University of Virginia Library

And now, the Angel who had Noah borne,
The Angel of Repentance, Phanuel,
A mandate, in reply to his request,
Received from Archangelic Michael,
Regent of Manhood, and of Virtue Prince,
Guardian of Nations, and the Guide of Kings;
Once Samiasa's, ere, in selfish pride,
He had unto himself a god become;
Thence to his evil genius was resigned.
—For gentle Phanuel, pitying his estate,
From the Most High, with earnest prayer, desired
Permission, on each seventh recurring day,
To minister to his despair, and pour
The balm of healing through his smitten soul.
For this, with incense at the gate of heaven,
He stood, and at the altar ministered
His golden vial's acceptable odour.—
There Michael came;

‘Me God hath charged,’ he said,
‘O Phanuel meek, with answer to thy prayer.
The terrible thunder of his Word hath sworn,
'Tis granted to thy importunity.
Far in the wilds, beyond Dudaël far,
The miserable Monarch, now not man,
Dwells with the savage of the Desart wild,
Himself a savage wilder; doom severe:
A beast, but uncompanioned, and unstalled;
Wet with the dews of heaven; desolate
Of human habits, as of human heart.
Far other spirit rules his spirit now,
Than once; Hherem, the Cursed of the Accursed,
Whom Hell's own gorge heaved forth, abominable.
—In lofty disbelief, and wilful pride,
When first the Primogenial Parents plucked
That fatal fruit from the Sciential Tree;
Then Hherem, with ignoble aim, possessed
The inferior creatures, a substantial form;
And quickened with his rage the bestial soul,
The creeping thing, and bird that wings the air:
Whence enmity between the kinds; . . the weak,
Prey to the stronger, in earth, air, and sea.
The nobler fellows of the Fiend aspired
At quarry nobler far, the souls of men;
And scorned his sensual taste irrational.
Yet of immortal men there are, content
To share their nature with the prostrate brute,
Earth's erect animals, and vainly proud,
As the gay Peacock of his gorgeous plumes.
Not such the Monarch's sin. 'Twas too intense
A consciousness of immortality,
Of spiritual vigour; rebel pride
Of reason, of the human will divine,
That sought presumptuously to rival God.
The sin of Adam, sin of Lucifer:
For which the Sons of Adam undergo
Probation; whence the Devils are condemned
Without reprieve, and destitute of hope,
Incapable of change, repenting not.
Emptied of his humanity the King,
And even deprived its shape, and form extern;
That he might feel, of grace divine, and free,
He was a human creature; and might know,
The attributes, whereof he waxed too proud,
Were the good gifts of Him who made him great,
And glorious in intelligence, and power,
And ruleth o'er the realties of earth.
—Now, Phanuel, to thy prayer this boon is given;
That the blest Sabbath, day of hallowed rest,
Duly administer, to his estate,
From direst punishment repose, and brief
Immunity from demon prevalence.’

When this he heard, glad Phanuel's praises rose,
In angel-hymns, to Mercy's sapphire throne.
Away he sped into the wilderness,
Upon his joyful errand; and now came
Into the extreme Dudaël, where it bounds
Upon the land of Naid; and there discerned
The fallen King, commanded by the Fiend:
The human drooped to brutish, the sublime
Spirit to shape ignoble; quadruped,
And prostrate; every attribute of soul
Convert to abject quality; each sense,
To bestial uses, piteously subdued.
—Soon he the Demon's charms dismissed, and o'er
The seeming brute proclaimed—

‘In part fulfilled
The Season of Repentance.’

From the sands,
Upon his feet upstarted Samiasa;
Naked as Adam, in his innocence.
Still wild of feature, but his heart was calm:
Well Phanuel knew, he was no Savage there,
And hailed the Monarch to a Man restored;
Then, with angelic care, as well befits
A covering Cherub, cast o'er his bare limbs,
Majestic in their order, and design,
A fleecy mantle; skin of a slain Lamb,
Which, on an Altar in the Wilderness,
An unhewn rock, they had, in sacrifice,
To the Eternal offered, thus atoned.

And, with the King, the Fiend, too, was released,
And straight away to hell in triumph went,
And mingled with the world; . . a traitor foul.
Nor to his charge came back on other days,
Albeit on Samiasa yet came back
The spell; suspended only, not dissolved,
Though less severely binding on his soul,
And leaving space for hope.

Thus fared the King;
Yet not, even on the blessèd Sabbath-day,
Would Samiasa to the world return;
Till, by much meditation, he had fixed
His spirit in most resolved humility.
—Long wandering, in search of some lone cave,
Where, as an eremite, he could, with prayer,
And abstinence, completely purge his soul
Of pride, and passion; lust, and appetite;
He came, where Gihon bounds the sable land,
Beyond the broad Erythræan; where abode
A Cainite colony, . . by Kael ruled,
A prophet blind, and scornful, and profane.

Wild scene the spot he chose—an ample bay;
But, all about the shores, dark earth was riven
With sulphur; and dread thunder scorched the fields:
For inland, though not far, a mountain rose
Volcanic, from below precipitous,
Circled above with wood, stern, craggy, wild;
Wherein, from summit to its utmost base,
A central chasm of fire perpetual burned,
Like incense in a censer, in a cup
Of large contents, vast of circumference,
Preserved; a crater deep, and broad; its sides
With thicket covered, harbour for the Boar;
Its bottom spread into a treacherous plain,
Where cattle, unconscious all of peril, grazed;
And leading, by a passage in the midst,
To one more spacious; by a rocky way,
Milelong descent, with ashes strown; and pools
Corrosive, bitter, salter than the sea,
And boiling like witch-cauldrons. Hence arose; . .
After due warnings given to those without,
In rumblings audible, and visible smoke,
And demonstrations palpable of stones,
Red-hot, projected wide; . . eruption dire
Of flaming ruin, terribly diffused.
Cloud, then, on cloud was piled, sulphureous film;
White of the whitest; in the massiest wreaths;
Far o'er the mountain, an enormous height:
Columns of stones, and ashes, intermixed;
And burning lava, pouring down the hill;
And often deep-red blaze ascending high,
Midst the huge volumes of that atmosphere,
Surmounting, mountainous, the mountain's self;
And, sometimes, with a summer storm increased;
Vapours of rain; sulphur, and mineral;
Together blent, and swelling to more bulk.
Then was the fountain of the fire unsealed,
And up it rushed; so passing high, and bright,
That wonder died of fear, or fear of wonder,
As either had possession precedent,
And waited change. Then, tempest rode athwart,
In sable chariot, and with shadow veiled,
Pillar of flagrant sheen in folded shrine;
Or, clearing thence away, revealed at large;
New-tinted with reverberated light
From the white clouds aloft, . . whose many hues
With the pale levin-flash contrasted well.

Like an extinguished crater, stood aby,
A hollow . . cineritious, cavernous,
Fire-eaten. Large it was—a sulphur mine,
By Nature excavated, high, and deep;
And templed in the rocks. Here hid, adored
The sanable, and royal penitent;
And made it sacred. With an iron style,
The craggy walls he pictured, graving there
Religious symbols, hieroglyphic signs—
Mythi of mixèd creeds, and systems new,
And mystic speculations, still begot
By indefatigable faculty
Of fancy, on the still productive mind.
—Not like the race of Cain, a labouring tribe
Of handicrafts mechanic, were the sons
Of the apostate; but from reason judged
Things physical, and gross, yet not aright:
For not of nature cared they to enquire—
Idle, though curious—and conceived strange laws,
She knew not of, her goings-on to rule;
Deciding ignorant, and as of time
Eternity discoursing, or as it
Describing time: or, daring there to soar
Where no experience ventures; region high
Of pure abstraction, beyond earth, or heaven . .
World of void forms. Thus, of such phantasies
These sculptures were, mysterious. There, behold,
Adam in Chaos struggling, ere Day was;
Conception dim, yet bodily expressed:
And, on the other side, he had portrayed
The Universe in Deity contained,
And Order pre-existent—state obscure;
High thoughts, and visions of a gifted mind.

Thus occupied, One found him whom he knew,
Palal; his father's friend, and with his sire
Acquainted, ere apostate. Palal had,
A traveller, come to Armon; lover he
Of wisdom. Vainly, ere then, he looked, in all
The ways of men, for the image of his own
Excellent spirit; and, the impress liking not
Of others, so was tempted ill to deem
The signet, and its manifold device:
Yet, having heard, or read, the Soul of Man
Was in the Image of the Almighty made,
Thought, as its model, that it must be good:
Nay, that the all-wise Maker would not mar
His likeness, with distorted workmanship;
Like a mad limner, merry at his mirrour,
Copying his own grimace: and thence inferred,
False man had broken, in some mysterious wise,
The seal, intrusted to him at his birth,
Of the divine resemblance. Thus in all
Imperfect, yet not equally defaced—
He in the land of his nativity
Conceived it most defective; but among
The Shepherd seed of Abel, . . or the sons
Of Seth, fond of high meditation, on the crest
Of loftiest mountain, holding with the sky
Communion planetary, . . least of all;
As having least departed from the pure
Religion of first nature, and of God,
By Adam taught. He journied to enquire
Of all they knew, and practised; that he might,
In the virtuous, and the wise, made manifest,
Catch glimpses of the Godhead, and compare
With the judicial standard in his soul.
They asked him of his country, and its ways:
The appetite of curiosity
Grew keener, the more food; till, in return
Of courtesy, at his departure, he
Took, under his protection, two of the most
Importunate to his own land, that they
Might witness what they sought, and bear report
Unto their brethren; Adon of the twain
Was one—the other to the fold returned
In time—but Adon not until the last,
As will be told. The Shepherd knew him not.
—Also, when Adon won a crown, and realm
With Amazarah; Palal would his court
Visit, in intervals of travel, oft,
And what he had seen, and heard, discourse; and, ay,
His knowledge, thus imparted, was as power
To Samiasa, when, for war arrayed,
He went to conquer nations, and to rule.

Now, in his many wanderings, Palal came
Unto the Land of Gihon, where he found
Dethronèd Samiasa. He had seen
Each country watered by the rivers four;
Had traced the course of Pison; and had gazed
On onyx, gold, and bdellium in the hills,
And streams of Havilah;—and he had sped
On the swift billows of the Hiddekel,
And caught the Tigers on its dreamy banks.

High theme, and wonderous, had the twain to tell
Each to the other; nor was wanting, then,
Different opinion to raise argument,
The seasoning of discourse. From their proud height,
Had Palal's speculations of mankind
Fallen earthward; by experience taught, he deemed
That only thence, through organs of the flesh,
Might man gain knowledge; which, abstracting far,
The dædal to ideal elevate
Raised, and refined, from complex to the pure.
For, on the face of universal earth,
No Open Vision lingered to instruct
The sophist, how unto the pious soul
Came revelations of another world:
Creed this, which stood in contrast with the dim,
And high-wrought theorizing of the king.
—Hence argued they; till, wearied out with words,
Thus Samiasa answered.

‘I perceive,
No common ground of logic have we got,
To edify a structure sure for both.
Nor may I listen calmly, and permit
That Nature should usurp the Spirit's throne,
And Reason's; who is law, dominion, power:
For as her sceptre is, or straight, or bent;
So they become. And individual lapse
Maketh a slippery path, where many fall;
And if in each her image be debased,
What matter codes? The reinless desart steed,
Less wild—less rude, than self-ungoverned Man.
And wherefore? Know, the steed is guided still
By Nature's law; is guided, and controuled:
But, as a spirit, Man is free to quit
Her rule, and limit, with unfettered will.
—In private virtue public good consists;
With private virtue public good declines:
This truth my father felt. Could he, for shame,
A God-forsaking, God-forsaken man,
Teach godliness, without which virtue fails,
Wanting Faith's index in the night of storms?
And what could I, whose crude conceptions spurned
Their cradle; and, for liberty, and light
Impatient ever, sought to seal themselves
In living characters, or monuments
Of lasting fame, upon the external world;
In verse, or statue, or elaborate picture;
Giving words wings, stone eloquence, and colour
Thought's visible creations? Ay, give ear:
Words are oft winged—how, then, is summed the soul?—
And, in the effulgence of our essences,
The breathing thoughts are kindled, whence they came;
Like eaglets, with the beak in thunder clothed,
The eye arrayed in lightning from the sun:
And there, in that substantial fire, all forms
External, all the images of sense,
Are alchemized, and turned into its kind;
And, thence effused, are emanations thence,
Of it, and from it; and aspire beyond
The limits of their origin; and bear,
Within their plumes, strength to intrude within
All substances, and essences, and orbs,
Material, intellectual; Hell, and Heaven;
And stamp them with their impress. If our words
Have such prerogative; what then the soul,
Whereof they breathe, and burn? Can that be doomed
To eternal durance, never to go forth
Of its clay prison, and the fleshly nook
'Tis pent in? Lo, its freedom cometh. All
The elements expect it, and all worlds—
Its signet is upon them, and shall be;
Its knowledge shall increase—its power command:
The bodily, which veils it, shall give way;
And it shall be itself, for evermore;
Of its own pleasure, both to will, and do;
And what its dwelling may be, and how bright,
Man's loftiest faculty may not conceive,
Till franchised from corporeal servitude;
And then it shall inherit a demesne,
Essential, endless, infinite, divine.’

With that he rose, on his companion's lips
Imposing silence; proposition brief
Soon making, that together they should seek
Man's haunts again. Anon, for travel girt,
They left that rocky lair; ascending, gained
A summit, and looked out on sea, and sky:
A glorious prospect. Calm old ocean lay,
Beneath the ancient heaven. Awhile, they gazed
On the pacific deep, and silent clouds.
Tears Samiasa wept; then turned aside
His steps toward the desart, by that way
To reach the world—a wider wilderness.
It was the Sabbath when they thus commenced
Their journeying: but, at eve, fell on the King
His mystic doom. Amazed, and terrified,
Then Palal would have fled; but Phanuel swift
Descended; and, arrayed in human form,
Thus startling not the sceptic's prejudice,
Appeared, as their companion; and, that week,
Walked with them, till the Sabbath came again;
When Samiasa unto Palal told
All his disastrous state, and pity won:
Wherefore the Sophist yet with him remained,
The solace of his wanderings through the wilds.

Still Phanuel tended them, invisibly;
And, once assuming his angelic shape,
To Samiasa said—

‘Befits it thee,
Full penance be accomplished in thy heart—
Not yet thy degradation is complete,
Which done thy soul is saved. Hence, what awaits
Thy sad experience, both of thee, and thine,
Will task endurance sternly. Be thou warned.
So may the Sire of Spirits thee restore,
In mercy, to that Reason which He is;
As I therefore will intercessant pray.’
—And, with this sad farewell, the Seraph went.