The Judgement of the Flood :: :: University of Virginia Library

Crowned with the Martyr's crown, and in the robe
Of purple cinctured; hail, triumphant Faith.
By thee we rise . . and rise; our thoughts by thee
Soar to the heaven, the Heaven of heavens, and build
Them habitations there. Nor these alone:
Thou givest wings unto the soul herself,
Wherewith supported, she shall downward look
Upon destruction in serene repose,
And smile above the planetary wreck.

Thereafter, shall the immortal soul rehearse
What harmonies she heard at hush of Eve;
Or in the quiet of the paly moon;
Or audible breathings of the coysome dawn,
When thought profound listened, as to the stars,
And silence had a voice. A still small voice,
Less than the slenderest whisper: twilight birth
From Nothing, and Creation; as their feud
Were intermitted, and their strife the while
But amourous play had been;—each lost in each,
Like light, and shade on Nature's countenance;

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Or wave on wave, within some gentle bay,
In multitudinous unity dissolved;
Or the light azure filmy clouds, within
The bosom of heaven's blue o'er Italy;
Or the self-moving undulations bland
Of the once Athenian marbles. 'Twixt that still
Small voice, and very silence, there abode
Nor embryo, nor shadow, of a sound.

And higher harmonies shall there be heard
Than what, from this material universe,
—In the most holy hour of sympathy
With its completions, when it best is felt,
Like an Æolian tone, within the soul,—
Inspired imagination may conceive,
Of sound, and sense, as from an oracle:
Higher, and happier harmonies; unmixed
With the blind darkness, and the wasting grief,
Or mournful reminiscence, which disturb
The sweetest music here; though joy there be,
Ay, and the most ennobling joy in grief:
With melancholy retrospect unmixed;
But warmed with that high fortitude of faith,
Which makes a seraph's harp all ecstasy,
And every number burn, as it were fire,
With most substantial rapture; at the shrine
Of Holiness, and Beauty kindled well.

Therefore, for Lamech's death no grief lament;
But rather triumph greet his happy change.

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BOOK THE FOURTH. SIGNS, AND WONDERS

I. The Incarnate

Change rules in life, as death. Transfigured, there,
Elihu stood. As when Messiah took
Apart, into a mountain high, those Three,
Who saw his face shine as the sun in heaven;
His raiment pure even as the light; the while
Talked Moses, and Elias, there, with him;
Anon, o'ershadowed with a radiant cloud,
Whence cried a Voice, ‘This is my Son beloved,
In whom I well delight me; hear ye him:’
Over Elihu such the change that came.
His face glowed, and a spirit breathed; enrapt,
As if a vision dawned upon his soul,
And warmed him with its lustre; nay, enlarged
His attitude into such majesty
As would become a god; . . . and, like a god,
Thus he that group bespake.

‘Effectual is
The prayer of pious men; and Lamech hath,
That which he prayed for, Death; his fittest doom.
Thus blessed, whom God corrects; if for past sins,
That they may be forsaken, and forgiven;
If righteous, that bliss future may surpass
The present pain, or be in joy secured:
Else taken from the ill to come away;
And for the sufferer, in the worst extreme,
A crown of glory incorruptible
The Eternal hath prepared. Mine hath it been,
To comfort the expiring saint, who meets
Elihu now in Hades; there, before,

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Gone with his brethren, on that fatal plain
Doomed to the slaughter. Ye, too, have your tasks.
Thine be it, Shem, the interiour of the Ark
To furnish; both for use, and ornament.
Thine, Japhet, outside to protect, and watch
'Gainst the designs of foes; for such will be.
And, Ham; thy passion, and thy crafty skill,
Well, if well used, shall find employment meet.
—Go forth: and, from the desart, and the wild,
Bring forth the savage; beast, and bird. Know, strength,
And wisdom shall be given thee, in the hour
Of trial in the chase. Thereafter, will
The time appointed come. For He shall make
Small water-drops; and they shall pour down rain,
According to their vapour, from the clouds
Dropt, and on man abundantly distilled.
Then, unbelieving man may question God,
If he can understand. Or let him, now,
Tell, if he knows, the spreadings of the clouds,
The noises of his tabernacle; and mark
The growing gloom, whence cometh peal on peal:
My human heart is moved—when God thus speaks.’

Thus spake the Incarnate: glowing more, and more,
With glory still diviner. Sensibly,
Voices, and lightnings, from the electric cloud,
The presence of the Omnipotent announced.
Anon, the sound of whirlwind, and of wings;
Ministering seraphs, o'er his awful head,
A canopy expanded of their plumes,
As of a fiery sky; while, from amidst
That dread pavilion, Thunders thus discoursed.

‘Man! where wast thou when Ages I decreed,
And laid for Space foundations? Knowest thou
Of the Beginning; when the Heavens, the Earths,
His filial words, were of the Eternals born?

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To thee all void, and formless, and a deep
Of darkness, till thereon the Spirit brood,
And the voiced Light distinction introduce
In Hades, else confusion; and divide
The light from darkness, making day, and night.
Light immaterial first; till, self-evolved,
It shine, and glow, and burn, within, and on,
The earth; and, with the watery element,
Act in construction, previous to the sun.
Where dwelt it, then?—now, dwells?—the Darkness, where?
—Hast thou commanded, since thy days, the Morn;
And caused the Day-spring gild the purple air?
The treasures of the Snow hast thou perceived,
Or those of Hail, for time of wrath reserved;
Of these yet inexperienced? Canst thou tell
Who, for the overflow of Waters, cleaved
Its channel; and divided the fit way
For Lightning of the thunder; that the Rain,
Whereof thou knowest not, may fall from heaven;
In Judgement, and then Blessing; and oft time,
On desart wild, untenanted of man,
To quicken desolation into bloom?
Hence, when to heath, and waste, and far-off isle,
Not habitable, or mountain too sublime
For human feet to tread, the traveller come,
Exploring, and shall see, distant or near;
There, he shall own a God; and laud the hand
Benevolent, the barren bleakest soil
That leaves not, mid frost, snow, and ice, undecked
With vegetation, but prepares a shew
Of Beauty to delight the Wanderer's eye.
—From seas, and rivers; lakes, and rivulets;
With the moist earth; the Clouds, in vapours, rise
To elevate expanse. Hast thou explored
Their secret treasures; searched Life's fountains out?
Hast thou the Centre reached, or have the gates

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Of Death to thee been opened? Hast thou seen
The dreamy portals of his shadowy halls?
Or, hast thou soared on high to other orbs,
And taken knowledge of their secret years?
The greater Light, and less; with the bright stars;
Morning, and evening? or their number learned?
Canst thou unrein the Comet, or upbind?
Or travel to Orion? or exchange
Impulse that gives them motion, or the checks
By which the attracting Spirit reins them in?
Canst thou command the Sea, and Earth obey
United influence both of Sun, and Moon?
The Vapours draw from waters, floods from clouds,
Replenishing the earth with great increase
Of flowers, and fruits? or teach the forms of things
The power to separate the beams, and rays,
Whence glow with various hues the works of God?
Settedst thou in the Old Obscure the Plants, and Seeds;
Then gavest to them the Sun, whose beams should call
Their beauty, and their produce, into life?
Madest thou for light the Temple of the Sun?
Or multiplied it sevenfold; and shrined
In floral emblems, vegetable life,
His loving gifts, in grass, and herb, and tree;
Each teeming to the birth, with germs, and seeds
Productive, with progressive growth endued,
With blood, and bone, and brain, and nerve, and skin,
According to their kinds; the types of thine,
As they of thee, in birth, and life, and death;
As thou, in all things, image art of God—
Who wisdom in the human bosom put,
And understanding in the human heart?
—The cunning of thy frame, it is not thine.
The heart itself is his; and unto him
Belongs thy spirit, as thy being doth:
And whatsoe'er, in other creatures, shews

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Thyself to thee, a shadow shews of God,
Of higher Wisdom vouches, greater Power;
Both what the seas produce, where great Whales swim,
And what in air soars far above the earth,
Fowl in the heaven's open firmament.
—Behold the Hawk; he by thy wisdom flies—
Whither the summer travels, and due south
Stretches his wings, to men ill seasons leaving—
Or, lo, the Eagle; sure, at thy command,
She hath upmounted, and her nest on high
Made, where she dwells abiding on the rock,
And in the crag her palace fortifies,
Whence with a glance she dooms her far-off prey.
Fed are her young with blood; and where the field
Craves for the slain in battle, there is she.
—Remark the diligent, and frolic Fish:
Play all their work, their labour only sport;
Them moves, not thy volition, but their own;
Their proper mind inspires them, guides, and guards;
To swim—to fly—to leap—to climb—to crawl,
According to their needs; in sea, or air,
Up cataract, or palm tree, or on shore.
Some, when the streams are dry in which they dwelt,
In search of water migrate o'er dry land,
Or in the night for food; oft time in shoals
Banded, with leaders marshalled rational.
With what nice judgement, they direct the blow
Against the insect: lo, from peril how
In mud they hide them; and, when storms approach,
Sink to the bottom, to the surface soar,
As wishing to avoid, or to enjoy,
The agitation of impending change.
Colours, and sounds distinguish they; and burn
With love of mate, of offspring, and of kind.
Some sleep in herds, appointing first their watch,
While on the rocks they sun themselves at ease—

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A peaceful race—a happy social tribe;
Various of bulk, but still the huger size,
In consciousness of power, the more serene;
Fearless of death, in pleasure living still,
And dying in a moment, with least pain;
Heirs of an element, wherein but they
May none exist, and made for their delight,
In motion slow, or swift, free from the change,
And influence of seasons, creatures bright;
Bright, as if woven of beams; amber of hue,
Or golden—azure, and green—and of all tints—
Making the deep a marvel. Knowest thou,
How they were framed to balance, to adjust,
Their weight against the waters; to divide
Their way therein? to see—to hear—to breathe
The fluid pregnant with the air of life?
Or how they choose to wander, or prefer
Local abode? or from the sea saline,
Against descending currents persevere
To the selected stream; there to depose
Their eggs in fitting beds, by bank, or shore?
—Of them may man tranquillity of mind,
And abstinence of appetite, be taught;
Wise, if he learn. From God their wisdom is;
Who giveth will, and wisdom even to forms,
So brief, and so minute, the straining eye
Discerns not parts, nor motion. Beauty, also,
He grants, and Music to the higher kinds:
The Birds of plumage glorious, rich of song;
Whose home is in the air, and there their road,
Wherein they cross the ocean, visiting
East, west, north, south; the ends of heaven, and earth.
Learn wisdom, too, of them; for ne'er have they
Absurdly done, nor ever folly known—
Accomplished in their nature, to the bourn
Of their perfection come; while thou hast yet

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To rise to thine by labour, and by death—
Needing redemption. Sinless are their ways,
Having affections, nor unapt to judge,
And act on thought, reflective, and enrapt;
And, with their numbers various, and how sweet,
Awaking meditation in thy mind,
And ecstasy of feeling in thy heart.
Yet fierce of these are some, on raven bent;
But most are gentle. So of Cattle too—
And all were thus, till Evil, made by man,
Was found in Nature; to correct in him
Fatal result, and mortal tendency.
—But in the coming age, when blessèd Life
Shall Death have conquered; then, will peace return
To all creation; both to man, and beast.
For unto thee hath God dominion given
Over the inferiour kinds. Wherefore he made
Thee in his image, that even thou shouldst rule
Over the fish of the capacious sea,
Over the fowl of the expanded air,
Over the cattle, and o'er all the earth,
And over every creeping thing thereon:
Blessed to be fruitful, and to multiply;
And to replenish, and subdue the earth.
—And Bird, and Beast to thee, O Ham, shall come;
From brake, and den; in desart, and in air;
In quiet majesty, and peaceful might;
Come, as of old to Adam, to be named
Of him in Eden; and as yet again,
They shall with Man abide, when He, who made,
Shall re-create the Heavens, and the Earth.
—Thine with their restoration reconciles;
Nature advanced to Spirit; when with all,
Even as with Shem, the Godhead shall abide.
Thrice blessèd be Jehovah, God of Shem;
By Ham, and Shem, and Japhet; for to them,

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His incommunicable Name is given,
The knowledge of himself. On earth shall be
His Residence divine—his Mercy-Seat—
And spread his glory o'er the Cherubim.
Of human seed becomes, of human loins
His Incarnation grows—the Son of Shem,
Pacific Victor; Lord of Heaven, and Earth;
In whom the fulness of all lands convenes,
The consummation of the Age to come.’
Thus spake the Incarnate; and was borne away.
Now, when the Thunder, and the Voice had ceased,
Together with the noise of winds, and wings;
Up from the ground, where, prostrate, they adored,
Methuselah, with Noah, and his sons,
Rose; and lo, none was with them: save there lay,
His face on earth, the corse of Lamech dead.

II. Burial of Lamech

Seven days from Lamech's death were passed in sorrow.
The day then dawning was decreed to do
Exequial rites to the forsaken shrine,
The temple of his body; of worshipper
Now void, but not of God. For, as on wilds,
Once cultivated, once the abodes of men,
Altars in ruin picturesque survive,
By Saint, or Idol o'er-presided still;
Thus, with our flesh, or buried, or cast out,
His Providence remains, preparing it
For restoration incorruptible.
Therefore, o'er corse, and sepulchre, the Sun,
Regardless of the dead, still rises, sets,
As when the wept-for such vicissitude
Found grateful; hence, the waves dance in their joy
Over the drowned. Air freshens yet, the fields

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Laugh, and the flowers do vaunt their dewy charms;
Though day by day, and hour by hour, Time dooms
And slays his thousands: for in earth, and sea
The human seed, in much dishonour sown,
Corrupts but to requicken gloriously.
O Death is kingly, and high state affects:
Quiet, and placid; of uncertainty
Untroubled, and, with destiny at one;
In independence of the illusive hours,
Crowns the pale corse what mystic majesty.
—Thus now, up from his bed with health aglow,
The Sun arises at this autumn tide,
Rejoicing o'er the golden sheaves of corn.
Hues sport in clouds, whose fleecy skirts are checked
With silvery tints of light, and glancing shade;
While the round orb awakes on the blue hills,
And the wild Deer play in his dewy beams,
And the birds sing their pæans: chief, the Lark,
His grassy couch forsaking, hymns the gate
Of everlasting heaven; but, heard on earth
At intervals, the speckled warbler's song
Wafts on the breeze; the pious Shepherd's joy,
His sinless flock unfolding, early risen.
—At later hour, that Shepherd pipes along
The hills, unconscious: pensively, the Peasant
Unlatches his lone wicket; and his flask
The Housewife fills, as he his ripping scythe
Sharpens in preparation; while his Dog
Expects his homely crust. As wont, the Cock
Rouses the barn; nor Partlet wakes alone,
With all her scarce-fledged brood; but eke the Maid
That, laughing underneath the shady elm,
Fills, for the dairy, swift the frothy pail,
Milched from the patient Cow. Thus Life proceeds;
While to the grave a patriarch's corse is borne—
Nor cares the Woodman, as he cleaves the oak

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In the deep forest, whom amongst mankind
Grim Death hath felled; and, on the daisied green,
The frolic Children, chasing Butterflies,
And principled in every limb with life,
Dream not of death; its terrours unconceived.

Of Lamech's hallowed corse, yet are there who
Be mindful; friends, and foes. From every part,
—Laid in his coffin, laved, and well perfumed,—
Came crowds to look upon his winding-sheet,
And gaze on his shut eyes; his silent mouth,
Closed with the fillet; and his tresses shorn.
Great were the lamentations in the ways,
Whenas the pomp of funeral passed by,
Of brethren, and of sisters, and of throngs:
Great was the wailing among multitudes,
Natural emotion, for restraint too big,
Nor of excess ashamed; so worthy whom
They wept. Now, at the burial-place arrived,
In the hewn rock a sepulchre prepared,
They, on the threshold of its narrow porch,
Repose awhile their burthen; whiles they pray
Above the dead; whiles friends, and relatives
Take their eternal farewell; ere the grave
Close on the form they shall behold no more.

But ere these rites were well begun, arose
Loud clamour. Lo, a host of warriour men,
In long procession, came; a gorgeous train,
On chiefs, and monarchs tending. Head of all,
Haughtily moved the enormous Elephant,
And his intelligent proboscis swayed
From out his ivory tusks, conscious he bare
What was or worthy, or of high esteem.
Not worthy, though of high esteem, was he;
Azaradel. Next, on a Zebra, came
Jabal; and Jubal, on an Antelope;

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—Full grown, and of dimensions larger far
Than, now, in Ind, associate in herds,
Timid, and shy; or Nyl-ghau, provincèd
North-west, 'twixt Hindostan's peninsula,
And Persia's once renownèd empery—
Hunted of Aurungzebe, when that Mogul
Held progress gay from Delhi to Cashmeer,
Summer retreat. Liker this beast to that
Which, on Euphrates, trees with jaggèd horns
Sawed down, though tangled in their bushes oft,
The hunter's easy prey: but likest far
The Unicorn, though other; for upon
That fearful brute, of high exalted horn,
Symbol express, and very type of pride,
Rode Tubalcain. And other chiefs were there,
In chariots lion-yoked; and, mounted, or
On foot, the populous throng rolled after them;
Like billows topped with foam, so thick the plumes
In ostentation worn. Right in the midst
Of that funereal train, Azaradel,
Advancing, spake.—

‘Wherefore are multitudes
Assembled? Hold ye politic debate,
How ye may cast the inevitable yoke,
Imposed on the surrounding lands through them,
The children of the City of the Wild,
By Adon prospered, deity benign?’

Him answered, then, Methuselah.
‘O prince,
No yoke can be imposed upon the free,
The truly free, who are not less at large,
Albeit in chains, or close in dungeon penned.
The soul no bars, nor shackles can confine;
Her liberty is of herself, or God,
Of every Being the essential Self.
Therefore, no controversy we maintain,

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To break what galls us not: else, even with thee,
We might dispute the right of mortal man
To question our design, yet unsubdued;
Or why assembled here, to assemble free,
Or not assemble, even as we list.
Yet know, we meet to consecrate the bier
Of Lamech; and within the grave repose
His clay, whose soul in Hades hath found rest.’

Replied Azaradel, the glozing prince:
‘To him yet higher honour had we done;
By force of his descent, and rightful sway:
And now for such, even o'er the precipice,
And brink of the all-feared grave, contention hold.
—Why hath not the anatomist made meet
The corse for the embalmer? Why not he
Anointed it within with cassia,
And aromatic myrrh? O kinsmen false;
Were ye impatient of his poor remains,
Ye hurried them into their resting place,
Seven days passed only? Them why seventy days
Preserved ye not, to be with gum prepared,
In linen swathed, and shrined in carvèd frames?
Where are the judges too, and oratours,
To set forth all the merits of the dead?
The mausoleum might build up his fame,
And Earth adore his planet in the Heavens.’

Whereto thus Noah:
‘At the portal, now,
Of Man's last home, and peaceful house, we stand.
Wherefore should Strife upon its threshold step,
And, with his clangous foot, break silence there?
Wherefore, since honour to the dead do we,
Debate the form? Honour is honour still,
Whate'er its shape; the spirit still the same,
Through every metamorphosis unchanged,
Alike indifferent to whatever mode.

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Yet, free to choose, that spirit transmigrant
May not of right be bound to other will.
Our customs have we—ye have yours: and both
Our sorrow, and our hope, may well express;
Or better one: yet neither may, by force,
Procure observance; but, by reason, shew,
At fitting time, and place . . for time, and place
Are her's to appoint, if reason be to rule . .
The ground of preference. But now reason is,
Our custom be permitted, and obtain,
For future hour reserving argument.
And rather, seeing that the day arrives,
When Deluge shall distinctions all confound,
And earth in one great interest unite,
Whither salvation, what, and how, to seek.’

Hereat among the ranks of Cain was zeal.
‘To whom are forms indifferent?’ Jubal said—
‘Thoughts ill expressed are maimed; and harmonies
Of verbal images, and metrical
Proportions sweet, make not a pleasing song,
If unto music set unskilfully,
Or married unto sounds unmusical.
Religious rites are holy: holy they,
Inviolate as fair religion's self;
The altar as the God, the sacrifice
As he it worships. Whoso one contemns,
The other offends, and merits penal stripes.
—The sons of Cain are wise; and, in their rites,
Best signify the soul's return to God,
And body to its elements restore.
Raise high the funeral pyre; and let the flame,
To such the corse converted, soar to heaven,
Type of the soul's ascent; while with the air
Mingles the smoke, or into fluid melts,
And blend with dust the ashes; element
With element composed: and thus, farewell;

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Thus, air to air, water to water, fire
To fire, and earth to earth. Of these is Man;
And unto these reverts, in order meet.’

This speech loud murmurs followed of applause,
Sent from the hosts of Cain: but, on the part
Of the mixed race, disapprobation rose.
Then weapons were unsheathed, and blood was shed
Betwixt the opposing creeds; and more had been,
But that Azaradel, and Tubalcain
Together spake, apart. Soon both exclaimed:
‘Bring forth the Prophet. Let the gods decide.’
—At once arose the universal shout,
‘Bring forth the Prophet.’

And they brought him forth;
Kaël, blind seër; blind of mind, and eye;
Who dared to deem even his own visions false,
Even to his own predictions infidel,
Yet ne'er the less believed by them who heard.

III. The Blind Prophet

Now, in the rear; high seated on a car,
Drawn by two Leopards; Kaël came enthroned:
Of a barbaric army chief adored.
Prince of a savage tribe, that dwelt beyond
The far Erythræan Sea; once immigrant;
From Naid, and Enos for their crimes exiled;
And, free from government, thenceforth declined
From lawless human to mere animal;
Half brute, but not half angel; and yet men,
If but as idiots. Hence, into their souls
Glimpses of reason flashed an awful light,
More piercing made by the surrounding gloom.
So had they superstitions; and from Death,
And from the Dead, were visited of dreams,

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Acceptable to Faith—high faculty,
By weakness to credulity reduced,
Yet even in weakness to be reverenced.
For them, strange meaning had the closing Year;
Since on its Last Day, at the mid of night,
The ghosts of the departed wont appear
To friends, and relatives; . . who ready made
For spiritual visitants their house,
And set the room in order, and prepared
Water to purify, and wine to welcome,
The traveller from worlds transcending this; . .
Whose coming they awaited all the night,
Until the hour appointed; then held they
Communion with their guests invisible—
Which whoso failed to do might vengeance fear.
Such vengeance fell on Kaël. Lightning smote
His eyes, and so they withered; and his frame,
Convulsed with the quick flash, in agony,
Shrunk; and, for sickness, he was cast abroad,
Into the fields where corses had been strewn,
As one already dead, or doomed to die,
Left with dry bones to perish. What great Power
Preserved the abandoned wretch? More helpless he
Than unprotected babe; yet he returned
Even from the Place of Skeletons, to health
Restored; and, by the people, thence believed
With spirits, and demons, in the haunted fields,
Communion to have held; whence, in their fear,
Him they avoided, till by priestly hands
Made pure, and then as prophet him esteemed.
—Such Kaël was; whose inspiration, now,
Armies awaited, to decide dispute
Of rituals vain: and he, with writhings torn,
Prelude of unintelligible sounds,
And other signs of ecstasy, at length

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Was of clear speech delivered; thus it ran.

‘Fools bury, fools embalm, fools burn their dead.
Fling them forth to the plains: and let the bird
Not shun them, nor the beast, as if abhorred,
And doomed to hell; but, as sweet morsels, eat,
And worthy entrance into worlds of bliss.
The feathered tribes may bear them then aloft,
Their pastimes to partake, and bathe in air;
And the four-footed creatures on the hills,
And in the forests, and by banks of streams,
Teach them new pleasures, and delightful sports.
What murmur? ha! ha! ha!’

And then he laughed,
So wild, and loud, and long, that all the rocks,
And burial places, in that field of graves,
Echoed the bitter mockery of that laugh.
Loud pealed the same from Jared's sepulchre;
Mahalaleel's replied to his dread mirth;
Cainan's that laugh resounded; and the vault
Of Enosh was alive with that mad voice;
And Seth's twin-pillared temple of repose
Was wakened with the hoarse profanity;
And Adam's tomb reverberated deep
The cachinnation; strange, and hollow tones
Of laughter, and of blasphemy prolonged.
—And well that scorn succeeded to allay
The growing tumult, which had else arisen,
And, in that prophet's infidelity,
Found reason 'gainst the judgement that pronounced
Their prejudices void; and, in their stead,
Proposed what all abhorred. But, in that pause,
A power, unfelt before, the savage swayed;
And change in his aspect, and form produced,
Whence wonder died of awe:—a gazing corse,
Not uninformed of life, but seized, and fixed

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In catalepsy, senseless—speechless—blind;
Though glaring, as restored to sudden sight.
But blind he stood a swarthy monument,
Gigantic; for his hue was as the night;
Burned by the sun, and clime where he was born,
With fervency intense; his flesh was coal,
And his blood fire, black with excessive heat.
And he was huge of size; his limbs were cast
In mould Titanian, shrivelled yet, and shrunk
From what they might have been; by indolence
Enfeebled, such as, in the wilderness,
Weakens the human rival of the brute.
Held by the charm whose spell he could not break,
He stood enrapt; and, though unwilling, spake
Words, which, though true, and because true, the more
He disbelieved.

‘Laugh, Spirits of the Dead,
Laugh, laugh; and, like the impatient battle-steed,
Cry ha! ha! to derision. Laugh; ay, laugh.
Came not the Foe your Children to subdue?
Came not the sons of mischief forth, to seek
A quarrel, and, with insult, to shed blood?
Laughed not your God in heaven as they came,
And beckoned to the Angel of the Air,
Whose sword, and symbol is the hairy Star;
Whereof none knows but He, who measured out
The appointed ages of its mystic course,
That it should wing its fiery way to earth,
And lash it with a scourge? Make from the wreck
Of worlds. The void, and formless deep returns:
Such as it was, ere moved the Spirit there;
Ere the quick fiat of his strong right hand
The Light created; when the Sun leapt forth;
And, with his left begotten, rose the Moon;
While, with his speed, were kindled the bright Stars.
—And shall I curse whom He in heaven hath blessed,

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Who lies not, nor repents? What charm is there,
Or what enchantment, 'gainst the sons of God?
Here divination fails. But, from the heights
Of Armon, I behold the sacred Ship,
Walking the waters o'er the drownèd world;
How lovelily—alone—a goodly tent,
A blessèd bark, none curse but the accursed;
And blessèd he who blesseth it, and them.’

By this were weapons flashing in the wind,
Some at the prophet's throat; he saw them not:
But now, recovering from that strange access,
Finds words of recantation, to appease
The credulous crowd:

‘I spake not, 'twas the Fiend—
The lying Fiend, commissioned to deceive;
Believe it not.’

Thus leads the blind of eye
The blind of heart. But the more politic chiefs,
Self-shamed of such absurdity, postpone
Their primal purpose; and, with ill design,
One insult with another substitute.
—So they, imprompt, about the patriarch's corse,
Funereal games, mock honour, celebrate.

Straight were the prizes placed in view of all;
Women, and vases; mares, and mules, and steeds;
And ornaments of silver, and of gold;
And instruments of music; bowls for wine;
And gems of price, and wonderous works of art,
And talents of great worth; which who possessed
Might purchase what to him gave most delight;
With sacred tripods, palms, and verdant crowns;
And arms, and vestments for the conquerours.

The trumpets blare; forth the keen Racers start,
Each eager for the goal. With various luck,
The rivals haste: nor is ill chance to lack,

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Sport making for spectators; who laugh loud
At him who slips, his feet on treacherous ground,
Or wearied with exertion. Olive crowns,
Steeds, helms, and quivers grace the victor-youths.

Then stand the Combatants in order forth;
Of shoulders broad, and strong, and large of limb;
The hand with cæstus, or with gauntlet gloved,
With clenchèd fists attacking, and attacked.
On tiptoe first erect, their arms in air,
Thrown up defiant, either head drawn back
From blow expected, they the fight provoke;
Then strike the void of air; or, on the sides,
And breast, sounds loud, or hollow next excite.
Ears, temples, jaws resound. Now this avoids,
Now that misspends his stroke—falls—rises: shame,
And skill, contending in the indignant soul,
New vigour give, add fury; and, like hail,
Incessant pelts, sans pity, blow on blow,
Till mouth, and teeth, and nostril run with blood,
And the faint head trails ghastly, sick to death,
Over the unconscious shoulder, gory, pale;
How pale—and paler by such contrast made
With that purpureal tide.

Less savage game,
The race of horse and chariot puts to proof,
O generous Steed, thy best nobility.
—Even as thy master's, on thy back enthroned;
Or, more conspicuous in the lofty car,
Lord of the reins, to guide, or goad thy speed;
Haply unskilful, from his seat of pride,
Cast, ignominious, under hoof, or wheel.

Pleased with the rapid motion, even though blind;
Kaël permits his charioteer to strive
In emulation; whirling him along,
To the far goal, how eager for the prize.

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Great was his skill—for not in steed, or car
The artist trusts; but, as a pilot guides
Through storms his vessel, with unerring hand
Drives forthright to his aim. Not his the steed,
But the strong Leopard; male, and female, as
They couple in their solitary dens:
Conscious of force, although to them denied
Sagacity of dog, or wolf; which given,
End none had been to ravage. Furnished so
With horrent teeth, set in the mouth, and jaw,
Incisor, and canine; and, in the cheek,
The lacerant, for deadliest purposes;
The tongue even armed, and the ridged palate rough.
Nor these alone; but claws, keen, long, and curved,
And each with sheath defended, skinny folds,
And callous, whereon, as a sole, the foot
Rests in progression,—with the teeth combine,
To rend the prey, dashed with the flexile paw
To ground, and irresistibly compressed.
Hunger to sate, the forest depth they leave;
Steal on with noiseless tread; or ambushed lie,
With ears astretch for slightest sound, or step
Far off; and eyes that see by day, or night.
—Slow of their gait, incapable of speed
Continuous, well behoved the charioteer,
Caution like theirs; suspicious watchfulness,
Lest swiftness him unskilful throw aback.
But Art prevails. In dusty whirlwinds driven,
Coursers are lost, and chariots hid in smoke—
And wide afield in vain contention spent.
He, by the shortest line, holds on his way
Patient; nor finds obstruction; for none deems
Such tardy motion might the crown attain.
Anon, he nears the goal; . . not unobserved;
And competition burns. Now—now—be proved
Muscular power, and force of giant size.

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‘Now—now—my leopard coursers. Brief the game;
Not far the goal—not needed swiftness long—
Start, and away.’

What speed may rival theirs?
In vain contends the horse. For what is he,
But as his rider? Nothing in himself,
By man unguided; only confident
In that superiour wisdom which controuls:
Insensate now, for idle human skill.
Not so that twain feline. Their genius waked,
Malignant, and ferocious. Agile, thus,
As with one bound, the appointed bound they gain;
Then stand—the victors they, in that career.
How beautiful of hue, and spotted well,
In rose-like circles, though irregular,
With centres coloured like the gentle fawn,
Upon a lighter yellow for its ground.
Head, neck, and limbs, and right along the back,
Dotted how thick with small unopened buds,
And of pure white the belly, chest, and neck.

Proud of the conquest; Kaël stood upright,
In triumph, and had spoken words of vaunt;
Straight by a spirit not his own constrained,
Possessed with prophecy. Hence, to the race
Of Cain, repeated he that parable,
Which Noah for that Shepherd lately spake,
In open hall, not then by Kaël heard.

‘Repent, or ye shall perish, who refuse
The sons of Abel needful corn, and oil.
Your Seed time, and your Harvest, they shall fail;
Your Cold, and Heat, shall strange mutation know;
Summer, and Winter; Day, and Night; shall cease.’
Scarce were the words pronounced, ere flashed on high
Steel in his rival's hand, a Cainite chief,

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The second victor in the chariot race;
Descending soon into the prophet's breast,
A sudden stroke, and mortal in its aim.
Back Kaël fell. But, in his driver's hand,
The scourge resounded; and, with wondrous speed,
The leopard pair fly thence, like wingèd steeds:
So, when disturbed, they frightened bear their prey,
Else on the spot devoured, to lonely place,
Glutting their raven with the carcase meal.
Thus ceased the impious games; and, from the graves,
Those wicked hosts, in wild confusion, fled;
Awed with strange fear, presaged from that event.

IV. Signs of the Seasons

Fair, at the close of this tumultuous day,
Art thou, O Moonlight, on this field of death;
Reposing here where mortal flesh decays,
Even at the portal of Eternity,
While, in the myrtle walks of Paradise,
The virgin spirit contemplates its bliss.
Sweet are the breezes that now cool our brows,
Erewhile with wrong inflamed; soft breathe ye round
These peaceful beds; and soft, ye honey dews,
Drop on the rocks, and fitting soil prepare
For vegetation. Mallow, purple-streaked,
And Asphodel with yellow flowrets, bloom
Where'er the dead are pillowed. Weep, ye Trees,
Shed your dishevelled leaves o'er the calm vale
Of their deep slumber. Willow, Ash, and Birch,
With heads suspended, mourn—and hang your fruit,
Ye laden Fig trees, to the hallowed ground.
Or rather let the mountain Cypress, with
The Poplar, and the Fir, of spiral form,
And floating foliage, point, like Faith, to God,

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Nature's own obeliskal monuments,
Raising their arms to heaven, while they deplore
Their brethren of the earth. But chief the Pine,
In his perpetual green of solemn hue,
His shape pyramid, his aroma sweet,
And his wind-shaken branches' hollow moan,
Symbol of grief, and immortality.
Also, thou Yew, whose years outlast the tomb,
And on the wreck of temples flourish still.
Osier, Oak, Vinestock, Laurel evergreen,
And Myrtle; Violet pale, and meek Primrose;
Ivy, and Olive; with the Jessamine,
Heartsease, and Holly; Honeysuckle, too,
With Palm, and Cedar, consecrate with life
Thy garden, Death. Thus, at extremest South,
The sepulchre of nature, Winter's tree,
Rich in perfume, perennial, shades with green
Valleys of snow, and territorial ice,
Mountain, and promontory, frozen isles,
And floods of crystal, and wide tracts of snow,
Even by the Petrel, and the Penguin shunned;
Left all to loneliness, and sullen gloom,
Save gleam of star, or moon, or meteor wild.
For Thou, who madest, givest to the soul
Lift, in the regions whither she is gone—
There morning from the orient aye looks down
Upon the laughing sea, that hyaline
By saints in spiritual vision seen;
And in the Eternal Presence she subsists.
Thus to the Patriarchs came serenest peace;
But on the race of Cain prediction fell.

Behold the Stags—how mournfully they gaze
Upon the waveless brooks, and pass away
In sorrow. Is it Winter? No—the time

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Of Autumn only; and but late the fields
Were white for harvest: but no harvest now
Hath Hope to glad withal her prophet eye.
A blight, and mildew, and a blasting wind,
Passed o'er the plains; and withered every ear.
One morn, the Huntsman rose; the biting air,
Charged full with fog, and mist, rebuked his sport,
And made him glad to shut his casement close,
And cower anigh his hearth. Then stood aghast
The Statist, and authority decreed
The Sower to go forth. The plough, and wain,
With clods of iron, and a soil of brass,
Prevailed not; and full soon the labouring Ox
Was to his stall returned. But not to feed:
For his provision now is needed more
By man; and he himself must die for food,
If the superiour animal be still
To live, and lord it o'er the barren earth.
The lowing Kine awaits the flowery mead;
But cold hath parched the pasture—and the grass,
The everlasting verdure of the earth,
Hath perished.

What may then long time survive?
For it is written, that no higher can
Without the lower be; albeit the least
Seek to the greatest, by that perfect law
Which urges to perfection all that is.
Hence appetite, in man, and brute, desires
The inferiour aliments which earth provides,
Inanimate, or animal; as those
Without which all would cease. The vegetable
The inorganic nourishes, and thus
Aspires to better; so the herbage soars
To a superiour life in beast, and man:
Material transmigration, melting one
Into the other; from mere mineral

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To human, and divine. But, now, the links
Are broken of that mutual harmony;
Interdependence wise.

Work, self-despised,
Is scorned; nor labours in his hut the Hind,
While dreams the Hound upon the household hearth.
But he hath slain his faithful Dog for meat;
And from the axe, and spade the Robin dashed,
That there for refuge perched, a famished bird.
Then Pestilence came on, a meagre fiend;
And wretches blessed the Winter, whose sharp cold
Was a defence against infection's breath—
In vain. For now the heavens all glowed, as they
With fervent heat would melt: the sun was wroth,
And glared with anger. Then the chains dissolved
Wherein the soil had suffered. But the race
Of men, plague-smitten, at their useless toil,
Died; and the unseasonable solar heat
Pierced the cracked ground, and obvious laid the seed
To bird, and beast, or smote it in its bed,
For lack of moisture, with a treacherous ray—
Life from the germ extracting. Tree, and shrub
Died with excessive heat.

Men cried to God,
He would withdraw the sun from midst of heaven.
And soon their prayer was heard. The months arrived
That Summer had been wont to visit earth;
When lo, the cold returned. With evening airs,
Came on the incipient chill; and men were fain
To shelter in their homes. Hour after hour,
They slept, and waked; and slept, and waked again;
But still no dawn. They looked out, and behold,
The round red moon, of unaccustomed size,
Made pale the planets' ineffectual beams;
And rose, and set in blood, and rose again.
But the sun rose not. Night had Day usurped,

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And Winter, Summer; as before it had
Autumn displaced: and blank uncertainty
Made strange vicissitude more hideous still.
At length the sun appeared; O blessed orb—
And warmth came with him: but sad earth was bare
Of vegetation. Morn, and noon have been;
And evening looks to see the Sun decline:
Still reigns the fiery king, and Day prolongs
From week to week, until the wearied eye
Loathes the unchanging light: and the worn heart
Sickens with uniformity, and longs
To sleep in darkness unashamed; . . nor less
Ashamed in day so long to waste the hours
In idleness, or only half employed.
'Twas Autumn; but no harvest was there, now,
To gather in the barns; nor grass to mow,
Nor fruit to pluck. But all was to begin
Anew: earth lay before them as a map
Uncoloured, and unnamed; and of their toil
No certain issue. Winter came at length;
Spring, Summer; and the soul of man rejoiced
To look upon the produce of the fields,
Grass, corn, and fruits; and flower, and herb, and tree.

Not only in the great metropolis
Of Enos;—but in Naid; its towns, and fields;
And in the Capitol that Irad built,
Won from the wild; and in the Cities, too,
Of Mehujaël, and Methusaël;
And the luxurious town of palaces,
For Lamech's pleasure edified; prevailed
These Wonders; that their dwellers might repent.

And were the Wicked warned? Hither, oft came
The Prophets from the land of Eden; Shem,
And Ham, and Japhet, and their Sire; to preach
Sincere repentance, that these ills might cease;

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And more, the threatened Flood not drown the Earth.
But they were hardened in increasing sin,
Because of the dread judgements; which were signs
Of Power divine, and Will for punishment.
And, chief, their hatred burned against the line
Of Abel; for whose sake, and by whose arts
Of incantation, evils so extreme,
(Thus they believed, by malice rendered prone
To credit aught against the race they wronged,)
Fell on them: and they sware, in council met,
To wreak dread vengeance on the favoured seed.

But greater grief remains for me to tell,
Whereto my shuddering soul may scarce give voice.

Nature is like a chariot, and needs Movers;
When drawn, it runs; not drawn, it standeth still;
Spirits of Fire, like steeds, are its precursors.
They fly; it follows flying, as they fly,
A glorious equipage, round a circle driven,
Bounded by the Infinity alone.

Beyond the bounds of the Erythræan main,
A Continent dispreads; a region wide,
And unexplored, named of an elder world,
Whereof who dwell therein believe a Wreck
The present was, and wherefrom claim descent.
Hear, then, their Creed.

Long ere Man's story dates:
Upon this planet sudden Judgement fell;
And it was blotted from among the stars,
Made void, and formless. But that Land was saved,
Though still in gloom involved. At length, the Light
Was reapparent; but not whence it came,
The solar orb, or any planet else,
Lunar, or stellar. Gradually, the dense,
And dismal pall of vapoury darkness melts;
Until, behold, the dawning Sun awakes,
Cheers with his beams the mountains, and the vales,

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And shines on seas, and rivers, as of old—
Him saw, and, after him, the Moon, and Stars
Saw those who dwelt on that surviving Land,
Masculine Creatures; whom Paternal Love
Created for his Glory, each one so
Begotten at the Source, not generate
By sexual mixture, and successive births;
Each one, like Adam, called a Son of God,
Immortal Offspring of Eternity.
Both him, and them, saw these; and, when they saw,
Shouted aloud, and hailed their glorious show,
Decking the forehead of the firmament;
A radiant crown, illuminate with globes,
Illustrious as with gems, and spheres of light:
Shouted aloud, with most exultant joy,
On their once-more inhabitable realm,
Encircled with a purgèd atmosphere,
And arched above with azure clear, and pure,
In the swift billows mirroured.

Happy they,
Those Sons of God; for they were sinless, then;
And proved, while so, imperishable too,
Even mid utter ruin. But, alas,
Not sinless they endured: . . by Woman won,
They fell, like Adam's self, and Adam's Sons,
Whose Daughters they beheld; beholding, loved:
And, their superiour natures mixing thus
With human, became Sires of giant men;
Who overran the earth with their renown,
And quelled all opposition by their might;
Making, and ending wars, as if for sport.

Alas, those Fathers of that Titan brood
Had bartered Immortality for Love;
Wedding with mortals, mortal had become,
And, with her Daughters, shared the lot of Eve.
—As Light unto the Sun, is Truth to God.

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Now on that Land, in melancholy groups,
Those Signs, and Wonders, prophesying Doom
They had observed; mutation, and surcease
Of Day, and Night; of Seasons, and of Times;
Mysterious, and premonitory signs:
Not deathless now, defiant of mischance,
As when the perished world, they had survived,
Felt the dread shock that crushed her germens in,
And made her as a grave, or as a womb,
To bury one, and bear another earth.

Great is their fear, expecting Destiny.
As yet, not one amongst them had felt Death,
Alarmed the more by inexperienced pain,
Which yet, by Oracles they might not doubt,
They knew themselves predestined to confront.
Great is their fear; and Terrour, like a god,
Their souls o'ershadoweth with his wings unseen,
Whose distant thunder spake of his approach.

END OF FOURTH BOOK.

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BOOK THE FIFTH. THE CHILDREN OF ABEL

I. Junia and Nain

Meantime, in peace, and blessedness reposed
The far Erythræan Isle; and stern farewell,
O Abel, to thy children, Famine's fiend
Pronounced; then, winged his way to distant shores.
—Now, from the beach, two Maidens fair behold
The fresh awakened sun from ocean rise,
Dallying awhile with the crisped billows' mirth;
Whose foam, else white, is tinted with a blush
From his salute; and, dimpled by the breath
Of the young breezes, breaks upon the waves
In sparkling smiles, innumerous, to hail
His resurrection from the apparent sea.
Of Love the maidens talked; nor were defiled,
For love was here religion—sinless—pure.
Of Love, and Hori, Junia talked with Nain,
The shepherd's sister; no ungrateful theme,
Yet not from sorrow free; since Junià
Pines that the youth, for whom her heart was sad,
Met not her virgin love. To him the stars
Had beauty far more excellent than all
The daughters of his land; and the bright moon
Was as a golden goblet full of wine,
A garland of renown, and on his soul
Shed inspiration, glory, life, and power.
Song him delighted too. The youth was wont
To mould the sea-shell to an instrument
Of music; and therefrom the tones extract,
Accordant with the feelings of his heart,
The thoughts of his high soul. And much he loved

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The solitude of ocean's shore, to muse,
And mark the poetry magniloquent
Of wave, and wind embracing. Hark; she hears—
Junia—the murmur of the shepherd's shell.
And, with her fairy finger, hushes now
The lips of her companion; both concealed
Behind a crag of rock, where well they list,
Unseen, the lay of Hori. Thus he sang:

‘Dear is the Ocean to the Island Bard,
As to the flapping Gull from coastward flying;
Or Swan, that in the bay, when waves are calm,
Conscious of grace, floats proudly on the rise,
And fall of billows; fearless; all the more,
Arching her neck with freedom, and delight;
Oaring her way, with glancing feet reversed,
Striking the enamoured surge to foam minute,
Like silver sparklets on an emerald urn.
—Frail was the tender bark, but fair, which bore
The remnant of the Martyr's exiled seed
O'er the thence-named Erythræan, to the wild
Of waters trusted—God their only guide.
Balm the propitious gales, and glass the sea;
For He had made it smooth, who wisdom gives
To the winged sojourners, to leave the land
Of coming winter for benigner clime.
Like them, they voyaged forth; and, as they went,
The lyre preluded to a pious hymn,
The winds enchanting, and relieving well
The else-wearied oarsman, with its cadences
Solemn, and sweet, and sweeter because solemn.
The Dolphins sported round, as pleased to hear
The anthem on the surge. Silence, and night
Succeeded; and the moonbeams rushed from heaven,
A cataract of light, on measureless
Expanse of ocean, and of air. The stars,

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With lamps of love, came dancing on the deep,
A solitude but for our lonely bark,
Companions lovely, smiling from the sky.
—Glorious the Sun-rise on the desart main;
The hum of billows awful, as they wake
Out of their silence, by the breathing Morn
Admonished of his coming, Seraph bright;
And the swift murmur of unnumbered fins,
Rejoicing in his welcome influence warm.
But he who would magnificence behold
Too broad to bear, intolerably bright;
Let him, mid boundless Ocean, in mid noon,
Gaze on the burnished billows, and o'ershade
His dazzled eyes from the volcanic orb,
Making a desolation, how profound
And hushed, throughout the wilderness of waves,
The universe of water, and of sky,
Interminable. Eden; like thy Mount
Cherubic-guarded, on the eternal sea
Of Sunset the great Vision. The wide West
Is as a Temple, and an Ark of clouds:
With pillar, and with cupola, all hues
Of costliest splendour, as in gems, and gold,
The chariot of the Sun. Awhile he stays,
So pausing on the brim ere he descend;
Until the mighty Shadow of his Orb
Apparent rise, where Heaven, and Ocean meet,
And he into her open bosom sink
In motion visible, and both immerge,
In bridal union, mystic, and divine.
All day, and night upon our endless way,
By Angels we were watched; till, lo, the Gull,
And fragrant breezes token gave of land,
Whereof our Dogs were conscious long before.
The faithful Dog, dear to the Shepherd's heart,
Dear partner on the hill side, and lone height,

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And meditative as the race he serves,
Inseparable friend—a pious brute.

How beautiful the far Erythræan Isle—
The ocean breezes visit her pale shore;
With grateful warmth, and genial moisture charged,
For wanton flower, and bud of living leaf:
With the far boom of rolling billows, borne
In murmurs on his ear, who muses, lone,
In the dim vale behind the cliffy beach,
On either hand a fair, and verdant hill,
Delightful solitude, an inland scene,
So nigh the world of waters deep, and wide.
And there are minstrelsies of torrent streams
And rivers, growling over rugged beds,
Fringed on each bank with trees as old as Time,
Sown in creation's hour; majestic Oak,
And leaf-proud Elm. And far away the woods,
Pensile, or level, stretch their shadows broad,
On upland slope, in valley serpentine;
Forests, and groves apparelled by the hand
Of the Almighty, with a luxury
Of bough, and branch, and foliage; bounty such
As his alone would on his works bestow.
How grandly rocks, and mountains heave their scalps
Into his heavens—the footstools of his throne.
With what delightful change, he scatters, o'er
The verdant sward, the prodigal flowers, amid
The waving grass, up-sparkling their own hues.
Myrtle, and Rose, and Woodbine; rathe, or late;
Report of human dwellings, to the eye
That, from the hill, the prospect meditates;
Nay, even the stern rocks hath he adorned
With Moss, and Lichen; and the barren heath
With dew-drop Blossoms, elegant though wild,
Small Shrub, and Berry, hyacinthine dark.
For this, thy children, Abel, on the brow

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Of yonder hill, have raised a votive shrine,
An altar to his name. There morn, and eve;
Where Eagle once, and Hawk, held sole domain;
Hymns celebrate his greatness; and the voice
Of choral psalm, and anthem magnifies
The praises of the Highest.

Sweet it is,
To praise Him who has cast the exile's lot
In this so lovely isle. Here glows the Vine—
How lush of tint, how frankly clustered. Fig,
And Olive flourish; the ripe Orange blooms.
Who may report his gifts? Who name the sum
Of the spread sands on ocean's shores, the stars
Within the firmament? He gave, even He,
The father's heart to man, to woman her's—
Sweet is the love of woman: sweet is Truth;
Of all things greatest: but far loveliest,
When in the heart of womanhood it lives—
How lovely then, my Junia, if in thine.’

Thus closed his song. Deep thrilled with bliss the soul
Of Junia, as she heard; and Nain exclaimed
Aloud with joy; and both, discovered so,
Were found of Hori: With a trembling lip,
His Sister he saluted with a kiss;
And to his bosom clasped his blushing Bride.

II. Michael, and Azaziel

No more of pastoral loves. War wears on high
His horrours, like a plume; and his loud voice
Roars, like a whirlwind, amid echoes wild
Of rocky beach, or desart solitude.
—Hovering like ominous bird; a veriest speck
Upon the horizon rising; might be seen,
A wingèd Bark, that larger, more distinct,

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Grew, and approached, ere long of men beheld—
Nor unobserved of angels. Michaèl,
Guardian of Nations, rushed on Helam down;
Bold cliff, that, beetling, far o'erlooked the main,
And not in song unfamed. For fable high
Thereof young Hori had conceived; supposed
Of island dwellers ere the arrival there
Of Abel's seed; a mythos well designed,
With passion graced, and manners suitable:
Nor ill-conjectured. For beyond them lay,
In isle remoter, that same race, for whom
Kaël was seër. Blinder they of mind
Than he of body; haply—'scaped from Naid,
In fear of vengeance for enormous guilt—
Furthest was best, they deemed, from that cursed spot,
Where justice might be born; but ne'ertheless,
The Cainite found them soon, and not as foe,
Chance-roving on the deep, in search of gain.
—Whereof let this suffice. Me it behoves
To speak of Michael, the Archangel, whom
Met strong Azaziel,—Fury of the War,
Demon of Battle,—on that rocky height.

Straight each the other seized, in mutual wrath,
Well matched; and wrestled there from morn to eve.
Meantime, the Cainite, with malicious speed,
Like a sea-hornet, from the o'erswarmèd air,
Lights on thy coast, O far Erythræan Isle.
Fame spread her bruit, and Battle raised his shout,
And his loud trump resounded. On the beach,
Full many a man of the invading hosts
Was victor—of a grave—a common grave,
Dug in the sands. For to the shepherd race,
Where'er they spread, the sacred threshold they
Of each loved home, the fender of each hearth,
The temple's portal, and the altar's steps.
Such was that shore—so dear—so sacred then;

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And holily defended, as from touch
Of sacrilege, with heroism so devout,
That whoso fell was as a sacrifice,
An offering slain to God; to whom the warm
Steam of the living blood, like incense, rose,
By angels in their golden censers waft,
When they present the Throne Divine before,
The prayers of saints, accepted graciously.
—O there is Sympathy for evermore
Of Angels with Mankind. Nor wanting proof.
Witness the infernal God of Battle wage,
With the Archangel, conflict terrible,
On Helam in the clouds; so high its scalp
The craggy summit reared. Less high the hill
In Rephidim, whose top ascended once
Musah, with Hur, and Aaron, while in war
Strove Isräel with Amalek. In hand
The Legislator held the Almighty's rod,
Wherewith the Rock in Horeb he had smitten,
Whence water quenched the thirst of discontent;
A weight but ill sustained: and ah, when fell
His arm, the foe prevailed; nor might succeed
The chosen race, if it were lifted not;
But, by the twain upheld, his heavy hands
Were steadily preserved, till going-down
Of that victorious sun. Like fortune waits
The seed of Abel, now. As prospers, here,
Michael with his assailant, on this height;
So they below advantage gain, or lose.

Nine days the Angelic Wrestlers, on the head
Of visionary Helam, ruled the doom
Of meeting armies. Hand in hand, they strove;
With strenuous wrist, at arm's length either held,
Lest, closing, one antagonist might win
Possession of the other, and o'erthrow.
Struggling they kept at distance, so from side

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To side swung with contention emulous,
And action muscular, supernal strength.
O for the war embrace. With outstretched hand,
Each aims to grapple at the heaving chest
Of his opponent: by a mighty gripe,
To strangle, and subdue; or to enclose
The staggering victim in the stringent folds,
As of a serpent's clasp, and so to crush.
Now, either shoulder clenched in either fist,
Their arms at equal length are mutual crossed;
But neither yet might cling to other's neck,
Not yet compressed the bosom, or the throat.
Deep-dinted in the substance; from such grasp
Reciprocal they shrink; and writhe, and reel,
Till shaken off, or with a sudden sleight
Removed; that, by some other joint, or limb,
The foe may be constrained; by hip, or thigh
Caught, and, with dreadful violence, elanced
From the strong wrestler's seizure, in his wrath;
As, from an arbalist, or catapult,
Arrow, or stone, the enginery of war.

With various fortune thus, but equal force,
On Helam strove the gods; while in the plains
Men fought with men, from morn to eve, engaged—
The invaders, and invaded; those constrained
Battle to court, and foremost to attack,
Safe only when assailing; these inclined
To wait occasion's favour. But ere long,
War won more inland passage; and hewed down
A pathway to the valleys, and the hills.
—O Vale of Elul; once so beautiful,
So tranquil in thy beauty: now in thee
Is exclamation; with the shriek, and shout
Of battle; wanton with the loud uproar,
As a glad hunter, with the merry noise
Of hound, and echo, discord musical.

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There, Hori, were thy mother, and thy sire,
Adra, and Abi, sheltered in their age;
Watched o'er by thee, and by thy sister, Nain,
With filial love; in humble confidence,
Reposing, and in peace, a blessèd pair.

But Strife now enters; and the whetted Sword
Is forth against the Shepherd. Warriours sing
To it their songs—to it, and to the Spear,
And to the Shield . . boasting that they with them
Till, sow, and reap, plant vines, and press the juice,
And hail them conquerours of field, and flood.
Slaves in Ambition's service; scorned by hell
For fools, less wise than are the fiends, who prey
Not on their kind, but, strong in multitudes,
Find wisdom in convention. Yet with these,
Man maketh widows, orphans, and doth mar
His brother's visage, and the father's face . .
With woe-begone expression for the slain,
The prematurely dead. In gorgeous weeds,
The fine proportioned, and elastic limbs,
(So skilfully marked out, that cunning art
Of painter, or of sculptour, fails to mend
Contrivance exquisite) of generous Steed
They gird for battle. Pleased with such array,
The heroic Courser, gently pacing, or
High bounding, goeth, proud of his career.
How mild the Elephant; yet him man makes
Furious in war, and cruel as himself;
Yea, and the adoring Dog instructs to rend
The human form, whereto the conscious brute
Else bows in awe . . the deity he loves.

There grew an old Oak in the Vale of Elul,
Old as the world, and planted in the Day,
In that mysterious day, wherein God made
The earth, and heavens, and each plant of the field,

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Before it was in the earth, and every herb
Before it grew, while man as yet was not.
Of stature scant, its sturdy trunk threw out
Huge arms, and branches o'er an area wide:
Birds loved it for its shelter, and its boughs
The Raven loved, to build her eyery in;
And young, and old of humankind, beneath
Its umbrage, on a summer eve, indulged
Innocent mirth; or listened to the speech
Of Abi, priestly man. There was he wont,
With Adra, to preside o'er pastoral sport;
And to the swains, and maidens oft would they
Give counsel prudent, couched in proverb quaint,
Or ancient saw, or present parable;
Then pause at intervals to listen, pleased,
To Hori's sylvan song, . . a happy group.
But, now, no more may Hori's numbers charm
Old age, or youth; the shepherd's pipe is changed
For battle weapon, and the rural bard
Lost in the patriot hero, brave to share
The common peril in his land's defence.
—Now the parental sage, and monitress
Are fain, beneath the favourite tree, to wile
The anxious time away, in simple talk
With sinless childhood; to their guardian charge
Confided, or resorting to their smiles,
For consolation, in the hour of doubt,
By weeping mothers tended, crowding round.
But, ah, not sacred long that spot from strife;
And massacre found unresisted way
With womanhood, and infancy, and age.
Slain by the Cainite, there flowed Abi's blood,
And Adra's, watering that agèd root
With needless moisture: for the murtherers,
In wanton malice, laid the axe of war
Thereat, and hewed it till it fell to earth,

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Groaning; its feathered burthens undislodged,
And, with their nests of many centuries,
Crushed with the crashing boughs; thus slaying, there,
The unfledged offspring, and the mother bird.
—Needs not of Hori's grief to tell; the heart
That's human will conceive; but rather now,
How, on the Hill of Dreams, angelic might
Mortal controuled, by mystic sympathy;
That so the coming doom, and what the end,
May be prejudged, and soothe the expectant mind.

Equal the wrestlers yet. Advantage none
Had either gained: and the ninth sun went down;
When, as by compact, each antagonist
Upon the summit slept, to rise refreshed,
As wont, when morning dawn. So Michaèl
Lay down to his repose; but in his heart
Azaziel had imagined treacherous wile,
And feigned to sleep, but slept not. 'Mid of night,
He rose; and the Archangel, where he lay,
Seized by surprise. In wonder, Michael, roused
From slumber, with a shout, alarm conceived,
And strove amain with his perfidious foe.
Yet, ah, what now avails?—Can this be night?
Than noon more radiant, but in terrours clad,
The sun knows not at mid-day? It is night,
With vesture all ablaze, and hair aflame,
Like a Bacchante, in her phrenzy fired,
With torch, for revel meant, to ruin turned.

The crackling Forest burns into the heaven;
And the clouds glow: the skies are drenched in blood;
Type of the blood now shed, in agony,
Upon the quaking earth. In Elon's grove
Of many trees, a wilderness of wood,
The race of Abel nightly shelter sought
From the invading hosts. Inspired by hell,
The Cainite, in his cruel mind, resolved

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To fire the forest in the noon of night,
And to each corner set infernal flame.
Gradual toward the centre of the wood
The element careered, converting to
Its proper substance, and consuming, all.
Escape was none; on every side was fire;
The baffled victim only could retreat
Into the depth of Elon, and await
His death in horrour. O what shrieks arose,
Unheard without; but not within, by those
Whose own soon echoed to the shrieks they heard:
Nor with the howl unanswered, wild, and drear,
Of beasts, and savage tenants of the wood.

What name had borne the fair Erythræan Isle?
Whate'er it was before, only by this,
After these deeds, 'twas known, . . Aceldama.
Hence fitly were that sea Erythræan called,
Which circled in that isle, or led thereto,
As to a land adjacent, red with blood:
But at the first, because that o'er its waves
The martyr's seed fled from the wrath of men,
It from the blood of Abel name derived.
—Not that the Persian, or Arabian Gulf,
Of Edom styled: they other; for o'er this
Great Deluge rolled, displacing every site
Of a past world, on ocean, or on earth.

III. The First Rain

Swift, o'er the far Erythræan, wings its way
The Slave-Ship of the World before the Flood.
Heaven loured above its course, and gathering clouds
Spake anger. But worse horrour waited it,
The Horrour of great Darkness, on the shore
Whereto it voyaged. Blessèd light enough
Was but permitted to debark the freight

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Of captives; then, into the city passed
The Cainite, and his victim. Capitol
Of Fratricide, what glories now adorn
The huge, and still enlarged metropolis?
Vision by gloom excluded; skill of man
Dies unadmired, unused. 'Twas morn—bright morn;
Bright as if meant to make more bitter still
What followed, and, with disappointment, carken
The care, and woe, and agony, which Wrath
Supernal had prepared. Night—starless night,
And moonless, quenched at once the Eye of Day:
Deep sleep o'ercame the Watcher of the Sun;
And Earth was Hades; and as ghosts were men,
Unseen, but not unheard. Shriek, sigh, and sob,
Were frequent; and the ear, grown sensitive
To malady, was startled evermore
With constant sounds of lonely misery:
A solitude, though crowded. When came on
The Darkness first, man converse held with man,
In mutual wonder; but, when it endured
From day to day, by weariness induced,
Silence—dogged, sullen silence, shut the heart,
In its own wretchedness pent broodingly.
By curses yet preceded; for, whenas
Communion ceased, and motion was essayed,
The blinded came in contact, and provoked
Contention in each other; ire, and oaths,
And blasphemy, and malediction, first
Cast on their fellows, next upon themselves:
But chief, 'twas horrible to hear the tone
Of woman's accent changed to malison,
Vindictive as more feminine:—the lips,
The very lips of infancy expressed
Feelings of desecration, and partook
The common madness with the common doom.
And there was random slaughter: father slew

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His son in darkness, and the son his sire,
In ignorance, and rage; as each opposed
The other's wished escape from out the cloud
Into what sunnier air, for so they hoped,
Might lie beyond. And reason for the hope
Had they; for, as at ease, and in the light,
They heard the voice of prophets, Woe—Woe—Woe—
Denouncing to the unrepentant still.
It was the voice of Noah, and his Sons,
Who through the darkness moved as in the light;
Protected, by the Holy Ones, from touch
Profane; nor touching in their progress aught
Of opposition, person, brute, or thing.
To them the Highest had appointment given,
To pass with word of warning, though in vain,
Through that great Plague of Darkness; and absolve
The Maker's mercy, and his justice save,
If man should perish, obstinate in guilt.

Such Portents spake impending Judgement nigh;
And well it might have seemed, that now had come
The very doom pronounced. For the dark cloud,
Whose bosom had embraced the sons of men,
Dissolving, shed upon the startled earth
Premonitory Rain; even thus forewarned
Of Power Divine, to accomplish that, prepared
For the unrighteous world, which it foreshewed:
But Wisdom ne'er with Unbelief consorts.
—First, was seen through the accumulated gloom
A flash:—'Twas Lightning.—Next was heard a peal,
And peal on peal succeeded. Thunder called
To Thunder, from his thrones of mountains, where
He reigns ubiquitous, expressive form
Of God in anger, voice armipotent.
And evermore the lightning's sheeted flame
Enlarged, and made a chasm of fearful fire
In that felt darkness' thick, and heavy fog,

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Infesting as with death the breath of life.
Then seemed heaven's gates to unshut, and the shower,
Ne'er known till then, to come down in a flood;
Nor ceased the lightning, nor the thunder, then;
Unquenched, its jaggèd jaws still oped, and closed,
Like to a dragon's mouth, outspitting fire,
In the o'erburthened air it purified.

Fear with that deluge fell; fear, that it was
The final doom. But, no: great Mercy sent
The Sign before, to warn, and to reclaim:
Yet with no Rainbow followed—such as, since,
Makes a triumphal arch of the whole Heaven,
For Earth redeemed from tempest once again,
Obedient to the promise. God's own bow,
Which in the clouds he set, encompassing
First Altar raised on the restorèd earth.
Such, too, as circled that Archangel's form,
Who stood in air, on ocean, and on earth,
All three engirdled in that triple round,
Bended on high by the Almighty's hand—
By Noah seen in vision, which foretold
The doom of Deluge, whose receding skirts
Therewith were beautified; for Love had shed
Light on the cloud, and grief to glory turned.
Token of everlasting Covenant
To Earth, and to her savèd worshippers;
Celestial way for Mercy to descend,
Upon a flowery bridge; a fluid arch;
The Brow of God shewn smiling, and appeased,
Visibly shewn, distended, and relaxed.

Sad was it to behold the scenes, and groups
Of men, and beasts, and things inanimate;
After such visitation. Trees were black,
And smouldering, blasted with the electric wrath;
And tower, and temple smitten to their fall:
And on the plain sheep, oxen, steer, and dog,

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Like statues, lay, or stood, as the swift stroke
Had found, and left them; life-like, but not living:
Life with a touch quenched, or transfused, or caught
With the quick flash, and to its source returned.
And human forms there, too, were piled in heaps,
Like ruined pillars—woman, man, and child,
Old, young, and middle-agèd; all in groups
Fantastic, or grotesque, or picturesque,
But each in mockery, and most so the last.
Cold—cold stood the survivours, though unscathed,
Shivering; and, soon, the unaccustomed Rain
Hardened to Hail, and agonized the flesh
With keen impression. Straight the symbol changed;
And it was Winter, . . such as winter is
In the restorèd world. Rain, vapours, snows:
Snows—like swan's down, or sea birds, they descend
On the diluvian earth; a volant flock,
Wonderous as novel, sailing on the wind;
Feathery, and flaky, sharp as arrows are:
And the bleak storm, with piercing violence,
And stern in desolation, teaches man
What wretchedness may yet appal his soul,
Or if not, penetrate his shrinking frame,
And task much fortitude of mind to bear,
And much experience to inure the flesh,
Else quivering with smart pain.

And were
The innocent race of Abel then involved
In the just vengeance that thus fell upon
The Cainite for his crime? That were unjust—
And thus in this Heaven's hand was manifest.
For not alone were Noah, and his Sons
Free from the darkness, but the captive race,
And with the prophets were delivered thence.
In Armon's vale, and in the Land of Streams,
They lived at large; while signal miracle

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The City of Enos, and the Land of Naid,
Irad's, and Mehujaël's capitols,
Methuselah, and Lamech, visited,
With signs of doom, and witnesses of power.

Free welcome gave the patriarchs of the vale,
O Abel, to thy seed; and young Zateel
The influence of his virtue, birth, and rank
Exerted in behalf of injured worth:
But, chief, with Hori rapt communion held,
By sympathy of soul; alike akin
To the great heart of nature, poets both.
—Born in the exile's land; far, far away
From old traditions, and the sacred soil,
Of high renown for deeds, and names of fame;
Fame honourable in the sight of God,
Not of men only; to the Shepherd Bard
Zateel had pleasing knowledge to impart.

‘Come with me, Hori;’ said the lovely youth—
(O both were lovely; amiable they
As Jonathan, and David, singer sweet,
In after-ages, whereof may be read
In Hebrew Scripture episodes divine.)—
‘Come with me, Hori; and in Armon's vale,
I will instruct thee in the wondrous spot
Where Adam was created, ere his Maker
Set in the garden Man whom he had formed—
Till then the child of Nature, thence of Grace.
Moreover, I will shew thee the sad Vale
Where fell the father of thy sinless seed,
Beneath the hand of Cain. Nay, weep not, Hori.’

‘It is no grief, Zateel; or if it be,
It pleases more than it afflicts—it soothes
With a calm joy that elevates the soul;
As when the dews have fallen, the fields revive,
And look with gladness into the blue eye,
And glittering face of the encircling heaven.

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IV. Vale of Adam

So to the Vale of Man's Creation came
The friendly pair. A shaggy wilderness;
Luxuriant, void of culture, beautiful
But savage; wide as wild, an ample grove,
Or rather forest country . . a wood world;
It stretches far, a wonderous theatre,
Huge, and majestic; of a scale so bold,
As Nature's hand may only operate.
On high rose cliff, and rock, and precipice;
Mountain magnificence; stupendous ridge;
Whereto the Teneriffe of an after age,
The Alps, and Andes of a future world,
Were common heights, or ordinary hills,
Mean, and domestic, by the eagle scorned,
Nor to be named in story, or in song.
—Far hiding in the skies their secret heads,
Above the lurid storm, and thunder cloud;
Serene, and hoar, no Sun may ever melt
The untrodden snows that face his burning rays,
With everlasting laughter bright as his,
And silent in its scorn. Down from their tops,
Rivers descend, large streams; and hew them out
Broad channels, and in hushed seclusion lie,
In linkèd fellowship, a chain of lakes;
And islanded therein, a brotherhood
Of crag, and brake, abode of bird, and beast;
Horrid with thorn, and briar; vexed with weed,
And binder, cleaving to the nobler trunk,
And intricated with the branches, bare,
Or leafy, and the boughs of tangled trees:
Haunt of the Asp, the Adder, and the Snake;
Jungle, and lair; and dens, and caves, and sands;
Desart, forlorn, and drear, and desolate;

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Marshes, and swamps, and bogs, and miry fens.
—There dwelt the Tapir; there the Jaguar dwelt;
Puma, and Bear, and Wolf, and reinless Deer;
Reptile, and Insect grown to monstrous bulk;
Viper, and Toad, and Bat, and noxious Ant;
Vulture, and Eagle; Condor, and Macaw.
Man had no habitation, here. August,
And lonely, to its silent solitude,
—So deep, and so profound it startled him,—
Chance-led, if he approached, he left it still;
Avoiding it from reverence: and that it,
(For so had God commanded,) should remain,
Type of man's state by nature; ere God's grace
Elect him, and exalt him to become
Heir of his mercy, child of Paradise,
Born to God's Eden, freeman of his Church:
Oft yet beheld at distance, or more nigh
Surveyed, permitted for example so.
Hence, hither led Zateel the Shepherd Bard;
Now both into the hallowed precincts set
Feet unprofane; yet they, with very awe,
Put off their shoes, as entering holy ground.
And it was holy,—and soon the twain adored.
For, in the navel of a woody scene,
Nigh to the portal of that mystic place,
As at the altar of an outward porch,
Guarding the sanctuary it precedes,
Sate, in a radiance flowing from himself,
One like Elihu, spiritually bright.
With fear, the apparition they beheld;
Their knees smote one another, and they fell
Trembling to earth, and worshipped silently;
For terrour made them mute. But mildly he
Rose gracious; and, advancing, gently spake:

‘Stand up; I am your fellow servant, sent
To teach what ye would learn.’

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With this assured,
Their confidence returned, and they resumed
An attitude erect; but, with bent brow,
In veneration stood, while he pursued.

‘Hence was the dust derived, whereof the Sire
Of Heaven, and Earth first moulded flesh of Man;
Then breathed into his nostrils breath of life,
That he became a living soul. Awhile,
Within these wilds he wandered, innocent,
And unrepining; and forsaken not
By him who made him, and, with thoughts divine,
Led to aspire, and warranted to hope;
Till in a cultivated garden set,
To dress it, and to keep it, lord of all.
Then he beheld how lovely Order was,
And how rude Nature put on novel charms,
When unto Law obedient, God's, or man's,
Trained by his will, and nurtured to his use.
But, ah, that blest estate he forfeited;
Living, not Knowing, he preferred to die,
Though by well living he had known all things,
And known all without evil, or delay.
Thence to the ground whence he was taken, Man,
Remanded, was by labour doomed to win
What Love had given, had he not doubted Love:
But that same Love it was, appointed now
Labour to Man; to call the spirit forth
Wherewith had God inspired him; to subdue
Chaotic Nature, and impose what form
His heaven-derived Intelligence decrees,
And so regain the life which he hath lost.
—Thus Man by Wisdom shall dominion use,
To govern, or evade all powers perverse,
Or rebel unto his supremacy,
And substitute them for his force of limb;

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And by his knowledge of them, and the might
Which knowledge gives, rise into blest estate
Of leisure, and ability to rear
Moral, and intellectual edifice;
Wherein, as in a temple, he may dwell,
With happiness, as to the present life,
And feel the Eternal, like an altar-flame,
Descending, in a cloud of glory, down
Into his soul, and charming it midway,
To meet it in the air, and guide to God.
—Not that the state of nature is not good,
For He who made it then beheld it so;
But that 'tis chiefly good, because it hath
Capacity of better, which to work
Is, under God, the privilege of man.
Beautiful on this silent wilderness,
Their cataract of light, the moon, and stars
Shed, like a sea; but few the forest paths
That feel their influence, few their shadows know.
Sublime, the sun at noon to burnished gold
Turns, with alchemic touch, the branches high,
That shine into the heaven; which, again,
Shines down on them, reciprocally bright:
But all within is as a dreary cave,
Scarce speckled, even at noon, with Uriël.
Still desolation spreads; bare rocks, and sand;
Nor visit there the seasons. Spring ne'er makes
The crevices of rocks to teem with life;
Nor hath the Summer beauty to bring forth;
Nor Autumn aught to garner: well it were
Might Winter's influence cool its scorching sands,
But they may thirst in vain. The unlaboured earth
Is hidden with the multitude of trees;
The untaught rivers, in no channels kept,
Drown, with perpetual flood, plains fertile else,
And to unhealthy moist convert the dry.

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Vain the warm sun, vain climate of the south,
Vain soil prolific, that, with idle growth,
And rank luxuriance, vegetation clothes,
And chokes the wood, and covers blessèd earth
With useless shrubs, and herbs, and noxious weeds—
Unfit for habitance, or nourishment.
To life unfriendly, breathes the stagnant air;
With putrid exhalations water teems;
And earth, encumbered, feels not sun, nor wind.
—Not there the brute gains vigour, though so wild.
And of the wild free denizen, and lord;
Dwarfed in his bulk, nor various in his kind,
Nor numerous, though undestroyed by man:
While the less noble tribes of creeping things
Increase, and multiply, and grow in strength
And size; the active principle of life
Its force expending on inferiour forms,
Offensive, monstrous, poisonous, and strange.
Only the birds, set free by gift of wing
From the controul of earth, howe'er it change,
Preserve their beauty, and their dazzling hue;
Yet with less various note, less pleasing song,
In the too-silent ear of solitude,
No man to listen, they attune their loves.
—Man, elsewhere, taught by Wisdom diligence,
Makes habitable what were desart else;
And with fertility, and beauty clothes,
For use, and ornament, the mended earth:
And, while he works, redeems from fleshly coil
The soul which animates it, and acquits
Some faculty from its imprisonment;
Till his perfection be accomplished quite
In revelation full, and use of all.
And One shall come, who, in the sight of men,
Shall the divinity of perfect man
Illustrate, and identify: and He

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The Word, and Will of God shall incarnate,
For Man's atonement, and instruction both.
His soul he shall possess in liberty,
Made free by truth, and purity of life;
And thence of all things shall he knowledge have,
And earth to him, and water shall submit;
And air, and fire acknowledge him divine;
And life, and death await upon his word;
And miracle on his creative will;
Who shall to Man ensample meet bequeath,
What, in the consummation of the age,
Shall crown him Monarch of the Elements.
—Meantime, shall many, though imperfect each,
Each in his several faculty complete,
Like functions of humanity set forth;
So that in all the whole may be expressed,
The want of one by other still supplied,
And that of many sometimes by the one;
But still by each his imperfection felt—
Nay, all—and over land, and ocean wailed;
So loud that heaven, and hell shall hear the moan.
Yet fear ye not; for peace shall come at last.’

He paused; but answer none his auditours
Had ready; mute with awe, and fixed to hear.
Then he resumed.

‘I go to Armon hence,
To Noah, and his house: there would I have
Your witness to the words, I bear in charge
To utter; and confirm them to the world,
That doubts the man who hath with me found grace.’

With this, he led them by the hand, and they
In silence yielded, unreluctantly,
And on each side attended him along.
Beautiful Armon: There, assembled, now,
The family of Noah. Chava sage

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Rejoices in her sons, a second Eve,
The mother of a world; nor less in you,
Her duteous daughters, lovely in your love,
Fair in affection; a domestic group,
A touching scene; but more pathetic made
By majesty of age, Methuselah,
Oldest of men, nor dying but with earth.

Noah was absent; for it was the eve,
When he went forth into the silent fields
To meditate, while nature was serene:
And often then he heard the voice of God.
Soon, at brief distance, he beheld approach
Zateel, and Hori, by Elihu led;
And hastened to adore. Anon his guests
He welcomed to his hospitable home;
Then Noah thus.

‘And hath my Lord come down
To see if Earth hath altogether done
According to the cry that hath gone up?
O be not wroth; permit thou me to speak,
Who am but dust, and ashes; and still spare—
Nor with the wicked slay the righteous too.’

Whereto, placed in the midst, Elihu spake;
‘Thus saith the Lord to Noah, and his Sons;
Man but for them should perish from the earth,
Whose countless sins have sieged the Eternal Throne;
And the loud voice of blood incessant cries
For vengeance. Soon He riseth, and will sit
In Judgement; and his sentence will go forth,
Armed with omnipotence; and on all flesh
Death ride in Deluge, that His Spirit may
Be freed from bondage, and new Life may teem
From the baptizing flood, and Conscience rise,
With Godward answer, meet, and right, and good.
—Therefore prepare, O Sons of Noah, now,

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For those appointed labours, which erewhile
Were set you; since by wonders, and by signs,
And tribulations hindered, for so long
The All-Patient waits; for what to Him is time?
But He to time is all: and therefore Time
Hath now heard warning spoken; pleased, awaits
Another change; not inexperienced, hails;
Knowing that each brings on the accomplishment
For which he worketh, anxions to become
Complete, and perfect in Eternity.’

This having said, he vanished. Heard with awe,
The household trembled; and, in prayer devout,
Sought for the soul that solace it imparts.

END OF FIFTH BOOK.

163

BOOK THE SIXTH. THE PREPARATION

I. Vale of Abel

The frosted Sun, half shaded by a cloud,
Set like a crescent, during harvest time;
Red as a bloody banner in the air.
—Zateel and Hori stood alone, within
The Vale of Abel's Sacrifice, and Death.

‘Here are the altars, Hori,’ said Zateel:
And Hori, pensive, murmured, ‘Which is Abel's?’

‘This,’ he replied;—‘by memory arboured round
With flowers; but now they all are dead, as he
For whom love planted them.’

Both, pausing, mused;
But Hori spake at last. ‘It is the season,
And suits my mood, Zateel. More rude was Cain
Than winter. Wherefore smote he, like a blast,
The lovely and the loving?’

Sadly looked
Zateel, while thus he answered: ‘Cain was tempted.
Wisdom had left him; but his Fury came
To Cain, deep musing, and dissatisfied
With toil, with sickness, and with threatened death.
The Tempter came; and both high commune held
On good, and evil; freedom, and fixed fate;
God, and creation; man, and his dominion;
The heavens, and this dim earth. Spiritual Law
With Nature strove; and, with creative force,
Resurgent from the human soul, wrought out
The form desired, from quarry, newly bewn,
Of the material elements around,
And in the very flesh—the heart—of man.

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Hence labour, and hence pain: and much of both,
By circumstantial evil, is required
For its removal; but far more the flesh
Demands, for that in it the spirit lives,
And works, and by it, and a law creates
Against its own, in organ sensuous,
Which, but for spiritual influence, were as none,
Blind, tasteless, deaf, intactual, nor of smell
Sagacious. Of this double task, had Cain
Toil so extreme in conquering the first,
(Else flesh had wanted life) that, in his person,
The harder labour had not time to prosper.’

Whereto thus Hori, low of tone, and mild:
‘But God, Zateel, had of the better law
Provided him a witness, in a Brother.
In concert, would together both had worked,
Mutual defect had mutual been supplied,
And unreluctant Abel—’

Suddenly
Zateel drew up, exclaiming: ‘Son of Abel:
Nature is proud of her priority.
The spiritual but succeeds her; and she scorns
To yield to second comer; nor e'er yet
Submitted, Hori, without agony.
This I have felt, and so may testify.
Nor would his natural delights man yield,
But that short of the infinite they fall,
(Whereto the senses would their organs task,
Being spiritual,) and so of happiness,
(Which must for infinite capacity
Be infinite, or fail to satisfy,)
And soon expire in pain Him to redeem
From their indulgence, fatal even to death;
By labour God suspended it, and raised
Man to exert high faculty of skill,

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To vanquish Nature in the outer world,
And inner.’

Hori, thus reproved, more meek
Responded: ‘O'er the outer world, as first,
Was Cain appointed victor, blessed to eat
Bread by his brow's sweat; and to Abel was,
As second, given that inner world to rule.
But aye the sensual is averse from toil,
Moral, or carnal; yet would be divine,
In knowledge absolute, obtained by theft,
Not earned; and, stretching beyond bounds desire,
Leaps the abyss of space; and what finds there?’

Whereto Zateel replied, in kindlier tone:
‘Ay, Hori; what, indeed, but utter Chaos?
O Reason's self oft wanders there unwise.
And thither led the Fiend the First-born Man;
Beyond the habitable world, into
The Abyss of Space; there, with one sudden flight,
To learn at once the story of all worlds,
Past, present, and to come, and of them ask
Questions that might experience supersede,
And please imagination indolent,
With phantasms, and vagaries; to the realms,
Anon, of Death arriving, Space surpassed,
And Hades entered, yet at length to earth
Returning, all as ignorant as before.
—So, much perplexed and maddened, Cain came back,
Wearied with speculation, uninformed,
And troubled with the Mystery of Blood;
But, in his phrenzy, shedding what he loathed,
Giving to God the victim he misdeemed
Wroth Heaven of Earth demanded.’

To such words
Hori these gravely added: ‘Still the race
Of Cain present in worship but earth's fruits,
And shudder at the life-blood, which the seed

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Of Abel offer.’

Meditative, then,
Zateel spake, mildly: ‘To the sense still chained,
The race of Cain, though grown in diligence,
Read no high meaning in the life of man,
No revelation in the sealèd book,
Which God has written in the things he made.
The stars to them, indeed, a language speak
For seasons, and for years; but not as signs.
Good workmen are they; and, with cunning hand,
Controul material substance, and employ
In uses, worthy deemed. Even thus instruct
Fathers their sons; but unintelligent
Of scientific principle, and rule,
And only careful of the body's good.
Hence, Cain could understand not, in the blood,
Aught more than victim slain to Wrath Divine;
Not that the merely animal was doomed,
For man's perfection, to be sacrificed;
And carnal death despised, so that the soul
Be quickened, rising glorious from the grave
Of mortifièd flesh.’

While Hori listened,
His brow grew heavy with the weight of thought,
Which found in these relief:—‘And Abel's blood,
Zateel, thus shed, reveals an earnest truth;
That he who would redemption for himself,
Or for his race, accomplish, must be brave,
In patience to endure the deadly hate
Of man, from nature undelivered yet;
Content, if so salvation come, to be,
First, an Ensample; next, a Sacrifice.’

Thus moralized the friendly pair: then home,
By the moon's light, returned; for now the stars
With chilling influence smote. When Hori next

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The Vale of righteous Abel visited,
He was alone, and summer had restored
The grave-flowers all their bloom, a beauteous shew:
But not to Hori beauteous; for his heart
Was broken with affliction. Vain all signs
Unto the Cainite; still, with mortal rage,
He followed up his victory, and claimed,
From their retreats, the captives as his slaves.
And Hori thus was seized, and to the will
Of tyrant was subdued. His free-born soul
Revolted, and then drooped, deprived of life,
Of moral life, and motive power of act;
To every influence of joy, and pain,
As bards are ever, all too sensitive.
Thus, in the morning, odours from afar
Attract the Bee, and, in the eve, or ere
The storm come on, the absence of the sun
Chills back the busy creature to her hive—
Like her, much store of honey, and of wax
He gathered, and laid up on his return . .
A mental treasure. Now his work is wrought.
So the poor Bee, of her antennæ shorn,
The instruments, with which she once received
Effluvial motion, broken, and destroyed;
The spell of her activity is dead,
Contrivance, wisdom, ingenuity—
Stupid, and helpless; torpid, and effete;
Order, subordination, loyalty,
Thrift, occupation, all are over now,
Wanderer forlorn, and isolate, and dull:
Such Hori was; and, in the populous world
A stranger grown, he had no interest there.

Scaped from despotic vigilance, he came,
One summer's day, into the Vale of Death;
And laid him down upon a sunny bank,
And looked into the heaven's unclouded blue,

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As his blue eye might blend therein, or that
Melt down into his visionary soul.
Thus he, in silence, and in solitude,
Gazing reposed; nor moved, when night came on,
Nor when the day returned; and, day by day,
And night by night, unmindful of the claims
Of hunger or of thirst, into the face
Of daylit sky or starry, upward still
Looked patient, like a prisoner supine,
Chained to a hill side, doomed to lonely death.
—By chance, Zateel there wandered; led, one eve,
By tender memory, to the sacred spot;
And there beheld him in the loveliness,
And resignation of his lifeless brow.
High meditation in the glazèd eye,
His gifted vision read; and then, aloud,
He prayed the Shepherd, by the flocks he knew,
The pastures, and the rivers that he loved,
The green hills, and the quiet of the heavens,
To wake from that deep sleep. Soon, on his soul
Came twilight, and a haunted gloominess;
And murmurs, and dim sounds of shrieks, and sighs;
And shapes, as in a dream, were struggling there,
Pale even to polished whiteness, terrible.
—Was it a dream? Lo, on the outlined air,
Michael appeared; and, with angelic hand,
Blessed the belovèd Dead on whom he gazed.

‘Thrice blessèd be the sufferer, set now
From the oppressor free.’

Thus Michael said.
But then, as with strange power, permitted him
Since that disastrous night, Azaziel smote
The extended benediction, and uptowered,
With all a victor's insolence, above
The Seraph of the sky.

‘Bless not whom God

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Hath cursed; whom, for the guilty, he hath made
A curse. Curse whom he dooms—the innocent,
Successive victims to atone his wrath,
Until One die for All.’

This to his knee
Brought down the faithful Guardian. Not to him,
But to his God he prayed; and short is now
The demon's triumph. Fallen on earth's face,
Elihu's presence he confessed; who thus,
As on a cloud supported, eloquent,
Bent the right hand of his extended arm
In action of command; and, with the left,
Appointed him his place of prostrate shame.
‘From Abel's blood to that last Sacrifice,’
Exclaimed he, ‘Man must answer. God demands
No victims to his wrath; but man doth make
His prophets martyrs, sent in love to man,
That he might hear, and live.’

This heard Zateel—
On one knee kneeling, one hand on his heart,
One high in air; thus, with the gaze he looked
Of him who sees a vision, wonder-rapt,
Entranced in ecstasy, possessed, inspired.

II. Animals

Need for high faith had sorrowing Zateel.
To him had Hori been, as once himself
To Samiasa; but the loss he felt,
Was for the Shepherd keener than the King:
For Love descends more easily than soars.
But now a void was left which Zerah might
Even fill not in his mind. Not seldom too,
The monarch's mystic destiny awoke
Inquiry, to be satisfied ere long.

By sea, and shore, the Sophist, and the King

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Held on their way; until their wandering steps,
Dudael, once again thy lonely waste
Trod, not unknown. New wonder waits them there;
For, fearless of the sands, behold, afar,
Two Pilgrims of the Wild, yet not on foot,
But mounted, as in triumph, on white steeds.
On still they came; and, round about them, thronged,
As by their presence charmed, the desart-beasts.
—There were the Lion, and his Prey; as though
For them they had the ready hunters been,
And for his young provided, with consent
Right leonine—his young, couchant in dens,
Lying in wait, else hid in covert glades.
—The Raven, satisfied, as if his brood
Cried not to God, nor needed, hovered there.
—Peculiar kind, and tallest of the race,
The mighty Ostrich; large, inapt for flight,
Upon her wings; but, powerful of leg,
God gave her swiftness, and unrivalled speed,
That dares the horse, and rider to pursue;
Now fleeing not, she swells the lordly train.
—Patient of desert thirst, the Camel-Bird;
With Cassowary, Rhea, and Emeu;
The Dodo, and the Bustard—giants all,
Yet gentle; iron eaters, not without
Heart for their offspring, watching o'er their eggs,
Laid in the torrid sands, solicitous
With circling flight, or sitting o'er the pit
Which serves them for a nest in cooler climes.
—There were the mountain Goat, and forest Hind,
Whose many moons none knows; they bow themselves,
Bring forth their young, and cast their sorrows out;
Hale are their young, nor need be fed of corn,
Forsaking once their dam, returning never.
—There also the free Pard, whose bands none brake;
Whom, in the wilderness, God gave to house,

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And make his dwelling in the barren land:
Afar he sees, and scorns the city throng,
And disregards the crying of the driver;
In purest air, his mountain pasture ranging,
And of his verdant feast in joy partaking.
—There was the Unicorn obedient. Who
Beheld him then, might deem, that he would stand
Beside thy crib, and live upon thine alms,
Bow to thy yoke his shoulder, and for thee
Harrow the vale, or in the furrow plough.
Yet trust not him, for he is strong, nor leave
To him thy labour, doubting not but he
Thy seed will sure bring home, and heap thy barn.
—There came Behemoth: he, whom God did make
Docile, though mighty; eating of the grass,
Ox-like; but with superiour force, and power
Embedded in his navel, and his loins.
No more is seen Behemoth now: . . but, then,
In motion like a cedar was his tail;
His sinews wrapt the shelly substance up;
Even as strong bars, his ribs; and, like strong bars
Of iron, were his bones; chief work of God.
Not him might man, but God, pierce through, and wound.
Mountains, where beasts play wild, to him gave food;
Trees shadowed his repose, in covert hid
Of reeds, and fens; the willows of the brook
Compassed his cool retreat. Was he athirst?
He drank a river, persevering slow,
As Armon might be drawn into his mouth,
So fixed his eyes upon the lessening stream,
While his strong snout brake way through every snare.

The Mastodon, provided with huge teeth
And tusks of ivory, in the incisive bone
Inserted, thick of limb, and with a trunk
Graced like the elephant, rival in height,
Of length exceeding his, herbivorous brute,

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Succeeded. Others smaller; and with them
The Mammoth, mighty of bone, and short of neck,
Horrent with mane, and hornèd from the jaw,
Also with tusks, but doubly curved. The Sloth,
The Ai, tree-climber, with reverted look,
While travelling along the line of branch,
Gazing at the observer from below;
The Megalonyx, monstrous brute, of claw
Immense, thrice lion size; were there. Nor there
Wanting the Megatherium. Tardy of gait,
Brief-trunked, brief-tailed, and resting on its hand,
It walked, robust, yet feeding chief on roots,
And to its talons trusting for its food;
Enormous creature; elegant, and light
Of head, and neck; bulky its hinder parts.
—Tiger, and Wolf, with the voracious Bear,
Then tame, there herded gentle. Hunters them
Since seek in jungle, and den, both east, and north.
In thicket hid of wood, and grass, and rush,
The Tiger slinks; meanwhile, the sportsmen band,
Warned by the instinct of the Elephant,
Wake him to roaring, till he covert break;
Then furious war begins, nor peril free.
Lone with his females in tree-hollow, cave,
Or rocky cleft, the hybernating Bear
Immures lethargic: soon the hunter's skall
Them circles with a cordon populous—
Tracked in the snow their doubles, and ringed round
Miles in circumference, silently, with skill,
Till found their lair; attacked with men, and dogs,
Slain are they in their den; or, summer sport,
Roused out the furious brutes, noble sometimes,
With head erect, and spirit fiery,
As of the war-horse, dashing in full speed
At hunter, or at opening for escape,
Fain to take refuge soon in tangled brake;

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Beset, and wheeling still from side to side,
They keep at bay pursuers, but at length
Fall dead with many wounds;—they, and their cubs.
So too in glen, the Wolf, sequestered, wild,
Rock-strewn, a craggy dell. A fiercer dog
Is he, and may be tamed; and, like a dog,
He winds his prey afar; yet them between
Is mutual enmity, and when they meet
Stern strife begins, but, in the end of such,
Difference ensues; . . the victor Wolf devours
His victim; but, not so, the nobler Dog
Leaveth untouched the carcase on the field.
The shades of evening set, forth prowls the Wolf,
Timid, yet strong, made but by hunger bold,
All things his prey, in wintery droves he scours,
Ferocious, hot for blood, from meanest thing
To that of man. Now, both with man, and brute,
In peaceful guise he comes, in order due;
Nor shuns man's friend, the Dog, nor seeks to slay.
—With him the simple Hare, Roebuck, and Fox;
Badger, and Stag; Rein-deer, and giant Elk;
In fellowship, together journey on.
Largest of Deer, the Elk, profusely horned,
Majestic creature: when incensed, his mane
Upbristles like the lion's. Graceful, too,
The Draught Deer, swift of foot: in after time,
Him shall the dweller of the realm of ice
Rein to his sledge, the slippery path along
Borne joyous rapid o'er the wild of snow.
The Stag how stately; of the woodlands king:
With beamy crown adorned his antlered head,
Agile of motion, beautiful in strength.
What anguish feels he in the cruel chase;
His eyes weep human tears, ere, panting, he
Resigns his towering front, and dappled skin
To the impatient pack. Of humbler shape,

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The Badger's cutting bite frays off the hound.
—The Urus, elephantine in his bulk,
With a red eye, and fiery; thick, and short
Of horn, and neck; with curlèd hair o'erveiled
His forehead—shaggy maned. With these came on
The Lynx feline, meet cousin of the Wolf,
Now mild as he, with the Hyæna Dog,
And the Hyæna's self, the Tiger-Wolf:
Cruel, and fierce, by solitude made stern,
Of flocks, and herds rapacious . . hunger-mad,
Even new-closed graves he rifles for his food.
Now gentle as the gentle Pelican,
Which, with the Cormorant, no glutton now,
The Raven of the Sea, expands on high
His dusky wing; nor fears for lack of food,
His well-filled wallet hanging down his breast,
That with his bill he presses, when he would
Nourish his young in desart, or on isle,
Or feed his brooding female on the nest.
—There, too, the Vulture hovered; and the Roc,
Fabled, or true; . . big, strong, and wide of wing;
Ferocious Bird—but with the Puma, now,
Llama, and Calf, its wonted prey, at peace.
With these the Griffon, bearded or without,
Kite, Buzzard, Falcon. Prominent of brow,
Hook-beaked, the Falcon tribe, and their great strength
Is in their talons, curved, acute, and long;
Tenants of rock, and cliff, and mountain range.
Nor absent was the strong-beaked Vulture-King,
With ruff of ashy grey, and brightly plumed,
Carrion his food; or, wanting this, the Snake,
And Lizard are his meat. Lizard, and Snake
Are here: the Tortoise both of land, and sea,
And Salamander, in the cold, and damp
Rejoicing, with the Frog, and harmless Toad,
Oft musical, and laughing in the fens:

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Beaver, and Otter, with the Serpent tribe,
Subtlest of beasts, quick—strong—voluminous,
Plated in mail, and loving best the storm,
The hurricane; rejoicing in uproar.
Python—keen-sighted, patient to restrain
Impulse, until secure to seize his prey;
Beautiful oft, and bright of hue, he lies
Beside the waters; of capacity
Goat, and Gazelle, even Tiger, to receive,
As raven for his maw; once by a god
Slain—great Apollo's shaft: the Boa huge,
That, with enormous folds, involves, and clasps,
And crushes soon the victim it absorbs:
The Rattle-snake, that warns ere it attacks,
Of man afraid, yet dangerous if disturbed:
Naja majestic, with a human face,
Glowing in coloured scales: Cerastes horned;
The agile Viper, elegant, and light,
Tinted, and lively, capable of love,
Of fond attachment, and familiar play
With childhood. Nor were wanting Insects there;
The Bee, and gaudy Butterfly, and Moth,
The humbler Fly, the Beetle, and the Gnat,
With the wise Ant, and irritable Wasp,
The Spider, and the Glow-worm, and all worms,
Not without mind, though creatures of small size,
And worthy their Creatour. Thronging there,
Attendant on those Pilgrim twain, they came,
By Samiasa, then, and Palal seen;
With wonder, and with awe not uninspired.

III. Edna, and Azaradel

Attended thus, Ham, and Elihu rode:
Serene, Elihu; wonder-stricken, Ham.
As o'er the realm of life Elihu held

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Sovran supremacy, and regal rule,
Like One, God made to be with glory crowned,
And set above his works, beneath his feet
All things disposed, in due subjection placed.
Him knew not Samiasa, but conceived
Some attribute divine incarnate in
That image of dominion, and, with knee
Low bent, shewed reverence; eftsoons, bid to rise,
Called by his name, he started at the sound,
But answered not, while on Elihu spake:

‘Discrownèd king, but new enthronèd man;
Here loiter not—the City named from thee
Thy presence needs, which yet 'twill fail to save.
What then? What is it to thee? His task to do
To man is given—the issues are with God.
Behold, I have endowed the Horse with strength,
Have girt his neck with thunder—and can shake
His courage, as he were a grasshopper.
Mount on his back, even thou, and Palal, too;
Palal, in whom faith buds not, though I quench
The glory of these nostrils terrible,
That he may ride in safety. Be it so.’

And as he spake, submiss two Steeds approached,
And pawed with pride the ground, and in their strength
Rejoiced; valiant, as if prepared to meet
Men armed for war, and making mock of fear:
Not them the sword would fright; 'gainst them in vain
Quiver would rattle, glitter spear, and shield.
In haste, then, on their shoulders sprang the King,
And Sophist; nor gave time the rampant steeds;
The ground in rage, and fierceness they devoured—
War-steeds they were; whence come they might not know;
But from afar—hark, sounded clarions loud;
Straightway those battle-horses reared their necks,
Doubting the trumpet's blare with scornful neigh,
Saying ha! ha! and snuffed the distant strife,

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The captain's thunder, and the shouting hosts:
Then sought, as if on eagle's wings, what they
Deemed the heroic conflict that they loved.
—But their high Master otherwise decreed.

Till Night, the brave Steeds bore the Wanderers—
And the Stars on the sands looked from the Sky;
A Paradise all Heaven, Earth all a Waste,
Save for the Horsemen twain, in whom Life lived,
Only in them; elsewhere was Life as Death,
Death without Birth, a barren sepulchre.

But lived it in them only? Voices scare
The silent Moon, admiring as she sails,
Like Hades through the Deep of fluid Air—
A ship of Souls, a populous Orb—and long
A Wanderer o'er the desart solitude;
Yet wondering more to hear, or to behold
Vocal, or moving aught, though few, and rare.
Round, and at full, her broad bright beams shed down
A radiance o'er strange group, at distance seen,
Chiefs, and attendants; horsemen, and men armed.

What did they in the silent Wilderness?

Nor men alone:—a Woman in the midst
Shrieked loud to the deaf wilds, and hearts as deaf,
And wild:—for, obvious in the light, the King
His Brother recognized, Azaradel;
And Sodi; and with them was Edna fair.

Had Sodi, then, by force, and, with the aid
Of sovran power, conveyed, from her far home,
The Maid who scorned his love, here now to sate
Passion grown savage since? No—in his heart,
Once good, ruled vengeful Hate where once reigned Love,
That to the incestuous prince was willing now
To sacrifice fair Object, whom he loathed
Still fair to see, still pure . . a blessèd thing.

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Then paused the Twain, to note what there might chance;
A friendly mound of sand concealed their forms,
And weariness had tamed, and hushed their steeds,
So hard had they been ridden. Thus, by chance,
All they o'erheard, unable to contend
With troop so numerous, lawless, bent on ill.

And Edna pleaded for her virgin rights:
‘Men cruel; men profane; why have ye rapt
Me from the vale of peace, and holiness,
From Armon, and the Family of Seth?
Sodi, thou lovedst me once. Can one who loves,
Who loved me ever, seize by force, by fraud,
My innocence, thus—thus—transporting me,
—Whither?’—

Then Sodi answered her, in scorn,
In irony:

‘Edna; to a monarch's arms—
To future honour, and dominion—Say,
Is this not love?’

‘O save me from such love;’
Cried Edna, falling prostrate on the earth,
‘Father of Heaven, oh, save me from such love.’

‘And I will save thee,’ . . Samiasa said, . .
And forth had rushed, but then his Angel came,
Even Phanuel, and stood before him here,
Restraining him with this admonishment—

‘She shall be saved; for God has heard her prayer.’

Then o'er her bent Azaradel, and raised
The dropping maid.

‘Why shouldst thou fear, who love?
Fair Edna, daughter of translated Enoch,
Named from thy mother, thee I saw in tears,
Then loveliest, at Lamech's burial-tide;
Hopeless of other chance, 'twas my despair
Surprised thee, and with seeming violence,
Hath borne thee from the Patriarch's land away—

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To Enos bent’

‘Bad city,’ . . then, she cried:
But he:

‘There, with the aid of Tubalcain,
Bride of a Prince, from Amazarah far,
We may both reign, and revel in high joy,
'Till to return it please us, and to wrest
Dominion from her hand, decrepid now,
And hated by the people.’

Here he paused,
As having said too much—but safely more
The traitor might have uttered; for all sense
Had left the Virgin, sunk into a swoon.

‘Ho, Hherem;’ cried Azaradel, . . ‘take charge
Of sleeping Beauty; for without thee, how
Could we for safety answer in these sands?
And if aright I augur, a wild storm
Will waken from the calm of this fair night.’

‘Fear not;’ said Hherem, coming from the train,
‘God-born.’—

‘God-born?’ demurred Azaradel:—
‘Adon's a god to them who so believe;
But not to me.’

‘Not he thy sire.’

‘Who then?—
What, thou?’

‘Now, heed the tale which I will tell—
Fit place, and time, the Desart, and the Night,
For such revealing. 'Tis the Mystery
Of Amazarah. Sit we down, awhile,
About this Fountain in the Wilderness.’

So down they sate in circle; Hherem, then,
To willing listeners thus his tale pursued.

‘When Cain from her by name of Wisdom known
Departed in his anger, and his heart

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Set on stern Beauty, such as Fury wears:
The Spirit whom he mated, then, conceived
Vision how Murther followed hard on Theft;
And the Fiend burned to example the bad league.
Eve's first-born solemnized the marriage-rite,
And shed abroad the sacramental wine,
That made it holy, from the living tree.
Glad I beheld it pour from out the cup,
Then dashed the void vain vessel to the ground.
—Once I was beautiful, as Woman is—
How beautiful, when in the Tiger's form
Or Lion's, in the life of wrath, keen wrought
By hunger, I was limbed, and in each limb
Shewed life in motion—beautiful, when in
The human heart I found a templed ark,
Wherein my laws were hidden. Beautiful
I seemed to Cain, till Conscience waked his soul
To fear, and in the mirrour of his dread
Changed my aspect to satyrane, and vile!
Upon the manèd Steed, he flew afar—
I followed, all as fast. Now Enos rose,
And was enlarged; and Wealth increased, and lust
Of Lucre, that divinest appetite
Which pleases most thy avaricious soul,
The noblest attribute, Azaradel.
Beauty in women, Majesty in men
Had birth, and being, and dominion won;
And straight the Spirit of Pride from the Abyss,
Walked in its ways; finding a home, and shrine,
A Temple in the City, and was adored
Under the name of Mammon, haughty god,
And heartless, heaping-up for self-good only
Wealth, or Opinion, careful of none else—
And, ay, at many a hearth was welcome he,
In more familiar guise—and in the house
Of royal Lamech dwelt, and had high speech

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With Zillah fair, and Adah beautiful.
—I saw him there, and knew the sports he played;—
Ah, present then was I, when Lamech breathed
His dread for them he slew, in Adah's ear,
And Zillah's. There between the Twain he stood,
Trembling; the reeking weapon in his hand,
The witness of his guilt. With drooping mien,
Zillah that story heard, and in her soul
Felt the cold hand of death, and with the touch
Thrilled, shuddering, terrour-stricken, awe-subdued—
But Adah was of bolder strain, and she
Cheered him with hope, and of resources spake,
Such as but women find, when perils throng,
To break successfully their dædal net.—
Like them their daughters:—fair Naamah, soft,
Soft as her mother, Zillah;—Adah's child
Was Amazarah, brave and brilliant maid;
For Adah to god Mammon listened pleased,
And her the Power compressed, whence issue grew,
The glorious Queen, whose daring waked to Love
Adon, soon slain by Amazarah's scorn—
Her scorn?—Ope, now, thine ears, Azaradel.
Her scorn?—Thou doubtest well, my Son, my Son,
Thy godship sprung of Adon. Not of thee
Was he the Sire. I wooed her, in her scorn:
I—deity—wooed her, the daughter of
A deity—preferred accepted claims—
And thou—nay, start not—for there comes of this
What will to thee do service.’—

Then loud laughed
Azaradel, exclaiming—

‘Speak it out’—
And Hherem said:

‘When to that City thou
Arrivest with this thy charge, there I'll repeat
The Legend I have told, while sitting now

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About the Fountain in the Wilderness;
And thou, in right of thy descent, shalt claim
Honours divine, as both by sire, and dam
Divinely sprung—God Mammon thou shalt be,
Made visible, revealed to mortal sense;
And this shall be thy Bride, by Oracle,
Destined, within the Temple of the Power,
To bless thy bed, shrined in the Secret Place.’

Then rose the Prince, and all who there on him
Attended, with the feint of Hherem glad;
And made for Enos with what speed they might.

And Samiasa spake, while Palal heard:
‘My heart was bursting in me while the Fiend
Lied in my Brother's ear. But 'tis to him
Appointed to degrade me; and a spell
Was on me while he lied, and still remains.
Yet do I feel my own good Angel nigh.
Palal, save for his word, that Edna's prayer
Was answered, and the assurance that I feel,
He who sustains all power owns will to save
Her innocence . . fair Edna's innocence . .
My trust in him had given my single might
Success against those hosts. Moreover, He
Who rules the tribes of animals, and lent
Us safety in the steeds we now bestride,
Imposed on me high duty, to return
Unto the City of my Name, where aid
Of mine was wanted. Nor may I presume
To change in aught the tasks appointed me.’

‘I know not,’ answered Palal, ‘aught of word
Angelic; but dispute not thy resolve.
'Tis Wisdom to escape, with utmost speed,
The desart-wild, for human dwelling-place.’

With that, the Sophist, and the King spurred on
Their rested steeds, swift o'er the sands conveyed.

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IV. Ham, and Elihu

Onward to Naid, Ham, and Elihu wend:
And, through the gates of that metropolis,
Pass with the miracle of multitudes,
Ferocious once, now tamed—increasing train,
In countless numbers it were vain to tell.

The tall Giraffe,—since Ethiopian brute,
A Cameleopard, male, and female here;
The male the taller, with high-raisèd chest,
And taper neck, and head; placid of mien,
Dun, with brown spots, his hue, and bristly-maned:
The Monkey, with the crescent on his brow,
Like the night's borrowed sun, the crescent moon,
Befitting symbol, mimicry of man:
The Oran Outang—wild man of the woods—
Ape, and Baboon, with face for ever old;
Ingenious race, of many species they,
The wilderness their home; in reverence held,
By superstitious husbandman, who views
The herd of satyrs, issuing from their woods,
Seize the collected produce of his toil,
The cultivated fruits, and fain submits,
In apathy, his orchard to the rape:
The Squirrel, various—Tamia named, and Palm;
A social tribe, roof-builders, and within
Domestic sanctuary entering free,
Like the red-breasted bird, to pick the crumbs
That fall beneath the hospitable board
Familiar. Provident, and active these,
Protecting from the wind their mossy nests,
High on the forkèd branches, and, in store
For winter, laying up their proper food,
Nuts, chestnuts, acorns, berries, fruit, and maze,
Hid in tree-hollow, or beneath the ground;
There burrowing long galleries, passaging

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To meet apartments, chambers separate
For each variety of treasured meat;
Or in migration, from the pine, or birch,
They build their boat of bark, to cross the lake,
And woo the wind with obvious tail upraised.
Grey, red, and black—some flying, or so fast
Leaping, no swiftest arrow sent from bow
In sport, or strife, e'er sped so swift as they
From tree to tree, by moonlight foraging,
Or skimming through the air from branch to branch,
They feed on leaves, and insects, . . all the day
Still nestling in the hollows of the trees.
— The double-wombed Opossum next, who loves
Trees for her dwelling, in a marshy site,
Or by the sea—the dreaming Civet too,
Slumbering the day, and prowling through the night
For birds, and smallest deer; draining the gore
Ere gorging on the flesh; yet odourous both.
— The Glutton, darting often, from high bough,
On Elk, or Rein-deer's head, and tearing thence
The eyes, and sucking of its blood, until
Death ease the prey of anguish; when he feasts,
Feasts till no food remain, or sleep surprise
The gorgèd feaster; then, even by the side
Of his poor victim, sinks into repose.
— The Weazel, slender, sleek, and agile; keen
For blood; either inhabitant of caves,
And rocky fissures, or of sheltering woods,
According to their kinds—the Pine, and Beech,
And Sable Martens, costliest of the tribe.
— The Ratel, ravisher of honied combs,
Ash-grey, and black, and loose though tough of hide;
Him guides the Honey-cuckoo with his note,
To the sweet treasures that he loves so well,
In burrows dug by quadrupeds, laid up
For the small Bees, unconscious service. There

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The Indicator leads, itself too frail
To storm the hive, the Ratel; flying slow,
And halting in its flight; and evermore
Admonishing with warning voice, until
The spoil is neared, then, ceasing from its note,
Quietly perched upon a tree, awaits
Its share of plunder, rendered for reward.
Oft too, ere twilight eve, the Ratel sits,
Shading the rays of the declining sun,
With one paw, from his peering eyes, until
A flight of bees, returning to their homes,
Direct him where his pillage may be lodged.
Some say, by Ganges, and the Jumna, too,
He prowls at night for newly-buried corse,
And scratches up the unprotected grave.
—The Beaver, architect by Nature taught,
And skilful builder, fetching from afar
Materials for the structure of his house,
Cemented well; a rodent animal,
For with his teeth he strips, and separates
The bark, his food, and wherewithal he builds;
A populous villager; or hermit shorn
Of former instinct, if of means deprived—
Neither less wise, the Ants. In peace with them
The Ant-eaters, great and less, with sheathèd tongue,
Folding within their mouth;—protruded whence,
They from the Ant-holes draw their proper prey.
—The Loris, slowly paced, which creeps abroad
At night, for prey, from branch to branch, of sleep
The guiltless murtherer; and the Lemurs quick
But gentle, feeding but on fruits, and roots,
Living on trees, and basking in the sun,
A social band, with white aspect, or black,
Rufous, or many hued. The Rabbit kind,
The Agoutis, and the Pacas; with the small
Chinchillas delicate, silken of fur,

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Fine as the spider's web, a cleanly tribe—
The lively Jerboa, and the Manis scaled—
The alpine Marmot, provident to store,
For winter, moss, and hay, within the holes
Formed in the mountain-sides; and there they sleep,
The door well-guarded first, to shut out cold,
And raging storm, as well as prowling foe.
The gentle Cavies, though irrational;
Yet like thereto, how many of the race
That rule them, eat, and sleep, and propagate,
And do no more—The Dormouse of the wood,
Of hedge, and bush—The Mole, that makes its nest
Beneath the ground, of herbage and of moss,
Warm bed—The slender Fitche, that both the wood
And thicket haunts, of barn, and hen-roost foe—
The Kangaroo, on its hind legs sustained,
And moving fast, high bounding and afar,
Its fore too brief, and but as hands employed
To dig with, or to feed. Named from its voice,
The Gnou, gregarious brute, like to the horse
In body, mane and tail, ox-like of head
And horns, and for his eye, the bright Gazelle's
Not brighter. Fiery-eyed, red glaring, keen
For blood, the yellow Ferret pale; now quenched
Its wonted ever kindled appetite.
—The small Racoon, a bounding animal,
At home on plain, or tree; him ocean oft
O'erwhelms at flow of tide, found on the shore
In quest of shell-fish, by the oyster quick
His foot enclosed, and prisoned to the spot:
Now, with the rest, in happy freedom grouped,
Obedient to Elihu's voice divine.
—Attended thus, Ham, and Elihu rode,
Right through the gates of Enos—and within
The streets of that great city wend along.

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Wonderous array, but far more wonderous still
The unwondering apathy of gazing crowds.
—In knots of disputants, the Citizens
Were grouped, engaged on argument too great
To spare attention, though by greatest sight
The world might witness wooed. A race they were
Of meagre artizans, mechanic slaves,
Whose boast of old grew that the common weal
By them was built, and nourished; authours sole
Of riches they, producers of the corn,
The oil, the clothing, and conveniences,
The luxuries which stablish social life;
And right it was that who created thus,
They should distribute wealth. High glee was theirs,
When Tubalcain, with fair Naamah vain,
His sister, and his spouse, held o'er the realm
Dominion. Willing, to her various lusts
Stern Tubalcain the wed Naamah left,
And bent to state economy his mind—
Skilful or to commence, or to promote
Invention, manufacture, and supply.

Labour he urged, and diligence he loved,
And whoso would of him employment found,
And what they made he kept in public store,
And sold to who could purchase. Thus became
Great Tubalcain of human industry
Proprietor, and lord; and, for exchange,
Had with his superscription metal stamped
For current coin, whence lust of lucre grew,
Root of all evil. Soon he made decree,
That none should weave, or knit; or sew, or shape
Sandal, or raiment, save of stuff supplied
From out his storehouse, to be then returned,
And wages paid for labour, whence again
At a taxed price, and with a duty-mark,
'Twas issued to the buyer. Thus was he

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A princely merchant, a mechanic king;
Nor many wanting were, who saw, in such
Confusion of all orders blent in one,
A loved equality of man with man,
And knew not all were masters thus, or slaves:
Bound by no generous, but by sordid links
Of commerce, that the finer feelings blunts,
If gain alone be sought. Soon, like a blight,
Gold withered happiness; and thus it proved
Food of digestion hard to body, or soul,
Both in the city, and the lands about
Of Enos, and of Naid. Awhile, appeared
Prosperity to smile, and plain it was,
Both court, and courtiers—if so called might be
Either, that fitlier were from stithy named,
Mart, or exchange, and chapmen—flourished well.
Far countries, in their produce, dealt with them,
And took the clothing, with the corn, and oil,
At higher price, which might have been at home
Better consumed; hence, mid abundance, lacked
The natives, working on in wretchedness—
Now misery cried loud, and would be heard;
What then? its wants invention must supply;
And soon machines were reared, and engines built,
Of wonderous power, and structure intricate,
That might the needed labour substitute,
And infancy might tend. Now was no scant
Of produce, still the poor were very poor;
Raiment was wrought, but clothed not them; and food
Went to all markets, but it fed them not;
And, worse, ere long, constructions first designed
To aid in labour superseded soon,
And to their other ills, next indolence,
The fruitful mother of pernicious moods,
Was added; crime succeeded, murther last,
Personal, and judicial—horrid waste

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Of human life, and human energy.

Meanwhile, the child was tasked from earliest morn
To latest eve, watching the processes
Of wheels, and chains ingenious, so to earn
A pittance for its parents; urged to toil
Excessive by the force of blows, and dying,
Even hour by hour, as standing at its work—
A constant martyrdom, but soon to end,
Since age mature, of man or womanhood,
Seldom attained, the grave quick closed on grief,
And shut the murthered infant safely up
From the oppressor, in the house of hope.
Meantime, for them whose hands could find no work,
Idle perforce, no means were found to give
Knowledge that might the spirit cultivate,
And rear a class that should, with moral power,
Win for instruction of the citizen
The means of life, reaping of temporal things
Guerdon for spiritual, imparted free;—
But rather by their rulers were they taught
To scorn religious ministry, and glow
With hate 'gainst Eden's patriarchy, and seek
In war provision, peace gave not for life.
—Hence, were the populace disputing now,
How to assail the Mount of Paradise,
And find an end, unreasoning, of their ills,
By seizing that Palladium of the Earth
For their possession: holding like a charm,
Whence plenty might, in some mysterious way,
Accrue to wisdom, and to folly both,
And vice might revel on the gifts of heaven.
And many a form had Hherem there assumed,
With Satan, and Azaziel, to inflame
The imbruted mind with passions fiercely wild.

On—on Ham and Elihu passed—on—on,
Even to the palace gates. The menials, there,

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At them, and at their retinue, awhile
Gazed with brief admiration, and went in
To Tubalcain, Naamah, and their court,
To tell them of a miracle. Aloud
Then laughed the royal pair, incurious they
Of aught beyond the circle of their aims,
And unbelieving. So forth of the town,
Into the fields and forests, hasted on,
Ham, and Elihu, on their mission bent.
—Thence took they bird, and beast. There, at thy voice
Divine, Elihu, following, obeyed
The Ibex, long of horn and numerous,
According to his years; his burthened head,
Though brief, is bearded, wanderer of Alps,
And dweller on their summits: the small Roe,
The Roe, though small yet strong, and great in craft,
Baffling the hound, and cheating of his scent,
As skilled to fly as he is to pursue:—
The Tapir of the wilderness, lone brute,
In far seclusion, buried in the depth
Of forest solitudes, veiled not alone
From man's intrusion, but the fellowship
Of his own kind;—him doth the hunter woo
By imitative whistle, sharp, and shrill,
Like to his own, then twangs the poisoned shaft,
And the poor beast is hit; but better fares,
Obstructed on his passage to the stream
By race canine; there, standing, he resists
Their worrying, and them, seizing by the necks,
Whirls to afar, not free from loss of flesh.
Now social came the Tapirs, and with them
The Peccaries, a tusky swinish tribe,
Collared, or else white-lipped, a forest-race,
In pairs, and families discovered one,
The other banded in a numerous troop;
Fording with care the current broad, and swift,

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And from the opposing bank still forthright on,
They hold their way destructive, scathing all
The planter's hopes; now guiltless, with the Boar,
Came they—or wild, or civilized, brave brute,
Though gluttonous; and the foul Hog, and Sow,
That to her vomit evermore returns,
Submissive now to law of purer strain.

But vain it were to paint the miracle
In verbal hues, and to express the train
Of creatures that there walked, or leaped, or flew.
The Birds, the glorious Birds, that made the air
As glorious in their flight, or decked the earth
With ornament of plumage numerous.
The spurless, but not crestless Curassow,
The galeated and the razor-billed,
The rufous and globose—the Peury, too,
The clamourous Guan, with the lady Crane,
The Crownèd, and the Crex, and Trumpeter,
The Heron, cleft of bill; the Bittern, raised;
The Spoonbill, and the Ibis; while the Stork,
Both white, and black, foremost with head, and neck,
Cleaved, large of wings, with legs reverted long,
Rapid the air, and matched the wild Curlews.

With these they left the region; journeying, till
They reached the junction of the rivers, where
Elihu smote the riven waters straight,
With his prophetic mantle. On each side,
They parted like a wall, and in the midst
Ham, and Elihu passed, with all their train,
By power miraculous guided. Such their guard,
By day, and anxious night, till their return
To Eden's land; then safely, in the Place
Of the First Man's Creation, sought they spot
For refuge; and there found for them, and theirs;
Ham, and Elihu; with the bird, and beast,
Their gathering, according to the Word

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Of the Almighty, that into the Ark
Two of each living creature of all flesh,
Of every kind, there to preserve alive,
Both male, and female, clean, and the unclean,
Of fowl, and cattle, Noah should bring in,
And take to him of all food edible,
As food for him, and them. And such high charge,
Spite what since chanced, to Ham was trusted then:
And learn from this, although a Father's curse
Pursue the race of Ham, that there with them
The Angel of Compassion still abides,
With miracle from Nature to redeem,
Turning to Eden desart wilderness;
Hence, shew them mercy in your justest acts,
Then justest when most merciful they seem,
And greet the Brethren with a holy kiss.

END OF SIXTH BOOK.