University of Virginia Library

NIGHT AND THE SOUL

Scene I.

A Wood. Night.
Alexis and Ferdinand.
Alexis.
[A pause.

Ferdinand.
Yes, Night is holy; but to me she seems
More beautiful than holy.

Alexis.
Yes, for thou
Wert still enamoured of the liquid grace
And loveliness that ever float and flow
Upon the surfaces of things.

Ferdinand.
And thou
Of the vast depths in which they are embosomed—
The indestructible and infinite;
The mighty march of the immeasurable;
The policies of Heaven; and the life,
And soul, and centre of all being; and
The yet stubborn Why? and Wherefore? that are still
Enscrolled in sunny-pictured hieroglyphs
Upon the brow of Heaven, and which are stamped
Upon the earth, and on the soul of man;
The everlasting interrogatories
Which all things frame unto the intellect;
And the unfathomed, and unfathomable,
And ever-during mysteries of God,—
Dark to our inner blindness evermore,
Save the swift-speeding interval in which
A phosphorescent glory lights them up,
Like the bright gleam which starts up out of midnight,
When a great cloud opens its heavy lids
To let through lightning glances. These are thine;
Thou dwellest with them as with bosom friends,
For they have wooed and won thee, heart and soul!
But as for me, I play not with the thunders,
And the grim lightnings are no friends of mine;
And the profound unmeasured amplitudes,
In which all times and changes hang like stars
On the great bosom of infinity;
And the deep questionings which rack thy heart,
Move me but little, though I know they are.
I never shook a paw with the dread Sphynx,
And all her riddles are to me as dreams.
I love the lowly and the beautiful;—
The peach, just rounding into ripeness, with
Its first young blush just spreading o'er its cheek;
The rain-drops hanging on the sturdy arms
Of wintry thorns, and bearing in their breasts,
A soulless purity, like little Undines;
The breath of flowers, and hum of honey-bees;
The wavy odour of beanfields, and songs
Of merry harvest-home; the music which
A tiny brooklet makes unto the trees
That stand in condescending stateliness
Along its mossy banks, like grim old greybeards,
Listening with all becoming gravity
To the sweet talk and fragmentary thought
Of prattling infancy; the amber blush
And hues of glory, which the evening spreads
Ere she has closed the flowery volume up,
The record of the day; and the dark zone
Of night, with all its Cabalistic pomp,
Star-constellated, and bedropt in gloom:—
All forms of grace and groups of loveliness
Win my soul's worship, and I ask not—why? [A pause.

Now our friend Anthony would scorn us both;
Thee for thy musings, and myself for mine.
All things are made for use, he says: the sun
Shineth by day to light him to his mill;
And the sweet moon and clustered stars arise
To prevent accidents at night; the winds
Blow from all quarters but to waft his goods;
And the great sea rolls endlessly, and pants
For nothing but earth's ships and argosies;
And human souls are born into the world
With all the trappings of eternity
Still hanging loosely round them, for his use.

Alexis.
Heaven save me from
Such moralists as these, who would convert
Yon infinite expanse into a chart
Of “ways and means,” and turn the universe
Into a great “Poor Richard's Almanack!”

Ferdinand.
The greed of gold would turn out God from Nature,
And blot all beauty from the skies, and make
Of this fair world a very Niflheim, filled
Like the dread Scandinavian House of Doom,
With poisonous effluences, and the bones
Of wise and wizard serpents. It hath changed
Mankind into a host of greedy ghouls
With bloodshot eyes, and foul and clutching hands.

Alexis.
Yes, man as ever follows his own folly,
Heedless of all his mighty destinies;
And though a golden crown and robes like snow
Hang in Heaven's arch, suspended by a thread,
He will not, by a single act of his,
Dissever the thin cord, and suffer them
To fold him in the vesture of a king;
Nor will he notice that the great white hand
Is busy, tracing out new characters
Upon the vast walls of the universe,
Until some second deep-eyed Daniel come
To lip the lightning words in thunder-tones!

Ferdinand.
The host of men go streaming on through time,
Like rivers over mud; and then go out
Into eternity, and stain its shores
With all the foulness they have gathered up.
Like dusty pilgrims on the broad highway,
They heed not all the flower-paths close at hand,
But still plod on till night; and then go in,
With all the grime of travel on their garb,
To meet the monarch of the Universe!

Alexis.
Glide on, leaving a serpent-trail behind them—
A legacy of slime amid the sand.
The earth is fattened with their flesh and bones;
The churchyard clasps them in its cold embrace,
And hands them over to corruption, who
Dissolves them into elemental limbs,
And in the sleep of ages yawns them forth,
To toss about in ghastly merriment,—
Mere dust,—their history and their cenotaph;
For from the first they trod the crooked paths
Of worldly policy, with eyes down-bent,
And greedy souls crying unto the dust, Give! Give!
Although behind them stretched infinitudes,
Star-dropped and sprinkled, and before them lay
Eternal domes of bliss, ablaze with light,
In whose vast jasper halls suns hung as tapers,
While eager angels beckoned them that way;
And ever and anon Night pitched her tent,
And, holding up her ebon balance, cried
Lo! in the one scale I have placed these worlds,
And in the other is your priceless soul.
Behold how it outweighs them all! Yet still
They plodded onward with their dust-filled eyes,
Ever repeating their shrill whine for “More!”
Until they stepped into the infinite,
And went down headlong into—who knows what?

Ferdinand.
The dread abyss?

Alexis.
Words are earth's forgeries,
And pass not current either in Hell or Heaven.
It is as if, on mighty themes like this,
Language with puny, frantic arms, strove hard
To fold a mountain in its weak embrace.
We seek to paint the darkness, and our brush
Smears nothing but itself.

Ferdinand.
Is it not sad that Nature ever spreads
In lavish prodigality her sweets
To tempt man's sickly appetite—in vain;
And scatters from her rushing wings swift flakes
Of light, presages of the bliss of Heaven
On eyes that see not, and on souls as blind;
And, like a young bird poised in upper air,
And hovering evermore on rainbow plumes,
Between the Eternal and the Infinite,
Sings ever low, and tremulous songs of both
Unto deaf ears. Is it not sad, I say?

Alexis.
We stand within the darkness of the porch
Of being—the Great Temple is beyond;
And God hath hung up on the vaulted roof
These splendours, but to light us to our rest,
And to prepare us for the blaze to come!
Nature is still, as ever, the thin veil
Which half conceals, and half reveals the face
And lineaments supernal of our king,—
The modifying medium through which
His glories are exhibited to man,—
The grand repository where he hides
His mighty thoughts, to be dug out like diamonds;—
Still is the day irradiate with His glory,
Flowing in steady, sun-streaked, ocean-gush
From His transcendent nature,—still at night
O'er our horizon trail the sable robes
Of the Eternal One, with all their rich
Embroidery and blazonment of stars.

Ferdinand.
Alas! that mankind see Him not,—the Great
And Everlasting Framer of all worlds;
Who paints himself upon the leaves of flowers,
And flings his portrait on the breasted clouds,
And sheds his syllogisms in the shape
Of suns and moons and planetary systems.
How is it that our fellows see not beauty,
That great thoughts never visit them?

Alexis.
'Tis well
They do not; for the mighty ones would shake
Their rotten temples, clay-built, to the ground;
Would blow them into smoke, with the old Gods
Of Asgard, and Olympus, and of Ind:
Their modern Mammon would be overthrown,
And all their dear conventionalities,
And plundered gains and selfish policies,
Flung to their grim old father—there below;
And all the frantic immolations, which,
In honour of their idols of the heart,
And of the market and the drawing-room,
The petty insipidities and waste
Of heaven-born energies, and all the trash
And tinselled fripperies of the world, must go.
The giants will have room! Oh! how I love them;
Whether they come in quiet majesty,
Like silent-footed pilgrims from the shrines
Far off, of old eternities, and bear
Tapers within their hands, to light the altars
Of the great inner temple, and reveal
Unto itself its wealth of pictured splendour;
Or come upon me full of power, and fling
My cherished prejudices round and round
In chaff-like whirling eddies, with their stride;
Or shake the firm foundations of my creeds,
Like busy lightnings peeling off stone-flakes
Adown rock-precipices, laying bare
The flinty ribs of chasms and deep gulphs;
Or whether they advance spontaneously,
Prank'd in deep shadows, like the dark-brow'd Night,
When I have lulled my soul into a hush
For their reception, and they glimmer in,
One following the other, like the stars
Taking their place upon the deep blue blank
Until one greater than the rest slides in
With all his wheeling glories round his head,
Like a great sun with his attendant planets.

Ferdinand.
Great thoughts oppress me like an incubus.
They sit upon my soul like thunderbolts.
I am uneasy with them as my guests,
While all the tiny beauties that entwine
Their wreath-like graces round the universe,
And gleam like lights upon stalactites
Depending from the vaulted roofs of dark
Earth-grottoes, and go flashing up and down
Amid the summer sunshine of the world,
Like the bright wings of spangled butterflies—
All melt into my soul like lunar rainbows!

Alexis.
I love to grasp a great thought by the heel
And plunge it underneath another Styx,
And see it come forth bright, invincible—
Strong, and yet beautiful—Achilles-like.

Ferdinand.
But all great thoughts and mysteries make me sad.

Alexis.
Well, and why not? The soul that hath not sorrowed
Knows neither its own weakness nor its strength;
Sorrow reveals heaven to us; for our souls
Hang in the infinite like sun-dyed globes
On which the time-rays of the present play;
But ever and anon a shadow comes
Over and on them, cast forth from their thrones
In the great world-to-come, when a bright seraph
Glides like a glow behind them. And our woes
Are like the moon reversed, the broad bright disk
Turned heavenwards—the dark side towards us,
Till God in His great mercy turns them round,
And rolls them with a wise and gentle hand,
Into the dim horizon of the past,
To bless us with their smile of tearful lustre.

Ferdinand.
There is a step winding along the vale.
Shall we avoid it?

Alexis.
No! let us remain.

Antonio
(coming up).
Good even, friends. How are you both? 'Tis long
Since I have seen you. Dreaming still I see.
Been having a chit-chat with the stars, maybe
A little quiet gossip with them,—hey?
Well, well! there's no accounting now for tastes.
Anything new up yonder? Any news?

Alexis.
No, nothing much! 'Tis said the moon hath dropped
Another egg or two, for they were seen
With the new telescope, not long ago,
Flying adown the western slopes.

Antonio.
In-deed!
That's all then, is it? No new signs appear,
No portents, shadows of events to come,
Nothing like war or famine anywhere
Brewing, perhaps?

Alexis.
No! Not that we know of!
There's Ursa Major there. Dost hear him growl?
But people say his rotten fangs are gone,
And that he can do nought but hug himself!

Antonio.
Ah; well, I thought it was no harm to ask.
People like you, out always in the night,
I fancied might have learned a thing or two;
But it's no matter.

Alexis.
Nay, those times have passed
When the stars peached about events to come!
Albertus Magnus might have helped you now,
Or Campanella, Fludd, or Jacob Behmen.

Antonio.
Aye! and where are they?

Alexis.
Resting in their graves.

Antonio.
Why then do you refer me to dead men?

Alexis.
Because the dead teach better than the living.

Antonio.
And that is all you know,—there's nothing else
That would be worth a man like me to hear?

Alexis.
Why yes! 'Tis said, the other night, Aquarius
Scattered his water-bowl, and all his stars
Wept long and sadly, that men were such fools
As to outshame the worm in their pursuits,
And starve their souls to make their purses fat!

Antonio.
Ha! Ha! I see. A little pleasant—hey?
Well, well—good night.

Both.
Good night.

Ferdinand.
And he is gone,
With all his dreary soul unlightened by
A single ray to say it is divine.

Alexis.
Oh no, not so. Antonio is a man
Of weight and influence in the busy world;
A most respectable and weighty man,
With lands and houses, and a heart of steel
For all who tenant them; a prudent man,
Who keeps a keen shrewd eye on the “main chance,”
And never lets an opportunity
Slip eel-like by, unused or unimproved.
He would sack heaven and earth, and make his soul
Into a greasy money-bag, just that
He might say to the world—all this is mine,
And hear his pockets jingle when he walks!

Ferdinand.
Most noble truly! Ah, one feels with such
As if the world had lost its bright attractions;
As if the sun were blotted out, and all
The stars were folded in their funeral robes,
And carried once for all to their lone graves
In uttermost Cimmerian realms of night;
And all the glances of the eyes we love
Were turned into the heartless stare of death;
And all the words of fondness, bubbling up
Fresh from the founts of feeling, were struck dumb;
And Nature had grown beautiless, and left
A charred and shrivelled image of herself
On the drear blanks of space, where grim mines yawned,
In which we were to toil and sweat for gold
In ever-during darkness—lidded night!
With such as these the world seems but a waste,
On whose aridities our very hopes
Sink spent, flapping their white wings till they perish!

Alexis.

Ferdinand.
Ah yes! pains past are pain no longer; true!
But what of those that loom up in the future?

Alexis.

Ferdinand.
Farewell, Alexis.

Alexis.
Farewell. But we will meet again, when Night
Throws her black pall athwart the corpse-like heavens,
And typifies the shadows and the glooms
That fold about the heart and sould of those
Who, in these times of ours, with daring wing
Dive down into the deeps of human life,
And come back reeking with dark doubts and dreads,
Or, with their plumage scorch'd and shrivell'd, dare
To utter profanations, and blaspheme.
But we will see, if from the darksome vault
Of human speculation, God will let
A bright but lowly faith glide to our souls
Like a young moon, to beautify the scene
With rays like reflexes of heaven, and show
The holiness of beauty, and of life.

Scene II.

An Alcove in a Garden. Night.
Flora and Caroline.
Caroline.
Flora, my dear, why do you look so sad?
Is not the night most lovely, with her locks
Dark as the raven's wing—and all around
A very picture of repose and peace—
Bathed in the luxuries of tranquil bliss,
Steep'd to the very lips in extacy
Too passionate for words, like the sweet moments
When the eye only speaks th'unsyllabled words
Of the o'erbrimming heart, and the soul spills
The overflowing fulness of its joy
In the sweet eloquence of silence. Hark!
The only voices that disturb the night,
Or rather mingle with its solemn hush,
Are two, save ours:—That of the restless wind
Gliding about among the trees, as if
The Angel of the Earth were passing o'er
The velvet carpet of her palace-home,
From chamber unto chamber, just to see,
With all the yearning of a mother's heart,
That all her loved ones were asleep and well,
And look her last on them for this one night,
And take their happy dreams with her to Heaven;
And that the motion that we hear was but
The rustle of her garments; and the other
Is the soft silver-sounding splash of yonder
Moss-covered fountain. How I love the sound
Of falling water! It hath something in it
Which speaks of the long past,—of infancy,
And the bright pearl-like days of childhood; and
I fancy that I hear it murmuring
Stories of red ripe berries; and with glee,
And with an innocent cunning, telling of
Those secret nooks where thickest hang the nuts
From their o'erladen branches:—Oh! it speaks,
In tones one cannot help but understand,
Of those far-distant times when all things were
Treasures and joys—not to be bought with worlds;
When a new pleasure was a pleasure, just
Because that it was new; and all things seem'd
As pretty-playthings to the new-born soul
Constructed for its use and sole amusement.
But why art thou so sad?

Flora.
Nay, Caroline,
Not sad! No, not quite that,—and yet,—ah well!
The Night is lovely, and I love her with
A passionate devotion, for she stirs
Feelings too deep for utterance within me.
She thrills me with an influence and a power,
A saddened kind of joy I cannot name,
So that I meet her brightest smile with tears.
She seemeth like a prophetess, too wise,
Knowing, ah! all too much for happiness;
As though she had tried all things, and had found
All vain and wanting, and was thenceforth steep'd
Up to the very dark, tear-lidded eyes
In a mysterious gloom, a holy calm!
Doth she not look now just as if she knew
All that hath been, and all that is to come?
With one of her all-prescient glances turn'd
Towards those kindred depths which slept for aye,—
The sable robe which God threw round Himself,
And where, pavilioned in glooms, He dwelt
In brooding night for ages, perfecting
The glorious dream of past eternities,
The fabric of creation,—running adown
The long Time-avenues, and gazing out
Into those blanks which slept before Time was;
And with another searching glance, turn'd up
Towards unknown futurities—the book
Of unborn wonders,—till she hath perused
The chapter of its doom; and with an eye
Made vague by the dim vastness of its vision,
Watching unmoved the fall of burning worlds,
Rolling along the steep sides of the Infinite,
All ripe, like apples dropping from their stems;
Till the wide fields of space, like orchards stripp'd,
Have yielded up their treasures to the garner,
And the last star hath fallen from the crown
Of the high heavens into utter night,
Like a bright moment swallow'd up and lost
In hours of after-anguish; and all things
Are as they were in the beginning, ere
The mighty pageant trail'd its golden skirts
Along the glittering pathway of its God—
Save that the spacious halls of heaven are fill'd
With countless multitudes of finite souls,
With germ-like infinite capacities,
As if to prove all had not been a dream.
'Tis this that Night seems always thinking of;
Linking the void past to the future void,
And typifying present times in stars,
To show that all is not quite issueless,
But that the blanks have yielded starlike ones
To cluster round the sapphire throne of God
In bliss for ever, and for evermore!
Oh yes! I love the Night, who ever standeth
With her gemm'd finger on her rich ripe lip,
As if in attitude of deep attention,
Catching the mighty echoes of the words
Which God had utter'd ere the earth was form'd,
Or ere yon Infinite blushed like a bride
With all her jewels; and I love the flowers,
And their soft slumber as they lie around
In the sweet starlight, bathed in love-like dew,
And looking like young sisters, orphans too,
Left to our watchful care and guardianship,
To keep them from the rough-voiced, burly winds,
And see that nought invades their soul-like sleep.
Thou canst not tell me what I do not love
In all this dark-robed family of peace;
The temporary hush of the low winds,
And their uprising wail;—the shadows there
Cast from the long dark shrubberies, that move
And rest again on the green sward, and nod
Their hearselike plumage to the passing winds;—
The deep, unclouded light, half glow, half gloom,
Dark, and yet lustrous, gleaming with a fire
Whose sources seem unfathomable;—love
Even the very grass beneath our feet,
Whose graceful blades I almost fear to tread on,
Because when I have passed, they raise themselves
Again, half in reproach, so quietly
Turning themselves once more unto the heaven
That cherishes and feeds them, I could weep
That I had crush'd them underneath my foot;—
Even yon tree, standing so lonely there,
As if it dreamt of all the music which
Its branches used to hold when in their prime,
Ere it became a dead and blasted thing
Upon the bosom of the living world,
Which she still weareth, as a maiden wears
The wither'd flowers of the sweet Long-Ago,
Ere love itself and lover both were dead!
And yet I love it too—grim ancient thing.
All, all, oh! yes, I dearly love them all!
But Caroline, my dear, canst thou not guess
Why the night makes me sad?

Caroline.
Oh yes, I can!
Trust me for that, my dear simplicity!
Thou ever wert a loving, trusting one;
With all thy heart expanded, like a rose
Casting its richest fragrance to the winds,
Retaining the sweet grace of childhood, with
A broad, high spirit always on the march.
I used to be much puzzled with thee once,
For when I saw thee moved, I used to think
Thy tender heart was too great for thy soul:
And then again when I have seen thee stand
Unblenching in the presence of such thoughts
As would shake lesser spirits to their fall,
And topple reason and her balance o'er,
I thought, with something of a shudder, that
Thy soul was greater even than thy heart.
It may be that I could not fathom either,
And therefore each seem'd greater than the other
Just as occasion alternated them.
But I have learn'd to see that heart and soul
Are rounded into perfect harmony
In my sweet friend;—and Flora, I could tell
The name of him, the great magician, who
Hath wrought this change within thee—shall I now?

Flora.
Yes.

Caroline.
It is love! And now, my little one,—
Forgive me, pray, for treating thee as such;—
Although I reverence thy greater gifts,
I feel towards thee, dearest Flora, just
As an elder sister might unto the child
Left to her tutelage and care; for thou
In all thy innocent wisdom art as strange
To all the wiles of worldlings as a child,—
Art like a crusted diamond, dark and void,
Confined within the earth; but when released
And brought out to the kindred light of heaven,
Glowing and beaming like a new-born star.
And now, my dear, I will reveal the cause
Why the night makes thee sad; 'tis simply this,
That in its depths thou seest a shadowy reflex
Of him thou lovest; while its crested stars
Like his great thoughts, seem ever flashing up
The infinite expanse in search of God—
The ultimate and primal truth of things,
And preaching still the unattainable
In lines of light, whose meaning lies beneath
In piles of darkness, which, like that o'erhead,
Is infinite. Is it not so now, say?
His absence makes thee sad. Am I not right?

Flora.
Oh Carry, thou wert ever a sad rogue!
Yes, thou art partly right.

Caroline.
Nay, altogether!
I know I am! And now then tell me this—
Whose thoughts were those thou didst regale me with
But now? I fancy I have heard a voice
Well known to thee, utter some vastly like them.

Flora.
Right once again! Alexis taught me them.
And oh! I think his thoughts so oft within
The solitudes of night, and even dream
Of them in sleep, until they form a part
Of my soul's garniture, and it remains
No more a wonder that I utter them,
As if they were my own; and sometimes too
I catch the rainbow robe of his expressions—
The very words he used—not only stringing
His gems upon a gold thread of my own,
But taking up the casket that enshrined
His jewels.

Caroline.
Nay, Flora, now thou wrong'st thyself!
For thy thoughts are original as his;
And I meant only he had given the tone
And wing'd the tendency of thy remarks.
I wonder where those dreamers are just now,
Alexis and that tiresome Ferdinand.

Flora.
That tiresome Ferdinand? Ah, Caroline!

Caroline.
Talking, I warrant now, about the plan
And method of the universe; and plunged
In difficulties on the politics
And civil laws of Saturn; weaving webs
Of lofty speculation in their minds
To bridge across the gulf-like infinite,
And suffer them to crawl o'er—spider-wise—
Heaven's dizzy ceiling, with their heads turn'd down
To pay a friendly visit to the moon,
And ask the stars how they get on up there!

Flora.
Ho! hold thy tongue, thou pretty rattlepate!

Caroline.
Is not the earth quite wide enough for them?
And are we ciphers in the universe?
Come, let us sing that song Alexis taught thee.
I will begin.

Caroline.—Earth.

Flora.—Heaven.

Caroline.—Earth.

Flora.—Heaven.

Caroline.—Earth.

Flora.—Heaven.

Caroline.—Earth.

Flora.—Heaven.

Caroline.
Ah! 'tis no wonder now, with views like these,
That they—I mean Alexis and dear Ferdinand—
Should turn away from earth, and look to heaven
For that repose, and peace, and purity
Which never have dwelt here.

Flora.
And yet, O Earth,
We love thee, in whatever drapery
Thou art invested.—Whether thou dost come
With all thy budding-blossomings of Spring,
Orbing themselves into fulfilment; or,
Girdled in nameless glories, in the prime
And plenitude of Summer, with thy zone
Sun-dyed and purpled, like the gates of heaven;
Or whether in the ripe fruition-bursts
Of golden autumns, with their loaded wains,
Nodding like gods whose smile is plenty; or,
In thy most ghostly garb of winter, when
Thou foldest up thyself in faultless snows,
And lookest like a marble-sculptured form,
Waiting for some fire-giving god to breathe
Into thy spotless shape the breath of life;
Or whether deck'd in all the pomp and glow
Of thy day-splendours and activities,
Brushing the gather'd skirts of ebon darkness
With opaline gem-like sunbeams; or, at night,
When thou unrollest thy great map of stars;
Or when thou wrappest round thee heavy clouds,
And the white foam of brattling tempests, and
Peoplest thy caverns with a thousand wails,
And night with wandering voices full of woe;
Or whether, with thy brow serene and calm,
Thou stretchest o'er thee, like a tranquil thought,
The charmèd circle of thy summer skies;
In each of thy appearances we love thee;
Whether a smile dwells on thee like a blessing,
Or a frown hangs its thunder-curtain o'er
Thy beetling temples; Oh, we love thee, Earth!
Thou beautiful! Thou happy once! We love
Both thee and thine, for art thou not our mother?

Caroline.
Yes, Flora, and in spite of all her faults,
And even sometimes, perhaps, because of them,
Earth's children cling tenaciously to her
As to a mother, though they may have dreams
Of peace and happiness in other spheres.
Didst ever hear of any who declared
That they did not, and yet who were sincere
In their profess'd alienation?

Flora.
Yes!
Of one such I have heard:—A fair young girl
To whom one keen woe, like the scythe of Death,
Had sever'd at a stroke the ties of earth,—
The tender trammelage of love and hope,—
And not released the spirit from its clay,
But left it bleeding out at every pore,
Clinging with torn hands to its prison-bars,
And gasping out towards the light, in vain.
For she had loved and been deserted; and
All her heart's wealth was now return'd to her
Base metal, and not current coin. Her love
Which went forth from her bright and beautiful
Came back a ghastly corpse, to turn her heart
Into a bier, and chill it with its weight
Of passive woe for ever. But the shock
Had turn'd the poles of being, and henceforth,
In circles ever narrowing, her soul
Went wheeling like a stricken world, round heaven.

Edith.

Caroline.
Ah! I was thoughtless when I question'd thee,
And reck'd not of those broken-hearted ones
Who are among us now, in spite of all
The sneers of hollow worldlings, who would fain
Persuade themselves and us that wither'd hearts,—
Hearts from whose deathliness all joys have flown
As birds from winter,—are but poets' dreams,
Feign'd but to rouse a tear or to amuse.
Who hath not seen them,—the dead living ones,
With that sad ghastly something—meant to hide
From other eyes the anguish and the woe
That are consuming them,—that something, which
Like the poor pallid ghost of a dead smile
Plays over lips that never shall smile more—
Cold as December moonbeams on snow-drifts?

Flora.
Yes! Who hath not seen them come where music is,
And high-pitch'd jubilance and merriment,
Like a low, plaintive semi-tone to break
The noisy harmony into pathos, and
Gliding upon the gorgeous lighted rooms,
Like a November gloom let deftly in
Among the golden hours of Summer. Oh!
Who hath not seen and pitied what he saw?
And felt for these most solitary souls
Left to the wardenship of misery;
Within whose charmèd circle not a ray
So far mistakes its mission as to pierce,
And not a sound of mirth can penetrate,
For all things take its shape and breathe its tone;—
Those earth-abjured ones unto whom the stars
Preach nothing but the record of their woe,
And tell it to the depths in which they slumber;
To whom the day inscribes it on the clouds,
And figures it in well known hieroglyphs
Upon the front of all things and all times;
To whom Night typifies it in her glooms;
And all the winds come laden with its wail;
And all sounds seem to utter it in turns;
And all the trees seem nodding their farewell
To happiness for ever. And the flowers,
Bending beneath its weight, seem glad to die;
And sobs and sighs are all the food of time;
And all things bright have got it as their shadow;
And every joy is but the gay reverse,—
The bright blank nothing,—but the picture's back,—
The portrait of their woe turn'd to the wall!
Woe! woe! All woe! Until it is sublime,
And the great thing stands out, and clasps the world
Within its gaunt, dark arms, and cries, Behold,
Here is my infant!—Those unhappy ones
Who take their anguish round about with them,
And whose dead atmosphere opaques all things,
And dyes them in its sable hues:—Who seem
For ever wondering why the world is glad,
And why it does not let its great black heart
Reveal itself and gloom upon its face.
Ah! there are many dead ones walking up
And down the world whose thoughts are not with us
Nor with the living earth, and asking nought
Of all its sunshine, and its smiles, and bliss,
But pleading with the passion of despair
For nothing but a grave and burial.

Scene III.

A Library. Night.
Alexis and Ferdinand.
Alexis.
O thought! What art thou but a fluttering leaf
Shed from the garden of Eternity;—
The robe in which the soul invests itself
To join the countless myriads of the skies;—
The very air they breathe in heaven;—the gleam
That lights it up, and makes it what it is;—
The light that glitters on its pinnacles;—
The luscious bloom that flushes o'er its fruits;
The odour of its flowers, and very soul
Of all the music of its million harps;
The dancing glory of its angels' eyes;—
The brightness of its crowns, and starlike glow
Of its bright thrones;—the centre of its bliss,
For ever radiating like a sun;—
The spirit thrill that pulses through its halls,
Like sudden music vibrating through air;—
The splendour playing on its downy wings;—
The lustre of its sceptres, and the breeze
Which shakes its golden harvests into light;—
The diamond apex of the Infinite;—
A ray of the great halo round God's head;—
The consummation and the source of all,
In which all cluster, and all constellate,
Grouping like glories round the purple west
When the great sun is low. For what are stars
But God's thoughts indurate—the burning words
That roll'd forth blazing from His mighty lips
When He spake to the breathless infinite,
And shook the wondrous sleeper from her dream.
Thus God's thoughts ever call unto man's soul
To rouse itself, and let its thoughts shake off
The torpor from their wings, and soar and sing
Up in the sunny azure of the heavens:
And when at length one rises from its rest,
Like the mail'd Barbarossa from his trance,
He smiles upon it, in whatever garb
It is array'd:—Whether it stretches up
In grand cathedral spires, whose gilded vanes,
Like glorious earth-tongues, lap the light of heaven;
Or rounds itself into the perfect form
Of marble heroes, looking a reproof
On their creators for not gifting them
With one spark of that element divine
Whose words they are; or points itself like light
Upon the retina, in breathing hues
And groups of loveliness on speaking canvas;
Or wreathes itself in fourfold harmony,
Making the soul a sky of rainbows; or
Sweeping vast circuits, ever stretching out
Broad-arm'd, and all-embracing theories;
Or harvesting its brightness focal-wise,
All centring in the poet's gem-like words,
Fresh as the odours of young flowers, and bright
As new stars trembling in the hand of God.
In all its grand disguises He beholds
And blesses His fair child. For thought is one,
As souls are in their essence, and it works
By kindred laws and processes in all;—
Whether it flames within thy mind, O God,
And publishes itself in spheres of light,
In worlds of spirits—effluences of Thee,
And shows its mighty convoluted throes
In embryotic suns and nebulæ;—
Or glimmers dimly in the humble mind
Of one of thy earth's children, whose grand wish
And festival ambition is to bow
To Thee; and whose most lofty thought is but
As the upturning of an eye in prayer;
Still are they one in nature—the great thought
That rayed out into constellated worlds
And the weak thought that went up in a sigh,—
The grand and lofty thought that, lover-like,
Hung a new star-string on the neck of heaven,
And the poor, lowly one that bee-like brought
The honey of a pious wish to Thee;
And this is one drop in that luminous flood;
One note from a light string of the great harp;
One leaf in all the universal wreath;
One point of all the glory of Thy throne;
One atom of the substance of all worlds;
One gem upon the costly floor of heaven;
One tiny firstling among all the wealth,
Which, going from Thee glances, is return'd
As suns. And to the Thine eye one human thought
Interprets all the rest; the dynasties
Of mightiest intellect, or martial power,
The Pharaohs and the Cæsars, and the times
Of Persian splendour, and of Grecian might,—
One human thought, invested in an act,
Lays bare the heart of all humanity,
And holds up, globule-like, in miniature
All that the soul of man hath yet achieved,
Its Paradises Lost, its glorious Iliads,
Its Hamlets and Othellos, and its dreams
Rising in towering Pyramids and Fanes
To show that earth hath raptures heavenward;
And like the touched lips of a hoary saint
Utters dim prophesies of after-worlds,
Making sweet music to the ear of God,
Like Memnon's statue thrilling at the sun;
And, as the New Year opening into life
Is all-related to the ages, so
Are man's works unto Thine, Almighty God;
And as the ages to eternity,
So are all works to Thee, Great Source of all!
And were all nature void, one human thought
Self-utter'd and evolved in act, left like
A white bone on the brink of the abyss
As the sole relic of what once had been:
Thou, who perceivest at a glance the all
In one, who scannest all relationships,
In whom all issues meet concentrative—
Couldst, from this puny fragment of Thy works,
Recal and re-arrange, and re-construct
The mighty Mammoth skeleton of things,
And fold it once more in its spotted skin,
And bid the bright Beast live:—Couldst, from this one
Poor little earthling, wither'd like a flower
Placed as a record by a death-struck hand
Between the leaves of the great Book of Doom,
Relume the dark—re-paradise all heaven,
Until the heaving infinite once more
Broke into light, and budded forth in stars.

Ferdinand.
Thought is the prophet of eternity.
And God hath written on its orbéd brow
“Deathless for ever.” Oh! it cannot die;
It is the soul's bright essence and its source.

Alexis.
All human souls dwelt in the mind of God
As purposes and grand intents, until
He wing'd them into utterance, to float
On independent pinions of their own,—
Made independent by His holy will,—
And, like a mighty convoluted wheel
Fire-barred and girdled, throwing off its sparks
For ever into the eternal dark
In humble imitation of its God,
The soul casts nothing from it but itself.
Bright fire-flakes gathering into spirit-gems
To flash for ever on the thrones of heaven
And flood its crowns with glory, or to mix
With the prolific glooms of darkness—so
Say some—in horrent shapes and chimeras,
To blast the soul like hell-fed dragons' eyes.

Ferdinand.
But, thinkest thou, these black thoughts like the good
Are all eternal?

Alexis.
No. If they be dark,
The darkness swallows them; if light, they live.

Ferdinand.
The good and beautiful will always bloom,
And bear their rich, ripe fruit for evermore;
While all the sinful, and the godless, like
A sapless branch, must perish endlessly.

Alexis.
For God is light; and all things dwell in Him.
And is it possible that He will let
The broad disc of His glory be obscured
By black spots dwelling with Him evermore?
Will He encasket darkness, and enshrine
The foul things of the earth in amber salts,
Conserves of sulphurous fire and flaming smoke?
Is sin a god that it should live for ever?
Or hath it a dark region of its own,
A dungeon empire where it reigns supreme,
Beyond the boundary line of God's dominions,
Out of the reach of His long sceptre, where
He is not known as King, but only held
An alien Monarch, and a rival? Ha!
Doth God brook rivals then? What, He! Nay! Nay!
The time is coming when that foul thing, Sin,
Shall, like a long distemper vanish; and
From all the hearts of men the gory stain
Of its blood finger-prints shall be wash'd out.
The doom of sin is death. Dust unto dust!
Night unto night!

Ferdinand.
'Tis likely. But are all thoughts moral then?

Alexis.
Not all.

Ferdinand.
No, for they come to us unsought,
Unquestion'd sometimes, sometimes undesired.
But whether willingly admitted, or
Thrown out as traitors, they have been, though but
For one short moment, in the citadel;
And, tell-tale like, they speed away to heaven,
To say, before its hosts, where they have lodged.

Alexis.
But man is not responsible for thoughts
Not guested by the will. And yet, 'tis well
To place a sentinel before the gate,
To claim the password from all comers-in.
For we are frail; and human will is blind,
And sometimes clasps a devil in the dark,
Unwittingly.

Ferdinand.
Oh! how they flutter in,
Countless as fire-flies in a southern night;
Some good, some evil, till the soul is strew'd
With angels' pinions, and with sable plumes—
Attesting truly to their origin.
How many thoughts, I wonder, in a day
Does one mind utter forth?

Alexis.
The thoughts it sheds
It has to answer for. For these are they
That have been honourably entertain'd,
Invited visitors, and pamper'd guests.
On whom the soul has waited like a slave;
Thoughts that have come and found the heart prepared
To lodge them in its inmost sumptuous rooms.

Ferdinand.
And action is the complement of thought,
Thought crystallised and held up to the view;
Thought is the sap of life, and act the fruit.

Alexis.
All acts before they were such, were first thoughts,
And as they flash out from the hand, they go
To spirit-land again, and are thoughts there:—
First thought, then act, and shortly thought again,
And thus the truth republishes itself.

Ferdinand.
Acts are the fingers that shape out man's doom,—
The cunning instruments with which he weaves
The tissue of the soul's robes, both for time
And for eternity.

Alexis.
And every act
Is deathless as the mind from which it sprang.
We do but strike the keys here, while the sound—
The unsubstantial and ethereal essence—
The jarring discord or the harmony,
Rolls and reverberates for evermore
Through the dread chambers of eternity.
No sooner does an act go from us, than
Its wings catch up the light of other worlds,—
The iridescent dyes and hues of heaven,
Or the dark sables of another land.
All acts are moral, or may be made such.

Ferdinand.
Ah! Thou art all for thought. The universe,
To thee, is but a thought worked out in pictures.

Alexis.
It is. And is it not such? What are suns,
Systems and worlds, but mighty thoughts of God,
All waiting to become the thoughts of men?
Have we already not appropriated
Wide fields of the grand empire of all things?
Where is the rainbow that has never spann'd
An arc of some man's mind? Where is the cloud
That has not enter'd in the dreams of some,—
The humble flower that never hath been hallow'd
To one poor heart? Where is the landscape, which,
Like a dumb man, hath never utter'd ought,—
The atom, or the season, or the hour
That hath not gone into the soul of man
And come out thence a thought? And that—out there,—
Out at that window,—yonder infinite
Hushing around us now with all its stars,—
Say, what are they and it but images—
Ideas made objective,—and held out,
Night after night, between the outstretch'd arms
Of God, to mirror forth His thoughts to man,
And show the recreant how and what to think?
And when the soul shall recognise in all
That which each typifies—when every cloud
Shall be a bright-brow'd messenger of God;
And every breeze shall utter forth His name;
And every star shall write it over heaven;
And every flower shall breathe it ere it dies;
And every wave shall say it to itself;
And every storm in thunder-transports shout,
High o'er the heads of all, His majesty;
When to the soul of man all circumstance,
All swift evolvement of events, shall be
But as the shadow of His mighty hand,
And as the title-page of His great book,
Bearing in capitals the author's name;
When its own thoughts shall all be good and pure
All holy, and all beautiful, and grand,
And claim a sisterhood and kinship with
The flowers that nestle on the heart of earth,
And those that golden the blue soil of heaven,
And each, like them, shall falteringly say
In tearful ecstasy, O God! O God!
Then shall the universe dissolve like wax,
Its mission and its purpose ended; and
Man's thoughts shall be like God's thoughts, full of Him;
And all the veils of matter shall be rent,
And He shine out in naked majesty,—
He—God—The Only One—sun-typed, star-typed,
But typified no longer, now that all
Mere representatives are understood,
Are fathom'd, and have answer'd their bright end;—
He the sole sun, sole star. He all in all.
The Universal One—all great—all good.
He—the omniscient, omnipresent God!
To whom be praise and honour evermore,
Amen!

Ferdinand.
Amen! And if I understand
Thee rightly, thou wouldst say that all things here—
The earth, the moon, the stars, the universe,
And all that they contain, with all their laws—
Are but the representatives of God;
Are nothing more than mirrors of His might,—
His ministers to each and all: and that
When the soul sees in them their aim and end,
Sees underneath the veil of things the God
Whose drapery they are, and utterance—
Sees that they preach Him in their laws and forms,
And are but as the glances of the eye
Revealing all the wealth of thought within;—
And when the soul in turn, inform'd by these,
Becomes the manifestor of His rays,
And moonlike, is a reflex of His light,
Then shall the age of types and shadows cease,
The great Mosaic dispensation end;
And the wide universe, with all its worlds—
Which, hitherto, was as a floating film
Upon the piercing splendour of the sun—
Shall melt into His smile, and disappear
Amid his glad Well Done, and welcomings:
And man with man, and soul with soul shall join
In a bright chain of everlasting love
Around His great white throne for evermore.
Is this thy thought, Alexis?

Alexis.
Yes, it is.

Ferdinand.
Well, it is large at least, and may be true.
Meantime, what of those thoughts of ours that are
Concentrated in books, as light in diamonds?

Alexis.
True books are noble, for they all reveal
The bright side of the soul—that part which deals
With its own destinies, and which is light,
Like a high mountain-slope, when all beside
Is dark and cheerless.

Ferdinand.
And all books are true
When they portray the soul unto itself,—
Either in pictures of its passions, or
In bright and beautiful impersonations
Of the grand features of the universe?

Alexis.
Yes. For the universe is to the soul
What a great brother is to a young sister.
They are related by the closest ties,
And whoso paints the one, must paint in part
The outline of the other.

Ferdinand.
Yes, for both
Are children of one Parent. Canst thou tell
The nature of the charm that lies in books—
That charm that draws us towards them as the clouds
Draw light and vapour; and which makes us feel
As if we had lost all our life in theirs,
And yet remember'd most what we had lost?

Alexis.
I think I can. There is within the soul
A region of still waters, never stirr'd
But by the hands of angels,—a sweet spot
Left sacred to the Deity, which He,
Amidst the almost universal wreck,
Hath still reserved in mercy for Himself;
A solemn grove still musical with song,—
An altar-fire still burning in the waste,—
A voice within that testifieth still,
In thrills of mute thanksgiving, to His grace.
And in this lake-like region all things bright
Are treasured and reflected, like the stars.
And in this grove all spirit-minstrels sing;
And to this fire, all beauty adds a brand;
And to this hushlike voice, all that is great
Gives utterance and power;—and therefore we
Heave with the throes of a volcanic joy
When aught without us moves these holy deeps.
And as the soul is all-related, and
Gives one of her fair hands to things that be,
And with the other clasps the infinite,
And turns herself to this, and then to that,
It matters not from which the great shock comes
That flings the rainbow-globules dyed in heaven
Over the fretting wavelets of the time;
And folds the bubbles and the dreams of earth
In grand gloom-mantles where the stars are hid
Like babies' toys in manhood's bright'ning dawn.
Whether from nature in her sweetest moods,
When she seems fresh from her Creator's hands,
Or from the fruitlike words of fellow men
That tell of years of ripening in the sun;
It cannot matter from what quarter comes
The music which breathes o'er its hidden strings,—
The light that glitters in its sea-like eyes,—
So that it be awaken'd to a sense
Of its own greatness and its littleness;
And have presented to it all the wealth
That lies beneath its moss-enamell'd soil,
Like the gold-coffin'd dust of kings beneath
The vulgar rubbish and the trash of time.
And if this come from nature, it is well;
Or from the thoughts of other men, still well;
And the soul rises into buoyancy,
Balloon-like, puff'd out with the gas of gods,—
Or as a maiden in the dew-sprent morn,
When her gold tresses are kiss'd by the winds;
And, like an angel self-enamour'd, springs
To clasp the bright thing that is laughing on
The broken ripples of the running brook.

Ferdinand.
Thou speakest in soul-pictures, yet I see
Thy meaning rising through them, free and simple
As a young princeling from the grand state-bed,
Where his white limbs have been enswathed all night
In gold and velvets. For thy thoughts reveal
Their own proportions through the gauzy robes
In which thou dost enshrine them; and like eyes
Looking through golden bars, not one of all
Their glances but is sure to hit its mark.

Alexis.
Books are man's worlds—his great attempts to speak
The meaning of the oracle within:
And worlds are God's books in the which He writes
A memoir of Himself in love to man.
The highest aim of both is self-revealment—
Projectment of internal truths in forms—
So that the soul may recognise itself,
And see in all the wonders it creates
A transcript of the fire-wrought characters
Playing upon the tablets in its heart.

Ferdinand.
Thou speakest of great books. But what of those
That come into the round and solid world
To show no more than their own emptiness;
With nothing in them saving black and white,
And guiltless as a hedgehog of a thought,
Like Nothing folded carefully, and made
Into a parcel to send off by post,
Directed to Miss Moonshine.—
Those books that give droll portraitures of souls,
With jaws expanded to sublimest gape,
Crying out for the thought that cometh not,
Like little fledgelings in their hedge-row nests;
But fancying the strange distension comes
From over-surges of the tide of song,
And not from want and hunger?

Alexis.
Even they
Have uses of their own, though these should be
But to engoggle eyes in wonderment,
That there should still be left mud-beds from which
Dust eddied out in clouds, although the skies
Shower truths down daily in soul-brimming streams!
Now if one could but fill them it were well,
For puddles sometime might reflect a star.

Ferdinand.
Ah! but they fancy that they all are full,
And blind you into instant proof of this
Whenever the wind comes.

Alexis.

Ferdinand.
And “requiescat,” and so on. But still
One must indulge a laugh at the expense
Of those who, scorning nature's godlike rule,
Frame laws unto themselves;—those who are lost
Amidst the mists and mirages of self,
Which they project before them on all things:—
Those everlasting smirkers whom nought wins
From their self-worship and idolatries;
Who think and speak as though they were commission'd
To preach their vanity before all worlds,
And lay upon the altars of all minds
An offering to their little emptiness;
Whose thoughts are vapid as small beer uncork'd;
Whose words are blown like bubbles till they burst;
Who talk of great things with an easy air,
As though to talk of them were to be great.

Alexis.
Whoso writes “thunder” is a thunderer,
And he who spelleth “lightning” is a god!—

Ferdinand.
Who get chin-deep into the mud, and cry
Behold the deeps! the deeps! Who spout their rhymes
Into the people's ears, as though they were
The morning chimes of all the great world-bells
In God's cathedral, the wide universe,
Calling all men to prayer—

Alexis.
Alas! Alas!
Tell them to keep their heads still—all will cease,
For they are but the jingles of the bells
That pendant-wise embellish their fools' caps.

Ferdinand.
Who vent high-sounding words instead of thoughts,
And seem unconscious that they are not one.

Alexis.
Great words come from great mouths, not from great minds!

Ferdinand.
Who would reduce all things to empty sound,
And, did the process answer, would confine
All beauty to their verses, which, drum-like,
Return mad volleys of a vague uproar,
Devoid of music and of meaning both;—
Whose lines seem waiting for a lusty voice
To shout them into utterance and life—
Louder the better—

Alexis.
Sound is the soul
Of sense, of course, and therefore they are right!

Ferdinand.
Who utter their foul blasphemies in print,
Appealing to the weak side of our race,
And batten on corruption like the crows.

Alexis.
Ah! Let us bury both—them and their food—
Out of our sight, and out of memory;—
The old dead skull, and the yet living worm
That wriggles in the caverns of its eyes!

Scene IV.

A Boudoir. Night.
Ferdinand and Caroline.
Caroline.
Come Ferdinand, now tell me, pray,
Why thou hast thus prolong'd thy stay
From days to weeks, from weeks to months;—
Or art thou happier when away?
If so, sir, you may leave me now!
I cannot bear an absent brow,
And eyes fix'd in a vacant stare
As yours are, on that empty chair.
Only one half of you seems here,
The other may be anywhere;—
Up in the air for ought I know
Helping the cloud nymphs to make snow:
Or at the bottom of the sea
Wondering where all its mermaids be.
But tell me truly now, I pray—
Such knowledge doth to me belong—
Why thou didst go from me, and stay,
Or staying,—why so long?

Ferdinand.
O Caroline, it matters not.
Thou art not, canst not, be forgot;
For wheresoever I may be,
My heart and soul are both with thee.

Caroline.
What! When I know that both were spent
On Saturn and on red-hair'd Mars?—

Ferdinand.
Yes. For Night's brow, like thine, is bent
But to reveal its wealth of stars.
So let thine bend, my love, no longer,
Thou canst not make thy beauty stronger;
And smile upon me once again,
Like sunshine through a shower of rain.
There! That will do! Those arch, dark eyes
With every glance seem ever proving
The peerless beauty, or the bliss,
The bliss and beauty both, of loving.

Caroline.
Ah! but thou hast not answer'd yet
The question which I just have ask'd thee;
Dost think, then, I so soon forget
The naughtiness with which I've task'd thee?
Come tell me where thou hast been roving,—
Thou who hast sung the bliss of loving.

Ferdinand.
To those who love there is no absence.
Thine image holds me like the air;
Whether I wander or I rest—
Goes and rests with me everywhere.
To those who love, the universe,
Like a great heart, is ever beating;
And every strong pulsation keeps
The one dear loved name still repeating.
To those who love, all moments are
Like cloudlets veiling o'er a star;
And everything in nature seems
Emparadised in golden dreams.
To those who love, all loveliness
Is but the image of the grace
That mantles o'er the one loved form;—
Is but a mirror of her face.
Day sings her name with thousand tongues,
And night the echo still prolongs;
Flowers breathe it to their mother earth;
Leaves lisp it by the light winds shaken;
Sighs gasp it to the heaving breast;
Tears tell it when they do but waken;
Dews hold it in their trembling souls;
Birds trill it to the morn and even;
Streams tell it to their flowery banks;
And star-beams write it over heaven.
All nature is but as a scroll,
With thy name filling up the whole.
And I, and my best friend, have been
Scanning the universe but now;—
He, thinking of I know not what,
I, thinking of thy pearl-like brow.
I cannot give his thoughts to thee;
But, Carry, I can give thee mine,—
Perchance he read another name,
But I saw, dearest, only thine.

Caroline.
There that will do. Thy verses, Ferdinand,
Are getting rather watery, like sea-sand.
Thy Pegasus hath gone quite out of breath;
Check him in time, or it may prove his death!

Ferdinand.
Hold wicked one! The dimples in thy face
Might well provoke him to another race.
Little love-cells they appear,
Large enough to hold a tear.
But what should he do—little stranger—
In those velvet halls of smiles?
His poor life would be in danger
From a thousand witty wiles.
They would pinch him till he vanish'd
O'er the soft and peachy brim;
They would fold him in love-garlands
Till he could no longer swim.
They would smother him with blossoms;
They would press him with a kiss,
Till his life went like a seraph
In a rainbow-robe of bliss.—
A tear could never live
On those fair cheeks of thine,—
It would vanish like a dewdrop
In the day-god's cup of wine.
It would melt off like an icedrop
Laid upon a burning bar;—
It would die out in that sunlight
Like a little patient star.

Caroline.
Better and better, Ferdinand! I vow
That is much better than “thy pearl-like brow.”
But are my dimples all? Have I no more
Of all the wares of beauty in my store?
I thought now I had got a pair of eyes,—
And a nose too, or else my mirror lies!
Then, I believe, I have a pair of lips,
And eke a neck, on which my black hair dips.

Ferdinand.
Dips like darkness on a snow-wreath
Resting on a mountain-side,
Which it glooms, but cannot cover;
Which it veils, but cannot hide.
Dips like brown bees on a lily,
Which they cannot darken quite;
But which seemeth for their presence
All the fairer, purer white.
Then thy eyes are like the heavens
When no cloud their beauty mars,
And their lovely deeps are lighted
By a countless host of stars.
Oh! thy eyes are dark, my beauty,
But one has not long to seek
For the light that cometh from them,
Like the morning from a peak,—
For the light that is within them,
And whose depths it does not break,—
Pure and lovely as a swan's neck
On a deep and shadowy lake.
Then thy lips are like the splendours
Which the Northern climes adorn
When the ruby tints of evening
Meet the ruddy hues of morn.
Oh! thy lips are rich and lustrous,
As though the sun had just caressed them;
But one cannot speak their beauty
Till one has—just thus—thus—pressed them!

Caroline.
There! if thy breath is not already spent
Thou oughtest to grow grandly eloquent,
For on these silly waxen lips of mine
If my glass tells me truly, there is wine
Would turn a harder, heavier head than thine!
But, Ferdinand, be serious now, I pray;
Think not I am that ever foolish thing
Who can give heed unto the lightest lay,
And believe all that flattering voices sing.
O, Ferdinand, I have a heart and mind!
The one to seek, the other to love duty,—
A soul akin to all that is refined
In the wide realms of wisdom, love, and beauty.

Ferdinand.
I know it, dearest; therefore, I
Bring to thee no feignèd sigh.
I know it, love, and therefore bring
Only pure drops from the spring,
The inner fount of feeling.
All the words I have been speaking
To reveal my soul's delight,
Are as true as daylight breaking
On the darksome dreams of night.
All the figures I've been using—
Though it might seem but in play—
Fit thee, dearest, just as well as
Garlands fit the Queen of May.

Caroline.
I know that thou dost love me, Ferdinand,
And therefore think all thou sayest true;
For love, without belief, is but waste sand
Compared with all the star-wealth of heaven's blue.

Ferdinand.
Yes, I love thee! Can I help it
When thou art as dear to me
As the ruby-breasted robin
To a leafless, wintry tree?
Oh thou art the one wine-bubble
On the goblet of my life!
Oh, thou art the one sweet rainbow
Bending o'er the clouds of strife!
Oh, thou art the spring's glad smiling
While the glooms of Winter linger!
Warm as living kisses lavished
On a dead man's pallid finger.

Caroline.
There, take that rose-bud with its leaves tight pressed,
Keep it but one short hour upon thy breast
And all its beauty will melt out of sight,
Like a wing vanishing in clouds of light.
There! Take it—type of all that we caress—
Poor hackneyed type of human loveliness!

Ferdinand.
Oh, Caroline! the future ever seemeth
To us, who on the barren present stand,
Like a great rose-tree brightly beaming
In God's right hand,
Grand and entire, where nothing is amiss,
A perfect globe of concentrated bliss.
And all our happy dreams and moments are
The scattered leaflets from this flower-star,
Coming to us, one by one,
Till the last poor leaf is gone;
And the stem all stripped and withered
Is the present in our hand,
While the rose-leaves dead and buried
Lie beneath us in the sand;
And we wonder, wonder always
Why our great and heavenly Sire
Did not give us the bright fragrance—
Did not give it us entire;
Wonder that he let us pluck it
Till its beauty was no more,
Till there was no other future
Than a bleak, unhappy shore;
Till we gather up our life-hopes
In a single shivering breath,
And exclaim, Ah, me! how goodly
And how fair a thing is death!

Caroline.
Nay, believe me, Ferdinand,
There are no moments such as those—
No moments when the future does not hold
Some opiate for our woes;
For when earth hath donned her mantle
Of funereal snows,
Another Spring, another Summer,
Bringeth another rose.
And when we weary of this round
Of good, and bright, and fair,
And when our hearts are but the echo
Of a whispered prayer,
And when all time seems but the shadow
Of a rich, ripe Autumn even—
Ah! when we tire of earth,
We turn ourselves towards heaven!

Scene V.

A Large Chamber. Moonlight.
Edith sitting alone.
Edith.

Scene VI.

A Subterranean Cavern. Torchlight.
Spirits of Darkness.
All.
Sisters, sisters, gather round us!
Shake the cavern's rocky floor!
We have triumph now before us;
We have treasure evermore.
Hell is winning! Earth is spinning,
Like a moth around its fate;
And the trophies grow and gather
Round the Doom-world's ebon gate.
Hark! the doors of hell are clanging,
Ever wheeling to and fro,
And the fiend's dark banner flutters
Proudly, o'er the world of wo,
For his subjects bow before him,
Crowding millions at a time;—
Heaven is fading; earth is dwindling;
Hell is ripening towards the prime,
And another soul is given us,
To torment, and tempt, and try;
We will rack him till he wishes
To be quit of us—and die!

Spirit of Gloom.
And I will gather horrors round his head,—
Wild shapes of awe and gloom;
And he shall wake at night with shivering dread
In his own lonely room;
And gaze out wildly into utter night—
No shining star at hand—
And feel himself a solitary soul
In a most silent land;
A solitary pilgrim in the world,
A stranger to the fair,
Whom all things lovely shall regard with hate,
Or an unfriendly stare;—
Till he shall wish the gloomy grave would ope
Its dark, flesh-soddened door,
And let him draw the bars of memory,
And think, and feel, no more!

Spirit of Mystery.
Shadows shall cover him,
Shadows and clouds;
Dead things shall haunt him—
Corpses, and shrouds.
All shall be mystery,
Foeman, and friend,
Rapture, and torment,
Life, and its end.—
All shall be mystery,
Ball-room and fair,
City, and solitude,
Heaven, earth, and air.
Nought shall be real,
All but a seeming;
Hell, but a mockery;
Heaven, a dreaming;
Nature, a nightmare;
Man, but a song;
Love, a misgiving;
Hate, a fool's wrong.
Friendship, a folly;
Enmity, vain;
Pleasure, a tickle;
Littleness, pain;
Loveliness, nothingness;
Beauty, a sigh;
Virtue, the flicker
On a dead eye!
Good, dust and ashes;
Evil, a sound;
All, a dazed swimming
In a mad round.
Life, but a shadow,
Death, but a gloom;
All—but the cross-bones
Over a tomb!

Spirit of Doubt.
And he shall doubt of all he sees,
And all in heaven and earth be dark;
And science be but as a breeze,
Fanning a dead face, cold and stark;
And knowledge be but emptiness,
And truth a vapour o'er a fen;
And evermore he shall revolve
The Why, the Wherefore, and the When!
And he shall vainly question life;
And vainly ask the truth of death;
For all shall be a silent blank—
Empty as air—light as a breath:
The very shadows of the trees,
The fickle wind's words to the leaf,
The glory on the Summer seas
Shall be more fix'd than his belief;
And he shall doubt his friend's warm clasp,
And doubt the kind gleam in his eye;
He shall doubt all of light and bliss,
And believe only in a sigh.

Spirit of Dread.
Terrors shall cover him,
Terrors and dread,—
Shapeless things hovering
Over his head.
Fear shall encompass him
Round and beneath,
Coming up from
The kingdom of Death.
He shall have shiverings
When we pass by,—
Direst heart quakings
Knowing not why.
He shall see thunder-clouds
Pass o'er his mind,—
See the red lightnings
Leaping behind.
Horrible Phlegethons
He shall still mark,
He shall look into
The Thulean dark:—
Look through the fire-bars
Into the cell,—
Hear the chains clank
On the floor of Hell.
In sleep he shall wander
By gloom-haunted streams;
Fiends' eyes shall glare at him
Through his long dreams:
Cold hands shall clasp his,
Breaking his rest;
Slimy snakes nestle
Warm in his breast.
Terrors shall move him
As tempests shake ships;
Doom-words shall haunt him,—
Rush to his lips.
He shall be fill'd
With dread and affright;
Night shall be horror,
Day be as night!

All.
Sisters, Sisters gather round us!
Shake the cavern's rocky floor!
We have triumph now before us,
We have treasure evermore.
Hell is winning! Earth is spinning
Like a moth around its fate;
And the trophies grow, and gather
Round the Doom-world's ebon gate.
Hark! the doors of Hell are clanging—
Ever wheeling to and fro;
And the fiend's dark banner flutters
Proudly o'er the world of woe.
For his subjects bow before him,—
Crowding millions at a time.
Heaven is fading, Earth is dwindling,
Hell is ripening towards the prime:
And another soul is given us
To torment and tempt and try;—
We will rack him, till he wishes
To be quit of us—and die.

Ministering Spirit.
Hell may plot, but Heaven plans;
Devils pull, but angels shoot;
And God bringeth forth a flower
From a foul and rotten root.
Bringeth light from out of blackness;
Maketh evil hidden good;
Changeth foulness into beauty;
Turneth poison into food.
Though the stream that bubbleth from ye,
May be black as hell itself,
It shall issue in His glory,
It shall mirror forth Himself.
Ye the moles are underground,
Stirring at the roots of flowers;—
He, the sun that shineth on them
Through the golden summer hours;
Ye are slaves unto yourselves,—
Servants of the mighty God;
And the mire ye cast around ye
Maketh fruitfuller the sod:
And the stones ye throw at virtue
Fall as pearl-gems at its feet;
And your thorns are turn'd to roses,
And your bitter into sweet.
Not a devil mutters curses
But a light-brow'd seraph sings;
Not a fiend flies, but an angel
Laugheth underneath his wings;
Not an evil thing is dandled
On the Devil's knotted knee,
But a smile breaks over heaven
At the new-born harmony.
For all evil is the wrappage
And the husk of some great good—
Is the Devil's ware and dishes
Which God filleth with sweet food.
And your grim, old, black, sin-goblets
Shall be brimm'd with richest wine;
And all evil things shall vanish,
And be lost in the Divine!

Evil Spirits.
But the soul that now is given us
To torment, and tempt, and try,—
We will rack until he wishes
To be quit of us—and die!

Ministering Spirit.
But the soul that now is given you
To torment, and tempt, and try,
Shall come from you bright as glances
From a merry, laughing eye;
Shall come luminous as moonbeams
Through a rack of clouds and glooms,
And triumphant as bright spirits
Winging upward from their tombs.
Not a trap you shall lay for him,
But a treasure he shall find;
Not a cloud shall ever haunt him,
But a star shall lurk behind;
Not a tempest, but a rainbow
Shall its cloudy glooms beguile;
And your woes shall serve as pillow
To a bright and infant smile!

Scene VII.

A Room looking upon a Public Street. Night.
Alexis alone.

Scene VIII.

As before. Night.
Alexis looking on the Passers-by.
Thus they stream on—on through the darken'd world—
Live lightnings rushing through long lanes of night—
Bright meteors dancing on the Infinite,
The heritors of the eternal thrones;
Princes, whose sovereignty shall still endure
When the stars sicken at the name of Night,
And the pale universe, with outstretch'd arms,
Sinks with a death-groan on the breast of God.
Thus they stream on! And still the old world laughs
And calls them pigmies and ephemera.
Cycles of ages had bedeck'd her head
With coronals before their fathers were,
And she will laugh around the grave of all;
But the smile smites herself. For are they not
Her masters, not her slaves? Aye, are they not?
What, though they all go down to night and death,
While she still fans her in the upper air;
What, though whole millions drop into the dark,
While centuries hang round her like idle wreaths,
They are the orphans of Eternity,
And wait the term of their outlawry here,
Coming from out of shadow in a night,
And passing into it again at morn—
There to sleep on until the Birthday comes,
And they are call'd unto the courts on high,
Where they shall reign for ever, while the voids
And booming blanks are begging for a world.
Thus they stream on! Each soul a universe;
Each man a microcosm of the whole,
Of all that is, or can be, here below,
Or in the great hereafter. Hell, earth, heaven,
All blended and concentrated in one,
And looking out of eyes that meet me now!
Cherub and Seraph—hierarchies of these
Lay slumbering in the compass of a soul;
Grand possibilities—Aurelias
Destined, perchance, to flash out into heavens!
Thus they stream on; And tramp the world for pence,
With unclaim'd acreage of stars at hand;
With constellations waiting for a lord;
And God Himself, with bounteous eye and hand
Casting the seed into the eternal soil
For them to reap and garner evermore;
Their wealth still growing, like the universe,
From seedlings into suns; from suns to systems.
Thus they stream on! Aye, ever, ever thus.
Witless archangels playing pitch and toss,
Or devils fingering marbles! Ever thus!
Great lights play round them from their unseen crowns;
Great destinies hang over them like clouds;
And they go scrambling on for halfpence still;
All arms and legs, and scampering eagerness,
And puny, impotent relinquishments;
While round-faced suns break into merriment,
Saying unto each other, “Oh, what fools!”
Thus they stream on! All mantled round by time,
Like god-lings buried to the neck in leaves,
With brows the sun might bless himself to see,
And eyes in which the stars might lose themselves;
Kings, with a beggar's wallet at their back;
Princes and potentates, disporting rags;
Crown'd monarchs, begging at their palace-gate,
And taking crumbs from menials, with a bow!
Thus they stream on! All gasping out for wealth;
For the poor pittance of a niggard world,
While vacant empires cry aloud for lords,
And sceptres are piled up in heaven, star-high,
Waiting for faithful hands to grasp, and wield.
[A long pause, during which he walks to and fro in a troubled manner.
[Another pause.
[Another pause.
Or is it possible to wed great thought
To noble action, and to make them one?
And if it were, what purpose would it serve
To a mad world that clings unto the past,
Like a young starveling to his mother's rags,
And is drawn forward unto nobler aims
As willingly as Hector was, behind
The chariot wheels of his great Grecian foe?
Wed thought to action? Make them one? Ha! Ha!
Cork thunder in a bottle; and go round
With phials labell'd Lightning in your hand!

Scene IX.

A Banquet Room. Night.
Charles, Henry, Edward, Amelia, Mary, &c.
Henry.
Night has come down upon us like a guest:
The stars are trembling in the cope of heaven;
And the light winds sing their low lullabies
Unto the sleeping flowers. The moon has come
Climbing the tree-tops to look in on us,
And the wine sparkles goldenly at her.
Our talk has been a wealthy summer-time
Aflush with flowers, and mellow-tasting fruits.
But now a chilling silence hath crept in,
Like Winter to a garden! Drive it hence!
Ruffle the plumage of this bird of night
With a great gust of song!

All.
A song! A song!
Let music fill up all the gaps of life.
Edward begin.

Edward.

Charles.
Sorrow and sin—an old tale, friend of mine.
Methinks a song clear as a silver lake
With one star on it would befit this night.

Henry.
Aye night has been good to us. Let her go
Hung round with songs as morn will be with flowers.
Come butterflies of poesy, arise;
Spread out your light-involvéd wings, and soar,
And let the night trail into golden day,
With her skirts stiffen'd with soul-jewelry!

Amelia.
Edward has struck the key. Come, Henry, sing;
And I will wander through the harp's sweet strings,
Like the low wind in May among the flowers,
Or like the murmur of the starlit sea,
To the soft warble of the nightingale.

Henry.

Charles.
Cold, Henry, cold, and philosophical.
Thou art a very Newton in thy love.
Come light thy pipe, and take thy lady's hand,
And use it for a stopper—as he did!
Spinoza laugh'd to see the spiders fight.
Sages do silly things sometimes I think,—
Nought half so foolish as to fall in love!
To think of bringing dust from ancient tomes,
To lay it on a lady's spotless glove,
And hope that she will love you for its sake!
Lore must be fresh to win a lady's heart,
Fresh as she is, and sparkling like the dew.
There is new wisdom in a lovely face
That shames the old for ever,—drives it back
Into the Titan-world of dim old shapes.
Love liveth in to-day, and in to-morrow,
And yesterday is nothing to the heart.
Hegel and Fichté in a lady's bower
Are blocks of marble to a gay parterre.
Love smileth on the bright and blooming flowers,
And leaveth truth to fester with their roots.
It looks not to the wherefore, but shines on,
Like yonder moon, in spite of all the creeds.
To me the universe is one great heart;
And love the only passion of the spheres.
The winds but whisper one soul-stirring word;
The trees all bend their stately heads to this;
Old Ocean heaves it from his panting breast;
The flowers all breathe it in their restless sleep;
And the great tongue of Night that sounds in “stars”
Singeth this one word only.—It is Love!

Edward.
Come, grumbler, sing thyself, a song in which
Love shall come leaping from thy throbbing lines
Like the young soul of music from a harp!

Charles.

Mary.

Henry.
Ah! like Alexis—pack'd with crowded thought;
Dark, and yet radiant, like an eagle's plumes,
Scarr'd by the lightnings it was playing with.
I saw him with a letter in his hand:
He said it came from Edith—she was dead.

Mary.

Scene X.

The Streets. Night.
Alexis.
[Ferdinand coming up unperceived by Alexis.

Alexis.
Ferdinand!

Ferdinand.
Ay, Ferdinand, Alexis; come again
To take thee back unto thyself, my friend,
Ye will be strangers by this time I think!

Alexis.
Are we not always strangers to ourselves,
And strangers to each other? Evermore
We are insphered, like stars within ourselves,
And though we light each other in the dark,
There is no contact, no escape from self.
We are but torches gleaming here and there
Whose flames may never mingle. Here within
Is this self-conscious Me, and there without
Are others like me, who are yet unlike.
I am a world unto myself, and move
In my own orbit, whence I cannot stray!
And all without are distant stars to me,—
Between us wide-jaw'd darkness, hungry night!

Ferdinand.
I know not. There are holy laws which bind
The planets of one family in one.
Systems and suns are link'd together thus,
And all to God. It may be that one pulse
Sent from his central heart, runs through the whole,
Threading the chasms with sympathies.

Alexis.
It may.
Would I could say it is.

Ferdinand.
Ah, thou art changed!

Alexis.
Changed? Ay! Changed, and still changeable, good friend!
My soul sloughs herself once a day at least.
I bury my old self each starry night,
And come a stranger to the world again.
'Tis an old story that we never see
The self-same picture twice!

Ferdinand.
And art thou changed,
To all who love thee—to thy friends, Alexis?

Alexis.
Friends, Ferdinand? I have no friends—want none!

Ferdinand.
No love—no Flora,—sitting like the moon
In her own pallid sorrow through the night,
And weeping that her lover never comes?

Alexis
(pausing, and pressing his hands to his head).
My soul,
Like a great monster, has devour'd my heart,
And now in hunger preys upon itself.
I have no faith in aught, no love, no hope.
My glory has gone from me; and I stand,
Like Samson underneath the reeling house,
With nothing but the thundering walls, and shrieks
To bear me company—I long for death!

Ferdinand.
All soul? A very novel-heroine!

Alexis.
Last night I dreamt the universe was mad;
And that the sun its Cyclopean eye
Roll'd glaring like a maniac's in the heavens;
And moons and comets, link'd together, scream'd
Like bands of witches at their carnivals,
And stream'd like wandering hell along the sky;
And that the awful stars, through the red light,
Glinted at one another wickedly,
Throbbing and chilling with intensest hate,
While through the whole a nameless horror ran;
And worlds dropp'd from their place i' the shuddering,
Like leaves of Autumn, when a mighty wind
Makes the trees shiver through their thickest robes:
Great spheres crack'd in the midst, and belch'd out flame,
And sputtering fires went crackling over heaven;
And space yawn'd blazing stars; and Time shriek'd out
That hungry fire was eating everything!
And scorchéd fiends, down in the nether hell,
Cried out, “The universe is mad—is mad!”
And the great Thing in its convulsions flung
System on system, till the cauldron boil'd—
(Space was the cauldron, and all hell the fire,)
And every giant limb o' the universe
Dilated and collapsed, till it grew wan,
And I could see its naked ribs gleam out,
Beating like panting fire,—and I awoke.
'Twas not all dream;—such is the world to me!

Ferdinand.
Why, this is terrible! These haggard thoughts
Are breeding madness in thy heart and brain,
Making a moonlit charnel of thy soul.
Come, then, and lave thee in the wells of love,
Ere these hell-grimings sink beneath the skin.

Alexis.
Too late! I tell thee it is all too late!
I must pass through this vigil all alone.
I have flung down my gauntlet to the world,
And it hath ta'en it up and smitten me,
And I am crush'd. If ever I should rise,
I will remember you, my friends! my friends! [A long silence, during which they walk on.

'Tis the old woe that rankles in my heart.
I listen'd to the Siren Mysteries
Until they master'd me—and I am lost!
Great bars of purple sunset hem me in
And shut me out from God; the tawdry Day
Puts on her flaunting baubles all in vain;
And the blue sky hangs o'er me like my fate.
A cruel purpose lashes the white sides
Of the stark universe. My faith is gone,
And human life to me seems purposeless,
Godless and lawless, as a bandit's talk.
Night brings to me no rest. My dreams are wild
As the lank hair of ancient prophetess
Streaming in frenzy on the midnight wind;
And my poor soul that once embower'd great thoughts,
Noble ambitions, lofty aims, pure hopes,
Is turn'd into a hospital by day
Where madness harbours from the jeers of men;
And then at night, when all the world is still,
A troop of jabbering demons travel through,
Crying “There is no good, no evil, and no law,
No right or wrong, no Hell, no Heaven, no God,
Nothing but thee and orderless decay!”
And there,—black,—coiling in extremest space,
A hideous doom seems whetting its grim jaws,
To take the flying worlds in at a gulp!
I see them go careering towards it still,
Like young birds wheeling round a rattlesnake;
And writhe and struggle, like a drowning man,
Striving to warn them, finding I am dumb!

Ferdinand.
Nightmare, my friend—and heavy suppers—hey?

Scene XI.

A Garden. Moonlight.
Ferdinand and Caroline.—The latter carrying their child. Flora a little apart.
Ferdinand.
Oh what a rich and lovely day is dead!
It came up like a Monarch from the East;
When the grey bars of dawn were turn'd to gold,
And night shrank back to let the bright one in,
The earth broke silence, and from out her heart,
A thousand singing joys burst like young birds
And went up pure and carolling, heavenward.
It was a happy marriage morn. The earth
Blush'd crimson in her flowers:—the lambkin winds,
Like angels loosening sorrow from the soul,
Shook the light dew from off the smiling leaves,
And all was gladness over sea and land.
Then as the day wore on, a stillness stole,
Like a long pause in music, o'er the earth.
The sea no longer panted on the shore,
But, like a jaded god, lay still and slept;
Not a leaf stirr'd, and every bird was dumb.
The world stood hush'd beneath the blazing sky,
Like a Queen stricken in her marriage robes;
One almost heard the great hot heart of noon
Throb in the silence with fierce passion-pants.
Then dark clouds slowly sail'd along the heavens,
Bending in conclave their great beetling brows,
When from their midst broke out the Thunder-king—
His fierce oration rattling o'er the earth,
Like the dread voice of one who speaketh doom,
Till Echo, like an ancient oracle,
Shook with the utterance of the speaking god;
And rain came splashing through the trembling leaves,
And the repentant earth was bathed in tears.
Then ruddy sunbeams, radiant with haste,
Rush'd past the black skirts of the flying storm—
Bright mediators between earth and heaven—
Rimming the pitchy vault with glowing light;
Masses of sunshine fell athwart the world,
And forth from the surrounding gloom there came
Exultant shapes innumerous, and caught
The glory dancing on their beating wings;
And singing birds fill'd the bright air with songs,
While sunbeams intertwisted threads of gold
Amidst the sable curtains of the storm,
And, like the heavenly finger on the wall,
Wrote mystic characters upon the clouds.
And so the Storm-King went, array'd in gold,
So quietly adown the gorgeous West,
One dreamt not it was his black, brawny hand
That shook the silence from the throne of noon.
He and his clouds went down into the West
Like angels golden-haired. Then twilight came,
And light was streak'd with darkness, Zebra-like,—
Dun, mystic twilight, heralder of Night,
Going before her, like a swarthy page.
And now the great Star-Queen herself has come,—
Night, the revealer of the wedded worlds,
Who draws the bright sun-curtain from the earth,
And lets her look into infinity!

Caroline.
See, the moon hangs there on the verge of stars,
Like a bright vestal at a temple-porch.

Ferdinand.
Ah, 'tis a blissful night! The universe
Is a great rushing hymn of praise to God.
My heart is singing with the happy spheres;
Not a string jars but all is harmony.
Night is the beautiful black slave of God,
And bends before him ever wrapt in awe,
While her great heart throbs thanks in burning stars!

Caroline, to her child.

Ah, toss thy little arms, my pretty one!
Thou canst not reach those beautiful bright things
That bend down towards thee from the blue-brow'd sky.
Ah! do they smile on thee, thou laughest so?
And hast thou learnt the mystery of their speech
That thou dost prattle on so eagerly?
What! leaping from my arms to go to them?
Not yet! not yet! my dear, my lovely babe!

Ferdinand.
Not yet! Not yet! That thought of starry death
Comes with a shock upon my wilder'd soul.
O Death! I tremble at thy very name,—
Thou terrible Iconoclast—thou dream
From which men waken demigods or fiends—
Thou great soul-sunderer—dreadful mystic, who
Walkest the earth with two worlds at thy heels!
Souls know thee—pure souls—for thou art their friend,
Hearts hate thee, Angel, and thy winning ways!
Thou comest to the festal halls of life,
Exchangest nods with some belovéd guest,
And he gets up and goes—goes with thee, Death,
And we are lorn and lonely evermore!
Thou slidest in among love-wedded hearts,
And there are empty chairs, and vacant rooms,
And gulfs of darkness in the souls of some,
In which eternity hangs like a star!
Black hat-bands banner thee along the streets;
And o'er the hearts who wear them are black bars
That serve to dungeon in the bright-wing'd soul,
That beats against them in ecstatic woe,
Longing to plunge out into seas of light
And sail away to join the cherish'd one!
Thou comest to some quiet, happy home,
And silence falls like snow upon thy steps—
A lonely woman has grown fond of graves,
Or a strong man goes bending all his days—
These are thy triumphs, Death! I love thee not.
Thou hast such fearful power to strip my soul,
As a storm hath to shake the apples down
From a rich orchard-tree, and leave it bare
And wretched in the cold arms of the winds.
Thou hast such fearful power to spoil my home
Of all the treasures I have stored it with,
Letting the long tongue of the howling storm
Lap up its bliss, till not a guest be left
But thee, and it, and woe, with wolf-like eyes;
Such power to make of this transcendent world,
Now laved in sunshine, with its avenues
Stretching away into eternity
Pleach'd o'er with golden fruits and lined with flowers,
Lit up by lights from both worlds—silver-edged,
Like starlight sloping down to meet the dawn—
Into a draggled road across flat fens,
O'er which in gusts, go, witch-like, jabbering winds,
While cold November rains come drizzling down,
And one man only tracks the miry way,
Plodding on wearily towards the distant sea
That lifts its leaden waves up sluggishly
To meet the cold breast of the dripping clouds;—
Such power to strip the world of all its joys,
And leave it tatter'd as a tree in March,
That I must shudder when I hear thee named,
Knowing how much I have for thee to take! [A pause.

This night, this starry night,—I like it not.
'Tis glittering with the heraldry of death!
This silence seems portentous. The hush'd winds
Are whispering to each other, like pale friends
Around a new-made death-bed. I am sick!
This thought of death has jarr'd upon the night,
And struck the music from its beating heart,
Leaving it joyless as a wintry wood.
The moon is not so lovely as she was.
Where is she?

Caroline.
Hiding there behind the clouds.

Ferdinand.
And now she comes forth from them shudderingly,
All white, and hasty, as a fear-bleach'd ghost
Trembling from out the sweltering arms of fiends!

Caroline.
Nay, not so ghastly! Rather like a soul
Who has pass'd through the portals of the tomb,
And come forth fair as she is from its glooms,
With an eternal wilderness of bliss
To travel over on its way to God.

Ferdinand.
Eternity—the portals of the tomb—
Still is our talk of Death—the mighty one
Who dwells beyond the outer edge of Time,
And yet inhabits not Eternity,
But liveth in mid region 'twixt the two;
With one foot planted on the life-fringed world,
And with the other lost in obscure deeps,
He swingeth souls across we know not what
Of wild and fearful, 'mong the thrones and crowns,
And pluméd splendours of infinity!

Caroline.
Ah! there is something strangely grand in death.
One moment, and the soul still lingers here;
Another, and 'tis gone to be with God;
And then the haunted spot that “Knew it once,
Knows it no more, for ever!” Dreadful words—
Full of wild import to the lingerers here.
O Death! we are so happy that thy looks,
Though heaven itself shines through thy pallid face,
Can win us not. Thou canst not tempt us hence.
The world is very fair. She is all heart;
And all her heart is steep'd and swims in love.
In love the landscapes sleep. The stars sing love,
Glowing upon the bosom of the night—
The heaving bosom of the midnight heaven—
And love shines out the soul of all things here.
We are so bound together, Silent One,
That, if thou takest any, oh! take all.
Sunder us not, but let us still be one.

Ferdinand.
Oh! it were sad indeed to change our lot
For some poor wintry phantom of a hope;
To turn our present o'erbrimm'd happiness
Into a dreamy, far world-seeking faith,
And stumble through the quagmires of our days,
Crying, to hush the agony within,
“Remember the star-kingdoms yet to come!”

Caroline.
And yet, perchance, it were a holier life
To hang for ever, like a star, on heaven.

Ferdinand.
Not to be drawn there by an earthly love.
The soul should long for heaven, and not the heart.
Heaven should not be a refuge, but a home;
Not a mere region of still peace, a state
Of freedom from the slavery of pain,
For which we sigh when we are steep'd in woe,
And earth no longer is endurable—
But the great house of God—the home of truth—
The congregation of the just and good.
'Tis good the soul should still be climbing up
Towards the bright thrones of immortality;
Not that the heart should be dragg'd heavenward
By the long tendrils of an earthly love. [A pause.

By the long tendrils of an earthly love.
Edith was right. She said she could not die
Until she loved God only for Himself,
And heaven for what it is. Her latest words
Were true and beautiful as her brief life.
She said, “The sorrows which the soul endures—
Not self-inflicted—are but hooded joys;
That when she touches the white strand of heaven
They cluster round her, and slip off their robes,
And laugh out angels in the world of light.” [Another pause.

'Tis strange how but a word, a sidelong glance,
Hath power to change the current of our thoughts.
Our talk has guested Death, till he has made
His home within us; like a grisly dream
Haunting a murderer's midnight, he remains.
We came out here to meet the lovely Night,
We said she was the very queen of love,
Our hearts rhymed to each other like a song,
Our souls were poems, fill'd with tranquil thoughts,
And we read out the meaning of the stars
In love, and pure exultant happiness.
But now the dance is done—the guests have gone,
Leaving us nought but the dishevell'd room,
And the pale flickering lamps. This thought of death
Fills up the compass of my soul; and she,
Like a black sun, sheds it on outer things.
We have turn'd night into an Eblis-hall;
We've built a throne for Death among the stars;
The canopy of midnight is his tent,
And yon bright moon is but his minister.

Caroline.
Nay, thou art ill, my much-loved Ferdinand.
Alexis hath infected thee with gloom.
Art thou not happy that thou talkest thus?

Ferdinand.
Happy? too happy! God hath given me thee,
And that sweet babe now nestling on thy breast.
Adam whirl'd suddenly out of Paradise
In the rough arms of jaggéd thunder-winds,
And flung down breathless on a wilderness,
Were not so lorn as I in losing you.
There was a widow, and she had a son;
He went forth from her; and she said the sun
Set, as she caught the latest glimpse of him.
The sun that set that night rose never more;
'Twas not the same that came up in the morn;
It wanted the heart-glow the old one had.
Her son was far away—oh! far away,
And the cold sunlight could not warm her heart.
There came a letter; he was coming back;
And the old light play'd once more on the hills.
'Twas winter time. She went down to the shore.
The waves were leaping in the arms of storms.
Three days she stood upon the fringe o' the sea;
The vessel hove in sight—and he was there!
Oh, how the ocean fretted! How it foam'd!
Oh, how the ship was laugh'd at by the waves!
Still he was there—her loved one!—'twas enough.
There came a mighty gust; but still she clung
To the sharp rocks, that tore her spray-drench'd hands.
She look'd again. There was a waste of waves—
A world of leaping water—and no more!
One dreadful billow flung a corpse on shore,
A white corpse—'twas her home-returning son.
The sun set then, and never rose again!
What were her woe to mine in losing you?
Ere I knew thee I was unto the world
But what an idle dream is to the night,
Hopeless and aimless, as the pilgrim clouds.
God gave me thee, and a great golden dawn
Broke on the slumberous splendours of my life.
I was no more a dreamer in dream-land,
But a bliss-haunted tenant of the world.
My energies which, hitherto, were streams
Babbling in sleepiest lazy monotones,
Beneath the umbrage of thick summer woods,
Leapt forth into the sunshine, and laugh'd out
Real living ripples, amid real things.
The world to me was always beautiful;—
Now it was holy too. I gazed no more
With vague eyes on the proud-dom'd temple-porch,
But went within, a worshipper of God.
Music was all I heard ere I knew thee,—
Music, but inarticulate, and wild;
Now I could hear the voices as they sang,
And the great burden of their chant was God!
And when our boy first smiled into my eyes,
His new-born angel-spirit woke in mine
A kindred angel, and the two were one;
And, o'er the barriers of our separate lives,
Held holy converse on their common heaven.
In my best moods I had seen nought but wings
Hastily glancing past my slumberous soul;
But now I dwelt with birds of paradise,
And daily, with familiar, gentle hand,
Stroked the long golden splendour of their plumes!
I, who had been a beggar before heaven,
Grew rich as Persian princes in a day.
New realms of thought were open'd in my soul,
Starry and beautiful as Night herself.
I was Aladdin who had found his lamp,
And all the earth was crusted o'er with gems.
New streams of life rush'd in at every pore;
Kingdoms of unsought beauty came to me;
Newer relationships explain'd the old.
I was an unshorn Pagan in a church
When all the worshippers came in and sang;
Now I was baptized, and a Christian too:
As if the darkness suddenly should break
Into a thousand white-wing'd angel forms
Before the rapt eyes of a tempted saint,
All things grew holy to me—man and beast,
Creeds and religions, and the wheels of life.
My barque had drifted near the shores of heaven;
Faint odours reach'd me from the happy lands,
And hallelujahs burst upon my ear!
The life of all things beat and throbb'd in me;—
I was a brother to the universe,
And loved all things from grass-blades up to God!
I was so happy, that my happiness
Brought me in contact with all blissful things,
And made me one with them. Before, I stood
A blind man 'midst huge piles of hoarded gold;
My eyes were open'd, and my soul grew rich.
You are my fated Lusitanian stars—
And if you fall, my being falls with you;
You are my Norna's candles in the world—
Sink in your socket, and my life sinks too;
Without you I were but a Samson shorn—
A helpless Abaris without his spear.
My spirit still might burn within this clay,
'Twould be like those sepulchral lamps of old
That watch'd for ages o'er the dust of death,
And died out when the light of heaven broke in.
Without you all the world would be a blank—
The idiotcy of being;—without you
Life would be told by pulses, not by aims.
You are the sun whose haloes are my light;
Sink, and the earth is desolate and drear.
Oh! 'twere as if a dank, dishevell'd night
Should rush up madly, haunted by the winds,
All black as Erebus, upon the steps
Of a great laughing, oriental day.
I should be wretched as a cold, lone house,
Standing a mark upon a northern moor,
Eaves-deep in snow, surrounded by black pools,
Pelted by Winter, ever anger-pale.
To lose you, having tasted of such bliss—
Such sweet companionship, such holy joy—
'Twere as if earth should be flung back again,
All singing as she is, and crown'd with flowers,
Into the reeking cycles of her past:
Instead of valleys, sedgy swamps, and fens,
With grim, unwieldy reptiles trailing through;
And in the place of singing, bellowings,
And the wild roar of monsters on the hills,
That reel for ever, belching out red flame—
While a hot mist surrounds the grisly brood,
And the world shakes, like madmen in their dreams.

Caroline.
Nay, ever trust in God, my Ferdinand;
'Tis He who gives the tinge to all we see.
He takes the worlds unto His great warm heart,
And it is summer, and they laugh in flowers:
And in correction He is merciful.
Grand purposes still underlie events;
The great earth is a foot-stool to a babe.
The policies of earth and heaven are one,
And what seems insignificant to us
May swell to grandeur in the courts above.
The tear wrung from a holy heart on earth,
May serve to float an argosy in heaven;
And the light breath that shakes the trembling twig
May fill a bright archangel's fanning wings.
Time is the crier of Eternity,
And this world is the herald of the next.
All things are but announcements—lifted hands
Invoking the great blessing—the Hereafter—
Fingers that point for ever at the stars!
Ah! God is ever near us, Ferdinand;
Life of all life, and Soul of all we see.
These are His ministers—the moon and stars,
Low-whispering leaves, and silver-lisping streams—
These are the altar-fumes—the incense-mist—
But the Divine Shekinah is behind!
We dwell in God as yon stars rest in heaven:
He is without, within, above, below,
And all things preach Him to the holy soul.
The world is but the echo of the words
Spoken by Him to old eternity;
And the love-prostrate heart may sometimes catch
Dim intimations of the whispering marvels—
Hints from the driving snow, the falling leaves,
The sun-enamour'd flowers, and twilight calms.
Since this stray angel nestled on my breast
A glory has descended on the earth,
And on the lowly walks of humble men.
All things are holy to me as the steps of saints;
It is as if some bright, angelic throng
Had brush'd the hills and meadows with their wings,
And left their splendour trembling on the grass.
My passion-beating heart is holier now
Since this white flower has rested on its throbs.
There is an ancient lore in childish eyes
That reaches back to those primeval times
Ere there was aught but soul, and bliss, and heaven.
He brought me nearer to those happy days;
He told me tales of God and Fatherland,
As I lay waking through the long, hushed night;
And the old songs are ringing in my heart.
What wonder, if sometimes my speech dwells not
With the sweet every-days of mother earth,
But soars away to older, happier climes?
Oh, not in woe shall we call God our God!
He changeth not. He hath been Love to us.
From Him our half-celestial bliss hath stream'd;
And even bliss is not its own bright end,
'Tis but the aiming at a greater yet;
And thinkest thou that He will break the chain
That links us to each other and to Him,
Ere the great purpose is accomplish'd? No!
I know God better! 'Tis with awe I say it.
He will not sunder us till both are ripe
For the fruition of all earthly love,
And immortality has seal'd our souls;
For each is helper to the other's heart,
And both are travelling surely heavenward.
The contract we have made is not for Time,
But for all times, and for Eternity,
For God was in it; and our love will grow
Coeval with the Deity Himself!

Ferdinand.
Ah! thou art right! 'Tis woman's argument—
The holiest, and the best—the God-touch'd heart's,
Not subtly spun from wire-drawn intellects.
There is no death—no snapping of the chain
That linketh Time unto Eternity.
Being on earth is but the seedling cast
Beneath the soil of immortality;
Death is the breaking through the heavy crust,
And heaven the flowering of the mighty plant;
All is progression, up from seed to flower,
Perpetual continuity; no gaps
From baby-hood on earth, to angel-hood in heaven!

Caroline.
'Tis even so. But see—thy sister there—
Our Flora, Ferdinand. How pale she looks,
With her claspt hands up-gazing at the moon.

Ferdinand to Flora.

Ah! Art thou lost among yon great blue deeps—
Prophetic image of the mind of God—
Agleam with stars, as His great soul with thoughts.
Those melancholy heavens have slept for aye,
Earth's birth-pang shrieks broke not their tranquil dream.
Still stretch'd they in their awful trance as now,
While she lay desolate and dumb as they,
Save when volcanoes lifted up their voice—
Olden Isaiahs in the wilderness—
And told unto the incredulous wastes wild tales
Of the great After-time—the age of flowers,
Of songs, and blossoms, Man and grassy graves?
Or do thy thoughts keep pace with yon lone moon
In her strange journeyings through the star-strewn heavens?
And dost thou view her struggling in the clouds,
Like a great poet with his unshaped thoughts,
Until she comes forth victor, as he does,
Leaving them fair and golden far behind—
A substance and a glory to the world?

Flora.
It is the moon I see, but not as thou.
Seemeth she rather a deserted queen
Who hath laid by her queenly robes, and gone
A solitary pilgrim through the streets
Of the wide city of God, in search of him
Whom she adores—her bright, recusant Lord;
And ever as she goes out by the West,
Lo! he comes up the shining gates of the East!
Yet patiently she follows on his track,
Nursing a trembling hope within her heart,
And catching blinding glimpses now and then
Of him, and his bright retinue before;
And where he cometh, lo! the world laughs out,
And men cry, “It is day;” but where she comes
A great hush goes before,—and it is night!
And she is pale with travel,—hapless moon! [A long Pause.

Hast thou forgot thy promise, Ferdinand?
Thou hast seen him? How did he look—what said he?

Ferdinand.
He look'd as pale as he had been with God
Close closeted an hour, and heard the boom
And clangour of the everlasting wheels
In the great under-world of busy doom.
He said, “Behold a wreck! Were there a sun
Shiver'd before me I'd crawl into it,
And gladly wrap its ruins round my head,
And hide me from the jeering universe.
Oh, what a terrible and maddening day—
Thunder and sleet, cold shiverings and fierce fires,
Hath burst out racking from my golden dawn!
Friends of my boyhood! whither have you flown?
You said of me, when I was but a child,
‘Lo! a new star hath broke upon the night!
Behold with what a mighty spring that soul
Leapeth upon strange truth! Ah! it shall yet
Unfold its long white plumes, and rush right up
Into cloud-regions, thrilling heaven with song,
And flinging down wide floods of harmony
Till the world rings, and men look up with wonder!’
Friends of my childhood, ah! what say you now?
True friends no doubt,—false prophets ne'ertheless!”
He said that he had gone in search of truth,
A sandall'd pilgrim o'er the wilderness.
Quoth he, “I made a hermit of my youth,
And shut it up in narrow silent cells,
Wooing with whitest hands this angel's love.
Never did fame-bless'd bard more eagerly
Quaff the great golden goblet at his lips
Than I dim glimpses of this heartless jilt.
I was a Roderick in the Fated Halls;
When the gigantic dangers leapt up arm'd,
Threatening me with their fearful panoplies,
I boldly challenged them, and they once more,
All clanging, dropp'd into their mystic sleep,
And I went on. On did I say? Ay, on!
But unto what? Deep call'd to mighty deep,
And down unto the lowest deep I went,
Hoping to meet some wizard in the dark
Who should reveal to me the wonder-world;
And ever as I went, the lamp of Truth
Flicker'd and flared before me, saying—On!
Ha! Ha! it is a pitiable tale!
Flappings of fear, great wheeling shapes of dread,
Tremours and shudderings shook me on the way,
And made me bend like flag-staffs in the wind.
Yet still the great word ‘On’ rang through the vaults,
And on I stumbled through the whistling caves,
Until at last my guide went swooping o'er—
Hurtling and quivering—a grim, black-jaw'd gulph,
And I stood trembling on the darksome brink,
And saw its bituminous sides stretch far below,
Rugged and bare, horrent and sheer as death,
And I drew back abash'd.”—
He said, his disappointed faculties,
Debarr'd of truth, leapt back upon the world
With energies intensified, and saw
Gigantic shapes of wrong upon its thrones,—
Saw heresies glide snake-like through the church,
Sliming the pulpit-cushion with their trail,
And nestle in the very Bible-leaves!
Saw vast oppressions in the market-place,
And in the halls of commerce, rottenness,—
Falsest philanthropies go through the streets,
And children suck in error with their milk,
Till he lost faith, lost heart, lost everything!

Flora.
Ah! 'Tis a dreary tale, and yet my heart,
My feeble woman's heart, hath faith in God!
A greater e'en than he hath cried in tears
“My God! Oh! why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
He will not suffer a great, earnest soul
To struggle with the Enemy alone.
When Reason only tries to scale high heaven
A flaming seraph guards its gleaming gates;
Even as the mystic sword shut Paradise
Unto our father in the days of old,
Is the bright heaven of Truth closed up on man.
But oh, there is a humble postern door
Open to love,—to love, and childlike faith,
Where he may glean up glances of the gods
As they go shimmering past in shining mist.
I do believe he will be brought to God,
Even as the babes were unto Christ of old,
And hear the blessing sounding o'er his head!
My poor Alexis! Would that I were with thee,
But I would be alone. Good night!

Ferdinand and Caroline.
Good night!

Scene XII.

A Chamber filled with books.
Alexis alone, after an interval of many months.
[A long pause, broken by the entrance of Ferdinand, accompanied by Flora and Caroline. Alexis clasps Flora in his arms in silence. Ferdinand and Caroline retire to the lower end of the room.
Alexis.
Again! Oh, yet again, my lovely one!
Do I once more behold thee, Flora mine?
Those tears—those gushing tears—ah! let them fall,
Dumb witnesses against me are they not?
Hast thou not one word of reproach—not one?
Oh, speak to me! Break through this dreary pause,
This long, long night, which I have pass'd alone!

Flora.
Ah! why alone, Alexis—why alone?

Alexis.
Had'st thou been with me it had never been.
Never had unbelief and grim despair
Held me a prisoner in their dreary realms,
With such an angel at my side as thou!
I had been brought to God by smoother paths.
But thinkest thou that I could come to thee
With my soul rocking between heaven and hell;
With all my heart unkingdom'd, and my faith
Clinging but faintly to the skirts of God;
That I, who utterly despised myself,
Could bring a thing I so despised to thee?
What! Place a crack'd diamond on that lily hand!
What! Mingle impious doubts and questionings
With the oblation of thy virgin prayers!
My love had been as sad unto thy soul
As a dead bird within a golden cage.
Thy heart is still unchanged—I see it is!
Thy presence here—thy smiles—thy happy tears—
All tell me that thy love is with me yet!
That letter which I wrote to Ferdinand,
Telling him of the change within my soul,
Hath brought thee hither with him, to my side!

Flora.
Ah! never elsewhere have I been in thought.
I have gone with thee through the tug and strife
Between the world of darkness and of light.
I never doubted thee—no, not an hour!
When woman loses faith in him she loves
There is no other comforter but God,
No time, no place, nor any world but heaven!
I have sigh'd for thee, wept for thee, pray'd for thee,
And would have died for thee, believing thee
As worthy of my life as of my love!

Alexis
(aside).
O God! in mercy hast thou come to me.
Thou hast o'erbrimm'd the measure of my bliss! [A long pause.
(To Flora.)

Dost thou remember it—that olden time
When the woods whisper'd round us ere the Night
Had loosen'd her dark tresses o'er the world,
And a strange shadowy stillness, like a sleep,
Was settling on the Abbey's swarthy walls?
We had stroll'd from our friends, and stood beneath
The dark and broken arches, lichen-strewn.
We heard their talk far up the slumberous vale;
They seem'd a part of it, but not of us,
For we two were alone, and all the world
Seem'd dim and distant as some Siren-land
Moon-bath'd, and murmuring in an olden dream.
We were alone. I told thee of my love,
And question'd thee of thine. There was a hush
In which my being—present, past, to come—
Englobed itself into a moment's space,
And trembled like a dew-drop on the grass;
A hush so pregnant—such a hungry hush,
That I leapt startled at thy whisper'd “Yes!”
Thy “Yes,” my Flora, that one little word
That made me rich as any sun in heaven,
With a whole retinue of courtier worlds
Hanging upon his skirts to catch his smile.
It was as if a broken harp should thrill
Full-string'd and golden in a moment's space,
And give out music to the very winds.
That happy eve!—Dost thou remember it?

Flora.
You lordly men live too much in your souls
While we poor maids live wholly in the heart.
You say “My mind to me a kingdom is;”—
We place the seat of empire otherwhere!
And thinkest thou a moment such as this,
In which a whole life's destiny was pack'd,—
A moment, said I?—Nay, the heart of being,
Destined to colour all my future life,—
A moment from the which my after years,
Like to blood-globules should derive their tone,—
That like the soul of nebulosities,
Trembled with fate, and starry after-life—
Could be forgotten in my waking hours?
Thy words to me were doom, I heard them all;
I answer'd thee, and gave thee love for love:
And thenceforth I was thine in heart and soul!

Alexis.
With this sweet memory nestling in my mind,
In one of my most self-desponding hours,
I wrote a tale of this same summer-time,
Which was to be prophetic of our fate.

Flora.
Oh let me hear it now that happiness,
Hangs o'er us like a blush of ruddy dawn!

Alexis
reads from a manuscript.

Ferdinand
(coming up, and pointing at the table strewn with papers).
“Othello's occupation is not gone.”

Alexis.

Flora
reads.

Ferdinand.
My eye is resting on a manuscript.
What is it—burly ballad, song or dirge?

Alexis.
A father's sob above his one child's grave.
But read it.

Ferdinand
reads.

Flora.
[Alexis nods assent.
She reads “The Child's Dream.”

Ferdinand.
This from Alexis! Wonders surely grow!
Alexis, the philosopher, the sage,
Whose song should be as wide as yon blue heaven—
A mighty sea where nothing less than worlds
Should sail through the calm deeps in place of swans,
With margin left for comets to stream through,
And brush the gold-dust from the face of suns,
With God himself for Hero, and all space
To its extremest verges for the scene,
With crimson sunsets and with golden dawns
For wayside flowers, with Night as a stray witch,
And Day as page—with a slight episode
To show how first the young stars were unleash'd,
Spangling the hush'd infinity with gold,
Like bright thoughts dwelling in a Poet's mind;
Alexis, the philosopher, and sage,
Descending to be laureate to a child,
And painting, with fidelity, its dreams!

Alexis
(smiling).
[He takes up a Manuscript and reads.
[Alexis, laying the manuscript aside.