PART THE FIRST.

IT is the time of the Crucifixion; and the angels of heaven have departed towards the earth, except the two Seraphim, Ador the Strong and Zerah the Bright One.

The place is the outer side of the shut heavenly gate.

Ador. O SERAPH, pause no more! Beside this gate of Heaven we stand alone.

Zerah. Of Heaven!

Ador. Our brother hosts are gone-
Zerah. Are gone before.

Ador. And the golden harps the
angels bore

To help the songs of their desire,
Still burning from their bands of fire,
Lie without touch or tone

Upon the glass-sea shore.
Zerah. Silent upon the glass-sea shore!
Ador. There the shadow from the
throne-

Formless with infinity,
Hovers o'er the crystal sea;

Awfuller than light derived,
And red with those primæval heats
Whereby all life has lived.
Zerah. Our visible God, our heavenly
seats!

Ador. Beneath us sinks the pomp an-
gelical,

Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,

The roar of whose descent has died

To a still sound, as thunder into rain. Immeasurable space spreads magnified

With that thick life, along the plane
The worlds slid out on. What a fall
And eddy of wings innumerous, crossed
By trailing curls that have not lost
The glitter of the God-smile shed
On every prostrate angel's head!
What gleaming up of hands that fling
Their homage in retorted rays,
From high instinct of worshipping,
And habitude of praise.
Zerah. Rapidly they drop below us.
Pointed palm and wing and hair,
Indistinguishable show us
Only pulses in the air
Throbbing with a fiery beat,
As if a new creation heard
Some divine and plastic word,
And trembling at its new found being,
Awakened at our feet.

Ador. Zerah, do not wait for seeing.
His voice, it is, that thrills us so
As we our harpstrings, uttered Go,
Behold the Holy in his woe-
And all are gone, save thee and-
Zerah.
Thee!
Ador. I stood the nearest to the
throne

In hierarchical degree,
What time the Voice said Go.
And whether I was moved alone
By the storm-pathos of the tone

Which swept through Heaven the alien name of woe,

Or whether the subtle glory broke
Through my strong and shielding
wings,

Bearing to my finite essence
Incapacious of their presence,
Infinite imaginings,

None knoweth save the Throned who spoke ;

But I, who, at creation, stood upright

And heard the God-Breath move, Shaping the words that lightened, 'Be there light,'

Nor trembled but with love,

Now fell down shudderingly,

My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,

As if in mine immortal overpowered
By God's eternity.

Zerah. Let me wait!-let me wait!--
Ador. Nay, gaze
not backward

through the gate.

God fills our heaven with God's own solitude

Till all the pavements glow:

His Godhead being no more subdued
By itself, to glories low

Which seraphs can sustain,
What if thou, in gazing so,
Should behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone-
And that to which we dare to press
Nearest, for its gentleness-
Ay, His love!

How the deep ecstatic pain

Thy being's strength would capture! Without language for the rapture, Without music strong to come

And set the adoration free, For ever, ever, wouldst thou be Amid the general chorus dumb, God-stricken to seraphic agony

Or, brother, what if on thine eyes

In vision bare should rise

The life-fount whence His hand did

gather

With solitary force

Our immortalities!

Straightway how thine Own would wither,

Falter like a human breath,
And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source!

I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!

O thou, who stronger art,

And standest ever near the Infinite,
Pale with the light of Light!

Love me, beloved! me, more newly made.

More feeble, more afraid; And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,

As close and gentle as the loving are, That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.

Ador. I am near thee, and I love thee.

Where I loveless, from thee gone,
Love is round, beneath, above thee,
God, the omnipresent One.

Spread the wing, and lift the brow. Well-beloved, what fearest thou? Zerah. I fear, I fear

Where men that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?

Where, having won the profit which they seek,

They lie beside the sceptre and the gold

With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,

And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?

Zerah. Of earth the bold:

Where the blind matter wrings An awful potence out of impotence, Bowing the spiritual things

To the things of sense.

Where the human will replies
With ay and no,

Because the human pulse is quick or slow.

Where Love succumbs to Change,

With only his own memories, for re

When thrilling from His hand along
Its lustrous path with spheric song,
The earth was deathless, sorrowless.
Unfearing, then, pure feet might
press

The grasses brightening with their
feet,

For God's own voice did mix its sound

In a solemn confluence oft With the rivers' flowing round And the life-tree's waving soft. Beautiful new earth, and strange! Ador. Hast thou seen it since-the change?

Zerah. Nay, or wherefore should I fear

To look upon it now?

I have beheld the ruined things
Only in depicturings

Of angels from an earthly mission,-
Strong one, even upon thy brow,
When, with task completed, given
Back to us in that transition,

I have beheld thee silent stand,
Abstracted in the seraph band,
Without a smile in heaven.
Ador. Then thou wert not one of
those

Whom the loving Father chose
In visionary pomp to sweep
O'er Judæa's grassy places,
O'er the shepherds and the sheep,
Though thou art SO tender?-
dimming

All the stars except one star,
With their brighter kinder faces,
And using heaven's own tune in
hymning,

While deep response from earth's own mountains ran,

'Peace upon earth-goodwill to man.' Zerah. "Glory to God!" I said

Amen afar.

And those who from that earthly mission are,

Within mine ears have told That the seven everlasting Spirits did

hold

That earth retains a tree

Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed

By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?

Ador. There is a tree!-it hath no leaf nor root;

Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:
Its shadow on His head is laid.
For He, the crowned Son,
Has left his crown and throne,
Walks earth in Adam's clay,
Eve's snake to bruise and slay-
Zerah. Walks earth in clay?
Ador. And walking in the clay which
He created,

He through it shall touch death. What do I utter? what, conceive? Did breath

Of demon howl it in a blasphemy? Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated

By the seven confluent Spirits?-Speak

answer me!

Who said man's victim was his deity?

Zerah. Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee. Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous light

Above, below, around,

As putting thunder-questions without cloud,

Reverberate without sound, To universal nature's depth and height. The tremor of an inexpressive thought Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud, O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips: And while thine hands are stretched above

As newly they had caught Some lightning from the Throne-or showed the Lord

Some retributive sword

Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse And radiance-with contrasted wrath and love

As God had called thee to a seraph's

part,

With a man's quailing heart. Ador. O heart-Ò heart of man! O ta'en from human clay, To be no seraph's but Jehovah's

own!

Made holy in the taking,

And yet unseparate

From death's perpetual ban,

And human feelings sad and passionate! Still subject to the treacherous forsaking Of other hearts, and its own steadfast pain.

O heart of man-of God! which God hath ta'en

From out the dust, with its humanity Mournful and weak yet innocent around

it,

And bade its many pulses beating lie
Beside that incommunicable stir
Of Deity wherewith He interwound it.
O man! and is thy nature so defiled,
That all that holy Heart's devout law-
keeping,

And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,
And gushings pitiful of tender weeping
For traitors who consigned it to such

woe

That all could cleanse thee not-without the flow

Of blood-the life-blood-His-and streaming so?

O earth the thundercleft, windshaken! where

The louder voice of "blood and blood" doth rise

eyes

The mystery of His tears? Zerah. I am strong, I am strong! Were I never to see my heaven again, I would wheel to earth like the tempest rain

Which sweeps there with an exultant sound

To lose its life as it reaches the ground. I am strong, I am strong!

Away from mine inward vision swim The shining seats of my heavenly birth

I see but His, I see but Him

The Maker's steps on His cruel earth. Will the bitter herbs of earth grow sweet

To me, as trodden by His feet?
Will the vexed, accurst humanity,
As worn by Him, begin to be
A blessed, yea, a sacred thing,
For love, and awe, and ministering?
I am strong, I am strong!

By our angel ken shall we survey
His loving smile through his woeful
clay?

I am swift, I am strongThe love is bearing me along.

Ador. One love is bearing us along.

PART THE SECOND.

Mid air, above Judæa. Ador and Zerah are a little apart from the visible Angelic Hosts.

Ador. BELOVED! dost thou see?-
Zerah.
Thee, thee.

Thy burning eyes already are
Grown wild and mournful as a star
Whose occupation is for aye
To look upon the place of clay
Whereon thou lookest now!
The crown is fainting on thy brow
To the likeness of a cloud-
The forehead's self a little bowed
From its aspect high and holy,
As it would in meekness meet
Some seraphic melancholy,
Thy very wings that lately flung
An outline clear, do flicker here,
And wear to each a shadow hung
Dropped across thy feet.

In these strange contrasting glooms
Stagnant with the scent of tombs,
Seraph faces, O my brother,

Show awfully to one another. Ador. Dost thou see?