His earth is iron under Him, and o'er Him

His skies are brass:

His seraphs cry 'Alas' With hallelujah voice that cannot weep; And man, for whom the dreadful work is done

Scornful voices from the Earth. If verily this be the Eternal's son—

Ador. Thou hearest:—man is grateful!

Zerah. Can I hear,

Nor darken into man nor cease for ever
My seraph-smile to wear?

Was it for such,
It pleased Him to overleap
His glory with His love, and sever
From the God-light and the throne
And all angels bowing down.
From whom His every look did
touch

New notes of joy from the unworn
string

Of an eternal worshipping!
For such He left His heaven?
There, though never bought by
blood

And tears, we gave Him gratitude!
We loved Him there, though un-
forgiven!
Ador. The light is riven
Above, around.
And down in lurid fragments flung.
That catch the mountain-peak and
stream

With momentary gleam, Then perish in the water and the ground. River and waterfall, Forest and wilderness, Mountain and city, are together wrung Into one shape/ and that is shapelessness;

The darkness stands for all. Zerah. The pathos hath the day undone:

The death-look of His eyes Hath overcome the sun, And made it sicken in its narrow skies. Ador. Is it to death? He dieth. Zerah. Through the dark,

He still, He only, is discernible— The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,

The countenance of patient anguish white.

Do make themselves a light More dreadful than the glooms which

round them dwell, And therein do they shine.

Ador. God! Father-God!

Perpetual Radiance on the radiant

throne!

Uplift the lids of inward Deity,
Flashing abroad
Thy burning infinite!
Light up this dark, where there is

nought to see, Except the unimagined agony Upon the sinless forehead of the Son. Zerah. God, tarry not! Behold, enow

Hath He wandered as a stranger.
Sorrowed as a victim. Thou

Appear for Him, O Father!

Appear for Him, Avenger! Appear for Him, just One and holy One,

For He is holy and just! At once the darkness and dishonor rather

To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,

And hurl ahack to ancient dust These mortals that make blasphemies With their made breath! this earth and skies That only grow a little dim, Seeing their curse on Him! But Him, of all forsaken, Of creature and of brother, Never wilt Thou forsake! Thy living and Thy loving cannot slacken

Their firm essential hold upon each other—

And well Thou dost remember how His part

Was still to lie upon Thy breast, and be Partaker of the light that dwelt in Thee

Ere sun or seraph shone; And how while silence trembled round

the throne, Thou countedst by the beatings of HLs

heart,

The moments of Thine own eternity!
Awaken,

O right Hand with the lightnings!

Again gather His giory to tby glory! What estranger—

What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust Between the faithful Father and the 'Son?

Appear for Him, 0 Father! Appear for Him, Avenger I Appear for Him, just One and holy One!

For He is holy and just. Ador. Tby face, upturned toward the throne, is dark— Thou hast no answer, Zerah,

Zerah, No reply,

. O unforsaking Father?—

Ador. Hark!

Instead of downward voice, a cry
Is uttered from beneath!
Zerah. And by a sharper sound than
death,

Mine immortality is riven. The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky,

Floats backward as by a sudden wind—
But I see no light behind:
But I feel the farthest stars are all
Stricken and shaken,
And I know a shadow sad and broad,

Doth fall—doth fall
On our vacant thrones in heaven.

Voice from the Cross. My God, My
God,

Why Hast Thou Me Forsaken?

The Earth. Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful why! My sin is on Thee, sinless One! Thou art

God-orphaned, for my burden on Tby head.

Dark sin! white innocence! endurance dread!

Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead—

Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart!

Zerah. He hath forsaken Him / I perish—.

Ador. Hold Upon His name! We perish not. Of

old
His will

Zerah. I seek His will. Seek,
Seraphim!

My God, my God! whete is it? Doth that curse

Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe?

He hath forsaken Him. Ador. He cannot fail. Angel voices. We faint—we droop— Our love doth tremble like fear— Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth. Do we prevad? Or are we lost?—Hath not the ill we did

Been heretofore our good? Is it not ill that One, all sinless, should Hang heavy with all curses on a cross? Nathless, that cry !—with huddled faces hid

Within the empty graves which men did scoop

To hold more damned dead, we shudder through

What shall exalt as or undo,~ Our triumph, or—our loss. Voicefrom the Cross. It Is Finished. Zerah. Hark, again!

Like a victor, speaks the Slain—

Angel voices. Finished be the trembling vain! Ador. Upward, like a well-loved Son, Looketh He, the orphaned One— Angel voices. Finished is the mystic pain I

Voices of Fallen Angels. His deathly

forehead at the word,

Gleameth like a seraph sword. Angel voices. Finished is the demon

reign!

Ador. His breath, as living God, createth— His breath, as dying man, completeth,

Angel voices. Finished work His hands sustain!

The Earth. In mine ancient sepulchres

Where my kings and prophets
freeze,

Adam dead four thousand years,
Unwakened by the universe's
Everlasting moan,
Aye his ghastly silence, mocking—
Unwakened by his children's knock-
ing

At his old sepulchral stone—

'Adam, Adam! all this curse is

Thine and on us yet!'

Unwakened by the ceaseless tears Wherewith tney made his cerement wet— 'Adam, must tby curse remain ?'— Starts with sudden life, and hears Vhrough the slow dripping of the caverned eaves,—

Angel voices. Finished is his bane! Voice from the Cross. Father! My

SPiRiT TO THiNE HANDS iS GivEN!

Ador. Hear the wailing winds that be

By wings of unclean Spirits made!

They, in that last look, surveyed The love they lost in losing heaven,

And passionately flee. With a desolate cry that cleaves The natural storms—though they are

lifting

God's strong cedar-roots like leaves;
And the earthquake and the thunder,
Neither keeping neither under,
Roar and hurtle through the glooms,—
And a few pale stars are drifting
Past the Dark, to disappear,
What time, from the splitting tombs,
Gleamingly the Dead arise,
Viewing with their death-calmned eyes,
The elemental strategies,
To witness, victory is the Lord's!
Hear the wail o' the spirits! hear.
Zerah. I hear alone the memory of
His words.

THE EPILOGUE.

My song is done! My voice that long hath faltered shall be still.

The mystic darkness drops from Calvary's hill Into the common light of this day's sun.

tt.

I see no more Tby cross, O holy Slain! I hear no more the horror and the coil

Of the great world's turmoil. Feeling tby countenance too still,—nor yell

Of demons sweeping past it to their prison.

The skies, that turned to darkness with

Tby pain.

Make now a summer's day,— And on my changed ear, that sabbath

bell

Records how Christ Is Risen.

tu.

And I—ah l what am I To counterfeit, with faculty earth-darkened

Seraphic brows of light And seraph language never used not •

hearkened 1 Ah me! what word that Seraphs say,

could come From mouth so used to sighs—so soon

to lie

Sightless, because then breathless, in the tomb?

iv.

Bright ministers of God and grace!—of grace

Because of God !—whether ye bow adown

In your own heaven, before the living face

Of Him who died, and deathless wears

the crown— Or whether at this hour, ye haply are Anear, around me, hiding in the night Of this permitted ignorance your light.

This feebleness to spare,— Forgive me, that mine earthly heart

should dare Shape images of unincarnate spirits, And lay upon their burning lips a

thought

Cold with the weeping which mine earth inherits;

And though ye find in such hoarse music wrought

To copy yours, a cadence all the while Of sin and sorrow—only pitying smile !— Ye know to pity, well.

v.

/ too may haply smile another day At the far recollection of this lay, When God may call me in your midst to dwell,

To hear yout most sweet music's miracle And see your wondrous faces. May it be.

For His remembered sake, the Stain on rood,

Who rolled His earthly garment red in blood

{Treading the wine-press) that the weak, like me,

Before His heavenly throne should walk in white.

THE POET'S VOW.

PART THE FIRST.

SHOWiNG WHEREFORE THE vOW WAS MADE.

I,

Eve is a twofold mystery—
The stillness Earth doth keep;

The motion wherewith human hearts
Do each to either leap.

As if all souls between the poles.
Felt 'Parting comes in sleep.'

n.

The rowers lift their oars to view

Each other in the sea;
The landsmen watch the rocking boats,

In a pleasant company;
While up the hill go gladher still

Dear friends by two and three.

tu.

The peasant's wife hath looked without
Her cottage door and smiled;

For there the peasant drops his spade
To clasp his youngest child

Which hath no speech, but its hands
can reach
And stroke his forehead mild

iv.

A poet sate that eventide

Within his hall alone,
As silent as its ancient lords

In the coffined place of stone ) When the bat hath shrunk from the praying monk—

And the praying monk is gone.

v.

Nor wore the dead a stiller face
Beneath the cerement's roll:

His lips refusing out in words
Their mystic thoughts to dole.

His steadfast eye burnt inwardly.
As burning out his soul.

vi.

You would not think that brow could e'er

Ungentle moods express.
Yet seemed it, in this troubled world.

Too calm for gentleness:
When the very star, that shines from far,

Shines trembling ne'ertheless.

vtt.

It lacked—all need—the softening light

Which other brows supply:
We should conjoin the scathed trunks

Of our humanity,
That each leafless spray entwining may

Look softer 'gainst the sky.

vitt.

None gazed within the poet's face—

The poet gazed in none:
He threw a lonely shadow straight

Before the moon and s-in. Affronting nature's f eaven-dwelling creatures.

With wrong to nature done.

iX.

Because this poet daringly.

The nature at his heart,
And that quick tune along his veins

He could not change by art,
Had vowed his blood of brotherhood

To a stagnant place apart.

X.

He did not vow in fear, or wrath,

Or grief's fantastic whim; But, weights and shows of sensual things

Too closely crossing him,
On his soul's eyelid the pressure slid
And made its vision dim.

Xi.

And darkening in the dark he strove
'Twixt earth and sun and sky,

To lose in shadow, wave and cloud.
His brother's haunting cry.

The wind:; were welcome as they swept:

God's five-day work he would accept,
But let the rot go by.

Xtt.

He cried—' O touching, patient Earth,

That weepest in tby glee, Whom God created very good.

And very mournful, we I Tby voice of moan doth reach His throne,

As Abel's rose from thee.

xni.

'Poor crystal sky, with stars astray;

Mad winds, that howling go From east to west ; perplexed seas,

That stagger from their blow! O motion wild! O wave defiled!

Our curse hath made you so.

Xiv.

'We / and our curse! Do / partake

The desiccating sin?
Have / the apple at my lips?

The money-lust within: Do / human stand with the wounding hand.

To the blasting heart akin? xv.

'Thou solemn pathos of all things.
For solemn pomp designed!

Behold, submissive to your cause,
An holy wrath I find.

And, for your sake, the bondage break,
That knits me to my kind.

Xvi.

'Hear me forswear man's sympathies,

His pleasant yea and no— His riot on the piteous earth

Whereon his thistles grow! His changing love—with stars above!

His pride—with graves below!

Xvtt.

'Hear me forswear his roof by night,

His tread and salt by day,
His talkings at the wood-fire hearth,

His greetings by the way,
His answering looks, hissystemed books,

All man, for aye and aye.

Xvitt.

'That so my purged, once human heart,

From all the human rent,
May gather strength to pledge and di ink

Your wine of wcndermer.t.
While you pardon me, all blessingly,

The woe mine Adam sent.

XiX.

'And I shall feel your unseen looks
Innumerous, constant, deep,

And soft as haunted Adam once,
Though sadder, round me creep;

As slumbering men have mystic ken
Of watchers on their sleep.

XX.

'And ever, when I lift my brow

At evening to the sun,
No voice of woman or of child

Recording 'Day is done,'
Your silence shall a love express

More deep than such an one!'

PART THE SECOND.

SHOWiNG TO WHOM THE vOW WAS DE. CLARED.

The poet's vow was inly sworn—

The poet's vow was told: He shared among his crowding friends