Lest it blanch thy lips from glory—
Ay! the cursed thing that moved
Its shadow of ill, long times ago,
Across our heaven's own shining floor!
And when it vanished, some who were
On thrones of holy empire there,
Did reign-were seen-were-never more.
Come nearer, O beloved!
Ador. I am near thee.
Ever to this earth?
When thrilling from His hand along
Its lustrous path with spheric song,
The earth was deathless, sorrowless.
Then, fearless, angel 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 river's flowing round,
And the life-tree's waving soft.
Beautiful new earth, and strange!
Ador. Hast thou seen it since
Zerah. Nay! or wherefore should I fear
To look upon it now?
I have beheld the ruined things
Only in depicturings
Of angels sent on earthward mission;
Strong one, e'en 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 they who from that earthward mission are,
Within mine ears have told,
That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold
With such a sweet and prodigal constraint,
The meaning yet the mystery of the song,
The while they sang it, on their natures strong;
That, gazing down on earth's dark stedfastness,
And speaking the new peace in promises,
The love and pity made their voices faint
Into that low and tender music, keeping
The place in heaven, of what on earth is weeping.
Ador. Peace upon earth! Come down to it.
Zerah.
I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.
Peace where the tempest-where the sighing is-
And worship of the idol, 'stead of His?
Ador. Yea, peace, where He is.
That earth retains a tree
Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed
By 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,
Hath 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 in 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-O 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 stedfast 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, wind-shaken !—where
The louder voice of "blood and blood" doth rise--
Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?
O heaven-O vacant throne!
O crowned hierarchies, that wear your crown
When His is put away!
Are ye unshamed, that ye cannot dim
Your alien brightness to be liker Him,—
Assume a human passion-and down-lay
Your sweet secureness for congenial fears—--
And teach your cloudless ever-burning 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 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 strong—
The love is bearing me along.-
Ador. One love is bearing two along.
[Mid-air, above Judæa. ADOR and ZERAH are a little apart from the visible Angelic Hosts.]
Ador. BELOVED! dost thou see?—
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-
Thy 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?
Alone the memory of their brightness
Left in them, as in thee;
The circle upon circle, tier on tier-
Piling earth's hemisphere
With heavenly infiniteness;
Above us and around,
Straining the blue horizon like a bow :
Their songful lips divorced from all sound;
A darkness gliding down their silvery glances-
Bowing their stedfast solemn countenances,
As if they heard God speak, and could not glow.
Ador. Look downward! dost thou see?
Zerah. And wouldst thou press that vision on my
Doth not the changed Earth
Speak loud enough of change and jeopardy
Without my witness? Her least rills
Do break abruptly from their forced mirth,
With a long sigh across the pastoral swards.
Be satisfied: I see her vales, ungreen
Where steps of man have been;
Her thunder-riven hills,
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