Classic Poem

SCENE — Another and a better World .

F ESTUS and Lucifer .

F ESTUS . What a sweet world! Which is this, Lucifer?
Lucifer . This is the star of evening and of beauty.
F ESTUS . Otherwise Venus I will stay here.
Lucifer . Nay
Itis but a visit.
F ESTUS . Let us look about us.
It is Heaven, it must be; aught so beautiful
Must, I am sure, have feeling. Cannot worlds live?
Least things have life. Why not the greatest, too?
An atom is a world, a world an atom
Seen relatively: Death an act of Life.
Lucifer . This is a world where every loveliest thing
Lasts longest; where decay lifts never head
Above the grossest forms, and matter here
Is all transparent substance; the flower fades not,
The beautiful die never, here: Death lies
A dreaming — he has nought to do — the babe
Plays with his darts. Nought dies but what should die.
Here are no earthquakes, storms, nor plagues; nc Hell
At heart; no floating flood on high. The soil
Is ever fresh and fragrant as a rose —
The skies, like one wide rainbow, stand on gold —
The clouds are light as rose leaves — and the dew,
'Tis of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy —
The air is softer than a loved one's sigh —
The ground is glowing with all priceless ore,
And glistening with gems like a bride's bosom —
The trees have silver stems and emerald leaves —
The fountains bubble nectar — and the hills
Are half alive with light. Yet it is not Heaven.
F ESTUS . Oh, how this world should pity man's: I love
To walk earth's woods when the storm bends his bow,
And volleys all his arrows off at once;
And when the dead brown branch comes crashing close
To my feet, to tread it down, because I feel
Decay my foe: and not to triumph's worse
Than not to win. It is wrong to think on earth;
But terror hath a beauty even as mildness;
And I have felt more pleasure far on earth;
When, like a lion or a day of battle,
The storm rose, roared, shook out his shaggy mane,
And leaped abroad on the world, and lay down red,
Licking himself to sleep as it got light;
And in the cataract-like tread of a crowd,
And its irresistible rush, flooding the green
As though it came to doom, than e'er I can
Feel in his faery orb of shade and shine.
I love earth!
Lucifer . Thou art mad to dote on earth
When with this sphere of beauty.
F ESTUS . It is the blush
Of being; surely, too, a maiden world,
Unmarred by thee. Touch it not, Lucifer!
Lucifer . It is too bright to tarnish.
F ESTUS . Didst thou fail?
Lucifer . I cannot fail. With me success is nature.
I am the cause, means, consequence of ill.
Thou canst not yet enjoy a sensuous world —
Refined though ne'er so little o'er thine own,
And yet wouldst enter Heaven. Valhalla's halls,
And sculls o'erbrimmed with mead, Elysian plains —
Eden, where life was toilless, and gave man
All things to live with, nothing to live for; —
The Moslem's bowers of love, and streams of wine,
And palaces of purest adamant,
Where dark-eyed houris, with their young white arms,
The ever virgin, woo and welcome ye, —
The Chaldee's orbs of gold, where dwells the primal Light,
Were all too pure for thee; yet shalt thou be
Surely in Heaven, ere Death unlock the heart.
I said that I would show thee marvels here;
For here dwell many angels — many souls
Who have run pure through earth, or been made pure
By their salvation since. It is a mart
Where all the holy spirits of the world
Perform sweet interchange, and purchase truth
With truth, and love with love. Hither came He,
The Son — the Saviour of the universe;
Not in the stable-state He went to earth —
A servant unto slaves; but as a God,
Carrying His kingdom with Him, and His Heaven
F ESTUS . Lo, here are spirits! and all seem to love
Each other.
Lucifer . He hath only half a heart
Who loves not all.
F ESTUS . Speak for me to some angel.
See, here is one, a very soul of beauty:
It is the muse. I know her by the lyre
Hung on her arm, and eye like fount of fire.
M USE . Mortal, approach! I am the holy Muse,
Whom all the great and bright of spirit choose —
'T is I who breathe my soul into the lips
Of those great lights whom death nor time eclipse:
'Tis I who wing the loving heart with song,
And set its sighs to music on the tongue:
It is I who watch, and, with sweet dreams, reward
The starry slumbers of the youthful bard;
For I love every thing that is sweet and bright.
And but this morn, with the first wink of light
A sunbeam left the sun, and, as it sped,
I followed, watched, and listened what it said:
Wherefore, with all this brightness am I given
From sun to earth? Am I not fit for Heaven?
From God I came once; and, though worlds have passed,
Ages, and dooms, yet I am light to the last.
Whatever God hath once bent to His will
Is sacred; so the world's to be loved still.
What of this swift, this bright, but downward being
Too burning to be borne — too brief for seeing?
What is my aim — mine end? I would not die
In dust, or water, or an idiot's eye:
I would not cease in blood, nor end in fire,
Nor light the loveless to their low desire:
No; let me perish on the poet's page,
Where he kisses from his beauty's brow all age;
Spelling it fair for aye, and wrinkle scorning,
As when first that brow brake on him like a morning
But yet I cannot quit this line I tread,
Though it lead and leave me to the eyeless dead:
It is mine errand: 't is for this I come,
And live, and die, and go down to my doom.
This is my fate — right and bright to speed on.
God is His own God: fate and fall are one.
Straight from the sun I go, like life from God,
Which hits, now on a heaven, now on a clod.
But, spite of all, the world's air warps our way,
And crops the roses off the cheek of day;
As some false friend, who holds our fall in trust,
Oils our decline, and hands us to the dust.
Where are the sunbeams gone of the young green earth?
Search dust and night: our death makes clear our birth —
It said — and saw earth; and one moment more
Fell bright beside a vine-shadowed cottage door:
In it came — glanced upon a glowing page,
Where, youth forestalling and foreshortening age —
Weak with the work of thought, a boyish bard,
Sate suing night and stars for his reward.
The sunbeam swerved and grew, a breathing dim,
For the first time, as it lit and looked on him:
His forehead faded — pale his lip and dry —
Hollow his check — and fever fed his eye.
Clouds lay about his brain, as on a hill,
Quick with the thunder thought, and lightning will
His clenched hand shook from its more than midnight clasp,
Till his pen fluttered like a winged asp,
Save that no deadly poison blacked its lips:
'T was his to life-enlighten, not eclipse;
Nor would he shade one atom of another,
To have a sun his slave, a god his brother.
The young moon laid her down as one who dies,
Knowing that death can be no sacrifice,
For that the sun, her god, through nature's night
Shall make her bosom to grow great with light.
Still he sate, though his lamp sunk; and he strained
His eyes to work the nightness which remained.
Vain pain! he could not make the light he wanted,
And soon thought's wizard ring gets disenchanted.
When earth was dayed — was morrowed — the first ray
Perched on his pen, and diamonded its way; —
The sunray that I watched; which, proud to mark
The line it loved as deathless, there died dark —
Died in the only path it would have trod,
Were there as many ways as worlds to God, —
There, in the eye of God again to burn,
As all man's glory unto God's must turn.
And so may sunbeams ever guide his pen,
And God his heart, who lights the morn of men;
For this life is but Being's first faint ray;
And sun on sun, and heaven on heaven, make up God's day.
And were there suns in day as stars in night,
They would show but like one ray from out his full-sphered light;
As but one momentary gleam would fly;
Or, as years, the arrows of eternity.
F ESTUS . Poets are all who love — who feel great truths —
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
There was a time — oh, I remember well!
When, like a sea-shell with its seaborn strain,
My soul aye rang with music of the lyre;
And my heart shed its lore as leaves their dew —
A honey dew, and throve on what it shed.
All things I loved; but song I loved in chief.
Imagination is the air of mind;
Judgment its earth, and memory its main;
Passion its fire. I was at home in Heaven:
Swiftlike I lived above: once touching earth,
The meanest thing might master me: long wings
But baffled. Still and still I harped on song.
Oh! to create within the mind is bliss;
And, shaping forth the lofty thought, or lovely,
Wo seek not, need not Heaven: and when the thought —
Cloudy and shapeless, first forms on the mind,
Slow darkening into some gigantic make,
How the heart shakes with pride and fear, as heaven
Quakes under its own thunder: or as might,
Of old, the mortal mother of a god,
When first she saw him lessening up the skies.
And I began the toil divine of verse,
Which like a burning-bush, doth guest a god.
But this was only wing-flapping — not flight;
The pawing of the courser ere he win;
Till, by degrees, from wrestling with my soul,
I gathered strength to keep the fleet thoughts fast,
And made them bless me. Yes, there was a time
When tomes of ancient song held eye and heart —
Were the sole lore I recked of: the great bards
Of Greece, of Rome, and mine own master land,
And they who in the holy book are deathless, —
Men who have vulgarized sublimity,
And brought up truth for the nations; parted it,
As soldiers lotted once the garb of God, —
Men who have forged gods — uttered — made them pass:
In whose words, to be read with many a heaving
Of the heart, is a power, like wind in rain —
Sons of the sons of God, who, in olden days,
Did leave their passionless Heaven for earth and woman,
Brought an immortal to a mortal breast;
And, like a rainbow clasping the sweet earth,
And melting in the covenant of love.
Left here a bright precipitate of soul,
Which lives for ever through the lines of men,
Flashing, by fits, like fire from an enemy's frout —
Whose thoughts like bars of sunshine in shut rooms
Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light —
Who make their very follies like their souls;
And, like the young moon with a ragged edge,
Still, in their imperfection, beautiful —
Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths,
Like the white nebulous matter between stars,
Which, if not light, at least is likest light, —
Men whom we build our love round like an arch
Of triumph, as they pass us on their way
To glory and to immortality;
Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion
Through every limb and the whole heart; whose words
Haunt us as eagles haunt the mountain air;
Thoughts which command all coming times and minds,
As from a tower a warden, — fix themselves
Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth,
Dropped from some higher sphere; the words of gods,
And fragments of the undeemed tongues of Heaven
Men who walk up to fame as to a friend
Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir
They have wrested, from the world's hard hand and gripe, —
Men who, like Death, all bone, but all unarmed,
Have ta'en the giant world by the throat, and thrown him;
And made him swear to maintain their name and fame
At peril of his life — who shed great thoughts
As easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves
In a kindly largess to the soil it grew on —
Whose rich dark ivy thoughts, sunned o'er with love,
Flourish around the deathless stems of their names.
Whose names are ever on the world's broad tongue,
Like sound upon the falling of a force —
Whose words, if winged, are with angels' wings —
Who play upon the heart as on a harp,
And make our eyes bright as we speak of them —
Whose hearts have a look southwards, and are open
To the whole noon of nature, — these I have waked
And wept o'er, night by night; oft pondering thus:
Homer is gone; and where is Jove? and where
The rival cities seven? His song outlives
Time, tower, and god — all that then was save Heaven.
M USE . Yea, but the poor perfections of thine earth
Shall be as little as nothing to thee here.
F ESTUS . God must be happy, who aye makes; and since
Mind's first of things, who makes from mind is blest
O'er men. Thus saith the bard to his work: — I am
Thy god, and bid thee live as my God me:
I live or die with thee, soul of my soul!
Thou cam'st and went'st, sunlike, from morn to eve:
And smiledst fire upon my heaving heart,
Like the sun in the sea, till it arose
And dashed about its house all might and mirth,
Like ocean's tongue in Staffa's stormy cave.
Thou art a weakly reed to lean upon;
But, like that reed the false one filched from Heaven.
Full of immortal fire — immortal as
The breath of God's lips — every breath a soul.
M USE . Mortal! the muse is with thee: leave her not.
F ESTUS . Once my ambition to another end
Stirred, stretched itself, but slept again. I rose
And dashed on earth the harp, mine other heart,
Which, ringing, brake; its discord ruinous
Harmony still; and coldly I rejoiced
No other joy I had, wormlike, to feed
Upon my ripe resolve. It might not be:
The more I strove against, the more I loved it.
Lucifer . Come, let us walk along. So say farewell.
F ESTUS . I will not.
M USE . No; my greeting is forever
Lucifer . Well, well, come on!
F ESTUS . Oh! show me that sweet soul
Thou brought'st to me the first night that we met.
She must be here, where all are good and fair:
And thou didst promise me.
Lucifer . Is that not she
Walking alone, up-looking to thine earth?
For, lo! it shineth through the mid-day air.
F ESTUS . It is! it is!
Lucifer . Well, I will come again.
[ Goes
F ESTUS . Knowest thou me, mine own immortal love?
How shall I call thee? Say, what mayest thou be
A NGELA . I am a spirit, Festus; and I love
Thy spirit, and shall love, when once like mine,
More than we ever did or can even now.
Pure spirits are of Heaven, all heavenly.
Yet marvel not to meet me in this guise,
All radiant like a diamond as it is.
We wander in what way we will through all
Or any of these worlds, and wheresoe'er
We are, there Heaven is, here, and there too, God.
F ESTUS . Thou dost remember me?
A NGELA . Ay, every thought
And look of love which thou hast lent to me,
Comes daily through my memory as stars
Wear through the dark.
F ESTUS . And thou art happy, love?
A NGELA . Yes: I am happy when I can do good
F ESTUS . To be good is to do good. Who dwell here?
Are they all deathless — happy?
A NGELA . All are not:
Some err, though rarely — slightly. Spirits sin
Only in thought; and they are of a race
Higher than thine — have fewer wants and less
Temptations — many more joys — greater powers.
They need no civil away: each rules himself —
Obeys himself: all live, too, as they choose,
And they choose nought but good. They who have come
From earth, or other orb, use the same powers,
Passions, and purposes, they had o'er death;
Although enlarged and freed, to nobler ends,
With better means. Here the hard warrior whets
The sword of truth, and steels his soul against sin.
The fierce and lawless wills which trooped it over
His breast — the speared desires that overran
The fairest fields of virtue, sleep and lie
Like a slain host 'neath snow; he dyes his hands
Deep in the blood of evil passions. Mind!
There is no passion evil in itself;
In Heaven we shall enjoy all to right ends.
There sit the perfect women, perfect men; —
Minds which control themselves, hearts which indulge
Designs of wondrous goodness, but so far
Only, as soul extolled to bliss and power
Most high, sees fit for each, divinely. Here,
The statesman makes new laws for growing worlds,
Through their forefated ages. Here, the sage
Masters all mysteries, more and more, from day
To day, watching the thoughts of men and angels
Through moral microscopes; or hails afar,
By some vast intellectual instrument,
The mighty spirits, good or bad, which range
The space of mind; some spreading death and woe
On far-off worlds — some great with good and life.
And here the poet, like that wall of fire
In ancient song, surrounds the universe;
Lighting himself, where'er he soars or dives.
With his own bright brain — this is the poet's heaven.
Here he may realize each form or scene
He e'er on earth imagined; or bid dreams
Stand fast, and faery palaces appear.
Here he has Heaven to hear him; to the which
He sings, with manlike voice and song, the love
Which lent him his whole strength, as is the wont
Of all great spirits and good throughout the world.
Oh! happiest of the happy is the bard!
Here, too, some pluck the branch of peace wherewith
To greet a suffering saint, and show his flood
Of woe hath sunken: this I love to do.
My love, we shall be happy here.
F ESTUS . Shall I
Ever come here?
A NGELA . Thou mayest. I will pray for thee,
And watch thee.
F ESTUS . Thou wilt have, then, need to weep.
This heart must run its orbit. Pardon thou
Its many sad deflections. It will return
To thee and to the primal goal of Heaven.
A NGELA . Practise thy spirit to great thoughts and things,
That thou mayst start, when here, from vantage ground,
We can foretell the future of ourselves,
And fateful only to himself is each.
F ESTUS . I do not fear to die; for, though I change
The mode of being, I shall ever be.
World after world will fall at my right hand;
The glorious future be the past despised:
All now that seemeth bright will soon seem dim,
And darker grow, like earth, as we approach it;
While I shall stand upon yon heaven which now
Hangs over me. If aught can make me seek
Other to be than that lost soul I fear me.
It is, that thou lovest me. Heaven were not Heaven
Without thee.
Lucifer . I am here now. Art thou ready?
Let us go.
A NGELA . Well — farewell. It makes me grieve
To bid a loved one back to yon false world —
To give up even a mortal unto death.
Thou wilt forget me soon, or seek to do.
F ESTUS . When I forget that the stars shine in air —
When I forget that beauty is in stars —
When I forget that love with beauty is —
Will I forget thee: till then, all things else.
Thy love to me was perfect from the first,
Even as the rainbow in its native skies:
It did not grow: let meaner things mature.
A NGELA . The rainbow dies in Heaven, and not on earth;
But love can never die; from world to world,
Up the high wheel of heaven, it lives for aye.
Remember that I wait thee, hoping, here.
Life is the brief disunion of that nature
Which hath been one and same in Heaven ere now,
And shall be yet again, renewed by Death.
Come to me when thou diest!
F ESTUS . I will, I will.
A NGELA . Then, in each other's arms, we will waft through space,
Spirit in spirit, one! or we will dwell
Among these immortal groves; or watch new worlds,
As, like the great thoughts of a Maker-mind,
They are rounded out of chaos: and we will
Be oft on earth with those we love, and help them;
For God hath made it lawful for good souls
To make souls good; and saints to help the saintly
That thou right soon mayst fold unto thy heart
The blissful consciousness of separate
Oneness with God, in Him in whom alone
The saved are deathless, shall become, for thee,
My earliest, earnest, and most constant prayer.
Oh! what is dear to creatures of the earth?
Life, love, light, liberty! But dearer far
Than all — and oh! an universe more divine —
The gift, which God endows his chosen with,
Of His own uncreated glory, — His
Before all worlds, all ages, and reserved
Till after all for those He loves and saves.
As when the eye first views some Andean chain
Of shadowy rolling mountains, based on air,
Height upon height, aspiring to the last,
Even to Heaven, in sunny snow sheen, up
Stretching like angel's pinions, nor can tell
Which be the loftiest nor the loveliest;
As when an army, wakening with the sun,
Starts to its feet all hope, spear after spear
And line on line reundulating light,
While night's dull watchfires reek themselves away,
So feels the spirit when it first receives
The bright and mountainous mysteries of God,
Containing Heaven, moving themselves towards us,
In their free greatness, as by ships at sea
Come icebergs, pure and pointed as a star
Afar off glittering, of invisible
Depth, and dissolving in the light above.
F ESTUS . My prayer shall be that thy prayer be fulfilled.
I must to earth again. Farewell, sweet soul!
A NGELA . Farewell! I love thee, and will oft be with thee.
Lucifer . I like earth more than this: I rather love
A splendid failing than a petty good;
Even as the thunderbolt, whose course is downwards,
Is nobler far than any fire which soars.
F ESTUS . I am determined to be good again —
Again? When was I otherwise than ill?
Does not sin pour from my soul like dew from earth
And, vaporing up before the face of God,
Congregate there in clouds between Heaven and me?
What wonder that I lack delight of life?
For it is thus — when amid the world's delights,
How warm so'er we feel a moment among them —
We find ourselves, when the hot blast hath blown,
Prostrate, and weak, and wretched, even as I am.
I wish that I could leap from off this star,
And dash my soul to atoms like a glass.
Lucifer . I have done nothing for thee yet.
Thou shalt
See Heaven, and Hell, and all the sights of space,
When'er thou choosest.
F ESTUS . Not then now.
Lucifer . Up! rise!
F ESTUS . No; I'll be good: and will see none of them.
Earth draws us like a loadstone. We are coming.