Classic Poem

Came on the starless age of the uncheered
Dark night, that in the shadow of the earth
Hid the dead Saviour of the world, and gleamed
Upon the warrior-watched and virgin tomb
Which held the mortal of that man foredoomed
To visit the deep region of the dead,
And thence to reascend both earth and heaven,
The first pale day; and more mean-time the gloom
Deepened in hell—where, motionless, reclined
The sad immortals, chief among the powers
Of earth and air, giants and fallen gods,
And looked upon each other without word.
Nor might the grief that bowed supremest shapes,
Nor the dumb trouble in their eyes, find voice
While he before them sat who with a word
Had made them voiceless, and spake not again,
And looked not up, since when his looked despair
Had darkened hell, and like a black eclipse
Covered the hope that was its only day.
Half to his throne ascended, on the steep
Sole-touched by his proud feet, as if dethroned
By his own act, and into ruin fallen
Self-hurled, sat Aïdoneus, discrowned,
With foot upon a broken sceptre set,
And head stooped forward to his hands, and seemed,
But for the rising and the slow decline
Of his wide-lifting shoulders, like one dead.
And dread his aspect, even to their eyes
Used to all sights of grandeur and despair,
All tragic posture and the pomp of woe;
Not only for his immemorial state
Abandoned, and the rightful awe that still
Sat on his unkinged head and vacant hand,
But him most capable of grief they deemed
Whose strength was greatest to endure or dare,
And deepest his despair whose hope was first.
So there before him, each upon his throne,
Sat as if throne and shape were but one stone;
And, for that space, more like their idols seemed
In regions orient, sitting, hushed and dark,
Within a woody cloister of close palms,
Or, old with lifeless years, in some forgot,
Rare-pilgrimed temple, or dim cavern, ranged,—
Unseen by all the stars. At length to break
The latent chain that bound the force of limb
And faculty in each fierce spirit, rose
Barbarian Baal; in his depth of shade,
Save by their gloomy and familiar eyes,
Not from the dark discerned; in shape conjoined
Angel and brute, in temper brute, but strong,
And third from Satan; whom with unfixed glance,
Under low-dropped and sternly neighboring brows,
He now regarded, as a frenzied beast
On his still dreaded master rolls his fierce,
Inconstant orbs. Him, ages now, unfed
With blood of slaughtered bulls and fragrant smoke,
Sharp hunger seized, and lion-pangs, to taste
Again such offerings, and repossess
The dark and secret land, whence fled of late
His desperate chief; not now from the armed voice
Of his great plaintiff, summoning its bands
Of vassal evils; not from thunder piled
On the crushed air, and titan-lightnings hurled
From his black solitary heaven, high
Above all reach; but from his far-stretched hand
Disguised as human, and the all-pure force
Of virtue, clad in human voice and shape.
Thus hindered of that hope, and chafed, and what
Was godlike in him fired with shame, to think
How one by one the ethnic gods had fallen,
Disarmed, before the constant powers of heaven,
Met in the battle-region of the earth—
How many forced by slight antagonists,
Of puny frame and seeming, from their old
Usurped domain,—himself, on Carmel's top
Amid his howling prophets, by a man,
Defeated, and their prowest, in the wide
And wild arena where he met the last
And wondrous apparition marked with signs
Of Heaven and hostile purpose;—by such scorns
Panged and enraged, and long made pale with hate
Of gods terrestrial-born, but equal made
With the celestial, and to like domain
By Satan raised—the mighty bulk stood up,
Strong but irresolute, and sought to throw
The weight of that stern presence from his soul,
And from its ward unlock imprisoned sound.
But scarce they heard the first hoarse breath, that died
Ere his dumb lips had shaped it to a word
Of any import, when throughout the throng
They stirred, and grasped their arms, as if some ill,
Long pondered and expected, from the heights
Of ether suddenly had fallen; he,
Around and upward, looked with listening stare;
Then, like a cloud arming in heaven, grew
More black and dreadful, and his giant peers,
With copied brow, frowned back dread sympathy,
Published revolt and general discontent:
Yet unprepared they heard, when words like these,
Forth poured like shaped, articulate thunder, shook
The wide Infern, that from its shadowy sides,
Of deepest region, ruined back the sound,
As when one shouts within a hollow cave.
“Abjects—once gods! befits it now that he,
Sole cause of this despair, and for whose sake
We suffer, that his pride may play at Jove,
God of this subterraneous world—with us,
His toys, for subjects—should here sit infirm,
Like his Memnonian image, blind and deaf
To evils that can add to grief that seemed,
Ere this, at greatest, and where all was lost
Bring ruin, and make woe in hell? 'Tis fit,
And time, methinks some monarch should ascend
The abdicated throne, which he perchance
Leaves to his recent victor, hitherward
Pursuing him, with unfamiliar feet
In the blind access hindered, if aright
The babbling lips of oracle have told
Of such a one's descent to these abodes.”
He paused, checked by no voice, by none assured:
As when a ship, that on the world's great sides
Climbs the wave-ribbed Pacific, 'gainst the weight
Of tempests from the skiey Andes pressed
Upon the barriered continent of air,
Resistless back, and leaning on the sea,
Is hit by thunder, and intestine fire
Breaks forth, and lights the inexorable face
Of her wild doom; the stark, bewildered crew
Give her to wind and sea, and as she swings,
Helmless, from wave to wave, with crashing spars,
Sit idle,—so sat these who manned the torn
And struggling wreck of heaven, in this abyss
Storm-tossed; so startled, yet infirmly sad
With such surmises as could make gods pale:—
When Satan reared his head, on which no crown
Might plainer have writ king, nor horrent plumes
Shadowed more terror: His immane right hand,
Armed with a gesture of supreme command,
Rose with deific grace to herald speech,
Then, from changed purpose or disdain of words,
Convulsively reached forth, and, as it seemed,
Grasped at the shade of an imagined power
To wield the elemental arms that hung
Gleaming and tremulous in the storm-lit air;
And muttered thunder bayed the ear: At once
A thousand hands upon the broad defence
Tightened their grasp, and half uprose the throng,
Or in their places stirred with ringing sound,
Like the faint threat of war: But Baal, prompt
To seize the imperial moment that controls
The after time, though not without some sign
Of effort in his mien, wrenched forth these words.
“Think not, twice-conquered, from thy sovran place
To awe us with a look, who see crowned Fate
Frown from a greater height on thee and us—
Thee quelled—and us, who far above all fear
Raised, as below all hope dejected, dare
The eternal Tyrant: the malignant star
Of thy dominion rose before our eyes,
Within our own horizon rose, and burned,
And fell toward the darkness, and, like thee,
A creature of the finite time—finds here
Its temporal limit and for ever sets.
Thy strength we know is great, but equals not
The combined strength it governs, the great force
And title of so many worshipped gods;
Which, if it be that might is proof of right,
May rightly govern thee, and henceforth shall.”
No answer Heaven's great traverser returned
To these bold taunts, though loud, he marked them not,
Nor heard; as showed his sinking head and arm,
And all his gestureless bowed form, collapsed,
As from a blow by an invisible hand.
And the infernal tribune poured amain
His turbulent speech, with words that swept like storms
Across the souls, celestial still, though fallen,
Of those high-thoughted gloomy deities;—
Words of just right and freedom, tyranny
And usurpation, lore their king himself
And tyrant taught them, when of old it served
'Gainst the All-Ruler: Nor did he forget,
But with the music of some sadness now
In his harsh tones, subdued, and smoothed, to speak
Of hoped deliverance, and the Babel-dreams
With which high-building fancy whiled their pain,
As of things real, merged in this despair,
And whelmed in this last ruin whose full wave
Broke high above them; and with wilful grief,
Over their drowned magnificence his soul
Still wandered and lamented, as the sea
Wails through a city sunk with all its towers.
Nor spared his insolence the highest names
To whom heroic deeds had given praise
Among earth's deities, and so place in hell;
Or those for fortitude as high advanced
By its great regent; Cain and Nimrod first,
Alcides, Theseus, Orion, blind
Bellerophontes, and the names, long since
Dead to the human ear, of Anakim,
Titan, and Demigod, the infant words
Of fame, forgotten in her age, but here
Retained, and honored as became the great
And first-born offspring of the virgin earth,
The giant nurslings of her mighty youth.
“Easy for you,” he said, with voice and look
As when the aerial storm-maned lion roars
Against the earth, and glares upon the doomed,—
“Easy for you to king and lord it here,
High-seated 'mid the tyrannies of hell,
Who know no greater state, nor ever felt
Contrast of hell and heaven, nor proved his might
Whose lightning strikes high tops, but such as ye
Leaves safe in weakness, fable what they may
Of wars on Jove. No dizzy height ye fell,
From climbed Olympus or towered Babel hurled,
Here in these depths to find far higher place
Than, though presumptuous, your low thoughts aspired
Above the cloud-spread air; whose blackness scared,
And casual fire—not frighted Jove—deterred
Wingless invaders, heavenward, step by step,
Ascending; know, proud reptiles, mated ill
With children of the air, that from this hour
We recognize no monarch but our fate,—
No peers but are our equals, thus at first
Created, or approved by might.” He ceased,
And his defiant foot and planted spear
Brought up an echo from the heart of hell.
Astarte, then, whose anger, scarce restrained
To hear these words from her Sidonian mate,
Burned like the glow of fire through binding smoke,
Blazed upward suddenly, and all her moons
And deep tiaras of stars flashed rosy ire,
Virgin disdain tempered with grief divine.
Like her own planet rising in the east,
So large and fair the beauteous giant stood,
To them who gazed, more lovely for her wrath.
To none was she unknown, to angels there
A woman-angel, from her faith seduced
By bright Abaddon, and to them of earth
Regent of moonèd skies; but in the west
The elect infernal queen, to whom far-strayed
In Nysa's flowery field, from out the earth,
Naked and grisly, came the king of night,
And shamed the modest day of her fair eyes,
And chased the clear Aurora from her cheeks,
Displaced with evening red, and dewy tears.
And thus she spake, with voice as when at night
One hears afar the instant birth of sound
In brazen tubes melodious, mixed with touch
Of stringèd sympathies, that with their tide
Of human feeling fill the hollow air,
Up to the dreaming moon, that stoops to hear.
“More than defeat, oh worse than this despair!
Oh shame, twice shamed with worse defeat, that thou,
An ancient god, his fated feodary,
Who knew him in his greatness, when we all
Could not perceive in what he seemed, who took
The star-bright name of Lucifer, less great
Than stern Jehovah, or in what his state
Shone less magnificent,—that one who sat
High-throned beneath his feet, supremely placed,
And him adored, his creature, he thy God,
His pliant hand, his foot, his smile, his frown,
His friend, and favorite, till ruin came
Like night upon his radiance, and he fell—
A falling sun that after him drew down,
What could he less? his firmament of stars,
And left mid-heaven dark an equal space,
Here in this cavern with his troubled light
To glorify perdition; oh worse fall,
And death to our divinity!—that they
Should faithful stand who only know him fallen,
And thou shouldst be the first, while thus he sits,
His soul striving its death, to launch these shafts,
Making the wounds trenched by the bolts of Heaven
The mark of thy more dire though feeble aim.
What did I hear thee urge, deedless declaimer,
Against his faith and conduct, from the hopes
Fallen in his defeat? Who gave us hope
Whereon to build these hopes that we lament?
Who gave us from this den unhoped reprieve?
Gave yonder flowery world and sapphire sky
In the celestial ether, and, to soothe
This pain, gifts, incense, ritual dance and song,
With clashing cymbals jubilant, awed looks
And smiles and supplicating tears? Who raised
Our prostrate deity, in this abyss
Half-buried in its ruins, where it lay
Spurned by the brute and unintelligent
Wild powers of nature, storm, and flaming fire,
And loud, insulting thunder,—its whole force,
And almost life, extinguished, and its light
Nigh trodden out by darkness,—who restored,
Reared, and enthroned it on the heart of man?
And thou, who gave thee thy high-altared hills
And woody temples? whose pale rites my soul
Not more abhorred, above the cedarn tops
Of Syria gliding nightly, than to hear
These blasphemies that more pollute thy lips.
And what though from green fields and azure air,
In that fair heaven of our exile, sent;
Thou for thy vulturous thirst indeed long since,
And we by this defeat? What can be said
But that our enemy, and his, is God,
The eternal elder of all spirits, sire
Of all control and power, over all
High head omnipotent; with whom he now
Strives inwardly, and not with such as thou,
Nor thy reproaches feels, nor hears these words
I speak in his defence, who little thought
He ever would need word from any tongue!”
Thus spake the queen of night, nor deigned to know
If well or ill regarded were her words;
But as when Judah's daughters mourned defeat
And desolation from the foe, she shook
The cloud of her dark tresses to her feet,
And sat beneath them, like a veil; dark, vast,
And stone-like motionless, like the great shape
Of their despair and grief before them set,
By the wan star above her stooping head
Silvered with light. Then high-placed Cain stood up,
A king in semblance, but whose head superb,
Gray with the downfall of afflicting years,
Suborned no greatness of its golden tire;
Nor among kings less than the first might seem,
Nor less than equal among angels stood
Hell's human premier, pale and sternly fair,
Of arch-angelic stature, like a god.
For spirit freed from bodily restraint,
Forced circumscription, if in essence great,
Of its true greatness then puts on the form:
If feeble and irresolute, though of bulk
Typhöean, adequate shape assumes,
Lopped of its huge proportions: And thus spake
The Homicide, whose hand first gave to death
The taste of blood; the lion of that pit
Where fallen he lay, unhumbled fierce and loud,
The first and eldest of his race in hell,
And by its older spirits, though heaven-born,
Feared for a youth accursed above their age.
“Princes, since I, it seems, must prove my right
To call you peers, I stand not here to speak
In his defence who needs none, and whose soul
Would deem such words dishonor, did he hear.
But this I say, that of necessity
Ye fell with him, who fell; his satellites;
Who, had ye then been left, as now ye would,
In that metropolis of all worlds, (by me
Unseen and undesired,) without your head,
Had fallen to ruins, and been darker left
In heaven, deprived his light, than in deep hell.
Fatal dependency, and if unjust,
Let Fate be blamed, not him: But I, who stood
Probationary heir to those bright seats
Whence ye were hurled, I, of free will, joined cause
With you against your tyrant, and alone
Among you came, not with these scoffings hailed,
The first ally of your new founded state;
Nor heard their omen in the infinite cry
That killed the silence when your monarch gave
To this red hand, with that permissive shout,
Hell's second sceptre, as by natural right
King of the new-confederated race.”
Thus far, he spake with low but rising sound,
As when, up