Classic Poem

SCENE — Everywhere .

Lucifer and F ESTUS .

F ESTUS . Why, earth is in the very midst of Heaven!
And space, though void of things, feels full of God.
Hath space no limit?
Lucifer . None to thee. Yet, if
Infinite, it would equal God; and that
To think of is most vain.
F ESTUS . And yet if not
Infinite how can God exist therein?
Lucifer . I say not.
F ESTUS . No. So soon when placed beside
The infinite, the poor immortal fails.
Lucifer . Space is God's space: Eternity is His
Eternity; His, Heaven. He only holds
Perfections which are but the impossible
To other beings.
F ESTUS . We are things of time.
Lucifer . With God time is not. Unto Him all is
Present Eternity. Worlds, beings, years,
With all their natures, powers, and events,
The range whereof when making He ordains,
Unfold themselves like flowers. He foresees
Not, but sees all at once. Time must not be
Contrasted with Eternity: 't is not
A second of the everlasting year.
Perfections, although infinite with God,
Are all identical; as much of Him —
And holy is His mercy, merciful
His wisdom, wise His love, and kind his wrath —
As form, extension, parts, are requisites
Of matter. Spirit hath no parts. It is
One substance, whole and indivisible,
Whatever else. Souls see each other clear
At one glance, as two drops of rain in air
Might look into each other, had they life.
Death does away disguise. Even here I feel
Among these mighty things, that, as I am,
I am akin to God; — that I am part
Of the use universal, and can grasp
Some portion of that reason in the which
The whole is ruled and founded; — that I have
A spirit nobler in its cause and end,
Lovelier in order, greater in its powers,
Than all these bright immensities — how swift!
And doth creation's tide for ever flow,
Nor ebb with like destruction? World on world,
Are they for ever heaping up, and still
The mighty measure never full?
Lucifer . To act
Is power's habit; alway to create,
God's; which, thus ever causing worlds, to Him
Nought cumbrous more than new down to a wing,
Aye multiplies at once my power and pain.
I have seen many frames of being pass.
This generation of the universe
Will soon be gathered to its grave. These worlds,
Which bear its sky-pall, soon will follow thine.
I, both. All things must die.
F ESTUS . What are ye orbs?
The words of God — the Scriptures of the skies?
For words with Him cannot be passing, nor
Less real, vast, or glorious, than yourselves.
The world is a great poem, and the worlds
The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts.
Ye cannot die.
Lucifer . Think not on death. Here all
Is life, light, beauty. Harp not so on death.
F ESTUS . I cannot help me, spirit! Chide no more.
As who dare gaze the sun, doth after see
Betwixt him and else a dark sun in his eye;
So I, once having braved my burning doom,
See nought beside — or that in every thing.
Hark, what is that I hear?
Lucifer . An angel weeping —
Earth's guardian angel. She is ever weeping.
F ESTUS . See where she flies, spirit-torn, round the heavens,
Like a fore-feel of madness about the brain.

A NGEL OF E ARTH . Stars, stars!
Stop your bright cars!
Stint your breath —
Repent ere worse —
Think of the death
Of the universe.
Fear doom, and fear,
The fate of your kin-sphere.
As a corse in the tomb,
Earth! thou art laid in doom:
The worm is at thy heart.
I see all things part: —
The bright air thicken,
Thunder-stricken:
Birds from the sky
Shower like leaves:
Streamlets stop
Like ice on leaves:
The sun go blind:
Swoon the wind
On the high hill top —
Swoon and die:
Earth rear off her cities
As a horse his rider;
And still, with each death-strain,
Her heart-wound tear wider:
The lion roar and die
With his eye-balls on the sky:
The eagle scream
And drop like a beam:
Men crowd and cry,
Out on this deathful dream!
A low dull sound —
'Tis the march of many bones
Under ground;
Up! and they fling,
Like a fly's wing,
Off them the gray grave-stones;
They sit in their biers —
Father and mother,
Man and wife,
Sister and brother,
As in life;
Lady and lover —
Love all over.
Their flesh re-appears — .
Their hearts beat —
Their eyes have tears:
Woe! woe!
Do they speak?
Stir? No!
Tongues were too weak,
Save to repeat
Woe!
But they smile
In a while;
For to wipe from His word
The dust of years,
He comes! he comes! the Lord,
Man-God, reappears;
To bless, and to save
From death and the grave —
To redeem and deliver
For ever and ever!
The dead rise —
Death dies.
Go, Time, and sink
Thy great thoughts in the sea!
And quench thy red link!
Let him flutter to rest
On thy God-nursing breast,
Eternity!
Mother Eternity!
What is for me?

F ESTUS . Poor angel! Ah! it is the good who suffer.
Look! like a cloud, she has wept herself away.
What of this world we view, and all yon worlds?
If God made not all things from nothing, how
Is He creator? Something must exist
If otherwise, eternal with Himself;
And all things had not origin in Him.
Lucifer . He made all things of Him. The visible world
Is as the Christ of nature; God the maker
In matter made self-manifest through time.
All things are formed of all things — all of God.
The world is made of wonders. Every day
Is born a new creation. Every orb
Hath its revealed word; and every race
Of Being hath its judgment, or shall have.
F ESTUS . Are all these worlds, then, stocked with souls like man's —
Free, fallible, and sinful?
Lucifer . Ay, they are.
All creature-minds, like man's, are fallible.
The seraph who in Heaven highest stands
May fall to ruin deepes' God is mind —
Pure, perfect, sinless. Man imperfect is —
Momently sinning. Evil then results
From imperfection. The idea of good
Is owned in imperfection's lowest form.
God would not, could not, make aught wholly ill,
Nor aught not like to err. Man never was
Perfect nor pure, or he would be so now.
Thy nature hath some excellences — these
Oft thwarted by low lusts and wicked wills.
What then? They are necessitate in kind,
As change in nature, or as shade to light.
No darkness hath the sun — no weakness God:
These only be the faulty qualities
Of secondary natures — planets, men.
God hath no attributes unless To Be
Be one: 't would mix Him with the things He hath made.
God is all God, as life is that which lives.
I am a mighty spirit, and yet I
Am but to God what lightning is to light:
Lightning slays one thing — light makes all things live.
Bear, then, thy necessary ills with grace;
No positive estate or principle
Is Evil — debtor wholly for its form
And measure to defect — defect to good.
Good's the sole positive principle in the world;
It is only thus, that what God makes, He loves —
And must: the others are but off-shoots. Ill
Is limited. One cannot form a scheme
For universal evil; not even I.
F ESTUS . Can imperfection from perfection come?
Can God make aught defective?
Lucifer . How aught else?
There are but three proportions in all things —
The greater — equal — less. God could not make
A God above Himself, nor equal with —
By nature and necessity the Highest;
So, if He make, it must be lesser minds
Little and less from angels down to men,
Whose natures are imperfect, as His own
Must be all-perfect. These two states are not,
Except as whole unto its parts, opposed;
And evil is itself no ill unless
Creation be.
F ESTUS . Is God the cause of evil?
Lucifer . So far as evil comes from imperfection,
And imperfection from the things He hath made,
And what He hath made from His will to make.
F ESTUS . Oh! let me rest, be it but a moment's pause!
This endless light-like journey wearies me.
Remember still my spirit toils in dust —
A dark, close cloud.
Lucifer . Alight, then, on this orb.
I am not wearied: I will watch by thee.
He sleeps — he dreams. How far men see in dreams!
In dreams they can accomplish worlds of things:
The heart then suffers a fusion of all feeling
Back to its youthful hours of innocence,
And nakedness, and paradise; ere yet
The world had wound a perishing garb around it;
While yet its God came down and spake to it.
Such and so great are dreams. My might, my being
To him is but a dream's. And could a state
To come fill up their dream-stretched minds, they might
Be gods. And may it not be so? Then man
Is worth my ruining. What does he dream?
With all the sway his spirit now exerts
O'er time, space, thought, it is but a shadowy sway,
Light as a mountain shadow on a lake.
Mine is the mountain's self. A touch would shake
To nought whatever his soul now feels or acts;
But not a world-quake could touch aught of mine
Thus much we differ. I will not envy man.
Power alone makes being bearable.
And yet this dream-power is mind-power — real:
All things are real: fiction cannot be.
A thought is real as the world — a dream
True as all God doth know — with whom all is true.
The deep, dense sleep of half-dead exhaustedness!
Would I could feel it. Ah! he wakes at last.
F ESTUS . Oh! I have dreamed a dream so beautiful!
Methought I lay as it were here; and, lo!
A spirit came and gave me wings of light,
Which thrice I waved delighted. Up we flew
Sheer through the shining air, far past the sun's
Broad blazing disk, — past where the great great snake
Binds in his bright coil half the host of Heaven, —
Past thee, Orion! who, with arm uplift,
Threatening the throne of God, dost ever stand
Sublimely impious; and thy mighty mace
Whirling on high, down from its glorious seat
Drops, crushed and shattered, many a shining world.
And so the brave and beautiful of old
Believed thou wast a giant made of worlds:
And they were right, if thus they bodied out
The immortal mind; for it hath starlike beauty,
And worldlike might; and is as high above
The things it scorns, and will make war with God,
Though He gave it earth and Heaven, and arms to win
Them both; and, spite of lust and pride, to earn them.
And now thy soul informs yon hundred stars,
As mine my limbs — well, 't is a noble end.
What now to thee be mortal maid or goddess?
Look! she who fled thee once, now loves and longs
To clasp thee to her cold and beamy breast.
Pine moon! thou art as far below him now,
As once she was above thee, thou of the world-belt!
And she who had thee, and who knew thee god,
Died of her boast, and lies in her own dust.
And she who loved thee, the young blushy Morning,
Who caught thee in her arms, and bore thee off
Far o'er the lashing seas to a lonely isle,
Where she might pleasure longer and in secret —
That love undid thee; and it is so now:
Whether the beauty seek, or flee, or have,
'Tis a like ill — this beauty doubly mortal.
What though the moon with madness slew thee there,
Let me believe it was within the arms
That loved thee even in the stroke of death,
And that there snapped the lightning link of life.
Kill, but not conquer, man nor mind may gods.
Thou image of the Almighty error, man!
Banished and banned to Heaven, by a weak world,
Which makes the minds, it cannot master gods.
And thou, the first and greatest of half-gods,
Which they in olden time did star together
To an idolatrous immortality;
Who nationalized the Heavens, and gave all stars
Unto the spirits of the good and brave,
Forestalling God by ages — wondrous men!
And if — beguiled by wine, and the low wiles
Thou wouldst not creep to meet, and a drunken sleep,
Like to high noon in the midst of all his might,
Close by the brink of immortality —
The deep dominions of thy sea-sire, thou
Didst lose thy light by kings who hate the great,
Thou only hadst to stand up to the sun,
And gain again thine eyes. So the great king,
The world, the tyrant we elect, in vain
Puts out the eyes of mind: it looks to God,
And reaps its light again. Wherefore, revenge!
Out with the sword! the world will run before thee,
Orion! belted giant of the skies!
Thou with the treble strain of godhood in thee!
March! there is nought to hinder thee in Heaven: —
Past that great sickle saved for one day's work,
When He who sowed shall reap Creation's field; —
Past those high diademed orbs which show to man
His crown to come; — up through the starry strings
Of that high harp close by the feet of God,
Which He, methought, took up and struck, till Heaven,
In love's immortal madness, rang and reeled;
The stars fell on their faces; and, far off,
The wild world halted — shook his burning mane —
Then, like a fresh-blown trumpet blast, went on,
Or like a god gone mad. On, on we flew,
I and the spirit, far beyond all things
Of measure, motion, time, and aught create;
Where the stars stood on the edge of the first nothing,
And looked each other in the face and fled, —
Past even the last long starless void, to God;
Whom straight I heard, methought, commanding thus:
Immortal! I am God. Hie back to earth,
And say to all, that God doth say — Love God!
Lucifer . God visits men a dreaming: I, awake.
F ESTUS . And my dream changed to one of general doom.
Wilt hear it?
Lucifer . Ay, say on! It is but a dream.
F ESTUS . God made all mind and motion cease; and, lo!
The whole was death and peace. An endless time
Obtained, in which the power of all made failed.
God bade the worlds to judgment, and they came —
Pale, trembling, corpse-like. To the souls therein
Then spake the Maker: Deathless spirits, rise!
And straight they thronged around the throne.
His arm
The Almighty then uplift, and smote the worlds
Once, and they fell in fragments like to spray,
And vanished in their native void. He shook
The stars from Heaven like rain-drops from a bough;
Like tears they poured adown creation's face.
Spirit and space were all things. Matter, death,
And time, left even not a wake to tell
Where once their track o'er being. God's own light
Undarkened and unhindered by a sun,
Glowed forth alone in glory. And through all
A clear and tremulous sense of God prevailed,
Like to the blush of love upon the cheek,
Or the full feeling lightening through the eye,
Or the quick music in the chords of harps.
God judged all creatures unto bliss or woe,
According to their deeds, and faith, and His
Own will: and straight the saved upraised a voice
Which seemed to emulate eternity
In its triumphant over-blessedness.
The lost leapt up and cursed God to His face —
A curse might make the sun turn cold to hear;
And thee, in all thy burning glory, tremble,
In front of all thine angels, like a chord.
Rage writhed each brow into a changeless scowl.
Madly they mocked at God, and dared His eye,
Safe in their curse of deathlessness. To Hell
They hied like storms; and, cursing all things, each
Soul wrapped him in his shroud of fire for aye,
With one long, loud howl, which seemed to deafen Heaven —
And then I woke.
Lucifer . A wild, fantastic dream
A mere mirage of mind! Come, let us leave:
We have seen enough of this world.
F ESTUS . Lift me up, then
World upon world, how they come rolling on!
But none that I see are so fair as earth:
There is so much to love that is purely earth.
Now I could wander all day in the wood,
Where nature, like a sibyl, writes the fate
Of all that live on her red forest leaves:
And have no other aim than wandering
Within that wood, and wind my arms around
Its gray, gaunt trunks, and think and feel to them;
While the wind, sinking, moans over the earth
Like a giant over some dead captive dame,
Whom death had saved from madness and his love; —
Could tramp across the brown and springy moor,
And over the purple ling, and never tire; —
Could look upon the ripple of a river,
Or on a tree's long shadow down a hill,
For a whole summer's day, wishing the sun
Would drink my soul up to him as he draws
Dew from the earth. These things are in my mind,
And suns and systems cannot drive them out.
Dost ravage all these worlds?
Lucifer . Ay, all mine own.
Where spirit is, there evil; and the world
Is full of me as ocean is of brine.
F ESTUS . God is all perfect; man imperfect Thou?
Lucifer . I am the imperfection of the whole —
The pitch profoundest of the fallible.
Myself the all of evil which exists —
The ocean heaped into a single surge.
F ESTUS . O God! why wouldst Thou make the universe?
Lucifer . Child! quench yon suns; strip death of its decay;
Men of their follies — Hell of all its woe!
These, if thou didst, thou couldst not banish me.
I am the shadow which Creation casts
From God's own light — But here we are, at Hell.
Hark to the thunderous roaring of its fires!
Yet ere we further pass — stop! dost thou shrink?
F ESTUS . At nought — not I! Come on, fiend! follow me!