PART III.
THE GODS .
I .
But afterward; when, save the steel-shod sound
O' the surly sentinel from tent to tent,
The camps were silent, and the night far spent,
Licinius, rising in the restless night,
Mused by the altars of his gods.
II .
Faint light
Stream'd from the faded embers, and faint fume.
O'er all his spirit a supernatural gloom
Had fall'n, and that profound discouragement
Which seizes on the soul whose passion, spent
In stormy thought, leaves action half unnerved.
In dead-cold skies the dark east, unobserved,
Wax'd sallow. Dead-cold influences pass'd
About the old man's heart. Licinius cast
His body upon the ground, and felt a Fear
Plant its foot on him in the darkness drear,
And pray'd intensely, as men only pray
When Fear is on them. Terror pass'd away.
A mystic wind was moving in his hair:
And hands unearthly touch'd him unaware.
III .
He, gazing up against the scatter'd gleam
Of the late stars, what time her dragon team
The night's moon-fronted maiden charioteer
Down o'er the dark world's edge was driving clear,
Saw — bright above the black and massy earth,
From cope to base — beyond the utmost girth
Of their wide-orb'd horizons, the intense
And intricate heavens, with silent vehemence,
Burst supernaturally open; as tho'
A bud should in a moment's time, not grow,
But change itself, into a flower full-blown.
IV .
To his sole sight was such a marvel shown.
The fair Olympians, all at once, and all
Together, in the Ambrosial Banquet Hall!
Each august countenance (vast gladness closed
In complete calm) ineffably composed
To an aweful beauty. Unendurably bare
The bright celestial nakednesses were.
And, far behind those Heavenly Presences,
Heaven's self lay bare to the innermost abyss
Of the unsounded azure. Orb in orb
Of what both seem'd to emit and to absorb,
In the same everlasting moment, light,
Space, silence, — sporting with the infinite!
For, to the universe, the universe
Listening, the while it answer'd, did immerse
The sound within the silentness of things.
Lights — meteors — mystic messengers, with wings,
Wands, trumpets, crowns — silently came and went
In the profound, but lucid, element
Of that divine abysm. Befitting form
Each Spirit shaped itself from calm, or storm,
Snow, fire, rain, thunder, and sea-thrilling wind:
All creatures of the All-creative Mind,
That makes each moment, and each moment mars,
Its own imaginings: thoughts, many as stars,
Or birds innumerable upon the wing:
Some, with congenial chance incarnating
Their restless essence, and so, brightening: some,
As soon as born, dissolved within the dome
Of that deep-lighted distance. Underneath,
The dim world, wrapt in mist of mortal breath,
Low glimmering, sea and land. And all about
The belted orb, close-coiling in and out,
Like a sleek snake with vary-colour'd back,
Glitter'd the constellated zodiac.
But, over tented camp, and temple wall
Or gated court, in tower'd cities tall,
Serenely slided down the silent sky,
Bearing disaster, bearing victory,
With benedictions these, as those with ills,
The viewless heralds of the Heavenly Wills,
Unmindful of the murmuring of mankind.
V .
All vague as vapour shapen by the wind
To mimic mountain, cape, or continent,
That every moment changes, came and went,
With wondrous modulation manifold,
The vision of that marvellous movement, roll'd
Around the zoned orb of Circumstance,
Revolving in the marginless expanse
Whereon the serene doors and porches all
Of that sublime god-builded Banquet Hall
Opening, let in and out Eternity.
VI .
There, midmost of his kindred godheads, high
In contemplative glory, and calm as morn
On lone Olympus (where no foot hath worn
Heaven's white snow from the summit of the world)
Sat Father Jove. From whose crown'd temples curl'd
The locks that, shaken, shake the woody tops
Of scornful hills, and o'er the full-ear'd crops
Roll blighting thunders, in storms, white or blue,
Of hail and rain. Broad-brow'd, broad-bearded too,
In meditative mood, with slack right hand
The cypress sceptre of his vast command
He, leaning forward, lightly held. All bare
The god's broad chest and ample shoulders were:
For gods, in company with gods, forego
Disguises meant for men: but all below
His spacious waist, in floods of massy fold,
From his large knees the lilied vesture roll'd:
Lest mortal eyes should, even in Heaven, espy
Aught save the robe that wraps the Deity.
VII .
At the right hand of her great spouse, the Queen,
Of scorn majestic, with man-quelling mien,
And regnant eyes, whose large looks everywhere
Were felt in Heaven, gazed from her blazing chair;
Whereon, to left and right, from either side,
Four crested peacocks droop'd their Argus-eyed
Junonian trains. Behind, above her head
The attendant Iris, her handmaiden, spread
Her bright bow, woven from the azure grain
Of the midsummer silver-threaded rain.
That eloquent spirit of the woodland air,
Men call the cuckoo (which, being bodiless there,
Needs not, and builds not, any nest on earth),
Sat on her stately sceptre.
VIII .
Solemn mirth,
Like sempiternal summer, fill'd the hall
Where, round that Twain, the lesser godheads all,
At ease reclining by the ambrosial board,
In rosy circle ranged. Save one: Hell's lord,
The black-brow'd Pluto. Thro' Heaven's cloudy gaps,
Loom'd his dim realm, — one vague, drear, vast Perhaps.
There, dubious in the light by Hecate brew'd
For ghastly uses, a vast multitude
Of shapes — all shadows of the lives of men —
Continually coming, sought the den
Man's fear digs in his conscience for his crimes:
The outcasts of all ages, from all climes,
Doom'd by all creeds: Religion's shipwreck'd crew,
Barbarian, Roman, Christian, Greek, and Jew:
Who, in the glare of that disastrous light,
Gazed on each other's faces (dismal sight!)
And knew themselves, at last, for kinsmen drear,
The common offspring of one parent, Fear.
For, tho' man change his gods full many times,
Yet changed gods change not man, nor he his crimes:
Still from the knowledge of himself he breeds
Fears that make Hell the helpmate of all creeds,
Or old or new. And, even already, all
The brazen bound of that Tartarean wall,
Which not the gods themselves can overleap,
In windy circuit o'er the sulphurous deep,
Half-Gothic towers, by monkish masons built,
Put dimly forth. Nought but the shame and guilt
Seem'd real in the ghostly flux below
Of swimming change, that surged from woe to woe:
So, flexile as man's ever-moving mind,
Whose masonry all monstrous forms combined
In one immense metropolis of Pain,
Tho' moor'd by Fear upon a midnight main,
Yet pace with time Hell's fluent structures kept,
From each new architectural adept
Fresh grimness winning.
IX .
But all this was seen
In fluctuation indistinct between
The gaps of Heaven, thro' filmy distances
Of darkness, wild as wicked fancy is:
Nor marr'd the mirth of that Olympian feast
More than spots floating on the sun's bright breast
Darken his glory.
X .
Only, in the first
Amazing moment, when the vision burst
On him that saw it, Hebe, filling up
With nectarous aenomel a glorious cup,
Paused, as she pour'd, and stared, with open eyes
And open mouth, in half-displeased surprise,
Upon the wondering mortal. For he had,
To her, the ever-insolently-glad,
In the great human sadness of his face,
The aspect of a creature out of place:
As tho' into her golden cup had dropp'd
A sudden spider. Ganymede, too, stopp'd
Teasing Jove's Eagle: who, with a great cry,
Rose, rough'd his feathers, seem'd about to fly,
But, seeing Jove so quiet, droop'd his wing,
And waited watchful of his keen-eyed king.
Venus with glance disdainful turn'd to scan
The old man's face: then, seeing that the man
Was chopp'd with battle, sun-bronzed, seam'd with scars,
She, whose white arm was round the throat of Mars,
Pointed a rosy finger, veiling half
In her soft eyes a little mirthful laugh
Under delicious lids dark-lash'd. But he
Look'd on his worshipper remorsefully,
As some grave chieftain, when the strife is done,
Safe and unhurt himself, might gaze upon
His wounded battle-horse about to die.
Amor, that, trifling with his bow hard by,
Noticed not this new comer of the earth
(He having both eyes bandaged from his birth),
Guess'd with that instinct arch to children given
For mischievous occasion (since, thro' Heaven,
The babble of the mighty banquet hall
Suddenly ceased, a moment's space) that all
The attention of the gods was occupied:
And furtively, by Dian unespied,
From her chaste quiver stole the arrows keen,
And, in their places, with mock-serious mien,
Did his own little wanton darts dispose.
THE GODS .
I .
But afterward; when, save the steel-shod sound
O' the surly sentinel from tent to tent,
The camps were silent, and the night far spent,
Licinius, rising in the restless night,
Mused by the altars of his gods.
II .
Faint light
Stream'd from the faded embers, and faint fume.
O'er all his spirit a supernatural gloom
Had fall'n, and that profound discouragement
Which seizes on the soul whose passion, spent
In stormy thought, leaves action half unnerved.
In dead-cold skies the dark east, unobserved,
Wax'd sallow. Dead-cold influences pass'd
About the old man's heart. Licinius cast
His body upon the ground, and felt a Fear
Plant its foot on him in the darkness drear,
And pray'd intensely, as men only pray
When Fear is on them. Terror pass'd away.
A mystic wind was moving in his hair:
And hands unearthly touch'd him unaware.
III .
He, gazing up against the scatter'd gleam
Of the late stars, what time her dragon team
The night's moon-fronted maiden charioteer
Down o'er the dark world's edge was driving clear,
Saw — bright above the black and massy earth,
From cope to base — beyond the utmost girth
Of their wide-orb'd horizons, the intense
And intricate heavens, with silent vehemence,
Burst supernaturally open; as tho'
A bud should in a moment's time, not grow,
But change itself, into a flower full-blown.
IV .
To his sole sight was such a marvel shown.
The fair Olympians, all at once, and all
Together, in the Ambrosial Banquet Hall!
Each august countenance (vast gladness closed
In complete calm) ineffably composed
To an aweful beauty. Unendurably bare
The bright celestial nakednesses were.
And, far behind those Heavenly Presences,
Heaven's self lay bare to the innermost abyss
Of the unsounded azure. Orb in orb
Of what both seem'd to emit and to absorb,
In the same everlasting moment, light,
Space, silence, — sporting with the infinite!
For, to the universe, the universe
Listening, the while it answer'd, did immerse
The sound within the silentness of things.
Lights — meteors — mystic messengers, with wings,
Wands, trumpets, crowns — silently came and went
In the profound, but lucid, element
Of that divine abysm. Befitting form
Each Spirit shaped itself from calm, or storm,
Snow, fire, rain, thunder, and sea-thrilling wind:
All creatures of the All-creative Mind,
That makes each moment, and each moment mars,
Its own imaginings: thoughts, many as stars,
Or birds innumerable upon the wing:
Some, with congenial chance incarnating
Their restless essence, and so, brightening: some,
As soon as born, dissolved within the dome
Of that deep-lighted distance. Underneath,
The dim world, wrapt in mist of mortal breath,
Low glimmering, sea and land. And all about
The belted orb, close-coiling in and out,
Like a sleek snake with vary-colour'd back,
Glitter'd the constellated zodiac.
But, over tented camp, and temple wall
Or gated court, in tower'd cities tall,
Serenely slided down the silent sky,
Bearing disaster, bearing victory,
With benedictions these, as those with ills,
The viewless heralds of the Heavenly Wills,
Unmindful of the murmuring of mankind.
V .
All vague as vapour shapen by the wind
To mimic mountain, cape, or continent,
That every moment changes, came and went,
With wondrous modulation manifold,
The vision of that marvellous movement, roll'd
Around the zoned orb of Circumstance,
Revolving in the marginless expanse
Whereon the serene doors and porches all
Of that sublime god-builded Banquet Hall
Opening, let in and out Eternity.
VI .
There, midmost of his kindred godheads, high
In contemplative glory, and calm as morn
On lone Olympus (where no foot hath worn
Heaven's white snow from the summit of the world)
Sat Father Jove. From whose crown'd temples curl'd
The locks that, shaken, shake the woody tops
Of scornful hills, and o'er the full-ear'd crops
Roll blighting thunders, in storms, white or blue,
Of hail and rain. Broad-brow'd, broad-bearded too,
In meditative mood, with slack right hand
The cypress sceptre of his vast command
He, leaning forward, lightly held. All bare
The god's broad chest and ample shoulders were:
For gods, in company with gods, forego
Disguises meant for men: but all below
His spacious waist, in floods of massy fold,
From his large knees the lilied vesture roll'd:
Lest mortal eyes should, even in Heaven, espy
Aught save the robe that wraps the Deity.
VII .
At the right hand of her great spouse, the Queen,
Of scorn majestic, with man-quelling mien,
And regnant eyes, whose large looks everywhere
Were felt in Heaven, gazed from her blazing chair;
Whereon, to left and right, from either side,
Four crested peacocks droop'd their Argus-eyed
Junonian trains. Behind, above her head
The attendant Iris, her handmaiden, spread
Her bright bow, woven from the azure grain
Of the midsummer silver-threaded rain.
That eloquent spirit of the woodland air,
Men call the cuckoo (which, being bodiless there,
Needs not, and builds not, any nest on earth),
Sat on her stately sceptre.
VIII .
Solemn mirth,
Like sempiternal summer, fill'd the hall
Where, round that Twain, the lesser godheads all,
At ease reclining by the ambrosial board,
In rosy circle ranged. Save one: Hell's lord,
The black-brow'd Pluto. Thro' Heaven's cloudy gaps,
Loom'd his dim realm, — one vague, drear, vast Perhaps.
There, dubious in the light by Hecate brew'd
For ghastly uses, a vast multitude
Of shapes — all shadows of the lives of men —
Continually coming, sought the den
Man's fear digs in his conscience for his crimes:
The outcasts of all ages, from all climes,
Doom'd by all creeds: Religion's shipwreck'd crew,
Barbarian, Roman, Christian, Greek, and Jew:
Who, in the glare of that disastrous light,
Gazed on each other's faces (dismal sight!)
And knew themselves, at last, for kinsmen drear,
The common offspring of one parent, Fear.
For, tho' man change his gods full many times,
Yet changed gods change not man, nor he his crimes:
Still from the knowledge of himself he breeds
Fears that make Hell the helpmate of all creeds,
Or old or new. And, even already, all
The brazen bound of that Tartarean wall,
Which not the gods themselves can overleap,
In windy circuit o'er the sulphurous deep,
Half-Gothic towers, by monkish masons built,
Put dimly forth. Nought but the shame and guilt
Seem'd real in the ghostly flux below
Of swimming change, that surged from woe to woe:
So, flexile as man's ever-moving mind,
Whose masonry all monstrous forms combined
In one immense metropolis of Pain,
Tho' moor'd by Fear upon a midnight main,
Yet pace with time Hell's fluent structures kept,
From each new architectural adept
Fresh grimness winning.
IX .
But all this was seen
In fluctuation indistinct between
The gaps of Heaven, thro' filmy distances
Of darkness, wild as wicked fancy is:
Nor marr'd the mirth of that Olympian feast
More than spots floating on the sun's bright breast
Darken his glory.
X .
Only, in the first
Amazing moment, when the vision burst
On him that saw it, Hebe, filling up
With nectarous aenomel a glorious cup,
Paused, as she pour'd, and stared, with open eyes
And open mouth, in half-displeased surprise,
Upon the wondering mortal. For he had,
To her, the ever-insolently-glad,
In the great human sadness of his face,
The aspect of a creature out of place:
As tho' into her golden cup had dropp'd
A sudden spider. Ganymede, too, stopp'd
Teasing Jove's Eagle: who, with a great cry,
Rose, rough'd his feathers, seem'd about to fly,
But, seeing Jove so quiet, droop'd his wing,
And waited watchful of his keen-eyed king.
Venus with glance disdainful turn'd to scan
The old man's face: then, seeing that the man
Was chopp'd with battle, sun-bronzed, seam'd with scars,
She, whose white arm was round the throat of Mars,
Pointed a rosy finger, veiling half
In her soft eyes a little mirthful laugh
Under delicious lids dark-lash'd. But he
Look'd on his worshipper remorsefully,
As some grave chieftain, when the strife is done,
Safe and unhurt himself, might gaze upon
His wounded battle-horse about to die.
Amor, that, trifling with his bow hard by,
Noticed not this new comer of the earth
(He having both eyes bandaged from his birth),
Guess'd with that instinct arch to children given
For mischievous occasion (since, thro' Heaven,
The babble of the mighty banquet hall
Suddenly ceased, a moment's space) that all
The attention of the gods was occupied:
And furtively, by Dian unespied,
From her chaste quiver stole the arrows keen,
And, in their places, with mock-serious mien,
Did his own little wanton darts dispose.