Classic Poem

SCENE — A Mountain — Sunrise .

F ESTUS AND Lucifer .

F ESTUS . Hail beauteous Earth! Gazing o'er thee, I all
Forget the bonds of being; and I long
To fill thee, as a lover pines to blend
Soul, passion, yea existence, with the fair
Creature he calls his own. I ask for nought
Before or after death but this, — to lie,
And look, and live, and bask, and bless myself
Upon thy broad bright bosom. From thee I
Sprang, and to thee I turn, heart, arm and brain.
Yes, I am all thine own. Thou art the sole
Parent. To rock and river, plain and wood
I cry, ye are my kin. While I, O Earth!
Am but an atom of thee, and a breath,
Passing unseen and unrecorded like
The tiny throb here in my temple's pulse.
Thou art for ever and the sacred bride
Of heaven, — worthy the passion of our God.
O! full of light, love, grace! — the grace of all
Who owe to thee their life; thy Maker's love;
His face's light. All thine rejoice in thee;
Thou in thyself for aye; rolling through air
As seraphs' song out of their trumpet lips
Rolls round the skies of Heaven. See the sun!
God's crest upon His azure shield the Heavens.
Canst thou, a spirit, look upon him?
Lucifer . Ay.
I led him from the void, where he was wrought,
By this right hand, up to the glorious seat
His brightness overshadows; built his throne
On piles of gold; and laid his chambers on
Beams of gold; wrapped a veil of fire around
His face; and bade him reign and burn like me.
There, ever since, sat warming into life
These worlds as in a nest, he has and is.
But fall he must. I have done, do, nought else
From my first thought to this and to my last.
No matter; it is beneath this mind of mine
To reck of aught. I hear, have borne the ill
Of ages, of eternities — and must.
I care not. I shall away the world as now,
Which worse and worse sinks with me as I sink,
Till finite souls evanish as a vapor;
Till immortality, the proud thing, perish;
And God alone be and eternity.
Then will I clap my hands and cry to Him,
I have done! Have Thy will now! There is none but Thee.
I am the first created being. I
Will be the last to perish and to die.
F ESTUS . Thou art a fit monitor, methinks, of pleasure.
Lucifer . To the high air sunshine and cloud are one;
Pleasure and pain to me. Thou and the earth
Alone feel these as different — for Ye
Are under them — the Heavens and I above.
F ESTUS . But tell me, have ye scenes like this in Hell?
Lucifer . Nay, not in Heaven.
F ESTUS . What is Heaven? not the toys
Of singing, love and music? such a place
Were fit for women only.
Lucifer . Heaven is no place;
Unless it be a place with God, allwhere.
It is the being good — the knowing God —
The consciousness of happiness and power;
With knowledge which no spirit e'er can lose
But doth increase in every state; and aught
It most delights in the full leave to do.
But why consume me with such questions? Why
Add earth to Hell, in the great chain of worlds
Which God in wrath hath bound about me?
F ESTUS . Why!
'T was therefore that I closed with thee, great Field!
That thou mightst answer all things I proposed,
Or bring me those who would do.
Lucifer . All these things
Thou wilt know sometime, when to see and know
Are one; to see a thing and comprehend
The nature of it essentially; perceive
The reason and the science of its being,
And the relations with the universe
Of all things actual or possible,
Mortal, immortal, spiritual, gross.
This, when the spirit is made free of Heaven,
Is the divine result; proportioned still
To the intelligence as human; for
There are degrees in Heaven as every thing,
By God's will. Unimaginable space
As full of suns as is earth's sun of atoms,
Faileth to match His boundless variousness;
And ever must do, though a thousand worlds,
As diverse from each other as is thine
From any of thy system's, were elanced
Each minute into life unendingly.
All of yon worlds, and all who dwell in them,
Stand in diverse degrees of bliss and being.
Through the ten thousand times ten thousandth grade
Of blessedness, above this world's and man's
Ability to feel or to conceive,
The soul may pass and yet know nought of Heaven.
More than a dim and miniature reflection
Of its most bright infinity; — for God
Makes to each spirit its peculiar Heaven; —
And yet is Heaven a bright reality,
As this or any of yon worlds; a state
Where all is loveliness and power and love;
Where all sublimest qualities of mind,
Not infinite, are limited alone
By the surrounding Godhood, and where nought
But what produceth glory and delight,
To creature and Creator is: where all
Enjoy entire dominion o'er themselves,
Acts, feelings, thoughts, conditions, qualities,
Spirit and soul and mind; all under God,
For spirit is soul Deified; — while earth,
To the immortal vast, God-natured Spirit,
Is but a spell, which having served to light
A lamp, is cast into consuming fire.
F ESTUS . And Hell? Is it naught but pits and chains and flames?
Lucifer . An ever greatening sense of ill and woe,
Aye crushing down the soul, but filling never
Its infinite capacity of pain.
F ESTUS . But human nature is not infinite,
And therefore cannot suffer endlessly.
Lucifer . God may create in time what shall endure
Unto Eternity. With Him is no
Distinction, nor in that which is of Him.
F ESTUS . Then is not soul of God, but man and earth.
Soul when made spirit is of earth no more,
Nor time, but of Eternity and Heaven.
'T is but when in the body, and bent down
To worldly ends, that human souls become
Objects of time, as most are, till the hour
Comes when the soul of man shall be made one
With God's spirit; and where shall woe be then?
Where, sin? where, suffering? when the mortal soul
Shall be Divinized and eternized by
God's very spirit put upon it?
Lucifer . How
Can souls begotten to predestined doom,
From and before all worlds, be deemed of earth?
F ESTUS . Things spiritual, as belonging God,
Are known unto Him, and predestined from
Eternity, nor these alone; but Flesh
Forms not nor does it need the care of Fate.
Lucifer . The object of eternal knowledge must
Have like existence.
F ESTUS . Then it cannot be
Bound unto torment; that would be to bring
Torture on godlike essence.
Lucifer . Hast not heard,
How thine existence here, on earth, is but
The dark and narrow section of a life
Which was with God, long ere the sun was lit,
And shall be yet, when all the bold bright stars
Are dark as death-dust — Immortality
And Wisdom tending thee on either hand,
Thy divine sisters? But do thou believe
E'en what thou wilt. It matters not to me.
F ESTUS . Is it the nature or the deed of God
To render finite follies infinite,
Or to eternize sin and death in fire?
For so long as the punishment endures,
The crime lasts. Were it not for thy presence,
Spirit! I would not deem Hell were.
Lucifer . Let not
My presence pass for more than it is worth,
I pray, nor yet my absence. Trust me, I
Could wish, with thee, that Hell were blotted out
Of utmost space. 'T is man himself aye makes
His own God and his hell. But this is truth.
F ESTUS . The truth is perilous never to the true.
Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool,
And to the false, error and truth alike.
Error is worse than ignorance. But say: —
How can eternal punishment be due
To temporal offences, to a pulse
Of momentary madness?
Lucifer . Pardon me.
Sin is not temporary. Nothing is,
Of spiritual nature, but hath cause
Immortal and immortal end in all,
As spirits. Therefore till the soul shall be
By grace redeified, as is the soul,
So is the sin, for ever before God.
F ESTUS . Sin is not of the spirit, but of that
Which blindeth spirit, heart and brain.
Lucifer . Believe so.
The law of all the worlds is retribution.
F ESTUS . But is it so of God?
Lucifer . The laws of Heaven
Are not of earth; there law is liberty.
F ESTUS . Thou thundercloud of spirits, darkning
The skies and wrecking earth! Could I hate men
How I should joy with thee, even as an eagle,
Nigh famished, in the fellowship of storms;
But I still love them. What will come of men?
Lucifer . Whatever may, perdition is their meed.
Were Heaven dispeopled for a ministry
To warn them of their ways; were thou and I
To monish them; were Heaven, and Earth, and Hell
To preach at once, they still would mock and jeer
As now; but never repent until too late;
Until the everlasting hour had struck.
F ESTUS . Men might be better if we better deemed
Of them. The worst way to improve the world
Is to condemn it. Men may overget
Delusion — not despair.
Lucifer . Why love mankind?
The affections are thy system's weaknesses;
The wasteful outlets of self-maintenance.
F ESTUS . The wild flower's tendril, proof of feebleness,
Proves strength; and so we fling our feelings out,
The tendrils of the heart, to bear us up.
O Earth! how drear to think to tear oneself,
Even for an hour, from looks like this of thine;
From features, oh! so fair; to quit for aye
The luxury of thy side. Why, why art thou
Thus glorious, and 't were not to sate the soul,
And chide us for the senseless dream of Heaven?
The still strong stream sweeps onward to its end,
Like one of the great purposes of God;
Or like, may be, a soul like mine to Him.
Along yon deep blue vein upon thy bosom,
Earth, I could float for ever. See it there —
Winding among its green and smiling isles,
Like Charity amidst her children dear;
Or Peace, rejoicing in her olive wreaths,
And gladdening as she glides along the lands.
Lucifer . And yet all this must end — must pass; drop down
Oblivion like a pebble in a pit:
For God shall lay His hand upon the earth,
And crush it up like a red leaf.
F ESTUS . Not be?
I cannot root the thought, nor hold it firm.
Lucifer . This same sweet world which thou wouldst fondly deem
Eternal, may be; which I soon shall see
Destruction suck back as the tide a shell.
F ESTUS . It will not be yet. I'll woo thee world, again,
And revel in thy loveliness and love.
I have a heart with room for every joy:
And since we must part, sometime, while I may,
I'll quaff the nectar in thy flowers, and press
The richest clusters of thy luscious fruit
Into the cup of my desires. I know
My years are numbered not in units yet.
But I cannot live unless I love and am loved;
Unless I have the young and beautiful
Bound up like pictures in my book of life.
It is the intensest vanity alone
Which makes us bear with life. Some seem to live,
Whose hearts are like those unenlightened stars
Of the first darkness — lifeless, timeless, useless —
With nothing but a cold night air about them;
Not suns — not planets — darkness organized:
Orbs of a desert darkness: with no soul
To light its watchfire in the wilderness,
And civilize the solitude one moment;
There are such seemingly; but how or why
They live I know not. This to me is life;
That if life be a burden, I will join
To make it but the burden of a song:
I hate the world's coarse thought. And this is life
To watch young beauty's budlike feelings burst
And load the soul with love; — as that pale flower,
Which opes at eve, spreads sudden on the dark
Its yellow bloom, and sinks the air down with sweets.
Let Heaven take all that's good — Hell all that's foul;
Leave us the lovely! and we will ask no more.
Lucifer . To me it seems time all should end.
The sky
Grows gray. It is not so bright nor blue as once.
Well I remember, as it were yesterday,
When earth and Heaven went happy, hand in hand,
With all the morning dew of youth about them;
With the bright unworldly hearts of youth and truth
And the maiden bosoms of the beautiful: —
Ere earth sinned, or the pure indignant Heavens
Retreated high, nigh God; when earth was all
A creeping mass alive with shapeless things:
And when there were but three things in the world —
Monsters, mountains and water: before age
Had thickened the eyes of stars; and while the sea,
Rejoicing like a ring of saints round God,
Or Heaven on Heaven about some newborn sun,
In its sublime samesoundingness, laughed out
And cried not I! Like God I never rest.
F ESTUS . God hath his rest; earth hers. Let me have mine.
Yet must I look on thee, fair scene, again,
Ere I depart. The glory of the world
Is on all hands. In one encircling ken,
I gaze on river, sea, isle, continent,
Mountain, and wood, and wild, and fire-lipped hill,
And lake, and golden plain, and sun, and Heaven,
Where the stars brightly die, whose death is day;
City and port and palace, ships and tents,
Lie massed and mapped before me. All is here.
The elements of the world are at my feet,
Above me and about me. Now would I
Be and do somewhat beside that I am.
Canst thou not give me some ethereal slave,
Of the pure essence of an element —
Such as my bondless brain hath oft times drawn
In the divine insanity of dreams —
To stand before me and obey me, spirit?
Lucifer . Call out, and see if aught arise to thee.
F ESTUS . Green dewy Earth, who standest at my feet,
Singing and pouring sunshine on thy head,
As näiad native water, speak to me!
I am thy son. Canst thou not now, as once,
Bring forth some being dearer, liker to thee
Than is my race, — Titan or tiny fay,
Stream-nymph or wood-nymph? She hath ceased to speak,
Like God, except in thunder, or to look
Unless in lightning. Miracles, with earth,
Are out of fashion as with Heaven.
Lucifer . More's
The pity. Call elsewhere! Old Earth is hard
Of hearing, may be.
F ESTUS . I beseech thee, Sea!
Tossing thy wavy locks in sparkling play,
Like to a child awakening with the light
To laughter. Canst not thou disgulph for me
From thy deep bosom, deep as Heaven is high,
Of all thy sea-gods one, or sea-maids?
Lucifer . None!
F ESTUS . I half despair. Fire! that art slumbering there,
Like some stern warrior in his rocky fort,
After the vast invasion of the world,
Hast not some flaming imp, or messenger
Of empyrean element, to whom,
In virtue of his nature, are both known
The secrets of the burning, central, void below,
And yon bright Heaven, out of whose airy fire
Are wrought the forms of angels and the thrones?
Hast none at hand to do my bidding? Come!
Breathe out a spirit for me! One I ask
That shall be with me always, as a friend,
And not like thee, who despotizest o'er
The heart thou seek'st to serve. I must be free.
Lucifer . All finite souls must serve; their widest away
Is but the rule of service. This fair earth
Which thou dost boast so much of, why, thou oe'st
'T is but the particolored, scummy dross
Of the original element wherefrom
The fiery worlds were framed.
F ESTUS . Air! and thou, Wind!
Which art the unseen similitude of God
The Spirit, His most meet and mightiest sign;
The earth with all her steadfastness and strength,
Sustaining all, and bound about with chains
Of mountains, as is life with mercies, ranging round
With all her sister orbs the whole of Heaven,
Is not so like the unlikenable One
As thou. Ocean is less divine than thee;
For although all but limitless, it is yet
Visible, many a land not visiting.
But thou art, Lovelike, everywhere; o'er earth,
O'er ocean triumphing, and aye with clouds,
That like the ghost of ocean's billows roll,
Decking or darkening Heaven. The sun's light
Floweth and ebbeth daily like the tides;
The moon's doth grow or lessen, night by night;
The stirless stars shine forth by fits and hide,
And our companion planets come and go; —
And all are known, their laws and liberties.
But no man can foreset thy coming, none
Reason against thy going; thou art free,
The type impalpable of Spirit, thou.
Thunder is but a momentary thing,
Like a world's death-rattle, and is like death;
And lightning, like the blaze of sin, can blind
Only and slay. But what are these to thee,
In thine all-present variousness? Now,
So light as not to wake the snowiest down
Upon the dove's breast, winning her bright way
Calm and sublime as Grace unto the soul,
Towards her far native grove; now, stern and strong
As ordnance, overturning tree and tower;
Cooling the white brows of the peaks of fire —
Turning the sea's broad furrows like a plough, —
Fanning the fruitening plains, breathing the sweets
Of meadows, wandering o'er blinding snows,
And sands like sea-beds and the streets of cities,
Where men as garnered grain lie heaped together;
Freshening the cheeks, and mingling oft the locks
Of youth and beauty, 'neath star-speaking eve;
Swelling the pride of canvas, or, in wrath,
scattering the fleets of nations like dead leaves:
In all, the same o'ermastering sightless force,
Bowing the highest things of earth to earth,
And lifting up the dust unto the stars;
Fatelike, confounding reason, and like God's
Spirit, conferring life upon the world, —
Midst all corruption incorruptible;
Monarch of all the elements! hast thou
No soft Eolian sylph, with sightless wing,
To spare a mortal for an hour?
Lucifer . Peace, peace!
All nature knows that I am with thee here,
And that thou need'st no minor minister.
To thee I personate the world — its powers,
Beliefs, and doubts and practices.
F ESTUS . Are all
Mine invocations fruitless, then?
Lucifer . They are.
Let us enjoy the world!
F ESTUS . If't was God's will
That thou shouldst visit me He shall not send
Temptation to my heart in vain. Sweet world!
We all still cling to thee. Though thou thyself
Passest away, yet men will hanker about thee,
Like mad ones by their moping haunts. Men pass,
Cleaving to things themselves which pass away,
Like leaves on waves. Thus all things pass for ever,
Save mind and the mind's meed.
Lucifer . Let us too pass!