Classic Poem

SCENE — Water and Wood — Midnight .

F ESTUS , alone .

All things are calm, and fair, and passive. Earth
Looks as if lulled upon an angel's lap
Into a breathless dewy sleep: so still,
That we can only say of things, they be!
The lakelet now, no longer vexed with gusts,
Replaces on her breast the pictured moon [time
Pearled round with stars. Sweet imaged scene of
To come, perchance, when this vain life o'erspent,
Earth may some purer beings' presence bear;
Mayhap even God may walk among his saints,
In eminence and brightness like yon moon,
Mildly outbeaming all the beads of light
Strung o'er night's proud dark brow. How strangely fair
Yon round still star, which looks half suffering from,
And half rejoicing in its own strong fire;
Making itself a lonelihood of light,
Like Deity, where'er in Heaven it dwells.
How can the beauty of material things
So win the heart and work upon the mind,
Unless like-natured with them? Are great things
And thoughts of the same blood? They have like effect.
L UCIFER . Why doubt on mind? What matter how we call
That which all feel to be their noblest part?
Even spirits have a better and a worse:
For every thing created must have form.
Passions they have, somewhat like thine; but less
Of grossness and that downwardness of soul
Which men have. It is true they have no earth;
For what they live on is above themselves.
F ESTUS . There seems a sameness among things; for mind
And matter speak, in causes, of one God.
The inward and the outward worlds are like;
The pure and gross but differ in degree.
Tears, feeling's bright embodied form, are not
More pure than dewdrops, Nature's tears, which she
Sheds in her own breast for the fair which die.
The sun insists on gladness; but at night,
When he is gone, poor Nature loves to weep.
L UCIFER . There is less real difference among things
Than men imagine. They overlook the mass,
But fasten each on some particular crumb,
Because they feel that they can equal that,
Of doctrine, or belief, or party cause.
F ESTUS . That is the madness of the world — and that
Would I remove.
L UCIFER . It is imbecility,
Not madness.
F ESTUS . Oh! the brave and good who swerve
A worthy cause can only one way fail;
By perishing therein. Is it to fail?
No; every great or good man's death is a step
Firm set towards their end — the end of being;
Which is the good of all and love of God.
The world must have great minds, even as great spheres
Or suns, to govern lesser restless minds,
While they stand still and burn with life; to keep
Them in their places, and to light and heat them.
If I desire immortal life for aught,
It is to learn the mystery of mind
And somewhat more of God. Let others rule
Systems or succor saints, if such things please;
To live like light or die in light like dew,
Either! I should be blest.
L UCIFER . It may not be.
For as we do no see the sun himself,
It is but the light about him, like a ring
Of glory round the forehead of a saint, so
God thou wilt never see. His unveiled love
Were terrible, too much for man to meet.
F ESTUS . Men have a claim on God; and none who hath
A heart of kindness, reverence and love,
But dare look God in the face and ask His smile.
He dwells in no fierce light — no cloud of flame;
And if it were, Faith's eye can look through Hell,
And through the solid world. We must all think
On God. Yon water must reflect the sky.
Midnight! Day hath too much light for us,
To see things spiritually. Mind and Night
Will meet, though in silence, like forbidden lovers,
With whom to see each other's sacred form
Must satisfy. The stillness of deep bliss,
Sound as the silence of the high hill-top
Where thunder finds no echo — like God's voice
Upon the worldling's proud, cold, rocky heart —
Fills full the sky; and the eye shares with Heaven
That look, so like to feeling, which the bright
And glorious things of Nature ever wear.
There is much to think and feel of things beyond
This earth; which lie, as we deem, upwards — far
From the day's glare and riot — they are Night's!
Oh! could we lift the future's sable shroud!
L UCIFER . Behind a shroud what should thou see but death?
F ESTUS . Spirit is like the thread whereon are strung
The beads or worlds of life. It may be here,
It may be there that I shall live again;
In yon strange world whose long nights know no star,
But seven fair maidlike moons attending him
Perfect his sky — perchance in one of those —
But live again I shall wherever it be.
We long to learn the future — love to guess.
L UCIFER . The science of the future is to man,
But what the shadow of the wind might be.
Such thoughts are vain and useless.
F ESTUS . Forced on us.
L UCIFER . All things are of necessity.
F ESTUS . Then best.
But the good are never fatalists. The bad
Alone act by necessity, they say.
L UCIFER . It matters not what men assume to be;
Or good, or bad, they are but what they are.
F ESTUS . What is necessity? Are we, and thou,
And all the worlds, and the whole infinite
We cannot see, but working out God's thoughts?
And have we no self-action? Are all God?
L UCIFER . Then hath He sin and all absurdity.
F ESTUS . Yet, if created Being have free-will,
Is it not wrong to judge it may traverse
God's own high will, and yet impossible
To think on't otherwise?
L UCIFER . It may be so.
All creature wills, and all their ends and powers
Must come within the boundless scope of God's.
F ESTUS . And all our powers are but weaknesses
To what we shall have, and to that God hath.
Doth not the wish, too, point the likelihood
Of life to come?
L UCIFER . Boys wish that they were kings.
And so with thee. A deathless spirit's state,
Freed from gross form and bodily weightiness,
Seems kingly by the side of souls like thine.
And boys and men will likely both be balked.
What if it be, that spirit, after death,
Is loosed like flesh into its elements?
The worlds which man hath constellated, hold
No fellowship in nature; nor perchance
As he hath systematized life, mind, and soul.
But sooth to say, I know not aught of this.
I have no kind. No nature like to me
Exists. And human spirits must at least
Sleep till the day of doom, if it ever be.
F ESTUS . Hast never known one free from body?
L UCIFER . None.
F ESTUS . Why seek then to destroy them?
L UCIFER . It is my part.
Let ruin bury ruin. Let it be
Woe here, woe there, woe, woe, be everywhere'
It is not for me to know, nor thee, the end
Of evil. I inflict and thou must bear.
The arrow knoweth not its end and aim.
And I keep rushing, ruining along
Like a great river rich with dead men's souls.
For if I knew, I might rejoice; and that
To me by Nature is forbidden. I know
Nor joy nor sorrow; but a changeless tone
Of sadness like the nightwind's is the strain
Of what I have of feeling. I am not
As other spirits, — but a solitude
Even to myself; I the sole spirit sole.
F ESTUS . Can none of thine immortals answer me?
L UCIFER . None, mortal!
F ESTUS . Where then is thy vaunted power?
L UCIFER . It is better seen as thus I stand apart
From all. Mortality is mine — the green
Unripened universe. But as the fruit
Matures, and world by world drops mellowed off
The wrinkling stalk of Time, as thine own race
Hath seen of stars now vanished — all is hid
From me. My part is done. What after comes
I know not more than thou.
F ESTUS . Raise me a spirit!
A wake ye dead! out with the secret, death!
The grave hath no pride nor the rise-again.
Let each one bring the bane whereof he died.
Bring the man his, the maiden hers! Oh! half
Mankind are murderers of themselves or souls.
Yea, what is life but lingering suicide?
Wake, dead! Ye know the truth; yet there ye lie
All mingling, mouldering, perishing together
Like run sand in the hour-glass of old Time.
Death is the mad world's asylum. There is peace;
Destruction's quiet and equality.
Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths:
Though many, yet they help not; bright, they light not.
They are too late to serve us: and sad things
Are aye too true. We never see the stars
Till we can see nought but them. So with truth.
And yet if one would look down a deep well,
Even at noon, we might see those saine stars
Far fairer than the blinding blue — the truth;
Probe the profound of thine own nature, man!
And thou may'st see reflected, e'en in life,
The worlds, the Heavens, the ages; by and by,
The coming come. Then welcome, world-eyed Truth!
But there are other eyes men better love
Than Truth's: for when we have her she is so cold,
And proud, we know not what to do with her.
We cannot understand her, cannot teach;
She makes us love her, but she loves not us;
And quits us as she came and looks back never.
Wherefore we fly to Fietion's warm embrace,
With her to relax and bask ourselves at ease;
And, in her loving and unhindering lap
Voluptuously lulled, we dream at most
On death and truth: she knows them, loves them not;
Therefore we hate them and deny them both.
Call up the dead!
L UCIFER . Let rest while rest they may!
For free from pain and from this world's wear and tear
It may be a relief to them to rot;
And it must be that at the day of doom,
If mortals should take up immortal life,
They will curse me with a thunder which shall shake
The sun from out the socket of his sphere.
The curse of all created. Think on it!
F ESTUS . Those souls thou mean'st whom thou hast ruined, damned.
L UCIFER . Nor only those; when once the virgin bloom
Of soul is soiled — and rudely hath my hand
Swept o'er the swelling clusters of all life —
Little it matters whether crushed or touched
Scarcely: each speaks the spoiler hath been there
The saved, the lost, shall curse me both alike:
God too shall curse me, and I, I, myself.
That curse is ever greatening — quick with hell;
The coming consummation of all woe.
F ESTUS . O man, be happy! Die and cease for ever!
Why wear we not the shroud alway, that robe
Which speaks our rank on earth, our privilege?
To know I have a deathless soul I would lose it.
L UCIFER . Believest thou all I tell thee?
F ESTUS . All, I do.
Stringing the stars at random round her head,
Like a pearl network, there she sits — bright night!
I love night more than day — she is so lovely.
But I love night the most because she brings
My love to me in dreams which scarcely lie;
Oh! all but truth and lovelier oft than truth!
Let me have dreams like these, sweet Night, for ever,
When I shall wake no more; an endless dream
Of love and holy beauty 'mid the stars.
L UCIFER . I see thy heart and I will grant thy wish.
I have lied to thee. I have command over spirits.
Whom wilt thou that I call?
F ESTUS . Mine Angela!
L UCIFER . There is an Angel ever by thine hand.
What seest thou?
F ESTUS . It is my love! It is she!
My glory! spirit! beauty, let me touch thee.
Nay, do not shrink back: well then I am wrong
Thou didst not use to shrink from me, my love.
Angela! dost thou hear me? Speak to me.
And thou art there — looking alive and dead.
Thy beauty is then incorruptible.
I thought so, oft as I have looked on thee.
Thou art too much even now for me as once.
I cannot gather what I raved to say;
Nor why I had thee hither. Stay, sweet sprite!
Dear art thou to me now, as in that hour
When first Love's wave of feeling, spray-like broke
Into bright utterance, and we said we loved.
Yea, but I must come to thee. Move no more!
Art thou in death or Heaven or from the stars?
Have I done wrong in calling for thee thus?
What art thou? Speak, love; whisper me as wont
In the dear times gone bye; or durst thou not
Unfold the mystery of thine and mine
Own being? Was it Death who hushed thy lips?
Is his cold finger there still? Let me come!
She is not!
L UCIFER . And thou canst not bring her back.
F ESTUS . I will not, cannot be without her. Call her!
L UCIFER . I call on spirits and I make them come;
But they depart according to their own will.
Another time and she shall speak with thee —
Ere long — and she shall shew thee where she dwells,
And how doth pass her immortality; —
If lengthening decay can so be called.
Can lines finite one way be infinite
Another? And yet such is deathlessness.
F ESTUS . It is hard to deem that spirits cease, that thought
And feeling flesh-like perish in the dust.
Shall we know those again in a future state
Whom we have known and loved on earth? Say yes!
L UCIFER . The mind hath features as the body hath.
F ESTUS . But is it mind which shall rerise?
L UCIFER . Man were
Not man without the mind he had in life.
F ESTUS . Shall all defects of mind and fallacies
Of feeling be immortalized? all needs,
All joys, all sorrows, be again gone through,
Before the final crisis be imposed?
Shall Heaven but be old earth created new?
Or earth, treelike, transplanted into Heaven,
To flourish by the waters of all life,
And we within its shade, as heretofore,
Cropping its fruit, with life-seeds cored at heart?
L UCIFER . Man's nature, physical and psychical,
Will be together raised, changed, glorified;
And all shall be alike, like God; and all
Unlike each other, and themselves. The earth
Shall vanish from the thoughts of those she bore,
As have the idols of the olden time
From men's hearts of the present. All delight
And all desire, shall be with Heavenly things,
And the new nature God bestowed on man.
F ESTUS . Then man shall be no more man, but an Angel.
L UCIFER . When he is dead and buried. What remains, —
That such an obscure, contradictory, thing
Should be perpetuated anywhere?
F ESTUS . Oh! if God hates the flesh, why made He it
So beautiful that e'en its semblance maddens?
Am I to credit what I think I have seen?
Or am I suffering some deceit of thine?
L UCIFER . I am explaining, not deluding.
F ESTUS . True
Defining night by darkness, death by dust.
I run the gauntlet of a file of doubts,
Each one of which down hurls me to the ground.
I ask a hundred reasons what they mean,
And every one points gravely to the ground,
With one hand, and to Heaven with the other.
In vain I shut mine eyes. Truth's burning beam
Forees them open, and when open, blinds them.
L UCIFER . Doubly unhappy!
F ESTUS . I am too unhappy
To die; as some too way-worn cannot sleep.
Planets and suns, that set themselves on fire
By their own rapid self-revolvements, are
But like some hearts. Existence I despise.
The shape of man is wearisome; a bird's,
A worm's — a whirlwind's, I would change with aught.
Time! dash thine hour-glass down. Have done with this!
The course of Nature seems a course of Death,
And nothingness the sole substantial thing.
L UCIFER . Corruption springs from Light: 't is the same power
Creates, preserves, destroys: the matter which
It works on, being one ever-changing form, —
The living and the dying and the dead.
F ESTUS . I'll not believe a thing which I have known.
Hell was made hell for me, and I am mad.
L UCIFER . True venom churns the froth out of the lips;
It works, and works like any water-wheel.
And she then was the maiden of thy heart.
Well, I have promised. Ye shall meet again.
F ESTUS . I loved her for that she was beautiful;
And that to me she seemed to be all nature
And all varieties of things in one;
Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise
All light and laughter in the morning: yea,
And that she never schooled within her breast
One thought or feeling, but gave holiday
To all; and that she made all even mine
In the communion of love: and we
Grew like each other for we loved each other —
She, mild and generous as the sun in spring;
And I, like earth all budding out with love.
L UCIFER . And then, love's old end, falsehood nothing worse
I hope?
F ESTUS . What's worse than falsehood? to deny
The god which is within us, and in all
Is love? Love hath as many vanities
As charms; and this, perchance, the chief of both:
To make our young heart's track upon the first,
And snowlike fall of feeling which overspreads
The bosom of the youthful maiden's mind,
More pure and fair than even its outward type.
If one did thus, was it from vanity?
Or thoughtlessness, or worse? Nay, let it pass.
The beautiful are never desolate;
But some one alway loves them — God or man.
If man abandons, God himself takes them.
And thus it was. She whom I once loved died.
The lightning loathes its cloud — the soul its clay.
Can I forget that hand I took in mine,
Pale as pale violets; that eye, where mind
And matter met alike divine? ah, no!
May God that moment judge me when I do!
Oh! she was fair: her nature once all spring,
And deadly beauty like a maiden sword;
Startlingly beautiful. I see her now!
Whatever thou art thy soul is in my mind;
Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain,
And peoples all its pictures with thyself.
Gone, not forgot — passed, not lost — thou shall shine
In Heaven like a bright spot in the sun!
She said she wished to die, and so she died;
For, cloudlike, she poured out her love, which was
Her life, to freshen this parched heart. It was thus
I said we were to part, but she said nothing.
There was no discord — it was music ceased —
Life's thrilling, bounding, bursting joy. She sate
Like a house-god, her hands fixed on her knee;
And her dark hair lay loose and long around her,
Through which her wild bright eye flashed like flint
She spake not, moved not, but she looked the more,
As if her eye were action, speech and feeling.
I felt it all; and came and knelt beside her.
The electric touch solved both our souls together.
Then comes the feeling which unmakes, undoes;
Which tears the sealike soul up by the roots
And lashes it in scorn against the skies.
Twice did I madly swear to God, hand clenched,
That not even He nor death should tear her from me.
It is the saddest and the sorest sight
One's own love weeping; — but why call on God,
But that the feeling of the boundless bounds
All feeling, as the welkin doth the world?
It is this which ones us with the whole and God.
Then first we wept; then closed and clung together;
And my heart shook this building of my breast,
Like a live engine booming up and down.
She fell upon me like a snow-wreath thawing.
Never were bliss and beauty, love and woe,
Ravelled and twined together into madness,
As in that one wild hour; to which all else,
The past, is but a picture — that alone
Is real, and for ever there in front;
Making a black blank on one side of life
Like a blind eye. But after that I left her;
And only saw her once again alive.
L UCIFER . Well, shall we go?
F ESTUS . This moment. I am ready.
Farewell ye dear old walks and trees! farewell
Ye waters! I have loved ye well. In youth
And childhood it hath been my life to drift
Across ye lightly as a leaf; or skim
Your waves in yon skiff, swallowlike; or lie
Like a loved locket on your sunny bosom.
Could I, like you, by looking in myself
Find mine own Heaven — farewell! Immortal, come!
The morning peeps her blue eye on the east
L UCIFER . Think not so fondly as thy foolish race,
Imagining a Heaven from things without;
The picture on the passing wave call Heaven —
The wavelet, life — the sands beneath it, death;
Daily more seen till, lo! the bed is bare.
This fancy fools the world.
F ESTUS . Let us away!