Classic Poem

SCENE — Wood and Water — Sunset .

F ESTUS alone

F ESTUS . This is to be a mortal and immortal!
To live within a circle, — and to be
That dark point where the shades of all things around
Meet, mix, and deepen. All things unto me
Show their dark sides! somewhere there must be
Oh! I feel like a seed in the cold earth; [light.
Quickening at heart, and pining for the air!
Passion is destiny. The heart is its own
Fate. It is well youth's gold rubs off so soon.
The heart gets dizzy with its drunken dance,
And the voluptuous vanities of life
Enchain, enchant, and cheat my soul no more.
My spirit is on edge. I can enjoy
Nought which has not the honied sting of sin;
That soothing fret which makes the young untried,
Longing to be beforehand with their nature,
In dreams and loneness cry, they die to live;
That wanton whetting of the soul, which while
It gives a finer, keener edge for pleasure,
Wastes more and dulls the sooner. Rouse thee, heart;
Bow of my life thou yet art full of spring!
My quiver still hath many purposes.
Yet what is worth a thought of all things here?
How mean, how miserable every care!
How doubtful, too, the system of the mind!
And then the ceaseless, changeless, hopeless round
Of weariness and heartlessness and woe
And vice and vanity! Yet these make life;
The life at least I witness if not feel.
No matter! we are immortal. How I wish
I could love men! for amid all life's quests
There seems but worthy one — to do men good.
It matters not how long we live but how.
For as the parts of one manhood while here
We live in every age: we think and feel
And feed upon the coming and the gone
As much as on the now time. Man is one:
And he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel,
With a gigantic throb athwart the sea,
Each others' rights and wrongs; thus are we men.
Let us think less of men and more of God!
Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over us,
Like a small bird winging the still blue air;
And then again, at other times, it rises
Slow, like a cloud which scales the skies all breathless,
And just over head lets itself down on us.
Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind
Rush, like a rocket tearing up the sky,
That we should join with God and give the world
The slip: but while we wish, the world turns round,
And peeps us in the face — the wanton world;
We feel it gently pressing down our arm —
The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders;
We feel it softly bearing on our side —
We feel it touch and thrill us through the body —
And we are fools and there's an end of us.
'Tis a fine thought that sometime end we must.
There sets the sun of suns! dies in all fire,
Like Asher's death-great monarch. God of might!
We love and live ou power. It is spirit's end.
Mind must subdue. To conquer is its life.
Why mad'st Thou not one spirit, like the sun,
To king the world? And oh! might I have been
That sun-mind, how I would have warmed the world
To love and worship and bright life!
L UCIFER , suddenly appearing . Not thou!
Hadst thou more power the more wouldst thou misuse.
F ESTUS . Who art thou, pray? I saw thee not before.
It seems as thou hadst grown out of the air.
L UCIFER . Thou knowest me well. Though stranger to thine eye,
I am not to thy heart.
F ESTUS . I know thee not.
L UCIFER . Come nearer! Look on me! I am above thee;
Beneath thee, and around thee, and before thee.
F ESTUS . Why, art thou all things, or dost go through all?
A spirit, or embodied blast of air?
I feel thou art a spirit.
L UCIFER . Yea I am.
F ESTUS . I knew it! I am glad, yet tremble so.
What hours upon hours have I longed for this,
And hoped that thought or prayer might produce!
I have besought the stars, with tears, to send
A power unto me; and have set the clouds
Until I thought I saw one coming: but
The shadowy giant alway thinned away,
And I was fated unimmortalized.
What shall I do? Oh! let me kneel to thee!
L UCIFER . Nay, rise! and I'll not say, for thine own sake,
That thou dost pray in private to the Devil.
F ESTUS . Father of lies thou liest!
L UCIFER . I am he!
It is enough to make the Devil merry,
To think that men call on me momently,
Deeming me ever dungeoned fast in Hell;
Swearers and swaggerers jeer at my name;
And oft indeed it is a special jest
With witling gallants. Let me once appear!
Woe's me! they faint and shudder — pale and pray;
The burning oath which quivered on the lip,
Starts back and sears and blisters up the tongue;
Confusion ransacks the abandoned heart,
Quells the bold blood, and o'er the vaulted brow
Slips the white woman-hand. To judgment, ho!
The very pivot of the earth seems snapped;
And down they drop like ruins to repent.
Such be the bravery of mighty man!
F ESTUS . I must be mad; or mine eye cheats my brain;
And this strange phantom comes from overthought,
Like the white lightning from a day too hot.
It must be so. But I will pass it.
L UCIFER . Stay!
F ESTUS . Oh save me God! He is reality!
L UCIFER . And now thou kneel'st to Heaven.
Fye, graceless boy!
Mocking thy Maker with a cast-off prayer;
For had not I the first fruits of thy faith?
F ESTUS . Tempter, away! From all the crowds of life
Why single me? Why score the young green bole
For fellage? Go! Am I the youngest, worst?
No! Light the fires of hell with other souls;
Mine shall not burn with thee.
L UCIFER . Thou judgest harshly.
Can I not touch thee without slaying thee?
F ESTUS . Why art thou here? What wouldst thou have with me?
L UCIFER . 'Fore all I would have gentle words and looks.
F ESTUS . I pray thee, go!
L UCIFER . I cannot quit thee yet.
But why so sad? Wilt kneel to me again?
This leafy closet is most apt for prayer.
F ESTUS . Yes; I will pray for thee and for myself.
L UCIFER . Waste not thy prayers! I scatter them: they reach
No further than thy breath — a yard or so.
And as for me, I heed them, need them not.
My nature God knows and hath fixed; and He
Recks little of the manners of the world;
Wicked He holdeth it and unrepentant.
F ESTUS . Therefore the more some ought to pray.
L UCIFER . To blow
A kiss, a bubble and a prayer hath like
Effect and satisfaction.
F ESTUS . Let me hence!
Go tell thy blasphemies and lies elsewhere.
Thou scatter prayer! Make me Thy minister
One moment God! that I may rid the world
For ever of its evil. Oh! Thine arm!
L UCIFER . Canst rid thyself?
F ESTUS . Alas, no. Get thee gone!
Can nought insult thee nor provoke thy flight?
L UCIFER . I laugh alike at ruin and redemption.
I am the one which knows nor hope nor fear;
Which ne'er knew good nor e'er can know the worst.
What thinkest thou can anger me, or harm?
F ESTUS . Wherefore didst thou quit Hell? To drag me there?
L UCIFER . Thou wilt not guess mine errand.
Deem'st thou aught
Which God had made all evil? Me He made.
Oft I do good; and thee to serve I come.
F ESTUS . Did I not hear thee boast with thy last breath
Not to have known what good was?
L UCIFER . From myself
I know it not; yet God's will I must work.
I come I say to serve thee.
F ESTUS . Well! I would
Thou never hadst: but speak thy purpose straight.
L UCIFER . I heard thy prayer at sunset. I was here.
I saw thy secret longings, unsaid thoughts,
Which prey upon the breast like night-fires on
A heath. I know thy heart by heart. I read
The tongue when still as well as when it moves.
And thou didst pray to God. Did He attend?
Or turn His eye from the great glass of things,
Wherein he worshippeth eternally
Himself, to thee one moment? He did not.
I tell thee nought He cares for men. I came
And come to proffer thee the earth; to set
Thee on a throne — the throne of will unbound —
To crown thy life with liberty and joy,
And make thee free and mighty even as I am!
F ESTUS . I would not be as thou art for Hell's throne;
Add Earth's — add Heaven's!
L UCIFER . I knew thy proud high heart.
To test its worth and mark I held it brave,
In shape and being thus myself I came;
Not in disguise of opportunity —
Not as some silly toy which serves for most —
Not in the mask of lucre, lust nor power —
Not in a goblin size nor cherub form —
But as the soul of Hell and evil came I
With leave to give the kingdom of the world —
The freedom of thyself.
F ESTUS . Good; prove thy powers.
L UCIFER . Do I not prove them? Who but I, that have
Immortal might o'er mine own mind, and o'er
All hearts and spirits of the living world,
Would share it with another, or forego,
One hour, the great enjoyment of the whole?
And who but I give men what each loves best?
F ESTUS . Open the Heavens and let me look on God!
Open my heart and let me see myself!
Then I'll believe thee.
L UCIFER . Thou shalt not believe
For that I give thee, but for that I am.
Believe me first; then I will prove myself.
Though sick I know thee of the joys of sense,
Yet those thou lovest most I will make pure,
And render worthy of thy love; unfilm them,
That so thou mayst not dally with the blind.
Thou shalt possess them to their very souls.
Pleasure and love and unimagined beauty;
All, all that be delicious, brilliant, great,
Of worldly things are mine, and mine to give.
F ESTUS . What can be counted pleasure after love?
Like the young lion which hath once lapped blood,
The heart can ne'er be coaxed back to aught else.
L UCIFER . I will sublime it for thee all to bliss:
As yet it hath but made thee wretched.
F ESTUS . Spirit,
It is not bliss I seek; I care not for it.
I am above the low delights of life.
The life I live is in a dark cold cavern.
Where I wander up and down feeling for something
Which is to be — and must be — what, I know not,
But the incarnation of my destiny
Is nigh.
L UCIFER . It is thy fate which weighs upon thee.
Necessity sits on humanity,
Like to the world on Atlas' neck. 'T is this,
And the sultry sense of overdrawn life.
F ESTUS . True;
The worm of the world hath eaten out my heart.
L UCIFER . I will renew it in thee. It shall be
The bosom favorite of every beauty,
Even like a rosebud. Thou shalt render happy,
By naming who may love thee. Come with me.
F ESTUS . I have a love on earth, and one in Heaven.
L UCIFER . Thou shalt love ten as others love but one!
F ESTUS . Oh! I was glad when something in me said
Come, let us worship beauty! and I bowed;
And went about to find a shrine; but found
None that my soul, when seeing, said enough, to.
Many I met with where I put up prayers,
And had them more than answered; and at such
I worshipped, partly because others did;
Partly because I could not help myself.
But none of these were for me; and away
I went champing and choking in proud pain;
In a burning wrath that not a sea could slake.
So I betook me to the sounding sea;
And overheard its slumberous mutterings
Of a revenge on man; whereat almost
I gladdened, for I felt savage as the sea.
I had only one thing to behold, the sea;
I had only one thing to believe, I loved;
Until that lonesome sameness grew sublime
And darkly beautiful as death, when some
Bright soul regains its star-home, or as Heaven
Just when the stars falter forth, one by one,
Like the first words of love from a maiden's lips.
There are points from which we can command our life;
When the soul sweeps the future like a glass;
And coming things, full freighted with our fate,
Jut out, dark, on the offering of the mind.
Let them come! Many will go down in sight;
In the billow's joyous dash of death go down.
At last came love; not whence I sought nor thought it;
As on a ruined and bewildered wight
Rises the roof he meant to have lost for ever.
On came the living vessel of all love;
Terrible in its beauty as a serpent,
Rode down upon me like a ship full sail
And bearing me before it, kept me up
Spite of the drowning speed at which we drave
On, on, until we sank both. Was not this love?
L UCIFER . Why, how can I tell? I am not in love;
But I have oft times heard mine angels call
Most piteously on their lost loves in Heaven;
And, as I suffer, I have seen them come;
Seen starlike faces peep between the clouds,
And Hell become a tolerable torment.
Some souls lose all things but the love of beauty;
And by that love they are redeemable;
For in love and beauty they acknowledge good;
And good is God — the great Necessity.
I have not told thee half I will do for thee.
All secrets thou shalt ken — all mysteries construe.
At nothing marvel. All the veins which stretch,
Unsearchable by human eyes, of lore
Most precious, most profound, to thine shall bare
And vulgar lie like dust. The world within,
The world above thee, and the dark domain,
Mine own thou shalt o'er rule; and he alone
Who rightly can esteem such high delights,
He only merits — he alone shall have.
F ESTUS . And if I have shall I be happier?
What is pleasure? What, happiness?
L UCIFER . It is that
I vouchsafe to thee.
F ESTUS . Am I tempted thus
Unto my fall?
L UCIFER . God wills or lets it be.
How thinkest thou?
F ESTUS . That I will go with thee.
L UCIFER . From God I come.
F ESTUS . I do believe thee, spirit,
He will not let thee harm me. Him I love,
And thee I fear not. I obey Him.
L UCIFER . Good.
Both time and case are urgent. Come away!
F ESTUS . Give me a breathing-time to fortify,
Within myself, the promise I have made.
L UCIFER . Expect me, then, at midnight, here. Remember,
That thou canst any time repent.
F ESTUS . Ay, true.[ Goes.
L UCIFER . Repentance never yet did aught on earth;
It undoes many good things. Of all men,
Heaven shield me from the wretch who can repent