Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 25
Beacon Hill, Torquay—where the poet fled to from London, hoping to improve her health. She lived in Torquay for just over two years.
The plaque commemorating the poet’s residence at Torquay
CONTENTS
SERAPHIM. PART THE FIRST.
SERAPHIM. PART THE SECOND.
A DRAMA OF EXILE
A LAMENT FOR ADONIS
QUEEN ANNELIDA AND FALSE ARCITE.
THE COMPLAINT OF ANNELIDA TO FALSE ARCITE.
A VISION OF POETS
THE POET’S VOW
THE ROMAUNT OF MARGRET.
ISOBEL’S CHILD.
THE ROMAUNT OF THE PAGE.
THE LAY OF THE BROWN ROSARY.
A ROMANCE OF THE GANGES.
RHYME OF THE DUCHESS MAY.
THE ROMANCE OF THE SWAN’S NEST.
BERTHA IN THE LANE.
LADY GERALDINE’S COURTSHIP:
THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT PILGRIM’S POINT.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.
A CHILD ASLEEP.
THE FOURFOLD ASPECT.
NIGHT AND THE MERRY MAN.
EARTH AND HER PRAISERS.
THE VIRGIN MARY TO THE CHILD JESUS.
AN ISLAND.
THE SOUL’S TRAVELLING.
TO BETTINE, THE CHILD-FRIEND OF GOETHE.
MAN AND NATURE.
A SEA-SIDE WALK.
THE SEA-MEW.
FELICIA HEMANS
L. E. L.’S LAST QUESTION.
CROWNED AND WEDDED.
CROWNED AND BURIED.
TO FLUSH, MY DOG.
THE DESERTED GARDEN.
MY DOVES.
HECTOR IN THE GARDEN.
SLEEPING AND WATCHING.
SOUNDS.
THE LOST BOWER.
A SONG AGAINST SINGING.
WINE OF CYPRUS.
A RHAPSODY OF LIFE’S PROGRESS.
A LAY OF THE EARLY ROSE.
THE POET AND THE BIRD.
THE CRY OF THE HUMAN.
A PORTRAIT.
CONFESSIONS.
LOVED ONCE.
THE HOUSE OF CLOUDS.
A SABBATH MORNING AT SEA.
A FLOWER IN A LETTER.
THE MASK.
CALLS ON THE HEART.
WISDOM UNAPPLIED.
MEMORY AND HOPE.
HUMAN LIFE’S MYSTERY.
A CHILD’S THOUGHT OF GOD.
THE CLAIM.
SONG OF THE ROSE.
A DEAD ROSE.
THE EXILE’S RETURN.
THE SLEEP.
THE MEASURE.
COWPER’S GRAVE.
THE WEAKEST THING.
THE PET-NAME.
THE MOURNING MOTHER OF THE DEAD BLIND
A VALEDICTION.
LESSONS FROM THE GORSE.
THE LADY’S “YES.”
A WOMAN’S SHORTCOMINGS.
A MAN’S REQUIREMENTS.
A YEAR’S SPINNING.
CHANGE UPON CHANGE.
THAT DAY.
A REED.
THE DEAD PAN.
A CHILD’S GRAVE AT FLORENCE.
CATARINA TO CAMOENS
LIFE AND LOVE.
A DENIAL.
PROOF AND DISPROOF.
QUESTION AND ANSWER.
INCLUSIONS.
INSUFFICIENCY.
THE LITTLE FRIEND.
THE STUDENT.
STANZAS: I MAY SING; BUT MINSTREL’S SINGING.
THE YOUNG QUEEN.
VICTORIA’S TEARS.
VANITIES.
A SUPPLICATION FOR LOVE.
THE MEDIATOR.
THE WEEPING SAVIOUR.
THE SERAPHIM
I look for Angels’ songs, and hear Him cry.
GILES FLETCHER.
SERAPHIM. PART THE FIRST.
It is the time of the Crucifixion; and the Angels of Heaven have departed towards the Earth, except the two Seraphim, ADOR the Strong and ZERAH the Bright One. The place is the outer side of the shut Heavenly Gate.
Ador. O Seraph, pause no more!
Beside this gate of heaven we stand alone.
Zerah. Of heaven!
Ador. Our brother hosts are gone —
Zerah. Are gone before.
Ador. And the golden harps the angels bore
To help the songs of their desire,
Still burning from their hands of fire,
Lie without touch or tone
Upon the glass-sea shore.
Zerah. Silent upon the glass-sea shore!
Ador. There the Shadow from the throne
Formless with infinity
Hovers o’er the crystal sea
Awfuller than light derived,
And red with those primeval heats
Whereby all life has lived.
Zerah. Our visible God, our heavenly seats!
Ador. Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,
Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all, —
The roar of whose descent has died
To a still sound, as thunder into rain.
Immeasurable space spreads magnified
With that thick life, along the plane
The worlds slid out on. What a fall
And eddy of wings innumerous, crossed
By trailing curls that have not lost
The glitter of the God-smile shed
On every prostrate angel’s head!
What gleaming up of hands that fling
Their homage in retorted rays,
From high instinct of worshipping,
And habitude of praise!
Zerah. Rapidly they drop below us:
Pointed palm and wing and hair
Indistinguishable show us
Only pulses in the air
Throbbing with a fiery beat,
As if a new creation heard
Some divine and plastic word,
And trembling at its new-found being,
Awakened at our feet.
Ador. Zerah, do not wait for seeing!
HIS voice, his, that thrills us so
As we our harpstrings, uttered Go,
Behold the Holy in his woe!
And all are gone, save thee and —
Zerah. Thee!
Ador. I stood the nearest to the throne
In hierarchical degree,
What time the Voice said Go!
And whether I was moved alone
By the storm-pathos of the tone
Which swept through heaven the alien name of woe,
Or whether the subtle glory broke
Through my strong and shielding wings,
Bearing to my finite essence
Incapacious of their presence,
Infinite imaginings,
None knoweth save the Throned who spoke;
But I who at creation stood upright
And heard the God-breath move
Shaping the words that lightened, “Be there light,
Nor trembled but with love,
Now fell down shudderingly,
My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,
As if in mine immortal overpowered
By God’s eternity.
Zerah. Let me wait! — let me wait! —
Ador. Nay, gaze not backward through the gate!
God fills our heaven with God’s own solitude
Till all the pavements glow:
His Godhead being no more subdued,
By itself, to glories low
Which seraphs can sustain.
What if thou, in gazing so,
Shouldst behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone —
Even that to which we dare to press
Nearest, for its gentleness —
Ay, his love!
How the deep ecstatic pain
Thy being’s strength would capture!
Without language for the rapture,
Without music strong to come
And set the adoration free,
For ever,
ever, wouldst thou be
Amid the general chorus dumb,
God-stricken to seraphic agony.
Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise
The life-fount whence his hand did gather
With solitary force
Our immortalities!
Straightway how thine own would wither,
Falter like a human breath,
And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source! —
My words have imaged dread
Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
And dropt thy wings in languishment:
Overclouding foot and face,
As if God’s throne were eminent
Before thee, in the place.
Yet not — not so,
O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil
The supreme Will.
Not for obeisance but obedience,
Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence!
The voice said “Go!”
Zerah. Beloved, I depart,
His will is as a spirit within my spirit,
A portion of the being I inherit.
His will is mine obedience. I resemble
A flame all undefiled though it tremble;
I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!
O thou, who stronger art,
And standest ever near the Infinite,
Pale with the light of Light,
Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,
More feeble, more afraid;
And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
As close and gentle as the loving are,
That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.
Ador. I am near thee and I love thee.
Were I loveless, from thee gone,
Love is round, beneath, above thee,
God, the omnipresent one.
Spread the wing and lift the brow!
Well-beloved, what fearest thou?
Zerah. I fear, I fear —
Ador. What fear?
Zerah. The fear of earth.
Ador. Of earth, the God-created and God-praised
In the hour of birth?
Where every night the moon in light
Doth lead the waters silver-faced?
Where every day the sun doth lay
A rapture to the heart of all
The leafy and reeded pastoral,
As if the joyous shout which burst
From angel lips to see him first,
Had left a silent echo in his ray?
Zerah. Of earth — the God-created and God-curst,
Where man is, and the thorn:
Where sun and moon have borne
No light to souls forlorn:
Where Eden’s tree of life no more uprears
Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead
The yew-tree bows its melancholy head
And all the undergrasses kills and seres.
Ador. Of earth the weak,
Made and unmade?
Where men, that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?
Where, having won the profit which they seek,
They lie beside the sceptre and the gold
With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,
And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?
Zerah. Of earth the bold,
Where the blind matter wrings
An awful potence out of impotence,
Bowing the spiritual things
To the things of sense.
Where the human will replies
With ay and no,
Because the human pulse is quick or slow.
Where Love succumbs to Change,
With only his own memories, for revenge.
And the fearful mystery —
Ador. called Death?
Zerah. Nay, death is fearful, — but who saith
“To die,” is comprehensible.
What’s fearfuller, thou knowest well,
Though the utterance be not for thee,
Lest it blanch thy lips from glory —
Ay! the cursed thing that moved
A shadow of ill, long time ago,
Across our heaven’s own shining floor,
And when it vanished, some who were
On thrones of holy empire there,
Did reign — were seen — were — never more.
Come nearer, O beloved!
Ador. I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee
Ever to this earth?
Zerah. Before.
When thrilling from His hand along
Its lustrous path with spheric song
The earth was deathless, sorrowless.
Unfearing, then, pure feet might press
The grasses brightening with their feet,
For God’s own voice did mix its sound
In a solemn confluence oft
With the rivers’ flowing round,
And the life-tree’s waving soft.
Beautiful new earth and strange!
Ador. Hast thou seen it since — the change?
Zerah. Nay, or wherefore should I fear
To look upon it now?
I have beheld the ruined things
Only in depicturings
Of angels from an earthly mission, —
Strong one, even upon thy brow,
When, with task completed, given
Back to us in that transition,
I have beheld thee silent stand,
Abstracted in the seraph band,
Without a smile in heaven.
Ador. Then thou wast not one of those
Whom the loving Father chose
In visionary pomp to sweep
O’er Judaea’s grassy places,
O’er the shepherds and the sheep,
Though thou art so tender? — dimming
All the stars except one star
With their brighter kinder faces,
And using heaven’s own tune in hymning,
While deep response from earth’s own mountains ran,
“Peace upon earth, goodwill to man.”
Zerah. “Glory to God.” I said amen afar.
And those who from that earthly mission are,
Within mine ears have told
That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold
With such a sweet and prodigal constraint
The meaning yet the mystery of the song
What time they sang it, on their natures strong,
That, gazing down on earth’s dark steadfastness
And speaking the new peace in promises,
The love and pity made their voices faint
Into the low and tender music, keeping
The place in heaven of what on earth is weeping.
Ador. “Peace upon earth.” Come down to it.
Zerah. Ah me!
I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.
Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is,
And worship of the idol, ‘stead of His?
Ador. Yea, peace, where He is.
Zerah. He!
Say it again.
Ador. Where He is.
Zerah. Can it be
That earth retains a tree
Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed
By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?
Ador. There is a tree! — it hath no leaf nor root;
Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:
Its shadow on his head is laid.
For he, the crowned Son,
Has left his crown and throne,
Walks earth in Adam’s clay,
Eve’s snake to bruise and slay —
Zerah. Walks earth in clay?
Ador. And walking in the clay which he created,
He through it shall touch death.
What do I utter? what conceive? did breath
Of demon howl it in a blasphemy?
/> Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated
By the seven confluent Spirits? — Speak — answer me!
Who said man’s victim was his deity?
Zerah. Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee.
Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous light
Above, below, around,
As putting thunder-questions without cloud,
Reverberate without sound,
To universal nature’s depth and height.
The tremor of an inexpressive thought
Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud,
O’erruns the awful curving of thy lips;
And while thine hands are stretched above,
As newly they had caught
Some lightning from the Throne, or showed the Lord
Some retributive sword,
Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse
And radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,
As God had called thee to a seraph’s part,
With a man’s quailing heart.
Ador. O heart — O heart of man!
O ta’en from human clay
To be no seraph’s but Jehovah’s own!
Made holy in the taking,
And yet unseparate
From death’s perpetual ban,
And human feelings sad and passionate:
Still subject to the treacherous forsaking
Of other hearts, and its own steadfast pain.
O heart of man — of God! which God has ta’en
From out the dust, with its humanity
Mournful and weak yet innocent around it,
And bade its many pulses beating lie
Beside that incommunicable stir
Of Deity wherewith he interwound it.
O man! and is thy nature so defiled
That all that holy Heart’s devout law-keeping,
And low pathetic beat in deserts wild,
And gushings pitiful of tender weeping
For traitors who consigned it to such woe —
That all could cleanse thee not, without the flow
Of blood, the life-blood — His — and streaming so?
O earth the thundercleft, windshaken, where
The louder voice of “blood and blood” doth rise,