Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 27
Creator, thou art sadder than thy creature!
A worm, and not a man,
Yea, no worm, but a curse?”
I dare not so mine heavenly phrase reverse.
Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork
(Whose seed disordered ran
From Eve’s hand trembling when the curse did reach her)
Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod
That smites thee never blossoming, and thou
Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow —
I leave to men their song of Ichabod:
I have an angel-tongue — I know but praise.
Ador. Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise
The passion-song of blood.
Zerah. And we, extend
Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne,
Crying “We have no music.”
Ador. Rather, blend
Both musics into one.
The sanctities and sanctified above
Shall each to each, with lifted looks serene,
Their shining faces lean,
And mix the adoring breath
And breathe the full thanksgiving.
Zerah. But the love —
The love, mine Ador!
Ador. Do we love not?
Zerah. Yea,
But not as man shall! not with life for death,
New-throbbing through the startled being; not
With strange astonished smiles, that ever may
Gush passionate like tears and fill their place:
Nor yet with speechless memories of what
Earth’s winters were, enverduring the green
Of every heavenly palm
Whose windless, shadeless calm
Moves only at the breath of the Unseen.
Oh, not with this blood on us — and this face, —
Still, haply, pale with sorrow that it bore
In our behalf, and tender evermore
With nature all our own, upon us gazing —
Nor yet with these forgiving hands upraising
Their unreproachful wounds, alone to bless!
Alas, Creator! shall we love thee less
Than mortals shall?
Ador. Amen! so let it be.
We love in our proportion, to the bound
Thine infinite our finite set around,
And that is finitely, — thou, infinite
And worthy infinite love! And our delight
Is, watching the dear love poured out to thee
From ever fuller chalice. Blessed they,
Who love thee more than we do: blessed we,
Viewing that love which shall exceed even this,
And winning in the sight a double bliss
For all so lost in love’s supremacy.
The bliss is better. Only on the sad
Cold earth there are who say
It seemeth better to be great than glad.
The bliss is better. Love him more, O man,
Than sinless seraphs can!
Zerah. Yea, love him more!
Voices of the Angelic Multitude. Yea, more!
Ador. The loving word
Is caught by those from whom we stand apart.
For silence hath no deepness in her heart
Where love’s low name low breathed would not be heard
By angels, clear as thunder.
Angelic Voices. Love him more!
Ador. Sweet voices, swooning o’er
The music which ye make!
Albeit to love there were not ever given
A mournful sound when uttered out of heaven,
That angel-sadness ye would fitly take.
Of love be silent now! we gaze adown
Upon the incarnate Love who wears no crown.
Zerah. No crown! the woe instead
Is heavy on his head,
Pressing inward on his brain
With a hot and clinging pain
Till all tears are prest away,
And clear and calm his vision may
Peruse the black abyss.
No rod, no sceptre is
Holden in his fingers pale;
They close instead upon the nail,
Concealing the sharp dole,
Never stirring to put by
The fair hair peaked with blood,
Drooping forward from the rood
Helplessly, heavily
On the cheek that waxeth colder,
Whiter ever, and the shoulder
Where the government was laid.
His glory made the heavens afraid;
Will he not unearth this cross from its hole?
His pity makes his piteous state;
Will he be uncompassionate
Alone to his proper soul?
Yea, will he not lift up
His lips from the bitter cup,
His brows from the dreary weight,
His hand from the clenching cross,
Crying, “My Father, give to me
Again the joy I had with thee
Or ere this earth was made for loss?
No stir no sound.
The love and woe being interwound
He cleaveth to the woe;
And putteth forth heaven’s strength below,
To bear.
Ador. And that creates his anguish now,
Which made his glory there.
Zerah. Shall it need be so?
Awake, thou Earth! behold.
Thou, uttered forth of old
In all thy life-emotion,
In all thy vernal noises,
In the rollings of thine ocean,
Leaping founts, and rivers running, —
In thy woods’ prophetic heaving
Ere the rains a stroke have given,
In thy winds’ exultant voices
When they feel the hills anear, —
In the firmamental sunning,
And the tempest which rejoices
Thy full heart with an awful cheer.
Thou, uttered forth of old
And with all thy music rolled
In a breath abroad
By the breathing God, —
Awake! He is here! behold!
Even thou —
beseems it good
To thy vacant vision dim,
That the deadly ruin should,
For thy sake, encompass him?
That the Master-word should lie
A mere silence, while his own
Processive harmony,
The faintest echo of his lightest tone,
Is sweeping in a choral triumph by?
Awake! emit a cry!
And say, albeit used
From Adam’s ancient years
To falls of acrid tears,
To frequent sighs unloosed,
Caught back to press again
On bosoms zoned with pain —
To corses still and sullen
The shine and music dulling
With closed eyes and ears
That nothing sweet can enter,
Commoving thee no less
With that forced quietness
Than the earthquake in thy centre —
Thou hast not learnt to bear
This new divine despair!
These tears that sink into thee,
These dying eyes that view thee,
This dropping blood from lifted rood,
They darken and undo thee.
Thou canst not presently sustain this corse —
Cry, cry, thou hast not force!
Cry, thou wouldst fainer keep
Thy hopeless charnels deep,
Thyself a general tomb
Where the first and the second Death
Sit gazing face to face
And mar each other’s breath,
While silent bones through all the place
‘Neath sun and moon do faintly glisten
And seem to lie and listen
For the tramp of the coming Doom.
Is it not meet
That they who erst the Eden fruit did eat,
Should champ the ashes?
That they who wrap them in the thunder-cloud
Should wear it as a shroud,
Perishing by its flashes?
That they who vexed the lion should be rent?
Cry, cry “I will sustain my punishment,
The sin being mine; but take away from me
This visioned Dread — this man — this Deity!”
The Earth. I have groaned; I have travailed: I am weary.
I am blind with my own grief, and cannot see,
As clear-eyed angels can, his agony,
And what I see I also can sustain,
Because his power protects me from his pain.
I have groaned; I have travailed: I am dreary,
Hearkening the thick sobs of my children’s heart:
How can I say “Depart”
To that Atoner making calm and free?
Am I a God as he,
To lay down peace and power as willingly?
Ador. He looked for some to pity. There is none.
All pity is within him and not for him.
His earth is iron under him, and o’er him
His skies are brass.
His seraphs cry “Alas!”
With hallelujah voice that cannot weep.
And man, for whom the dreadful work is done ...
Scornful Voices from the Earth. If verily this be the Eternal’s son —
Ador. Thou hearest. Man is grateful.
Zerah. Can I hear
Nor darken into man and cease for ever
My seraph-smile to wear?
Was it for such,
It pleased him to overleap
His glory with his love and sever
From the God-light and the throne
And all angels bowing down,
For whom his every look did touch
New notes of joy on the unworn string
Of an eternal worshipping?
For such, he left his heaven?
There, though never bought by blood
And tears, we gave him gratitude:
We loved him there, though unforgiven.
Ador. The light is riven
Above, around,
And down in lurid fragments flung,
That catch the mountain-peak and stream
With momentary gleam,
Then perish in the water and the ground.
River and waterfall,
Forest and wilderness,
Mountain and city, are together wrung
Into one shape, and that is shapelessness;
The darkness stands for all.
Zerah. The pathos hath the day undone:
The death-look of His eyes
Hath overcome the sun
And made it sicken in its narrow skies.
Ador. Is it to death? He dieth.
Zerah. Through the dark
He still, he only, is discernible —
The naked hands and feet transfixed stark,
The countenance of patient anguish white,
Do make themselves a light
More dreadful than the glooms which round them dwell,
And therein do they shine.
Ador. God! Father-God!
Perpetual Radiance on the radiant throne!
Uplift the lids of inward deity,
Flashing abroad
Thy burning Infinite!
Light up this dark where there is nought to see
Except the unimagined agony
Upon the sinless forehead of the Son!
Zerah. God, tarry not! Behold, enow
Hath he wandered as a stranger,
Sorrowed as a victim. Thou
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
At once the darkness and dishonour rather
To the ragged jaws of hungry chaos rake,
And hurl aback to ancient dust
These mortals that make blasphemies
With their made breath, this earth and skies
That only grow a little dim,
Seeing their curse on him.
But him, of all forsaken,
Of creature and of brother,
Never wilt thou forsake!
Thy living and thy loving cannot slacken
Their firm essential hold upon each other,
And well thou dost remember how his part
Was still to lie upon thy breast and be
Partaker of the light that dwelt in thee
Ere sun or seraph shone;
And how while silence trembled round the throne
Thou countedst by the beatings of his heart
The moments of thine own eternity.
Awaken,
O right hand with the lightnings! Again gather
His glory to thy glory! What estranger,
What ill supreme in evil, can be thrust
Between the faithful Father and the Son?
Appear for him, O Father!
Appear for him, Avenger!
Appear for him, just One and holy One,
For he is holy and just!
Ador. Thy face upturned toward the throne is dark;
Thou hast no answer, Zerah.
Zerah. No reply,
O unforsaking Father?
Ador. Hark!
Instead of downward voice, a cry
Is uttered from beneath.
Zerah. And by a sharper sound than death,
Mine immortality is riven.
The heavy darkness which doth tent the sky
Floats backward as by a sudden wind:
But I see no light behind,
But I feel the farthest stars are all
Stricken and shaken,
And I know a shadow sad and broad
Doth fall — doth fall
On our vacant thrones in heaven.
Voice from the Cross. MY GOD, MY GOD,
WHY HAST THOU ME FORSAKEN?
The Earth. Ah me, ah me, ah me! the dreadful Why!
My sin is on thee, sinless one! Thou art
God-orphaned, for my burden on thy head.
Dark sin, white innocence, endurance dread!
Be still, within your shrouds, my buried dead;
Nor work with this quick horror round mine heart.
Zerah. He hath forsaken him. I perish.
Ador. Hold
Upon his name! we perish not. Of old
His will —
Zerah. I seek his will. Seek, seraphim!
My God, my God! where is it? Doth that curse
Reverberate spare us, seraph or universe?
He hath forsaken him.
Ador. He cannot fail.
Angel Voices. We faint, we droop,
Our love doth tremble like fear.
Voices of Fallen Angels from the Earth. Do we prevail?
Or are we lost? Hath not the ill we did
Been heretofore our good?
Is it not ill that one, all sinless, should
Hang heavy with all curses on a cross?
Nathless, that cry! With huddled faces hid
Within the empty graves which men did scoop
To hold more damned dead, we shudder through
What shall exalt us or undo,
Our triumph, or our loss.
Voice from the Cross. IT IS FINISHED.
Zerah. Hark, again!
Like a victor, speaks the slain.
Angel Voices. Finished be the trembling vain!
Ador. Upward, like a well-loved son,
Looketh he, the orphaned one.
Angel Voices. Finished is the mystic pain.
Voices of Fallen Angels. His deathly forehead at the word,
Gleameth like a seraph sword.
Angel Voices. Finished is the demon r
eign.
Ador. His breath, as living God, createth,
His breath, as dying man, completeth.
Angel Voices. Finished work his hands sustain.
The Earth. In mine ancient sepulchres
Where my kings and prophets freeze,
Adam dead four thousand years,
Unwakened by the universe’s
Everlasting moan,
Aye his ghastly silence mocking —
Unwakened by his children’s knocking
At his old sepulchral stone,
“Adam, Adam, all this curse is
Thine and on us yet!” —
Unwakened by the ceaseless tears
Wherewith they made his cerement wet,
“Adam, must thy curse remain?” —
Starts with sudden life and hears
Through the slow dripping of the caverned caves, —
Angel Voices. Finished is his bane.
Voice from the Cross. FATHER! MY SPIRIT TO THINE HANDS IS GIVEN.
Ador. Hear the wailing winds that be
By wings of unclean spirits made!
They, in that last look, surveyed
The love they lost in losing heaven,
And passionately flee
With a desolate cry that cleaves
The natural storms — though they are lifting
God’s strong cedar-roots like leaves,
And the earthquake and the thunder,
Neither keeping either under,
Roar and hurtle through the glooms —
And a few pale stars are drifting
Past the dark, to disappear,
What time, from the splitting tombs
Gleamingly the dead arise,
Viewing with their death-calmed eyes
The elemental strategies,
To witness, victory is the Lord’s.
Hear the wail o’ the spirits! hear!
Zerah. I hear alone the memory of his words.
SERAPHIM. EPILOGUE.
I.
My song is done.
My voice that long hath faltered shall be still.
The mystic darkness drops from Calvary’s hill
Into the common light of this day’s sun.
II.
I see no more thy cross, O holy Slain!
I hear no more the horror and the coil