Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Page 31

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


  To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,

  Which are the more distraught and full of pain

  And weak of apprehension!

  Adam. Courage, Sweet!

  The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop

  With slow concentric movement, each on each, —

  Expressing wider spaces, — and collapsed

  In lines more definite for imagery

  And clearer for relation, till the throng

  Of shapeless spectra merge into a few

  Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand

  Which sweep out and around us vastily

  And hold us in a circle and a calm.

  Eve. Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.

  Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?

  Adam. Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,

  Which rounds us with a visionary dread,

  Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,

  In fantasque apposition and approach,

  To those celestial, constellated twelve

  Which palpitate adown the silent nights

  Under the pressure of the hand of God

  Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,

  Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:

  But, girdling close our nether wilderness,

  The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow, —

  Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,

  In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,

  Through which the ecliptic line of mystery

  Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,

  Foreshowing life and death.

  Eve. By dream or sense,

  Do we see this?

  Adam. Our spirits have climbed high

  By reason of the passion of our grief,

  And, from the top of sense, looked over sense

  To the significance and heart of things

  Rather than things themselves.

  Eve. And the dim twelve....

  Adam. Are dim exponents of the creature-life

  As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved!

  By stricter apprehension of the sight,

  Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage

  The terror of the shadows, — what is known

  Subduing the unknown and taming it

  From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there,

  Presents a lion, albeit twenty times

  As large as any lion — with a roar

  Set soundless in his vibratory jaws,

  And a strange horror stirring in his mane.

  And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh —

  Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab

  Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws,

  Like a slow blot that spreads, — till all the ground,

  Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself.

  A bull stands horned here with gibbous glooms;

  And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes

  Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark.

  This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard;

  And here, fantastic fishes duskly float,

  Using the calm for waters, while their fins

  Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.

  While images more human ——

  Eve. How he stands,

  That phantasm of a man — who is not thou!

  Two phantasms of two men!

  Adam. One that sustains,

  And one that strives, — resuming, so, the ends

  Of manhood’s curse of labour.[B] Dost thou see

  That phantasm of a woman?

  Eve. I have seen;

  But look off to those small humanities[C]

  Which draw me tenderly across my fear, —

  Lesser and fainter than my womanhood,

  Or yet thy manhood — with strange innocence

  Set in the misty lines of head and hand.

  They lean together! I would gaze on them

  Longer and longer, till my watching eyes,

  As the stars do in watching anything,

  Should light them forward from their outline vague

  To clear configuration.

  [Two Spirits, of Organic and Inorganic Nature, arise from the

  ground.

  But what Shapes

  Rise up between us in the open space,

  And thrust me into horror, back from hope!

  Adam. Colossal Shapes — twin sovran images,

  With a disconsolate, blank majesty

  Set in their wondrous faces! with no look,

  And yet an aspect — a significance

  Of individual life and passionate ends,

  Which overcomes us gazing.

  O bleak sound,

  O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!

  How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels,

  Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail

  Around the cyclic zodiac, and gains force,

  And gathers, settling coldly like a moth,

  On the wan faces of these images

  We see before us, — whereby modified,

  It draws a straight line of articulate song

  From out that spiral faintness of lament,

  And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.

  First Spirit.

  I am the spirit of the harmless earth.

  God spake me softly out among the stars,

  As softly as a blessing of much worth;

  And then his smile did follow unawares,

  That all things fashioned so for use and duty

  Might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty —

  Yet I wail!

  I drave on with the worlds exultingly,

  Obliquely down the Godlight’s gradual fall;

  Individual aspect and complexity

  Of gyratory orb and interval

  Lost in the fluent motion of delight

  Toward the high ends of Being beyond sight —

  Yet I wail!

  Second Spirit.

  I am the spirit of the harmless beasts,

  Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming;

  Of all the lives, erst set at silent feasts,

  That found the love-kiss on the goblet brimming,

  And tasted in each drop within the measure

  The sweetest pleasure of their Lord’s good pleasure —

  Yet I wail!

  What a full hum of life around his lips

  Bore witness to the fulness of creation!

  How all the grand words were full-laden ships

  Each sailing onward from enunciation

  To separate existence, — and each bearing

  The creature’s power of joying, hoping, fearing!

  Yet I wail!

  Eve. They wail, beloved! they speak of glory and God,

  And they wail — wail. That burden of the song

  Drops from it like its fruit, and heavily falls

  Into the lap of silence.

  Adam. Hark, again!

  First Spirit.

  I was so beautiful, so beautiful,

  My joy stood up within me bold to add

  A word to God’s, — and, when His work was full,

  To “very good” responded “very glad!”

  Filtered through roses did the light enclose me,

  And bunches of the grape swam blue across me —

  Yet I wail!

  Second Spirit.

  I bounded with my panthers: I rejoiced

  In my young tumbling lions rolled together:

  My stag, the river at his fetlocks, poised

  Then dipped his antlers through the golden weather

  In the same ripple which the alligator

  Left, in his joyous troubling of the water —

  Yet I wail!

  First Spirit.

  O my deep waters, cataract and flood,
r />   What wordless triumph did your voices render

  O mountain-summits, where the angels stood

  And shook from head and wing thick dews of splendour!

  How, with a holy quiet, did your Earthy

  Accept that Heavenly, knowing ye were worthy!

  Yet I wail!

  Second Spirit.

  O my wild wood-dogs, with your listening eyes!

  My horses — my ground-eagles, for swift fleeing!

  My birds, with viewless wings of harmonies,

  My calm cold fishes of a silver being,

  How happy were ye, living and possessing,

  O fair half-souls capacious of full blessing!

  Yet I wail!

  First Spirit.

  I wail, I wail! Now hear my charge to-day,

  Thou man, thou woman, marked as the misdoers

  By God’s sword at your backs! I lent my clay

  To make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:

  And now, in change for what I lent, ye give me

  The thorn to vex, the tempest-fare to cleave me —

  And I wail!

  Second Spirit.

  I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fasten

  My sorrow’s fang upon your souls dishonoured?

  Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten, —

  Your crown’s weight on the world, to drag it downward

  Unto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scenting

  The blood of wars, roar hoarse and unrelenting —

  And I wail!

  First Spirit.

  I wail, I wail! Do you hear that I wail?

  I had no part in your transgression — none.

  My roses on the bough did bud not pale,

  My rivers did not loiter in the sun;

  I was obedient. Wherefore in my centre

  Do I thrill at this curse of death and winter? —

  Do I wail?

  Second Spirit.

  I wail, I wail! I wail in the assault

  Of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded!

  My nightingale sang sweet without a fault,

  My gentle leopards innocently bounded.

  We were obedient. What is this convulses

  Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?

  And I wail!

  Eve. I choose God’s thunder and His angels’ swords

  To die by, Adam, rather than such words.

  Let us pass out and flee.

  Adam. We cannot flee.

  This zodiac of the creatures’ cruelty

  Curls round us, like a river cold and drear,

  And shuts us in, constraining us to hear.

  First Spirit.

  I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike

  A sense of death to me, and undug graves!

  The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like

  The ragged foam along the ocean-waves:

  The restless earthquakes rock against each other;

  The elements moan ‘round me— “Mother, mother” —

  And I wail!

  Second Spirit.

  Your melancholy looks do pierce me through;

  Corruption swathes the paleness of your beauty.

  Why have ye done this thing? What did we do

  That we should fall from bliss as ye from duty?

  Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses,

  Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses —

  And I wail!

  Adam. To thee, the Spirit of the harmless earth,

  To thee, the Spirit of earth’s harmless lives,

  Inferior creatures but still innocent,

  Be salutation from a guilty mouth

  Yet worthy of some audience and respect

  From you who are not guilty. If we have sinned,

  God hath rebuked us, who is over us

  To give rebuke or death, and if ye wail

  Because of any suffering from our sin,

  Ye who are under and not over us,

  Be satisfied with God, if not with us,

  And pass out from our presence in such peace

  As we have left you, to enjoy revenge

  Such as the heavens have made you. Verily,

  There must be strife between us, large as sin.

  Eve. No strife, mine Adam! Let us not stand high

  Upon the wrong we did to reach disdain,

  Who rather should be humbler evermore

  Since self-made sadder. Adam! shall I speak —

  I who spake once to such a bitter end —

  Shall I speak humbly now who once was proud?

  I, schooled by sin to more humility

  Than thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king —

  My king, if not the world’s?

  Adam. Speak as thou wilt.

  Eve. Thus, then — my hand in thine —

  ... Sweet, dreadful Spirits!

  I pray you humbly in the name of God,

  Not to say of these tears, which are impure —

  Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth

  From clean volitions toward a spotted will,

  From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more!

  I do not ask more. I am ‘ware, indeed,

  That absolute pardon is impossible

  From you to me, by reason of my sin, —

  And that I cannot evermore, as once,

  With worthy acceptation of pure joy,

  Behold the trances of the holy hills

  Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales

  Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy, —

  Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between

  Two grassy uplands, — and the river-wells

  Work out their bubbling mysteries underground, —

  And all the birds sing, till for joy of song

  They lift their trembling wings as if to heave

  The too-much weight of music from their heart

  And float it up the aether. I am ‘ware

  That these things I can no more apprehend

  With a pure organ into a full delight, —

  The sense of beauty and of melody

  Being no more aided in me by the sense

  Of personal adjustment to those heights

  Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,

  But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed

  By my percipiency of sin and fall

  In melancholy of humiliant thoughts.

  But, oh! fair, dreadful Spirits — albeit this

  Your accusation must confront my soul,

  And your pathetic utterance and full gaze

  Must evermore subdue me, — be content!

  Conquer me gently — as if pitying me,

  Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick

  As watering dews of Eden, unreproached;

  And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth,

  Not ruffled — smooth and still with your reproof,

  And peradventure better while more sad!

  For look to it, sweet Spirits, look well to it,

  It will not be amiss in you who kept

  The law of your own righteousness, and keep

  The right of your own griefs to mourn themselves, —

  To pity me twice fallen, from that, and this,

  From joy of place, and also right of wail,

  “I wail” being not for me — only “I sin.”

  Look to it, O sweet Spirits!

  For was I not,

  At that last sunset seen in Paradise,

  When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs

  Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,

  All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God

  Held them suspended, — was I not, that hour,

  The lady of the world, princess of life,

  Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touch

  A rose with my white hand, but it became

  Redder at once? Could I walk l
eisurely

  Along our swarded garden, but the grass

  Tracked me with greenness? Could I stand aside

  A moment underneath a cornel-tree,

  But all the leaves did tremble as alive

  With songs of fifty birds who were made glad

  Because I stood there? Could I turn to look

  With these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,

  Now good for only weeping, — upon man,

  Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoiced

  Because I looked on him? Alas, alas!

  And is not this much woe, to cry “alas!”

  Speaking of joy? And is not this more shame,

  To have made the woe myself, from all that joy?

  To have stretched my hand, and plucked it from the tree,

  And chosen it for fruit? Nay, is not this

  Still most despair, — to have halved that bitter fruit,

  And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,

  Turning the GREATEST to mine enemy?

  Adam. I will not hear thee speak so. Hearken, Spirits!

  Our God, who is the enemy of none

  But only of their sin, hath set your hope

  And my hope, in a promise, on this Head.

  Show reverence, then, and never bruise her more

  With unpermitted and extreme reproach, —

  Lest, passionate in anguish, she fling down

  Beneath your trampling feet, God’s gift to us

  Of sovranty by reason and freewill,

  Sinning against the province of the Soul

  To rule the soulless. Reverence her estate,

  And pass out from her presence with no words!

  Eve. O dearest Heart, have patience with my heart!

  O Spirits, have patience, ‘stead of reverence,

  And let me speak, for, not being innocent,

  It little doth become me to be proud.

  And I am prescient by the very hope

  And promise set upon me, that henceforth

  Only my gentleness shall make me great,

  My humbleness exalt me. Awful Spirits,

  Be witness that I stand in your reproof

  But one sun’s length off from my happiness —

  Happy, as I have said, to look around,

  Clear to look up! — And now! I need not speak —

  Ye see me what I am; ye scorn me so,

  Because ye see me what I have made myself

  From God’s best making! Alas, — peace forgone,

 

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