Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Page 31
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,
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,