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Lucifer. Well, and if it be!
I chose this ruin, I elected it
Of my will, not of service. What I do,
I do volitient, not obedient,
And overtop thy crown with my despair
My sorrow crowns me. Get thee back to heaven,
And leave me to the earth, which is mine own
In virtue of her ruin, as I hers
In virtue of my revolt! Turn thou from both
That bright, impassive, passive angelhood,
And spare to read us backward any more
Of the spent hallelujahs!
Gabriel. Spirit of scorn,
I might say, of unreason! I might say,
That who despairs, acts; that who acts, connives
With God's relations set in time and space;
That who elects, assumes a something good
Which God made possible; that who lives, obeys
The law of a Life-maker …
Lucifer. Let it pass!
No more, thou Gabriel! What if I stand up
And strike my brow against the crystalline
Roofing the creatures, – shall I say, for that,
My stature is too high for me to stand, —
Henceforward I must sit? Sit thou!
Gabriel. I kneel.
Lucifer. A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven,
And leave my earth to me!
Gabriel. Through heaven and earth
God's will moves freely, and I follow it,
As colour follows light. He overflows
The firmamental walls with deity,
Therefore with love; his lightnings go abroad,
His pity may do so, his angels must,
Whene'er he gives them charges.
Lucifer. Verily,
I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn,
Might hold this charge of standing with a sword
'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well
As the benignest angel of you all.
Gabriel. Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change.
If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God
This morning for a moment, thou hadst known
That only pity fitly can chastise:
Hate but avenges.
Lucifer. As it is, I know
Something of pity. When I reeled in heaven,
And my sword grew too heavy for my grasp,
Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce
So much as the first shell of, – toward the throne;
When I fell back, down, – staring up as I fell, —
The lightnings holding open my scathed lids,
And that thought of the infinite of God,
Hurled after to precipitate descent;
When countless angel faces still and stern
Pressed out upon me from the level heavens
Adown the abysmal spaces, and I fell
Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind
By the sight within your eyes, – 'twas then I knew
How ye could pity, my kind angelhood!
Gabriel. Alas, discrowned one, by the truth in me
Which God keeps in me, I would give away
All – save that truth and his love keeping it, —
To lead thee home again into the light
And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars,
When their rays tremble round them with much song
Sung in more gladness!
Lucifer. Sing, my Morning Star!
Last beautiful, last heavenly, that I loved!
If I could drench thy golden locks with tears,
What were it to this angel?
Gabriel. What love is.
And now I have named God.
Lucifer. Yet, Gabriel,
By the lie in me which I keep myself,
Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise,
What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts
To that earth-angel or earth-demon – which,
Thou and I have not solved the problem yet
Enough to argue, – that fallen Adam there, —
That red-clay and a breath, – who must, forsooth,
Live in a new apocalypse of sense,
With beauty and music waving in his trees
And running in his rivers, to make glad
His soul made perfect? – is it not for hope,
A hope within thee deeper than thy truth,
Of finally conducting him and his
To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,
Which affront heaven with their vacuity?
Gabriel. Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
To suit thy empty words. Glory and life
Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in
A compensative splendour up the vast,
Flushing the starry arteries.
Lucifer. What a change!
So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too
Fill as may please you! – and be pitiful,
As ye translate that word, to the dethroned
And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,
That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,
Am here and will not go; while there, along
The light to which ye flash the desert out,
Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay
In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?
Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,
I am not a fallen angel!
Gabriel. Dost thou know
Aught of those exiles?
Lucifer. Ay: I know they have fled
Silent all day along the wilderness:
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the marshalled cherubim
Shining against, not for them; and I know
They dare not look in one another's face, —
As if each were a cherub!
Gabriel. Dost thou know
Aught of their future?
Lucifer. Only as much as this:
That evil will increase and multiply
Without a benediction.
Gabriel. Nothing more?
Lucifer. Why so the angels taunt! What should be more?
Gabriel. God is more.
Lucifer. Proving what?
Gabriel. That he is God,
And capable of saving. Lucifer,
I charge thee by the solitude he kept
Ere he created, – leave the earth to God!
Lucifer. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin.
Gabriel. I charge thee by the memory of heaven
Ere any sin was done, – leave earth to God!
Lucifer. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon.
Gabriel. I charge thee by the choral song we sang,
When up against the white shore of our feet
The depths of the creation swelled and brake, —
And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower
Of all that coil, roared outward into space
On thunder-edges, – leave the earth to God!
Lucifer. My woe is on the earth, to curse thereby.
Gabriel. I charge thee by that mournful Morning Star
Which trembles …
Lucifer. Enough spoken. As the pine
In norland forest drops its weight of snows
By a night's growth, so, growing toward my ends
I drop thy counsels. Farewell, Gabriel!
Watch out thy service; I achieve my will.
And peradventure in the after years,
When thoughtful men shall bend their spacious brows
Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere
To ruffle their smooth manhood and break up
With lurid lights of intermittent hope
Their human fear and wrong, – they may discern
The heart of a lost angel in the earth.
CHORUS OF EDEN SPIRITS
(chanting from Paradise, while Adam and Eve fly across the Sword-glare)
Hearken, oh hearken! let your souls behind you
Turn, gently moved!
Our voices feel along the Dread to find you,
O lost, beloved!
Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels,
They press and pierce:
Our requiems follow fast on our evangels, —
Voice throbs in verse.
