Philip James Bailey (Филип Джеймс Бэйли)
Festus – 19
Law moral one and same all being imbounds, Compresses, animates, even as natural law The orb, of light and gravity. Where is soul, There fallibility, choice, and righteous doom, Following, of deity. To the bodiless realms Such abstracts apt, sights spiritually recalled Our travellers tell; of visioned miracles, this, All parent nature sees through, not as God Eternal, but aye immanent in his thought, Whole impress of the all--creative cause; Of world--faiths that, each, itself all truth Boasting, truth sole; its practices foul or vain, Declaring heaven--imposed, to heaven unknown, Save by its wrath. Good will, good deed, towards man, To none confined, in all, like blessed of God, Like honoured know. To man a prescient view Of what is true repentance, to the soul Yet to be realized, spirit--informed, expands. Heaven's judgments are the spiritual harmonies On virtues based, the same with earth's, which show To creatures God's great sceptre justified, In every sphere. The penitence for sin God loves, is after holiness of life. Space. Festus and Lucifer. Lucifer. Mark'st thou this vast half--luminous orb we coast, Not sun, not star? Festus. I note it, and so much Admire I would see more of't. Lucifer. It is a world God is in act of making. Life not yet Lifts up her head. Sole, order, first of things, Begins to arrange the elements. Festus. There are signs 'Twill be a world where all felicitous ends Designed by God may be fulfilled; a sphere Midway 'twixt earth and heaven; a common ground Where deity and humanity may unite Forces, and more effect than either 'lone. Lucifer. Theories so many, and like this, I have seen Fall through sheer lack of base, one might despair Less sanguine than myself. Meanwhile though swift Our transit, time is ours to hold converse. Hast aught upon thy mind to impart, or ask? Festus. My life is massed with miracles. Wheresoe'er I be, visions are mine; and late entranced Some angel surely, upon mine inner eyne, Life's chart preliminary unrolled, at last, Ended with painting heaven. Lucifer. Ere yet expert, Repeat, 'twere doubtless curious, false or true. Festus. Right veritable it is, I trust, if peace And love and charity are where most God is. Lucifer. Say on. It will while our way through this extense, Dreamlike, itself. Festus. Many, the greatest, truths Man hath acquired in visions, or in dreams. For then it is the soul recalls the spheres Of preexistent nature, and evokes The ghosts of coming ages, or, unites Passed, present, future by one windlike touch, Which loosens the world's zone, and renders mind The master of creation. So with me Once proved it, in a vision; for the crown Of nature is passivity, and man's Best mood the pure recipient; in a state Of twilight--like existence, as when light, Darkness, sun, moon, earth, sky were nigh all one Universal substance; nought distinct save souls, Echoes of light intelligible, towards heaven Reacting. Matter, mind the All now comprise In contrary perfections, as the twin Tide--wave inarms the world. Within the pure Blue lifeless void, where brightest stars, what else Than blackest dust illumined from without, Their central fires being self--consummative Only of death? no light show, till we hail From ours, or their own ambient: so with man; It is only through their sensuous atmospheres That spirits can view each other, or that soul, As light all colourless, yet all colours holds, By search of Being's supremest spheres of thought Spiritual and moral, which man's nature rule, Can, by that art sublime, the scheme conceive Whereby the vital whole, outrayed from God, His impress takes, and about his feet revolves In everlasting period: he, all made, Suffering, affiliating, inheavening; round, Of effluent life, or influent; this eterne, That, temporal; known to some, with power and means Commemorative, of old, endowed, and now To him who words the wonders he hath seen. It was the spirit of the universe In whose deep breast as on twin founts of life The worlds of heaven were nourished, I beheld. The fragrance of heaven's fadeless fields, her breath, The endless blessings of an act of grace, Or mercy's matron bosom, filled her words: And each articulate syllable she expired, Seemed with the lore of ages laden, as earth O'erheavily with her old baptismal flood. Her eye profound, which dazed so mine at first, I scarce might see, immortal quiet homed; As though all heaven had settled upon one star. She spake, and I regarded with such awe As eaglet, when he first beholds the sun: And though what I recall be true, so far As worded, it is less than truth; for how Can a spar utter how it was crystallized? She spake, I said, the spirit, and at her word, Behold the heavens were opened as a book, `I am the world soul, nature's spirit am I. Ere universe was or constellation, space, System, or sun, or orb, or element, Darkness, or light, or atomie, I first lived; I and necessity, though twain in life, Yet one in essence. God is, men exist. Man and all finite natures among themselves Act freely; between God, and man and all Nature finite, to this unknown, is fate: What is divine is of necessity free.' I heard and I received; and from my soul Intense in quiet, perfect in repose, Like sleep's fantastic frostwork, all the sense Melted of death; and the heaven--surrounding state Entering, of pure existence among gods, It grew ignited with divinity. Again the world--soul voiced itself; and I Indrank the fruitful glories of her words, As earth consumes the golden skiey clouds. `Two books there are which must be read; the one, The elements exist as leaves in; worlds As symbols; earth, thus, of humanity; Water of spirit, fire of divinity, And air of all things; stars the truths of heaven. Water and fire are elements divine; Earth and air, human; heaven and the soul From one proceed, and the blue--heated skies; Out of the other bodihood and abode. Judge doubtful things by certainest; things dark By what is clear, and dangerous by safe; And prophesy to all which live of God, Their aboriginal heaven, and total end Of spirit in his just love. Of soul, believe, The other tome I spake of--that man's flesh His spirit not trulier holds, than in divine Nature, its contrary, God's infinite soul Imbounds the universe: thine infinite work But infinitely less than thee, O God! The universe is simple; God and I. Cause and effect are all that in it is, And more; for cause containeth its effect. Cause, operation and effect are God, Nature and man; which both partake of one. Through error human souls accept the truth, As through distorting air the light whereby They live, of sun or starlet. Through the world The soul receives God, but from God the soul Receives the spirit, the chosen thus, thus the world; The cloud--led many, the star--guided wise. For spirit it is makes times and nature clear, As of old water purified by fire.' Methought I answered, as it might be, thus: `Life, like a floating islet, comes and goes, We know not, mean not how. From heaven a star Falls, and we track a cold dark somethingness, In our conception as unlike all birth Celestial, astral issue even, as wind Is unlike wisdom, thunder unlike snow. We know but that we are, not how, not why. The distance between finite, howsoe'er Great, and the infinite being infinite, Our life shows incomplete and sectional; And the large unity of the whole, while sought From morn all musical to blank starred night, In mind to realize, soon, too soon we see The wolf--like shadow of death which shameless haunts With spectre--like eclipse the vital orb, Creep o'er life's path, and threatening total dark The fiery marrow freeze of the vauntful world.' While yet these words were vibrant on my tongue, I saw the sun--god stall his flamy steeds In customary splendour; these, in turn, Shaking their lightning trappings off to earth, And snatching a few golden grains of sleep, Solaced them with their corner in the west; Towards where earth uplifts her crystal crown, White with all yearèd snows and radiant rime; While, ever and again, the dancing morn, Even in the mid abyss of solar night, With roseate blaze impowers the shining skies, And pure prismatic fire that lights the stars. Stretching her hand into the nebulous depths Of space eterne, again the spirit spake. `As the aethereal essence of the world, Matter thereof mere increment, I of earth Speak to thee now; for, as one Father is Of all things, and of spirit all act is born, So, of one substance is all nature made. Regard not earth as the whole universe; Nor minify yet the orb into a point Where all relations vanish. Earth receives In an immortal influence, from the stars, And out of her bright and generative heart, To all conceived and born therefrom, gives back The vital virtues of the potent heavens, With their invisible radiance filling up The interspatial skies. To all the forms Of plant, fish, brute, bird, insect he who made Gives, from life's infinite estate, renewal Ceaseless in mass; to man, soul--crowned, alone Revival personal; 'mong each other; all Differing in eminence. Some excel; the rest Suffer not therefore. Wrong to none is wrought By honour to a high peculiar few, Self--meritless, whose sole position stands By themselves ingenerable. Exists this class Eclect in all things living; best in man; In whom heaven's motional harmonies, the world's Elemental workings, nay the spirit pure Of fire impassible, and aethereal, all Incorporate are, in sunlike excellency. All men, as sons of man, be sons of God; Yet all like portion nor position have, In earth, nor heaven: of common promises Heirs, not like perfectness, nor privilege. Change arts of earth; the science of the skies, Immutable, the first man learned of God, Is elder than the sun; hath hallowed all Successive firmaments; revealed to man, Whose soul--star inly burns with living light, Who holds the constellations in his hand, Sign manual of his God, and brief of fate, Truth highest speaks, and certainties most blessed. Souls these of luminous birth who penetrate The core of all best wisdom, know all truth Hath central commune with the infinite; All faith with truth; thus kingly, till with God United, and the heavenly fulness shared. With carnal minds to outward worship prone And ordinances the spirit race of light, Consummate in truth's secret discipline, use But saintly silence, knowing all, of all Themselves incognizable, but souls who love Virtue and God. Souls conscious, self convict, Of wrong and ill; through trial, to be proved; Through peril, purified from inbred sin; From surface righteousness; from faith in gods Many and false; from scorn of the one true; From gross and giant passions; souls who roam Life's wilderness, idolatrous, and believe Their record of perfective life their proof Of power to save themselves; but these the elect Of nature, peers of paradise, pitying, serve. Men are of one kind, therefore, two sorts. All Shall find desire unite with destiny. For those, as said; for these, though all the powers Of air array themselves in lines of fire, And arm them with death's armoury; though hell's Hosts camp them, high as tented mountains round; Yet, at a wave of his hand, like to slaves, They vanish from the assiegement of the saints: Spirits which, dominations incarnate, And sons of stars that darting out of heaven, Made themselves mortal for the mother's sake; Here, with original motion, fling off truths Of perfect light, oracular even of God; Truths in their minds who worthily receive, Of inborn virtue full, accompletive Of wisdom; and like heaven's luminous rudiments, Which gradually may gravitate to worlds, Corroborate their nature, and make free Their souls to course through the blank void of time, To the bright fulness of eternity. Beyond, too, souls unnumberable, unnamed, And orbs all named, all numbered, mortal, know These be the great initials of the world: Being is one, the central infinite, cause Common to both creator and create, The great substantive essence of the whole. Knowing and doing and the fact of form, Laws co--existent of its modal life. The natural creation ended, first Commenced the spiritual, which in God ever Aforetime lived, thus time unfolds the seed Sown in eternity, and reaped therein:-- The great paternal and invisible fire Which eateth that it issueth, and wherein, Being an infinite means as well as end, All filiated nature ceaseth work. Now matter makes not one continuous orb, Nor is light all--where massed alike; the stars, Like thunderbolts perradiate, clustered stand Or, separative, seek systems omniform. God is the sole and self--subsistent one; From him, the sun--creator, nature was; Æthereal essences, all elements, The souls therein indigenous, and man Symbolic of all being. Out of earth The matron moon was moulded, and the sea Filled up the shining chasm: both now fulfil One orbit and one nature, and all orbs With them one fate, one universal end. From light's projective moment, in the earth The moon was, even as earth i'the sun; the sun A fiery incarnation of the heavens. When sun, earth, moon again make one, resumes Nature her heavenly state; is glorified.' As, to the sleepless eye, form forth, at last, The long immeasurable layers of light, And beams of fire enormous in the east, The broad foundations of the heaven domed day All fineless as the future, so uprose On mine the great celestial certainty. The mask of matter fell off, I beheld, Void of all seeming, the sole substance mind, The actualized ideal of the world. An absolutest essence filled my soul; And superseding all its modes and powers, Gave to the spirit a consciousness divine; A sense of vast existence in the skies; Boundless commune with spiritual light, and proof Self--shown, of heaven commensurate with all life. And I to the light of the great spirit's eyes Mine hungry eyes returned which, past the first Intensifying blindness, clearlier saw The words she uttered of triumphant truth. For truly, and as my vision heightened, lo! The universal volume of the heavens, Star--lettered in celestial characters, Moved musically into words her breath framed forth, And varied momently; and I perceived That thus she spake of God: I silent still And hearkening to the sea--swell of her voice. `From one divine, all permanent unity comes The many and infinite; from God all just To himself and others, who to all is love, Earth and the moon, like syllables of light, Uttered by him, were with all creatures blessed By him, and with a sevenfold blessing sealed To perfect rest, celestial order; all The double tabled book of heaven and earth, Despite such due deficiency as cleaves Inevitably to soul, till God resume, Progressive aye, possessing too all bliss Elect and universal in the heavens.' And silence settled on me deeplier still, Like a snow--muffled statue. Lucifer. Need was none To speak. Festus. Again, as a gale of light, the spirit Me wholly in her assumed, so that the words I heard, like cloudless thunder, wrought in me Holy recognizance of the source of things. `God, first and last of being, from out whose hand Came all things sensible and eternal, all Forth flowing from, and ebbing back to, him, Creation's God, regeneration's lord; And meet perception of their sum and end. Man's Saviour, like his Maker, must be God. And, all effect commensurate with its cause, Each infinite, creation stands redeemed By him first, last, and mediate, God in all. Full in the bosom of humanity, he As on the waters of the imperfect world, Came down, the God--spirit, thus in soul uniting The mortal and eterne, and in one word, Foreuttered ere all time, which legendwise Still rounds the world, though nigh obliterate now The best part,--immortality,--gave the key All mansions opening of paternal heaven.' `Thy name, O Immortality,' here, I said, `Sounds clear essential music, through the soul Thrilling, as through the heartstrings of a star, In air and sphere--form yet inconsummate, Its tidal pulses and dim throbs of light, Ere fraternized in heaven, yet presage sure In hope, of state to come; yea, round that hope So vast yet vague, which, like the northern morn, One hour usurps the mid--sky, and the next Lies buried 'neath the pole, are gathered thoughts And truths whose gravity oft determine life; As motion in an atomie leads at last To a world's orbit, mote and motion given. For spirit, self--conscious of its inner life, Makes all externals subject, and o'er thoughts And things, maintains that rule which in itself, Is present proof of what the soul most seeks; Its boundless union with its God.' Then she, The world--divining spirit, even as a star O'erflows with light, still spake of deity. `God, Untermable in essence, being unnamed, Men grasping ever at his love, his name Man--given, in pious perpetuity breathe, And strive to throw thought--light by act reflex On being, originative of life and thought, In hope to know the great unknowable, Within whose ample essence all conceipt Respecting it, as good, intelligence, life, Man born, or angel--mind can frame, is lost Like a stray gust, which from some aëry height, Soars, suicidal, up the dark inane. Lucifer. Pardon; but say, this speaking vision, how long Endured it? Festus. Nay, I know not; hours, it may be, Moments, perhaps. I was, in truth, entranced. Lucifer. Ne'er had I one but once. Ask not, in turn, How long mine lasted; mine hath lasted me Thousands of years, in sooth;--I need but shut Mine eyes, and see it now--and then, I saw Looking as might be casually towards earth, Man's sphere, the horizon black with numberless crowds. Midst these uprose a mountainous altar, shaped Like a vast inverted pyramid, whereby stood Four forms stern, solemn: one arrayed in white, And one in uniformal black; in green, The third, and of all hues the fourth. And most I marked at first, the two first named. All bliss Each claimed, as his alone, denouncing one The other; both all warning that fierce fire Burned for their sake who sware not by a creed Garbled, patched up, and contradictory; text Confounding oft with comment; by no rule Interpretative bound; as literal, now, Now figurative, construing laws like plain. Love, said this pair, nathless, from first to last, Its author's nature being, infinite love To mortal man, his motive sole; their creeds And deeds, as arctic from antarctic wide. At either side they stood, and pressed the world; And honestly and right earnestly prayed all men To serve God; their incongruous laws obey; Accept of heaven's free grace; and something do To help the Omnipotent how to save a soul. And myriads sought their several priestly sides, And did as was enjoined them, and rejoiced. Then something passed between them; and the twain, Ceasing opponent duarchy, atoned In friendship for past enmity, and straight Culling all contraries from holy grounds, Built up an idol, of all elements, Most disaccordant. Thus, his deathly feet They framed of fire, of earth his lower limbs, His breast of mass terraqueous; his head, air; Varying with strange and mutable--featured clouds. Round him, enthroned on the broad and upturned base Of that earth--piercing altar--pyramid, They reared at last, earth aiding in all modes, A circular temple, patent to the sun; Sea--lavered; mountain--columned; kingdom--paved. When as he sat his throne, there rose a shout From the foregathered multitudes, which caused The circumspatial skies shake, cold with dread, And to her inmost base earth vibrate. He In his right hand held the sun and moon, close--linked; And in his left a wingèd orb cross--crowned; By his side hung down, curved comet--wise, a sword Of fire; a rosary of unluminous stars Decked either wrist. With stars his breast was mailed, Like to a knight's of old, with scales steel--gilt; Or like an ice--plant with perpetual dew; Or diamond beetle, round beglobed with light: And the unsphered skies darkened momently. To him was brought, bound hand and foot, the world, Which more intensely worshipped than the poor Bewildered devotee in eastern lands His golden squatting idols, diamond--eyed, Whose car grinds human dust. The monarch, there, Upon that central shrine where sate the god, Laid down his crown; the warrior cast his sword; The peer, his glittering badge; the merchant prince, His hoarded coffer. There, the statesman placed His seal of power; the priest, his robe; the bard, And the harmonious master, lyre, and pen. Who soar, or mine, in science, or in art, Their elements and implements and gifts; The scribe, and the physician, and the wright, His several offering. Thither hied the crowds Of mediate millions between gain and toil; Thither the brawny--armed and brown--browed hind Whose wealth was in his will and daily work, Repaired; and earth's luxurious, toilless, tribes Followed; each with his hand full of good things, And felt their conscience lightened; blessed their lot; And all went well, and ended happily. Round that great altar, thousand lesser were, With crowds ringed each, though each the hate and scorn Of the majestic pair who served the highest, And sware to make all souls believe alike, In clockwork--like content. Yet might they not. The many most succeed. The great few fail. Some of belief thought most, of practice some, Some thought of God as darkness, some as light. And worshipped each; some held that space was God; While others said, and wiselier, God is what? Some held that deity, and all heavenly powers Were of one essence like divine and high, Even as the starry commonwealth of heaven. These deemed that, wholly contemplating God, The soul, suffused in deity, required No active virtue, but on God's own breast Lay lulled in glory and in communitive Life with divinity, its best end fulfilled. These deemed whate'er is done by men is done By God's spirit, and they thence conclude no sin Exists, unless to those who so esteem; And that to live without all doubt or dread Were to restore to life the paradise Initiate of the soul, that pleasant place Erst disafforested, and so realize The catholic salvation of the world. Some held that, now and then, there speaks in all The word of God, his light enlightening all, If not resisted carnally. Some adjudged The evil of sin and punishment alike Reflected, if eterne, on rule divine. Some that man's spirit had once forelived in heaven, A holy creature, but that sinning, earth Was its amercement made, its prison, flesh; Emerging whence, it shall by grace resume Its pre--existence and high powers. Festus. In dreams Doubtless, and reveries, oft, sublimed by faith, Dim glimpses come, I know, of blessed states, And shadowings of power passed, which to the soul Seem inborn and accustomed, as a star To light, when, late immersed, it leaves the sun. Lucifer. Some thought perfection gainable still on earth By their own mean life and efforts, as in heaven; And that with man it rests to reinstate The Adamic Eden; and, by converse pure And holy life, redeem the sacred day When nature's every work was miracle; When man, brute, angel, all in happy ease Communed, and fruits throat--slaking made good, wise; As ere the immortal seraph--serpent, hid By the sunset side of earth, stole forth and stung Heaven's virgin star; brake nature's innocent seal, And left his lightning trail through all divine Traditions. Some, strange speculatists thought he And Other, were two lower powers, whom God Had pitted in broad duel during time; But that the final victory would be heaven's; Not knowing evil's might. A countless train Of misbeliefs like pure parhelia, these Which come and vanish and return, new lifed, With men unstable; unhinderable of priest; Some grains of truth--gold starring here and there The vast formations of the false. Meanwhile, For meddling with such mysteries unmeant Surely by heaven to be cleared up on earth, Who have eyes trained to pierce the dark, outtaken, These twin compellers of conformity, Erst marked, condemned from time to time to hell, Rack, massacre and fire, each bubble sect That in full--blown emptiness rose, to show their own Familiar, brotherly, charity, and so prove The inspiration theirs they claim of God, Who tells all, he is love. Those sects themselves, Full of molecular motion, fought like mites Which fill a water--drop, and day by day Cursed or consumed each other. For the rest, Who stood round the great altar muttering creeds, And each had his dissenting heretics, The third smote simply by the sword who dared His chequered tale, not wholly truth nor lie Doubt, but suspended 'twixt, as utter void Baseless. The fourth, more meek in general mood, Willed ignorantly, both true and false, 'like scorned, To tolerate. Now and then he closed his eyes Wrathful, and slew promiscuously all round. Festus. Much doubtless may be meant in that thou hast seen. A sacred side there is to everything, As given or else forbidden, as false or true, According to the greater truth involved; One side is always bright, one always dark, Leaflike and moonlike; and each separate life Is as a leaf which waits the quickening breath Of nature, our mysterious prophetess, To give 't due place and order in the world. Heights too there are profound, and depths sublime Of thought, faith sole can deal with; for as God's True name, if known, is uttered not in heaven Highest, nor on earth, so deeps unnameable are Which cannot be revealed of human life, And ought not if they could; the elements Of the premortal manhood which inhered In the conception of creative mind, Since shown to few, and only dimly known. Lucifer. The spirit thou namest, then, showed thee not these things? Festus. Continue; if thy vision more unveiled Thou wouldst impart, or me behoves to know. Lucifer. Modes next I marked of practice, rite and form, Strangest of human trusts: here, some would burn There, others, drown, these maim, those clamm themselves Or fellows, all in proof of piety; Some sacrificed their children, some their sires; Some fruits, some flowers; beasts and the young of beasts, In honest obstinate hope of earning heaven. Others heaped stone on stone, shrine piled on shrine, In emulous mimicry of the threefold heavens; Silver inlaid with gold, gold decked with gem; Others dug out the earth and worshipped fumes, Or paid respect to vapours which inhaled Bred holiest inspiration; some in warm And reeking entrails read the signs of God, Or deemed they did, prophetic: others sun, Moon, stars, those fixed or wandering those,--adored, For spiritual good thence down--drawn; earth--born fire Or sun--born; rivers, mountains, seas, stones, herbs, Brute, insect, bird, fish; earth and air and man; All these were sworn by, prayed to, in the wild Sad faith that man's humanity, by them, Could gain some earnest of divinity. Some only ate of certain meats, or laid Under dread ban, all flesh and milk and wine; Extolling green food and the sparkling spring, As though brutes only spiritually lived, And virtue were a vegetable thing. Others wore iron spikes around their waists, Burned fire in their bosoms; with their bread Mixed dust and filth, ate grass, and naked lived; Or crawled for leagues like serpents in the dust In sign of self abasement; sign indeed Not lacked, where proof of fact much overabounds. Still, for I hasten now to close the tale Of those who thus believed, thus acted, still, Whene'er I looked around me, hour by hour, The multitudes departed, yet increased. But one way came they; countless ways they quit,-- Through age, birth, pestilence, vice and folly and war; Disease, excess, woe, famine, sin and fate;-- The city of life, twelve gated; gazing thus, Priest, altar, crowd, god, all I seem to have seen, Vanish, and are no more; till some near day, When I would see again the earth, and lo! The vision all recurs in orderly lapse; From end to end, parts special only changed. Festus. 'Tis strange, tis sad, and if I now with man Conversed, I'd say that spirit and nature known To act contrarious, yet by God's grace, tend To ultimate harmony, seeming being opposed To being in seeming only; rises earth Sunwards, not sun on earth; yet let not man Deem creatural elevance into heaven his right, By force of reason, or end necessitate Of nature truthwards. So, through life God, sought By act divinely voluntary illumes Sunwise, the world of soul. Even here, i' the pure Black, unbeing void, where but for light of stars Lit by God's vital hand--the brightest star But blackest dust illumined from without, Their central fires their death--source sole,--not life Could be nor mutual influence; so with man; It is only through their sensuous atmospheres Spirits can behold each other; and as light Which, colourless, all colours holds, by such Becomes itself enlightening, so, too, soul, Dowered inly with all varieties of belief, Born in itself to realize all time, By search of Being's supremest spheres of thought Moral and rational, which rule man's life, Learns, while the universe revolves round God In everlasting period, and the world Spiritual within, enlightened inly, how By sweet attraction towards its source, his love, Balanced by upward gravity of the whole Towards his divine perfections, he, himself, Conceiving, bearing, suffering, ending all, Affiliates finally, and inheavens. For thus To me appeared the sign the spirit now gave. Lucifer. But though man knows not absolutely, at large, His God, nor many have been in spirit rapt To heaven; yet hell to outdo in mutual hate, And threats reciprocal of quenchless fire, For speculative creeds, earth's foulest crimes Held easily expiable, seems gross misprise Of heavenly justice, and God's tolerance. Festus. Seems! Behold now heaven, the spirit exclaimed, and I One vast and universal heaven behold; God's world--pervading and perpetual smile, Which, harmonizing, lights all, all light o'erspreads. There everything hath life, the elements All vitalized, and glorified, and named Love, wisdom, strength and beauty, and all hues Which nature owns, from earth's original blush, To heaven's eternal azure, hallowed are; There sentient clouds, the delicate chariots oft Of journeying souls, inspired by musical winds, Winds fragrant as the breath of deity, shed Grateful, their choicest effluence round the skies. There, spirit exalting joys abide; there flow The fountains of eternal life and streams Of perfect virtue for soul--baptism; there, Roll faith's abysmal mysteries, darkly clear; Though soundless, shoreless, luminous with life, Tempting to be explored. There, grow the groves, Whose trees of golden boles and pearly fruits Breathe, as wind moved, the harmonious lauds of souls, Freed from the illusions of more mortal spheres. Cities and fanes of diamond crown the hills, Bright with the sole companionship of heaven, In this pre--earthly paradise, wherein Who enter are, by kindliest angels, clad In garments wrought of rainbows; and in robes Woven as of sunset clouds; while viny wreaths Gemberries bearing, form their coronals, Exuberant of all fruitage. Food they need not Who live on life, and quaff eternal joy; And rest in peace as in the down of doves. There, many pass all time, the hour of God, In pure and whole contentment. Others, still, In ceaseless, boundless progress, as from star To star, from bliss to bliss pass, until all Like rays of light, light all attractive, all Delightful light redeemed up to the sun, Return to God renewed. In one band, there, Souls of all faiths, earth--holden, gracious live, In mutual forgiveness blessing each The other; what too in their several creeds Is proved false, each casts off; what true all keep, Uniting and amending, for in all Was truth, if most in one. Thy soul it joys She said, the spirit, to see this. Search thy heart; Search, wouldst thou enter these abodes, and know There is a secret sign, whereby the soul Feels certainty of safety and of power Imparted, public to the universe, By a single world unwist of, but to one Conscious of soul's divinity a sign Infallible, of the life immortal; sign Stamped in the spirit, as is the gleaming seal Thou sawest on brows of those imparadised, The true, triliteral monogram of God. I searched, and in my vision deemed I found. But what avails it now? Lucifer. Aught said she more? Festus. What need the spirit more speak? No more I heard. She ceased, the all--create; and gazing down deep, As into her own breast, she crossed in peace O'er that abyss her life embracing arms. She ceased; and all was silence. Earth and heaven, Like solar seas unfathomably bright, Rolled forth their inmost radiance in twin tides, Immeasurable. Since the first begotten day, Until the last born eve when all shall end, And life's great vein within the embosoming skies Be utterly dried up; till night shall come, As some cloud--monster eats up, star on star, The children of the light; till dew no more Shall freshen earth's lip, nor breeze her breast, hath been Beheld such glory, nor shall be, nor may, Of nature serving God; she sibyl--like, Instinct with inspiration, and he her Endowing with all bliss unendingly. Lucifer. The universe is but the gate of heaven. See from this highest orb, the crown of space And footstool to the infinite, thou may'st gain Already, a glimpse of glory unconceived. Festus. See how yon angels stretch their shining arms, Wave their star--haunting wings which gleam like glass, And locks that look like morning's when she comes Triumphant in the east. Is this their joy O'er some world penitent? Lucifer. Lo! there it rides; Blessed to discharge on heaven's all peaceful shores Its long accumulated load of life; Its deathless freight, pilgrims of time and space. Yon guilty orb, of hesitating light, Slow looming there on its dark path, goes up At the hour forewritten, as do all worlds, to God, To judgment; and the earthquake groans I hear, Which rend its adamantine breast forebode Its agonizing doom. Festus. And grieves not heaven With world or soul lost, as with saved it joys? Lucifer. How may mortals mourn at the decree Of righteous wisdom, in itself to them A bliss to view, being infinite? Is't not just That justice should be realized? And there, See one example in the skies prepared, To admonish and remind of that's to come. Festus. But why repented it not, in time? Lucifer. Perchance It held not penitence needed; what, if proud, It recked not? Time, maybe, is for it, yet. Ask of the spirit of the world. Festus. I dare not. Lucifer. What unto us is time, stands before God Eternity. Repentance is the grief For, and effectual abstinence from sin, Creatures can scarce attain to, without God; But with him all is feasible. Festus. Cloudy and clear By turns, thy words as heaven. I know not what To think, nor how to act. Lucifer. It is natural. Who Can hit but as appointed him? Who aim, But as permitted? God gives all their ground; Bow, arrow, mark, prize, eye and arm, and all; All life's conditions, origin, means and end. Forefixed of God his fates revealed as hid In words till now concealed of prophet truth, Under the buried basements of the skies, Shall yet, I have heard, o'erthrown these, reappear. Festus. I seek not of man's fate now. I seek God. All heavens exterior passed, the seats of soul Self--purificative, and probational, me Heaven's threshold now--even where yon radiant sun Of suns, sphere central and supreme of space, The aspirant soul forewarns of holier life, And aims more spiritual than mixed earth needs, Immediate most to deity,--me attracts With irresistible force. Lucifer. Thereto we tend. Meanwhile glance downwards from this world--coping, Ere higher risen, and know that to the extreme Of utter space, where not an atomie mars The void invisible, easier 'twere to cast A lead, and total its velocity; pierce All space, nor cross light's path, than fathom man's Dark heart, or sound the hollows of his soul. Festus. Whether the greater sinner, that mean nature All these life--spheres which dominates, or thou The spirit of evil, archfoe of God and doomed, One day to perish within the eternal fire Of his wrath, even in deity thus, in whom As they begin may all things end, I know not. I only feel God loves but perfectly, And can, his own, the spirit of good. And now! Listen! I hear the harmonies of heaven From sphere to sphere and from the boundless round, Re--echoing bliss to those serenest heights Where angels sit and strike their emulous harps, Wreathed round with flowers and diamonded with dew; Such dew as gemmed the ever during blooms Of Eden winterless, or as, night by night, The tree of life wept from its every leaf, Unwithering. Now, in solemn lapse, I hear The music of the murmur of the stream Which, through the bridal city of the Lord, Floweth all life for ever; nay, catch the breath, Through its star--shadowing branches, of that tree Transplanted now to heaven, but once on earth, Whose fruit is for all beings,--breathed of God. Oh, breathe on me, inspiring spirit--breath! Oh, flow to me, ye soul--reviving waves! Freshen the fading spirit that droops and dies. Lucifer. It is plain that, here, what man craves, God hath willed.
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