 Dramatis Personae of A Drama of Exile. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Drama of Exile by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Dramatis Personae. Lucifer. Read by Patrick Beverly. Gabriel Readby. Jay Saunders. Adam Readby. David Klaperik. Eve Readby. Gemma Blythe. Christ Readby. David Monkaster. Narrator. Rubble Voices and Aged Voices. Read by Barry Eads. Eden Spirits and Earth Spirits. Read by Margaret Espayet. Spirit of the Trees. Recording by Andrea Lee. River Spirits and Second Spirit. Read by Miriam Esther Goldman. Bird Spirit. By Dan Rose. The Flower Spirits. Read by Crystal Layton. Morning Star. Angel Chorus. First Semi Chorus. Second Semi Chorus. And Youthful Voices. Read by Neeru Ayur. First Spirit and Love Voices. Read by Rissa Byrne. Pot of Infant Voices. Read by Mia Saunders. The Poet Voices. Read by Aaron Elliott. Philosophic Voices. Read by Simon Lauer. In Scene 3, two of Lucifer's lines are read by Peter Y. And two of Gabriel's lines are read by Carl Manchester. End of Dramatis Personae. A Drama of Exile by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Drama of Exile. Scene 1. Scene. The outer side of the Gate of Eden shut fast with cloud, from the depth of which revolves a sword of fire self-moved. Adam and Eve are seen in the distance, flying along the glare. Lucifer, alone. Rejoice in the clefts of Gehenna, my exiled, my host. Earth has exiles as hopeless as when a heaven's empire was lost. Through the seams of her shaken foundations, smoke up in great joy, with the smoke of your fierce exultations, deform and destroy. Smoke up with your lurid revenges, and darken the face of the white heavens, and taunt them with changes from glory and grace. We, in falling, while destiny strangles, pull down with us all. Let them look to the rest of their angels, who's safe from a fall. He saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon re-quicken that sod? Un-kinged is the king of the garden, the image of God. Other exiles are cast out of Eden. More curse has been hurled. Come up, O my locusts, and feed in the green of the world. Come up! We have conquered by evil. Good reigns not alone. I prevail now, and angel or devil inherit a throne. In sudden apparition, a watch of innumerable angels, rank above rank, slopes up from around the gates to the zenith. The angel Gabriel descends. Hail, Gabriel, the keeper of the gate! Now that the fruit is plucked, Prince Gabriel, I hold that Eden is impregnable under thy keeping. Angel of the Sin. Such as you stance, pale in the drear light, which rounds the rebels' work with Maker's Wrath, there shall be an idea to all souls. A monumental melancholy gloom, seen down all ages, wends to mark despair, and measure out the distances from good, go from a straight away. Where for? Lucifer. Thy last step in this place trod sorrow up. Recall before that sorrow, if not this sword. Angels are in the world. Where for not I? Exiles are in the world. Where for not I? The cursed are in the world. Where for not I? Depart. And where's the logic of depart? Our Lady Eve had half been satisfied to obey her Maker, if I had not learned to fix my postulate better. Does thou dream of guarding some monopoly in heaven instead of earth? Why, I can dream with thee to the length of thy wings. I do not dream. This is not heaven, even a dream nor earth. As earth was once first breathed among the stars, articulate glory from the mouth divine, to which the myriad spheres thrilled audibly, touched like loot-string and the sons of God, said our men singing it, I know that this is earth not new created but new cursed. This Eden's gate not opened but built up. With a final cloud of sunset, do I dream? Alas, not so. This is the Eden lost. By Lucifer the serpent, this sword, this sword alive with justice and with fire, that smote upon the forehead Lucifer, the angel. Where for angel go? Depart. Enough is sinned and suffered. By no means. Here's a brave earth to sin and suffer on. It holds fast still. It cracks not under curse. It holds like mine immortal. Presently will sow it thick enough with graves as green, or greener surters than its knowledge tree. We'll have the Cyprus for the tree of life, more eminent for shadow. For the rest, we'll build it dark with towns and pyramids and temples if it please you. We'll have feasts and funerals also, merry-makes and wars, till blood and wine shall mix and run along righter the edges. And good Gabriel, he like that word in heaven, I too have strength. Strength to behold him and not worship him. Strength to fall from him and not cry on him. Strength to be in the universe and yet neither God nor his servant. The red sign burnt on my forehead which you taunt me with is God's sign that it bows not unto God. The potters mark upon his work to show it rings well to the striker. I and the earth can bear more curse. Oh miserable earth, oh ruined angel. Well, and if it be, I chose this ruin. I elected it of my will, not of service. What I do, I do volition, 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. Spirit of scorn, I might say of unreason, I might say that who despairs acts, that who acts convives, with God's relations set in a time and space, that who elects assumes a something good, which God made possible that who lives obeys the law of a life-maker. 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. I kneel. A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven and leave my earth to me. Through heaven and earth. God's will moves freely, and I follow. As colours follow light, he overflows. The firmament falls walls with deity. Death all with love, his lightnings go abroad. His pity may do so his angels must, when air he gives them charge. Verily, I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn, might hold this charge of standing with a sword-twixed man and his inheritance, as well as the benignest angel of you all. Thou speakest in the shadow of thy charge. If thou had scazed upon the face of God, this morning for a moment thou hath known that only pity fitly can chastise. Hate but avenges. 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, adorned the abysmal spaces, and I fell trampled down by your stillness and struck blind by the sight within your eyes. It was then I knew how ye could pity my kind angelhood. I lashed his crown one by the truth in me, which God keeps in me I would give away, or save the truth and his love keeping it, to lead the 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. 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? What love is, and now I have named God. Yet, Gabriel, by the lie in me which I keep myself, thou art a false swearer. Where it otherwise, what dost thou hear, 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 in 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? Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven to suit thy empty words, glory and life. Fulfill your own depletions, and if God side you far from him, his next breath drew in, a compensative splendour up the vast, flushing the starry arteries. Whither change? So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too fill as may please you, and be pitiful, as ye translate that word, to be ye throned 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 me thinks I am not a fallen angel. Does thine know what of those exiles? 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 marshaled cherubim shining against not for them, and I know they dare not look in one another's face, as if each were a cherub. Does thine know what of their future? Only as much as this, that evil will increase and multiply without a benediction. Nothing more? Why so the angels taunt? What should be more? God is more. Proving what? 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. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin. I charge thee by the memory of heaven, ere any sin was done, leave earth to God. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon. I charge thee by the choral song we sang, when up against the white shore of our feet, the depths of creation swell and break, and the new worlds breed at foam and flower, of all that coil wrought outward into space, on thunder edges leave the earth to God. My woe is on the earth, to curse thereby. I charge thee by that morning full star which trembles. Enough spoken, as the pine in Norland forest drops its weight of snows by a night's growth, so, growing towards my ends, I drop thy councils. Farewell, Gabriel, watch out thy service. I achieve my will, and paraventure 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's spirits, chanting from paradise, while Adam and Eve fly across the sword glare. Harken, O Harken, let your souls behind you, turn gently moved. Our voices feel along the dread to find you, O lost beloved. Through the six shielded and strong marshaled angels they press and pierce. Our requiems follow fast on our eventiles, voice-throbs inverse. We are but orphaned spirits left in Eden a long time ago. God gave us golden cups, and we were bidden to feed you so. But now our right hand hath no cup remaining, no work to do. The mystic hydra-mel is spilt, and staining the whole earth through. Most ineradical stains foreshowing, not interfused, that brighter colors were the worlds foregoing, than shall be used. Harken, O Harken, ye shall harken surely, for years and years, the noise beside you dripping coldly purely of spirits' tears. The yearning to a beautiful denied you shall strain your powers. Ideal sweetnesses shall overglide you, resumed from ours. In all your music our pathetic minor, your ears shall cross, and all good gifts shall mind you of diviner, with sense of loss. We shall be near you in your poet-langers and wild extremes, what time you vex the desert with vain angers, or mock with dreams. And when upon you weary after Romaine, death's seal is put, by the foregone ye shall discern the coming, through eyelids shut. Hark, the Eden trees are stirring, soft and solemn in your hearing, Oak and Linden, Palm and Fur, Tamarask and Juniper, each still throbbing in vibration since that crowning of creation, when the God-breaths bake abroad, let us make man like to God, and the pines stood quivering as the awful word went by, like a vibrant music string stretched from mountain peak to sky, and the platen did expand, slow and gradual, branch and head, and the cedar's strong black shade fluttered brokenly in grand, grove and wood were swept to slant in emotion jubilant. Which divine impulsion cleaves, in dim movements to the leaves, dropped and lifted, dropped and lifted, in the sunlight greenly sifted, in the sunlight and the moonlight, greenly sifted through the trees, everway the Eden trees, in the nightlight and the moonlight, with a ruffling of green branches shaded off to resonances, never stirred by rain or breeze. Fare you well, farewell, the silven sounds no longer audible, expire at Eden's door, each footstep of your treading, tread out some murmur which you heard before, Fare you well, the trees of Eden, you shall hear, nevermore. Hark the flow of the four rivers, hark the flow, how the silence round you shivers while our voices through it go, cold and clear. Think a little while ye hear of the banks where the willows and the deer crowded and drinkled ranks, as if all would drink at once where the living water runs, of the fishes golden edges flashing in and out the sedges of the swans on silver thrones, floating down the winding streams with impassive eyes turned shoreward, and a chaff of undertones and the lotus leaning forward to help them into dreams. Fare you well, farewell, the river sounds no longer audible, expire at Eden's door, each footstep of your treading, tread out some murmur which you heard before, Fare you well, the streams of Eden, you shall hear, nevermore. I am the nearest nightingale that singeth in Eden after you, and I am singing loud and true and sweet. I do not fail. I sit upon a cypress vow close to the gate, and I fling my song over the gate and through the mail of the warden angel's marshaled strong over the gate and after you. And the warden angel's let it pass, because the poor brown bird, alas, sings in the garden sweet and true. And I build my song of high pier notes, note after note, height over height, till I strike the arch of the infinite, and I bridge abysmal agonies with strong, clear calms of harmonies, and something abides and something floats in the song which I sing after you. Fare ye well, farewell. The creature sounds, no longer audible, expire at Eden's door. Each footstep of your treading, treads out some cadence which she heard before. Fare well, the birds of Eden, ye shall hear, nevermore. We linger, we linger, the last of the throng, like the toes of a singer who loves his own song. We're spirit romas of blossom and bloom. We call your thoughts home as ye breathe our perfume. Till the amaranths splendour of fire on the slopes, till the lily bells tender in grey heliotrobes, till the poppy plains keepings etch, dream, breath, and bleed, and that the angels they're stepping grew wider to sea, till the nook set with molly ye jested one day in, till your smile whacked too wholly, left your lips praying. To the rose and the bower place that dripped over ye sleeping, to the asphodel flower place ye walked angle deep in. We pluckage your amend, we stroke down your hair. We faint in our lament and pine into air. Fare ye well, farewell. The Eden sounds, no longer sensible, expire at Eden's door. Each footstep of your treading, tread at some fragrance which ye knew before. Fare well. The flowers of Eden ye shall smell, nevermore. LibriVox Recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Drama of Exile, Scene 2 Scene, The Extremity of the Sword Glare Pausing a moment on this outer edge where the subvernal sword glare cuts in light, the dark exterior desert. Has thou strength, beloved, to look behind us to the gate? Have I not strength to look up to thy face? The need be strong, young spectacle of cloud, which seals the gate up to the final doom. Is God's seal manifest? There seem to lie a hundred thunders in it, dark and dead. The unmulted lightnings vane it motionless, and, outward from its depth, the self-moved sword swings slow its awful nomen of red fire from side to side in pendulous horror slow. Across the stagnant, ghastly glare, don't flat. On the intermediate ground, from that to this, the angelic hosts, the archangelic pumps, thrones, domination, princetums, rank on rank, rising sublimely to the feet of God, on either side and overhead the gate, show like a glittering and sustained smoke, drawn to an apex, that their faces shine betwixt the solemn clasping of their wings, clasped high to a silver point above their heads. We only guess from hence, and not discern. Though we were near enough to see them shine, the shadow on thy face were awful o'er to me, at least to me than all their light. What is this, Eve, thou dropest heavily in a heap earthenward, and thy body heaves under the golden floodings of thine hair? O Adam, Adam, by that name of Eve, thine Eve, thy life, which suits me little now, that I now confess myself, thy death, and thine undoer, as the snake was mine, I do enjoy thee, put me straight away, together with my name. Sweet, punish me, thou love be just, and ere we pass beyond the light, cast outward by the fiery sword, into the dark, which earth must be to us, bruise my head with thy foot. As the curse said my sea gel, the first tempters, strike with curse, as God struck in the garden, and as he, being satisfied with justice and with wrath, did roll his thunder gentler at the close. Thou, pardventure, midst at last recoil to some soft need of mercy, strike my lord, I also, after tempting, writhe on the ground, and I would feed on ashes from thine hand, as suits me, how am I tempted? My beloved, mine Eve and life, I have no other name for thee, or for the sun, than what ye are, my utter life and light. If we have fallen, it is that we have sinned, we. God is just, and since his kerth does comprehend us both, it must be that his balance holds the weights of first and last sin on a level. What, shall I, who had not furt you to stand straight among the hills of Eden, here assume to mend the justice of the perfect God, by piling up a curse upon his curse against thee, thee? Also, perchance, thy God might take thee into grace for scorning me, thy wrath against the sinner giving proof of inward abrogation of the sin. And so, the blessed angels might come down and walk with thee as erst. I think they would, because I was not near to make them sad, or soil the rustling of their innocence. They know me. I am deepest in the guilt, if last in the transgression. Thou. If God, who gave the right enjoyance of the world, both unto thee and me, gave thee to me the best gift last, the last sin was the worst, which sinned against more compliment of gifts and grace of giving. God, I render back strong benediction and perpetual praise from mortal feeble lips, and incense smoke out of a little censor may fill heaven. That thou, in striking my benumbed hands and forcing them to drop all other boons of beauty and dominion and delight, has left this well-beloved eve, this life within life, this best gift between their palms in gracious compensation. Is it thy voice, or some saluting angels calling all my feet into the garden? O my God, I stand here between the glory and dark, the glory of thy wrath projected forth from Eden's wall and dark of our distress, which settles a step off in that drear world, lift up to thee the hands from whence hath fallen only creation's scepter, thanking thee that rather thou hast cast me out with her than left me lorn of her in paradise, with angel looks and angel songs around to show the absence of her eyes and voice to make society full desertness without her use and comfort. Where is loss? Am I in Eden? Can another speak my own love's tongue? Because with her I stand, upright as far as I can be in this fall, and look away from heaven which doth accuse and look away from earth which doth convict into her face and crown my disgrunt brow out of her love and put the thought of her around me for an Eden full of birds and lift her body up, thus to my heart, and with my lips upon her lips, thus, thus, do quicken and sublimate my mortal breath which cannot climb against the grave's steep sides but overtops this grief. I am renewed, my eyes grow with the light which is in thine, the silence of my heart is full of sound. Hold me up so, because I comprehend this human love. I shall not be afraid of any human death and yet because I know this strength of love I seem to know death's strength by that same sign. Kiss on my lips, to shut the door close on my rising soul, lest it pass outwards in astonishment and leave thee lonely. Yet thou liest, Eve, then heavily on thyself across mine arm and face fiat to the sky. And the tears running as it might seem my life from thee, they run so fast and warm let me lie so and weep so as if in a dream or prayer, unfathom'ning, class by class the hard, tight thought which clipped my heart and showed me evermore. Load of thy justice as I loathe this snake and as the pure ones loathe ours then today, old day, beloved, as we fled across this desolating radiance cast by swords, not sons, my lips prayed soundless to myself, striking against each other. O Lord God, it was so I prayed, I ask thee by my sin and by thy curse and by thy blameless heavens, make dreadful haste to hide me from thy face and from the face of my beloved ear, for whom I am no help meet. Quick away into the new dark mystery of death I will lie still there, I will make no blaint I will not sigh, nor sob, nor speak a word, nor struggle to come back beneath the sun where, para-adventure, I might sin anew against thy mercy and his pleasure. Death, oh death, whatever it be is good enough for such as I am, while for Adam here no voice shall say again in heaven or earth it is not good for him to be alone. And it was good for such a prayer to pass my unkind eave betwixt our mutual lives. If I am exiled, must I be bereaved? It was an ill prayer, it shall be prayed no more and God did use it like a foolishness giving no answer. Now my heart has grown too high and strong for such a foolish prayer. Love makes it strong and since I was the first in the transgression with a steady foot I will be the first to tread from this void-glow into the outer darkness of the waste and thus I do it. Thus I follow thee, as air while in the sin what sounds, what sounds I feel in music which comes straight from heaven as tender as a watering dew. I think that angels not those guarding paradise but the love angels who came us to us always said God fainted unawares back from our mortal presence unto God as if he drew them inward in a breath his name being heard of them I think they with sliding voices leaned from heavenly towers invisible but gracious Hark! How soft! Chorus of Invisible Angels Water man and woman go upon your travel Heaven assists the human smoothly to unravel all that web of pain wherein ye are holding Do ye know our voices chanting down the golden? Do ye guess our choice is being unbeholden to be harkened by you yet again? This pure door of opal God hath shut between us as his shining people you who once have seen us and are blinded new yet across the doorway past the silence reaching frugals ever more may blessing in the teaching glide from us to you Think how earthed you're eating day on day succeeding with our presence load we came as if the heavens were bowed to a milder music rare ye saw us in our solemn trading trading down the steps of cloud while our wings out spreading double comes of whiteness drop superfluous brightness down from stair to stair our oft abrupt though tender widely gazed on space we flashed our angels blender in either human face with mystic lilies in our hands from the atmospheric bands breaking with the sudden grace we took you unaware while our feet struck glories outward smooth and fair which we stood on floor wise black formed in mid-air or oft when heaven descended stood we in your wandering sight in a mute apocalypse with dumb vibrations on our lips from Hosanna's ended and grand half vanishings of the imperial things within our eyes belated till the heavenly infinite falling off from the created left our inward contemplation opened into ministration then upon our axle turning of great joy to sympathy we sang out the morning dotting up the sky or we drew our music through the noontites hush and heat and shine informed with our intense divine interrupted vital notes palpitating hither, thither burning out into the ether sensible like fiery motes or whenever twilight drifted through the sedar mosses the globed sun we lifted trailing purple, trailing gold out between the passes of the mountains manifold to anthems slowly sung while he, a weary, half in swoon our joy to hear our climbing tune transpires the star's concentric rings the burden of his glory flung in broken lights upon our wings the chant dies away confusedly and Lucifer appears now may all fruits be pleasant to their lips beautifully the times have somewhat changed since thou and I had talk beneath a tree albeit ye are not gods yet Adam, hold my right hand strongly it is Lucifer and we have love to lose in the name of God go apart from us, O thou Lucifer and leave us to the desert thou hast made out of thy treason bring no serpent's slime at thwart this path kept holy to our tears or we may curse thee with their bitterness curse freely, curse is thicken why, this Eve who thought me once part worthy of her ear and somewhat wiser than the other beasts drawing together her large globes of eyes the light of which is throbbing in and out their steadfast continuity of gaze knots her fair eyebrows and so hard a knot and down from her white heights of womanhood looks on me so amazed I scarce should fear to wager such an apple as she plucked against one riper from the tree of life that she could curse too as a woman may, smooth in the vows so, speak wickedly I like it best though that thy words be wounds for so I shall not fear thy power to hurt trench on the forms of good by open ill for so I shall whack strong and grind with scorn scorning myself for ever trusting me as far as thinking ere as naked dust he could speak wisdom our new gods, it seems deal more in thunders than in courtesies and sooth mine own Olympus which anon I shall build up to loud voiced imagery from all the wandering visions of the world may show worse railing than our lady Eve pause her the rounding of her argent arm but why should this be Adam pardoned Eve Adam loved Eve Jehovah pardoned both Adam forgave Eve because loving Eve so, well yet Adam was undone of Eve as both were by the snake therefore forgive in likewise fellow temptress the poor snake who stung there not so poorly hold thy wrath beloved Adam let me answer him for this time he speaks truth which we should hear and ask for mercy which I most should grant in likewise as he tells us in likewise and therefore the I pardoned Lucifer as freely as the streams of Eden flowed when we were happy by them so depart leave us to walk the remnant of our time out mildly in the desert do not seek to harm us any more or scoff at us or ere the dust be laid upon our face to find there the communion of the dust and issue of the dust go at once go forgive and go ye images of clay shrunk somewhat in the mould what jest is this what words are these to use by what a thought conceiv ye of me yesterday a snake today what a strong spirit a sad spirit perhaps a fallen angel who shall say who told thee Adam thou the prodigy of thy vast brows and melancholy eyes which comprehend the height of some great fall I think thou hast one day worn a crown under the eyes of God and why of God it were no crown else verily I think thou art fallen far I had not yesterday said so surely but I know today grief by grief sin by sin a crown by a crown I mock me now I know more than I knew now I know thou art fallen below hope or final reassent because because a spirit who expected to see God though at the last point of a million years could dare no mockery of a ruined man such as this Adam who is high and bold be it said passing of a good red clay discovered on some top of Lebanon or happily of Aonus beyond sweep of the black eagle's wing a furlong lower had made a meek a king for Eden so it is not possible by sin and grief to give the things your name that spirits should rise instead of falling most impossible the highest being the holy and the glad whoever rises must approach delight and sanctity in the act ha my clay king thou wilt not rule by wisdom very long the after generations earth me thinks will disinherit thy philosophy for a new doctrine suited to thine heirs and class these present dogmas with the rest of the old world traditions Eden fruits and Saurian fossils speak no more with him beloved it is not good to speak with him go from us Lucifer and speak no more we have no part in which thou the dust not scorn nor any bliss dousiest for coveting nor innocence for staining being breathed we would be alone go ah ye talk the same all of you spirits and clay go and depart in heaven they said so and at Eden's gate and here re-iterant in the wilderness none say stay with me for thy face is fair none say stay with me for thy voice is sweet and yet I was not fashioned out of clay look on me woman am I beautiful thou hast a glorious darkness nothing more I think no more false heart thou thinkest more thou canst not choose but think as I praise God unwillingly but fully that I stand most absolute in beauty as yourselves were fashioned very good at best so we sprang very beauteous from the creant word which thrilled behind us God himself being moved when that august work of a perfect shape his dignities of sovereign angelhood swept out into the universe divine with thunderous movements earnest looks of gods and silver solemn clash of cymbal wings whereof was I in motion and in form apart not poorest and yet yet perhaps this beauty which I speak of is not here as God's voice is not here nor even my crown I do not know what is this thought or thing which I call beauty is it thought or thing is it a thought accepted for a thing or both or neither a pretext a word it's meaning flutters in me like a flame under my own breath my perceptions reel forever more around it and fall off as if it too were holy which it is the essence of all beauty I call love the attribute the evidence and end the consummation to the inward sense of beauty apprehended from without I still call love as form when colorless is nothing to the eye that pine tree there without its black and green being all blank so without love is beauty undissurned in man or angel angel rather ask what love is in thee what love moves to thee and what collateral love moves on with thee then shall thou know if thou art beautiful love what is love I lose it beauty and love I darken to the image beauty loves he fades away while a low music sounds thou art pale, Eve the precipice of ill down this colossal nature dizzies me and Hark the starry harmony remote seems measuring the heights from whence he fell that that we have not fallen so by the hope and aspiration by the love and faith we do exceed the stretcher of this angel by the happier weeds than he is by the death or rather by the life of the lord god how dim the angel grows as if that blast of music swept him back into the dark the music is stronger gathering itself into uncertain articulation it throbs in on us like a plaintive pressing with slow pulsations vibrate of its gradual sweetness through the yielding air through such expressions as the stars may use no starry sweet and strange with every note that grows more loud the angel grows more dim receding in proportion to approach until he stands far a shade now words song of the morning star to Lucifer he falls utterly away and vanishes as it proceeds mine orbed image sinks back from thee back from thee as thou art fallen, me thinks back from me back from me oh my light bearer could another fairer lack to thee lack to thee ah ah here's for us I love thee with the fiery love of stars who love by burning and by loving move to near the throned Jehovah not to love ah ah here's for us their bros flash fast on me from gliding cars pale passion for my loss ah ah here's for us mine orbed heat drop cold down from thee down from thee as fell thy grace of old down from me down from me oh my light bearer is another fairer one to thee one to thee ah ah here's for us great love preceded loss known to thee known to thee ah ah thou breathing thy communicable grace of life into my light mine astral faces from thine angel face hust inly fed and flooded me with radiance over much from thy pure height ah ah thou with calm floating pinions both way spread erect irradiated did sting my wheel of glory on, on before thee along the god light by quickening touch ha ha around, around the firmamental ocean I swam expanding with delirious fire around, around, around in blind desire to be drawn upward to the infinite ha ha until the motion flinking out the motion to a keen whirl of passion and avidity to a dim whirl of languor and delight I wound in gyrant orbit smooth and white with that intense rapidity around, around I wound and interwound while all the cyclic heavens about me spun stars, planets, suns and moons dilated broad then flashed together into a single sun and wound and wound in one and as they wound I wound around, around in a great fire I almost took for God ha ha here's for us thine angel glory sinks down from me down from me my beauty falls me thinks down from thee down from thee o my light para o my path preparer gone from me gone from me ah ah here's for us I cannot kindle underneath the brow of this new angel here who is not thou all things are altered since that time ago and if I shine at Eve I shall not know I am strange I am slow ah ah here's for us hence forward human eyes of lovers shall be the only sweetest sight that I shall see with tears between the looks raised up to me ah ah when having wept all night at break of day at the folded hills they shall survey my light a little trembling in the grey ah ah and gazing on me such shall comprehend through all my pts pomp at morn or even and melancholy leaning out of heaven that love their own divine may change or end that love may close in loss ah ah here's for us End of Scene 2 A Drama of Exile by Elizabeth Barrett Browning This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Drama of Exile Scene 3 Part 1 Scene farther on a wild open country seen vaguely in the approaching night How doth the wide and melancholy earth gather her hills around us grey and gassed the stair with blank significance of loss right in our faces is the wind up ne and yet the cedars and the junipers rock slowly through the midst without a sound the shapes which have no certainty of shape drift duskly in and out between the pines and loom along the edges or the hills and lie flat curdling in the open ground shadows without a body which contract and lengthen as we gaze on them Oh life which is not man nor angels what is this no cause for fear the circle of God's life contains all life beside I think the earth is crazed with curse and wanders from the sense of those first laws of fixed form and space forever she knew sin we were not rare we were brave sinning yeah I plucked the fruit with eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there are our God thrones as the tempter said not God my heart which beat then sinks the sun had sunk out of sight with our Eden night is near and God's curse nearest let us travel back and stand within the sword glow till we die believing it is better to meet death than suffer desolation nay beloved we must not pluck death from the maker's hand as erst we plucked the apple we must wait until he gives death as he gave us life nor murmur faintly over the primal gift because we spoiled its sweetness with our sin ay dust thou discern I see all how the spirits in thine eyes from their dilated orbits bound before to meet the spectral dread I am afraid ay ay the twilight bristles wild with shapes of intermittent motion aspect vague and mystic bearings which are a creep the earth keeping slow time with horrors in the blood how near they reach and far how gray they move treading upon the darkness without feet and fluttering on the darkness without wings some run like dogs with noses to the ground some keep one path like sheep some rock like trees some glide like a fallen leaf and some flow on copious as rivers some spring up like fire and some coil ay ay dust thou balls do say like what coil like the serpent when he fell from all the emeralds blender of his heightened rived and could not climb against the curse not a ring's length I am afraid afraid I think at his God's will to make me afraid permitting these to haunt us in the place of his beloved angels gone from us because we are not pure dear pity of God that dispermit the angels to go home and live no more with us who are not pure save us too from a lowly company almost as lowly in our eyes perhaps as we are in the purest pity us us too nor shut us in the dark away from verity and from stability all what we name such through the precedence of earth's adjusted uses leave us not to doubt betwixt our senses and our souls which are the more distraught and full of pain and weak of apprehension 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 arid clear for relation till the throng of shapeless spectra merge into a few distinguishable fantasms vague and grand which sweep out and around us vastly and hold us in a circle of a calm strained fantasms of pal shadow there are twelve thou who didst name all lives hast names for these methinks this is a zodiac of the earth which around us with a visionary dread responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth a fantastic apposition and approach to those celestial consulated twelve which palpitate a down the silent nights under the pressure of the hand of God stretched wide in benediction at this hour not a star prick at the flat gloom of heaven but girding close to our nether wilderness the zodiac figures of the earth looms slow drawn out as suited 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 foreshadowing life and death by dream or sense do we see this 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 thing rather than things themselves and the dim dwell our dim exponents of the creature life as earth contains it gaze on them beloved by stricter apprehension of the sight suggestions of the creature shall asoge the tear of the shadows what is known subduing the unknown entaming 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 a strange horror stirring in his mane and there a pedulous 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 crawl over by it seems to crawl itself a bowl stands horned here with gibbous blooms and a ram likewise and a scorpion rise its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark this way a goat leaps with a wild blank of beard and here fantastic fishes dustfully float using the calm for waters while their fins throw about quick rhythms along the shallow air while images more human how he stands that phantasm of a man who is now thou two phantasms of two men and one that strives resuming so the ends of manhood's curse of labor does thou see the phantasm of a woman I have seen but look off to those small humanities 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 and face on them longer and longer till my watching eyes as the stars do in watching anything should light them forward from their outline to clear a 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 colossal shapes twin sovereign images insolent 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 oblique sound shadow of sound 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 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 fashion so for use and duty might shine anointed with his chrism of beauty yet I wail I drave on with words exultingly obliquely down the godlight's gradual fall individual aspect and complexity of curatory orb and interval lost in the fluid motion of delight toward the high ends of being beyond sight yet I wail I am the spirit of the harmless beasts of flying things and creeping things and swimming of all the lives are 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 fullness 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 they wail, beloved they speak of glory in God and they wail, wail that burden of the song drops from it like it's brute and heavily falls into the lap of silence Hark again I was so beautiful so beautiful I 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 grapes swam blue across me yet I wail 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 oh my deep waters cataract and flood what wordless triumph did your voices render oh mountain summits where the eagle stood and shook from head and wing, thick do's of splendor how with holy quiet did your earthy accept that heavenly knowing you were worthy yet I wail oh 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 you living and possessing oh fair half souls capacious of full blessing yet I wail I wail I wail now hear my charge today 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 fire to cleave me and I wail I wail I wail behold ye that I fasten my sorrows feying upon your souls dishonored accursed transgressors down the steep ye hasten your crown's weight on the world I get downward unto your ruin lo, my lions senting the blood of wars roar, hoarse and unrelenting and I wail I wail do you hear that I wail I had no part in your transgression none my roses on the bow did bud not pale my rivers did not loiter in the sun I was obedient wherefore in my center do I thrill at this curse of death do I wail I wail I wail in the assault of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded my nightingale sank 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 I choose God's thunder and his angels' swords to die by Adam rather than such words let us pass out and flee we cannot flee this zodiac of the creature's cruelty curls around us like a river cold and drear and shuts us in constraining us to hear feel your steps, oh 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 your melancholy looks to 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 while treak the hawks in waiting for their jesses fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses and I wail 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 no strife mine Adam let us not stand high upon a wrong we did to reach disdain who rather should be humbler evermore since self made sadder Adam shall I speak I who speak once to such a bitter end shall I speak humbly now who once was proud I schooled by sinned more humility than thou hast oh mine Adam oh my king my king have not the world speak as thou wilt best then my and in line sweet dreadful spirits I pray you humbly in the name of God not to say of these tears which are impure grant me such pardon and graces 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 aware indeed that absolute pardon is impossible from you to me by reason of my sin and that I cannot ever more as once with worthy acceptation of pure joy behold the chances of the holy hills beneath the leaning stars or watch the veils and you pallid with their morning ecstasy or hear the winds make pastoral peace between too grousey uplands and the river wells work out their bubbling mysteries underground and all the birds sing till for joy of song they live their trembling wings as if to heave the too much weight of music from their heart and floated up tether I am aware 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 but rather cobbled darkly and made ashamed by my perseverance of sin and fall and melancholy of humilion thoughts but oh fair dreadful spirits albeit this your accusation must confront my soul and drop pathetic utterance and full gaze must ever more subdue me be content conquer me gently as if bidding me not to say loving let my tears fall stick as watering juice of even unreproached and when your tongues reproof me make me smooth not ruffled smooth and still with your reproof and their adventure better or more sad well look to it sweet spirits look well to it it will not be a miss in you who get 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 well eye well being not for me only eyes in look to it oh sweet spirits for was I not at that last sunset seen in paradise when all the western clouds doubted sudden angel faces face by face all hushed in 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 favor could I touch a rose with my white hand but it became redder at once could I walk leisurely along as watered garden but the grass tracked me with greenness could I stand alongside a moment underneath a corner 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 a bond 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 loved that bitter fruit and ruined so the sweetest friend I have turning the greatest to mine enemy I will not hear thee speak so harkensperits our god who is the enemy of none but only of their sin has 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 less passionate and anguish she fling down between your strambling feet God's gift to us a sovereignty by reason and free will sinning against the province of the soul to rule the soulless reverence her estate and pass out from her presence with no words oh dearest heart have patience with my heart have patience stead of reverence and let me speak for not being innocent it little doth become me to be proud by the very hope and promise set upon me that and sport only my gentleness shall make me great my humbleness exalt me awful spirits by 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 you see me what I am you scorn me so because you see me what I have made myself from God's best making alas peace foregone love wronged and virtue forfeit and tears wept upon all vainly alas me alas who have undone myself from all that best fairest and sweetest to this wretched this saddest and most defiled cast down cast down what word meets absolute loss let absolute loss suffice you for revenge for I who lived beneath the wings of angels yesterday wandered today beneath the ruthless world I reigning the earth's embrace yesterday put off from me today for heat with prayers I yesterday who answered the Lord God composed and glad as singing birds the sun might shriek now from our dismal desert God and hear him make reply what is thy need thou whom I cursed today I at last who yesterday was helped me to end the light unto mine Adam today the grief and curse meet for him and so pity us ye gentle spirits and pardon him and me and let some tender peace made of our pain grow up betwixt us as a tree might grow with boughs on both sides in the shade of which when presently ye shall behold us dead for the poor sake of our humility upon our breathless lips and drop your twilight to use against our brows and stroking with mild hands our harmless hands left empty of all fruit perceive your love distilling through your pity over us and suffer it self-reconciled to pass I part two Lucifer rises in the circle who talks here of a compliment of grief of expiation wrought by loss and fall of hate subduable to pity? Eve? take counsel from thy counsellor, the snake and boast no more in grief nor hope from pain my docile Eve I teach you to despond who taught you disobedience look around earth spirits and phantasms here you talk unmoved as if you were red clay again and talked what are your words to them your grief to them your deaths indeed to them did the hand pause for their sake in the plucking of the fruit that they should pause for you in hating you or will your grief or death as did your sin bring change upon their final doom behold your grief is but your sin in the rebound and cannot expiate for it that is true aye, that is true the clay king testifies to the snakes counsellor hear him very true I will insert as that is true ye wail, ye all wail paraventure I could wail among you oh thou universe that holdest sin and woe more room for wail ah, ah he was for us he was for us Mark Lucifer, he changes awfully it seems as if he looked from grief to God and could not see him read it, Lucifer how he stands yet an angel we all wail does thou remember, Adam when the curse took us in Eden on a mountain peak half sheathed in primal woods and glittering in spasms of awful sunshine at that hour a lion couched part raised upon his paws with his calm massive face turned full on thine and his main listening when the ended curse left silence in the world right suddenly he sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff as if the new reality of death were dashed against his eyes and roared so fierce such thick carnivorous passion in his throat tearing a passage through the wrath and fear and roared so wild and smoked from all the hills such fast keen echoes crumbling down the veils precipitately that the forest beasts one after one did mutter a response of savage and of sorrowful complaint which trailed along the gorges then at once he fell back and rolled crashing from the height into the dusk of pines it might have been I heard the curse alone I wail I wail that lion is the type of what I am and as he fixed thee with his full faced hate oh adam comprehending doom so gazing on the face of the unseen I cry out here between the heavens and earth my conscience of this sin this woe this wrath which damned me to this depth I wail I wail I wail oh god I scorn you that ye wail who use your pretty griefs for pedestals to stand on beckoning pity from without and deal in pathos of antithesis of what ye were for sooth and what ye are I scorn you like an angel yet one cry I too would drive up like a column erect marble to marble from my heart to heaven a monument of anguish to transverse and overtop your vapary complaints expressed from feeble woes I wail I wail for oh ye heavens ye are my witnesses that I struck out from nature in a blot the outcast and the mildew of things good the leper of angels the accepted dust under the common rain of daily gifts I the snake I the tempter I the cursed to whom the highest and the lowest alike say go from us we have no need of thee was made by god like others good and fair he did create me ask him if not fair ask if I caught not fair and silverly his blessing for chief angels on my head until it grew there a crown crystallized ask if he never called me by my name Lucifer kindly said as Gabriel Lucifer soft as Michael while serene I standing in the glory of the lamps answered my father innocent of shame and of the sense of thunder ha ye think white angels in your niches I repent and would tread down my own offenses back to service at the footstool that's read wrong I cry as the beast did that I may cry expansive not appealing fallen so deep against the sides of this prodigious pit I cry cry dashing out the hands of whale on each side to meet anguish everywhere and to attest it in the ecstasy and exultation of a woe sustained because provoked and chosen pass along your wilderness vain mortals puny griefs in transitory shapes be henceforth dwarfed to your own conscience by the dread extremes of what I am and have been ye have fallen it is but a stepsfall the whole ground beneath strewn woolly soft with promise if ye have sinned your prayers tread high as angels if ye have grieved ye are too mortal to be pityable the power to die disproves the right to grieve go to ye call this ruin I half scorn the ill I did you were ye wronged by me hated and tempted and undone of me still what's your hurt to mine of doing hurt of hating tempting and so ruining the sword's hilt is the sharpest and cuts through the hand that wields it go I curse you all hate one another feebly as ye can I would not certis cut you short in hate far be it from me hate on as ye can I breathe into your faces spirits of earth as wintry blast may breathe on wintry leaves and lifting up their brownness show beneath the branches bare beseech you spirits give to Eve who beggily entreats your love for her and Adam when they shall be dead an answer rather fitting to the sin than to the sorrow as the heavens I throw for justice's sake gave theirs I curse you both Adam and Eve say grace as after meat after my curses may your tears fall hot on all the hissing scorns of the creatures here and yet rejoice increase and multiply ye in your generations in all plagues corruptions melancholies poverties and hideous forms of life and fears of death the thought of death being all-way eminent immovable and dreadful in your life and deftly and dumbly insignificant of any hope beyond as death itself whichever of you lieth dead the first shall seem to the survivor yet rejoice my curse catch at you strongly body and soul and he find no redemption nor the wing of seraph move your way and yet rejoice rejoice because you have not set in you this hate which shall pursue you this fire hate which glares without because it burns within which kills from ashes this potential hate wherein I angel in antagonism to God and his reflex be attitudes mown ever in the central universe with the great woe of striving against love and gasp for space amid the infinite and toss for rest amid the desertness self-orphaned by my will and self-elect to kingship of resistant agony towards the good round me hating good and love and willing to hate good and to hate love and willing to will on so evermore scorning the past and damning the to come go and rejoice I curse you and we scorn you there's no pardon which can lead you to a right when your bodies take the word of the death curse in our sight then the bee that hummeth lowest shall transcend you then you shall not move an eyelid though the stars look down your eyes and the earth which ye do filed shall expose you to the skies lo these kings of ours who sought to comprehend you and the elements shall boldly all your dust to dust constrain unresistedly and coldly I will smite you with my rain from the slowest of my frosts is no receding and my little worm appointed to assume a royal part he shall reign crowned an anointed or the noble human heart give him counsel against losing of that Eden do ye scorn us back your scorn toward your face is Grand Lorne as the wind drives back the rain thus I drive with passion strife I who stand beneath God's sun made like God and though undone not unmade for love and life low ye utter threats in vain by my free will that chose sin by mine agony within round the passage of the fire by the pinings which disclose that my native soul is higher than what it chose we are yet too high o spirits for your disdain nay beloved if these be low we confront them from no height we have stooped down to their level by infecting them with evil and there's one that meets our blows gaze the right amen let it be so we shall triumph triumph greatly when ye lie beneath the sword there our lily shall grow stately though ye answer not a word and her fragrance shall be scornful of your silence while your throne ascending calmly we in erudem of your soul flash the river lift the palm tree the dilated ocean roll by the thoughts that throb within you round the islands alp and torrent shall inherit your significance of will and the grandeur of your spirit shall our broad savannas fill in our winds your exultations shall be springing even your parlance which invagals by our rudeness shall be won hearts poetic in our eagles shall be up against the sun and strike downward in articulate clear singing your bold speeches our behemoth with his thunderous jaw shall wield your high fancies shall our mammoth breathe sublimely up the shield of St. Michael at God's throne who waits to speed him till the heavens smooth grooved thunder spinning back shall leave them clear and the angels smiling wonder with dropped looks from sphere to sphere shall cry ho ye heirs of Adam ye exceed him root out thine eyes sweet from the dreary ground beloved we may be overcome by God but not by these by God perhaps in these I think not so had God for doomed despair he had not spoken hope he may destroy Circus but not deceive behold this rose I plucked it in our bow of paradise this morning and went forth and my heart has beat against its petals all the day I thought it would be always red and full as when I plucked it is it ye may see I cast it down to you that you may see all of you count the petals host of it and note the colors painted ye may see and I am as it is who yesterday grew in the same place oh ye spirits of earth I almost from my miserable heart could hear a braid you for your cruel art which will not let me down the slope of death draw any of your pity after me or lie still in the quiet of your looks as my flower there in mine a bleak wind quickened with indistinct human voices spins around the earth zodiac filling the circle with its presence and then wailing off into the east carries the rose away with it Eve falls upon her face Adam stands erect so verily the last departs so memory follows hope and life both love said to me do not die and I replied oh love I will not die I excelled and I will not often love but now it is no choice of mine to die my heart robs from thee call it straight way back death's consummation crowns completed life or comes too early hope being set on thee for others if for others then for thee for thee and me the wind revolves from the east and round again to the east perfumed by the Eden Rose and full of voices which sweep out into articulation as they pass let thy soul shake its leaves to feel the mystic wind hark! I hear life I relive, I relive and it's life that we receive it's a warmth and anew which we softly budden to from the heart and from the brain something strange that overmatches of the sound and of the sight flying round in trickling patches with my sorrow and delight yet is it all in vain more than softly it has to all be revived all we live all we live and this life that we achieve is a loud thing and a bold which with pulses manifold strikes the heart out full and vain active doer, noble liver strong to struggle sure to conquer though the vessel's prow will quiver at the lifting of the anger yet do we strive in vain more than softly it has to all be revived all we live all we live and this life that we conceive is a clear thing and a fair which we set in crystal air that its beauty may be plain with a breathing and a flooding of the heaven life on the whole while we hear the forests budding to the music of the soul yet is it tuned in vain more than softly it has to all be revived oh we live oh we live and this life that we perceive is a great thing and a grave which for others use we have duty legan to remain we are helpers fellow creatures of the right against the wrong hearted teachers of the truth which make us strong yet do we teach in vain more than softly it has to all be revived all we live and this life that we reprieve is a low thing and a light which is gested out of sight and made worthy of disdain strike with bold electric laughter the high tops of things divine turn thy head my brother after these thy tears fall in my wine for all is laughed in vain more than softly it has to all be revived I hear a sound of life of life like ours of laughter and of wailing of grave speech of little plaintive voices innocent of life in separate courses flowing out like our four rivers to some outward main I hear life life and so thy cheeks have snatched scarlet paleness and thy high strength fast of glory from full cups and thy moist lips seem trembling both of them with earnest doubts whether to utter words or only smile shall I be mother of the coming life hear this deep generations how they fall down the visionary stares of time the natural thunders far yet near sewing their fiery echoes through the hills am I a cloud to these mother to these and bringer of the curse upon all these Eve sinks down again oh we live oh we live and this life that we conceive is a noble thing and high which we climb up loftily to you God without a stain till recoiling where the shade is we retread our steps again and descend the gloomy hades to resume man's mortal pain shall it be climbed in vain oh we live oh we live oh we live and this life we would retrieve is a faithful thing of heart which we love in heart to heart until one heart fits a chain both thou be one with me I will be one with thee ha ha we love and live alas ye love and die shriek who shall reply for is it not loved in vain welcome softly rest it all be in mind oh we live oh we live and this life we would survive is a gloomy thing and brief which consummated in grief leave it ashes all for gain is it not all in vain welcome softly rest it all be in mind and bring her of the curse upon all these the voices of water and humanity die off so let me die so let us die when God's will sound the right hour of death and bring her of the curse upon all these oh spirits by the gentleness she use in winds at night and floating clouds at noon in gliding waters under lily leaves in chirp of crickets and the settling hush of bird makes in her nest with feet and wings fulfill your natures now agreed allowed we gather out our natures like a cloud and thus fulfill their lightnings thus and thus harken oh harken to us as the storm wind blows bleakly from the norland as the snow wind beats blindly on the more land as the simmoom drives hot across the desert as the thunder roars deep in the unmeasured as the torrent tears the ocean fell to atoms as the whirlpool grinds at fathoms below fathoms thus and thus as the yellow toad that spits its poison chili as the tiger in the jungle crouching stillly as the wild boar with ragged tusks of anger as the wolf dog with teeth of glittering clanger as the vultures that scream against the thunder as the owlets that sit thrown asunder thus and thus Adam God cruel unrelenting spirits by the power and me of the sovereign soul whose thought keep pace yet with the angels march I charge you into silence trample you down to obedience I am king of you ha ha thou art king with a sin for a crown and a soul undone thou the antagonized tortured and agonized held in the ring of the zodiac now king beware we are many and strong whom thou standest among and we press on the air and we stifle the back and we multiply where thou would trample us down from rights of our own to an utter wrong and from under the feet of thy scorn oh forlorn we shall spring up like corn and our stubble be strong God, there is power in thee I make appeal unto thy kingship there is pity in thee oh sinned against great God my seed my seed there is hope set on thee I cry to thee thou mystic seed leave us not in agony beyond what we can bear fall in into basement below thunder mark a mark for scorning taunted and perplexed by all these creatures we ruled yesterday whom thou, Lord, rulest always oh my seed through the tempestuous years that rain so thick petwixt my ghostly vision in thy face let me have token for my soul is bruised before the serpent's head is a vision of Christ appears in the midst of the zodiac which pales before the heavenly light the earth's spirits grow grayer and fainter I am here this is God curse us not God anymore but gazing so with omnific eyes lift my soul upward till it touch thy feet lift it only not to seem too proud to the low-eyed of some good angel's feet for such to tread on when he walketh straight and thy lips praise him spirits of the earth I meet you with rebuke for the reproach and cruel and unmitigated blame ye cast upon the old masters drew they have sinned and drew their sin is reckoned into loss for you, the sinless innocence which of you praises since God made your acts inherent in your lives and bound your hands with instincts and imperious sanctities from self-devasements which of you disdains these sinners who in falling proved their height above you by their liberty to fall and which of you complains of loss by them for whose delight and use ye have your life and honour in creation ponder it in the blind humanity though fallen exceed you this shall film your son shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud turn back your rivers footpath all your seas lay flat your forests master with a look your lion at his fasting and fetch down your eagle flying nay, without this law of mandem ye would perish beast devouring tree by tree with strangling roots and trunks set tusk-wise ye would gaze on God with an perceptive blankness up to the stars and mutter why God has thou made us thus and pining to a shallow idiocy stagger up blindly against the ends of life then stagnate into rottenness and drop heavily, poor, dead matter piecemeal down the abysmal spaces like a little stone let fall to chaos therefore over you receive man's scepter therefore be content to minister with voluntary grace and melancholy pardon every right and function in you to the human hand but yea, to man as angels are to God servants in pleasure, singers of delight suggest us to his soul of higher things than any of your highest so at last, he shall look around on you with lids too straight to hold the grateful tears and thank you well and bless you when he prays his secret prayer and praise you when he sings his open songs for the clear song note he has learnt in you of purifying sweetness and extend across your head his golden fantasies to you into soul from sense go serve him for such price that not in vain nor yet ignoble ye shall serve I place my word here for an oath mine oath for act to be hereafter in the name of which perfect redemption and perpetual grace I bless you through the hope and through the peace which are mine to the love which is myself and still Christ albeit thou bless me not in set words I am blessed in harkening the speak Christ speak Adam bless the woman man it's thine office and first in sin and first in sin and first in death raise the majesties of thy disconsolate brows oh well beloved and front with level eyelids thou to come and all the dark of the world rise woman, rise to thy peculiar and best altitudes of doing good and of enduring ill of comforting for ill and teaching good rise with thy daughters if sin came by thee and by sin death the ransom righteousness the heavenly life and compensated rest shall come by means of thee if woe by thee had issued to the world thou shall go forth an angel of the woe thou didst achieve found acceptable to the world instead of others of that name of whose bright steps would bear the hills be satisfied something thou hast to bear through womanhood peculiar suffering answer to the sin some pain laid down for each new human life some weariness and guarding such a life some coldness from the guarded some mistrust from those thou hast too well served from those beloved too loyally for some reason feebleness within thy heart and pressure of an alien tyranny with its dynastic reason of larger bones and stronger sin use but go to thy love shall chant itself in its own beatitudes after its own life working a child's kiss set on thy signed lips shall make thee glad a poor man served by thee shall make thee rich a sick man helped by thee shall make thee strong thou shalt be served thyself by every sense a service which thou renderest such a crown I set upon thy head Christ witnessing with looks of prompting love to keep thee clear of all reproach against the sin for gone from all the generations would succeed thy hand which plucked the apple I clasped closed thy lips which spake I kiss closed I bless thee in the name of paradise and by the memory of edinic joys forfeit and lost by that last cypress tree green at the gate which thrilled as we came out and by the blessed nightingale which threw its melancholy music after us and by the flowers whose spirits full of smells did follow softly and back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers and four-fold rivers courses and all these I bless thee to the contraries of these I bless thee to the desert and the thorns to the elemental change and turbulence and to the roar of the estranged beasts and to the solemn dignities of grief to each one of these ends and to their end of death and the hereafter I accept for me and for my daughters this high part which lowly shall be counted noble work shall hold me in the place of God and rest and in the place of edin's last delight worthy endurance of omitted pain while I'm my longest patience there shall wait death's speechless angels smiling in the east whence cometh the cold wind I bow myself humbly hands forward on the ill I did that humbleness may keep it in the shade shall it be so shall I smile saying so oh seed, oh king, oh God who shall it be seed what shall I say as edin's fountains welled brightly betwixt their banks says well as my soul betwixt thy love and bower and sweetest thoughts of war gone even now for the first time since God said Adam, walking through the trees I dare to pluck you as I plucked our wild the lily or pink the rose or hill