Their homage in retorted rays, From high instinct of worshipping,

And habitude of praise. Zerah. Rapidly they drop below us. Pointed palm and wing and hair Indistinguishable show us Only pulses in the air Throbbing with a fiery beat, As if a new creation heard Some divine and plastic word, And trembling at its new-found being,

Awakened at our feet.

Ador. Zerah, do not wait for seeing.
His voice, His, that thrills us so
As we our harpstrings, uttered Go,
Behold the Holy in His woe.

And all are gone, save thee and—
Zerah.
Thee!

Ador. I stood the nearest to the throne In hierarchical degree,

What time the Voice said Go! And whether I was moved alone By the storm-pathos of the tone Which swept through heaven the alien name of woe,

None

Or whether the subtle glory broke
Through my strong and shielding
wings,

Bearing to my finite essence
Incapacious of their presence,
Infinite imaginings,

knoweth save the Throned who
spoke;

But I, who at creation stood upright And heard the God-breath move the words that lightened, 'Be there light,'

What a fall

Nor trembled but with love, Now fell down shudderingly,

crossed

By trailing curls that have not lost The glitter of the God-smile shed On every prostrate angel's head! What gleaming up of hands that

fling

had towered,

As if in mine immortal overpowered
By God's eternity.

Zerah. Let me wait!-let me wait!Ador. Nay, gaze not backward through the gate.

solitude

Till all the pavements glow,

His Godhead being no more subdued
By itself, to glories low.

Which seraphs can sustain.
What if thou, in gazing so,
Shouldst behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone-
Even that to which we dare to press
Nearest, for its gentleness-
Aye, His love!

How the deep ecstatic pain

Thy being's strength would capture! Without language for the rapture, Without music strong to come.

And set the adoration free,
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be
Amid the general chorus dumb,
God-stricken to seraphic agony !-

Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise

Pale with the light of Light! Love me, beloved! me, more newly made, More feeble, more afraid;

And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,

As close and gentle as the loving are, That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.

Ador. I am near thee and I love thee.
Were I loveless, from thee gone,
Love is round, beneath, above thee,
God, the omnipresent One.
Spread the wing, and lift the brow
Well-beloved, what fearest thou?
Zerah. I fear, I fear—

Ador. Zerah.

What fear?

The fear of earth. Ador. Of earth, the God-created and God-praised

In the hour of birth?

Where every night the moon in light

Come nearer, O beloved!

thee

What time they sang it, on their natures

To look upon it now?

I have beheld the ruined things
Only in depicturings

Of angels from an earthly mission,-
Strong one, even upon thy brow,
When, with task completed, given
Back to us in that transition,

Ador.

Zerah.

He!

Where He is.

Can it be

That earth retains a tree Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed

By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?

nor root;

Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit :
Its shadow on His head is laid.

For He, the crowned Son,
Has left His crown and throne,
Walks earth in Adam's clay,
Eve's snake to bruise and slay-
Zerah. Walks earth in clay?
Ador. And walking in the clay which
He created,

He through it shall touch death. What do I utter? what conceive? did breath

Of demon howl it in a blasphemy? Or was it mine own voice, informed, dilated

By the seven confluent Spirits ?-Speak -answer me!

Who said man's victim was his Deity? Zerah. Beloved, beloved, the word came forth from thee.

Thine eyes are rolling a tempestuous light
Above, below, around,
As putting thunder-questions without
cloud,

Reverberate without sound,
To universal nature's depth and height.
The tremor of an inexpressive thought
Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud,
O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips;
And while thine hands are stretched
above,

As newly they had caught Some lightning from the Throne, or showed the Lord

Some retributive sword,

Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse And radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,

As God had called thee to a seraph's

part,

With a man's quailing heart.
Ador.

O heart-O heart of man!
O ta'en from human clay,

To be no seraph's but Jehovah's own!
Made holy in the taking,
And yet unseparate

From death's perpetual ban,
And human feelings sad and passionate!
Still subject to the treacherous forsaking
Of other hearts, and its own steadfast
pain !

When His is put away!

Are ye unshamèd that ye cannot dim Your alien brightness to be liker Him,— Assume a human passion, and down-lay Your sweet secureness for congenial fears,

And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyes

The mystery of His tears?
Zerah. I am strong, I am strong.
Were I never to see my heaven again,
I would wheel to earth like the
tempest rain

Which sweeps there with an exult-
ant sound

To lose its life as it reaches the
ground.

I am strong, I am strong.
Away from mine inward vision swim
The shining seats of my heavenly
birth-

I see but His, I see but Him-
The Maker's steps on His cruel earth.
Will the bitter herbs of earth grow

sweet

To me, as trodden by His feet?

As worn by Him, begin to be
A blessed, yea, a sacred thing,
For love, and awe, and ministering?
I am strong, I am strong.
By our angel ken shall we survey
His loving smile through his woful
clay?

I am swift, I am strong-
The love is bearing me along.
Ador. One love is bearing us along.

PART THE SECOND

[Mid-air, above Judaea. ADOR and ZERAH are a little apart from the visible Angelic Hosts.]

Ador. BELOVED! dost thou see?-
Zerah.
Thee, thee.
Thy burning eyes already are
Grown wild and mournful as a star
Whose occupation is for ay
To look upon the place of clay

Whereon thou lookest now.
The crown is fainting on thy brow
To the likeness of a cloud,

The forehead's self a little bowed
From its aspect high and holy,
As it would in meekness meet
Some seraphic melancholy.
Thy very wings that lately flung
An outline clear, do flicker here,
And wear to each a shadow hung,

Dropped across thy feet.

In these strange contrasting glooms
Stagnant with the scent of tombs,
Seraph faces, O my brother,
Show awfully to one another.

Ador. Dost thou see?

not glow.

Ador. Look downward! dost thou see?
Zerah. And wouldst thou press that
vision on my words?

Doth not Earth speak enough
Of change and of undoing,
Without a seraph's witness? Oceans
rough

With tempest, pastoral swards Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing

The bolt fallen yesterday,

That shake their piny heads, as who would say

We are too beautiful for our decay'— Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone

Earth, to her earthly moan. Voice of all things. Is there no moan but hers?