The poetical works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning ...

Dedication

TO MY FATHER.

When your eyes fall upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be ofi the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you, who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither of us to speak before the world : nor would it be possible for us to speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough, that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to yours. And my desire is that yoti, who are a witness how if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day, — that you, who have shared with me in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them every day — that you, who hold with me over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one Name, — may accept the inscription of these volumes, the exponents of a few years of an existence which has been sustained 'and comforted by you as well as given. Somewhat more faint-hearted than I used to be, it is my fancy thus to seem to return to a visible personal dependence on you, as if indeed I were a child again ; to conjure your beloved image between.myself and the public, so as to be sure of one smile, — and to satisfy my heart while I sanctify my ambition, by associating with the great pursuit of my life, its tenderest and holiest affection.

Your

Part The First

It Is the time of tlie Crucifixion ; and tlie angels of heaven have depaiteil towanls the earth, except the two Seraphim, Ador the Strong and Zerah the Bright One.

The place is the outer isiUe of the shut heavenly gate.

Ador. O SERAPH, pause no more !

Beside this gate of Heaven we stand alone.

Zerah. Of Heaven !

Ador. Our brother hosts are gone — Zerah. Are gone before.

rdor. And the golden harps the angels bore To help the songs of their desire, i Still burning from their bands of fire, Lie without touch or tone Upon the glass-sea shore. Zerah. Silent upon the glass-sea shore! Ador. There the shadow from the

throne — Formless with infinity.

Hovers o'er the crystal sea ;

Awfuller than light derived. And red with those primseval heats

Whereby all life has lived. Zerah. Our visible God, our heavenly

seats !

Ador. Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical.

Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all, —

The roar of whose descent has died

To a still sound, as thunder into rain. Immeasurable space spreads magnified

With that thick life, along the plane The worlds slid out on. What a fall And eddy of wings innumerous,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 Their homage in retorted rays. From high instinct of worshipping.

And habitude of praise.

Zerah. Rapidly they drop below lis. 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, it is, 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

THE SERAPHIM.

Which swept through Heaven the alien name of %voe.

Or whether the subtle glory broke Through my strong and shielding

wings, Bearing to my finite essence Incapacious of their presence, Infinite imaginings, None knoweth save the Throned who

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

Nor trembled but with love, Now fell down shudderingly. My face upon the pavement whence I

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.

God fills our heaven with God's own 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.

Should behold but only one

Attribute, the veil undone —

And that to which we dare to press

Nearest, for its gentleness —

Ay, 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 The life-fount whence His hand did gather

With solitary force Our immortalities !

Straightway how thine own would wither.

Falter like a human breath,

And shrink into a point like death,

By gazing on its source 1

My words have imaged dread. Meekly hast thou bent thine head. And dropt thy wings in languishmcnt Overclouding foot and face ; As if God's throne were eminent

Before thee, in the place. Yet not — not so,

loving spirit and mee'ic, dost thou

fulfil The Supreme Will, Not for obeisance but obedience, Give motion to thy wings. Depart from hence.

The voice said ' Go.' Zerah. Beloved, I depart. His will is as a spirit within my spirit, A portion of the being I inherit. His will is mine obedience. I resemble A flame all undefiled though it tremble ;

1 go and tremble. Love me, O be-

loved !

O thou, who stronger art. And standest ever near the Infinite, 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.

Where 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 V Zerah. I fear, I fear — Ador. What fear ?

Zerah. 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 Doth lead the waters, silver-faced ? Where every day, the sun doth lay A rapture to the heart of all

The leafy and reeded pastoral. As if the joyous shout which burst

From angel lips to see him first, Had left a silent echo in his ray ?

THE SERAPHIM.

Zerah. Of earth — the God-created and God-curst,

Where man is, and the thorn.

Where sun and moon have borne

No light to souls forlorn. Where Eden's tree of life no more up-

rears Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead The yew-tree bows its melancholy

head.

And all the undergrasses kills and

seres.

Ador. Of earth the weak.

Made and unmade, Where men that faint, do strive for

crowns that fade ?

Where, having won the profit which they

seek.

They lie beside the sceptre and the

gold With fleshless hands that cannot wield

or hold.

And the stars shine in their unwinking

eyes ?

Zerah. Of earth the bold :

Where the blind matter wrings An awful potence out of impotence. Bowing the spiritual things

To the things of sense.

Where the human will replies With ay and no.

Because the human pulse is quick or

slow.

Where Love succumbs to Change, With only his own memories, for revenge.

And the fearful mystery —

Ador. Called Death ?

Zerah. Nay, death is fearful — but

who saith 'To die,' is comprehensible. What's fearfuller, thou knowest well. Though the utterance be not for thee. Lest it blanch thy lips from glory — Ay ! the cursed thing that moved A shadow of ill, long times ago, Acroisour heaven's own shining floor. And when it vanished, some who were On thrones of holy empire there. Did reign — were seen — were — never

more.

Come nearer, O beloved !

Ador. I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee Ever to this earth ?

Zerah. Before.

When thrilling from His hand along Its lustrous path with spheric song. The earth was deathless, sorrowless. Unfearing, then, pure feet might

press The grasses brightening with their

feet.

For God's own voice did mi.v its

sound In a solemn confluence oft With the rivers' flowing round And the life-tree's waving soft. Beautiful new earth, and strange ! Ador. Hast thou seen '1 since — the

change ?

Zerah. Nay, or wherefore should 1 fear 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, I have beheld thee silent stand, Abstracted in the seraph band. Without a smile in heaven. Ador. Then thou wert not one of those Whom the loving Father chose In visionary pomp to sweep O'er Judaea's grassy places. O'er the shepherds and the sheep. Though thou art so tender? —

dimming All the stars except one star. With their brighter kinder faces. And using heaven's own tune in hymning.

While deep response from earth's own mountains ran, ' Peace upon earth — goodwill to man.' Zerah. " Glory to God !" — I said Amen afar.

And those who from <that earthly mission are, Within mine ears have told That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold

THE SERAPHIM.

With such a sweet and prodigal constraint, The meaning yet the mystery of the

song, What time they sang it, on their natures

strong ; That, gazing down on earth's dark steadfastness, And speaking the new peace in promises, The love and pity made their voices faint Into the low and tender music, keeping The place in heaven, of what on earth is weeping, Ador. Peace upon earth ! Come down

to it.

ZeraJi. Ah me !

I hear thereof imcomprehendingly. Peace where the tempest — where the

sighing is— And worship of the idol, 'stead of His? Ador. Yea, peace, where He is. Zerah. He !

Say it again.

Ador. Where He is.

Zerah. 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 ?

Ador. There is a tree ! — it hath no leaf 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 Ihrone — 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.

O heart of man — of God ! which God

hath ta'en From out the dust, with its humanity Mournful and weak yet innocent around

it.

And bade its many pulses beating lie Beside that incommunicable stir Of Deity wherewith He interwound it. O man ! and is thy nature so defiled. That all that holy Heart's devout lawkeeping.

And low pathetic beat in deserts wild. And gushings pitiful of tender weeping For traitors who consigned it to sucli

woe — That all could cleanse thee not — without

the flow Of blood— the life-blood — ///j — . an J

streaming so ?

O earth the thundercleft, windshaken !

where The louder voice of " blood and blood " i doth

THE SERAPHIM.

Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice? O heaven — O vacant throne !

crowned hierarchies, that wear your

crown

When His is put away !

Are ye unshamed, that ye cannot dim Your alien brightness to be liker Him, — Assume a human passion — and downlay 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,

1 would wheel to earth like the tempest

rain Which sweeps there with an exultant

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 ? Will the vexed, accurst humanity. 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 woeful clay?

I am swift, I am strong — The love is bearing me along.

Ador. One love is bearing us along.