SCENE X.
MOUNTAINOUS SOLITUDES OF HERMON.
I SRAPHIL , A ZOARA , O RAZIEL , A STARTE .
ASTARTE .
Is this our doom decreed, to perish thus?
To confront death, and feel the stroke ere dealt,
Hopeless in God as in ourselves? I heard
The threat, but deemed it was a sound; I felt
His mercy infinite as is his love.
ORAZIEL .
And doth Astarte in her fears forget
Her Angel's presence?
ASTARTE .
Look on me! — do I fear?
Though yon clouds lower as if they could no more
Control their wrath, though sounds of caverned winds
And waters meet mine ears, doth this hand tremble?
Oraziel! my frail bosom feels its will
Resigned to death, its weaker nature dreads;
I shall look passively upon the sights
That sterner natures might appal.
Farewell,
Beautiful earth! where I no more must dwell;
Farewell the dim and leafy places where
These eyes first opened on the azure air,
And drank the hues and glories of the day,
Stamped in my heart that cannot pass away.
Farewell, my once-loved flowers! that I have felt
Were living things, that sympathies in them dwelt;
For in bright sunshine I have seen them glad,
With laughing eyes as if my joy they had,
And droop their heads beneath the sky o'ercast
With a fine sorrow; they, too, die like me,
But not alone; when their brief life is passed,
They leave behind them for their memory
Their odorous breathings, and their faded leaves,
Frail playthings of the wind, the wind that grieves,
Or seems to grieve, above them.
I shall pass
And die unknown; sunk, buried in the mass
Of a crushed world. I shall not now be pressed
In my last hour to a human breast;
I shall not hear the passionate sympathies
Of answering love, silently speaking eyes
Whose sorrow found no vent in words, but made
Their silence, holiest eloquence, pervade
The parting spirit; till what seemed to die
Was restlessness become tranquillity,
Feeling upon the loved one's breast reclined,
I left in that lone heart my life behind.
Oh would that I had died, and never proved
Life's desolating passion, never loved!
But passed away as violets, unseen,
Known only by their breath that they have been;
While human eyes and human hearts had found
My grave, and sanctified the holy ground,
Till I became in them a life apart;
Till the dead lived in memory's throbbing heart!
AZOARA .
Check this wild passion, sister dear!
I strive to listen, and without a tear;
I would teach thee endurance, and impart
My own unconquered spirit, but I feel
The voice of nature answering thee here.
ISRAPHIL .
Nay, Azoara! weep, I blame thee not;
The pride that thy high nature doth reveal
Is like my own, immortal, but those tears
Are human, and thy spirit more endears
To him who shares thy mortal lot.
AZOARA .
But where are the elect who shall be saved,
Who tremble at the fate that we have braved?
They who in caverns shrink from death,
The cowering remnant of the seed of Seth,
Wanting the courage and the will
To dare aught great in good or ill?
Lo! they have shrouded from our view,
Ere the great strife of life and death ensue,
To watch from some safe nook with placid eye
The wreck and ruin of a world roll by!
We tread in our great father's steps, and bear
Our destiny, and die — but not despair;
They to the last eke out their dregs of life;
Let them; too soon will end their strife
With wants and agonies of which 't is made
Nor ours to blush that we betrayed
Our selfish fears, abandoning our kin,
Shaming our nature as our origin.
ISRAPHIL .
Despond not, Azoara! they shall not
Triumph o'er thee or thine; what signs are given
Of this impending ruin? I behold
Clouds gathering into storm, I see birds flee
To nests, and brutes to cover. If men feared,
The prodigy is passed; it was the dream
Of Noah, but, were the crushing elements
Resolved to chaos, we have sworn by —
ASTARTE .
Hark!
AZOARA .
It was not thunder; a Voice spake, I heard
The articulation!
ISRAPHIL .
'T was the voice of God;
He calls us back to heaven; — behold his angel.
AZOARA .
A mighty Spirit is descending poised
On wings o'ershadowing earth like thunder-clouds
What majesty invests his presence! Night
Gathers above those solemn brows; I feel
Denunciation in their glories veiled.
ISRAPHIL .
'Tis Michael, leader of the host of heaven,
Nighest the throne of God. He brings great tidings,
Else had he not descended here.
MICHAEL .
Angels! who erringly have trod
Apart from the most High,
Nought may destroy your immortality,
Ingenerate from God.
Upon each brow I read untold
Remorse that preys within;
I come His mandate to unfold,
To warn ye of the death of sin.
Behold! athwart the uncrowned head
Of yonder sun is darkness shed;
Soon will that light be sped;
With it your latest hope is fled.
ORAZIEL .
Sublimest Hierarch! if we erred
In loving daughters of the earth,
Such evil was forewritten ere their birth;
Nor they the erring who tend heavenward.
Have we from Him withdrawn them? Hear,
Prostrated in her reverential fear,
Her who before thee lowly bends the knee;
Who doth attest the Godhead speaks in thee.
MICHAEL .
Thou kneeling, in thy veneration bowed,
Daughter of Earth! be thy remorse avowed
To Him the ineffable.
ASTARTE .
O thou
Mightiest creation of the living God!
Take thou my human veneration, awed
By thy great presence. I see through the wrath
Of that serene but solemn brow
The light of gentler feeling shine,
As I have seen the star shed o'er its path
Rays through the wake of thunder-clouds. Incline
From thy dread state to hear a child of dust!
We are the punished who aside have trod;
We bow to His decree, and own it just,
But with his justice is great mercy blended.
Mankind have turned from Him, but we have not;
Adoring heavenly things,
Their Maker cannot be forgot.
My spirit, could my will have plumed its wings,
Had from this earth ascended,
To read the works of the Most High;
And when embodied to my eye
The starry form of mine imaginings,
What could my earthlier nature but ally
Its mortal life to immortality?
MICHAEL .
Daughter of Earth! I chide not, nor condemn,
But warn. I speak the immutable decree.
Thou feelest thou hast erred;
Thy heart tells thee thou hast forgot His word,
Leaving the paths ordained marked out for thee;
The heavier doom alights on them
Who forsook brighter realms above.
Thou hast abandoned him who thee had given,
In the repose and trust of human love,
That happiness which most approacheth heaven,
Love that brings with it fulness of content;
Thou on a reed hast leant, the trial hour
Shall prove how impotent;
Yet doth thy gentler nature, even in sin,
Its own atonement win;
Prayer that hath ever power,
From thy misgiving heart preferred,
Is at the throne of mercy heard,
And shall avert severer punishment.
ISRAPHIL .
I yield not to our destiny, nor dare;
Nor the One supplicate in prayer.
I rest upon the strength of mine own spirit,
The light that from itself it doth inherit.
I have but its behests obeyed;
In worshipping the beautiful He made,
I yielded to the impulses He gave.
I will against all evil shield her, come
In whate'er form it may;
I will upraise her from earth's tomb,
Or share the annihilating doom;
Such is my will, let fate the worst essay.
MICHAEL .
Angels! your eyes are opened, look abroad;
Blazing athwart yon swarthy sky,
Behold the handwriting of God!
ISRAPHIL .
We see the lightning scroll —
MICHAEL .
Read ye, nor fear,
Great mercy's last award.
Behold the veiling Sun!
I flee the coming wrath, my work is done.
ASTARTE .
Read the dread sentence!
ISRAPHIL .
" Angels, hear!
Ye have wandered from your sphere;
Earth is doomed; if ye are found
Treading its devoted ground,
The bond that binds to heaven shall sever,
And ye shall be — "
Eternal! never
May we obey?
AZOARA .
I know it now;
The doom is on thy livid brow;
The dreadful truth is graven there
In traces furrowed by despair!
Ye hide it with a vain endeavour,
Our death-sentence — " Condemned for ever!"
Sister! kneel with me. O by
The God who calls on ye from high,
By our earthly love, by all
The terrors round us that appal;
By your immortality!
Leave, oh, leave us here to die; —
Let the Almighty Being see
We yielded to our destiny.
ASTARTE .
Say, when we too weakly erred
From His paths, forgot His word,
Ordinance and rule of life,
Great was our remorse and strife;
That we deemed His mercy still
Would o'erlook our human ill.
AZOARA .
Lo! how beneath us reels the ground;
Hark, to that mighty and o'erwhelming sound!
ISRAPHIL .
The fountains of the great deep are unbound.
Behold! the hills upheave like broken waves,
Rent through their cloven bosoms; from them hurled
Vapour, and flame, and smoke, and fiery cloud,
Swirling around their ruins; from the caves
Bound forth the maddened brutes, the cleft earth gapes,
Opening to her foundations, the great world
Revealed of unimaginable shapes;
A chaos-wilderness of life and death,
Blasted by fires above, or crushed beneath,
Heaved upward, tossing in their misty shroud,
The wreck of life's innumerable things!
The winds, with their annihilating wings,
Sweep the wild waters, buried in the sound
Of thunders rending the red firmament,
Mingling in one wild uproar upward sent;
While, lighting fitfully the gloom profound,
Sky-cleaving lightnings show the opened eye
Of the Avenger visible.
ORAZIEL .
Hence! — fly
Upward to Hermon's loftiest crest.
ASTARTE .
Aid me! I sink —
ORAZIEL .
Repose thou on this breast.
ISRAPHIL .
Away! — from yonder cloud-capped peak we soar;
Thence will we flee with you, or sink for evermore.
MOUNTAINOUS SOLITUDES OF HERMON.
I SRAPHIL , A ZOARA , O RAZIEL , A STARTE .
ASTARTE .
Is this our doom decreed, to perish thus?
To confront death, and feel the stroke ere dealt,
Hopeless in God as in ourselves? I heard
The threat, but deemed it was a sound; I felt
His mercy infinite as is his love.
ORAZIEL .
And doth Astarte in her fears forget
Her Angel's presence?
ASTARTE .
Look on me! — do I fear?
Though yon clouds lower as if they could no more
Control their wrath, though sounds of caverned winds
And waters meet mine ears, doth this hand tremble?
Oraziel! my frail bosom feels its will
Resigned to death, its weaker nature dreads;
I shall look passively upon the sights
That sterner natures might appal.
Farewell,
Beautiful earth! where I no more must dwell;
Farewell the dim and leafy places where
These eyes first opened on the azure air,
And drank the hues and glories of the day,
Stamped in my heart that cannot pass away.
Farewell, my once-loved flowers! that I have felt
Were living things, that sympathies in them dwelt;
For in bright sunshine I have seen them glad,
With laughing eyes as if my joy they had,
And droop their heads beneath the sky o'ercast
With a fine sorrow; they, too, die like me,
But not alone; when their brief life is passed,
They leave behind them for their memory
Their odorous breathings, and their faded leaves,
Frail playthings of the wind, the wind that grieves,
Or seems to grieve, above them.
I shall pass
And die unknown; sunk, buried in the mass
Of a crushed world. I shall not now be pressed
In my last hour to a human breast;
I shall not hear the passionate sympathies
Of answering love, silently speaking eyes
Whose sorrow found no vent in words, but made
Their silence, holiest eloquence, pervade
The parting spirit; till what seemed to die
Was restlessness become tranquillity,
Feeling upon the loved one's breast reclined,
I left in that lone heart my life behind.
Oh would that I had died, and never proved
Life's desolating passion, never loved!
But passed away as violets, unseen,
Known only by their breath that they have been;
While human eyes and human hearts had found
My grave, and sanctified the holy ground,
Till I became in them a life apart;
Till the dead lived in memory's throbbing heart!
AZOARA .
Check this wild passion, sister dear!
I strive to listen, and without a tear;
I would teach thee endurance, and impart
My own unconquered spirit, but I feel
The voice of nature answering thee here.
ISRAPHIL .
Nay, Azoara! weep, I blame thee not;
The pride that thy high nature doth reveal
Is like my own, immortal, but those tears
Are human, and thy spirit more endears
To him who shares thy mortal lot.
AZOARA .
But where are the elect who shall be saved,
Who tremble at the fate that we have braved?
They who in caverns shrink from death,
The cowering remnant of the seed of Seth,
Wanting the courage and the will
To dare aught great in good or ill?
Lo! they have shrouded from our view,
Ere the great strife of life and death ensue,
To watch from some safe nook with placid eye
The wreck and ruin of a world roll by!
We tread in our great father's steps, and bear
Our destiny, and die — but not despair;
They to the last eke out their dregs of life;
Let them; too soon will end their strife
With wants and agonies of which 't is made
Nor ours to blush that we betrayed
Our selfish fears, abandoning our kin,
Shaming our nature as our origin.
ISRAPHIL .
Despond not, Azoara! they shall not
Triumph o'er thee or thine; what signs are given
Of this impending ruin? I behold
Clouds gathering into storm, I see birds flee
To nests, and brutes to cover. If men feared,
The prodigy is passed; it was the dream
Of Noah, but, were the crushing elements
Resolved to chaos, we have sworn by —
ASTARTE .
Hark!
AZOARA .
It was not thunder; a Voice spake, I heard
The articulation!
ISRAPHIL .
'T was the voice of God;
He calls us back to heaven; — behold his angel.
AZOARA .
A mighty Spirit is descending poised
On wings o'ershadowing earth like thunder-clouds
What majesty invests his presence! Night
Gathers above those solemn brows; I feel
Denunciation in their glories veiled.
ISRAPHIL .
'Tis Michael, leader of the host of heaven,
Nighest the throne of God. He brings great tidings,
Else had he not descended here.
MICHAEL .
Angels! who erringly have trod
Apart from the most High,
Nought may destroy your immortality,
Ingenerate from God.
Upon each brow I read untold
Remorse that preys within;
I come His mandate to unfold,
To warn ye of the death of sin.
Behold! athwart the uncrowned head
Of yonder sun is darkness shed;
Soon will that light be sped;
With it your latest hope is fled.
ORAZIEL .
Sublimest Hierarch! if we erred
In loving daughters of the earth,
Such evil was forewritten ere their birth;
Nor they the erring who tend heavenward.
Have we from Him withdrawn them? Hear,
Prostrated in her reverential fear,
Her who before thee lowly bends the knee;
Who doth attest the Godhead speaks in thee.
MICHAEL .
Thou kneeling, in thy veneration bowed,
Daughter of Earth! be thy remorse avowed
To Him the ineffable.
ASTARTE .
O thou
Mightiest creation of the living God!
Take thou my human veneration, awed
By thy great presence. I see through the wrath
Of that serene but solemn brow
The light of gentler feeling shine,
As I have seen the star shed o'er its path
Rays through the wake of thunder-clouds. Incline
From thy dread state to hear a child of dust!
We are the punished who aside have trod;
We bow to His decree, and own it just,
But with his justice is great mercy blended.
Mankind have turned from Him, but we have not;
Adoring heavenly things,
Their Maker cannot be forgot.
My spirit, could my will have plumed its wings,
Had from this earth ascended,
To read the works of the Most High;
And when embodied to my eye
The starry form of mine imaginings,
What could my earthlier nature but ally
Its mortal life to immortality?
MICHAEL .
Daughter of Earth! I chide not, nor condemn,
But warn. I speak the immutable decree.
Thou feelest thou hast erred;
Thy heart tells thee thou hast forgot His word,
Leaving the paths ordained marked out for thee;
The heavier doom alights on them
Who forsook brighter realms above.
Thou hast abandoned him who thee had given,
In the repose and trust of human love,
That happiness which most approacheth heaven,
Love that brings with it fulness of content;
Thou on a reed hast leant, the trial hour
Shall prove how impotent;
Yet doth thy gentler nature, even in sin,
Its own atonement win;
Prayer that hath ever power,
From thy misgiving heart preferred,
Is at the throne of mercy heard,
And shall avert severer punishment.
ISRAPHIL .
I yield not to our destiny, nor dare;
Nor the One supplicate in prayer.
I rest upon the strength of mine own spirit,
The light that from itself it doth inherit.
I have but its behests obeyed;
In worshipping the beautiful He made,
I yielded to the impulses He gave.
I will against all evil shield her, come
In whate'er form it may;
I will upraise her from earth's tomb,
Or share the annihilating doom;
Such is my will, let fate the worst essay.
MICHAEL .
Angels! your eyes are opened, look abroad;
Blazing athwart yon swarthy sky,
Behold the handwriting of God!
ISRAPHIL .
We see the lightning scroll —
MICHAEL .
Read ye, nor fear,
Great mercy's last award.
Behold the veiling Sun!
I flee the coming wrath, my work is done.
ASTARTE .
Read the dread sentence!
ISRAPHIL .
" Angels, hear!
Ye have wandered from your sphere;
Earth is doomed; if ye are found
Treading its devoted ground,
The bond that binds to heaven shall sever,
And ye shall be — "
Eternal! never
May we obey?
AZOARA .
I know it now;
The doom is on thy livid brow;
The dreadful truth is graven there
In traces furrowed by despair!
Ye hide it with a vain endeavour,
Our death-sentence — " Condemned for ever!"
Sister! kneel with me. O by
The God who calls on ye from high,
By our earthly love, by all
The terrors round us that appal;
By your immortality!
Leave, oh, leave us here to die; —
Let the Almighty Being see
We yielded to our destiny.
ASTARTE .
Say, when we too weakly erred
From His paths, forgot His word,
Ordinance and rule of life,
Great was our remorse and strife;
That we deemed His mercy still
Would o'erlook our human ill.
AZOARA .
Lo! how beneath us reels the ground;
Hark, to that mighty and o'erwhelming sound!
ISRAPHIL .
The fountains of the great deep are unbound.
Behold! the hills upheave like broken waves,
Rent through their cloven bosoms; from them hurled
Vapour, and flame, and smoke, and fiery cloud,
Swirling around their ruins; from the caves
Bound forth the maddened brutes, the cleft earth gapes,
Opening to her foundations, the great world
Revealed of unimaginable shapes;
A chaos-wilderness of life and death,
Blasted by fires above, or crushed beneath,
Heaved upward, tossing in their misty shroud,
The wreck of life's innumerable things!
The winds, with their annihilating wings,
Sweep the wild waters, buried in the sound
Of thunders rending the red firmament,
Mingling in one wild uproar upward sent;
While, lighting fitfully the gloom profound,
Sky-cleaving lightnings show the opened eye
Of the Avenger visible.
ORAZIEL .
Hence! — fly
Upward to Hermon's loftiest crest.
ASTARTE .
Aid me! I sink —
ORAZIEL .
Repose thou on this breast.
ISRAPHIL .
Away! — from yonder cloud-capped peak we soar;
Thence will we flee with you, or sink for evermore.
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