But fall he must. I have done, do, nought else
From my first thought to this and to my last.
No matter; it is beneath this mind of mine
To reck of aught. I bear, have borne the ill
Of ages, of eternities—and must.
I care not. I shall sway the world as now,
Which worse and worse sinks with me as I sink,
Till finite souls evanish as a vapour;
Till immortality, the proud thing, perish;
And God alone be and eternity.
Then will I clap my hands and cry to Him,
I have done! Have Thy will now! There is none but Thee.
I am the first created being. I
Will be the last to perish and to die.
Thou art a fit monitor, methinks, of pleasure.
To the high air sunshine and cloud are one;
Pleasure and pain to me. Thou and the earth
Alone feel these as different—for Ye
Are under them—the Heavens and I above.
But tell me, have ye scenes like this in Hell?
Nay, not in Heaven.
What is Heaven? not the toys
Of singing, love and music? such a place
Were fit for women only.
Heaven is no place;
Unless it be a place with God, allwhere.
It is the being good—the knowing God—
The consciousness of happiness and power;
With knowledge which no spirit e’er can lose
But doth increase in every state; and aught
It most delights in the full leave to do.
But why consume me with such questions? Why
Add earth to Hell, in the great chain of worlds
Which God in wrath hath bound about me?
Why!
’Twas therefore that I closed with thee, great Fiend!
That thou mightst answer all things I proposed,
Or bring me those who would do.
All these things
Thou wilt know sometime, when to see and know
Are one; to see a thing and comprehend
The nature of it essentially; perceive
The reason and the science of its being,
And the relations with the universe
Of all things actual or possible,
Mortal, immortal, spiritual, gross.
This, when the spirit is made free of Heaven,
Is the divine result; proportioned still
To the intelligence as human; for
There are degrees in Heaven as everything,
By God’s will. Unimaginable space
As full of suns as is earth’s sun of atoms,
Faileth to match His boundless variousness;
And ever must do, though a thousand worlds,
As diverse from each other as is thine
From any of thy system’s, were elanced
Each minute into life unendingly.
All of yon worlds, and all who dwell in them,
Stand in diverse degrees of bliss and being.
Through the ten thousand times ten thousandth grade
Of blessedness, above this world’s and man’s
Ability to feel or to conceive,
The soul may pass and yet know nought of Heaven,
More than a dim and miniature reflection
Of its most bright infinity;—for God
Makes to each spirit its peculiar Heaven;—
And yet is Heaven a bright reality,
As this or any of yon worlds; a state
Where all is loveliness and power and love;
Where all sublimest qualities of mind,
Not infinite, are limited alone
By the surrounding Godhood, and where nought
But what produceth glory and delight,
To creature and Creator is; where all
Enjoy entire dominion o’er themselves,
Acts, feelings, thoughts, conditions, qualities,
Spirit and soul and mind; all under God,
For spirit is soul Deified;—while earth,
To the immortal vast, God-natured Spirit,
Is but a spell, which having served to light,
A lamp, is cast into consuming fire.
And Hell? Is it nought but pits and chains and flames?
An ever greatening sense of ill and woe,
Aye crushing down the soul, but filling never
Its infinite capacity of pain.
But human nature is not infinite,
And therefore cannot suffer endlessly.
God may create in time what shall endure
Unto Eternity. With Him is no
Distinction, nor in that which is of Him.
Then is not soul of God, but man and earth.
Soul when made spirit is of earth no more,
Nor time, but of Eternity and Heaven.
’Tis but when in the body, and bent down
To worldly ends, that human souls become
Objects of time, as most are, till the hour
Comes when the soul of man shall be made one
With God’s spirit; and where shall woe be then?
Where, sin? where, suffering? when the mortal soul
Shall be Divinised and eternised by
God’s very spirit put upon it?
How
Can souls begotten to predestined doom,
From and before all worlds, be deemed of earth;
Things spiritual, as belonging God,
Are known unto Him, and predestined from
Eternity, nor these alone; but Flesh
Forms not nor does it need the care of Fate.
The object of eternal knowledge must
Have like existence.
Then it cannot be
Bound unto torment; that would be to bring
Torture on godlike essence.
Hast not heard,
How thine existence here, on earth, is but
The dark and narrow section of a life
Which was with God, long ere the sun was lit,
And shall be yet, when all the bold bright stars
Are dark as death-dust—Immortality
And Wisdom tending thee on either hand,
Thy divine sisters? But do thou believe
E’en what thou wilt. It matters not to me.
Is it the nature or the deed of God
To render finite follies infinite,
Or to eternise sin and death in fire?
For so long as the punishment endures,
The crime lasts. Were it not for thy presence,
Spirit! I would not deem Hell were.
Let not
My presence pass for more than it is worth,
I pray, nor yet my absence. Trust me, I
Could wish, with thee, that Hell were blotted out
Of utmost space. ’Tis man himself aye makes
His own God and his hell. But this is truth.
The truth is perilous never to the true,
Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool,
And to the false, error and truth alike.
Error is worse than ignorance. But say:—
How can eternal punishment be due
To temporal offences, to a pulse
Of momentary madness?
Pardon me.
Sin is not temporary. Nothing is,
Of spiritual nature, but hath cause
Immortal and immortal end in all,
As spirits. Therefore till the soul shall be
By grace redeified, as is the soul,
So is the sin, for ever before God.
Sin is not of the spirit, but of that
Which blindeth spirit, heart and brain.
Believe so.
The law of all the worlds is retribution.
But is it so of God?
The laws of Heaven
Are not of earth;
