Myself have charms, foresee events in dreams;
Can prophesy, prognosticate, know well
The secret ties between many magic herbs
And mortal feelings, nor condemn myself
For knowing what is innocent; but thou!
Thy helps are mightier far and more obscure.
Was it with wand and circle, book and scull,
With rites forbid and backward-jabbered prayers,
In cross-roads or in churchyard, at full moon,
And by instruction of the ghostly dead,
That thou hast wrought these wonders, and attained
Such high transcendent powers and secrets? Speak!
Or is man’ mastery over spirits not
Of such a vile and vulgar consequence?
Were not my heart as guiltless of all mirth
As is the oracle of an extinct god
Of its priest-prompted answer, I might smile
To list such askings. Mind’s command o’er mind,
Spirit’s o’er spirit, is the dear effect
And natural action of an inward gift,
Given of God, whereby the incarnate soul
Hath power to pass free out of earth and death
To immortality and Heaven, and mate
With beings of a kind, condition, lot,
All diverse from his own. This mastery
Means but communion, the power to quit
Life’s little globule here, and coalesce
With the great mass about us. For the rest,
To raise the Devil were an infant’s task
To that of raising man. Why, every one
Conjures the Fiend from Hell into himself
When Passion chokes or blinds him. Sin is Hell.
How dost thou bring a spirit to thee, Festus?
It is my will which makes it visible.
What are those like whom thou hast seen?
They come,
The denizens of other worlds, arrayed
In diverse form and feature, mostly lovely;
In limb and wing ethereal finer far
Than an ephemeris’ pinion; others, armed
With gleaming plumes, that might o’ercome an air
Of adamantine denseness, pranked with fire.
All are of different offices and strengths,
Powers, orders, tendencies, in like degrees
As men, with even more variety;
Of different glories, duties, and delights.
Even as the light of meteor, satellite,
Planet and comet, sun, star, nebula,
Differ, and nature also, so do theirs.
With them is neither need, nor sex, nor age,
Nor generation growth, decay, nor death;
Or none whom I have known; there may be such.
Mature they are created and complete,
Or seem to be. Perfect from God they come.
Yet have they different degrees of beauty,
Even as strength and holy excellence.
Some seem of milder and more feminine
Nature than others, Beauty’s proper sex,
Shown but by softer qualities of soul,
More lovable than awful, more devote
To deeds of individual piety,
And grace, than mighty missions fit to task
Sublimest spirits, or the toil intense
Of cultivating nations of their kind;
Or working out from the problem of the world
The great results of God—result, sum, cause.
These ofttimes charged with delegated powers,
Formative or destructive; those, in chief,
Ordained to better and to beautify
Existence as it is; with careful love
To tend upon particular worlds or souls;
Warning and training whom they love, to tread
The soft and blossom-bordered, silvery paths,
Which lead and lure the soul to Paradise,
Making the feet shine which do walk on them;
While each doth God’s great will alike, and both
With their whole nature’s fullness love His works.
To love them lifts the soul to Heaven.
Let me, then!
Whence come they?
Many of them come from orbs
Wherein the rudest matter is more worth
And fair than queenly gem; the dullest dust
Beneath their feet is rosy diamond:—
Others, direct from Heaven; but all in high
And serious love towards those to whom they come.
None but the blest are free to visit where
They choose. The lost are slaves for ever; here
Never but on their Master’s merciless
Business, nor elsewhere. Still sometimes with these
Dark spirits have I held communion,
And in their soul’s deep shadow, as within
A mountain cavern of the moon, conversed
With them, and wormed from them the gnawing truth
Of their extreme perdition; marking oft
Nature revealed by torture, as a leaf
Unfolds itself in fire and writhes the while,
Burning, jet unconsumed. Others there are
Come garlanded with flowers unwithering,
Or crowned with sunny jewels, clad in light,
And girded with the lightning, in their hands
Wands of pure rays or arrowy starbeams; some
Bright as the sun self-lit, in stature tall,
Strong, straight and splendid as the golden reed
Whereby the height, and length, and breadth, and depth,
Of the descendant city of the skies,
In which God sometime shall make glad with man,
Were measured by the angel; (the same reed
Wherewith our Lord was mocked that angel found
Close by the Cross and took; God made it gold,
And now it makes the sceptre of His Son
Over all worlds; the sole bright rule of Heaven,
The measure of immortal life, the scale
Of power, love, bliss, and glory infinite):—
Some gorgeous and gigantic, who with wings
Wide as the wings of armies in the field
Drawn out for death, sweep over Heaven, and eyes
Deep, dark as sea-worn caverns, with a torch
At the end, far back, glaring. Some with wings
Like an unfainting rainbow, studded round
With stones of every hue and excellence,
Writ o’er with mystic words which none may read,
But those to whom their spiritual state
Gives correlative meaning, fit thereto.
Some of these visit me in dreams; with some
Have I made one in visions, in their own
Abodes of brightness, blessedness, and power:
And know moreover I shall joy with them,
Ere long their sacred guest, through ages yet
To come, in worlds not now perhaps create,
As they have been mine here: and some of them
In unimaginable splendours I
Have walked with through their winged worlds of light,
Double and triple parti-coloured suns,
And systems circling each the other, clad
In tints of light and air, whereto this earth
Hath nothing like, and man no knowledge of:—
Orbs heaped with mountains, to the which ours are
Mere grave-mounds, and their skies flowered with stars,
Violet, rose or pearl-hued, or soft blue,
Golden or green, the light now blended, now
Alternate; many moons and planets, full,
Crescent, or gibbous-faced, illumining
In periodic and intricate beauty,
At once those strange and most felicitous skies.
How I should love to visit other worlds,
Or see an angel!
Wilt thou now?
I dare not.
Not now at least. I am not in the mood.
Ere I behold a spirit I would pray.
Light as a leaf thy step, or arrowy
Footing of breeze upon a waveless pool;
Sudden and soft, too, like a waft of light,
The beautiful immortals come to me;
Oh, ever lovely, ever welcome they!
But why art thou, of all men,
