To say there is a mystery in this
Or aught is only to confess God. Speak!
It is God’s will that I possess this power,
Thus to attract great spirits to mine own,
As steel magnetically charged draws steel;
Himself the magnet of the universe,
Bound whom all spirits tremble, and towards whom
All tend.
If as thou sayest, it is good:—
May it be an immortal good to thee.
There is no keeping back the power we have.
He hath no power who hath not power to use.
Some of these bodies whom I speak of are
Pure spirits, others bodies soulical:
For spirit is to soul as wind to air.
They give me all I seek, and at a wish
Would furnish treasures, thrones, or palaces;
But all these things have I eschewed, and chosen
Command of mind alone, and of the world
Unbodied and all-lovely.
Is not this
Pleasure too much for mortal to be good?
All pleasure is with Thee, God! elsewhere, none.
Not silver-ceiled hall nor golden throne,
Set thick with priceless gems, as Heaven with stars,
Or the high heart of youth with its bright hopes;—
Nor marble gleaming like the white moonlight,
As ’twere an apparition of a palace
Inlaid with light as is a waterfall;—
Not rainbow-pinions coloured like yon cloud,
The sun’s broad banner o’er his western tent,
Can match the bright imaginings of a child
Upon the glories of his coming years;
How equal, then, the full-assured faith
Of him to whom the Saviour hath vouchsafed
The Heaven of His bosom? What can tempt
In its performance equal to that promise?
My soul stands fast to Heaven as doth a star;
And only God can move it who moves all.
There are who might have soared to what I spurned;
And like to heavenly orders human souls;
Some fitted most for contemplation, some
For action, these for thrones, and those for wheels.
Tell me what they discourse upon, these angels?
They speak of what is past or coming, less
Of present things or actions. Some say most
About the future, others of the gone,
The dim traditions of Eternity,
Or Time’s first golden moments. One there was—
From whose sweet lips elapsed as from a well,
Continuously, truths which made my soul
As they sank in it, fertile with rich thoughts—
Spake to me oft of Heaven, and our talk
Was of divine things always—angels, Heaven,
Salvation, immortality, and God;
The different states of spirits and the kinds
Of Being in all orbs, or physical,
Or intellectual. I never tired
Preferring questions, but at each response
My soul drew back, sealike, into its depths
To urge another charge on him. This spirit
Came to me daily for a long, long time,
Whene’er I prayed his presence. Many a world
He knew right well which man’s eye never yet
Hath marked, nor ever may mark while on earth;
Yet grew his knowledge every time he came.
His thoughts all great and solemn and serene,
Like the immensest features of an orb,
Whose eyes are blue seas, and whose clear broad brow,
Some cultured continent, came ever round
From truth to truth—day bringing as they came.
He was to me an all-explaining spirit,
Teaching divine things by analogy
With mortal and material. Thus of God,
He showed, as the three primal rays make one
Sole beam of Light, so the three Persons make
One God; neither without the other is.
However bright or beautiful itself
The theme he touched, he made it more so by
His own light, like a fire-fly on a flower.
And one of all I knew the most of, yet
The least can say of him; for full oft
Our thoughts drown speech, like to a foaming force,
Which thunders down the echo it creates.
Yet must I somewhat tell of him. He was
The spirit evil of the universe,
Impersonate. Oh, strange and wild to know!
Perdition and destruction dwelt in him,
Like to a pair of eagles in one nest.
Hollow and wasteful as a whirlwind was
His soul; his heart as earthquake, and engulphed
World upon world. In him they disappeared
As might a morsel in a lion’s maw,
The world which met him rolled aside to let him
Pass on his piercing path. His eyeballs burned
Revolving lightnings like a world on fire;
Their very night was fatal as the shade
Of Death’s dark valley. And his space-spread wings—
Wide as the wings of Darkness when she rose
Scowling, and backing upwards, as the sun,
Giant of Light, first donned his burning crown,
Gladdening all Heaven with bis inaugural smile—
Were stained with the blood of many a starry world:
Yea, I have seen him seize upon an orb,
And cast it careless into worldless space,
As I might cast a pebble in the sea.
His might upon Ibis earth was wondrous most.
He stood a match for mountains. Ocean’s depths
He clove unto their rock-bed, as a sword,
Through blood and muscle to the central bone,
With one swoop of his arm. His brow was pale—
Pale as the life-blood of the undying worm
Which writhes around its frame of vital fire.
His voice blew like the desolating gust
Which strips the trees, and strews the earth with death.
His words were ever like a wheel of fire,
Rolling and burning this way now, now that:
Now whirling forth a blinding beam, now soft
And deep as Heaven’s own luminous blue—and now
Like to a oonqueror’s chariot wheel they came,
Sodden with blood and slow, revolving death:
And every tone fell on the ear and heart,
Heavy and harsh and startling, like the first
Handful of mould cast on the coffined dead,
As though he claimed them his.
Entering.
Dost recognize
The portrait, lady?
Festus! who is this?
What portrait?—
Wherefore comest thou? Did I not
Claim privacy one evening?
Why, indeed—
I simply called, as I was on my way
To Jupiter—and he’s a mouthful, mind;—
To keep the proverbs, too, in countenance.
Any commands for our planetary friends?
I go. Make my excuses! Goes.
A mistake,
Dearest; but rectified. Apart. And he is gone!
Hell hath its own again. Some sorrow chills
Ever the spirit, like a cloudlet nursed
In the star-giant’s bosom.
Tell me, love,
More of these angels!
There was one I loved
Of those immortals, of a lofty air,
Dimly divine and sad, and side by side
Him whom I spake of first she oft would stand
With her fair form—shadow illuminate—
Like to the dark moon in the young one’s arms.
She never murmured at the doom which made
The sorrow that contained her, as the air
Infolds
