Of God’s will alway as most good and wise.
She had but little pleasure; but her all,
Such as it was, was in devising plans
Of bliss to come, or in the tales of Time
And the sweet early earth. She was in truth,
Our earth’s own angel. Ofttimes would she dwell
With long and luminous sweetness on her theme,
Unwearying, unpausing, as a world.
The sun would rise and set; the soul-like moon,
In passive beauty and receptive light—
Absorbing inspiration from the sun,
As doth from God His prophet ceaselessly—
She too would rise and set; and the far stars,
The third estate of Light, complete the round
Of the divine day;—still our angel spake,
And still I listened to the eloquent tongue
Which e’en on earth retained the tone of Heaven.
The shadow of a cloud upon a lake,
O’er which the wind hath all day held his breath,
Is not more calm and fair than her dear face—
So sweetly sad and so consolingly,
When she spake even on the end of earth.
Save that her eye grew darker, and her brow
Brighter with thought, as with galactic light
Mid Heaven when clearest, at such times, not I
Had known that earth were dearer unto her
Than other of the visitants divine,
Which hallow oft mine hours;—save, too, that then,
As though to touch but on that topic had,
Torpedo-like, numbed thought, she would straight cease
All converse suddenly, and kneel and seem
Inwardly praying with much power—rise,
And vanish into Heaven. My mind is full
Of stories she hath told me of our world.
No word an angel utters lose I ever.
One I will tell thee now.
Do! let me hear!
Thy talk is the sweet extract of all speech,
And holds mine ear in blissful slavery.
’Twas on a lovely summer afternoon,
Close by the grassy marge of a deep tarn,
Nigh halfway up a mountain, that we stood,
I and the angel, when she told me this.
Above us rose the grey rocks, by our side
Forests of pines, and the bright breaking wavelets
Came crowding, dancing to the brink, like thoughts
Unto our lips. Before us shone the sun.
The angel waved her hand ere she began,
As bidding earth be still. The birds ceased singing
And the trees breathing, and the lake smoothed down
Each shining wrinkle and the wind drew off.
Time leant him o’er his scythe and, listening, wept.
The circling world reined in her lightning pace
A moment; Ocean hushed his snow-maned steeds,
And a cloud hid the sun, as does the face
A meditative hand: then spake she thus:—
Scarce had the sweet song of the morning stars,
Which rang through space at the first sign of life
Our earth gave, springing from the lap of God
On to her orbit, when from Heaven
Came down a white-winged host; and in the east,
Where Eden’s Pleasance was, first furled their wings,
Alighting like to snowflakes. There they built,
Out of the riches of the soil around,
A house to God. There were the ruby rocks,
And there, in blocks, the quarried diamonds lay;
Opal and emerald mountain, amethyst,
Sapphire and chrysoprase, and jacinth stood
With the still action of a star, all light,
Like sea-based icebergs, blinding. These, with tools
Tempered in Heaven, the band angelic wrought,
And raised, and fitted, having first laid down
The deep foundations of the holy dome
On bright and beaten gold; and all the while
A song of glory hovered round the work
Like rainbow round a fountain. Day and night
Went on the hallowed labor till ’twas done.
And yet but thrice the sun set, and but thrice
The moon arose; so quick is work divine.
Tower, and roof, and pinnacle, without,
Were solid diamond. Within, the dome
Was eyeblue sapphire, sown with gold-bright stars
And clustering constellations; the wide floor
All emerald, earthlike, veined with gold and silver,
Marble and mineral of every hue
And marvellous quality, the meanest thing,
Where all things were magnificent, was gold—
The plainest. The high altar there was shaped
Out of one ruby heartlike. Columned round
With alabaster pure was all. And now
So high and bright it shone in the midday light,
It could be seen from Heaven. Upon their thrones
The sun-eyed angels hailed it, and there rose
A hurricane of blissfulness in Heaven,
Which echoed for a thousand years. One dark,
One solitary and foreseeing thought,
Passed, like a planet’s transit o’er the sun,
Across the brow of God; but soon he smiled
Towards earth, and that smile did consecrate
The temple to Himself. And they who built
Bowed themselves down and worshipped in its walls.
High on the front were writ these words—to God!
The heavenly built this for the earthly ones,
That in his worship both might mix on earth,
As afterward they hoped to do in Heaven.
Had man stood good in £den this had been:
He fell and Eden vanished. The bright place
Reared by the angels of all precious things,
For the joint worship of the sons of earth
And Heaven, fell with him, on the very day
He should have met God and His angels there—
The very day he disobeyed and joined
The host of death blackbannered, Eden fell;
The groves and grounds, which God the Lord’s own feet
Had hallowed; the all-hued and odorous bowers
Where angels wandered, wishing them in Heaven;
The trees of life and knowledge—trees of death
And madness, as they proved to man—all fell;
And that bright fane fell first. No death-doomed eye
Gazed on its glory. Earthquakes gulped it down.
The Temple of the Angels, vast enough
To hold air nations worshipping at once,
Lay in its grave; the cherubs’ flaming swords
The sole sad torches of its funeral.
Till at the flood, when the world’s giant heart
Burst like a shell, it scattered east and west,
And far and wide, among less noble ruins,
The fragments of that angel-builded fane,
Which was in Eden, and of which all stones
That now are precious, were; and still shall be,
Gathered again unto a happier end,
In the pure City of the Son of God,
And temple yet to be rebuilt in Zion;
Which, though once overthrown, and once again
Torn down to its foundations, in the quick
Of earth, shall soul-like yet re-rise from ruin—
High, holy, happy, stainless as a star,
Imperishable as eternity.
—The angel ended; and the winds, waves, clouds,
The sun, the woods, and merry birds went on
As theretofore, in brightness, strength and music.
One scarce could think that earth at all had fallen,
To look upon her beauty. If the brand
Of sin were on her brow, it was surely hid
In natural art
