Of the main dome beyond. Though shadows cross
Each other’s path, yet let us go through it.
And lo! an opening scene in Heaven, Wherein
The foredoom of all things, spirit and matter,
Is shown, and the permission of temptation;
The angelic worship of the Trinity,
By God’s name uttered thrice; the joys and powers
Of souls o’erblest, and the sweet offices
Of warden-angel told; and the complete
Well-fixed necessity and end of all things.
From Heaven we come to earth, and so do souls.
For next succeeds a soft and sunset scene,
Wherein is shown the collapsed, empty state
In which all worldly pleasures leave us; youth’s
Though natural, fitful, unavailing, struggle
Against a great temptation come unlocked for:
And that to sin is to curse God in deed.
The soul long used to truth still keeps its strength,
Though plunged upon a sudden mid the false;
As hands, thrust into a dark room, retain
Their sunlent light a season. So with this.
The lines have under meanings, and the scene
Of self-forgetfulness and indecision
Breaks off, not ends. A starry, stirless night
Follows, which shadows out youth’s barren longings
For goodness, greatness, marvels, mysteries.
Whence comes this dream of immortality,
And the resurgent essence? Let us think!
What mean we by the dead? The dead have life,
The changed; and, if they come, it is to show
Their change is for the better. The bait takes.
Man and his foe shake hands upon their bargain.
The youth sets out for joy, and ’neath the care
Of his good enemy, begins his course.
The next scene seems to promise fair; for sure
If that there be one scene in life, wherefrom
Evil is absent, it is pure early love.
Alas! when beauty pleads the cause of virtue
The chief temptation to embrace it’s wanting.
A man in love sees wonders. But not love
Makes the soul happy: so the youth gets hopeless.
To this comes on a stem and stormy quarrel
’Tween the two foe friends—Youth demanding what
Cannot be; and the other withholding safe
And easy grants. They part and meet, as though
Nothing had happened, in the next scene: none
Know how we reconcile ourselves to evil.
But there they are, together, aiding each
The other, and abusing others.
I
Was waiting for an eloquential pause
In this mysterious, allegorical,
Mythical, theological, odd story.
So now, then, I shall ask myself to sing;
And granting I agree to my request,
I think you ought to thank me.
That we will.
But not just now.
Oh! yes, now; yes, this moment
I’m in the humour.
We are not.
Yes, let her!
What shall I sing?
Sing something merry, love.
I won’t: I’ll sing the dullest thing I know;
One of thine own songs.
What a compliment!
Sing what thou lik’st, then.
No; what thou lik’st.
Well,
Something about lore, and it can’t be wrong.
For love the sunny world supplies
With laughing lips and happy eyes.
And ’twill be sooner over.
And so better.
Like an island in a river,
Art thou, my love, to me;
And I journey by thee ever
With a gentle ecstasie.
I arise to fall before thee;
I come to kiss thy feet;
To adorn thee and adore thee,
Mine only one! my sweet!
And thy love hath power upon me,
Like a dream upon a brain;
For the loveliness which won me,
With the love, too, doth remain.
And my life it beautifieth,
Though love be but a shade,
Known of only ere it dieth,
By the darkness it hath made.
Was that addressed to me?
Well, now resume.
Trial alone of ill and folly gives
Gear proofs of the world’s vanities; but little
Good comes of sermons, prophecies, or warnings.
Though from the steps of an old grey market-cross,
The Devil is holding forth to the faithless. There
A social prayer is offered up, too. This
Is followed by a bird’s-eye view of earth,
A stirring-up of the dust of all the nations.
Then comes a village feast; a kind of home
Unto the traveller—where, with the world,
We mix in private, talking divers things;
A country merry-making, where all speak
According to their sorts, and the occasion.
Deeper than ever leadline went, behold
We search the rayless central sun within.
We penetrate all mysteries, but are
Unfitted long to dwell in the recess
Of our own nature, and we long for light.
True aspiration riseth from research.
Next, by the o’erthrown altar of a fane,
Foundation-shattered, like the ripened heart,
We find ourselves in worship. Let us hope
The spirit, form, and offering, grateful all.
In one of Earth’s head cities, after this,
We tower-like rise, and with an eminent eye
Glance round society, insatiate;—
The high unknown as yet unrealized.
In less time than the twinkling of a star,
Insphered in air, the arch-fiend and the youth,
Like twilight and midnight, discourse and rise.
Thence to another planet, for the book,
Stream-like doth steal the images of stars,
And trembles at its boldness, where we meet
The spirit of the first night of temptation;
And mix with many of those lofty musings
Which sow in us the seeds of higher kind
And brighter being. Heavenly poesie,
Which shines among the powers of our mind,
As that bright star she dwells in, mid the worlds
Which make the system of the sun, is there too.
But these high things are lost, and drowned, and dimmed,
Like a blue eye in tears, that trickle from it
Like angels leaving Heaven on their errands
Of love, behind them, in the scene succeeding;—
A scene of song, and dance, and mirth, and wine,
And damsels, in whose lily skin the blue
Veins branch themselves in hidden luxury,
Hues of the heaven they seem to have vanished from.
Moonlight and music, and kisses, and wine,
And beauty, which must be, for rhyme-sake, divine.
Mere joys; but saddened and sublimed at close
By sweet remembrance of immortal ones
Once loved, aye hallowed. Still, in scenes like this,
Youth lingers longest, drawing out his time
As a gold-beater does his wire, until
’Twould reach round the earth.
And be of no use then.
Blame not the bard for showing this, but mind
He wrote of youth as passionate genius,
Its flights and follies—both its sensual ends
And common places. To behold an eagle
Batting the sunny ceiling of the world
With his dark wings, one well might deem his heart
On heaven; but, no! it is fixed on flesh and blood,
And
