deathlessness. To Hell
They hied like storms; and, cursing all things, each
Soul wrapped him in his shroud of fire for aye,
With one long loud howl which seemed to deafen Heaven—
And then I woke.
| Lucifer |
A wild fantastic dream!
A mere mirage of mind! Come, let us leave:
We have seen enough of this world.
|
| Festus |
Lift me up then!
World upon world how they come rolling on!
But none that I see are so fair as earth:
There is so much to love that is purely earth.
Now I could wander all day in the wood,
Where nature, like a sibyl, writes the fate
Of all that live on her red forest leaves:
And have no other aim than wandering
Within that wood, and wind my arms around
Its grey gaunt trunks, and think and feel to them;
While the wind, sinking moans over the earth
Like a giant over some dead captive dame,
Whom death had saved from madness and his love;—
Could tramp across the brown and springy moor,
And over the purple ling, and never tire;—
Could look upon the ripple of a river,
Or on a tree’s long shadow down a hill,
For a whole summer’s day, wishing the sun
Would drink my soul up to him as he draws
Dew from the earth. These things are in my mind,
And suns and systems cannot drive them out.
Dost ravage a these worlds?
|
| Lucifer |
Ay, all mine own.
Where spirit is, there evil; and the world
Is full of me as ocean is of brine.
|
| Festus |
God is all perfect; man imperfect. Thou?
|
| Lucifer |
I am the imperfection of the whole—
The pitch profoundest of the fallible.
Myself the all of evil which exists—
The ocean heaped into a single surge.
|
| Festus |
O God! why wouldst Thou make the universe?
|
| Lucifer |
Child! quench yon suns; strip death of its decay;
Men of their follies—Hell of all its woe!
These, if thou didst, thou couldst not banish me.
I am the shadow which Creation casts
From God’s own light.—But here we are, at Hell.
Hark to the thunderous roaring of its fires!
Yet ere we further pass—stop! dost thou shrink?
|
| Festus |
At nought—not I! Come on, fiend! follow me!
|
XXIII
Scene—Hell.
|
Lucifer and Festus entering. |
| Lucifer |
Behold my world! Man’s science counts it not
Upon the brightest sky. He never knows
How near it comes to him; but, swathed in clouds,
As though in plumed and palled state, it steals
Hearselike and thieflike round the universe,
For ever rolling and returning not—
Robbing all worlds of many an angel soul—
With its light hidden in its breast, which burns
With all concentrate and superfluent woe.
Nor sun nor moon illume it, and to those
Which dwell in it, not live, the starry skies
Have told no time since first they entered there.
Worlds have been built, and to their central base
Ruined and rased to the last atom; they
Of neither know nor can—unconscious save
To agony—nought knowing even of God
But His omnipotence to execute
Torture on those He hath in wrath endowed
With Heaven’s own immortality, to make
Them feel what woe the Almighty can inflict,
And the all-feeble suffer, and not be
Annihilated as they would. Be sure
That this is Hell. The blood which hath embrued
Earth’s breast, since first men met in war, may hope
Yet to be formed again and reascend,
Each drop its individual vein; the foam-bubble,
Sun-drawn out of the sea into the clouds,
To scale the cataract down which it fell,
Or seek its primal source in earth’s hot heart;
But for the lost to rise to or regain
Heaven, or to hope it, is impossible.
|
| Festus |
Are all these angels then, or men, or both?
Or mortals of all worlds?
|
| Lucifer |
Immortals all.
|
| Festus |
What numbers!
|
| Lucifer |
All are spirits fallen through sin
At various periods of eternity;
And not by one offence, to one same doom,
And at one moment, did they down from Heaven
Like to the rapid droppings of a shower;—
No! each distinct as thunder-peals, they fell;
Save those that fell with me. With me began
Sin even in Heaven; with me but sin remains.
Once I alone was Hell. Behold my fruits!
|
| Festus |
What do yon fiends! some ’mong them look like mortals:
Their hearts shine through them like live coals thorugh ashes.
They look like madmen gone delirious.
Oh! horror! let me hence!
|
| Lucifer |
Nay, hear!
|
| Festus |
I hear!
A strain incongruous as a merry dirge,
Or sacramental bacchanal might be.
|
| Lucifer |
Men are they not, but devils at the best;
And I would have thee mark them.
|
| Festus |
I attend.
|
| Fiends |
Fill the bowl! it burns but blackly:
Fill it up with living fire:
Drunkard! hadst thou sipped as slackly
As thou pourest—pour it higher!
Then thou hadst ne’er with me been bound
In Hell to dwell;
But let the burning health go round—
Drunkard!—to Hell!
Fill! it drinks but cold and leadly;
Fill it up with bubbling fire:
Drink! ’tis nothing half so deadly
As thy soul when living, Liar!
Or thou hadst ne’er with me been bound
In Hell to dwell;
But let the burning health go round—
Liar!—to Hell!
Fill! it boils but sick and sadly;
Fill! some more immortal fire:
Murderer! drain it quickly, madly,
As the stab thou gav’st thy sire!
Or thou hadst ne’er with me been bound
In Hell to dwell;
But let the burning health go round—
Murderer!—to Hell!
|
| Festus |
Nay, let me quit! now know I what Hell is.
What are they—drunkards, liars, murderers?
|
| Lucifer |
Can wine destroy the soul? or Hell’s fierce flames
Feed upon holy water, wherewith Priest
Baptiseth sinless babe? Can liar make
God lie? or cheat his neighbour of his soul?
No! God’s salvation waiteth not on man’s
Weak will nor ministry; nor man’s perdition
Upon his brother’s hatred or neglect.
Can murderer slay the soul? or suicide
Drug immortality? Their sin is great,
And is eternally condemned of God;
But of their nature, the which Death destroys,
Their own as well as victim’s recompense.
When Time hath overcome the ruin wrought
Upon their hearts who loved the dead, that they
Who suffered most have most forgiven ill—
Shall the dead slay the living ceaselessly?—
Shall God, who is all Love, reverse, reserve,
Here in Hell, ages afterwards, those crimes?
And because man hath sinned a moment, crown
All crime in instituting punishment
Unending for an instantaneous wrong?
Shall that be justice? It were more than vengeance.
Yet such the Deity men fable, such
The Hell whereto they doom themselves.
|
| Festus |
No more.
The world is
|
