Festus

mean
Pertained to it hath perished atomless.
Earth, like a diamond, basks in her own free light;
Unfed, unaided, unrequiring aught.
All now is purity and power and peace.
The first-born of creation, they who hail
Archangels as their brethren, mountainlike
Reign o’er the plains of men, converting all;
Reaping the fields of immortality,
Each one his sheaf, for Him the Harvest-Lord,
To whom belongs earth’s whole estate and life
And every world’s. Angel

And He shall gamer all.
The awful tribes which have in Hades dwelt,
Past count of time, await their rising. God’s
Great day, the sabbath of the world’s long week,
Is at high noon; and Christ hath yet to come
To judge and save the living and the dead.

Saint

The shadows of Eternity o’ercast
Already Time’s bright towers. The Heavens shall come
Down like a cloud upon a hill, and sweep
Their spirit over earth, and the whole face
And form of things shall be dissolved and change.
Nothing shall be but essence, perfect, pure,
And void of every attribute but God’s.
This even is too gross for that which is
To come. The holy have both earth and Heaven.

Festus

Nor pain, nor toil of mind or frame, nor doubt,
Nor discontent, nor enmity to God,
Disturb the steady joy the spirit feels;
Nor element can torture, nor time tire;
Nor sea nor mountain make or bar or fear;
Sickness and woe and death are things gone by;
Destroyed with the destruction of the world:⁠—
Shadows of things which have been, never more
To waste the world’s bright hours, nor grate the heart
Of mighty man; now fit for thrones and wings;
Ruler of worlds, main minister of Heaven,
Inheritor of all the prophecies
Of God fore-uttered through the tongues of Time,
Ages of ages. Evil is no more.

Archangel

And does earth satisfy thee now?

Festus

As earth.
There is a brighter, loftier life for man
Even yet, the very union with God.

Archangel

God works by means. Between the two extremes
Of earth and Heaven there lies a mediate state⁠—
A pause between the lightning lapse of life
And following thunders of eternity;⁠—
Between eternity and time a lapse,
To soul unconscious, though agelasting, where
Spirit is tempered to its final fate;
When every interfulgeht conscious state
Within or between worlds, repose or bliss,
Divested, man shall, mix with Deity,
And the Eternal and Immortal make
One Being. As in earth’s first paradise
God’s Spirit walked with man, and commune made
With him, so in the second, after death,
Man’s spirit walks with God in an elect
Existence, and a vigil of the great,
The holy day which is to break in Heaven.
Thither the Lord of Life went, in the hour
That Hell by Earth revenged itself on Heaven,
With one soul penitent accompanied;⁠—
Nor long remained He there, yet long enough
To cheer earth’s faithful, who received Him then
Tn silent unknown blessedness of soul,
With time-outwearing hope that yet in Him
They should partake the Godhood of His love.
And with Him rose then, in prophetic proof
Of His Divinity, many a deathless ghost,
Triumphant o’er that blind revenge which wrought,
Hell! thy destruction⁠—thy salvation, Earth!

Festus

That such will be, the just well know; and all
Earth’s great events and changes tend thereto;
Its fiery dissolution in the past,
And supernatural recommencement now
Under the universal creed of Christ.
The chosen and the world-redeemed partake
His personal and spiritual reign.

Archangel

And this shall last, till, like the setting sun
Deserting earth, He shall retire to Heaven,
With all His captive victors in His train,
Triumphant, and translated evermore
Into the hierarchal skies. Wilt see,
While yet time is, earth’s shadowy world within⁠—
The inward living death she bears about
Her heart, hath ever borne⁠—and, augur-like,
Explore the ominous bowels of the earth?
To me are given the secrets of the centre,
The keys of earth, to lock and to unlock,
Coffer-like. I, it was who seized and bound,
At His behest who wills and it is done⁠—
Even on their thrones, the mighty thou wilt see.

Festus

Angel of Heaven! I would view these things.

Archangel

Nor these alone, but other wonders yet.
The valley where Death’s dark wings brooded o’er,
A God-offending night, unvisited
By sun or star, where but the fatuous fire
Of man’s weak judgment wandered, till God’s Son
Laid o’er the black abyss a bridge of light,
And married earth to the mainland of Heaven:⁠—
This shalt thou see, Death’s grave; and over him,
And over it, that monument of light,
Enlightening earth. The gods and fiends of old,
And all the fictions of the heart of man,
Imagined of the future past for aye,
Thou shalt inspect. Behold this mountain! We
Must pass through it; for under lie the gates
Of the invisible regions whereunto
We tend, for a brief season.

Festus

On then!

Archangel

Bare
Thy marble breast, O mountain, to its depths!
An angel and a man divine demand
A way through these foundations.

Festus

And the rocks
Open like mists before thee.

Archangel

Follow me!

XXXIII

Scene⁠—Hades.

	Archangel, Festus, Death, Lucifer.
Festus	Almighty God! sustain me. This is Death;⁠— And this⁠—I knew not, angel! he was here⁠— Is Lucifer⁠—the fallen, like a bolt Of thunder forged in intramundane air, Self-buried in the centre. Lucifer! Wake from thy sealike sleep; in peace or wrath, Rouse from thine age-long trance; arise and see; The representatives of earth and Heaven Stand by thee. As for me, I blame no more The part thou tookest in my mortal life; ’Tis gone⁠—nor spurn thee for delusions dead. The blood that hath been spilled is sunk in earth, And run into the rivers, and dried up Into the air;⁠—and there’s an end of it. What good hath come of it alone I bear At heart. And we have both offended God. Let me, though not in nature to forget, Forgive, what every one hath sometime felt⁠— The Devil’s burning gripe upon his heart. I see thee with compassion, half with hope.
Lucifer	Mortal! I bow to thee, arid would do to The least and lowest spirit God hath made: But still the curse that I am cursed with Outlasts the elements⁠—outlives all time.
Festus	All curses cease with time; all ill, all woe. Blessings star forth for ever; but a curse Is like a cloud⁠—it passes.
Lucifer	’Twas by him⁠— Yon angel, only not almighty, there! As with a chain of mountains I was bound And hurled into this unformed nebulous life; Stripped of all might when mightiest, struck down While triumphing the loftiest⁠—enslaved When most a monarch o’er both earth and hell, And made a shadow among shadows here. It recks not.