Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“ To my heart, and, the love-charm I once more receiving
May drink thy love in it and keep of a truth
That one kiss in the place of Adonis the living.
Thou fliest me, mournful one, fliest me far,
My Adonis, and seekest the Acheron portal,—
To Hell's cruel King goest down with a scar,
While I weep and live on like a wretched immortal,
And follow no step! O Persephoné, take him,
My husband!—thou'rt better and brighter than I,
So all beauty flows down to thee: I cannot make him
Look up at my grief ”

“ Her glory like my glory? Has she waxed
Mortal, like Adam? Has she learnt to hate
Like any angel?
Second Voice. She is sad for thee.
All things grow sadder to thee, one by one.
Angel Chorus.
Live, work on, O Earthy!
By the Actual's tension,
Speed the arrow worthy
Of a pure ascension!
From the low earth round you,
Reach the heights above you:
From the stripes that wound you,
Seek the loves that love you!
God's divinest burneth plain
Through the crystal diaphane
Of our loves that love you.
First Voice. Gabriel, O Gabriel!
Second Voice. What wouldst thou with me? ”

“ Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay
In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?
Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,
I am not a fallen angel!
Gabriel.Dost thou know
Aught of those exiles?
Lucifer.Ay: I know they have fled
Silent all day along the wilderness:
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the marshalled cherubim
Shining against, not for them; and I know
They dare not look in one another's face,—
As if each were a cherub! ”

“ Albeit the piercing thorn and thistle-fork
(Whose seed disordered ran
From Eve's hand trembling when the curse did reach her)
Be garnered darklier in thy soul, the rod
That smites thee never blossoming, and thou
Grief-bearer for thy world, with unkinged brow—
I leave to men their song of Ichabod:
I have an angel-tongue—I know but praise.
Ador. Hereafter shall the blood-bought captives raise
The passion-song of blood.
Zerah.And we, extend
Our holy vacant hands towards the Throne,
Crying "We have no music." ”

“ Zerah.He!
Say it again.
Ador.Where He is.
Zerah.Can it be
That earth retains a tree
Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed
By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?
Ador. There is a tree!—it hath no leaf nor root; [Pg 117]
Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:
Its shadow on his head is laid.
For he, the crownèd Son,
Has left his crown and throne,
Walks earth in Adam's clay,
Eve's snake to bruise and slay—
Zerah. ”

“ As putting thunder-questions without cloud,
Reverberate without sound,
To universal nature's depth and height.
The tremor of an inexpressive thought
Too self-amazed to shape itself aloud,
O'erruns the awful curving of thy lips;
And while thine hands are stretched above,
As newly they had caught [Pg 118]
Some lightning from the Throne, or showed the Lord
Some retributive sword,
Thy brows do alternate with wild eclipse
And radiance, with contrasted wrath and love,
As God had called thee to a seraph's part,
With a man's quailing heart.
Ador. O heart—O heart of man! ”

“ There is silence. Adam and Eve fly on, and never look back. Only a colossal shadow, as of the dark Angel passing quickly, is cast upon the Sword-glare.
Scene.—The extremity of the Sword-glare.
Adam. Pausing a moment on this outer edge
Where the supernal sword-glare cuts in light
The dark exterior desert,—hast thou strength,
Beloved, to look behind us to the gate?
Eve. Have I not strength to look up to thy face?
Adam. We need be strong: yon spectacle of cloud
Which seals the gate up to the final doom,
Is God's seal manifest. There seem to lie
A hundred thunders in it, dark and dead ”

“ But so, too, is their silence; each way lies
Woe strong as fate.
When gods began with wrath,
And war rose up between their starry brows,
Some choosing to cast Chronos from his throne
That Zeus might king it there, and some in haste
With opposite oaths that they would have no Zeus
To rule the gods for ever,—I, who brought
The counsel I thought meetest, could not move
The Titans, children of the Heaven and Earth,
What time, disdaining in their rugged souls
My subtle machinations, they assumed
It was an easy thing for force to take
The mastery of fate. ”

“ But life,—beyond the reach of guilt and grief,
The whole creation. Henceforth in my name
Take courage, O thou woman,—man, take hope!
Your grave shall be as smooth as Eden's sward, [Pg 90]
Beneath the steps of your prospective thoughts,
And, one step past it, a new Eden-gate
Shall open on a hinge of harmony
And let you through to mercy. Ye shall fall
No more, within that Eden, nor pass out
Any more from it. In which hope, move on,
First sinners and first mourners! Live and love,—
Doing both nobly because lowlily!
Live and work, strongly because patiently! ”

“ Hast thou an altar for this sacrifice?
O heaven! O vacant throne!
O crownèd hierarchies that wear your crown
When His is put away!
Are ye unshamèd that ye cannot dim
Your alien brightness to be liker him,
Assume a human passion, and down-lay
Your sweet secureness for congenial fears,
And teach your cloudless ever-burning eyes
The mystery of his tears?
Zerah. I am strong, I am strong.
Were I never to see my heaven again,
I would wheel to earth like the tempest rain
Which sweeps there with an exultant sound
To lose its life as it reaches the ground.
I am strong, I am strong. ”

“ If I am exiled, must I be bereaved?
Eve. 'Twas an ill prayer: it shall be prayed no more;
And God did use it like a foolishness,
Giving no answer. Now my heart has grown
Too high and strong for such a foolish prayer,
Love makes it strong and since I was the first
In the transgression, with a steady foot [Pg 27]
I will be first to tread from this sword-glare
Into the outer darkness of the waste,—
And thus I do it.
Adam.Thus I follow thee,
As erewhile in the sin.—What sounds! what sounds!
I feel a music which comes straight from heaven,
As tender as a watering dew. ”

“ Besides the grief thou hast told can aught remain?
Prometheus. A sea—of foredoomed evil worked to storm.
Io. What boots my life, then? why not cast myself
Down headlong from this miserable rock,
That, dashed against the flats, I may redeem
My soul from sorrow? Better once to die
Than day by day to suffer.
Prometheus.Verily, [Pg 194]
It would be hard for thee to bear my woe
For whom it is appointed not to die.
Death frees from woe: but I before me see
In all my far prevision not a bound
To all I suffer, ere that Zeus shall fall
From being a king. ”

“ Thou man, thou woman, marked as the misdoers
By God's sword at your backs! I lent my clay
To make your bodies, which had grown more flowers:
And now, in change for what I lent, ye give me
The thorn to vex, the tempest-fare to cleave me—
And I wail!
Second Spirit.
I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fasten
My sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonoured?
Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten,—
Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downward
Unto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scenting
The blood of wars, roar hoarse and unrelenting—
And I wail! [Pg 53]
First Spirit. ”

“ HE saves not. Where's Adam? Can pardon
Requicken that sod?
Unkinged is the King of the Garden,
The image of God.
Other exiles are cast out of Eden,—
More curse has been hurled:
Come up, O my locusts, and feed in
The green of the world!
Come up! we have conquered by evil;
Good reigns not alone:
I prevail now, and, angel or devil,
Inherit a throne. ”

“ Ah, ah! dost thou discern what I behold?
Adam. I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes
From their dilated orbits bound before
To meet the spectral Dread!
Eve.I am afraid—
Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes
Of intermittent motion, aspect vague
And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,
Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.
How near they reach ... and far! How grey they move—
Treading upon the darkness without feet,
And fluttering on the darkness without wings!
Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;
Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees ”

“ My seed shall the first tempter's! strike with curse, [Pg 22]
As God struck in the garden! and as he,
Being satisfied with justice and with wrath,
Did roll his thunder gentler at the close,—
Thou, peradventure, mayst at last recoil
To some soft need of mercy. Strike, my lord!
I, also, after tempting, writhe on the ground,
And I would feed on ashes from thine hand,
As suits me, O my tempted!
Adam.My beloved,
Mine Eve and life—I have no other name
For thee or for the sun than what ye are,
My utter life and light! If we have fallen,
It is that we have sinned,—we: God is just ”

“ Death's strength by that same sign. Kiss on my lips,
To shut the door close on my rising soul,—
Lest it pass outwards in astonishment
And leave thee lonely!
Adam.Yet thou liest, Eve,
Bent heavily on thyself across mine arm,
Thy face flat to the sky.
Eve.Ay, and the tears
Running, as it might seem, my life from me,
They run so fast and warm. Let me lie so,
And weep so, as if in a dream or prayer,
Unfastening, clasp by clasp, the hard tight thought
Which clipped my heart and showed me evermore
Loathed of thy justice as I loathe the snake,
And as the pure ones loathe our sin. ”

“ Prometheus, I behold: and I would fain
Exhort thee, though already subtle enough,
To a better wisdom. Titan, know thyself,
And take new softness to thy manners since
A new king rules the gods. If words like these,
Harsh words and trenchant, thou wilt fling abroad,
Zeus haply, though he sit so far and high,
May hear thee do it, and so, this wrath of his
Which now affects thee fiercely, shall appear
A mere child's sport at vengeance. Wretched god,
Rather dismiss the passion which thou hast,
And seek a change from grief. ”

“ If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve,
Found acceptable to the world instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills. Be satisfied;
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood,
Peculiar suffering answering to the sin,—
Some pang paid down for each new human life,
Some weariness in guarding such a life,
Some coldness from the guarded, some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served, from those beloved
Too loyally some treason ”

“ I had promised my own prudence to shut close the gates of Eden between Milton and myself, so that none might say I dared to walk in his footsteps. He should be within, I thought, with his Adam and Eve unfallen or falling,—and I, [Pg xiii] without, with my Exiles,—I also an exile! It would not do. The subject, and his glory covering it, swept through the gates, and I stood full in it, against my will, and contrary to my vow,—till I shrank back fearing, almost desponding; hesitating to venture even a passing association with our great poet before the face of the public. ”

“ Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses?
And I wail!
Eve. I choose God's thunder and His angels' swords
To die by, Adam, rather than such words.
Let us pass out and flee.
Adam.We cannot flee.
This zodiac of the creatures' cruelty
Curls round us, like a river cold and drear,
And shuts us in, constraining us to hear.
First Spirit.
I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike
A sense of death to me, and undug graves! [Pg 54]
The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like
The ragged foam along the ocean-waves:
The restless earthquakes rock against each other ”

“ Prometheus. I gratulate thee who hast shared and dared
All things with me, except their penalty.
Enough so! leave these thoughts. It cannot be
That thou shouldst move Him. He may not be moved;
And thou beware of sorrow on this road.
Oceanus. Ay! ever wiser for another's use
Than thine! the event, and not the prophecy,
Attests it to me. Yet where now I rush,
Thy wisdom hath no power to drag me back;
Because I glory, glory, to go hence
And win for thee deliverance from thy pangs,
As a free gift from Zeus. ”

“ Eve.O Saviour Christ,
Thou standest mute in glory, like the sun!
Adam. We worship in Thy silence, Saviour Christ!
Eve. Thy brows grow grander with a forecast woe,—
Diviner, with the possible of death.
We worship in Thy sorrow, Saviour Christ!
Adam. How do Thy clear, still eyes transpierce our souls,
As gazing through them toward the Father-throne
In a pathetical, full Deity,
Serenely as the stars gaze through the air
Straight on each other!
Eve.O pathetic Christ,
Thou standest mute in glory, like the moon!
Christ. Eternity stands alway fronting God ”

“ And plant a newer race there. Not a god
Resisted such desire except myself.
I dared it! I drew mortals back to light,
From meditated ruin deep as hell!
For which wrong, I am bent down in these pangs
Dreadful to suffer, mournful to behold,
And I, who pitied man, am thought myself
Unworthy of pity; while I render out [Pg 168]
Deep rhythms of anguish 'neath the harping hand
That strikes me thus—a sight to shame your Zeus!
Chorus. Hard as thy chains and cold as all these rocks
Is he, Prometheus, who withholds his heart
From joining in thy woe. ”