Lilith

“ He is a new god,—He has called, and she, Lilith, has obeyed! Without love, without life, without aught in the world save the lily-garb of untouched holiness,—it is what the pale Christ seeks, and He has found it here,—here, with the child who slept the sleep of innocent ignorance—here where no thought of passion ever entered unless I breathed it,—or perchance he—El-Râmi—thought it—unknowingly. O what a white flower for the Christ in Heaven, is Lilith!—What a branch of bud and blossom! ... Ah, cruel, cold new gods of the Earth!—how long shall their sorrowful reign endure! ”

“ He knew and he saw the body of Lilith,—he must know, and he must see her Soul. And while he leaned above her couch, entranced, a sudden strain of music echoed through the stillness,—music solemn and sweet, that stirred the air into rhythmic vibrations as of slow and sacred psalmody. He listened, perplexed but not afraid,—he was not afraid of anything in earth or heaven save—himself. He knew that man has his worst enemy in his own Ego,—beyond that, there is very little in life that need give cause for alarm. ”

“ The love of Lilith! Oh fool! The love of a corpse kept breathing by artificial means! And what of the Soul of Lilith? Can It love? Can It hate? Can It even feel? Surely not. It is an ethereal transparency,—a delicate film which takes upon itself the reflex of all existing things without experiencing personal emotion. Such is the Soul, as I believe in it—an immortal Essence, in itself formless, yet capable of taking all forms,—ignorant of the joys or pains of feeling, yet reflecting all shades of sensation as a crystal reflects all colours in the prism. ”

“ Ah, Lilith, sure the love that basely weighs,
That stoops to count its gifts, and hoarding, says,
‘Such and so many, these indeed are mine;
I hold my treasure dear, nor covet thine;’
This is not love; ’tis Thrift in borrowed dress,
Deceiving thee. Love giveth free largess
With open hand, clean as the whitest day;
Yea, that it gave, forgetteth it straightway.
Beyond these walls dwells bliss that lives not here?
When thou hast bartered peace, outshining clear
And storm-tossed wide, art wildly driven hence,
The outer world gives thee no recompense. ”

“ One can be more alone in London than in a desert if one chooses. Now, you know all. You have seen the dead Lilith,—the human chrysalis of the moth,—but there is a living Lilith too—the Soul of Lilith, which is partly free and partly captive, but in both conditions is always the servant of my Will!”
Féraz looked at him in mingled awe and fear.
“El-Râmi,”—he said tremulously—“What you tell me is wonderful—terrible—almost beyond belief,—but, I know something of your power and I must believe you. Only—surely you are in error when you say that Lilith is dead? ”

“ No, Lilith—my Lilith whom I snatched from greedy death—even you may fail me at the last,—you may break your promise,—the promise that I should see with mortal eyes your own Immortal Self—who can blame you for the promise of a dream, poor child! You may prove yourself nothing but woman ”

“ And even now while my whole heart craves for it, I question whether it is worth having! Poor Lilith!—only a woman after all,—a woman whose beauty will soon pass—whose days will soon be done,—only a woman—not an immortal Soul,—there is, there can be, no such thing as an immortal Soul. ”

“ El-Râmi stared, but could see nothing,—nothing save the lamp-light and the nodding flowers.
“There?” he repeated bewildered—“Where?”
“Alas for you, that you cannot see her!” said the monk compassionately. “This blindness of your sight proves that for you the veil has not yet been withdrawn. Lilith is there, I tell you;—she stands close to those roses,—her white form radiates like lightning—her hair is like the glory of the sunshine on amber,—her eyes are bent upon the flowers, which are fully conscious of her shining presence. For flowers are aware of angels’ visits, when men see nothing! ”

“ Lilith stretched her fair arms out with a gesture of weariness.
“I said I was tired—” she murmured—“Tired of the search through Infinity for things that are not. A wayward will bids me look for evil—I search, but cannot find it;—for Hell, a place of pain and torment,—up and down, around and around the everlasting circles I wend my way, and can discover no such abode of misery. Then I bring back the messages of truth,—but they are rejected, and I am sorrowful. All the realms of God are bright with beauty save this one dark prison of Man’s fantastic Dream. ”

“ Lilith rose and left the room. Wolkenlicht now understood that Lilith was a frozen bud, and could not blossom into a rose. But pure love lives by faith. It loves the vaguely beheld and unrealised ideal. It dares believe that the loved is not all that she ever seemed. It is in virtue of this that love loves on. And it was in virtue of this, that Wolkenlicht loved Lilith yet more after he discovered what a grave of misery her unbelief was digging for her within her own soul. ”

“ Lilith!” exclaimed El-Râmi in strange agitation, “Why will you talk of love!”
“Do you not think of love?” said Lilith—“and must I not respond to your innermost thought?”
“Not always do you so respond, Lilith!” said El-Râmi quickly, recovering himself a little, and glad of an opportunity to bring back his mind to a more scientific level. “Often you speak of things I know not,—things that perhaps I shall never know——”
“Nay, you must know,” said Lilith, with soft persistence. “Every unit of life in every planet is bound to know its Cause and Final Intention. ”

“ Judge me not harshly, my Sweet,—for if indeed you are divine, and this beauty I behold is the mere reflex of Divinity, let me see the divine form of you for once, and have a guarantee for faith through love! If there is another and a fairer Lilith than the one whom I now behold, deny me not the grace of so marvellous a vision! ”

“ So Lilith backward turned to holier days,
Watching through misty tears where trod those ways
Her feet in other times.
Sudden and sweet
Came down those paths a glimpse of flying feet;
A sound of girlish laughter smote the air.
In jealous rage, Lilith uprose to dare
The guarding Angel’s wrath. But, silver clear,
The mocking laugh of Eblis caught her ear.
“Thou hast forgot,” he said, “this peaceful land,
Living, thou canst not enter.”
But her hand
Grasped once again the roses’ shining strand,
[72] And ’neath her guileful touch, like scarlet flame
The snowy flowers burned. ”

“ Lilith yet fiercer clasped the child
When that lorn mother, tear-stained, weeping, wild,
Poured forth her woe.
As one that wakes to life
From peaceful dreams, leaps quick amid the strife
Of morning hours, so now the maid to pass
From Lilith’s arms strove hard. And loosed her clasp,
[88] And turned her shadowed face with plaintive moan
And fond beseeching eyes, where lay her mother lone. ”

“ Oh, my angel mother in heaven, if you had been on earth you would never have let your child fall into such a trap. You would have taught her; you would have warned her. Oh, he ought to have been generous; he ought to have remembered that I had no mother; he ought to have let me alone!”
“What is the matter with you, dear child?” inquired the baroness, breaking in upon Lilith’s grievous reverie. “You are so absorbed and distressed that you must be in some great trouble, either for yourself or for some one else. Can I do anything for you?” ”

“ I cannot love you!—at the touch of your bleeding Hand the world freezes like a starving bird in a storm of snow;—the hearts of men grow weak and weary, and of what avail is it, O Prince of Grief, to live in sadness all one’s days for the hope of a Heaven that comes not? O Lilith!—child of the sun, where art thou?—Where? Never to have known the joys of love,—never to have felt the real pulse of living,—never to have thrilled in a lover’s embrace,—ah, Lilith, Lilith! ”

“ Lilith modestly suggested.
“Possibly,” wearily replied the lady; “but nothing interests me, child—except yourself—nothing. With every appliance of material good—with youth and health and wealth—I have no interest in life, no enjoyment of anything.”
“Oh, madame! what has brought you into such a state as this?” exclaimed Lilith, speaking from the irrepressible impulse of her great sympathy, and then stopping short and blushing at the thought of having asked the baroness an impertinent question.
But Madame Von Bruyin did not seem to perceive any impropriety in Lilith’s words. ”

“ Who will bring back the wise old gods,—the gods of the ancient days,—the gods who loved and were not ashamed,—the gods of mirth and life and health,—they would have left me Lilith,—they would have said—‘Lo, how this woman is old and poor,—she hath lost all that she ever had,—let us leave her the child she loves, albeit it is not her own but ours;—we are great gods, but we are merciful!’ Oh, Lilith, Lilith! ”

“ It is the poet’s hope that the chords of the mother-heart universal will respond to the song of the childless one. That in the survival of that one word lullaby, may be revivified the pathetic figure of one whose home, whose hope, whose Eden passed to another. Whose name living in the terrors of superstitious peoples, now lingers in Earth’s sweetest utterance. That Pagan Lilith, re-baptized in the pure waters of maternal love, shall breathe to heathen and Christian motherhood alike, that most sacred love of Earth still throbbing through its tender lullaby. ”

“ Lilith comes!
Listen, my babe!
See how the dusk pines
Tremble and crouch;
Over wide wastes borne, white are the snow-wreaths blown,
And loud the drear icy fjords shudder and moan;
Lilith comes!
Listen, my babe!
Ah! Hear the wild din,
Fierce o’er the linn,
The sea-gull, affrighted, soars seaward away,
And dark on the shores falls the wind-driven spray;
Lilith comes!
Listen, my babe!
The shuddering ice
Shivers. It cracks!
[100] Like a wild beast in pain, it cries to the wrack
Of the storm-cloud overhead. The sea answers back—
Dread Lilith comes!
Listen, my babe! ”

“ As Eblis pushed aside the bent boughs light.
“O dame,” he said, “it seemeth surely meet
Earth’s richest gifts to lay at Lilith’s feet;
Therefore I said ‘unto the fairest one,
Things loveliest beneath the shining sun
I bring.’ Since of all crafts in this young earth
I am true master, unto her whose worth
So much deserves, I bear this marble sphere,
Whose hollowed husk, well polished, gleaming clear,
Hides rarest fruit.” ”

“ Do you not see that I—I who have recoiled from the very thought of loving,—I, who have striven to make of myself a man of stone and iron rather than flesh and blood, am conquered by your spells, victorious Lilith!—conquered in every fibre of my being by some subtle witchcraft known to yourself alone. ”

“ Close, close in her strong arms she bears my babe, smiling;
She hath sucked the soft bloom from the lips of my dead.
Now far speeds the vampire, with yellow-gold hair—
Oh! lullaby, baby—of Lilith beware!
Art frighted, my baby? Nay, then, thy mother
Low singing enfolds thee all safe from the snare;
Afar flit the Elf-babes ’mid gray, misty shadows,
Afar flees the temptress with yellow-gold hair. ”

“ The English mother o’er her babe sings low;
Where red the cross burns on the ivied fane,
Unwitting, pagan Lilith lives again—
[104] And softer sings, nor feels the wailing pain
Still faintly surging through that low refrain;
Nor dreams she hears Love’s early cradle cry
Slow echoing through Earth’s song—sweet lullaby—
And in the shadow of that cross, her strain
Breathes sweetly; love, and hope, and ended pain.
Softlier while that small arm closely clings
About her heart, that mother peaceful sings:
O babe, my babe, the light doth fade! ”

“ As day after day passed with the disappointment of the morning, and the wearying round of the afternoon, Lilith grew heart-sick and brain-sick over it all. The splendors of the preparations for the approaching wedding were in such dissonance to her anxious and despairing mood that, young and beautiful as she was, she began to take a strong distaste to finery, and to wish herself among the plain Methodists of Aunt Sophie’s humble boarding-house. ”

“ Till Eblis wrathful cried: “Because this Eve
Adam holds dear, art mourning? Still dost yearn
To mate his sordid soul? Or wouldst thou turn
From summer land to Eden walls?
“The man
Belike, ne’er loved thee. So is it young Eve can
His pulses sway. Is she not passing fair?
Her fancies wild, it is her daily care
To bend beneath his ever fickle will.
Red-lipped and soft, she deftly rules him still,
Though he wist not. Yet sweeter Lilith’s frown
Than archest smile she wears. Great Soul! The crown
Thou bearest of fadeless life. ”

“ He had resolved to waken Lilith. What sort of a being she would seem when once awakened, he could not quite imagine. He knew she had died in his arms as a child,—and that her seeming life now, and her growth into the loveliness of womanhood was the result of artificial means evolved from the wonders of chemistry,—but he persuaded himself that though her existence was the work of science and not nature, it was better than natural, and would last as long. ”

“ And kissed the temptress through the green-leaved space.
Whereat fell Lilith snatched the babe and fled,
Crying, as swift from Eden’s bounds she sped,
And like a fallen star shone on her breast
The child, “At last! at last! thy peaceful rest
Ere long will cease. O helpless mourn, frail Eve,
Uncomforted. O hapless mother, grieve,
Since Lilith far from thee thy babe doth bear!
She leaves thy loving arms, thy tender care.
[84] Nor canst thou follow anywhere my flight,
When far we go athwart the falling night. ”