ftEtKElET 
 
 LIdRARY : 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
F E S T U S 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 fn 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/festuspoennOObailrich 
 
From the ^ast hy Johrh fi. (P. ]V[(^Q ^rids, 1^46. 
 
FESTUS 
 
 A POEM BY 
 
 PHILIP JAMES BAILEY 
 
 LONDON: 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LIMITED 
 BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. 
 MDCCCCL 
 
LONDON : 
 
 PUIKTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFOUD BrEi:Er AND CUAELXG CilOSo. 
 
753 
 
 DEDICATION, 
 
 ilY Father 1 unto thee to whom I owe 
 All that I am, all that I have and can ; 
 
 Who madest me in thyself the sum of man 
 In all his generous aims and powers to know, 
 
 These first-fruits bring I ; nor do thou forego 
 Marking when I the feat thus closed, began, 
 
 "WTiich numbers now near three years from its plan. 
 Not twenty summers had embrowned my brow. 
 
 Life is at blood-heat every page doth prove. 
 Bear with it. Nature means Necessity. 
 
 If here be aught which thou canst love, it springs 
 Out of the hope that I may earn that love. 
 
 More unto me than iramoi-tality ; 
 Or to have strung my harp with golden strings, 
 
 1839. 
 
 170 
 
PKEFACE. 
 
 The author, in preparing, on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication, 
 a final revision of this poem, has been advised by friends whose opinions 
 he much esteems, to foresay to a risinjj generation of students, a few 
 words indicative briefly of certain leading- features which have, more or 
 less from the beginnintr, (as illustrating the ultimate triumph of good 
 over evil), distinguished the work, from others conversant with a like 
 class of topics ; and to make some alterations in the current issue which, 
 it is believed, will recommend themselves to the judgment of the ob- 
 servant reader. 
 
 The poem has been taken to be a sketch of world-life, and is a summary 
 of its combined moral and physical conditions, estimated on a theory of 
 spiritual things, opposed as far as possible to that of the partialist, pessi- 
 mist and despairing sceptic, the belief of the misbeliever, so prevalent in 
 our time ; not only in regard to the creation, government and administra- 
 tion of the world by divine providence, but in its views as to the origin of 
 the so-called mystery of moral evil ; and in its general positions known as 
 universalist, illustrative of the highest aspirations and the happiest future, 
 liere and hereafter of humanity. Here, however, it may be as well to 
 premise that, substantially, the poem stands now, and indeed in most of its 
 chief respects remains, imchanged ; and it does so for the reason more 
 especially, that very soon after its first appearance, the author perceived 
 the original outline to be suflBciently extensive and elastic to admit almost 
 every variety of classifiable thought, and reasonable enlargement of pur- 
 pose ui)on such matters as human faith, morals and progress could not fail 
 to present to the ripening experiences of life. In the course, however, of 
 years, it becomes almost inevitable, in the case of a living writer, that 
 Home things shall have been added, some things, for sundry reasons, 
 varied, and some things taken away. 
 
 To begin, for instance, with what has been varied; it maybe stated that 
 in compliance with the representations already made public, of more than 
 one notable writer and fully competent critic, and in accord with conclu- 
 sions of the author's more matured thought, aU the utterances ascribed in 
 previous editions of the poem to various divine interlocutors are now 
 assigned solely to one uni-personal Deity, being more suitable, we are led to 
 believe, to the pur]X)8e and position of poetry generally, among the arts, in 
 modern monotheistic times, during which the expansion of the horizon of 
 the moral universe has at,deast equalled that of the material ; and certainly 
 a« being more congruous with the philosophic tendencies, at the present 
 day, of religious thought, in which the unity and infinity, alike insepar- 
 able from each other, and in themselves indivisible even in conception, of 
 the Divine Nature, is unquestionably, and for ever established. 
 
 The parts that have been taken away are several passages of an almost 
 exclusively theological cast that bore but a distant relation to the ruling 
 
3 PREFACE. 
 
 motives of the invention, as a whole, and a few songs and lyrical effusions, 
 tome of them pretty general favourites, which though missing from their 
 accustomed place will be found comprised more appropriately it is thought 
 in a collection of minor miscellaneous verse intended presently to see the 
 light. 
 
 In regard to additional matter admitted into the text ; the Angel- 
 world, the Star-flight of Luniel and Festus, and considerable portions of 
 the Spiritual Legend, the first for sometime Avithdrawn, have now been all 
 re-adjusted and brought more palpably into parallel with the progressive 
 action of the story ; while, along with the closing war of good and ill, in 
 which the souls of that generation are represented as determining by their 
 own free choice of sides, their future spiritual destiny ; the blending 
 of sacred millennial aspirations forenoted of old to be ultimately verified, 
 as well as the conjecturally realized triumphs of humanitary theories, 
 secular but not irrational ; and the happy results of pious and inspired 
 clvarity in the treatment of subdued evilhood, takes each its place as an 
 integral segment of the circle to which all belong. 
 
 Certain changes less or more oi-ganic, in the constitution of the poem 
 as at this moment it presents itself, being thus accounted for, the writer far 
 from seeking to apply to it any formal or minute analysis, but being desirous 
 merely to supply the unaccustomed reader with a brief prescript, regarding 
 its primary and more prominent objects and aspects, trusts confidently 
 that upon a few such heads as construction, characterization, main spope 
 or tendency, and special note of dift'erence from other works occupied witli 
 similar, if not equally comprehensive, schemes, and which not many of 
 I he criticisms likely to fall into a stranger's hands have grasped very 
 cflfectively, the following remarks may sulfice to prepossess the reader 
 with a serviceable summary of the work now in his hands. 
 
 Viewed structurally then, the poem will be found through all its semi- 
 century or so of scenes, one continuous whole ; resolving itself, upon 
 examination, not into books, or acts, but into twelve or more groups, 
 celestial, astral, interstellar and terrestrial, solar, planetary, and one otlier, 
 the sphere of the Internals ; that is to say, into so many clusters of 
 sections subordinated into seven classes, finally reducible into three, 
 ileavcnly, finnamental, earthly ; throughout variously distributed. 
 
 With regard, for example, to the celestial scenes, three in number, 
 v/ith two of which the poem opens and terminates ; the first shadowing 
 forth predictively the fore warnings and decrees of divine providence, 
 afterwards to be embodied in the action of the story ; the last, which 
 JM completive, s1io\n ing wherein the main issues are summed up and 
 justified ; while botli are seen to be divided centrally by a mid heavenly 
 section, judicial and punitive in character, of the same elevation as the 
 others, and which, wliile securing a symmetrical arrangement of the 
 interjacent portions, reflects equally upon the preceding and succeeding 
 developmentg of the narrative. 
 
 Of the terrestrial scenes, more numerous, as might be expected, than 
 those of any other class, devoted to the earthly experiences of the hero, 
 bin loyos, his friends, his companions, his adventures, the temptations 
 ind trials by which he is tested, and the offences of pride and passion by 
 which he is temporarily overcome, his aspirations and shortcomings, his 
 penitences and griefs, his voluntary self -demission of the surpassing and 
 60 to spi.ak mu-aculous gifts and privileges with which he has been 
 
P&EPAdS. n 
 
 f^ndowed, and his gfradual advance morally and spiritually from the 
 world chaos of conflicting partialist and imperfect beliefs to the sufficing 
 system of simple and philosophic truth to which he at last attains, it is 
 at this time unnecessary to speak. Tlie story, which as a whole more 
 regards the future than the passed or the present, comprises and con- 
 nects all these particulars, having, besides a plan overt, what may be 
 called an under plan ; the latter mainly concerned with the initiation and 
 perfection of a social but secret agency of the world's wisest well-wishers, 
 who are supposed in every state and country throughout the globe to be 
 actively engaged in the removal of every cause of national animosity in 
 men's hearts, preparatory' to such a condition of things as can only morally 
 issue in the establishment of imiversal peace among all peoples ; the 
 culmination of which imaginary i)olicy proving precisely coincident, in 
 point of time, with the openly announced impending end of the world aa 
 told in the very first scene, and towards the conclusion shown realized ; 
 and coincident, in point of fact, with the covert but philanthropic action of 
 the sages of all lands in elevating to a throne of universal peace, a single 
 sovereign soul, both are shown ultimately to convene, and make one. 
 
 Interspersed with these, the several clusters of the supramundane scenes 
 wUl be found to be occupied chiefly with the assertion and illustration of 
 the unity of God's moral law, in analogy with that of the physical, aa 
 alike universal, eternal and all suflScient, in contrast with the views of 
 a late eminent but eccentric metaphysician, which amount, it cannot be 
 denied, to hypothetical polytheism. Here and there, and among the 
 interspaces between star and star, where almost nothing more is brought 
 forward scenically than what the simple ideas of duration, extension, 
 distance and magnitude abstractedly imply ; and not all inaptly therefore 
 perhaps dedicated to legendary narrative, with divers moral and meta- 
 physical speculations will be found, such as those connected with spiritual 
 pre-existence, soul discipline throughout all spheres, the eflScacy of prayer, 
 and the everlasting validity of the prophet-preached principle of peni- 
 tence ; topics in themselves neither uninteresting nor unimportant, nor 
 in their high and comprehensive scope, inai^propriate to those rare and 
 rarely reachable regions in which they are represented to occur. 
 
 Further, in relation with matters such as those pertaining to that 
 mysterious spiritual future, which, dependent as it is upon action, 
 may be said to be in a certain sense, always with us, the enlai'ge- 
 ment, will possibly be noted, since its first appearance, of The Star- 
 flight of Festus and the angel Luniel, which traversing the astral signs 
 of the sun's annual course, present a fair field for the indulgence of 
 conjecture upon those theories of preparatory ghostly purification proper 
 to brighter spheres, with which such bards and seers as have elected or 
 aspired to present in their works any passable rationale of the moral 
 universe, have from time to time familiarized the world, before the 
 divinely conceded entrance of human spirits even those of the great and 
 good, patriots and sages of old, as recorded for us by some of their " least 
 earthly minds," upon the full fruition of their predestined heritage. These 
 may be taken, though in ever so inadequate a degree, not only to typify to 
 the ardent aspirant after eternal perfections the many glorious species of 
 possible felicity in a future state so, figuratively, conveyed ; but also, a 
 novelty in serious verse, to indicate a boundless variety of directions 
 In which, besides the soul-exalting worship of Deity, the highest hopes, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 pRiaFAc:^ 
 
 the largct^t life, the broadest extension of faculties, and the noblest 
 exercise of human duties, not less than spiritual prerogatives, may be 
 looked forward to, and enjoyed. 
 
 Turning, in the meantime, in order to complete and conclude OCT brief 
 inspection of this class of scenes, the supernatural, which forms an essential 
 clement of the fiction, to the instance, exceptional in its nature, of the 
 sphere of the Infernals, or Hell Purgatorial, answering morally to that 
 jintichthonal and hypothetical sphere, though invisible in the physical 
 order of things, which early Greek phHosophy found herself at the^ very 
 outset of her career constrained to demand as a necessary counterpoise to 
 the insoluble diflBculties and rampant anomalies sensible throughout the 
 actual system of things, and in default of which exemplification of God's 
 severe but rational equity, the teaching as a whole embodied in the work 
 were manifestly imperfect, it will be seen, nevertheless, that this judicial 
 section has designedly features of a remedial and ameliorative quality, 
 analogous to those shown during the current period, by civilized society, 
 in the treatment of its criminal law-breakers ; which strongly and 
 pointedly differentiate the story from all preceding poetical adumbrations 
 of the place of so-called endless and hopeless torment. In this condition 
 or position, place or state, necessarily abides the obstinate and unrepentant 
 simier of all worlds ; but whence, by ministiy of the angelic and com- 
 passionate sons of God, divine clemency has provided, as in more than one 
 instance exampled, a means, if availed of duly, of self -deliverance ; and it 
 is in the collation and adaptation of these two sections just passed under 
 notice, in which soul is represented as undergoing in due order, the just 
 judgment of heaven, because of offence, and the self imposed penalties of 
 l)enitent conscience, prior to that loftier and happier course of self 
 craendative discipline, and spiritual advancement symbolized by the varied 
 experiences recounted in The Star-flight ; and which enure according to 
 the poet's creation, and his conception of the moral world, untU, con- 
 sistently with its plan, final felicity is universally won ; and the charactef 
 of Deity vindicated, as one who having righteously made man respon- 
 sible for his deeds will stni not render a creature of finite faculties, 
 whether as regards active forces or powers of passion, amenable to fines, 
 infinite, and out of all proportion possible to their causes. Thus Ms 
 nature and essence, as a Being of unassailable sovereignty and con- 
 sequently imi)ei-turbable equity is demonstrated ; and one of the implicit 
 but cardinal purports of the poem plenarily achieved. 
 
 Passing on therefore from these and like aboriginal rudiments of a 
 fable not indebted for its peculiarities to the somewhat newly-rationalized 
 divinity of the day, to the next head, that of characterization which 
 appears naturally to express itself in a few primary and typical concep- 
 tions, such as, first, that of Deity which has already been touched upon 
 as above, reveiently; and which will be found represented, and in 
 opposition to the pantheism, the nature- worship, and the man- worship, 
 all equally idolatrous, of our times, as a personal Infinite ; one whose 
 infinitude, if personality signifies, in any sense, those attributes or 
 qualities which distinguish one individual entity from all others, con- 
 stitutes his personality ; an affirmation which may doubtless sui-priso 
 certain censors who ignorantly or unfairly have accused of Pantheism 
 a work that from its first page to its last, abounds with witness to the 
 existence of the one and sole Infinite, the eternal, almighty, and 
 
PREFACE. 5 
 
 ▼oluntary creator of tlie world, who containing in himself, and per- 
 vading-, the universe, and existing in a manner which to us incom- 
 prehensible, is still not wholly by finite intelligence inapprehensible; 
 but, in a like sense to that which Pauline Pantheism, as it has been 
 called, presents to us, namely that of the Great Spirit in whom we live 
 and move and have our being, as an Infinite, always and everywhere 
 present to us ; a universal conscience cognizant of our every act, per- 
 fectly and convincingly knowable ; we, in the meantime seeing and 
 knowing that all the acts of a finite being, along with tlie being itself, 
 are alike commensui-ables ; but that the eternity which pertains only to 
 Deity, is with aught, or with all, created, incommensurable and incomma- 
 nicable ; and that whatever dogma or decree is metaphysically inconsistent 
 with reason's demonstrable conclusions, can never be theologically, nor 
 scientifically, tenable. 
 
 Next, in accord with all sacred traditions, ancient and orient, that of 
 angelhood in its double capacity, on the one hand of a mighty hierarchy, 
 loyal naturally and by all-sufficient reason, to its bounteous Creator, a 
 world of holy ministrant intelligences, guardians of orbs, of n itions, of 
 souls, shown in vital and beneficent relations with various personages of 
 the poem, the main events connected with which, such as the destruction 
 and re-creation of the earth, the visitations extended to other spheres, the 
 Initiations, the foundation of a world-wide empire, and many other in- 
 stances of the marvellous, being, it is taken for granted, of sufficient 
 dignity to justify, assthetically, the invoked presence or aid of superior 
 powers ; — and, on the other, of that false, fallen, and as yet impenitent 
 host, of whom the head, the tempter, the flatterer, the deluder of men, 
 the Lucifer of the story, stands intended to represent our generalized or 
 abstract idea of evil as a principle, if we may so speak, temporally imper- 
 sonate ; endowed with certain almost spatial dignities tliat serve, at lease 
 from a poetical point of view, to individualize a character, which in 
 its prospective rehabilitation yields only in the interest it attracts to that 
 inspired by the position of the protagonist. 
 
 And lastly, of Humanity generally, imder its twofold aspect, primarily, 
 spiritual, exemplified in two instances ; one recently released from bodily 
 bonds, and passing through the process of probational purification ; another, 
 rejoicing in assured beatitude ; secondarily, as outlined in the person and 
 career of the hero and his companion characters, with such x>eculiarities 
 and qualifications of gift and temperament as pertain to their chief, and 
 the various members of the poetical circle alluded to, as suffice to vitalize 
 the framework of the pageant, and demai-k it from the range of simple 
 allegory. 
 
 Of the general scope and nature of the story, the reader, even if it be 
 his first essay, keeping in mind what he may have already gathered from 
 the foregoing remarks ; from the spirit of the teachings they convey 
 indirectly, or more directly illustrate, from the general reputation of the 
 work, such as that expressed in the words of one of its critics intimating 
 the aim of the poem to be the exhibition of " a soul gifted, tried, buffeted, 
 beguiled, stricken, purified, redeemed, pardoned and triumphant : " of a 
 Boul, it may be added, passing through and from knowledge, to wisdom ; 
 from passion and worldly and frivolous pleasures, to heart pinity and 
 spiritual happiness, a philosiophic creed and a comprehensive calm of 
 mind ; from the tyranny of doubt and the benumbing influence of conti-a- 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 dictory and incredible beliefs, to the certainty of assured faith in simplest 
 and amplest truth ; from voluntary humiliation and self-denudation of all 
 temporal and extrinsic gifts and privilepres, to the enjoyment of perfect 
 and unlimited power, accomplished on the appointed day, when mankind, 
 by enlightened self -development, and the prevenient will of God, shall 
 have anived at absolute and universal sovereignty over the powers of 
 nature, and have rendered subservient to common use, all the conquests and 
 the treasures of science, all the best institutions and safeguards of civil 
 society ; — the reader, being thus informed, it is the author's impression, 
 will scarcely require any further details before commencing his perusal 
 of the pages before him. 
 
 Upon the execution of the poem, which has been called by some of its 
 censors an epic drama, and wliich certainly belongs rather to the order of 
 the many-stringed harp than lo the lyre, it docs not become the author to 
 speak. Criticism, which has not) been lacking either in the old world or 
 the new, may be sa'.d, with a few minor exceptions, to have faiily enough 
 and even generously discharged its always honourable functions. And if 
 not any poem, — ajifreeably with the somewhat denunciatory decree of one 
 of themediasval councils, omnia poeniata Jia;retica mnt, — precisely satisfies 
 a rigidly orthodox pietist, it is some consolation to a delinquent of this class 
 if, in his choice of heresies, he thinks he has done his best to favour a simple 
 creed which comprises in its consecrated elements a belief in the benignant 
 providence of God, in the immortality of the soul, in the harmonized 
 gospel of reason and faith combined, in the just, discriminative and 
 equitable judgment of the spirit after death by Deity, and in the delight- 
 some duty of aiding upon earth the peaceful, morally progressive and 
 voluntary self -evolution of Humanity as one brotherhood — an eclectic and 
 philosophic symbol anticipated towards the end of the worJc as destined 
 eventually to be everywhere on earth welcomed and established, and one 
 which, however much in some quarters misunderstood, yet in its original 
 inception and design spaciously and presciently conceived, has since been 
 not inconsistently nor immethodically carried cut, to the ultimate achieve- 
 ment of all that from the first wr<* promised or predicted, 
 
 Blackhlath. 
 May, 188», 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SCEKB 
 
 PROEM . . . . 
 
 
 PAOK 
 9 
 
 I. 
 
 HEAVEN . . : . . 
 
 
 . 20 
 
 11. 
 
 WOOD AND WATER— SUNSET 
 
 
 . 8S 
 
 III. 
 
 WATER AND WOOD— MIDNIGHT 
 
 
 01 
 
 IV. 
 
 A MOUNTAIN 
 
 
 r,9 
 
 V. 
 
 A COUNTRY TOWN . , . 
 
 
 . CD 
 
 VI. 
 
 LAWN AND PARTERRE . 
 
 
 96 
 
 VII. 
 
 A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE . 
 
 
 109 
 
 VIII. 
 
 LAWN AND PARTERRE . . . . 
 
 
 114 
 
 IX. 
 
 HEATH AND SANDS BY THE SEA 
 
 
 125 
 
 X. 
 
 EARTH'S SURFACE 
 
 
 128 
 
 XI. 
 
 A VILLAGE FEAST .... 
 
 
 lo3 
 
 XII. 
 
 EARTH— THE CENTRE . . . . 
 
 
 175 
 
 XIII. 
 
 A CHURCHYARD 
 
 
 179 
 
 XIV. 
 
 A METROPOLIS; PUBLIC PLACE . 
 
 
 183 
 
 XV. 
 
 THE INTERSTELLAR SPACE 
 
 
 195 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE HESPERIAN SPHERE 
 
 
 206 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE MOON ... . . 
 
 
 221 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 CLOUDLAND ...... 
 
 
 281 
 
 XIX. 
 
 PARTY AND ENTERTAINMENT . 
 
 
 251 
 
 XX. 
 
 A LAKE ISLET 
 
 
 277 
 
 XXI. 
 
 INTERSTELLAR SPACE 
 
 
 322 
 
 XXII. 
 
 THE CENTRAL SUN . . . . 
 
 
 3.37 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 THE WORLD'S OUTERMOST OR P. 
 
 
 3r.9 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 HEAVEN . . . . . 
 
 
 302 
 
 XXV. 
 
 THE MARTIAN SPHERE 
 
 
 389 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 SI-MMER-HOUSE AND PLEASirRE r;T:cr> 
 
 E^ . 
 
 398 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 HOUSE BY A RIVER .... 
 
 
 420 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 HOME ; AN INTERIOR .... 
 
 
 4C9 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 APARTMENT IN MANSION . 
 
 
 478 
 
 3LXX. 
 
 A ROCKY PROMONTORY OVEUEANGING 
 
 THE SEA . 
 
 482 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 8CEKB 
 XXXI, 
 
 XXXIT. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 XXSIX. 
 
 XL. 
 
 XLI, 
 
 XLII. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 XLIV. 
 XLV, 
 
 XL VI. 
 
 XLVII. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 L. 
 
 LI. 
 
 LII. 
 
 rAOE 
 
 GAEDEN AND BOWEE BY THE SEA . . .506 
 
 MANSION OVEELOOKING THE SEA . . . , 522 
 EOCKS AND SANDS BY THE SEA-SHOEE . . .541 
 
 INTEESTELLAE SPACE 545 
 
 HELL PUEGATOIttAL 556 
 
 THE SUN 57'J 
 
 GAEDEN AND BOWER BY THE SEA. . . . 589 
 
 A EUINED TEMPLE, SUEEOUNDED BY SANDS . . 596 
 
 A LIBEAEY AND BALCONY, OVEEHANGING A EIVEE 606 
 
 COLONNADE AND LAWN .... 618 
 
 AN OEATOEY 637 
 
 GAEDEN AND GEOVE BY THE SEA , . . .640 
 A LONELY LODGE AMONG THE SNOWY MOUN- 
 TAINS 662 
 
 GAEDEN TEEEACE, BY THE SEA .... 672 
 A LONELY LODGE AMONG THE SNOWY MOUN- 
 TAINS 695 
 
 A GATHERING OP KINGS AND PEOPLES . . .703 
 
 THE SKIES . . 720 
 
 EAETH MILLENNIAL . 742 
 
 HADES 754 
 
 PAEADISAL EAETH . . .... 765 
 
 THE JUDGMENT OF EAETH 7(]9 
 
 HEAVEN 773 
 
 L'ENVOX . » . 794 
 
F E S T U S 
 
 PROEM. 
 
 Eabtu's and time's end, man's rifje progressive, add 
 His happier reascent and great return 
 Godwards ; and freely chosen of spirit delapsed ; 
 Happier in reascent, than in his fall 
 Mournful, and througfh all puiifying spheres 
 Perfective, let the bard his harp restrung, 
 Chaunt ; and prophetic faith in union meet 
 "With philosophic reason charm the ear ; 
 One law of penitent self amendment, due 
 From faultful conscience, the whole moral world, 
 (As Natui-e's gravitative, cohesive, force 
 This sensible) binding ; evil's source and cause, 
 And reason of being ; mystery none; its fine; 
 Add, self discrowned its end ; good's fail/hiul war 
 Fatef raught 'gainst ill ; ill how o'ercome in orbs 
 Angelic, how in ours ; time's tidal hour 
 Obliterative of Bjing, when most at one, 
 Man's universal soul, thus ait wise typed 
 In individual guise ; man, joyful man, 
 In moral i3omp enthroned, shall all things king, 
 All natural powers, all social states, in peace. 
 Sing we then, now, of restitutive times ; 
 Of confidence in God, and good ; for know, 
 This time is equal to all time that's gone, 
 Of like extent ; not, as in grave regard, 
 Ilecognizant of the passed, ashamed to weigh 
 Its wisdom with our forbears ; nor its face 
 Hide 'fore the future ; each is missioned here 
 To ends like worthy of its sender, God. 
 Him therefore let us bless too, and take heart ; 
 All ages aie his offspring, and all worlda 
 Form f lom his breath like dewurops out of air ; 
 He life in all infusing. Nor is earth's orb 
 Outlawed or excommunicate. This our God 
 Is still as kind, his gifts like wondrous fair, 
 Unlimited, even as when the wind first blew. 
 Still shiue^ his sun on the gvej rotting rock, 
 
 B8 
 
10 FE8TUS. 
 
 Keen, pure, as o'er the primal matter once, 
 
 Ere floods, mannoreal now, had smoothed their couch 
 
 Of perdurable snow, or granite wrought 
 
 Its skyward impulse from earth's hearth of fire, 
 
 Up to insanest heights ; or thunder oped 
 
 His cloudy lips, and spake. Immutable he, 
 
 All things to himwards, spiritual, natural, show 
 
 Unvaryingly of change. God, nature, man, 
 
 Life's universal threelihood, man perceives 
 
 E'er to each other that they have been ; and soula, 
 
 Like in the mass, but differenced in themselves, 
 
 With special gifts, duties and joys, he makes, 
 
 In such wise, blesses and inspires, that each, 
 
 Teaching themselves and others, him may learn. 
 
 To those come gifts to enjoy the world, to gain, 
 
 To cultivate, amuse, adorn ; to these, 
 
 Who live alone with God and nature ; smile 
 
 With the sun for mirth, or sadden with the moon, 
 
 And the elements and their spirits our kin, as men ; 
 
 Boons too unasked, unmeasured as the light 
 
 Which lights at countless points the formless whole. 
 
 Such now. Heaven's seers, in things eternal taught, 
 Skilled soulwise to lay bare the heart of the world, 
 Know that while elemental change, locked round 
 In self succedent course, may nature serve 
 As God, in spirit, progress alone of soul 
 Is to him dear as its existence ; know 
 The moral realm in us expansible, ever 
 Greatening with speed accumulative, the rays 
 Of Heaven's authentic sphere pierce more and more 
 The obstructive dark of ignorance ; know, in fine, 
 This age, ours, happier, amiabler than all 
 Passed, in that God who witness lacks not ever 
 His ways to vindicate, now breathes among men 
 More of his own humanity ; and earth, 
 Mellowed by wer-tering suns, her t^iachers teach 
 A broader, kindlier message ; show how need 
 (vored in om- nature for divine commune. 
 Trust in a holy future, largelier planned 
 Than doubtful pride deems safe ; makes strong the strings 
 Of man's heart to endure. Nay, should all schemes 
 By angel, and angalic soul, here sown ' 
 
 In love's behalf, for human fellowship. 
 Of loftiest scope, fail time by time, to fruit ; 
 Yet social life grown peoccful, grown sereno, 
 Grown saintly sweet and pure, as th' orb, in meek 
 Enthusiasts' dream conceived, by art refined 
 To gas ; and seas dried up to a vaporous film, 
 flight fitly seem to seek ; a future filled 
 By faith ; supplanter not of reason she 
 But Bupplementer ; proves, to eyes which view 
 ITiins^s coming as things present, and things passed, 
 
FESTUS, U 
 
 Man's powers adjustible with God's ends designed, 
 And being: perfected. Souls such, content 
 ^\'■ith simplest fare ; (for Wisdom's board rejects 
 Mere dainties ; nor to any sets she forth 
 More than her homely bread, sweet olives, mead, 
 Cheer hospitable, and sacred salt, a meal 
 This with God's grace,) feast and felicitate each 
 The other, on like aims, means ; they her thanks 
 Most winning-, and her stateliest smile, who spread 
 The mystic welcome of her heavenly house 
 Stintless ; and standing by her gates invite 
 All blameless spirits to share the feast of God. 
 
 Each race hath had its revelation, all 
 Diversely imperfect ; and though rational light 
 Imparting plenteously, light yet bedimmed 
 By mean less luminous passed through, prophet soul 
 Bard, sovereign, saint or lawgiver, all heaven moved. 
 Better is yet to come ; completive, clear, 
 Eclect, refined. Man once in spirit one, 
 His primal thought of worship, sacrifice 
 Of guilty life or innocent, shadowy type 
 Of that to be, self-saciifice, through life 
 Of animal passions, lower cravings, self's 
 Un worthier ends, to truth's great cause, pro^id true 
 But more effectually, sincerely proved, 
 Shall, in the spirit, the only true receive. 
 Who now the world's wide scripture, God writ, best 
 Interpret, the interlinear version use 
 Of spiritual light authentic as the first 
 Of reason's utterances, which to us shows 
 The bearing, meaning, and intent of things, 
 And God's eternal purpose perfected 
 In them, and all spheres like compacted, tuned 
 To heavenly lyrings foreconceived of old. 
 Which tell of their great author, tell in joy. 
 Tor ix)esie being a thing divine of God, 
 Who made his prophets poets, and the more 
 We feel of poesie we become like God, 
 In love and power creative ; under-makers : 
 So, song being of the supernatural thouglit 
 Connatural utterance, solely can the worJd's 
 Unbounded beauty speak, tixe unceasing sonl'g 
 Perfective fall, terrestrial tests, re-rise ; 
 And the premortal concords of pure mind, 
 Made and creative, show at last resumed. 
 
 True fiction hath a higher end, and scope 
 Wider than fact ; it is nature's possible, 
 Contrasted with life's actual mean ; and gives 
 To the conceptive k)u1 an inner world, 
 A loftier, ampler, heaven than that wherein 
 The nations sun themselves. In that bri^H. sphere, 
 Behold the mental creatures of the met 
 
IS FESTU8, 
 
 Whose nampR are writ highest on the rounded crciyn 
 
 Of fame's triumphal tu'ch ; the shining shapea 
 
 AMiich star the skies of that invisible land. 
 
 Where earthly immortality dwells, with sage 
 
 Hero and seer, her sceptred lieges, bard, 
 
 And all souls vowed to truth. Among such, let oum, 
 
 Whom fabulous wars, nor wai-s too true, nor rise 
 
 Of realms or fall, nor tjirones o'erthroAvn allure, 
 
 Like that interior empire in our own 
 
 One spirit ; as with the elements of mind's orb, 
 
 Stem quatrain of the moral world, good, ill, 
 
 Choice and necessity, struggling, sing, the field, 
 
 (And what we are deepliest mixed v/ith, God and man 
 
 Boots most to know ;) where God the all good ; the world's 
 
 Evil ; and man wherein are both ; all said 
 
 Of Deity's said in reverence and in love, 
 
 Deploy their forces. These, thought's ultimate forma, 
 
 In mutual bearings traced, all teach us, good 
 
 Immortal, as of God, for God to know 
 
 In nature ; nature know in God, unites 
 
 Both reason and faitli ; teach evil here latent, there 
 
 Patent, but all- where tevst of spirits ; choice, need» 
 
 Like light's electric force twin poled in us. 
 
 And all soul ; teach, that we our being have, 
 
 We of this mortal mixture, in the same law, 
 
 (God-given, to prove by arbitrary grace 
 
 Him free of all necessity in his act) 
 
 As heaven's intelligences of all ill pure ; 
 
 And the dread Hadcan shades, endangering space 
 
 Between astral worlds, and interceptive ; teach 
 
 Virtue and reason attributes divine. 
 
 Deathless, (not finite qualities, though to us 
 
 Seeming by causal distance from their source. 
 
 The absolute, dwindled,) changeless ; justest proof 
 
 Of soul, the outbreath of Deity. But whilst 
 
 To man for wilful wrong meet reccmpense 
 
 Be due, the right renewal of pure will 
 
 And self amendment his approof so wins 
 
 As to involve houl safety to all time. 
 
 Souls virtuous, know, the souls eclect of God; 
 
 Albeit souls sinless not may aid his ends. 
 
 Now that the aU-wise Infinite, when free 
 He made soul finite, should soul's choice preview, 
 Needs all must judge ; such forecast act nor thought 
 Forced upon us implying at his hands 
 Which framed and laiow our mutable life ; who viewa 
 Reverently. God's nature in itself will o^vn 
 He sole hath full free will whose will is fate ; 
 Knows too, that in humanity Godwise weighed 
 Freewill is but necessity in play, 
 T)ie clattering of the golden reins which guide 
 The thundcrl'ootcd coursers of the suo. 
 
FESTUS. 
 
 But introspective man . while ne'er in truth 
 
 Of more than limited freedom seized, in will. 
 
 Word, deed, yet knows himself throug-liout his life, 
 
 This petty coig-n and se^'ii^eiit of the etenie, 
 
 As virtually choice-free ; nor more would ask ; 
 
 He gladdening that God only knows all fates. 
 
 Even, as contrariwise the ship. infonne<l 
 
 With serviceable fire, obeying nought, 
 
 As seems, but her own and iron-hearted force ; 
 
 To flowing tide, tide ebbing, or adverse 
 
 IndiflFereut ; reckless or of storm, or breeze 
 
 Weak as ba)je's parting breath too faint to stir 
 
 The feather held to it ; yet her secret self 
 
 Knows liege with Nature's elements, and as much 
 
 Thrall, thrice disfranchised of all liberties, 
 
 As the white-boomed barque that woos tlie wind 
 
 With welcoming arms, and to each whispering gust 
 
 Yields, murmurously assent. For either s course 
 
 He only answerable whose choice of times 
 
 .Ajid freights is such as shipment shows of goods 
 
 Xot incommerciable in that high haven 
 
 Man's spiritual craft is bound to. But who, bccans© 
 
 Men unf ore wistful, eye not act's last end. 
 
 How should they till they see with God ? deems man, 
 
 Set he his heart contrarious as he may 
 
 'Gainst God, can nought do but work out His wiU, 
 
 Though at an infinite angle, for life's use 
 
 Tlierefore responsible not ; confounding laws 
 
 Of being and of doing, deepliest errs. 
 
 Laws there are twain man serves ; the law of law, 
 Race, custom, creed, time, conscience, circumstance, 
 Chance ; law superficial this ; who breathe the light 
 Of spiritual virtue, know God's will towards good 
 Of all He hath made, dii-ected ever ; (such 
 Summed ultimately in this. Himself to know ;) 
 ITie law of laws, all central, vital. These 
 To imblend, by holy art, to cultured man 
 All excellence and all blessing means. Who join 
 With love sincere of truth, good act, good will. 
 Just life, pure conscience, 'scaping so the world's 
 Self -sentenced servitude to fond desires 
 Inequitable, and selfish pride to outvie. 
 And not by bettering serve, men, reunite 
 In free perfection with Divinity, here. 
 Such are heaven's secret heirs, the adopt of God, 
 Pure souls of astral and asonian strain. 
 Unknown, imnamed, unblazoned. These be they 
 Whose souls though chastened here, yet cho5*en from first, 
 Bom of the eternal seed of heavenly life. 
 Light's golden genemtion into time 
 Breathed Godwise, He translates to bliss divine, 
 The primal final total state of Heaven, 
 
14 FE8TVS. 
 
 And normal pcrfectness in Him. But whilst 
 
 God's boundless love predestinative, and shown 
 
 In soul from the world outchosen, his power displa7» 
 
 Preroxative and freedom, His great end, 
 
 Toucliing: all moral Being, its progress just 
 
 In virtue and judgment, by the pure plain law 
 
 Of right and truth like needful seems, to prove 
 
 Heaven's equity, and to difference good from ill. 
 
 ^Vhat's done, or ill or good, not earth nor heaven 
 
 Can all undo ; but wilful ill done, soul 
 
 Self -humbled for tlie pride which thereby God 
 
 Challenged, such ill confessed, how grievous ! may 
 
 Be of God absolved ; and earnest will and act 
 
 The balance to restore, and more, of good. 
 
 Unsettled by Sin's liand, much expiate, due 
 
 To justice mo'?t, if mercifully construed, 
 
 As promised by the all-faithful, a,nd man needs, 
 
 Kvil and good are God's right hand and left. 
 Iliere is but one great right and good ; ill, wron^ 
 Dense, vast howbeit to finite mind, to him 
 Omniscient, shadovrs show, not substances. 
 Nothing can be antagonist to God ; 
 (Let contest be 'twixt equals,) in pure power, 
 Nor right, against the All-just One ; Him, who all 
 Controlling, sanctions trial-tests, wliich minds 
 Feeble and i)ifciable, temptations call. 
 "While even to some of lijnited powers confessed, 
 But strong in stem resolve, so, heaven sustained, 
 By ministry of evil, whose reason sole 
 Of being, is that it prove, conscious or not, 
 Promoter of God's ends in sifting souls 
 Finite, but free, for good, good stands forth clear. 
 Who reads aright God's world-book thiswise learns, 
 He ever makes for bliss twofold, His own. 
 And theirs he hath made, all life ; (no meaner end 
 Worthy of him can be, nor just toward them :) 
 
 Who read not in the blessed belief that souls 
 All may be saved, read, wretched to no end ; 
 Made were we to be saved ; to live in love, 
 Peace, holy joy of spirit, and in the light 
 Of his pure all-presence ; we are of God. 
 That godlike man, for this cause, should, like God 
 Show somewhat, strikes not strangelier than that earth 
 Favours her sun-sire. All her elements 
 Are his ; his, more ; more perfect. This, flings off 
 A planet aeriform ; by twin laws ruled ; 
 Of self -impelling force within, the one ; 
 And one the ambient power necessitous, 
 Star crushing, limitary of act, which cui-ves 
 Ambition's course ; and that, a creature, man ; 
 Say, rather, a creation, God breathes forth. 
 Time conquering, conquering space ; dependent ; ftco. 
 
FE8TUS. Ifi 
 
 Swaj-fid by these truths, and compassed, as by stars 
 Earth in her course, our story, mingling life, 
 Not cursorily, with things on high, but scenes 
 Showing of heaven and earth as body and soul 
 In our humanity linked, we thankful, learn 
 How God by e'er creating and His own 
 One Being imbrea thing through the sentient whole ; 
 How too by ruin of evil, and good's great field 
 Uy finite force for God won ; for that cause 
 Assorted, and when failing, made in the end 
 Just, pure ; He doth eternize joy ; and make 
 Good infinite by remaking all in Him. 
 (Dur thoughts are bounded but by the infinite. 
 "What comes before and after the great world, 
 Beep in light's secretest abyss, and life's 
 Immensity most reserved is ours to muse, 
 Xot to declare ; where finite reason ends, 
 Faith leaps ; and finds firm ground in the divine. 
 God, thus, our Savioiu*, still with spirit humane, 
 Communes ; with some in lifelong sacrament, 
 Faithwise ; which, rounding all activities 
 Of Boul, a higher faculty than reason 
 Shows, though of brightest revelative power, 
 As the snowheaded mountain riseth o'er 
 The lightning, and applies itself to heaven ; 
 A faculty which meaning gives to time ; 
 Sanctity to man's kingly blood ; and like, 
 And equal interest in God's bounteous ends. 
 
 AVherefore the world, of mean believings sick, 
 Of partial creedlets, most in mysteries rich, 
 And sophistries, waits wearying for the trutli, 
 Now, like an angel on the wing from Heaven. 
 For, as when, stonns gone, each cloud-ghost, vapoury, yasfc, 
 Each shape, sky-menacing, the unetemal brood 
 Of misconceptions fear, by ministering wind 
 Routed, and hurled to absolute void ; we, strewn 
 Luxurious, on the crag's crown, nought thence seen 
 Save ocean's quivering outline, sharp as death, 
 Cutting the horizon of the after world ; 
 'ITie welkin's luminous and exhilarant blue, 
 Eternity made visible, which o'erhangs 
 Changeless, this changeful sphere ; complacent, eye 
 Tliose unimagined heights, aerial, calm. 
 Of tempests hidden, not touched ; so earth's mis-faitha, 
 Seedlings of death and superstition, foul, 
 Or foolish, or of mountiainous falsehood, fled 
 From off the face of never mutable truth, 
 One, indivisible, sole, we feel in this 
 Like verity, God's infinite fatherhoo<l ; 
 A faith if formless, boimdless ; man's broad soul 
 All satisfying with permanent peace. The world 
 Ib God's great will in act, heaven in repose ; 
 
l« PESTU8. 
 
 Earth is Ileaven's floor ; and as of time's vast showi 
 
 Or email, our God, the omnipotent operative, 
 
 "World-sire, the all-parent, first and last of Being ; 
 
 Whose eye-blink kindles suns, whose glacial breatli 
 
 In sad reproof congeals ; imbreasts, doubt not, of all 
 
 The eternal image ; and, as in temporal wise, 
 
 The sun, sole habitant of the tsnted sky, 
 
 The enlightener of all jDlanets, weld adored ; 
 
 Who yet with minute beauty all life's fields 
 
 Impearls, and things most momentary sublimes ; 
 
 ►Still in each fairy orblet of the dew 
 
 Housed, ere to his breast assumed ; so, too, the bard, 
 
 "Who heavenly objects owns with earth's, while light 
 
 And beauty scattering over all he loves. 
 
 And feels with, tmsts but to himself all hopes 
 
 Artwise of lasting record in man's mind ; 
 
 He from all else thus varying, that alone 
 
 "While lightening all soul with the inner light 
 
 Conscious in him, in others he calls forth 
 
 Like powers by them undreamed of ; and all life 
 
 Sentient, (where ends, begins it ?) with bright touch 
 
 Illuminant, handling, shows how art confirms 
 
 Nature in him, whot-e wont it is to achieve 
 
 The impossible ; as, while all common fowl 
 
 Once launched, must on, or drop, one is, who heir 
 
 To powers incommunable, his wheeling flight 
 
 At will halts ; eyes o'erhead the storm-thinned rack ; 
 
 Beneath, the streamlet gliding ; round his feet, 
 
 Moveless, as clamped to some invisible rock, 
 
 Shadowy, aerial, the impertinent rout 
 
 Of birdlings flout ; he, poised on equal wing, 
 
 Through every plume, breath delicate and intense 
 
 PtCfcpiring free, his place in spatial air 
 
 Ponders at ease ; nor acts, till, self -inclined, 
 
 He circumscribes the sphere, and coasts the skies. 
 
 Art is man's nature ; nature is God's art. 
 All nature in the poet's heart is limned 
 In little ; as now in landscape stones, we see 
 The swell of ground, green groves, and running streami 
 Fresh from the wolds of Chaos ; hints of life 
 Foreworldly, pencilled by pre-solar light. 
 Or paradisal sun ; so in his mind 
 Ingrained in primal purity, know, life's main 
 And simple elements marshalled 'neath one law. 
 Harmonic and continuous ; God to know 
 The heavenly glory of ; and of doing good, 
 And being man ; the pride of serving truth ; 
 The joy of furthering reason's Cause, and right's, 
 The cause of freedom, virtue, peace ; nor these 
 For mean or easeful ends alone ; but brave 
 To bear, as blessed to be, he wisdom seeks, 
 Aiid eacred rites participates in, which give 
 
FESTUS. 17 
 
 To souls like-willed, the privilege he hath e<amed, 
 And all prepared makes partners of his light. 
 'Twixt priestly powers and laic stands the bard, 
 A living- link ; now chanting odea divine ; 
 Now holy, and austere, with sacred spell 
 Inviting angels ; with fine magic, fiends 
 Evoking, whiles in festive guise, his brow 
 With golden fillet bounden, earnest alone 
 The throng to charm, that f^eeks, or celebrates, 
 The games here, there, the mysteries of life, 
 "With truths ornate, and pleasure's choicest plea, 
 
 Man's minion tlius and monitor, though all else 
 Be mute, he, armed with the instinct both of rule 
 And right, in privilege only ix)tent, speaks 
 His spirit in self -rewarding song, nor asks 
 For the world's luxuries, nor gifts. So, ours 
 Who, his first feat conceived in flowering youth, 
 And after through all ripening lustres made. 
 His life's chief business, mission, end ; with all 
 Fair addings, summed ; and save with these, and just 
 Rc-orderings, and adomings, all time brought. 
 Brooked as but aidant to his soul's intent, 
 Knew, else, scant jo^'- ; but this achieved, enough ; 
 Even as the ormer, pearly ear o' the sea, 
 AMiose aim nor tide nor tempest shakes, but ehapes | 
 Who, taught by orient suns and vesper skies, 
 ASTiere steers the crescent star her silvery ark 
 O'er azure deeps, gold rippled, many a year 
 Splendidly toiling, his mysterious shell. 
 Bom of himself, a life-long miracle, gifts 
 Daily, with goodlier dyes and tenderer hues ; 
 In bulk, in beauty vastening e'er ; he now 
 The quivering rose-blush kindles, now the blue 
 Haunts as with memory of some flame-plumed wave 
 Horsing adventurously the seas by night, 
 Lone, errant : or of ruddiest lightning snatched 
 While diving ; now with prismy pencil fires 
 Finelier the gieen of travelled seas surcharged 
 With tropic sunsets ; now the Iceberg's spell. 
 Which binds the enchanted rainbow in its breast, 
 Steals holily ; but chastened every gleam, 
 Each soft ubiquitous flash fused flickering ; whilst 
 Vanishing fixed ; till at last one master tint. 
 Thinned to a thought, all hues commuting, shot 
 Quick through the whole, his lonely life-work h« 
 Indifferently perfects ; and moon by moon. 
 Known but to silence and the all-aidant God, 
 Lives self-imparadised. So tasked, his time 
 Our bard, like minded nature's ends, and hearven's, 
 To accomplish, passed ; for man and nature e.^ich 
 Give signals of perfections, not this hour 
 In them inherent : part passed, part to come ; 
 
M FE8TU8. 
 
 Bliud nidimeuts, hap of qualities divine, 
 
 Gone, or to be ; our poor mean force, of power 
 
 Boundless ; our cunning- and coarse art, of skill 
 
 Heaven's plenary iubreatli fills and fines ; our ends 
 
 Finite, of his, the gieat first Cause, in whom 
 
 We, as like lustred with the elements 
 
 Fixed, and in nature bom of sun and sea, 
 
 Light's golden generation, not alone 
 
 Patterned according to his Being show, 
 
 But emulous of his operations, act 
 
 To life enlightening ends, like-motived. Think I 
 
 God worketh slowly, yea, a thousand years 
 
 He takes to lift his hand off that he hath made, 
 
 When seemingly most finished. Layer on layer, 
 
 liaid as by fingers skilled in length's extremes, 
 
 And thrilled progressive through all elements, 
 
 He framed earth ; fashioned, balled and hardened it 
 
 Into the great, bright, useful thing it is ; 
 
 Water he heired with marl ; flame stilled by stone ; 
 
 Its seas life crowded, and soul hallowed lands 
 
 He with the sun's broad girdle that sets ag-Iow, 
 
 Tiike love's embrace, close clinging as for life, 
 
 ]]arth's orbed breast, girt ; fanned with tempests ; veiled 
 
 With nebulous ocean clouds, now bright, now dark ; 
 
 With virgin gold veined ; dusted thick with gems ; 
 
 Lined it with fire ; and round its heart-fire bowed 
 
 Hock-ribs unbreakable ; until, whole at last, 
 
 ICarth took her shining station as a star. 
 
 In heaven's dark hall, high up the throng of worlds. 
 
 All this and thus did God. Nor meanly blame 
 Man, mediator betwixt the whole and Crod, 
 "\Vho causes like in essence, if diverse 
 In value, would collate ; nor this conceive 
 l^xtem to that most in us, the divine 
 .\nd universal reason of things ; but own 
 'J'hat even as when in summer's sultriest heats, 
 At night, o'er heaven the hannless flash looms wide, 
 With faint far fulminings, and we learn, all day 
 We have breathed invisible lightnings, and our breast* 
 Arched on unvolumed thunder ; so, once taught 
 (Jlearly in spirit to realize our own 
 TJncredited divinity, we first feel 
 True consciousness of life, as iill«d, sphered, skied 
 With Deity. Be it aye so. For aught else, 
 Most rests with those who read. A work, a thought, 
 Is that each makes it to himself, of great 
 Dark meanings capable, rushing like the sea, 
 In life-shoals measurelessly ; may be, as air 
 By the wild doves' wing beclouded, while they sweep, 
 Miles broad, o'er western woods, with glimpses vast 
 Here, there, of firmamental light ; or, nothing ; 
 Bodiless, spiritless. Be but ours conceived 
 
FESTU8. 19 
 
 With adequate force, and lo ! we add a star 
 
 To thought's bright hemisphere. And for man's soul, 
 
 As shown in actual, and in ultimate times 
 
 Foreshadowable, the test of virtue tried, 
 
 Temptation, and its workings in the heart ; 
 
 Ambition, thirst of secret lore, 307, love ; 
 
 Riverlike, sometimes doubling on itself ; 
 
 Adventure ; travel heavenly, and of earth ; 
 
 Friendship and pleasure, passion, poesie, 
 
 Viewed ever in their spiritual end and power : 
 
 Bliss heavenly ; evil, of God annihilate ; 
 
 The angels lost, restored, by him all mace ; 
 
 Life pre-existent ; and like marvels, much 
 
 Unnamed ; one visible remnant of pure faith 
 
 The soul-incoronating, when most eclipse d ; 
 
 Most nigh gone ; these the mainland of our orb 
 
 Might form ; its isles, its seas. But if less vast 
 
 Our soul-grasp, be content : the whole a fane 
 
 Intelligible conceive spire, tower and crypt ; 
 
 Dome, sanctuary, and shrine, the spirit which holds, 
 
 To whom, and his by whom, it is consecrate; 
 
 From whose porch, now passed through, is something soow, 
 
 As in saintly shrine by Seine's blue wave, the shell 
 
 Colossal, from seas southern shipped, since filled 
 
 With waters purificative, immirroring, shows, 
 
 The main pile's pillared vast beyond of what 
 
 At large succeeds ; the all-intempling law 
 
 Of moral being answerable for act, 
 
 Self -testing choice of good or ill ; faith's course, 
 
 And scope, in chosen, and world-ensampling soul ; 
 
 With time's distractions, with the world's deceits 
 
 Contestant, ere yet gained celestial life. 
 
20 FE8TVS, 
 
 I. 
 
 Behold us spHt^so in IleaTSTi , units 
 In jingel worship of the infinite God, 
 AVorld dpstinative. Evil all tempting, maTi 
 ]\ra]igncd, God vindicates Himseu, and proves 
 Earth bettering through all ages ; best tne last , 
 Ill's double attack permits, and names the strif* 
 Testful of evil and good that all shall close. 
 The kind sv/'eet oflSces hear of angel guard ; 
 The privileged joys of chosen souls which choose 
 Themselves in God, all goodness; how perdures 
 The s|iirit premortal, and perfectible ; awed, 
 The tinal doom of things terrestrial learn. 
 Yet while from time's broad chart the accumulate du«t 
 Sweeping of years unnumbered, and to heaven 
 Opening His boon design, God all foreshows 
 Accomplished, grieves one angel still ; 'tis Earth's. 
 An outline this of world-life, which, begun. 
 Will end, and rightly, in Heaven, and witli God ; 
 God, too i' the midst, substantive of the whole. 
 
 Heaven, Deity, The Angelic Hierarchy, Beniel, Guaedxam 
 Angel, Angel of Earth, Lucifer. 
 
 God. Eternity hatli snowed its years upon tliem ; 
 And the white winter of their age is come, 
 The world, and all its worlds ; and all shall end. 
 Seraphim (jn'orshij)pi7ir/). God 1 God 1 God 1 
 As flames in skies we bum and rise 
 
 And lose ourselves in Thee. 
 Years on years. And nought appears 
 
 Save God to be. 
 To us no thought Hath Being brought 
 
 Toward thee that doth not move ; 
 Years on years, And nought appears 
 
 Save God to love. 
 All thou dost make, Lies like a lake 
 
 Below thine infinite eye j 
 Years on years. And all appears 
 Save God to die. 
 Cherubim. As sun and star, how high or far, 
 Shew but a boundless sky ; 
 So creature mind Is all confined 
 
 To shew Thee God Most High. 
 The sun still turns, the sun still bums 
 
 Round, round himself and round ; 
 So creature mind To self's confined ; 
 But thou, God ! hast no bound. 
 Systems arise, or a world dies, 
 
 Each constant hour in air ; 
 But creature mind, with Heaven afiined| 
 Lives in thy love, God, there. 
 
FESTU8. 21 
 
 See. AKD Cue. (tofjcther). Thou fill'st our eyes, as were the skies, 
 One buminji: boundless sun ; 
 "Wliile creature mind in path confined, 
 Passetli, a six>t thereon. 
 
 The Elect Spiuit?^. The voices of our brethren, cry, Lord ! 
 Still 'gainst the ills, the wrong-s, the cruelties, 
 Peoples and kings of earth, tyrants alike 
 O'er othera, slaves of self, each heap on them, 
 Imiwii-tial in injustice, war or peace. 
 Say, rather, war exhausted, equal grief 
 Bring-s to thy friends, thy chosen ; for whose just sake 
 I'larth, thou hast said, not less, alone survives. 
 It may be these, full soon, shall have borne enough. 
 
 UoD. Know, all ye angels, who these heavens make glad 
 In the utterance of e'erduring truth, with bliss 
 Divine preharmonizod ; nor yet the less 
 AVith total Being's joys and woes ; commoved ; 
 You. too, blessed spirits, on earth regenerate, here 
 Before the sun, conceived, souls highest bom. 
 But humble each as high ; sage, simple, pure ; 
 (iod loving, and all good ; with mine own will 
 Eternal, your immortal aspirance, oned. 
 Angels and saints, hear ; from the depths of space 
 And out of earth's broad heart, as from all spheres, 
 Now and again, the patient cry I hear 
 Of mine elect beloved ; hopeful soon 
 To know earth's hot probation passed ; to seek 
 The great reality they so long have longed 
 To embrace, of Deity ; you and tliem, and all 
 Of every age, clime, race, faith chosen, it now 
 Behoves to learn your wish, ^\ith my will summed. 
 All truths your sacredest traditions teach 
 On the end of worlds, are trembling to be bom. 
 Conceived, once dubious ; now in perfect stage 
 For ever crystalled ; not as natural things, 
 Which, consummate, decline to their last pitch ; 
 But once evolved for ever perfected. 
 What prophecy inspired and science sage. 
 Predictive from jjassed record of lost lights 
 Ethereal, hath, oracular, tougued, henceforth, 
 On earth, hastes to fulfilment. Faith's long roll 
 Of numbered spirits, but one of perfect lacks ; 
 Lacks but the seal now fixed of breathful life ; 
 Life natural ; end and ebb of Being's tide ; 
 Foremost of all, earth's end, 
 Akgels. Earth's end is sealed. 
 
 Anqel op Eahth. I, Lord, who with the luminous seven wUich 
 lamp 
 Thy sun-throne, and with light thence filled, had he&nl 
 Some flying fame of swiftly destined close 
 Common to every orb ; and seeing that mine 
 Had barely touched tne verge of betteraess, 
 
23 FESTU8. 
 
 Though ready, ripe in sooth, for happier things, 
 Long hoped for by its best and worthiest ; both 
 That threatened doom, bnt dubiously, mcseemed, 
 Preached, to believe ; and which if true or else, 
 To learn, me hither brings, learn now, alas ! 
 Too true, the fateful fact. 
 
 God. Perfection reached. 
 
 In spiritual things, lives self -perpetuate, aye ; 
 In mortal or dissoluble things, in states 
 Of social growth, or race-wise, rests not long ; 
 But fleetly runs, or suddenly, to fall, 
 Even as yon great galactic ring mid space, 
 Turns and returns, succedent to itself, 
 Till all succumb, world after world, to fate. 
 
 Angel of Earth. To hear this and to bear, yet know all doom 
 Proves just, is mine ordeal. But v/hat is this ? 
 I hear the beat of a strange, strong wing in heaven ; 
 Irregulate, wild. It makes towards the throne. 
 It is the Spirit of Evil. Woe is me I 
 Woe to the earth ; to man. What seeks he here ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Ye thrones of Heaven, how bright ye are, how piire t 
 How have ye brightened since I saw ye first ! 
 How have I darkened since ye saw me last ! 
 WTiat 'vails Hell's murk abyss of fire, that cave 
 Loathsome of falsest oracles, M-here Ill's host 
 Endure, inflict, or plot perdition ; what 
 Air's ravenous helglits I reign over and roam 
 Wreckful, tempestuous, with all lackeying plagues 
 Vaporously impomped ; on self -wrought rack the while, 
 Maddening me, 'gainst these seats serene, on good 
 I:!ternal based ; with the incense canopied o'er 
 Of universal worship, echoing, round 
 Heaven's templed dome, God's sun-woi-ds, great with life ? 
 Yet must I v/ork through ^vorld and life my fate ; 
 And winding through the wards of human hearts. 
 Steal their incarnate strength. Death doth his work 
 In secret and in joy intense, untold : 
 As though an ecrtli-quake smacked its mumbling \i\y» 
 O'er some thick-peopled city. But for me, 
 Exists nor peace nor pleasure, even here, 
 MTiere all beside, the very faintest thought. 
 Is rapture. I will speak to God, as erst ; 
 If wrong, no matter ; wrong's mine instinct now. 
 But so for ever ? Shall all 111 and I 
 Stand, like eternal with Him, in God's face ? 
 It means not. Let my pre:sent plot proceed. 
 Father of Spirits as is the sun of air. 
 Who, self-sufficing, willing things to be. 
 All hallowedst by thy world-effecting word ; 
 Afl in him seen, the vast world creature, man, 
 Primal humanity of the Deity self 
 Jmiolding, emanant first of natures pure, 
 
FUSTUS. 
 
 As man hnmortal, angel spread through space ; 
 As mortal, sensuous, earthy, through all sphereo ; 
 With \\'hom, participant of thy spirit, the soul 
 U!ifall<;:i, or soul restorable, in commune 
 Joys fii-stly, lastly and for ever ; hear, 
 God one and sole ; who, all where in thy law8, 
 Almighty art in their effects ; all good 
 In thy designs ; and in thyself, all wise ; 
 Whoroe word onmific forms the way the world 
 Proceeds on temporally ; and whence to thee, 
 Etonial, in theo reborn, it returns ; 
 Before all light's material ray ; all ray 
 Extcmt, intelligible ; all time, change, law ; 
 Thou, sole unchangeable, seest me once again ; 
 Still sunlike, though eclipsed, of blinding power j 
 And fiery cause, and evemess of ill ; 
 l^eliold I bow before thee. Hear thou me. 
 
 (tOD. "What would'st thou Lucifer ? 
 
 Lucifer. The world-apple 
 
 Shows dead ripe. It wants plucking. Touch it thou, 
 Or I, and lo 1 the poor perfection falls. 
 
 God. "\Miat may to thee seem perfect, oft in heaven 
 Far other sheweth. 
 
 LuciFKR. Man, through ignorance first 
 
 And need of knowing, fell : now, grown so wise, 
 He thinks he lacketh nothing ; not even God. 
 Science so self-sufficient shews ; she makes 
 Each day such vast advances through the world, 
 Inly and outwardly, that even now she aims 
 Tliee to dethrone ; and, miracles aU disproved, 
 As fabulous ])rcaches of eternal law, 
 Not now, nor ever possible, men to teach 
 Her own more marv'ellous mysteries, and thenceforth 
 Herself e'er deify. 
 
 Goj), All tilings to know 
 
 Subordinate even to law, precludes not faith 
 Towards one who every law first made, first willed. 
 
 liUCiFEU. Faith I have missed from earth this many an agpe ; 
 Faith, is she here .' 
 
 God. Faith is both there and here ; 
 
 Particij)ant of divine ubiquity. 
 Thy knowledge is defective. Still on earth 
 Ai-e those who knowing mo>-t, tlie most believe, 
 
 Lucifer, More like myself, who knowing much, most doubt 
 Lives not the soul on earth who seeks not self 
 lu love ; in knowledge ; most of all in power ; 
 Xor would not sacrifice to self the world. 
 Self is the god men worship, more than thee. 
 
 God. Perfected from the first by grace divin?, 
 Tlie heavenborn spirit and pre-immortal, fraught 
 V/ith luminous fulness, tliough a moment dimmed 
 Dy r*iu, not perished. knowle<lge conciliates 
 
H FESTU8. 
 
 With wisdom, both with faith ; and faith is wis© ; 
 Or ignorant ; as may be. Were I, once more 
 Future to test, as in the passed, by proof 
 Of many, or one, as erst, thou would'st fail. 
 
 Lucifer. How, fail? 
 
 I deemed me passably successful there, 
 In Eden once ; and everywhere, since then. 
 ^Vhere'er man's heart hath planned its Paradise. 
 
 God. To finite mind divergent from the light 
 Etenae, it doubtless seems so ; but in view 
 Of spirits who stand concentric with all truth, 
 Howbeit of bounded gaze, liko these thy peers. 
 Who loved thee once, loved, monished, mourned in vaiilf 
 Thy failure shows fore-ordered and complete. 
 The imperfect needs nmbt err, meted by scale 
 Of the ungraded absolute ; but return, 
 According to conviction of what's good, 
 Goodwards, is alway possible, and to all. 
 
 LuciFEH. God I oppose ; must. Can opposal fail, 
 If foreordained ? Then he in mine his own 
 Failure appoints. Such failure seems success. 
 Nought see I more. Can any further see ? 
 Let me accept the test. Or blessed, or cursed, 
 All seems indiflerent now, with thirst of powei", 
 Love, lore divine and human of all time. 
 Been, being or to be, nought made can quench, 
 8ave waters of celestial life which flow 
 ■y^ence, sunwards ever, among the sons of men 
 A youth Ihere is, I fain would have, given up 
 Wholly to me. 
 
 God, I know hira. He is thine 
 
 To tempt. Him richen with what gifts thou wilt, 
 What might, what faculty. He'll still own grace 
 Not thine. Ujwu his soul no absolute power 
 Hast thou. All souls be mine ; and mine for aye. 
 
 Lucifer. Thanks, God I This means still, I may so torment 
 With dubiety his conscience, ruining all 
 Assurance God wards ; t;o with pleasures ply, 
 Passions and creatural vanities, his heart 
 Trained downv/ards, with world wisdom, and profound 
 Knowledge of surfaces, so his spirit, corrupt ; 
 Make proud with gifts stupendous ; with all use 
 Of mundane power inordinate, and forepledge 
 Of superhuman privilege taint his soul, 
 Tliat ; — be it ! I leave to thee ths absolute. 
 
 God. And I give thee leave to this, that man may know 
 My love than all his sin more ; and to himself 
 While proving nought save God can satisfy 
 The soul he maketh great, prove both to thee 
 And to the v/orld, faith peer of knowledge. 
 
 GuAiM)iAN Angel. Thanks, 
 
 Vut Uii*. Loril, endless thanks and ceaseless praise, 
 
FESTUS. iB 
 
 Both from the world, and me, and Angels all. 
 To know at hand truth's trial, trust in thee 
 Strengtheneth ; and proof of principle perfects 
 Man's noblest resolutions for liis own. 
 Or the world's weal, here blessedly at one. 
 
 Lucifer. Thou God art all in one. Thine infinite 
 Bounds being. Thou hast said the world shall end. 
 "Wandering through space and yond purlieus of heaven, 
 Such words mothinks, chanced I, but now, to o'erhear ; 
 And earth, I take it, man's peculiar plot, 
 'Voids not the general doom. 
 
 God. The earth whereon 
 
 lilan lives, dies with him : Lo 1 its hastening end 
 Hangs imminent o'er it. 
 
 LuciFEB. Due, I not deny. 
 
 The world is perfect as concerns itself, 
 And all its parts and ends ; not as towards tliee. 
 So man, imlikest, likest God of all 
 F.xi.-<tence, thee resembleth as act, mind. 
 In him of whom I ask, I seek once more 
 To tempt the living world ; and then depart. 
 
 God. Time ceaseth. All ye thousands of the chosen. 
 Thousands of God, the innumerous hosts of souls 
 Forecalled, forecounted, since the world began, 
 All ages passed, your self -conditioned doom 
 Fulfilling, hear ye heavenly, on earth's end 
 And man's, ray judgment. Mark this mortal soul, 
 Many a long lustre working out his own 
 Elcxition, with tuccess right variable 
 As seems ; all souls else struggling in the flesh 
 Alike with him, shall, by one choiceful act, 
 Contemporary with Nature's end, their fate 
 Freely decide ; and in faith's final fight. 
 Spiritual, sole blessed, their meet reward attain ; 
 Who fail, fail not to expiate pains most just. 
 Be sure, ere I, long suffering too, forgive. 
 ■\VTio rightly choose, and bravely war, make lioaven ; 
 Bliss instant theirs, bliss ever. So shall not 
 Mercy tax justice witli o'erjust extremes : 
 Nor justice mercy lawless call, e'ermore. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Oh who hath joy like mine ? joy first by me 
 Felt, when in dim eternity, far back. 
 From out thy boundless bosom, as a star 
 In the air, that soul was kindled, Lord ! and given 
 To me, througli every age of world-life gone. 
 To guard and guide ; the wliile by spheral strains 
 Hailed, from Heaven's depths, we botli at thy feet fell 
 In worship ; joy of joys, now, e'er assured. 
 
 LuciFEE. Vaunt not thyself, nor aught too hastily. 
 
 Guardian Anoel. Peace I 
 
 To you, ye Saints and Angels, let me speak ; 
 For you I see rejoice with me, ve know 
 
26 FE8TU8. 
 
 What 'tis to triumph o'er temptation ; what 
 
 To fall before it ; how the young spirit fainta ; 
 
 The virgin tremor ; the blood's ehh and flow, 
 
 Exagitated by hearfc-quakes, out of wont ; 
 
 When first some vast temptation calmly comes, 
 
 And states itself before the imequal soul, 
 
 For conflict unprepared ; prepared not even 
 
 Semblance to own of conflict ; as the sun 
 
 Low looming in the west startles the wave 
 
 Of whimpling brook, which yet, its waters grown 
 
 Aortal 'mongst earth's veins, shall mainward pour 
 
 The riverine flood ; full many a broadening league 
 
 Of land o'ermantling. Than the Tempter's self 
 
 Can be no greater peril. Less the shame 
 
 Of yielding ; more the glory of conquering, 
 
 In him this soul elect, of ill so sought, 
 
 Expert of time's accumulated tests, 
 
 Till now, earth given, his crowning trial comes ; 
 
 With mine, I trust, his triumph. Know, ye Saints, 
 
 From infancy through childhood, up to youth 
 
 Have I this soul attended ; marked him blessed 
 
 With all life's sweet and sacred ties ; the love 
 
 Prayerful of jiarents ; pride of friends ; health, eava. 
 
 Prosperity ; social converse with the good, 
 
 The gifted ; and a heart all lit with love. 
 
 Like a summer sea aflow with living light. 
 
 Hopeful and generous and earnest ; rich 
 
 In commerce with high spirits of all time ; 
 
 Knowledge and truth for their own divinest selve» 
 
 Loving ; earth's deeds of glory tracking now ; 
 
 Now conning wisdom's words, as, heaven inspired 
 
 In bright effectual ray the mind they tinge 
 
 Of sage, or bard ; nor he himself to strain 
 
 Creative, serious, all inapt, nor all 
 
 Unpredisposed ; but as some Hermit rock 
 
 All earth's lone outguard, daily of the sea 
 
 Takes baptism, and, in the elemental rite, 
 
 WTiile o'er its head the tidal function pours, 
 
 Full-handed, gladdens ; so he in prayer and praise, 
 
 Morning and evening constant, for good asked, 
 
 Or blessing granted ; affluences of thought, 
 
 Such as might string his own to noblest aims 
 
 Of bettering man ; or kindred soul arouse 
 
 To meet conception of sumatural things ; 
 
 Or fancy's feats, wrought deftest ; he with Heaven 
 
 Joyed in commune. Fraught thus with peace his Caya 
 
 And studious nights star-armied, or moon crowned. 
 
 In good, in joy, all radiantly elapsed ; 
 
 His grateful heart opening to the Lord of Life, 
 
 Our spiritual sun, flower-wise. All this, while long 
 
 I marked, a slow but at length a palpable change 
 
 Hid spirit eclipsed ; from what o'ershadowing sphere 
 
FE8TUS. 27 
 
 Showed not to me ; and I a full from good 
 Fatal and final feared. 
 
 Lucifer. Regard me, friend ; 
 
 Deerast thou I roam the earth for nothing now f 
 Tliou art scarce a competent soul-guard. Pleased to see 
 Doubtless such rare simplicity, know thou well 
 It is this same candour lures us ; habits these 
 Which tempt the very Tempter ; tempt even me. 
 The expansive spirit which feels all bounds a bond, 
 Though of remotest space, attracts ; aught free 
 A natural foe that must be mediatized. 
 
 God. Too well divinest thou the soul's weakness. Oft 
 The o'er dominating spirit less jirompt to learn 
 Self-rule, than to command another, falls 
 Off guard, into undreamed of pains and fines. 
 
 Guardian Angel. An aching wish to know the world, I knew 
 Lorded late while his spirit. Ambition, love 
 Eldest of things, that dawn-life of the soul ; 
 Youth's passionate pleasures and frivolities, all 
 Had thrown cross-lights, and dazed his once so clear 
 Purview of life. Life's^simpler aims lacked zest. 
 God's love seemed lost upon him. Oh ! he grew 
 Heart-deadened ; watching, warning vain, I fled 
 Hither, to intercede with God our Lord, 
 To bless him with salvation, suddenly. 
 Such things have been. 
 
 Lucifer. And are not. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Plead we may 
 
 Always for those we love, by leave divine. 
 And now thou summ'st all iDounties, Lord ! in him 
 Choosing as t«st of human faithfulness, 
 ]My ward, my charge. But thou God knowest the mould 
 Of mortals, and the infinite end the souls 
 Thou savest are all predestined to in heaven. 
 So be thy mercy mighty to this spirit 
 Fiend-threatened, nor permit him who presides 
 O'er hell's eternal holocaust, too far 
 To tempt or tamper with man's mutable heart. 
 
 God. ^ly mercy doth all outstretch the universe; 
 Shall it suffice not for one soul ? 
 
 Li'CiFER. God's wrath 
 
 Am I to myself ; and for that wrath inheres 
 In evil as sin, am bound to do my part. 
 Angel, do thou thine. They be far enough 
 Asunder. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Are the heaven-strung chords of irnn's; 
 Immortal spirit for thee to wreck at will ? 
 Bear witness all ye blessed to the word ! 
 Angels, intelligences, the sons of God ; 
 Ye who know nought but truth, nought feel but love ; 
 Will nought but bliss, nought do save righteousness : 
 Whose life was ere the heavens were yet conceived. 
 
U FESTUS. 
 
 The stars begotten, or eldest ages bom ; 
 
 Ye first who crown all heavens ; in whose great namoi 
 
 God's name is deepliest rooted, though it live 
 
 Germwise in all these hierarchies of light, 
 
 Or spiritual or spheral ; ye who move 
 
 Restless amidst the peace profound of heaven, 
 
 And watchful round the throne ; ye all who rule 
 
 Regions, states, kingdoms, races, families, tribes, 
 
 Times, ages, epochs, cycles ; ye who souls 
 
 From heaven bear earthwra'ds, and from earth, enriched 
 
 With aspiration and good deeds, towards Heaven, 
 
 Traverse the starry circlets of all skies ; 
 
 Or ye whose life it is to present all souls 
 
 Reborn to their Creator ; or through space 
 
 Golden globed, search for junctures grace may bless ; 
 
 Ye through whose ministry of mercy all 
 
 His delegate spirits, now strengthening prophets, now 
 
 The patriot 'gainst vindictive power ; the snge 
 
 Toiling for crowds his toils who scorn which yet 
 
 May gladden a hemisphere : ye, who, the throne 
 
 Sought, stirless stand round, tranced ; and on your Lord 
 
 Gaze, and in gazing, gain divinity ; high 
 
 Tenants, all ye, of the archetypal worlds 
 
 From whose celestial patterns all things be, 
 
 Become, or are created ; and you ye spirits 
 
 Fr.ed once on earth into Heaven's privilege^!, 
 
 Yours are the multitudes of testf ul stars ; 
 
 Yours, power for ever, all instructive peace, 
 
 Yours, pei-manent and progressive joy, who work 
 
 And live with God ; bear witness all, that not 
 
 More surely bliss with godliness dwells, and one.s, 
 
 Than that, even spite of sin, man's purblind race 
 
 Might, and they would, with you, Heaven's denizens. 
 
 Recognize in time's scenes, though cloud-belts bar, 
 
 In provident mystery, half its burning disk, 
 
 The o'emiling power thiough miracle tempering law, 
 
 Which by our creature purposes worketh out 
 
 Its deeds ; and by our own deeds its purposes. 
 
 Angels. Devoted spirit, proceed ; bloom forth in act. 
 Heaven's help, time's ripening forces are thine own ; 
 Nature's best, holiest influences ; and all, 
 AVith vast assent, confirm thy just appeal. 
 
 LuciFEE. Still, Lord, this tyrant patron. Soul to soul 
 I with this mortal battle. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Be the end, 
 
 God ! for thy gloiy only ; and evil's act 
 Make for thy creature's good. 
 
 Lucifer. if lightnings smite not 
 
 Straight to its end this goodly world-frame, 'lilre 
 in all the stars ; nor writhing nature yield, 
 All severally, her elemental limbs 
 To common death ; nor serpent armies, winged 
 
PE8TU8. m 
 
 To fang man's race, outnumbered, and bo wreak 
 Heaven's doubtless bounteous dooms, to myself I eeem 
 To have lost, since here, the clue of things. Meanwhile, 
 ITic more of death-chilled venom one can pom-, 
 Since all tilings, 'tis adjudged, right soon shall cease, 
 Transfusive, Lord, into blind Nature's veins 
 The more mayhap, God would ; the more at least 
 Seem I to anear success. When creatures stray 
 I'arthest from thee, then warmest towards them bums 
 Thy love, even as yon sun- star hotlicst beams 
 On earth, when distant most ; or seems. 
 
 Guardian Angel. The earth, 
 
 Tliis soul indwells, thia gmin chose from life's sanda, 
 Die^ with him ; fine and sum of miracles, 
 That spiiit the most incredulous, demon, man, 
 May know, who all doth, all sustains, can all 
 Unmake ; and every law, sphere-based, withdra'wn. 
 The whole may wholly cease. 
 
 Lucifer. Lord, now go I 
 
 Thy will to do, for once, which being herein 
 Desirably destructive, I to aid 
 Will, too. So, he I have lighted on would seem 
 Of the forechosen. But will their happy fate 
 All men's involve ? And if all men's, all mind's ? 
 ( !an state of aught create immutable be, 
 Even by sin 1 Knew I but this, not thwart 
 God's purix)ses would I, nor seek to wage 
 "War bootless with the eternal of the Heavens. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Spuit depart ; the secrets of the skies. 
 God's counsels, angels proximate to the throne 
 Dare but enquire, 'tis meet not thou shouldst share. 
 
 God. Hearing he undei-stands not that he hears, 
 Nor seeing, sees. Nought wists he perfectly 
 ^Vho loves not God. 
 
 LuciFEE. Heaven's oracles in Heaven 
 Speecliless, still doubt I. 
 
 God. "Who doubts only, exists 
 
 Vainliest. Thou, too, who watchest o'er the world, 
 Whose end I fix, prepare to have it judged. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Lord ! let me not then have watched o'tr it in 
 vain. 
 From age to age I have hoped, from hour to hour 
 It would better grow, grow holier ; hope so still ; 
 Better it is than once ; hath knowledge more : 
 More freedom, more goodwill ; man more aspires 
 To attain a high humanity now, akin 
 To Heaven's divine IdoaL This orblet, Lord I 
 More love I now than ever, as the seat, 
 With many another star, of spiritual life, 
 Whereby the etemai Reason, with all made 
 Commimes, as born of Deity, and all 
 Makes eye this orb as altar, whence praise, prayer, 
 
m PESTUS. 
 
 The soul's pure flame of sacrifice, to thee 
 
 From all creation soareth. Me ttou gav'st it 
 
 As a child-ward. To me earth is as even 
 
 To thee the boundless universe ; nay, more ; 
 
 For thou conldst other make. It is my world. 
 
 Take it not, Lord ; but rather let it be 
 
 Immortal as thy love ; and altars are 
 
 Holy ; and angel brethren, sister orbs, 
 
 Hail it afar, so titled. Oh I I have seen 
 
 World questioned, comforting world, yes seen them "Weef 
 
 Each otlier, if but for one red hour eclipsed ; 
 
 Or, as when, but now, Jove's giant orb, obscured 
 
 By blood- wet clouds, dread proof of deadly strife 
 
 In his breast, disruptive, if subdued ; immoved 
 
 His sun-sired kin look on him, and pass by ; 
 
 Earth only pitiful of the idol sphere, 
 
 Sore struggling with his foes, herself unfree 
 
 From violent ill-wishers, waves many a mist, 
 
 Anxious upon her mountain crests, in sign 
 
 Of astral sympathy ; so warmly true 
 
 To nature's touch the star-grain of her mould ; 
 
 Earth of all worlds most generous ; of all stars 
 
 Earth, fairest, tenderest. 
 
 LuciFEB. Know'st thou not, or bound 
 
 Hast been for aye to thy false, thy faithless world. 
 As foolish, too, as false, nor yet divined, 
 How hard it proves to fight 'gainst fate / 
 
 AifGEL OF Eaeth. I kuovr 
 
 Fate is God's word ; his mediatorial means 
 Spheres, angels, men ; his act the infinite whole ; 
 Nor fear tliee, and thy forces aught. 
 
 Bej^iel. Leave thou 
 
 All gainsaying to the accusant spirit, and know 
 Divine Humanity 'tvvixt the world and God 
 Of intermediate essence, in all orbs 
 Implanted by the maker, for his joy. 
 Their good ; pretemporal, only not eteme, 
 Is subjected to evil in time ; bears pain, 
 (Jrief, changefulness ; and so by commune shares 
 The weakness of all worlds it dwells within, 
 Angelic, not than human less ; partakes. 
 Brother and friend of spirit everywhere 
 The sorrows of the world God made, God loved. 
 
 God. a truth thou, Beniel, chief of all heaven's hosta 
 Loyal, star-bright, all sons, with thee, of God, 
 All angels, still imperfect, suffering thence 
 111, and succumbing to the Tempter ; choice 
 Blinded by motives meaner than the highest ; 
 Not than man less, canst prove ; and late returned 
 Hither, from such high service, knowest fuU well 
 A world destroyed means oft a world renewed 
 In holier beauty ; and each act divine 
 
Revised perfective, broader deeps of love. 
 
 LuciFEE. I. too, doubt not, could tell thee much beside ; 
 Angel of earth, behoves thee lay to heart, 
 Feared I not greatlier some might learn too much 
 For their bouVs peace. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Hence I Me thou daunt'st no more. 
 
 Beniel. Star unto star, upon its pilgrim course 
 Speaks light authentic or reflective ; world 
 To world rccognizant of its source, its end 
 Achieved, foreshows ; and grateful to its Lord, 
 Implores the password of the great return 
 Of Being create, made pure, to God, whose name 
 In us. or with us shared, the word imparts 
 To Deity re-vmitive, worth all tongues 
 In earth or heaven. In neither, other name 
 Thau this avails ; the sire's, who all that is 
 Hath made so sweetly reasonable, that soul, 
 By love enlight-ened, eying God's intent 
 Expanded through all Nature, and itself, 
 Must coincide with heaven ; and to heaven's ends, 
 By voluntary contract impledged, and force 
 Of ever aspiring purity, adheres 
 Self -consecrate, Godrhallowed. Every orb. 
 Nay, every soul its wilful act abides 
 As angel- world hath late due witness borne, 
 lliou sole, in making and unmaking worlds. 
 Canst rule. Lord 1 or preserve to highcvst ends 
 By precreative right all life ; but makest 
 For us and our behalf, in teaching worlds, 
 Worlds rectifying, judging, saving worlds, consisti 
 Thine everlasting Being. One world frame tread* 
 In other's footsteps ; each, by limited mind, 
 Eternal thought, to thee, infinite One, 
 Changeless, a pause progressive. 
 
 Lucifer. Earth he next 
 
 Will judge ; for so saith God. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Be it not, Lord I 
 
 Thou art all love, all goodness. He, the foe. 
 The evil of the universe, loves not earth. 
 Nor, man, thy son, nor thee. 
 
 LuciFEB. Love I not earth, 
 
 Fair earth, well zoned ? 
 
 Angel of Earth. Thou knowest best the allwise. 
 
 Lucifer. Behold now, all you worlds 1 The space each fills 
 Shall be right soon its successor. Accept 
 The trivial consolation. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Earth ! oh earth ! 
 
 Lucifer. It is earth shall head destruction. She shall end. 
 The worlds shall wonder why she comes no more 
 On her accustomed orbit ; and the sun 
 Miss one of his Apostle lights ; the moon, 
 An orphaned orb, shall seek for earth for aye, 
 
32 Fmrus. 
 
 Through time's untrodden depths, and find her nofc, 
 
 No more shall mom, out of the holy east 
 
 Stream o'er the amber air her level light ; 
 
 Nor evening, with the spectral fingers, draw 
 
 Her fr-tar-sprent cui-tain round the head of earth. 
 
 Her footsteps never thence again shall grace 
 
 Heavens blue, sublime. Her grave, Deatli's now at work, 
 
 Gaps deep in space. See, tombwards gathering, all 
 
 Her kindred stars in long process, night-clad ; 
 
 Each lights his funeral brand, and ranks him round. 
 
 And one by one, shall all your wandering worlds, 
 
 "Whether in orbed path they roll, or trail 
 
 (lold-tressed, in length inestimable of light, 
 
 Their train, retamless from extreme space, cease ; 
 
 The sun, bright keystone of Heaven's world-built arch 
 
 Be left in burning solitude ; the stars 
 
 As dewdrops countless on the aetherial fields 
 
 Of the skies, and all they comprehend shall pass ; 
 
 The spirits of all worlds shall all depart 
 
 To their great destinies ; and thou and I, 
 
 Greater in grief than worlds, shall live, as now. 
 
 Beniel, But shall it be as now like-mi^ -i<J}kI, say ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Thou'dst know how far I can the coming sound. 
 This learn at least ; and 'mongst thy chiefest things 
 Not yet achieved, account ; that could even Power 
 All ill annul, it would not, nor would glad 
 Made mind with the announcement. It is more 
 To strive 'gainst some things than all else possess. 
 Nor yet the issue is complete that ill 
 Were better not to have been. Is good made worse 
 By evil's being ? Is it I disfavour thee ? 
 Or shinest not clearlier thou on my black ground ? 
 
 Beniel. Time yet may be, O fallen ! when Satael, thou, 
 And all thy peers conjured 'gainst heavenly good, 
 True, thou art more of evil than all they, 
 May cease from act ; no longer to infect 
 With deathf ul respiration the sweet air, 
 Vital and virtuous, of the all-betterinjr world ; 
 But seeking light, health find. 
 
 LuciFEB. It may be so ; 
 
 Time was, time ia ; it seems not like ttt \te ; 
 Or I could scarce myself Identify. 
 
 Beniel. Likelier it show? /» some, from age to age. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Thou fi-^-nd, canst know not the to come. 
 
 Lucifee. It is safe 
 
 For all that, to predict woe. Woe impends 
 Always. 
 
 Beniel. In hell's dark future that is writ 
 Shall amaze man yet, fiend, angel. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Spirit, hear ; 
 
 All heavens at thee shall peer. 
 
 LuciFKB. There, to thy earth. 
 
FESTUS, SS 
 
 Angel of Earth. Think not thy ways so secret, nor thy craft 
 So inconceivable ; but thou art tracked. I know 
 Where a blind world dislurained late of God, 
 Smote into blackness thrice of darkness, such 
 As spreads where light, God's shadow, is not ; by storme 
 Of stars meteoric wrecked ; of ruins built 
 From depths of mined systems ; by base force 
 Invert of dissolute elements dragged to the verge 
 Of chaos, rolling round space utmost, lies. 
 There, the outcast of all Being, orderless, 
 Good only lacking from all rudiments ; 
 Reigns ruin permanently ; disaster sows, 
 Decay reaps ; naught aught fits ; that, fit for thee, 
 Be thy world. Leave, leave me the lifeful earth ; 
 Green, fertile, flowery, fruitsome, full of men ; 
 It« orderly elements graduated ; its wants 
 Prelusive of perfections yet to be ; 
 Home-shrine of every virtue, every law 
 Spatial or spiritual, God hath given the world. 
 Stretch forth thy shining shield, God I the heavens, 
 Over the prostrate earth, an armed friend, 
 And save her from the swift and violent hell 
 Her beauty hath enchanted ; from the woe 
 Of love like his, oh 1 save her though by death. 
 
 LuciFEB. Go, tell the earth I come. 
 
 Angel op Eakth. Tidings of ill 
 
 Announce thyself, be thine own fiendspel, thou. 
 
 God. Who of all here, ye sons of God, empowered 
 By my sole will, and missioned to fulfil 
 My word, will range him 'gainst this wily force 
 Nor dread, Heaven's fixed executant, his arms. 
 Or of sheer might, or craft ? 
 
 Sons of God. That, Lord, our chief. 
 
 Our prince, will. 
 
 Beniel. Of such task if worthy deemed ; 
 
 The more, as of our order, some, ere earth 
 Flood covered, like a cofiin 'neath its pall 
 Of waters, not a little, by their fault 
 Helped man to that dire ruin. 
 
 God. So let it be. 
 
 Take. Kosmiel, thou his seat, when Beniel serves 
 Elsewhere, Heaven's purpose ; be it an age or hour. 
 
 Kosmiel. Joyed in the world's great order to await 
 Thy ripening plans, while soul create, and soul 
 Self-expiative with judgment, or redeemed 
 Work out good's happy course, from first designed, 
 It is cither's bliss to aid. Lord I thine intents. 
 
 Beniel. O'er all things are eternity and change, 
 And special predilection of our God, 
 Particular functions of set soul to achieve. 
 Thou, Lord 1 who souls creat'st as the sun clouds 
 From the tea of spirit, sire thoa of man thy son's 
 
 o 
 
84 FMTUS. 
 
 Spii-itual and bodfly essence, both, in wliom 
 
 God's holy spirit imbreathed gonphip conferred, 
 
 Equal with ours ; made mediative ; and since, 
 
 Now, and in all worlde;, his creator's laws. 
 
 And privilege of free choice enjoying, pays 
 
 Justly, free spii'it's contingent fines ; to know, 
 
 And feel the scope and pride of ]ioblest powers, 
 
 Yet court full oft the grossest meanest proof 
 
 Of ignorance, imperfection and all sins 
 
 Such weakness leads to, and the original lack 
 
 Of Being's highest qualities, yet in all 
 
 Is heir of God and Nature ; and in Thee 
 
 Attempering Deity ■with humanity, law 
 
 With mercy's equity, as these sainted, shew, 
 
 Live ever, and Heaven's most pure equality cluira, 
 
 With angelhood divine, each thrice made pure ; 
 
 And you, blessed saints, i-egencrate, now from taint 
 
 Of choice too oft deflectible, freed ; and whom 
 
 God, self -exempted arbitrarily from law, 
 
 Himself to prove supreme o'er all he had made, 
 
 Lawed, willed, first chose ; and you, thronged countless, last 
 
 To be in the infinite proof of spiritual life's 
 
 Probational advance all time ; for whom 
 
 All Heaven the fulness of its bliss reserves ; 
 
 Creator and created, witness both 
 
 How even if earth and eveiy orb fire-fraught, 
 
 Of space, enkindled luminously, should cease ; 
 
 Perish materially ; while spirit create 
 
 Imperfect, and so fallible, lasteth, fall 
 
 Always maybe ; and strife twixt ill and good 
 
 Will be ; 'gamst thee Creation's evil, prince 
 
 Of the world, nsurpative oft of seat not thine, 
 
 In all spheres ; be it mine, at God's behest, 
 
 These universal heavens concurrence, add 
 
 Mine own soul's call, to strive, for aye ; and though 
 
 Nor I, nor Nature, neitlier, wholly void 
 
 Of the holy gift prophetic, wist the end 
 
 Of Being, yet fear not I for good's success 
 
 Final ; or in the skies ; or earth's broad field ; 
 
 Or in these lists delimited of one soul. 
 
 God. Earth when her Sabbath ends, m the high close 
 Of order, shall not be. 
 
 LuciFEB. Now, Heaven, farewell. 
 
 Hell is more bearable than nothingness. 
 Too terrible that. To soul which sees one end 
 Only, destruction, it is enougli to have 'scaped 
 Even as I have. To eai-th and action, now. 
 Outfly me an' thou canst, old Time, I am gone. 
 
 God. Destruction and Salvation are two hands 
 Upon Being's face. When both unite at close 
 Of time's course hourf ul, death's dark day begins, 
 Dawna^ noons unseen. Each, orb to its forefixed end 
 
fSSTUS, 
 
 Exists ; and earth my crcatnro, pre-elect 
 
 Of worlds, ere all death-stricken, but passed through fire 
 
 Renewed, made pure past primal innocence, 
 
 Is saved. The world shall perish like a worm 
 
 Upon destruction's path ; the universe 
 
 Evanish as a ghost that scents the sun ; 
 
 Yea like a doubt before God's truth ; yet nought 
 
 More than death then shall perish ; for then dawns 
 
 The Sabbath of Salvation, ne'er to end. 
 
 Joy, then, ye souls of God regenerated, 
 
 Ye indwellers divine of Deity, know 
 
 In Him ye are immortal as himself. 
 
 Angels. So shall the All in all be All in one. 
 
 God. Know, angel-guard, thy charge, from first ordained 
 To prove his faith in God, that widening fields 
 Of blessed Salvation, which is God to know 
 And his will do, shall with time's broadening bounds 
 Of knowledge equalled, match ; and both be reaped. 
 Together. Be heaven's secret, this, reserved 
 Even from himself, he of man's ra^e the last. 
 And lo ! I hallow him to the ends of heaven, 
 That though he plunge his soul in sin, like a sword 
 In water, it shall no wise cling to him 
 For ever. 111 so holds not to aught made 
 Of love divine ; but reason of being shews 
 Subservient to the loftier brighter life, 
 Souls are of God, All ends are known in Heaven 
 Ere aimed at upon earth. The child is chosen. 
 
 Saints. Another soul the all-holy one 
 
 Hath chosen out of perishing earth : 
 And when is done the life begun, 
 Throughout the whole shall Heaven see none 
 More joyful of the immortal birth. 
 
 God. Let now you ening spirit, in act as doom 
 Precipitate, there by angel eyeable, scarce. 
 So sviaftlier than the wind hath he downsped, 
 By me e'er seen through ; who deformity being 
 Good distort ; every fount of life, with death 
 Embittereth ; taints each separate birth with siu ; 
 And the soul world fouls with self ; so prompt to aid 
 Creation's foes, destmction, death ; his worst 
 Dare ; yet shall God, before even thought create. 
 Shew just ; and sin's sire, false and faithless, learn 
 Soul progress due to strife against his strife ; 
 CJontention 'gainst himself, good's second source ; 
 He, too, of men the tested soul and chosen, 
 Chosen from first, to the last tested ; soul 
 In faith unfaltering as the pole-star, fixed 
 Emblem to earth of this Heaven's restful throne 
 Of light, immutable, shall God confess. 
 
 Beniel. Father of men and angels, Sons of God 
 Coth. by thy holy spirit so named, thy will 
 
 09 
 
8d PESW8. 
 
 Accompllshetli itself. Be it ours to adore. 
 
 Thrones. Thou God, art Lord of Being ; and thy just thoughts 
 Are high above the star-dust of the world ; 
 The spheres themselves are but as glittering noughts 
 Upon these imperial robes, thy skies, impearled. 
 Life's countless thrones, yon orbs, 'mid spaces infinite 
 Beam joyous 'neath love's universal sight ; 
 We, who Thine ordered Thearchy divine 
 Set forth, who with thy glow effluxive shine, 
 We, angel raylets gladden in thine interior light. 
 
 Dominations. Between creation and destruction, now 
 The lull of creatural action iutervenes ; 
 God rests ; and the world is working out its week. 
 His hand is in his bosom, and at peace. 
 But what was gradually create, shall be 
 Most suddenly unmade ; that arm which now 
 Slumbers upon his breast, shall yet wave forth ; 
 And from the lightning patliway of his feet, 
 The aethereal web world-studded of the skiei?, 
 Like to the gossamer waof , beaded with dew, 
 Stretched o'er the morning traveller's walk, shall pass, 
 Annihilate, and for ever. For, behold I 
 His oath uncancellable on heaven's altar rests ; 
 The whole shall end. All matter, erst conceived 
 Of God the Eternal and the Virgin void. 
 The firmament of material worlds shall cease ; 
 By spheres, may be, replaced of spiritual light ; 
 But Thee, who holds't ia thine all-moulding hand 
 The infinite as a ball, all worlds, or gross 
 With elements, or to spirit refined, shall serv^e ; 
 Yea, o'er the universe aye omnipotent, thou 
 As over meanest atomie reignest Lord. 
 
 PowEKS, Thy might, God, self -creative is, thy works 
 Immortal, temporal or destructible, all 
 Ever in thy sight are blessed there. The heavens, 
 Thy bosom, o'er all existence stoops thine eye ; 
 U'he worlds thy shining footprints shew in space. 
 
 Princedoms. Eternal Lord ; thy strength compels the worlds. 
 And bows the heads of ages ; at thy voice 
 Tlieir insubstantial essence wears away. 
 
 Virtues. All-favouring God, we glory but in Thee, 
 Ye heavens, exalt, expand yourselves. They come. 
 The infinite generations, all divine. 
 Of Deity come, our brethren, come om- friends. 
 
 Archangels. Thou who hast thousand names, as night hath stars, 
 Which light thee up to mind finite, yet scarce 
 Thy limitlessness illume, nor tliat abyss 
 Of Being, wherein thy wondrous attributes 
 Themselves constellate, Lord I thy light, the light 
 Wh dwell in, shall at last, all times consummed, »- 
 
 Fulfil the universe, and all be bliaa 
 
FE8TU3. 87 
 
 Anqels. Thee, God of Heaven, of all, we praise ; 
 Through our ne'er sun setting days, 
 
 And thy just ways, divine ; 
 In thine hand is every spirit ; 
 Cleansing pam and meed of merit ; 
 All things souls and worlds inherit, 
 
 Of thee all bora, are thine. 
 Not unto creatui-es is it given 
 To scan the purposes of Heaven, 
 
 Alway just and kind ; 
 But before thy holy breath, 
 All quickening where it operateth, 
 Life and spirit, dust and death, 
 The boundless all is driven. 
 As clouds by wind. 
 Saints. Thousands of Angels, Lord, around thee stand, 
 Thousands of worlds ; all counted without pause, 
 Or end : each joys, his quest at thy command 
 Fulfilling, true to thy soul-quickening laws. 
 So place US, God, where all may serve thy will 
 Beneficent ; and free reason guide us still. 
 Angel or Earth. Woe, woe at last in Heaven ; 
 Earth to death is given. 
 The ends of things hang still 
 Over them as a sky. 
 Do what, do how we will. 
 All's for Eternity. 
 Saints. Reject not, Lord 1 thine angel's innocent prayer ; 
 Her golden charity, without all alloy ; 
 Look on her drooping wing, her troubled air ; 
 Pity her hopeless plaint, her lost employ, 
 
 God. Fate, learn to reconcile thyself with joy. 
 Earth's angel-warden, lift thine head. Thy prayers, 
 Ungranted wholly, graceless fall not yet 
 Back to their generous source. Thy love-task once 
 Achieved, to guide that sphere's tempestuous life 
 Through all vicissitudes, this reward be thine ; 
 Thy ultimate hopes to know made truths ; its mien 
 Of beauty purified, she shall be known 'mong stars, 
 By the name of Peace ; true end to godly strife 
 'Gainst evil, of good ; which heaven with joy shall fiU ; 
 And calm delights inviolable of love. 
 Eternal, spiritual ; love divine of God. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Accessible, Lord ! as air to drops of de^w 
 That blend them in the blue serene of even, 
 We, in thy peace approach thee, and, submiss, 
 Thy will would seek. 
 
 God. Thy charge for a time resigned. 
 
 Warn thou, and take thy leave. He shall not faint. 
 Strengthen bim will I, as with a belt of stars. 
 Guardian Axgel. But when he ncccb me most! 
 Goo. It is as I will. 
 
88 FESTUS. 
 
 I am the Guardian Angel of the world 
 Of spirits not less than spheres. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Lord of all Being, 
 
 Be it as thou wilt ; thy might, will, way, are one. 
 
 11. 
 
 From Heayen soul-like to earth. It is sundown ; tvp« 
 
 Of the approaching end of earth's day. Mark 
 
 The heart's state, oni])ty and collapsetl the world's 
 
 Vain pleasures leave- u.- in, if penitoit uot 
 
 For wasted gifts and hou; s dissatisfied, 
 
 Distraught. The Power, ;:I1 ill, his Ivu-es deploys. 
 
 Youth's natural fitful, unavailing struggle 
 
 Xote, 'gainst temptation corae unlocked for; power, 
 
 Ix)ve, knowledge ; who shall slight the three convened, 
 
 Like llie Ideean goddesses of old ; 
 
 Nor yet as these, compctitiTe, but combined ? 
 
 To know the future of man's race ; the soul's 
 
 Passed, individually ; to be beloved 
 
 By the world's paramount beauty, and sit earth's t hron# ? 
 
 Reft of heaven's generous help, how soon we fail ! 
 
 Know yet, 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 IVlse, 
 
 As hands thrust into a dark room retain 
 
 Their sun-lent light, a season. So now here. 
 
 The scene of indecision, and of self 
 
 ForgetXukiess breaks off, not ends. 
 
 Wood and Water — Park — MoTisUm in Distance — La^vn — J lower- 
 garden lordcring a laliclet — Siuvht. 
 
 LuciPEE, Festus, Guardian Angel. 
 
 Lucifer. Time was, I said above there, time may be, 
 Kven for me, though he flies me pretty close. 
 The threat to undo this fine old time-piece chills 
 One's blood. Besides, the key once lost miyht not 
 Be again found. Meanwhile, the whole be<?ins 
 To cease : the great phenomenon disappears. 
 No time was lost at the beginning, true. 
 Though it takes one back a crowd of years to think 
 Of our first conscious day dawn. After all, 
 One's not so old but we may like one last 
 Adventure in the Fair, this show of shows. 
 The scenery round recalls, to pensive mijid, 
 Faintly, a rather vivid passed, wherein 
 Some good beginnings came to a 8pee<ly end ; 
 And endings now are just beginning. Still, 
 It is somethi:ig to have 'scaj^ed a long-feared end. 
 Fore Heaven ! I had rather do my worst and live, 
 Than do my best, and die. I and my task 
 Seem both at least permissible. So, to act. 
 
FESTUa. 89 
 
 The spot is chosen for me, here it is 
 
 I make the experiment ; and here, relieved 
 
 For (i^ood, I trust, of angel watch and %vard, 
 
 The man sought, he whose desultory step 
 
 Rustling 'mong fallen leaves I hear. Ee speaka. 
 
 I thought 'twas only serpents like myself, 
 
 Bom double-tongued, addressed their proper ears, 
 
 For lack of livelier audience. One must hearken. 
 
 I make mj-self for the nonce invisible ; 
 
 A precious privilege that, shared with most ghosts, 
 
 And spectres of much eminence. So ; I listen I 
 
 Festus (advancing^ This is to be a mortal, and immortal. 
 To live within a death-bound circle, and be 
 That dark point where the shades of all things round 
 Meet, mix, and deepen, Somewhere's truth light. "Where 1 
 0\\ ! I feel like to a seed in the cold earth, 
 Quickening at heart, and pining for the air. 
 Passion is destiny ; the heart is its own fate. 
 It is well youth's gold rubs off so soon ; for soon 
 llie heart gets dizzied with its drunken dance ; 
 And life's voluptuous vanities enchain, 
 r]n chant, and cheat no more. That spirit's on edge, 
 Which nought enjoys sin's honeyed sting not taints ; 
 That soothing fret which makes the young untried, 
 Unwise, unwarned, swift to forestal its dues, 
 Thonging to be beforehand with their nature, 
 In dreams and loneness cry they die to live ; 
 That wanton whetting of the soul, which wliile 
 It gives a finer, keener edge for pleasure, 
 Wastes more, and dulls the sooner. Rouse thee, heart* 
 Bow of my life, thou yet art full of spring. 
 My quiver still hath many a purpose. Yet 
 (^f all life's aims what's worth the thought we waste on't ? 
 IIow mean, how miscitible seems every care ; 
 How doubtful, too, the system of the mind. 
 And then, the ceaseless, changeless, hopeless round 
 Of weariness and heartlecsness and woe ; 
 And vice and vanity. Yet these make life ; 
 The life at le^st I witness, if not feel. 
 No matter, we are immortal. How I wish 
 I could love men ; for still, mid all life's quests 
 There seems but worthy one ; to do men good. 
 It matters not how long we live, but how. 
 For as the pai-ts of one manhood, while here, 
 We live in every age ; we think, and feel, 
 And feed upon the coming and the gone 
 As much as on the now time. Man is one ; 
 And he hath one great heart. It is thus we fed 
 With a gigantic throb athwart the sea 
 Each other's rights and wrongs. Thus are we men. 
 Let us think less of men ; man fills not half 
 The measure of man's mind ; and more of God, 
 
40 FESTUS. 
 
 Sometimes the thought comes swiftening over ii3, 
 
 Like a stray birdlet winging the still blue air ; 
 
 Again it rises slow, like a cloud which scales 
 
 Breathless the skies ; and just overhead upon us 
 
 Down plunges ; we, with excess of witness stunned. 
 
 Sometimes we feel the wish across the mind 
 
 Rush, like a rocket tearing up the sky 
 
 That we should join with God, and give the world 
 
 The slip ; but while we wish, the world turns round, 
 
 And peeps us in the face ; the wanton world ; 
 
 We feel it gently pressing down our arm. 
 
 The arm we had raised to do for truth such wonders ; 
 
 Wa feel it softly bearing on our side ; 
 
 We fee) it touch and thrill us through the body ; 
 
 And we are fools ; and there's an end of us. 
 
 Tis a fine thought that sometime end we must. 
 
 There sets the sun of suns ; dies in all fire. 
 
 Like Asshur's death*great monarch. God of might t 
 
 It is X)Ower we love, and live on. Spirit's end, 
 
 And reason of being, seems somewhat, if 'tis this. 
 
 Mind must subdue. To conquer is its life. 
 
 AVhy madest thou not one spirit, like the sun, 
 
 To king the world ? And oh might mine have been 
 
 That sun-mind, how would I have warmed the world 
 
 To love and worship and bright life ! 
 
 LuciFEE {suddenly appearing). Not thou. 
 
 Hadst thou more power — put case thou hadst thy wish, 
 It is vastly feasible — more wouldgt thou misuse. 
 But other matters first. 
 
 Festus. Who art thou, pray ? 
 
 It seems, as thou hadst grown out of the air. 
 
 LuciFEB. Thou knowest me well. If stranger to thine ca ( 
 I am not to thy heart. 
 
 FESTU8. I know thee not. 
 
 Lucifer. Come nearer. Look on me. I am above thee, 
 Beneath thee, and around thee, and before thee. 
 
 Festus. Why, art thou all things, or dost go through all 
 A spirit 7 or an embodied bla.st of air ? 
 I feel thou art a spirit. 
 
 LuciFEE. Yea, I am ; 
 
 The creditable presentment of a man, 
 I flatter myself I may be too. 
 
 Festus. Thou art spirit. 
 
 I knew it. I am glad, yet tremble, too. 
 What hours, what years, say, have I longed for this, 
 ..Vnd hoped that thought or prayer of force mio-ht yna ; 
 How oft besought the stars, with tears, to send 
 A power to me, and have set the clouds until 
 I deemed I saw one coming ; but ah, too soon. 
 The shadowy giant alway thinned away, 
 And I was fated luiimmorcolised ; 
 
FE8TUS. 41 
 
 Unsccptrcd with the sway I would o'er sonla; 
 What shall I do 7 Oh let me kneel to thee 1 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, rise ; and I'll not say, for thine ovvn sake, 
 That thou dost pray in private to the Devil. 
 
 Festus. Father of lies, thou liest. 
 
 Lucifer. I am he. 
 
 It is enough to make the Devil merry, 
 To think that men deeming me dungeoned fast 
 Ever in hell, call on me momently ; 
 Swearers and swaggerers jeer at my name ; 
 And oft indeed it is a special jest 
 With witling gallant"?. Let me once apijear, 
 Woe's me I they faint and shudder, pale and pray : 
 The burning oath which quivered on the lip 
 Starts back, and sears and blisters up the tongue ; 
 Confusion ransacks the abandoned heart ; 
 Quells the bold blood ; and o'er the vaulted brow 
 Slips the white woman hand. To judgment, ho I 
 The very pivot of the earth seems snapped ; 
 And down they drop like ruins, (even as drop, 
 In days of national ire, once sacred shrines, 
 Scenes of rank jugglery ; here a pillar falls 
 To its fluted knee ; a pediment there, that once 
 O'er-browed the state ; and there, some delicate arch, 
 Wliose marble arms as petrified in prayer 
 Long drew Heaven's pitying glance, now rude earth's prey, 
 Ruinous, dishallowed lies ; so these, so thou 
 By anarch fears prostrated,) to repent. 
 Such be the bravery of mighty man 1 
 
 FestCci. I must be mad ; or mine eye cheats my brain. 
 And this strange phantom comes from overthought, 
 Like the white lightning from a day too hot. 
 It must be so. But I will pass it. 
 
 LuciPEB, Stay ! 
 
 Festus. save me, God 1 He is reality, 
 
 Lucifer. And now thou kneelst to Heaven. Fye, graceless boy 1 
 Mocking thy Maker with a cast-off prayer ; 
 For had not I the first fruits of thy faith / 
 
 Festus. Tempter, away 1 From all tlie crowds of life 
 Why single me ? Why score the yomig green bole 
 For fellage ? Go ! Am I, the youngest, worst 2 
 No. Light the fires of hell with other souls ; 
 Mine shall not bum with thee. 
 
 Lucifer. Tliou jndgcst harshly. 
 
 Can I not touch thee without slaying thee ? 
 
 Festus. Why here ? What wouldat with me ? 
 
 Lucifer. 'Fore all I'd have 
 
 Looks and words gentle. 
 
 Festus. Go I 
 
 Lucifer. I cannot yet. 
 
 But why so sad ? Wilt kneel to me again ? 
 This leafy clonet is most apt for prayer. 
 
 OS 
 
43 FESTVS. 
 
 Festus. Yes, I will pray for thee and for myself. 
 
 Lucifer. "Waste not thy prayers : I scatter them ; they rise 
 Xo farther than thy breath ; a yard or so. 
 jind as for me, I heed them, need them, not. 
 My nature God knows, and hath fixed ; and he 
 Kecks little of the manners of the world ; 
 Wicked he holdeth it, and unrepentant. 
 
 Festus. Therefore the more some oug-ht to pray. 
 
 Lucifi':e. To blow 
 
 A kiss, a bubble, a prayer, hath like effect 
 And satisfaction. 
 
 Festus. Let me hence ; or thou, 
 
 Go tell thy blasphemies and lies elsewhere. 
 Thou scatter prayer I Make me thy minister 
 One moment, God, that I may rid the world 
 For ever of its evil. Oh, Thine arm. 
 
 Lucifer. Canst rid thyself I 
 
 Festus. Alas, no. Get thee gone. 
 
 Can naught insult thee, nor provoke thy flight ? 
 
 Lucifer. I laugh alike at ruin and redemption ; 
 I am the one which knows nor hope nor fear ; 
 Which ne'er knew good, nor e'er can know the worst. 
 What thinkest thou now can anger me, or harm ? 
 
 Festus. Wherefore didst thou quit hell ? to drag me thither ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thou wilt not guess mine errand. Deernest thou 
 aught 
 Which God hath made all evil ? Me he made. 
 Oft I do good ; and thee to serve I come. 
 
 Festus. Did I not hear thee boast with thy laf*t breath 
 Not to have knovra what good was ? 
 
 Lucifer. From myself 
 
 I know it not ; yet God's will I must work. 
 I come, I say, to serve thee. 
 
 Festus. Well, I would 
 
 Thou never hadst come ; but speak thy purpose straight. 
 
 Lucifer. I heard thy prayer at sunset, scarce yet pasr-ed, 
 W^here still yon dim and filmy cloudlet, drooped 
 Like to God's eyelid, thinned with unshed tears 
 Of watching, over a worthless, faithless world, 
 Skreens the orb, now vanished. I was there ; Ma 3 iiere, 
 I saw tliy secret longings, unsaid thoughts, 
 Which prey on the breast like night-fires on a heath, 
 I know thy lieart by heart. I read the tongue. 
 When still astutely, as well as when it moves. 
 And thou didst pray to God. Did he attend ? 
 Or turn his eye from the great glass of things, 
 Wlierein he worshippeth eternally 
 Himself, to thee one moment ? He did not. 
 I tell thee naught he cares for men. I cama. 
 And come to profiler thee the earth ; to set thee 
 Upon a thi-one, the throne of will unbound ; 
 To crown thy life with liberty and joy ; 
 
FS8TU8. 
 
 And make the« free and mig-hty, even as I am. 
 
 Festus. I would not be aa thou art for hell's throne, 
 Great fiend ; add earth's. 
 
 Lucifer. I knew thy proud hijfh heart. 
 
 To test its worth and mark I deemed it brave, 
 In shape and bein^ thus myself I came ; 
 Not in disgfuise of opportunity ; 
 Not as some silly toy, which serves for most ; 
 Not in the masque of lucre, lust nor power ; 
 Not in a goblin size, nor cherub form ; 
 But as the soul of hell and evil came I, 
 With leave to give the kingdom of the world 
 The freedom of thyself. 
 
 Festus. Good ! Prove thy powers. 
 
 LuciFEE. Do I not prove them ? Who but I that hold 
 Immortal might o'er mine own mind, and o'er 
 All hearts and spu-its of the living world, 
 Would share it with another, or forego 
 One hour the great enjoyment of the whole? 
 And who but I give men what each best loves ? 
 
 Festus. Open the heavens, and let me look on God ; 
 Open my heart, and let me see myself, 
 Then, 111 believe thee. 
 
 Lucifee. Thou shalt not believe 
 
 For that I give thee ; but for that I am. 
 Believe me fiist ; then will I prove myself. 
 Though sick I know thee of the joys of sense, 
 Yet those thou lovest most I will make pure. 
 And render worthy of thy love ; unfilm them, 
 That so thou mayst not dally with the blind. 
 Thou shalt possess them to their very souls ; 
 Pleasure and love and unimaqrined beauty ; 
 All, all that be delicious, brilliant, great 
 Of worldly things are mine, and mine to give. 
 
 Festus. What can be counted pleasure after love f 
 Like the young lion which hath once lapped blood, 
 The heart can ne'er be coaxed back to aught else. 
 
 Lucifer. As yet, methinks. love hath but made thee, — else 
 Why now sad / — wretched I But if I for thee 
 Sublime it to all bliss 
 
 Festus. Hold, loveless spirit ; 
 
 It is not bliss I seek. I care not for it. 
 I am above the low delights of life. 
 The life I live is in a cold dark cavern 
 WTiere I wander up and down, feeling for something 
 'Which is to be, and must be ; what, I know not ; 
 But some event, incarnate destiny, 
 Is nigh. 
 
 Lucifek. It is that I put before thee now. 
 To choose. Confess thy fate, which weighs upon thee. 
 Necessity, like to the world on Atlas' neck, 
 3its ou humanity. It is this, nought more ; 
 
U FESTUS. 
 
 And the sultry sense of overdrawn life. 
 
 Festus. True. 
 
 The worm of the world hath eaten out mine heaxt 
 
 Lucifer. I will renew it in thee. It shall be 
 The bosom favourite of every beauty, 
 Even like a rosebud. Thou shalt render happy. 
 By naming who may love thee. Come with me. 
 
 Festus. Power spiritual forbidden, nor lowlier quetit 
 Me suiting soon, as sweep o'er grain-fraught fields 
 Sea-bordering, deathful sands, so waste of life, 
 My spirit deformed, until, — and I was glad, 
 My heart spake in me suddenly, and said 
 Come, let us worship beauty ; and I bowed ; 
 And went about to find a shrine ; but found 
 None that ray soul when see'ng said to, enough. 
 Many I met witii where I put up prayers, 
 And had them more than answered ; some, whera love 
 Filled the whole place as 'twere oppresses! with heavexi, 
 And I worshipped partly because others did, 
 Partly because I could not help. But none 
 Of these t^o me assigned, away I went 
 Champing and choking in proud cherished pain ; 
 And a burning wrath that not a sea could slake. 
 So I betook me to the all-sounding sea 
 And mocked its bitterness ; and said unwise. 
 Mine heart had more of it than his ; whereby. 
 In slumberous mutterings I o'erheard, it moaned 
 Of a revenge to come, which me well nigh 
 Life-reckless, gladdened, savage as the sea. 
 At last, came love ; not whence I sought, nor thought it, 
 Nor hoped. But I grew friendly with the maiu. 
 I had only one thing to behold, the sea ; 
 I had only one thing to believe ; I loved : 
 Until that lonesome sameliness of thought 
 To the eye of mind grown all absorbing, grew 
 Like darkly beautiful as death, when some 
 Bright soul regains its star-home ; or as heaven 
 Just when the stars falter forth, one by one. 
 Like the first words of love from a maiden's lip«. 
 There are points from which we can command our life ; 
 When the soul sweeps the future like a glass ; 
 And coming things, full freighted with our fate, 
 Jut out dark on the offing of the mind. 
 Let them come : many will go down in sight ; 
 [n the billow's joyous dash of death go dowTi. 
 And we foresee the crash, the wreck ; nor yield 
 One point to fate, as though self -sworn to doom. 
 On came the living vessel of all love ; 
 Terrible in its beauty as a serpent ; 
 Rode down upon me, like a ship full sailed, 
 And bearing me before it, kept me up 
 Spite of the dro^Tiing speed we drave at. 
 
PXSTV8. 
 
 Lucifer. Much 
 
 It was like Death's craft 
 
 Festus. It was Love's. 
 
 LuciFEiL It may be. How 
 
 Is't likely I can tell, who am scantwisc skilled 
 In allegories, nor am as yet in love. 
 But oft times I have heard mine angels call 
 On their lost loves and amiablest compeers 
 In Heaven ; and, as I suffer, seen them come ; 
 Seen starlike face* peep between the clouds, 
 And hell become a tolerable torment. 
 8ome souls lose all things but the love of beauty ; 
 And by that love they are redeemable ; 
 For in love and beauty they acknowledge good 
 And good is God, the great Necessity. 
 
 Festus. Whoso would reconcile Time's claim and Fate's, 
 Is coheir with unwisdom in all ends 
 Of disappointment and defeat. The fair 
 "WTio thralled me held me by more potent charms 
 Than wiles could feign, or spells could implicate. 
 I loved her for that she was beautiful, 
 And that to me she seemed to be all nature, 
 And all varieties of things in one. 
 As many charmf ul changes had in thought 
 And sweet caprice as the opal hath of hues ; 
 Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise 
 All light and laughter in the morning : fear 
 No petty customs nor appearances ; 
 But think what others only dreamed about ; 
 And say what others did but think ; and do 
 What others would but say ; and glory in 
 What others dared but do ; so pure withal 
 In soul : in heart and act such conscious, yet 
 Such careless innocence, she made round her 
 A halo of delight ; 'twas these that won me ; 
 iVnd that she never schooled within her breast 
 One thought or feeling, but gave holiday 
 To all ; and that she made all even mine. 
 In the communion of love : and we 
 Grew like each other, for we loved each other ; 
 She, mild and generous as the air in spring ; 
 vVnd I, like earth, all budding out with love. 
 
 LuciFEK. And then, love's old end, falsehood ; nothing irore© 
 I hope ? 
 
 Festus. What's worse than falsehood ? to deny 
 The god that is within us, and in all 
 Is love ? Love hath as many vanities 
 As charms ; and this, perchance, the chief of both : 
 To make our young heart's track upon the first, 
 And snowlike fall of feeling which overspreads 
 The bosom of the youthful maiden's mind, 
 
46 FESTUS. 
 
 More pure aud fair than even its outward type. 
 
 If one did thus, was it frota vanitj ? 
 
 Or thoughtlessness, or worse ? Nay, let it pass, 
 
 The beautiful are never desolate ; 
 
 But some one always loves them — God or man. 
 
 If man abandons, God himself takes them. 
 
 I know not why love falters. Sense perchance 
 
 Of other's perfectness discourageth us. 
 
 Rather than spurs one to the like. Such doubt 
 
 Howe'er resolved, there rose between her star 
 
 And mine a cloud ; which, lifted, showed this set. 
 
 That, mingled with Heaven's day. It was even tliiia, 
 
 I said we were to part. She nothing spake. 
 
 There was no discord ; it was music ceased ; 
 
 Life's thrilling, bounding, glorying joy, ceased. 8tt6 
 
 Like a house-god, she, her hands fixed on her knee. 
 
 Her dark hair loose and long, the wild bright eye 
 
 Of desolation flashed through, lay around her. 
 
 vShe spake not, moved not ; more than act or sx^eech 
 
 Her eye I felt. I came and knelt beside her. 
 
 And my heart shook this building of my breast, 
 
 Like a live engine booming up and down. 
 
 It is the saddest and the sorest sight, 
 
 One's own love weeping. But why call on God 
 
 This, now, or that decree, crude, as we think. 
 
 Or cruel, to recast for us, or reverse, 
 
 But that the feeling of the boundless bounds 
 
 All feeling as the welkin doth the world ? 
 
 Then first both wept, then closed and clung together. 
 
 Then, like snow-wreath of peerless purity 
 
 That upon mountain heights, by daily veer 
 
 Of just one light-ray, loosening, line by line. 
 
 Its hiddenest heart-hold, slowly absolves itself 
 
 From all its haughty coldness, and seeks p^^ace 
 
 Even at the cliil s foot ; so she, white, by mine ,* 
 
 Weird, much unchanged, as seemed, in outward cheer, 
 
 But love's preeminence lost in life, life lost. 
 
 Never were beauty, love, and woe so wrought 
 
 Together into madness, as that hour. 
 
 Then comes the feeling which unmakes, undoes ; 
 
 Which tears up by the roots the sealike soul, 
 
 And lashes it in scoin against the skies. 
 
 Twice did I madly swear, hand clenched, to heaven, 
 
 That not even he nor death should tear her from me. 
 
 Profane defiance 'twas, 'gainst each. Here, last. 
 
 Upon this breast, she swooned ; here, midst these arms ; 
 
 Here, cloudlike, poured she forth her love which was 
 
 Her life to freshen this parched heait. In vain. 
 
 Nor looked I e'er again on her alive. 
 
 She wished, she said, to die. She wished ; she died. 
 
 The lightning loathes its cloud ; such souls their clay. 
 
 Can I forget that hand I took in mine, 
 
FESTU8. Iflr 
 
 Pale as pale violets ? tJiat eye where soul 
 And sense met, like divine ? Ah no, may God 
 That moment judg-e me when I do ! Oh ! fair 
 Was she, her nature once all brightness, spring. 
 ^Vnd ominous beauty, like a maiden sword, 
 Startlingly beautiiul, whose dark flashes hide 
 Deaths many, more triumphs. I see thee now, 
 Whate'er thou art, thy spirit is in my mind ; 
 Thy shadow hourly lengthens o'er my brain, 
 And peoples all its pictures with thyself. 
 Grone, not forgot, passed, not lost ; thou shalt shine 
 In heaven, as even a bright spot in the sun. 
 And now I am alone. Say on 1 What more 
 Can tempt save union of love with death ? 
 But y ester-eve it was she died, and now 
 Scarce hath the spmt yet aspii-ed to heaven. 
 I feel it hovering round me. Let mine eyes 
 But realize their faith, and I am thine. 
 The soul first, then the body and the grave 
 ^Vre welcome or indifferent as may be. 
 
 Lucifer, With tho**e whom Deatli hath drawn I meddlo not. 
 My part is with the living solely here. 
 I have not told thee half I will do for thee. 
 All secrets thou shalt ken — all mysteries construe ; 
 At nothing marvel. All the veins which stretch, 
 Unsearchable by human eyes, of lore 
 Most precious, most profound, to thine shall bare 
 And vulgar lie like dust. The world within, 
 The world above thee, and the dark domain, 
 Mine own thou shalt o'errule ; and he alone 
 WTio rightly can esteem such high delights, 
 He only merits — he alone shall have. 
 
 Festus. And if I have, shall I be happier ? Saj 
 What's pleasui'e ? What is happiness ? 
 
 Lucifer. It is that 
 
 I vouchsafe to thee. 
 
 Festus. Am I tempted thus 
 
 Unto my fall ? 
 
 Lucifer. God wills or lets it be. 
 
 How thinkest thou ? 
 
 Festus. That I will go with thee. 
 
 Lucifer. From God I come. 
 
 Festus. I do believe thee, spirit 
 
 He will not let thee harm me. Ilim I love, 
 And thee I fear not. I obey him. 
 
 LuciFEB. Good. 
 
 Both time and case are urgent. Come. But see 1 
 Xay ; night hath one more marvel than the moon. 
 
 Festus. I glimpse the pale flash of an angel's wing, 
 But whose I see not, nor, though seer-bom, know. 
 
 Lucifer. Spells too have I, thou knoweat ; and my ring, 
 The round horizon of the visible world. 
 
tt FJE8TU8. 
 
 Will hold a ghost or two. But what is this ? 
 
 Superfluous were all evocation here. 
 
 No interruption, sure ; no afterthoug'lit ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. Spirit of 111. who round the ^pher6cl air 
 Boamest, thy interference ratified 
 By God's will, for the time my task annuls ; 
 And I, by word supreme, my charge resign. 
 
 Lucifer. Happy relief 'twere, doubtless for thyself, 
 And many a myriad like thee, ang-el motes I 
 Te are a race superior far to doves ; 
 Whiter in plume, and in the pen-feather 
 More potent, notably. Thy cure be mine. 
 
 Festus. I hear a mixed soimd as of liglit and night 
 In shadowy conference. 
 
 Lucifer. It concerneth thee, 
 
 And yet thou mayst not know. 
 
 Festus. Be as it may 
 
 That, canst thou say me truly ? 
 
 Lucifer. WTieref ore not ? 
 
 Falsehood and truth to me indifferent be : 
 N"or more than that, this penal. Not to know 
 All things, so much ^•till knowinj^ : to what end 
 The universe is tending, when fulfilled 
 Its spatial orbitation ; in what die 
 The metamorphic essence lastly cools ; 
 Nor how, in finite creature, good and ill 
 Should infinitely diflcer. fonns the curse 
 And penalty all pay. I, most, whom Fate 
 Aye drives contrarious on the fiery lines 
 I break not, and which cannot bear me down. 
 I grow impatient of this goalless race, 
 "Recessions and precessions : and this change 
 Of elemental atoms without end ; 
 Of self -paid dues, and plagues the world enjoys f 
 And renovative ruin ; swarms of life 
 In the corrupting corse creation seems. 
 It is time that something should begin to end. 
 I have beheld the inflation of the world ; 
 -\nd dogged the huge delusion ; I await 
 The cloudy wreck, trailed o'er the tract of time. 
 
 Festus. Where imperfection ceaseth heaven begica 
 Where sin ends, bliss. 
 
 Lucifer. To thee mayhap is joy ; 
 
 Or ultimate or immediate, here or there. 
 But I who deathless seem to myself and live 
 With these world-shadowing skies life's primal form, 
 Life's final, like compeer, shall woeful hail 
 Woe's abrogation ; for if God said — threat 
 To me, to all else promise — let all woe 
 Cease, cease I too with woe ; my total power 
 O'er being perforce then closed. But a.s the sun, 
 Opening with fiery key the locks of ioe 
 
FBSTUS. 48 
 
 Blow yielding, and from breasts of barreiincsB 
 
 A fruitful flood drawing tliat with new life 
 
 K-edecms creation, endless store still leaves 
 
 O^ "iOst unloosed, so, if to me, supposed 
 
 Evict from nature, God shall yet retain 
 
 The evil of mine own Bein?-, it were enough 
 
 This sensible to eteniize. I, meanwhile, 
 
 With doom unsure but menacing crowned, the round 
 
 Termless, of fixed fniality to all things, 
 
 Myself except, and mine own sorrows, tread 
 
 E'er, and re- tread. To waste, to spoil's to live. 
 
 Guardian Angcl. Do thou thy best, thy worst, thou still art 
 foiled. 
 And while iugiidiijg even tliy gravest wound, 
 Losest thine aim : that wound is healed of death. 
 
 Lucifer. Art thou not hence, celestial sinecure ? 
 Instead of lolling ou his shoulders, him 
 Thou yet mayst see on mine. 
 
 Festus. Again I hear, 
 
 -\b thougli some Titan cloud, gold-lipped, at ease 
 Immense, held passing word-play with the sun. 
 
 Guardian Axcjel. Yet not in idlesse. holy though it were, 
 Nor marble meditation, nor mere thought 
 Of the supreme perfection, thought alone 
 Worthy the name of thought in soul create ; 
 The river homaging its ocean fount 
 In every whispering wavelet, wrap I me ; 
 Far other aim be mine. Yes, he shall know 
 The hidden extremes of nature ; earth's, sea's, air's ; 
 The central fires ; both world and wilderness 
 Like tempting, though with diverse offering ; power, 
 Love, knowledge blent ; nor — though by 111 devised 
 To obscure God's truth, the consciousness of soul 
 Ever existent ; its individual source. 
 Its universal end — shall all things prove 
 But tests and purifiers ; nay, thou thyself 
 The evil of all things made. Ill's forceful soul, 
 Naught else than foil of good. 
 
 Lucifer. Bereaved of thee 
 
 We may prepai-e to see strange sights indeed ; 
 Karth's polar linch-pins loosened, and the wheels 
 Of light and dark that the world drags on, smashed. 
 
 Guardian Angel. I leave him, not desert : for, fortifiod 
 With the pure love of one, he God shall love 
 For granting him that blens-'ng. For the rest. 
 In heaven's eternal archives all is writ. 
 Pertaining to the mountain-throned end. 
 I will prepare my loved one's destiny ; 
 And with ray kindred angels smoothen his ways 
 So among men, that he o'er all may cope, 
 Throneworthy through all ages ; hallowed, blessed ; 
 Bom of the lofty lineage of the light, 
 
^^ FESTUS. 
 
 And gifted with the sceptre of a star, 
 
 In state pre-temporal, fated to earth's end. 
 
 Prophets shall preach of him, and wise men win, 
 
 By secret power, the world to choose him chief ; 
 
 The universal faith impersonate. 
 
 Peace to the soul- world, and the grand belief 
 
 Wherein are blended truth and bliss, shall he, 
 
 By aidance of the blessed, install on earth, 
 
 Calmly at once, as heaven instates its stars. 
 
 LuciFEE. Athwart this v/eb, then, must I throw my warp. 
 Can I not dim the intellig-ence with eclipse 
 Of sagfest-seeming doubt, owl-eyed to mark 
 Small ills, of reason's light-broad world of good, 
 Noteless ? With specious theories of the rise 
 Eterne of things, and end of temporal means, 
 His spirit confuse, and ravelling every thought 
 Inexplicably that shows God's simple will 
 Not chance, not mere development as cause 
 Of progress always heightening, better ever. 
 Than stand -point passed, God he may cease to see T 
 Can I not poison all the springs of life 
 And founts of feeling ? friendship make a void, 
 And love a golden snare wherein his heart 
 ►Shall rage like a trapped lion ? Hath wit pow er 
 To satisfy the soul, or power then wit 
 To save the spirit from despair ? 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Ordained 
 
 To nobler ends than aught thou reck'st of, he, 
 As in time passed from all perfective rites, 
 From every test, soul-tried, shall wisdom win, 
 As flowers sweet sustenance from the invisible air ? 
 And common elements. 
 
 Lucifer. I mine own ends seek, 
 
 Not God's. Ordained or not, means nought to me. 
 Sin and be saved, can God's elect, if he 
 Elect be ? Prove it, time. Love, knowledge, power, 
 These are my costliest baits ; and on his path 
 Must these be spread. Distracted with delights 
 I know, too, let me fancy he escapes. 
 
 GuABDiAX Angel. God's servant is man's master. So shall rule, 
 One with heaven's spiritual sun whose light 
 Soul-quickening, Being with truest life impregns, 
 The spirit I have all life tended on, endowed 
 Henceforth with plenar powers of virtual sight. 
 And sense extreme of primitive perfectness. 
 By him, all-ordering, the infinite One. And now, 
 Scion of life eterne, and ward of heaven, 
 Mine earthly charge, for a time farewell ! 
 
 Festus. What's that I 
 
 I saw a light, like earth-bom lightning, shoot 
 Up, through night's infinite sanctuary. 
 
 LcciPEB. It was nothing 
 
TZISTUS. SI 
 
 >ESTt7S. Give mc a breathing-time to fortifr, 
 Within myself, the promine I have made. 
 
 LuciFEB, Kxpect me, then, at midnight, here. Rememlscr 
 That thou canst any time repent. 
 
 FESTUij. Ay, true. 
 
 LuciFEU. Kepentance never yet did aught on earth« 
 It undoes many g^ood things. Of all men, 
 Heaven sliield me from the wretch who can repent I 
 
 III. 
 
 Follows a starry night 
 Wliere in the talk of man and spirit we see 
 Foreproven, the all-grasping njind's iuordinitte iov« 
 For marvels, mysteries, than for goodness more 
 "Say even for greatness. Miracles we must hare. 
 Wlience comes this dream of immortality 
 And the resurgent essence ? Death is change. 
 But spirit's return, allowed of heaven, is now 
 To strengthen a fiue but fuintmg faith, and sliovr 
 Such change for better. Soul reborn, we see, 
 Stalls not in death ; but like the polar sun, 
 One moment balanced on life's infinite verge. 
 Rises in roseate splendour to renew 
 Always a mightier day. The spell, as pledge 
 Of gifts to come and prouder privilege, works. 
 Man and his foe shake hands upon their bargain. 
 
 WaUr and Wood — Midnight. 
 Festus, alone. 
 
 All tilings are calm, and fair, and passive. Earth 
 
 Lookrj as if lulled upon an angel's lap, 
 
 Into a breathless dewy sleep : so still 
 
 That we can only say of things, they be. 
 
 The lakelet now, no longer vexed with gusts, 
 
 Replaces on her breast the pictured moon. 
 
 Pearled round with stars. Sweet imaged scene of time 
 
 To come, perchance, when, this vain life o'erspent, 
 
 Earth may some purer beings' presence bear ; 
 
 Mayhap even God may walk among his saints. 
 
 In eminence and brightness? like yon moon, 
 
 Mildly outbeaming all the beads of light 
 
 ►Strung o'er Night's proud dark brow. How strangely fair 
 
 Yon round still star, which looks half suffering from, 
 
 And half rejoicing in its ovm. strong fire ; 
 
 Making itself a lonelihood of light, 
 
 Like Deity, where'er in heaven it dwells. 
 
 How can the beauty of material things 
 
 So win the heart and work upon the mind, 
 
 Unless like-naturcd with thera ? Are great thing^s 
 
Bf PESTU3. 
 
 And thoughts of the same blood ? They have like effect. 
 Would one were here who could these knots unloose ! 
 
 Lucifer. Why doubt on mind ? Wh&t matter how we call 
 That which all feel to be their noblest part ? 
 Even spirits have a better and a worse : 
 For every thing created must have form ; 
 Form meaning limitation. God, alone, 
 Is formless and illimitable mind. 
 Passions they have, somewhat like thine ; but leas 
 Of grossness and that downwardness of soul 
 Men boast of. It is true they have no earth ; 
 For what they live on is above themselves. 
 
 Festus. There seems a sameness among things ; for mind 
 And matter speak, in causes, of one God. 
 The inward and the outward worlds are like ; 
 The pure and gross but differ in degree. 
 Tears, feeling's bright embodied form, are not 
 More pure than dewdrops, nature's tears, which she 
 Sheds in her o-wti breast for the fair which die. 
 The sun insists on gladness ; but at night, 
 When he is gone, poor nature loves to weep. 
 
 Lucifer. Less real difference is there among things 
 Than men imagine. They overlook the mass, 
 But fasten each on some particular crumb, 
 Because they feel that they can equal that. 
 Of doctrine, or belief, or party cause. 
 
 Festus. That is the madness of the world — and that 
 Would I remove. 
 
 Lucifer, It is imbecility, 
 
 Not madness. 
 
 Festus. Oh 1 the brave and good who serve 
 A worthy cause can only one way fail ; 
 By perishing therein. Is it to fail ? 
 No ; evei'y great or good man's death is a step 
 Firm set towards their end, the end of being ; 
 The good of all, and love of God. The world 
 Must have great minds, even as great spheres or sunf, 
 To govern lesser restless minds, while they 
 Stand still and burn with life ; to keep in place, 
 Light, heat them. Life immortal do I seek, 
 For aught, it were most to learn mind's mystery, 
 And somewhat more of God. Let others rule 
 Systems or succour saints, if such things please ; 
 To live like light, or die in light like dew ; 
 Either, I should be blessed. 
 
 Lucifer. It may not be. 
 
 For as not the sun himself thou viewest, but only 
 The light about him, like the glory ringed 
 Round a saint's brow ; so, God thou wilt never see, 
 Darkness of light eradiative. Nor seek. 
 His naked love were terrible. Saints dread more 
 To be forgiven than sinners do to die. 
 
PESTU8, n 
 
 Flstus. Men have a claim on God ; and none who hath 
 A heart of kindness, reverence, and love, 
 lint dare look God in the face and ask his smile. 
 He dwells in no fierce light — no cloud of flame ; 
 And if it were, Faith's eye can look throug-h hell. 
 And through the solid world. We must all think 
 On Crod. Yon water must reflect the sky. 
 Midnight 1 Day hath too much of light for us, 
 To see thingn spiritually. Mind and Night 
 Will meet, though in silence, like forbidden love; f?, 
 With whom to see each other's sacred form 
 Must satisfy. The stillness of deep bliss, 
 Sound as the silence of the high hill-top, 
 Where thunder finds no echo — like God's voice 
 Upon the worldling's proud, cold, rocky heart — 
 Fills full the sky ; and the eye shares witli hea"S'en 
 That look, so like to feeling, nature's bright 
 And glorious things aye wear. There's much to thmk 
 And feel of things beyond this earth ; which lie. 
 As we deem, upwards, far from the day's glare 
 And riot. They are Night's. Oh ! could we lift 
 Tlie future's sa)>le shroud ! 
 
 Lucifer. Behind a shroud 
 
 What should'st thou see but death ? 
 
 Festus. Spirit ; the thre^i 
 
 Sightless, whereon are strung life's world-great beads. 
 It may be here, I shall live again ; or there, 
 In yon strange world whose long nights know no star ; 
 But seven fair maidlike moons attending him 
 Perfect his sky ; perchance in one of those ; 
 But live again I shall, wherever it be. 
 We long to learn the future ; love to guess. 
 
 Lucifer. The science of the future were to man 
 What the wind's shadow might be, sought he screen 
 From fire or flood. Save in the effect of act. 
 And the interlinked sequences of things, 
 Whereby to ourselves we make passed, present, coming', 
 There is no future. WTiy so fret this string ? 
 Such thoughts are vain and useless. 
 
 Festus. Forced on us. 
 
 Lucifer. All things are of necessity. 
 
 Festus. Then best. 
 
 But the good are never fatalists. The bad 
 Alone act by necessity, they say. 
 
 Lucifer. It matters not what men assume to be 
 Or good or bad, they are but what they are. 
 
 Festus. WTiat ia necessity ? Are we, and tliou. 
 And all the worlds, and the whole infinite 
 We cannot see, but working out God's thoughts 1 
 And have we no self-action ? Are all God / 
 
 Lucifer. Then hath he sin and all absui-dity. 
 
 Festus, Yet, if created Being have free-will 
 
&4 FE8TU8. 
 
 Is it not wrong to judge it may traverse 
 God'B o^vn high will ; and yet impossible 
 To think on't otherwise ? 
 
 Lucifer. It may be so. 
 
 All creature wills, and all their ends and powert 
 Must come within the boundless scope of God's. 
 
 Festus. And all our powers are but weaknesses 
 To what we shall have, and to that God hath. 
 Doth not the wi.sh, too, point the likelihood, 
 Of life to come ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Boys wish that they were kings, 
 
 And so with thee. A deathless spirit's state. 
 Freed from gross form and bodily weightiness, 
 Seems kingly by the side of souls like thine. 
 And boys and men will likely both be balked. 
 What if, — death after — spirit were loosed, like flesh, 
 Into its elements ? Hold yon worlds, man maps 
 Constellate, fellowship in nature ? Life, 
 Mind, soul, as he hath planned, perchance no more. 
 But sooth to say, I know not aught of thia. 
 I have no kind. No nature like to me 
 Exists ; and human spirits must at least 
 Sleep till the day of doom — if ever it be. 
 
 Festus. Hast never known one free from body ? 
 
 Lucifer. Xone, 
 
 Festus. Why seek then to destroy them ? 
 
 Lucifer. It is my paiu 
 
 Let ruin bury ruin. Let it be 
 Woe here, woe there, woe, woe be everywhere. 
 It is not for me to know, nor thee, the end 
 Of evil. I inflict ; and thou must bear. 
 The arrow knoweth not its end nor aim. 
 And I keep rushing, ruining along, 
 Like a great river rich with dead men's soula^ 
 For if I knew, I might rejoice ; and that 
 To me by nature is forbidden. I know 
 Nor joy in ill's success, such as elates 
 Lesser malevolences ; nor sorrow sours 
 My soul at sight of heaven's unwearying love 
 Manwards. With me through time, a changeless tone 
 Of sadness like the nightwind's is the strain 
 Of what I have of feeling. T am not 
 As other spirits, — but a solitude 
 Even to myself ; I the sole spirit, sole. 
 
 Festus. Can none of thine immortals answer me ? 
 
 LuciFEE. None, mortal 1 
 
 Festus. Where then is thy vaunted power? 
 
 LuciPEE. It is better seen as thus I stand apart 
 From all. Mortality is mine — the green 
 Unripened universe. But as the fruit 
 Matures, and world by world drops mellowed oflE 
 The wxinklin^r stalk of Time, ae thine own race 
 
FESTUS, 
 
 Hath seen of stars now vanished, all is hid 
 From me. My part is done. WTiat aft«r cornea, 
 I know not more than thou. 
 
 FKSTUri. Raise me a spirit I 
 
 Lucifer. Command o'er natural essence, space, time, matter, 
 I yield thee. Can I give thee power o'er soul i 
 
 Festus. Awake, ye dead ! out with the secret, death ; 
 The grave hath no pride, nor the rise-again, 
 Let each one bring the bane whereof he died. 
 Bring the man his, the maiden hers ! Oh ! half 
 !\Iankind are murderers of themselves or souls. 
 Yea, what is life but lingering suicide ? 
 Wake, dead 1 Ye know the truth ; yet there ye lie 
 All rangling, mouldering, perishing tocrether, 
 Like run sand in the hour-glass of old Time. 
 Death is the mad world's asylum. There is peace : 
 Destruction's quiet and equality. 
 Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths : 
 Though many, yet they help not ; bright, they light not. 
 They are too late to serve us ; and sad thmgs 
 Are aye too true. We never see the stars 
 Till we can see nought but them. So with truth. 
 And yet if one would look down a deep well, 
 Even at noon, we might see those same stars 
 Far fairer than the blinding blue— the truth. 
 Probe the profound of thine own nature, man I 
 And thou mayst see reflected, e'en in life. 
 The worlds, the heavens, the ages ; by and by, 
 The coming come. Then welcome, world-eyed Truth I 
 But there are other eyes men better love 
 Than Truth's : for when we have her she is so cold, 
 And proud, we know not what to do with her. 
 We cannot understand her, cannot teach ; 
 She makes us love her, but she loves not us ; 
 And quits us as she came and looks back never. 
 Wherefore we fly to Fiction's wann embrace, 
 With her to relax and bask ourselves at ease ; 
 And, in her loving and unhindering lap 
 ^'■oluptuously lulled, we dream at most 
 On death and truth ; she knows them, loves them not ; 
 Therefore we hate them and deny them both. 
 
 LuciFEE. But could I make that visible always there ? 
 
 FESTU8. Call up the dead. 
 
 Lucifer. Let rest while rest they maj. 
 
 For free from pain and from this world's weai- and tear, 
 It may be a relief to them to rot ; 
 And it must be that at the day of doom, 
 If mortals should take up immortal life. 
 They will curse me with a thunder which .shall shake 
 The sun from out the socket of his sphere. 
 The curse of all created. Tliink ou it- 
 
86 FESTUS. 
 
 Festus. Those souls thou meanest, whom thou hast ruined, 
 damned, 
 
 Lucifer. Nor only those ; when once the virgin bloom 
 Of soul is soiled ; and rudely hath my hand 
 Swept o'er the swelling clusters of all life ; 
 Little it matters whether crushed or touched 
 Scarcely : each speaks the spoiler hath been theie. 
 The saved, the lost, shall curse me both alike : 
 Ood t/)0 shall curse me, and I, I, myself. 
 That curse is ever greatening, quick with hell ; 
 The comiag consummation of all woe. 
 
 Festus. O man, be happy. Die and cease for ever. 
 Why v.ear we not the shroud alway, that robe 
 Which speaks our rank on earth, our privilege ? 
 To know I have a deathless soul I would lose it. 
 
 Lucifer. Believest thou all I tell thee ? 
 
 Festus. All, I do. 
 
 Stringing the stars at random round her head, 
 Like a pearl network, there she sits, bright Night 1 
 I love night more than day, she is so lovely. 
 But I love night the most because she brings 
 My love to me in dreams which scarcely lie ; 
 Oh, all but truth and lovelier oft than truth ; 
 Let me have dreams like these, sweet night, for ever, 
 WTien I shall wake no more ; an endless dream 
 Of love and holy beauty amid the stars ; 
 And earth and heaven for me may share between them 
 The rough realities of other bliss, 
 
 Lucifer. I see thy heart, and I will grant thy wish 
 I have lied to thee. I have command over spirits ; 
 And e'er behold them, bodiless as space. 
 Whom wilt thou that I call ? 
 
 Festus. Mine Angela ! 
 
 Lucifer. There is an Angel ever by thine hand. 
 What seest thou ? 
 
 Festus. It is my love. It is she 1 
 
 My glory, spirit, beauty 1 let me touch thee. 
 Nay do not shrink back ; well then I am wrong : 
 Thou wert not wont to shrink from me, my lovo, 
 Angela ! dost thou hear me ? Speak to me. 
 And thou art there ; looking alive and dead. 
 Tliy beauty is then incorruptible. 
 I thought so, oft as I have looked upon thee. 
 Thou art too much even now for me as once. 
 I cannot gather what I raved to say ; 
 Nor why I had thee hither. Stay, sweet sprite 1 
 Dear art thou to me now, as in that hour 
 When first love's wave of feeliag, spray-like, broke 
 Into bright utterance, and we said we loved. 
 Yea, but I must come to thee. Move no more. 
 Art thou in death or heaven, or from the stars? 
 She speaks not, 'Tis ^ phantom maybe, only. 
 
FESTUS. 
 
 Have I done wrong in calling- for thee thus f 
 
 What art thou 7 Say, love ; whisper me as wont, 
 
 In the dear times gone by ; or durst not here. 
 
 Unfold the mystery of thine own bright being. 
 
 And mine ? Was't meddling death who hushed thy lipi 1 
 
 Is his cold finger there still ? Let me come I 
 
 She is not ! 
 
 LuciFKB. And thou canst not bring her bad:. 
 
 Festus. I will not, cannot be without her. CaU her. 
 
 LuciPEB. I call on spirits and I make them come : 
 But they depart according to their own will. 
 Another time and she shall speak with thee. 
 For, of thy state no more, to know her thou 
 Into her sphere must rise. 
 
 Festus. What most I'd know 
 
 Is how soul acts, how suffers ; how the God 
 Treats, death achieved, man's mind. 
 
 LuciPER. She of tlie pas-'^ed 
 
 Shall there fulfil thy spirit ; and, holding forth 
 The bright clue, which like lightning's friendly flaah 
 Before one, night-lost in a wood, shall guide 
 The soul its path through life's retumless maze, 
 And teach the mystery of thyself. All this, 
 Ere long ; and she shall show thee where she dwells, 
 And how doth pass her immortality ; 
 If lengthening decay can so be called. 
 Can lines finite one way be infinite 
 Another ? And yet such is deathlessness. 
 
 Festus. It is hard to deem that spirits cease, that thought 
 And feeling flesh-like perish in the dust. 
 Shall we know those again in a future state 
 ^^llom we have known and loved on earth ? Say yes 1 
 
 Lucipeb. The mind hath features as the body hath. 
 
 Festus. But is it mind which shall revive ? 
 
 Lucipeb. :\[an were 
 
 Not man without the mind he had in life. 
 But, think. When dead and buried what remains, 
 That such an obscure, contradictory thing 
 Should be perpetuated anywhere ? 
 
 Festus. Oh ! if God hates the flesh, why made he it 
 So beautiful that e'en its semblance maddens? 
 Am I to credit what I think I have seen ? 
 Or am I suffering some deceit of thine ? 
 
 Lucipeb. I am explaining, not deluding. 
 
 Festus. True. 
 
 Defining night by darkness, death by dust. 
 I run the gaimtlot of a file of doubts. 
 Each one of which down hurls me to the ground. 
 I ask a hundred reasons what they mean. 
 And every one points gravely to the ground 
 With one hand, and to heaven with the other. 
 In vain I shut mine eyes. Truth's burning befira 
 
iS8 FE8TU8. 
 
 Forces them open ; and when open, blinds them. 
 
 LuciPEB. Doubly unhappy ! 
 
 Festus. I am too unhapi)y . 
 
 To die ; as some too way-worn cannot sleep. 
 Planets and suns, that set themselves on fire 
 By their own rapid self -revolvements, arc 
 But like some hearts. Existence I despise. 
 The shape of man is wearisome ; a bird's ; 
 A worm's ; a whirlwind's ; I would chang-e with aught. 
 Time I dash thine hour-glass down. Have done with this. 
 The course of nature seems a course of death ; 
 The prize of life's brief race, to cease to run : 
 The sole substantial thing, death's nothingness. 
 
 Lucifer. Corruption springs from light ; 'tis one same iiower 
 Creates, preserves, destroys ; matter whereon 
 It works, one e'er self-transmutative form. 
 Common to now the living, now the dead. 
 
 Festus. I'll not believe a thing which I have known. 
 Hell was made hell for me, and I am mad. 
 
 LuorPER. True venom churns the froth out of the lips ; 
 It works, and works, like any waterwheel. 
 And she then was the maiden of thy heart. 
 Well, I have promised. Ye shall meet again. 
 But stay ; take this, a final warning. Aught 
 Thou hast seen, hold not too sure. Ofttimes the brain 
 Breams waking ; with vitality endows 
 Its own creations ; argues ; thought's best proofs, 
 Things spiiitual projecting on gross sense, 
 As shadows upon boards, refutes. 
 
 Festus. What, all 
 
 Illusion, vision, sleight of touch, or tongue ? 
 
 LuciFEK. I say not so. This, that is probable. 
 Now, shall we go ? 
 
 Festus. This moment. I am ready ; 
 
 Farewell ye dear old walks and trees ; farewell 
 Ye waters ; I have loved ye well. In youth 
 And childhood it hath been my life to drift 
 Across ye liglitly as a leaf ; or skim 
 Your waves in yon skiff, swallowlike ; or lie 
 Like a loved locket on your sunny bosom. 
 Could I, like you, by looking in myself. 
 Find mine own heaven — farewell 1 Immortal, come 1 
 The morning peeps her blue eye on the east. 
 
 Lucifer. Think not .so fondly as thy foolish race, 
 Imagining a heaven from things without ; 
 Tlie picture on the passing wave call heaven ; 
 The wavelet, life ; the sands beneath it, death ; 
 Daily more seen till, lo 1 the bed is bare. 
 This fancy fools the world. 
 
 Festus. Let us away t 
 
 LuciFEfi, Wings of the wind, be ours ! once, twice, ."-way J 
 
FE8TU8. 60 
 
 IV 
 
 NoTT sets the jouth out for joy, the city of joy, 
 Whose walls illuminated with all-hued spheres 
 Ueacon the immense of life. lie, 'neath the cure 
 Of his kindly enemy, begins his course ; 
 Eacli aiding other ; all beside abused. 
 Heaven, hell, life pre-exiettnt, things not yet, 
 Things passed, immemoi-able, foreshadowy, show 
 liricfwise before the all-quest ful s]urit, intent 
 To prove its dominance o er the vorld, till taught 
 Earth, air, nor fire, nor all the elements fused 
 Into one subtlest essence, aught avail 
 The soul to assist or to divert, once charged 
 God's mighty but mysterious ends to achieve ; 
 Ends more substantial than all solidest things. 
 
 .1 Mountain. Sunrise. 
 Festus and LuciFER. 
 
 Festus. Mom on the mountains I Mai-k her lifening glow, 
 IJg-ht's blessed advent prophesying" ; and now 
 The awful signals, sensible, but scarce seen. 
 Of the under-welkin'd sun. Here, midft this fr.ne, 
 With the awe of space domed, let me, sole with God, 
 In privacy of his omnipresence, pray ; 
 And while the unboundedness of earth and sky 
 Seizes in silence all the spirit, let me, 
 With nature one, for like dependent life, 
 Grateful, adore. 
 
 LuciPEB. Oh, pray adore : I'm dumb. 
 
 Festus. In cilence soul most nears the Infinite. 
 Hail beauteous Earth I Gazing o'er thee, I all 
 Forget the bounds of being ; and I long 
 To fill thee, as a lover pines to blend 
 Soul, passion, yea, existence, with the fair 
 Creature he calls his own. I ask for nought 
 Before or after death but this — to lie. 
 And look, and live, and bask, and bless myself 
 Upon thy broad bright bosom. 
 
 Lucifer. Earth's the Lord's, 
 
 Festus. True ; I should be more reverent. Thou hast all 
 Nature's supremest sanctities, earth. From thee 
 Sprang I, to thee I turn, heart, arm, and brain. 
 Yes, I am all thine own. Thou art the sole 
 Parent. To rock and river, plain and wood, 
 I cry. ye are my kin. While I, O earth I 
 Am but of thee an atom, and a breath, 
 Passing unseen and unrecorded, like 
 The tiny throb here in my temple's pulse. 
 Thon art for ever ; and the sacred bride 
 Of heaven ; worthy the passion of our Qod, 
 
60 FESTUa, 
 
 Oh I full of liglit, love, grrace ; the grace of all 
 
 Who owe to thee their life ; thy maker's love ; 
 
 His face's light. All thine rejoice in thee ; 
 
 Thou in thyself for aye ; rolling through air, 
 
 As seraph's song, out of their trumpet lips, 
 
 Bolls round the skies of heaven. But who is this, 
 
 Burning the clouds before him ; the round world 
 
 Apt to his golden gi-asp ? his fingers all 
 
 Streaming with light effectual to impart 
 
 Full fellowship of illuminate life ; from out 
 
 The depths extreme, who comes, of orient space T 
 
 Undo those gilded bars : fling wide yon gates 
 
 Eastwards, of changeful pearl ; wide o'er his ways, 
 
 Strew palms, as 'fore heaven's conqueror, and the night" i 
 
 Flying hosts, star-standarded ; make pure his paths 
 
 With rain of liquid crystal. He shall see 
 
 How earth can put on majesty, to meet 
 
 The king in her own mansion. Let the mom 
 
 Pour, penitent for the passed, o'er all his head, 
 
 Her wealthful waste of perfumed sweets ; his feet 
 
 Let kiss, with all her dews. It i'? he, the sun ( 
 
 God's crest upon his azure shield the heavens. 
 
 Canst thou, a spirit, look upon him ? 
 
 Lucifer. Ay. 
 
 1 led him from the void, where he was wrought, 
 By this right hand, up to the glorious seat 
 His brightness overshadows ; laid on piles 
 Of gold his chambers, and upon beams of gold 
 His throne built ; flung a fire- veil round his face ; 
 Crowned him with rays reverberant from all clouds : 
 And bade him reign, and bum, like me. Like me 
 Pall, too, he must. I have done, do, nought else 
 Prom my first thought to this and to my last. 
 Xo matter ; it is beneath this mind of mine 
 To reck of aught, I bear, have borne the ill 
 Of ages, of infinities ; and must. 
 I care not. I shall sway the world as now ; 
 Which worse and worse sinks with me as I sink. 
 Till finite souls evanish as a vapour ; 
 Till immortality, the proud thing, perish ; 
 And God alone be and eternity. 
 Then will I clap my hands and cry to him, 
 I have done : have thy will now, there is none but thee. 
 I am the fiist created being (ceased 
 Necessity and nature and with them 
 The strain of imperfection) : I the last 
 Will be for ever to perish and to die. 
 
 Festxjs. Thou art a fit monitor, methinks, of pleasure. 
 
 LuciPKE. To the high air, sunshine and cloud are one ; 
 Pleasure and pain to me. Thou and the earth 
 Alone feel these as different ; for ye 
 Are under them ; the heavens and I above. 
 
FesttJS. But tell me have ye scenes like this in hell f 
 
 Ldcifeb. Nay, not in heaven. 
 
 Festus. What is heaven ? not the toy» 
 
 Of singing, love and music I Such a place 
 Were fit for glee-maids only. 
 
 Lucifer. Heaven is no placa 
 
 Unless a place with God. all- where ; no more 
 Therefore conceivably to come, than now. 
 It is the being good ; the knowing God ; 
 The consciousness of happiness and power. 
 With knowledge which no spirit e'er can lose, 
 But doth increase in every state ; and aught 
 It most delights in, the full leave to do. 
 But why consume me with such questions ? Why 
 Add earth to hell in the great chain of worlds 
 God in his wrath has bound about me ? 
 
 Festus. Why ? 
 
 It was therefore that I closed with thee, great Fiend 
 That thou mightst answer all things I proposed, 
 Or bring me those who would. 
 
 Lucifeb. But all these things 
 
 Thou wilt know sometime, when to see and know 
 Are one ; to see a thing and comprehend 
 The nature of it esvsentially ; perceive 
 The reason of its being ; its inner laws 
 .\nd outer, all convergent goodwards ; trace 
 All science upmost through va«t nature's plan ; 
 And their relations with the whole, of things 
 (.Contingent, willed, done, sensible, spiritual, gross. 
 This, when the spirit is made free of heaven, 
 la the divine result : proportioned still 
 To the intelligence as finite ; for grades 
 There are in heaven as all- where, in all things, 
 By God's wiU. Unimaginable space. 
 As full of suns as is earth's sun of atoms, 
 Faileth to match his boundless variousness ; 
 And ever must, albeit a thousand worlds, 
 As diverse from each other as is thine 
 From any of thy system's, were elanced 
 Kaoh minute into life unendingly. 
 AU of yon worlds and all who dwell in them 
 fStand in diverse degrees of bliss, and being ; 
 Of bliss ; grades countless o'er this world's, and man's 
 Ability to conceive or feel ; of being ; 
 A world- wheel of all varying aims and ends 
 Bettering the soul's best cherished powers, and fixed 
 Never, but ever orderly, self -placed 
 In such progressive and up-trending ways 
 As Deity must approve, must bless ; the soul 
 3Iay soar through searchful ; yet of heaven nought know, 
 More than a dim and miniature reflection, 
 Of ita most bright infinity ; for God 
 
63 FESTTTS, 
 
 Makes to each spirit its peculiar heaven. 
 
 These thou mayst yet not miss ; intent to learn 
 
 Mere exigencies of being ; nor seek to know 
 
 Beyond what bears on judgment, be'est thou wise ; 
 
 For I no further tempt thee to a risk 
 
 That might ensure all ruin ere thy time. 
 
 And yet is heaven a bright reality, 
 
 As this, or any of yon worlds ; a state 
 
 AVhere all is loveliness, and power, and love ; 
 
 Where all sublimest qualities of mind, 
 
 Not infinite ; are limited alone 
 
 By the all-sunounding godhood ; and where nought 
 
 But what createth glory and delight 
 
 To creature and Creator is ; where all 
 
 "Enjoy entire dominion o'er themselves, 
 
 Acts, feelings, thoughts, conditions, qualities, 
 
 Spirit and soul and mind ; all under God ; 
 
 For spirit is soul deified ; while earth, 
 
 To the immortal, vast, god-natured spirit 
 
 Is but a spell, vrhich having served to light 
 
 ^ lamp, is cast into consuming fire. 
 
 Such, and so sweet is memory to the eage 
 
 Expert of good and evil. But, enough. 
 
 Festus. And hell ? Is it nought but pits, and chaiuG, and flames f 
 
 Lucifer. An ever greatening sense of ill and woe, 
 The exhausted soul down-crushing, filling never 
 Its infinite capacity of pain. 
 
 Festus. But human is not infinite, 
 And cannot, therefore, suffer endlessly. 
 
 Lucifer. God may create in time what shall endure 
 Unto eternity. With him is none 
 Distinction, nor in that which is of him. 
 
 Festus. Then is not scul of God, but man and earth. 
 8oul when made spirit is of earth no more, 
 Xor time, but of eternity and heaven. 
 It is but when in the body aiul bent down 
 To worldly ends that human souls become 
 Objects of time, as most are, till the hour 
 Comes, when the soul of man shall be made one 
 With God's spirit ; made eternal, made divine ; 
 And where shall woe be then ? sin ? suft'ering .' 
 
 Lucifer. How- 
 
 Shall soul thus favoured, then, predestined thus. 
 To glory afore all worlds, be deemed of earth 
 Earthy ? 
 
 Festus. Tilings spiritual as belonging God, 
 Are to and from eternity, by him 
 Predestined, known ; nor these alone ; but fle^<h 
 Forms not, nor doth it need the care of fate. 
 
 Lucifer. The object of eternal knowledge must 
 Have like existence. 
 
 Ffi3TU8. Tlien it cannot bo 
 
r£8TU8. «S 
 
 Bound unto torment, that would dreadlj' bring 
 Torture on godlike essence. 
 
 LuciFEE, "What if thine 
 
 litiBtenoe on this sphere were but, em told, 
 In mystic talea of old spread over eartli. 
 The dark and narrow section of a life 
 Which was with God, long- ere the sun was lit : 
 And shall be yet, when all the bold bright stars 
 Are dark as death«duflt ; Immortality 
 And Wisdom tending tliee on either hand, 
 Thy divine sisters ? What if earth-Ufe prove. 
 Of thee and thy conceptions head and end. 
 Who were to blame ? Thou canst not surely expecfc 
 Me to know all things. 
 
 Festus. Truly, I have heard 
 
 Sometimes, or deemed, what deepest musings failed 
 To explain, or render more than dubious, lips, 
 Uncorporal lips, ai-tlculate in mine ear, 
 Lessons, long ages back learned ; deemed I have felt 
 Oft-times a shadowiest conception seize 
 My spirit, as though the echo of a life 
 Far passed, rang through one's being, and thrilled the heart 
 With sense of joys requickened, of thought rethought, 
 Of difEculties fore-vanquished, and of truth 
 Taught by a sacred death regenerative, 
 AMiich, justified from sin, as though were mine 
 A life half conscious of sublimer spheres, 
 A mind transessenced through all faiths, refined 
 Through ends divine fulfiJied. 
 
 Lucifer. Ends thou mayst yet 
 
 Clear from the tangled passed, if one sole clue 
 Thou gloriest in. 
 
 Festus. Could thought but realize ! — 
 
 No, it is incredible. 
 
 Lucifer. Well, do thou Ixilieve 
 
 Even as thou wilt. The science of the passed, 
 The science of the future, lack them both. 
 Why seek such ? Seize the present. 
 
 Festub. 'Tis all doubt. 
 
 Lucifer. Doubt's ail-where, doubtless, but in heaven. 
 
 Festus. And thou 
 
 Whose life shows, catanict-likc, one cea.seless fall, 
 Mayst match it I But if doubt bide not in heaven, 
 Neither dwells certainty upon earth. But say, 
 Is it the nature or the deed of God, 
 To render finite follies infinite, 
 Or to eternize sin and death in fire ? 
 For so long as the punishment endures. 
 Tlie crime lasts. Were it not for thy presence, 
 Spirit 1 I would not deem hell were. 
 
 Lucifer. Let not 
 
 iiy presence pass for more than it is worth, 
 
6i FS8TU8. 
 
 I pray, nor yet my absence. Trust me, I 
 Could wish, with thee, that hell were blotted out 
 Of utmost space. 'Tis man himself e'er makes 
 His own God, and his hell. But this is truth. 
 
 Festus. The truth is perilous never to the true, 
 Nor knowledge to the wise ; and to the fool, 
 And to the false, error and truth alike. 
 Error is worse than ignorance. But say : 
 How can eternal punishment be due 
 To temporal offences, to a pulse 
 Of momentary madness ? 
 
 Lucifer. Pause and think. 
 
 Sin is not temporary. Nothing is, 
 Of spiritual nature, but hath cause 
 Premortal and immortal end in all, 
 As spirits. Therefore till the soul shall be 
 By grace redeified, as is the soul, 
 So is the sin, for ever before God. 
 
 Festus. Sin is not of the spirit, but of that 
 Which blindeth spirit, heart and brain. 
 
 Lucifer. Believe s<x 
 
 The law of all the worlds is retribution. 
 
 Festus. But is it so of God ? 
 
 Lucifer. The laws of heaven 
 
 Are not of earth ; there law is liberty. 
 
 Festus. Thou thundercloud of spirits, darkening 
 The skies and wrecking earth ! Could I hate men 
 How I should joy with thee, even as an eagle. 
 Nigh famished, in the fellowship of storms ; 
 But I still love them. What will come of men ? 
 
 Lucifer. Whatever may, perdition is their meed. 
 Were heaven dispeopled for a ministry, 
 To warn them of their ways ; were thou and I 
 To monish them ; were heaven, and eai-th, and hell 
 To preach at once, they still would mock and jeer 
 As now ; but never repent until too late ; 
 Until the everlaating hour had struck. 
 
 Festus. Men might be better if we better deemed 
 Of them. The worst way to improve the world 
 Is to condemn it. Men may overget 
 Delusion ; not despair. 
 
 Lucifer. WTiy love mankind ? 
 
 The affections are thy system's weaknesses ; 
 The wasteful outlets of self -maintenance. 
 
 Festus. The wild flower's tendril, proof of feebleness, 
 Proves strength ; and so we fling our feelings out, 
 The tendrils of the heart, to bear us up. 
 O earth 1 how drear to think to tear oneself, 
 }ilven for an hour, from looks like this of thine ; 
 From features, oh ! so fair ; to quit for aye 
 The luxury of thy side. Why, why art thou 
 Thus glorious, an "twere not to sat« the soul, 
 
FESTU8. 61? 
 
 And chide us for the senseless dream of heaven ? 
 
 The still strong stream sweeps seaward to its end, 
 
 Unrestful, unrestrainable, like one 
 
 Of God's great purposes ; or like may be, 
 
 A soul that seeks the Eternal ; like mine own. 
 
 Along yon deep blue vein upon thy bosom, 
 
 Earth ! I could float for ever. See it there, 
 
 Winding among its green and smiling isles, 
 
 Like charity amidst her children dear ; 
 
 Or peace, rejoicing in her olive wreaths, 
 
 And gladdening as she glides along the lands. 
 
 Lucifer. And yet all this must end ; must pass ; drop down 
 Oblivion, like a pebble in a pit : 
 For God shall lay his hand upon the earth. 
 And crush it up like a red leaf. 
 
 Festus. Not be ? 
 
 I cannot root the thought, nor hold it firm. 
 
 Lucifer. This same sweet world which thou would'st fondly 
 deem 
 Eternal, may be ; which I soon shall see 
 Destruction suck back as the tide a shell. 
 
 Festus. It will not be yet. I'll woo thee, world, again ; 
 And revel in thy loveliness and love. 
 I have a heart with room for every joy : 
 And since we must part sometime, while I may, 
 I'll quaff the nectar in thy flowers, and press 
 The richest clusters of thy luscious fruit 
 Into the cup of my desires. But who 
 Would care to live unless he loved, and were loved ; 
 Unless he had all things young and beautiful. 
 Bound up like pictures in his book of life ? 
 It is vanity, of all things most, makes bear 
 With life. Some live like unenlightened stars 
 Of the first darkness ; lifeless, timeless, useless ; 
 With nothing but a cold night air about them ; 
 Not Sims ; not planets ; blankness, limbed and framed ; 
 Orbs of a desert gloom : with not one soul 
 To light its watch-fire in their waste of being ; 
 Or seem so, miserably ; but how or why 
 They live I know not. This to me is life ; 
 That if life be a burden, I will join 
 To make it but the burden of a song : 
 I hate the world's coai-se thought. And this is lire ; 
 To watch young beauty's budlike feelings burst. 
 And load the soul with love ; as that pale flower 
 Which opes at eve, spreads sudden on the dark 
 Its yellow bloom, and sinks the air down with sweets. 
 Let heaven take all that's good — hell all that's foul ; 
 Leave us the lovely, and we will ask no more. 
 
 Lucipeb. To me it seems time aU should end. The sky 
 Grows grey. It is not so bright nor blue as once. 
 Well I remember, as it were yesterday, 
 
 D 
 
mtiievoEid^ 
 
 Orr 
 
 ia holy Iribrity Imgliwl ooi^ 
 .Aad cried, Bor I, like God, I neramfc. 
 
 nBRvaGodlnliiHiira^eadiilieaL Let loe Ix:iT>e 
 Tot floit I look OR tiiee, fiur fleeae, again, 
 Ewldepart. The gloqr of liie vodd 
 boaalllMida, Iai 
 I gaae on river, sea, iaiie, 
 
 vood, and wild, and ficeJiiiped hm. 
 
 Irifl^htfy die. iHnoe dMik ia d^. 
 d^ aad port aad palaee, ddfB aad toite, 
 laeaMMdaadBuvpedbefonflML All« 
 Ihe ekflKBla of Ike wodd aae at nj feefe, 
 Above we and alioat omu Sow weald I 
 Be and do aoMeeiiai beaide tiiat 1 am. 
 Gaaafc Ikon not fire BM 
 Of <ke pne cMOMse of an . 
 flneh aa n^ boodlew bcain iMdL ofttimea dcawB, 
 In ibe dtvttie inamitj of dteama ; 
 Toytmd heton me^ and obey ne, apitit f 
 
 CUl oat. and aee if ao^ axise to tliee. 
 Green dewj eactii, who etandfwt at mj feel 
 Wnging, and poaring eonrfifBO on thj bead, 
 Ai naiiid nalive water; ipeak to me 1 
 I am tl^ eon. Omat tfaon not now, aa onoe, 
 Brin^ fortii aome being desm^ liker to tiiee 
 la my ttPf titan or Unj fay, 
 or woodrUjuidi f 
 
 I^icnrEB. She hath oeaced to speak, 
 
 like God, caEoept in thunder ; or to look, 
 Unleae hi lightomg. JGndea, with earth. 
 Axe oat of faahion, aa with heaven ; and morels 
 The pity. GaU daewheaeu Old earth is hard 
 Of hearing, nu^be. 
 
 FEeroi. I beseedi thee, sea ! 
 
 Teasing thy wavy locks in spadding play, 
 Like a dUkl ewakening with the waoithfnl light 
 To laqghtv; eaaat not thoa disgnlph for me, 
 Trom tiqr deep bosom, deep mb bMuren is hig^ 
 Of an tt^ ae»-fodi one, or aeMMUi f 
 
FB8TV8. 
 
 None! 
 Cmak not from mA tliat palpdhl^ rmpaar raOed 
 
 iiaare;, 
 
 of Mufcoraid? 
 
 IliilfdeBpuc Fireilkafcat 
 lun flOiBB fltant 'vamor IB Ins lodpf £art^ 
 Aftor ike ^aok m¥aai<m Off liie viadd. 
 
 Of eBffjnn deoMnt, wlio boOi knows 
 Bf nntanl Yiifae, of euWs eental Toid, 
 Bmn^ bekm, tiie swdbIb, and U^ BBH^vcnli, 
 Onfc of vkoM aieiy fim eome angei focBtt, 
 ill, ■mwiihlf an to pmrer? 
 ■eafckandiodoBBjrladdiB^? Game! 
 
 Hot of otamgtii destraotive, hat of finest Cosee ; 
 aa fiaaMi fartii in flowcRta : aetey in ^pniB^, 
 wHk gone^ighfc, and vitb pyni* 
 
 Tb be vi& nw alviT* «■ » Aand, n «U ; 
 
 lOCDSB. AHi 
 laMfctlMinfeof 
 
 dnfaeOonboHli^ofaa; 
 Mlkintntl^antUB 
 
 or 
 
 »1 
 
68 FE8TU8. 
 
 In maze concentric, intercycling, vast ; 
 And all are known, their laws and libertiea. 
 But no man can foreset thy coming, none 
 Reason against thy going ; thou art free, 
 The type impalpable of spirit, thou, 
 God's vital breath, great purifier of earth. 
 Thunder is but a momentary thing, 
 Like a world's death-rattle, and is like death ; 
 And lightning, like the blaze of sin, can blind 
 Only and slay. But what are these to thee, 
 In thine all-present variousness ? So light 
 As not to awaken, now, the snowiest down 
 Upon the dove's breast, winning her bright way, 
 Calm and sublime as grace to suffering soul, 
 Towards her far native grove ; now, stem and strong 
 As ordnance, overturning tree and tower ; 
 Cooling the white brows of the peaks of fire ; 
 Turning the sea's broad furrows like a plough ; 
 Fanning the fruitening plains ; breathing the sweets 
 Of meadows ; wandering over blinding snows ; 
 And sands like sea-beds ; and the streets of cities, 
 Where men as garnered grain lie heaped together ; 
 Freshening the cheeks, and mingling oft the locks 
 Of youth and beauty 'neath star-speaking eve ; 
 Swelling the pride of canvas, or, in wrath. 
 Scattering the fleets of nations like dead leaves ; 
 In all, the same o'ermastering sightless force ; 
 Bowing the highest things of earth to earth, 
 And lifting up the dust to the stars ; fatelike. 
 Confounding finite reason, and like God's spirit, 
 Regenerative, life breathing o'er the world ; 
 Midst all corruption incorruptible ; 
 Monarch of all the elements, earth's broad bounds 
 Rounding invisibly, hast not one 'mong aU 
 Sylph-kind, with voluntary but viewless wing, 
 To spare thy suppliant for a season ? 
 
 LuciPBB. Hold 1 
 
 All nature knows intuitive, I am here, 
 With thee ; and as with desert lion, sense, 
 Full strange of his proud presence, seems to o'erspread 
 Saudworld, and life suspend ; so thriUs, instinct 
 With its fierce secret, the whole frame of things ; 
 Which feels, with me, no minor minister, 
 Thou needst. To thee I personate the world, 
 Its faiths ; half doubt, half truth ; its practices^. 
 Just, surface-wise ; its powers ; all mine, at least, 
 Will serve thee most intelligently. Fail these. 
 Indeed, let fail success itself. 
 
 Festus. Are all 
 
 Mine invocations fruitless then 1 
 
 LiJCiFEE. They are. 
 
 Let ns enjoy earth. 
 
FESTUa, 
 
 Pestus. It were well. 
 
 LuciFEB. 'Tis time, 
 
 As when in boreal climes the southening sun, 
 One hour on heaven's aerial rood suspense, 
 The ecliptic cleared, thereafter, east and west 
 More liberal day flings round ; pleased earth responds ; 
 And the ice-fettered rivulet, joyed, breaks up, 
 Clattering, in fluvial freedom ; thenceforth flowing 
 Deeplier and more impulsive ; so thy heart, 
 For a season chilled, contracted, in unseen 
 Currents constrained, shall now its course resume, 
 Leaping with life redundant. 
 
 Festus. Wer't God's will 
 
 That thou shouldst visit me, he shall not send 
 Temptation to my heart in vain. Sweet world ! 
 We aU stiU cling to thee. Though thou thyself 
 Passest away, yet men will hanker about thee, 
 Like mad ones by their moping haunts. Men pass, 
 Cleaving to things themselves which pass away 
 Like leaves on waves. Thus all things pass for ever, 
 Save mind, and the mind's meed. 
 
 LuciPEB. Let us too pass. 
 
 Soul solemnized by dear ones' death, belief 
 
 In heavenlv life confirmed of reason finds. 
 
 Here roimd her bier they meet who several rvile 
 
 After the heart to each in turn their fate. 
 
 "World knowledge, fruit both sweet and bitter, shows 
 
 Its green and ruddy sides, mean, generous thought. 
 
 Trial alone of ill and folly gives 
 
 Clear proof of the world's vanities ; best right 
 
 To warn, denounce. Too oft but Httle good 
 
 Of sermons comes, of prophecies, and warnings. 
 
 Though one most apt to admonish of man's end, 
 
 And from the steps of an old gray market cross, 
 
 The Devil is holding forth to the faithless. There, 
 
 Gravest predictions slighted most, not less, 
 
 The spirit of truth impartial mav provide 
 
 Conviction just, fit utterance. So to God 
 
 A social prayer is offered up for man 
 
 Of all strains, countries, poUcies, creeds. 
 
 A Coimtry Toum — Market Place — JVoon, 
 
 LuciFEB and Festus. 
 
 Lucifer. These be the toils and cares of mighty men* 
 Earth's vermin are as fit to fill her thiones. 
 As these high heaven's bright seats. 
 
70 FESTU8. 
 
 Festus. Men's callings all 
 
 Are mean and vain, their wishes more so ; oft 
 The man is bettered by his part, or place. 
 How slight a chance may raise, or sink a soul, 
 
 LuciFEB. What men call accident is Grid's own paiii. 
 He lets ye work yonr will, He wills ye will. 
 But that ye meant not, know not, do not, he doth. 
 
 Festus. Wliat is life worth without a heart to feel 
 The great and lovely harmonies which time 
 And nature change responsive, all writ out 
 By preconcertive hand which swells the strain 
 To divine fulness ; feel the poetry, 
 The soothing rhythm of life's fore-ordered lay, 
 As planned from first by its great maker ; feel 
 The aim and joy of things whose inner laws 
 Are present witnesses of God ; and once 
 Conform with His intent, thrice holy ; sin, 
 Though rebel, ne'er beyond his sceptre's length, 
 But sadly privileged yet by destiny 
 To compulsory service. Oh ! to stand 
 Soul raptured, on some lofty mountain thought, 
 And feel the spirit expand into a view 
 Millennial, life-exalting, of a day 
 When earth shall have all leisure for high ends 
 Of social culture ; ends a liberal law 
 And common peace of nations, blent with charge 
 Divine, shall win for man, were joy indeed ; 
 Nor greatly less to know what might be now, 
 Worked will for good with power, for one brief hour. 
 But look at these, these individual souls ; 
 How sadly men show out of joint with man. 
 There are millions never think a noble thought. 
 But with brute hate of brightness bay a mind 
 Which drives the darkness out of them, like hounds. 
 Throw but a false glare round them, and in shoals 
 They rush upon perdition ; that's the race. 
 What charm is in tliis world-scene to such minds 
 Blinded by dust ? What can they do in heaven : 
 A state of spiritual means, and ends ? 
 
 Lucifer. Who knows ? 
 
 What hinders, not the less, if, these betwixt 
 And that pure heaven thou dreamst of, some broad zono 
 Of mild a)therial order, spread, where souls. 
 Tempered prospectively, through dateless years, 
 And lustral, fit themselves to loftier life. 
 And ends more estimable than these we see ? 
 
 Festus. Such- state were not unreasonable ; but who 
 Unless in dreams or visions, knows the like '/ 
 Thus must I doubt ; perpetually, I doubt. 
 
 LuciPEB. Who never doubted never half believed ; 
 Where doubt, there truth is ; 'tis her shadow, I 
 Declare to thee the passed is not. All life 
 
FESTUB, H- 
 
 I have looked o'er, yet never seen the age 
 That had been, nor to be. Why dread or dream 
 About the future ? Nothing but what is, is, 
 Else God were not the maker that he seems, 
 Like constant in creating as in being. 
 Embrace the present. Let the coming pass. 
 
 Festus. Thou windest and unwindest faith at will, 
 AVhat am I to believe ? 
 
 Lucifer. I am allowed 
 
 By common law to instigate. Not even thou 
 Wouldst wish me more. Know then thou mayest believe 
 But that thou art forced to. 
 
 Festus. Then I feel perforce 
 
 That instinct of immortal life in me 
 Which prompts me to provide for it. 
 
 Luctfer. Perhaps. 
 
 Festus. There shall be no nncertainty with me, 
 Ere yet we part. 
 
 Lucifer. The prospect pleases still, 
 
 Festus. Man hath a knowledge of a time to come ; 
 His most important knowledge ; the weight lie>i 
 Nearest the short end, this life ; and the world 
 Depends on what's to be. I would deny 
 The present, if the futui-e. Oh 1 there is 
 A life to come, or all's a dream. 
 
 Lucifer. And all 
 
 May be a dream. Thou seest in thine, men. deeds, 
 Clear, moving, full of speech and order. Why 
 May not, then, all this world be but a dream 
 Of God's ? Fear not. Some morning G od may waken. 
 
 Festus. I would it were so. This life's a mystery. 
 The value of a thought cannot be told ; 
 But it is clearly woi-th a thousand lives 
 Like many men's. And yet men love to live, 
 As if mere life were worth the living for. 
 
 Lucifer. AVhat but perdition will it be to most ? 
 
 Festus. Life's more than breath and the quick round of 
 blood ; 
 It is a great spirit and a busy heart. 
 The coward and the small in soul scarce do live. 
 One generous feeling, one great thought, one deed 
 Of good, ere night would make life longer seem 
 Than if each year might number a thousand days, 
 Spent as is this by nations of mankind. 
 We live in deeds, not years ; in thoughts, not breaths ; 
 In feelings ; not in figures on a diaL 
 We should count time by heart-throbs, lie most lives 
 Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. 
 Life's but a means imto an end ; that end, 
 To those who dwell in Him, He most in them, 
 Beginning, mean and end to all things, God. 
 The dead have all the glory of the world. 
 
W FESTU8. 
 
 Why will we live, and not be glorious ? 
 
 We never can be deathless till we die. 
 
 It is the dead win battles ; and the breath 
 
 Of those who through the world drive like a wedge 
 
 Tearing earth's empires up, nears death so close, 
 
 It dims his well-worn scythe. But no ! the brave 
 
 Die never. Being deathless, they but change 
 
 Their country's arras, for more, their country's heart. 
 
 Give then the dead their due ; it is they who saved us; 
 
 Saved us from woe and want and servitude. 
 
 The rapid and the deep ; the fall, the gulph, 
 
 Have likenesses in feeling, and in life ; 
 
 And life so varied hath more loveliness 
 
 In one day, than a creeping century 
 
 Of sameness. But youth loves and lives on change, 
 
 Till the soul sighs for sameness ; which at last 
 
 Becomes variety, and takes its place. 
 
 Yet some will last to die out thought by thought 
 
 And power by power, and limb of mind by limb, 
 
 Like lamps upon a gay device of glass, 
 
 Till all of soul that's left be dark and diy ; 
 
 Till even the burden of some ninety years 
 
 Hath crashed into them like a rock ; shattered 
 
 Their system, as if ninety suns had rushed 
 
 To ruin earth, or heaven had rained its stars ; 
 
 TUl they become, like scrolls, unreadable, 
 
 Through dust and mould. Can they be cleaned and read ? 
 
 Do human spirits wax and wane like moons ? 
 
 Lucifer. The eye dims and the heart gets old and slow ; 
 The lithe limbs stiffen, and the sun-hued locks 
 Thin themselves off, or whitely wither ; still, 
 Ages not spirit, even in one point. 
 Immeasurably minute ; from orb to orb, 
 Eising in radiance ever like the sun 
 Shining upon the thousand lands of earth. 
 Look at the medley, motley throng we meet ; 
 Some smiling, frowning some ; their cares and joys 
 Alike not worth a thought ; some sauntering slowly, 
 As if destruction never could overtake them ; 
 Some hurrying on, as fearing judgment swift 
 Should trip the heels of death, and seize them living. 
 
 Festus. Grief hallows hearts even while it ages heads ; 
 And much hot grief, in youth, forces up life 
 With power which too soon ripens and which drops. 
 
 [J. funeral passes. 
 Ah ! what is this 1 A mystery sure resolved. 
 I felt as fascinated towards this spot. 
 Meseemed I saw a beckoning, as of bright 
 Invisible hands I could not choose but follow. 
 •Twas for this, doubtless. 
 
 LuciFEB. strange coincidence J 
 
 I0 this the funeral of the fair defunct 
 
FESTU8, 78 
 
 Thou told'st me of somewhile, with tears ? 
 
 Festus. The same. 
 
 Lucifer. Behold those three fair maiden mourners. "Well, 
 It is something, in default of other means, 
 To leave fair friends behind one. Speak to them. 
 
 Festus. That were I nowise loth to do. But stay ; 
 My heart is not an anvil ; and the blow 
 >Vhich grief hath struck me, needs not to be paired ; 
 Or they might breed for ever. 
 
 Lucifer. Speak to them. 
 
 Festus. Why, yes, I'll speak to them ; I know them r.ll, 
 As they know her they follow. Yet, methinks, 
 All knowing, to ask curiously seems ill. 
 
 Lucifer. To leam what others know seems only well. 
 
 Festus. Whose funeral is this ye follow, friends ? 
 
 Lucifer. Would ye have grief, let me come. I am woe. 
 
 Mourner. We want no grief, Festus 1 she died of grief. 
 
 Festus. Said'st thou she died ? Oh, then, I knew her. 
 
 Mourner. True. 
 
 Festus. Set down the body ; I would look yet on her. 
 Not lovelier now than ever, only not. 
 And garlanded, as for bridals. 
 
 Mourner. True. What then? 
 
 Say not thou knew'st not, thou, this crownM maid, 
 Willed as death's bride, not thine, to be thus interred. 
 
 Festus. Her hopes knew I too well. Oh, no 1 I nought 
 Deny. I am doomed too many to offend, 
 To prove the end of. Not the less, let be. 
 When died she 1 
 
 Mourner. But the o'er-last night when the sun 
 
 His purple sea-couch pressed, and high in air 
 Heaven glorified itself with every hue 
 The world holds loveliest. 'Twas to those who watched 
 That death-bed as if nature yearned to express 
 By all tints gorgeousest her inmost joy 
 To know this soul's reunion with its God. 
 
 Festus. I mind the hour, the moment. 'Twas the breath 
 As of a thousand lilies, witness pure 
 Of her spirit's sanctity, lingering by this bier, 
 Still, compassed me unconscious of the event, 
 And marvelling of the miracle. Let me look 1 
 
 Mourner. In sooth, a piteous sight. 
 
 Festus. A heavenly sight I 
 
 Now, sons of God, what do ye now in heaven, 
 \\hile one so fair, so good, lies earthening here 1 
 "Why not translate these holy relics hence 
 To your unperishing precincts, to be shrined 
 There fitliest ; or reanimate these as once ? 
 X will give up the future for the passed ; 
 The winged spirit and the starry home. 
 Would heaven but let her live, and make me love. 
 
 Clara. I feel as though her spirit hovered near • 
 
 D 3 
 
74 PE8TU8. 
 
 Holy and pure, it wafts me with its wing-s. 
 
 Elissa. Their shadows strike across me. Let us move. 
 Friends wait us sorrowing where, hard by, her sires 
 Sleep in the marbled minster. 
 
 Festus. Heed them not ; 
 
 Our duty, this day, waits on destiny. Stay. 
 
 Lucifer. Canst thou not spare to these her sister friends, 
 Whose eyes with grief's salt baptism run o'er ; 
 And who, like mourning- starlets, weep the end 
 Of their once brightest, one consoling word ? 
 
 Festus. Their solace mine ; her, sometime, to rejoin, 
 Yv'ere ye not with her when she died ? 
 
 Helen. We were. 
 
 She left us a bequest I dared not then 
 Accept, nor now name, which from our torn hearts 
 A promise drew, as steel magnetic draws 
 Stilly, from out a wound the painful speck. 
 Sometime thou may'st be told ; not now ; not here. 
 
 Festus. For me to know might haply both console. 
 
 Clara. But never wilt thou know it from my lips, 
 
 Helen. She bade all cherish thee for her dear sake 
 And gave thee her forgiveness. 
 
 Festus. Shade divine 1 
 
 Spirit immortal and immaculate, hear I 
 Speak ! 
 
 Elissa. What ! Art mad ? Wouldst have a spirit here ; 
 And in the day's broad eye ? 
 
 Lucifer. Why not ? 
 
 Elissa. Grant, heaven I 
 
 I only swoon. 
 
 Festus. Swoon not, but brace thy heart 
 
 To its true tension. It may have yet to bear 
 Unheard-of woes. Speak, spirit, that our poor ears 
 May grow rich treasuries of thy golden words. 
 
 Elissa. Nay, wish not back from her paternal heavena 
 The pure ghost, self-congratulative ere now, 
 Of its translated life. 
 
 Festus. She comes no more, 
 
 Clara. Nor would she, save by night, when her fair feet, 
 Threading the shiny mazes of the stars, 
 May bring us helpful hope, by grace divine ; 
 Or us perchance premonish. 
 
 Lucifer. Voice is none. 
 
 Festus. No, all is still ; and still right well I know, 
 If aught behoves me learn by token, dream, 
 Vision, or sign, or visitation, I 
 Shall learn it ; and like truly do ye know, 
 Ye heedful, faithful, faultless few, her friends, 
 Where'er her spirit dwells, she dwells in full 
 Regality of nature ; crowned with power, 
 With purity clothed and girt with grace. Her ail 
 Was an immortal's always, I have seen 
 
FE8TU8. 76 
 
 Stars look upon't kinwise, with sympathy. 
 
 Mourner. She was a love-gift heaven once gave to earth, 
 And took again, because unworthy of her. 
 
 Festus. And will ye gaze again upon her face ? 
 Draw nigh. But knee the majesty of death. 
 
 Helen. Speak, thou beloved sister of my heart ! 
 Death shall bo loyal to thee ; nought shall change 
 Thy form's marmoreal loveliness. All truth 
 Thou boldest now, all knowledge. Speak to us ! 
 
 Clara. No : she is silent in the hand of death ; 
 Soothed by his touch perchance, like a young bird, 
 Dreadless ; incredulous of cruel fate. 
 
 Festus. Soul of my spirit 1 
 
 Clara. Oh, ne'er could she have dreamed 
 
 This wrong from thee 1 
 
 Festus. This wrong 1 Hear, Clara, thou 
 
 Whose name stands first in memory, even ere hers, 
 Nor know I when I loved not thee. 
 
 Clara. Be dumb. 
 
 Never until we have mourned for mourning ceased, 
 Shall hope herself have hope to exculpate one. 
 Would dim thy name, sweet spirit, with even a plaint. 
 Thou didst but dip thy wing in life's dark stream. 
 And then away. We, wondering, watched thee whilst. 
 
 Elissa. How hath the white rose conquered on this cheek I 
 This fair and final field of death and life. 
 Life is no match for death, since thou art fled ; 
 The balance of existence is no more. 
 Let us begone, where thou art gone, to heaven. 
 
 Mourner. And yet we weep thee, weep thee, all of us, 
 
 Festus. How could I be so ciniel ? Who but I ? 
 O faithful as the moon-crowned night to heaven, 
 In pure recurrent beauty, is then this 
 Saddest of trysts our last ; or do we yet 
 Meet in the far-off future ? 
 
 Lucifer. Much depends. 
 
 Elissa. And is there no remorse ? 
 
 Clara. No blame ? 
 
 Helen. No wrong ? 
 
 Festus. Why are ye troubled thus, and your clear souls 
 Made for a moment turbid ? Can ye grieve 
 As I grieve ; ye, as I be wretched ? No 1 
 But though it claim no pre-established course. 
 Yet give a torrent place ; 'twere wise ; 'twere wise. 
 
 Mourner. The moment after thou desertedst her, 
 A cloud oame over the prospect of her life ; 
 And I foresaw how evening would set in, 
 Early, and dark and deadly. She was true. 
 
 Festus. Did I not love thee, too ? pure perfect thing ; 
 This is a soul I see and not a body. 
 Gk), beauty, rest for aye ; go, starry eyes. 
 And lips like rose-buds peeping out of eugw ; 
 
70 FE8TU8. 
 
 Go, breast love-filled as a boat's sail with wind, 
 
 Leaping from wave to wave, as leaps a child 
 
 Thoughtless, o'er grassy graves ; go, locks which have 
 
 The golden embrownment of a lion's eye. 
 
 Yet one more look ; farewell and fair I 
 
 All who but loved thee shall be deathless ; nought 
 
 Named, if with thee, can perish. Thou and death 
 
 Have made each other purer, lovelier seem, 
 
 Like snow and moonlight. Never more for thee 
 
 Let eyes be swollen, like streams with latter rains. 
 
 To die were rapture, having lived with thee. 
 
 Thy soul hath passed out of a bodily heaven 
 
 Into a spiritual. Kest 1 pure after love ; 
 
 In love pmre ; pure before. The dead are holy. 
 
 I would I were among them. 
 
 Elissa. Let us hence. 
 
 Festus. Nay, not so soon shalt thou unbless mine eyeSL 
 I turn, and turn, to tread the round of fate. 
 As worshippers of old their templed tombs ; 
 And lo 1 thy tomb, thy temple is my heart. 
 
 Claea, She is no more in man's hand ; but in Gods. 
 
 Festus. So young, so lovely, so adored. Thy years 
 The moon's sweet cycle scarce had run ; and now, 
 Oh I recommence in heaven thy dateless course. 
 Our souls were so, so delicately attuned, 
 A scarce discernible discord, a lapsed word, 
 An inconsiderate eye-glance, thrilled through both, 
 With well-nigh fatal jar. But here, this hour, 
 "What is there I'd not give, again to know 
 That bosom's lightest swell, which once, 'gainst mine, 
 For pardon craved, or granted, a mere thought, 
 Beat like the billows of the sea of life ? 
 And now corruption, come ; sit, sate thyself. 
 This is thy choicest revel. Thou hast been 
 Mine only, if my happier rival, thou 
 Who takest love from the living ; life from beauty ; 
 Beauty from death ; whole robber of the world. 
 
 Helen. Oh, heaven is happier, now that thou art there. 
 Sweetest of human spirits ; and for us 
 Enough, the blessing to have known thee here. 
 
 Festus. It is so. All life's blessings, hope and peace ; 
 And innocence of youth's prime, seem sweeping past, 
 As with the footfall of a cataract, 
 Deathwards, precipitately ; and, fled with these. 
 Thou, happy spirit, f erene, seraphic 1 Yes 1 
 Thou, too, art gone. Upon thy brow, no more 
 Fair seer of lucent eye shall see ray forth 
 The inborn crownlet ; crown of light, or fire. 
 All wear, all work, unweeting, for themselves ; 
 Dew-bright was thine. Closed are thine eyes for aye. 
 Those deep dark jets of light ; that pearly hand, 
 Gifted with whitest witchery to convoke 
 
FE8TU3. n 
 
 Pure beings that oft beset our simshot path, 
 
 Gleams with the seal of power no more. No more 
 
 The star-throned rulers of the spheral heavens 
 
 Obey thy bidding- here. On other shores 
 
 The kings of thought salute thee. Thou hast passed 
 
 The river of judgment ; and the saintly land 
 
 Of the elect immortals guests thee now. 
 
 Wait thou awhile to welcome me : not long ; 
 
 For thought's substantive shadows, things create 
 
 Of our own mind vivific, me forewarn, 
 
 Like eastern slaves, lip-fingered, menacing mutes ; 
 
 Death is at hand. O injudicious judge 1 
 
 Justice unjust ; what though the world must die, 
 
 Was this her time ? What more can time unrol 1 
 
 Can life replevy upon the house of death ? 
 
 Can truth unteach the promise of the passed ? 
 
 Can earth remass the wealth of worship thou 
 
 Outpouredst at my feet, more than numb age. 
 
 That feast of lips, that banquet of the breast, 
 
 Which Paradisal youth yields yet to all ? 
 
 No I thou art gone. Oh, never till the hour 
 
 AVlien the great Gatherer, with his spirit hand. 
 
 Hath cuUed the ripe worlds from the tree of life, 
 
 Shall, sunlike, set in its illumined grave, 
 
 Another head, sacred as thine. Farewell, 
 
 Thou fair perfection of the universe ; 
 
 I turn to thee, the prayer-point of my soul ; 
 
 And swear, by all the hopes I have of death, 
 
 I had more prized all wretchedness with thee. 
 
 Than joy with others. Fate, fulfil thy scheme. 
 
 Demand thy fee. There's nought worth reckoning left. 
 
 The fair configurations of my life 
 
 Are passed away. Lingers alone in air 
 
 One pale malignant star ; that star, mine own. 
 
 LuciFEB. Oh, we'll think better sometime of our stars. 
 Myself, by fits, feel faintly saturnine ; 
 Given to low spirits, and so forth. But have care, 
 Or thou wilt drain these lovely eyes of tears 
 That may be wanted yet. 
 
 Festus. This in thine ear. 
 
 Blood is more easily shed than tears, by men ; 
 And I would spare some heart-drops from their founts 
 When every drop were worth a year of life, 
 Bather than now these glittering traitors fell. 
 But not less be thou silent. Let these weep. 
 It is well that I have mingled tears with theirs. 
 Fair Eden's rivers had one only head, 
 And flowed into one outfall : our great dole. 
 Like vent. And now though I wander round the world, 
 Each step but brings me neai-er to the grave ; 
 Her grave. 
 
 EussA. Perchance, there, we may meet again 
 
78 FESTUa. 
 
 LuciPEB. Lovely lamenters I We again will meet. 
 
 Festus. Peace, soulless spirit. 
 
 LuciPEE. Peace is all I ask. 
 
 Festus. Let Tis rejoice for her ; for ourselves mourn 
 Wholly and separately. Art thou, say, blithe 1 
 Remember whom we grieve for now ; art sad 2 
 Reflect that she is bliss. Mere happiness 
 la of ourselves ; but blessedness, of God. 
 And so, rejoice, fair mourners, and farewell. 
 
 Lucifer. O ignorance sublime 1 innocence I 
 What would I risk to know ye, and believe 1 
 
 Festus. Behold them slowly westering on their way, 
 Like those bright lights that head heaven's starry bier. 
 
 Lucifer. Each hath a special grace. 
 
 Festus. But as I live-~ 
 
 Lucifer. Come, that is cheering ; not a minute since 
 At the last gasp I deemed thee. 
 
 Festus. I marked not 
 
 Their several charms, opponent or in trine. 
 
 Lucifer. Thou shalt love aU at will. 
 
 Festus. I hear thee not. 
 
 Suffer my silence. One thing seems. Henceforth 
 I have a love on earth and one in heaven. 
 
 Lucifer. That I misdoubt not. This is somewhat dull. 
 There is a mean with him as all : and now, 
 Ere my free promises too soon condense 
 Into more gross utilities, it were well 
 I from this sacred and supernal love 
 His heart should alienate ; and, time by time. 
 With some calm passion, or — I have them yet 
 Before me in mine eye, with rival fair 
 Not frivolous, oh no, spiritual, scarce less 
 Serious this next than her late canonized ; 
 More provident of the future, may be, vowed 
 To active piety more, — assort him, till 
 Aweary of all these animate ice-maidens 
 Dolorous, he seek life's luxuries, in despair, 
 And youth's gay converse ; shallow joys, but still 
 Quite deep enough to drown. I'll think on't. 
 
 Festus. Hope I 
 
 Where dwells she ? 
 
 Lucifer. Hope? In dreamland. Sometine soon 
 
 Or never, at the furthest, we'll hie thither, 
 I have seen her house by moonlight, travelling once 
 Nigh Ouranus sixth satellite. Much I fear 
 It is mostly moonshine there, by tremulous wastes 
 Of darkness intervalled. Sweet spot, Hope's home I 
 Grounds ? What it stands on, true ; but everywhere 
 Vast outlooks. All well fenced about with towers, 
 Planned to reach heaven, but failing that, doubt not 
 They touch the feet of clouds. Her closeless gates 
 No janitor haunts, suspicious, souring air 
 
FESTUS. ^ 
 
 ^ith his writhed countenance ; fact, to me, who own 
 A key that opens walls, let alone doors, 
 Less than to some momentous. Strange to note, 
 The house will show all sizes ; now a dwarf 
 Might fork it ; now 'twould guest a giant. 
 
 Festus. Good. 
 
 Perhaps we both may lodge there some fine day. 
 
 LuciPEB. But in the meanwhile more substantial euda 
 Will better suit us. Life hath claims on thee. 
 
 Festus. Living is but a habit ; and I mean 
 To break myself of it soon. 
 
 Lucifer. Too soon thou canst not, 
 When that is preappointed stands achieved. 
 Meantime I half think with thee ; and much grieve 
 Men heed not of the day, how nigh none knows, 
 "Which brings the consummation of the world. 
 But in mine ear the old machine already 
 Begins to grate. They would not credit warning-, 
 Or I would up and cry, repent I I will. 
 Here's a fair gathering and I feel moved. 
 Mortals, repent I the world is nigh to its end ; 
 On its last legs, and desperately sick. 
 See ye not how it reels round all day long ? 
 
 Boys. Oh ; here's a ranter. Come, here's fun. Amen* 
 I know the church service by heart. 
 
 Bystander. Be off ! 
 
 You'll serve the church by keeping out of it. 
 
 Lucifer. I am a preacher come to tell ye truth. 
 I tell ye too there is no time to be lost ; 
 So fold your souls up neatly, while ye may ; 
 Direct to God in heaven ; or some one else 
 May seize them, seal them, send them — you know whcret 
 The world must end. I weep to think of it. 
 But you, you laugh 1 I knew ye would. I know 
 Men never will be wise till they are fools 
 For ever. Laugh away ! The time will come, 
 When tears of fire are trickling from your eyes. 
 You will blame yourselves for having laughed at rac, 
 I warn ye, men : prepare ; repent ; be saved. 
 I warn ye, not because I love, but know ye. 
 God will dissolve the world, as she of old 
 Her pearl, within his cup, and swallow ye 
 In wrath ; although to taste ye would be poison, 
 And death and suicide to aught but God. 
 Again I warn ye. Save himself who can I 
 Do ye not oft begin to seek salvation ? 
 Yon ? you ? and fail, as oft, to find ? Sink ? Co.cim 7 
 And shall I tell ye, brethren, why ye fail 
 Once and for ever ? why, there is no passed ; 
 And the future is the fiction of a fiction ; 
 The present moment is etemity. 
 It is that ye have sucked corruption from the worhi. 
 
80 FESTU8, 
 
 Like milk from yonr own mothers ; it is in 
 
 Your soul-blood and your soul-bones. Scarcely earth, 
 
 Out of a thousand sons, weans one to heaven. 
 
 Beginnings are alike : it is ends which differ. 
 
 One drop falls, lasts, and dries up, but a drop ; 
 
 Another begins a river : and one thought 
 
 Settles a life, an immortality : 
 
 And that one thought ye will not take to good. 
 
 Now will I tell ye just one other truth : 
 
 Ye hate the truth as snails salt, it dissolves ye, 
 
 Body and soul ; but I don't mind. So, now : 
 
 Up to this moment ye are all, each, what ? 
 
 Suppose I leave you to infer, 'Twill be 
 
 The same, we know, the next day — and the next i 
 
 Till some fine morning, ye will wake in fire. 
 
 Observe, I mince not, I, the truth for ye. 
 
 Belike you think your lives will dribble out, 
 
 As brooks in summer dry up. Let us see I 
 
 Try ; dike them u^ ; they stagnate ; thicken ; scum. 
 
 That would make life worse than death. Well, let go f 
 
 Where are ye then ? for life, like water, will 
 
 Find its last level ; what level ? The grave. 
 
 It is but a fall of five feet after all ; 
 
 That cannot hurt ye ; it is but just enough 
 
 To work the wheel of life ; so work away 1 
 
 Ye may think that I do not know the teims 
 
 And treasures whereupon ye live so high. 
 
 But I know more than most men, modestly 
 
 Speaking. I know I am lost, you too I fear. 
 
 Could God, save by destroying me, me save, 
 
 I ofttimes ask myself, self -tormenting. So, 
 
 With none advantage over you, I have thought 
 
 Rather ye might, perhaps, the f reelier bear 
 
 One in your own state to advise for ye. 
 
 Now don't you envy me, good folks, I pray ; 
 
 Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from hell. 
 
 'Twill be such coals will bum ye, by the way. 
 
 Your other preachers first think they are safe. 
 
 Then run they to and fro to serve ye ; slave, 
 
 Slay themselves well nigh ; sweating like a bone 
 
 TJnburied, alway. I, too, for your sakes. 
 
 But I, alas 1 boast no such perf ectness. 
 
 Nay, I say broadly I am the worst among ye ; 
 
 And God knows I have no need to wrong myself, 
 
 Nor you. I boast not of it, but as truth ; 
 
 It is little to be proud of, credit me. 
 
 What is salvation ? What is safety ? Think ! 
 
 Who wants to know ? Does any 1 
 
 The Ceowd. All of us. 
 
 LuciFEB. Then I will not tell ye. You shall wait until 
 Some angel come and stir your stagnant pouls ; 
 Then plunge into yourselves, and rise redeemed. 
 
FE8TU8, 81 
 
 Oh I bat say you, we are redeemed, long since. 
 
 Our faults condoned, debts cancelled, all. God ran 
 
 One winter eve, the yuletide holidays. 
 
 His pen right down the black accompt, choke full 
 
 Of columned figures, row on row, and smiled ; 
 
 Passed your poor pot-hooks palliative of play ; 
 
 Your sham excuses of mistaken feasts ; 
 
 Sick headaches, paltiy truantries, what not ? 
 
 And ticked ofE all, bills, extras, dues, as paid. 
 
 So ye are new men, you ; most, at least. Look to it ? 
 
 But don't take rights for granted ; nor all said 
 
 Of gospel, gospel : nor because one dies. 
 
 How miserably defunct you would fain not know, 
 
 But a would-be friend, and leaves you all he had, 
 
 His charity, think you e'er forsooth must live 
 
 In lack-nought ease, and unconditioned joy. 
 
 There's not much logic, I can tell ye, there. 
 
 A Voice. You look quite fresh from college. "Who's your coach ? 
 Do spend your long vacation here. 
 
 Lucifer. Our term's 
 
 Not jet quite over. Make the most of chance. 
 Think, lucky for your sakes I'm here. But here 
 Nought tempts my stay. You are unjust. Could I see 
 One hoised for my offence, nor cry, Let go I 
 I did it : punish me ? Indeed not, I. 
 Play fair, now : don't be always crying " Kings I " 
 And think to sneak, unnoted, to the goal. 
 Some odd day, mark me, you'll be caught ; and then — 
 Why then, so much precisely as you have shirked 
 Your proper share, you'll earn worse buffetings, 
 Quit your own forfeits. Sin like demi-gods. 
 If sin ye will ; but pay your scot, like men. 
 Don't run up a huge score, and leave a friend, 
 A mere acquaintance, rather, of whose name 
 You have taken advantage, to pay for you. Tush 1 
 You know heaven's terms, and right and wrong, both know 
 As well as up and down, or north and south. 
 Heed, then, which way you wend. If that way, sure 
 You will one day knock the pole. Don't say, you thought 
 It only led to Babylon ; led to Rome ; 
 Geneva, Jericho, or where not ? please don't. 
 I hate such wriggling fibs. Due north, the pole I 
 Sin leads, as straight, — make no mistake, — to helL 
 Well, come ; you never held that you were saints ; 
 Not even angels, fallen or otherwise ; 
 But, reckoned generally, the race looks up. 
 You improve, you'll swear : advance ; march ; grow less bad ; 
 Less fatuous, less ferocious, every day ; 
 Grind out old flaws in ye ; don't, you say, as once, 
 Roast all who differ from you. Good, but listen. 
 As when some shore-bred urchin, spit o' the brine, 
 Hatched just above high- watermark, first quits 
 
82 FE8TU8. 
 
 His boulder-cumber'd beach, to earn hard bread 
 
 From harder hands ; and eyes, as slips the coast 
 
 From sight, clifP, jetty, his dad's nets, and cot ; 
 
 And, last thing marked, the out-beetling village crag", 
 
 Capped, — ^no, not quite, — with granate toad, or eft 
 
 Hugeous, that creeps, creeps, but ne'er crowns the top ; 
 
 Or stone-struck hag, still irritable, her spell 
 
 Tempestuous muttering o'er rock-chaldron ; years, 
 
 Long years lapsed, he returns : within himself 
 
 All changed ; enriched, mature ; and nearing, views, 
 
 Through something bitterer than the blinding spray, 
 
 Or is't a sudden spume-drift blurrs his sight? 
 
 The unbettered spot : — a few deciduous huts, 
 
 Replaced by sundry of like leaf ; the same, 
 
 Surely the same, wild tangled knot of brats, 
 
 Sun-coiffed, sand-shod ; one missing, who ? the same 
 
 Witch-pot, that never boils, nor will, till earth 
 
 Spouts up again her molten slag ; the same 
 
 Unspeakable monster scaling aye the height 
 
 It fails, footetalled, to reach. So you ; you are. 
 
 Just what you were, just where, as once when I 
 
 First saw ye forty years since ; and next week. 
 
 Or fifty centuries hence, 'twould be all one. 
 
 You are quite the same, in bulk ; a trivial law, 
 
 A surface custom varied, here, as there 
 
 A moss-patch more, or less ; but oh 1 the back 
 
 O' the creature ; oh, the fissurous grin ; the crawl ; 
 
 Identic ; unmistakeable. Zounds I I know ye. 
 
 The Ceowd. And if ye know, what then ? 
 
 LuciFEE. ^YhJ, I'll not say. 
 
 Come, I'll unroll your hearts and read them to ye. 
 'Tis a long strip, Death's ritual. Hear not less. 
 To say ye live is but to say ye have souls. 
 That ye have paid for them and mean to play them, 
 Till some brave pleasure wins the golden stake, 
 And rakes it up to death, as to a bank. 
 Ye live and die on what your souls will fetch ; 
 And all are of different prices ; therefore hell 
 Cannot well bargain for mankind in gross ; 
 But each soul must be purchased, one by one. 
 This it is makes men rate themselves so high : 
 "While truly ye are worth little ; but to God, 
 Ye are worth more than to yourselves. By sin 
 Ye wreak your spite against God ; that ye know ; 
 And knowing, will it. But I pray, I beg. 
 Act with some smack of justice to your Maker, 
 If not unto yourselves. Do 1 It is enough 
 To make the very Devil chide mankind ; 
 Such baseness, such unthankfulness 1 Why he 
 Thanks God he is no worse. You don't do that. 
 I say be just to God. Leave off these airs : 
 Know your place ; speak to God ; and say, for once. 
 
FE8TU8. 
 
 Go first, Lord : take your finger off your eye. 
 
 It blocks the universe and Grod from sight. 
 
 Think ye your souls are worth nothing to God ? 
 
 Are they so small ? What can be great with God f 
 
 The sun and moon he wears on either arm, 
 
 Seals of his sovereignty. "What now, huge men ! 
 
 WTiat will ye weigh against the Lord 1 Youvselves ? 
 
 Bring out your balance : get in, man by man : 
 
 Add earth, heaven, hell, the universe ; that's all, 
 
 God puts his finger in the other scale, 
 
 And up we bounce, a bubble. Nought is great 
 
 Nor small, with God ; for none but he can make 
 
 The atom imperceptible, and none 
 
 But he can make a world : he counts the orbs, 
 
 He counts the atoms of the universe. 
 
 And makes both equal ; both are infinite. 
 
 Giving God honour, never underrate 
 
 Yourselves : after him ye are everything. 
 
 But mind 1 God's more than everything ; he is God. 
 
 And what of me ? No, us ? no 1 I mean the Devil ? 
 
 Why see ye not he goes before both you 
 
 And God ? Men say, as proud as Lucifer ; 
 
 Pray who would not be proud with such a train ? 
 
 Hath he not all the honour of the earth ? 
 
 WTiy Mammon sits before a million hearths, 
 
 "NVhere God is bolted out from every house. 
 
 He'll not forget that. Some day there'll be haply, 
 
 A pretty general eviction. Then, 
 
 Mind me, he'll break your bars and burst your doors, 
 
 Which slammed against him once, and turn ye out, 
 
 Koofless and shivering, 'neath the doom-storm ; heaven 
 
 Shall crack above ye like a bell in fire, 
 
 And bury all beneath its shining shards. 
 
 He calls, ye hear not 1 Lo ! he comes — ye see not. 
 
 No ; ye are deaf as a dead adder's ear : 
 
 No ; ye are blind as never bat was blind. 
 
 With a burning, bloodshot blindness of the heart : 
 
 A swimming, swollen, senselessness of soul. 
 
 Listen. Whom love ye most ? Why, him to whom 
 
 Ye in your turn are dearest. Need I name ? 
 
 Oh no ! But all are devils to themselves ; 
 
 And every man his own great foe. Hell gets 
 
 Only the gleanings ; earth hath the full wain ; 
 
 And hell is merry at its harvest home. 
 
 But ye are generous to sin, and grudge 
 
 The gleaners nothing ; ask them, push them in. 
 
 Let not an ear, a grain of sin be lost ; 
 
 Gather it, grind it up ; it is our bread : 
 
 We should be ashamed to waste the gifts of God, 
 
 Why is the world so mad ? Why runs it thus 
 
 Baving and howling round the imiverse 1 
 
 Because the Devil bit it from the birth I 
 
»* FU8TU8. 
 
 The fault is all with him. Fear nothing-, friends ; 
 
 It is fear which beds the far to-come with fire, 
 
 As the sun does the west : but the sun sets ; 
 
 Well : still ye tremble— tremble, first at light, 
 
 Then darkness. Tremble 1 ye dare not believe. 
 
 No, cowards 1 sooner than believe ye would die ; 
 
 Die with the black lie flapping on your lips, 
 
 Like the soot-flake upon a burning bar. 
 
 Be merry, happy if ye can : think never 
 
 Of him who slays your souls nor him who saves. 
 
 There is time enough for that when ye are a-dying. 
 
 Keep your old ways ; it matters not this once. 
 
 Be brave ; ye are not men whom meat and wine 
 
 Serve to remind but of the sacrament ; 
 
 To whom sweet shapes and tantalizing smiles 
 
 Bring up the Devil and the ten commandments ; 
 
 And so on. But I said the world must end. 
 
 I see some old men 'mong ye, and they know, 
 
 Discomfortably enough, the heart in age. 
 
 Lower and lower, like the wintering sun, 
 
 Sets daily, and is troubled more to rise. 
 
 Let them be rather gay to miss earth's end. 
 
 I am sorry ; it is such a pleasant world ; 
 
 With all its faults it is perfect — to a fault ; 
 
 And you, of course, end with it. Now how long 
 
 Will the world take to die ? I know ye place 
 
 Great faith upon death-bed repentances ; 
 
 The suddener the better. I know ye often 
 
 Begin to think of praying and repenting ; 
 
 But second thoughts come, and ye are worse than ever ; 
 
 As over new white snow a filthy thaw. 
 
 Ye do amaze me verily. How long 
 
 Will ye take heart on your own wickedness, 
 
 And God's forbearance 1 Have ye cast it up ? 
 
 Come, now ; the year, and month, day, hour, and minute, 
 
 Sin's golden cycle ? Know ye, pray, how long 
 
 Exactly, heaven will grant ye ; how long God, 
 
 Who when he had slain the world and wasted it, 
 
 Hung up his bow in heaven, as in his hall 
 
 A warrior after battle, will yet bear 
 
 Your contumely and scorn of his best gifts ; 
 
 Man's mockery of man ? But never mind ! 
 
 Some of us are magnificently good, 
 
 And hold the head up high, like a giraffe : 
 
 You, in particular, and you ; and you. 
 
 Good men are here and there, I know ; but then 
 
 You must excuse me if I mention this. 
 
 My duty is to tell it you ; the world, 
 
 Like a black block of marble, jagged v^ith white. 
 
 As with a vein of lightning petrified, 
 
 Looks blacker than without such ; looks, in truth, 
 
 So gross the heathen, gross the Christian too, j*jj^.w4i 
 
FESTUS. 85 
 
 Like the original darkness of void space, 
 
 Hardened. Instead of justice, love, and grace, 
 
 Each worth to man the mission of a God, 
 
 Injustice, hate, uncharitableness, 
 
 Triequal reign round earth, hell's trinity, sure. 
 
 Ye think ye never can be bad enough ; 
 
 Nay, as ye sink in sin ye rise in hope. 
 
 And let the worst come to the worst, you say, 
 
 There always will be time to turn ourselves, 
 
 And cry for half an hour or so, to (Jod : 
 
 Salvation, sure, is not so very hard ; 
 
 It need not take one long ; and half an hour 
 
 Is quite as much as we can spare for it. 
 
 We have no time for pleasui'es. Business ! business ! 
 
 No ! ye shall perish suddenly and unsaved. 
 
 The world shall stand still with a rending jar, 
 
 As though it struck at sea ; or, as when once. 
 
 An arm Titanian, say not whose, but jogged 
 
 By earthquakes, wryed the pole, and o'er the dry 
 
 Poured competitive mains. The nnsleepful sea, 
 
 Moaning and bellowing now round caverned coasts ; 
 
 Now, drawing hard through thirty thousand teeth, 
 
 Upon the shingly shore, his pauseful breath. 
 
 Like some monogamous monster which hath lost, 
 
 Poor fool 1 his mate ; and every rock-hole searched 
 
 By torch of foam-light, dogs her steps with sad, 
 
 Superfluous faithfulness, shall rest at last. 
 
 Nor wist which way to turn him ; ebb nor flow 
 
 No more to choose. All elements as though smote 
 
 With reasonablest disloyalty to man's 
 
 TJsurpful claim, their constrained suit shall cease, 
 
 And natural service ; men their mightiest wont, 
 
 Their meanest use and craft. The halls where parle 
 
 The heads of nations, shall be dumb with death. 
 
 The priest shall dipping, die ; can man save man ? 
 
 Is water God ? The counsellor, wise fool, 
 
 Drop down amid his quirks and sacred lies. 
 
 The judge, while dooming unto death some wretch, 
 
 Shall meet at once his own death, doom and judge. 
 
 The doctor, watch in hand and patient's pulse, 
 
 Shall feel his own heart cease its beats, and fall. 
 
 Professors shall spin out, and students strain 
 
 Their brains no more. Art, science, toil, shall cease, 
 
 Commerce. The ship shall her own plummet seek, 
 
 And sound the sea herself and depths of death. 
 
 At the first turn, Death shall cut off the thief. 
 
 And dash the gold-bag in his yellow brain. 
 
 The gambler, reckoning gains, shall drop a piece : 
 
 Stoop down, and there see death ; look up, there God. 
 
 rhe wanton, temporising with decay. 
 
 And qualifying every line which vice 
 
 Write? bluntly on the brow, inviting scorn, 
 
86 FESTUa. 
 
 Shall pale through plastered red ; and the loose low sot 
 
 See clear, for once, through his misty, o'erbrimmed eye. 
 
 The just, if there be any, die in prayer. 
 
 Death shall be everywhere among your marts ; 
 
 And giving bills which no man may decline, 
 
 Drafts upon heU one moment after date. 
 
 Then shall your outcries tremble amid the stars : 
 
 Terrors shall be about ye like a wind ; 
 
 And fears fall down upon ye like four walls. 
 
 Festus. Yon man looks frightened. 
 
 Lucifer. Then it is time to stop. 
 
 I hope I have done no good. He will soon forget 
 His soul. Flesh soaks it up, as sponge does water. 
 
 The Chowd. He's a mad ranter ; down with him. 
 
 Festus. Let him be 1 
 
 Lucifer. Stand by me, Festus ! and I will by thee. 
 Said I not what they were ? When am I wrong ! 
 Why, heaven and earth ! this is the second time 
 I have run for my life. 
 
 Festus. Nay, nay, come back I I'll see 
 
 These rustics harm thee not : they would chair thee round 
 The market-place, knew they but whom thou art. 
 I'll make it mine to soothe them for a space. 
 Peace, there, my friends ! one minute ; let us pray. 
 Grant us, O God ; that in thy holy love 
 The universal people of the world 
 May grow more great and happy every day ; 
 Mightier, wiser, humbler, too, towards thee. 
 And that all ranks, all classes, callings, states 
 Of life, so far as such seem right to thee, 
 May mingle into one, like sister trees. 
 And so in one stem flourish ; that all laws 
 And powers of government be based and used 
 In good, and for the people's sake ; that each 
 May feel himself of consequence to all, 
 And act as though all saw him ; that the whole, 
 The mass of every nation, may so do 
 As is most worthy of the next to God ; 
 For a whole people's souls, each one worth more 
 Than a mere world of matter, make, combined, 
 A something godlike, something like to thee. 
 We pray thee for the welfare of all men. 
 Let monarchs who love truth and freedom feel 
 The happiness of safety, and respect 
 From those they rule, and guardianship from th66k 
 Let them remember they are set on thrones 
 As representatives, not as substitutes. 
 Of nations, to implead with God and man. 
 Let tyrants who hate truth, or fear the free, 
 Know that to rule in slavery and error, 
 For the mere ends of personal pomp and power, 
 Is such a Bin as doth deseirre a hell 
 
PESTUS, 87 
 
 To itself sole. Let both remember, Lord I 
 
 They are but things like-natured with all nations j 
 
 That mountains issue out of plains, and not 
 
 Plains out of mountoins, and bo likewise kingB 
 
 Are of the people, not the people of kings. 
 
 And let all feel, the rulers and the ruled, 
 
 All classes and all countries, that the world 
 
 Is thy great halidom ; that thou art king, 
 
 Lord, only owner and possessor. Grant 
 
 That nations may now see, it is not kings, 
 
 Nor priests, they need fear so much as themselves ; 
 
 That if tliey keep but true to themselves, and free 
 
 Sober, enlightened, godly ; mortal men 
 
 Become impassible as air ; one great 
 
 And indestructible substance as the sea. 
 
 Let all on thrones and judgment-seats reflect 
 
 How dreadful thy revenge through nations is 
 
 On those who wrong them ; but do thou grant, Lord, 
 
 "When wrong shall be redressed, such change be wrought, 
 
 With clemency judicial, not with hate, 
 
 Nor criminous violence, whereby one wrong 
 
 Translates another ; both to thee abhoiTent, 
 
 The bells of time are ringing changes fast. 
 
 Grant, Lord I that each fresh peal may usher in 
 
 An era of advancement ; that each change 
 
 Prove an effectual, lasting, happy gain. 
 
 And we beseech thee, overrule, God I 
 
 All civil contests to the good of all ; 
 
 All party and religious differences 
 
 To honourable ends, whether secured 
 
 Or lost ; and let all strife, political 
 
 Or social, spring from conscientious aims, 
 
 And have a generous, self -ennobling end, 
 
 Man's good, and thine own glory in view always* 
 
 The best may then fail, and the worst succeed. 
 
 Alike with honour. We beseech thee. Lord 1 
 
 For bodily strength, but more especially 
 
 For the soul's health and safety. We entreat thee 
 
 In thy great mercy to decrease our wants, 
 
 And add autumnal increase to the comforts 
 
 Which tend to keep men innocent, and load 
 
 Their hearts with thanks to thee, as trees in bearing j 
 
 The blessings of friends, families and homes, 
 
 And kindnesses of kindred. And we pray 
 
 That men may rule themselves in faith in God 
 
 In charity to each other, and in hope 
 
 Of their own soul's salvation : that the mass, 
 
 The millions in all nations, may be trained, 
 
 From their youth upwards, in a nobler mode, 
 
 To loftier and more liberal ends. We pray 
 
 Above all things, Lord I that all men be free 
 
 From bondage, whether of the mind or body j 
 
&i^ FEUTU8. 
 
 The bondasfe of religious big-otry, 
 
 And bald antiquity ; servility 
 
 Of thoug-ht or speech to rank and power ; be all 
 
 Free as they ought to be in mind and soul, 
 
 As well as by state-birth right ; and that Mind, 
 
 Time's giant pupil, may right soon attain 
 
 Majority, and speak and act for himself. 
 
 Incline thou to our prayers, and grant, Lord I 
 
 That all may have enough, and some safe mean 
 
 Of worldly goods and honours, by degrees, 
 
 Take place, if practicable, in the fitness 
 
 And fulness of thy time. And we beseech thee 
 
 That truth no more be gagged, nor conscience dungeoned. 
 
 Nor science be impeached of godlessness ; 
 
 Nor faith be circumscribed, which as to thee, 
 
 And the soul's self affairs, is infinite ; 
 
 But that all men may have due liberty 
 
 To speak an honest mind, in every land ; 
 
 Encouragement to study, leave to act 
 
 As conscience orders. We entreat thee. Lord ; 
 
 For man, thy son's divine humanity's sake. 
 
 With all his faults and errors total man's. 
 
 In whose cause all thy prophets, from the first 
 
 Speak, to this last, to take away reproach 
 
 Of aU kinds from thy church ; and all temptation 
 
 Of pomp or power political, that none 
 
 May err in the end wheref or they were appointed 
 
 To any of its orders, low or high ; 
 
 And no ambition, of a worldly cast, 
 
 Leaven the love of souls unto whose care 
 
 They feel propelled by thy most holy spirit. 
 
 Be every church established, Lord 1 in truth. 
 
 Let all who preach the word, by the word live, 
 
 In moderate estate ; and in thy church, 
 
 One, imiversal, and invisible, 
 
 World-wards, yet manifest unto itself, 
 
 May it seem good, dear Saviour, in thy sight, 
 
 That orders be distinguished, not by wealth. 
 
 But piety and power of teaching souls. 
 
 Equalize labour. Lord ! and recompense. 
 
 Let not a hundred humble pastors starve, 
 
 Though true humility now and then may rein 
 
 Power's praacing steed, and churl-bom pride ride down 
 
 Rough-shod, an innocent group, while one or two, 
 
 Throned, mitred, palaced, banquetted, burlesque, 
 
 With worldliest gifts, the holy penury. 
 
 The fastings, the foot- wanderings and the preaching 
 
 Of Christ and his first followers ; such the lot 
 
 Mostly, thy wisdom casts for every son 
 
 Of man, whose soul thou first regeneratest, 
 
 To illume, with light prophetic of the heavens, 
 
 Time's slothful generations. Wake them, Lord I ^- 
 
FESTU8, 
 
 So sanctify man's science that its touch 
 
 Shall all disease cure ; so with truth sincere 
 
 Empower faith's prayer, that rightly made on terms 
 
 By heaven long- since conditioned, at a word, 
 
 Bread may be given for millions at a time. 
 
 Would heaven, thou God ! might'st come again ; earth's life, 
 
 And man's race, of thy spirit reborn, renew ; 
 
 And fixed in air for aye thy cloud of peace. 
 
 "War should be then no more, wrong, want, nor woe. 
 
 But till that perfect advent, grant us. Lord 1 
 
 That all good institutions, orders, claims 
 
 "NVL'^ely and chaiitably proposed, in aid 
 
 Of social, moral betterment and mind's 
 
 World-wide conversion to the eternal truth, 
 
 On thy divine foundation built, of love 
 
 Towards fellow man, of universal peace, 
 
 And service to thee sole, may thiough all lands 
 
 Speed prosperous, and fit daily many a soul 
 
 Humbly to earn its restful seat in heaven : 
 
 May more of such be raised and nobly filled ; 
 
 That thy word may be taught throughout all landa ; 
 
 Thy saving spirit rejoice in all souls saved. 
 
 In virtue of that spirit we dare to name, 
 
 And by that spirit made bold, we ask for good 
 
 And peace to all who peace desire, or seek ; 
 
 We dare to pray for all that live, or die. 
 
 Man dies to man ; but all to thee, God, live. 
 
 We therefore pray thee for these dead to us, 
 
 Man's xmiversal race, in flesh extinct ; 
 
 In spirit immortal, our forbears ; not those 
 
 Alone who died unwitting of all truth, 
 
 But whose souls opening after, like a flower 
 
 In finer air, may compass more than we ; 
 
 Not only for the sage, saint, seer of old 
 
 "WTio saw thy truth but darkly, felt thy light 
 
 But feebly, yet, unfaltering, held the faith. 
 
 That the good God who made all, all decrees, 
 
 Allots and blesses all, in this life, man 
 
 May trust like lovingly for life to come. 
 
 Not only for those faithful wise of yore. 
 
 But for the mass unwise of all times ; now, 
 
 Passed and to come ; who boast not of thy love, 
 
 Nor glory in thy name ; but spurn thy law, 
 
 Nor keep thy precepts ; for the wicked wight 
 
 Who hates thy righteousness ; and for the good 
 
 Who his own preacheth ; for the scomer who 
 
 Despiseth thy humility, most high I 
 
 The ignorant who thy providence misdoubts ; 
 
 The dark inverted soul who sees not thee ; 
 
 The bigot who maligns thee, Lord 1 for all, 
 
 Quick, dead, we ask thy boundless mercy, more 
 
 Than all sin, all defect, as infinite 
 
90 FESTU8. 
 
 O'erlaps all finites. But by us be none 
 
 Condemned ; save those -who, self -condemned, reject 
 
 Thy law ; shall culprits take the judge's seat ? 
 
 Christ's lesson of forgiveness mote not we 
 
 Forget. If they who wrought earth's crov/ning crime 
 
 Were of his intercession worthy. Lord ! 
 
 Of whom shall fellow -sinners, like ourselves, 
 
 Despair? To whom shall mercy hope deny ? 
 
 And we entreat thee, that all men whom thou 
 
 Hast gifted with great minds may love thee well, 
 
 And praise thee, for their powers, and use them moet 
 
 Humbly and holily, and, lever-like. 
 
 Act but in lifting up the mass of mind 
 
 About them ; knowing well that they shall be 
 
 Questioned by thee of deeds the pen hath done. 
 
 Or caused, or glozed ; inspire them with delight 
 
 And power to treat of noble themes and aims, 
 
 "Worthily, and to leave things low and mean ; 
 
 Of vice and day-lifed folly bom, to die 
 
 Of their own native baseness ; make them know 
 
 Fine thoughts are wealth, for the right use of which 
 
 Men are and ought to be accountable ; 
 
 If not to thee, to those they influence. 
 
 Grant this, we pray thee, and that all who read, 
 
 Or utter, noble thoughts may make them theirs, 
 
 And thank God for them, to the betterment 
 
 Of their succeeding life ; that all who lead 
 
 The general sense and taste, too apt, perchance, 
 
 To be led, keep in mind the mighty good 
 
 They may achieve, and are in conscience bound, 
 
 And duty, to attempt unceasingly 
 
 To compass. Grant us, all -maintaining sire f 
 
 That all the great mechanic aids to toil 
 
 Man's skill hath formed, found, rendered, whether used 
 
 In multiplying works of mind, or aught 
 
 Life's thousand wants to obviate, may avail 
 
 Much to mankind's progressive welfare, now ; 
 
 And in all ages henceforth and for ever. 
 
 Let their effect be, Lord 1 to lighten labour. 
 
 And give more room to mind ; and leave the poor 
 
 Some time for self -improvement. Let not these 
 
 Be forced to grind the bones out of their arms 
 
 For bread, but have some space to think and feel 
 
 Like moral and immortal creatures. God I 
 
 Have mercy on them till such time shall come. 
 
 Look thou with pity on all lesser crimes. 
 
 Thrust on men almost when devoured by want. 
 
 Wretchedness, ignorance, and outcast life. 
 
 Have mercy on the rich, too, who pass by 
 
 The means they hold at hand to fill their minds 
 
 With serviceable knowledge for themselves, 
 
 And fellows j and support not the good cause 
 
FE8TUS, 91 
 
 Of the world's better future. Oh, rewaxd 
 
 All such who do, with peace of heart, and power 
 
 For greater good. Have mercy, Lord ! on each 
 
 And all, for all men need it equally. 
 
 May peace, and industry, and commerce, weld 
 
 Into one land all nations of the world, 
 
 R^kinning those the deluge once estranged. 
 
 Oh 1 may all help each other in good things, 
 
 Mental and moral, and of bodily kind. 
 
 Vouchsafe, kind God ; thy blessing to this isle, 
 
 Speciallj;. May our country ever lead 
 
 The world, for she is worthiest ; and may all 
 
 Profit by her example, and adopt 
 
 Her course, wherever great, or free, or just. 
 
 May all her subject colonies and powers 
 
 Have of her freedom freely, as a child 
 
 Receiveth of its parents. Let not rights 
 
 Be wrested from us, to our own reproach, 
 
 But granted. We may make the whole world free, 
 
 And be as free ourselves as ever, more ! 
 
 If policy or self-defence call forth 
 
 Our forces to the field, let us in thee 
 
 First trust, and in thy name we shall o'ercome ; 
 
 For we will only wage the righteous cause. 
 
 Let us not conquer nations for ourselves, 
 
 But for thee. Lord, who hast predestined us 
 
 To fight the battles of our future age, 
 
 Age to be then of peace, now ; and forestalled 
 
 All meaner aims of victory ; so subdued 
 
 All thought of barbarous glory gained by blood 
 
 Shed, to have done with war before thou comest. 
 
 Or thy dread whisper throug]i the o'erconscious eariih 
 
 Thrilled, stuns all living, and makes live the dead. 
 
 Till then. Lord God of armies, not of stars 
 
 Only, which midst obstructive darkness, man 
 
 Their luminous forts, and so establish Light's 
 
 Dynastic order, self equate with space. 
 
 But wheresoe'er law is ; we, aiming. Lord ! 
 
 Like force of moral rule, and mental trutli, 
 
 And soul-enlightening knowledge, to maintain 
 
 'Gainst freedom's foes, and ignorance, tool and dupe 
 
 Of warful tyranny ; let our foes if such, 
 
 Foes too of marching manhood, before ours 
 
 Have their swords broken, and their cannon burst, 
 
 And their strong cities levelled ; and while we 
 
 War faithfully and righteously, to raise, 
 
 lilake free the peoples we subject and train 
 
 To self -dominion ; dower with law our faith ; 
 
 Civilise, humanize the lands we win 
 
 From savage or from nature, every soul 
 
 Taught truthfully to know thee ; thou, God I 
 
 Wilt aid and hallow conquest, aa of old 
 
d8 FE8TUb. 
 
 Thine own immediate nation's, when it spoiled 
 
 At thy command, the idolatrous realms of earth 
 
 And sacrilegious lands of unbeing gods. 
 
 It may be yet some world-dividing war 
 
 For liberty 'gainst despotry, for truth 
 
 'Gainst falsehood, virtue against vice, shall ask 
 
 And task our forces. But 'fore all we pray 
 
 That all mankind may make one brotherhood, 
 
 And love and serve each other ; that all wars 
 
 And feuds die out of nations ; whether those 
 
 Whom the sun's hot light darkens, or ourselves 
 
 Whom he treats fairly, or the northern tribes 
 
 Whom ceaseless snows and starry winters blench ; 
 
 Savage or civilised, let every race 
 
 Red, black, or white, olive, or tawny-skinned, 
 
 Settle in peace and swell the gathering hosts 
 
 Of souls which worship peace. Oh ! may the hour 
 
 Soon come when all false gods, false creeds, false prophets, 
 
 Allowed in thy good purpose for a time, 
 
 Demolished, the great world shall be at last 
 
 God's mercy-seat, the heritage of a pure 
 
 Humanity, made divine, and the possession 
 
 Of the spirit of comfort and wisdom ; shall all be 
 
 One land, one home, one friend, one faith, one law ; 
 
 Its ruler God, its practice righteousness, 
 
 Its life peace. For the one true faith we pray ; 
 
 There is but one in heaven, and there shall be 
 
 Seeing thou hast said all soul shall know thee one, 
 
 But one on earth, the same which is in heaven. 
 
 Prophesy is more true than history. 
 
 Grant us our prayers, we pray. Lord 1 in the name 
 
 And for the sake of universal man. 
 
 Who thee like Saviour as Creator, holds, 
 
 Over all worlds, one Holy Spirit, God. 
 
 The Ceowd. Amen ! 
 
 Lucifer. Well, friends, we'll sing a hymn ; then part. 
 I give it out, and you sing — all of you. 
 
 Oh ! earth is cheating earth 
 
 From age to age for ever ; 
 She laughs at faith and worth. 
 
 And dreams she shall die never ; 
 Never, never, never ! 
 
 And dreams she shall die never. 
 
 And hell is cursing hell 
 
 From age to age for ever; 
 Its groans ring out the knell 
 
 Of souls that may die never ; 
 Never, never, never ! 
 
 Of souls that may die uci er. 
 
 My bless-ng be upon ye all ; now go ! 
 
FESTU8. 9S 
 
 Festus. Now I propose to Bing another stave, 
 Nor with that demonish malediction end. 
 
 But heaven is blessing heaven 
 
 rrom age to age for ever ; 
 And its thanks to God are given 
 
 For bless that can die never ! 
 Never, never, never ! 
 
 For bless that can die never. 
 
 I wonder what these people make of thee. 
 
 Lucifer. Ay, manner's a great matter, 
 
 Festus. They deserve 
 
 All the rebnke thon gavest them, and more. 
 What mountains of delusion men have reared 1 
 How every age hath bustled on to build 
 Its shadowy mole — its monumental dream 1 
 How faith and fancy, in the mind of man. 
 Have spuriously immingled, and how much 
 Shall pass away for aye, as before yon sun, 
 Lord, he alike, of steadfastness and change, 
 The visionary landscapes of the skies ; 
 The golden capes far stretching into heaven ; 
 The snow-piled cloud crags ; the bright wingM isles, 
 Which dot the deep impassive ocean air, 
 Like a disbanded rainbow, of all hues, 
 Fit for translated fairy's Paradise ; 
 Or as before the eye of musing child, 
 The faces fancy forms in clouds, or fire, 
 Of glowing angel, now ; now, darkening fiend's. 
 Arts, superstition, creeds, philosophy ; this 
 Called natural as material, and so deemed 
 Extrusive of design and God's great ends, 
 Have held in turn man's mind, betrayed and mocked ; 
 Thou, too, vain science, who wouldst level man, 
 Ajid all create with God, thine hour is come ; 
 Thy lips were lined with the immortal lie, 
 And, dyed, with all the look of truth ; men saw, 
 Believed, embraced, detested, cast thee off. 
 Thou wouldst not take in vain God's name. Wouldst take 
 His being into thine apprehension ? No 1 
 Those lights the mom of truth's immortal day, 
 As thou didst falsely swear them, have not all 
 Vanished, the mere auroras of an hour ? 
 Yet didst thou vow to gather up, clear again, 
 The fallen waters of humanity, smoothe 
 The flaw from an eye ; piece even a pounded pearl. 
 
 LuciFEB. I bet she failed. 
 
 Festus. Thank God, I am a man, 
 
 Not a philosopher. 
 
 LuciFEE. Of that brand, oh no : 
 Not a materialist. Another cast, -.s^ 
 
 Science may yet succeed. 
 
 Febtus. She never can. -.^^--j 
 
W FBSTUS. 
 
 Rivers may rot the root of oak fire-bolted ; 
 Revive it, never. 
 
 LuciPEB. True ; for once be gay. 
 
 Festus. Oh, let me to the hills, where none but God 
 Can overlook us ; for I hate to breathe 
 The breaths, and think the thoughts, of other men, 
 In close and crowded cities where the skies 
 Frown like an angry father, mournfully. 
 Oh, but I love the hills ; love loneliness, 
 AUwhere of desert shore, or wold scant-lifed. 
 Where there is nothing else, there is always God, 
 Yes, wearied soon of borough crowds, I love 
 My fellows most at arm's length, not too near ; 
 In the mid distance, somewhat, — nature seems 
 A holier mediatress 'tween God and man. 
 Mean mightier than aught else. But when alone. 
 Braced by life-searching thought, and with the lOTt 
 Of his creations filled, I go to meet 
 Heaven on the hills, my soul I feel expand 
 In sensefulness of Deity, and amidst 
 Star-mimicked snows, indigenous of the skies, 
 Conscious of spirit made capable to accept 
 Celestial hints, and in dim depths of thought, 
 Implunged, of God's perfections infinite, 
 His simple ways I muse, all kind ; him, soul 
 Substantial of the universe, and his ends, 
 Divining better from those goodliest acts 
 In world foundations traceable, than in tomes 
 Named revelative, too oft to his nature false. 
 His boundless bounteousness. And, wotting well, 
 How to be sought he loves, not only in prayer 
 And praise, not only in virtue helped, wrong crushed, 
 But for himself essential, seek betimes, 
 Softly and solitary, nor deem to miss 
 Always the spot surpriseful, where he might 
 Have hidden himself secretive ; there no less 
 Conceivably, than in columned temples ; now, 
 In sea-halls echoing tidal thunders, walled 
 With wave-scooped rock, piled mightily crag on crag. 
 Like masonry of gods ; in chasmy caves, 
 Cool, oozy, unsuspect of brangling crowds, 
 Where ocean oft his white steeds stalls ; impaved 
 With gore-dyed granite, as though God, concern sd 
 For private weal and suffering, had in wrath 
 And very truth, for ravaged lands, and fields 
 Dejwpulated, some pest enorme, hide- winged, 
 Horn-lidded as to his eyes, trode down to death, 
 And drowned in his own poisonous blood, gall-greened i 
 Then, 'neath earth's threshold buried, hot ;— and now 
 Midst woods, O awful woods, ye natural fanes, 
 Whose very air is holy, and we breathe 
 Of God ; he, while we worship, there for us. 
 
FESTUa, S5 
 
 Lucifer. All this done leisurely, and come other thing-s 
 Of like necessity, say, and a green old a^e 
 Waits sweetly both. Had I more faults than one, 
 My favourite failing would be found, I fear, 
 In fondness for society. Much beside 
 Mountains and groves me lure. 
 
 Festus. Ah true ; there's man, 
 
 So rich in wants. 
 
 Lucifer. And woman, wealthier still 
 
 In that particular, seeing she wants just now, 
 To want her master. There are maids I know 
 Look to be asked for yet, ere they grow grey. 
 
 Festus. Oh, but I am put to the ban, this day. 
 
 Lucifer. Let grief 
 
 Weep her eyes dry to their last tear, to-night ; 
 She hath a trick of brightening up, ere morn, 
 Would startle many a ghost, could he but wait. 
 Exile mayhap, who knows ? commute, our time. 
 With such accomplishments as I to thee 
 Own owed, such gifts and potencies as erst 
 Were promised, will be well filled up. Meanwhile 
 It is fit that something more were done for man, 
 By those who aim to benefit him, than aught 
 He now enjoys. Some social Paradise, 
 Some practicable Elysium, canst not plan. 
 Devise, imagine, scheme ? It is scarce my cue. 
 
 Festus. Long have I pondered such. But ne'er while earth's 
 Incongruous nations each, as now, its end 
 Selfish would gain by force or fraud, exists 
 One chance that good men's dreams be verified. 
 Never till peace one-minded sway the whole. 
 
 Lucifer. The sole equality now on earth is death • 
 The rich have ne er enough of everything ; 
 The poor have never enough of anything. 
 I am for judgment : that will settle all. 
 Nothing is to be done without destruction, 
 Death is the universal salt of states ; 
 And blood the base of all things, law and war. 
 Society broken up and well ground down ; 
 The world in short macadamised, might serve ; — 
 The road to hell wants mending. Come away ! 
 
 Festus. But can such peace be attained without all war ? 
 
 Lucifer. Think eo. 
 
 Festus. Who lives to see were surely blessed. 
 
 And now, take note, I climb yon hills. 
 
 Lucifer. Yon hiUs ? 
 
 There's no one, sure, lives there, who — 
 
 Festus. When shall I 
 
 Betnm? 
 
 Lucifeb. ril think. When gone, say's, out of bloom. 
 
FE8TU8. 
 
 YT. 
 
 Our next 
 Adventure seems fair promising, for if be 
 One scene in life whence evil may be ruled 
 Absent, 'tis sure pure early love. But not 
 Love sole, with the world untried before one's eye 
 Eager to search all being, though of gross cares 
 Freed, and in easefullest obscurity lapped 
 Can make soul happy. Doubts of thmgs divine, 
 Generate sponts«->W)usly, or thought inborne 
 By rumour of thv -ft^orld, a& pestful seeds 
 Mist sown, or of spirit in sell forced fellowship 
 From eviller sphere conveyed ; as dominant soul 
 Seer's tranced intelligence shakes, the mind distract. 
 But see love's star now rise, which ere it set. 
 Shall, many a mischance bettered, perfect life 
 And lead to heavenward ; hear of holy ends ; 
 Goaded into man's heart ; and worth of faith. 
 
 Lawn and Parterre — Bridge — Village Church in Diitance — 
 Festus and Clara — Evening. 
 
 Clara. Time ever on the wing, an age it seems, 
 Though but few moons have passed, since here we met. 
 
 Festus. Oh happy are those hills which long, to me, 
 Showed as stem barriers, 'twixt this hapless heart, 
 These hopeless feet, and joy's sojourn ; but cleared 
 Behold. I have found the sacred trust these guards 
 Had to their vales remote, conveyed, thyself. 
 And could the sight of blessedness make blessed, 
 Then were I truly fortunatest of men. 
 As one elect by lightning, consecrate 
 Deathwise to God, true chooser of the slain. 
 Slain, but for ever living with life's lord. 
 I, gladdening in thy dear companionship, 
 All do I can to exalt my soul as thine. 
 To holiest ends and missions thou dost seal, 
 "With force persistent mine much lacks. Too oft 
 There comes the doubt that palters with all faith, 
 And palsies aspiration ; act, nor aim, 
 Nor earnest end in life, which leaves to enjoy. 
 Days are to me of light when I rejoice 
 In earth, man, all things round, and strong belief 
 Rules, as a prevalent wind the world, my mind. 
 The stars instil their virtues in the schemes 
 I muse, so much doth generous reason joy 
 In rich forecasts of full-orbed happiness ; 
 And the all fatherly Deity smiles. Anon, 
 Come surging from afar, dark doubts like wrecks 
 Of forespent storms we deemed we had done with. Wave 
 On wave of darkness, like the shadowy tides 
 Of that tenebrous sea which billowing breaks 
 Boundless on lunar promontories, my soul 
 
FESTUa 97 
 
 O'erfloods ; nought satisfies. All ends seem mixed 
 With means that make for evil ; and if I see 
 God's hand, it is everywhere distinct from things 
 Moulding them not, nor guiding ; least of all 
 The errant soul I know me. 
 
 Clara. How I life's goods, 
 
 Heaven's gifts, health, beauty ; earth's, wealth, culture, love, 
 Are means, not ends. A mind absorbed in means, 
 Means but a mind that's mean, which endless errs. 
 
 Festus. It may be ; nay, 'tis probable. Say, it's true. 
 
 Clara. Let us do more than this. Have noblest ends, 
 Ends which will bear the eye of God, nor flinch. 
 
 Festus. But this means strife. Why should I strive with 
 men? 
 No ends have I to gain that man can give ; 
 Save one ; and that not for myself, but them. 
 
 Clara. But thou I thought hadst highest intents, and these 
 It was that drew my soul to thine, resolved, 
 I deemed, to head the advance of men. And now, 
 Wouldst note at ease the bubble of fountains rise t 
 Number the daisies on the lamb-cropped green ? 
 Or count the maythom's bloomlets as they fall 
 Fragrant in faery showers ? Shall I attune 
 Mine harpstrings, strained into their subtense beam, 
 Luminous and hollow as is a golden flame, 
 To songs commemorate of perfect bliss, 
 Earth now enjoys ; of war, of woe, extinct. 
 Sin, ignorance, penury ? Or, are all these 
 Ills, yet to be o'ermastered ? 
 
 Festus. These be thoughts 
 
 Do scare the spirit that rouses them. 
 
 Clara. May be. 
 
 And sometimes self-love scared, is self-love cured. 
 
 Festus. To know the truth I seek ; self-love's best aim 
 Or soul's worst, know I not. 
 
 Clara. An aim, perchance, 
 
 Attainable, not at once ; but if pursued 
 With single and earnest gaze not doubtful. Men, 
 By bent of spirit or dint of labouring limbs 
 Only their ends gain, or their means to live, 
 None other mean save inspiration is 
 Which coming from above no labour asks 
 Nor can be earned by merit, nor set wilL 
 
 Festus. Perish the thought 1 
 
 Clara. And if earth's inborn strength 
 
 Could e'er unhelped relift her to the stars 
 She left ; it takes a mightier hand than man's 
 Soul to resphere on earth ; yet could she ne'er 
 By native worth claim Heaven as birthright, more 
 Than man make cloudland home. 
 
 Festus. The inheritance 
 
 pf soul, its birth-plac^ death-place may be earth. 
 
 1 
 
88 FE8TU8. 
 
 Our present is doubt's veriest sphere. Who knows 
 With certainty what is ? 
 
 Claea. This know. What comes 
 
 Direct from God, his spirit, allwhere, alway, 
 Is deathless, tireless ; working good for all, 
 In ways unnumbered Souls that luxury love 
 And labour loathe are on their grief ward way. 
 Nature without all effort gravitates. 
 Men worsen naturally. As falls a star 
 Earthwards, so deathwards falls the inactive soul, 
 Or indevote to good, Heaven's counterfoil. 
 Some generous thoughts thou hadst of serving man 
 And aiding higher causes, happier ends. 
 Than all the ages yet had sought, or given. 
 
 Festus. I had, I am cooler. 
 
 Clara. 'Tis my grief. 
 
 Festus. Enough I 
 
 Turn we to things that leave us not in the end 
 Inconsolable. It is joy to know the day 
 Is filling up with feelings that will last 
 Memorially, all life. 
 
 Claea. All time, we hope. 
 
 Festus. Hope, and its lunes, its tides, to their very heaifc, 
 Ebbed out, with me are at dead water. Come 1 
 Let us consider deeplier, things that be. 
 What happy things to wit, are youth, love, sunshine. 
 How sweet to feel the sun upon the heart. 
 And know it is lighting up the rosy blood. 
 How sweeter still, that sun within the soul. 
 The consciousness of mutual love returned. 
 And with all joyous feelings making shine 
 The dark breast, like a grot with prismy spar. 
 We walk among the sunbeams as with angels, 
 
 Claea. Yes, there are feelings so serene and sweet, 
 Coming and going as with a musical lightness. 
 They more than make amends for their passingness, 
 And balance God's condition to decay ; 
 As yon light fleecy cloudlet floating along. 
 Like golden down from some high angel's wing, 
 So breaks and beautifies the blue, we lose 
 Just reckoning of its imminent end. And love 
 Hath some such very semblance, or I err 
 At large. I wonder if ever I could love 
 Another. How I should start to see on the sward 
 A shadow iwit thine own, arm-linked with mine. 
 
 Festus. Thou art happy, I doubt not. I, if nothing else, 
 I have renewed my youth. 
 
 Clara. When wert thou deemed 
 
 Aged? 
 
 Festus. Oh, thou know'st not then, how old I am ? 
 Know, in my brain I hear each several age 
 Whose gpirit I have by study absorbed, and so 
 
TE8TU8. 
 
 Aisimaated, that morally we are one. 
 
 If not yet accurately defined my years, 
 
 I am of full age ; I have come into mine own, 
 
 By grief -right. Take me, peer of want and woe ; 
 
 Proud thrall of doubt, my liege. 
 
 Claba. Be not so sad, 
 
 Festus. How not be sad, whene'er the astounded mind 
 A moment muses upon the future scope, 
 How vast, of human woe ; to sensitive soul, 
 Enquiring novice of that mapped-out state. 
 Enough to make all thought of Heaven a guile. 
 Here, a few blessM, who have pre-empt all joy, 
 There a mass on mass, in boundless, pauseless pain. 
 It shakes all thought of God, as being just. 
 
 Claba. It shakes our trust in our own reason. Here, 
 We may not know all elements of a sum. 
 Untold, intangible, only partly worked, 
 Unseen, be thou content with proffered heaven. 
 
 Festus. How trust a future so woe- weighted ? 
 
 Claba. Trust 1 
 
 See, here's a garland I have bound for thee. 
 Let me but twine it round thy brow. There, know, 
 Many be kings of men ; rule but thyself, 
 Thou art king of man. 
 
 Festus. The augury I accept. 
 
 Claba. Eagles thou doubtless see'st by flocks. 
 
 Festus. Not so. 
 
 Nay, crown thyself ; it will suit thee better, love. 
 Place wreaths of everlasting flowers on tombs, 
 And deck with fading beauties forms that fade. 
 Put it away, I will no crown save this ; 
 And could the line of dust which here I trace 
 Upon my brow, but warrant dust beneath, 
 Nor more, for aye ; or could this bubble frame 
 Informed with soul, lashed from the stream of life 
 By its own impetus, but burst at once 
 Aiid vanish, part on high and part below, 
 I would be happy, nor would envy death : 
 Could I, like heaven's bolt, earthing, quench myself, 
 This moment would I bum me out a grave. 
 
 Claba. What canst thou mean ? 
 
 Festus. Mean, is there not a fu'-urs 
 
 Passed, present, coming, be accursed, each ? 
 
 Claba. Oh say not so. The future sure is filled 
 With promises. Are not even promises sweet 
 From one we love and trust, of bliss ? And we. 
 Shall we not ever live and love, as now ? 
 
 Festus. For love, I know not : live, I fear we must. 
 
 Claba, And love, because we then are happiest, love ; 
 We shall lack nothing having love ; and we, 
 We must be happy everywhere, we twain, 
 life Bpiritual changeless even as is the sea 
 
 S2 
 
100 FE8TU8, 
 
 In essence, tlioug-h of variablest aspect, 
 
 Rolling the same througli all earth's ages, now 
 
 O'er mountain tops where only snow abides, 
 
 And the sunbeam hurries coldly by, or o'er 
 
 The vales, ship guesting now, of some old world, 
 
 Older than ancient man's, — is ever great. 
 
 Clear, self-continuative, reflecting heaven : 
 
 So then with us. Our natures raised, refined 
 
 From these poor forms, our days shall pass in peace, 
 
 And love ; no thought of human littleness 
 
 Shall cross our high calm souls, shining and pure 
 
 As the gold gates of heaven. Like some deep lake, 
 
 Upon a mountain summit, they shall rest, 
 
 High above cloud and storm of life like this ; 
 
 All peace and power and passionless purity. 
 
 Or, if a thought of other troublous times 
 
 Life niffle f cr a moment, it shall pass 
 
 Like a chance raindrop on its heavenward face, 
 
 Regardless, recordless. 
 
 Festus. Oh I who so wise 
 
 As thou in things incredible, things unknown ? 
 
 Claea. I love to meditate upon bliss to come. 
 Not that I am unhappy here, but given 
 To hope more perfect bliss may rectify 
 The lowlier feeling we enjoy now. Earth, 
 This world, this life is not enough for us ; 
 They are nothing to the measure of our mind ; 
 For place we must have space, for time must have 
 Eternity, and for a spirit godhood. 
 
 Festus. Mind means not happiness ; power not goOcU 
 
 Clara. True bliss 
 Seek thou in holy life ; in charity ; 
 Not the mere passive charity which gives, 
 When asked for, coin ; but, active towards mankind, 
 Embraces every good ; in love to God. 
 "Why should such duties cease, such powers decay ? 
 Being of nature spiritual, boundless scope. 
 And worthy of high uplifted life for ever ? 
 Man, like the airbom eagle who remains 
 On earth only to feed and sleep and die ; 
 But whose delight is on his lonely wing, 
 Y/ide-sweeping as a mind, to force the skies 
 High as the light-fall, ere, begirt with clouda 
 It dash this nether world, immortal man, 
 If measuring not with equal mind the All, 
 His aspirations yet by nought below 
 Divinity coped, up rushes, aye, towards heaven, 
 As his essential home. faith ! most pure 
 Of things ; the world's sole honour 1 
 
 Festus. Come, what's faith ? 
 
 Let us make believe like diildren ; faith ? A tower 
 Beared of rotmd boulders on f ear*s quakef ul bo^ ; 
 
FESTU8. 101 
 
 A belfry built of dominoes on the palm 
 
 A pulse's throb o'erthrows ; — that's my faith. Thine ? 
 
 Proceed ; past doubt thy faith works miracles. 
 
 Work one in me now. Granted I have sinned, 
 
 Sin would I not for ever, I repent. 
 
 I would again be blameless, Heajr, Lord. Speak 
 
 To me thy child in thine invisible likeness, 
 
 The wind, as once of yore. Let me be pure ; 
 
 Let me be once more as an innocent child 1 
 
 As ere the clear could trouble me ; when life 
 
 Was sweet and calm as is a sister's kiss ; 
 
 And not the wild and whiiiwind touch of passion 
 
 Which though it scarcely 'light upon the lips, 
 
 With breathless swiftness sucks the soul out of sight. 
 
 So that we lose all thought of it Speaks he ? No 1 
 
 Though meanest of all possible miracles, 
 
 The vast inviolate silence answers, No. 
 
 Claka. Dost thou dictate to God ? 
 
 Festus. Now God forbid ; 
 
 But faith and all its promises and forms. 
 And, save religion's forms what know men, show 
 On heaven's part, most divine indifference. 
 
 Claea. True faith nor biddeth nor abideth form. 
 Knee bended, eye uplift, with heart prostrate ; 
 Is all man need to render, all God asks. 
 "What to the faith are forms ? A passing speck, 
 A crow upon the sky. God's worship is 
 That only he inspires 1 and his bright words 
 Writ in the red-leaved volume of the heart. 
 Return to him in prayer, as dew to heaven. 
 We quit the right way wantonly, and life 
 Call error : truth we shun, coiirt soulless wit ; 
 And say it is ignorance to adore. Our peace, 
 Our proper good we rarely seek or make, 
 Mindless of soul's beneficent powers and end 
 Immortal, as the pearl is of its worth. 
 The rose its scent, the wave its puiity. 
 
 Festus. My soul is like to die of unproved ends. 
 Quit we these saddening themes. My mind too long 
 Hath been begloomed by them. Sing then ; for I love 
 Thy singing, sacred as the sound of hymns. 
 On some bright sabbath morning, 'mid the moor, 
 Where all is still save praise, of ru.stic saints 
 Gathered beneath some wide-branched oak ; high heaven 
 Sheds on the spirit its kindred cabn ; hard by, 
 The ripening grain its bright beard shakes i' the sun ; 
 The wild bee hums more solemnly ; the deep sky, 
 The fresh green grass, the sunny brook, the sun, 
 All look as if they knew the day, the hour. 
 And felt with man the need and joy of thanks. 
 
 Claba. I cannot sing love's lightsome lays ; thou knowst 
 Who can ; but none who love as I ; for I 
 
102 FESTU8. 
 
 Thy sonl love, and would save it, Festus. Listen : 
 
 Is heaven a place where pearly streams 
 
 Glide over silver sand ? 
 Like childhood's rosy dazzling dreams 
 
 Of some far faery land ? 
 Is heaven a clime where diamond dews 
 
 Glitter on fadeless flowers ? 
 And mirth and music ring aloud 
 
 From amaranthine bowers ? 
 
 Ah no ; not such, not such is heaven ! 
 
 Surpassing far all these ; 
 Such cannot he the guerdon given 
 
 Man's wearied soul to please. 
 For saint and sinner here below 
 
 Such vain to be have proved : 
 And the pure spirit will despise 
 
 Whate'er the sense hath loved. 
 
 There we shall dwell with Sire and Son 
 
 And with the mother-maid, 
 And with the Holy Spirit, one ! 
 
 In glory like arrayed : 
 And not to one created thing 
 
 Shall our embrace be given ; 
 But all our joy shall be in God: 
 
 For only God is heaven, 
 
 Festus. Albeit God only, and our soul, the soul 
 Can save, I know thou lov'st me. I, in vain 
 Strive to love aught of earth or heaven but thee, 
 My first, last, only love : nor shall another 
 Tempt even my steadfast heart. Like far-off stars, 
 A thousand, sweet and bright and wondrous fair, 
 A thousand deathless miracles of beauty, 
 They shall e'er pass at all but eyeless distance, 
 And never mix with thy love, but be lost. 
 All meanly in its moonlight lustrousness. 
 
 Claba. How still the air : the tree-tops stir no leaf 
 But stand and peer on heaven's bright face as though 
 It slept, and they were loving it : they would not 
 Have the skies see them move, for summers, would they ? 
 See that sweet cloud. It is watching us I am certain. 
 What have we here to make thee stay one second 2 
 Away 1 thy sisters wait thee in the west, 
 The blushing bridesmaids of the sun and sea. 
 Would I were like thee, little cloud, to live 
 Ever in heaven ; or, seeking earth, let faU 
 My spirit down only in droplets bright of love ; 
 Sleep on night's dewy lap ; and the next dawn, 
 Back with the sun to heaven ; and so for aye. 
 Sweet cloudlet ! Senseless seeming things there are, 
 One must, almost, count happy. Oft have I watched 
 A gossamer line sighing itself along 
 The air, as it seemed, and so thin, thin and bright, 
 Like a stray threadlet woven in light's gay loom, 
 
FE8TUS. 103 
 
 I have envied it, a moment, followed : oft 
 
 Eye-tracked the sea-bird's down, blown o'er the wave, 
 
 Now touching it, spirited again, aloft. 
 
 Now out of sight, now nigh, till in some bright fringe 
 
 Of streamy foam, as in a cage, at last, 
 
 A playful death it dies ; — and mourned its death. 
 
 Festus. Surely thou earnest straightwise from the stars. 
 And instantly from heaven : thy calm bright thought, 
 Pure as the roseate snow on polar plains, 
 In starlike flakelets falling, stamped with proof 
 Of its high geniture, suits and soothes my mind. 
 O well thou deemest of celestial things. 
 And high-bom duties dedicate to earth. 
 To dignify the day with deeds of good, 
 And eve constellate with all holy thoughts, 
 This is to live, and let our lives narrate, 
 In a new version, solemn and sublime. 
 The grand old legend of humanity. 
 But think'st thou now the futui-e is a state 
 Like positive with this, or e'er can be aught 
 Than another present, toilsome, full of cares, 
 Duties, perhaps ; that soul will e'er be nigher 
 To God than now, save as may seem by mind's 
 Debility, as from weakness of the eye, 
 And the illusions matter forms, j'on sun 
 Shows, hot and wearied, resting upon the hill? 
 It would be well I think to live as though 
 Nought more were to be looked for ; to be good 
 Because it is best here ; and leave hope and fear 
 For lives below ourselves. If earth persuades not 
 That I owe prayer and praise and love to God 
 "VVTiile all I have he gives, will heaven ? will hell f 
 No, neither, never. 
 
 Clara. I think not all with thee. 
 
 Festus. And how, unless worst ills revive, how live ? 
 Shall all defects of mind and fallacies 
 Of feeling be immortalised ? All needs, 
 All joys, all sorrows, be again gone through ? 
 Shall heaven but be old earth created new / 
 Or earth, tree-like, transplanted into heaven, 
 To flourish by the waters of life ; we, still. 
 Within its shade cropping the fruit life-cored ? 
 
 Claea. Not so I Man's nature bodily, soul-wise, both, 
 Shall be changed throughout, exalted, glorified ; 
 And all shall be alike, like God ; and all 
 Unlike each other, and themselves. The earth 
 Shall vanish from the thoughts of those she bore. 
 As have the idols of the olden time 
 From men's hearts of the present. All delight 
 And all desire shall be with heavenly things. 
 And the new nature God bestowed on man. 
 
 Festus. Then man shall be no more man ; but an angel. 
 
10* FESTU8. 
 
 Clara. Have I not heard thee hint of spirit friends, 
 Other than him thou spakest of now 1 
 
 Festus. Thou hast heard. 
 
 Clara. Where are they now ? 
 
 Festus. Ah close, mayhap, at hand. 
 And since now other miracles lack, observe ! 
 I have a might immortal, and can ken 
 "Vl^th angels. Neither sky, nor night, nor earth, 
 Hindors me. Through the forms of things I see 
 Their essences ; and thus, even now, behold, 
 But where I cannot show to thee, far round, 
 Nature herself, the whole effect of God. 
 Mind, matter, motion, heat, time, love, and life, 
 And death, and immortality, those chief 
 And first-born giants all are there, all parts, 
 All limbs of her their mother ; she is all. 
 
 Clara. And what does she ? 
 
 Festus. Produce ; it is her life. 
 
 The three I named last, life, death, deathlessness, 
 Glide in elliptic path round all things made ; 
 For none save God can fill the perfect whole ; 
 And are but to eternity as is 
 The horizon to the world. At certain points 
 Each seems the other ; now the three are one ; 
 Kow, all invisible ; and now, as first, 
 Moving in measured round. To me there seems 
 A mocking, flickering likeness in their mien, 
 To some I know. Not seldom all I see. 
 Or mix with, seems a fleeting masque prepared 
 By some obsequious tyrant, bent on fraud ; 
 Some despot servile to necessity ; who, 
 For his own ends, plants before our inward eyes, 
 TTie eternal phantom of the universe. 
 And bids us call it real. 
 
 Clara. How look these beings ? 
 
 Festus. Ah 1 Life looks gaily and gloomily in turns ; 
 With a brow chequered like the sward, by leaves, 
 Between which the light glints ; and she, careless wears 
 A wreath of flowers ; part faded and part fresh. 
 And death is beautiful ; and sad ; and still. 
 She seems too happy ; happier far than life. 
 In but one feeling, apathy ; and on 
 Her chill white brow frosts bright a braid of snow, 
 
 Clara. And immortality ? 
 
 Festus. She looks alone ; 
 
 As though she would not know her sisterhood. 
 And on her brow a diadem of fire, 
 Matched by the conflagration of her eye, 
 Outflaming even that eye which in my sleep 
 Beams close upon me till it bursts from sheer 
 O'erstrainedness of sight, burns. 
 
 Clara. What do thej t 
 
FE8TU8. 105 
 
 Festub. Each strives to win me to herself. 
 
 Clara. How ? 
 
 Festus. Death 
 
 Opens her sweet white arms and whispers, peace 1 
 Come say thy sorrows in this bosom 1 This 
 Will never close against thee ; and my heart, 
 Though cold, cannot be colder much than man's. 
 Come ! All this soon must end ; and soon the world 
 Shall perish leaf by leaf, and land by land ; 
 Flower by flower ; flood by flood ; and hill 
 By hill away. Oh I come, come ! Let us die. 
 
 Clara. Say that thou vnlt not die 1 
 
 Festus. Nay, I love death. 
 But Immortality, with finger spired, 
 Points to a distant, giant world, and says 
 There, there is my home. Live along with me I 
 
 Clara. Canst see that world ? 
 
 Festus. Just ; a huge shadowy shape . 
 
 It looks a disembodied orb ; the ghost 
 Of some great sphere which God hath stricken dead. 
 Or like a world which God hath thought — not made. 
 
 Clara. Follow her, Festus 1 Does she speak again ? 
 
 Festus. She never speaks but once : and now, in scorn. 
 Points to this dim, dwarfed, misbegotten sphere. 
 
 Clara. Why let her pass ? 
 
 Festus. That is the great world-question. 
 Life would not part with me ; and from her brow 
 Tearing her wreath of passion flowers, she flung it 
 Around my neck, and dared me struggle then. 
 I never could destroy a flower ; and none 
 But fairest hands like thine grace even with me 
 The culling of a rose. And Life, sweet Life, 
 Vowed she would crop the world for me, and lay it 
 Herself before my feet even as a flower. 
 And when I felt that flower contained thyself, 
 One drop within its nectary kept for me, 
 I lost all count of those strange sisters three ; 
 And where they be, I know not. But I see 
 One who is more to me. 
 
 Clara. I know not how 
 
 Thou hast this power and knowledge ; I but hope 
 It comes from good hands, be it not thine own 
 Force, simply of mind. 
 
 Festus. Consider man's employ 
 
 So many years, and his few minutes' thought 
 On heaven, and own 'tis less even, what we do, 
 Than what we think, that fits us for the future. 
 
 Clara. I would we had a little world to ourselvee 
 With none but we two on it. 
 
 Festus. And if God 
 
 Gave us a star, what could we do with it 
 But what we can, without it ? Wish it not. 
 
 s8 
 
106 FESTUa. 
 
 Clara. I'll not wish then for stars ; but I could lore 
 Some peaceful spot where we might dwell unknown ; 
 Where home-bom joys might nestle round our hearts, 
 As swallows 'neath our roofs ; and rustic peace, 
 With blessings of the lowly, innocent aims, 
 And kindliest neighbour charities, blend their sweets, 
 As dewy tangled flowerets midst one bed, 
 In pure and unimpassioned life. 
 
 Festus. a cot 
 
 I know, rose-roofed, by myrtle masked, with porch 
 'Twixt vine and honeysuckle embowered ; near by, 
 A rill, heath-braided, crowned with flowering fern, 
 Repeats the silvery tattle of the hills 
 To rocks, less garrulous, maybe ; pleasance, grove. 
 Silent, while song-birds sleep, with pensive gloom, 
 With florid gaiety, each in turn lure. There, 
 Summer's wild roselet scents the unthoughtf ul step 
 That stills its pleading fragrance ; see, the head 
 Pardoning, peeps up, unharmed The comfortiug hum 
 Of bees is always audible ; allwhere seen 
 Fruit sweetly eagering, that not cloys. There, backed 
 By every sunset, ocean, in his heart, 
 Changeful, but charmful aye, heaven's glories now 
 Liberally redoubles ; now conceals in's breast, 
 Eivallous and agitated. There, friendliest mom 
 Wakes you through latticed jasmtu ; eve, retiring, 
 Breathes of dew-beaded eglantine ; and night 
 Her luminous forces, starwise, oft deploys, 
 To unveil, for sage, so much as sage to unveil 
 3Iay list, the fates premonitory of men. 
 
 Clara. That spot thou knowest ? 
 
 Festus. Oh, yes, my feet could find it, 
 
 Eyes had I none. Sometime, when leisure calls, 
 In virtue's vacancies, we will search it out. 
 
 Clara. Sometime may never come. But know, friend, this I 
 Virtue hath never vacancies. Her hours 
 Have far too solid use to need such strength 
 As any gaps can give. But look ! Day dies 
 Surely, of too much beauty, which becomes 
 In its intensity holy ; and we fear. 
 See how yon cloudlet climbs the welkin, lone, 
 Like lambling strayed from some gold-fleeced flock 
 Low folded by the sun ; now, dimmer grown 
 Upon the aery movmtain's side, and now. 
 High in the infinite heavens, it disappears. 
 Saintlike, updrawn to God's invisible breast, 
 Wherein is rest for all things : thunder, there, 
 Nor the blue flashing levin, dread seraphim 
 And cherubim of storms, complain no more ; 
 But hushed to silence, and their eyes tearblind. 
 Crushed to his fatherly bosom, who now bids forth 
 The elements, now recalls them, sleep in peace ; . .. 
 
FESTU3. 107 
 
 Peace, how divine ; peace love I more than love. 
 
 Festus. The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is lore. 
 Earth's taints, the odours of the skies are in it. 
 "Would man were aught but that he seems, the mean 
 Of all extremes. Brute's death, the deathlessness 
 Of fiend or angel better shows than all 
 Tlie doubtful proj^pects of our painted dust. 
 And all morality can teach is, bear ; 
 And all religion can inspire is, hope. 
 
 Clara. It is enough. Fruition of the fruit 
 Of the great tree of life, is not for earth. 
 Stars are its fruit ; its lightest leaf is life. 
 The heart hatli many a sorrow beside love ; 
 Yea, many as are the veins which visit it. 
 The love of aught on earth is not its chief ; 
 Nor should be. 
 
 Festus. True : inclusive of them all 
 
 There is the one main sorrow, life ; for what 
 Can spirit, dissevered from the great one, God, 
 Feel but a grievous longing to rejoin 
 Its infinite, its author, and its end ? 
 
 Claba, And yet is life a thing to be beloved, 
 And honoured holily, and bravely borne. 
 A man's life may be all ease, and his death, 
 By some dark chance, unthought of agony ; 
 Or, life may be all suffering, and decease 
 A flowerlike sleep ; or, both be full of woe ; 
 Or painless each. Kind as inscrutable. Heaven 
 Blame not for inequalities like these ; 
 They may be justified ; how canst thou know T 
 They may be only seeming ; canst thou judge? 
 They may be done away with utterly 
 By loving, knowing, fearing God the truth. 
 Nor should love's self be grievous ; but though blent 
 With the world's dues, life's future, nature's claims, 
 And though all woes their dolorous kinship prove 
 With it, deem not aught ill, remediless. 
 In aU distress of spirit, grief of heart, 
 In bodily agony or in mental woe, 
 Think thou on God, how patiently, how long, 
 Rebuffs and vain assumptions of the world, 
 He bears with disobedience of his law, 
 Or the poor spite of weak and wicked souls, 
 With men's contempt, their thanklessness, their hate ; 
 Joy even in thine own anguish, suffering 
 Assimilates thee to Him, not less than good, 
 Think upon what thou shalt be. Think on God. 
 Then ask thyself what is the world ? What time ? 
 And all their mountainous inequalities, what ? 
 Are not all equal as dust atomies strown 
 On heaven's bright concave ? 
 
 Festus. What is» thou canst not 
 
108 FE8TU3, 
 
 Persuade me of, to my mucli betterment! 
 As ocean languishing 'neath half-lifed tides, 
 Aroused at length, by kindly urgent gales, 
 His clay clogged deep, root upward, eyes distraught ; 
 Let now some snow-wind, bound to thaw his v/ing 
 Frost feathered, mid more genial climes, but skim 
 The fractious waves ; these, (like to seething glass 
 Glittering, planed down 'neath artist hand) by touch 
 Perfective smoothed, roll lucid ; so my mind, 
 By doubts and passions to its depths perturbed, 
 Thy luminous thought pure, piercing as the breeze 
 From polar stars breathed, calms and clarifies. 
 
 Claea. Farewell ; night darkens fast ; and dewfall chilla. 
 Remember what thou saidst about the stars. 
 
 Festus. Oh, yes ; I of ttimes think of them and thee, 
 Together. 
 
 Claea. True ? 
 
 Festus. Star art not of my life ? 
 
 Claea. Another night, and thou wilt t«ll me more 
 Of wonders thou canst see ? 
 
 Festus. Ay, thou shalt view 
 
 Fearless, celestial marvels. 
 
 Claea. Nay, I dread. 
 
 But hap me weal or woe, I am thine. 
 
 Festus. Farewell ! 
 
 Claea, But helps not now in all those sad extremei 
 Of thought thou feel'st the stranger friend I once 
 One day of grievous memory, met ; expert 
 Of spirit, thou say'st, and other spheres, to arm 
 Thy soul with faultless proofs of God's good rule, 
 Life deathless ? Conquered ill ? 
 
 Festus. With proof of nothing. 
 
 He hath a dispensation, but of doubt ; 
 Which umbers all my days. Spheres are, he avers. 
 To have fared through, but in vision, dream, concept, 
 I say not whether, but where nought which is 
 Shows like conditioned with our earth state ; form, 
 Number, nor colour, are, nor sense, nor time ; 
 But souls migrate in death or life, at will, 
 To vaster firmaments, or orbs minute ; 
 Where odd from equal differs not in kind ; 
 Nor contraries exist ; where well's not ill's 
 Foe ; nor wrong, right's ; as suits us here to hold, 
 And verity proves not proveable. 
 
 Claea. The false one 1 
 
 Truth's one and same in Heaven and every world, 
 Even as on earth ; and good, ill, false and true, 
 All where, as here, opposed ; just and unjust. 
 Earth's moral law, like great, like grave, with those 
 Which sway the spheres, space circling, know imbased 
 On the attributes of God, whose onemostnesfl 
 Essential )uAds the unbounded, which if not 
 
FE8TU8, 109 
 
 All compassablo, yet plainly, by tho soul 
 Using such reason alone as He hath given, 
 Inapprehensible not. Such craze as this, 
 Thy friend's, so contrary to reason shocks 
 The mind, as base and perilous. 
 
 Festus. Not always 
 
 He judges like irrationally. 
 
 Clara. Some day 
 
 Thou wilt regret such teachings as confuse 
 Things foulest with things loveliest. Much I fear 
 Thou wilt have full soon to choose between him and me. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Humanity first must expiate in fit mode 
 
 Proportionate all its sins and shortcoming's, 
 
 Ita mark luissings perverse ; which, conscious of, 
 
 And self convict, the soul its prime step takes 
 
 Towards truth aud goodness absolute, which but found 
 
 Free, if self-pushed, to fall ; if fallen, free 
 
 To rise, in Deity, makes man's last, best joy ; 
 
 Union with God, absorption meaning not ; 
 
 As through death's law, in Deity, soul by soul 
 
 Like stars to the sun's bosom ; till our God, 
 
 Maker and sire of all, becomes, himself. 
 
 The sum of soul and aggregate of things 
 
 Imperfect, mutually opposed, world-soiled, 
 
 By him create ; but, union with his law, 
 
 And pure acceptance on God's part of man's 
 
 Service devout to good, conceived at large, 
 
 Divine love's vast intents elect to share ; 
 
 And help evolve Heaven's grand and pure designs. 
 
 A Mountain Precipice, overlooking a Lake, 
 Festus and Lucifee, 
 
 Festcs. Dark, wretched thoughts, like ice-isles in a stream 
 Clashing, choke np my mind ; and to none end. 
 In spite of all we suffer, and enjoy, 
 AH we believe we know, and deem to have proved, 
 There comes this question, over and over again. 
 Driven into the brain as a pile is driven, 
 "What shall become of us hereafter ? What 
 Id't we shall do ? how Uve ? how feel ? how be ? 
 For, granting us not perfect here, nor ill 
 AMiolly, shall soul be moveless after death ? 
 Progressless / or, self -lured from sphere to sphere ? 
 Or, shall 't be aH one dread remembrance crushed 
 Into a being, unfutured save of woe ? 
 And so conserved by burning memory, poured 
 In on the mind, that wrecking we would save, 
 
110 FESTU8. 
 
 That saving, we -would lose ; life's pettinesses ; 
 Errors, futilities, foibles, trivial caces. 
 That, like the lava-floods which choked of yore 
 The Cyclopgean city, brimming up 
 As with torrent brass, its mighty mould, our own 
 Annoy we perpetuate ? And shall the passed, 
 Thus ruinously perfected, e'er remain ; 
 Our being's grandest moiety, our soul's 
 Capacities for more good and greater power 
 Than life allows, unused ? Or ends death all 
 With his despiteful trick ? Like snow which lies 
 Down wreathed round the lips of some black pit, 
 Thoughts which obscure the truth, accumulate ; 
 "Which solve it, in it lose themselves. There's none 
 True knowledge till descent ; nor then, till after. 
 
 LuciFEE. What shall invert the world's vast order ? bring 
 The future backward on the present ? make, 
 To the finite, visible, truth as 'tis in God ? 
 Men glimpse the light through medium dense or clear, 
 As reason rarifies, and yet so distort 
 That through the smoky glass of sense, the sun. 
 All-blessing, scarce would know himself. So with truth. 
 
 Festus. The truth is known through reason, not through sense. 
 
 Lucifer. What's truth to thee ? 
 
 Festus. Truth's more than all things else 
 
 Beside itself. 
 
 LuciFEE. To every separate soul 
 All men agree 'tis something like diverse. 
 
 Festus. What differences exist are theirs who see ; 
 Not his, at whom they glance. Truth's one and same. 
 As the sun, viewed at sea by thousand eyes. 
 The one same orb shows ; yet no twain of men 
 The identic image gaze, nor the gold waved path. 
 Between ; but every soul a different sight ; 
 Thus, too, each heart turned Godward, shapes its own 
 Divine ideal, and its way towards Him, 
 The infinite light, to each true, but to all 
 Diverse the mean betwixt ; which mean to know, 
 Is truth to question and to answer ; God 
 To hold commune with by ourselves, and feel 
 As power and knowledge summed, united, crowned. 
 For God is truth. 
 
 LuciFEE. Truth question, then, no more. 
 
 Festus. I will not. But the cause I love is truth's j 
 And in it I will fight till death my soul 
 Seize, to embrace it in another world 
 If aid it need. 
 
 LuciFEE. It may be thou shalt faint 
 From weakness on thy way ; thy purpose change ; 
 Or, tempting things, how grievously 1 divert. 
 
 Festus. I boast me not. Grant even thy kind conceit. 
 Still trust I so to profit by earth's act, 
 
FE8TU8, 111 
 
 Thafc, though our sphere, and we (each round himself, 
 His special interests, feelings, hopes) revolve 
 Daily, on our own axis ; and yet earth 
 Just progress makes 'mid space ; so soul behoves, 
 Through life's broad orbit, to advance in light 
 Of moral, spiritual perfectness, towards Govi, 
 Whose shadow upon Heaven's dial falls not back 
 Ever ; nor slacks ; for lo I that shadow is truth. 
 Be it therefore, that I somewhakiSy a^ thou fear'st, 
 Fail on my way ; yet mine intent is firm. 
 Since from the chaos of false faiths my soul 
 Rose, soared to light, and ordered freedom knew, 
 I have a perfect passion for the truth 
 As 'tis, and only is, in God ; the one. 
 Sole infinite ; sole saviour, maker, judge. 
 This faith I live for, for this truth, I trust 
 To hail triumphant round the earth, I'd draw 
 The brand of fate, which reaps, through all the orbs. 
 Their final field. My sword, 'tis true, may burst, 
 Right in mine hand ; my lance snap ; my brave bow 
 Rend in the midst, with life-lorn shriek ; this faith 
 Quit will I ne'er, though elsewise tried, I fell 
 From sphere to sphere, and, mortal sin incurred. 
 Died penally through every star in heaven. 
 
 LuciFEa Mark me, I have a theory, too. But now, 
 One universal scheme of the moral world 
 SuflBces, at a time, i)erchance. Meanwhile 
 Know thou, God trieth all ; he tempteth none. 
 Nor acts without just motive, nor just end. 
 
 Festus. Be it I I am not one who holds his life 
 A conscious crime 'gainst God . he flagrant deed 
 Of others, whose like sin was t^t of being. 
 Nor hold I as a truth all gracious Heaven 
 Gave its own breath to man more sure to make 
 His deperdition in the end. Let life 
 Of life be judge, and its many staged career, 
 And state to be ; till justest mercy draw 
 Towards the eternal good, the errant soul. 
 
 Lucifer. That were to start full fair ; and now, start we 1 
 Life is the one great truth ; the fiction death. 
 Arc never satisfied ? Must thou still and aye 
 Kevel in bootless questings ? 
 
 Festus. Lo 1 I speak 
 
 To heaven, and hell makes bold to answer me. 
 It is better too than silence. What if stars 
 Invoking, earth now, in forbiddance stem, 
 Rumbles her cavemed threatenings at my feet ; 
 Or midnight clouds low muttering in long lines 
 Uncomprehended thunders stun mine ear ? 
 Call'st thou this power ? 
 
 Lucifer. Ton pretty little star 
 
 Shines, methinks on a vasty falsehood. Power 
 
112 FE8TUB. 
 
 Thou hast, o'er finite ag-encies ; but none 
 I tell thee, over the infinite. Confess, 
 Therefore, unjust presumption, and receive 
 Obediently, meet means. What would'st thou do ? 
 
 Festus. I sicken of this mean and shadowy nature, 
 And shallow life ? 
 
 Lucifer, Well, is death deep enough ? 
 
 Festus. Life unetemal's nought. All life's in God« 
 My heart's blood is ia ebb. Not rarely I think 
 The sameness it is, and tameness, of the times 
 Prostrates my spirit. I want an upward change. 
 What do they in the asteroids ? the orb 
 Whose months are years of earth ? But more, I'd see 
 The roots of Ilanokh. earth's metropolis 
 Cain built in Nodland ; see the fanes and tombs 
 Of buried states ; cities of wicked gods. 
 Clouded with profane incense once ; 'neath sea 
 Wlielmed now, washed out, 
 
 LuciFEE, Be it as thou wilt. In time 
 
 Thou shalt know many a mystery, 
 
 Festus. This I know. 
 
 I have been told, and taught, and trained, to pray. 
 I pray ; and have no answer ; may, as well 
 Wrestle with the wind. I feel as might a cloud, 
 Which, on the golden threshold of the skies, 
 Halting and faltering, glancing towards the sea, 
 Fearing to rise, and fainting, men suspect 
 As a spy of night ; when it had but to soar, 
 And with its excellent beauty ravish earth, 
 
 Lucifer, There's reason now and then in similea. 
 Souls are like clouds bom of the infinite stock 
 Of ever-formless essence ; and their race 
 In bounteous beauty run, or ruinous storm ; 
 Objects of love and gladness, or of ill, 
 And wrong and wrath, as nature predicates ; 
 Which having blessed or blasted in their life, 
 Die, and rejoin the universe, to rise 
 Like emanant dew on earth, in future forms 
 Of retributive nature ; she herself, 
 All being, doing, and enduring all. 
 
 Festus. This life is as a question, to which comes 
 No audible answer, save an echo, 
 
 Lucifer. Hark I 
 
 Festus. Where thou art, all is dumb, I would repent. 
 What shall be done to expiate offence ? 
 
 Lucifer. Well ; sacrifice a butterfly to the wind. 
 As soon expect thy lif eflood tide to rise 
 Out of death's baseless depths, depths yet by me 
 Tin plumbed, as look to be wise and innocent both. 
 Heart up ! If virtue loses, wisdom wins. 
 And evil and good, like the light's rays traversed 
 By bandlets black, or chequered chart of old 
 
FE8TU8, . lia 
 
 Soil dedicate, show, originally, immixed. 
 Oh ! I have a long antiquity at my back. 
 
 Festus. Good to extract from evil were not hard, 
 Even to God's limited creatures ; and to wring 
 Out of good, ill, we know thy proper life ; 
 But to transmute all evil into all good, 
 That were the cross of science, and the crown. 
 Such crown I would were mine. 
 
 LuciFEB. It is not in man. 
 
 Set clouds on fire ; go, sow the sea with sand ; 
 Then reap your crop of foam, and gamer it. 
 
 Festus. The time shall come when every evil thing 
 From being and remembrance both shall die, 
 The world one solid temple of pure good, 
 Up-towering, star-crowned, to the feet of God. 
 
 LuciFEE. Never, while thou art conscious of thyself. 
 Never, till from that shining sheaf of days 
 Behind him, God, the annihilator, such name 
 I deepliest in me consecrate, shall pluck 
 Earth's death-day ; and his wrath bum white for aya 
 
 Festus. Let all the air be lightning ; earth, dissolved 
 Through flames aithereal, and the twice-passed gates 
 Of nebular pertransition, back to void. 
 Vanish ; and yet Heaven's ends are still achieved ; 
 God still is good ; still tends o'er those he loves. 
 
 Lucifer. Why, therefore, comes no answer to thy prayers'* 
 
 Festus. It may be, silence is the voice of God. 
 
 LuciFEB. Assent, or dissent ; whether of the twain ? 
 
U4 FESTUS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A man in love sees wonders naturally 
 
 Ours, sole, endowed with gifts abnormal, sLows 
 
 But gradually, his powers, and other makes 
 
 Participable of starry views and scenes, 
 
 And intuitions spiritual, instilled, 
 
 May be, by angel kind, of lovelier worlds 
 
 An ominous parable told by his love, endured, 
 
 Heart-faltenng, he his constancy asserts ; 
 
 Suspectible, so affirmed ; but wait the end. 
 
 And who can thought control ? the wish who shun 
 
 One may not all avert, nor, vexed, evade. 
 
 But Kke a stranger in the street, we meet, 
 
 Nor can aside from, haunts us, that we work 
 
 Our selfish will, and yet please God too ? See 
 
 The first leaf falls of heart's bloom. Discontent 
 
 With nature ; strong desire ; implanted how ? 
 
 Springs up to know all Ufe; the secrets learn 
 
 Of science, and time's truths arcane ; projects 
 
 Evil would fulfil, that this forebusied, soul 
 
 All virtue of self ascription to its lord 
 
 Might lose. The heart, doubt-torn disposed to death, 
 
 End, if e'er writ 'mong possible things, erased. 
 
 Latvn and Parterre; Bridge, and Village Churclu in distance, 
 Evening. Festus and Claba. 
 
 Festus. My soul's orb darkens, as a sudden star 
 Which, heaven and earth of wonder emptied, vranes ; 
 Passes for aye ; eclipsed not ; self -consumed ; 
 All but a cloudy vapour, dimming there 
 The spot in space it once illumed. To myself 
 Once seemed as I a mount of light ; but novsr, 
 A pit of night. I dare no more of this. 
 For like a shipwrecked stranger in a lighthouse 
 I have looked down on the dark and utter side 
 Of such thoughts, from the leeming room of reason, 
 And beheld all beyond black, roaring madness. 
 As earth through all her polar midnight feels 
 The o'erbearing strain which warps her toward the sun, 
 That know I, I mayn't rid me of : the sense 
 Of late success disastrous to be gained 
 At price of present happiness. It is done. 
 Being due but to its end, makes wretched mo 
 Untimely while assured the world itself 
 Shall reconcile to virtue ere I part 
 Unsatiate of the world. Fate 1 ask not sole 
 One sacrifice this heart faithful to me, 
 Nearer which ought to be each hour ; but asked 
 By natural augury or mute charm, no sign 
 To me the incommunicant future yields. 
 More than the silvery mirror of the main 
 Mist veiled, aU imagery of clouds ; nor more 
 Though sought with prayers, foretells me Heaven through those 
 
FESTUa. 115 
 
 Lights and perfections of our nature, God 
 Hath in our faculties spiritually enshrined. 
 But for the day. It is by events we live. 
 Anticipations fool us to the quick. 
 Conjecture, oh prediction, out on ye I 
 Come nearlier to me, Clara, where hast been 
 This long, long hour ? 
 
 Clara. I have been but here, hard by, 
 Planting these flowerets by the brook, that they, 
 Not of felicitous feeling void, their own 
 Or other's, beauties might reflective note 
 In the swift sparkling wave : and odorous gifts 
 Uncustomary, exchange. 
 
 Festus. Ah happy flowers I 
 
 ^Vlien shall I know such calm ? But I have vowed 
 To be joyous in myself, I will be ! See, 
 Here have I lain all day in this green nook, 
 Shaded by larch and hornbeam, ash and yew ; 
 A living well and runnel at my feet ; 
 And wild flowers dancing to some delicate air ; 
 An urn-topped column, and its ivy wreath. 
 Skirting my sight, as thus I lie and look 
 Upon the blue, unchanging, sacred skies ; 
 And thou too, gentle Clara, by my side. 
 With lightsome brow and beaming eye, and bright 
 Long glorious locks which drop upon thy cheek, 
 Like gold-hued cloudflakes on the rosy mom. 
 Oh 1 when the heart is full of sweets to o'erflowiuff, 
 And ringing to the music of its love, 
 Who, not an angel, nor a hypocrite, 
 Could speak or think of happier states? 
 
 Clara. In truth 
 
 I know not ; but a sadness that to me 
 Feels moi-tally prophetic, charged with threats 
 Of severance, coldness, fears of possible death, 
 Change in the faith may be of one of us. 
 And such like sad contingencies, weighs down 
 At times, my heart much ; sadly more than all, 
 Life's promises seem to lighten or lift. 
 
 Festus. Away 
 
 With baleful thoughts ; let joyaunce be our life. 
 Well art thou Clara hight, for soul more bright. 
 More lovely, lives not out of Paradise. 
 
 Clara. I have another name whose element 
 Is tears, they tell me. In the coming time, 
 Who knows ? it may become me more than this. 
 
 Festus. 'Gainst that sad augury set thou my resolve ; 
 And be it fordone for ever. 
 
 Clara. Fate will prove. 
 
 But oh 1 I dread estrangement, dread to dream ; 
 Lest even dreams should wrong thee, and thou act 
 As in time's great betrothals legends tell 
 
116 FE8TU8. 
 
 Man brake his vows, and Nature's holy hearfc 
 
 So suffered, that the wound scarce yet is healed. 
 
 For I have heard how once in the head of days 
 
 Man lived with Nature as his sacred bride 
 
 In union pure and perfect. All her wealth, 
 
 Which God had dowered her with, from the ricli genu 
 
 That starred her sandals, and so lit her path, 
 
 To the predominant virtues of the spheres, 
 
 And latent life of elements, she to him 
 
 For that her lord was poor though potent, gava 
 
 He too with ampler thought and vital truths, 
 
 Strewn in divine disorder like the stars 
 
 "Which to the ignorant mean nought, but to the eye 
 
 Instructed, oft configure boundless good ; 
 
 With deep conceit of mysteries, than all rocks 
 
 Fire-grained, or sea-couched, and all stories fraught 
 
 With wisdom, though in earliest fable penned, 
 
 Elder ; aught worthy knowing was soon known ; 
 
 So sanctified her spirit that she became 
 
 Like a created goddess. Her he taught 
 
 The life in life of faith ; and what on earth 
 
 Was powerfuUest of things, the bended knee 
 
 Which can prevail o'er God ; and how, all years, 
 
 For one clear hour, earth hath the option now 
 
 To rest, and rain all things, but renew 
 
 Her maiden splendour and primeval bliss ; 
 
 Or, bearing fate, like chance of equal meed, 
 
 Secure the starry skies. These mark her thread, 
 
 Amid the hush of heaven, their thronging spheres, 
 
 And her light footsteps, lauding, breathless wait 
 
 Her choice in charmed silence ; she sweeps on ; 
 
 Such holy confidence hath earth in heaven, 
 
 Her surety, that though favourite, nay elect 
 
 Herself now, all shall ultimately be blessed. 
 
 Thus intimate with time's deep things and high 
 
 They reigned like regal angels. To his kin 
 
 All powers and pleasures he promulged ; and rites 
 
 Omen and augury hallowing, rayed round shrines 
 
 Where gods might worship ; and beyond this, fed 
 
 His soul on secret wisdom, as on fasts 
 
 The spirit thriveth. These espoused, inspired 
 
 With their thus harmonized perfections, lived 
 
 Long while in bliss and honour, each content 
 
 With faith-hfe, mythic, vast ; all arts to them, 
 
 All science ancillary. But ah 1 in fine. 
 
 And in the heel of time which treads us down, 
 
 There came a change. The wrong was surely man 'a { 
 
 For nature fails not ; but how none hath shown, 
 
 Whether a too approving smile misled, 
 
 Dim her ascent but brilliant in her fall. 
 
 Some emulative handmaid ; and what first 
 
 Seemed zeal to serve grew rivalry to please ; 
 
Or fair confederates, faultless till they fell, 
 
 Made strength vaunt of his failure ; this we know } 
 
 Imperfect wearieth of perfection sole. 
 
 So he, the keystone loosed of loyalty, 
 
 Lapsed from his liege love, warps his heart from her, 
 
 Beauteous and bounteous as a sovereign saint ; 
 
 And to a thousand lax and painted arts, 
 
 Of barren glitter and unholy wiles. 
 
 Like sultan flaunting through his gay hareem. 
 
 Flowered with the carnal beauties of all climes, 
 
 Vows the idolatrous homage of his lips. 
 
 His home he left, and leaving, lost his rights 
 
 O'er nature's secret treasures ; for in belief 
 
 Walking no more ; nor with the miracles 
 
 Himself of old, divine magician, wrought, 
 
 Faith instigating, and storied in the stars. 
 
 Earth's holy primer, versant ; he, in art's 
 
 Sensuous conceits, or idol imagery. 
 
 Lewd solace seeks ; or else with science, guide 
 
 Guideless, self -nominated, through life's wide maw 
 
 Roams with no saving clue. Keys all in vain, 
 
 He forges ; locks he forces : nought is there. 
 
 In vain conjures the elements ; these are bom 
 
 Of nature's household, and are sworn to her ; 
 
 Ko mysteries, now, soul- thrilling, prodigies all 
 
 Repressed or ridiculed, faith made thrall to fact, 
 
 And life, well nigh sabbatic wholly, once, 
 
 With scarce one hour left of a holy day. 
 
 His tongue hath lost the simple spell of truth. 
 
 Neither believing nor believed, he roams, 
 
 Peaceless and powerless, round his forfeit realm, 
 
 Free, though as outcast. Yea, till he redeem 
 
 His troth to nature, she who was his queen. 
 
 Ere consort, and at her immaculate feet. 
 
 Whiter than moonlit water, shall lay down 
 
 For aye his falsehoods, brave through penitence, rest 
 
 Nor holy home, shall ever again be man's. 
 
 Festus. Neither was nature perfect, as I thought. 
 
 Claba. Oh, is it possible thou hast never known 
 How both derived tiieir fates ? Wilt hear ? 
 
 FESTua Proceed. 
 
 Clara. Yon sun, just set, all seeing, all beseen, 
 Filling the sacred seven and urns of fire, 
 Had, time unlimited, lived debarred of life 
 Soul-hallowed ; when our God, his kind intent 
 Now agefully matured, all things prepared, 
 Incorporated its spirit, and for mate 
 Made him the lucid moon, now rolling round 
 His disk immense, at fatal distance doomed. 
 O Sun, O Moon, king of the skies and queen ; 
 Hero and heroine of the universe, ye ; 
 Lovers divine., daughter and son of God.- 
 
118 FE8TU8. 
 
 How shall a feeble, humble tongue like mine 
 
 Your fall sublime, sad but illustrious lapse, 
 
 To mortal mind convey ? Free were they both 
 
 To roam the skies ; or, if forbidden aught 
 
 Were named in heaven's infinitude, so vast 
 
 Their spatial liberty, no laws they knew. 
 
 But written within the book divine of fate 
 
 One law there was. For ages unconceived, 
 
 They nothing knew but light unshadowed, life, 
 
 Love, liberty, all unbaunted, undeformed 
 
 By one divisive moment, or mere fear ; 
 
 Till, in the plains celestial wandering once. 
 
 And heaven till then no happier orbs embraced, 
 
 A radiant path as though by feet of gods 
 
 Trodden, star-littered, as eai-th with golden seed 
 
 Autumnal, on the gleaner's yellow road, 
 
 They neared ; and where it brightly branched in twain 
 
 One listless moment separated. 
 
 Festus. Alas 1 
 
 Thenceforth one sole tradition streaks time's stream, 
 From the dumb ages of the passed, to truth's 
 Eternal future. Ah yes, I see the sun 
 Unguarded, now betrayed, incarcerate, bound, 
 Blinded, insulted, mocked, to incessant toil 
 Doomed, wageless ; bound ; now, ready to be slain 
 In bonds on heaven's high hill ; yea, see him at last, 
 Smote by the star-bear's wide and wintry woimd, 
 To yearly death, set 'neath the snake-wreathed pole, 
 Hiding in Hadean tomb, his disrayed crown. 
 Tales though traditionary, still hopeless not. 
 For again I see him, majestic and serene, 
 Though suffering from the unkindly detriment 
 Which earthly nature treacherous him hath wrought. 
 He quits the aerial desert ; lifts his head 
 Glad, like wrecked swimmer, shorewards, and salutes. 
 As with a kiss of fire our hallowed earth, 
 The threshold of his old abode the heavens. 
 Once more in heaven, the reascendent light 
 Beams from the burning cross which marks his conrse 
 Triumphant over lessening night ; once more 
 The lord of nature lifts his conquering brow 
 As though from death eteme. 
 
 Claea. These lovers twain 
 For a space though separated, I said, full soon 
 Their spheral courses recombining, came 
 To the vast portal of a luminous fane 
 Guarded by living forms of shapes unknown, 
 But void within. A vacant throne was all 
 The dome sublime contained ; upon whose steps 
 A star-scaled serpent slumbered. Boused 
 
 Festus, No more ! 
 
 If only aa some cloud-giant burled from heaTen^ 
 
FE8TU8, 119 
 
 And vapouring as he falls, thy words to me 
 Seem throatful of time future, and my mind 
 Give sensible unease. Peace will lastly come, 
 Howe'er disseverance loving souls may grieve. 
 The wise well know true union is in heaven, 
 And there alone. 
 
 Claba. It may be. 
 
 Festds. Types of tmth, 
 
 These pressed upon creation through all spheres 
 Material, mental, by God's hand and seal : 
 Truths which time's ear for ages hears with awe 
 Servile, nor knows their meaning ; as earth stunned 
 With thunders, said, of gods ; till some sage earns 
 Heaven's humble secret ; and from man's freed mind 
 The fieiy fiction fades. Think thou »o more 
 On ill-houred apologue or of man or star. 
 Hear rather thou what glads me to have seen 
 Trance-wise, a bright miraculous mystery 
 Of God ; a vision worth all sequels lost 
 Of love estranged. The great reunion hear : 
 The divine marriage of the moon and sun. 
 The sun was flaming high in heaven ; the moon 
 Mighty though mild, and all the saintly stars 
 Beaming at once in grandeur and grave joy. 
 'Twas the world's All-Sire gave the bride. The Hooii^ 
 C!ompanions of her course, f orewrit on high. 
 And all its sevenfold Sanctities, virgin peers, 
 Were her immortal bridemaidens ; and strewed 
 On her white way, by many a mansion lamped 
 With festive radiance, astral wreath, and robe, 
 Girdle, and palm-branch, — palm, sole tree that greena 
 Both heaven and earth, to where in dayless time, 
 Degreeless space, her absolute home, prepared 
 Nigh to the infinite, stood. Struck loud their lyres 
 Of light, the angels ; and to the feet of those 
 Divine ones bowed them, as to spirit and soul 
 Conjoined, of things celestial ; with acclaim 
 Ecstatic, far off hailing each and crying, 
 Welcome thou lord, thou bride of light ; all joy 
 In everlasting being be yours ; and all 
 The universal blesser, God, can give. 
 Choicest of all the chosen, thy love is more 
 To the soul delicious than, to scent, the rose, 
 Purer than is the lily or is the light. 
 Lord of the dawn, thee now the wearied world 
 Awaits ; earth's eyes with watching for this day 
 Fail. The bread's broken and the wine is inured, 
 And all the guests are gathered, from the bounds 
 Of heaven's imperial horizon, to this, 
 Our bright palatial centre. All things serve 
 The hallowing rite, which nature owns with God, 
 And BO they became o&e. la golden ho. 
 
120 FSSTnS 
 
 In silver car came she, down the blue skies. 
 But on return they clomb the clouds in one 
 And vanished in their snow. The marriage feast 
 Was held, throughout the intelligible world, 
 An universal holiday ; all now lumed 
 With light than sunlight softer, than the moon's. 
 Mightier and more intense ; nor since have ceased 
 The great congratulations. Peace and love 
 Pervade the perfect state, and all is bliss. 
 
 Claea. True prophet mayst thou be. But list ; that soimd, 
 The passing-bell, the spirit should solemnise ; 
 For, while on its emancipate path, the soul 
 Still waves its upward wings, and we still hear 
 The warning note, it is known, we well may pray. 
 Festus. But pray for whom ? 
 Claea. it means not. Pray for alL 
 
 Pray for the good man's soul 
 
 He is leaving earth for heaven, 
 
 And it soothes us to feel that the best 
 
 May be forgiven. 
 Festus. Pray for the sinful soul ; 
 
 It fleeth, we know not where ; 
 
 But wherever ib be, let us hope ; 
 
 For God is there. 
 Claea. Pray for the rich man's soul ; 
 
 Not all be unjust, nor vain ; 
 
 The wise he consoled ; and he saved 
 
 The poor from pain. 
 Festus. Pray for the poor man's soul ; 
 
 The death of this life of ours 
 
 He hath shook from his feet ; he is one 
 
 Of the heavenly powers. 
 
 Pray for the old man's soul ; 
 
 He hath laboured long ; throug-h life 
 
 It was battle or march. He hath ceased, 
 
 Serene, from strife. 
 Claea. Pray for the infant's soul ; 
 
 With its spirit crown unsoiled. 
 
 He hath won, without war, a realm ; 
 
 Gained all, nor toiled. 
 Festus. Pray for the struggling soul ; 
 
 The mists of the straits of death 
 
 Clear off ; in some bright star-isle 
 
 It anchoreth. 
 
 Pray for the soul assured ; 
 
 Though it wrought in a gloomy mine, 
 
 Yet the gems it earned were its own, 
 
 That soul's divine. 
 Claba. Pray for the simple soul ; 
 
 For it loved, and therein was wise ; 
 
 Though itself knew not, but ^-ith heaven 
 
 Confused the skie* 
 
FESTUa. 121 
 
 PestUS. Pray for the sage's soul ; 
 
 'Neath his welkin wide of mind 
 Lay the central thought of God, 
 Thought undefined. 
 Pray for the souls of all 
 To our God that all may be, 
 "With forgiveness crowned, and joy 
 Eternally. 
 Claba. Hush I for the bell hath cer.sed ; 
 And the spirit's fate is sealed ; 
 To the angels known ; to man 
 Best unrevealed. 
 Festus. Stay ; what wouldst say, yet ? Something, surely, sad 
 Barkens thy mind's disk. Speak it. 
 
 Claba. Nay, not sad. 
 Some other time. 
 Festus. Why now, love. 
 
 Glasa. Well then thus. 
 
 These vast unearthly powers thou hast, thou saidst 
 I should myself for once partake. Let me 
 Assure my own heart they be innocent. 
 Refused, I judge them evil ; if harmless they, 
 Thou wilt permit me share, or view, the means. 
 This ask I therefore, not from vain desire 
 Of prying into mysteries, nor as test 
 Of words of thine ; for thee believe I truly : 
 But as a proof of love and harmlessness, 
 To view with these same marvelling eyes of mine, 
 The sensible form of some obedient sprite. 
 Or invocable angel. Wilt thou ? 
 
 Festus. Ay. 
 
 Wouldst parley Luniel on her silvery seat, 
 Or the star-tiared Ourania ? for the night 
 Deepens in heaven ; and even now I see 
 Earth's cardinal world-watchers, each prepare 
 His wing to poise for paradisal flight. 
 Relieved by darker angel. 
 
 Glaea. None of these. 
 
 Behold yon star just trembling into light. 
 Hath it a tutelar spirit ? 
 Festus. Yea, every star. 
 
 Glara. Prepare thy spell then. I would see its form ; 
 And hear its voice. 
 
 Festus. Weird charm nor spell I use ; 
 
 Nor incantation. My sole magic, might. 
 Mine only sign, this ; this my spirit ring. 
 Prayer, faith, and a pure heart can draw down heaven. 
 Most surely then one star. Kneel thou with me. 
 Spirit of yon star, that now 
 Peer'st through God's all-clothing sky, 
 List, we need thee here below ; 
 Leave thy mystic light on high, . 
 
122 FE8TUS, 
 
 By the all-compelling name, 
 
 Thought alone, but uttered never ; 
 
 Word in heaven and earth tlie same. 
 
 Come thou now, and come thou ever. 
 
 \Vhat seest thou ? 
 Claea. I perceive a lustrous form, 
 
 Led by a loftier one, of mien serene, 
 The first, as timid, and to earth strange, last 
 Of heavenlies, seems as with a message charged 
 I might be fain to hear. 
 
 Festus. This, luminous soul. 
 
 Reflective, makes as venturing towards myself. 
 
 Claea. Well doth each grace thy potent word. For me, 
 I feel a light, a voiceable power. 
 
 Festus. Arise 1 
 
 What wilt thou oft? 
 Claea. Nought will I. Let it speak. 
 
 Stae Spieit. Man's vital frame of the elements is ta'en 
 And when by sacred energy of mind. 
 He nature's robe can thread by thread unwind. 
 Till death's proved nothingness, show sunwise plain 
 Life's allness ; heaven's true science then ye gain ; 
 Learn how God yearns all souls in bliss to bind ; 
 How, too, through heaven and angels, stars and earth, 
 He, All-Sire, bounteous, wise as just, through light. 
 Light natural and intelligible which springs 
 From Deity, both, eternal outflowings. 
 Spread through the universe of death and birth, 
 Sweet surety of immortal essence brings 
 To spirit advised of reason infinite, 
 And, with the powers, ends, place to it assigned, 
 The ultimate content of all living things. 
 For as even all mere existence hath due worth, 
 End justified by God, who caused to be ; 
 So, knit together by wisest amity. 
 Plant, planet, star, gem, life instinctive, life 
 Angelic ; all, man's soul, by like decree, 
 Teach, each through noble or virtuous quality, 
 The whole with order, goodness, happiness rife, 
 His being and progress through eternity, 
 Know mortal, then, that with or gem or flower. 
 Love's glance, or eai-th-lent ray of farthest star. 
 To such as, faith-led, seek in doubt's dark hour 
 Truth, holiest influences may be, yea are ; 
 And gracious interchange of special power. 
 Claea. Star Spirit, it is so. 
 
 Stae Spieit. Who his soul-path knowi 
 
 To the one universal Spirit, and rightly seeks 
 How long or sore soe'er his struggles, falls, 
 Eelapses, shall, by penitent labour nerved. 
 And in spirit refreshed by heavenly counsels brought 
 By the angel of the day. who gives to God 
 
FE8TU8. 123 
 
 His hourly record of men's deeds, at last, 
 Soul-perfectness enjoy ; his life's long course, 
 With all best purposes strengthened, — as a stream 
 Sea-bound, that with a thousand rills empowered 
 No meet recipient save the main knows ; summed 
 In the eternal Good. 
 
 Festus. So be it with alL 
 
 Claba. Oh I have gazed on spiritual beauty, known 
 Till now, by none. 
 
 Festus. Let both rejoice in truths 
 
 We may hold, loyally, supreme. As when 
 Before some mighty suzerain, crowned of God, 
 A vassal sultan, tribute to discharge, 
 Or homage yield, kneels, resolutely content ; 
 Nations kneel with him, and in his prostrate brow, 
 A peopl:^ of pride kiss dust ; so, I, with all 
 Truth-lovers, though a half-tribe scarce of man, 
 And dizzied yet with soul-light. Spirit, to thee. 
 Thy starry name ? 
 
 Stab Spieit. Pneumaster. 
 
 Claba. Where dost dwell ? 
 
 Stab Spieit. I in my star abide, yet oft in heaven. 
 Not where the precreated seraphs beam. 
 Nor cherubim with countenance winged ; who round 
 Heaven circling, as with whirlwind wings of light, 
 A holy and living throne for the Spirit, form, 
 AU-haUowing ; but where sainted souls attain, 
 Heroical ; chanting now, God's mercy thrice 
 Victorious o'er all worlds sin-treasoned, sworn . 
 
 To evil and vanity ; who the mysteries now 
 Of wisdom hymn, the holy inspiring light 
 Which Deity sows in nature and in stars. 
 Sows, reaps, and in men's souls replants, blessed heirs 
 Of either world, above beloved, below 
 Accepted ; now, with guardian spirits of spheres, 
 Angelical and elect, mixed, I, too, serve ; 
 All orders of each other inpenetrant, now ; 
 For, by the fall of Lucifer, pride's no more. 
 If e'er in heaven ; in heaven, as now on earth, 
 Humility, highest of all virtues, known. 
 I thus at thy behest, immortal, come 
 To obey a mortal's will, thine own, whose sleep 
 The angels guard, with dreams bestarred, of heaven ; 
 Dreams that oft check, with suspensory charm. 
 The wing of wandering heavenly ; dreams I ask 
 To inspire, then, on mine own bright ray return. 
 
 Claba. Holy and lovely sprite, be thou with God. 
 
 Stab Spibit. Cherished of heaven, earth's choicest souls, farewell I 
 
 Claba. Farewell, too, thou. 
 
 LuNiKL. From yon high astral arch 
 
 Gliding, and wide white halo, I and this 
 Bright virtue, holy guardian of an orb, 
 
124 FE8TU8. 
 
 But lately psirented of skies and splieres 
 Me visiting, heard the call ; and prompt to instil 
 In this thy loved one's heart the hallowing truth 
 That life's best chann is brave content with life, 
 Continuously progressive, see us here 
 Such aim, such life be hers, not spare of grief ; 
 Thou man hast mightier ends to attain and serve. 
 But scarce yet ripe for conversance with spheres 
 Not always to be deemed as distant. Know, 
 Means amplest by God's will around thee placed ; 
 Mine own, in time first, haste the hour to attend 
 Thee thither, and the searchful soul to assist 
 By voluntary commission of divine 
 Helps, to conceive the plan of God's great whole ; 
 The reason of its existence ; all its aids 
 Immediate, goodwards tending, and the spread 
 Of sequent joy substantial through all worlds. 
 
 Claka. Gone, gone that star-pure spirit. 
 
 Festus. And, following then, 
 
 Sweet compeer of such astral guests. May night, 
 Earth's healing shadow, from her sphere-bright form 
 Unfolded virtuously, thy soul release 
 From all ill, all defect ; that so through dreams 
 Thou mayst in spiritual Edens taste the joys 
 Anticipative, thou hopest, and feel the sense 
 Of heavenly patterned powers, whereof day owns 
 But a mean, blenched, copy. Go ; I do commend thee 
 To aU good angels, maiden ; and if so much 
 I love thee, yet I dare not as I would. 
 For all the heart most longs for, most deserves, 
 Passes the soonest and most utterly. 
 The moral of the world's great fable, life. 
 All we enjoy seems given but to deceive. 
 Or, may be, undeceive us ; and when done 
 The sum and proved, why work it over again 1 
 They are gone, the heavenly and the earthly. I, 
 As a lone column, cold in sunshine, stand 
 Projecting darkness only, — around me cast 
 Soul-saddening shadows. What indeed is life, 
 This life-world, Lord, wherein thou hast founded me 
 But a bright wheel which bums itself away, 
 Benighting even night with its grim limbs, 
 When it hath done, and fainted into darkness ? 
 For say, we are promised life immortal, how 
 Even then shall we exist ? Hath soul a soul 
 Grosser without and spiritual fine within ? 
 Are grades in deathlessness, and bounds which mark 
 From existence essence, as in our bodily frame 
 Flesh seems but fiction, for it flies away ; 
 While this the gaunt and ghastly thing we bear 
 In us, and hate and fear to look upon. 
 Is truth, in death's dark likeness limned, No more t 
 
FE8TUS, 125 
 
 IX. 
 
 To choose we are forced, but what to choose is ours, 
 
 How providently, how happil}'^ time will prove. 
 
 Comes on a quarrel stormy and stem, if brief, 
 
 'Tween the two foe friends, this, demanding what 
 
 Cannot be ; who immunity shall secure 
 
 'Gainst self-sought evil ? that, safe grants withholding 
 
 And easily made ; their taunts recriminative 
 
 Resultless proven ; as when some summer eve 
 
 Two emulous youths from strict scholastic toil 
 
 Set free by holy night, looser of bonds, 
 
 Rush bounding to the main slumliering hard by, 
 
 With latent light inly aflame, and quick 
 
 Implunged, rise gameful, glittering like star-gods 
 
 Lean arrogant on the lightning wave ; launch each 
 
 'Gainst other, liquid meteors thunderless. 
 
 The foam handsmote in showerlets archwise falls 
 
 Flashing, about them ; neither gains ; so part 
 
 Our disputants ; one, separative, and one 
 
 Adherent more to pact implied, the attack 
 
 On faith contrives through sadd'st inconstancy. 
 
 Heath and Sands hj the Sea. 
 Festus ; and afterivards Lucifer. 
 
 Festus. Love's heart is right, how prescient of all tnith 
 To come, it needs ; nor long my choice o'erdue, 
 'Tween angel incomplete and finished fiend. 
 Say, I have chosen, and freely. What results f 
 I am no mightier master than erewhile ; 
 JiTor favoured more of Heaven, so lavish long 
 Of most oracular promises. I pray ; 
 Pray, only, to be made child-pure. 
 
 LuciFEB. Child-pure I 
 
 A simple enough request I 
 
 Festus. And lo 1 as far 
 
 As infinite silence makes, I learn but this ; 
 God hath refused me. Wilt thou do it for me ? 
 Or shall I end with both ? Remake myself 1 
 
 Lucifer. Remake I Do, if thou canst and wilt. But know 
 It is the one thing I cannot do for thee. 
 Am I not open with thee ? Why choose that ? 
 
 Festus. Because I will it. Thou art bound to obey. 
 
 Lucifer. The world bears marks of mine obedience. 
 Well, 'tis a judgment doubtless. Heaven is just. 
 And justly asking faith of all that all 
 Even ill, served ultimately His own wise ends ; 
 He all disposing, I rebel : and now. 
 In my turn asking nothing but belief 
 Unfaltering, in oneself, say ; I foresee 
 Thou wilt bring to an end the whole, ere well begun, 
 
 Festus. My heart, like an insurgent king no more 
 Brooks the accnstoined tribute. 
 
126 FE8TU8. 
 
 Lucifer. Well, I waive it 
 
 Festus. OfiE 1 I am torn to pieces. Let me try, 
 And gather up myself into a man, 
 As once I was. I cannot live, and live 
 In endless doubt. The day hath lost its charm, 
 The night its holy beauty, when from heart. 
 Even if not whole with God, faith fled, hope fails 
 In warrantable prediction, or conceit 
 Of better things. 
 
 LuciFEK. Oh, if thou lov'st a creed, 
 
 Be pessimist, nihilist, an' thou wilt. There are 
 Who deify the Devil in their own hearts, 
 In dreams of everlasting nothingness. 
 
 Festus. Be what I may, I have done with thee. Dost hear ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thou canst not mean this ? 
 
 Festus. Once for all, I do. 
 
 Lucifer. It is men who are deceivers, not the devil. 
 The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat 
 Oneself. All sin is easy after that. 
 
 Festus. I feel that we must part ; part now or never. 
 And I had rather of the two 'twere now, 
 
 Lucifer. This ie my last walk through my favourite world, 
 And I had hoped, with thee to have enjoyed it. 
 For thee I quitted hell ; for thee my soul 
 Shrivelled and warped into a man ; for thee 
 Shed I my shining wings ; for thee, this mask 
 Of flesh put on, and seeming shape like thine ; 
 This moveless mockery of mere motion, brooked ; 
 And now, by my woe I swear, that were I now, 
 For thy false heart to give my spirit spring, 
 I would scatter soul and body both to hell, 
 And let one bum the other. 
 
 Festus. If thou darest 
 
 Lift but the finger of a thought of ill 
 Against me, and — thou durst not ; mark, we part. 
 
 Lucifer. Well, as thou wilt. Remember soon thy heart 
 Will shed its pleasures, as thine eye its tears ; 
 And both leave loathsome furrows. 
 
 Festus. Thinkest thou 
 
 I will have no pleasures without thee, vain fiend, 
 Who marrest all thou makest, and even more ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thou canst not, save indeed some poor trite thing 
 Called moderation, every one can have. 
 And modesty, heaven knows, is suffering. 
 
 Festus. Now will I prove thee liar, for that word ; 
 And that the very vastest out of hell. 
 With perfect condemnation I abjure 
 My soul ; my nature doth abhor itself 
 For giving thee one moment's right to touch me. 
 Hence, let me pass. I have a soul to spare. 
 
 Lucifer. A hundred, I. He is gone ; though but for a time, 
 He braves me, he 1 even as, on cave-rent coast, 
 
FESTU8. 199 
 
 Hard driven by hurricane blast, the mounting tide 
 
 Like a white wild beast, chased, flashes into its den. 
 
 The assault turns ; heads the attack ; the slackening wave 
 
 Overtakes, and raging, quells for a moment ; soon 
 
 The flood, inveterate victor, rising swift 
 
 With grave equality, smoothens all ; cave, crag. 
 
 Torrent ; who knows strife was, or where ? Meanwhile, 
 
 I have him yet ; for he is mine to tempt. 
 
 Beside the greed of power, and rage to know 
 
 All knowable, there's much magic in life's waste 
 
 On abstruse studies that can benefit none ; 
 
 Ignoring wilfully, so, men's proper end 
 
 Of mutual good. Of such I know, and may, 
 
 Him stimulating with somewhat of all lures, 
 
 Perchance, in time, take due avail. It may be, 
 
 Gold ; gold hath the hue of hell-flames ; but for him 
 
 I will lay some brilliant and delicious lure 
 
 Shall be worth perdition to a seraph. Only, 
 
 Consider beauty's argument, how it tells ; 
 
 Her eye's close reasoning glance ; delicious proof. 
 
 Her fingers clasp ; her lip's soft summing up ; 
 
 The delicate peroration of her sigh ; 
 
 Scarce audible ; visible rather ; oh, I know ; 
 
 Passion, thou exquisite spirit, now's thy turn. 
 
 And if he love not now, while woman is 
 
 All bosom to the young, when shall he love ? 
 
 VTho ever paused on passion's fiery wheel ? 
 
 Or trembling by the side of her he loved, 
 
 Whose lightest touch brings rapture, e'er stopped shOTt 
 
 His eloquent speech, to reckon up his pulse ? 
 
 The car comes ; and they lie and let it come, 
 
 Triumphant. See, it crushes, kills. What then ? 
 
 It holds their god, their idol ; so they die ; 
 
 Doubtless, of joy. And he, he looks not one 
 
 Enough shall fool : but sick of skill in foils 
 
 He flings away, risks ne'er aught less than life. 
 
 Nay, let him look on aught which casts the shadow 
 
 Of a royal pleasure, and methinks he'd dare 
 
 Embrace a bride of flre. Such love is. Arms ! 
 
 To arms ; so, beauty they be thine. For love 
 
 Like nature, is war ; sweet, sensible war. And now, 
 
 Pleasure, shall any part thee from my use 2 
 
 Let wring God's l^htnings from the grasp of God. 
 
 But who his tactics blabs ? Or I an end 
 
 More summary might f orefix. One beauty may 
 
 Be played against other ; and faith, once uncaged, 
 
 Whistles with oh 1 such sweetness, from the bough. 
 
 Most men glide quietly and deeply down. 
 
 Some, and 'tis passion plunges fierceliest men 
 
 Into mine arms, as find they will who will 
 
 Seek hell's abysses like to cataracts I 
 
 And he shall sometime, seek it how he may. 
 
138 FB8TU8. 
 
 But it matters not ; hell bums before them all. 
 
 It is by hell-light which throug^h their life's thick fog 
 
 Glares red and round ; which gone, would leave to grope 
 
 In utter dark these heirs of heaven, they shine 
 
 To each other ; and their chief est deeds achieve. 
 
 The thought revives one. I felt ohilled ; but now, 
 
 Oh for a fan ! all Ophir for a fan. 
 
 X. 
 
 Meanwhile, as nought 
 Had passed, we see them presently, meet. Who knowt 
 How 'tis we reconcile ourselves to evil ? 
 But in this bird's-eye view of earth, and track 
 Of dust stirred through all nations, note we whilst 
 His friend malevolent triumphs by control 
 Of superficial miracles, compassing 
 With him, as day and night, together, earth, 
 Man, shown all forms and fanes of faith as vain 
 Alike, in God's esteem, knows, in truth's light 
 Her total season, sunlight, blossoming here, 
 Here ripening, God his secret will, well-pleased, 
 Sees gradually mature ; domes old or new 
 Misdedicate, or mean, with his presence filled, 
 To himself, the all-shrined One reserves ; \mtil. 
 In all earth's living tabernacles, each land 
 Him worship, God, the untempled, whom all creeds 
 Concelebrate. 
 
 EarWs Surface — An Hour's Ride* 
 LuciPEB and Festus. 
 
 Lucifer. Wilt ride? 
 
 Festus. I'll have an hour's ride. 
 
 LuciFEB. Be mine the r*-eeds ; be me the guide. 
 I something know of alnb^t every land. 
 Their features, products, legends. Understand 
 My lot has been to know men's sagest teachers ; 
 Their prophets, patriots ; and, go to 1— their preachers. 
 Apart from any prejudice, let me add. 
 They are, most of them, indifiEerently bad. 
 
 Festus. Quick 1 I'll not question what you say. 
 
 Lucifer. It's odd I never make a call 
 But it's — Long looked for, after all I 
 
 Festus. Come, call your hacks. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh, they'll not stay. 
 
 It may not be with me as some ; 
 What I invoke is pretty safe to come. 
 Come hither, come hither, my brave black steed ; 
 And thou too, his fellow, hither with speed ; 
 Though not so fleet as the steeds of death. 
 Your feet ftre as sure ; ye have longer breath j 
 
PE8TU8. 129 
 
 Ye have drawn the world without wind or bait, 
 Six thousand years, and it waxeth late ; 
 So take me this once, and again to my home ; 
 And rest ye, and feast ye. 
 
 Festus. They come, they come. 
 
 Tossing- their manes like 
 Pitchy or snowy surge ; and lashing 
 Their tails into a tempest ; their eyes flashing 
 Like shooting thunderbolts. 
 
 LuciFEB. So I know your masters, coltB. 
 Choose. 
 
 Festus. The white one. 
 
 LuciPEE. Be it so, 
 
 Mourning suits me best, we know. 
 Up and away. 
 
 Festus. Hurrah 1 hurrah 1 
 
 Tlie noblest pace the world e'er saw. 
 I swear by heaven, we'll beat the sun, 
 In the longest heat that ever was run, 
 If we keep it up, as we've begun. 
 
 Lucifer. I told thee my steeds were a gallant pair, 
 
 Festus. And they were not thine, they might be divii c. 
 
 Lucifer. Thine is named Ruin, and Darkness mine. 
 
 Festus. Like all of thy deeds, now, that's unfair. 
 
 Lucifer. A civiller and gentler beast 
 Than thine, thou hast never crossed, at least. 
 Now, look around. 
 
 Festus. Why, this is France I 
 
 Nature is here like a living romance. 
 Look at its vines, and streams, and skies ; 
 Its glancing feet, and dancing eyes. 
 
 Lucifer. Well worth no doubt a second glance. 
 But now, one glimpse with nie, from Alp to main I 
 See its wide glebe, with rooted seas of grain 
 Billowing ; its cities bowered mid fruit-groves, here, 
 Such an by Adour, or Dordogne, a life 
 Flowerful all years enjoy ; there, heights cave crowned 
 "Where lordly savage, long ere time could count 
 How many his fingers, or his horn-book knew, 
 Warf ul 'gainst the elements, pampered babe and mate. 
 On the pink silvered pith of fawnling's limbs, 
 And marrow of all he slew ; and there, liis life's 
 Last chase achieved, to the end superb, his neck 
 With rough red amber gorgeous, greatly died. 
 
 Festus. Now, Europe's head, all others scorning ; 
 Model of states, now ; then, their warning ; 
 Strangest of nations, light yet strong. 
 Fierce of heart, and blithe of tongue, 
 Prone to change, so fond of blood, 
 She wounds herself to quaff her own, 
 Shows, aye, a brave, bright, lovely land j 
 And well deserving every good 
 
 1 
 
130 FE8TUS. 
 
 "Whicli others wisli themselves alone ; 
 Could she but herself command. 
 
 LuciFEE. On, on, no more delay 
 Or we'll not ride round the world, all day. 
 
 Festus. Good horse get off the ground. 
 
 LuciFEE. Sit firm ; and if our coursers please 
 We'll take at once the Pyrenees. 
 'Twas bravely leapt. 
 
 Festus. Ay, this is Spain ; 
 
 Europe's last land 'twill e'er remain. 
 Last in the progress of the eai-th 
 To moral light, and liberty ; 
 In all things last, to prove how bigotry 
 Can v/aste all wealth, and banish worth. 
 Studded with many a gloomy shrine 
 \liat is't men worship here, I pray ? 
 
 LuciFEE. This fane, once Moslem, Christian now, 
 Refuses obstinately to say. 
 
 Festus. But mean not men to one, the same, divine, 
 However rites may vary, e'er to bow 1 
 
 Lucifer. Away, nor loiter now for pictured art, 
 Or natural scene by miracle consecrate 
 Or patriot wa'-, mock chivalry or true ; 
 
 Festus. Not where the rivulets flow of life, and death, 
 Nor Tayo's wave gold-footed ? Not even to spy 
 The Iberian vault, where, sire of swords. Tubal 
 Abode, first ; great Alcides, after, famed 
 For magic, marvels necromantic, v/ealth 
 Untold, unhallowed ? 
 
 Lucifer. Not an instant. Come I 
 
 Turn th}^ steed, and slacken rein ; 
 Quick, we must be back again ; 
 O'er the vale hid in the mountain ; 
 O'er the merry forest fountain ; 
 Ruin and Darkness, we must fly 
 O'er crag and rift, swift, swift, swift 
 As the glance of an eye. 
 
 Festus. See here is Italy, the grave 
 Of freedom slaughtered once ; who now 
 Accomplishing her prophet's vow, 
 In resurrection from the dead 
 Uplifts her pure and graceful head. 
 Content to keep her wise and brave. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh, yes ; and here where Alp and Alp Pennine 
 Force, snowy-tented, heaven : shall many a hill. 
 His head with olive wreathed, and his foot bathed 
 In fat of flour, and milk, ring loud with joy, 
 O'er superstition's end. 
 
 Festus. Be not so sad. 
 
 Since worse may happen, even here ; where Tiber, stream 
 Cloud-bom, of empire, rolls ; and that, the Hun, 
 God's scourge, lies coffined under j may so sleep 
 
FESTU8. 131 
 
 One time, all evil beneath love's covering flood I 
 
 Lucifer, And there lies Greece, -whose soul, men say, hafch fled. 
 
 Fkstds. Some god perhaps may come and raise the dead. 
 For birthplace once of gods ; — such, ancient Time, 
 Lord of the golden age ; and he, self-styled, 
 Monarch of space, and all celestial orbs, 
 Heaven, fount of light ; such Zeus the All-living One 
 Hight Saviour ; such the Titan sage and good, 
 Who upon Caucasus sulTered ; birth-place, too, 
 Of something more than gods, philosophy ; 
 Art, science, polity ; what yet thence may come, 
 Wlio knows ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Not I. Time nip3 us. 
 
 Festus. Athens, home 
 
 Of heroes, and of gods Olympus, not 
 To stay our steps, one instant ; not to see 
 Parnassus, heaven of bards, nor Delphi ? 
 
 Lucifer. No I 
 
 What hours have we to waste on gods, or, worse 
 By one degree, — on bards ? let heroes be. 
 Not he of hyperborean fame who earth 
 Rounded, on golden arrow, white winged, was like 
 To sleep more on his path. But see, the isles ; 
 The starry islet wandering with the wind 
 Once, rooted now, the cradle of twins divine ; 
 The Rhodian, sovereign of the sacred sea ; 
 God-nui-sing isles, isles god-entombing ; graves 
 Of demigods who made believe to die. 
 
 Festus. Legends like these, once pleased. 
 
 Lucifer. But now, 
 
 Through yonder dark and winding rift, 
 Pass we, where Mounts Kropakhian lift. 
 Each one, his lightning-scarred, but dauntless brow ; 
 Hard by the sensitive fount, whose wave obeys. 
 With an obsequious volume, the moon's wane. 
 Or increment ; and that funereal spur 
 Of night-hued marble, that round beglooms the air, 
 Lo I there the unpeaceful Euxine, womb and tomb 
 By turns, of many nations ; nor far off 
 Twin cities, keys of empire, mark, blood-dyed, 
 Matched but by Troy of host devouring fame. 
 The pool Ma3otic here, worshipped as god 
 By Scythian, and the Amazon, militant dame. 
 Jealous of the archer breast. 
 
 Festus. Away 1 away I 
 
 From Pesth to Worms seems but a trot. This day 
 I feel the gad. 
 
 Lucifer, But first, a double, I pray, 
 Norward, a time, we'll hold our cours^ 
 Thine I think is the bolder horse. 
 But bear him up with a harder hand ; 
 Eough riding this o'er Swisserlaci. 
 
 % 2 
 
13a FE8TUS. 
 
 Festus. So all have found it, who have tried ; 
 High as their Alps the people's pride, 
 Never to have bowed before 
 The tyrant, or the conqueror. 
 One glance. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh two I'd have thee take. 
 
 Festus. 'Tis Leman ; freedom's sacred lake 
 "Whose shores by genius hallowed, stand 
 Its Eden, and its holy land. 
 
 Lucifer. Away, away ; before thee lie 
 The fields and floods of Germany ; 
 From legendary Rhine, whose bed's 
 The crypt of goblin gold ; hills bare, 
 The Demon Shadow seems to stride ; 
 Demon indeed, a man self magnified ; 
 Hills, forested to their crown ; and where. 
 By virgins' bones and magians' heads, 
 'Gainst harm foref ended, who would dare 
 Attempt it, even of fiendish foes ? 
 To steep Schaffhausen's seething snows. 
 That know not, more than time, repose, 
 To founts Danubian, and their fall 
 Through the Iron Gates, behold it all ! 
 
 Festus. Well I love thee, fatherland ; 
 Sire of Europe as thou art ; 
 Be free, and crouch no more, but stand ; 
 Thy noblest son will take thy part. 
 Oh sooner let the mountains bend 
 Beneath the clouds, when tempests lower, 
 Than nations stoop their sky-corapeering heads 
 In homage to some petty despot's power. 
 The worm which suffers mincing into parts 
 May sprout forth heads and tails, but grows no heart* 
 
 Lucifer. There lies Austria, famous land 
 For fiddlesticks and sword-in-hand. 
 
 Festus. And Poland whom truly unhappy we call j 
 Unable to stand, unwilluig to fall. 
 Forge into swords thy feudal chain ; 
 Smite even the souls of foes in twain ; 
 The shackles have been bound in vain 
 Round England's arms, and we are free, 
 As the souls of our sires in heaven which he. 
 That earth should have so few 
 Men, fathers ! like to you I 
 
 Lucifer. What matter who be free, or slaves 1 
 For all there is one tyranny, the grave's ; — 
 Or freedom, may be. On, on, haste ! 
 
 Festus. What land is yonder wide, white, waste ? 
 
 Lucifer. Ha ! 'tis Russia's gentle realm ; 
 Whose sceptre is the sword, whose crown the helm. 
 Wouldst know the difference 'twixt the bond and free ? 
 'Tis that these will, those will not, liberty. 
 
FESTU8. 133 
 
 Festus. Truly, though strange it sound to some, 
 All government's by rule of thumb. 
 
 LuciFKB. Thou seest, mid air, that darling little cloud ? 
 To us, I think, 'twill be allowed 
 To pass beyond, above, that we may spy 
 Rightly, the things which round us lie ; 
 From Zemlia, and the sistering islets seven. 
 And Thul^ ultimate hiding-place of man, 
 By the hill Altaic, named, in the age of mounds, 
 The Almighty Grod, by Tchudic tribelets, now 
 In the book of nations known no more ; there, still, 
 Higher than lark soars, cloudlet scuds, it stands ; 
 To Volga, holy Boug, and warlike Don ; 
 Divine Alborz, the sacred mountain, site 
 Of the Promethean agony, where he spilled 
 His blood, who, a god, the end of gods foretold ; 
 And Caspian, 'neath whose shallowing wavelets hides 
 God's Eden. 
 
 Festus. rich in secrets I 
 
 Lucifer. See, where towers 
 
 Baghavan upon whose brow the holy flame 
 Incessant bums to Aurmazda, lord of light. 
 
 Festus. I swear by every atom that exists 
 I better love this reckless ride 
 O'er hill and forest, lake and river wide. 
 O'er sunlit plain and through the mountain mist, 
 Than aught thou hast given to mo beside. 
 
 LuciFEK. Kei-man's sands, salt- white, swept by torrid wind,. 
 Plague-breath'd, there, see ; which, roused the desert dust, 
 Blinds man's bright eye, and mummifies his frame. 
 There oft, in arid dell, the cool suhrab 
 Calm mockery of sweet waters, overhung 
 With green and succulent shrubs, you seem to hear 
 The ripple of the waves, delusive lurks ; 
 Shamo and Koom and Kobi, Heraut ; and Balkh, 
 Mother of cities, murally encrowned. 
 Mourning mid endless ruins, but hiding yet 
 His marble thi-one, milkwhite, who of mortals king 
 First reigned : — shall we seek, and fit it for the last ? 
 Now from our Moimt of prospect to descend. 
 Our gryphon flight 'twere better here to end, 
 And solid earth reseek. Bear, downwards, friend. 
 
 Festus. Look, my way I can only read 
 By the sparks from the hoof of my giant steed. 
 
 Lucifer. There, by the gilded roof, which from afar, 
 Gleams o'er the desert like an earth-propped stai', 
 Observe Thibetian L'haysa, templed seat 
 Of an incarnate Deity, where still 
 Mix Shamans and the Lama's lieges ; those 
 Urging the stars, and with sublime deceit 
 Announcing fate ; these, with machine-made prayers. 
 Their transmigrative God, who immanent aye 
 
134 FESTUa 
 
 In your humanity leaps from frame to frame, 
 Deathless, nor ever fails, 
 
 Festus. Still eastwards, ho ! 
 
 See what a long, long track 
 Of dust and fire behind ; 
 For leagues and leagues aback ; 
 And shrill and strong, as we shoot along, 
 Whistles and whirrs, like a forest of firs 
 Falling, the cold north wind. 
 
 Lucifer. "Where art thou now ? 
 
 Festus. In Tartar land ; 
 
 I know by the deserts of salt and sand. 
 Nor aim nor end hath the wandering life, 
 Rest reaps but rest, and strife but strife ; 
 With the nations round they ne'er have mixed, 
 For good or for ill, they stand all still, 
 Their bodies but rove, their minds are fixed. 
 
 LuciFEE. Miss not the chance, Manswara's lake I 
 The sight alone, some pilgrims say, 
 Immortally blessed the soul will make. 
 There, feast thine eyes with it, and away ! 
 
 Festus. Father of fables, much I fear 
 Thy creed more liberal than sincere. 
 
 Lucifer. Pray fancy not what I repeat 
 I have any faith in ; men will cheat 
 Their souls with legends in all ages ; 
 And I, — I'm only eighth of all the sages. 
 Start not, we are on earth's roof ridge here, 
 The watershed of nations, old Pamir. 
 Courage, we need not fall. There, Kokonoor, 
 Sea subterranean, once, of wandering fame ; 
 Here Baikal, holy lake, of mountain meres 
 Vastest ; and those twin pools, named eyes of heaven ; 
 Shelinga, there I 
 
 Festus. Ancestral seat, first home 
 
 Of perfected humanity, ice-chill now. 
 But glowing once with the heart-heat of new earth I 
 Haunt of the young immortal's golden years. 
 Ere nations boasted names, base wile ; 'twas here 
 The primal people of angel seed outlined 
 All human knowledge, taught with difference fine 
 Tongues of diverse roots ; wise, themselves, and free, 
 While culturing earth they charactered the skies ; 
 Their veritable divinity penned in signs 
 Celestial ; and in heaven's constellate lights 
 One natural creed eternized. 
 
 Lucifer. So ? 
 
 Festus. Are these 
 
 The hills sepulchral talked of, sodden with blood 
 Of slaughtered henchman, slave or steed ; far round 
 Earth heaves with tomblets, as the sea with waves ; 
 These old, old wilds Kathayan ; graves as yet 
 
FESTUa 135 
 
 By art or avarice nnprofaned, where lie 
 Kings fameless, of unstoried states, entombed, 
 Forgot, together ? 
 
 LuciPEB. These I And there, not far, 
 
 Lo I mounds even mightier, where two summer days. 
 The shepherd sheik, as a lion of the sands 
 Loan, keen, brown-maned, shall mark both herd and flock 
 Content, depasture ; underfoot, the Khan, 
 God's shadow ; brother, may be, of the moon ; 
 Sole refuge of a wretched world, the whiles 
 He plundered, and to those who asked, gave bread. 
 Sceptred, and swathed within his leaf -gold shroud. 
 Sleeps, doubtless, sound ; though o'er that gacred head 
 Shrill sings the boor ; who, striding round the base. 
 In meditative measurement, and round, 
 Twirls his long lance, contemptuous of the time 
 He lives in ; which but likes great things, not makes. 
 
 Festus. And yonder see old China's wall I 
 Where gods of gold men's minds enthral ; 
 Gods whose gold's their only worth. 
 
 Lucifer. Well, is not gold the god of earth ? 
 
 Festus. Whate'er, meseems, men's gifts ; their clime, 
 Their race, their ends, their lore, their time ; 
 Round earth one universal instinct reigns ; 
 Hear allwhere talked of, gods ; see allwhere fanes. 
 
 Lucifer. True ; here men worship mighty Brahma ; there, 
 Pure Buddh alone is named in prayer ; 
 And yonder, nought save heaven ; 
 Far round, Islam hath conqueror been ; 
 And Moses, and the holy Nazarene, 
 O'er half the world hath driven. 
 
 Festus. I doubt not ; each of variant rite, 
 But all concerned with the Infinite ; 
 The one, the sole ; in whose kind hand 
 Lie all things by him formed or planned, 
 All orbs, all souls ; to none denied. 
 Save hearts of prejudice and pride, 
 Grace, whereby each is sanctified. 
 O'er all the world one faith I deem, 
 Howe'er unlike the expression be, 
 In type, tradition, liturgic. 
 The life immortal, God supreme. 
 
 Lucifer. True ; and to such conclusions como, 
 One might almost have stayed at home. 
 
 Festus. A moment breathe we. Every land, 
 Beside the sacred trivialities 
 Which most the unthinking millions please, 
 Hath its own sanctity. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh, I understand. 
 
 Festus, Here Konfuts6, pure sovereign sage, who realm 
 By realm, truth-seeking, knew but, named but God, 
 Tlae great one, ere all nature, ere all law ; 
 
186 FE8TU8. 
 
 The eternal reason that had arched the heavens ; 
 
 The universal essence ; here Meng-tse 
 
 Superbly taught all acts, — the human soul 
 
 Not self -condemned by inborn pravity, 
 
 To ever-deepening sin, — essays towards good, 
 
 As water aye its level seeks ; here, son 
 
 Of truth, self-styled but truthless, Lao, preached 
 
 Of deathly souls, and pleasure's quest, life's end ; 
 
 And, head of earthly immortals, held that God, 
 
 From whom the world, as life from light, in death 
 
 His gift supreme, eternal life, resumes. 
 
 LuciFEB. But now for time's sake, let us rise 
 A thought superior, towards the skies ; 
 We have but to reach a certain height, 
 And everything appears in sight. 
 See there ; one instant cast thine eye 
 Where, on the world's edge, isle-crowds lie ; 
 Massed nebulous ; great, small, rich in gold, spice, gems ; 
 From far Niphon, where, shrined, the bull of light 
 Butts first, with fiery horn, the egg mundane ; 
 And Miako's gilded idol, hugest he 
 Of hand-wrought gods, sits placid, to the isle 
 Earth's equatorial scores as with a sword, 
 Midstwise, Sumatra, hundred-citied ; seats 
 Palatial boasting built by gods ; to that 
 Irnmensest isle, gold-grounded, whose least rill 
 Outbids Pactolus ; where the tameless tribes 
 
 Witch-queened, who the boomerang hurl, dwell ; and, food-pined, 
 Do mess on their own blood, disseised of sense ; 
 And Tonboro, neighbour dread to the Khersonnese 
 Aureate, there lying like some rich reprobate. 
 With ashes strewn by stern and dominant priest, 
 Ere absolutive of sin : which seen, and cooled 
 Our horses' feet in freshening clouds, away 1 
 
 Festus. Lo I southwards, hey for Hindustan ; 
 The sun beats down both beast and man ; 
 Herb, insect, tree, for life do gasp ; 
 The river reeks, and faints the asp. 
 But blithe are we, and our steeds, I trow, 
 And the mane of mine yet bears the snow 
 Which fell on us, by Caucasus. 
 By the four beasts, but this is warm. 
 
 Lucifer. Away, away, nor stint nor stay, 
 We'll reach the sea before yon storm. 
 
 Festus. Wilt take the sea ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Ay, that will we 
 
 And swim as we ride oirr steeds astride ; 
 Come leap, leap off with me. 
 
 Festus. What 1 from this steep, a mile above the sea ? 
 
 LuoiFEE. Check not thy steed one pace, but patsng glimpse 
 Dhawalageri's pinnacle, earth's supreme, 
 Kailas, Merou, celestial mounts, mid-sky 
 
FE8TU8. 137 
 
 Dazzling their divine denizens ; Ganges, dropped, 
 Tradition tme, from Siva's solar eye ; 
 And Chandra-bagha, holy to the moon ; 
 But not for these, nor where earth's loftiest leap 
 Of waters lights the forest gloom, stay wo 
 Our horse-flight : nay, nor for the Edenic isle. 
 And peak, where foot of Buddh, the last of gods, 
 Or Adam's first of men, impressed, the land 
 Hallows to pilgrims desperate, of all creeds. 
 
 Festus. There is a rapture in the headlong leap, 
 The wedge-like cleaving of the closing deep, 
 A feeling full of hardihood and of power. 
 With which we court the waters that devour. 
 Oh 1 'tis a feeling great, sublime, supreme, 
 Like the ecstatic influence of a dream, 
 To speed one's way, thus, o'er the sliding plain, 
 And make a kindred being with the main. 
 
 LuciFEB. By Chaos, this is gallant sporty 
 A league at every breath ; 
 Methinks if I ever should have to die, 
 I'll ride this rate to death. 
 
 Festus, Away, away upon the whitening tide, 
 Like lover hastening to embrace his bride. 
 We hurry faster than the foam we ride ; 
 Dashing aside the waves which round us cling, 
 With strength liks that which lifts an eagle's wing 
 WTiere the stars dazzle and the angels sing. 
 
 Lucifer. We scatter the spray, and break through the billows, 
 As the wind makes way through the leaves of willows. 
 
 Festus. In vain they urge their armies to the fight ; 
 Their surge-crests crumble 'neath our strokes of might. 
 We meet, fear not, we mount ; now rise, now fall ; 
 And dare with full-nerved arm the rage of all. 
 Through anger-swollen wave, or sparkling spray, 
 Nothing it recks ; we hold our perilous way 
 Right onward till we feel the whirling brain 
 Ring with the maddening music of the main ; 
 Till the fixed eyeball strives and strains to ken, 
 Yet loathes to see the shore and haunts of men ; 
 And the blood lialf starting through each ridgy vein 
 In the unwieldy hand, sets, black with pain. 
 Then let the storm-king, cloud o'er cloud disspread, 
 Tear the tempestuous terrors of his head : 
 Let the wild sea-bird wheel around my brow. 
 And shriek, and swoop, and flap her wing, as now ; 
 It gladdens. On, ye boisterous billows, roll ; 
 And keep my body, ye have ta'en my soul. 
 Thou element, the type which God hath given 
 For eyes and hearts too earthy, of his heaven ; 
 Were heaven a mockery never I would mourn 
 While o'er thy billows I might still be borne ; 
 While yet to me the power and joy were given 
 
 F 3 
 
138 FE8TUS, 
 
 To fling my breast on thine and mingle earth with heaven. 
 
 LuciFEE. 'Twas always one of my profoundest wishes, 
 The sea to study, and consider fishes. 
 And now that, well ; behold us come ; 
 Nor e'er before could I the time 
 Spare to such end, though so sublime 
 Let us explore the great aquarium. 
 Soon shall we see the denizens of the deep 
 Dart by us ; shapes primceval claimed by gods 
 Vishnu, and mixed Oannes ; ork, and whale. 
 The oceanic beast, whose jaws like hell's gates onco 
 Yawned to ingulph the recreant prophet, cast 
 By crew f oref ated in the ravening deep ; 
 Sea-horse and seal, old ocean's flocks ; and all 
 That flout the whirlpool, down whose swirling maw 
 Voracious of all life, the shrieking ship 
 Plungeth ; bright dolphin, lover of the lyre, 
 For more than one sublime adventure starred ; 
 And, dubious those, behold, whom air and sea 
 Alternate please, now fly with fins, and now 
 With wings swim ; lords of richest wrecks be these ; 
 All who, or lonely and deathful, haunt the deeps ; 
 All that by coast, by firth, in endless shoal, 
 Vanwise, or rear, heave shoreward ; all who glide 
 Through streets of submerged cities, weed-draped, thronged 
 With waves, where, once, as in sumptuous Valipur, 
 Fluctuated the courtier crowd ; through magic Ys ; 
 By its silver flood-gates lost ; or gilded marts 
 Of Vinborg, greed-fouled, — spitefully content, 
 Nor wink their cold white eye ; clang may the bells 
 Still pendulous in those tide-swept towers, as though 
 In calm, for prayer ; storm-clashed, for victory ; they 
 Reck not, nor death-peal heed ; through marble grove 
 Of pillars, once impalaced, as through copse 
 Of coralline branchery, they their wavy way 
 Fan flexuously ; uncharmed, unhindered, fan. 
 
 Festus. Land I this the island supplement 
 To Africa's great continent ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Not here, not here, nor yet we land ; 
 Though grateful doubtless were the strand 
 Where nature's alms, we might the traveller's tree 
 Meet, in whose veins condensed the essential dew 
 Flows f ontal ; while its flowerets, lamp-like, light 
 To its restful tent of leaves, the wayfarer. 
 One minute more. We quit the main ; 
 We make the shore. Here's land again ; 
 The Cape I now scour o'er Afric's plain, 
 From the head of storms, and lion by the sea 
 High couchant ; and God's table, draped with clouds ; 
 By stream Kafifrarian, endless called, and that 
 Rock-brinked. which through Mataman, townless land, 
 B^^s ; where, too, flourishes first and best of things, 
 
FE8TU8. 18S 
 
 So by Damaras deemed, the all-froctaous tree 
 From whose far-shadowing limb- wood, human fmit 
 Kipe, deathless dropped ; where, half by gumwoods girt, 
 And palm, barbarian Quorra steals ; there, men. 
 In ivory, gold, blood, trade ; nor, far remote, 
 "Who the divine child, babe eterne, adore ; 
 Unconscious Deity ; haste we, haste we, on. 
 
 Festus. Away, away, on either hand, 
 Nor town nor tower, nor shade nor shower, 
 Nothing save sun and sand. 
 
 Lucifer. But here, see many a treeful tract with wood 
 Well seasoned, as to feed the final fires ; 
 Here, there, a naked rcahnlet, centred round 
 Some vast baobab, like aged with ocean's tides ; 
 Within whose cavernous and sepulchral trunk, 
 Meet village senates, lawing peace, war, now, 
 To dusky clans ; now, in its templed bole, 
 The idol gods adoring of the land ; 
 Arboreal fane ; some dragon-blooded tree, 
 Like-yeared with the cloud-bow, or one eve, one mom. 
 Than the stai-s younger ; ranged wherewith the stock 
 That, willowy, waves above the ruined wreck 
 Of Babylon, or even that, nigh Memphian well. 
 Rifted yet vital, 'neath whose honoured boughs 
 Paused once the sainted pair, who, angel- warned, 
 Bare in their bosom o'er Zin's isthmian sands. 
 An unweaned child-god, but a sapling seems 
 Of yesterday. 
 
 Festus. What are these hills we have just 
 
 O'ervaulted ? 
 
 Lucifer. These, Lupata, spine o' the world 
 Kumara, there, the emerald mount ; and there, 
 See, there they are, I knew right soon 
 We'd light on the Mountains of the Moon. 
 Over them, over ; nought forbids. 
 
 Festus. Yonder the Nile and the Pyramids ? 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, we can't stay to search them. Rise, good steo^Js 
 Let us enjoy another earthscape. See 
 Louqusor, Medina Thabou ; all that rests 
 Of hundred-palaced Thebes, where, shrineless, dwelt 
 One who supreme, the unknown, the invisible reigned 
 'Midst many idolatrous, o'er one tribe devout, 
 Grodwise ; and long ere cometary earth 
 The stars disturbed, with presages of woe 
 To heaven's great family, in herself to be 
 Concentrate, and accomplished to the death, 
 As in a fiery vortex, himself named 
 To worshipping worlds, as here, the imageless, 
 The infinite, the eternal. There, behold, 
 O'er the Erythraean gulf dyed red with blood 
 Of Pharaoh's hosts, the free, wide sandy wastes 
 Of kingless Arabie ; Mecca, seat of power 
 
140 FE8TU8. 
 
 Prophetic, and the city of the tomb, 
 By angels haunted. 
 
 Festus. And thy sacred well, 
 
 Seem I to recognise from storying pens, 
 Divine Zemzem, from founts celestial strained 
 Through astral strata, and the musky loam 
 Of Paradise ; whence moonbrowed maids of light, 
 Fearless, their life-cups fill with bliss. 
 
 LucTFEB. And there, 
 
 El Kodsh, and substitutive mosque, rock-based, 
 Upon whose crest, intempled now, shall stand 
 The archangel stern, when he, by judgment trump 
 All souls shall summon ; and with fate-fraught rod 
 Inevitable, call forth what Hades holds. 
 Here, well-walled Joppa, towered before the flood ; 
 There, Tyre, where once Astarte, round the earth 
 Pacing, moonlike, a star, picked up new fallen, 
 Which she, at her own altar, stretching out 
 Her sceptral cross, to herself hallowed. There, 
 Once, Olybama rose ; there, CEnosli ; home 
 Of the giant race, earth dominating, sites now 
 Sightless to all save eyes endowed like thine. 
 Here, Byblos, Orchoe there ; Bab-El, God's gate, 
 Where hides mayhap 'neath thunder-thwarted pile, 
 With archives of mid earth's initial throne. 
 The foreworld's infant speech ; here Nin-evech, 
 There Arach, Arkite city of the moon ; 
 Whose golden-crowned shades shall all precede 
 Kingly, at doom ; though Persargadss's graves, 
 Roman, and Russ, and Norman's castled tomb 
 Yield up their tyrannous ghosts ; his even who yet 
 In sepulchre secrete still lies ; and once. 
 Mid alabastrine halls, approached through forms 
 Cherubic, of ubiquitous wing, now, see. 
 In unearthed sculpture, leagues a thousand hence, 
 Divining 'fore his gods, with wine ; or, now 
 Immingling arrows, mark him draw, perchance, 
 Self -sought, his fiery fate ; and if, more near. 
 Thine eye still keep its edge, that wandering vill, 
 Builded, men say, in test of faith, times passed. 
 Mid Arab wilds, by great Shedaad, whose walls 
 In tiers alternate towered of silver and gold ; 
 Invisible since to dulled belief. Dost see it ? 
 
 Festus. Is't now a structural mass, dream-like out-drawn 
 In vanishing perspective, with pillars winged, 
 Translucent, quivering up like columned air 
 Of resurrective dew, sunfired ; dim domes, 
 And spacious sanctuaries ? Or, plainer now, 
 Is it like a shadowy palace, rich in rest. 
 The feverous brain of worn-out traveller draws 
 Upon the heatful noon, that as with glimpse 
 Of comforting things allures, but while we move 
 
FESTUS. 141 
 
 Nearer, retreats ? 
 
 Lucifer. Ah, good ; thou seest it not. 
 
 Tarn, sudden now, and coast this midland sea, 
 By Carthage, Barca, Tripoli ; 
 Crete, there, Jove's grave ; there, Sicily, 
 Isle of the sun, whence Hades' equal bride ; 
 And 'twixt whose templed cliffs and us, that barque, 
 Laden with the sack of Rome, tyrannic queen 
 Of bonded nations — the tile-gilded roof 
 Of Jove's high capitol ; the seven-starred lamp 
 And golden table of God's own temple, won 
 By Vandal king self-crowned of earth and sea. 
 And their affiliate iles, — storm-sunk, but served, 
 With ivory thrones, and busts marmoreal, gems 
 And jewelled caskets, armlets, torques, and lings. 
 And carquanets impearled, and coffered coin 
 Of conquered states, to startle, or to adorn 
 Sicilian sea-nymphs in their billowy plt.y. 
 By Syrts Cyrenean now we hie, 
 By Atlas range and Barbary ; 
 By the desert heart of slave-land ; waterless sea, 
 Where tide once haply broke tempestuous, now 
 Heaves, ponderous, the slow sand-wave, stormy dust 
 Scattering in poisonous clouds. 
 
 Festus. Not far I deem 
 
 The Hesperidean gardens, serpent-watched 
 Once, watched ia vain. The honeyed opiate, there. 
 Was quite too much. 
 
 LuciFEE. The land of serpents this ; 
 
 Haunted by adder, cockatrice, those the Moor 
 Wreathes round his limbs, or, in his bosom, curled 
 Confederate, cades ; those that, by glistering glance. 
 Charmed song-birds to their death transfix ; or those 
 IMore fascinative, that oft the innocent breath 
 Of babes, suck, viperously, away ; and once, 
 By him enormous, on these banks, just cleared. 
 Of Bagi-adas ; who, memorable worm, 
 Rome's hosts braved singly ; singly suffered siege ; 
 War waged ; till by arblast and by catapult, 
 And burning darts, self-firing as they flew. 
 Quelled, he at last capitulates with death ; 
 His shining slough to swell the conqueror's pomp. 
 
 Festus. a learned demon past all contradiction. 
 
 Lucifer. Why, look ; I'm naturally strong in fiction. 
 And then it rather piques one to describe 
 The triumphs of the serpent tribe ; 
 Whether of cobras, god-kinned, thought to have missad 
 Their way from heaven ; or crowned basilisk, type 
 Of demon good, and mundane genius ; such 
 As round his healthful staff Asclepios twined, 
 And saviour named ; or such, perchance, as now 
 Mid Caesarean isle, 'neath mound tower-topped, 
 
142 FE8TU8. 
 
 Lies tombed, redoubtable dragon ; be tbe tale 
 Not rather told of ethnic faith, o'erthrown 
 By conquering- cross. 
 
 Festus. Their crown is, to have striven. 
 
 Lucifer. See Mong Msesoba, Mount of God, first marked 
 Of Punic mariner, when from seas unkeeled 
 Since Argo, or dark diluvian barge, as car 
 Of gods he hailed it, once fire-ringed ; of flame, 
 Of fume, even, naked nov/. And now still on 1 
 
 Festus. Hurrah I by my soul at every bound, 
 I feel, I see the earth rush round ; 
 I see the mountains slide away, 
 That side night, and this side, day. 
 
 Lucifer. Wilt see the New "World ? 
 
 Festus. Well ; a peep. 
 
 Lucifer, One dainty run, then ; one more leap 
 And lo I we quit this lion ground, 
 Plunging from palmy steep, once more into the deep. 
 
 Festus. To cross indeed the Atlantic tide, 
 And far as southmost Fire-land ride, 
 Would I, if time be ours. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh, plenty ; 
 
 Be there, too, ere we reckon twenty. 
 
 Festus. The sea again, the swift bright sea 1 
 
 Lucifer. Hold hard ; give rein ; and follow me. 
 See there, the Elysian islets, of eld thought 
 Home for the heroic blessed, who years divine 
 Enjoyed, and life eternal as of heaven ; 
 Now, only fortunate deemed, their mountlets crovnied 
 By that beneficent stem, whose top, with clouds 
 Nightly encompassed, soon as morning beams. 
 From leaf and ramage sheddeth cool bright showers, 
 Freshening the fountless soil ; matron and maid, 
 God thanking for his daily boon, with joy 
 Brim high their globular gourds from every bough. 
 
 Festus. It is somewhere hereabouts I count to have heard 
 Of other happy spots being found. 
 
 Lucifer. No lack 
 
 Of such demesnes ; the winged isle, to wit. 
 Walled high with gold- bright crystal, giant kinged, 
 Bound the world flying, oft-sighted, good ; but found ? 
 
 Festus. And Bolotoo, joint paradise of gods 
 And men, 'mid ocean isolate, land of shades ; 
 Where, to chance wanderer for the future bound, 
 And for lost secrets searching, all spent thought 
 There hoarded, temple, tower, and grove-clad hill 
 Show but forms permeable ; through all he stalks 
 As through a solid vision ; wall, cliff, bark. 
 Close round him, as over diving gull the main. 
 Lucifer. 'Tis odds we have gone thi-ough it, and not known. 
 Festus. Look ; listen. There is music in the cave 
 Where ocean sleeps, and brightness in the wave 
 
FE8TU8. 148 
 
 The sea-bird makes its pillow, and the star, 
 Last bom of heaven, its azure mirror ; far 
 And wide, the pale, fine gleam of sea-fire glows, 
 Softly sublime, like lightnings in repose ; 
 Till roused anon, afar its flaming spray it throws. 
 
 Lucifer. Well, now we have travelled above the waves, 
 Wilt travel a time beneath ? 
 And visit the sea-born in their caves ; 
 And look on the rainbow -tinted wreath. 
 Of weed ; pearl-starred, and gemmed, wherewith 
 The mermaid binds her long, green hair ? 
 Or rouse the sea-snake from his lair 1 
 See where he gambols for us there 1 
 
 Festus. Ay, ay ; down let us dive. 
 
 LuciFEE. Look up ; we lack not stars, I swear ; 
 And every star thou seest's alive ; 
 A little globe of life, light, love ; 
 "VSTiose every atom is a living being, 
 Each into other's bosom seeing ; 
 Each enlightening the other. 
 
 Festus. Oh iiow unlike man's world above, 
 Where mainly, vainly, each must strive 
 To dim, or to outshine his brother. 
 Would only I were ocean's son, 
 The solitary brave, 
 Like yon sea-snake, — no end hath he 
 To fear because his soul is free. 
 No future heaven to crave, 
 Whose life's but to sun all his folds upon 
 Tlie crest of the highest wave. 
 
 LuciFEE. Yon reptile men call serpent of the sea. 
 Eldritch, huge, ocean-churner, hight in Ind, 
 In Norland, world- circler ; whose hoary mane 
 And visage, sadly human, reared mast-high. 
 Till suddenly down implunged, it disappearing. 
 Appals the homebound mariner, as at eve 
 Roimding his last of headlands blue, he weens 
 In its eye to have hailed some Pharos, newly erect, 
 May be less caitiflc than he looks. 
 
 Festus. Enough 
 
 I have seen of him ; some fathoms. 
 
 LuciPEB. Know this soil 
 
 Thou treadst, the continent, once, in ages passed, 
 Neptunian, where the sea-god righteous ruled, 
 And his sons ten ; here, trace the beds of streams 
 Foreworldly, such as with voluminous surge 
 Atlantis cantoned, and, in main long lost. 
 Their tusky spoil disbogued ; or, swollen with doom 
 Of yearly freshet, scared the rock-scooped booths 
 Of savage tribelets trembling ; there, the bounds 
 Mark, once of jealous states war-mad, all stilled 
 By watery and necessitous peace, unhoped, 
 
144 FE8TUB. 
 
 Unlooked for ; here, the isle Triphylian Jove 
 Judged from his imminent chair. 
 
 Festus. And now behold 
 
 Drowned lands and verdurous meadows submarine, 
 Where water turtles wander, pasturing free. 
 
 LuciFEE, Come on, come on ; the dew, last night 
 Was heavy. 
 
 Festus. Are those spars, so bright. 
 Or eyes of things which ne'er forgive 
 That seem to play on us, and glare 
 With rage, that we so far should dare 
 To search the hidden depths 
 Where tide, the moon-slave, sleeps ; 
 And ork, and ki-aken, world-forgotten, live ? 
 Where the wind breathes not, and the wave 
 Walks Eof tly, as above a grave ; 
 Where coral worms, in countless nations, 
 Build rocks up from the sea's foundations ; 
 Where the islands strike their roots 
 Far from the old main-land ; 
 .And spring like desert fruits. 
 Shook off by God's strong hand, 
 Up from their bed of sand. 
 
 LuciFEE. There ; now we stand on the world a end land ; 
 Over the hills, away we go ; 
 Through fire and snow, and rivers whereto 
 All others are rills. 
 
 Festus. Through the lands of silver, the lands of gold ; 
 Through lands untrodden, and lands untold ; 
 Lands where his age-long skirmish still maintains 
 The conquering Araucanian ; who from his bounds 
 The pale face waiving aye, still, manly, serves 
 The world's essential Spirit ; and on whose shore 
 The mount of thunder, o'er the orb-wi-ecking flood 
 Soul buoyant of all things, self -steered, in times 
 Long gone, first grounding, paused ; then ceased, content ; 
 Ceased, from its world-wide wanderings ; lands where trined 
 With sun and moon eterne, the rainbow, dream 
 Of the elements, was adored. Near by, of old, 
 A marvellous hill towered ; is't, I wonder, now ? 
 That crystal mount, cloud-crested, once which stood 
 In western Tucuman, with acute reply 
 Answering the solar messages of light, 
 As equal, equal? deep below its base, 
 O'erarched, a river navigable will run. 
 
 LuciFEE. Nay, if 'twas ever here, it is here, this hour 
 Lo 1 Andes, outer wall of earth ; and here 
 Light-wise, in pardonable idolatry. 
 Pure Pachacamac, lord of the universe, 
 By kingly Yngas was adored, and choirs 
 Sun-dedicated, of virgins ; fairer they 
 Than all the flowers their golden gardens grew ; 
 
FE8TU8. i4fi 
 
 Or silvern shrubs scarce imitative, and gemmed 
 
 With ruby bud or beryl, could show. And now. 
 
 Nor mine, nor mountain lake though choked with gold, 
 
 Like Titicaca, from whose sacred shores 
 
 Long ages lapsed ; the scions of the sun, 
 
 Mango Capac and Mama Ocllo, stepped 
 
 Ancestral, to the sceptre of Berou, 
 
 Om- course must stay ; nor yet, though nigh, the spot 
 
 Where that unbearded brood, — whose gnarled knees 
 
 Ranked level with the poll of general men ; 
 
 "Whose eyen glared like shields rimmed round with brass ; 
 
 \Miere fell their shadow grass nor floweret grew ; 
 
 At sight of whom men swooned and women died ; 
 
 Debarked ; whence God best knoweth, here at foot 
 
 Of Andes' highest ; but them, his vengeance roused 
 
 For vast offence — a fieiy falchion quelled ; 
 
 Sudden it swept from heaven, and in one Bwathe 
 
 Laid all their giant trunks. 
 
 Festus. What sin was theirs ? 
 
 LuciFEB. The story's quite apocryphal, I admit ; 
 'Tis nothing, maybe, but a round, sound, lie ; 
 Who told it first, is answerable. 
 
 Festus. Thou, too. 
 
 Words are deeds spoken. Aught we do is writ 
 Brief -wise in God's eternal diary. 
 All acts seem echoed to the skies. We live 
 As in a bell. 
 
 LuciFEB. Meanwhile, be it ours to hie 
 Unstayed by aught above earth, or beneath, 
 Not even by bass of rivers subterrene, 
 Booming through caves, each with his several roar, 
 I hear them plain, down to earth's focal fires, 
 Still inextinct, and flaming floods ; whence dashed, 
 They reascend volcanic, melled with ice, 
 Lava, and fishy mud, and so explode 
 Vaporous, the solid hills ; by the mount of stars ; 
 By Chuquibamba's cone of carmined snow ; 
 And Rupurini's demon cliff, dark browed 
 With wood self -procreate, must we swiften on, 
 To the equatorial groves that mat the shores 
 Of Maracaybo, and Maragnon's tide, 
 The sea's tide mastering ; Temi, gold-dyed stream, 
 And falls of Tequendama ; rent ere yet 
 The moon rode, aery. 
 
 Festus. Haste we I 
 
 LuciFEB. Nature, here. 
 
 Of life like lavish as the sun of light. 
 Leaves all this foodful paradise unbarred. 
 Ungated even ; while almost every tree 
 Hangs heavy with vital bread, man's simplest board ; 
 Or fruit lactifluous, from whose flower-tipped stem. 
 High trembling, the earth-gorged Indian, thirstf ul, drains 
 
146 FE8TU8, 
 
 At sundown, creamy draughts ; to all his kin 
 Dispensing, patriarchal, bowl on bowl. 
 
 Festus. Our high road narrows shrewdly, here ; 
 A stumble might — 
 
 Lucifer. Bah ! what a tale 1 
 
 Thy pad is surefoot, past all fear ; 
 And mine ; well, when shall Darkness fail 1 
 But see ; not oft the eye comprises. 
 Not even when quickened to embrace 
 A circle wish-wide of pure space. 
 View fairer than upon our vision rises. 
 Behold the isle-gemmed western sea ; 
 Black Hayti, once the imperial negro's throne ; 
 Bahamas, and the Virgins, those to lee ; 
 And that, of all earth's westlands earliest known. 
 
 Festus. This road's a trifle rugged. 
 
 LuciFEE. On I 
 
 We have far to prance ere the hour is gone. 
 By strait and bay, by swamp and plain 
 Through torrent flood ; through hurricane ; 
 Have we our pathless course to find. 
 
 Festus. As quick we ride, on either side, 
 Atlantic or Pacific tide. 
 Thoughts legendary of spots where hide 
 The Aztek's mythic realms, come o'er the mind ; 
 Coy Iximaya, and the precipitous gates 
 Of that recondite capital, mountain scarped, 
 Of sacred dwarf -kings, haply, with all theirs 
 To vanish into cloudland, doomed ; thenceforth 
 With ghosts, of fabulous crowns, such ghosts as haunt, 
 Baseless, the cots of nations, walk for aye. 
 
 LuciFEE. So many rarities will be lost, one day, 
 Ko need to moan for a trinket like a town. 
 See here, Copan's, Uxmal's insculptured domes, 
 Mysterious, tombed alive in matted woods, 
 Buried erect, unruinous : here, the toils 
 Combined of royal patriots, and leal crowds, 
 All limbs who strained to upbuild, and their throats bore 
 To applaud, complete, what now the bat, the snake. 
 The wight who hath lost his way, alone know ; there, 
 Serf -reared, the fire fanes of Palenque, cross-famed. 
 And towers she-eagles nest on imperturbed ; 
 Cholula's terraced pyramid, and those vast. 
 Mid pathway of the dead, to sun and moon 
 Hallowed, o'er minor mounds more mean than stars 
 Which rise, supreme ; Subtiaba's palaces ; 
 Cities and holds of dynasties unknown ; 
 Less glorious, may be, than the soldans named 
 By proud Fardusi, paradisal bard ; 
 Less numerous, not ; who natural signs here graven, 
 Charged with intensest meaning, now all lost ; 
 Wrecked on some rock unchaarted in time's flood, 
 
FESTUa. 147 
 
 No ebb sball e'er dismask. 
 
 Festus. But little seems 
 
 To hinder, or to attract. 
 
 LuciFEB. Wood, river, lake, 
 
 Earth's widest, mightiest, spread around, 
 Beset in vain the path we take, 
 Intent alone to gain our starting ground. 
 Some pools, indeed, we'll pass, ere the hoar woods 
 Of growth eternal, continental reach, 
 That all enclose, — from florid lands which seas 
 Columbian lave, to gold-rocked Labrador ; 
 From ocean's gilded sands, by Kalamath, 
 To silveriest Secklong, we have overswept. 
 
 Festus. There's a dark cloud of slaves, which mars ; 
 But look 1 it lifts beneath one's eyes, 
 The fairest views that round us rise ; 
 Though nought shall blot the bannered stars, 
 From freedom's skies. 
 
 LuciFEB. Here the Aztek's, bowered with floating pleasances 
 Where sailed the swans of sway symbolic ; see. 
 There Yutah's lake, where the polygamous crew, — 
 Misled by one self-unctioned, not anoint 
 Of genius, nor from world-life spiritual, strained ; 
 Who from the brook, the lines of lacquered lead 
 Sham angel forged, dug out ; who, after, fell 
 Death-shotten, with Caesar's trickling wounds thrice told ; 
 111 doer he, ill done by, — their starred hour 
 Dreadless abide, of doom. Here note these hills 
 With cedars prediluvian, towerlike, crowTied ; 
 And yon demarking gap, far blazed through woods, 
 AVhere day begins, and east from west divides. 
 
 Festus. I would yon shining chain of waters, now 
 Slave, Athabascan, down to the Huron, coast. 
 
 LuciFEB. Mark, too, those mightiest rivers, tributaries 
 From Firm-land to their Sea-lord ; there, not far, 
 Ohio broadens ; here, gross Missouri dims 
 The deepening sire of floods, aye tiding on 
 His cun-ent deluge to the ingulphing breast 
 Of central seas ; he, clearing oft his banks 
 Of secular secrets, too long kept, strange frames 
 Of mammoth shows, or kindi'ed monster ; brutes 
 Dreadest, whose teeth might nigh with tombstones match • 
 Limbed, like an oak ; but all swept off by heaven. 
 Creation at the flood revising : such 
 Burial made they and osseous monument. 
 To themselves, 'mid riverine swamps ; swamps, too, tlie snakr 
 By red men hallo\/ed, haunts, which multiplies 
 Annual, its rattling rings ; and once, which hid 
 Nigh sacred well, by priestly craft, the man 
 Divine, to all of irksome sanctity, f anged 
 To the death ; and so, held amiablest of worms, 
 And kin, by common treachery, to mankind. 
 
148 FE8TU8. 
 
 Festus. What mean these mounds we skim shaped animal-wise, 
 Turtle's, wolf's, serpent's, favouring, or uncouth. 
 The vulture's wide- winged brotherhood of death ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Clan-roots of nations these, one common source 
 Shadowing, and, reared ere all imburghing walls,| 
 By stalwarth savages, in arts of life 
 Less skilled than feats of death, and who, where now 
 State-capitals stand, hounded the hills ; as, far 
 Eastwards, in older sphere, and stony shape 
 Snake-headed, volumed over downs, and piled, 
 Progressive, from the Aleutians to the Basque, 
 Dracontian fanes, oracular logan, cirque 
 Slab-pillared, tell one vast and simple faith. 
 Rudely divine ; perchance, from heaven. But now, 
 To reach where Erie through Niagara hurls 
 Precipitant all her thunderous waters down 
 His crescent steep, and so to Ontario breaks 
 A continent's discontent which else, bulged up, 
 Might the whole Firm-land flood. 
 
 Festus. One sound all drowns : 
 
 'Tis as Earth's tongue. 
 
 Lucifer. Away ! Ice now and snow 
 
 And frozen firth our echoing hoofs invite 
 Towards the sacred grove to Esquimo known. 
 Whence, chipped by giant woodman, man and brute 
 Fell earthwards, upwards, birds, in sea dropped, fish f 
 So fable Arctic folk, tribes sparse and spare ; 
 Whose crooked crones, in glittering huts of ice, 
 When the vivific sun, world conqueror, ends 
 Yearly his serpent path, in silent snow 
 His thunder hiding, — to their home-cloyed youth, 
 Sharpening the bone-tipped shaft for morse, or seal, 
 Quaint legends gabble of primal Eld. But see ! 
 Here we are not sole travellers. 
 
 Festus. Ah 1 yon sledge. 
 
 Half hound's land this ; brave hound ; of souls creato 
 Sub-human gifted highliest , most to man 
 Faithful, — both where the auroral arch o'eibroods 
 Graves lost, unsearched for not, and the city's heart, 
 Through life to his last sigh ; and so, worthy judged 
 Such skiey deathlessness as men can give, 
 Or dogs divine, of Dian's nebulous chase. 
 Can joy in, led by their leash of light ; or he. 
 Staunch grew, man-hearted, starred in holiest writ, 
 Who, burning, bays Orion's spacious steps ; 
 Or good DheiTeem, sung in the mighty war, 
 'Twixt chiefs of lunar lineage, and the sun's, 
 For the empery of Ind ; — four-footed friend 
 To righteous rajah ; he, that kingly kin 
 All blessed and deified, — lonely left, at last 
 Shakes off, disgaiseful test, the shape canine, 
 And shines heaven's primal virtue, peer of gods. 
 
FE8TU8. 149 
 
 LuciPEB. Take credit for quite candid praise : 
 Nor dogs need we, nor sluggard sleighs. 
 
 Festus. I feel the iron in ray blood 
 Drawn curiously towards the Pole ; 
 But oh this cold congeals me ; and 'twere good, 
 All said and done, to make our goal. 
 
 Lucifer. Tliou care^t not, then, to tread the terrible ways 
 Which lead to nature's mightiest mysteries, down 
 To the humming axis of these surface lands. 
 Where, earth-guiding, the magnet mountain stands, 
 Brainlike, ensconced beneath her snowy crown. 
 
 Festus. Not now ; as yet, enough to view 
 Earth's outward. 
 
 LuciPEB. So then, hence ! 
 
 Festus. Adieu 
 
 America, thou, half-brother of the world ; 
 With something good and bad of every land ; 
 Greater than thee have lost their seat ; 
 Greater scarce none can stand. 
 
 LuciFEB. Just touch the Arctic ring will we ; 
 For our horses snort and snuff the sea. 
 And pant for where they ought to be. 
 
 Festus. Well, here's the sea ; and as we flew iu, 
 I said, let Darkness follow Ruin. 
 
 LuciFEB, 'Twas right, spur on. Come, Darkness, come. 
 Think of thy well-strown stall. 
 
 Festus. And Ruin 1 
 
 Lucifer. Oh yes ; there's a stable-home 
 For Ruin, too, after all. 
 
 Festus. For me, I fear no fate to come, 
 Not that which bids me fall. 
 Oh happy, if at last I lie 
 Within some pearled and coralled cave ; 
 Where high o'erhead the booming surge. 
 And moaning billow, shall chant my dirge ; 
 And the storm-blast, as it hurrieth by. 
 Shall, answering, howl to the mermaid's sigh, 
 And the nightwind's mournful minstrelsy, 
 Their requiem over my grave. 
 
 LuciFEB. Through mom and midnight, sunset and high noon. 
 One hour hath ta'en us ; o'er all land and sea, 
 O'er earthquake opening, and iceberg have we 
 Swept in swift safety. 
 
 Festus. Hour, o'er now, too soon. 
 
 Greenland and Iceland far a-lee ; 
 The crests of mountains now I see 
 Through rolling mists, grey-gilded, burst ; 
 And islands still beloved by me ; 
 Ben Loda, mount of God, and Nevis, first 
 Saluted of the sun ; and, Erin's Me 
 Westmost whereon day's lord his parting smile 
 Through groves of worship, dedicate to fate, 
 
150 FE8TU8. 
 
 Utters, ere yet, kinglike, in fickle state 
 He turns to flatterers of his greeting ray. 
 
 Lucifer. There, see the causeway, we'll not foot, to-day, 
 Of giants, who from lerne through deep sea, 
 By long columnar jetty, and pillared pier 
 Basaltic, crystal-capped, and close as canes 
 In Javan jungle, treacherous access sought 
 To Albyn's kingly clans, and fate-stoned throne ; 
 'Twixt Erin, thence, and Cambria steer 
 The lands are close, but be it known 
 I have been in sharper straits ere now. 
 
 Festus. Bee Snowdou's bossy back, and moro 
 Remote, in ice, and snow-light hoar 
 Plinlimmon's ravine- wrinkled brow. 
 
 Lucifer. By Severn's sea our sinuous course now bonds ; 
 Yon windy cliff, your isle of isles that ends ; 
 And Lizard porphyry caved. 
 
 Festus. 'Twas here of old, 
 
 And old world tales the air load, gods uncouth, 
 Ogres iniquitous, dv/elled, whom Corin, proud 
 Of Tyrrhene monsters slain, slew, and at once 
 Sheer o'er the crags dashed ; Cormoran, and those vilo, 
 Whose far descendant Rhytho, Uther's son 
 Brained with red brand on the high Comubian mount 
 That still o'erpeers the Atlantic ; once, as well, 
 The Llionnese viewed, and all the Armor ic shore 
 Inundate now for aye, but haunt of brood 
 Like these enorme, in lays chivalric famed ; 
 "Who in towers of brass abode, or burnished steel, 
 That all the region round imblazed ; with throng 
 Of damsels dungeoned, and brave knights unhorse-l j 
 Fire-breathing dragons, guardians of their gates ; 
 IJut all, in tine, by some proud paladin 
 Of table round, or peer imperial quelled. 
 
 Lucifer. Behold the common narrow sea, 
 Which like a strong man's arm, 
 Keeps back two foes whose lips, wrath- white, 
 Prove hearts with rage oft warm. 
 It is very sure, this land we near 
 Should all things take their natural course, 
 Sometime in sea will disappear. 
 
 Festus. And if they do, it might be worse j 
 In peace and war she is with the sea, 
 By fate conjoined inseparably. 
 How shall my country fight. 
 When her foes rise against her ; 
 But with thine arm, sea, 
 The arm which thou lentst her ? 
 "Where shall my country be buried, 
 When bounden to die ? 
 Let her choose out her place in the sphere, 
 Where she shall lie. 
 
FE8TU8. 151 
 
 She hath brethren more than a hundred, 
 
 And they all crave room ; 
 
 They may die, and may lie where they live ; 
 
 They shall not mix with her doom. 
 
 AMiere, but within thine arms, O sea, O sea ? 
 
 "\^'herein slie hath lived and gloried, let her rest be. 
 
 "When we dream of her end, and her tomb, 
 
 We will rise, and will say to the sea. Flow over her ; 
 
 We will cry to the death of the deep, Cover lier. 
 
 England, my country, great and free, 
 
 Heart of the world, I leap to thee. 
 
 Lucifer. It's land ; and that's enough for me. 
 
 Festus. What were the world's without thine history ? 
 Let faith her rites, her creeds to Israel trace ; 
 Earth 8 lore, earth's art, let flow from Gnecla's race ; 
 Owe Christendom to Rome its states, its laws ; 
 The freedom of mankind is England's cause. 
 To science, learning, law, religion, she 
 Adds nature's grace supreme, of liberty. 
 Mother of empire, native to command, — 
 WTiose stem self-rule to fickler realms makes known 
 A love which serves, but serving, awes, the throne ; 
 Hope, yet, and aid, of thrall, in every land ; 
 She first refused with slavery to defile 
 Her shores ; and God looked do wn, and blessed the Isle j 
 Saying : — In this cause, Albion, fare thou forth ; 
 Thy fleets, thy hosts, thy peoples, round the earth ; 
 Elect of powers 1 be first in wealth, as worth ; 
 To lands less blessed teach thou fair freedom's charms ; 
 Fear not the snares of peace ; nor war's alarms ; 
 And leave with heaven the issue of Our arms. 
 
 LuciFEK, 'Tis not for that, she is dear to me. 
 What I admire is her humility. 
 
 Festus. Sanctuary of peace and song ; of toil coUeagned 
 With science, ever largening this, like the orb 
 Loaded with golden rain of annual stars, 
 Preponderative, prolific ; kingly wealth 
 Bringing to many a black mechanic burgh 
 Gas-breath'd, steam-pulsed ; and which, by day obscure, 
 Strangely at night, bright, oft to star-seer skilled, 
 Who in neighbouring planet notes, maybe, with lens 
 Than ours more potent, earth's pale spherelet, gives 
 Sore brain-ache to divine ; — isle, with aU charms 
 Natural and social blessed : here, cultured plain, 
 Green hill, there ; grainy level, and fruit-fraught vale ; 
 Downs, dear to freedom ; dim and misty moor, 
 Where aches the eye with objectless survey ; 
 And long dun moss, by cairn or comlech crowned ; 
 Or lithic dance of giants, 'neath the moon ; 
 Hurlers, or wrestlers, who by sport profaned 
 Hours holy ; or bridal revellers, like beguiled, 
 That, scornful of Sabbatic peace, till primes, 
 
152 FE8TU8. 
 
 Footed their fool's reel ; and so, fitly earned 
 Their stony transformation ; days of rest 
 Are theirs, now, unpervert ; now, o'er their ears, 
 The gold-stacked thunder-pipes grave anthems drone, 
 And voluntaries, in vain ; in vain to them 
 Church-chimes, for aye. 
 
 Lucifer. Indeed 'tis very sad. 
 
 Legends are these quite touching in their tone : 
 Instructive, too, remark, when left alone. 
 Kow get on land ; quick, hie along ; 
 O'er forest, copse, and glade ; 
 We have but a league or two more to go, 
 Before our journey's made ; 
 With speed that flings the sun into the shade. 
 
 Festus. See the gold sunshine, patching, 
 And streaming and streaking across 
 The grey-green oaks ; and catching. 
 By its long brown beard, the moss. 
 
 Lucifer. I have shown thee as I promised, eartJi. 
 That rightly thou mightst count its worth, 
 To have and hold. To me it seems 
 Like valuable with last month's dreams. 
 
 Festus. It favours virtue to have been 
 But witness of a glorious scene, 
 Where truth hath taught, and wisclom dwelt ; 
 Where freedom fought, and faith aspired 
 To earn the love her soul desired ; 
 Where right hath triumphed, wrong hath knelt { 
 And peace the heaven diffused she felt. 
 
 Lucifer. It may be. Should I find it so, 
 Another time, and elsewhere, thou shalt know. 
 But now ; ah, here's an open plain ; 
 Here, we'll get down. 
 Away, good steeds : be off, again. 
 
 Festus. We must be near to town, 
 I am bound to thee for ever 
 By the pleasure of this day ; 
 Henceforth let us never sever, 
 Come what come may. 
 
FE8TU3. 153 
 
 XL 
 
 After travel, homelier life, 
 A country tnorry-making, a village feast 
 May even please, where, with the local world 
 We' mix in private ; seriously converse 
 Of light things, lightly enough of serious. Skilled 
 To revive dead lore, and magnify extinct 
 Arts, and extol sjTnbolic wisdom, here 
 The world-man in the student finds a friend. 
 Henceforth a power in life, or open, or hid. 
 The new star mounts the mid-sky ; from his stance 
 Acts fateful ; now opposing, now conjoined. 
 Record of strange spheres hear, scarce stranger still 
 Than ours. Let hope just thought of deathless soul 
 Kind Deity, and tho dole which aye itself 
 Recrowns from ruin's fruit, form. Spirit is here 
 As at dead water balanced : back no more 
 Can it ; advance 'twill not. How ends the strife? 
 Weight well with worlds the star-scale, and with ends 
 Incompassable of man unhelped, who'd win 
 This soul. 
 
 A Village Feast. Evening Twilight, 
 Festus and Lucifer. Afterwards Others. 
 
 Festus. It is getting- dark. One has to walk quite close 
 To see the pretty faces that we meet. 
 
 Lucifer. A disagreeable necessity, most 
 Truly. 
 
 Festus. We'll rest upon this bridge. I'm tired. 
 Yon tall slim tree I does it not seem as made 
 For its place just there, a kind of natural maypole ? 
 Beyond, tlie lighted stalls with the good things stored 
 Of childhood's simple world : and behind them 
 The shouting showman, and the clashing cymbal ; 
 The open-doored cottages and blazing hearths ; 
 The little ones running up with naked feet. 
 And cake in either hand, to their mother's lap ; 
 Old and young laughing ; schoolboys with their playthings 
 Clowns cracking jokes ; and lasses with sly eyes. 
 And the smile settling on their sun-flecked cheek, 
 Like noon upon the mellow apricot ; 
 Make up a scene I can for once give in to ; 
 It must please all, the social and the selfish. 
 Are they not happy ? 
 
 Lucii'ER. "Why, what matters it ? 
 
 They seem so : that's enough. 
 
 Festus. But not the same. 
 
 Lucifer. Yet truth and falsehood meet in seeming, like 
 The falling leaf and shadow on the pool's face. 
 And these are joys like beauty, but skin deep. 
 
 Festus. Remove all such, and what's the joy of earth ? 
 It is they create the appetite for life ; 
 
164 FESTUa. 
 
 Give zest and relish to the lot of millions. 
 And take the gust for them away, what's left ? 
 A. skeleton of existence, soulless, mean, 
 
 Lucifer, It is pleasure men prefer to power. To stoop 
 Is easier than to climb ; and power's above, 
 Pleasure, below the soul. They are but few 
 Who feel not, this, a weakness, that a woe. 
 (^Children at play.') 
 
 Fbstus. Play away, good ones. I could romp with you. 
 To look, sometimes, upon a child's fair face 
 Such innocence, outward and intense, of life, 
 Is resurrection to the heart ; and oft. 
 To those who mole-like grope through an earthy life, 
 What know they else so indicative of heaven, 
 So vast in blessing, as these god-sent kings 
 And queens, according to love's dynasties ? 
 The might and the delight of nations lies 
 In them, and 'tis for them earth's what it is. 
 
 Lucifer. Another row of dragon's teeth, a row 
 Of grinders, look ye. 
 
 An Old Man. Pity the poor blind man. 
 
 Festus. Here is substantial pity. 
 
 Old Man. Heaven reward yon. 
 
 Festus. Blind as the blue skies after sunset 1 Blind ! 
 Well I too tire of looking upon what is. 
 One might as well see beauty never more. 
 As view with empty eye. Would all were over ! 
 Our pleasures leave us, as sighs leave the heart, 
 Though each sigh leaves it lower ; still relieved. 
 Nought happens but what happens to oneself. 
 It is sad to think how few life's pleasures are, 
 Wheref or men risk eternal good. What else, 
 One's self except, one's self can satisfy ? 
 
 Lucifer. Too much, soon tells its tale. I quite feel for you. 
 
 Festus. It is sad success, to antedate life, and reap 
 'Gainst rule, one's field, ere noon. For what results 
 But laborous restitution, sowing, reaping, 
 Losing again ? Such toil, such gain alike. 
 Tire. Live too slowly, can we, to be good, 
 And happy 1 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, how suddenly wise 1 
 
 Festus. But youth, 
 
 Burning to forestall nature, will not wait Time, 
 Stern sculls-man with his barge, to ferry it o'er 
 Life's stream, but flings itself into the flood, 
 Intolerantly, and perisheth. Well, what charm's 
 In time, as time, what good ? Are longest days 
 Happier than short ones ? What then can age offer ? 
 It is sometime now since I was here. We leave 
 Our home in youth — no matter to what end ; 
 Study — or strife — or pleasure, or what not ; 
 And coming back in few short years, wc find 
 
FE8TU8. 155 
 
 All as we left ifc, outside ; the old elms, 
 
 The house, grass, gates, and latchet's self-same click ; 
 
 But lift that latchet,— all is changed as doom : . 
 
 The servants have forgotten our step, and more 
 
 Than half of those who knew us know us not. 
 
 Advei-sity, prosperity, the grave, 
 
 Play a round game with friends. On some the world 
 
 Hath shot its evil eye, and they are passed 
 
 From honour and remembrance ; and a stare 
 
 Is all the mention of their names receives ; 
 
 And people know no more of them than they know 
 
 The shapes of clouds at midnight, a year hence. 
 
 Lucifer. Let us move on to where the dancing is ; 
 "We soon shall see how happy they all are. 
 Here is a loving couple quarrelling ; 
 And there, another. It is quite distressing. 
 See yonder. Two men fighting ! 
 
 Festus. What avail 
 
 These vile exceptions to the rule of joy ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Behold the happiness of which thou spakest ! 
 The highest hills are miles below the sky ; , 
 And so far is the lightest heart below 
 True happiness. 
 
 Festus. To one who knows so well 
 
 What that is, doubtless 'tis a snake-like world, 
 Tail aye in mouth, as if it ate itself. 
 And moralled time. To others kindlier masked, 
 A make-believing cheat, it shows ; to me, 
 The world seems like yon children's meny-go-round j 
 What men admire are caiTiages and hobbies, 
 Which the exalted manikins enjoy. 
 There is a noisy ragged crowd below 
 Of urchins drives it round, who only get 
 The excitement for their pains — best gain perhaps ; 
 For it is not they who labour that grow dizzy 
 Nor sick ; that's for the idle proud, above ; 
 Who soon dismount, more weary of enjoying, 
 Than those below of working ; and but fair. 
 It is wretchedness or recklessness alone 
 Keeps us alive. Were we happy we should die. 
 Yet what is death ? I like to think on death : 
 It is but the appearance of an apparition. 
 One ought to tremble ; but oughts stand for nothing. 
 I hate the thought of wrinkling up to rest ; 
 The toothlike, aching, ruin of the body. 
 With the heart all out, and nothing left but edge. 
 Give me the long high boimding sense of life, 
 WTiich cries, let me but leap into my grave, 
 And I'll not mind the when, nor where. We never 
 Care less for life than when enjoying it. 
 Youth, youth, shrink not to die. What is, to die ? 
 I cannot grasp the meaning more than can 
 
156 FE8TU8. 
 
 An oak's arms clasp the blast that blows upon it. 
 There is an air-like something- which must be, 
 And yet not to be seen, nor to be touched. 
 I am bound to die ; for having been to myself 
 Every thing, there is nothing left but nothing", 
 To be again. 
 
 LuciFEE. Hark 1 here's a ballad-singer. 
 
 Ballad-Singek. All of my own composing ! 
 
 Festus. Yes, yes— we know. 
 
 Faemer, The Grypsy maid I We have had that, ten times over. 
 She is gone. Glad were we, would the whole tribe follow, 
 Nor come again. 
 
 Girl. I mind it well ; and oft 
 
 I wonder if the tale it tells be true. 
 
 Ballad- Singer. Every man's life hath its apocrypha. 
 Mine has, at least. I have said more than need be. 
 It happened too when I was very young. 
 We never meet such gipsies when we are old. 
 And yet we more complain of age than youth. 
 
 Lucifer. Another, please, not quite so gloomy, friend ; 
 I dare say, you have ditties by the score. 
 
 Ballad-Singer. I dare say, but you want a merrier ? 
 
 Lucifer. Yes, 
 
 We can't be always in canonicals. 
 Nor always sermonising'. 
 
 Ballad-Singer. True, for you. 
 
 Now, make a ring, good people. Let me breathe. 
 
 lSlngs» 
 
 Oh ! the Tvce green neuk, the sly green neuk, 
 
 Tlie wee sly neuk, for me ! 
 Whare the wheat is wavin' bright and brown, 
 
 And the wind is fresh and free. 
 Whare I weave wild weeds, and out o' reeds 
 
 Kerye whissles as I lay ; 
 And a douce low voice is murmuriu' by, 
 
 Through the lee-lang simmer day. 
 Oh ! the wee green neuk, &c. 
 
 And where a' things luik as though they lo'ed 
 
 To languish in the sun ; 
 And that if they feed the fire they dree, 
 
 They wadna ae pang were gone. 
 Whare the lift aboon is still as death, 
 
 And bright as life can be ; 
 While the douce low voice says, na, na, na ! 
 
 But ye mauna luik sae at me. 
 Oh ! the wee green neuk, &c. 
 
 Whare the lang rank bent is saft and cule, 
 
 And freshenin' till the feet ; 
 And the spot is sly, and the spinnie high, 
 
 Whare my love and I mak' seat : 
 And I teaze her till she rins, and then, 
 
 I catch her roun' the tree ; 
 While the poppies shak' their heids and blush : 
 
 Let them blush till they drap, for me ! 
 Oh ! the wee green neuk, &c. 
 
FE8TU8, 157 
 
 pESTUS, And all who know such feeling's and such scenes 
 Will, I am sure, reward you. Here — take this. 
 
 Others. And this, and this — too I 
 
 Singer. Thank ye all, good friends I 
 
 Festus. There's much that hath no merit but its truth, 
 And no excuse but nature. Nature does 
 Never wrong : it is society which sins. 
 Look at the bee upon the wing among flowers ; 
 How brave, how bright his life. Then mark him hived, 
 Cramped, cringing in his self -built social cell. 
 Thus is it in the world-hive : most where men 
 Lie deep in cities as in drifts, death drifts ; 
 Nosing each other like a flock of sheep ; 
 Not knowing and not caring whence nor whither 
 They come or go, so that they fool together. 
 
 Lucifer. It is quite fair to halve these lives, and say 
 This life is nature's, that society's, 
 ■\Mien both are side-views only of one thing. 
 
 Farmer. Here comes his reverence. Sir, it does one good 
 To see you come among us, in these days. 
 
 Parson. Why, I have but little comfort in these pastimes ; 
 And any heart, turned Godwards, feels more joy 
 Li one short hour of prayer, than e'er was raised 
 By all the feasts on earth, since their foundation. 
 But no one will believe us ; as if we 
 Had never known the vain things of the world] 
 Nor lain and slept in sin's seducing shade. 
 Listless, imtil God woke us ; made us feel 
 We should be up and stirring in the sun; 
 For everything had to be done ere night^ 
 Wliat is all this joy and jollity about ? 
 Grant there may be no sin. What good is it ? 
 
 Fabmer. I can't defend these feasts, sir, and can't blame. 
 
 Parson. Good evening, friends ! Why, Festus I I rejoice 
 We meet again. I have a young friend here, 
 A student — who hath stayed with us of late. 
 You would be glad I know to know each other ; 
 Therefore be known so. 
 
 Festus. You arc a student, sir. 
 
 Student. I profess little. But it is a title 
 A man may claim perhaps with modesty. 
 
 Festus. True. All mankind are students. How to live 
 And how to die forms the great lesson still. 
 I know what study is : it is to toil 
 Hard, through the hours of the sad midnight watch, 
 At tasks which seem a systematic curse, 
 And course of bootless penance. Night by night. 
 To trace one's thought as if on iron leaves ; 
 And sorrowful as though it were the mode 
 And date of death we wrote on our own tombs : 
 Wring a slight sleep out of the couch, and see 
 The self -same moon which lit us to our rest, 
 
158 FE8TU8. 
 
 Her place scarce changed perceptibly in heaven, 
 
 Now light us to renewal of our toils. 
 
 This, to the young mind, wild and all in leaf. 
 
 Which knowledge, grafting, paineth. Fruit soon comes ; 
 
 And more than all our' troubles pays us powers ; 
 
 So that we joy to have endured so much : 
 
 Slaved, slain ourselves, almost. More ; it is to strive 
 
 To bring the mind up to one's own esteem : 
 
 Who but the generous fail ? It is to think, 
 
 While thought is standing thick upon the brain, 
 
 As dew upon the brow — for thought is brain-sweat — 
 
 And gathering quick and dark, like storms in summer, 
 
 Until convulsed, condensed, in lightning sport, 
 
 It plays upon the heavens of the mind ; 
 
 Opens the hemisphered abysses here, 
 
 And we become revealers to ourselves. 
 
 Student. When night hath set her silver lamp on high, 
 Then is the time for study : when heaven's light 
 Pours itself on the page, like prophesy 
 On time, unglooming all its mighty meanings ; 
 It is then we feel the sweet strength of the stars. 
 And magic of the moon. 
 
 LuciFEK. It's a bad habit. 
 
 Student. And wisdom dwells in secret, and on high. 
 As do the stars. The sun's diurnal glare 
 Is for the worldly herd ; but for the wise. 
 The cold pure radiance of the night -bom light. 
 Wherewith is inspiration of the truth. 
 Time was, I ne'er sought rest before the sun 
 Rose broad ; and, maybe, for that sacrifice, 
 Through a like length of time as that now gone, 
 The world shall speak of me six thousand years hence 
 
 LuciFEE. How know you that the world won't end to-morrow ? 
 
 Paeson. I, now, an early riser, love to hail 
 The dreamy struggles of the stars with light. 
 And the recovering breath of earth, sleep drowned, 
 Awakening to the wisdom of the sun, 
 And life of light within the tent of heaven ; 
 To kiss the feet of Morning as she walks 
 In dewy light along the hills, while they, 
 All-odorous as an angel's fresh-culled crown. 
 Unveil to her their bounteous loveliness. 
 
 Student. I am devote to study. Worthy books 
 Are not companions ; they are solitudes ; 
 We lose ourselves in them and all our cares. 
 The further back we search the human mind, 
 Mean in the mass, but in the instance great ; 
 Which starting first with deities, and stars. 
 And broods of beings earth-born, heaven-begot, 
 And all the bright side of the broad world, now 
 Boats upon dreams and dim atomic truths ; 
 Is all for comfort and no more for glory » 
 
FE8TUB. 159 
 
 The nobler and more marvellous it shows. 
 Trilles like these make up the present time ; 
 llie Iliad and the Pyramids the past. 
 
 Festus. The future will have glory not the less. 
 I can conceive a time when the world shall be 
 Much better visibly, and when, as far 
 As social life and its relations tend, 
 Men, morals, manners shall be lifted up 
 To a pure height we know not of nor dream ; 
 When all men's rights and duties shall be clear, 
 And charitably exercised and borne ; 
 When education, conscience, and good deeds 
 Shall have just equal sway, and civil claims ; 
 Great crimes shall be cast out, as were of old 
 Devils possessing madmen ; truth shall reign, 
 Nature shall be rethroned, and man sublimed. 
 
 Student. Oh I then may heaven come down again to earth ; 
 And dwell with her, as once, like to a friend. 
 
 LuciFEB. As like each other as a sword and scythe. 
 Oh I then shall lions mew and lambkins roar. 
 
 Festus. And having studied — what next ? 
 
 Student. Much I long 
 
 To view tlie capital city of the world. 
 The mountains, the great cities, and the sea, 
 Are each an era in the life of youth, 
 
 Festus. There to get worldly ways, and thoughts, and schemes ; 
 To learn to detect, distrust, despise mankind ; 
 To ken a false factitious glare amid much 
 That shines with seeming saintlike purity ; 
 To gloss misdeeds ; to trifle with great truths ; 
 To pit the brain against the heart, and plead 
 Wit before wisdom ; these are the world's ways : 
 It learns us to lose that in crowds, which we 
 Must after seek alone, our innocence ; 
 And when the crowd is gone. 
 
 Student. Not only that : 
 
 There, all great things are round one. Interests 
 Mighty and mountainous even of estimate. 
 Are daily heaped or scattered 'neath the eye. 
 Great deeds, great thoughts, great schemes, world-bettering, all 
 In practice possible, or in purpose great, 
 Of human nature, there, are common things. 
 Men make themselves be deathless as in spite ; 
 As if they waged some lineal feud with time ; 
 As though their fathers were immortal, too ; 
 And immortality an every-day 
 Accomplishment. 
 
 Festus. Fie 1 fie I it is more for this : 
 
 Amid gayer x)eople, and more wanton ways, 
 To give a loose to all the lists of youth ; 
 To train your passion flowers high ahead, 
 And bind them on your brow as others do. 
 
led PMTus. 
 
 The momlit revel and the shameless mate ; 
 The tabled hues of darkness and of blood ; 
 The published bosom and the crowning' smile ; 
 The cup excessive ; and if aught there be 
 More vain than these or wanton, — that to have- 
 Have all but always in intent, effect, 
 Or fact. Nay, nay, deny it not : I know. 
 Youth hath a strange and strong desire to try 
 All feelings on the heart : it is very wrong. 
 And dangerous, and deadly : strive against it ! 
 
 Student. It might be some old sage was warning us. 
 
 Festus. Youth might be wise. We suffer less from paina 
 Than pleasures. 
 
 Student. I should like to see the world, 
 
 And gain that knowledge which i* — 
 
 Festus. Barrener 
 
 Than ice ; possessing and producing nought 
 But means and forms of death or vanity. 
 The world is just as hollow as an eggshell. 
 It is a surface, not a solid, mind : 
 And all this boasted knowledge of the world 
 Means but acquaintance with low things, it seems 
 To me, things evil, or things indifferent. 
 
 Faemer. Much more is said of knowledge than its worth. 
 A man may gain all knowledge here, and yet 
 Be, after death, as much in the dark as I. 
 
 Lucifer. What makes you know of living after death ? 
 
 Farmer. Why, nothing that I know, and there it is ! — 
 But something I am told has told me so. 
 No angel ever came to me to prove it ; 
 And all my friends have died and left no ghosts. 
 
 Festus. All that is good a man may learn from himself ; 
 And much, too, that is bad. 
 
 Parson. Nay, let me speak I 
 
 Aught that is good the soul receives of God, 
 When he hath made it his ; and until then, 
 Man cannot know, nor do, nor be, aught good. 
 Oh I there is nought on earth worth being known 
 But God and our own souls — the God we have 
 Within our hearts ; for it is not the hope. 
 Nor faith, nor fear, nor notions others have 
 Of God can serve us, but the sense and soul 
 We have of him within us ; and, for men, 
 God loves us men each individually. 
 And deals with us in order, soul by soul. 
 
 Lucifer. But this is not the place for sermons. 
 
 Parson. True 
 
 We heard once, Festus, you were travelling : 
 Pray, in what parts ? 
 
 Festus. Among the outer orbs. 
 
 PARSOif. Nay, surely not so far ; except in thought, 
 Perchance, or calculation. 
 
FESTU8. 161 
 
 Festus. a month back 
 
 I was in giant land. 
 
 Parson. Ah ! fee-faw-fum ? — 
 
 They did not eat you, there ? 
 
 Festus. Oh 1 no. They much 
 
 Preferred their usual fare. 
 
 Parson. "VMiat might it be ? 
 
 Not Englishmen and hasty pudding, eh ? 
 
 Festus. They are no more cannibals than you or 1 ; 
 But are of various tastes, and patronize, 
 I know, rich diet. 
 
 Parson. It's excusable. 
 
 And they are great consumers, I dare say. 
 
 Festus. A wheat-stack of our friend's here would but make 
 One loaf of bread for them. Oak trees they use 
 As pickles, and tall pines as toothpicks ; whales. 
 In their own blubber fried, serve as mere fish 
 To bait their appetites. Boiled elephants, 
 Rhinoceroses, and roasted crocodiles — 
 Every thing dished up whole — with lions stewed, 
 Shark sauce, and eagle pie, and young giraffes, 
 Make up a potluck dinner, — if there's plenty. 
 Then as for game, the pterodactyles 
 And ichthyosauri are great dainties there, 
 Coming in season only once an age. 
 They reckon there by ages, not by years. 
 
 Student. And as to beverage ? 
 
 Festus. Oh ; if thirsty, they 
 
 Will lay them down and drink a river dry, 
 Nor once draw breath. 
 
 Parson. Ah 1 camel, gnat, and all. 
 
 Festus. Others are more abstemious, and consume 
 Egg-broth and simples chiefly. There was one 
 Who when I saw him first sat by a fire : 
 An egg, an hour-glass, and a water bowl 
 Being before him. All he said was this : — 
 WTien the sand is run 
 The egg is done. 
 This he first boiled, then roasted, and then ate. 
 
 Student. What soi-t of one ? Perhaps an ostrich egg 1 
 
 Festus. Much larger. Here is nothing of the kind. 
 The yolk was like the sun seen in a fog ; 
 The white was thin and clouded, and the shell. 
 Heavy and hard, as is our earth-pie crust. 
 
 Lucifer. What kind of bird it was that laid it — guess I 
 
 Parson. Continue. You have travelled in the dark ; 
 But wisdom sometimes inns with ignorance. 
 "What of their persons, habits, language, creed 1 
 
 Festus. Huger than Xapheleim of old, whose bulk 
 Cast cloudlike shadows on the eclipsed caxth. ; 
 Huger than those our childhood's chap-books brand ; 
 Or all whose deeds till now defile romance ; 
 
162 FE8TU8. 
 
 Albadan, and those monstrous, sire and son, 
 
 Wh.oni Amadis, the flower of knights, o'erthrew, 
 
 Not counting- much of giants — so to win 
 
 His Oriana bright at Miraflor ; 
 
 In form and stature, these, as mountain -sized, 
 
 Could walk through woods like ours as through long grass. 
 
 They live seven thousand years of years like man's, 
 
 And then die suddenly ; when death takes place 
 
 Tliey bu;in the bodies always in a lake, 
 
 The spray whereof is ashes, and its depths 
 
 Unfathomable fire ; and never mourn ; 
 
 Use little verbal language, but express 
 
 All thouglit by action, and oracular use 
 
 Of eye or hand. Their chief religion seems 
 
 Self punishment by sin and rites of fire. 
 
 'Twould do the godless good to visit once, 
 
 One of this awful race whom late I saw ; 
 
 And who, were time and place more fitting — 
 
 Student. Kny, 
 
 We are apart from others. Nothing sa-^^e 
 Yon heavenly ark which floats among the stars, 
 Now resting on an Ararat of clouds, 
 Hath leave to overlook us. 
 
 Parson. Pray proceed. 
 
 Festus. Once I had travelled through a weary world, 
 Than all in heaven more barren and forlorn ; 
 Dark as the wild heart of a thunder-cloud ; 
 Strewn with the wrecks and ashes of all orbs, 
 Firestranded, rolling in quick agony ; 
 Peopled with burning ghosts dislimbed and chaired ; 
 And in the midst a giant, by a fire, 
 Kindled of burning passions, and full fed 
 With sins long seasoned ; at whose feet there stood 
 A crystal cistern, brimmed with human tears, 
 Which sprinkled but inflamed the fire withal ; 
 The giant all while watching with stem mien. 
 And ruthless interest the w-hole. Dread sir 1 
 Said I, as I drew near, what angers thee ? 
 He answered not, but pointed ; and I saw, 
 Full in the midst of that infernal fire, 
 Blazing aghast in solar solitude, 
 A panting shadow, which, with skeleton eyes. 
 And woe-gouged countenance, whereon was hung 
 A white eclipse, like darkness pale with pain, — 
 Watched for the disappearance of the heavens 
 With a despairing hope : entranced it lay 
 In palpitant torments self -perpetuate, racked 
 Ever ; anon turned restlessly, and cried 
 Woe, woe is me 1 Eternal Spirit God 1 
 Thy wrath is heaviest when made bearable. 
 Put forth thy strength and sweep the universe. 
 With me, into the night of nothingness, 
 
FESTU8. 168 
 
 Thafc sin and soul may perish. Woe is me f 
 
 Still shine the blessed heavens, and still, like ice 
 
 By art fire-frozen, my dole my dole renews. 
 
 And the giant laughed, glad in his ministery 
 
 Of scathe ; and blew, with all his breath, his hell, 
 
 Still fiercer — till it bellowetl, and the orb 
 
 Beneath my foot sole seared, and I took leave ; 
 
 For there was somewhat in the giant's air, 
 
 And his huge balefii-e, and the naked plain — 
 
 Bald as the scalp of Time — which caused me 4read. 
 
 Parson. I doubt not all you say is memory's birth. 
 Conceived of fiction. Never mortal man 
 Hath travelled in another sphere than this. 
 It was a vision, Festus, say, a dream. 
 
 Festus. Say as you will, is not a dream a fact ? 
 
 Parson. Dreams you have dreamed till you believe in them ; 
 But such as these are awesome. Not the less 
 View them vouchsafed as warnings. Oft the mind, 
 Freed by angelic sleep from bodily bonds, 
 
 Knows ucenes and themes like these you have named, which tend 
 To edifying much. Such travel is 
 Like mine, the travail simply of the brain. 
 
 Festus. It is pure reaKty. 
 
 Parson. Well, say no more. 
 
 We may pursue the sense of things too far. 
 True travellers they through all the lands of life, 
 Moral, emotional, or love's sunny zone ; 
 The palm-graced pilgrims of truth's holy land, 
 Who, all experienced, reason, wisdom find, 
 And virtue less without than in themselves. 
 So through all moral schools, the cold, stern porch, 
 Divine, impassive ; garden gay, where still 
 Dwelled pleasure scarce than vii'tue less severe 
 And stately grove of lofty lore select ; 
 The truth sought soul progresses, till we find 
 Our home is where she leads ; and we are guests 
 But of our guide ; the shrine she shows, herself. 
 The golden side of heaven's great shield is faith ; 
 The silver, reason. You see this, I that ; 
 The junction is invisible to both. 
 
 Student. One thing is sometimes said, another meant. 
 
 Lucifer. "What ai-e your politics ? 
 
 Farmer. I have none. 
 
 Lucifer. Good. 
 
 Farmer. I have my thoughts. I am no party man. 
 I cai'e for measures more than men, but tliink 
 Some little may depend upon the men ; 
 Something in fires depends upon the grate. 
 
 First Boy. What are your colours ? 
 
 Second. Blue as heaven. 
 
 Third. And mine 
 
 Are yellow as the sun, 
 
 o 2 
 
164 FE8TUS. 
 
 FiEST. Mine, green as grass. 
 
 Second. Green's forsaken, and yellow's forsworn ; 
 And blue's the colour that shall be worn. 
 
 Student. As to religion, politics, law, and war, 
 But little need be said. All are required, 
 And all are well enough. Of liberty, 
 And slavery, and tyranny we hear 
 Much ; but the human mind affects extremes. 
 The heart is in the middle of the system ; 
 And all affections gather round the truth, 
 The moderated joys and woes of life. 
 I love my God, my country, kind and kin ; 
 Nor would I see a dog wronged of his bone. 
 My country ! if a wretch should e'er arise, 
 Out of thy countless sons, who would curtail 
 Thy freedom, dim thy glory, — while he lives 
 May all earth's peoples curse him — for of all 
 Hast thou secured the blessing ; and if one 
 Exist who would not arm for liberty. 
 Be he, too, cursed living : and when dead, 
 Let him be buried downwards, with his face 
 Looking to hell ; and o'er his coward grave 
 The hare skulk, in her form. 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, gently, friend. 
 
 Curse nothing, not the Devil. He's beside you — 
 For aught you know. 
 
 Student. I neither know nor care. 
 
 {They 2>ass some card-players.^ 
 
 FESTUa Kings, queens, knaves, tens, would trick the world away, 
 And it were not now and then for some brave ace. 
 
 Student. You see yon wretched starved old man ; his brow 
 Grooved out with wrinkles like the brown dry sand 
 The tide of life is leaving ? 
 
 Lucifer. Yes, I see him. 
 
 Student. Last week he thought he was about to die : 
 So he bade gold be strewn beneath his pillow, 
 Gold on a chest that he might lie and see, 
 And gold put in a basin on his bed, 
 That he might dabble with his fingers in. 
 He's going now to grope for pence or pins. 
 He never gave a pin's worth in his life. 
 What would you do to him ? 
 
 Lucifer. I would have him wrought 
 
 Into a living wire, which beaten out. 
 Might make a golden network for the world ; 
 Then melt him inch by inch, and hell by hell, 
 "Where is the law of wrath. 
 
 Student. Oh, charity 1 
 
 It is a thought the Devil might be proud of — 
 Once and away. Misers and spendthrifts may 
 Torment each other in the world to come. 
 
 Lucifer. And thus do men apportion their own lot j 
 
FESTU3. 165 
 
 A j»Tain ot comfoi-t and a sack of sin. 
 
 Festus. Men look on death as lightning, always far 
 Off, or in heaven. They know not it is in 
 Themselves, a strong and inward tendency, 
 Tlio soul of eveiy atom, every hair : 
 That nature's infinite electric life, 
 Escaping from each isolated frame, 
 Up out of earth, or down from heaven, becomes 
 To each its proper death, and adds itself 
 Thus to the great reunion of the whole. 
 There is a man in mourning 1 What does he here ? 
 
 Student. He has just buried the only friend he had, 
 And now comes hither to enjoy himself. 
 
 Festus. Why will we dedicate the dead to God, 
 And not om-selves the living ? Oft we speak, 
 With tears of joy and trust, of some dear friend 
 As surely up in heaven ; while that same soul, 
 For aught we know, may be shuddering even in hell 
 To hear his name named ; or a wandering ghost, 
 lyioon-eyed, which gasps to read on marble slab 
 His virtue-lauding epitaph ; or there may be 
 No soul i' the case, and the fat icy worm. 
 Give him a tongue, can tell us all about him. 
 
 Student. Here is music. Stay. That simple melody 
 Comes on the heart like infant innocence, 
 Pure feeling pure ; while yet the new-bodied soul 
 Is swinging to the motion of the heavens, 
 And scarce hath caught, as yet, earth's backening course. 
 
 Festus. The heart is formed as earth was — its first age 
 Formless and void, and fit but for itself ; 
 TTien feelings half alive, just organized. 
 Come next, — then creeping sports and purposes ; 
 Then animal desires, delights, and loves — 
 For love is the first and granite-like effect 
 Of things — the longest and the highest : next 
 The wild and winged desires, youth's saurian schemes, 
 Which creep and fly by turns ; which kill and eat, 
 And do disgorge each other ; comes at length 
 Humanity to perfect life, and divide. 
 By woman. Great their bliss, but ill arrives. 
 Or the insipidity of an innocent soul 
 Palls : or some fatal act, a curse, a death, 
 An exile's laid upon it, and it goes — 
 Quits its green Eden for the sandy world, 
 "VMiere it works out its nature, as it may ; 
 In sweat, smiles, blood, tears, cursings, and what not. 
 And giant sins jwssess it ; and it worships 
 Works of the hand, head, heart — its own or others — 
 A creature worship, which excludeth God's : 
 The less thrusts out the greater. Warning comes, 
 But the heart fears not — feels not ; till at last 
 Down comes the flood from heaven ; and that heart, 
 
166 FESTU8. 
 
 Broken inwards, eartlilike, to its central hell : 
 
 Or like the bright and burning- eye we see 
 
 Inly, when pressed hard backwards on the brain, 
 
 Ends and begins again — destroyed, is saved. 
 
 Every man is the first man to himself, 
 
 And Eves are just as plentiful as apples ; 
 
 Nor do we fall, nor are we saved, by proxy. 
 
 The Eden we live in is our own heart ; 
 
 And the first thing we do, of our free choice, 
 
 Is sure and necessary to be sin. 
 
 Each to himself is also the last man, 
 
 And with him bears and earns the world's vast doom. 
 
 LuciFEE. The only right men have is to be damned. 
 What is the good of music, or the beauty ? 
 Music tells no tmths. 
 
 Festus. True ; but it suggests 
 
 And illustrates the highest of all truths, 
 The harmony of all things — even of earth. 
 With its great Author. Oh ! there is nought so sweet 
 As lying and listening music from the hands. 
 And singing from the lips, of one we love ; 
 Lips that all others should be tuned to. Then 
 The world would all be love and song ; heaven's harps 
 And orbs join in ; the whole be harmony ; 
 Distinct, yet blended — blending all in one 
 Long and delicious tremble like a chord. 
 But to thee, God 1 all being is a harp 
 Whereon thou makest mightiest melody. 
 
 Lucifer. Hast ever been in love, friend ? 
 
 Student. Never, T 
 
 Festus. Spite of morality or of mystery, love 
 It is, which mostly destinates our life. 
 What makes the world in after life I know not ; 
 For our horizon alters as we age : 
 Power only can make up for the lack of love ; 
 Bower of some sort. The mind at one time grows 
 So fast, it fails ; and then its stretch is more 
 Than its strength ; but, as it opes, love fills it up, 
 Like to the stamen in the flower of life. 
 Till for the time we well-nigh grow aU love ; 
 And soon we feel the want of one kind heart 
 To love what's well, and to forgive what's ill, 
 In us, — that heart we play for at all risks. 
 
 Student. How can the heart, which lies embodied deep, 
 In blood and bone, set like a ruby eye 
 Into the breast, be made a toy for beauty, 
 And, vane-like, blown about by every wanton sigh ? 
 How can the soul, the rich star- travelled stranger. 
 Who here sojourneth only for a purchase, 
 Eisk all the riches of his years of toil, 
 And his God-vouched inheritance of heaven, 
 For one light taste of love 2 which makes forget 
 
FE8TU8. 167 
 
 By force of juice Lethean all beside 
 Of lore, or studious gain, or so I have heard ; 
 Love being itself most perishable of things, 
 A vanishing quantity, at the best. 
 
 Lucifer. No matter I 
 
 It is so ; and when once you know the sport, 
 The crowded pack of passions in full cry, 
 The sweet deceits, the tempting obstacles, 
 The smile, the sigh, the tear, and the embrace, 
 With kisses close as stars in the Milky Way, 
 In at the death, you cry, though 'twere your own ; 
 Or, so I have heard. 
 
 Student. Most sound morality ! 
 
 Nothing is thought of virtue, then, nor judgment ? 
 
 Lucifer. Oh ! everything Ls thought of — but not then. 
 And — judgment — no ! it is nowhere in the field. 
 
 Student. Slow-paced and late arriving, still it comes. 
 I cannot understand this love ; I hear 
 Of its idolatry, more than its respect. 
 
 Festus. Respect is what we owe ; love what we give. 
 And men would mostly rather give than pay. 
 Meanwhile let no vain teachings lead aside : 
 Morality's the sole right rule for all. 
 Nor could society cohere without 
 Virtue were loved ; there are whose spirits walk 
 Abreast of angels and the future, here. 
 Respect and love thou such. 
 
 Lucifer. Of course you wish 
 
 Women to love you rather than love them. 
 Well, mind 1 it is folly to tell women truth ! 
 They would rather live on lies so they be sweet. 
 Never be long in one mmd to one love. 
 You change your practice with your subject. All 
 Differ. But yet, who knows one woman well 
 By heart, knows all. It is my experience ; 
 And I advise on good authority. 
 
 Festus. Time laughs at love. It is a hateful sight, 
 That bald old grey-beard jeering the boy. Love. 
 Passion is from affection ; and there is nought 
 So maddening and so lowering as to have 
 The worse in passion. Thhik, when one by one, 
 Pride, love, and jealousy, and fifty more 
 Great feelings column up to force a heart. 
 And all are beaten back, — all fail— all fall : 
 The tower intact ; but risk it : we must learn. 
 To know the world, be wise and be a fool. 
 The heart will have its swing — the world its way : 
 Who seeks to stop them, only throws himself down. 
 We must take as we find : go as they go, 
 Or stand aside. Let the world have the wall. 
 How do you think, pray, to get tlirough the world ? 
 
 Student. I mean not to get thi'ough the world at all 
 
168 fESTUS 
 
 But over it. 
 
 Festus. Aspiring I you will find 
 The world is all up-hill when we would do ; 
 All down-hill when we suffer. Nay, it will part 
 Like the Eed Sea, so that the poor may pass. 
 We make oar compliments to wretchedness, 
 And hope the poor want nothing-, and are well. 
 But I mean, what profession will you choose ? 
 Purely you will do something- for a name. 
 
 Student. Names are of much more consequence than things. 
 
 Festus. Vv^ell ; here's our honest, all-exhorting- friend, 
 The parson — liere the doctor. I am sure 
 The Devil might act as moderator there, 
 And do mankind some service. 
 
 Lucifer. In his way. 
 
 Student. But I care neither for men's souls nor bodies. 
 
 Festus. What say you to the law ? Are you ambitious ? 
 
 Student. Nor do I mind for other people's business, 
 I have no heart for their predicaments : 
 I am for myself. I measure everything 
 By, what is it to me ? from which I find 
 I have but little in common with the mass, 
 Except my meals and so forth ; dress and sleep. 
 I have that within me I can live upon : 
 Spider-like, spin my place out anywhere. 
 
 LuciEHE. This youth I have long observed as one most apt 
 By virtue of like studies to thine own ; 
 (And to meet two such wizards in one night 
 Seems a delight scarce credible,) to form 
 A future friend. Not had it been so planned 
 By subtlest wit, could our rencounter here 
 More fortunate be, more opportune. 
 
 Festus. Agreed. 
 
 I think I see in him a want supplied 
 Of life doomed lonely enough. Nor seems he lured 
 By traits of popular art or mercenary : 
 But more through intellectual penance given 
 To obsolescent quests than feastful crafts. 
 To none of all the sciences, nor arts. 
 Astral, or earthy, you feel your mind, then, drawn ! 
 
 Student. Why no ; there are so many rise and fail and fall, 
 One knows not which to choose. 
 
 Festus. True ; for as for the stars, 
 
 I never lock on them without dismay. 
 Earth hath outrun them in our modem mind 
 By worlds of odds. We have lost all sympathies 
 With the e'er moving skies, and seem, ourselves, 
 To the eternal less, and less concerned 
 In act and use of heavenly things, than when 
 Poor earth was almost all. Enough for us 
 It seems, and our cold reckoners to jot down 
 Their revolutions, distances, and squares ; 
 
FESTUa. 169 
 
 While the bright laws which stars and spirits rule, 
 
 From deep-toned Saturn ; from the sea-god's stai-, 
 
 And thunderous bass of heaven's immediate orb, 
 
 WTiose inefficient ray, or good or ill 
 
 Fails to decide here, to the shrill-voiced moon, 
 
 Are buried, grave on grave. Who now will care 
 
 To learn of things more spiritual than facts 
 
 Totalled up, day by day ? Who now aspires, 
 
 Aweful, to attain the spells of secret power. 
 
 And safety, say, 'gainst spirits supernal, taught 
 
 By ancient seers and sages ? Who now knows 
 
 Of fourfold worlds and elemental spheres 
 
 Concentric, like the ring the wizard draws 
 
 Round him, which lord our earth ; yet in such wise 
 
 That still, through them, we may conjoin our souls 
 
 To the starry guardians of all worlds, beyond 
 
 Moon-mansions, and heaven's burning heart, where dwell 
 
 Celestial spirits all-knowing, and divine 
 
 Demons ? All, infinitely unsought, are deemed 
 
 Doubtless, extinct. No danger now of aught 
 
 Knowing, which ought not justly to be known. 
 
 And you, ye planetary sons of light. 
 
 Your aspects, dignities, gifts, and detriments, 
 
 And all your heavenly houses and effects. 
 
 Unknown to shallow sciolists, shall no more 
 
 Meet here, devout expounders. Ye shall shine 
 
 Henceforth, in vain, to man ; cease to reward, 
 
 Or instigate ; and you, too, ye juried signs, 
 
 Earth's sun-surrounding path illuming, mind 
 
 Move ye no more ; nought more of faith feel men 
 
 In the eternal order, Grod was deemed 
 
 To have made common once 'tween heaven and earth ; 
 
 But all the starry inclusions of all signs 
 
 Shall rise, and rule and pass, and no one know 
 
 There are worlds whose spirit-rulers fraternize 
 
 With ours ; and unsuspect, high commune hold. 
 
 In the shining voices of the spheres, with souls 
 
 Of astral purity. The mystic charm 
 
 In numbers, and the all-various unity 
 
 Of being, repetitive, which ones with God 
 
 The whole, and coming from, to him returns. 
 
 Allures no more man's mind, debased ; nor, now, 
 
 The mysteries of names ; yet wot we well 
 
 That natural perfection multiplied 
 
 By spiritual, on monadic deity based, 
 
 God's names, as known to men and angels, gives ; 
 
 And how thus Fate rules, really all, by means 
 
 Mediate, and nominal. 
 
 Student. Take, too, chemic art ; 
 
 What do men now ? Weigh atoms ; count them ; rate 
 Their mean affinities, laws. The starry stone, 
 Golden, invisible, principle of life, 
 
 o3 
 
15rd FE8TU8. 
 
 Fine quintessence of all the elements, 
 
 Is still unbouglit ; still flows the stream of pearl 
 
 Beneath the magic mountain ; still the scent 
 
 As of thousand amaranth wreaths, all life which lures, 
 
 Though vainly, unto its sweetness, floats around 
 
 Mistlike, the sliining bath where Luna laves, 
 
 Or Sol, bright brother of that mooned maid, 
 
 Triumphs. The earth celestial, the live land, 
 
 Still is, though veiled ; still breathe for those who will, 
 
 The airs of Paradise. The watery fire, 
 
 Destructive, recreative, impalpable. 
 
 The initial and conclusion of the world, 
 
 The secret of creation shared 'tween God 
 
 And man, now nature's only, timewise, still 
 
 "Waits man's deific choice ; soul's simple light 
 
 Divine, wherein all rudiments blend, still bums 
 
 Our spirits within. The snowy gold, the seed 
 
 Nucleate of star, — by wind impiegned, of God, 
 
 If arbitrary of favour, — bound, being tracked, 
 
 Dismasked, to render rich and deathless all, 
 
 Hides not. The water of deathless life still flows ; 
 
 Still bounds through nature's veins the sanative juice 
 
 Absolvent of disease ; and still, in fine, 
 
 The secrets only to be told by fire. 
 
 Starry, or beamless, central and extreme. 
 
 Bum to be bom. And other natures may 
 
 Use them, and do. In Demogorgon's hall 
 
 Still sits the universal mystery, life 
 
 Hidden in itself, but cognizable in cause. 
 
 By its own willing members : of man, sole. 
 
 The recreant spirit of the world ignored. 
 
 He surface-knowledge loves ; the crimes of crowds 
 
 Calls virtue ; adores the useful vices ; licks 
 
 The gory dust from off the feet of war. 
 
 And swears it food for gods, though fit for fiends 
 
 Only ; reversing, in his own vile plight. 
 
 The Devil's, when first he boarded this our orb, 
 
 A fallen angel's form, a reptile's soul. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh I this is libellous to man and fiend 
 And brute together. 
 
 Student. All are ai-t and part 
 
 Of the same mystic treason. But enough 1 
 I have seen the end of all earth's loftier lore. 
 There shall be no more cabala, nor magic ; 
 Nor Rosicrucian nor alchymic skill ; 
 Nor fairy fantasies : no more hobgoblins, 
 Nor ghosts, nor imps, nor demons. Conjurors, 
 Enchanters, witches, wizards, shall all die 
 Hopeless, and heirless ; tteir divining arts 
 Supernal or infernal, dead, with them. 
 And so it will doubtless be with other things 
 Jn time ; therefore will I my brain commit 
 
FE8TU8. 171 
 
 To none of them. 
 
 FE3TU8. Perchance ifc were wiser not : 
 
 Man's heart hath not half uttered itself yet, 
 And much remains to do as well as say. 
 The heart is some time ere it finds its focus. 
 And found, with the whole light of nature strained 
 To a hair's-breadth through it, oft, the things it bums 
 To search, it lights, oblivious, to their death. 
 I had not thought the world within its walls 
 Held one so versed in ignorance, so expert 
 In things impracticable. You must have lived 
 So centrally apart as not to know 
 That studies once perchance thought loftiest, since, 
 Have lost their footing by proved uselessness ; 
 WTiile lowlier ones, which merely better man, 
 Bring him more near his Maker. 
 
 Student. I believe 
 
 The world will neither better end nor worse 
 For aught I do, or wish to do, or mean. 
 
 Lucifer. Signs of a conscientious recklessness, 
 Such thoughts, as touch me and attract, I never 
 
 So fortunate seem as in 'lighting upon friends 
 Bent on their own ends, openly. Gcod ; be wise. 
 
 Student. Wisdom is not to know what others know. 
 
 For pTiu.v science patent to mankind 
 
 I reck nought. Secret truth is that I seek. 
 Lucifer. And rightly. Pure intelligence alone, 
 
 Unmixed with moral aims, is truly wise. 
 
 To cheapen truth that every one may buy, 
 
 You must so thin the gold as makes it worthless. 
 
 Festus. Nay, but contrariwise ; the more you spread 
 
 Tlie more you emulate truth's deity, 
 
 In his best attribute, the gift of bliss 
 
 To others. Truth for its own sake's worth little ; 
 
 Communicated, priceless. Mix with men; 
 
 Not slavewise to the mass ; but having gained 
 
 In secret freedom, truth, that moral gold 
 
 \\Tiich mind transmutes, perfective from all thought, 
 
 And hath in noblest souls most potent rule, 
 
 Impart to all prepared. 
 Student. This alchemy 
 
 How shall I learn, whereby thought truth becomes. 
 
 And knowledge, wisdom ; — raagistery divine ? 
 
 Lucifer. We'll speak of this sometime at leisure. I 
 
 Know one, who could unseal this hidden lore ; 
 
 And hold the wine of wisdom to their lips, 
 
 Who can appreciate her divinest draught. 
 
 Kay, more ; perchance can reconcile the aims 
 
 Of both ; and knowledge supplement with power. 
 Festus. Well, farewell, Mr. Student. May you never 
 
 Regret those hours which make the mind, if they 
 
 Unmake the body j for the sooner we 
 
iH 
 
 FE8TU8. 
 
 Are fit to be all mind, tlie better. Blessed 
 
 Is lie whose heart is the home of the great dead, 
 
 And their great thoughts. Who can mistake great thoughts f 
 
 They seize upon the mind ; arrest and search, 
 
 And shake it ; bow the tall soul as by wind ; 
 
 Rush over it like a river over reeds, 
 
 Which quaver in the current ; turn us cold, 
 
 And pale, and voiceless ; leaving in the brain 
 
 A rocking and a ringing ; glorious. 
 
 But momentary, madness might it last. 
 
 And close the soul with heaven as with a seal 1 
 
 In lieu of all these things whose loss thou moumest; 
 
 If earnestly or not I know not, use 
 
 The great and good and true which ever live ; 
 
 And are all common to pure eyes and true. 
 
 Upon the summit of each mountain-thought 
 
 Worship thou God, with heaven uplifted head 
 
 And arms horizon stretched ; for deity is seen 
 
 From every elevation of the soul. 
 
 Study the light ; attempt the high ; seek out 
 
 The soul's bright path ; and since the soul is fire, 
 
 Of heat intelligential, turn it aye 
 
 To the all-Fatherly source of light and lif o : 
 
 Piety purifies the soul to see 
 
 Visions, perpetually, of grace and power. 
 
 Which, to their sight who in ignorant sin abide, 
 
 Are now as e'er incognizable. Obey 
 
 Thy genius, for a minister it is 
 
 TJnto the throne of Fate. Draw towards thy soul, 
 
 And centralize, the rays which are around 
 
 Of the divinity. Keep thy spirit pure 
 
 From worldly taint, by the repellant strength 
 
 Of virtue. Think on noble thoughts and deeds, 
 
 Ever. Count o'er the rosaiy of truth ; 
 
 And practise precepts which are proven wise. 
 
 It matters not then what thou fearest. Walk 
 
 Boldly and wisely in that light thou hast j — 
 
 There is a hand above will help thee on. 
 
 I am an omnist, and believe in all 
 
 Keligions ; fragments of one golden world 
 
 To be relit yet, and take its place in heaven. 
 
 Where is the whole, sole truth, in deity. 
 
 Meanwhile, his word, his law, writ soulwise here, 
 
 Study ; its truths love ; practise its behests. 
 
 They will be with thee when all else have gone. 
 
 Mind, body, passion all wear out ; not faith 
 
 Nor truth. Keep thy heart cool, or rule its heat 
 
 To fixed enda ; waste it not upon itself. 
 
 Not all the agony maybe of the damned 
 
 Fused in one pang, vies with that earthquake throb 
 
 Which wakens soul from life-waste, to let see 
 
 The world rolled by for aye, and we must wait 
 
FU8TU8. 1^3 
 
 For onr next chance the nigh eternity ; 
 WTiether it be in heaven or elsewhere. 
 
 Student. Sir, 
 
 I will remember this most grave advice 
 And think of you with all respect. 
 
 Festus. Well, mind, 
 
 The worst of men may give the best advice. 
 Our deeds sometimes are better than our thoughts. 
 Commend me, friend, to everyone you meet. 
 I am an universal favourite. 
 All turn to me whenever I speak, full-faced, 
 As planets to the sun, or owls to a rushlight. 
 Farewell. 
 
 Student. I hope to meet again. 
 
 Festus. And I. 
 
 LuciFEB. Fear not. Chance favours like recurrences. 
 
 Festus. Tender's a woman singing. Let us hear her. 
 
 Singer. In the grey church tower 
 
 Were the clear bells ringing, 
 "When a maiden sat in her lonely bower 
 
 Sadly and lowly singing ; 
 And thus she sang, that maiden fair 
 Of the soft blue eyes and the long light hair. 
 
 This hand hath oft been held by one 
 
 Who now is far away ; 
 And here I sit and sigh alone 
 
 Through all the weary day : 
 Oh when will he I love return ? 
 And when shall I forget to mourn ? 
 
 Along the dark and dizzy path 
 
 Ambition madly runs, 
 'Tis there they say his course he hath, 
 
 And therefore love he shuns ; 
 Oh fame and honour crown his brow. 
 For 80 he would be with me now. 
 
 In th» grey church tower 
 
 Kept the clear bolls ringing, 
 "When a bounding step in that lonely bower 
 
 Broke on the maiden singing ; 
 She turned, she saw ; oh happy fair ! 
 For her love who loved her bo well was there. 
 
 LuciPEE. And we might trust these youths and maidens fair. 
 The world was made for nothing but love, love. 
 Now I think it was made most to be burned. 
 
 Festus. The night is glooming on us. It is the hour 
 When lovers will speak lowly, for the sake 
 Of being nigh each other ; and when love 
 Shoots up the eye, like morning on the east, 
 Making amends for the long northern night 
 They passed, ere either knew the other loved ; 
 The hour of hearts ! Say grey-beards what they please, 
 The heart of age is like an emptied wine-cup ; 
 Its life lies in a heel-tap : how can age judge 1 
 
Vri FE8TU8. 
 
 'Twere a waste of time to ask how they wasted theirs ; 
 
 But while the blood is bright, breath sweet, skin smooth, 
 
 And limbs all made to minister delight ; 
 
 Ere yet we have shed our locks, like trees their leaves, 
 
 And we stand staring bare into the air ; 
 
 He is a fool who is not for love and beauty. 
 
 It is I, the young, to the young speak, I am of them ; 
 
 And always shall be. "What are years to me f 
 
 You traitor years, that fang the hands ye have licked, 
 
 Vicelike ; henceforth your venom-sacs are gone. 
 
 I have conquered. Ye shall perish : yea, shall fall 
 
 Like birdlets \)eaten by some resistless storm 
 
 'Gainst a dead wall, dead. I pity ye, that such 
 
 Mean things should have raised, in man, or hope or fear ; 
 
 Those Titans of the heart that fight at heaven. 
 
 And sleep, by fits, on fire, whose slightest stir's 
 
 An earthquake. I am bound and blessed to youth. 
 
 None but the brave and beautiful can love. 
 
 Oh give me to the young, the fair, the free. 
 
 The brave, who would breast a rushing, burning world 
 
 Which came between him and his heart's delight. 
 
 Mad must I be, and what's the world ? Like mad 
 
 For itself. And I to myself am all things, too. 
 
 If my heart thundered would the world rock ? Well 
 
 Then let the mad world fight its shadow down. 
 
 Soon there may be nor sun, nor world, nor shadow. 
 
 But thou, my blood, my bright red running soul, 
 
 Eejoice thou, like a river in thy rapids. 
 
 Rejoice, thou wilt never pale with age, nor thin ; 
 
 But in thy full dark beauty, vein by vein 
 
 Serpent- wise, me encircling, shalt, to the end, 
 
 Throb, bubble, sparkle, laugh, and leap along. 
 
 Make merry, heart, while the holidays shall last. 
 
 Better than daily dwine, break sharp with life ; 
 
 Like a stag, sunstruck, top thy bounds, and die. 
 
 Heart, I could tear thee out, thou fool, thou fool ; 
 
 And strip thee into shreds upon the wind. 
 
 What have I done that thou shouldst maze me thus ? 
 
 Lucifer. Let us away ; we have had enough of hearts. 
 
 Festus. Oh for the young heart like a fountain playing 
 Flinging its bright fresh feelings up to the skies 
 It loves and strives to reach ; strives, loves in vain. 
 It is of earth, and never meant for heaven. 
 Let us love both and die. The sphinx-like heart 
 Loathes life the moment that life's riddle is read. 
 The knot of our existence solved, all things 
 Loose-ended lie, and useless. Life is had, 
 And lo ! we sigh, and say, can this be all ? 
 It is not what we thought ; it is very well. 
 But we want something more. There is but death. 
 Aud when we have said and seen, done, had, enjoyed 
 And suffered, maybe, all we have wished, or feared, 
 
FE8TU8, 175 
 
 From fame to rain, and from love to loathing", 
 
 There can come but one more change — try it— death. 
 
 Oh it is g-reat to feel that nought of earth, 
 
 Hope, love, nor dread, nor care for what's to come, 
 
 Can check the royal lavishment of life ; 
 
 But, like a streamer strown upon the wind, 
 
 "We fling- ourselves to fate and to the future. 
 
 For to die young is youth's divinest gift ; 
 
 To pass from one world fresh into another, 
 
 I>e change hath lost the charm of soft regret ; 
 
 And feel the immortal impulse from within 
 
 "Wliich makes the coming, life, cry alway, on I 
 
 And follow it while strong, is heaven's last mercy. 
 
 There is a fire-fly in the south, but shines 
 
 When on the wing. So is't with mind. When once 
 
 We rest, we darken. On I saith God to the soul, 
 
 As unto the earth for ever. On it goes, 
 
 A rejoicing native of the infinite. 
 
 As is a bu-d, of air ; an orb, of heaven. 
 
 XII. 
 
 That aery lodestone, operant still. 
 The love of boundless knowledge, leads us down 
 DeepUer than ever leadlin* went, to search 
 The central rayless light we have within, 
 And learn, that, touched albeit all mysteries, traced 
 Orb-foundang theories sagest, handled fire 
 Defthest, unfit, as discontent, to abide 
 Longwhile by nature's hearth, 'twere better seek 
 Our proper good in act. Such hght to love, 
 To hope for, strive for, hve for, as best shows 
 Our Maker, fellow laboiner for man's good, 
 "Working, within us charitably ; and shows, 
 To souls, high aimed, who others claim to serve 
 Supremely, they themselves need, lowliest rule, 
 Life makes most blessed. Even science finds in God 
 Its ultimate form, the unknown ; all utmost truth 
 To inmost faith, responds ; aU heavens exteme, 
 Arcbed, sphere o'er sphere conformably, to soul's 
 Interior hues. It is from research like this, 
 True aspiration riseth. 
 
 Earth — The Centre, 
 
 LuciPEE and Festus. 
 
 Lucifer. Behold ns in the fije-crypts of the world ; 
 Through seas and buried mountains, tomb-like tracts 
 Fit to receive Death's skeleton when he is dead ; 
 Through earthquakes and the once proud structured bones 
 Of earthquake-swallowed cities, have we wormed, 
 Down to fire's ever-burning forge, whence breathes 
 That fluent life-heat, nenetrative. which clothes 
 
1^6 FE8TU8. 
 
 Itself in lightnings, scaping hence tlirough air, 
 
 And pierces to the last and loftiest pore 
 
 Of earth's snow-mantled mountains. In these vaults 
 
 Are hidden the archives of the universe. 
 
 There screened, in awful and omnipotent ease, 
 
 Nature, the delegate of God, brings forth 
 
 Her everlasting elements ; and here, 
 
 The reverend ashes of all ages gone 
 
 See, finally inurned. 
 
 Festus. All solid now 
 
 "Was fluid once, air, water, fire, or some 
 Vast, permeant, element ; communal, all in one ; 
 As in this focal, world-evolving heat ; 
 Moisture all mothering ; or the vacuous power 
 We are based on, I must deem. 
 
 Lucifer. The original 
 
 Of all things, all existence being one 
 Derivative whole, is one. The differences 
 Seen, show diverse but to the finite mind. 
 
 Festus. This marble-walled immensity, overroofed 
 "With pendant mountains glittering, awes my soul. 
 
 Lucifeb. Here mayst thou lay thine hand on nature's Lcart. 
 And feel its thousand yeared throbbings beat, 
 As through a sea-strait, till to beat, it cease. 
 High overhead, and deep below our feet. 
 The sea's broad thunder booms, scarce heard ; bowed round, 
 Yon arches, like to suspended contiuents 
 Of starry matter burning inwardly, stand : 
 Hard by, earth's gleaming axle sleeps, unmovei. 
 All movement centering. 
 
 Festus. Age, here, on age 
 
 Lie heaped like withered leaves. And must it end ? 
 
 Lucifee. All here hath holden fellowship with gods, 
 With eldest time and primal matter, space. 
 Stars, air, and all inherent fire, the abyss 
 Unluminous, chaos, night. These rocks retain 
 Proof of those times, earth's ancient youth, when she 
 With heaven had holy bridals ; royal gods. 
 If turbulent, combative, discontent, nathless 
 Their bright, immortal issue ; when, too, lived, 
 Prehuman and heroic, the broad-eyed race. 
 Whose science, as these rocks the seas sustain. 
 Hath formed the base of the world's fluctuous lore ; 
 When, too, by mountainous travail, human thought 
 Sought to obtain the untouched heavens, by right 
 Of lineal virtue ; when the artful powers, 
 Forecounsel and experience, by meet aid 
 Of wisdom, teachers of all social good, 
 With godhead strove ; and gloriously they failed } 
 In failure half successful ; when even men's 
 Minds were as continents vast, and not, as now, 
 Beed-plota minute, with acres, here and there, 
 
FESTUa, 177 
 
 Of brains untilled. 
 
 FESTU& Minds still which know by proof 
 
 What those could but assume, that all these rocks, 
 Hand- wrought of One, these solid fires ; the air 
 Nebulous, commixed with starry spore, and earth's 
 Waters, with unborn continents heavy, all 
 The rude original seen of nature, mate 
 With heaven, all procreant parents they of forma 
 Fate-ordered, crude products of matter, once 
 Like firstlings on the axis, altarwise, 
 Laid, of the globe, earth's testimony still stand 
 To her creative God ; who, in the heart 
 Of nethermost darkness, his miraculous name 
 Scores legible, as upon the sun's broad brow, 
 Mid blaze chaotic, and liquescent plains 
 Of ever-seething flame, where sink and rise 
 Alp-blebs of fire, vast, vagrant ; name which reads 
 Perfection infinite in all ways ; all names 
 Other of gods, obliterates. 
 
 LuciFEB. How but one ? 
 
 Each star, canst tell ? may its divinity boast. 
 
 Festus. God's hand hath scooped the hollow of this world ; 
 His, sole, who all doth, and remembereth all 1 
 Or aim, or deed ; nor, like an atomic dropped 
 Of meteoric light, some star, in's lightning rush. 
 Hath brushed off, which is quenched in last night's dew ; 
 Nor as, when fiery monarch, ireful, starts 
 In jewelled arms war- wards, a sudden gem 
 Falls, and, 'neath tramp of shouting hosts, is lost 
 Am I, even I, forgotten. Ere blended, here, 
 As in a bowl, the spheral rudiments lay ; 
 WTience all elaborated in turn, and raised 
 From shining star-seed into embryon orbs 
 And germs gigantic of the universe ; 
 Each mighty change a thought of God, each thought 
 An act substantial of perfective power, 
 Leaving at last prolific earth life-stored 
 With light impregned, I know right well 'twas planned 
 For me, for man, his favourite. Even here, 
 These blasts that tear tempestuous from the deep ; 
 These throes that rack the centre, nature's wail 
 For her directing lord, this many an age 
 Missed from her midst, these elemental hells, 
 Conflictive, earth's upheavals, founts of fire. 
 And island vomitings, fail the sense to quench 
 Of divine wardship ; nought permitting he, 
 Though for a time self -hidden, and changeless laws, 
 In mutable types, through ever- varying forms, 
 Dispensing, proof of one continuous end. 
 To happen his beloved of harm ; and this 
 As holiest truth I hold. Didst bring me hither, 
 Trusting to lose God's track ? 
 
178 FE8TU8, 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, but to show 
 
 How things begin to end. Why, then, e'er made ? 
 This ball so rolled and rounded, melts away 
 Even now, to its constituent atoms. See, 
 This weary axis wavers in its end ; 
 It will sometime snap. 
 
 Festus. Though here were posited 
 
 All secrets of existence, natural those. 
 These supernatural, dwell not here would I, 
 Not science' founts profoundest even, to drain. 
 I long to know again the fresh green earth. 
 Breeze life-breath'd ; sea, and sacred stars ; and feel 
 In active comity with the world's wide powers. 
 These recollections crowd upon my mind, 
 Like constellations on the evening skies, 
 And will not be forbidden. Oh 1 let us leave. 
 
 LuciFEE, Aught that reminds an exile of his homo 
 Is surely pleasant. I, friend, am content. 
 
 Festus. I cannot be content with less than heaven j 
 Living, and comprehensive of all life. 
 Thee, universal heaven, celestial all ; 
 Thee, sacred seat of intellective time ; 
 Field of the soul's best wisdom : home of truth. 
 Star-throned ; by whom, and old oracular night. 
 Our spirit compeers in every orb are taught ; 
 Who can but love ? To me, by night, by day. 
 Thou art, thou must be reverend, world-whole sphere I 
 Whether the sun all light thee, or the moon, 
 In clouds embayed, mid astral islets, air 
 With beauty inundate ; or some god-star, sole, 
 As a great drop of light, shed tremulously 
 Out of her full flowing urn ; yea, tearlike, fallen 
 From her, Night's eye, o'er nature's tome, as she 
 Reads, softening so our present fates ; or when 
 In radiant thousands, each star reigns, unshared 
 His royalty, and leaderless, uncontrast 
 With the light their light is lost in, sons of fire, 
 Arch element of the heavens ; thee, even, when storm 
 And rack, our vision from thy threshold bar, 
 More love I, thinking upon the splendid calm 
 Which bounds the deadly fever of these days, 
 The higher, holier, spiritual heaven wherein 
 Soul, predisposed to expatiate, shall start forth 
 On joy's relapseless course ; and such progress 
 As counts the infinite only in its midst. 
 Felicitously partake. Come, let us rise ; 
 Nay, quit this world, within whose heartstrings still 
 I know me encoiled. The deeplier I descend. 
 The higher rise, the nearer seem I God. 
 
 Lucifer. It is knowledge only makes thee near to aught, 
 Whence ignorance most eloigns. These rocks, which hold 
 Time's cavernous footsteps printed in raw fire 
 
FESTUa. 179 
 
 Detain thee, then, no more ? 
 
 Festi;3. I would be ^ne. 
 
 Tlie world hath made such comet-like advance, 
 Lately on science, men may almost hope 
 Before it die of sheer decay, to learn 
 Something about their infancy, as this day 
 I have taught me of earth's original. 
 
 Lucifer. True ; but me 
 
 This troubles not. 
 
 Festus. Were all earth's mountain chains 
 
 To utter fire at once, what a grand show 
 Of fireworks for our neighbour moon. 
 
 LuciFEB. The passed 
 
 Hath seen such sights ; and I ; seen grander. Rise 1 
 Let us ascend. 
 
 Festus. But not through the charred throat 
 
 Of an extinct volcano. 
 
 Lucifeb. This way ; down ; 
 
 So thread we at once the world-bead. 
 
 Festus. Haste, away. 
 
 Life is too brittle, time too brief to waste. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 All man's acts, 
 Serious or trivial, all man's thoughts perchanoe 
 Pass not unmarked of angel eye, or God's. 
 We know in daytime there are stars about us, 
 Just as at night, and name them what and where, 
 Bv sight of science ; so by faith we know, 
 Though till our night we see them not, that spirits 
 Are round us, and believe heaven may be fuU 
 Of angels, as of star-motes night's white zone. 
 A brief but solemn parley o'er a gi-ave, 
 Earth's hollow threshold of futurity. 
 Observed by spirit invisible, aptly heads 
 Hohest resolves ; and, be they kept, enough 
 To assure the heart of peace. Each soul must tread 
 Singly his doubt-press. Time too soon fulfilled, 
 Leads to a pi-omised proof of progress gained 
 liy spirit on high, late loved, enlightening thus, 
 Premonstrative, our end. 
 
 A Clivrch-Yard. 
 Festus and Lucifer leside a Tomb. 
 Festus, It is not Crod we doubt of : it is one's self. 
 How can the separate soul, and most, if pure, 
 Exist distinct from God ; if perfect not, — 
 As who shall vaunt, even hers ? how re-unite ? 
 Is he the perfect, the defectible, too ? 
 Here, everywhere, the spirit one holy word, 
 Preacheth, in multitudinous tongues ; in birth. 
 
180 FE8TTTS. 
 
 Growth, blossom, fruit, collapse of life, and rise 
 
 Regenerative of being ; the saving truth. 
 
 Congruous with man's first faith, world-wide, in God 
 
 And in the soul-adjusting future, shown 
 
 Resurgent by these grave-sprung flowers. For grant 
 
 We die, nor nature cherish more man's frame, 
 
 Than her dead leaflets, still to have lived conform 
 
 With reason's law, and virtue's fine delights j 
 
 To have kept intact the spirit's purity ; 
 
 To have revered, believed in others ; hoped 
 
 And suffered for, in pains we would not lack ; 
 
 The soul's inborn religion, dear to God, 
 
 And those who nature love ; while but to have dreamed 
 
 Of one great Being, the absolute good ; who joys, 
 
 And waits, to impart to spirit, duly afiined. 
 
 Reunion with himself, true bliss ; the just ; 
 
 The supreme virtue ; whose immense repose, 
 
 Actful, not idle, while to him vast scope 
 
 Leaving administrative, to us reserves 
 
 Deliberate choice ; our fleeting, cloudlike lives, 
 
 Of his persistent firmamental soul. 
 
 Contrast and like ; seems in itself to assure 
 
 Our being of permanency , and well nigh provea 
 
 Not immortality only, but cognate 
 
 Divinity, that such vast and godlike dreams 
 
 Man's brain could sanely guest. 
 
 Lucifer. How sanely, friend ? 
 
 Festus. Oh yes, this sense of the infinite, bom in man, 
 Cultured or wild, of one sole essence, God, 
 The governing conscience of all spirit, the same, 
 Continuous, his and ours ; salvation seems ; 
 A rock sethereal, this, sky-based, which shows 
 Us, like originate with the eteme of heaven. 
 For, as who the leaflets of the aye-moving plant. 
 Though of proportions delicatest, first eyes, 
 Instinct with circular freedom, even of spheres 
 Suggestive, ultimately, and heaven ; and, awed, 
 Marks, as in preference moved, this frond or that. 
 By some sufficing motive, if to us. 
 Occult ; so shapes mysteriously, through ghost 
 Or natural spirit of earth and air, man's mind 
 As out of self -necessity, to pursue 
 This grandest and most perfect mould of thought, 
 The thought of deity ; man's best good, of all 
 Rich, poor, participable. 
 
 Lucifer. Good ; let the world 
 
 Work out its mingled fates, closed thus, or thus. 
 'Twere well, not grow too heavenly, all at once. 
 
 Festus. When life is most about one, power and proof 
 Of human foresight ; some new conquest won 
 By science from the vast unknown ; some gift 
 Ol! wt, which shall outworth a nation's debt, 
 
PJB8TUB. 181 
 
 Heirloom of agfes, sealed to earth for good ; 
 
 And through all lands, one smile man's general face 
 
 Lights up, self -glorifying ; oft, then, I feel 
 
 Sunkenest in soul, most faltering in the sense 
 
 Of spiritual reality : and, in turn 
 
 •Midst base coiruption's trophies mazed, as here, 
 
 And stony tablets dropped from Death's grim tome ; 
 
 Even in the marble palmed and cavernous grasp, 
 
 His hollow hand arched like a charnel house, 
 
 Holds, never slackening, of its prey, once won ; 
 
 Most hopeful, most assured of being. 
 
 LuciFEB. To see 
 
 Nature's sad wreck, on this, life's undercoast, 
 Cast, and to deem still, something, somewhere, 'scapes 
 By salvage, speaks strong faith. 
 
 Festus. How is't I lovo 
 
 The spirit of this fair creature, earthening here, 
 If not in nature ? 
 
 LuciFEB. May it not be, thou lov'st 
 
 Her memory, less herself ? 
 
 Festus. Nay, hear, sweet spirife t 
 
 Let years crowd in, and age bow down 
 My bosom to the earth, which gave ; 
 As yon grey, worn out, crumbling stone 
 Dips o'er the grave ; 
 
 Though passion me no more should thrill, 
 Nor pleasure please, nor beauty move ; 
 Though the heart stiffen, and waxed still, 
 No more make love ; 
 Still, in my breast, like river gold. 
 Imbedded bright, thy love shall lie ; 
 Sun-grains, that with the sands are rolled 
 Of memory. 
 
 Still, let me hold what bliss the spirit enjoys 
 Is that thou hopedst here, couldst ne'er forget. 
 
 LuciPEE. It may be that death's dewy slumber cloya 
 The soul, as yet. 
 
 Festus. Surely, that soul hath burst the tomb, 
 Long while, enrobed in living light ; 
 Not being accursed, wormlike, to eat the gloom 
 And dust of night. 
 
 LuciFEB. Oh surely life, in sporting on eaith, lies 
 Till death share up the rich green sod ; 
 But soul ! if there it lives, or here it dies, 
 Why try ye God ? 
 
 What should it never smile nor sigh 
 From cheeks or lips but those beneath ? 
 Outweighs not love the world's vast lie. 
 Bests life not death ? 
 
 Festus. I ask why man should suffer death ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Answer, what right to life hath he ? 
 God gives, and takes away, your breath. 
 
182 FE8TU8, 
 
 What more liave ye ? 
 
 Breath is your life, and life your soul ; 
 
 Ye have it warm from his kind hands ; 
 
 Then yield it back to the great Whole, 
 
 ^Vhen he demands. 
 
 Why, deathling-, wilt thou long for heaven ? 
 
 Why seek a bright, but blinding way ? 
 
 Go, thank thy God that he hath given 
 
 Night upon day. 
 
 Festus. It may be but illusion, then, the all 
 Of marvels thou hast shown ? 
 It may be that the wreath-tricked, trailing pall 
 Closes all known ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Go, thank thy God, that thou hast lived j 
 And ask no more. 'Tis all he gave ; 
 'Tis all he wills, to be believed ; 
 God and the grave. 
 
 Festus. For thee, God, will I save my heart 
 For thee my nature's honour keep ; 
 Then, soul and body, all or part, 
 Eest, wake, or sleep. 
 
 Yet, might it be, a strange deeire my breast 
 Hath seized, I know not how ; it is as though 
 A meteor of the night had there sought rest. 
 And burns within me, her to view once more 
 Whose form here lies. 
 
 LuciFEE. In sooth, I saw a light 
 
 But now, to thee, it may be, invisible. 
 Which showed me here her spirit, close urging on 
 Its moonbeamed path, some sister soul to impress 
 With the arms of fortitude, or widowed heart 
 Perchance, with patience' humbler crest. Perchance, 
 We are like to have enough of that. 
 
 Festus. There are, 
 
 Who her help merit and need ; and doubtless have, 
 Should others justly lack. 
 
 LuciPEE. If, once for all 
 
 To gorge thy passion for the unknown, I show 
 Herself to thee, with clear sight in her own. 
 Blessed home, thou wilt aid me first to other ends 
 More pressantly required. 
 
 Festus. More than to view 
 
 Goodness perfected ? 
 
 Lucifer. Yea, even power assured. 
 
 Festus. Command. Thou art ambitious for me. 
 
 Lucifer. Good, 
 
 The inevitable sequences of things 
 Like an art-ordeied torrent, made to amuse, 
 Eun themselves dry. 
 
 Festus. Heaven speed the time with me. 
 
 The sun of life shall mount the skies no more, 
 It is one eternal setting. My burden is 
 
FE8TU8, 183 
 
 Henceforth, the spirit. 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, divers quests be ours ; 
 
 And at the occnrrent season each shall claim 
 Of us, due recognition. 
 
 Festus, Be it. Away 1 
 
 XIY. 
 
 In one of earth's 
 Head cities, awaiting this, the effect unknown, 
 Of evil, not, truly, all- wise, we towerlike rise ; 
 With eminent but indifferent eye survey, 
 Bubdue, in thought, society, now in all 
 Its greater grades seen. Secret science, since 
 Divert to aims of power mysterious, schemes 
 For freedom, wealth, airs; war's surcease; and spread 
 Of mind-light, social virtue. Here the germ 
 Of universal sway, sought from the first. 
 See posited, striking, round an inner world, 
 Its roots intelligible, but not till the end 
 Destined to fruit; love, friendship, faith, all things 
 Ministrant. Plans all feasible, shadowed out, 
 Of one sublime humanity purified, 
 "Warm even the civic air. And shall not God's 
 Own peace crown man pacific ? 
 
 A Metropolis ; Public Place. 
 Festus and Lucifer, Student, and Others. 
 
 Festus. My thoughts go, cloudlike, round the world, nor rest. 
 I am on fire to realize the fate 
 
 Which darkly, in the future's depths, thou hast shown ; 
 Or else am with the mightiest folly mocked 
 E'er imped a soul to madness ? How, meanwhile 
 Our ends differ ? Can we for mellowing suns 
 Wait ? When shall earth acknowledge me ? 
 
 Lucifer. Not now 
 
 Never, till self -compelled. The time will come. 
 Have patience. It is the blessing of the angels. 
 
 Festus. Patience 1 say slow self-murder. 
 
 Lucifer. Wait for what 
 
 Is on the wing already, or reach the end 
 As of an aimless lunge i' the empty air. 
 Knowledge, love, power, are thrones thy soul shall sit 
 In order due as promised. Patience, man I 
 We are as yet but minors, both of us. 
 
 Festus. Of pleasure one has hardly had a glimpse. 
 
 Lucifer. Each pleasure hastes thee to thine end, and man's. 
 Each new sought joy, each freshly proven power, 
 But draws the end of all things like a hood, 
 Around thy fated head the closer. Come. 
 Bethink thee of thy pact. 
 
184 FESTUS. 
 
 FestuS. I do ; a pact 
 
 Where abstinence only serves to quicken pain ; 
 Indulgence, shorten pleasure. Which, to choose, 
 To let alone, which, wiser ? 
 
 LuciFEE. In them both 
 
 Is reason : but all- wise, man will never be. 
 
 Festus. Nay, come then, pretty patience. Sand by sane 
 The world is worn away ; the sea hath sapped, 
 How oft 1 earth's vaulted base ; times countless whelmed, 
 'Neath his abysmal bowl, the mountain tops. 
 'Tis but a matter of days. Most greatest things 
 Are gradual. Star on star, the heavens fulj&l 
 Their issue ; and truth quickens here the soul, 
 Dipped in substantial lightning of the sun 
 Spiritual, and with the eternal saving saved, 
 By every breath inspired of God. I yield. 
 Let us to that near hand : the end, deferred. 
 Life to enjoy, not only one must conform 
 To the world's laws, but bye-laws, customs, moods. 
 What can be done here ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Oh, a thousand things 
 
 As well as elsewhere. 
 
 Festus. True ; it is a place 
 
 Where passion, occupation, or reflection, 
 May find fit food or field. 
 
 LuciFEE. Take we our ease 
 
 Beside this feathery fountain. It is cool. 
 And pleasant ; and the people, passing by. 
 Fit subjects for twin moralists like us. 
 Here, we can speculate freely on policy ; 
 On social manners, fashions, and the news. 
 Now the political aspect of the world 
 At present, is most cheerful. To begin. 
 Like charity, at home. Out of all wrongs 
 The most atrocious ; the most righteous ends 
 Are happiest wrought. 
 
 Festus. Ofttimcs it chances so. 
 
 LuciFEE. Take of the blood of martyrs, tears of slaves, 
 The groans of prisoned patriots, and the sweat 
 Wrung from the bones of famine, like parts ; add 
 The stifled breath of man's free natural thought ; 
 The tyrant's lies, the curses of the meek ; 
 Vapour of orphan's sigh, and wail of all 
 Whom war hath spoiled, or law first fanged, then gorged; 
 The usurpations of the lawful heir. 
 The common weal, which comes to its own, all done ; 
 The treasonous rebellions of the wise ; 
 The poor man's patient prayers ; and let all these 
 Simmer some centuries, o'er the slow red fire 
 Of human wrath, and there results at last, 
 A glorious constitution, and a grand 
 Totality of nothings ; for what's all 
 
FESTUa. 185 
 
 Weighed with man's destiny ? 
 
 Festus. Of recipes 
 
 Enoug-h. That man's a warful animal, [^Soldiers 2>ass ; music. 
 
 Glories in gunpowder, and loves pai-ade, 
 Trefers them to all things, see present proof. 
 Life's but a Kword's length at the best. 
 
 LutiFER. Past doubt. 
 
 Bar-ii-on, duly smelted, niles the world. 
 
 Festus. How many tilings want remedying. What next ? 
 
 LuciFEK. Well, in this scat of empire, by this head, 
 And nucleus of a nation world-famed, sit 
 And name your remedies ; for, sick to death 
 Well-nigh, and perishing of rank rotting sores. 
 That gilded plasters hide, are all these burghs ; 
 Huge populous solitudes, where penury pines 
 Mid havoc of excess; while guileful wealth 
 Serves, tremblingly, behind the public board, 
 Pale want, his stomach stiff from sheer default 
 Of exercise, is pressed to join, and thank 
 Compulsory charity, interested to give ; 
 Or, back to shadowy feasts where all things lack ; 
 Save appetite to destroy. What's wanted here ? 
 
 Festus. Nought but a total chnnge ; true, honest, life, 
 Holy and simple ; peace ; a cheerful faith 
 In God ; and nothing spent not purely earned. 
 
 Lucifer. Utopian, I much fear. But look here comes 
 A man thou knowest. 
 
 Festus. I do. Stop, friend, of late 
 
 I have not seen thee. W^hither goest thou now ? 
 
 Student. I am upon my business, and in haste. 
 
 Festus. Business 1 I thought thou wast a simple schemer ; 
 A theorist of most nebulous mark and views ; 
 Founder of many imaginary states ; 
 And student of all arts impracticable. 
 
 Student. Mayhap, I am. There is a visionary 
 Business, as well as visionary faith. 
 My nature is more to sympathize vnth men. 
 Than in their actual aims participate. 
 What these by traffic strive to attain for themselv^, 
 I seek, by the hidden mastery, to achieve 
 For others. Let but fruit my next thought, — then. 
 Bid me compete with states, and wateh who wins. 
 
 Festus. And holdst thou faith in the art alchemic still ' 
 Still seekst secluded in the ravenous search 
 For gold to verify thine earlier hopes ? 
 
 Student. Though mingling more with men, my mind is yet 
 Leased to the great invention. I, in sooth. 
 Have all my life been living in a mine. 
 Lancing the world for gold. I have not yet 
 Fingered the right vein. Oh ! how oft I wish 
 The time might come again, pert science prates of, 
 When earth's bright veins ran ruddy vix^n gold. 
 
186 FE8TU8. 
 
 Lucifer. When next the world's gold melts 'twill run, I fear, 
 A pretty steep course towards its natural end. 
 
 Student. Oh 1 I am not without my moderate hopes. 
 When in earth's first foundation as an orb, 
 Her giant elements held, like god-kings, sway 
 Free, and successive heritage, each his gift 
 Made earth, to mark his long illustrious reign. 
 Air, water, with prolific forms and fair, 
 Their realms made vital ; with grain, herb, the mould ; 
 With tall trees towering cloudwards, thousand yeared ; 
 Fire, with all ore, gem, marble, stained with dyes 
 Stolen from the infant sun, when feeble he lay. 
 In the orient cradled ; and that earth might not, 
 Mid the first passion of her golden prime, 
 Exhaust all joy, each power some art arcane 
 Penned for the cherished future ; and to Time, 
 Earth's scribe and heaven's remembrancer, consigned 
 The opening of their treasured archives. These, 
 We, who now hold the keys of wisdom, read ; 
 Translate the fiery tongues of obelisks ; 
 Revive the blackened brain-craft of old scrolls, 
 A score of centuries tombed ; light's radiant chords 
 Peel naked to the stars ; weigh air, theirs, ours ; 
 Count off the sun's vast rudiments, and his brow 
 With vaporous iron crown ; apt compliment 
 To our own stern age. One secret only, still. 
 Of moment, lacks ; and this found, eai-th may rest, 
 And reap unusual joy. It is my main hope. 
 
 Festus. Were all rich, nothing left but gems and gold, 
 All things less pure, less precious, all beside 
 Were worthless, penniless. But what crowds of things 
 Life hath, more worth than wealth 1 When, viev/ed the A\orld, 
 We mark the mighty ignorance of the mass, 
 In all lands, their huge servitude of mind, 
 And think, what sometime it would be, to see 
 Freedom and wisdom substituted, thought 
 Fails ; and the heart faints at the vast conceipt. 
 
 Student. Truly ; but not for gold, as ore, I slave. 
 As means subservient only to some end, 
 Great and beneficent, world-wide ; end I scarce 
 Thus casually can name, but holy, high, 
 And in the face of all earth's worn-out frames 
 Of civil power, dynastic, popular, all 
 Alike effete, right justified. 
 
 Festus. So ? I hear. 
 
 Lucifee. For this end, gold is needed. 
 
 Festus. I perceive. 
 
 Student. For universal liberty, gold, and more, 
 Wrongs must be rectified, rights established. 
 
 Festus. True ; 
 
 Where'er a wrong exists, a right is quelled ; 
 And wrongs seem everywhere. Serfs I despise, 
 
FESTU8 187 
 
 For nations, if so, must so be, by choice. 
 TjTante, or many or one, elect or bom, 
 I hate. But how will justice-loving time 
 Reckon with all the despots, many and mean, 
 NVho falsify, by weight of brands and chains, 
 The balance civil hath over savage life ; 
 Who knows ? That Mercy may be satisfied 
 By so much Justice sweeps, with level hand, 
 From off the measure's head, we'll hope. 
 
 Lucifer. Yes, hope. 
 
 Festus. Hope retributive Mercy may succeed 
 Her sterner sister Justice, and aye reign 
 In parity with love. For know, while God 
 Sits, judging 'mid the heavens, and all things made 
 Governs by infinite laws, each several sphere 
 Ovras yet his special equity. Even on earth, 
 A vast invisible seat he hath, like aged 
 With the unwandering hills. In every soul's 
 Instinct of right ; in all just sympathies ; 
 In every conscience, sensitive to the truth. 
 As skies to light ; in every innocent heart, 
 Whose strings, like angel lyres, are tuned in heaven ; 
 Built into being, as though its comer-stone, 
 Towers, core of rule, this seat ; and when, crushed down 
 By popular ^\'rong of kings, or tyrannous crime 
 Of crowds, man's prayer, to him appealing, steals 
 Skywards, a shock convictive through all hearts 
 Shoots : and men's eyes, disfilmed, strange sense receive 
 Undreamed of : view, there, in their veriest midst. 
 The eternal Presence, throned. His judgments, there, 
 Be very sure are executed : his fines 
 To the last blood drop paid. Oh may at last 
 Earth's Lord to all be merciful ; but now. 
 Let God be just ; 'tis all we need. I hear. 
 As faith his gifts recounts, by man misused, 
 Heaven's reasonable demands withstood, the groans, 
 Like to an earthquake thundering underground, 
 That shake, tempestuous. Time's repentant breast. 
 
 Student. Wait, wait ; not long. The Rectifier will rise ; 
 A purer and more righteous aera come. 
 The crowd of kings, the sovereignty of crowds. 
 Shall alike pass, and perish. Time shall be, 
 ^Vhen earth one state, the lord of peace rules all. 
 Deep in earth's cavemed heart, self -hidden, I see, 
 Her loms with wisdom's silver serpents girt. 
 The Nemesis of nations. Stem she sits 
 Her monumental throne. The hush of death 
 Spreads round her, halo-like. Even Hope, her friend. 
 Oft deems her dead. Yet lives she ; live she will. 
 She hath a vital secret in her breast, 
 As though she nui-sed a god Avliich scarcely breathes, 
 Ihe freedom of the future. To all else 
 
188 FESTU8 
 
 Superior, in that secret, nought beside 
 
 Heeds she : but hears indifferent o'er her head, 
 
 The ebb, or flow, of empire, and the march 
 
 Of militant generations ; and but smiles, 
 
 And rocks her foot, contemptuous. Not for these 
 
 Moves she, nor is she moved ; nor cares she watch. 
 
 Wordless of joy or woe, say why is she 
 
 Incarcerate ? why abandoned ? why suspect 
 
 Even of the pure ? why in her cell by all 
 
 Her lover kings forgot, — could one who hath eyed 
 
 Her pale and dominant brow, and mounded breast 
 
 Elate with life, nor sliuddering shrunk to meet 
 
 That stately stare, ever forgot ? Away ! 
 
 Name not old wrongs. If wrongs have been, be sure 
 
 Some day will right them. Know, she hath never been 
 
 Save by her own serene assent, exiled 
 
 From the upper earth's face. What then doth she there, 
 
 Darkling in central solitudes ? Alas I 
 
 Of her divine prevision all devoid, 
 
 Unwelcome and unworthy suitors she 
 
 Hath, many an one, who her to rash attempt 
 
 Of empery would entice, and so secure 
 
 Her forfeit royalty ; wicked these nor reck 
 
 God's patience, or her own, prayer- wrung, to abide 
 
 The hour of destiny, and the award of love, 
 
 The liberator, fore-chosen. For when the dew 
 
 Now wet, hath ripened into the thunder- cloud. 
 
 And man's breath made God's lightning, one shall come 
 
 Who, of things passed intolerant, but divine 
 
 In mercifulness, and prompt ere all to free 
 
 The captive, and, to the exiled, home restore, 
 
 Shall ope her scaled hand ; tear out the spell 
 
 Of silence' self invoked eclipse, for ends 
 
 Then gained ; and give a spear ; her queenly brow, 
 
 Which ne'er hath stooped before, shall sanctify 
 
 With a crown, more holy than the wall-culled wreaths 
 
 Of cities sieged, saved by their sons ; and, SC; 
 
 Lead her compassionate forth with him to head 
 
 Revived, regenerate manhood. Speed it heaven 1 
 
 That we the dawn of that great day may see, 
 
 If not for all its mightiest outcomes spared. 
 
 Lucifer. This is the spirit I want to see abroad. 
 V/e two can aid each other. Spread these views. 
 
 Student. The wise and good wish well to liberty, 
 Throughout all lands ; but aim to win her cause 
 By some bold movement, from the heart of all 
 United nations. Generous souls all joy 
 To see man's serf, risen up, a prince with God. 
 
 Lucifer. The movement might be secret, nor its end 
 Till finally, divulged. 
 
 Festus. Be it a? je will. 
 
 Not, e'er, by war. 
 
FESTU8. 189 
 
 LuciFEB. From age to age old Time 
 
 Hath washed his hands in the heart's blood of earth. 
 It's rather late to speak against it, now. 
 
 Student. If without war the world could live one year 
 •Twere well. Yet fields of death, ye are earth's pride, 
 For what is life to freedom ? War must be 
 While men are what they are ; while they have bad 
 Passions to be roused up : while ruled by men ; 
 While all the powers and treasures of a land 
 At beck of the ambitious, wrongs may be 
 Offered, with insult ; yea, while rights are worth 
 Maintaining; freedom keeping, or life having, 
 So long dread I, the sword shall shine. 
 
 Festus. Yet war, 
 
 All save the spiritual war we wage within, 
 Shall cease. Thy next thought ? 
 
 Student. Ah, the crowning schemo 
 
 I hinted ? 
 
 Festus. Yes, this golden badge ; what may it 
 Imply, so patently concealed, displayed 
 So critically ? 
 
 Student. It means, I have joined myself 
 To certain circles of the wise ; a new 
 Consociate power, intrinsic to all states, 
 Self vowed in sacred bonds to holiest ends ; 
 Who, worshipping one sole Lord in heaven, would choose 
 One sole on earth, peace thus ensured ; mankind's 
 Free brotherhood, and whole unity. To this end 
 What want we ? Wealth, time, numbers, secresy. 
 For this, all powers subordinate of the earth. 
 All social schemes, all frames of govemmenii 
 Are now essayed, tried, treated with ; all wealth 
 Sought variously ; all wisdom of the passed, 
 All faiths that move men's souls, and dominate still ; 
 Convergent forces, are folded one by one 
 Within our politic plan ; plan which, at last, 
 By virtue of rational necessity, must 
 Make sure, God aidant, earth's whole common-weaL 
 But how this unity to achieve of choice ; 
 And how, by act, inaugurate and complete 
 This grand concerted good, seems yet a knot 
 Time's wearied fingers work at till they bleed. 
 And baflfled races vainly pray for. Such 
 Our failure. 
 
 LuciFEE. Such shall be no more. My plans 
 Are ripening faster than I thought, than need. 
 
 Student. Wilt come with me and join this lordly host 
 Of brethren, friends of Grod, to whom pertains 
 The gift of the world's future ? 
 
 Lucifer. Well, we have plans. 
 
 Our auricrucian friend could doubtless make 
 Ilia banded brotherhoods well subservient here, 
 
190 FESTUS. 
 
 To views, but latcliest treated, of our own. 
 
 Festus. True, if a few, illumined with all truth, 
 Initiate in all wisdom, hidden and open, 
 Armed with all wealth, could but forefit the world 
 For perfect freedom, Man might wish no more 
 Than add to freedom, peace ; and to peace, power. 
 
 Student. Be ours. 
 
 Festus. I love the initiates wise ; but doubt 
 
 If freedom e'er, with wisdom, prove the lot 
 Of all, or most. 
 
 Lucifer. Hands seem for manacles made : 
 
 And feet for fetters. 
 
 Student. Join with us. 
 
 Festus. I'll think. 
 
 Student. Teachers of base societies still abound. 
 But we and all our ends are peaceful, pure, 
 To dignify the mass, refine the race ; 
 To make man lord not slave of all the means 
 Mechanic science owns, and give each child 
 Of earth a tangible share in all his age 
 Inherits, or of mind, or aids of life 
 Material, grounded all on God's just laws. 
 This is what knowledge ought to bring mankind ; 
 Not ceaseless toil, strife, war, nor want ; but life's 
 Free use and reasonablest enjoyment ; peace 
 Unanimous 'neath one head the wise and good 
 Of nations shall elect ; who knows, one day, 
 Who shall be chosen ? 
 
 LucirES. The end we now foreglimpsa 
 
 And in the flow of this one stealthy vein 
 Through the vast body of man, the use can trace 
 Of all our future means. 
 
 Student. 'Tis gold we want ; 
 
 Not men to bribe, but honourably repay 
 Pure life's, and thought's expenditure ; to spread 
 'Mong men, due knowledge of all bettering truth. 
 And found the kingdom of perpetual peace, 
 Sole base of perfect life. 
 
 Festus. To such good ends 
 
 Means henceforth I can promise shall not lack. 
 
 Student. Who can foresee the future, helps forecast. 
 A peaceful revolution through all lands 
 Shall course ; and seizing all state powers, to one 
 Sole hand transfer them ; universal peace 
 So settled for all years. War's armaments. 
 War's waste of wealth, time, thought, and life ; its griefs, 
 Its pains, its wounds immedicable ; its woes. 
 Gone, how the world shall prosper, and attain 
 All proper perfectness. Join thou with us 
 And we'll together preach these sageet plans. 
 
 Festus. I have passed through all the elements of the world ; 
 Sea'a depths, air's heights, the central fires, while 'neath 
 
FESTU8. 191 
 
 "My feet antijioclal thunders pealed ; round earth, 
 
 Coast, continent, desert, isle, and fruit- fraught plain, 
 
 In all their various vastness ; and have viewed 
 
 Nought venerable in them, of source, nor force, 
 
 Self-aiusative or diviiie ; save vassal powers, 
 
 Obsequious to the ends designed of God, 
 
 Coherent made, and vivified, by laws 
 
 Inborn -with them, imbreathed, nought. Ocean's tides 
 
 Poured o'er my head, in seas, for ages, never 
 
 My spirit to meaner faith could disbaptize 
 
 Than God's most proveable fatherhood of the world, 
 
 Material, mental, spiritual ; his just 
 
 Rule oft, and loveful care ; himself the soul's 
 
 Sole trust, judge, savioui*. meed. In this faith firm. 
 
 Can any truer be ? no tests I dread. 
 
 Student. Nor needst, 
 
 Thy creed, as ours, hallows, enshrines 
 The essential truths of all ; these brief ; these few. 
 How vast ! Thus minded thou art most meet to join 
 Our rational rites, and sacred feasts, truth holds ; 
 Orgies divine. 
 
 Festus. Of God, or nature ? Comes 
 
 Of this, a sorrow unfruitful, and woe-filled. 
 Her mysteries teem with shrieks of struggling souls. 
 Doubt's cavernous darkness, and remorseful fires, 
 I'd not endure for worlds. But heaven's bring bliss ; 
 Light, peace, and soul- joy, such as he the sun, 
 Felicitative, instils in all that live. 
 
 Student. Fear nought, but prove them. Elf-e am I losing time. 
 
 LuciFEB. Nay, time is never lost, if friends are made. 
 Promise. They all shall aid in our great aim. 
 
 Festus. I will advise me. And when next we meet. 
 What my resolve, without all fail, expect. 
 
 Student. We surely all again meet. 
 
 LuciFEE. Haply not. 
 
 For me I am but poor company. Deem me, rather, 
 As some retumless meteor, from all ties 
 Of amity or obedience loosed, that flings, 
 Careless, his starry store mid space's fields ; 
 Nor, in revisited spheres, dreams e'er to reap 
 I'he harvest of his hand. But, touching gold 
 I have a secret I would fain impart 
 To one who would make right use of it. Now, mark. 
 There are fifty elements, chemists say, and more. 
 Get, then, these fifty principles, or what not. 
 Mix up together : put to the question, all. 
 Teaze well with vapour, fire ; much triturate. 
 Add the right quantity of lunar rays. 
 Boil whole, and let it cool ; and watch what come??. 
 
 Student. Thrice greatest Hermes ! but it must be. Yes I 
 I'll go and get them ; good day, — instantly. 
 
 LuciFEB. He'll be astonished probably. 
 
VS% FE8TU8. 
 
 Festus. He wQf ? 
 
 In any issue of the experiment. 
 The nostrum may perhaps explode, and — 
 
 LuciPEE. Nonsense. 
 
 Festus. There needs no satire on men's rage for gold, 
 Their nature is the best ; and best excuse. 
 But what for aims like these our friend intends, 
 Seeing they march with ours, we will provide. 
 Fear not ; our mint not all man can exhaust. 
 Some news seems stirring. 
 
 LuciFEE. One of Saturn's moons, 
 
 I heard, had flown on his face, and blinded him. 
 It was also said, in circles I, at times. 
 Enter, his outer ring was falling off. 
 If I should find, I'll keep it. It might fit 
 A little finger such as mine. I doubt 
 Poor Saturn's breaking up. But for these news ; 
 Some one perhaps has lit on a new vein 
 Of stars in the far void, or made out at last, 
 The circulation of the light ; or what 
 Think'st thou ? 
 
 Festus. I know not. Ask 1 
 
 LuciFEE. Sir, what's the news ? 
 
 Passer-by. The news are good news, being none at all. 
 
 Lucifer. Your goodness, su*, I deem of like extent. 
 We heard the Great Bear was confined of twins. 
 
 Stranger. It is not unlikely ; stars do propagate. 
 
 Festus. And so much for civility and news. 
 This city is one of the world's social poles, 
 Round which events revolve ; here, dial-like. 
 Time makes no movement but is registered. 
 
 Lucifer. Yon gaudy equipage 1 hast ever seen 
 A drowning dragon-fly, floating down a brook, 
 Topping the sunny ripples as they rise ; 
 Till, in some ambushed eddy, it is sucked down, 
 By something underneath ? Thus with the rich I 
 Their gilding makes their death conspicuous. 
 
 Festus. This man is nobly rich, that, nobly poor ; 
 These, the reverse. Rank makes no difference. 
 
 Lucifer. The poor may die in swarms, unheeded. They 
 But swell the mass of columned ciphers earth 
 Runs up without a thought. Oh wretched poor. 
 Woe-bowed, thank God for something, though but this, 
 He fire, ye ashes 1 
 
 Festus. Thou art surely mad. 
 
 Lucifer. I meant to moralize. I cannot see 
 A crowd, and not think on the fate of man j 
 Clinging to error, as a dormant bat 
 To a dead bough. Well, 'tis his own affair. 
 
 Festus. All homilies, on the sorts and lot of men, 
 Are vain and wearisome. I desire to know 
 No more of human nature. As it is, 
 
• FE8TU8. 103 
 
 1 honour it, and liate it. Let that do. 
 
 Lucifer. Here is a statue to some miglity man, 
 "NMio beat his name on the drum of the world's ear, 
 Till it was stupefied ; and, I suppose, 
 Kot knowing what it was about, reared up 
 This marble mockeiy of mortality ; 
 "VVTiich shall outlive the memory of the man, 
 And all like him, who water earth with blood, 
 And sow with bones, or any good he did, 
 As eagles, gnats. But failures why indict ? 
 "Wliy carp at insect sins, or crumb-like crimes ? 
 The world, the great imposture, still succeeds ; 
 Rtill, in Titanic immortality, writhes 
 Beneath the burning mountain of its sins. 
 
 Festus. There's an old adage about sin and some one. 
 The world is not exactly what I thought it, 
 But pretty nearly so ; and after all, 
 It is not so bad as good men make it out, 
 Nor such a hopeless wretch. 
 
 LuciFEE. For all the world 
 
 Not I would slander it. Dear world, thou art 
 Of all things under heaven by me most loved ; 
 The most consistent, the least fallible. 
 Believe me ever thine affectioiiate 
 Lucifer. P.S. Sweet, remember me ! 
 
 Festus. Wilt go to the cathedral ? 
 
 LuciFEB. No, indeed ; 
 
 I have just confessed. 
 
 Festus. "Well, to the concert, then ? 
 
 Lucifer. Some fifteen hundred thousand million years 
 Have passed since last I heard a chorus. How ? 
 In sooth, can I time calculate ? seras none 
 Are in the eternal. Time is as the body ; 
 Eternity, the spirit, of existence, 
 
 Festus. That would I learn and prove. 
 
 Lucifer. The finite soul 
 
 Can never learn the infinite, nor may be 
 Informed by it, unaided. 
 
 FtSTUS. Be it so. 
 
 What shall we do ? 
 
 Lucifer. I put myself in your hands. 
 
 Festus. Wilt go on 'Change ? 
 
 Lucifer. I rarely speculate. 
 
 Steady receipts are mostly to my taste. 
 
 Festus. But something must be done to pass the time. 
 
 Lucifer, Let us, then, pass all time. 
 
 Festus. Good I pass ; but how ? 
 
 Lucifer, I have the power to make thy spirit free 
 Of its poor frame of flesh, yet not by death ; 
 And reunite them afterwards. Wilt thou, think, 
 Entrust thyself to me ? 
 
 Festus. In God I trust. 
 
IM FE8TU8. 
 
 And in his word of safety. Have thy will. 
 Where shall it be effected ? 
 
 Lucifer. Here and now. 
 
 Festus. What of this heap of accidents, properties, 
 This mock essential, shade on shade impinged, 
 Redoubled to the likeness of a form, 
 Tliis outward humanhood ? 
 
 Lucifer. Oh heed not that. 
 
 Body may like a shadow wait on thee, 
 And thou not know it. Soul may be so fine. 
 Recline thou calmly upon yon marble slab, 
 As thoug-h asleep. The world will miss thee not ; 
 Its complement is perfect. I will mind, 
 Tliat no impertinent meddler troubles there. 
 Thy tranced frame. The brain shall cease its life 
 EngTossing- business ; and the living blood. 
 The wine of life, which malceth drunk the soul, 
 Sleep in the sacred vessels of the heart. 
 Three steps the sun hatli taken from his throne. 
 Already dowmwards, and ere he hath gone. 
 Who calmeth tempests with his mighty light, 
 We will return ; and until then, the bright rain 
 Of yonder fountain fails not. 
 
 Festus. Thus be it. 
 
 Lucifer. One of my minor failings is, I fear, 
 I am too indulgent. I make pets of men ; 
 And they fool me. The eastern sage of old, 
 Who for each fancied privilege paid by stress 
 Of strange austerities gained not half what thou 
 Only of will canst compass. Will and rise. 
 
 Festus. Come ; we are wasting moments here that no"^ 
 Belong, of right, to immortality, 
 And to another world. 
 
 Lucifer. Prepare ! — 
 
 Festus. And thou ? 
 
 Lucifer. I vanish altogether. 
 
 Festus. Excellent I 
 
 Lucifer. Body and spirit part. J — 
 
FESTUS. 195 
 
 XV. 
 
 Even wliile a star 
 Might twinkle twice, or calm, retiring sea, 
 Irresolute yet to leave, his moonlit kiss 
 Shimmering repeat upon the impassive shore. 
 The arch-tiend and youth, bound skyward, soaring hold 
 Darkly, commune, like twilight and midnight, 
 Of being and things to be, 'mid intei-space 
 Of worlds. The angelic fall is touched on. Soul 
 Imperfect, mixed, not seeing how deity could, 
 Pure spirit, by act of will aught earthy, gross 
 Frame ; nor ill's source, end, understand ; mistaught 
 By adulterate truth which poisons more than pure 
 Falsehood, hears how, of angels made, not God 
 Who would not with the earthy soil his hand, our orb 
 Had all its parts constituent cast by palms 
 Depute, tale told to mislead perchance. Yet who 
 Heaven granting place and means of penitence, 
 Irrestorable shall name the angelic race ? 
 Who fiction blame, mother of fairest hope ? 
 
 T/te Interstellar Sj)ace. 
 
 Festus a7ld LUCIPEE. 
 
 Fkstus. ^\ hero, where am I ? 
 
 LuciFEB. We are in space and time, just as we were 
 Some half a second since ; where wouldst thou be ? 
 
 Festus. I would be in eternity and heaven ; 
 The spirit, and the spirit made blessed, of all 
 Existence. 
 
 Lucifer. And thou shalt be, and shalt pass 
 All secondary nature ; all the rules 
 And the results of time. Upon thy spirit 
 These things shall act no more ; their hand shall be 
 Withered upon thee ; in thee they shall cease. 
 Like lightnings in the deadening sea. Not now. 
 We have worlds to go through first. But see, just turn 
 Thy face, see earth. 
 
 Festus. How beauteous, brighter thrioa 
 
 Than e'er our lamp to man ; just mean 'twixt sun 
 And moon, its mighty members, sea and lan(i, 
 Shining, in revelry of light. 
 
 Lucifer. Cleared now, 
 
 All atmosphere terrene, and meteor zones, 
 Into this darkening azure, deeper aye 
 At every breath, where reig-ns eternal night. 
 Haste we ; thy longings shall be satiate soon : 
 For see, we rise, ever rise ; ana 1, as m. (iientoa. 
 Incorporal, like an echo of oneself. 
 Float on the inscrutable aether ; or from here, 
 Springing the arch of space to yon extreme. 
 With absolute levity seem as I might to bound. 
 
 Festus. Ah I many have been my longings, many and deep, 
 To leai-n the mysteries of creation ; things 
 
 H 2 
 
196 VESTUa. 
 
 Not publislied on earth's surface. 
 
 LuciFEE. Sucli as, say, 
 
 Festus. Thou first didst promise me to unfold ; and now 
 Our time, and this vast progress, seeming smooth, 
 Continuous, e'er without end converse invites. 
 
 Lucifer. Speak confidently. 
 
 Festus. Before man's fall I'd know 
 
 How was't the angels fell ? 
 
 Lucifer. Nor all by one 
 
 Ilevolt, nor one decline. 
 
 Festus. Say how. 
 
 Lucifer. Time was, 
 
 "When God, one, sole, in ancientry eteme, 
 In essence, inconceivable, all extent 
 A luminous fulness filling, willed to make ; 
 Withdrew a portion of his essence ; breathed 
 The angels into being ; and in that space. 
 Girt by the infinite, the world became; 
 Near to him, spirit, life ; matter, last of all. 
 And farthest from him ; willed, still. With this rose 
 The evil of life create, all possible sin. 
 The happy angels, to enlarge God's reign 
 Thinking, besought his leave to make a world, 
 From matter's vast residuous mass. Time was, 
 Earth beamed heaven's youngest orb ; which granted, they, 
 Armed with imputed deity, began 
 Instant the work orbific ; fire and all 
 The elements freed, the land from sea demarked, 
 Rock igneous from aquatic, clay from ooze ; 
 The continents made, the isles, the mountains, streams, 
 Lakes, fountains, plains, tree, herb and flower, all life 
 Vegetive, in fine, and brutish ; all that wings 
 Air, or swims sea, or treads, four-footed, earth ; 
 Or creeps, or glides. These giants made, these elves. 
 Apes, pygmies, such, the tall indignant cranes, 
 Angered by broken treaties, drave and drowned 
 In sea-pools, first of victories hight marine. 
 Those, (Emim and Zamzummim of old v/rit ; 
 And those Hrymthursar called, who norwards held 
 Frore Jotunheim, fleering oft at gods and men ; 
 Vain rivals of one heaven-planned shape, of man 
 By God in just majestic medium made. 
 And this, accepted, they with all gifts decked. 
 God taking thought, himself, of sun and star, 
 With whom to think indeed is to create, 
 He, to the formative angels gave the world 
 They had thus wrought out of chaos, and adorned 
 With every living miracle, and man 
 As head and end of all its dignities. 
 In delegate royalty to rule. Thus earth, 
 Thine earth, embraced of heaven, and core of space, 
 Was plenished, furnished, finished. The angels now 
 
FE8TUS, 197 
 
 Longing to instruct man's mind, a chosen band, 
 
 Out of their fair fraternity, depute, 
 
 Who straight ascending, quit for heaven. So all, 
 
 Bright and more bright, while starward they progressed, 
 
 And touched the invisible threshold of the skies, 
 
 These angels grew ; till as they neared the seat 
 
 "Where, close below the throne, bright Nature sits, 
 
 Perpetual maid, perpetual mother-bride ; 
 
 Sits, gladdening in her splendid offspring, spread 
 
 Through space, star-spirits of seed divine, blessed heirs 
 
 Of deity ; sits, serene ; — they, pondering, paused, 
 
 AVho seemed a constellation, all of suns. 
 
 Tempting the zenith. Here, their quest resigned 
 
 To God's sole will, 'twas here, accordant Fate 
 
 Tlie predetermined boon they asked, due powers 
 
 Of God to perfect, that they loved conveyed ; 
 
 And more, he, hearkening to such fervent prayer, 
 
 Grants ; but ere yet dismissed, to them, to all 
 
 In heaven assembled, speaks thus : Spirits divine, 
 
 Immortals, hear ; go rule each one his lot, 
 
 3elf -sought, of grace appointed. To all tribes 
 
 Of men shall prophets speak, and holiest souls 
 
 Heaven-seeking ; heed they be of you truth taught. 
 
 So teach them, that however with faith and truth 
 
 Inspired, they serve God only ; reverence due 
 
 Pay you, pay all ; but adoration sole 
 
 To him who all things made, and sole, can save. 
 
 Angels and spirit-hosts of prehuman strain, 
 
 Levies of light divine innumerous, rapt 
 
 All, sate in still assent, until one soul, 
 
 Interpretant of heaven, and mind create, 
 
 Tuneful and luminous as a singing star, 
 
 Stepped into light, and in the immarbled ear 
 
 Of the convergent infinite, sang to God 
 
 Larklike, his lone lay, gratulant, worshipful 
 
 Of him All- Wise. A cherub- choir the same 
 
 In stateliest revolution, traced, tmth-taught. 
 
 Of power project through all effluxive spheres. 
 
 Returning fined, exalted, perfected, 
 
 In a perduring emblem all the heavens 
 
 Still study, and with their centre- searching eyes. 
 
 These things, though wholly comprehending not, 
 
 Tilings passed, things coming, God the angels showed ; 
 
 Mliereat they trembled, and were troubled. Some, 
 
 In place of proffering lowliest praise to God, 
 
 And holiest thanks for leave to do his will. 
 
 In those harmonious lauds the hosts had sung, 
 
 Pleased with their works, cried. These created wo. 
 
 Sudden, the stars stood silent. Every sphere 
 
 Ceased its divine accord. The sun paled. All, 
 
 That proud presumptuous vaunt, shuddered to hear. 
 
 Divisions reigned. There were, who Godwards kept 
 
198 FE8TU8. 
 
 Due loyalty ; and these withdrew to heaven, 
 
 The wAjigel of Salvation, Phanuel pure ; 
 
 Sun-ruling Ouriel, Luniel, and the rest. 
 
 Peers of the fallen, once, and holy seven, 
 
 Supplanted, round the throne, their brethren. These, 
 
 For some were more sin-tainted, others less ; 
 
 Earthwards rewinding, in prospective pride 
 
 Enriched it thousand-fold with all delights. 
 
 For men they sowed herb, spice, grain ; planted flower ; 
 
 Fruits luscious graffed on trees ; silver and gold 
 
 Bight earth with, ore, and marble, and every gem ; 
 
 Gems larger lovelier these, than all now known ; 
 
 And that smaragdine mirror, their chief toy. 
 
 Which all the angels wrought, each gifting it 
 
 With some unique perfection, after owned 
 
 By Israel's wisest, who the tongues of bird, 
 
 Brute, angel, men, all, knew ; and who therein 
 
 Looking, the wished-for passed, of any age, 
 
 Beheld apparent, as in the instant fact ; — 
 
 And when, solicitous of the future, he 
 
 Had breathed thereon, with the evanishing reek 
 
 From its talismanic disk, limned clear, he saw, 
 
 And all the coming conned. For men they chose 
 
 The sites of cities, after, seats of power, 
 
 Wealth, law, religion, learning, freedom ; one. 
 
 The city of the dead, men for themselves 
 
 Founded in ominous haste, and fast bestrewed 
 
 With skeleton foliage of the tree of life. 
 
 God made man free. He fell. His freedom seen, 
 
 The angels asked allegiance of man's race. 
 
 And while some mixed with carnal follies drift 
 
 llellwards, on storms of passionate covetise ; ' 
 
 By rank and vile inventions, to man's ill, 
 
 Earn othersome God's wrath ; no few through pride 
 
 In their first formative privileges ; in thought 
 
 Keigning triumphant, independent gods. 
 
 O'er men, shared sept and tribe among them ; each, 
 
 Launched on his own wild will ; and thus they ceased, 
 
 Those once most virtuous angels, that pure choice, 
 
 And grateful excellence the first had, to own ; 
 
 Seeking at first their names, each to his clan 
 
 To magnify, and so become, by aid 
 
 Of mean, or monstrous, miracle, their gods ; 
 
 In lieu of teaching men, the One Supreme 
 
 To worship, God. Fell many an angel thn^. 
 
 The fall is universal in all spheres. 
 
 For finite spirit, wherever tasked to keep 
 
 The counsels of divine perfection fails. 
 
 The starry story of one primal pair. 
 
 Twin pillars to the portals of life's fane, 
 
 Or free-born deities, free as stars are fixed 
 
 And the celestial serpei»t, sun-conceived, 
 
FESTUB. 199 
 
 Invader of heaven's annual paradise, 
 
 Wants not, where'er is life ; but graved in rocks, 
 
 Rude missals of millennial patriarchs, 
 
 Incised in arrowy Zend, on tabled clay — 
 
 On i>alm foil penned, or purple pulp of flowers 
 
 Illumed with every literal g-race, or writ 
 
 On vii^in vellum rose-e:ilded and perfumed, 
 
 Shrined in the bosom of some cloistered saint, 
 
 The same sad tale perpetually commands 
 
 The astral annals of the universe. 
 
 A separate interest 'twixt themselves and God 
 
 Insinuate once, like conflicts 'monf^ themselves, 
 
 And schemes of empire basely politic, sprang:. 
 
 One name of God each took, or masculine 
 
 Or feminine, deity having justly both, 
 
 "Who Father is, and bringer-forth of all ; 
 
 Some title of divinity, none save God 
 
 Could equitably assume, that so they, vain, 
 
 Blight, as lords substitute, the rights receive 
 
 Due to the alone Eternal, and his name 
 
 Blot from the hearts and memories of mankind. 
 
 Such were Baal Semim, Lord of heaven, whom old 
 
 Phoenicia worshipped ; such too, league-invoked 
 
 In Syria as the lord of waters, he 
 
 Whose covenant witness was the e'erlasting well ; 
 
 He, such, by Nile, Ilephaistos, father of fire ; 
 
 Aurmazd or Ilus, such ; who when he had bade 
 
 The Persian bow before his so-called throne, 
 
 The sun, and claimed, phanta.^tic, to have made 
 
 Espendcrmad, earth's fair tutelar, bright Khourdad, 
 
 And all the seven great angels, lit the stars, 
 
 Father himself of light ; his strength reserved, 
 
 So feigned he to his prophet, for that strife 
 
 Final and all composing, 'gainst his power 
 
 I name not, lord of evil, but in Yezd 
 
 Prudentially still worshipped, from the world 
 
 Kouted, to be, with three-fold thunder fires, 
 
 As chiselled glorious on the Assyrian slab ; 
 
 Vain boasters all these mock divinities ; such 
 
 A\Tiom Asian tribes hailed, dove-bom, mother of heavcBj 
 
 And 'mong their mingled gods the Nasaiiy claimed, 
 
 Lady of light ; those who in sequent years 
 
 In the holy and lovely island of the west, 
 
 As lords of light, of fate, of wealth, of power, 
 
 Gifts, glories were adored ; such, latelier known, 
 
 Mid deeps Pacific isled, Muooi, stretched 
 
 Full length, gigantic shorer-up of earth ; 
 
 High title his, Sustainer of the world. 
 
 But soon in angel breasts, ill passions bred, 
 
 And multiplied to wrongs ; developed ill 
 
 Evolved more perfect sin, till, frantic stricken, 
 
 Men cursed their benefactors, cursed and Bcomed, 
 
200 FE8TU8. 
 
 These, fabling- of the future, bade their seera 
 
 Read signs in moving spheres, coin chanted lies 
 
 "Which, doubly feigned, deceivers self -deceived, 
 
 From tripod trolled, or maundered from dim shrineB, 
 
 And brazen idols, inwardly excavate, 
 
 "Whereby false faith, or rich voluptuous fraud. 
 
 Might in murk night self -satiate, triumph. Thus, 
 
 Contentious 'mong themselves who most should reap 
 
 From man's credulity, allwhere triumphed wrong. 
 
 Oppression followed rivalry ; full soon 
 
 Symbols and signs of terror were, in place 
 
 Of love, God's own and holiest title, ta'en ; 
 
 And the divine to finite passion changed. 
 
 Then first the primal lamb whom spring's warm breezb, 
 
 Its pearly flowers and brooldets bubbling clear, 
 
 Welcome, newborn, 'neatli sign connate in heaven ; 
 
 Next, human victims bled ; and passed the babe 
 
 Through baptistry of blood or fire, to peace. 
 
 Such offerings, loathed by heaven ; while stoimiest wn.rg; 
 
 Each striving most to widen his domain, 
 
 Propelling his adorers to invade. 
 
 Root out, and ruin all of faith opposed, 
 
 Angel with angel waged, and god 'gainst god. 
 
 The heavens were rent with lightnings, raid the fields 
 
 Of interjacent space, as the high powers, 
 
 Now heated to malignity, oft closed 
 
 In thunderous conflict, till the fire breath'd hills 
 
 Grew iced with foar ; and qunking earth beneath 
 
 Reeked with the gore of brethren, brethren slain. 
 
 So, while 'gainst heathen, heathen, kin 'gainst kin 
 
 Streamed foe -wise in embattled war- waves ; mowed, 
 
 With scythed cars, earth's man-eai-ed crops ; of wealth, 
 
 Peace, culture, states despoiled ; while every land 
 
 Red rapine reaped, and idiot famine fed ; 
 
 "While maid and mother, eld and childhood, ate 
 
 Grief's heart, and drank the tears of woe, hell, know, 
 
 Agape for pitiless spirits, and o'er men's wrongs 
 
 Retaliative, content, groaned deep delight. 
 
 The angel of the ocean-flowing Nile, 
 
 And he who Hermon's heights and Lebanon held ; 
 
 These, who the honours of the plains, and those 
 
 Who river, sea, or several planet claimed ; 
 
 And he who, where Hiddekel gulphward darts, 
 
 Ruled with an absolute crown, for ages, strove, 
 
 With changeablest success, but changeless woe. 
 
 So, too, the Median angel and the Greek, 
 
 Contending, fanes and altars were o'erthrov/n, 
 
 Defiled ; and myriads, militant devotees. 
 
 Through vain ambition of immortals, slain. 
 
 One thing was common to all nations, woe. 
 
 Sin, vice and luxury, with their flower- wreathed rods, 
 
 Ruled and chastised the nations ; race by race, 
 
FESTU8, 201 
 
 Slaughtered, made, like that cruel tower Shirauz 
 Once held, of bodies breathful, limed with blood, 
 Time's generations, layers of death. 
 
 Festus. Not all : — 
 
 Or vainly read I earth's recorded passed. 
 Was surely bale, nor with life blight ; to man 
 One sweet exemption, by God's grace, pertained ; 
 One gift diviner than the angels gave. 
 Or took away, by them o'erlooked, but given 
 From heaven's own treasury, all their mutual ire 
 Could ruin not, nor pervert ; love, nought but love ; 
 Parental, filial, conjugal, and divine. 
 Life's armies were recruited still by love ; 
 Fond hearts still grew affection, as fields gi-ain ; 
 Still bloomed and fruited with an inward life, 
 And vintage of delight ; still youthful breasts, 
 Ileciprocally fired, imparted joy, 
 Imported rapture ; tenderest converse, still, 
 Sweet as the whisperings of imblossomed trees, 
 Or the low lispings of night's silvery main. 
 Lived on the lips of lovers, then as now, 
 By fount or mead, or wandering, moon beguiled, 
 'Neath tall white cliffs, along the unshadowed shore. 
 
 LuciPEB. In sooth not aU was sorrow, nor all sin ; 
 Many too reckless lived to grieve ; who died 
 Early, died guiltless of much crime ; not all 
 Was ill, then. Not the less, priest, bard, nor mage, 
 From oracles, nor from mystic orgies ; none 
 From secret source, nor patent ; ghostliest runes, 
 Nor rolls of birchen bark, with mighty lay 
 Of divination, graven in branched signs, 
 Ere dim tradition ; not from tablets rich 
 With Auscan god-lore, and augurial rites 
 Of volant fowl ; from cane, nor palm-leaf, drenched 
 With sacred scents, in gilded Pali penned, 
 Could whisper to the world one saving spell ; 
 One sacred secret snatched from jealous heaven ; 
 That might the house of death illame ; nor aught 
 From oracles Sibylline ; Klarian fane ; nor cave 
 Delphic, of holiest ambiguity, sought ; 
 Not Rabbin versed in Kabalistic lore. 
 Nor echoing daughter of the spirit voice ; 
 Nor spheral talismans, nor star-graved seals, 
 Whose influences, worlds, elements, all pervade 
 Could raise in life one soul to peaceful hope. 
 Death -passed, of ultimate union with the Light 
 Intelligible, of being. Nought hence could save, 
 lletrack their steps the angels scorned ; nor deigned, 
 From holiest truths eliminating all false. 
 To help reharmonize with God, man's mind ; 
 But, as misplaced of purpose, blent their rites. 
 That so from mystery mystery still might come, 
 
 k3 
 
202 FESTUS, 
 
 And no solutioB, no salvation, soul 
 Sufficing-, issue. Virtue, without end 
 Was preached of, taug-ht, discussed, belauded, sungf ; 
 But as in theories of best life, men grew 
 More skilled and perfect, so in practice worse. 
 Nor all philosophies, nor their devotees, 
 'Vailed aught ; not his, who held the all was God ; 
 Not his who first from heaven to earth deduced 
 Philosophy, and then from earth to heaven 
 Retraced the soul's path by immortality ; 
 Nor his, the sometime slave's, sumamed divine, 
 Eich in Egyptian wisdom, and all lore 
 Hellenic, who in Academe taught, well pleased, 
 The teacher of earth's conqueror, and the hearts 
 Of tyrant kings softened by gratitude ; 
 Not they who, in the Porch, oft dreamed aloud 
 Their passionless figment of humanity ; 
 Nor he who, in the Garden, vainly taught 
 Pure pleasure as man's truest mark and end ; 
 The pleasure of just virtue, one with God's ; 
 Whose words the hearts corrupt corrupted they 
 Aimed but to purify ; not he who scorned 
 All things, nor he, all doubting ; not even they, 
 Manly and moderate, honest friends of truth, 
 Who all the tenable jioints of others chose, 
 And in one system starred. Nor better fared 
 The dubious mind, elsewhere, intent on truth. 
 To some, in every land, of soul reborn. 
 The gifts pertained of wisdom, life and peace ; 
 But who the multitudinous mass should teach ; 
 What truths unfold, and what more shrewd reserve, 
 The wisest men were doubtfullest, and believed 
 The ultimate indifference of all deeds, 
 All thoughts, all motives, all intents ; the best 
 Were erring guides ; to most man's life but showed 
 A bridge of groans across a stream of tears. 
 Again the giant world-sphinx, winged with air. 
 Sun -faced, star-maned, tailed with the rolling sea. 
 And breasted as beseems the dam of all ; 
 AVho nourisheth men and beasts ; her riddle reads. 
 And this time, she the knot divine propounds, 
 Of how may man with God be reconciled ? 
 Who solves, earns well the purple ; and thenceforth, 
 With ominous and curse- worthiest glory, wears 
 His gold-spiked crown. But ah 1 his end is woe. 
 He to his fate uneyes himself in vain ; 
 His tomb is in Time's chasm ; and all along, 
 Oracular thunders further quest forefend. 
 In every generation of his kind, 
 Hero, or priest, or bard, or sage, or king, 
 There lives but one can solve. 
 Festus. And all were dumb I 
 
FESTU8, 203 
 
 Lucifer. But now that times, of old foretold, drew nigh, 
 God, the most highest, compassionating? the plight 
 Of wretched mortals, thus with reason blessed 
 But with material nature cursed, devoid 
 Of guide infallible, or of standard puie, 
 And ground beneath the crushing rivalries 
 Of disobedient angels, sent on earth 
 His spirit-anointed prophet, soul heaven-bom. 
 To preach true knowledge of heaven's Lord, that faith 
 In him alone supreme, he might retrieve 
 To earth's bewildered nations, and the reign 
 O'erthrow of angel-kings who thralled the world 
 With their most false misrule ; and, in their front. 
 The haughty and presumptuous spirit-chief, 
 ^^^lo, one stem family of Semitic seed 
 Choosing, inhibiting brotherhood from the hour 
 "When out of Nembrod's wi'ath, and Assur's land, 
 The idolatrous Chaldees' demoniac fires. 
 And city, itself a realm, of Nin-Evech, 
 He brought the father of the faithful ; ruled 
 His wayward chosen in all their wanderings. 
 Rebellions, servitudes ; and, by him led forth 
 Lateliest from Goschen, in K'naan now 'bode : 
 He, boasting God to teach, the sole, most high. 
 But elsewhere with the unequal angels linked. 
 Confused of doctrine : — tremble not, but hear. 
 IMen cried aloud to God, God, pitying man, 
 Eyes, in sublime compassion, man belov.r ; 
 And mercy, unto the semi- angel, man, 
 Flows from the vision. God, long-suffering, acts. 
 
 Festus. At length we touch the hem of history's robe. 
 
 Lucifer. The chosen and some even gentUe tribes at one 
 In this fanatic craze like treacherous gusts 
 Inflated with, and all delusive all 
 Blew rivalrou-s from their lips of prophecy. 
 "What, then was so predicted, could but coma 
 Comes now the liberator of soul, the saint 
 Of saints ; the preacher of forgiven sin ; 
 On due repentance between eai-th and heaven ; 
 The great Pacificator. 
 
 Festus. Went not wild 
 
 The world with joy ? 
 
 Lucifer. Indeed not. 
 
 Festus. Was no claah 
 
 Of aword on shield, hence useless but for hive 
 Of swarmful bees ? No bruit of brazen trump, 
 Pealing its joyous requiem o'er dead war ? 
 No world-wide murmurs of expectant joy, 
 Too mighty to be uttered, or repressed, 
 From myriads heard ? No arch triumphal reared ? 
 Earth's cities showed no revelry ? No domes, 
 Nor Parian pillars chapiter'd with flam© 
 
204 FJE8TU8 
 
 Of flower-wreathed lamps, respiring odorous oils ? 
 
 Ko festal halls with floral rainbows spanned, 
 
 And bannered silks with silvery ciphers wrought 1 
 
 No gilded car ? No team of creamwhite steeds, 
 
 In housings pranked of purple and pearl ? Came forth 
 
 No mitred priest, his path of peace to charm 
 
 With benedictions, pouring at his feet 
 
 Long-templed treasures, ransom of a race ? 
 
 Their trenchant trade nor smith, nor armourer, ceased ? 
 
 Seemed there no universal pause from pain ; 
 
 War ; now of heaven discountensuuced, and God's truce 
 
 Of promise, made perpetual ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Since that day 
 
 The world hath made more war than e'en before ; 
 And this man's followers, mad to prove him prince 
 Of peace, have soaked, and still steep, earth in blood. 
 
 Festus. In grace of such high advent, figured forth, 
 By sagest seer, in sacred dance and game, 
 Showed not the sphered skies their mysteries, then, 
 In honour of God's fatherhood first preached 
 Of all men, and man's brotherhood ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Nay, thou dreamest. 
 
 Festus. Glared not the hills with joy-fires ? Made the kings 
 No feast imperial ? Bled not fountains wine, 
 With gush luxurious into marble meres ? 
 Nor prince nor kingling largesse gave to churl. 
 Nor freedom to those bond ? No ? Loosed not heaven, 
 When, masked in manhood, earth he dignified 
 By touching with his feet, as once the wave 
 While he to faith a golden pathway showed, 
 Self-interested, from out its depths, some noon 
 Eclipsing orb, that missioned thus of God 
 Man's spirit to purify, and exalt with proof 
 Of immortality, all earth's souls might learn 
 His entrance into life ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thou knowst the tale. 
 
 So it was not. 
 
 Festus. No, thus : One pale pure star, 
 
 Fresh coined of God, like that which on the lap 
 Of astral queen, sphere-throned, for later worlds 
 Leapt forth ; this, marked of none but three ; through air 
 Glode slowly ; and towards a newborn babe, so came 
 Earth's prince of prophets lowlily, that night 
 Of wintry snows, by her who bare cave-cribbed, 
 'Mid lowing oxen and adoring herds, 
 Pointed with rayonnant finger, and retired. 
 
 LuciFEE. Foretold or not by stars, or winged suns, 
 This seer of seers who humbliest lived, his words 
 Well-like profoundly clear, and, deeplier drawn. 
 The purer showing, his entire life one long 
 Perpetual miracle, who to preach the truth 
 And men buy back to true faith in one God, 
 
 1 
 
FESTU8. 205 
 
 Lived solely, was by treachery base, inspired 
 
 Of tb' apostate angels colleagued, seized and slain. 
 
 Thousands revered and loved him ; one betrayed. 
 
 For this, for man's own sake, and for the ills 
 
 Strife rivalrous 'mong these celestial powers 
 
 Caused, God deposed the angels ; and, their seals 
 
 Of sovereignty annulled, they cast, as bidden, 
 
 All, into black oblivion ; even as since 
 
 In mountain tarn volcanic, throne and crown, 
 
 Sceptre, and all regalia, golden gauds. 
 
 The imperial pagan of the west, though he 
 
 Justly, to baulk his conquerors base, — implunged ; 
 
 In time to come, some needy fisherman, 
 
 At close of day, with his last throw, perchance, 
 
 Shall joyful net, a mass, if weed-webbed, foul, 
 
 And once a despot's diadem, may yet 
 
 Burnish to brightness fit for holiest shrhief^. 
 
 Festus. Thus, too, may it be with the angels, once consigned 
 To purifying penance, loth henceforth 
 Even in thought, God's unity, like intense, 
 Like infinite with this onemost heaven, to break. 
 Is there for such no hope 1 None ? Nay, I see 
 Hope's dawn in far-off skies. 
 
 Lucifer. Keen-eyed one, cease. 
 
 ■\Mien spirit that springs from Being's eternal fount 
 Led down through all life's elements, lapse of time 
 And tact of sense concurring, hath at last 
 Its earthlier dross precipitated, and again 
 Bound lightwards, in its course self -clarified, 
 Reflecting God, as ocean in his breast. 
 Booklike, the starry transcript of the skies 
 Holds, so all virtuous and celestial powers 
 ]\Iay look for like communion ; but so long 
 As separateness of self, and turbid touch 
 Of world-love or of passion, dim the soul. 
 Never ; be it theirs or thine. But thine, even now, 
 Bears the design of earthliest discontent, 
 Not sacred satisfaction. Now to him. 
 ■\\Tiose soul is saved all things are clear as stars, 
 And to the chosen is sense of safety : this 
 None else, nor cold insurgent heart, nor mind 
 Menial, can compass. It is the way of God, 
 The starry path none treaxi but spirits heaven-high, 
 Who were of him before all worlds, and ai-e 
 Beloved and saved for ever, while they live. 
 Thou of the world art yet, with motives, means 
 And ends, as others. 
 
 Festus. I will no more of it. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh dream not that. Thou knowest not the depth 
 Of nature's dark abyss, thyself, nor God. 
 Thou mayst yet rise and fall oft as the sea. 
 
 Festus. And those thou tell'st of 2 
 
206 FE8TU8. 
 
 Lucifer. It may be with them, 
 
 Light overstrong- and darkness overlong', 
 As with thyself, blind alike eye and mind, 
 
 Festus. But I foresee. 
 
 Lucifer. At least, thou dost forejudg-e. 
 
 Festus. How comes it then, being spirit, I see not all 
 As spirit should ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thou lackest both life and death ; 
 
 Earth's death, heaven's life. Then wouldst thou see with God, 
 And know creation's strife in harmony 
 With him, and 'mong its separate parts, how raised, 
 And ordered why. 
 
 Festus. Death alters not the spirit. 
 
 LuciFBE. Death must be undergone ere understood. 
 
 Festus. One world is as another. Rest we here. 
 
 Lucifer. See,, thus men count of destiny. All is chance. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Thence to a happier planet — ^for 'twas his, 
 
 Whose soul, streamUke, the images of stars 
 
 Immirrored in its surface, stealing, while 
 
 At its boldness trembling, knowledge of all spheres 
 
 Predisciplinary, to reap ; — ^where, blessed, we meet 
 
 The spirit just glimpsed the first night of temptation ; 
 
 Thenceforth the soul's instructress. The prime steps 
 
 See, of the angel spirit, earth -trained to good ; 
 
 Lnmortal, self-perfectible ; whose deep thoughts 
 
 And lofty musings sow in us the seeds 
 
 Of higher nature, brighter being. The muse, 
 
 Especial faculties raised and vivified, there. 
 
 Hail ; heavenly poesie hail ; all mental powers 
 
 Outlustring, even as this, eve's dewy star, 
 
 All worlds. The searchful soul, bent to evoke 
 
 From all intelligence its especial spell 
 
 Of union with truth universal, seeks, 
 
 Earth meditating, and in the future plunged 
 
 Of mind's advance, our nearest, saddest Ught, 
 
 Tlie Hesperian Sphere. Another and a tetter World. 
 
 Festus, Lucifer, Angela. 
 
 Festus. Sweetest of worlds 1 which, Lucifer, is this f 
 Lucifer. This is the star of evening and of beauty, 
 Festus. Otherwise Hesper. I will stay here. 
 Lucifer. Nay : 
 
 It is but a visit. As the morning star 
 Some know it, too ; but these, a wakeful few. 
 I have no interest in it. 
 
 Festus. Let us look 
 
 About us. Heaven, it is, it must be I Aught 
 So beauteous, must have feeling. Cannot worlds live ? 
 Least things have life : why not things greatest, too ? 
 
 I 
 
FE8TU3. 207 
 
 An ntomic is a world, a woiid an atom, 
 Seen relatively ; and death an act of life. 
 
 Lucii'EK. This is a world where every loveliest thing 
 Lasts lonjJTCst ; where decay lifts never hc^d 
 Above the grossest forms, and matter here, 
 Is all transi)arent substance ; the flower fades not ; 
 liut every eve {jives forth a fragrant ]i«,'ht ; 
 Till, by degrees, the spirit of each flower 
 Essentially consuming it, ilio fair frame 
 Refines itself to air ; rejoining thus 
 Its archetype, and preiixistent. Here, 
 The beautiful die not ever. Death lies all 
 Adreaming ; he hath nought to do : the babe 
 Plays with his darts. Nought dies but what should die. 
 Here are no earthquakes, storms nor plagues ; no hell 
 At heart ; no floating flood on high. The soil 
 Is ever fresh, and fragrant as a rose ; 
 The skies, like one wide rainbow, stand on gold ; 
 The clouds are light as rose leaves, and the dew. 
 It is of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy. 
 The air is softer than a loved one's sigh ; 
 The ground is glowing with all priceless ore. 
 And glistening with gems, like a bride's bosom ; 
 The trees have silver stems and emerald leaves ; 
 The fountains bubble nectar ; and the hills 
 Are half alive with light. 
 
 Festus. The very blush 
 
 Of being ; it is surely too a maiden world, 
 Unmarred by thee. Touch it not, Lucifer. 
 
 LuciFEE. It is too bright to tarnish. 
 
 Festus. Didst thou fail ? 
 
 Lucifer. I cannot fail. Success with me is nature, 
 I who am cause, means, consequence of ill. 
 Yet is't not heaven. 
 
 Festus. Oh, no. And would I change 
 
 Earth, with her desert breast, and wood -wavy brow, 
 Fickle though oft, even fatal, for this round 
 Of delicatest realities ? Nay, I love 
 Earth's woods to haunt when the storm bends his bow, 
 And volleys all his arrows ofl: at once ; 
 And when the dead brown branch conies crashing close 
 To my feet, to tread it down, because I feel 
 Decay my foe ; and not to triumph's worse 
 Than not to win. It is wrong to think on earth ; 
 But terror hath a beauty, even as mildness. 
 And I have felt more rapture even on earth 
 When, like a lion, or a day of battle. 
 The storm rose, roared, shook out its shaggy mane, 
 And leapt abroad on the world, and lay down red. 
 Licking himself to sleep, as it got light ; 
 Ay, in the cataract-like tread of a crowd, 
 AJid its irresistible rush, flooding the green, 
 
208 FESTU8. 
 
 As thongL. it came to doom, than ever I could 
 Feel in tMs faery orb of show and shine. 
 I love earth I 
 
 LuciFEE. Thou art mad to dote on earth, 
 "When with this sphere of beauty. Nay, conceive. 
 Thou canst not yet enjoy a sensuous world, 
 Eefined though ne'er so little o'er thine own, 
 And still wouldst enter heaven. "Valhalla's halls, 
 And skulls o'erbrimmed with mead ; cities of gold, 
 Cities of silver ; temples roofed with light ; 
 God-home and glory-land ; Elysian plains, 
 Where peace and pleasure, endless, cloudless joy, 
 And ever-ripening bliss, enrapture all ; 
 The Buddhist's blessed Nirvana, half between 
 What is, and what is not ; the Chaldee's orbs 
 Of gold, where wons the primal light intense ; 
 The high celestial mountains, bright with hues 
 Spiritual of heaven, Brahm loves, and Siva holds, 
 So pure that snow would stain, and dew defile ; 
 Where music, and her sister beauty, song, 
 Each, time by time on other leaning, haunt 
 The waters of immortal life, which flow 
 So fables feign in everlasting lapse ; 
 Nor other sustenance need, nor can endure ; 
 The pearly palaces and odorous groves ; 
 Forms heavenly, infinite brightness, and of souls 
 The starry transmigrations, they who home 
 By the amber main, believe their lot, past death ; 
 The Aztec's burning heaven, where living clouds 
 By warrior souls infoi-med, sweep round the sun 
 Ceaseless ; rise, fall, at will ; an earth-life now. 
 Or heaven-life had, in turn ; whose sword-play make* 
 Lightning, whose voice in battle, thunder, they 
 Warring on high ; the Moslem's love-bowers, streams 
 Of wine, and tents palatial, gem illumed ; 
 Where dark-eyed houris with the endearing arms 
 White, ever virgin, woo and welcome ye ; 
 Eden, where life, toilless, at least, gave man 
 All things to live with, nothing to live for ; 
 Were, all, too pure for thee. Yet shalt thou be 
 Surely in heaven, ere death unlock the heart. 
 
 Festus. Lo, here are spirits, denizens of the sphere, 
 I doubt not, fitly fair ; and, strange 1 all seem 
 To love each other. 
 
 LuciPEE. He hath but half a heart 
 
 Who loves not all. 
 
 Festus. Speak for me to some angeL 
 
 See, here is one, a very soul of beauty. 
 Nay, 'tis the Muse. I know her by the lyre 
 Hung on her arm, and eye like fount of fire. 
 
 Muse. Mortal, approach. I am the holy Muse, 
 Wiom earth's best spirits adore ; her chosen choose. 
 
FE8TUB. 200 
 
 It is I "who imbreatho my soul into the lips 
 
 Of those great lights whom death nor time eclipse , 
 
 It is I who wing the loving heart with song, 
 
 And set its sighs to music on the tongue ; 
 
 It is I who watch, and with high thoughts reward, 
 
 For every thing I love that's pure and bright, 
 
 The holy aspirings of the youthful bard. 
 
 •Twas but tliis mom, with the first wink of light, 
 
 A sunbeam left the sun ; and as it sped, 
 
 I followed, watched, and listened, what it said : — 
 
 ' Straight from the sun I part ; and though have passed 
 
 Since bidden of God, and in heaven's centre cast, 
 
 Worlds, ages, dooms, yet I am light to the last. 
 
 And though, foreseen, the world's air warps our way, 
 
 And crops the roses from the cheek of day ; 
 
 As some false fiiend who holds man's all in trust, 
 
 Oils his decline, and hands him to the dust, 
 
 Yet all our God shall once bend to his will, 
 
 Is sacred, to be loved, or borne with, still ; 
 
 "We know not what may be ; we bide what must. 
 
 If such then fate, to speed unwavering on 
 
 My path, be mine ; though fate and fall be one. 
 
 For what's this swift, this bright, but downward being, 
 
 Too burning to be borne, too brief for seeing ? 
 
 What is mine aim, mine end? Would I expire 
 
 Grovelling in common dust, in sea, air, fire ? 
 
 Help avarice pelf to heap, war wreak his ire. 
 
 Or light the loveless to their low desire ? 
 
 No ; but if favouring fate which, urged from God, 
 
 Here vivifies a heaven, and there a clod, 
 
 Grant me but this request, death's pang to assuage, 
 
 'Twould be to perish on the poet's page, 
 
 Where, kissing from his beauty's brow all age, 
 
 Bespelled for ever fair, and wrinkle scorning, 
 
 As when first that brow brake on him like a morning, 
 
 He, with adoring spirit, creates the line 
 
 Which leads, by mortal beauty to divine, 
 
 Man's soul. For this end, earthbound though, I come, 
 
 I'd live, die, go down gladdening, to my doom.' 
 
 It said ; and saw earth 1 and one moment more 
 
 Fell bright beside a vine-shadowed cottage door. 
 
 In it came ; glanced above a glowing page 
 
 Where youth foreshortening and forestalling age, 
 
 Weak with the work of thought a boyish bard 
 
 Sato suing night and stars for his reward ; 
 
 The unwrought crownlets which to bards belong, 
 
 And bloom perennial in their sacred song. 
 
 The sunbeam swerved and grew, a breathing, dim. 
 
 For the first time, as it lit and looked on him ; 
 
 His forehead faded, pale his lip, and dry ; 
 
 Hollow his cheek, and fever fed his eye ; 
 
 Doubt-clouds lay round his brain, as on a hill 
 
210 FE8TU8. 
 
 Broods the incipient storm, unvoiced ; and still, 
 
 Quick with the thunder thought, and lightning- will. 
 
 His clenched hand shook from its more than midnight clasp ; 
 
 And his pen fluttered like a winged asp ; 
 
 Save that no deadly venom blacked its lips ; 
 
 'Twas his to enlighten life, and not eclipse, 
 
 Nor would he shade one merit owned hy other, 
 
 To have a sphere his slave, a god his brother. 
 
 Still sate he, though his lamp sunk : still he strained 
 
 His eyes to work the nightness which remained. 
 
 Vain pain 1 he could not make the light he wanted ; 
 
 And soon thought's wizard ring gets disenchanted. 
 
 When earth was dayed, was morrowed ; the first ray 
 
 Perched on his pen, and diamonded its way ; 
 
 Tlxe sunray that I watched, which, proud to cease 
 
 Mid some fair line, inspu-ed of love and peace, 
 
 Died, in the only path it would have trod, 
 
 WtJire there as many ways, as worlds, to God ; 
 
 Died ; in his eye again to live and burn. 
 
 As aature's gloiy all to heaven's shall turn, 
 
 When truth's immortal sunbeams guide his pen. 
 
 And love his heart who, God-taught, teaches men 
 
 They may be all they most aspire to be, 
 
 Their longed-for end, their earliest destiny, 
 
 Whose aim in life is truth and sanctity. 
 
 For earth-life is but being's dawning ray ; 
 
 And hadst thou suns in day as stars in night, 
 
 And each, of heaven perfective, towards God's day 
 
 Thy soul brought, still, its highest, truest right 
 
 Were, luminous, to rejoin his full- sphered light. 
 
 Before whose face creations pass away. 
 
 As cloudlets pass before the steadfast sky, 
 
 Or as years, time's arrows 'fore eternity. 
 
 Festus. Thanks I With the Muse is always love and light, 
 And self-swom loyalty to truth. For know. 
 Poets are all who love, who feel, great truths, 
 And tell them : and the truth of truths is love. 
 There was a time — oh, I remember well 1 
 When, like a sea-shell with its sea-bom strain, 
 My soul aye rang with music of the lyre ; 
 And my heart shed its lore as leaves their dew, 
 A honey dew, and throve on what it shed. 
 All things I loved ; but song I loved in chief. 
 Imagination is the air of mind ; 
 Judgment its earth and memory its main ; 
 Passion its fire. I was at home in heaven. 
 Swiftlike, I lived above ; once touching earth, 
 The meanest thing might master me : long wings 
 "But bafiied. StiU and still I harped on song. 
 Oh 1 to create within the mind is bliss ; 
 And, shaping forth the lofty thought, or lovely, 
 We seek not, need not heaven : and when the thought, 
 
T'ESTUS. 211 
 
 Clondy and ehapclcFfi, fiift forms on the mind, 
 
 Slow darkening into some gigantic make, 
 
 How tlie heart shakes with pride and fear, as heaven 
 
 Quakes under its own thunder ; or as might, 
 
 Of old, the mortal mother of a god, 
 
 When first phe saw him lessening up the skies. 
 
 And I began the toil divine of verse, 
 
 Which, like a burning bush, doth guest a god. 
 
 But this was only wing-ilapping — not flight ; 
 
 The pawing of the courser ere he win ; 
 
 Till by degrees, from wrestling with my soul, 
 
 I gathered strength to keep the fleet thoughts fas',. 
 
 And made them bless roe. Yes, there was a time 
 
 When tomes of ancient song held eye and heart ; 
 
 Were the sole lore I recked of : the great bards 
 
 Of Greece, of Home, and mine own master land. 
 
 And they who in the holy book are deathless ; 
 
 Men who have vulgarized sublimity ; 
 
 And bought up truth for the nations ; held it whole ; 
 
 Men who have forged gods — uttered — made them pass : 
 
 Sons of the sons of God, who, in olden days, 
 
 Did leave their passionless heaven for earth and woman ; 
 
 Brought an immortal to a mortal breast, 
 
 And, clasping rainbowlike sweet earth, here left 
 
 A bright precipitate of soul, which lives 
 
 Ever ; and through the lines of sullen men, 
 
 The dumb array of ages, speaks for all ; 
 
 Flashing by fits, like fire from an enemy's front ; 
 
 Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms, 
 
 Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light ; 
 
 Who make their very follies like their souls ; 
 
 And like the young moon with a ragged edge, 
 
 Still, in their imperfection, beautiful ; 
 
 Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths, 
 
 Like the white nebulous matter between stars, 
 
 Which, if not light, at least is likest light ; 
 
 Men whom we build our love round like an arch 
 
 Of triumph, as they pass us on their way 
 
 To glory, and to immortality ; 
 
 Men whose great thoughts possess us like a passion, 
 
 'Rirough every limb and the whole heart ; whose words 
 
 Haunt us, as eagles haunt the mountain air ; 
 
 WTiose thoughts command all coming times and minds, 
 
 As from a tower, a warden ; fix themselves 
 
 Deep in the heart as meteor stones in earth. 
 
 Dropped from some higher sphere ; the words of gods, 
 
 And fragments of the undeemed tongues of heaven ; 
 
 Men who walk up to fame as to a friend, 
 
 Or their own house, which from the wrongful heir 
 
 They have wrested, from the world's hard hand and gripe ; 
 
 Men who, like death, all bone but all unarmed, 
 
 Have ta'en the giant world by the throat, and thrown him ; 
 
212 FE8TU5, 
 
 And made him swear to maintain their name and fame 
 
 At peril of his life ; who shed great thoughts 
 
 As easily as an oak looseneth its golden leaves 
 
 In a kindly largesse to the soil it grew on ; 
 
 Whose names are ever on the world's broad tongue, 
 
 Like sound upon the falling of a force ; 
 
 Whose words, if winged, are with angels' wings ; 
 
 Who play upon the heart as on a harp, 
 
 And make our eyes bright as we speak of them ; 
 
 Whose hearts have a look southwards, and are open 
 
 To the whole noon of nature ; these I have waked, 
 
 And wept o'er, night by night ; oft pondering thus : 
 
 Homer is gone : and where is Jove ? and where 
 
 The rival cities seven ? His song outlives 
 
 Time, tower, and god — all that then was, save heaven. 
 
 Muse. Yea, but the poor perfections of thine earth 
 Shall be as little as nothing to thee hero. 
 
 Festus. God must be happy, who aye makes ; and since 
 Mind's first of things, who makes from mind is blessed 
 O'er men. Thus saith the bard to his work : — Thy god 
 Am I ; and bid thee live as my God me. 
 Soul of my soul 1 thou camest and went'st, sunlike, 
 From mom to eve ; fire-smiling on this heart, 
 Aforetime calm, until by passion's tides, 
 Roused, and ambition's tyrannous gales it rose, 
 And dashed about its house all might and mirth, 
 Like ocean's tongue in Staffa's stormy cave. 
 But wert thou fragile as the reed once filched, 
 From heaven, in theft heroic, and with gifts 
 Of world-vast change charged, still I hail thee fraught, 
 With deathless fire, immortal as the breath 
 Of God's lips, every breath, a soul. 
 
 Muse. It is welL 
 
 Mortal, the Muse is with thee : leave her not. 
 
 Festus. Once my ambition to another end 
 Stirred, stretched itself, but slept again. I rose 
 And dashed on earth the harp, mine other heart, 
 Which ringing, brake ; its discord ruinous 
 Harmony still ; and coldly I rejoiced 
 No other joy I had, wormlike, to feed 
 Upon my ripe resolve. It might not be : 
 The more I strove against, the more I loved it. 
 
 LuciFEE. Come, let us walk along. So say f arewelL 
 
 Festus. I will not. 
 
 Muse. No : my greeting is for ever. 
 
 LuciFEE. Well, well, come on 1 
 
 Festus. Oh 1 show me that sweet soul 
 Thou brought'st to me the first night that we met. 
 She must be here, where all are good and fair : 
 And thou didst promise me. 
 
 LuciPEB. Is that not she 
 
 Walking" alone, up-looking to thine earth 1 
 
I'HSl^Ua. 213 
 
 For, lo I it Bhinetli through the mid-day air. 
 
 Festus. It is, it is 1 
 
 LuciFEB. Well, I will come again. 
 
 The more he views, the more 'tween God and him. 
 
 Festus. Knowest thou me, mine ovni immortal love f 
 How shall I call thee ? 
 
 AiJGELA. Soul, I know thee well. 
 I am a spirit, Festus ; and I love 
 Thy spirit, and shall love, when once like mine. 
 More than we ever did or can even now. 
 Pure spirits are of heaven all heavenly. 
 Yet marvel not to meet me in this guise, 
 All radiant like a diamond as it is. 
 We wander in what way we will through all. 
 Or any of these worlds, and wheresoe'er 
 We are, there heaven is ; there, and here too, God. 
 Nor deem still less thou art unwatched on earth. 
 Even when I saw thee by the grave, and knew 
 I was purely in thy thoughts, 'twas my soul's prayer 
 To God, who o'erorders all things in unseen 
 C!ontrol, and bends to his praise what hates him most, 
 As what most loves, thou mightst, sometime with me 
 Here meet, and quit thy mind of doubts. For here 
 Bwell many and wisest angels, many souls 
 Who have run pure through earth, or been made pure 
 By their salvation since. It is a mart 
 Where all the holy spirits of the world 
 Effect sweet interchange of knowledge ; truth 
 Barter for love, for love truth ; each enriched, 
 
 Festus. Thou dost remember me ? 
 
 Angela. Ay, every thought 
 
 And look of love which thou hast lent to me, 
 Comes daily through my memory as stars 
 Wear through the dark. 
 
 Festus. And thou art happy, love f 
 
 Angela. Yes : I am happy when I can do good. 
 
 Festus. To be good is to do good. Who dwell here ? 
 Are they all deathless — happy ? 
 
 Angela. All are not : 
 
 Some err, though rarely, slightly. Spirits sin 
 Only in thought ; and they are of a race 
 Higher than thine ; have fewer wants and less 
 Temptations, more joys, greater powers. They need 
 No civil sway ; each rules, obeys, himself. 
 All as they choose, live ; choose but good. Who have come 
 From earti, or other orb, use the same powers, 
 Passions, and pui-poses, they had ere death ; 
 Although enlarged and freed, to nobler ends, 
 With better means. Here the hard warrior whets 
 The sword of truth, and steels his soul against sin. 
 The fierce and lawless wills which trooped it over 
 flis breast ; the siieared desires that overran 
 
214 FE8TU8, 
 
 The fairest fields of virtue, sleep and lie 
 
 Like a slain host 'neath snow ; he dyes his hand 
 
 Deep in the blood of evil passions. Mind I 
 
 There is no passion evil in itself ; 
 
 In heaven we shall enjoy all to right ends. 
 
 There sit the perfect women, perfect men ; 
 
 Minds which control themselves, hearts which indulge 
 
 Designs of wondrous goodness, but so far 
 
 Only as soul extolled to bliss and power 
 
 Most high sees fit for each, divinely. Here, 
 
 Tlie statesman makes new laws for growing worlds, 
 
 Through their forefated ages. Here, the sage 
 
 Masters all mysteries, more and more, from day 
 
 To day, watching the thoughts of men and angels 
 
 Through moral microscopes ; or hails afar, 
 
 By some vast intellectual instrument. 
 
 The mighty spirits, good or bad, which range 
 
 The space of mind ; some spreading death and woe 
 
 On far off worlds ; some great with good and life. 
 
 And here the poet, like that wall of fire 
 
 In ancient song, towers o'er the universe ; 
 
 Lighting himself, where'er he soars or dives. 
 
 With his own bright brain : this is the poet's heaven. 
 
 Here he may realize each form or scene 
 
 He e'er on earth imagined ; or bid drer^ms 
 
 Stand fast, and faery palaces appear. 
 
 Here he hath heaven to hear him ; to whose love, 
 
 Which lent him his whole strength, with mainlike voice, 
 
 And song he thankful sings as is the wont 
 
 Of all great spirits and good throughout the world. 
 
 Oh I happiest of the happy is the bard 1 
 
 Here, too, some pluck the branch of peace to greet 
 
 A suffering saint with, and foreshow his flood 
 
 Of woe hath sunken : this I love to do ; 
 
 Who, late on Mercy's mission charged, thee heard ; 
 
 Kow, here ; but wherefore ask not : thou sometime, 
 
 Shalt know, and known, and loving me, approve ; 
 
 Rejoice in knowing. 
 
 Festus. Be it, loved one, as thou wilt. 
 
 Angela. My love, we shall be happy here. 
 
 Festus. Shall I 
 
 Ever come here ? 
 
 Angela. Thou mayst. I will pray for thee, 
 
 And watch thee. 
 
 Festus. Thou wilt have, then, need to weep. 
 
 This heart must run its orbit. Pardon thou 
 Its many sad deflections. It -vvill return 
 To thee and to the primal goal of heaven. 
 
 Angela. Practise thy spirit to great thoughts and things, 
 That thou mayst start, when here, from vantage ground. 
 By ceasing to be little on earth, a soul 
 Effectually, grows here, half boundless, where 
 
FESTU8. 215 
 
 Knowledf^c of that wo would , in bcinpr, ends. 
 
 Our spirits what there tlicy know and love, of things 
 
 Divine, here greaten to ; for their final cause 
 
 Their inmost end, their hig:hci?t source in us 
 
 Being God, soul-consciousness of wliom is blisa, 
 
 This, our celestial aptness for high ends ; 
 
 World-lording will, ceaseless progress of mind, 
 
 Ambition to do good, the mastery, sought 
 
 With tears, of mysteries, and the exalting love 
 
 Of all perfections, virtuous and divine, 
 
 Our birth, our worth, proves ; and the rational soul's 
 
 Most choice endowment shows ; whereby, demarked 
 
 From lower intelligence, and with heavenly life 
 
 Collate, we test the future as of God, 
 
 Whose sealed recognizance we embosom here. 
 
 For his eternal knowledge, rounding time. 
 
 And all things in it happening, makes the world, 
 
 To us one vast contingency, to him 
 
 All certainty appear, whose note of things 
 
 Their actual being precedes, as being, with us, 
 
 Its noteableness ; who in himself all cause 
 
 Or absolute or conditioned holds, and knows 
 
 Of all his works by him begun, by man 
 
 Continued, or let lapse, which sole shall end 
 
 In sanctified perfection. If by us 
 
 Conceived, accordant wdth his pure design, 
 
 O happy we 1 our life-leaf beams in heaven's 
 
 Br'ght archives ; but time's parable misjudged, 
 
 Misonstrued wilfully, defiled, distort 
 
 To ends of him and us unworthy, find 
 
 We may, to our cost, or blotted out, erased, 
 
 Or, shrieking, from the eternal volume, torn. 
 
 Thus, while each fateful only is to himself. 
 
 We can foretell our future ; we foremake. 
 
 Festus. Speak to me of the future. 
 
 Angela. Wliy alone 
 
 Of the to come ? 
 
 Festus. Because I love and dread, 
 
 As might a vessel laden o'er-deep with gold, 
 To cross a stream upon whose further side 
 Safety allures, but in whose midst is death, 
 The untold pleasures of the life my soul 
 Is richliest freighted with. 
 
 Angela. God's supreme gift, 
 
 Whereby all beings gauge their high advance 
 In heaven, to perfect joy, is this ; to learn 
 The everlasting future. Less or more. 
 All happy spirits can, as one with him. 
 The more their power their longing is the less ; 
 Contented with divinity ; but I 
 Am only at his feet, not yet his breast. 
 A. natural sadness bom, Festus, bom 
 
216 FE8TU8, 
 
 ff 
 Of the sad passed ; though passed, though sad, still deat ; 
 Clouds yet my vision of eternal things ; 
 And human love yet more than nothing seems. 
 Oh 1 speak not of the future. Speak to me 
 Thou, of the passed. 
 
 Festus. Immortal I from thine eye 
 
 Wipe out the tear of time. The gates of hell 
 Are barred upon the passed. Their hold is like 
 The grasp of gravitation. Shall the passed 
 Ever evade the death-clutch of the world ? 
 No, they shall, like two cars, wheel locked in wheel, 
 Roll down together to destruction's depths. 
 Nay, rede me of the future what thou canst, 
 Divine one 1 heaven is in the possible. 
 
 Angela. Oh, once ere now I cast my spirit sight 
 Into the orient future, to preview 
 The features of thy lif elot ; but, alas ! 
 I saw what I were fain to have remained 
 Unweeting of for ever. Now, once more, 
 Thou wouldst revive my woe. 
 
 Festus. Nay, if it grieve thee, 
 
 I will not wake the future. Let it sleep 
 Till its time come. 
 
 Angela. Yet with that woe I saw 
 
 A web of joy was woven for thyself, 
 For me, for many, by the love of God ; 
 Who, granting his own spirit to the form 
 Of divinized humanity, unbuilds 
 The superseded soul, and making all 
 Spirits anew in him, doth make all one. 
 This is the infinite calm which circumscribes 
 All local lifestorms ; this the law of peace 
 Constrains all strife ; the rule of bliss all woe 
 Which disannuls. Haste, haste, thou blessed hour, 
 To the divine fulfilment of the end 
 Of total being. 
 
 Festus. Thus serened, speak on ; 
 
 And with the sequence of my life forearm 
 The soul that is within me. Angel, speak 1 
 
 Angela. Nay, I am no celestial, worthy yet 
 Of so high title as messenger of God ; 
 But in the fire of love's refining flame, 
 The love of God and good, with all these souls 
 Around, self elevating, the great return 
 Of made intelligence in high increment 
 Of purity, towards its source most high, enjoy, 
 And aid ; our being's aim ; of every scope 
 Divine, the crowning reason ; gracious love 
 Granting with joy each spirit's advised request. 
 Hence at my prayer 'twas given me, as I said, 
 The future to foresee ; and I beheld 
 A vision of thyself begirt with forms, 
 
FESTU3. 217 
 
 Nay, more than one, of beauty ; though to one 
 
 Lovely and pure aa loving, I thy heart 
 
 Had trustfully bequeathed ; but sad was this ; 
 
 And that was blithe of blee ; and that ; enough 1 
 
 I cannot all denote them ; but I know 
 
 l^Talign I felt at first to see the heart 
 
 I loved, by them usurjied. But when I thought 
 
 From these calm heights, of all earth's cares and woes, 
 
 And life's brief paradise, the hour of love, 
 
 And knew it aye a failure, as of old, 
 
 Though a divine experiment, I wept, 
 
 And prayed, and found forgiveness for my fault. 
 
 Seek to them ; choose. They all are in thy life 
 
 Blent, and as elements mingled in the cup 
 
 Creative of thy world. These twain are bound, 
 
 One, with temptations which the soul divert 
 
 Creature- wards from its Maker, not of need. 
 
 Not wisely, but too oft ; one, with the charms 
 
 I f not forbidden, of secret loiowledge, hidden 
 
 As harmful, to the spirit that seeks not truth 
 
 For herself sole. This dearest, first and last. 
 
 Shall teach thee perfectness, and guide thy mind 
 
 On earth, from truth to truth, as I from star 
 
 To star unseen, shall have led thee through the skies. 
 
 With her be happy. And as I looked, I found 
 
 Though 'fore each one, successive, as the fates, 
 
 Thy spirit did bow ; and none but in hert;elf 
 
 Chastened, than I was happier ; yet in the end 
 
 All formed one family spiritual of love. 
 
 I^Ty soul then gladden e<^l, and I knew that joy 
 
 The seal of my salvation. I beheld 
 
 All things rejoice beneath the light of love, 
 
 Vrbich seemed to bum within me, and beam thi-ough, 
 
 Lost in the boundless loneliness of God. 
 
 I saw earth's war-scarred countenance sweetly glide 
 
 Into the angel lineaments of peace ; 
 
 And gentlest sorrow dream herself to joy. 
 
 Tears shed on earth were reaped in heaven in smiles, 
 
 And what was sown in sighs was raised in songs. 
 
 Hapt iu this vision with ecstatJc bliss, 
 
 Myself secure from all external chance. 
 
 As though the one pure atomic of light 
 
 Impounded in the centre of the sun, 
 
 Ere yet the end of all, m.ethought I saw 
 
 Each beauty gathered by the careful hand 
 
 Of the great gatherer, who f orgetteth none. 
 
 I felt my being brightened and made fit 
 
 For heavenly regions, gladdening in their glee, 
 
 And grieving in their grief ; as, with thine own, 
 
 One blessed fate I viewed involving all, 
 
 One everlasting end. All earthly love 
 
 Consunun'd with thine, I saw, made love dirine. 
 
218 FESTU8. 
 
 For as the countless globelets of the dew 
 
 Image each one the sun, so, in the dawn 
 
 Of heaven's great day, the seed of God shall shine 
 
 Each with his golden likeness in his breast. 
 
 Thus far my vision. May the all-kind God, 
 
 Who crowns creation with o'erflowing love, 
 
 Bless it to thee 1 And wouldst thou further know, 
 
 Or of the passed, or the calm coming time. 
 
 Seek yonder sphere serene ; for changeless there, 
 
 In lofty and in lonely light sedate, 
 
 The sibyl angel sits, star studying ; 
 
 Two only things before her — heaven and earth. 
 
 Her ask, and she will answer all ; nay, show 
 
 Sometime, if friendliest trust mayhap, prevail, 
 
 A wider scope of things, than spirit like mine 
 
 Of heaven's novitiate, can control. And this, 
 
 Albeit thyself to know is most of all. 
 
 To know, yet soul-world it behoves thee search 
 
 Ere called on high thou dream'st of entering Heaven. 
 
 Festus. Bound am I by the promised boon of one 
 Who holds his spirit in fealty to his word 
 To cross celestial thresholds, and the gates 
 Pass of the invisible land. 
 
 Angela. That may not he. 
 
 For lo I there is written in the book of God 
 This fate ; no soul on earth which lives, of Him 
 Unbidden, unproved of justifying spheres 
 Spiritual, can enter Heaven, or eye the light 
 Intelligible of Deity, and not die. 
 
 Festus. It may be, I am bidden. 
 
 Angela. It may. And now, 
 
 By me forebode, by sweetest Luniel there. 
 Forewarned, foretaught, and fortilied in soul, 
 Retrieve thou the terrene. Endure, enjoy. 
 Who rightly all conditions of life's law 
 Fulfils, from death to happiest deathlessness, 
 Proceeds, divinized. Mayst thou in holy joy. 
 Thy spiritual birthright here reclaimed, aye live ! 
 
 Festus. So shall it be : thy will and my deed, one, 
 I do not fear to die ; for though I change 
 The mode of being, I shall ever be. 
 World after world shall fall at my right hand ; 
 The glorious future be the passed despised : 
 All now that seemeth bright will soon seem dim, 
 And darker grow, like earth, as we approach it ; 
 While I shall stand upon yon heaven which now 
 Hangs over me. If aught can make me seek 
 Other to be than that lost soul I fear me, 
 It is that thou lovest me. Heaven were not heaven 
 Without thee. 
 
 Lucipee. I am here now. Art thou ready 2 
 Let us go. 
 
FESTU8. 219 
 
 • 
 
 Angela. Well — farewell. It makes me grieve 
 To bid a loved one back to you false world ; 
 To give up even a mortal unto death. 
 Thou wilt forget me soon, or seek to do. 
 
 Festus. "When I forget that the stars shine in air ; 
 When I forget that beauty is in stars ; 
 "When I forget that love with beauty is ; 
 "Will I forget thee : till then, all things else. 
 Thy love to me was perfect from the first, 
 Even as the rainbow in its native skies : 
 It did not grow ; let meaner things mature. 
 
 Angela. The rainbow dies in heaven and not on earth ; 
 But love can never die : from world to world, 
 Up the high wheel of heaven, it lives for aye. 
 Remember that I wait thee, hoping here. 
 Life is the brief disunion of that nature 
 WTiich hath been one and same in heaven ere now, 
 And shaU be yet again, renewed by death. 
 Come to me, when thou diest 1 
 
 Festus. I will, I will, 
 
 Angela. Then, in each other's anus, we will waft through space, 
 Spirit in spirit, one ; or, grateful, dwell 
 Among these immortal groves ; watching new worlds, 
 As, like the great thoughts of a Maker-mind, 
 They are rounded out of chaos : w^ill be oft. 
 On earth with those w^e have loft and love, and help them ; 
 For God hatli made it lawful for good souls 
 To make souls good ; and saints, to lielp the saintly. 
 That thou right soon raayst fold unto thy heart 
 The blissful consciousness of separate 
 Oneness with God, in whom alone the saved 
 Are holy and deathless, shall become, for thee, 
 My earliest, earnest, and most constant prayer. 
 Oh I what is dear to creatures of the earth ? 
 Life, love, light, liberty ? But dearer far 
 Than aU, and oh 1 an universe more divine. 
 The gift, God crowns his chosen with, of heaven's 
 Unimageable glory, ere all worlds. 
 And after all reserved for those he loves. 
 As when the eye first views some Andean chain 
 Of shadowy rolling cloud-crags, air-based, height 
 On height, in sunny snowshcen. up the skies 
 'Spiring, like angels' pinions, when heaven's host 
 Self-hushed, God's utterance listens, nor can tell 
 Which loftiest, nor which loveliest, be ; as when 
 An anny awakening with the sun, all hope, 
 Starts to its feet, spear answering spear, line, lino 
 Reundulative ; white plumes, like war-foam, wave 
 Far round ; the light of sword-bom lightning gleams 
 Generously ; while reek themselves away, unwatched, 
 Night's watchfires dull : so feels the spirit when first 
 Doubt quelled, faith's conquering arms flash certainty 
 
220 FESTU8. 
 
 9 
 
 On reason's field ; so, too, when now the soul, 
 God's bright and mountainous mysteries receives, 
 Containing heaven ; moving themselves towards us. 
 In their free greatness, as, by ships at sea, 
 Come icebergs, imminently upon their base 
 Heaving, poised ; pure and pointed as a star, 
 Afar off glittering, of invisible depth, 
 And in the light above, dissolving. 
 
 Festus. Dear one I 
 
 My prayer shall be, that thy prayer be fulfilled. 
 And now, to earth again. Farewell, sweet soul. 
 
 Angela. Farewell. I will be oft with thee if maj'be. 
 But if, as fate may order, me thou mect'st 
 Elsewhere than hc7'e, demand of me no word, 
 But imitative of virtues not yet thine, 
 Thou shalt learn sometime, why, where silence is 
 Worthless ; and reticence only hath wise praise. 
 
 LuciFEK. Earth like I more than this : I rather love 
 A splendid failing than a petty good ; 
 Even as the lightning's bolt, whose course is downwards, 
 Is nobler still than any fire which soars. 
 I scarce can say wherefore I had thee hither, 
 It was wrong, I fear. 
 
 Festus. Mayhap 'twas destiny, 
 
 Life's special charm. 
 
 Lucifer. Go to — reasons are plenty, 
 
 Nor ever absent, but when wanted. Come 1 
 
 Festus. I am determined to be good again. 
 Again ? When was I otherwise than ill / 
 Both not sin pour from my soul like dew from earth, 
 And, vapouring up before the face of God, 
 Congregate there, in clouds, between heaven and me ? 
 What wonder that I lack delight of life ? 
 For it is thus — when amid the world's delights, 
 How warm soe'er we feel a moment among them — 
 We find ourselves, when the hot blast hath blown, 
 Prostrate, and weak, and wretched, even as I am. 
 
 Lucifer. I have done nothing for thee yet. Thou heaven 
 Shalt see, and hell, and all the sights of space, 
 Whene'er thou choosest. 
 
 Festus. Kot then now. 
 
 Lucifer. L^p 1 rise I 
 
 Festus. No ; I'll be good ; and will see none of them. 
 
 Lucifer. Kemember, there's the moon. 
 
 Festus. My memory 
 
 Is most tenacious of the things of light, 
 And the commands of love. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh, happy thought I 
 
FE8TU8. 221 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Charged by the spirit e'er upwards ripening, man 
 And evil, nis mightier minister, invade 
 P<?aceful, that sacred sphere, the queen of heaven, 
 Whose passive utterances of light reveal 
 The birth of things, their subjectness to soul, 
 Spiritual and human ; sin's source, and the means 
 Whereby perfection reuttained, and men 
 And angels joined in bliss with God, all good 
 Shall be at full ; and Time, his crown resigned 
 After his day's reign, to Eternity, — 
 Mother of him, and of ages all, cease. Here, 
 Inspired by love of soul-life progressive, 
 Though for a season thwarted the daring spirit 
 Promise exacts unforfeitable, from one 
 "Who can fulfil vow made to test the skies 
 Perfective, elevative of life. 
 
 The Momi. 
 
 Festup, Lucifer, and Luniel. 
 
 Festus. Thus far along these silenfc wastes of light 
 Have we, unseeing and unseen, held on. 
 Time's sands seem turned to seed-pearl as they glide. 
 In luminous slumber, through his shadowy glass, 
 To glorified repose ; while snowy Peace 
 Hushes the infant soul, here bom again. 
 To wonder and delight. And yet these rocks, 
 ^MlOse flames once flourished in the face of heaven. 
 Like burning banners o'er a fiend host, there 
 Arrested in ignition, fire made stone. 
 Speak out of other state than quiet once. 
 Not Chaos when in travail of the earth. 
 And groaning with the birth-pang, nor the sun's 
 Deserts of fire, sea-deep with drifting flame ; 
 Nor all contortions of the solemn clouds. 
 Can match the immarbled madness of this orb : 
 As though some vast wild passionate soul, ablaze 
 Through all its nature with volcanic sin. 
 By God's one word translated into light. 
 And the pure beauty of celestial peace, 
 "With adamantine silence seized, had coma 
 That instant changeless, deathless and divine. 
 Still meet we not what in this sphere we seek. 
 Methinks my mission here may fail, and might. 
 Were not my soul by force of faith in her 
 Assured, who urged our hither steps, mine most 
 Investigative, as like to light on truth 
 Here hidden ; and though long bafiled, as to me 
 Seems, who from sea-bed dry to hill-top have sought 
 Vainly, the angel virtue of this orb, 
 StiU trust I to behold her, not as yet 
 Eightly, perhaps, invoked. Or shall I call 
 
222 FE8TUS, 
 
 Her aid, who -willed us here ? 
 
 Lucifer. And if I knew nofc 
 
 To an ace our whereabouts, though groping-, now 
 And then, through manifold darkness, as we have done ; 
 And of our failui'es, quite enough I I, too. 
 Might deem this changeful spherelet just the spot, — 
 It is bounded, west by light, and east by night, 
 And north and south by nothing and the wind, 
 For all poetic possibles, and believe 
 Truth captured, might romance to us all the night, 
 Two sennights long, in allegories. At last ! 
 
 Festus. Lo now the angel, as foretold. She makes 
 Hither. beauty, holy and divine, 
 Life-eyed, soul-crowned, illuminated with truth. 
 Mark how unearthly fair and pure ; her air 
 Of sad felicity, and her mingled mien 
 Of innocent life and knowledge absolute. 
 
 Lucifer. Ere Time had whet his infant scythe, or left 
 His cradling clouds, or yon pale watery star, 
 Heaven's giant tear, first cast its shade o'er space, 
 That angel knew I well ; but now, no more. 
 Nor wished I here to meet, nor thou with her. 
 
 Festus. Mind's silent invocacy hath oft such end. 
 
 LuNiEL. Earth-child, behold the angel of this orb. 
 Long have I marked thy wonder at these scenes. 
 Thy search for me ; this ceased, that satiate now. 
 Much of the passed thou 'mindst me, and the race 
 These hills and plains, once populous, teemed with, theo 
 Not wholly like ; of purer strain than thine. 
 Aerial more, meseems ; for virtue, hence, 
 Translate, entire to heaven. I, thus, charge-freed. 
 Rejoice to bid thee welcome, from what orb 
 So e'er thou hailest, the sun, which, day by day, 
 All forces of the world converts to light, 
 Exhaustless, and the hoards he spends, renews ; 
 Or further star ; thrice welcome ; whencesoe'er, 
 Welcome 1 What tidings bringst thou ? say, art thou 
 The earnest of the line to come, foretold 
 By skiey spirits and friendliest, as once more 
 Soul- wise, to people these silvery solitudes 
 Of light, whose advent I these ages wait ? 
 
 Festus. O holy and divine one. I am man. 
 And not the hero of the destined race 
 Thou hopest ; not here inducted ; yet allowed 
 Latewhile, by leave divine, I, touching thus 
 At yon bright wanderer of the sun's broad realm 
 Stem king and lawgiver of stars the sphere 
 Hesperian, like thyself of crescent brow, 
 Nigher the sun one grade than we, where now 
 Aspirant of heaven, a spMt blessed of God, 
 A sweet and sacred sister of my soul, 
 Sojourns ; and, tending thence, towards earth mine own, 
 
FE8TU8. 223 
 
 Am by her hither bidden, that I might learn 
 From thee, lone watcher of the skies, and solb 
 Mediatress 'tween the sun and earth, the fates 
 Spiritual to be fulfilled of those we love, 
 And mighty-minded man. And such we hold 
 Thy sanctity of nature, thine unweighed 
 Largesse of light intelligible, and calm 
 Control of ill, thou wilt for me unseal 
 The fountain of tlie future, and charm forth 
 Wave after wave of wonder. 
 
 LuNiEL. Thou, too, who ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Master and servant am I here of him ; 
 Thine equal, more and less. But come not I 
 Inquiring or desiring aught of thee. 
 The future is to me mere nothingness ; 
 The passed but as a dream ; the present is 
 My portion ; therein only do I live. 
 Among these soulless solitudes, in sootli, 
 Seems little call for me. But here I am. 
 
 LuNiEL. Oh well, I ween, do we each other know ; 
 For all things, soul or spirit, here show clear. 
 Within the radiant region of this orb, 
 As light transpicuous, neither mist nor cloud 
 The unconditioned vision dims ; and thou, 
 Tempter of life, to me art throughly known. 
 I know thee as the evil spirit of time. 
 But mystery is there in thine origin, 
 Thy ministry, thy fall, which, none create, 
 Not even thou thyself canst fathom. Grod 
 Only can read what he hath written there 
 In hieroglyphic darkness, and he will ; 
 That his great works may know themselves and Lim, 
 Ere all the ages end. From God I own 
 Power to foretell what only he foreknows ; 
 And ye are both predestined beings. Such 
 His pleasurable will, that they who serve 
 Rule with him ; who obey not, serve him still, 
 
 LuciFEE. It is even so ; thou sayest truth. 
 
 Festus. Thy words. 
 
 More precious to mine ear than seaborn pearls, 
 Pierce me with light. Speak on, pray. 
 
 LuxiEL. Mortal, know 
 
 Our spirits are the keys to all we see ; 
 And whoso, first permitted and inspired 
 Of heaven, but pondereth well the page of life 
 Before him, shall unlock at last the store 
 Hid in it and all others. To predict 
 The coming it is needf ullest to con 
 The passed and present. As to things of time, 
 Time is divisional ; eternity 
 All unitive. Perfection is to come. 
 I thus the mutual destinies have learned 
 
224 FESTU8, 
 
 Of thine orb and mine own. 
 
 Festus. Inform me, then, 
 
 O holy and divine one I wlio now tread, 
 On this sole purpose bent, these shores of light, 
 Silently shining-, by thy spirit graced, 
 The god-state of the future. 
 
 LuNiEL. Be it so 
 
 Attend ye ; for ye witnesses are both 
 To wisdom, of her world-comprising plan. 
 One is the end and origin of all. 
 God, from the first, was solely in himself ; 
 Nor aught was in existence. God except : 
 Nor time, nor world, life, flesh, sense, soul, nor sla, 
 Nay, there was no negation ; God sole all. 
 But willing to create, his hands he spread 
 From east to west, and constituted space ; 
 From north to south he planned the boundless map^ 
 And consecrated it. The universe 
 Is but a state of being, and a life 
 And time condition of the will divine ; 
 A veil whose web is light embossed with stars ; 
 Through which the eternal essence kindly deigns 
 To manifest itself ; and all he makes, 
 As buds and tender branches bourgeoning, 
 From Being's sacred stem, making to bless. 
 Deep in the universal centre of things. 
 Infixed the Infinite, for gods God made. 
 Therefore, the heavens ; and dark asthereal space, 
 For the immortal angels, love sustained, 
 Which occupy with him eternity. 
 And sin not, err not, doubt not. Next he made, 
 By might omnific and deific love. 
 Matter, for beings of a nature mixed, 
 Whose forms should be material, blessed with lifo^ 
 Vegetive, fleshly ; these instinctive, those 
 Unconscious ; and for these and him to come, 
 With starry globes innumerable, suns. 
 Planets, and moons, and meteors, circumvolved 
 Each round the other, round their central sun, 
 In countless clouds and firmamental wholes. 
 Whose orbits scarce demean infinitude, 
 Bid he the void impeople ; he the suns 
 Of self -genetic, space-creating light. 
 As types and tokens of his heavenly love 
 And beatific power, with spirits vast 
 And world ordained intelligences, fined 
 From all creation, through its thousand gradea. 
 For man, the mighty earth, and all the orbs 
 Revolving round the middle thrones of fire. 
 Compacted of the elements, wherein 
 Dwell separately all less perfect souls ; 
 For him the moon, reflective, ministrant. 
 
FESTUS. 225 
 
 Of all he cliose one system as a law, 
 The great ensample of his starry scheme, 
 One smi, one earth, one moon, one : ace, one tribe. 
 He rules by choice the universal whole. 
 All that are angels, therefore, held, or gods. 
 And worshipped by the ignorant soul, are man ; 
 Man, self -inclusive of all lower forms. 
 All higher natures less than the Most High, 
 For angelhood and manhood (doubly branched 
 Offspring of Deity) each one glorified 
 By freest choice of good o'er ill, and life 
 In consonance with His universal law. 
 Is homed and heavened within the embrace of God, 
 The final sum that science crowns her with, 
 This ; between God and nature, man alone ; 
 However various his conditions be, 
 Through space's universal round, and all 
 The countless orbs of viewless skies, exists ; 
 Nature's essential summit he and God's 
 Deific incarnation : this weigh well ; 
 For spirit is refracted in the flesh. 
 And shows as crooked what is straightness' self. 
 Call all not God nor nature, man ; nor fiend 
 Nor angel but his kin ; God, thus, the world. 
 And man, are all : man midst, the third great form, 
 Wherein unite the two divine extremes, 
 In vital essence. Partly viewed, to each 
 His double nature is allied ; conjoined 
 They embrace themselves in him, compact effect 
 Of God and the lone universe ; he the mean 
 Immortal, vital, of all things, brute life, 
 And heaven's divine eternity. In man 
 Do God and nature reconcile themselves ; 
 God's image he, and the world's. In mental kind, 
 In moral and spiritual his sire's ; in frame. 
 This elemental and transitional shape. 
 His mighty mother Nature's favourite son. 
 9oul, quintessential element, unto her 
 Heaven's love-gift he alone heirs of her fruit ; 
 She, perfected in him most ; of her line, 
 Head-glory. As man the quality of all life 
 Thus shares above, below, and matter inert, 
 So, in his nature sanctified, all things back 
 To their final origin return, in round 
 Totality of life. For our dear sakes, 
 Life mortal is exalt to life eteme, 
 And God with justest love still saves from death, 
 To heaven's divinest destinies, the son 
 Of his ete:nal bridals. 
 Festus. "Whence are we 1 
 
 LiTNiEL. Child of the royal blood of man redeemed, 
 The starry strain of spirit elect, create 
 
226 FESTUS 
 
 Before all worlds, all ages, thence we are. 
 
 This, therefore, be thy future and thy fate. 
 
 As water putrefied and purified, 
 
 Seven times by turns, will never more corrupt ; 
 
 So thou and thine whole race, all change endured, 
 
 Through doubt, sin, knowledge, faith, love, power, and bliss, 
 
 Shall practise every note of Being's scale, 
 
 Till the whole orblet harmonized with heaven, 
 
 Peace, pure imperial peace, rule all below ; 
 
 Till, star by star, these bright and sacred seats, 
 
 Whose ancestry of sempiternal suns 
 
 Comes of the vast and universal void. 
 
 And in whose lineage of light yon earth 
 
 Seems but a new possession, scarcely worth 
 
 Accepting or rejecting, shall at last 
 
 Into primordial nothtagness relapse ; 
 
 And man, the universal son of God, 
 
 Who occupied in time those starry spheres. 
 
 Regenerate and redeemed shall live for aye, 
 
 Made one with deity ; all evil gone, 
 
 Dispersed as by a thunderclap of light. 
 
 LuciFEE. Spirit serene 1 Hath evil no effect ? 
 
 LuNiEL. Timeous it hath, being the shadow of good. 
 With man all good hath evil, or may have ; 
 Evil, of Boul test, it seems good to God 
 To bear with, pending time ; for how, unless 
 Contingent, were free choice ? Thus may with God 
 Evil itself prove possible good. 
 
 Festus. And sin ? 
 
 LuNiEL. Evil and sin are twin with time and man. 
 Sin from a selfish, sensual, source sprung, seeks 
 An individual end ; whereby we stand 
 Opposing deity, and the great commonwealth 
 Of worldly life ; sin voluntary evil ; 
 But good, wherein with God we concentrate, 
 Though bound on Being's very utmost verge, 
 Unites us with the infinite, and rules 
 Right through us, as a radius of the law 
 Eternal of intelligence which bounds, 
 Quickens, upholds, and rectifies all things. 
 Sin is the birth of evil ; hell, of sin ; 
 Destruction of corruption forms the end. 
 Heat is not in the sun, nor wrath in God, 
 Who, though our faith may waver, still is love. 
 Sense of his terrible justice makes it wrath 
 To soul that sins : He judging, alway mild. 
 'Tis the eye twinkles, not the star. When him 
 We spurn we suffer : suffer and inflict. 
 On him our suffering, gracious he, all time. 
 Revenge, wrath, judgment, all are names of love 
 The crowned effect of being, and therein 
 Result Such retribution is our God's : 
 
FESTU8. 
 
 Such glorious retribution as the sun 
 Inflicts on fogs and shadows. Hell is part 
 Of nature. Human retribution stands 
 Divine in ordination ; but divine 
 Judgment on human souls by torturing fires, 
 In everlasting blast, a blind reproach 
 To the pure God, who blesseth all he makes. 
 
 LuciPEB. Destruction I believe in. Mercy may 
 What it once made, unmake ; scarce re-create 
 Into its opposite. Between man and man 
 Justice is sacred, and 'tween man and God, 
 ^V^lose equity all embraces, mercy is sure. 
 But between God and fiend no middle power 
 Exists, save man, and no creator he. 
 
 LuNiEL, Thee God I all creatural nature more or lesa 
 Denies ; but thou, above all contraries, 
 All lovest, all affirmest, as of thee. 
 
 Festus. As when two clouds, such differences delight, 
 By controvertive currents blown of air, 
 Each other's path cross, vast in seeming grace. 
 As knowing heaven both ample and apt enough 
 Even opposites to tolerate ; each to me 
 Truth's footsteps seems to track. From both I learn, 
 Scanning the depths of Deity, what fate 
 Inexplicable judgment first pronounced, 
 By arbitrary rule, in reason's light 
 Shows righteous, shows humane, shows worthy God, 
 Yea even here as everywhere, let man 
 Worship his Recreator, and the world's, 
 Made perfect blissward, by preparative fire. 
 In this aspect or that, life nourishing, life 
 Refining, not of life destructive sole. 
 O thou, who holdst the universe in thyself, 
 Not only as we may mentally, but in act ; 
 Cause uncontaminate by effect, all else 
 Effect with cause creatively connexed ; 
 WTio in Being's inaccessible depths dost dwell 
 Central, thence self -diffused through all ; whose course 
 Through space uncomprehended, we but track 
 By the evanishing star-dust of thy feet 
 Left on heaven's roads ; from world nathless to world. 
 From firmament to firmament can we trace 
 Each soul his individual link with thee ; 
 The pure invisible touch which makes us thine ; 
 The something more substantial than the sun, 
 More general than the void, yet nested here ; 
 As through the aery silence of the soul. 
 Swifter than eagle rushing upon the wind, 
 Thou sweepst into possession, when thou wilt. 
 So many are thy mercies, what is left 
 Save this, to ask ? continue to us that 
 Thou givest. To cease pertaiueth not to thee, 
 
 12 
 
228 FE8TU8, 
 
 The elements may all confusedly fail ; 
 Systems, now burning-, stiffen corselike ; or slide 
 Into their graves of darkness and decay ; 
 The sun at length exhausted in the strife 
 For fiery aliment from the self -thinned air, 
 With his aithereal victor, sleep, and die ; 
 And firmaments conglobe them, till at last 
 Tlie universe in one orb concentrate, fit. 
 Then, for thy footstool only. Change like this 
 Ten thousand times may happen, until it fall 
 To the observant spirits at thy right hand 
 Noteless, by reoccurrence ; man, the while, 
 Restored to the essential whence he came 
 Consorting but with the infinite, nor knowing 
 To utter what is not divine and true. 
 Shall ripen in thy bosom, till he grow 
 Through endless heavens, triumphant and serene, 
 Into the throned god thou badst him be. 
 
 LuNiEL. Depart. Thou knowest all things, knowing this. 
 The world is God's broad word, whose sense is heaven, 
 To those who wisely read ; time's trilogy, 
 The mighty drama of the Lord ; the rest 
 Man, angels, act and hymn. To him devote 
 Be all the paradisal world to come ; 
 Each hill an altar named to God, where man 
 Saintly, may pray and praise ; a covenant heap 
 Of witnessed commune 'tween th'^m ; oh, may earth 
 Sea-like, but render back the heaven she nears ; 
 Be every flower a censer of delight 
 Spiritual ; each wing an augury of the skies. 
 
 Festus. a future this, to live for. 
 
 Lucifer. I abhor 
 
 The self-delusions men affect. With them 
 The future is a god-king, bom in heaven, 
 Rich with hereditary royalties, 
 And entail of interminable times. 
 
 Mom's roseate breath, fresh blown o'er night's bright dew, 
 Is foul before this urchin's, as a sough ; 
 His hand is like the lily's fragrant snow ; 
 And he is robed in weeds of whitest sheen ; 
 Pet godling of the world 1 The present, what ? 
 A ragged, beggared dotard, sick to death 
 Of the grey years, and round returning skies. 
 But what's the truth ? Nor passed, nor future, is ; 
 The present only is all time. 
 
 Festus. Too much 
 
 Thou hast taught me, spirit, of the passed, to shun 
 The surety 'tis in me, for good or ill ; 
 And thou, too much, sweet angel, not to feel 
 The hopes first planted in my mind by her 
 Who bade me here, of commune blessed to come, 
 Make henceforth life's best part, that I the more 
 
FESTUa. 
 
 CJoncede me tx) the future. 
 
 LuNiEL. Know, then, friend 
 
 Of her I love with thee, that limited though 
 In sphere, each spuit celestial, yet the extent 
 To all seems well nigh vergeless ; and if thou, 
 Prepared, wouldst ken what more of human fates, 
 Even of the individual spirits that star 
 Earth's pat^t^ed, renowned ; and how the eternal years 
 Find them and leave ; or lapped in thought, as these, 
 Or fired to act, as those, perpetual, say 1 
 
 Festus. Dear angel ! If through all these radiant sphere.- 
 Thou show'st, 80 stimulant to the inquisitive mind. 
 Of dreams of miracles wrought, mayhap, by son, 
 Prophet, or saint of the Supreme ; not masked 
 In mean or stable state, but as a god, 
 Canying his kingdom with him, and his court, 
 His converts, and his heaven ; that so, though plunged 
 In death's abyss, death passed, it is in his train's 
 Triumph, and the effluence of his conquering light, 
 They enter deity ; if, nay, trust me, e'er 
 Mine it might be, more proofs of God's just love 
 Than ever earth sliows, to learn, such would I rather 
 In thy care tutelar, than 'neath other wing 
 Angelic, these mine eyes have yet beheld. 
 
 LuNiEL. God's are the ultimate ends of life ; but these, 
 Sun, planet, satellite, heaven's all-typed spheres, 
 Of evervariant being, it is mine to search, 
 Sojourn in, pass through ; if abide in not. 
 Mean mundane these, and just remedial spheres, 
 Heedful, preliminary, where meet, death passed, 
 Men's spirits ; for whose can His pure eyeli«ls. heaven's 
 Passive rebuke, sustain ? Such hovering search 
 Our possible privilege, leave being had, to enrich 
 The spirit with royal liberties but fulfilled 
 In thy kind, deathwise ; and thus the freed soul fit 
 For truth, orbed perfectly in heaven alone ; 
 High thought and pure, it is mine to hallow aye, 
 And guide through heaven the meditative sonl, 
 Slightful of luxuries. Let not world-life warp 
 Tliy heart from its strain upwards. Shun, severe, 
 Seclusive, youth's frivolities and deceits. 
 
 LuciFETi. Oh yes, I'll help in all austerities. 
 There's nothing like extremes. The mean's too good. 
 
 Festus. Earth was my future once, but now 'tis heaven. 
 
 LuxiEL. Earth is the emerald tablet, by God's throne, 
 He writes his laws upon, and his open fates ; 
 That all the heavens his starry rede may learn. 
 Even to the end. Thither ye therefore hie. 
 Earth's angel waits thee next, estranged by woe 
 From all her kindred world- wardens, she weeps 
 The impending end of things, nor ceases haunt 
 Heaven with thrice deprecated prayer. FarewelL 
 
230 FE8TUS. 
 
 LuciPEB, Come then, since earth and heaven have willed it thus. 
 Let us fare forth ; our mutual destinies 
 Coeval, and concurrent with the world. 
 This life thou findst not, saj, a thoug-ht too g-rave ? 
 Who seeks creation's mysterios ; — well, a change, 
 Now and again, seems reasonable, I own. 
 
 Festus. How can the aspii-ing spirit, whose faith is sure, 
 "Whose aims, experiences like these, converse 
 With pure intelligence, and advance in paths 
 Heavenward, divine, prove reach their mark, e'er change 
 Its end, and change for meaner ? 
 
 Lucifer. Pleasure, love, 
 
 And mirth, ye graces three, make up for this, 
 Bight soon, or something will, I fear, go wrong. 
 We want some merry chirrupping friends, that's clear. 
 There is one I have marked in secret for some time, 
 Of that inamorato triad once I met, 
 Following a bridelike funeral, if not vowed 
 Wholly to mirth, yet one who for a while 
 Might brighten up his path, and aid such aims 
 As mine be ; nor much miss the mark. But wait. 
 A sunny pool 'mid life's brief stream, I seem 
 To see, where glides, scarce sensible of the flow, 
 Youth's gilded shallop calmed 'mong lilies ; seem 
 To catch a song ; quaff wine. 
 
 Festus. What sayst ? 
 
 Lucifer. I say, 
 
 Me unconditioned being charms not ; nor things 
 Certain ; contingencies are enough for me ; 
 And serve me passing well. 
 
 Festus. Farewell, sweet orb. 
 
 Earth draws us like a lodestone. See, we are coming;. 
 
FESTU8. 231 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Say not of God. as intinite, we nought know ; 
 
 For His esseutial, rayed through attributes 
 
 Adding not to, nor borrowing trom, the whole, 
 
 Like to some beamy crystal which in light 
 
 SeLf-emanative, iraparadised, all round 
 
 Yields many and mighty facets, than man's eye 
 
 Each vastier ; this as not from that distinct ; 
 
 But as our self-delimiting vision seeks 
 
 Ends such, or such aids ; justice, mercy, love, 
 
 Like powers, one variant perfect, one divine 
 
 Substantive ; us illuminant as with act 
 
 And proof reflex of one same moral law. 
 
 Operant through every grade of spiritual life ; 
 
 As gravity, of a like material scope 
 
 Through all creation, shews ; but know, our thought, 
 
 If incapacious of the unbounded mind ; 
 
 And a mere match for time and space, things made 
 
 Of like span with our fellow world ; yet not 
 
 Inapprehensible wholly, even of God, 
 
 As out of these His vast perfections flow 
 
 To limited spirit however potent, pure 
 
 Or fallen, the moral law oi every sphere ; 
 
 All angel tribes ; human ; fallible all, 
 
 All even though fallen perfectible ; back to Him, 
 
 In seK-redemption voluntary, and heart 
 
 Obedient, to the law of penitence, called. 
 
 Cloudland. Festus, Lucifer, after Angel op Earth. Cloudi 
 and Mountains seen — Sunset. 
 
 Festus. We are nearing, I perceive the earth. Less clear 
 This region respirable than midmost space 
 We late have transited. And nigher now 
 The cumulous waves of vapour which, o'erhang 
 The heads of mortals heave in view. Behold 
 Yonder earth's angel guardian, pensive sad 
 Below eve's gold-fringed cloudlet, faithful e'er 
 To her spheral charge. She marks, and seems to await. 
 Our coming. 
 
 Lucifer. Go 1 accost her. 
 
 Festus. Angel guide, 
 
 For such I feel I err not, naming thee, 
 Of this fair orb, my natal star, while thus 
 Eying this harp still resonant ; and these tears. 
 Sad witness of a heart with grief o'erflowed, 
 Say what thou friendly meditatest, and how, 
 If any wise, he who speaks now, may thy soul 
 One sigh's weight lighten ; or how elsewise aid 
 One wish thou wouldst see fulfilled, I, and my peer. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Both know I : him as cause of world-wide woe, 
 And thee, as earth's last hope, and mine, so view 
 Thy kindly promise given unasked, to aid 
 In aught I had at heart, strong trust in me. 
 So waked, that this decree for earth's surcease, 
 Which crushes down the essential in my soul 
 
232 FE8TU8. 
 
 Of deathless life may be, since God is kDown 
 
 In Heaven, as answerer prompt of prayer, for aye 
 
 Cancelled, should man and angel both beseech. 
 
 Let us then both to Heaven. 'Twas but even now, 
 
 So fruitful is my memory of sad things, 
 
 Which always first are found, if turned at last, 
 
 And mellowed to a happier end, I mused 
 
 On what had once befallen in ages gone 
 
 A sister sphere, (was nought more sad to see 
 
 In all God's world) and wept, as thou beheld'st, 
 
 O'er the remembered woe ; till later thought 
 
 Like to a sunset gleam that lightens up 
 
 Creation with a prophet's glance, assuaged 
 
 My spirit, suggestive of a morrowing joy 
 
 Divine, the effect of prayer accorded. 
 
 Festus. Speak, 
 
 Angel revered ! thy story I would leam. 
 Be it of grief or gladness ; to thy mind 
 Becalled, it may be, for some holy end 
 Heaven would through us, work out. 
 
 Angel of Eaeth. Wouldst thou then now^ 
 
 Elect to hear, and he thy foe-like friend, 
 He, primal culprit of the first, and now 
 Mask'd instigator of evil in this last ; 
 Albeit too wary oft to show himself 
 Among the wrecks he hath wrought ; if he, soul-steeled, 
 Can hear the shame of passed deceit revived 
 And told, not I will shrink the auspicious task. 
 
 LuciPEE. I will bear with all I can. If smote too sore 
 "Why, I'll go hunt with Nimrod, or the moon, 
 Orion's shootress ; pitiless punisher 
 Of misdemeanant giants ; she who joys 
 To chase the clouds brute-shaped, chat with her light 
 But threatened, scud, nor wait the maddening dart. 
 
 Angel of Eabth. And if to know how various, sudden, »low. 
 Or ceaseless, are the courses God elects 
 To conquer evil ; slowly erasing, now 
 Its fatal features, line by line ; and now, 
 By one annihilant word, destroying it, 
 For aye ; how amiably redemption fills 
 Vv'^ith souls reclaimed the bosom of our God 
 In countless wise ; in every separate sphere 
 Thou, mortal, wilt at least rejoice to learn 
 TTie triumphs of eternal good ; and thou 
 Immortal, be forewarned to dread just dooms. 
 
 Festus. holy angel, warden of the world, 
 Who guidedst its first footsteps o'er the paths, 
 Untried, of newest space, well plodded now. 
 Which round the sun it circleth, do thou speak 
 Who sweetliest can ; whose long experience tends 
 Far past the immediate parentage of Time, 
 Into ages precreate, what may thou dejm'at. 
 
PESTU8, 283 
 
 To man, through me, God blessed instruction prove, 
 And wisdom of the Heavens ; these, gate and goal 
 Of that true life the inviolate purity 
 Of yonder sky but shadows. So that we, 
 Like self -obedient elements which contain 
 Their total laws, and partial liberties, 
 God's rule may trace more readily in all spheres, 
 AJid more condignly weigh. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Immortals, hear. 
 
 Lucifer. We wait. 
 
 Angel op Earth. In one of those pure, happy stars which claim 
 Like peace with Heaven ; what time mine orb, yon earth, * 
 Weltering beneath her waste and watery shroud. 
 And, judgment executed, all care, all cause 
 All office lost, of lesser kind, like ours, 
 Create, had forfeit paid ; one cell-like speck, 
 Tilting the waves, un whelmed, unhelmed, within 
 Whose wood-bowed womb all life that globe could boast, 
 Lay saved miraculously ; I, thus released 
 From duties superseded ; to such sphere. 
 Invisible oft to all but art-armed eye, 
 Self relegate, had withdrawn to ponder fate 
 And seek that clue of equity hidden of God 
 In time's unravelling ball ; and there received 
 Companionably, some lustres, not a few. 
 Passed among saintliest friends ; with whom, one daj, 
 'Twas holy festival in Heaven ; the close 
 Of time's divinest epoch, from of old 
 Commemorate of soul's advent to the world ; 
 Joy satisfied, a feast of souls devout, 
 Serenely celebrated by souls of Light, 
 Spread through that happiest orb ; and, evening come, 
 Was on the point to join the eternal passed ; 
 Far round the infinite extremes of space, 
 Star spake to star rejoicing, as each sped 
 His splendid way, and a rekindling smile 
 High on the countenance of Heaven's central sun 
 Thrilled to the heart of nature ; while there rose 
 Expressive of felicity pure and whole, 
 A clear bright strain of music, like a braid 
 Of silver round a maiden's raiment, all 
 The sweet solemnity imbounding. There, 
 Each lofty sjiirit luminous with delight. 
 Sate these, of God's selectest angels ; here 
 Sate others, in their grade less high ; but all 
 Like humble spiritually ; of one bright seat 
 I, transient tenant for that deathless hour 
 Of the great year celestial ; gathered round 
 The golden board of this palatial orb. 
 In spheral order. All of fruitage known 
 To their unvanishing Eden, and the land 
 Of everlasting light, to pl«ft» the sense, 
 
 l& 
 
2S4 FESTUa. 
 
 AJid satisfy tlie soul, the tree of life 
 
 In all its bright varieties could yield 
 
 Was lavished ; and its fragrance filled the skies. 
 
 The bright blue wine as though expressed from Heaven 
 
 Glittering with life, went moonlike round and round, 
 
 Times sacredly repeated, 'mong the gods 
 
 And spirits who had earned, each one, his star, 
 
 In that immortal conclave, as they held, 
 
 Deep commune on the wondrous end imposed 
 
 By the Eternal, Saviour of the world. 
 
 Not less than Sovereign, Maker, and just Judge, 
 
 Upon his infinite work ; and all the harps 
 
 Intwined about with nectar-dropping flowers, 
 
 Which wither not though culled, but on the brow 
 
 Or mid the bosom, bloom as in their fields. 
 
 Were trembling into silence, when there stepped, 
 
 Unseen before (as some Diviner's rod 
 
 Had smitten aside a viewless veil, and shown 
 
 Him always there) into the joyous midst 
 
 Of that bright throng, surprised in holy ease, 
 
 A young and shining Angel. In his air 
 
 Sat kingly sweetness, kind and calm command, 
 
 Yet with long suffering, and a conscious wealth 
 
 Of inexhaustible patience, yet to be 
 
 To the utmost proved, imlslended ; for the soil 
 
 Of dust was on his garb and sandalled sole ; 
 
 Dust on the locks of undulant gold which flowed 
 
 From his fair forehead rippling round his neck ; 
 
 Bedropped, defiled with cold and cavelike dew. 
 
 One hand a staff sustained of greenest growth, 
 
 As 'twere a sapling of the tree of life ; 
 
 And one smoothed in his breast, a radiant dove. 
 
 Fluttering its wings in lightnings rainbow-hued, 
 
 The sole companion of his pilgrimage. 
 
 Bilent he stood and gazed. The angels straight 
 
 Rose from their pearly seats, in wreathed with gema 
 
 And priceless azurine from the morning's mine. 
 
 And bowed the head, and stretched the hand ere yet 
 
 One welcoming word were uttered. Wine and bread, 
 
 Bread made of golden wheat, and wine of life, 
 
 Such only as immortal Virtues use 
 
 Before the guest were set ; and cool white robes, 
 
 The angels gave him, floating halo-like 
 
 With fleecy glistening round his fainting limbs. 
 
 Twain of the Thrones at once their seats resigned ; 
 
 Ministrant Princedoms sang again the strain 
 
 Which fills the halls of hospitable Heaven 
 
 When that the holy enter, or the Sons 
 
 Of Light hold high and hallowed festival. 
 
 Then spake the cherub, chief est of us all ; 
 
 Bright Angel 1 from whatever sphere arrived 
 
 Supernal and celestial, or some orb 
 
FE8TU8. 236 
 
 Far off, of starry nature ; for the toil, 
 
 Mcthiiiks, of travel weighed upon ye erst ; 
 
 "While signs of mortal struggle, as to us 
 
 Seemed, graved thy brow, and bent a famished frame, 
 
 Now cheerily relieved ; instruct us, pray. 
 
 Who here assembled sit to celebrate. 
 
 By kind commission of our Lord, his love, 
 
 If we in aught thine ends can further aid, 
 
 Or, thine intents, good as those only thou, 
 
 We are sure, couldst plan, serve ; even as fain we would ; 
 
 For all we know is holy enters here. 
 
 By virtue of our King's set law ; and we 
 
 Prepared for sacred action, instant are. 
 
 Thus he, his seat resuming, while a glance 
 
 Of bland appi'oval beamed from eveiy eye, 
 
 Wise reticence still reining in each tongue. 
 
 Answered the stranger Angel rising slow 
 
 Sunlike, from out his seat of clouded gold ; 
 
 kind, noble natures ; well ye work 
 
 Your ministry of love, who thus pour forth. 
 
 Unmeasured, unconditioned, your divine 
 
 Riches of deed and word, that all who come 
 
 Whether by invitation, or by need 
 
 May of the Sovereign's bounty whom ye serve, 
 
 Like honour with his chosen friends receive ; 
 
 Accept these thanks, this blessing. As he ceased, 
 
 The air became all incense ; and the skies, 
 
 Aj8 though endowed with native sunlife, showered 
 
 Around on all their iridescent smiles. 
 
 Oh not to us, said I, in name of all, 
 
 Be gratitude for duty barely done ; 
 
 All honour is our Lord's, To him we owe 
 
 This gracious exaltation o'er the world 
 
 Wherein his love sustains us ; his, who first 
 
 By one omnipotent Fiat breathed us forth ; 
 
 WTio, out of awful non-existence us 
 
 Translated into life, and turned our souls 
 
 To angel constellaHons, ranging free 
 
 Through all the eternal liberties of light. 
 
 But if thou wilt, say, oh most holy guest, 
 
 Whom we account us blessed to receive. 
 
 While yet the day doth solemnize the skies, 
 
 Wherefore thou hither comest ; how treated else 
 
 In other worlds, and whither now ; so we, 
 
 Ilaply may gather wisdom from thy words, 
 
 Or help afford by deeds. Then once again, 
 
 That radiant youth immortal as the mom, 
 
 Hose from the crown of Heaven, and bending low 
 
 Spake with a soft bright utterance, like the voice 
 
 Of very silence musing : so serene 
 
 His parlance ; all attent his audience round. 
 
 happy angels, heavenly and divine, 
 
23« FE8TU8. 
 
 To whom nor sin, nor sigh, nor tear, nor woe, 
 
 Not even in thought imaginary may come ; 
 
 And whose free lives in blessed obedience pass 
 
 To one law pure and sole, the law of love ; 
 
 How shall ye hear, or I relate, the griefs 
 
 Of orbs disrupted, and of spirits dyed 
 
 In blackest sin ; of God's high rule reject ; 
 
 His own deputed, exiled ; rudely thrust 
 
 From ancient throne, and old dynastic calm 
 
 Thought steadfast and eteme, and through the blank 
 
 Of lifeless night compelled to wander ; where 
 
 But that afar he caught the friendly glance 
 
 Of your extreme and most felicitous star, 
 
 He might perchance have ever strayed ; but since 
 
 A gracious ear to stranger's plaint be yours, 
 
 Let me, in briefest wise recount the events, 
 
 Mid worlds far distant, some few deeds of mine 
 
 Blent with, not wholly dimly, part concern : 
 
 That ye in joy thus fortified, may thanks 
 
 Give for your peaceful lot, and further bless 
 
 God, who hath put it in your hearts to share 
 
 Those bounties with the stranger, ye enjoy. 
 
 To Him be praise and worship in all worlds. 
 
 Passed even the ken of angels, in the midst 
 
 Of a bright ring of worlds, the central void 
 
 By luminous circlet compassed, which so hides 
 
 Its proper firmament ; with that flaming belt 
 
 Self cycling, moveable, of galactic suns 
 
 Tempering the outer infinite ; an orb 
 
 There is, ah me ! there was, an orb of light ; 
 
 Once all mine own. In Heaven, my Angel Sire. 
 
 Such blessed relations are, ye know, in Heaven, 
 
 Abode, and ruled in glory many a tribe 
 
 Elect, of choicest virtues ; Abiel he, 
 
 Sovereign of all intelligences, all spheres ; 
 
 Beniel, my name ; and sons are we all, of God. 
 
 This orb I, trusted with supremest powers. 
 
 Paternal love could lend, myself had framed ; 
 
 Myself with life endowed, all ordering ; all 
 
 Adorning ; only not creating ; that, 
 
 Asks the Omnipotent hand, and loveful life. 
 
 All life is sacred in its kind, to Heaven ; 
 
 And all things holy, beautiful, and good. 
 
 There angels, marking it enriched with gifts 
 
 Of marvellous virtue ; and observant souls. 
 
 From all spheres, dwelled as in the bosom of bliss. 
 
 Piety, innocence, peace, and joy made up 
 
 The sum of being. Worship was the air 
 
 They breathed, and lived by ; lowliest righteousness 
 
 The ground they trode, wrought, builded on. A land 
 
 It showed of fountains, flowers, and honeyed fruits ; 
 
 Of coo] green umbrage, and incessant sun, 
 
FESTU8. 237 
 
 Temperate of light, exhilarant ; rainbows there, 
 
 In permanent splendour, spanned the skies, by cloud 
 
 Sterner than amber breath-dimmed, undeformed ; 
 
 Here clear blue streams singing and sparkling ran 
 
 The bloomy meads to fertilize ; there, some 
 
 With honey, nectar, manna, milk or wine, 
 
 Fit for angelic sustenance, slow flowed, 
 
 'Tween palaces and cities, midst of groves, 
 
 Like giant jewels, set in emerald rings ; 
 
 Ail-where, the bowery coverture of woods 
 
 Ancient and dense, laced with all tinted flowers ; 
 
 Peaceful sojourn, for shade or rest, of lamb, 
 
 Lion, ox, eagle, dove or serpent, goat 
 
 And snow-white hart ; each sacred animal 
 
 Cleansed from all evil quality, sin instilled. 
 
 Speaking one common tongue, and gathered oft 
 
 In wisest parley 'neath some hallowed tree, 
 
 Centring each mazy pleasance, intersect 
 
 With an invisible bound ; so sweet the force 
 
 Of nature, heavenly sanctioned : such the charm 
 
 Life paradisal and palatial opes 
 
 To the heirs of worlds and ages. All went well 
 
 Full many a sunny cycle ; and year by year 
 
 The souls of that blessed orblet ripening rose 
 
 Spirit- wise to perfection ; day by day 
 
 Grew spirithood to deathless angel-kind ; 
 
 Angelic nature to Divine estate ; 
 
 Gracious and happy emulance which of all 
 
 Should happiest be. Among that heavenly race 
 
 Abode two angel sisters, nymphs divine. 
 
 The daughters of the Lord of gods and men ; 
 
 Star-dowered ; inheritresses of heavenly light ; 
 
 Conspicuous 'midst their holy kin, though all 
 
 Of eminent virtue, moved the sisters, each 
 
 As in finite form a vision verified 
 
 Of the eternal beauty. Yet how unlike 
 
 Their nature and their loveliness ; in one 
 
 A soul of lofty clearness, like a night 
 
 Of stars, wherein the memory of the day 
 
 Seems trembling through the meditative air ; 
 
 In whose proud eye one fixed and ark-like thought 
 
 Held only sway ; that thought a mystery : 
 
 In one, a golden aspect like the dawn. 
 
 Beaming perennial in the heavenly east, 
 
 Of paly light ; she ever brightening looked 
 
 As with the boundless promise unfulfilled 
 
 Of some supreme perfection ; in her heart 
 
 That promise e'er predestinate, alway sure, 
 
 Her breast with joy suffusing ; and so wrought, 
 
 Her sigh seemed happier than her sister's smile ; 
 
 Yet patient she and humble. Of these twain 
 
 The elder my betrothed was ; to me, 
 
238 FESTU8. 
 
 From antemundane ages, by my sire, 
 
 As of like royal issue with myself, 
 
 Of spirit divine reserved ; yet so disposed 
 
 The triple inheritance stood of this bright orb, 
 
 That ere the elder entered on her dower, 
 
 The whole, well-nigh, the younger should a fair 
 
 Domain, to her accruing, first enjoy : 
 
 Of her own choosing, sacred to herself. 
 
 Sequestrate ; so forefixed of old ; until. 
 
 Some secular times accomplished, both should lapse 
 
 Into mine own pretemporal, crowning, rights. 
 
 Who shall gainsay the will supreme of God? 
 
 For both He loved right well ; but, for my sake, 
 
 The first the best, with whom was most secured 
 
 The bliss of all. The younger now had ruled 
 
 Moonlike, in meekest wise, 'neath Truth's inspired 
 
 Instruction, and divine faith's, many an age 
 
 O'er her select dominion ; and delight 
 
 Leapt up its highest, when the news, made known 
 
 By Wisdom, their high governante, spread abroad, 
 
 Of nuptials nearing celebration. Vast 
 
 And rich in festive splendour, were commenced 
 
 The s. i cred preparations ; every heart 
 
 Impatient for the hour when dominant stars 
 
 Immingling cogent rays, should, said the seers, 
 
 Propitious prove for such world touching rites 
 
 As gave the biide-queen of their angel race 
 
 With me enthroned to sit, and with me rule. 
 
 Deceptive predication 1 Whence ? Ah me 1 
 
 For lo ! in lieu of orbs conjoined, eclipse, 
 
 Black, and of both I The very night, sky-scanned 
 
 By thousand eyes for the expected sign, 
 
 (So Fate, which none save God who uttered, knowo, 
 
 Had ordered) suddenly a stranger star. 
 
 Shaped swordlike, and self -wielded, as it seemed, 
 
 Or by invisible hand brandished on high. 
 
 Far ofl: in space appeared, out dazzling swift 
 
 All lesser, nearer, lights which nature showed. 
 
 So rapidly from end to end it fiew 
 
 Of Heaven's horizon, even as though it scorned 
 
 The quiet skies of that ecstatic sphere. 
 
 That the third night gone its threatful place in air 
 
 It left for the unknown infinite below. 
 
 When to their wondering eyes the morrow mom 
 
 A marvel mightier than the sworded star, 
 
 I sole perceived the Evil One (disguised 
 
 In aery outline hovering, high behind) 
 
 Had there unsheathed in heaven, where late it flamed, 
 
 Behold, was present. Bands of angels, whence 
 
 Was known not, thronged the groves and palaces 
 
 Which decked our paradisal world, in air 
 
 And aspect, fair yet foreign, and distinct 
 
FE8TU8. 289 
 
 Their every action with a shining grace 
 
 Which like a lodestar chained, unfelt, the eye ; 
 
 And made their charm fulness, exceeding far 
 
 The solemn beauty of the original tribes, 
 
 Erstwhile so happy, fatal. For these first 
 
 The heart divided, once entirely God's, 
 
 Whole, and without a flaw ; first tuned their lyres 
 
 To angel love alone, but half divine ; 
 
 First taught to separate self from Deity ; 
 
 Yet seemed they nought to teach, but rather fled 
 
 All serious converse and ini>truction, soon 
 
 Curtailing worship and prolonging rest ; 
 
 As though true worship were not union high 
 
 Repose inagitable of soul, and rest 
 
 In him. the immutable good, of all that live. 
 
 These after mingling, now as though by chance, 
 
 Now choice, in holy celebrations, asked 
 
 Their rank to name and order, made reply 
 
 They were the youngest offspring of the Heavens, 
 
 Children of bliss and knowledge, richly dowered 
 
 With singular joys and rare immunities ; 
 
 That they were spirits of freedom, and their suit 
 
 And servage voluntaiy, whence only germed 
 
 Wliat small, if any, merit, they might claim ; 
 
 As else, their gracious Lord, they said, were mocked 
 
 With none save forced compliance ; that all good 
 
 Sprang from the natural impulse of their souls 
 
 Arid the proud pleasure of pure liberty ; 
 
 Which claims, self -laudatory, and unlawed power, 
 
 Proved they the measure of the skies fulfilled, 
 
 Held in duality with Him who made ; 
 
 The complement of all extremes of light 
 
 Begun, and closed ; of all celestial kind 
 
 The essential flower ; that after them was nothing ; 
 
 With them, perfection finished ; — which to preach 
 
 Of their own selves, and teach the truths consigned 
 
 To their sole hands, their only purpose there ; 
 
 Wandering where'er to wander pleased them best. 
 
 Like, but unequal, as the eye to heaven, 
 
 EiTors the shape of truths put on, as clouds 
 
 The forms of isle and continent whence they sprac;?, 
 
 Suspended in the skies. With such like words, 
 
 So falsely seeming true, and ofttimes urged 
 
 Were sundry led aside to question, doubt, 
 
 Deny, at last cast off, the holy law 
 
 Ordained of Deity which makes his love 
 
 Sustaining spirit, with virtue straitly yoked 
 
 The soul's true faith and motive of all just 
 
 Practice ; true reason and cause of righteous life, 
 
 Peace, bliss. To those who mocked the modest truth 
 
 And knew but this or that extreme of thought. 
 
 Free-will but signified the idolatry 
 
240 FE8TU8. 
 
 Of selfisli nature, as opposed to God ; 
 
 Blown up with, self-conceived deserts, and proud 
 
 To prove its own an independent power, 
 
 Held in like absolute estate with Heaven's. 
 
 Vain, impious thought, begone, and cease for aye. 
 
 So these, divine permission to myself 
 
 Such secret straight entrusting, to what end 
 
 Ye shall ere long be 'ware of, presently 
 
 Seceded ; yet remained, on outward terms, 
 
 As heretofore, with their unshaken kin. 
 
 But oh 1 the absolute excellence was no more. 
 
 The plane of pure perfection broken through, 
 
 It was as though some galaxy of stars 
 
 Had sunken, and left a horrid rent in heaven ; 
 
 A ragged flaw athwart the sapphirine floor ; 
 
 A foul chaotic chasm. Still further spread 
 
 As from some central and impulsive point, 
 
 In ceaseless radiation, day and night, 
 
 Fresh errors, and reiterate wrongs and jars. 
 
 In vain I throned myself in judgment hall, 
 
 Uttering decrees predestined as of yore ; 
 
 In vain I walked among them, beckoning back 
 
 Such as in false society had strayed ; 
 
 In vain, I warned of evil ; showed them all 
 
 How God's exterminating judgments fell 
 
 Ever on sin, with woe to whom they came. 
 
 The testimony came to all in vain. 
 
 The disaffection spread. Oh 1 still I weep. 
 
 Recalling that declension, sad and wide. 
 
 By frankness unsuspect, and free access 
 
 Gained to the imperial nymph, the strangers next 
 
 Base hints insinuate of self-seeking power 
 
 Sowed widely against the holy guide and nurse, 
 
 Celestial wisdom, 'neath whose bounteous care 
 
 Had grown those angel sisters since their rise 
 
 Starlike, responsive to God's wUl and word. 
 
 In the arcanest heavens. Her soon alas 1 
 
 The wily wanderers whispered first away, 
 
 From wonted inculcation of deep lore, 
 
 And holy truths, as narrowing down the soul, 
 
 And marring the free actions and intents 
 
 Of the angelic pair ; to which, mean charge 
 
 The elder, not the wiser, won too well 
 
 By much and false persuasion, at the last 
 
 Gave in, nor rued till after ; so mistaught 
 
 To gladden at lack of all, even mild, restraint, 
 
 Upon the natural world commanding will. 
 
 Not so the younger ; who with tears profuse 
 
 Grieved at the doom of parting with her guide ; 
 
 Severance from holy tutelage, and loss 
 
 Of the words of love, inspiring and inspired. 
 
 She might from one so sagely instructive reap 
 
FE8TUS. 241 
 
 Tlirough life to come, who from the first instilled 
 
 Into their souls the sacred elements 
 
 Of heavenly tiiith ; and gave them each to taste, 
 
 In prelibation of suprcmest bliss, 
 
 The perfect sum of knowledge. God, she taught, 
 
 Is truth most pure, and justice, good, and love ; 
 
 To all His creatures, infinitely made known 
 
 By these, and such like attributes, though to none 
 
 In essence wholly cognizable ; He more 
 
 Than all capacity of created mind, 
 
 Through aU time strained were equal to conceive. 
 
 Yet all His virtues imitable, He, man 
 
 And angel, so to image Him designed, 
 
 As far as pure Humanity could, that all 
 
 In righteousness and holiness and peace 
 
 And purity, joy might compass, justly earned, 
 
 And happiest self -content. From His right hand 
 
 Necessitative, sprang all existence ; sprang. 
 
 All various forms and spheres of spatial life, 
 
 Innumerous as the atomies of the light, 
 
 Or as the sands Time's mighty year-glass holds, 
 
 Though it comprise all deserts ; nature's vast 
 
 And elemental limbs, of His great wiU 
 
 The organs ; He above all form, all bound. 
 
 All Being ; whose every act is free ; whose word 
 
 Is fate ; with whom alone, and with His will 
 
 Concurrent was there peace. The bliss of Being 
 
 Is to be loved of God, sole source and end 
 
 Of rational beauty, and the eternal joy 
 
 Life echoes f aintliest from all orbs in sign 
 
 Recognizant of His will that all create, 
 
 Not selfishly, nor slavishly, but moved 
 
 Freely to compass universal good. 
 
 Shall His own aims promote ; ill, God's great way 
 
 Obstructing but for a time, diverting not ; 
 
 And good triumphant ultimately, the peace, 
 
 All-harmonizing, secure, which rules in Heaven, 
 
 Peace, victress of all war. So wisdom made 
 
 Her favourite wise of heart, and led the one 
 
 Beloved thiough all the virtuous spheres and homes 
 
 Of perfect pleasure to the chequered globes 
 
 Which spirits aspirant, or, to grosser ends 
 
 Of sin and error, prone, commingling haunt ; 
 
 And as the Sun, through gilded waters, massed 
 
 Vaporous, of the upper firmament climbs ; then steep, 
 
 Down to the lowliest nook of farthest space, 
 
 "Where earth like clay upon the potter's wheel, 
 
 Spins, day and night, descends ; they passed, to where 
 
 The last of happy creatures, and the first 
 
 Of wretched beings, semi-moital man, 
 
 Bides : who, his clay though tempered with the flow 
 
 Fourfold of Paradisal wave, and warmed 
 
242 FE8TU8. 
 
 With breath of Deity, yet so self-bedimmed 
 
 Of soul-sight rests, that, duped by dullest seers, 
 
 VHio, with earth-pent vapours blown, and reek of tims, 
 
 Falsely oracular sit and agonize, 
 
 Preaching perdition endless, though in Heaven 
 
 Tlae sunsmile of Salvation on God's face, 
 
 To soul assurant of bli?s ultimate, beam 
 
 Unrecognized, unrecked of, undivined, 
 
 He all his rise ignores and glorious end. 
 
 Still, after all these wanderings, wotting well, 
 
 One single soul more wondrous than all worlds 
 
 WTiich mass the skies with miracles of light ; 
 
 They joyaunce most and rapt contentment found 
 
 Coolly triumphant, as the restful stars 
 
 Shall shew in heaven when time's hot day is done, 
 
 Each in their proper orb and common sphere ; 
 
 To meditations on futurity most 
 
 Devote, and scrutiny of both act and aim 
 
 Self -writ, indelible, on the inner tome 
 
 Each soul imbreasts ; one day to be collate 
 
 With the pretemporal volume graven of God, 
 
 In tablets adamantine, high in heaven 
 
 Treasured, the true Originals of fate. 
 
 The Elder Excellence, meanwhile, who longed 
 
 For more, and mere autocracy, unchecked, 
 
 Unled, unwarned, ruled with a random hand, 
 
 And an occasional sovereignty, the all 
 
 But full totality to herself assigned 
 
 Of the allegiant myriads of her race. 
 
 These loved her well, and willingly themselves 
 
 Ascribed to her for ever ; for that she 
 
 Gave them all freedom ; wherefore in return 
 
 They were her slaves by gratitude ; and ripe 
 
 Any desire to grant or scheme abet 
 
 Which pleased herself, or those intent to please ; 
 
 Counsel however sage, and precept fair 
 
 Savouring of better will, or end than theirs. 
 
 Were treason named ; and Wisdom's words, at last* 
 
 Bewrayed by guile, into a net were wrought 
 
 For her own shining feet ; alas, the day ! 
 
 Long was a pretext sought, and baffled oft ; 
 
 But never failure followed ill intent : 
 
 And base success still sealed each fatal plot : 
 
 The hour of parting came, and Wisdom wrung 
 
 Her high uplifted hands ; nor breathed, unless 
 
 To her she loved, that youthful saint, farewell ; 
 
 Which elsewhere given, were but a mock to make 
 
 Of valediction. How could that she left 
 
 By any chance fare well ? Yet still she stayed 
 
 Lingering around that once supremest sphere 
 
 "V^Tiere, with the angel sisters of her care, 
 
 She was of Eld so happy. Oft she made 
 
FE8TU8. 243 
 
 For fLight ; but pausing, her reluctant wing 
 "VVTieeled pityingly again ; and thus consumed 
 Her last night there, till every star had waned 
 Into the coming light ; then took her way 
 Upon her own bright plumed arms to Heaven. 
 The vanishing flash of her asonian wing 
 Long hoped by those insinuant tempters, oft 
 In deep divan met, they triumphant, marked ; 
 And toward the elder of the imperial twain 
 Those regal nymphs, inheritors of heaven, 
 Laden with crown and robe and sceptre, rushed 
 Tumultuous ; and applausive, hailed her thus ; 
 
 lofty Angel fair, be thou our Queen ; 
 Worthy the sole and unobstructive rule 
 Of every sphere, and every spirit-race ; 
 Heart-honom*ed, heaven-ordained, predestined heL' 
 Of the bright line of ages numberless. 
 
 Since God creating atomies first began, 
 And ended with the universal world. 
 Thou hast beheld no equal, nay, no like. 
 Thee only we acknowledge ; and for this 
 Hold our arrival blessed. Empress, hail ! 
 Then she elate, and with pride-blinded soul. 
 Culpably tolerant of blasphemous praise. 
 The towering seat prepared for her assumed. 
 And sat a sceptred traitress ; by that act 
 Her sister's previous right not only balked, 
 And mine succedent challenged, but of all 
 The promised privileges devised to accrue. 
 On my accession, to the race, the loss 
 Inexorably involved. Far, now, and wide, 
 The tidings flew that I and all my rule 
 Were virtually annulled ; abolished ; left 
 Exsiccate even of hope. The judgment seat 
 
 1 sat, and none attended ; or but came 
 With false, fictitious cause, to scoff and jeer. 
 Then came an edict of perpetual ban 
 
 And forcible exile 'gainst myself, and all 
 Who dared the fallen fortunes to support, 
 Or but to name as lawful. Thus the sword, 
 WTiose fiery emblem glared at first in air. 
 Reigned, and divided all things. Every gate 
 Of every temple straight was closed ; and lo I 
 Each high and heaven allusive dome was fiUed 
 With hollow-sounding emptiness alone. 
 Once, in the midst of their assembly high, 
 Met to discuss mean only and secular things, 
 Such as had ne'er before moved angel minds ; 
 And in the palace hall, where erst were held 
 Full courts of joy, sweet audiences of love ; 
 Skilled plans and choice designs of future good, 
 Told, put to proof, improved, or perfected ; 
 
244 FESTUa, 
 
 And messages and missions sent, of grace, 
 Or publicly received ; hall, temple, court, 
 Built of immarbled air, essential stone, 
 Transpicuous, fictile, workable by thought ; 
 Once I essayed to speak, and hearing hoped ; 
 But ere a word, they bound me by the hands 
 And drave me out with curses, taunts and gibes 
 Passing, thus manacled, the new-made throne 
 Where sat the crowned traitress, of her crime 
 Conscious, and trembling mid the array of state 
 That girt her in brightly, I spake ; but not 
 In anger nor revenge ; for I foresaw 
 The wretched end of all such mortal sin. 
 And knew Heaven's holy purposes alone. 
 Eternal and substantial, stand for good : 
 Behold me thus ; I quit thee ; 'tis thy will. 
 Me thou f orswearest, who had loved thee more 
 Than all the tribes of angels, love thee still, 
 Despite the evil flatteries now thy soul 
 Is darkened with, degraded. Know me true. 
 The hour will come when thou shalt hold me yet 
 Dearer, than now detested. But 'tis thou 
 Shalt change ; not I. Watch ; for I come again. 
 She answered with a smile, a wretched smile 
 I could but pity her for ; but trembled, mute : 
 And I departed that dishallowed hall. 
 In this, too, God permitted them success, 
 And in far more that at the close he might 
 Their highest height o'ertop, and with the arms 
 Of love all conquering fling forth more supreme 
 His thrice victorious standard. Such his will ; 
 Such even in exile, now, the due, the dear 
 Obedience of my heart ; for well I knew, 
 To change or re-create, with Him perdured 
 As facile as to make. The younger angel maid 
 Who dauntless kept her faith, and still with me 
 Held sad and sacred commune, though by stealth, 
 Was suffered to remain, close cloistered first, 
 In solitude religious, for that they 
 The empress' mind who swayed, dared not advise 
 To put her quite to death ; and that the tie, 
 And natural sympathy of sisterhood, 
 Sweet memory of the excellent times of old, 
 And flickering purpofjes for future years. 
 Which played about the heart of her enthroned. 
 Together, wrought to spare her and preserve. 
 Anon, though bidden to busy herself alone 
 With her own matters, and those mixed with them, 
 She, at convenient times, permission wrung 
 To walk abroad and tend her charities ; 
 But only in the humblest, homeliest guise. 
 And, as the Queen had shrunk not to abjure 
 
FE8TUS. 246 
 
 Love passed, love present, and all future love 
 
 Between her and myself, her whilome Lord, 
 
 The younger, in derision, they who mocked 
 
 Both, called the bride expectant, and the spouse. 
 
 Now, what a change came o'er that orb serene ! 
 
 Through all the day was revelry and mirth ; 
 
 Nor respite knew the night, till no one recked 
 
 Of natural order, or of dues divine. 
 
 While the neglected damsel, at the gates 
 
 Of her imperious sister, at whose beck 
 
 All luxuries started into life and use. 
 
 In servile garb, and oft with ashea crowned 
 
 As in contempt, sate outcast and forlorn. 
 
 royal menial, imperial thrall 1 
 
 Companion once of angels in their height, 
 
 How lowly art thou fallen ; and yet how pure, 
 
 Seen in the sin-consuming light of God ; 
 
 How meek, how perfect, in true servitude. 
 
 These contumelies and worse, unvexed, she borOj 
 
 Unheeding, uncomplaining. Day by day, 
 
 Her to impresss with due sense of disgrace. 
 
 Was she led in, before the obsequious crowd, 
 
 In sackcloth clad, to make obeisance meet 
 
 To the sisterly majesty, which she, at first. 
 
 Abashed, for peace-sake, coldly made ; nor lacked 
 
 AU hope, some gold-grains Time might number still 
 
 Among the barren sands he measui'ed forth ; 
 
 That wisdom yet might home with them again ; 
 
 And her usurping sister, still beloved, 
 
 Though for this deed condemned, her diadem 
 
 Yield to its rightful lord, and heir. In this 
 
 Hope she survived, nor wholly stood alone. 
 
 ■\Vhile all, almost, in that strange change of rule 
 
 And law agreed, a certain few there were 
 
 Nathless, within whose hearts the echoes stayed 
 
 Of those last words I uttered ; and these found 
 
 Joy unconceived in trusting still they might 
 
 In act be verified ; and oft, as best 
 
 They could, they comforted the angel child. 
 
 Daily and nightly, she upon her knees 
 
 Besought God to rekindle, in the hot 
 
 And blinding darkness of her heart who ruled, 
 
 The lovelight of His presence ; and to quench 
 
 Sin's ruins as lava torrent, trained and led 
 
 With desolating prevision, through that once 
 
 Fair gardened world, fertile of joy, by those 
 
 Who first impoi-ted it with evil ends. 
 
 At night, too, in the wilderness wo met ; 
 
 For what erewhile a pleasaunce showed, was now 
 
 A drear and desert sphere ; and there from her. 
 
 I, banished, learned what things and how befell ; 
 
 Nor left she e'er without one asked for boon, 
 
246 FESTUS. 
 
 Despite the wrongs I suffered with herself, 
 
 Wrongs which too many loudly joyed to hear, 
 
 That I for all would pray and intercede. 
 
 There were who spared not breath to show, though One 
 
 Who knew her well knew better, that she strove 
 
 Her sister in my heart's love to supplant ; 
 
 And for that she herself kept faith, would bound 
 
 To herself all favour ; and so circumscribe. 
 
 Through infidelity forfeited of one. 
 
 The promise made to both, of highest bliss, 
 
 Which on thek birth- day had to each been given, 
 
 And, writ in silvery phylacteries, strung 
 
 Around their brows ; by the younger openly, 
 
 Not proudly ; by the tj'ranness hid, as though 
 
 Ashamed of, or indifferent to, God's gifts. 
 
 So like, yet how diverse, those twins divine ; 
 
 The daughters of the Most High God. To each, 
 
 As creatural spirit was trial still decreed 
 
 That they might know to approve the power devolved 
 
 From Heaven, of perfect choice ; know good, know woo j 
 
 The woe, to this, of saintliest innocence 
 
 Falsely traduced ; the purifjing pain, 
 
 To that, of sin repented of, abjured, 
 
 Atoned for • though they knew not that all grief 
 
 Should vanish, and good only and pure joy 
 
 Soul sifted justifiably by times, 
 
 Encrown each other finally. In all orbs. 
 
 Are secret truths, known but to Him who laid 
 
 Their sui-e foundations, trembling though they stand 
 
 Upon the countless columns of the air. 
 
 By secret instigation thus the heart 
 
 Was poisoned, of the Angel Queen to shun 
 
 And doubt her innocent sister. Time by time 
 
 Such imputations cast failed not to work 
 
 Wrath in the royal breast ; but rarely now 
 
 Of former love, or possible future, touched. 
 
 Enough such proud jiresumption, as inferred 
 
 By slander's lying tongue, were whispered round ; 
 
 Thus visited. Within the central square. 
 
 Fronting the glittering palace, stood the throne 
 
 Which changed so much the aspect of that orb. 
 
 And which I told of first ; whereon each day 
 
 She, ministering blind justice, sat, absorbed 
 
 In love of her own empery ; rapt to hear 
 
 The adulation of her foreign train ; 
 
 To trifle with her sceptre as a toy, 
 
 And court the rainbow flashes, startling bright 
 
 Of the star-gemmed tiara ; to her eyes 
 
 Jewels well worth the satrapies of Heaven ; 
 
 Rich in all fancied virtues to attract 
 
 Good, or from evil fend ; the which same gems 
 
 She oft would deftly moralize, and prove 
 
FUSTUS. 217 
 
 To the 8ubs'>rviont glozers, round, how well 
 
 Their comeliness became her ; how much stead 
 
 The brow, the bosom where they dazzlinp: lay ; 
 
 Now gleaming forth defiant, now reposed 
 
 In silent capabilities of light. 
 
 lliere, in her radiant siege, that Angel Queen, 
 
 (What time the sister, so abased as wont, 
 
 Meekly came forth, in pale humility, 
 
 Low bending like the creaceut moon, when first 
 
 Born of the golden calm the western sky 
 
 Joys in prophetic, duly to perform 
 
 Set reverence,) sat, and eyed askance ; then spake j 
 
 "\\Tiile o'er her head r.ttendant3 from behind 
 
 Pavonian canopy of azure held 
 
 In manner of a sunshr.de, this to screen 
 
 From that one's gloiy, which might else have smote 
 
 Harmful ; " Fair seeming sisterling, is't that thou, 
 
 In my default, aspirest to espouse 
 
 The angel prince, my sometime lover-lord, 
 
 He exiled, thou in bonds ? If so, content : 
 
 Ye well befit each other ; and so far 
 
 As merits make, are equal in my mind." 
 
 Answered the younger ; "01 affianced bride 
 
 Of God's own issue, be, betwixt us twain. 
 
 Nor struggle, nor misdoubt. They both malign 
 
 Who sow the seeds of discord broad-cast here. 
 
 We each have our fore-noted lot. Be mine 
 
 The power, the privilege say, of servitude ; 
 
 Be thine command. My faith can never change. 
 
 But thou hast fallen from service, to a throne. 
 
 Though he who ever loves, nor swerves from that 
 
 His heart hath fixed on once, with me consort, 
 
 It is but for a season ; and all our talk 
 
 Is of thee always. Countless prayers are thine." 
 
 '* I too have my devotions, and serve God, 
 
 Doubtless, although I worshir) not with thee," 
 
 Replied the elder ; bowing f i om her throne ; 
 
 " We worship each our star ; out all in Heaven." 
 
 "We may not worship but th-i Invisible," 
 
 Answered the younger, firm. " No matter, now," 
 
 Rejoined the angel monarch (smiling bright 
 
 On her confederated beguilers, round, 
 
 "Who smoothly sanctioned every pearly word 
 
 That beauteous and imperial rebel breathed), 
 
 " My temple is my heart. My seat is fixed 
 
 Here in the midst of friends ; and by this crown, 
 
 Each gem a sacred talisman of power ; 
 
 Or amulet protective from all harm. 
 
 Wrought by the spirit of friendly elements. 
 
 And wondrously endowed, I swear, and be 
 
 The oath as death irrevocable, the dull 
 
 Alliance, once for me designed, by me, 
 
248 FESTU8, 
 
 I shrink not to confess, desired, I now 
 
 Abjure for ever. Go, dear sister, meet 
 
 Our would-be friend, once more, tliis once for me ; 
 
 And let him know our fixed resolve ; nor Lord, 
 
 Nor living- equal is, nor shall be, mine." 
 
 Incipient murmurs of applause ran round 
 
 The lustrous throng-, when lo I an omen strange. 
 
 While yet she spake, the jewels of her crown. 
 
 But now obtested, in the sight of all 
 
 Dropped, several, down ; a sadly splendid lapse, 
 
 Like meteor showers, autumnal, in earth's sky, 
 
 Whose fancied virtues, in her false esteem, 
 
 Were that which made her queenly ; down they fell, 
 
 And but enriched the dust. With deep dismay, 
 
 She eyed the empty sockets, and was still. 
 
 Shame-stricken, slowly slid from her away, 
 
 The parasitic court, which had supplied 
 
 That mockery of a crown. The younger, then, 
 
 Who at her sister's feet her seat still sought ; 
 
 " sister 1 divine one, most dear I 
 
 There is a jewel more than worth all these, 
 
 These, virtue's shining semblances ; nought else : 
 
 Wilt thou not seek it ? 'Tis for asking, thine. 
 
 A friend there is ; a lover ; one most true ; 
 
 Who would not thus desert thee, though it had been 
 
 Thyself, by judgment, hurled into the dust ; 
 
 But there he would have comforted thee." " No more,* 
 
 Said the haught Empress ; " I have cast my lot : " 
 
 Then hurried from her throne, and disappeared. 
 
 Next came the crime of crimes, with curses crowned. 
 
 Staggering precipitate. No lack was there 
 
 Of direful sign and portent ; chief was this ; 
 
 Each day grew murker ; for the light of truth. 
 
 Suns those serenest firmaments ; and all 
 
 The falsehoods each one uttered, lie by lie 
 
 Rolled into rings of darkness round their heads, 
 
 Till the conglomerate gloom obscured the day ; 
 
 And each one so infringed the other's view 
 
 That contact in collision ceased. And still, 
 
 With gathering shades the stranger spirits shoAved 
 
 Still seemlier, and like light outletting flowers, 
 
 Glowed in the lengthening eve ; and oft at night, 
 
 As the stars streamed their silvery radiance forth. 
 
 Their rosy bowers they trimmed ; and training low 
 
 The honeyed wreaths, heavy with odorous dew, 
 
 Warbled a vesper song, inviting mirth, 
 
 And amicablest converse in the shade. 
 
 There likewise, they averred, to serve their God ; 
 
 AVhose living image dwelled, they said, among them ; 
 
 With natural worship and symbolic rites 
 
 Of souls regenerate ; there, would seek to impart 
 
 The esoteric truths which nature veiled, 
 
FESTU8, W» 
 
 Of the one triplicative essence ; there, 
 
 All cosmogonic and theurgic lore 
 
 Make free to ravished vision ; and for one 
 
 Prostration of the spirit duly made, 
 
 The sacred fire, and secrets of the stars. 
 
 Nightly, these boastful proffers were proclaimed, 
 
 And mysteries more enchanting still, with smiles 
 
 Hinting of happier revelations yet, 
 
 AVhcn those they loved were perfected in faith. 
 
 These smiles at first were answered but by t^miles 
 
 Incredulous, dissident. And yet, see, said they, 
 
 (In impious invocation of that doom, 
 
 Concuning figure, which their criminous aim 
 
 Exactly covered, not long time postponed) ; 
 
 I low the night lengthens we have brought with ua ; 
 
 Permitted to this end. that out of night 
 
 And preternatural darkness such as this, 
 
 -tlay spring that luminous vision we enjoy, 
 
 And in ourselves create, of things divine. 
 
 Partake ye with us. Thus they tempted on. 
 
 Wonder at last awoke desire. Among 
 
 The original race angelic was a sage 
 
 Of dominant lineage, for undated years 
 
 Prime Counsellor he of good, who oft had urged 
 
 Obedience to old law ; reproved who ened, 
 
 In listening to these promissory guests 
 
 One wasted atomic even of an hour. 
 
 And most deplored their advent. Him it seemed 
 
 Good to the Great One who all life controls, 
 
 And circumscribes all action, so to prove 
 
 His further ends superior, to permit 
 
 One heedless moment's converse with the spirit, 
 
 Chief of these voluntary visitants, 
 
 "Who lay 'mid fragrant flowers reclined, as though 
 
 Dreaming ; all sense yet but half solved in sleep. 
 
 The rafliant chaplet drooping, and the zone 
 
 Cerulean, featly tricked with semblant stars, 
 
 Unloosened for repose. Arise, he cried. 
 
 Sternly ; and work some good, while liaply light 
 
 Shall last. And wherefore ? said the angel guest ; 
 
 In wise and happy idlesse, half divine, 
 
 Those live who how to spend their life know best. 
 
 Our life is contemplation : our sole work 
 
 Is worship. 'Tis the weak who ceaseless act. 
 
 We mightiest are in rest. This eve return ; 
 
 And I will show thee that we worship here. 
 
 What more, in speech hath never been di\'ulgod ; 
 
 But whatso'er, his first reproof's bright edge 
 
 Seemed blunted, to the sage ; who went his way, 
 
 Wordless ; his heart a sudden storm of thought, 
 
 Assaulting. Day, in musing passed and prayer, 
 
 Eepeated, but not satisfied, At night, 
 
250 FE8TU8. 
 
 When all the stars burned brightliest, and the bowers' 
 Of song were silent, he in stealth returned ; 
 And lo ! the spirit slumbering- as before. 
 
 sweet and soft salute of sacred sleep, 
 The starry eyes and lightning- lids of earth 
 And evening slowly sealing, and the cheek 
 Of angel painting with a pearlier calm, 
 
 How wert thou mocked then ! Morn came, and he 
 
 Returned not, poor apostate. Soul by soul 
 
 Who went to seek him, stayed ; so strong the spell 
 
 One dread defection cast. In every bower 
 
 But that wherein he was, 'twas said he hid ; 
 
 And soon each flowery canopy one concealed, 
 
 Of self -idolaters sought, but never found. 
 
 Pity them now, ye angels ; for like you 
 
 Equal, almost, in favour of their Lord, 
 
 Were once those lapsed ones. These are heart-wrung tears. 
 
 At these words sympathetic tears swam o'er 
 
 For the first time, from each celestial eye. 
 
 As trees autumnal shed their leafy griefs 
 
 In golden showers, shaken by sudden gust ; 
 
 Tears not to be forbid ; tears, too, I see, 
 
 Which, mortal ! cloud thine eyes. 
 
 LuciFEE. Let us depart. 
 
 Festus. What, now so sensitive I 
 
 Lucifer. List, earth is calling. 
 The voice of her enchantments fills the sky ; 
 The fragrance of her young and innocent breath ; 
 The odours of her bosom, banked with flowers, 
 As with the o'ermuch perfume of lilies closed 
 And clustered in scant room, quite conquer me. 
 There's more attraction in them than this tale 
 Of ruinous success, soon to my disgust 
 Re-righted. But no matter. Let us hence. 
 
 Angel of Eabth. What urged thee. Lord of ill, this ill to wreak? 
 
 Lucifer. Was't not enough for me, that passing by 
 An orb, not bulkier much than thine, and seeing 
 The confident, reckless, virtue of all soul, 
 
 1 should have risked its ruin ; riskea, and won. 
 For a time at least. Eternity's not mine. 
 
 I brook no more. 
 
 Festus. So, angel, part we now. 
 
 Angel of Earth. If this must be, enough, When next we meet 
 Thou, child of earth, shalt cease to mourn, those tears 
 Attesting pity for lost gods ; and both 
 Make glad in the holy and unlooked for end, 
 The good event, the joyful issue vouched 
 To fervent prayer, of our late told of star 
 So suddenly unblessed ; whose final fate 
 Recorded, beams the one conciliant ray 
 To me, of Being. 
 
 Festus. May wo meet then, soon. 
 
 1 
 
FESTU8. 261 
 
 For much I long, though now frustrate, to learn, 
 So much as we may di-aw the future's veil, 
 The sequent state of angel world. 
 
 LuciFEB. Away 1 
 
 Earth's more to me than all earth's angel dreams. 
 
 Festds. 'Tis strange, 'tis beautiful but to meet with these 
 Sweet spii-its as here abound, each personal soul 
 In form aerial, framed distinct, like wind 
 Passive, not senseless, but selfmoveable, fills 
 With rapturous hope my heart, and bids rejoice 
 That we like stationary stars may pause 
 Awhile upon our course. 
 
 Guardian Angel, Pause, and proceed. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 But dimmed, 
 Drowned, lost all this, like an eye in tears of mirth, 
 Like a Btar setting in a twinkling sea, 
 Mid revellings, song and dance, wild glee and wine, 
 "Where beauty's orb rules, lady of the hour, 
 More astral than terrene, o'er lovelorn youth, 
 And damsels on whose lily necks the blue 
 Veins branch themselves m hidden luxury. 
 Hues of the heaven they seem to have vanished from. 
 By new loves lured, by life's sheer levities, swift 
 The tempted takes his leap, as cloud -lapped stream 
 Vaults o'er its crags, self-aissipative in an-, 
 To end in watery dust without all end ; 
 Mere spells the spirit's eye to daze 'gainst needs 
 Of nobler being ; mock substitutes for aims 
 Truth asks ; but saddened penitently, at close. 
 By sweet remembrance of tne sainted soul 
 Once loved, aye hallowed ; still a force on high, 
 Beart-purifying. Oh! still in scenes like this, 
 Touth lingers longest, drawing out his time 
 As goldbeater his wire attenuates, till 
 It would reach round earth, and be of no use, then. 
 
 Party and Entertainment. — Garden: JPonntains. 
 
 Festus, Helen, Lucifeb, Charles, Lucy, and Others. 
 
 Festus. My Helen, let us rest awhile, 
 For most I love thy calmer smile ; 
 We'll not be missed from yon gay throng. 
 They dance so eagerly and long ; 
 And were one half to go away, 
 I'll bet the rest would scarce perceive it. 
 
 Helen. With thee I either go or stay, 
 Prepared, the same, to like or leave it ; 
 These two perhaps will take our places ; 
 
252 FE8TU8. 
 
 They seem to stand with longing faces. 
 
 Festus. Tlien sit we, love, and sip with me, 
 And I will teach thyself to thee. 
 Thy nature is so pure and fine, 
 'Tis most like wine ; 
 
 Thy blood, which blushes through each vein, 
 Rosy champagne ; 
 
 And the fair skin which o'er it grows, 
 Bright as its snows. 
 
 Thy wit, which thou dost work so well, 
 Is like cool moselle ; 
 Like madeira, bright and warm, 
 Is thy smile's charm ; 
 Claret's glory hath thine eye, 
 Or mine must lie ; 
 But nought can like thy lips possess 
 Deliciousness ; 
 
 And now that thou'rt divinely merry, 
 I'll kiss and call thee spaikling sherry. 
 
 Helen. I sometimes dream that thou wilt leave me 
 Without thy love, even me, lonely ; 
 And oft I think, though oft it grieve me, 
 That I am not thy one love only : 
 But I shall alway love thee till 
 This heart like earth in death, stand still. 
 
 Festus. I love thee, and will leave thee neveTj 
 Until my soul leave life for ever. 
 If earth can from her children run. 
 And leave the seasons, leave the sun ; 
 If yonder stars can leave the sky, 
 Bright truants from their home in heaven ; 
 Immortals who deserve to die, 
 Were death not too good to be given ; 
 If heaven can leave and live from God, 
 And man tread off his cradle clod ; 
 If God can leave the world he sowed, 
 Right in the heart of space to fade ; 
 Soul, earth, star, heaven, man, world, and God 
 May part ; not I from thee, sweet maid. 
 Ah, see again my favourite dance, 
 Bee the wavelike line advance ; 
 And now in circles break, 
 Like raindrops on a lake : 
 Now it opens, now it closes, 
 Like a wreath dropping into roses. 
 
 Helen. It is a lovely scene, 
 Fair as aught on earth ; 
 And we feel, when it hath been, 
 At heart a dearth ; 
 
 As from the breaking up of some bright dream ; 
 The failing of a fountain's spray-topped stream. 
 
 IVlLL. Ladies, your leave ; we'll choose a queen. 
 
FESTUa. 258 
 
 To mle this fair and festive scene. 
 
 Charles. And it were best to choose by lot 
 So none can hold herself forgot. 
 
 [T/iey draw lots : it falls to Helen. 
 
 Festus. I knew, my love, how this would be ; 
 I knew that fate must favour thee. 
 
 All. Lady fair ! we throne thee queen : 
 Be thy sway as thou hast been, 
 Light, and lovely, and serene. 
 
 Festus. Here, wear this wreath. No ruder crown 
 Should deck that dazzling brow ; 
 Or ask yon halo from the moon. ; 
 'Twould well beseem thee now. 
 I crown thee, love ; I crown thee, \xiWB ; 
 I crown thee queen of me ; 
 And oh 1 but I am a happy land, 
 And a loyal land to thee. 
 I crown thee, love ; I crown thee, love ; 
 Thou art queen in thine own right : 
 Feel ! my heai-t is as full as a town of joy ; 
 Look I I've crowded mine eyes with light. 
 I crown thee, love ; I crown thee, love ; 
 Thou art queen by right divine ; 
 And thy love shall set, neither night nor day, 
 O'er this subject heart of mine. 
 I crown thee, love ; I crown thee, love ; 
 Thou art queen by the right of the strong; 
 And thou didst but win where thou mightst have slain, 
 Or have bounden in thraldom long. 
 I cro\\'n thee, love ; I crown thee, love ; 
 Thou art my queen for aye ; 
 As the moon doth queen the night, my love ; 
 As the night doth crown the day. 
 I crown thee, love ; I crown thee, lovo ; 
 Queen of the brave and free ; 
 For I'm brave to all beauty but thine, my love ; 
 And free to all b*»Auty by thee. 
 
 Helen. Here, in this court of pleasure, blessed to reign, 
 If not the loveliest, where all are fair, 
 We still, one hour, our royalty retain. 
 To out-queen all in kindness and in care. 
 Love, beauty, honour, bravery, and wit ; 
 Was ever queen served by such noble slaves ? 
 The peerage of the heart — for heaven's court fit : 
 We'll dream no more that earth hath ills or graves. 
 With mirth and melody, and love we reign : 
 Begin we, then, our sweet and pleasurous sway ; 
 And here, though light, so strong is beauty's chain, 
 That none shall know how blindly they obey. 
 We have but to lay on one light command ; 
 That all shall do the most what best they love j 
 And Pleasure hath her punishments at hand 
 
254 FE8TU8. 
 
 For all who will not pleasure's rule approve. 
 But no 1 there's none of us can disobey, 
 Since, by our one command, we free ye thus ; 
 And, as our powers must on your pleasures stay- 
 Support — and you will reig'n along with us. 
 
 Festus. Ha I Lucifer I How now ? 
 
 Lucifer. I come in sooth to keep my vow. 
 
 Festus. Thy vow ? 
 
 Lucifer. To revel in earth's pleasure*, 
 
 And tire down mirth in her own measures. 
 
 Festus. Go thy ways : I shrink and tremble 
 To think how deep thou canst dissemble ; 
 For who would dream that in yon breast 
 The heart of hell was burning ? 
 Or deem that strange and listless guest 
 Some priceless spirit earning ? 
 I hear methinks from every footstep rise 
 A trampled spirit's smothered cries. 
 
 Lucifer. But for yon jocund wight, I feo-r ; 
 Just in the nick of time wo met ; 
 I stopped, and asked him where you were ; 
 His kindness I shall ne'er forget 
 Small chance had I of being here. 
 I think it quite ungenerous in you, 
 At such gay gatherings as the present, 
 My once-loved converse to eschew, 
 Just as I meant to make things pleasant. 
 It's rather hard when one has called 
 The club, to be yourself black-balled. 
 
 Charles. Fest, engage fair Marian's hand. 
 
 Festus. Pass me ; she is free no less 
 Than I, who by my queen will stand ; 
 May it please her loveliness 1 
 
 Helen. Festus, we know the love, and sec. 
 Which was with Marian and thee, 
 Our early friend, once Clara called, 
 But now from us long while estranged ; 
 In all, except her hopeless love 
 For thee, her faithless lover, changed ; 
 And we would see ye once again, 
 I nothing doubt, resume. 
 
 Marian. In vain, 
 
 I wish it not. I do but strive, 
 A love though buried still alive, 
 To hallow with the dearer name 
 That sheltered its first flickering flame. 
 He seeks another. Though he range 
 From heart to heart, not I shall change. 
 Love veered unbidden ; he yet may learn 
 Unsought, unsolaced, to return. 
 
 Helen. I hold him not against his will ; 
 Thine he may be, thine only still. 
 
FE8TUS, U$ 
 
 LUCJIFEB. Well-rooted plants soon fruit. A lighter love 
 Will lighter instincts in him move. 
 These joys, these raptures of mere sense, 
 Senseless, enjoyment's pure pretence, 
 Must surely cloud all innocence. 
 And as he gains in knowledge high 
 Of spirit, nature, destiny. 
 Faith, fostered by yon faithful soul, 
 So ripe in love, so rich in dole, 
 Faith must as surely in him die. 
 
 Festus. I marvel at myself. There seems 
 A power within me bids me claim 
 A freedom like space-filling dreams, 
 AVhich are, and are not, but in name ; 
 A fateful freedom, all the same ; 
 Wheref rom I vainly try to shape 
 Some way of conquest or escape. 
 
 Lucifer. My schemes succeed as soon as planned ; 
 Needs must, if so and so but drive ; 
 AVTien once you know your neighbour's hand, 
 It's wondrous how your game will thrive. 
 
 Charles. Of freedom we'll have no abuse. 
 Dance with your royal fair. 
 
 Lucifer. Make no excuse. 
 
 Festus. Rebellion pleases most, though little use. 
 I will not dance to-night again, 
 Though bid by all the queens that reign. 
 
 Helen. What, Festus 1 treason and disloyalty 
 Already to our gentle royalty ? 
 
 Festus. No — I was wrong — but to forgive 
 Be thy sublime prerogative I 
 
 Helen. Most amply, then, I pardon thee ; 
 In proof whereof, come dance with me. [^A dance» 
 
 Laurence. How sweetly Marian sweeps alon^ ; 
 Hor step is music, and her voice is song. 
 Silver-sandalled foot I how blest 
 To bear the breathing heaven above, 
 "Which on thee, Atlas-like, doth rest, 
 And round thee move. 
 Ah I that sweet little foot : I swear 
 I could kneel down and kiss it there. 
 I should not mind if she were Pope ; 
 I would change my faith. 
 
 Charles. Works, too, we hope. 
 
 Laurence. Ah ! smile on me again with that sweet smile, 
 Which could from heaven my soul to thee beguile ; 
 As I mine eye would turn from awful skies 
 To hail the child of sun and storm arise ; 
 Or, from eve's holy azure, to the star 
 Which beams and becks the spirit from afar ; 
 For fair as yon star- wreath which high doth shine, 
 And worthy but to deck a brow like thine ; 
 
256 FE8TU8. 
 
 Pure as the 'Light from orbs whicli ne'er 
 Hath, blessed us yet in this far sphere 
 As eyes of seraphs lift alone, 
 Through ag-es on the holy throne ; 
 So brig-ht, so fair, so free from guile. 
 And freshening- to my heart thy smile ; 
 Ay, passing all things here, and all above. 
 To me, thy look of beauty, truth, and love. 
 
 Mauian. Pray, heed me not. 'Twere vain to me 
 To pay thy heart's lost fealty. 
 
 Haeey. Thy friend hath led his lady out. 
 
 Festus. He looks most wickedly devout. 
 
 Fan^sty. When introduced, he said he knew her, 
 And had been long devoted to her. 
 
 Emma. Indeed — but he is too gallant, 
 And serves me far more than I want. 
 He vows that he could worship me ; 
 Why, look 1 he is now upon his knee. 
 
 Lucifer. I quaff to thee this cup of wine, 
 And would, though men had nought but brine ; 
 E'en the brine of their own tears. 
 To cool those lying lips of theirs ; 
 And were it all one molten pearl, 
 I would drain it to thee, girl ; 
 Ay, though each drop were worth of gold 
 Too many pieces to be sold ; 
 And though for each I drank to thee, 
 Fate add an age of misery : 
 For thou canst conjure up my spirit 
 To aught immortals may inherit ; 
 To good or evil, woe or weal. 
 To all that fiends or angels feel ; 
 And wert thou to perdition given, 
 I'd join thee, in the scorn of heaven f 
 
 Emma. Oh fy 1 to only think of such a fate I 
 
 Lucifer. Better than not to think on't till too late. 
 They'd not believe me, Festus, if I told them, 
 That hell, and all its hosts, this hour behold them. 
 
 Festus. Scarcely ; that demon here again 1 
 But though my heart biurst in the strain 
 I will be happy might and main 1 
 So wreathe my brow with flowers, 
 Aud pour me purple wine. 
 And make the meny hours 
 Dance, dance with glee like thine. 
 While thus enraptured, I and thou, 
 Love crowns the heart, as flowers the brow. 
 The rosy garland twine 
 Around the noble bowl. 
 Like laughing loves that shine 
 Upon the generous soul ; 
 Be mine, dear maid, the loves, and thou 
 
VESTua, m 
 
 Shalt ever bosom them as now. 
 
 Then plungre the blushing wreath 
 
 Deep in the ruddy wine ; 
 
 As the love of thee till death 
 
 Is deep in heart of mine ; 
 
 While both are blooming on my brow 
 
 I cannot be more blessed than now. 
 
 Lucifer. Thou talkst of hearts in style to me quite freeh : 
 The human heart's about a pound of flesh. 
 
 Festus. Forgive him, love, and aught he says. 
 
 Helen. What is that trickling down thy face ? 
 
 Festus. Oh, love, that is only wine, 
 From the wreath which thou didst twine ; 
 And, casting in the bowl, I bound, 
 For coolness' sake, my temples round. 
 
 Helen. I thought 'twas a thorn which was tearing thy brow ; 
 And if it were only a rose-thorn was tearing, 
 "VMiy, whether of gold or of roses, as now, 
 A crown, if it hurt us, is hardly worth wearing. 
 
 Lucy. From what fair maid hadst thou that flower ? 
 It came not from my wreath, nor me. 
 
 Charles. Love lives in thee as in a bower, 
 And sure this must have dropped from thee ; 
 From thy lip, or from thy cheek : 
 See, its sister blushes speak. 
 Nay, never harm the harmless rose, 
 Though given by a stranger maid ; 
 'Tis sad enough to feel that flower 
 Feels it must fade. 
 And trouble not the transient love, 
 Though by another's side I sigh ; 
 It is enough to feel the flame 
 Flicker and die. 
 
 And thou to me art flame and flower, 
 Of rosier body, brighter breath ; 
 But softer, warmer than the truth ; 
 As sleep than death. 
 
 Festus. The dead of night : earth seems but seeming ; 
 The soul seems but a something dreaming. 
 The bird is dreaming in its nest, 
 Of song, and sky, and loved one's breast ; 
 The lap-dog dreams, as round he lies, 
 In moonshine, of his mistress' eyes : 
 The steed is dreaming, in his stall, 
 Of one long breathless leap and fall : 
 The hawk hath dreamed him thrice of wings 
 Wide as the skies he may not cleave ; 
 But waking, feels them clipped, and clings 
 Mad to the perch 'twere mad to leave : 
 The child is dreaming of its toys ; 
 The murderer, of calm home joys ; 
 The weak ma dreaming endless f ears j 
 
258 PmTUS. 
 
 The proud of how their pride appears 
 
 The poor enthusiast who dies, 
 
 Of his life-dreams the sacrifice, 
 
 Sees, as enthusiast only can, 
 
 The truth that made him more than man ; 
 
 And hears once more, in visioned trance. 
 
 That voice commanding to advance, 
 
 "Where wealth is gained ; love, wisdom won ; 
 
 Or deeds of danger dared and done. 
 
 The mother dreameth of her child ; 
 
 The maid of him who hath beguiled ; 
 
 The youth of her he loves too well ; 
 
 The good of God ; the ill of hell ; 
 
 Who live of death ; of life who die ; 
 
 The dead of immortality. 
 
 The earth is dreaming back her youth ; 
 
 Hell never dreams, for woe is truth ; 
 
 And heaven is dreaming o'er her prime, 
 
 Long ere the morning stars of time ; 
 
 And dream of heaven alone can I, 
 
 My lovely one, when thou art nigh. 
 
 Helen. Let some one sing. Love, mirth, and son^, 
 The graces of this life of ours. 
 Go ever hand in hand along, 
 And ask alike each other's powers. 
 
 Lucy (sings). For every leaf the loveliest flower 
 Wliich beauty sighs for from her bower ; 
 For every star a drop of dew : 
 For every sun a sky of blue ; 
 For every heart a heart as true. 
 
 For every tear by pity shed 
 
 Upon a fellow-sufferer's head, 
 
 On ! be a crown of glory given ; 
 
 Such crowns as saints to gain have striven, 
 
 Such crowns as seraphs wear in heaven. 
 
 For all who toil at honest fame, 
 A proud, a pure, a deathless name ; 
 For all who love, who loving bless, 
 He life one long, kind, close caress ; 
 Be life all love, all happiness. 
 
 Will. How can we better time employ. 
 Than celebrate, with every breath, 
 Through hours that laugh themselves to death, 
 This bridal feast of love and joy ? 
 
 Festus. That song reminds me, but it may not be j 
 No I I am sailing on another sea. 
 
 Lucifer. Tell me what's the chiefest pleasure 
 In this world's high heaped measure I 
 
 All. Power, beauty, love, wealth, wine 1 
 
 Lucifer. All different votes 1 
 
 Fanny. Come, Frederici thine 
 
 What may thy joy-judgment be ? 
 
 Feederic. I scarce know how to answer thee ; 
 
FESTUa. 259 
 
 Each, apart, too soon will tire ; 
 
 Alto{?ether slake desire. 
 
 So ask not of me the one chief joy of earth, 
 
 For that I'm unable to say ; 
 
 But here is a wreath that will lose its chief worth, 
 
 If ye pluck but one flower away. 
 
 Then these are the joys which should never dispart — 
 
 The joys that are dearest to me : 
 
 As the song, and the dance, and the laugh of the heart, 
 
 Thou, girl, and the goblet, be. 
 
 Lucifer, Oh, excellent 1 the truth is clear ; 
 The one opinion, too, I love to hear. 
 
 Helen. Is this a queen's fate, to be left alone ? 
 I wish another had the throne. 
 Festus I why art thou not here. 
 Beside thy Hege and lady dear ? 
 
 Festus. My thoughts are happier oft than I, 
 For they are ever, love, with thee ; 
 And thine, I know, as frequent fly 
 O'er all that severs us, to me : 
 Like rays of stars, that meet in space, 
 And mingle in a bright embrace. 
 Never load thy locks with flowers. 
 For thy cheek hath a richer flush ; 
 And than wine, or the sunset hourj 
 Or the ripe yew-berry's blush. 
 Never braid thy brow with lights, 
 Like the sun, on his golden way 
 To the neck and the locks of night, 
 From the forehead fair of day. 
 Never star thy hand with stones, 
 For, for every dead light there, 
 Is a living glory gone. 
 Than the brilliant far more fair. 
 Nay, nay ; wear thy buds, braids, gems ; 
 Let the lovely never part ; 
 Thou alone canst rival them. 
 Or in nature, or in art. 
 Be not sad ; thou shalt not be : 
 Why wilt mourn, love, when with me ? 
 One tear that in thine eye could start 
 Could wash all purpose from my heart 
 But that of loving thee ; 
 If I could ever think to wrong 
 A love so riverlike, deep, pure, and long. 
 
 Helen. I cast mine eyes around, and feel 
 There is a blessing wanting ; 
 Too soon our hearts the truth reveal. 
 That joy is disenchanting. 
 
 Festus. I am a wizard, love ; and I 
 A new enchantment will supply 5 
 
 K2 
 
260 FEBTUa* 
 
 And tlie cliarm of tHne own smile 
 Shall thine own heart of grief beguile 
 Smile, I do command thee, rise 
 From the bright depths of those eyes ; 
 By the bloom wherein thou dwellest, 
 As in a rose-leaved nest ; 
 By the pleasure which thou tellest, 
 And the bosom which thou swellest, 
 I bid thee rise from rest ; 
 By the rapture which thou causest. 
 And the bliss while e'er thou pausest, 
 Obey my high behest. 
 
 Helen. Dread magician 1 cease thy spell ; 
 It hath wrought both quick and well. 
 
 Festus. Ah 1 thou hast dissolved the charm ; 
 Ah 1 thou hast outstepped the ring ; 
 ■\Vho shall answer for the harm 
 Beauty on herself will bring ? 
 Come, I will conjure up again that smile, 
 The scarce departed spirit. There it is ! 
 Settling and hovering round thy lips the while. 
 Like some bright angel o'er the gates of bliss. 
 And I could sit and set that rose-bright smile, 
 Until it seemed to grow immortal there ; 
 A something abstract even of all beauty, 
 As though 'twere in the eye, or in the air. 
 Ah ! never may a heavier shadow rest 
 Than thine own ringlets' on that brow so fair ; 
 Nor sob, nor sorrow, shake the perfect breast 
 ^Vhich looks for love, as doth for death despair. 
 And now the smile, the sigh, the blush, the tear, 
 Lo ! all the elements of love are here. 
 Nay, wither not, with doubt's mistrustful sigh, 
 Love's tender, ah 1 too quickly perishing leaf : 
 Nor let one briny tearlet beauty's eye 
 O'ercloud with life embittering grief. 
 Oh 1 weep not, sigh not ; woe, nor mortal wrath, 
 Should taint with sad defect a soul like thine ; 
 Say, is it given the rule-less lightning's path 
 Earth-blinding, e'er to strike the stars divine ? 
 Sing, then, while thy lover sips, 
 And hear the truth that wine discloses ; 
 Music lives within thy lips. 
 Like a nightingale in roses. 
 
 Helen («tw^«). Oh ! love is like the rose, 
 
 And a month it may not see, ^ 
 
 Ere it withers where it grows ; 
 Kosalie ! 
 
 I loved thee from afar ; 
 
 Oh ! my heart was lift to thee, 
 Like a glaas up to a star ; 
 BosaUel 
 
 J 
 
FE8TU8, 261 
 
 TJiine eye was glassed in mine, 
 
 As the moon is in the sea : 
 And its shine was on the brine ; 
 Rosalie! 
 
 The rose hath lost its red ; 
 
 And the star is in the sea ; 
 And the briny tear is shed ; 
 Kosalie ! 
 
 Festus. What the atars are to the night, my love, 
 "What its pearls are to the sea ; 
 What the dew is to the day, my love, 
 Thy beauty is to me. 
 
 Helen. I am but here the under-queen of beauty, 
 For yonder hangs the likeness of the goddess ; 
 And so to worship her is our first duty. 
 The heavenly mmds of old first taught the heavenly bodies 
 Were to be worshipped ; and the idolatry 
 Holds to this hour ; though, Beauty 1 but of thine. 
 I am thy priestess, and will worship thee, 
 With all this brave and lovely train of mine ; 
 Lo 1 we all kneel to thee before thy pictured shrine. 
 Yes, there, thou goddess of the heart. 
 Immortal beauty, there 1 
 Thou glory of Jove's free-love skies. 
 E'en like thyself too fair. 
 Too bright, too sweet for mortal eyes, 
 For earthly hearts too strong ; 
 Thy golden girdle liftst, and drawest 
 The heavens and earth along. 
 Oh I thou art as the cloudless moon, 
 Undimmed and unarrayed ; 
 No robe hast thou, no crown save yon, 
 Goddess I thy long locks' soft and sunbright braid. 
 And there's thy son. Love, beauty's child, 
 World-known for strangest powers ; 
 Boy-god 1 thy place is blest o'er all ; 
 Smil'st thou at thoughts of ours 2 
 And there, by thy luxurious side, 
 The queen of heaven and Jove 
 Stands ; and the deep delirious draught 
 Drinks, from thy looks, of love, 
 And lips, which oft have kissed away 
 The thunders from his brow, 
 "VVho ruled, men say, the world of worlds. 
 As God our God rules now. 
 And thou art yet as great o'er this. 
 As erst o'er olden sky ; 
 Of all heaven's darkened deities. 
 The last live light on high. 
 God after god hath left thee lone. 
 Which lived on human breath ; 
 
262 FE8TUS. 
 
 When prayers were breathed to them no more, 
 
 The false ones pined to death. 
 
 But in the service of young hearts 
 
 To loveliness and love, 
 
 Live thou shalt, while yon wandering world, 
 
 Named unto thee, shall move. 
 
 Ko fabled dream art thou ; all god, 
 
 Our souls acknowledge thee ; 
 
 For what would life, from love, be worth, 
 
 Or love from beauty be ? 
 
 Come, universal beauty, then. 
 
 Thou apple of God's eye. 
 
 To and through which all things were made, 
 
 Things deathless, things that die ; 
 
 Oh 1 lighten, live before us there ; 
 
 Leap in yon lovely form, 
 
 And give a soul. She comes 1 It breathes ; 
 
 So bright, so sweet, so warm. 
 
 Our sacrifice is over ; let us rise ; 
 
 Tor we have worshipped acceptably here ; 
 
 And let our glowing hearts and glimmering eyes, 
 
 O'erstrained with gazing on thy light too near. 
 
 Prove that our worship, goddess, was sincere. 
 
 Festus. I read that we are answered. The soft air 
 Doubles its sweetness ; and the fainting flowers, 
 Down hanging on the walls in wreaths so fair. 
 Bud forth afresh, as in. their birth-day bowers. 
 Dew-laden, as oppressed with love and shame. 
 The rose-bud drops upon the lily's breast ; 
 Brighter the wine, the lamps have softer flame ; 
 Thy kiss flows f reelier than the grape first pressed. 
 Life lightly lies on us, as in time's first hours, 
 Olympian, when the immortals went and came, 
 And skies crystalline heaven and earth both blessed. 
 
 Will. A dance, a dance 1 
 
 Helen. Let us remain. 
 
 Festus. We will not tempt your sport again. 
 
 Helen. Behold where Marian sits alone. 
 The dance all sweeping round, 
 Like to some goddess hewn in stone, 
 With blooming garlands bound. 
 
 Festus. Tell me, Marian, what those eyes 
 Can discover in the skies, 
 Whereon thou gazest with such ecstasies ? 
 
 Marian. For earth my soul hath lost all love, 
 But heaven still loves and watches o'er me ; 
 Why should I not, then, look above. 
 And pass, and pity all before me ? 
 
 Festus. Oh ! if yon worlds that shine o'er this, 
 Have more of joy, of passion less, 
 I would not change earth's chequered bliss 
 For thrice the joy those orbs possess ; 
 
FE8TU8. ! 
 
 "Which seem, so stirange their nature is, 
 Faint with excess of happiness. 
 
 Marian. Thy heart with others hath its rest, 
 And it shall wake with me ; 
 And if within another breast 
 That heart hath made itself a nest, 
 Mine is no more for thee. 
 Heart-breaker, go ! I cannot choose 
 But love thee, and thy love refuse ; 
 And if my brow grow lined while young, 
 And youth fly cheated from my cheek, 
 'Tis that there lies below my tongue 
 A word I will not speak : 
 For I would rather die than deem 
 Thou art not the glory thou didst seem. 
 But if engirt by flood or fire, 
 Who would live that could expire ? 
 Who would not dream, and dreaming die, 
 If to wake were misery ? 
 
 Festus. Whose woes are like to my woes ? ^^^^at, is madn8'?s 
 The mind exalted to a sense of ill 
 Soon sinks beyond it into utter sadness, 
 And sees its grief before it like a hill. 
 Oh ! I have suffered till my brain became 
 Distinct with woe, as is the skeleton leaf 
 WTiose green hath fretted off its fibrous frame, 
 And bare to our immortality of grief. 
 Deep in my heart there lies, as in truth's well. 
 The image of thy soul ; 
 
 But ah 1 that fountain once so sweet, by spell 
 Of power is sealed, beyond my will's control. 
 
 Mabian. Like the light line that laughter leaves 
 One moment on a bright young brow, 
 So truth is lost ere love believes 
 There can be aught save truth below. 
 
 Festus. But as the eye aye brightlier beams 
 For every fall the lid lets on it. 
 So oft the fond heart happier dreams 
 For the soft cheats love puts upon it. 
 
 Marian. I never dreamed of wretchedness ; 
 I thought to love meant but to bless. 
 
 Festus. It once was bliss to me to watch 
 Thy passing smile, and sit and catch 
 The sweet contagion of thy breath. 
 For love is catching, from such teeth ; 
 Delicate little pearl-white wedges, 
 All transparent at the edges. 
 
 Marian. False flatterer, cease. 
 
 Festus. It is my fa':e 
 
 To love, and make who love me hate. 
 
 Marian. No ! 'tis to sue, to gain, deceive ; 
 To tire of, to neglect, and leave. 
 
264 FE8TU8, 
 
 The desolation of tlie Boul 
 
 Is what I feel ; 
 
 A sense of lostness that leaves death 
 
 But little to reveal ; 
 
 For death is nothing- but the thought 
 
 Of something being again nought. 
 
 Helen. Cease, lady, cease those aching sigha, 
 "Which shake the tear-drops from thine eyes, 
 As morning wind, with wing fresh wet, 
 Shakes dew out of the violet. 
 Forgive me if the love once thine 
 Hath changed itself unsought to me ; 
 I did not tempt it from thy heart, 
 I planned no treason against thee ; 
 And soon, perchance, 'twill be my part 
 As thou now art, to be. 
 
 Marian. I blame no heart, no love, no fate ; 
 And I have nothing to forgive : 
 I wish for nought, repent of nought, 
 Regret nought, but to live. 
 
 Helen. Nay, sing ; it will relieve thy heart. 
 
 Mabian. I cannot sing a mirthful strain ; 
 And feel too much to act my part. 
 E'en of an ebbing vein. 
 
 Festus. Our hearts are not in our own hands ; 
 Why wilt thou make me say, 
 I cannot love as once I loved ? 
 
 Mabian. Hear 1 'tis for this I stay ; 
 To say we part, for ever part ; 
 But oh 1 how wide the line 
 Between thy Marian's bursting heart, 
 And that proud heart of thine. 
 For thou wilt wander here and there, 
 Ever the gay and free ; 
 To other maids wilt fondly swear, 
 As thou hast sworn to me ; 
 And I, oh I I shall but retire 
 Into my grief alone ; 
 And kindle there the hidden fire, 
 That bums, that wastes unknown. 
 And love and life shall find their tomb 
 In that sepulchral fiame ; 
 Be happy ; none shall know for whom ; 
 I will not dream thy name. 
 
 Festus. As sings the swan with parting breatb, 
 So I to thee ; 
 
 While love is leaving, worse than life, 
 Forewarningly. 
 
 Speak not, nor think thou any ill of me, 
 The son of destiny, the crown of fate. 
 The pen of power which writes earth's future state, 
 If thou wouldst not die soon, and wretchedly, 
 
FE8TU8. 365 
 
 t 
 
 Oppressed with sense of passed felicity ; 
 Passed yet perchance to davm again on thee. 
 Behold me bound beneath the threefold spell, 
 Which heaven hath laid upon me, earth, and helL 
 It may be that I love thee even now 
 More than my tortured spirit dare avow ; 
 It may be that the clouds which dim my gaze, 
 Though rich with roseate gold, are full of scath, 
 And may disperse 'neath thy soul's purer rays ; 
 But now I cannot waver on my path ; 
 Nor condescend the world to undeceive, 
 "Which doth delight in error and believe. 
 Time will unfold whate'er we have of truth, 
 As ripening years the greener growth of youth. 
 Thus then, farewell, dear maiden, ere I go ; 
 Thus dearly have I earned my rightful woe. 
 
 Oh ! if we e'er have loved, lady, 
 
 We must forego it now ; 
 Though sore the heart be moved, lady, 
 
 "When bound to break its vow. 
 
 I'll always think on thee, 
 And thou sometimes — on whom, lady } 
 
 And yet those thoughts must be 
 Like flowers flung on the tomb, ladv. 
 Then think that I am blest, lady, 
 
 Though aye for thee I sigh ; 
 In peace and beauty rest, ladv, 
 
 Nor momn, and mourn, as 1. 
 
 From one we love to part, lady, 
 
 Is harder than to die ; 
 I see it by thy heart, lady, 
 
 I feel it by thine eye. 
 
 Thy Hghtest look can tell 
 Thv heaviest thought to me, lady ; 
 
 Oh ! I have loved thee well, 
 But well seems ill with thee, lady ! 
 Though sore the heart be movedj^ lady, 
 
 "When boimd to break its vow. 
 Yet if we ever loved, lady, 
 
 "We must forego it now. 
 
 Mabian. "Whate'er thou dost, where'er thou goest 
 My heart is only thine, thou knowest. 
 
 LuciFEB. CJome, I must separate you two ; 
 Such wretchedness will never do. 
 The little cloud of grief which just appears, 
 
 I If left to spread, will drown us all in tears. 
 Emma. Oblige us, pray, then, with a song. 
 Chaeles. I'm sure he has a singing face. 
 Will. At church I heard him loud and long-. 
 LuciPEE. Pardon ; but you are doubly wrong. 
 Helen. Obey, I beg. Here, give him place. 
 LuciFEE. I have not sung for ages, mina : 
 So you must take me as you find. 
 This is a song supposed of one, 
 A fallen spirit, name unknown, 
 X s 
 
FESTUa. 
 
 Fettered upon his fiery throne ; 
 Calling- on his once ang-el-love, 
 Who still remaineth true above. 
 
 Thou hast more music ia thy voice 
 
 Than to the spheres is given, 
 And more temptations on thy lips 
 
 Than lost the angels heaven. 
 Thou hast more brightness in thine eyes 
 
 Than all the stars which bum, 
 More dazzling art thou than the throne 
 
 We fallen dared to spuni. 
 
 Go search through heaven ; the sweetest smile 
 
 That lightens there is thine ; 
 And through hell's burning darkness breaks 
 
 No frown so fell as mine. 
 One smile, 'twill light, one tear, 'twill cool ; 
 
 These will be more to me 
 Than all the wealth of aU the worlds, 
 
 Or boundless power could be. 
 
 Helen. Entreat him, pray, to sing again. 
 LuciFEE. Any thing any one desires. 
 Festus. Your loveliness hath but to deign 
 To will, and he'll do all that will requires. 
 
 LuciFEB. («i«^s). Oh ! many a cloud 
 
 Hath lift its wing ; 
 And many a leaf 
 
 Hath clad the spring ; 
 But there shall be thrice 
 
 The leaf and cloud, 
 And thrice shall the world 
 
 Have worn her shroud ; 
 Ere there's any like thee, 
 But where thou wilt be. 
 
 Oh ! many a storm 
 
 Hath drenched the sun ; 
 And manv a stream 
 
 To sea nath run ; 
 But there shall be thrice 
 
 The storm and stream, 
 Ere there's any like thee, 
 
 But in angel's dream ; 
 Or in look, or in love. 
 But in heaven above. 
 
 Lucy. What is love ? Oh 1 I wonder so : 
 Do tell me ; who pretends to know ? 
 
 Frank. Ask not of me, love, what is lovo ! 
 Ask what is good of Grod above ; 
 Ask of the great sun what is light ; 
 Ask what is darkness of the night ; 
 Ask sin of what may be forgiven ; 
 Ask what is happiness of heaven ; 
 Ask what is folly of the crowd ; 
 Ask what is fashion of the shroud ; 
 Ask what is sweetness of thy kiss ; 
 Ask of thyself what beauty is ; 
 
FE8TU8. 267 
 
 And if they each should answer, 1 1 
 Let me, too, join them, with a sigh. 
 Oh 1 let me pray my life may prove, 
 When thus, with thee, that I am love. 
 
 Festus. I cannot love as I have loved, 
 And yet I know not why ; 
 It is the one great woe of life 
 To feel all feelinpr die : 
 And one by one the heartstringfs snap 
 As ajjfe comes on so chill : 
 And hope seems left that hope may cease, 
 And all will soon be still. 
 And the strong passions, like to storms, 
 Soon rajre themselves to rest ; 
 Or leave a desolated calm, 
 A worn and wasted breast ; 
 A heart that like the Geyser spring", 
 Amidst its bosomed snows, 
 May shrink, not rest ; but with its blood 
 Boils even in repose. 
 
 And yet the things one might have loved 
 Remain as they have been ; 
 Truth ever lovely, and one heart 
 Still sacred and serene ; 
 But lower, less, and grosser things 
 Eclipse the world-like mind ; 
 And leave their cold dark shadow whora 
 Most to the light inclined. 
 And then it ends as it began. 
 The orbit of our race. 
 In pains and tears, and fears of life, 
 And the new dwelling place. 
 From life to death, from death to life, 
 We hurry round to God ; 
 And leave behind us nothing save 
 The path that we have trod. 
 
 Helen. In vain I try to lure thy heart 
 From grief to mirth ; 
 It were as easy to ward off 
 Night from the earth. 
 
 Festus. Fill I I'll drink it till I die, 
 Helen's lip and Helen's eye 1 
 An eye which outsparkles 
 The beads of the wine, 
 With a hue which outdarkles 
 The deeps where they shine. 
 Come ! with that lightly flushing brow, 
 And darkly splendid eye ; 
 And white and wavy arms which now, 
 Like snow-wreaths on the dark brown bough. 
 So softly on me lie. 
 Come ! let us love, while love we may, 
 
268 FE8TUS. 
 
 Ere youth's bright sands be run ; 
 The hour is nigh when every soul, 
 Which 'scapeth evil's dread control, 
 Nor drains the furies' fiery bowl, 
 Shall into heaven for aye, 
 And love its God alone. 
 
 Helen. Now let me leave my throne ; and if the hours 
 Have measured every moment by a kiss, 
 As I do think, since first ye gave these flowers, 
 It was to teach us how to dial bliss. 
 Farewell, dear crown, thy mistress will not wear, 
 Save when she sitteth royally alone. 
 Farewell, too, throne ! not quickly wilt thou bear 
 A happier form, if fairer than mine own. 
 
 Will. The ladies leave us 1 
 
 Lucifer. Oh ; by all means let them ; 
 
 But say, for heaven itself, we'll not forget them ; 
 Say we will pledge them to the top of breath, 
 As loud as thunder, and as deep as death. 
 
 Festus (apart). Methinks I hear in every sigh 
 Of wind, that stirs the illumined bowers, 
 A whisper of the immortal powers 
 Reproachful, from death's spoils that lie, 
 In happiest alchemy, 
 Transfiguring themselves to flowers. 
 Oh ! for thy grave, my love I 
 I want to weep. 
 
 High as thou art this earth above, 
 My woe is deep ; 
 
 And cold my heart is as thy grave, 
 Where I can neither soothe nor save. 
 Whate'er I say, or do, or see, 
 I think and feel, alone to thee. 
 Oh 1 can it, can it be forgiven. 
 That I forget thou art in heaven ? 
 Thou wilt forgive me this, and more : 
 Love spends his all, and still hath store. 
 Thou wilt forgive, if beauty's wile 
 Should win, perforce, one glance from me ; 
 When they whose art it is to smile 
 Can never smile my heart from thee ; 
 And if with them I chance to be. 
 And srive mine ear up to their singing, 
 It, windlike, only wakes the sea, 
 In all its mad monotony, 
 Of memory forth thy music ringing 
 Thou wilt forgive, if, now and then, 
 I link with hands less loved than thine, 
 Whose goldlike touch makes kings of men 
 But wakes no will in blood of mine ; 
 And if with them I toss the wine, 
 And set my soul in love's rip© riot, 
 
\ 
 
 FESTUS. 269 
 
 It echoes not, this desert shrine, 
 
 Where still thy love from heaven doth shine, 
 
 Moon-like, across some ruin's quiet. 
 
 Thou wilt forgive me, if my feet 
 
 Should move to music with the fair ; 
 
 When, at each turn, I bum to meet 
 
 Thy stream-like step, and aery air ; 
 
 And if before some beauty there. 
 
 Mine eye may forge one glance of gladness, 
 
 It is but the ripple of despair 
 
 That shows the bed is all but bare, 
 
 And nought scarce left but stony sadness. 
 
 Thou wilt forgive, if e'er my heart 
 
 Err from the orbit of its love ; 
 
 "VThen even the bliss-bright stars will start 
 
 Earthwards, some lower sphere to prove. 
 
 And if these lips but rarely pine 
 
 In the pale abstinence of sorrow, 
 
 It is, that nightly I divine. 
 
 As I this world-sick soul recline, 
 
 I shall be with thee ere the morrow. 
 
 Thou wilt forgive, if once with thee 
 
 I limned the outline of a heaven ; 
 
 But go and tell our God, from me, 
 
 He must forgive what he hath given ; 
 
 And if we be by passion driven 
 
 To love, and all its natural madness, 
 
 Tell him that man by love hath thriven, 
 
 And that by love he shall be shriven ; 
 
 For God is love, where love is gladness. 
 
 Perchance thy spirit still stays in j^on mild star, 
 
 In i)eace and flame-like purity, and prayer ; 
 
 And, oh ! when mine shall fly from earth afar, 
 
 I will pray God that it may join thine there ; 
 
 'Twere doubling heaven, that heaven with thee to share. 
 
 And while thou leadest music and her lyre, 
 
 Like a sunbeam holden by its golden hair. 
 
 May I, too, mingling with the immortal choir. 
 
 Love thee, and worship God I what more may soul desire ? 
 
 Enough for me ; but if there be 
 
 More, it shall be left for thee. 
 
 Walter. If anything I love in chief, 
 It is that flowery rich relief 
 That wine doth chase on mortal metal 
 Before good wine begins to settle ; 
 But all seem smilingly, serenely dull. 
 And melancholy as the moon at full. 
 Quenched by their company they seem, 
 Like sparks of fire in clouds of steam. 
 
 Charles. They who mourn the lack of wit, 
 Show, at least, no more of it. 
 
 Festus. I cannot bear to be alone. 
 
270 FE8TUSL 
 
 I liate to mix -witli men ; 
 
 To me there's torture in the tone 
 
 Which bids me talk again. 
 
 Like silly nestlings, warned in vain, 
 
 My heart's young joys have flown ; 
 
 While singing to them, even then, 
 
 They left me, one by one. 
 
 I envy every soul that dies 
 
 Out of this world of care ; 
 
 I envy e'en the lifeless skies, 
 
 That they enshrine thee there ; 
 
 And would I were the bright blue air 
 
 Which doth insphere thine eyes. 
 
 That thou mightst meet me everywhere^ 
 
 And feel these faithful sighs. 
 
 E'en as the bubble that is mixed 
 
 Of air and wine right red, 
 
 So my heart's love is shared betwixt 
 
 The living and the dead. 
 
 If on her breast I lay my head, 
 
 My heait on thine is fixed : — 
 
 Wilt thou I loose, as I have said. 
 
 Or keep the soul thou seekst ? 
 
 From me thou canst not pass away 
 
 While I have soul or sight ; 
 
 I see thee on my waking way, 
 
 And in my dreams thee bright ; 
 
 I see thee in the dead of night, 
 
 And the full life of day ; 
 
 I know thee by a sudden light ; 
 
 It is thy soul, I say. 
 
 If yonder stars be filled with forms 
 
 Of breathing clay like ours, 
 
 Perchance the space that spreads between 
 
 Is for a spirit's powers ; 
 
 And loving as we two have loved, 
 
 In spirit and in heart, 
 
 Whether to space or star removed, 
 
 God will not bid us part. 
 
 Festus. How sweetly shine the steadfast stan^ 
 Each eyeing, sister-like, the earth : 
 And softly chiding scenes like this, 
 Of senseless and profaning mirth. 
 
 LUCIFEK. Thou art ever prating of the stars, 
 Like an old soldier of his scars : 
 Thou shouldst have been a starling, friend, 
 And not an earthling : end 1 
 
 Festus. And could I speak as many times 
 Of each as there are stars in heaven, 
 I could not utter half the thoughts — 
 The sweet thoughts one to me hath given. 
 The holy quiet of the skies 
 
FE8TU8. ta 
 
 May waken well the blush ot shame, 
 "Whene'er we think that thither lies 
 The heaven we heed not, ought not name. 
 Oh, heaven I let down thy cloudy lids, 
 And close thy thousand eyes ; 
 For each, in burning glances, bids 
 The wicked fool be wise. 
 
 LuciPEB. I can interpret well the stars. 
 
 Chables. Indeed, they need interpreters j 
 And once, myself, I own, desired 
 To cast their meanings into verse ; 
 But found the feelings so inspired, 
 Inapt, as sunshine on a hearse : 
 And you no doubt will find it worse. 
 
 Lucifer. Then thus, in their eternal tongue, 
 And musical thunders, all have sung, 
 To every ear which ear hath given. 
 From birth to death, this note of heaven : 
 Deathlings I on earth drink, laugh, and love : 
 Ye mayn't hereafter, under or above. 
 Yes, this the tale they all have told 
 Since first they made old Chaos shrink ; 
 Since first they flocked creation's fold, 
 And filled all air as flakes of gold 
 Bedrop yon royal drink. 
 For as the moon doth madmen rule. 
 It is, that near and few they are : 
 And so in heaven each single star 
 Doth sway some reasonable fool. 
 Whether on earth or other sphere ; 
 For what's above is what is here. 
 Moons and madmen only change ; 
 What can truth or stars derange ? 
 
 Edward. Brave stars, bright monitors of joy 
 Right well ye time your hours of warning ; 
 For, Booth to say, the eve's employ 
 Doth wax less lovely towards the iromin^t 
 So push the goblet gaily round ; 
 Drink deep of its wealth, drink on ; 
 Our earthly joy too soon doth cloy, 
 Our life is all but gone ; 
 And, not enjoy yon glorious cup, 
 And all the sweets which lie, 
 Like pearls within its purple well. 
 Who would not hate to die ? 
 
 Will. And who, without the cheering glance 
 Of woman's witching eye, 
 Could stand against the storms of fate. 
 Or cankering care defy ? 
 It addt fresh brightness to the bowl ; 
 Then why will men repine ? 
 Content we'll live with heavem'a best gifts, 
 
272 fESTUS. 
 
 With woman, and with wine. 
 
 Hakry. Cnps while they sparkle, 
 Maids while they sigh ; 
 Bright eyes will darkle, 
 Lips grow dry. 
 Cheek while the dew-drops 
 Water its rose ; 
 Life's fount hath few drops 
 Dear as those. 
 Arms while they tighten ; 
 Hearts as they heave ; 
 Love cannot brighten 
 Life's dark eve. 
 
 George. Oh 1 the wine is like life ; 
 And the sparkles that play, 
 By the lips of the bowl, 
 Are the loves of the day. 
 Then kiss the bright bubble 
 That breaks in its rise ; 
 Let love be a trouble 
 As light, when it dies. 
 
 Festus. Well might the thoughtful race of oM 
 With ivy twine the head 
 Of him they hailed their god of wine 
 Thank God ! the lie is dead ; 
 For ivy climbs the crumbling haU 
 To decorate decay, 
 And spreads its dark deceitful pall 
 To hide what wastes away ; 
 And wine will circle round the brai:i, 
 As ivy o'er the brow. 
 Till what could once see far as stars, 
 Is dark as death's eye now. 
 Then dash the cup down 1 'tis not worth 
 A soul's great sacrifice : 
 The wine will sink into the earth ; 
 The soul, the soul — must rise. 
 
 Charles. A toast I 
 
 Frederic. Here's beauty's fairest flower, 
 The maiden of our own birth-land 1 
 
 Harry. Pale face 1 — oh for one happy hour 
 To hold my splendid Spaniard's hand I 
 
 Kestus. Why differ on which is the fairest fonCp 
 When all are the same the heart to warm ? 
 Although by different charms they strike. 
 Their power is equal and alike. 
 Ye bigots of beauty 1 behold I stand forth. 
 And driuk to the lovely all over the earth. 
 Come, fill to the girl by the Tagus' waves 1 
 Wherever she lives there's a land of slaves. 
 And here's to the Spaniard 1 that warm blooming maii^, 
 With her step superb, and her black locks' braid. 
 
FE8TU8. 273 
 
 To her of dear Paris ! with soul-spending glance, 
 "VVTiose feet, as she's sleeping, look dreaming a dance. 
 To the Norman 1 so noble, and stately and tall ; 
 Whose charms, ever changing, can please as they pall ; 
 Two bowls in a breath I here's to each and to all 1 
 C!ome, fill to the English ; whose eloquent brow 
 Says, pleasure is passing, but coming, and now ; 
 Oh 1 her eyes o'er the wine are like stars o'er the sea, 
 And her face is the face of all heaven to me. 
 And here's to the Scot I with her deep blue eye, 
 Like the far-off lochs 'neath her liill-propped sky. 
 To her of the green isle ! whose tyrants deform 
 The land, where »he beams like the bow in the storm. 
 To the maiden whose lip like a rose-leaf is curled, 
 And her eye like the star-flag above it unfurled ; 
 Here's to beauty, young beauty, all over the world I 
 
 Will. Hurrah I a glorious toast ; 
 'Twould warm a ghost. 
 
 Festus. It moves not me. I cannot drink 
 The toast I have given. 
 There I — Earth may pledge it, and she wilL 
 Herself and her beauty to heaven. 
 Drink to the dead, youth's feelings vain 
 Drink to the heart, the battered wreck, 
 Hurled from all passions' stormy main ; 
 Though aye the billows o'er it break, 
 The ruin rots, nor rides again. 
 
 Chaeles. Friend of my heart 1 away ^ith care, 
 And sing, and dance, and laugh ; 
 To love, and to the favourite fair, 
 The wine-cup ever quaff. 
 Oh 1 drink to the lovely 1 or near, or far, 
 Though fair as snow, as light ; 
 For whether or falling or fixed the star, 
 They both are heavenly bright 
 Out upon Care 1 he shall not stay 
 Within a heart like thine ; 
 There's nought in heaven or earth can weigh 
 Down youth, and love, and wine. 
 Then drink with the merry 1 though we must die, 
 Like beauty's tear we'll fall ; 
 We have lived in the light of a loved one's eye. 
 And to live, love, and die is alL 
 
 Festus. Vain is the world and all it boasts ; 
 How brief love's, pleasure's, date I 
 We turn the bowl, and all forget 
 The bias of our fate. 
 
 Chaeles. We who have higher things to do, 
 Might well-nigh feel ashamed 
 Our faces in these founts to view. 
 
 Festus. Of conscience I, unblamed. 
 The passing hour enjoy, with all 
 
2n FE8TU8, 
 
 Delights tliat youthful hearts enthral ; 
 Enough to know that grief and care, 
 Remorse, regret, will soon their share 
 Of life assert. 
 
 Chables. Meantime, to loftier ends, 
 I would mine own, and friends, 
 Might timefuUy revert. 
 High aims have we to gain ; 
 Behoves us sure, refrain 
 From follies such as these. 
 
 Festus. To-night it irks me not 
 That fate to us allot 
 Some passing hours that please. 
 Ne'er can we all evade 
 The future's saddening shade, 
 Our own fate, nor the passed, 
 With us, from first, forecast. 
 
 Chaeles. Some other I must try persuade. 
 List, stranger guest. Within thine ear, 
 One word, apart. 
 
 Lucifer. We are private, now, 
 
 Beside this fountain falling clear. 
 
 Charles. With aims so vast and bold which thou 
 Hast for our friend, thou'lt scarce allow 
 Others, I doubt, to interfere. 
 But though, 'neath love's and beauty's spell, 
 Youth lacks true wisdom's just control, 
 Yet from our merry gatherings here 
 Comes nought of evil to the soul. 
 
 Lucifer. 'Tis more than thou, maybe, canst tell. 
 
 Charles. It means not. What I would with thee, 
 Is to contrive with me, how best 
 May he, our friend, the verity 
 Of verities, — such through time confessed, 
 The truth which men of every rite 
 Have held in secretest delight — 
 Acquire. 
 
 Lucifer. I'll see to it some day ; 
 And when my plans are fully laid 
 Will ask your good advice, and aid 
 In such designs as, need I say, 
 Will smooth combinedly the way 
 To ends each have in separate view 
 For mutual good. 
 
 Charles. Agreed. Good friends, adieu 1 
 
 Lucifer. As proverbs say of every land, in time, 
 A twig for that bird, too, I'll lime. 
 
 Festus. Stay, Charles : so rarely have we met 
 Of late, from thee I fain would learn 
 How speeds the scheme whereon thou hast set 
 Thy heart, thy mind, life, sole concern. 
 
 Charles. With those whose life is given to aught 
 
FESTUS, 175 
 
 That claims a worthful kind, or end, 
 
 How all beside appears but nought ; 
 
 How little else can truth commend. 
 
 Nor can I force myself to feel, 
 
 'Twere rigrhtly to have lived one day 
 
 I've scored nought for the general weal, 
 
 The world's great cause. If e'en the api)eal 
 
 Strike now an unawakened ear. 
 
 Success may sometime crown the essay, 
 
 And, with accordant voice, all here 
 
 Help round our grandly vastening spliere. 
 
 This night too, here, as everywhere, 
 
 Where chance or choice my lot may lay, 
 
 To all, ere each his homeward way 
 
 Sought, I had made our scheme right clear, 
 
 Which, should not all this hour who hear 
 
 Justly conceive, truth still may hold 
 
 The wisest league earth's annals e'er have told : 
 
 Our holy conclave, oathed to free 
 
 Man from false faith, and murderous swordlawry 
 
 Festus. Cause worthy, noble, it shows to me, 
 Our ultimate times to liberate 
 From deathly war, from patriot hate. 
 And all the ills with these that mate, 
 Prolific of life's evillest fate. 
 Nor could they but be charmed to know 
 The world-wide good for all in store. 
 
 Chables. And grant them shocked ; 'twere better so, 
 "Would each but lend his several weight 
 To instruct, make pure, and elevate, 
 The earth war-cursed, and ignorant evermore. 
 List to our brethrens' sacred strain, 
 Breathed in low tone through every clime ; 
 Soon over mountain, sea and plain 
 Resounding, till in the end of time, 
 Man's wise and happy sanction it shall gain. 
 
 Earth is growing 1 Lay your chains 
 
 Tyrants, as ye list, or can ; 
 Measurement of all your reigns 
 
 Proves the greatening mind of man. 
 vainly lay ye load on him. 
 
 Vainly rivet throne to throne ; 
 
 Freedom, with a threatening groan, 
 Shakes off her shackles, limb by limb. 
 Earth is growing 1 Chain the seas ; 
 
 Chain the lightning, chain the wind. 
 Nation now by nation frees. 
 
 Frees itself in heart and mind. 
 Behold the sovereign states expand, 
 
 Law their strength, from hour to hour, 
 
 Toil in quiet earns the power 
 To d9 what justice may command. 
 
276 FESTUa. 
 
 Earth is growing 1 Burst your bonds, 
 
 Ye that bide in bigot fear ; 
 Lo 1 the world's belief responds 
 
 To your Lord, all kind, all dear. 
 The truth is peaceful ; man's great soul 
 
 Daily mounts a mightier sphere ; 
 
 Creeds are widening ; year by year. 
 Fall off the bonds which faith control. 
 Earth is growing 1 Nations, ope 
 
 Your arms to embrace your brother man ; 
 Peace is now within your scope, 
 
 Peace and plenty, Nature's plan. 
 Fling aside all feud and hate 
 
 Learn each other's life to love ; 
 
 And truth, all other things above, 
 With godliest virtue cultivate. 
 Earth is growing ! future doom. 
 
 Endless woe, of old conceived. 
 Truth shall vanquish ; life to come 
 
 Lovelier prove than love believed. 
 "Whose aim is godlike to be just ; 
 
 To greaten with true hope life's whole, 
 
 Is ours ; and helps man's heavenly soul 
 To exalt, above his natal dust. 
 Earth is growing I Bound to march. 
 
 Stand ye liberators forth ; 
 Wide as Heaven's God-builded arch, 
 
 Freedom claims her rule on earth. 
 O never may the Immortal rest. 
 
 Never shall her triumph cease, 
 
 Till, with justice, power and peace. 
 Fair freedom home in every breast. 
 Earth is growing 1 Let the world 
 
 Hail with joy the advancing time ; 
 War shall into night be hurled ; 
 
 Peace shall conquer every clime. 
 One in faith, in virtue one, 
 
 Man shall yet be good and great ; 
 
 Nations form one only state ; 
 Heir of earth, ascend thy throne. 
 Festus. It is enough. 
 Chaeles. Farewell. 
 
 Festus. The Dawn is here. 
 
 Geoege. How goes the enemy ? 
 LuciFEB. What can he mean f 
 
 Festus. He asks the hour. 
 Lucifer. Aha ! then I 
 
 Advise, if Time thy foe hath been. 
 Be quick ; shake hands, man, with Eternity. 
 
FESTU8. til 
 
 XX. 
 
 Graced by sweet promise pliglit on lunar plains, 
 Ajid 'gainst all iU annoured by spirit divine, 
 Our seeker of soul's holy mysteries, lift 
 By spiritual hand from earth's gross vanities ; 
 From cruel lies of false creeds ; from all taint 
 Of treason truth wards, which God's love most just 
 Towards beings, create ave capable to advance 
 Bv self amendment, would impugn, and faiu 
 The fountain of futurity to foretaste, 
 Dares, angel-led, by God's behest, to trace 
 Soul, in its reascendant course through all 
 Heaven's spheres probational, of varied fates, 
 Essential man, self purifying, must pass ; 
 Views gradually perfectible life's vast whole ; 
 Tells, joyful, wisdom's grand and gracious plan. 
 
 A Lahe-iilet ; Lawn ; Garden ; Grove, — Mountains, Waterfall, 
 and Mainland in the Distance. 
 
 Helen, Maeiax, Student, afterwards Festus. 
 
 Helen. (Jone? whither? 
 
 Student. Know not I. He and his friend 
 
 Tramp earth untii-ed, or rather seem on wing 
 Trackless to travel, he, not unlikely even 
 His steed sidereal steers where Cepheus sits 
 Footing the pole ; or where the grim ore, long 
 Death-stiffened into stoniest stars extends 
 His spatial bulk, who once to engorge the sun 
 Three days continuously his jaws stretched. 
 
 Helen. Peace 1 
 
 I prithee, or we, like maxillary feat 
 From thee, may have like cause to rue. 
 
 Student. I'm mute. 
 
 Helen. Let me propitiate one who half, I fear, 
 Distrusts my love. Dear Marian, hate me not. 
 
 Marian. Nay, I would love thee as of old. Cause none 
 Have I to 'plain me of thee. With lighter heart 
 How marvel that thou his love attracted more, 
 His we both mind us of ? than mine, grief fraught, 
 Of woe to all presagef ul ? If I change, 
 *Twill be to one who changes not. 
 
 Helen. I know 
 
 Thy fine and eminent nature, nor believe 
 Thou wouldst deign to conquer, more than court, tlie crowd ; 
 As a sacred river, purified of earth, 
 Albeit bepraised, beprayed, encrowned with flowers, 
 Ingratiate even by living sacrifice. 
 Scarce noting its own bounties ripples along, 
 Reckless of adoration most, so thou, 
 Calm in life's onflow, towards its endless end. 
 
 Student. Good, were life being only ; but to knew 
 To act, with some, seems scarce less than to be. 
 
278 FESTUa. 
 
 Helen. True, 'tis witli me a passion all to learn 
 Sainted in sacred song of eld, or proved 
 By science now ; but fear, too much, to attain. 
 
 Marian. And when attained, how cheerless 1 
 
 Helen. Say not so. 
 
 To fill the soul with knowledg"e hidden and high 
 I would brave death this night. Maid, dame of old 
 Partook all mysteries with the crowned crowd 
 Of happy initiates. We yet — 
 
 Maeian. See, yon skiff 
 
 Nearing the shore, makes, with recursant wing, 
 Surely, some sign recognizant. 
 
 Student. Wait. But how 
 
 Unless we forcibly and of purpose raise 
 O'er life's low meannesses the mind, shall we 
 Fit us for loftier being, powers more intense 
 Of soul, and mental act ; how brook the laws 
 Compressed into necessities which both rule 
 And serve the spirit world, we hardily trust 
 To view, nay sometime gain ? To reach and grasp 
 Mind's rational solidity, to construe 
 The equivocal oracles of life, our frames 
 With lives extern conjoined, our spirits with God, 
 Perplexes most, the clearest. 
 
 Marian. Dark howe'er 
 
 Time now, like ocean's broadblazed rim of light 
 Mid-heaven by clouds o'erpent, the future glows 
 With glory. 
 
 Helen. It may. To me, creation's passed, 
 Thought's ray re-scaled towards light, howe'er far back, 
 Seems, than the nearest future, less remote. 
 
 Marian. See now, it is no stranger. Yes, we all, 
 I think, that footstep welcome, Festus, thine. 
 
 Student. It is he, not undesired. The time draws nigh 
 For our most cherished projects wide to spread 
 Their world roots, ramifying, of vastest change. 
 Thy presence was well due. 
 
 Festus. I knew it. This 
 
 Fair company, one eve at least, shall well 
 Compensate us for time devote to ends 
 Eyed stemlier. Yes, it glads me still to meet 
 Dear Marian, and thee Helen always. 
 
 Helen. But thou I 
 
 Whence com'st thou ? We were wondering whether earth 
 Held thee, or some more brilliant sphere had lured. 
 
 Festus. Too wondrous and too various charms are earth's^ 
 For other star to stay me long. But now 
 Let me not serious converse hinder. While 
 My foot, this fair pavilion's shadow touched 
 Entering, I heard in musical challenge charged 
 Of passed o'er all the future : nearer, more 
 Momentous, was't. 
 
FESTUa. 2H9 
 
 Helen. 'Twas mine. Sours link with God 
 
 Shows clearlier in its rise than end. Nor seems 
 The reason of soul's continuance, of like weight 
 With that of primal being. 
 
 Festus. Seems not ? I've seen. 
 
 Helen. Nay, let us know. Thy strange friend's stranger creed 
 Though simple, of death and God, suflBced not thee ? 
 
 Festus. It could not. 
 
 Helen. Oft I think of earth being made ; 
 
 And here, throned solitary, and face to face, 
 With the broad universe, I can dream" I see 
 God's very primal act, when earth first showed, 
 In sudden answer to his thought. Here heaped he 
 Green hillocks gently uprearing like young colts, 
 Playful in sunny pastures ; mountains, there. 
 Like hoary spectres in the fabulous glass 
 Of world-famed wizard, eyed their shadowy shapes 
 Slow lengthening in the lake, nor guessed how high 
 Their predeterminate heads would rise, but rose 
 Responsive, stilly, to his rational word 
 First uttered then, commensurative of form 
 Fairest, most high ; here, echoing rock and crag, 
 There, the wild waste, voiced with articulate falls, 
 A.nd winds, all variable of tone : — there, see 
 In yon disrupted cone the visible stress 
 Of his vast all-mastering hand ; — by bloomy meada 
 Blue streams he drew life-teeming, lakes like this, 
 With baby Edens isled ; traced out the bounds 
 Of nations, radiate from their shelving shores ; 
 Parted earth's hemispheres ; round land the aeas 
 Sateless, unsociable as death, rolled ; last, 
 Savage and sacred in all innocence, man 
 Sowed broad-cast o'er his fields, he, sole. 
 
 Student. Nor I 
 
 Think otherwise, albeit there are who hold 
 Unmade, self-made, this world, or made by hands 
 Of angels, 'mongst whose thrust the devil his own, 
 So questionable seem some things in their cause, 
 Their end, their workings. Why are scorpions, snakes, 
 And poison flowers ? 
 
 Marian. Be glad we are bid, forewarned, 
 
 isot aU things inexplicit, to reject. 
 
 Festus. It was God from the beginning framed the whole, 
 Earth, heaven, and into being the angels breathed. 
 
 Helen. This, and that all souls made, him reverence owe 
 For their existence, thanks for life, and hope, 
 We, duteous, learn from priest and primer ; learn 
 Faith's sacredest traditions, gratefully. 
 Of life to come ; but what's their sum ? I'd know 
 O'er all things, this : how mind's survivable strength 
 To its elements resublimed, loosed from this build 
 Organic, lives, acts ; how it is soul sobslBts 
 
280 FE8TU8, 
 
 Separate ; how this that influences, works out 
 Its kind, here inchoate, in loftier states 
 Of being". Not all mankind are heroes, saints 
 Nor predicable angels. Are then the worlds 
 Peopled by pure intellig-ences, with one 
 Sole, fixed idea ; one changeless habit ; one 
 Act, mental and eternal ? May not some 
 Fall back even in existence, to low ranks 
 And lower still ? 
 
 Festus. Progress is life's great law ; 
 
 And expiatory penitence if a state 
 Timely retardant is of higher growth 
 The root. Some late experiences of mine 
 Would please you, doubt I not, to hear. 
 
 Student. We all 
 
 Long much to hear. Not given up all to gold, 
 Nor merely frivolous, now thou knowst me, not 
 To lore mysterious only given, if far 
 From gabble of popular creeds, in one ear droned 
 By science, in the other by sheer ignorance. 
 The masses too, I'd serve, and loyally ; 
 And serve them most by ruling them. 
 
 Helen. And I, 
 
 All natures I would know ; with all I feel 
 Compassionately ; in every generous aim 
 Join ; prize each pure design art, science, owns 
 As elevative of mind ; all projects faith. 
 Though secularized, can prove of likely good 
 I love ; would further ; pray for. 
 
 Student. Make us free 
 
 Therefore of these pure mysteries of true life 
 To come, authentic, spiritual, as I thee 
 Have helped to learn those truths sublime, chief lights 
 The passed from all her firmament holds towards us. 
 Of sensible use, soul-gladdening. 
 
 Festus. Not in vain 
 
 Shall any truthwards tending, self impelled 
 Towards wisdom, test of earnest heart, from me 
 Ask glorious knowledge, most of all ye, who 
 With me, like meditant on fates coming, now 
 Upon mine assured experience shall believe 
 Soul aye regenerate, progressive, all time 
 Self sifted upwards ; which transmuting fires 
 Spiritual, intelligible pass through that make fit 
 For states more eminent than their last, till each 
 Achieve perfection ; each in order due. 
 
 Maeian. That every soul, by penitence hath power 
 To raise itself to bliss, were joy to know. 
 
 Helen. Sit, let us hear. This verdurous dell flower rimmed 
 Like a green bowl o'errunning at the brim. 
 In blooms ; yon woods thick darkening, Avhere of old 
 Lean solitary bark-clad, his soul from sins 
 
FE8TU8, 281 
 
 Of pomp, from luxury, his heart, assoiled, 
 Prayerwise ; and knight by faintest footsteps, tracked 
 To the hermit's cell his love lorn fair ; still stream, 
 And sultry sky, aU suit. Yon mountain, draped 
 To the foot, in purple mists, whereto the clouds, 
 Their awful gift, as to an altar, bring 
 Of thunder sealed, seems hearkening ; we, with ear 
 To nature's melodies tuned, the vesper chant 
 Of birds in blosmy brake ; the solemn lapse 
 Of yon white waterfall just seen, just heard ; 
 And most one voice, if with the silvery tone 
 Resonant of stars, not I should wonder, — wait. 
 All harmonising. 
 
 Mabian. We listen. 
 
 Student. Soul oppressed 
 
 With sense of high experiences, so all 
 Transcendant, well may pause. For who feels not, 
 Eyeing as we now heaven's expanse, and this. 
 Accomplished daylight, lit by one, Hoi)e's star, 
 A sense in him of like infinity, fill 
 His being, and speak of equal future ? 
 
 Festub. Tes. 
 
 Who in clear midnight's starry hush shall stand, 
 On high and heathery peak o'erpeering sea and land ; 
 The ocean glassed immensity of sky 
 Wooing the spirit to inspect its near futurity ; 
 Or who when spring's faint crescent in the skies 
 Folds to her breast her burthening world of mysteries, 
 Pacing some gardened height or tomb-towned hill, 
 A capital at his feet, moon-haunted, noiseless, chill ; 
 Ponders those holiest shades earth still reveres, 
 That have earned each one his star ; 'mid yon soul-ripening 
 
 spheres, 
 The heavenly state perceptible, powers may feel 
 In him expanding, vie with all the heavens reveal ; 
 Mind's vast innate capacities, which thus 
 Bind in one common chain the world, our God, and us. 
 While lowly faith unfalteringly refers 
 To treasures keyless knowledge vainly vaunts as hers ; 
 Man still with decent pride may claim to trace 
 The grounds whereon his rule of all things God doth base ; 
 Whose justice is our justice, and whose powers. 
 His infinite, love and truth, are attributes of ours ; 
 With whom we have communion, and enjoy. 
 Through rational light, what age nor death can e'er destroy ; 
 For soul, with Deity consubstantial, feels 
 All nature does or bears, each mystery fate conceals ; 
 Which, though it wind a thousand different ways, 
 Points ultimately towards God, 'midst of all being's maze. 
 If in yon boundless vault we therefore see 
 Proofs of an aU adapting, governing. Deity ; 
 Gracious in heart, and bounteous ; greatening man 
 
282 FE8TU8. 
 
 Witli sacred gifts to enjoy, and glory in, all lie can ; 
 
 Ourselves even here, considerate of times passed, 
 
 And future, from earth's prime heroical to her last ; 
 
 May, communing with all, unblamed, conceive 
 
 What godlike ghosts of all shall joy in, or achieve ; 
 
 May, justly speculative, man's coming state, 
 
 With heaven's most perfect gifts, to him, while earth's, collate ; 
 
 And meditating the great and reverend names. 
 
 Time's luminous roll within its world-wide margin claims 
 
 Deem how perchance their spirits, in spheres refined, 
 
 W^alk kingly, self -subject ; or, with excursive mind, 
 
 Where some felicitous sun serenely reigns, 
 
 Lead large sethereal lives 'mid paradisal plains. 
 
 I, musing thus, fair Luniel from her sphere 
 
 CoUucent, which completes twelve times its monthly year 
 
 In ours, with the sun conjoined, and yet once more ; 
 
 'Lighted on spiry crag, riven from the rocky shore, 
 
 Saw sudden stand before me ; all her charms 
 
 By her own light chastened, stand ; with welcome waving arms. 
 
 For this with spirit friends ; one agef ul hour 
 
 Brings to perfection fruit earth scarce had riped to flower. 
 
 She, skilled my bosom's inmost thought to tell. 
 
 Called, questioning, " Wouldst thou where those spirits thou deem'st 
 
 of, dwell ? " 
 " Gladly," I answered, " Angel 1 would I wend 
 The world throughout with thee, searching from end to end 
 Tho bounds of being." " Wouldst thou life's issues trace 
 'Tween God and Nature lawed ? " she said, " To man's vast race. 
 Earth's mediatised divinity, and learn 
 By how steep gradients soul may still to heaven return ? " 
 " Liefer than aught on earth," I answered, " Lo 1 " 
 Said Luniel then, " what thou from him wouldst never know. 
 Who tempts thy heart with boons of feebler worth, 
 I am from God empowered to show thee, son of earth. 
 Eemember thou no more when once are known 
 These mysteries of the world progressive round God's throne, 
 Canst stoop to trifle with life's vanities, now 
 Henceforth abjured to be ? " "I solemnize the vow," 
 Said L Each silent knelt. " In times to be, 
 Full soon," said Luniel, " thou perchance mayst fitly see 
 This vow to mind ; and, alway, to recall 
 The promise plight." " Forbear the future to forestall," 
 Said I, disgracious. " Shun, then, soul of light 1 
 Shun passion's pits obscure, whose depths bemock the sight. 
 And for that I, who hold thee free to take. 
 Or to refuse, the boon I offer for thy sake. 
 Nor would one hour enforce the divine will 
 Under pretext of fate, his word made to fulfil. 
 Would war 'gainst self-love only, which would bind. 
 Even in hallowing bonds, free choice of other's mind." 
 " heavenly spirit," I said, " O taught of heaven, 
 Tears more than dew-drops I would weep were to me given 
 
FE8TJJS. 283 
 
 Much to fore-know. But I abide the event." 
 
 It is well, said the Ang^el ; fate befriends the reticent. 
 
 Now mainland-ward the rift she crossed between 
 
 Our rocks, in ebon shade half, half in argent sheen, 
 
 Saying", " Eye well yon starry arch on high, 
 
 Wiierein the eternal scales of justice cope the sky. 
 
 Lo I there the lists of trial ; there the fields 
 
 Of triumph, God to souls in good persistent, yields. 
 
 Thousands of years, souls preexistent may. 
 
 In line with laws celestial, take earth's downward way ; 
 
 "Who take, death-freed, the ascent towards heavenly life. 
 
 Through tests perfective, tests wherewith all worlds are rife, 
 
 Are blessed ; and these it is mine to mix with ; mine 
 
 To encourage, to sanctify, in striving for divine 
 
 Communion ; and the spirit eclect prepare 
 
 Heaven's feast intelligible, boundless, of truth to share.** 
 
 " All this," said I, " I bum to learn ; my breath 
 
 Seems worthless, all not known, even parenthetic death." 
 
 Tranced while I stood thus 'neath her fixed eye, 
 
 My spirit stole softly forth towards hers, as midst the sky 
 
 Steals forth a starlet in the gloaming, none 
 
 Wist how, " Behold me, I ; space hungering to be gone. 
 
 So clear, so penetrant, so pervasive, grew 
 
 Her luminous presence there, that, him except, who knew 
 
 Her orb's vast absence in the depths of space, 
 
 One might have deemed such light forth issuant from its face. 
 
 " Rise," said the Angel, flashing forth her hand. 
 
 Which, touchless, mine sustained, as doth the invisible band 
 
 Betwixt the aerial fish stretched, both uphold. 
 
 Swifter than happiest hours winged we, where meteors rolled ; 
 
 Passed blank vacuity, passed where air most thin 
 
 Nought leaves for light's relays to range or revel in, 
 
 Far, as in space, mom's first faint beamlets shine, 
 
 From those still steeps of heaven where evening's shade decline, 
 
 Rose we, each breath ; and ere the sunken sun, 
 
 Gloomed by earth's westward limb, our mounting eye might shun 
 
 One glimpse we caught, our last, of the sea-flood broad, 
 
 Edged with extremest light, like the hem of the garment of God ; 
 
 Passed all the erratic spheres where penitent kings, 
 
 'Mid soul-crowds, conscience touched, all grades, all shades, of 
 
 things, 
 Terrestrial, sensual, sinful, learn to eschew ; 
 Here, grouped for mutual strength, here sparse, a loftier few ; 
 But each their elevance to the all pure most high, 
 Outworking ; passed the solar orb, which drawing nigh 
 " If," Luniel said, " thy questioning eye, aright 
 I read, thou wouldst know why we, so near, the source of light 
 Avoid ? " "I would." " Not thus, may we the sphere 
 Accost, which rules, know thou, time's great celestial year, 
 Not yet, the mighty spirit who there controls, 
 Loyal alway to Heaven, the group which round him rolls. 
 Of various worlds, even thine ; and not by way 
 
284 FESTUa. 
 
 Of passing guest, but bound on some supreme essay ; 
 
 Not now ; the day is kalendared on high, 
 
 Both shall ; and there, surprised to find thee, thither hia 
 
 One other ; passed all orbs' sun-circling speed. 
 
 Where the equidialled points no further may recede ; 
 
 And the whole space our petty system spanned. 
 
 Showed like the scattered nest of ostrich in the sand. 
 
 Still soaring in wide circlets towards the sign, 
 
 The sun's bright gates, so called by the angelhood benign 
 
 Of these sethereal regions, coped by stars ; 
 
 The jambs of those vast ports, nought mean nor mortal mars, 
 
 We, hailing, touch ; heaven's holy angel guard, 
 
 Us answering, spake and said, thus proving watch and ward, 
 
 ' Queen of the Night I whatever fate thee brings 
 
 Unwont, be welcome still ; thy silvery shadowing wings 
 
 Part hiding, somewhat show, as on thy breast 
 
 Incumbent, which hath quelled thine interlunar rest.' 
 
 Said Luniel, " Well it is, whate'er God's will. 
 
 Each should his ought discharge, his primary due fulfil. 
 
 Know then, that I who, heaven-deputed, range 
 
 These wonted space-realms, come, charged to let interchange 
 
 Notes of all life, all being, among these spheres. 
 
 By the earth-born mortal who beneath this wing appears ; 
 
 And who, it was long fore-wi'itten in rolls of fate, 
 
 Premundane, long ere light the void might animate ; 
 
 Some genius of the stars his hand should seize. 
 
 And guide complacent through the untold eternities ; 
 
 And whom, precognizant of the aspiring soul 
 
 I, from mine own bright orb, would oft on earth control.** 
 
 " Seems he to hold the seeds within his breast 
 
 Of citizenship eterne, heaven's franchise prepossessed." 
 
 " Though erring, though imperfect, he the claim 
 
 Of brotherhood owns, to aid all who the Eternal's name 
 
 Trust ; who on right's success o'er wrong rely ; 
 
 O'er evil, good's ; and soul's last rest in God, on high ; 
 
 On virtue's world-wide triumph ; truth's increase ; 
 
 Heaven's doom, humane and just ; and earth's perpetual peace, 
 
 " Continue," said that world-ward, soul benign ; 
 
 " What nobler man can do, man's spirit can scarce divine.*' 
 
 We, urging thence our way, the adits vast, 
 
 Repellent, hollow, mark, now entered, and now passed 
 
 Of those sidereal realms which Luniel knew 
 
 So well, and I so longed but to conceive as true ; 
 
 The abodes of life e'er brightening, where earth's souls. 
 
 Their sterner fates consummed, scale the bright ring which roUd 
 
 Soul clarifying, through heaven ; and which to ascend 
 
 As bidden by holiest word, our spirits we now commend ; 
 
 Intent to aid the aspirant mind, from earth 
 
 And bodily bondage freed, into a loftier birth. 
 
 While poised now on the belted clouds we stood, 
 
 Of a giant sun, and all its marks, its movements, viewed ; 
 
 ♦' Boundless as are God's works in all these spheres. 
 
FESTUa. 285 
 
 One mediate spirit," I said, " manliko throughout appears ; 
 
 With whom I see, commingling free, the soul 
 
 Humane, now learns to obey, now teaches to control ; 
 
 Thy word in all confirmed, which first I learned, 
 
 In yon orb, hence with earth, as double star discerned ! " 
 
 " Worlds variable and changeful," spake my guide, 
 
 Meet for terrestrial spirits are found, sin-purified, 
 
 Self -shriven. Who certain bliss, bliss-sealed, have gained, 
 
 Bide in yon highmost suns, unaltering, unconstrained. 
 
 All, planets, satellites, spheres, but as a base 
 
 Serve for the g^eatening powers of man's divinized race ; 
 
 Imi)erf ect, but aspiring through all time, 
 
 Up to the highest heaven ambition's star may climb. 
 
 For, as a lightning thought, a glint o' the eye, 
 
 Will fruit through dreams into a life's eternity, 
 
 Ro all mind's varied faculties which now 
 
 Nor time's demands nor bodily needs due scope allow 
 
 Shall, 'neath God's hallowing eye matured, expand, 
 
 Those happiest ends to attain he from all time hath planned ; 
 
 And sanctify the simplest soul, their shrine. 
 
 Brightening from world to world, through every sacred sign. 
 
 Fleet, but as drowning thought which crowds all time 
 
 Into one instant's act from now to Nature's prime ; 
 
 Swifter than spear spear seconds of the light 
 
 Polar, which archwise crowns our earth-sphere's arctic night, 
 
 My guide in God I following, we from sign 
 
 Soaring to sign, first light where night and day combine. 
 
 In equal shares. His righteousness to show, 
 
 "Whose equity rules all worlds in Heaven, as earth below. 
 
 So symboUed to creation by yon scales, 
 
 Inskied on high, whose poise sin vainly countervails. 
 
 Here, 'midst a bright celestial group we stood 
 
 High 'mongst star-magnates, first of the solar brotherhood. 
 
 Where astral spirits, in long progression tried. 
 
 Upon perfection's path, well nigh so deified ; 
 
 With variant angel tribes in ordered grades 
 
 Of social mind, I marked, God's law o'er forms or aids. 
 
 Here, Solon, prince of the proverbial seven, 
 
 Heads his constellate seers, the lawgivers, whose heaven 
 
 It is to interpret God's divine decrees 
 
 To worlds his justice binds, to souls his mercy frees. 
 
 3Ianou, there, Konfutsze, new codes dictate 
 
 Of equity, and between vexed orblets arbitrate ; 
 
 For worlds may in thought each other wrong, as ours 
 
 Far spheres, with doubt that them God fills with sentient powers, 
 
 But leaves their home in space, a soulless blank, 
 
 Mindless their own to enjoy, and reasonless to thank. 
 
 Here, Minos lord of those who, east and west, 
 
 Soul continents judged of old, presides as justice' best 
 
 Interpreter, in all things true, but named 
 
 Descent from fabulous gods, and for all virtues famed, 
 
 Karth owns ; and, with him, Numa, laws decree, 
 
286 FE8TU8. 
 
 Faiths, morals, rights, that now with truth alone agree, 
 
 Humanity, and pure right. Zaleucus, there, 
 
 Fresh laws like those which even while drawing earthly ail 
 
 He knew of God, prepares ; and justice proves 
 
 One with the beauteous spirit which all things makes and moves, 
 
 Lycurgus, here, his soul realm arms ; and trains 
 
 The militant spirit to live on good alone it gains 
 
 Victorious, from each vanquished vice ; and life, 
 
 From luxury freed, ordains, with sin unceasing strife. 
 
 Pythagoras, there, convokes with potent sign 
 
 Of discipline perfect, pure societies, proved divine 
 
 By silent concord ; love of mental light, 
 
 And aim to serve by good, the all good infinite. 
 
 There, Plato's soul full orbed, the good, the true, 
 
 Enjoys, the absolute fair ; there, labouring to renew 
 
 Some holier commonwealth, a crown obtains 
 
 Kingly, in the very stars where Justice banished, reigns, 
 
 God's delegate. Here, too, pointing to the scroll 
 
 Where prime of men, the words, immortal is man's soul, 
 
 He penned, and where its first and starry state 
 
 Viewing restored, he dared inspired to predicate. 
 
 Not without leave divine, the gladdening throng 
 
 His sacred hand salute ; him hailed in grateful song, 
 
 Noblest of men. Euhemerus, here, there, More, 
 
 Found in Eutopian worlds the states they feigned before ; 
 
 Here, Omar, God's great unity end and cause 
 
 Boasts of one conquering faith, sole base of rights, dues, laws. 
 
 Here, Zenghis, here, Akhbar, God law proclaim ; 
 
 Fuse and imblend all faiths 'neath one all conquering name. 
 
 Meet, -.iElfrid, Ina here, kingwise arrayed ; 
 
 State-rules, and codes confer ; and now, a mightier shade, 
 
 Self -crowned, and matched with great Justinian's fame, 
 
 These orbs with heartiest trust, welcome, and shrewd acclaim, 
 
 Who conquering first all vanquished, then his realm 
 
 Inmost bequeathed of law ; force none could overwhelm. 
 
 Here, he who first the state's true form conceived^ 
 
 Wisdom, wealth, numbers (these by their chosen), all inweaved 
 
 Into one whole ; and dared so concentrate 
 
 Men's energies as to make a land into a state, 
 
 Which should forget not others, and their good. 
 
 But, slavery's chain broke, hold all freemen of one blood ; 
 
 By patriots circled of all times, now plans 
 
 With them, all polity proved to accord with spiritual man's. 
 
 Papinian, Ulpian, Scsevola, here, unite 
 
 To assure the spirit severe of its prescriptive right 
 
 To freeest choice, as fits intelligence, 
 
 Of Deity sired, and heired with conscience, reason, sense 
 
 Of citizenship on high, the heavenly state. 
 
 All conquering, freeing all ; intangible, even, of fate. 
 
 And now through soundless space, windlike through light. 
 
 Successive bars we pierced and passed of day and night ; 
 
FESTU3. 287 
 
 The way combust, wliich, from the sacred seats 
 
 Of legislature, to worlds where warrior warrior meets, 
 
 Leads, where the glowing spherelots of the sign 
 
 Sequent, we resting prove now wrongly deemed malign. 
 
 " Herein," said Luniel, " view to whom heaven's lord 
 
 The privileges of power, soul dominance, doth accord. 
 
 Here in, elevated, inspired, and purified, 
 
 By conscience, man's inventive mind, so closely allied 
 
 To God's creative spirit, revises, mends 
 
 Its projects, and passed feats remoulds to worthier ends. 
 
 So here, all features of man's personal mind. 
 
 Made beauteous, magnified, and meliorate we find. 
 
 Kings, patriots, heroes, here, and potentates, 
 
 Found empires day-broad, march to achieve supremest fates ; 
 
 Here, conquerors haste with armies of the light, 
 
 The cloud-topped towers to o'erturn of evil's tyrant might ; 
 
 "Wage truceless war 'gainst cruelty, and advance 
 
 Their fiery hosts to invade thy realms, black Ignorance ; 
 
 To invade and free ; not basely subjugate, 
 
 For their own selfish ends, the bond they liberate. 
 
 There, just usurpers humiliate, dethrone 
 
 Huge errors that devour souls ; sins demoniac grown 
 
 By pamperings unrestrained ; demurest vice 
 
 Idolatrous ; and false faiths that souls from God entice. 
 
 Look, and well weigh, what time thou wilt ; this hour 
 
 Give I to thee." I looked, and grateful blessed the Power. 
 
 Nimrod, here, haughty now no more, unless 
 
 Gainst pride, pursued, we viewed, through the obscure wilderness, 
 
 Of worldly Ufe, almost like this of ours, 
 
 Monsters, but now of sin, and so to virtuous powers 
 
 Self -thralled, that fearing most, fair freedom's frown, 
 
 He flings in Hadean deeps his loved star-patterned crown. 
 
 Sesostris, there, war's patriarch, seeks his place 
 
 Lowliest 'mong kings, with joy, captive of conquering grace. 
 
 Here, violated states and murdered kings 
 
 Nave's stern son now counts vilest ; counts worst of things, 
 
 Kingdoms to seize by force, strongholds or lands. 
 
 For other ends than right or self defence commands ; 
 
 Sacked cities ; and such wrongs to cause to cease. 
 
 Leads he God's chosen hosts, to \'ietories won of peace 
 
 Persuadent ; which nor woe nor wound e'er leave ; 
 
 No hate burned heart for theft of throne or state to grieve ; 
 
 Nor deems now God, the all-pitying, could dictate 
 
 Horrors that merciless fiends would shrink to perpetrate ; 
 
 But, foe to all false gods and idol sins, 
 
 Arms his elect with powers omnipotent to convince. 
 
 And with heaven's saving help 'mong those who have erred, 
 
 Makes for his chosen, way by one conversive word, 
 
 Miraculous. Cyrus, there, of life assured 
 
 Deathless, forenamed of God, by carnal bribe unlured, 
 
 Vast tracts subdues, huge zones, of doubt and sin 
 
 The infinite of defect we feel our souls within j 
 
288 FE8TU8. 
 
 Tlie immortal life lie credited wMle on earth 
 
 He here enjoys, of innocence loved, and faithful worth. 
 
 Here Xerxes to his will all elements binds 
 
 Serve they but plans to enlarge, or to enlighten minds. 
 
 The youth Pelleean, here, who at Babel died. 
 
 And since through many a sphere hath expiated his pride, 
 
 For spirits in every rank def ectible made, 
 
 Gain but through time and test and proof, perfection's grade ; 
 
 Seeks now, in virtue's cause, new worlds to win. 
 
 That he may aid to assoil from soul debauching sin. 
 
 Here, too, Assyria's last of tyrants, taught 
 
 Wisdom from just revolt for ills by luxuiy wrought, 
 
 Salutes the rebel friend, as right to assay 
 
 His rule, his fate, who built two cities in one day ; 
 
 Yet lost his life through idling 'mong slave-queens ; 
 
 The ambition now of each, blessed, both in ends and means ; 
 
 His who loved peace, but now with active aim ; 
 
 His, who risked death for right ; true patriot's proudest claim ? 
 
 There, Bayazet and Timur rush to embrace 
 
 Mutual, and every cause of enmity to efface, 
 
 As subjects each of other, strive to extend 
 
 Art's empire, learning's, faith's, true brother, and true friend. 
 
 Alaric here his lightning legions leads 
 
 Of virtuous spirits 'gainst vice ; the sphere o'erruns ; nor dreadf 
 
 To attack the dominant sins that e'er have ruled 
 
 Earth-life, intemperance, pride, attacks, subdues ; self -schooled. 
 
 Here, Brutus, Cassar, there, firm friends enrolled ; 
 
 Bom social order this, that, sense of rights to uphold, 
 
 With Pericles now unite, and Charlemagne, 
 
 Soul freedom and states' peace imperial to maintain ; 
 
 Shadow of peace celestial, which attends 
 
 Alway perfected power ; peace, which all crowns and ends. 
 
 Swiftlier through shining gether than the ray 
 
 Darts forth of boreal morn, we spirits our spacious way 
 
 Seize, till we 'light amidst his lustrous reign, 
 
 Who deathless life abjured such star-life but to gain. 
 
 And worlds where spirits acute, of keenest cast. 
 
 And lowliest wisdom life in love and worship passed. 
 
 " Start not," said Luniel, " in this gracious land. 
 
 Where wider ends than earth's, and loftier heavens expand. 
 
 Time's grandest, holiest, worthiest souls, to view, 
 
 ^till speculative of truths that variously the true 
 
 Invariable, concern ; (for not alone 
 
 Does certainty all suffice ; man's spirit adores the unknown ;) 
 
 Nor paradise deem to one scant spot confined ; 
 
 But walled once, now world-wide, spreads various as man's mind 
 
 As bidden, I look ; and every soul-king see. 
 
 Like level suns aglow with glad solemnity. 
 
 There, Verulam's spirit, from Natui-e's upmost height. 
 
 Serves, ministrant with herself, the lowliness infinite ; 
 
 The immeasurable humility which filled 
 
 The world creative mind, when man to make He willed i 
 
FE8TU3. 289 
 
 Wisdom all potent, preaches ; and proclaims 
 
 Omniscience crown of all the Self-Existent's names j 
 
 Knowledge applied, is power ; not knowledge void 
 
 Of act, he adds ; and good, when but for good employed. 
 
 Great Albert and Erigena truths exchange 
 
 Current 'mong gods ; with reach half heavenly prearrange 
 
 The philosophic schools of youthening spheres. 
 
 Pire-sainted Bruno, there, freed now from ignorant fears 
 
 Of blind fanatic priests, who shamed the creed 
 
 They vainly mouthed, aflarms Grod all in thought and deed ; 
 
 The world an emanation of his mind ; 
 
 And man's free spirit in God dilate, not undefined. 
 
 The shade Cartesian, here, with thought supreme 
 
 Pregnant, still broods on Being's one all comprising theme, 
 
 Still seeks of every spirit from stranger star 
 
 The inborn truth all hold, " because God is, we are." 
 
 Malebranche, his quest for tnith, there, aye renews ; 
 
 And verifies, but in God, the vision he pursues ; 
 
 In him, the sovereign truth, the essential whole. 
 
 Sees all things through the mean of the universal Soul. 
 
 Here, Berkeley's genius quickening all his dreams, 
 
 In sense supernal blends what is with all that seems ; 
 
 And showing naked mind the synonym 
 
 Of all perfections makes it God, or equals him ; 
 
 Mind, and mind's acts, the base of aU things ; sense 
 
 Time, science, matter, space, cause of the whole immense. 
 
 Here, blessed Spinoza's spirit, as heaven sublime. 
 
 In G<xi finds all extent, all thought, all place, all time ; 
 
 But elsewise than on earth he deemed ; not these 
 
 With Deity one and same, he now enlightened sees ; 
 
 Nor, inf erentially, 'mong things finite, 
 
 The spiritual God with vice confused, and wrong with right ; 
 
 But as a skiff, wind driven 'gainst stream, to mount, 
 
 Flies, filled with breath divine, to truth's eternal fount. 
 
 Clarke's soul triumphant, here, to all create 
 
 God's unity, central truth, inspired to demonstrate, 
 
 On high, persists adoringly to prove 
 
 Him through all attributes one, the world — constructive love. 
 
 Fore-tuned on earth, there, Leibnitz' spirit still hears 
 
 The harmonies of mental mixed with material spheres, 
 
 Sees the sufficing reason of the whole 
 
 In that beneficent will that makes, guides, owns, the soul, 
 
 With all perfections filled of their due grade, 
 
 Not absolute like to God's, but congruous with mind made ; 
 
 And hails, with righteous and regenerate zest. 
 
 The eternal heavens as still most perfect, happiest, best. 
 
 Ah 1 paint who can, the sweet and rapturous fire 
 
 Which thrills the praisef ul souls of that God hallowing choir, 
 
 Locke, here, and analytic Kant, man's mind, 
 
 Though limited by defect yet virtually undefined, 
 
 Search with deliberate piety, test. cor!:pcre 
 
 With demons, angels, cr intelligences more raro ; 
 
290 FE8TU8. 
 
 Nor fixedness find in creatural knowledge ; nought 
 
 Certain in scope or grasp of man's most serious tlionglit, 
 
 Save, base and sum of purest reason, this ; 
 
 God only is true being, and being, true, only, bliss. 
 
 There, the great Swede, ascetic seer, God graced. 
 
 With conscious speech of spirit, acts, monitor wise, so placed 
 
 That conversant whilst with deathless minds afar. 
 
 He scrutinizes all souls, from earth's sea-glittering star, 
 
 Launched hourly, fore-ordained to segregate 
 
 All spirits whose lot is lawed by their interior state, 
 
 Each to its self -judged circle of joy or pain ; 
 
 For just proportion e'er, through heaven as earth, must reign, 
 
 And correlate spheres agree ; with patient zeal 
 
 "Proving to each whence flowed life's sequent woe or weal, 
 
 He, with poetic justice, which is God's, 
 
 Deals to the pure, palms, peace ; deals to the unrighteous, rods. 
 
 Here, they who followed once the chase on earth, 
 
 Yield now their souls to aims of truer, weightier, worth ; 
 
 Not now the shades of hapless beasts pursue ; 
 
 But faults and errors hasfce to exterminate from the view 
 
 Of spirits susceptible of some meaner end 
 
 Than nature points as best, or virtue might commend. 
 
 Swift as the lord of light's resiu-gent ray 
 
 Shoots o'er expectant earth the warm delights of day ; 
 
 Instant as flies man's thought from earth to heaven, 
 
 When, peace imploring, God his pardoning grace hath given, 
 
 To penitent soul, a world we make whence streamed 
 
 Light soothing, strengthening light, the gates of Heaven it seemed ; 
 
 Here, those who on earth would draw from darkest mine 
 
 The gold that witches man, or gems that brightliest shine 
 
 Seek now for truths enlightening, truths arcane. 
 
 Thought-gems, his brow to illume who worthiest still shall reign 
 
 In lowliest tasks for others' weal, to seek 
 
 Power which makes rich the poor, and wealth which kings the 
 
 weak. 
 Lo 1 here the pious priests of every creed, 
 
 Who the Pure one served, and pure themselves would intercede, 
 For man, as race, as people, as tribe, as soul. 
 " No fanes here," Luniel said ; " all heaven one temple whole." 
 " Nor more need we, dear Spirit," said I, " below ; 
 Were purity but a plant, earth freelier learned to grow. 
 For not in priestly vestments, broidered bright. 
 And various as the hues wherewith rich autumn dight, 
 Blazons inbred decadence ; not in pile 
 
 Of plate, nor treasurous chests ; high arch, nor dim-roofed aisle ; 
 Nor victim crowned with flowers, whose fragrant breath 
 Blends with his last low moan in commonalty of death. 
 Lies our acceptableness, nor ever lay : 
 'Tis to man's spirit and heart God sole regard doth pay. 
 The prayer inspired's prayer granted. This alone 
 Know we ; we give thee thine ; thou tak'st but that's thine own. 
 Hox can our limited foresight swerve thee, Lord, 
 
TESTUS, 291 
 
 Nor wanderings, from aught planned, or penned, in fate's record. 
 
 Nought can we lend thee, Lord ! that's first not thine ; 
 
 Nought add by deed to thy felicitousness divine, 
 
 Save this ; to serve our fellow men ; who thus 
 
 Serve man, serve God. Nought less, 'tid all he asks from us." 
 
 Said Luniel, " hour hour urgeth. Ears and eyes 
 
 More than lips use." Abashed, I strove for silence' prize. 
 
 Towering 'mid saintliest throngs from every clime. 
 
 From all spheres called, from the midst, the end, the bii-th, of time, 
 
 Great Oiigen here I viewed, and heard rehearse 
 
 God's love, sire, saviour, soul of the rational universe. 
 
 No longer heretic deemed, to all he proves 
 
 That all God makes for good, essentially, he loves ; 
 
 If erring, pities ; and, while worlds endure. 
 
 Awaits their reasonable assent to just and pure 
 
 Service of truth ; in charity, sage, now sees 
 
 Secured, the first fruits there, of God's great victories 
 
 O'er rebel evil, through convincing grace 
 
 Which, infinite, must at last all finite foes efface. 
 
 There, Anius, Melchizedek, in one rite 
 
 Of thanks to God most highest, the infin'te one, unite ; 
 
 In spiritual faith now oned, their simple creed 
 
 Confess, sufficing men, and all that angels need. 
 
 Here, Miiiam, Deborah and the matron sage 
 
 Lastitia like inspired, to teach a later age. 
 
 Read, vsTrit in nobler spheres, the Eternal's name 
 
 Irradiating all skies, the one the sole, the same ; 
 
 The name on earth most honoured, first in heaven, 
 
 Known all where, His to whom all love, all praise, be given. 
 
 Theano, here, Sibyl, and holy maid. 
 
 Virgin of sun, or moon, in dazzling forms arrayed ; 
 
 Their crowns inscrutable with sublime device. 
 
 And garlands wove from flowers fadeless of paradise ; 
 
 Serve now the Fatherly Spirit, whose every beam 
 
 Is lifelight to the soul, inspired by love supreme. 
 
 " So spii-itual," said Luniel, " all things here, 
 
 That many a sight thou seest more strange may seem than clear ; 
 
 But know, wherever the divine desire 
 
 Of good bums ; heart-bom flame conceived of heavenly fire ; 
 
 Where'er celestial youth may yet be taught 
 
 Wisdom, or deeds devout of virtuous valour wrought ; 
 
 Where purity of thought may yet be instilled. 
 
 Or breast with high resolves, beneficent, be fulfilled ; 
 
 A longing like intense to assure mankind 
 
 Some moral boon ; or save from fall some doubt-poised mind ; 
 
 "Where holy unsuccess, sustaining grace 
 
 3Iay ask, receive ; there view, be sure, each angel face, 
 
 In-beaming strength ; there, every holy muse, 
 
 Her art now hallowed, learns through all spheres to diffuse. 
 
 For God all various beings both can make, 
 
 And sanctifying can bless, for his dear creature's sake ; 
 
 For theii sake, no one's else ; their food, their life, 
 
 l2 
 
292 t^ESTUS. 
 
 Their soul's imbounded peace, with hope celestial rife. 
 
 Of fleshly gods, of man-made idol's meed, 
 
 Of intercessory saints 'tween sire and son, what need ? 
 
 Sole to himself, from all that He creates, 
 
 Angel or man, the appeal, the Eternal consecrates." 
 
 " Kindly as God may act, I said, to one 
 
 The spirit elect, imjust can justice be to none. 
 
 This, favoured by priority and degree ; 
 
 Of bliss ; yet all at last shall taste his clemency." 
 
 Quick as the leap thou gav'st, obedient light 1 
 
 In response to the word of God's omnific might, 
 
 Through many an interstellar space, thought-winged 
 
 Glide we, where broods of nebulous stars their sires enringed ; 
 
 Heat lavishing these, those elemental light 
 
 Hoarding, ere on the void, though eager, loosed for flight ; 
 
 To orbs where dominate strange new forms of truth ; 
 
 "Where age heart-ripening melts in soul-perfective youth ; 
 
 WTiere demi-gods of science faith befriend ; 
 
 And seek, their theories proved, God's purpose to commend ; 
 
 Tracing in Him not mists, not mites, the rise 
 
 Of man's life and the world's, lost in archaic skies. 
 
 With the Phoenician priest, here, deep discourse 
 
 On Chaos, vital winds, and nature's plasmal force 
 
 Holds Thales ; here, his crude imaginings 
 
 On mundane forces mends, and primal seeds of things ; 
 
 Here, Euclid his indevious problems frames 
 
 For nascent orbs, and proves, by Bpace-dra\\Ti diagrams, 
 
 Tri'ths spiritual, eteme ; of import vast 
 
 More even than all, not slight, time 'neath his name hath massed 
 
 There, Meton, through recurrent cycles, trains 
 
 Star-spirits to union, earth's scarce yet with Heaven's attains, 
 
 Though urged through many an age. The golden prime 
 
 Was before gold was known ; when all the souls of time 
 
 Reunion sought with God, the spiritual sun 
 
 Of Heaven's eternal whole, world-hallowing one by one, 
 
 The starry hosts, how joyed. The Assyrian seer 
 
 Nameless, who named the stars, pre-nominating each sphere 
 
 'Neath skies here thicklier lamped ; with Egypt's priest 
 
 By Nile celestial, hails, delighted, fields increased 
 
 For astral parables, wherein sagest mind. 
 
 Quick with mysterious truth, can loose the heavens, or bind ; 
 
 Can track the travelling pole-star, as it goes 
 
 Through constellations all unfined, ere Nile-land rose ; 
 
 Or, allegorized the star-book's dazzling page. 
 
 Trace, through all desert skies, soul's sacred pilgrimage. 
 
 There, Archimedes finds the point he would 
 
 Of leverage, to uplift all worlds, even this, towards good ; 
 
 Finds, in God's infinite will all souls to bless. 
 
 The stand-point whence to start ; — the goal, his righteousness. 
 
 No more, here, Ptolemy courtly celebrates 
 
 Feats fabulous of dim stars, but judges rational fates 
 
 By virtuous influences of holier spheres, 
 
FE8TU8. a 
 
 Souled with the grreat and good of Heaven's all-hallowing years. 
 
 There, many a special group of souls I viewed, 
 
 In majesty of man and saintliest sisterhood, 
 
 Whose least divine ambition was to expend 
 
 Life in enlarging good, and blessing without end. 
 
 " ye benevolent spirits," I said, " on earth 
 
 Who soothed with brotherly love and aidance, suffering worth ; 
 
 Ye holy of all ages, of all creeds, 
 
 Truth-taught, and prompters sage of kindliest, justest deeds, 
 
 Who fed the poor, the ignorant taught, the weak 
 
 Strengthened to do their best ; truth gain, and gained, to speak ; 
 
 Your prisoning frames exchanged for the opening sky, 
 
 Continuing still to bless, seek self in Deity ; 
 
 One thing I would entreat of ye, impelled 
 
 By anxious thoughts oft risen from scenes mine eye beheld ; 
 
 O seek, guard the death-born soul, when first 
 
 Naked, sin-stained it stands 'fore God, and fears the worst ; 
 
 And the clear spirit, calm ! that eased from breath 
 
 With just one pitying smile salutes and passes death. 
 
 Such generous cares God will repay." Eeplied 
 
 One spirit I knew on earth and reverenced, to my side 
 
 Approached ; " This needs not. Who on earth the state 
 
 Of heaven's lost heir have toiled to amend, to show how great 
 
 The space just right like his aspires to span ; 
 
 l^Iore venerable to prove the mind and soul of man ; 
 
 Make worthier of his end ; to achieve the sum 
 
 Of social right ; found faith's pure simple creed to come ; — 
 
 For in all worlds the growth of general mind 
 
 Like treatment needs, that law by free rights stand defined ; 
 
 Rights, asking not as earth's the patriot's blood 
 
 Ever, yet everywhere that ill succumb to good ; — 
 
 All who have laboured upwards toward the light, 
 
 Intelligible, divine, since man in lowliest plight, 
 
 Of glacial age or stone, first crouched the knee 
 
 To some lone crag, his rock of help, his deity. 
 
 Till now, when soul, of all idolatry shriven, 
 
 Thine infinite unity, Lord 1 sees symbolled best by heaven ; 
 
 Have earned unconscious, God's approving glance, 
 
 And now within the map of his broad countenance 
 
 Exceed in joy unutterable, and trace 
 
 Their destiny in the calm most-high of his embrace ; 
 
 Where worshipper with worshipped, once made one. 
 
 Live perfect, live divine in heavenliest union." 
 
 " Live ye e'er thus," said Limiel ; " and because 
 
 Ye have sought not to divide his own from Nature's laws ; 
 
 But striven to spread his realm, the heaven within 
 
 Man's mind ; loved good, and done ; shunned ill ; detested sin ; 
 
 Because not alone ye have loved, but still the aims 
 
 Dear to all heavenlies helped ; still toiled, may be, like n.ameS; 
 
 To earn, though humbler, blessed the more, their weal 
 
 Considering who themselves, the excellences they feel 
 
 Lacking, or to theirs strange, most wanting, each 
 
294 FE8TU8. 
 
 Favouring the other's need, to learn this, that to teach ; 
 
 Meet now for final union with the soul 
 
 Felicitative of life, that sums and saints the whole ; 
 
 God, to his snowiest heights of spiritual rest, 
 
 Translates ye, heavening- all in his soul-hallowing breast." 
 
 Swifter than sun-ray when from star to star, 
 
 World wakening, space it leaps, thought scarce can feign how far 
 
 Quicklier than pulsings of Heaven's firiest light. 
 
 Each wave of Luniel's wing new systems brought in sight. 
 
 Discoverers, here, of all earth's liberal arts, 
 
 Reign midst their several crafts ; skill each to each imparts 
 
 Soul-generous. There, explorers search fresh fields, 
 
 Of thought, to invade new worlds ; each hint sage legend yields 
 
 Of holy commerce with more genial spheres, 
 
 Richer perchance in grace, globe so to globe appears 
 
 Near-eyed, and ignorant of the countless plans 
 
 God hath to increase the bliss of worlds ; the angel man's 
 
 Powers to communicate, haste such means to use 
 
 As dropped on distant orbs may boundless good diffuse. 
 
 Here, Colon wings his thoughts to far-off spheres. 
 
 Hid in the viewless deeps of nature's earliest years ; 
 
 And musing on such hints as tragic sage 
 
 Of Cordova let fall to his beliefless age. 
 
 His soul, here, feeds on sparse prophetic strains, 
 
 Collate of sundry suns ; oft eloquently sustains 
 
 His justly-reasoned hope, that, there, 'mid space, 
 
 One ultimate earth must be, soul's happier dwelling place ; 
 
 In virtues, blessings rich ; in gold and gems 
 
 Intelligible, that deck angelic diadems. 
 
 There, too, his hero followers, pleased, equip 
 
 'Neath their high ensigned dove, the spirit's celestial ship, 
 
 Manned by their holy and apostolic crew, 
 
 Peace-minded, who with love all worlds, all souLs subdue. 
 
 Here, in his Argosy embarked, we steer, 
 
 Bright Luniel's hand on the helm which lights the hemisphere, 
 
 Till, duly sailed, an outpost orb of space 
 
 We near ; and landing, view invention's trysting place. 
 
 Here, daughter of necessity 1 abide 
 
 Thy patient sons, till by success indemnified 
 
 For all their toil ; and hallowing every aim 
 
 To God's great ends, they graff on his, the creature's claim 
 
 Ingenuous, to go forth to happier stars, 
 
 Where time all- just intents matures, ill's only mars ; 
 
 Gives to oblivion folly, and records 
 
 Imperishably all deeds of good ; all wisdom's words ; 
 
 All truth's bright thoughts ; that inlight to us given, 
 
 When God first breathed in man the luminous breath of Heaven ; 
 
 And so endowed with reason's testful ray, 
 
 As makes, self -cloaked, sin's night ; self-oped, man's moral day. 
 
 " TTiough various here," I said, " these spheres of mind, 
 
 Nor soul to each inapt, well pleased its like to find ; 
 
 Xet, through th^ ripening ages, as time runsf. 
 
FESTU8. 106 
 
 Some diflferences will rise to rend the soundest suns." 
 
 " Each soul," said Luniel, " every other prroup 
 
 Of stars, than that its wont, is free to ; nor need coop 
 
 In its o\sTi cares its energies, unconfined 
 
 Of dominant kindred ; all immixed of divers kind, 
 
 Kind Heaven secures ; but lest even one just end 
 
 The soul allure past bounds pure equity may intend 
 
 Like worthy dues to g-uard, in every sphere, 
 
 Spirits of variant aims, but all like just, appear. 
 
 Here, ail-where, too, meet spirits of diverse strain, 
 
 Searchf ul of others' fates, good bent to impart or gain ; 
 
 Renew, enhance, their love of those on earth 
 
 Held admirable or dear for truth's sake, or just worth. 
 
 Here, patriot monarchs hating tyrant's throne, 
 
 Deem despotry pertains not to bom kings alone ; 
 
 Despots confess of all ranks worst of things. 
 
 Save sovereign mobs ; for crowds may sin not less than kings ; 
 
 States 'gainst one soul sin even as one 'gainst all ; 
 
 To each now Godward turned, earth's crowns how dim, how smaU ! 
 
 Here, Phocion, Regulus, where'er is heard 
 
 One rational voice, set up and magnify man's word ; 
 
 Word, worthy in all worlds of truest fame. 
 
 Self love, nor popular wrong, nor dread of death can shame ; 
 
 Well knowing, Death nor Hades e'er can be 
 
 Rival or foe to truth and manly integrity. 
 
 There, Aristides, Cato, Howard, bless 
 
 Worlds with one stringent law tempered by tenderness ; 
 
 Law, which to break in thought, is sin ; in act, 
 
 Death ; and salvation sole to ensue and keep intact ; 
 
 The law divine of being and doing good, 
 
 Wherein we are one with God ; the act He wills, we would. 
 
 Here, too, sit they who kings and peoples both 
 
 Rate equitably ; and keep to God and man their troth. 
 
 Here, Tacitus, sage of incorruptible pen, 
 
 Worthiest Heaven's deeds divine, of all the sons of men, 
 
 To enregister ; with stem but equalled stress 
 
 Of judgment, judges kings, eternal righteousness 
 
 As 'tis in heaven, his breast-law ; here, ordains 
 
 States their amercement vast of pride-subjecting pains ; 
 
 Due penitence for war's brutal gust ; Rome's first 
 
 Of glories once ; now felt with shame and misery cursed ; 
 
 Of luxury each convicts, and wanton wrong ; 
 
 Fore all, the exemplar sets of virtue's children ; strong 
 
 In justice, purity, pious innocence 
 
 Unbarterable, and sweet soul-ignorance of offence." 
 
 Fleetlier than those incessant beams which dart 
 To circumscriptive skies from Nature's central heart, 
 Mine angel guide and I. our wingM way 
 Renewed, intent to pierce in peace heaven's bright array, 
 Shoot, both in mortal's and immortal's view, 
 Like silvery flames serene, through Night's aerial blue, 
 To worlds where spirits unrestf ul, soon or late, 
 
296 FE8TU8, 
 
 Meet from all bounds of space ; and, friendly congregate, 
 
 Are by intuitive caution led to choose 
 
 Travel in orbs remote where they may most diffuse 
 
 Of good, joy, wisdom, to less favoured spheres, 
 
 Of undeveloped light, prerogative of years. 
 
 Here, missioners such of truth their stores congest, 
 
 Accumulative of powers to aid their holy quest ; 
 
 That, winged with light, they may the grace impart 
 
 Of that impartial love which wins creation's heart ; 
 
 There, souls of broadest thought, intent humane, 
 
 Self dedicate to the toil sublime for others' gain. 
 
 Plan their bright way from sphere to sphere, of soul 
 
 Convertive, till to good, returns the unbounded whole. 
 
 " With these, if any," Luniel said, " to cast 
 
 Mine ultimate lot would I, with rapture join at last." 
 
 For she foreknew, not stamped in seals of clay. 
 
 But in the indelible passed, her orb should pass away. 
 
 " True through all life, thy Maker so conceived." 
 
 Said I, " thy lot, by change thou now wouldst sore be grieved, 
 
 Whose changes show but seeming ; in thine own 
 
 Essential, thou in heaven unchangeful wouldst be known." 
 
 ** So was it," Luniel answered, " so shall he, 
 
 Unalterable, God 1 thy law of destiny ; 
 
 Who all worlds rulest to that righteous end, 
 
 Their good and thine own joy, thou didst from first perpend. 
 
 Here, marked I many a spirit who made all thought 
 
 Subordonnant to the intent humane for which he wrought. 
 
 The Coan sage, here, head of that high clan. 
 
 On earth devote to learn the bodily frame of man ; 
 
 To heal, support, restore ; to lighten pain ; 
 
 Now seeks how most to teach the immortal how to gain 
 
 Kriowledge of man as spirit, elect to live 
 
 Invulnerable of years, of strength self generative ; 
 
 Whom nor decay can dull, nor feebling age 
 
 Disable, or check i' th' midst his skiey pilgrimage ; 
 
 Set towards that boundless goal, that spiritual fine 
 
 Infinite, who best knows, death fleshly, life divine. 
 
 There, Galen's soul devout, life's mysteries 
 
 Mid spheral forms more fair than human, loves to ceize ; 
 
 Life's motives analyse, life's ends detect, 
 
 All harmonized in design, in reason and in eilect. 
 
 Harvey, Buffon, there, Cuvier, all renew, 
 
 Self vowed to God, their worship of the all-good and true ; 
 
 Still study as once on earth life's laws ; still prove 
 
 With how methodic grace God regulates his love 
 
 Toward creatures of aU grades ; still strive to show 
 
 How, circling through all worlds, one vital truth doth flow ; 
 
 One quickening, soul sustaining, governing force. 
 
 Which animating all form, derives from God its source ; 
 
 To this gives reason, rule ; foreknowledge gives 
 
 O'er the to-come ; to this, instinct whereby it lives. 
 
 Here, by mean thoughts, transmute through virtuous mould, 
 
FESTU8. 297 
 
 (Wise adept's tliirsb for truth converts to moral gold, 
 
 Soul-richening verities, of a rational creed 
 
 Heaven asks of earth, and earth fails never yet to need,) 
 
 And natural alchemy of generous mind, 
 
 We saw pour forth at will its treasures unconfintKl, 
 
 Unperishing, which, evoked by art sublime, 
 
 Shall sunlike gild the tomb of predeceaseful time. 
 
 Lavoisier, there, the elements of all things 
 
 Solves, and at will compacts, and their constituent .springs 
 
 From form crystalline and uimiattered force. 
 
 With delicacy divine tracks to its parent source. 
 
 Linne, here, proven in vegetive life, still sees 
 
 Mind ; and in moss minute ; even as in mightiest trees. 
 
 Whose growth is as an empire's ; marks one soul 
 
 Of ever-developing perfection guide the whole. 
 
 Lieuweuhoeck, here, in life invisible learns 
 
 The infinite hidden, and still that God revealed, discenw 
 
 "NVho covenants but with life create by laws 
 
 Inviolable, himself their substance, sum, end, cause. 
 
 Swift as the mindful glance, night come, each star 
 Sends to his brother spheres, familiar, though afar ; 
 Measure to us, how from its centering place 
 To orbit scarce seen light can, leaping, conquer space, 
 The angelic wing unwearied rapt our flight 
 Through rings of dazzling air, walled by untempered night, 
 To spheres where those of soil once, now of soul 
 Culturers, where'er new starfields stretch, or streamlets roll 
 Of orbs, like those which, from diluvian urn. 
 Pour down the skiey steep, plains spiritual now leara 
 With vital virtues sown to reap ; the increase 
 Of that rich glebe whose roots are joy, whose fruits are peace 
 " Here realised," the angel said, " time's dreams behold, 
 And that celestial life these happier worlds unfold. 
 The denizens of these orbs Being's proper ends 
 As pure intelligences seek, God's and Nature's friends ; 
 Prompt here, now there, in shrewd and resolute band, 
 The whole, depth, height, to explore the all parent love hath plannod. 
 And so in spheres diverse his tracks pursue, 
 Old as prenatural Night, as day's spring ever new. 
 Ofttimea, the humble seer, who nature's laws 
 Loves and reveres, and aims to ally with goodness' cause, 
 Shows natural rights in virtues all converge 
 Conservant of true force, and so in Deity merge 
 Whence first they rayed ; oft, hopeful, here contrives 
 Subsidiary designs, whence nature, pleased, derives 
 Kew modes of self enchantment ; oft combines 
 With God's great plans, all good faith ancillary divines ; 
 Thence issuant glories in truth's flight sublime 
 And modes exhaustless joys to avail of hallowing time ; 
 The evolvement watching of each special race 
 Exaggerative of good. The inferior to displace 
 By better, nature progressive, fails not ; 
 
 L 8 
 
298 FE8TU8. 
 
 But ynila. the coming kind casts e'er her fateful lot ; 
 
 Secreting instinct first as base of mind, 
 
 Affection, passion, next, as wheels in motion wind ; 
 
 Till, with demonstrant reason summed, the soul, 
 
 Fit to conceive God's being, symmetric stands, and whole." 
 
 " Woe's me," I said, " for souls that when they die 
 
 Have failed the exacting- tests of God to satisfy." 
 
 " Not aught create, nor all, nor lapse of time 
 
 Immeasurable, with God can palliate one crime ; 
 
 But mercifulness toward soul of limited force 
 
 In virtue and foresight both, hath like and equal course ; " 
 
 Adds Luniel ; " Who in life's allotted tests 
 
 Fail, and by penitent griefs have soothed the righteous breasts 
 
 Of those they have wronged on earth ; who self convict 
 
 Of sin, abjured and mourned through law divinely strict, 
 
 Mount to this upper life, these holier skies. 
 
 Of purity progressive, till power be theirs to rise, 
 
 Through vh-tuous means, the inspiring hope, to employ 
 
 Their faculties to the ends that yield their Maker joy ; 
 
 Who all the heights and deptiis of soul commands, 
 
 And weighs men's motived lives in the hollow of his hands ; 
 
 Whose spirit, incarnate alway m man's race. 
 
 Angel and mortal both doth in one zone embrace. 
 
 Behold, my guide said, "here, where now we stand, 
 
 This roseate shadowed sphere where spirits of grace, once banned 
 
 Basely, by man's spite, dwell ; that to this shore 
 
 Of bliss, have passed through straits of rolling flame and gore ; 
 
 Souls, loved by God and men ; and some not less 
 
 By immolant zealots, now, heart-changed, by conscience' stress ; 
 
 For not alone are wrongs corrected, here ; 
 
 But hate, pride, envy changed to feelings pure, and clear 
 
 From every taint of self that might have bred 
 
 In friendship, rivallous thought ; thought, now which leads instead, 
 
 Envy to emulation ; hate, to love 
 
 Of good ; and pride, to pride that souls in G^ which move 
 
 And live, and have their essence, to forgive, 
 
 Know better than huge lengths of vengeful days to live. 
 
 Here, those who once, from purpose misconceived, 
 
 Tracked to their death some foe, or friend, who yet believed 
 
 Haply, one ampler tenet than their own 
 
 Curt creed contained, now gladden in spirit to make known 
 
 Their sympathies with all who hold the true. 
 
 Here opening on their minds, the infinite good which view. 
 
 There, saints and martyrs all their memory lose 
 
 Of wrongs and deaths ; each prompt ripe blessings to diffuse 
 
 Full-handed, on faith's friends wherever tried ; 
 
 And with their bright examples adorn religion's side. 
 
 For means of well-doing lost, for sad neglect 
 
 Of blessings, erring souls had lost all right to expect, 
 
 These waste no time, I saw, in vain lament ; 
 
 But henceforth haste to achieve alway God's wise intent ; 
 
 Each acting as with Deity inspired, 
 
FESTUa. »0 
 
 And con scions of the end by wariest love desired. 
 
 There, he of Tarsus, 'mong apostles least, 
 
 Self noted, but by men, Christ's best and noblest priest^ 
 
 Holds it not impious now that man should learn 
 
 Evil to know from good ; good, godlike and eterne ; 
 
 All e\'il perishable ; but vaunts his own 
 
 Life ta'en at last by taste of tools to him weU known j 
 
 And, all existence ranged in one supreme 
 
 Trine ; and so summed, views God, man, nature, as they seem 
 
 To mind imperfect, but expanding ever. 
 
 In moral might and worth, by pure and high endeavour. 
 
 Savonarola, Huss, Joan, Jerome, here, 
 
 For human ignorance shed the condonative tear ; 
 
 O'er man's malig^nance mourn : not long 1 with joy, 
 
 Teresa, Gersen, teach how spirits most rapt, employ, 
 
 In wholesome change, renewed life's total round ; 
 
 And with high ecstasy blend experience like profound." 
 
 " To souls," I said, " of such transcendent strain. 
 
 Heaven seems an easy prize to win, and won, retain ; 
 
 'Tis but to live as ye were wont below, 
 
 Add but reward to worth ; say for ' I trust,' ' I know.' " 
 
 Guyon there, here, Hypatia, Bourignon, 
 
 High confidences exchange, each vowed to God alone ; 
 
 Here, Calvin, there, Servetus, side by side 
 
 God one the same confess ; and, in spirit clarified, 
 
 This, by repentance fires, and that, by grace 
 
 Exalted to forgive, in mutual love embrace ; 
 
 The unity, that, of Godhood hailing, now ; 
 
 And this the elect one's bliss. Heaven's first end, fain to avow 
 
 Here, Crysostom and Luther find new fields 
 
 To expatiate in, of truth ; of all that freedom yields 
 
 For spirit to glory humbly in ; of care 
 
 The chastened soul now gives to truths essential. Prayer 
 
 Voiceless, Boehm's and Helmont's shades, combined, 
 
 For soul illumining gifts, breathe to their Lord all-kind. 
 
 That lead to primal light, the plenar sense 
 
 Of life supreme, and love of Deity more intense. 
 
 Swift faring as an eye-blink of the sun, 
 Which, when some envious cloud, its course abortive run, 
 Heat-molten, evanisheth ; shows to wakeful eye. 
 Star-studying, isle or hill snowswathed, 'neath Martian sky ; 
 In just such time as thought's from thought discerned. 
 We arrived, where but to attain, my mind once strongliest yearned ; 
 Where nature's realms with spirits sublimest teemed, 
 Elysian realms, most meet for shadowy gods, meseemed. 
 There, many a bard and prophet prone to stray 
 Mid stars, rejoice to enjoy perfection's widening way ; 
 The liberties extreme, God e'er appends 
 To rational souls, self -vowed to high and virtuous ends. 
 Here, Israel's seer, Xile cradled, he, who led 
 God's chosen through the sea, and in all people's stead, 
 The graven stones of Law received, and took 
 
800 FESTUS. 
 
 On man's behalf the oath to obey the eternal book ; 
 
 Daoud, here, and Ayub blend songs ; while round 
 
 Concordant, angel strings, as mountains light, the sound, 
 
 Snatch ; and with choicer art, zeal more ablaze, 
 
 World broad benevolence blend with those thrice blessed l&ys. 
 
 They in all lands, all worlds, are Heaven's elect 
 
 Who him best honouring, strive most good for man to effect. 
 
 The prophet choir, and he who heads their van 
 
 Pre-ominous of the fate, how blessed ! of future man. 
 
 On scrolls abestine scored with fiery pens 
 
 Soothly forebodes all worlds, as once this world of men's, 
 
 Of divinized humanity, the state 
 
 E'en lowliest, that o'er death shall yet predominate ; 
 
 Of nature heavenly bride and mother — may, 
 
 By holiest spiiit impregned, pure e'er as dawning day, 
 
 Man's universal sonship breathing through 
 
 The spell predictive, once incredible, now known true. 
 
 Valmiki, here, to crowds, with curious awe 
 
 Astound, delights to show how fancy, skilled to draw 
 
 Her visions once upon the illumined page. 
 
 Limns fables now on the air, for audiences more sage ; 
 
 Shows, whilst with billowy grandeur sweeps along 
 
 In strains of tidal strength his stream of patriot song 
 
 Fore orbs, how he his hero-godlings leads 
 
 Through huge emprises ; chaunts their world enlightening deeds ; 
 
 How mythic llama his generous battle forms ; 
 
 Routs every demon foe, wrong's every fastness storms. 
 
 That might sin's purpose serve, or to constrain 
 
 The innocent 'gainst their will ; to ratify the reign 
 
 Of evil, Heaven's rebel, or help defile 
 
 The soul serenely chaste which lives but for his smile, 
 
 Her husband's, lover's, lord's, and grown more pure 
 
 Through suffering and suspense, love's union makes more sure. 
 
 Vyasa, here, no more the peril sings 
 
 Of crownlets lost by cruel jest of kindred kings, 
 
 Lunar and solar, demon-driven to wage 
 
 War, who to wile truced time in forced companionage 
 
 This, realm by realm his empire diced away, 
 
 And the world's sceptre that, impledged in paltry play ; 
 
 But rating regal power in sacred awe 
 
 Hails sovereign sway as aid to Heaven's divinest law. 
 
 Never again those bards the authentic force 
 
 Of elements hail but hymn their sole creative source ; 
 
 All nature still participant shown with man, 
 
 And animal life revered, completes heaven's kindliest plan. 
 
 Orpheus anew there, hai-ps the adventurous strain 
 
 And starry voyage of soul athwart the aerial main ; 
 
 Founds later rites ; and to perfection brings 
 
 The spirit, self-chastened, trained to gaze but heavenly things ; 
 
 Nor, in pursuit of soul's salvation brook 
 
 One moment's backward glance, though life were in the look, 
 
 Here Olen, Linus there, the omnipotent ease 
 
 Sings of creative power and justice' stem decrees. 
 
FESTua. vn 
 
 There, haply Homer's awful shade amends 
 
 His lay, and powers divine and human smgB as friends. 
 
 Pure and impartial ; not contestf ul ; urged 
 
 By fate to fraud, or strife, prayer-bribed these, those sin-scourged- 
 
 Seeks Hesiod there in heaven's exterior stars 
 
 Virtue's abode ; views pleased, all time's Titanic wars 
 
 Of g^od gainst evil, vile Typhonian power 
 
 Not unforedoomed, nor yet slain in its culminant hour ; 
 
 Renewed to happier issue. JEschylus, here 
 
 Still thunders in his clouds, the same oracular seer 
 
 As erst in Greece, his parables of man. 
 
 Sin-shackled, God-loosed ; throned ; Heaven's vast triadic plan, 
 
 For teachable soul ; the secret now dares tell 
 
 How every untrue god should learn before he fell 
 
 To Hadean pains, remorseful there to lie. 
 
 The one sole name in heaven they all should deify, 
 
 And should all theirs displace. There, Sophocles, 
 
 Heart-racked no more by sense of man's mean destinies, 
 
 (Sorrow for even involuntary sin 
 
 No need for hallowing there, no risk of perishing in) 
 
 His lyre with joy- wreaths crowns, to extol the worth 
 
 Of immortality's new career, the spirit's rebirth ; 
 
 Euripides, there, greets from earth's orbed tomb 
 
 Redeemed man's faithful soul, greets, and now knows by whom. 
 
 In raptured views, here, Pindar knows his isles 
 
 Elysian. of the blessed, which sin nor death defiles, 
 
 To spheres of light expanded, where the soul 
 
 Rosponsible, age by age tried, as time's cycles roll, 
 
 All stain lost, quits all faults, and virtue -crowned 
 
 Those spiritual gold-flowers culls, which strew that starry ground, 
 
 Alceeus, Sappho, here, their vows renew 
 
 By each other sworn, those twain, towards love divine and true, 
 
 Kleanthes and the Pleiad bardlets, now, 
 
 Their mutual love, and ends self -less, heart-oned, avow ; 
 
 In God's perpetual lauds, in justice praise. 
 
 Conspire they, both to show and waDc in virtue's ways. 
 
 The star they serve, is that majestic lyre. 
 
 Type of each grateful soul that hymns his heavenly sire, 
 
 Eternal, infinite, without all change, 
 
 In essence, passed all thought of bounded Being's range. 
 
 Korinna, here, the prize of that pure strife 
 
 'Gainst sin, Olympian souls are crowned with, heavenly life, 
 
 Wins, strives for. Bion, Moschus, there, sustain 
 
 With hymnists of all time a loftier, holier, strain ; 
 
 Soul's death, by the Eternal Love deplored. 
 
 These sing, and those, Heaven's joy on godlike life restored. 
 
 Here, learns Lucretius' master mind to see 
 
 Amidst Heaven's seminal orbs the indwelling Deity ; 
 
 Not beauty sole ; not crowds of gods ; but one 
 
 Equal and apt to all the world-machine needs done ; 
 
 And Tartarus' pains remedial proved, direct 
 
 To riifhteousnesB and joy, joys in the glad prospect. 
 
802 fESTUS. 
 
 Joy, Maro's heart, there, rays forth, as he sees 
 
 The blessed results of soul's abstergent penalties, 
 
 And righteous meeds of justice, most divine 
 
 When moderatest, her beam, towards mercy shows incline. 
 
 To worlds, here, Ovid still their birth chants ; strives 
 
 Their tribes to instruct with truth ; the purity of their lives 
 
 Counts man's best faith ; best worship, this, to instill 
 
 In all souls love of good, souls self transformed from ill. 
 
 There, Lucan views with philosophic soul, 
 
 One Deity who creates, contains, rules, loves the whole ; 
 
 Here, Terence, proud of fellowship intense 
 
 With man's vicarious power, which sways, 'neath Providence, 
 
 Each sphere, and suffers through its regal will. 
 
 And mortal pains, the dues its fate is to fulfill, 
 
 Joys ail-where that to all create, may be 
 
 Soul freedom, and His love, who made man's spirit free, 
 
 Manilius, there, who, scrupulous from afar. 
 
 Would moralize once the aspects of moon or planet ; star 
 
 Or group of stars constellate, " such as these " 
 
 Said Luniel, " here, to expound man's mortal destinies ; 
 
 His thought, space scanning, rather bends to assign 
 
 To reason's ultimate spheres, (that universe of divine 
 
 Perfections, which, as virtue, power, and love, 
 
 Star Heavens interior skies, all skies, all orbs, above,) 
 
 Those fateful influences o'er soul which stand 
 
 High'st ; and show, God to obey, the world is to command. 
 
 Boethius, here, Synesius, sing and teach, 
 
 Altem, in heartiest hymns, the God all natures preach ; 
 
 The simple, infinite, Deity ; world-adored. 
 
 By man, by angel ; man's, creation's, heavenly Lord ; 
 
 With force resistless, science summed, both prove 
 
 How boundless reason rules the world, and rules through love. 
 
 Fardusi, there, of angel spirit foresent 
 
 By God, 'gainst evil sworn to wreck the firmament, 
 
 Vaunts gloriously the triumph ; and of good 
 
 O'er sin the enchantress vile, and all her hellish brood. 
 
 Here, Zardusht, owns his error ; and conceives 
 
 How evil annulled, perforce, God good sole conqueror leaves. 
 
 There, Saadi, Djami here, God's mystic love 
 
 Whisper to skiey saints, their secret lore to prove, 
 
 Sign oral of the Ineffable ; or show 
 
 'Neath word-veils truths half -hid, souls dread yet seek to know. 
 
 Meet ^sop, Bidpai, Phaedrus ; one main tongue 
 
 Like construable, man's tribes and lowlier lives among. 
 
 Nature's, they interpret to the sweet surprise 
 
 Of angel-souls ; tongue rife with rational thought and wise. 
 
 Join Babrius, Lokman ; teach all in one school 
 
 How kings may best serve men ; and sages learn to rule 
 
 He here the Eddaic lay who grimly penned. 
 
 Graved in dark lurid runes creation's awful end ; 
 
 Prophetic ; and from Hades called the ghost 
 
 Of buried god ; learns how, of all things, Deity most, 
 
FE8TUB, m 
 
 Hath calm, hath peace ; foreboding all intent, 
 
 No dissidence in decrees, no surprise at event ; 
 
 Dubiety nor debate, can ever be ; 
 
 Nor divine subterfuge, the all fatherly equity 
 
 Sate ; shows how not in twilight strife Heaven's powers 
 
 'Mid themselves war, as men, blind, on this earth of ours, 
 
 But 'gainst unholy acts and wicked will 
 
 Battling, contrive at last good's triumph o'er all ill. 
 
 Ossian, there, hails the Eternal spirit sun, 
 
 The Deity who to all gives life-light, takes of none. 
 
 Ilere, Kaedmon hymns, to listening orbs, the mind 
 
 All formative, infinite, yet, which, finite form defined 
 
 In nature, in the soul, in sacred life. 
 
 Fills, and each force sustains wherewith the whole is rife. 
 
 Du Bartas, there, here, Groot, no more, the fall 
 
 Of man and nature sing ; but this, the rebirth of all 
 
 And self recovery, with divine consent. 
 
 Of soul, create to obey, and love, the Omnipotent ; 
 
 That, the benignant advent of each star 
 
 New birthed which draws his eye, light sensitive, from afar 
 
 Its elements recounts, to souls select, 
 
 Its character, its course, its destiny, and aspect, 
 
 Here, Milton soars and sings ; there, Dante steers 
 
 His spectral barque, night-sailed, o'er time's unfathomed yeara 
 
 Though neither happily finds, by God's good will, 
 
 Room in his boundless world for endless woe, nor ill ; 
 
 "While both with penitent majesty confess 
 
 God everywhere ; and where He lives, He lives to bless. 
 
 Here, Shakespeare's spirit, conceptual of the passed, 
 
 Sweeps space, a giant ghost ; and leaning upon the blast, 
 
 Rounds many a sphere ; notes all things, and surveys 
 
 Sad, penetrative, benign, life's least and largest ways ; 
 
 And more of things to come contemplant, now. 
 
 Life's intricate ends toward good all tending, seeks to avow. 
 
 Boiardo, Geoffrey, and, of many a lay 
 
 The weird inventors, there, all natuie's hidden array 
 
 Of magical miracles revel in, nor find 
 
 Proof but of generous power, where'er creative, kind. 
 
 Here, Spenser's spirit directs, nor bids one rest, 
 
 All virtues, sunbright band, howbeit on several quest, 
 
 With steadfast will, each, active, haste to prove 
 
 Its title to enjoy that meed Celestial love 
 
 Immutable, shall yield to souls who have striven, 
 
 And, through the unlooked for test, the approval won, of Heaven. 
 
 Here, Camoens and Ercilla, warlike strains 
 
 Alternating with high deeds of couiage, which disdains 
 
 To compass less than conquest of a state ; 
 
 Some world-realm thralled of sin, truth would emancipate, 
 
 Him join, who Salem Liberate sang ; and now 
 
 The blessed assault repeats, and leads, 'neath saintly vow 
 
 Of hosts who time's long battailous jxith have trod. 
 
 To win aa victors, heaven perforce, the peace of God. 
 
801 FESTU8. 
 
 There, Pope's, Young's, Thomson's shades, devout, sublime, 
 
 Good in all nature trace, trace in the Eternal, time. 
 
 Here, Blackmore's rational soul, from every sphere 
 
 Fresh proofs draws of Grod's love and equity, and as here, 
 
 Inconfutable in song, the applause secures 
 
 Of each majestic judge whose favour fame ensures. 
 
 Here, Rowley's spirit superb, self-humbled, seeks 
 
 Sin's forged delights to expose ; here, virtue's champion, speaks 
 
 'Mid young enthusiasts for the all true and pure ; 
 
 His love, and allows how faith most tried, is brave to endure. 
 
 There, Maddalo's sensitive soul, of stainless birth, 
 
 Springs to embrace in Heaven, the God he mit-sed on earth ; 
 
 There, Julian's, with his friend's (from thoughts how vain, 
 
 How reasonless, of chance, world-gendering of the inane, 
 
 Cleared, or of paired Creators, foes in will, 
 
 This, lord of good and light, that, lord of dark and ill), 
 
 Twin spirits whose brilliant bale, lilce stars malign 
 
 In the void ascendant, long drew tears from Mercy's eyne ; 
 
 Now, both rejoicing in redemptive light 
 
 Of reason, adore and prove one sole good infinite. 
 
 Here, Adonais, blessed by all above. 
 
 The Soul Eternal hymns, God, Lord of light and love ; 
 
 The universal Deity, in all spheres 
 
 "Worshipped, and in all souls, like countless as His yeai-s.** 
 
 As when in line exorbitant has been cast 
 Around two focal lights an ellipse just and vast, 
 Surrounded by a fair and stately throng. 
 Whose rapt acclaim revived tones of pre-earthly song, 
 Each, 'mid a satellite ring which round them paced, 
 A pair I knew, I marked, and to accost them haste. 
 Each separate light, of like, and liberal, flame ; 
 Me they at once salute, and welcome by my name ; 
 As when with binary movement far in space 
 Twin stars each other round, and both, alternant, face j 
 Advance, salute, withdraw, and restant, gaze 
 Voiceless on their beloved, the lode- star of their days, 
 So these conccptive each of other's views. 
 Communicative of truth, seek truth but to diffuse ; 
 And I, who hailed at sight, right many a pair 
 Angelic while on earth joined them, benefic, there. 
 Here, reunite, aU gladden ; and all dilate 
 On the blessed theme, to all true spirit and elevate. 
 Common and dear ; soul's progress through the passed, ' 
 The future's heavenly gates, and faith's reward, at last. 
 Here, or in kindred clustering starlets dwell 
 "Who best have fret the lute, or tuned the sounding shell. 
 Arion, there, Jubal, Terpander, lead 
 Some vestal orb to obey the air their lyre or reed 
 Charms worlds with ; here, Amphion (prompt to raise, 
 On spiritual harmonies, cities whose walls are praise ; 
 "Whose streets are thanksgiving ; whose gates are prayer : 
 "Whose denizen souls ai' quq with Heaven's intents), bids share 
 
FESTU8. i»6 
 
 Their kindliest homes with those whose sentient breath, 
 
 Breathed even through brazen tubes, things dead redeems from death, 
 
 Earth's mightier melodists, all in one sweet strain. 
 
 That peace to express man's soul is maddening yet to attain, 
 
 Joined ; nor shall such for e'er be foiled, who wait 
 
 His all-sway, which at last true world-peace shall instat-e. 
 
 Quick as the scintillant shafts which towering rise 
 Up from the sun's broad orb to pierce the enringing skies, 
 Pa«s we to stars, where arts of old that graced 
 Earthlife, or dignified by memory now replaced, 
 Still honoured, flourish ; doubtless, of the twain 
 Best pleased I, who of art knew most the stem and strain. 
 To Pheidias, here, no more the form divine 
 Of Deity Bf-ems to man permissible to design ; 
 Sufficient be it his essence to conceivo 
 Unimageable, whose life it is soul-life to believe. 
 To Zeuxis, there, Parrhasius, here, is given 
 New skill to grace all truth with use sanctioned of heaven, 
 The soul's most sacred dreams to actualize, 
 In every shape and sense joy blameless can devise. 
 Here, Angelo's great spirit, on vastier bounds 
 Than Sistine shrine presents, his potent thought expounds 
 With sceptral pencil, on the aerial domes 
 High soaring into space which stud those starry homes. 
 And if earth's rise i)Ourtraying, and the doom 
 WTiich recusant soul awaits in worldstates yet to come ; 
 Not now, in fulminant wrath m.akes God remove 
 His creatures from his sight ; but judging all in love, 
 Kxults in legislative calm, in peace, 
 All conquering, and the reign of justice ne'er to cease ; 
 So here, who the awe-inspiring scene first drew 
 Of God's last judgment, now with false contrasts the true ; 
 Deems fallible fancy's fault too harsh ; nor feigns 
 Joy felt, to meet one skilled to sketch the Edenic plains, 
 Fair match for sterner scheme ; and so diffuse 
 O'er time's remembered scenes heaven's own more glorious hues : 
 Earth-scopes at will recalled ; and studies made 
 To illustrate saintliest life. Beato's, Raphael's aid 
 Guide, Murillo, Blake, invoke ; their powers 
 Used to adorn such lays as charm the immortal's hours, 
 And happily leisured gods, who press to hear 
 Prophet or bard his song recite ; or, tome of seer 
 Turn, marvelling, leaf by leaf, with love imbued 
 Of mind's miraculous gifts, in solemn solitude. 
 Here, founders of all crafts, all science, meet 
 Their perfectors ; and both their marvellous ends complete. 
 This one, with fanes of every form, to show 
 One spirit alone divine as God's, made mind could know ; 
 That every plan of sacred cast, ornate 
 Or simple, or vast or small, true faith shall consecrate ; 
 These, Him would honour sole in unity ; these, 
 In countless forms of life, and all life's energies. 
 
306 FE8TU8. 
 
 Here, they who temples built by Nile, or pitched 
 
 'Mid desert sands, grey booths, by badg-er's hides enriched ; 
 
 They who together Oman's threshing floor 
 
 Hallowed, and all to God who built, or rich or poor ; 
 
 Hophra, Bezaleel, Hiram ; who, where smiles 
 
 Ocean on Attic shores, Rhodian or Delian isles, 
 
 Their snow white shrines and fluted shafts combined, 
 
 As purity's sign, the soul to raise, and charm the mind ; 
 
 Hold now, all worlds as temples : every soul 
 
 A festive fane to Him devote, who framed the whole. 
 
 Cadmus here, Faustus there, new modes devise 
 
 Of symbolling thought unfixed ; scheme how, to distant skies 
 
 To impart intelligence ; while Franklin binds 
 
 With tameable lightnings spheres, as serpent charmer winds 
 
 Worms wise but fangless round his breast, and plans 
 
 With Watts, new forms of force, for mightier worlds than man's. 
 
 Here, souls with gifts engraffed that 'neath the chill 
 
 Pressure of want, drear lack of culture, or sage will, 
 
 Bloomed not on earth, in this expand ; their prime 
 
 Of nature but deferred to heaven's more genial clime. 
 
 There, innocent souls, foes but to wrong, hate, strife. 
 
 Speak with God's special voice, sparing all breathful life. 
 
 The patriarchs of all arts, all sacred, there, 
 
 Aim steeplier, more sublime discoveries make and share, 
 
 As worlds and elements, there, more grand than ours, 
 
 Fields vaster, more diverse, yield, claim, superior powers. 
 
 New solar laws, here, Kepler, and the Pole, 
 
 Wisest of all who watched the worlds round night that roll. 
 
 Interpret spiritually ; with finest skill 
 
 Showing how all results must gravitate towards God's will ; 
 
 How his attractive love unites and binds 
 
 Godwards, time's general soul, earth's Individual minds ; 
 
 And how all heavenly systems men devise. 
 
 Hath each true archetype in God's eternal skies. 
 
 Pride of his age, his orb, Kopemik, here, 
 
 Motives of moral act, not in man's vital sphere, 
 
 Selfish, necessitate, shrinks not now to show 
 
 How, from one central truth, for truth is God, there flow 
 
 Essential verities, through all worlds, that fill 
 
 All time, attracting good, repulsive of all ill. 
 
 And for that God is truth, lo 1 Kepler, here 
 
 Unveiling heaven -wide laws, proves, yet, with holy fear, 
 
 How mazy schemes, of credence intricate, 
 
 Fail 'fore that faith in God which nerves soul as with fate 
 
 All conquering, to avow the immutable one. 
 
 And indivisible, God, all wise, all-good ; who none 
 
 Equal, or like, or second e'er hath known ; 
 
 The holy spirit, all-sire, all present, aU in one : 
 
 Proves, how from out one central force enianes 
 
 The life which makes alive all souls, and all sustains ; 
 
 The imsleepful Judge who wields the whole at will, 
 
 The establisher of right, the exterminator of ill. 
 
FESTU8. 807 
 
 There, Galilei shows how truest creeds 
 
 Truth warmliest welcome, such so proved by kindliest deeds. 
 
 His soul no more by dubious friends perplexed, 
 
 Nor treacherous priests ; no more with persecutions vexed, 
 
 Shows to admiring orbs with joy elate, 
 
 The sky-scheme, and how simple its unexceptive state, 
 
 That every sphere, so willed iiie intelligent cause, 
 
 Hound other, or itself, revolve by fated laws ; 
 
 Each orbital movement of Heaven's world-thronged whole 
 
 One incoUieive plan speaking, one master soul. 
 
 Learns Newton here new laws orbicular ; bides 
 
 The age long lapse of years eternity divides 
 
 With time in conning new organic frames 
 
 Of mundane being ; life, here, from ignorance reclaima 
 
 Heavenwards ; and loyal to His gracious force 
 
 WTio to all things prescribes their interactive course, 
 
 Now, this world shows how truth with science sides ; 
 
 Now, that ; and like a god, in passing, times their tides. 
 
 There, Flamsteed, and Laplace, through fineless space, 
 
 Detect in mightiest ease the sunstar's nebulous race, 
 
 Through all its varied vastness, and combine 
 
 More marvellous proofs to adduce of mechanism divine ; 
 
 Proofs, too, of how from one chief truth made known, 
 
 Light-wise, all worship spreads concentric round God's throne. 
 
 And how all natural systems reason views 
 
 Based on one variant plan, congruous, one end pursues. 
 
 Here, Dalton, pious, venerable, contrasts 
 
 As framed by God's good will which all precedes, outlasts, 
 
 The primary motes of spheres ; nor e'er to chance 
 
 Compellant. prone to ascribe their world genetic dance 
 
 Twin atomies meets with anywhere ; but finds 
 
 In God's minutest acts studies for vastest minds. 
 
 Swift as the impetuous messages of light 
 Hurled from the sun's hot heart, which daze Heaven's spatial night ; 
 Fleet as the healing angel's arrows fly, 
 When he his golden quiver is emptying o'er the sky, 
 Intent to slay some vast and viperous pest 
 An ignorant city clasps, delirious to her breast ; 
 The Leonine sign we reach, where, poised in space, 
 In kinglihood of light, one star holds sovran place. 
 " Mark thou these generous souls," said Luniel, " round 
 "WTio all the more they give, in their own gifts abound ; 
 Worlds grratefuUer for good on them bestowed 
 By lowliest spirits, who know the boon they bare a load, 
 Howbeit by love imposed ; and humbly sought 
 But to be loved by those whose every life they had bought 
 At their own life's cost ; souls which perceive all time 
 As men a passing storm in some precarious clime ; 
 Or an impermanent star, which peers through space. 
 And comes and goes, nor knows one fixed abiding place." 
 
 From orblet on to orb, we winged. " Behold," 
 
SOB FESTU8. 
 
 Said I, " how warmer stars hope's livelier buds unfold." 
 
 Here, many a troop of joy-eyed souls, we viewed, 
 
 Glad to rejoin hope ; those to g-lad the multitude, 
 
 Telling" how they on earth, despairing, died ; 
 
 And wakening- here, hope, first of forms before them eyed. 
 
 Souls, innocent in God's eye of all offence. 
 
 If being bom were none, nor dying in defence 
 
 Of virtue, piety, or their sacred breath 
 
 Who had given them to the light, and hallowed so their death ; 
 
 Now, circling reverent round their guide, the more 
 
 Their trust, so much her power showed mightier than before. 
 
 "Souls these," said Luniel, "time's millennial course 
 
 Sixfold repeated, shows with ever greatening force, 
 
 Convictive, teaching virtue as the test 
 
 Of earthlif e, temperance, truth, and Heaven's perfective rest ; 
 
 For blameless spirits enough. Let sin sustain 
 
 Just discipline ; and false gods disproved, of angel strain, 
 
 All error bounden at last to disappear 
 
 One holiest faith shall yet fill earth's e'er-bettering sphere ; 
 
 Hosts spiritual of truth shall yet o'errun, 
 
 Unconquerable, the orb, from rise to set of sun. 
 
 Souls such as they are these, who from the first 
 
 Have combated that deceit which conscience, sin accursed, 
 
 Dreads of a vengeful Power whose posthumous wrath 
 
 Bums, passed the tomb, to bar soul from its upward path. 
 
 Through penitence, towards that peace which fills Heaven's sky, 
 
 The balmy air saints breathe of boundless charity ; 
 
 The great return of spirit created, led 
 
 Star by star, life by life, back to all Being's head, 
 
 The vital fulness of divinity, there 
 
 Concentrate, to complete, and Heaven's perfection share. 
 
 Consummate spirits are these who time by time 
 
 Offer themselves to God, to work his will sublime ; 
 
 On his fixed word, as on an altar, lay 
 
 The life He lent, to plead to soul- worlds, wiled astray, 
 
 The rectifying truth, regenerant, pure, 
 
 Remedial, which alone, through all the ages, sure, 
 
 And through all worlds sufficient, serves to save, 
 
 By brotherly help, the gift their provident Father gave ; 
 
 And so conserve, to their enduring good. 
 
 Who else might alway err in trackless dubietude. 
 
 Souls such as these, the simple truth attest 
 
 Of Him the one, the sole, the mercifullest, the best. 
 
 Who feels, with all He hath made, their faults, their needs, 
 
 Their weaknesses, defects ; and 'gainst imperfect deeds. 
 
 Or blameable acts, sets justice, less severe 
 
 Than infinite right might claim ; for, finite, who could bear ? 
 
 Here, noting, too, soul's fall perpetual, due 
 
 To faculties imperfect, incompetent to fore view 
 
 Act's sequence ; yet, in man's elastic strain. 
 
 Rise, grand if gradual, hail, towards Heaven's perfective plane ; 
 
FE8TU8. S09 
 
 Embodying thus, its last and best event, 
 
 The great Designer's vast and primariest intent. 
 
 Here Vico, awed, learns how, in the Heavenly mind, 
 
 Not only all advanoe of human soul designed. 
 
 But all the orbs of universal space, 
 
 In God's infinite plan have each progressive place. 
 
 There, Campanella, soaring on the wings 
 
 Of the world's giant soul, up to the source of things, 
 
 Finds it the end ; and spirit's heavenly rest, 
 
 Immortal and divine, in God's all-hallowing breast ; 
 
 Knows etJsence and existence, in things made. 
 
 Variant, and sole in God identic ; so displayed 
 
 The world's base spiritual ; in meet degree 
 
 AU things as they respect the love of Deity, 
 
 Within their natures shrined. Here, Cardan finds, 
 
 Not proved by stars self -lit, but by truths only, minds 
 
 Illumed in the Heaven God lights, life boons dispense 
 
 Reflective of His power, His truth, His all-presence ; 
 
 His, who endowed the moral world with one 
 
 Chief gift of freest choice in Him, of union 
 
 With good eternal, or of ill's forlorn 
 
 Estate, foredoomed to cease, of imperfection borne. 
 
 Agrippa, here, who to all occult lore 
 
 Gave method, meaning, place in science, now, no more 
 
 With vanity vexed, makes boast o' the shadowy show 
 
 Of dread and secret craft ; nor longer longs to know 
 
 The inmost spirits of all material things. 
 
 Of elements and of stars, nor through enchanter's rings 
 
 Raise ghosts, or fabulous demons ; but each thought 
 
 Bends now to augment the sense of wonders truth hath wrought ; 
 
 Nor 80 much what is penetrable, to soul 
 
 Searchful of truth, as what's permissible to the whole. 
 
 Here Lully, more successful than of old 
 
 In one great art combines, resolves, and seeks to unfold, 
 
 The mysteries of all science, so to bind 
 
 In one regenerate shape all instruments of mind, 
 
 "Moral and rational, which to soul shall show 
 
 True certitude in all things men think, wish, feel, or know. 
 
 This, found in Deity only, which enfolds 
 
 All perfect infinites, and deploys the truths it holds, 
 
 To mind observant of God's works and ways. 
 
 As, to some sun-seer, night unveils her starry maze ; 
 
 Shows all laws, rays from His eternal sphere, 
 
 And boundless, issuant ; loveful these, and those severe ; 
 
 Unvarying all, conti-olling all events. 
 
 All equal to the ends of infinite firmaments. 
 
 And, if created mind, affecting what 
 
 Passes comprise, part fail ; yet all inadequate not 
 
 The infinite to appraise ; nor ours to clutch 
 
 Sj)ace boundless, as a whole, yet of that whole how much 
 
 Man's common reason grasps, as when one sees 
 
 Space opt'uing up to space its i>^rry immensities j 
 
810 FE8TU8. 
 
 So, though in reason limited, in belief 
 
 Illimitable, of God we hold and haye in chief. 
 
 Hutton, De Luc, there, Werner, many a globe 
 
 Fire cored, rock-girdered, search ; bent reverently to probe, 
 
 In emulous love of sacred knowledge, all 
 
 The secrets God hath shrined in every heavenly ball ; 
 
 And primary elements sought no more, all teach, 
 
 God's plastic hand imparts vu*tue no natures reach. 
 
 Here, Huyghens, oft, his preconceptive lines 
 
 Of worlds and souls, compares : and vastening all, refines 
 
 To more majestic purports, and to ends 
 
 Nobler than charmed of old, on earth, his noblest friends. 
 
 Swift as on time's first day, Heaven's thought-made light, 
 With one meek glance, dispelled the inconspicuous night, 
 Pretemporal, like extensive with all space ; 
 And spheres surprised first eyed each other's stonied face ; 
 Fleetlier through shining aether than the ray 
 Darts forth of polar light ; we spirits, our spacious way 
 Cleave, to seats loveliest, where the ripened fruits 
 Of wise Humanity glow ; the errors faith transmutes 
 To judgments generous, just ; the loves and hates. 
 Like holy, righteous heaven adopts, reciprocates : 
 Farther than those bright sparklings of his crown 
 Through space interminable, our sun sends ceaseless down, 
 To the watchful world ; in an eye's glance, we passed, 
 Commoved in spirit, and sad, and reached, descending, last, 
 Those clear and fortunate stars, where many wise. 
 Earnest in good ; for good, prompt all to sacrifice, 
 Dwell ; and ^^dth sight far bent towards the end of things, 
 Live righteously, and leave to Heaven all orderings ; 
 Who all things view, with reverent trust, as weighed 
 On God's determinaait beam ; and Heaven's broad future laid 
 On such foundations as love, joyed, may see ; 
 And Justice, to all souls commend, as yet to be. 
 Here, Henoch, joined with Atlas, walks the sky, 
 Translated, one, to an ever-brightening destiny ; 
 One, God to praise, for every new-bom star 
 Which decks heaven's coasts where His beloved Immortals are. 
 There, too, the throned three, who, long through Heaven, 
 Followed the star of God when Christ to earth was given, 
 The Eternal Love pursue ; and through aU skies 
 Humanity sole proclaim the spirit God deifies. 
 Here, many a soul all creatural virtues graced, 
 Of aU. earth's faiths, I saw, high in God's favour placed ; 
 Buddhist and Brahman, Mazdyan, Moslem, Jew. 
 Shaman's, Sikh's, Christ's ; of all the world's beliefs no few, 
 Gladdening ; yet griefful that so oft man's mind 
 Will God's salvation deem to faith or form confined. 
 Church, temple, ritual password, sect, or creed. 
 While all God asks from men, is pure thought, righteous deed. 
 And love of Him, sole : truth this, one and same, 
 Clommon, to earth and heaven, heaven's saints and earth's conclaim. 
 
FESTUa. 811 
 
 Here, Socrates, humane and humbly wise. 
 
 Inspired, immortal, death, life's fugitive foe defies ; 
 
 And knowing now man's thought the measuring rod 
 
 Of all things, all things knows, and knows things all in God, 
 
 There, Zeno learns how all-compelling fate 
 
 Hangs on free choice ; free choice alone necessitate 
 
 Of €rod, resolved that privileged rank to ensure 
 
 And range, to soul, He had made immortal to endure ; 
 
 Made, and foreseeing how men choose to live, 
 
 Their right saved, and secured His own prerogative. 
 
 Here, Epicurus, sanguine, now, no more 
 
 Creation's seeds to assort, but greatlier far to adore 
 
 The star-sower of all space, fails not to find 
 
 Fit spheres to sway, wherein to mould the ductile mind 
 
 Of fallible cast, to wisdom ; and incite 
 
 Souls purified to aid the all-active Infinite ; 
 
 Who, joy eternal not in stirless rest 
 
 Seeks, but in soul redeemed, and worlds by kindness blessed. 
 
 Stilpon the blessings shows of chastened mind. 
 
 In harmony with the laws of Nature pure and kind ; 
 
 No more, here, Pyrrho doubts ; but certified 
 
 Of Deity, in his soul contemns all thought beside ; 
 
 There, D'Hobach, Volney, Hume, while scanning spheres, 
 
 And time's concentric course 'midst Heaven's all-bounding years, 
 
 Find law itself miraculous ; truth imbase 
 
 On outward knowledge ; faith in the inmost conscience place ; 
 
 Science supreme of things known, things believed. 
 
 And, faith conceded, show truth as in God conceived. 
 
 Kebes the tablet, here, of life mimdane 
 
 Unrolls, and pious troops leads toward the Eternal's fane ; 
 
 Truth's temple on virtue's golden strata based 
 
 And with the o'ersheltering roof of faith celestial graced. 
 
 Prodicus, there, the path of righteous choice 
 
 Points, manly, and confirms industrious virtue's voice, 
 
 Fame promising 'gainst the lures of pleasurous vice, 
 
 And treacherous indolence, perdition's normal price. 
 
 Here, Aristotle's keen discursive sense. 
 
 Ranging from tiniest life to pure omnipotence, 
 
 All things defines, demonstrates Being's cause ; 
 
 New moral rules propounds ; plans new illative laws. 
 
 Here, to all wisdom's inexhaustible spring, 
 
 His thirst for truth unslaked, brings, and e'er longs to bring, 
 
 Tully, his mind receptive ; sifts his store ; 
 
 Fines and refines, till all ho owns is purest ore, 
 
 Of polity, probity, right ; the chief est good 
 
 Soul can embrace, where'er in life, in death pursued. 
 
 '* Clear patriot shade," I said, " to the end of days, 
 
 Thy land's applause, God's calm approof, hear, all men's praise." 
 
 His dream august, here, Scipio verifies, 
 
 And with star-ruling spirits resumes life's happiest ties 
 
 Eternized ; oft from Cirque galactic led 
 
 Hither, where patriot souls, one brotherly fellowhead, 
 
812 FESTU8, 
 
 Meet from all spheres. There, the lame Gyaran slave 
 
 Basks before God, and bids, in face of fate, be brave, 
 
 Earth's trembling orb ; basks, in the beam of God, 
 
 Heaven's light intelligible, Himself his own abode ; 
 
 Of his own law, Lord ; on Nature's ends relies. 
 
 Truth, conscious rectitude ; still liolds those only v/ise. 
 
 Free, who, prepared alike to live or die, 
 
 Their natural will with God's, so fate's, identify. 
 
 Heaven's thrall, ere man's. With him, the imperial sage 
 
 Joins hands ; man's inborn sense of God ix> every age 
 
 Revealing ; our own b(;ing, misconceived, 
 
 By us, asserts divine and proves what he believed. 
 
 There, world-wise Seneca to shining throngs, 
 
 God's presence shows by right to sinless soul belongs ; 
 
 Still holds eternal bliss their boon, their prize, 
 
 That love God, souls divine, their virtue deifies ; 
 
 Proves coarsest passions maj'-, by tact refined. 
 
 Of duteousness and faith, broaden and exalt the mind ; 
 
 And avarice even, by wondrous holihood 
 
 Of spirit, be changed to greed of truth for all men's good j 
 
 Nor, from all error free, shall fallible mind, 
 
 In any imperfect soul, howe'er towards God inclined. 
 
 Avail all truth to compass, in whose view 
 
 Man's best perfection is, perfection to pursue. 
 
 Here, Apuleius, from sin's gross disguise 
 
 Freed, shows now, hierophant of purest mysteries ; 
 
 How soul, reborn, attains, despite its fall. 
 
 Through self -wrought rise, a blessed reunion with tlie All 
 
 Essential one. Plotinus, there, disrates 
 
 His spirit no more, but oned with that he contemplates, 
 
 In thought ecstatic, aims to sum the whole ; 
 
 Man's vast particular, God's the universal soul. 
 
 Here, Proclus glorying in all bliss to be. 
 
 His spirit imbathes in deeps of f ontal divinity. 
 
 Eucleides there, Ammonius, and a band 
 
 Self -culled from various faiths, for one belief demand 
 
 Access, in Heaven's wide temple, where all creeds 
 
 Have each their separate shrine ; beneficence in deeds 
 
 And love of God, the sole conditions claimed 
 
 By that Immutable saint to whom the whole is named ; 
 
 Who, all good, holds no rival foe in kind. 
 
 But evil, a moral myth, impersonate of man's mind. 
 
 Crowned with original innocence, never lost, 
 A youthful spii-it that late death's refluent tide had crossed, 
 There, marked I, as through many a tempering sphere, 
 Though scarcely changed, or made more spiritually clear, 
 More amiable, she, with the immortal blessed, 
 Up to serenest heights of pure perfection pressed. 
 We both, in silent awe, as on they swept 
 Upward, that band behold, who Heaven's immense e'er kept ; 
 Their kindred's good, immortal in all spheres, 
 Bent to achieve, where'er ill, transient even, appears ; 
 
FB8TUS. 813 
 
 And as when dove or sea fowl o'er the sky 
 
 Crossing, in myriads massed, show oft, to watchful eye, 
 
 The shape each singly owns ; the living cloud. 
 
 Its flightful shadow upon the sea, eyed, cries aloud ; 
 
 So, but in guise angelic, and with song, 
 
 Not less than that which soars sweet from the seraph throng, 
 
 That host of light rejoiced as on they flew 
 
 Upon their love-fraught quest ; and so, like-joyed, we knew 
 
 Tliat, as some relieving force, the pride of kings. 
 
 Makes towards its aim, nor rests its city rescuing wings, 
 
 Vast, incontractile, till it gain its end ; 
 
 Routs the beleaguering foe ; and makes a state its friend ; 
 
 Firm through all time ; this mission, too, on high, 
 
 Charged with God's grace, and urged by dear Humanity, 
 
 Must, lastly, triumph. I, meantime (one glance 
 
 Caught of a rayonnant form, which bent its countenance 
 
 That moment towards us) following the angel's eye, 
 
 Mark, as from bosom dropped of that bright host draw nigh 
 
 Within our vision, every feature clear, 
 
 The spirit all we have known, and of all known most dear. 
 
 Drawn nigh, she vanished voiceless ; if to impose 
 
 Upon remembrance reticence, Heaven only knows, 
 
 And she, in this. Heaven's confidant. Not one glance 
 
 Strayed from that mien, till gone ; when, first, I brake the trance ; 
 
 And cried, " Blessed spirit from first of sinless strain. 
 
 Time's dimming dust shook off, gladden in thy source again ; 
 
 Clear, incontaminate flower of life, there live, 
 
 Stem but towards self thou wouldst all others' faults forgive, 
 
 As on earth, so in Heaven ; there now, in right 
 
 Of primitive purity, rise ; rejoin thine Infinite." 
 
 " Our finite ends," said Luniel, " we, meanwhile 
 
 Had best prove ; and rejoin Earth's far off spatial isle. 
 
 Rejoice thou, too, companion through these skies, 
 
 In glories ne'er before unveiled to mortal eyes. 
 
 Of love, soul-educative ; who sole hast viewed 
 
 With what all various joys God hath these worlds endued ; 
 
 Which proved, prepare man's upward battling mind 
 
 For nobler, loftier, bliss by the All- just designed." 
 
 ** Enough ; " I answered. " All I have seen, and now. 
 
 As a bird, that travelling far, yet still, his native bough 
 
 Musing, 'mid Oran's palms, or Thracian plains, 
 
 Towards Albion's lowliest eaves his sight instinctive strains, 
 
 Some rustic cot to view, less fair than bowers. 
 
 Where he with Spring might spend her borrowed summer hours ; 
 
 But ah 1 his birth-place ; I, with all her woes. 
 
 Her griefs, her faults, ask earth." " Be it," the angel said ; " here 
 
 close 
 The sights thou hast glimpsed of spheral life. Alway 
 Ponder the truths these scenes mysteriously convey ; 
 And as each separate star, by fine degiees. 
 Nature from taint chaotic and blind, wild, motion frees ; 
 80 spirits dowered with virtuous sense of strife 
 
8U FESTU8. 
 
 tJpwarda, through all the ranks of firmamental life. 
 
 Their faculties requicken at His great will, 
 
 Who, schooling all in love, bids all His thoughts fulfil ; 
 
 While these, in Heaven's new orders taught and trained, 
 
 Their best reward e'er reap in duties love-constrained. 
 
 For, not on stools of stateliest idleness, 
 
 Shall God the immortal soul magnificently distress ; 
 
 Nor, with monotonous viollings, disarrange 
 
 Glad Nature's genial course of ever freshening change ; 
 
 Not He shall doom man's everduring days 
 
 To raptures dumb, nor thoughts unutterable of praise ; 
 
 Nor dazzle with one ecstatic blaze the mind 
 
 That bums, in active good, man's worthiest end to find ; 
 
 God's loftiest love ; nor craves for ampler rest 
 
 Than Virtue's meed demands, God in the heart possessed ; 
 
 But progress, to the blessed, shall bliss contain, 
 
 And, to the worst, give hope, through purifying pain, 
 
 Remorse, repentance, self -regenerate will, 
 
 Of good gained, virtue loved, loathed vice, abandoned ill. 
 
 For, being is probation. Soul, on earth. 
 
 In every testful sphere, must prove to God its worth, 
 
 Its use of privileged powers ; and, free create, 
 
 By its own act works out its ever instant fate ; 
 
 And evil's darkness, what but possible light ? 
 
 The field where conquering Truth wages her gracious fight.'* 
 
 " Life, fire-chordlike," I said, " at once, both ways. 
 
 Truth between God and man, and man and God conveys. 
 
 And, as in class, some teacher when he gains 
 
 Full seizure of the minds he elevates while he trains ; 
 
 And hurrying to impart the final word. 
 
 Which shall to each convey ripe meaning of all heard, 
 
 Hears, intercepted from his lips, let fall 
 
 His own conclusive proof, conceived, expressed by all ; 
 
 So man, long taught of Heaven through wisest strain, 
 
 Speaks in one word his soul, 'tis life he would maintain ; 
 
 Eternal life ; which worlds here, worlds on high 
 
 Alike fail space for spirits' due expanse to supply ; 
 
 All ours ; wherein through Nature's infinite years, 
 
 Successive world-lives sloughed, the immortal reappears ; 
 
 Man, finite deity ; who in meet employ 
 
 God's will fulfils ; and so, all duty with all joy 
 
 Blends, that in every sphere the spirit may see 
 
 Clearlier, why being once regenerate, still should be 
 
 Enamoured of perfection," " Do thou, then. 
 
 Remembering God is God, and angels heavenly men. 
 
 Men, earthly angels ; messengers, 'like sent 
 
 His aims to enact, throughout the all lif eful firmament, 
 
 Each like empowered, like missioned, His wise will 
 
 In their divinest ends and noblest aims, fulfil 
 
 Both, lif eful ; and all scare of death apart, 
 
 Said Luniel, trust God's love ; trust wholly, and take heait ; 
 
 Paul, Plato, seest not, live ; and Christ the skies 
 
FESTU8. 816 
 
 Crowns ; dread not thon. dear soul, to join the all good and wise. 
 
 Whose end is so to assimilate to His own 
 
 All spirits, that Love- in spired, they share His boundless throne. 
 
 Now must we hence. I know thou wilt forget 
 
 Too much thou hast learned ; 'tis thus men ag-grandise the debt 
 
 How needlessly, to God's good grace they owe 
 
 Eagering this, that, to leani, then that they learn, unknow. 
 
 This, and thou dost, so keenlier shalt thou feel 
 
 The oblivious art God's pity alone avails to heal, 
 
 \Miat anguish, shame and honor shall be thine 
 
 To have hooded thine own eyes to hide the light divine 
 
 The law of conscious freedom, every breast 
 
 Holds from God's hallowing hands ; Fate bids me spare the rest. 
 
 But Heaven may aid, enhance ; nor shall the care 
 
 Of one sweet spirit thou least dreamst of, forsake thee, there." 
 
 " "VVhate'er the ill I do, the dread to dree 
 
 These ills foretold, I said, may haply advantage me. 
 
 So would I urge once more, ere yet I lose 
 
 All touch, all sight of these, these bright soul-gladdening views." 
 
 " Look, then, once more ; behold these happier spheres, 
 
 Where soul grown strong by lapse of ever lengthening years, 
 
 All sin and sin's punition, every trace 
 
 Of trespass in the spirit, permitted such to efface, 
 
 Effectually erased, the enfranchised force. 
 
 Rejoicing to renew its upward, heavenward, course 
 
 With faculties refined, sublimed, made pure. 
 
 And glad no more the scorns of Ignorance to endure. 
 
 While wink the fates ; He lingering to fulfil 
 
 His ends, 'gainst all who mock, or trust to balk his will ; 
 
 WTio drew from out the depths of His delight 
 
 All Being, to make and share His pleasure infinite ; 
 
 Who gave the key of law ; law is but love 
 
 Directed and defined to ends all law above, 
 
 He only can ensure, who, rational soul. 
 
 Makes answerable to Him whose love inarms the whole ; 
 
 The law of truth, right, virtue ; means are these 
 
 Life's loftiest aims to achieve, soul's happiest potencies. 
 
 When in the lapse of ages, time's great year 
 
 Fulfilled, the disciplined soul shows perfect, peaceful, clear, 
 
 All life shall be renewed, and man's great race 
 
 Transfigured, bide in Heaven, God's spiritual embrace." 
 
 " But say," said I, " what loftiest end is ours, 
 
 Angel's or man's ; does soul attain celestial powers ? " 
 
 " What end at last the principle divine 
 
 Shall win, like regal heir exiled, until combine. 
 
 Through depurative tests, life's every end 
 
 Perfective ; and, tiU proved God's champion, liege, and friend. 
 
 The inmost heavens it gain, where, time by time, 
 
 Convoked, the hierarchies of blessed souls sublime. 
 
 Rule and sustain, with Him who willed, the whole ; 
 
 God will, himself, impart to man's affiliate souL 
 
 We now address us to depart ; and I, 
 
316 FE8TU8, 
 
 Contempling with dismay the black and vacuous sky 
 
 Below our feet, held back, till half compelled 
 
 By the angel Power ; when, high before us, I beheld, 
 
 Not marked till then, a tower broad based, sublime 
 
 Ten-staged, each stage a star. *' Lo 1 this the tower of Time," 
 
 Said the Angel, " which to ascend and gain one view 
 
 Encyclic, of the spheres, we have light-borne, lightened through, 
 
 Thy soul may strengthen for the nearing strife 
 
 Never to close till Heaven gives rest to spiritual life." 
 
 This climbing, sphere by sphere, on the upmost stance 
 
 Old Time we viewed who thence his worlds in one broad glance, 
 
 All in his ken, surveyed ; and though to few 
 
 Orbs, and those aged, he speaks, yet he the angel knew ; 
 
 The angel, him. Still wist not I their tongue ; 
 
 Preglacial, it might be, when moons were alway young. 
 
 But Luniel says, he moaned that while his head 
 
 And feet felt frore as ice, his heart was molten lead ; 
 
 And that, she told him, never since the hour 
 
 He first the heavens convinced of his rapacious power. 
 
 When, from the breast of earth's maternal orb. 
 
 The spherelet, whose pure paths her guiding cares absorb. 
 
 Was rudely wrung ; and, (but that ruth divine. 
 
 All bettering, bade the lost upon the loser shine, 
 
 To cheer her night ; there had been sore discontent. 
 
 With Time's remorseless rule, through all the firmament) 
 
 His cruel act she never had forgot, 
 
 Howbeit all holy G-od had sanctified her lot." 
 
 To which he answered, " He no vain regret 
 
 Feigned for aught crook'd of course. God all would straighten 
 
 yet; 
 And now that doom's long reign had once begun, 
 Few were the hours ere night should fold all, sun by sun ; 
 Eternity resume creative right, 
 
 And stud all heaven with stars intelligible of light." 
 Then, bidding Time farewell, which he, meseemed. 
 Took ill, as from his eyen a piteous malice gleamed ; 
 And marking where the welkin-cleaving ring 
 Our sunpath meets ; and all earth destined spirits doth bring, 
 (In their prejudged descent to assume the cloak 
 Of body, wherein abide all who endure life's yoke,) 
 To the fields they dwell in many a year, the gates 
 We neared, where sunlifed soul fulfils and earns its fates, 
 Through vast futurity; and towards the same 
 Star-chapiter'd pointing, I, " behold our way," exclaim. 
 " Not by G-od's gates," said the Angel, " we depart ; 
 We, mean and shadowy things, as I am, and thou art ; 
 Not as reborn, assured ; nor pure, untried ; 
 Nor as on His palms our names God's hands bare sanctified ; 
 But, as beseems us more, through yon bright valves 
 The southening sun's broad gates, who space's splendid halves 
 Distinguishing, in one sole service binds, 
 With his and angel's, man's, all ancillary minds ; 
 
FE8TU3, 817 
 
 Servants, but elevated, the laws, the ways 
 
 Of His great house to enforce, all rational life obeys." 
 
 Her loveable teaching, full of hope and awe, 
 
 (Completing, as our feet fast towards those portals draw, 
 
 Paused Luniel ; and descending, hand in hand. 
 
 Our starry quests we cease, quit that setherial land ; 
 
 As when with instant impulse down the sky 
 
 Shoot, on November's eve, twin meteors from on high. 
 
 '• G-rant me," said I, as on our swiftening course 
 
 We sped, like lightning rays shot from some sunny source ; 
 
 '* One boon, dear spirit ; if, as to me appears 
 
 These souls I have seen have ages, long since lived, or years 
 
 Full many ; and many a hopeful lustre passed, 
 
 As deathless, wise, all sense of grosser sins have cast ; 
 
 And purifying penance, with one pang, 
 
 Ix)ng drawn, hath 'scaped, unscathed, from error's fatal fang. 
 
 Into these homes of truth and holy joy, 
 
 Perfective, apt henceforth times endless to employ ; 
 
 Souls, glorying now in liberty of state, 
 
 Freed from the bonds of sin, of law the irrational hate, 
 
 Of conscious conflict 'gainst God's love, the strong 
 
 Wrestler who throws all ill, and slays the giant, wrong ; 
 
 Yet wouldst assent now, I their state would view, 
 
 ('Neath thy world-shadowing wing) who live but life to rue ; 
 
 By error yet so g^iiled, and by the event 
 
 Of selfish sin unchanged, impure, impenitent." 
 
 '* This may not be, I know not why, as yet 
 
 Know but it is forbid ; nor do, nor dare forget 
 
 ^Vhat were to brave prohibitive law, replied 
 
 In tenderest tone, (earth glimpsed that moment,) the angel guide. 
 
 Beings and scenes less blessed than these be, I 
 
 Love not. With other aid tempt thou earth's nether sky, 
 
 Dimmed by one world, I know ; where spirits accursed 
 
 By their own acts or lusts, manfiend or demon erst, 
 
 God's justice satiate through the burning sense 
 
 Of his pure law contemned, due penitence for offence 
 
 Needing, ere, lifed again with freedom, light 
 
 Intelligible, with love and conscious sense of right, 
 
 r»Ian, Heaven may face, or any spheral kind 
 
 Blessed with belief in God, and crowned with reasoning mind ; 
 
 This, kno'W'ing still, life's future end, far less 
 
 To expiate evil passed, than e'er in good progress. 
 
 For the rational world God made his mirror first ; 
 
 And his own image 'twas, till man by sin self -cursed, 
 
 Shattering in countless selfs the semblance fine. 
 
 Made unreflective dust of once one whole divine. 
 
 Souls that love God, His heaven our hearts within. 
 
 That here by love and good towards man, and hate of sin. 
 
 Most thrive, are they for whom His heavenly rest 
 
 On high He saves, atnd folds in his eternal breast. 
 
 But thou, to earth returned, forget not there. 
 
 What here thou hast seen, though store of sorrow be thy aharo. 
 
318 FE8TU8. 
 
 Speak to thy fellow souls all hope, all joy ; 
 
 Seek life's most pure delights in mercy's mild employ. 
 
 The lapsing tear slight not ; nor penitent sigh 
 
 Check, earnest of the intent to turn to him most high ; 
 
 The orgies of false faith forsake, false life, 
 
 For spiritual commune with heaven, of rapture rife ; 
 
 Forswear life's follies for man's bettering cause ; 
 
 And learn, by practice stern, soul's self redemptive laws. 
 
 For, not in spatial acts of earth and main ; 
 
 Not in the vaulted dome of heaven's star-lighted fane, 
 
 Not in the spring-tide breath of buds and flowers. 
 
 Nor growth of grain or fruit, sense we the All-holy's powers ; 
 
 Not in the rise of dews, nor suns that shine 
 
 Glimpse we the escapef ul proof of cause, or will, divine ; 
 
 But know, it is in the laws of things which bound 
 
 Our thoughts of time, space, earth, His all-presence is found ; 
 
 Laws moral and material, which through space, 
 
 Binding all earthlike spheres have each like needful place ; 
 
 G-ood, thus, o'er ill, o'er wrong right, God's great cause, 
 
 One with himself, dispread essential through all laws, 
 
 Of sensible Nature ; measure, number, weight. 
 
 Identic in all orbs, one mind must predicate ; 
 
 One nature argue : acting towards one end, 
 
 From a like motived cause all worlds may apprehend ; 
 
 That motive, good and joy : His own and theirs 
 
 He hath made, as he with all the bliss of Being shares j 
 
 God uncomprised of soul, yet in all hearts ; 
 
 Immeasurable ; without all sign, all form, all parts ; 
 
 TJnsearched for, unknown ; till besought, severe ; 
 
 To penitent soul, sin stained, pure love without all fear. 
 
 And his redemptive process, one and same. 
 
 Self betterment, in all worlds, trust in his only name ; 
 
 Such, too, the workful fellowship he asks 
 
 Of soul create, in this its holiest of all tasks. 
 
 Behold, then, spread through universal space. 
 
 One rational world, finite, reflective of God's face, 
 
 Though in limited guise : His consciousness like vast 
 
 With all made, things to come, things present and things passed, 
 
 Still proves demonstrable to reasoning powers. 
 
 Free, fraught with love of truth, and sense of fact, like ours ; 
 
 For, as by sense, like man's, though finer far, 
 
 The astherial tribes commune, each in its native star, 
 
 While time's essential truths, whate'er their range 
 
 Established, absolute are, and can nor cease, nor change ; 
 
 And spatial objects, various guised, pure mind. 
 
 Though bounded, all- where sees, consimilar in kind ; 
 
 If, simply one, say, gravity's, law, but show, 
 
 Then number, measure, light, night, time and distance, know ; 
 
 Then, moral pressure, truth, eternal law. 
 
 Immortal life, man's mind, is justified to draw ; 
 
 And reason, compass-like, through all the skies, 
 
 Points to His work, one whole- through countless ministries, 
 
FE8TVB. 819 
 
 Moral, material, spiritual, divine. 
 
 Our substance is His shadow." " Oh 1 be it ever mine, 
 
 This track of light thou hast traced amidst the sky, 
 
 Prophetic of life's fate, and human destiny ; 
 
 This starry clue, to steer by, through the maze 
 
 Of unconclusive time, innumerable of days." 
 
 Nay, not innumerable. Impends from birth, 
 
 Said the Angel guide, " the fate which hounds thee into eartn ; 
 
 Yet not therefore with death terrestrial ends 
 
 The testing time of souls, wherein may make amends 
 
 Sin for its -v^Trong, as urged by justest doom, 
 
 Or blameworthy neglect find fitting time, and room 
 
 World-wide, to improve. To foster gifts Grod-given, 
 
 To all, spare not ; but train Despair's own soul towards Heaven ; 
 
 As some kind hand the storm-dashed rose bids rise ; 
 
 Face sunward, and recalls to live with winds and skies ; 
 
 While morrowing heaven, resprinkling with the dews | 
 
 Baptismal of the stars, regenerate life renews. 
 
 Go, now, compeer of all we have seen and passed. 
 
 That spirit may serve to expand, and, wisely brace, at last, 
 
 The soul to arm for that aneaiing strife, 
 
 Never to close, till Heaven gives rest to pilgrim life ; 
 
 As, through the skiey wilderness, wandering aye, 
 
 Mine all enlightening orb ; thou, on thy worldly way ; 
 
 Go, now, expert of all the all teaching skies. 
 
 Veil or unveil, of mind's immortal mysteries ; 
 
 Initiate, go, consummate in all tests 
 
 Divinest love demands, and rational faith suggests ; 
 
 Go, aspirant of perfection ; and, in earth, 
 
 And in thine own heart, seek all Heaven prescribes of worth ; 
 
 Know virtue always loved of God ; all where, 
 
 Truth and good, one and same, in Heaven, as earth. Whate'er 
 
 Is good and true with man, earth, angel soul, 
 
 True is and good, to God, and where Heaven's last orbs roll ; 
 
 Know conscious wrong too, sin ; and evil will. 
 
 And evil act, in all God's moral world, 'like ill. 
 
 But go ; thou never, till life's space be passed, 
 
 Wilt 'vail to trace God's plan divine, from first to last. 
 
 Plan which created mind's whole thought transcends. 
 
 Source of its every power, sum endless of all ends." 
 
 This said, she, poising her space-cheering wings. 
 
 Earth touched, there left me, where first on celestial things 
 
 Musing, I, questioned, asked her aid ; and where 
 
 She first had bid me breathe, with her, celestial air ; 
 
 Left me, in sacred silence more endowed 
 
 With meaning than all words could tell, though thunder-loud. 
 
 Helen. Silence may be best speaks experience. 
 
 Student. Yes, 
 
 Experience of an age may yield an hour's 
 Contentment ; of an hour, an age's awe. 
 
 Festds. It is nature's silent miracles most convince, 
 Most bless, most elevate the soul. 
 
S20 FESTV8. 
 
 Helen. And yet 
 
 While doubtless these experiences the passed 
 And present, tend tx) reconcile with ends 
 Future, still much inexplicable remains, 
 Of ordinary existence, and the fates 
 Suffered in soul, in person here. 
 
 Student. Perchance 
 
 We expiate here in pains faults of passed lives ; 
 And all our joys are but rewards. 
 
 Festus. It may be, 
 
 We meet with mysteries everywhere in life. 
 That, could we solve ! — ^As oft, 'mid ruflaing- seas, 
 A wave path, clear, scarce tremulous, we discern, 
 Seeming sig-nificative ; which neither knows 
 Begfinning of extension, nor fixed end ; 
 Which marches not with cliff on high, nor reef 
 Below ; to no cloud answers ; no vague keel 
 Cut accidently ; nor desultory gust 
 Scored ; but e'er exquisite to the wondering eye, 
 Searchful of all substantive cause, so close 
 To the secret truth we bum once, keeps in calm 
 Tenacity, its unf athomed force of form ; 
 Until, the gaze glanced off, tired, or divert 
 Casually, we miss, nor ever can regrasp 
 The grand identity ; so, too, 'mid the world. 
 We trace, we think, at times, God's ways, the more 
 Pondered, the plainlier manifest ; but through 
 Fatuity, or mere mutable conceit. 
 Faith's failure, or what not ? we lose in life's 
 Wide weltering waste, the track, which f oUowea, iii.ght 
 Have led, if not to perfectness, to peace. 
 
 Helen. Methinks, I, too, have missed this perfect way, 
 Else wherefore am I troubled this to know 
 Or that, when knowing is so vastlier less 
 Than being ? And can it be, I am being here 
 Tested and proved through life ? Cares great, cares small, 
 Indifferent, trusted to me hour by hour, 
 And note of treatment taken ? It cannot be, 
 And yet it may. One's faith indeed so warns 
 It is. Who sins against his better light 
 Sins sadly. Still the sense oppresses one 
 Of life BO cast. 
 
 Student. Nay, here are twain will vouch 
 Thy perfectness, at least ; and 'gainst all comers. 
 
 Helen. Hush 1 Seest thou none beside thee ? 
 
 Festus. Who is here f 
 
 I parted from thee, but an hour ago. 
 
 Student. I left thee but an hour since. 
 
 Festus. Why so soon ? 
 
 Lucifer. So soon ? I have traversed earth. 
 
 Festus. Aii, good ! no more,^ 
 
 Let us within, friends. Soon the stars and dews 
 
FE8TU8. 821 
 
 Will take our places. Pray, precede, dear Helen 
 Enchant, thou canst — thy company ; so that me 
 They miss not for an hour, or twain. 
 
 Hemjn. But how 
 
 Deceive myself ? 
 
 Festus. Forget me, too. 
 
 Helex. That word 
 
 Deserves no answer. 
 
 Student. None ? 
 
 Festus. Adieu ! 
 
 Helen. Be sure, 
 
 When next we meet, we'll be less grave. 
 
 Student. Meanwhile, 
 
 To tasks beneficent, Festus, we, reserved, 
 Let haste. Earth's hopes at length are rii)ening fast. 
 If hiddenly, to happier ends than bard, 
 Saint, social seer, or politic sage e'er dreamed. 
 One brief creed, simple and of necessity true ; 
 One moral code, in every land the same ; 
 Which, justice realized, shall be each man's good, 
 And all men's joy ; one law ; one general rule ; 
 The world one state, and peace perpetuaL 
 
 Mahian. Heaven 
 
 Grant it may be ! 
 
 Festub. I come. Good friend, do thou 
 
 The requisite dispositions to these ends 
 Prepare. I follow. 
 
 Student. I obey. 
 
 Festub. And now 
 
 Wherefore hast sought me here ? 
 
 Lucifer. But this to say 
 
 Summoned to farthest space for a time, I come 
 Hail, and f areweU to bid thee. 
 
 Festus. Nay, not thus 
 
 Part we. I would with thee. 
 
 Lucifer. Reflect. 
 
 Festus. I do. 
 
 I would see Heaven. 
 
 Lucifer. Behold ! 
 
 Festus. I would enter Heaven. 
 
 Lucifer. Retire into thyself ; heart consecrate 
 And sanctified in soul. 
 
 Festus. I would see God. 
 
 Lucifer. He is the Invisible. 
 
 Festus. And I ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thou art 
 
 The Insatiable. Arise with me. 
 
 Festub. I rise. 
 
PE8TU8, 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Law moral one and eame all being imbounds, 
 
 Compresses, animates, even as natural law 
 
 The orb, of light and gravity. Where is soul. 
 
 There fallibility, choice, ana righteous doom, 
 
 Following, of deity. To the bodiless realms 
 
 Such abstracts apt, sights spiritually recalled 
 
 Our travellers tell ; of visioned miracles, this, 
 
 All parent nature sees through, not as God 
 
 Eternal, but aye immanent in his thought, 
 
 Whole impress of the all- creative cause ; 
 
 Of world-faiths that, each, in itself all truth 
 
 Boasting, truth sole ; its practices foul or vain. 
 
 Declaring heaven-imposed, to heaven unknown, 
 
 Save by its wrath. Good will, good deed, towards man, 
 
 To none confined, in all, like blessed of God, 
 
 Like honoured know. To man a prescient view 
 
 Of what is true repentance, to the soul 
 
 Yet to be realized, spirit-informed, expands. 
 
 Heaven's judgments are the spiritual harmonies 
 
 On virtues based, the same with earth's, which show 
 
 To creatures God's great sceptre justified, 
 
 In every sphere. The penitence for sin 
 
 God loves, ia after hohness of life. 
 
 Interstellar Space. 
 
 Festus aTld LUCIFBB. 
 
 Lucifer. Mark'st thou this vast half -luminous orb we coast, 
 Not sun, not star ? 
 
 Festus. I note it, and so much 
 
 Admire I would see more of 't. 
 
 LuciPEB. It is a world 
 
 God is in act of making-. Life not yet 
 Lifts up her head. Sole, order, first of things, 
 Begins to arrange the elements. 
 
 Festus. There are signs 
 
 'Twill be a world where all felicitous ends 
 Designed by God may be fulfilled ; a sphere 
 Midway 'twixt earth and heaven ; a common ground 
 Where deity and humanity may unite 
 Forces, and more effect than either 'lone. 
 
 LuciFEE. Theories so many, and like this, I have seen 
 Fall through sheer lack of base, one might despair 
 Less sanguine than myself. Meanwhile though swift 
 Our transit, time is ours to hold converse. 
 Hast aught upon thy mind to impart, or ask ? 
 
 J^ESTUS. My life is massed with miracles. Wheresoe'er 
 I b^, visions are mine ; and late entranced 
 Some angel surely, upon mine inner eyne, 
 Life's chart preliminary unrolled, at last, 
 Ended with painting heaven. 
 
 LuciFEB. Ere yet expert, 
 
FESTUa, 323 
 
 Repeat, 'twere doubtless curious, false or true. 
 
 Festus. Right veritable it is, I trust, if peace 
 And love and charity are where most God is. 
 
 Lucifer. Say on. It will while our way through this extense, 
 Dreamlike, itself. 
 
 Festus. Many, the greatest, truths 
 
 Man hath acquired in visions, or in dreams. 
 For then it is the soul recalls the spheres 
 Of pre-existent nature, and evokes 
 The ghosts of coming ages, or, unites 
 Passed, present, future by one windlike touch, 
 'Which loosens the world's zone, and renders mind 
 The master of creation. So with me 
 Once proved it, in a vision ; for the crown 
 Of nature is passivity, and man's 
 Best mood the pure recipient ; in a state 
 Of twilight-like existence, as when light, 
 Darkness, sun, moon, earth, sky were nigh all one 
 Universal substance ; nought distinct save souls. 
 Echoes of light intelligible, towards heaven 
 Reacting. Matter, mind the All now comprise 
 In contrary perfections, as the twin 
 IHde-wave inarms the world ; the total round 
 Of effluent life, or influent ; this eteme. 
 That, temporal ; known to some, vsdth power and meane 
 Commemorative, of old, endowed, and now. 
 To him who words the wonders ho hath seen. 
 It was the spirit of the universe 
 In whose deep breast as on twin founts of life 
 The worlds of heaven were nourished, I beheld. 
 The fragrance of heaven's fadeless fields, her breath, 
 The endless blessings of an act of grace, 
 Or mercy's matron bosom, filled her words : 
 And each articulate syllable she expired. 
 Seemed with the lore of ages laden, as earth 
 O'erheavily with her old baptismal flood. 
 Her eye profound, which dazed so mine at first, 
 I scarce might see, immortal quiet homed ; 
 As though all heaven had settled upon one star. 
 She spake, and I regarded with such awe 
 As eaglet, when he first beholds the sun : 
 And though what I recall be true, so far 
 As worded, it is less than truth ; for how 
 Can a spar utter how it was crystallized ? 
 She spake, I said, the spirit, and at her word, 
 Behold the heavens were opened as a book, 
 • I am the world soul, nature's spirit am I. 
 Ere universe was or constellation, space, 
 System, or sun, or orb, or element. 
 Darkness, or light, or atomic, I first lived j 
 I and necessity, though twain in life, 
 Yet one in essence. God ia men exist. 
 
 M 2 
 
824 FE8TU8. 
 
 Man and all finite natures among themselvea 
 
 Act freely ; between Grod, and man and all 
 
 Nature finite, to this unknown, is fate : 
 
 "What is divine is of necessity free.' 
 
 I heard and I received ; and from my soul 
 
 Intense in quiet, perfect in repose, 
 
 Like sleep's fantastic frostwork, all the sense 
 
 Melted of death ; and the heaven-surrounding state 
 
 Entering-, of pure existence among gods, 
 
 It grew ignited with divinity. 
 
 Again the world-soul voiced itself ; and I 
 
 Indrank the fruitful glories of her words. 
 
 As earth consumes the golden skiey clouds. 
 
 ' Two books there are which must be read ; the one, 
 
 The elements exist as leaves in ; worlds 
 
 As symbols ; earth, thus, of humanity ; 
 
 Water of spirit, fire of divinity, 
 
 And air of all things ; stars the truths of heaven. 
 
 Water and fire are elements divine ; 
 
 Earth and air, human ; heaven and the soul 
 
 From one proceed, and the blue-heated skies ; 
 
 Out of the other bodihood and abode. 
 
 Judge doubtful things by certainest ; things dark 
 
 By what is clear, and dangerous by safe ; 
 
 And prophesy to all which live of God, 
 
 Their aboriginal heaven, and total end 
 
 Of spirit in his just love. Of soul, believe, 
 
 The other tome I spake of, that man's flesh 
 
 His spirit not trulier holds, than in divine 
 
 Nature, its contrary, God's infinite soul 
 
 Imbounds the universe : thine infinite work 
 
 But infinitely less than thee, O God I 
 
 The universe is simple ; God and I. 
 
 Cause and effect are all that in it is, 
 
 And more ; for cause containeth its effect. 
 
 Cause, operation and effect are God, 
 
 Nature and man ; which both partake of one. 
 
 Through error human souls accept the truth, 
 
 As through distorting air the light whereby 
 
 They live, of sun or starlet. Through the world 
 
 The soul receives God, but from God the soul 
 
 Receives the spirit, the chosen thus, thus the world j 
 
 The cloud-led many, the star-guided wise. 
 
 For spirit it is makes times and nature clear. 
 
 As of old water purified by fire.' 
 
 Methought I answered, as it might be, thus : 
 
 * Life, like a floating islet, comes and goes, 
 
 We know not, mean not how. From heaven a star 
 
 Falls, and we track a cold dark somethingness. 
 
 In our conception as unlike all birth 
 
 Celestial, astral issue even, as wind 
 
 Is unlike wisdom, thunder unlilje snow. 
 
FESTUa, 825 
 
 We know but that we are, not how, not why, 
 
 The distance between finite, howsoe'er 
 
 Great, and the infinite being infinite, 
 
 Our life shows incomplete and sectional ; 
 
 And the large unity of the whole, while sought 
 
 From mom all musical to blank starred night. 
 
 In mind to realize, soon, too soon we see 
 
 The wolf -like shadow of death which shameless haunts 
 
 With 8i)ectre-like eclipse the vital orb, 
 
 Creep o'er life's path, and threatening total dark 
 
 The fiery marrow freeze of the vauntful world.* 
 
 While yet these words were vibrant on my tongue, 
 
 I saw the sun-god stall his flamy steeds 
 
 In customary splendour ; these, in turn, 
 
 Shaking their lightning trappings off to earth, 
 
 And snatching a few golden grains of sleep, 
 
 Solaced them with their corner in the west ; 
 
 Towards where earth uplifts her crystal crown, 
 
 White with all yeared snows and radiant rime ; 
 
 While, ever and again, the dancing mom. 
 
 Even in the mid abyss of solar night, 
 
 With roseate blaze impowers the shining skies, 
 
 And pure prismatic fire that lights the stars. 
 
 Stretching her hand into the nebulous depths 
 
 Of space eteme, again the spirit spake. 
 
 ' As the aethereal essence of the world, 
 Matter thereof mere increment, I of earth 
 
 Speak to thee now ; for, as one Father is 
 
 Of all things, and of spirit all act is bom. 
 
 So, of one substance is all nature made. 
 
 Begard not earth as the whole universe ; 
 
 Nor minify yet the orb into a point 
 
 Where all relations vanish. Earth receives 
 
 In an immortal influence, from the stars. 
 
 And out of her bright and generative heart. 
 
 To all conceived and bom therefrom, gives back 
 
 The vital virtues of the potent heavens. 
 
 With their invisible radiance filling up 
 
 The interspatial skies. To all the forms 
 
 Of plant, fish, brute, bird, insect he who made 
 
 Gives, from life's infinite estate, renewal 
 
 Ceaseless in mass ; to man, soul-crowned, alone 
 
 Revival personal ; 'mong each other ; all 
 
 Differing in eminence. Some excel ; the rest 
 
 Suffer not therefore. Wrong to none is wrought 
 
 By honour to a high peculiar few, 
 
 Self-meritless, whose sole position stands 
 
 By themselves ingenerable. Exists this class 
 
 Eclect in all things living ; best in man ; 
 
 In whom heaven's motional harmonies, the world's 
 
 Elemental workings, nay the spirit pure 
 
 Of fire impassible, and aethereal, all 
 
326 FESTU8. 
 
 Incorporate are, in sunlike excellency. 
 
 All men, as sons of man, be sons of Gk)d ; 
 
 Yet all like portion nor position have, 
 
 In earth, nor heaven : of common promises 
 
 Heirs, not like perf ectness, nor privilege. 
 
 Change arts of earth ; the science of the skies, 
 
 Immutable, the first man learned of God, 
 
 Is elder than the sun ; hath hallowed aU 
 
 Successive firmaments ; revealed to man, 
 
 Whose soul-star inly bums with living light, 
 
 Who holds the constellations in his hand, 
 
 Sign manual of his God, and brief of fate, 
 
 Truth highest speaks, and certainties most blessed. 
 
 Souls these of luminous birth who penetrate 
 
 The core of all best wisdom, know all truth 
 
 Hath central commune with the infinite ; 
 
 All faith with truth ; thus kingly, till with God 
 
 United, and the heavenly fulness shared. 
 
 With carnal minds to outward worship prone 
 
 And ordinances the spirit race of light. 
 
 Consummate in truth's secret discipline, use 
 
 But saintly silence, knowing all, of all 
 
 Themselves incognizable, but souls who love 
 
 Virtue and God. Souls conscious, self convict, 
 
 Of wrong and ill ; through trial, to be proved ; 
 
 Through peril, purified from inbred sin ; 
 
 From surface righteousness ; from faith in gods 
 
 Many and false ; from scorn of the one true ; 
 
 From gross and giant passions ; souls who roam 
 
 Life's wilderness, idolatrous, and believe 
 
 Their record of perfective life their proof 
 
 Of power to save themselves ; but these the elect 
 
 Of nature, peers of paradise, pitying, serve. 
 
 Men are of one kind, therefore, two sorts. All 
 
 Shall find desire unite with destiny. 
 
 For those, as said ; for these, though all the powers 
 
 Of air array themselves in lines of fixe. 
 
 And arm them with death's armoury ; though hell's 
 
 Hosts camp them, high as tented mountains round ; 
 
 Yet, at a wave of his hand, like to slaves, 
 
 They vanish from the assiegement of the saints ; 
 
 Spirits which, dominations incarnate. 
 
 And sons of stars that darting out of heaven, 
 
 Made themselves mortal for the mother's sake ; 
 
 Here, with original motion, fling off truths 
 
 Of perfect light, oracular even of God ; 
 
 Truths in their minds who worthily receive, 
 
 Of inborn virtue full, accompletive 
 
 Of wisdom ; and like heaven's luminous rudiments, 
 
 Which gradually may gravitate to worlds, 
 
 Corroborate their nature, and make free 
 
 Their souls to course through the blank void of time, 
 
FE8TU8. 827 
 
 To the bright fulness of eternity. 
 
 Beyond, too, souls unnumberable, unnamed, 
 
 And orbs all named, all numbered, mortal, know 
 
 These be the great initials of the world : 
 
 Being is one, the central infinite, cause 
 
 Common to both creator and create, 
 
 The great substantive essence of the whole. 
 
 Knowing and doing and the fact of form, 
 
 Laws co-existent of its modal life. 
 
 The natural creation ended, first 
 
 Commenced the spiritual, which in Gk>d ever 
 
 Aforetime lived, thus time unfolds the seed 
 
 Sown in eternity, and reaped therein : — 
 
 The great paternal and invisible fire 
 
 Which eateth that it issueth, and wherein, 
 
 Being an infinite means as well as end, 
 
 All filiated nature ceaseth work. 
 
 Now matter makes not one continuous o^^ 
 
 Nor is light ail-where massed alike : the stars, 
 
 Like thunderbolts perradiate, clustered stand 
 
 Or, separative, seek systems omniform. 
 
 God is the sole and self-subsistent one ; 
 
 From him, the sun-creator, nature was ; 
 
 -Ethereal essences, all elements, 
 
 The souls therein indigenous, and man 
 
 Symbolic of all being. Out of earth 
 
 The matron moon was moulded, and the sea 
 
 Filled up the shining chasm : both now fulfil 
 
 One orbit and one nature, and all orbs 
 
 With them one fate, one universal end. 
 
 From light's projective moment, in the earth 
 
 The moon was, even as earth i' the sun ; the sun 
 
 A fiery incarnation of the heavens. 
 
 When sun, earth, moon again make one, resumes 
 
 Nature her heavenly state ; is glorified.' 
 
 As, to the sleepless eye, form forth, at last, 
 
 The long immeasurable layers of light, 
 
 And beams of fire enormous in the east, 
 
 The broad foundations of the heaven domed day 
 
 All fineless as the future, so uprose 
 
 On mine the great celestial certainty. 
 
 The mask of matter fell off, I beheld, 
 
 Void of all seeming, the sole substance mind, 
 
 The actualized ideal of the world. 
 
 An absolutest essence filled my soul ; 
 
 And superseding all its modes and powers, 
 
 Gave to the spirit a conBciousness divine ; 
 
 A sense of vast existence in the skies ; 
 
 Boundless commune with spiritual light, and proof 
 
 Self -shown, of heaven commensurate with all life. 
 
 And I to the light of the great spirit's eyes 
 
 Mine hungry eyes returucu which, past Iho ilrst 
 
828 FE8TU8, 
 
 Intensifying blindness, clearlier saw 
 
 The words she uttered of trimnpliant truth. 
 
 For truly, and as my vision heightened, lo I 
 
 The universal volume of the heavens. 
 
 Star-lettered in (jelestial characters. 
 
 Moved musically into words her breath framed forth 
 
 And varied momently ; and I perceived 
 
 That thus she spake of God : I silent still 
 
 And hearkening to the sea-swell of her voice. 
 
 ' From one divine, all permanent unity comes 
 
 The many and the infinite ; from God all just 
 
 To himself and others, who to all is love, 
 
 Earth and the moon, like syllables of light. 
 
 Uttered by him, were with all creatures blessed 
 
 By him, and with a sevenfold blessing sealed 
 
 To perfect rest, celestial order ; all 
 
 The double tabled book of heaven and earth, 
 
 Despite such due deficiency as cleaves 
 
 Inevitably to soul, till God resume. 
 
 Progressive aye, possessing too all bliss 
 
 Elect and universal in the heavens.' 
 
 And silence settled on me deeplier still, 
 
 Like a snow-muffled statue. 
 
 LuciPEE. Need was none 
 
 To speak. 
 
 Festus. Again, as a gale of light, the spirit 
 Me wholly in her assumed, so that the words 
 I heard, like cloudless thunder, wrought in me 
 Meet apperception of the source of things. 
 * God, first and last of being, from out whose hand 
 Came all things sensible and eternal, all 
 Forth flowing from, and ebbing back to, him. 
 Creation's God, regeneration's lord ; 
 And holy recognizance of their sum and end. 
 Man's Saviour, like his Maker, must be God. 
 And, all effect commensurate with its cause, 
 Each infinite, creation stands redeemed 
 By him first, last, and mediate, God in all. 
 Full in the bosom of humanity, he 
 As on the waters of the imperfect world, 
 Came down, the God-spirit, thus in soul uniting 
 The mortal and eteme, and in one word, 
 Foreuttered ere all time, which legendwise 
 Still rounds the world, though nigh obliterate now 
 The best part, — immortality, — gave the key 
 All mansions opening of paternal heaven.' 
 ' Thy name, O Immortality,' here, I said, 
 ' Sounds clear essential music, through the soul 
 Thrilling, as through the heartstrings of a star. 
 In air and sphere-form yet inconsummate, 
 Its tidal pulses and dim throbs of light, 
 Ere fraternized in heaven, yet presage sure 
 
FESTUa. 829 
 
 In hope, of state to come ; yea, round that hope 
 
 So vast yet vagrue, which, like the northern morn, 
 
 One hour usurps the mid-sky, and the next 
 
 Lies buried 'neath the pole, are gathered thoughts 
 
 Ajid truths whose gravity oft determine life ; 
 
 As motion in an atomic leads at last 
 
 To a world's orbit, mote and motion given. 
 
 For spirit, self-conscious of its inner life, 
 
 Makes all externals subject, and o'er thoughts 
 
 And things, maintains that rule which in itself, 
 
 Is present proof of what the soul most seeks ; 
 
 Its boundless union with its God.' Then she, 
 
 The world-divining spirit, even as a star 
 
 O'erflows with light, still spake of deity. * Gkxl, 
 
 Untermable in essence, being unnamed, 
 
 lyien grasping ever at his love, his name 
 
 Man-given, in pious perpetuity breathe, 
 
 And strive to throw thought-light by act reflex 
 
 On being, originative of life and thought, 
 
 In hope to know the great unknowable, 
 
 In fulness ; he in mercifulness known 
 
 Only to spirit create in any sphere ; 
 
 The all prothetic universal I. 
 
 Substantive of all being ; whose sole word 
 
 Will infinite expressing, all effect, 
 
 Within whose ample essence all conceipt 
 
 Respecting it, as good, intelligence, life, 
 
 Man bom, or angel-mind can frame, is lost 
 
 Like a stray gust, which from some aery height, 
 
 Soars, suicidal, up the dark inane. 
 
 LuciFEE. Pardon ; but say, this speaking vision, how long 
 Endured it ? 
 
 Festus. Nay, I know not ; hours, it may be. 
 Moments, perhaps. I was, in truth, entranced. 
 
 LuciFEB. Ne'er had I one but once. Ask not, in turn, 
 How long mine lasted ; mine hath lasted me 
 Thousands of years, in sooth ; — I need but shut 
 Mine eyes, and see it now — and then, I saw 
 Looking as might be casually towards earth, 
 Man's sphere, the horizon black with numberless crowds. 
 Midst these uprose a mountainous altar, shaped 
 Like a vast inverted pyramid, whereby stood 
 Four forms stem, solemn : one arrayed in white, 
 And one in unif ormal black ; in green, 
 The third, and of all hues the f ouith. And most 
 I marked at first, the two first named. All bliss 
 Each claimed, as hig alone, denouncing one 
 The other ; both all warning that fierce fire 
 Burned for their sake who sware not by a creed 
 Garbled, patched up, and contradictory ; text 
 Confounding oft with comment ; by no rule 
 Interpretative bound j as literal, now. 
 
830 FESTU8, 
 
 Now figurative, construing laws like plain. 
 
 Love, said tMs pair, nathless, from first to last, 
 
 Its author's nature being-, infinite love 
 
 To mortal man, his motive sole ; their creeds 
 
 And deeds, as arctic from antarctic wide. 
 
 At either side they stood, and pressed the world ; 
 
 And honestly and right earnestly prayed all men 
 
 To serve G-od ; their incongruous laws obey ; 
 
 Accept of heaven's free grace ; and something do 
 
 To help the Omnipotent how to save a souL 
 
 And myriads sought their several priestly sides, 
 
 And did as was enjoined them, and rejoiced. 
 
 Then something passed between them ; and the twain, 
 
 Ceasing opponent duarchy, atoned 
 
 In friendship for past enmity, and straight 
 
 Culling all contraries from holy grounds, 
 
 Built up an idol, of all elements. 
 
 Most disaccordant. Thus, his deathly feet 
 
 They framed of fire, of earth his lower limbs. 
 
 His breast of mass terraqueous ; his head, air ; 
 
 Varying with strange and mutable-featured clouds. 
 
 Round him, enthroned on the broad and upturned base 
 
 Of that earth-piercing altar-pyramid. 
 
 They reared at last, earth aiding in all modes, 
 
 A circular temple, patent to the sun ; 
 
 Sea-lavered ; mountain-columned ; kingdom-paved. 
 
 When as he sat his throne, there rose a shout 
 
 From the foregathered multitudes, which caused 
 
 The circumspatial skies shake, cold with dread, 
 
 And to her inmost base earth vibrate. He 
 
 In his right hand held the sun and moon, close-linked • 
 
 And in his left a winged orb cross-crowned ; 
 
 By his side hung down, curved comet-wise, a sword 
 
 Of fire ; a rosary of unluminous stars 
 
 Decked either wrist. With stars his breast was mailed 
 
 Like to a knight's of old, with scales steel-gilt ; 
 
 Or like an ice-plant with perpetual dew ; 
 
 Or diamond beetle, round beglobed with light : 
 
 And the unsphered skies darkened momently. 
 
 To him was brought, bound hand and foot, the world, 
 
 Which more intensely worshipped than the poor 
 
 Bewildered devotee in eastern lands 
 
 His golden squatting idols, diamond-eyed, 
 
 WTiose car grinds human dust. The monarch, there. 
 
 Upon that central shrine where sate the god. 
 
 Laid down his crown ; the warrior cast his sword ; 
 
 The peer, his glittering badge; the merchant prince, 
 
 His hoarded coffer. There, the statesman placed 
 
 His seal of power ; the priest, his robe ; the bard, 
 
 And the harmonious master, lyre, and pen. 
 
 Who soar, or mine, in science, or in art, 
 
FE8TU8. B31 
 
 Their elements and implements and gifts ; 
 
 The scribe, and the physician, and the wrig-ht, 
 
 His several offering. Thither hied the crowds 
 
 Of mediate millions between gain and toil ; 
 
 Thither the brawny-armed and brown-browed hind 
 
 "Whose wealth was in his will and daily work. 
 
 Repaired ; and earth's luxurious, toilless, tribes 
 
 Followed ; each with his hand full of good things, 
 
 And felt tJheir conscience lightened ; blessed their lot ; 
 
 And all went well, and ended happily. 
 
 Round that great altar, thousand lesser were, 
 
 With crowds ringed each, though each the hate and scorn 
 
 Of the majestic pair who served the highest, 
 
 And sware to make all souls believe alike, 
 
 In clockwork-like content. Yet might they not 
 
 The many most succeed. The great few fail. 
 
 Some of belief thought most, of practice some, 
 
 Some thought of God as darkness, some as light 
 
 And worshipped each ; some held that space was God ; 
 
 "VSTiile others said, and wiselier, God is what ? 
 
 Some held that deity, and all heavenly powers 
 
 Were of one essence like divine and high. 
 
 Even as the starry commonwealth of heaven. 
 
 These deemed that, wholly contemplating God, 
 
 The soul, suffused in deity, required 
 
 No active virtue, but on God's own breast 
 
 Lay lulled in glory and in communitive 
 
 Life with divinity, its best end fulfilled. 
 
 These deemed whate'er is done by men is done 
 
 By God's spirit, and they thence conclude no sin 
 
 Exists, unless to those who so esteem ; 
 
 -A ad that to live without all doubt or dread 
 
 Were to restore to life the paradise 
 
 Initiate of the soul, that pleasant place 
 
 Erst disafforested, and so realize 
 
 The catholic salvation of the world. 
 
 Some held that, now and then, there speaks in all 
 
 The word of God, his light enlightening all, 
 
 If not resisted carnally. Some adjudged 
 
 The evil of sin and punishment alike 
 
 Reflected, if eteme, on rule divine. 
 
 Some that man's spirit had once forelived in heaven, 
 
 A holy creature, but that sinning, earth 
 
 Was its amercement made, its prison, flesh ; 
 
 Emerging whence, it shall by grace resume 
 
 Its pre-existence and high powers. 
 
 Festus. In dreams 
 
 Doubtless, and reveries, oft, sublimed by faith, 
 Dim glimpses come, I know, of blessed states. 
 And shadowings of power passed, which to the soul 
 Seem inborn and accustomed, as a star 
 
83a FESTU3. 
 
 To liglit, when, late immersed it leaves the sun. 
 
 Lucifer. Some thouglit perfection gainable still on earth 
 By their own mean life and efforts, as in heaven ; 
 And that with man it rests to reinstate 
 The Adamic Eden ; and, by converse pure 
 And holy life, redeem the sacred day 
 When nature's every work was miracle ; 
 When man, brute, angel, all in happy ease 
 Communed, and fruits throat-slaking made good, wise ; 
 As ere the immortal seraph- serpent, hid 
 By the sunset side of earth, stole forth and stung 
 Heaven's virgin star ; brake nature's innocent seal. 
 And left his lightning trail through all divine 
 Traditions. Some, strange speculatists thought he 
 And Other, were two lower powers, whom God 
 Had pitted in broad duel during time ; 
 But that the final victory would be heaven's ; 
 Not knowing evil's might. A countless train 
 Of misbeliefs like pure parhelia, these 
 Which come and vanish and return, new lifed, 
 With men unstable ; unhinderable of priest ; 
 Some grains of truth-gold starring here and there 
 The vast formations of the false. Meanwhile, 
 For meddling with such mysteries unmeant 
 Surely by heaven to bo cleared up on earth, 
 Who have eyes trained to pierce the dark, outtaken, 
 These twin compellers of conformity, 
 Erst marked, condemned from time to time to hell, 
 Rack, massacre and fire, each bubble sect 
 That in full-blown emptiness rose, to show their own 
 Familiar, brotherly, charity, and so prove 
 The inspiration theirs they claim of God, 
 Who tells all, he is love. Those sects themselves, 
 Full of molecular motion, fought like mitea 
 Which fill a water-drop, and day by day 
 Cursed or consumed each other. For the rest, 
 Who stood round the great altar muttering creeds, 
 And each had his dissenting heretics, 
 The third smote simply by the sword who dared 
 His chequered tale, not wholly truth nor lie, 
 Doubt, but suspended 'twixt, as utter void 
 Baseless. The fourth, more meek in general mood, 
 Willed ignorantly, both true and false, 'like scorned, 
 To tolerate. Now and then he closed his eyes 
 VVrathf ul, and slew promiscuously all round. 
 
 Festus. Much doubtless may be meant in that thou hast seen* 
 A sacred side there is to everything, 
 As given or else forbidden, as false or true, 
 According to the greater truth involved ; 
 One side is always bright, one always dark, 
 Ijeaflike and moonlike j and each separate lif o 
 
FE8TU3. 333 
 
 Is as a leaf which waits the quickening" breath 
 
 Of nature, our mysterious prophetess, 
 
 To give it due place and order in the world. 
 
 Heights too there are profound, and depths sublime 
 
 Of thought, faith sole can deal with ; for as God's 
 
 True name, if known, is uttered not in heaven 
 
 Highest, nor on earth, so deeps unnameable are 
 
 "Which cannot be revealed of human life. 
 
 And ought not if they could ; the elements 
 
 Of the premortal manhood which inhered 
 
 In the conception of creative mind, 
 
 Since shown to few, and only dimly known. 
 
 LuciFEB. The spirit thou namest, then, showed thee not these 
 things ? 
 
 Festds. Continue ; if thy vision more unveiled 
 Thou wouldst impart, or me behoves to know. 
 
 Lucifer. Modes next I marked of practice, rite and form, 
 Strangest of human trusts : here, some would bum, 
 There, others, drown, these maim, those clamm themselves 
 Or fellows, all in proof of piety ; 
 Some sacrificed their children, some their sires ; 
 Some fruits, some flowers ; beasts and the young of beasts, 
 In honest obstinate hope of earning heaven. 
 Others heaped stone on stone, shrine piled on shrine, 
 In emulous mimicry of the threefold heavens ; 
 Silver inlaid with gold, gold decked with gem ; 
 Others dug out the earth and worshipped fumes, 
 Or paid respect to vapours which inhaled 
 Bred holiest inspiration ; some in warm 
 And reeking entrails read the signs of God, 
 Or deemed they did, prophetic : others sun, 
 Moon, stars, those fixed or wandering those, — adored, 
 For spiritual good thence down-drawn ; earth-bom fire 
 Or sun-bom ; rivers, mountains, seas, stones, herbs, 
 Brute, insect, bird, fish ; earth and air and man ; 
 All these were sworn by, prayed to, in the wild 
 Sad faith that man's humanity, by them, 
 Could gain some earnest of divinity. 
 Some only ate of certain meats, or laid 
 Under dread ban, all flesh and milk and wine ; 
 Extolling green food and the sparkling spring, 
 As though brutes only spiritually lived, 
 And virtue were a vegetable thing. 
 Others wore iron spikes around their waists, 
 Burned fire in their bosoms ; with their bread 
 Mixed dust and filth, ate grass, and naked lived ; 
 Or crawled for leagues like serpents in the dust 
 In sign of self abasement ; sign indeed 
 Not lacked, where proof of fact much overabounds, 
 Btill, for I hasten now to close the tale 
 Of those who thus believed, thus acted, still. 
 
834 t'ESTUa. 
 
 Whene'er I looked around me, hour by hour, 
 The multitudes departed, yet increased. 
 But one way came they ; countless ways they went 
 Through age, birth, pestilence, vice, folly, and war. 
 Disease, excess, want, famine, woe, sin, fate. 
 The city of life twelve-gated ; gazing thus, 
 Priest, altar, crowd, god ; all I seem to have seen, 
 Vanish, and are no more ; till some near day 
 When I would see again the earth, and lo I 
 The vision all in orderly lapse, recurs 
 From end to end, parts special only changed. 
 
 Festus. 'Tis strange, 'tis sad ; and if I now with man 
 Conversed, I'd say that spirit and nature known 
 To act contrarious, yet by God's grace, tend 
 To ultimate harmony, seeming being opposed 
 to being in seeming only. Rises earth 
 Sunwards, not sun on earth ; yet let not man 
 Deem creatural elevance into Heaven his right 
 By force of reason, or end necessitate 
 Of natural virtue ; for in moral spheres 
 All action is of God, so willed, or wrought 
 By his direct permission ; and when through life 
 Ceaselessly sought, he, too, the world of soul, 
 By act divinely voluntary, illumes. 
 Sunwise, and quickens 1 Even here, in the pure 
 Blaclj;, unbeing void, where but for light of stars 
 Lit by God's vital hand, the brightest star 
 But blackest dust illumined from without ; 
 Their central fires their death source sole ; not life 
 Could be, nor mutual influence, until hailed 
 From ours, or their own ambient ; so with man ; 
 It is only through their sensuous atmospheres 
 Spirits can behold C'ach other, or that soul. 
 Born in itself to realize all time, 
 Dowered inly with all varieties of belief, 
 As light all colourless all colours holds ; 
 By search of Being's supremest spheres of thought 
 Spiritual and moral, which man's nature rule, 
 Can, by that axfc sublime, the scheme conceive 
 Whereby the vital whole, from God outrayed 
 His impress takes, and about his feet revolves 
 On everlasting period ; and the world 
 Spiritual, enlightened inly, orbitates 
 By sweet attraction towards its source, His love. 
 Propelled by upward gravity of the whole 
 Towards his divine perfections ; he himself 
 Conceiving, hearing, suffering, ending all, 
 AflQiliates finally, and inheavena For thus 
 To me appeared the sign the spirit now gave. 
 
 LuciFEE. But though not absolutely at large man knows 
 His God, nor many have been in spirit rapt 
 To Heaven ; yet hell to outdo in mutual hate, 
 
FE8TU8. 835 
 
 And threats reciprocal of quenchless fire. 
 For speculative beliefs, earth's foulest crimes 
 Held easily expiable, seems prross misprise 
 Of heavenly justice and God's tolerance. 
 
 Festus. Seems 1 
 
 But 'tis not of man's conduct here I doubt 
 Nor seek to know his errors. I seek God. 
 All heavens exterior passed, the seats of soul 
 Self-purificativo and probational, me 
 Heaven's threshold now ; even where yon radiant sun, 
 Of suns, sphere central and supreme of space, 
 The aspirant soul forewarns of holier life, 
 
 And aims more spiritual that mixed earth needs, y 
 
 Immediate most to Deity ; mo attracts > 
 
 With irresistible force. 
 
 LuciFEK. Thereto we tend, 
 
 Festub. And now my vision seemed passed end, to expand ; 
 Behold now heaven, the spirit exclaimed, and straight 
 One vast and universal heaven, I view ; 
 
 God's world-pervading-, soul-sustaining smile 
 
 Towards good and holiness, for aye realized ; 
 
 And which all just ends harmonizing in spheres 
 
 Of mind and space, all hallows and makes glad. 
 
 There every thing hath life ; the elements 
 
 Made vital, glorified fourfold, and named 
 
 Love, wisdom, strength and beauty ; every huQ 
 
 "Which nature owns, from earth's original blush 
 
 To heaven's eternal azure, holy caused ; 
 
 There sentient cloudlets, delicate chariots oft 
 
 Of journeying souls, inspired by musical winds, 
 
 Winds fragrant as the breath of deity, shed 
 
 Grateful, their choicest effluence round the skies. 
 
 There, spirit exalting joys abide ; there flow 
 
 The fountains of eternal life and streams j^ 
 
 Of perfect virtue for soul-baptism ; there, r 
 
 Roll faith's abysmal mysteries, darkly clear ; 
 
 Though soundless, shoreless, luminous with life 
 
 Tempting to be explored. There grow the groves 
 
 Whose trees of golden bolls and pearly fruits 
 
 Breathe, as wind moved, the harmonious lauds of souls 
 
 And spiritual ; from illusory matter freed ; 
 
 Cities and fanes of diamonds crown the hills, 
 
 Bright with the sole companionship of heaven, 
 
 In this pre-earthly paradise, wherein 
 
 Who enter are by kindliest angels clad 
 
 In garments wrought of rainbows ; and in robes 
 
 Woven as of sunset clouds ; while viny wreaths 
 
 G^m berries bearing, form their coronals, 
 
 Exuberant of all fruitage. Food they need not 
 
 Who live on life, and quaff eternal joy. 
 
 And rest in peace as in the down of doves. 
 
 There many pass all time, the hour of God, 
 
335 FE8TU8, 
 
 In pure and still contentment. Others, yet, 
 
 In ceaseless, boundless, progress, as from stai 
 
 To star, from bliss to bliss pass, until all. 
 
 Like rays of ligbt, light all attractive, all 
 
 Deligbtful light, redeemed up to the sun, 
 
 Betum to God renewed. In one band, there 
 
 Souls of all faiths, earth-holden, gracious live, 
 
 In mutual forgiveness, blessing each 
 
 The other ; what too in their several creeds 
 
 Showed unproved, disproved, arrogant or unwise 
 
 Or needless, each casts off ; what true, all keep, 
 
 Uniting and amending ; for in all 
 
 "Was truth, if most in one. Thy soul it joys, 
 
 She said, the spirit, to see this. Search thy heart ; 
 
 Search, wouldst thou enter these abodes, and know 
 
 There is a secret sign whereby the soul 
 
 Feels certainty of safety and of power 
 
 Imparted, public to the universe. 
 
 By a single world unwist of, but to one 
 
 Conscious of soul's divinity, a sign 
 
 Infallible of the life immortal ; sign 
 
 Stamped in the spirit as is the gleaming seal 
 
 Thou sawest on brows of those imparadised 
 
 The true triliteral monogram of God. 
 
 I searched ; and in my vision deemed I found, 
 
 But what imports it now ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Aught said she more ? 
 
 Festus. What needs the spirit more speak ? No more I heard. 
 
 She ceased ; the All-Create ; and gazing down, deep I 
 
 As into her own vast breast, o'er that abyss 
 
 Her life-embracing arms she crossed in peace. 
 
 She ceased ; and all was silence. Earth and heaven, 
 
 Like solar seas unf athomably bright 
 
 Rolled forth their inmost radiance in twin tides 
 
 Immeasurable. Since time's first begotten day, 
 
 Until the last bom eve, when all shall end ; 
 
 And life's great vein within the embosoming skies 
 
 Be utterly dried up ; till night, as some 
 
 Cloud-monster eats up star on star, shall whelm, 
 
 In her intransitory darkness, all 
 
 The children of the light ; till breath no more 
 
 Shall freshen earth's lip nor breeze her breast, hath been 
 
 Beheld such glory, nor shall be, nor may. 
 
 Of nature serving God ; she, sibyl-like. 
 
 Instinct with inspiration, and He her 
 
 Endowing with all bliss unendingly. 
 LuciFEB. Approach we now the boundary of Heaven's sphere, 
 
 The footstool of the Eternal. 
 Festus, We draw nigh. 
 
FESTUS. 837 
 
 XXII. 
 
 One mediate being is, through all worlds, man ; 
 One natural compass ; one sole moral scheme 
 Pervades all worlds ; truth, reason, virtue, love 
 And wisdom, sisterly hierarchy in God, 
 Of divine attributes, the bounds embrace 
 Of infinite life ; and, as in spirit, one 
 Space-travelling, views suns other than our own. 
 Of mightier light ; see stars constellate take 
 New shapes ; and, recombined in alien forms, 
 Beam grandlier now, now dimlier ; but the same 
 Their astral elements ; so, the more is seen 
 Of soul-life universal, mind, the more 
 Rejoicing in the original bright of things, 
 The luminous plan adaptible to all change, 
 Knows it shall recognize in after worlds, 
 How variouslv soe'er thought 'guise its form, 
 The base of all, the Immutable. Here, too, deems 
 Eccentric science, systems, conglobate. 
 May mass them finally ; sun crushed on sun ; 
 The ultimate form of all phenomenal life. 
 Inapposite not such judgment to our strain. 
 
 The Central Sun ; Festus ; Lucipeb ; Angel op Earth ; who 
 continues, and concludes, the story of The Angel-Wobld. 
 Festus and Lucifer approaching. 
 
 Festus. Space-centering sun ; of science new conceived, 
 But eldest of all worlds ; parental mass, 
 Midmost of all repose ; vast counterpoise 
 Of Being's total movement ; point, all act 
 Tends to ; outcome of all accomplished Time's 
 Countless activities ; here extinguished ; base 
 E'er broadening of the o'erthrown whole ; sad tomb 
 Of all intent ; and cope-stone of all deed. 
 Here Science sums her speculative career ; 
 Who in the immense prediction of this orb 
 Unseen, and hearted in all boundlessness ; 
 Knowing the g^eat necessity in the close 
 Of things ; foretold this mean 'tween all and nought, 
 Type of the infinite oneness whence were fonned 
 All world-diversities, once ; and now recast 
 In composite unity, of life's end divine. 
 Seat of original silence and the crown 
 Of final harmonies, whereto all these 
 Thy nursling worlds, by Being's broadest law 
 Material gravitate ; thyself not all 
 To him irresoluble, whose cogent word 
 From spatial others, and all void, bade Be. 
 
 Lucifer. Go where we will, 'tis very sad, we meet 
 With ruins, as a rule. These world- wrecks, see 
 Once, doubtless, floating gallantly enough. 
 
 Festus. But one word, and the whole unsubstanced show 
 Of things once made shall cease and disappear. 
 The ruins even shall perish. 
 
838 FE8TU3. 
 
 LuciFEB. Good. But now 
 
 Behold earth's Angel ; more than hoped for this. 
 
 Festus. Angel benign ; to meet thee, sums the joys, 
 To greet thee, heals the pains, of many a year. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Once named between us, never lost I sight 
 Of this our possible meeting-place, and here. 
 If each pause on our course, 'tis upward, still, 
 And nearer, so, to God. The expanding soul 
 Vast world-life here enjoys, and to its field 
 Scaled meetly of free act and duty, bends 
 Its whole force to ends finest ; and so earns 
 Rewards condign of God, howbeit unsought. 
 Here all the tribes of universal man 
 Human, angelic, mingle ; here convene ; 
 Are hence distribute, and example aU. 
 These to their natal orb true ; those to spheres 
 Various, as Heaven ordains, need, choice, demands. 
 
 Festus. These, not unlike to men in guise and air 
 But of an ampler presence and more bright 
 Within, as though an inward star, the heart 
 Elanced its penetrable light through all, 
 And on all round ; not elsewise than a soul 
 Met sometime on the earth, egregious, pure 
 In honour, radiant minded, not than men 
 Less cognisant of science, lore mundane. 
 Or truth divine ; but simpler, and with more 
 Constant essay to attain life's loftier aims ; 
 Reached rarely, hardly, even here, with proof 
 Trebled of single-hearted faith. Ail-where, 
 Nature like selfish as on earth, like check 
 In good things, like negation of things ill, 
 Like training towards things better needs, as all 
 Who would their soul's perfection. 
 
 LuciFEB. All- where ? 
 
 AifGEL OF Eabth. Yes, 
 
 Here, then, as elsewhere, spirit is tempted, tried, 
 Fails, too, in men and angels, one in fount, 
 In end, one ; purifies its mediate path 
 Back to its lifeful source first, last and best 
 Of Being ; infinite ; and so, distinct, 
 By boundless variance, from all soul create 
 Man, mean of all things, bodily, spiritual, shaped 
 Diversely ; one substantially in frame. 
 In faculties, elsewise, and in mental powers, 
 Finite and free essentially ; of good 
 111, right and wrong, true, false, expertly wise. 
 Responsible ; with Divinity and the world 
 One mighty triad. To each separate sphere, 
 Its thought, its lore, its proof of God, by law 
 Based on the immutable One's perfections ; based 
 On rational science, general in all orbs. 
 Deductive of one common moral rule ; 
 
FE8TU8. 83d 
 
 So, franchised by its maker ; through all worlds. 
 By angel dominated, or man, free choice 
 And just obedience or revolt 'gainst law, 
 Pertains as here ; for liberty, divine 
 Prerogrative of will, man shares with Heaven ; 
 To know this, is to know the world no more 
 A mystery, or false maze which baffles mind. 
 But progress constant, self-perfective life. 
 And this for man's whole race, not only such 
 As earth breeds of red-hearted souls, but lives, 
 Mid spaces passed all angels' ken, that range 
 Life's limits boundless. 
 
 Festus. Gladly I thy words 
 
 Grave on my heart. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. But now, since retrospect 
 More fruitful oft of wisdom proves than act 
 Scarce conscious ; and reflection's side-ray cast 
 Shows clearlier where we stand than the foot tells ; 
 So, by thought, musing o'er the passed, not less 
 Than plans for time to come, the soul grows wise. 
 
 Festus. Rest me then here, and if the tale of worlds 
 And acts transcending earth's, lead not too far 
 From present purjKJses, do thou resume, 
 Compassionate spirit, the story of the star 
 Whose act revoltant, earlier told, thou saidst 
 To thrones and virtues, caused celestial tears, 
 Till then to them unknown ; to me mayhap 
 By right more 'customed, apt enough. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Not once 
 
 Forgetful of our purpose the sad theme 
 Suits me not ill, who look with vesper choirs 
 To chant life's dirge. 
 
 LuciPER. I steel me to endure. 
 
 These lachrymatory ducts, perchance, are dry, 
 Doubtless adust ; or from excess or lack 
 Of ocular lymph ; but hold thou to thy text, 
 Not I will interrupt. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Those tears thou hast named, 
 Complaisant fiend 1 I not invoke, nor need ; 
 My mission not of punishment ; yet well 
 The tale to be recounted may thee shake 
 With dread, anticipative of doom. And thou. 
 As some proud pine uneasily from his crag. 
 Scanning the horizon, eyes a long low cloud, 
 Premonitory of thunder and the shock 
 Of griding lightning through his van ward limb, 
 Hadst best prepare for that may come ; and now 
 Those tears recorded shed in saddest tone. 
 Resumed the Heavenly stranger his discourse. 
 * Ne'er to be found,' I said ; but who can find 
 A limit to Grod's mercy ? In like estate. 
 They never may, nor shall be ; still, for all 
 
840 FE8TU3. 
 
 Is hope ; the inalienable resource of soul. 
 
 But let the time-glass of their sins run down, 
 
 Whose recollection whelms me still with woe. 
 
 Not many darkening days had passed away, 
 
 Before the mighty mysteries stood revealed ; 
 
 And strangest vanishings one by one of those 
 
 Once loved and honoured most, made sadly clear 
 
 Beneath the shade delicious of a wood, 
 
 In whose Elysian glades those strangers fixed 
 
 At first their dwelling, and therein prepared 
 
 Their secret rites and sacred mysteries, 
 
 Skirting the gold sands of the sapphire sea 
 
 Were those deceived assembled ; so deceived 
 
 The day they weened was longer, brighter, now ; 
 
 And each the other hailed as happier then, 
 
 Than in the ages passed. Forth flashed the song, 
 
 Upwards, like earth-bom lightning, and the dance, 
 
 Of crystalltrie symmetry, skimmed around the shore 
 
 In vortices of light ; the world-queen there 
 
 Now mingling with the mirthful throng ; now sole^ 
 
 Seeking in thought repose. Oh this, they cried, 
 
 Is joy, the bliss of liberty. At once. 
 
 That senseless dream to dissipate, lo 1 there rushed, 
 
 Out of a cave with toppling crags o'erhung, 
 
 A hugeous monster, such as never night 
 
 With murderer's mind engendered, when his heart 
 
 Lay panting underneath the conscience pang 
 
 Like fawn beneath a wolf's jaw. Dragonlike 
 
 In lengthening volumes stretched his further part, 
 
 Incalculably curled, but in the front, 
 
 On one wide neck a hundred heads he reared. 
 
 Which spake with every mouth a hundred tongues. 
 
 Through teeth of serried daggers, black with blood. 
 
 The breath he drew in day, he breathed out night. 
 
 Descending to the sea to drink, though close 
 
 By his cave a cool bright river mn, 'twas thirst 
 
 The monster showed he better loved than aught 
 
 More pure, that thirst could quench. The abhorrent 
 
 Shrank backwards tide by tide ; but he pursued 
 
 Triumphing in its fascinating fear 
 
 Into the very midst ; then gorged, returned 
 
 Soul-sodden to the shore ; where prone he lay 
 
 Before his horrid hold ; with stormy joy. 
 
 Gnashing his steely teeth, and with his tail. 
 
 Now close contorted, and now far out launched, 
 
 Sweeping the shiny slime of the wide sea-sands. 
 
 Awe stricken stood the duped allies, fear-grouped, 
 
 Of the delusive strangers. Ceased, at once. 
 
 The dance's moving labyrinth ; shouts of joy ; 
 
 And whispered gratulation. First to speak 
 
 Was one, the last who lapsed from pure estate, 
 
 Be this the god you serve ? the god ye swar© 
 
FE8TU8, 841 
 
 We too should this day, see ? Our god, said they. 
 
 And are we bound to adore him, who have passed 
 
 Through your mysterious rites, and on us ta'en 
 
 His worship, by the oath of fire? Ye are bound, 
 
 In tones of hate replied the spirit chief, 
 
 By whom that wise one told of first was lost, 
 
 Tliere standing as the hierophant of hell ; 
 
 Behold ye are before him ; bow the knee. 
 
 Ilim then I bow not to, nor worship, said 
 
 The recusant convert ; but recant, abjure 
 
 Now and for ever. Ne'er would I have dreamed 
 
 To exchange the one true for a hundred false ; 
 
 Death, be my witness. Be his witness, death ; 
 
 All cried aloud ; and knee'd their idol fiend. 
 
 And the vast monster smiled ; on every head 
 
 (Each head a half -face shewed of one same god ; 
 
 A half-face of a century more of such. 
 
 Demoniac ; as thine earth itself once served ; ) 
 
 A hot and lurid smile, like the red light, 
 
 Which hovereth o'er the earth-quake yet unborn, 
 
 Though quickening. Woe I "NVTien all, such answer made, 
 
 Were, with remorse smit, penitent, and aside 
 
 Turned them to go, the hierophant exclaimed, 
 
 Give to the mighty one his victim due ; 
 
 The angel youth then who had just recalled 
 
 His oath accursed, the fell destroyers seized 
 
 And cast before their false, foul god, which cried. 
 
 No more of these ignoble victims ; hence, 
 
 Bring me the royal sisterling, and I ask 
 
 None else ere I depart. These fearful words 
 
 Heard, consternation and lament the minds 
 
 Filled of all present, and most base resolve 
 
 The hearts of some, like molten lead. And now. 
 
 Their cruel purpose when the sister queen 
 
 Saw, to that living idol, fierce and foul. 
 
 She kneeled ; and touched with natural sorrow, him 
 
 Besought the child to spare. Take what, she said. 
 
 Take all thou will'st, but leave alone this one, 
 
 My sweet and sacred sister. She with me 
 
 Once in the happy passed, and innocent, lived, 
 
 A pure perpetual blessing ; from her hand 
 
 Came boundless bounties ; not a word she spake 
 
 But seemed a benediction ; her bright heart 
 
 With lovelight glowed, for ever at the full. 
 
 In days of old, o'er all the orb she ranged, 
 
 And wheresoe'er she ranged, reigned. AU that felt 
 
 The 8i)ell of her resplendent presence, joyed 
 
 In her ecstatic advent, as the waves 
 
 Leap into light to meet the increscent moon. 
 
 But now, because of deeds thou know'st too well, 
 
 Deeds, it were better, may be had not been, 
 
 Immured, she lives the life of charity, 
 
8^ FESTU8, 
 
 In the still precincts of her holy home, 
 
 With many a pious handmaiden around, 
 
 In starry palace templed, till the hour 
 
 Of once predestined nuptials, as she deems. 
 
 If sorrow have not wrecked her reason, come, 
 
 I, her rebukes of love have of ttimes borne, 
 
 Scornful, and heaped on her indignities. 
 
 Things, peradventure, for repentance meet, 
 
 She hath thrice forgiven ; but spai-e her life, we pray 
 
 And I for all speak thou wouldst count thine own ; 
 
 So good ; to all so aidf ul ; so beloved. 
 
 Thou speakest as the she-fool only can, 
 
 Retorted then the angry terror. Rise. 
 
 The reasons thou dost urge for life are those 
 
 I hate her for, to death. Go ; thou thyself 
 
 Shalt bind her to yon rock, or both I slay. 
 
 Ceased then his tongue its frightful thunder clang. 
 
 Meanwhile those basest few who thought to win 
 
 The tyrant monster's favour, and preserve 
 
 Themselves from fatal end, death-threatened now, 
 
 Sought out the sorrowing maiden, and disguised 
 
 In borrowed robes of cheerful thanksgiving, 
 
 Entered the heavenly sanctuary wherein, 
 
 At the high altar ministering she stood, 
 
 Angelic priestess rapt in rites divine ; 
 
 Presaging sorrows soon to be fulfilled ; 
 
 Predicting woes accomplished while foretold. 
 
 These, in mock worship mingling with the rest 
 
 Yea, even in mine own presence ; for in her. 
 
 Midst all these woes did I sole solace find. 
 
 Her, sudden seized, and bound ; and hurrying off 
 
 To a lone sea-crag, circled by the sea, 
 
 There, for the monster's evening victim, left. 
 
 Then vowed I to deliver her from her foes. 
 
 And for the rescue armed. The lightning steed. 
 
 On air which pastures, the pre-ultimate sign 
 
 Of the divine destruction of all worlds ; 
 
 The sparkles of whose hoofs in falling stars. 
 
 Struck from the adamantine course of space. 
 
 Stream o'er the skies, in swift and solemn joy 
 
 Came trembling at my call. A lance of light, 
 
 A sunbeam tempered in eternal fire, 
 
 I in mine hand assumed, and forth we fared. 
 
 Wide o'er the waters ro^e a wail of woe, 
 
 With a crowd's fierce shout of exultation twined ; 
 
 For, chained to a dark rock, rough and high, the sea 
 
 Was loathly yielding back to land, there stood. 
 
 Arrayed in Paradisal purity 
 
 Alone, that meek and innocent angel maid ; 
 
 The monster wading greedily through the waves, 
 
 Her to devour ; the angels, some aghast; 
 
 Exulting some j her sister as half dead, 
 
FESTVa. 843 
 
 Fell fainting from her seat ; the only light 
 
 Of falling stars, with blinks of lightning mixed, 
 
 Lamping the red horizon fitfully. 
 
 Midway 'tween rock and sea, we met ; and though 
 
 The creature bellowing would have fled, nor more 
 
 Light's eye with mock divinity defiled ; 
 
 Yet was I there to slay as weU. as save. 
 
 The lance of light I couched ; and straight my steed 
 
 Who knew, instinctive, all his dread devoir ; 
 
 Drove on, like an inevitable storm, 
 
 Through the whole monstrous mass, till in the heart, 
 
 Quivering it stood, triumphant. Down then dropped 
 
 The soulless corpse. The beauteous captive's bonds 
 
 I, instant, burst ; and wrapped her sacred limbs 
 
 In the like robes I wore, of golden web 
 
 And azure wove ; for forth I sped at first. 
 
 Of conquest confident, mine armour dight 
 
 With trophies rich, beseeming such event. 
 
 And on the rock where long she swooning lay, 
 
 Though conscious she was saved from direst death, 
 
 I placed her, perfect in pure loveliness, 
 
 And in that garb of glory. Then there came 
 
 A voice, as of a star-cloud in the sky, 
 
 Approving all I had done, and blessing. Formed 
 
 I saw, too, 'neath the cloud a rainbow bright. 
 
 From whose arch, falling as in circular gust. 
 
 And minishing spires, this wing&d thing of light, 
 
 Sign augural of divine and holy peace, 
 
 God-missioned, hovered round me for a time, 
 
 Then nestled in my bosom, as ye see. 
 
 But not 80 from the orb, where still remained 
 
 Those recreant spirits who with loud lament 
 
 Wept their extinguished god ; him to revive 
 
 Striving with all their strength. In vain they strove. 
 
 Now, lest the venomous vapours of his corpse 
 
 Might the whole sphere impost, it was decreed. 
 
 By crown alike and lieges, all alarmed, 
 
 To offer to the soul of the dead beast. 
 
 His body as a solemn holocaust, 
 
 Each of the other worthiest. This achieved, 
 
 With a vast mass of pompous rites, the Queen, 
 
 In sordid weeds of false humility, 
 
 And all her proudest subjects, head declined, 
 
 In mournful train, upon a mighty mound 
 
 Upreared by the seaside, the heapy corse 
 
 Of the terrific slain laid out ; and balked 
 
 In their last complot, lo I another seized 
 
 Their souls, instinct with hate more murderous still ; 
 
 Mine own destruction. Me, where I remained 
 
 Protecting her I honoured, they approached, 
 
 Beseeching I would witness the last rites 
 
 And public incremation of the dead, 
 
846 FE8TU8, 
 
 All that he gladdeneth over, as his own ; 
 
 Nor aught made more than he can deal with ; turn 
 
 Towards its own profit, and his joy ; though oft, 
 
 In travail of its proper end, made mind 
 
 Dole measureless endures, constrained to learn 
 
 The rule, that in made mind, the divine is born 
 
 Of bitterness ; and where sacrifice is not, 
 
 Is never fire ; the fire which sanctifies. 
 
 One thought now lightened in my mind ; one hope 
 
 My spirit possessed ; one vast desire my soul. 
 
 I claimed to suffer for her, in her stead, 
 
 So she might be absolved. But Heaven refused 
 
 The substitute injustice. Think, said God, 
 
 Have I not said for ages, every soul 
 
 Should its own burden bear, and every son 
 
 Of man, his own feet from the snare release 
 
 He had himself entangled in ? Think not. 
 
 One soul, however high can other free 
 
 From sin or sin's due doom. Just Heaven forbids 
 
 All misconceived presentment of the good 
 
 For ill, and innocence for guilt ; nor needs ; 
 
 He who is more, and higher, than all laws 
 
 He hath made, as merciful as just, can aught 
 
 He will, of leviable fine, remit. 
 
 The death-mulct, therefore of offencef ul soul, 
 
 On its own penitence forgiven ; and each 
 
 Its arbitrary act must bide. No more 
 
 Misconstrue equity divine, but bid 
 
 The penitent sinner trust in God, and live. 
 
 But still no sign of soul repentant showed ; 
 
 And judgment took her unobstructed way. 
 
 More solid grew the darkness, night by night ; 
 
 The sacred groves were fired, and every tree. 
 
 Charred into naked blackness ; day by day. 
 
 City and temple, hallowed once, were razed, 
 
 And their foundations rooted up, to find 
 
 Some light to see to live by, or invent 
 
 Haply ; in vain. The soil they stood on, self 
 
 Consumed, gave grisly ashes at the last, 
 
 Only ; un juiced, unvital. Day and night, 
 
 Kang with the cries of myriad woes, the skies, 
 
 Till the stars shuddered ; and the orb I watched 
 
 The awakening of the Angel Maid in, shook. 
 
 Close by her feet, insculptured, on the couch 
 
 Her light form, lightlier than a folded flower 
 
 Impressed, a child cherubic showed, which held 
 
 An hour-glass in his hand. Ten times it turned, 
 
 Upwards and downwards ; at the twelfth it fell ; 
 
 And falling, broke ; and as it fell, she rose ; 
 
 Rose, like a lily bending o'er its stem, 
 
 Gently until she stood. And, hark, she cried, 
 
 Beloved, hear'st thou not that wail of woe ? 
 
FUSTUS. 347 
 
 I know it, whence it comes. Oh let ns henoe 
 
 Hasten, and Heaven beseech to save ; to save. 
 
 Then stirred the dove divine imbosomed here. 
 
 And I obeyed its impulse, as of God, 
 
 From whom it came ; and calling to my side 
 
 A cloudlet like a silver swan that sailed 
 
 The deeps of air, we clasped its snowy down, 
 
 And swiftly winged our way ; till, di*awing near 
 
 Again, that dark apostate orb, our tears, 
 
 But most my loved one's, fell like raindrops down. 
 
 Thus moved, I said, unto the air, be fire ; 
 
 And to the waters, be ye flames ; (but flames 
 
 Celestial, purifying ; not gross like those 
 
 I have told of, all destroying, which far off 
 
 Showed, on the horizon, the unbroken ring 
 
 Of round beleaguering fire, that, swift as thought 
 
 The angelic nations all in one doomed flock 
 
 Relentless, closed), I said, and straight, in sooth 
 
 It was so ; for it seemed but meet to purge 
 
 The sanctuary in this wise, so defiled. 
 
 From side to side, from end to end, it burned ; 
 
 From pole to pole it blazed, from sea to sea ; 
 
 All cleansing it consumed ; till in the heart 
 
 Of that bright city, central to the sphere, 
 
 Now shining ruins only, o'er the height 
 
 Of one immovable mountain monument, 
 
 (Forked like a double pyramid which sole 
 
 Survived the splendid wreck) we stood on ; lo 1 
 
 Struck suddenly as from vertical space, what seemed 
 
 To fear's rash eye once more Heaven's fiery glaive 
 
 All 'stonying, burned ; some dreading it, if waved 
 
 By the same hand as first, would cleave in twain 
 
 Their self accursed sphere, and hurl its dust, 
 
 With them, for ever into the deathly void. 
 
 Near and more near on waves of light it rode 
 
 Swiftly triumphant, and with blinding beam ; 
 
 Till o'er the orb's full centre, all its fires 
 
 Conflagrant, mutually pernicious, quelled, 
 
 As in presence of a mightier power, at last, 
 
 By slow descent alighting, still it stood ; 
 
 Stood upright ; not, as deemed, a flaming brand, 
 
 But sceptral olive staff ; the original rod 
 
 Our pilgrim angel's copied ; this with light 
 
 Liquid and lif ef ul sapped ; distilling peace 
 
 On such as, Heaven's true seed, light love ; there standfl ; 
 
 Symbol of peace and power supreme ; which all 
 
 Who seek God's sceptral righteousness, Heaven's scale 
 
 And measure of immortal bliss, may touch. 
 
 And touching live. Who toucheth magnetwise 
 
 That luminous pale, no longer gropes in dark 
 
 Of his own Being, but all things sees through ; 
 
 And in, and to himself authentic light. 
 
846 FE8TU8. 
 
 All that he gladdeneth over, as his own ; 
 
 Nor aught made more than he can deal with ; turn 
 
 Towards its own profit, and his joy ; though oft, 
 
 In travail of its proper end, made mind 
 
 Dole measureless endures, constrained to learn 
 
 The rule, that in made mind, the divine is born 
 
 Of bitterness ; and where sacrifice is not, 
 
 Is never fire ; the fire which sanctifies. 
 
 One thought now lightened in my mind ; one hopo 
 
 My spirit possessed ; one vast desire my soul. 
 
 I claimed to suffer for her, in her stead, 
 
 So she might be absolved. But Heaven refused 
 
 The substitute injustice. Think, said God, 
 
 Have I not said for ages, every soul 
 
 Should its own burden bear, and every son 
 
 Of man, his own feet from the snare release 
 
 He had himself entangled in ? Think not. 
 
 One soul, however high can other free 
 
 From sin or sin's due doom. Just Heaven forbids 
 
 All misconceived presentment of the good 
 
 For ill, and innocence for guilt ; nor needs ; 
 
 He who is more, and higher, than all laws 
 
 He hath made, as merciful as just, can aught 
 
 He will, of leviable fine, remit, 
 
 The death-mulct, therefore of offencef ul soul, 
 
 On its own penitence forgiven ; and each 
 
 Its arbitrary act must bide. No more 
 
 Misconstrue equity divine, but bid 
 
 The penitent sinner trust in God, and live. 
 
 But still no sign of soul repentant showed ; 
 
 And judgment took her unobstructed way. 
 
 More solid grew the darkness, night by night ; 
 
 The sacred groves were fired, and every tree. 
 
 Charred into naked blackness ; day by day. 
 
 City and temple, hallowed once, were razed, 
 
 And their foundations rooted up, to find 
 
 Some light to see to live by, or invent 
 
 Haply ; in vain. The soil they stood on, self 
 
 Consumed, gave grisly ashes at the last, 
 
 Only ; un juiced, unvital. Day and night. 
 
 Rang with the cries of myriad woes, the skies, 
 
 Till the stars shuddered ; and the orb I watched 
 
 The awakening of the J\ngel Maid in, shook. 
 
 Close by her feet, insculptured, on the couch 
 
 Her light form, lightlier than a folded flower 
 
 Impressed, a child cherubic showed, which held 
 
 An hour-glass in his hand. Ten times it turned. 
 
 Upwards and downwards ; at the twelfth it fell ; 
 
 And falling, broke ; and as it fell, she rose ; 
 
 Rose, like a lily bending o'er its stem. 
 
 Gently until she stood. And, hark, she cried, 
 
 Beloved, hear'st thou not that wail of woe ? 
 
FESTUS. 347 
 
 I know it, whence it comes. Oh let ub henoe 
 
 Hasten, and Heaven beseech to save ; to save. 
 
 Then stirred the dove divine imbosomed here. 
 
 And I obeyed its impnlse, as of God, 
 
 From whom it came ; and calling to my side 
 
 A cloudlet like a silver swan that sailed 
 
 The deeps of air, we clasped its snowy down, 
 
 And swiftly winged our way ; till, di-awing near 
 
 Again, that dark apostate orb, our tears, 
 
 But most my loved one's, fell like raindrops down. 
 
 Thus moved, I said, unto the air, be fire ; 
 
 And to the waters, be ye flames ; (but flames 
 
 Celestial, purifying ; not gross like those 
 
 I have told of, all destroying, which far off 
 
 Showed, on the horizon, the unbroken ring 
 
 Of round beleaguering fire, that, swift as thought 
 
 The angelic nations all in one doomed flock 
 
 Relentless, closed), I said, and straight, in sooth 
 
 It was so ; for it seemed but meet to purge 
 
 The sanctuary in this wise, so defiled. 
 
 From side to side, from end to end, it burned ; 
 
 From pole to pole it blazed, from sea to sea ; 
 
 All cleansing it consumed ; till in the heart 
 
 Of that bright city, central to the sphere, 
 
 Now shining ruins only, o'er the height 
 
 Of one immovable mountain monument, 
 
 (Forked like a double pyramid which sole 
 
 Survived the splendid wreck) we stood on ; lo 1 
 
 Struck suddenly as from vertical space, what seemed 
 
 To fear's rash eye once more Heaven's fiery glaive 
 
 All 'stonying, burned ; some dreading it, if waved 
 
 By the same hand as first, would cleave in twain 
 
 Their self accursed sphere, and hurl its dust, 
 
 With them, for ever into the deathly void. 
 
 Near and more near on waves of light it rode 
 
 Swiftly triumphant, and with blinding beam ; 
 
 Till o'er the orb's full centre, all its fires 
 
 Conflagrant, mutually pernicious, quelled, 
 
 As in presence of a mightier power, at last, 
 
 By slow descent alighting, still it stood ; 
 
 Stood upright ; not, as deemed, a flaming brand, 
 
 But sceptral olive staff ; the original rod 
 
 Our pilgrim angel's copied ; this with light 
 
 Liquid and lifeful sapped ; distilling peace 
 
 On such as. Heaven's true seed, light love ; there standa ; 
 
 Symbol of peace and power supreme ; which all 
 
 Who seek God's sceptral righteousness, Heaven's scale 
 
 And measure of immortal bliss, may touch, 
 
 And touching live. Who toucheth magnetwise 
 
 That luminous pale, no longer gropes in dark 
 
 Of his own Being, but all things sees through ; 
 
 And in, and to himself authentic light, 
 
348 FESTU8, 
 
 To all gives light. Alas for creature will ! 
 If here some seek, more there the truth eschew. 
 Darkness and light still stand at war, as good 
 And ill, which lose and win in turn, while stars, 
 Vivific globelets roll them through the veins 
 Galactic of the heavens ; so long as lasts 
 Creation ; nor our prescient Lord the weight 
 Casts in life's scale of his all-conquering word, 
 And good, for good, prevails. But now, I said. 
 Go thou poor selfless soul ; this golden key- 
 True, triple, take which life, death, life divine. 
 Eternal emblems ; master-key of all 
 Time's mysteries in all worlds ; which nought may let ; 
 Which Heaven's own gates unlocks of solid light, 
 The portals of the palace of that Sun 
 No eye create shall else behold ; which, said, 
 I from my breast the sacred symbol drew, 
 And in her pure palm placed. This, said I, take 
 And ope the prison our exile moans in, nigh 
 To death. Restore to life's sweet light, strike off 
 The manacles from her hands, and from her feet 
 Loosen the insultant fetters. In her wounds 
 Pour thou the oil of peace, and wash with streams 
 Of living waters. Clothe her with thyself 
 As thou art clothed. O cheer her heart with hope 
 And inspiration of thy faith, and say 
 I sent thee to redeem her. Tell her, still 
 My love hath never altered ; not in grief. 
 In passion not, not in disgrace, nor guilt ; 
 Howe'er inconstant her heart, or opposed. 
 Her love I with an everlasting love ; 
 The One am I unchanging ; what beside 
 Thou wilt ; for thou canst only utter truth. 
 Go ; and may He who over-orders all 
 Speed thee upon thy quest. She, wordless, went, 
 But looked her thanks ; which seemed to promise full 
 Discharge of precept ; on a wished-f or wind 
 Wafting herself away. I, who, while aU 
 This dark defection reigned in Angel world, 
 Had warned in vain 'gainst error, seeing now, 
 Heaven's own eternal standard planted there, 
 Perpetual in its mild appeal to all. 
 Even souls sin smirched, for life and choice renewed, 
 Predestinately triumphant ; and once more. 
 By this dear monitor, this God-gift, moved 
 That sphere to quit ; first in myself resolved 
 Time's mighty stream to pass, which bounds the realms 
 Of sense and soul, and either separates 
 From Heaven's eternal spirit land, that I 
 Might to the sire of all present for all 
 My heart's entreaties ; and the prayerful love 
 Of that bright maid, for her sister, penitent now, 
 
FE8TU8. B40 
 
 The Eternnrs f^^rcat forgiveness mifxht receive 
 
 And sin o'erlapping pardon. On this high 
 
 And arduousost emprise, behold me bound ; 
 
 Yet ere I left my cloudlet car, whence late 
 
 I marked that world-wreck, once again I gazed 
 
 Thitherward, and beheld before the gates 
 
 Of a half -buried palace, black as death. 
 
 Its marble portals, locked in blessed embrace, 
 
 The well-belovM twain. A voice then spake, 
 
 The voice of one joy-hearted, soft and clear 
 
 As bells at early morn, on that blessed day 
 
 Named in the breast-laws of each starry orb, 
 
 Wherein eternity entwines with time 
 
 Its golden strands, and weds the world to Heaven ; 
 
 Arise, stand forth, beloved sister, rise ; 
 
 How blessed am I to serve thee, to release. 
 
 The faintest sigh of penitence faith's fine ear 
 
 Hears through a dungeon's walls ; and this we heard j 
 
 Heaven heard it, and rejoiced. And longer, now, 
 
 Nor doubt, nor wait. Behold thy handmaid, me. 
 
 Gifts bring I for thee ; gifts of countless cost ; 
 
 Of priceless worth. Thy lover Lord commands 
 
 Array thee for the bridals. Lo, the new 
 
 And shining robes by heavenly fingers wrought 
 
 Fit for her form divine whose happy love 
 
 Is hallowed in the eternal rites of Heaven. 
 
 So shall we dwell together here in bliss. 
 
 Till he shall come who ever comes to all 
 
 His promise sanctifies. Use well the hour 
 
 Which yet remains, in all obedience clear ; 
 
 And deck thyself in weeds of righteousness, 
 
 With jewels of good deeds adorned, and clad 
 
 In radiant raiment redolent of praise. 
 
 For infinite is every gift of His 
 
 Divine bestowing ; and Salvation's cup, 
 
 As Nature's, He to overflowing fills. 
 
 With joy I heard, I saw. Nor longer then 
 
 Awaited, but where most the starlands crowd 
 
 The potent North, my way sped, space on space 
 
 Leaving in turn behind ; passing unharmed 
 
 Upon the verge of Being, where the path 
 
 Narrows to almost nothing ; the monsters foul, 
 
 Grave-dust, and death-night, things ye know not of, 
 
 Yet fatal beasts to all who, me before, 
 
 That way had urged. But God hath favoured me. 
 
 And nigh thereto, the Golgotha of worlds. 
 
 Time's chamel house, where, skuJl-like, giant orbs 
 
 Extinct of life, with rotting, sickly light 
 
 Defiled the purview, and advance delayed ; 
 
 Yet shrinking nought, though shuddering, passed I on, 
 
 Through all uncleanness clean, all foulness, pure. 
 
 Fasting, athirst and faint with travail, still 
 
850 FE8TU8, 
 
 My purposed way I have held, till, bright afar, 
 
 The kindly radiance of this angel world 
 
 Beaconed me hither, and I came. Ye now. 
 
 Thanks for your welcome, holy and hospitable, 
 
 Behold me journeying to the City of God, 
 
 There to prefer my prayers, and plead for those 
 
 Whom still I love, though drawn aside to trust 
 
 The natural strength allotted them, and not, 
 
 With first and just reliance, as befits 
 
 All soul created, God ; who thus to all 
 
 By failure even of angels, when He wills, 
 
 The perfect path points out ; and to all spirit, 
 
 Sin's sequence, and the mean to escape from sin, 
 
 Asserting, shows His righteousness and grace. 
 
 Let whoso feels in holy will inspired 
 
 Me to accompany, speak, to that bright throne 
 
 Where God our Father in all glory sits, 
 
 The world in holy audience at His feet ; 
 
 And there, with me, while giving praise for all 
 
 His word hath made and saved, for those not yet 
 
 Redeemed, pray ceaselessly. Uprist, as 'twere 
 
 A living constellation, suddenly, 
 
 Seven of those angels, I one, pressed around, 
 
 By impulse each, and like instinctive, urged, 
 
 Eager for friendly escort ; when the chief 
 
 Cherub who welcomed first that pilgrim bright, 
 
 Thus said ; Another holy day, made blessed 
 
 By our dear guest ; how different he from those 
 
 Deceptive friends he tells of ; hath now slid 
 
 Into the passive, strength recruiting, night ; 
 
 Rest also ye. Such is mine own intent. 
 
 Replied the eloquent guest ; and less for that 
 
 These life-tried limbs have gone through, than their sakea, 
 
 Who know not half the flight they meditate. 
 
 Then, worship before rest ; the changeless wont 
 
 Of all, ere act, refreshment, or repose. 
 
 Last, on their happy couches, odorous all 
 
 Of flowery incense, lay the angels down. 
 
 Shading their faces with the plumy gold 
 
 Of their space -searching pinions ; sacred sleep 
 
 Stealing the starry wonders of their eyes, 
 
 And with divinest visions hallowing all. 
 
 Morn, like a maiden o'er her pearls, a gift 
 
 Unhoped, mysteriously conveyed by night. 
 
 Glanced o'er the manna dew, as though the ground 
 
 Were sown with starseed ; and the angels rose, 
 
 Each from his hallowed couch, and, duly made. 
 
 The soul's oblation Godwards, took their leave. 
 
 For a brief space, of their beloved compeers ; 
 
 With many an ardent longing for the way. 
 
 As yet untried, 'neath such sweet leadership. 
 
 Exchanged, at length, the last embrace, last look. 
 
FESTU8. 851 
 
 High npward, the bright bevy, like to light 
 
 Out of the crownM North, shot ; on and on, 
 
 Through firmamental fields of farthest space, 
 
 Till, at the brink of a broad river arrived, 
 
 Swift as a cataract, but unbroken, still. 
 
 And level as is the mean line of the sea. 
 
 Which seemingly pervaded heaven, they halt. 
 
 Thick with chaotic matter and unformed. 
 
 Like the volcanic blood unseen which bounds, 
 
 In veins of lightning, through earth's cavernous heart ; 
 
 With ruined orbs, like broken ice lumps, rolled 
 
 Melting and crumbling, from the ocean deeps 
 
 Of passed eternity, dense, it rashed, to meet 
 
 The infinite to come ; and while its depths 
 
 Were darkness self, yet every surface wave 
 
 Which curled out of the mass, seemed light alive, 
 
 Though but an instant. On an eminent height, 
 
 \Miich overpeered the stream, the angels sate. 
 
 Then said our Angel leader to the rest, 
 
 *' What see ye past the river ? " And they said, 
 
 *' We nothing see beyond. Athwart this stream. 
 
 If stream it be, and not a shoreless main. 
 
 Is more than we can ken." " But I," returned 
 
 The questioner, " see beyond, the clear bright land 
 
 Of heavenly immortality ; mine own 
 
 By birthright, earned, and given ; and thither, we, 
 
 Descending to the shore," he stooped, and dipped 
 
 Into the stream his hand ; which filling full, 
 
 He tasted, and thus spake : " Ye waters, once 
 
 Of death, but now of life percipient, take 
 
 Back the libation I of ye have made. 
 
 And be ye changed for ever." Uttering this, 
 
 He cast the dark remainder in the flood, 
 
 Which was, of being, but that instant changed 
 
 Into the tide of conscious life, with light 
 
 Celestial, flashing to its soundless deeps. 
 
 Grasping the branch then of an olive tree. 
 
 Which bowered with verdant gold the peaceful shore, 
 
 He therewith sprinkled, one by one, the band 
 
 Who him accompanied ; with these pure rites 
 
 Making them free, initiate into heaven, 
 
 And death the lesser mysteries of life. 
 
 Joy, self -evolving now each heart lit up 
 
 With solemn marvel at these gladsome deeds ; 
 
 And round him all stood linked in one embrace. 
 
 ** Behold," he said ; " for fit it is that now 
 
 We keep our course ;" and just below, there lay. 
 
 Moored but a little distance from the side, 
 
 A crescent boat, translucent as a star, 
 
 We all embarked in, paled with godly dread ; 
 
 /"or one, I said, 'mong that self -chosen seven, 
 
 Who had, in duteous care, succeeded once. 
 
S52 FESTUS. 
 
 Long since the primal hoptarchs expianti now 
 
 Of their false claims to Divinity, sin superb, 
 
 Was I ; my fellow angels, of all g-rades ; 
 
 One only in their holy fear of God. 
 
 If lightning- were the gross corporeal frame 
 
 Of some seraphic essence, whose bright thoughts 
 
 As far surpassed, in keen rapidity, 
 
 The lagging action of his limbs, as mind 
 
 Man's clay ; so, too, with like excess in speed, 
 
 O'er animated thought of lightning, flew 
 
 That moon horned vessel o'er life's upmost deeps. 
 
 Passed memory's golden isles, where things are not, 
 
 And only names exist, cloud counterparts. 
 
 Around whose reefs the bright seductive sea 
 
 Smiles wreckf ul, and sincerest smoothness feigns. 
 
 We went, we knew not how. It was as though 
 
 Finite with infinite mingling, rapture wrought 
 
 Of o'er abundant reason. At the last 
 
 Heaven's azure shores we made, and leaped on land. 
 
 Scarce had we touched that land all life, when lo I 
 
 From every footfall, like soft waves of light, 
 
 A murmurous music sprang, as if its own 
 
 Its bosom welcomed, with serenest joy 
 
 Eejoicing inwardly. The sacred soil, 
 
 To these premundane harmonies vibrating. 
 
 The same which faith hears in the still of time. 
 
 Our chief saluted ; kneeling, likewise we. 
 
 Then he, embracing all, each soul in turn. 
 
 Said, build we now a column here of light, 
 
 That all upon the further side may know 
 
 We have in safety crossed the flood, and see 
 
 What perils, 'mid stream, to avoid. Himself 
 
 Placed the foundation stone ; and one by one, 
 
 Masses of dazzling adamant, which starred 
 
 The shining shore, like flowers that fringe the banks 
 
 Of woodland brook, we piled up altar- wise. 
 
 At his command. On every ewne was graved. 
 
 In gleamy dark, some name of God ; each name, 
 
 A separate title symbolizing truth. 
 
 A sheaf of lightnings on the head he placed, 
 
 Which with the skies intense communion held, 
 
 And burned in correspondence : all thus crowned 
 
 With heartiest love, soul beaconing, warning soul. 
 
 Our journey called us on : and pleased we trode 
 
 That land of solid concord ; yet not long 
 
 The lower line of progress kept. Aloft 
 
 Once more we stretched the light related wing. 
 
 High in the face of Heaven's eternal towers. 
 
 Immeasurably, as seemed at first, remote ; 
 
 And of sight-quelling brilliance, more almost 
 
 Than enough to quench our lesser beam. But this. 
 
 As we approached them, strengthened and enlarged. 
 
FESTUS. 
 
 lu heart and effluence. WMlst we happy seven 
 
 "Were marvelling at such change, enrapt in thought, 
 
 Lost in the labyrinth of a boundless love, 
 
 Self -humbled by the glory upon us poured, 
 
 Heaven was, we felt, close to us ; and wo had reached 
 
 The baeement of that shining city's walls. 
 
 Celestial, which enclosed the essential world, 
 
 Or might, expansible ; and standing by 
 
 Prayer's glowing gate, about to enter, missed 
 
 Our stranger friend, our angel leader. Lost 
 
 In holy wonder, greater now, each turned 
 
 To other, yet none spake. But straight on high, 
 
 A voice spake for us, saying. Enter ye ; 
 
 For I am he who led ye hither ; still 
 
 Lead ye ; your guest ; your guide. Then rushed on all. 
 
 Like eagre swallowing up its streamy way, 
 
 The whole mysterious truth. And we obeyed 
 
 The word magnetic ; the divine constraint. 
 
 We entered. All was silent. One sole voice 
 
 The extatic stillness brake, at last ; and toned 
 
 With Heaven's serene eternity, streamed up 
 
 Towards the Ineffable One ; nor harp, nor hymn 
 
 Ear caught, nor breath beside ; nor thought, nor hope 
 
 Of aU creation, but therein was bound. 
 
 Father, he said, in union with all souls 
 
 Thou hast into being breathed, for all I pray ; 
 
 I, son of thine humanity, through the worlds 
 
 Kow, wandering ; now, if proximate to thy throne, 
 
 Never to thee ; to thee nought made is near, 
 
 Nor can be ; thou thyself being nigh to all. 
 
 For us thy creatures thus imperfect, yet 
 
 So perfect made, that tempted by the sense 
 
 Of their own excellence, trusting in themselves, 
 
 More than in thee, presumptuously, and apt 
 
 Therefore to fall ; for those now fallen we pray, 
 
 Thy mercy, Lord 1 Let not the imperfect, tried 
 
 By thy perfection ; nor the fallible, weighed 
 
 Against omniscience, prove such failure fixed 
 
 For creatures' total ruin ; nor just pain, 
 
 For ever operative, wear out at last 
 
 Power limited of endu^nce ; for the strength 
 
 Of all create, would rend beneath the strain 
 
 Like a bow o'erstrung, contending. Lord I 'gainst thee. 
 
 Puither let all corrected, chastened, fined 
 
 By thy just law, their reason self -convict 
 
 Constraining them, recoveringly partake 
 
 Truth's sacred light ; that so the soul relumed 
 
 And strengthened 'gainst the darkness self -invoked. 
 
 Of spirits or false, or faultily unforeseeing, 
 
 Which shrouds their world, its lover Lord may seek ; 
 
 That Heaven's pure light the darkness of that world 
 
 May clarify ; that soul, by thy pure spirit 
 
354 FESTUa, 
 
 Impregned, bring* forth divine f elicitousness ; 
 
 And, passed death's bitter flood, the just may see 
 
 Life's pure regeneration come, in fine, 
 
 To all soul, saved and sanctified to thee. 
 
 He ceased ; and issuant from the eternal throne, 
 
 Came, like a cloud of light, the bright response. 
 
 The Godhead in expression ; love through law 
 
 Uttering, more broad than light, thus published ; son ! 
 
 Be ever answered, soon as made, thy prayers. 
 
 Out of that love which stablished first the stars, 
 
 And with pure Nature's holy Spirit conjoined, 
 
 Brought forth divine humanity, through all spheres. 
 
 Free as a God to choose in error's spite. 
 
 In sin's, in ill's, in imperfection's, lo I 
 
 I make the world mine own, and take again, 
 
 For its own sake rehallowed, and in me 
 
 Redeemed, all spirit life ; this to my will, 
 
 Free, fateful, due, from first ; redemption, not 
 
 Than all creation less embodying, love. 
 
 Shall see no bound, and so be satisfied 
 
 With everlasting ingrowth. Finite mind 
 
 Can err no more than boundedness involves, 
 
 And the Infinite concedes. World after world, 
 
 The illuminated missal of the skies. 
 
 Which leaf by leaf thou tum'st, shall close ; the spheres 
 
 Of shining sadness, man ubiquitous owns 
 
 Thou once, and that but late thou pray'dst for, erst 
 
 Apostate, now to bliss restored and grace. 
 
 Shall, as thou wouldst, retrack the paths of life. 
 
 And as in this orb, now, grace divine hath blessed, 
 
 They who love God, see truly ; so, removed 
 
 For a space, the angels reprobate which sought 
 
 To wreck the innocence of all ; even now 
 
 Conscious of wrong, and so redeemable 
 
 By self -exactive discipline of years, 
 
 Full many, and remorseful, yet to be. 
 
 Shall see in the end how reason, of process pure 
 
 And irresistible, shows their former act 
 
 Both sin, and sin to be abjured and mourned. 
 
 Which done, and mercy, chief of acts divine 
 
 In their conception, manifested to them, 
 
 Behold the world I gave thee, sinless first, 
 
 Then recreant, last, to bliss restored and grace. 
 
 Made happier and more amiable than first, 
 
 The earnest of the harvest of the skies, 
 
 Behold it at thy feet. The creature lures, 
 
 Snares, both, of mystery and idolatry, 
 
 Shall yet, transformed, rejoice before all life, 
 
 As simple worship, perfect truth, pure faith. 
 
 Law is the first of tilings, and form is law. 
 
 As light create is night destroyed, so changed 
 
 Shall every sensible organ be to force 
 
FE8TU8, 86S 
 
 Fpiritnal and form ; all power to faculty 
 
 Divine ; each fault a pure perfection made. 
 
 God said ; responsive silence caught the words. 
 
 And hid them in her breast, as night the stars. 
 
 Glowing and sparkling in the life-rayed sun 
 
 Of the celestial firmament, glided up 
 
 On pinions wide of playful lightnings poised 
 
 That sphere Elysian ; by the angels eyed 
 
 (As stars in nightly council watch the earth,) 
 
 ^Vho gladdening saw, three paces from the light, 
 
 Midst of that pure and renovared orb 
 
 Covering with evening cope a wearied head, 
 
 Beside the gardened bank of a bright stream, 
 
 A fair and lofty lady, clad in robes 
 
 Of sea-green hue, girdled with golden zone 
 
 All variously begemmed ; and round her brow, 
 
 Encrowned with peaks of quivering light, a veil 
 
 Of heavenly azure : In this hand a tower. 
 
 In that, a tree. Sate at her feet a maid. 
 
 Pale perfect and serene. 'Tween both there passed, 
 
 With many a reassurant word of love, 
 
 A mutual smile of sympathy and trust. 
 
 As though their lot were linked ; yet knew they scaroe 
 
 How, nor the invisible witness of the Heavens. 
 
 These, while each viewed intently, as though felt 
 
 Close by, the waft of angel's wing, at last 
 
 The younger whispering spake ; Sweet sister mine. 
 
 Sleep thou, and me let wait his coming sole. 
 
 Me he expects to watch ; but would not thou. 
 
 Thereon, reluctant but persuasible still, 
 
 That elder Excellence, laid her down, below 
 
 A rock, in woods, and scented blooms embowered, 
 
 The river flowed by ; watch ; her latest word ; 
 
 Watch, an' thou wilt , in sooth, he will not come. 
 
 Or not to me, who wrought him so much bale. 
 
 And eve set in : still watched the maiden meek. 
 
 And at midnight she prayed. Be thine, O God, 
 
 The spirit which commands and smiles ; which bids 
 
 And blesses ; promises and fulfils ; be ours 
 
 The soul which serves and suffers ; thine the stars 
 
 Tabled upon thy bosom like the stones 
 
 Oracular of light, on the priest's breast ; 
 
 Thine the minutest mote the moonbeams show. 
 
 Come true thy veriest word, and all are blessed. 
 
 Be but thine infinite intents fulfilled. 
 
 And what shall foil the covenanted oath 
 
 The spiritual earth is based on, and behold 1 
 
 The whole at last redeemed and glorified. 
 
 Bid thou thine Angel, Lord I of all thy Song 
 
 Observant most, to whom this orb was given 
 
 To guard and guide, and all its indwellers 
 
 Obediently to thee ; but once sin-lapsed, 
 
 N 3 
 
856 FE8TU8, 
 
 Now part restx)red, to ua descending, bring 
 
 The comfort of thy pardon, and pure bliss. 
 
 Thus praying. Heaven siill looking on, (and know 
 
 When Deity would reveal Himself in soul 
 
 Or mission, He an effluence f ulmines forth, 
 
 A flash of His self-luminous plenitude ; 
 
 Into an angel form, instinct with life 
 
 Immortal as His Thought, and so assumes 
 
 An essence apprehensible,) came down, 
 
 His robe of light, sun-brooched made round them day ; 
 
 Our angel guide, great Beniel, whom myself, 
 
 And all my bright companions cognizant now 
 
 Of his beneficent history and his world's, 
 
 Alike eventful, knew well ; and he stood. 
 
 Shone on his breast sublime a meteor sun, 
 
 The sisterly twain between : The elder rose, 
 
 Full pale ; leapt up the younger, blithe at heart : 
 
 Whom, by the hand, the angel softly took ; 
 
 And said, O thou, who watchedst, and hadst faith. 
 
 What shall be thy reward ? If I, she said, 
 
 Have done well, 'twas from reverence of our God, 
 
 And love of His divine love ; this thy bride, 
 
 Predestined from the first to thy bright breast, 
 
 Being infinitely more worthy of thy love. 
 
 Than I, his handmaid, to proclaim the names 
 
 Only of countless virtuous attributes 
 
 Which own him Lord for ever. What though sin 
 
 Serpent-like f anged her, and she fell, I knew 
 
 Thou, God 1 couldst touching heal her ; and thy power 
 
 To do good, equalled by thy will, whose love's 
 
 World wide. Were aught to me of guerdon due, 
 
 It were, to serve, love her, and dwell with both. 
 
 Be then to her the vow first promised, now 
 
 Performed ; and troth-plight in espousals end. 
 
 With penitent gratitude then the royal bride 
 
 Who had once so tormented the younger, then, 
 
 In all her queenly beauty cast her down, 
 
 And clasped her handmaid's knees, her sister's knees, 
 
 And wept amain. But her the Angel raised, 
 
 And with bland smiles saluting each, both blessed. 
 
 Come ye with me, he said, beloved, come ; 
 
 Be one my sister and be one my bride, 
 
 Each as the other dear, each like divine. 
 
 The handmaid's faith hath saved the mistress' throne. 
 
 The world's wide doomring ours, shall neither this 
 
 XJsurpful of sway premature ; nor this 
 
 With less than all content, lack claim to use 
 
 Equal and just regality ; one with mine, 
 
 Of God predestinate ; and or there, or here, 
 
 Our spuits' home be Heaven ; and Heaven is where 
 
 We best can serve the All-father and our kind. 
 
 Then one by either hand he led them up, 
 
FE8TU8, 857 
 
 This with the holy presence and august, 
 
 Most like the mother goddess, city crowned, 
 
 Now tiar'd as with the towers of Paradise ; 
 
 That, with the lucid crescent on her brow, 
 
 To the high seats of old prepared for both 
 
 Beneath God's footstool, which all things create 
 
 And temporal, subdivides from His, eteme ; 
 
 And all the Angels and the Spirits blessed, 
 
 Who, wise and pure, temptation had withstood, 
 
 Yet wiser, humbler now, for victory won. 
 
 Awaiting hopeful their return who erred. 
 
 And theirs who had taught to err, serenely dwelled 
 
 Around the sisterly twain in Angel world, 
 
 Concentric with the Spiritual Sun, which rules 
 
 Those skies supernal ; and the orb whose face 
 
 To its original brightness now relumed. 
 
 Shone gloriously. And Wisdom, like of old, 
 
 From one to other, as a holy thought 
 
 Pervades a gladsome circle, praising God 
 
 Profoundly filled and happily every soul. 
 
 Smiled the aU-gracious God ; and Heaven then saw 
 
 Reflected in the universal face 
 
 Divine humanity lifts, all sphered, and bom 
 
 As of eye, eye-glance, the undeemed similitude 
 
 It bears the unlikenable ; as sky and sea. 
 
 This bosoming but an imaged infinite, 
 
 Unimageable, embraces all finite. 
 
 The Eternal all sire smiled ; and from his throne 
 
 Stretched out the hand of blessing o'er the world ; 
 
 And blessed it was, for ever, blesse 1 it is. 
 
 Festus. God's justice done, the faultful Angels lost 
 Deceivers and deceived were ; speak 1 
 
 Angel op Ra.rth. Condemned. 
 
 Doubtless to punishment and fine condign. 
 Thenceforth to mourn their sin and expiate best 
 They may, their foul idolatrousness of soul, 
 And mysteries of o'er many godded faith, 
 By sad self cure, stem penitence and return 
 To truth (by them long honoured, spiritual truth 
 Celestial known) though f alseliest derelict ; 
 We know, as Grod is just ; but what their end. 
 He sole who made them pure, with mental force 
 Enough to have quelled all reason's paltry foes ; 
 Knows, and deliberates ; but who pitying all. 
 All to punition just ; perdition not 
 Endless, assigned ; with hope of ultimate grace, 
 By proof of penitent self lustration, sense 
 Of culpable pride, and wrong of violate law. 
 Lightened ; which sole, hell's adamantine chain 
 Solves ; and time's irons acetouswise eats through ; 
 Nor less knows he, and more, what each deserves, 
 Who started first their fall ; nor boldly showed 
 
859 fESTUB. 
 
 His hand of guile as once, but skilled adept 
 
 In ruinous art, taught basely to prefer 
 
 To the highest, their nature's meanest principles ; 
 
 Their love of ease, power, luxury. Spirit of 111 1 
 
 Why lo ! the Evil one hath evanished. Much 
 
 I marked him writhing with remorse and shame 
 
 As to me seemed, the while that woe I limned, 
 
 Complex and ever deepening, sin had burned 
 
 Into our orb's breast ; and that but to evade 
 
 Looked half impossible, memory keenly traced 
 
 What oft I have viewed, when facing north, nor far 
 
 From where the sun's broad scales gan night to o'erbow 
 
 With half the day's weight due ; and cottier lude 
 
 Of ruder glen, upon the steep hill side, 
 
 Huge heap of weed and haulm of summer, raked 
 
 From lands discropped now, fires ; the pale blue fume 
 
 Soars bulkily ; and in wreathed volume asks, 
 
 From every jutting turn of the glen, escape, 
 
 Ere miserably dispersed in air ; so sought, 
 
 With each fresli incident of the varied tale, 
 
 Plainly but vainly, too, our Spirit of 111, 
 
 Retreat with forces whole. 
 
 Festus. Nor only such. 
 
 So far as no disturbing speech, his word 
 He hath saved to thee, intact ; but less perchance 
 The exposure pained him of defeated scheme. 
 Than the tmtroublous end of one who had erred, 
 And been forgiven, his pride disgusted. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Know 
 
 Hope for one world, one soul, is hope for all, 
 Crown thou thy heart with that imperial truth. 
 And now away, Him track we by the bounds 
 Of furthest space. 
 
 Festus. Be with mc to the end. 
 
FESTUa. 859 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Material masses these, which, to the soul 
 Of reason assured that all things made, finite, 
 Imperfect, and distinguishable from God, 
 Contained in Him, not he in them, good end, 
 As bound serve, and commensurable of thought, 
 Whir.h Him, the sole inmieasurable, dcmark 
 From that he hath made, and spiritual contrast 
 'Gainst aught material though it overpeer 
 The edge of night and nothingness. Nor yet 
 Inevitably, in prayers of prostrate crowds. 
 Vows of embattled nations, on their knees 
 Each thirsting for the other's blood, on plea 
 Of coveted territory, or boundary, scored 
 On mountain tops or river-beds, such gusts 
 Thick, selfish, sottish, pierce the heavenly air 
 Like one pure soul's intaminate breath, to God. 
 "With whom rests all decree for world or soul 
 For angel or for nation. 
 
 T?ie World's OvterTiiost Orl. 
 Festus, Angel of Eaeth, Lucifeb. 
 
 Angel of Eaeth. Here, upon the ntter verge of infinite space, 
 Lo, Koemiel, Heaven's great centinel, whose eye 
 Subservient, scans creation ; and for aid 
 To soul finite, memorially preserves 
 The records of existence ; all the growth 
 Maturity and age of systems ; ends, 
 Sudden or gradual, of air's errant orbs, 
 The advance of mind, and gain of absolute gooi, 
 O'er sin and ignorance, in the eternal sphere. 
 Great, and in duty great, o'er all preferred, 
 All serves he strictly, strictliest serving God ; 
 He, longing most to mark the end of Time, 
 Who now, as the abdicating Sun lays down 
 His sceptre golden shafted, and resigns. 
 At eve, to ocean's mutinous rout of waves, 
 All kingsliip, rounds him towards his western gates, 
 The gates of exile, never to return ; 
 He sees us ; and our volatile rest, not mean 
 To him, nor meaningless, be sure, wiU note. 
 But speak to hirn no word. 
 
 Festus. His look restrains. 
 
 Angel of Eaeth. God's speechless intermediary, twixt Him 
 And his intelligent universe ; angel he 
 Of silence, who the unworded prayer collects, 
 "Which rises, hour by hour, through the broad whole, 
 From angel, man, sphere, soul, and suffering life 
 Ail-where ; intelligent, but to higher, oft 
 
360 FESTU8. 
 
 Eeckless, or arrogant, subject ; and presents 
 Before the throne ; presents ; his heart too full 
 Of creatures' self-inflicted woes, and sense 
 Of virtue's best aims lost, unblessed, to voice 
 Articulately one plaint before the Power, 
 Incognizant not of aug-ht that haps ; but pledge 
 To the angel of pure duty. Pass we on 1 
 The universe is but the gate of Heaven. 
 See from this highest orb, the crown of space. 
 And footstool to the Infinite, thou mayst gain 
 Already, a glimpse of glory unconceived. 
 
 Festus. See, how yon angels stretch their shining arms, 
 Wave their star-haunting wings, which gleam like glass, 
 And locks, that look like morning's, when she comes, 
 Triumphant, in the East. Is this their joy 
 O'er some world-penitent ? 
 
 Angel op Earth. Lo, there it rides ; 
 
 Blessed to discharge on Heaven's all peaceful shores 
 Its long accumulate load of thinking life ; 
 Its deathless freight of souls, long tested, tried ; 
 Pilgrims of time and space, freed, perfected. 
 
 Lucifer. Yon guilty orb, of hesitating light, 
 Slow looming there on its dark path, goes up, 
 At the hour forewritten, as do all worlds, to God, 
 To judgment : and the earthquake groans we hear, 
 Which rend its adamantine breast, and mar 
 Silence and symphony alike, forebode 
 Its agonizing doom. 
 
 Festus. And grieves not Heaven 
 
 With world, or soul, lost, as with saved, it joys ? 
 
 Angel op Earth, How may immortals mourn at the decree 
 Of righteous wisdom, in itself to them 
 A bliss to view, being proof of the divine 
 And infinite perfections. Is't not just 
 Justice be realized, if late ; and there. 
 See one example in the skies prepared 
 To admonish and remind of that to come. 
 
 Festus. But why repented it not in time ? 
 
 Lucipee. Perchance, 
 
 It held not penitence needed. What, if proud, 
 It recked nought ? Time, may be, is for it yet. 
 Ask of the Angel, who is angel both, 
 Of the great world and silence. He for once, 
 Much time is on his hands, might reel you off 
 A skein of fine advice. 
 
 Festus. I dare not. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Know 
 
 What unto us is time stands before God 
 Eternity ; though concurrent act and doom, 
 Each claim, yet intermediate of effect, 
 Is equity. This for deed irrevocable 
 Eepeutance substitutes, self-condemuative, 
 
FESTU8. Wl 
 
 And expiative remorse. 
 
 Lucifer. And more than this, 
 
 They keenliest know who most repudiate good, 
 And for ill strive. Repentance is the grief 
 For, and effectual abstinence from sin 
 Creature can scarce attain to without God ; 
 But with Him, allis feasible. 
 
 Festus. Cloudy and clear 
 
 By turns thy words, as heaven, I know not what 
 To think, nor how to act. 
 
 Lucifer. It is natural. Who 
 
 Can hit, but as appointed him ? Who aim 
 But as permitted ? God gives all their ground, 
 Bow, arrow, mark, prize, eye and arm, and all ; 
 All life's conditions, origin, mean and end. 
 Forefixed of God, His fates revealed, as hid 
 In words till now concealed of prophet truth, 
 Under the buried basements of the skies. 
 Shall yet, I have heard, o'er thrown these, reappear. 
 
 Angel of Earth. AU God hath said shall take effect, whose 
 words 
 Are lifeful forces, causal potencies 
 Of that they foredetermine ; so, soul. 
 Not difficultly, for thus thy mute reserve 
 Of speech divine, I, as half absorbed in doubt, 
 Conceive ; and thou celestial scenes, and tongues, 
 Shalt learn, not ineffective to express. 
 Enough, Be of good courage. That we know 
 Than men more, tell we not, unbid ; and thee 
 Behoves use all free will ; whose holy cause 
 Mind thou at heart revere, in earth, as Heaven. 
 
 Lucifer. Meanwhile, glance downwards from this copiug 
 world. 
 Ere higher risen, and know to the extreme 
 Of utter space, where not an atomic mars 
 The void invisible, easier 'twere to cast 
 A lead, and total its velocity ; pierce 
 All space, nor cross light's path, than fatliom man's 
 Dark heart, or sound the hollows of his soul. 
 
 Festus. Whether the greater sinner that mean nature 
 All these life spheres which dominates, or thou 
 World-spirit of evil, arch foe of God, and doomed 
 One day to perish in the eternal lire 
 Of His wrath, wrath of Deity thus, in whom 
 As they begin, may all things end, I know not ; 
 I only feel God loves but perfectly. 
 Nor can love, but his own ; the spirit of good. 
 Listen ; I hear the harmonies of Heaven, 
 From sphere to sphere, and from the boundless round 
 Re-echoing bliss to those serenest heights 
 Where angels sit, and strike their emulous harps. 
 Wreathed round with flowers, and diamonded with dew ; 
 
 N 3 
 
862 FE8TU8. 
 
 Such dew as gemmed tlie ever-during blooma 
 Of Eden winterless, or, as night by night, 
 The tree of life wept, from its every leaf, 
 Unwithering. Now, in solemn lapse I hear 
 The music of the murmur of the stream 
 WTiich through the bridal city of the Lord 
 Floweth all life, for ever ; nay, catch the breath, 
 Through its star-shadowing branches, of that tree, 
 Transplanted now to Heaven, but once on earth, 
 Whose fruit is for all beings, breathed of G-od, 
 Oh 1 breathe on me, inspiring spirit breath. 
 Oh 1 flow to me ye soul-reviving waves ; 
 Freshen the faded soul that droops and dies, 
 Lucifer. It is plain that here what man craves, God hath 
 willed. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 Enter now Heaven. Even man's deathly life 
 
 May be there, by God's leave. Once brought to God 
 
 The soul's probation and foredoom, and heaven's 
 
 Designs towards man, whole, individual, shew 
 
 Fuller by light, of love parental. There, 
 
 God's will shall be our own ; all spirits be his. 
 
 A lightning revelation of the heavens 
 
 And heavenly hfe, to spirit whose highest aim 
 
 AVas lowliest to adore the All-good, mistold 
 
 Of old, and much too oft by truthless tongues ; 
 
 To adore the unity essential, sole, 
 
 Of God the All- Sire of Being ; source and end ; 
 
 And though less hard to shape, o'er air's bright heights, 
 
 The wide -winged wind, He will forgive who owns 
 
 Names like the Zealous, like the merciful ; we 
 
 This moment, and all life, all spirit, all soul. 
 
 Mind, matter, being as much within His presence, 
 
 And known through, like a glass film in the sun, 
 
 As though we stood upon the star- stoned courts 
 
 Of his celestial city. Where He is 
 
 He is all ; one, infinite, personal Deity. 
 
 Earth's final doom, man's triumph, peace supreme, 
 
 Foreshewn ; illative each of other's end. 
 
 Heaven. The Deity, Angels, Guardian Angel. Festus a7id 
 Lucifer entering. Angel of Earth, ARCHANGELa 
 
 AbchaNGELS. Infinite G-od, thy will is done ; 
 
 The world's last sand is all but run ; 
 The Night is feasting on the Sun, 
 
FESTU8. 868 
 
 LuciPEB, All-being God, I come to thee again ; 
 Nor come alone. Mortality is here. 
 Thou badest me do my will, and I have dared 
 To do it. I have brought him up to Heaven, 
 Assigned for a time to mine indulgent hand, 
 That thou, just judge, mayst judge 'twixt him and me. 
 
 God. Thou canst not do what is willed not to be. 
 Suns are made up of atoms ; heaven of souls. 
 And souls and suns are but the atomies 
 Of the body I God indwell ; the natural form 
 Of mine infinite essence. 
 
 LuciFEB. Mortal, here 
 
 Await, the while I parley fate. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. 'Why, now, 
 
 Spirit of ill, mfflest heaven's calm ? 
 
 Lucifer. I will say. 
 
 Is not this creature, by successful wile 
 Yet mine ? Have I not caused him waste his yeara 
 In search of lore forbidden, forgotten ? in chase 
 Of intermittent dreams philosophy gives 
 Brief brain life to, and vague, of wisdom housed 
 'Mong men, and virtue homed ; realities vain 
 Such as the eye, true key of heaven, shapes forth 
 Imaginative, from clou(^ ; in stem essays 
 Futile, to o'erflesh with sense the iron limbs 
 Cold science moulds of some mechanic thing 
 She calls man Godless, in persuading wealth, 
 Of leave to toil most liberal, to impart 
 Of his hoards, or lands some share (what right have 
 One element more than other to f orestal ?) 
 To the unmonopolist mass ? And sins not one 
 Who God's best gift, life, in irrational plans, 
 Immoderately benevolent, wastes, though fair 
 His final aims, like grossly, even as wight 
 Who from air's aureate mists would wring out gold, 
 Or from seas silver, and his charity stake 
 On success, clammed meanwhile his poor 1 All this, 
 In secret conclave with aspiring friends. 
 To work men's welfare in their own despite, 
 He wish-content, by act not, not even will, 
 (To wish is weakness, mind's strength is to will,) 
 Schemes such designs to realize ; but blends, 
 Alternate now, with aims of meanest range, 
 With luxaries, beauty's charms, love's witcheries ; 
 As well may be, thou absent. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Wish and will 
 
 Are his, I know, for good, yet ; and of good's 
 Least sparkle Heaven is thrifty ; ends, too, these 
 Solid enough, beget sometimes in deeds. 
 
 LuciPEB. Solidity alas, thou and thy charge 
 Alike lack. Prime in the precipitate reel 
 Poor Pleasure, (nought more sadly frivoloua 
 
364 FE8TU8, 
 
 On earth) leadfi, headlong whirls this wilful soul j 
 
 Or, as trim craft, with lights at mast and bow. 
 
 Lured on by fraudulent torch ; of flattering shoal 
 
 Suspectless ; heedful nought of sunken reef, 
 
 Or monitory wave, here bright, there dark, 
 
 Comes dancing, to perdition ; ^vTeckers laugh ; 
 
 Rich, saidst thou, in time's coming honours ; grave 
 
 That should be, with predestined empire's trust ; 
 
 Earth's hope ? Pleasure's, my pampered slave's, arch-drud<je. 
 
 Behold him, he is here. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Know, sophist fiend I 
 Life's happier gifts, youth's privileges, the heart's 
 Spring growth of love, joy-fraught, may e'er be used, 
 And innocently ; even not with views forestrained 
 To the end of being. Man's pleasure in the world, 
 His nature made to each fit, theirs except 
 Who twilight sense of future heaven command. 
 And promissory perfection unfulfilled ; 
 Yet, in its union with Divinity, sense 
 Still glorious judged 'gainst theirs who see will not ; 
 Is bom of socialty ; but in the eteme, 
 Such joys as vanities smirch not ; love of self 
 Degrades not ; folly fouls not, spirit disclaims, 
 For trivial things writes venial ; to all soul 
 Yields grace, which more than covering all offence 
 Defective, keeps them sealike incorrupt, 
 While those of pure and godly will, whose souls 
 yelf bound are to divine ends, pleasurous life 
 Know in that only wherein God's delight 
 Consists ; and man's with His, unites and ends 
 In self, in Deity ; who nor motive, good, 
 Nor end knows, other than Himself. Thou errest, 
 If therefore him thou deem'st almost thine, thine 
 By weight accumulate of mere levities. These 
 Ruin not for aye. God hath not so aspersed 
 The nature He ennobled as to charge 
 Its shield with sable simply. Even now, 
 This soul, mine erewhile ward, hath haply learned 
 Revulsive, to hate vanity, shun the show 
 Of luxury, idlesse, and life's glittering baits 
 Thou lurest with. Pause, and see I In yon star-scales 
 Pendent in heaven, whose weights are worlds, one soul 
 Outworths, this one life's well and ill, at large. 
 Show thus far, level balance. What as yet 
 Imponderable, but all decisive, life's 
 Brief lapse may add, thou knowest not. 
 
 Lucifer. This I know : 
 
 Wide fields be mine yet, many a vowed ally ; 
 Aids inesistible. Hdldom's strength I'll stretch, 
 To touch mine end. Power's trustiest aids to leam 
 Is now his aim ; doubtless, that he may best 
 Cozen and cajole those smootheners of his way 
 
FESTUa. 366 
 
 Throne wards, he most concerts with. Can such eads 
 
 Be innocent, of themselves ? Nor this alone. 
 
 He may not doubt God's Being, he being here ; 
 
 But he hath heard earth's sag-est sophists doubt 
 
 If God's eternity soul's deathlessness 
 
 Could warrant, or the world's ; and hold the whole, 
 
 God, and his throne, the firmament, and all, 
 
 Might some day topple o'er into the abyss 
 
 Of absolute nothing ; he in truth's bright track 
 
 Treading, he thinks, who such instructors seeks. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Truth's veriest shrine, f elicitative of soul 
 He seeks, I know. Nor public rite, belief, 
 Nor tenet utterable shall all content 
 The aspiring spirit, earth's farthest bent to explore, 
 Truth's ti-uest, space's highest. 
 
 LuciPEE. Who lives to beg 
 
 Alway of woods their shade, may live to lose, 
 In them, himself. Let well be ; 'tis enough, 
 Crood things will rightly rule their own progress, 
 Let iU be, and it gallops towards its end ; 
 Grows, shadow like, at once enormous, bred 
 Of kindred darknesses. The heart inane 
 Of mystery let him pierce ; the maze where eld's 
 Misfaiths, with heresies new in endless round 
 Err ; pride demure falls quickliest. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Falls he not. 
 
 LuciFEE. Oh, he is bound to falL 
 
 Guardian Aitgel. Not boimd, but free. 
 
 Lucifer. I know him free to doubt not only men 
 Are free ; but free to attempt to efforce the will 
 Of other. 
 
 Guardian Angel. That were sin indeed. 
 
 Lucifer. Indeed ! 
 
 Oh trust me I foresee results, if cause 
 Mine be not to control. 
 
 Guardian Angel. For that may Heaven 
 Be thanked by all, by none more than thyself. 
 God through me speaks. 
 
 God. What wouldst thou, Lucifer, 
 
 With him thou hast brought here with thee ? 
 
 Lucifer, Show him God. 
 
 God. No being, on part of whom death's curse through faith 
 Transfigured into blessing, rests were it only 
 Upon his shadow, looks on God and lives, 
 Save by divine permission. 
 
 Lucifer, Look and live. 
 
 Look, Festus ! look. 
 
 Festus. God, sole and onemost ; God, 
 
 Eternal fountain of the infinite, thou 
 On whose life tide the stars seem strown like bubbles, 
 Forgive me that an atomic of being 
 Hath sought to see its Maker face to face. 
 
866 . FE8TU8. 
 
 I have viewed all thy works, thy wonders ; passed 
 
 From star to star ; from space to space, and feel. 
 
 That to see all which can be seen is nothing- ; 
 
 And not to look upon thee, the Invisible. 
 
 The Spirits I met all seemed to say, as on, 
 
 Starwards, they sped, their lightning wings o'er mo 
 
 One moment slackening, with superior glance, 
 
 I might not look, whate'er I were, on G-od. 
 
 But thou this spirit beside me didst empower 
 
 To make me more than them with gifts immortal. 
 
 So when we had winged through thy wide world of things, 
 
 And marked stars made and saved, destroyed and judged, 
 
 I said, and trembled lest thou heardst me not, 
 
 And madest thyself right ready to forgive, 
 
 I would see God ere yet, I died, in Heaven, 
 
 Searcher of hearts, and quickener I I am here, 
 
 Forgive, Lord I 
 
 God. Mortal, rise. Look on me. 
 
 Festus. Nought 
 
 Unless like dazzling darkness, see I. 
 
 LuciPEB. Good I 
 
 I foreknew how it would be. I am away. 
 If living, I await thee in the sun. 
 
 Festus. Thy creature, God 1 am I' Oh, slay me not, 
 But bid some angel take me ; or I die. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Come hither, Festus. 
 
 Festus. Who art thou ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. I am one 
 "Who have e'er, till late, been by thee, from thy birth. 
 Thy guardian genius, thy good angel, I ; 
 Eestrict somewhile to Heaven, at his demand, 
 Who feared my warnings weighed more than his lures. 
 
 Festus. Till now, I knew thee not. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. I am never seen 
 
 In the earth's low thick light, but here in heaven 
 And in the air God breathes, I too am clear. 
 From wonted charge on earth withheld, that God's 
 Ends, by yon spirit late challenged, might shew plain 
 In his own eyes, I have here sojourned, and now 
 Leave asked of God, in view of all to come, 
 And separation's aims attained, I seek, 
 Him telling nightly thy day's thoughts and deeds, 
 And watching o'er thee on earth, as here, again 
 To attend thee through thy lifetime, I await 
 God's fateful word permissive. Pray for me, 
 As I for thee pray daily, and intercede. 
 
 Festus. Hear. Lord, the prayers of man and angel oned. 
 
 Angel of Eaeth. Earth's guardian angel's hear for man's ; and 
 man's 
 For earth's ; and bless the united orison. 
 Thou knowest. All- wise 1 my life one ceaseless prayer ; 
 Let me yet hope that prayer, that life, to thee 
 
FESTUa. M 
 
 Prove acceptable ; and earth's dread end adjudged 
 Once, rest deferred. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Not always kindliest prayer 
 Breathed even for other's joy is blessed ; but oft 
 Not granted, better shows ; or, but in part. 
 
 God. Not all Heaven's prayers, nor earth's combined, 'gainst Fate, 
 Whose reasons are breast-laws hidden in Deity, 
 Can of themselves prevail to supersede 
 His wise benevolence ; nor the sense of grief, 
 From curt experience sprung, with facile flow 
 Of tears, suffice to stay stem justice' hand, 
 All satisfying ; yet stretched not e'er to check 
 Pity's deep founts of their abstergent flow. 
 But fate's decree, ye angels, which concerns 
 Both, with yon Spirit of Evil's sequent course, 
 Howbeit to him unknown, ye yet shall learn 
 Irrevocable, as just. For though, all time. 
 By meanest spite impelled, 111 war 'gainst Heaven, 
 Other than this shows preferable to us. 
 Who measure not, 'gainst force finite, our strength ; 
 And, preferable, so best. 
 
 Festus. Rest can I none 
 Until Heaven's peace I know. Will God forgive 
 That I did long to look on Him ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. He may ; 
 
 It is the strain of all high spirits towards him. 
 
 Festus. Creator of the vast yet fallible soul 
 Of all imperfect nature ; of all wrong 
 Cleanser not justifier ; dread trampler out 
 Of evil ; of sin presumptuous which could bring 
 Unbidden to thee the spirit while yet uncleansed 
 Of death's deep flood ; death- worthiest me of men, 
 Bid live ; that I to all thy love may teach, 
 Mighty in founding worlds, in making man, 
 Mightier in pardoning evil, and in sin 
 Annihilating for ever. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Lord I thine eye 
 A moment fixed on sin, the culprit blot, 
 As a sun-shot cloud, incontinently, exhales ; 
 And destiny's page, once more reopened fair, 
 Looms in unwonted white. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Do thou, O Lord? 
 Whose couchant power than Nature's active, more, 
 Awes into silence aU these orbs, these hosts, 
 Forgave 1 
 
 Guardian Angel. It is felt thou art forgiven. Through all 
 The conscious infinite of celestial life, 
 A sense of the Eternal thought, inspired 
 By pure humanity of the Deity, fills. 
 And mediatizes all things. Thou couldst not 
 Even if thou wouldst, behold God ; masked in dust, 
 Thine eye on darkness lights ; but when flesh-freed, 
 
868 FE8TU8, 
 
 And the dust shaken off the shining essence 
 
 God shall glow through thee as through living glass, 
 
 And every thought and atom of thy being 
 
 Shall guest his glory, be o'erbright with God. 
 
 Hadst thou not been by faith immortal made 
 
 For the instant, know, thine eye had been thy death. 
 
 Festus. And this is Heaven ! Lead on 1 the Heaven all souls 
 In all the spheres most long for ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Yea, for this ; 
 
 The state of holiness with bliss of life 
 Mortal to life angelic raised ; made one. 
 Nor marvel heaven hath marvels ; such as now 
 I come to show thee, and with God's blessed aids, 
 The angels of His presence make acquaint. 
 Not that He needeth aid ; but life to endow 
 With virtue and use and joy is His delight. 
 
 Festus. And this is Heaven 1 I knew it. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. It may well l^, 
 
 Thou hast been here in the spirit. For, mortal, know 
 Heaven is interior to all spheres, all souls. 
 The secret chamber 'mid creation's breast. 
 Where alway may be found Life's master, used 
 That viewless key thou knowest of. 
 
 Festus. I believe. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Lo 1 the recording angel ! 
 
 Festus. Him I see 
 
 High seated there, the pen within his hand 
 Plumed like a storm portending cloudlet, curved 
 Half over heaven, and swift in use divine, 
 As is a warrior's spear ? 
 
 Guaedian Angel. Mark now the book 
 Wherein are written the records of all worlds. 
 Which, jfixed, collate with wandering, 'neath his eye 
 Previsive, that illumining it construes ; 
 Contrast with thoughts of deeds to come in spheres 
 Once solar, nebulous now, make glad or grave ; 
 Time's tidings to confirm, or sum the charm 
 Of self-fulfilling prophecy. 
 
 Recobding Angel. And here, 
 
 Thine orb's end, mortal, mark thou nigh. 
 
 Festus. Ah me I 
 
 The end of that, Heaven once held Heaven's ally ! 
 
 Guaedian Angel. Turn then the leaf. 
 
 Recobding Angel. Yet is't not every world 
 Laid open to its axis thus by stroke 
 Of death, hath fate like hopeful. 
 
 Festus. It is man's joy ; 
 And not to us without cause special. See 
 Earth's angel guardian, gladdening in the thought. 
 
 Guaedian Angel. There too, see mighty Michael, dight not now 
 In panoply sun blinding, nor on war 
 Exterminant bent, though looking towards a field 
 
FE8TU8. 809 
 
 Of thunderous battle to be fought yet, big 
 
 With creatural fates, pacific, joys to scan 
 
 At God's behest, the book of life where beam 
 
 The names in starry brilliants of God's sons ; 
 
 Names long- enrolled, foregiven, which angels learn 
 
 By heart of those predestined chiefs to be, 
 
 Of battailous hosts in that soul hallowing war. 
 
 Deadly and everlasting, waged by good 
 
 'Gainst evil. And if within that scroll of life 
 
 Thy name inscribed for good were, wouldst thou see it? 
 
 Recording Angel. As leader, or as follower, it is writ, 
 As victor, or 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Enough 1 It cannot be 
 As vanquished. Search for such the files of death. 
 
 Festus. And if it be, not I dare look ; though, seen, 
 Henceforth to me were that constellate word 
 More, brighter, clearer, than all stars. 
 
 Recording Angel. To Heaven, 
 
 It is bright or dim as actions cause. 
 
 GuAJBDiAJi Angel. Raise still 
 
 Thine eyes. Lo 1 Midst yon nebulous cloud of thrones 
 Rayed inwards brightlier than withoutwards, one 
 Expectant waits its occupant ; the chosen 
 All round, their gleaming thronelets, from that mount 
 Of light hewn, which ere light create, or night 
 Never create, was, heaven's eternal base 
 Whereon God's throne is 'stablished, gladdening, prsBS. 
 For whomso kept, the invited rest is sweet ; 
 Were grateful ; and 'tis vacant. Sit on it. 
 
 Festus. Nay, nothing more than sight will I forestall. 
 
 Recording Angel. Good. Brighter seat than that thou ey'st, 
 I have seen 
 Hurled, like a star deject o'er being's brink, 
 To pre-etemal nothing, unconceived. 
 
 Guajrdian Angel. Speak, angel of salvation, is this well f 
 
 Phanuel. It is well. God rejoiceth mightily, 
 In silence, as of unextended space. 
 In his forechosen ; and Heaven's love-speechless choirs 
 In his elect one's choice. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Turn now and view 
 
 "WTiere spirits redeemed, beside the nver of God, 
 Quaff everlasting peace ; hence joy profound 
 The Heavenlies draw, withdrawn ; preparing aye 
 For higher and intenser Being ; and here, 
 Heaven's upper fountains spiritual, see, where flow 
 Life's waters soul-regenerative, like aged 
 With those eternal emanations shown 
 To saintliest sage alone, which hang suspense 
 High o'er the firmament of created things, 
 Pretemporal, swiftening towards the abyss of time } 
 Founts, Raphael, healing angel, once of eyes 
 tiarthly, the vision purger, bidden of God, 
 
870 FE8TU8. 
 
 Presides o'er ; laved wherewith the immortals cleanse 
 
 Their sight to penetrate the essential light 
 
 In all things hidden ; and, visible but on earth 
 
 To eyes oped inmostly, (even as that stone, 
 
 Of fabulous function, with the adept renowned. 
 
 Seed of the sun, through filial fire turned all 
 
 It touched to solar gold,) the spirit beloved 
 
 Informs with godlihood impute ; all soul 
 
 To the great soul thus uniting. Such the bliss, 
 
 The power vouchsafed to man, such faculties. 
 
 Yet but the surface shadow canst thou see ; 
 
 The substance is to be. There Gabriel, chief 
 
 Of messengers evangelist to worlds. 
 
 Of good nigh hopeless, proud, or, self condemned, 
 
 Declares God's warnings ; or, predictive, charged 
 
 With tidings gracious, to the spirits around 
 
 Expounds His promises. Nor vastier boon 
 
 To angel world, or man-world, Deity gives 
 
 Than prophet soul, in divers tongues foretold, 
 
 May be, in sundry lands and ages, life 
 
 To enlighten and to judge. Behold yon group 
 
 Of blessed ones. In their docile mien and eyes 
 
 Grateful, the spirit shows how all ill, all doubt 
 
 With them, hath ceased, as death hath ceased. 
 
 Festus. But SCO, 
 
 Hither they come rejoicing, marvelling. Mark 
 How all with kindliest wonder look on me. 
 Mayhap to their pure sense I tell of earth. 
 Some seem as though they knew me, I know none. 
 But how claim kinship witli the glorified, 
 Unless with them like glorified ; nay, first 
 With them f orehallowed, even if chose ? Yet, yes I 
 It is, it must be, that angelic spirit. 
 By some miraculous power, addressing me 
 Draws me towards her, speechless, gestureless ; 
 My heart outruns me ; mother I See thy son. 
 
 Angel Mothee. Child, how art thou here ? 
 
 Festus. God hath let me come. 
 
 Angel Motheb. Art thou not come unbidden, and unpre- 
 pared 1 
 
 Festus. Forgive me, if it be so. I am come, 
 And ever have I said, do aught I might ; 
 And ever have I hoped, say, aught I would, 
 There are two who will forgive me, God and thou. 
 
 Angel Mother. As reason bids, forbids, or dubious deems. 
 Do I. Heaven's great parental heart, more wise, 
 More cognizant, of his creatures than ourselves 
 Of ourselves are, more merciful may show 
 Than even a mother's. It is for him alone 
 To say, I all forgive, may he, I pray. 
 
 Festus. Dear angel mother, thou art blessed, and blessed 
 I, too, thee knowing kindliest of all kin, 
 
FE8TU8. 871 
 
 Uplift for mere humility to God's feet. 
 
 Angel Mother. Son of my hopes on earth, and prayers in 
 heaven, 
 €k>d's love is infinite infinitely even more 
 Than is our imperfection. Promise, child, 
 To love him for this privileg-e, more than ever. 
 And for his boundless kindness shewn towards me. 
 Now my son hear me ; for heaven's hours are not 
 As earth's ; all's all but lost not given to God. 
 Oft have I seen with joy thy thoughts of heaven, 
 And holy hopes, which track the soul with light. 
 Rise from dead doubts within thy troubled breast, 
 As souls of drowned bodies from the sea. 
 Upwards to Grod, and marked them so received 
 That oh my soul hath overflowed with rapture. 
 As now thine eye with tears. But fear, my son 
 Beloved, fear thou ever for thy soul ; 
 It yet hath to be saved. Nor can I hold 
 Myself or thee secure of that desired, 
 Till time be passed and gone. Nought perfect stands, 
 But what's in Heaven. All kind, God long hath caused thee 
 Think upon him. Think alway. Ere I left 
 Earth, with the last breath air would spare for me, 
 The last look life would bless me with, I prayed, 
 And half the prayer I brought myself to God, 
 Thou mightst be wise and happy ; and now, behold, 
 Thou art unhappy and unwise. 
 
 Festus. Beloved 
 
 And blessed one, I rejoice that thou art clear. 
 And all who have cared for me, of my misdeeds. 
 Thy spirit was on those who nurtured me. 
 All word and practice that could be of good. 
 Was to me given ; so that my sin is splendid. 
 
 Angel Mothee. Thou mockest reason. 
 
 Festus. Know, then, if I have sinned, 
 I have sinned sublimely. 
 
 Angel Mothee. Such nor better makes 
 Nor less, sin's self. Who sins sublimely, sins 
 Profoundly : and so suffers. 
 
 Festus. Be it so. 
 
 Angel Mothee. Splendour is none in agony, nor in sense 
 Of conscience pitiless morsure, which assaults, 
 And so devastates soul's substantial force. 
 Hope scarce can find a hope whereon to build. 
 
 Festus. Nay, I am glad I suffer for my faults. 
 I would not, if I might, be evil and happy. 
 
 Angel Mother. God laughs at evil by man made, and 
 allows it. 
 In common with all free life, scope to act : 
 The vaunt of mountainous evil, and the power 
 To challenge Heaven as from a molehill, child 1 
 
 Festus. Few better hearts than mine hath God e'er made, 
 
S72 FE8TU8. 
 
 However much one fail of their sage craft, 
 Who in the world's long-, duU, dark, streets of forms, 
 By towering- follies varied, brick themselves, 
 And call their dreary existence, social life. 
 
 Angel Mother. Heart goodness shows its truth in self- 
 restraint, 
 In acts of peace and kindness. Hand and heart 
 Are one thing with the good, as thou shouldst be. 
 Corruption's splendour hath no vital power. 
 Content in sin shews apathy, not peace. 
 Do my words trouble thee ? Then, treasure them. 
 Pain overgot gives peace ; as martyr's death 
 Earns heaven. All things that speak of heaven speak peace. 
 Peace hath more might than war. High brows are calm. 
 The host of stars is stiU. Their silence weighs 
 More mightily with the mind than though they spake 
 Thousand tongued, musically; and truths like suns 
 Stir not ; though systems round them come and go. 
 Mind's step is still as death's ; and all great things 
 Which cannot be controlled, whose end is good. 
 This peace, God's peace, seek thou ; and learn to love. 
 Behold yon throne ; there, love, faith, hope are one : 
 There, judgment, righteousness and mercy work 
 One and same end. Salvation. Vengeance such 
 Worthy of God 1 How else should He, all-good, 
 Treat evil, unless by bettering, or due means 
 Granting it to ameliorate ? himself 
 Avenge how, but by right for wrong 1 how wrath, 
 Rejoice in, save by ill slain ? As on earth 
 Destruction restoration means to the pure 
 Of elements world corrupted ; so, by death. 
 From bodily bonds and the repugnant sense 
 Of merited limitation freed, the soul's 
 Humanity most is perfected in Heaven. 
 
 Festus. Myself I did not make, nor plan my soul. 
 I am no angel nursed in the lap of light. 
 Nor fed on milk immortal of the stars, 
 Nor golden fruit grown in the summery suns. 
 How am I answerable for this my soul ? 
 My master, free with me, as fixed with fate? 
 As a star which moves a certain course in mode 
 Certain, its liberties are laws, its laws 
 Tyrannic, under God. All that we do 
 Or bear, is settled from eternity 
 Endless, beginningless. To act is ours. 
 Quite sure, not less, aU done, or good or ill. 
 Is for God's glory alway, and is ordered. 
 
 Angel Mother. If soul were but an organ, and no power 
 Of good or evil had haply within itself, 
 More than the eye hath power of light or dark, 
 God fitting it for good, and evil being 
 Good in another way we are not skilled in ; 
 
PE8TU8. Vri 
 
 The good we do of his own good will ; the ill 
 
 Of his own letting ; man were simply slave 
 
 Choiceless, of dignity void, nor grandly impowercd 
 
 To make law, as to obey ; a lustrous blank, 
 
 A perfect imperfection ; even as nature, 
 
 All light in life, shines marshlike too in death ; 
 
 With vagrant fires that haunt even rottenness. 
 
 But worse with souls, that, wilfully unjust, 
 
 We see reject their privileged walk with God ; 
 
 Their source of true vitality lost ; and given 
 
 So to degenerate life that all their powers, 
 
 And splendid faculties, but decaying seem 
 
 In sin, and flying off by elements ; 
 
 Like wandering worlds which scare the extremes of space, 
 
 With fiery visitation, or in black 
 
 Abyss of preordained destruction, slow 
 
 Perish, self dissipative ; a continent, now 
 
 Sloughiag, a climate, oh 1 to such, woe worth ! 
 
 What shall be done to them ? 
 
 Festus. Probational life 
 
 Doubtless endures as long as justice claims. 
 All may not live again, but all which do. 
 Must change perpetually, even in heaven ; 
 And not by death to death, but life to life. 
 
 Angel Mother. No ; step by step, and throne by throne, we rise 
 Continually towards the Infinite ; 
 And ever nearer, never near, to God. 
 
 Festus. To foUow towards perfection man's best end 
 And happiest makes ; who deem they have attained, 
 Are nowise nigh. Our merit is to have served 
 On earth the cause of good, peace, freedom, truth ; 
 Each ultimately Him. That God enjoins, 
 That God permits, twain wheels are, the world-car 
 Runs upon glibly enough, and will, to the end. 
 Law moral bars all wrong ; law spiritual all 
 Affirms of right ; free choice, our fate decides. 
 All right is right divine. A worm hath rights, 
 Kings leagued cannot despoil him of, nor sin ; 
 The light to be treated with humanity. 
 Yet wrongs, of privatives produced, themselves 
 Serve, sometimes men ; their use have ; and, like wants, 
 Are ofttimes well permitted to best ends. 
 A double error sometimes sets us right. 
 
 Angel Mother. Not in sphere spiritual, nor books of doom. 
 But if in man no absolute rule inhere. 
 Of right and wrong, his God given conscience then 
 Were of aU things most base, which vacillant, acts. 
 Sin palliating, condemning, pardoning sin. 
 To serve is not to deserve. Who can claim 
 Merit for weU doing ; for exceeding not 
 What's equitable ? Soul, be virtuous, just, 
 Truthful, benevolent holy. WTiat reward 
 
374 FE8TU8, 
 
 Owes God, who made all rational, to thee 
 
 For acting reasonably ? Is virtue more 
 
 Than moral reason ? Thy reward be this ; 
 
 To know that G-od approves thy deeds, which done, 
 
 Contribute to the unbounded joy He grants 
 
 The Saints in Heaven ; and this, too, from his own 
 
 Joy o'erabounding. Tliey have earned it not, 
 
 Nor merited aught. 
 
 Festus. Demerit, then at least. 
 
 In not being as we might be good, is all 
 We can insist on, that is surely ours ; 
 Ours, by all titles ; by escheat ; default 
 Of nearer kindred ; and so inheritance ; 
 But though dismeritous thus, and fully equipped 
 Our cause to implead, we are not, for that, all wise. 
 Perplexed we oft see God's best purposes 
 And kindliest, brought about by dreadest sins ; 
 Time's triumphs, through wrongs deadliest, oft transpire. 
 Twin nations struggle ; and the earth sweats blood ; 
 A current generation is wiped off 
 Like to an enemy's life from a sword's blade ; 
 And lo 1 Death's children from their hillocky homes 
 Send forth a race to freedom sworn and peace. 
 So in our passions waywardest, our best 
 Affections ; how predict their distant end ? 
 
 Angel Mothee. Learn thus how wisdom oft corrects man's 
 wrong. 
 
 Festus. We note co-incidents. We lack a rule 
 Persistently corrective of all ill. 
 Whereby effect and cause, are alike good. 
 Is thunder evil ? It may fright from sin ; 
 Or dew divine ? It may undo a realm. 
 Oft, men for innocent beauty's sake, their souls 
 Deform ; and for the high their thoughts debase. 
 Does virtue lie in sunshine ? sin, in storm ? 
 Or, is not each one natural, needful, best ? 
 How know we good from evil ? How demark 
 Essential this from that ? And may not this 
 Immediate, be that finally ? We know 
 Wrath and revenge God claimeth as His own. 
 And yet men speculate upon right, wrong ; ill, 
 And well, as each of each annihilative. 
 Like day and night, forgetting both one cause, 
 The same original boast, of God's good will ; 
 Active, or passive as permission, claim. 
 Sin's complice, traitor, judge and headsman, all. 
 
 Angel Mothee. But conscience knows her mission ; and tho' 
 cowed 
 And crushed, her lineage ; and her watchful seat 
 Once from her stolen, but through sense of guilt, 
 Eestored, still claims as hers, God's assessor ; 
 Nor this sole, but through penitence due for sin, 
 
FESTUa, 876 
 
 And her self-purifying intent achieved, 
 She soars, transfigured, glorified to Heaven. 
 
 Festus. Or falls ; for ages lost ; perhaps, for ever. 
 
 Angel Mother. Nothing is lost in nature, least of all 
 The immortal spirit to deity ; proof and pledge 
 Triumphant, of his kiadliest attributes ; 
 His will to uplift, advance, expand, perfect 
 Each individual soul, and all unite 
 In one supreme perfection, of himself 
 The essential image ; every state and sphere 
 Of universal nature, a holy stage 
 Of purified amendment for the next 
 Creative birth, and graduatsd ascent. 
 Towards this celestial ; summing, centering all, 
 The excellences of being. Nay, no soul 
 Though in sin's lowest, blackest depth implunged, 
 Lost to the world, to angels, to itself, 
 Is lost to Grod ; but there it works his wiLL 
 Patient, and bums conform with justice. Sin 
 Convinced bears penitence ; and from ignorant vice 
 Converted, springs wise virtue ; from mean greed, 
 Active beneficence never satiate, save 
 With welfare of some rational soul, secured, 
 Or compassed, charitably ; all virtues, means 
 To yet diviner ends, attainable still 
 By man, majestic in progression. Grace, 
 Knowledge and love, the sense of harmony, 
 And beauty of form, used rightly by the spirit 
 Studious of truth, are purifying powers ; 
 So, all things that to order and perf ectness 
 Of nature tend ; the culture of pure thought, and art 
 Idolatrous not ; the sacred liberty of other's will. 
 Oh mayst thou never plot to infringe such right I 
 The politic freedom of earth's thousand states. 
 And all life's social blessings, crowned with peacei 
 And as earth's elements, not disunitive, pass 
 Each into other, wavelike, and possess ; 
 And as mind's powers, by thoughts perfective rules, 
 More eminently capacious show ; so range 
 Symmetric, our emotions with God's law, 
 Of highest good : and such is nature's crown. 
 But limiting not the Deity thus, him know 
 In such wise operative, that while in all 
 Projwrtion he delights, with mind create, 
 In rhythmic undulations of the light, 
 Commeasurable with space, even weakest things 
 Are yet to be made examples of his might ; 
 The most defective, of his perfect grace. 
 Whene'er he thinketh well ; so rounding all 
 Extremes in one complete simplicity 
 Of motive, mean intent. 
 
 Festus, Oh, everything 
 
876 FESTUa. 
 
 To me seems good and lovely and immortal. 
 
 The whole is beautiful ; nor can I see 
 
 Aught wrong in man nor nature, aught not meant, 
 
 As from his hands it comes who fashions all ; 
 
 Holy as his formative word, the world itself 
 
 His mightier revelation ; to whose sense 
 
 All writ must be attuned ; all miracles made 
 
 Like broadly just. He breathes himself upon us, 
 
 Before our birth, as o'er the formless void 
 
 He moved at first, and we with his spirit are all 
 
 Livingly inspired. All things are God, or of God. 
 
 For the whole is in God's mind what is a thought 
 
 In ours. All that is good belongs to God ; 
 
 And good and God are all things ; or shall be. 
 
 Angel Mother. God, in his own parental nature, knows 
 All creatures and their possible powers ; for he 
 By universal essence is ; and through 
 His attribates, by limited mind alone 
 Distinguished from his substance, to all made 
 Imparts his virtues, and with reason impowers 
 The creatures he, their author, throughlier knows. 
 Than they themselves ; their course, their every lapse 
 Exorbitant from the right, and glad return 
 From firmamental exile, back to him ; 
 Who mercifully forgiving sin, foreseen 
 By precreative eye, yet not approves 
 111, fruit of imperfection, save as test 
 Of vital faith and patience in pure hearts. 
 Thus all created good, or to good ends, 
 Or sanctified, conduce. Man's highest bliss. 
 In union with his source and crowning end, 
 Is serving man and loving God ; his root 
 And finial flower, is when to vast surview, 
 Baised of God's kingdom, the soul straitening bounds 
 Of race, creed, temperament, o'ertopped, the spirit, 
 All covetings, vain distinctions, aims, desires, 
 To God surrendering, abnegates ; to him 
 Being of beings, who all things vivifies ; 
 Who his own goodness in his creatures seeks. 
 He had already willed there modified ; 
 His own intense perfection ; his divine 
 Beauty and purity, as the sun in dew 
 His reflex glory. So too the liberate soul, 
 Rapt in the extatic gaze of joy he grants. 
 And into commune raised with its cause, partakes 
 Thought's freedom, truth's necessity, like divine ; 
 Nay, questioning of eternity, fore-reads 
 With angels, on God's face, the thoughts of peace 
 And miracles of benevolence he conceives 
 To enrich and bless all life with. But there lacks 
 In souls like thine unsaved, and unexalted, 
 The light within, the light of perf ectness, 
 
FE8TUS» 877 
 
 As 'tis iu heaven. Here, time expert, all's seen, 
 How oft the soul even strong, if tempted, falls. 
 As some rock-towering lighthouse, which long years. 
 Rolls its ubiquitous eye, cyclopic, vast, 
 Sea-searching ; but to time's slow sap and siege 
 At last consentful, leaves a gap, by groans 
 Greeted from ruinous bajques ; and 'neath the sea 
 Lurking, exasperates every peril that once 
 It luminously forbade ; so, stable and stem 
 The virtuous soul I have seen long whiles command 
 The future, marked and thanked by thousands saved 
 Gloriously ; but fallen, lie hopeless now as thine 
 O'ersurged, alas, by life's allurements. Pray, 
 Such end be not thine ; for if thine, on earth, 
 God only, it is, can raise it, and rebuild. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. And his, thy son's, he will yet raise. Siiico 
 with me 
 I have shown him infinite wonders. We have oped 
 And scanned fate's golden scroll wherein are writ 
 In Truth's own hand all things to be, time's long 
 Array of serried worlds, and all the fruit 
 Of all their peopling occupants; have seen 
 The records of his being ; passed and to come, 
 His long temptation, sin and suffering. 
 
 Festus. And hear it, beloved and blessed, mine own 
 Salvation. 
 
 Angel Mothee. God, how great is He, in being, 
 I nfini te infinitely, in power and grace. 
 But oh ! transcendent truth, when thus to one 
 Poor spirit he gives his hand in love, he seems 
 To impart his own unboundedness of bliss. 
 Scarce worth destroying, one thinks ; less saving ; each 
 Loves he, as all his equals were. 
 
 Festus. I know 
 
 All I must henceforth go through, the doubts, woes, 
 Passions of life ; which knowing, hinders not, 
 Purificative trials by whose stern aid 
 The spirit achieves perfection, sloughing off 
 Snakewise, constraint of narrower being ; the world's 
 Entanglements ; the snares of youth, I bear 
 Obeyingly ; nor repine as when I erst 
 
 Looked back, and saw how life had balked, foiled, fooled me. 
 Fresh as a spouting spring upon the hills. 
 My heart leapt out to lif ewards ; little it thought 
 Of all the vile cares that would rill into it ; 
 The mean, low places it must coast ; the falls, 
 The drains, the crossings, and the mill- work after 
 God hath endowed me with a soul scorns life ; 
 Not that he gave, but that I live ; and graced 
 With an element over and above the world. 
 Mixed in its masque, I find nor harm nor charm, 
 Enough to attract to folly this, nor warp 
 
378 FESTU8. 
 
 From Wisdom, that. IndifEerence serves and saves. 
 But the price one pays for pride is mountain hig^h. 
 There is a curse beyond death's rack ; a woe 
 God hath put forth his strength in ; a pain past 
 All our mad wretchedness, when some sacred secret 
 Hath flown from out the encaging- heart, care-closed 
 Vainly ; the curse of a high spirit famishing, 
 Because all earth but sickens it. 
 
 Angel Mothee. Nay, confirm 
 
 Thy spirit with godlier, say, with manlier thoughts. 
 Contrast not earth-life with celestial ; both 
 Variants of one existence deem ; the same 
 This, but immutable save to happier ends. 
 Here, as the general air, respired of all, 
 All speak the mind of God whose world-Hke thoughts 
 Heaven's multitudinous being suffuse, as beams, 
 To one who curious treads the wavy panes 
 Of ocean's floor gold-framed, through myriad squares 
 Tempered, the sun, quickening the expanse with light. 
 Here, all in all, we live ; the weakliest soul 
 His solar spirit partaking, as need bids. 
 He not alone of things the conscious f orco. 
 But conscience of all spirits who to heaven's 
 Perfective science man's nature so adapts 
 By gradual growth of virtue to attain 
 Divinity, that he may the whole fulfil. 
 These excellences of godhood are the modes 
 Whereby, to us create, he makes himself 
 Known, truth's source, end and centre, which supply 
 With perfect sustenance each benevolent vow ; 
 Each virtuous aim earth owns ; as justly fixed 
 Towards the perpetual betterment of things, 
 And reascension sourcewards of all souls ; 
 Heaven's sole aim foreign to itself, which earth's 
 Wisest and holiest spirits, truth-freed, that all 
 May reach, none lost, together toil for ; here 
 Only, perfection realized, where law 
 Nature and liberty trined, are blessed. Nor doubt, 
 If, as thou sayest, thy future life thou knowest 
 And but its rudiments, surely, limned, perchance 
 By eye imaginative, as yet in block 
 Unhewn, the pillars of Time's temple ; still, 
 In all things seek, and that sole, perf ectness 
 In nature, virtue, reason, faith ; which, used 
 Rightly, to €rod unite the spirit outrayed 
 From Him, and with essential Deity tinged. 
 For while by various faults and flaws each soul 
 Falls from that plane of perfectness ordained 
 Comparative by its Lord, this, thoughtlessly 
 That passionately, irrevocably none 
 It may be ; not the less, God's saving love. 
 By discipline drawn, by penitence, by pure life, 
 
FE8TU8. 879 
 
 The spirit, self-starained from guile, illumes ; in time 
 
 Relamps ; helps on its upward way ; dark, oft, 
 
 Oft devious, painful ; now with word, sign, cheers ; 
 
 And, not by wilful wrong persistent, stained, 
 
 The pilgrim soul receives ; redeems ; restores, 
 
 Redeifies. Hither come they from all orbs 
 
 Perfective, souls perfectible, those except 
 
 Who, loved with love eternal, of God called 
 
 Spring to His breast. Here the hopes of earth's best hoortB, 
 
 The master aims of ages, for man's good. 
 
 All nature's properties perfected, man's mind 
 
 In God, the rational imity of the whole 
 
 Embraces, and in meditating, grows blessed. 
 
 Festus. How radiant shew yon blessed souls. 
 
 Angel Mother. Knov.-, child, 
 
 Each faithful thought of God, each saintly hope, 
 Clear aspiration for earth's weal ; pure aim ; 
 Beneficent deed ; each reverent service shewn 
 To man's majestic nature, as to a pure 
 Abstraction of Humanity deified ; 
 Each generous thought that warms the social breast ; 
 Hei-e beams a ray of life divine, the frame 
 Fills with e'er heightening beauty, and the whole 
 Being perradiates with celestial light, 
 Transfigurative ; which known, all choice of good 
 The soul is capable of, will heaven foretel 
 In us ; and His assured acceptance shew 
 Token of the spirits' birth in man, whose mind 
 Progressive, suffering, perfected, with peace 
 Divine crowned, in itself all things made good, 
 Thus harmonizes with other, and with God. 
 
 Festus. Behold the ebb of the life-tide of the world. 
 
 Angel Mother. It grieves not me. We sooner meet. Go, 
 child; 
 Fulfil thy fate. Be, do, bear ; and thank God. 
 Be good, do good ; bear pains heaven-sent, resigned 
 To God's corrective love ; and in the light. 
 Soul ripening of his law, for the end prepare. 
 To me it seems as I had lived all ages, 
 Since leaving earth, and thou art yet scarce man 
 Matured ; than that more, thou wilt never be. 
 
 Festus. It was not, mother, that I knew thy face ; 
 The luminous eclipse that is on it now. 
 Though it was fair on earth, would have made it strange 
 Even to one who knew as well as he loved thee. 
 And if these time -tired eyes ever imaged thine, 
 It was but for a moment, and the sight 
 Passed ; and my life was broken like a line 
 At the first word ; but my heart cried out in me. 
 
 Angel Mother. Thee knew I weU ; and now again to earth, 
 
 Festus. Yet, ere I hence, one dear embrace vouchsafe 
 That like to him of old who but by touch 
 
380 FE8TU8. 
 
 Of mothering earth stood unsubdued ; I, too 
 By spiritual salute of thine, may thrive 
 Stoutlier in worthiest matters, through all lifo 
 For virtue haply so conveyed. 
 
 Angel Mothee. As yet, 
 
 Thy forward foot forbear. Not all thy steps 
 In life, have been by me approved ; nor all 
 Have tended upwards. Sifted from all sin 
 Self-will and self-deceit, when next thou comest, 
 Oh may I say but when, shalt thou from me 
 Win the asked-for blessing, still suspended hope. 
 
 Festus. Just be thy words, Farewell. 
 
 Angel Mothee. If well thou dost, 
 
 Well wilt thou fare ; and I, in thee made glad. 
 G-o, son ; and say to all who once were mine, 
 I love them, and expect them. 
 
 Festus. Blessed one, 
 
 I go. 
 
 Angel Mothee. I charge thee, G-enius, bear him safely. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Through light, and night, and all the powers 
 of air 
 I have a passport. 
 
 Angel Mother. God be with thee, child. 
 
 Festus. Where, guardian, is the Spirit induced me here ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. That Spirit is no more here. Behold him 
 gone 
 Like a spent thunder-cloud which, rolled away, 
 Bears in its shapes chaotic, visible proof 
 Of the distracting fires that rent its breast 
 Of force self-dissipative. Not long can he 
 Heaven's light, foretaste permitted thee, abide, 
 Thus eminently, wherein all these exult 
 From saint to seraph, hierarchies of bliss. 
 For known to all ye Angels is the good 
 God hath eternally decreed to man ; 
 The secrets of perfection yours ; but heaven's 
 High whispers and intense, the soul of 111 
 Knows not, nor can know ; in the source of light 
 Sightless ; and means for ends misplacing ever, 
 Of his own acts incomprehensive, he 
 Glutting life's passionatest desires at full 
 And instigating soul's vainest aims, misdeems 
 To cause thee, spirit of earth, God lost, thyself 
 Forfeit to him ; albeit God all o'errules 
 To his own great ends in manner none forecasts. 
 But this know ; and, as spherelet nigh the sun. 
 Revels in lightful secrecy, my soul, 
 With heavenly insight penetrate, perceives 
 Dowji broadening vistas of futurity, how, 
 Him shall God's Angel, archetypal power 
 Of Heaven's divine humanity, now at hand, 
 Revisiting misreported hell, endure 
 
FE8TU8. 881 
 
 To meet, and all his hosts with hope inspire 
 
 To earn, repentant, pride subject, heaven's peace, 
 
 Pardon and restoration. 
 
 Angels. Joyed we hear. 
 
 Guardian Angel. For lo 1 it is written in the Book of God, 
 Where spirits may learn aforetime what is fate, 
 In endless prescience of world-winning love. 
 That, as by angel man through woman fell, 
 Through her, shall this first-fallen again too rise ; 
 All life in ultimate perfection linked 
 By him who oft-times chooseth meanest means 
 To compass world- vast purposes, whereby 
 God vindicates himself. Nay, thine own sphere, 
 The first fruits of the great destruction, earth, 
 Bom of the mother night of ages once 
 Into a sad and struggling life, at last 
 Shall be most blessed hailed among the worlds. 
 
 Angels. All time, all place, is consecrate to God. 
 Man may do despite, but the ill redounds 
 To himself only. The world is holy still. 
 God's fane is unprof aned. Some graceless wretch 
 Blasphemes a holy sage. What harm ? The throat 
 Filled with scurrility only is defiled ; 
 Not seer, nor his pure word. So, too, all means 
 Have majesty, if used of God ; all ends 
 By him who made, ordaine*!, are sanctified. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Come ; all is heaven before us. 
 
 Festus. And I feel 
 
 Now happier, bett-er, nobler for the words 
 Taught me of truth by one whom fate forbade 
 Beneath the sun, to teach. 'Tis, doubtless, best. 
 
 Guardian Angel. See now where, like a journeying beam of 
 light 
 From the sun's arched crown, she moves, each orblet passed. 
 Enveloping in her shadow aureole-wise ; 
 Mark, too, where 'midst those radiant rounds, well nigh 
 With spirits elect replete, few void ; in sooth 
 One only primary, and its satellite seats. 
 All welcome her return. Soul, what seest thou 
 'Mid that celestial session ? 
 
 Festus. Her I see 
 
 Revered, beloved, smile now, who here but late 
 Me counselled somewhat sadly, sagely still ; 
 And, usward pointing, with that finger used 
 God's gracious deeds to trace, her lowliest seat. 
 At feet of twain above who sit serene, 
 Brow-mitred with aerial gold, assumes. 
 Who be they ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. That, mankind's First mother ; this 
 His, who mankind with loftiest creed enriched 
 Of divine Sonship, in God's spirit renewed ; 
 By virtue and repentance justified, 
 
382 FESTUa. 
 
 Act godlike imitate, and self -betterment ; 
 Sucli, soul's sole way from earth, to G-od the Truth ; 
 And, nestling at their feet, she whom thou own'st 
 Mother ; of mankind's last ; for thou art he. 
 
 Festus. Am I ? It is enough. I have seen God. 
 
 Guardian Angel. True ; and hast passed all limits of all thirga 
 So doing. Such a miracle in itself 's 
 A dispensation. That thou hast dared, and done ; 
 Stood on the step which life eternal parts 
 From instant nothing ; and like proofs of God's 
 Tolerance divine towards man, and man's bold glance 
 Inquisitive, proud, yet worshipful towards Him, 
 Ilold glad ; and be to thee such daring blessed. 
 As when in actual space, here, 'neath our feet, 
 Some new fired cometary we see, compact 
 Of Heaven's selectest elements, ere yet made 
 His first excentric orbit, haste to accost 
 With homage and oblation due of light, 
 The solar majesty ; till, hour by hour. 
 The luminous throne, all false and fulsome dread 
 Repudiating, approached, in flame-floods plunged, 
 Long lost to ken he seems ; but soon emerged, 
 A pure aetherial virtue of the void, 
 Proud of persistent substance ; not absorbed ; 
 Not in vacuity spent ; his beamy locks 
 He shakes abroad illimitable ; nor stoops 
 Life's vast ellipse to recognise, or trace 
 The curve of his return. Let fixM stars 
 Their firmamental years ; their spatial range, 
 And course recurrent, let the wandering worlds 
 Vaunt henceforth, an' they will ; he, more than aught, 
 'Mid things create, glorying as incombust. 
 So thou, expert of Being, hast now beheld 
 Its source and end, the Infinite One ; and liv'st. 
 God and his great idea, the universe. 
 His one and infinite thought aye being evolved, 
 Are over and about us ; be the one. 
 Being of beings, as thou hast known, in whiom 
 The spirits create of all essential spheres, 
 Progressive and self purificative, work out 
 Their ever bettering end, — God, only God, 
 Worshipped ; be the other reverently proved. 
 
 Festus. Surely, there's rest in Heaven. 
 
 Guardian Angel. As thou, ere now 
 
 Hast seen, the spirits of men, the wise, brave, just, 
 Daring and charitable, in those strange orbs. 
 The angel of thy satellite crescent showed 
 Their guerdon of self completive perf ectness 
 Taken at God's hand, through, dateless terms of time. 
 Triumphs of passed and future, not without 
 Toil spiritual achieved and earnest deed ; 
 So here behold bow holy is well- won rest ; 
 
FE8TUS. 
 
 And how tho soul finite, by endless life 
 Enriched, God crowns, betimes, with ease intense 
 And renovative repose. The heart of heaven 
 This, which in silent movement, like the soul's 
 In spiritual commune with God, e'er lives. 
 
 God. Hear heaven, and earth, hear. Not in vain shall all 
 My prophet-sons, inspired, through time, have preached 
 Of justice, and Heaven's peace with man to come. 
 The latter days shall yet their glory see. 
 Let therefore peace and charity upon earth 
 Start forth, as from the tender herb, the dew, 
 'Mong all mankind one-minded. Let pure schemes 
 Just and benevolent souls of ages gone 
 Have nursed, mature ; let hopes sincere of all 
 World-patriots, earth's best spirits for nature's weal, 
 Fulfil themselves ; all godly plans bear fruit 
 Of laudable profit ; freedom and the use 
 Temperate of all Heaven's blessings, with just sense 
 Of mutual rights, and service due 'mong all 
 Brethren ; heart-purity ; holy life prevail 
 Most presently earth over. 
 
 Febtus. Peace, thon saidst, 
 
 Lord? 
 
 God. Peace, I say. Be war henceforth reserved 
 To spiritual ends, and strife of virtuous soul 
 'Gainst soul ill-willed, 'gainst evil ; and which if not, 
 All limited life were aimless, fruitless ; lost 
 All fitting use of powers ; all choice, all worth ; 
 Such conflict holy, such war, war divine, 
 Emancipative of spirit, as in accord 
 With fate long uttered, shall the close of things 
 Terrestrial, mark decisive, to the amaze 
 Of all participant in the final field 
 Of evil and good. Be thou right strong to bear 
 Therein thy part. 
 
 Festus. Thine, Lord, the cause, the praise. 
 
 God. This contest we remit to man's last race 
 And generation, that, by choice of good, 
 Eejected sin, soul purity, preferred 
 As dear to God whose breath is holiness. 
 That fight, aforetime fought in each one's breast, 
 But once for all fought now at large, may prove 
 Heaven gives and makes cause conunon witk all souls, 
 For the good, militant. For the time enough. 
 Guard- Angel, let this soul, thy charge, to earth 
 Returned, fate's first-fruits cull. Nor go unwarned* 
 Let him self satiate of all knowledge, learn 
 The world's sage untruths ; yea, how idol gods, 
 All alike false, into each other fallen, 
 At last fall into nothing ; one alone, 
 All time's most secret verity and overt, 
 Vouched for by all j to him not only known 
 
884 FE8TU8. 
 
 By reason, and inspiration, but pure grace. 
 
 Let sacred rites, deific called by those 
 
 Seeking- in vain 'mong many gods, the one 
 
 Who knows none save himself, so aid that while 
 
 Those aims, high, holy, for man's weal, he seeks, 
 
 Reached to and realised in earth's harvest age ; 
 
 These, scions of the seers of old, inflamed 
 
 With love of guerdon due to worthiest work ; 
 
 And gaining hiddenly their great effects, 
 
 As nature hers, in silence and unseen ; 
 
 They may his faithful aspirations make 
 
 Accord with their decrees ; man's perfectness 
 
 Concurrent with earth's tale of days, by us 
 
 Assigned first. Thou, too, angel of the reed 
 
 Of record, quick Cherubiel, of truths to me 
 
 Transcriptive, trace from Heaven's original tonguo 
 
 Into this man's, of world-speech what to know 
 
 Him most behoves, the sum of wisdom's lore. 
 
 Apt volume found, and fitting shrine to hold 
 
 Truth's treasures freely worded, take thou heed 
 
 That Evil's plot, by us o'erruled, this man 
 
 Of fate may view in every test to come. 
 
 The infinite providence controlling life, 
 
 Life hallowing, if to good trained ; and the curse 
 
 Of coveted power the soul to intercept 
 
 Upon its way, to G-od and judgment ; good 
 
 Ruling, and in the end, good crowning all. 
 
 Men know not, nor can know, the day, which, reached. 
 
 Their kind's perfection, marches on fate's page 
 
 With earth destroyed, peace crowned ; from birth of things 
 
 An end f orefixed, which so long while delayed 
 
 By tyrannous superstitions, wars, and wrongs 
 
 Of every dye, reduces to a day 
 
 What might have been enjoyed a thousand years. 
 
 Let not man therefore deem himself aggrieved 
 
 By destiny ; but the day thy charge, elect 
 
 Of universal man, shall, choosing power 
 
 World wide, decide he most can serve his kind 
 
 By ruling, and so rendering general choice 
 
 Of peace infrangible ; so ensured as then 
 
 Shall patiently appear, the day of days 
 
 To thee will prove, Guard Angel, nor to thee, 
 
 Angel of earth, less. 
 
 G-UAEDiAN Angel. I then may this man 
 Accompany as of old. 
 
 G-OD. Thou hadst need. 
 
 G-UARDiAN Angel. O joy ! 
 
 G-OD. Him failing, thou mayest strengthen to all good ; 
 Him sin-bound, check ; him sinning, see thou show, 
 With the spirit who tempts, so prompt to avile him, hell ; 
 And so with pains premonitory of proof 
 His soul chastise j that he the fines may feel, 
 
FESTU8, 8»6 
 
 Of obstinate fault and purposeful offence. 
 
 Though warnings may have useless proved, fail not 
 
 To meet this mortal equitably adjudged 
 
 Hell's fiendly prison to pass through, he to bear, 
 
 As through a burning tent an arrow shot 
 
 Bears on its wingM heel the scent of fire, 
 
 Thereafter, speechless griefs ; for though by fate, 
 
 Soul chartered to console mankind, and thence 
 
 Hell's animate flames evading ; yet no day 
 
 Shall pass without its retributive tear 
 
 For sin conceived if not achieved ; and earth 
 
 Revisiting through all lands, remorseful ; preach 
 
 The spirit's thrice holy freedom, sought by him, 
 
 Thrall of imperious passion for the hour, 
 
 To invade, to desecrate ; (how many a time 
 
 To be repented of) and the verity tell, 
 
 Long lost to man, of justly apportioned doom 
 
 In realms, whence self -recuperative, the soul 
 
 May diffidently again seek to behold 
 
 My face ; and rightliest balanced equity 
 
 Prove by strict mercy administered, that the heart 
 
 Of the broad world may gladden in its God. 
 
 Salsts. So from all ill thou. Lord 1 bring'st ever good : 
 Be all things thus o'erruled to work thine ends 
 Self-satisfactive ; Being's boundless good, 
 And everlasting bliss made one with thine. 
 
 God. Know, all souls shall be judged ; commended all 
 Bather to self -amendment ; and condemned 
 None without end : those cradled through all streams 
 Of time, all spheres : these by me chosen to prove 
 To creature mind my sovereign freedom ; those 
 By virtue's law adjudged, and natural light 
 Of conscious right and wrong, the just, so taught 
 Of heaven's eternal equity, proclaim 
 In God and man one common righteousness, 
 One sole ; man justified to God, by sense 
 Of love's, truth's, piety's laws innate, obeyed ; 
 Or violate, self-condemned ; and God, free choice 
 By his own free will who gave, like cleared, to man. 
 Thou, Beniel, who beheld'st the angelic fall 
 Primal, and in this last, of Angel-world, 
 With holiest love, wroughtst, earnest to retrieve 
 To truth and good all who, for such soul gifts, 
 Most harmed, most hated thee, go teach those same, 
 Self -trammelled in sin's sequences, and now 
 In hell imperilled, how to meet, how scape. 
 Of every age and sphere. 
 
 Angel op Eabth. Haste, soul-guard thou, 
 The impending ruin of man's orb, long doomed, 
 To o'ertake, and Time's slow step slip swiftly by, 
 Make much of every moment, ere it pass. 
 
 GuABDIA^' AxGEL. Sire of ail spirits celestial, and of eart'j, 
 
386 FESTU8. 
 
 "We live but in tlie well-doing of thy wilL 
 Thrice holy Lord, predestinator of all 
 Thy creatures' lives and duties, thy behests 
 I joy to obey, and visit Hell's blind world 
 And donjon orb of judgment, at thy word 
 Whose thought is destiny, and justest law. 
 
 G-OD. Let him not doubt of liberty there, nor deem 
 Here only, angels free. All spirits live 
 In order's law, the law of sequent times, 
 Passed, present, and to be ; which, operant not, 
 The world, nor aught that is, were what it is ; 
 Law, which sane soul could no more hate, disown, 
 Evade, or seek to annul, than it could blot 
 Its being from God's knowledge. Learn, too, this ; 
 Too long hath earth misdeemed of hell. It is just 
 Since reason's self is foiled in her own words, 
 By bigots caught, and twisted as they fell. 
 The truth were yet unveiled. This soul's offence, 
 Thought only, fit occasion gives to learn. 
 
 And thence, like apt, for him to announce to man, , 
 
 Hell's predetermined scope, its temporal use, 
 Its equity, and its unetemal end. 
 
 Him, angels, free through fiend- world ; and while there. 
 Its nature marked, and true contrition's fruits, 
 Bid him, to man returned, throughout all lands, 
 The justifying truth, so learned, proclaim ; 
 My name revindicate from the evil charge, 
 Sad misconceit, of sin's perpetuator. 
 And infinite torturer of soul finite, made 
 For ends far other : Heaven's remission, there 
 Even, to be earned by just remorse ; return 
 To truer life, with law concordant ; hate 
 Of good and order, sin being ; life untrue. 
 
 Festus. angel 1 let me welcome thee. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Nay, name me, 
 
 For by thy lips invoked at mom and eve, 
 My name I love. 
 
 Festus. Return we now ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Return. 
 
 Festus. How vast it seems, this deep abyss of space 
 World-studded, 'neath our feet. 
 
 GuAEDLAN Angel. Stars stranger stiU, 
 
 Nobler than those late visited we may find. 
 Wnt sojourn for a time among these spheres, 
 And test their natures ? 
 
 Festus. Gladly. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Seek we then. 
 
 All rareness and variety these bright globes 
 Can offer ere we reach thine orb. Descend. 
 Now is the age of worlds. Another comes. 
 
 God. This weigh thou, mortal, thoughtful. Ere thou findest 
 Again thy star, lo 1 Ouriel of the Sun 
 
FE8TUS. 387 
 
 Hath it in charge to show thee, of the passed 
 
 The spirit's sacred liberty ; and prove, 
 
 As, in that primest privilege of God's soul, 
 
 Thou hast thyself demeaned, so care thou most 
 
 Not to infract another's right, or dread 
 
 Just vengeance and severe, on wilful wrong. 
 
 Thou, angel, this ; — the wonders of all worlds, 
 
 While thus unfolded to the sateless eye 
 
 His dateless passed, and all himself, he cons ; 
 
 And how the spirit from age to age may fall 
 
 From birth-star down to death- star through all sphere ; 
 
 Show him how yet, by rational rites, by life. 
 
 Sweet, holy, penitent for the passed ; by firm 
 
 And pure aspirings for the future, soul 
 
 Eternal union with its Lord may win. 
 
 For, know all Angels. I have so made man, 
 
 That his original excellence shall defeat 
 
 All he hath ill ; his inborn goodness, sin 
 
 So outweigh finally, his soul shall live 
 
 By royal right of virtue in itself 
 
 Immortal, and here reign with us in heaven. 
 
 Nor be ye astound that Evil, by me permit, 
 
 By me commissioned, to himself unknown. 
 
 Life, more than one imperishable, to loose 
 
 From body ; and who so acting deems himself 
 
 But by his own vain ends, inspired, should feel 
 
 False impulse to triumph ; all souls, be sure. 
 
 Have their appointed season, and just reward. 
 
 One law there is ye angels know, to all 
 
 Intelligences, alike responsible made 
 
 Through starry space, through spheres probational ; spheres 
 
 DiscipUnant ; for breach of law divine, 
 
 Man's good which underlies in all the worlds, 
 
 Confession of Heaven's code as just ; and fines 
 
 Depurative, self -fixed for trespass, (priced 
 
 By death's enlightening judgment in such orbs 
 
 As death, life's mightiest change, affects ; in those 
 
 Death haunts not, by disseverance from Grod's love,) 
 
 For ill, if e'er, to other selfishly 
 
 Done or devised, while lasts to wronged soul 
 
 Or wronger, memory of the inflicted wrong. 
 
 Lest passion or more treacherous fault revived. 
 
 The like offence perpetuate each in turn, 
 
 Retaliative for ever ; ill so shown 
 
 Attempered 'mid yon orbs sin-cleansing, where 
 
 Justice nor claims, nor equity tasks enjoins, 
 
 Of restitutive service feasible not ; 
 
 But good-will more than equal, for all time, 
 
 With the ill passed, adds beneficent acts ; the souls 
 
 Meanwhile of both, f orgiver and forgiven. 
 
 In high and ever heavenward harmony 
 
 Progressive, each, with variant grades of good, 
 
 02 
 
888 FESTUS. 
 
 The other bettering, the whole righteous law 
 
 Of practical penitence for offence, to improve 
 
 In active virtue, this ; and thus fulfilled. 
 
 Know too all thoughts just holy, high, the mind's 
 
 Divine ideals, which the aspiring soul 
 
 Longs, and would joy to verify, are, here, 
 
 Or, in surrounding spheres, the aptest sites 
 
 For such celestial seed, implanted, nursed. 
 
 And to full fruitage brought ; and they who bear, 
 
 Beget, or guest such thoughts in these high spheres, 
 
 Their starry destinies enjoy, or change 
 
 For that alone they better love, or feel 
 
 They can make others happier by. 
 
 Angels. Laws, Lord ! 
 
 We live by, and do worship thee, in them, 
 Like patent, all comprising, operative. 
 Throughout Heaven's moral commonweath, as those 
 Through space unseen, yet strong, that soul its own 
 Redemption earns, and carries in itself. 
 Wrought under thee, God 1 not more life's lord 
 Thou, than soul's confessor, who dost absolve 
 By righteousness divine, which all things weighs 
 Justly, earth's self -caused ills, man's mark missings, 
 Life's errors ; and, dues equitably repaid ; 
 And, heart amendment proved, of guilt wilt clear 
 All nature, made defectible, and its best 
 Aspired to, sought and wrought, at last wilt bless. 
 Behold, God maketh earth and soul anew ; 
 The one like heaven, the other like himself j 
 So shall the new Creation come at once ; 
 Sin, the dead branch upon the tree of life, 
 Shall be cut off for ever, and all soul 
 Concluded in his boundless amnesty. 
 
 God. Nor err ye, nor be ignorant as to sin. 
 To bridge the intransmeable void that gaps 
 *Tween thought and act, alike free, instant that. 
 This, fixed for aye, were both to annul ; were right 
 And wrong, and good with evil, to confound. 
 Ill done, is treatable but one only way ; 
 It must be rectified ; not execute, 
 See it by conscience self condemned, soul roused, 
 Soul saved. Yet cognizant of the law it half 
 Infringed, divinely operant, justly smote 
 With foresight realized of age-long remorse, 
 And fiery wrath indignant, of all Heaven. 
 
 Angels. Even as in one, so be it. Lord, in all ; 
 Be it ever as thou. Lord I wilt. Thy word is fate. 
 O 1 haste, ye times, when universal man 
 All narrower creeds abandoned, in one faith. 
 Thee sole shall worship rationally, the eteme, 
 The personal infinite, the All-one, who makes, 
 Sustains, all things comprises, and all souls, 
 
FE8TU8. 839 
 
 Self purified, by the truth made free, redeems. 
 
 Aechangel. All are but particles of one divine 
 And never can in holy gladness shine 
 Till builded all into one common shrine 
 Which Grod shall make His temple. As tho woo 
 Each human heart on earth doth undergo, 
 Shall be the calm immeasurable flow 
 Of joy, united man in Heaven shall know. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Divine humanity, HwLxt the world and God, 
 Of intermediate essence in all spherei, 
 Inseminate by the Maker, for tneir good, 
 Angelic, not than human less, exists 
 In both imperfect, differing in degree, 
 In each perfectible ; and if here to die, 
 Be to depart to other spheres less harsh, 
 Less rudimentary than our own ; as faith 
 Refined and rationalized persuades, and proof 
 Here absolute shews ; and if from other worlds, 
 By Heaven's aU-knowing soul e'er sent where most 
 ]S ceded for purity, force or ampler Kfe, 
 More varied culture ; higher grace, or growth, 
 Expanse of natural powers, or kindlier mien 
 And bearing of Humanity towards itself, 
 And all creation's lowlier ranks ; enough 
 Is graspable by the finite spirit, of God's 
 All present governance, reason to convince 
 He all things made for their commutual good, 
 And in their joy His own to realize. 
 
 The Martian Sphere. Festus, Guardian Angel, Lucipeb. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Regained the sun's bright precincts, rest ^ 
 here. 
 Almost thou mayst believe thyself at home. 
 Another star-step down our steep descent, 
 And we are there. 
 
 Festus. See here, fire, water, snow : 
 
 These truly are family features of a sphere 
 Akin to earth. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Akin, but not too well 
 Affected ; say the star-seers of all time ; 
 Dread sign of strife and woe ; by Pagan faith 
 To the war-god dedicate. Twin moonlets, bright 
 And crescent, one ; one, wan and waning, wait 
 Close on his thunderous tread, as who should bear 
 His godship's spear and shield ; and heaven's steep hill 
 Ascending, cheer him on his reddening way, 
 Hot with reflected flames. But lo I the arch fiend, 
 Come so far forth to welcome thy return, 
 Doubtless. 
 
890 FE8TU8. 
 
 FESTua He intercepts, but not disputes, 
 Our path. 
 
 Lucifer. Impatience brought me here. I feared 
 Thou hadst been lost, or dissipated in air, 
 As meteor, may be. But now, fear, avaunt ! 
 Like some explorer of far isles, returned 
 Homewards, in spoil of all the elements. 
 Rich, in tree-corallery and pendent pearl, 
 And odorous woods and gnms, and jewelled gold ; 
 Thou comest with mindful stores of starlif e rife, 
 And legends stretching back to time's pale dawn. 
 We wait to join thee earthwards. 
 
 Festus. Be it so. 
 
 Why see we not the angel of this orb ? 
 
 LuciPEE. Though much my friend he is this hour away ; 
 He knows where war most thrives ; so him I made 
 My deputy for the nonce. 
 
 ^UAEDiAN Angel. He might have learned 
 
 If here, how near to a total end all war, 
 In any sphere. 
 
 Festus. How old this thought of war ; 
 
 Indigenous in the elements, nay, in Heaven. 
 These very heavens, how old, whose starry forms 
 Of ancient legend sired, still keeping shape 
 Traditionary, from hence seen, largelier loom, 
 Answering their names more pertinently. See there, 
 Sirius, bright measurer of the heroic years, 
 Primaeval ; and, more vast than viewed from earth, 
 The huge Orion, standing, arm uplift, 
 (As we thee, rebel Evil of the world. 
 Sublimely impious, threatening so God's throne, 
 Might image,) and his mighty mace on high 
 Whirling, conceive, all trace of some bright star 
 Lost from a glorious seat, for ages held, 
 Dropping its fruit of many a shining orb 
 Crushed, shattered, down the abyss. 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, rather,. say 
 
 An image of the Almighty error, man, 
 Banished and banned to heaven, by a weak world 
 Which makes the minds it cannot master, gods. 
 
 Festus. Orion ! belted giant of the skies. 
 Whose head is lost in heights of heaven ; whose belt, 
 Embossed with kingly stars, thee mightiest shows, 
 And first 'mongst half gods ; they, sage seers of Eld, 
 Who nationalized the skies, and, wondrous men. 
 Ere history graved her slab, or fame crowned song. 
 Forestalling heaven by ages, gave all stars 
 To the spirits of the good and brave, once earth's, 
 Believed thou wast a giant, bulked of worlds ; 
 Nor wholly ill believed ; if thus they typed 
 The immortal mind ; for it hath starlike beauty, 
 And world-like might, and is as high above 
 
FE8TU8, 391 
 
 The things it Booms ; and thoug-h He gave it earth, 
 And heaven, and arms to win them both, will war 
 Vainly with God, nor seek His gifts to earn. 
 
 Guardian Angel. To aflSx fictitious meanings to conceits 
 Dream-limned, and fabled acts, hath e'er been man's. 
 
 Festus. Yea, and if such their fateful prescience, thou 
 Brave star, great victim of mean victors, once 
 Beguiled by wiles thou wouldst not stoop to meet, 
 Of poison impested wine, and a drunken sleep, 
 Like to high noon in the midst of all his might ; 
 And unremembering of all good, one hour, 
 Allegiance to pure laws, and just renown, 
 Thou, on the brink of immortality 
 Won worthily, didst abjure thy claim, and sin 
 Through forceful passion, foullier than all seas, 
 Thou walkest o'er, nor wet'st thy glittering feet, 
 The deep dominions of thiue ocean-sire, 
 Could cleanse ; and losedst so, thine inborn light, 
 
 By rude revenge of kings, who hate the great, 
 
 Thou f earedst not to reseek Heaven's light supreme, 
 
 Renovative ; and upstanding towards the sun, 
 
 Didst gain again thine eyes. So the great king, 
 
 The world, the tyrant we elect, in vain 
 
 Puts out the eyes of mind ; miud looks to God, 
 
 And reaps once more its light. And now thy soul, 
 
 O flood-borne king, informs yon hundred stars, 
 
 As mine my limbs. Well, 'tis a noble end. 
 
 What now to thee be mortal maid, or goddess ? 
 
 Look ; she who fled thee once, now loves, and longs 
 
 To clasp thee to her cold and beamy breast. 
 
 Pine, moon ; thou art as far below him, now 
 
 As once she was above thee, thou of the world-belt. 
 
 Who called thee hers, and knew thee demi-god. 
 
 Died of her boast, andMies in her own dust ; 
 
 And she who loved thee, the young blushy Morning, 
 
 The mighty, the invincible maid of ligJit, 
 
 Who caught thee in her arms, and bore thee off. 
 
 Far o'er the lashing seas to a lonely isle, 
 
 Where she might pleasure longer and in secret, 
 
 That love undid thee ; and it is so now, 
 
 Whether the beauty seek, or flee, or have, 
 
 'Tis a like ill ; this beauty, doubly mortal. 
 
 What though death-f anged by creeping things thou scomd'st ; 
 
 Or, that the moon with madness slew thee there ; 
 
 Let us believe 'twas yet within the arms 
 
 Which loved thee, even in the stroke of death ; 
 
 And that there snapped the lightning link of life. 
 
 Kill, but not conquer man nor mind, may gods. 
 
 Wherefore, revenge, thou who so much hast borne, 
 From man's deceit, and treachery of false gods. 
 And woman's love, and mean contempt of kings, 
 Out with the sword ; the world will run before thee. 
 
392 FE8TU8. 
 
 Thou with fhe treble strain of g'odhood in thee, 
 March 1 there is nought to hinder thee in heaven, 
 
 LuciFEB. Nor us in air. But doubt not he will march, 
 When word to march is given. From head to foot, 
 Your giant shall collapse. His sword, his mace, 
 Staff, kingly girdle, and the radiant sheath 
 Lit inly with dim nebulous lights, shall join 
 All discreate things. Yon foot that spumed the main, 
 Shall heel the void. Those stem and stormy stars, 
 On his broad shoulders blazoned, that o'er fleets 
 Glared preaccepted ruin, and to all crews 
 Tempestuous death, shall shine no more, but seek 
 A sudden nothingness. Would I might end 
 Like wholly and for ever. 
 
 Festus. Hope not that : 
 
 Hope aught else better, Spirit 1 
 
 Lucifer. No more ! What else 
 
 Of marvellous thou hast seen I'U doubtless learn 
 Some later day. 
 
 Festus. It is all one miracle. 
 
 The world I live in, and the life I breathe. 
 
 GuAEDiAiT Angel. 'Twere well the militant spirit who under 
 God, 
 This spherelet guides, misdeemed of old by earth's 
 Lost ages, lord of battles, should have heard 
 The heavenly word, seal up war's blood- writ rolL 
 
 LuciFEB. He'll hear it soon enough. 
 
 Festus. What mean those clouds 
 
 Explosive seeming, close to earth, that blotch, 
 Gore-dyed, her face ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. War, war, continuous war ; 
 Preparatory, or suffering from, our earth. 
 Self desecrative of habit, breeds. 
 
 Festus. Enough ; 
 
 A spirit is abroad that act to annul ; 
 That self-dt«m to undoom. 
 
 Lucifer. 'Tis the sole way 
 
 I know to ensure the end of earth. Give peace ; 
 She'll die for want of violent deaths. But see, 
 Quite apt to our discourse, our angel guide, 
 Good Martiel, faithful to his orb, nor yet 
 So very long away, wars now are brief. 
 If not less frequent ; 'companied by a troop 
 Of spirits as though in earth-life bred. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Too true. 
 
 Such have I oft seen rush from battle fields, 
 Like storm-clouds, nor, till now, knew whither. Hail, 
 Angel, be welcome home. 
 
 Martiel. Be welcome, you 
 
 Celestial spirits, or earthly ; one I see, 
 Plainly, of earth. 
 
 LuciFEB. Another, thou wouldst say. 
 
FESTU8. 393 
 
 As plainly, — well, I grant it, more or less ; 
 I am quite ubiquitous. 
 
 Festus. How, and wherefore here 
 
 It haps we meet, hear briefly, angel friend. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. And you, ye stranger souls, all dumb, here 
 rest, 
 And, teachable, hearken a brother spirit, of man, 
 Forethoughtful of these outer spheres, on whose 
 Thresholds, as now on this, ye some day stand, 
 His visits among them tell ; which so may prove 
 To you no detriment, but the inexpert 
 Arm with forecast of spiritual change, once missed 
 By them on earth, but verified to be 
 In every spirit sustained, ere holy peace 
 Accept the adventurous hand. 
 
 Festus. They speak not, these, 
 
 Maetiel. Nor marvel not their voice is but a ghost, 
 Whose whisper rather strikes the heart than ear. 
 The astoimding step from death, to life renewed, 
 Still holds them mute ; but they will yet bless God. 
 
 Festus. Not now I tell of those resplendent spheres 
 First passed through nigh to Heaven, whence self-dismissed 
 Thy going, Lucifer, mine forewent ; and thence, 
 Through spatial tracts, to man or angel known 
 Never before, glide ; I and mine, dear guard ; 
 But only of those hard by, of solar strain, 
 And outer globelets of our system ; hear 
 What therefore I of late have seen, where been. 
 All things permitted, or enjoined of God, 
 By us enjoyed, accomplished, knowing all 
 Material spheres made but as fields to test 
 The erring, yet refinable spirit ; God's act 
 It is, which, unknown, tries through time, the soul's 
 Fidelity, asks its free response ; our course 
 Through space, star-peopled, checked by many a world, 
 Of bright enchantments, singing as they sped, 
 We oft delayed to search their wonders wild. 
 Stranger than e'er of wizard wrought, or feigned 
 By wild romancer in his lunes, till reached. 
 These twelvefold mansion-spheres perfective ; first. 
 Entering as nature needs, the outmost round 
 Of solar generation, all unnamed, 
 Where bide, in merit and misdeed like poised, 
 Those souls indifferently on earth, self -steered. 
 Self -compassed, who nor hit the white, nor miss 
 The targe ; the crowd whose deeds were good enough. 
 Examples blameless, but who sought not truth, 
 The insuperable and all-suflacing truth ; 
 Their spiritual ingrowth stinting thus ; and here, 
 Who wise to teach, by deeds, denied their faith, 
 Both ardent now to teach the true, and join 
 With it all good in act consistent, seek 
 
394 FESTU8. 
 
 Souls such as those in life they failed to serve, 
 
 And ofttimes absent upon earth ; and load 
 
 With treblest gifts, with benefits thousandfold 
 
 To bless whom they had wronged ; so pure the sense 
 
 Of divine retribution to the soul 
 
 Death hath enskied ; so plain. Thence, sunward still, 
 
 To a vast crystalline orb, where innocent sprites 
 
 And amiable, who God in life adored 
 
 Lukewarmly ; kept but formally His law. 
 
 Loved only cursorily their race, nor lacked 
 
 Of good life aught save credence in its worth ; 
 
 Enlightened now from their great life-fount, draw 
 
 In earnest commune joy unhoped, unthought, 
 
 Undreamed of raptures in imparting good. 
 
 Anon to satellite orbs, where gentlest shades, 
 
 Of ill incapable only seeming, learned, 
 
 In more robust activity, to achieve 
 
 For others worthier weal than aught they deemed 
 
 Their own strength capable of ; to themselves peace. 
 
 To all varieties known, of deathless race. 
 
 As though on separate special mission bound, 
 
 Urged by desire insatiable to know 
 
 These star-dwellers of ampler skies, we passed 
 
 Through darknesses ethereal, lamped with gleams 
 
 Of servant meteors, waved by friendliest hands, 
 
 Commanded to that end, to a mightier star, 
 
 Where sultans of the fore-flood age, allies 
 
 Of godly realms, but peccant in themselves. 
 
 And baser royalties of succeedent times. 
 
 To purify from sin their gold-bound brows. 
 
 Have opposite places changed with those they held 
 
 Their slaves on earth ; these, wistful now of truth 
 
 Their despot drudge control to worthiest tasks, 
 
 Self evident for the general good, ordained 
 
 Of Grod, who all, the least as greatest, rules. 
 
 The orb of virtues this, glowing, self -lit 
 
 With spiritual excellences, like jewels mined 
 
 By humblest labour, each one for himself. 
 
 But in the crowned insignia of God's saints, 
 
 Unalterably the best for others' use. 
 
 Here, jubilant choirs of righteous souls convene. 
 
 This teaching, that one taught ; and all of Heaven. 
 
 Here, meditation sums God's laws ; the code 
 
 Spatial, that binds life's universal realm. 
 
 Not to be broken, ne'er evaded : here. 
 
 And all- where, one same equity. This quit, 
 
 Mine angel guard, his wings across his breast 
 
 Folding, me closely clasped ; and as a star ; 
 
 From the immoveable loosed, in one bright line 
 
 Of light continuous, darts, till these calm plains 
 
 Of roseate snow sighted, he, opening wide 
 
 His gradual wings, as her eye wonder, (viewed 
 
FE8TU8. 895 
 
 Some new made world, where lately all was void) 
 Let fall hi8 foot, mine following, where we stand. 
 
 GuABDiAN A^'GEL. Well may one wonder who hath seen, and more 
 Who hath not seen, worlds made or unmade ; for Icnow, 
 God alway is creating ; earth by earth, 
 And heaven with heaven concentric ; and the whole 
 Framed, into being all spirits, all angels, breathes. 
 And as some youthful Mage, full oft in tale 
 Pictured of arrant wizardry, from night 
 Calling the first time to him powers he knows not, 
 Nor how the spirits, huge, welkin-winged, that throng 
 To kiss the evocative hand, may show ; 
 So God ; tut so, unlike ; ancient, ere time 
 Existed ; He, all knowing, passed, to come ; 
 Wistful of all capacities of all things ; 
 All being, root and ramage, to his eye 
 Precognizant, ever clear ; His own vast thoughts 
 Evokes, all generative, and gives them life, 
 Life spheral, spiritual life. He now, by name 
 The elements calls, which, each one in its place, 
 And in its turn, obedient comes to the word 
 Oinnific, of the infinite soul ; now, orbs 
 From inorganic shapelessness, bids forth, 
 Revolving, radiative, whose glowing globes, 
 In Ri'-her cooled, their eddying course contract 
 In less exorbitant bounds ; and lull to rest 
 Their flaming hearts within them ; now conceives 
 In h! wide counselling mind, an order blessed 
 Of angelhood ; and lo 1 firmaments over abound 
 With the new hierarchy. 
 
 Festus. What mean yon souls. 
 
 Inquisitive as they seem of every breath 
 They breathe ; though more asthereal than the exhaled 
 Filmlet of birdling's bill, on wintry mom ? 
 I, on behalf of those even since arrived, 
 Not less than mine own curiousness, would ask 
 Of thee, kind sphere interpreter, for time 
 All further search of mine forbids, what aim 
 The various acts of these so various groups, 
 Busied, we see, with every root of life, 
 And inquest so profound, as seems, of all 
 They live by, and upon, regard ; and thence, 
 Upon what after upwar<l shelving plane 
 Such life, progressive here, wends, and its end. 
 
 Martiel. Where'er is man, he eveiywhere, behold 
 There too delusion. In each rudiment 
 Of natural world-life he perfection seeks, 
 Not finds ; the search yet bettering him ; here, see 
 Who dig the earth for bubbles, wring the cloud 
 Of sunset for its rubied gold ; who strain 
 The snow to win its whiteness, and the lake 
 Moonlit, will cradle oft, for shadowy bars 
 
898 • FESTU8. 
 
 Of argent ore. In all worlds man's pursuits 
 
 Are like in spirit, if bodily diverse, 
 
 Here, some devote to public good will serve 
 
 Themselves tlie last ; self being in itself 
 
 Not culpable, but as illy placed or used. 
 
 Who looks up Heavenward, in what lawful quest 
 
 Soe'er, the gaze attracts of angels ; these 
 
 His spirit's proper force, and strength of will 
 
 Persistent, which through mountains thrills, and finds 
 
 No durable check to its adamantine neb, 
 
 Well- weighed, instruct, oft help. So here, we see 
 
 The death-proof soul, impatient now of wrong, 
 
 As reckless once of right, makes good his hours 
 
 Once in vain idlesse waste, mean aims, base arts ; 
 
 And raised o'er tyrant trivialties of sect, 
 
 Custom and habit, modish servitudes, 
 
 And of transparent honesty proud, now learns 
 
 All sensuous motives, such as ruled too much 
 
 His course on earth, to hate ; to abhor the thirst 
 
 For carnage, and the lust for city, or, soil, 
 
 Contermiaous this, that neighbouring, not his own, 
 
 For ever ; the sole strife become, with such, 
 
 Is, who shall better other most, most load 
 
 With boons of peace ? Life-lovers these, who haste 
 
 To expiate every needless death on earth, 
 
 By them caused wantonly, and now awaked 
 
 To righteous sense of their own wrongfulness, 
 
 With compensative care, life's every kind 
 
 Tend round them, like, yet different ; to abjure, 
 
 With passionate tears of joy their misbeliefs ; 
 
 Misdeeds ; and, save 'gainst evil, shun aU strife, 
 
 Somewhile to be fordone. The end of all. 
 
 When spiritual betterment shews full aptness here, 
 
 To be trans-sphered, earth's globe expert, passed by, 
 
 The westering star thou knowest, the Hesperian orb, 
 
 Admits the spirit aggrandized and made pure, 
 
 Joy positive to partake. 
 
 Festus. With rest refreshed. 
 
 And how much who can say, save one who feels. 
 The cup of sleep drained to its last sweet lees. 
 Awaked to ends more thoughtful ; or, as might 
 Of old have felt the mythical islet king, 
 Lord of the vengeful bow, when he, footswoUen 
 With travel, many a steep and jagged brow 
 O'ertopped, his bath takes at the observant hands 
 Of nursing Night farshining, who had erst 
 Cherished his youth, and all his venturous life's 
 Toilful beneficence known ; his heart the while 
 For weightier works ennerved, and graver acts. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. My guidance as from first prepared, accept, 
 
 Lucifer. Why now resumed thy charge ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. By God replaced, 
 
FE8TUS, 397 
 
 Whose is all place. 
 
 LuciPEB. But why ; the All-present One, 
 
 As easily as an angel or a saint 
 Invoked, nor, called, less like to aid, being nigfh 
 Ever, to all, I know not. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Thou mayst learn, 
 Sometime, if patient. 
 
 LuciPEB. Oh I if not till then, 
 
 That stoiy may, perchance, have lost its charm. 
 Him therefore let impart to whom he wills. 
 And it concerns, his reason. But for ourselves, 
 Not patient only, cautious must we be. 
 False spirits I hear are much about ; and some 
 No little in vogue. Have I not heard invoked 
 In splendid privacy with prayer untongued, 
 Joined hands, and incense improvised in air, 
 The astral ghost irradiate with soft light 
 Intelligible, not sensible ; seen him come 
 Self shapening into vision ('gainst all law 
 Of metaphysic) mage, meanwhile, or maid, 
 Still resolute to wring forth the hidden spell 
 Shall urge indifferent beauty lovewards ; snatch 
 Life's revocative charm, or seek the oath 
 Obligeant which the star-bound spirit shall stay 
 Upon that un winged way no eaglet knows, 
 Nor mom's, nor evening's golden parallels 
 Illume ; no lengths, nor latitudes of light ; 
 No angel blabs ; the session with a seal 
 Of mutual grace closed, sweeter from some lips 
 Than nectarous drop, pellucid, self -distilled 
 From the hearts of flowers ; so cautious must we be, 
 
 Festus. Oh, we'll be very cautious, on my word. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Let then that evil spirit depart.' 
 
 Festus. Make not 
 
 Thy stay, if elsewhere called, depend on ours, 
 "Who linger here, e'er wistful of new sights. 
 
 LuciFEB. It is well, I go. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Thou go'st ; 'tis well. 
 
 LuciPEB. Our paths 
 
 Bifurcate here. 
 
 Festus. So, we shall meet again. 
 
 LuciPEB. Fear not ; quite soon. 
 
 GuAEDiv^ Angel. For earth's great common wca', 
 
 And wealth of good, would it were not so. 
 
 LuciPEB. Ha 1 
 
 I overheard that. There's a wormy spoke 
 In that same wheel of good, rots the whole tyre, 
 Or much I err. 
 
 Festus. Here wait we yet awhile. 
 
39S FE8TUS, 
 
 XXYI. 
 
 Time's lapse who notes mid flights Kke this ? Once mere 
 
 In merry medley mixed, youth's liberal mirth, 
 
 Disport we ; now the natural luxuries taste 
 
 Of love, trust, amity, un-Circa^an cups 
 
 Which chang-e to loftier life, by virtuous channs, 
 
 The spirit, of joy enchanted ; still unmasked 
 
 Worldwards, in frivolous plciisures. These, one hour, 
 
 Our world-seer joins, soul solemnized, to renounce: 
 
 And as of old, when in some sainted shrine, 
 
 By secular license, antic play perturbed 
 
 Time and again, the dim roofed vastnesses, 
 
 And dominant sanctities of the place, but passed 
 
 Harmless and soon ; the hallowed solitude 
 
 Leaving, when gone, more grave ; so here, meanwhile, 
 
 Deserted long, it may be, the only love 
 
 Life sanctifying ; let wit adora, or grace 
 
 Charm, as they may ; too sensitive sliows, to abide 
 
 Constant estrangement, and aye failing faith. 
 
 Summer-liouse, and Pleasure-grounds ; Groves; Walkg ; Fovntalns. 
 Maeian, Helen, Edward, Charles, Sophia, and Others. 
 
 Edward. Again we meet in this fair scene ; 
 Ah I might we be but ever young. 
 
 Harry. We pray thee, Helen, be again our queen, 
 
 Helen. I prithee hold thy tongue. 
 A royal revolution 'twere indeed 
 That I should twice reign, and myself succeed. 
 
 Charles. Kg nay, no nay I it must be so ; 
 Permit me. 
 
 Helen. Well, there needs no show 
 Of more reluctance than I feel ; 
 Both kings and queens must court the commonweal. 
 
 Harry. A bumper at meeting, a bumper at parting ; 
 As many you like be between ; 
 
 But we will have a right ruddy brimmer at starting ; 
 A health to our beautiful queen. 
 
 Long long may she reign in our hearts and right arms, 
 And her all but omnipotence last ; 
 
 She shall fear nothing rougher than love's light alarms : 
 There is nought in the coming can darken her charms j 
 There is nought can eclipse in the past, 
 A brimmer at sitting, a brimmer at starting. 
 As many you like be between ; 
 But we will have a right ruddy bumper at parting, 
 A health to our beautiful queen, 
 Oh ! while beauty shall live in the form of the fair, 
 And love in the heart of the brave, 
 The queen of our souls, she shall never despair, 
 For our hearts we would drain, and our deaths we would dare. 
 To avenge whom we love, or to savo. 
 
FE8TU8. 
 
 Helen. Bom to exert the powers of my state, 
 Charles, I have named thee poet-laureate. 
 
 Harry. Kiss hands upon appointment. 
 
 Charles. Sovereign fair 1 
 
 Behold thy grateful servant. 
 
 Helen. Sit thou there, 
 
 In all but fuU equality with me ; 
 Love rules the heart, and the mind poesie : 
 In youth at least, and when in hours like this, 
 The rule is pleasure, the exception bliss. 
 
 Laurence. But where is Festus? 
 
 Helen. 'Tis to him we owe 
 
 The repetition of this scene of joy. 
 He bids me say he loves ye all ye know, 
 But deems his presence less attraction than annoy. 
 Whatever ye can name, and I command, 
 Is by his bidding welcome thus to all ; 
 But pardon craves ; high quests he hath in hand, 
 "Which wait not on his own nor pleasure's call. 
 And though to me his presence be a power, 
 His every word with love's bright magic rife. 
 Yet he — nor him from that height would I lower — 
 Lives in the upper hemisphere of life ; 
 Where angel thoughts and spiritual orbs 
 Roll in the majesty of mind profound ; 
 Where Truth's bright disk, all doubt spots dark absorbs), 
 And inspiration's lightning beams abound. 
 Whether he e'er return to scenes like this, 
 I know not — much I question' — but can trace 
 The tone, methinks, of that sad soul of his 
 Roll ever deepening down an endless bass, 
 Like an abyss of thunder. But, away I 
 These tears mine eyes have haunted all the day ; 
 Now they are vanished. Let us change, I pray. 
 The matter of our converse. 
 
 Sophia. Ay, be gay I 
 
 Helen. Come, we will consecrate the passing hour, 
 With songs of love, and lays of beauty's power ; 
 For when the tale of Time hath told 
 A thousand thousand years. 
 His purple pinions staiTed with gold, 
 Wherewith he doth the world enfold, 
 Will still be stained with dust, and tears ; 
 And still life's sole brief Paradise, in sooth. 
 Be love and beauty in the hour of youth. 
 A song, a dance, one cup to beauty's name ; 
 Music, a jest, or pleasant tale in rhyme ; 
 BuflBcient these, with mirth and gentle game, 
 Alternate with repose, to fill our time. 
 And first, a dance 1 for earth and heaven 
 Are both to choral influence given. 
 
400 FESTUS, 
 
 All things their nature that fulfil, 
 
 In harmlessness and joy, his will 
 
 Worship and do ; though dumb and still ; 
 
 For noteless, countless are the ways 
 
 Of nature practising his praise ; 
 
 And dancing hath a sacred birth 
 
 Like all the happiest customs of the earth. 
 
 Charles. The sun in the centre turns solemnly round, 
 And the pale god of shades, the conductor of souls, 
 Seems to warm as he circles the gloiy profound, 
 Where the goddess of beauty all beamingly rolls ; 
 While earth, with her sister, floats brilliantly by. 
 Her heart towards the sun, and her love in her eye. 
 Then Mars, like a warrior gloomy and red. 
 Impetuous wheels, ever glancing at one ; 
 While nine sister goddesses mazily tread. 
 In the midst of a nonade each heavenly head. 
 The bright fields of air which encircle the sun ; 
 And Jove the majestic, serene in his might. 
 Sweeps cloudy and thunderous aye to the light. 
 Then Saturn, old grey-bearded emblem of time, 
 Comes slowly and chilly to join with the rest ; 
 And Ouranus next with young Eros sublime, 
 Move slowly as though they partook with the blest ; 
 And each, his bright bevy of sei-vitors round, 
 Complete the vast figure with harmony crowned. 
 
 HJELEN. This, Sir, is your inaugural ode ? 
 
 Chaeles. If you, fair lady, think it so. 
 Your word imposes the sole code 
 Of truth, law, or justice, we may know. 
 
 Helen. Then my authority is absolute. 
 
 Edwaed. As truth's my liege. 
 
 Helen. We'll soon see if it suit 
 
 So like the stars which circle through the skies, 
 As Charles hath sung, 
 
 Let us too dance with choral harmonies, •• 
 
 Ourselves among. 
 
 Marian {apart). Again that name hath knelled upon mine ear, 
 Though I have never voiced it. 'Tis to me 
 Too deeply, yea unutterably dear. 
 How warmly too she loves him 1 Let it be. 
 Who most enjoy the light may best endure. 
 When come, the darkness ; as it now is here. 
 Whatever his, may my troth-plight keep sure ! 
 I have turned to thee, moon, from the glance 
 That in triumphing coldness was given ; 
 And rejoiced, as I viewed thee all lonely advance, 
 There was something was lonely in heaven. 
 I have turned to thee, moon, as I lay 
 In thy silent and saddening brightness ; 
 And rejoiced, as high heaven went shining away, 
 
FESTU8. 401 
 
 That the heart had its desolate lightness. 
 
 I have turned to thee, moon, from my love, 
 
 And from all that once blessed me, in sadness ; 
 
 And can marvel no more that, abandoned above, 
 
 Thou should'st lend thy bright face to make madness. 
 
 I have turned to thee, moon, from my heart, 
 
 That in love hath long laboured and sorrowed ; 
 
 And have hoped it might mix, as I watched thee depart^ 
 
 Like thyself, with the mom which had morrowed. 
 
 Laueence. Can I behold the lady of my love 
 Mourning alone, from pleasure all apart ? 
 Again I seek thee, though it be to hear 
 The sentence of destruction to my heart. 
 Yet if it be so, still one moment stay ; 
 For so it haps whene'er I think of thee, 
 So blent is thought with love's anxiety, 
 My spirit doth invariably pray. 
 Any blessing God can give 
 Never be withheld from thee ; 
 Nor will I desire to live 
 If that prayer be lost to me ; 
 Else I were unworthy thee. 
 If e'er my hand doth aught of good 
 I do it in thy name ; 
 For well I know thy kind heart would, 
 If with me, bid the same. 
 All mirth I check, for well I know 
 It is not meet for me ; 
 No smile shall ever light this brow, 
 Nor ought, away from thee. 
 
 Maeian. I thank thee, Laurence, and believe ; 
 But this ifl all I can for thee, 
 Save grieve that thou should'st vainly grieve, 
 I to another am as thou to me ; 
 In this strange passion which pain sanctifies ; 
 This folly sorrow makes sublime and wise. 
 
 Laueence, Oh 1 there is nothing in this world of outb 
 So sad to see. 
 
 As the dark worm which dwells wherever flowers 
 Our destiny ; 
 
 Eating the heart out of youth's budding houra 
 Of glee. 
 
 Not oft in sunny beds, nor sheltered bowers. 
 Life's lot is cast ; 
 
 But chiefly lost in shade, and chilled by showers, 
 Or the rude blast ; 
 
 Till all its delicate and wholesome powers 
 Are past. 
 
 And this then is the end of all the bliss 
 Which love and beauty offered, and my soul 
 Made certain of in natural triumph ; this 
 
402 FESTUS. 
 
 The heritage of life ; and this, love's goal. 
 
 Maeian. Peace 1 there is one I name not, came not hera 
 Partly because of me. But think'st thou I 
 Came to indulge a wretched vanity 
 With thee, or pry into another's sphere ? 
 With whom I grieve too ; which is more unblest, 
 Whose love is shunned or sought, let time attest I 
 
 Lucy. In his thou lovest we see thy heart, 
 Engrossed exists but as a part 
 Of one essential ; and there be 
 Who deem not that too wise in thee ; 
 But as some unwary serpent who her soul's 
 Pride hath paid down for sweet sounds, and unrolls, 
 Or intertwines, her body's shining rings. 
 At his mere will who, touched the silver keys 
 Of ivory flutelet, opes and seals joy's springs 
 Within her ; gently irritates at ease, 
 Or soothes ; but charms her, wheresoe'er he please ; 
 Until, translated for obedient skill, 
 Into his breast she, nestling there, lies still, 
 Pleased, nigh to death, with such dear harmonies ; — 
 So we, more free, thy love confess 
 Ilath more of faith than hopefulness, 
 Maeian. It may be ; mine it is, no less. 
 Helen. And now, for pastime, some one tell a tele ; 
 Come, an adventure, Charles. 
 
 Chaeles. Oh, pray dispense 
 
 With my devoirs this time. I fain would try 
 If any wit be in the company ; 
 By observation, not experience. 
 Of course I judge : for of my own 
 The world and I are cognizant alone. 
 
 Emma. Fatigued, no doubt, with over-admiration 
 Of your sweet self. 
 
 Helen. Well, all then, in rotation. 
 Walter. Now I know a delicious tale 
 Will suit you, Carrie, to a T. 
 
 Caroline. Do tell me then, and I'll believe 
 It more than truth, if need should be. 
 
 Walter. Well ; Love is the child of bliss and woe j 
 So, from his parents dear. 
 One eye is blinded with a smile. 
 One drowned in a tear. 
 And on one lip there drops a kiss, 
 Like honey from the wild woodbine ; 
 And that's the lip he had from bliss — 
 And that's the lip I will have mine ; 
 But on the other hangs a lie, 
 And that — but that's 'tween you and I. 
 Caroline. How very odd I 
 Walter. Why, it's a fact. 
 
 And therefore needs no illustration ; 
 
FESTU8, 403 
 
 But if yon think its principle abstract 
 It is easily shown in operation. 
 
 Caroline. Oh dear 1 no, no I I'll vow it's true, 
 Rather than have it proved by you. 
 
 Lucy. How aught than truth can e'er be truer, 
 Is news than e'en the newest newer. 
 
 Edward. Who thinks to sever life's delights 
 From happiest duty, woe invites ; 
 A facrt which minstrels of all times 
 Have sanctioned, listen ! in their rhymes : 
 
 Lucy (sing.t). 
 
 As I stood by the lakelet of love, to my view, 
 Mid the moon's fairy glow, shone a soul- charming scene ; 
 The clouds were all silver, the skies were all blue. 
 And the shores were all waving with woodlands of green. 
 In R boat-shell of pearl sailed a maid and a youth. 
 And the song that she sang sounded sweeter than truth ; 
 But the youth sjit all silent ; and soon to my sight, 
 They sped thi'ough the gathering shadows of night. 
 
 "While I watched them departing, the waves seemed to sigli, 
 And the faintest of halos encircled the moon ; 
 And though love-light the gale, ever feigning to die, 
 There were signs of a change coming sudden and soon. _ 
 But the skies were still beaming, the stars were still bright, 
 And the lovers still steering their course of delight, 
 When the sound of the song on mine ear died away, 
 And the seal of sweet silence concluded the day. 
 
 When the sun to its woes first awakened the world, 
 What a scene ! the tall forests lay prostrate and bare ; 
 While the love-freighted bark into fragments was hurled. 
 And the youth and the maiden, alas ! they were — where ? 
 'Gainst the tempest that raged they had struggled in vain ; 
 And the lake rolling wroth as the storm-stricken main ; 
 Then the voice that was silent had shrieked round the shore; 
 And the song that seemed sweeter than truth was no more. 
 
 William. With poets everything must deathless be ; 
 Now, it's the passingness of things that gives 
 Their most exciting charm to me ; 
 Life has less beauty if it ever lives. 
 All loveliest things pass soonest ; clouds and flowers, 
 Rainbows, heart-kindling glances, the sweet smile. 
 Because brief, we admire, or make them ours ; 
 But we should slight them lived they longer while. 
 
 Charles. It is sweet to dream we are blessed at last with her 
 Who first made rapture in our bosom stir ; 
 Who.^e heart was fiction's home, while pure romance 
 Came purer from her lips ; or was't, perchance, 
 Her soul was music's shrine, whence with skilled key, 
 Each clear delicious tone the world of sound 
 Owns, as akin to airs celestial, she 
 At will drew forth, and radiated around 1 
 Though fairer, kinder since we may have known , 
 That first most innocent vision sits her throne ; 
 Still in our sleep plays o'er young passion's part; 
 
404 FESTUS 
 
 As pleasure's ghost still haunts the ruined heart ; 
 
 Where lie the buried loves of younger years, 
 
 Whose rites and requiems are as sighs and tears. 
 
 Sleep on, ye living dead, in day, nor rise. 
 
 But in night's shadowy shapes and dreamy eyes. 
 
 Then, fade not, stir not till the imagined scene. 
 
 Brain- wrought, with earliest joy the soul possess : 
 
 'Tis bliss to have known the vision that hath been ; 
 
 To dream of happiness is happiness. 
 
 But dearer than that tone, and than the dream 
 
 Sweeter, of bliss, or long-remembered love, 
 
 It is to feel we shall be deathless, here ; 
 
 That earth will speak of us, when gone above. 
 
 Geoege. Sweeter and dearer still than all before, 
 Would be to hear some say, I'll say no more : 
 A blessing I can scarce expect to be 
 From those who are more near than dear to me ; 
 You, Charles, for instance. 
 
 Charles. Why, you greedy elf, 
 
 Would you have all the nonsense to yourself ? 
 
 Helen. Now let us have no argument, I pray. 
 
 Feank. Suppose we have a pretty lively song. 
 
 Emma. Suppose you sing it, then. 
 
 Feank. Well, never say 
 
 I don't intend to help you, right or wrong. 
 Will no one sing ? then I'll essay 
 A song I learned but yesterday. 
 
 Oh gaze on her beautiful soft rolling eye, 
 And revel with bliss in its languishing love ; 
 Oh gaze on its darkness and brightness, and sigh 
 That truth from that heaven should ever remove. 
 Oh gaze on her ringlets of raven black hair ; 
 And her delicate eyebrow's soft pencilly Hne ; 
 Would her heart were but true as her bosom is fair ; 
 That the saint were as worthy of love as the shrino. 
 
 I have gazed, I have loved, I have worshipped ; but fain 
 I now would declare it, my madness is past ; 
 But pleasure no more in my heart will remain 
 Than the sparkle of spray on the sand -beach cast. 
 I loathe her, and love her ; I never can rail ; 
 It is passed, and I reck not ; my fortune I dare : 
 Henceforward, the shroud of my hopes is my sail ; 
 And the peace which I sought, I have found — in despair 
 
 Lauea. Hast thou got anything there for me ? 
 For surely thou never shouldst bring me near thee, 
 Unless thou hast some gift with thee. 
 To bribe me to hear thee. 
 
 Edwaed. I bring thee neither bribe nor boon, 
 I offer only flowers. 
 Which gathered thus the hope devise 
 Each other's hearts are ours. 
 Receive them lady, in that breast 
 With peace and purity to rest • 
 
FESTUa. 405 
 
 And oh, if not too much for prayer, 
 With them, my life my love be there. 
 
 Laura. Thou mayst be happy if thou wilt, 
 Nor envy these poor flowers their spot ; 
 For close as in a clenched hand 
 Thy love within my heart hath lot. 
 
 Fanny. "WTio mentioned ghosts ? In nothing I so glory 
 As a right thrilling, chilling, good ghost story. 
 
 Edwabd. But on a soft and fragrant summer eve, 
 With glistening flowers and flashing waters by, 
 One lacks the proper impulse to believe : 
 But then, — I don't believe them. 
 
 Will. Oh 1 nor I. 
 
 Lucy. They want a fireside and a howling storm ; 
 Summer time seems too sensuous and warm. 
 
 Frederic. Oh 1 you are a parlous little infidel, 
 Or I could tell a tale ; but I am not well. 
 My head seems wrong, and somehow, altogether, 
 Feels like a bullet on a peacock's feather. 
 
 Walter. Do you believe that spirits interfere 
 With men, events, or actions anywhere ? 
 
 Charles. Let gold bagged priests, from Ganges to Bermudas, 
 The gospel preach, according to St. Judas ; 
 It is my opinion, if the truth were known, 
 That earth pertains to man and beast alone ; 
 And neither saint, nor fiend, nor bright nor dark angel, 
 Between the south pole and the port of Archangel, 
 Have any call, or leave, or will, or power 
 To meddle with a mortal for an hour. 
 
 Fanny. Oh 1 you're an unbeliever. 
 
 Charles. That is true. 
 
 So far as I may not believe in you. 
 
 Helen. Sir, you are rude. But since my faith's attacked^ 
 WTiat of immortals ? Is it not a fact 
 That saints and demons of ttimes interact ? 
 Such the belief at least in times of yore. 
 Which, if we share not, our disgrace is more. 
 Things sacred and supernal did we mind 
 More, and omit the meaner cares of life, 
 Our souls would grow like holy, like refined, 
 With loftier thoughts and nobler actions rife. 
 There is an ancient legend I have heard 
 About a saint, a demon, and a stone, 
 Which bears upon this matter word for word ; 
 A marvel I myself have seen and known. 
 
 Harry. Enchant us, pray, still further. We will be 
 Moveless and mute to meet your wishes ; 
 Yours the sole speech, your awful audience we ; 
 Between us, Saint Antonio, and the fishes. 
 
 Charles. I beg you will not. I neither wish 
 To be mistaken for a saint nor fish. 
 
 Sophia. A spuit speaking as is writ, 
 
406 FE8TU8, 
 
 Mig-lit yet convert you. 
 
 Charles. Not a whit : 
 
 I'd not believe a word I heard of it. 
 Nor yet of summer fairies, winter ghosts, 
 Nor any other spiritual hosts. 
 
 Helen. As true as 'tis, the great earth knoweth not 
 That it is part of heaven, and God's own lot, 
 Though some there are who know it ; so there be 
 Bards who affect much infidelity ; 
 Although they never can abandon quite 
 Their loyal love to the pure Infinite. 
 Meantime, you speak more laxly, Charles, than prudent, 
 And quite forget your recent life as student. 
 
 Charles. But students, whatsoe'er their kind, 
 Must now and then unstring the mind. 
 In years gone by I have believed so much, 
 My liege imperial knows I don't deceive her, 
 That as infinity does on nothing touch. 
 My next door neighbour's now an unbeliever ; 
 And no one can imagine who has not 
 Tried incredulity, how blessed his lot. 
 
 Eaima. Just now, Charles, you uncourteously named 
 The fairies. 
 
 Charles. I confess. 
 
 Emma. Then I propose, 
 
 Of your impiety are we so ashamed, 
 A solemn censure on such loose opinions ; 
 And strict expulsion from these free dominions. 
 
 Caroline. Have mercy 1 
 
 Helen. What can be too bad for those 
 
 Who trust but their own senses ? I suppose 
 All here have seen the rings the fairies track 
 In dancing on the mead ; and he must lack 
 Mere sense who doubts of their existence, when 
 Their footsteps are as marked as those of men ? 
 
 Charles. Commandress of the beautiful 1 of these tlironea 
 Supreme disposer 1 star incarnate, hear I 
 Thy sceptral lily no companion knows ; 
 Thy flowery crown no rival in our sphere. 
 And though we all have doubtless, curious, viewed. 
 While large o'erloaded wealthy looking wains, 
 Quietly swaggering home through leafy lanes, 
 In autumn evening's shadowy solitude. 
 Leaving on all low branches, as they come. 
 Straws for the birds, ears of the harvest home, 
 Those dark green rings where fairies sit and sup, 
 Crushing the roseate dew in the acorn cup ; 
 Where by his new made bride, the bridegroom sips, 
 The white round moon upon his longing lips 
 Shimmering ; yet know, 'tis only by report, 
 By fiction, legend, by mistake, in short, 
 yfe smiling tell the old tradition j 
 
FE8TU8. m 
 
 And half affect to understand. 
 But while I g^ant your loftier position, 
 Ask any fiery proof which may demand 
 The fateful service of this loyal hand ; 
 I'll not be reasoned into superstition. 
 
 Laura. We know what sufferings you have undergone. 
 
 Charles. Could I but say how I've been treated 
 How sadly I've been jilted, cheated ; 
 It would move the passion of a stone ; 
 And yet when not with ladies I'm alone. 
 I like the company of women most, 
 And after theirs my own : 
 Among men I feel always lost. 
 Ladies' society for me, or none. 
 
 Helen. Peace 1 say no more. We all agree in part. 
 This court thinks fit to confiscate your heart ; 
 And, till the fine be paid, to one at least — 
 Some lady here — you cannot be released. 
 Begone I thank us that you escape so well 
 From what it is impossible to tell. 
 
 Charles. Oh ! I appeal against my fate. 
 
 Helen. Just as a cur a coach may bait. 
 It nought avails. 
 
 Charles. But what am I to do ? 
 
 The puzzling power of a pair of eyes ! 
 One pair is black, one grey, another blue : 
 I am a sacrifice 1 
 
 They are three — the sweet sisters I love in my heart, 
 And all so unlike and so fair ; 
 When with all, I am longing to love them apart. 
 And apart, I would all of them there. 
 By the world, I dare say, I shall greedy be reckoned, 
 But my wish I can name in a word : 
 I would live with the first, I would die with the second, 
 And immortal I'd be with the third. 
 
 Helen. Go : we have pardoned you with like contrition. 
 As we condemned — without condition ; 
 This point excepted — that you sing a song 
 In token your deliverance is wrong, 
 Though just my judgment. Pray don't keep us long ; 
 Or banishment perhaps may be your lot. 
 
 Charles. Oh 1 I protest against it. 
 
 OTHERa Despot fair, 
 
 Your sentence is too cruel. 
 
 Helen. Hold slaves, what ? 
 
 Dispute 1 I fine you each. So now, despair. 
 Thus We adopt first the most stringent measure ; 
 Our taxes are your songs, your fines our pleasura 
 These ladies will assist you now and then. 
 
 Emma. Behave yourselves like men. 
 
 Charles. There's no escaping, it appears to me, 
 However nod and wink, etc., be. 
 
40S FE8TUS, 
 
 I look on thee while singing, 
 
 Thou bright- eyed love of mine, 
 As misers while they're ringing 
 
 The gold they love to shine. 
 
 Then while on this poor earth, 
 Where pain and sorrow bound us, 
 
 "We'll quaff the wine in mirth, 
 And music make aroiind us ; 
 
 "We'll drink the wine-god, Bacchus, 
 
 And all our merry friends, 
 And if old Death attack us, 
 
 Why, then, the frolic ends. 
 
 Laueence. Pray, is that all ? The moral, to my thought, 
 Is yet to come, as certainly it ought. 
 
 Feank. When a man asks for morals, it's a sign 
 That he is wanting either them or wine. 
 
 Chaeles. Let the young be glad ! though cares in crowd* 
 Leave scarce a break of blue, 
 Yet hope gives wings to morning clouds ; 
 And while their shade the sky enshrouds — 
 By love and wine which through them shine, 
 They are turned to a golden hue. 
 Then give us wine, for we ought to shine 
 In the hour of dark and dew. 
 
 Helen. A broad hint truly. Pay the bard his foe, 
 I dare say he is thirsty. 
 
 Feank and Othees. So are we 1 
 
 Chaeles. What ho 1 a butt of sack 1 
 
 Helen. But no butt here 
 
 Or sack you'll get another way I fear. 
 Bemember that, within our sacred sight. 
 You should continue abstinent, to-night. 
 Indeed I don't approve that sort of song ; 
 And think it very rude and rather wrong. 
 To make my subjects good, is my main plan ; 
 Let them be merry with it, if they can. 
 Mind, as it is, I am resolved almost. 
 To make you forfeit your important post. 
 
 Edwaed. Freedom, authority, — twin poles 
 Bound which revolve all human souls, — 
 The many choose that easier state 
 Where others for them arbitrate j 
 These, stronger, liberty prefer. 
 With livelier pleasure, power to err ; 
 But lest rebellion dare dispute the helm 
 With her, appointed over us, to be 
 The crowned mistress of our joyous realm, 
 I here maintain her sacred sovereignty. 
 Firm to her throne, her crown, I stand. 
 And vouch her irresponsible command. 
 
 Helen. Thanks, Edward ; I would knight yon on the spot> 
 But, really, I'm afraid my sword's forgot. 
 
FESTUa 400 
 
 However, take my rerbal accolade I 
 Imagine I embrace you ; and in proof 
 Of your high act of fealty just made, 
 Sing, sir, I charge you, on your own behoof. 
 
 Edward. Sing I cannot ; but if you please to list 
 A fable, from a fine old moralist. 
 Whose name I have forgotten — but no matter — 
 ^sop, or some one ; probably the latter — 
 
 Helen. I am sorry, Edward, we're not able 
 Your song to commute for a fable ; 
 Because in that delicious time 
 When gods and nymphs were in their prime, 
 Brutes spoke, the poets all allow, 
 As sensibly as men do now. 
 
 Edwaed. If all said, square not wholly with the time 
 Firstly laid down, it matters not in rhyme ; 
 Which, with an all-controlling care of things, 
 Gives its own laws to chaos, or to kings. 
 
 Frank. A heart full of feeling, a cup full of wine ; 
 Come — sip, love ; come — sip, love ; 
 There's nothing I lack but that sweet lip of thine ; 
 Thy lip, love — thy lip. love. 
 Thine eyes are like two romping stars, 
 That look as they had drank of wine ; 
 And flying from nignt's brow, had brought 
 Their liquid love to thine. 
 But I forget ; they're not the words I mean. 
 
 Helen. Wilt sing, Sophia ? 
 
 Sophia. I obey thee, queen. 
 
 Of knight and lady to each other true, 
 I sing the generous lay, their due. 
 
 Yes, lady dear, for aye — adieu ! 
 
 The false world I defy, lady ; 
 But thou, sweet soul, so fair, so true, 
 
 I would thou couldst not sigh, lady. 
 Oh ! mind thee not of me when gone, 
 
 But lay thy memory by, lady : 
 In light and J03auuce live thou on ; 
 
 Leave me, leave me to sigh, lady ! 
 
 fair ! true ! for aye I go ; 
 From thee, from thee I hie, lady : 
 
 1 must not yield me to thy woe, 
 I dare not list thee sigh, lady. 
 
 Yonder thou seest my father's hall, 
 
 "Whose turrets pierce the sky, lady ; 
 Ah ! rather migb't they on me fall, 
 
 Than I would hear thee sigh, lady ! 
 
 To far-off lands now wends his way ; 
 
 And, if he there should die, lady, 
 Oh ! let thy true love, happy, say 
 
 He never caused thee sigh, lady. 
 Farewell for aye ! It wrings thy heart, 
 
 It drowns thy darkening eye, lady. 
 Farewell ! I feel what 'tis to part ; 
 
 But say thon wilt not sigh, lady ! 
 
410 FESTUa. 
 
 Will. May none here ever know as true 
 The false cold lover's last adieu I 
 But yet to show things as they be, 
 The false maid thus ye all may see. 
 
 Thou lov'st another, maiden ! 
 
 And I am free as thou ; 
 My heart with scorn is laden, 
 
 To speak but with thee now. 
 Though through thy glossy ringlets 
 
 My hand hath often played, 
 Here — take it back ! 1 loathe it — 
 
 The long unbosomed braid. 
 Away, away ! no more with thee. 
 
 Thou falsest, fairest maid ! 
 
 One heart is ripe and laden 
 
 "With love for me e'en now ; 
 I'll woo me then the maiden 
 
 More kind, more true than thou. 
 Then give it to my rival, 
 
 The black and glossy braid ; 
 And give the hand which twined it, 
 
 The cheek whereon it played. 
 Away, away ! no more with thee, 
 
 Thou fairest, falsest maid ! 
 
 Helek. There beams, methinks, a story in those eycSj 
 Lucy, of thine, of faithfulness to death, 
 Unlike the desolate discords which now rise 
 So oft 'tween hearts love stiU companioneth. 
 
 Lucy. Most gentle sovereign 1 sacred be thy hest ; 
 Would the light levy yet were worthier thee. 
 My lay belongs then to the city bright, 
 Which, goddess-like, sprang sparkling from the sea. 
 
 Thus to a fair Venetian maid. 
 
 The proudest of the train, 
 With which the Doge went forth arrayed 
 
 To wed his vassal main : 
 
 * This very day,' her lover said, 
 
 * Will Venice go the sea to wed.* 
 
 * Say, dearest, how thy knight so true 
 
 Shall win this longed for hand; 
 
 What deed of daring, valour's due. 
 
 Shall honour love's command ? ' 
 
 * I'll have the bridal ring,' said she, 
 
 * Wherewith the Doge will wed the sea ! • 
 
 Came forth the Doge and aU his train, 
 
 And sailed upon the sea ; ^ 
 The banners waved, and music's strain 
 
 Eose soft and heavenwardly ; 
 And blue waves raced to seize the ring 
 Which ghded through them gUttering, 
 
 The lover through the bright array 
 
 Eushed by the Doge's side : 
 A plunge — and plxune and mantle gay 
 
 Lay lashing on the tide ; 
 He heard a shriek, but down he dived, 
 To follow where the ring arrived. 
 
FESTUS. 411 
 
 He BOTight 80 long, that all above 
 
 Believed him gone for aye ; 
 Nor knew they 'twas his haughty love 
 
 Who shrieked and swooned away. 
 At length he rose to light— half dead — 
 But held the ring above his head. 
 
 The lady wept — the lover smiled — 
 
 She had not deemed he would 
 Have dared it, — was a foolish child— 
 
 And loved as none else could. 
 * Take it, and be a faithful bride 
 To death,* the lover said, and died. 
 
 The lady to a convent hied, 
 
 And took the holy vows ; 
 And was till death a faithful bride 
 
 To her eternal spouse. 
 And then the ring her lover gave 
 They buried with her in her grave. 
 
 Walteb. a gem may have a hundred sides, 
 And glitter bright in each : 
 Where true philosophy presides 
 Pleasure it is to teach ; 
 
 I therefore choose the charms of happy faith. 
 Secure in love's all present joy ; 
 From aught that might e'en dreams alloy, 
 With dread of future skaith, 
 
 I dreamed of thee, love, in the eve, 
 And I lay among bright blushing flowers ; 
 I awoke — and, ^ ! how could I grieve, 
 If the blooms hurried back to their bowers ? 
 
 I dreamed of thee, love, in the night, 
 And the stars stood around by my head ; 
 I awoke to thv beauty so bright, 
 And the stars "hid their faces and fled. 
 
 I dreamed of thee, love, in the mom, 
 And a poet's bright dreamings drew nigh ; 
 I awoke, and I laughed them to scorn : 
 They were black by the blink of thine eye. 
 
 I dreamed of thee, love, in the day. 
 And I wept, as I slept, o'er thy charms ; 
 I awoke, as my dream went away, 
 And my tears were all wet on thine arms. 
 
 Helen. Ah I who would long for bliss above, 
 That tastes the joys below ? 
 Or, hanging on the lips of Love, 
 Would seek to kiss his brow ? 
 Unless to change and clear the taste, 
 Lest sweets iu sameness run to waste. 
 
 George. C!ome, do you dance 7 
 
 Laubence. No ; we two here remain, 
 
 Mabian. But why indulge in mutual sorrows vain ? 
 And if I grant this one request — 
 
 Laubence. It is the last time I shall be bo blessed. 
 Oh I thou art kind, and I will tbintc 
 
413 FESTUS 
 
 This wine to be thy love I drink ; 
 
 Blood my heart would gladly miss, 
 
 Could it BO be filled with this ; 
 
 And each pulse would madlier move, 
 
 Warm with wine, alive with love. 
 
 Look upon it, love, and weep 
 
 Thine eyelight o'er its purple deep ; 
 
 So each luminous glance shall be 
 
 Like phosphor globelet in the sea. 
 
 Other lovers soon will sue thee — 
 
 Let them — they will ne'er possess 
 
 More than I enjoy who view the 
 
 Lightning of thy loveliness. 
 
 It may be love and light in heaven, 
 
 But here on earth such love is death ; 
 
 And such light is blindness driven, 
 
 Lance-like, through the breast and breath. 
 
 All who love thee sure will die : 
 
 Thy beauty hath fatality. 
 
 For now is near my heart's last hour ; 
 
 I feel it fading like a flower, 
 
 When folding up its leaves to rest, 
 
 And narrowing in its own sweet breast. 
 
 I mean not that I die to-day, 
 
 But that my spirit wears away. 
 
 And, save thyself, see nought to lure it 
 
 Back to earth's falsehoods which immure it. 
 
 Makian. Thou wilt live yet many happy yean^ 
 Far more in number than the tears 
 Men shed o'er broken hearts, if not 
 When first forsaken, aye forgot ; 
 While we, according to old fashion. 
 With our own tears must slake our passion ; 
 Or weeping in our bosoms lorn and lone, 
 Try if tears cannot turn the heart to stone. 
 
 Laurence. Promise, dearest, when I die. 
 
 Marian. Such phrase can scarce to me apply. 
 
 Laurence. Not to mourn, nor weep, nor sigh ; 
 Eyes like thine should never weep, 
 Nor sweet bosom sorrow keep. 
 Let nor stone, nor verse, nor aught, 
 Mark where rests — what loved and thought ; 
 If they ask thee where I lie, 
 Say, within thy memory. 
 Weep not thou o'er grave of mine ; 
 Sprinkle on it sparkling wine ; 
 That shall keep the grass all new 
 Like to an immortal dew ; 
 And some fallen star shall stay, 
 Watching, while thou art away„ 
 Scatter rose and ivy wreath 
 On the turf I rest beneath ; 
 
FE8TU8. 413 
 
 Murmur low my favourite song, 
 Through the deep blue twilight long ; 
 In that soft and soothing tone, 
 Heaven to thee, love, lends alone. 
 When I'm gone, then, come again ; 
 Talk to me in lightsome strain ; 
 Should I answer, start not thou ! 
 I'll but say I'm blessed as now ; 
 Should no sound the silence break, 
 Think me, oh I too blessed to speak. 
 Let me lie till angels say. 
 Wake 1 the world's long week is passed : 
 Spirit 1 this is holy-day ; 
 This is God's — the best and last. 
 
 Marian. Well were such feeling, such request, 
 To any save to me addressed. 
 
 Helen. Come, Marian, having finished our parade, 
 We have leisure now to list another lay : 
 But since you have not been dancing, I'm afraid 
 Laurence and you are idle, love-sick, say ? 
 
 Mabian. Could I comply I'd not remain thus mute. 
 
 Fbbdebic, Shall I sing for you as a substitute ? 
 
 I saw a rose was fading — 
 
 Fading 'neath mine eye ; 
 "When thus, with love's upbraiding, 
 
 I heard that passed one sigh : — 
 Oh ! give me back one blush — • 
 
 But one from out the many 
 1 loved to give to thee 
 
 Ere other I knew any — 
 
 Liked or looked on any. 
 
 For I am sad and lonely — 
 
 Lone and Uke to die ; 
 Oh ! give me back one only, 
 
 I am too weak to cry. 
 The beam, the breeze, the dew, 
 
 Shun now my shrinking bosom ; 
 Tears I hare need but few, 
 
 Their brine can bring no blossom— 
 
 Me, nor bhght nor blossom. 
 
 Then to that rose was failing — 
 
 Failing 'neath mine eye, 
 I said, 'tis useless wailing ; 
 
 Forget, forgive, and die. 
 One look to heaven in prayer. 
 
 And one to me in kindness ; 
 The deathwind shook its leaves. 
 
 And I was one with blindness — 
 
 Lone in burning blindness. 
 
 Habby. Although I would not needlessly intrude — 
 Fanny. To sing, not being asked, is rude, 
 Habby. To cease with such a dull down-hearted ditty, 
 Would be a wrong, I think, as well as pity. 
 Lucy. Pray, sing us something livelier, then. 
 
414 FE8TU8. 
 
 Sophia. And don't be personal again. 
 
 Annie's eyes are like the night, 
 Nell's are like the morning gray; 
 Fanny's like the gloaming light, 
 Hal's are sunny as the day : 
 
 Bright — dark — blue — gray, 
 I could kiss them night and day : 
 
 Grey — blue — dark — bright — 
 Morning, evening, noon, and night. . 
 
 Annie's brow's arched like the sky, 
 Nell's is white without a spot ; 
 Hal's is as a palace high, 
 Fanny's lowly like a cot : 
 
 High — arched — low — white, 
 I could kiss them day and night ; 
 
 White — low — arched — high , 
 Kiss them night and day could I. 
 
 Annie's lips are warm and bright, 
 Fanny's free and full of play ; 
 Hal's are sweetest out of sight, 
 Nell's are always in the way : 
 
 Bright — warm— sweet— play, 
 I could kiss them night and day ; 
 
 Play — sweet — warm — ^bright, 
 All the day and all the night. 
 
 Lucy. Had I a little sister 
 Just a fairy, six years old ; 
 And with eyes of grey or blue. 
 Or of dark, or sunny hue. 
 Why, I think I might have kissed her, 
 In the way that you have told. 
 But for sake of sleep and quiet, 
 'Twould be mad, I think, to try it. 
 
 Will. Mulcted in song I hasten to discharge 
 The debt I owe, and pay it thus in large. 
 
 Oh ! Love's a bold pirate — ^the soul of the sea ! 
 He impresses the proud, and he fetters the free ; 
 His flag's a red heart, in the bows are his guns, 
 And the wind's always with him — the foe ever runs. 
 
 Oh ! Love's a bold pirate — the son of the sea ! 
 
 The winds are his laws, and his laws make him free. 
 
 The star that he steers by, her eye he adores. 
 
 And the haven he's bound for, earth's infinite shores. 
 
 Oh ! Love's a bold pirate — the sword of the sea ! 
 
 For the poor he hatn plunder, and fame for the free ; 
 
 At home in a chase, he nor spares foe nor friend ; 
 
 Though a stem chase, and long chase, the longest must end. 
 
 Oh ! Love's a bold pirate — the pet of the sea ! 
 He will do all, and dare all, 'gainst all that may be ; 
 He haUs her all fair, just before they fall to't, 
 And his foe makes his prize and his consort to boot. 
 
 Helen. Were Festus here, and his strange friend, 
 Who like his shadow, follows him. 
 We should not feel so lost, nor lend 
 One's heart to mirth I scarce commend 
 
FESTUa, 4SB 
 
 Mirth, whose hot breath pure soul will dim. 
 For he whom all here present, love, 
 And I adore, fails ne'er to move 
 Our hearts to dwell on loftier themes 
 Than pleasure's chase, or joy's vain dreams. 
 
 Charles. Your loveliness is always right, 
 In fallibility's despite. 
 Though now as fond of harmless mirth, 
 As any faithless miscreant on the earth ; 
 Yet cultured mind it scarce beseems, 
 All art's achievements, wisdom's gains, 
 And truths, which knowledge justly deems 
 Outbalance conquest's costliest pains, 
 For youth's vain joys to sacrifice ; 
 And mute but bright applause of beauty's eyes. 
 
 Helen. Witness, ye stars 1 the vow to you addressed j 
 Shall never more such thoughtless hours be given 
 By me to merest pleasures I Thus confessed, 
 Behold this starlet, from its velvet rest. 
 Like birdling bright, from mother's nest 
 Snatched, I have placed upon my breast ; 
 Sign that for higher aims my soul hath striven ; 
 You, Charles, have seen me, and shall know the rest. 
 
 Chakles. I marked a constellation rise in heaven. 
 
 Marian. And what remains for me but rest, 
 Acceptance, and a soul to peace resigned ? 
 Let me not heaven's decrees contest, 
 Nor scan with carping mind. 
 Life to lay down, as love to leave. 
 If called. I ought without regret ; 
 Comes not the beauty of the eve 
 Till all the sun be set. 
 And though they last not quite an hour, 
 Yet have the vespers more 
 Of holy evercoming power. 
 Than all day-rites before. 
 If soon the sunshine of my day 
 Hath grown beclouded, who shall say 
 Life's woise probation is not o'er ? 
 
 Helejt. Be it, for mercy's sake, I pray. 
 And now that we enough have laughed and mourned, 
 This house of kings and queens must stand adjourned. 
 The day hath darkened into twilight, night 
 Hath glittered into starlight, since we met ; 
 The restorative dew hangs thick and bright 
 On herb and tree and flower ; yon foamy jet 
 Flings up its bubbling music chillier now ; 
 And droop the blooms that long have wreathed the brow. 
 Ladies, and you bold serfs I I now propose 
 To bring this joyous vigil to a close ; 
 And as aU bidden have now paid their fine, 
 To leave these heroes to their fate — their wine. 
 
<16 FE8TU8. 
 
 Chables. Except yourself, dear despot, all 
 Have done their best to hum or squall ; 
 But if your beautyship would condescend 
 To teach us what true melody might be, 
 There's not a creature present but would lend 
 His ears to listen for a century. 
 
 Helen. Sir, I respect you for your flattery ; 
 All compliments of course are strange to me ; 
 The moral strength required for flattery now, 
 To a fair young queen is great you must allow : 
 I only envy you the power to make them. 
 
 Charles. 'Tis sure the better part to take them. 
 
 Helen. We don't believe them when you pay them, 
 
 Charles. Nor we when we say them. 
 No longer then, ladies, I pray, 
 At our flattery or fickleness grieve ; 
 If you never believe what we say, 
 "We never say what we believe. 
 
 Helen. From our rule and example, gentles, learn, 
 And lay this to your hearts each one in turn : 
 Pay compliments, pay visits, pay respects, 
 But pay your just debts first. 
 
 Harry. Our whole effects I 
 
 Helen. The royal rule of pure equality. 
 In complaisance and kindness, still shall ba 
 Confided in, and reverenced by me : 
 So shall my deed of abdication make 
 My queendom lost to me, another's gain ; 
 And so may all who here successive reign. 
 Nor think themselves too witty, wise nor plain, 
 Be loved, as loser, for the losing's sake. 
 Let me a moment's study take. 
 
 Lucy. Poor Marian, much I grieve for her j 
 Her glorious promise unfulfilled. 
 Now, nought but love's remembrancer ; 
 As woods, with sport and music gay, 
 In dumbness dark, by sunset stilled. 
 
 Helen. She too lives much within my mind j 
 And if by her loss I have gained, 
 In her I honour unrestrained. 
 That faithfulness she failed to find. 
 Attend 1 my song the constancy discovers 
 Of a right royal pair of lovers 
 Whom never thought nor wish to part, 
 One moment crossed, in mind or heart. 
 
 Come, beloved, let us roam 
 
 Forth into the golden fields ; 
 Ton high palace marks our hoire, 
 
 Ours is all that nature yields : 
 Come, betrothed and espoused, 
 
 Earth is rising towards the sun^ 
 And -with hght and joy aroused. 
 
 Meets the love witmn us one. 
 
 1 
 
FJSSTU8. 417 
 
 Open now thy sleep -dewed eyes, 
 
 Show the subject soul its queen ; 
 Brierhter than the newborn sides 
 
 Their delicious depths I ween. 
 Don thee, love, thy royal white ; 
 
 Needs no more divine array; 
 Fairer than the morning light, 
 
 Eule thou ever with the day. 
 
 Come tlie morrow, day divine, 
 
 AH shall wake and bless the sun ; 
 Those thou lovest shall be mine, 
 
 They and thou and I be one : 
 Crown and throne the world shall gain, 
 
 Thou the universal state ; 
 Bride and beauty, rise and reign, 
 
 Love thy life, and heaven thy fate. 
 
 FbanK. The meaning whereof as I take it, — 
 
 Helen. True ; it's exactly what you make it. 
 
 Charles. A right royal riddle, the more I revolve it, 
 The greater the mystery to me appears. 
 As I don't think on earth there's a soul that can solve it, 
 I vote to discuss it some day 'mid the spheres. 
 
 Geobge. There's only one thing wanting that could mend 
 That song ; — a blaze of fireworks at the end. 
 
 Helen. I'll not have aught I sing, or say, 
 Discussed, or carped at, anyway. 
 Farewell, friends 1 let us hope to meet again 
 When others may be present whom we know. 
 
 Edwaed. Go, semi-demi deities, in vain 
 True faith the polytheist scouts ; 
 No soul that's sane 'mong either doubts 
 The world will worship idols still. 
 
 Geoege. Pray, go 1 — 
 
 Walteb. At last the so-called soulless have departed. 
 Leaving sundry broken-hearted. 
 
 Fbedebic. To make the life of perfect mould, 
 Like that in Paradise of old, 
 Each must give their better part ; 
 We our soul and they their heart. 
 
 Laurence. The night hath gone, and all the stars 
 Have vanished at the sun's bright warning ; 
 Still the moon, ghostlike, haunts the heaven, 
 As though she deemed to her 'twas given : 
 What hath the moon to do with morning ? 
 So love is fled, and all the fair 
 Gone ; some with smiling, some with scorning, 
 Save one, the fairest far above : 
 But what have I to do with love, 
 More than the moon hath with the morning ? 
 The moon hath lost her light, and seems 
 To dim the scene she was once adorning : 
 So my poor heart, its lovelight gone, 
 StiU in the heavens where late it shone. 
 Lags like the moon upon the morning. 
 
418 FJE8TU8. 
 
 But I am likest to that moon in tMs, 
 That I am brightest when my love's away ; 
 For when with her my borrowed light is lost 
 As is the moon's amid the dazzling day. 
 
 Charles. I hear a step ; 'tis his I am sure 
 By those most wished who forced to endure 
 These mumbled monologues disdain, 
 Justly, I think, their selfish strain. 
 
 Will. Friends it becomes friends' trust to 
 And social, 'mid such themes as these, 
 Fit matters fitly treat ; nor speak 
 Of aught not apt to mirth and ease. 
 Feank. 'Tis Festus 1 welcome. 
 Festus. Glad am I 
 
 To light on guests so well disposed, 
 So well engaged. 
 
 George. One beaker try 
 
 Ere yet this flask's account be closed. 
 
 Harry. Good 1 pass the ruby round. There's nought so dttll 
 As to behold a noble vessel full 
 Of radiant blessings, halt upon its way ; 
 So fairly give and fairly take, I say. 
 Progress is nature's unexcepted law ; 
 'Twere better e'en to go from bad to worse, 
 Than 'tween two like degrees of Ul see-saw ; 
 Stagnation is an universal curse. 
 There is nothing stands still — so old sages declare, 
 But the world's ever changing in earth, sea, and air ; 
 All the powers of nature, in truth if we trace, 
 What are they ? — what are they, but running a race ? 
 The winds from all quarters career through the sky ; 
 They blow hot, they blow cold, they blow swift, they blow high j 
 They follow, they flank, and they fly in our face ; 
 What are they ? — what are they, but running a race ? 
 The rivers that run to the ends of the earth, 
 Flow thousands of miles from the place of their birth ; 
 From the old and the new world they pour out apace j 
 What are they ? — what are they but running a race ? 
 The worlds they call wanderers, rolling on high, 
 That enlighten the earth and enliven the sky ; 
 Going hundreds of miles in a minute through space ; 
 What are they ? — what are they, but running a race ? 
 Then with goblets before us, whatever they hold, 
 Let the hue of the nectar be pui-ple, be gold, — 
 Let us say as we sit among friends, face to face, 
 What are they ? — what are they, but running a race ? 
 
 Frederic. Thou'rt scarcely, Festus, quite so gay 
 As when, long since, thou went'st away. 
 
 Festus. I've seen, — what now I cannot say ; 
 But things that tend the mind to free — 
 
 Frederic. From what, we'll not discuss. I see I 
 No more of all our old hilarity 1 
 
FESTU3, 419 
 
 Latjrencte. All this is lively. Beauty, love, and mirth 
 Might seem to flavour even vapid earth 
 To a pure spirit's lips. For my own part, 
 I own it sinks life deeper in my heart, 
 At every fresh recurrence : but at times 
 A thought comes tolling o'er the darkened soul 
 Which we dare hardly guest ; but ill it chimes 
 "With scenes of joy like this, which from the roll 
 Of memory we too oft would fain erase. 
 
 George. Not I, one jot, save your ill-omened face. 
 
 Walter. For sacred riddles this is neither time nor place. 
 
 Laurence. No : but of earth some sacred writings tell 
 Its flower was paradise, its fruit was hell. 
 Such is the fruit of worldly pleasure now ; 
 And thus perhaps my meaning you may trace. 
 
 Harry. We do ; but think it useless to avow 
 Such views at festive moments like the present. 
 
 Charles. Indeed they call up notions quite unpleasant. 
 So, let us rout them by another draught. 
 And thoughts bright as the beverage quaffed. 
 
 Harry. The future is the world of youth — 
 The future is our joy ; 
 We dream of honour, love, and truth, 
 And bliss without alloy. 
 But harp not now on lore or truth, 
 Forget your dreams of glory ; 
 The wine will double us our youth ; 
 To-morrow dream again of sooth ; 
 But now to what's before ye. 
 
 Charles. Some say Truth lies in water, some in wine ; 
 Suppose I mix them ; now she must be mine. 
 
 Frank. Nothing again will serve to make us merry. 
 
 Frederic. 'Twas stupid in you, Laurence. 
 
 Laurence. Was it ? 
 
 Will. Very. 
 
 Edward. Infernal cant you'll always find 
 Upsets all pleasant parties of this kind. 
 
 George. He has put the company, 'tis plain, to flight*. 
 
 Walter. And so I say — 
 
 Charles. I'm going, too. 
 
 All. Good night ! 
 
 Festus. Now and again, earth's scenes to mo 
 Grow dearer, as I rarelier see. 
 So whilst yon streak of lowliest light 
 Steals, as to kiss the upward steps of night, 
 Wait I, to watch, alone the birth 
 Sublime of morning on the earth. 
 She comes 1 how beauteous are her smiles, 
 The ever glorious mom ; 
 Up from old ocean and his isles. 
 Her car of radiance borne 
 B^ the winged steeds of light, 
 
 I k 
 
420 FESTUS. 
 
 Spuming far the shades of night ; 
 
 While darkness gathers round her head, 
 
 Her heavy wings that late lay spread 
 
 Wide o'er the sleeping world ; 
 
 She quits her home, she flies away ; 
 
 Abandons her usurped sway ; 
 
 To shame and exile hurled ; 
 
 Thus falsehood fly, in that blessed hour, 
 
 When truth for aye resumes her long lost right and power 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 Not all regardless, meanwhile, for dear heart 
 
 So lost, but elsewhere bent, through many a sphere, 
 
 Celestial precincts quit, our venturous soul. 
 
 Heaven's varied vast of worlds having long essayed, 
 
 Of spirits sublime consociate, now returned, 
 
 To his life's new liege ;— and joyously they greet 
 
 As boat by breeze, and billow, backed by tide. 
 
 His bright experience he of heavenly homes 
 
 Kelates, where spiritual natures kind and high, 
 
 Light-bom, which can divine eternal things, 
 
 Passed and to come, dwell ; of the friendly fiend, 
 
 Tells ominously, — xmeyeable of the mass. 
 
 Strange forms will show ; — and something comforting speaks, 
 
 From angel lips learned, of lost Eden's crown. 
 
 The walls of Paradise are built up of stones, 
 
 All virtues. Help we God to edify 
 
 Within ourselves, his spiritual temple here. 
 
 House, Garden, and Terrace, ly a River, 
 
 Festus and Helen : afterwards Lucifeb. 
 
 Helen. Come to the light, love ! Let me look on thee 
 Let me make sure I have thee. Is it thou ? 
 Is this thy hand ? Are these thy velvet lips, — 
 Thy lips so lovable ? Nay, speak not yet I 
 For oft as I have dreamed of thee, it was 
 Thy speaking woke me. I will dream no more. 
 Am I alive ? And do I really look 
 Upon these soft and sea-blue eyes of thine, 
 Wherein I half believe I can espy 
 The riches of the sea ? Nay, heavenly hued 
 As though they had gained from gazing on the skies 
 Their high and starry beauty. These dark rolled locks 
 Oh G-od 1 art thou not glad, too, he is here 1 — 
 Where hast thou been so long ? Never to hear, 
 Never to see, nor see one who had seen thee — 
 Come now, confess it was not kind to treat 
 Me in this manner. 
 
FESTUS. 421 
 
 Festub. I confess, my love. 
 
 But there I have been whence tongue, nor pen, ncr hand, 
 Could token thee ; and seen, — enough I It is thee 
 I see now, and thy shadow to me more 
 Than all above essential. 
 
 Helen. Where hast been ? 
 
 Pestus. Say, am I altered ? 
 
 Helen. Nowise. 
 
 Festus. It ia well. 
 
 Then, in the resurrection we may know 
 Each other. I have been among- the worlds ; 
 Angels, and spirits bodiless. 
 
 Helen. Is this true ? 
 
 Can it be so ? 
 
 Pestus. It is : — and that both here. 
 And elsewhere. When the stars come, thou shalt seo 
 The track I have travelled through the light of night ; 
 Where I have been, and whence my visitors. 
 
 Helen. And thou hast been with angels all the while. 
 And still dost love me 1 
 
 Pestus. Constantly as now. 
 
 But for the time I did devote my soul 
 To their divine society, I knew 
 Thou wouldst forgive ; yet dared not trust myself 
 To see thee, or to wing one word, for fear 
 Thy love should overpower the plan conceived, 
 And acting, in my mind, of visiting 
 The spirits in their space-embosomed homes. 
 
 Helen. Porgive thee 1 'tis a deed which merits lova. 
 And should I not be proud, too, who can say. 
 For me he left all angels ? 
 
 Pestus. I forethought 
 
 So thou wouldst say ; but with an offering 
 Came I provided, even with a trophy 
 Of love angelic, given me for thee ; 
 For angel bosoms know no jealousy. 
 
 Helen. Show me. 
 
 Pestus. It is of jewels I received 
 
 From one who snatched them from the richest wrcc!s ^ 
 
 Of matter ever made, the holiest, "*S 
 
 And most resplendent. 
 
 Helen. Why, what could it be ? 
 
 Jewels are baubles only ; whether pearls 
 Prom the sea's lightless depths, or diamonds 
 Culled from the mountain's crown, or chrysolith, 
 Cat's eye or moonstone ; or hot carbuncle. 
 That from the bed of Eden's sunniest stream 
 Extracted, lamped the ark, what time the roar 
 Of lions pining for their free sands, smote 
 The hungry darkness ; toys are they at test. '- 
 
 Jewels are not of all things in my sight 
 Most precious. 
 
422 FESTUS. 
 
 Festits. Nor in mine. It is in their use 
 
 Their value lies, the pure thoughts they call up 
 Of beauty unearthly, and the qualities high, 
 "Virtuous, each emblems. For as diamonds show 
 Purest of things, light densed, which fire restores 
 To air, nought left, so these let sign to thee 
 The faith we need, all purity, all light. 
 Through fervency resolving into heaven. 
 Each bears his cross ; may thine ne'er heavier be, 
 Nor darker, than the jewel which there illumes 
 Thy bosom, as even to wanderer southward bound, 
 Rises, how lovelily 1 o'er the calm blue wave. 
 The star-cross of the skies, so light, so bright. 
 
 Helen. I thank thee for that wish, and for the love 
 AVhich prompts it — the immeasurable love 
 I know is mine, and I with none would share. 
 Forgive me ; I have not yet felt my wings. 
 Now have I not been patient ? Let me see 
 My promised present. 
 
 Festus. Look, then — ^they are here ; 
 
 Bracelets of chrysoprase. 
 
 Helen. Most beautiful 1 
 
 Henceforth to me these gems more dear shall be, 
 More sacred, than to followers of Islam, 
 The diamond star, where, under golden pall, 
 The prophet lies of kingless Arabic ; 
 Than that mysterious stone which Japhet's son 
 Stole from his grandsire, weather foul and fair 
 Buling, the tempest-generating gem ; 
 Than the green brilliance of that luminous throne. 
 Carved from an emerald block, where once sat young 
 Vieija, king of solar blood, 'mid towers 
 Palatial, by Serendib's pearly seas, 
 Reared airily ; topped now by swart diver's heel ; 
 Than those which decked the standard lost for aye 
 To Persia, and the proud Iranian line. 
 At Kadesieh, where Khaled, sword of God, 
 The victory gained of victories ; and those gems 
 Doled to his hosts, for every warrior one ; 
 Though these more numerous than the winged cloud, 
 "Which flays a province of its greenery ; 
 Yea, than that solar jewel, one solid spark 
 Erupted from the sun^ which rife with all 
 Mysterious powers and virtues, Krishna sought 
 I' the north's bear-guarded cavern, and one long moon 
 Fought for, both night and day ere he could gain 
 Triumphant ; — gem divine ; their every gleam, 
 When I speak not, shall thank thee, they are mine. 
 
 Festus. Come, let me clasp them, dearest, on thine arms ; 
 For these of those are worthy, and are named 
 In the foundation stones of the bright city, 
 Built, blessed abode I f cr the immortal saved ; 
 
FESTU8, 423 
 
 And snch their hue, the golden' green of plains 
 Paradisal stretched about it boundlessly ; 
 Tinted intenselier with the burning beauty 
 Of God's eye, which alone doth light that land, 
 Than our earth's cold grass garment with the sun ; 
 Though even in the bright, hot, blue-skied east, 
 Where he doth live the life of light and heaven ; 
 Where, o'er the mountains, at midday is seen 
 The morning star ; and the moon tans, at night, 
 The cheek of careless sleeper. Take them, love. 
 There are no nobler earthly ornaments 
 Than jewels of the city of the saved. 
 
 Helen. But how are these of that bright city 2 I 
 Am eager for their history. 
 
 Festus. They are 
 
 Thereof prophetically. 
 
 Helen. To me they seem 
 
 Like glittering remnants of a ruinate star, 
 Bather than aught of earth. 
 
 FESTua But earth's they are, 
 
 And Eden's too, whose rich oracular soil 
 Grave birth to things which happily now f oreshew 
 In dumb but radiant prophecy both type 
 And substance of true soul-life virtue, all 
 Our coming Paradise demands ; which told, 
 As told to me by an angel thou wilt learn 
 Whence and how came to thy fair arms, these gems. 
 
 Helen. Well ; I will wait till then ; it is enough 
 That I believe thee always ; — but would know. 
 If not in me too curious to enquire, 
 How came about these miracles 1 Hast thou raised 
 The fiend of fiends, and made a compact dark, 
 Sealed with thy blood, symbolic of the soul, 
 Whereby all power is given thee for a time. 
 All means, all knowledge, to make more secure 
 Thy spirit's dread perdition at the end ? 
 I of such awful stories oft have heard. 
 And lore, soul-jeopardying ; nor know not whither 
 Conceit like f ascinative might lead even me. 
 Myself have charms ; foresee events in dreams ; 
 Can prophesy ; and not unskilled to tell 
 The secret ties between many a magic herb 
 And mortal feeling, faculty, scarce myself 
 Condemn for arts so innocent ; but thou ! 
 Thy helps are mightier far, and more obscure. 
 Was it with wand and circle, book and skull. 
 With rites forbid, and backward-jabbered prayers, 
 In cross-roads, or in churchyard, at full moon, 
 By strange instruction of the ghostly dead. 
 Thou hast achieved these wonders, and attained 
 Buch high transcendent powers and secrets ? Speak- 
 i Or is man's mastery over spirits not 
 
424 FE8TU8 f 
 
 Of Bucli a vile and vulgar consequence ? 
 
 Festus. Were not my heart as guiltless of all mirth, 
 As is the oracle of an extinct god 
 Of its priest-prompted answer, I might smile 
 To list such askings. Mind's command o'er mind, 
 Spirit's o'er spirit, is the clear effect 
 And natural action of an inward gift, 
 God-given, whereby the incarnate soul hath power 
 To pass free out of earth and death to heaven 
 And immortality, and with beings mate. 
 Diverse of kind, lot, state. This mastery 
 Means but communion ; means but power to quit 
 Life's little globule here, and coalesce 
 With the great mass about us. For the rest, 
 To raise the devil were an infant's task, 
 To that of raising man. Why, every one 
 Conjures the fiend from heU into himself. 
 When passion chokes or blinds him. Sin is hell. 
 
 Helen. How bring'st a spirit to thee ? 
 
 Festus. It is my will 
 
 Makes visible. 
 
 Helen. Shape me one in words. 
 
 Festus. They come, 
 
 The denizens of other worlds, arrayed 
 In diverse form and feature, mostly lovely ; 
 In limb and wing ethereal, finer far 
 Than an ephemeris' pinion ; others, armed 
 With gleaming plumes, void-conquering, pranked with fire. 
 These of like offices, and unlike strengths, 
 Powers, orders, tendencies, in such degrees 
 As men, with even more variety, show 
 Glories dissimilar, duties, and delights. 
 Even as the ray of meteor, satellite. 
 Planet and comet, nebula, sun, or star, 
 Differ, and nature also, so do theirs. 
 With them is neither need, nor sex, nor age, 
 Nor generation, growth, decay, nor death ; 
 Or none I have known ; such may be ; each mature, 
 Created, and complete with all required 
 Experience, seems. Perfect from God they come. 
 Yet have they different degrees of beauty, 
 Even as of strength and holy excellence. 
 Sexless, I said, are angels, but the seals 
 Mental of either holy kind, in all 
 Prevail. Of milder and more f emiuine strain 
 Than others seem some, beauty's proper sex, 
 Shown but by softer qualities of soul. 
 More lovable than awful ; more devote 
 To deeds of individual piety, such, 
 And grace, than mighty missions fit to task 
 Sublimest spirits ; the toil, intense and vast, ^. - ' 
 
 Of cultivatiopr nations of their kind ; 
 
FESTU8, 42B 
 
 Of -vrorkmef out from the problem of the world, 
 The great results of God, — result, sum, cause. 
 These, ofttimes, charged with delegated powers, 
 Formative or destructive ; those, in chief, 
 Ordained to better, and skilled to beautify 
 Existence as it is ; with careful love 
 To tend upon particular worlds or souls ; 
 Warning and training whom they love, to tread 
 The soft and blossom-bordered, silvery paths, 
 Which lead and lure the soul to paradise ; 
 Making the feet shine which do walk on them ; 
 While each doth Grod's great will alike, and both, 
 With their whole nature's fulness, love his works. 
 To love them, lifts the soul to heaven. 
 
 Helen. Let me, then ! 
 
 "VMience come they ? 
 
 Festus. Some from orbs whose rudest mould's 
 
 More worth, more fair, than queenly gem ; the dust 
 Dullest they foot, is rosy diamond : — 
 Others from heaven immediate ; but in high 
 And serious love towards those they come to, all. 
 Free be the blessed, none else, to visit whom. 
 And where they choose : the lost, slaves ever ; here, 
 Never but on their Master's merciless 
 Business, nor elsewhere. Still -with these dark spirits 
 Have I conversed, and in their soul's gross shade, 
 That, like a mountain cavern of the moon, 
 To fixed sight, deepening seems the more we gaze, 
 Searched them, and wormed from them the gnawing truth 
 Of their extreme perdition ; marking oft 
 Nature revealed by torture, as a leaf 
 Unfolds in fire, writhes, bums, yet unconsumed : 
 Spirits who devastative of weaker soul. 
 And fighting obstinately the glad belief, 
 God's foresight and disposure of the world. 
 Hold all hap-hazard come ; from bad to worst 
 Led mainly ; self -tempested. Others are. 
 Who garlanded with flowers unwithering, come, 
 Or crouTied with sunny jewels, clad in light, 
 And girded with the lightning ; in their hands 
 Wands of pure rays or arrowy starbeams ; some 
 Bright as the sun self-lit, in stature tall, 
 Strong, straight, and splendid as the golden reed 
 Which, heaven's all mothering city, seat of saints, 
 Descendible, God shall sometime tread with man, 
 Was measured with by the angel ; reed that found 
 Aforetime by that angel, nigh the cross, 
 And on high taken. God made gold, and now 
 Stretched sceptrewise o'er all the skies, the scale 
 It is held of power and glory infinite. 
 Some gorgeous and gigantic, who with wings, 
 Wide as the wings of armies in the field, 
 
 P3 
 
426 PE8TUS, 
 
 Drawn out for death, sweep over heaven ; and eyes 
 
 Deep, dark as sea- worn caverns, with a torch 
 
 Glaring at the end far back. "With pinions some 
 
 Like an unfainting rainbow, studded round 
 
 With stones of every hue and excellence, 
 
 Writ o'er with mystic words which none may read, 
 
 But those to whom their spiritual state 
 
 Gives correlate meaning. Me do some in dreams 
 
 Visit ; with some in visions 'mid their own 
 
 Abodes of brightness, bliss, and power, have I 
 
 Made one ; and know full well I shall joy with them 
 
 Ere long their sacred guest, through ages yet 
 
 To come, in worlds not now perhaps create. 
 
 As they have been mine here : and some of them, 
 
 Have walked with, through their winged worlds of light, 
 
 Double and triple particoloured suns, 
 
 And systems circling each the other, clad 
 
 In tints of light and air, earth knows not of, 
 
 Nor man ; orbs heaped with mountains, ours to theirs, 
 
 Mere grave-mounds ; and their concave flowered with stare, 
 
 All-hued ; their light now blent, now variant ; moons 
 
 Many, and planets crescent, waning, full, 
 
 In periodic change and intricate beauty. 
 
 At once those strange and most felicitous skies, 
 
 Illumining. As the nature of those spheres 
 
 Their natives are ; some human-like, and some 
 
 Of great gigantic grace and happiest air. 
 
 Yet solemn as the sun ; they walk like winds, 
 
 Whose dwelling is all immaterial space. 
 
 And vanish slowly in the hollow heavens. 
 
 Some of still vaster size and mightier mien, 
 
 Whose movement is as thunder in a cloud. 
 
 Devouring space ; some, like to flickering ghosts 
 
 Of fire, while underneath their every step 
 
 Spring perfumes up and flowers ; bedight in rays 
 
 Aerial of the purest, brightest skies ; 
 
 Others, of sanguine hue, whose step is like 
 
 An instantaneous trembling of the heavens ; 
 
 Others, again, whose forms for utter bright 
 
 Are indefiuable ; from place to place 
 
 Their feet pass like the twinklings of the stars j 
 
 Some of a cold, pure bodily rayonnance 
 
 As is the moon's of naked light, ungarbed 
 
 In circumspheral au', who glide like clouds ; 
 
 And some in bands, some singly, some in groups ; 
 
 For all perchance is starlif e after death ; 
 
 While others sworded, sceptred, crowned, and robed. 
 
 Spirits of power who rule each one his star. 
 
 Whose form is fire, whose life strength, and as storma 
 
 Precipitate, come, and go ; nor e'er all known. 
 
 For angels can assume the form they please, 
 
 And transform things inanimate, 'is ono« 
 
FE8TU8. 427 
 
 With earth's angeKc watcher I beheld ; 
 The lonely diamond which bedecked her pale 
 llansparent brow, was oh I so pure and clear ; 
 Like one lar^e drop of paradisal dew, 
 Immortalized, it shone ; and such, she said, 
 It was ; from a leaflet gathered of the tree 
 Of perfect life, on Eden's natal mom. 
 
 Helen. I would it were mine to visit other worlds, 
 Or see an angel. 
 
 Festus. Wilt thou now ? 
 
 Helen. I dare not. 
 
 Not now, at least. I am not in the mood. 
 Ere I behold a spirit, methinks, I'd pray. 
 Yet if to orbs far off, one may not wend 
 Like thee, nor note their natives on the spot ; 
 That there's a short if steep way from the stars 
 Their lords may come to us by, has been held 
 By men for many an age, and held is still. 
 
 Festus. Light as a leaf they step, or the arrowy 
 Footing of breeze, upon a waveless pooL 
 Sudden and soft, too, like a waft of light. 
 The beautiful inmiortals come to me. 
 
 Helen. But why art thou of all men favoured thus t 
 To say there is a mystery in this, 
 Or aught, is only to confess G-od, Speak 1 
 
 Festus. It is God's will that I possess this power 
 Thus to attract to mine great spirits, as steel 
 Magnetically charged, steel diaws ; himself 
 The magnet of the whole, round and towards whom 
 All spirits do tremblingly tend. 
 
 Helen. If, as thou sayest, 
 
 'Tis good, be it to thee good, perduring ever. 
 
 Festus. He hath no power who hath not power to use. 
 Spirit's to soul, as wind to air ; and those 
 Livelier, think less of earth, these duller, more : 
 Such give me all I seek ; at an unsaid wish 
 "Would furnish treasures, thrones, or palaces. 
 But all these things have I eschewed, and chosen 
 Command of mind alone, and of the world 
 Unbodied, and all lovely. 
 
 Helen. Is not this 
 
 Pleasure too much for mortal to be good ? 
 
 Festus. All pleasure is with thee, God ; elsewhere, none. 
 Not silver ceilM haU, nor golden throne. 
 Set thick with priceless gems as heaven with stars ; 
 Or the high heart of youth with its bright hopes ; 
 Nor marble gleaming like the white moonlight, 
 As 'twere an apparition of a palace ; 
 Inlaid with light, as is a waterfall ; 
 Not angel pinions coloured like yon cloud 
 Bannering the sun's broad evening tent, can match 
 Child-musings on life's glorious years to come ; 
 
428 FESTU8. 
 
 How, then, his faith to whom the All-kind vouchsafes 
 
 The heaven of his own bosom ? What can tempt 
 
 In its performance, equal to that promise ? 
 
 My soul stands fast to heaven, as doth a star, 
 
 And only God can move it, who moves all. 
 
 There are who might have soared to what I spumed ; 
 
 And like to heavenly orders human souls : 
 
 Some fitted most for contemplation, some 
 
 For action ; those for thrones, and these for wheels. 
 Helen. Tell me what they discourse upon, these angels, 
 Festus. Much speak they of what's passed, or coming ; less 
 
 Of present things and actions. These most tell 
 
 Of heavenly histories, rich in vast events ; 
 
 God's dealings with especial worlds ; of tests 
 
 Pending, to come, those ; others of the gone, 
 
 The dim traditions of eternity, 
 
 Or time's first golden moments. One there was, 
 
 From whose sweet lips elapsed, as from a well. 
 
 Continuous, truths, which my soul fertilized 
 
 With richest thoughts, spake to me oft of heaven, 
 
 Salvation, immortality, angels, God. 
 
 Our talk was of divine things alway : soul, 
 
 The diverse states of spirit ; time's testing grades ; 
 
 Truth's, faith's progressive steps ; the varied kinds 
 
 Of Being in different spheres, these physical, 
 
 Those intellectual most. I never tired 
 
 Preferring questions, but at each response, 
 
 My soul drew backwards, sealike, into its depths, 
 
 To urge another charge on him. This spirit 
 
 Long time came to me daily, and whene'er 
 
 I prayed his presence. Many a world he knew 
 
 Right well, eye ne'er hath marked on earth, nor may ; 
 
 Yet perfect variedly. Still more, each time 
 
 He came, had grown his knowledge on mind's truths, 
 
 Inmost, and spirit's sublimest themes. His thoughts, 
 
 Like the immensest features of an orb. 
 
 Whose eyes are blue seas, and whose clear broad brow 
 
 Some cultured continent, showed from time to time. 
 
 Revolved, some mightiest truth. Interpretant, he. 
 
 Teaching divine things by analogy, oft. 
 
 With mortal and material, showed of God, 
 
 Forbidding even, as soul-idolatry. 
 
 To shape a mental image of the one 
 
 TJnlikenabie, and though the natural mind, 
 
 Skimming the abyss of Being, like a bird, 
 
 Which with its wing's tip thinks to sound the sea, ■;• 
 
 Sevenfold, Divinity, might to eye create. 
 
 Awed 'neath its many titles, show ; or, now. 
 
 Godhead, triune,— as through three primal rays, 
 
 None without other, beams the heavenly light ; *' 
 
 So, virtually inseverable ; so, one ; 
 
 The spirit enlightened inly sees through both, ^ 
 
FESTU8 429 
 
 And of all tentative and devout desire, 
 
 To sum and shape Divinity, bans the essay ; 
 
 The clear white light of Deity, one and sole, 
 
 Infinite, indivisible, being in thought. 
 
 Another, ministrant of salvation, sent 
 
 All where on Mercy's quests, by Nature's lord ; 
 
 Whose thoughts ubiquitous round time's starf old, beat ; 
 
 Bent on the good of being ; life's great laws 
 
 Dictate of wisdom and pure science, peered 
 
 With virtue and verity and reason, right, 
 
 Free choice and conscience keen ; the law for sin 
 
 'Gainst God, emendative, of repentance, head 
 
 Of every moral charter, in all worlds 
 
 Identic, aid of sad and searchf ul soul, 
 
 Where'er expatiating, who kindred proofs 
 
 Of beauty and stability, like signs 
 
 To those he in his own breast bears of truth, 
 
 Wisdom and love, shows, whereby denizen, 
 
 Of starlet most remote, may recognize 
 
 In earthly visitant, liegeman like himself 
 
 Of the same kindly Deity, whose acts 
 
 And attributes must all where harmonize. 
 
 And one of all I knew most, yet the least 
 
 Can I of him speak adequately ; for oft 
 
 Our thoughts drown speech, like to a foaming force. 
 
 Which thunders down the echo it creates. 
 
 Yet must I somewhat tell of him, the world's 
 
 Spirit evil, impersonate ; strange and wild to know. 
 
 Perdition and destruction in him dwelled 
 
 Like to a pair of eagles in one nest. 
 
 Hollow and wasteful, whirlwindlike, his soul ; 
 
 Now, in mysterious grandeur, wasting heaven ; 
 
 Contracted, now, to human littleness 
 
 And most minute malevolence, as though God 
 
 In life reversing, wrecking one poor soul. 
 
 The sphere which met, aside rolled, him to let 
 
 Pass on his piercing path, whose space-spread winff-s. 
 
 Wide as the wings of darkness when she rose 
 
 Scowling and backing upwards, as the sun, 
 
 Giant of light, first donned his burning crown, 
 
 Gladdening all heaven with his inaugural smile, 
 
 Make sad creation. Mightiest in this sphere, 
 
 He stood a match for mountains. Ocean's depths 
 
 He clave to their rock-bed, as a sword to bone, 
 
 With one swoop of his arm. As falls on face 
 
 Of some fair planet, lapped in heaven, eclipse 
 
 Intimidative, his thought fell on the heart 
 
 Shuddering, like angel, who, the thunder curse 
 
 O'er-hears, of demon foe. His voice, oppressed 
 
 With desolateness, not otherwise than gust 
 
 Autumnal, strewing earth with leafy death, 
 
 Words bore of fatal cast, both heart and ear 
 
430 FE8TU8, 
 
 Startling ; words harsh, words heavy, like the first 
 Handfuls of mould, cast on the coffined dead 
 Whose end we see for good. 
 
 LuciFEE {entering). Dost recognize 
 
 The portrait, lady ? 
 
 Helen. Festus, who is this ? — 
 
 What portrait ? 
 
 Festus. Wherefore comest thou ? Did I not 
 
 Claim privacy, one evening ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Why, I called 
 
 To keep the proverbs simply in countenance. 
 
 Festus. Dost not remember, loveliest, some few moono 
 Agone, and he, who — 
 
 Helen. Surely, I recall 
 
 His presence now. Where all were, he was, too, 
 Welcome. Bright hours, now faded. 
 
 LuciFEE. Queen of joy I 
 
 Thy soul-thought, like the fragrance of a flower, 
 Speaks the bright essence whence it emanates. 
 Unwelcome I should not be, I felt sure. 
 Pardon my abrupt entrance ; and believe, 
 If for those hours' contentment, it were e'er 
 Mine to do thanks, in place of uttering, what 
 More than that crown of knowledge, high minds like thine 
 Affect, and if world-hidden, the more, could I 
 Proffer, as now ? 
 
 Helen. And I, could I aught do, 
 
 Say, think, were worth reward, would nought else choose. 
 
 Festus. Like the bright fish sphered southwards, fed from age 
 To age, on midnight's luminous food, and still 
 Of the starry streamlet unreplete, man's mind, 
 Insaturable of knowledge seems, though bound 
 To use secrete, most selfish. 
 
 Helen. Be it. For me, 
 
 To know more is to live more. 
 
 LuciFEE. Both are ripe 
 
 For truth's reception. Wherefore not be sealed 
 With wisdom's sacred St;al ? One is, I know. 
 Who underneath the sun nought better loves 
 Than heaven- aspiring souls to initiate here. 
 Into those solemn mysteries, which, once proved, 
 Stretch through death's sea of shadows, and the world 
 Of mortal and immortal life make one ; 
 Illuminative rites, all times maligned 
 By shallow wits, which yet, inscribed in stars 
 Aiid skiey legends, overtopped the flood ; 
 Known but to the white-souled race of light, who born 
 In heaven, may insight claim of solar truth, 
 And evermore receive ? 
 
 Helen. Thou givest me 
 
 Somewhat to look for, live for, die for, now. 
 I feel the Sibylline nature in my soul 
 
FESTU3. 431 
 
 TTncofl its secret stren^h. I long to act. 
 
 Lucifer. Who loves or -would achieve perfection here, 
 Lives, like the sun, in restful action, best ; 
 Imparting light, disclosing not its source. 
 The sage I mean, full well I know, have known 
 Long, and ye him shall know. Our student friend 
 Bring with ye, for his earnest soul, athirst 
 For the pure draught from wisdom's pearl- lipped bowl 
 And keen with wholesome hunger for the truth, 
 Shall chant its thankful compline with your own. 
 The more so as I doubt not tliat he hath done 
 In furtherance of our ends is all he can 
 Accomplish ; and 'tis fit he have his meed 
 Prepare him secretly for our emprise. 
 Trust everything to me, and at the hour 
 And spot, hereafter to be named, we meet ; 
 All eager to enjoy the feast of light. 
 
 Festus. Faith sometimes more expects than truth can grant 
 And brings a jar for what scarce fills a pliial. 
 But faith, not knowledge, mates with bliss. To some 
 Not matters, how much knowing, or unknown. 
 I have seen a grisly bedesman, in the porch 
 Of a church he'd weep to enter, all aflaunt 
 With tatters, — like a tree which sheds its bark, 
 And begs its way to ruin, up and down, — 
 ^Vhose starry -headed sceptre, warded, watched 
 By angels under oath, waits but in heaven 
 His regal hand ; hand here outstretched for alms. 
 The more I know, the quicklier comes the sum 
 Of all things. Therefore urge me not ; nor tho'i. 
 Charm of my being, haste me to forego 
 For even divine accomplishments, this life 
 In love now lapsing as a summer stream 
 In the sun, of nought reflective save of heaven. 
 Rather forgive me, both ; if, dreading change, 
 I feel an ominous instinct to avoid, 
 Though now might be fulfilled my once best aim*^ 
 The mystic science proflfered. 
 
 Helen. Nay, I pray, 
 
 Beseech, command thee on thine allegiane;o ; 
 Force me not to compel thee. 
 
 Festus. Still, content 
 
 With present drift, I would not. 
 
 Helen. Alas 1 that i 
 
 Should live at once to beg of thee, and spurn 
 That unaccustomed dulness which slow creeps, 
 And mosses o'er the marble of thy clear mind. 
 We yet will gain our point. 
 
 Lucifer. I trust so. Me 
 
 yt much concerns, for I have ends in view 
 I cannot yet accomplish, this undone. 
 There are, whose curiousness were quite enough 
 
432 FESTU8, 
 
 To ruin half a galaxy of eartlis, 
 Let each but have his, her, bent. Seems to me, 
 They scent their self-destruction from afar, 
 And hound themselves to their own stark end. 
 
 Helen. While thus my suzerain balances in mind 
 His reasons for and 'gainst our plans, take note 
 I for myself would learn, as longs one more 
 I know, our student friend, what likeliest thou 
 Know'st only, and mightst tell ; a secret held 
 Profane to search into by those who deem 
 The spirit life in God's own hand when once 
 From body separated ; albeit we learn 
 Ghosts come right willingly, of no offence 
 Conscious, from being entreated thus by man. 
 But this, and what the immortal sprite first learns 
 As truth, and thinks most urgent to impart 
 To others, friends or kindred, at all risk, 
 I burn to acquire. Wilt aid me in this dear quest ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Gladly. 
 
 Helen. Not we on acts or rights rely ; 
 
 But simply upon the true desire to gain 
 Eight knowledge of the coming time. And now, 
 How early and how easily these effects 
 To realize, let our friend with thee devize, 
 I have it much at heart. 
 
 LuciFEB. Be thine content. 
 
 All things shall be provided, as thou wouldst. 
 
 Festus. This way and that way swayed, but guide^ess still, 
 Like to a sunk skiff, lurching in the ooze, 
 My heart lies ; ana the sport of every wave 
 Of feeling, once contemptuously it keeled, 
 Kor floats, nor falls. Time must 1 have to think. 
 
 Lucifer. Then time be thou, as heretofore, my friend. 
 But what shall I do, ail tbis wretched while, 
 Thou art engrossed thus i 
 
 Festus. Do as I ; make love. 
 
 LuciFEB. But tnat were to fall up. Well, I'll think, too 
 For now, as I remember, and to learn 
 Of equal beauty, doubtle^^s, pleases all ; 
 Last night, not far from bence, a form I marked 
 Of queenly beauty seated by the sea 
 As eyeing heaven, the birthland of her soul ; 
 What time the weltering sun, magician-like 
 His golden wand had levelled on the main 
 And soothed it into silence ; face and form 
 Once seen before by me in saddest wise. 
 Beside the bier of one, fame held like fair. 
 
 Festus. Name it not now : the harvest of my heart 
 Is always woe, whate'er the joy of bloom ; 
 Nor raise the ghost of grief to haunt henceforth 
 Life's desolate tenement. 
 
 HfliiEN. Oh ! I know her weU, 
 
FE8TU3. 433 
 
 She is the occultation of my soul 
 Prospective ; for I dread lest we should meet. 
 It is Elissa. Friendship's favourites once 
 Were we, till lordlier likings since, made us 
 Distant and cold as earth's opposing- poles. 
 Seek her, sue if thou carest. I wish her much 
 Too well to wish her here. She makes my dreams 
 Ghastly. 
 
 LuciPEB. Nay, dread her not. 
 
 Helen. Away I 'Twere well. 
 
 LuciFEB. As rival elements that strive to impress 
 Their power on mountains, lower and lessen them, 
 Nor can aught else ; so peradventure, these. 
 One talks of science, one of knowledge. What's 
 All science but the last vague certainty, 
 Safe to be superseded ? Soon, in sooth, 
 We shall have done with knowledge, and their help 
 Who have best served us ; all in time, and turn. 
 But as I am nothing, if not complaisant, 
 Thou, lady, shalt have that thou seekest, speech 
 Of an immortal ghost. 
 
 Helen. Account us there. 
 
 Lucifer. To know all magic, all divinities, 
 The studies of so many fruitful years 
 Have led, or leaned to, what should sum but this, 
 The essential knowledge, of all time ? 
 
 Festus. To me 
 
 Such needs not. Even as with our friend his art 
 Of would-be gold-making, before thy boons 
 Abounding, did abandon, needful not 
 Longer to him ; so, I who now enjoy 
 All spiritual privileges, this one, forbid, 
 Repudiate and abjure. No art he needs 
 Thou f avourest ; nor is lawful this to me. 
 
 Helen. We will so order matters each shall come. 
 And go, content. I promise for our friend. 
 
 Festus. Not me thou drawesfc into that path proscribed. 
 
 Helen. If now, for ill or good, who knows ? Be it tried 
 Whether for good or ill. 
 
 LuciPEE. I think I know. 
 
 The wise foresee things which, — let fools foretell ; 
 With me it is enough to act. And now ; 
 Any commands for our planetary friends ? 
 I go, make my excuses. 
 
 Festus. A mistake, 
 
 Dearest, but rectified, 
 
 Helen. Will he return T 
 
 Festus. No. 
 
 Helen. Thou art troubled. 
 
 Festus. Truly. I, far off 
 
 Feel the perturbing influence of his star, 
 Ere visible : knew him coming, not yet come. 
 
434 VE8TU8, 
 
 Helen. Let us rejoice together, and both hope 
 Such strange effects may cease, or I shall dread 
 Him to accompany elsewhere, or to meet 
 As predisposed, but now — 
 
 Festtts. And he is gone ! 
 
 Hell hath its own again. Some sorrow chills 
 Ever the spirit, like to a cloudlet nursed 
 In the star-giant's bosom. 
 
 Helen. Tell me, love, 
 
 More of these angels. 
 
 Festus. One there was I loved 
 
 Of these immortals of a lofty air, 
 Dimly divine and sad ; and side by side 
 Him I first spake of, she, with me, would stand^ 
 Listing his converse, shadow illuminate. 
 Like to the old moon in the young one's arms. 
 She murmured never at the doom which made 
 Her sorrow, all enfolding, as air earth ; 
 But God's will alway named as good and wise. 
 Pleasure but little was hers ; that, all in plana 
 Devising of a bliss to come, and tales 
 Untold of time, or the sweet early earth. 
 While Eden's dews yet glistened upon her feet. 
 She was, in truth, our earth's own angel. Oft 
 In long and luminous sweetness would she treat 
 These themes, unwearying, pauseless, as a world. 
 Rise would the sim, and set ; the soul-like moon, 
 In passive beauty, light from him absorbing, 
 As prophet inspiration aye from God, 
 Would set, and rise ; and the far stars, the third 
 Estate of light, complete day's round divine. 
 Still spake our angel ; still to the eloquent tongue 
 On earth heaven's tones retaining, lent I ear. 
 The shadow of a cloudlet on a lake 
 The wind is holding now his breath o'er, shows 
 Not calmlier, fairlier not, than thy dear face, 
 Consoling spirit, when summing even earth's end 1 
 Save that her eye grew darker, and her brow 
 Brighter with thought as with galactic light 
 Mid-heaven when clearest, at such times, not I 
 Had known our earth meant more, or deaier were 
 To her, than other visitants divine 
 Which hallow oft mine hours ; — save too that then 
 As but to touch that chord, numbed icily, thought, 
 She would cease converse, suddenly ; kneeling, pray 
 In silent earnestness ; and, anon, rise 
 And vanish into heaven. My mind is full 
 Of stories she hath told me of our world. 
 No word an angel utters lose I ever. 
 One I will tell thee, now. 
 
 Helen. Do ; let me hear. 
 
 Thy talk is the sweet extract of all speech, 
 
FE8TUS. 435 
 
 And holds mine ear in blissful slavery. 
 
 Festus. It was on a golden summer afternoon 
 Close by the grassy marge of a deep tarn, 
 Nigh half way up a mountain, that we stood, 
 I and the angel, when she told me this. 
 Above us rose the grey rocks, by our side 
 Forests of pines ; and the bright breaking wavelets 
 Came crowding dancing to the brink, like thoughts 
 To our nps. Before us shone the sun. We, peaked 
 As on some finial of the templed earth, 
 Peer round the infinite, far and near. Then I, 
 In ecstasy of thought : What need hath man 
 Of Eden passed, or Paradise to come, 
 When heaven is round us and within ourselves ? 
 God's peace, if anywhere, is surely here. 
 So boundless, so intense this sensible awe 
 Of nature 'neath his eye ; my soul, with thine, 
 With all, this hour consentient. Need, the world 
 Hath always, said Earth's Spirit, of loftier ends, 
 And meanings, than men's daily duties raise, 
 Howe'er well done ; of something holier, more 
 Akin with perfect, or to be, or gone. 
 To live by, as a pattern. Speak, I said. 
 The angel waved her hand e'er she began, 
 As bidding earth be still. The birds ceased singing ; 
 The trees scarce breathing : and the lake smoothed down 
 Each shining wrinklet ; and the wind drew off. 
 Time leaned him o'er his scythe, and listening, wept. 
 The circling sphere reined in her lightning pace 
 A moment. Ocean hushed his snow-maned steeds, 
 And a cloud hid the sun, as hides the face 
 A meditative hand. Then spake she thus. 
 Scarce had the sweet song of the morning stars. 
 Which rang through space at the first sign of life 
 Our earth gave, springing from the lap of God 
 On to her orbit ended, when from heaven 
 Came down a white-winged host, and eastwards, where 
 Lay Eden's pleasaunce, first their pinions furled, 
 Alighting reverently. There, marked whate'er 
 Could be of good, as seemed, for man secured 
 By care divine, one brief debate in vow 
 Ended, that they on his behalf should build 
 Out of the riches of the soil around 
 A house to God. Here were the ruby rocks ; 
 And there in blocks the unquarried diamond lay ; 
 Topaz and emerald mountain, chrysoprase, 
 Sardonyx, sunstone, crystal, jacinth, stood 
 All light, with the stilly action of a star. 
 Or sea-based iceberg, blinding, to such sight 
 As men now boast, degenerate. These with tools 
 Tempered in heaven, the band angelic wrought, 
 Raised, fitted, polished, aptly imbedding first 
 
436 FU8TU3, 
 
 The deep foundations of tlie holy dome 
 
 On bright and beaten gold. And all the while, 
 
 Songs to God's glory hovered around the work, 
 
 Like rainbows round a fountain. Day and night, 
 
 Went on the hallowed labour till 'twas done : 
 
 And yet but thrice the sun set ; more than thrice 
 
 Eose not the moon ; so quick is work divine. 
 
 Tower all, and roof and pinnacle, without. 
 
 Were solid diamond. Based on chrysoprase, 
 
 Gold-green, of meek humility sign, the wall 
 
 Opalline, emblem of all virtues ; soared 
 
 Lustrous, with amethystine fruitage topped, 
 
 Of temperance type ; — expressive these to man 
 
 Of loftiest excellences and deepest needs 
 
 In edifying his soul, the angels strove 
 
 Symbolically to show how best, by these 
 
 Of earthly things transpicuousest, men might 
 
 The beauty of purity learn, the joy of peace 
 
 With God, and bliss of perfectness in him. 
 
 Sole source, sole end of worship, or iu heaven 
 
 Or earth, to all intelligences. Within, 
 
 The dome was eye-blue sapphire, truth supreme, 
 
 God's infinite unity, shadowing, — sown with stars 
 
 And glittering spheres constellate. The wide floor, 
 
 One emerald, earthlike, veined with silver and gold. 
 
 Marble and mineral, glowed, of every hue 
 
 And marvellous quality. There, the meanest thing 
 
 Earth's most magnificent now, was gold, to God 
 
 First due, to him sole. Of one ruby shaped 
 
 Stood the high altar, heartwise. Columned round 
 
 With alabaster pure was all. And now. 
 
 So high and bright it shone in the midday light, 
 
 It could be seen from heaven. Upon their thrones 
 
 The sun-eyed angels hailed it ; and there rose 
 
 In heaven, a hurricane shout of angel-joy 
 
 Which echoed for a thousand years. One dark, 
 
 One solitary, and far-foreseeing thought 
 
 Passed, like a planet's transit o'er the sun, 
 
 A.cros8 the brow of God. But soon he smiles 
 
 Earthwards on the angels, and that smile, to himself 
 
 The temple consecrates. And they who built 
 
 Bowed themselves down, and worshipped in its walla. 
 
 High on the front were writ these words : — To God ; 
 
 The heavenlies built this for the earthly ones, 
 
 That in his worship both might mix on earth, 
 
 As afterwards they hope to do in heaven. 
 
 Had man stood good in Eden this had been. 
 
 He fell, and Eden vanished. The shining shrine, 
 
 Piled by the angels of all precious things. 
 
 For the joint worship of heaven's sons and earth's, 
 
 Fell with him, on the fixed and looked-for day 
 
 He should have met God and hia angels, there : 
 
FESTUa. 437 
 
 The very day he disobeyed, and joined 
 
 Death's host black-bannered. Man felL Eden fell. 
 
 The groves and grounds which God the Lord's own feet 
 
 Had hallowed ; the all-hned and odorous bowers 
 
 Where angels wandered, wishing- them in heaven ; 
 
 The trees of life and knowledge, trees of death 
 
 And madness as they proved to man, all fell ; 
 
 And that bright fane fell first. No death-doomed eye 
 
 Gazed on its glory. Earthquakes gulped it down. 
 
 Long, to the world unknown, and half forgotten 
 
 In heaven, the angels' temple, reared to embrace 
 
 All nations, with God's hosts, in saintliest rites 
 
 Ceaseless of sequence worshipping, at once, — 
 
 Lay in its grave, the cherubs' flaming swords 
 
 The sole sad torches of its funeral ; till, 
 
 When the just flood sin 'venging, pure itself 
 
 And purifying, came, doomed, earth's giant heart 
 
 Burst shell-like, and so scattered far and wide 
 
 The fragments of that angel-builded fane, 
 
 High, holy, happy, stainless, as a star. 
 
 In Eden once, — whereof all gems men still 
 
 Deem precious, are ; and yet may find imbased 
 
 Potentially in those pure walls whose towers 
 
 Of light, the extense of space o'erawing, bar 
 
 From ill or false, the abode to be of saints. 
 
 Glorious. For they who, truth-taught, now, the right 
 
 Significance of things, — more worthful far 
 
 Than the things themselves, can recognize — all gems 
 
 Perceive, in their best use, but mystic signs 
 
 And types of virtue, tests foundational 
 
 Of spirit reborn on high, and proofs of soul's 
 
 Most perfect qualities : love's deep rubied glow, 
 
 Of charity towards mankind ; hope's emerald gleam, 
 
 Of ultimate grace ; faith's adamantine flame, 
 
 Godwards ; crown these of spiritual life ; these, base ; 
 
 These, 'midst ; of the celestial city of God, 
 
 And capital of his kingdom, state divine, 
 
 Star-mansioned ; state imperishable, of heaven. 
 
 The angel ended : and the winds, waves, clouds, 
 
 Woods undulative, and merry birds went on 
 
 As theretofore in iDrightness, strength, and music. 
 
 One scarce could think that earth at all had fallen, 
 
 To see her beauty. If sin's errless brand 
 
 Dimmed her predestined brow, 'twas surely hid 
 
 In natural art, from every eye but God's. 
 
 All things seemed innocence and happiness. 
 
 I was all thanks. And look i tne angei said ; 
 
 Take these, and give to one thou lovest best. 
 
 Mine own hands saved them from the shining mip 
 
 I late have told thee of ; and me she gave 
 
 What now are greenly glowing upon thine armja. 
 
 Ere I could answer, she was up, star-high, 
 
438 fE8TU8. 
 
 Winning her way through heaven. 
 
 Helen. How shall I thank thee 
 
 Enough, or that kind angel, who hath made 
 The gift to me dear doubly, by the advice 
 Hidden in the present ? 'Tis that, humility, 
 Doubtless I lack. We'll see to it. I shall be 
 Afraid almost to wear ; but part with them 
 I would not, for the treasures of all stars. 
 How show my thanks ? 
 
 Festus. Love me as now, dear beauty, 
 
 Present or absent, always, and 'twill be 
 More than enough for me, of recompense. 
 
 Helen. Hast met our angel latewhile ? 
 
 Festus. I have not. 
 
 Yet oft methinks I see her ; catch a glimpse 
 Of her sun-circling pinions or bright feet 
 Which, than for earth, for rainbows fitter seem. 
 Or heaven's triumphal arch more firm and pure 
 Than whitest marble ; see her, seated oft 
 On some high snowy cloud-cliff, harp in hand, 
 Singing the sun to sleep, as down he lays 
 His head of glory upon the rocking deep. 
 And so sing thou to me. 
 
 Helen. There, rest thy brow. 
 
 Bow thyself down, before my feet. Rest ! rest 1 
 
 Oh not the diamond starry bright 
 
 Can so delight my view, 
 As doth the moonstone's changing light, 
 
 And gleamy glowing hue : 
 Now blue as heaven, and then anon. 
 
 As golden as the sun ; 
 It hath a charm in every change ; 
 
 In brightening, darkening one. 
 And so with beauty, so with love, 
 
 And everlasting mind ; 
 Each takes its tint from things above, 
 
 And shines as it's inclined, 
 Or from, or towards, celestial truth, 
 
 With blind, or brilliant, eye ; 
 And only lights as it reflects 
 
 The life-light of the sky. 
 
 He sleeps 1 the fate of many a gracious moral 
 This I to be stranded on a di-owsy ear. 
 
FE8TU8, 439 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Life's gaudier vanities shunned, or banned, the world 
 
 Escaped from ; passion dignified ; some talk 
 
 Of faole and of cabala, mystic lore ; 
 
 War, actual earth regarded, heaven's reproach 
 
 Unanswerable, 'gainst man ; the finiitful claims 
 
 Of friendship in abeyance long, restored ; 
 
 Pauses, reposeful, for a time the strain. 
 
 In memory we, passed life, passed feat of bard, 
 
 Bards best interpretera of life's sad dream. 
 
 Review ; and plans for peaceful progress aid. 
 
 Note, nathless, change impending, schemes conceived 
 
 By help of evil, that in dismay will end 
 
 Undreamed of, but all innocently ensured 
 
 By beauty and hero and friend ; marking, who knows } 
 
 Heart, soul, and intellect, homed in tranquil ease. 
 
 AVho mind's interior realm, life's outer treat ; 
 
 Things passed, to come ; — secret in secret cased, 
 
 Like oatls of ivory carven, enclosing, each, 
 
 One than itself less, than itself one more ; 
 
 And, like life's double enigma, so involved, 
 
 The sole solution makes the mystery. 
 
 Home ; an interior, Festus, Helen at her piano. — Afterwards, 
 the Student. Evening. 
 
 Helen. I cannot live away from thee. How can 
 A floweret live without its root 1 Attend 1 
 I am to say and do just as I please. 
 That's my great charter, is't not ? Thou art king" ; 
 I am to command thee ? May I ? That I will. 
 
 Festus. I love to be enslaved. Oh 1 I would rather 
 Obey thee, beauty, than rule men by millions. 
 
 Helen. Near, as afar, I will have love the same. 
 "With a bright sameness like this diamond, 
 Which, wheresoe'er the light, 'lite brilliant shines, 
 Ajid thou shalt say all manner of pretty things 
 To me ; mind, to me only ; write love-songs 
 About me ; and I will sing them to myself ; 
 Perhaps to thee, sometimes, as it were now ; 
 If I should happen to feel very kind. 
 
 Festus. Sing now. 
 
 Helen. No 1 
 
 Festus. Tyrant, I will banish thee. 
 
 Knowst thou what comes of tyrants, in the main 1 
 
 Helen. Oh 1 though an absolutist, I'm bound by laws 
 Of my own making. 
 
 Festus. Laws that can be sung ? 
 
 Helen. Nay, if to sing and play please, I would die 
 To music. Wrong 'twas to deny thee aught. 
 But be not anger'd with me, for though heaven 
 Forgave, I'd ne'er forgive myself if I 
 Brought sorrow on thee. 
 
 FfiSTua, Thou wouldst not, I belieye. 
 
440 FE8TV8. 
 
 Helen. Nought fear I but an unkind word from tliee. 
 Dark death may frighten children, hell, the wretch 
 Who feels that he deserves it, but for me, 
 I do, nor say, aught worthy the pure pain 
 Thy frown can give, or a cold careless look. 
 If I do wrong, forgive me, or I die. 
 And thou wilt then than I be wretcheder ; 
 The unforgiving, than the unf orgiven. 
 
 Festus. I do absolve thee beauty of all faults 
 Passed, present, and to come. Thy sole defects 
 Like unformed stars, inconstellate in heaven, 
 Are but perfection incognized, whose worth 
 I'd match against the forces of five spheres 
 By happiest apparitions manned. 
 
 Helen. Enough. 
 
 What was I saying ? I love this instrument ; 
 It speaks ; it thinks 1 nay, I could kiss it. Look ! 
 Jealous ? three things love I, half killingly : 
 Thee lastly ; and this, next ; and myself first. 
 
 Festus. Thou art a teazeful, tiresome thing ; and yat 
 Do I weary of thee ? Never ; but could gaze, 
 Faint from delight, upon thy countenance, 
 In the serious joy with which we eye and eye 
 Space boundless, visible attribute of God, 
 Who all things making in himself, makes thus 
 And there, the heaven we hope for ; and can find 
 No point wherefrom to take its altitude ; 
 For the infinite is upwards, and above 
 Aught highest create, conceivable ; so I, 
 Musing upon thy face, expression like 
 Heavenly, and heightening e'er the more I muse, 
 Believe. 
 
 Helen. I am happy now with thee. 
 
 Festus. And I. 
 
 Steeped in the still sweet dew of thy soft beauty, 
 Like earth at day-dawn lifting up her head 
 Out of her sleep, star- watched, to face the sun ; 
 So I to front the world on leaving thee. 
 Oh, there is inspiration in thy look, 
 Poesie, prophecy. Come thou hither, love. 
 This evening air, how sweet. 
 
 Helen. It breathes on us, 
 
 Fresher and clearer through these dewy vine-leaves, 
 Fit for the forehead of the young wine-god. 
 
 Festus. A large red egg of light the moon lies like, 
 On the dark moor-hill ; and now, rising slow, 
 Beams on the clear flood, smilingly intent, 
 Like a fair face which loves to look on itself, 
 Saying, " There is no wonder that men love me. 
 For I am beautiful." 
 
 Helen. Well, I don't mind 
 
 Others first told me. 
 
FESTU8. 441 
 
 Pesi'US. Now were soon enough. 
 
 Helen. Nay, nothing comes to us too soon but sorrow. 
 
 Festus. For all were happiness, if all might live 
 Long, or die soon enough ; for even us. 
 Virtue they tell us lives in self-denial ; 
 My virtue is indulgence. I was bom 
 To gratify myself unboundedly, 
 
 So that I wronged none else. These arms were given me 
 To clasp the beautiful, cleave the wave, or, branched 
 In tenfold perfectness, prove how supreme 
 O'er nature, man ; these limbs to wander where 
 I will ; these eyes to view all fair or grand. 
 Earth claims ; these ears to list my loved one's voice ; 
 These lips to be divinized by her kiss ; 
 And every sense, pulse, passion, power, to be 
 Efpened into perfect life. 
 
 Helen. True virtue is one 
 
 With nature, or 'tis nothing. It is love. 
 Remember'st not when, the other eve, thy friend, 
 The Student called, a tale was on thy tongue, 
 Out of the poets, about love, and sonow. 
 And happiness and such things, — he interrupted ? 
 
 Festus. But I forget such tales when thou art by. 
 Besides I asked him here again to-night, 
 Here, at this hour, and he is punctual. 
 
 Helen. In truth then I despair of hearing it. 
 He keeps his word relentlessly ; with not 
 More pride an Indian shows his foeman's scalp, 
 Than he his watch for punctuality. 
 
 Festus. But tales of love are far more readily made, 
 Than made, remembered. 
 
 Helen. TeU-tale, make one then. 
 
 Festus. Well then my story says there was a pair 
 Of lovers, once — 
 
 Helen. Once 1 nay, how singular I 
 
 Festus. But where they lived, indeed, I quite forget : 
 Say, anywhere ; say here : their names were, — I 
 Forget those too. Say, anyone's ; say ours. 
 
 Helen. So far 'tis not improbable ; pertinent, too. 
 No wild vagaries ; quite in bounds. I hear. 
 
 Festus. The lady was, of course, most beautiful. 
 And made her lover do just as she pleased ; 
 He therefore doing unwisely, doing wrong ; 
 Neglecting all in heaven and earth, but her. 
 They met, sang, walked, talked folly, just as aU 
 Such couples do ; adored each other ; thought, 
 Spoke, wrote, dreamed of and for, nought else in life 
 Than their sweet selves. And so on. 
 
 Helen. Pray proceed. 
 
 Festus. That's all. 
 
 Helen. Oh no 1 
 
 Fbstus. Well, thus the tale ends, stay 1 
 
442 FESTU8. 
 
 No, I cannot remember, nor invent. 
 
 Helen. Do think. 
 
 Festus. I can't. 
 
 Helen. Oli, then I don't like that. 
 It is not in earnest. 
 
 Festus. Well, in earnest then. 
 
 She did but look upon him, and his blood 
 Pulsed stronglier from his heart her gaze to meet ; 
 For at each glance of those sweet eyes, a soul 
 Looked forth as from the azure gates of heaven ; 
 She laid her finger on him, and he felt, 
 As might a formless mass of marble feel, 
 While feature after feature of a god 
 Were being wrought from out of it. She spake ; 
 And his love-wildered and idolatrous soul 
 Clung to the aery music of her words. 
 Like a bird on a bough, high swaying in the wind. 
 Even as a storm-charged cloud that in the night, 
 Will have wept itself away, unseen, nor made 
 Earth thankless 'ware of its self sacrifice. 
 That it might richen one pasture ; so, too, he, 
 To endow with all his love, her heart he loved, 
 Would the whole firmament of his life exhaust* 
 In happying hex, unnoisefuUy : — and she, 
 Soft as a feather-footed cloud in heaven. 
 While her sad face grew bright like night with stars. 
 Would turn her brow to his, and both be happy ; 
 Numbered among the constellations they. 
 
 Helen. As some ambitious wave, far out at sea, 
 Whitens the wide horizon with one flash, 
 And dies for ever, is, I foresee, my life. 
 
 Festus. Helen, my love. Art there ? Oh ! it has been 
 Such a day, so bright, as that thou knowest when fijst 
 I said I loved thee, that long sunny day 
 We passed upon the waters, heeding nought. 
 Nought seeing, save each other. 
 
 Helen. I remember, 
 
 The one thing wise, good, I have ever done. 
 Was to love thee. Would none else were as I, 
 Wise. Didst not say that student would be here ? 
 
 Festus. I think I hear him every minute come. 
 
 Helen. I deemed him in our revellous days gone by, 
 Intolerably reserved. 
 
 Festus. Not wholly, sure. 
 
 Helen. Once when thou wert afar, he came, and then, 
 Right sadly entertained me, the whole while, 
 Themes so recondite, studies so abstruse 
 Perpending, that he left me much perplexed. 
 Much he explained to me of cabbala ; 
 And correspondences, and symbol type ; 
 Angelic tongues and astral alphabets ; 
 All which, quoth he, learned aptly, make for ns 
 
FESTUS. 443 
 
 An upward reaching lesson to the skies. 
 
 And as all souls are but the breath divine, 
 
 Dewlike, conglobed into separate entities, 
 
 By inimical matter, limited here 
 
 Of pure necessity, and by distance cooled. 
 
 From heaven's life-giving centre, so, he afl&rmed 
 
 That manhood is but angelhood disguised 
 
 In some frustrate condition, earthwards urged ; 
 
 And angelhood but reascendant — 
 
 Festus. Man ? 
 
 Helen. Nay, truly I forget me. In his scheme, 
 But one thing was, and that was infinite ; 
 But whether man or deity, not now 
 Can I recall ; indifferent which, it seemed. 
 Constrained, in fine, to check him, I averred 
 Such converse to be awful. Truly it is ; 
 And all commune, he added, when, to its depths, 
 The soul itself unbosoms, and high thought 
 Calls to truth's far profound, as to the sea. 
 The clouds storm-fraught, that groan with thunder-fire, 
 And passionate flashings blent with blinding rain. 
 
 Festus. He ceased then ? 
 
 Helen. Ceased. 
 
 Festus. And this was what he taught ? 
 
 Helen. Nay, this was what I learned. Teach could he not ; 
 For he lacks faith, nor can indoctrinate. 
 All things he seems to know, and nought believes j 
 Save as a possibility. To me. 
 His mind shows inconclusive, as an arch 
 Without its facial keystone. 
 
 Festus. Sad 1 yet I 
 
 Feel my heart ripen towards him as a friend. 
 More tlian to other unit of my kind. 
 All minds must thread the burning shares of doubt ; 
 Who wholly scatheless 'scape are blessed ; are few. 
 Thine be it, him to imbue with faith like thine ; 
 And so remunerate with commutual debt. 
 He, for the future, will be one of us. 
 
 Helen. It is not kind. We should be more alone. 
 But let it pass. I am at peace with thee ; 
 And pardon thee, and give thee leave to live. 
 
 Festus. Magnanimous I 
 
 Helen. When earth, and heaven, and all 
 
 Things seem so bright and lovely for our sakes, 
 It were a sin not to be happy. See, 
 The moon is up, it is the dawn of night. 
 Stands by her side one bold, bright, steady star. 
 Star of her heart, and heir to all her light ; 
 Whereon she looks, so proudly mild and calm, 
 As she were mother of that star, and him 
 Knew, in his sphere a sovran sun ; but there, 
 By her dear side, in the great strife of lights 
 
4M FE8TU8. 
 
 To sliine to God, he, filially, had failed, 
 And hid his arrows and his bow of beams. 
 Mother of stars I the heavens look up to thee. 
 They shine the brig-hter but to hide thy waning ; 
 They wait and wane for thee to enlarge thy beauty ; 
 They give thee all their glory, night by night ; 
 Their number makes not less thy loneliness, 
 Nor loveliness. 
 
 Festus. Heaven's beauty grows on us ; 
 
 And when the elder worlds have ta'en their seats, 
 Come the divine ones, gathering one by one, 
 And family by family, with still 
 And holy air, into the house of God, 
 The house of light he hath builded for himself ; 
 And worship him in silence and in sadness. 
 Immortal and immovable. And there, 
 Night after night, they meet to worship God. 
 For us this witness of the worlds is given. 
 That we may add ourselves to their great glory. 
 And worship with them. They are there for lights, 
 To light us on our way through heaven to God. 
 And we, too, have the power of light in us. 
 Ye stars, how bright ye shine to-night ; mayhap 
 Ye are the resurrection of the worlds. 
 Glorified globes of light I Shall ours be like ye ? 
 Nay, but it is 1 this wild, dark earth of ours. 
 Whose face shows furrowed like a losing gamester's, 
 Is shining round, and bright, and smooth in air, 
 Millions of miles off. Not a single path 
 Of thought I tread, but leads to God. And when 
 Her time Is out, and earth shall have travailed again 
 With the divine dust of man, her sons, reborn 
 Immortal, shall to her due reverence make ; 
 While she, their mother, purified by fire. 
 Shall sit her down in heaven, a bride of God, 
 And handmaid of the everbeing One. 
 Our earth is learning all accomplishments 
 To fit her for her bridehood. 
 
 Helen. He is here. 
 
 Festus. Welcome. 
 
 Student. I thought the night was beautiful, 
 But find the in-door scene still lovelier. 
 
 Helen. Ah I all is beautiful where beauty is. 
 
 Student. Night hath made many bards ; she is so lovo'y. 
 For it is beauty maketh poesie. 
 As from the dancing eye come tears of light. 
 Night hath made many bards ; she is so lovely. 
 And they have praised her to her starry face. 
 So long, that she hath blushed and left them, often. 
 When first and last we met, we talked on studies ; 
 Mingling with men, as even by thee advised. 
 Abandoning abstruse studies, as of stars, 
 
FESTU8, 445 
 
 In their antique relations, thougrht, with earth 
 
 Seed-gold, or medicinal all-heal ; now 
 
 As profitless, unless to raise the mind 
 
 To ends more high and pure ; ends better gained 
 
 By severe knowledge of time's actual truths, 
 
 Than meditation on mere possibles ; 
 
 All other intellectual aims resigned, 
 
 As recreative, apart from duty's aims, 
 
 Save metaphysic lore which fines the mind, 
 
 And teaches Being's vast necessities, 
 
 Poetry only I confess is mine ; 
 
 The only thing I think of now, or read ; 
 
 Feeding my soul upon the soft, and sweet, 
 
 And delicate imaginings of song ; 
 
 For as nightingales do upon glowworms feed, 
 
 So poets live upon the living light 
 
 Of nature and of beauty ; they love light. 
 
 Festus. But poetry is not confined to books, 
 For the creative spirit thou seekest, is in thee, 
 About thee, and all others ; yea, it hath 
 God's everywhereness. 
 
 Student. Truly. It was for this 
 
 I sought to know thy thoughts, and hear the course 
 Thou wouldst lay out for one who longs to win 
 A name among the nations. 
 
 Festus. First of all. 
 
 Care not about the name, but bind thyself, 
 Body and soul, to nature hiddenly. 
 Lo, the great march of stars from earth to earth, 
 Through heaven how silent 1 Earth speaks inly alona. 
 Let no man know thy business, save some friend j 
 For it is with all men and all living things. 
 Experience and imagination, sire 
 And mother are of song, the harp and hand. 
 The poet, in his lay reflects his soul. 
 As some lone nymph beside a woodland well, 
 "Whose clear white limbs, like animated light, 
 Make glad our heart and our sight sanctify. 
 The soft and shadowy miracle of her form. 
 Take care that such be perfect ; that thou feel 
 Full sympathy with all life ; a sense that e'en 
 In nature's wildest, massiest, may be felt 
 His rock-sustaining presence. God they serve 
 Best, who adorn humanity most, and help. 
 By holiest usurpation of his gifts, 
 Ilappy to make all fellow life around. 
 The bard must have a kind, courageous heart, 
 And natural chivalry to aid the weak. 
 He must believe the best of everything ; 
 Love all below, and worship all above. 
 All animals are living hieroglyphs. 
 The dashing dog, and stealthy-stepping cat, 
 
446 FE8TU8. 
 
 Hawk, bull, and all that breathe, mean sometbing" more 
 
 To the true eye than tbeir shapes show ; for all 
 
 Were made in love, and made to be beloved. 
 
 Thus must he think as to earth's lower life. 
 
 Who seeks to win the world to thought and love, 
 
 As doth the bard, whose habit is all kindness 
 
 To every thing-. 
 
 Helen. I love to hear of such. 
 Could we but think with the intensity 
 We love with, one might do great things, I think. 
 Festus. Kindness is wisdom. 
 Helen. Touching, love, these tribes 
 Creatural, thou speakst so meetly of, were none 
 Like them, in lovelier worlds, or what in fine. 
 Hast thou of other marvels ? 
 
 Festus. What is earth, 
 
 But one majestic miracle, wrought of God ? 
 
 Helen. But didst thou never meet, 'mid far-ofif orbs, 
 None of those strange commingled shapes which here 
 Romance and fiction boast of, and bards sing ? 
 Methinks in worlds half finished, one might see, 
 As earth once saw in the solemn days of old. 
 Mysterious sphinx, or dragon flamy breathed, 
 And centaur, lord of all four-footed life. 
 Who with man's heart and head, and a steed's hoofs, 
 Scoured earth, impetuous, windlike ; Minotaur 
 For whose just death in labyrinthine lair. 
 Bright Ariadne won her star-pearled crown ; 
 Man-bull, or lion winged, cherubic shaped, 
 Or solar, proud Assyria erst adored ; 
 Simorgh, and rokh, and phcEnix cometlike. 
 Which nested in the sun ; and in the deep, 
 Sea-horse fish-tailed ; and not unknown, even now, 
 Or here, to nature, where, by Jura's isle. 
 Fond mermaid, hybrid of the earth and sea, 
 Than fair-haired Yseult vainer of her locks, 
 Erect amid the waves, on caudal curve 
 Poises her form, weed-girdled ; in her hand 
 Her shadow glassed ; she, rivals knowing none, 
 Beckons the youth belated in his skiff. 
 Far out of hail of land ; seductive, lauds 
 The quiet cave, surpassing in sweet gloom, 
 Earth's superficial glare ; her bridal home ; 
 Her dower of pearl and amber ; wide domain ; 
 The charm immortal of the foamy sea ; 
 And every joy ; oft, over shoulders white 
 Showering the shining tresses, which, as oft 
 The lapping waves displace ; but he, with fear 
 Half dead, though scarce incurious of the deeps, 
 Nor to adventure mostly disinclined, 
 Rows faster, lest the moon set, till he hears 
 His heart's betrothed, him wailing on the beach. 
 
FE8TUS. 447 
 
 Some simple cottage maid ? 
 
 Festus. Far happier he. 
 
 Helen. I grant ye. But hadst thou no strange- world toy; 
 No faithful fire-drake dogging every step ; 
 No spotted wyvem. giant pet, bat- winged ; 
 Lithe hbbard, purring panther, cat of God, 
 Nor shoulder-perching harpy ? Didst not find 
 One salamander fire-conceived, oft seen 
 Luxurious, nestling in the seven-yeared flame j 
 Emblem of him who 'mid the children three, 
 Thrown in the furnace, trode the coals serene ; 
 Nor milk-white unicorn, not so rare, bestride. 
 Through greenwood, ambled once by faerie power, 
 Predictive of the damsel of the sea ? 
 
 Festus. I can't remember these things, if I saw. 
 
 Helen. There may be savagery in other worlds, 
 If less than man's exterminative. For see, 
 How cruel, men ; not to themselves-wards less 
 Than lives below them ; lives God hath not thought 
 Unworthy him to make, we ought not deem 
 Unworthy of our care ; but though create 
 To serve or suffer, treat, as made by him 
 With high humanity. Yet in their death 
 Look how men wanton 1 till the heart it grieves 
 Scarcely, when these, in blind revenge of blood 
 Causelessly shed, retaliate death for death ; 
 As when in icy seas the barb-gored whale 
 Drags his tormentors deathwards ; and though these 
 For life kill, others slay for play, as still 
 In Zetland, where betimes some ruthless wight. 
 Scaling the scaur, in sport the nests despoils 
 Of auk or gull ; they, crowding clamorous round, 
 Intruded on, insulted, injured, sore 
 His ears besiege, until with querulous wing. 
 One stem and ancient fowl assails his eyne ; 
 His hold gives way ; he topples headlong down. 
 From crag to crag rebounding, till the sea. 
 For many a ghastly loan responsible, 
 Seals up the expiring secret ; and, avenged, 
 God's feathered kind scream triumph. Him, at home, 
 Or dame, or mother, by her drowsy wheel, 
 Expects ; and through the ominous night, her ears 
 Sharpens to catch his customary step. 
 Whose ghost now flaunts the breakers ; or, far off, 
 Lamps the lone wold. I cannot brook to see 
 This needless, useless, senseless, slaughter strewn 
 Round earth as though death-torments were a boon 
 We owed it to our kinghood to impart. 
 Impartially, to all created life. 
 But how all minor cruelties of man 
 Are summed in war, conclusive of all crimes ; 
 When not defensive, indefensible 1 
 
448 FESTU8. 
 
 Festus. Light of my lieai-t 1 thou say'st the veriest truth. 
 How is it Christian nations boast of war, 
 Practised to steep the earth in brother blood, 
 Deeper than heathen ? Shows not current time 
 Man's deadliest wit at work how most to slay ? 
 Scan earth, and mark the myriads massed in arms, 
 Scowling defiant hate ; burning to reave 
 Each other of domain, state, power ; or prove 
 Predominance of race 1 What hosts arrayed 
 In battailous pomp meet, east and west, the eye I 
 Not those so vast, to immemorial age 
 Sacred, of Scythic birth, which, floodlike, surged 
 Far round the mount Armenian ; nor so wide, 
 Those once the crutched hermit's eyes beheld, 
 TJprist in bodily answer to his prayers. 
 By Danube's bank ; whence hardy knighthood's shield ; 
 Nor host immixed that, by Propontic wave. 
 Its ranks deployed by nations to salute 
 The golden-footed dame, who sheathed in steel 
 Her lilied breast, and couched her lance for love 
 Of Christ ; and with the hope of wresting back 
 From infidels his hallowed tomb, led on. 
 With jewelled rein, and morion snowy plumed, 
 Her maiden chivalry, and glittering queans. 
 Luckless ; for ah ! their virgin valour quailed, 
 Ere yet upon the spoil, the manlier might 
 Bounded of stem Islam ; nor, till unhorsed, 
 Unhelmed, knew these the delicate foe they had thrown, 
 Flower-breathed, as in the moon of blossoms earth. 
 
 Student. Nor that by sunny Tours, where fell the f orcf 
 Moorish, beneath the Frankland monarch's mace, 
 Which Europe saved from tui'bi. and Koraun ; 
 Nor those above whose heads the flaming sword. 
 Two-handled, and two-edged with pest and fire, 
 Of militant angel, pierced the clouds, and slew, 
 At one stroke, squadrons. 
 
 Festus. Still, from age to age. 
 
 Prevails the universal lust of death 
 And vulgar slaughter ; war of all bad things 
 Worst, and man's crowning crime, save when for faith 
 Or freedom waged ; but when for greed of ground, 
 Or mere dominion, cursed of man and God. 
 As when the clans Mogul — ^which late had left 
 Their maze of mountains the high plains that bound, 
 Whence Buzanghir and all his valorous brood. 
 Heads of the golden horde, and sons of light, 
 Whom Alancova to her sun-spouse bare 
 At treble birth ; the lords of throne and crown, 
 Khaliph's, or king's, or Tzar's, which Zinghis gained, 
 Or filial Kublai, with all-suasive sword, 
 Bright ravisher of sotds, into one realm 
 Hounded and died ; strict theists they who held 
 
FESTU8. 449 
 
 In Got! and their own swords, a brief, brave creed,— 
 
 O'er Europe's quaking heart careered, and like 
 
 Sunblast on greensward, graved their fiery name 
 
 In blazing towns and harvests blackening ; woke, 
 
 With tramp terrific of their horses' hoofs. 
 
 The slumbering nations ; to its stony foot 
 
 Burned Breslaw, and at Wollstadt won a field 
 
 Red with the gore of Christian chivalry, 
 
 But fled from their own conquest ; fled aghast ; 
 
 And perished in the wilds where they were bom ; 
 
 And when in later times and distant lands, 
 
 By countless wrongs indignant made, distraught, 
 
 The Azteks for their lord, and woe-crowned head. 
 
 Stem Moctezuma, archer of the heavens, — 
 
 Beset by bigots, falsely named white gods, 
 
 Their deeds of black fiends rather savouring. 
 
 But, steel-clad cowards, strong in fulminant arms, 
 
 Instalment thought of thunder at command. 
 
 By the plume-mailed barbarians, gold who held 
 
 The sun's bright tearlets — sought in vain to buy 
 
 Humanity of Christians, infidel these 
 
 To earth's best faith, nor capable to preach. 
 
 By bloodshed, creed pacific ; or southward, where 
 
 His quadripartite world the Ynga ruled ; 
 
 Earth's universal passion wasting not 
 
 On king-faced coin, but hallowing every mote 
 
 To beauty, or to deity, till came. 
 
 Crowding, the guests profane, with priest and crosa, 
 
 Who slaughtering thousands of his flock, and him 
 
 Incarcerating, bade pile his prison walls 
 
 With the soul-soiling dross they hungered for, 
 
 Ere he should know release, his sole release 
 
 Death ; — how humiliated must all men feel, 
 
 Dumb with unmeasurable guilt, to know 
 
 That for these vicious ends the self -deemed good, 
 
 Have all good illed ; and, in faith's peace-pledged name, 
 
 Blasphemous, vaunted of the invader's crimes. 
 
 And gloried in the havoc of his hand. 
 
 Helen. Yea, even Christians sometimes may do well ; 
 As when by gay Chalons the Paynim Hun, 
 His hosts arrayed, contemptuous of the faith 
 Which nerved their arms who conquered, wrongly he 
 Deeming in godless numbers victory lay ; 
 Just cause had they to thank God, and to wave 
 The sword of sacred triumph in his cause, 
 One with the cause of freedom, faith, and life. 
 
 Student. But now with that thou spakest of, before 
 This privileged interceptress of all speech 
 Deflect as from a gem's face, thought's bright rays ; 
 Go on, I pray. I came to be informed. 
 Thou knowest my ambition, and I joy 
 To feel thou feedest it with purest food. 
 
450 ]PE8TU8. 
 
 Festus. Tell all I feel I cannot ; save myself, 
 Seeming to know but little ; yet am not shamed 
 To have studied mine own life, and know it like 
 Tear-blistered letter, fruit and proof which holds 
 Of feeling deeper than poor pen can score, 
 Or the eye discover ; and that, oft, my heart's thoughts 
 Will rise and shake my breast, as madmen shake 
 The stanchions of their dungeons, and howl out. 
 
 Helen. But thou wast telling us of jwesie, 
 And the kind nature-hearted bards. 
 
 Festus. I wasi 
 
 I knew one well, a friend of mine : his mind, 
 Taste, temper, habits, temperament and life ; 
 Yet with heart kind as beats, he was, earthlike, 
 No sooner made than marred, for ever. Young, 
 He wrote amid the ruins of his heart ; 
 They were his throne and theme — like some lone king, 
 Who tells the story of the land he lost, 
 And how he lost it. 
 
 Student. Tell us more of him. 
 
 Helen. Nay, but it saddens thee. 
 
 Festus. 'Tis like enough. 
 
 We slip away like shadows into shade ; 
 We end, and make no mark we had begun ; 
 We come to nothing, like a pure intent. 
 "N\lien we have hoped, sought, striven, and lost our aim, 
 Then the truth fronts us, beaming out of darkness. 
 Like a white brow, through its overshadowing hair. 
 
 Student. Unkindly truth ; nay, be not so severe. 
 One of us dies ; so end our claims, our plans. 
 We choose our side, we take our ground, high strung. 
 Or meek ; most, hopeful ; deem life's game our own, 
 To the third figure ; lo 1 our bails drop down 
 Plump, or clack skywards ; and it is we who have scored 
 Nothing : — not even a bye. Truly, too true. 
 
 Festus. But I was speaking of my friend. He, quick, 
 Generous, and simple, obstinate in end. 
 High-hearted, was from his youth ; his spirit rose 
 In many a glittering fold and gleamy crest, 
 Hydra-Uke to its hindrance ; mastering all, 
 Save one thing — love, and that out-hearted him. 
 Nor did he think enough, till it was over. 
 How bright a thing he was breaking, or he would 
 Surely have shunned it, nor have let his Hf e 
 Be pulled to pieces, like a rose by a child. 
 But passions cause remorse that make the heart, 
 Musing the passed, writhe 'neath its ivory vault, 
 And thin the blood by weepiug at a night. 
 If madness wrought the sin, the sin wrought madness, 
 And made a round of ruin. It is sad 
 To see the light of beauty wane away ; 
 Know eyes are dimming, bosom shrivelling, feet 
 
FESTU8. 461 
 
 Losing their spring, and limbs their lily roundness ; 
 But it is worse to feel our heart-spring gone, 
 To lose hope, care not for the coming thing, 
 And feel all things go to decay with us, 
 As 'twere our life's eleventh month : and yet 
 All this he went through, young. 
 
 Helen. Poor soul 1 I should 
 
 Have loved him for his sorrows. 
 
 Festus. It is not love 
 
 Brings sorrow, but love's objects. 
 
 Student. Then he loved. 
 
 Festus. I said so. I have seen him, when he hath had 
 A letter from his lady dear, he blessed 
 The paper that her hand had travelled over, 
 And her eye looked on ; and would think he saw 
 Gleams of that light she lavished from her eyes, 
 Wandering amid the words of love there traced, 
 Like glowworms among beds of flowers. He seemed 
 To bear with being but because she loved him. 
 She was the sheath wherein his soul had rest, 
 As hath a sword from war : and he at night, 
 Would solemnly and singularly curse 
 Each minute he had not thought of her. 
 
 Helen. Now that 
 
 Was truly like a lover 1 and she loved 
 Him, and him only. 
 
 Festus. Well, perhaps it was so. 
 
 But he could not restrain his heart, but loved 
 In that voluptuous purity of taste 
 Which dwells on beauty coldly, and yet kindly, 
 As night-dew, whensoe'er he met with beauty. 
 
 Helen. It was a pity, that inconstancy — 
 If she he loved were but as good and fair 
 As he was worthy of. 
 
 Festus. Dark and bright there is, 
 
 To everything but beauty such as thine. 
 And that's all bright. If fault in him, 'twas one, 
 Which made him do sweet wrongs. It mattered Ufctle. 
 Or right or wrong, he were alike unhappy. 
 Ah me 1 ah me 1 that there should be so much 
 To call up love, so little to delight I 
 The best enjoyment is half disappointment 
 To that we mean, or would have, in this world. Ofb 
 There are strange and sudden lights which startle youth, 
 Prowing adventurously, life's seas, and seem 
 To beacon it towards them ; they are wreckers' lights ; 
 But he shunned these ; and gathering, when she rose, 
 Moon of his life, his true if perilous course. 
 Though a sea of sorrow struck him, he yet held 
 On ; dashed all grief -ful from him as a bark 
 Spray from her bow bounding : he lifted up 
 His head, and the deep ate his shadow merely. 
 
 ^9 
 
452 FE8TU8, 
 
 Helen. A poet not in love, is out at sea 
 Indeed ; he must have a lay-figure, too. 
 
 Festus. I mean but to describe this friend of mine. 
 
 Helen. Describe the lady, too ; she was, say, at once, 
 Above all praise and all comparison. 
 
 Festus. Why, true. Her heart was all humanity, 
 Her soul all God's ; in spirit and in form, 
 Like fair. Her cheek had the pale pearly pink 
 Of sea-shells, the world's loveliest tint, as thoug-h 
 She lived, one half might deem, on roses sopped 
 In silver dew ; she spake as with the voice 
 Of spheral harmony, which greets the soul. 
 When at the hour of death, the saved one knows 
 His sister angels near ; her eloquent eye 
 Deposed, to him who loved, so sweet its hue, 
 All other lights as grades of gloom ; her dark 
 Long rolling locks were like a stream the slave 
 Might search for gold, and searching, find. Her frown — 
 
 Helen. Nay, could she frown ? 
 
 Festus. Ay, but a radiant frown, 
 
 In common with the stars. 
 
 Student. Stars, fending now 
 
 Business, now pleasure or alliance, men 
 Malignant call, but so malign. Our stars, 
 Permissive, or averse, are always kind. 
 
 Helen. Enough. I have her picture perfect. Cease. 
 
 Student. What were his griefs ? 
 
 Festus. Who hath most of heart, knows most 
 Of sorrow ; folly and sin and memory make 
 A curse the future fires vie with in vain. 
 The sorrows of the soul are graver still. 
 
 Student. Where and when did he study ? Mixed he much 
 With the world, or was he, in his choice, recluse ? 
 
 Festus. He had no times of study, and no place ; 
 All places and all times to him were one. 
 His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved, 
 And sounded only when the spirit blew. 
 Sometimes in feasts and follies, for he went, 
 Life-like through all things ; and his thoughts then rose, 
 Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still. 
 Sometimes in dreams ; and then the shining words 
 Would wake him in the dark before his face. 
 All things talked thoughts to him. The sea went mad, 
 And the wind whined as 'twere in pain, to show 
 Each one his meaning* ; and the awful sun 
 Thundered his thoughts into him ; and at night, 
 The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers. 
 The spirit speaks all tongues and understands ; 
 Both God's and angel's, man's and all dumb things, 
 Down to an insect's inarticulate hum. 
 And an inaudible organ. And speak it did 
 Tlie spirit, to him, of eyerything create j 
 
FE8TU8. 4S3 
 
 And with th.e moony eyes like those we see, 
 
 Thousands on thousands, crowding- air in dreams, 
 
 Looked into him its mighty meanings, till 
 
 He felt the power fulfil him, as a cloud 
 
 In every filament feels the forming wind. 
 
 He spake the world's one tongue ; in earth and heaven 
 
 There is but one, it is the word of truth. 
 
 To him the eye let out its hidden meaning ; 
 
 And young and old made their hearts over to him ; 
 
 And thoughts were told to him, as unto none 
 
 Save one who heareth said and unsaid, all. 
 
 And his heart held these as a grate its gleeds, 
 
 Where others warm them. 
 
 Student. I would T had known him. 
 
 Festus. All things to him were inspiration : wood, 
 Wold, hill and field, sea, city, and solitude ; 
 Crowds, streets, and man where'er he was ; and God's 
 Blue eye, which is above us. Soundless sands. 
 Stem cliff with sea- weed sandalled ; patient beach, 
 Storm deprecating ; and still, deep, stately stream 
 Travelling, iastinctive, mainwards ; mead and plain ; 
 Summer's warm soil and winter's cruel sky, 
 As a sea eaglet's eye clear, icy blue. 
 All things to him bare thoughts of minstrelsy. 
 He drew his light from that he was midst, as a lamp 
 Matter of fire, from air. though it show not. His 
 Was but the power to light what might be lit. 
 A muse he met ia every lovely maid ; 
 And learned a song from every lip he loved. 
 But his heart ripened most 'neath southern eyes, 
 Which sunned their sweets into him all day long : 
 For fortune called him southwards, towards the sun. 
 
 Helen. Did he love music ? 
 
 Festus. The only music he 
 
 Or learned or listened to, was from the lips 
 Of her he loved ; and then he learned by heart 
 Her words, delicious as the candied dew. 
 And durable, which gems the rose, on shores 
 Pacific, where the wastering sun hath sown 
 The soil conceptive with the seed of gold ; 
 Albeit she would try to teach him tunes, 
 And put his fingers on the keys ; but he 
 Could only see her eyes ; and hear her voice ; 
 And feel her touch. 
 
 Helen. Why he was much like thee. 
 
 Festus. We had some points in common. When we love, 
 All air breathes music, as though insucked through lips 
 Of lyre .^kDlian ; nature's every life 
 To ours responsive, like the branchy bower. 
 By Indian bards feigned, which, with ceaseless song, 
 Answers the sun's bright raylets ; nor till eve, 
 Folds her melodious leaves, and all night rests ; 
 
454 FE8TU8. 
 
 Drinking" deep draughts of silence. 
 
 Student. Was he proud ? 
 
 Festus. Lowliness is the base of every virtue : 
 "Who goes the lowest builds, doubt not, the safest. 
 My Grod keeps half his pity for the proud. 
 
 Student. Was he world-wise ? 
 
 Festus. The only wonder is 
 
 He knew so much, leading the life he did. 
 
 Student. Yet it may seem less strange when we think back, 
 How we, in the obscure chamber of the heart, 
 Sitting alone, see the world tabled to us ; 
 And the world wonders how recluses know 
 So much, and most of all how we know them. 
 It is they who paint themselves upon our hearts, 
 In their own lights and darknesses, not we ; 
 One stream of light is to us from above, 
 And that is that we see by, light of God. 
 
 Festus. We do not make our thoughts ; they grow in ns 
 Like grain in wood : the growth is of the skies, 
 The skies, of nature ; nature of God. The world 
 Is full of glorious likenesses ; and these 
 'Tis the bard's task, beside his general scope 
 Of story, fancy framed, to assort, and make 
 From the common chords man's heart is strung withal, 
 Music ; from dumb earth, heavenly harmony ; 
 And for souls parched mid the world's wilds, to draw, 
 As from his altar's sacred hollows drew 
 Druid, his dews celestial, holy draught 
 Of life-thought clear, sweet, nutrient, as spring water. 
 Welling its way through flowers. As nature teems 
 With outward symbols fair or saintly, all. 
 Of our best thoughts, — though not till night we see 
 Heaven moveth, and a darkness thick with suns. 
 So faith with clearest proof the thoughts we think, 
 The eternal truths of science, and divine 
 Virtue subsist in God, as stars in heaven ; 
 And as these specks of light great worlds will prove, 
 When we approach them sometime free from flesh, 
 So too our thoughts will become magnified 
 To mindlike things immortaL And as space 
 Seems but a property of Grod, wherein 
 All matter abides, so, other attributes 
 The infinite homes may be of mind and soul. 
 Eise from our souls' thoughts, even as from the sea 
 The clouds sublimed in heaven. The cloud is cold, 
 Although ablaze with lightning — ^though it shine 
 At all points like a constellation ; so 
 We live not to ourselves, our work is life ; 
 In bright and ceaseless labour, as a star 
 To all worlds save itself, shines. 
 
 Helen. And thy friend, 
 
 And she he loved, happy were they together? 
 
FE8TU8. 4 
 
 Festits. True love is ever tragic, grievous, grave. 
 Bards and their beauties are like double stars, 
 One in their bright effect. 
 
 Helen. Whose light is love. 
 
 Student. Or is it poesie thou meanest ? 
 
 Festus. Both : 
 
 For love is poesie — it doth create ; 
 From fading features, dim soul, doubtful heart, 
 And this world's wretched happiness, a life 
 Which is as near to heaven as are the stars. 
 
 Helen. Love's heart turns sometimes faint, like a sick pearl. 
 He needs such delicate diet as the bird 
 Gold-breasted, which on cloudlets only mom 
 Hath ambered fed, ere rose-breath'd summer end 
 Dies, nor can brook the shadow of decline. 
 
 Festus. They parted ; and she named heaven's judgment seat, 
 As their next place of meeting ; and it was kept 
 By her, at least, so far that nowhere else 
 CJould it be made until the day of doom. 
 
 Helen. So soon men's passion passes I yea it sinks 
 Like foam into the troubled wave which bore it. 
 Merciful G-od 1 let me entreat thy mercy 1 
 I have seen all the woes of men ; pain, death, 
 Remorse, and worldly ruin ; they are little. 
 Weighed with the woe of woman when forsaken 
 By him she loved and trusted. Hear, too, thou 1 
 Lady of heaven, maid-mother, thou in whom, 
 Betaking him into mortality, 
 As in thy son he took it into him, 
 God from the temporal end eternal made 
 One soul- world same and ever, oh ! for the sake 
 Of thine own womanhood, with divinity crowned, 
 Pray away aught of evil from her soul ; 
 And take her out of anguish unto thee, 
 Always, as thou didst this one 1 
 
 Festus. Who doth not 
 
 Believe that that he loveth cannot die ? 
 There is no mote of death in thine eye's beams 
 To hint of dusk, or darkness, or decay ; 
 Eclipse upon eclipse, and death on death ; 
 No 1 immortality sits mirrored there, 
 Like a fair face long looking on itself ; 
 Yet shalt thou lie in death's angelic garb. 
 As in a dream of dress, my beautiful : 
 The worm shall trail across thine unsunned sweets, 
 And feast him on the heart men pined to death for ; 
 Yea, have a happier knowledge of thy beauties 
 Than best-loved lover's dream e'er duped him with. 
 
 Helen. It is unkind to think of me in this wise ; 
 Beside that I may die by sea, or fire, 
 Or gulped down quick by earthquakes, who can tell f 
 Surely the stars must feel that they are bright, 
 
456 FE8TU8. 
 
 In beauty, number, nature, infinite ; 
 And the strong sense we have of God in ns, 
 Makes me believe my soul can never cease. 
 The temples perish, but the God still lives. 
 
 Festus. It is therefore that I love thee ; for that when 
 The fiery perfection of the world, 
 The sun, shall be a shadow, and burnt out, 
 There is an impulse to eternity 
 Kaised by this moment's love. 
 
 Helen. I pray it may I 
 
 Time is the crescent shape to bounded eye 
 Of what is ever perfect unto God. 
 The bosom heaves to heaven, and to the stars ; 
 Our very hearts throb upwards, our eyes look ; 
 Our aspirations always are divine. 
 
 Festus. Yet is it in distress of soul we see 
 Most of the God about us, as at nig-ht 
 Of nature's limitless vast ; for then the soul, 
 Seeking- the infinite purity, most in prayer, 
 By the holy Spirit o'ershadowed, doth conceive 
 And in creative darkness, unsuspect 
 Of the wise world, ig:norant of this, perfects 
 Its restitutive salvation ; with its source 
 Reconciliate and end ; its humanized 
 Divinity, say, of life. Think God, then, shows 
 His face no less toward us in spiritual gloom, 
 Than light. 
 
 Helen. But not all gloom felicity brings ; 
 And hers, I fear, brought somewhat less than bliss. 
 There is a love which acts to death, and through death, 
 And may come white, and bright, and clear like paper 
 From refuse, or from purest things at first : 
 It is beyond life's accidents. For things 
 We make no compt of, have in them the seeds 
 Of life, use, beauty, like the cores of fruit 
 We fling away. 
 
 Student. But of thy friend ; say more. 
 Perhaps much happiness in friendship made 
 Amends for tin love's sorrows ? 
 
 Festus. Ask me not. 
 
 Helen. But loved he never after ? Came there none 
 To roll the stone from his sepulchral heart, 
 And sit in it, an angel ? 
 
 Festus. Ah, my life I 
 
 My more than life, mine immortality I 
 Both man and womankind belie their nature 
 When they are not kind ; and thy words are kind, 
 Loving, and beautiful like thyself ; thine eye 
 And thy tongue's tone, and all that speak thy soul 
 Are like it. There's a something in the shape 
 Of harps, as though they had primarily been made 
 By music, self-inamorated, that sought 
 
FESTUS, 457 
 
 Some form of utterance adequate to exhaust 
 Her passionate sense of perf ectness ; so seems 
 Thine absolute beauty but the effect of soul, 
 Sublimed and sweetened by the virtuous love 
 Of others' excellencies ; thou, indeed, to me 
 Reminder of her loving'st sympathies. 
 And he, of whom thou askest, loved again. 
 Couldst thou have loved one unlike men, whose heart 
 Was wrinkled long before his brow ? who would 
 Have cursed himself, if he had dared tempt God 
 To ratify his curse, in fire ; and yet 
 With whom to look on beauty was a need, 
 A thirst was, yea, a passion? 
 
 Helen. Yes, I think 
 
 I could have loved him ; but no, not unless 
 He were like thee ; unless he had been, been thee. 
 Tell me, what was it rendered him so wretched, 
 At heart? 
 Festus. I may not tell thee. 
 Student. But tell me, 
 
 How, and on what he wrote, this friend of thine ? 
 
 Festus. Love, mirth, woe, pleasure, was in turn his theme ; 
 And the great good which beauty does the soul ; 
 And the Grod-made necessity of things. 
 And like that noble knight in olden tale, 
 Who changed his armour's hue at each fresh charge. 
 By virtue of his lady-love's strange ring ; 
 So that none knew him save his private page, 
 And she who cried, G-od save him, every time 
 
 He brake spears with the brave till he quelled all ; 
 So he applied him to all themes that came ; 
 
 Loving the most to breast the rapid deeps 
 "Where others had been drowned ; and heeding nought. 
 Where danger might not fill the place of fame. 
 And 'mid the magic circle of those sounds. 
 
 His lyre rayed out, spell-bound himself he stood, 
 
 Like a stilled storm. It is no task for suns 
 
 To shine. He knew himself a bard ordained, 
 
 More than inspired, of God, inspirited : 
 
 Making himself like an electric rod 
 
 A lure for lightning feelings ; and his words 
 
 Like things that fall in thunder, things the mind, 
 
 In a dark, hot, cloudful state, makes meteor ball-like, 
 
 To spirits then spoken with spirit tongue, prevailed ; 
 
 Compelled by wizard word of truth, they came. 
 
 And rayed them round him from the ends of heaven. 
 
 For as be all bards, he was bom of beauty, 
 
 And with a natural fitness to draw down 
 
 All tones and shades of beauty to his soul : 
 
 Even as the rainbow-tinted shell, which lies 
 
 Miles deep at bottom of the sea, hath all 
 
 Colours of skies, and flowers, and gems, and plumes ; 
 
 Q 3 
 
458 FE8TU8, 
 
 And all by nature, wMch doth reproduce 
 
 Like loveliness in seeming opposites. 
 
 And nature loved him, for he was to her 
 
 Faithful and loyal, tending well the weal 
 
 Of every life, or blood, or sap, was hers. 
 
 To her grand soul, death needless, needless pain, 
 
 Is deadly sin. Him, therefore, in august 
 
 Silence she edified in deeper things 
 
 Than the world's babble robs of ; speaking him 
 
 In that instinctive paradisal tongue, 
 
 Known now to nature, poet-priests, and God, 
 
 Who out of clouds, flowers, fountains, dreams, and stars, 
 
 Weave a commutual language ; and conveyed 
 
 Clear to his eyes her veiled blaze of light ; 
 
 And led him by the hand, and made him trace, 
 
 'Neath time's disguising dust, the broad-based truth, 
 
 And iron impress, ineffaceable. 
 
 Of the eternal die. DivinerUke, 
 
 He ate the hearts of things ere yet he could 
 
 Prophesy of them ; or predict of worlds 
 
 By augury of angels ; or foresee 
 
 Life's round career accomplished in the skies. 
 
 As though his ear had been by serpents lipped, 
 
 He wist the world of life. Of every tribe 
 
 Of living things the key-spell he could speak, 
 
 And entered in its presence with the sign 
 
 Of perfect acceptation. He of all 
 
 Was free ; a branch from off the tree of light. 
 
 Heaven-planted midst the wood we all indwell. 
 
 There was a light in death itself to him. 
 
 And the to-come had a clear presence. Thus 
 
 Of ttimes, at eve, together, eyeing heaven, 
 
 Creating stars, we sat, and stretching forth 
 
 The eagle-headed sceptre of the soul, 
 
 Euled them at ease enthroned ; with gifts of power 
 
 Widening the empyrean world on world. 
 
 And dropping down the fathom-line of thought 
 
 Into the future years, conceive what 'twere 
 
 To quit this world's necessitated deeps, 
 
 These strange librating bonds of birth and death ; 
 
 And sweep into the still, free, sphere on high, 
 
 On faith and truth, our undeveloped wiugs, 
 
 Like to a vital wind, invisible, 
 
 Yet firmed and bounded in a beauteous form ; 
 
 To give up life for being, and be gods : 
 
 Such were the heights we aimed at, such the deeps 
 
 He reached and yet alive ; for, sooth to say, 
 
 His soul was twin-lif ed with a certain star ; 
 
 When he died, the star also died. 
 
 Helen. Note that. 
 
 Student. Now, I beseech thee, be not as a stream 
 Which publisheth its shallows, but keeps all 
 
FE8TU8, 459 
 
 Its deep things to itself. "What mean'st thou, sayf 
 
 That all things have a soul, an inner life, 
 
 I much believe, such things as trees and flowers, 
 
 Life not as ours like positive, less defined, 
 
 Still conscious, rivers, may be, mountains, stars : 
 
 That substance implies essence, essence life ; 
 
 That what to us mere matter shows, may show 
 
 As mentally to others ; and that men 
 
 Are shadows inwardly invert of gods ; 
 
 So. at the fiery martyrdom of earth 
 
 "VMien all heaven's starry sisterhood shall sigh 
 
 The blazing pyre to see, our souls will rise 
 
 With its spheral spirit, and there in it for ever, 
 
 Abide, all life's forms blessed and beautified. 
 
 Helen. What if it were that life, commencing first 
 In kind atomic, step by step, through all 
 The countless grades vegetative, animal. 
 Of nature, should progress at last to man, 
 Possessed with all the intermediate powers 
 Of all the schooling spheres he had passed through, till 
 This mere noviciate of humanity. 
 Encumbered with the veil of flesh, expired ; 
 The spirit shall take the plenar vows of truth, 
 And enter upon the sanctity of heaven ? 
 
 Festus. Our life is like the wizard's charmed ring , 
 Death's heads, and loathsome things fill up the ground, 
 But spirits wing about, and wait on us, 
 Wliile yet the hour of enchantment is. 
 And while we keep within, we are safe, and can 
 Force them to do our bidding. 
 Student. It is very true. 
 
 Helen. Oh that mine eyes had virtues, such as those 
 Native to fairy fount in Sarnia's isle. 
 Rock-pinnacled by the foamy braid of the sea, 
 
 Of reach how perilous ; whereby, oft, of yore, 
 
 'Neath summer moons, danced elf-dom, and its wave 
 
 Fresh, sweet, so gifted, that man's eye inlaved 
 
 Thereafter knew sense spiritual, and view 
 
 Of bodiless things ; gift with the fairies now 
 
 Gone, possibly ; but if not, how little it were 
 
 To risk all, tiiis once gained 1 
 Student. Risk nothing, beauty j 
 
 But know that always properly prepared 
 
 By holy meditation and divine lore, 
 
 Souls, self -adapted knowledge to receive 
 
 Are, by the truth desired illumined ; made 
 
 Fit to convene, converse with purer powers 
 
 Which do unseen surround us e'er, and gladden 
 
 In human good and exaltation ; oft. 
 
 The face of heaven is not more clear to one, 
 
 Than to another, outwardly ; but this, 
 
 By btrong intention of his soul perceivesj, 
 
Attracts, unites himself to essences, 
 
 And elemental spirits, of wider range, 
 
 And more beneficent nature ; by whose aid, 
 
 Occasion, circumstance, futurity, 
 
 Impress on him their image, and impart 
 
 Their secrets to his soul ; thus chance and lot 
 
 Are sacred things ; thus dreams are verities. 
 
 The soul too, which, like mountain lakelet lifts 
 
 Its gaze to heaven alone, will, doubt not, learn 
 
 Glaased in its visionary profound, to read 
 
 Ere long, futurity's cloudy forms ; or mark 
 
 Clear through time's crystalline egg, the chanceful play 
 
 Of spirits, and strange forecomingness of things, 
 
 Saidst not this friend of thine was even a bard 
 
 And wrote prophetic of time's aftenv^orld ? 
 
 Festus. Ay, and time's present. 
 
 Student. What of that he wrote ? 
 
 Festus. Some said, and lied, that he blasphemed, because 
 God's name he used, as spirits use it, barely ; 
 Yet surely more sublime in nakedness 
 Statuelike, than in a whole tongue of dress ; 
 And these, to all eternity lie (if not 
 Saved, when our God shall raze that lie from life, 
 And from his own eternal memory) lied. 
 Thou knowest, God, that to the fuU of worship, 
 All things are worshipful ; and thy great name 
 In all its awful brevity hath nought 
 Unholy breeding in it ; but doth bless 
 Kather the tongue that utters it ; for me, 
 No higher office ask I than to fling 
 My spirit before thy feet, and cry thy name, 
 God, through eternity. Who in-everence sees 
 In use of that true name may used have been 
 To misuse, or, profane, to take in vain ; 
 And the same eye might see obscenity 
 In pure white statues. Know, therefore, for such, 
 Who others wilfully mislead, or cause 
 Needless, to err, the word is lied, though writ 
 In honeyed dew, upon a lily leaf, 
 With quill of nightingale, like love-letters 
 Of Oberon, to the bright Titania penned, 
 Fairest of all the fays. Thou, loving truth. 
 Call all things by their names ; heil call thou hell ; 
 Archangel call archangel ; and God, God. 
 
 Student. Such harm not, may be, long. Full oft the foe, 
 Most combative, himself works out for us. 
 And our true cause, unmeant success ; as when 
 Heaven's bow, sign intermediary, high bent 
 'Twixt sky and earth, some eve, storm-darkened, eyes 
 The coronal arch of her aerial bridge 
 Swept off by swarthy clouds, of unseen gusts 
 The allies too visible, both conjured to quench 
 
FESTU8. 461 
 
 Her peerless life, (dangliter and heiress sole 
 
 Of the sun, death-stricken) she nothing daunted, vows 
 
 Splendid reprise ; and seeing soundly based 
 
 On earth and sea her compassing lines, with use 
 
 Potent of natural magic bom mature, 
 
 Out of contrarious blasts and raging powers. 
 
 Imponderable, of air, strange help compels 
 
 From hostile elements ; and the more their shock,. 
 
 Exasperate, she the more her shining ranks 
 
 Forms and reforms, indomitable ; from foes 
 
 Foes beckons ; smiles them to herself, and quick 
 
 In her own luminous livery, self arrayed 
 
 Her glad recruits ; she, conscious of the end's 
 
 Reflective triumph, from the field of fight 
 
 Slowly retreats ; such self constructive force 
 
 Haply, we reap, was thine. 
 
 Helen. Not such were all ? 
 
 Festus. No. Unlike those false brethren who of >ld 
 Sold their enlightener, and into duresse cast 
 The unfolder of high secrets, far and near, 
 All generous souls rejoiced in his, as one 
 Which holding in itself the sacred power 
 Thought to eternize, things divine achieves 
 With infinite ease ; an earnest thus to all 
 Of gifts to come ; as when young Jove, who now 
 Had but dethroned his sire, nor lots yet cast 
 With his titanic kin for the world's sway ; 
 In earth's first blaze of conquest Maia met, 
 From out whose hallowed bosom lacteal life 
 He erst had drawn ; she, bending close to his. 
 Her sad, but luminous brow, with thought oppressed 
 Of favour and dominion, him besought 
 What sometime he would grant her for long love, 
 And bounteousness of both her mothering breasts ; 
 He, i)oor in all but in immortality ; 
 Earth was not his as yet, but only heaven ; 
 Touched her with hand deific, and her form, 
 Flashing with light, flew upwards as a star, 
 Insphered in air for ever. There she shines ; 
 Not envious of the power, her earthly veins 
 Which filled with astral life ; but laudful, blessed. 
 So too the high and bright souled sons of men 
 Loved him and praised. Yet praise nor fame he loved. 
 Men's praise an awe of one's own self so breeds 
 In us, we fear lest the heart, magician-like. 
 Show more than we can bear. The clouds which hide 
 The mental mountains rising nighest heaven, 
 Are full of finest lightning, and a breath 
 Can give those gathered shadows fearful Ufe, 
 And launch their light in thunder o'er the world. 
 Yet was not all perfection, even finite ; 
 But that at first defective most, he wholed, 
 
462 FE8TU8, 
 
 By tyrant will, and toilful skill, use-born ; 
 As the young merlin, when he first takes flight, 
 The uncredited wing whirrs aimless ; this side, now, 
 Stoops dubiously, now that ; his ways, his bourne, 
 Wists not, nor potencies ; till, timely taug-ht 
 By faulteous circlet and shrewd fall, just scope, 
 Firm trust in the unvacuous air, life's field 
 Henceforth to be, full-yeared, his total skies 
 Measuring in glance immense, with sternest plume 
 Strained steadily through one pa useless, pulseless flight, 
 He rounds ; or, augur-like, from end to end. 
 Pages the parted firmament. So with him 
 Contemplative of work at last matured, 
 His eye's dark ball grew greater with delight, 
 And darker, as he viewed the things he had made ; 
 Not planless, aimless not ; deep based, high reared ; 
 Not men nor monsters only outside the fane 
 Grinning and howling ; but a holy group 
 Shown shrined within, before seraphic forms, 
 Embodied thoughts of worship, wisdom, love. 
 Joining their fire-tipped wings across the shrine 
 Where his heart's relics lay, and where were, wrought 
 Upon men's minds immortal miracles. 
 
 Student. Poems outlive religions, nay than some 
 Better they are, and lovelier far than most. 
 The poet's pen, the true divining rod 
 Trembling towards feeling's inner founts, brings fortli 
 To light, to use, the sources many and sweet 
 We have, of beauty and good in our own deep bosoms, 
 But what if it be true that all is God ; 
 Worship, the passive sympathy of parts 
 Atomic with the mightier, active mass, 
 As might a foam drop worship the great sea ; 
 All deities mere abstractions of man's mind. 
 And ultimate moral laws impersonate 1 
 I hold my revelation in myself. 
 Of the God within me, sacred and supreme. 
 And for the law moral, humane, believe 
 He truest is of men whose thoughts are highest. 
 Whose wishes noblest, purest, charitablest ; 
 Whose acts embody most both wish and thought. 
 Ill deeds who doth, in such incarnates hell, 
 By his own wilL In our own brain or heart, 
 The magic circle lies wherein we raise 
 Sprites, good or bad. With our own blood, it is. 
 We pour libation to forbidden powers ; 
 Or satisfy with expurgative fires, 
 Fed from the fuel of unbounded grief, 
 The offended God within us. Life's great laws, 
 The world is based upon, inviolable, 
 By us, and to us holy, he who makes 
 Breaks never. This my creed, I hold ho most 
 
FESTU8, 463 
 
 Believes, who only God believes ; all else 
 Is superstition. 
 
 Festus. More than this is true, 
 
 And more is needed. Freedom not alone 
 Is worthy of worship ; souls most one with heaven 
 Less, may be, glory in liberties than laws. 
 
 Student. Man's mind is like the moon, whose crescent orb 
 Tops yonder hill ; the vastier volume dark ; 
 But 'tis not that which grows ; the viiginal light 
 At first but just enough to affirm its life, 
 With total and resistless ray, at last 
 Subdues the obscure sphere ; so reason wins 
 From faith her shadowy world ; and knowledge hoards 
 What ignorant belief hath lost for aye. 
 Belate his purpose summarily. 
 
 Festus. Why thus. 
 
 Helen. I have been quite waiting for an eloquent patiao 
 In my instructors' speeches ; gained at last. 
 So now then, I shall ask myself to sing, 
 And granting I agree to my request, 
 I think you ought to thank me. 
 
 Student. But not now ! 
 
 Helen. Oh, yes, this instant. 
 
 Festus. Aught thou lik'st of love. 
 
 Student. Something about love ; and it can't be wrong | 
 For love the sunny world supplies 
 With laughing lips and happy eyes. 
 
 Festus. And 'twill be sooner over. 
 
 Student. And so better, 
 
 Helex. 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 ! 
 
 With the mom I haste to woo thee, 
 
 Through the day I seek thy side ; 
 With the eve Fm constant to thee, 
 
 As the moon is to the tide, 
 So my Ufe in ghding by thee, 
 
 Seems its purpose to fulfil ; 
 To behold thee, and be nigh thee, 
 
 And thine image bosom still. 
 
 And thy love hath power upon me, 
 
 Like a dream upon a bram ; 
 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. 
 
464 FESTUS. 
 
 A most lug-ubrious end ; I hope that song, 
 'Tis thine, was not addressed to me. 
 
 Student. Eesmne. 
 
 The king who ruled the demons, ruled the powers 
 Of air, ruled angels, was by woman ruled. 
 
 Festus. All great lays, equals to the minds of men, 
 With the divine deal ; have for end some good 
 Commensurate of the soul, some scheme of being 
 To illustrate ; this, God's great world-drame to sum, 
 Prophetically. Mind, this world's, and soul, God's 
 The wise man here joins, orderly, all he can. 
 Mid lesser lays stand, as among village cots 
 Churches, these works high, holy, whose sanctity 
 Crowns them as gold cross minster dome, and shows, 
 As with that instonement of divinity. 
 The whole belongs to God. Joy 'tis to know 
 However state, or soul, in creed might err. 
 Mind's greatest works done e'er to God, as hand's ; 
 So, hallowed shown, to him, man's loftiest thought, 
 And might's sublime humility. One bard 
 Shows God as he deals with kings and states, war-ruled g 
 One as inaugurating an empire's sway ; 
 As with the first man this ; this, as with heaven. 
 Earth, hell, and fires remedial ; ours, one soul 
 Forechosen, man's ultimate, with whom all time, 
 Earth's universal race and life sphere end ; 
 One soul, one statued mind, one naked heart, 
 Emblemed ; creative and created mind 
 Shown allwhere interactive ; this though yielding" 
 In mediate trials, triumphing o'er the last 
 Temptation, testful ; being, at one with God, 
 AU points are central to the infinite. 
 Therefore it is that deity, which fills 
 The spheres, unnumbered save by him who made 
 The space existent whole, one human heart. 
 With equal power and specialty inspires. 
 His aim being spiritual most, the bard would toll 
 How the soul stands with God, and the unseen 
 Kealities round us all ; our angel kin. 
 And spheres of heavenly life ; the mind-made worlS, 
 Without, within ; part, earthly. Other bards 
 Man dressed in manners, customs, forms, and laws, 
 Time, place, appearance, countless accidents 
 Of peace or polity draw ; to him these are not ; 
 'Twas his to show, whate'er his doubts, sins, trials, 
 However earth-bom pleasures soil man's soul ; 
 What power soe'er he gain of evil, still. 
 That not alone till death time is, but heaven 
 Stands open day and night to spirit and man, 
 Ever ; for all are of God's race, and have 
 In themselves good. The life-writ of a hearty 
 Whose firmest prop and highest intent, the hope 
 
FESTUS. 465 
 
 Proffered of serving God as poet-priest ; 
 
 And the belief that he would not put back 
 
 Love-offering's, though brought to him by hands 
 
 Unclean and earthy even as fallen man's 
 
 Must be ; and most the thankful manifest 
 
 Of his high power and goodness, in redeeming 
 
 And blessing souls that love him, spite of sin, 
 
 And their old worldly strain, these are the aims, 
 
 The doctrines, truths, and staple of the story. 
 
 "VMiat theme sublimer than all soul being saved ? 
 
 Though it is not moral standards most, the bard 
 
 Is called to inculcate, such designs pertain 
 
 To other ministries, the law of life 
 
 His all-comprising province, yet he errs, 
 
 Who, faithful maybe to his higher end, •• 
 
 Unites not both in one symmetric plan, 
 
 Lofty and plain and pure as are the skies ; 
 
 All forms resolving to one element. 
 
 Our world-man's life, — the model of all men, ho 
 
 All in his fate involving, friends, loves, foes, 
 
 As draws the sun his children, circling round 
 
 Heaven's infinite, to his own eternal end ; 
 
 Being moralled wholewise, thus, and even in parts, 
 
 Which, though to careless eyes, like the winged stones, 
 
 Air-travelled, now on Saronian downs, convolved, 
 
 And in primaeval mystery, still, to eye 
 
 Trained worshipfully, reveal a holy use, 
 
 And meaning of a temple reared to God ; 
 
 While in all life's scenes and sections that is found 
 
 Which aiding thought of him, biTn whom the more 
 
 We obey and love, the nigher to are we drawn. 
 
 As by attraction spiritual, and growth 
 
 Of divine gravity, whereby the soul. 
 
 Though on things' outmost verge, elects to seek 
 
 Its central reason of being, all- where diffused. 
 
 Shows all that's good is deathless, as of God. ^ 
 
 For the world tells us manifestly of him, 
 
 As of my soul, flesh ; so our imperf ectness 
 
 Proves his perfection ; our atomic life. 
 
 His orbed totality of being. This told 
 
 For man's behoof in these and ultimate times, 
 
 The bard with eye f oreviewing gifted, shows 
 
 Instructive, how God reconciles to himself 
 
 All being. 
 
 Student. By purifying from ill all worlds? 
 I would not ask thy meaning, but that I know 
 Thy even lighter words have in them couched 
 Not rarely a double value ; and much convince 
 Of secret sanctity, like a golden toy 
 Mid beauty's orbM bosom ; speak thy thought. 
 
 Festus. Too oft have holiest bards defiant lU 
 Successful shown 'gainst God, Ours, truelier taught 
 
466 FE8TU8. 
 
 Holds not the Omnipotent self -doomed to succumb 
 
 'Neath evil and imperfection, sin, woe ; serfs 
 
 By him so made for ends sealed in their birth. 
 
 But, as when artist, skilled in feats of fire, 
 
 The mother-city of an empire shows 
 
 How, though heart-sick for slaughtered sons, she still, 
 
 May gladden her in the peace their swords have wrought : 
 
 The mimic comet at his signal soars 
 
 To invade the upper sphere ; and streams of fire 
 
 Blood-dyed, shot east and west, speak war, until 
 
 Tumultuous founts of flame, erewhile immasked, 
 
 Flare triumph to the stars ; then, with weird art, 
 
 He bids the skies shed showers of golden rain, 
 
 Of wealth pacific proof, or sheaves of light 
 
 Drop their bright grain ; token that while the rich 
 
 Reap, e'en the poor may glean life's goods ; or, roots, 
 
 Instant in air, a palm whose glittering cones 
 
 Seem culled by hand celestial, fruits of peace, 
 
 As peace of victory ; street, spire and dome, 
 
 With fire-jets gleam, in lines of lengthening light, 
 
 Vibrant, by playful gusts chased ; soothed in soul, 
 
 The night-thronged nations thunder their applause. 
 
 So he, heaven's war divine 'gainst falsest hell ; 
 
 Grod's conquest o'er Ill's ravenous hosts ; and grace. 
 
 And peace triumphant celebrates for man. 
 
 Now deathless, qualified for heaven by good. 
 
 Student. Ajid all begins and ends, thou sayest in heaven f 
 
 Helen. So gracious the bard's plan. 
 
 Festus. Yes, even as one 
 
 "Who sacring first his touch with waters blessed, 
 Some stateliest minster entered, breast and brow 
 Glistening with holy dew, from aisle to aisle, 
 Here, overshot with raftered sunbeams, there 
 With gorgeous lights begloomed, strays reverent ; all 
 Its spatial vastness, all its wonders notes ; 
 Arches of aspiration and command ; 
 Columns and carved curves which end, but seem 
 While ending blending with infinitude ; 
 Shrines and miraculous treasures, relics heired 
 From tutelar saints, ascended now ; views wrought 
 Immarmorate on the wall, the angelic poise 
 Of souls, earth's last assize ; or, floorwise traced. 
 Boundless, indevious as a law of God, 
 Her long degree of light, her beam in heaven, 
 Mid sistering spheres itinerant ; knees the slab 
 Luminous with gold aerial and all dyes 
 Oriel or rose transfuse in jewelled squares, 
 And gems gigantic as of paradise. 
 Imaginary, immortal ; nether crypt 
 Spectral, shrinks not to unnight ; nor risen, abhora 
 On prayerful knee, to scale sin-loosening stair, 
 Thrice sacred ; or with penitent foot o'erpace, 
 
FESTU8. 467 
 
 Beqneet of sterner faith, its myetio maze, 
 A knott€d league in length ; but, led, at last. 
 By many a winding step to the roof high spired, 
 Glimpses with thanks, the skies, and air unwalled, 
 Unincensed air, breathes gladliest ; so, man's soul 
 Time-travelled, all its hallowed wanderings o'er, 
 In the infinite presence ends of deity, — 
 The bard shows. 
 
 Student. Heaven's the birth of spirit ; the world 
 
 Passing, preparative only in its kind. 
 "We are but here the multiples of men. 
 Like seeds of thought and transient words of chance 
 WTiich, buried in the mind for days and nights, 
 Live to revive, and fructify in dreams 
 Of infinite power and import ; the round world 
 "VVe act in, shall itself but barely seem 
 To the soul a faltering reminigcence ; seem 
 Like a base thought across a cloudless prayer, 
 "Which rufiles it, not annuls ; and lo 1 the great 
 Artist, whose pictures live, expunges earth, 
 And on his easel there dawns another heaven. 
 
 Helen. These things to think of, life nobilitatea. 
 
 Festus. The sun, we may affirm, is dead and gone 
 For ever, and may swear he will rise no more ; 
 The skies may put on mourning for their god, 
 And earth heap ashes on her head ; but who 
 Shall keep the sun back, when he thinks to rise ? 
 WTiere is the chain shall bind him, where the cell 
 Shall hold him ? Hell he would bui-n down to embers ; 
 And would lift up the world with a lever of light, 
 Out of his way ; yet know ye 'twere thrice less 
 To do thrice this, than keep the soul from God. 
 O'er earth and cloud and sky and star and heaven. 
 With God it 'bides, uprisen as is a prayer. 
 O'erwearied with life's feints, and vain pursuits, 
 As some dim starlet, lost in maze of strange 
 Systems, retreats to heaven's securer depths, 
 Where luminary create hath never beamed. 
 So, indigent only of pure rest, the soul 
 Seals and secretes itself in deity. 
 
 Helen. Hush I 
 
 Kow lest we talk of nothing else all night, 
 I'll to my musia Sweet one, yes, I come. 
 Art thou not glad to see me ? What a time 
 Since I have touched thine eloquent fingers, white 
 As eminent ripples upon an elfin sea 
 Of sound. Hast thou forgot me ? mind I know'st not 
 My greeting? Ah I I love thee. Talk, you two, 
 Never heed me. I shall not you. 
 
 Student. Agreed 1 
 
 Helen. By the sweet muse of music, I could s^'ear 
 I do believe it smiles upon me. See it, 
 
468 FE8TU8, 
 
 Full of unuttered melodies, like a bird, 
 
 Articulative of sweetest notes, that seem 
 
 From each, other globed as musical droplets strung 
 
 On a string of silence, — beating time with wing 
 
 Strained heavenward, now, — now, slowly, groundwards eloped 
 
 Kich in invisible treasures, like a bud 
 
 Of unborn sweets, and thick about the heart 
 
 With ripe and rosy beauty, full to trembling. 
 
 I love it like a sister. Hark 1 its tones ; 
 
 They melt the soul within one, like a sword 
 
 Albeit sheathed, by lightning. Talk to me, 
 
 Lovely one ; answer me thou beauty. 
 Student. Hear her I 
 
 Helen. What said ye, sing again ? Your kindness well 
 
 Merits the raptures you are doomed to enjoy. 
 
 The rose is weeping for her love, 
 
 The nightingale ; 
 And he is flymg fast above, 
 
 To her he will not fail. 
 Already golden eve appears ; 
 
 He wings his way along ; 
 Ah ! look, he comes to kiss her tears, 
 
 And soothe her with his song. 
 
 The moon in pearly light may steep 
 
 The Btm blue air ; 
 The rose hath ceased to droop and weep, 
 
 For lo ! her love is there. 
 He sings to her, and o'er the trees 
 
 She hears his sweet notes swim; 
 The world may weary ; she but sees 
 
 Her love, and hears but him. 
 
 Fbstus. So to the flower of perfect life the world. 
 Sings the eternal spirit ; drinks its divine 
 Perfume, and comforts it with fluttering wings. 
 
 Student. That roses weep, is a botanic fact ; 
 A zoologic truth, that birds woo flowers. 
 
 Helen. 'Tween truth and fact, a world-wide difference lies ; 
 Earth is a fact, but heaven, oh heaven, is truth. 
 
 Festus. The spirit speaks of God in heaven's own tongue, 
 No mystery to those who love, but learned. 
 As is our mother-tongue from him, the parent, 
 By whom first fashioned, flesh and spirit, all forms 
 Of truth, and feelings of all kinds of beauty, — 
 Moral and natural, in our heart-clay stamped, 
 Bum with celestial pattern. It is in love, — 
 Earth midway sphered 'tween love and war, war's part 
 In poesie played, our bard hath most his work 
 Love's heart-book made, and made well nigh all grief ; 
 For the heart its truest likeness leaves in love's 
 O'erwhelming sorrow, which bums up and buries, 
 Like to the eloquent impress left, nor lost. 
 In ashes, of Pompeian maiden's bosom : 
 With love divine such blent. Though thin, though fleet 
 
FE8TU8. 48ft 
 
 Onr thoughts of God as ghosts, our thoughts of men 
 
 A.8 men, bold, yet the ideals personate, 
 
 The shadowy creatures youth dreams live in the world 
 
 Embodied, but invisible, save in mind's. 
 
 The mightier, lack not ; names believed, beloved. 
 
 Of beauteous souls all saved, which stand, perchance, 
 
 Who knows ? for the heart's desires made pure in heaven. 
 
 Student. How is't the world so falls below our hopes 7 
 
 Helen. The world I 'tis a forged thing, and hath not got 
 God's die ui)on it ; 'twill not pass in heaven. 
 
 Student. I might believe thee, and remain still proof 
 Against all soothsayers. 
 
 Festus. Pray now, cease, Ye twain 
 
 Jar ever ; even, as with two bickering swords. 
 Concurrence makes not harmony. 
 
 Student. Nay, I yield. 
 
 Helen. Oh I could stand and rend myself with rage 
 To think I am so weak, that all are so. 
 Mere minims in the music made from us, 
 "While I would be a hand, to sweep from end 
 To end, from infinite even to infinite, 
 The world's great chord. The beautiful of old 
 Had but to show some god had been with them, 
 And their worst fault to their best deed was hallowed. 
 That was to live. Could we uproot the passed, 
 Which grows and throws o'er us its chilling shade, 
 Lengthening each hour, and darkening ; or could we 
 Plant where we would the future, and make flourish, 
 'Twere to live, too. Enough, it seems, the present. 
 All weighed, to endure. The city of the passed 
 Is in ruins laid ; its echo echoing walls 
 At a whisper, fall : the coming's not yet built. 
 Nor laid even its foundations ; rather seems it. 
 Like the air-city, goodly and well-watered. 
 The dry wind dreams of on the sand, and dies 
 Wandering round it, and maundering ; we, our homes 
 Imaginary, cool courted, with alcoves 
 And fountains dropping in the noonlight, there 
 Waiting us, madly eye, and rave, and x)erish ; 
 Not seeing the desert present is our end. 
 
 Festus. End darkest have the brightest natures oft. 
 
 Student. Let us not speak so ominously ; but while 
 We live, work out our natures. We can do 
 No wrong in them ; they are divine, eterne. 
 I follow mine attraction, and obey 
 Nature as eai-th does, circling round her source 
 Of life and light, and keeping true in heaven 
 Her path, if perfect not in round. What is ? 
 
 Festus. True ; no prognostics, or we close our night 
 Too sadly, and go sleep, and dream of deaths. 
 Student. Dreams are mind-clouds, thought-forma, unshapen 
 and high. 
 
470 FE8TU8, 
 
 Or but Grod-shaped, like mountains, wliicli contain 
 Much and rich, matter, ofttimes not for us 
 But others' conscience, dreams being" rudiments 
 Of the great state to come. 
 
 Helen. But what's a dream 
 
 Of death ? Is that all ? Well, T too have had, 
 What all methinks have once at least, in life — 
 A vision of the reg-ion of the dead ; 
 It was the land of shadows : yea, the land 
 Itself was but a shadow ; and the race 
 Which seemed therein were voices, thoughts of forms, 
 And echoes of themselves. And there was nought 
 Of substance seemed, save one thing in the midst, 
 A great red sepulchre — a granite grave ; 
 Upon whose carven floor, and sides, inscored 
 With guise of things not known to breathing wight, 
 (Shapes of extinguished constellations, signs 
 Of flying fire-drake, sheathed in the iron down 
 Of demon wings, or medalled as with scales 
 Of flaked and flattened meteors ; or, mislimned 
 With endless curves maze-wise, like that pale slab 
 The Morbihan Main, in prehistoric tomb 
 HiU-isled, secretes inconstruable.) there lay 
 A ghostly skeleton from whose jaws, decaying 
 Ever ; its only sign of life its dying 
 Continuously, the shades were born ; some bright ; 
 And these went upwards heavenly ; dark were soma j 
 And those, born dark, grew darker and remained. 
 A land of change, yet did the half things nothing 
 That I could see ; but passed stilly on, 
 Taking no note of other, mate or child ; 
 For all had lost their love when they put ofE 
 The beauty of the body. And as I 
 Looked, I began to dream it was a dream ; 
 The grave before me presently backed away. 
 And I rushed after it : when the earth quaked twice ; 
 Opened and shut, like the eye of one, convulsed. 
 Then shut to with a shout. The grave was gone. 
 And in the stead there stood a gleed-like throne, 
 The ghostlings shook to see, and swooned ; for there, 
 Strange shapes were standing, loaded with long chains, 
 The links whereof were fire, waiting the word 
 To bind and cast the shadows into hell ; 
 For Death the second sat upon that throne, 
 Which set on fire the air not to be breathed. 
 And as he lifted up his arm to speak. 
 Fear preyed upon all souls, like fire on paper j 
 And mine among the rest, and I awoke. 
 
 Student. By Hades 'twas most awful. 
 
 Festus, * Pray to arcrt 
 
 The augury of such visions. 
 
 Student. But I too, 
 
FE8TU8. 471 
 
 Have dreamed strange things beyond the mind's clear grasp, 
 
 Beyond life's limits and the term of time, 
 
 And star-lamped palace of eternal night. 
 
 I dreamed time's system ended, like a day 
 
 Of celebrant victory rounded with a roar 
 
 Of jubilant thunder, which subsides at last 
 
 Into emphatic silence ; and the soul 
 
 Which had outlived the great creative week, 
 
 Those seven fair days the Pleiades of time. 
 
 Whereof if one be lost, 'tis lost in heaven, 
 
 Was rising from the ashes of the sun, 
 
 Assured of its divineness, to enjoy 
 
 Birth upon birth of glory and delight ; 
 
 When lo ! — a skiff upon a sea of fire, 
 
 Wearily ploughing, crossed my vision's disk ; 
 
 And straight it changed for ever and was nought. 
 
 And as I gazed upon the lucid void, 
 
 All things reframed themselves before mine eyes ; 
 
 And looking up aloft I heard in heaven 
 
 Young fluent Time discoursing of the worlds. 
 
 With starry diagrams on night's black board, 
 
 Most learnedly to many a lovely Hour, 
 
 Who fain would have delayed to hear him out ; 
 
 While wise Eternity sat by and smiled. 
 
 Waving them all away. 
 
 Festus. And Time though now 
 
 Old, withered, bald, stiU prates of them as I 
 Have heard him, his young Hours, his lilied lovea ; 
 And still his mighty mother, in serene 
 Maturity of beauty, sits and smiles ; 
 The infant dotard's inexperienced age 
 Sublimely pitying ; for well she knows, 
 Though time and life are both of dual kind, 
 And men and things now sacred and profane, 
 Yet in the coming all shall holy be ; 
 And the calm world reflect the One divine. 
 Peace is the end of all things, tearless Peace ; 
 Who by the immoveable basis of God's throne, 
 Takes her perpetual stand ; and, of herself 
 Prophetic, lengthens age by age her sceptre. 
 The world, like a lion dLsembi-uted, rid 
 With rose- wreathed reins, by a childling in some isle 
 Enchanted, shall be subject yet to love, 
 Earth's lord transforming ail, he, unsuspect. 
 
 Student. I shall be swift to read. 
 
 Festus. Yes read and leani 
 
 A hearty thanksgiving for blessings here ; 
 The proud prediction proved of life, to come ; 
 IjOvc, holiness, future bliss unlimited ; learn 
 To view in nature deity all diffused. 
 Her study ; and with earth's purest elements 
 Dlingle thy being ; sworn suitor for the smile 
 
472 FESTUB. 
 
 She pays all love with ; nor, until thine eye, 
 Hallowed by sympathy with her in all shapes 
 Fleeting or fixed, and every changeful mood, 
 Conceive her spiritually, believe thou aught 
 Knowest, or canst ; this conscious of, with heart 
 Loyal and reverent to the inmost soul, 
 And onemost cause of things, live blessed. For this, 
 The world hath said its say, for and against ; 
 And after praise and blame cometh the truth. 
 
 Student. And of all tr^ith, the most we prize we learn 
 From poesie, faculty inborn, except 
 From God derived not. 
 
 Festus. This condition add : 
 
 That as lauds attract the largesses of heaven, 
 As gifts God's bounties, purity his saints ; 
 So genius owes to his twin brother, toil, of fame, 
 And so called inspiration, most. As when 
 In planning some steel-rutted road, long years 
 Dreamed of, — where now the fire-horse ramps, steam-breath'dj 
 Sweating red coal-drops on his panting path, — 
 The deep-eyed engineer his level lays 
 Inscrutable, and anon, the hills with men, 
 Brood of his brain swarm ; black, unbottomed mosa, 
 And willowy dale with mattock gleam and axe ; 
 Or rock-hills, cleft as with a giant's club, 
 Groan loud ; but stealthily, and reach on reach, 
 The mighty work, elongating itself, 
 Glides dragon-like, nor, — save in litheliest curves, 
 Flexed, gracile, as the lines meridian heaven 
 Hath clustered polewards, — swerves ; till o'er the sea, 
 Victor by hill and chasm, broad stream and plain. 
 Cloud-plumed its iron- brow towers high, at last 
 With head works of all nations ranked ; so here, 
 His primal plan for others' weal, our bard, 
 Made wise by grief's infallible instinct, knew 
 Must grow in gradual grandeur, till by toil 
 Inevitable of art complete, man's calm 
 Approof it conquer ; and by conquering serve. 
 "Ks the soul's long service manwards, and toward God, 
 Which hath alone his inbreath, and is rendered 
 To him from those he worthy makes to worship ; 
 Who kneel at once to him, and at no shrine, 
 Save in the world's wide ear, do they confess them 
 Of faults all truths, through which, as the world follows, 
 He heareth and absolveth ; for the bard 
 Speaks but what all feel variously within 
 The heart's heart ; and the sin confessed, absolved. 
 Is done with, and for ever. Bards, to God, 
 The almighty poet of the world, confess ; 
 And they to whom it is given with holy things 
 To deal thus, and such privilege high partake, 
 Life individual with life's lord enjoy, 
 
FE8TU8. 473 
 
 Uplifted o'er the vast and markless mass ; 
 
 Yet not into a sphere of selfish thought, 
 
 But of innate and infinite commune 
 
 "With all creation ; for, as distance rules, 
 
 Behold the stars are suns, the sun a star ; 
 
 So they who near God, boundless hold his love; 
 
 Who far off lie, misdoubt it almost nought. 
 
 And I who hold the cle^ir and flawless faith, 
 
 Ancient and universal in the spheres, 
 
 Know earth was ta'en out of heaven's starry side, 
 
 And both blessed. Therefore am I joyful, here. 
 
 In the far to be our heirdom glitters. 
 
 Student. Say, 
 
 Thy friend, was he much seen of the world ? 
 
 Festus. No, truly. 
 
 Too oft men look on all who live askance. 
 Were he a cold grey ghost, he might have honour. 
 Nor thought he of himself save as a ghost. 
 Who sees in night his day. For the true bard, 
 And genius those most haunts who loneliest are. 
 In life and in desire, crowds never ; knows, 
 Kay, makes himself inevitably, ghostlike ; 
 He lives from men apart ; he wakes and walks 
 By nights, he puts himself into the world 
 Above him ; and he is what but few see. 
 Ko peace, choice, chance is his of happier being. 
 Till his secret told, the occult hoard he show. 
 Yet seeks he none, save of his own dear blood ; 
 Lets generations pass, till his like turns up ; 
 Nor him, unless with reverence brave bespoke, 
 Thin k s fit to inf eoff, his heir : for knows he not 
 He only, to that old hid treasure, truth ? 
 And the world wonders shortly how some one 
 Hath come so rich in soul. It little dreams 
 Of the poor ghost that made him. Each this spirit 
 Receives, transmits. But while inventive soul 
 The bearings and the workings of all things 
 Around, knows more than other ; knows all ends 
 Of nature meet and fit ; wit, wisdom, worth, 
 Goodness and greatness ; to sublimity 
 Beauty approachf ul ; and his purpose seems 
 But hesitantly to reach, he to himself 
 Lives in thought, secularly ; as a planet world 
 Labouring slowly seemingly up the void, 
 But with infinite pace to immortal eyes, and knowing 
 Who means the bard's great functions, must not sole 
 Be as nature perfect, but in art perfect ; 
 And himself measuring 'gainst pure mind, and high 
 Extolled above himself, will seek some theme 
 Where spiritual element most majestic shows. 
 All covering, not all constituting ; thought 
 Enkindling, as in some conflagrant wood, 
 
4/74, FE8TU8, 
 
 By lightning fired, or swept by liurricane's feet, 
 
 With whirlwinds winged, bough chafe bough, till all bum. 
 
 Like heaven's star-written prophesies : thus, conceive ; — 
 
 Time, shattered shadow of eternity, cast 
 
 On the troubled world as the sun shows brokenly 
 
 Upon wavelets, time, but a second to the dead. 
 
 Had seen elapse unconscious many an age ; 
 
 And the reek o' the world's great burning, o'er the sldeo 
 
 Trailed, was fast wearing into air away ; 
 
 When a saint stood before the throne, and cried, 
 
 Blessed be thou. Lord God of worlds that are, 
 
 Have been, and are to be ! for infinite like 
 
 With thy creation, their destruction, wise, 
 
 Just, thou, in both, — Give me a world. God gives ; 
 
 And the world was. How this new orb was made. 
 
 Show : where it shone ; who ruled, abode therein. 
 
 Worshipped, and loved ; their natures, duties, hopes ; 
 
 Let it be pure, wise, holy, beautiful. 
 
 If elsewise not, so made by stress of heaven, 
 
 Kindly forced good ; we have had enough of sin 
 
 And folly here to embrace even change of chains. 
 
 Show God as fatherlike, going thither mildly ; 
 
 All blessing, cursing none ; no need for those, 
 
 That he shall come in glory new to himself. 
 
 With light whereto the lightning's shall be shadow, 
 
 And the sun's, sadness ; borne on a car self -teamed, 
 
 High wheeled, of burning world, within whose rims 
 
 Whole hells glow ; and beneath whose course dry up 
 
 Like drops of dew, the starlets faint, of space. 
 
 Student. It is a theme I want. What theme remains ? 
 
 Festus. One that shall start and struggle within thy breast 
 Like to a spirit, in its tomb at rising. 
 Rending the stones, and crying ' Resurrection 1 ' 
 What theme remains I Thyself, thy race, thy love, 
 All sanctified, the faithless, and the full 
 Of faith in God ; thy race's destiny. Know 
 Every believer is God's miracle. 
 Blend all in one great holy work, which first, 
 A handful of eternal truth, shall men 
 A heartf ul, after, make ; bid bury with them : 
 Fair hands shall turn, idolatrous, and bright eyes 
 Sprinkle their sparkles o'er it with their tears. 
 The young, gay, brave shall seek 't with joy ; the old 
 Still hearty in decline, whose happy life 
 Hath blossomed downwards like the purple bell-flower. 
 Closing the book shall utter lowly ; death, 
 How little ! 'tis life in God that's infinite. 
 Believe thou art inspired, and thou art. 
 Behold the bard. He is wont to make, unite, 
 Believe ; the world to doubt and part and narrow 
 That he believes he utters. What the world 
 Utters, it trusts not. Pray we, time may come, 
 
FE8TU8. 4flS 
 
 When all who "would raise men's minds may be God inspired 
 To utter truth, and feel like love for men. 
 
 Student. One thing I'd know, thy friend's faith. 
 
 Festqs. Ah 1 I see. 
 
 Though cognizant of his temper, culture, taste, 
 We know not what a man is, till we know 
 What he believes ; that known, all's well-nigh known. 
 Well, this is what his faith was, faith in God. 
 It was right enough to ask. Thou art as one 
 Who roaming haply lands remote, arrived 
 At some strange gated city, whose domes and spires 
 While yet far off have piqued his spirit to learn 
 Its fabulous passed, its legendary renown, 
 Its present life, its people's exploits, tasks, toils. 
 Their haunts of pleasure, halls of science, art, 
 By pencil fine or chisel glorified. 
 The abodes of learning, catacombs of wit 
 And seminaries of thought he paces ; scans 
 Their courts of sacred justice ; tribune, throne, 
 Senate ; treads, pleased, the proud embattled keep 
 Of princely governance ; and yet longs, — all these 
 Seen, seen 1 — to view God's children at their best ; 
 And mark how high their flood of thought devout 
 Hath borne them up in their chief shrine of old, 
 By them prededicate to Divinity ; mind 
 Made holy, needs, seeks deity most ; so there, 
 Ingliding stilly, with the vespering sun. 
 Through curtained porch, the sanctuary within. 
 Welcomed by looks none but devout or kind, 
 He kneels ; thanks heaven for hourly mercies ; pleads 
 For a blessing upon those he loves, afar 
 Or near ; and thus with brethren worshipping 
 One Father, feels, whate'er their social claims 
 Art- wise, or civil, on man's just sympathies 
 Fraternal, spiritual, men each other know 
 Through fellowship best in God. But what his creed 
 I scarce dare say, so simple and brief it seemed ; 
 But as heaven high, as earth broad, it embraced 
 All souls of men. 
 
 Student. Poets, I think, henceforth 
 
 Are the world's best teachers ; mountainous minds, their heads 
 Are sunned, long ere the rest of earth. I would 
 Be one such. 
 
 Festus. It is well. Bum to be great 
 
 Each mountain stands inspired as touching heaven. 
 But pay not praise tc loftiest things alone. 
 The plains are everlasting as the hills. 
 Revere Grod's order everywhere. And now, 
 Thou hast heard thus much from one not wont to give 
 Nor seek advice, remember whatsoe'er 
 Thou art as man, suffer the world ; 'twas thus 
 God made ; entreat it kindly, and forgive. 
 
476 FE8TUS. 
 
 Tliey who forgive most sliall be most forgiven. 
 Dear Helen, I will tell thee what I love 
 Next to thee ; — poesie. 
 
 Helen. What ! can there be 
 
 Aught even second to me in thy love ? 
 Doth it not distance all things ? 
 
 Festus. Sooth to say, 
 
 I once loved many things ; ere I met with thee, 
 My one blue break of beauty in the clouds, 
 Bending" thyself to me as heaven to earth. 
 Even now 'tis variable, this love. To-night, 
 It is, as thou seest : to-morrow — 
 
 Helen. Well ? j 
 
 Festus. Oh, nothing. M 
 
 Helen. Mine, too, moonlike may seem to lessen or grow, ■ 
 
 Because not visible all at once. But felt 
 Trulier by me in inmost consciousness, 
 It knows no night, nor morrow, like the sun. 
 Unchangeable even as space, it still shall be 
 When yon bright suns, in time's great hour-glass, what 
 But sands 1 are run out. 
 
 Festus. Without woman, man's 
 
 But half man ; and as idolaters their gods 
 Heavenless, we deify first what we adore. 
 
 Student. It is not idolatry life looks most for now. 
 There's work at hand, which, not achieved, I'd look 
 Simply on life as keeping me from God, 
 Stars, heaven, and angels' bosoms. I lay ill : 
 And the dark hot blood pulsed, plunging through and through me. 
 They bled me and I swooned ; and as I seemed 
 To die, a soft sweet sadness seized my soul, 
 That made me feel all happy. But my heart 
 Would live, and rose and wrestled with the soul, 
 Twining around it as a snake an eagle, 
 WTiich stretched its wings and strained its strength in vain. 
 Mine eyes unclosed anon, and I looked up. 
 And saw the sweet blue twilight and one star, 
 One only star in heaven, I felt I had been 
 Quite near to, hoveringly ; and then I wished 
 I had died and kept to it ; but, my pulse revived, 
 Was glad I lived to love life once again. 
 And so our souls turn round upon themselves 
 Like orbs upon their axles ; what was night 
 Is day ; what day, night ; God will guide us on ; 
 Body and soul, through life and death. 
 
 Helen. Our life 
 
 Is comely as a whole ; nay, something more ; 
 Like rich brown ringlets, with odd hairs all gold. 
 We women, have four seasons, like the year. 
 Our spring is in our lightsome girlish days, 
 When the heart within us laughs for simplest joy | 
 Ere yet we know what love is, or the ill 
 
FE8TUS. m 
 
 To be loved by those we love not. Summer is, 
 When loving and beloved, we double our life, 
 And seems short ; from its very splendour seems 
 To pass the quickliest ; crowned with flowers it flies. 
 Autirtnn, when some young- thing with tiny hands. 
 Cheeks rosy and bright, and flossy tendrilled locks, 
 Is wantoning about us day and night. 
 And winter is, when these so loved, have perished, 
 If we ourselves depart not ere that time, 
 For the heart ices then. And the next spring 
 Is in another world, if such world be. 
 Some miss one season, some another. This 
 Shall have them early, and that late ; and yet 
 The year wear round with all as best it may. 
 There is no rule for it ; but in the main 
 It is as I have said. 
 
 Festus. My life with thee 
 
 Is like a song ; and the sweet music thou 
 "Which doth accompany it. 
 
 Student. Tell me, did thy friend 
 
 "Write aught beside the work thou tellest of ? 
 
 Festus. Nothing. 
 
 Thereafter, like the burning peak he fell 
 Into himself, and was missing evermore. 
 
 Student. If not a secret, pray, who was he ? 
 
 Festus. "^lio ? 
 
 I say not, I. 
 
 Helen. Guess I 
 
 Student. Nay, it is passed all gncss. 
 
^8 FE8TU3, 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Philosophy hath her initiates, skilled 
 
 To measure reason's powers ; to yield and ask ; 
 
 To steadily stand on proven truths ; nor seek 
 
 Too much to prove ; to adjust the self poised mind 
 
 "With world necessities, and free aid extend 
 
 To Heaven's beneficent order. Sound nor sign 
 
 Nor graspable test is hers, save grasp of mind ; 
 
 Fixed aim to goodwards ; liberal sense of truth. 
 
 As permeating life's various spheres ; but one, 
 
 Identic, indivisible ; predisposed 
 
 To assent to law, where found ; in world, or mind, 
 
 Soul that hath once attained as some attain, 
 
 With fateful knowledge of futmity, 
 
 Faith, fuU assured that from time's crowned womb, 
 
 "Whate'er is bom, comes kingly ; and so feels. 
 
 As by an upward sifting process, things 
 
 All wisest, oest, as God meant, must at last 
 
 Eeign, and reign permanently ; full soon perceivea 
 
 All secondary knowledge pall. To such 
 
 Eule, rite, sign, symbol, aU have ceased to fruit. 
 
 Wlio knows the eternal secrets of the stars 
 
 Hath touched the quick of aU faiths ; knoweth all 
 
 "Worth knowing ; though wise faith all known transcends. 
 
 Apartment in Mansion. Festus, Helen, Lucitee, Student, 
 entering. JSventide, 
 
 Festus. Urge me no more. 
 
 Lucifer. Good, I am silence self 
 
 When need be. 
 
 Festus. I will think of it, 
 
 Helen. At last I 
 
 Welcome, Sir Student ; I have news for thee. 
 Thou art with us invited to partake 
 Truth's mysteries. 
 
 Student. I am loyal to the bond 
 
 I hold. 
 
 Helen. These, mental merely, claim nor rank, 
 Nor rivalry with such : or I were not. 
 Like Grecian maid and matron of times gone, 
 Wise as their mystic masters and like oathed. 
 Admitted 'mong the sacred band. 
 
 Festus. Our friend, 
 
 Minding him of thy longing for all light 
 Of knowledge, and my sovereign beauty's, here, 
 Hath proffered to procure us without pain 
 Of probatory tests, due but from souls 
 Less highly elate, the privileges revived, 
 As shown spectacular to the elect of earth, 
 Those who in eld time holiest orgies held 
 Of rare and reticent wisdom, versed in lore 
 Of many a land ; and ritual more august 
 If pompless outward, owned ; and who, while creed 
 
FESTUa. 4IJ9 
 
 Of no external etate, idolatrous, 
 Ck)uld claim all verity, such, at least some few 
 From each, might glory in ; a faith more choice, 
 More perfect function, and more blessed belief 
 Profess delightful ; and be justified. 
 
 Student. The like it may be I acknowledge true 
 Ever and now. 
 
 Helen. Wnt therefore with us share 
 
 This priceless privilege ? 
 
 Student. Gladly ; and the more, 
 
 As earnestly concerned with special rites, 
 Less diverse in their origin than the end 
 Some of us toil to extend 'mongst men, and mean, 
 By earth enlightening inwardly, to achieve 
 In the end, outwardly. 
 
 Helen. Success be thine. 
 
 Student. Son doubtless of the oak and rock, Fd know. 
 Art thou not now initiate of the truth, 
 And her great cause ? 
 
 Helen. Say, art thou perfect ? 
 
 FESTua Scarce 
 
 An answer, that, fair lady of the light. 
 
 Our friend would learn our moral lineage. Wait. ^ 
 
 "What kinship hast thou with thy Lord ? 
 
 Student. Most near. 
 
 Grod's Son was Adam, Adam's Son am I. 
 
 Festus. What is thy life's chief end and business, here ? 
 
 Student. Bom free, 'tis mine ambition most to serve : 
 Serve Grod and man. 
 
 Festus. Enough : true brethren we. 
 
 But, hear. To wisdom's lover, self -elect 
 Man most to serve, and aid Heaven's best designs 
 Of faith in God, and earth's best, noblest laws 
 Each other must confirm, and all unite 
 In crowning our humanity ; and to a soul 
 Burning to view truth's light diffused o'er earth ; 
 Know all good stands, in order and degree. 
 Degrees there are in wisdom, without end ; 
 Truth apt to all ; but to soul passed all grades, 
 From all obedience to command of all, 
 What rite or rule prerequisite can be ? 
 His being, is the preparation claimed. 
 And who so lives not as the Master lived, 
 Time's great Initiate here of life divine, 
 In the dry wilderness of self-denial 
 Beset, it may be, by wild passions, sins 
 Brutelike ; by demons, in the forms of fame 
 Power, beauty, tempted ; worship, wealth ; craft ; anghfc 
 That could the truth-pledged soul in its serene 
 Progression towards Grod's throne, one hour deflect 
 To aims base, selfish ; and who, trampling these 
 Feels not God's sanction, nor the conscious worth 
 
480 FE8TU8, 
 
 Of one long ministered to by angel hopes', 
 
 Winged witli the spirit of comfort from high Heaven, 
 
 Filling the craving mind with food celestial ; 
 
 Greater or les8 than Saint and Spirit elect. 
 
 Hath nought, or most of perfect manhood, tried 
 
 In God's soul cleansing fires, consuming sin. 
 
 If most, and life no fulling needs, how rare ! 
 
 'Tis well ; if nought, and the aspirant fail, one tef5t, 
 
 One only lawed ; and lured by sensuous baits 
 
 By lucre, luxury, worldly pomp, or power, 
 
 Idolatrous worship, now of many a god. 
 
 Now of but one fictitious, false, he falls 
 
 Into that inner dark of spirit, the pit 
 
 Of boastful ignorance, pit of trembling ; pit 
 
 Lit only by the light of serpents' eyes 
 
 And the sad brood of dragons watching hoards 
 
 Of wealth imaginary as faerie gold : 
 
 There wandering desolately, and self-condemned, 
 
 Till renovative times bid hope revive. 
 
 But who so rational conquereth self, how blessed ! 
 
 All that he once subdued, he now enjoys. 
 
 Proud of his Aid, though humble in himself, 
 
 Lion of God, he all attacks o'ercomes 
 
 Of f ascinative fraud, or fiercest force. 
 
 A proffered throne to steal away his soul 
 
 Into bypaths of treachery, and bewray 
 
 The secret truth, supremely sweet, he spurns, 
 
 Whose crown is God, perfector he of souIm. 
 
 All souls, of God born, and the mother faith 
 
 They are bred, and nursed in, are Heaven's citizens. 
 
 The king hath many a hundred handmaidens, 
 
 All sharers in his worship, of his love. 
 
 Others may thirst to know more. I all know 
 
 I would know. Who, I pray, can teach me truths 
 
 More sure, choice, comforting, broadlier based, than mine, 
 
 Of spirit divinely graduate ; being's grand 
 
 Development upwards ; and the instructed soul s 
 
 Humane and generous judgment of the world, 
 
 Though error fouled, by patient penitence 
 
 Compassing peace ; by peace, perfection ? Man, 
 
 Like some offencef ul god of old debarred 
 
 For a time the heavenly mount, his penance passed, 
 
 Returning exile of eternity 
 
 And cognizant of celestial kindred, friends, 
 
 And scenes celestial, finds him further met 
 
 With Heaven's all pardoning welcome, and this hails, 
 
 In suctt'alike the true and false, joy's sum, 
 
 And seal of all felicity ; so too, know, 
 
 This kno-\vn, there is nothing much to learn beyond* 
 
 Yet are they who would teach me more. 
 
 Lucifer. None knows 
 
 So much he can't know more. 
 
I 
 
 FE8TU8. 481 
 
 FESTCra. I know not that. 
 
 Helen. Cliill not our souls with negatives. 
 
 Student. Say, *' I come," 
 
 It's to be hoped, like man-gods, we'll survive. 
 
 FE8TU8. Say, then, I come. These mysteries are, if truth's, 
 Then wisdom's. 
 
 Student. Both in spirit are one. 
 
 Helen. I long to see a spirit. 
 
 Lucifer. Thou shalt see. 
 
 Student. Ere yet the coming sun-feast, my comperrs. 
 Grave sponsors of man's thousands, me elect 
 To a modest grandeur only the humble heart 
 Knows to use rightly ; whence long-brooded plans 
 Soon to be realized I for one may help 
 Project ; which shall astonish earth, and bless ; 
 Of peaceful revolution through all lands. 
 Not more complete subversion of all place 
 Our orb makes, spinning round its axis, firm, 
 And as a star-beam fine, than our fresh change, 
 Our free felicitous order, soon to be 
 Installed, shall bring to pass on every race 
 Of man ; on every realm and tribelet known ; 
 A world-wide change pacific ; all state powers 
 To one sole hand transferred, and by such use 
 Transfigured into peace, once and for aye 
 Mankind's, how bright henceforth his course ; abjured 
 War's waste of wealth, time, thought and life ; what swift 
 Advance shall mark man's un conceived career 
 Upon his moral orbit, purer so 
 Than the eternal azure earth hath tracked 
 From the beginning, of commutual trust. 
 And prospering perfectness. 
 
 Helen. Thought such as this 
 
 Dazzles the mind ; distracts with joy. 
 
 Student. But know, 
 
 Distraught one, whose fair life is as a star's, 
 Gjuchant in purple space, things mightiest most, 
 Originated of order, in themselves 
 Their due results evolve, hence all the use 
 Of wealth, by friends, not far remote, supplied, 
 Earth seems to have swallowed, nor acception signed. 
 Think not I have ceased to feel with the old adept, 
 Though he for ends impossible wrought and sought 
 With worldly selfishness ; nor looked passed art's 
 Sway o'er the world of greed ; while we who know 
 What riches self subdual can achieve 
 For others ; what vast stores of moral good. 
 Social and mental, wealth used widely yields. 
 Know he's a thrice great fool who makes not glad 
 In the advance men owe to simple gold. 
 And now nor gold nor gems earth's surface strew ; 
 They must be sought within. It is there Earth hid»n 
 
 B 
 
482 FESTUa, 
 
 Her choicest gifts. 
 
 Helen. Go tlien, good dragon ; brood 
 
 O'er all thy secret living wealth., and plana 
 By golden leverage to uplift the globe 
 Into a loftier sphere ; nor there forget 
 To raise thyself. 
 
 Lucifer. We'll not forget. 
 
 Student. Farewell. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Soul's minor mysteries shown by lig'ht of faiths 
 None wholly false, imperfect, all : the true 
 No secrecies hath, no ritual. But not all 
 "Who love truth, and are brave to seek, are free 
 To find. Who curiously, else unprepared, 
 Force themselves into her presence, earth 
 Not ripe yet for her advent, perish ; fruit 
 Untimely fallen, Death's harvest home begins. 
 Be the first fruits holy, let us hope, to God. 
 One of our fair ones di-eadly quits life's field, 
 And he, the enthusiast friendhest, what of him ? 
 Precipitate as a comet when it dips 
 Below the undulant edge of the keen sea, 
 Smoothly seiTate as Indian dag, he ends. 
 How near is utterest failure to success. 
 Ambitious of all excellence, he no more 
 Save in his life-work like the luminous shade, 
 Sign heavenward of earth's progress 'mong the spheres, 
 From the equinoctial towering high, at eve, 
 , Lightens our orbital task : or by report 
 
 And inference, only. Ambition's hero-ends 
 In view, its means no longer needed, love 
 Nor friendship, but by ceasing, aid. The spuit 
 Of woe foretells, and lo ! it comes to pass. 
 
 A ItocTiy Promontory overluinging tlie Sea. Festus, alone. 
 Afterwards Lucifer. Midnight, Moonlight* 
 O starry harp of Heaven, poet's star 1 
 To man prophetic ; since wild earth hath changed 
 Her astral aim, of worlds to will supreme 
 Attuned, and soul from death's numb hand redeemed, 
 God wards ; once more, once more in thankful joy, 
 Through midnight's mighty silence, the divine 
 Vibrations of thy world-strung chords I hear. 
 Theirs is the strength of ages. Infant time 
 Smote on them playful, and the eternal toy 
 Decks, still, heaven's aery halls. Thou, still, unchecked, 
 And changeless, circlest round God's feet ; to us 
 Of life triumphant sign o'er sleepf ul death 
 Eternal, and necessity colleagued 
 In pact resistless, save to spirit inspired 
 
FESTU8. 483 
 
 Of love, whereto our most of joy and grief 
 
 We owe ; soul-testing ; sacred both. For here, 
 
 If fate our sovran rule ; in worlds to come 
 
 Necessity shall be thrall to us divine ; 
 
 We homaging her each separately ; but one 
 
 With God, collectively, her liege. So shown 
 
 Life's full communion with its Lord, let joy, 
 
 By his touch imparted, through thy starry strings, 
 
 Harp of God's hand, thrill, he all creatural' straiixa 
 
 Ruling and rectifying to his own ends. 
 
 Perchance, in after times, in some far sun. 
 
 Less conscious than our serpent-coiled orb. 
 
 Whose guilty heart, ghost haunted, leaps with f oar 
 
 At all faith's innocent spectres as they pass, 
 
 Eyeing as now yon sacred shape, the soul 
 
 With thy predictive legend pleased, shall view 
 
 All Heaven rejoicing in perfection ; all 
 
 Spheres worshipful of God ; all liberty 
 
 Love's law whereon the world's wide walls are built, 
 
 In harmonies based, become the law of life, 
 
 Which all intelligence, passion-tamed shall sue 
 
 To live consentient with, and mind supreme ; 
 
 God's peace o'er arching nature's strife. But me 
 
 Bright harp ! let gladden in looking on thee, moro 
 
 In this augurial, that as he of old 
 
 Legendary, who bare thee upon his breast, 
 
 By sweet extortion of thy starry strains, 
 
 The Hadean powers compelled his spouse to yield, 
 
 One moment's glimpse of life regenerate ; boon 
 
 Of gods, disastrous, and of dim record ; 
 
 Man yet in happier juncture, buried faith, 
 
 His spiritual bride, by pity of deity, 
 
 Shall show redeemed to life for aye. Could now 
 
 Mortal, that bright feat emulate ? 
 
 LuciPEB. Thou wouldst not 
 
 Fail, doubtless, in intent. But destiny 
 As here thou hast felt, hath heavy hands, and strong 
 Escapeless grasp. Well, he is sensitive 
 Who can from stars comfort though cold, extract, 
 And out of fables truth. 
 
 Festus. Each soul his star 
 
 Of evil or good predominant hath ; but me 
 All heavens betoken woe. 
 
 LuciPEB. Deeds before words, 
 
 I half suspect I know what thou wouldst say, 
 But saying soothes full oft the soul sore tried. 
 Bay on. I have time enough for others' dole. 
 Let be mine own. 
 
 Festus. Bride of my heart, woe I 
 
 One instant see I thee both quick and dead. 
 O mystery of most sad bereavement. This 
 It t« racks me to the core. The good, wise, kind, 
 
 B 2 
 
484 FESTUa, 
 
 Why Bnatched away, when prized, when needed most ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Calm and command thy soul. 
 
 Festub. I will. Allured 
 
 By hope-fraught promises thy words conveyed 
 Of revelations of the light occult, 
 I, long, in kind reserve, deemed fitlier hid, 
 We with our studious friend at his request. 
 Thrice urged, went forth to meet him named by theo, 
 Sunseer ; but whom the desolate end of all 
 Proved rather dread adept of daxknesses. 
 It was the hour of stars. Spring's crescent sphere 
 Followed the vanishing footsteps of her lord 
 For that she loved the light ; 'twas eve, I said, 
 As thou wouldst have. I had marked the setting sun 
 Calling all kindred glories of the world, 
 All friendly royalties, earth, sea and air, 
 To attest his end imperial, for that they 
 Must likewise learn to die, who came and stood 
 Round his orbed bier, death-hallowed ; came too, thara. 
 Nature as earth's high priestess fain to skreen 
 The death-throes of titanic light, and drew. 
 From side to side of Night's vast sanctuary, 
 And o'er heaven's blood-dyed altar, with the fires 
 Flushed of faith's evening sacrifice, a veil 
 Celestial, of all hues, rose, amber, peai-1. 
 Lilac, and palest green ; like a faint thought, this, 
 A half reluctant memory interfused 
 With dreams, of earth in paradise ; far round 
 The impurpling sea fiood, fired with opaline gleams 
 Heaved, as though pondering every wave ; below, 
 Our feet, rough, ruddying crags ; the horizon barred, 
 As of a vizor'd enemy come to mock, 
 Its beams of blinding gold shot lancewise forth. 
 In permanent Kghtnings, levelled as to pierce 
 The dying sun-god ; high o'erhead the while 
 Heaven's boundless, stainless blue, star-glinting, flecked 
 With crimsoned featherings of night's shadowy wing, 
 Pure, peaceful, all consoling. Fell round us, 
 Now prayerful, twilight swift, and as we sped, 
 By wild rough windings, through a holy land 
 Of earliest solar worship, solemnized 
 In prehistoric eld, the age of fire. 
 They, heartfull of expectancy ; I, in aught 
 That might to us conduce of permanent weal, 
 Or wisdom, save to soul, long taught of truth, 
 Untrustf ul ; and woe's me ! how fate confirms 
 All saddest premonitions ; deep in thought ; 
 Mute, save in whispered wordlets, or mere signs, 
 A hill we reach, by moonrise, on whose head 
 Hearselike, a sable grove nodded. We mount ; 
 And midway the ascent, descending, strike 
 A foot-road, forked like a divining rod, 
 
FE8TU8. 
 
 Whose dexter branch we track until we near 
 
 A stone of worship, sun devote, which us 
 
 Shrining- within its shadow, struck to the heart 
 
 A holy chill ; while round its base, earth-tombs 
 
 Crowd, waves immovable of a sea of death, 
 
 Thee wait we long time here ; and whiles, this rock 
 
 As maenhir, still by Keltic spouse adored, 
 
 Babeless, who oft, with lank and fawning breasts, 
 
 In aid of hoped-for motherhood, secretly, 
 
 At moony midnight, frets its bossy chine ; 
 
 Which rustic's eye now shuns ; but most abhors 
 
 By ghostly twilight, deeming fiend transformed, 
 
 This rock, thrice circling we, as type of ours, 
 
 Sun spiritual, supreme rock, hail, hand-linked. 
 
 Thence pressing on, breathless, a dell we near. 
 
 Wherein secreted lay, below a tall 
 
 And rugged precipice, a glassy pool. 
 
 Like an enchanted mirror in the breast 
 
 Hid of a dreadful wizard, of all speech 
 
 Disdeignf ul, ere he prove his threatened power ; 
 
 And glowering nigh the foot of the imminent cli5 
 
 Adverse, a cave, but late discoverable 
 
 And, save to us, unknown. Accosted here 
 
 By one who kept the shadow of the rock ; 
 
 In semblance favouring most the Samian Seer, 
 
 As graven in classic gem ; his pendent beard 
 
 Parted i' th' midst ; of amber hue its waves 
 
 Like as of fluent spar, in falling caught 
 
 Upward ; and flung o'er either shoulder, curved, 
 
 Typhonian fell, he, us receiving, back. 
 
 As we advanced, withdrawing, heads us all 
 
 Sagewise ; and as the outer world we quit, 
 
 A blast premonitory caused groan the groves 
 
 O'erhead ; while underfoot, more startling still. 
 
 Earth tremblings, and choked thunderpeals, in vain 
 
 Ejaculated just warning, at hia sign ; 
 
 For who on earth long taught by wisdom, truth, 
 
 But would, in silence most excelling, most 
 
 Encouragingly indulge ; the hour at hand 
 
 Of seasonable discourse ? We enter, each 
 
 Passive, none hopeful, as it seemed ; nor once. 
 
 From first to last was joy a moment there, 
 
 As one believed might be ; but all severe 
 
 Or solemn was ; head bared and naked foot, 
 
 We our hands plunged in purifying rill 
 
 Which o'er its couch, pale alabaster, veined 
 
 With glittering purple glode, now wade ; our act 
 
 Threefold, so intimating that not alone 
 
 The initiate from the world, its walks, its works. 
 
 Must pass, made pure ; but soul, through defluent things 
 
 Of time and change, must cross to things eteme, 
 
 Substantial, spiritual, fixed. A strait anon 
 
486 FE8TU8. 
 
 Jaggred and dark, dragged tlirough, we enter, crouclied, 
 
 A cave high pitched, a cave of caves involved, 
 
 Vault after vault, outbranching without end ; 
 
 Not that unlike bordering on the heavenly coasts, 
 
 "Where, in the sub-celestial empire, hid 
 
 His head the offended sun ; till wooed by gods, 
 
 And sued by men prostrate, so feign the bards 
 
 And bonzes of Zipang, his staff of light. 
 
 He seized, and reassumed his rolling throne ; 
 
 An underworld abyssmal, excavate 
 
 Of nature, but in time, by those indwelled 
 
 Whom hall nor tower could home ; but where of old, 
 
 If sere tradition, and what wiselier shows ? 
 
 Err not, such time as, fire-drake of the seas, 
 
 Leviathan ; huge Behemoth, and the Boar, 
 
 In vain demolished, on the morrow whole ; 
 
 Ill's choicest type, light's conqueror ; deinother, 
 
 Dreadest of brutes, limbed oaklike ; and whose teeth 
 
 As tombstones showed ; aurochs, and elk enorme, 
 
 Whose antlers, than an oarsman's oars well plyed, 
 
 Spread widelier ; mammoth huge, and mastodon ; 
 
 (These dying, deigned not fall ; but bidding earth 
 
 Close o'er them, and it would, grim sepulture, 
 
 By glacial Lena, or Nerbuddah's banks, 
 
 Or Mississippian swamps, made they, erect, 
 
 And their own osseous monument ;) compeers 
 
 Of animal life, held main and plain, abode, 
 
 The prediluvian giants of the land ; 
 
 Of race dispersed throughout earth ; and as sons 
 
 Of angels fallen, not all unskilled to instruct 
 
 Mankind in truth, if following most the false j 
 
 Among whom one, for even of giants worse 
 
 And better were ; his people's soothsayer ; 
 
 Spared mercifully for fitter ends to come ; 
 
 Forewarned by the Ark-man's truly boding voice, 
 
 And smote with shame for wrongs long since by him 
 
 Wrought, or his race, sole penitent he, 'gainst men ; 
 
 To mountains deeplier based, and earlier snowed, 
 
 And loftier than Ararat, earth had borne 
 
 Heavenward, 'scaped scatheless ; and remorseful baro 
 
 God's aqueous curse ; thence following falling floods, 
 
 And covering continents with his stormy stride. 
 
 Sought out mid Albion's hills, his kindred's home 
 
 Erstwhile, his life millennial in these scenes 
 
 Of carven prophesy, here, on man's behalf 
 
 Wore out, and predivulged in speaking stone ; 
 
 Eaxjh, men and giants, ignorant, that should these, 
 
 By Thamiel taught the star-lore of the skies ; 
 
 By Azael secrets none but he had gained 
 
 Ineffable, all they had learned, propound, and men 
 
 Here, on the impending wall opposed, beheld I 
 
 Had such received ; and then, all earth's veriest truths, 
 
FE8TU8. 
 
 By sa^ philosophy earned, by care and search ; 
 
 Pure intuition toilless, preconceived ; 
 
 Celestial inspiration, held from first ; 
 
 Or reason, simply greater than all else, 
 
 Led back triumphant from doubt's lessening realms, 
 
 That God to know, is best of things ; and aught 
 
 Of knowledge else, art, science, nothing worth ; 
 
 Petty and paltry pilferers of man's time ; 
 
 All human wit made useless, might, like flower 
 
 Withered ere blooming time, have lightened never 
 
 Out of its sheath, to adorn, our starry world. 
 
 Wondering we stood, and still. His hands then smote 
 
 Our Arch-mage, and the thunder of his palms 
 
 Re-echoing palpably o'er head, a gush 
 
 Of blinding lightnings diowed us now the roof 
 
 A glimmering void, spar starred, where travelling lights, 
 
 Like planetary seats of social gods, 
 
 By craft titanic f ulmined into shape, 
 
 Self -levered fabrics of artistic fixe. 
 
 Mysterious moved ; through whose bright art we read 
 
 The awful wonders of that uneyed sphere ; 
 
 Where, as though Nature craved to represent, 
 
 In shows of time, eternal verities, 
 
 That she the scions of the wise might teach 
 
 In one vast visible lecture things to come 
 
 Things passed, things present, here insculped were seen. 
 
 Wrought out from primal matter, nebulous. 
 
 As in marmoreal epic, time's career 
 
 Imperfect, necessary, but deed by deed 
 
 O'erruled, the marvels of the All-causal hand, 
 
 And end of man perfectible. Here we viewed 
 
 The first essay of force to form in laws 
 
 Symmetric, of stability preordained 
 
 The mountain playthings of the infant sun ; 
 
 And in maturity his alfiliate sphei-es ; 
 
 Promoted or pervert in after times. 
 
 To mind's abstractions deified, or the heart's ; 
 
 Here, wrought in stony flames, the age of fire ; 
 
 Earth, now, one vast volcano vomiting forth 
 
 Her continents ; after, gradually accrete 
 
 By moist alluvial, cloud-bom ; and her seas 
 
 Of sand ; the thunder-haunted mountains, troda 
 
 By Time's comminutive foot to flint-dust ; now, 
 
 Islands extemporizing in a breath. 
 
 Grouped, there, the Preadamic races, huge ; 
 
 By age of fire swept off, or water ; Heavtn 
 
 The world revising at the flood ; and doomed 
 
 To swell some second chaos with their wrecks 
 
 Sublime. Enormous and now fabulous shapes 
 
 Cross-peopling all the elements ; winged bulls ; 
 
 Stags star-yoked, which lead mom an endless chact 
 
 Sad gryphon, eagle su-ed and lion bom ; 
 
488 FESTU8, 
 
 Unslumbering goldward, jealous of all gems : 
 And those commingled births whom Belus smote 
 Headless, and drowned in gore ; his mission here. 
 Mild rokh, simorgh, wise sun-spirit ; all these 
 In converse amiable now graved, now wroth ; 
 In lifelike petrifactions crowd the walla. 
 The heavenly age, the age of Paradise, 
 Here glowed in gold- veined marbles, darkened sole 
 By angel treason, and the fall of gods. 
 Earth conscious first condoled with, and still rues. 
 Here, symboUed by the thousand branched tree, 
 From whose broad boughs hang constellated gifts 
 And every wish delicious of the heart ; 
 The tree of life, there, deathless ; and of all 
 Create, significant ; from heaven's free air, 
 To death's imprisoning roots, and hell's ; but else, 
 Withered too soon ; and, here, with meteor wave 
 Surging, the all-obliterative flood. 
 Thereto next limned in adamantine lines 
 The age of evil when unto angel hands, 
 To sceptred Satael, and to Samael crowned, 
 Chiefs of the original hiemrchies of heaven 
 And, their base compeers of the mountain oath, 
 Virtue and leave were given to deluge earth 
 With woes all optional ; shadow and reverse 
 Of every good gift Grod had showered on man ; 
 Now checked by pain or nullified by fine 
 On every blessing. Swiftly malignant these 
 Embittering every element with death, 
 Taught men the lust of war, heart's thu-st of blood ; 
 Gave reptile, insect, herb venom ; and poured 
 In earth's veins poison mineral ; neath the hills 
 The motive powers of earthquakes rooted ; sowed 
 Death's seeds explosive ; angered air with storms j 
 These made the hollow columns of the sea, 
 And lofty as the tower of glass that rose 
 Mid ocean sudden by the astounded barque 
 Of Partholoin, straight helmed for leme's isle ; 
 Those, watery pillars death-black, oft that burst 
 Swollen, nigh ship becalmed on sweltering seas 
 Beneath the hot line ; and ere now have quenched 
 The life-light in some fugitive skiff escaped, 
 Like truant cygnet from its parent sail, 
 Stealthy on lawless quest ; in marble such 
 Portrayed with industry malicious ; there, 
 Incised in mellow Parian ; those, intent 
 To teach rebellion 'gainst all law divine, 
 To man and angel foes, the lightnings forged, 
 He who of right owns all made, after claimed, 
 Wrapped in authentic thunders, and by hands 
 Angelic, Usdom wracked with the grim towns 
 In salt slime sleeping neath the sea of death. 
 
FESTUa. 
 
 These, fell disease contagious pest and plagne ; 
 
 Here, these as teaching gnileful in dark cell 
 
 Secrete, the cruel craft of sorceries ; 
 
 Black magic showed, and daemon thralling spells ; 
 
 The blood-draught necromantic, and such charms 
 
 As fright the shadowy Nations of the dead. 
 
 Which shuddering, flickering upwards towards the light 
 
 Unfold the soul-sought secret, or impart 
 
 Foreboding fatal to the wretch death doomed. 
 
 Here, in man's heart, and woman's richer mould 
 
 More fertile, these, all evil passions sowed ; 
 
 Such snakelike envyings, wolflike jealousies, 
 
 As when for love of fair Khalmanah, bride 
 
 Of paradise, and Eden's heiress, Cain 
 
 Him slew, since feared as Hades, god of death, 
 
 Whom our first mother, though sin smirched, revered, 
 
 Bewept a hundred years ; so long the dead. 
 
 While death showed new to life and earth, was mourned. 
 
 And here, entabled with undreamed-of skill, 
 
 In art colossal and majestic, those 
 
 "Viewed we, to the life remoulded, who first taught 
 
 War mace, and sword to shape, pole-axe and spear ; 
 
 These, gems to mine, and jewels for the fair. 
 
 Brightly seductive ; women were their spoil 
 
 From the beginning ; and their spurious brood 
 
 Gigantic, in whose ears apostate preached. 
 
 That patriarch, who of God the accredited 
 
 Ambassador to Angels, into heaven 
 
 Translate, of death not touched, ere Noah, as yet 
 
 With his majestic consort great Tidea, 
 
 Queen mother of the nations, deified 
 
 After as Vesta or Kybele, all 
 
 Her offspring kings of earth tripartite, sought, 
 
 God warned, the Ark, and all theii- living train. 
 
 Instmcted by our guide, the way who had showoi 
 
 Thus far, and led through all that followed, all 
 
 Expounding, from the atomic seed of stars. 
 
 To the all-conglobed system's end, the coui'se 
 
 Albeit at large, not tedious, but the more 
 
 Prolonged, the more inspiriting ; slow we passed 
 
 Out of the hall of elements, and the obscure 
 
 Of man's beginnings, as in nature seen, 
 
 In art, in social severance nationwise. 
 
 The earing-time of earth's first faiths and false ; 
 
 Into the fane of life. Here, graven the war. 
 
 Holy, on this side, waged twixt earth and heaven, 
 
 On that unholy ; 'tween the pious race 
 
 And impious tribes ; still in man's bosom-world 
 
 Waged ever, mocks his heart ; where yet he builds 
 
 His Babel towers to equate him in proud thought. 
 
 With Heaven ; and shield him, vain hope, from its wrath , 
 
 In craggy frieze glared round the o'ervaulted roof, 
 
 B a 
 
490 FE8TUS. 
 
 Wider than any rainbow's sea-pier'd span : 
 
 There, hundred handed vices, titan sins, 
 
 And giant crimes ; pride heaped on pride, as hills 
 
 On hills piled, whence unwisdom seeks to tear 
 
 The hig-h-throned Thunderer of the Heavens, who wroth, 
 
 Rightly, with sin persistent, wilful, gross. 
 
 With fiery hail hurls all to hell ; but touched 
 
 In time, with ruth, for foes so mean, these grants 
 
 Piacular remedies, there to undergo 
 
 Asbestine, purifying, thrice blanchening pains. 
 
 Here, marally confronting us, we mark. 
 
 And marking, mourn, time's prime idolatry ; 
 
 Earth's many godded error ; statued stars ; 
 
 And theirs, who, prostrate on hill-tops, the sun 
 
 Untempled, or the moon, and clustered spheres. 
 
 Or singly wandering, worshipped ; this, when earth, 
 
 Fairest and first apostate of the heavens, 
 
 Through unconditioned ignorance, and the false, 
 
 Spheres vastier than the void, or space unmoved, 
 
 Fell, all the way from Deity to the stars ; 
 
 Fell, maimed, but not immedicably. Here, see 
 
 Love's earliest graven monument, and first 
 
 Of purificative legends, from the skies 
 
 Transcribed, soul-sacrifice of all delights, 
 
 Powers, gifts ; Ishtar's descent, love-led, to hell ; 
 
 Precipitate, dazzling as the star of stars, 
 
 Through wastes celestial, seeking her beloved ; 
 
 There Psyche's (last and loveliest of all mythes) 
 
 Ascent, love-led, to heaven ; for man insculpt 
 
 The bright ensample ; virtue's pilgrimage, 
 
 Self -guided through all earth, more arduous task 
 
 Howbeit, than those ; or all by fable feigned. 
 
 Aurmazd and Ahriman, there, in balanced strife 
 
 The doubtful sphere contest ; and here, in stone 
 
 Prophetically white the conquest glad 
 
 Of the beneficent power, as once I heard 
 
 Methinks in heaven, or glimpsed in lifelong dreame. 
 
 Previsionary, good yet shall gain in strife 
 
 Bloodless, the eternal field. Young Orus there, 
 
 His sire the sun, his mother mild the moon ; 
 
 sacred night-sun, soul of Heaven, which through 
 
 The starry welkin wanderest in serene 
 
 Sorrow, commemorative of light's Lord lost ; 
 
 Him living ne'er thou'lt find ; but lo ! thy son, 
 
 The evil godhead Typhon slays, and reigns. 
 
 Wise, silent child of light. Here, next the god 
 
 Incarnate, ninefold, crushed, with sole supreme, 
 
 To death, and strangled, with resistless hand. 
 
 The snake-god ; holy fiction 1 The Asoors, there, 
 
 In armied millions, by the deities, 
 
 Vanquished, draws off their whole malignant host, 
 
 Dostiaed some day to perish, but their end 
 
FESTU8. 401 
 
 Leave to the prescient artist to record. 
 
 Kow, towards the impending cliff-like wall, opposed, 
 
 The plain, rock paved, between, traversed, we turned. 
 
 Here, the divine and human wrestled ; there, 
 
 Where faith's bright orbit reason's intersects 
 
 The human and angelic ; time by time 
 
 On earth permissive Deity to those 
 
 He loves, gives leave to conquer, and retires 
 
 Upwards, half pleased with his defeat ; there, chaired 
 
 In starry state, sits the proud queen, condemned. 
 
 The everlasting sacrifice to view 
 
 Of her unguilty child, who waits with arm 
 
 Outstretched, imploring, like humanity aye, 
 
 The innocent for the ill, to be redeemed 
 
 By some divine deliverer ; none shall come. 
 
 But lord and lover ; wind-winged, lightning shod ; 
 
 Ender of ill, slayer of sin's serpent seed ; 
 
 The holy, and the invisible. There, with head 
 
 Hurled downwards from heaven's topmost height, the king, 
 
 Righteous, but too much glorifying of self, — 
 
 Who thought mere merit enough to earn a throne 
 
 In God's eternal kingdom ; fatal fault 1 
 
 Wherefore, as clutching at, with either hand, 
 
 A world, but grasping nought, unvoiced reproof 
 
 He gives to all immortal. There, behold, 
 
 Limned to the life, instoned in adamant, 
 
 Prophetic of the first of prophets, called 
 
 On Aram's plains, listening the fatherly voice. 
 
 Commanding to adore life's spiritual Lord ; 
 
 Who made the heaven and earth ; the eteme, the sole ; 
 
 Which listening, Art there shews the one great act 
 
 That cleaves with clear divisive line of light, 
 
 Meridian wise, from end to end, time's chart 
 
 Historic ; falsehood there, and darkness ; here, 
 
 Truth, and divinest light ; from whose blessed day 
 
 Of unitary belief, all prophet soul. 
 
 Him following through the ages, now by law, 
 
 By penitence now marked, now by grace, to the hour 
 
 Arabia's sworded seer, and conquering scribe. 
 
 Sweeping idolatry off one half the earth, 
 
 The truth restablished of God's onemostness. 
 
 Triumphant evermore. Here, hosts terrene, 
 
 Hosts heavenly and iafernal, armed with faith 
 
 Or infidel fury fought ; these sworn to raae. 
 
 In ruin, cities reared by hands divine, 
 
 Or, for divine ends ; such the goodly towers 
 
 Truth dwells in, based on adamant ; the ancient domeo 
 
 Imperishable, where wisdom empir*^ holds 
 
 Paternal, and in columned halls sevenfold 
 
 Deals justice increate, prescriptive ; such 
 
 They built ambitious, imitative, who Rome, 
 
 City of cities, earth's crowned capital, 
 
163 FESTUS. 
 
 Of sway unbounded, credulous ; sucli the bright 
 
 Cecropian burgh, with olive wreathed ; and that, 
 
 God's templed city of peace, earth's joy, not yet, 
 
 Albeit foretold oracular, verified ; 
 
 Such sacred Troy, and every mystic site 
 
 Song-hallowed, fountain, fig-tree, fane and all 
 
 Apt to that holiest legend which, begun 
 
 By discord's apple, with one all conquering steed 
 
 Huge, rampant, ends ; such, that, gold builded, ersl, 
 
 On sceptre tridentine of Indian god. 
 
 Men's sins degraded into stone, and now 
 
 Debase to clay ; but still no whit cognate 
 
 To common earth ; but of time's earliest heaven 
 
 One unadulterate section. Those defend 
 
 Tlieir starry battlements ; their walls inlaid 
 
 With purest virtues ; courts and streets and squares 
 
 With godliest prudence paved ; prophetic these. 
 
 And dimlier outlined, passionate prejudice show 
 
 'Gainst patient consciousness of sacred truth ; 
 
 Of obstinately protected sin 'gainst right ; 
 
 Of freedom's just revolt 'gainst despotry. 
 
 Although of premier peoples. Here the north, 
 
 Icy, but strong in multitudinous stars 
 
 Of strengthening virtues ; there, the burning south, 
 
 Led by its passionate queen, contending, stood. 
 
 In fierce and fateful fray ; death looking on, 
 
 Well-pleased ; who else may lose, he always wins. 
 
 Here, nation after nation fought the world, 
 
 For universal dominance ; fought in vain. 
 
 One sole elect of creatures, head of hosts 
 
 Peaceful, unweaponed, save with reason's arms 
 
 Assuasive, promise hath of that dread gift. 
 
 All fronting, at the end, a female form. 
 
 Gigantic, kneeled, earth's guardian, to some power 
 
 Invisible, uncompassionate (for so deem 
 
 Boodh's godless priests, slaves of the golden foot). 
 
 Now interceding for its life ; but she, 
 
 The fatal sign once given, ordaining death. 
 
 Relentless tears the solid universe 
 
 Asunder ; tears earth's axis from her heart. 
 
 Quivering ; and lo ! on either side, behind, 
 
 The final field, so feared once, to be fought 
 
 'Twixt giants of time's dawn, from prison self -freed. 
 
 At nature's eventide, and gods mundane ; 
 
 Who, grasping each an element in his hand, 
 
 Hurl, one at other, ruin ; orb 'gainst orb 
 
 Clashing, and sun 'gainst sun, till all, with deaths 
 
 Commutual, perish. We, our doubting eyes 
 
 Edged upon growing blacknesses, which now 
 
 Mute lightnings lit, in mock of light ; and blind 
 
 Thunders now groped round. Ever and anon, 
 
 rutted athwart the dark what spectres seemed. 
 
FE8TU8. 493 
 
 Bat dimly eycable. Locked hand in hand, 
 
 Our fair heroic, trembling 'tween her guards, 
 
 Firm yet in spirit, even as the patriot queen 
 
 In golden chains bound Homewards, so to grace 
 
 Her victor's triumph, each step doomed to move 
 
 Time's ruth, and wrong's eternal recompense. 
 
 Nor whither more knew ours, but towards the west ; 
 
 We aU, together, pace ; then, separate, each, 
 
 A long laborious road as seemed, but brief 
 
 Doubtless, in substance ; until, through the gate 
 
 Rock-arched, of this demesne now cleared, we, pressed, 
 
 Creep, speechless ; whence emerging in a cave ; 
 
 Not lovelier the green grot where grew young Zeus 
 
 To stripling godhood, hid from cruel Time ; 
 
 Nor stalactital palace, subterrene 
 
 In Parian islet, where their unseen Court, 
 
 As fancy feigns, the sacred Nine once kept, 
 
 And crownless ruled o'er kingly servitors, 
 
 More sweetly showed recondite ; more secure 
 
 Its walls of marbled ingrowth ; we rejoin 
 
 Each other's side and reunite our form. 
 
 Here, for the first time othersome we meet 
 
 Beside ourselves, all silent ; to his voice 
 
 StiU hearkening, who in face like his, and guise, 
 
 The name of wisdom's lover firstliest claimed ; 
 
 Heard, prime of men, heaven's spheral harmonies j 
 
 At Metapontum wrote upon the moon ; 
 
 Bared at Olympian feast the golden thigh 
 
 In proof of solar lineage ; bade, as man's 
 
 True worship, God be imitated ; who, just, 
 
 Beneficent, ever at unity with himself, 
 
 Was our best pattern. 
 
 Lucifer. most apt adept I 
 
 How must your leader have rejoiced to find 
 Gathered in this, philosophy's inmost home, 
 His novices so teachable. For the rest. 
 Truth is as each one troweth. Wliat means peace ? 
 It may mean self -extinction. The next step ? 
 
 Festus. Listening we stood, charmed ; reassured in faith ; 
 Heart-lightened, onward fared ; and following close 
 The echoes of our guide's feet, in the heart 
 Of a dim/dome of all but sightless bounds, 
 And named of immortality, him found 
 Apart, and changed in mien, less mild as seemed, 
 On an arch, towered, neath which a torrent foamed, 
 Red with his torch's glare, blood-like. Beyond, 
 A mount of awe there loomed, which showed inspired 
 With palpitant light ; that sudden came and went, 
 Wilderingly ; and, thither pointing, ' lo I the end 
 Of our emprise ; ' witli these words clave our guide, 
 As with a sword, the silence ; then, ' who truth 
 Would win, as she awaits us, in yon shrine, 
 
494 FE8TU3. 
 
 Teaming' the victor sonl to sate with peace 
 
 And wisdom ; and to crown, witli life divine, 
 
 EartMife, and her embrace deifio give ; 
 
 Know, that to arms untested, hearts untried, 
 
 She trusts, yields, nought. Let not yon seething stream, 
 
 One, therefore, who would gain such priceless prize, 
 
 Affright ; but let the wight content with less, 
 
 Smile colder and more conventional embrace, 
 
 Tread, after me, the arch.' 
 
 LuciFEB. He never could 
 
 Have thought you half believed, what true, he taught, 
 Or taught but half he knew. 
 
 Festus. Here quailed she first, 
 
 Of the end too emulative, the mean unproved. 
 Who never dreamed of trial aught, nor test 
 And last ; — but let me pause. Our student feere 
 Bolder than I, because incredulous, rid 
 Not solely of superstition but mere faith. 
 As God would have, plunged with me in that tide ; 
 And struggled, nigh to safety. Once a prow, 
 More like a raft, without all bulwark, shoal 
 And with no true bilge, adrift from upper bank, 
 Help promised falsely ; till, at last, a rock 
 Grasping, this, loose at base, betrayed his trust ; 
 And crushing, soon that death-flood hurried off 
 Into earth's cavemed darkness, and the abyss, 
 Keverberant alway with its watery roar. 
 And funeral wail perpetual ; but to me, 
 Now wading, floating now, safe transit vouched, 
 Though sickening to the sense ; nor wist I this 
 Till, 'scaped, and scantly, from the perilous arch 
 Which crumbled, as she crossed, nor left retreat. 
 My love I met who saw, and fainting told ; 
 Told, shuddering, like the tree whose sense of sin, 
 Howbeit involuntary, the ages fail 
 To calm, as weighted yet with the pendent power. 
 I meanwhile, shore who had reached, heard, heard dismayed, 
 Thrice called aloud his name, which to no end 
 Unanswering silence sadly learned, thenceforth 
 Wasted, like time upon unquickened stars. 
 Scant leisure ours was for lament ; for now, 
 Fiercer, and far more urgent, waxed the mien 
 Of our mysterious leader, who aloof 
 Held him, and hailed as careless of our loss, 
 Or witless, for his countenance saw we not. 
 And now, all light snatched from us, hie we on, 
 We twain, I bearing up her slackening steps. 
 Amid darknesses successive, each more deep 
 Than other, and far thunders whence we opined 
 Day, egress, nearer than they seemed ; to us 
 A time of torture, but determined soon. 
 And now, from out that fane of pauseful fire, 
 
 ( 
 
FESTU8. ^5 
 
 We seemed tmskilled to escape from, -wlieii light was, 
 
 And in whose quivering bosom half distent 
 
 With smothered splendour, like the sacred side 
 
 Of Athyr, travailing of the sun, the Light 
 
 Blew, flowerlike, open ; and with arrowy glance 
 
 Showed us one only feat to confiummate. 
 
 From out that lofty shrine of roseate glow 
 
 And twixt the stops of stormy thunders, now, 
 
 Voices and harps, and far, faint harmonies 
 
 We list ecstatic, as though deadliest fate 
 
 Would mask it f aerywise. Here, each one's foot, 
 
 Instinct with caution, easy seemed the ascent, 
 
 Nor either paused, until the brink we touch, 
 
 Unseen till lighted on, of a horrent chasm, 
 
 Sacred in use, defensive of the fane, 
 
 Forbidding access uninvited. There, 
 
 But on the thither steep, our sun-seer stood, 
 
 WTio gazed that orb, nor blinked ; for on his side, 
 
 New risen upon the season's narrowing night; 
 
 Sheer through a mountain fissure shone the sun 
 
 The fane within lightening. That rocky rift. 
 
 Clean cut, as ghastly vein, shale blue, earth's he? it 
 
 Explosive once, through granate, shot, league loi g, 
 
 Now seas persistent have weU breathed, and left 
 
 Hollow, as tube twixt isle and isle that swings, 
 
 Echoing ; clear, startling, as the iron gash 
 
 Helm-riving, that on war fields counts for one ; 
 
 I only bidden ; one fondly comforting sign, 
 
 One word consolatory to her there left, 
 
 Expressed ; leap clear ; and clearing so, clear death. 
 
 Enter, to me he cried ; and enter alone, 
 
 Soul that would learn truth's sum, must learn it sole. 
 
 To her who had me accompanied, then, a seat 
 
 In the immarbled rock assigned, he, ranged 
 
 Beside her ; all in common silence lapsed, 
 
 I looked, content. Truth's shrine, then, entering sole, 
 
 Sole ; as the sun in heaven his subject sign ; 
 
 View first mid many an arched recess, star-ringed, 
 
 Ranked orderly, and from grade to grade of all 
 
 Perfection ; each mysterious symbol truth 
 
 Hath hallowed ; every teeming sign faith holds 
 
 In old and orient imagery devote 
 
 To sacred use, with mightiest meanings eked. 
 
 Which wisdom worthful makes but to those wise. 
 
 Lords of best learning ; signs which here conjoined, 
 
 In secret state emblazoned, rayed with words, 
 
 Divine, unutterable, soul charm by charm, 
 
 Open, in awful gradual, till achieved 
 
 The one sole truth which crowns all creeds, and sums. 
 
 The thought of God is simple enough ; it is man 
 
 Makes the world's mystery ; who, self -warned of powers 
 
 Unlimited but for sense, cloud-lifed conceives 
 
4W FE8TU8. 
 
 Beyond the impermanent skies, the eternal soul 
 
 Of all existence, transitory, or fixed ; 
 
 Perfect though infinite ; knows through virtue truth j 
 
 And as an educable divinity, schooled 
 
 Through Being's grand gradations, loves the law, 
 
 Of all intelligent life ; just ; bettering soul ; 
 
 Soul-freeing, joining whole with God ; yet lives 
 
 Doubt's thrall, and fool. This, one long instant ; next, 
 
 Prostrate within the sanctuary, and still 
 
 My mind the effect sublime of joy retains, 
 
 Cleared, elevated, and sanctified by sight 
 
 Of a*l faith's passed perplexities, to one 
 
 Kej* yielding, in result, the one same truth. 
 
 Great there with gladness grew my spirit, as might 
 
 Of old some riverine god, upon his side 
 
 Leaning complacent, on his long career 
 
 Heflective ; foamy fall ; still, sunny reach : 
 
 Shoal, and bend troublous ; ere the bar which bounds 
 
 His wave from Ocean's, he o'ersurge ; thenceforth, 
 
 One with the all parent power ; so I, at one 
 
 With the universal Spirit ; full, fixed content 
 
 Of Being and satisfaction with all life 
 
 Knew, and the oneness of all verity. 
 
 Thus gladdening to have reached that shrine of shrineej 
 
 Where light intelligible (henceforth the sun's 
 
 But a shadow shown) all life illumes, I kneel 
 
 In silent worship ; and thence rising, saw. 
 
 On the wrought altar-rock laid gleaming, midst 
 
 The fragrant death of flowers all hued ; and where 
 
 Life, more than flower-life sensitive, ne'er was ta'en ; 
 
 A volume vast, clasp closed, whose ambered sides, 
 
 Each as a giant's corslet spacious, vamped 
 
 In ore of Auphir, bossed with burning gems, 
 
 Glowed ; gems which conscious seeming of just worth, 
 
 'Neath lightning-lidded eyes sense more intense 
 
 Of virtues, veiled ; apt to each saintliest sign 
 
 Symmetric, rayonnant with all stones of price, 
 
 On either covering board emblazoned ; here, 
 
 The shield of God's anointed hymnist, proof 
 
 Of human and divine oned ; there, the seal 
 
 Heaven lent, of wisdom's lord thrice potent, all 
 
 The elements dominating ; soul guardant 'gainst 
 
 All world-ill, ill demoniac. Oped, behold, 
 
 The tome within, on azure leaves writ large 
 
 In syllabary constellate, like night's spheres 
 
 By spiritual hands I hailed as known, transcribed, 
 
 From skiey archives ; every mitred thought 
 
 Graved trophy wise for truth won ; God's great code 
 
 Life's universal law, by will divine 
 
 First lodgM of angels in Heaven's sanctuary, 
 
 The law all regulative of space and time ; 
 
 Of mind, create imperfect ; good, and choice ; 
 
FE8TUS. 
 
 Of evil and necessity, life and death, 
 
 The eternal, infinite, matter, movement, force ; 
 
 Paged these, horizonwise ; as when at lig-ht's 
 
 First dawn, our fellow orbs, sky-circliiig- stood 
 
 With ns conjunctive, self-alli^ed ; and those 
 
 Of moral might, and indicative of truth, 
 
 Columnar, like the vaporous bands, all tinct. 
 
 The sun's rich elements, out of boundless space 
 
 Skreened, and enregistered ; the heavenly rule 
 
 Through soul-world operative, through every sphere 
 
 Mental and spiritual penetrant ; one same law 
 
 In all essential, and for creature's good, 
 
 On like base, all- where, founded ; in my mind, 
 
 This summary all which rests, this brief record ; 
 
 Sole simple pure, the personal infinite, 
 
 Of necessary essence, perfect, free, 
 
 All present, good, is wise and just ; life, love ; 
 
 Not as space passive, powerless ; nor as time, 
 
 Subject of mere relation between deed 
 
 And doer ; but of duration source, and sum, 
 
 And of all causes ; founder of the skies ; 
 
 Author of all the elements of the world ; 
 
 Quickener of tides ; of the heart's first beat ; as sire 
 
 Of natural life, lord of the law of growth ; 
 
 The life of bulb and bud, of root and limb ; 
 
 Of act instinctive in all animate tribes 
 
 Blind instigator ; in man's kinglier race. 
 
 Teacher of social law ; of sacred rites. 
 
 Of family sanctities ; and the holy round 
 
 Of virtues our humanity attests 
 
 As unitive with the heavenly state ; and proof 
 
 Of our derived divinity ; guardian he 
 
 To us his kindred, though remote, and yet 
 
 On the great stem regraf table ; who man 
 
 With nature guides, exacting righteous fines 
 
 And satisfactions from the temporal, due 
 
 When erring, to the eternal equity shown 
 
 In just proportions, verified by love. 
 
 Here, turning o'er these mighty leaves, I leam 
 
 His primal essence ; cause, mean, end of all ; 
 
 Mean, by permission and endurance ; cause 
 
 By his own will ; and end, that all have joy. 
 
 The circular path of worlds in beauty traced ; 
 
 The total scope of things, thus viewed, heaven taught ; 
 
 The fruitful round of seasons, as on earth. 
 
 So in man's life ; kind nature's loveliness ; 
 
 All witness made to love, and love's deep laws ; 
 
 God-laws ; not written only on stcne, nor graven 
 
 Once on a time in granate ; but for aye. 
 
 And everywhere in all things that uphold 
 
 The uses, ends, and harmonies of the world, 
 
 And the stability of the universe : 
 
 497 
 
408 PE8TU8. 
 
 In ocean's trenclied -waves, in earth's broad vales, 
 
 In air's wide wind-streams ; in birth, growth, and death ; 
 
 Bloom, fruitage, seed regenerative, decay ; 
 
 The wholesome waste of storms ; the torrent's wrack ; 
 
 The brooklet's silent prattle ; in love, in truth, 
 
 Divine fear, provident virtue, hope of peace ; 
 
 In the heart's aspiration after God's 
 
 Just sanctity and approval ; for the rule 
 
 Of righteousness ; a rightlier balanced life 
 
 To come ; and all the general good that aids ; 
 
 Even evil, but good's less degree, and shown 
 
 Needful, or useful in progression. Soul, 
 
 Struggling against the imperfect and default, 
 
 Back to the intelligent light, must needs return ; 
 
 And finds return, advance, through conquered ills, 
 
 Predestined to attain the good supreme. 
 
 While issuant thus from God's breast, spirit fares •* 
 
 Variously through schooling spheres, and many a round 
 
 Calamitous, to death's nadir ; its return. 
 
 All progress naturally, and intense delight, 
 
 And conscious pressure towards the infinite, shows. 
 
 For evil, moral and natural, though the proofs 
 
 Of imperfection necessaiy to all 
 
 Created things, are, this, annulled by man's 
 
 Perfectibleness ; by God's foredooming word 
 
 That ; both concurrent ; frames the crucial test 
 
 Each soul must pass, and stand thereby, or fall. 
 
 The fall hath fatal force, and in all spheres, 
 
 As though with gravity's irresistible spell. 
 
 Sin fascinates but to worsen, and with low aims 
 
 For loftier, cheats the inquisitive spirit. But who 
 
 Can love's all saving faithfulness divine, 
 
 That hath not erred ; nor separated the seeds 
 
 Of good and evil, painful task ; nor felt 
 
 All evil hath temporal origin, and so ends j 
 
 But good, identical with God, endures 
 
 To all eternity, and subtends the base 
 
 Celestial, of his universal life ? 
 
 Thus all things from him, to him witness bear, 
 
 Assentient as their good, their source. There's not 
 
 An angel relegate to the outmost spheres, 
 
 But vaunts his strain divine ; no creatural soul, 
 
 No animate form that foots the soil, or creeps, 
 
 Or ocean nether-tided wanders ; nay. 
 
 There's not the tiniest lif elet flecks the air, 
 
 "With wing invisible, who through his sires 
 
 Preadamite ruled earth, but strange lineage boosts, 
 
 And high and azure blood ; nor heaven itself 
 
 From his proud pedigree spares ; but in his coat, 
 
 As heir of life, and life of Him create. 
 
 Quarters the arms of God. Man only, skilled 
 
 To anticipate the divine as virtue's meed ; 
 
FESTU3, 409 
 
 The nltimate scope of spirit, and nature's end ; 
 
 To know each holy element, mode, and mean 
 
 Of spiritual refinement ; and in law, 
 
 Note Nature's secondary effects ; in rock. 
 
 The force commute of ocean ; not in earth's 
 
 Life-flowing- breast ; nor air's inspiring- breath ; 
 
 €rod'8 renovative spirit, to trace ; nor yet 
 
 In flamy light of sun or star, the strength 
 
 "VMiich made, and could destroy all ; not in heat, 
 
 However gentle, his reconstructive power ; 
 
 Neither in the ever during, boundless, space, 
 
 Of all, save Deity, void ; science supreme 1 
 
 Not in things, Grod ; so learns to graduate 
 
 In Heaven's, and earth's great mysteries, as to see 
 
 Through spiritual commune with Divinity here 
 
 The secret of reunion, ne'er attained 
 
 Save by the aspiring soul, on arduous path ; 
 
 Man's elevative fall, soul's richening fine ; 
 
 Punition covetable ; heart clarified 
 
 By calming troubles, and the final fruit 
 
 Of meditative perfection to the soul 
 
 Made righteous, hallowing, self elect to serve 
 
 Man and his maker ; this, in essence one ; 
 
 And that in kind and nature myriadfold. 
 
 From every massive page I turned, there came 
 
 The spirit of consolation. Ending thus. 
 
 The book I closed ; rejoiced 'twas mine to know 
 
 The truth transformative of life, that God, 
 
 The conscious Infinite, wills, by rendering soul 
 
 Wistful of his divinity, man to make 
 
 Free, blessed ; and striving towards perfection, crown. 
 
 So loves he those that to him turn, with life 
 
 Immortal his congenerate gift. And now, 
 
 Words heard I whispering me to call within 
 
 The beauteous brave who had dared so much and earned, 
 
 As to her it seemed, albeit I knew, and feared 
 
 The attempt to achieve more. Opening, then, intent 
 
 Again to approach her I so loved, and seek 
 
 Some sign to assure her present entrance, lo I 
 
 The chasm which yawned betwixt us, and at first 
 
 Scarce pace-wide, now showed fathomless, and broad 
 
 As 'tween two waves, 'mid sea, rood- wide is stretched 
 
 Their tempest-cradling hollow, hurricane rocked. 
 
 Desperate, I called ; but now, behold the ground 
 
 As though upon rolling hinges, nether hidden, 
 
 Slode crabwise ; and methought, nay, could it be ? 
 
 The temple against whose wall our leader leaned. 
 
 Tottered, as though deliberant or to stand 
 
 Or fall. One moment more than sated sight. 
 
 For ah ! a shriek I heard ; nor all my years 
 
 Of life had learned me that dread sound ; a shriek 
 
 Which paled my heart dead white ; and turned, I viewed 
 
500 FE8TU8. 
 
 Slow sinking with, the slab she stood on, down' 
 
 Down, irrecoverably the abrupt abyss, 
 
 My loved one, like a sacrifice to nig-ht. 
 
 Glory and joy of life, creation's crown, 
 
 Now lost ; already do I feel the weight 
 
 Of woes prospective ; therefore, time's broad stream 
 
 Flows o'er thine end in silence ; hides thy doom. 
 
 To heaven she raised her finger, and was gone. 
 
 Nor saw I, nor aught knew, distinctly more ; 
 
 Save that in springing upward, for mere life, 
 
 My own feet failing partly of due hold. 
 
 That vast substructure, all, meseemed, was blent 
 
 With earth's interior chaos, shapes uncouth 
 
 Of primitive formlessnesses ; and I passed ; 
 
 The mysteries now in mystery all inwombed, 
 
 For ever, and ne'er to be by me resought ; 
 
 Clear through the death-rift into heavenly day ; 
 
 For spirits are e'er bom upward while in time, 
 
 As by Caesarean birth. The orient sun 
 
 Head of the house of heaven, the sire of days, 
 
 The manifestive light, the lord of joy, 
 
 Saluting, prostrate, lo 1 as when in sight. 
 
 Of axe and headsman,. some o'er- wrongous wretch, 
 
 Fear urged, confesseth, but one murtherous deed, 
 
 Still unsuspect, keeps back, and with a groan, 
 
 And grinding shudder, locks it in his breast ; 
 
 Nor leaves his lips scarce room to vaunt of breath ; 
 
 So earth, that fatal fissure with a crash 
 
 Closing, beheld I hide her deathf ul deed ; 
 
 "WTiile I, from shutting, as from opening death, 
 
 Doubly escaped, seem scarce convinced of life. 
 
 Thou speakest not. 
 
 LuciFEE. I have nothing to observe. 
 
 The quest of knowledge is man's deadliest pride ; 
 And me nor pride, nor death, surpriseth now. 
 
 Festus. Twain of my best supports, as though the earth 
 Twin elements should miss, my heart hath lost. 
 
 LuciFEE. The spirit inquisitive which all things would learn, 
 Leams all things nothing may be. 
 
 Festus, Ah 1 Let be. 
 
 Life's intransmissive secret now she knows ; 
 Knows but too well. 
 
 Lucifer. Gro to. Have done with these 
 
 Leaflets, that on thy life's voluminous tide 
 Float incidently and surface-wise ; whose fates, 
 Fixed doubtless ere all time ; and if with blind, 
 And joyous dance of atomies then unglobed, 
 Cogeval ; yet thine own involving not, 
 Thou well mayst pass aloofwise. 
 
 Festus. I would know 
 
 How these effects so distant from the hopes 
 Of those who indulged them, came to pass so soon. 
 
fE8TU8* 801 
 
 Effects which make me truly hate myself 
 For gifts, premonitory, and woes ensured 
 As fear might shriek, by my predictive tongue ? 
 
 Lucifer. Shall I then say, who happily now for thee. 
 And thine enlightenment, was there, of all 
 The first ; without the shrine thou gainedst, for truth's 
 Bright sanctuary thou know'st, hast long while known, 
 A shrine is, not a temple. 
 
 Festus. How didst know ? 
 
 Lucifer. Not much it matters now. Enough, I saw, 
 Heard, all. Thy leader was, I said, a friend, 
 What hindereth he may so have favoured me, 
 By private predisposure, sight, record, 
 Of what so there transpired ? 
 
 Festus. Nought; nought. Proceed, 
 
 I can bear alL 
 
 Lucifer. Scarce had thy foot the floor 
 Tasted ; and thou, absorbed in quest of truth. 
 And love celestial, saw'st not aught within, 
 But law, ere she, our victress of all tests, 
 Without ; our fair adventuress ; death's last bom ; 
 Spake winsomely her guide, and thine ; and said ; 
 This moment seize ; the spirit but now released, 
 Just 'scaped the prisoning clay ; and floating round, 
 Is here ; I feel the fanning of his wings. 
 Thou, I have heard, hast many a mighty spell ; 
 Canst bid the eaglet soaring sunwards turn 
 And round thy head wheel, liefer ; while thou wilt ; 
 Canst stay the river upon his course ; the tide. 
 Upon his world-wide path ; and halt, mid-air. 
 Suspense, the ravening lion in his leap. 
 Give me that spell to speak ; or sjjeak it thou. 
 Which may estop the spirit upon its way. 
 To judgment. All too easily led, thy guide 
 Complying, what befel next, hear. " I'd know," 
 She said, " What most behoves me learn of all 
 Life hath as yet to teach me." In lieu of words, 
 Grew, quivering on eve's wavering air (for now, 
 Winds land-bom, languorous, sighing for the sea, 
 Mixed with the breeze, breathed shorewards,) on her eye, 
 What seemed a dream of being ; such as mind 
 With the persistence of a star, which though 
 Invisible, on the sensitive mirror stamps 
 Its radiated presentment, might on mind, 
 Musing abstract Humanity, project. 
 Fronting the other each one silent stood ; 
 The incarnate spirit, and soul disframed. As when 
 In time, some nebulous fire-mist feels at once 
 All quickening throes composed ; and for the birth 
 Impatient, waits God's word. " World, be thou bom ; " 
 And on the shrunken and shimmering elements, 
 Whence it was bred, now derelict of light, 
 
602 FE8TU8. 
 
 A pitying glance for weakness passed, sheds, blent 
 
 ■With pride of power to come ; yet knows, heart-gripped, 
 
 All while by fire interior, henceforth due, 
 
 The frankening fine for absolute life, and state 
 
 Of starhood, how austere the privilege gained ; 
 
 How grave the boon ; so now, this phantom soul, 
 
 Scarce out of touch, 'ware of life's late compeer, 
 
 Previews severe its future. With such sense 
 
 As the pale dawn of consciousness, self -waked 
 
 From deathliest numb, might summon, yet alive, 
 
 Her voice not throughly sad, nor wholly lost, 
 
 The sprite seer thus bespake the sprite: "Think not. 
 
 Dear Spirit, our soul-friend but so late, so fond, 
 
 Too soon I seek thy counsel, or demand 
 
 The truth pledge promised. Wept I tears of woe, 
 
 For evermore, not I could now undo 
 
 Death's agonizing passed, and the dread end 
 
 I saw, but might not hinder. Say what truth, 
 
 If such thou knowest, and verity it is said, 
 
 Beams on the soul world-freed, the instant life 
 
 Drops her dark mask, me most imports of all 
 
 My future life on earth to learn ; not less, 
 
 While asking, I repent me of the quest 
 
 I yet persist in, and will err no more, 
 
 In this wise ; still, since now thou art here, I ask." 
 
 *' Thine earth-life, know then, beauteous soul, (I hearfl 
 
 The spirit phantasmal answer) but a dream's 
 
 Duration, while departing ; and, believe 
 
 That as in drowning-death, souls see life passed 
 
 In memory's closing flash, one moment shown ; 
 
 So I, the next, born into spiritual life, 
 
 As far as eyes untried the limitless 
 
 Can test, o'erglimpse the future ; and thus see. 
 
 Spirit ! too daring for thy day, thy name 
 
 With mine compaged, alligned in death's white book. 
 
 One instant, and he turns the allotted leaf 
 
 For ever. Grrieve not, need is, each depart 
 
 To spheres remedial ; where o'er curious soul, 
 
 Self trained to error, may hours wasted once 
 
 In seeking petty ignorant sprites, redeem 
 
 By deeds and ministerings, best planned to serve 
 
 The sole All- wise ; and other spirit addict 
 
 To secret knowledge sealed to private use, 
 
 May so be disciplined that many a sphere 
 
 Shall of his preaching profit ; each false thought, 
 
 Each mental vice through zones discriminative 
 
 'Twixt cultured wrong and inscience, and the burst 
 
 TJnmoderated of passion, there absterged. 
 
 And expiate, every virtue strengthened ; all 
 
 Shall press, compact, towards perfectness. But not 
 
 With fate of him thou lov'st, blends thine ; nor noons 
 
 His day with thine as both have f ondliest hoped ; 
 
FE8TU3. M8 
 
 Neither may I to tend thee here, aspire. 
 A hand more delicate and devout than mine 
 Awaits thee on light's threshold, waits for sake 
 Of thy pure love and sympathy with all life 
 Create of God, a sisterly hand, and prompt 
 To guide thee on thy rightward way, more apt 
 Than I, who now must my way wend ; wend sole. 
 So, ere thou comest, farewell. It is writ in doom 
 Our lines of life shall never nearlier meet 
 Than when, time gone, hand clasped an instant hand. 
 Though therefore but a moment sever us now 
 That moment means eternity. Farewell." 
 " Farewell," she said ; '• make others good and blessed ; 
 If us no more." " But I, nor blessed, nor good. 
 Can neither yet," replied the spirit ; *' and now, 
 God's judgment is upon me. I am gone. 
 Whither, and to what end I know full well ; 
 And knowing, gladden, and were it to the extreme 
 Of uncreated void, where never ray 
 Of nebulous orb, nor wild sun-seeking star. 
 Adventurous, strayed, still would I joy, secure 
 In His infinite presence, there to meet 
 Love equitable ; and fine not more than just, 
 For fault finite. Already by my side, 
 Bright, but to thee invisible, I behold 
 A shadowy monitor, bidding rather keep 
 Our spherelet's natal orbit ; brother souls 
 Help free from superstition, and prepare 
 The spuits of such as tread the food-fraught earth 
 For happier gains than yet they dream of ; peace, 
 Pure life, and wise morality, homed with all- 
 Wherefore with all these kind and welcoming ghosts 
 I see around me, eager to accost 
 Me hopeful soon to join their armied clouds 
 Spiritual, insensitive not, pure souled wto still 
 Struggling 'gainst ill, are covetous man's great prize, 
 Earth's peace, to assure ; in which great cause alone 
 I lived, and in this eddy of the fray 
 Divine, one moment merged, I died. But not 
 Ere the high end I had planned, I knew secured ; 
 And not the knell of nations could undo. 
 I know the adjudgment leviable on sin ; 
 I feel the fine inflicted ; I confess 
 Its equity, and before all living things. 
 Let but the soul long temjiered to endure. 
 This hour endure, justice and I ai-e quits ; 
 Then shall I face God and the world again, 
 He said ; and as thou hast seen some daiing pine, 
 Rock perched, and pitiably incautious, still 
 A tree of God, bend haughtily to the breeze 
 It wots of, far away, ere lowlier tops, 
 l^earer the wind's eye, bat observant less 
 
604 PUSTUS. 
 
 Of nature's fateful preferences ; so, he 
 
 Of hastening- sentence, that nought more might brook, 
 
 Of parle thrust in, betwixt the spirit and God, 
 
 Precognizant, and of rigid right, outspread 
 
 His arms as though to invite swift act ; and last, 
 
 Even like a columned sandcloud, in its breast, 
 
 Holding the vital storm which gives it shape ; 
 
 G-ives movement ; gives distraction ; to his doom 
 
 Corrective, sternly bettering, swept away. 
 
 Festus. To know all this is grievous ; not without 
 Some compensation, may be. Following this — 
 
 Lucifer. Knowing not ill what pace an earthquake makes 
 How quick from wreck to wreck, from land to land, 
 It strides with thunderous footstep, one perchance 
 A wanderer, trapped and curbed, thy guide, I take, 
 So timed the corsef ul course of, that such time 
 As thou didst hear his few and whispered words, 
 Bidding unclose the gates of truth's bright shrine, 
 And thou complying, openedst ; — nay, no more ; 
 It was sad indeed, the sight that scared thine eye. 
 
 Festus. But if by this soul's fate we learn, what tells 
 That dearer shade's ? 
 
 Lucifer. One mystery, say, assumed, 
 
 All mysteries proveth. 
 
 Festus. This, meanwhile, to know, 
 
 Of nature, God, and man, the simple truth. 
 Common to all, of all creeds truth the core, 
 Outworths all gain beside ; annuls all loss ; 
 Pain, suffering. What men else believe nought helps 
 Nought harms ; their primal faith this, Godwards, this 
 That close as ever we may be in death 
 To his feet, we are never closer than in life. 
 Clearer or darklier may the vision show 
 But it is always there ; and thus to me, 
 Deliverance, just passed, out of perilous fate. 
 Slipped through death's fingers, solemnizes life, 
 Kay, sanctifies. One seems to hold the trust 
 More straight from God. No earthly mean we need. 
 No graduated conception of the gift. 
 To prove its worth through fellow creaturehood, 
 Or test our reasoning ; soul rehomed, restalled, 
 Renewed, confirms spontaneously its vows, 
 Ta'en first when scarce intelligible. 
 
 Lucifer. And now 
 
 Time threatens to forestall our course. Wilt do 
 A message for me ? 
 
 Festus. Aught I will, may serve 
 
 To ease, divert my mind. 
 
 Lucifer. True ; I had forgot. 
 
 Seek then the fair Elissa ; and with her. 
 From time to time, confer ; some time it asks. 
 Upon th^ coming ends, long- hoped, which she 
 
FESTUa. 606 
 
 May sanction, perchance aid ; Qapart) but how secure 
 Her help toward this end desired, unless 
 To impledge her heart for him who aims and bums 
 To achieve this pinnacle of world power, she most 
 Of women the world boasts of, would adorn ; 
 I scarce yet see, more than to know, the work 
 Must sudden be, and swift. Go, waste no words. 
 Improve thy welcome. 
 
 Festus. I want something new. 
 
 LuciPEB. Hence I assure thee pleasant company, 
 More than thine own ; bright future and — 
 
 Festus. I go. 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Yes, go ; but I unseen attend thee yet, 
 To warn 'g^iiist cruel sin ; perchance to save. 
 Not even he doth know that I am here. 
 
 LuciFEE. Thus to dissemble suits me ; me reminds 
 Of whilome triumphs. Well wots the world ere now 
 I have starred it on an ampler stage. Meantime 
 I get impatient for the end forefixed. 
 I trust this fair one so to assure, that she, 
 In spirit commanding, may the man's excite 
 As fitmost for such eminence. Then, all ends. 
 
 Festus. Now though I do what I desire, or fail, 
 Each were not less an evil. 
 
 LuciFEB. Nature, friend, 
 
 Is given to man to conquer. 
 
 Festus. But alas I 
 
 Not yet can we o'ercome our nature here, 
 Would we. 
 
 Lucifer. If therefore passion strike the heart, 
 Let it have length of line, and plenteous play. 
 The safety of superior principles, oft. 
 Lies in exhaustion of the lower, vast. 
 Or violent, as they may be. What can men, 
 Or angels, but obey those ordering laws 
 Conscious existence prizes, thrives on ? 
 
 Festus. Fate ! 
 
 Who seeks thee everywhere, will find thee there. 
 
 LuciFEB. All hesitancy is ominous. 
 
 Festus. Such a thought 
 
 Stands in the way of nothing ; not even man. 
 
506 FE8TUS, 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Our Btory binds us still for a •while to earth, 
 And Bea all aged, gray at once with years, 
 And green with youth. Oft those unhappiest have 
 Their heart's desire in dreams ; we dreaming that 
 Not seldom shall befal us. And when love 
 In creature worship merges, who can tell 
 What 'tis we love ? Perchance incarnate evil. 
 For now the evillest one's designs take shape ; 
 Through beauty to be impressed upon the soul 
 Tempted, that each in other rapt, and love 
 Of world- pomp, chosen his final gift, all power, 
 The end might swiftUer happen. Not the less, 
 One grain of holiest hope is sown, whence fields 
 Other than ours, bv patience tilled, shall wave 
 "With unimagined narvests. 
 
 Garden and Bower by the Sea, 
 
 LuciPEE and Elissa. Afterwards Test us. 
 
 LuciPEB. Night comes, world jewelled, as my bride should be. 
 Staxt forth the stars in myriads, at the sign 
 Of light, divine usurper, as to wage 
 War with the lines of darkness ; and the moon 
 Pale ghost of light, comes haunting the cold earth 
 After the sun's red sea-death, quietless. 
 Immortal night 1 I love thee. Thou and I 
 Are of one strain. Heaven's eldest issue, we. 
 He makes ; we mar together all things ; all 
 But our own selves. Let love not make thee cold 
 And tremble, or thou'lt chill me. That starry robe 
 Thou wearest, makes thee lovelier. Love me, night I 
 Catch me up to thee, mightiest one. To thee, 
 Thee only, fatal power might I unveil 
 A plot so great, so just it must succeed, 
 Were success merit's predicate. The friend 
 Whose fate momentous most to man I treat, 
 Long launched with me on a tempestuous track 
 See, and still hotlier must I urge, that hurled 
 On passion's treacherous shoals, his barque may yot 
 Founder, o'erf raught as 'tis with human doom ; 
 Doom, thou, O precreative night, who holdst 
 Within thy breast, the prime conceipt of things, 
 And their last outcome, might'st impart, wert thou 
 Oracular, as of old, as of old, kind. 
 Small help get I, elsewhere. But surely, here 
 Cometh mine earthly. I, ia mine own toils 
 Seem to me tangled. Her high-natured soul 
 Takes seriously all. But to me no end, 
 In show, or earnest, save the end of all, 
 Remains. To that end all thiags be mere means. 
 What though for her I feign a passion she 
 Should feel not (say not feign) for any one. 
 
FE8TU8, BOS' 
 
 It irks not me, let fate fulfil its aim, 
 
 It makes but clear the way for the end I mean. 
 
 Nor can we plot, or plan, outside what's known. 
 
 Him for whose fall I care this beauteous dame 
 
 Shall duly dazzle ; and, for I think not much 
 
 Of ultimate perseverance, with their fates 
 
 So blent, if the threads prove pliable enough, 
 
 This way or that, by suffering, or by siu, 
 
 Or patent power, sublimed in secresy, 
 
 The world's works running gently down, no check 
 
 Will likely mar the smooth decline I mean. 
 
 All things have so far answered the sage plans 
 
 Friends, some, alack I defunct of life and aim, 
 
 Long toiled, nor fruitlessly, to attain. At last 
 
 Earth shows in travail of an unborn king ; 
 
 The imperial infant, he ; and sooner now 
 
 Than he or any knows, man's mightiest choice 
 
 Is being destined. See slowly, solemnly. 
 
 As riseth from the main the sacred moon, 
 
 Stately and still, she grows upon the night. 
 
 She sees me not Ere yet she comes is time 
 
 To rectify my spirit to its just points 
 
 Above, around. How is it that now I thrill 
 
 More deeply 'neath her eye-glance than the gaze 
 
 Of spirit or angel ? Can this negative 
 
 Eternal be subdued by things of time ? 
 
 And paltriest afiBrmations of mere power. 
 
 If by him guided, bear the brunt of worlds ? 
 
 As still, when set the sun, in summer's tide, 
 
 Earth feels, though faintly, his presence ; and the night. 
 
 Hath never total dark ; but round her head 
 
 In starry silence, light invisible feels 
 
 Mysteriously his blind way ; so, I now 
 
 Oppressed with what seems coming, as one doomed, 
 
 At day-dawn, which to all beside brings life : 
 
 To him death only. It is Elissa 1 "Welcome I — 
 
 Elissa. Is't not a lovely, nay, a heavenly eve ? 
 
 Lucifer. Thy presence only makes it so to me. 
 The moments thou art with me are like stars 
 Peering through my dark life. 
 
 Elissa. Nay, speak not so, 
 
 Or I shall weep, and thou wilt turn away 
 From woman's tears : yet are they woman's wealth. 
 
 Lucifer. Then keep thy treasures, lady I I would not have 
 The world, if prized at one sad tear of thine. 
 One tear of beauty can outweigh a world 
 Even of sin and sorrow, heavy as this ; 
 But beauty cannot sin, and should not weep, 
 For she is mortal. Oh 1 let deathless things 
 Alone weep. Why should aught that dies be sad f 
 
 Elissa. The noble mind is oft too generous, 
 And, by protecting, weakens leaser ones ; 
 
506 FE8TU8. 
 
 And tears must come of feeling, though they quench 
 As oft the light which love lit in the eye. 
 
 LuciPEB. I meant not to be mournful. Tell me, now, 
 How hast thou passed the hours since last we met ? 
 
 Elissa. I have stayed the livelong day within this bower ; 
 It was here that thou didst promise me to come ; 
 Watching from wanton mom to repentant eve, 
 The self -same roses ope and close ; untired, 
 Listening the same birds first and latest songs. 
 And still thou camest not. To the mind which waits 
 Upon one hour, the others are but slaves. 
 The week hath but one day — the day one hour ; 
 That hour of the heart — that lord of time. 
 
 Lucifer. Sweet one 1 I raced with light, and passed the laggard 
 To meet thee — or, I mean I could have done — 
 Yea, have outsped the very dart of death — 
 So much I sought ; and were I living light 
 From God, with leave to range the world, and choose 
 Another brow than his whereon to beam ; 
 To mark what even an angel could but covet ; 
 A something lovelier than heaven's loveliness ; 
 To thee I straight would dart, unheeding all 
 The lives of other worlds, even those who name 
 Themselves thy kind ; for oft my mind o'ersoars 
 The stars ; and, pondering upon what may be 
 Of their chief lording natures, man's seems worst — 
 The darkest, meanest, which, through all these worlds, 
 Drags what is deathless, may be, down to dust. 
 
 Elissa. Speak not so bitterly of human kind ; 
 I know that thou dost love it. Hast not heard 
 Of those great spirits, who the greater grow 
 The better we are able them to prize ? 
 Great minds can never cease ; yet have they nob 
 A separate estate of deathlessness : 
 The future is a remnant of their life : 
 Our time is part of theirs, not theirs of ours ; 
 They know the thoughts of ages long before. 
 It is not the weak mind feels the great mind's might ; 
 None but the great can test it. Feels the oak 
 Or reed the strong storm keenlier ? Oh, unsay 
 What thou hast said of man ; nor deem me wrong. 
 Mind cannot mind despise — ^it is itself. 
 Mind must love mind : the great and good are friends ; 
 And he is but half great who is not good. 
 And, oh I humanity is the fairest flower 
 Blooming in eai-thly breasts ; so sweet and pure. 
 That it might freshen even the fadeless wreaths 
 Twined round the golden harps of those in heaven. 
 
 LuciPEB. For thy sake I will love even man, or aught. 
 Spirit were I, and a mere mortal thou. 
 For thy sake I would even seek to die ; 
 That, dead or living, I might still be with thee. 
 
FESTUa, C09 
 
 But no 1 I'll deem thee deathless — mind and make, 
 And worthier of some spirit's love than mine ; 
 Tea, of the first bom of God's sons, could he, 
 In that sweet shade thy beauty casta o'er all, 
 One moment lay and cool his burning soul ; 
 Or might the ark of his wide flood -like woe 
 But rest upon that mount of peace and bliss, 
 Thy heart imbosomed in all beauteousness. 
 Nay, lady I shrink not. Thinkest thou I am he ? 
 
 Elissa. Thou art too noble, far. I oft have wished, 
 Ere I knew thee, I had some spirit's love ; 
 But thou art more like what I sought than man : 
 And a forbidden quest, it seems ; for thou 
 Hast more of awe than love about thee, like 
 The mystery of dreams which we can feel, 
 But cannot touch. 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, think not so 1 It is wrong. 
 
 CJome, let us sit in this thy favourite bower. 
 And I will hear thee sing. I love that voice, 
 Dipping more softly on the subject ear 
 Than that calm kiss the willow gives the wave ; 
 A soft rich tone, a rainbow of sweet sounds. 
 Just spanning the soothed sense. Come, nay me not. 
 
 Elissa. Do thou lead out some lay ; I'll f oUow thine. 
 
 LucirEE. Well, I agree. It will spare me much of sham* 
 In coming after thee. My song is said 
 Of Lucifer the star. See, there he shines I 
 
 I am Lucifer, the star ; 
 
 Oh ! think on me, 
 As I lighten from afar 
 
 The heavens and thee ; 
 In town, or tower, 
 Or this fair bower, 
 
 Oh ! think on me ; 
 Though a wandering star, 
 As the loveliest are, 
 
 I love but thee. 
 
 Lady ! when I brightest beam, 
 
 Love, look on me ; 
 1 am not what I may seem 
 
 To the world or thee ; 
 But fain would love 
 "With thee above. 
 
 Where thou wilt be. 
 But if love be a dream, 
 As the world doth deem. 
 
 What ia't to me ? 
 
 Elibsa. Could we but deem the stars had hearts, and loved. 
 They would seem happier, holier, even than now j 
 And, ah I why not ? they are so beautifuL 
 Ajid love is part and union in itself 
 Of all that is in nature brilliant, pure ; 
 Of all in feeling sacred and sublime. 
 
610 FE8TU8. 
 
 Surely the stars are images of love : 
 The sunbeam and the starbeam doth bring lore. 
 The sky, the sea, the rainbow, and the stream, 
 And dark blue hill, where all the loveliness 
 Of earth and heaven, in sweet ecstatic strife, 
 Seem mingling hues which might immortal be, 
 If length of life by height of beauty went : 
 All seem but made for love — love made for all : 
 We do become all heart with those we love : 
 It is nature's self — it is everywhere — it is here. 
 
 LuciFEB. To me there is but one place in the world, 
 And that where thou art ; for where'er I be, 
 Thy love doth seek its way into my heart, 
 As wlU. a bird into her secret nest : 
 Then sit and sing ; sweet wing of beauty, sing. 
 
 Elissa. Bright one 1 who dwellest in the happy skiea» 
 Rejoicing in thy light as does the brave 
 In his keen flashing sword, and his strong arm's 
 Swift swoop, canst thou, from among the sons of mea 
 Single out those who love thee as do I 
 Thee from thy fellow glories ? If so, star, 
 Turn hither thy bright front ; I love thee, friend. 
 Thou hast no deeds of darkness. All thou dost 
 Is to us light and beauty : yea, thou art 
 A globe all glory ; thou who at the first 
 Didst answer to the angels which in heaven 
 Sang the bright birth of earth, and even now, 
 As star by star is bom, dost sing the same 
 With countless hosts in infinite delight, 
 Be unto me a moment I Write thy bright 
 Light on my heart before the sun shall rise 
 And vanquish sight. Thou art the prophesy 
 Of light which he fulfils. Speak, shining star, 
 Drop from thy golden lips the truths of heaven. 
 First of all stars and favourite of the skies. 
 Apostle of the sun — thou upon whom 
 His mantle resteth— speak, prophetic beauty ! 
 Speak, shining star out of the heights of heaven. 
 Beautiful being, speak to God for man 1 
 Is it because of beauty thou wast chosen 
 To be the sign of sin ? For surely sin 
 Must be surpassing lovely when for her 
 Men forfeit God's reward of deathless bliss. 
 And life divine ; or, is it that such beauty, 
 Sometimes before the truth, and sometimes after, 
 As is a moral or a prophesy. 
 Is ever warning ? Why wert thou accorded 
 To the great Evil ? Is it because thou art 
 Of all the sun's bright servants nearest earth ? 
 Star of the momiag 1 unto us thou art 
 The presage of a day of power. Like thee 
 Let us rejoice in life, then, and proclaim 
 
FE3TUS, Bll 
 
 A glory coming- greater tlian our own. 
 
 All ages axe but stars to that which comes, 
 
 Sunlike. Oh I speak, star 1 Lift thou up thy voice 
 
 Out of yon radiant ranks, and I on earth. 
 
 As thou in heaven, will bless the Lord God ever. 
 
 Hear, Lucifer, thou star ! I answer thee. 
 
 Oh ! ask me not to look and love, 
 
 But bid me worship thee ; 
 For thou art earthly things above, 
 
 As far as angels be : 
 Then whether in the eve or mom 
 Thou dost the maiden slues adorn. 
 
 Oh ! let me worship thee ! 
 
 I am but as this drop of dew; 
 
 Oh ! let me worship thee ! 
 Thv light, thy strength, is ever new, 
 
 iven as the angels' be ; 
 And as this dewdrop, till it dies, 
 Bosoms the golden stars and skies, 
 
 Oh ! let me worship thee ! 
 
 But, dearest, why that dark look 7 
 
 LuciPEE. Let it not 
 
 Cloud thine even with its shadow : but the ground 
 Of all great thoughts Is sadness ; and I mused 
 Upon passed happiness. Well — be it passed I 
 Bid Lucifer, as I do, gaze on thee, 
 The flame of woe would flicker in his breast, 
 And straight die out — the brightness of thy beauty 
 Quenching it as the sun doth earthly fire. 
 
 Elissa. Nay, look not on me so intensely sad. 
 
 LuciFEE. Forgive me : it was an agony of bliss. 
 I love thee, and am full of happiness. 
 My bosom bounds beneath thy smile, as bounds 
 Tlie sea's unto the moon, his mighty mistress ; 
 Ljnng and looking up to her, and saying. 
 Lovely I lovely ! lovely 1 lady of the heavens 1 
 (}h ! when the thoughts of other joyous days. 
 Perchance, if such may be, of happier times, 
 Are falling gently upon the memory, 
 Like autumn's leaves distained with dusky gold, 
 Yet softly as a snowflake ; and the smile 
 Of kindliness, like thine, is beaming on me ; 
 Oh 1 pardon, if I lose myself, nor know 
 AVhether I be with heaven, or thee. 
 
 Elissa. Use not 
 
 Such ardent phrase, nor mix the claim of aught 
 On earth, with thoughts more than with hopes of heaven. 
 
 Lucifer. Hopes, lady I I have none. 
 
 Elissa. Thou must have. Ail 
 
 Have hopes, however wretched they may be. 
 Or blessed, it is hope which lifts the lark so high, 
 Hope of a lighter air and bluer sky ; 
 And the poor hack which drops down on the flints, 
 
51S FE8TU8. 
 
 Upon whose eye the dust is settling, he 
 Hopes, but to die. No being exists, of hope 
 Of love, void. 
 
 Lucifer. Yes, one is ; the ancient 111, 
 Dwelling and damned through all which is : that 'ipirlt 
 "Whose heart is hate ; who is the foe of God ; 
 The foe of all. 
 
 Elissa. How knowest thon such doth live ? 
 
 If one there be, the spirit foe of man. 
 It is only that inferiors still must strive. 
 With God they cannot strive nor dare to deem« 
 What single star could in itself abide 
 The onset of the armies of the heavens ? 
 How then all armies his, who all hath made ? 
 And made in love ? Oh, trust me, never fell 
 By love, a spirit or earthly, or of heaven. 
 Rather by love they are regenerate ; love, 
 Mind's happiest privilege, of all living things 
 The sole suflS-cing reason. A threelihood 
 There seems of principles, which represent 
 And rule created life ; the love of self. 
 Our fellows, and our God. In all there reigns 
 One common feeling ; each maintains the other ; 
 Compatible all, all needful ; this to life, 
 To virtue, that, to bliss all. All, together. 
 Source, end, perfection show of being create. 
 From these three principles cometh every deed. 
 Desire, will, reasoning, good or bad ; to these 
 They all determine — sum and scheme : the three 
 In centre and in round, one, wrap life's world 
 Sky-wise. Hail ! air of love, whereby we live ; 
 How sweet, how fragrant ! Spirit, though unseen- 
 Immortal, immaterial, though it be. 
 One only simple essence liveth — God, — 
 Creator, uncreate. The brutes beneath, 
 The Angels high above us, with ourselves, 
 Are but compounded things of mind and form. 
 In all things animate is therefore cored 
 An elemental sameness of existence ; 
 For God, being love, in love created all. 
 As he contains the whole, and penetrates. 
 Seraphs love God, and angels love the good ; 
 We love each other ; and these lower lives, 
 Which walk the earth in thousand diverse shapes, 
 In whose mean being see God's humility. 
 According to their reason, love us too ; 
 The most intelligent affect us most. 
 Nay, man's chief wisdom's love — the love of God. 
 The new religion — final, perfect, pure — 
 Is that of mercy and love. Heaven's great command, 
 Our all-sufficing precept — ^is't not love ? 
 Truly to love ourselves we must love God« 
 
FESTU8. 613 
 
 To love God we must all his creatures love- 
 To love his creatures, both ourselves and him. 
 This love is all that's wise, fair, good, and happy. 
 
 Lucifer. How knowest thou God doth live / why did ho not 
 "With that same hand which scattered o'er the sky. 
 Aa this small dust I strew upon the wind. 
 Yon countless orbs, aye fixing each on him 
 Its flaming- eye, which winks and blenches oft 
 Beneath his glance, — with the finger of that hand 
 Which spangled o'er infinity with suns, 
 And wrapped it round about him as a robe ? 
 Why did he not write out his own great name 
 In spheres of fire, that heaven might alway tell 
 To every creature, God ? If not, then why 
 Should I believe when I behold around me 
 Nought, scarce, save ill and woe ? 
 
 Elissa. God surely lives ! 
 
 Without God all things are in tunnel darkness. 
 Let there be God, and all are sun — all God. 
 And to the just soul, in a future state. 
 Defect's dark mist, thick-spreading o'er this vale, 
 Shall dim the eye no more, nor bound survey ; 
 And evil, now which boweth being down 
 As dew the grass, shall only fit all life 
 For fresher growth and for intenser day, 
 Where God shall dry all tears as the sun dew. 
 
 LuciFEB. lady I I am vnretched. 
 
 Eltssa. Say not so. 
 
 With thee I could not deem myself unhappy. 
 Hark to the sea I Like the near hum it sounds 
 Of a great city. 
 
 LuciFEB. Say, the city earth ; 
 
 For such these orbs are in the realms of space. 
 
 Elissa. I dreamed once that the night came down to me : 
 In figure, oh 1 too like thine own for truth. 
 And looked into me with his thousand eyes ; 
 And that made me unhappy ; but it passed ; 
 And I half wished it back. Mind hath its earth 
 And heaven. The many petty common thoughts 
 Whereon we daily tread, as it were, make one, 
 Ajid above which few look ; the other is 
 That high and welkin-like infinity, — 
 The brighter, upper half of the mind's world, 
 Thick with great sun-light and constellate thoughts ; 
 And in the night of mind, which is our sleep. 
 These thoughts shine out in dreams. Dreams double life ; 
 They are the heart's bright shadow on life's flood ; 
 And even the step from death to deathlessncss. 
 From this earth's gross existence unto heaven. 
 Can scarce be more than from the harsh hot day, 
 To sleep's soft scenes, the moonlight of the mindl 
 The vrave is never weary of the wind, 
 
614 fESTUS. 
 
 And in mountainous playfulness leaps to it always. 
 
 But mind, world wearied, glooms itself in sleep, 
 
 Like a sweet smile, settling into proper sadness ; 
 
 For sleep seems part of our immortality ; 
 
 And why should anything that dies be sad ? 
 
 Last night I dreamed I walked within a hall — 
 
 The concave of the world. Long shroud-like lights 
 
 Lit up its lift-like dome, and pale wide walls, 
 
 Horizon like : and every one was there ; 
 
 It was the house of death, and Death was there. 
 
 "We could not see him, but he was a feeling : 
 
 We knew he was around us — heard us — eyed us ; 
 
 But where wast thou ? Thee met I not. And all 
 
 "Was still as primal nothingness ; or as G-od, 
 
 Deep judging, when the thought of making first 
 
 Quickened and stirred withiu him ; and he made 
 
 All heaven at one thought as at a glance. 
 
 Noise was there none ; and yet there was a sound, 
 
 "Which seemed to be half like silence, half like sound. 
 
 All crept about still as the cold wet worms, 
 
 Which slid among our feet, we could not 'scape from. 
 
 Round me were ruined fragments of dead gods — 
 
 Those shadows of the mystery of One — 
 
 And the red worms, too, flourished over these, 
 
 For marble is a shadow weighed with mind ; 
 
 Each being, as men of old believed who 'neath 
 
 A dim starlight of truth religious lived, 
 
 A moral night, contrast with ours, — distinct 
 
 In form, and place, and power. But oh I not all 
 
 The gathered gods of eld could shine like ours, 
 
 Ko more than all yon stars could make a sun, 
 
 I felt my spirit's spring gush out more clear, 
 
 Gazing on these : they beautified my mind, 
 
 As rocks and flowers reflected do a well. 
 
 Mind makes itself like that it lives amidst, 
 
 And on ; and thus, among dreams, imaginings. 
 
 And scenes of awe, and purity, and power, 
 
 G-rows sternly sweet and calm — all beautiful 
 
 With godlike coldness and unconsciousness 
 
 Of mortal passion, mental toil ; until, 
 
 Like to the marble model of a god, 
 
 It' doth assume a firm and dazzling form, 
 
 Scarcely less incorruptible than that 
 
 It emblems : and so grew, methought, my mind. 
 
 Matter hath many qualities ; mind, one : 
 
 It is irresistible : pure power — pure god. 
 
 While wandering on I met what seemed myself : 
 
 Was it not strange that we should meet, and there t 
 
 But all is strange in dreaming, as in death. 
 
 And waking, as in life ; nought is not strange. 
 
 Methought that I was happy, because dead. 
 
 All hurried to and fro ; and many cried 
 
FESTUa. 515 
 
 To each other — Can I do thee any good ? 
 
 But no one heeded : nothing could avail : 
 
 The world was one great grave. I looked, and saw 
 
 Time on his two great wings — one, night — one, day— 
 
 Fly moth-like right into the flickering sun ; 
 
 So that the sun went out, and they both perished. 
 
 And one gat up and spake — a holy man — 
 
 Exhorting them ; but each and all cried out — • 
 
 Go to 1 it helps not — means not ; we are dead. 
 
 Death spake no word methought, but me he made 
 
 Speak for him ; and I dreamed that I was death ; 
 
 Then, that Death only lived ; all things were mixed ; 
 
 Up and down shooting, like the brain's fierce dance 
 
 In a delirium, when we are apt to die. 
 
 * Hell is my heir : what kin to me is heaven ? 
 
 Bring out your hearts before me. Give your limbs 
 
 To whom ye list or love. My son. Decay, 
 
 Will take them : give them him. I want your hearts, 
 
 That I may take them up to God.' There came 
 
 These words amongst us, but we knew not whence. 
 
 It was as if the air spake. And there rose 
 
 Out of the earth a giant thing, all earth ; 
 
 His eye was earthy, and his arm was earthy ; 
 
 Heart had he none. He but said, I am Decay ; 
 
 And as he spake, he crumbled into earth, 
 
 And there was nothing of him. But we all 
 
 Lifted our faces up at the word, God, 
 
 And spied a dark star high above in the midst 
 
 Of others, numberless as are the dead. 
 
 And all plucked out their hearts, and held them in 
 
 Their right hands. Many tried to pick out specks 
 
 And stains, but could not ; each gave up his heart. 
 
 And something — all things — nothing — it was Death, 
 
 Said, as before, from air — Let us to God ! 
 
 And straight we rose, leaving behind the raw 
 
 Worms and dead gods, all of us — soared and soared 
 
 Right upwards, till the star I told thee of, 
 
 Looked like a moon — the moon became a sun : 
 
 The sun — there came a hand between the sun and us, 
 
 And its five fingers made five nights in air. 
 
 God tore the crown from off the sun's broad brow, 
 
 And flung the flaming glory flat to hell. 
 
 And when I heard a long, cold, skeleton scream, 
 
 Like a trumpet whining through a catacomb, 
 
 Which made the sides of that great grave shake in. 
 
 I saw the world and vision of the dead 
 
 Dim itself off — and all was life. I woke, 
 
 And felt the high sun blazoning on my brow, 
 
 His own almighty mockery of woe, 
 
 And fierce and infinite laugh at things whicli cease. 
 
 Hell hath its light — and heaven ; he bums with both. 
 
 Ajid my dream broke, like life from the last limb 
 
 63 
 
516 FE8TUS. 
 
 Quivering ; so loth I felt to let it go, 
 
 Just as I thought I had caught sight of heaven, 
 
 And seen my last of life's unhappiness. 
 
 It came to nought, as dreams of heaven on earth 
 
 Do always. Have I touched some spirit-chord, 
 
 Adroitless, jars within thy mind ? For, see ! 
 
 Like to a mountain battlemented with cloud, 
 
 Some gloomy thought, what is't ? o'erpents thy brow ? 
 LuciFEE. It is only this ; we are to part. 
 Elissa. So soon I 
 
 Farewell, then, gentle stars 1 To-night, farewell 1 
 
 For we all part at once. It is thus the bright 
 
 Visions and joy of youth break up — but they 
 
 For ever. When ye shine again I will 
 
 Be with ye ; for I love ye next to him. 
 
 To all, adieu 1 When shall I see thee next ? 
 LuciPEE. Lady, I know not. 
 Elissa. Say 1 
 
 LuciFEE. Kever, perchance. 
 
 Elissa. There is but one immortal in the world 
 
 Who need say — never 1 
 LuciFEE. What if I were he ? 
 
 Elissa. But thou art not he ; and thou shalt not say it. 
 
 There is not a thing so ill I would not save 
 
 Had I the power, from ill, and from itself. 
 
 LuciFEE. A thought inspired ; it might have come from heaven. 
 Thou art the soul of kindness. 
 
 Elissa. Who so speaks 
 
 The soul of kindness, speaks the mind of God ; 
 For nature is all kind, and all he made. 
 Justice and power are attributes of God, 
 But love his essence. How then harmonize 
 Infinite love with creatures' endless woe ? 
 If every creatural act be finite, all 
 God's infinite, then must his love at last 
 Win every spirit, and all hate subdue. 
 Can God's will fail for ever ? But he wills, 
 And must, that all souls should be saved and blessed. 
 As man could never be more just than God, 
 Shall God, too, be less merciful than man ? 
 The soul create imperfect therefore sins 
 Because imperfect ; but by him redeemed, 
 As by an universal sacrifice. 
 Being is saved ; and sin gone, suffering ends. 
 Then, finite nature, which can only know 
 Imperfect good, by purifying spheres 
 Of wisdom and progression, grace sustained, 
 Harmonious lives with the eternal heavens. 
 Oh 1 let us meet and talk of things like these. 
 Always. I love the thought of boundless good. 
 Stars rise and set, like beauteous, through all time, 
 With a sublime exactitude to meet i 
 
FESTU8. tVr 
 
 Each other's faces. Why not we, like them ? 
 
 LuciFEB. I see no beauty — feel no love— all things 
 Are unlovely. 
 
 Elissa. O earth 1 be deaf ; and heaven 
 
 Shut thy blue eye. He doth blaspheme the world. 
 Dost not love me ? 
 
 Lucifer. Love thee ? Ay I earth and heaven, 
 
 Together, could not make a love like mine 1 
 
 Elissa. When wilt thou come again ? To-morrow ? 
 
 Lucifer. Well. 
 
 And then I cross yon sea ere I return ; 
 For I have matters in another land. 
 Fear not. 
 
 Elissa. When will our parting days be over ? 
 
 Lucifer. Oh 1 soon — soon 1 Think of me, love, on the waters I 
 Be happy I and, for me, what love I more 
 Than at night to ride upon the broad-backed billow, 
 Seaing along and plunging on his precipitous path ; 
 "While the red moon is westering low away, 
 And the mad waves are fighting for the stars, 
 Or, say, their transient imagery, sea-sown, 
 Like men for — what they know not ? 
 
 Elissa. Scomer 1 
 
 Lucifer. Saint I 
 
 Elissa. Much that is great hath earth ; and but one ssa j 
 To her, as is her spirit ; impulsive oft. 
 As the mad monarch passion to the heart, 
 Fathomless, overwhelming, which receives 
 The rivers of all feeling ; in whose depths 
 Lie wrecked all nature's riches ; God, O sea I 
 Stainless, immaculable by death, by earth 
 Of grossliest burthened stream, unfiled ; while all 
 Accepting, pm-ifying, commuting ; God, 
 "WTien first he made thee, moved upon thee then ; 
 And left his impress there, the same even now. 
 As when thy last wave leapt from chaos. — Hark I 
 Nay, there is some one coming. 
 
 Festus {erttering). It is I. 
 
 I said we should be sure to meet thee here : 
 For I have brought one who would speak with thee. 
 
 Lucifer. Thanks ! and where is he ? 
 
 Festus. Yonder. He would not 
 
 Come up 80 far as this. 
 
 Lucifer. Wlio is it ? 
 
 Festus. I know not 
 
 \Mio he may be, or what ; but I can guess. 
 
 Lucifer. Remain a moment, love, till I return. 
 
 Elissa. Nay— let me leave 1 
 
 Lucifer. Not yet : do not dislike him. 
 
 He is a friend, and more another time. 
 
 Festus. I am sorry, lady, to have caused this parting. 
 I fear I am unwelcome. 
 
5] 8 FE8TUS. 
 
 Elissa. We were parting. 
 
 Festus. Then am I doubly sorry; for I know- 
 It is the saddest and tlie sacredest 
 Moment of all with, those who love. 
 
 Elissa. He is coming ! 
 
 So I forgive thee. 
 
 Lucifer. I must leave thee, love : 
 
 I know not for how long : it rests with thee 
 If it seem long at all. Eternity 
 Might pass, and I not know it, in thy love. 
 
 Elissa. If to believe that I do love thee always, 
 May make time fly the fleeter — 
 
 LuciPEE. I'll believe it — 
 
 Trust me. I leave this lady in thy charge, 
 Festus. Be kind — wait on her — may he, love ? 
 
 Elissa. Thou knowest. I receive him as thy friend, 
 Whenever he come. 
 
 Festus. I ask no higher title 
 
 Tlian friend of the lovely and the generous. 
 
 Elissa. Farewell I 
 
 Festus. Lady 1 I will not forget my trust. 
 CAjpart) The breeze which curls the lake's bright lip but lif to 
 A purer, deeper, water to the light ; 
 The mflaing of the wild bird's wing but wakes 
 A warmer beauty and a downier depth. 
 That startled shrink, that faintest blossom-blush 
 Of constancy alarmed 1 — Love 1 if thou own'st 
 One weapon in that shining armoury, 
 The quiver on thy shoulder, where thou keep'st 
 Each arrowy eye-beam feathered with a sigh ; 
 If from that bow, shaped so like beauty's lip, 
 Strung with its string of pearls, thou wilt twang forth 
 But one dart, fair into the mark I mean, 
 Do it, and I will worship thee for ever ; 
 Yea, I will give thee glory and a name 
 Known, sunlike, in all nations. Heart be still 1 
 Hy message given, I go. 
 
 Elissa. Farewell, 
 
 Lucifee. Farewell, 
 
 Fare ill, it irks not me. The man is mine. 
 Mine, too, the snare, I laid it, true enough. 
 Plot without ceasing, something haps at last. 
 This parting over — 
 
 Elissa. Yes, this one — and then ? 
 
 Lucifee. Why, then another, may be. 
 Elissa. Ko — no more. 
 
 I'll be unhappy if thou tell'st me so, 
 
 Lucifee. Well, then — no more. 
 
 Elissa. But when wilt thou come back ? 
 
 Lucifee. Almost before thou wishest. He will know. 
 
 Elissa. I shall be always asking him. 
 
 Lucifee. One word 
 
FE8TU8. B19 
 
 Apart with thee ere yet thou leavest. Know, 
 
 I have with him a purpose thou mayst aid. 
 
 Conscious though careless of the future, he 
 
 Thou wot'st of, breathes premarked to mighty ends, 
 
 The heir of fate ; and though to states unknown, 
 
 The destined head he lives of power mundane, 
 
 Than grandest monarch's more. His soul, as yet 
 
 Absorbed in love of wisdom, and his heart 
 
 In beauty's starry smile steeped, lack the lure 
 
 To climb ambition's heights, where yet his foot. 
 
 Outstepping all, is due. If thou, possessed 
 
 With aught of friendly impulse, to that end 
 
 Couldst wake into a glow the torpid gleeds 
 
 Which wait the inspiring breath, words, as may suit, 
 
 Of ardour or contempt — forms audible — 
 
 Thy fealty to mewards I hold firm, — 
 
 It will much advantage me, and mine own ends 
 
 Advance. 
 
 Elissa. I doubt not, but in worthy purposes, 
 One might adventure more than words ; and this 
 Towers on the mind more grandly, as the thought 
 Is contemplated. 
 
 LuciFEE. True. Perchance himself 
 
 Urged warily may to thine ears confide 
 The future, and success concert with thee. 
 Tempt him, and he might name thee queen of earth. 
 Yea, stamped by thine ascendant soul, commence 
 That bright career the world awaits. 
 •* Elissa. And thou ? 
 
 What part hast thou in this ? 
 
 LuciFEE. A great one I, 
 
 Though not like his. 
 
 Elissa. Ah, me 1 A second-best. 
 
 LuciFEE. Who doeth not great things with equal casa, 
 And small, doth but indifferently. 
 
 Elissa. We all 
 
 "pave met ere now. 
 
 LuciFEE. My fault it shall not be 
 
 That ye are strangers. 
 
 Elissa. Say for me — farewell 1 
 
 LuciFEE. Shine on, ye stars I and light her to her rest ; 
 Scarce are ye worthy for her handmaidens. 
 Why, hell would laugh to learn I had been in love. 
 As rumour through some impish spy may blab. 
 And would be blind, as they oft are who laugh ; 
 Not seeing their own folly, nor the flaw 
 Which stars their self-deceit. These twain I bring 
 Together as prime factors in my sum, 
 The evil most profound I can achieve — 
 Earth's sudden death. Yet, through the boundless mist 
 Of mockery I have played with, one bright peak, 
 Sharp, solid, peers into the upper light ; 
 
620 FESTU3. 
 
 One thouglit of good, one seed of sacred truth, 
 
 One priceless pearl fallen from love's fairy lips, 
 
 Hath, sunk into my soul. It irks me not, 
 
 Thoug-h, like the projective powder of adept, 
 
 Hell's base metallic mass it should transmute 
 
 Into one pure and perfect orb of gold, 
 
 The future is to be ; and not as yet 
 
 Can I be balked. Eradicated good 
 
 Hath heretofore the aim been of my being. 
 
 Shall I not strive to root it out then, hence ? 
 
 See which is stronger, that, or I ? though helped 
 
 By all creation's wrong and wretchedness ? 
 
 The war of good and evil narrowed here 
 
 To mine own spirit, it is time to force the strife. 
 
 All obstacles must be removed, the fates 
 
 Are fast maturing to their end, at once. 
 
 Thou seemest fixed in thought, as a star in space. 
 
 Hast thought of that, I whilom promised thee ? 
 
 Festus. Soon, then soon. 
 
 My mind is now intent on other aims. 
 
 LuciPEE. The world perhaps will hear of ? 
 
 Festus. Ay, anon. 
 
 LuciFEE. I have affairs in helL Wilt go with me ? 
 
 Festus. Yes, in a month or two : — not just this minute. 
 
 LuciFEB. I shall be there and back again ere then. 
 
 Festus. Meanwhile I can amuse myself ; so, go I 
 But some time I would fain behold thy home, 
 And pass the gates of fire. 
 
 LuciPEE. Thou shalt, and soon. 
 
 My home is everywhere where spirit is. 
 
 Festus. The strongest passion which I have is honour : 
 I would I had none : it is in my way. 
 
 Guardian Angel. One moment, Festus ; go ! I follow. 
 
 Lucifer. Gone ? 
 
 All things are as I meant them. On the ridge 
 Of ruin, how we brave it ; as though one. 
 Ambitious of a seat in heaven, above 
 The cloud-encumbered pathway of the wind, 
 Should sit the tremulous bridge all-hued, which spans 
 Air's stormy realms, fate scorned. To mark an eagle, 
 Batting the sunny ceiling of the world, 
 With his dark wings, one well might deem his heart 
 On heaven ; but no 1 it is fixed on flesh and blood ; 
 And soon his talons tell it. Let me think. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Thy gi-eat decrees, O God of grace 1 be given 
 To humblest spirits to know : too blessed if they, 
 Thy holy secrets sharing, live, depute. 
 To work thy universal will, and ground 
 In thine intents the all-embracing heavens. 
 Empowered by thee to serve thine ends divine, 
 We learn the thoughts of others ; and in this wise 
 Now know I thine, Lucifer 1 thy schemes 
 
FE8TU8, 631 
 
 'Gainst God's elect, by mortal, fatal Bin 
 
 To ruin ; but the words within thy spirit, 
 
 Let fall by her thou once wouldst sacrifice ; 
 
 I, and her angel here together prayed ; 
 
 Like the atomic seed of worlds, the heart 
 
 And nucleus of new nature shall betimes, 
 
 By will of God regenerate ; and all aims 
 
 Of creatural evil frustrate, God's sole end 
 
 Of universal good o'erride all bounds ; 
 
 And in his infinite satisfaction close 
 
 The world of life : — words which, truth-soul'd, have strucTc 
 
 To the main root of being ; thoughts of good 
 
 Thou canst not now annihilate ; hopes which bear, 
 
 ITiough silent, witness not to be suppressed 
 
 By time, like earth's immarbled sediments. 
 
 To age-compressing floods. Thou wilt not brook 
 
 To her, harm ; even this can I foresee ; 
 
 And thus thy first good deed, rebuking thought 
 
 Of ill in other, shall both her and him 
 
 "Whom thou wouldst lure to ill, and loss of bliss, 
 
 Them and thee profit. Time, and God's high will 
 
 Shall all things else educe, as writ in heaven. 
 
 But he shall know my presence ere I go. 
 
 Spirit, I warn thee 1 
 
 LuciFEE. What 1 celestial friend 1 
 
 Meet we once more ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. At last, let mockery cease. 
 
 Lucifer. Let mockery cease. I have — ia this not true ? 
 To be is something, to believe is more — 
 While owning Him supreme, believed his good, 
 Yet bounded by mine evil ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. O, conceit 
 
 Most false, most fearful 1 How then shall he gain 
 The victories he hath promised to himself, 
 And all, in everlasting prophesies, 
 If he subdue not evil and transform 
 AH ill to good ? That were a victory vast, 
 And of none other hand achievable ; 
 Worthy indeed of God. 
 
 LuciFEE. This sole I see ; 
 
 All evil I must elaborate to the end. 
 Both in this mortal and myself. Meanwhile 
 Can I not, in his heart — bad, base return 
 True, for that late to me vouchsafed, — one thought 
 Evil, one wild desire, instil ; of soul 
 Perilous, if ruinous not ? 'Gainst both, in sooth, 
 Must I take arms ; as the audacious main 
 Combats twin elements at once, the land 
 Lashing with breakers, while with clouded foam, 
 The neutral air intimidate, he invades. 
 But dare I meet the fate mysterious, now 
 Threatened, or promised ia't? awaits me? \WeU; 
 
522 FE8TU8. 
 
 It recks not. I can brave it to the last. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Aiv^GEL. My lips are sealed, mine eyes. 
 
 LuciFEK. Mine, too. Around 
 
 Tlie caved heavens I grope, nor see escape ; 
 This everlasting vault, these tombing skies. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 Hearts, like Tiioons, 
 Mature apace ; and while one half the world 
 Is busy, and one half dreaming. Passion's path 
 Is railed of perilous ventures scarcely 'scaped 
 By sheer precipitancy, as ice unsafe 
 Oft rends not till we are sped. Pity the fair 
 Embodiment of thrice passionate love, by man 
 From his fiend friend won ; the lure yet laid of power, 
 Ambition's highest to attract, learn, lustly fails ; 
 Nor less the false solution this would seek 
 Of selfish luxury, and a life unlawed 
 By relevance to the eternal, and its dues. 
 Thus wiled, lo ! life's defeat we fame ; with cups 
 Of air inebriate, or more substanced, drain 
 Deceived, the wine of our own death-feast ; plot, 
 Ravenous of doom, self-ruin ; but this withheld. 
 See wars of soul with soul that but half- won 
 Half lost on either side feints prove contrived, 
 By the bad spirit's means for his own worst ends : 
 "Whom we know not when come ; so dark we grow. 
 
 Mansion overlooking tlie Sea, Interior. A Drawing-room. 
 Festus and Elissa. Guardian Angel. Lucifee. 
 
 Festus. Who says he loves and is not wretched, lies. 
 Or that love is madness, mad from his mother came. 
 It is the most reasonable thing in nature. 
 What can we do but love ? It is our cup ; 
 Our fine, our passion. In heaven's name, Elissa 1 
 WTiat was it made us love 1 
 
 Elissa. I know not, what ? 
 
 I am not happy. I have wept all day. 
 
 Festus. It was thine own fault. What wouldst thou Lave cf 
 me? 
 I tell thee we must — no : I cannot tell thee. 
 I cannot brook those tears. Thou knowest I love thee, 
 Worship thee ; oh it's a world more than worship, 
 The cold obedience given to God. Elissa, 
 Turn towards me thy fair brow. 
 
 Elissa. Nay, let me weep. 
 
 Festus. Thou hadst no need, no call, no cause to have loved me. 
 One was, who well loved thee. 
 
 Elissa. I could not help 
 
 His loving me ; nor, woe is me 1 prevent 
 My loving thee. Alas 1 it is our fate. 
 
FESTUa. 828 
 
 Festus. Then fate hath f eo'd the passion for oar end ; 
 And we are sold to ruin. 
 
 Elissa. Then we will die 
 
 Together ; quit together body and life ; 
 But while I live, none can I love but thee. 
 Look at me ; heart and arms, I am thine own ; 
 Have been, must be. Oh 1 I was happy once ; 
 Ere I knew thee. And thou, why wast thou kind 
 To me, kind cruelly, or this had not been 
 Ever. But now, be cruel, if thou wilt. 
 Hate me, still I am thine ; disown me, thine ; 
 Desert me, no thou canst not. Look at me, 
 I am half blind with weeping, and mine eyes 
 Have scarce a tear left in them, for I yet 
 Dread how 'twill end. Thou wilt leave me, leave me, lone, 
 Loveless, forgot. 
 
 Festus. Nay, if we are given to forge 
 
 Adventures, let it be so. Say, we part. 
 Say, we must part. Think that I come again. 
 
 Elissa. Not be again with thee, nor thou with me I 
 It is too much. Let me go mad, or die. 
 
 Fecstus. Live mine, Elissa ; and I will ever love thee. 
 
 Elissa. Wilt thou ? Oh make me happy. Say it again. 
 I cannot know too often of my bliss. 
 
 Festus (apart). As shakes the continent 'neath the solid fail 
 Of mighty stream, lake-gorged, appalling air. 
 Thought wildering, so my heart by passion's force 
 Stunned, rests nor night nor day, but rocks with one 
 Ceaseless vibration. Does the very air 
 WTiisper f orbiddance to my will ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. soul, 
 
 Be wise 1 The vast invisible witness all 
 Beholds. 
 
 Elissa. But say, dost love me ? wilt thou love me ? 
 
 Festus. Since I have knowm thee I have done nought else. 
 All hours not spent with thee are blanks between stars. 
 Love thee ? I love thee madly. Thou hast drained, 
 Of all its love, mine heart. It will empty be 
 To aught after thee. Ay, now relume thine eyes, 
 Those eyes that might a moment win the glance 
 Of any seraph gazing not the throne. 
 
 Elissa. No wonder thine. What 1 tears I 'Tis thy turn now. 
 Sad formulary with me of speechless grief 1 
 One retributive tear is there. Nay, why ? 
 
 Festus. 'Tis strange, 'tis startling, is the first hot tear 
 We have shed, may be for years ; and which hath lain 
 Like a water-fairy in the eye's blue depths, 
 Spell-bound ; death freed it not ; pain, not ; nor shame ; 
 Nor penitence, nor much pity, nor despair ; 
 What else but love could ? For a fearful time 
 We can keep down the floodgates of the heart. 
 But somewhile we must draw them, or it will burst 
 
624 FE8TU3. 
 
 Like sand, tliis brave embankment of tlie breast, 
 And drain itself to dry death. ■V\'lien pride thaws, 
 Look for floods. I have that in thought that sets 
 Between me and the world a bar, no power 
 Can loose. 
 
 Elissa. What thoup:ht ? Our time may soon be over. 
 
 Festus. I cannot think of time ; there is no time. 
 Time, time, I hate thee with the hate of hell 
 For aught that's good, but thou art infamous. 
 I will give thee half mine immortality 
 To keep back for an hour. Leave me to-night, 
 ^*jid wither me to-morrow like a weed. 
 
 Elissa. Where is he now ? 
 
 Festus. In Hades, hope I 
 
 Elissa. What mean'st thou ? 
 
 He wronged thee never. Say, when cometh he ? 
 
 Festus. To-night. 
 
 Elissa. He comes to sever us like fate. 
 
 But shall he part us ? 
 
 Festus. Never. Let him part 
 
 The sun in twain first. 
 
 Elissa. Now, would I, he came 
 
 Right speedily, for it frets me until freed 
 Frankly, from all allegiance. 
 
 Festus. See him not, 
 
 Pie will re-lure thy spirit with vain deceits ; 
 Or try. No, hence with me. Trust me. Av/ay, 
 Ere he come. 
 
 Elissa. I may not. It was ever thus ; 
 I am born to make unhappy all around me. 
 
 Festus. Of thy being wrong I will not hear ; it is I ; 
 I am the false usurper. And since one 
 Must be a sacrifice, be it me. 
 
 Elissa. Thou swarest, 
 
 Even now to love me ever 1 
 
 Festus. Be it so. 
 
 I have sworn, and now and then I keep my oath ; 
 I will not give thee up. 
 
 Elissa, We have been too happy. 
 
 We might have known woe follows bliss as close 
 As death, life. 
 
 Festus. Ah 1 how cold thy hand is. Here, 
 Warm it upon my heart. Nay, let it be. 
 The hand that is on the heai't is on the soul. 
 And it is thus some moments take the heart, 
 Life's wheel, and steer us through eternity. 
 
 Elissa. Loose, now, my hand. 
 
 Festus. Look beautiful on me then ! 
 
 Speak to me. Keep my name upon thy lips. 
 Steeped in their roseate dew, lips sacred aye 
 To the word that shall be ; and the unexpressed sweets 
 Of possible music ; hither turn those eyes, 
 
FESTU8, 525 
 
 Within whose depths one streaming star, the soul's 
 
 Ascendant, radiant rules, that mine may share 
 
 Their dear translated light ; that cheek, just tinged 
 
 As with the visible echo of a blush ; 
 
 Pale as the sumptuous bosom'd rose, which, save 
 
 For its heart, might vie with snow ; that crescent brow 
 
 Beaming with soul-light, oh, incline to mine. 
 
 Nay, do not weep. We never trust your tears. 
 
 Tears, even as spirits within a magic glass, 
 
 Upon practised witchery, wait on woman's will. 
 
 Eltssa. Wrong me not thus. The end of love is woo , 
 And of woe, death, and of death, death alone. 
 And there is no redemption for the heai-t. 
 
 Festus. Love hath no end except itself. We only 
 Felt we loved, and were happy. 
 
 Elissa. Ah, it was so. 
 
 Our sole misfortune is, we have been happy. 
 We never shall be happy here again. 
 
 Festus. Nay, say not so. Let us be happy, now. 
 Happy ? To fling aside thy wavy locks, 
 And feed upon thy white brow mine eyes ; to look 
 Deep into thine, till mine I feel have drank 
 Full of that soft wet fire which floats in them ; 
 Eyes I would never leave, yet when most near 
 Then, most astray, I ; nay, but to glance, as one 
 Who hath eyed the inconceivable forms on high, — 
 Where midst upon the beauty of thy breast 
 Sits Love, like one between the cherubim ; 
 To name thee, dream thee, but one moment mine 
 Delights me more than all that earth can lend 
 The good or bad, or heaven — 
 
 Elissa. Oh name not heaven I 
 
 With thoughts so foolish and so wi'ong. 
 
 Festus. What's wrong ? 
 
 Shall my blood never bound 'neath beauty's touch. 
 Heart throb, nor eye thaw with hers when her tears 
 Drop quick and bright upon the glowing brow 
 Bowed at her feet, because, forsooth, it is wrong ? 
 Let it be wrong, it is wrong, it is wretchedness, 
 I seek to suffer. 
 
 Elissa. Nay, be calm. I never 
 
 So love thee as when calm. Even then, 'tis strange I 
 How dare we love each other as we do I 
 
 Festus. Give me some wine ; more wine. It pleasures me 
 One's blood to impurple with the pall-black wine 
 Of southern slopes, where years agone this grape 
 Clustered mayhap o'erhead, and my brow screened 
 With the strong dark shadows cast by lustier suns. 
 Good, now. It feeds my will. And I have plans, 
 Oh, plans I 'twould take an age to execute, 
 A realm to realise ; a world to undo. 
 
 Elissa. Drink ; but the vintogc of a hundred years 
 
628 FE8TU8. 
 
 Would never slake shame's memory, lieed thou well, 
 Nor quench the thirst of folly. 
 
 Festus. Fill again, 
 
 My beauty. Sing- to me and make me glad. 
 Thy sweet words drop as softly upon the ear 
 As rose leaves on a well ; and I could listen. 
 As though the immortal melodies of heaven 
 Were wrought into one word, that word a whisper, 
 That whisper all I would from all I love. 
 
 Elissa. I am not happy ; cannot sing. Thou looA-;!St 
 Happy. Would I were 1 
 
 Festus. The sun's body, they say, 
 
 Is dark, hard, hollow ; light but a floating fluid 
 Veiling him. 
 
 Elissa. Ah 1 how truly like man's heart ; 
 
 Most when, self -hid in passion's bright disguise, 
 Fraudful. 
 
 Festus. Dost moralize ? Oh, I'm with thee, there 1 
 
 Servant (entering). A singer told to come is here. 
 
 Festus. Wilt hsai him ! 
 
 Elissa. Gladly, love. Bid him enter. 
 
 Festus. What hast there ? 
 
 SiNGEB. Oh, everything, I think. 
 
 Festus. Well anything 
 
 Will serve, this once. 
 
 SiNGEB. The last new song ? 
 
 Festus. Begin. 
 
 Singer. Oh ! let not a lovely form 
 
 With feeling fill thine eye ; 
 Oh ! let not the bosom warm 
 
 At love-lorn lady's sigh ; 
 For how false is the fairest breast ; 
 
 How little worth, if true ; 
 And who would wish possessed, 
 
 What all must scorn or rue ? 
 Then pass by beauty with looks above ; 
 Oh ! seek never — share never — woman's love ! 
 
 Oh ! let not a planet-like eye 
 
 Imbeam its tale on thine ; 
 In truth 'tis a he — though a he 
 
 Scarce less than truth divine. 
 And the light of its look on the young 
 
 Is wildfire with the soul; 
 Te follow and follow it long, 
 
 But find nor good nor goal. 
 Then pass by beauty with looks above ; 
 Oh I seek never — share never — woman's love ! 
 
 Elissa. Methinks I must have heard that voice before. 
 Festus. And I, though I forget me where. 
 Elissa. I, too. 
 
 Singer. Oh ! let not a wildering tongue 
 Weave bright webs o'er thtue ear ; 
 Nor thy spirit be said nor sung 
 To the ail- of smile or tear. 
 
FESTU8. 627 
 
 And say it hath melody far 
 
 if ore than the spheres of heaven, 
 Though to man and the morning star 
 
 They sang, Ye be forgiven ! 
 Yet pass by beauty with looks above ; 
 Oh ! seek never — share never — woman's lovo I 
 
 Oh ! let not a soft bosom pour 
 
 Itself in thine ! It is vain. 
 Love cheateth the heart, oh ! be sure. 
 
 Worse even than wine the brain. 
 Then snatch up thy soul from liis snare, 
 
 Ere e'en from the goblet's brim, 
 Thy lip ; for the wise declare, 
 
 There is none that can blind like him. 
 Then pass by beauty with looks above ; 
 Oh ! seek never — share never — woman's love ! 
 
 Festus, Come hither, I would look on thee. I haye seen 
 Some one much like thee. 
 
 Elissa. It was a brother, maybe ? 
 
 SiNGEE. I have none, lady. 
 
 Festus. Go ; but leave your song; 
 
 Elissa. Gk) not as yet. Even yon unfolding- door 
 Hath cleared the sultry-passion'd air, which hangs 
 Heavy as with idolatrous incense. Wait. 
 There was a steadying coolness of the stars 
 Came with those footsteps. Stay I — Again, I prithee. 
 
 Festus. Sing something burning, passionate, and sweet* 
 For oh I I am in the mood to realize 
 All deep and dear enjoyment. Trill away, 
 The lilt perchance may dovetail with the time. 
 
 Singer. Thou art for happiness with me. 
 
 Love, love me as thou wilt ! 
 I care not, so I live with thee, 
 
 For goodness or for guilt. 
 I leave repentance to the weak, 
 
 And to the good all gladness : 
 I only feel, that while I speak, 
 
 Reason to me seems madness. 
 
 This heart at once went wild for thee, 
 
 While yet thou wert not mine ; 
 And now thine eye is law to me — 
 
 Law human and divine. 
 I leave despair to all who fail, 
 
 Who love and lose thee, sadness ; 
 For what 'gainst beauty can avail, 
 Which, moon-like, maketh madness ? 
 Is this sufficient ? 
 
 Festus. Ample, excellent. 
 
 His words perplex me not a little. But now 
 Bid him depart. 
 Elissa. Let fate fulfil itself. 
 
 Servant. Here, follow me. 
 
 SiNGEE. Soft, friend. Await me here, 
 
 While I assort my ditties, and concert 
 Wliat on re-entry may be just. 
 
628 FE8TU8. 
 
 SeevAnt. Art bidden 
 
 To reappear ? » 
 
 SiNGEE. Truth, I may be recalled. 
 
 Elissa. How is't my heart misg-ives me so ? How is't 
 I long, yet dread, to meet this regent once, 
 Now outcast, of my spirit ? How break to him 
 That change which o'er the firmament of my life 
 Hath swept, and stormily even now, where once, 
 Calm homed. Alas for me 1 Thou knowst not, thou 
 Though dear, my troubles, 
 
 Festus. Weeping again, my love ? 
 
 Thou art by turns the proudest, humblest, creature 
 Earth owns. The least thing, now, dints thy soft heart j 
 Now, thou couldst face unblenched, a menacing world. 
 Oh, if to say I love laid all the sins 
 Of all the worlds on me I'd say it, still. 
 
 Elissa. If love be blind, it must be by his tears ; 
 For love and sorrow alway come together, 
 Love with his sister, Sorrow, by the hand. 
 
 Festus. Nay, I will conquer thee again to smile, 
 To jet forth thy soul's radiance, once again. 
 Or lose my right to love thee. Let me kneel. 
 Come I I will have no other gods but thee ; 
 To none but thee will I bow down and worship. 
 Thy bosom be mine altar, and thine eyes 
 Stars manif estive that lead me hourly on 
 To the shrine of thy divinity. Shine 1 Appear I 
 Oh cruel as the week-day gods of old 
 Wilt thou have human victims ? Not content 
 With fire and water, kisses, tears, is't thou 
 Wilt have life's subtler element ? must needs 
 On immortality feast ? Here, take me, then ; 
 I offer up myself, in sacrifice, 
 To thee. 
 
 Elissa. Where will thy passionate folly end? 
 I love thee. 
 
 Festus. I conjure thee, let me swear 
 By some sweet oath that shall to both be holy, 
 By arms which hold ; by knees which worship thee ; 
 By that dark eye, the dark divine of beauty. 
 Yet trembling o'er its lid all tears and light ; 
 Glory, and eye of eyes which yet have shone • 
 By this lone heart which longeth for a mate ; 
 By love's sweet will and sweeter way, by all 
 I love, by thyself, myself, let me, let me, 
 Let me, — but draw the lightnings from thine eye ; 
 Kisses be my conductors ; do not frown ; 
 Nor look so temptingly angry. I was but trifling. 
 The cold, calm kiss which cometh as an alms 
 Not a necessity is not for me, 
 Whose bliss, whose woe, whose life, whose all is love. 
 
 Elissa. We both wrong whom we love, love whom we wrong; 
 
 i 
 
FE8TU8. 529 
 
 Febtus. Bnt I am even as a dog* that fondles o'er, 
 And licks the wound he dies of. Would I could 
 Create or suffer within myself enough 
 Of love to kill. 
 
 Elissa. Thou lovest one whom, maybe, 
 
 Thou oughtst not to have loved. 
 
 Festus. Love hath its own 
 
 Belief, own worship, own morality. 
 Own laws. It were better that all love were sin 
 Than that love were not. By-laws it must have, 
 Exceptions to earth's rules, and heaven's, not meanings 
 The good it doth, nor ill. 
 
 Elissa. Oh, plead not thus ; 
 
 It is wrong, it is unjust, unkind. 
 
 Festus. It is. 
 
 But I am half mad and half dead with it. 
 I have loved thee till I can love nought beside. 
 My heart is drenched with love, as with a cloud 
 A sky aspiring hill. So much I have 
 Of lifefulness I seem to o'erlive myself. 
 I hate all things but thee ; shun men like snakes ; 
 "Women, like pits. To me thou art aU woman, 
 All life, all love, and more than all my kind. 
 I love thee more than I shall love and look for 
 Death, dare he take thee from me. But who dreama 
 Of death and thee together ? 
 
 Elissa. I dream so, not 
 
 Rarely ; and know not but that now and again, 
 I would such dreams were verified. The best 
 Of all things are dreams realized. 
 
 Festus. Ah me 1 
 
 Dreams such as gods may dream thy soul possess 
 For aye i' the Hadean Eden, death ; but here, 
 Me bless with love's divine reality. 
 So live we ever ; thou in thyself, with me 
 Happy ; and I of thee all wise, aU blessed. 
 I have gone round the compass of all life 
 And can find nought worthy of thee. I but feel 
 That were I, as I ought to be, a god 
 I would sacrifice to thee the sun, in bright 
 And burning honour of thy love ; proof sought 
 Of mine oblation's worthfulness ; for know, 
 Miracles are not miracles with gods. 
 
 Elissa. Dearer thou canst not be to me, unless 
 I die in telling how dear. 
 
 Festus. Mine 1 be mine I 
 
 My soul is stung with thy beauty to the quick. 
 Oh but thou art too good or else too bad ; 
 Be colder or be warmer, 
 
 Elissa. Leave me. 
 
 Festus. Well 
 
 It is most cruel, first to light the heart 
 
68P FE8TU8. 
 
 With, love completely, boundlessly ; and then, 
 
 Moonlike, slowly to edge aside, and leave 
 
 One only little line of all so bright, 
 
 Once ; teach and nnteach ; nay, to use more arts 
 
 Than would outdo the devil of his throne, 
 
 To make us ignorant of all we know ; 
 
 To take the heart to pieces carefully ; 
 
 For it is love alone can build the heart ; 
 
 To root the tree up, 'neath. whose shade v/e have lived, 
 
 And give us back a sliver. Let it die. 
 
 GuAEDiAx A2\GEL. Thus daxes he brave fate's end. "With her 
 to reign 
 In passionate and imperial, solitude, 
 Forbid, he would drive dominion from his mind, 
 As drives the wind some day-besetting cloud 
 Though ne'er so grand and gorgeous, down the skies, 
 So he might soothe his heart with this new love 
 And rest in peace. False peace 1 not thus grants Heaven. 
 Soul's blind devotion paid to passion's cause. 
 Worthless, self -slaughter means, not sacrifice. 
 She only shares pride's seat, pride banned — whose soul 
 Turned prayerful Godwards, power can sanctify 
 By teaching rule to serve. Haste, beaven, the hour. 
 
 Elissa. Hark, he is coming. 
 
 Festus. Wlio is coming ? 
 
 Elissa. He 
 
 Thou knowest, I wait for. 
 
 Festus. No 1 lie cannot come ; 
 
 For I have driven an oath, into bis heart. 
 And hanged a curse about his neck, might sink 
 The Prince of Air to the centre. 
 
 Elissa. But thou saidst 
 
 He was to come, and at fixed time. 
 
 Festus. I said so ? 
 
 I'm, sure, bewildered. Time it is indeed 
 To do what most I am here to do. 
 
 GuARDiA2f Angel. Beware I 
 
 Oh ! I beseech thee. Nay, he hears me not, 
 More than 'mid foamy turmoil of a sea 
 Storm-lashed, is heard the sigh of land-locked gale. 
 State-severed, hid in continents. 
 
 Festus. All concurs. 
 
 With what malefic providence, will men say, 
 Success hath covenanted with wrong. The hour 
 Bums as it passes o'er me with a wing 
 Stifling of fire, till all's done ; and we here 
 Enjoy perfection. Have, have, cries a voice, 
 As of a crowd within me. All one's life 
 Lies past the vast horizon there, unseen. 
 But must be sought and had. I would do aught 
 To throw this dark desire which wrestles with me. 
 It answers not to hold it at arm's length. 
 
FESTUS. 
 
 It mnst be hnrled, dashed, trampled down, or see 
 It soars, and all subdues. O lady, hear ! 
 Never did angrel lore bis beaven. nor king- 
 Crown, as I thee. As some fire-bearted star. 
 By beauteousness of sister spbere allnred. 
 His ancient seat mid ererlasdng- spaoe, 
 And self-suMcing barmonies quits, to round 
 Ceaseless, tbe idol orb. and to bers add 
 H;s pomp of lig-bt subservient, nor would leava 
 Sucb luminous vortex, but tbe unlidded eye 
 Bums to ber always. — I for tbee, most fair I 
 Mind's self rule, earth's forego ; nor other end 
 Seek than thyself. 
 
 Elissa. But to what end ? Tbe world 
 
 Is ripening with the plans thyself bast sown. 
 And waits its reaper. "Would not earth contend ? 
 
 Festus. Let others notions fit them to our need. 
 I have efeced my nature in the hope 
 To conciliate love with fate. In vain ! As might 
 One resolute to die, the shore sought, cry 
 To the wide embattled wave whose twin white arms. 
 And stretched out fingers, streamy with latent li^ht, 
 All things before them conquering, at last, close. 
 Arched Hke the bow of death, resplendent, ' Come^ 
 Wreck me with thine embrace, it is my doom.' 
 So, to thy destinative hands, my brow 
 Xow circling as a moveable aureole, I 
 My spirit reserveless trust. 
 
 Elissa. See, now, tbe mocn. 
 
 As one whose soul, sole conversant with heaven, 
 But by immortal memories saddened, still 
 Considers silently the excuseful mirth 
 Of wavelets in their twinkling play, and dance 
 Of even the eternal elementss which will take 
 Now. and once more their pleasure, 
 
 Festus. Oh: far off! 
 
 That everlasting shimmering ; 'tis indeed 
 Too notable ; and anon — 
 
 F.T.TSSA. Yon fountain's Ml I 
 
 How sweetly it lulls tbe ear, and ringed in groves 
 Of fragrant fruitagre, and by showers, suspense 
 And permanent, of the myrtle's pearly stars. 
 Shocks not with love's own murmured words. 
 
 Festus. Peace, peace I 
 
 I cannot grant tame audience, thou with me. 
 To outward nature. 
 
 Elissa. Think then of thine own. 
 
 Nay, let me look then on the impassive bills. 
 Their swell uncbangeful. stirless rise and fall ; 
 Tbe sea is aU too mutable, and tbe moon. 
 I breathe now, 'neath this trx>llis. 
 
 Festtjs. Breathe, and know 
 
B82 FE8TU8. 
 
 The might and truth of hearts is ne'er so shown 
 As in loving those we ought not, may be, love ; 
 Or cannot have. 
 
 Elissa. Let me not wrong thee, Festus. 
 
 Let me not think I have thought too well of thee ; 
 And that to rebel 'gainst thee were heaven to obey. 
 What is't thou meditatest ? Hast aught conceived 
 Would contrary God's ends ? and edge aside 
 Thy path from duty and destiny ? 
 
 Festus. I am here 
 
 To act, not ask, nor answer ; to myself 
 I am henceforth sole responsible. 
 
 Elissa. Alas ! 
 
 I do begin to fear thee. 
 
 Festus. That were well. 
 
 Elissa. Wouldst thou God's law and man's evade ? Thon 
 know, 
 I cannot fly the world ; more than defy 
 Earth's bodily gravity ; still less wouldst thou deem 
 Soul to disconsecrate ? 
 
 Festus. Not a moment. Not 
 
 One spot thy shadow hallows. But these climes 1 
 This plot of earth is all too mea,n, too tame. 
 Too moderate in its temperament ; its range 
 Of act too average ; nor enough profound 
 Its total rest. I love the pitiless sun ; 
 Soil that reeks high with rankest f ruitfulness ; 
 Law such as lurks in storms ; each day a day 
 Of history ; and a sleep lawn-pillowed, now 
 'Neath moonlight, now in savage sun-blaze trapped ; 
 Half down some steep ravine, safe hutted ; lulled 
 By boom of waters, black with molten snows ; 
 The passionate lands where women live to love. 
 And men 'twixt war and worship halve their days. 
 
 Elissa. Is't thou sayst war ? 
 
 Festus. I prate not now of peace ; 
 
 But warring with myself, with heaven, with doom, 
 I reck not were the world all war, and thou 
 Queen of the south, to head a hemisphere 
 Of foes against me challenging so the throne 
 Of a plight orb, I'd care not. Thee to bind 
 In bands of love triumphant, 'twere enough 
 For me, the great tradition's sum and close. 
 
 Elissa. What dreadful words are these I What change hast 
 thou. 
 Change utter and unutterable, endured 
 In spirit, who once wert most humane of men 
 Not manwards sole, but towards all life. Be calm. 
 Truth, thou affrightest me. 
 
 Festus. Oh, I am calm, 
 
 As husbandman when midst the harvest field. 
 And the soft shadelets thrown by autumnal moons 
 
FE8TUa» 533 
 
 Prom sheaf and shock, he eyes the ungarnered i)ile, 
 Builded breast hi^h, shake to his pausing foot, 
 Anticipative of whitest wealth. Nay, see ; 
 Calm as the heartiest circlet of a wheel, 
 Whose visible movement's lost, to myself I seem 
 Still, absolutely. feel my pulse ; I'm cabn ; 
 Breathless. 
 Elissa. We trifle. 
 
 Festus. Trifle then no more. 
 
 Let us away, away 1 Yon innocent orb 
 Sacred, sequestrate, vii-gin of the skies. 
 Us following, with her patient power shall tend 
 Our homeward track nor leave us till we reach, 
 With thy fair following, holiest peace. 
 
 Elissa. I cannot. 
 
 Thou wouldst dethrone my will, and bid me trudge 
 A beggar queen o'er earth. But know my will 
 As thine free, free to love thee an' I choose, 
 Despite thy proud disloyalty, thy peer ; 
 But not my sacred will to efforce. Away 1 
 
 Festus. Oh say not so. Slay me at once, I die. 
 I look upon thy beauty, and forget, 
 As in a dream of drowning all things else. 
 Right, wrong, seem one, seem nothing. Thou art beauty ; 
 That beauty everything. Speak not. It may be 
 I shall look on thee as looks the sun on earth, 
 Until like him I gaze myself away 
 From heaven. But if thou wouldst I look no longer, 
 Change then the action of thy loveliness. 
 Lest long same-seemingness should send me mad. 
 Blind me with kisses. I would ruin sight, 
 To give its virtue to those lips whereon 
 1 would die now or ever live. Away I 
 For as wearied wanderer snow-blinded, sinks, 
 And swoons upon the swelling drift and dies ; 
 So on that dazzling bosom would I lay 
 These famished lips, and end their wanderings there. 
 Come, let us balk the future of its end 
 Hoped for, forfeared by some. Oh ! I'll be all 
 Thou ask'st for in the coming, placable, calm. 
 Most moderate, most amenable to right ; 
 But know the present pressant 1 know, I still 
 Am earnest, still resolved ; and shall I now 
 For scare of covetise, and the curt commands 
 Of law, whose thunderous negatives awe the world, 
 And pale the lips of weekly posturists. 
 Shall I cheat thee, bonny heart of mine, of this 
 Thy long expected spoil ? No, minion, no I 
 But if meanwhile thy word hope certify 
 With promise of thyself ; — what 1 not appeased ? 
 Kay, rage not, dove of mine 1 — ferocious dove I 
 
 Elissa, Be as thou wert. What -vvill become of us f 
 
534 FE8TU8. 
 
 Festus. Be mine, be me, be aug-ht but so far from me. 
 Let U.S from hence. The south expects our feet 
 With tremulous burnings. Winds await our flight, 
 Breathless, till hailed. My heart is numb with ire 
 Of love. I rage to be with thee where none 
 Can eye or awe us, of the incarnate world. 
 All nature waits our will, all skill of art. 
 Our sloop in moonshade hid, beyond yon crag, 
 Impatient, rocks from head to heel, to hear 
 One footstep crash the beach ! For thy dear sake, 
 The world may go a begging for a king. 
 And say, we jilt our destiny, and so void 
 Their ends who would foreclose earth's leading lifn ; 
 What ail we ? length of rapturous days our own, 
 And respited humanity ? It were something 
 Both earth and heaven, hell aidant, to defeat ; 
 Defeat the stars 'gainst us concoursed. 
 
 Elissa. Alas 1 
 
 Alas I I dread thee now. 
 
 Festus., Nay, fear not me. 
 
 Whither we wend, once there, while earth attends 
 The marvellous rumour, blessings not, nor banns 
 Shall lack, nor unspanned leisure ; quashed all hcpos 
 Of abnegated empire, what shall be 
 Ours, but love boundless, sateless ? 
 
 Elissa. Listen I 
 
 Festus. ITo I 
 
 I list to no conditions, here nor now. 
 Give me thyself. Rise, come with me, with me I 
 Surely, some whirlwind waits to lackey us hence ! 
 
 G-UAEDIAN Angel. Where art thou, Lucifer / Part them ! 
 
 Lucifer. Is't my jjavt 
 
 To order, or hinder fate ? As yet, let be. 
 
 Festus. Far off, on the obscure disk of earth, is mine 
 Oi-iginally by sword-right of my sires, 
 Upon a mountain spur which dips its foot 
 Death-deep in the sea, a stem stronghold, that boasts, 
 In ruinous luxury, still sufficing state, 
 An exiled tyrant liberally to guest. 
 And all his wastrel court ; high peaked, far back 
 Snows everduring blanch ; below, thick woods 
 Lush leaved, broad fanned, fruit breedful, stretch ; and there, 
 All night around the crowns of favourite palms, 
 Their winged and intricate reel, the fireflies, — sjiarks 
 Vivid, as 'twere of life's divinity, weave. 
 Mocking the star-maze ; and in rapid act 
 Of light, self regulative, law heed nor need. 
 Being of surpassing nature ; there, too, pour. 
 From their encoigning huts, leaf -roofed, when dews 
 And shadows thicken at mid-moon, for dance, 
 Feastful, hot-breath'd, the lithe and dusky array 
 Who call me master, adulativc, and n:outh 
 
FESTUS. 535 
 
 Maybe a common creed ; but coyly, adore, 
 
 Some uncouth idolet to their g'lebe adstrict, 
 
 With whom I have whiles done battle ; there, with ms, 
 
 Most excellentest of things, be thou their pride, 
 
 Their providence, their supreme ! Nay, linger not, 
 
 See, all the way is water. Moons but three 
 
 Shall waste their light upon our flamy wake, 
 
 Ere we are there : there rest in lavish peace 
 
 And pall-less pleasures. Oh it is not for me 
 
 Enough to have gazed and doted on thee until 
 
 Mine eye is dazzled, and brain dizzied. Thou 
 
 All worship must exhaust ; it is not enough 
 
 That in long dreams my soul hath toiTent-like, 
 
 Swept this majestic make ; nor, that it now 
 
 Fails in the sight of heaven and thee, nay, falls 
 
 As a summer sunset, seawards, hot and tired 
 
 With the o'erlong day, that slowly degrades itself 
 
 Of absolute beauty to a noteless mass 
 
 Uncomeliest of all things — reck I, The cost, 
 
 The fine, I have summed, and yet have sworn to £11, 
 
 Sometime, mine arms with bliss. 
 
 Elissa. Sit, Festus 1 
 
 LuciFEE. FrieuLls f 
 
 Did ye not know me ? No 1 Then know me now. 
 
 Elissa. It was he. 
 
 Festus. Thou — 
 
 Lucifer, Hush ; thou art not to utter what 
 I am. Bethink thee : it was our covenant. 
 
 GuAEDiAN A2sGEL. Man from thyself saved though as 'gainst tliy 
 will, 
 Give thanks thou mayst for life snatched from remorse, 
 Ajid sin's soul-blinding sophistries : and learn 
 How even by the hands of evil God worketh good. 
 Nor dream his fates can fail, or plans succeed 
 Without his part of the fortune. 
 
 Festus. I, content, 
 
 Submit me to the award of God. 
 
 GuAEDiAN AifGEL. Farewell. 
 
 LuciFEB. Thee, lady, said I, once, I again would see. 
 
 Elissa. Thou didst, and I must thank thee. Waiting here 
 Thy visit, all uucharmed by the ripple of seas 
 On summer eve, moonlit, 'twere well I staid 
 To render back to thee my troth, or one, 
 Too daring thoughtless, would have borne me off 
 AVhither I know not, might have smirched a name 
 Though meaning not, that shall be stainless stilL 
 'Twas wrong, but I forgive. He hears me not. 
 
 Lucifer. I hear. Thou knowest what once I was to thee— 
 One who for love of one I loved, for thee. 
 Would have done or borne the sins of all the world ; 
 Who did thy bidding at thy lightest look 
 And had it beai to have snatched an argel's crown, 
 
636 FE8TU8. 
 
 Off his bright brow, as he sate singing-, throned, 
 
 I would have cut these heart strings that tie down 
 
 My spirit, and spite of thunder and sacrilege, 
 
 Had laid it at thy feet. I loved thee, lady. 
 
 I am one whose love was greater than the world's, 
 
 And might have vied with God's ; a boundless ring 
 
 All pressing upon one point, that point thy heart. 
 
 And now, but should I call on my revenge ; 
 
 It were at hand in armies. But thou art woman ; 
 
 And I forget my purpose and my wrongs 
 
 In looking, and in loving. 
 
 Elissa. Was it sin 
 
 To have loved once ignorantly 1 
 
 LuciPEE. Oh, hear her heaven. 
 
 There is no blasphemy in love, but doubt ; 
 No sin but to deceive. 
 
 Festus. Then is she sinless. 
 
 Thy heart's embrace though close was snakelike cold. 
 And mine was warm, and more, was welcome. 
 
 LuciFEE. Patienod > 
 
 Of thee I spake not, cared not, thought not, L 
 Be sure, it was not from reverence for thee, 
 I saved ye, but for her sake and mine own. 
 I have excused so much there is little left 
 To make more words about ; but, for the future, 
 I would almost vow, so variable it seems. 
 It were as well expect to entice a star 
 To perch upon one's finger, or the wind 
 To follow one like a dog, as think to fix 
 To aught a woman's heart. Answer me not. 
 Let me say what I have to say, and go. 
 Thou art all will and passion, that is thine 
 Excuse and condemnation. 
 
 Elissa. While that will 
 
 Was turned towards thee, thou saw'st in it no harm. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh I have heard what rather than have heai-d 
 I would have stopped mine ears with thunder ; words 
 That have gone singing through my soul, as arrows 
 Through the air, their death-song. a 
 
 Elissa. Not from me expect fl 
 
 Defence, nor accusation. Both I scorn. ^ 
 
 LuciFEE. Now, let us part, or I shall die of wrath. 
 
 Elissa. Part then. 
 
 LuciPEE. Thank God it is for eternity. 
 
 Elissa. I do. Away. 
 
 Lucifer. Festus, I wait for thee. 
 
 I have fulfilled the word between us passed 
 So far as is permitted me. Look back I 
 There is little unaccomplished. 
 
 Festus. One thing yet. 
 
 LuciFEE. And that mayhap anon. Wouldst rather power 
 To sow in millions or in units reap ? 
 
FESTU8. 637 
 
 FESTua Spirit, beyond compute, beyond compare, 
 Both I must have. 
 
 LuciFEE. So then, this womanish love, 
 
 Brain-feebling, heart unmanning sentiment. 
 Must be put by, which is to neither gain, 
 Honour, nor need nor meed. Enough of love. 
 True, it hath served a purpose with myself ; 
 Although constrained the very end to avert 
 All forecast had led up to. Nor in this 
 Seemed I myself quite, but as urged by power 
 Unseen, resistless. 
 
 Festus. Well, I will think of it. 
 
 LuciFEB. It is thought and done with. Soon, 'twill lead tliee 
 whither 
 Thou shalt behold more marvels than man e'er 
 Hath known ; perceive eai-th spiiit-wise, and know 
 All nature tributary. 
 
 Festus. 'Twere well ; in time. 
 
 LuciFEE. Said I, in this strange deed, I to myself 
 Seemed not myself, quite ? But though baffled here, 
 By what a good deed seems, one cipher less 
 In the great evil's boundless deficience. 
 It were base to flee the field, one chance yet left. 
 If in the lure of power, my next, he fail 
 Self -magnifying, he forfeits all. 
 
 Festus. But now, — 
 
 And come 1 thou art not the fii-st deceived in love ; 
 Yet is not love so much love as a dream 
 Of madness, whence we wake, scared and astound 
 To find that what we have loved, must love, is not 
 That we had meant to love ; and all we deemed 
 To be, proves nought ; — from each, like guerdon reaped. 
 
 LuciFEE. Well, doubtless well. 
 
 Festus. Perhaps I profited 
 
 Too much by thy good lessons. 
 
 LuciFi^ic. Lady, ere 
 
 I hence, grant yet one favour. Take this rose 
 Fresh from its parent stem ; make much of it ; 
 And as it fades, let all remembrance fade 
 Of him who gave. 
 
 Elissa. I cast it down at once. 
 
 The eagle needs no omens who to all 
 Himself is ominous ; and not with me 
 Shall memory, like a whirlpool 'neath a fall, 
 Whose watery resurrection scares the bold, 
 Revolve the mangled moments of the passed 
 In wearisome dissolution : no 1 at once — 
 
 LuciFEE. The furies hint it, let the fates advise. 
 Take heed. A nobler life may sometime cross 
 The path of spirit perplexed, intempested ; 
 Inexorable ; and like that — 
 
 Festus. Go. I follow. 
 
538 FE8TUS. 
 
 Lucifer. Now therefore would I wag-er, and I miglifc 
 The great archangel's trump to a dog- whistle 
 That whatsoever happens, worse ensues. 
 
 Festus. Even the unwise may prophesy, now and then. 
 Forgive, love, him ; and me forgive for all. 
 
 Elissa. Yes, I forgive. What is there not and whom 
 That I forgive not ? Let me be forgiven 
 By the Great Spirit in death as I, in life, 
 Pardon who would me wrong, if such soul live. 
 The love which giveth all, f orgiveth aught. 
 And thou to me art more than earth or heaven. 
 They have but given me life, thou gavest love ; 
 The lord of life, thou my life, love, and lord. 
 Take me again, my kindest, dearest, best. 
 Him who hath gone I never loved like thee. 
 Was in his eye a desolation, seemed 
 To prey upon all the light, whate'er, in mine. 
 But it is passed ; and he with it. I think 
 I know, thou lovest me. 
 
 Festus. And I think:, as now, 
 
 For perfect love there should be but one god. 
 One worshipper. 
 
 Elissa. We know the gods of old 
 
 Worshipped each other, equal deities. 
 For the poets surely spake the truth of gods 
 Who dare not speak but truth. 
 
 Festus. O breathing beautv, 
 
 Bards seek ideally, dost believe the gods 
 Of old, toys, terrors, of an infant world ? 
 
 Elissa. If I do not believe, I scorn them not. 
 Nay, I could mouxn for them and pray for them. 
 I can scorn nought a nation's honest heart 
 Hath held for ages holy : for the heart 
 Is alike holy in its strength and weakness. 
 All things to me are sacred that have been ; 
 And though earth, like a stream, blood-streaked, which tella 
 A long and silent tale of wrongful death. 
 May mostly, blush her history, and her eyes 
 Hide, yet the passed is sacred ; it is God's ; 
 Not ours ; let her, let us, do better, now. 
 
 Festus, re-inspired, retowered in spirit, arise ; 
 Go mate thee with the stars ; thou art not made 
 For mortal 'spousals. Tears all gone, all dread. 
 All dubiousness, beams forth thy soul again. 
 Lo 1 there are veins of diamonds in thine eyes. 
 Might furnish crowns for all the queens of earth. 
 Oh 1 I could sooner price the sun, than set 
 A value earth could pay, upon thy look. 
 Look 1 I would rather look upon thee one minute, 
 Than a whole day on Paradise ; — such days 
 As are, and only, in heaven. But now I have seen 
 Fate's all compelling nod, and must away 
 
FE8TUS. 539 
 
 \Miat wilt thou ? Is there aught dost fear ? 
 
 Elissa. I dread 
 
 But too long separation ; nothing else. 
 
 t^STUS. Would I could more assure thee than by worrls. 
 
 Elissa. When heaven and earth were first betrothed, they brake 
 The rainbow 'tween them as a ling, for each 
 A part, in token of their troth-plight, till 
 Their sacred bridals, when both fragments oned, 
 It shall conclude the eternal covenant. 
 But we, we need no signal, need we ? 
 
 Festus. None. 
 
 Ilere have I fixed my rest. It may be none 
 Shall compass all the ends he hopes, in gift 
 Of hands divine sole ; but for the destiny, 
 Mightiest, which e'er awaited man, earth's crovvTi, 
 I spurn it for thy sake ; renounce. 
 
 Elissa. For me ? 
 
 I fear me, love of power is more than power 
 Of love were't tried. 
 
 Festus. Till ti-ied, 'twere well to trust. 
 
 But I have heard the call I must obey. 
 It hastens me away. 
 
 Elissa. And am I nothing ? 
 
 \fho masters not his fate is weak indeed. 
 
 Festus. What if by serving thee, I vanquish mine ? 
 
 GUAEDIAN Ahqel. Vain boast ; thou canst not God resist, his 
 eye 
 Foreseeing, preordains what comes to pass. 
 
 Festus. We are the lords of our own destiny, we ; 
 Our own fates, furies, graces. All the gods 
 Are we to ourselves because we love. 
 
 Elissa. Nay, tremble. 
 
 Thou utterest treasonable truth against 
 The dead divinities. 
 
 Festus. Who shall reconcile 
 
 Their powers, or 'venge their slighted worship. 
 
 Elissa. God, 
 
 For the divine, though dimlier, being of old 
 As now, adored, what 'gainst our sense of God 
 Sins, chiefliest pride, heaven alway punisheth 
 With death or madness. 
 
 Festus. Nay, convert me quite. 
 
 Thou art at heart, a pagan. 
 
 Elissa. I am one 
 
 In whose free faith the truth, whate'er, is holy, 
 And what is good is sacred. 
 
 Festus. I am too. 
 
 Elissa. I cannot bid thee hence. Nay, sifc. From thee 
 Parted, I feel as a tree might feel, half riven, 
 And my soul acheth to spring to, — as thus. 
 
 Festus. Still must I loose these arms ; and while heart-lillod 
 With memories of sweet thefts, a thousand years 
 
540 FESTU8. 
 
 In Saturn, nor ten thousand in the sun 
 Approximative to bliss, should rob me of, 
 My parting' gift I know thou wilt not refuse ; 
 Nor would I proffer aught which emblemed less 
 Than life celestial and the light divine. 
 Expect me ere it wither ; ere the scent, 
 Sweet effluence of its perfectness of leaf, 
 Hath fled its starry censer, look for me. 
 Let the death-destined perish. We shall live. 
 
 Elissa. My life is one long loving thought of thco. 
 If any ask me what I do, I say, 
 I love. 
 
 Festus. All that ? It is enough. Farewell 1 
 
 Elissa. And he is gone ! and the world seems gone with him. 
 Shine on, ye heavens ; why can ye not impart 
 Light to my heart, dark as death's mantling wing ? 
 Bright, beauteous, but unfeeling, may be, even 
 To those who love ye, are ye nought like us ? 
 Or, why then, bright, I, so unhappy? Is it. 
 That gladdening in the light which was, ere time, 
 And seeing all, ye count not this as aught ? 
 Yet would not I my woes untold, unthought. 
 Unseen o' the world, blind lightnings which still strike 
 With secret scathe and fiery, make more plain 
 Even to you, sweet stars ; nor change, for thrice 
 The joys of others ; since they are, love, for thee. 
 Our very wretchedness grows dear to us 
 Suffering for one we love. Or, can it be. 
 That, bright and deathless both, ye have too much 
 Of beauty for us, mortal ? and, now curbed. 
 The impetuous beam that else might blind, now checked, 
 Our mistimed aspirations for your seats, 
 Bid note that yet your silvery silence tells 
 More than man's goldenest utterances of Heaven ? 
 Bright through all ages therefore ye may know 
 Beauty, oh yes, too much, that consciousness 
 Of absolute lovelihood which doth make, men say, 
 Unhappy all who see it, all who have. 
 And were it true, read we our fate in you, 
 Who, hailed of old Divinities, on man's birth 
 Your premier rays ascendant, sages deem 
 So fraught with virtue as life's both extremes 
 To tinge with dye of destiny, come our turn, 
 We, seers more veritable, diviners born 
 With more of Heaven in us than ye, your coursCi, 
 Your doom, forefix ; our brief mortality more 
 To God the Eternal than your starry years ; 
 Though brightness be not always happiness, 
 Or wisdom were not sad, with ages rife. 
 And many as are your life rays space-pervading. 
 Strange witness bear ye with ourselves to one, 
 All wise, who in things remote as stars and souls 
 
FE8TUS. 541 
 
 Our tTioup:lit-Hnk unitive planned, All-being God 1 
 
 "Who art, by cause, in all things, and in whom, 
 
 By act and law all maybe, then best loved, 
 
 As thou by them best worshipped, spiritwise, 
 
 Whom commune, soul to soul, with thee, makes gods ; 
 
 Let us believe that if thou gavest earth 
 
 For our bodies, then the stars were for our souls, 
 
 For perfect beauty, love unbounded, joy 
 
 Ceaseless, and everlasting life with thee ; 
 
 Let us believe they look upon us here, 
 
 As their inheiitors, and save themselves 
 
 For us, as we for thee, and thou for all. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Count not the ripples upon life's stream, our days ; 
 Nor eddying errors as a change misdeem 
 Of cxirrent ; mark thou wiselier, the main flow 
 Of ever Godward being. The hand supreme 
 Outreaching all, guides to a term unthought. 
 Contrition makes confession; penitence draws 
 Pardon. So, thoughts once smfuUest abjured, 
 Dawn shows of the true life. The downward node 
 Turned, begins reascent : for God, with whom 
 His Holy angels' prayers prevail, ordains 
 The peccant spirit to view and visit hell ; 
 That this, of punitive flames, invisible, 
 Assured, but all potential, thence to man 
 Might bring his gladmost tidings back, and prove. 
 How jiistest judgment trines at once with God's 
 Love, and the soul's amendment. 
 
 Mocks and Sands ly the Sea-shore. 
 Festus and Guaedian Angel. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Here break for good the bonds of silence. 
 Once 
 Again we may as erst sweet commune hold. 
 I have spoken already, and once more by God's will 
 Bid thee despair not, but with penitence hear 
 The counsels of the All-wise, and fate's decree. 
 The anguish of thy heart, thy tears, sighs, gi'oans, 
 Have reached God. Wouldst thou aught confess ? 
 
 Festus. angel I 
 
 How dared I think to thwart God's thought ? or 'scape 
 The law inevitable of destined doom 1 
 I hate, I loathe, I curse, condemn myself 
 To righteous penance and heart-scourging fires 
 Of sharp remorse for aye. 
 
 Guaedian Angel Thy better self 
 
542 FE8TU8, 
 
 So bids, retributively just. Tbou knowest 
 Wherein thou hast failed ; in this one test, the crown 
 Of good's conflict with evil, thou art proven 
 Losel, and all thy heavenly guidance foiled ; 
 Myself aggrieved, dishonoured. Now, as of old, 
 Triumphant towers the tempter. Urge no more 
 Mean exculpations one keen thought, truth-edged, 
 Of conscience scatters. 
 
 Festus. Be it so, angel. I 
 
 Have sinned ; erred wilfully ; wronged right ; succumbed 
 To a base temptation fiend-forged in my heart ; 
 The inlight quenched, which every soul illumes, 
 God's witness in the spirit, and inmost seal, 
 Blurred o'er with passionate fire. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Confession clears 
 
 The conscience ; and it is welL Though but in mood 
 What's done thou canst not now undo ; for thought 
 Is mind's act, but 'twixt thought and outward deed 
 As 'twixt heaven's polar stars, lies the whole world. 
 
 Festus. How was't I failed ? How came it sin's rank breath 
 The cool calm air of virtue dared defile ? 
 Oh I have lost my starry seat in heaven ; 
 Lost God's approving smile. 
 
 GuAHDiAN Angel. Nay, God indeed 
 
 Hath suffered this, hath led thee to the abyss 
 Of all deceptive nature, thee to show 
 Its ruinous depths, no hand save his alone 
 Can lift from. Thou hast sinned, sinned, open-eyed. 
 But in thought only and passion. Let such strange pasa 
 Life carnal from life spiritual demark, 
 This henceforth thine. 
 
 Festus. It shall be, heavenly one J 
 
 Let the passed life-state perish. Be it with me, 
 As when some soft and sleepy summer scene 
 Of nature, framed before us, we, with the view 
 Content, like passive, like indifferent, gaze 
 Listless ; all secondary shades of things 
 Immingling, show confusedly ; hill, vale, plain. 
 The rivulet's gentle curve, the tremulous slope 
 O' the wood, the unlevel outline of far hills, 
 Just dusking air, all blend in light diffuse 
 Indefinite ; — suddenly, a masklike cloud, 
 Creeping mid-sky, the sun surprises ; straight, 
 As 'twere God's staff, a light-shaft, sharp, severe 
 Strikes earth, and lo ! the unmoralled mixture ends ; 
 The face of things shows changed ; shapes all transformed, 
 Dark things grow darker, brightlier glow things bright ; 
 The o'ersmiling world's frail witchery, and her craft 
 Inequitable of tolerance, fails, eoUate 
 With that just spear-beam ; so this knowledge, now 
 xnlanced into my soul by conscience, makes 
 Not only truth more amiable, but shows 
 
FESTU8. 513 
 
 Of good and ill the eternal severances. 
 
 Guardian Angel. It is well. Be verified thy resolves I and 
 graved 
 On thy soul's frontlets, that remembering how 
 Of old thou f ailedst, and yet wast not forsook, 
 Thou mayst be wise ; recalling, too, how they 
 Who wisdom willed but for themselves, and mere 
 Preeminence in the world, friend, lover, both 
 Untimely, perished ; thou alone, self -trained 
 Sagelier, albeit unwittingly, to ends 
 Happier and nobler, even to serve, preserved. 
 Yet boast not, nor presume. In souls, forgiven 
 Of Grod, his chosen anointed, he, and they 
 Regenerate, make one being, their spirits which live 
 And thrive by holiest mii-acles, while here 
 Made pure by conscience, penitence, love of good 
 And hate of ill, restoratives of soul, 
 Shall reap at last divine reception there, 
 Presume not yet, nor boast. Not yet thy lot 
 Exhausted ; or for man's sake, or thine own. 
 God's will o'errules his own appointed fates. 
 
 Festus. Was this my sin f oreset ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. Original sin's 
 
 A figment of man's brain. Pure come we all. 
 Angels and men, from God. And though by iiesh 
 Soul- soiled, our own and others' faults ; life's needu ; 
 Its passions, vanities, selfishness ; and numbed 
 By ebb of moral energies, the force 
 Essential, as thy privileged eye hath proved, 
 To itself, among spirit-spheres instructive, fined 
 By sense of truth, and reasonably con-roit 
 To God's demand of penitent betterment, 
 Self-sown in the spirit, detersive of all sin, 
 All carnal aims, or more, deterrent, yet 
 Shall win its ultimate heaven, and rest in God, 
 Wliose throne is world-wide. God therefore, pray thoTj. 
 Thy forerun thought of evil intent, frustrate 
 By mean so marvellous, be not actual sin 
 Against thy soul adjudged ; but, cloudlet-like, 
 That steals through heaven, nor shadow leaves belo «« , 
 The unfixed fault may pass dissoluble, 
 Kor thy closed page, dread angel of the pen I 
 Darken : and I mine orisons adding, too, 
 Will both present in heaven. 
 
 Festus. Be thou my soui'e 
 
 Kind keeper. Pray for me. For me remains 
 One only course, the step towards heaven. 
 
 Guardian Angel. It may 
 
 Be arduous, but 'tis life. 
 
 Festus. Oh, yes ! 'tis life. 
 
 AH else unsafe, in this to act's to live. 
 Ab some belated cliff-climber, — ^his track 
 
U4> FUSTUS. 
 
 Homewards, tide-swept, at foot of columned crag* 
 Reared with its fellow jambwise, like blind gates 
 Hadean, to mask earth's inmost, — halted, eyes 
 Shndderingly, all round, the death-expectant sea ; 
 The ascent, limb perilling* ; and, reflective, knows 
 One sole safe path, that, upwards ; — to the feat 
 Girds him unanxious, and so climbing climbs 
 Now, by sheer slopes unpunctuate to the edge ; 
 Now clinging to grim steeps, — the lichen gray 
 Scarce closelier ; steeps that in the paling light 
 Smile treacherous welcome, even as death might smile, 
 Petting the plumes of some surprised soul ; — now, 
 Coasting the chasm which laughs the sea-hawk's home, 
 And her brown broodlings, ragg'd with flickering down, 
 From human foot, till he, rock-swarmer, clutch 
 Breathless, the bleak, black top ; all daylight spent, 
 Save one poor sack of gold the unthrifty sun. 
 Decamped, hath dropped by the tent-pegs of the sky j 
 And prostrate, wordless, but with welling eyes 
 Thanks heaveH ; so I, too, haunted by a god, 
 Like one of old, who yields my soul no rest, 
 Bear me, till I in him attain the sum 
 Of peace and safety. 
 
 GuAHDiAN Angel. Mayst thou even attain ! 
 Thus heart-wrung, thus soul-humbled, know God wiViS 
 Thou make of hell f oreproof in conscience ; view 
 The fate foredoomed for one who wilful sins ; 
 And voluntary, visit with him who owns 
 And strives to extend, hell's stem domains. There, reigna 
 Nathless, thou wilt find, eternal equity, 
 And justest law ; sin's graduate chastisement, 
 The harmonic bonds 'twixt fault and fine, and there, 
 Man's mind, disrupt from self-deceits shall show 
 Time's wasted faculties still used to ends 
 Emendative of soul. There, all God's ways. 
 To nature's reconciled, prove thou not more just 
 Than amiable ; so, gladdening man and earth. 
 There, too, I meet thee, delegated of Heaven. 
 
 Festus. I go. Adieu I 
 
 GUAEDIAN AjfO^EL. When out of night leapt light, 
 
 Not weightier seemed the event than now from this, 
 The good, the glory. One fault 'twas wrought man's fall ; 
 This act, the rise of angels ; so o'erruled 
 To good, all evil beneath the hand of God. 
 
 Festus. Be it m.ine to enjoy or suffer, as decreed. 
 
FESTUS. C45 
 
 xxxiy. 
 
 In such time 
 As it takes to turn a leaf, we are in heaven ; 
 flaking our wa}' among the wheeling worida, 
 Millions of suns, half infinite each, and space, 
 For ever shone into, for ever dark, 
 As deity, to and by created mind ; 
 Upborne by the companion spirit, who held. 
 As tempter, now, by God, enlightener, now 
 But servant ever, in grasp unloosenable 
 The nature shows of the All in One ; whence evil, 
 And its necessity, mystery none to man's 
 Enlightened reason only in sin condemned 
 As voluntary ; but mediate in all life, 
 Betwixt its source and end ; the angels' fall. 
 Originated, essentially, as man's. 
 And creature's perfectness how impossible 
 Until made one with God ; from whom all law. 
 For law not more than matter can itself 
 Create, or act might being's self precede. 
 One ultimate force intelligent, therefore, is. 
 One primal self sufficing infinite. 
 
 Interstellar Space, 
 Festus and Lucipee. 
 
 Festus. AVhy, earth is in the very midst of heaven 1 
 Albeit well-nigh invisible, and space. 
 Though void of things feels full of God. Hath space 
 No limit ? 
 
 LuciFEB. None to thee ; yet, Infinite, 
 Would equal God ; which cannot be. 
 
 Festus. Yet not, 
 
 Infinite, how can God therein exist ? 
 
 LuciFEE. I say not. 
 
 Festus. No. So soon when placed beside 
 
 The infinite, the poor immortal fails. 
 
 Lucifer. It is God contains the infinite, not that God. 
 Space is God's space : eternity is his 
 Eternity ; his, heaven. He only holds 
 Perfections, which are but the impossible 
 To other beings. 
 
 Festus. We are things of time. 
 
 Lucipeb. With God time is not. Unto him all is 
 Present eternity. Worlds, beings, years, 
 With all their natures, powers, and events. 
 The range whereof when making he ordains, 
 Unfold themselves like flowers. He foresees 
 Not, but sees all at once. Time must not be 
 Contrasted with eternity : it is not 
 A second of the everlasting year. 
 Peifections, although infinite with God, 
 
646 FE8TU8, 
 
 Are all identical ; as mnch of him — 
 
 And holy is his mercy, merciful 
 
 His wisdom, wise his love, and kind his wrath— 
 
 As form, extension, parts, are requisites 
 
 Of matter. Spirit hath no parts. It is 
 
 One substance, whole and indivisible, 
 
 "Whatever else. Souls see each other clear 
 
 At one glance, as two drops of rain in air 
 
 Mig-ht look into each other, had they life. 
 
 Death doth away disguise. 
 
 Festus. Even here I feel 
 
 Among these mighty things, that, as I am, 
 I am akin to God ; — ^that I am part 
 Of the use universal, and can grasp 
 Some portion of that reason within whose scope 
 The whole is ruled and founded ; — that I have 
 A spirit nobler in its cause and end. 
 Lovelier in order, greater in its powers, 
 Than all these bright immensities — how swift I 
 And doth creation's tide for ever flow, 
 Nor ebb with like destruction 1 World on world 
 Are they for ever heaping up, and still 
 The mighty measure never full ? 
 
 Lucifer. To act 
 
 Is power's habit : always to create, 
 God's ; which, thus ever causing worlds, to him 
 Nought cumbrous more than new down to a wingf, 
 Aye multiplies at once my power and pain. 
 I have seen many frames of being pass. 
 This generation of the universe 
 "Will soon be gathered to its grave. These worlds, 
 "Which bear its sky-pall, soon will follow thine. 
 I, both. All things must die. 
 
 Festus. "What are ye orbs 7 
 
 God's words — the scriptures of the skies ? for words 
 "With him cannot be passing, nor less vast, 
 Less real, nor less glorious than yourselves. 
 The world is God's great poem ; and the worlds 
 The words it is writ in ; and we souls, the thoughts. 
 Ye cannot die. 
 
 Lucifee. Think not on death. Here all 
 Is life, light, beauty. Harp not so on death. 
 
 Festus. I cannot help me, spirit ! Chide no more. 
 As who dare gaze the sun, doth after see 
 Betwixt him and else, a dark sun in his eye ; 
 So I, once having braved my burning doom, 
 See nought beside, or that in everything. 
 Hark 1 what is that I hear ? 
 
 Lucifee. An angel weeping*. 
 
 Earth's guardian angel ; she is always weeping. 
 
 Festus. See where she flies spirit-lom round the heavens^ 
 lake a foref eel of madness about the brain. 
 
FESTU8. 647 
 
 Angel op Earth. Stars, stcars I 
 
 Stop your bright cars I 
 
 Stint your breath ; 
 
 Repent ere worse ; 
 
 Think of the death 
 
 Of the universe. 
 
 Fear doom, and fear 
 
 The fate of your kin -sphere. 
 
 As a corse in the tomb 
 
 Earth ! thou art laid in doom. 
 
 The worm is at thy heart. 
 
 I see all things part : — 
 
 The bright air thicken. 
 
 Thunder- stricken ; 
 
 Birds from the sky 
 
 Shower like leaves ; 
 
 Streamlets stop, 
 
 Like ice on eaves. 
 
 The sun go blind ; 
 
 Swoon the wind 
 
 On the high hill-top, 
 
 Swoon and die. 
 
 Earth rear off her cities 
 
 As a horse his rider ; 
 
 And still with each death-strain, 
 
 Her heart- wound tear wider. 
 
 The dead rise ; 
 
 Death dies. 
 
 Go, time, and sink 
 
 Thy great thoughts in the sea, 
 
 And quench thy red link. 
 
 Let him flutter to rest 
 
 On thy god-nursing breast, 
 
 Eternity ; 
 
 Mother Eternity, 
 
 What is for me ? 
 Festus. Poor angel I ah, it is the good most sufTer, 
 Look 1 like a cloud she hath wept herself away. 
 Yon central sphere supreme of spirit create. 
 Immediate seeming most to deity, draws 
 "With irresistible force. 
 LuciFEB. Thereto we tend. 
 
 Festus. What of this world we view, and all yon worlds ? 
 If God made not the whole from nothing, how 
 Is he creator ? Somewhat must exist 
 Else, with himself eternal, nor had all things 
 In him their origin. 
 
 LuciFEB. AU being he makes 
 
 Of his own nature manifestive ; each day 
 Is bom a new creation ; the infinite 
 Expands perpetually, new formed ; all orbs 
 Have their revealed law ; and every race 
 
 t2 
 
548 FE8TU8. 
 
 Of being hath had its judgment, or shall have. 
 
 Festus. The infinite reach of dark and vacuous snace I 
 Oh, let me rest, be it but a moment's pause 
 Remember still my spMt toils in guise 
 Aerial, shadowy. 
 
 LuciFEE. Alight then on this orb, 
 
 Central of heaven's great system, and the seat 
 Recipient of the virtues of all stars. 
 
 Festus. Are all these v7orlds then stocked with souls like man's. 
 Free, fallible, and sinful ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Listen. Although 
 
 All things be perfect relatively, with God 
 All is imperfect absolutely. No room's 
 In his f orecounsel for repentance ; none 
 For acts emendative. Grow not in his hand 
 From fabulous chaos, stars ; nor needs he learn. 
 By slow degrees, to separate elements 
 From jumbled contraries. The heavenly spheres 
 Show not as shapeless lumps on rumbling roads 
 Time scarce hath time to level ere lo ! they end ; 
 But bright and glib from the creative hour 
 Orb, orbit to each other apt, all life 
 Intelligent, admires ; and knows the mind 
 Omniscient lacks not schooled experience' lore. 
 Him can events instruct who all events 
 Foreorders to their end ? Nor yet with him 
 Who for his own good pleasure all hath made, 
 All life pervades, perpetuates and conducts, 
 Lieth necessity more than freedom. These 
 On spirit create, imperfect, only act. 
 As every living thing upon earth sustains, 
 Unconscious, weight enorme of aery leagues, 
 Their inner life-power thus enabling them ; 
 So by the force of freedom self -conceived. 
 The spatial pressure of necessity 
 Man bears with equal mind, as paired with fate. 
 And inwardly divine. So I with him. 
 
 Festus. 'Tis well in souls created room is found 
 For some self -bettering impulse. Spirits how else 
 So feeble, and so defectible, see restored ? 
 
 LuciFEE. All creature minds like man's are fallible. 
 The seraph who in heaven highest stands, 
 May fall to ruin deepest. God is mind ; 
 Pure, perfect, sinless ; man imperfect, is, 
 Momently sinning. Evil then results 
 From imperfection. The idea of good 
 Is owned in imperfection's lowest form. 
 God would not, could not make aught wholly ill ; 
 Nor aught not like to err. Man never was 
 Perfect nor pure, or so he would be even now. 
 Thy nature hath some excellencies ; these. 
 By mean proclivities, oft, and wicked wiles 
 
FESTUS. 649 
 
 Thwarted, albeit in kind necessitate 
 
 As change in nature, or as shade to light. 
 
 No darkness hath the sun, no weakness God 
 
 These only be the faulty attributes 
 
 Of secondaiy natures, planets, men. 
 
 God's are not attributes by creature mind 
 
 From his essential separable, or such 
 
 Not limitless, him would mix with that he hafcli m.ilo. 
 
 God is all God, as life is that which lives. 
 
 A mighty spirit am I ; yet what to light 
 
 Is lightning ? Lightning maybe one thing slays : 
 
 Light makes all live. Thy necessary defects 
 
 Bear thou with grace ; thy self inflicted ills 
 
 Quell as thou canst. No positive estate 
 
 Is evil, or principle, wholly for its form 
 
 And measure due to defect, defect to good. 
 
 Good's the sole positive principle in the world. 
 
 It is only thus that what God makes, he loves, 
 
 And must. Ill's limited. None can form a schema 
 
 For universal evil ; not even I. 
 
 Festus. Can imperfection from perfection conic ? 
 Can God make aught defective ? 
 
 Lucifer. How anght else ? 
 
 But three proportions are there in all things ; 
 The greater — equal — less. God could not ma'.: 3 
 A god above — ^nor equal — with — himself, 
 By nature and necessity the Highest. 
 So, if he make, it must be lesser minds, 
 Lower and less, from angels down to men, 
 Whose natures are imperfect, as his own 
 All perfect must be. These two states are not 
 Except as whole to its parts opposed ; and evil's 
 Itself no ill, unless creation be. 
 
 Festus. Is God the cause of evil ? 
 
 LuciFEB. So far as evil 
 
 From imperfection comes, and the imperfect 
 From things he hath made, and these come from his will 
 To make, be it said, if reverently, he is. 
 
 Festus. Then imperfection goes back past man's fall ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Goes to the veriest verge of being creato 
 And nature's rise. 
 
 Festus. Speak. 
 
 Lucifer. All was peace in heaven 
 
 When God to the assembled angels showed 
 His future ends towards man, not yet create. 
 Some, I and mine, his wisdom in that end 
 Misdoubt ; and as we doubted, a dim film 
 Shadowy, o'erspread the spirit ; and we felt 
 Dark, and first knew ourselves from God diverged, 
 Excentric to the imiversal soul ; 
 First knew ill's relative existence ; knew 
 Foreseeingly the strife which should pervade 
 
660 JfESTUS. 
 
 Creation, then begun, which we were doomed 
 
 To wage for ever ; its final cause, and how 
 
 To be transformed and righted and made ground 
 
 Of greater glory, knew not ; of that end 
 
 Still dubious ; our conclusive ignorance, 
 
 In common with creation, of the mode 
 
 And reason to that endwards being a curse, 
 
 Inevitable appearing save by death. 
 
 But how, immortal, die ? Ere yet one act 
 
 Had faintest thought interpreted, o'er heaven 
 
 Fell down a volumed darkness, night of night. 
 
 Thick as a thousand palls, were earth the bier. 
 
 For Grod upon his throne had frowned. When fled 
 
 The blackness of that strangeness, lo ! we stood, 
 
 Who erred, disjoined by line impalpable, 
 
 But ah 1 impassable, from all in heaven. 
 
 The seed of sin expanded, as thought swift, 
 
 As love light. Self in lieu of God remains 
 
 In all their souls who sin, self, deified. 
 
 Evil is multitudinous. G-od is one. 
 
 But though the sum of evil, in myself 
 
 Not whole or absolute ill, I ; for to live 
 
 Is of itself a predicate divine ; 
 
 Good of a high condition ; and to be. 
 
 Proves mine existence drawn with all from God. 
 
 Festus. How is't that mind create of freedom boasts, 
 Which, when most one with God, most knows itself 
 Constrained by law divine ? Wert free at first ? 
 Or won'st by force of sin, free solitude ? 
 If thus, then is not freedom a defect ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Thou soon shalt see of freedom and constraint 
 Enough to sate all questionings. 
 
 Festus. It is well. 
 
 This endless, light-like journey hath wearied me. 
 
 LuciPEB. Rest thou. I watch by thee. I am not wearied. 
 He sleeps ; he dreams. How far men see in dreams 1 
 Or dream they see ; do worlds of things ; the heart 
 To its first hours of innocence reverts. 
 And nakedness and paradise, ere yet 
 Round it the world had wound its perishing garb ; 
 While yet its God came down and spake with it. 
 Such, and so great are dreams. My might, my being, 
 To him is but a dream's. And could a state 
 To come fill up their dream-stretched miads, they might 
 Be gods. And may it not be so ? Then man 
 Is worth my ruining. What doth he dream ? 
 With all the sway his spirit now exerts 
 O'er time, space, thought, it is but a shadowy sway ; 
 Light as a mountain shadow on a lake. 
 Mine is the mountain's self. A touch would shake 
 To nought whatever his soul now feels or acts ; 
 But not a world-quake could touch aught of mine : 
 
FESTUS. B51 
 
 Thus much we differ. I will not envy man. 
 
 Power alone makes being bearable. 
 
 And yet this dream-power is mind-power — real : 
 
 All things are real : fiction cannot be. 
 
 A thought is real as the world — a dream 
 
 True as all God doth know — with whom, all is true. 
 
 The deep dense sleep of half -dead exhaustedness 1 
 
 Would I could feel it. Ah ! he wakes at last. 
 
 Festus. Oh 1 I have dreamed a dream so beautiful 1 
 Methought I lay as it were here ! and lo 1 
 A spirit came and gave me wings of light, 
 Which thrice I waved delighted. Up we flew 
 Sheer through the shining air, far past the sun's 
 Broad blazing disk, — past where the great great snsike 
 Binds in his bright coil half the host of heaven ; 
 Past that great sickle saved for one day's work, 
 When he who sowed shall reap creation's field ; — 
 Past those bright diademed orbs which show to man 
 His crown to come ; — up through the starry strings 
 Of that high harp close by the feet of God, 
 Which he, methought, took up and struck, till heaven, 
 In love's immortal madness, rang and reeled ; 
 The stars fell on their faces ; and, far off, 
 The wild world halted — shook his burning mane — 
 Then, like a fresh-blown trumpet blast, went on, 
 Or like a god gone mad. On, on we flew, 
 I and the spirit, far beyond all things 
 Of measure, motion, time and aught create : 
 Where the stars stood on the edge of the first nothing, 
 And looked each other in the face and fled, — 
 Past even the last long starless void, to God ; 
 Whom straight I heard, methought, commanding thus : 
 Immortal 1 I am God. Hie back to earth. 
 And say to all, that God doth say —love God 1 
 
 LuciFEE. God visits men adreaming : I, awake. 
 
 Festus. And my dream changed to one of general doouL 
 Wilt hear it? 
 
 Lucifer. Ay, say on ! It is but a dream. 
 
 Festus. God made all mind and motion cease ; and lo ! 
 The whole was death and peace. An endless time 
 Obtained, in which the power of all made failed. 
 God bade the worlds to judgment, and they came — 
 Pale, trembling, corpse-like. To the bouIs therein 
 Then spake the Maker : deathless spirits, rise 1 
 And straight they thronged around the throne. His arm 
 The Almighty then uplift, and smote the worlds 
 Once, and they fell in fragments like to spray, 
 And vanished in their native void. He shook 
 The stars from heaven like raindrops from a bough ; 
 Like tears they poured adown creation's face. 
 Spirit and space were all things. Matter, death, 
 And time, left nought, not even a wake to tell, 
 
552 FE8TU8. 
 
 Where once their track o'er being-. 'Neath the force 
 
 Eternal of his will, they faltered, failed, 
 
 And fainted into nothingness, God's own light, 
 
 Undarkened and unhindered by a sun, 
 
 Glowed forth alone in glory. And through all 
 
 A clear and tremulous sense of God prevailed, 
 
 Like to the blush of love upon the cheek. 
 
 Or the full feeling lightening through the eye, 
 
 Or the quick music in the chords of harps. 
 
 God judged all creatures unto bliss or woe, 
 
 According to their deeds, and faith, and his 
 
 Own will : and straight the saved upraised a voica 
 
 Which seemed to emulate eternity 
 
 In its triumphant overblessedness. 
 
 The lost leaped up and cursed God to his face ;_ 
 
 A curse might make the sun turn cold to hear ; 
 
 And thee, in all thy burning glory, tremble, 
 
 In front of all thy angels, like a chord. 
 
 Rage writhed each brow into a changeless scowl. 
 
 Madly they mocked at God, and dared his eye, 
 
 Safe in their curse of 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 lieaven ; — 
 
 And then I woke. 
 
 LuciFEE. A wild fantastic dream ! 
 
 A mere mirage of mind 1 Come, let us leave : 
 We have seen enough of this world. 
 
 Festus. Lift me up, then. 
 
 World upon world how they come rolling on 1 
 Smooth moving, irresistible, breathing life, 
 Self perfect each in impulse, course and end. 
 But none I see so beauteous are as earth. 
 
 LuciPBE. Behold these spheres. These be heaven's goldeu harps, 
 By God strung, struck by angels ; making now 
 Harmonious worlds, now worlds of harmony. 
 
 Festus. Here, all where, God is ; the universal soul, 
 All centering, circumscribing, quickening all. 
 In his own essence infinite ; soul of space ; 
 Life of all force, and primaiy moving will 
 Of the great whole his rational laws traverse ; 
 Concurrent still to ends foreset, foreproved. 
 As in a boundless armillary of God. And here, 
 In face of all these regnant rules and bonds, 
 Weaving their spells around me, like the rays 
 Varied of orbs which leap the vast inane. 
 And through one thrill, as those electric beams. 
 All hued, in high and turreted chamber born, 
 That span with one weird spring, eve's darkening air 
 fitill reticent of its stars ; mind's spatial fields 
 Like glancewise reaped, let wariest soul confess. 
 Pondering these mighty spheres imbased on lawa 
 
FLSTU8, 653 
 
 Moral and natural, clashing not, distinct, 
 
 Quick each with life intense as limitless, 
 
 Free reason arguing- bent toward special ends 
 
 Heaven can approve, that these, by man adopt, 
 
 And with God's attributes aUigned, in us 
 
 Begets that sense of world life which pervades 
 
 The interminous whole ; and features traced by tmih 
 
 Between man's spherelet spiritual, of soul, 
 
 And the great orb that in God's bosom bums, 
 
 A common conscience of one right, and good, 
 
 Earthly and heavenly hallows, and one truth. 
 
 One moral world life generate which pervades 
 
 This seminary of soul ; and bids all feel, 
 
 And joyed participate the effect supreme 
 
 And venerable of one well-ordered plan 
 
 Conceived from the beginning ; know in truth, 
 
 Where law is, there is God ; yet is not God 
 
 Law only ; but peace and order and harmony. 
 
 Progressive purity and perfection ; law, 
 
 Proof of self -limiting will, itself to expound 
 
 Towards mind create, whereby his spirit, defined. 
 
 Might interact with secondaries ; nor these. 
 
 From contact with pure deity, fail for aye. 
 
 Or in the original void cease. Contract this 
 
 All natural life intelligently enjoys. 
 
 And builds on, for its world completive course. 
 
 Lucifer. All true laws harmonize ; in force and enl ; 
 Law being law to God, not less than man. 
 Inviolable. Earth crumbles and decays : 
 And with the all-gulphing main wars ever ; fire. 
 Air, each o'er other elements reigns, subdues 
 Disorganizes, transforms ; the life meanwhile 
 Of governing nature being to straightly hold, 
 Or rectify that balance, each in turn 
 Aims severally to ruin. 
 
 Festus. Earth, earth I 
 
 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 : 
 Aimless, save there to wander, and mine arms 
 Wind round their grey gaunt trunks ; nor, idly quite 
 Their instincts blind but beauteous seek to guess ; 
 And what things vegetal think of the light, the air 
 The frost disanimative, the nourishing brook, 
 And the rude robber storm, that steals their bloom. 
 Whiles ; and whiles, sinking, moans o'er wintry earth, 
 Like a giant over some dead captive dame 
 "Whom death had saved fi-om madness and his love ; 
 Could watch the clouds self shaping fanciful, 
 Embodied silences, their news yet impart 
 To each other impulsive, as from wind or sun j 
 
 T a 
 
554 FESTU8. 
 
 Could tramp across the brown and sprinpfy 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 summer's day, wishing the sun would call 
 
 My conscious soul up, up to him as he draws 
 
 Dew from the earth : sweet earth, in every clime 
 
 Like lovely, in all t-mes, all seasons, now 
 
 In tropic wilds, flower blazoned ; now where hills 
 
 Their burning feet cool in the pearl-paved wave ; 
 
 Now, where in face of winter, —as a flower, 
 
 Sheds its superfluous leaflets to its feet, 
 
 Heart-touched by frost ; or as some silly maid 
 
 Consulting to her cost, thin-bearded hag, 
 
 Enchantress deemed, with many an uncouth rite 
 
 And mercenary, her white weeds, piece by piece. 
 
 Yields, ere yet, mute, to lonely couch consigned. 
 
 And dream of spouse to be, who though far oil 
 
 Perchance at sea, still, forced by witchwrought charm, 
 
 Shall surely his features visionary reveal 
 
 Ere dawn ; — delusive spell ! so there, like nude. 
 
 Stands nature, icily pure ; and now where air 
 
 Aids life by temperate sweets, with heat nor cold 
 
 Stifling perfection : these things, in my mind, 
 
 Nor suns nor systems can drive out nor quell ; 
 
 Nor universal system of all suns. 
 
 Lucifer. Oh I earth and sun I have marked them both of late 
 This ailing, failing that, whose genial loves 
 Men once so mouthed ; they loathe each other's face, 
 By this time, trust me candidly, as each, 
 Seized of the secret of the other's life. 
 Though severally disposed, together clamped 
 By fate unloosenably, vain triumph steals 
 Of mutual hate. As some black-blooded chief, 
 Swift towards his sudden and unexpected end 
 Sickening, puts on in right of royalty 
 Strange robes of ceremony, to meet with Death ; 
 Death, than he mightier ; and to blind all nigh 
 Bids, openly, all his treasures be earthed with him ; 
 Bar-gold and spoils unransomable of war ; 
 Privily, the poisonous bond-quean, — round his feet 
 Ministrant, gliding like a sable ghost, 
 Whose slow still step he, easeless, eyes, askance. 
 Knowing full well she bums at heart to see 
 The last of him ; — dooms to be hurled into his gravo, 
 Living ; and wept by all round, dies content. 
 In mute malignance ; ignorant she o' the end, 
 So nigh, precipitate. Let them perish, both. 
 Behold the boundless prospect. Goodlier view 
 I know not : suns which rounding the infinite, 
 But slowly, as though reluctant to exhaust 
 The pleasing amplitude of space, themselves 
 
FESTUS. 655 
 
 Confess but disguised planets, and so complying 
 With life's perpetual prog^ress, nearer aye 
 In its vast spiral to the all-central soul, 
 Towards this the original seat of thing's return 
 Obedient ; for all worlds are 'ware of God ; 
 Nay, an orb by him arraigned, starts sensitive 
 To the touch divine, and feels his finger's forcej 
 In counsel or command ; the same, it knows 
 Which hoUoweth out the bed the stream of timo 
 Shall flow in, flow for aye. Shall mind do less ? 
 
 Festus. Dost ravage aU these worlds ? 
 
 LuciFEE, Ay all mine own. 
 
 WTiere spirit is, there evO. ; and the world 
 Is full of me, as ocean is of brine. 
 
 Festus. God is all perfect ; man imperfect. Thou ? 
 
 LuciFEE. I am the imperfection of the whole ; 
 The great negation of the universe : 
 The pitch profoundest of the fallible : 
 Myself the all of evil which exists ; 
 The ocean heaped into a single surge. 
 
 Festus. God I why wouldst thou make the universe ? 
 
 Lucifer. Child 1 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 whole creation casts 
 From God's own light. But lo ! we are here ; at hell. 
 Hark to the thunderous roaring of its fires 1 
 Yet ere we further pass, pause ; dost thou shrink ? 
 
 Festus. At nought ; not I. Come on, fiend ! follow me. 
 
656 FESTUS 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 Traversed the void, 
 Hell's fires, unhallowed not, nor if towards the end 
 Of spirit penitence lit, God's patient love, 
 Man's penitent soul each other win ; nor, reached, 
 Found hopeless ; but the initials even of good 
 In the mad mock of mortal revelry mark ; the quelling truth 
 That all life's sinful follies run to hell ; 
 Lies, wrongs, debauches, murders, die not ; live 
 In hell for ever ; make, are hell ; till just 
 Amendment expiate, and the soul's right will. 
 Set heavenward, lead those lost to happier end. 
 Perdition to the impenitent certain ; yet, 
 Redemption as creation vast ; all soul 
 Of every kind, angelical or humane, 
 Amenable sometimes to God's saving truth. 
 And mercifullest forbearance, more than force 
 Convictive ; by long sufiering conquering all. 
 There, awed, the visitant spirit, in joy endowed 
 "With heaven's self justifying message, — less 
 Man's soul to free from dread of pain eterne, 
 Than God's name from the injustice measureless 
 They to his rule, corrective, just, impute 
 Falsely who such affirm,— hell's end foretells. 
 
 Hell. LuciFEB 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 imiverse ; 
 Outcast of order, exile of all law. 
 Save that which empties or condemns it ; 
 Eolling, returning not ; robbing all worlds. 
 Of many an angel soul ; its light hid deep 
 In its breast which bums with woe concentrate, woe 
 Superfluent, woe self generate and eterne. 
 Nor sun nor moon illume it ; and to those 
 "Who dwell in it, not live, the starry skies 
 Have told no time since tirst they entered there. 
 Worlds have been built and to their central base 
 Ruined, nay razed to the last atom ; they 
 Of neither know nor reck, unconscious save 
 To agony, nought knowing even of God, 
 But his omnipotence so to execute 
 Torture on those he hath in wrath endowed 
 With heaven's own immortality, as to make 
 Them feel what scathe the Almighty can inflict, 
 ALnd the all feeble endure, nor — as they would — 
 Be annihilated. Be sure that this is hell. 
 The blood which hath embrued earth's breast since first 
 Men met in wax may hope to be reformed, yet, 
 
FE8TU8. W7 
 
 And reascend, eacli individual drop, 
 Its vein ; the foam-bubble from sea, sun-drawn 
 Cloudwards, to scale the fall it erst fell down ; 
 Or seek its primal source in earth's hot heart ; 
 But for the lost to rise towards heaven, regain, 
 Or hope it, ne'er can be. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Deceiver still 1 
 Wouldst thon mislead, even here 1 Who are the lost 
 For ever ? Mortal, thou shalt here learn truth. 
 Here, see what time by time full oft reveals, 
 The immortal fallen for long while unredeemed, 
 Impenitent, with no sense of hating" sin, 
 Yet gradually, or suddenly, self taught 
 To know the all-righteous Judge. 
 
 LuciFEE. Art thou too here ? 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Here am I. as elsewhere. 
 
 Festus. Protect ; instruct 
 
 Guardian Angel. Behold me, by heaven missioned, so to clear 
 From all illusion spiritual and wrong 
 Conceit, that tyrant sin as now would teach. 
 Or ignorantly misrule, that thou mayst both, 
 "VVTiile in soul agonized by that thou seek'st 
 As just reward for wilful wrong, than thine 
 Worse only by the unfrustrate act of dread 
 Betrayal, now too self condemned, take good 
 To thyself ; and so instructed here, the world 
 After, forewarn, as hopeless not ; and God 
 Prove therefore just in this his judgment hall 
 Of helL 
 
 Lucipee. Believe me in mine own domain. 
 
 Festus. Are all these angels then, or men, or both ? 
 Or mortals of all worlds ? 
 
 Lucifee. Immortals all. 
 
 Festus. Countless as meteorites that strew the breast 
 Of some quenched orb where yet they lie aglow, 
 Panting away their life-fires I 
 
 Lucifee. Fallen through sin, 
 
 At various periods of eternity, all. 
 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 thunderpeals 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 
 Whose hearts shine through their frames as living coals 
 Through ashes. These, a torture agonised 
 Express ; those madness gone delirious ; all 
 By excess of evil and woe, in clingLng strife 
 Contort, like nested snakes, that fang each other 
 
558 FE8TUS. 
 
 "Witli wounds that wake to life, and stnigg-ling' deaths 
 Ceaseless, requickened as if from mortal pan^s. 
 Oh horror ! let me hence. 
 
 LuciFEE. Nay, hear. 
 
 Festus. I hoar 
 
 A strain incongruotis as a merry dirge, 
 Or sacramental bacchanal. Oh shame ! 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Truly, for here is spiritual chaos ; deeps 
 Wherein, distraught to their own first rudiments, 
 Souls must reseek their ends, refound themselves ; 
 Each worsening other, deepening life's despair ; 
 Till sin be from the spirit eliminate clean. 
 
 Festus. sad and pitiable ye souls of men, 
 Self -torturing without end ; hell's alien fiends. 
 
 Lucifer. Men are they not, but devils at their best. 
 And I would have thee mark them. 
 
 Festus. I attend. 
 
 Lucifer. Behold the cup of demons and their board ; 
 Their fellowship, their triumph, their self hate, 
 Who so much loved themselves, their wretched joy. 
 
 Fiend. Heap high the fires of hell ; let woe not languidh, 
 Heap up with everlasting flames, heap higher. 
 There, let the man-fiend, consummate in anguish, 
 Howl through the fathomless profound of fire. 
 To tempt and ruin those that once were solely 
 God's, and torment them, when with us they dwell, 
 This is our end, and their existence wholly 
 Hid in the doom no demon dares to tell, 
 But is shadowed in the harrowing eternity of hell. 
 
 Deeper than the bowl the drunkard drained so gladly ; 
 
 Deadlier than the lie which scorched the Har's tongue ; 
 
 Keener than the blade the murderer plied so madly, 
 
 Eats aye into the essence, the worm that all hath stung ; 
 
 And for that they succumbed to the toils wherewith we bound them, 
 
 Their bread is burning brimstone, their drink is bubbling fire ; 
 
 For they live upon the nature of the tortures that surround them ; 
 
 And their life is in the death they shall never see expire, 
 
 Lo ! it floweth from the fountains of the ever-seething ire. 
 
 Festus. Nay, let me quit. Now know I what hell is. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Be not deceived even here, by the show of 
 things. 
 Lift up this veil of fire and look beneath. 
 Here is nought seen save justice, strict, supreme, 
 By all approvable ; by the spirit which bears. 
 Inflicts, or views, remedial, fruiting good ; 
 Unworthy not of God to doom, nor man 
 To endui-e. See 'midst this basement of all soul. 
 Antipodal to heaven, hate, envy, base 
 Desire, revenge, wrath, inhumanity, pride. 
 All crime engendering vice, by sense of sin, 
 Here forced inevitably upon the spirit. 
 Patience, and slow conviction of God's truth 
 And justice, gradually but surely change 
 
FESTU8. 'M 
 
 To qualities substitute, that time by time 
 
 Mature, and fit the soul to seek a sphere 
 
 More congruous with its altered state ; in fine 
 
 Passing to virtue's realm, and joy's. For know, 
 
 Evil is not an ultimate, even in hell, 
 
 Either as law of being, or state ; but here 
 
 Elsewhere, allwhere, through Being's avoidless shade, 
 
 Probational, and convertible by our God 
 
 To luminous good, restorative of life. 
 
 See, now, how seeks this soul, in true remorse 
 
 Gradual, but unrelaxed, to amend ; and there. 
 
 As when some mountain rivulet through black gorge 
 
 And jagged chasm, hurried, with thunderous plunge 
 
 Leaps suicidal, down ; its bed, — thenceforth 
 
 Of agony, with the death -foam of its lips 
 
 Whitening, and rage regretful at its fall ; — 
 
 Ere yet it reach some pool profound and still, 
 
 "Where time, its visage smoothed, may cause reflect ; 
 
 So here, the atrocious spirit, self cursed with sin, 
 
 "Writhes in his lengthening torments, till more calm 
 
 Conviction penitence teach, and bring to soul. 
 
 Of future ends considerate, peace. 
 
 Festus. heaven 1 
 
 Can such things come to pass ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. They may, and do. 
 
 Festus. "What means yon fiendish chant, then ? 
 
 Lucifer. It means this : — 
 
 Sin with deep draughts of fiery venom fed, 
 Drains, to the latest dreg of murderous flame, 
 Its own consuming fate, self punitive ; thus 
 Constructing its own death, its own defeat 
 Scheming with fatal skill, as I myself 
 The lord of evil, fear I am, 
 
 Festus. But if God's 
 
 Good will gave all things being, then his hate,— 
 "What is unholy he detests to death, 
 Cannot do less than, were it even the all, 
 Annihilate. 
 
 Guardian Angel. "What if evil, left to itself, 
 Corrupt itself away ? 
 
 Lucifer. "When ends the world, 
 
 I end. 
 
 Guardian Angel. A glorious hope. But God's intent 
 Unsearchable, as his will unbattleable. 
 O'errides, o'errules the all, child of his hand. 
 Hence, it means, too, when all's done, and at last, 
 Time's sun, declining down the eternal skies. 
 Leaves his last shining shadow upon the sea. 
 And in the boundless abyss entombs his beams ; 
 "When final evening folds the universe 
 Heavily round, then hell shall drain the dread 
 Cup of perdition to the last drop. 
 
BOO FE8TU8. 
 
 Lucifer. Death 
 
 Is of all things tlion thinkest, most like sleep. 
 The dead think otherwise. But wherefore thus ? 
 What mean my words to thee ? 
 
 Festus. In sooth I know not. 
 
 I am constrained to hear them. 
 
 LuciPEE. They mean this ; 
 
 Words, shapes, like easily are by spirits assumed. 
 
 Festus. So, then, these palpable torments, — 
 
 Guardian Angel. Whatsoe'er 
 
 Thou seest, see most thou err not. Burning- racks 
 Conscience self -agonized bears, corrective griefs, 
 Fires of remorse refining, pains soul-wringing, 
 "WTiereby the spirit, of evil dispoUute, 
 Conscious, its clarity reattains ; and strained 
 Through many a mediate check, which fuller sense 
 Of others' rights and God's prerogative gives, 
 Steps upwards towards perfection, though still far, 
 Proofs fiery show of the inward struggles waged 
 In spirits immortal by rebellious will. 
 Proud once of self idolatry ; now shame-burned 
 With hot humiliation 'neath God's eye, 
 Sightful of all things to their inmost core. 
 At forfeiture of noblest privileges, 
 By creature owned, once for the world's worst cheats, 
 Life's worthlessest impostures bartered ; sin 
 And her false felonry. Contrarious, there 
 High o'er hell's reek and roar of clashing lies. 
 Which now obscure, now deafen, now all affright, 
 By truth's calm utterance gradually subdued. 
 Like foul things perishing simply of the light, 
 See virtue, wisdom, love, peace, righteousness, 
 Harmonious with themselves and her, up soar 
 Towards their all-central source, as satellites 
 Their light, their beauty, to renew ; and showing 
 How pitiable the counterfeits men praised. 
 Make to the obdurate infidel helis of shame ; 
 To betterward tending soul, an aim right high 
 To aspire to ; and a standard of rise gained. 
 
 Festus. That these poor souls, so self -distort, should e'er 
 By justice straightened, hope to again see God 1 
 
 Guardian Angel. Not unreturnless are the paths of hell, 
 More than inevitable : whence now the soul. 
 Sifted through outraged conscience' scapeless bars 
 Given up to retribution just, weighed, proved. 
 May issue purified, and through cleansing rounds 
 Of nature, self -wise chastened, happiest life 
 Win ; and the heart's ill lusts exorcised, seek 
 Sin-freed, and humble, acceptance of its God. 
 End only worthy, this, of God ; who, — all 
 Things apliest planned, — to finite reason gave 
 Virtue, as test of heavenliness, and hell 
 
FE8TU8. 661 
 
 Reserved as his displeasnre souls must feel, 
 
 Who, erring wilfully, impenitent end 
 
 Their day on earth ; his laws world- wise who scorn, 
 
 His provident control, his just commands, 
 
 They answerable, and his retributive rule. 
 
 Festus. How changed in this heaven- justifying- truth, 
 Show all things now I no sin of man, by man 
 Not duly expiable ; all life to come, 
 And passed, like witness of his righteousness. 
 Hell terminable makes heaven an actual joy. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Behold these nations of iniquitous soul, 
 Which, mixed with misery here, all orderless lie ; 
 Who God f orgat on earth, or wronged ; false priests 
 Whose lips the prayers they made for peace, defiled ; 
 Blessing ambition's bloody-bannered war ; 
 The apostate hypocrites of every faith ; 
 Death-ravening demagogues worshippers of the axe ; 
 Murderous inquisitors of contending creeds ; 
 Remorseless mobs who urged to death the pure. 
 The patriot, benefactor of his race ; 
 Peoples, not less than tyrannous kings unjust, 
 See called on here to pay their righteous dues ; 
 Kor less than soul of craftiest statesman, proud 
 Erst of iniquitous war for trivial end. 
 Heroes whose spirits adhere to forceful fight, 
 Still as. a sword blood-rusted cleaves to its sheath ; 
 Blasphemers ; perjurers ; stirrers up of strife ; 
 Impure, the innocent ravishing with their eyes j 
 Torturers of humbler lives, idolaters ; 
 Of sinners chief the impenitent, and those 
 Who in life were most severe on others' sins ; 
 Ignoble souls, who quench in sensual ends 
 Reason's divine light, given as guide. Nor these. 
 Doomed justly, deem, through purgatorial pains. 
 Their way to upper spheres, pure and serene. 
 May lightlier win. Who have long time outraged man, 
 Have God to appease at last ; and his great heart 
 Long suffering, oh unweariable, aye beats 
 For justice, mercy crowned. So then let once 
 Repentance, reason's first deflective step 
 From sin's dark ways, ascendant, mark the soul's 
 Path, and the atonement's virtually achieved. 
 The essential fires they bum in, patient fires 
 Which leprous soul unscurf from sin, contract 
 Grossly and wilfully, eat in time the curse 
 Would else consume them, and to childlike state 
 Of innocence, not ineligible, restore. 
 Here, all the g^iilty passions cleansed from self's 
 False pleadings, and the indulgence of the sense, 
 Show monstrous, shame judicial reason's eye. 
 Remorse, repentance, follows ; all things thus 
 Work, worldlike round to their due end : and hell's orb 
 
562 FE8TU8. 
 
 Hath, its proper place in heaven as thine, and all* 
 
 For that earth-life not sufficeth to G-od's ends, 
 
 And man's immortal destinies, hell, here 
 
 As timely chastisement affirms, yon heaven, 
 
 As prize eternal ; that a mildened doom, 
 
 A doubled bliss this ; and, equivalent deemed 
 
 Of earth's iniquities and her virtues, shows 
 
 O infinite universe, thou hast no like to man, 
 
 The conscious breath of the world's deity. 
 
 No second favourite of our God's. Not hell. 
 
 Not sin, destroys the soul. Can falsest creed 
 
 The innocence unmake of sinless babe ? 
 
 Can lewd idolaters who adore the world, 
 
 Gold, or as savages, the stars and heaven, 
 
 And elements of earth, obstruct, defraud 
 
 God of his worship true ? None worship him, 
 
 But with, and in, his spirit ; noug-ht attains 
 
 His love, but that proceedeth from it first. 
 
 His praise is ever vastening in all worlds, 
 
 Throug-h all the ages. Nought eternal is 
 
 But that's of God ; all pain and woe, finite 
 
 Are, therefore. Can thief steal from heaven the soul ? 
 
 Can liar make God to lie ? Can poisoner drug 
 
 Soul's immortality ? Great the sin, flesh-bom, 
 
 But expiable by this, by that forgiven. 
 
 It may be, shall the dead slay e'er the living ? 
 
 Shall God, all love, here, ages afterwards. 
 
 Reserving these misdeeds, himself, reverse ? 
 
 And because man a moment sinned, all crime 
 
 Crown in unending scourgings for the wrong ? 
 
 Shall such be justice called ? 'Twere more than vengeance. 
 
 Said One, five hundred times, forgive 1 Shall God 
 
 Act by less perfect law than he bids men heed ? 
 
 Yet such the deity men will fable ; such 
 
 The hell whereto they doom themselves. 
 
 Festus. No more I 
 
 Not I will so misjudge life's gracious lord. 
 As in earth's skies, whate'er the mutable day 
 Of rosy or lurid hue brings, high o'er all. 
 Beams at last heaven's eternal azure, firm 
 Unfathomable ; so here and allwhere, see. 
 Rule wrath or justice whiles they may, the whole 
 In his ever-enduring mercy wrapped. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. How else 
 
 Could earth's and heaven's Creator glory find 
 In hell, or creature good ; if God be just. 
 Or man, a being salvable 1 
 
 Festus. See, now. 
 
 Ton spirit whose brow seems calmer than the wont 
 Of most, as though suffused with trustful hope. 
 What doth he here ? 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. If spirit, it grieve thee not, 
 
FESTU8. 563 
 
 And thon mayst speak, alleviate for the time 
 From woe, say why here ; and when hope, for hope, 
 I judge, is thine, may lead thee hence, that so 
 This man by God permit, may on return 
 Earthwards, to his relate thy tale of truth. 
 
 Festus. It will much content me. Say what brought thee 
 hither ? 
 
 Spirit. God's angel was I once ages agone : 
 But though doing good, not glorifying God, 
 "Who me empowered. He sent me here to fire 
 The proud spot from my heart. 
 
 Festus. And when wilt tlion 
 
 Do this, and own thou hast wronged God ? 
 
 Spirit. Even nov/, 
 
 I do repent me and confess it here. 
 I do not beseech God now to let me be 
 What once I was ; but might I only sit, 
 A footstool for some other worthier far 
 Who owneth now my throne, I should be happy ; 
 Happier than ever I was in my proud prayers 
 That G^ would give me worlds on worlds to govern ; 
 Happier than in receiving prayers and blessings 
 From prostrate priests of old and crowded fanes. 
 
 God, remember me, oh save me 1 
 Festus. See I 
 
 1 do believe there is an angel coming 
 This way, from heaven. 
 
 Spirit. He comes, to me, to me. 
 
 Angel. Hail sufferer ; sinner now no more, God bids me 
 Bring thee on high. Thy throne is kept for thee ; 
 And all the hosts of heaven are on the wing, 
 To welcome thee again. 
 
 Spirit, I dare not come. 
 
 I am not worthy heaven. 
 
 Angel. But God will make thee 
 
 Unworthy not, humility self restored. 
 
 Festus. Spirit adieu 1 may we meet again in place 
 Better, and happier time. 
 
 Spirit. Glory to God. 
 
 Mortal, I go. Farewell. Say thou to all 
 On earth, repent ; be humble, and despair not. 
 
 Lucifer. Here, one may go, and there, one. Thousands come 
 I have seen, and have contemned, such sparse effects 
 Of individual moment, and still spurn 
 Such promptings, or in others, or myself. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Hell is God's wrath, his infinite hate of sin ; 
 Hate, which e'er burns, annihilative of ill. 
 Ajid while existent, him so grieves who feels 
 All where, compassionately, with suffering good, 
 Creation in him working so much grief 
 In time, that obstinate if in evil, now 
 And again, a world's demeanour may be such 
 
564 FE8TU8. 
 
 That, to destroy shall please him ; and its name, 
 
 Struck from the starry scroll, no more is heard. 
 
 Kiiow, every proof of virtuous progress towards 
 
 Perfection, towards his own pure mind and ends, 
 
 He loves, aids, seals. Nor be not this forgot ; 
 
 "When human nature is most perfect, then 
 
 Its fall is nearest, as of ripest fruit. 
 
 But know it is not sin only Grod abhors ; 
 
 He all things hates that make it possible ; 
 
 All imperfection voluntary, while choice 
 
 Of better lies at hand : as from him leading, 
 
 SeKwards, astray. Nor start at all, here seen. 
 
 The infinite opposition of perfection 
 
 To imperfection leaves nor choice, nor mean, 
 
 But gracing with all possible good whate'er 
 
 Is capable to receive. The natural whole 
 
 He made, and called, complete. The moral world 
 
 Is never ending. Such God's hate, and love : 
 
 Each holy, just, perfective, this of hate 
 
 As here thou seest ; of love, as shrined in Heaven. 
 
 LuciFEE. Thinkst thou as mortals think yet ? 
 
 Festus. This is not 
 
 As thou didst speak of hell, nor as I judged. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Judge as thou seest. These hells, etcr]:al 
 named. 
 In speech oracular, word ambiguous used 
 If of duration, not to torments point 
 Of the individual spirit, which, taught of God, 
 Whose universal aim is to redeem 
 All He hath made, and made in essence free. 
 As of Himself outbreathed, so soon as grieved 
 By sense of severance from His mightier will 
 So long, and therefore goodward tending, learns 
 Its mountain of demerit grain by grain 
 To wash away by penitent tears. But look 1 
 Who hither comes ? 
 
 Lucifer. It is Beniel, Son of God. 
 
 The all-present Deity, made conceivable here, 
 In the divine humanity of his Being, 
 Urged pitifully to seek his creatures' good 
 Their good, his joy : He, all where, operant 
 As choice, or need, on their behalf asks. 
 
 Beniel. Friend, 
 
 Not I am God : but sent to express his law 
 Of equitablest salvation, to all free. 
 Who are free to sin, free are to abandon sin. 
 I, fellow immortal with thyself, of Heaven, 
 Bight willing minister of God, to thee 
 And all hell's hosts, accredited, come to teach 
 Conciliant penitence, and the fruitless strife 
 Waged 'gainst the rational good Heaven proffers still, 
 And ever, to the intelligent world of life. 
 
FESTUS. 665 
 
 God'd mercy is His justice to made soul 
 Angelic, human. 
 
 LuciFEB. See, great Angel I see, 
 
 Kor gracious less than great, how yet in vain 
 Thou plead'st thy pleasing plan ; for save betimes 
 A solitary escheat, of all his tribe 
 Falls to the whilome Lord, against whose thi-one 
 World vast, all these thou look'st on, strengthless, here, 
 Impenitent, hopeless, Godless, as they, now, 
 Their desperate plight for all time worsening, deem, 
 In ftde and flood of war insurgent, rose ; 
 Rose, and for ever ebbed ; ay, hotlier ebbed 
 Than first they flowed, in flood, from out the abyss 
 Firiest of woe, unamiable, all these. 
 Unbent, unbettered, will again rush forth 
 In might of mad despair, their hate to prove 
 Of God's love, and of thee, who in his throne's 
 Broad shadow favoured sit'st, immediate. Know 
 Salvation is the scorn of angels fallen. 
 
 BenieLu I know it, with all Heaven. And were soul's death, ; i 
 And wrack of spirit life, God's aim and end, ■ ; 
 
 Such scorn were proof enough, to Heaven's dismay, 
 Of the Omnipotent's failure ; in wise work 
 Worse worsted He than meanest mind create, 
 In structure of some fractious, seeming toy. 
 Not possible this, divine Humanity 
 Shall rescue yet from ultimate ruin all 
 The humane Divinity made. The Father makes 
 And orders every moment what is best. 
 
 Festus. This is God's truth. Hell feels a momejit cool. 
 
 Beniel. Hell is his justice : heaven is his love } 
 Earth his long-suffering ; all yon spheres his care 
 Of soul perfectible ; nought create but shows 
 Some quality of God. Therefore come I, 
 By Him sent, these to announce, thus tempered ; peace 
 To accord to strife ; to give to justice mercy ; 
 Even to long suffering longer : everywhere 
 God's justice yields to his Humanity place. 
 
 He hath made that lord of all thin^, of all worlds, » 
 
 And of all souls therein ; yea, world by world, : 
 
 And soul by soul, He hath all redeemed, or given 
 The means of their salvation. Why not hell ? 
 
 Festus. To know that every spiiit, though long while lost 
 'Midst its own maze of error, self designed, 
 Still owns a clue, makes tolerable these pains. 
 Hope to one world, one soul, is hope to all. 
 
 BE^^EL. To every spirit that God hath deathless made 
 He hath given enough of virtue, truth to know ; 
 And lost, thrust, cast away, by that alone 
 Recovered, every spirit's to be redeemed. 
 While this one, may be, trusting its own strength, 
 And failing, God reviles ; and that one, good 
 
666 FE8TU8. 
 
 Deeming too humble in its course ; by pride 
 
 Pointed to loftier paths, which, trode, converge 
 
 In selfish ends, and enmity 'gainst the soul 
 
 Supreme, divine; others, in countless modes, 
 
 But each 'like wrong, all, by reverse process, 
 
 May learn what 'tis to be by Him redeemed 
 
 Who from the first foreseeing how far 'stray 
 
 Created mind would err, the great Return 
 
 Plaiined in His heart ; and thus redemption made 
 
 Like possible to the creature, as to Him 
 
 Was possible creation ; to him sole ; 
 
 Creator, Saviour, Judge. Best, worst, need one 
 
 And same salvation. Final in his world 
 
 Nought is, save G-od. Therefore these souls to be seen 
 
 And pitied much for their woes, for their evil more, 
 
 Need not, shall not, cannot be inhelled for aye. 
 
 For albeit on earth or here, they have thrust God from them, 
 
 Disowned his prophets, mocked his angels, stormed 
 
 His curses, threatenings, back to Him, God is such, 
 
 He can still pity ; bear with, suffer still ; 
 
 Still save them. Heavenly father 1 mercy fears not, 
 
 But, by thy love, hell can be saved from hell. 
 
 Festus. holy messenger of Heaven, f orebidden 
 Me here to meet and 'monish, and to men 
 And angels both, thrice blessed interpreter, 
 Of the Supreme One's will, say, who be these? 
 
 Beniel. Mortal, here see who fell of old, through pride. 
 Created mind could ne'er the thought conceive 
 Of equalness with God, unless by first 
 Debasing the idea. They err who feign 
 The Fiend by vain ambition fell from Heaven. 
 He in the God-state first with aU his hosts 
 By reason inhered ; by choice, as cloud to cloud 
 On the hill-side succeeds, with all his hosts. 
 They darkened and declined and passed away. 
 Through pride in what they were, they fell, and not 
 Ambition to be highest. T^ese while yet 
 The dew lay of creation's mom ; and now 
 G-listens the dew of evening o'ef the world. 
 Fall primitive this, of soul create first fall, 
 World moulding spirits depute, of all, who each 
 Vainglorious fell, assumptive of high names 
 Pretemporal, and rites due to Deity claimed 
 Rites, as theirs, blasphemous, who, pretended gods, 
 Earth's several nations ruled of old, but since, 
 111 expiative, have hence, long while transferred 
 Their hopes to Hades ; and, so angels tell. 
 Desirous to true God their stolen names 
 To yield, commenced, as feigned Satumian times, 
 Their long delayed return. There, who the peace 
 Envying of Angel- world, seductive taught 
 
 pleasures, idol worship ; from such stains 
 
FESTUS. 567 
 
 Of sin not self-assoiled yet, as must be, 
 
 Ere possible their return to heaven ; and here, 
 
 Mixed in one stormy ruin with the rest, 
 
 Once bright Samiaza, Azaziel, recreant thrones, 
 
 And virtues, these, of prediluvian lapse ; 
 
 Of giant sons earth-bom the kinless sires ; 
 
 immortal, but who lost by mortal love, 
 
 Their lot in the eternal. 
 
 Festus. Save them, Lord ! 
 
 Beniel. May he 1 Salvation is God's will supremo ; 
 Cause final of all things. But while to some 
 He grants, as proof and earnest of the truth. 
 Ere yet fate take the tangled skein of time. 
 And weave it into one surpassing web, 
 Fit for the glorious garment of our God, 
 Bliss precedent o'er all else ; the angels such ; 
 Yet he, the Maker, sole omniscient, knows 
 The boundless whole of Being, its mediate joys 
 And pains, its oscillant process, and its end. 
 Here, sin confessed, that God stand cleared in eyes 
 Of every creature, and the need how great 
 To feel just, sin's reward ; for soul to know, 
 In all worlds, that whoso God's law contemns, 
 Him God condemns. Hell justifies ; but not 
 In His pure sight for ever. When your part 
 Of self -amendment, damnatory of sin. 
 Ye have yourselves fulfilled. His mercy then 
 Will stay the hand of righteous vengeance. Once 
 Your >vi-ong confessed, your judgment justly earned, 
 God's equity proclaimed, to His just will 
 Assentient, peace serene and grace shall calm ; 
 Implunged in life's pure well, the fount of truth, 
 May many waters cleanse ye and restore. 
 I who by God's humanity am sent. 
 His mercy, and equity's retributive law, 
 Bid ye immortal fallen, rise again ; 
 There is a resurrection for the dead, 
 And for the second dead ; and though ye died 
 Fell, fell again and again died and fell. 
 There's life to come for all, a life, a rise 
 Perpetual as the spring's life in the year ; 
 Ye fruiting consciously, as ill or good. 
 
 A Fiend. Angel of God most high I what wouldot with us ? 
 Is ours not hell enough, remorse, strife, hate 
 Mutual, of all ? Why double with thy mild eyes ? 
 
 Beniel. Spirit, I come to show thee how remorse 
 For God offended, for violated law, 
 For iniquity done, may save thee. 
 
 Fiend. How save fiends ? 
 
 Beniel. How any save, save by the spirit of truth, 
 And love, of Him whose mercy so outdures 
 All things, it must at last all things persuade. 
 
568 FE8TU8, 
 
 Repentant, God forgives tliee, and the truth 
 Enlightening, He, the all-holy One, shall hallow 
 "With sense of justly inflicted chastisement, 
 And of an equity lenient, more than law, 
 Wiser. Repent still : judgment is at hand. 
 But these means, times for repentance given, o'erslurrecl, 
 Tremble, this hell is nought to that which comes. 
 Believest thou God can save thee ? 
 
 Fiend. I believe, 
 
 And I adore. 
 
 Beniel. Faith sanctifies the soul, 
 See all ye fallen, even in the heart of woe. 
 Come to me. Spirit ; faith hath but touched thy brow 
 With momentary finger, and thou art bright 
 As morning is in heaven. 
 
 Spieit. Angel of light am I again. See, this is to be saved. 
 Ye lost, confess that Heaven is justified 
 In hell's corrective plagues. 
 
 LuciFEE. I like it not. 
 
 Beniel. Hear ye immortals, dead in evil and sin, 
 Yet unrepented of, oh repent, and be 
 All angels. 
 
 Spieit. Oh, repent. He comes to show 
 How penitence yet available all may save. 
 
 A Lost Soul. I too, who while on earth believed not God, 
 Nor deathless spirit ; nor, partly by defect 
 Of teaching, may be, self-willed, heaven nor hell, 
 Nor sin's result ; who faithless, trusted not 
 God's universal fatherhood, nor man's 
 Immortal sonship ; nor that e'er the all-good, 
 Indwelling Heaven, could in humanity 
 Hide, and abide essential ; but believed 
 In mine own fleshly being only ; I, 
 Repentant sore, that vile belief condemn, 
 And viler disbelief ; a worthier faith 
 Now, blessed angel, glorying in, shall hope 
 Me visit here ? 
 
 Beniel. Though in hell's deepest hell. 
 
 Thy soul shall she salute, and God, redeem. 
 Arise ; seek Heaven. 
 
 Soul. Blessed herald of Divine 
 
 Mercy, thy sweet command, (as precept preached 
 Of old by prophet, in himself he proved 
 Of valid truth, in pardoning all his foes) 
 Thou betterest by exampling ; bidd'st to Heaven, 
 And show'st the way ; thy debtor thus all life. 
 
 Anothee Soul. I, too, 'mid scenes of violence, sins of soul, 
 Justly cut off, and crimes of head and hand, 
 In fullest fruitage of iniquitous act. 
 By God all good, my fellow men to save 
 From baser wrongs, then plotting in my brain, 
 Eepent mc of my wickedness ; and still 
 
FESTU8. 5C0 
 
 Acknowledging the mercy of these pains 
 So grievously imposed, so long endured, 
 Dare hope his pardon, who me power hath dealt 
 His justice to confess. Thou couldst not be 
 True to Divinity, were not sin condemned 
 By Him, whose faithfulness from Heaven to earth, 
 Ileacheth, and hell's hot roots ; nor, pardoned not, 
 And sin-atoned for, to humanity true. 
 Red-handed in my guilt I died. And death 
 Darted upon my soul. Through woeful ages 
 My spirit hath burned with expiative remorse 
 And lon^ng sore to serve whom I had wronged, 
 On earth ; desire that God's compassionateness 
 Would gi'ant me leave, for them to sacrifice 
 This self I am, this whole essential pang ; 
 Kor elsewise seek I not release from woe. 
 
 Beniel. Be of good heart, poor soul. Thou art not lost, 
 Assure thyself, for aye. Time puts no term 
 To Grod's divinest attributes ; to love 
 Compassion, mercy, truth, or time, and time's 
 Events would dominate his, the eternal mind. 
 Lo now these human with the angelic mixed 
 In process of purgation ; angels these 
 Retributive, who by God ordained, their own 
 Mis-deeds to expiate in judicial acts. 
 Self -punitive, while to others penal, thus 
 The united betterment work out of both. 
 Mark, too, who 'twixt due penitence and remorso 
 Contrition's upper stone and nethermost, grind 
 The spirit self -convict, self -condemned, as through 
 A mill of fire, to pure repentance ; whence, 
 Reframed, revivified, the heart again 
 Warms with new love towards God and man. Be sure, 
 Mortal, through all our God's intelligent world, 
 Through all its infinite multitudes of soul. 
 Its testing earths, its proof -fraught spheres, its orbs 
 Of purifying progress, near or far, 
 Central, or clustering round some parent globe, 
 Not man alone aspires to Himwards ; not 
 Man only worships wholly. Spirits elect. 
 Through all mind's conscious orders, fraught with gifte 
 Of reason, and answerable for act or choice, 
 Made just, made holy, glorified, e'er seek 
 With Him essential union. Nay, even here. 
 Through all hell's haunts of burning anguish, woe 
 Unslaked, for follies 'voidable once, now closed 
 With seal judicial of the passed ; regrets 
 TTnstifleable for secret sins to the world 
 Since patent ; for applauded lies life-long ; 
 The wail of self-deception undeceived ; 
 The gnawing curse of conscience tricked in rain j 
 The torturing memories of life's every grace 
 
670 FE8TU8. 
 
 Eaoli innocent joy, each natural pleasure fouled, 
 Degraded, desecrated by sin ; through, all, 
 The guilty spirit still purifiable, keeps, 
 Deep in its inmost essence, consciousness 
 Of divine origin, nor misdoubts its own 
 Capacity of redemption. Change may be 
 That moment quickening in them, not in vain. 
 Though here be weepings of repentant tears 
 Enough to quench hell's sin-lit fires ; though here 
 Be wailings like the moan of dying worlds 
 Over impossible restitutions ; wrongs 
 Ne'er to be righted now ; o'er virtue's last 
 Kesolves for future amendment lost ; not less 
 Believe the world's GTod's field of culture ; sin's 
 Tares into ashes burned more fertile making- 
 Creation ; and his heavenly gamer helping 
 With time's more precious harvestage to fill. 
 
 Festus. holy envoy of Heaven, tell further, how 
 Their final doom man fallen and angel lost, 
 May lighten or rectify ? Examples these 
 Or but exceptions of the state to be ? 
 
 Beniel. All things are intermediate ; in His world 
 Nought final is save God ; his name for aye 
 Be praised and magnified ; he first alone. 
 He only last, Creation circling midst. 
 Life preexistent in the spirit-spheres 
 Is life preparative ; upon the earth's, 
 Probation ; after death purgation. All 
 Begins, all ends, all mediates sole in Grod. 
 He all things makes, rules ; all administers. 
 It is just that sin should suffer. It is unjust 
 Alike to made and Maker to believe 
 The Eternal should a creatural soul invest 
 With deathlessness, to suffer pain alone ; 
 No possible betterment to the sufferer 
 Eesultant, proof 'twere of pure tyrant rule ; 
 Birth but a penalty, and mortal life 
 One cruel and continuous curse of God. 
 
 Lucifer. But here annihilation is their hope 
 Who be not hopeless. How shall aught create 
 The onslaught sustain of him, the Almighty One P 
 Or how, if hell be but his justice, bear 
 The wrath of the Omnipotent ? "Who despair, 
 And, proud to suffer Being, deem nought ends, 
 Live on, in untamed energy of ill, 
 If matter indestructible, why not mind ? 
 
 Beniel. Yea, who the depths of Deity can conceive, 
 That only see its surface, creaturewards ? 
 Their punishment is partly to believe 
 Hell's pain perpetual ; but it ends. 
 
 Lucifee. Ends ? 
 
 Beniel. Ends. 
 
FESTUa. 571 
 
 Fires these -Ionian, not eternal ; thoughts 
 
 How diverse ! Nought eternal is save God, 
 
 In like sense, and the spirit with him made one. 
 
 As pulsatory 'tis everlasting, this ; 
 
 The fires eternal, not the punishment 
 
 On individual soul, or man's, or fiend's : 
 
 Age lasting, or with life like timed alone. 
 
 For just so much as a man hath lived in sin, 
 
 In wilful wickedness or contempt of good ; 
 
 Corrupt, corrupting others ; unrepentant, 
 
 So much for practised wrong the spirit suffers ; 
 
 So much for worst offence he pays soul-racked. 
 
 Who tempts or wrongs another, mulcts himself 
 
 In niiseiy he not reckons nor conceives ; 
 
 So long remorse, as with a burning rasp 
 
 In venom steeped, shall bite his quivering heart ; 
 
 Till, blanched and purified, sin's pantherine spots 
 
 Vanish in whiteness as the wool of lambs. 
 
 "While every evil passion which man's soul, 
 
 With flesh engendering, fostered while in life, 
 
 Becomes in death a living fiend to scourge, 
 
 With parricidal and Briarean hand, 
 
 Its guilty parent, shrinking, shrieking, lost ; 
 
 But vanquished, grows an angel, pure, transformed, 
 
 Attracting to salvation in the heavens. 
 
 For the foundations of the intelligent world 
 
 Are laid in imperfection ; and all soul 
 
 The fire divine of rational pain for sin 
 
 Must pass through, in its holy reascent 
 
 Through life perfective to life pure, supreme : 
 
 But 'gainst unending woe, God's pitying love 
 
 Towards every soul, all covering, e'er avails, 
 
 GuABDiAN Angel. Wherefore should all men purge the soul of 
 sin 
 Conscience of criminal desire ; self-love. 
 Concupiscence, ire, envy, hatred, sloth, 
 The mind of all perturbing passion ; heart 
 Of all propensity not made clear to bear 
 Heaven's fullest, holiest light ; whereof by love 
 Divine and human, wisdom, charity, 
 Immoi-tal mediators of the world and soul, 
 Man may become the blessed recipient. 
 And heaven be filled with jubilant spirit, as air 
 With motes prismatic, moving not, to God's 
 Creative mind, with concourse orderless, 
 Unmeant, but the vivacious seed of worlds. 
 
 Beniel. Oh vainly never from the contrite soul, 
 Stabbed with the golden dagger of remorse 
 For sin, pours forth the penitential prayer. 
 The enlightened conscience quickened by blessed grief 
 Man's self condemning judgment torturing him. 
 Death were too cheap a pain, man's life a fine 
 
572 FE8TUS. 
 
 Too trivial to appease God's proud revenge, 
 But that with, reason faith unites, less ill 
 Men do, less will they suffer ; the more g-ood 
 On earth men do to men, the more will Grod 
 Do unto them in Heaven ; for He repays 
 Always a hundred, oft-times thousandfold. 
 
 Spieit Redeemed. Who knoweth this and sinneth, great his sin. 
 
 Spieit Saved. But greater towards the sinner is God's love. 
 
 Beniel. One grain of good, whose sheafings shall at last 
 Choke out perdition, and with glorious death 
 All evil ruin, see mortal 1 here insown. 
 
 Festus. Thou who in guise of angel showest to man, 
 And all intelligent mind, the miglity mould 
 Of that divine humanity which inheres 
 In the Eternal ; and our natural end 
 Foreplanned ; thy words are holy, fitting one 
 Who, filially adopt, and called, of God, 
 Communion holds alike with Deity, 
 And with ourselves, his creatures. In our breast 
 The weakness of all worlds dwells ; on thy brow. 
 Their Maker's glory, and thine own. All life's 
 Most holy sympathies, all mind's virtues meet 
 Heavenwards preponderating in thee, and last 
 Even in God's bosom centre. And thus love, 
 The heart's deep gulph-stream, that with warmer wavo. 
 Sun gilded, soothes the abysses of our life, 
 And tempers with its mild divinity. 
 The universal breath all part- wise breathe, 
 Hasting its end celestial with serene 
 Progress to compass, makes us, transient, feel 
 In loving God, the soul reseeks its source ; 
 Being to being answering, name to name. 
 
 LuciPEE. This likes me not. lliough what seemed destined once 
 For ever, happier fate annuls, yet who 
 Hopes fall like mine redeemable ? Av/ay I 
 The vain impossible thought. 
 
 Beniel. Impossible not. 
 
 Hell proved remedial, proves God's rational love. 
 The world to error sworn misdeems tlie spirit 
 Create, tormented through all times ; but soul 
 Finite, can bear not infinite pain ; and hell, 
 God's everlasting ordinance ; nought he does 
 But is with his own eternity impressed. 
 And wise good- will ; hell, reason's spiritual force 
 Corrective, force ameliorant of ill 
 Done wilfully 'gainst right, truth, conscience, sc oius 
 Fitliest prepared for temporal wrongs ; itself 
 Of terminable appliance to finite 
 Transgressor, as were just ; and just God is : 
 Not punishing minor sins with major pains, 
 But penalty appropriating to offence. 
 With nicest equity. Greater need, in sooth, 
 
FESTU3, 573 
 
 Were that the base, or ignorant, soul should rise 
 
 Tlirough grades of penitence and amendment, sought 
 
 Freely, and wise become and noble ; blessed 
 
 With final pardon of God ; than slave in hell 
 
 Through burning ages endlessly, to adjust 
 
 The balance sin on earth left ^\^:onged ; for sin, 
 
 Offspring of evil, and wherefore only He 
 
 His hands makes answerable, yea sin itself 
 
 Irreconcileable to God, shall yet, 
 
 Self mulct of all its aims, ends, life, become 
 
 The contrary of all things, and not be. 
 
 LucrPER. This is to me a mystery. How can hoi! 
 Dwindle, betimes, thus ; God being just ; how sin, 
 To limited soul, imperfect made, not e'er 
 Impossible, to contingency subject 
 Of all kinds through all ages, cease ? 
 
 Festus. I sec 
 
 Truly in this God's wisdom just ; foresee 
 A time when creatural opposition void. 
 All temporal misconception ended, soul 
 Though bounded, so instructed, shall confess 
 God's justice and benevolence in all things, 
 All spirits then one with truth divine, this hell, 
 More state than place, yet place not lacking, more 
 Than feeling focus'd in the breast lacks heart, 
 Shall in the fiery lake of old ordained, 
 Annihilant of all ill, cease ever. Yes I 
 Orb of perdition 1 thou too shalt die out. 
 And thy red-sheeted flames shall fail for aye. 
 Thy palpitating piles of ruin, hot 
 With ever active agony, and quick 
 With soul immortal ; down whose midnight heights 
 God's wrath, in cataracts of self -kindling fire, 
 Leaps ceaseless, quenchless on hell's orb, shall rush 
 Into divine oblivion, as a steed 
 Rushes into the battle there to die. 
 Thy quivering hills of black and bloodlike hue, 
 Death-breathing, shall collapse like lifeless lungs, 
 And end in air and ashes. Thou shalt be 
 Dashed from creation, sparklike, from a hand 
 Scarless ; rolled off, a volumed syllable 
 Of midnight thunder, from truth's coming day. 
 The river of all life which flows through heaven 
 Shall reach yet, yet o'erflood thy flames. No more 
 Shalt thou vex angel, God, nor man, with vaunt. 
 Or blazon false, of endlessness ; nor all 
 Soul-seekings, though of hungriest bigot zeal, 
 Mad for eternal ills, shall hunt thee out. 
 Thy day is sometime over. Be it soon ; 
 And thou the lost world which the world hath lost. 
 
 LuciFEB. "Where now is he, whose advent, wheresoe'er 
 O'er evil triumphing, makes heavenly good 
 
574 FE8TU8. 
 
 Persistent ? Nouglit I fear, save him, and him 
 Successful. 
 
 Festus. There ; see many do believe. 
 
 LuciPEE. It is not that I cannot credit truth. 
 But that I rather fear, as one of old, 
 God hath inspired false prophets with a lie. 
 To wreak me further wretchedness. But now 
 Stand thou, while this great reaper reaps his ear. 
 Elsewhere, beside me. I will speak to mine ; 
 Or they will sure adore him. Hell, hell I 
 Powers of perdition, thrones of darkness, hear. 
 Wrath, ruin, torment, hear ye me. It is I. 
 Thanks, fiends I know ye hate me well, and may. 
 I tempted, ruined all. But wherefore now 
 So ominously supine 1 Earth's fate, and all 
 Her many kingdomed tribes, now, know ye not. 
 Is oscillating in air ? List, then, to me. 
 Be still, ye thunder-blasts, and moving hills 
 Of fire, that sweep, like columned sands, these plains 
 Or rush, unthought, in avalanches of flame, 
 Down hell's precipitous soul-falls, paved with gleeds 
 That force to fly into the fire-breathed clouds, 
 And these to fall, alternate dread ; be calm. 
 Hell doth outdin itself ; weak-hearted slaves, 
 What are ye that I thus should toil for you ? 
 Power I have proffered, kingdoms I've prepared, 
 Nothing is for ye but your fiery fate. 
 Slaves, slaves, ye are too much at ease. Ye leave 
 Me single in evil's work of woe. I, sole. 
 Go forth to sow destruction. I alone, 
 Keap ruin. But had ye been as I, ere now, 
 The universe had been, doubt not, all hell ; 
 And for a pit each fiend had had a world 
 To rule. But rise. To strive 'gainst Heaven is life i 
 Evil to spread is more than joy ; its shade 
 Dims all that yet may happen. Up, hell and act ; 
 Who knows but from its central chaii', we good 
 May yet dis-seat ; and, hurling each his orb 
 Scatter it in fine as sand ? To reign is nought 
 Like to dethrone ; each greater then than God. 
 Or is it ye dream, like those submiss, late lost, 
 Of peace, and pity, of power restorative ? 
 And if dethrone we may not, that we can. 
 We will ; withdraw from spirits even, one by one, 
 The allegiance owed the Lord of life in heaven 
 Or elsewhere ; leave him lonely in the skies' 
 Desert, and grieving on his liegeless throne ; 
 While we o'er all the populous spheres hold rule, 
 And, spite of right and good, ill deify 
 With these or those, new ranks of spirit sublime, 
 Succeed we may. nor fail one perfect soul. 
 If elsewifie us it irks not ; for, at last, 
 
FESTUS. 57i 
 
 Time perfected, if ever, should all souls, freed, 
 
 As promised, from the tomb-like clay they boast 
 
 Eise ; ere the threshold of eternity one 
 
 Crosseth, a deed of note I have in mind, 
 
 May yet be achieved ; whereof more news anon. 
 
 Methinks I see ye captives, suppliants, bound. 
 
 Can His wrath less than us annihilate ? 
 
 May we not so sin as to ensure this end ? 
 
 Choose ye. I have chosen ; and chosen long ago. 
 
 But will ye, fiends, give up your hopes of heaven, 
 
 And entrance as young conquerors, fresh from spoil, 
 
 And choice of thrones, won by your death-red hands, 
 
 For pitiful penitence, like yon angel there, 
 
 Garbed though in sheeny white, star-tiar'd, lyre armed ? 
 
 Forbid it, all sin's pride, sin's prowess ; all 
 
 Hell's pains we have borne, nor blenched, forbid ! Meanwhile, 
 
 Know ye, man's world, adjudged not long to endure, 
 
 And though time's orb so waneth, fields there are 
 
 Twain to be f oughten as yet, with man, with God. 
 
 Be glad ; be glad. Earth's sons may soon be here ; 
 
 To our vast forces accessories strong. 
 
 And here, as earnest of my word, behold 
 
 This visitant earthling ; standing by my side. 
 
 Speak to them, Festus. 
 
 Festus. Nay, I dread them. 
 
 LuciFEE. Speak. 
 
 Great spirits, he scarce is worthy to address ye, 
 In that I cannot say, he is yet like you. 
 Committed to extremest sin ; nor yet 
 To pains perpetual doomed. 
 
 Festus. But I am come ; 
 
 God wills me here ; not even Hell's prince repugns. 
 These matters for my presence here suflBceing, 
 I, saved or lost, know well enough 'tis fate : 
 Fate that I come ; fate that I quit ; and though 
 Soul-racked to view such woe, yet mercy approves 
 The means remedial of God's righteousness 
 And justice satisfied ; for wrath which not 
 Ends, nor appeaseable shows, is brute revenge, 
 Not divine equity. Souls, doubt I not, 
 Are, which be better some, some worse than mine ; 
 More illy qualified these than I to brook 
 Hell's stripes restorative and chastening storms 
 Fiery ; but though none less ; and would twere so t 
 Yet have I never mocked God's holy word ; 
 Nor torn it into fuel for my scorn ; 
 Nor doubted, saving tremblingly, his being ; 
 His love to man ; His right to be adored ; 
 Never have hated ; never wronged my race ; 
 Deluded nor rejoiced in their delusion ; 
 Never have beckoned off the good from good ; 
 Never have mocked, ror scattered hopes ; nor e'er 
 
570 FESTU8, 
 
 Have wasted hearts, nor desolated hearths ; 
 
 And if I have once, twice, as who hath not ? 
 
 Toyed with temptation, yet even he will say, 
 
 Who there stands, I have never yielded up 
 
 To his burning dalliance, this my soul. And though 
 
 Sin were God's everlasting hate, sin's not 
 
 In the spirit of man, not even in yours, eterne ; 
 
 As I from reason, truth revealed in Heaven, 
 
 And out of lips divinely inspired, have learned 
 
 Here ; and now haste, confirmed of love, to impart 
 
 To man. Yet he's my friend, the Evil One, 
 
 And why is wondrous ; judge ye wherefore, too. 
 
 I have no malice, enrj, nor reveng-e ; 
 
 None of those petty passions which bad hearts 
 
 Scourge red into themselves ; for passions are 
 
 Sufferings ; and which to nourish is his wont ; 
 
 Wherein's his power : and, save enjoying earth, 
 
 Have nought done he could share in. But he came 
 
 From Grod, he said, to give ; and I believed. 
 
 Great spirits lie not, nor doubt. 
 
 LuciFEB. Hear I He says truth. 
 
 Not that he knows, (nor his, nor yours, to know) 
 The reason of all my doings. It is that unf cared, 
 Unforethought, tempts, betrays : and that I who bait, 
 Who plague the world to do its will, most use, 
 Proceed we therefore to the future. True, 
 Though tortured with undying pain all we. 
 All pain, as bom of life create, must end ; 
 Nay life, begianiagless not, itself must cease. 
 Be only hate perpetual of all good. 
 And life itself sustained by hope of strife. 
 
 A Fiend. Proud are we to prepare for such contest. 
 
 A Spieit. a field ye may repent of. 
 
 LuciFEE. E'en so. 
 
 This, or that, issue tells. To win is gain 
 Of purpose ; lose ? We lose what ne'er was ours. 
 Repent ? We gain apt tolerance for a time. 
 
 A Spieit. 'Gainst man thou mayst be worsted even yet ,♦ 
 'Gainst God, thou must be. 
 
 LuciFEE. Be it. We still can bear. 
 
 And bested, still renown is ours in Heaven. 
 But whatsoe'er our schemes, somewhile they'll keep. 
 Nor need designs unripened more than peer 
 Coy from their fence of words. Time's more than need. 
 Eternal nought is, nought can be, save God. 
 
 Festus. But how Creator's glory reconcile 
 With all creation's sin, save those His grace 
 Sustains perforce in heaven, 'twere wise to leave 
 In His hands ; since nor ye, nor I, can say. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Nor yet is the all-create replete with sin. 
 Nay, but a minor part. Could God rejoice 
 In that He hath made, were all convict of guilt, 
 
FE8TUS. 577 
 
 In Heaven or earth ? Yet hath Hearen more of joy 
 In one hour than all earth for many an age, 
 Or groups of starry worlds from birth to death. 
 
 Lucifer. Ejiow, fiends I All I have to this mortal done 
 Sanctioned of Heaven, which might, an it would, annul 
 One who submission less than betterment 
 Hates and rejects, or may to the end design. 
 For in but one groove can I or act or live. 
 God ! go on making ; I will go on marring ; 
 Go on believing, man ; I go on tempting ; 
 Saint, angel, cherub, seraph, and archangel. 
 Good genius, thou, thou guardian soul o' the world ; 
 And, Beniel, thou, of all the sons of God 
 First favourite of my hate, and hell's whole scorn, 
 Go ye on all, all blessing. It is my being 
 To curse and to undo. Be it now for me, 
 These lords of misadventure to consult ; 
 Then back to earth, to work out what remains 
 Of this man's fate ; and wait his world's destruction. 
 
 Festus, Prince of aerial powers, whose single chiefs, 
 (Here, in sin's lowest deeps, malignant, plot 
 Iniquity worse than hell's walls, though enlarged, 
 Can e'er confine ; and thence o'erleaping, earth's 
 High summits seized, realms, worlds, command of guile) 
 More formidable to soul, than hosts colleagued 
 To some lone fort, man's spirit misguide, or lure 
 To ruin ; and oft by overpoise of ill 
 Tempt God to o'erthrow earth, and so sad remorfro 
 Wreak in his breast, the unbuilder he of things. 
 As framer once, by one mere element 
 Withdrawn from nature's sensible mass, the whole 
 He might exterminate in a day, one day 
 Destructive, complemental of the seven ; 
 Much fear I, for man's orb, if these inflamed 
 By their implacable Head's incitements, rush 
 To o'erwhelm it with their tempest of iU foes, 
 Pride, superstition, godlessness, unbelief, 
 Worse misbelief, idolatry, and like sins. 
 
 LuciFEB. Be at ease. Those fiends have never left thine earth 
 Since first they found a footing. 'Tis their home. 
 What next may hap, me irks not. And albeit 
 One needs but seldom councils how to guide 
 Our feet astray ; to counsel 1 
 
 Guardian Angel. Let cabal 
 
 These, as they list ; their malice heed not thou, 
 Manwards nor Godwards. 
 
 Festus. Not the less seems hell 
 
 To its centre shook by Beniel's gracious deeds 
 And words ; he, chiefest of the sons of light 
 Great and resistless made by gifts divine 
 To him imparted with his mission. Blessed 
 The most and lowliest he in God's great cause 
 
 u 
 
678 FE8TU8. 
 
 To serve, by service consecrate to good 
 Of all tlie wliole return : whose advent here, 
 As elsewhere, triumphing o'er evil, makes 
 Good heavenly, all persistent, willed of God. 
 How many a lost one shall the boon effect 
 Feel of his words, and acts. 
 
 GUAEDIAN Akgel. Lo ! far and near, 
 
 Are many who half believing, deem their loss 
 In his departure remediless ; but Heaven 
 Already reached, he herald- wise shall tell, 
 If but of intermediate arc, the hope 
 That gilds the welkin of Hell's woful world ; 
 "Where yet, his purpose neither won nor lost, 
 Of dubious doom, enlists Heaven's love intense. 
 
 Festus. Let us too hence ; nor wait, suspense, so long, 
 That Evil 'company us. 
 
 Guardian Angel. He '11 follow fast. 
 
 Festus. Rise 1 The Divan disperses. Even as when 
 On earth at close of autumn storms, some eve, 
 While ocean's ruddy border marks where low 
 On the horizon hid, the spotful sun, 
 Assentient fates frowns ; whereon suddenly 
 The clouds call council ; and dim vaporous forms, 
 Titanic, hundred handed, powers enorme, 
 Their light-edged crowns upreared, like kings convoked 
 Proud war debate ; or seem ; while light lasts ; soon 
 Eight tyrannously resolved, one final storm 
 Conclusive of all wrongs, all ills, to wreak 
 On some poor isle or coast, the first they meet ; 
 And so set forth gesticulative of threats 
 Their sad complot to achieve ; swift, break they up, 
 And start them, muttering, o'er the sky ; so these, 
 Swollen with wrath declamatory, who now 
 Their lurid legions lead, and livid arms 
 'Gainst us, weak earthlings. 
 
 Guardian Angel. God forefend I who knowa 
 
 But Heaven may curses turn to blessings, hate 
 To grateful aid : turn dread reproach, despair, 
 And senseless and unjust complaints, to trust 
 Of fellow spirits ? 
 
 Festus. I see him gathering all 
 
 His wings in air about him ; marshalling 
 His every force to overtake us. 
 
 Guardian Angel. We shall meet. 
 Doubtless : but not before we make the siizu 
 
FESTUS. 679 
 
 XXXVL 
 
 Hence earthward tending first we make the sun ; 
 
 Where as at rest in light, a mediate point, 
 
 A bright eft'ect original of God, 
 
 Enlightening all tilings inly and without, 
 
 'Twixt earth and heaven, the spirit beloved, first met 
 
 In satellite sphere, and aye progressive, here. 
 
 By kindred tnrone companioned, seeks, of truth 
 
 Missioned, our soul heroic to imbue 
 
 With sense of being seonian. Only thus, 
 
 As we advance in life perfective, soul 
 
 Smns accurately the future forming force 
 
 Of failures passed ; for failures are all faiths , 
 
 Though eacn to educable man once good. 
 
 The spirit inquisitive of the long foregone. 
 
 By natural bamers checked, at last all bounds 
 
 Of birth and death views vanish ; eyes the dawn 
 
 Pretemporal of creation ; eyes the end. 
 
 Which the soul searchful of tnith spiritual, hidden 
 
 In light's supreme source, seeks, and leanis, and loves. 
 
 Could suffexing expiate offence, the soul 
 
 Now suffering had the most may be, atoned. 
 
 But something more than suffei-ing, God requires, 
 
 Ere re-instating soul, to sin self-thi-aUed 
 
 Spontaneously, and which rethronement seeks 
 
 Mid heavenly orders ; m ore than mere remorse ; 
 
 Mere penitence ; it is love which nears his own. 
 
 Earth-like, the heart must bide all chance, ere yet 
 
 The Heaven-life form within it ; and we feel 
 
 Midst all the world's delights, and life's desires. 
 
 That chastity of heart which loves but God ; 
 
 And self-restriction privilege supreme. 
 
 T/ie Sun. 
 
 Festus, Angela, Lucifee, Guardian Angel, Otiriel. 
 
 Festus. Parent of spheres, who filling once all space, 
 God bidding, threwest off as cloakinf^ clouds, 
 To thee intolerable, of nebulous heat, 
 The planetary fires ; which, gathered there 
 In narrowing circlets, imminent o'er the void, 
 Each in one common sky, thou centering all, 
 Reign'st o'er, their lord and sire ; so hailed by earth 
 First of heaven's stars reflective of the light 
 And favourite of the sun, sole source and end 
 All turn to ; I too like thyself, a liege 
 But spiritual, of God, who gave us both 
 To be ; but in free obedience me ; in law 
 Infrangible thee, the law of light ; through space 
 Darting thy quickening ray from orb to orb, 
 Leaping, like thought ; behold, I seek thee, Sun 1 
 Not all unconscious may be of thy state. 
 Slave giant, god in bonds ; whose lot sublime 
 But 'scapeless 'tis, to king the aetherial world, 
 As mine, of doom not wholly weetless ; urged 
 Not albeit by divine necessity, 
 (Servant of God, and master of all things 
 
 u 3 
 
680 FE8TUS. 
 
 Exteme to that free mind man owns with Heaven ;) 
 
 Kor contrary to Heaven's fore-ordering- will, 
 
 But freely, and mine own arbitrary choice. 
 
 Due knowledge seeking of all being passed, 
 
 Far back in nature's veriest prime ; to prove 
 
 The spirit's original God-gift, liberty ; 
 
 Soul's summit flower, which first by Him conveyed, 
 
 Keunion conquers with its source divine, 
 
 Essential ; in existence yet discrete. 
 
 Home, doubtless, this of vasty spirits who rule 
 
 Like realms, far stretching-. One I seem to know, 
 
 Already arrived, and never absent long-. 
 
 Lucifer. Lo I I am one who seeks not to be sought 5 
 Nor waits to be expected. Heard I aright ? 
 Though I and sundry others have by times 
 Adjm-ed him, I have mostly found the sun 
 Sparing of speech, and chary in reply. 
 Wait'st thou his answer ; or shall I speak for him? 
 
 Festus. Some sign oracular, world-wide, shadowy, 
 If word none spoken may show not all in vain 
 My visit, nor all imfruitful to the soul. 
 There's more than one I am named to meet with here, 
 Beside mine heavenly guide whom gone to seek 
 The angel regent of this orb, I await, 
 Confiding in good tidings, nor thee less 
 Blessed Angela, of thy sojourn here to tell 
 And all thy soul's intensive culture, trained 
 Heavenward, hope I to meet. 
 
 Lucifer. Even failing these 
 
 If chance, or choice, or destiny hath caused 
 Our courses here converge it were doubtless well. 
 
 Festus. "Would I could welcome one all ill-come ! 
 
 Lucifer. Still 
 
 All mysteries once I pledged me thou shouldst ken 
 Nor mazed stand at aught. That promise now 
 I honour ; and will show thee thou hast been 
 Thyself whate'er thou seest. Ere every birth, 
 The spirit in self obliviousness implunged, 
 Sloughs off the oppressive consciousness of years, 
 Soul saddening ; as with thunder seasoned eve 
 The record of a day of joy. But leave 
 Is sometime mine, and power devolved of Heaven, 
 With reminiscence of time's tides foresped 
 The memory to endow, and from life gone, 
 Evoke eternal pictures ; that all souls, 
 Of worlds to come, may view the undying passei 
 Made to the mind's eye visible ; for the world 
 Of sense is but an outline manifold 
 And surface of true substance. Underneath 
 That superficial veil is nought save Grod ; 
 
 Festus. Draw it, and die 1 
 
 Lucifer. Not yet. It stirs not me- 
 
FE8TU8. 681 
 
 That thou wouldst e'er from this to that extreme, 
 
 Hie with a footstep as of polar ligrht 
 
 All sequence mocking : urgent when the passed 
 
 Then on the future calling. But this sun, 
 
 This mighty orb and all its solar brood, 
 
 How many, or how far soe'er ; all life, 
 
 Hath its set suit and semce. Be it now mine 
 
 To show what hath been ; show thine own vast self 
 
 The sum most deep of mystery ; and the soul 
 
 Here doting on the veriest chance of death 
 
 Its prouder pre-existence, angel mate 
 
 Of immortality all time foregone. 
 
 And now what seest thou ? 
 
 Festus. Surely, in yonder shape 
 
 I see approaching, purer, lovelier, her 
 Whose spirit enshrined in beauty's crescent star, 
 With bliss intense lit up my heart ; my soul 
 Steeped in the pearly radiance of her smile ; 
 But here, of loftier and more grand aspect 
 Nor now by inward shadows umbered ; speak. 
 Transcendent spirit ; and whom thou seekest, say, 
 And wherefore here ? 
 
 Angela. Oh, an' thou mind'st tboe not 
 
 Of that I spake, when (in yonder spherelet pale 
 Of splendour, which, concentric with all globes 
 Bounding this throne of light in pauseless pomp 
 Of order rolls,) we last met, I a dream 
 Kamed, to me ominous of all good ; to thee 
 Not illy shaped, it now were vain to grieve 
 For memory's loss. 
 
 Festus. Thine image, and thy words 
 
 Lie in my heart's entablature graved too deep 
 To lose, but by a shock shall shatter all 
 To shards. 
 
 Angela. Forgive ! Why here ? This know : the joy 
 Chiefest but one of spirits concerned to assure 
 Their best reward God's smile, is so to seek 
 Their good they love, as leads such to like end 
 As that their friends and favourers enjoy. 
 Such end be thine ; to ever more advance 
 Soul-wise toward God. The life of all that's good 
 Is one perpetual progress. Every thought 
 That strengthens, purifies, exalts a mind 
 Betters the soul so blessing. 
 
 Festus. Spirit benign, 
 
 Such progress is perfection. It is the power 
 Of man's perfectibility gives to earth 
 Capacity of heaven. And thou hast left 
 Yon orb celestial, man's embodied hope 
 Of brighter life to come, for this, light's throne ; 
 Throne than all empires wider. But while thou 
 Art here of right and fitness, I of mere 
 
582 FE8TUS. 
 
 Permission come, and momentary choice ; 
 A stranger wandering", spotlike, round tlie tent 
 Eadiant of solar fire-cloud ; worthy scarce 
 Such privileges to claim, yet bidden of fate, 
 
 Angela. To will and to permit, with one whose will 
 Creative even of all obstructive force, 
 Is irresistible, were nought but one, 
 When His own joy and man's good, wherefore the whole 
 "Was framed and founded, forms the eternal end. 
 
 OuEiEL. Mortal, and thou his angel guard, and thou 
 Blessed spirit, now denizen of these mighty realms ; 
 And thou, unblessed ; each on your several quest, 
 Appointed or allowed, one aim all ruling, 
 Be it mine to bid to all free access here 
 In his name who all guides of worlds ordains. 
 
 Festus. Much it rejoiceth me, angel guard, 
 To meet thee here intuitive. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Wheresoe'er 
 
 Thou art, am I, or far or nigh, to ward 
 From woe, to watch 'gainst evil, or to warn. 
 
 Lucifee. Doth evil lurk in visions of the passed, 
 Which passed I promised him of old to show ; 
 Not knowing then, scarce now, what stores were here 
 Historic and phantasmal of life-scenes, 
 Spirits most choice, on this or that sphere, live 
 Age after age to enact. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Thou promisedst more 
 Than all 111 could perform, or thou mightst claim. 
 Mortal, wilt choose or him for hierophant, 
 Or me? 
 
 Lucifee. Nay, let the fates, their great designs achieved 
 Proceed, to our enlightenment. I yield. 
 
 Festus. Here'neath yon mighty ruler, mightiest he, 
 Most blessing, who most serves in godliest love, 
 Ought not we first his sanctioning aid to ask ? 
 
 Lucifee. Yon servant-lord's ? chained doubtless to his throne ? 
 Such empery be not mine, nor aid, nor leave. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Speak, regent spirit of the sun ; dispel 
 Our difiiculties, and solve our densest doubts. 
 
 Oueiel. Truly this time-glance of the passed is mine 
 To manifest or reserve ; divine assent 
 To me so much lends ; and just now I heard 
 The voice within me bidding show. But know, 
 Were I sole servant of the universe, 
 As of one starry family, not then 
 Could I the pride admit thou f eelest, fiend, 
 In ruling, or in ruining, one poor soul. 
 True kingship's glory is humility. 
 Hence, knowing every star, for light no more 
 Obstructs here eye angelic, than night man's 
 Hinders. I know intuitive all that haps 
 Successive in these spheres, time's solar brood 
 
FE8TU8. 683 
 
 Of state mundane, how many, or how far 
 
 Soe'er, in void star-sown ; and every act 
 
 Of every soul to God linked, in the passed 
 
 Depictured, stored in one vast treasure-house, 
 
 The memory of the universe, evoked 
 
 At call of Him all-equitable, or one 
 
 Who needs, of the heavenly destined ; hold betimes 
 
 Converse with angels watchers bright, and hear 
 
 Informing whispers from remotest skies 
 
 Of world-birth, death-disastrous, growth, decny ; 
 
 O'er all, God's will unspoken, but ear and eyo 
 
 Each alike witnessing to Him, who mute. 
 
 Answers by earth-tremblings a people's sins. 
 
 And trespasses, by thunderous lava-floods ; 
 
 Who shakes the sifted isles o'er death's abyss ; 
 
 Rebukes with livid plagues a country's crimes ; 
 
 Notes backslidings by tempests ; and with storms 
 
 Unseasonable of ice and lightning, posts 
 
 His judgments on the many nationed worlds, 
 
 Vibrant through solid elements ; or, more mild, 
 
 All angelhood with gently prompting touch 
 
 "Warns, and now me ; that I, of Heaven depute 
 
 Thy spirit mortal, reimbue with sense 
 
 Of times long and for ever lapsed, and trace 
 
 Of faiths imperfect that in truth evolved 
 
 Wholly their sole perfection find. But thee. 
 
 Fair spirit I welcome from the Hesperian orb. 
 
 And later still from neighbouring spherelet, whenca 
 
 The interpretative Angel dwells, who skilled 
 
 In moral mysteries and miraculous signs 
 
 Of solar and of satellite natures, thee 
 
 Doubtless accomplished in such lore as yet 
 
 Gods blessing, will thee aid, here timely arrived 
 
 To advise the soul beloved, through many a star 
 
 Fined and so far advanced, as needs but now 
 
 One other life, one other death, to crown. 
 
 Him therefore, provident of his weal, do thou 
 
 Expositress of truth, and loveable friend 
 
 Of all souls amiable and pure, with us, 
 
 'Neath yon cloud pediment (high o'erarched and bright 
 
 With flaming peaks half blinding sight ; but source 
 
 Of every primal hue, each dazzling, blent 
 
 With other, each outshining all the rest, 
 
 As the eye favours that or this ; within 
 
 Shadowed by comforting cloudlets of cool mi£3t) 
 
 Recluse in this soul clarifying sphere. 
 
 View all the ages fore our eyes deployed ; 
 
 And Time's star-jewelled cup by mortal lips 
 
 Drained to its nectarous lees, sweet as when first 
 
 To God's creative word the lucent wave 
 
 Essential, sparkled forth, and in the face 
 
 Of the All- father smiled ; the eternal passed 
 
584 FESTU8. 
 
 Boundless recovery of the ages gone ; 
 The draught of recollection from the fount 
 Of spiritual reminiscence quaffed. This law, 
 How strange soe'er to angel soul it seem, 
 Or mind by bodily bondage cramped, we hold 
 Holy ; and, inly blazoned in our breast, 
 Joy to obey. All this to some good end 
 Tends. That ye came for, do ; for such is fate, 
 God's law unvoiced or voiced ; and age by age, 
 Concurrent with his written, ripely fulfilled. 
 
 Guardian Angel. A life, a moment, all is doomed of God ; 
 The aged growth of empire, and the fall 
 Ephemeral of a flower. 
 
 Angela. That all are here 
 
 Hosts of the blessed know ; and for what end 
 Thou, man, shalt leam, and with profound surprise, 
 The volumed ages of the soul unseal ; 
 Time's gi-owth concentric reaping at one glance. 
 
 Festus. Hold we then passed and future in ourselves ? 
 
 Angela. Truly. Thy future lightly once I limned ; 
 Leave given so far. Meanwhile to souls advanced, 
 And armed with powers interpretant, to all, 
 Given in yon spherelet, of the sun's broad brood 
 Brightest, and youngest, nearest to his breast ; 
 Souls, there reborn aetherial, and endowed 
 With explicative gifts towards all things hidden, 
 Which orbital and obsequious spheres perplex 
 Of right, just might, and many a mystic knot 
 That plainly smoothened out, rich store unfolds, 
 Abstract and absolute, of eternal truth ; 
 To souls, in sooth, like mine ; who, as I, had lived 
 Some certain revolutions, quickly passed. 
 Within its orb, 'twas given, and last to me, 
 To know, that steps significant of dear earth 
 With mine once current, were here due. How told j 
 By stars confederated in air ; or news 
 Whispered by winged pilgrim on his way 
 From sky to sky, was told me not. Enough 
 For me. The rest I knew ; and at thought's pace 
 Journeying, behold me here. 
 
 Festus. beauty, once 
 
 Of earth, but now prospective more of heaven, 
 How all thou say'st recalls thy constancy, 
 Thy loveable tenderness, attempering truth ; 
 For as some primgeval stream, earth nourishing once. 
 Whose giant bed a continent here conceals. 
 Seas, there, efface ; named by no living land, 
 Kor mapped its tideway ; but whose course still graved 
 Hither, as yond, in monumental mark 
 'Neath isle, main, mainland lui-ks ; my heart's fii'st flow 
 Of love, though since by worlds of life, and ebb 
 Of yeara, immemorable, as seems, oppressed, 
 
FESTU8. 585 
 
 I yet retxace, and footsteps of the flood. 
 
 Ajjgela. Forget not : but remember, too, how once 
 On eai-tli, the fatal mystery thou besoughtst me, 
 Unconscious what that mystery then comprised, 
 To ope of thine own nature, while death's seal, 
 Inviolable on earth, our natal sphere. 
 Yet iced my lips ; and now wouldst know it still ? 
 
 Festus. Spirit of beauty, who so late hast known 
 Death, man's penultimate fate, speak on, nor cease ; 
 The air thy breath doth hallow, feels to me 
 Vital with light of truth. 
 
 Angela. Truth's holy beam 
 
 Disperseth passion as the moon full orbed 
 The clouds below her dissipates. Let no aim 
 Less than celestial fix thine eye ; for soul. 
 Though pre-essential in a bygone sphere, 
 Or future form, shows still direct from God. 
 
 OuRiEL. God, when He made the heavens precede the earth, 
 Made in them all celestial substances. 
 Angel, and spirit, and life intelligence, 
 And soul, if deathless pre-existent ; all 
 With power of gradual perfectness enriched ; 
 That by successive sense of spheral life, 
 Refined to common divruity, each might gain 
 Original bliss. To mortals of thine orb, 
 O man I ere now, though few, and many an age 
 Sundered, hath He the world-wide wave of light 
 From memory's fount revealed, that sage and seer 
 And now thyself mightst learn therefrom to live ; 
 And consciously undeathful, teaching men 
 Soul purified from love of mortal things. 
 By an immortal passion, truth from good 
 And good from truth, each generative of each, 
 The spiritual sunlife of authentic soul. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Angel, we wait, of this immortal's passed. 
 Thy world enlightening touch, that rimmed or cored 
 With light, in shadowy visions, soul may trace 
 Its marvellous eld ; and on these painted clouds. 
 Pavilioned round the sky, triumph to come. 
 
 Angela. Here 'mid this world vast granary of light, 
 Where the sun's fruitful rays, self harvested, 
 Look to supply fresh systems yet to be. 
 Sit we, and thy passed being's shadowy scenes 
 See, silent, listening to time's tolling tongue. 
 
 Festus. Silent ? Then these be mysteries. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Holy, grand, 
 
 Lucifer. They to their solar secrets ; I to mine ; 
 And mine intents ; in number minishing, 
 In matter greatening. Ye will follow soon. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Fear not, but I attend him all due times. 
 
 Angel. If nought so dear to me be as our passed, 
 Unless thy future, let me, only intent, 
 
686 FE8TU8, 
 
 Where'er God's will determine my sojourn, 
 
 On thy course, with all souls of various worth, 
 
 But even on earth by one I trust and love, 
 
 Hast thou to deeds been urged in kind, not show, 
 
 Mighty, and to man's need of faith and peace 
 
 Eedounding most ; let me, with these conjured. 
 
 Prevail ; 'tis time, to the end thou knowest, which though 
 
 Matured in secret, wins by wise restraint, 
 
 The somewhile full fruition of all good. 
 
 Festus. To haste this end might seem to favour self. 
 
 Angel. If self even sow the seed, man's total kin, 
 Shall reap the common field ; nor canst thou gain 
 Too soon truth's triumph and faith's world-wide peace, 
 "Who aims to head the world and on its path, 
 Of intellective light and moral, more 
 And more approaching truth's blessed day ; to lead 
 Humanity's e'er progressive sphere with faith 
 More pure and perfect in itself and God, 
 Secured ; and sense of righteousness in both 
 One ; happier end than hope even dreamed ; of wealth 
 Nought coveting, save wealth to make all souls 
 Than his own wealthier in soul gifts, of all 
 Most needs the mind-force which shall shew him heir 
 And hero of Humanity ; and who most 
 Its failings feeling, and defects, with powers 
 Of kindness substitute shall so enlarge 
 Ripe nature, and refine, as shall present 
 For every fault a potency ; for all 
 Wrongs, jealousies, un justnesses, attacks, 
 Defeats, invasions, rebelries, a roll 
 Of inter-racial benefits which henceforth 
 Shall bind all peoples in one deed of peace. 
 One charter of free brotherliness ; and frame 
 ITratemal of all earth's constituent states. 
 Then shall thine earth, our Hesper, and all staxs, 
 Stars of the evening, as, tides passed, of morn. 
 Shout forth in songs of joy ; and, so combined 
 In the concerted whole, each orb redeemed. 
 In the end renewed, shall lift its sunbright head 
 High o'er time's flood, and all be conscious heaven. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Who holds not life more yearfal tlian the 
 hour 
 Recurrent annual of his birth might show, 
 When first into this world he wept his way 
 Errs, doubt not much ; for called of God, man's soul 
 In patriarchal periods, comet like. 
 Ranges, in lengthening order, many a sphere. 
 Here taught, and there to teach forechosen, as ariR*^ 
 Inly with noblest weapons, gifts of mind. 
 Heaven-lavished, wisdom's all beneficent Cause 
 Best skilled to aid, most apt to wound to death 
 All forms of error ; soul as in itself 
 
FESTUa, 687 
 
 Invulnerable, immortal. So with this, 
 
 Whose course we wait thee, spirit of power ! to trace 
 
 The moral light's initiate, truth's adept, 
 
 In spiritual rites perfected ; who seven times 
 
 Bathed in life's luminous fount, and in its light 
 
 Commingled, leavening with his own the world, 
 
 Throixgh all God's holy universe he roamed 
 
 In quest of truth regenerant ; bom to instate 
 
 Mankind in veriest faith ; and searching out, 
 
 Through all disguise, the eternal unity ; 
 
 Soul of the world, the spirit that fills all space ; 
 
 Yet dwells within man's heart, the infinite one. 
 
 OuElEL. God's providential fates towards earth and man 
 Have yet to be consummed ; and these comprise 
 More than perchance thou knowest. One element 
 Subtracted from the universe, all is death. 
 All forms material fade ; all signs, all modes, 
 All shapes. The shows of mightiest things shall pass ; 
 And nothing but essential deity 
 Be and remain. 
 
 LuciFEE. The element I foresee 
 
 To be withdrawn seems strangely akin to life, 
 And this to me pertains. The end is nigh. 
 Heaven justifies my purpose ; and permits 
 Herein my action. Life or death, what now 
 Matters to me, or any ? All are doomed. 
 
 Guardian Angel. We, irrespective, each of other's course, 
 Work, and One only knoweth how all ends. 
 
 Lucifer. This know I, that I reck not of the passed. 
 And for this soul, most chosen, I long have feared 
 To watch him was spoiled time. One trial more I 
 But Lord I my spirit expands. I long to test 
 Nations at once : a race, a generation. 
 
 Guardian Angel. So be it. The generation now to be swept 
 From life, in fleshly mould, by earth's dread doom, 
 The spirits of total man's terrestrial strain. 
 He added, whom I still tend on, God permits. 
 As he from first vouchsafed to approve to all, 
 And thee, divulsive of the world of life. 
 Its kind and end. Counsel divine I speak 
 Those souls secure who prove by sovereign grace 
 God's will, not to necessity thrall, but he 
 Lord even of destiny, and source of fate. 
 
 Festus. Such and so grand soul's long career surveyed 
 Through time that here in light's eternal noon 
 First see I all things clear ; from end to end 
 Humanity's cycle half divine ; begun 
 In one soul's dumb commune with Heaven, and closed 
 With all perfections of the countless race, 
 See spirit and soul, mind, life, flesh, feeling, mix 
 Reciprocate as the elements ; see how flow 
 The streams of focling ; passion's cataracts ; 
 
688 FE8TU8. 
 
 How rise, how sink, mine, mountain ; this of pride 
 
 And that of covetise. Truth is man to know, 
 
 The human universe, and the divine and fate 
 
 Central, that all must be fulfilled, which is 
 
 Of nature ; sin and strife ; destruction, change ; 
 
 And righteousness and peace, ere earth, (all things 
 
 Are means for greater good) can take new life ; 
 
 Or man, God's minister become. Not less, 
 
 If heaven and all its stars depend on earth, 
 
 Then may eternity on time ; but time's 
 
 An atom of eternity ; and earth 
 
 A crumb of Heaven ; both segments of the orb 
 
 Of being created, emanant from God, 
 
 Whose flowings forth are aye and infinite, 
 
 But voluntary in act ; and so enjoy 
 
 Illimitable duration, free to live 
 
 Distinct in tried existence, or return 
 
 After life's long protracted strifes and tests 
 
 Or this, or that to its parent source ; but pends 
 
 Neither, on other ; each responsible sole 
 
 To its lord all equitable. One only truth 
 
 Hath paramount consequence, God's truth how kept, 
 
 Inspirited in man. The world may act, 
 
 Believe, bless, curse its way, as best it lists ; 
 
 Expend a vain life solemnizing points 
 
 Uncertain as the site of Paradise, i 
 
 Or area of Hades ; to its own 
 
 Judgment, such self-imposed, it stands or falls. 
 
 Nor need it wholly doubt ; of one thing sure 
 
 Expect in time or place whate'er it may. 
 
 To those whose eyes are opened e'er so little 
 
 No future disappointment can be more 
 
 Than that we are now to ourselves. Men make then* hearts 
 
 Centres of all hopes, powers, designs ; nor deign 
 
 Scarce life to circumscribe, so vast his thought 
 
 Of his own merits, mindful not that points 
 
 Perfect are points imaginary, nor are. 
 
 Save as intelligible ; substantial not. 
 
 Draw therefore life as best we may, to make 
 
 The imperfect notions of perfection pair ; 
 
 Bound as a world or as an atom round, 
 
 Pure as some virgin visionary's dream 
 
 Of sainthood sociable with changeful love, 
 
 Or faith's regenerative wave, with power 
 
 Endowed of granting safety, conquering death, 
 
 It fails to match the true invisible 
 
 We labour of, we boast, but bring not forth« 
 
 Let this with me have passed away, all doubt 
 
 Henceforth indifferent hath no interest. Love 
 
 What only is certain I. Soul sundered here 
 
 From all my race, and dread with doubt definedj 
 
 (Hence fiery shadows 1 I have outlived ye once) 
 
FESTUa, 589 
 
 I have left all for one ; truth's needled rays 
 
 For truth's one sphere, the mean for the supreme ; 
 
 The dubitable powers that soul now serve 
 
 With adulative assistance and now rule 
 
 Rudely, proofs asked authentic of descent, 
 
 And linea{?e loftier than gods could show, 
 
 I have quit for wisdom, sovran power, orb-throned, 
 
 Yet here I may not rest ; nor selfish seek 
 
 Mine own perfection sole. The mightiest sphere 
 
 Is not for man the best. Mind's elements, 
 
 And matter's, sire and mother these of things. 
 
 Are in all worlds proportioned ; best on earth ; 
 
 And earth hath favour over crowds of stars ; 
 
 Earth let me then reseek. It suits not now 
 
 To plunge in pleasure, or to passion stoop. 
 
 The lion honey of the heart, which speaks, 
 
 And lurks in, life corrupted. Thirst no moro 
 
 For knowledge universal now the heart 
 
 Distracts ; nor shallow gaiety dulls ; nor meet 
 
 I' the brain, with dizzying mixture. Be it mine 
 
 To hope not yet all things conclude ; nor speed 
 
 Fate's broad winged bolt ; but, from its living bow, 
 
 God's lips, still there detained the unerring word. 
 
 XXXYII. 
 
 Earth regained, 
 And lonesea- shore where the great waves come in 
 Frothed Uke a horse put to his heart-burst speed, 
 Sobbing up-hill, note we, his ends frustrate ; 
 How evil, who liar, accuser, tempter, known 
 Deceiver proven, his title of murderer to earn 
 Man's hater, God's most, works his victim's death, 
 Reckless of promised boons ; ingrate ! Fell deed ; 
 By guardian powers of good to good o'erruled. 
 Struck thrice by loved one's death, give sorrow way, 
 "What fleshly gods, or perishable, can yield, 
 The heart consolement ? Fly to solitude. 
 Only the desert can drink up love's tears. 
 
 Garden and Bower hy the Sea. Evening, 
 
 Elissa, Lucifer ; afterwards Festus. 
 
 Elissa. God, by whose elements holy and undefiled 
 I, too, clear-lifed as they, now stand, nor shrink 
 These primal powers to face unveiled, and mix 
 Aweless, with nature's grand integrities. 
 Of no sin conscious ; how else dare I breathe 
 This air getherial, vivid, which thy throne 
 Circling, to us from far descends, peace-winged ;— . 
 
690 FB8TU8. 
 
 How tread this earth thy cloudy feet o'erpace, 
 
 Unwearyable ; — this tameless, termless sea, 
 
 Heaven imaging, — like the eternal mind which made, 
 
 Embosoming in reflection all its works — 
 
 How, confident, bear to embrace, — I, hopeful e'er 
 
 'Neath thy strong guard to abide, could I not now 
 
 In vital contact with the infinite mind, 
 
 Through innocence, thee, pure Lord, seek ? Hear 1 — and granfc 
 
 That while with these and thee at one, the soul, — 
 
 Accepted, suffering with yon sun, baptized 
 
 To daily death, which yet from burying bath 
 
 Rises regenerate, and to awakening worlds 
 
 Shows as the light immortal, — may, itself 
 
 A morning ray shot forth, at eve, resumed 
 
 By the world-quickening spirit whose beams are life, 
 
 Eye, undisturbed, its end, and so with dread 
 
 No more than scathe, the mortal change endure 
 
 Which trains us towards perfection ; and, in turn 
 
 Our atomic to the life celestial adds ; 
 
 Our instant to the eternal. I, by dreams 
 
 Divining, and night's palpable visions, know 
 
 Joy unexpected and reunion blessed, 
 
 With strange premonishment of death, confuco 
 
 My soul as though were sought a sacrifice 
 
 Of one assured best of the offerer's love. 
 
 And dearest the demanding deity. Strange, 
 
 This struggle of free emotion and fixed faith. 
 
 Come, Festus, let me think, my love, on theo I 
 
 Why art thou thus away from me so long ? 
 
 I have whispered it unto the southern wind, 
 
 And charged it with my love : why should it not 
 
 Carry that love to thee as air bears light ? 
 
 And thou hast said I was all light to thee. 
 
 The stars grow bright together, and for aye, 
 
 Loverlike, watch each other ; and though apart, 
 
 Like us, they fill each other's eyes with love 
 
 And beauty : but mine only fill with tears. 
 
 Oh I life were nothing without love ; and love 
 
 What without love's embrace ? Haste, haste thee, lo7C 
 
 One taste of thy dewy lips, my love, 
 
 Would far more gladden me 
 Than a draught of the waters, in heaven above. 
 
 Of immortality. 
 Then oh come hither to me, my love ! 
 
 Back to this bosom, dear ; 
 It is burning for thee, though thy love be dead, 
 
 Widow -like on her lord's death-bier. 
 
 One touch of thy gentle hand, sweet feere I 
 
 One glance of thy glowing eye, ^ 
 One pitying word, oh, one pardoning tear. 
 
 And I've nothing to do but to die ; 
 
FI18TU8, 591 
 
 But to die in the bliss of thy breast, my love, 
 
 Like a flower to the gods which is given ; 
 That was happy in life, and is holy in death, 
 
 For it dies on an altar of heaven. 
 
 And be it that I should die, and whensoe'er, 
 My life, love, I bequeath to thee, that thine 
 Redoubling, I may alway live with thee. 
 Nay, but I feel I am dying- ; and dreams too true. 
 This sense of life-loss ! From out the firmament 
 Of visible things, my life fast faints avp-ay 
 Into dim nothingness ; nature's self my fate 
 Prefiguring in the mid-day moon I marked. 
 This noontide, stealing nightwards. And, as ghost 
 Caught tampering with the truth, and straight dismissed 
 By some austere exorcist, shuddering, turns 
 Its shadowy face to Hades, never more 
 "With man to mix, nor earth's familiar scenes 
 Haunt, once so cherished ; but bidden prepare for pains 
 Soul-bracing, while they rack, and richening fines, 
 Would yet life lavish in one exhaustive gaze 
 On things too dear ; so I, forewarned this world 
 To quit, quit still reluctant ; while as yet. 
 Like a mom-loitering masquer tracked and mocked 
 By the tell-tale light, who hopes, yet dreads his home, 
 I, all-while conscious of divine love lost 
 For human, blame my heart. Heart 1 thou that makest me 
 Live, 'tis thou killest. Let me but, ere I die. 
 See him I love. He must know how I love hi m . 
 Festus 1 come to me. I do think I am dying : 
 I see him, — in brain-sight, him coming to me now ; 
 Now he is thinking of me, loving me ; 
 He sees me — flies to me half out of breath 5 
 His hand is on my arm— he looks on me ; 
 And puts my long locks backwards — God 1 thy ban 
 Lies up«n waking dreams. To weep and sleep ; 
 Dream — wake, and find one's only one hope false, 
 Is what we can brook, for we do endure it, 
 And bear with heaven still. Nigh one year ago, 
 I watched that large bright star, much where 'tis now : 
 Time hath not touched its everlasting lightning. 
 Nor dimmed the glorious glances of its eye ; 
 Nor passion clouded it, nor any star 
 Eclipsed ; it is the leader still of heaven. 
 And I who loved it then can love it now ; j 
 But am not what I was, in one degree. 
 Calm star ! who was it named thee Lucifer, 
 From hi m who drew the third of heaven down with him ? 
 Oh 1 it was but the tradition of thy beauty I 
 For if the sun hath one part, and the moon one. 
 Thou hast the third part of the host of heaven — 
 Which is its power — which power is but its beauty 1 
 LuciFEB. It was no tradition, lady, but of truth I 
 
592 FJSSTU8. 
 
 Elissa. I thouglit we parted last to meet no more, 
 
 Lucifer. It was so, lady ; but it is not so. 
 
 Elissa. Am I to leave, or thou, then ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Neither, yet. 
 
 Elissa. And who art thou that I should fear and serve ? 
 
 Lucifer. I am the morning and the evening star, 
 The star thou lovedst ; thy lover too ; as once 
 I told thee incredulous ; star and spirit I am ; 
 A power, an ill which doth outbalance being. 
 Behold life's tyrant evil, peer of good ; 
 The great infortune of the universe. 
 Am I not more than mortal in my form ? 
 Millions of years have circled round my brow, 
 Like worlds upon their centres ; — still I live ; 
 And age but presses with a halo's weight. 
 This single arm hath dashed the light of heaven ; 
 This one hand dragged the angels from their thrones : 
 Am I not worthy to have loved thee, lady ? 
 Thou mortal model of all heavenliness I 
 Yet all these spoils have I abandoned, cowered 
 My powers, my course becalmed, and stooped from the high 
 Destruction of the skies for thee, and him 
 Who loving thee is with thee lost, both lost. 
 Thou hast but served the purpose of the fiend ; 
 Art but the gilded vessel of selfish sin 
 Whose poison hath drunken made a soul to death : 
 Thou, useless now. I come to bid thee die. 
 
 Elissa. Wicked, impure, tormentor of the world, 
 I knew thee not. Yet doubt not thou it was 
 Who darkenedst for a moment with base aim 
 God to evade, and shun in this world, man. 
 Love's heart ; with selfish end alone redeeming 
 Me from the evil, the death-fright. Take, nathless, 
 One human soul's forgiveness, such the sum 
 Of thanks I feel for heaven's great grace that thou 
 From the overflowings of love's cup mayst quench 
 Thy breast's broad burning desert, and fertilize 
 Aught may be in it, that boasts one root of good. 
 
 Lucifer. It is doubtless sad to feel one day our last. 
 
 Elissa. I knew, forewarned, I was dying. God is good. 
 The heavens grow darker as they purer grow, 
 And both, as we approach them ; so near death. 
 The soul grows darker and diviner hourly. 
 Could I love less, I should be happier now. 
 But always 'tis to that mad extreme, death 
 Alone appears the fitting end to bliss 
 Like that my spirit presseth for. 
 
 Lucifer. Thy death 
 
 Gentle shall be as e'er hath been thy life. 
 I'll hurt thee not, for once upon this breast, 
 Fell, like a snowflake on a fevered lip, 
 Tiiy love. Thy soul shall, dreamlike, pass from theo. 
 
FESTUa. 593 
 
 One instant, and thon wakest in heaven for aye. 
 
 Elissa. Lost, sayest thou in one breath, and saved in Leaven. 
 
 LuciFEE. Whatever my words, God's are true. With him 
 Good heavenly, heavenly bliss, eternal are ; 
 While aU created things, if to these false, 
 Perish ; perdition even perisheth. 
 
 Elissa. Thee one good deed I owe for. 
 
 Lucifer. With thy life 
 
 I now myself repay. 
 
 Elissa. But that still leaves 
 
 Me debtor. 
 
 LuciFEK. No ; to thee the deed was due. 
 Time's orbit turns recurvant. It may be, 
 A consciousness of restorative power 
 Ingrains and gladdens all life. Not aught is lost 
 For ever. All nature knows its end, not less 
 Than source divine ; and I, by truth in me 
 Dimly refract, what may be from what must 
 Arguing, feel thou it is hast given me hopes 
 Of ultimate possibilities, scarce I dare 
 Breathe to myself in darkness. 
 
 Elissa. Hast thou hopes ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Like the first shower which cooled the burning plain, 
 Where Jove o'erthrew the giants, and high God, 
 Giving o'er dumb- struck volcans, leave to earth 
 To outspread her mantle green, the moss to nurse. 
 And dandle lichen, where he had e'er, till then, 
 Hailed rocks ; thy words once wrought a blessing here ; 
 And caused the indelible germ of good, howe'er 
 Minute, which cored in all create abides, 
 Spring forth to lightwards. Fruited it not in time ? 
 
 Elissa. Truly. Be all forgiven ; as now to thee 
 I pardon grant for this ill boon of death ; 
 If inescapeless. 
 
 Lucifer. Fate hath nought more sure. 
 
 Elissa. The world is heaving with the earthquake throes 
 Of some portentous birth, some form of power, 
 Whose orbed head is to o'ertop all thrones. 
 Am I not bound to live till that I see 
 I have wrought for, longed for, prayed for ? 
 
 Lucifer. No 1 thou art bound 
 
 To die. I, too, see darkness, only at times. 
 As sacred night begins all things and ends. 
 But here, thine end's too clear, clear as the lines 
 Of fate, to palmist's eye, which cross the hand. 
 
 Elissa. I ever thought thee to be more than mortal. 
 And since thus mighty, grant me, and thou mayst 
 This one, this only boon, as friend to friend ; 
 Bring him I love, one moment ere I die ; 
 Life, love, all his. 
 
 Lucifer. And is't to him thou vowest 
 
 Thy nature's sweets ? Nay, then, this queenly life 
 
694 FE8TUS. 
 
 With love perfected, as yon gold gemmed vase, 
 
 By lustrous flowers encrowned, all fragrance, makes 
 
 An offering fit for shrines, a gift for gods, 
 
 'Tis time were sent for sanctuary, on high. 
 
 Thou judgest well. All but almighty I am, 
 
 And have strained my strength to its verge to satisfy 
 
 His heart who loved thee ; gave I not up to him thee ? 
 
 Reigns he not erea. st thi>! sar> moment there. 
 
 Or possibly may, and if He please*, not else — 
 
 King of the sun, and monarch of tlie sevei. 
 
 Orbs that sun'ound him, leaving earth alone. 
 
 For the present ; earth is in good keeping yet ? 
 
 I know he is hasting hither now ; he comes ; 
 
 But may not see thee living. 
 
 Elissa. It is not thon 
 
 Who takest life ; it is God, whose I shall be ; 
 And his, with God, whom here my heart deifies, 
 I glory in his power. He'll save me. 
 
 LuciFEE. Cease ! 
 
 As a wind-flaw, darting from some rifted cloud, 
 Seizes upon a water-patch mid main. 
 And into white wrath worries it, so my mind 
 This petty controversy distracts. He comes, 
 I say, but never shalt thou view him, living. 
 
 Elissa. But I will, will see him, and while I am alivo. 
 I hear him. He is come. 
 
 LuciFEE. The end of things 
 
 Are urgent. Still, to this mortuary deed 
 Beluctant, fix I death's black seal. He's here ! 
 
 Elissa. I hear him ; he is come ; it is he ; it is he 1 
 
 LuciFEE. Die graciously, as ever thou hast lived ; 
 Die, thou shalt never, look upon him again. 
 
 Elissa. My love I haste, Festus 1 I am dying. 
 
 LuciFEE. Dead 1 
 
 As ocean racing fast and fierce to reach 
 Some headland, ere the moon with maddening ray 
 Forestal him, and rebellious tides excite 
 To vain strife, nor of the innocent skiff that thwarts 
 His path, aught heeds, but with dispiteous foam 
 Wrecks deathful ; I, made hasty by time's end 
 Impending, thus fill up fate's tragic form. 
 A word could kill her. See, she hath gone to heaven. 
 
 Festus. Fiend I what is this ? Elissa ! She is not dea'i« 
 
 LuciFEE. She is. I bade her die, as I had reason. 
 
 Festus. Now o'er the bosom of this death, I swear, . 
 God's will and mine one moment harmonized, 
 I hate thee, I abhor thee, I abjure 
 Thee and thy works. 
 
 LuciFEE. Who seeks the other, first ? 
 
 I can't afford to quarrel ; but for the nonce 
 I am gone. 
 
 Festus. Away, fiend 1 Leave me. Mine Elissa 1 
 
FESTUS, 595 
 
 LtrciFER. Meet me in city or in eolitnde, 
 By sea, or desert where pale marble shafts 
 Stud the hot sands, or, fallen, earth's generous springs 
 Imposthumously, forewaste, — enough I wc meet. 
 
 Festus. Thy bolts fall heavily on me, Lord 1 and fast. 
 
 Guardian Angel. O steeds of passion, whirl not reason's car 
 From life's precipitous marge into the void 
 Of madness. 
 
 Festus. Sole in life !— save as to one 
 I may not think of. Let me 'scape the world. 
 O weary, weary world, hide thou in heaven ; 
 Search out some nebulous depth where thou mayst leave 
 Thy holy ashes ; I some shore or isle 
 In ocean's spatial distance, seek, where plunged 
 In penitence, this my burning heart, like steel 
 In the wave retempered, may, by solitude 
 Concentrate, purified, thenceforth the new life 
 Of heaven inaugurate, hallow, and all fates 
 Again face, grace directing, to their end. 
 
 Guardian Angel. By judgments such as these God calls to 
 himself 
 The Boul he loves. Do thou thy spirit serene, 
 Meanwhile, by holiest place and saintliest shrine, 
 "Wherein and midst the memories to them due 
 Thy spirit may raise itself to thoughts divine, 
 XJntamperable. 
 
 Festus. Such comfort much I need, 
 
 Good angel 1 such restoratives. Bear with me. 
 
 Guardian Angel. AU things are means for greater good ; from 
 laws 
 Which gall not, but yet curve thine orbM limbs, 
 O Sun ! to laws which frame the atom's core. 
 For laws enclose all libei-ties ; and leave 
 Scope for soul's choice eternal through all worlds. 
 Free wiU is life's determinant. But to make 
 Eternity absolute, depend on acts 
 Of momentary years, were Heaven to hold. 
 And all its stars, create but to serve earth. 
 Earth's but a crumb of Heaven, and time a sole 
 Atom of th' whole Eternity owns ; nor penda 
 That upon this irrelatively ; the twain 
 One essence being, emanant from God, 
 Whose fiowings forth are aye and infinite. 
 
59B FE8TU8. 
 
 XXXYIII. 
 
 God only can heal the bruised spirit, and yield 
 
 Peace. By the overthrown altar of a fane, 
 
 Foundation shattered, which from faith to faith 
 
 Translate, e're consecrate still stands, we joia 
 
 In mystic worship secretly. Let us trust 
 
 All, worship, form and ofi'ering grateful. Stone 
 
 Untooled ; untouched, unless by nature's hand, 
 
 By man reared, solitary ; mound, pyramid, 
 
 Tower, temple, obelisk, stony cirque, and spire 
 
 To one fact witness, that as suu and moon 
 
 Fill, with their light, space, so twin truths man's mind 
 
 Through time possess ; God's onemostness, and our 
 
 Immortal life. To soul saved, time's no more 
 
 An opponent section of duration, summed 
 
 In separate column from the eternal. All's 
 
 Eternity, is concentric with our life. 
 
 A Ruined Temple, surrounded hy Sands. 
 Festus, Lucifer ; afterwards Guardian Angel. 
 
 Festus. Surely this site's thrice holy ; lingers round 
 These walls the sense of prayer, prayer proffered, prayer, 
 Answered ; the accumulate air of awe which fills, 
 All where the ancient sanctuary of Grod. 
 Here will I worship solely. 
 
 Lucifer. It is a fane 
 
 Once sacred to the sun since consecrate 
 To the cross ; deserted now, it is open quite 
 To the next comer. 
 
 Festus. There's no next to come, 
 
 Save He who is always here. It matters not 
 That false god here may have truly been adored 
 Or true G-od falsely served ; nor by what rites 
 Life hating or life nourishing, or with sign 
 Simplest of com, oil, wine, or fruit and flower. 
 The truly holy soul which hath once received 
 God's all transcendent gift, the imparted sense 
 Of unitive life with him can hallow here 
 Whatever creed it owns ; even this wrecked fano, 
 Thrice widowed of its god ; whate'er the shrine. 
 But whether rude, or in art perfect ; fane 
 Concentric or elliptic ; earth-mound ; shrine. 
 Burrowing beneath, to ghostly gods devote ; 
 Or minster towers, wind-loved, man's creed confess, 
 As run the ages ages down ; not less what late 
 Of Theo-human being, ere all time, 
 And all incarnate emanations, seed 
 Of rainbow or of lily, or sunbeam, priest 
 Or prophet taught these stones, than in times long gone. 
 Of mediatorial Light, heaven's orbed god. 
 Sunning though feebly, death's black void with ray 
 
FE8TU8. 697 
 
 Too sadly numerable ; for all remains, 
 
 It is man's devotion saints the shrine he haunts, 
 
 The final faith I am here to preinstate, 
 
 For times Time sole can sum. Albeit for me, 
 
 In years passed, and till now, for general men, 
 
 The dominant faith sufficed, the kindly crowd, 
 
 Of worshipping mien devout, the gorgeous rite, 
 
 The genuflective wave, the common awe. 
 
 The scent of incense, hymns and harmonies 
 
 O' the sanctuary, yet knowing somewhat still 
 
 More amiable, the secret of the soul. 
 
 Commune alone with God, me here behold 
 
 Seas, deserts, crossed, to appeal to in this shrine 
 
 Oracular of old days, my soul's one trust ; 
 
 What, Lord, wouldst now I do, with this my life 
 
 Forlorn, my soul forsworn, both false to Thee ? 
 
 To pour forth my soul's worship, and to God 
 
 Give witness of earth's eldest, youngest faith ; 
 
 Known alway to the wise if by them hidden, 
 
 Who feared the excess of freedom, as of truth 
 
 To men less sage ; but destined all to outlast ; 
 
 With Heaven co-ordinate only ; base of all 
 
 From the beginning ; of all now sum and crown ; 
 
 God's oneness infinite, his kind fatherhood 
 
 In all worlds as in this, of spiritual soul : 
 
 Man's brotherhood in this life, and in the next 
 
 Heaven's merciful judgment ; one sole moral law 
 
 O'er earth ; and peace promoted here, the proof 
 
 Prospective of man's spiritual peace with God. 
 
 Each orb is to itself the heart of heaven ; 
 
 And each belief, wherein man roots his hox)e. 
 
 And lives and dies, God's favourite. What if here, 
 
 Of yore, before this shrine, the sun's pure priest. 
 
 And all his prostrate worshippers, knew their god 
 
 Fire-bodied, but grossly ; conqueror of the shades, 
 
 Of earth bright purifier ; invoking thee, 
 
 O sun I as glory of air, and lord of light ! 
 
 Fountain and fane of heaven's immortal fire ; 
 
 Lord of the upper world and lower ; judge 
 
 Strict, incorruptible ; giving every land 
 
 Just wealth of light ; due service from each soul 
 
 Exacting ; showing all, high, low, like love ; 
 
 King of the life to come, immortal ; soul 
 
 Treating with purifying penalties ; 
 
 Great wonder-worker ; seer of all the skies ; 
 
 The gates of whose house are the east and the west : 
 
 The ever-coming light, bright mystery ; 
 
 Sense binding, mind attracting, passion taming ; 
 
 Light bom, light generating, light all life ; 
 
 Whom God begat on light which first he loved, 
 
 Encircling in himself ; but who in shades 
 
 Of primal night wast nursed ; whom all time's hours 
 
598 FE8TU8. 
 
 Attend ; whose travel beneficent round the world 
 
 Makes one eternal triumph ; unto whom 
 
 All earth is sacred ; — ^Yes I O sun to thee 
 
 One vast and living garden of the Lord, 
 
 Watered by light streams, where the vine divine 
 
 Fruits, inexhaustible, for the wise ; and where 
 
 Shepherd of worlds, and harmonist of heaven. 
 
 The music of whose golden lyre is light ; 
 
 With pastures varied, thrives thy starry flock, 
 
 Numbered complete, in spiritual perfectness 
 
 Inviolable ; in multitude of days 
 
 Deathless, as in thy years thou nightslayer ; 
 
 Whose car the elements draw ; from whom all signs 
 
 And natural miracles joyously proceed ; 
 
 Whose eloquent fire lights aye their starry heads 
 
 That, in celestial conclave with thee ruling, 
 
 Pour down, on darkness' crown, original light ; 
 
 Whose gospels are the seasons, all thy twelve 
 
 In spheral order and a chain starlinked, 
 
 Through gods, kings, signs, gems, toils, tribes, messengers, 
 
 Heroes and peers, the universe uniting 
 
 To thee in love, thy being's boundless law ; 
 
 Thy Maker's synonym ; his symbol thou : — 
 
 Whose offspring are the ages, and who,*e years 
 
 Links of the everlasting chain of change 
 
 Thou bindst us with, progenitor of spheres ; — 
 
 To whom time's azure serpent, starry scaled 
 
 And noiseless creeping, that its years now sloughs 
 
 In thy reviving brightness, and now lays 
 
 Its world-eggs in thine incubant rays, we hold 
 
 Hallowed, because of thee inspired with life ; 
 
 Whose quickening touch all life, soulless or souled, 
 
 Draws up towards thee all generative ; of pest 
 
 And death, dispeller ; life elicitor ; 
 
 World-navelled oracle, whose sensible beam 
 
 O'erpatent, oft the strongest eye blinds ; oft 
 
 Godlike, death-darting, life reclaims through the aye 
 
 Revolving universe and evolving. This, 
 
 The faith of honest ignorance, yet with sense 
 
 Of thanks for good received, and things create 
 
 Misprising for their Maker, in a rude 
 
 Shallow belief which gladdened not the soul. 
 
 Raised not, sustained, nor inly enlightened, passed ; 
 
 To a nobler creed transformed, that thenceforth hailed 
 
 In the material heavens but shadowy types 
 
 Of spiritual truths more solid ; and in shapes 
 
 Of hero and saint, light's natural qualities. 
 
 Truth, power and purity moralled ; in the sun 
 
 The source of all things through vast mysteries sought, 
 
 Their meaning and their end ; from thee, sun 1 
 
 Child of the infinite firmament, conceived 
 
 A filial god, laborious for man's good ; 
 
FE8TUS. C99 
 
 TJnweaxyable on earth as in the skies ; 
 
 Hero and victor of the universe ; thou, 
 
 Who at thy bii-th didst slay sin's serpent brood ; 
 
 And through the foul stalled stable of this world's life, 
 
 The sourceless, circular, river of thy love 
 
 Didst turn ; redeem the soul of man thy friend 
 
 From death and hell ; destroy the dragon fiend 
 
 With the seven deadly heads, devouring life j 
 
 Regain thy golden apples, paradise ; 
 
 And, to complete the mystic cycle, rise 
 
 Well proven, and approved of God, to heaven : — 
 
 Of whose divine end emulous, we, too, tried 
 
 By choice of virtue over pleasurous vice, 
 
 Though now by passionate sins distraught, and now 
 
 Soul-soiled by waste subservience to mean aims, 
 
 From God estranged, yet longing to return, 
 
 And brighten again the spirit by strict contact 
 
 With heaven's original ray, might sometime find, 
 
 Having here lived beneficently 'mong men, 
 
 Merited acceptance. Not sufficing this, 
 
 Man's soul which speculatively had erst conceived 
 
 The light unlimited, whose most ancient sheen 
 
 Beamed forth man spiritual, angelic mind, 
 
 Intelligent life, life sentient, and, less pure, 
 
 Still from God emanant, matter, form and all 
 
 This universe in its oval orbit holds, — 
 
 The light intelligible conceived on earth 
 
 Incarnate ; light, before whose orient ray 
 
 The gods all vanished like night's ghosts ; light solo, 
 
 Sun spiritual ; source not only of life and light 
 
 Worldly, but soul-regenerative ; whom all 
 
 The lives of all the elements, lamb, fish, dove ; 
 
 Earth all productive ; life requickening air ; 
 
 The purifying wave, perfective fire ; 
 
 Whom all earth's faiths and creeds, rites, gods of old, 
 
 Foreshadowed personate as a child of man, 
 
 In precognition of eternal truth 
 
 Made deathless ; whom and his, the world foretyped, 
 
 One all-comprising prophecy ; the moon. 
 
 Virgin of heaven, who nightly bringeth forth 
 
 The light, thine own, O sun ! in heaven to earth ; 
 
 Morn's herald star, imbathing earth in dew, 
 
 And the sun leading into the desert sea. 
 
 To his eternal baptism, ere with light 
 
 He floods the world, and cleaves the breathing skies 
 
 With inspirative fire ; earth, weeping set, 
 
 Sin-shamed, self -humbled, like the penitent one 
 
 Below his cross, the darkness of whose death 
 
 Eclipsed all day ; these, and light's whole bright fiock^ 
 
 Before thy crucial exaltation fied, 
 
 But bom of light, predestined yet to range 
 
 In bliss the spirit-pasturiDg skies ; to qualf 
 
600 FE8TU8. 
 
 Serene, the waters of the smi ; and yet 
 
 Catch his vivific secret, as he beams 
 
 Resurgent, from the entombing wave ; that grave 
 
 Thou, daily dying, dost, night by night, o'erpass 
 
 Into the invisible halls men dread ; but whence, 
 
 Hadean god, death-hidden in dark and chill, 
 
 Eastering, again thou comest with joy ; — foretyped, 
 
 All signs, all seasons, records but of thee, 
 
 And of thy deeds divine and dignities, 
 
 Soul-embleming : twin being, Grod with man, 
 
 Whose doubled nature indicates in heaven 
 
 Natural and spiritual ; who holdst unmoved 
 
 The balance of the all- just One o'er the world. 
 
 Well weighing work and faith ; with scorpion sting 
 
 Treating the carnal conscience self -condemned ; 
 
 WTio bendst the heavens before thee like a bow 
 
 And earth thine orbed arrow shoot'st through air j 
 
 Who from celestial fountains pourest floods 
 
 Of grace regenerative ; who to thyself. 
 
 Produced by thee, earth's twin chief boons of life 
 
 Dost sanctify for sustenance and for joy. 
 
 Symbols of soul and body, that both be known 
 
 In him thou too but symboUest, God. But these, 
 
 Enthusiasts of a composite creed who sought 
 
 The impossible with too easy to imblend, 
 
 And difficulty soul-bracrug scape, but failed 
 
 With speculative conceits to unreason faith. 
 
 Learned liberally at last the simpler truth 
 
 Whereby we recognize as one of heaven's 
 
 Star peers the sphere we dwell in, and yon sun 
 
 Know, too, as not above us ; we are upon 
 
 The same proud level ; by the same laws constrained ; 
 
 Of the like roots compact. Who therefore knows 
 
 Soul-freed, all stars but steps in heaven's great scale. 
 
 Up to G-od's throne from time's last orb which eyes" 
 
 The inner and the utter infinite round 
 
 To that highest deepest midmost site where heaven's 
 
 Star-music ends, for ever quelled in the sun's 
 
 Silence supreme ; knows happily too, that through 
 
 All spheral forms, the centre searching soul, 
 
 Circling in bright expansive progress, fit 
 
 To match the march of angels in time's van, 
 
 By-passing all night's constellated chart 
 
 Where God hath set his burning seal the sun, 
 
 And all delights of merely intelligent life, 
 
 In spirit conquests self -purifying skilled, 
 
 Reseeks thee, lone and universal light. 
 
 Spiritual, divine, deific ; even as at first 
 
 Creative, all conclusive ; with dread hope 
 
 Persistent, individually, to acquire 
 
 Clear glory, and midst the all-involving heavens 
 
 Share preapportioned rule. Now dawns the day 
 
FE8TU8. eOl 
 
 AVhen natural faiths and typical both outworn 
 
 Man's spirit sight by eyebright of the stars, 
 
 And rue celestial cleared, one deity sole, 
 
 One spirit throughout the globe shall name ; one Power 
 
 Beyond all being ; of all worlds sire and heir ; 
 
 Sole Saviour of the world of life he hath made ; 
 
 Whose breath from servile matter framed at first 
 
 The fading frostwork of created things. 
 
 Earth's tale is told in heaven ; heaven's told in earth. 
 
 Since either 'gan, though thousand tribes have chosen 
 
 A thousand ty])es, one sole true faith hath been, 
 
 The faith of all in God. Let earth, henceforth, 
 
 To its right creed re-oriented, the faith 
 
 Which, world-comprising, soul-sufficing, wise 
 
 Spirits are taught of rational light, — confess 
 
 Things all may symbols, each of other, be, 
 
 Nothing of God. To this joyed eye, the hour 
 
 Already, hawklike, preens its wing for flight, 
 
 ■\\Tien all shall be remassed in one great creed. 
 
 All spirit shall yet be rebegotten ; all 
 
 Worship rededicate, time's degenerate lapse 
 
 Twice having fused the symbol with the truth ; 
 
 All dark things brightened ; all contrariants blent ; 
 
 And truth and love, x)erradiating all life 
 
 Be the new poles of nature ; earth, at last 
 
 Joining the great procession of the skies. 
 
 Now, therefore to the sole true God, in man, 
 
 In nature timely manifested, these walls 
 
 Shall echo praise, if never yet. Attend. 
 
 Bring me a morsel of the fire without. 
 
 For I a sacred offering unto God 
 
 Will make, as high priest of the world. He lacks not 
 
 At best hands, consecration, whom thou, Lord 1 
 
 By choice hast hallowed ; and these elements 
 
 I offer, thou hast holy made, by making. 
 
 LuciFEE. Lo, fire 1 I wait thee in the air. 
 
 Festus. Withdraw. 
 
 Eternal, infinite Spirit, hear thou, heaven-throned, 
 WTiile one, by thy divine salvation graced, 
 A servant of thy boundless law of love. 
 This temple redevotes to a purer end 
 Than they who built or who abandoned knew. 
 Thine Lord are all the elements, all the worlds ; 
 The sun thy bounteous servant, and the moon 
 Thy servant's servant ; the round rushing earth ; 
 This lif ef ul air ; these thousand winged winds ; 
 Fire, heaven-kinned ; continental clouds ; the sea 
 Broad-breasted, tranced lake ; and rivers rich. 
 Arterial ; sky-crowoied, shadow-haunted hills, 
 Their woody tresses waving on the breeze. 
 Grateful, in sign of worship ; all are thine. 
 Thine are the snow robed mountains girdling earth 
 
602 FE8TU8. 
 
 As the white spirits God our Saviour's throne ; 
 
 Thine thg bright secrets central in all orbs, 
 
 And rudimental mysteries of sphere life, 
 
 Fire misted, nebulous. The sun starred night, 
 
 Day all prevailing, ever maiden mom, 
 
 Consummate eve, earth's varying seasons aye 
 
 Confess them thine, through the life gladdening world. 
 
 All art hath wrought from earth, or science lured 
 
 From truth, like flame out of the firecloud ; all 
 
 Man's thought, man's toil, man's deeds, his best of thee 
 
 Inspired, of thee foreplanned all nature, are 
 
 Thine ; thine the glory ; all of thee conceived, 
 
 Things finite, infinite, to thee belong. 
 
 As mountains to a world, as worlds to heaven. 
 
 City high domed and pompous ; populous town, 
 
 Toilful, and early hamlet ; all that live 
 
 Or die : decay or flourish ; change, or stand 
 
 Unchanged, before thy face, heaven's starry hosts 
 
 Thy ministry of light, for thee exist. 
 
 Or, at thy bidding, are not. Thine, all cause 
 
 Evil, or best, of every orb ; all ends 
 
 Forebalanced, yet preponderate so towards good 
 
 As all events to adjust : thine Lord ! all souls ; 
 
 Thought, atom, world, the universe thine ; thou yet 
 
 Thine eye, all hallowing, canst as easily turn 
 
 From comprehending the bright infinite, 
 
 To this crushed temple, where the wild flower decka 
 
 Its earthquake rifted walls, and birdlets build 
 
 In leafage of its columned capitals. 
 
 And to this crumbling heart I offer here, 
 
 As trust thine own eternity. Behold 1 
 
 Accept, I pray thee Lord I this sacrifice ; 
 
 These elemental offerings, simple, pure, — 
 
 A branch, a flowery turf, a burning coal, 
 
 A cup of water and an empty bowl, — 
 
 I, in man's name, make filially to thee, 
 
 Formless, save kneeling heart, save prostrate soul, 
 
 In token of thine all perfect monarchy 
 
 And world comprising mercy, of us confessed. 
 
 This air-filled bowl, of the world typical, thou 
 
 With thy good spirit replenishest, and the soul 
 
 Receptive of thy life conferring truth ; 
 
 This, the symbolic element, whence, reborn, 
 
 Made pure, thy chosen are first regenerate 
 
 Out of men's mighty multitudes, yet all 
 
 As of one nature be redeemed ; this coal. 
 
 From the earth torn flaming, which thy mercy, sin 
 
 Consuming, as of earth proclaims ; and these 
 
 Pale flamelets, starwards tending, emblem just 
 
 Of spirit aspiring Godwards ; this mere turf 
 
 As the earthy nature and abode we would 
 
 Subject to thee, here Iving, though type obscure, 
 
FESTU8. 
 
 Yet representative of heaven's every star, 
 
 And world extended matter ; all these in one 
 
 Sole, simple oblation proffered ; — last, this branch, 
 
 High flourishing over all, let this. Lord I sign 
 
 Thine own eternal son Humanity, 
 
 Twin-natured with the angels, which all spheres 
 
 Pervading, and on earth part mortal, part, 
 
 In Heaven exists immortal by thy will, 
 
 Redemptive of all being ; the golden branch — 
 
 Rootless in self, graffed only in deity, — f 
 
 Of life's eternal tree, seer's, sibyl's, word 
 
 Inspired of old, full of dark central thought 
 
 And mystic truth, foretold should overspread 
 
 The spirit world, death's every wound, with its fruit 
 
 Healing : — all, offering, offerer. Lord I accept. 
 
 Nor these of natural birth as 'neath thine hand 
 
 Pure and munificent framed, hold thou to thee 
 
 Sole acceptable ; but these, corn, olive, grape. 
 
 By sumptuous man manipulate into food, 
 
 Whereby we strengthen ourselves to endure for thee 
 
 This bodily life, and use as best we may. 
 
 Deign thou to look upon, and so sanctify 
 
 "With thine all hallowing glance ; for, taucrht by seer, 
 
 Priest, hierophant of old, thou, walking earth, 
 
 Shrinking thyself to shape create, calf, lamb 
 
 Or kid, with angels and god -messengers 
 
 Partaking, drinking wine and breaking bread. 
 
 So tokening man's divinity humane, 
 
 And thy divine humanity, we know 
 
 Didst, in all forms of being, the force convey 
 
 Of holiest goodness ; thine essential life 
 
 Pervading all the elements of the world ; 
 
 Thine actual all-presence in every heart. 
 
 Lift choicefully to thee. So now and here, 
 
 By usance of like signs communion whole 
 
 Of bodily powers and spiritual, God 1 with theo 
 
 Maker, regenerator, we ask : — ask, too. 
 
 This gift. Lord 1 that if men can nought but sin. 
 
 Forgive the creature crime, — fruit this of soul 
 
 Imperfect, but by thee create, which takes 
 
 From thee its whole capacity, — and bring back 
 
 To thy breast world-parent 1 who madest the whole, 
 
 And wilt remould all, purified, to thee. 
 
 "Wherefore, in spirit of this kind faith, baptized, 
 
 Faith, world embracing, soul sufficing, faith, 
 
 Wherein the vortices of all variant creeds 
 
 As eddies in the sea are lost, let me. 
 
 Let both Lord I gladden within ourselves ; thon, God ! 
 
 Who joyest to view the living world, endowed 
 
 As with thine own vitality, although 
 
 Insentient of its mighty source, because 
 
 Reflective of thine attributes ; but man 
 
604 FESTUS. 
 
 Most, as tlie living mirror, wMcli conceives 
 From thy vivific beam tlie rational ray 
 Conscious, wliereby we, cognizant of thee, 
 Light of thy light, our crowning glory gain ; 
 Thou, thy chief joy. Exchanging therefore sense 
 Of life undying, and sureness of the truth. 
 Thine infinite unity, which doth underlie 
 The world's wide walls, the truth which, uttered, opea 
 All- where a paradise, to man colleagued 
 In brotherly worship of the invisible one, 
 Father of all immortal spirits, 'twixt whom 
 And him, love mutual mediateth alone ; 
 We joy, as those of old, who, in mysteries 
 Initiate, ranked as gods. For now, of ours 
 Taught trueliest, and thou, sun, the innocent cause 
 Of faith's first error, from celestial things 
 Deposed, and made to man subservient, we, 
 Time's childish ignorance passed, and earth's vain lore 
 Symbolic, mythical, shadowy, put away 
 As holy asnigmas merely, do yet confess 
 That though word written, or sign, be born no more, 
 The spirit's revelation still proceeds. 
 Evolving all perfection ; and that while 
 We bless thee, G-od our Saviour, sole, who madst, 
 And making, couldst no other thought than good 
 Of creatural life conceive ; for evil is not, 
 Kot even as thought, in thee conceivable ; 
 And whatsoe'er their transient mean of time, 
 Expert in failure, needing more of good, 
 The nearer they the all perfect light approach 
 We, bounded spirits, confess the infinite Spirit^ 
 And antiformal, needs no word, nor lacks 
 Whereby to mark its union with the soul ; 
 For, kindled like a sacrifice of old, 
 By heaven's spontaneous fire, the soul achieves, 
 In inspiration, being's highest end ; 
 Save that accomplished in death's final cause, 
 With G-od reunion. Hope whereof, thou Lord I 
 Instilling into men's minds of eld as now, 
 Man's richest heritage, and, so, providing 
 'G-ainst mortal things, that must and ought to be, 
 Thou, who dost all things rightly, all are best, 
 Joy, sorrow, suffering, power, since ruled by thee, 
 This heart which finally I to thee devote, 
 And here, this spirit enlightened with all love 
 Godwards, let cease from prayer, these lips from praise, 
 Save that which life shall offer pauselessly. 
 Be with me. Lord now, ail-where and for aye. 
 Now go I forth again, refreshed, consoled. 
 Upon my time enduring pilgrimage. 
 Ho, Lucifer ! 
 LuciFEE, I wait thee. 
 
FE8TU8. «OiJ 
 
 Festus. Whither next ? 
 
 Lucifer. As thou wilt ; apposite spots or opposite ; 
 It is light translateth night ; it is inspiration 
 Expounds experience ; it is the west explains 
 The east ; it is time unfolds eternity. 
 
 Festus. Enough. It is time then that I homewards tend« 
 
 Lucifer. "WTierever, be it together. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Spirit, hear ; 
 
 How kind is God who one good deed rewards 
 By will, or opportunity, or means 
 To do another. Shall I name an act 
 Of mine good ? Nay, say only such to such 
 Were preferable. TTiis man, my charge, by me 
 Invisibly watched would penitent now redeem 
 His life from vanity and the vile expense 
 Of soul on worthless objects. Learn then, he 
 Inspired by Him, whose essence and whose name 
 Is alike truth, from this time hallowed fane 
 Issuant, in soul resurgent, at my prayer, 
 With just devotion to his kind, in every land 
 World-pilgrim, guest of nations soon to be 
 Shall preach the lifeful truth, the sum of all 
 Terrestrial poKcy, universal peace 
 And crown of truth divine, God's onemostncBS. 
 And if with penury penitence and pain 
 His ghostly privileges be poised, yet God's 
 Whole truth he yet shall see triumphant change 
 The earth's benighted nations in one day, 
 From dead belief unquickenable, to faith 
 Spiritual, all active, and all lifeful faith ; 
 By one perpetual pauseless miracle, 
 He shall, the whole race calling as one soul, 
 Convert to peace and joy, himself with all 
 Bound in one bond, one golden girdle inspanned. 
 A world-wide ministry, which not alone 
 Even if a penance, works to him, a blessing, 
 But unlike those of old, to all beside, 
 In things divine, things human. But he goes 
 Sole ; and so single labours. Meet him, home 
 Reached, an thou wilt. 
 
 Lucifer, Be it, as thou art bidden to say. 
 
 Festus. Thy bidding is the oracle I have sought. 
 
FESTU8, 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 As in our sky sometimes a vaporous mass 
 
 Low do"\vTi, snows thunder threatening ; while by winds 
 
 Of happier, if adverse wing fanned, high up, 
 
 Unutterably extolled, a cloud-stream clear. 
 
 Tinged as with ghostliest silver, spreads, opposed, 
 
 Its shadowy waveletage, bespeaking peace 
 
 Prospective, genial change ; so here ; o'er man's 
 
 And life's concerns, celestial influences 
 
 Shed their serene constraint. Calmed by excess 
 
 Of grief, by disillusion purified, 
 
 "We picture back life's simpler, earlier joys. 
 
 Pleased ; and contrasting with the sateless greed 
 
 Of knowledge, unbelief in love we had nigh 
 
 Ourselves discredited, faith in innocence 
 
 By passion spumed, self, magnified by eye 
 
 Invert, disloyalty to law once deemed 
 
 By us divine, it may be, all on earth 
 
 "W^e count false, vain ; our part is played ; to live 
 
 "We list not. Lustres more than one may lapse 
 
 In tasks such as a world's conversion asks. 
 
 Importunate. 'Tis the new temptation's hour. 
 
 The last lure power is profiered ; grasped at. All 
 
 Hangs on the last desire. 
 
 A Library and Balcony, overTtanging a River. Summer Night in 
 the North. 
 
 Festus, Guaediak Angel, Lucifee, 
 
 Festus. The last high, upward slant of sun en the trees, 
 Like a dead soldier's sword upon his pall, 
 Seems to ©onsole earth for the glory gone. 
 Oh ! I could weep to see the day die thus : 
 'J'hi> deathbed of a day how beautiful. 
 Linger ye clouds one moment longer there ; 
 Fan it to slumber with your golden wings ; 
 Like pious prayers ye seem to soothe its end. 
 It will wake no more, till the all revealing dr. j, 
 When like a drop of water greatened bright 
 Into a shadow, it shall show itself 
 With all its little tyrannous things and deeds, 
 Unhomed and clear. The day hath gone to Go\j, 
 Straight, like an infant's spirit, or a mocked 
 And mourning messenger of grace to man. 
 Would it had taken me too upon its wing 1 
 Mine end is nigh. Grant heaven, I die outright-, 
 And slip the coil, without waiting it unwind ! 
 Who, lying lonely upon a highmost hill. 
 In noon's imperious silence, nought about him 
 But the clear dark sky, like to God's hollowed hand 
 On earth's head laid, but expects some natural spirit 
 Should start out of the universal air ; 
 And gathering round him all his cloudy robe, 
 
FF.8TU8. 607 
 
 As one in act to teach mysterious things, 
 Explain that he must die ? that risen as high 
 As life can lift him up, as far above 
 The world as flesh can mount, o'er tyrant wind, 
 And clouded lightning, and the rainbow round ; 
 And gained a loftier, more mysterious beauty 
 Of feeling, something like a starry darkness 
 Seizing the soul, say he must know that now 
 Having so much attained ; so trodden away, 
 And trampled off the elements of the world, 
 Life hath more awe than death ; as that to die 
 That hour were best of fates, and saying, vanish, 
 "Who hath not at such moments felt, as now 
 I feel, that to be happy we must die? 
 And here I rest above the world, and its ways ; 
 The wind, opinion, and the rainbow, beauty, 
 And the thunder, superstition. I am free 
 Of all : save death, what want I to be happy ? 
 Hell solves all doubts. Come to me, spirit of evil I 
 
 LuciFEE. Lo 1 I am here ; and ever prompt when called. 
 Death's such a favourite now at court, it seems. 
 He hath but to ask and have. Him teaze not yet, 
 Or, freesome, he may take thee at thy word. 
 I do not suppose in truth thou art happier now, 
 In toiling for all others, than as one© 
 But for thyself. 
 
 Festus. It may be not, but now 
 Those others are mine other self. 
 
 LuciPEE. But come. 
 
 How speed thy general pleasures ? 
 
 Festus. Bravely. Joys 
 
 Are bubble-like ; what makes them, bursts them, too. 
 And like the milky way, there, dim with stars, 
 The soul which numbers most, will shine the less. 
 
 LuciFEE. No matter ; mind ife not. That joys of earth 
 Should turn to ruin of spirits is somewhat hard. 
 What are these, love, hilarity, vanity, 
 These secondary orblets of man's life. 
 And satellites of youth's all glowing sphere, 
 But natural luxuries, few indeed can shun ? 
 They have well nigh unimmortalized myself. 
 
 Festus. Yet have they nought, base, impure, ruinoua 
 Heart-harlots, wherewithal to sate the spirit 
 Which doth enamour immortality. 
 It may be, as to love, the feeling still 
 Is adamantine though the splendid thing 
 Whereon it writes its record, is of all 
 Frailest ; and though earth, lovely mother, shows 
 To all the same blind kindness, beautiful 
 To see, she loves her children with, to me 
 Her beauty she in vain unbosometh. 
 It lists me not to live ; for things may be 
 
608 FESTU. 
 
 Corrupted into beauty ; and even love, 
 
 Wliere all the passions blend, as hues in white, 
 
 Tires at the last as day would, if all day, 
 
 And no night. It may be, forgive me, God I 
 
 I am getting too forlorn to live, too waste ; 
 
 Aught that I can, or do love, shoots by me. 
 
 Like a train upon an iron road. And yet 
 
 I need not now reproach mine arm nor aim. 
 
 For I have winged each pleasure as it flew, 
 
 How swift or high soever in its flight. 
 
 We cannot live alone. The heart must have 
 
 A prop without, or it will fall and break. 
 
 But nature's common joys are common cheats. 
 
 As he who sails southwards, beholds, each night, 
 
 New constellations rise, all clear, and fair ; 
 
 So, o'er the waters of the world, as we 
 
 Eeach the mid zone of life, or go beyond, 
 
 Beauty and bounty still beset our course ; 
 
 New beauties wait upon us everywhere ; 
 
 New lights enlighten, and new worlds attract. 
 
 But I have seen and I have done with all. 
 
 Friendship hath passed me like a ship at sea ; 
 
 And I have seen no more of it. A friend 
 
 I had with whom, in youthhood, I was wont 
 
 To learn, think, laugh, weep, strive, and love, together j 
 
 For we were always rivals in all things ; 
 
 Together up high springy hills, to trace 
 
 A runnel to its birthplace — to pursue 
 
 A river — to search, haunt old ruined towers. 
 
 And muse in them — to scale the cloud-clad hills, 
 
 While thunders murmured in our very ear ; 
 
 To leap the lair of the live cataract. 
 
 And pray its foaming pardon for the insult ; 
 
 To dare the broken tree-bridge across the stream ; 
 
 To crouch behind the broad white waterfall, 
 
 Tongue of the glen, like to a hidden thought — 
 
 Dazzled, and deafened, yet the more delighted ; 
 
 To reach the rock which makes the fall and pool ; 
 
 There to feel safe or not to care if not ; 
 
 To fling the free foot over our native hills, 
 
 Which seemed to breathe the bracing breeze we loved 
 
 The more it lifted up our loosened locks. 
 
 That nought might be between us and the heavens ; 
 
 Or, hand in hand, leap, laughing, with closed eyes, 
 
 In Trent's death-loving deeps ; yet was he kind 
 
 Ever to us ; and bare us buoyant up. 
 
 And followed our young strokes, and cheered us on— 
 
 As quick we dashed, in reckless rivalry, 
 
 To reach, perchance, some long green floating flag — 
 
 Just when the sun's hot lip first touched the stream, 
 
 Reddening to be so kissed ; and we rejoiced. 
 
 As breasting it on we went over depth and death. 
 
FE8TUB. 609 
 
 Strong in the naked strife of elements, 
 
 Toying- with danger in as little fear 
 
 As with a maiden's ringlets. And oft, at night 
 
 Bewildered and bewitched by favourite stars, 
 
 We would breathe ourselves amid unfooted snows ; 
 
 For there is poetry where aught is pure ; 
 
 Or over the still dark heath, leap along, like harts, 
 
 Through the broad moonlight ; for we felt where'er 
 
 We leapt the golden gorse, or lowly ling, 
 
 We could not be from home. — That friend is gone, 
 
 There's the whole universe before our souls. 
 
 Where shaU we meet next ? Shall we meet again ? 
 
 Oh 1 might it be in some far happy world, 
 
 That I may light upon his lonely soul. 
 
 Hard by some broad blue stream, where high the hills, 
 
 Wood-bearded, sweep to its brink — musing, as wont, 
 
 With love-like sadness, upon sacred things ; 
 
 For much in youth we loved and mused on them. 
 
 To say what ought to be to human wills. 
 
 And measure morals sternly ; to explore 
 
 The bearings of men's duties and desires ; 
 
 To note the nature and the laws of mrud ; 
 
 To balance good with evil ; and compare 
 
 The nature and necessity of each ; 
 
 To long to see the ends and end of things ; 
 
 Or if no end there be, the endless, then. 
 
 As suns look into space ; these were our joys — 
 
 Our hopes — our meditations — our attempts. 
 
 One thing he missed 'twas faith in man ; he loved 
 
 Knowledge to please and greaten himself, not men* 
 
 Yes, he is gone, and what remains but woe ? 
 
 And if I have enjoyed more love than others, 
 
 Love's but superior suffering, and is more 
 
 Than balanced by the loss of one we love. 
 
 And love, itself, hath passed. One fond fair girl 
 
 Remains, who loves me still. But is it love 
 
 I feel ? or but pure kindness ? Let fate prove. 
 
 How shall I find another like my last ? 
 
 Even as I had for her relinquished all. 
 
 Herself, that more than all, to me was lost ; 
 
 And Death cast down the tower of my intent. 
 
 Though thou and he o'erthrew, yet heaven, I know, 
 
 Her soul received ; and the Eternal beauty 
 
 Embayed within its arms the mortal fair. 
 
 The golden and the gorgeous loveliness, 
 
 A sunset beauty ! Ah I I saw it set. 
 
 My heart, alas 1 set with it. I have drained 
 
 Life of all love, as doth an iron rod 
 
 The heavens of lightning ; I have done with it ; 
 
 And all its waking woes, and dreamed-of joys. 
 
 No more shall beauty star the air I live in ; 
 
 And no more will I wake at dead of night, 
 
610 FE8TU8. 
 
 And hearken to the roaring' of the -wind- 
 
 As though it came to carry one away — 
 
 Claiming for sin. Fear lost, I am lost for ever. 
 
 To earn the world's delights by equal sins, 
 
 Seems the great aim of life — the aim succeeds. 
 
 Here it is madness, and perdition there. 
 
 And but for thee I might have now been happy 1 
 
 LuciFEK. Why charge, why wrong me thus ? When first I know 
 thee, 
 I deemed it thine ambition to be damned. 
 Thine every thought, almost, had gone from good, 
 As far as finite is from infinite ; 
 And then thou wast as near to me as now. 
 Thou hadst declined in worship, and in wish 
 To please thy God ; nor wouldst thou e'er repent. 
 What more need I, to justify attempt ? 
 Have I shrunk back from granting aught I promised ? 
 Thy love of knowledge — is that satisfied ? 
 
 Festus. It is. Yet knowledge is a doubtful boon — 
 Hoot of all good, and fruit of all that's bad. 
 I have talked with elements, here unknown, of worlds j 
 Learned the majestic language of the sons 
 Of light, and heaven's angelic kin ; and taught 
 By spheres impetuous hearted, mountain maned, 
 And wisest stars which speak themselves in signs 
 Too sacred to be explicable here. 
 The bright articulations of their spheres. 
 Have summed the mysteries of all worlds with earth's, 
 And found in all one same and master truth. 
 And now what better am I ? Nearer God ? 
 When the void finds a voice, mine answer know. 
 
 LuciFEE. What better or what worse thou canst not teU. 
 For good and evil, wherein differ they ? 
 Accrue not both from the same parent force, 
 As ripeness and decay ? Light, light alone, 
 Of hues how contrary soe'er is cause 
 Common and one. 
 
 Festus. Distracter of God's truth I 
 
 Shall not God's word, all separative, suffice ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Thou canst not have lacked joys. 
 
 Festus. We seek them oft 
 Among our own delusions, follies, pains ; 
 Joys half accursed my soul hath writhed 'mong oft, 
 Like to some day-lif ed creature in the heart 
 Of a rose, to him death odorous from excess. 
 
 LuciFEE. Hath not care perished from thy heart, as, flun^ 
 From the apostle's hand, the viper ? 
 
 Festus. Just like that : 
 
 All care shall cease in fire. 
 
 LuciFEE. Infatuate, cease. 
 
 Festus. Were act mind's mate, man had a firm hold now 
 On the immortal f utm-e : but we turn 
 
FE8TUS. 611 
 
 From either skiey end, star-garlanded, 
 
 Teeming with light, and from the spirit tniths 
 
 Which crown all thought, to gauds and lures of life 
 
 All formed, and beauty's eyes inspired with tears, 
 
 Or fired with mirth conclusive ; and so lose 
 
 Count of those heavenly spheres we meant at first 
 
 To reckon unto the last atomic light. 
 
 But how shall these, the joys and cares of earth, 
 
 And life's vain schemes, appear to the great soul, 
 
 Which hath no friend, no equal save the world. 
 
 When all these constellated systems known 
 
 To the keen ken of science, space's depths, 
 
 And the whole mighty heavens that bind our reach, 
 
 Hang like a pale speck doubtful to the eye. 
 
 In unimagined distance ? Is it thus 
 
 Ordered of God lest man's weak powers should fail, 
 
 And the round wall of madness pound us in ? 
 
 Eternity 1 thou holdest in thine own hand 
 
 The casket of all secrets, death the key. 
 
 And now what seem I even unto myself ? 
 
 Life's impulse ceased, we live on being's rebound { 
 
 As some vain wind, which having wasted life 
 
 In rounding mountains and their shadowy wooda 
 
 Made lyrehke vocal, dies at last at sea 
 
 The sun sole witness, where deep-brooding spreads 
 
 The uttermost circumference of a calm ; 
 
 So the soul struggling through life's death-clouds, ends 
 
 In the serene eternal. 
 
 LuciFEB. It may be. 
 
 No life is waste in the great worker's hand : 
 The gem too poor to polish in itself, 
 We grind to brighten others. Courage, friend 1 
 Hast thou not had thine every quest ? 
 
 Festus. Save one. 
 
 LuciFEB. Why not then rest at last, and life enjoy f 
 
 Festus. How can I rest while aught remains not tried ? 
 
 LuciFEB. Not tried ? I proffer now the power thou long'st Tor. 
 
 Festus. I have beheld my name writ in the book 
 Of life eteme ; wherefore then tempt'st thou me ' 
 What were a seat among the sons of kings 
 To him whose seat is with the sons of God ? 
 
 Lucifer. Fate's scheme must be fulfilled. Salvation, though 
 Promised, is not achieved ; and if achieved, 
 Is stUl not life accomplished. Never known 
 To being create may fate's most holy law, 
 Till the day dawn of all fulfilments, be. 
 
 Festus. When God once speaks, his word for ever stands. 
 Still let me well consider. 
 
 LuciFEB. Justly weigh 
 
 All things. I have need to ponder even as thou. 
 Say he casts back mine offer. Still is due. 
 By thought or deed, the unknotting of the tale, 
 
 z 2 
 
«12- FE8TU8. 
 
 Some day. Accepts ? Still well ; the peace he harps on, 
 
 Be his, though not for long would earth's endure, 
 
 Without ; and for within, I'll look to that. 
 
 Meanwhile, as on some stem and strifef ul day. 
 
 An age smote hot into an hour, that sends 
 
 Kings crownless begging, or an empire hurls 
 
 To popular deperdition, and its lord. 
 
 Rude dominator of nations, to his doom, 
 
 Comes night with limpening dews ; and drives the crowd 
 
 Home, self -distraught with pale and panic fears, 
 
 Lest law lift up her ghastly head as stunned, 
 
 Not slain, or power imperial drown the roar 
 
 Of brute success, with muffled tramp of troops. 
 
 Stealthy, retributive ; so be it mine, time due. 
 
 To enfeeble his spirit's triumphant temperament 
 
 With nature's sick forebodings, vain and vague 
 
 And vacillating emotions, which undo 
 
 All reason hath yet pronounced most stable. Come I 
 
 Since last we met, thou hast well nigh, land by land. 
 
 O'er tramped the earth, alone, in dole, and pain ; 
 
 We horsed it once for pleasure ; and of pride 
 
 And passion expiative, hast humbly oathed 
 
 All nations in one common bond of peace 
 
 Till the world's wisest seers, elect of men. 
 
 In hidden and holy conclave meet to choose 
 
 Some sovereign soul to rule the race ; all war 
 
 Quelled by unanimous thought ; all want, all woe, 
 
 From every clime evict (war, war begets), 
 
 A noble aim world wide, thou wouldst not miss. 
 
 Festus. I would not, truly. From mine earliest youth 
 Since I was conscious of myself, mine aims 
 Heaven's everlasting truths to actualize 
 In Being's passing hour, that mark I have held 
 Constant in view ; and even if once obscured 
 By one huge wave of passion intervened 
 Between my life's tossed barque and guiding lights 
 I pay the fine for failure justice bids 
 So would not I, who from idolatrous rites 
 Unblessed beliefs, and spells forbidden escaped. 
 By penance just, self earned, avoid to see 
 How little in truth of rational love would make 
 All earth's beliefs imblended in one pure creed ; 
 All semi-animate faiths one vital truth, 
 Which shall outlive the globe, and reconcile 
 Creeds contrary by refining all ; with plans 
 By him framed we of old both knew, and whom 
 I in my earnest youth most loved, devised, 
 And partly and in secret set afoot ; 
 Whose bright soul, glorious, may be, in yon spheres, 
 Surveys pre-eminent the success of schemes 
 Earth's good was compassed by. 
 
 LuciF£B. And some deserts 
 
FE8TU3. 638 
 
 He loved to assure to others, say, a friend 
 
 But more than thou, or any of his, have reaped. 
 
 These, the world's burden, human history's end, 
 
 Bound yet to be accomplished, as he held. 
 
 Not then nor since thou hast dreamed of consciously, 
 
 As thine ? 
 
 Festus. As only his whom God designed. 
 
 LuciFEE. How ignorance may comport with wisdom, see^ 
 But life is not a failure wholly, sure, 
 Let us sum up thine earlier aims and quests. 
 Say but the word, and thou shalt press a throne 
 But less than mine, scarce less than heaven's ; before 
 Whose feet earth's puny potentates may sue 
 For choice of slavedoms, and be all satisfied. 
 
 Festus. The paltry pittance of a world like this 
 Were not a bribe for me, nor all its crowns 
 Crushed into one tiara, but that thus, 
 By supersession of all earthly sway, 
 Autocrasie divine were mine ; and man, 
 Knowing the power of truth and faith, might see 
 Fate, highest of all laws, and recognize 
 In mine direct complicity with heaven : 
 My will, my fate, God's fate. 
 
 LuciPEE. So let it be. 
 
 Festus. I have had enough of the infinities : 
 I am moderate now. I will have the throne of earth. 
 
 LuciFEE. Thou shalt. Yet mind 1 — with that the world muni 
 end. 
 
 Festus. I can survive. 
 
 Lucifer. Nay, die with it must thou. 
 
 Festus. Why should I die ? I am egg-full of life : 
 Earth's in her first young crescent quarter, yet. 
 I dare not, cannot credit it shall die. 
 I will not have it, then, 
 
 Lucifer. It matters not ; 
 
 I know thou never wilt have ease at heart, 
 Until thou hast thy soul's whole, full desire ; 
 Whenever that may happen, all is done. 
 Once again therefore search the scroll of life ; 
 Mark what is done, what undone. Lo I in love, 
 Already twice hath judgment passed upon thee. 
 Say hath not evil wrought its own revenge. 
 And death the only guerdon thou hast gained ? 
 Let then mere self -life cease. The heart's career 
 Is ended. With the world thy part is now. 
 The depths of feeling, passion, pleasure, woe, 
 The mysteries and dread delights of spirit. 
 All, thou hast sounded. Now behoves to live 
 The worldlif e of the future — last the samo 
 One instant or for ever. Bury love. 
 The steedlike world stands ready. Mount for life. 
 
 Festus. Well, then — be it now 1 I live but for myseii- • 
 
614 FESTWS. 
 
 The whole world but for me. Friends, loves, and all 
 
 I sought, abandon me. It is time to die. 
 
 I am yet young ; yet have I been deserted, 
 
 And wronged, by those whom most I have loved and served. 
 
 Sun, moon, and stars ! may they all fall on me, 
 
 When next I trust another — man or woman. 
 
 Earth rivals hell too often, at the best. 
 
 All hearts are stronger for the being hollow. 
 
 And that was why mine was no match for theirs. 
 
 The pith is out of it now. — Lord of the world — 
 
 It will not directly perish ? 
 
 Lucifer. Not perhaps. 
 
 Thou wilt have all fame, while thou livesb, now. 
 
 Festus. I care not ; fame is folly : for it is, sure, 
 Far more to be well known of God than man. 
 With all my sins I think I feel I am God's. 
 
 LuciFEE. Farewell, then, for a time. 
 
 Festus. I am alone 
 
 Alone ? He clings around me like the clouds 
 Upon a hill. When will the clouds roll off ? 
 When will sun visit me ? thou great God I 
 In whose right hand the elements are atoms ; 
 In whose eye, light and darkness but & wink ; 
 Who, in thine anger, like a blast of cold, 
 Dost make the mountains shake like chattering teeth ; 
 Have mercy ! pity me 1 for it is thou 
 "Who hast fixed me to this test. Wilt thou not save ? 
 Forgive me, Father I but I long to die ; 
 I long to live to thee, a pure, free mind. 
 Take again, God 1 and thou, fair earth, the form 
 And spirit which, at first, ye lent to me. 
 Such as they were, I have used them. Let them part. 
 I weary of this world ; and like the dove, 
 Urged o'er life's barren flood, sweep, tired, back 
 To thee who sent'st me forth. Bear with me. God 1 
 I am not worthy of thy wrath, nor love 1 — 
 Oh 1 that the things which have been were not now 
 In memory's resurrection ! But the past 
 Bears in her arms the present and the future : 
 And what can perish while perdition is ? 
 From the hot, angry, crowding courts of doubt 
 Within the breast, it is sweet to escape, and soothe 
 The soul in looking upon natural beauty. 
 Oh ! earth, like man her son, is half divine. 
 There is not a leaf within this quiet spot. 
 But which I seem to know ; should miss, if gone. 
 I could run over its features, hour by hour, 
 The quaintly figured beds — the various flowers — 
 The mazv paths all cunningly converged — 
 The black yew hedge, like a beleaguering host, 
 Round some fair garden province— here and there, 
 The cloudlike laurel clumps sleep, soft and fast. 
 
FESTua. eu 
 
 Pillowed by their own shadows — and beyond, 
 
 The ripe and ruddy fruitage — the sharp firs' 
 
 Fringe, like an eyelash, on the faint blue west — 
 
 The gi-ey old church, its age-peeled pinnacles. 
 
 And tufted top, whence, now, the white owl wheels ; 
 
 The oaks, which spread their broad arms in the blast, 
 
 And bid storms come, and welcome ; there they stand 
 
 To whom a summer passes like a smile : 
 
 And the proud peacock towers himself there, and screams, 
 
 Knffling the imperial purples of his neck ; 
 
 O'er all, the shadowy groves which crest the hills. 
 
 And with descending clouds equality claim 
 
 Of gloom ; whisper with winds nought else knows nigh, 
 
 And bow to angels as they wing by them ; 
 
 The lonely, bowery, woodland view before — 
 
 And, making all more beautiful, thou, sweet moon, 
 
 Leading slow pomp, as triumphing o'er heaven 1 
 
 High riding in thy loveless, deathless brightness, 
 
 And in thy cold, unconquerable beauty, 
 
 As though there were nothing worthy in the world 
 
 Even to lie below thee, face to God. 
 
 And Mght, in her own name, and God's again, 
 
 Hath dipped the earth in dew ; — and there she lies, 
 
 Even like a heart all trembling with delight. 
 
 Till passion murder power to speak — so mute. 
 
 Young maiden moon 1 just looming into light — 
 
 I would that aspect never might be changed ; 
 
 Nor that fine form, so spirit-like, be spoiled 
 
 With fuller light. Oh 1 keep that brilliant shape, 
 
 Keep the delicious honour of thy youth, 
 
 Sweet sister of the sun, more beauteous thou 
 
 Than he sublime. Shine on, nor dread decay. 
 
 It may take meaner things : but thy bright look, 
 
 Smiling away an immortality. 
 
 Assures it us — nay, it seems, half, to give. 
 
 Earth may decease. God will not part with thee, 
 
 Fair ark of light, and every blessedness 1 
 
 Yes, earth, this earth, may foul the face of life, 
 
 Like some swart mole on beauty's breast — or dead 
 
 Stiff, mangled reptile some clear well — while thou, 
 
 Like to a diamond on a dead man's hand, 
 
 Shalt shine, aye brilliant, on creation's corse ; 
 
 "Whence God shall pluck thee to his breast, or bid 
 
 Beam 'mid his lightning locks. What are earth's joys 
 
 To watching thee, tending thy bright flock over 
 
 Yon fields celestial ? Mother, and maid of light I 
 
 That, like a god, redeems the world to heaven — 
 
 Making us one with thee, and with the sun, 
 
 And with the stars in glory — lovely moon 1 
 
 I am immortal as thyself ; and we 
 
 Shall look upon each other yet in heaven 
 
 Often — but never, never more on earth. 
 
616 PE8TUS. 
 
 Am 1 to die so soon ? This death 1 — the thought 
 
 Comes on my heart as through a burning glass. 
 
 I cannot bend mine eyes to earth, but thence 
 
 It riseth, spectrelike, to mock — nor towards 
 
 The west, where sunset is, whose long bright pomp 
 
 Makes men in love with change — but there it lowers 
 
 Eve's last still lingering, darkening cloud ; and on 
 
 The escutcheon of the mom, it is there — it is there 1 
 
 But fears will steal upon the bravest mind, 
 
 Like the white moon upon the crimson west, 
 
 I have attractions for all miseries : 
 
 And every course of thought, within my heart 
 
 Leaves a new layer of woe. But it must end. 
 
 It will all be one, hereafter. Let it be ; 
 
 My bosom, like the grave, holds all quenched passionit 
 
 It is not that I have not found what I sought — 
 
 But, that the world — tush 1 I shall see it die. 
 
 I hate, and shall outlive the hypocrite. 
 
 Stealthily, slowly, like the polar sun, 
 
 Who peeps by fits above the air- walled world — 
 
 The heavenly fief he knows and feels his own, 
 
 My heart o'erlooks the paradise of life 
 
 Which it hath lost, in cold, reluctant joy. 
 
 I live and see all beauteous things about me, 
 
 But feel no nature prompting from within 
 
 To meet and profit by them. I am like 
 
 That fabled forest of the Alp Pennine, 
 
 Which leafless lives ; whereto the spring's bright showers, 
 
 Summer's heat breathless, autumn's fruitful juice, 
 
 Nothing avail ; — nor winter's killing cold. 
 
 Yet' have I done, said, thought, in time now passed, 
 
 What, rather than remember, I would die. 
 
 Or do again. It is the thinking on't, 
 
 And the repentance, maddens. I have thought 
 
 Upon such things so long and grievously. 
 
 My lips have grown like to a cliff-chafed sea, 
 
 Pale with a tidal passion : and my soul, 
 
 Once high and bright and self -sustained as heaven, 
 
 Unsettled now for life or death, feels like 
 
 The gray gull balanced on her bowlike wings, 
 
 Between two black waves seeking where to dive. 
 
 Long we live thinking nothing of our fate ; 
 
 For in the mom of life we mark it not — 
 
 It falls behind ; but as our day goes down 
 
 We catch it lengthening with a giant's stride. 
 
 And ushering us unto the feet of night. 
 
 Dark thoughts, like spots upon the sun, revolve 
 
 In troops for days together round my soul, 
 
 Disfiguring and dimming. Death 1 death I 
 
 The past, the present, and the future, like 
 
 The dog three-headed, by the gates of woe 
 
 Sitting, seem ready to devour me each. 
 
FE8TUS. 617 
 
 I dare not look on them. I dare not think. 
 The very best deeds I have ever done 
 Seem worthy reprobation, have to be 
 Repented of. But have I done aught good ? 
 Oh that my soul were calmer ! Grant me, God 1 
 Thy peace ; that added, I can smile and die. 
 Thy spirit only is reality : 
 All things beside are folly, falsehood, shame. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Elect of spirits, of sinners God forgiven, 
 Soul of my watching, not in all things thou 
 Hast pleased God, nor responded to my care j 
 But lone and comfortless nor I, nor heaven 
 Would have thee. 
 
 Festus. Well I know I both have grieved. 
 
 But not thou knowest all things. 'Tween my soul 
 And God are secrets not consigned to thee. 
 Until I have assurance from his word. 
 Which maybe I shall never have in life, 
 I dare not deem me safe, nor sealed in bliss. 
 
 Guardian Angel. More, then, than this beseems me not to say, 
 One lives who loves thee still, by thee estranged. 
 Give pure fidelity due meed. 
 
 Festus. Her soul 
 
 Walks but with God. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Nay, she forgets not thee. 
 But as when by morning moonlight, while round dews 
 Bead still the impleached paths, some thoughtful nmi, 
 Whose very life would wither 'neath a name 
 Of secular cast, culls, with cold paly hand. 
 Buds delicatest, that these the shrine may deck 
 Of patron saint who hallows from his niche 
 The bosky pleasance, and at his marble feet 
 Breathe forth their premier odours ; bent to joy 
 The just on high, she guileless thinks, with gilts 
 Of earth least gross, most savouring innocence ; 
 And posing reverently the offering, lo ! 
 She kneels 1 Heaven's hosts thrill stilly ; and while beard 
 The heart-breathed prayer, transcending reason, in doubt, 
 God's watchful eye watch. He, saint, votary, shrine. 
 Oblation marks : and, all seen, each in kind 
 Pure, not reproves ; but, pleased -wath patiently. 
 Smiles, inostensive : — so, this soul who jaelds 
 Her life-flower to memorial love, and lives 
 Elsewise in active virtue, known to heaven 
 May, though beclouded seemingly, abide 
 In secret sunshine all her days, and bear 
 A strengthening weight of blessing, not alone 
 For herself, but others, hope. 
 
 Festus. I hope. Thy words 
 
 Too kind are to deceive. Yet still I would 
 I knew my destiny. I may hope, not love. 
 
 Guardian Angel. But love's more mild reflection, such as that 
 
-618 FESTU8. 
 
 Tempered with love divine was always hers, 
 She feels, thy saintly Clara, and with thee 
 Fate sharing-, such as life hath still to give. 
 Might yet communicate. This is the love 
 The heavens approve ; this sole. 
 
 Festus. I doubt it not. 
 
 We may be reconciled ; — united, never. 
 The end we aim at, her more sensitive soul, 
 Filled with the love of lowliest loneliness. 
 Will suit not, I foresee. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. To her thou owest 
 Essayed reunion ; and if there it end. 
 Her pure thought will thine own refine ; perchance. 
 May sanctify the sacrifice both make. 
 
 Festus. Thou sayst what ought to be. Be it mine to make 
 Meet reparation. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel, Prosper. 
 
 Festus. Thanks ! 
 
 Guardian Angel. Farewell. 
 
 XL. 
 
 First love recalled 
 Not yet reanimate, joy and grief disguised 
 Each as the other, neither gains, perplexed, 
 His way. Even they who play round wisdom's kuee 
 Miss sometimes worthiest ends. Knowing no mean, 
 Ambition's high demands too close encroach 
 On nature's pious privileges. Not less 
 True tenderness reioices to conceive 
 The happy evangel, world-vast, of God's love ; 
 His alhance with aU life create and how 
 Heaven's mercy ends sin's mystery, as made clear 
 To the great gatheiing of the spheres, round God 
 Convoked ; and thanks with holiest warnings blends. 
 grace forgiving, how in heaven divine, 
 How sweet on earth love reconciled ; how dear 
 Virtue in both ; though trode down or ignored, 
 Still precious, goldlike, as in southei-n isle, 
 Vastest of isles, to Asian continent 
 Eich countei-poise, o'er mount and vale and plain 
 Tribes senseless, salvage, tramped the o'ertreasured earth 
 For ages, nor its charm, nor value knew. 
 
 Colonnade and La,wn. 
 
 Festus and Claka. 
 
 Festus. Henceforth this spot be sacred ; here, where first 
 1 shrined thee, flower of beauty, in my heart. 
 None holier to the tribes of earth ; not thou. 
 Divine Elborz, now cold and crowned with snow, 
 Since rested on thy brow the ark ; but once 
 Peak paradisal whereupon God's sons 
 
FE8TU8. 619 
 
 Of Baintliest lineage helped the harps of heaven, 
 And joined each eve, ere rest, the angelic hymn : — 
 Earth's fixst commnnion with the immortal blessed. 
 Not holier thou, though meanest mound on earth, 
 Nigh Moslem city of the moon, where, first, 
 After long severance for their death-fraught sin. 
 And world wide wanderings lonely, from afar, 
 Our great original mother him espied, 
 Tall as the crowned palm, though bowed with woe, 
 Whom her soul clave to ; one whole age had passed ; 
 Nought more divine than demons had she seen, 
 More human than the ape ; when her hot tears, 
 And his repentant groans drew down from heaven 
 Permission for their dear reunion there ; 
 The mount of recognition ; hallowed, thence, 
 To after ages, by that blessed embrace, 
 Obliterative of woe. Come, come ; oh come ! 
 Of heaven forenamed, of me from first foreblessed. 
 As in arctic climes Spring, wandering through the air, 
 His long lost consort earth, all frozen at heart 
 Finds 'tranced 'neath wicked winter's deathly spell, 
 Stretched corselike ; he full soon by gentle embrace, 
 Warm breath, »nd sedulous skill calls back to life 
 His star-browed bride ; she wakes ; her stiffened limba 
 Kequickening, stirs ; casts off the sheeted snows ; 
 Trees, jocund with the loosening life-sap, freed 
 Through all their veinlets, don their greenery ; birds 
 Their voice refound, in song each other greet ; 
 And, like some hoary grandsire's wrinkled front, 
 Ridgy with life-long cares, touched suddenly 
 By infant's playful finger — ocean's face. 
 Dimpled by gambolling gust, lights up, and breaks 
 Into a running smile, and laughs for leagues ; — 
 Heaven and all-pitying nature o'er the glad 
 Reunion weep their joy ; so, found by me, 
 Sweet solace of my soul, I long to make 
 To thee atonement. Reconciled to thee, 
 All parenthetic passions sacrificed, 
 The world shall slip off easy from our hands, 
 And we not miss her. Long 1 how long I wait I 
 
 I wait for thee, even as the weary west 
 
 Waits for the evening star, 
 With whom the etex*nal promises of rest 
 
 And glory are. 
 I wait, as waits a storm-cloud in the sky. 
 
 The bow divine of peace, 
 Which bids the thunders and the lightnings lid 
 
 Down, and fear cease. 
 I long to meet thee, as earth longs to view 
 
 Icebound, spring's golden flowers ; 
 Thv beauty soothes my spirit, as the dew 
 
 Dais's burning hom-s. 
 
620 FS8TU8. 
 
 As heaven's own light upon some sainted shrine 
 
 "Where mouldering rehcs be, 
 Thou shinest in upon this heart of mine, 
 
 Sacred to thee. 
 And as a line erased some trace still bears 
 
 Of words therein first writ, 
 Which neither pen can hide, nor penitent team 
 
 As 'twas refit ; 
 It matters not what other powers around 
 
 Here graved their conquering name ; 
 Below all depth thy love will still be found 
 
 Truth's secret fame. 
 
 Known to ourselves, we only share with heaven 
 
 The secret yet by me ineffable. 
 
 Lo 1 now I see thee coming, come, at last. 
 
 Claea. At thy desire I come, though hard to me, 
 We have lived separate lives, unlike, unsought 
 Each by the other. Wherefore meet we now ? 
 
 Festus. Thee seeking in thy sacred solitude, 
 I told thee I had somewhat to impart, 
 Somewhat to ask ; if asking were not vain, 
 Which springs despondingly from dubious heart. 
 
 Claea. Time was it was not thus. But others cama 
 Whose tyrant beauty and more soaring souls 
 Thee dazzled, me eclipsed. Already years 
 Have passed since first we were, what now we are, 
 Strangers. 
 
 Festus. I do confess to my reproach 
 A friend too well forgotten, and thine image 
 By time's coUeagued forces with the world's, 
 Effaced half from this monumental breast ; 
 And as the effigy of a saint, insculpt 
 On alabastrine tomb some unroofed shrine, 
 Faithless fiduciary, hath bared to moon 
 And winds star-iced, wastes plenteously away, 
 Thinned pitifully by the upper elements ; 
 Compassionate woods their leafy tresses strew 
 Winterly, o'er it perishing, and bemoan 
 In gusty suspiration ; so of thee. 
 My thought memorial, while impaired, had joined 
 Well nigh for aye life's lengthening dusk ; and now^ 
 Let but the passed be buried, where it lies 
 In mine awed memory hidden, like to a blade 
 Gore rusted, in its sheath, no more to flash 
 In the grey air upon the eyes of men, 
 And all the future is otrr own. One's own 
 Resistless weakness 'tis which overcomes, 
 More than another'r strength. Oh 1 I confess, 
 Oft hath this heart allured by glittering rites 
 And sacred titles, and celestial names. 
 Offered at others' altars, and decreed 
 Wildly, profanely, negligence of tliiaa. 
 
FE8TUS. S21 
 
 True, I have worshipped idols and forsworn 
 
 The loving faith I owed to thee alone ; 
 
 Canst thou forgive ? reconsecrate the heart, 
 
 Rededicate the temple ? Do not all 
 
 Beliefs how far soever from God's truth, 
 
 Circle around the same in mode prescribed, 
 
 A-s round heaven's secret and all-central sun, 
 
 The constellated skies ? And shall then love 
 
 Lack like justification, or in vain 
 
 Plead the necessity of liberty ? — 
 
 For truly I was destined for this end, 
 
 And in myself believed the most at first. . 
 
 For mortal knowledge, which is error, dies, 
 
 And spiritual truth alone outlasts 
 
 All nature ; love insensibly with heaven 
 
 Here blending, thither wending, thence derived. 
 
 Clara. Wert thou as I such need had never been ' 
 But we had lived serene and sinless here, 
 Aimless, save loving God and bettering maru 
 Nay, let it be so still, with thee, I pray. 
 As in a round wide view from some taU hill . 
 Central and isolate, it happeneth oft. 
 The furthest things on all sides eyeable 
 Are village temples tapering to the skies, 
 Be such, too, the horizon of the soul ; 
 And every ultimate object, unto heaven 
 Calmly aspiiing, indicate its end. 
 And sanctify the limits of our life. 
 For as in gentlest exhalations earth 
 Breathes forth the glisteniug steams which, high in atr, 
 Glow, sunlipped, into clouds of rosy gold, 
 Or seek again her breast in fruitful dew j 
 So of our aspirations and desires, 
 Might we endow life's skiey calm, they all 
 Made retributive blessings, and a clime 
 Of love create about us bright and boon ; 
 An everlasting spring of holy good, 
 And venerable beauty. But, alas 1 
 Men breathe forth passions which fall back in blights, 
 And stormy desolations, that defile 
 The sky-born streams, and flood life's fields with woe, 
 
 Festus. The evil in our nature we can act 
 Alway and utter ; but the inner good 
 Hath inexpressive boundlessness. Earthlike, 
 Each carries with him his own atmosphere, 
 Or pure or foul, where'er we orbitate. 
 Who knows himself in spirit, all things knows ; 
 As in nature even the atom and the all 
 Commune and know each other ; and as the slant 
 Invisible axis of the earth too fine 
 For fairy to find footing tiptoe, bears 
 All superincumbent continents and seas, 
 
622 FE8TU8. 
 
 Mountains and air realms. Knowing- thus, that once, 
 
 My own heart like a wizard's magic book, 
 
 Studded with spells despotic to call up 
 
 Sprite, spectre, and familiar fiend, must needs 
 
 Assoilzied be from every fiery sign 
 
 And fateful cipher, ere made safe for aye ; 
 
 Thee as a priestess pure of old seek I, 
 
 That thou mightst hold to me the holy branch, 
 
 Dipped in soul-cleansing wave, the branch of peace : 
 
 That peace thou lovest so well and both desire ; 
 
 And from thee ask absolvement of passed sin. 
 
 For as when the sun's light in some high-domed fan 3 
 
 On golden altar gleaming finds itself 
 
 In face of something holier, more divine ; 
 
 So, on thy sacred soul heaven's truths, confirmed, 
 
 Beam in subservient blessings. 
 
 Claea. If thou meanest 
 
 That thou dost hope forgiveness, it is given ; 
 Thine hath it been ere asked for ; always thine. 
 
 Festus. Bright soul, be blessed. Take again thy name 
 Unto thee ; sign of reunited love. 
 
 Claea. Name which because it hath lingered on thy lips, 
 In love's pure tones full oft, always to me 
 Is sacred. None shall name me so but thou, 
 Thou only. When thou changest, that shall change. 
 
 Festus. Breathe not to me of change. Albeit I lived 
 On earth till, like some desert builded fane. 
 She ceased, though based on astral laws, from sight, 
 Wasted by winds, worn down by elements, 
 Smoothed level under time's insatiate sand ; 
 Invisible even to treasure-seeker's sight ; 
 Oh I should change no more. Henceforth to me, 
 Be thou, thou art, the type of holiest things ; 
 Pure symbol and fulfilment of all good 
 Compass and aspiration perfected ; 
 Truth's promises and fulfilments interlocked ; 
 Bound in one saintly volume love-illumed : 
 A book of benedictions, sealed to me ; 
 A final, spiritual covenant ; and a new 
 Alliance, hallowed both for earth and heaven. 
 This fallible heart, enchanted long, distraught 
 By charms of luxury, sense, art, knowledge, now 
 To truth's allegiance, and to thine returns. 
 
 Claea. 'Twas not for life's mere pleasures, not for powei 
 Prospective ; nor wide knowledge of men's ways, 
 Their wants, their needs, their wrongs, and remedies, 
 I loved thee from the first ; but for thyself ; 
 And for that royal touch of sympathy. 
 Which heals so much of the world's ill, with man, 
 And now I may not these ; I dare not have. 
 As some great glacier, from its icy breast 
 Expelling aught of baser nature, seeks 
 
I'ESTUa, 623 
 
 By this self -chastening means to pmify 
 
 Its visible essence, so, all soul sincere, 
 
 Must, of its high, and bright vitality, 
 
 Reject, in silent scorn, those worldly taints, 
 
 And aims extraneous, which itself debar 
 
 From inmost commune, and most high, with heaven. 
 
 Why then thy spirit degrade with greed of powe;-, 
 
 Thankless, unblessed, as I have heard ? To me 
 
 This were forbiddance. Aught that clogs the soul, 
 
 Or clouds its aspirations, I abhor. 
 
 Be it not therefore that though one in heart. 
 
 We are in spirit twain. 
 
 Festus. Nay, speak not thus. 
 
 All nature is forebodeful ; winds and streams 
 And cloud shapes, which in heaven's inverted bov/1 
 Forecast our future. The presage of some vast 
 And world-wide revolution nigh at hand 
 In a sonorous whisper rounds earth's dome. 
 
 Clara. Trr.e : I have heard it. Would it were unlrue 1 
 Hearts may be sad at parting, but at meeting, 
 They should sp^ng light as birds upon the spray. 
 
 Festus. Thy ibhoughts, as stars the sea, light up my mind ; 
 Heaven's son am I, and am by Heaven made free 
 Of all low laws and lesser fealties ; 
 Whence, in this age, when men of crooked mind 
 Or feeble, who fail the glorious Cause of things, 
 Or reason of their existence, to perceive 
 Stamped through Nature's mass perlaminate, 
 Self -destined to misprision of life's ends 
 Bid us misrate with them the whole as ill. 
 To these let good or ill hap as they may 
 But say not fate doth not fulfil itself. 
 Adumbrate from the first ; less shadowy now ; 
 The lowlier into loftier, changing aye. 
 What if my cause before men show askant, 
 Yet is it straight as light in the eye of Heaven. 
 To God I am no mystery. Well He knows 
 All motives ; and my objects I avow 
 Each night to Him, who each mom sanctions them. 
 
 Clara. For all this, I foresee the end in woe ; 
 Woe utter, woe inevitable : not yet. 
 Like oriented, may be, to one same x)oint. 
 Friends, worthiest fellow helps of Heaven, desire. 
 
 Festus. True to my purpose, what if I be f also 
 To others and their objects, mine being good 
 I hold it great and holy, and to Fate, 
 Commit their reconcilement, and to thee. 
 Thy longing is I know for simplest peace ; 
 Mine, too ; nor wouldst thou, peace apart, care even 
 With me to share earth's throne. 
 
 Clara. The only throne 
 
 I hope for is one nor policy, nor power 
 
624 FBSTU8. 
 
 Can found ; nor war o'ertlirow, nor popular rage ; 
 Nor blood befoul ; nor treachery undermine ; 
 Nor pride succeed to, or thrust off ; a throne 
 "Where dear humility may both set and see 
 All higher worthier than herself. 
 
 Festus. Be it thus ; 
 
 I am at peace with all men, save myself ; 
 Even now ; my rule safe warranted by fate. 
 
 Claba. Thousands of enemies must be thiue even li'ivff. 
 No mortal's safe from foes ; the envious eye 
 Grudges all gifts ; nor is the tyrant free 
 Though kindliest-faced, from dread, which no exempt 
 Knows, nor distinction. If he does not fear, 
 He hates ; and if he does not hate, he scorns ; 
 And scorn and hate and fear are all, with him, 
 And alike, deadly : he therefore insecure : 
 For man by man each slays him in his mind. 
 
 Festus. Who said I'd be a tyrant, or that gifts 
 From Grod's great love wrought evil ? 
 
 Claea. Power unchecked, 
 
 To nought on earth amenable, that way tends. 
 But this is not the future I, in heart 
 Have dared so long to dream of. Even although 
 Thy will shouij vaunt full dominance o'er the earth, 
 To me it brings scant pleasure. I had hoped 
 New love to welcome like the morning air, 
 Which wakes the buds in roseland ; and that still, 
 If, like twin hands around the face of life. 
 Thou hadst a wider scope and bolder course. 
 Our act and end were yet but one ; to note 
 The hours, and all the years fulfil of love. 
 But now since I this mighty rumour heard 
 My thoughts, though many are all sad, and shaped 
 In one mould, tear-like. Nay, albeit I see 
 Thy triumph, I abjure it, would I might 
 For thee disclaim it even as for myself. 
 It is meat forbidden the fasting soul that pines 
 For pure nutrition, 'tis unclean ; accursed. 
 How canst thou claim world service, and enjoy 
 Heaven's favour ? 
 
 Festus. Both be fated mine. 
 
 Clara. Enough, 
 
 Choose 'tween thy destiny and me. Unite, 
 As living bond, I dare not, those extremes. 
 This fateful future I mistrust ; nor know 
 In what wise God secured ; but shrink to share. 
 
 Festus. This know, though doomed thy late-recovered loT« 
 Dearer to me than aught of earth, to lose. 
 Fate I must follow. Said I not my soul 
 Had taken up its birthright, and assumed 
 The spirit's freedom, to accept life's boons, 
 Its highest ends ensured ; and fix by choice 
 
FE8TU8. 
 
 Its star to steer by, love or fate ? itself 
 Holding: the imag-ed all, of eacli soul's good 
 Consultant, stand woiid-tjpe ; and versant thus 
 With absolute good, the wisely electing spirit 
 Might towards its great reward progress, in peace 
 O'erpassing all earth's lesser joys ? 
 
 Claka. Say on. 
 
 I would not have thy soul abase itself 
 By one thought about me. 
 
 Festus. Nay, speak not so. 
 
 But if at the start, as now by thy word curbed, 
 Should love's career be over in my heart, 
 A vaster sphere expands before me. Power 
 And knowledge I can give thee for thy love : 
 But scarce repay in kind. 
 
 Clara. I hear thy words. 
 
 The fragrance of life's floweret long is fled, 
 Still let it linger, cherishable for passed 
 And memoried sweetness, where thou laidst it, here. 
 
 Festus. Sweetest and dearest, kindest, best of beings, 
 It is I who suffer, suffer therefore me. 
 While I am with thee. The sole love, I feel. 
 That might have, that hath, blessed me ; — but what eye 
 Can see an orb's whole circuit at one glance ? 
 Life's orb, alas 1 is on the wane ; and much 
 Must yet be said, much done. All things of the end 
 Have premonition ; and states mightiest, long 
 Exhausted of all old beliefs, now seek 
 New faith, which can alone regenerate ; 
 Nations now readily sponsors for man's right 
 To every blessing earth can give, or heaven. 
 The earth-flower closeth even now its leaves, 
 Death's dews are falling. We are verging nigh 
 On sundown of time's universal day, 
 And these be of life's last vespers. It remains 
 As promised by the All-granting power, to changt» 
 The essential for the real, and to translate 
 The virtual into practice. All that truth 
 Mining her way through policy profound 
 Secretes from masses skilless to commute 
 Force into power ; all that the holy bond 
 Of man's most high fraternities secures 
 Is mine, unthought of by the obsequious world 
 Of minimous notables, adding nought to nought, 
 XJnfeared, unprized. One right in fine now is, 
 Which supersedes all others, one and sole 
 Man's regal race is loyal to the right 
 Of doom divine, and the destiny God imposed. 
 Who now elects a nation, now a man. 
 Maybe, to work his will ; and sanctify 
 His end that I this moment seal, time's seal ; 
 
626 FE8TU8. 
 
 And closure of the canon of all kin^s. 
 
 Claea. I ponder ; yet my soul its balance keeps ; 
 Not prizing-, not approving all I h.ear ; 
 More marvelling- how thou know'st of thing-s yet duo 
 And how the end of all things blends with thine. 
 
 Festus. God's thoughts are as a firmament of stai-s, 
 Fixed suns ; the heavenly truths which he inspires 
 Or we by nature know of Him, the all 
 Revealed, all hidden ; eternal show to us, 
 Innumerable, and vast. Man's loftiest thoughts 
 Even on his proper destinies as one soul ; 
 Or, volumed into nations ; or the race 
 As whole ; mind's flittiag meteors which, flashed through 
 Life's hemisphere, illume it (whose counterpart 
 Is death ; heaven ; what ?) with but decadent light, 
 Both for us needed, perfect each, each true ; 
 These temporal not the less than those eterne, 
 Whose union constitutes the universe. 
 As when some mighty Mage, not solely given 
 To learn life's passing secrets, but divine 
 From natural knowledge, how time's current hour 
 Bears on the eternal, 'gainst the reticent skies 
 Wagers his skill ; and notes how from the breast 
 Of tempting virgin, by her side who holds 
 The golden spike ; or his marital hand 
 Who heads the arkite triad, leap they forth, 
 Showerwise, bright stars ; or from his trencliant glaivo 
 Gralactic, waved to save from death the maid 
 With sunlets girdled ; dropped whence, many an orb. 
 In meteoric nights autumnal, fills, 
 In falling, half the firmament with light ; 
 And thus, from fixed and transient lights combined, 
 Draws astral fates, forewarning war, love, death, 
 Deliverance from all ill, nay, what he would ; 
 So I, though in lowliest wise, forebent to learn 
 From God's fixed laws and truths ; from Nature's acts. 
 Effectual, limited, and our rational thoughts. 
 Perforce constructive of harmonious wholes ; 
 Thoughts that, like Heaven's evanishing spherelets, light 
 Inmostly, man's high brain, his destined end, 
 Deduce, and future of the world-wise soul ; 
 Which weighed, the sum I find incongi'uous not 
 With God's prime plan, but truly accomplctive ; 
 And fortunate ; for at man's, our native's, birth, 
 The star of love and peace benefic ruled ; 
 In mid-life, all the heavenly houses ; law, 
 Love, science, power, faith, health, wealth, mirth, and dearth^ 
 Friendship and feud, he knew ; and when at last, 
 Failing betwixt time's trembling lights, ere yet 
 The towering gates of death's dark house he neared ; 
 And ere his eyes dimmed ; he the ascendant sun, 
 
FE8TU8. eSfi' 
 
 Nature's arch-priest, in whose wise law of love 
 
 He had learned at length, a faithful votary, 
 
 To walk, beheld rejoicingly approach 
 
 His head to shrive him, and his soul release 
 
 'Llid blessings humbly conquered, he foreknew 
 
 His future, rich with joy ; undreamed of joy, 
 
 Orb after orb unfolding endless showed. 
 
 So the same star which led him into life. 
 
 His spirit restores all kind to heaven ; and earth's 
 
 Vast horoscope, with ours, is verified. 
 
 Claea. With ours, thou saidst ; say ours ; one life, cnc death. 
 The one is so much than the many more ; 
 Why then even twain ? And why not, if like glad 
 Together, each the other and the world. 
 Congratulate upon destiny so divine ? 
 
 Festus. God is a great destroyer. All must die 
 And earth must be destroyed, ere aught's renewed. 
 
 Claea. Destroyed I mysterious judgment ; as when God, 
 With ruinous fire from heaven hurls down the fane 
 Wherein his faithful worship ; or salutes 
 With death this holier temple of the soul 
 Sudden and swift, no times for penitence. 
 Nor prayer. 
 
 Festus. Arraign not I God's deep decrees. 
 I cannot tell thee all I know, nor dare ; 
 For wisdom seals the lips which wonder opes. 
 The spirit's initiation dread and grave 
 Into the light intelligible of truth, 
 Saddens, as with joy's overleap, the soul 
 It hallows and expands. But thou because 
 Thou knowst so much of truth, more still shalt know, 
 Faith fortifying, to thee, my parting gift 
 This, than all realms more worth, till partings cease, 
 
 Claea. What is it thou wilt tell me? 
 
 Festus. I have seen 
 
 What ne'er again may be, nor e'er till now hath been. 
 
 Claea. Where didst thou see this marvel ? 
 
 Festus. 'Twas in space ; 
 
 He took me there, of whom I oft have told ; 
 And midst of all the void, and in its place 
 Was God ; the God all live in, not behold. 
 What now to thee I tell. He told the spheres ; 
 For the great family of the universe 
 Round Him were gathered as a fire ; and we 
 Held back ; and, saving God, none did us see. 
 
 Claea. Say on, love. Let me hear. 
 
 Festus. A sound, then, first, 
 
 I heard as of a pent-up flood just burst ; 
 It was the rush of God's world-winnowing wing. 
 Which bowed the orbs as flowers are bowed by breath of 
 
 spring. 
 And then a voice I heard, a voice sublime. 
 
628 FE8TU8. 
 
 To which the hoarded thunders of all time 
 
 Pealing earth's death-knell shall a whisper be 
 
 Saying these words, Where will ye worship me ? 
 
 Ay, where shall be yoiir Maker's holy place ? 
 
 The heaven of heavens is poor before his face. 
 
 How shall ye mete my temple, ye who die ? 
 
 Look 1 Can ye span your God's infinity ? 
 
 Hear, mighty universe, thy Maker's voice ; 
 
 Let all thy myriad, myriad worlds rejoice ; 
 
 Lo, I your Maker do amid ye come, 
 
 To choose my worship and to name my home. 
 
 This heard each sphere : and all throughout the sky 
 
 Came crowding round. Our earth was rolling by. 
 
 When God said to it, Rest ; and fast it stood. 
 
 With voice like winds through some vast olden wood, 
 
 Thus spake the One again. Behold, earth. 
 
 Thy parent God ; it is I who gave thee birth. 
 
 With all my love I did thee once endow, 
 
 With all my mercy ; this thou hast even now. 
 
 But bear, O orb 1 corrupt by countless creeds, 
 
 One only true, to worship me (made known 
 
 To all) in love and fear. Sin first disown. 
 
 Act justly, and repent of evil deeds. 
 
 Yes, hear my words ; thou never loved'st me well. 
 
 Nor f eard'st my wrath. Dread'st thou no longer hell f 
 
 Dream'st thou that guilt shall alway mock those fires, 
 
 That deathless death which hell for aye expires ? 
 
 Oh, hear, and dread in time ; amend ; and turn 
 
 From thy misdeeds ; lest, when these spherelets burn ; 
 
 Pass ; and, like dewdrops 'neath mine angry rays, 
 
 Sunwise, this bright, broad universe doth blaze. 
 
 Blaze like the fat in sacrificial flame ; 
 
 A holocaust 'tis mine sometime to claim ; 
 
 Its scorching quenchless mass all, I should pour 
 
 Upon thy naked soul. Canst thou endure ? 
 
 He said, and as the fear fraught words flew passed, 
 
 Earth fluttered like a dead leaf in the blast, 
 
 Thou who outbrav'st God, fate so sad, so sure ? 
 
 ODme not my words to pass ? Thou well dost know. 
 
 Am not I God ? thy trust ? Yet trust not thou, 
 
 Impenitent, to ward my righteous blow. 
 
 Due to eternal justice, high in heaven, 
 
 As on earth, low ; unalterably even. 
 
 Haste, cleanse thy brow, thine hand from brother-blood ; 
 
 War spilled ; from sin thy soul ; thine heart from crime j 
 
 Me, thy sole Saviour call, while yet is time, 
 
 And live in loving, doing, being, good. 
 
 Commute all vain beliefs for one, the sole 
 
 Which me delights, and sanctifies the whole ; 
 
 Then seek again my face. No longer fear ; 
 
 Repent, and live. Sweet music in thine ear, 
 
 And peace, I speak. Seek thus to be forgiven ; 
 
PESTU8. 629 
 
 Thus loved ; and meet with joy thy God in heaven. 
 
 Now to this universe of pride and sin, 
 
 Pride, in themselves ; in that all creatures err, 
 
 Self -slaved, who their mean ends to God's prefer ; 
 
 And sin ; that sordid souls who Heaven would gain 
 
 At once, say, failing, God makes all in vain ; 
 
 Speak I, ere yet I call mine angels in. 
 
 Draw nigh, ye worlds. These timidly, more near 
 
 Yet distantly approaching, pressed to hear, 
 
 Circling the infinite, their light did seem, 
 
 Before his eye, paled to a pearl's dull beam. 
 
 Attend, said God. O'er all he lifts his hand. 
 
 Where will ye set my tent ? Where shall my temple stand t 
 
 All, longwhile dumb, distracting silence spread 
 
 Throughout that host, as each were stricken dead ; 
 
 Till, in such time as takes the sun to rise. 
 
 Rejoicing, from earth's lap to upper skies ; 
 
 One answer, scaling like a silvern cloud, 
 
 Heaven's heights, and toned as one who thinks aloud 
 
 In solitary reflection, reached the ear 
 
 All listening, of the Almighty. Said each sphere 
 
 Lord I we will search aU space ; and star by star, 
 
 From central sun to utmost sphere ; and far 
 
 As zenith is from nether, will we fare 
 
 To find a fitting site for worship, where 
 
 Thy name may be exalted, and a fane. 
 
 Worthy, (but none such know we, wouldst thou deign 
 
 The like to view) where thou might'st aye remain. 
 
 Replied to each, one voice, a several sign. 
 
 Have I e'er asked such honours, as 'tis yours 
 
 To give ; or urged such wants as need endures ? 
 
 I, worlds, your lord ? lord of life's every line, 
 
 Material, spiritual, humane, divine. 
 
 I made ye, I endowed ye. Ye are mine. 
 
 Then trembled forth each orb. Thine, Lord, for ever thine. 
 
 Thy breath from nothing filled us all at fiLrst ; 
 
 And could again, as soon, the bubble burst. 
 
 All that ye have, within myself have I ; 
 
 Grod, am complete ; f uU inexhaustibly. 
 
 I dwell within myself, and ye in me. 
 
 Not in yourselves. I have infinity. 
 
 The every thing in all things is my throne ; 
 
 Your might is my might, and your wealth mine own. 
 
 'Tis by my power and sufferance that ye shine. 
 
 I dwell in light, and all your light is mine. 
 
 Be dark, said God. Night was. Each glowing sphere 
 
 Dulled. Night seemed everything and everywhere ; 
 
 Save that in outmost space a feeble flare. 
 
 Told that hell's pits forlorn were sunken there. 
 
 Shuddered in fear the universe the while, 
 
 Till God again embraced it with a smile. 
 
 Divine delight, responsive, spread through space / 
 
630 FE8TU8. 
 
 And like a serious smile, whose gradual grace 
 
 Expands its soul born sunshine o'er the face, 
 
 One common rapture, Nature's joy, all place 
 
 All sense pervades. Come now, ye worlds, and Iiear 
 
 Said God our Lord, the truth I thus make cle.ir. 
 
 My words are mercy ; wherefore should ye fear ? 
 
 Draw nigh to God the whiles He yet is near. 
 
 Straightwise, obedient to his sacred will 
 
 One great concentrate globe they crowd to fill, 
 
 Systems and suns pour forth their glowing ui-na ; 
 
 Full in the face of God the glory bums. 
 
 Hearken thou host ; thy trembling hope to raise, 
 
 I to all Being thus make plain my ways. 
 
 God the creator bade all being rise ; 
 
 And matter came in void, like clouds in skies. 
 
 Lifeless and cold, it spread throughout all space ; 
 
 And darkness dwelled, and frowned upon its face. 
 
 Chaos I bade depart this work of mine ; 
 
 And straight the mighty elements disjoin. 
 
 Then light I lit ; then order I ordained ; 
 
 And put the dance of atoms to an end. 
 
 Matter I brake and scattered into globes, 
 
 And clad ye each in green and growing robes. 
 
 Your sizes, places, forms, I fixed with laws ; 
 
 And wrought the link between effect and cause. 
 
 Your spheres I framed ; your stations, motions planned j 
 
 These compass fingers all your orbits spanned. 
 
 Then shaped I lives for each which might inherit 
 
 Form, force, emotion, instinct, will ; not spirit ; 
 
 Then rational spirits I made, of heavenly worth, 
 
 Free, fallible, all ; those of angelic race. 
 
 These human ; variants of the same great class, 
 
 Immortal, nought eternal ; all possessed 
 
 Of such high powers that they each separate test 
 
 Their world-life offers masterfully might pass ; 
 
 Tests by me fixed ; and for that happier place 
 
 Fit them, which suits best their original birth 
 
 Deathless, divine. Round these, from every earth, 
 
 One universal nature spread through space, 
 
 I gathered forms and features fit for love. 
 
 Trust, pleasure, power and all I could approve, 
 
 To every spirit elect I told my name. 
 
 My love, my might, and whence all being came ' 
 
 To each soul, deathless, righteously decreed 
 
 To me accountable in thought, word, deed; 
 
 Through every sphere, age, nation, race, and climo, 
 
 For use of its own powers, own dues, own time. 
 
 Then every orb complete, along the sky, 
 
 In glory, beauty, order and harmony, 
 
 I launched. Souls, worlds did every gift possess, 
 
 Which could a mortal and immortal bless. 
 
 fo all the hope of happier state was given j 
 
FE8TU8. 631 
 
 For all I keep one common, boundless heaven. 
 
 Hear then, ye souls, for bliss supreme create, 
 
 The just conditions of your future fate. 
 
 Self- wrought. All free, 'tween good and ill to choose, 
 
 To do the right, God love, and wrong refuse ; 
 
 Or, fear of God despised, to elect to sin ; 
 
 Free creatures, freely made. But all may win 
 
 Life everlasting, everlasting joy. 
 
 If ye do but the love of sin destroy ; 
 
 The will, the intent, no spirit can defend, 
 
 This only is offence ; and the sole mean ; 
 
 Nor lies there any mediate hope between ; 
 
 To atone for wrong, is to repent ; amend ; 
 
 The all-holy and all- just, so made your friend ; 
 
 Which lacked, shall never spirit enter heaven. 
 
 How shall the soul still sin-fraught be forgiven ? 
 
 How unforgiven, can ye thrice hapless, claim 
 
 Hope in my mercy, trust upon my name ? 
 
 All fallible, all, if not to sin self -driven 
 
 May fall. But know, the pure and star-stepped path 
 
 Of penitence, agewise, (which the atoning soul, 
 
 Sad, but aspirant towards the promised pledge 
 
 Of pardon, mercy asks, to blunt the edge 
 
 Of judgment's blade, treads) 'scapes my righteous wrath, 
 
 'Gainst evil ; and leads so straightly to the goal, 
 
 Your forfeit fine has mercy paid to Heaven, 
 
 That if ye will not journey on that way. 
 
 The truth, the life, what is't ye merit, say ? 
 
 Life is the field of choice. The paths of ill 
 
 And good, which blissward this, that woe-wards tend, 
 
 Are yours to follow freely, and fulfil 
 
 Mine aims ; your own, ill, ye may still amend 
 
 By resolute grief contrite. Not hopeless can 
 
 One spirit be deemed : not even of God and man 
 
 The foe self -named, who would his track conceal ; 
 
 (Though me in conscious presence all things feel) 
 
 And craftily seeks to annul mine ancient plan. 
 
 Him and his deeds, his ends shall time reveal. 
 
 But ye, souls celestial bom. who pause 
 
 Even now, perhaps, 'tween sin's and virtue's cauao, 
 
 Be brave, be wise ; obey your Saviour's laws. 
 
 Know that unbounded variance lies between 
 
 All ill and good ; nor mediative, nor mean. 
 
 Nor sacrifice, 'twixt such can intervene 
 
 Nought save my mercy can be, or hath been. 
 
 Death is life's gate ; and sin sometimes of bliss, 
 
 To penitent soul, which mourns its deeds amiss : 
 
 But wiser 'twere to flee from folly's way. 
 
 And to Him turn who warns but loves you aye. 
 
 Turn from your follies, fickle ones, and live ; 
 
 And take the bliss your God alone can give, 
 
 God the Creator, me all beings own j 
 
632 FESTU8. 
 
 God the Redeemer, I will still be known ; 
 God too the judge, the each, the three, the one. 
 Again, the Everlasting cried, repent ; 
 To bless or curse I am omnipotent. 
 And what art thou, created being ? Round 
 That world of worlds, his arm the Almighty wound } 
 The bright immensity he raised, and pressed, 
 All trembling, like a babe, unto his breast. 
 There, in the Father's bosom, rose again 
 Of filial love the universal strain ; 
 Strong and exultant, blissful, pure, sublime, 
 It rolled, and thrilled and swelled, in notes unknown to timc^ 
 Think ye that I who thus do ye maintain. 
 Thus alway cherish ye, or all were vain, 
 Think ye that I cannot uphold in heaven, 
 In righteous state the souls I have forgiven ? 
 Be this a weightier task ? With God 'tis one 
 To guide a sunbeam, or create a sun ; 
 To rule ten thousand thousand worlds, or none. 
 Art thou not with thy Lord, host of heaven ? 
 Fain to return to him who caused ye be ; 
 Though faulty, restorable through love and fear ; 
 The love of God, and fear of evilry ; 
 Fain to return all spiritually, to me. 
 If, penitent for offence, to come ye might be free ? 
 Answered all spirits in that unbounded sphere. 
 Entranced celestially then, first, to hear 
 Their sins, whate'er, might sometime be forgiven ; 
 The primal covenant. Lord, thou mad'st and willed 
 With us, for our best good, be so fulfilled. 
 Go, now, ye worlds, said God ; henceforth forbear 
 Temples for me, or shrines, to upbuild in air ; 
 None such I need. But learn ere ye depart 
 My favoured temple is man's humble heart. 
 Therein to dwell I leave my loftiest skies ; 
 There shall my holiest of all holies rise. 
 He spake ; and swiftly reverent to his will 
 Sprang each bright orb on high, its sphere to filL 
 Glory to God, they chanted as they soared ; 
 Father Almighty, be thou all adored. 
 Thou art the glory ; we, thine universe, 
 Serve but abroad thy lustre to disperse. 
 Unsearchable, and yet to all made known ; 
 The world at once thy kingdom, and thy throne j 
 In thee our God we li\^ ; from thee we came, 
 Time-stricken sparks of thine eternal flame. 
 In thee like motes in the sunbeam do we move, 
 Glow in thy light, and gladden in thy love. 
 Earth only, like to a spot upon the sun, 
 Sullen remained in that grand union 
 Of joy, praise, harmony. Word spake she none. 
 Claea, Earth only had been chidden. 
 
FE8TU8. 633 
 
 Festus. Not alone. 
 
 High o'er all height, Grod gat Him on His throne. 
 Downwards he bent, and like a meteor ball 
 From Cepheus' hand we see, green burning, fall, 
 Grod, as in pity, through the extense of space 
 Again to run its ever-narrowing race 
 Bowled the all-favoured, but the ingrate sphere, 
 Which rushed like ruin down its dark career : 
 And high the air's blue billows rolled and swelled, 
 On many an island- world mine eye beheld. 
 
 Claba. And where, and what is he, this mighty friend, 
 "Who to thee human thus his power doth lend ? 
 Who bore thee harmless, as thou tell'st, through space. 
 And brought thee front before thy Maker's face ? 
 
 Festus. I know not where he is. It is but at times 
 He is with me ; but he memorably sublimes 
 His visits thus, by lending me his might 
 O'er things more bright than day, more deep than night. 
 And he obeys me ; whether good or ill 
 His, or my purpose, he obeys me still, 
 
 Clara. Festus 1 I conjure thee to beware, 
 Lest thus the evil one thy soul ensnare. 
 
 Festus. What I may not a free spirit have preferred 
 A mortal to his heart, as thou thy bird 
 Lovest, because it singeth of the sky. 
 Although it be as far below thy soul 
 As I 'neath an archangel's majesty ? 
 God will protect the atom as the whole. 
 
 Claea. Him then I pray ; the spirit full must share 
 The truths it feels with God himself in prayer. 
 So guide us God, in all our works and ways. 
 That heart may feel, hand act, mouth show thy praise ; 
 That when they meet who love, and when they part. 
 Each may be high in hope, and pure in heart ; 
 That they who have seen, and they who have but heard 
 Of thy great deeds, may both obey thy word. 
 
 Festus. Unto the wise belongs the sphere of light ; 
 And to the spirit world compelling might. 
 Yon sun now setting in the golden main 
 Shall count me his ere next he rise again. 
 One farewell round I long to make above 
 As now with thee this leavetaking of love. 
 Once more to circle round the central skies. 
 And sound the silent infinite, where rise 
 Creation's outflows, and the new-bom light 
 Smiles babelike on the lap of ancient nursing night. 
 Would earth had nothing further fair to lure ; 
 Nor being more to answer or endure. 
 But I foresee, foresufEer. Bound to earth 
 Wrecked in the deeps of heaven, in death's expiring birth. 
 
 Claea. Is all then over ? I ask not what hath come 
 Of those I have heard once thine ; but fear, nor speak. 
 
634 FJS8TU8. 
 
 Fate brooks not to be questioned in the light. 
 But Bball we part ? Is this ordained or not ? 
 Or is the earth-star struggling still with death ? 
 
 Festus. Being of beauty, whose yet unfilled arms 
 Form an incarnate Eden, and whose eyes 
 The angel watchers o'er it, mine exiled, 
 And gazing on thee gainless, smile no more. 
 For if life's feelings flow not now as erst, 
 It is not that they are vanished, like a stream 
 Sun dwindled, or earth drained ; but that their face 
 Is frozen 'neath the world's wide winter I No 1 
 The liquid lightning of thine eye, no more, 
 Nor flowery light which blooms upon thy cheek, 
 Nor delicate perfection of pure form, 
 A breathing revelation incarnate, 
 Illumes for me the dusk of life. Night reigns. 
 My heart's poles now are fixed like earth's in heaven. 
 Shining in solid silence to the moon, 
 Starry and icy silence ; and all ceased 
 Their torrid oscillances. Once it rolled 
 In tropic splendour. Now experience treads 
 Deep in the snow of blossoms. Maid of love 1 
 Were thy heart now free as a zoneless nymph, 
 And on life's race of rapture mad to start. 
 Like her of old, ere dropped the golden pome, 
 'Twere vain to me ; immoveable is mine ; 
 Still as a statue studying stony tome. 
 Unite we may not. In this fateful life 
 There is no real union. All things here 
 Seem of monadic nature and with God 
 All oneness and sole allness lives alone. 
 Still even in this, time's age penultimate, 
 And in my heart's exhausted mine, I feel, 
 But I for ever have forsworn it, both 
 The magic might of beauty, and the fierce 
 Deliciousness of love. Yes I I must be 
 In soul, in sacrifice alone. Thoughts once 
 My masters, now in bonds retributive round 
 My soul's invisible centre, titan-like. 
 Hold I ; and 'scaped from thrall to dominance fool 
 As liberated god of old, who heaven's 
 Unbounded calm is eyeing as he returns. 
 Rejoicing, the eternals to rejoin. 
 I hold life's feast, death's fast, indifferent, 
 There is divorce between my heart and me. 
 And I have neither bride nor brethren, I. 
 But I achieve mine end, the end of all. 
 From this is no appeal to death nor fate, 
 Nor the just Gods ; herein are all at one, 
 Love me not therefore now ; but when with me 
 ITie great cessation happens ; when the poles 
 Are icing, and this tyrant of life's realm 
 
FESTU8. 635 
 
 Totters to execution, and well earned 
 
 Kuin, attend me : whether in the flesh, 
 
 Or in the spirit, be with me ; and mark ; 
 
 One birdlike thought through death's white void shall fly, 
 
 Right to thy bosom home, the thought of thee. 
 
 Cherish it there as thine, and royally, 
 
 In its snow palace. It will bear the gaze 
 
 Of all the star-souls, and the spirit stars 
 
 Which will the land of living light indwell. 
 
 I feel earth slacken in rotation. Time 
 
 Lays down his weary length as though the work 
 
 Wherefore he had his hire were finished. Go. 
 
 Now there is nothing left for us on earth, 
 
 Save separation. 
 
 Claba. Still I love thee ; stilL 
 
 Hast thou no further word ? 
 
 Festus. No ; death alone 
 
 Is that I live for ; ever in mine eye ; 
 Death, white-robed doorkeeper of heaven, whose sword 
 Soul from the spirit severeth. For one 
 In wisdom reinstated, and brought back 
 Into the sovereign presence, the golden soul 
 Which sees things as they are, nor as they are 
 Only, but as through eternity they shall be, 
 Known, justifiable, is thenceforth still ; 
 As he who in the mystic caldron bathed, 
 Immortal grew, but dumb. Henceforth, death-mute 
 Am I ; and all things else with me consent. 
 
 Claea. But this is not the end. 
 
 Festus. Go. I have said ifc, 
 
 I am henceforth alone. My thought of thee 
 Above all passionate fire-peaks, and above 
 The sacred snow-line of my heart, where soul 
 And spirit in ecstatic stillness join, 
 Bides in perpetual purity. Farewell. 
 Present, or absent, save the eternal aim 
 Soul dominating I own, the all I love, — 
 Live, look for. She is gone. She comes no more. 
 Nor will come. Gone 1 Even as the full-sphered moon 
 Through thousand shafted pinewood looms, thus scored 
 Lineally in countless columns to still eye ; 
 So, apposite we, 'tween us, like differences ; 
 But moving, this from that, one image sole 
 Complete, fulfils sight ; such to me, through all 
 Life's solid shows, obstructive, severative. 
 Thy name, thy mien, thy memory ; by its own 
 Act undistraught, unalterably perfect. 
 So be it. This gone, another life be mine. 
 I live not now to learn what best to make 
 Of life's delights, nor nature's excellences, 
 Nor soul's capacities, nay, no longer live 
 To learn love's high resolves, nor fathom fate's j( 
 
63« FE8TU8. 
 
 Though, these with ours must join ere th' end. Mine aim 
 
 By this same innocent but traversed, I am fined 
 
 Past all I am worth ; and so 'tis life at last 
 
 Unworths the soul. May Heaven not note that thought. 
 
 No more. I dare not die. I scarce dare live. 
 
 The longer live I, I the further seem 
 
 From God disparted ; draw no longer near 
 
 My life's desire. O ! wouldst thou God renew 
 
 The creature which of old thou madest, might meet, 
 
 Then, would I ; as, to save from death man's life, 
 
 Some passing stranger hurling off his cloak, 
 
 Leaps into deeps unsounded ; bid my soul, 
 
 Discumbered of all hampering qualities, 
 
 Long sought, loved, honoured, had, which seem but now 
 
 Conscience to blur, of the eternal, seek 
 
 The depths unspeakable of that love, that truth, 
 
 It is enough, it is, all, to know. *Twere right 
 
 I should advise me well how best to act. 
 
 I'll to the hills, the cold, keen hills of God. 
 
 Blenched with all winter's myriad fold of snows ? 
 
 Nought 'twixt the air they breathe and spatial void ; 
 
 Thin, thin imponderably ; where soul may muse 
 
 Unbrokenly of Heaven ; where all the shows 
 
 And multiple hues sectarian of belief. 
 
 Barbaric or idolatrous, are by one 
 
 Divine and dread simplicity, replaced. 
 
 "We are too rich in culture and ostent, 
 
 And art's chicane. Men worship sight and sound. 
 
 "We fruit ourselves away to our own loss, 
 
 And no man's gain ; like some chance seeded palm 
 
 'Mid Afric sands. I come, ye hills, I come 
 
 Bare, fruitless as yourselves ; loss heaped on loss. 
 
FE8TU8, 687 
 
 XLI. 
 
 Our first, onr last, by heavenly fates impelled ; 
 
 We agJiin meet ; warned by the Spirit progressive, leam. 
 
 Not man's design, mere compromise of good 
 
 "With ill, nor ill's, infeasible most, approves 
 
 Celestial polity. Eeason's plea, here shown 
 
 Of gravity less than virtue's ; virtue's, there, 
 
 Convictive less than reason's. What the twain, 
 
 Unversant in fate's ultimate laws, reject, 
 
 Grace gratulative enjoins. Not separate life. 
 
 But oneo, perfection's source. 
 
 An Oratory. JDayhreak. 
 
 Clara arid Angela, 
 
 Clara. I have erred, not sinned. My soul in faith assured, 
 Feels conscious of acceptance, and of prayer, 
 Night long companion of the stars, fulfilled. 
 Relief and surety come on day's broad wing. 
 My spirit, fountainlike, of the present full, 
 O'erflowing with the future, life hath all 
 I ever asked. God shriven then, be it mine 
 What once I failed in to amend ; to undo 
 The wrong and do the right. Thee thank I, Lord t 
 For this repose of spirit, this sense of peace 
 By thine approof made holy. Hear I not, — 
 Fanning the calm of mom with sensible beat, 
 The musical movement of an angel's wing, 
 Vibrant with spheral airs ? Nay, on my heart 
 I feel the hint of a bodiless hand, as rose 
 Wind-ruffled, might some pitying finger feel 
 Its leaflets smoothening. t^weetened by seraph's breath, 
 And scent of saintly garments seems the air. 
 Speak, spirit ! for sure I am, one circleth me 
 In narrowing ring, and swiftening folds, as erst 
 Rounded the worshipping priest, of primal faith, 
 His arrowy rock, sun-sainted. Voice thyself, 
 Angel 1 
 
 Angela. The spirit of her, thine earliest friend 
 Ami. 
 
 ClabA- Thy best-belovM, say. 
 
 Angela. Best loved. I 
 
 Thy trials, tears and sighs have numbered all 
 Since the sad day thou followedst to the tomb 
 The form once dearest to thy sisterly heart. 
 Deem not thyself uncared by me, when first 
 A desolate heart embodied, with pale ai-ms 
 Outstretched to the pitiless world, and stem quatrain 
 Of elements, thou well nigh meet'st fate half-way ; 
 Nor think I have never marked thy course through life, 
 Most like a weeping and dishevelled cloud 
 Trailing its forlorn honours o'er the sea 
 
638 FE8TU8. 
 
 Rude, reckless, unsympathetic, till ^t reach 
 Time's western gates which, passed, ope but one way } 
 Nor eyed thee from woe's waves soul- whelming-, seizo 
 The pearl of spiritual content which yet 
 Thine angel brow shall light, as it hath earned 
 The approving love of saints in heaven who watch 
 O'er two estranged hearts, in whose union earth 
 Her summing good awaits. His spirit who still 
 Loves thee, thou yet shalt bless ; and, ere the end, 
 Thine hallowing, will I guide unto his breast, 
 God guiding me. For he himself foreknown 
 Knoweth, called, chosen, but oh 1 not sanctified 
 Not perfected, nor of saints celestial peer 
 While yet one selfish thought other wards dims 
 The soul presumptuous, or with one wish, not 
 For their good aimed, disturbs. To thee is giver:; 
 The glory of teaching this, to me the grace 
 Of bidding thee so act. When he thou lovest, 
 Urged by thy gracious influence, graffed in hjiu, 
 Lives consonant with his destiny, so conceives 
 Of life's great ends that duties show as soul's 
 Best privileges, obedience stands transformed 
 To triumph, then the end indeed draws nigh. 
 Till penitent of all sin and sanctified, 
 Even spirit elect pleaseth not wholly God : 
 Nor itself gladdens in him with that whole joy 
 The perfected conceive who walk through life 
 Heart-crowned, with the aureole of divinity 
 Their reborn nature glorifying. 
 
 Claea. Be this 
 
 And all things as God would. 
 
 Angela. Ye both have errecJ. 
 
 Missioned for this cause prompt from heaven I come 
 To show ye this. Thou shrankest to share with him 
 His exaltation in the house of life. 
 Miraculous, unconceived lest secular cares 
 Thy way from peace and still humility warp, 
 Mistrusting destiny ; — nor he his heart 
 Would lovewards ope, lest the magnificent end 
 World-rule, of God determined, in his hands 
 Waver, or wane, or e'er his thoughts quit. Heaven 
 Otherwise orders. Thou to him shalt reach. 
 With God's design the fruit of perfectness 
 Pure grace ; calm, holy, generative of peace 
 And vital wisdom ; not on truth's domain 
 Deviating by chance, nor on strict virtue's grounds 
 Trespassing, as by stealth ; but in thy course 
 Upheld by holiest patience, shalt with all 
 Divine conditions congruous live, as earth 
 Moves with the moving future of the stars, 
 Fateful and fair as they : even here, in heaven, 
 Quickened with life eteme, the saved, reborn 
 
FE8TU8, 
 
 Of God the Spirit, are spirits themselves divine 
 Whose will the worlds await. Hence, seek thy fato, 
 GThis nnion is decreed in heaven — and blessed. 
 
 Claba. I yield. Albeit aye erring, let me not 
 Urgre pardon for def ectible nature ; — that 
 Is God's decree, too ; but with purest gold 
 Obedience, haste to o'erlay God's mercy-seat, 
 The hour of life he grants us here. 
 
 Angela. It is well. 
 
 This hoped I from the first. Know, in yon orb 
 Where first, — this quit, — I, greatened in soul by death 
 Rejoiced, thy loved one now, mine erst, to meet, 
 And point Ms spirit hopeful of heaven, to truth ; — 
 Orb, which then lit to rest the sun, but now 
 Him ushereth, as thou seest, this mom to toil 
 Celestial, and the glory of active life, 
 I thy felicitous fate presaged, than mine 
 Happier, — as seemed to eye of being which yet 
 Earth's echoes thrilled ; fate now fulfilled. Lo, thera ! 
 See where yon wanton sun, not yet ripe aged, 
 But, feigning infancy, with Mom's fair hours 
 Sent to arouse him, toys, and bids them bind 
 Their grossest gauzes round him ; lo 1 he stirs, 
 And suddenly every golden swathe that ringed 
 His mummied limbs falls off ; his wakeners scud 
 Far, far, rose blushed ; he triumphs innocently ; 
 And smiling gives to eternity the day 
 He had promised ere he slept. Accept, so thou. 
 Life's renovative season, and be content 
 With all good compassable. 
 
 Claba. Be it as heaven willa. 
 
'610 FE8TU8, 
 
 XLTI. 
 
 Perfection gained, 
 True love his life renews, now sanctified, — 
 Our world-seer counts humanity's gains, how earth's 
 Best aims bv the associate wise the' elect 
 Of universal manhood leagued to instal 
 God's peace, the peace of earth, show. 'Neath one head 
 One moral empire seems secured, whose laws 
 Tend proveably but to human weal, not power 
 Selfish, nor private ends. What forces know 
 Life's game? It may be fate. The all-tested soul, 
 Whose aim to most serve men proves best to rule. 
 His doomful choice here makes ; war, life prolonged 
 To the fore-flood fathers' years, with personal powers 
 Like theirs who, — lords Preadamite, kinged the world, 
 Incarnate forces of the universe. 
 At option, or pure peace, nature's last boon, 
 Death instant, his ; he this, for man's good, claims ; 
 Unwitting that that hour the day of God 
 Destined, earth's doom-day dawns. Time closes in. 
 
 Garden and Grove by the Sea. Mountain near, 
 
 Festus and Claea. 
 
 Festus. Day of all days, bright daughter of the sun, 
 From midnight hailed by rushing star-clouds, glad 
 "With their auxiliar light to perfect here 
 My loved one's happy birth-hour ; day of days, 
 When first, fair bride, thy life-path crossing mine, 
 This transept of existence traced, God now 
 To himself hath hallowed, our united life ; — 
 Day which now gives me thee ; — and thou, night's queen, 
 In heavenly lowliness sublime, and meek 
 With the sun's imputed radiance, like a soul 
 Holy in God, aye brightening with the light 
 Reflected from the Invisible ; earth, albeit 
 Now with thee waned, while nightly in thy lost light 
 Death's daily gain stands forth, and conquest waste 
 Of eternity over time ; earth calls on you. 
 Ye sacred lights, God's ministry in heaven, 
 Each other eyeing, to bewail with her 
 As I, these hours, so sadly, deadly sweet. 
 Stopped in mid flight, which, else, might well be deemed 
 Intransitive, immortal ; hours, ah I too soon. 
 For me, to cease, like the olden Paradise 
 Earth's glory, flowery initial of time's tome. 
 Thee, too, invoke I, of all fateful powers 
 The complemental force, true one, thrice tried ; 
 This reverence, this my worship is to own 
 Thy truthful steadfastness ; and, separate life 
 When each can yield help meet the other, a false 
 And inconclusive end. How only blessed 
 Men's aims when steadied by celestials' hands I 
 
FESTVu. 641 
 
 Clara. My heart intuitive spake the truth, meseemed 
 The severance once thou threatenedst could not prove 
 Final God's equity forbade. 
 
 FESTua Enough ; 
 
 Our guardian angels greeting soon agreed. 
 
 Clara. And, bidden of heaven, our destined union fruits 
 In ominous bliss. 
 
 Festus. Most dear, most honoured bride. 
 
 Thou sayest. Hast heart to view earth's death-throes ? Mark 
 Her end, with thine like timed ? For as, while now 
 The westering sun, high on yon Alpine height. 
 Snow shouldered, Uke a maid for whiteness praised 
 Of neck or brow, blushing, in sweet defeat 
 Of admiration, comelier, — his farewell glow 
 Incarnadines, an instant, — let the moon 
 Orient, shed down her silver shafted rays, 
 As though in negligent rivalry to contest 
 The palm of perfect beauty, man's rapt eye, 
 Meanwhile, by the coalition unconceived 
 Of natural lights, droops, awed ; so, on thy head 
 Heaven's claims and earth's, mine too, in right of death, 
 One moment dreadly mingle. 
 
 Clara. For all fates 
 
 To be prepared, I seek. Thou hast to me 
 The world oped and expounded : its needs, claims 
 On God ; its fore-reached purpose in his mind ; 
 Its compassed ends and failures. I, too, thee 
 May have served ; and the AU-blesser's wise intents ; 
 By proof of heart obedience, and the gain 
 Of following truth rather than leading men. 
 
 Festus. So kind and providently instructive all 
 His counsels. Here, too, past the worth of worlds, 
 Aa tb jugh we owned the merits of angels, God 
 A season of satisfaction, ere all cease, 
 And rest hath given, to note the mighty march 
 And grieve its closure mind hath made ; the schemes 
 Of social life just perfected, now for aye 
 Disharmonized by their imminent end ; its gains 
 For toil material, and o'er powers matured 
 By happy use, which, sovereign servants, aid 
 Man's magistery o'er nature ; this in strength 
 Faith's match, unbasing mountains, bridging seas, 
 States binding to serve peace and freedom ; this 
 Starring anew the night with pit-born light, 
 Secrete from primal matter's nebulous flame ; 
 This, third of powers imponderable, which earth 
 Bridle in her orbit, gravitative, or this 
 Attractive ; this our knowledge o'er the gods 
 Swiftening and time's poor possible ; this which guides 
 By mineral instinct, through the deep, tall ships 
 Sail winged ; or this not life, but life-like, heat, 
 Source of inanimate motion and innate, 
 
64S FE8TU8. 
 
 Caught from God's breast ; — all nourislimg powers with man 
 Leagued, want and death — earth's evillest ills — to slay ; 
 And now, long time victorious. 
 
 Claba. So advanced, 
 
 Completion would the curse not blessing seem 
 Whereto creation tends, were not God's love. 
 Making this world's fulfilment that world's base, 
 Better than all we hope. Earth's end how else 
 Conceive, or justify by law divine 
 Not less than natural which, in things made, makes 
 Perfect, fore-state to fall ? If life him owe 
 For breath, for more, death ; access limitless 
 To ampler being, God's plenitude. So, earth 
 Ended, all holds that's well ; faultless the fair ; 
 Potent the pure ; the great and good, joy-souled, 
 Each other helping, serve the many with love. 
 
 Festus. Who loves thee, Lord, lives like thee ; is, does, good. 
 
 Claha. Man surely grows more godlike daily, nearing 
 His final future. Thee sublimed in soul 
 And with life's aims uplift to loftier ends 
 Time's lapse hath found. 
 
 Festus. Time, too, to good men given 
 
 By work devout, unselfish, sage, to raise, — 
 As lands by hidden force their beach upheave 
 To levels unforethought, — man's social mass 
 To purer life, more reasonable, more just, 
 More parallel with God's plan. Behold I the bounds 
 Of every separate science, known, and all 
 In one consummed ; all modes of state-rule made 
 Like operative of good ; all liberties 
 Coincident with authority ; every faith 
 Grounded on heavenly influences, and made 
 Their compensating errors so to adjust 
 As truth's success to ensure. O'er all, peace, most 
 Approximative of earth to heaven, and love 
 Brotherly, thirst for others' good, not blood, 
 Now urging nations, more content me yields 
 Than earth's full orbed realm, my doom. The world 
 One grand equality now kings. Slave, no more, 
 Nor lord, — their common nature regnant — breathes ; 
 Rich drone, nor beggar clammed. Sin, vice and wrong, 
 Hate, misery, lawlessness, contempt of kind, 
 Self -worship, ignorance, fraud, impiety, all 
 Life's fellest plagues, impurity of thought, 
 Or word, or deed, fled hellwards, the chief wise 
 Revering nature, teach hope : the holy chosen 
 Pray, interceding for their fellows, God. 
 Earth's great ones plight to amity, states no more 
 Ravening for war's dread flesh-feast, seethed in blood, 
 From lust of soil or pride of power, but yearning 
 Solely for liberty self-earned, or secured 
 For others, knowledge, mental and bodUy health. 
 
FE8TU8, 648 
 
 And increment of the good God's function, fill 
 
 Pacific, each their just and natural bounds 
 
 Lakelike. Towards this all times have wrought ; and now 
 
 ^Vhoso man's worldlife notes, his qualities metes, 
 
 His faculties ; sums the vast designs or boon 
 
 Even now benevolent hearts cherish, and brains 
 
 Restless to enlighten souls, and the flesh free 
 
 From servile toils, needs sordid, that to quests 
 
 More pure, more grand, the world's day may be leased 
 
 Largelier, and aims best worthy life, of heaven 
 
 Anticipative, — wots well no ampler lists, 
 
 No fairer scope could God have given, than earth 
 
 As now, state-chequered, with all patterns graced 
 
 Each excellentest, of faith, rights civil, grades 
 
 Of culture, social, mental ; cunning craft, 
 
 Refining art ; nor def tlier planned to aid, 
 
 By gradual concentration of good gained, 
 
 The just expansion, just, though slowly achieved, 
 
 Of man's supreme capacities, which, sphered 
 
 Integral, all, we know shall cease. Nor less, 
 
 Author and perfecter of man's wondrous life ! 
 
 Mark we herein thy wisdom which brooked not 
 
 Men should grow wise too fast, nor blessed too soon, 
 
 Thy bounty iu withholding ; of sage restraints 
 
 Lavish ; in mere deficiency the grace. 
 
 Most manifest, of perfectible power ; that all 
 
 Grounded in good and ill, made sage through choice, 
 
 By pure contrition proved, may seek ia thee 
 
 Sole, their divinity, and attain. So fit, 
 
 So perfect, seems his training, both in kind 
 
 And instance, of our race, that while we, here, 
 
 This calm concentrate life, large yet intense, 
 
 Consuming, near our culmiuant destiny, 
 
 The last necessities of his state o'ercome, 
 
 Man — like an exiled prince, who through all tima 
 
 Bums to regain his natal throne — hath proven 
 
 By peril, self-abnegation, sacrifice 
 
 By labour, learning, largesse, earnest rich 
 
 Of kingly intents, the integrity of heart 
 
 By birthright his, that purity, that faith 
 
 In faith, and charity to his kind, the wise 
 
 Know needful to reunion with their God. 
 
 For, as of old, truth's substitute, in shows 
 
 Mimetic of the moral sphere, through rocks 
 
 Dragged naked, bounding breathless out of fiames ; 
 
 "Walled in the lone grey death cell midst the moor, 
 
 A death regenerative of spiritual life, — 
 
 Waiting by nodding rock triumphant proof 
 
 Of ghostly call, or innocence ; by beasts 
 
 Or men, more brute, with sword and brand and fin^£^^ 
 
 Driven desperately, till the delusive goal 
 
 Eaught, lo I the deep and hidden well, whence risea 
 
 T ^ 
 
644 FE8TU8. 
 
 And throughly pimfied, his holy peers 
 
 Elect, joined, their austerely splendid life 
 
 Partaking and companioning ; signs but these 
 
 Of the soul's struggles, toils, victories, and its blessed 
 
 Acceptance with the power which, granting life, 
 
 Tests meetly all responsible spirits ; thenceforth 
 
 Him delegate of God, behoved to abide 
 
 In ever ripening certitude, — and truth's 
 
 Grave mysteries, here, all lore beside outworth, — 
 
 The advent of the Eternal, and the e'er 
 
 Eenewable triumph of truth's light. So, now, 
 
 Self-chosen example of humanity, here, 
 
 The initiate of philosophy, while freed 
 
 From physical contest, perilous feat and fear 
 
 Of elements embattled, — tests once meet 
 
 For times of ignorance, — versed in every art 
 
 That life adorns or consecrates ; in law 
 
 Ennobling, science which sustains, in ties 
 
 Social and sympathies ; in relations pure 
 
 Alike with kind and kindred ; skilled in lore 
 
 Prof oundest, man hath heired from ages passed ; 
 
 A doer of good deeds ; strong to endure 
 
 The stings of slander, torts of strength or fraud j 
 
 Perfect in faith's just ordinances ; in all 
 
 The duties of humanity, must, perforce, 
 
 More even than erst, clearly approve himself 
 
 Truth's champion, virtue's friend. But, who aspires 
 
 His nature to consummate, to partake 
 
 Strict and entire communion with the source 
 
 Sublime of soul ; resolved, though lone, to tread 
 
 The heavenward path of wisdom, — quits, content, — 
 
 Life's labyrinthine round ; earth's charmful lures ; 
 
 Time's fraudulent vanities ; abhorrent, shuns 
 
 Man's meaner passions ; paltry pleasures, cares 
 
 Carnal or covetous ; wily ambition's schemes, 
 
 Eank ostentation's toys ; the solid world 
 
 Held but a shadow, every idol form 
 
 And mode of worship waived, trusts schemes no more 
 
 Of faith widespread, wise seeming once, but, now 
 
 Gone like a molten glacier, that of old, 
 
 While yet the youthful sun his waxing beam 
 
 Shot on our shivering orb ice armoured, aye 
 
 His burning glance fate-fraught and fascinative, 
 
 By dale and hill followed, till, o'er the brink 
 
 Precipitous of the abysmal main, it fell 
 
 In a dry cataract shimmering on the beach, 
 
 No more to rise ; but, henceforth, spirit solf 
 
 In spirit adoring, he, the enfranchised heart. 
 
 Trampling on death, and more, the fear of death, 
 
 Shall equal angels here : the soothly wise, 
 
 Separate to righteousness, self -reverent, sworn 
 
 Earth's peace to endeg-vpur aye in spite's despite ; 
 
FESTUa. 6iS 
 
 Their nature hallowed by their aims ; inspired 
 With God's truth, knowing all things as in God, 
 So from him emanant, and, as proveably 
 Purposed by him, good ; — evil ignoring save 
 As cloudlet which the calm brief while obscures 
 Of perfect being : one substance, all divine, 
 Eternal, indivisible, vital ; these 
 With him, all life, unite, as altar fires 
 Assimilate with the heavens. 
 
 Claea. Should never man 
 
 Near, more than now, perfection ; and the best, 
 Sinners by nature, if by grace sinless, clothed 
 In righteousness divine, as mount with snows 
 Eternal, while within red rabid fires 
 Smoulder, although perhaps subdued, still joys 
 Are there to some not world-known. Let us boast 
 In secret, of our thrones, like kings disguised, 
 And as, in eastern spousals, bride and lord 
 Crown each the other, kingly obeisance, so. 
 Humiliate with the excess of grace God given, 
 Praise we his merciful pleasure in pardoning sins 
 Of loved ones, greater than their power to offend. 
 
 Festus. Thy soul let revel in its own innocence 
 Even as in snow the snow-pure ermine. 
 
 Claea. Heaven 
 
 Is in our inmost spirit as in the eye 
 Yon imaged infinites. 
 
 Festus. All plans forespent, 
 
 Pleas present, purposes of future life. 
 To him surrendered who gives all ; the passed 
 Errors abjured ; mine heart I have molten in tears 
 As kings their gods erewhile in gold to pay 
 Some covetous conqueror ; but to my soul God 
 Content with nought but all, hath all at last 
 Remitted and forgiven. It is faith removes 
 This mountain of our sins, and in the sea. 
 Tearful, of penitence casts. As by art's stress, 
 Granite and steel flow free as oil, so 'neath 
 God's awful love man's conscience stilly thaws, 
 AVTiate'er its self-shaped purpose losing : here 
 Withdrawn, self -banished, I the ascendant sign 
 Wait of earth's demolition ; knowing still 
 With God one preappointed end yet holds, 
 One high design yet unfulfilled. This, soon, 
 The assembled chosen of nations, of our race 
 Chiefest in worth and wisdom, shall make known 
 Returning from all lands, their vast consent. 
 In sage and solemn secrecy achieved, 
 With doom divine, recorded in the roll 
 Of foreordaining fate, and thine own spell 
 Predictive of pacific power. 
 
 Claea. Out God 
 
646 FE8TU8. 
 
 Is happily lord of peace and union. Strife 
 Divisive nought agrees with love and heaven. 
 
 Festus. But unity hath shades, modes manifold, 
 Many are the ways God shows us we may serve 
 Man, and his own good cause. These even the toils 
 And trappings of the fight by virtue waged 
 In man's behoof 'gainst ill ; the dust, shouts, sweat 
 Of struggling swarms attract ; and these, a spot 
 Contemplative, where memory may recal 
 The simple sweets of early love, the heart's 
 "Wild honey, gathered in green glades man's eye 
 Seems even to startle ; which, like the wrestler's oil 
 In grappling with the world or ghostly foes, 
 May loosen the adversary's grip. 
 
 Claba. Need were 
 
 Our deeds, motives to scan, and their results 
 Carefully, prayerfully ; every daily sum 
 Of duty verify by its holy rule 
 In God's celestial key wherein, more fixed, 
 More true than nature's fleet forms, all acts, means 
 And ends contingent, through each factor traced. 
 Thought, feeling, interest, ignorance, circumstance 
 And temperament stand solved ; of our moral sense 
 Ati*^ soul's vitality sole test, prime rules, — 
 That each one's acts and purposes comport 
 "With others' good not less than ours. 
 
 Pbstus. It is this — 
 
 Life's universal law, the code divine 
 Graved in all hearts wild, cultured, though unwrit, 
 Justly to live and temperately ; in peace 
 And charity with the world ; content with fate ; 
 To law obedient human and divine. 
 And to the lord of law ; to all that breathe 
 Kind ; sociable with mankind ; honouring all 
 life's pure relationships ; to worship God 
 Sincerely, and to do men good ; abet 
 Virtue, the right, always 'gainst vice, wrong, ill ; 
 Truth aye to speak, — for to speak truth's to talk 
 In God's own tongue, truth middle term 'twixt earth 
 And heaven 1 to labour honestly, and rest 
 Holily, cheerfully, for he who made 
 All things, both rest and toil hath hallowed ; — us 
 Ones with the one supreme in will, and rounds 
 "With good the common nature of all life ; 
 "Which of and in him born, him serves and loves 
 "With open trustfulness. Whate'er the end, — 
 On this sure base, — that God's wide equity 
 Commensurable with mercy, and than all law 
 Juster, all tabulated claims o'erriding 
 Bidden or forbidden, and which by principles 
 Precept supplants or modifies, — ^rest we j safe 
 !Ihat even as he himself immutable 
 
FESTU8, 647 
 
 In essence, but reflecting outward lives, 
 
 As ocean clouds, shows towards created soul 
 
 Reciprocal eternally ; — as we love 
 
 Loving ; condemning as we err ; to all 
 
 Revering him, resembling, boon ; so man 
 
 To deity linked, by life immortal, feels 
 
 In his inmost being when, heartwrung, he forespcaka 
 
 Heaven's judgment on iniquitous deed ; when wroth 
 
 At treachery's triumph ; or, when uttering truth 
 
 Spiritual, inspired, — all states external lost 
 
 Like star-dust from a seraph's wing in flight 
 
 Upwards, conscious identity with G-od. 
 
 Such union now earth's best reality ; time's 
 
 Most chief, most choice delight ; the soul at pi'ice ; 
 
 Life's rolling round, to him submiss, the Spirlc 
 
 Divine, of loftier ends once meant for man 
 
 Reminded, deigns to regulate. As when. 
 
 In class, the pensive tutor, — his high heart 
 
 Ambitious as a bow upstretched to outshoot 
 
 All rival boughs, on vast designs intent 
 
 Inly of human weal, truth proven, or law 
 
 Harmonic, 'tween creator and create, — - 
 
 By timid monitor summoned, shuts away, 
 
 Sighing, his sacred theories, and proceeds 
 
 To lowlier needs in earnest ; bent to inform 
 
 His docile pupils how our sphere the sun 
 
 Spins round, and in what posture, blandly, at once 
 
 The mimic globe — by puerile guilt awryed 
 
 From its right incline, restores, minutely just. 
 
 To ciphers graved on the arc meridian, brazen. 
 
 Steadfast, all circling ; our true attitude 
 
 Toward heaven thus shown ; — so God, by prayer invo'^ed 
 
 Stooping to instruct the sons of men, corrects 
 
 To his eternal and immoveable law 
 
 Soul, from its due position sin-wrenched ; — he, 
 
 So much less prone to punish than to teach 
 
 Pleased, pleased to expound and rectify, nor timo 
 
 On passed mischance waste, he himself for us 
 
 Gives as best lesson ; and our poor fallen orb 
 
 Bids walk again, head skyward ; man's main end, 
 
 Whate'er his first deflection, being to make 
 
 Now, best amends we may ; to know, be, do 
 
 The most we can, of good ; for that we know 
 
 And do, we in truth are ; and thus bettered, live ; 
 
 His joy and ours combined. For, when God first 
 
 Launched on its infinite course this sphere of man. 
 
 This mixed humanity, — through good and ill 
 
 Contestf ul, whirled — as earth through gloom and shjen— 
 
 Zloned it with laws, with broad degrees of right 
 
 Humane swathed, and with binding lengths of love 
 
 Divine, convergent, crossed, he midst all powers 
 
 Of fate the intelligible orb enthroned ; 
 
648 FMSTU8. 
 
 Housed it with ang'els ; him, their common souro 
 
 Beneficent, of light, life, g-odship round 
 
 In graduated freedom ranged, and bade 
 
 To all the bliss thought creatural could conceive, 
 
 And live, aspire. We, thus encouraged, taught 
 
 All vital wisdom profitable to man 
 
 In thought, word, deed and love to him, our being's 
 
 Fitness and joy most high ; taught here to know 
 
 The virtues are heaven's elements, as air, 
 
 Fire, water, earth, the world's ; and that the soul, 
 
 Simple and inseparable, conformed by their 
 
 Pure quality to his heavenly substance, lives 
 
 Thence, trans-essentiate, secretly in God, 
 
 As a star in day ; — ^find, too, as by access 
 
 Of finite to the infinite, nature's end. 
 
 Claea. How rich in teachings is God's word ! 
 
 Festus. soul 
 
 Of saintly light, wherever truth be voiced, 
 God's word know, as his law in all that's right. 
 Wherever soul acts righteously, intends 
 Truth's triumph, or man's weal, with mutual joy 
 There creature and Creator meet ; not less 
 On crag or desert sand, than temple floor 
 Of porphyry polished, or tall columned courts 
 With moonwhite marble impaved and night-black slabs. 
 Where heart thou findst pure, holy, unselfish life, 
 Love brotherly, matched and crowned with love of God, 
 Seek there his people, his chosen ; hear there his word 
 With all perfections teeming. Who now lodge 
 The living saving truth, nor famishing soul 
 Gorge on gross shadows, and the unf oodful chaff 
 Of ceremonies artistic, — servile form 
 Of words, nor tinkled time of worship, need. 
 Nor dome spire-peaked, sky peering. Life's best part 
 In voiceless converse and serene commune 
 With heaven's soul-sanctifying spirit, who gives 
 To every age fit inspiration, passed. 
 They in their own hearts hold realm, shrine and God, 
 Him in themselves adoring. The soul's war, 
 Its struggle not yet to admit the Almighty force, 
 Though round it and above ; the heart's revolt 
 Ended and pardoned ; dread, despair, doubt, quelled, 
 God to his saints reveals himself as peace, 
 Parent of bliss. Such, glorified, have sped 
 From deathful nature and her fettering sins, 
 By divine impulse into life eterne. 
 There, errless, they abide. Nor hold such lot. 
 Though of pontifical function void towards man, 
 Irreverend ; for, by none else shareable, 
 JSave their victorious spirits who, fined in fires 
 Of trial and of soul conflict, running bright 
 Pure, ductile to God's hand as virgin ore. 
 
FE8TU8. 619 
 
 Original innocence have regained ; these sole, 
 
 Bo God sealed, true felicity know ; whose breasts 
 
 Ty rational light illumed ; and filled with plans 
 
 Worthiest of man, angelic purposes, 
 
 Beam, inly sensible of divinity ; thence, 
 
 Such serious rapture radiating, as felt 
 
 Once, maketh happy aye. Yes, these are they 
 
 Who in purity of heart, in humbleness 
 
 Of spirit, faith-fraught, in holiness of life, 
 
 In sin condemned, repented of, abjured. 
 
 In will quiescent as the wave Christ's feet 
 
 Trode tranquil ; who, their being yielding up, 
 
 To him who asks, as a sigh to one beloved, 
 
 Are wholly God's. Let whoso hath these signs 
 
 Congenital with the spirit's birth, rejoice. 
 
 For him time renovates the sphere ; redates 
 
 Earth from its primal order ; trebly bright 
 
 Shine sun and moon ; the sweet stars shape themselves 
 
 Into all oracular asterisms ; the clouds 
 
 Space-bom, like thoughts of mind, mount at his spell 
 
 Compulsory, to f orespeak things coming ; air, 
 
 God's fan, wafts Eden ; and the large, live world 
 
 Throbs palpably beneath his hand ; his heart 
 
 Is as an ark twin cherubs, prayer and praise, 
 
 Fend with lif e-sacring wings. 
 
 Claea. Less worship, more 
 
 Virtue, the same in all faiths, and their sum 
 Earth needs ; a godly race self given to God, 
 Who of his mind partaking, in his will, 
 By boundless acquiescence, co-operate ; 
 Lovers of natural life and cherishers. 
 Though more of spiritual existence, still ; 
 Pacific ; holding each man sacred guest 
 In common with himself, of one great host ; 
 Yielding to him their nature, he, who all 
 Defect o'erfills, to them, his righteousness ; 
 These in the mirror of God's mind his will 
 Reading, shall satisfy, perfective ; his 
 Whose thoughts are high as mountains, deep as seas ; 
 Who in either hand beginning holds and end 
 Of things ; pours forth creation, or withdraws. 
 Like him of yore whose lordly lay led back 
 The rivers gladdening, refluent, to their source ; 
 Regeneration's sacred cycle ; his 
 Whose eye guides nature ; goalless yet. 
 
 Festus. How long 1 
 
 Nature is full of God ; but he abounds 
 Immeasurably o'er all, who all hath made. 
 Kot that I trace Him sensuously on earth. 
 By foot or finger : not in flower that blooma 
 Or frame life-breathed ; or, so might men enjoy, 
 Endamage, Heaven's high majesty ; deform, 
 
 t8 
 
650 FE8TU8, 
 
 Define, and, calculable, sum up the God, 
 
 Thus virtually denied. It is in His laws, 
 
 All cause, invisible, not in their effects. 
 
 That operant now 'mid darkness, now through light 
 
 And powers imponderable, bring forth to life 
 
 Bud, blossom, breath and being, Deity lives ; 
 
 Communes with mind made, and the whole pervades 
 
 In Him comprised ; laws, which though yet by him 
 
 Ordained, his monarch will, at choice o'errides 
 
 And adds to all these elements which we know 
 
 A sense of his Divinity in the heart 
 
 Insown, and in our soul of souls, death-freed 
 
 Of spirit ; man hails eternal and divine. 
 
 Even evil tells of God, to the pure soul 
 
 And thoughtful, as divinely endured. 
 
 Claea. To know 
 
 Prayer radius-like unites the soul with God, 
 All central, all surrounding ; shuts the world 
 Out of the heart ; and sets frail being to face 
 Eternal virtue, rapture gives ; but prayer 
 Preferred, is oft more, prayer fulfilled, means, end, 
 Lo, mine now granted in my joy and thine. 
 Think, too, how patient God, how wise man's friend ; 
 Triumph deferring till, full faith assured, 
 Our ill-timed importunities brooked awhile — 
 The world to its f oref ated end approach. 
 
 Festus. Man entered on a higher course, the scheme 
 Of things seems in these later, kindlier days, 
 Nobilitated. No slaughterous tools of war. 
 By false-souled priests ill-blessed, by reckless scribes 
 Lauded, tear men to quivering fragments, now ; 
 Nor sword, death's reaping-hook for human com ; 
 Nor cannon's syllogism confutes the right 
 In bloodiest controversy. One round belief, 
 One universal and simple faith in God, 
 'Stablished o'er earth, from slavish ignorance freed 
 And tyrant superstition, one most just 
 Perfect and catholic polity, makes mankind 
 Though late, an unity ; shows man purified, 
 Man elevated, man peaceful, man made wise j 
 "Worthy God's rule ; but rule, by his will, on me 
 Devolved. And me, the world's vast littleness 
 Mocking ^lo more, I look not for that prize 
 Vouchsuied me with vain ambition, nor with pride 
 Hail, but a toilful privilege deem to serve 
 In duty spiritual my brotherly race ; 
 Judge it the righteous fine I pay for wish 
 Presumptuous granted. Earth's conclusive hour 
 Hath clicked its gentle alarm ; and all too late 
 'Twere to recall what, if regretful, I 
 Have caused, the doom of earth. I have seen ere now 
 A penitent people, prostrate, bid remorse 
 
PJS8TU8. esi 
 
 Trample tlieix hearts as in a winepress ; seen 
 
 Nations when galled with the insults of yeara 
 
 And wrongs of generations sacrificed 
 
 To the few's selfish class-pride, at last roused 
 
 Wroth, and their ire incendiary demark 
 
 Through all the land ; here by burned cities ; llure 
 
 By beaconed palaces, fuming night with scent 
 
 Of cedarn roofs — the tapestried handiwork 
 
 Of queens long since anointed, long embalmed. 
 
 Palling the flaunting flames ; sudden, the bold, 
 
 With sense of wrong irreparable, and dread 
 
 Of retribution, chill ; — for soon revenge 
 
 At conscience' feet confesseth, — and in vain 
 
 Time's slowly purpling fruit would fain await 
 
 Kepentant, remediless ; so I, my soul 
 
 To thoughts tumultuous yielding once, too prompt 
 
 To impound the future, would, but can, defer 
 
 No longer, time's last end. The final word, 
 
 Raze earth to its foundations, hath gone forth. 
 
 Hungers the inevitable to be fulfilled, 
 
 As gods of the orient, uncomputed years. 
 
 Yearn for their avatars. This end foreknown, 
 
 The secret thought — as torrent sub terrene 
 
 Wrenched by distorting strata from the light, 
 
 Falls inly thundering on earth's heart, my soul 
 
 Fills with unnatural tumult, for man's sake 
 
 Not ours, though blent inextricably. And as, 
 
 While storms rend air, on high reigns spatial calm, 
 
 Where spheres their ancient tracks of light re-rolliug;, 
 
 Salute in saintly silence, storm and star 
 
 Like just intent accomplishing, — so thy life, 
 
 Pure, i)eaceful as the path setherial trode 
 
 By her now regnant in mid heaven, and mine, 
 
 Long time by doubt and passion tempested. 
 
 In common with the world, reach one same end. 
 
 Clara. When, know we not, nor would I know. But all time 
 Seems now a boon unreckonable ; most fit 
 Therefore for godliest spirit to rouse the hearts 
 Of thoughtless nations to life's imminent close ; 
 And as of old the arch-druid, golden knifed, 
 From his altar crag now lonely amid the moor, 
 Doled forth to awestruck tribes by brands, God's rue. 
 Their willowy bowers or rockhewn nests, in brows 
 Of cliffs, scooped like the sand-swallow's, to waim, 
 Hearths sanctify, and life forefend from bale ; 
 Do thou, man's throned minister, send round 
 Thy flame-winged words warning the world of doom j 
 Blessing with hope of heaven : that all in heart 
 May home them and hold holy. 
 
 Festus. The world's rich 
 
 In warnings ; and advice creeps of ttimes round 
 To find one, goal and starting-point. Already 
 
663 FESTU8. 
 
 A thousand tongues I have caused to monisli men, 
 
 Incredulous, to this day, of things to be ; 
 
 Nor by one hour would I, for selfish ends, 
 
 Time's scheme foreclose. The soul made perfect here, 
 
 By him who in secret works, and openly, 
 
 Patent in nature's every fact while yet 
 
 In operation latent, helps by means 
 
 Thrice sifted, heaven, to sow with both hands brimmed 
 
 The liberal truth, nor faint ; to scatter hope 
 
 And reap belief ; my guerdon sole, as yet, 
 
 To bask me in thy rare retreats, content 1 
 
 "Where, stripped of mere conventional values, life 
 
 And time are, by deliberate conscience, priced 
 
 At their just worth, the good that may be wrought 
 
 In them and through them for mankind, by mind 
 
 Actful, not o'er solicitous ; where the mock 
 
 Empire which custom sways, the painted forts 
 
 Unreason mans 'gainst truth, delude no more ; 
 
 Where eyes o'ertaxed with the world's tinsel glare, 
 
 The luminous rottenness of sacred shams ; 
 
 The microscopic grandeurs flattery feigns 
 
 Eye-fawning, her own pettiness to hide ; 
 
 The foil of false repute ; the sickly flash 
 
 Of pale and pasty wit tricked from the crown 
 
 Of ignorance worn by puniest judgling ; — add, 
 
 Where ears, distraught by their gong-beaten .lies. 
 
 Who betwixt obscurity and ignominy 
 
 Courted, embrace both, — gluttons of contempt ; 
 
 By full-fed pity's after-dinner groans 
 
 O'er lean men's nuncheons ; the paper trumpet's blcro 
 
 Blown, till it bursts, of charity ; by the oaths 
 
 Obscene, of gentle doctrine gone stark mad I 
 
 And babble of opinion's shallowing stream 
 
 All down its daily kennels, — may each, in still 
 
 And wholesome shade, rest ; — while even here, to viow 
 
 The eye-brine trickling down to the treacled lips 
 
 Of adulation fined, greed hoped ; to hear 
 
 The bruit of nations questing after dreams, 
 
 And dream-names, sworn to capture liberty ; 
 
 Might make one wretchless smile. Have I not seen 
 
 An ignorant people serve the living God ; 
 
 And self -dubbed sapients, grovelling at the graves 
 
 Of certain dead rogues, ycleped philosophers, 
 
 Call their foul faith religion ? 
 
 Claea, Kate not now 
 
 'Neath their just worth faith nor philosophy ; 
 The soul's instructor this, that sage moderatress. 
 Apt in one faultless breviary, to imblend 
 All faiths heaven's angels might use here with us. 
 We there with them. 
 
 Festus. Know I not, here and there, 
 
 An amiable mild-mannered seer whose vast 
 
FESTU3, 653 
 
 Inheritance of the skies escheats to dust, 
 
 By voluntary defeasance, atom-wise, 
 
 Stake out his lines of being-, necessity 
 
 Reason, the absolute, negative, — what not ? 
 
 Measure himself 'gainst God ? Assume to be 
 
 God ? and survey the universe of things 
 
 With some dissatisfaction as a feat 
 
 Scarce worthy of him, nor comparable at all 
 
 To that he meant it should be when — his soul 
 
 Diffused, meanwhile, in death through space — he next 
 
 Should wake to conscious deity ? 
 
 Claea. Nay, let be. 
 
 Such bitterness savours not perfection. Sneer 
 Nor sarcasm peace befit, nor spirit affied 
 To charity's friend, content. 
 
 Festus. Thee filrm I know 
 
 On mercy's side, by kindliest nature bound 
 The punitive ire stem justice vaunts to assuage, 
 Though lashing but with tongued scourge, and scorn 
 Of foes presumptuous, even if weak. As when 
 Heaven's lesser bale, through many a stellar house 
 In militant triumph riding, till by law 
 Gods even must vail to, stalled, his fiery team 
 Reins stationary, and, chafed at forced recoil. 
 One bloodshot feverous glance on the luckless lands 
 Thralled to the sign he fires, thrown, backening turns ; 
 Stamps in the nations fury and civil strife 
 Disastrous ; causing the social elements 
 Clash ; or, through ruinous insurrection, seek 
 Self sundering, raw contracts, less just ; if now, 
 Beauty's mild orb, that fair benignant, beam 
 Conjunctively disposed, on the dread scene 
 Time groans withal, her stem swain's human realm 
 Compassionating, his brow, frown writhen, she smooths 
 While yet far, with boon-asking eye ; and now, 
 Neared timidly the starry pest her charms 
 Dazzle, toys guileful with the death-strung nerve 
 Of his bow sky-arched ; his angriest bolts steel-beaked 
 Lulls womanishly ; with strange delicious touch 
 Sleeking their storm-packed plumes ; each battailous fate 
 To stress competitive softens, to wordy wars, 
 Or emulous bent ; thus tempering every plague 
 She fails to avert, or, 'midst her piteous breasts, 
 Paler than moonlit lilies, hides ; — the world 
 Breathes bold, nor wots the secret treaty of light 
 Sealed in heaven's chancellerie ; — so thou, sweet bride 
 Predominating by mere humanity, sweep'st 
 All bitterness from my heart. 
 
 Claea. Such grace, mayhap 
 
 Thou deemest weakness still ; and much misdoubts 
 My mind the emprise thou vowest me to. 
 
 FfiSTUS. Be brave I 
 
654 FESTTTS. 
 
 Thy weakness brings forth strength, as the young slight moon 
 
 The year's main tides. Nor I have strength, nor thou 
 
 Aught to endure or do but comes from him, 
 
 Tasker and lesson. Joy be it meanwhile, to me 
 
 "WTiose loftiest hope is lowliest even to stand 
 
 'Mong devotees of good ; a vital voice 
 
 With the great whole in unison ; to feel 
 
 How, raised by G-od's good mercy above the clash 
 
 Of narrow creedlets, jarring systems, sects 
 
 Sick of unnatural piety, overlaid 
 
 With truths so twisted as show well nigh false ; 
 
 One soul from faiths complex and frivolous freed, 
 
 Grace-moved, more worthily truth to construe, mny, 
 
 Through simplest trust in God and neighbour man, 
 
 Learning a wiser, teach a happier way. 
 
 Rather than all these spurious sanctities, 
 
 Give me the loneliest desert where man's free soul 
 
 Towers naked in God's eye, and, as a temple 
 
 Empty, but full of awe, let me all shrines 
 
 By art debased, for heaven's uncolumned fane, 
 
 And truth's unritualled service, quit ; a faith 
 
 Faith fills with visits of angel deities ; 
 
 A pastoral rite, a patriarchal creed ; 
 
 A filial worship of the all-fatherly God ; 
 
 A covenant binding with the Eternal, — this 
 
 Of truth communicative ; this bold to embrace 
 
 The vital Infinite. The soul which wins 
 
 Rest in the alone divine, once purified 
 
 From all ills gotten of contact with the world, 
 
 Its hollow shows and rank impostures, dread 
 
 Of wrongs impossible to impute to God, 
 
 Yet sure his justice, as all his attributes — 
 
 Will boundlessly afEect intelligent life, 
 
 Lives rebegotten, a personal verity. 
 
 By him in view of his complete design 
 
 The whole, conceived ; and so thereto akin, 
 
 And unto God, name greater than all writ, 
 
 All wit, can teach, that he who made, and told 
 
 The broad affinity, seals and sanctifies. 
 
 Claea. Shows there no peril lest ghostly pride sliould snare 
 Our spirits somewhile in parleying, pondering, even 
 These ends, so vast, of God ? To touch on, seems 
 So oft, in view defective, to comprise. 
 God grant us humble hearts and lowly thoughts. 
 
 Festus. Love I not, too, humility, these thy pJcnins 
 Of soul, rich in the roots of fruitful things ? 
 None but the great in mind, the true in heart, 
 The just in life, the perfect, seek thy peace, 
 Thy pastures, where the consoling spirit oft 
 Walks beatific ; sanctifies the breast 
 Which suffers sovereignly, and, all kind, confinus 
 The soul that lists not other's gifts, nor need, 
 
FE8TU8: 655 
 
 Each to himself suflBcing ; but its own, 
 
 Loyal, asserts to vindicate God's rights, 
 
 And, boasting nought its own, all claims as God'e, 
 
 God is my friend, and nature. Sun and sea 
 
 Are my next neighbours. Yon great main and I 
 
 In turn expatiate o'er the same sands ; wake 
 
 By each other's bed ; or by the sad moon trined, 
 
 Her silvery kiss of pure and equal love 
 
 Receive ; joint boon and bond. Of t in his sleep. 
 
 And in this neap of time, I overhear 
 
 The ubiquitous winds weird secrets interchange 
 
 With the elements of the future ; he alone, 
 
 To those exalted mysteries unbid ; oft 
 
 From mom's slow opening eye to eve's, sun-drooped, 
 
 Track his broad dial's hands of ebb and flood ; 
 
 Now, like a favourite thought, recurrent, dart 
 
 Into his bosom ; now, like falcon poised, 
 
 Mantling his wings, strained stirless in mid air, 
 
 Float, with the sea-sway swaying ; upon his heart's 
 
 Large and deliberate beat, rocked. Earth, for me. 
 
 Sometimes, I dream, forgetful of fate's plan, 
 
 A niche hides, ivy fingered, dank with dew, 
 
 Close by her side, where, when the gay day ends. 
 
 Her world-worn brood she lulls ; with sweets alone 
 
 Of sleep unsurfeited. The moss-branched woods, 
 
 Traversed by sloping lanes of evening light. 
 
 Greet, whispering to themselves, my wonted foot ; 
 
 And you, gaunt hills, that stand with broad brows bared 
 
 As in x>erpetual consciousness of God 
 
 With us, and inward audience of the heavens ; 
 
 And pass me along nightly with solemn touch ; 
 
 In the austere comity of mountains me 
 
 Accept, your reverent comrade, like endowed 
 
 With reticent virtue ; ye, who but seem to lack 
 
 Organic utterance ; quick with sacred thought ; 
 
 And through the eye's still commune not unskilled 
 
 To impart, prompted by dumb immensity, 
 
 Majestic meditations. Among your forms 
 
 Unmoved, the spirit consentient with that power 
 
 Working miraculous in all round, grows apt 
 
 And proper to the Eternal. We believe 
 
 In silence, looking on the face of things 
 
 Which have returned through changeless years his gazo 
 
 Who in time's fluctuating effects, — absorbed 
 
 'Mid their surroundings, iceberglike, — joys not ; 
 
 But in his own pure mountainous purposes, 
 
 Fixed as the ever sedent fates, the orb 
 
 Which dominate. Drawn thus, and in right accord 
 
 Towards the divine, we walk, though on the intense 
 
 Circumference, we, as He while all within, 
 
 To all exterior ; walk, like paced with God, 
 
 Loaning on him, and, cor.scious of tha ysloX, 
 
655 FE8TU8. 
 
 All-presence of his arm, advance ; no more 
 Maker with made, nor just law with blind force, 
 Or act of chance misblending ; but sustained 
 By his impartible strength, and by the smile 
 Cheered, which all spirit turned Godward doth illume, 
 We tread down each day's shadow, and so step 
 Clean o'er the soiling world. 
 
 Clara. The world nathless 
 
 We too much love, for those imperial tasks 
 And kinglier ends the soul is destined to. 
 By him who calls us not to trifle but reign. 
 
 Festus. It is manworld only, this petty universe 
 Deformed by sin and selfhood, to the sense 
 Breeds vileness, and repugnance of pure thought. 
 God's outer sphere is faultless. Be it man's 
 To accord the soul-world with the world-soul, God. 
 When from each heart youth's grand illusions perish, 
 Mean wits deem so much wisdom earned ; conceits 
 Exploded counting virtual truths, not knowing 
 The multitude here of sectional sciences 
 Accomplished ignorance. Truth can be but one ; 
 Of all, the essence sole and simple. 
 
 Clara. See I 
 
 The blue of heaven o'ercast. Each natural change 
 Seem I to dread, sad f orenote of the end. 
 A rising gust o'erawes me. Vain alarms 
 Doubtless, but erewhile to be verified. 
 
 Festus. Life's shadow, death, hastes to enshroud the world. 
 
 Clara. You skiey mourners that, like mine own sad thoughts, 
 Can scarce yourselves sustain, too prompt to tears, 
 Let me at least weep with ye. Nature, here 
 Ends her divine descent. Henceforth it is God 
 Claims all things, and reclaims. And can it be. 
 That all this vast and visible scheme of things, 
 Set in light's golden frame, no more shall eye 
 View ? Mountain ; streamlet swiftening to the deep ; 
 Sward, flower besprent ; wind-haunted forest ; plain 
 Fruit-laden ; all gone ? Shall nevermore that peak 
 With stem uplifted finger threatful, check 
 The outgoing storm, and bring it to his feet, 
 Effusive ? Nor yon grim glacier where it creeps 
 Wrinkled and rigid, as snake half frozen, e'er burst, 
 At streamy touch of the all-transfiguiing sun, 
 Its icy enchantment, nor its patient hope 
 Yet gain, of all its race this only, balked ? 
 Shall no to-morrow be ? Shall the fair moon. 
 Her starry stations nightly accomplishing, 
 Threading in wavy orbit every sign, 
 Wax ne'er again ; like us, safe housed within 
 The mansions of the immutable ? 
 
 Festus. All souls. 
 
 One grand, one worldwide trial passed, shall glide 
 
FESTUa, 667 
 
 Into eternity as the awakenin* earth 
 
 Rounds towards the day re-risen. Our Lord, even now, 
 
 With knowledg-e fills of passed things and to come 
 
 The spirit by him f orechosen ; and as in cave 
 
 Caucasian, priest hereditary, tribe-led 
 
 At old year's end, thrice pacing the emerald walls 
 
 Those mystic offering's, none but he may, makes ? 
 
 From off the central altar, rock-squared, lifts 
 
 The chalice golden chased, with drowsiest juice 
 
 Of bearded grain creaming, and from its hue. 
 
 Clear or beclouded ; troublous or stirless state ; 
 
 And savour sweet or acrid, to those round 
 
 Of time's forth-issuing seasons much divines, 
 
 Peace, life and plenty, dearth or death or war ; — 
 
 So me hath God installed, from time's full cup, 
 
 At eve of earth's great year, to announce to man 
 
 Grief gone, pain passed, the day of general joy 
 
 And, — war, the world's worst curse rehomed in hell,— 
 
 The age of peace perennial. 
 
 Clara. Earth, as though 
 
 In foref east of delight, and dimly limned 
 Grandeurs to come, looks wistful of a change 
 Brightening, dawnlike, man's mind, new-moralled, 
 
 Festus. Dream 
 
 Of perfectness too soon, alas 1 to cease. 
 But better thus than as of old, when earth 
 Despairing lay, war-gored, by ignorance base 
 Blinded, and crushed by weight of despot crowns, 
 Piled on her panting bosom. Await thine hour. 
 Hopefully, earth. Peace, victress peace draws nigh. 
 The secret longings of the wise, deep based 
 On perfectness, fast ripening, leave joy's heart 
 Beggared of blessings not all heavenly. And now 
 Thrill with the audible advent of their fate, 
 Fate predetermined good, all lands ; his boon 
 Last, loftiest, best, who all founds. 
 
 Claba. Ere the worlds, 
 
 Light was : ere light night ever-being, pierced 
 After by sun-stars ; and world, light, and night 
 Spring up and cease, while God's word but matures. 
 
 Festus. Grinding the road of doom on worldlike wheels, 
 Time's coming coursers, day and night, I hear 
 Whirling the car of destiny. It comes. 
 The clouded dust of ages marks its track ; 
 Now, lost in depths of space ; a moment, mobbed 
 By noisy nations ; now again, it hurls 
 All hindrance from its path. The gates of force, 
 The bars of hate and prejudice, in vain 
 Oppose. It thunders to my feet. Time's lord, 
 The sun, long sunk, that sober legacy 
 Of light he left the hour spent, too, night warns ua 
 Hence. 
 
658 FE8TU8. 
 
 Claea. And I feel, with all these failing" flowers, 
 Consentful. Nature hath to all thing's given 
 Her silent signal. Earth her thought-racked brow, 
 Racked to provide for all she is doomed to bear, 
 Pillows at God's feet ; and to his diligent guard. 
 Her slumjbering spirit commends. 
 
 Festus. We ours to him, 
 
 Like confident, as not cherished less, less watched, 
 At day's dawn, sun crowned noon, or eve. Me leaving^ 
 Somewhile, go, sacred consort of my soul ; 
 This coring deepliest in thine heart ; that they 
 Who love, know God, to his their wills conform 
 As mists to mountains, and, like one long trained 
 In loyal suit to nature, who forebears 
 In clouds the ripple of rills, as yet aerial 
 Which shall make glad the meads ; who views in stars 
 The adoring awe their light shall sometime win 
 In eyes of unborn ages ; so souls f oregraced 
 By like gifts to conceive all scope of good 
 Heaven prophesies fulfilled, not only God 
 Indwell, but here i)articipant of the joy 
 He in them feels, shall, dying, ever live I 
 
 Claea. May we so live we dread not here to die ; 
 So die, we dread not afterward to live ! 
 
 Festus. Now heaven be thanked, man's end henceforth can 
 man 
 Calmly construe, note hopefully ; and, seen, 
 Exist, at least, not miserably ; our God, 
 By dread experience, known, of Hadean realms, 
 No more, as f alseliest once to impious thought, 
 Unjustest of all beings ; indeed most just. 
 Yes, now I can behold the world nor breathe 
 The life-long sigh that I or any live ; 
 That souls whose sins minute hell's fiery light 
 Taxed to make legible even in God's broad eye, 
 Should, cursing and accursed, their Maker's shame, 
 Live, deathless, inameliorable. Thank God ! 
 God's realm hath no such scandal ; boundless space 
 Hides no such horrible blot on nature's end ; 
 A figment, which, if true, God were not God, 
 Man, man, nor fiend their enemy. As one 
 Who at ebb of tide, by treacherous underdraught 
 Sucked seawards, stealthily, tossed here, tossed there, > 
 
 In death-play of the brutal surge, ere yet. 
 At turn, hurled landwards scornfully, wave on wavo, 
 Each strenuously intending doom, — the foam. 
 Wide-spreading as his watery winding-sheet, 
 Eyes round him ; and beyond, the infinite 
 Upper and lower, sees, of mata and sky, 
 All pitilessly conclusive of his end ; 
 And knows the elements oathed against him ; knows 
 Nought with him, God except, and hope ; at last. 
 
FE8TUS. 659 
 
 Battling no more with breakers, even for breath, 
 
 Feels, as his feet insensitive drop, the sand, — 
 
 Friend unsuspect, unconscious, unbeheld, — 
 
 And with his heart's last life-beat, lifts again 
 
 His head from burying billows, — lifts, and lives ; 
 
 As one who toiling up the burning slope. 
 
 High pitched, of cone vulcanic, soon to outpour, 
 
 Dread prelibation of earth's end, red floods 
 
 Fuellous, of lava, in God's cup of wrath 
 
 Slow brimming, till the ebullient dross, league-hi^-h, 
 
 Shoots up, hell spilKng ; — scorched by sun-fires ; parched 
 
 By fumes sulphureous from above, by heat 
 
 Subterrene stifled ; now, by stony showers, 
 
 Gleed-hot, imperilled, now by hissing streams 
 
 Of seething ore, — swoons, falls : but, once restored, 
 
 And, wistf ulness returned, the healing ice 
 
 Loosed from his feverous forehead, as from crag 
 
 In spring, fall winter's snows, — conceives, towards God^ 
 
 The rebegetter of his future, thanks 
 
 Such, and so vast, as might a nation feel, 
 
 From famine saved, or pest ; so I, from sense 
 
 Of hell, mistaught by merciless ages passed, 
 
 Reproachful against God, the infinite love, 
 
 As scourging soul with self -perpetuate woe, 
 
 Firefloods eruptive of ^vrath endless, freed ; 
 
 And knowing all things spiritual bettering ayo, 
 
 Perfecting, growing worthier of God's thought, 
 
 Ever, by even disciplinary pains. 
 
 Can look now on the world if not with joy, 
 
 With trust of ultimate peace ; so much hath searcii 
 
 Of truth, faith lowly but firm, and meditative 
 
 Perfection, profited me, as this to know ; 
 
 That not till freed from soul-seductive cares 
 
 The longing for mere knowledge, greed of power, 
 
 Luxury, the world, and all its nothings, lures 
 
 To lead astray, I have lived to spurn or shun. 
 
 Can soul, by such disoriented, recur 
 
 To union with the Onemost spirit ; nor e'er 
 
 Till all men's broken faiths remassed in one, 
 
 Grod's unity end, and man's vast brotherhood 
 
 Spread peaceful o'er the earth shall all partake 
 
 Faith's universal headship ; war thenceforth. 
 
 Sacred or saecular, ceased for aye. For know. 
 
 While leonine tribes, which, desert-shrined, deem GV.l 
 
 One sole : and while the art-loving races seized 
 
 With sense of deity through all things diffused. 
 
 And conscious of more complicated life. 
 
 Trace him, through nature's myriad -sided whole, 
 
 Trine-wise, or manifold, simple faith at last 
 
 Names the All-one ; shows earth's all various croods, 
 
 True in time's partial views each, in the eteme 
 
 One verity, same and whole. This truth to me 
 
660 FESTU8. 
 
 Blessed, wlio have visited all earth's holiest shrinei; 
 And by alien ritual undeterred, have joined 
 My spirit in worship at all sacred feasts 
 Saying, God be hallowed here as allwhere, only ; 
 Soul of the world 1 Source of all good, and end, 
 Teach us true worshippers to be, 
 Spirit in spirit. Lord I of thee ; 
 Our soul's just judge, lover and lord of truth. 
 Men's piety reverencing in all earth's creeds, 
 In every sanctuary, his praise with prayer, 
 Parents of peace, I have found. To all who him 
 Love truly, and spiritually adore, he grants 
 Like favour, like deliglit. Nor needs for thi^ 
 So perfect commune, one revealing word 
 Soulwards, the spirit of God divinely dumb. 
 But as when, long winter passed, his fibrous veins 
 Stiff and contract with stormy cold, some oak. 
 Hallowed by patriot legend, and with birth 
 Of world-feared realm coeval, feels, one morn, 
 His tender leaflets buddening in the breeze, 
 And loosening in the light ; hears himself breathe, 
 With self-f elicitant murmur ; waves his boughs 
 Towards every casual wing in welcome ; laughs 
 To know himself alive ; his gay, old heart. 
 Tingling 'neath spring's regenerative touch. 
 Swells with the sense already of worshipping praise 
 He through his shade shall reap from beasts and men, 
 Stretched grateful, at his huge roots, there to enjoy 
 Life's natural sacrament of rest ; while round 
 His leafy tent prowl summer heats, in vain 
 Ravening ; so, I, faith's festive light refound, 
 Live fourfold, and in this my soul, beyond 
 All world-force, feeling th' elements of heaven 
 Struggle for loftier and more perfect life, 
 Like-natured with the infinite, joy with joy 
 Speechless, as earth, when she God's smile returns. 
 
 Claea. But even if all mysterious rites thou hast learned, 
 The spirit's probation, and just progress ; still, 
 Till pride of knowledge in the humility ends 
 Of wisdom ; and all proud desires of power 
 In righteous service manwards, and to God, 
 Thou hast learned nought, and lived in vain. 
 
 Festus. I am one 
 
 Contented with his call, who knows the world 
 Progresses just as heretofore, by wi-ongs 
 Much, and by rights a little ; who, possessed 
 By absolute indifference to the run 
 Of fortune's and the world's blind turmoil, waits 
 His destined task, as mariner late storm-tossed, 
 By his beosted boat stretched, swarthening in the sun. 
 Lists the qtrick creeping flood. I seem to have passed 
 All world-life, all desire. My blood fulfils 
 
FSSTUa. 661 
 
 Its orbit as the stars their round in heaven 
 
 With a cool constancy even I admire. 
 
 What would my monitress ? For the soul to have passed 
 
 Passion and doubt, twin helps, twin foes, and trust 
 
 inimitably in Grod, who builds his heaven 
 
 On love, the life-link between himself and man j 
 
 And our immortal know the interior arc 
 
 Of his more vast eternal, seems true life, 
 
 Kor all unworthy of high intelligence ; — 
 
 Which life attained the aspiring spirit shall find 
 
 Unselfish virtue's meed ; the rational joy 
 
 And satisfaction just, to us accruing. 
 
 Of spiritual holiness which to us outsprings 
 
 Direct and radios-like from God's own heart, 
 
 Eternal therefore ; and the gracious boon 
 
 Of infinite amendment fixed by God 
 
 On all free spirit though peccant, surely at lact 
 
 Amenable, as imperfect, narrow, dark, 
 
 To suasions of the infinite perfect light ; 
 
 Thence penitent and progressive ; yes, to know 
 
 Him, th' universal being, in time deployed 
 
 Through forms innimierable, the all lif ef ul stars, 
 
 Globules that float through his galactic veins. 
 
 And yon spherebounding sea, the shimmering fringe 
 
 Of his broad skirts world-spangled, spread o'er space ; 
 
 One self -evolving essence which all things 
 
 O'errules and underlies ; the source eterne 
 
 Of all conceptive nature ; to mere life 
 
 Life elemental, with the permanent flow 
 
 Of streams, and virtual immortality 
 
 Of mountains ; to earth's annual growth the sense 
 
 Adding of animate instinct ; but in man 
 
 Self-knowledge of the whole, its parts, plan, end, 
 
 Its author, and his own, whose advent here 
 
 Flesh hallows ; in whose consciousness of sin. 
 
 And the ilL the imperfect, the inadequate 
 
 Attempts we make to realize truth and good, 
 
 Our finite thwarts the Infinite ; and makes 
 
 The natural cross both suffer ; but whose death, 
 
 When soul that's bound on earth is loosed in heaven, 
 
 Shows us the reascendant god, is life 
 
 Eternal, life celestial, life divine. 
 
 Claea. May such be ours 1 
 
 Festus. Oh, may it I To me thy life 
 
 Redeems a long sad passed, and fills with sense 
 Of joy unutterable the brief to come. 
 As a fountain which from Andean heights art-led 
 Into palatial gardens, massed with flowers. 
 Though far beguiled and long repressed, jets up 
 At last columnar, seeming so to express 
 Its own and nature's innocent glee ; nor can, 
 Though of all rills simplest, secretest, conceal 
 
662 FESTtlS. 
 
 Pre-eminency of source, but, 'gainst its will, 
 
 Itself encrowns with soft and scintillant snows 
 
 Of night-starred silence vindicative, and coy, 
 
 And colourless perfection of pure life. 
 
 Such as earth owns, heaven neighbouring ; thus too, thou 
 
 To me, sweet, come, reanimatest the world 
 
 Howbeit not of thine element ; and the soul, 
 
 With recollection of celestial things 
 
 Serenest, only impartible from on high. 
 
 XLIII. 
 
 Not in one plane inde viable the soul 
 
 Makes way, but moonhke waveringly, as though 
 
 Not to advance content for a time, the while 
 
 Urged by interior fate to compass heaven 
 
 Pauseless, the spirit's instruction still proceeds, 
 
 And God's original end itself fulfils. 
 
 Hallowed by promise given, faith's prayer the will 
 
 Strengthening to adventure for earth's weal, eartli'b j^caee, 
 
 Through mouth of kindliest angel, and by sign 
 
 Of saints celestial, God sends tidings down. 
 
 Of soul's acceptance sealed ; Himself to man, 
 
 So far as finite can contain, imparts 
 
 This wise, the infinite of his presence ; one 
 
 In verity, mortal soul with soul eteme. 
 
 A lonely Lodge amojig the Saoivy MoniUo I us. 
 
 Festus alone; afterwards Gc\jxrt>ik^ Angel. 
 
 Festus. I feel as if I could devour the days 
 Till the time come when I shall gain mine end ; 
 God shall have made me ruler, and all worlds 
 Signed the sublime recognizance. Till then, 
 Even as a boat lies rocking on the beach, 
 Waiting the one white wave to float it free, 
 Wait I the great event ; — too great it seems. 
 Yet, Lord 1 thou knowest the power I seek for sought 
 For man's good and thy glory, and its desire 
 By thee inspired. As I use it use thou me. 
 Thou hast said that such I shall enjoy, and then, 
 My mission and thine ends accomplished, here, 
 I seek a world where souls begin again. 
 Or life take up from where death broke it at. 
 Like disproportion there 'tween will and power 
 As here, may not be. If not, I shall be happy. 
 I feel no bounds. I cannot think but thought 
 On thought springs up, inimitably, around, 
 As a great forest sows itself ; but here 
 
PE8TUS. 663 
 
 There is nor gfround nor light enougrh to live. 
 
 Sealike, I would be everywhere at once ; 
 
 And, sensible of the natural competence 
 
 To outspread my spirit o'er all the endless world, 
 
 Would act at all points. Bound to one, I feel ; 
 
 So poor mere place is, with ubiquity weighed, 
 
 As wellnigh nowhere. Sense, flesh, feeling-, fail 
 
 Before the imperious mind's feet as the dust 
 
 She treads, windUke lifts up and leaves behind. 
 
 How mind will act with body glorified 
 
 And spiritualized, and senses fined, 
 
 And pointed brilliantwise, we know not. Here, 
 
 Even, it may be wrong in us to deem 
 
 The senses' degradations, otherwise 
 
 Than as fine steps, whereby the queenly soul 
 
 Comes down from her bright throne to view the mass 
 
 She hath dominion over, and the things 
 
 Of her inheritance ; and reascends. 
 
 With an indignant fiery purity, 
 
 Not to be touched, her seat. The visible world, 
 
 Whereby God maketh nature known to us, 
 
 Is not derogatory unto himself. 
 
 As the pure Spirit Infinite. A world 
 
 Is but, perhaps, a sense of God's whereby 
 
 He may explain his nature, and receive 
 
 Fit pleasure. But the hour is hard at hand, 
 
 When time's gray wing shall winnow all away, 
 
 Heaven's stars, earth's atoms : when Creator mind 
 
 And mind create shall know each other ; worlds, 
 
 Bodies, put off, and man his Maker meet 
 
 Where all, who through the universe do well, 
 
 Embrace their hearts' desire ; what things they will 
 
 And whom remember ; live, too, where they list ; 
 
 And with the beings they love best, and God, 
 
 Inherit and inhabit boundless bliss. 
 
 Hear me, all-favouring God 1 my latest prayer ; 
 
 Thou unto whom all nations of the world 
 
 Lift up their hearts, like grass-blades to the sun ; 
 
 Who all things hast, save need of aught ; who hast gl7en me 
 
 Earth and her all ; give from thy gamer stored 
 
 With good, some sign Lord now in proof to earth 
 
 My prayers are with thee ; that they rend the clouds, 
 
 And, rising through the sightless dark of space, 
 
 Reach to thy central throne. Oh I let me feel, 
 
 What was my constant dream in my young years, 
 
 And is in all my better moments now, — 
 
 My hope, my faith, my nature's sum and end, 
 
 Oneness with thee and heaven. Lord ! make mo sure 
 
 My soul already is in unison 
 
 With the triumphant. Ah ! I surely hear 
 
 The voices of the spirits of the saints, 
 
 And witnesses to the redeeming truth j 
 
664 FE8TU8, 
 
 Not, as of old, in scanty scattered strains, 
 Breathed from the caves of earth, and cells of citieB,— • 
 Nor as the voice of martyr choked with fire, — 
 But in one solemn hymn of joy as when 
 From the bright walls of the heavenly city they 
 Looked on the war of hell, host upon host. 
 Foiled by God's single sword before their gates 
 Of perfect pearl ; — nearer and nearer now ! 
 This is the sign, O Grod I which thou hast given, 
 And I will praise thee through eternity. 
 Saints feom Heaven. 
 
 Call all who love thee, Lord ! to thee, 
 
 Thou knowest how they long 
 To leave these broken lays, and aid 
 
 In heaven's unceasing song ; 
 How they long, Lord ! to go to thee, 
 
 And hail thee with their eyes, — 
 Thee in thy blessedness, and all 
 
 The nations of the skies ; 
 
 All who have loved thee and done well. 
 
 Of every age, creed, chme ; 
 The host of saved ones from the ends 
 
 And all the worlds of time : 
 The wise in matter and in mind, 
 
 The soldier, sage, and priest ; 
 Eling, prophet, hero, saint, and bai'd, 
 
 The greatest soul and least ; 
 
 The old and young and verv babe, 
 
 The maiden and the youth. 
 All re-bom angels of one age — • 
 
 The age of heaven and truth ; 
 The rich, the poor, the good, the bad, 
 
 Redeemed alike from sin ; 
 Lord! 
 
 Eternity begin. 
 
 Festus. "Will ye away, ye blessed ? To God I then 
 Commend ye, and my soul with yours ; and 'midst 
 The light ye live in, oh 1 mind ye of the days 
 Sunless, and starless nights, myriads on earth 
 Pass without faith's one ray, and pray for those 
 Who in the world's dark womb bound, know not yet, 
 Through indifference, ignorance, or disbelief. 
 Their sire, God. Lord of all earth, all worlds, all heavens^ 
 Lift up to thine my spirit ; let me so share 
 The comfort of thy love, that while ordained 
 To my great task, no more misgivings, fears. 
 Nor mortal doubts, the soul chill, thou by thy love 
 Hast hallowed, and so made like molten gold 
 The mould that holds it precious ; or for thine 
 Own ends, if such thou suffer, may they pass 
 Quickly and traceless, perish ; all thoughts of earth 
 All deathpangs too o'ercome, may I with thy chosen^ 
 Seraphs and saints, and all-possessing- souls, 
 "Which minister through the universe, to tliee, 
 
FE8TUS. 665 
 
 Enthroned in spirit's intensest bliss, succeed 
 To heaven for ever. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Hear, mortal, and believe. 
 The soul once saved shall never cease from bliss. 
 She doth not sin. The deeds which look like sin, 
 The flesh and the false world, are all to her 
 Hallowed and glorified. The world is chanjj^ed. 
 She hath a resurrection unto God, 
 "While in the flesh, before the final one. 
 And is with God. Her state shall never fail. 
 Even the molten granite which hath split 
 IMountains, and lieth now like curdled blood 
 In marble veins, shall flow again when comes 
 The heat which is to end all ; when the air 
 Is as a ravening fire, and what at first 
 Produced, at last consumeth ; but the soul 
 Redeemed is dear to God as his own throne, 
 And shall no sooner perish. Hearken, man I 
 "Wilt thou distrust God ? 
 
 Festus. God I ne'er distrust. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Perchance his dooms perplex thee ; thou 
 wouldst know 
 "Whj this, why that, were ta'en. If that, by charm 
 Of world-lore and all mysteries abstruse. 
 Art's secular sanctities and accomplishments, 
 Would have divert thy heart, thy life absorbed 
 As fain she would, to her own ends : if this, 
 Of sway ambitious, had foreurged the arm 
 Of empire, ere among men's minds the need 
 And good of universal peace became 
 Compeer, in thine, of conpcience purified 
 And life sublimed and hallowed ; had life's friend, 
 Though cordial and sincere, infected thine 
 "With his soul's selfish purports, love of power, 
 "Wealth, knowledge, state and rule for any good 
 Narrower than all thy kind's ; the stars had stopped 
 Their sacred march. All fates are in God's hand ; 
 And whether by their own presumption, pride, 
 Passion or ignorance, this or that one cease, 
 Perish, man knows not, angel knows not. All 
 Know it is just. Doubt thou on doubt no more. 
 Prepare then for the power and lot most high 
 Whereto the Lord hath called thee. He hath heard 
 The prayers thou hast now besought him with, heart-strained, 
 And bids me tell thee, shrink not, doubt not. He 
 Will comfort and uphold thee at the end. 
 
 Festus. Thou art mine angel guard I I recognize, 
 \n every holy feature of thy face. 
 The instigated thoughts of heaven which oft 
 In my world wanderings blessed me ; in thy touch. 
 The virtuous resolution ; in thy voice. 
 The warning and foreknowledge unexplained, 
 
666 FE8TU8, 
 
 Not unesteemed, prompting- to do or shun ; 
 And in thy smile joy total and supreme. 
 
 Guardian Angel. But death's eternal secret all must hear, 
 
 Festus. I fear, I fear this miracle of death 
 Is something terrible. 
 
 G-UARDiAN Angel. Where faith were not 
 In God's all-moulding hand, such fear were well. 
 As when aerial voyager — in car 
 Strung pensile 'neath some huge and gaseous glcbo, 
 That but by loftier levity attains 
 Life's limit, upwards eyes the Infinite, 
 Formless and vast as deity ; then, while throu2:h 
 His mind, himself a wind-steered atom — pass 
 Inexplicable thoughts and doubts sublime, 
 And troublous forecast of his travel's end, 
 Pores, wistful, downwards on the sea of clouds, 
 Peaked far below his feet in billowy hills, 
 Sea over sea, whose vaporous baptism he 
 Must plunge through, ere he sets where fortune lists, 
 Or tyrant gusts decree ; so 'twixt all truth 
 And death, the uncertain soul, sustained alone 
 By its own insubstantive power, less free 
 Than mutable, sees no safety in its course, 
 Nor fixed goal afar. But, soul-assured, 
 Kests on the rock-foundations of God's word ; 
 Nor brooks the awful liberty to doubt. 
 
 Festus. My soul feels firmer ; fitter for the end, 
 Too soon, come when it will. But while life lastj 
 This holy mystery of incertitude, 
 La wed of God, doubtless, to some good, rules all. 
 As when from some broad bluff where rival wiuds, 
 Hold haughty revelry, by night we see 
 The lurid lights of a huge city lie 
 Below, like an abyss of fallen stars, 
 Marked dully from those heavenly ones, and feel 
 The storm and stress of transit, though subdued, 
 And as with deadened thunder, still the ear. 
 More than day's roar and the tempestuous tides 
 Of social strife : so, calling back our years. 
 We note where youth's bright aspirations soar 
 O'er life's dim actions ; how, too, as we age. 
 Life's recollections more than present deeds 
 Or hopes, mind's courts judicial crowd ; while thcrc^ 
 Still, by her balance, sits everlasting doubt 
 Poising and pondering all things. But to God, 
 Go angel, and declare that I repent 
 Of all misdeeds ; that but for his own grace 
 I should repent of my whole life ; that on 
 That grace, which now hath sanctified the whole, 
 I trust for all the rest of it, and then 
 For ever ; that I am prepared to act 
 And suffer as he bids, and in all things 
 
FE8TUS. 667 
 
 To do his will rejoicing. 
 
 GuAKDiAN Angel. It is done. 
 
 Festus. Oh ! I repent me of a thousand sins, 
 In number as the breaths which I have breathed. 
 Am I forgiven ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. Child of God, thou art. 
 It is God prompts, inspires, and answers prayer ; 
 Nought for sin, save repentance here, avails. 
 And none can truly worship but who have 
 The earnest of their glory from on high, 
 God's nature in them. It is the love of God 
 The extatic sense of oneness with all things, 
 And special worship towards himself that thrills 
 Through life's self-conscious chord, vibrant in him, 
 Harmonious with the universe, which makes 
 Our sole fit claim to being immortal ; that 
 Wanting nor willing, the world cannot worship. 
 And whether the lip speak, or in inspired 
 Silence, we clasp our hearts as a shut book 
 Of song unsung, the silence and the speech 
 Is each his ; and as coming from and going 
 To him, is worthy of him and his love. 
 Prayer is the spirit speaking truth to truth ; 
 The expiration of the thing inspired. 
 Above the battling rock-storm of this world 
 Lies heaven's great calm, through which as through a bell, 
 Tolleth the tongue of God eternally, 
 Calling to worship. Whoso hears that tongue 
 Worships. The spirit enters with the sound, 
 Preaching the one and universal word. 
 The God word, which is spirit, life, and light ; 
 The written word to one race, the imwrit 
 Revealment to the thousand peopled world. 
 The ear which hears is preattuned in heaven, 
 The eye which sees prevision hath ere birth. 
 But the just future shall to many give, 
 Gifts which the partial present doles to few ; 
 To all the glory of obeying God. 
 
 Festus. The knowledge of God is the wisdom of man — 
 This is the end of being, wisdom ; this 
 Of wisdom, action ; and of action, rest ; 
 And of rest, bliss ; that by experience sage 
 Of good and ill, the diametric powers 
 WTiich thwart the world, the thrice-born might di:ccm, 
 With the undeflected spirit pure from heaven, 
 That he who makes, unbuilding, saves the whole ; 
 In wisdom's holy spirit all renewed. 
 To know this, is to read the runes of old, 
 Wrought in the time-outlasting rock ; to see 
 Unblinded in the heart of light ; to feel 
 Keen through the soul, the same essential strain, 
 Which vivifies the clear and fire-eyed stars, 
 
668 FE8TU8, 
 
 Still harping" their serene and silvery spell 
 
 In the perpetual presence of the skies, 
 
 And of the world-cored calm, where silence sita 
 
 In secret lipcht all hidden ; this to know — 
 
 Bring-s down the fiery unction from on high, 
 
 Chrism spiritual of heaven's eternal sun, 
 
 Which hallows and ordains the regnant soul ; 
 
 Transmutes the splendid fluid of the frame 
 
 Into a fountain of divine delight, 
 
 And renovative nature ; — shows us earth, 
 
 One with the great galactic line of life 
 
 Which parts the hemispheral palm of heaven ; 
 
 This with all spheres of being makes concord 
 
 As at the first creation, in that peace, 
 
 Earth's hope, heaven's joy, the choice of the elect. 
 
 Life's grace, G-od's blessing. And as time's vesper hymn 
 
 The starry matins of eternity 
 
 Precedes, and dawn of being in the new heavens, 
 
 To know this, is to know we shall depart 
 
 Into the storm-surrounding calm on high, 
 
 The sacred cirque, the all-central infinite. 
 
 Of that self -blessedness wherein abides 
 
 Our God, all kind, all loving, all beloved ; — 
 
 To feel life one great ritual, and its laws. 
 
 Writ in the vital rubric of the blood. 
 
 Flow in obedience, and flow out command, 
 
 In sea-like circulation ; and be here 
 
 Accepted as a gift by him who gives 
 
 An empire as an alms, nor counts it aught, 
 
 So long as all his creatures joy in him, 
 
 The great Eejoicer of the universe, 
 
 Whom all the boundless spheres of being bless. 
 
 Angel. I go. Thy God is with thee. We shall meet 
 Ere long, no more to part. 
 
 Festus. Hear, angel-guard I 
 
 Hie thee to heaven, and say in man's behalf, 
 Perfect as creatural limits will let be, 
 All aptnesses of heaven and earth complete, 
 All being's best aims accomplished, God's and man's, 
 Truth, union, peace, society's triple crown 
 Secured, 'twere well, ere fall befal, earth cease. _ 
 I have chosen ; and all the ambitious hopes of life. 
 Proud schemes of power prolonged ; huge length of days j 
 And all that secret wisdom toiled to achieve 
 One hour shall wreck. 
 
 GUAEDIAN Angel. It is best for all. Farewell 1 
 
 Festus. It is sweet to feel we are encircled here, 
 By breath of angels as the stars by heaven j 
 And the soul's own relations, all divine, 
 As kind as even those of blood ; and thus, 
 While friends and kin, like Saturn's double rings, 
 Cheer us along our orbit, we mav feel 
 
FE8TU8. 6C9 
 
 We are not lone in life, but tliat earth's part 
 
 Of heaven and all thinprs. Left now lonely here, 
 
 Like a pray gaunt menhir by the all-wasting sea, 
 
 The solitude impersonate, nature's ebb 
 
 Surviewing-, let me my life o'erlook. I see, 
 
 Not inconspicuous, hence : an islet fair 
 
 Fertile ; with waste spots ; washed by death's wide main. 
 
 All streams of life emotional gulphing ; skyed 
 
 By boundless thought ; and, albeit sunned by faith, 
 
 And heavenly love, sin-clouded ; passion swept 
 
 As though the nest of storms ; ribbed through by chains 
 
 Of mountain acts ; immoveable shackles these ; 
 
 No subtlest sophist can dislink ; no priest 
 
 Pretentious loose ; no angel bid fall off. 
 
 Acts are for ever. Thoughts, like dreamclouds, come 
 
 Unbidden, and go ; nay, oft 'neath reason's ray 
 
 Evaporate, cease, unknown to the heart or God. 
 
 But deeds die not ; though trodden below the ground 
 
 They seed for ever. Yet the coming clears ; 
 
 The chaos of uncertainties, the storm-fires 
 
 Of thought-search, feeling, I have passed through, henceforth 
 
 By force of fate foregone, though scarcely now, 
 
 Shadows to me, of truth, life sure— no more 
 
 Vex ; nor, dragged captive, groan I, where'er doubt 
 
 Skims in his fugitive tents, pitched here, pitched there j 
 
 But the well-built walls of castled certainty 
 
 Me, voluntary, detain, faith's guest, faith's friend 
 
 Undauntable, dreadless of all siege ; nor awed 
 
 Of the twinned strife, waged ere the birth of things, 
 
 Of freedom against fate, mere liberty. 
 
 The inferior marking ; spirit more high, the stress 
 
 Of virtue's laws, and reason's despotry ; 
 
 Until through every range is reached the soul 
 
 In whose great essence fate with freedom ones. 
 
 Called by his sovereign mandate thus to reign 
 
 In earth and death beyond, my spirit, as air 
 
 No arrow wounds, passive to every best 
 
 The All-sire sends forth, abides. Are God's ways now 
 
 Less marvellous than of old, with men ? Lacks one 
 
 Due witness in his own considerate heart, 
 
 Of impulse, guidance, warning, sway divine ? 
 
 All things controlling to concerted ends 
 
 Material or of mind ? Through what dim paths. 
 
 Unconscious seemingly of all approach 
 
 Truthwards, I have trode ; how secret wisdom's ways j 
 
 And through what mazy discipline at last, 
 
 In thought's free centre summed and ended, I 
 
 Soul perfected am come. How things despised 
 
 Once ignorantly, have since in life's complete, 
 
 But graduated evolvement, gained just power. 
 
 True trust and dignity. How the spirit, cleared 
 
 From every doubt, — the bla ck o'erbelted clouds 
 
670 FE8TU8, 
 
 Of mystery rounding the orbed world, is now 
 
 To faith, pure simple life, and conscious joy 
 
 Of being with deity concentrate, returned. 
 
 See love and knowledge, superficial tests, 
 
 Though once deemed satisfying, now proved but meana 
 
 Soul perfective for heavenlier ends. Command, 
 
 Life's crowning proof I feel, if or towards self, 
 
 Or man's good bent. And this now nerves me, I 
 
 Obedient though reluctant, armed for fight, 
 
 By faithful love, wisdom divine, and meek 
 
 Philosophy, whose broad and rational fan, 
 
 All doctrine winnowing, windlike leaves truth sole. 
 
 The vital seed of science ; with such food 
 
 Celestial, the sense quickening that nought bars 
 
 Man's conscience from commune divine, and heaven's 
 
 Own inspiration ; she, life's guard and guide. 
 
 From creeds opposed, like verities draws ; annuls 
 
 All rancour ; mediatizes the proud points 
 
 Of old and worldwide worships, and declares. 
 
 As every faith begins and ends in God, 
 
 The virtual spirit of all, love ; earth-life, rite 
 
 Initiative to life divine. Man's heart. 
 
 So bettered in its aims shall yet with all 
 
 In heaven beat tunably. Pursuits, desires, 
 
 Affections, passions which once specious made 
 
 Existence and experience seeming sage. 
 
 Paled 'fore death's breathless stride shall cease, and lenva 
 
 Kapt union only with the eternal mind 
 
 And concourse with its ends. For, once approved 
 
 The illusoriness of things, the barrenness 
 
 Of knowledge, and occupation ; the unworth 
 
 Life's solid-seeming bubble infilms, the cares, 
 
 The needs which here disfigure time, the wrongs 
 
 Society most in virtue's name enacts, 
 
 Maugre the prime decrees staunch conscience owns 
 
 Heaven sown, innate ; man spiritually framed 
 
 Upon the scale of gods, with broods of stars 
 
 Coaeval, vast in years, perfectible even 
 
 To the mid point where mixed humanity blends 
 
 With pure divinity and parental, views. 
 
 In God's unbounded and immediate being, 
 
 All secondary existence reunite ; 
 
 By beauty of purity drawn ; by holiness 
 
 Of thought and godliest love of love supreme ; 
 
 All hopes amassed, all ends concentrate there. 
 
 To know the truth of God, by none without 
 
 His special love known ; in accord to act 
 
 With sanctified intelligences that rule. 
 
 Each, as the finger of God, a world ; to feel 
 
 Heart and mind one, with all we rule or serve ; 
 
 Mind, everywhere like-motived, passioned ; ours 
 
 Toned all to endure, but hopeful of things best, 
 
FE8TUB, 671 
 
 As ultimately and only bound to be : 
 
 To know each new conception gained of God's 
 
 All blessing nature, proof of commune pure 
 
 With deity, and of his divine embrace ; 
 
 Makes the round good I have longed for, and by grace 
 
 God, now, such capabilities perfected, grants. 
 
 (Dome then, the end at once. Nay, wherefore not ? 
 
 Content with recognition just from spirits 
 
 Of orders highest, selectest round me, — even 
 
 As when Jove's prosperous star, upclimbing slow 
 
 Behind some hill-based city, obscured at first 
 
 By urban exhalations, and confused 
 
 With earthlier luminaries, draws soon, serene 
 
 Towards the upper rooms of space, and the bays bri(jglng, 
 
 And flat wide wastes of wet and weedy sand ; 
 
 With beamy path, shows plainly planet wise, 
 
 Through grandeur of patience, and the ascent to heiglita 
 
 More and more pure continually, by hosts 
 
 Fraternal, in bright conclave welcomed, there 
 
 With them heaven's arch to ti-ead, and the rare blue air 
 
 Respire, of immortality, let my soul. 
 
 By fate and faith empowered all eminence here 
 
 To o'erpass ; misjudgment's fog cleared, and rank mists 
 
 Of slander : passion's cloud-scud, and all fires 
 
 Fatuous or vaporous, ignorant praise ill rates 
 
 As lights perennial, henceforth of this high end 
 
 Assured, and state celestial, life's last aim 
 
 And holiest duty, God to obey, fulfil. 
 
 The world's precipitate opposition changed 
 
 To tolerant acquiescence, man's whole strength 
 
 May still need marshalling 'gainst destruction's ranks j 
 
 Should these contest the world-realm yet, or those 
 
 Their Lord's disposal of time's ultimate gifts 
 
 Defy, and power's supreme arrangements. Hence 
 
 I live but in the future ; earth in me 
 
 Breathes only, and in my choice ; choice, heaven-approved 
 
 Too long perhaps withdrawn, too glad to escape 
 
 Once the o'ermastering world, my solitude, 
 
 Myself, it is now for me to quit, and life's 
 
 Opposing interests, influences, contemned, 
 
 Work out for all a freer, worthier fate. 
 
 As one on coast half cave, half crag, but caught 
 
 By tempest, savage breast-room finds, and peace, 
 
 In the sudden silence of a rocky rift, 
 
 Nought visible thence but storm of foam-flakes floating 
 
 Before its mouth like wild words, from white lips 
 
 Wrung reckless, desperate tossed ; save roar of sea 
 
 Kought heard, and his own, his hurried breathing ; — awed 
 
 By the sensible stillness round him of all else, 
 
 And vague unreasoning fears lest thunders thrice 
 
 B^verberant smote, should casually unloose 
 
 The natural vault- work o'er his head, and make 
 
672 FE8TU8. 
 
 Safer to face, without, the hurricane drift 
 
 Rock shivering', than abide in that grim cell 
 
 Its calm, so deathful possibly ; tides the while 
 
 Mounting, night falling, his now dread retreat 
 
 By lightning searched, he at last from his niche burst forth, 
 
 Braves resolute, all ; so I, long periods passed, 
 
 Of dolorous exile and seclusion, seek 
 
 Through the tempestuous clash of human wills, 
 
 And general hate, save of the good and wise. 
 
 Mightier than others, or themselves deem, earth's, 
 
 Mine own, and man's convergent destinies. 
 
 XLIV. 
 
 Union of God with nature, man their son 
 
 Hymns ; and Heaven thanking for all earthly good 
 
 Perfected in humanity, with his bride 
 
 Sibylhne, he, as prophet bards of old, 
 
 Their mom and noontide service, chants, alteme 
 
 Earth's evensong, earth's vespers, night at hand. 
 
 Hope of the wise and good through time, the world 
 
 Shown bettered, but by virtue's noblest plans 
 
 Thought out of genius, and through patient aid 
 
 Of brethren, saintliest lovers of their kind, 
 
 So patent made, the holy and sage at last. 
 
 For their host aims and worthiest deeds dare hope 
 
 God's sanction. StUl, let nature grieve, as wont ; 
 
 Man, woman, angel weep earth's coming end ; 
 
 End that so chosen shall show earth's final race 
 
 Still parted; these self- ranged to serve God's will ; 
 
 These contrary, their own ends ; fate still, by death 
 
 Not, as ill deemed, unalterable. God just, 
 
 God kind, accepts all penitence, at all times. 
 
 Garden Terrace, hy the Sea ; Cliff and Wood near ; Town 
 
 Festus and Claea. 
 
 Febtus. O days of heaven and earth, when all things seem 
 Perfection, issuant from some central soul 
 Whose life all love, all happiness, transfused 
 Through being we share, and in humane degree 
 Enjoy, nay more enhance ; for man's delight 
 In virtue and holy thought redounds to God's. 
 And as heaven's calm immense, intense, the wind 
 Ceaselessly operative pervades, and so 
 Faintly to us, God's mode of being conveys 
 And action spiritual, we too the more 
 J^y deed of mind we range the world, and rise 
 
FE8TU8. 673 
 
 To thought serene celestial, and devote 
 
 Our spirits to inmost commune with his works ; 
 
 In him our source confessed, our base in them ; 
 
 Knowing the duties, destinies of souls , 
 
 Self-charg-ed their wellbeing to promote, and train 
 
 The immortal up towards deity, so far 
 
 Do we God's work, and bear the stamp divine 
 
 Of perf ectness, progression. To perceive 
 
 Our oneness with the universe, and feel 
 
 The joyous mystery which each special life 
 
 Binds to the conscious infinite immasked 
 
 In its own creations, brings the intuitive soul 
 
 Such fine delight as simple gods of old 
 
 Pleased cheaply, felt, who budged unseen the streets 
 
 Of cities dedicate ; and beside some shrine 
 
 Hearkening their names invoked, and scenting myrrh 
 
 Or nard, bewrayed their presence with a smile, 
 
 Men took for playful lightnings, such as cast 
 
 From Pallas' filial hand gleam wide, — but home 
 
 Returned, find every prayer they had prayed fulfilled. 
 
 The soul self satisfied of being which knows 
 
 The absolute spirit and infinite ; on whose head 
 
 Their holy hands the ages have imposed, 
 
 Teeming with sevenfold boons ; who through himseL! 
 
 Feels flow the vital and invisible force 
 
 Which to its will compels all, but through all 
 
 Makes harmony of its most tyrannous laws, 
 
 Subjection grateful ; even in wild extremes, 
 
 Beauty inevitable ; and, — though for a time 
 
 III, like some arrogant cloud that blurs the sun, 
 
 Through the wide welkin riot, at last good 
 
 Predominant o'er all evil, in man's heart 
 
 Mixed, as corruption serves to engender life 
 
 For better ends, he, like flower sweets to the sun 
 
 Light erst instilled, drawn G-odwards, in whom souls 
 
 Forelive first as in cause pretemporal, rests 
 
 From toilful apprehension of the whole, 
 
 In spirit sabbatic ; and the heavens and earth, 
 
 And various nature's sympathetic life 
 
 Each in their generations, hails divine. 
 
 Somewhat to feel in common with all life 
 
 Human, instinctive, vegetive, to trace 
 
 One vital force through life, leaf, light ; the vast 
 
 Of nature's powers and products, or her fair 
 
 And delicate outgrowths ; river, mountain, main, 
 
 Forest or floweret, g^ves the spirit access 
 
 To God a thousand ways ; and so secures 
 
 His favourable acceptance as we make 
 
 Mention within our minds of all his good. 
 
 On wild and heathery turf to bask, or cool 
 
 Green sod of meads, or bloomy lawn where rose. 
 
 Laurel and lily cluster, loam-bom scents 
 
674 FE8TU8. 
 
 With flowery incense mingling ; to recline 
 
 Dreamy and passive to all influences 
 
 Cloudlet and sun thrill tlirough the sensitive breast, 
 
 By rivulets elm o'erarched, and lulling lapse 
 
 Of rippling wavelets glittering, and the oft 
 
 Redimpled eddy slowly concurrent ; stretched 
 
 'Neath blos'my trees, gaze through their silvery snow, 
 
 On air's blue heights inviolable ; to scale 
 
 Perilously some sheer browed cliff, that day's 
 
 Salvation thenceforth ne'er forgot, or cling, 
 
 Only not vanquished by the vindictive blast, 
 
 Prone to the craggy nape of giant peak. 
 
 Whence the rapt eye may crowd into its ball 
 
 A visioned kingdom ; forth to steal at eve, 
 
 Grave tryst to keep with tutelar stars, and trace 
 
 Their prosperous walk through night ; or mark them rise 
 
 Till, with their fair reflection 'midst the lake. 
 
 They meet in tremulous joy ; cave-hidden to watch 
 
 The moonlit cataract, sheeted like a ghost, 
 
 Muttering in awful monotone its one 
 
 Intelligible word of life ; to list 
 
 Far off, the torrent's inarticulate roar 
 
 Blend with the storm- wind through the wood, till both 
 
 In those inaudible harmonies silence copes, 
 
 Die ; to contest the strength of confluent streams ; 
 
 The rushing rain to face, heaven's holy rite 
 
 Of sprinkling, oft to priest at nature's shrine 
 
 Serving, prelustrant ; to imbreast the gale 
 
 Healthful, reanimative, the breath divine 
 
 Of the great world spirit, that where he will, 
 
 Blowing with aery baptism reimpregns 
 
 With new life principles man's sacred frame ; 
 
 Desert and savage shore to roam, all thought 
 
 Feeling, strung tense by soleness, and the sense 
 
 Of high equality with aught create ; 
 
 Star-like, to haunt wastes spatial, where alone 
 
 Mid clear aired wilds the sunfires purify 
 
 And founts rock smitten of God, the spirit sincere, 
 
 Insensible of limits, may grow to feel 
 
 Like broad simplicity ; such delights may know 
 
 Of sun, sea, hill, and bleak and wind-bleached wasto, 
 
 And silence superhuman of the skies, 
 
 Apt to wise solitude as the drumming world 
 
 Conceits not of, nor dreams, may learn to love 
 
 Of very lonesomeness the elements. 
 
 Our kingly kin tetrarchal, as the powers 
 
 That start all shapes, and close ; uniting thus 
 
 Things sensible and things animate in one realm. 
 
 Our own heart's royalty ; — thus aye to live 
 
 Part absolute of the world's essential cause, 
 
 Free, arbitrary ; creative of all truth 
 
 Conviction, mental impress ; in oneself 
 
FE8TU8, 67S 
 
 ICnjoyer of the timverse, co-mate 
 
 With nature's eldest dignities, self ordained, 
 
 Self consecrate, enthroned, is to regain 
 
 Our birthright from us filched by the false world, 
 
 Irreverent, mean ; our heart to re-immerse 
 
 In being's primal font ; our covenant faith 
 
 With nature reaflarm, and so accept 
 
 Absolvence by the eternal spirit from life's 
 
 Vain toils and deadening trivialties ; renew 
 
 Our soul's first sacrament, and take in God 
 
 With mindful extasie to ourselves, and sense 
 
 Of the world-bosoming deity, who all 
 
 By reason made, in love sustains, and, just 
 
 In judgment, all will bless ; 'tis to conceive 
 
 By force of vital sympathies the whole : 
 
 And be, and act through all ; it is to feel 
 
 Our spirits collateral flow with time's broad flood. 
 
 Even as our heart's blood coursing aye, like pulsetl 
 
 With earth's unhesitant streams ; 'tis tx) possess 
 
 Souls self adjusted to the whole round of things, 
 
 The central life, the infinite. Man alone, 
 
 Conscious alike of natui-e and of God, 
 
 Brings both into communion ; sanctifies 
 
 With sympathy the naked elements ; 
 
 And — like the mediator he is, inspires, 
 
 Appreciative of all his blessings here, 
 
 That joy in God God's works enkindle in him. 
 
 When thus by wisdom's clearsight he first views, 
 
 With eye grown practised to the infinite. 
 
 Whether on mount, mid desert, or withdrawn! 
 
 In chambered loneliness and studious calm. 
 
 Those inner spheres wherein dwell goodness, truth ; 
 
 Peace, love, the inborn sense of God ; and knows 
 
 That God subsists in virtue and holiness, 
 
 As in material forms the essential force 
 
 Impalpable, yet there, — which underlies 
 
 The common properties of things ; 'neath all 
 
 Defect perfection ; soul-spheres these that rule. 
 
 And mould this volatile world whose shows, that hour 
 
 Lift themselves lightly oflE mistlike, we find 
 
 Instamped through being's universal self. 
 
 Proof of our prime conception there ; and here, 
 
 To such as love humanity, divine 
 
 Adoption ; and, life's loftiest end to come, 
 
 A spirit regenerate, glorified, in full 
 
 Concord with God and nature. Enter thou 
 
 Therefore, into thyself ; be at one with God. 
 
 Thus being, we trueUest live. To will what's just ; 
 
 To love what's pure ; to seek man's peace as God's ; 
 
 And aid his worthier aims ; to feed on truths 
 
 Soul-liberating, supreme ; our daily choice 
 
 Being such to assimilate, and to all commend 
 
 I9 
 
'678 FItiSTUS. 
 
 As gracious, saving, best, makes us in pai-t 
 
 Celestial, and in ours inhearts the faith 
 
 Of everlasting being. Prophetic man 
 
 Who can f oreset the stars their stations ; winds 
 
 Weigh ; and his own mind's virtues deify, 
 
 A larger, freer, happier, holier life 
 
 Shall lead than all the painful pietism 
 
 Of peddling sects could compass. God's great dower 
 
 To the accepted spirit of life eteme, 
 
 Seems in excess no more when those he loves 
 
 He with the fulness of perfection crowns. 
 
 The gift of his own nature ; through the soul's 
 
 System so working that it is he who us 
 
 Capacitates to enjoy, and is himself 
 
 The enjoyment he confers ; feast, host, guest, grace 
 
 And blessing ; teaching that, with us, to strive 
 
 For heaven is heaven ; to love God is to be, 
 
 Ourselves, divine. For as yon space spanning bow, 
 
 The miracle of a moment, which adorns 
 
 And seems all things to comprehend, earth, sea 
 
 And firmament made its debtors, proud to pay 
 
 Their subsidy of admiring joy, its end 
 
 Achieved, God's truth to certify, in the skies* 
 
 Boundless and formless unity disappears ; 
 
 So, arched an instant on the eternal disk 
 
 Of life divine, man's soul, — embracing here 
 
 This world-frame in itself, each, but for heaven, 
 
 Baseless, incredible, — ceasing gradual, grows 
 
 With its object one ; this death-conditioned life, 
 
 These vari-coloured pomps of transient time, 
 
 These elements of existence dropped, whose end 
 
 Is as was their beginning ; and assumed 
 
 In plenitude of deity, and the immense 
 
 Seclusion of his essence, reattains 
 
 Identity with being still ours, once all. 
 
 Clara. How deeply doubly dear are beauties seen 
 Never enough, but now untimely lost. 
 
 Festus. It is this o'erglooms, o'erwhelms me. Life's best aims, 
 Seclusion's studious joys, conceptive mind. 
 Peopling the void with many a voice and shape 
 Of truth impersonate, heeding not alone 
 This day- wave on whose feathering ridge we ride, 
 But the wild world of billows bound to break 
 Yet on time's patient shore ; home's daily dues ; 
 The converse spoken or writ of a choice friend ; 
 Words winnowed well of sages of the light, 
 Garnered in books, the elect of ages, crowned 
 By man's depurate judgment, have so long 
 Consoled me, so long made, still to me makcj 
 With the delightful talk of one I love, 
 Society, and in rich exchange supplied. 
 For the tumultuous trifling of the times, 
 
FESTU8. 677 
 
 And their puffed out inanities, a retreat 
 
 Complacent, where the soul, of wisdom's charms 
 
 Fired, may the shades of kingly sages guest, 
 
 Earth's silver-shielded band of minds immortal, 
 
 The livelong day, — listing them sadly enlarge 
 
 On virtue and the good most high of life ; 
 
 The passionless perfection of our race ; 
 
 On being and becoming, — the eteme 
 
 Entangled in the temporal, — reason, truth 
 
 Essential, and divine fate ; — or, though fixed, 
 
 "WTiere fancy, palmer- wise, at will, may roam 
 
 The faery fields of fiction and romance, 
 
 Alive with princely knights, queens, giants, churls ; 
 
 Enchantresses steel castled, whose wan smiles 
 
 Win realms, but too soon, at a breath, dissolved :— 
 
 Or isles of song Elysian, trode by muse 
 
 Rose crowned, new ditties lilting day by day ; — 
 
 That I, thus privileged, dare not deem me all 
 
 Unblessed, nor my Lord chide for good desired, 
 
 Withholden ; rather, even as now, on life 
 
 Passed, calmly ruminant, on the unmeasured tracts 
 
 Of world-lore reaped ; and death deriding truths, 
 
 Heaven-planted in man's soul, wrung by brave hand 
 
 Guided of angels, from the stifling clutch 
 
 Of unveracious faiths, 'tween God and man 
 
 Intrusive, but amended, sanctioned now 
 
 By the hallowing spirit, his disentangling hand 
 
 All life's knots smoothening, recognize ; nay, him 
 
 More heartf uUy revere, who the free boon 
 
 Of everlasting union, sharing here 
 
 With whom he would, in arbitrary delight. 
 
 All lesser gifts discards, with one more grand 
 
 His favourites to consumm. 
 
 Claba. Hours such as these 
 
 To me. time's worthiest seem ; yes, when we die, 
 Memory will bless those moments most in life 
 We passed in worship, drinking in the breath 
 Of the Great Spirit, who with his presence fills 
 Impalpably, the whole ; but of whom the wise 
 Only aware, a life co-apt, within 
 His definite governance, live. Oh, I have felt 
 At such times as my heart had wings ; nay, what 
 Lacked, that we took not flight at once, for heaven ? 
 
 Festus. To know all these, life's purest, loftiest joys, 
 Commensurate even with mind, death-doomed ; to feel 
 Earth hourly fail, might sadden us, — gloried not 
 Faith more in God's decree than man's desire. 
 
 Clara. Yon sun, whose sea-set here, to happier globes 
 Bodes light-birth ; yon faint crescent, in the sky 
 Airily hovering, like to a spirit scarce 'scaped 
 From death-pyres still aglow ; yon snow-piled peaks 
 Clouds pearly o'erfilm ; all things invito, as though 
 
678 FE8TU8. 
 
 On his own one day — paled half of sanctity, 
 
 Of joy half — God had smiled ; to round with thought 
 
 Divine and meditative, on him who made. 
 
 Than that, nought fitter, nor more blessed, though earth 
 
 And we at the next breath, ceased. Having all we would, 
 
 Even as in heaven, free commune. Lord 1 with thee, 
 
 To whom all life instinctive, tree and flower, 
 
 Breathe, thankful for their being, praise ; and hill. 
 
 River and grove, and high towered town, remote 
 
 Their universal hymn attune, let us 
 
 Our gratulant souls unite with nature's ; we 
 
 As some their life-loved union, ours with God, 
 
 Thus, praiseful consecrating. 
 
 Festcjs. What need? As when 
 
 Midst summer's still noon we, cliff-chaired, view earth, 
 And sea, land-locked, lost in each other's arms, 
 Union ineffable ; so of perfected souls, 
 One with the natural deity they adore ; 
 God hears the unworded worship. Think on him. 
 
 Claea. Nature is free-tongued. All things need their word. 
 Yon clouds, these flowerets which perfume our feet, 
 In masses golden and azure and aU. hues. 
 In splendour with each other vieing, to me, 
 Day's dewy footsteps nightwards seem to grace 
 With notes of venerant praise. Blend we with theirs, 
 While those yet poise their delicate pinions, these 
 Their incense freelier pour, earth's vesper hymn 1 
 
 Festus. Nay then, me fellow celebrant with thyself 
 Hold, priestess : for, nor shrine high roofed, with arch 
 Marmoreal, nor orbicular dome, need we ; 
 Nor interpleading choir our spirits to guide 
 Godwards ; between the immaculate heavens and us 
 No form its shadow casts. Soul- worship pure 
 Leaps at one infinite bound from prostrate hearts 
 Into God's bosom, where transmute it bides, 
 And with the eternal ones. Not these alone ; 
 All things, God, by thee made, are to thee 
 Holy, and with true praisefulness inspired ; 
 Nature and all her powers, thy servitors, 
 Our friends and fellow-worshippers : and man, 
 Arch-priest of earth, most bounden thee to adore. 
 Thou, O great sun, whose life eliciting ray 
 But shadoweth forth his greater grace, who showers 
 On spiritual and natural world alike 
 His inexhaustless good : sun-kindler, him, 
 Sun-quencher, praise thou and adore, who thee 
 Fixed in full heaven his mighty miniature ; 
 Him, infinite centre, unseen, from whose force 
 Original, radiate all things, and to whom, 
 Inly illumining every soul of life, 
 Parental, they relapse ; even as thy beams. 
 Though world-soiled thine all brightening breast regain 
 
FESTU8. 679 
 
 Sun, magnify thy maker ! 
 
 Claba, Moon, whose gleam 
 
 Eeflective, types the Grod-light, wherewith shines 
 Man's soul, lead thou, through each sabbatic change 
 That errant essence to One invariable ; 
 And, as some pilgrim maid, from shrine to shrine 
 Circling, insatiate of all sanctities. 
 Her resolute soul to expand with fullest faith, 
 And holiest memories ; teach us, light of night, 
 By thy superb procession through yon skies, 
 Mansioned with many a world of bliss, to enlarge 
 Our spirits with love of God, nor know of wane, 
 Save in the world's attraction ; so best serving 
 Our Lord and thine. 
 
 Festus. Twin spheres, perpetual rest 
 
 This showing, pauseless motion that, between 
 Whose fires, for purifying, the storied day. 
 The night, earth's star tipped shadow pass, and space. 
 World spangled, 'neath whose sensible folds, his garb, 
 The formless spirit within we trace ; your Lord 
 Attest, the eternal reason of the whole ; 
 Hidden in himself, self manif estive cause ; 
 Former of forms ; who, source and sum of life, 
 Bade being be ; and, from his boundless deeps 
 Of reason, drew law primitive and supreme. 
 Ye orbs, self moved, which, rounding with our own, 
 The infinite within, without, yourselves 
 Find nought but God, oh, shout aloud your proofs. 
 All heavens may hear ; and even the nebulous star, 
 Of pale, irresolute sheen, with fearful joy 
 Vibrant, conclude God is, our Lord, our Sire ; 
 Kot chaos, chance, nor matter ; law inert. 
 Unconscious ; nor yourselves, contingent, weak. 
 Who might have been, as now, or not have been. 
 Chance hurled him prostrate in the dust when asked 
 The crucial question ; chaos cowled his head 
 In twice redoubled darkness, witting nought ; 
 Mute matter heard not ; no 1 it was mind most skilled 
 All made by one onmific word ; all named 
 His children ; laid on every head his hand. 
 Whose radiant impress shows there still ; and dowered 
 With natural life, second to nought save soul. 
 Wherefore, bright worlds, your parent spirit exalt ; 
 Leap 'mid your solar dance ; with awful mirth 
 Joy in yourselves and gladden in your God. 
 He through your space spread tome, of light and peace, 
 And fates more blessed than these, of rights divine 
 And heavenly royalties, his starry rede 
 To man predictive speaks, whose words are worlds. 
 
 Claea. Stars restful, who, day's dazzling veil withdrawn, 
 Heaven's sanctuary illume, your laws, powers, spheres, 
 Graduate, each gift of the variousness he sole 
 
680 FE8TU8, 
 
 Holds in perfective fulness, reason of thanks 
 
 Past numbering', him, through all life mundane, adore 
 
 Harmoniously. Time's tawdry pageants pass. 
 
 States, empires come — pause, vanish. O'er yon hills, 
 
 Your globed fires, in dread-fraught sameliness 
 
 Of time and place, rise punctual. Shall stars show 
 
 More than their founder, faithful ? 
 
 Festus. Hear, all orbs, 
 
 Moveless, or who, persistent in extremes. 
 Course fast and far the firmament, and, ours quit, 
 Warm ye full oft by alien hearths ; while proud 
 Of chaste and chartered liberties, your sire, 
 Source, force and end of every law by him 
 To creatures limited, he by all bonds unbound, 
 Above law, praise the Lawgiver ; who poured ye forth 
 As from an urn of life ; flooding with light 
 All space, but gave space, light, life, bound and scope ; 
 Order divine, connate with heaven ; and form, 
 First of all laws, whereby the immensurable, 
 To finite fitted, fills the organic whole : 
 Mirror material of substantive mind ; 
 For nothing finite, nought conceivable 
 By us, can of itself be, more than God, 
 Beyond thought, to aught else existence owe. 
 Effect pretemporal of eternal cause. 
 Heaven in thy highest reach, thy starriest depth, 
 Thy bosom's inmost infinite, sanctify. 
 With thy voluminous silence him all wise ; 
 Who, holding all perfections absolute 
 And necessary, as all conclusions time, 
 As space orbs, as earth nature's countless germs. 
 The great progressive power which prompts with life 
 Their self -renewing functions, and unseals 
 The flowing forces of this sensible sphere — 
 Aye tabernacleth in thee. 
 
 Claba. And thou, O earth, 
 
 Who movest in music, like a harper's hand, 
 "White among gleamy chords, thine elements. 
 Stringed fourfold, laud him with all sounds of joy ; 
 With joy august and dread, great mother world, 
 "WTiose veins within, the fire Promethean stolen 
 Truly of heaven, and him, who planned the plains 
 ^therial, streams from unbeginning time 
 To time unending ; cease not, earth, his praise. 
 Who in himself imbreasts both thee and heaven. 
 
 Festus. O heart of fire, which, central, towards our feet 
 Throbbest, through rock girders zone wide, and huge halls 
 Where stalactital mountains hang, and whence 
 Are fed the deep gorged volcanoes that erst scarred 
 With channelled flame-floods and hot torrent ore, 
 Earth's soft face, healing now ; material shape 
 First looming, which, uncurbed and uncompressed, 
 
FE8TU8» 681 
 
 fiwept'st o'er the naked void, a burning mist ; 
 Till, stiffened gradual, the constituent mass, 
 Once reek-like, severing into self-poised spheres, 
 In gravity rejoiced, space circling ; him 
 Greet as liege loyal Master, who, of old, 
 On the high mount of world enlightening law — 
 For law is love defined — toward those who brake 
 So soon the tabled stones of blessing, tamed down, 
 And tempered into intolerable blaze, 
 The eye glance of his wrath ; fire, praise thou God ; 
 Earliest of worldly rudiments, and last ; 
 Voracious even of death, though bodiless, 
 Though soulless. Retributive cause, him praise. 
 
 Olaea. Grey ocean, folding in thine arms our earth 
 Still shrinking tremulous from the booming shock 
 Of thy foam-crested legions, laud the arm 
 Which, forceful, hollowed tliine abysmal bed. 
 All not thine own, with other throned thieves — 
 Thou must yield up. What justice bids restore 
 In thy store count not. Neither quite despair. 
 The prayers of purity and of penitent sin 
 Like favourites be of God. He, righteous, reads, 
 As through a tear in nature's eye, thy deeps 
 Reluctant ; and just restitution claims 
 From thee, from all, before acceptance. Night 
 And morn, thy voice, or tolling to repose 
 I hear, or whispering out of sleep. To earth's 
 Tongue, and all elements, join then, Ocean, thine ; 
 Him equitable, only unsearchable, name. 
 
 Festus. Tides, that with tranquil transport woo the shore, 
 Or vehement rapture roused by passionate airs. 
 Clash, cymbalwise, your white hands. He is God 
 Who fashioned you, evoked you from the void 
 Impalpable of vapour, and with force 
 Mobile, as with resistless will endowed. 
 Spell over in every wave his words of love, 
 When first he taught you whence ye were ; and when, 
 Wearied with vast librations to and fro. 
 And sparklings infinite, twinkling time away, 
 Your deep breasts heave with long and dreamy swell, 
 Let his dread name, untongued, initiate sleep. 
 And hallow all your calm. 
 
 Claea. Him, ebb and flood, 
 
 Now heaped in billowy darkness, now ungloomed 
 By streamy globelets of liquescent flame. 
 Like light chaotic struggling for free life, 
 Worship in all your width ; who bade ye flow 
 From fountains elemental, and condensed, 
 In the cool concave of his spacious hand. 
 The world air limitless, wherein he breathed 
 All being into being, Laud your God. 
 
 Festus. "V^'inds, tireless wayfarei-s of air, like aged 
 
 z 3 
 
682 FE8TU8. 
 
 With the beginning, his all fatherly lips 
 
 Bless, that from dull vacuity woke ye, now 
 
 Laden with death tempestuous, but with wafts 
 
 Oftener of his world vivifying breath, 
 
 Who matter into movement touching, gave ye 
 
 To rove the earth as spirits space : his name 
 
 In secret sigh as lovers wont, therewith 
 
 All elements divinizing ; and while ye sweep 
 
 Earth in bland waves aerial, gales health-rife, 
 
 The white wheat winnowing for high granaries, 
 
 A life-whole benediction breathe. What less 
 
 Can creature its Creator give ? What more ? 
 
 Him whirlwinds, hurricanes, wild winged storms, confess, 
 
 Earthquakes, and powers pernicious ; that the breast 
 
 Of this fair orb have rent aforetime ; nor 
 
 This sole ; but once disrupting into space 
 
 Our midmost planet, shot, diffuse through void, 
 
 A shower of falling worlds ; just judgment j — praise 
 
 Destructive him, him recreative, who yet 
 
 Those shattered world-shards shall restore, conglobed 
 
 In innocent unity, and to happier life 
 
 Their intercursive tenants. Meteors, him. 
 
 And lightnings, laud with thunders thousandfold, 
 
 Who do his bidden bests, and justify 
 
 Grod's dealings, when beneath high bannered tent. 
 
 The feastful conqueror, thunder riven, down drops 
 
 Before his guests astound ; or, on his throne, 
 
 Struck by a falling star, loosed from God's hand, 
 
 The tyrant, curse incarnate, suddenly ends 
 
 In face of all the land he had outraged. Him, 
 
 Agents of wrath and angels of his ire, 
 
 Laud, who, too, slays with uncompassionate bolt 
 
 Shepherd and sheep blameless alike, in shade 
 
 Of weathering crag, death dreamed not of, nor ill ; 
 
 Praise him, nathless, that man's whole race may know 
 
 Submiss, prepared, the incomprehensible One ; 
 
 Who in himself all motives, means, and ends, 
 
 Compriseth, first and final cause of things. 
 
 Nor by necessity he, nor dubious choice 
 
 Of specious good, acts ; but the best wills, does, 
 
 As absolute viewed, now, relative or eterne. 
 
 Claea. Snow, with thy voiceless tongue, from either pole 
 To zenith, preach in godliest silence God ; 
 Who ice and frost, thy sterner brethren, armed 
 With glassy key to lock earth's life warm veins ; 
 Praise him reanimative. Thy glistening down, 
 Thy blossoming starlets, thy crystalline flowers, 
 White as the wing of angel waved in heaven 
 Only, shed thankful. God exalts the pure. 
 On peaks sky peering, and earth's orbed brow 
 Upturned as in God's ai-ms, thy Lord adore. 
 
 Festus. Night's dazzling dancers, tall-speared, which invade 
 
FE8TV8, 683 
 
 Air northward, with explosive rays, the stars* 
 Pale armies routing breathless, and sure mom 
 Confounding' with false outbursts ; ominous once 
 Of imminent battle strife, fear's restless ears 
 Deafening with clash imaginary of arms ; 
 With all your fiery tongues, lambent of heaven, 
 Peal forth to God your resonant thanks, that ye. 
 Mere militant maskers known, men now your play 
 With curious questings mark, and cheerful awe ; 
 For knowledge hath undreaded ye ; no more 
 Prefigurative of war. Haste, days of peace, 
 Humanity's perfection, peace ; our path 
 Convergent with divinity, there ; oh, haste. 
 Man shall be one in spirit as God is one. 
 Our God is Lord of peace. 
 
 Claea. Breathe, glittering bow, 
 
 All hued, ere burst, as though from beauty o'ertense. 
 Thy brief, bright life throughout, one solemn thought ; 
 God's oath, how thankworthy ; the passed passed by ; 
 Which, sparing earth, thee special witness hight, 
 Man's heart to reassure 'gainst ruining storms ; 
 While far beyond, bides aye the intent divine 
 Of precreative love. Him, bow of heaven, 
 God's holy oath made visible here, adore. 
 
 Festus. Laud him ye cloudlets snow-bosomed, which mom 
 Or eve serve, golden robed ; or, rich in rain. 
 Blend tearful blessings with the reviling blast ; 
 Praise ye, whose life expends itself in good, 
 The source surceaseless of all blessings. Hymn 
 Your God, while hurrying on wing-footed winds, 
 His messages of mercy to scorched lands 
 Dreaming of violet wreaths, dew soaked, to cool 
 Their sun seared breasts, and widening deserts strew 
 With riot of rank greenery ; or, when slow 
 Beneath the moon, ye swoon away utterly, 
 Earth breathing lightlier then ; each blade and bloom 
 Bedropped with fragrant moist ; cheer ye ; your life 
 Culmines in death ; for, from your birth-hour, known 
 Of no man, midst the black Atlantic, wroth 
 At ancient bans ignored, which betwixt old 
 And young world barred alliance, now with coils 
 The voiceable lightnings dart through, perfected, 
 Till life's last moment, God your whole career 
 Sams in his eye's broad purjjose. What, round heaven, 
 Hath seemlier honour ? Praise him for your end. 
 
 Clara. Storm breasting cliffs, whose feet, earth stained, the deep 
 Laveth, as with the humility of a god ; 
 Oh I of that steadfast strength make much, your Lord 
 Hath sunken you in and grounded you, as signs 
 Of his unshaken truth, against whose face 
 The spray of years from time's unnumbered tides, 
 Dashes in vain. Rocks, glory in your host j 
 
684 FESTUS. 
 
 Earth framer lie wlio liath king-ed you with his name, 
 And ta'en your own ; whose guests are ye for life ; 
 And then, make room. 
 
 Festus. Ye too, who sit serene, 
 
 Firstborn of earth and ancients of the snow ; 
 Time's youthmates ; mountains, solemn as God's thought* 
 Pondering the chain of being, life with life 
 Linked in connatural lineage round to him ; 
 Praise ye his favouring hand, who in earth's murk breast 
 Moulded your giant forms ; who, age by age. 
 Tried ye with flood, and tested ye with fire ; 
 Proved ye with darkness ; racked ye patiently, 
 As schooling for perfection ; and at last, 
 Crowned and consummate in all mysteries. 
 Led into sacred light, the outmost court 
 Of God's invisible temple, whose dome is life, 
 "Whose sanctuary the soul ; him, aye at rise 
 And set of sun, when comeliest ye appear, 
 In fiery albs arrayed and burning snows, 
 To adore fail not ; for he in your most pure 
 Beauty delights ; and to his heavenly eye, 
 Whose loveliness shows boundless as his love. 
 All beauteousness is holy. Laud ye him, 
 Whose mystic name heaven, secret and sublime, 
 Hath yet to you assured. Him praise, too, plains, 
 Teeming with succulent life, glebe, glade, and lea. 
 With homeliest blossoms blushing now, with fruit, 
 Boughed soon delicious ; or solemnized with com ; 
 Confess who blessed you with the privilege man 
 To banquet : man, earth's king. 
 
 Claea. Coy valleys, lisp 
 
 Well pleased, your thanks, that God's attempering hand 
 Hath smoothed ye meet for happiest ends, and made 
 Shadows substantial of the calm which broods, 
 Welkin-like, o'er those upper deeps of soul 
 Vain worldling sounds not, nor pride's keel profanes. 
 Gush into song, shy nooks ; dells fall and swell, 
 With every deep pulsation of earth's heart. 
 Into melodious praise, even as joy's eye 
 Melts in the measureless relief of tears. 
 Him whose ordaining hand your solitudes 
 Hath given to peace, adore : who heaved the hills. 
 Your dales too delved as deep. 
 
 Festus. Vine mantled knolls, 
 
 Whence 'stils the grape blood choicest juice that charms 
 God's tabled round, the earth ; him, palm plumed vales, 
 Where glow all fniits of tropic fame ; and fields 
 That temperate taste, the palate's luxe, rules ; him, 
 Hot wilds of herbage sparse ; all healing roots. 
 And wholesome poisons ; spice and incense ; all 
 For our sustenance and delight which fructify, 
 Or flourish boskv • laurel, myrtle, and bay ; 
 
FESTU8. 635 
 
 Oil-olive, puide to wisdom, pledge of peace ; 
 
 Gum, balm, acacia's sinless branch, and myrrh ; 
 
 Pour forth your sweet breath'd thanks, till starry earth, 
 
 Still fair, still dear, still in her matron prime, 
 
 "With thickening odours cloud her sacred path, 
 
 Like a swung censer through the templed skies. 
 
 Clara. Bloom bedded pleasances, where leisured taste 
 Luxuriates, as in recollected dreams 
 Of Kfe prenatal in God's garden ; him, 
 How fair, the beautifier of all worlds. 
 Worship ; and all ye plants, well nurtured, praise ; 
 Who quickened you from dark and obdurate seed ; 
 Suppled with balmy showers your growthf ul roots ; 
 Gave daily dews ; tapered your shapely stems 
 In his fine fingers ; with free foliage clad. 
 Pendent and plenteous ; starred your heads with flowers. 
 Crosswise or radiate ; praise him with meek pride. 
 It was his considerate touch your bosoms bathed 
 With heaven's translucent hues ; your heart-buds dyed 
 In sunsets paradisal ; steeped your leaves, 
 One moment, in aetherial scents ; and streaked 
 With veinlets velvet lined, your nectarous cups ; 
 None less, none else. virgin lily, queen 
 Of flowers, immaculate, vaunt, with all thy kin 
 Most delicate, vaunt, not less than forest oaken, 
 Or cedam, fane-famed, ebon, sandal, rose ; 
 Settim, God's ark, or gopher, man's, his hand ; 
 Nor shadowy pine copse, soundless as the void. 
 
 Festus. Fair fountains, rainbow haunted, art hath voiced 
 Through marble lips, and 'mid palatial courts 
 Bade whisper God's great name ; you that, like strings 
 Of liquid silver, ripple 'neath nature's touch, 
 In lifef ul melody ; and, through daisied banks, 
 By your own sweet song solaced, seek your end 
 In joy unlessenable : and you, tameless springs. 
 Froth flecked, that seawards gash the plashy moor ; 
 Or rush, rock maddened, adown deep jagged ravines, 
 Chant, murmurous him ; him, rill and runnel praise. 
 
 Claea, Praise him, ye rivers, vastening as ye roll, 
 From ice cleft or turfed slope, to where the main 
 Lurks watchful, with your waters soft and sweet, 
 To slake his lips salt-parched, and tribute seize 
 In kind of his liege loves ; and you, from heights 
 Flush with the eagle's eyrie, plunging, death 
 Scorning as life, for are not ye immortal ? 
 And you from chasmy and glacial wilds, death-white, 
 Or pine clad gore, leaping, cloud shrouded ; praise 
 His name, who on your first precipitous steps. 
 And pretty stumbling falls, smiled stealthily ; 
 Your infant course mapped ; fed with milky mists ; 
 And, guiding to good ends the wayward est course, 
 Those swift, still feet subservient made to bear 
 
686 FI18TU8. 
 
 Treasures of sap to meadland, swathed in sward, 
 Or leagues of grain, heart strengthening ; all the sun, 
 Of annual growth, or root perennial, helps 
 Mature, with you, praise him for. 
 
 Festus. Seas, land ringed, 
 
 Primgeval ocean's relics, and ye fresh 
 And lucid lakelets, where the stark fisher, man, 
 First floated his rough raft, and the mud hut 
 He, beaverlike, had builded, fortified ; 
 Or where, hard by, the cave-bom savage left 
 His liberal bones to mell with those he had gnawn ; 
 Eejoice, and bless your Maker, that in your breast 
 Lie glassed now cities and castled palaces. 
 Wood nested cots, rich mansions, gold topped fanes, 
 And seats of science ; while o'er your faces skim 
 Barks self impelled, art's noblest, manliest feat. 
 God, necessary in essence, in will free, 
 Because illimitable, and free to free 
 From general law his special will and ours. 
 Powers self determinative, through all his works 
 In apt proportions acts to ends well planned ; 
 Eules rudest nature by dynamic law, 
 Spatially operative ; his own designs 
 Oft modifying by like wise ; empowers 
 Organic being with instinct ; but to mind 
 Leaves liberty of motive ; and himself 
 Conceals, to allow to man and angel scope 
 Accountable. Let all life praise its Lord 
 Therefore ; of beasts, if tamed, as G-od's claimed onc9, 
 Ours now, whose inoffensive natures he. 
 Most amiable, as ensamples chose of his 
 All suffering deity ; laud him, end and head 
 Of sacrifice ; if wild, his prescience praise, 
 Which would not mean should nobler strains restrict. 
 Dwellers in ocean's wave roofed hall, who range. 
 Constant, from shoal to deep, from deep to shoal ; 
 Him worship, heavenly husbandman, who drives 
 Yearly his star-plough o'er the brine, and seeds 
 Its furrows with your innumerous hosts of life. 
 Cloud haunters, ocean now, the skies anon 
 Enthralling, greet him gratefully who gave 
 Your strength despotic, and powers of threefold use ; 
 Wave cradled, riding winds, land tripping ; hail 
 Your Maker irresponsible, who all being 
 Founded, not found made, and so justified. 
 
 Clara. And you, bright song-birds, whose felicitous lives 
 In flight, thought-swift, and music sweet as love, 
 Heart-harmony, elapse ; song, even and morn, 
 Concerted, trill, grateful to him who grants 
 Your innocent souls earth's luxuries, and in life 
 Here, something like the liberties of heaven. 
 
 Festus. Your kind with force, choice honoured, aixd so allied 
 
FE8TU8. 687 
 
 By nature's lord to the world's conscious sense 
 
 And rational energy, him, ye serpent seed, 
 
 Skin sloughing, witness annual of new birth ; 
 
 Him, too, ye insect tribes, thrice-lived, who joy 
 
 In natural resurrection, and fulfil 
 
 The cycle of being, glorified with wings ; 
 
 Of luminous bodies, ye ; or, honeyed swarms, 
 
 In politic craft pre-eminent, and sage use 
 
 Of toil divisional with constructive skill. 
 
 Praise ; praise ye gay broods, dawn-bom, night-sl.iMi. nir 
 
 With filmy winglet fanning ; nor yet grieve. Deuia, 
 
 Impatient not for you alone, secures 
 
 In his dark couch, after life's giddying reel, 
 
 A sequel undisturbed. Ye animate motes, 
 
 Uneyeable, whose curt existence we 
 
 Laugh into nought at every breath ; yet deem 
 
 Your Maker bounteous. Life, how scant soever, 
 
 Seems good, as loaned of God, whose arpi aU spaco 
 
 Outspans, whose eye all mirrors. 
 
 Claea. Him, then, hynui, 
 
 O universal nature, passive power 
 Of deity, which, with the minutest thing 
 Subsistent, owest thyself totally to God ; 
 The whole embracing in thy boundless breast ; 
 Our world-sire praise ; while yet immortal man, 
 The intelligible light, silent, within, 
 ShaU clearlier hear than though each atom spake ; 
 Or every cloudlet thundered. Worship God. 
 
 Festus. Him worship, all of human blood who ro^ij). 
 Tribal, in wilds ; for breath, food, freedom, praise ; 
 Ye more, who, fixM, live the life refined 
 Of cities, amid societies of the wtse ; 
 Graced with all science, learning, interchange 
 Of luxuries, profitable to all, and wealth, 
 Art's delicate toil, or lowliest labour, earns : 
 For polity based on manly rights ; for life 
 Social, by moral law, with usance kind. 
 Confederate, ruled ; for nature's comely boons ; 
 For virtue's bonds majestic ; mind's delights ; 
 The affections of the heart ; the joys of sense ; 
 Man's common usefulness to man, whereby 
 The general good conceived of thee, and blessed 
 In that conception, issues : for the gift 
 Those fitnesses to trace in all thy works, 
 Which, proved the intent, glads and sublimes mans .-wul, 
 Conclusive of resemblant powers ; and deeds 
 Like, but how little Like 1 Him bless for power 
 To separate truth from error, right from wrong ; 
 For love of knowledge ; art's purifying grace ; 
 For cultured mind ; for means material thralled 
 In thousand shapes by inventive wit ; and now 
 Forces of progress, aids to man's high race, 
 
688 FESTU8, 
 
 And holy future ; succourers of the world ; 
 
 Aye working through part ends its end complete, 
 
 Through beauty, good, truth ; order realized. 
 
 Expressed or thought, its way back to Grod's breast , 
 
 Seat both of law and liberty, needful each 
 
 For mere creation ; he o'er both supreme. 
 
 Praise him, all bounteous, for the intelligence 
 
 Inquisitive, which from every being would wrest 
 
 The reason of its existence, nor, tongue-stilled, 
 
 Slacks but in gaze of thee, before whose face 
 
 Bow angel essences, in number more 
 
 Than night's invisible stars, wherewith, commixed, 
 
 The forces of the universe stand ; him praise 
 
 Who is praised of all. Praise him for power to praise, 
 
 Clara. Ye continents many-peopled, and all isles, 
 Children of earth and ocean ; and thou, chief, 
 Who hast the birthright and the blessing ; swell 
 With jubilant joy. the song to him supreme, 
 Father and friend of life ; who man's crude needs 
 Mildens with heavenly sanctions, by seer's voice 
 Or prophet's ; justice names his assessor ; 
 Gives nations the reward of well-doing, peace, 
 While evildoers themselves accurse by war ; 
 Presumptuous states by races checks, and stress 
 Of personal interaction ; now lays bare 
 To scofl&ng ages popular policy ; 
 Now scheming power's recondite cunning ; heeds 
 Indignant, empires wrongs reciprocate. 
 Just rights unheld complacent ; to all doles 
 Such excellencies as wisdom warrants. Nought 
 Lacks he true 'compt of, who, with all that think, 
 Most intimate secretly, cons both, and weighs 
 Men's individual deeds ; which, though we feign 
 Transient to hold and trivial, by him glimpsed 
 Prove not phaenomenal merely, but imply 
 Eternal bearings ; and here rooted, there 
 Fniit freely ; if to our contentment, well ; 
 If elsewise, still reproachless he, whose end, 
 In all creating, was to diffuse himself 
 Through life in uncontaminate good ; to all 
 As present, and to those he loves most nigh. 
 Him, in the heights of his divinity, praise. 
 The depths of his humanity ; the breadth 
 Of being ; who redemptive reassumes. 
 Into his perfect nature ours ; fills up, 
 With promised gifts to penitence due all souls 
 Deficience ; souls which in manhood setting, rise 
 In deity, praise ; all lands, lips, nations, hail 
 His laudable name ; till, passed from world to world, 
 Their shining feet it reach, who, glorious, tread, 
 Starpaved and straight, the streets of Paradise. 
 Festus. Hira. workers of the world, world-wielder him, 
 
FESTU3. 689 
 
 Blessed in activity, blesser of repose, 
 Praise ceaseless, who with alternative rest 
 And action, nature's self-perpetuate scheme 
 Poises ; contracting or expanding force 
 The ages hoard, the houi-s distribute ; him 
 Who, coupling life with motion, builds on rest 
 Eternal heaven. TVTio labour's law revere, 
 The sweat of honest toil, deeming a dew 
 Grateful to God, more than that beads the rose. 
 Laud, manful, him, ye who gaunt want, fell foe 
 To life and knowledge, battling daily, yet 
 Wot well where'er on earth be faith and truth, 
 Aim holy or aspiration, there is God ; 
 That all who do their best of hand or mind, 
 Do well ; and thought devout may every task, 
 Not of itself unholy, hallow. Him 
 Unchangeable himself, but of all change 
 Impressive ; self -necessitating cause ; 
 Ye truth searchers exalt, whose trust to know 
 All verity as in heaven, he, sovereign soul 
 Of being, divines, and turns to simplest faith ; 
 WTio, more than all, is ; whom apparent things, 
 Fruit transient of eternal root unseen, 
 Conspire to honour, from life's primal cell, 
 To heaven's immeasurable arch, and hosts 
 Contiguous of all being ; which both worlds 
 Exterior and intrinsic, link in powers 
 Reactive ; and God indwelling in the world 
 Evince ; but God, most just ; who towards us acta 
 As he would have us act towards all and him ; 
 Exacting from perfection perfect deed. 
 Granting the imperfect, grace ; his equity such. 
 Who loves the spirit longsuffering like himself ; 
 But his own binds in normal righteousness 
 To manwards, and assumes the splendid coil, 
 ^Vherewith, attaching nature to himself. 
 True freedom means obedience to high law, — 
 Our spirits he liberates and exalts. Him praise, 
 In whose divine perception all things made, 
 Move congruous, designate for final good ; 
 Happy because all holy ; in his love 
 Boundless ; in virtue sumless ; who for us 
 Made truth compensate nature, and with liglit 
 Kinned and companioned her ; the soul's guide that, 
 This, body's ; him let man praise, who, empowered 
 With high capacities to administer here. 
 Creation's uses and our own, yet dares. 
 Humbly, the stores his Lord for him amassed 
 In times bygone, adjust ; and the vague force 
 Nature inbred at birth, condenses, fines ; 
 The code of life interprets ; and, inspired 
 Conform with reason, faculty supreme, 
 
fiS^O FESTU8. 
 
 Divine, and to both common, truth revealed, 
 As march the ages on, makes more humane, 
 And so more worthy God. 
 
 Claka. Him, deeplier taught 
 
 In holiest mysteries, blessed o'er all in soul. 
 Simple or sage, ye of celestial strain. 
 Yet earth-bom, laud, who caused ye, finite, know 
 Him infinite ; and his nature imageing 
 In your conditionate essence, be to him 
 Through man's immediate kinship, as his Son, 
 Your whole life one sole filial act ; and though, 
 Like star cloud permanent in the void, the cross, 
 Mystery insoluble, still shadowing shame 
 "With honour, earth's hate thwarted by God's love, 
 Proclaim it, man redeemed, as e'er thy first 
 Of blessings. Thanks for all things, but for this, 
 Thanks threefold 1 
 
 Festus. Oh ! it were a blessed thing 
 
 Faith such as thine to have held unfaltering ; ne'er 
 To have fainted, failed, waned, wavered. It is as when 
 In Alp-land, on some white and fanglike crag, 
 Keen, cruel as Time's tooth, earth's blanched extreme, 
 Trophy of this world's desolateness, I've seen 
 A splintered cross, memorial frail, upreared 
 By perilous piety, once, and since, of aught 
 Save vulturous levity of wing, untopped ; 
 By snows path-hating, blurred ; by gelid rains 
 Glazed ; streaming, now, with long and icy tears ; 
 Now tempest-rapt from vision ; now, to the eye 
 Restored by curative lightnings ; by the sun's 
 First rays saluted, by his last ; there, still. 
 Ever, with arms outstretched, obtesting all 
 The elements, even as though sphere-kinned, it st;; ds, 
 Dumb, but attesting God, and the white world 
 Adjm-ed, to witness that, nor scorching shii e, 
 Storm, nor all mutable seasons can defeat 
 Its changeless cheer ; itself so frail, yet sign 
 Of that's eternal ; so, 'gainst time's assaults, 
 'Gainst nature's banded powers, thy faith thou hold'st 
 Inalterable, triumphant. 
 
 Clara. Yea, I hold. 
 
 Festus. God grant thee this to enjoy, and tc the end ? 
 Mine always such I dare not say ; but now. 
 Lord of our life ! of this sure, more than aught, 
 Let us, while praising thee for all, most praise 
 For thy regenerant spirit which hallowing life. 
 Ones it with thine ; whereby we dread not death. 
 The house the sun must pass through, and the sign 
 Which us initiates into heaven ; but know 
 Death means reunion with the deathless ; range 
 With our translated elders ; consciousness 
 Enlarged of the eternal spirit unmarred 
 
FESTUa. C91 
 
 By bodily needments ; life at one with God; 
 
 And faitii's huge promises ; our souls assume 
 
 The future, and we covenant here for heaven ; 
 
 Confirmed by fate. Here, and for ever, him 
 
 All souls, praise. Praise him, lovers of his law 
 
 Unwrit, word unrevealed, but to yourselves ; 
 
 Not for those faculties only with all life 
 
 Ye own instinctive, but each mental gift 
 
 Enlightened conscience swaj^s ; for conscience' scI" ; 
 
 For those affections not the world, not man. 
 
 Not country, friendship, love exhausts, nor blood, 
 
 While just devotion bums in us towards him ; 
 
 For those high powers, conceptions, hopes, which fill 
 
 Or thrill our breasts ; which prophets e'er have preachoij, 
 
 Or nature hints we share, the unboundedness T 
 
 Of time, existence, will ; the ennobling sense ' 
 
 Of duteousness towards men, of debt to God ; 
 
 For reason, whose undimmed outlook o'er the world. 
 
 Is balanced by right insight into ourselves ; 
 
 For a life whitening through probation, here ; 
 
 For deep convictions of a loftier lot. 
 
 An ampler scope of spirit, a draught of bliss 
 
 Endless, to be, nearer the fount ; praise him 
 
 Who godly care spares not, nor stores, that we. 
 
 Saved from our niggard selves, and unto him 
 
 Assimilate, may, through good deeds faith inspired ; 
 
 Just estimate of divine love towards all made ; 
 
 Life venerable and pure ; the calm supreme 
 
 And clear of sacred souls, the quietude 
 
 Intense and infinite, gain of holy thoughts ; 
 
 Such as he loves and lives in. 
 
 Clara. Laud ye Gcd, 
 
 Saviour and instigator of all good ; 
 Yet not the less impenetrable ! who ill 
 O'errules to good ; both mingles ; ends and means 
 Metes ; sparing now, as space were something scant ; 
 Now lavish of waste worlds ; atomic force 
 Economizing here ; there solar powers 
 Permitting perish. What then ? That sun hath lon^ 
 Compassed its end ; this atom a world's head 
 May yet be. Him, ye just in soul, adore, 
 Who, latent deity, gives place to all, 
 And takes away ; whose holy attributes, 
 Essential as his being, ray and rule 
 From him, through all his rational works ; the sourco 
 Of every virtuous tie the world of soul 
 Acknowledgeth, as from wisdom's sacred breast 
 Spontaneous sprung ; whereby God laws himself 
 In natural rectitude, with all create ; 
 He who all made, himself to manifest ; 
 And to intelligent creatures gave to know, 
 Possess, communicate, his love and truth ; 
 
692 FESTU8, 
 
 His righteousness to emulate ; to share 
 
 His holiness ; his beatitude enjoy ; 
 
 And, in his wisdom skilled, in his intents 
 
 Proved, and heart purified, for others' weal 
 
 Most labouring, taught to crown with moral good 
 
 The vast divine of things. 
 
 Festus. But though the mass 
 
 Be holy, yet the first-fruits God most loves. 
 Praise, therefore, him, ye sons of light, and bless 
 The communable deity, who, albeit. 
 Perpetual passion suffering at men's hands, 
 Hoards not from those he loves divinity ; him, 
 Participants of his kingly state, whose wills 
 With his conjoined, subregnan^rule, the same, 
 Though in narrower round, as his ; praise him supremo, 
 Who loves the praises he in hymns inspires, 
 Or, wordlessly, imbreathes. Let all f orechosen ; 
 Ambitious only of more humility ; 
 Exalted but to serve ; who, while in time, 
 Bide truelier in the eternal state, which rests 
 To each world proper, pillared upon the passed 
 And future in the soul, praise him ; ye, most, 
 Whose privilege is to please God perfectly ; 
 Earth this wise tolerated ; whereto ye lend, 
 Like fire from faith's accepted offering. 
 The savour of salvation ; whose heart's hope 
 That all souls might be saved, by him inspired, 
 Transfigured into fate, reads sure in heaven. 
 All ways are byeways but the way of God, 
 So broad, not thought a road. And man's wise heart 
 Which wide relations with the infallible holds, 
 Though flawed by error ; with all excellence. 
 Moral and rational ; with God immanent 
 In all things, yet transcendent over all. 
 Knows him sire, saviour, sanctifier of soul ; 
 Who in their principles cores all ends ; combines 
 Eesults f orestablished with acts freely willed ; 
 Through body clarifies the spirit of man ; 
 And virtue made obligatory, but ruled, 
 For its validity, rise and close in him. 
 
 Clara. Him praise, ye generations of the passed, 
 Whose unrenown seems holier than all fame ; 
 All final history in her epitaphs 
 Of nations notes ; him, who the adopted soul 
 Fills, by sin's absolution, with rich foretaste 
 Of evil's abolition ; the world stamped 
 With total good. Praise him, ye sceptered saints 
 With God, like-minded, glorying in his will. 
 Impeccable, who muse celestial things ; 
 Whose sins are washed away in seas of love ; 
 Who, liberate from all law, sit judging law ; 
 Whose passiojj for perfection sated, ye, 
 
pestus. ws- 
 
 Rapt into deity, with your Lord enjoy 
 Life unitive, life eternal, life divine ; 
 Who revel in futurity, and inhale 
 The gust of inspiration at his lips ; 
 Of all worlds owner, author of all fates. 
 
 Festus. Who knoweth God the sum of science owng. 
 The heavens record his handiwork ; the earth 
 Worships his footsteps ; life his breath repeats ; 
 The soul his imag-e ; everlasting space, 
 The harmonies of his nature echoing, round 
 Eeflects his vast extension ; the great whole 
 His boundless being, and his infinite mind. 
 
 Claba. Midst, but apart from all, he substance gives 
 And choice, distinct from others and himself ; 
 Yet himself makes the beauty and the bliss 
 Of his intelligent universe ; its aim. 
 Its orderly source, its endless end ; whose rule, 
 Let justice among equals reign, — is love. 
 For he with us not varying, harsh or bland, 
 As our vain 'haviour bids, but in himself 
 All kind, sufficing, fixed ; unroughed by wrath, 
 By bribef ul prayers unsmoothed ; towards all his works 
 Piteous, yea, sentient of faith's faintest sigh, 
 In all his sweetness, is by none save soul 
 Saved, apprehensible. 
 
 Festus, Lord, be it for me 
 
 With earth's triumphal hymn these lays to blend, 
 Worthy but of thy blessing that they flow 
 From gifts thou gavest, reconsecrate to thee ; 
 Whereby in thy dear love thou madest it mine 
 To interpret nature's elements, and with her 
 In all her holy tongues commune ; to live 
 In presence of our peers, the powers of heaven, 
 Sun, moon, and skies star-crowded ; clouds, winds, tides ; 
 Bom of yon far blue infinite ; but aU 
 Predestined to soul service ; mine to scan, 
 In greatest minds' great thoughts, earth's passed ; betimes 
 Fatal, foreshape the future ; mine to know. 
 In moral might towards thee deific drawn 
 All spirits in order blessed ; mine, henceforth, aye 
 To extol thee merciful as mighty ; thee, 
 Ours, and all being's, end and author, God. 
 All things in thee subsistent, thou alone 
 In thyself art ; all eyeing at one glance ; 
 All minding in one thought ; in one sole act, 
 Creating, comprehending, judging all. 
 Unalterable as silence, thy decrees 
 Are boundless and for ever. Thy delight 
 Is in the holy of heaven, and in the heart 
 Eesponsive to thy counsels. Even as space, 
 All things embosoming, is thy mercifulness. 
 Thy love is life ; and they who find thee here, 
 
694 PE8TU8, 
 
 Find perf ectness and peace ; eternal gifts ; 
 Peace in themselves, and perfectness in thee. 
 
 Claea. Hallowed and comforted the soul, elate 
 By pure prostration at Grod's feet, the world 
 Meets but scant welcome from us ; we half hoped 
 To have lost what soon we lose for aye and all. 
 
 Festus. I seek no selfish gladness, though to me 
 High thoughts are life, and life immortal more 
 Only in conception as divine than this, 
 Our perishable, in act ; yet would not I 
 Forestall apart from thee those paths, those plana 
 We have hope to perfect in eternity. 
 To search together truth space-wide ; to soar 
 In spirit unitedly through all the immense 
 Thus, of celestial thought, gives joy sublime, 
 I know to both. As when by sunset's hues 
 Invited, some fair falcon, whose broad eye 
 Mirrors the welkin, through air's shadowy blue 
 Wheeling with wing unwavering, every plume 
 Stretched tense, mid sky serenely balanced, calls 
 Forth from her eyrie, crown of sea-faced crag. 
 His mightier mate ; these twain each other now 
 In unconceived ellipse, curve following curve. 
 Redoubled rainbowlike, outsweep ; thrice o'er 
 Snatch from ambition's touch the zenith ; mock 
 With playful fall the expectant earth ; now, thwart, 
 In arbitrary and intercircling flights, 
 Their mutual orbits, emulous ; this below 
 Echoing the other's cry on high, till heaven 
 Closes, by hint of stars, the rapt contest, 
 
 Clara. How near earth's end I 
 
 Festus. Earth's future soon is told, 
 
 Nigher each hour, the incredible becomes — 
 
 What sole can be ; the key that all unlocks. 
 For now not only our life's exterior charms. 
 Earth's beauties perish, but mind's most treasured joys, 
 Brain-realms pictorial of creative thought, 
 Fairer than Eden, were that garden all 
 Fiction entranced, e'er dreamed. Song, art, romance, 
 Farewell 1 Hope is, we enjoy not only, there, 
 The future, but the passed made clear, sublimed, 
 Perfect. Perchance in life to come a glimpse 
 May ope, G-od good, to memory's inward eye 
 From all imperfect aims, impure views, purged 
 Of divine fable. If not, be it as God will ; 
 But as when the moon at her full round arrived 
 Of beauty, uprising, level, from the main. 
 Late turbulent, smiles to behold the loyal waves' 
 Awe, and their hush low whispered hear as she 
 Venerable by birth, though young, just state assumes, 
 And splendid presidency ; these, too, like pleased 
 With her exact observance of all times, 
 
I'ESTUa. 695 
 
 And tlie well-lawed conformity to things 
 Earthly, of things celestial and serene, 
 As mutually assurant, yield her back, 
 Considerate, smile for smile ; so I, — so thou, 
 Rouls like authentic, each the other's breast 
 Let fill with pure content. 
 
 Claba. As far as such, 
 
 Amassed of all defects, avail. 
 
 Festus. There's one 
 
 Defect we have each outlived. We part no mora 
 
 XLY. 
 
 Soul commune solitary with God, its great 
 Surrender of the prized and partial boons 
 Of personal privilege passing nature, now 
 Self hiunbled, shown demissive; nor all sought 
 By heaven accorded. But while welcomed what 
 Is given, the soul to penitence self-adjudged. 
 On pardon sought and prayed, from God receives 
 His ghostly absolution. See, at last. 
 The heart's first wish so sanctioned, so assured. 
 The heaven-imputed charge, by earthly Powers 
 Supported, proffered, imminent, now o'erweitrhts 
 The aspiring Spirit with prescient grief, if Heaven's 
 Free testimony makes glad ; and man's assent 
 General, but improclaimed to power, God- vouched, 
 I'ills now with calm inalienable the soul. 
 
 A lonely Lodge among tlw Snowy Mountains. 
 
 Festub alone. — Afterwards Guardian Angel, Claka, aiul 
 Embassage. 
 
 Festus. Hail, holy HilLs, holy as unsubject 
 To man's necessities, man's caprice ; and linked 
 Eather by charm of changelessness to things 
 Celestial round you, and the unwinged sphere, 
 How spacious I of the eternal ; ye who now 
 In everlasting session, white and pure. 
 Sit calm, as judging of the all-changing world ; 
 But passed of old, flame forged, through orbed fires 
 Smote smooth, and on the anvil shapen of dumb 
 Necessity, to that mould of just repose 
 Henceforth, your own, as conscious of passed tests 
 Of too great ardour to be borne, I come 
 From juins self-stricken of remorse, and pangs 
 Repentance fans conflagrant to a sense 
 Of culpable injury sweetness more severe 
 Pardoning left doubly guilty, me to add 
 
696 FE8TU8. 
 
 To your serenest brotherhood, where each 
 
 Like soul scourged kings through blanching penance shriven, 
 
 In endless fast and solitude apart, 
 
 But with me fellowing, in free penury 
 
 Of all prerogatives cast away, all luxe 
 
 Of marvellous gifts granted by grace of God, 
 
 By man's, or nature's, earned, or bold embrace, 
 
 Of wilier evil won, of honours all. 
 
 Save dignity of impending death ; this, sole, 
 
 Not to be laid down, lost, nor ta'en by force, 
 
 Nor forfeited, by treason, nor by lapse, 
 
 Of claim, or user's right ; of every fief 
 
 Safest ; self stripped of each, of all, I ask 
 
 Kinwise, and kingwise, welcome. By just vow, 
 
 By resolute thought, self bound, am I not more 
 
 God's obligate, than though I had girded me 
 
 With a chain of mountains ; and with unlinked limbs 
 
 Indeviable of purpose, I lay down 
 
 All gifts once gloried in by one who now 
 
 Would hold him weakest humblest of God's sons ; 
 
 Who on these mountain altars would lay down 
 
 His peerless privileges ; visitancy of stars ; 
 
 Encompassage of space, and converse high 
 
 And sacred with the heavenlies ; make his own, 
 
 Lowliest of lives, nay, even if that he would 
 
 Self sacrificed, retake. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Thy mortal life 
 God not recalls yet ; nor thou, son of death, 
 Death destined, death invoke. Heaven's ends are yet 
 Not aU gained. It is not life alone, in flesh 
 But soul in life, and life in Him, God asks. 
 The sacrifice God would is not of death, 
 But life's continuous service, to the end 
 Bettering. 
 
 Festus. Such, angel, seek I and foreclose 
 All privileges of spirit once pined for ; all 
 Wont, use, and joy in them ; all summits scaled 
 Of holiest science, all the deeps unblessed 
 Sounded, or cognizable afar of mind. 
 My solace, my delight once, earth and Heaven 
 Too lavish of their boons to me, of all 
 Desertless ; thankless not. If therefore now 
 In face of all these mountain elements 
 And at His feet who made both me and them 
 I all put off, and humbler than the dust 
 Unpack me of such favours, count me not 
 Ingrate, nor graceless, ye, nor thou, God ; 
 These holdings hide me from myself, mere man. 
 If not from thee, pure Deity. Let me not 
 One solitary pretence put forth of pride ; 
 Nor boast me even of nothingness. Enough, 
 Upon the bead roll of the intransient stars, 
 
FESTU3, m 
 
 To count thy names. God, thine attributes, 
 
 Of measureless perfection ; equal all, 
 
 All infinite and inseparable each 
 
 From other; and with Him essential, one. 
 
 Lo! d of all virtues, oh when man's vain soul 
 
 Minds him, how oft he hath thee offended, 'gainst 
 
 His natural reason, spiritual sense of law. 
 
 Inborn of right, and summings clear of truth 
 
 Irrefutable ; how oft by error wiled 
 
 Sin lures the soul to a banquet of distress 
 
 WTiere grief might gorge her fill, were appetite not 
 
 To that end at dead water, well he might 
 
 Say as I say ; but can I say it ? No I 
 
 I sin no more. Not less in firm intent. 
 
 Shall all these trappings, sin's contingents, here, 
 
 Wealth, pleasure, luxury, knowledge, greed of power, 
 
 Mind treasures boundless as the aerial gold 
 
 Wliich floods the o'erwealthy west of eve ; all boons 
 
 Once sought for, hoped for, prayed for, and enjoyed ; 
 
 Boons singularly possessed, and perfected 
 
 By sweet and sole experience in the way 
 
 Stand of my purpose not to know them more ; 
 
 All powers, all gifts, and all delights in them, 
 
 That gave to walk in upper air, and course 
 
 Through yon aetherial space, sparse even of stars, 
 
 And with the immortals mingle ; who of earth 
 
 Can word this rapture ? All desire which eyea 
 
 Beauty, eyes view not, hate I. Me no more 
 
 The spirits of mind's bright impalpable world 
 
 Shall throng round, as the winds some mountain top ; 
 
 Nor watery lightfulness of ghostly eyes. 
 
 Belonging heavenly forms informed with light, 
 
 Impose their spell of record, under pain. 
 
 The inspiration quits me ; it is gone. 
 
 Like a retreating army from the land 
 
 Which it hath wasted : the long gleaming mass, 
 
 Snakelike, at last hath wound itself away. 
 
 And left me weak and wretched. None again 
 
 Of all the starry tribes of museful mien 
 
 Shall visit me. Their welcome cancelled ; leave 
 
 Revoked ; approach fenced off, forbid ; henceforth, 
 
 Restricted to perfection, their own realm, 
 
 Me they may haunt no more ; i' the coming time, 
 
 My Boul and they be strangers. Let them quit. 
 
 True, albeit, I loved them more than life. 
 
 Knew myself hallowed by their quickening touch ; 
 
 Their mere salute was consecration ; gone 1 
 
 They are gone ; and nought of beauty is on earth 
 
 Left, with them comparable. All chastened hopes 
 
 Of sway beneficent o'er earth's soul ; a charm 
 
 Mightier than all beside of wealth or power 
 
 Eaxth e'er could actualize or dream of, go. 
 
698 FESTUS: 
 
 I name ye not again ; I banish hence, 
 Gold-mined, and countless leagues of land and sea 
 All that this heart once coveted of days here 
 Prolonged ; of love returned ; ambition summed ; 
 And to its vastest compassed ; every hope 
 Save, an' I might. Lord 1 one except, for earth's 
 Peace, and for purified souls return to thee, 
 I do them off. I put them all away, 
 With the constituent atomies of a frame 
 Lost many a decade since. Let them rejoin 
 The elements even as these I bear with now, 
 When I am gone for ever, and this mould 
 Shall help recast the rudiments of an orb 
 Whose fates are yet unsyUabled in the word 
 Omnific of our God. I am a wall, 
 A tower of sunbaked blocks that crumbles down 
 Into the clay it was made out of ; a tower 
 That once o'erawed the region ; but which now, 
 The enemy so hath shattered that my gaps 
 Are greater than my masses ; more is f aUen 
 Than all that stands, and my remain in gs bulk 
 Less than my ruins. I have saved a wreck 
 Whose board scarce floats, flush with the face of death s 
 And save one inner lamplet in my breast, 
 That lights an image of the tutelar god, 
 I see nor sun by day, nor star by night. 
 To steer by ; and the helmsman's gone death-blind. 
 These gifts, may be, these potencies, I hold. 
 Have nought but barred me out from nature's means 
 Of raising man ; and so uprearing heaven 
 On earth below. But as some mount august, 
 Of oil, wine, wood prolific, root, grass, grain 
 Itself denudeth age by age till rests, 
 Fertile of food, nought, but all perisheth, down 
 To the stone substantive of its parent plain. 
 Noteless, unfructuous ; so though gradual that, 
 And instant this, and sudden, my re-act, 
 I give me as at first I was, a leaf 
 Of all good vacuous, now a tablet rased 
 Of every boon, to Grod. Soul-rid of all. 
 Oh let time's torrent take them to its bed 
 Of darkness. I will know of them no more, 
 But stand before my God the merest man 
 His vast creation knows. All yield I up ; 
 Not boastfully ; not loathly ; but tear off 
 Gladly. As a slave, self -robbed, self-sold for nought j 
 A castaway wretch, and naked to the quick, 
 Thy living debt ; what am I more, to thee ? 
 What can I more, than prostrate speechless, here, 
 Wishless, alone, or sole with thee, confess 
 Whatso thou wilt O God, will I. 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. 
 
FESTUS, 699 
 
 Last of the lineage loved, the elect of Heaven, 
 
 Thine act and thy resolve alike have pleased 
 
 The all-father. Not even God can cause the passed 
 
 Eetum. It is thy fate, nought less, to rule 
 
 By serving, and by serving, rule deserve. 
 
 God's will it is that thy will, whole-sphered peace 
 
 And sole and sovereign power, thy first desire 
 
 When first conceived, conceded, be fulfilled. 
 
 This great, this grave legation, at their head 
 
 Thy faithful fair, from far approaching, ask 
 
 Thine assent to their cause who bid thee reign, 
 
 And will all end right soon to gory war, 
 
 Through thee achieve. Lo 1 empire laden, they come. 
 
 Proceeding proud, but pompless, of all power. 
 
 Festus. Their suit is granted, heavenly one, who com'st. 
 I feel, from Grod, ere claimed. 
 
 Guardian Angel. See, who first hails ; 
 Her joy by thine judge. Hear her, and revive. 
 
 Claea. Thy footprints following through earth's loftiest snows, 
 And nearest to the stars of aught mundane. 
 Grieve not, nor blame whom here thou seest ; not me ; 
 Sought by these kindliest sages who believed 
 True love could never lose its aim but points 
 Errorless, to its object. I who had traced 
 Thy foot-prints momwards by the beneficent acta 
 Of spirit enlightened nations, and had marked 
 Where reason's torch accompanying had cleared 
 Efurth's darkest dens where superstition false. 
 Foolish, or foul, hid ; thou, all pride renounced. 
 All pomp, all thanks, that might attend thee, fleddst 
 Ever ; and higher, rareUer seen, becamst ; 
 More secret, silent more ; (tracks still I knew ;) 
 And knowing, for their good, and those unseen 
 They speak for, benefactors of their kind, 
 The realizers of schemes we long ago 
 Had longed to further ; such thou wilt not blame ; 
 Have hither to thy wonder, doubtless, come ; 
 To bid thee grant, beside their quest, now urged, 
 Thy loving leave, my life to add to thine. 
 Mine aid to thy command : enlightened now 
 By one of Heaven's immortals, dear to both. 
 On thine earth-bettering aims, ennobling time ; 
 Nor might I longer stint my joy, nor rein 
 My foot from following thine. 
 
 Festus. Thrice welcome, sweet, 
 
 I saint not, as uncanonized, but Heaven's 
 First function fear to usurp ; whate'er the cause 
 Of this auspicious advent. 
 
 Clara. See them come, 
 
 The high select of states depute and powers 
 Illuminate, of time's last and wisest age, 
 Bringing earth's empire with them. 
 
700 FESTUS. 
 
 Festus. Friends, approach. 
 
 Legates. Obedient to our chief's, thy friend's behest 
 Ere dying, and earth's many nationed will 
 In unnoised conference of the wise expressed 
 Thee seek we, king", who most of men, through us, 
 The world to one faith winning, by consent 
 Of all, art he, to whom man's race most owes 
 Both fealty and love ; and teaching men, 
 In this belief simple, supreme, to end 
 All creed-bom differences in one great truth, 
 None worthier to impersonate the world's 
 Wide will for peace, we know ; which end secured 
 By nature and by policy 'neath one head. 
 Thine own, dissension ceaseth : war's no more. 
 Guided by one we knew knew thee, and where 
 The exile self-banished, and the white retreat 
 Keighbouring these aery regions whence are bom 
 Meteors the incendiaries of lowlier airs. 
 At last we reach thee : though devote to rest 
 Recuperative, amidst these snow-clad peaks, 
 Soul's solitary aspirings embleming. 
 But whence we, delegates of all sovereign states 
 Whose dominant policy is world-peace and help 
 Mutual of nations ; ends to holiest souls 
 Dear from the dawn of days, to these ; and ne'er 
 Was higher sanction known on earth than voice 
 And place, of prophet-king, thyself would draw; 
 Bidding in name of Heaven and man, conjoined 
 In piety and in polity once, receive 
 The symbols grateful earth through us, adjured 
 To charity, peace and unity, presents 
 Of world-sway ; one, thenceforth immoveable ; 
 The o'erthrow of all earth's petty potentates ; 
 The warm acclaim of nations of all climes, 
 Tongues, of a creed, all else foregone, thine own, 
 Simple, irrefutable, the same with Heaven's ; 
 Of worship as a pure and awed delight ; 
 Of wisdom, virtue, peace, and righteousness, 
 Man's universal birthright through all lands ; 
 Take these our offerings, monarch ; man of man. 
 
 Festus. Have I not seen this, among coming things, 
 For what seems ages 1 That star-studded crown, 
 Which hangs as though a hand out of the air 
 Held it where'er I went before mine eyes ? 
 Rather let earth, truth, all things fail, than I 
 Fulfilling fate, since all that now can hap 
 Will serve but fate to unfold. 
 
 Claea. Let these depute 
 
 Of extinct kings and demarchs, whose unthought 
 Duty it is to serve, not reign, bring forth 
 Robe, orb, crown, sceptre ; bright and germinant signs 
 And constellations of dominion. Now 
 
FESTU8. CTOl 
 
 Thy glory, my soul's lord is like the sky, 
 Nought's to be seen beyond it. Potent things, 
 Of lesser space, may sparkle in it starlike, 
 Thine all embraceth, all outstretcheth. 
 
 Festus. Queen I 
 
 Faithful and dreadful thou as lioness ; 
 There spake the bride of empire. But for you. 
 Friends and fiduciaries of sacred power, 
 The accumulate fruit of all earth's king-doms passed, 
 In one, the world could heretofore not brook 
 Your proffer, providence sanctioned, I accept. 
 For man's whole good ; that cause I answer for, 
 Only and alway, your constituent realms 
 Reseeking, in my name salute, and show 
 In blessed exchange for their rich gifts this sign 
 Of one pure potent, peaceful state, this sword 
 To the hilt thus shattered hopelessly ; and say ; 
 Hear world ; henceforth wars cease ; go, toss thy head, 
 And shake thy shoulders, like a horse dishamessed. 
 No more shalt thou, blood -blotted brand, men lure 
 To practice of thy fascinating sin ; 
 Nor crimson cloud-bath of the evening sun 
 The dreams of sleepful city or hamlet dye 
 With visionary death. Remains for thee 
 Nothing, Earth 1 but penitence for the passed. 
 All strife composed, and peace for the future. 
 
 Legates. King, 
 
 It is not the world which makes thee great ; 'tis thou 
 Greatenest the nations. We depart. 
 
 Festus. Farewell. 
 
 Nor linger thou, beloved one. Thou hast made 
 Me happy. 
 
 Clara. This to know makes happier me. 
 
 Festus. Those whom thou led'st, rejoin. With them return. 
 Right soon, I'll be with ye. 
 
 Clara. Dear love, adieu. 
 
 Festus. While they, earth's ultimate order preached, prepare, 
 Have with thee every blessing life and time 
 Can lend, and thou enjoy ; and add, mine own. 
 
 Clara. I go, to await thy coming. 
 
 Festus. May the moon, 
 
 God's blessed creature, handmaid of his word 
 Her silvery headed shafts shower down to show 
 By night, and every morrowing sun, by day 
 Protective, light thy path. All gone, 'Tis well ; 
 I yet must be alone. These snow-spired hills. 
 These starf ull skies which here have eyed so long 
 Time's struggles with the eternal, mine here closed, 
 Must see the end of strife. They know me now, 
 And best alone. Not only earth's glad peace. 
 Nought now can wrong, nought ruffle it, nor endanger, 
 More than a wild bird's wandering wing the air, 
 
*r02 FE8TU8. 
 
 Must be assured ; but I of mine. 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Believe, 
 
 Thou shalt be. Let not yet o'erbold desire 
 The grace cup patience fills, grasp unadvised. 
 Make no presumed security of God, 
 Nor because more thou hast had, and more hast cast 
 Away, deem either merit in his eye 
 Who still nor word nor sign gives ; lavish he, 
 Of silence, most ; for none can Him construe. 
 
 Festus. No 1 'tis enough, nought seek I more on earth. 
 All passion, all opinion, 'like contemned ; 
 Self- beggared of all boons once prized, my soul 
 All told, what is't ? unless a penitent sigh, 
 That dims eve's air, star bright ? 
 
 Guardian Angel. Hope shall be thine ; 
 
 And constancy to endure what fate yet claims. 
 
 Festus. True ; I would shrink not from all dues. Time was, 
 I longed for power to hold ; somewhile I have prayed 
 To escape from. 'Tis enjoined. The awful boon 
 To enjoy becomes the sacrifice. 
 
 Guardian Angel. So be it. 
 
 The self deposed, the abdicated, ere crowned, 
 Behold restored. 'Tis but the imperial soul 
 Can make, or bear, the sacrifice supreme. 
 
 Festus. God's judgments I adore. And as in spring, 
 By Nanking, courtly seat of T'sin's high lord. 
 What time the winds harmoniously disposed 
 Tinkling the white pagoda's gilded bells 
 Meet music make to Heaven propitiable 
 All canopying, he, sovereign labourer, sole 
 With royal rights and sacerdotal crowned, 
 Who, year by year on the rebirth of things 
 Driving his furrow deep in earth, both soil 
 And toU. doth hallow ; and with hand that curbs 
 A hundred kinglings, store of food fraught grain 
 Sowing, the steps of that bright tower then scales 
 In solemn solitude ; and upon its peak. 
 Wrestles alone with Heaven ; prostrate in prayer 
 Heart-scourged, and with confession, expiates thrice 
 Those sins the sun saw in his golden round, 
 By faultf ul nations done, till, night arrived, 
 He, of the stars inquisitive, through sage 
 And perfect intuition of the skies, 
 And mutual acts of spheres, and social signs, 
 The horoscope of nations, and of all 
 His diligent lands, art-drawn, he so descends. 
 Vicarious, bringing with him prosperous days ; 
 Thus seek I, who have sown so long the seed 
 Of peace, o'er time's broad field, earth's peace, God's peace. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Such may He grant. 
 
 Festus. The saorifice be mine, 
 
FE8TU8. 708 
 
 XLVI. 
 
 Much of the passed is prophecy ; and now, 
 
 All done, amoition earns nis wage : proof, prize, 
 
 Indisputable of peace. A social change 
 
 Being wrought, with that like vast in nature's prime, 
 
 When the elements less gross than air, condensed 
 
 Into mountainous levels, broad footholds made themselves 
 
 Of nations, — figuring forth the fateful mind 
 
 Pacific, all controlling, war, and worse. 
 
 Could worse be, in life's penultimate age. What war 
 
 World wide and through all time had failed to achieve, 
 
 Sage peace with sensitive hand unseen, wins. Love, 
 
 Of mortal things last, nestles within the heart. 
 
 Ambition ruined by success ; displaced. 
 
 Humbled by destiny unforethought ; doubt's last 
 
 Attack, see, crushed ; for though to the edge of hell 
 
 Despair bring one self-blindfold, yet turns not 
 
 Ours, heaven affianced, false to God, who tries 
 
 All spirits ; and this, from its own ruin at last. 
 
 Like a flag storm-torn, fluttering from its staff, 
 
 Evanishing, saves. Earth's elements diicohere. 
 
 A GatTiering of Kings and Peoples. 
 Festus throned; Lucipee, wtid Claea. 
 
 Festus. Princes and Peoples 1 Powers once of earth \ 
 It suits not that I point to ye the path 
 I trode to reach this sole supreme domain — 
 This mountain of all mortal might. Enough, 
 That I am monarch of the world — tVe world. 
 Let all acknowledge loyally my laws. 
 And love me as I them love. It will be best. 
 No rise against me can stand. I rule of Grod ; 
 And am God's sceptre here. Think not the world 
 Is greater than my might — less than my love — 
 Or that it stretcheth further than mine arm. 
 Kings 1 ye are kings no longer. Cast your crowns 
 Here — for my footstool. Every power is mine. 
 Nobles 1 be first in honour. Ye, too, lose 
 Your place, in place : retrieve yourselves in good. 
 Peoples 1 be mighty in obedience. 
 Let each one labour for the common weal. 
 Be every man a people in his mind. 
 Kings — nobles — nations I love me and obey. 
 I need no aid — no arms. Bum books — break swords I 
 The world shall rest, and moss itself with peace. 
 
 Kings. Tyrant, we love thee not 1 and we as one 
 Man will resist thee. 
 
 Festus. Well I know it. Mark I 
 
 Ye are all nations, I a single soul. 
 Yet shall this new world order outlast aU. 
 Behold in me the doomsman of your race. 
 Will, reason, passions, all shall serve and aid, 
 
704 FE8TUB, 
 
 Yea your most secret qualities and powers. 
 Not by the mandate of the mass as wont, 
 In times gone by for aye, to mark the elect 
 Of popular will ; not by sublime descent 
 From conquering kings, sit I here ; but of God 
 Called, and of wise men's wisdom, and the force 
 Supreme of reason, and law of serving love 
 Intituled and acknowledged, name me lord. 
 
 Nobles. Reason rebels against thee, and condemns 
 Tyrant and slave alike ; exalting this. 
 Deposing that, adjusting all ; as yet 
 Hope we and mean to do with thee and these. 
 
 Festus. And seek ye to gainstand the faith in God f 
 
 blindest rulers 1 will ye never learn 
 Your proper region and due dominance ? 
 Whatever ye rule, I rule over you. 
 
 All unobstructed power is sanctified. 
 
 Divine rule is a tyranny of good. 
 
 Mine shall be like it. Tyrant 1 WeU ; I am. 
 
 1 glory in the title ; reverence 
 Myself, for that it is accorded me. 
 
 What is above this soul of mine but heaven 7 
 
 How was it I came here ? By royal birth 
 
 From fatherly despots ? Was't by stealthy stride, 
 
 Ambition's wont ? Or, by the sycophant pace 
 
 Of popular patriot ? Or the earth-shaking march 
 
 Of militant states ? By nothing save the step 
 
 Dawnlike of mental light, led on by souls 
 
 Of moral majesty whose noble faith 
 
 And peaceful polity our social sphere 
 
 Thus amiably progressing, proves the hopes 
 
 Of all earth's good and sage in ages passed 
 
 Prophetic ripening to fulfilment, man 
 
 His own and unacknowledged lord, enthroned, 
 
 The world round ; prelude of his great return 
 
 Godwards, and Heaven regained, his final home. 
 
 Peoples. The opposite of rule divine is best 
 For man. Power gives temptation, which in tura 
 Sets aside honour, social duty, law. 
 And right ; creates abuse, and abuse strife, 
 Confusion, retribution, bloodshed, sin. 
 Though for a season cloud and meteor, sign 
 Of transient action midst eternal calm, 
 Usurp the heights of air, yet soon the stars 
 Their peaceful reign resume ; and now at last. 
 Since earth hath wiser waxed, the people theirs. 
 Therefore descend thou and make room for us ; 
 Or else thy powers submit to perfect proof. 
 And our approval, ratified by all. 
 
 LuciFEB. These are the proud divisors of times passed, 
 Brought forward to futurity : the seed 
 Of souls which live to sow dissension ; souls 
 
FESTUS. 705 
 
 Who would snspend npon a cable's strand, 
 A continent of cavil. Go, good friends. 
 A mightier contest than ye dream, and like 
 To task all craft acurainous, waits ye yet. 
 "While hangs the world together, these lack not. 
 
 Festus. Nations 1 behold the day of gladness, long- 
 Craved by all righteous souls, the day of peace, 
 The feast-day of the Eternal. Sun, main, sky, 
 Beaming each one with God's reflected love, 
 Their vast content, united, smile. And now 
 ^Vhen in these times, earth's latest days, the sea, 
 His ancient sites revindicate, reigns supreme 
 O'er all time's storied states, and powers renowned 
 Of antique policy, heMess empires, cleansed 
 By God's liege element from the blood of wars. 
 Sacred and most iniquitous, at the shrines 
 Poured, of false gods, to this terrene upheaved 
 Freshliest, and counter-shadowy, where young earth 
 Unannalled, undefiled, demands as dower 
 The mighty and immaculate future ; now 
 When heaven round other star than sung of old 
 Rolls peaceful ; star of conquered death, the lyre's 
 Bright paramount ; when, with swift and easy she ck, — 
 As toiling traveller from his shoulder shifts 
 Towards the day's end, his burthen. — earth shakes ol 
 Her overpoise of old beliefs and stale 
 Traditions ; and with slope celestial trimmed 
 To happier influences, — still find we things, 
 Conform to reason most, by the mass most spumed ; — 
 Sad leaven of our original self -defect. 
 
 Peoples. This newest order of things us suits not. 
 
 Festus. Nay, 
 
 Ask not how long 'twill last. Meanwhile, enjoy ; 
 Heap all the harvest peace and power can give 
 Freedom and nature perfected. Let all 
 Good plans benevolence longs to realize. 
 Not yet accomplished be achieved. For what 
 Beside, were boundless power, and peace assured, 
 One only polity, one sole faith ? 
 
 Peoples. We trow not. 
 
 We, more than half, throw back the whole thou'dst give $ 
 Want not thy boons, nor thee ; would say farewell. 
 
 LuciFEE. Their honey smacks of rue, or I mistake. 
 
 Festus. Man's conscience is an angel or a fiend, 
 According to his deeds. What have I done ? 
 I was the youngest bom of destiny. 
 The favourite of fate, and fortune's heir : 
 My word for once was law and prophecy. 
 Speak, spirit ! have I forfeited my star ? 
 
 LuciFEE. Storms give to dust a privilege to rise, 
 And fly in all men's faces — even kings' 1 
 
 Peoples. Monaxch, thou rulest nought. We will thee not. 
 
 A A 
 
?06 FE8TU8. 
 
 Fbstus. What if a million moleMUs were to league 
 Their meannesses together, with due pomp, 
 And to some mountain say, — In the name of God ! 
 "\^Tiither dost thou aspire ? Does any deem 
 That great imperial creature would descend 
 From those sublimest solitudes of air. 
 Where it had dwelt in snowy sanctity, 
 For ages, ere the mud-made world below 
 Was more than half conceived, to parley there 
 At its own footstool, and lay down its crown, 
 And elemental commune with the skies. 
 Because its height was so intolerable. 
 And its supremacy termed tyranny ? 
 "Why look ye all amort ? Is doomsday come ? 
 Stand forth, and speak, sole servant of my throne I 
 If aught thou hast to settle and explain 
 Or straightway send these nations to their homes. 
 Peoples. Our home is where we rule and are content, 
 Lucifer. Ye mighty once — ye many weak, give ear 1 
 I and my god — for god he sure mnst be, 
 In human form, who sitteth there enthroned — 
 For readier rule, and for the good of all. 
 Have cast again the dynasties of earth 
 According to the courses of the air : 
 Therefore, from east, and west, and north, and south, 
 Four kings ministrant element-like shall bend 
 Before his feet. Hearken, thou unkinged crowd 1 
 Ye have not sought the good of those ye governed. 
 The people only for the people care. 
 Ye seem to have thought earth but a baU for kings 
 To play with : rolling the royal bauble, empire, 
 Now east — now west. Your hour and power is past. 
 Ye are the very vainest of mankind, 
 As loftiest things weigh lightest. Ye are gone 1 
 Nations, away with them ! Nor do ye boast 1 
 Ye find that power means not good, not bliss. 
 But ye would wed delusion : — now, ye know her. 
 And she is yours for life — and death — and judgment. 
 There is no power, nor majesty, save his : 
 His is the kingdom of the world and glory. 
 His throne is founded centre-deep by heaven ; 
 And the whole earth doth bless him, and approve 
 With proud assent, one-minded. As the sun 
 Fresh risen from hallowing waters which his touch 
 In turn reconsecrates, by slow ascatit, 
 Persistent, but inevitable, assumes 
 The zenith, and in judgment throned, his seat, 
 As standard of all height, gives earth, gives heaven, 
 To each the same scale, this, your liege, for you 
 For all, lays down one perfect level law, 
 His will ; and he, at will, will turn the world, 
 As light turns earth round. Greet your lord, and go» 
 
FE8TUS. 707 
 
 Festus. All silent I Do they understand ? 
 LuciFEE. Why, yes ; 
 
 They hold thy gain, their loss ; that's all. 
 Festus. O men I 
 
 brethren 1 deathless mortals, hear me once 1 — 
 Listen, ye nations 1 would ye learn how stands 
 
 Your great accompt with those, earth's choice, who mo 
 Have chosen, attend, while I times passed unfold, 
 Time present, times to come. Men all are bom 
 To serve or rule ; no harm, if they who rule 
 Most, the most serve. To this end I, self -vowed, 
 Elect of heaven, casting in mind how best 
 
 1 could man benefit ; and soul-grieved to know 
 Of doubts that in one's fellows' hearts and ours 
 Dare -wTetchedly God's being ignore, oft mouthed 
 By mock philosophy, I, self -sworn to seek 
 
 All truth through nature, region none of life, 
 
 Inner or outer spared ; while through all forms 
 
 Material, through the world's broad elements. 
 
 All science, graduating, have traced ; and joyed. 
 
 My way, through fires sphere-cored, the hearth of things 
 
 And the atlantean axis of the world, 
 
 Where played time's brood, archaic, fought ; air's heights, 
 
 And all the undescribed circumference, 
 
 Where earth's thick breath thins off to blankest space, 
 
 Scaled ; ocean's stormy baptistery, world-walled, 
 
 Sounded, and trode the high exhilarant snows. 
 
 Sparkling like star-dust ; while all form extreme 
 
 Of socialty, rude, polished, tested, I 
 
 One sense of law, in all, one law of right 
 
 Finding, one sanctity of blood, proof sure 
 
 To man of like rise, end ; and while in all 
 
 These elements of conclusion joyed to trace 
 
 All- where, the god-print of one boimteous hand 
 
 Omnific, predisposant : nor, less proof. 
 
 Marking of power than love ; to view o'er all 
 
 Spread the wide wing of God propitiable. 
 
 Answerer of prayer, inspirer ; in all need 
 
 The Lord of provident goodness, by pure hearts 
 
 Neared only, and spirit imbued with love of God 
 
 And man ; a spirit which, sinning, seeks through faith 
 
 And penitence, re-access to him the One 
 
 Invariable, whose wordless name, as taught 
 
 By him, all orders of existence serves 
 
 To fraternize, all worlds, all souls unites ; 
 
 Nor, labouring to this end, though pleased to see 
 
 Science, in all her walks, keep step with faith. 
 
 Each purifying the other, can soul content. 
 
 Through nature's sensible rudiments to have passed 
 
 Fruitless, unless in heart, grace-taught ; but aye 
 
 Wretched to view faith's vast divergences, 
 
 0«^ only true 'mong men, to me it came, 
 
 ▲ ▲ 2 
 
708 FESTU8. 
 
 As duty and end inspired, to seek in all 
 
 The essential verity which, to each germane, 
 
 All linking, permeated. This hoped, throug-h all 
 
 Soul-culture of the passed, and sacred creeds. 
 
 Initiative on earth of life divine, 
 
 From earliest days, — whose ruinous relics still 
 
 Astound, not, sole, through many a faith extinct, 
 
 I pilgrim-wise have toiled, but many a fane 
 
 Now silent, solitary, save hj the sun 
 
 Uneyed, unvisited, save by the elements. 
 
 With patient foot have trodden ; in rock-slabbed tomb, 
 
 For the living built as though to expiate sins 
 
 Titanic ; cell sepulchral midst the moor 
 
 For penitence reared or rites regenerative 
 
 Of aspirant soul ; in stony ark on hill 
 
 Piled giant-wise, have knelt, heart-racked, to wring 
 
 From those dumb rocks their secret, petrified 
 
 Long years since, what their stone of fate, hard by, 
 
 And intersecting circles of good and ill, 
 
 Mutation, destiny, life, imported ; chair 
 
 Piacular, scooped from cliff wherein to outwatch 
 
 The moon, or trace some fateful birth-star end 
 
 Its skiey arc, oft rapturous pressed ; in these, 
 
 Fanes roofless, wandering, stretched o'er heathy downs, 
 
 And pillared crags ranged rudely ring-wise, rough, 
 
 Shapeless, or shaped like clouds, men's first essay 
 
 To circumscribe the infinite, and one spot 
 
 Make holier than the rest where Grod is all ; 
 
 Have bowed me 'neath the mystic moon, and praj'-ed 
 
 Before the altar, hoary, meteoric, once 
 
 Encrowned with fire the flood quenched ; and these quit 
 
 For Parian shafted shrines, shrines such as bom 
 
 To moimt Pentelic, parent of white fanes. 
 
 Commemorate in earth's choicest lore, to light, 
 
 To wisdom, sacred, to heaven's Lord ; or such. 
 
 Columnar as illume the broadening sands 
 
 Round Tchelminar or Balbeck, to the sun, 
 
 Hallowed of old ; and thence to those cross-based 
 
 Which cloudward towered, or domed, here consecrate 
 
 The principle of divine self-sacrifice, 
 
 Passing, have in them all, all found, at core, 
 
 Identic ; — heart prostrate with hand uplift, 
 
 Professed man's creed eternal ; — G-od is God ; 
 
 Nought else ; the Infinite, the Eternal, one ; 
 
 All provident nature is his prophet ; man 
 
 His son from him first issuant back returns 
 
 To him by virtue, and moral light ; his law 
 
 Is pure and righteous ; in its practice, peace, 
 
 Wisdom, salvation are. He, God, is love ; 
 
 But just both when he punishes and forgives. 
 
 Him fear, obey, love, worship. Of all faiths 
 
 The essence thus ^n mine own spirit summed 
 
FE8TU8. 709 
 
 In fanes both old and new, I, with all rites, 
 
 The world-presiding deity, dared to adore, 
 
 And knew such service acceptable ; — nor less 
 
 That God's name ye might know as Love, not Fear ; 
 
 That hope and not despair might rule your souls 
 
 Conceptive of the future life ; that war 
 
 Earth's vastest curse might cease, and peace the path 
 
 Prepare of justice, know, my task hath been, 
 
 By secret rites and sacred, many a year, — 
 
 As might a river subterrene through caves 
 
 Abysmal, issue sunwards seek — to gain 
 
 Such light of truth as, lightening soul, might all 
 
 Advantage in the scale of being ; with sense 
 
 Of wisest justice competent to reframe 
 
 On base right equitable man's social life ; 
 
 With saving trust in God, the infinite mind. 
 
 Simplest of faiths and the sole true ; with arms 
 
 Of purest piety in prayer's fervent fires 
 
 "Wrought indestructible, so to encrown man's soul 
 
 That nought of good, save angelhood, scarce remains 
 
 For men to attain, that, well nigh reached ; and helped 
 
 By sagest souls who, operating unseen 
 
 As nature's forces, in one law supreme 
 
 Have wrought of faith and life, and all good ends 
 
 Knotting in one, in me have all success 
 
 Crowned ; and all this for you. 
 
 Peoples. Thee, king of earth, 
 
 We want not, nor await we thy projects. 
 War when we would, and when war-wearied, peace ; 
 Fair conquest and fair risk we rather love 
 Than peace enforced, forced union. 
 
 Festus. Ye who speak 
 
 Are not the whole. 
 
 Peoples. We are most. 
 
 Festus. Alas for man ! 
 
 No hope. This grand reunion lasts no more 
 Than my day. Seer, sage, saint, have wrought in vain. 
 Thought's pettiest differences are cherished more 
 Than truth's most vast congruities. In vain 
 It seems, to have oped the way to truth, and peace. 
 And reason's sacred cabinet, wherein all 
 Earth's wise might make their conclave, and the world 
 Rule bodily, spiritually ; in vain to have passed 
 Through pains and perils without end, to earn 
 For man the attainable results he spurns ; 
 Peace universal, one pure simple faith, 
 ITirough lifts of soul, successive, whence its view 
 Widened and purified can clearlier hold 
 Manhood's test, virtue ; and for all inspired 
 With love their kind to enlighten, and with proof 
 Perfective of each soul to serve its race 
 By loving God. and well-doing. 
 
710 FE8TU8, 
 
 Peoples. Be it so. 
 
 Good will we not by these means to such end. 
 
 Others. "We, king-, we homage thee. In thee content, 
 We hail the great designs of God fulfilled. 
 Thee for no other end than man to serve, 
 Enlighten, free in mind, he here hath placed. 
 Thee for our joy, our perfectness we take, 
 Our seal of earth's companionship with heaven ; 
 Our hope and our accomplished proof of good. 
 His laws the only miracles being- knows, 
 And these because from nothingness his will 
 Evoked them ; matter powerless, lawless ; time, 
 Extent, life, mind, the infinite whole his own 
 Blessed spirit diffused through space, and made all good. 
 
 Festus. Knowledge re-oned now with belief, while men 
 Deem diversely of lesser ends, God's law 
 Moral and natural, through man's mean evolved, 
 Or demonstrate, him shows like kind and wise. 
 The world hath but just now full use attained 
 And seisin of its happiest privilege ; 
 "Fcp^ as one who unremembering somewhat seeks 
 Ho hath never truly lost, and at last knows 
 Haply in his hand or bosom, so the world, 
 God seeking, finds but in those inner heavens, 
 That peaceful and perfectible nature, man 
 Long missed, but, recoUective, in his breast 
 Divinely implaced perceives ; and now, of self 
 Recognizant, by true means, ends true achieves. 
 
 Lucifer. Be it 1 If peace content not mighty man, 
 What can ? For as the people cannot rule 
 Themselves, sc neither may a crowd of kings. 
 And hence hai K been the evil of the world ; 
 Now ceased for ever. War will be no more. 
 His is the sway of social sovereign peace. 
 His tyranny is love and good to all. 
 His is the vice-royed, vouchsafed, reign of God. 
 
 Festus. What wouldst thou angel-guard ? for I feel thee near. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Mortal, the end draws nigh. Prepare 1 For 
 thus 
 God justifies his ways and manifests 
 His equitable forecounsel, told in heaven. 
 
 Festus. men, O brethren, turn your souls to God. 
 
 Lucifer. Why wish the world's conversion? Men have choice 
 Of evil and good ; have e'er had ; ever will ; 
 Even these whose souls are yet unmade. Eight soon, 
 God will fulfill his thousands known from first ; 
 Whose apex soul alone is lacking, thine. 
 Depart, ye nations ! 
 
 Festus. Hold 1 I yet must speak 
 One word of hope to inspirit those most sad, 
 Most sage, who hold not with the noisier mass, 
 Aggressive ever, unsatiate of all good ; 
 
FESTU8 711 
 
 Adjure all by their better selves, and show 
 All, that, mayhap, not all know. 
 
 Lucifer. Time is pa«:ped 
 
 For teaching. 
 
 Festus. Fields ripen even while we rpaj). 
 
 One glad and glorious prospect beams o'er earth. 
 As when from victory won, a people long- 
 By foreign foes oppressed, true grasp regained 
 Of popular right, or claim, gathering, elate 
 At peace thus earned, and potent place resumed 
 In nature's order, ordered freedom, meet 
 In their mid capital ; thrills through thickening thron;^8 
 One multitudinous heart ; from breast to breast 
 In lightning leaps, the spirit of freedom bounds, 
 Instant, ubiquitous, as through echoing skies 
 The fulminant fire-cloud, self -diffusive, throbs 
 With thunderous pulsations, aweing earth : 
 So here ; make glad ye many : joy to view, 
 Monarchs 1 your reconciliate nations, not 
 By pairs, nor triads, but by imbanded states. 
 Embrace commutual : one in godliest will, 
 In chivalrous fealty, to uplift the low ; 
 To enrich the poor ; the weak protect ; you, priests I 
 No longer prompt, as through time passed, to Lle>s 
 With waters thrice unhallowed, war's red flags ; 
 Kneeling do homage, joyful, for man's sake. 
 To this pure banner solitary which floats 
 In repetitive signs round earth, of peace ; 
 Fruit of one common worship, practice, creed ; 
 You too, rejoice ye masses ! mean no more 
 By frightful frivolousness, but wistful now, 
 Of life's great ends, and the soul's worthiest aims, 
 As by your wisest taught, and hallowed most 
 By your kind Maker, kinder Saviour, judge 
 Kindest, of all man's kind ; earth's meanest wight, 
 Self ranked in the host of good, 'gainst evil arrayed, 
 A spirit is, sage, seer ; proud to obey earth's law. 
 Like just with Heaven's, extensible through all worlcs, 
 Soul elevative : him, therefore, on this throne. 
 Broad axis of humanity's moral sphere. 
 Seated, serene ; in whom ye reign ; your chief, 
 Your chosen champion 'gainst the great ones gone ; 
 Kinglings who mount their lineage to false gods, 
 While we, and all our lieges, but to the true, 
 One single generation ; one descent ; 
 
 Godlings, there prostrate, with their blood-bouj^ht crowna 
 And trampled peoples ; him, ye lowly, hail, 
 Ye lofty ; loftiest he of all in place ; 
 Lowliest in heart ; him hail, in whom alone, 
 All sanctions concentrate ; the elect of God : 
 Of his own will ; and earth's one-minded choice 
 Humanity rules ; reign peace, and piety reign ; 
 
712 FJSSTU8. 
 
 Hule, reign, which, all ones with God's rule more dread. 
 
 Peoples. man our king", live ever. Be thy days 
 As are the days of Heaven, a thousand years. i 
 
 *Tis in thy life, thine only life, we live, i 
 
 And by thy name, most mighty soul, we swear. 
 
 Lucifer. So be it. They bow their heads in sign to obey, 
 But 'tis the bow of death, 
 
 Festus. Hark, fiend 1 dost hear 
 
 That sound as of a deep and world-wide sigh 
 Tempestuous, sweeping upwards, as it stills ? 
 
 Lucifer. Ay, 'tis the death-groan of the sons of men ; 
 Thy subjects, king ! 
 
 Festus. Why hadst thou this so soon ? 
 
 Lucifer. It is God who brings about all this ; not I. 
 Truly, Death leaves a sweeping swathe. Mark, now, 
 Heaven's law, and earth's, how just 1 what time's for these 
 If sinners were among them, as I deem 
 Might be, if I my memory closely raked, 
 Condignly to repent, and keep that law 
 Of penitence, thou wast told, subserves all spheres ? 
 
 Festus. I know not, God is merciful, as just. 
 Not yet, it may be, time hath ceased with these, 
 I am not ready — and — it shall not be ! 
 
 Lucifer. I cannot help it, monarch I and — it is ! 
 Hast not had time for good ? 
 
 Festus. One day — perchance. 
 
 Lucifer. Then hold that day as an eternity. 
 
 Festus. All around me die. The earth is one great death- 
 bed. 
 
 Lucifer. Time's tide is nearly out, and sick folk die. 
 
 Festus. Oh 1 worst, oh wretchedest of woes, of wrong's 
 Of time's disasters. Thou of all at last 
 Worst, cruellest. As some tyrant storm, of sea 
 And sky the usurpful scion, strives to tear, 
 Unnatural, from the brow of towering crag 
 Its crown ice-peaked, far glittering ; but repulsed, 
 Baffled, discomfited, howling, mainward vaults. 
 His mean revenge to wreak, wrathful, on foe 
 More passive ; and days three the indignant deep 
 Lashing, with rage accumulant hour by hour. 
 His track betrayed by fulminant fires within. 
 Breaks on Britannic coasts, whitening for leagues 
 The Atlantic ; and e'er fiercer far than first 
 When he his lairth-world left, with his last breath. 
 And death-blast most of all convulsive, wrecks. 
 With ruinous vehemence, fleets and fields and towns, 
 So thou, great fiend 1 dost last of all thy worst. 
 
 Lucifer. But these thou seest shall rise again for good, 
 Or ill, each one in ghostly personalty. 
 
 Festus. But just, 
 
 Cut off, untimely, all should choose. See, now. 
 
 Clara. Oh ! save me, Festus 1 I have fled to thee, 
 
TESTUS, 713 
 
 Through all the countless nations of yon dead— 
 For well I knew it was thou who sattest there, 
 To die with thee, if that thou art not death : 
 And if thou wert, I would not shrink from theo, 
 I am thine own, own Clara 1 
 
 Festus. Thou art safe 1 
 
 Here in the holy chancel of my heart — 
 The heavenly end of this our fleshly fane, 
 I hold thee to communion. Rest thee safe. 
 
 Clara. Men thought I was an angel, as I passed ; 
 And caught up at my feet — but I 'scaped all. 
 I knew I should die by thee : the soul that loves 
 Soul-wise alone gives forth true oracles. 
 
 Festus. Then there is faith among these mortals yet. 
 Thy beauty cometh first, and goeth last — 
 Willow-like. Welcome 1 
 
 Clara. Oh 1 I am so happy I 
 
 Festus. I speak of thee as of the dead ; — the dead 
 Are alway faithful. 
 
 Clara. I will stay with thee — 
 
 Though angels beckon — may I ? Let me, love 1 
 I dare not — cannot, take mine eyes from thee, 
 For fear of looking on the dead. Dear Festus I 
 I think of thee as when I loved thee first ; 
 For all time since, even as the ebbing sea 
 Falls in its rise, and loses in its gain. 
 My heart ne'er passed that hour. It soothes me now, 
 
 Festus. Well, too, I mind me of that day ; a day 
 Fragrant from first to last with sunny flowers ; 
 Of cloudless light, of cloudless love ; it passed : 
 Eve came ; the dewy night stole forth, dim-veiled; 
 Arcturus, heavenly oxherd, bowed his knee 
 Star-cusped, upon the hill, as though with all 
 His worlds he worshipped God ; his conquering head 
 Bowed 'neath the orb-gemmed crown, hollow with heaven, 
 God o'er him holds as one who had striven with God, 
 And gained the day o'er deity. Oh I no more 1 
 Shall we not mind us of that day in heaven ? 
 Thou art the only one hast answered me. 
 Love to love — life to life. 
 
 Clara. Oh ! I am dying I 
 
 The heavens are pressing down upon me. God 
 My father seeks the spirit of his child. 
 
 Festus. Gro, golden lily, bloom thou on the breast 
 Of everlasting sanctity. 
 
 Clara. Farewell 1 
 
 Give me one kiss — the kiss of life and death— 
 The only taste of earth I will take to heaven. 
 Here I let me die, die in it I 
 
 Festus. Last and best I 
 
 Now am I one again. Oh I memory runs 
 To madness, like a river to the sea« 
 
 Ai.8 
 
714 FE8TUS. 
 
 These long illustrious tresses, gold of gold, 
 
 Yea, very gold of very gold, which here 
 
 Insult all thought of limit ; to my touch 
 
 Dearer than were the sceptre of the sun^ 
 
 Wave me no more bright welcome ; and these lips/ 
 
 "Whose animated silence sweetlier told 
 
 Than talk of other angel, move no more 
 
 In silence or in sound ; these bright brown eyes, 
 
 Still as extinguished stars, no more reflect 
 
 The virtues of the heavens. Man's world of old, 
 
 Began with woman, mother of all life ; 
 
 And, after countless ages, now, with thee. 
 
 Bride of my soul, death's youngest daughter,lends. 
 
 Our union is, and hath been, most in mind, 
 
 That perfect, yea, that hallowed ; and I end, 
 
 As I began, sole as the sun in heaven. 
 
 Happy as heaven have I, love, been with thee ! 
 
 Thine innocent heart hath passed through a pure life, 
 
 Like a white dove, wing-sunned through the blue sky. 
 
 A better heart God never saved in heaven. 
 
 She died as all the good die — blessing — hoping. 
 
 There are some hearts aloe-like, flower once, and die 
 
 And hers was of them. — Thrall art thou and free : 
 
 Free of immortal life though bound of death. 
 
 Not the emotional surface of the sea, 
 
 Whose form from things without is ta'en, but more 
 
 The deep essential quiet of its bed, 
 
 Thy soul resembled in the pure profound. 
 
 Thy love to me was as the morning dew, 
 
 Earth's liquid jewellery, wrought of air, 
 
 Young nature's christening ; whose every bead, 
 
 Bound as the globular genesis of things, 
 
 And bright as heaven's own gems in diamond set, 
 
 Emblemed its pure perfection o'er this heart ; 
 
 Now sun parched, thunder scorched ; yet stricken thue^ 
 
 Feeling myself each hour, each pulse-beat drawn, 
 
 More mightily drawn, to join and glory in 
 
 All being's everlasting sense of God. 
 
 I see the universe made clear with light. 
 
 Holy with spirit, pure with deity ; 
 
 Man the dear son of God to God returned. 
 
 And earth's renascent nature throned in heaven. 
 
 The voice of ages, syllabled in suns, 
 
 Pronounces God's unceasing benison 
 
 Upon his bright creation. Time is touched 
 
 On all hands by the Eternal : and the world 
 
 Is bounded, rounded, ended but by heaven. 
 
 Therefore the soul, in death resilient, looks, 
 
 Backwards to whence its impulse came, to God i 
 
 And all things lovely and divine that here 
 
 It loved in spirit, are too, with it conjoined, 
 
 ^d mingled with the future of the stars, 
 
FE8TU8. 715 
 
 And blissful occupation of all space. 
 
 As, pending time, the passed and future cause 
 
 Chief reasons, and the present but a point, 
 
 So in eternity all's presentness. 
 
 Hence therefore from me now all thoughts of earth ; 
 
 Be they as in a lake of lightning quenched ; 
 
 In lone annihilation lie entombed ; 
 
 And memory's pall be buried with the bier. 
 
 There lies my soul's love : and lo ! all life, — 
 
 In such time as the pale self -flattering moon, 
 
 Who loves to see her likeness in all lakes, 
 
 Kath ta'en, from her first starlike peep above 
 
 The hiU, to free wholly her silvery breast, 
 
 Her upper and her lower limbs of light, 
 
 From dark, detentive earth, and, spumed all ties. 
 
 Of all attractions 'sdeignful, southening, soars 
 
 Calm, but unpiteous, heavenward, — life hath ceased; 
 
 Ajid silence reads the dead world's burial tale. 
 
 And death sits quivering, there, and watering 
 
 His great gaunt jaw at me. When must I die ? 
 
 Lucifer. Say 1 dost thou feel to be mortal or immortiit ? 
 
 Festus. Away 1 — and let me die alone. 
 
 Lucifer. I go : — 
 
 And I will come again : but spare thee, now. 
 One hour, to think 
 
 Festus. On all things. God, my God ! 
 
 One hour to sum a life's iniquities ! — 
 One hour to fit me for eternity — 
 To make me up for judgment and for God ! — 
 But one hour, spirit I to curse thee ! Nay, for that, 
 There may be endless hours. God ! I despair, — 
 And I am dying. Let me hold my breath I 
 I know not if I e'er may draw another. 
 I feel death blowing hard at the lamp of life. 
 My heart feels filling like a sinking boat : 
 It will soon be down — down. What will 'come of me ? 
 It is as I always wished it ; — I shall die 
 In darkness, and in silence, and alone. 
 Even my last wish is petted. God 1 I thank thee ; 
 It is the earnest of thy coming — what ? 
 Forgiveness / Let it be so : for I know not 
 What I have done to merit endless pain. 
 Is pleasure crime ? Forbid it, God of bliss 1 
 Who spurn at this world's pleasures, lie to God j 
 And show they are not worthy of the next. 
 What are thy joys we know not — nor can we 
 Coma near thee in thy power, nor truth nor justice ; 
 The nearest point wherein we come towards thee, 
 Is loving — making love — and being happy. 
 Thou wilt not chronicle our sandlike sins ; 
 For sin is small, and mean, and barren. Good, 
 Onl.7, is ijrcat, and generous, and fruitful. 
 
716 TE8TU8. 
 
 Number the mountams, not the sands, O God ! 
 
 God will not look as we do on our deeds ; 
 
 Nor yet as others. If he more condemn, 
 
 Shall he not more approve ? A few fair deeds 
 
 Bedeck my life, like gilded cherubs on 
 
 A tomb, beneath which lies dust, decay, and darknesB. 
 
 But each is better than the other thinks. 
 
 Thank God 1 man is not to be judged by man ; — 
 
 Or, man by man the world would damn itself. 
 
 What do I see ? It is the dead. They rise 
 
 In clouds 1 and clouds come sweeping from all sides, 
 
 "Upwards to God : and now they all are gone — 
 
 Gone, in a moment, to eternity. 
 
 But there is something near me. 
 
 Spieit. It is I. 
 
 Festus. Go on I I follow, when it is my time. 
 Not perfect yet the complement of heaven. 
 There is no shadow on the face of life : 
 It is the noon of fate. Why may not I die ? 
 Methinks I shall have yet to slay myself. 
 I am calm now. Can this be the same heart 
 Which slept when sleep it did from dizziness, 
 And pure rapidity of passion, like 
 The centre circlet of the whirlpool's wheel ? 
 The earth is breaking up ; all things are thawing". 
 River and mountain melt into their atoms ; 
 A little time, and atoms wiU be alL 
 The sea boils ; and the mountains rise and sink 
 Like marble bubbles, bursting into death. 
 
 thou Hereafter 1 on whose shore I stand — 
 Waiting each toppling moment to engulf me — 
 What am I ? Say, thou Present I— say, thou Past I 
 Ye three wise children of Eternity 1 
 
 A life ? — a death ? — and an immortal ? — all ? 
 
 Is this the tlireef old mystery of man ? 
 
 The lower, darker Trinity of earth ? 
 
 It is vain to ask. Nought answers me — not God. 
 
 The air grows thick and dark. The sky comes down. 
 
 The sun draws round him streaky clouds, like God 
 
 Gleaning up wrath. Hope hath leapt off my heart, 
 
 Like a false sibyl, fear-smote, from her seat, 
 
 And overturned it. I am bound to die. 
 
 Why wait, then, here, as an o'erfreighted cloud, 
 
 Abandoned by its lightlier winged convoy, 
 
 Lags, in some shadowy hollow of the hills, 
 
 Scapeless, till death, how dilatory I dissolve. 
 
 God I why wilt thou not save ? The great round world 
 
 Hath wasted to a column beneath my feet. 
 
 1 will hurl me off it, then ; and search the depth 
 Of space, in this one infinite plunge 1 Farewell 1 
 
 To earth, and heaven and God I Doom I spread thy lap ; 
 I come— I come. But no ! may God forbear, 
 
FESTU8. ri7 
 
 To jndpre the tempted purpose of my heart I 
 
 Me hath he stablished here, and he will save ; 
 
 And I can smile destruction in the face. 
 
 Let his strong hand compress the marble world, 
 
 And wring the starry fire-blood from its heart ; 
 
 Still on this earth-core I rejoice in God ; 
 
 I know him and believe in him as Love, 
 
 And this divinest truth he hath inspired, 
 
 Mercy to man is justice to himself. 
 
 To have held the truth is something, maybe. Yes 1 
 
 As when in time's remote, even life's gay youth, 
 
 Adventurous, tramping upland tracts, towards eve, 
 
 Following the sun from rise to rise we spring, 
 
 And clearing just this eminence now, now that, 
 
 Stretch quick our stride, and hold him yet in heaven, 
 
 Nor let depart till certain quite he has marked 
 
 As cognizant witness, how we have toiled to keep 
 
 His golden company, so one sole truth 
 
 God in the soul, attested, glorified, 
 
 Pursued through life, I feel, hold still at last 
 
 Supreme, consolatory. It lights me here ; 
 
 And will, till nature's night. But now compute 
 
 Thy deeds unwise, thy wasted times and means, 
 
 Disservice of the pure, the true, and judge 
 
 Thyself condemnable, if in part alone ; 
 
 Judge justly, judge impartially. But how ? 
 
 Like to the mighty leaves of light, shook off 
 
 Autumnal from the tree of time, which strew 
 
 In stormy incandescence the sun's heart, 
 
 My thoughts, confusedly burning, waste away 
 
 This world-enlightener. Soul, what hast thou done f 
 
 Hast brought forth a new God, or all the heavens 
 
 Stripped of their shining shams and shown the true t 
 
 Earth's spiritual idols hurled to hell ? 
 
 Behold them, ghosts of gods, the evanishing reek 
 
 Of lights extinguished. I have seen them all 
 
 Huddled in Hades ; lives that live no more, 
 
 Fast fading into sheer nonentity. 
 
 Hast thou, with all things granted to thy wish, 
 
 Wrought out thy sovereign end, to warm the world 
 
 To worship, love, pure life, thy solar will ? 
 
 Thy heaven-wide mark, thine universal aim ? 
 
 Alas 1 how futile action weighed 'gainst thought 1 
 
 What mountainlike conceptions swell the mind I 
 
 What monumental molehills we achieve I 
 
 O grief, O woe, that I so much have thought 
 
 Of self ; of God so little. Yet to know 
 
 Him, holy, gracious, giver of all good, 
 
 Forgiver of all evil, were surely enough 
 
 To sate the insatiable. In him we rest, 
 
 Our spiritual universe, in him 
 
 Move, as the self-revolving orbs in heaven. 
 
71S FE8TU8, 
 
 And 1 thou strange mysterious universe, 
 
 Eternal, unconceived, star-studded heaven, 
 
 Who art in God, and G-od in thee ; and we 
 
 Of both, and in both, sovereign slaves of law, 
 
 Founded we know not or by whom, or how ; 
 
 Canst thou not aid us to conceive ourselves, 
 
 Atoms of thine entirety, double-natured, 
 
 But powerless separate, seeing only this ; 
 
 Matter, if indestructible, always was. 
 
 And aye must be ; mind, too, if force defined ; 
 
 And though immortal both, yet vital only 
 
 And individual, when by laws combined ? 
 
 What then ? Are unintelligent laws alone 
 
 The rulers of the universe, and God 
 
 A metaphysic fiction ; am I God ; 
 
 As bud, tree rudimental ? As a seal's 
 
 Reverse impression, signifying yet 
 
 One only meaning, spelling one same word ? 
 
 As part material, objective to God? 
 
 As immaterial, subjective with him ? 
 
 As thus, of both symbolic, in myself, 
 
 An abstract of the infinite, the whole ? 
 
 No difference 'tween the all and God, but this, 
 
 Active and passive deity 1 man I 
 
 sacred nature, all divine ! In vain 
 
 We seek more light than that we see by. Nough'fe 
 
 Explaineth death but death, nor life but life ; 
 
 Whether perpetuate in more brilliant spheres, 
 
 Or fined and heightened simply into heaven ; 
 
 Communion with the spirit of infinite life. 
 
 All present reason, and eternal right. 
 
 Hailed by each natural mind as God, the good, 
 
 The wise, the holy, the all-blessing. Hence, 
 
 God is to man both God unknown and kno'v^ii. 
 
 The known we love ; but the unknown, although 
 
 We name it non-existent, still we fear ; 
 
 And fearing everything, fear nothing most. 
 
 As 'mid sky-crowning halo, the wan moon, 
 
 Like an enchantress in her charmed ring, 
 
 By recusant dsemons scared, her wheel of light 
 
 Widens, to fend her from wind-striding storms, 
 
 Threatf ul of death, in vain ; she knows all ; sees 
 
 The coming cloud which blots her out of heaven ; 
 
 So, too, my soul, affrayed, but firm, foreknows 
 
 The fatal end of all things. Yet, why fear ? 
 
 Great nature is my mother and my friend ; 
 
 When God comes down from heaven he dwells with her. 
 
 Hers is the house of mourning and of mirth ; 
 
 Feasting and fasting go on side by side ; 
 
 The song of bridals and the dirge of death, 
 
 And wail of birth, are aye beneath her roof. 
 
 She brings her children to their father's knee. 
 
FESTUa. n9 
 
 These he rebukes, rewards those ; judf^es alL 
 
 To all he shows their union with himself, 
 
 And those he loves best, takes, from time to time, 
 
 Back to his heavenly hall. Thus, now we know, 
 
 As 'tween the sun and earth lights spectral bond 
 
 Proves both like-essenced, concrete of one force 
 
 Reduplicate, parental ; so we find 
 
 The elemental thoughts of God and man 
 
 One ; the same self -constituent truths are ours. 
 
 Ours is his justice, his our love, though based 
 
 On grander and more sure foundations ; heaven 
 
 We share in doing good and willing well ; 
 
 In blessing, bettering, pardoning others here, 
 
 His universal throne. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Go, reign with him. 
 
 Festus. My confessor art thou, God, alone. 
 Soon all the shows of nature shall depart. 
 And nought not one with deity, goodness, love, 
 Peace, righteousness, and divine humanity. 
 Yea, nought but the eternal be for aye. 
 He his hand opened and the world was born. 
 He shuts it, and the essential nothingness 
 Embodied, dies its everlasting death, 
 The infinite conclusion of all things. 
 Open thine arms, death ! thou fijie of woe. 
 And warranty of bliss 1 I feel the last 
 Red mountainous remnant of the earth give way. 
 The stars are rushing upwards to the light ; 
 My limbs are light, and liberty is mine. 
 The spirit's infinite purity consumes 
 The sullied soul. Eternal destiny 
 Opens its bright abyss. I am God's ! 
 
 God. Man, die I 
 
720 1^:^8TXT8, 
 
 XLYII. 
 
 The skies, the skies reclaim us. Earth dissolred, 
 
 God's will prevails now sole. As when o'er vast 
 
 And shoreward flats at murkiest noon of night, 
 
 No single element, not high heaven, not earth, 
 
 Not sea is visible ; one wide searching wind, 
 
 Sign solitary of life, blows ; blows ; so sweeps 
 
 Through death's unsubstanced state, God's vital thought. 
 
 He, as he will, builds, rebuilds ; but to all 
 
 Create, most just, the soul-world opes, that time 
 
 Foreclosed, unthought of men, as by some huge 
 
 Judgment self- wrought of nature, each spirit might make 
 
 Of evil or good, preponderant choice. Behold 
 
 The war all souls must wage ; war justified 
 
 By God, forefiied ; for good fought ; war divine ; 
 
 War spiritual ; war heavenly : — and because 
 
 The good forgive the evil, all justice done, 
 
 God too forgives the good ; and hope weds joy. 
 
 After inferior nature is subdued 
 
 The all-evil see confined. Earth's elements 
 
 Conglobe themselves from chaos, purified. 
 
 The Sides. 
 
 AisTGELS, AifGBL OP Eaeth, Luniel, Guaediaj? Angel, Festus!, 
 
 LUCIFEE. 
 
 Phanuel. The age of matter consummate, Heaven decrees 
 AH things that are shall end, save that is God's. 
 As with one -world so shall it be with all ; 
 For all false, human, fallible, as towards 
 Creator, creature must be, while defect 
 Of separate life their being vitiates, are. 
 Prepare ye not the less for all at last. 
 Grade upon grade of glory, sons of God I 
 
 Angels. May we, our Lord and thine who through thy lips 
 Us wameth of the coming, know our souls, 
 Ministrant, but to effect His loveable will, 
 Whose will is righteous reason, ruled supreme, 
 Live, and but live to obey, in joy. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. One sphere 
 
 Yon prophet of perdition, who saw not 
 In it destroyed, his own discomfiture. 
 Space lacks already ; and life the great retreat 
 Begins. 
 
 Angels. Thy hand regenerative, we wait 
 Author of all, its place to fill in heaven. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. Earth's annals are accomplished, and her 
 tale 
 Told in the eternal archives, closed for good. 
 Behold the ruinous rudiments of a star. 
 Once mine ; nor let repose in death ; but since, 
 Tortured and torn by hands malevolent. See I ^ 
 
 Hath any seen discerption like to this 
 
FESTU8, 721 
 
 Titanic, of an orb's once radiant limbs ? 
 
 Anqels. Despair not thou, the nucleate heart still is, 
 Doubtless : and, purified, may yet revive. 
 
 LuNiEL. Meanst thou yon mass unsphered, suspense 'tween 
 heaven's 
 Calm upward, and these detrimental deeps, 
 Down dragging, all destructive, part without 
 Mine orbit, part within ; was that once earth T 
 I see no feature, like. 
 
 Angel op Earth. Ah, yes 1 not quite 
 Void, yet, of nature's cardinal shapes, each hour 
 Tending to wonted settlements, waiting still 
 The word compulsory, quickening, to reform ; 
 Or, to disperse, permissive, earth it was. 
 
 LUNIEL. Seems something wanting to perfection. Lacla 
 Force, may be for inception of new worlds ; 
 Lacks will ; perchance mislike feels deity towards 
 That mould of being. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. I go. Earth ! man, farewell. 
 
 LuNiEL. One moment, angel, fold thy wing. Stay yet 
 Thy star-fldght ; and, — if gained God's leave, while thus 
 CoUeagued, we parle, we, hosts ubiquitous, soon 
 Eradiated, to part, on quests divine. 
 From this spot, God's now presence central makes 
 To the whole unlimited, — say, we all would know 
 "Who circling with the whirlwind of our wings 
 Yon rude compost, the earth, have, curious, marked, — 
 "What mean these grouped below us ; that side, fiend, 
 And man, this ? this triumphant, that abject ? 
 "What, too, yon guardian spirit, hovering near ? 
 "Why silent aU in God ? To most it bodes 
 Mystery ; nor me can these, consociate here. 
 But for the hour, from spheres far off, inform 
 Touching events strange, vast, late happed in heaven. 
 Speak, friendliest spirit ; for, when thine orb, dispersed 
 In fiery fragments, lessening more and more 
 By self-resolvent forces from all claim 
 CiohaBsive, robbed my memory of a form 
 I once so dearly loved, tears so mine eyes 
 Drowned, grief my heart so panged. I fled ; yes, far 
 Space- winging, fled that world- wrack. But now say 
 Ere yet, sweet angel- ward of earth, thou joinest 
 Again, thy charge, say, heard not I resound 
 Late on those aery shores, the shock of war ? 
 For view I might not, since the sun's bright ball 
 Eayless, upon his ebon throne, the void. 
 Between me and this dread combat intervened ? 
 
 Angel op Eabth. War, Luniel ? Yes 1 I there. Not I could 
 quit 
 Even earth's ashes : nor was't for me to shrink 
 From sharing all her woe. Nor only this 
 Knew I, but all predestined in the passed ; 
 
722 FE8TU8. 
 
 The hostile forces, good and evil, each 
 
 Head in man's spirit contentious, wisely framed 
 
 For advance perpetual, conflict consecrate 
 
 By virtue's laws whose powers preponderant tend 
 
 Through nature, Godwards ; if to ill devote 
 
 Wrenched therefore culpably 'g-ainst God's end, — and all 
 
 To that grand crisis pertinent, whose just 
 
 EfFeot, as earth with heaven reharmonized, 
 
 Foretold, we have yet to see. Meanwhile, be sure 
 
 'Twas a fair foughten fight, this field of fields. 
 
 LuNiEL, Kehearse, dear spirit, this contest, for the sensa 
 Intense of joy in extreme action makes 
 "Wish one had there been. 
 
 Angel op Earth. War unmatched in time ; 
 
 Holiest of wars, and best, the war of good 
 'Gainst evil. 
 
 Phanuel. amiablest of angels, say 
 As thou beheldst, it may be, sharedst the strife, 
 Its varying course. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. Slight part in this was mine, 
 angel of salvation 1 but to encheer 
 The heaven-prized spirits with hope and holy strength. 
 Nor is it I can tell ye best. Behold ! 
 Couched 'neath yon cloudy precipice, the soul 
 War-proven, who watch keeps o'er the conquered fiend. 
 Heaven's late antagonist, and earth's ; he, best. 
 He, or the fiend, how fared the fight, can say. 
 For need I show that in yon prostrate shape, 
 Lies evil o'erthrown, its doom from God's just lips 
 Here waiting ; not with weak reproach, nor shame 
 Boisterous, nor mock contempt ; but as evil sage. 
 Not wholly execrable, nor yet to be 
 Deemed desperate infinitely ; but aptest sense 
 His of necessitate being, and consciousness 
 While gaining all his limited ends, of ends 
 Wider opposed, his mastering ; we, not he. 
 Unless through blind and fluttering instinct, him 
 Knowing by alchemy of force divine, 
 God's sole will, yet transformable. 
 
 LuNiEL. Draw nigh, 
 
 Mortal. And, if I err not, we. ere now. 
 Have met, traversed and seen together much. 
 Much joy I, that such good conceived hath borne 
 In thee, though late enough, fair fruit. And now 
 Wouldst me repay for favours passed, or these 
 Spirits of amity please ; and if of deeds 
 Glorious at once and good, thou lovest to tell 
 Not less than aid, — speak on 1 that we, informed. 
 With all benevolent souls, that joy which crowna 
 And sums celestial life may share whene'er, 
 And in what spheres soever, through all space 
 Good prospers, good in all because of God. 
 
FESTUa. 728 
 
 GtTARDlAN AXGEL. Approach, my Festus, spirit beloved, nor 
 fear 
 Trespass ag-ain of evil, nor dread escape 
 From God's unmeasured grasp. This conflict passed, 
 Know all ye ang-els, earth's, with time, with life 
 Coordinate, and the victory God's, of good. 
 
 Festus. O heavenly angels, denizens of state 
 Celestial, pardon ye, if words of mine, 
 Conceptions human failing to translate. 
 Fall shorter miserably of minds divine ; 
 But that ye part, made wise in order due 
 Of all things, hear, bright spirits this tale in few : 
 And may the all present, but invisible One, 
 Inspire me to declare what sole is true I 
 Ere yet, and this ye wot of, earth attained 
 Her supreme end, man's race, — so gracious grown 
 Their instinct of perfection to be gained 
 In all things, had, in outward life, so won 
 Comfort refined, and moderate plenty, ease, 
 Free faith, and learning's temperate luxuries. 
 That, in self -flattery, they would whisper, none 
 Of souls create, or kinds to be, unknown. 
 In social law, weal, polity, might proceed 
 Further ; scarce 'scaped they angels to become. 
 In charity and all knowledge. Underneath 
 This outward life of mind was spirit-death. 
 Wide spread, not tainting all. Heaven saw the need,— 
 Here, prophecy and pagan foresight one, — 
 Of a great purifying strife, the doom 
 Self -wrought, of woe or bliss, from good or ill 
 Practised by fallible souls but free, wherein 
 God's aims they might adopt, or side with sin : 
 And conscience so with fate, one end fulfil. 
 Earth's final scenes avails not now to unroll ; 
 Her agony was o'er, and death's, mine own, 
 For we had died together : and my soul. 
 Freed from life's bonds, God's universal throne 
 Touched instant, and the immaterial whole 
 Henceforth intuitive grasped ; and knowing, knew 
 Some all composing purgatorial strife. 
 Conclusive of all contest passed through life. 
 Some vast impending struggle foredoomed and due. 
 Such conflict God permitting for his ends 
 To be deferred till earth had ceased, outbumed, 
 The bliss of his elect Ircm first decerned, 
 Secured, that souls all else might prove themselves his friendfi 
 Or foes, self -judged ; and ere these hellwards turned. 
 Those heavenwards, each their principles foreshow 
 To all their fellow spirits on high, beiow ; 
 And if to wisdom's godlier life inclined, 
 Or ignorance dark and selfish lusts their mind. 
 I had passed then through death's cloud ; my spirit dilate ; 
 
724 FESTUff, 
 
 Like to a flower wMcli suddenly expands 
 
 Seemed with all force fraught fourfold, and the fat© 
 
 Of life-worlds trembling in my single hands. 
 
 I looked around ; and though earth's sphere no more 
 
 Loomed 'neath my feet as memory sought, nor wore 
 
 The mask impenetrable she wont before, 
 
 Yet to my spiritual sense seemed all as when 
 
 First conscious, nature knew I, matter, men, 
 
 Save that the elements midst transition seemed 
 
 Somewhat ; incongruous ; bent to interchange ; 
 
 Not friends, not foes, but each to other strange, 
 
 Unfixed, unfinished, as things had but dreamed 
 
 Their passed life over again ; with many a gap 
 
 Of orderly sequence blanked ; faults still, mayhap, 
 
 Of unrecognizant miud ; to be disesteemed. 
 
 Thus, then the prospect stood ; an obscure plain 
 
 Showed spread far out before the face of heaven, 
 
 Where solitude, if generable, once given 
 
 To life, might have presumed an endless reign, — 
 
 When, suddenly, on either hand, arose 
 
 And marvellously, as though compact of air, 
 
 Ere the whole eye were of the fact made 'ware, 
 
 A world in arms, though mixed, instinctive foes. 
 
 Souls, these, humane, which filled earth's every land, 
 
 When death's stern angel, at a sign, life's scroll. 
 
 Stretched 'tween his hands, did ruthlessly uproll ; — 
 
 Not numbered 'mongst the chosen, but free to prove 
 
 By virtuous tests, amenable to love, 
 
 Who, foes of God, would fall, or, friends, would stand } 
 
 SuflBcing thus to vindicate the end 
 
 God in creatiag free doth aye perpend ; 
 
 That good should master ill ; heaven's hoped for life 
 
 Mere death outworth ; God's peace, all creatural strifo. 
 
 For every soul, unwittingly in the passed 
 
 Self -quit or self -condemned, — no proofless plea 
 
 Of faith in carnal gods, no unbased trust 
 
 To magical words or symbols in the eye 
 
 'Vailing, of God the Father, kind as just 
 
 Towards all his children, he uplifting none 
 
 At cost of others ; asking not of one 
 
 More than his strength or light could owe ; this last 
 
 Of all earth's human generations, he 
 
 Mildliest of all, as cut off timelessly. 
 
 Would treat. His ways how holy, and how fair I 
 
 Quick as by passion's step, that vast array, — 
 
 By trumpets silver or brazen, which each one told 
 
 Inly, beneath what pennons to repair. 
 
 That either side their visible tongues unrolled. 
 
 Divided, sought its side and tods: its way. 
 
 Boon, distant hills gleamed with long ranks of foea, 
 
 Illimitable, as sunset lines which bar 
 
 Eve's skies, or sphere broad belted, as for war, 
 
Baget to outlap or with the opponent close : 
 
 Each gorged horizon tremulous with the crowds, 
 
 O'er plain and mount self -urged like armied clouds. 
 
 On either side, two eminences I viewed, 
 
 Tall, ominous, like twin monsters on the plain, 
 
 Fallen brooding. Each vast mound, of arms was reared 
 
 Carnal and spiritual mingled ; bright appeared 
 
 Those, with a sickly polish which by use 
 
 "Wears off ; by use, a dazzling hue these gain, 
 
 Intensitive. that of dulness dares accuse 
 
 The glaref ul lightnings earth midst all her path 
 
 Fronts : and 'tween these the ghostly multitude 
 
 By brotherly love commoved, or scorn, which hath 
 
 With hell fell concert, each, his arms to choose, 
 
 Passed and repassed. Whiles marked I, unconcerned, 
 
 The gathering tempest rolling down the hills, 
 
 And storm of men their hurricane way that burned 
 
 Before them ; and though, time now passed, averse 
 
 From war, and deeming it earth's crowning curse, 
 
 Her worst and least defensible of all ills, 
 
 Yet now it sacred seemed ; and, strange fatality ! 
 
 Who should be vanquished, or who victor, while 
 
 My course and choice awaiting to decide, 
 
 Borne in, it seemed, upon me as a tide 
 
 O'erwrothed, that all the blood-feuds which defile 
 
 Earth's annals, were but mocks of this reality, 
 
 Their end, their antitype ; yet, so secure 
 
 My trust in good passed all things framed to endure, 
 
 No fear my heart from steadiest state might lure ; 
 
 Nor mote I marvel more what should create 
 
 Such mighty armaments, should thus draw forth 
 
 Those, as of southern fire-gloom bom, with hate 
 
 Hot, these, as storms of splendour from the north 
 
 Issuant, in long keen lines o'er half the earth, 
 
 "When I beheld in these commilitant bands 
 
 Men of all faiths, all tongues, all strains, all lands, 
 
 All names ; on that side all co-variants massed 
 
 Votaries of error, falsehood, mystery, each 
 
 Leagued 'gainst the faith on this, earth's first, earth's la-.t ; 
 
 Held by the wise of every age and speech ; 
 
 Which saints sing, angels celebrate and teach, 
 
 God's unity, and his love ; man's deathless soul 
 
 Judged with just mercy ; so that he, the whole, 
 
 Who made, made pure, will ultimately ally 
 
 With him. Not long stood dallying with suspense. 
 
 I, who had * whither,' alway paired with ' whence,' 
 
 "While pondering on man's end, as source, like high ; — 
 
 When, hark 1 from form invisible, but close by, 
 
 An angel voice 
 
 Guardian Angel. 'Twas I, dear Festus, I, 
 Thy soul-ward I 
 
 Festus, Tboul — cried, • Aim, for thy defence; 
 
726 FE8TU8, 
 
 The idolaters, thy foes, and truth's, appear ; 
 
 And all the hosts of evildom, since life 
 
 Began, revived to wage earth's deadliest strife."' 
 
 And, in a moment, ere the anxious eye 
 
 Could glance around, a shadowy hand was neiir ; 
 
 Dight me in armour ; gave a glittering brand 
 
 Which, lurid as the flash tempestuous heaven 
 
 Hurls to sea, queller of cloud- sundering levin, — 
 
 Shook forth its permanent lightnings in mine haiid ; 
 
 Soul-trenchant ; wrought of star-steel which endui^;:,- 
 
 Even as of old the mystic meteor sword, 
 
 By nomad Scythian idolwise adored, — 
 
 No sheath ; its ingrained fire all cloak comburcs 
 
 Disdainful ; gave this spiky shield ; this spear, 
 
 Floweret of fight, of war's keen crop bright ear : 
 
 Then, vanished visibly. I wordless stand, 
 
 Waiting the approach of some one to dispel 
 
 The mist of doubt upon my spirit that fell. 
 
 While thus I stood expectant, from on high 
 
 Yon angel came, — oh ! can I ever tell 
 
 His guardian love ? — and touching thrice mine eye, 
 
 With force endowed it prism- wise, whereby 
 
 All motives to themselves men justify 
 
 As stimulating their acts, it could disblend. 
 
 Even to their innate elements which the soul, 
 
 With either host, according to their end 
 
 Coordinated, and lawed to sin's control, 
 
 Or virtue's. Thus apprised, I straightways view. 
 
 Who served false gods, if but with piety, drew 
 
 Toward us ; who homaged even the sole and true, 
 
 As hypocrites, sought the enemy ; and so knew, 
 
 God just, self -doomed all. There, with those, I eyefi 
 
 All selfish passions, envy, avarice, hate, 
 
 Impiety and impurity close allied. 
 
 Sloth, wrath, intemperance, cruelty and false pride. 
 
 Within the enemy's breast self -generate. 
 
 Each several vice the bad have deified 
 
 Corrupting inwardly ; each contagious side 
 
 To his neighbour's heart infecting. Here, elate, 
 
 The pure determining reasons when I saw. 
 
 The love of Grod, of mercy, virtue's law, 
 
 Truth, wisdom and their friends impersonate, 
 
 Though fewer than the foe, of loftier state, 
 
 I, as by rational gravitation, sped 
 
 Swift towards the array of light, and made mine own 
 
 The cause they served. No sooner joined, than head 
 
 Stood I, meseemed, o'er all, leave asked of none. 
 
 Nor of sway wishful : for no longer fired 
 
 With love of place pre-eminent as desired 
 
 Erstwhile, nathless these ends my seekers sought 
 
 Prizing, ends virtue sanctioned, wisdom loved. 
 
 To save from error's doom, give heaven its aught, 
 
FESTUS. 727 
 
 Predestined ; capture in pure mercy ; win 
 
 The soul self -blinded to the effects of sin 
 
 Crodwards ; ends worthy of him, by him approved ; 
 
 And truth's friends : — all resistlessly concurred 
 
 My soul to attract. Their foemen, rebels vile 
 
 Showed, who his rule spumed, scorned his power and word ; 
 
 Strove aye his works to depreciate, defile ; 
 
 Colleag-ued to impair the just ; to irapug-n the true ; 
 
 To blacken every fault thought had but blurred : — 
 
 To vaunt their arms could all the Gods subdue. 
 
 Or chase them out of heaven, —an atheist crew, 
 
 And disbeliefful host, — and their seats give 
 
 To creatural bom pretenders, fortune, chance ; 
 
 Developed force, wed atoms with the expanse ; 
 
 To mere material powers that be, not live ; 
 
 All godliest truths ignored ; — such, these who fought — 
 
 So learned I, from the spiritual in view given 
 
 Mine eye, — for falsehood, and, for God, would nought. 
 
 And now, nor time for more served ; for, self -massed . 
 
 With treacherous speed, and ranked, their lines as driven 
 
 By inward tempests, on, the foe came fast ; 
 
 From every eye-ball rage and malice gleamed ; 
 
 Like burning floods along the plain they passed. 
 
 High on their ensigns strange devices beamed 
 
 Forbidden, of blackest magic scrolled in light 
 
 Of vicious glamour ; spells of murderous might ; 
 
 And weapons weird, with mottoes base bedight, 
 
 Such as around the lips of Circe's bowl, 
 
 Or on siren's tongues suffice to slay the soul ; 
 
 Here, as though stolen from the heraldry of hell, 
 
 On many a shield, ' eternal death,' imblazed ; 
 
 Here, the illumined lie, ' no God ! ' we gazed, 
 
 Imbannered. Still no terror us befell. 
 
 But as when earth's forceful orb, ancient of night, 
 
 Bx)Uing serene on her foresmoothened way, 
 
 Some dimly insultant shower of meteor light 
 
 Breasts listless, undeflect ; so our array 
 
 Dense, but with crush of splendours, all their charge 
 
 Hurled on us, each receives, contemns at large ; 
 
 So certain seem we of our ultimate day. 
 
 But not too wisely this, nor then. Still on, 
 
 On sweeping still, with shouts and cursings dire, 
 
 Their brows as brass, their squadrons swift as stonn 
 
 When arrowy lightnings nature's face deform ; 
 
 Before them darkness, and behind them fire. 
 
 They, hosted, rushed ; and as a sea its banks 
 
 Strikes foaming, thundering, smote our faithful rank.?. 
 
 Then closed the armies. Cloud 'gainst cloud when thrown 
 
 By adverse winds, first straggles into thin strife 
 
 From different levels, till, storm-crushed in one, 
 
 Darkness 'mid darkness wedged, with horrors rife, 
 
 The gloomy concave no distinction shows j 
 
728 FE8TUS, 
 
 So blended in one vast intricate fray, 
 
 These, bellowing, called destruction on their foes, 
 
 And with a terrible onset nought could stay, 
 
 Left havoc scarcely room his arm to play. 
 
 From our own hearts unspoken prayers arose ; 
 
 And praise of God who the beginnings knows 
 
 Of all things from the end ; and to defeat 
 
 Ever subjects, at first, the cause he hath chose. 
 
 Reeled earth beneath the madness of the shock ; 
 
 The mountains smoked ; the hills broke from their seat ; 
 
 Their banks streams leaped ; groans burst from hardest rock 
 
 The seas convulsed against their barriers beat ; 
 
 The sun, like one who, fear-struck, drops his hands 
 
 Withdraws his beams, and all astonied stands, 
 
 Rayless ; re- waked, lifts her red torch the moon, 
 
 Lest all should yet be lost ia total night. 
 
 The trembling stars, unchecked by fervid noon, 
 
 Rush from their bowers, with censers burning bright ; 
 
 Even hell was moved, and weltering where he lay, 
 
 A howl of joy sent forth commingled with dismay. 
 
 Scarce was a pause bethought of, either side. 
 
 And fiercelier e'er the war waxed, for betide 
 
 What might of conflict or conquest, ere long 
 
 The sun ; all saw, must set ; — incentive strong 
 
 With us to fight so as to win, who light 
 
 Even as God's shadow love ; to them, too, night 
 
 Who worship as the friend of fraud. Now, 'mong 
 
 The traitor ranks whose leaders we had guessed 
 
 Nowise, nor knew what griefs their manifest 
 
 Of war set forth, — a chief had late appeared. 
 
 Of towering stature, and of visage fell, 
 
 Who in his hand a dreadful weapon reared 
 
 Macelike, entwined with serpents, seed of heU ; 
 
 While round his neck a burnished shield, its blaze 
 
 Far o'er the war-field flashed with blinding rays. 
 
 Quailed all the faithful 'neath the impending might 
 
 Of this impersonate awe ; a withering spell 
 
 Bode in his eyes that struck with deathly blight 
 
 Men's souls ; scarce 'scaping one, a fatal daze 
 
 Who on those wide-scanning orbs but paused to gaze. 
 
 As when, through sheaf -piled fields, a ball of fire, 
 
 Elanced from cloud electric, speeds its way, 
 
 Scorching and wasting with unwavering ire, 
 
 Each feeble obstacle nought but surer prey ; 
 
 So, through janks prostrated, the eye might trace 
 
 His devastations by a trenched tract 
 
 Of souls slain seemingly ; and still his pace, 
 
 Precipitate as a lava cataract, 
 
 Deaiii-f raught, he urged ; now, as he nearlier drew 
 
 Amazed, I gazed ; for well that form I knew ; 
 
 And, hailing, would have stayed ; in vain ; for aye 
 
 SCke dasifjlation round him gravei grew. 
 
FESTUS. 729 
 
 His step, his mien alas I I could but know, 
 
 His ominous air ; and from his eye's deep glow, 
 
 Pulsant, requickening like to ember fanned 
 
 By the owlet's wing, all sequent things in hand 
 
 My soul conceives, undeeded, done, foreplanned. 
 
 " Hold, spirit ; " I cried ; " grant all thy doomed array 
 
 One moment's truce, and these just proffers weigh. 
 
 God willeth not the death ye seek this day ; 
 
 But that ye live. Submit yourselves to heaven, 
 
 Quit evil, and all sin's false pretence eschew ; 
 
 Repent, believe, be good and be forgiven. 
 
 'Tis God's will." " Art thou," quoth the fiend, " the man 
 
 I stood by, late ? " "I am," I said. " And can 
 
 These souls, think' st thou, who live beyond the grave, 
 
 Freed from death's law, who now destruction brave, 
 
 To other will subject them than their own ? 
 
 Speak, all ye hosts 1 " " We serve ourselves alone " ; 
 
 Broke in low thunders from those lurid lines. 
 
 Shadowy. " Accept thy answer, nor again 
 
 Obstruct," the demon said, " with projects vain,- 
 
 Our course." — Grieved, scarce surprised, retain 
 
 All ours, perseverant, one sublime consent, 
 
 One fixed resolve ; through all our columns shines 
 
 On every face the firm but sweet intent 
 
 To prove, by love's resistless argument 
 
 God kind as just ; and how sin's worst endeavour 
 
 Being finite, must at last fail all to outbrave 
 
 His boundless goodness which, perforce, for ever 
 
 Endures ; not he more prone to love than save 
 
 The souls he hath made. This too we let them hear 
 
 By herald's lips ; and vowed to persevere 
 
 While life remained. Like hardly obstinate, they, 
 
 Motive and end impugned, word sent to say 
 
 No God they knew ; nor, if they won their way 
 
 O'er us, should we great nature's mysteries 
 
 Traduce, and live. Forewarned by taunts like these 
 
 We nerve ourselves once more to war, and strain 
 
 Our strength to o'erthrow the mountainous juggleries 
 
 They forge against us. Strange and monstrous shown 
 
 Of all imaginary ills, portents, 
 
 Such only as inventive madness knows, 
 
 Forbye their own, of hideous armaments 
 
 O'erhead in air ; seemed even to join the fray 
 
 The elements bodily ; and whilst fieriest rain 
 
 And winds sulphureous storms contrariant threw 
 
 'Gainst our firm-footed forces, earth and main 
 
 By turns retaliating dismay, now drew 
 
 Hither, the fight, now thither. Fixed retain 
 
 Both hosts the intent, as yet, the day to gain. 
 
 As when some ocean-flood to circumvent 
 
 An island obstacle, its strife! ul tides, 
 
730 FE8TUS 
 
 Though to collide at last doomed, first, divides, 
 
 This polewards, linewards that, while each intent 
 
 On its own course, half with its rival's blent, 
 
 Conscious not yet of check, nor rise nor fall 
 
 Brooks, till at last, one turbulent level all 
 
 In vast libration holds ; — so we this war 
 
 And strenuous ssquipoise of discontent 
 
 Wag-e, doubt-crowned, nor, who victors know thus far. 
 
 We most had suffered ; ours, most wounded, showed. 
 
 Yet still meseemed we had gained the ground where Ht(x>d 
 
 Their streamy standards first ; and gained for good. 
 
 But as when athwart some broad far-stretching beach 
 
 The seaward wind ascendant, hour by hour. 
 
 With huge and inexhaustible greed of death, 
 
 Sweep sand-clouds suicidal, mad to reach 
 
 The invasive waves white plumed who at every breath 
 
 A land bom levy engulph, insatiate ; — so 
 
 Like endless, fruitless like, this strife of power 
 
 With power, to feud eternal threats to grow ; 
 
 As though even fate prevaricated. Again 
 
 From point to point the rebel chieftains flew. 
 
 And, passing, on us faithful, looks oft thr*.w 
 
 Of proud contempt, to mark the swathes of slain ; 
 
 So seemed our vanquished to their treacherous view. 
 
 In splendid mien and lofty port they shone. 
 
 Dazzling the eye ; and as from out the mass. 
 
 They sudden broke, and then were lost anon, 
 
 Like stars they showed, when tempests break and pass 
 
 In quivering fragments of dark clouds away. 
 
 Casting around a brief but baleful ray. 
 
 The faithful checked, a moment, now resumed 
 
 Hotlier the fight ; and though the rebel arms 
 
 Bright bannered, far and wide, the field illumed. 
 
 In guise triumphant, brooked no base alarms. 
 
 No foot now flinched ; no hand now failed ; no heart 
 
 Grew faint, of those who filled, still firm, our throng. 
 
 Of sacred ranks ; each soul, inspired, his part 
 
 Heaven-named, performed, in zeal and reason strong 
 
 For reason strengthened every hand that fought 
 
 That day for faith. How tense the strain was ours 
 
 One moment proved ecstatic, when, faith-brought ; 
 
 Truth, virtue, 'like their cause, their ends, their powers, 
 
 Our camp seek ; stay ; and midst our vaunt-guard bide ; 
 
 In panoply of proof, with hosts allied, 
 
 G-ivers of victory ; choosers they of all 
 
 Whose choice is life eternal ; by our ranks 
 
 Hailed rapturously, and their pure aid with thanks ; 
 
 Maids of immortal sanctity, we forestall 
 
 Their triumph ; and regard half-deified ; — 
 
 Invincible, they at least. By our content, 
 
 So audibly voiced, the foe at last alarmed. 
 
 And at such access of high poweis, so armed, 
 
FE8TU8, 781 
 
 To madness wronglit, and upon nought less bent 
 
 Than us to at once annihilate, formed behind 
 
 Each wing, fresh myriads massed ; and passion-blind 
 
 Our Unes unmoved assail ; till, flagging they, 
 
 We, our main strength reserved, renew the atfray ; 
 
 Impatient, dreadless, on the enemy rush, 
 
 And 'neath our might, in turn, their legions crush. 
 
 As when 'neath spring's bright sun, clouds broken fiy 
 
 Before the impulsive wind, and, through the sky 
 
 Routed, as by rejoicing gusts of light, 
 
 Pass, shamed and dulled, so these their fated flight, 
 
 Beneath our swift assaults, speed sullenly. 
 
 Exultant we pursue our conquests ; yield 
 
 They seem to do on all sides ; everywhere 
 
 We spread our terror ; overrun the field ; 
 
 Surrender some ; some clamour to be led 
 
 'Gainst their late friends ; — too weary we, instead, 
 
 These guard for later discipline ; — but the snare 
 
 We are in, mark not ; for, as a rock-foiled wave. 
 
 Instinct with treachery, scoops an envious grave 
 
 For the pursuing surge ; so us, our foe 
 
 Had into straits enticed we could not know 
 
 Af orewhile. Sudden spread around ouj feet 
 
 Quicksands, where hollower hills redoubled cheat 
 
 With hope of fugitive rest. And some, no few, 
 
 By deftest witchery dazed and drawn, pursue 
 
 A high-road broad, which brings their camp in view, 
 
 Rich in all luxuries, tent and provant there, 
 
 Tempting repose, refreshment. " beware ! " 
 
 Our a igel cried, o'er watchful in the sky, 
 
 ** 'Tis all illusion, 'tis a visible lie. 
 
 Retr' at, reframe yourselves." Ashamed in time, 
 
 They 'scape the torments of remembered crime. 
 
 And seek circuitously their peers and friends ; 
 
 When lo 1 their backs scarce turned, the enchantment enc-B 
 
 As suddenly. But the enemy boastful now 
 
 Of least success, thought even to countervail 
 
 Our vantage late, by aids that could not fail, 
 
 Suborned of all the powers unjust below ; 
 
 Sin, superstition, passion, vice, hate, pain ; 
 
 He called, and hell's delusions thronged the inane : 
 
 Phantoms and fiendish spectres, such as glow 
 
 Preposterous, on the horizon long and low, 
 
 Where lies, cloud-stifled, on his golden bed 
 
 The tyrant sun ; shapes, that from foot to head, 
 
 Distort themselves fanatically, and change 
 
 Their misconceived proportions every breath 
 
 They draw, ere throes of self -dissolving death 
 
 Scatter o'er space their writhing limbs. So strange 
 
 And to distract our spirits, these shapes appear, 
 
 Foul, threatening, that on high assailed by fear, 
 
 Below by force, we might less mightily ply 
 
732 FESTUS. 
 
 Our arms, this wise enfeebled ; — arm nor eye 
 
 Quailed, or to phalanxed host, or imminent sky 
 
 Not impious force, not ghastliest wizardry, 
 
 Prevailed, The tempest of enchantment passed, 
 
 Calm, we resumed our freer, safer ground ; 
 
 Defend, and for reward brief respite found. 
 
 ** Hear, fellow-warriors," soon I cried, '* not long 
 
 Behoves us to recruit our strength with rest. 
 
 'Tis action, and its sole end, fair conquest, 
 
 Heaven of our arms demands ; 'twere like them wi'ong, 
 
 To stand not ever and instantly on guard." 
 
 Assent all eagerly. Thus, not unprepared 
 
 The enemy find us ; but still bent to wage 
 
 What war they might, who fought because we spared, 
 
 In mean, sparse, unsustained attacks they cast 
 
 Their failing strategy 'gainst us ; till, at last, 
 
 Not daring longer openly to engage 
 
 Our conquering standards, they for parle applied ; 
 
 But parley served not ; for we, loyal, pressed 
 
 Now keenly on, and all their wiles defied ; 
 
 More traitorous than we knew them yet untried. 
 
 As vulture trapped our enemy found too late. 
 
 Strife nor submission freed from fore-fixed fate, 
 
 Of them unthought ; of us, yet unconf essed. 
 
 Anon, our faithful pause ; for now the foe 
 
 Desperate, turned 'gainst each other, nor expressed 
 
 One plan, but for their Head hate sole possessed ; 
 
 "WTiose errors grossest ignorance seemed to show 
 
 And whose misf eats all ills to premonstrate ; — 
 
 Less seriously concerned our force to wreck 
 
 They, than their own league ; — crazed ! More potent check, 
 
 No more sufl&cing punishment could know, 
 
 'Twas plain, the adversary. Blow now 'gainst blow 
 
 Answering no more from ours, war lulled. While thus 
 
 In separate commonalties resolved, and while 
 
 By open conflict or by scarce hidden guile. 
 
 Each thwarting other, gradually they wound 
 
 Their battle from off this world-contested ground, 
 
 As though some likelier schemes to rediscuss. 
 
 Their leader, prompt to prove his weight in war, 
 
 To every foe, or open or envious. 
 
 In face of all his gleamy squadrons round. 
 
 Stood, as in summer's dawn the morning star 
 
 Is wont, in the young orient to protect 
 
 Night's astral troops, retreating nigh and far 
 
 Into heaven's fastnesses, ere o'ermastering light 
 
 All rout ; and seems, while any shadows are, 
 
 With his sole tutelar spear, day's whole effect 
 
 To outworth ; such craft of bravery in sight 
 
 Of our chafed legions, haughtily dared deploy 
 
 Their chief, who would our hopes, God's ends, destroy. 
 
 Yet seize we not the moment to embroil 
 
FE8TU8. 733 
 
 Our arms afresh ; but pause from battailous toil. 
 
 For now day dimmed, though long- seemed dark delayed ; 
 
 A-nd hills, themselves but shadowy, shadows made. 
 
 Kow, set the sun ; but who of all forecast 
 
 That sunset he beheld was nature's last ? 
 
 Man's little day, f oreweighted on the beam 
 
 Of God's eternal poise, time's day supreme, 
 
 Closed now for aye on that astherial field ; 
 
 And all to night primasval looked to yield ; 
 
 That strife of strengths supernal, once of old, 
 
 Time's twilight, and the god- war, seer foretold ; 
 
 That contest so to conquest near, as deemed. 
 
 Our hosts, thus ended, worse than doubtful seemed. 
 
 In pardonable distrust ; and some forebode. 
 
 The world's passed, they should see no day of God : 
 
 Kot reckoning how all being our God can bend 
 
 To his vast aim, nor whither all things tend. 
 
 Now 'mongst the opposing powers strange factions showed, 
 
 And 'gainst their chief in mutinous hatred glowed. 
 
 Plot plot supplanted : each malign device 
 
 This one a feint proposing, that, a snare. 
 
 Foiled by his craft they sought to sacrifice ; 
 
 He, pondering all, all deems un worth his care. 
 
 Till, galled at bruited failure of his plans, 
 
 The cause of good to ruin, God's and man's, 
 
 As boasted of in hell, and hatched first there, 
 
 Swells ultimately within the demon's breast 
 
 Lust for one more, one crucial, last contest. 
 
 His scheme imparted, animates the rest. 
 
 'Tis fixed ; the friendly powers of darkness aid 
 
 Their columns thickening 'neath night's fraudf ul shade. 
 
 Yet not such secret guile was theirs to vaunt, 
 
 But Virtue, — who an eminence hard by 
 
 Had conquered, when she might unseen descry 
 
 All hostile evildom, — she, aye vigilant. 
 
 Forewarned us ; nay, presentient, had divined 
 
 From ominous silence what dumb fiend stood nigh ; 
 
 And thence what proximate peril to fii-st defy. 
 
 As therefore, when, times passed, to obey man's mind, 
 
 The electric harpstrings humming in the wind, 
 
 With latent lightning charged, strange news of birth 
 
 Imperial, peace, war, or loved patriot's death, 
 
 In viewless miracle flashed o'er half ^"He earth, 
 
 By land, by sea, while one could hold his breath. 
 
 So through our serried squares the tidings passed, 
 
 PresignaUed by the rise of time-fixed star, — 
 
 From the pure power — ' The foe prepares a last 
 
 Assault. Be equal all, anear, afar ; 
 
 Nor doubt the event, God's champions as ye are.' 
 
 And soon, in full extent of all their host, 
 
 On us they advance, wide-homed ; as rock-bound coast, 
 
 Curved orescent- wise, shuts in some helpless bay ; 
 
'7U FE8TU8. 
 
 Though cheered by wavelets bright which know nathleea 
 
 A spell to check their enemies' forwardness ; — 
 
 So we the impending foe abide, and pray. 
 
 With a shock they burst upon us, as a cloud. 
 
 Bampant in air, hail-fraught, no mean that knows 
 
 'Tween the still step of its aerial snows 
 
 From this to that horizon, and the breach 
 
 Of all heaven's laws by abruptest thunder-speech 
 
 In burning bolts articulated, they blast 
 
 Our ranks, not foreadvised for nought. Allowed 
 
 Scarce time our files again to form, such blows 
 
 Dealt they, as might to all subjection teach, 
 
 Save their bom masters. We, our foes irate, 
 
 Instinctive foes, by birth these, those by fate, 
 
 By reason more, but all as foes self -classed, 
 
 Fight leniently ; nor strive to exterminate. 
 
 So much as to chastise and teach. Vain care ! 
 
 Boused by one wide tempestuous thunder-blast. 
 
 Wild brief of all the discordry of war, 
 
 They bore down on us, with the sickening sweep 
 
 Of an eclipse's wing, which, shadowy, chilled 
 
 To its fiery heart, the sphere, and the storm stilled 
 
 Of foregone strife ; down on us, in the deep 
 
 The murk, unmorrowing, darkness, as it seemed ; 
 
 Cleared all mid-spatial checks ; closed for the fray ; 
 
 Singled every soul his man, as who should say 
 
 Each spirit hath sworn its separate sheaf to reap 
 
 From that stupendous tilth, fate's harvest field, 
 
 Where all the vanquished, to perdition sealed. 
 
 Sank down, to horrible ruin unrepealed 
 
 Unmatched ; or so they opined. Not one but dreamed 
 
 Of worsting us by truculent rage, or sheer 
 
 O'erbearingness ; nor knew their doom how near. 
 
 Through all their vast platoons, as lightning ploughs 
 
 Black storm-clouds, pierce we ; all our forces rouse ; 
 
 In flying raids their wings clip, and attack. 
 
 Lighter, their masses dense and dazed ; drive back 
 
 To where their main reserves, not yet too late 
 
 For one grand stroke, in ignorance stand of fate. 
 
 We pause. They form ; charge ; but not all the weight 
 
 Their force disorderly could accumulate, 
 
 Nor vehement fury gave them, our array 
 
 Indented pennanently. At this, abashed, 
 
 As one who by sheer self will hath lost his way, 
 
 Our rebels round them glared with dumb dismay, 
 
 Like to a storm whose last faint lightnings flashed 
 
 Soundless, ere yet it ceased, 'mid heaven's blithe vault 
 
 In impotent vapourings. We, meanwhile, who rest, 
 
 With one sole resolute purpose prepossessed. 
 
 Such thankful tears shed, each on other's breast, 
 
 As one life hazarding 'gainst some grim assault 
 
 Of the elements, and still extant, sternly glad 
 
FE8TUS. 735 
 
 Despite the escape from judprment lately had, 
 
 To know his vital virtue not at fault, 
 
 Nor all his lifelong: training at last vain, 
 
 WTio feels that not to have lost is all to gain ; 
 
 Now, like elate, from rank to rank we tossed, — 
 
 As waves the columned shadow of the sun, 
 
 From this to that spray-crested, ever lost 
 
 In rearward depths, fresh framed in front, — the smilo 
 
 Self-luminous of success, so dearly won, 
 
 So scarcely, that disdainful of all wile. 
 
 All force, presumptuous, I at length began 
 
 To accredit; fate with faith's too facile plan, 
 
 And dream all might to one sole duel bend 
 
 This battlefield of good and evil man. 
 
 How act ? ' Stand forth, fell foe ; man's, God's,' I cried, 
 
 * Who dost to both all ill, dost more intend. 
 
 Thy prsepotence dread not I ; but fortified. 
 
 Built up and towered in spirit by strength divine, 
 
 I wait to seal this woe, thine end or mine, 
 
 With mine all these ! ' As glides a cloud from far, 
 
 Lone scout of tempests, towards some paly etar, 
 
 Pale, not appalled, in silence one may feel 
 
 Perfusive even to fainting, ere it rend 
 
 Its heart in fiery thunders, so reveal 
 
 Our foe storm-massed 'gainst us, their mighty head, 
 
 Towards me advancing on slow foot ; — but ere 
 
 That occultation, crowds on either hand 
 
 Between us rush, and each to his command 
 
 Deliberately retmned, reform instead 
 
 Their front, their lines redress. In dudgeon thus, 
 
 He taking ill foregone to advantage us, 
 
 Wheeled round, and suddenly as meteor stone 
 
 From clashing clouds struck, darts he forth alone ; 
 
 A step by each force deemed 'like perilous ; 
 
 So dire the tactic seemed, his aidant powers 
 
 To follow fail ; as shrink to front him ours. 
 
 From awed amaze. As when some dread cyclone. 
 
 Bred nigh earth's morning land, sweeps forth to sea, 
 
 Southening, nor until satiate with its plan 
 
 Of mighty annoy turns, raging, norwardly ; 
 
 Slayer of all force save its own ; hut, hull. 
 
 And light-tower, late of life and radiance full. 
 
 Stilled ; woods all levelled ; every animate breath 
 
 For ever quenched ; beneath its storm-stretched wingr 
 
 One scapeless, boundless doom on all beneath 
 
 Spread silent ; spared no single senseful thing 
 
 On main or mold ; but, ruinous most of man, 
 
 Ends, where of death still prodigal, it began ; 
 
 So evil, he, insuperable, his race 
 
 Typhonic rounds to his first sad starting place, 
 
 Like orbitally ; we dumb ; those burning most 
 
 For battle, as these^ a seeming dead-struck host ; 
 
^6 FESTUS. 
 
 But seeming only ; by self dread subdued ; 
 
 By dread of hell ; of heaven ; to these renewed 
 
 Came soon more wholesome life. Fell now from heaven, 
 
 As I the event sought of this strife in prayer, 
 
 These words, space-sundering ; ' To nought made is given 
 
 This war to end, but to God sole. Persevere 
 
 Ye righteous souls. Ye win, if late, win ever.' 
 
 Heart warm with joy I heard. To us who know 
 
 "We no defection have to mourn, to show, — 
 
 With growth of disciplined forces everywhere, 
 
 No breast but glows recuperative, no arm 
 
 But touched one moment by the sacred charm 
 
 Of that soul-medicine, he, within his tent 
 
 The great Physician, gives to all who will ; 
 
 To us, of strength vouchsafed proud, ardent, still, 
 
 As warriors of the light to fight 'gainst ill, 
 
 Scarce other plan than this seemed left, untried, 
 
 'rod's mind, diffused abroad in us, our guide, 
 
 The enemy now to charge in chief ; and while 
 
 Their force by ours outmastering, force and guile 
 
 Alike crushed, bind, in love's constraining bands ; 
 
 For in our camp was store of griefless chains 
 
 Unloosenable, which nought, not pride withstands, 
 
 Of golden patience wrought and purest pains, — 
 
 Nor slay, but relegate solely to God's hands. 
 
 This vow by each partook, and ministered 
 
 Mutually, as though by comforting wine and bread, 
 
 Refreshed, each heaven-devote battalion stands ; 
 
 One moment pray we silently ; then form ; 
 
 Then forward, by one impulse, like a storm. 
 
 But oh 1 a storm of tenderness and fear 
 
 For them, not of them, even as streams o'erbear, 
 
 But not uproot, the sedgy crop they hold ; 
 
 Thus irresistibly we outsweep, enfold, 
 
 Thus, peace-inspired, we war ; pass hope ; each hand 
 
 Mightier than aught known evil might gainstaiid, 
 
 Evil, cloud-lifed. Boots not to tell how last 
 
 O'erthrown, cowed, conquered, 'neath our yoke they passed. 
 
 Nor how, heaven therefor thanked, we testified 
 
 Our boundless joy. But as the earth-conquering tide, — 
 
 Who many a green and purple braid, at large, 
 
 Twist gorgeously in trebly tincted strand, 
 
 Like desert sanctuary's symbolic band, 
 
 Casts careless on the shore's wide shining marge ; 
 
 With giant globelets gemmed of rainbow foam. 
 
 Seed of the sea, whence beauty first was born ;-^ 
 
 A mass ingarlanded of jewelled weeds : 
 
 His prostrate foe thus decked in divine scorn 
 
 Of strength, strength sterner had o'erbome ; — so w* 
 
 All honours quartering with the enemy, 
 
 Nor longer counting possible strife to come, 
 
 Qur vanquished load with spoil of generous deeds j 
 
FESTU8, 7a7 
 
 Drive, jubilant, all our glittering triumph home, 
 
 "With song, and loud conclaim of victory. 
 
 Thus warred, thus win we. Time shall sink in night 
 
 But never shall from memory pass the sight 
 
 Transcendant, when the foe their sign first gave 
 
 Of full submission. Like the smile of light, 
 
 The silent lightning of the moonlipped wave, 
 
 "WTiich, lengthening gradual, pai-ts now, now extends ; 
 
 Beams from far points at once, there central breaks ; 
 
 Here from the midst its flight extremeward takes ; 
 
 Then, sudden ceased, revives ; revives, nor ever ends ;— 
 
 Gleamed forth the inexhaustible joy, now ours 
 
 Through all our dazzling lines. There are, meanwhile, 
 
 "With our changed adversaries, no longer powers 
 
 Of ill, who fain with fate would reconcile 
 
 Their late discomfited chief. He, too, in mien 
 
 By sudden sorcery changed, both hosts between, 
 
 On wing malefic hung, as, poised o'er sands, 
 
 Shadowy, a black and jagged cloud will lie, 
 
 Monstrous and solitary. Too fierce to fly 
 
 But, braving doom, with uplift impious hands 
 
 Clenched, clubbed with threats, he glowered upon the sky, 
 
 The great infortune of the universe ; 
 
 All winding, man and God, in one unuttered curse. 
 
 " thou All-good 1 *' I cried, " to yon dark power, 
 
 Malevolent, in the air, betwixt thy throne 
 
 And us, our cause arraigning in thine own. 
 
 Be thy miraculous might, conversive, shown, 
 
 And all thy mercy us ward, this dread hour ; 
 
 Or show us how our foe to annihilate." 
 
 Presumptuous, thus, impatient, if I prayed 
 
 Yet not unacceptably all, as fate 
 
 To the world reveals. For lo 1 all life create. 
 
 As warrior's breast of arrowy bolt relieved 
 
 Flesh racking, — groaned with joy, as down he fell,— 
 
 God's passive hand withdrawn, without whose aid 
 
 Things nathless evil, were all of force bereaved, — 
 
 With thunderous shock, reverberant even in hell. 
 
 The spirit, disrealmed, of iU ; there stirless laid. 
 
 All being seemed now aswound, and smitten as dumh. 
 
 Grew a presage in every breast of some 
 
 Solemn and saintly act of God to come. 
 
 As when, at eve, some cloud, which long hath lain 
 
 The oppression of the heavens, and of a realm 
 
 The terror, — fled, — redeemed from nameless fear, 
 
 Anarchal, of earth-quakings, and the train 
 
 Of ills conflagrant, which by larcenous wile 
 
 By chance, by lightning, oft whole states o'erwhelm ;"■• 
 
 Make glad the citizens, seeing, slow, appear 
 
 In air, a pearly calm, as though of sphere 
 
 Happier than theirs ; the young moon's maiden smile 
 
 Jj&adB, sullen late, lighte up ; the tranquil main 
 
 BB 
 
788 FE8TU8. 
 
 Rests to its roots ; — so we, war gone, heaven's peace. 
 
 Coheir of bliss, and all their vast release, 
 
 Welcome. The day of Grod, to ns the day 
 
 Of joy, to theirs destined of dire dismay, 
 
 Dawned o'er our heads ; the sun of justice, sphere 
 
 Of righteousness, no setting more to fear. 
 
 Beamed manwards ; and his seat assumed for ayo. 
 
 All now the end of ends knew nigh ; and lo ! 
 
 Each eye intent on heaven's aspect, there shone 
 
 Instant, on light's enlargening horizon, 
 
 As crystalled by the spirit which round us blew 
 
 Perfect, in symmetry divine to view 
 
 A long slim cloudlet, like to a golden bow 
 
 Knapped just i' the midst ; its loose and listless chord 
 
 Tangled about it. Thus showed God the Lord 
 
 That fight was finished ; good's great victory won ; 
 
 Earth's war of spiritual light and darkness done ; 
 
 The strife of ages closed. Then all the sun 
 
 Helped us to note our foemen's piteous state. 
 
 And know thereby our victory half achieved 
 
 Onely, while charity failed to renovate 
 
 With hope those fallen ; with faith those sin-deceived j 
 
 With trust in God those erst who misbelieved. 
 
 These humbled now, submissive, silent, gave 
 
 Ruth first its power to amend, grace, hoi>e to save ; 
 
 Us, spirit to help that ardent multitude 
 
 'Gainst ours so lately arrayed, but whom we viewed 
 
 Xow, burying out of sight, in one deep grave, 
 
 Their carnal arms, ashamed. Disharnessed, nude 
 
 They watched their banners bum. Then first we sair, 
 
 Glancing on our own arrfls, each arm a law 
 
 Of God, each weapon a virtue ; shield and glaive 
 
 A truth divine, strong to subdue or save ; 
 
 Wrought of God's hand, God's art 1 without a flaw; 
 
 Forged in heaven's fire ; impenetrable, alike, 
 
 This, faith to guard ; by reason, that, to strike. 
 
 While myriads thus their arms laid down, subdued 
 
 By kindness, patience, grace, love, mansuetude ; 
 
 All human excellences and God's combined ; 
 
 And while truth, wisdom, virtue all things viewed 
 
 Approvingly, and helped one mighty mind 
 
 "^rom all to mould, some few start out, of kind 
 
 indomitable, and for meet punishment, 
 
 Conform to holy reason's just intent. 
 
 And his, divine, reserved, — who from the age 
 
 Initial of the world, life's every stage 
 
 Hath loved to advance and sought to ameliorate. 
 
 We, these things knowing, and with the great effect 
 
 Secured, well pleased, thanks first to God direct : — 
 
 Which done, in every wound we pour the balm 
 
 Of heavenly all-heal ; every conscience calm 
 
 With mercy's anodyne ; strengthen every mind 
 
FE8TU8, no 
 
 "With just belief of strife man's vital need 
 
 By one all wise, who good and ill so twined 
 
 With freedom, that his fate man rules, — decreed 
 
 Until to nature's war heaven's peace succeed ; 
 
 And God's pure truth triumphant prove the intent 
 
 He, world-wise providence, from the first hath planned, 
 
 That good 'gainst ill, in free arbitrement 
 
 Of spirit, fair fought, should final conqueror stand ; 
 
 Reason, faith serving, sin and self command ; 
 
 And bale and bliss, life's vast contrariant whole, 
 
 One cause confess, one universal soul. 
 
 Now all earth's old distinctions ceased ; sea, land 
 
 Lapsing into their primal essence gi-ew 
 
 -^therial, and the wind, world- warning, threw — 
 
 As wretched seer who some state-ruinous ill 
 
 Foretelling, helps his woeful weird fulfil. 
 
 The popular mind distraught by such sad skill, — 
 
 Into each dying gust, as breathed of fate. 
 
 Force, our mixed tribes once more to segregate ; 
 
 Soul winnowing far from souL These banned, — the word 
 
 Compellant, sternly mild, in fatherly tone 
 
 Said, as by one who willed to amend their state, 
 
 Nor utterly ruined nor all reprobate, 
 
 WTio favoured error, sin, the imperfect, — heard 
 
 Wistful : not ignorant how to reatone 
 
 With God the spirit, and knowing so concurred 
 
 In their just doom ; knew, all the long career 
 
 Of pains abstersive, pains heaven's nether sphero 
 
 Opes aye to all, ere filled the soul's great year 
 
 Before them ; knew their kind remedial end 
 
 Necessitated ; and went. As one by one 
 
 Like rags of darkness from night's mantle riven, 
 
 Eve's tempest slackened, clouds, the face of heaven 
 
 Long shadowingly deform, loath to be gone ; 
 
 But all at last mass up the horizon. 
 
 So they : their chief in bonds, once seeming friend, 
 
 Prey of my falchion, spoil now of this spear, 
 
 Out- taken ; he, still reserved for judgment here : — 
 
 God's will so said. Meanwhile we, warned, attend 
 
 A further sign ; and instantly 'twas given ; 
 
 A fire- voice ; gathering gradual out of heaven. 
 
 Sense hallowing, mind transfiguring, round us came ; 
 
 A voice ; as when within some holy shrine 
 
 Our God comes down in answer to his name 
 
 Invoked, and with a wordlessness divine 
 
 Holds converse inmostly ; and us, who had striven 
 
 Through this soul conflict, calling, straight we knon'.— . 
 
 As lived things dead, touched, erst, by prophet's rod. 
 
 In us the spirit regenerant's deathless glow ; 
 
 A. fire, that all with purifying zest 
 
 Before it, burned ; consuming, midst our breast 
 
 Na+^re's whole evil ; and this fire was God. 
 
 B B 2 
 
740 F:E8TU8. 
 
 I, then : — " As reeflet, long from parent shore 
 
 Orphaned, that save at hoUowest ebb of all 
 
 Year-tides, peers not the savage surges o'er, 
 
 Nor airs her pearl and coral, childish store, 
 
 I' the golden light ; nor ever, — while befal 
 
 Others, such less joys oft, — rejoins, by chance 
 
 Her kindred lands ; gift compensative none 
 
 Desiring for life-long suppression more 
 
 Than this, eternized to her, — the sun's glance ; ' 
 
 So, from time's deeps emergent, and the flood 
 
 Refluous, of life and death, my soul, in thine, 
 
 O God I sole spirit of universal good, 
 
 Oned with all blessed, the unnumbered multitude ; 
 
 Immortal, mystic, militant, and divine, 
 
 Would in thine eye-light bask, thy governance." 
 
 No after sound nor sign. The renovate sphere 
 
 Good thus world victor, evil o'erthrown, — us, here 
 
 Biding God's ends, see, angels ! Dost not fear 
 
 Fiend 1 late my foe, fate's future, deadlier pass ? 
 
 LuciPEE. Have not I triumphed o'er the wcrld that Wi^ 
 God. Prince of the powers of air, thy doom is nigh. 
 The prison and place of spirits shall be for thee 
 As for all these guilt 'complices thine, thou hast wronged 
 For a time one proper mansion : they in pain 
 Emendative : thou, evil 1 
 
 Lucifer. And what if I 
 
 Heart-hardened, still endure ? While lasts the world, 
 Thou mayst restrain, confine ; not make to cease. 
 
 God. Him lead ye angels into Hades, there 
 To await my will while the world's sabbath lasts. 
 These souls elect, self purified, fore-called 
 Who die not, nor, who through my favour, lose 
 Unconscious, by death's intermediate sleep, 
 Nor expiative amercement, joy in me, 
 Who, righteous souls of all earth's epochs passed, 
 All faiths, all grades of mind, here from the tomb 
 First-born, the truth, in heaven once gospelled, prove ; 
 That faith should conquer misbelief, the good 
 All ill subject, virtue all sin ; and these 
 Led by one sampling soul, forechosen of love, 
 First fruits of life celestial which their breast 
 Fills, — shall the earth, now renovated, indwell. 
 Angels. Be it Lord as thou dost will, with us, with all 
 God. Angel of earth, and thou bright Phanuel, sole 
 In the infinite presence, visible of thyself, 
 And you, ye astral souls, who, latewhile, here, 
 Earth's end, as rise, saw, and this unfixed mean. 
 Of seeming chaos ; who still animate, guide, 
 Or train the orblets to your genial care 
 Consigned, and in your charge as in my love 
 Happy, know, all, if, sumless times now gone 
 Earth's mountainous frame to upbuild, from central base, 
 
FE8TUS. 741 
 
 To airiest battlement once I willed, 'twas not 
 
 Necessity clog'pred my hands, nor forced compute 
 
 Of infinite atomies ; no, my power as choice 
 
 Untrammelled, see, angel of starry earth. 
 
 My special promise once in heaven's records 
 
 Enrolled, shall be fulfilled. "While time beholds 
 
 Orbs vaster, scattered into particles, dim 
 
 The surface of eternity's flood, conjoin 
 
 The casual meteor, or for ages drift 
 
 Through space extenuate, to minutest motes 
 
 Dissolved, even lucent dust, and radiant mist, 
 
 Prime manifest of the invisible essence, thine, 
 
 Regathering all its elements shall again 
 
 Brighten the vital air, fierily refined. 
 
 Lo I earth shall live again and, vnth her sons, 
 
 Have resurrection to a brighter being ; 
 
 And wakening like a bride, or like a morning. 
 
 With a long blush of love, to a new life, 
 
 Another race of souls shall rule in her, 
 
 Creatures all loving, beautiful and holy ; 
 
 Such, — see them !— as, evil quelled, and justice wrought, 
 
 Have vanquished bound and tiampled under foot 
 
 Their souls' defect, by self -set tendence towards 
 
 The absolute good ; whom death holds therefore not 
 
 In more than freshening slumber, and who, prime 
 
 Resurgents of all life, haste now to live. 
 
 LuNiEL. Heard'st thou the word ? 
 
 AxGEL OF Eaeth. The word I heard, Earth, be ! 
 And earth meseemed in echoing, learned to live. 
 
 Phanuel. So swift the omnific word, scarce syllabled, lo I 
 The perfect orb, in shape as erst, but made 
 Purer, aetherial, instantly restored, 
 As these glad eyes but now behold, to form, 
 And purified, by God's sole actful word. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. Be glad with me, ye angels I Earth from 
 sleep 
 Regenerative, awakening, all her powers 
 Her beauties, spring spontaneous ; gum and pine 
 Entwine their shadows ; lily and violet blend 
 Odours ; and myrtle and bay on morning gales 
 Eve's perfumes, stored with starry jasmin, musk, 
 And rose in amicable exchange, shall strew. 
 
 Guardian Anqel. See paradise her growth of nectarous flowers 
 Revives, to crown the eternal season's hours ! 
 Away, ill ; pain, away 1 Creation, burst 
 Into one orderly hymn of joy ; all life 
 Sing, voluntary, his love, who willed to make 
 From evil all good, as all from nothing, first ; 
 Henceforth %vith changeless boons and beauties rife, 
 For his own glory, and for his creatures' sake ; 
 Of him so loved, all his with rational hope 
 Endowed that they might trace in nature's scope 
 
^42 FE8TU8. 
 
 Presage of perf ectness all lives should take. 
 No fire, no sea ; all elements to one form 
 Final, of universal use, and plan, 
 Reverting ; air invulnerable of storm ; 
 Karth, pure, transpicuous, shadowless ; and man 
 Apt for commune with G-od, as he began. 
 
 Angels. The world begins and ends with paradlts, 
 The garden and the city of the blessed ; 
 Begins with paradise and ends with heaven. 
 Angel op Eakth. Thee, thank we, Lord 1 all powers of spiritufil 
 light, 
 Concerned thy counsels to partake, and spread 
 Wideliest we may allwhere the holy ends 
 Of thy benevolence. Most, earth's warden, I. 
 
 God. Gro, angel 1 guide her as erewhile through heaven. 
 LUNIEL. Sometime my half -gloomed sphere, again may live. 
 Angel of Eaeth. On ! on ! my world again 1 
 Again we fly 
 
 Through heaven's blue plain, 
 As thought through the eye j 
 Ye angels keep your heaven. 
 I earth. For that with God 
 I have striven ; 
 And have prevailed, 
 I come once more ; 
 I come to thee, earth I 
 Like a ship to shore. 
 
 XLVIII. 
 
 Millennial earth, transfigured to a star, 
 The rebegotten world, see, born again; 
 Good, universal order, peace and joy. 
 Fruits of the new creation, all the heira 
 Holy, of hght, share ; sAveet command in these, 
 In those, obedience sweeter still. All art 
 Sublimed, all science hallowed, to best ends, 
 Life worldly made life heavenly by God's law 
 Pervasive, spiritual ill, pain bodily, cease. 
 Are gloriously disproven all godless doubts. 
 Earth's cavemed prophesies, of oracular reek 
 Voiced, not divine breath, of mere fleshliliood. 
 Virtues incorporate spiritual-wise, with heaven 
 Linked, their original nature show and end. 
 Life lower now with more intelligence dowered, 
 Docile, imharmful, gladdens in fates humane. 
 
 Earth Millennial. 
 
 Archangel, Angel of Earth, Luniel, Angels, Saints, 
 Angela Festus, and Clara. 
 
 Angel op Earth. God and the world one Holy family ; 
 The houses of the heavens and earth ^Uied : 
 
FE8TU8. 94a 
 
 That was the prophecy, and this the proof ; 
 Love the beginning- of the great return. 
 
 LuNiEL. I had a happy vision yesternight, 
 Methought I saw the gathering of all tribes 
 Of men returning out of dateless death, 
 Unto the Holy land, the land of life. 
 
 Saints. We saw it likewise ; we, yea, all of ns, 
 And heard the angels sing : far up mid heaven 
 Their blessed words resounded, of our thoughts 
 The pure celestial echoes ; this their hymn. 
 
 Thev come from the ends of the earth, 
 
 'VVliite with its aged snows ; 
 From the bounding breast of the tropic tide, 
 
 Where the day-beam ever glows ; 
 From the east where first they dwelt, 
 
 From the north, and the south, and the west, 
 "Where the sun puts on his robe of light, 
 
 And lays down his crown to rest. 
 
 Out of every land they come ; 
 
 Where the palm triumphant grows, 
 Where the vine overshadows the roofe and the hills, 
 
 And the gold orbed orange glows : 
 Where the olive and fig-tree thrive, 
 
 And the rich pomegranates red. 
 Where the citron blooms, and the apple of ill 
 
 Bows down its fragrant head. 
 
 From the lands where the gems are bom ; 
 
 Opal and emerald bright; 
 From shores where the niddy corals grow, 
 
 And i)earl3 with their mellow light ; 
 Where silver and gold are dug, 
 
 And the diamond rivers roll, 
 And the marble white as the still moonlight 
 
 Is quarried, and jetty coal; — 
 
 They come — with a gladdening shout ; 
 
 They come — with a tear of joy ; 
 Father and daughter, youth and maid. 
 
 Mother and blooming boy. 
 A thousand dwellings they leave, 
 
 Dwellings — but not a home ; 
 To them there is none but the sacred soil, 
 
 And the land whereto they come. 
 
 Thev are princes and conquerors all. 
 
 With the Father of spirits and men ; 
 The elect of all ages He knew they might fall, 
 
 But resurgent, be with Him again. 
 Their Maker, their Saviour, their Judge, 
 
 They shall know Him the One, as of yore. 
 And the burden be lift from the heart of the world, 
 
 And the veil on their souls be no more. 
 
 And the Temple again shall be built, 
 
 More holy tnan ever of old ; 
 Be the floor the new Earth, and the star-storied sky 
 
 Be the roof that all soul shall enfold. 
 
74A PESTUB. 
 
 From the saints of all worlds to their Lord, 
 
 Prayer morning and eve shall rise ; 
 And the lamb, of all sinlessness sign upon earth, 
 
 They shall follow, His flock, in the skies. 
 
 Angel op Eaeth. As isles, disjoined by superficial deeps, 
 Yet rooted stand in unity with worlds ; 
 So with the interior continent of heaven, 
 Earth and its own. 
 
 Saints. Now know we the whole world 
 The land of heavenly commerce, where both kinds 
 Of men and angels mix with mutual gain ; 
 With knowledge, and with wisdom, and with joy 
 Flowing ; the final festival of time. 
 
 Phanuel. Angels, God's gracious ministry, doubt ye not, 
 In many a sphere, — by laws of light and weight 
 With yours commutual bound, as ye to them. 
 Spiritual, by sense of right and truth, by proof, 
 By love of Deity, and by bonds to both 
 Common of virtue and piety, interchange 
 With chosen intelligences and spirits of power, 
 Thrones and all heavenly excellences, who scale 
 The star-stair of perfection's tower, glad news 
 Of orbs, even yours, regenerate. Every globe 
 A mansion of the spirit, world-blessing souls 
 Mingle at large with men. Know, who would prove 
 Divinity by deeds works miracles ; who 
 By words, speaks mysteries mixed with clearest truths. 
 All revelation is a mystery, here. 
 
 Angel of Eaeth. The ultimate mysteries faith shall celebrate, 
 Perfective, of the holy spirit, are G-od's ; 
 Whose manifold salvation all imbounds. 
 Sinner and saint, one world completing plan. 
 
 Saints. holy Angel, warden of the world, 
 Who guidest its first footsteps o'er the path, 
 Untried of newest space, well trodden now. 
 Which round the sun it circleth ; and thou, too, 
 Serenest of all angels, fairest, first. 
 Of those here culled, the flower of heaven's bright hosts, 
 Who knowest the heart of truth, and well may'st smile 
 At legends of the birth of sun and stars, 
 The atomic ancestries of elements, 
 And infantile antiquity of time, — 
 We in this sphere rejoice that with ye we 
 The truth possess and glory in. Do thou 
 Speak then, who canst, bright angel guide of earth, 
 If leisure thine, whose long experience tends 
 Far past the immediate parentage of time, 
 Into eternal geons, what to us 
 The Godblessed words may prove of living light. 
 Instruct us in the wisdom of the heavens, 
 At once the gate and goal of the true life 
 The empyrean shadows, so that we 
 
FJS8TUS. 745 
 
 Like self obedient elements, which contain 
 Their total laws and partial liberties, 
 The reig-n of Grod may honour in all spheres, 
 And act therewith concoidantly, as here. 
 
 Angel op Earth. As when one wise in Nature's ways of old, 
 Gazing through optic lens, heaven's spatial plains, 
 Perceived that what to naked eye black blanks 
 Unfathomable, and lonesome adits seemed 
 From universe to universe, were in truth 
 Crowded with suns ; bo, too, created mind, 
 Scanning the depths of Deity, must confess, 
 When by his will enlightened, that what shows 
 As mere inexplicable judgment, fate, 
 Imposed by arbitrary ruler, first. 
 Proves, rightly known of good and glory full, 
 As firmamental fields with orbs of life. 
 For infinitely various are the ways 
 ^^^^erein G-od conquers evil ; at one tima 
 Slowly eradicating, line by line, 
 Its fatal features, and again, by one 
 Annihilative word, destroying it. 
 The sphere I mourned as mine, to ruin doomed, 
 God hath restored to being ; and newly dowered 
 With life, and holy soul, transformed, it beams 
 Self -shining. And, recipient of all bliss 
 Unmerited, unmeasured, she the like 
 Imparts to all who in her hallowed light. 
 Gladden. Thereto, I now ; God bidden to tend. 
 
 LuNiEL. The issue of all ages is at hand. 
 
 Angel of Earth. Heaven's ways are always cyclical ; its events. 
 All orbital, its ceras ; and albeit 
 The sin of man. Promethean, never cease, 
 Nor the avenging vulture's beak, blood-wet ; 
 Yet is the arrow always on the wing, 
 'WTiich seeks the heart of vengeance, seeks and slays. 
 So fiom the first divine forgiveness clasps. 
 To her aU quickening bosom, all which live ; 
 Calls all by name, and naming, halloweth them. 
 
 Saints. Thus, by God's goodness, goodness comes to us 
 Out of his boundless plenitude ; and man, 
 The shadowy semblance of the vast divine, 
 Like a dark sphere absorbed into the sun. 
 As in presecular time emergent thence. 
 His constellated seat assumes in heaven, 
 A deathless incarnation of the light. 
 And this despite of evil, sin, and pain, 
 That every faculty be perfected, 
 And all affecLion purified in man ; 
 Love being love of good, hate, hate of ill j 
 Divines^t hate, unanimous with love. 
 Wherefore to those who realize God's will. 
 And with the eaice their O'-vp. ^bcunilata 
 
 B B ."^ 
 
746 FESTTIS, 
 
 Water in water flowing-, air in air, 
 Passive as silence, active as the lig'lit, 
 deceiving and dispensing-, moments fall 
 Like silver raindrops stippled in tlie ground, 
 ■\Vhose resurrection is in grain of gold. 
 But with the generation of the world, 
 Who their back turned upon the sun to toy 
 "With their own shadows, meanly pleased to mark 
 Their selfgrowth, not considering that the more 
 These things extend themselves, the nearer they 
 To their extinction ; — not thus. Night comes on ; 
 And lo I the whole flock in the fold of death. 
 
 Angel of Eaeth. Ends and beginnings mingle at the bst ; 
 All ultimates are foreordained ; these days, 
 And those far times, when yon fair flowering orb, 
 Lily-like, beamed out of time's shadowy tide ; 
 And spread its bright and continental leaves. 
 Fragrant with sunny incense, to the heavens. 
 But his infallible eye, beneath whose beam 
 Essence becomes appearance, every day 
 Doomsday, an inner circlet of pure time. 
 Concentric with eternity, and part 
 Of the same all inclusive octave here. 
 The darkness from the light shall sejugate ; 
 The visible veil of the invisible. 
 And the times near when all shall be complete j 
 The golden seed from ripe fulfilment fall ; 
 Eternal mind immortal utterance make ; 
 The many-coloured arch a circle be ; 
 Earth's orb elect her crescent horns conjoin 
 With light perpetual, total, vital light ; 
 And, the mixed past made pure and holy, cause 
 The present paradise, the future heaven. 
 
 Saints. Man's being is an everlasting birth ; 
 We are ourselves the elements of heaven. 
 And as the eye is sacred to the sun. 
 So be the soul to God. It is sweet to point 
 To prophecies fulfilled, when spells of good. 
 To us extinct all ill, all sin, all woe ; 
 The world seems wreathed from end to end with joy, 
 And garlanded with glory, as the hall 
 Of some great populous palace at a feast. 
 Our nature we relume, too, as the sun. 
 From the bright burning atmosphere he breathes, 
 The starry spirits of his frame renews, 
 And revels in his glory without end. 
 So we in that divinity rejoice, 
 Wherein all spiritual essence is and acts. 
 Authentic because free. 
 
 Angels. Praise therefore heaven. 
 
 Saints. To thee, God, maker, ruler, saviour, judge I 
 Ihe Infinite, the Universal One, 
 
FE8TU8. HI 
 
 Whose righteousnesses are as numberless 
 
 As creature sins ; who giver art of life ; 
 
 Who sawest from the first that all was good, 
 
 Which thou didst make, and sealed'st it with thy love, 
 
 Thy boundless benediction on the world ; 
 
 To thee be honour, glory, prayer and praise, 
 
 And full-orbed worship from aU worlds, all heavens. 
 
 May every being bless thee in return 
 
 As thou dost bless it ; every age and orb 
 
 Utter to thee the praise thou dost inspire. 
 
 Let man, Lord 1 praise thee most, as all redeemed, 
 
 As many in the saints, as one in thee. 
 
 Oh may perpetual pleasure, peace, and joy, 
 
 And spiritual light inform aU souls ; 
 
 And grace and mercy in bliss thousandfold 
 
 Enwrap the world of life. May all who dwell 
 
 On open earth, or in the hid abyss, 
 
 Howe'er they sin or suffer, in the end. 
 
 Receive, as beings bom at first of thee, 
 
 The mercy that is mightier than all iU. 
 
 May all souls love each other in all worlds, 
 
 And all conditions of existence : even 
 
 As now these lower lives that dwell with man 
 
 In amity, rejoicing in the care 
 
 Of their superior, and in useful peace. 
 
 Upon the common earth, no more distained 
 
 With mutual slaughter — no more doomed to groan 
 
 At sight of woe, and cruelty, and crime. 
 
 Lo 1 all things now rejoicing in the life 
 
 Thou art to each and givest, live to thee ; 
 
 And knowing other's nature and their own 
 
 Live in serene delight, content with good, 
 
 Yet earnest for the last and best degree. 
 
 Their hands are full of kindness, and their tongues 
 
 Are full of blessings, and their hearts of good. 
 
 All things are happy here. May kindness, truth, 
 
 Wisdom, and knowledge, liberty and power, 
 
 Virtue and holiness, o'erspread all orbs 
 
 As this star now ; the world be bliss and love ; 
 
 And heaven alone be all things ; till at last 
 
 The music from all souls redeemed shall rise, 
 
 Like a perpetual fountain of pure sound, 
 
 Upspringing, sparkling in the silvery blue ; 
 
 From round creation to thy feet, God ! 
 
 Festus. One's fellow conquerors recognized in peace, 
 How calm, how sweet this life ! from passion pure, 
 From natural evils freed. The storm of time 
 The world hath wept through, and the whirl of life 
 Once mine, shows like an agonized dream 
 Hung in the halls of memory, bannerwise ; 
 Proof -sign of victory passed. Speak, angel-bride, 
 Being of bliss and beauty, seems not thia 
 
748 FE8TU8. 
 
 The peace serene tliy spirit longed for onoe ? 
 
 Claea. It is. How doubly dear all sacred things 
 Show to the soul elect salvation here 
 Hath hallowed ; and how blessed the high employ, 
 God's wisdom teaching to millennial man, 
 And learning love divine. 
 
 Festus. Doubt's tempest-age 
 
 Soothed into silent and profound belief ; 
 The soul's ambitious and ill-ordered quests 
 Chastened to aspirations ; all desires, 
 Calm as the regular breathings of the breast. 
 What joy to worship, in our heart recrowned, 
 The exiled sovereign of earth's youth, long lost, 
 Our old paternal faith ! — What joy to feel, 
 Though life-deforming passions come and go, 
 Stormlike, and cloudlike, high o'er all, the spirit 
 Stands, in impassive purity and peace, 
 Identical with heaven. See, soul of light. 
 Thy kindred angel ! 
 
 Angela. Yes. This joy is mine, 
 
 To quit betimes the grandeurs of the sun. 
 His continents of light and sea-like springs 
 Of radiance, here to wander by their side 
 Beloved on earth as mine ; and ye are they 
 I loved most. Most of all it gladdeneth me 
 In hallowed commune thus to help expand 
 The spirit capacious of extremest truth. 
 With ends beneficent ; so that kindly act 
 Keep pace with godly thought. 
 
 Festus. God's universe, 
 
 A boundless field for ever-active good. 
 To soul so bent, unfolds. While, world by world — 
 Through all successive spheres, the aspiring spirit, 
 Death bom, yet reascendent, till it come. 
 Through many a cradling starlet, to the orb 
 Whence its predestined rise shall end all proof, 
 Restore the wanderer to the way, and blend 
 Life momentary with the eternal state, 
 The everlasting order of all days, — 
 Wisdom her many-chambered dome reveals, 
 Her graduated heaven. 
 
 Claea. Content with this. 
 
 One altar in her thousajid-shrined fane. 
 Earth's simpler souls their rites of truth and love 
 Like faithfully fulfil with those enthroned 
 Who look down on the empyrean. Here 
 All knowledge sanctified, all mind enlarged. 
 All faculties reformed, how perfect seems 
 To eyes illumed with truth's interior light, 
 Self -opening, flowerlike, those most gracious trials 
 Our souls once suffered ; sufferings now enjoyed. 
 ANGELA. VHiSit lengths we reach of spiritual light ; 
 
FE8TU8, 740 
 
 What breadths now compass our celestial views ; 
 What heights faith's visionary eye commands ; 
 What depths we fathom of divinity ; 
 Let him tell, who can count the motes of air, 
 Stars, and the rays of stars, or God's good deeds. 
 
 Festus. Alas I what mean conceptions once were man's 
 Of God ; his essence, nature, ends. In vain 
 Men thought to magnify the Infinite, 
 Who merely magnified their own small thought, 
 And made it monstrous. Not in vain for such 
 May we thy pity ask, thy pardon, Lord ; 
 For us, the joy to feel, the gift to prove 
 Love, power, and wisdom omnicausal thine, 
 Which from the fount divine of being flow. 
 With hatred and revenge are base effects. 
 And passions, to mean natures only known ; 
 Not to be charged to God, nor named with him. 
 Passions are proofs of imperfection. Thou 
 Only hast all perfections, God 1 who art 
 Eternal reason quickening boundless laws ; 
 The laws of love, life, light, wherein be based 
 The world's sublime foundations. 
 
 Angela. Oh, how vast 
 
 The glories of the future, once mismatched 
 'Gainst earth-life merely, and all its littleness. 
 
 Clara. Were happiness alone our being's aim, 
 We, over nature reigning and mere soul. 
 Pure intellect, and all whom, led by them 
 Our better lot is here to raise, refine, 
 Enlighten, free from inner mental bonds. 
 Oh, glorious rule 1 it might indeed seem well 
 For good of others and our own delight. 
 This natural dispensation and divine. 
 This fii-st degree of heaven should aye perdure. 
 
 Angela. True ; earth is all one Eden. Pity 'twere^ 
 That it should ever end. 
 
 Saint. I say not so ; 
 
 Although I have a thousand plans in hand, 
 Some interwoven with the farthest stars — 
 Each one of which might ask a year of years 
 To perfect. 
 
 Clara. Be it ; our Mak*r knoweth best 
 What thought or deed may best belong to time, 
 Or to eternity. 
 
 Saint. All prophecy 
 
 Hath said the earth shall cease, and that right soon. 
 
 Festus. It is like enough. Beauty's akin to death. 
 
 Angel. Behold, our sister graces of the skies, 
 Faith, Hope, and Love, descend I Methinks of late 
 Ye chiefly dwell on earth. 
 
 Love. Where lives and reigns 
 
 Xhe divine Ixmnanity, there are we ever seen. 
 
760 FE8TU8, 
 
 Successire, as the seasons to tlie sun. 
 
 Saints. Well are ye known and welcome in all worlds. 
 "Wherever lofty thought or godly deed 
 Is lodged or compassed, there your blessings rest. 
 
 Hope. How sweet, how sacred now, this earth of man's, 
 The prelude of a yet sublimer bliss I — 
 I marked it from the first, while yet it lay 
 Lightless and stirless ; ere the forming fire 
 Was kindled in its bosom, or the land 
 Lift its volcanic breastwork up from sea. 
 The deluge and idolatries of men 
 I viewed, though shuddering, and with faltering eye, 
 E'en to the incarnation of heaven's Truth, 
 And dawn of earth's best faith ; that faith which fled 
 An infant, waxed anon a giant ; peeped, 
 A star, and grew a heaven-fulfilling sun ; 
 Which was an outcast, and became, ere long, 
 A dweller in all palaces ; which hid 
 Its head in dens of deserts, and sat throned, 
 After, in richest temples high as hills : 
 Which, poured out painfully in mortal blood. 
 Rose an immortal spirit ; as a slave 
 Was sold for gold and prostrated to power ; — 
 And now that lowly bondmaid is a queen ; 
 And lo 1 she is beloved in earth and heaven ; 
 And lieth in the bosom of her Lord, 
 The bride of the all-worshipped, one with God. 
 
 Love. We, even of divinest origin. 
 In infinite progression view all worlds ; 
 And we are happy. 
 
 Faith. The dead sleep as yet ; 
 
 But their day cometh, and the bonds of death 
 Already slacken around the living soul ; 
 The mortal sleep of ages, which began 
 When time sank down into his slumberous west, 
 Thins even now o'er the reviving eyes, 
 Gathering their heaven-lent light, no more to wane 
 In woe or age : never be quenched in tears. 
 Like a star in the sea. It is as I ever knew ; 
 My life is to receive and to believe 
 The word and words of God. 
 
 Love. I who am Love^ 
 
 And Grace, and Charity, rejoice with you. 
 Whither ye wend I with ye ; whether here, 
 Or on the utmost rim of Light's broad reign, 
 The least and last of stars which even seems 
 To tremble at its insignificance, 
 In presence of Infinity ; where yet 
 No angel's wing hath waved, nor foot of fiend 
 Left its hot imprint ; — still, in all do we 
 Find fit delight and honour, as now here. 
 Now earth and heaven hold commune, day and night { 
 
FESTU8. Ifft' 
 
 There's not a wind but bears upon its wing 
 The messages of God ; and not a star 
 But knows the bliss of earth. 
 
 Festus. The earth hath God 
 
 Etemade, and all its elements refined, 
 Fit for subliraer being. Flesh hath passed 
 Its fiery baptism, and come forth clear 
 As crystal gold : all that of vile or mean 
 Pertained to it hath perished atomless. 
 The kindred ties of family and race, 
 Intensified into identity, now, 
 
 Earth, like a diamond, basks in her own free light, 
 Unfed, unaided, unrequiring aught. 
 All now is purity, and power, and peace. 
 The first-bom 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. 
 
 PHANUEii. And he shall gamer nil. 
 
 The awful tribes which have in Hades dwelt. 
 Passed count of time, await their rising. God's 
 Great day, the sabbath of the world's long week, 
 Is at high noon ; the Judge hath yet to come. 
 
 Claea. The shadows of eternity o'ercast 
 Already time's bright towers. The heavens shall coma 
 Down like a cloud upon the hill, and sweep 
 Their spirU over earth, and the whole face 
 Ajid form of things shall be dissolved and changed. 
 Nothing shall be but essence, perfect, pure, 
 And void of every attribute but God's. 
 This even is too gross for that to come, 
 The holy have the earth, and heaven is theirs. 
 
 Festus. JN'or 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 
 
^52 FMTU8, 
 
 Even yet, the very union with. God. 
 
 Phanuel. 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 ; 
 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 Truth's prophet went, in the dread hour 
 That hell by earth on heaven revenged itself, 
 With one soul penitent 'companied ; — nor long 
 Remained, but while enough to cheer earth's troop 
 Of foremost disobedients, heads of Sin's 
 Long line, who soul enlightened him received 
 With time-outwearing hope that yet in God 
 They should partake the fulness of his love. 
 And with him rose then, in prophetic proof 
 Of immortality, 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 ; aud i.ll 
 Earth's great events and changes tend thereto ; 
 Its fiery dissolution in the passed, 
 And supernatural rebirth which now 
 The chosen and the world-redeemed partake. 
 
 Phanuel. And this shall last, till like the setting sun 
 Deserting eai-th, 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 living death she hearts, and, augur-like, 
 Explore the ominous bowels of the sphere ? 
 As one great life it is pervadeth all 
 That bud, breathe, beam, so in the spirit world, 
 Of God, his will through countless ministries 
 Confided potently, works publicly ; 
 And I, the liberating angel, marked 
 From supramundane time, act to this end. 
 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, 
 
FESTua. m 
 
 Even on their thrones, the mighty thou wilt see. 
 
 Festus. Angel of heaven 1 I would view these thing3L 
 
 Phanuel. Nor these alone, but other wonders yet. 
 The valley Death's dark pinions brooded o'er, 
 A life-offending night, an visited 
 By sun or star, where but the fatuous fire 
 Of man's weak judgment, wandered till God's hand 
 Laid o'er the black abyss a bridge of life, 
 And married earth to heaven's mainland thou'lt see, 
 Death's grave ; and over him, that monument 
 Of light, enlightening earth. The gods and fienda 
 Of old, and all the fictions of man's heart, 
 Imagined of the future passed for aye. 
 Thou shalt inspect. Belaold this mountain I We 
 Must pass through it ; for under lie the gates 
 Of the invisible regions whereunto 
 We tend, for a brief season. 
 
 Festus. On then 1 
 
 Phanuel. Bare 
 
 Thy marble breast, mountain, to its depths 1 
 An angel and a man divine demand 
 A way through these foundations. 
 
 Festus. And the roc\'3 
 
 Open like mists before thee. 
 
 Phanuel. Follow me I 
 
764 FE8TU8. 
 
 XLIX. 
 
 The soul-state, intermediate 'twixt earth's life 
 And the world future, unconceived till seen, 
 We search with curious awe ; mark dormant death; 
 Nor, joyless, evil accost, by heaven restrained ; 
 From bonds aeonian loosened, ere the end : 
 View, visionary, the circle of false gods, 
 Eefractions of the sole and infinite One, 
 Conceptions imperfect of deity, held 
 Of old, by ignorant and idolatrous man, 
 Yet honest, who his best faculties adored 
 Unwittingly, his mere passions : — ruined, chained, 
 "Worshipless, all bear witness to one true, 
 All-free, all-necessary, aU holy God. 
 Error's unreal immortality, see 
 Extinguished by God's verity : hear the word 
 Divine, by all obeyed. 
 
 Hades, 
 
 Aechangel, Festus, Death, Lucifer. 
 
 I'estus. Almighty God 1 sustain me. This is death :— 
 And this — I knew not, ang-el, he was here — 
 Is Lucifer, the fallen ; and like a bolt 
 Of thunder forg-ed in intramundane air, 
 Self -buried within the centre. Not in hell ; 
 Where every spirit's work, by fire is tried ; 
 For there is fierce exaction of just dues, 
 Stern course of forfaults compurgrate ; remorse 
 Flame-toothed, with bite unflickering, find I him ; 
 But here, God-bounden in rest. 
 
 Phanuel, Lucifer 1 
 
 Wake from thy sea-like sleep, time's calm so long, 
 Long and unfathomable hath ceased. Arise 
 In peace or wrath, rouse from thine age-long trance^ 
 And see ; earth's representative, and heaven's, 
 Stand by thee. Closed, death's intermediate state, 
 Heaven's breath blows freely round us as the air 
 Vital of all futurity. 
 
 Lucifer. Heaven's just doom 
 
 Respect thou, angel ; nor thou, mortal, erst 
 Vassal, last victor, vaunt thou this, nor blame 
 Fate's word, for that, f orespoken. 
 
 Festus. I blame no more 
 
 The part thou took'st once in my mortal life ; 
 It is gone ; nor spurn thee for delusions dead. 
 The blood man's strife once spilled is sunk in earth, 
 Run into rivers, seas ; dried up in air ; 
 Air, water, earth themselves, all elements, gone. 
 With the sin itself ; even sin being expiate now 
 By sufferance of just doom ; good done to soul 
 Wronged ; and first ijinoQenge rightly sought of Grod* 
 
FESTUa. ^ 
 
 As therefore came by freedom sin, by sin 
 Knowledge, and last by knowledge wiabed return 
 Godwards, what good hath come of all I bear 
 Alone at heart ; and if we have both, time passed 
 Offended God, let me, though in nature not 
 To forget — forgive what each man once hath felt, 
 The devil's all-burning grip upon his heart. 
 Thee view I with compassion ; half with hope, 
 
 Lucifer. Mortal ! I bow to thee, and would to the least 
 And lowest of all the spirits that God hath made ; 
 Being in ill his worser, but that the curse 
 I am accursed with of impenitency. 
 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 passeth. 
 
 LuciFEE. It is a cloud 
 
 Enshrouds creation. Good and ill perchance 
 Have one end. 
 
 Phanuel. Mark the uncertain wit he words. 
 Twice-shot contrariwise his thought- woof seems 
 Itself to thwart reversive ; not of truth 
 Takes he yet hand-fast ; nought of right conceives 
 Indeviable ; and yet, once more, 'tis writ. 
 With miscreant strife, even faithless in himself. 
 His final fate he tempts, well-earned, so far 
 As finite spirit can deem ; nathless, strange change 
 In him once wrought, like strange to come may augur. 
 
 Lucifer. Angel and mortal, hear 1 who else save God 
 Can fathom nature ? who unveil, he sole, 
 Except, who clothed ? Me needs not here defend, 
 Mine ofl&ce, preappointed ; nor yet tell 
 What thoughts if vacillant, stni perchance not vain 
 Wholly, have filled my soul since thus. Dread thou 
 The executant of God's vengeance, for by him 
 Yon angel, only not almighty, tnere I 
 As with a chain of mountains, i was bound, 
 And hurled into this unformed nebulous life ; 
 Stripped of all might when mightiest, struck dowA 
 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. Let the impenetrable soul 
 Be ground as through a mill ; know only I 
 In action or inaction equal woe ; 
 Suffering, doing, being, one extreme. 
 Pass on I we meet again. 
 
 Festus. And when we do, 
 
 May God forgive, as I ! 
 
 Phanuel. Mayhap thou wilt yet 
 
 Know me as minister of his mercy. 
 
 Lucifer, I 
 
7!W FE8TU8. 
 
 I look for mercy ? never 1 Least, wlieii now 
 Plotting the sum of evil. 
 
 Phanuel, Behold there Death 1 
 
 Throned on his tomb — entombed in his throne ; 
 Just as he ceased he rests for aye ; his scythe, 
 Still wet out of its bloody swathe, one hand 
 Tottering sustains : the other strikes the cold 
 Drops from his bony brow ; his mouldy breath 
 Tainteth all air. 
 
 Festus. I dread him now no more, 
 
 Nor hate. He is a vanquished enemy. 
 
 Phanuel. Listen I he speaks. 
 
 Death. To you, ye sons of G od, 
 
 My latest words I utter. Unto him 
 Who ever lives, and hath for aye destroyed 
 Me and my reign, give ye this crown usurped, 
 And lay it at his feet ; and this dulled dart 
 Which was my sceptre. To the conqueror 
 Belong these trophies. All the progeny 
 Of time will soon cease. Lo 1 the end's at hand. 
 
 Kosmiel. Thus shall it be, Death I and thus it is. 
 But hear, Death 1 and thou, great Fiend ; the will 
 Of the Eternal Life, the all-present Good 
 Is that I free ye both. Thou Death, depart ; 
 Seek other sphere, where poised with life minute 
 Thou mayst existence match, and wait G-od's will, 
 Largening or lessening. Rise thou, hell's lord. Behold ! 
 Even while I speak, so mighty shows his word, 
 Those chains though mountain-ribbed, and fit to bind 
 The tide to the sea's bed, like clotted snow, 
 Fall from thy feet. Up, then, and do thy will, 
 Whate'er it be, and wheresoever. Go 1 
 
 LuciFEE. Let us away, O Death 1 
 
 Death. Let us away 1 
 
 My realm I leave behind me. 
 
 Lucifer. I mine seek. 
 
 Festus. Lo 1 they are gone. Earth's breath is purified. 
 The air feels lighter, I breathe easier since. 
 Who now these giant shades of awe which fill 
 The midst, the present of the place ? And whose 
 Yon throne inane whose perilous void bespeaks 
 A central terror which, unseen, more awes 
 Than others' presence 1 
 
 Kosmiel. Heaven to them thereby 
 
 Their state subordinate shows ; the doom of pride. 
 These are the mighty nothings man of old 
 Made ; unrealities dread by whom he swore, 
 prayed to, and sacrificed ; brother falsehoods all ; 
 Men like himself, imagination changed 
 To gods ; for good deeds these, and those for bad : 
 Or, angels who aspiring to be gods, 
 Made themselves deathless nothings ; lords of death, 
 
FE8TU8. 76J 
 
 And fire, and judgment ; lords of time and war j 
 Beauty, and strength, and light ; and the long roll 
 Of creatural powers and passions deified. 
 Abstractions made by men, by God preserved — 
 Preserved as shadows thus to realize, 
 Before all devotees, their nothingness ; 
 Who gave their names to stars which still roam round 
 The skies, all worshipless, even from climes 
 Where their own altars once topped every hill. 
 Attend, their reign is over. Tixese their last 
 Oracular utterances alone are true. 
 
 Zeus. O God supreme, sole, all the gods to thee 
 Restore their stolen titles. Thou alone 
 Hast true right to the names of deity. 
 First Cause, and imperceptible, unseen ; 
 If apprehended, only by pure soul ; 
 Source of all life, transcendent and eteme ; 
 Source of all measure, motion, time, and change ; 
 Who makest, movest, rulest all ; thyself 
 Impassible, immoveable, unmade ; 
 The one great Spirit of the universe. 
 Who the world made of heaven and earth, as man 
 Of mind and body. Father of all life. 
 Whose living spirit animates the whole ; 
 Governs and guides to ends both blessed and wise ; 
 Gave mind its active power ; to nature gives 
 Eternal pregnancy, perpetual birth ; 
 And reasonable order, aye renewed ; 
 The light of heaven, the parent of the world ; 
 ■\Mio art eternally, and causest things 
 To be, which heretofore have never been ; 
 The sovereign will, the intellect, the soul, 
 The perfect good, the perfect fair, the All ; 
 One, immaterial, who by one sole act 
 Dost all things comprehend ; and bliss supreme 
 En joy est, by knowing perfectly thyself. 
 Among the worlds how many are thy names 1 
 For as the sun in divers tongues hath names 
 As many, yet to all men is but one, 
 So thou, however named, art God the sole. 
 Creator and adomer of the heavens ; 
 Ruler most high of gods, and sire of man ; 
 First, best and greatest of all beings, last ; 
 Kind conqueror of all foes ; of all create 
 The infinite reason, the substantive cause ; 
 The forces of all life, impersonate. 
 Thou knowest and foreknowest all at once ; 
 Thou givest good and evil to all souls. 
 Thine arm sweeps over sea and land ; thine eye 
 Pierceth all elements, to the Hadean shades, 
 Where thou art throned, too, as in upper skies ; 
 Thy throne coequal with the universe. 
 
758 FE8TUS, 
 
 The proud thou dost rebuke with death ; with life 
 
 Immortal dost reward the just and true. 
 
 All who have served or loved thee thou dost love, 
 
 And worship givest of all men in the heavens. 
 
 With souls beneficent, innocent, and pure 
 
 Thou dost the largest and the loveliest stars 
 
 For aye consociate. All belong to thee. 
 
 And those who love thee ; heaven and all its worlds. 
 
 Apollo. Soul of the toilful sun, who dost unite 
 Creator and created ; light of God, 
 And God of light ; of human and immortal 
 Spirit, sole physician ; victor thou of sin, 
 That hell-bom serpent, thee, we gods adore ; 
 The sovereign truth, who neither canst deceive 
 Nor be deceived ; let earth and heaven their crown 
 Offer at the altar of thy fatherly knee. 
 
 OsiEis. Lord of the thi-eefold region, life and death. 
 And everlasting being ; king of gods ; 
 Builder and benefactor of all worlds ; 
 Who cast earth's rock foundation, and with hUls 
 Walled it about, and moated with the sea ; 
 Thou, sitting in the shining house of life, 
 Movest with thy foot the everlasting wheel 
 Of nature, and man's members mould'st divine j 
 Breathest in them their soul, and takest back ; 
 Life-issuing as the sun imparteth light ; 
 Glad re-awakener of the soul in heaven. 
 Eternal, all-beneficent, Lord of truth ; 
 King of obedient natures ; for thy will, 
 Perforce or favour, all create obey. 
 Distributor of destinies ; lord beloved 
 Of spirits in the land of joy divine, 
 The land of purity, and light, and peace. 
 So should earth be, oracular truth once said, 
 And thus it is. Lord of stability, 
 For heavenly things alone endure for aye. 
 Eternal vivifier of all heavens I 
 Before thy face the impure cannot abide. 
 The crowned slave mocks thee ; and like hills of sand. 
 Crumbling beneath the ruin of thy tread, 
 Earth's mountains tremble, and her high places fall. 
 Thy name is higher than the highest heaven ; 
 Thy glory firmer than the firmament. 
 Ruler of spirits ; of heaven's superior spheres ; 
 The eai-thly, and the nether world of hell ; 
 Beginningless and endless, the one cause. 
 Great, unimpersonable ; whose attributes 
 Are beings, and whose thoughts creations ; thou, 
 From whose mouth wordlike the round world is honu 
 Sovran of souls, and reestablisher, 
 Who plantest the divine life in man's mind ; 
 Who weighest man's actions in his heart, ere yet 
 
FE8TU8. JW 
 
 They bud in speech, or fruit in deed of hand. 
 The birth and breath of prophecy ; of time 
 Maker ; of all, eternal head and end. 
 The Lord of Hades, dwelling in the tomb ; 
 Death henceforth clean and sanctified to man ; 
 "VMio with just sceptre rulest righteous souls. 
 Joy of the just on earth, the blessed in heaven ; 
 Treating all evil with thy sacred scourge ; 
 Lord of the visible and invisible life ; 
 Being of beings ; causer of causes ; God. 
 
 AuRMAZD. Illimitable essence, unconceived ; 
 One Spirit infinite : from all thy works 
 Dissimilar, great dispenser of all good ; 
 Best of all best, and wisest of aU wise ; 
 Father of justice and of equity ; 
 Perfect, who knowest all things from thyself. 
 The Lord of nature ; not to be bribed by gifts 
 Nor mocked by false prayers. Teacher sole of truth, 
 To those high souls whose wisdom is their joy, 
 Their everlasting strength, their inner heaven ; 
 Coheritors, and spirit peers of power, 
 These, who by intuition half -divine 
 Of the interior light, the light conceive ; 
 And, knowing God, aU knowledge know of him ; 
 Ruler of earth and guardian, king of heaven ; 
 Who made this world, that heaven ; gave life to all ; 
 And from the radiant fingers of his sun 
 Streams indiscriminate blessings upon men ; 
 Children of earth and death, but planned to live 
 In an immortal future, pure from ill ; 
 Earth's mountain evils smoothed off ; the whole orb 
 Crystalline made ; themselves all shadowlass. 
 He, with unerring prescience, perfect power, 
 Unchanging kindness acts, and wisest love ; 
 Who is the life of heaven ; the threefold one ; 
 Uniting deity and humanity, 
 Self -circled in the eternity divine ; 
 Drives evil's monster daimon from the earth, 
 From human souls sin's shadow, and o'er all 
 Life sheds resplendent purity and bliss. 
 
 KosMiEL. False gods have had ere now true worshippers, 
 Who honoured names they Avrongly deified ; 
 The true God false adorers, who him shamed. 
 If aught could, they deceitful knee'd, in base 
 And bloody service, so misdeemed ; or whose 
 Nature more horrible than their own they judged. 
 But now man's universal heart made pure 
 By penitence and penance, every fine 
 Paid to the utmost mite, all worship proves 
 The faith that's most humane is most divine, 
 Dearest to God and worthiest his approof. 
 Imperfect apprehension he not blames 
 
760 FE8TU3. 
 
 Of things above liian's intellectual grasp, 
 
 For 'thought less answerable than for act. 
 
 Of conduct most he judgeth. good or bad. 
 
 Who lives not equal to his highest sense 
 
 Of truth and good ; whose acts, judged by himsolf 
 
 "Wrong, conscience damns ; doth, so far, wilful sin ; 
 
 His natar knowingly degrades ; and God, 
 
 Thereby offended, justly dooms such soul 
 
 To punishment proportionate ; fine being then, 
 
 And righteously, commensurate with offence ; 
 
 Ox finite causes infinite, and outweighs ; 
 
 Law earthly more divine than heavenly, proves, 
 
 And man more just, more merciful than God ; 
 
 Which is not nor can be, as thou mayest yet 
 
 Know ere we quit this inward world of shades. 
 
 Festus. Oblivion's own ; like unrecorded dreains, 
 JEnigmas uninterpretable, these, 
 The worshipped perish ; the adorers live. 
 
 Zeus. Before the Christian cross and Moslem mosque 
 My marble fanes have fallen, and my shrines 
 Shrank like a withered hand, ages ago. 
 But now all signs and sacred domes for gods 
 To dwell in are extinct. The world is all 
 One temple of the truth. 
 
 Brahm. The ages feigned, 
 
 That made time groan to think how old he was, 
 And deities in millions, are no more. 
 Ageless eternity, and God the sole, 
 The royalty of heaven, is at hand, 
 Maker, destroyer, saviour 1 By all sense 
 Incomprehensible ; all things above. 
 True being, cause of all ; how, what, unknown. 
 Ouc universal mind pervading all ; 
 Dwelling in ocean, penetrating earth, 
 Touching the heaven, enclosing all the stars ; 
 Inhabiting the universe, and through it 
 Passing like wind. All souls, all gods or men, 
 Shall fail in thee, as air, a phial holds, 
 Rejoineth infinite space, the crystal cell 
 Once broken which confined it. Yea, as streams 
 To ocean flowing, cease therein, all name 
 Losing, all form, so freed from life's sad yoke, 
 Created spirit once emanant from God, 
 Shall recombine with deity, and enjoy 
 In heaven's original bliss its primal power. 
 
 BUDH. All things that are shall nothing be at last, 
 Save what's resolvable in deity ; 
 Yea, the whole world of old before thy face 
 Fading, sfcormlike beneath the sun, shall pass, 
 Absorbed in Godhood as some islet cloud 
 Melts midmost in the slowly darkening day. 
 
 Festus. Great be the misconceptions even of gods. 
 
FESTU8. 761 
 
 BuDH. Giver, receiver, master of all life ; 
 The primal, final, universal soul ; 
 Pure deity absorbed in ultimate rest ; 
 \Mio knowest the number of all souls, all stars ; 
 Lord of the everduring dome of beaven. 
 The region of perfection, home of bliss. 
 Who dwell'st alone in the unseen, too pure 
 For death-doomed eye ; the Lord who contemplates 
 With eyes of love the myriad-nationed world ; 
 Lord of all being, ruling from on high. 
 Heaven, earth, and man, the sacred trine of life I 
 Great sea of spirit, fountain of all forms, 
 Issuer of all the laws of life which rule 
 Both unintelligent orbs and mightiest minds 
 In the well-ordered world, transcript divine 
 Of thought eternal in thy boundless breast ; 
 Let us to thee give aU our titles, thine 
 Of right, thine only. Let us, gods of earth, 
 Thee worship, God of heaven, as shadows sun; 
 Thee, self -existent, universal Lord, 
 Unchangeable, and independent ; all 
 Embracing ; by thee planted all the worlds 
 Expand like flowers on life's eternal stem ; 
 Impenetrable, pure ; judge of all spheres ; 
 Author and worker of all laws which rule, 
 IMaterial, mental, moral, — all the worlds ; 
 Father and founder of all souls, all stars, 
 Creator, blesser, hallow er of all life ; 
 Whose will necessity, whose word is fate ; 
 Whose providence inexorable law ; 
 Who to the infinite nature thou hast made, 
 Givest lavish maintenance ; while in thyself 
 Wealth inexhaustible still overabounds ; 
 Treasures of mercies unconceived. Who, yet, 
 To premonition of the humblest soul 
 Inspired by thee to ask what thou hast willed,. 
 Attentive, grant'st thy saints their least request, 
 Were it an orb of light. All holy, hear ; 
 We praise thee, we adore thee, God of gods ! 
 
 Odin. All-father, permeating the world, all things 
 Sustaining, who end'st strife, and holy peace 
 Ordain'st, which lasts for aye ; the omniscient, one, 
 And undeceivable, thee all gods adore. 
 
 Festus. And all the lesser shades which move like moons, 
 Half darkened by the greater — half illumined — 
 Are priests and prophets of the mightier ones ? 
 
 KosMiEL. They are ; — and further roimd than eye can mark 
 The myriads of adorers of each god. 
 Confused and prostrate, as their souls awake 
 To the objects insubstantial of their prayers. 
 Behold 1 they kneel to those they hailed on eartb 
 As makers — as omnipotent — eteme — 
 
762 FE8TU8. 
 
 And cry for help, for comfort ; none have they 
 
 To give to others or themselves ; these high 
 
 Divinities, which, like shadowy pyramids, 
 
 Show form of strength, but of reality nought. 
 
 Gods of a mightier kind and nobler strain, 
 
 These truly — yea, but half false ; and though now 
 
 Doomed, as the partial copies, so, untrue 
 
 Of the one universal, worthier yet 
 
 Man's trustful prayers and lauds, than those thou seest 
 
 Far off, round yon horizon of death's hall, 
 
 Monstrous, uncouth, fear-gendered, barbarous ; 
 
 Such as were Eimac, who by Lima once 
 
 Sat, aboriginal oracle, imaged huge ; 
 
 Till, smote by Christian mace, the immarbled lie 
 
 Rejoined chaotic formlessnesses : strewn 
 
 In grim and grinning fragments round its base : — 
 
 Or where in Kirauea's lava-land 
 
 And island hills ablaze, fierce Pele, thought 
 
 Goddess of fire, mid burning billows basked, 
 
 And music of the clashing hills of flame ; 
 
 Or trode, triumphant, the tempestuous glow ; 
 
 Such too the gory gods of western climes, 
 
 Who yearly claimed their feast of blood. The falsa, 
 
 The base, the brutish deities give way, 
 
 And all their sacred follies in their train, 
 
 Before the earthquake truth, engulphing all. 
 
 Woe to the false gods, woe 1 to prophet, priest, 
 
 And worshipper, all woe ! 
 
 Festus. Hark 1 round the earth 
 
 Each soul hath found a tongue and uttereth woe. 
 Lo 1 from their thrones the man-made gods descend, 
 And rend their robes and trample on their crowns, 
 And hurl away their sceptres. Woe to all 
 The gods and idols of the heart of man 1 
 Their sun is set for ever in the night 
 Which was ere light was. Surely it is more 
 To be true man or woman than false god, 
 And falser prophet. God alone, the true,'; 
 The God of heaven, and all, shall be confessed 
 And worshipped. 
 
 KosMiEL. Woi-Bhipped, witnessed, too, 
 
 By all : the faithful and the faithless — saint 
 And sinner. See, like clouds, the gods disperse, 
 Into their preoriginal nothingness. 
 And now the woe of those misguided, blind 
 To the demoniac madness of their creeds, 
 Shall be transformed to joy ; they who adored 
 Their dreamlike deities, merely incompetent, 
 Shall, by God's grace, essential cause of all 
 Prior to all self-manif estive power, 
 Wisdom, or word, or act, reason, or will, 
 Their errors see transfigured into truth. 
 
FE8TU8. 763 
 
 Listen, ye souls of men ; all worship cease 
 
 Of what is false and fleeting- ; to your minds 
 
 Self -believed, always free, but bounded aye. 
 
 Fitted, or more or less ; but now to trath 
 
 Transferred your lost allegiance shall receive 
 
 Just warrant of its Tight, perpetual peace, 
 
 Conscience of truth, bliss indestructible. 
 
 One only true Grod can be, has been, is. 
 
 False gods there never have been, nor false sui e ; 
 
 Save the abnormal shadows which betimes 
 
 Leap into life around him, and to man's 
 
 Weak sense owe all existence. So of these, 
 
 Parheliacal gods which mocked men's minds, 
 
 And, lighting them to darkness, left them there. 
 
 False gods have never been ; nor false truths ; forms 
 
 Partial and finite of the Infinite one 
 
 Who made all, all disposeth ; who of all, 
 
 Hebrew and heathen, worldling and elect 
 
 Is worshipped, once as objects prayerwards served, 
 
 While of necessity falling short of truth, 
 
 To upraise, through all earth's times and climes, man's son 
 
 And one the Spirit of Evil, Dis, Lucifer, 
 
 Typhon, Misophanes, Satan, Aherman, 
 
 Hades, what name soe'er priest pleaseth best, 
 
 In nature still and destiny, one and same, 
 
 Creation's imperfections personate. 
 
 And Evil vitalised and as being conceived ! 
 
 False gods there never have been ; but of God 
 
 False names, false notions numberless. Behold 
 
 In these the transient types of one eteme ; 
 
 Each several aspect deified, of Truth ; 
 
 The obeliskal One, the primal three ; 
 
 The powers divine and cardinal of heaven. 
 
 Yet prayer, preferred with a pure heart, to Eaal, 
 
 As neither heard nor answered could it be 
 
 By non-existent daemon, might, bv him. 
 
 Who sits enthroned in unthought purity, 
 
 The lord and lover of the world, be ta'en, 
 
 And righteously fulfilled ; so angels deem. 
 
 But in the depths of man's own nature, see, 
 
 As in a lake, reflected, hills, skies, clouds. 
 
 His heaven, his hell, and all his creature gods, 
 
 Inverted, and distorted, and obscured : 
 
 All which must vanish ere the truth divine 
 
 In glory supervene. Idolatry 
 
 Worshipped God meanly, as though knowablo 
 
 Through generative energies and powers ; 
 
 Not as man's great regenerative Lord. 
 
 For life was of the Angels, as was law : 
 
 But love in place of law, as final judge, 
 
 In lieu of life, heaven's immortality 
 
 Christ taught, hence what in false faiths energies, 
 
^fll FESTU8. 
 
 Were deemed, are symbols only in the true. 
 
 God's omnipresence seems not sensuous ; 
 
 Unless he be in us we are not in him. 
 
 Signify all things ; nothing represents. 
 
 And therefore were the chosen race alone, 
 
 To whom the godly secret was confined, 
 
 Lapsing from faith, rebuked and charged with sin 
 
 The general world, unconscious pietists 
 
 Of falsest creeds and errors, God allowed 
 
 To live on, unreproved, till came the time 
 
 WTien all the mysteries of heaven and earth 
 
 Were put in evolution ; are but now 
 
 Fulfilling. 
 
 Festus. Lo! the nations of the dead. 
 Which do outnumber all earth's races, rise ; 
 And high in sumless myriads over head 
 Sweep past us in a cloud, as it were the skirts 
 Of the Eternal passing. 
 
 A Voice. Souls, arise 
 
 To deathless life ! 
 
 KosMiEL. It is God speaks. Let us hence. 
 The general judgment is in hand, — God's hand. 
 The souls of those whom God loves circle us. 
 For thee, thy lot thou knowest. As a seed 
 Buried in earth doth multiply itself 
 Full fifty fold, so will thy nature when 
 Changed, it lifts head in the air divine of heaven. 
 
 Festus. Out of the depths of earth and the world's womb 
 Thine unborn angels seek thee, God, all love ; 
 Now is thine hour for which all hours -were made. 
 All life created, all things else ordained ; 
 Be it the hour of mercy. Lord I to all. 
 Now reap the righteous, righteous but in thee 
 Any, their guerdon. Evil to repay 
 
 With good was Christ's command, and earth with heaveD 
 Is thus the great example of his word. 
 Do thou Lord be with us. In thee we live ; 
 Our treasure, trust, and triumph is in thee, 
 God's pure humanity ; whence salvation comes 
 To the countless all thou dost redeem. Betrothed 
 To heaven was earth upon her natal day. 
 The ages sweep around me with their wings 
 Like angered eagles cheated of their prey. 
 Eeach forth your arms ye angels. See them come. 
 I hear the orderly torrent of their wings 
 Hitherward streaming. Lo ! the glowing skies 
 Ar« rushing to receive us. Oh ! rejoice 
 All ye that are immortal, and whate'er 
 Hath been predestined to eternal end. 
 The day determined ere all time was, dawns. 
 
FE8TUS. 765 
 
 111, now released, 
 Kecklesa of late discomfiture, as head 
 Of human strife 'gainst heaven, God's ends world-wide, 
 Inapt to appreciate, as his woeful fiends 
 He erst had promised, makes, an angel tells 
 To earth's dear saints, and how, one last and worst, 
 Attempt to o'erthwart God's iust design. But as when 
 Some red volcano, scattering burning death, 
 The aggregated ire of ages lifts 
 Off earth's heart, saved from sphere-disruptive woes, 
 So, evil's ultimate force, hell's following, tends 
 In way unthought, unreckoned by itsell, 
 To goodward, vanquished by almighty good. 
 
 Paradisal Earth. 
 
 Angels and Saints — ^An Angel descending ; Festus. 
 
 Saint. Whence art thou ? 
 
 Angel. I ? from heaven, and thither tend ; — 
 One moment here to bid all souls prepare. 
 Our Lord, the prince of peace eternal, comes 
 With his victorious hosts, to judge the world. 
 
 Saint. What victory hath our Liberator now pained ? 
 
 Angel. One final, over death and hell. Shout, earth 1 
 Thy freedom is accomplished, and thy foes 
 Brought down to endless ruin. 
 
 Saint. Angel, speak 1 
 
 We bum to learn the tidings of this war. 
 Whereof thou tellest and doubtless wast a part. 
 
 Angel. Hot from the fight I come. This lightning blada 
 Hath holpen well to thin the infernal rout. 
 Which back hath fled to hell, howling like winds. 
 But let me, at your will, ye peaceful saints, 
 Relate what happed to us, from first. The hour 
 Was come in Heaven when Beniel, Son of God, 
 Bowing his head before the Omnipotent, 
 Who doubled every blessing infinite 
 Wherewith he had enriched his destined one 
 From first, rose from his glorious throne, and stepped 
 Into his sun-bright car, calling aloud 
 God's angels to attend him while he went 
 To judge the earth, as foreordained of old ; 
 That heaven and earth might view the majesty 
 And mercy of the God of all. We came, 
 Selectest spirits, countless ; crowded bright 
 As the great stream of stars which flows through heaven, 
 Fast by the foot of God, each wave a world ; 
 Eager to eye this act of glory long 
 Talked of, in bliss, and now to be achieved. 
 Forth from the starry towers, and world-wide walla, 
 Of heaven, we set in high and silent joy, 
 And journeyed half our way through space, when Id ! 
 
^eff FEBTU8. 
 
 A sight which checked the foremost flaming ranks, 
 
 That halted frontwise, working doubt at first, 
 
 But triumph after. Shielded and drawn up close. 
 
 Behind a broken and decaying world, 
 
 From whence the light had vanished like the light 
 
 Out of a death-shrunk eye, sat Lucifer, 
 
 Midst in the power of darkness, and the hosts 
 
 Of hell, enthroned sublime ; and all were still, 
 
 As ambushed silence round the foe of Grod. 
 
 But oh I how changed from him we knew in heaven. 
 
 Whose brightness nothing made might match nor mar « 
 
 Who rose and it was mom ; who stretched his wing. 
 
 Or stepped, from star to star ; so changed he showed 
 
 Most like a shadowy meteor, through whose guise 
 
 The stars dim glint— -woe- wasted, pined with pain. 
 
 And by his side there sate or shrank a shape 
 
 We angels knew not, but the son of Grod 
 
 Knew him, and called him Death ; whom when he sa^T;, 
 
 Arousing, after, out of sleep intense, 
 
 That unrealmed tyrant drew his mortal dart. 
 
 And drave it through himself, — a shade, shade-quelled. 
 
 Then to that chief of mischief and his fiends, 
 
 Who, thick as burning stones that from the tiiroat 
 
 Of mount eruptive foul the benighted sky, 
 
 Shot up triumphant into air, as they 
 
 Beheld our ranks move on, thus spake our chief, — 
 
 Not wrathfully, but sternly pitying : 
 
 Hell's wretched remnant ! wherefore crouch ye here ? 
 
 Is it to sue destruction, or to bar 
 
 My passage ? If it be, in both ye err. 
 
 And will ye trust yourselves again to war 
 
 With me, God-missioned ? Have I not overcomo 
 
 Ye separately both ? Speak, brutal Death ? 
 
 Fit follower thou, and fellow to all woes, 
 
 Wherefore this instantaneous haste from hell, 
 
 And both from Hadean bondage, thus again 
 
 So soon to compass mightiest wickedness, 
 
 And tempt extremest wrath ? Speak, head of hell I 
 
 To him thus Lucifer : Predestined foe, 
 
 Prince of the face of God, fii-st-born of heaven, 
 
 Head of all angels, trath -fulfilling spirit, 
 
 Thy power I not defy, but even in peace, 
 
 I war with fate. My life is to destroy. 
 
 Evil hath more activity, if good 
 
 More strength : and one must wear the other out. 
 
 The more august the sin, so much the more 
 
 Is my necessity. Yon earth hath been 
 
 The battle plain of heaven and hell. From God, 
 
 Who knoweth all things, and from thee to whom 
 
 Such knowledge as befits, he yields, 'twere vain 
 
 To hide my purpose, which for a thousand years, 
 
 Of bondage, hath grown in mo and lived on, 
 
FESTU8, 167 
 
 Toad-like within a rock —vital where all 
 
 Beside was death — to seize the nascent souls 
 
 Of men as they rerose from death to life, 
 
 Ajid sweep them off in midst of all these hosts 
 
 Assembled for that cause, here, as thou seest, 
 
 To hell ; — the universal race of man. 
 
 But if ordained that not on them, but thee 
 
 And thine, old hate shall satisfy itself, 
 
 Approach no nearer ; for we live by death ; 
 
 Or turn fate's tide let Him, who solely can. 
 
 Ceasing thereat, his host upraised a shout 
 
 Which shook the stars revibrant. Then to him 
 
 Our Chief spake tolerantly : It is well Grod rules. 
 
 Lo ! to what base extremes infernal pride 
 
 Can push a princely spirit, once of heaven. 
 
 Thee we will not destroy now, for thine hour 
 
 Hath yet to come — when least thou thinkest it, 
 
 God's wrath thou hast endured in punishment, 
 
 Not yet his power. Away 1 I warn ye hence, 
 
 Ere wrath ride forth again. To him the Fiend 
 
 Answered : God rules not us, the unordered damne<!i. 
 
 Nor recks of helL For ages past belief, 
 
 Unless by those who like ourselves denied 
 
 God's own eternity by creature mind. 
 
 However lofty, hardly compassed — we 
 
 Our pain have borne without remorse, or sign 
 
 Of pity from our Maker. Shall we now 
 
 Believe, while thus confronting him again, 
 
 He means us better ? Never worse than now. 
 
 Therefore I say to ye, On ! mightiest fiends, 
 
 On I Let us reap companions for our woes, 
 
 Or earn annihilation ! As when of old. 
 
 By bard, or soothsayer — but in vain — averred, 
 
 The swiftening shadow of some baleful god, 
 
 Himself impalpable, swept through air, and lo I 
 
 A high towered city tottered to its foot, 
 
 Rock-arched ; or many breasted fleet, lay strewn, 
 
 Straggling, like leaflets torn from out a book. 
 
 Upon the tide intempested ; so bent 
 
 To involve all soul in ruin, flew the fiend 
 
 Towards his marked prey. At the mere word, to bar 
 
 His way depute, whose ways are over all 
 
 His works, hell's fiery phalanx instant rushed. 
 
 A million spears blazed forth their challenge bright, 
 
 As of as many tongues. Serene our ranks 
 
 Stood like the stars o'er thxinder. The Angel Power 
 
 Sate in his orbed car, and breathed on them ; 
 
 And they were rolled up like the desert sands. 
 
 Before the burning wind ; throne wrecked on throne, 
 
 All mined and f oredone. Pursue 1 he cried, 
 
 Nor let them near the earth we go to judge. 
 
 And we pursued, as many as he chose, 
 
7e» FE8TU8. 
 
 And chased from Bphere to sphere that wretched wreck 
 
 Of falsest fiends : — and I, it seems, am first 
 
 Of all my victor brethren, to declare 
 
 The triumph passed and coming ; and your hearts 
 
 With tidings cheer of him to whom be due 
 
 Lauds for his so efficient breath. 
 
 Saint. Behold 
 
 Another warrior angel from on high, 
 Like angels, singly always or in hosts. 
 
 Angel. It is the most dread Azrael, unto whom, 
 Exterminative, Death's sword is given as boon. 
 
 Saint. What sayst thou heavenly one ? 
 
 AzEAEL. To the extreme bound 
 
 Of light's domain we chased the flying foe, 
 Who on the confines of the lower au- 
 Once rallied at their leader's stem command, 
 Whom more they fear, or seem to fear, than Grod, 
 They halted, formed, and faced us. I and mine 
 As on we came in order, full career. 
 Exalted by success, hoped ardently 
 One more convincing contest : but in spite 
 Of future woe, or the tempestuous threats 
 Of the great fiend who marshalled them, each eyed 
 His neighbour pale ; their trembling shook all air ; 
 And each one lift his arm, but no one struck. 
 Awhile in deaththroelike suspense they stood ; 
 Or like the irresolution of the sea 
 At turn of tide ; — then, wheeled, and fled amain ; 
 And in one mass immense broke down from heaven, 
 Cliff-like ; there, let them lie. Such fate have fiends ; 
 Such self -accumulate loss, such home, such hell. 
 
 Festus. And saw'st thou hell, the abode of fiends ? 
 
 Azrael. We saw j 
 
 Nor unsurprised ; for round the mountain walls 
 Chasmy, that prop hell's nebulous domelet, dun 
 And dim as a star quenched, that regropes its way 
 To chaos, and to nothing, gleamed in light 
 TJntamishable these just words ; God is love ; 
 Corrective, perfective : hope, spirits never 
 To quit, save by due penitence, and consent 
 With law divine : thence hope ; thence liberty ; 
 Thence heaven. Be these yours, now and ever. Hope 
 So angels fallen may yet to upper spheres 
 Gradually evade, or elsewise as fate rules ; 
 But there now, flouting fate, the recreant rests 
 Of that huge host, once world-compact, astound 
 At their own ruinous failure ; forceless now 
 Their caitiff force for ever, as 'twould seem, 
 Self -blamed, all troubled, each other chiding, groan. 
 And we returned, hoping to meet, as charge 
 To all was given, the Lord our glory here. 
 
FE8TUS. 78? 
 
 LI. 
 
 ;^^an*8 final doom conceive : the awai'd to iill 
 
 Earth's tribes of souls by spirits elect, their chiefg 
 
 Saintly, themselves through purifying rule 
 
 Of chastening spheres, to proximate perfectncss 
 
 Long trained; all rational hosts, by boundless love, 
 
 Brought round to service reasonable and just, 
 
 Of life's beneficent lord. A million miuds 
 
 Fixed momently on him, and countless more, 
 
 In rest, act, sin or strife, all seen at once, 
 
 Show but as one to God, all man one soul. 
 
 Blessed, when in spiritual sacrament as now 
 
 All creature being, by God in\dted, taste 
 
 His infinite essence, who all life within, 
 
 Soul with soul pure communes. "We glimpse the cloge ; 
 
 And swiftlier than an angel's wings outpace 
 
 Time's plodding feet, things ripen imto thcu' end. 
 
 I%e Judgment of Earth. 
 
 Beniel, Kosmiel, Angels and Saints. 
 
 KOSMIEL. Let all the dead rejoice ; their Saviour comes, 
 Invisible, but His missioned Angel, see ; 
 "With clouds of angels circled like a sun 
 Belted with light, and brighter than all light. 
 Lo, he descends and seats him on his throne ; 
 Alighting like a new made sun in heaven. 
 The world awaits thee Lord ! Rise, souls of men, 
 Buried beneath all ages from the first ; 
 Numbered, unnumbered, rise ye ; death, no more. 
 Hath power upon ye than the ravening sea 
 Upon the stars of heaven. Ye elements 
 Give back your stolen dead. He claimeth them, 
 ^Vhose they both were and are and e'er shall be. 
 Angel of Eaeth. See I to wipe from his word 
 
 The dust of years. 
 
 He comes, he comes, the Lord, 
 
 In his love, 
 
 Man's God, reappears ; 
 
 Through his angels depute 
 
 To abolish life's fears ; 
 
 To bless and to save 
 
 From death and the grave ; 
 
 To redeem and deliver, 
 
 For ever and ever. 
 Beniel. I come in God's great name sin to repay, 
 With holiness, death with dcathlessness, man's soul 
 With God's spirit ; yea, all evil with all good. 
 Yc angels, ye elect, who with God's love 
 Informed, shall rule -with me o'er life, assume 
 Your seats of judgment. Judge ye all in love, 
 The love which God, the all-father, hath to you. 
 Saints. May He tiie father of ^irits, teach us how 
 
 c o 
 
!r70 PEs^ns. 
 
 To judge ourselves ; so may we others judge. 
 
 Beniel. Our maker, heaven's supreme, the all-perfect Oiie 
 Will us, his humbler servitors, so fill 
 With the spirit divine grace, mercy, that in you, 
 All judging, God shall judge, and soul by soul^ 
 Before ye, ever brought to cleansing pains 
 Of self reproach consigned, for all ofEence 
 Conscious 'gainst God and man, ye so shall train 
 By precept and example 'like divine. 
 As shall all lowlier nature raise to sense 
 Worthier of being, as pure and true to God, 
 And fruitful sole of good ; from sphere to sphere, 
 Of every virtue, thus refined, and raised. 
 Ye saints of choice with all ye rule, and serve, 
 One vast equality so attained of bliss, 
 With us shall enter heaven. 
 
 Saints. Be it where God will ; 
 
 But now we render back to thee the love 
 Which is thine own, none else is worthy thee ; 
 Prime essence, virtue of all excellence. 
 
 Beniel. Whate'er the sign, the emblem, chailered hiTr, 
 Treaty or covenant, man in ages passed 
 Hath boasted, of the spirit that should redeem 
 From sin and ignorance, idols many and foul. 
 His spirit to purify and lead to enjoy 
 Visions of peace triumphant, glory and power ; 
 Know all are symbols only of truth ; and know 
 To creature thought, God in his wholeness seems 
 Inestimable ; so these conceived him best 
 Partwise, as acting through main energies, 
 Sevenfold, or trebly substanced, increate 
 Aspects of being ; they deemed, but vainly ; thos«. 
 With more or less of majesty, as a cloud 
 Sun-gilded, of the storm's tempestuous breath, 
 Shows nobler than the minimous gust man's lips 
 Force on air frore ; so, more than all things God j 
 All spirit, all substance, manifest or concealed. 
 God know ye one pure spirit, the all-potent force, 
 Eradiative of soul, as suns of rays. 
 Which time by time, to their central source return 
 Their end, their reason sole ; intelligences. 
 Angels all, sons of God, to him, of all 
 Created, spirit and matter, sire and sum ; 
 For as in man's breath congealed, cross, starlet, flower 
 Sphere crystalline, form, so into life all being. 
 Harmonious and symmetric, God imbreathes. 
 Behold, this day I dwell with ye on earth, 
 Time doling for the accomplishment of thingo, 
 Judicial, curative, rewardful ; la wed 
 Even to the last. The next shall be in heaven, 
 Where ye shall meet the all-father, and remain 
 In the eternal presence ; the all in one. 
 
FESTus. m 
 
 The sole true being of the universe. 
 
 The sole essential ; but self -existent, God. 
 
 Saints. Xo god but God is. He is his own prophet. 
 God, self-sufficient. Lord of the great throne, 
 Higher than heaven, and wider than the earth j 
 Vaster and more profound than the abysa ; 
 Whose is the kingdom of the universe. 
 Who comprehendeth all things ; made the sun 
 Star earth with flowers, and with his golden sword 
 Reap, like a labourer in the fields of light, 
 One everlasting harvest round the world ; 
 He made the moon succeedent ; he ordained 
 Darkness and light ; he causeth life and death. 
 The heavens and earth stand firm at thy command ; 
 And all that is between them and beneath. 
 High, gracious, mighty, worthy of all praise 
 Art thou in this life, Lord ! and life to come. 
 Bounteous and wise, thou lovest the merciful ; 
 The holy, the forgiver thou of sin, 
 The accepter of repentance ; faithful, just ; 
 Giver of peace, victorious ; excellent 
 Are all thy names, thy ways ; eternal Power ! 
 Thou knowest all things hidden and divulged. 
 Beside thee there is no God, thou art one. 
 Although within the world, the world without; 
 Who was ere time or space was ; and now is. 
 And will be though they both should cease for aye. 
 Nigher to every being than its life, 
 Too mighty still to live in aught create ; 
 Too holy to conform to things of time ; 
 Too perfect in all excellence to change. 
 All angels he hath made, all heavens, all orbs ; 
 Maintains and metes their natures, motives, end:-!. 
 Accordant with his mighty will : foreknows 
 All knowable things, and comprehends all known. 
 He knows the number of the drops of dew. 
 Spring's every leaflet, autumn's every seed, 
 And sums the quivered shafts of eveiy sun. 
 The movement of all thought within man's bruirx ; 
 The stir of every feeling in his heart ; 
 The rise of every longing in his soul ; 
 Sin's sooty trail and virtue's radiant track, 
 Traced in the inmost spirit, shows unto him 
 Clear as the course of comets in the sky. 
 He knoweth his own secrets, and conceals 
 From the united gaze of all create, 
 His infinite aim, his purpose absolute. 
 Neither to be resisted nor reversed 
 Is his decree, delayed nor dallied with ; 
 For at the fated moment all's fulfilled. 
 Without all quality, pure essence, he 
 Ears hath not, but hears all things ; eyes hath not, 
 
 3 
 
772 FEI^TUS. 
 
 But all things sees ; nor distance is, nor dark 
 To his divine cognition. To his touch 
 All innermost substances are palpable ; 
 The hearts of all things patent to his glance. 
 Wise in his ways and just in his decrees, 
 Nothing hath being but by him produced ; 
 And though permitted evil, to him sole 
 Pertains the right of knowing why it is. 
 For God must not be questioned. He alone 
 Hath all right, privilege, and prerogative. 
 The world exists but by his sufferance. 
 All things belong to him ; and into all, 
 Brought out of mere privation into light, 
 He entereth as possessor, maker, lord. 
 Nog from necessity aught created he ; 
 Nor that to him were need of lower life ; 
 Nor shadow of vantage from the universe ; 
 But from his lovingkindness, grace, and will 
 He breathed a vital blessing over space, 
 Quickened the void infinitude with light, 
 And filled the heavens with angels, earth with men. 
 Who love him, worship him, obey him, he 
 From his beneficent nature well rewards ; 
 Not from their merit ; nor tie absolute 
 Existent 'twixt well-doing and reward. 
 For merit man hath none, but all is grace ; 
 Nor can God under obligation lie 
 To aught created, principle, or power. 
 Man all receives from, nothing gives to God, 
 But that he hath received ; the gift to praise, 
 The grace to thank ; the glory to adore. 
 Dear Lord, all sire, all saviour, for thy gifts. 
 The world were poor in thanks, though every soul 
 Should nought but breathe them ; every blade of grass, 
 Yea every atomic of the earth and air 
 Thanks utter like to dew. Thy ways are plain 
 Only in thine own light. And this great day, 
 By one unfolded with thy spirit replete, 
 Unveils all nature's laws and miracles ; 
 All to thee all as one. Thy judgment all 
 Wise mercy. Lord of love, the world's no more 
 Illegible ; all is bright as new-bom star. 
 All men have sinned ; but not a single soul 
 Less than the countless all can satisfy 
 The ultimate triumph which to us belongs 
 Who in mortality strove, and won ; or failed 
 As these, the unnumbered, till death after. See I 
 Beniel. The book of life is opened. Heaven begins. 
 
FESTU8. 778 
 
 LII. 
 
 Judg^c not all heretic belief of old 
 
 As wholly fabulous. The Iranian seer 
 
 Hath left it writ, and our hearts hold it true, 
 
 That evil and good, twin powers, as light and dark, 
 
 Were destined to contest with varying mean. 
 
 The world while e'er it lasts ; but in the sum 
 
 Of things, the final conquest is our God's. 
 
 The grand intent of being, and its main stress, 
 
 Is towards its best, the all-perfect. Rest in God ! 
 
 Heaven, highest and all enfolding, fills at last 
 
 Its infinite bounds; reward of love divine; 
 
 Salvation, not alone of this soul, view, 
 
 Whose steps we have tracked through time, nor total man's 
 
 Only, but of all spuits. Our God, in fine, 
 
 Drawing his thousand-folded veil of light. 
 
 Shows to the world, the astound and jubilant world. 
 
 As that from first forefixed and justified. 
 
 The universe cleansed of evil ; hell for aye 
 
 Abolished ; the holy happy ; all create 
 
 Redeemed ; themselves all bliss ; all love, their God. 
 
 Heaven. 
 
 The Deity, Angels, Saints, Spirits Elect, Festus, Lucipee 
 
 The Restored Angels. 
 
 The Recording Angel. All souls of men are judged, save one. 
 earth's chosen, 
 And last of God's elect. 
 
 God, Him, too from first 
 
 'Mong spirits predestined saved, thoug^h to the last 
 Tried, longest disciplined, see ye entering 1 Come 
 Immortal, I have saved thy soul to heaven. 
 Come hither. All hearts bare themselves to me^ 
 As clouds unbind their bosoms to the sun. 
 Wealthy was thine in gifts of good ; and, grant 
 Its guilt most lay in lavished time and thought 
 On uneternal ends, unuseful truth. 
 Knowledge, mind-power, and worldly sway, thy teste, 
 Let pass, for one whose life 'twas, all to serve ; 
 Let light outweigh the darkness. 
 
 Saints. Saints, rejoice ! 
 
 Elect Spirits. Welcome, free spirit, long lost, long hoped to 
 heaven. 
 Where pure perfection reigns, the world of gods. 
 We, too, rejoice. Here now the Spirit Divine 
 Of inspiration and commune with all 
 Man's groat and infinite help ; the ally whose aid 
 Outworths all arms, all armies ; soul create, 
 And soul Creator, each in other's face 
 Before all ; soul, if falteous, sanctified 
 By voluntary return to God ; such pain 
 Suffered, as righteously by Him decreed, 
 And profitably to be endured j hence not 
 
 3 
 
77* FE8TU8, 
 
 Infinite ; just punition in the passed, 
 Being a joy to have borne ; all truth, foretold 
 In heaven accomplished, let behold and hear, 
 Now even fulfilments hasten towards their end. 
 
 Saints. Lord thou of all the covenants, life and trutli. 
 Law, love and peace, revealed and unrevealed. 
 With man made ; when from Paradisal dust 
 And heavenly archetype, thine image, earth 
 Received her master ; with whose kind conform 
 Imperfect, variously, each soul of man 
 Some semblance of the vast Humanity 
 Conceived of thee, ensamples ; and through such, 
 As angel, deathless, or, as mortal, man. 
 The world-starred infinite fills ; we thank thee nov/, 
 For this Thy Spirit's full harvest, and rejoice 
 In all Heaven's joy. 
 
 Festus. Could I my soul outpour 
 
 In thanks Lord, as a river rolling ever. 
 Too scant it were for all I owe. 
 
 Saints. Too scant, 
 
 Albeit life's years were as earth's atoms many ; 
 Too scant for even immortal life to prove 
 What even a moment's long enough to shew 
 In the Eternal's glance, all seen at once, 
 Thy love of good, thy thanks to Him who saves. 
 One heart-throb sometimes earneth Heaven, one terir. 
 
 Festus. Father of Angels and all spirits ; of men 
 Maker ; of worlds and souls ; thee, let all thank 
 Who have lived, and deathless witness to thy grace. 
 Let me too, Holy One, who hast chosen me 
 From old eternity, whiles as yet I lay 
 Hid liko a thought in God unuttered ; thee 
 Creatoi Bole, sole Saviour, praise, sole judge. 
 Sun of the soul, whose day is now all noon, 
 Eternal ; who of the universe makest one heaven ; 
 We praise thee ; heaven doth praise thee ; praise thyself, 
 Who only worthily canst ; all we being dumb. 
 
 God. What wouldst thou Lucifer ? The soul thou seek'ol 
 Of old to ruin as in mock, is here. 
 And all his race, progressive in all spheres, 
 Their purifying probation passed, shall time 
 By time arriving hither joyful join 
 Heaven's blissful hosts. 
 
 LuciFEE. Each separate sphere, I know 
 
 Hath its particular evil : good alone 
 Is, as of God, whole, absolute. But for me 
 I have mine own affairs to attend to, much 
 As times have changed ; but is not this soul mine 1 
 Have I not part and lot in him the most 
 Of all, not he ? 
 
 God. Evil ! hear thou my words. 
 
 In the beginning, ere I bade things be ; 
 
FFSTUS. 77fi 
 
 Or, finite filling o'er with the infinite, 
 
 Ere ever I bogafc the worlds on space, 
 
 I knew of him. and saved him pre-elect. 
 
 Son of mine own humanity, in the face 
 
 Of every fault, all weakness, by him owed 
 
 To that defective nature he finite 
 
 Could 'scape not ; and which I as infinite, judge 
 
 And maker, cognizant of, in mine own breast 
 
 Feel yet through all the frailties of things made ; 
 
 And 80, like feelingly can judge. What God 
 
 In fatherij' magnanimity chose to make. 
 
 Let his divine humanity, (fallen soul, 
 
 Through self -amending penitence purified, 
 
 Seeking return, acceptance) therefore save. 
 
 For I abide not sin, and in my sight 
 
 Where righteousness and equity only ; this 
 
 On my part, on the world's that, ever live, 
 
 Sin cannot be but temporary ; in fine 
 
 It is destroyed for ever, and made nought. 
 
 Spirit of evil, this mortal loved me ; 
 
 "With all his doubts, he never doubted God : 
 
 But from doubt gathered truth, as snow from clouds, 
 
 The most and whitest from the darkest. Such 
 
 His aim was, such his trust to gain for good, 
 
 With many a shortcoming his most strong desire 
 
 Was to do good among men ; to show life's end 
 
 In knowing, loving, God ; and making known 
 
 His boundless grace ; him vindicating from charge 
 
 Of partial choice inequitable ; and wrath 
 
 Unjust, of endless reprobation, aimed 
 
 'Gainst sinners unpermitted to repent. 
 
 Lucifer. Now know I who for certain are the elect ; 
 The Sons of God predestined all to bliss. 
 
 God. This too know truth ; truth once to thee foretold 
 Ilowbeit incredulous thou ; he, man, so versed 
 Become, in science of all nature's laws, 
 Tlie more he knew, conclusive each of good. 
 As all approved themselves, through perfect meano 
 To happic:<t ends, the more he God believed. 
 
 LuciFEii. Belief is not much as a test. 
 
 God. Belief 
 
 Means more or less. Belief in virtue means 
 Not mere existx3nce, but the practised mean 
 On all incumbent, towards tliat happier end 
 From first designed for man ; belief in truth 
 Moauo active search for verity ; and in man 
 Duties of heavenly charity, and all acts 
 That tend to pcaoe ; and makes a test of tests. 
 Once failed he ; once, nor failed nor won ; the last. 
 Power's test, he pas.sed ; nor feigning, sought he pomp, 
 Life-luxury, sensuous ease, nor mere command. 
 ^or privileged gain ; but the world's weal : which, won, 
 
776 FESTU8. 
 
 In concert witli the sage, and so secured 
 
 Through moral nature and law social, man 
 
 Made perfect thus, ere yet was list to fall, 
 
 His will with mine, self-oned, was, all to end ; 
 
 And so foreclose with provident care earth's orb 
 
 O'eraged, nor longer apt for use of such 
 
 Exalted lineage, then too fine to match 
 
 Their sphere's coarse elements. Add, for that peace he cho?e, 
 
 For earth and man, though losing for himself 
 
 Thereby both life and power ; and for that good 
 
 He chose 'gainst ill, and ill forgave, by ill 
 
 Most wronged, and myriads with him ; and made pure 
 
 By divine fire, of sin consumptive, he 
 
 With all the vanquishing hosts of saints who trode 
 
 Their nature's evils, and the bodily faults 
 
 Of imperfection freely down, by stress 
 
 Of upward striving steps resumed, restored 
 
 In heaven which gave them being, see all here. 
 
 And if in life's extreme he sued for death, 
 
 'Twas but to bring him quicklier to my feet. 
 
 Lucifer. I own misreckoning somewhat, and might ask 
 Forgiveness, if I knew of whom. 
 
 God. Thou knowest 
 
 There are but two ; the soul thou hast wronged ; and God. 
 
 Lucifer. And where's the soul I have not wronged ? 
 
 God. And where 
 
 The soul, of me forgiven, which hath not all 
 Its injurers pardoned ? 
 
 Lucifer. Lord ! as yet forbear. 
 
 God. All thou couldst do would ne'er have moved his rest 
 From that celestial rock, whence first he heard 
 Issuant God's voice ; not 'mid the lightning's flash 
 Deafening, nor earth-ground thunder, but the calm 
 Outspeech of truth self -regulated in tone, 
 That law is love defined, in justest bounds. 
 To soul adapt, and all things else create. 
 
 Lucifer. I leave thee, Festus : Here thou wilt be happy. 
 To be in heaven is God to love for ever. 
 And him thou must love here. Here thou wilt find 
 All thou canst love, and oughtst ; for souls reborn 
 Of Deity, made and moulded over again 
 Into his sunlike emblems, multiply 
 His might and love ; the saved are suns, not earths ; 
 And with original glory shine of God. 
 While I, e'er deepening in my darkness, live 
 Without one hope-gleam 'cross the gloom of being. 
 
 Beniel. Father of men and angels, sons of God, 
 Both in thy holy spirit so named, I pray 
 Once more to thee, who from the initials know'st 
 To the end, all life thou hast made, one prayer. 
 
 God. 'Tis heard. 
 
 Festus. Let us part, Spirit. It may be. in the coming, 
 
FE8TU8. 771 
 
 That as some sun extinguished now, shall yet 
 
 In the ends of heaven restituent, shine again, 
 
 Light-crowned ; so thou, and all soul, sometime worth 
 
 It would seem God's making, maybe worth forgiving ; 
 
 And, purified by steady and upward strain 
 
 Of spirit accordant with Divinity ; 
 
 Blessed to eternity with the ingrowth of truth, 
 
 And passion of obedience to his law, 
 
 Then viewed impartially as just ; all mind, 
 
 Self uttering assonantly with his pure will, 
 
 Ta'en back into his bosom, shall in fine 
 
 Be one with him who is all, and all in one. 
 
 LuciPEE. It may be then I shall cease to be. Farewell. 
 Forgive me in that I tempted thee. 
 
 Festus. I am glad. 
 
 LuciFEE. Farewell, ye angels ; look your last on me. 
 I tempt no more. I am tempted ; but of good, 
 r go. 
 
 Angels. Hope still. 
 
 LuciFEK. My hope's to cease,. I go. 
 
 Let me become but nothing, and all soul 
 Shall joy for ever. This, Lord, be mine end. 
 
 God. Stay, Spirit ; it suits not Heaven's eternal laws 
 Of good, that all create be at once unmade. 
 Nor yet that 111 be immortal. In all space 
 Is joy and glory, and the spiritual spheres, 
 l^xultant in the sacrifice of sin 
 And creatural defect, unfilled by faith, 
 Leap forth as though to welcome earth to heaven. 
 Sliadows are passed away. Through all is light. 
 Man is as high above temptation now 
 And where by grace he always shall remain, 
 As ever sun o'er sea ; and sin is burned 
 In hell to ashes with the dust of death. 
 The world itself is but a faded dream 
 To souls which lived therein ; and thou art null j 
 And thy vocation useless ; gone with them. 
 Not all in vain, nor fruitless shew the years 
 Millennial of thine exile from earth's face. 
 Glad smiling in that absence ; absence most 
 Fertile to thee, lone penitent of all passed, 
 In bettermost resolve, as Heaven, in this 
 Forgiveness asked of man, now eyes, elate ; 
 Ask of another yet ; and time may be 
 Heaven's star-mailed hosts shall joy in thee again ; 
 And the lost tribes of angels who with thee 
 Wedded themselves to woe, first ; and who dwell 
 Around the dizzying centres of all worlds 
 Blessed with the blessedest be again ; for thus 
 Salvation to the lost accrues, far passed 
 Thine ultimate thought, but wholly in scope of mine. 
 Speak, Beniel, thou whose just and simple thought 
 
778 FLSTUS. 
 
 Reflects and concentrates the mind of Heaven 
 In all its spheres and orders, tell how truth 
 And the good growth implanted once in spirits 
 Our heavenly mansions claimed, of late, how long I 
 Pride's troubled serfs, still hesitant, have matui-ed. 
 
 Beniel. The hope already there, thine eyes, O God, 
 All seeing, had viewed from its first rise in what 
 Was fiend-world once, and thou hadst bade me seek 
 In gravest ambassago, and by sustenant word 
 Encourage and confirm hath, mid those hosts 
 Torturous of fallen immortals, sad to see, 
 So well sped, hear ye blessed, and be glad 
 Ye holy, that this hour 'tis such, as when 
 On earth at dead ebb, moveless, waits the main 
 But a single impulse from its heart, and lo 1 
 Just palpitant on the welkin, nor from sky 
 Wholly distinguishable ; one throb imparts 
 Heaven's touch initial ; so, that anguished sphere 
 Of angelhood distort, an ocean mass 
 Of vanquished powers remorseful, now no more 
 Rebels, 'gainst good contestant armed ; but tossed 
 Of soul, surgelike in sea ; now, forward swayed 
 By rational trust in truth ; for how, if just 
 Man to permit repent, shall righteous Heaven 
 Bar angel of like boon ? drawn backwards, now, 
 By dread lest ill desires, deeds, worse deserts, 
 Outweighing faith in God's all mercifulness. 
 Should root them there ; seems but to await the word 
 Instituent, to renew all to right end. 
 And form afresh a more felicitous flood. 
 
 God. Know all ye Heavens, that thought is alway mine 
 Of choice, and time's use made by soul, oft turned 
 Conversive of things made to their true end. 
 
 Lucifer. True 'tis, despair of happier change for thf m 
 In them shows not unpalliated. But were 
 Repentance theirs, and all the fruits I see 
 And know it gains ; have long known ; how could yet 
 That knowledge me advantage ? For howbeit all 
 God's enemies small or great err, much of good 
 jMiscalculant, yet their sin, their natui-e alike 
 If mighty is measurable ; mine only of all 
 Indomitable, indocile, changeless ill, 
 Reems infinite ; and m.j being at God's hands 
 Asks but annihilation. 
 
 God. Spirit of ill, 
 
 Be it not so. In those sunbrightening words, 
 Tliough dimmed by wholesome fears, all Heaven may trace 
 The light-growth of those star clear seeds first sown ; 
 Deep in thy spiritual consciousness, by one 
 Thou mockedst with feigned love, yet fatal ; one 
 V»'ho now forgives. 
 
 Lucifer. So vast my sense of wrong 
 
FESTUa. 1l1'^ 
 
 To snch is, nor to such alone, nor man 
 Only, in mass, but all create ; the woe 
 Of memory so overwholminpr, there is nought 
 My g^ef to alleviate, though of life assured 
 Henceforth serene and rational, dared I near 
 The shadov/ but of thy footstool, save to quench 
 This soul-force deathless of itself, and hurl 
 To naked nought the incommutable life 
 Linked with the passed for ever. 
 
 God. Spirit, know 
 
 The same Omnipotence which from thought all made 
 Can by like power illimitable, all ill 
 Make to all good subservient ; and that first 
 Based in the imperfect lowliest, cope at last 
 With absolute perfection. In all worlds 
 Of temporal range, to soul imperfect, ill 
 As test of soul ; shows needful ; and, as tests 
 Seek alway, if they sometimes fail, to win 
 Perfection, know, I, sole of Being, free 
 To act, as answerable but unto myself ; 
 Of all laws source and end, which bind for good 
 The whole ; laws competent to embrace, to rule, 
 Nourish, sustain all things ; I yet being more 
 And greater than all laws by me made ; laws 
 'Gainst me unuseable by the total force 
 Of all create conjured dread not, nor need. 
 Weighing, as righteous judge, the sum of powers 
 Subaltern, aught their armied feebleness, 
 Witli all aids leviable 'gainst me colleagued, 
 Could compass. Nor, dread therefore thou, because 
 Vanquished, subject, necessity to me 
 Should counsel endless punishment of sense. 
 Or instant end of life ; pain, evil, death, 
 Foes finite all can pity ; how much more 
 The Father, souls made primely bright and pure, 
 Be it since, sin-soiled : too cognizant he of all 
 He makes ; and making knows ; too 'ware of all 
 Failing, who fails not ; but appeased by due 
 Repentance, and the oCcnding spirit's return 
 Self -impulsed, to the eternal order lawed 
 Of God from first, love, justice, virtue, peace. 
 As imperfection's lot it is to seek 
 Ever, but never in itself to achieve 
 Perfection, I, of every Being sole, 
 Free absolutely, and necessary alike, 
 Have, as a man who puts a girdle on. 
 Girt me with law ; and draw or loosen at will, 
 In arbitrary delight. But fear not thou. 
 The all-righteous, howbeit self -exempt from all 
 Law liens, and unhinderable, should err 
 By anger, or by love too partial ; just 
 In all. He not to reprobation dooms 
 
780 FE8TUS. 
 
 Endless, who may have sinned, or thwarted most, 
 Or most neglects ; but such even, wiselier taught 
 By Time, great expert of the world, to bliss 
 Final shall save, so please He ; these by mean 
 Perfective ; these by use untasked of power 
 Inscrutable, precreative. 
 
 Sons of God. Lord, to thee, 
 
 Thy fulness much, thy mercifulness more, 
 Pertain all rights, all pure prerogatives. 
 
 God. All angel world, not wiser once than thee. 
 Their more than peer in power. Heaven's laws desire. 
 To see through space established and help spread. 
 Yet, spirit of ill, thy heart shows hard and green, 
 Unmellowing, hardening rather outwardly. 
 
 LuciPEE, Naught less than sudden sunburst, it may be 
 Of ripening light, shall serve. As yet forbear. 
 
 God. Draw nigh, ye angels, who long time with hope 
 Inspired, but scarce with expectation touched. 
 Of heavenly pardon, and with conscious will 
 Of betterment and of penitence moved, have strove 
 My grace to attract, and bring your spirits again 
 To the orderly progress of all good, approach. 
 Lo ! ye are all restored, redeemed, rebrought 
 To Heaven, by Him who justly cast ye forth, 
 Not vengefuUy, your God, who mercy shows 
 To good and ill both, in sequestering sin. 
 Nor can the pure humanity of your God 
 AU-being, let suffer woe for aye ; not those 
 Who most have wronged him, and the souls he loves. 
 For his murderers Christ on earth forgiveness asked ; 
 And that he would, I will. The Sage of Auz, 
 Unjustly accused, for his revilers' sins 
 Himself atoned, by innocent sacrifice ; 
 The wise Athenian, doomed by ignorant judge 
 Iniquitously, to drain the empoisoned bowl, 
 Freely forg'ave his enemies ; nor shall man 
 Be juster, nor more merciful than God ; 
 Nor thing made than its Maker more perfect. 
 The fount love draws from is too deep for mere 
 Creation to exhaust, draw he, draw ye 
 Angels, eternally. Your primal fall. 
 Unfathomable, till stayed, of thought create 
 Was ; man's has ever been ; the wilful choice 
 Of pravity and of pride, for truth and right ; 
 For free revolt, 'gainst service to just law. 
 Each hating in his breast that wistful judge, 
 Hight conscience, by me set, of right and wrong j 
 Else of ourself no image man ; nor more 
 Angel, of God. But made, and to themselves 
 Left, arbitrary, to order through all life 
 Their every step, each motived, shall aught less 
 Than self lustration of the spirit divine, 
 
FESTU8. 781 
 
 Agewise, through worlds, (if need so long to attune 
 
 The soul to those presecular harmonies 
 
 Of mind with things create, yon spheral songs 
 
 Foreshadow luminously ;) be worthy deemed 
 
 To appease law's wounded majesty, and good's 
 
 Duo give to God ? But God the Saviour's face, 
 
 In likeness shewn of penitence pure, to all 
 
 Open who've sinned through the whole infinite, 
 
 The reascendant soul may seek ; and, proved 
 
 Its perfect change, the all-chastened world of mind 
 
 Reseeks its fatherly source. 
 
 Angels. Yon distant skies 
 
 Seem teeming with a timidly nearing host 
 Of angels late self -exiled, who scarce know 
 Their seats of old constellate still in heaven. 
 
 Saints. marvellous mercy, God e'er blessing all. 
 
 Angels. Behold they come, the legions of the lost, 
 Transformed already by the bare behest 
 Of God our Maker to the purest forms 
 Of seraph lustre. 
 
 God. These have but fulfilled 
 
 Defect's extreme contingence : nor without 
 Such sequence, in its compass deepening oft 
 To risk of evil, in man, so sUbstanced, free 
 By nature, can things made act of themselves 
 Or interact. Not theirs perfection ; worse 
 And better rounds all life, all conscious act. 
 Air, water, earth, each vital element 
 Acts downwards ; fire, all destruent, sole aspires ; 
 And ends in upper air ; so, mind create 
 Self-'stranged from God, through death, pernicious mean, 
 To Him, in man returns ; in angel, void 
 Of gross mortality, soul transfigurate, ne'er, 
 In agony, all its luminous essence lost, 
 But doubly brilliant, as the morning star 
 Steeped in Heaven's longest dark, beams, nearing whilst 
 Its lif eful fount, through ill all good consummed ; 
 Be all received. 
 
 The Restored Angels. But thine Lord all the praise 
 And ours submissive thanks ; thine, Lord I who mad'st 
 The imiverse that alike its good and ill 
 Praise thee, the soul supreme. 
 
 Saints. say, ye risen 
 
 From life unblessed, how came the end we see ? 
 
 Restored Angels. Protecting souls, how, hear. Ye doubtless 
 marked 
 From these rejoicing heights where never war's 
 Dark storm-cloud blots the blue serene of day 
 Eternal, hell's late feud ; when evil had done 
 Its worst, and we 'gainst God's all mastering power 
 Had fought, and failed in ruin of tlie kind ends 
 Thou Lord hadst planned for man, and, seeing how vile 
 
782 FE8TUS. 
 
 ilow vast our wreck, whicli all Ave e'er had done 
 
 Or schemed, involved ; which shewed how baffled all, 
 
 Complot or field ; how hopeless grow ill's strife 
 
 'Gainst g'ood divine ; and mindint^ us of need 
 
 Like boundless, wisdom promised to all soul 
 
 Fixed on self -betterment penitently, there rose 
 
 On us, a twilig-ht dawn of reason, eclipsed. 
 
 Long-, woefully, but e'er brightening-, till we viewed 
 
 In heaven's true lig'ht gradual, our wretched deeds, 
 
 Soul-torturing now, and all the unholy frauds 
 
 We had, self -blinded, mocked our sight with ; saw 
 
 LTnvv'orthy of rational virtues, so endowed 
 
 As we, with means of growth in excellence : powers 
 
 Incapable not, to range with those on high 
 
 Who, through good, rule ; one sole step ta'en, and hold 
 
 That spatial step we took : and in ourselves 
 
 Repentant resolutely of all passed ill, 
 
 Done and devised ; the insuppressive groan 
 
 Ilell, startled at the shock, heard ; and far round 
 
 All orbs, the wailing echoed of our woe. 
 
 This heardst thou, piteous Judge ; and over all 
 
 Came peace. Then God most blessed us, and forgave. 
 
 Made pass through purifying spheres, of will 
 
 Testful, and act probationary, of thought. 
 
 Oh ! he hath triumphed over all the world 
 
 In mercy, over earth and death and hell. 
 
 God. The obduracy of Evil still pervades 
 The spirit of pride discomfited ; as when first 
 Rebel ; or say we might, " Hear, Spirit, and live ; 
 Thy followers following, light rescek, and peace : 
 And thou who earnest to heaven one soul to claim, 
 Remain possessed by all ; the sons of bliss 
 Shall welcome thee again and all thy hosts ; 
 Of whom thou first in glory as in woe 
 Last ; brightest now, as darkest late, shalt shine ; 
 Take, Lucifer, thy place ; this day redeemed 
 Be thou to archangelic state ; bright child 
 Of morn, once more, beam forth thou, fair and free 
 O'er all light's starry armam^ents ; and thou, 
 Highest, then humblest, of all soul create. 
 Thus vanquished, adversary of good, by good, 
 And thus restored ; death slain ; sin quelled ; all ill 
 Convert ; bid darkness cease ; and all be light. 
 
 Lucifer. Such ne'er can be. 
 
 God. Such must be. 
 
 AxGELS. By thy word. 
 
 All-quickening, Lord 1 even he may yet adore 
 Thy mercy ; and the mystery that of old 
 111 seemed to many a soul, to all made plain 
 And good become in God's design, the hour 
 Of fate, thou hast said it, failless, shall amve. 
 
 AiJTGELS. That hour may all abide, and bide in joy. 
 
FESTUS m 
 
 God. God's grifts are e'er of increape. For this cause 
 Receive ye tenfold of all gifts and powers ; 
 Yours once of old. 
 
 Lucifer. I cannot live on hope. 
 
 All mind reverts to its original source 
 As clouds self-emptied in their generant main. 
 
 God. And you ye saints rejoice ; that reig^n of old 
 Foretold, millennial, ceased, love all, the truth 
 Shall dwell in and fulfil all spirit create ; 
 ITallow and quicken ; that long-ed for reign, with heaven's 
 Identic, of humanity pure, alone 
 Subsidiary to God's, must disappear. 
 The spirit of just humanity divinized 
 No more extern to Deity, yields at once 
 To Kim its 'mediate Being ; and by the loss 
 Of separateness all gaining, man with God 
 Unites, as even in firmamental light 
 One, universal, hides each several star. 
 So creatures all in deity : all created 
 Intelligence circled in Heaven's boundless wheel, 
 All ends in the initial centre crowned, 
 The central infinite which imbounds all made ; 
 Their conquests are my conquests ; every truth 
 They have mastered, mine own verity ; all their lore, 
 The eternal wisdom ere all worlds conceived. 
 
 KOSMIEL. Be glad world of worlds ; rejoice, all life ; 
 And mourn no more ; death, evil, suffering, cease. 
 
 Saints. Yea death and hell have passed away ; the oxtremoB 
 Of space no longer blurred with the foul reek 
 Of spheres sin-tormented ; heaven pure and calm 
 Cored in God's infinite unity, see the whole. 
 
 God. For that my grace is greater than the world, 
 Mine essence vaster than the universe, 
 AU recreated life exalted now 
 To union with its author, the divine 
 Foundations of their Being all may see ; 
 And know that though on all the fine I fixed 
 Of finitude ; on soul's works, and its results ; 
 Its aids, its theories, temporal and eteme ; 
 Woes self -begotten ; self -conceived deserts 
 And misconstructions of the All Merciful One, 
 When come the end of all, which none but I 
 Know, nor can know, it is mine, the whole made pure 
 By perfect annihilance of ill to enfold 
 In mine own infinite Being, and in all 
 The life of love imbreathe, of good, of God. 
 One sole salvation possible is of soul 
 Create, the universal, ultimate God, 
 When finite things He made, made He for nought ? 
 
 Angkl. Thou madst theiu for thy pleasure, Lord, onr good. 
 
 God. Can I find pleasure in a world of woe ? 
 Man good, or angel joy, in endless sin, 
 Sin aimless ? Can soul rational, if misled 
 
r84 FESTUS. 
 
 By evils false presentments, so contest 
 Its being's primal law as hope to prove 
 Profit or pleasure permanent in ill ? 
 And I, who, say ye, seek mine end in joy 
 Boundless, that find, or this, in creature pain ? 
 
 Angel. Thou, Grod, art lord of equity and rij^ht ; 
 Nor couldst so disproportioned end and mean. 
 In that thou hast made, ordain. One law the world 
 Of reason and of desert pervades : of well 
 Separative from ill. 
 
 GrOD. Ye judge as I, the truth. 
 
 To soul finite, fine finite sole, is due. 
 Where art thou spirit, or man, that's infinite ? 
 Where, angel essence, where thou orbf ul world ? 
 Not I, of Being the one sole infinite Cause, 
 Could so have made thee ? And who, therefore, else ? 
 Know ye unwisdom, hate, things limited, caused 
 By bounded faculties, once opposed to Heaven, 
 As fall angelic, human fall, both prove, 
 Must, in the end, to love and wisdom, powers 
 Of source divine, immeasurable, for good 
 Of others, inexhaustible, succumb ; 
 Boasting themselves as vanquished by an arm 
 Not than Almighty less. For this, because 
 Justice is justly punitive, albeit not 
 In chastisements annihilant, as conceived 
 Full oft, by trembling guilt, in divers lands. 
 And sundry times, such being all then that men 
 Could bear with or assimilate, not till now 
 Might man mine whole of meaning know, or you 
 Leam our entire intent. One law there is 
 In every world the same, man, angel, fiend 
 Each of necessity made imj^erfect ; this 
 Righteous, as ye who here dwell ; and these twain, 
 Fallen, but losing ne'er the power to rise 
 If so they will, being free. Its issues see. 
 
 Angels. The wise of old thine acts unpublished held 
 Holy and just ; expounded, we adore. 
 
 God. Evil to soul create means opposite. 
 Of what to her in outward guise shews good, 
 In act or thought ; thus death, to all which live ; 
 Corruption and decay. But in my sight 
 Know, absolute evil never was, is not, 
 Nor could it ever be. I made the world ; 
 Called it by mine own name, and named it good ; 
 The infinite whole, as circumscribed in me. 
 All things I made to be good, and good is bliss, 
 Free choice to prove, and need of grace needs not 
 Fireflames to be eternal, feigned by o'erzeal 
 In God's behalf. Freewill most perfect, pure, 
 Hath still a limit, my will, all ellipse 
 Of thought create, outcircling ; if with mine 
 (>o-apt, infinite virtually ; opposed, 
 
FESTU8. 785 
 
 Fate's indefeasible riglit revives. So deem 
 
 Hate agfainst me (sin, what else) limitless, 
 
 In conscious spirit, its author I, must mean 
 
 Such being were best not being: ; and so in G-od 
 
 Defectible judg-ment ; folly in wisdom. Far 
 
 From nature's mind, glorying in reason, fly 
 
 Such base, unhallowed thought. The worlds I made, 
 
 That I in them might joy, and they in me. 
 
 The dayfly's life I have made enjoyment. Life 
 
 Angelic, boundable not by fellow mind. 
 
 Should I make, sensible of unbounded woe ? 
 
 Though fail the imperfect, left to itself, to weigh 
 
 Perfection's warnings, or the fateful proof 
 
 Of self incompetency itself to rule 
 
 And thus by ill corrupt, wrong willing, sin 
 
 Suffering in time-state righteous penalties 
 
 Proportioned to sin's voluntary offence, 
 
 Yet justice increate grants final grace 
 
 From him who founded all ; of all defect 
 
 All perfect source ; sole answerable cause. 
 
 Know too, in him who wronged 'twas better, choice 
 
 To have of good and ill with life, than not ; 
 
 Though, after, justly fined for choice of wrong. 
 
 Better for him who suffered ill, to enjoy 
 
 The sense of Being, than ever not to have been. 
 
 Regard, too, had to the heavenly recompense. 
 
 For innocence, that ; for tested virtue this. 
 
 Lucifer. But who shall see the end of Evil ? 
 
 Beniel. Who 
 
 Its rise and fixed its limits. 
 
 Lucifer. And how wrought 
 
 This great effect ? 
 
 Beniel. Spirit of troublous ill, 
 
 \Vho most on earth, but in all spheres thou might'st, 
 Ilast e'er, with all the necessary defects 
 Of creatural nature, even as pestilence 
 With a city's breathable air, so joined thyself 
 As to seem one with evil, not alone 
 In the world's eyes but thine own too, this may pass 
 All creature power to say ; pass even our will, 
 Desire, and aspiration. It may bo 
 That, each of each discumbered, in the end. 
 First faith so working in thca, thee restored 
 To the angel perfectness thou once adorn'dst. 
 And closed the great procession led by truth 
 Of soul create, that all the impei-fect oned 
 With its great source, the all perfect, ignorance filled 
 To the lip with Divine wisdom ; evil gone 
 Out of the world that was, like one dark wave 
 Merged in a sea of light ; and in the world 
 To be, unknown ; God's grace shall all sustain ; 
 And ill and darkness banished. He shall rest. 
 The Eternal Reason, with all things He hath willed 
 
786 FE8TUS. 
 
 Into being, made, administered, content ; 
 He, they, alike ; each naming- other, good. 
 
 God. Mind free, but limited, and imperfect, fails 
 In due conception, justly inadequate 
 Of my divine intents to creatures known 
 As fate, doom, destiny ; evil, so, and good 
 War spiritual wage which lasts while time lasts. Ilera 
 Good losing nought is made divine ; and ill, 
 Sloughing its selfish personalty, becomes, 
 Transfigured in ascent, the all redeemed 
 Commensurate with soul-kind ; and mind finite, 
 Distinct from, yet with Deity perfused, 
 The whole is peace ; divisive nature ends. 
 Truth only unitive marks the spirit's path, 
 An endless radius from a boundless point 
 Of all comprising Being ; in itself 
 Of pure perfection. All created mind 
 Whate'er its power, how far soe'er it fly 
 This pai-ent point, hath limit to its force ; 
 And active thought its essence ; and retained 
 By attraction consubstantive must revolve 
 Around its spiritual centre. 
 
 Angels. God. 
 
 God. Henceforth 
 
 All thought of the now hallowed world of life, 
 Tends to communion with the Infinite One, 
 Communion vital, virtual and divine. 
 Wherein is bliss supreme. 
 
 Beniel. O, ever blessed 
 
 Of all thy rational universe, thy love 
 So hallows that it stoops to, that made mind 
 Great with a something greater than itself 
 Conceived of Deity, its most lofty thought 
 With the aureole crowned of sanctity, howe'er 
 Below Divinity's vast companionship, 
 Self consecrate to thee, we pray thee take 
 The all that's ours, ourselves. 
 
 God. I, too, of soul 
 
 Sole parent ; of the soul-world sire, as Lord 
 Of the unbegotten world, who have so adjudged 
 The substance of all beings, all their powers 
 And qualities to their preconcerted end ; 
 Their faculties to the good they might achieve ; 
 Their duties to their just deserts ; the truths 
 They have compassed, to their possible deeds, and feats 
 Actual ; 'like sacred, powers and weaknesses ; 
 All bid make glad with me. For not the tears 
 Of nature's life-birth, nor time's death-pangs passed, 
 Nor all persistent woes of transient life, 
 Could other do than justice justify 
 In all power made, and wisdom dowered, and love 
 United ; were not this compassionate heart, 
 (]alm-pulsed as a Pacific, and these eyes 
 
FE8TUB. 787 
 
 Cloudless as upper skies unvexed, unveiled, 
 
 (Yet searchful as tlie wind through woods), my first 
 
 And last of assessors, their Lord remind 
 
 How the inabilities of things made a -e not, 
 
 Less than their potence, holy. 
 
 Beniel. Be it, O God I 
 
 Justice and mercy are thine attributes ; 
 Thine essence, love. Set up thy glory, Lord I 
 In pure humanity common and divine 
 Through all the star-world. 
 
 God. Nature, spirit of life, 
 
 Not soul to me responsible, hath had all 
 She can have, not being goddess, I, in thee, 
 Therefore, created spirit, of all my love 
 Son, whole and sole ; albeit not perfect, free ; 
 Though fallible, thou, amiable, in thee more glad 
 Than even in me thou, call all heavens to see 
 And their souls satisfy, that howbeit both 
 In one thrice holy Spirit once joined, unite, 
 Throughout time's severance from eternity. 
 And the soul's spacious world-field, 'gainst all ill ; 
 And each, his several way, with conquest crowned ; 
 'Tis I, who substituting for law divine 
 Of righteousness and justice, equity 
 To broad humanity all where, and the worlds 
 Of mutable course angelic, thus fulfil 
 An infinite sacrifice ; greater far than all 
 Of secondary existence could for me ; 
 Though theirs to me more due than mine to them : 
 Their victory but the type and shadow of mine, 
 The exterminator of evil. 
 
 Saints. Praise we God ! 
 
 God. Yet would not I such gift ; save of free wijj 
 And that divine constraint of rational good 
 Which perfect adds to perfect ; and all souls 
 And soul-worlds, binding its amplest verge, 
 Gives, in the end, to all, felicity. 
 
 Beniel. All hallowing Deity, all parent Power ; 
 Thy throne the crown of Heaven, thy crown thy name, 
 Thy name the ever blessed, the Lord of life ; 
 Bliss-giver thou, who art the bliss of all, 
 Be thy soul satiate with this victory. 
 It is for thee this universal war 
 Thou bad'st, I fought and closed ; I, and mine hosbe, 
 Ail thine. 'Tis the hope of thine approval nerves 
 'Neath nobler leaders, chosen, and cheered by thee 
 Alway our upward wing, that all by thee 
 Sanctified, might in spirit to thee return, 
 To their all centering source. For thee, we gaiix 
 This heavenly victory, who couldst all by a word 
 Subdue ; for ourselves, this holy rest, thy x^eace ; 
 Celestial, recreative. Peace we know 
 Is thine for ever, thought-transcending peace, 
 
788 FESTU8. 
 
 Infrangible, inassailable. All our days 
 
 Are not as one of thine. Thy days, G-od 1 
 
 Nor morn nor eve comprise. We, starlets pale. 
 
 Time's dawnings note, its noonings, and its night ; 
 
 While thou full many a firmamental arch. 
 
 Bow-bender of the heavens, hast changed, and changed 
 
 Unmarked by other. Lo ! even I have seen 
 
 The mountain of creation, all whose sands 
 
 Were starworlds, called eternal by made mind, 
 
 Ray finite, of the all central inJBnite, 
 
 Like to a night-born islet, mid the main, 
 
 Sink in the void abysmal whence it rose. 
 
 But thou art changeless, causeless, unconceived, 
 
 Uncomprehended God. Thee, let all Heaven, 
 
 Prostrate in infinite silence, worship. Lord I 
 
 Whose fane's the world, whose sanctuary the soul. 
 
 OUEIEL. Lift up your starry heads, ye angel sons 
 Of the Eternal ; God is throned in heaven. 
 
 KosMiEL. Lift up your starry voices, all ye spheres ; 
 Let all creation from its innermost heart 
 Sound forth one song of ceaseless, boundless praise. 
 
 Festus. How joys the soul redeemed ; joys, as when first, 
 On the horizon of God's awful eye. 
 Some world He hath willed into existence beams, 
 And gladdens in his glance, whose look is love. 
 
 LUNIEL. What infinite wonders we have witnessed here, 
 And now the greatest this, of all most blessed. 
 Triumphant, all embracing good, the whole 
 Concordant, one made with the one supreme. 
 For, as in things material, force all rules, 
 In matters spiritual weakness wins ; as once 
 Of old, on the angel visioned plain, thou sawest 
 Vv^restler with God, and prince ; so, once again. 
 It is God's humanity prevails with God. 
 
 Festus. Unsearchable are His ways, his works. 
 
 Angel. . . But not 
 
 Dubious, when shown. In this most luminous life, 
 Shined through by deity, and wherein the worlds, 
 God's vast and palpable thoughts transpicuous range. 
 The outcome, soul 1 behold, of all good deeds, 
 Though profitless misdeemed on earth ; all aims 
 Wliich, faultless in themselves, failed ; hopes well based 
 Frustrate, not fruitless, in the eternal plan, 
 Not futile ; but to the soul advantageous ; 
 Here roots of duty set in natural mould 
 Of heart-love, social virtues, freely bloom ; 
 And, fragrant though below, they ofttimes showed 
 Blighted, and irresponsive to just hope. 
 These are the flowers that now unwithering wreathe 
 The immortal brows of saints, and shed far round, 
 Perfume of holy hilarity. And as marked 
 On earth through some dark cloud-cleft, travelling swift, 
 yhe li"-ht-shafK downward shot from the sun's broad eye, 
 
FE8TU8. 789 
 
 niumed successive mount, spire, city or sea ; 
 So points God's finger, brightening" all the dark 
 Of being, fate's favourite secrets, one by one, 
 To spirits benign, of reason sanctified, 
 And to saints prepared, permitted truths profound, 
 In wisdom's breast hid : all the problems, dark 
 And intricate, of existence, solved ; we, taught, 
 Thus by Omniscience. 
 
 Angela. Here too, in the soul, 
 
 How brightened and refined through every sphere. 
 As a light-ray, urged through various lenses, sheds 
 At each, some passionate colour, till it stands, 
 Sweet in untinted whiteness, at the gates 
 Of reasonablest perfection, thou mayst learn, 
 All tendencies of good, all rarest powers, 
 And faculties of spirit made holy, pure, 
 Potent to imbue receptive mind with sense 
 Of beauty, spiritualized and sanctified, 
 Have full fruition ; scope unlimited ; end 
 Boundless ; all plans prolific of the weal 
 Of worlds, and sanctioned by God's sign of good. 
 Their harvest through the appointed ages reap. 
 
 Guardian Angel. That sinners be made holy, sin itself 
 By righteousness commute, and vital bliss 
 Out of deadliest suffering wrought, (though to finite mind 
 From God divergent, strange,) astounds not soul 
 Affiliate to divinity ; for what else 
 More contrary can show than heaven thus full 
 Of being, innumerable, wise, virtuous, blessed, 
 And the black void whence all things, at his word 
 Leapt into life, and starred the skies with light ? 
 That flame should heavenward soar, or waters fall. 
 Or ice evolve heat, mind no more confounds 
 Than that who fallible stood should sometime fail. 
 "Why that who fell, should rise ? AH evil but gives 
 Just scope for God's benevolence, mightier still, 
 ■\Vho forms all natures, and at will transforms ; 
 Happy in making happy, spirit elect 
 Of Heaven and earth, and using to best ends 
 This life-world, and its universal powers. 
 Thus, too, with the angels once estranged, at last, 
 Atoning by obedience meet to God ; 
 Oh doubly blessed and trebly worshipped name, 
 Of all in Heaven, or earth, or under earth 1 
 Self exiled from affairs mundane ; and now, 
 For selfish rule, inexpiable else. 
 And cruel, reckless deed ; for impious thought 
 Of mock prerogative, or of title robbed ; 
 Misconstrued love, and means of grace thrust ba«-.k r 
 They, with perpetual penitence contrite. 
 And all asbestine soul-purgation, passed, 
 In limitless progression exaltate, 
 Tlirough conduct, aspiration and intent, 
 
7d0 FE8TUS. 
 
 Tlirice recreate, see, now rise ; and round Grod's throne, 
 
 Where, o'er the infinite and immaculate skies, 
 
 Yon rainbow bends its everlasting beams ; 
 
 Not drops of water, but translucent spheres, 
 
 Wherein abide, quick with eternal life, 
 
 Time's loftiest spirits, all glorified ; they, translate 
 
 Out of life's ordinary to perfect sense, 
 
 Bright guardians e'er shall stand ; of all create, 
 
 To its cause interpretant ; like dear to Grod, 
 
 Both man and angel kind ; and so, in the end, 
 
 Unnumbered times, duration unbethought. 
 
 When passed, our God, his name be ever blessed, 
 
 By all, and hallowed, reigning mediately. 
 
 In all the worlds of space, in all the powers 
 
 Of spirit aggrandized, holy, happy made. 
 
 Shall the whole infinite animate and bless 
 
 Where'er soul lives ; wherever stretch his skies. 
 
 LuciFEE. Then, highest, humblest I, eternal Lord 5 
 Of all thou hast made, shall be ; and by thy word 
 All recreative, renewed, transformed. I feel 
 The essential in me trembling, like to ice spears 
 Feeling their way 'neath star -frost o'er a lake, 
 Thy mercy adore ; the mystery as of old, 
 To many a soul meseemed to all made plain. 
 And good become in Grod. 
 
 Beniel. So wait thine hour 
 
 Repentant ; of subjection only proud, 
 
 Festus. So great his mercies are, so vast his love, 
 So infinite is his wisdom, all things seem 
 Possible, be they only good and kind. 
 All kind affections ripening here in heaven, 
 A thousand fold beneath God's smile, and blessed 
 Of all, all blessing, perfect life attained. 
 Nature expands into divinity. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Hither with me. 
 
 Festus. But where are those I love ? 
 
 The dear religions of my heart, all true. 
 All perfect, all consoling while they ruled 1 
 
 GuAEDiAN Angel. Yon happy group. 
 
 Festus. Ah, blessed ones come to me. 
 
 Are ye all here, too, with me ? 
 
 Angels. All. 
 
 Festus. 'Tis Heaven. 
 
 Angel. All spirits in heaven one holy company make. 
 Self ruled and penetrate with divinity. 
 
 Guardian Angel. Heaven, 
 
 God's special seat was with him from the first. 
 And must be e'er ; but this thou seest, the soul's 
 Guerdon, Creation's crown, was last of things 
 Made, and is ever largening. Through divine 
 Beneficence, its foundations bright were laid 
 In reason's holiest verities ; in mind's 
 Acts absolutest of good ; from self -dross fined, 
 
FE8TU8. 791 
 
 In N"atnre'8 {?ifts, and excellencies made pnre ; 
 
 Life's cliariiies and sanctities ; while o'er all 
 
 The sentient chords of sympathy viewless sketched 
 
 To tested spheres its spiritual, which unites 
 
 With the vital worlds of virtue and rational liglit, 
 
 Lines so demonstrant of God's aim to adapt 
 
 To parallels of responsible choice, each act 
 
 Of duty ; so commensurate each deg-ree 
 
 Of just obedience there to bliss here, earned 
 
 Celestially, that not to sec the fair 
 
 Conj^ruities of the eternal world with time's 
 
 Conditions, where'er placed, were nor to know, 
 
 Nor be. As in heaven, this central infinite, 
 
 The vast concerted laws of general being. 
 
 In God's ear hallowed all and harmonized. 
 
 Blend spiritually, and that peace intense express 
 
 Cre?.ted mind can neither sum nor sound. 
 
 So on man's soul, and natures like to his. 
 
 Of good and ill mixed, not infallible, falls 
 
 The calm most sweet, of orderly judgment born, 
 
 They share who enter heaven : those first who come 
 
 By grace divine f orechosen, to prove his love 
 
 Greater than law, himself than all he hath made : 
 
 Vouched for of God, who careful guides the paths 
 
 Of saints on earth, with this hand, as with that, 
 
 The world ; and these through training laws who pnf'.s 
 
 All tests, triumphant, tests, the touch of God, 
 
 He proves the virtue of souls by ; but beyond. 
 
 Their powers tiies none, nay always far within ; 
 
 So, in all temptations justified ; and this 
 
 One backward glance make clear ; think thou on thias, 
 
 For here, man's course, whate'er refining spheres 
 
 He pass through, shows with strictest relevance 
 
 To the passed, no error possible, eveiy age 
 
 Brightening ihe soul, aU- verifying time 
 
 All grades of being accomplished, all desires, 
 
 All aspirations crowned, each with the one 
 
 In absolute union rests. 
 
 Festus. All see I, now 
 
 And, Heaven within the spirit, the whole divine. 
 Before God's all felicitating love 
 All earth-love pales ; how pure soe'er, or dear j 
 And worship, sense of immanent deity. 
 Labouring within the spirit to burst forth 
 Into supreme expression of all truth. 
 Circling the soul as with a glory cloud. 
 One spirit alone I sought and seek in heaven 
 To know ; and one sole spirit on earth di£fu.-:ed 
 'Mong men ; the spirit of truth, and love, and peace. 
 All find I here at last, man's heaven, and God's. 
 
 AiJGELS. All praise, all love, all worship Lord, be thl::it . 
 Thy mercy even reach this spirit of 111 ; 
 Who vanquished both by man and angel, broke 
 
792 FE8TU8. 
 
 In spirit (as some precipitate cloud pours forth 
 Its shadowy substance, in a world of tears) 
 Now vents apart his inly minishin^ force 
 In sig-hs profuse, if wordless, hopeless, not. 
 
 God. But 111 must be annihilated. 
 
 Angels. He, Lord ! 
 
 Is not all evil. Thou did give him being ; 
 And Being is of itself, a living good. 
 
 God. He left us of his own free will, he hath seen 
 Our good triumphant through the world ; his ends 
 Frustrate ; his evil, evil not, but made 
 In his despite, subservient to Heaven's good. 
 Let him crave mercy towards himself. 
 
 Ang-els. He seems 
 
 To waver ; but is silent. All is doubt. 
 
 Festus. Who can survey the world's vast ways and woes, 
 He hath passed through, times extinct ; all orbs like earth. 
 Seed sunborn, increment of ageless light. 
 Founded in strata deep and dim of stars ; 
 Beyond those skies, the camp of light, where gleams 
 The bannered sun, God's oriflamme ; beyond 
 Each sun-star space knows, beaming out his life 
 Godwards, in glorious gratitude of light ; 
 Passed all time's mutable opposites, act and rest ; 
 The mighty sequences of light and night ; 
 Systems scarce form deforms, so pure, so nigh 
 To the unconditionate sphere, this dome divine, 
 The infinite which all finite bounds ; nor feel 
 Soul worship, humblest, unitive with him 
 Maker of good, exterminator of ill ; 
 Saviour of all perfectible essence, God, 
 The highest bliss of being, being knows ? 
 Wherefore let us him ceaselessly adore, 
 Active or meditative, as wisdom wills. 
 Praise Him ye chosen of the earth and skies, 
 Ye visible raylets of the invisible light. 
 Blend with the universal heaven, your hymns j 
 Immortal leaflets of love's holy flower, 
 Breathe forth your perfume of eternal praise. 
 
 Angel. Come let us join our souls to the glory song 
 By man and angel sung, all saved, to God. 
 
 The Saved. Father of goodness ; Lord of lovs, 
 Spirit of comfort, Be with us, 
 God who hast made us, God who hast saved, 
 God who hast judged us. Thee we praise. 
 Heaven our spirits ; Hallow our hearts ; 
 Let us liave God-light, Endlessly. 
 Ours is the wide world. Heaven on heaven ; 
 What have we done Lord, worthy this? 
 Oh we have loved thee ; That alone 
 Maketh our glory, Duty, meed. 
 Oh, we have loved thee ; Love we will, 
 Ever and every Soul of us. 
 
FESTUS. 798 
 
 Grod of tho tempted ; God of the tried ; 
 God of the lost once, Be with all. 
 Thou who hast proved us ; God of the free, 
 Lord of the perfect, Be all thine, 
 Chosen ere all time, Servants of truth, 
 Thee in our life sphere. Chosen have we. 
 Let us bo near thee. Ever and aye, 
 Oh, let us love thee, Infinite. 
 
 Festus. So soul and song begin and end in heaven, 
 Your birth-place and your everlasting- home. 
 
 Angels. In heaven extolled all souls now saved, of earth. 
 All saints and angels, chosen thy will to effect 
 God, confess thy pure and pious ends. 
 All government, sway and empire is at last 
 United here, the kingdom sole of heaven, 
 Meant from the first for universal rule. 
 In view of boundless bliss, all creatural power, 
 Essentially defective, shall in Thee 
 Henceforth enjoy perfection ; and both sons 
 Of God, angelic, human, teach the souls 
 Victors through God, eternal virtue's truth ; 
 Adding sustaining grace to every thought 
 Hallowed by thee, by thee all thought inspired. 
 Divine and holy is thine every work, 
 Eternal only as ordained, by thee. 
 Unknown but to thyself, who dost remain 
 Steadfast in love, though heaven and earth rebel* 
 All blessing God, who with thy boundless love. 
 Dost fill with deity heaven, and make the soul 
 Of man expand with immortality. 
 Now we with him in fourfold joy rejoice ; 
 And all the heavenly hierarchies of light, 
 In every word fulfilled, thy grace adore. 
 The Gods are one God, and all power is his. 
 High over all, and deep in all dost thou 
 E'er rule, whate'er their mediate end, all wills. 
 On all thy throne is based ; and round all thou 
 Stretchest the line of justice limitless. 
 All sway be thine. Lord ! heaven and earth are ojKi 
 In universal gladness. World by world 
 Night renders up to thee the fruit of light 
 Sown in her bosom, reaped and ripening here. 
 Unutterably blessed all soul to approach 
 Perfection in the infinite ; not opposed ; 
 How far soe'er, now, still to thee allied, 
 AU sanctifying Lord of love and might, 
 Let whole creation testify to thee ; 
 As vice to virtue, darkness to the light. 
 Hell thus to Heaven, and man to Deity. 
 Glory to thee our God, who, all to prove, 
 On earth by law, by grace, here, law above. 
 Dost show the great I am, the all I love. 
 
 Beneel. All-father I Let the worlds foredoomed to cease, 
 
 D D 
 
794 FE8TU8. 
 
 Cease ; but man's soul tliy living breath, to thee 
 
 By natural expiry returned, and freed 
 
 Essential from all death, and of thyself 
 
 Deific, saved, let all in thee be one, 
 
 Immutable made, and homed 'mid thy wide arms, 
 
 World maintenant, seek the shadows of thy breast. 
 Angels. God all in all, the All-perfect, He with heavei^ 
 
 Earth, and all spheres and every human soul, 
 
 And ang-el spirit He hath made, makes glad ; 
 
 Reflecting we with infinite content 
 
 His promises of neverf ailing truth. 
 
 Time there hath been when only G-od was all ; 
 
 And it shall be again. The hour is named, 
 
 When evil exterminated from every sphere. 
 
 And Angel Saint, man, every spirit create, 
 
 Though more or less imperfect, tested, tried. 
 
 Self-fined, and, passed thought, purified ; uplift 
 
 Above their present state ; drawn up towards God 
 
 Like dew into the air, shall be all heaven ; 
 
 And all souls shall be in God, and shall be God, 
 
 And nothing save God be. 
 Beniel. Let all be God's 1 
 
 God. "World without end, and I am God alone 
 
 The aye, the infinite, the whole, the One, 
 
 I only was ; nor matter else, nor mind ; 
 
 The self contained Perfection unconfined. 
 
 I only am ; in might and mercy one ; 
 
 I live in all things, and am closed in none. 
 
 I only shall be ; v/hen the worlds have done, 
 
 My boundless Being will be but begun. 
 
 L'ENVOL 
 
 Read this, world 1 He who writes is dead to thee, 
 
 But still lives in these leaves. He spake inspired : 
 
 Night and day, thought came unhelped, undesired, 
 Like blood to his heart. The course of study he 
 ■\Vent through was of the soul-rack. The degree 
 
 He took M-as high : it was wise wretchedness. 
 
 He suffered perfectly, and gained no less 
 A prize than, in his own torn heart, to see 
 
 A few bright seeds : he sowed them — hoped them truth. 
 The autumn of that seed is in these pages. 
 
 God was with him ; and bade old Time, to the youth, 
 Ub clench his heart, and teach the book of ages. 
 
 Peace to thee, world ! — farewell ! Be God, whose power's 
 Infinite, love and grace deific, ours 1 
 
 LONDON: PBINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 STAMFOBD STBEET AND CUAHING CB0S3. 
 
14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 RENEWALS ONLY — TEL. NO. 642-3405 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below, or 
 
 on the date to which renewed. 
 
 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 ^ 
 
 fe^'^ 
 
 ,-<'^-. 
 
 \ ^-' 
 
 JU*|X '69-llAiV 
 
 t.<:>Aw oepT. 
 
 JPN Z003 
 
 ftMR 2 9 2G04 
 
 J'JN 1 2D04 
 
 LD 2lA-38m-5,'6i 
 (J401slO)476B 
 
 General Librar 
 University of Calif 
 Berkeley 
 
>Cl595;,i