CHRIST IN HADES: 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM W. LORD 
 
 (is rbi/ aSrjv. 
 SYMBOLUM ATHA.NASIANUM. 
 
 ?i}e fcescenDeli fnto jBJdl. 
 
 THE APOSTLES CREED. 
 
 Mortem suscepisse et vicisse, intrasse inferos et redisse, venisse in 
 jura Tartar! , et Tartari jura solvisse, non est fragilitas, sed potestas. 
 
 PET. CHRYSOLOGUS. 
 
 NEW-YORK: 
 D. APPLETON & CO., 200 BROADWAY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 GEO. S. APPLETON, 164 CHESNUT-ST. 
 
 M.DCCCLI. 
 
T 
 
 ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by 
 
 WILLIAM W. LORD, 
 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the District of 
 New Jersey. 
 
7 
 
 c 
 
 TO 
 
 HON. WILLIAM B. KINNEY, 
 
 WITH THE 
 HOPE THAT HIS JUDGMENT WILL APPROVE A WORK 
 
 TO WHICH FRIENDSHIP 
 WILL NOT PERMIT HIM TO BE INDIFFERENT, 
 
 ( finscrfbeto, 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 "Of those which did believe the name of Hades to belong 
 unto that general place which comprehended all the souls of 
 men, some of them thought that Christ descended to that place 
 of Hades, where the souls of all the faithful, from the death of 
 the righteous Abel to the death of Christ, were detained, and 
 there, dissolving all the power by which they were detained be 
 low, translated them into a far more glorious place, and estated 
 them in a condition far more happy in the heavens above. * * * 
 Another opinion hath obtained, especially in our Church, that 
 the end for which our Saviour descended into hell was to tri 
 umph over Satan and all the powers below, within their own 
 dominions. And this hath been received as grounded on the 
 Scriptures and consent of Fathers." Pearson on the Creed. 
 
 IT was my purpose, in undertaking this work, 
 to give poetic form, design, and history to the 
 descent of Christ into hell ; a fact that has for so 
 many ages attracted the curiosity of the human 
 mind, as to furnish occasion for surprise that the 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 attempt has not hitherto been made. As regards 
 the end for which He descended, I have adhered 
 to the Christian tradition that it was to free the 
 souls of the ancient saints confined in the temporal 
 paradise of the Under- world, embracing also in my 
 design the less general opinion, that it was to de 
 monstrate His universal supremacy by appearing 
 among the damned. 
 
 A source of additional human interest was sug 
 gested by the relation which men, as a distinct 
 order of beings, might be supposed to sustain to 
 demons in the place of their common doom, and 
 under new conditions of existence ; such, I con 
 ceived, as would make it possible in some degree 
 to realize even the divine fictions of the Greek 
 mythology, under the forms and with the attri 
 butes accorded them by ancient religions, and by 
 the poetry of all time. This could not fail to sug 
 gest the further conception of introducing the divin 
 ities of our forefathers, and of other great families 
 of mankind, thus bringing together in action and 
 contrast the deified men, or various representatives 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 of an heroic humanity, among different races : nor 
 did it seem too great a stretch of imaginative prob- 
 ability to conceive that their general characteristics 
 might be adopted and imitated by beings already 
 invested by the human mind with an indefinite 
 power, and inhabiting a world in which the won 
 derful becomes the probable. 
 
 But it is, after all, the general purpose of exhib 
 iting the triumph of moral power over all physical 
 and inferior spiritual force, in the descent of Christ 
 into hell, which gives my design the complex char 
 acter of a mythic, heroic, and Christian poem, and, 
 at the same time, constitutes the unity of its parts. 
 The ancients, whose representative types I intro 
 duce, knew and appreciated but two kinds of 
 power, brute or physical, and spiritual, including 
 all occult and supernatural efficacy, and strength 
 of intellect and will. Virtue, triumphant by the 
 aid of adventitious force, or relying upon uncon 
 querable pride and disdain to resist it, was the 
 highest reach of their dynamic conceptions. Moral 
 power is properly a Christian idea. It is not, 
 
Vili PREFACE. 
 
 therefore, without what I conceive to be a true as 
 well as a poetic apprehension of the design of the 
 Descent into Hell, that the heroes of profane, and 
 the not fabulous Titans of sacred antiquity, by 
 their rivalries and contentions, brought together 
 in arms for a trial of their comparative strength, 
 are suddenly confronted with a common and dis 
 similar antagonist, and "all strength, all terror, 
 single or in bands, that ever was put forth" 
 opposed to that novel, and, save in the Temptation, 
 hitherto untested power, represented by Christ, the 
 author of the theory and master of the example. 
 
 He is not supposed to appear among them 
 " grasping in his hand ten thousand thunders," 
 but endued with an equal power, the result and 
 expression of perfect virtue and rightful authority. 
 His triumph is attributed neither to natural, nor to 
 supernatural power ; but to moral superiority, 
 evincing itself in His aspect, and exercising its 
 omnipotence upon the soul and conscience. That 
 in the conception of a great Christian poet, His 
 appearance among the rebel angels in heaven was 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 distinguished by the former attributes, is due, per 
 haps, to the heroic prejudice of a mind thoroughly 
 imbued with the spirit of pagan writers, and of 
 the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 As to invention and art, if a poem does not 
 commend itself by the interest it excites, the 
 author, except in writing it, could not worse 
 bestow his tediousness than in its defence and 
 exposition. I may be permitted to say, how 
 ever, that while a conviction that the character of 
 my own performance must necessarily bring it 
 into comparison with greater works, could not de 
 ter me from undertaking what seemed of sufficient 
 promise to justify some degree of daring, I am 
 well aware that, compared with these, it is but a 
 symphony to a strain an urn to a temple ; and as 
 such let it be judged. The reverence for great 
 poets which, after them, would give no hearing 
 to one using what we may call, for convenience 
 sake, the Christian mythology, is a prejudice as 
 fatal to creative art, and as certainly tending to 
 the poverty of letters, as would have been a simi- 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 lar notion among the Greeks and Eomans with 
 respect to the mythology to which Homer in like 
 manner, and to a still greater degree, gave form 
 and expression. The question in such cases is not 
 whether the later poet uses associations established 
 in the minds of men by earlier poets, if it were r 
 even Milton, and perhaps Homer, would stand 
 convicted of obligation to greater inventive ge 
 nius, but whether he combines, for an original 
 purpose, newly discovered with existing mate 
 rials ; whether the impression produced is that 
 of invention and novelty ; not whether he ori 
 ginated the entire mass of materials, some of 
 which, at least, are, with all writers who endure 
 the test of time, as old as history and nature : in 
 a word, it is whether character and incident are 
 taken from existing works, or are the result of 
 new combinations, which flow naturally from an 
 original design, working itself out in intelligible 
 poetic forms. 
 
 EASTRIDGE, Dec. 8. 1850. 
 
UJTIVBRSIT 
 
 ARGUMENT. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 DISCOVERS Satan seated in despair among the infernal 
 powers, upon his return to hell after his defeat in the Tempta 
 tion of Christ. 
 
 Baal, an angel and one of the ethnic deities, rising in his 
 place among the dejected fiends, denounces Satan ; accusing him 
 of imbecility, on account of his defeat in his recent trial of the 
 divine pretensions of Christ, and the despair into which he is 
 thrown by his failure. He advises that some other take the 
 throne, which Satan, not ascending, seems voluntarily to have 
 abdicated, as the former intimates, in view of the predicted 
 descent of his Victor into that world. He complains that they 
 have been disappointed in their hopes of relief from the pains 
 of their present condition through the agency of Satan, and 
 inveighs against the human race in hell, and their elevation 
 by Satan to equal dignity and power. 
 
 Astarte, a female angel and one of the Sidonian divinities, 
 
Xll ARGUMENT. 
 
 replies ; accusing Baal of disloyalty to his natural sovereign, and 
 defending Satan from his imputations. She is followed by Cain, 
 who, as the oldest of his race in hell, and as their natural head, 
 has been elevated by Satan to the place next himself. He re 
 torts the taunts of Baal, on behalf of himself and his kind, defies 
 and denounces him and his faction. In consequence, the human 
 and the angelic powers separate, and draw off under their re 
 spective leaders, leaving Satan, where the opening of the book 
 discovers him, buried in apathy and despair. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 The inferior paradise and its inhabitants described. 
 
 Abel narrates to Adam and the Saints a vision, in which the 
 death of his Antitype, Christ, is revealed, and its relation to 
 them, and to mankind in general, indicated. At the conclusion 
 of the narration, the Saints break forth into a hymn, in which 
 they adore the Word in His threefold aspect of Creator, Enlight- 
 ener, and Redeemer of the world, and implore His immediate 
 presence and revelation among them, in their world of banish 
 ment and privation banishment from Him. and privation of His 
 light. Christ descends. The meeting of Christ with Adam, 
 and His reception by the Saints. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 In the infernal Hades the human and the angelic powers 
 meet in the field to test their comparative strength, and decide 
 
ARGUMENT. Xlll 
 
 the dominion of hell. The conflict, yet undecided, is termi 
 nated, through divine interference, by a tempest that over 
 whelms both. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 Christ in Paradise declares to the Saints the purpose of His 
 descent ; explains why it has been so long delayed ; announces 
 His intention of passing over into the Tartarean Hades ; and in 
 forms them of what is there performing, viz., the convening, 
 through their contentions and rivalries, of the infernal powers, 
 by their own act, but in the divine intention, in anticipation of 
 His appearance among them. 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 In Tartarus the angelic forces, withdrawn from the field, take 
 counsel how to retrieve the disaster suffered in their first conflict 
 with the human powers. Baal accuses the tyranny of fate, and 
 advises another trial of their fortune, but unavailingly. Asmod 
 rises and refutes the doctrine of fate, and denies that their de 
 feat is to be attributed to its influence concedes the equal 
 power of the human spirits, and advises a secret and sudden 
 assault ; which they prepare to put in execution. 
 
 The human powers, convened upon similar occasion, are ad 
 dressed by Cecrops : he congratulates them upon their partial 
 success, but argues the necessity of strengthening themselves by 
 alliance with all the races in hell of a common origin intimates 
 that the Titans, conceived to be the Antediluvian or Archaic 
 
XIV ARGUMENT. 
 
 race of men, and also the Asar, the Northern heroes and deified 
 men. or those who enacted their parts, should be sought in the 
 several and distinct regions of hell which they chose to inhabit, 
 and their alliance and aid solicited. They approve the project, 
 and send ambassadors to the Titans and the Asar. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 The Ambassador to the Asar, after a difficult access to the 
 region, enters the imitated Valhalla. His reception by the Asar, 
 
 The Ambassador to the Titans discovers and addresses them. 
 His reception by them ; their rising. 
 
 BOOK VII. 
 
 The Asar, seized with the Berserker fury (see note 2, Book 
 VI.) at the sight of armed strangers, fall upon them to whose 
 aid they had been summoned. While the Northern powers are 
 thus engaged in contest with their kind, the angelic enemy 
 make their attack from the air. 
 
 At a sound, supposed by them to be a manifestation of the 
 divine power for their overthrow as in the former conflict, the 
 angelic host retire. The Titans approach. The meeting of the 
 Titans and the later races of mankind. The angelic powers 
 return and renew the assault, and the whole human race in hell 
 become engaged with them in a general conflict. 
 
A K Q U M I N T . XV 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 A light appears on the side of hell next paradise, and Christ, 
 followed by the unarmed host of saints, approaches the embattled 
 fiends and infernal powers. Terror-struck, they retreat for aid to 
 Satan (who has hitherto remained, as the First Book describes him, 
 seated apart, and indifferent to what was passing in his domain). 
 Satan rises and advances to meet Christ. Their meeting. The 
 triumph of Christ, and His ascent from Hades with the Saints. 
 
INVOCATION. 
 
 THOU of the darkness and the fire, and fame 
 Avenged by misery and the Orphic doom, 
 Bard of the tyrant-lay ! whom dreadless wrongs, 
 Impatient, and pale thirst for justice drove, 
 A visionary exile, from the earth, 
 To seek it in its iron reign stern ! 
 And not accepting sympathy, accept 
 A not presumptuous oifering, that joins 
 That region with a greater name : And thou, 
 Of my own native language, dread bard ! 
 Who, amid heaven s unshadowed light, by thee 
 Supremely sung, abidest shouldst thou know 
 Who on the earth with thoughts of thee erects 
 And purifies his mind, and, but by thee, 
 
XV111 INVOCATION. 
 
 Awed by no fame, boldened by thee. and awed 
 Not with thy breadth of wing, yet with the power 
 To breathe the region air attempts the height 
 Where never Scio s singing eagle towered, 
 Nor that high-soaring Theban moulted plume, 
 Hear thou my song ! hear, or be deaf, who may. 
 
 And if not rashly, or too soon, I heed 
 The impulse, but have waited on my heart 
 With patience, and its utterance stilled with awe 
 Of what inspired it, till I felt it beat 
 True cadence to unconquerable strains : 
 Oh, then may she first wooed from heaven by prayer 
 From thy pure lips, and sympathy austere 
 With suffering, and the sight of solemn age, 
 And thy gray Homer s head, with darkness bound, 
 To me descend, more near, as I am far 
 Beneath thee, and more need her aiding wing. 
 
 Oh. not again invoked in vain, descend, 
 Urania ! and eyes with common light 
 More blinded than were his by Heaven s hand 
 Imposed to intercept distracting rays, 
 Bathe in the vision of transcendent day ; 
 And of the human senses (the dark veil 
 
INVOCATION. XIX 
 
 Before the world of spirit drawn) remove 
 The dim material hindrance, and illume ; 
 That human thought again may dare behold 
 The shape and port of spirits, and once more 
 Hear voices in that distant, shadowy world, 
 To which ourselves, and this, are shadows, they 
 The substance, immaterial essence pure 
 Souls that have freed their slave, and given back 
 Its force unto the elements, the dread 
 Manes, or the more dread Archetypes of men : 
 Like whom in featured reason s shape like whom 
 Created in the mould of God they fell, 
 And, mixed with them in common ruin, made 
 One vast and many-realmed world, and shared 
 Their deep abodes their endless exile, some, 
 Some to return to the ethereous light 
 When one of human form, a Saviour-Man 
 Almighty, not in deity alone, 
 But mightier than all angels in the might 
 And guard of human innocence preserved, 
 Should freely enter their dark empire these 
 To loose, o er those to triumph ; this the theme, 
 The adventure, and the triumph of my song. 
 
BOOK I. 
 
BOOK I. 
 
 CAME on the starless age of the uncheered 
 Dark night, that in the shadow of the earth 
 Hid the dead Saviour of the world, and gleamed 
 Upon the warrior-watched and virgin tomb 
 Which held the mortal of that man foredoomed 
 To visit the deep region of the dead, 
 And thence to reascend both earth and heaven, 
 The first pale day ; and more mean-time the gloom 
 Deepened in hell where, motionless, reclined 
 The sad immortals, chief among the powers 
 Of earth and air, giants and fallen gods, 
 And looked upon each other without word. 
 Nor might the grief that bowed supremest shapes, 
 Nor the dumb trouble in their eyes, find voice 
 2 
 
26 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 While he before them sat who with a word 
 Had made them voiceless, and spake not again. 
 And looked not up, since when his looked despair 
 Had darkened hell, and like a black eclipse 
 Covered the hope that was its only day. 
 
 Half to his throne ascended, on the steep 
 Sole-touched by his proud feet, as if dethroned 
 By his own act, and into ruin fallen 
 Self-hurled, sat Aidoneus, 1 discrowned, 
 With foot upon a broken sceptre set, 
 And head stooped forward to his hands, and seemed, 
 But for the rising and the slow decline 
 Of his wide-lifting shoulders, like one dead. 
 And dread his aspect, even to their eyes 
 Used to all sights of grandeur and despair, 
 All tragic posture and the pomp of woe ; 
 Not only for his immemorial state 
 Abandoned, and the rightful awe that still 
 Sat on his unkinged head and vacant hand, 
 But him most capable of grief they deemed 
 Whose strength was greatest to endure or dare, 
 And deepest his despair whose hope was first. 
 
 So there before him, each upon his throne. 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 27 
 
 Sat as if throne and shape were but one stone ; 
 
 And, for that space, more like their idols seemed 
 
 In regions orient, sitting, hushed and dark, 
 
 Within a woody cloister of close palms, 
 
 Or, old with lifeless years, in some forgot, 
 
 Rare-pilgrimed temple, or dim cavern, ranged, 
 
 Unseen by all the stars. At length to break 
 
 The latent chain that bound the force of limb 
 
 And faculty in each fierce spirit, rose 
 
 Barbarian Baal ; in his depth of shade, 
 
 Save by their gloomy and familiar eyes, 
 
 Not from the dark discerned ; in shape conjoined 
 
 Angel and brute, in temper brute, but strong, 
 
 And third from Satan ; whom with unfixed glance, 
 
 Under low-dropped and sternly neighboring brows, 
 
 He now regarded, as a frenzied beast 
 
 On his still dreaded master rolls his fierce, 
 
 Inconstant orbs. Him, ages now, unfed 
 
 With blood of slaughtered bulls and fragrant smoke, 
 
 Sharp hunger seized, and lion-pangs, to taste 
 
 Again such offerings, and repossess 
 
 The dark and secret land, whence fled of late 
 
 His desperate chief; not now from the armed voice 
 
 SI7J3RSIT7 
 
28 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Of his great plaintiff, summoning its bands 
 
 Of vassal evils ; not from thunder piled 
 
 On the crushed air, and titan-lightnings hurled 
 
 From his black solitary heaven, high 
 
 Above all reach ; but from his far-stretched hand 
 
 Disguised as human, and the all-pure force 
 
 Of virtue, clad in human voice and shape. 
 
 Thus hindered of that hope, and chafed, and what 
 Was godlike in him fired with shame, to think 
 How one by one the ethnic gods had fallen, 
 Disarmed, before the constant powers of heaven, 
 Met in the battle-region of the earth 
 How many forced by slight antagonists, 
 Of puny frame and seeming, from their old 
 Usurped domain, himself, on Carmel s top 
 Amid his howling prophets, by a man, 
 Defeated, and their prowest, in the wide 
 And wild arena where he met the last 
 And wondrous apparition marked with signs 
 Of Heaven and hostile purpose ; by such scorns 
 Panged and enraged, and long made pale with hate 
 Of gods terrestrial-born, but equal made 
 With the celestial, and to like domain 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 29 
 
 By Satan raised the mighty bulk stood up, 
 Strong but irresolute, and sought to throw 
 The weight of that stern presence from his soul, 
 And from its ward unlock imprisoned sound. 
 
 But scarce they heard the first hoarse breath, that died 
 Ere his dumb lips had shaped it to a word 
 Of any import, when throughout the throng 
 They stirred, and grasped their arms, as if some ill, 
 Long pondered and expected, from the heights 
 Of ether suddenly had fallen ; he, 
 Around and upward, looked with listening stare ; 
 Then, like a cloud arming in heaven, grew 
 More black and dreadful, and his giant peers, 
 With copied brow, frowned back dread sympathy, 
 Published revolt and general discontent : 
 Yet unprepared they heard, when words like these, 
 Forth poured like shaped, articulate thunder, shook 
 The wide Infern, that from its shadowy sides, 
 Of deepest region, ruined back the sound, 
 As when one shouts within a hollow cave. 
 
 " Abjects once gods ! befits it now that he, 
 Sole cause of this despair, and for whose sake 
 We suffer, that his pride may play at Jove, 2 
 
30 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 God of this subterraneous world with us, 
 His toys, for subjects should here sit infirm, 
 Like his Memnonian image, blind and deaf 
 To evils that can add to grief that seemed, 
 Ere this, at greatest, and where all was lost 
 Bring ruin, and make woe in hell ? Tis fit, 
 And time, methinks some monarch should ascend 
 The abdicated throne, which he perchance 
 Leaves to his recent victor, hitherward 
 Pursuing him, with unfamiliar feet 
 In the blind access hindered, if aright 
 The babbling lips of oracle have told 
 Of such a one s descent to these abodes." 
 
 He paused, checked by no voice, by none assured 
 As when a ship, that on the world s great sides 
 Climbs the wave-ribbed Pacific, gainst the weight 
 Of tempests from the skiey Andes pressed 
 Upon the barriered continent of air, 
 Kesistless back, and leaning on the sea, 
 Is hit by thunder, and intestine fire 
 Breaks forth, and lights the inexorable face 
 Of her wild doom ; the stark, bewildered crew 
 Give her to wind and sea, and as she swings, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES . 31 
 
 Helmless, from wave to wave, with crashing spars, 
 Sit idle. so sat these who manned the torn 
 And struggling wreck of heaven, in this abyss 
 Storm-tossed ; so startled, yet infirmly sad 
 With such surmises as could make gods pale : 
 When Satan reared his head, on which no crown 
 Might plainer have writ king, nor horrent plumes 
 Shadowed more terror : His iinmane right hand, 
 Armed with a gesture of supreme command, 
 Rose with deific grace to herald speech, 
 Then, from changed purpose or disdain of words, 
 Convulsively reached forth, and, as it seemed, 
 Grasped at the shade of an imagined power 
 To wield the elemental arms that hung 
 Gleaming and tremulous in the storm-lit air ; 
 And muttered thunder bayed the ear : At once 
 A thousand hands upon the broad defence 
 Tightened their grasp, and half uprose the throng, 
 Or in their places stirred with ringing sound, 
 Like the faint threat of war : But Baal, prompt 
 To seize the imperial moment that controls 
 The after time, though not without some sign 
 Of effort in his mien, wrenched forth these words. 
 
32 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 " Think not, twice-conquered, from thy sovran place 
 To awe us with a look, who see crowned Fate 
 Frown from a greater height on thee and us 
 Thee quelled and us, who far above all fear 
 Raised, as below all hope dejected, dare 
 The eternal Tyrant : the malignant star 
 Of thy dominion rose before our eyes, 
 Within our own horizon rose, and burned, 
 And fell toward the darkness, and, like thee, 
 A creature of the finite time finds here 
 Its temporal limit and for ever sets. 
 Thy strength we know is great, but equals not 
 The combined strength it governs, the great force 
 And title of so many worshipped gods ; 
 Which, if it be that might is proof of right, 
 May rightly govern thee, and henceforth shall. 
 
 No answer Heaven s great traverser returned 
 To these bold taunts, though loud, he marked them not. 
 Nor heard ; as showed his sinking head and arm, 
 And all his gestureless bowed form, collapsed, 
 As from a blow by an invisible hand. 
 And the infernal tribune poured amain 
 His turbulent speech, with words that swept like storms 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 33 
 
 Across the souls, celestial still, though fallen, 
 
 Of those high-thoughted gloomy deities ; 
 
 Words of just right and freedom, tyranny 
 
 And usurpation, lore their king himself 
 
 And tyrant taught them, when of old it served 
 
 Gainst the All-Ruler : Nor did he forget, 
 
 But with the music of some sadness now 
 
 In his harsh tones, subdued, and smoothed, to speak 
 
 Of hoped deliverance, and the Babel-dreams 
 
 With which high-building fancy whiled their pain, 
 
 As of things real, merged in this despair, 
 
 And whelmed in this last ruin whose full wave 
 
 Broke high above them ; and with wilful grief, 
 
 Over their drowned magnificence his soul 
 
 Still wandered and lamented, as the sea 
 
 Wails through a city sunk with all its towers. 
 
 Nor spared his insolence the highest names 
 To whom heroic deeds had given praise 
 Among earth s deities, and so place in hell ; 
 Or those for fortitude as high advanced 
 By its great regent ; Cain and Nimrod first, 
 Alcides, Theseus, Orion, blind 
 Bellerophontes, and the names, long since 
 
34 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Dead to the human ear, of Anakim, 
 Titan, and Demigod, the infant words 
 Of fame, forgotten in her age, but here 
 Retained, and honored as became the great 
 And first-born offspring of the virgin earth, 
 The giant nurslings of her mighty youth. 
 
 " Easy for you," he said, with voice and look 
 As when the aerial storm-maned lion roars 
 Against the earth, and glares upon the doomed, 
 " Easy for you to king and lord it here, 
 High-seated mid the tyrannies of hell, 
 Who know no greater state, nor ever felt 
 Contrast of hell and heaven, nor proved his might 
 Whose lightning strikes high tops, but such as ye 
 Leaves safe in weakness, fable what they may 
 Of wars on Jove. No dizzy height ye fell, 
 From climbed Olympus or towered Babel hurled, 
 Here in these depths to find far higher place 
 Than, though presumptuous, your low thoughts aspired 
 Above the cloud-spread air ; whose blackness scared, 
 And casual fire not frighted Jove deterred 
 Wingless invaders, heavenward, step by step, 
 Ascending ; know, proud reptiles, mated ill 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 35 
 
 With children of the air, that from this hour 
 We recognize no monarch but our fate, 
 No peers but are our equals, thus at first 
 Created, or approved by might." He ceased, 
 And his defiant foot and planted spear 
 Brought up an echo from the heart of hell. 
 
 Astarte, then, whose anger, scarce restrained 
 To hear these words from her Sidonian mate, 
 Burned like the glow of fire through binding smoke, 
 Blazed upward suddenly, and all her moons 
 And deep tiaras of stars flashed rosy ire, 
 Virgin disdain tempered with grief divine. 
 Like her own planet rising in the east, 
 So large and fair the beauteous giant stood, 
 To them who gazed, more lovely for her wrath. 
 To none was she unknown, to angels there 
 A woman-angel, from her faith seduced 
 By bright Abaddon, and to them of earth 
 Regent of mooned skies ; but in the west( 8 ) 
 The elect infernal queen, to whom far-strayed 
 In Nysa s flowery field, from out the earth, 
 Naked and grisly, came the king of night, 
 And shamed the modest day of her fair eyes, 
 
36 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 And chased the clear Aurora from her cheeks, 
 Displaced with evening red, and dewy tears. 
 And thus she spake, with voice as when at night 
 One hears afar the instant birth of sound 
 In brazen tubes melodious, mixed with touch 
 Of stringed sympathies, that with their tide 
 Of human feeling fill the hollow air. 
 Up to the dreaming moon, that stoops to hear. 
 
 " More than defeat, oh worse than this despair ! 
 Oh shame, twice shamed with worse defeat, that thou, 
 An ancient god, his fated feodary, 
 Who knew him in his greatness, when we all 
 Could not perceive in what he seemed, who took 
 The star-bright name of Lucifer, less great 
 Than stern Jehovah, or in what his state 
 Shone less magnificent, that one who sat 
 High-throned beneath his feet, supremely placed, 
 And him adored, his creature, he thy God, 
 His pliant hand, his foot, his smile, his frown, 
 His friend, and favorite, till ruin came 
 Like night upon his radiance, and he fell 
 A falling sun that after him drew down, 
 What could he less ? his firmament of stars, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 37 
 
 And left mid-heaven dark an equal space, 
 
 Here in this cavern with his troubled light 
 
 To glorify perdition ; oh worse fall, 
 
 And death to our divinity ! that they 
 
 Should faithful stand who only know him fallen, 
 
 And thou shouldst be the first, while thus he sits, 
 
 His soul striving its death, to launch these shafts, 
 
 Making the wounds trenched by the bolts of Heaven 
 
 The mark of thy more dire though feeble aim. 
 
 What did I hear thee urge, deedless declaimer, 
 
 Against his faith and conduct, from the hopes 
 
 Fallen in his defeat ? Who gave us hope 
 
 Whereon to build these hopes that we lament ? 
 
 Who gave us from this den unhoped reprieve ? 
 
 Gave yonder flowery world and sapphire sky 
 
 In the celestial ether, and, to soothe 
 
 This pain, gifts, incense, ritual dance and song, 
 
 With clashing cymbals jubilant, awed looks 
 
 And smiles and supplicating tears ? Who raised 
 
 Our prostrate deity, in this abyss 
 
 Half-buried in its ruins, where it lay 
 
 Spurned by the brute and unintelligent 
 
 Wild powers of nature, storm, and flaming fire, 
 
38 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 And loud, insulting thunder, its whole force, 
 And almost life, extinguished, and its light 
 Nigh trodden out by darkness, who restored, 
 Reared, and enthroned it on the heart of man ? 
 And thou, who gave thee thy high-altared hills 
 And woody temples ? whose pale rites my soul 
 Not more abhorred, above the cedarn tops 
 Of Syria gliding nightly, than to hear 
 These blasphemies that more pollute thy lips. 
 And what though from green fields and azure air, 
 In that fair heaven of our exile, sent ; 
 Thou for thy vulturous thirst indeed long since, 
 And we by this defeat ? What can be said 
 But that our enemy, and his, is God, 
 The eternal elder of all spirits, sire 
 Of all control and power, over all 
 High head omnipotent 5 with whom he now 
 Strives inwardly, and not with such as thou, 
 Nor thy reproaches feels, nor hears these words 
 I speak in his defence, who little thought 
 He ever would need word from any tongue !" 
 
 Thus spake the queen of night, nor deigned to know 
 If well or ill regarded were her words ; 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 39 
 
 But as when Judah s daughters mourned defeat 
 
 And desolation from the foe, she shook 
 
 The cloud of her dark tresses to her feet, 
 
 And sat beneath them, like a veil ; dark, vast, 
 
 And stone-like motionless, like the great shape 
 
 Of their despair and grief before them set, 
 
 By the wan star above her stooping head 
 
 Silvered with light. Then high-placed Cain stood up, 
 
 A king in semblance, but whose head superb, 
 
 Gray with the downfall of afflicting years, 
 
 Suborned no greatness of its golden tire ; 
 
 Nor among kings less than the first might seem, 
 
 Nor less than equal among angels stood 
 
 Hell s human premier, pale and sternly fair, 
 
 Of arch-angelic stature, like a god. 
 
 For spirit freed from bodily restraint, 
 
 Forced circumscription, if in essence great, 
 
 Of its true greatness then puts on the form ; 
 
 If feeble and irresolute, though of bulk 
 
 Typhoean, adequate shape assumes, 
 
 Lopped of its huge proportions : And thus spake 
 
 The Homicide, whose hand first gave to death 
 
 The taste of blood ; the lion of that pit 
 
40 CHRIST IN HADES* 
 
 Where fallen he lay, unhumbled fierce and loud, 
 The first and eldest of his race in hell. 
 And by its older spirits, though heaven-bom. 
 Feared for a youth accursed above their age. 
 
 " Princes, since I, it seems, must prove my right 
 To call you peers, I stand not here to speak 
 In his defence who needs none, and whose soul 
 Would deem such words dishonor, did he hear. 
 But this I say, that of necessity 
 Ye fell with him, who fell ; his satellites ; 
 Who, had ye then been left, as now ye would. 
 In that metropolis of all worlds, (by me 
 Unseen and undesired,) without your head, 
 Had fallen to ruins, and been darker left 
 In heaven, deprived his light, than in deep hell. 
 Fatal dependency, and if unjust, 
 Let Fate be blamed, not him : But I, who stood 
 Probationary heir to those bright seats 
 Whence ye were hurled, I, of free will, joined cause 
 With you against your tyrant, and alone 
 Among you came, not with these scoflings hailed, 
 The first ally of your new founded state ; 
 Nor heard their omen in the infinite cry 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 41 
 
 That killed the silence when your monarch gave 
 To this red hand, with that permissive shout, 
 Hell s second sceptre, as by natural right 
 King of the new-confederated race." 
 
 Thus far, he spake with low but rising sound, 
 As when, uprousing in his shadowy lair, 
 The storm-hound of the north begins to bay, 
 Thenceforth, as when into the sky he pours 
 From his distended breast prolonged stern tones, 
 And, leaping forth, breaks through the crashing pines 
 With one wide roar, that swallows up the air. 
 
 " Baal, thy airy vaunt of ancient state, 
 That overtops our new-raised deity, 
 Must be perforce the scorn of him who deems 
 Lost honors a disgrace, and sees not yet 
 What glory comes of station forfeited, 
 And while retained, ingloriously held 
 By sufferance, not by might : Not to be great, 
 Hear it ye pining factions twice the slaves 
 Of Him ye hate, slaves of his power and pride, 
 And Thou, great egotist of heaven, pleased 
 With fair-shaped breath of muses that accord 
 Praise to demands for praise not to be great 
 
42 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 I deem it, in the summits cf the world 
 
 To sit with worshippers in loud-hymned state. 
 
 Pomp blazing back on pomp, and voice to voice, 
 
 In swelled antiphony and chorus bland, 
 
 Returning echo up the wearied air : 
 
 Nor is it from an armed hand of cloud 
 
 To cast the thunder-darkness that dismays 
 
 Affronting men, nor to their dreadful aim 
 
 To guide the whirlwinds that upkindle here 
 
 These black and smoke-enveloped lakes to flame : 
 
 This to be strong and greatly cruel that 
 
 Is to be weakly glorious ; to be great, 
 
 Lies in the soul that on itself retires 
 
 For strength ; this, serviles ! I deem great, 
 
 Not to possess, but to contend with force ; 
 
 By strength of will to dispossess our Hate 
 
 Of his chance sovereignty, who, spite his boast, 
 
 Is not almighty while the will defies, 
 
 And heart dethrones him. Be it yours to wage, 
 
 Who know no victory but success in arms 
 
 Or treachery, base quarrel with your chief: 
 
 I will assume the war ; this arm shall lead 
 
 The earth s divinities, when Fate permits, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 43 
 
 Gainst your victorious kindred of the air, 
 By you more dreaded than ere you by men ; 
 But first, untimely scoffer, mean to prove 
 That other stroke than Michael s can smite down 
 Thy vain pretensions, who, with all thy host, 
 In second rout, hurled down these yawning gulfs 
 May find a greater depth than hell from heaven." 
 
 He ceased, and with a sound as of the sea, 
 "When some fierce wind that in the tropic sky 
 Hung black and dreadful, from its continent loosed, 
 Roars down upon the flood, the throng uprose ; 
 And sea-like swayed unto its outmost verge 
 His audience, as the stormy impulse rolled 
 Onward, beyond his ken, its helmed waves, 
 Up thundering far and wide, with crash of arms, 
 And spray of flashing, spears, and plumy foam. 
 And far beyond his voice, as, where the wind 
 As yet fills not the air, wave urges wave 
 Thousands on thousands rose in glimmering ranks. 
 Apparent through the gloom : At once, the broad 
 And rival standards of the earth and heaven, 
 This azure and that emerald, unfurled, 
 And opening, shadowed battle on the air, 
 
44 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Filled with armorial horrors, as beneath 
 Stood the deep space replete with armed shape ; 
 Then, soon, diverse, like clouds athwart the sky 
 Diversely driven, moved to form the war : 
 Whose dawn in their display the hosts beheld. 
 And, as when swift Achilles cleft the power 
 Of Ilion betwixt Xanthus and the gate, 
 They parted ; these with Baal to the south, 
 Those north with Cain : But Satan where he sat 
 Like a huge tower half sunk upon its height. 
 Rose not, nor stirred, and starred Astarte there 
 Sat motionless before him in her light. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
BOOK II. 
 
 IN the same world, of demons and damned men 
 
 The endless-fixed abode, the same deep world 
 
 Of pale, unbreathing realms, but in a clime 
 
 Where horror became awe, and darkness shade. 
 
 Lay Paradise ; l divided from the dark 
 
 And punished region by a gulf, so wide 
 
 That scarce a level arrow, launched across 
 
 By stronger than a mortal archer s arm, 
 
 "Would plumb the centre ; and so deep, the thought, 
 
 Though swift and patient, that should track its flight, 
 
 Must deem the abysm s bed had stayed at last 
 
 The fast descending arrow falling still. 
 
 And here, as on the gulfs Tartarean shore, 
 
 Of wild and abrupt aspect was the soil, 
 
48 CHRIS TIN HADES. 
 
 Shaped by creation s storm, and unadorned 
 
 By the six artist days of after calm ; 
 
 But full of wilful grandeur, and rich gleams 
 
 In rocks of carbuncle and all ores, and like 
 
 The floor of heaven in rough gold unwrought, 
 
 And idle wealth ; and for a living realm, 
 
 In this bright desert set, as in the sun, 
 
 And like a dim and vast oasis, stood 
 
 The Paradise of God ; of earthly saints. 
 
 Born ere their Saviour, till that Saviour s arm 
 
 Should break its shadowy door and make them free,- 
 
 The sad Elysium. 2 Still the place as sleep, 
 
 And as dreams beautiful ; along the plains, 
 
 Swept by no wind and withered by no star, 
 
 With fixed, wan shadow, stirless aspens stood, 
 
 Dark myrtles, and gaunt poplars still and pale, 
 
 With cypress mixed : and many a frowning brow 
 
 And melancholy look in crag and steep, 
 
 Was smoothed by climbing vines and flowery weeds 
 
 That built themselves on high, with all their gay 
 
 Thick-tangled blooms, and on the barren rock 
 
 Hung odors ; soft and subtle next to heaven 
 
 The clime, and, fit for spiritual breathing, pure : 
 
CHRIST J N HADES. 49 
 
 Nor did it want some glimmerings like day, 
 
 But oh ! how different from the dewy clear 
 
 Of open heaven ; nor could it want, if fair, 
 
 The mirror, that by hand-clasped mountains raised, 
 
 Or set in emerald vales, earth s sceneries hold 
 
 To their own beauties ; from the hills around, 
 
 Browed with black firs and cedars, with thick boughs, 
 
 That mingled with the darkness cast from peaks 
 
 O er peaks uprising in the skyless air, 
 
 A thousand sinuous or precipitous streams 
 
 Lapsed with dim-heard decadence, and from sight 
 
 Fled, in devouring clefts, or slept in pools, 
 
 That deep within their bosom, held a dream 
 
 Of rocks and falling streams and prospects still. 
 
 Nor did the place adornment lack from art 
 Of towers and temples, that a rugged clime, 
 Of hilly aspects, best befits for show. 
 For the pale meditative shades that here 
 Waited release to heaven, had not forgot 
 The beautifying skill of men, nor lost 
 The nature that impels them to indue 
 The nobler moods and unessential forms 
 Of spirit with material ornament 
 
t r CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 And visible being, giving thus to sense, 
 
 And so by sensuous reflection to itself, 
 
 The pure immortal part. And hence as where 
 
 A stranger, in the opening flower of day, 
 
 Approaching far .ZEgina on the sea, 
 
 Or Corinth o er the isthmus, sees in air 
 
 The snowy edifice of temples old, 
 
 That sleep upon the hills, like clouds of Jove, 
 
 And paint the fronted sky, but which the sun 
 
 Dispels not, to his wonder, here the hills 
 
 At every spot of vantage, bore on high 
 
 Fanes with white statues set in shining frieze 
 
 And spacious pediment : such shapes as seemed, 
 
 So airy light they stood, or large reclined, 
 
 As they had down descended on the vast 
 
 Columnar pedestal, rising from beneath 
 
 To meet and give fit resting-place to gods : 
 
 And, though but human, not less grand the groups 
 
 That all the famed heroic story told 
 
 Of Jephtha and of Sampson, regal Saul, 
 
 And David, sweeter Orpheus than harped 
 
 At hell s deep portals, with prolonged, wild sound, 
 
 Down the abysses wailing on the ear 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 51 
 
 Of the infernal Fate ; but this, inspired, 
 Sang at the gates of heaven, and his strain 
 Bade the eternal doors of glory move. 
 
 Upon a height by that dividing gulf 
 Once measured by the eye of Dives, fixed 
 On the cool extreme, to the abhorred abyss 
 More near than the blest people used to roam, 
 Sat Adam, doomed, sad penance self-imposed, 
 His offspring to behold, who fell from earth, 
 Struck with mortality for his sake, like leaves 
 Cut by the noiseless frost from some full tree, 
 In yellow autumn. None escaped his sight, 
 Of them, who from the region of the day 
 Alighting, brightened the Elysian peaks, 
 Or those, more numerous, who, along the brink 
 That shored eternal night, discerned, afar, 
 Like dusky shadows driven athwart the clear. 
 Into the darkness fell, unnoised how deep. 
 
 This without grief his nature might not bear. 
 Though nerved to patience by the strength sublime 
 Which he who views his crime with steadfast eye, 
 Finds in the stern regard. What could he seem, 
 Although but shade by grief more dimmed with shade, 
 
52 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 But sire and head of an immortal line ? 
 
 And now there was a splendor in his look, 
 
 And conscious strength in his large-limbed repose, 
 
 As in a man whom destiny inspires 
 
 To assume in soul the greatness which her hands 
 
 Invisibly prepare ; or as they feign 
 
 Of the swart Brahmin, who beneath the sun 
 
 Sits without time or change, till death thinks scorn 
 
 To touch his withered life, his penance done, 
 
 His eyes grow terrible with light, his limbs 
 
 Put on their youth, and his impatient feet 
 
 Already feel the steps of Indra s throne. 
 
 Eve on his right hand sat, with head declined, 
 
 From recollected shame, or weaker mind 
 
 Than to endure, with Adam, sight more sad 
 
 Than haunts the wide and ever frighted eyes 
 
 Of Niobe, for tears compassioned into stone ; 
 
 And opposite reclined his second born. 
 
 First wept, and Moses at his feet, with fixed 
 
 Unalterable brow and eye severe ; 
 
 And in his hands the tables of the law. 
 
 These solitary sat, and lower stood 
 
 Grray seers, and warriors, in old times revered. 
 
CHRIST IN II A D E ri 53 
 
 For here came not the general crowd, though free, 
 
 Familiarly, nor lightly dared obtrude, 
 
 Nor but with awe approach the unborn man. 
 
 But now intenser awe pervaded all, 
 For Adam s voice upon their wonder fell, 
 With shadowy, but so vast and solemn sound, 
 That silence not displaced but deeper seemed 
 In the deep listening of the dead around 
 As thus the Sire to Abel " Whence, oh son, 
 Was that sad look, the unforgotten sight 
 Of death, in thee first given to my eyes, 
 Again upon thy face, and in thy limbs, 
 But chased by smiles more bright than that was dark, 
 And such a glory in thine eyes and brow 
 That scarce I knew thee ? So on earth the sun, 
 When first I saw him darkened by a cloud, 
 And thought him gone for ever, like some grand, 
 High fronted, glorious angel sometimes seen 
 In-looking on our bower, then seen no more. 
 Bursting again imprisoning cold or dark, 
 Rolled from his vapory cave, like noon on night/ 
 
 " Adam and Sire," the favorite replied, 
 " Unconsciously thy speech has touched the cause : 
 
 OF THR 
 
 I; w Av V mm * 
 
54 CHRIST IN HA DBS 
 
 For to iny eyes racthouglit the sun appeared, 
 As often to rny thoughts, a golden round, 
 That turned too soon its darker side to earth ; 
 Or by the intervention of a shade 
 Stood ruined of its splendor : as it seemed 
 To my last-looking glance when sudden death 
 Fell on these darkened eyes, and like a blow 
 Bore me to earth, unstayed by foot or hand. 
 Nay, Adam, thou and Eve, why does that look 
 Still haunt your downcast eyes at words like these , 
 As if I only of my kind had died ? 
 And soon a flight of angels I descried, 
 Together driving, in that dim eclipse, 
 From the four sides of heaven, so thick as yet 
 Came never, in an orb of cloudy wings, 
 Hitherward wafting the insphered souls of saints. 
 And that way looking whither they all held 
 Their mid-air voyage, I perceived at length 
 Why utmost heaven, through its golden ports, 
 Emptied itself of glory, and its state 
 Dissolved ; while powers pre-eminent, confused 
 With meaner angels, filled the inferior sphere. 
 For Him, oh Adani ! who on earth oft came 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 55 
 
 As from no higher power, and spake mild words 
 
 But awful, which we spake not and yet knew ; 
 
 Him I beheld, uplifted in the air, 
 
 Upon a bleeding tree that struck no root 
 
 Into the earth, but by the evil hands 
 
 Seemed fixed, which on a branch transverse had stretched 
 
 Him bound and naked, who still seemed, though worn, 
 
 By mortal-haunting sorrow and great pain, 
 
 To the gaunt spectacle and hue of death, 
 
 The same we called Jehovah, and no less 
 
 To me a wonder than Almighty God. 
 
 And, as I looked, it lifted up its head 
 
 And cried, so loud as never thou and Eve 
 
 Made lamentation erst in Gihon s vale, 
 
 On the returning day of sin and doom. 
 
 And darkness fell upon me with the sound, 
 
 And mortal fear. But when unclosed my eyes, 
 
 To utter dark near wounded by that sight, 
 
 With orb restored, the like affronted sun 
 
 Stood large and glorious ; and methought I knew 
 
 Havilah s cedarn shade, but dreamy dark 
 
 It fell around ; and on an altar near 
 
 A lamb sent up its snowy wreath to heaven. 1 
 
50 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Here stood awhile the stream of strange discourse : 
 But none with stir or speech the wonder loosed, 
 Mute in all tongues and fixed in all their eyes ; 
 But wider browed, intelligent, and intent 
 Beyond all picture, in the aspect old 
 Of bards and prophets and the mighty shades 
 Contemplative, that sat before the mount, 
 Themselves like hills unmoved. But now their heads, 
 Each head marked regal by the silver crown 
 Of millenary years, great Elders leaned 
 Involuntary forward, and their harps 
 Touched with preludings to intended song ; 
 As when a breeze breaks from its crystal cave 
 In the all-tranquil air, and at deep noon 
 Sweeps through a grove on momentary wings. 
 
 But soon the silent seer from revery raised 
 His eyes, re-lumined with the vision s close, 
 Most difficult in memory for thought 
 To unperplex ; where wake begins with sleep 
 To mingle rays, as oft the sun and moon 
 Shine in the uncertain dawn : and thus resumed. 
 
 " Then in the sun where, beamless, in the air 
 With sacrificial vapor filled, it stood. 
 
CHRIST IN IIADES. 57 
 
 I of a human shape became aware, 
 That me more glorious seemed ; my bright 
 Celestial counterpart ; that nearer came 
 Until the sun its circle wide enlarged 
 Around us both, and me invested fair. 
 Within its rosy atmosphere, with bloom 
 And splendor like the other, more and more 
 Transfiguring to his brightness all of earth 
 And gloom that lingered with me, till too near 
 Or bright I lost the image, and awaked 
 Here in this dusky light to see you sit 
 Familiar as before, with sunless looks." 
 
 Here ceased, but not in silence ended, that 
 Which to their shadowy senses seemed a sound : 
 As when one instrument, to tell its tale 
 Of wondrous motions in a human spirit, 
 Sounds in an orchestra, and all the throng, 
 In solemn trance, like lively sculpture sit 
 With open eyes, and mark not what they see, 
 Or through its unapparent forms look out 
 Into the world from which these sounds are sent 
 Or with closed orbs, but sight attentive still 
 And subtly present in the hearing sense, 
 3* 
 
58 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Then, like immediate thunder heard, at once 
 From the long calm of all the powers of sound, 
 That slumbered in the banded tubes of brass, 
 The sea of music breaks, with wave on wave, 
 Rolled high, and driven by the storm of soul 
 Forth poured in human breath ; like swimmers they 
 Amid the sounding billows sink and gasp ; 
 So on the voice of Abel when it ceased, 
 A thousand voices burst the gates of song, 
 And on a thousand and ten thousand souls 
 Of the redeemed, through all that region deep, 
 Poured like a wind upon the sea. The sound 
 Even to the Earth went up ; from voice and hand 
 Rushed mingled song and strain, like fire and flame. 
 And heard again were Israel s solemn strings 
 And Judah s singers, and the alien harps 
 That on the willows hung by Ulai s banks, 
 Voiceless above the murmuring stream. And Thou, 
 Celestial Light ! thy praises filled the ear, 
 Abysmal, of immeasurable night. 
 Sun of all stars, star of all heavens, Thou 
 Wast by their song adored resplendent Word, 
 (; Let there be light !" and Thou, creative Hand, 
 
CHIilST IN HADES. 59 
 
 That on its flying beams the image laid 
 
 Of all the flaming world ; tremendous Power, 
 
 That gather dst in thy wide-exploring grasp 
 
 The dark, diffused materials, and framed 
 
 The earth, and reared it ; by thy mystic skill 
 
 Untaught, and force omnipotent, it rose 
 
 From gloomy waste, and bore the mountains up, 
 
 And hung their peaks in heaven ; Hand of might, 
 
 Wisdom, and mastery, that pour dst the sea 
 
 Around the earth, the air around the sea, 
 
 And light round all ; that weavedst the blue sky 
 
 Throughout the starry space, and held st the entire 
 
 And rounded universe like an ornament 
 
 Before the infinite Reason s raptured Eye 
 
 Thee glorious in day and night they hymned, 
 
 In hell and heaven ; but Thou, of human spirit 
 
 And reason the light, redeemer of the soul 
 
 From darkness of worse night, eternal Word, 
 
 Begot without beginning, without end 
 
 Existing, thee, as the Messiah, sung, 
 
 As Saviour far more glorified. And break, 
 
 Thus rose the invocation of All Saints, 
 
 Break wide, bright Word, upon these sunless realms, 
 
60 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Prime fiat of creation, Word of power ; 
 Light of all vision, glory of the light, 
 Lightning of glory ! and on us whose eyes 
 Turn ever on the darkness a blind prayer, 
 On us, who, sunk below the living world, 
 See not earth, ocean, air, nor the vast wheel 
 Of heaven, swift-turning with all-circling flame 
 On us, thou, milder than the lunar dawn ! 
 Thou, brighter than the towering orb of day ! 
 Sun of all suns and worlds, beyond the reach 
 Of night and earthly shadows, riding high 
 Above all heavens in eternal noon, 
 Descend or to our eyes transmit thy beam. 
 
 Scarce yet the strain could from its echoes deep, 
 With fourfold repetition from all sides 
 Of the wide subterranean cavern beat 
 In higher concord implicate, be told, 
 When from above they heard a louder strain 
 Responsive ; and immediate light afar, 
 As from the disk of an appearing sun 
 In their dark sphere, shone o er them, and in gold 
 Clad all that stood thereunder, gloriously 
 Revealing the assembly on the mount. 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 61 
 
 The splendor on their upturned faces fell. 
 And shone in each, as when the morning beams. 
 From the high east, number the ocean sands. 
 Yet blinded not, so clear and soft it fell, 
 And like a cloud of light, athwart the deep 
 And painful gloom : And distant, in the midst, 
 Girt by an orb of seraphs on the immense 
 Circumference hovering, each with pinions twain 
 Erect, twain prone, and twain that clasped the air, 
 And spreading sunny locks o er-streamed with gold 
 From open heaven stood a shape like man, 
 With bleeding hands and feet, but joyful mien ; 
 Wan, but with recent triumph in his look, 
 And calm, as one with victory not elate : 8 
 And through the central glory drawn transverse, 
 As if upon his shoulders borne whose death 
 Redeemed its shame, behold the accursed beam, 
 Intelligible to their wonder through the dream 
 Of Abel, soon confirmed. Not swift the sphere 
 Descended ; like a hovering cloud it came, 
 Toward them compelled, as if descent, opposed 
 To its unprompted motion, and against 
 The upbuoyant strains from all sides blown beneath 
 
62 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 By trumping angels, were more difficult 
 Than, from the instant impulse, to obey 
 The stress of harmony, and mount to heaven. 
 
 At length it rested, like a radiant crown, 
 On that sole awful peak, where sat apart 
 The Sire of men ; who to their Saviour rose, 
 And for a space the First and Second Man 
 Confronted stood, each father, and each son ; 
 The heavenly Father and his earthly Son, 
 The earthly Father and his Seed divine ; 
 And Moses rose, his head unantlered now 
 Of the bright beams that made it dreadful, quenched 
 Before their brighter far j and from his hands, 
 Not passionate as once, with solemn act, 
 Cast down and brake the tables at his feet. 
 Then patriarch and prophet bowed at once, 
 Nor thought it shame that their large fronts sublime 
 Should touch the ground ; and Abel bowed, and Eve 
 Clasping his feet, and all the multitude 
 Toward the transfigured mountain where he stood, 
 As on that Galilean hill beheld 
 In raiment clear, (yet rather, on this peak, 
 He glorified Calvary and the tree of shame,) 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 63 
 
 Throughout the utmost region, bowed the head. 
 Bending one way like plants before the wind. 
 
 And oh ! hereafter, thou whom this dark strain 
 Scarce dares to mention, for the deeper awe 
 That sinks its numbers, may my soul indeed 
 Join in that worship that it renders now 
 With visionary effort, or, more blest, 
 With tears, behold thee, though afar, in heaven. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
BOOK III. 
 
 BACK iiito Tartarus from that bright peak 
 Resting celestial feet, and made the immense 
 High pedestal of a god indeed, my muse 
 Compels the wing ; intent to sing, and me, 
 Her earnest listener, teach the fiery war 
 Of those intractable despairing spirits, 
 Demoniac and human, blown into a heat 
 And sevenfold rage of fire, that made the hell 
 Which outward burned and flamed against the shore 
 Of their assaulted being, a septentrion sea 
 O er-glassed with cold in winter s dark extreme. 
 Now like as day, struck with the mortal dint 
 Of cold and gloom, when rises from the earth 
 Black night, floods out his glorious life, and stains 
 With flaming or and gules the argent field 
 
C8 C II R I S T I N II A D E S . 
 
 Wherein, upon his sinking orb, he leans 
 
 In haggard splendor, and, athwart the world. 
 
 Throws back his mighty image on the east, 
 
 And makes it seem two suns or set or rise, 
 
 So with a sicklied glory from the blaze 
 
 Of martial pomp the region shone, appeared 
 
 Like these the hosts opposed, as far apart, 
 
 In radiant gold and brass and pallid steel, 
 
 Glimmering athwart the intervening gloom 
 
 In either side of hell ; but not like these 
 
 They faded, leaving night : in order set 
 
 For battle, and in thought prepared as erst 
 
 In will, at once with caution armed and rage, 
 
 Their mutual motions and swift steps o ercame 
 
 The interval of darkness deep with space, 
 
 Till now into each other s gleam they fell, 
 
 Contiguous ; though from each other still 
 
 So far remote in space as from the east 
 
 To the west cape, that shut the Atlantic gulf; 
 
 Then swifter rushed to meet, and swift, behind, 
 
 Wide-following darkness like a storm came down. 
 
 And high above them, in the air disturbed 
 
 By moving armaments, grim lightnings broke 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 69 
 
 In wavering lines, and seamed the opaque far dark 
 "With rivers of fire, and hairy meteors streamed 
 Along the immense, or in the skylcss height 
 Wheeled, and around them with swift motion wrapped 
 Vast lengths of sounding flame ; or bursting shone 
 Like shattered suns, and either army dazed 
 And far-illumined ; nor beneath their feet 
 Less glowed the iron path, and frequent flamed 
 The smouldering base under their dread advance. 
 
 So many warrior-shapes then moved beneath 
 As never on the surface roused at peal 
 Of clarion, or in cadence beat the ground 
 To the loud hand of war upon the drum, 
 Or pale lips pressed upon the thrilling reed, 
 When moving nations armed flashed back the sun : 
 Nor had it been a field so full, or vast, 
 Though of all fields and battles were made one, 
 So thick the clime-bronzed race of demons swarmed, 
 So numerous the fairer flock of men ; 
 The field so spacious that they trod, who not 
 For burning sea, or torrent rolling fire 
 Under its cloud-white veil, or vacuous gulf, 
 Or marsh of pale-spread flames, made turn or stay. 
 
70 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 So on they came, revealing and revealed, 
 And imminent with light, in what it showed, 
 More dreadful than the deep accustomed gloom 
 That partially concealed them each from each. 
 Nor were they undismayed, but high-enraged 
 Above a doubt of the event, they strode 
 With uiidiminished steps the lessening space : 
 Black and precipitous battle on each brow 
 Hung threatening ; and each eye with victory blazed, 
 And saw the foe already by their feet 
 Down-trodden. First, and far-seen, Baal loomed, 
 Swift-nearing, like the highest peak of lands 
 Half hid in mists, that moving seems to one 
 Whirled by it on the sea at morning-tide. 
 Asmod the right, and Ammon led the left, 
 The orient Jove though this usurped the name, 
 Nor less that Grecian god. To these opposed, 
 Towered adamantine Cain, both doomed and writ 
 Unconquered in his brow sedate and stern ; 
 Naked as erst on earth, and yet than none 
 Less terrible, and armed with that dire plant, 
 Torn by the gnarled roots, whose stroke accursed 
 First burst the gates of war. Upon his right 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 71 
 
 Athenian Theseus marched, nor other seemed 
 Than when at Marathon his mighty shade 
 Paced giant-like before the patriot Greek s 
 Awe-thrilled and joyful, and his armed foot 
 Broke through the Asian line. In look like Cain, 
 Alcides stalked upon the foremost left, 
 Thus naked and without armor, better armed 
 With strength and courage ; the Nemean s hide 
 Thrown idly backward, showed his queller s hand 
 Laid on its knotty engine, with a mien 
 Lightly secure. On each part they appeared 
 As once in earth they did or ether ; these 
 Like themselves, those like the hero-gods, 
 They were or imitated there ; but all, 
 Although in look still human and distinct, 
 Of spiritual stature, and with arms 
 Proportioned ; like hill-crowning cedars waved 
 Their plumy helms, and, at each forward step, 
 Shook nodding ruin down and dark defeat. 
 The other side, supreme, as they who feel 
 Superior worth innate, or time-faced right, 
 Meet rebels, with superb presumption came, 
 And port omnipotent ; by which dismayed 
 
72 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 And awe-struck as it seemed, the adverse front, 
 When now so near the tread of each to each 
 Like echoes came, made halt, and through their lines, 
 Suddenly retrograde, disorder fell. 
 
 Then Baal, prompt to scoff, made hoarse the air 
 With triumphings like these : " Warriors in peace, 
 Peaceful in war ! not overweeningly ye scorn 
 I see, and see in time for peace, wise thoughts 
 To entertain, though late ; better resolved, 
 Doubt not. ye mockeries of our state, ye mimes 
 And siiadows of our grandeur, pigmies swelled 
 And puffed beyond proportion better willed 
 You seem in act to fly, than when, too bold, 
 You thought to meet the substance of your shade, 
 And try what strength might lie in real gods. 
 But thou, first parasite of hell, remain, 
 And fly not, as becomes their leader, first, 
 That in the rear of rout this arm may reach 
 To drag thee by the false-crowned head reverse, 
 And strangle thy new godhead in my gripe. 
 
 Wide-eyed retort with lightning filled the face 
 Of Cain, but thunder from Alcides broke. 
 "Weak hejid and arm, but warlike frown and sound, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 73 
 
 And gesture dread, thee, and thy vaunting mates, 
 
 What dumb hierophant could doubt divine, 
 
 Since ye sustain so many dire defeats, 
 
 And live, yet only know defeat? And this 
 
 To us you threat, whose fame has made the stars 
 
 Still shine in our renown, and tell our deeds 
 
 To mortal eyes such deeds as fill not heaven 
 
 Without faint glory even in this pit, 
 
 To me ! who never knew defeat or shame, 
 
 But mean to add a labor to my twelve, 
 
 And from thy impious mouth tear out that tongue, 
 
 Engine of blasphemy and faction still, 
 
 And to this leonine trophy add the fell 
 
 From thy brute-browed and far less godlike head." 
 
 Thus, pillared Hercules, and Baal replied, 
 But more disturbed, as more like his own boast 
 The harsh refrain, shook like a tower, that sapped 
 By secret mine, though full of war and means 
 Against assault and siege, threats instant fall. 
 " Dismay of thieves and brutes ! learn from a god 
 Defeat, honored too much should I say shame, 
 Who honor thee to chastise : but know, that loss 
 In such a warfare as we waged, I deem 
 4 
 
74 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 More great and glorious, than such as thou 
 To quell with easy victory, as we shall." 
 
 He ended, and no time for further vaunt, 
 Or deeds, when lo the cause of the delay : 
 On right and left, between the open ranks 
 Of footmen in deep files withdrawn, afar, 
 Through the dispersed smoke, chariots and horse, 
 In size and action to the gods they bore 
 Not disproportioned, nor unwieldy, showed 
 Tremendous through the gloom : of all-pure fire 
 Their subtle essence, into shapes like these 
 By orient or Argive warriors wrought, 
 At the quick hint of ancient use afield. 
 For spirit from the bonds of matter freed 
 Over the baser substance has more power, 
 To mould it into shapes diverse, and life 
 Infuse, impulse, and energy divine, 
 With swiftest operation of a thought. 
 
 Ere word might fill the pause, upon the foe, 
 For such encounter unprepared with like 
 Or other means, rushed down the ethereous steeds, 
 Winged, swift, far-bounding, thunder-hoofed, and each 
 With lightning maned; and from their nostrils wide, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 75 
 
 Breathed pestilence and flame. Themselves in look 
 
 And motion irresistible, neath the flight 
 
 They ran of spears and javelins, thrown behind, 
 
 Innumerous, from the chariots, that from far 
 
 Rained wounds and wide confusion on the foe, 
 
 Dismayed and broken ; and the gulfing wheels 
 
 Trenched their deep way through ranks on ranks o er- 
 
 thrown, 
 
 While in the swarth of their armed axles fell 
 "Whole groves of legionary spears, like reeds 
 Cut by the sickle, but more quickly strowed 
 That living meadow by swift reapers mowed, 
 And iron harvest stunned. But not by all 
 Was the fierce onset unwithstood : and chief, 
 And full of strength and stature, Baal stood, 
 As when in some great deluge, bearing trees, 
 Ships from their anchors loosed, and fabric huge 
 From its foundation raised, with clinging life 
 Upon the wreck, and all the human wealth 
 Of promontories from the mainland torn 
 Or in the steep flood of Vesuvius poured 
 Adown its vine-clad sides some hill untouched, 
 With its green top and plumy forest stands, 
 
76 CHRIST IN- HADES. 
 
 With promise to the world of future life, 
 
 And safety possible to men : So stood 
 
 The Toparch strong : On whom drove Tubal-Cain, 
 
 Thence Vulcan clept, whose hands, upon the forge, 
 
 First shaped the warlike soil to sword and spear, 
 
 And chariots framed, and bade the trumpet neigh, 
 
 And gave a tongue to war. But in the field, 
 
 Too late, the fear of his great baron smote 
 
 The armed mechanic : by one impulse swayed, 
 
 The conscious coursers swerved, and where the head, 
 
 From the strong spine, stooped o er his guiding hand, 
 
 A blow from Baal s sequent blade, reversed, 
 
 And sheer descending, fell ; and into wreck 
 
 Sunk his wheeled pomp, together fiery horse 
 
 And chariot into smoking ruins fade. 
 
 But him Alcides met, as through the field 
 He sought whatever had withstood the shock 
 Of hippogriff, and centaur, and armed wheel, 
 With courage still for conflict : whom, unarmed, 
 Fierce Baal thought, with one sure stroke, to cleave 
 Miserably twain : a moment his huge sword, 
 Uplifted, adding terror to its sway, 
 Hung like a bladed comet in the air ; 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 77 
 
 Then fell, unmeasured, dreadful, from its poise 
 
 Thrown forward with resistless force and weight. 
 
 Back swift Alcides leaped, nor fled too soon ; 
 
 His right foot stained the adamantine point, 
 
 That trenched the rock beneath, as where a stream 
 
 Breaks fissured way. Ere Baal from the blow 
 
 Retrieved his height, the hydra-quelling mace 
 
 Fell through the air, with horrible descent : 
 
 The stroke roared like a wind, and on his casque 
 
 Struck thunder, and his linked armor burst 
 
 From his huge trunk, as lightning from an oak 
 
 Breaks shattered rind and limbs ; crushed acres groaned 
 
 At his decay, and o er the din of war 
 
 High rose the iron rumor of his fall. 
 
 Nor did less tumult swell the late defeat 
 Of monstrous Dagon, from whom, worse deformed 
 With hippodame and kraken, self-assumed, 
 So spirits can, turned infantry and steed, 
 Nor chose the ambush of his doubtful shape. 
 On him Orion clear, came undismayed, 
 And as a dusky dragon, in close shade 
 Of horrible thicket, sees, from his deep lair, 
 With sleepy orbs amazed, a silver knight 
 
78 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Shine toward him like the sun, with like blind look 
 He saw Orion ; who, while thus he stood, 
 And unresolved to fight as god or brute, 
 Upon his many shapes discharged a stroke 
 More ruinous, than when, rising from the ark, 
 Angered Jehovah, in the secret night 
 Of his dark house, the biformed Triton struck 
 Invisibly, and both his shapes deformed. 
 
 And they no better fared at human hands, 
 Who, vain of human empire, chose to seem 
 Their own invented fictions, in the wild 
 And wasteful riot of imagining mind, 
 By high, angelic genius poesied 
 In vedas and puranas, full of gods, 
 By accident or penance, raised to heavens 
 That on the blue Sumeru s summits lie, 
 Above the sun, in the unmoving light 
 Of Brahm ; but their romancers pined beneath, 
 In the immovable darkness, by no day 
 Alternated : Who yet, this day, would be 
 The awaking of their dream, the living gods 
 Of their stone idols, and together marched 
 Bi-headed, many-membered, monstrous shapes ; 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 79 
 
 That more by their complexity of parts 
 Encumbered than assisted, fell and writhed 
 Beneath the single, flashing hand that held 
 One sword, directed by a dual eye, 
 And by swift motion multiplied to meet 
 Their many-weaponed, idly striking hands ; 
 Too late, in the dread imminence, to change 
 Back to angelic shape and wieldy limbs. 
 
 Before all others terrible, advanced 
 Eight-handed Shiva, and, with insult stern, 
 Demanded Magog and great Madai old, 1 
 Whose filial nations peopled the world s east, 
 That to their children s deities they, too, 
 Should worship render ; but the answer felt 
 On his crushed brain, so swift more lion-like 
 Than like dead stone the fragment of a rock 
 Leaped from gray Madai s hand ; unstayed, 
 Huge Shiva s head sunk on his rear-ward breast ; 
 Then, one by one, relaxed his threatening arms, 
 Hand after hand its clanging weapon dropped, 
 And clutched the air, or sought with outstretched palms 
 To upstay his reeling trunk : Then Vishnu forth 
 Sprang warrior-like, and stood in guise and shape 
 
80 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 More human, but, in stature, vast as when 
 To Shiva and to Brahma, claiming each 
 To be the oldest of the gods, he said 
 " He that ascending shall behold my head, 
 Or that descending shall descry my feet, 
 Is oldest :" Weary years swift Brahma climbed, 
 And Shiva dived, but neither what he sought 
 Discovered, although Brahma s lie prevailed. 
 
 All stood amazed, by wonder more than fear 
 Disabled, and no champion to assail 
 The armed and living mountain dared a thought j 
 Till Indian Dionysus, reckless, drove 
 His leaping chariot, whirled by tawny pards, 
 Toward the colossus ; and a javelin hurled 
 High in the air where seemed to be his head, 
 But vainly, and another at his breast 
 As vainly threw ; both through the phantasm passed 
 As through the air ; then at his feet where stood. 
 Beneath the mighty umbrage, the true form 
 A third, and suddenly the towering shape 
 Fell into shadowy ruin, as a cloud, 
 By lightning rent, bursts, and descends in rain. 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 81 
 
 But there the greatest imminence of the field 
 Hung doubtful, and the noon of battle stood, 
 Where Cain met Asrael. 2 He from heaven held 
 Commission still, executor of the word 
 Fatal to all, in Adam" Thou shalt die." 
 Task to fulfil by no damned angel sought, 
 But, eagerly, by him ; less through desire 
 Of the carnivorous glut, than from the strange, 
 Inventive pleasure that he took to try 
 Each different means of death, and power in each, 
 And task the last capacity of pain : 
 To men invisible, yet by many names, 
 White Leprosy, and pined Consumption, known, 
 Hot Fever, and immedicable Plague. 
 But now, in his own shape, more ghastly stood 
 The mighty Ethiop : from his caverned head, 
 With hiding basilisks terrible, and browed 
 With night, down to his noiseless feet 
 Two sable wings fell wide ; on which he sails, 
 Each day, o er all earth s region, and which oft, 
 When he o er some full capital, forewrit 
 For desolation, hovers with the Night, 
 Rain pestilence. And thus spake the fiend 
 4 
 
82 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Polluted most and deadliest of all powers 
 
 In earth or hell. " First rival, and my first, 
 
 But too reluctant victim, who this hand 
 
 Preventedst of its right to the first death, 
 
 Thyself to feel it first ; and found st the charm 
 
 Sought of thy God against my dreaded power, 
 
 Less potent ; seek st thou again to prove 
 
 The miserable hour, the fear, the pain ? 
 
 Or wouldst thou, for my victim not again 
 
 Fate yields thee, as thou deem st, become my slave 
 
 By second conquest, and with torpid chain 
 
 Lie fever-bound in hell, or, at my choice, 
 
 Sit leprous at my feet, or ague-struck, 
 
 Unnerved, and palsied in my presence live ?" 
 
 To whom hell s premier answered, with close brows 
 " Sick-haunting raven, pleased with carnal taste 
 Of carcasses, and stench of monuments ; 
 Queller of babes, fierce troubler of the old 
 Bed-rid humanity, night-dismal kite, 
 Earth s scavenger ! dost thou thy service deck 
 With name of conquest? for thy office erst 
 On me performed, of which thy boast is framed, 
 Take late requital now." Swift, at the word, 
 
CHRIST IN HA DBS. 83 
 
 The felon plant that armed his hand, propulsed. 
 
 Swung circling to its aim : down Asrael sunk, 
 
 Like a hurt vulture, on his ample wings 
 
 Recumbent ; but immediate rose as she, 
 
 Sick with the peaceful prospect and pure air, 
 
 Aloft, springs from her rock against the wind 
 
 That brings the taint of death and with that sword 
 
 Unseen, beneath whose wound the host 
 
 Of Sennacherib without battle fell, 
 
 Or in dark duel, touched triumphant Cain : 
 
 No wound, nor perforate nor trenched gash appeared, 
 
 Ichor or blood diffusing ; pale he stood, 
 
 A breathing time, but breathless ; forward then, 
 
 As when that tropic wind that comes unseen 
 
 In sea or sky, a tall mast, cordage-knit, 
 
 With all its drawing clouds, snaps short it falls 
 
 Sea-ward, and circling half the sky he fell, 
 
 Without a sound till fallen, and felt death 
 
 So as the spirit can, and as the parting soul 
 
 Perhaps may feel it, when with mortal pangs 
 
 Struck through the bodily sense, but not destroyed. 
 
 But courage now, from the first shock o erpast, 
 Encouraged more, to see the fall indign 
 
84 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Of one so potent, in the heavenly powers 
 
 Revived, with furious shame ; and, by their foes 
 
 Taught horror, armed with flames they fought, 
 
 And fire opposed to fire : flash lighted flash, 
 
 And lightning against lightning streamed adverse, 
 
 And on their helmets blazed, and round their shields 
 
 Rolled in terrific circles. Each a Jove, 
 
 Ethereal-armed, seemed, fighting ; and the crash 
 
 Of simulated thunder wanted not 
 
 From fall of heroes armed, and din of shields. 
 
 Earth shook, and universal silence roared 
 
 With sudden dissolution. Nor withstood 
 
 The fiery cavalry the assault of arms 
 
 Of their own substance forged ; down sunk 
 
 The snorting team, or into formless flame 
 
 Their speed escaped : when lo a stranger change ! 
 
 Below heroic dignity debased, 
 
 Gods, by demoniac instincts and wild rage 
 
 Excited, leaving form and port divine, 
 
 Took shape of lion, pard, or serpent fanged, 
 
 As bold or treacherous nature prompted each 
 
 With horrible suggestion. On each side, 
 
 With shapes of heaven, and human features, mixed, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 85 
 
 Huge tigers crouched, and glared, or the scared field 
 
 Circled with threatening yell and fiery spang ; 
 
 And unicorn and centaur to the clang 
 
 Of trumpets neighed. But such a sight not long, 
 
 God, from his all-surveying height, might leave 
 
 In heavenly prospect. Suddenly a storm 
 
 Blown periodic from the wastes of hell 
 
 Fresh fuelled with the wrath of fire, came down, 
 
 Involved with thunderous roar and dismal shade. 
 
 Like mountain peaks above the mist, the flames, 
 
 Through pitchy clouds, rolled their advancing spires 
 
 To heights unmeasured, and the sulphurous air 
 
 Kindled with quick combustion : wide around, 
 
 Linked lightnings fell, and thunder denounced wreck 
 
 To all that stood before. Not sooner fall, 
 
 When, in the desert, gainst a caravan, 
 
 Of merchant-camels Bedouin horsemen ride, 
 
 If the fierce saymel redden the blind air, 
 
 Robber and spoil, than these, of men or gods 
 
 Embattled, first, and in most dreadful field, 
 
 Fell miserably, with all their useless arms 
 
 And puissance, defeated, at the breath 
 
 Of their great Arbiter, unmoved, in heaven. 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 JUST then, as on the night that with veiled stars, 
 And brows with deeper folds of darkness bound, 
 Attended Christ s great burial, Titan-morn, 
 From out the east horizon s fiery gulf, 
 Upheaved his flaming orb, just then, and neat 
 Where, sunk below its farthest published beam, 
 Abaddon sat dethroned before his throne, 
 Amid the stern and darkness-deepening frown 
 Of mutinous gods, the silent throng of saints, 
 Before the mountain-altar on which stood 
 Their sacrifice and Saviour, from the floor 
 Of paradise uprising, to the day 
 Of his refulgent look, unveiled their eyes 
 Splendrous with unaccustomed light, and bathed 
 In the translucent dew from their great joy 
 
90 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Distilled, in unrepressed, calm tears, that each 
 Insphered a smile, as dew-born drops, a sun ; 
 And made fresh flowers spring where er they fell. 
 
 He, from his eminence, discerning all 
 His rescued flock, as, with the rising sun, 
 A shepherd, from his height, o erlooks a field 
 White with his peaceful feudatories, smiled 
 Manifest love, which that far-banished realm 
 Than sapphire heaven more brightened ; and these words 
 Spake, 1 far and near heard equally distinct. 
 " Loved and elect of Heaven, loved by me, 
 From everlasting, with fraternal love ; 
 For whom I left the Godhead s high repose, 
 And clear and tranquil sway, and, in this form, 
 Have sought, and in this place from earth 
 Descending, through the gate of death 
 Meet you, with joy like yours ; and greater joy 
 Preparing, shall soon lead you where with me, 
 They whose sole rest has been in sleep and death, 
 Shall rest from death in life, from sleep awake, 
 To rest in waking, where no night, nor sleep, 
 Falls on the eyes, nor dimness of the soul 
 Beclouds them, or from weariness or tears. 
 
CHRIST IN HADEB. 91 
 
 But first, I hither come to win the keys 
 Of heavenly access from the sovran foe, 
 And your accuser ; yielded to his hand, 
 Till one of human kind shall wrest them thence : 
 Nor does he doubt, who put to test the strength 
 Of military heaven, and dared to cite 
 His throned liege to duel, these to keep 
 In his propriety, gainst a foe so weak. 
 Now, first, shall your dark janitor suspect 
 That not for his strict hate, and your fixed doom, 
 He holds that office, but for his defeat 
 And your advantage, in the distant scope 
 Of Heaven s purpose, that debars your right 
 To heavenly station with the pure unfallen 
 Deities, and yet creatures, (who, because 
 Created, use their gift of narrow thought 
 More to be just than merciful, and great 
 More than magnanimous,) until a man, 
 Never polluted, and with glory more 
 Than they adorned, and with the Father s love, 
 Lead up his erring race, and in their shape, 
 Before the bosom-seraphim, and great 
 Angelic elders, high above all place 
 
92 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Throned, and advanced at the right hand of Power, 
 
 Authenticate their title to a seat 
 
 Above their origin or merit ; and pride, 
 
 Heaven s sole temptation, and through which alone 
 
 Angels are fallible, to worship turn 
 
 And meet humility. My coming long deferred 
 
 You deemed, and, in this banishment, complained 
 
 Yourselves Heaven s orphans, if indeed his sons. 
 
 I came not in the green and sunless time 
 
 Of patriarchal writ, the shepherd age, 
 
 "When on the sparsely tented Asian fields 
 
 Still hung creation s early dawn and mist, 
 
 Lest legendary soon, forgot, or mixed 
 
 With fable, should become the act whose fame, 
 
 Though harsh to untuned ears the hymn of death, 
 
 Shall henceforth be the music of the world : 
 
 But on the plenary and highest noon 
 
 Of human wisdom, though at brightest dark, 
 
 I rose with light, and to the greatest height 
 
 Of man s ascent descended. Now begins, 
 
 Far stretching o er all empire to the end, 
 
 My reign on earth : Jerusalem no more, 
 
 But all the earth is holy. Sion still 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 93 
 
 Bears on her hills a temple, fashioned high, 
 
 And full of glorious office, but devoid 
 
 His presence who from human lips loves truth 
 
 More than his praise ; and soon her Holiest Place 
 
 Beneath the feet of nations shall be stamped, 
 
 And bruised with iron dint : To-day is laid 
 
 With deep and sure foundation in my death, 
 
 Soon, in my resurrection, to be raised 
 
 With heavenly superstructure fair, the new 
 
 Jerusalem ; the undecaying pile 
 
 Of glory spiritual, whose most pure walls 
 
 Shall be the illimitable air, her gates 
 
 The East and West, but Sion is no more." 
 
 At this, not spoken by their heavenly Guest 
 
 Without some touch of sorrow, not a few 
 
 Among the dwellers on that pallid shore, 
 
 Wept irrepressibly ; and hoary heads 
 
 Desponded patiently upon the breast 
 
 Of king and prophet ; and a sound was heard, 
 
 As of the golden strings of many a harp 
 
 Broken by hasty hands, and sighs were breathed, 
 
 And sobs tumultuous ; as when a band 
 
 Of exiles, on a foreign coast, to hear 
 
94 CHRIST IN HADE8.- 
 
 The ruin of their city, while for wrongs 
 
 And injuries they should smile, break out and weep. 
 
 But thus his interrupted speech pursued 
 The orator divine, seer self-inspired : 
 " The earth is mine, my empire over all 
 Imperial ; and now to the defeat 
 Of hell, and of the last infernal hope, 
 I lead you forth ; not for the unarmed aid 
 That ye can render, who, at rest, shall see 
 Victory from armies wrested, without arms. 
 And to this end, through recent quarrel, sprung 
 From the unnatural league of fiends and men, 
 Innumerous hell is gathering to one field 
 Her legions ; and, in realms of heat and cold, 
 All the remotest lurkings of despair 
 Yield their dark tenants, in one confluent host 
 Assembled, to receive me with my saints. 
 
 He ceased, and to the earth once more they bowed, 
 Thanks giving and adoring : low, at once, 
 Bowed saint and airy minister : but one 
 There was who nearer clung, and at his feet 
 Bewildered wept ; no citizen more old 
 Of this fair region than that hour, with Christ, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 95 
 
 The only human shape besides, he came. 
 
 And proved so soon the promise, " Thou this day 
 
 Shalt be with me in paradise." Then all 
 
 The ethereous host, inspiring mighty breath, 
 
 For conceived anthemings of vaster tone, 
 
 With noise as of the calm sea thundering, stirred, 
 
 And sunk and rose in sounding depths and heights ; 
 
 And to that dark profound, from highest heaven, 
 
 Their harps drew echoes ; and the solemn crowd, 
 
 Beneath and distant, whitening hill and plain 
 
 Far stretched without horizon, hymning in 
 
 With apt and instant hallelujahs, poured 
 
 Doxology and thanksgiving, highest praise, 
 
 And glory highest ; while, through all the air, 
 
 Upon the multitude around fell flowers, 
 
 By seen and unseen hovering angels showered, 
 
 Profusely, from their hands and loosened locks ; 
 
 Fresh roses, lilies, and violets, like morn 
 
 With evening blended : as if flowery heaven 
 
 Had shaken down its blossoms to the wind, 
 
 And all its thick, ambrosial branches loosed 
 
 Their bloom and fragrance ; or the under sky 
 
 Its stars had snowed down, noiseless, from the blue 
 
96 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Serene of night. That moment, where, beneath, 
 
 The dread, transfigured peak leaned from the verge 
 
 Of the ingulfed, unfathomable void, 
 
 A shadow fell along the airy steep, 
 
 And vanished, like a just appearing cloud 
 
 Below the horizon driven by the wind 
 
 A shadow, but with lineaments and shape 
 
 Like human, that grew pale almost to air, 
 
 And cast a look behind, that had made dumb 
 
 Deep groaning pain, or hollow-shrieked despair ; 
 
 For Judas knew his Lord, and stretched his arms, 
 
 With that last look, reverse to his descent, 
 
 And, headlong, disappeared in the deep gulf. 
 
BOOK V. 
 
BOOK V. 
 
 WITHDRAWN from that dire field, and far remote 
 Each from the other in the unbounded waste. 
 The hostile powers took counsel for their state 
 What farther, on each part, might be devised 
 To end the war, and in their vexed domain 
 Fix the disputed sceptre. And not long 
 The place to which the angelic tribes retired 
 To build again the wreck of war, remained 
 Without intelligent sound amidst the roar 
 Of elements dismayed, and guttural dash 
 And low-lisped threatenings of the sinking storm. 
 First, Baal lingered up, and cast around 
 A sullen eye, as if to seek a foe 
 Or challenge accusation ; but none stirred. 
 Some sat with head bowed low, some lay supine 
 At monstrous length, and others, half reclined, 
 
100 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Looked up into the darkness with fixed eye. 
 
 But by their apathy not less enraged, 
 
 His fury dashed itself against despair, 
 
 In words like these : " Since none who shared with me 
 
 This late prodigious fortune, would impeach 
 
 My conduct of the war, or cares to hint 
 
 It otherwise had fallen had Satan led, 
 
 There haply needs not to enforce my words 
 
 The rebel-dared decadence of this hand. 
 
 Yet why of words speak I ? at all why speak ! 
 
 Tis not the skill of words can cure these wounds, 
 
 Or heal the breach in our strong title up : 
 
 It lies not in the flowery epilogue 
 
 To an act barren of glory, or the pomp 
 
 Of eloquent declaim gainst earless fate, 
 
 To excuse dishonor, thus dishonored more, 
 
 And doubly shamed defeat, from foes so weak. 
 
 But this we all have proved long since, that fate, 
 
 Who to the strong gave courage, on the weak 
 
 Bestowed more cunning, and, for want of power 
 
 Found in themselves, the mastery o er powers 
 
 Extrinsic : yet their artifice once known, 
 
 What more can it avail ? But strength bestowed 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 101 
 
 Is a perpetual gift, if courage not deserts 
 
 The citadel of all power. Rise then, and arm ! 
 
 Prevent their new devices, and perchance 
 
 Their triumph may prove prologue, in the end, 
 
 To worse disgrace, and be to our defeat 
 
 As when one lifts a foe above his head 
 
 To dash him from the height beneath his feet." 
 
 He spake ; but none who bowed looked up, and they 
 Who flooded all the field with disarray, 
 And loose disordered arms, rose not, nor stirred. 
 
 Then to the moody senate, from his seat. 
 Composed, nor with defeat in look or mien, 
 Stood up mercurial Asmod the divine: 
 His argent shield, thrown back in peaceful guise, 
 Horizoned, round, his head and shoulders fair ; 
 And on his ebon spear he leaned, with mien 
 That made it seem for this, not war designed. 
 And thus, unchecked by Baal s hostile eye, 
 He spake. " Much have I heard of late, oh friends. 
 Since the all-golden day of our estate 
 Gave place to this sad night, in which we dream, 
 With strange invention heard and pondered much, 
 In the celestial argument of gods, 
 
102 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 And imitative poesy of men, 
 
 Of destiny, necessity, and fate : 
 
 But only this have learned thus far, that fate 
 
 Is power, and power in us is fate, till met 
 
 With greater power, be it of strength, or skill 
 
 That makes strength instrumental. Both we find 
 
 Abundant in our foe, though of the first 
 
 Our leader but complains, with what just cause 
 
 Both to accuse ye know. Omniscient craft 
 
 I, least, can doubt in them, who me so oft, 
 
 Their instigator to device, have taught 
 
 Means to the end. The race, in motion warm, 
 
 Symposiac and amorous, yet forced 
 
 To rear their lives upon an iron soil, 
 
 And make their over-peopled rock yield life 
 
 Against its nature, every faculty 
 
 Of art apply, exhaust ; and hither still 
 
 The warlike breed descend, and bring to these 
 
 Who arm against us each invention strange, 
 
 Each artifice and new implement of war 
 
 Huge catapult, or enginery to raze 
 
 Walled cities at a blow, or overthrow 
 
 Whole armies, at safe distance, and secure. 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 103 
 
 What can avail blind force, though armed like Jove, 
 
 And limbed like Atlas, that bears up the world, 
 
 Against high stratagem, that turns its harm 
 
 Against itself, and binds it with the chain 
 
 Of its own rage, toils in its own attempt, 
 
 And makes its arms the armory whence it draws 
 
 Means for assault. Sooner shall we, here shut 
 
 Under the dark, unyielding doors of earth, 
 
 Storm the closed gates of heaven, and repossess 
 
 The seats imperial where our ruin sits, 
 
 Or, from this gulf of night ascending up, 
 
 Hang trophies on the pillars of the sun, 
 
 Than found a kingdom, here, upon the forced 
 
 Subjection of these less, yet more than gods. 
 
 Our utmost flight of hope must perch, this side 
 
 Success, on special victory, whose bruit 
 
 May clamor gainst the fame of this defeat. 
 
 But from what stratagem, since even here 
 
 Mere force is vain, as this sad field attests, 
 
 Shall hope commence ? I know of none but this ; 
 
 They through old instinct, though with choice of state, 
 
 Still keep their ancient shape, firm-knit to tread 
 
 The earth their limitation. Also we, 
 
104 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Though in this dungeon shut with human gnomes, 
 
 Agile and tall remain, with wings to soar, 
 
 Or dive, or sweep the air in circles, or extend 
 
 The equator, or the horizontal plane, 
 
 Or the deep pole. I counsel, then, to ascend 
 
 Into the darkness, bearing all our war, 
 
 And, coasting near the upper light and air, 
 
 Until arrived to where they sit secure, 
 
 In loose unharnessed ease, and paeans sing, 
 
 On them whose wave of battle in this deep 
 
 Broke highest, and o erwhelmed us down descend 
 
 In cataract of main war. Which, if approved, 
 
 With instant speed perform : lest while we sit 
 
 And meditate the voyage, they prevent 
 
 Our purpose with the sudden clang of wings 
 
 Induced at like suggestion, and rain chains 
 
 And fiery missiles from the darkness down ; 
 
 Or come trailing along the ground some damned 
 
 Invention, and strange implement, to throw 
 
 Huge fragments, crags, and flaming stones, and turn 
 
 Hell s bottom on our heads, who sit thus prone, 
 
 Disordered, unresolved, a host disarmed 
 
 With arms around, as if, without a foe. 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 105 
 
 By their own weapons fallen ; so dismayed 
 And lost we seem, without all pride and shame, 
 Thus miserably escaped their first assault/ 
 
 He ceased ; and they approved his words as wise, 
 And fit to become deeds. Straight, from the heap 
 Of waste confusion Alpine statures tall 
 Gathered themselves upright, and plucked their arms, 
 And standards reared, redressed their shattered gear, 
 And in their threatening limbs, new-armed, their 
 
 strength 
 
 And purpose felt, and poised themselves in air 
 On their long-idle wings ; with not less stir 
 Than the black cranes in Lithuania s fens 
 When, from the austral winter overpast, 
 Rise all the stormy clans, and seek the north. 
 
 Meantime, the earth-descended powers convened 
 In martial diet ; and high-seated Cain 
 First worshipped with obeisance due began 
 Colonial Cecrops, father of the West, 
 And founder of the famed Athenian pile : 
 With weighty brow, that frowned high enterprise 
 5 
 
106 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Above sagacious eyes that tempered fear, 
 
 He stood erect, and crowned with that sole star 
 
 Of Hesperus ; and these his words, that fell 
 
 With sound of weight, that echoed ponderous thought. 
 
 " Not less, in this armed council, than the first 
 
 To exult, I glory in the event 
 
 Of this late trial with the elder powers 
 
 Of their celestial vaunt. Yet victory I know 
 
 Not certain conquest ; and to overthrow 
 
 Not always subjugates ; nor in one field 
 
 Is empire lost or won ; nor can one day 
 
 Decide the next, when foes so potent join. 
 
 They who best know and prize themselves, least fear 
 
 To prize their enemies. To us their power 
 
 Is neither shame nor loss, to think them weak 
 
 No credit to our own ; nor shames it strength 
 
 To seek for aid, that oft prevents its need : 
 
 Which, not delayed, I counsel for our cause, 
 
 Against the next encounter, sure to fall. 
 
 None here would use a thought to look for help 
 
 To mighty Aidoneus where he sits 
 
 With Hecate forlorn. Nor, if unsought, 
 
 Perhaps for sullen ages may he rise 
 
CHRIST IN HADE3. 107 
 
 From his stern apathy : while these will wage 
 
 Eternal war ; and as the blue-eyed race 
 
 Of Asar, daily, in their own demesne, 
 
 On bannered fields, with joyful peal of arms, 
 
 Contend in tournament and knightly joust, 
 
 Or downright battle soon repaired so we, 
 
 Not with like gentle purpose and stern love, 
 
 But fierce unsated hate, the deadly rut 
 
 Of unrepairing rage, and pined revenge, 
 
 By slaughter unappeased, but fed by strife. 
 
 Shall meet a foe as strong and stern ; and, each 
 
 Unconquerable, to each the endless strife 
 
 Shall be defeat. In numbers we exceed, 
 
 And this advantage will our party still, 
 
 With augmentation, keep ; for every death 
 
 On earth above, save of the few who pass 
 
 To blest Elysium, is to us a birth : 
 
 While to their side, the kindred powers of heaven, 
 
 Unprocreant, immortal, and ordained 
 
 Infallible, yield not the numerous might 
 
 Of their addition. But we need not wait 
 
 The harvest of our race for multitude, 
 
 If not controlling, not to be controlled. 
 
108 CHRIST IN HADES 
 
 The sons of Coelus and of Odin sit, 
 
 Titans and fierce Einherier, undisturbed, 
 
 Each in their toparchy ; and have not heard 
 
 The larum of loud war, or from the noise 
 
 Of elemental conflict in these gulfs 
 
 Distinguished it. I counsel that from these, 
 
 Ambassadors, on early foot, entreat 
 
 Availful aid. Besides the advantage sought, 
 
 Twere to mankind much shame that our bad foes, 
 
 Who no relationship sustain or ties, 
 
 But of degree or rank, should make one cause, 
 
 And we, derived from the same loins, with one 
 
 Sole father, and one common spring 
 
 Of all our streams, not make one flood, one sea 
 
 Of confluent battle, and in one armed wave 
 
 Break on their leaguer, or main head of fight. 
 
 From Saturn, of the Titans youngest born, 
 
 So the Olympian parables unfold, 
 
 (Whom the pragmatic Judeans would fain 
 
 Demonstrate Noah,) sprang the race of gods. 
 
 Him vengeful Earth, we story, armed with steel 
 
 And saved from Uranus what time he thrust 
 
 His giant offspring from his sight beneath 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 109 
 
 The floor of day, but whom by Heaven himself 
 They celebrate preserved. From him, three sons 
 Shared all the earth we also said, and named 
 Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. But the Greeks 
 To old lapetus 1 trace the human stream, 
 Brother of Saturn, whom these call his son ; 
 From him loan, whence the lonians spread 
 Westward ; and from fair Gomer, eldest born 
 Of the same sire, the north derives its swarm, 
 That from the flowery south poured forth, to hive 
 In frost and cold ; from him it takes its name 
 Cimmeria, thence the Cymri, and from him 
 The Rome-recoiling German ; and his sons, 
 Guileless and simple, virtuous without lore, 
 And warlike without pomp, spread from the steep 
 Sides of hoar Caucasus to the region dark 
 That neighbors the sea-washed Atlantis vast, 
 And northward, at the entrance to these shades, 
 Shores on the cavernous pole. There oft, at night, 
 The solitary fisher hears upon his door 
 The hollow summons to his task, and finds 
 His boat deep-freighted, sinking to the edge 
 Of the dark flood, and voices hears, yet sees 
 
110 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 No substance ; but arrived where once again 
 His skiff floats free, hears friends to friends 
 Give lamentable welcome : the unseen 
 Shore resounds, and all the specious air 
 Weeps forth the names of father, brother, wife. 
 There the weak commonalty of mankind 
 Most haunt, reluctant exiles, who their fond 
 Abode choose regional to earth ; the more 
 Heroic enter the immediate heart 
 Of most profound perdition, and divide, 
 In these interior depths, their full-swayed power, 
 Imperial, with the ancient thrones of night. 
 
 But not the whole of our unhappy race 
 Make that dark journey : they who erred 
 Through Heaven s dark counsel, or by high constraint, 
 Just homicides, and violators bred 
 To violence, the rash incontinent, 
 And they who break injurious oaths, at death 
 Are wafted to deep-realmed Atlantis, o er 
 The wide sea unwounded by a keel. 
 Immense and dark the land ; all the remote 
 Wild region in one solemn shadow lies 
 Of green contiguous woods, with rivers spanned, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. Ill 
 
 That in their arms wind half the earth, and hills 
 Dependent, and dividing the blue air, 
 From arctic to antarctic Cold : and here 
 Live the new race a timid, twilight life, 
 Oblivious and expiatory, spent 
 In feeble war or chase. But soon, (so shows 
 Our divination dark, a gift no more, 
 Itself informs us, to suborn the praise 
 And adoration, as to gods, of men, 
 Once yielded to our oracles, on earth 
 For ever sealed ; yet who can cease to feel 
 A human interest in our common race, 
 And their dark history, storied or foretold?) 
 Soon shall this upper limbo, and in part 
 Elysium, dissolve ; the older breed 
 Of actual men shall touch the farther shore 
 Of ocean, and the hybrid race shall fade 
 Like hyperborean flowers, that in the rear 
 Of winter spring, and at his bleak regress 
 Fall, sickled by the steely touch of frost. 
 "West from the gulfed pillars of the wide- 
 Victorious Hercules, swift equine ships 
 Shall ride the unfooted ocean-road, before 
 
112 CHRIST IN 11 A D E 3 . 
 
 O erpassed but by the chariot of the sun ; 
 
 Or when his golden cup Alcmena s child 
 
 Employed for Erythea, and against 
 
 Old Ocean bent his bow, so fable tells. 
 
 These, one shall guide, whose greater deeds shall make 
 
 Mine, and the more vociferated fame 
 
 Of Jason in the voyage that called gods 
 
 To venture, and pressed Theseus to the oar. 
 
 The Dioscuri, and the aged might 
 
 Of Hercules an old-time tale, a faint, 
 
 Far-listened echo in the ears of men. 
 
 Him following, the sons of that stern race, 
 
 Here seated by themselves, but whose strong aid, 
 
 If I advise with wisdom, should be sought, 
 
 Shall there build up a world against the old, 
 
 And balance East and West, and wield far-swayed 
 
 But liberal empire, and themselves their king. 
 
 But what imports us more than such discourse. 
 Though what at other times best pleased to hear, 
 Is now to fortify our assaulted state 
 "With league proposed to their great ancestry, 
 Already storied in deific runes. 
 And to our own and theirs, the Titan brood, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 113 
 
 Antediluvian ; and to this end. 
 
 Let speedy heralds to the north and east, 
 
 Their early-seized partitions of this realm, 
 
 Fly. winged with your commands." Here ceased the 
 
 sound ; 
 
 And the pleased diet on his proper hand 
 The peaceful wand imposed, and bade him seek 
 The Titans with soft words ; the other charge 
 On fleet, aerial Perseus bestowed ; 
 Then rose, and filled the dusky height with shape 
 And feature, and, for dawn of danger, roused 
 The hoarse, prophetic thunder of a camp. 
 
BOOK VI. 
 
BOOK VI. 
 
 To punish them, though damned, in whom the light 
 
 Of heavenly counsel scarce displaced the dark 
 
 Of human ignorance, the rod is slight, 
 
 The penalty not extreme. This, to their gain, 
 
 Found the gigantic children of the north 
 
 In the dim house of Hela entertained 
 
 More like death s guests than victims, though at best 
 
 With dreary cheer. Their empire, dark and wild, 
 
 But not from Pandemonium less remote 
 
 Than Paradise, in the uttermost bleak sides 
 
 Of that deep region, stands, replete with fear 
 
 And howling dangers, but unvexed by fire. 
 
 Here pallid heroes act again their deeds 
 
 Rehearsed in runes, and emulate the fame 
 
 Of the bright Asar, 1 and their state by bards 
 
 Imagined, in great Asgard, seat of gods, 
 
118 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Or frozen Utgard, territory wide 
 
 Of giants mountain-tall, and strong as winds. 
 
 Here Nastrond s snaky marsh, whose waves freeze black, 
 
 And thaw in blood, spreads under curdling mists ; 
 
 Where base and coward lie, forever scared, 
 
 For punishment, with terrors ever new. 
 
 For the less monstrous, frowning Helheim stands. 
 
 Within whose icy halls the dead guests sit, 
 
 Unmoved, and mute through noiseless age on age. 
 
 But in more temperate air Vingolfa s bower 
 
 Shelters the tall blue-eyed, and flowers ; both fair, 
 
 But without bloom ; and Trudvang here in-walls 
 
 A space wide for a realm : as high up piled, 
 
 Valaskialf rises, roofed with blazing shields. 
 
 That spread a golden blush upon the clouds 
 
 Hovering on earth s near confines in the north, 
 
 And from beneath, like sinking Titan, light 
 
 A skiey arc above ; so vast it towers 
 
 O er deep Valhalla and its seated throng 
 
 Of godlike tenants : and the dome resounds 
 
 With fierce festivity and iron din. 
 
 Here, with the Asar and Asynior, sit 
 The Einherier, and Valkyrior virgin-eyed, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 119 
 
 Who each her chosen warrior wooed a-field 
 Binds to her breast, with golden tresses wound, 
 And pure-lipped kisses, for the only love 
 Of glory, yields : The Berserker. 2 who scorn 
 Armor, and armed, contemning coward herds 
 Hid under shields, and crippling from afar 
 The fair athletic limb with treacherous dint 
 Of foreign substance, hardened wood or steel 
 Crouch naked and apart, and tear their food 
 Untouched by fire, and drain the brimfull skulls 
 Of giants, while their insolent wild scorn 
 For Odin s self, and for the thunderer Thor, 
 The danger of his hammer scarce restrains. 
 Beneath the board huge wolves, like house dogs, slink, 
 Whose hunger glares, alike, on feast and guests ; 
 And haunting ravens flit above, with song 
 Dissonant ; or the dusky favorites perch, 
 And wing the foodfull hand imbrued with war. 
 
 Then rise the throng with frowns, who late like friends 
 Sat side by side, and spoke each other s praise, 
 And to the field rush stormful ; where each day 
 The Valkyrior choose the brave, and to the rest 
 Leave widowhood. Yet oft to him that falls 
 
120 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Comes the impartial maid, as when at first 
 She marked his red cheek in the pallid field : 
 Who as he fell stooping with arms dispread 
 Under her smiling locks of shadowy gold 
 Down from her checked, ethereal, snowy steed 
 Beheld her, and forgot defeat and shame ; 
 Nor heard the taunts of his too numerous foe 
 The dying warrior, on whom Glory s self, 
 Incarnate, seemed to smile, and bend her rays. 
 
 Now, on his broad-winged sandals, to this bourne 
 Of souls heroic, Perseus, from the bow 
 Of their great purpose sent who ruled his speed, 
 Came like an arrow ; nor once paused in all 
 His spacious flight, till far pursued, as when 
 A ship from the equatorial through half 
 The heavenly circle, down the polar sky 
 Sails till she hits the impenetrable cold. 
 At length his swift feet stayed upon the edge 
 Of the steep gulf Gringungagap, that yawns 
 From shore to shore, as wide as that which laves 
 Swart Afrio s forehead, and the pillared feet 
 Of Europe, her pale sister, on each hand. 
 No element, however, that which parts 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 121 
 
 Bleak Niffelheim from Muspelheim contained, 3 
 For oared or wafted way, with transport large, 
 Like that which from old Carthage to the wall 
 Of Roman empire, and to Afric back, 
 Defeating and defeated nations bore ; 
 But in its stead a void and dismal depth, 
 Whose dumb abyss afflicted more the ear 
 Than that when roars, with side-redoubled sound, 
 The inwashing sea gainst Calpe s windy stroke. 
 No other means of passage here appeared. 
 Than a faint rainbow, that, by what dim light 
 Strays hither from the earth, upon an arch 
 Of mist, foundationless, stands built, and spans 
 The dreadful space. Still he who boldly treads 
 Will find it firm, but with one fear he sinks 
 Into the steep vacuity, unstayed 
 By foot or grasping hand. Let him who knows 
 What glory is, bethink him if his feet 
 Have not o erpassed this bridge, in Sagas called 
 Bifrost, that leads to the abode of gods. 
 O er this, as on a solid arc of rock, 
 Or mortised timber firm, undaunted strode 
 The mighty courier ; and before him found, 
 6 
 
122 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Upon the farther coast, a barrier huge 
 
 Of icy mountains, upon either side 
 
 Stretched like a sheer precipitous wall, whose top 
 
 Rose inaccessible to sight. But he 
 
 Like wind or flame, aloft, unbaffled, sprang ; 
 
 And, like an eagle on a mountain s side, 
 
 Upright ascended, with ethereal step 
 
 Scaling the dizzy steep : availed him then 
 
 The winged gift compelled, for their one eye 
 
 And single tooth, from Ceto s hoary brood. 
 
 Now on the breathless peak he stood, and cast 
 On all sides round his armed image down, 
 That from the icy cliffs gleamed out infract. 
 And far across a plain, and o er wide seas, 
 And deep-sunk vales in which the glassy mist 
 Stood undistinguishable from lake or sea, 
 In the inferior horizon, he beheld 
 The top of huge Yalaskialf and the tower 
 Of godlike Odin ; that, far-off, appeared 
 A natural mountain, overshaped by art. 
 Soon on that side, precipitant, like a star, 
 Or meteor, he fell from peak to peak 
 Just touched with winged and scarce alighting feet, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 123 
 
 And reached the level vale ; through which so swift 
 
 Half ran, half flew the wing-dight, glorious child 
 
 Of golden Jove, the mist on the cold air 
 
 Blown from his nostrils and that half concealed 
 
 His burnished armor, and the nymph s clear gift, 
 
 The sun-forged helm whose day-like beams could make 
 
 Invisible whoever wore it, at his will 
 
 Behind him shone in the clear ether, stained 
 
 By his irradiant voyage, like the wake 
 
 Of a swift orient ship when it seems one 
 
 With that of the great sun, that sinks astern. 
 
 At length Valaskialf s gates and solemn porch 
 Stood wide and deep before him, only kept 
 By Cerbercan Fenris, who, too late, 
 Uproused his gaunt and monstrous corpse to bay 
 The foreign step. Before the snaky head 
 By the intruding Gorgophont displayed, 
 Fixed stood the stony glare in his wide eyes, 
 The huge portcullis of his craggy jaw 
 Stood open, and the warning howl, unheard, 
 Still swelled his rigid throat. So on he passed 
 And in Valhalla at the banquet stood 
 Unseen, beneath the wondrous helm, by eye 
 
124 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Of any god ; who wondered not the less 
 
 At the fixed stare, and long, affrighted howl 
 
 Of spectral ban- wolf, and the ominous croak 
 
 Of wheeling ravens, with the instant scream 
 
 Of joyful vultures from their bannered perch 
 
 Along the wall. Then runic Bragur, moved 
 
 With frenzied portent, loosed his robes and hair, 
 
 And to his shrieking harp loud raved the song 
 
 Of Ragnarok, 4 oft heard in Odin s hall 
 
 With imitative din. Profuse of death 
 
 The rune, sung with a battle s sound, and shrill 
 
 With desolation, fit to please the ear 
 
 Of dreaming horror : and its theme the great 
 
 And final war in which all gods and men, 
 
 And beasts, and giants join ; till in the end 
 
 The gloomy Surtur from the heart of night, 
 
 To their destruction by Alfader doomed, 
 
 Leaps, armed with flames, and burns the day s clear 
 
 light, 
 And stars, and sun, and earth and heaven away. 
 
 Came to the fearful strain as fearful pause, 
 And, at the moment, the all-golden child 
 Of Danae from his mystery flashed out 
 
CHRIST 1 ft HADEri. 125 
 
 Upon their wonder ; fair as Mars he towered. 
 
 Thus godlike tall, and terrible in arms. 
 
 Amazed the winking giants sat, and scarce 
 
 The clear sheen of his complete mail could bear, 
 
 And dazzling, sunny crest ; each, meantime, drew 
 
 The breath through his stretched nostrils back 
 
 Into his breast, distended with affright ; 
 
 Irresolute all, if they at once should fall 
 
 And worship, or strike dead the intruding guest : 
 
 Who spake well guarded between sight and sound, 
 
 Bright apparition and smooth speech, to leave 
 
 No interval. " I come to lead you, gods, 
 
 To Ragnarok : no more the mimic war 
 
 Ye need to wage ; now real danger sounds 
 
 To utterance of conflict, and the last 
 
 Occasion now of glorious strife, soon past, 
 
 Trumpets the universe to arms. The field 
 
 Awaits you where the Jotuns join their powers 
 
 Against our race, and Surtur sits aloof, 
 
 But doubt not shall avenge us, when the blow 
 
 Of God Alfader breaks the chain of fate." 
 
 At this, like magic scene, throughout the hall, 
 At once, the crowded banquet to a host 
 
126 CHRIST IN HA DBS. 
 
 Of warriors turned. He from his side forth drew 
 His adamantine sword, a beam of day 
 Tempered in deepest night, and waved them forth : 
 And from the towered and ample port, whose height 
 They threatened with their stature, crowd on crowd, 
 In thousands on thousands, rolled, as from a bay 
 Returning, when, at once, the land wind blows 
 And tide makes out, the many-murmured sea 
 Gluts through a gulf, pressed by the storm behind. 
 
 A smoother way, though in attempt and aim 
 
 Of equal enterprise, the wandering chief 
 
 Of Sals found, than tasked the bright and swift 
 
 Son of the golden rape ; yet passed a wide, 
 
 Abrupt, and dismal interval of life 
 
 In man, or plant, or reptile, which itself 
 
 Had seemed fraternal in that total death, 
 
 And solitude without an eremite 
 
 To feel it solitary. On he fared 
 
 O er plains like great Sahara, only marked 
 
 And measured by the sky, but more immense 
 
 And sea-like smooth and drear ; and seas o erpassed 
 
CHRIST IN H A D E 8 . 1 27 
 
 Like that which rots without a breaking wave 
 
 Upon its desert^ shore, and spreads above 
 
 Ingulfed Pentapolis, but rolls not out. 
 
 Nor in, at all her gates ; with patient feet 
 
 Ascended mountains self-revealed, whose tops 
 
 Burned, from their base, like stars at distant heights 
 
 In the immense of gloom ; then under earth, 
 
 Through caverns within caverns wound his way 
 
 In close ravines, across the gloomy roar 
 
 Of subterranean waters, and deep gulfs 
 
 That yawned immeasurable ; his only guide 
 
 Down these sunk mountains, and inverted heights, 
 
 The star that crowned his forehead, and inwove 
 
 His sable locks with gold, and flushed his eyes ; 
 
 Replete with eager fire. At length emerged 
 
 Into an ample region in the main 
 
 And common cavern of that lower world, 
 
 He sees what distant seemed like hills, and rocks 
 
 That fragmentary lie, confusedly heaped 
 
 Where left by some great deluge or of sea 
 
 Or sliding earth, with thundering glaciers borne 
 
 From higher regions, and whose awful shapes 
 
 Hint of old worship, fabling to the eye 
 
128 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 As if for sacrifice by giants piled. 
 
 Instant he lingered, and breathed, half aloud, 
 
 The Titans ! but none moved : some on the arm 
 
 Leaned far, with head depressed, or raised ; some lay 
 
 Recumbent, and half buried, where the soil 
 
 Had grown around them and the frequent rain 
 
 Of fire and ashes strown the unmoving bulk, 
 
 Incrusted, that it almost seemed a mound 
 
 Grotesque with human shape. With noiseless awe 
 
 The ambassador advanced, as if to rouse 
 
 Them loth, though for that purpose sought ; 
 
 And, nearer now, the bright surmounting star. 
 
 That lamped his wondering eyes and wary feet, 
 
 Bronzed with its light archaic, wondrous shapes, 
 
 Things fabulous-vast and rude, that nature seemed 
 
 Striving itself to art, in head or group 
 
 Of half formed sculpture struggling from the rock, 
 
 Or art Memnonian, to nature turned 
 
 In gradual process, broken and deformed 
 
 Under the noiseless hammer of strong Time : 
 
 These, near, with human shadows broke his gleam ; 
 
 And others, in the distance, half revealed, 
 
 Lay undefined, like fragments of the night 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 129 
 
 With which the path of morning is forewrit. 
 
 None looked, or turned, or deigned to mark who came 
 
 With unaccustomed light ; nor might his look 
 
 Have awed them into audience if seen, 
 
 Though, as he stood to gaze, his measure seemed 
 
 A cedar s shadow in the evening sun. 
 
 But soon thus proemed his Egyptian tongue : 
 
 " wonder never raised by gods or men ! 
 And see I then the more than men or gods, 
 Of that old world the citizens, here doomed 
 To this inert yet glorious rest of power 
 Deemed dangerous to Destiny itself? 
 The creatures of a greater time, and doom 
 Proportioned J less than your once selves, yet oh, 
 How greater than the greatest of our world ! 
 I from the later born of our one race, 
 And common mother, Earth, have hither sped 
 Ambassador, in their need against the power 
 Of ruined not ruling gods, to seek your aid, 
 Sought now, rest sure, where Destiny not fears 
 Your, but for her, omnipotent avail." 
 
 At this Hyperion roused himself, and ope d 
 His sunless eyes, assaying sight of whom 
 fi* 
 
130 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 He thus bespoke. "Art thou from earth, voice? 
 Then tell me if the sun still rolls through heaven : 
 An age, old with more ages, and I saw him not ; 
 Nor his translucent ray has washed these orbs 
 "With dewy light, and purged their thickening gloom 
 And fear has much possessed me that he conies, 
 Mid his long journey sunk in age or sleep, 
 From Ocean s doors no more, nor comes the moon, 
 That in his shadow walks, nor banded stars." 
 
 " I come not from the earth," the voice returned, 
 Yet doubt not that her green demesne is still 
 The journey of the sun, but from the heart 
 Of this Tartarean deep, where gods with men, 
 Or gods with gods more truly, wage once more 
 The ancient war : but weaker now the foe, 
 We stronger far ; yet not too strong to ask 
 The aid of your great potency for right. 
 We also for a fallen Saturn fight, 
 And his old cause, against revolted sons ; 
 Whom, for more shame, he finds in his defeat 
 Unfaithful ; though his first dethronement found, 
 With that Hesperian Saturn, no sweet isle 
 Beyond the ocean, where soft nymphs support 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 131 
 
 His hoary head, loosed from its golden load. 
 And bed him in their bosoms, in his ear 
 Whispering the while old tales that make him dream 
 Himself still master of the earth and air." 
 
 This heard Prometheus, where he lay supreme 
 Upon his rock, from which a tree, of those 
 Unsightly roots that rude and sparsely grow, 
 But never verdurous, in that clime, had forced 
 Its tough gnarled bole and split the stone ; 
 As if from his indomitable life. 
 One nature in the rock and him, it grew, 
 Fed by the excess and bounty of his strength. 
 And thus he spake, but took no greater heed 
 Of any presence there, than if the voice 
 Had fallen from the air, or out of heaven. 
 
 " Who speaks of war to us ! who have subdued 
 All strength in armies lodged, or single arm, 
 Omnipotence himself have dared, and chained 
 With his own chain thege bands that bind us fast j 
 And by existence here in this dark pit 
 And closet of the earth, still check his power, 
 Limit his infinite, and imprison Jove 
 In his imperial domain. To act 
 
 x. 
 
132 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Strong should he be who acts, or weak, advanced, 
 
 Or overthrown is weakness, and shows need. 
 
 But he is strong who with Omnipotence 
 
 Or wills without constraint, or else defies, 
 
 And I defy. Then let the eternal power 
 
 That knits the universe with his strength, and feels 
 
 It through, and wields it as one moves his limbs, 
 
 Hurl himself on me, I stir not this arm, 
 
 Yet in the end shall conquer : let him break 
 
 His aggregated thunders, storm on storm. 
 
 Through deafened ages, till he lose, at last, 
 
 The reckoning of his blows, it is to me 
 
 But one concussion, heard, not felt, or felt, 
 
 Unpained ; for I am all one thought, one will, 
 
 And that is to defy." He spake, like one 
 
 Silent thenceforth, and all the Titans groaned 
 
 A stern response, as at the skiey fall 
 
 Of region-thunder neighbored mountains raise 
 
 A deep and sullen clamor, long prolonged. 
 
 Yet the sage emissary to despair 
 Gave not his purpose, but inspired to act, 
 Unconscious whence the courage came or thought 
 For such adventure, instantly advanced 
 
I II I! I | I I \ II A II If . \ > 
 
 To the //real ather-t. and with hi* :-l:ili 
 Oaducean. charmed, unlinked lii.s r-|i:iin, and freed 
 I ln- de.-pin; f M-cc of hinewy neck ;md limb. 
 Awhile with th<- trungc motion of free power, 
 Ketorcd from HO long lap:-:e that it, ;-;eem-d pven. 
 And |,;i--:-ion:ili: incipience ( ,f !.!n,ii;rlil. 
 AH to wh;it, mi-Hit, j,roce<-d ( ,f t,h:it, ^re;it j/ift, 
 \\ . ;.k an the unb rent lied y<-anlin^ of :in hour 
 Fato M aged rebel and JOVC H tyrant lay. 
 Then. UH the ca r tires and for a Hpaco 
 
 LeaVCH wliere he |.-;,n,:<| upon the //uliy coaHt 
 
 II aveniH void, and tin: emerged rocks in air, 
 
 Inflowing on his HtepH, anon ho roarH 
 
 Up from the dangerouM main againHt the hi#h. 
 
 PercuHHcd, resounding, limitary nhore, 
 
 So rOic the Titan, and hin Htru^gling armn 
 
 M<led in the air, :i if he hou; hl, 
 The power who on his impioui htren^th had lixed 
 With unrelenting hand the band of law, 
 IndiHHolute, though a world gn-w old the while; 
 
 M :ilitilii- the < -;n d Hell ingulfed tlieHU Wold-. 
 O Jove and do I fed the,. yi< I<1 at l<-n; lh. 
 
 And tempt me to be God? yet tempt in vain ! 
 
134 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 No ! though the universe besides should feel 
 Unworth and misery, and for that cause 
 Be seized with instant longing to rush back 
 Into thy bosom, I remain, and I 
 Deny thy greatness, greater in myself. 
 Yet should it be of fate and not of thee 
 That I am loosed this chain, but for her power 
 Not worn ; thou, who hast with me so long 
 Parleyed in thunder, and with lightning fought 
 Gainst the impregnable fort of my disdain, 
 Then shall I see if thou with change of place 
 Shalt conquer me, as I have thee o erthrown, 
 Though with all gods, and earth, and heaven to aid." 
 
 Then old lapetus, of his stern son 
 Impatient, and his long inactive scorn, 
 Upheaved his gray paternal head and rose, 
 And cited their despair to answer hope 
 In words like these. " brethren bound 
 In these afflictions, shall we wake, or sleep 
 For ever ? rather should I not say die ! 
 Here stretched until we turn again to earth, 
 Our mother, as they tell, to whose dark womb, 
 Meseems, we have returned to find our grave ; 
 
CHRIST IN UADE3. 135 
 
 Or living, do but live as parts of her, 
 And she but live in us, as in these rocks. 
 Not without stern endeavor shall we climb 
 To heaven, and the stores of thunder reach, 
 That give us mastery, though, as ye have heard, 
 Our right at length sinks the fixed beam of fate. 
 Which way first opens, there success will prove 
 This change in fortune, or in time prevent 
 Our worse defeat: therefore this herald star. 
 Whose human, pleasing voice has filled the ear 
 Of dateless silence here with sound, whose theme 
 Is life and strength in arms, and vital stir 
 Beyond this tideless realm, all they will rise 
 And follow, who henceforth companion me." 
 
 He spake ; and at the sound, as when that famed 
 And wondering traveller a great city saw 
 Turned into stone, and all the peopled streets 
 Made marble, nearer life than pillared groups 
 In sculptured Memphis or great Athens set, 
 Noble and merchant, citizen and slave 
 Stand statue-like, with rigid hand, that grasps 
 The stiffened mane, the warrior, prompt to mount 
 A reined equestrian shapely rock, that shows 
 
136 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 The stony foam in his wide nostrils, curved 
 By his long-parted breath, but uncollapsed, 
 What time a disenchanting trumpet blows, 
 The warrior mounts, the steed with fiery hoof 
 Kesilient starts, the crowd throng in and out, 
 And all the city thunders with the burst 
 Of instantaneous motion, or if where 
 Great Arthur and his champions around 
 Sit on their dreaming steeds in warlike muse, 
 Sage Merlin s wand, unburied to restore 
 To British chivalry its strength and flower, 
 Should split their viewless prison, forth they start 
 With levelled spears, but find no giants now, 
 Themselves grown giants to their dwindled race, 
 Like these, or those weak figures both to express 
 Such magnitudes up from their wearied couch 
 The ease-tired Titans rose ; but with a sound 
 As when an earthquake, from the centre, tears 
 Grainst its circumferent motion through the earth, 
 And for an instant checks its solid wheel ; 
 That shakes down cities with the sudden pause. 
 
BOOK VII. 
 
BOOK VII. 
 
 O Spirit of sweet Song, and child of Heaven, 
 
 Miraculous Music ! who upon thy string 
 
 Hast caught, and, more subliming, poured the noise 
 
 Of bursting thunder, and the ocean s wild, 
 
 Vast monotone, and the shriek of hovering winds ; 
 
 And, of slight instrument dost with a touch 
 
 Give to our ears the sempiternal chime 
 
 Of heavens through heavens revolving, I full oft 
 
 Have heard thee and rejoiced. But thou, stern harp, 
 
 ^Eolian, golden, of heroic fame, 
 
 Through which the airy spirits of the dead 
 
 Move viewless, and for ever breathe like winds 
 
 The Manes of the great ! for other sound, 
 
 Who, with profaner hand, shall tune thy strings, 
 
 Tense with the touch of Homer, and to fame 
 
 Revived, his haply listening heroes bid, 
 
140 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Though in a darker state, appear in arms ? 
 Yet thou, deemed dead, immortal-young and fair, 
 Divine Calliope where in some cave 
 By old Scamander, or the yellow wave 
 Of Tiber, sitting, hushed in marble trance 
 Of statue pale, or thy own shadow hid 
 Shalt hear my early strain, and lest the attempt 
 Jar on thy golden dream, thyself with touch 
 Of many-memoried fingers aid the song. 
 
 Might creatures be called happy, the dark stream 
 Of whose existence from the only source 
 Of happiness is cut off, such might be deemed 
 The earth-sprung powers in hell s begun campaign, 
 Plumed with sucli desperate fortune, and their state 
 Of sullen passion into action changed, 
 And busy hope and fear ; the tideless bay, 
 Their solitary port, that to the main 
 Of being heaved no wave, uproused once more, 
 And swelling with the self-same tides of power 
 And sympathy, that move both earth and heaven. 
 They all who toiled, or idled in the camp,. 
 Drew from the fresh and glowing breeze of life 
 A seeming health, and to their aspect pale 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 141 
 
 Apparent bloom in cheek and lip, and fire 
 
 And sparkle in the eye. Some their new powers 
 
 Tried on the elements, to invent strange arms, 
 
 Missiles that on their object should beget 
 
 New weapons, wounding wide, or in the air 
 
 Burst horrible, and fall with showers of fire. 
 
 Yet here but little used, nigh useless made, 
 
 Where swifter means and motion stead, and weights 
 
 Thrown irresistible by a living arm. 
 
 Others defensive armor wrought, to fit 
 
 All movements, welted firm, and closed to search 
 
 Of tempered weapons, or the subtle wound 
 
 And venom of insinuating fire. 
 
 And beings now of female form appeared, 
 But haggard beauty, to their former selves 
 Such as the day-paled moon, by early men 
 Distinguished from a cloud : and still their eyes 
 Gave light to their wan beauties, and seemed stars 
 Wandered from heaven, or such as hear the knell 
 Of fading night, with twofold service loud, 
 Rung by the shrilly summoner of morn : 
 Nor did their womanhood make hell more fair, 
 Nor its harsh gloom might mitigate for man : 
 
142 CHRIST IN HADE8. 
 
 Their sole employ, before this warlike stir, 
 Seated apart, to mourn, and like unseen, 
 Transfigured Progne, grieve out all their night 
 With tales of treacherous love in life long past, 
 And go through all the story of the world, 
 And all their scorns and loves, here turned to hate 
 If lust, indifference if love. But now 
 Familiar war with pleasing dread subdued, 
 And glorious lure of famed heroic strength 
 Attracted these stern dames again to mix 
 With hated men. Nor did they want some sense 
 Of old association in their sex 
 With warlike feats on earth, by them admired, 
 For them achieved. Mycaena s rugged queen, 
 Frowned back by stern .ZEgisthus, turned 
 To Agamemnon, who turned not, nor met 
 Her eyes, but with his own, amidst the crowd, 
 Sought Iphigenia. Helen armed the pale 
 Priamides, to whom the presence there 
 Of great Achilles was more sad than hell. 
 Electra to Orestes half gave heed, 
 Half to Pylades, and the manly queen 
 Penthesilea on Achilles gazed, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 143 
 
 And marked the hand that wounded, and the eye 
 
 That other wounds might make and heal : and midst, 
 
 Sat, in a hushed and unintruded space, 
 
 Eternal Homer, and his thousand-toned 
 
 Continuous harp, to that immortal tale 
 
 Of Troy subverted, and the adventured way 
 
 Of gray Ulysses, rung with sounds that awed 
 
 More than Dictsean thunder ; and which drew 
 
 To that dim deep the all-illumined shape 
 
 Of glory down from heaven : Achilles smiled, 
 
 The Atridae, and grand Ajax, his self-judge 
 
 And executioner, smiled each to see 
 
 His virtues and the faults, his virtue s best 
 
 And best loved flatterers, distinct alike, 
 
 In the just mirror of his Jove-like thought 
 
 Reflected ; and more wondered to perceive 
 
 Himself made greater to himself, and deeds 
 
 Heroic, and armed fortitude admired 
 
 More in rehearsal than in conscious act. 
 
 Which to repeat, indeed, full soon they met 
 An unexpected summons. For the Northern powers, 
 Advanced far as to the aspect of armed men, 
 Reckless, and blinded to the swift affront 
 
144 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Of their bright leader, and remonstrance loud 
 To their mistaken fury, with unchecked, 
 Headlong proclivity to whatever seemed 
 To promise their sole joy, upon them fell, 
 Unsignalled, as a self-loosed weight of snow 
 Tears down some Alpine summit to the vale. 
 But like a torrent they, or like a sea, 
 Received it, and up-foamed, with wasteful roar 
 Swallowing its ingulfed wrath, and melted soon 
 The fractured and dissevered mass of power. 
 
 Perseus first himself, withstanding, met 
 The immediate onset, overborne by Thor, 
 And backward thrown upon his empty hands, 
 With head and feet bent under, and each link 
 Of his Hephestian armor rent from each ; 
 That anvil for his stroke he seemed, whose sledge 
 Stayed not ascent with gain of gathered force ; 
 But ere contrary hurled, it hung in poise, 
 While Thor glared up and down and saw but air, 
 So swift his foe escaped. But better matched, 
 Achilles of the sworded Odin -stood 
 The fierce encounter. Yet they lingered both 
 Awhile, and gazed, and each admired and praised 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 145 
 
 The other for a god. So when a bull 
 
 That through the wild his vanquished kind pursues, 
 
 Or hunts the wide-mouthed bay of wounded dogs, 
 
 His hunters erst, by chance a lion sees, 
 
 With lowered horn he stares ; the bestial king 
 
 Struck with his aspect, imitating, glares 
 
 "With large recumbent head and glowing eyes, 
 
 His shaggy strength reposed upon his loins, 
 
 Thrown back and bent to spring. And soon uproused 
 
 The Achaean lion, but at distance first 
 
 Put. forth his strength ; and from his hand a spear 
 
 Sprang effortless, like lightning from the arm 
 
 Of alway-tranquil Jove with aim as sure, 
 
 But from the tempered barrier which the arm 
 
 Of Odin raised, glanced downward and struck through 
 
 Where joined the ankle his supporting foot ; 
 
 Who forward fell, but with directed force 
 
 Threw all his height into one blow, heaved high, 
 
 And far descending, and the steely hand 
 
 Cleft from the wielding arm of Thetis son, 
 
 Deemed woundless, but in vain baptized in Styx. 
 
 Amazed Achilles stood with doubt and pain, 
 While Odin to his Vulcan-mated feet 
 7 
 
146 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Restored his stature. But, soon reproduced, 
 The living from the severed member snatched 
 The fallen sword ; and now his two-edged grasp 
 Each plies, nor in the dazzled space between 
 Leaves interval ; and shrilling winds rush forth, 
 With momentary swiftness, from the sway 
 Of their immense, wide-sweeping falchions, oft 
 With dreadful shock colliding, and forced light, 
 That kissed the gloom at every touch of steel. 
 And what would be the end might almost seem 
 Doubtful to Fate, where each with so great fame 
 Stood forth, and ancient laurels now refreshed, 
 Or withered more and rent, and strength so great 
 As if the embodied West and glorious East 
 Full-armed, in single duel met, should try 
 Their past and future quarrel for the world. 
 But, on the instant, now above their heads 
 The darkness darkened more, and through the hosts 
 The tongues of wide-loosed fury ceased, at sounds 
 That ruined ruin, with the horrid stun 
 Of falling rocks, and swift projectiles hurled, 
 Resistless, from the height ; so, ere the earth, 
 Their solid roof, unpillared by deep mines. 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 147 
 
 Down thunders, where, beneath the surface, delve 
 Gain s swarthy slaves a shower of loosened ore 
 Foretells destruction : but still dreadlier fell 
 War s deadly forgery, spears and darts that rung 
 Like iron on iron shivered, where they struck 
 The adamant field, rebounding, or pierced through 
 Armor and armed, pinned to the fissured rock, 
 Inextricably, or where crushed between 
 Nether and upper flint, shield worse than wounds, 
 They lay afflicted with the dint that fell 
 Thick as falls hail, when, in the dropping year, 
 To rocky Sipylus bearded Winter climbs, 
 And marbles with his look the ceaseless tears 
 Of the invisible Niobe of the air. 
 
 As when a wind upon the sea descends, 
 And hurls himself along, and holds his foe 
 Beneath, who leaps against him in mad waves, 
 If rain pours down with thunder, they their strife 
 Both cease with mingled moan and dash, and flood 
 Drowns flood and wind these in mid-tempest stood 
 Becalmed, and suffered storm. But impious Cain 
 From where he lay, with hands and feet transfixed, 
 Crucified on a rock, supine, thus loud 
 
148 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Blasphemed. " Jehovah, or whatever power, 
 
 Hidden in gloom, exhausts his store of ills 
 
 Armed coward, great, in accidents ! who vaunts? 
 
 Of goodness, and the original pretends 
 
 Himself of soul and spirit, with discourse 
 
 Of holiness and justice, but brute strength 
 
 Employs against us still ; think not defeat 
 
 Follows assault though unresisted found. 
 
 Pile earth and heaven upon these fettered limbs, 
 
 And me to ruin, thy creation make 
 
 One ruin, and thyself thereon sit throned, 
 
 And I stretched under ; I am still as far 
 
 Above thee. and my unimprisoned soul, 
 
 Untouched, and free from chains, on all sides space 
 
 Smiles out upon thee in disdain. In arms 
 
 Strong I believe thee r author of a strength 
 
 Greater than found in thee, the will and power 
 
 That in himself he finds to be unpraised 
 
 Yet just, good, yet not hourly kneed and sung 
 
 By angels, nor reflected in their smiles, 
 
 Who, though thus crushed, can deem ? or who believe 
 
 Thy nature could produce aught to oppose 
 
 And hate it, foreign to itself, and doomed 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 149 
 
 Therefore to punishment ? Or, if thy pride 
 
 Must claim our origin, as misbegot 
 
 Unnatural offspring, why not then destroy 
 
 Thy alien creatures, and the ill-tuned harp 
 
 New string, harmonious with perfect praise ? 
 
 They nought so much desire ; and to unmake 
 
 At least might prove thee maker, which till then 
 
 Whate er thy power contingent, or by fate, 
 
 Or elder birth bestowed, and kept, once gained, 
 
 By cunning, and made sacred with the awe 
 
 Of forged religion, I shall dare to doubt ; 
 
 Though with more waste of thunder urged and noise, 
 
 Thine ancient dialectics, or enforced 
 
 With arguments like these, so apt at hand, 
 
 And potent to convince those formed for pain." 
 
 To whom thus scoffing, from .the gloom a voice 
 Responded in like vein : " Great Cain, our foe 
 And signal dread, but dangerous most to Heaven ! 
 We own the honor great, and not unfelt, 
 To be mistaken for all-swaying Jove ; 
 Nor does our power proved on thee warrant less, 
 Nor the deep pain thy speech betrays ; but yet, 
 Sooth to confess, we only use. like Him, 
 
150 
 
 CHE 1ST IN HADES. 
 
 The just prerogative of superior force 
 
 To afflict inferior natures, without grant 
 
 Of privilege to retort. Of old indeed, 
 
 We little thought, at variance ourselves, 
 
 His rebels to have punished, and much less 
 
 Reasoned his cause : which now I do to show 
 
 Thee imbecile in intellect, thy sole boast, 
 
 As body, though more obstinate in will, 
 
 Tis granted, than are some ; yet less by far 
 
 Than many a brute, whose ignorance, the cause 
 
 Of his low fortitude, had been also less 
 
 Perhaps, had he, like thee, for ages been 
 
 Academist in this unfettered school 
 
 Of intricate and dark theology. 
 
 Learn, sophist, that Jehovah s right obtains 
 
 Not from his being this or that, but is, 
 
 Because it seems, and has the power 
 
 To enforce what it pretends, and punish those 
 
 Its claim withstanding. Higher proof who needs ? 
 
 Or what superior sanction could the fact 
 
 (Though proved) of our creation to his deeds 
 
 A fford ? or what thy arrogated proof 
 
 Of genesis by our destruction shown ? 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 151 
 
 Vain argument ! for we ourselves unmake 
 Both what we neither make, nor yet restore. 
 Or what propounds the imprecated bolt 
 Annihilating that but itself leaves nought 
 To the annihilated, and of proof 
 Made unintelligent ; or if restored, 
 After what lapse of time, yet who shall know 
 Whether by power extrinsic or innate ?" 
 
 Thus, to the atheist, the libertine, 
 Dark Asmod, subtlest litigant for ill 
 In the infernal forum ; who his foe 
 Reviled, and with injurious defence, 
 Alike derided Heaven. But now in him, 
 And in the angel-host, and those oppressed 
 Beneath the advantage that their station gave, 
 Hearing took sudden captive tongue and hand 
 And every power, as all a coming sound 
 Discerned, yet distant, indescribable, 
 Nor to be told if it was tread or flight, 
 Or under ground, or both in earth and air ; 
 As when an earthquake, on its march along 
 The Mediterranean shore, or o er the sea 
 Submerged and sunk beneath its bottom, comes 
 
1 52 CHRIST IN IIADEB 
 
 By whirlwinds trumpeted. Nor did they doubt, 
 Who heard the sound, that, for these atheist scoffs, 
 God, as not seldom in their impious den, 
 Had bared his terrible and still lurking hand. 
 
 At once for flight, the ethereous army formed 
 Their hovering ranks, and on delayless wing 
 Sought a near mount ; and on its farther side 
 Descending, perched, as on a leeward cliff 
 The ominous flocks of ocean wait the storm. 
 
BOOK VIII. 
 
 7 
 
BOOK VIII. 
 
 IN earth above, on the celestial round 
 
 Open to heaven, and clad with air and wave, 
 
 And on that side of the great polar stream, 
 
 Where the bold Genoese touched the strand, till then 
 
 The virgin of the sea, a marble stands, 
 
 Whose shape by old Ilissus many a one 
 
 Might equal, none excel ; a fresh antique, 
 
 Birth of the old world and the new, that shows 
 
 How Orpheus at the twilight doors of hell, 
 
 Fast by lulled Cerberus, with forward stoop 
 
 And hand above his patient brow, explored 
 
 The hushed and awful deep. And thus, arrived 
 
 To where he left of late his numerous league, 
 
 With standards fixed and warlike sheen and din, 
 
 To find it silent now and void and dim, 
 
 Gazed Cecrops : and the hindered Titans tood 
 
156 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Expecting when his voice should clear the cause 
 Of their delay. But nothing heard or saw 
 The infernal pilot, whom conjecture strange 
 Held dreamy mute, and fixed on leaden foot. 
 For them dispersed upon the battered field, 
 Like fear possessed of heavenly argument 
 Proved perilous to the disputant, as those 
 Who brought their mischief, and on pinions fled ; 
 And for the passion of whatever ill 
 Moved toward them, like a storm-predicting host 
 In deep Sahara, these, from sight and sound 
 Self-buried, lie, and wait the dismal wave. 
 
 At length he spake ; concealing what he feared. 
 That they through paler after-thought had fled, 
 Doubting the dread alliance which he brought, 
 Of equal power to injure as to aid. 
 " Or have they gone, for whom I broke your rest, 
 sons of Uranus, impatient grown 
 To seek the foe, or by a greater power 
 Dispersed, without a vestige fled oh thought 
 Too sad, though but conjecture, for a dream 
 Improbable ! I doubt ; nor can surmise 
 Which or what else befallen : but this I know, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 157 
 
 That in this dreary void I left a host. 
 
 Like gods in strength, and men in multitude, 
 
 And, but by you, unmatched in earth or hell." 
 
 To whom attentive Cain made quick reply. 
 " Fled even sight should not convict the eye 
 Of one who knows us, although welcomed back 
 To worse affliction, than thy absence sought 
 With vain-successful mission to avoid. 
 Nor yet by greater force you find us fallen, 
 But by mistake and guile, thanks to the prompt 
 And helpful malice of inveterate Heaven." 
 
 At this, all they who cowered beneath the storm, 
 Still felt, though past, of their angelic foe, 
 All to whom hope, undying, though shot through 
 With every star s malignancy, or pride, 
 Or curious inclination to behold 
 Their great allies, gave strength, uprose and stood ; 
 Some towering straight and firm, some half upright ; 
 And some from deep gulfs labored up, and gazed 
 On the large brood of Ccelus, whom their mate 
 Held with mute gesture and persuasive mien 
 Adroitly governed, yet, himself. like him 
 Who yoked the lions, or who first bestrid 
 
158 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 The snorting steed for battle, on the amazed 
 
 Confronted infantry seen moving swift, 
 
 And footless, like a god, half awed, half proud. 
 
 G-yes and Cottus loomed in sight, and huge 
 Briareus with a hundred folded hands, 
 Typho3us terrible with as many heads, 
 Each breathing storms, immense Enceladus, 
 Coeus and Creus, female Themis stern, 
 More feared than loved, and pale Mnemosyne ; 
 And, from behind, Hyperion looked down, 
 Like his rebated orb, when half beneath, 
 And half above, he leans upon the earth, 
 And on the shadowy hills and forests bleak 
 That edge upon his light, and the great world 
 About to rise above him, frowning night 
 And cold against his beam, casts down, from far, 
 One wide, last look of majesty supreme. 
 
 These to the eye of Cain familiar seemed, 
 And nearer to himself, though he with those 
 Of younger date, and less affined, stood leagued. 
 And now, erect, with hoary might redressed, 
 And like an earth-fast oak that stronger seems, 
 Its twisted fibre bared, when sacred made 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 159 
 
 To vengeance by the unvictimed bolt of Heaven, 
 Than when its rooted strength and verdant tower 
 Turned the direct north wind -before them stood 
 Their Elder, and undoubted paramount. 
 
 But thoughtful most the seeming shame and loss 
 Of his confounded myrmidons to retrieve, 
 Soon, at his hest, a rousing trumpet broke 
 With melancholy clamor through the deep. 
 Nor might the chains of Erebus, nor the draught, 
 Lethean, of unmixed despair, nor fear 
 Of Heaven s thunder, nor superior force 
 In men, or gods, or elemental powers, 
 Retain them idle at that summons blown : 
 But, to the confines of the sight, the field 
 Uprose, throughout, and armied all the space ; 
 Thus, when the swooping wind a pliant marsh 
 Of osiers bends along, its wings o erpast, 
 They rise like one, and stand with whispering leaves. 
 Nor did the Titans less in these admire 
 Each splendid feature, burnished shield emblazed, 
 And silver-seeming limb, and pictured crest 
 With shading wings or plume, than they in those 
 Their monstrous breadth and stature, (for their bulk, 
 
160 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Whether on horizontal line it poised, 
 Or vertical, seemed hard to tell,) and strength 
 And aspect, as of things in nature, hills. 
 Or massy clouds in the horizon heaped, 
 And shaped by storms, were those, as these. 
 Endued with life and motion. But not thus 
 The bearded Asar, as they frowned apart, 
 Or without order started from their fall, 
 Saw the huge ancients ; and the comers deemed 
 The Jotuns without doubt, spirits of fire 
 And aching frost, the native powers of hell ; 
 Part of their myth unrealized till now. 
 
 And soon perhaps the war had sprung anew 
 Between these loose allies, had not again 
 The airy plague, returning with worse shock, 
 Made manifest the common foe. But now 
 The assailants hovered lower, and more near 
 The flight of warriors to their quarry came, 
 Like vultures stooping on a conquered field. 
 And some, with bolder fury, on the cast 
 Of spear and javelin following, sword in hand, 
 Leaped down ; but the main army kept the air ; 
 And each strange foes, and stronger, finds to cope, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 161 
 
 And not inferior, though beneath. Wide raged 
 
 Tisiphone and her fateful sisters, sprung 
 
 From parricide, or the monstered womb of Night. 
 
 Their living twine, they resting, to the ground 
 
 Hung sleeping ; or, if seated, Spread around ; 
 
 But now a thousand serpoftls hissed the ear, 
 
 And from their eyes shot madness. Otus fought, 
 
 And Ephialtes, and the iron blows 
 
 Of Steropes and Brontes clashed in air. 
 
 The triple-hundred hands of Gyes leagued 
 
 With Cottus and Briareus, searched the gloom, 
 
 And dragged down winged squadrons, as the arts 
 
 Of fowlers in a snare surprise their prey. 
 
 And loud Typhceus, fierce, together drove 
 
 Whole armies whirled and crushed, or wide dispersed 
 
 With storms blown east and west, and north and south ; 
 
 As when a tempest with the fluttering leaves 
 
 Of a stripped forest plays, and on the air 
 
 The scattered tresses of shorn Ceres strows. 
 
 But who, though frenzied with a strength like theirs, 
 And by heroic meditation stern 
 Trained like an athlete for the mighty theme, 
 Would dare to sing the strife where powers diverse, 
 
162 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Diversely armed, and numberless to thought, 
 Ranged, in one field, the depths and heights of hell ; 
 To see, if sight might be, as from the peak 
 Of a jarred mountain one beholds the sea 
 Beneath, and storm above, and vapor mixed, 
 In the wild clouds, with light and glancing fire, 
 And all the sky involved with one wide wreck 
 Of solid earth, in whirlwind, with torn trees 
 And human fabric in the darkened air : 
 Or as if rather the essential powers 
 Of water, earth, air, fire, at once should meet, 
 In naked elemental force, to try 
 Which should destroy and reign ; nor might it seem 
 Less greatly terrible when the four chief powers 
 Of hell encountered, in a war that left 
 No second battle theirs, but one full act 
 Of many made, and all the lingering plot 
 And circumstantial march of ruin marred 
 With the swift access of inbreaking death. 
 But suddenly on the night, the element 
 Of tumult now, as once of silence, fell 
 A vast and spreading circle of clear light, 
 That from the side next paradise encroached 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 163 
 
 Upon the darkness, thickened more beyond ; 
 
 And soon revealed the vexed and horrid space 
 
 With all its battle painted clear, and held 
 
 Distinct in its bright orb, in depth and height 
 
 And utmost bounds ; as if celestial day 
 
 Had windowed their opaque dark roof, and purged 
 
 The atmospheric dross from all the clime ; 
 
 And, on its edge, swept in vast demi-cirque, 
 
 The host of angels, unconcealed, it drove 
 
 Wide o er their foes beneath ; and far beyond 
 
 Alighting, they began retreat, by these 
 
 Close followed : with what cause for fear 
 
 Behold, and wonder One of human shape, 
 
 In simple guise, unarmed, and o er his head 
 
 A white and hovering dove ! and far behind, 
 
 On all sides flocking to this emblem fair 
 
 As to a standard, legions wide-displayed, 
 
 And deep with multitude, the prospect closed ; 
 
 But without spear or martial sign or sound, 
 
 Clad in the candid drapery of peace. 
 
 Yet were their garments clear not touched, nor feet 
 
 Pained by the burning soil ; for, godlike, they 
 
 In moving walked not, but came gliding smooth, 
 
164 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 . Like stars adown the sky, or clouds along 
 The unimprinted air moved by the wind. 
 As from its shores, a shining river floats, 
 (Such things are told) unmingled through a pool, 
 So came the argent host ; and from the van 
 Of glory, seeking darkness and the shades 
 Of deeper regions, all the dusky bands 
 Before them fled, like night before the morn. 
 
 Oh ! that the voice were mine, and mine the ear 
 And visionary power of that inspired 
 First builder of a Christian song, whose speech 
 Prophetic, laboring things too high for verse, 
 Foretold the end of time doomed at the sound 
 And dreadful confirmation by the hand 
 Of that eternal angel on the earth 
 And restless sea upborne and all the scenes 
 Of glory and of darkness in the act 
 Of consummated earth, and heaven withdrawn 
 With awful pomp, and solemn trumpets blown. 
 Pouring alternate ecstasy and loud woe. 
 I too must sing of judgment : not thy theme, 
 Celestial seer, the mid-air throne and throng 
 Beneath, paining the eye with multitudes 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 165 
 
 - v 
 
 From the discovered depths of earth and sea 
 Uprising to the world-dissolving trump, 
 And filliifgJueast and west and high and deep, 
 But of the angels, fallen first, and so 
 Prejudged in him their head, and head no less 
 Of human faction : On whom now retired, 
 Before the unshadowed face of heaven expressed 
 In human lineaments, both friends and foes, 
 And monstrous things and shapes, a gloomy rout 
 From the extremest boundaries of pain. 
 "Why done, or with what hope none knew ; but him 
 They knew the greatest, and to where he sat, 
 Still like their god, though bowed, and by despair 
 Self-turned to stone, cast up an awful look 
 Of doubt and supplication. He his eyes 
 Fixed on the spectacle, like one long blind. 
 Who stares, suspectful of some dread approach ; 
 Then half uprose, and thrice again made feint 
 Of rising, ere the strength in his pale limbs 
 His stubborn heart diffused to bear him up : 
 But stood, at length, with air supreme o er fear, 
 A shape of heaven, or with such look and mien 
 As God himself, who now in human form 
 
166 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 He dared confront, had rather been arrayed, 
 Shaped to the eye of heroes, when they prayed 
 To Jove the arbiter. Soon, through the ranks, 
 Opening in vista wide and deep, he moved 
 To meet the bright invasion. Armed he came, 
 Plutonian, measureless, and dread as night ; 
 Whose king indeed he seemed, and fit to reign 
 Over all powers ; and wide around he cast 
 A darkness at his coming, as a storm 
 That from the ridge of some bleak mountain torn 
 With all its clouds, moves down in earth and sky 
 To overwhelm the sun. But when his strides 
 Had measured half the space with what design 
 Who knows but He who gave him power thus far ?- 
 He faltered, and with haughty steps reversed, 
 Before the calm severity of mien 
 And feature in his opposite, retired ; 
 But lingered so, and sought against the shame 
 Of his retreat to hold himself upstayed, 
 Each backward step impressed the bedded flint 
 Whereon he set his strength and sought to stand ; 
 Till at the gates of the dark fort which held 
 The keys of heavenly access, and of that pit 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 167 
 
 Sole egress, their appointed keeper paused. 
 
 Immense they stood, shut by almighty power, 
 
 And barred secure against less force and skill 
 
 In human or infernal siege applied. 
 
 And here, at bay, the great apostate turned 
 
 Full on his enemy, and frowned despair ; 
 
 And roused his strength, and to his soul, sublime 
 
 With sense of single greatness, while his host 
 
 Stood imbecile, up-summoned for this hour 
 
 The thoughts of all that he had been in heaven, 
 
 Or hoped or claimed on earth, or held in hell. 
 
 With steady front advanced the shining siege ; 
 The unarmed army onward, and converged, 
 Came, glorious with numbers : but alone 
 Moved their eternal leader, and from far 
 His aspect shone with unremitted beam 
 Direct on Satan : He his dusky shield 
 That heretofore, thrown back, -his gloomy head 
 Around, and on his mighty shoulders lay 
 Like the horizon on the earth at eve 
 Cast forward, drooping his huge spear, inclined, 
 But not full-levelled. All the host of saints 
 Stood still, and fatal sympathy first moved 
 
168 C H R I 9.T; flH A D E S 
 
 A murmur in his>Gwa*Jft% siirrnberous stir 
 As of awaking vjiirt. ^bj^^w^rd and more near 
 
 
 
 Came the 6el:e^tial^i^^nen once again 
 
 He moved, and wTth a forward step shook hell. 
 
 But at the instant, as with lightning struck, 
 
 Though none perceived the stroke, with arms upthrown, 
 
 Self-hurled, on the disputed gates he fell, 
 
 And ruined down their strength ; nor fell alone, 
 
 But all his host the silent thunder felt, 
 
 And smote, with wide and simultaneous roar 
 
 Of armored limbs, the adamantine floor. 
 
 But other noise soon rung, and from the saints 
 Hosannah, and hosannah ! sweet and loud, 
 In that deep cavern, from the echoing air 
 Sunk far beneath the roots of earth, as sung 
 By warbling seraphs in the top of heaven. 
 
 Now as the golden wheel of day that climbs 
 The precipice of the world, on that side whence 
 He shines at morning brightening, as he comes, 
 Forests and craggy heights and seas and fields 
 To early eyes, throws high into the air, 
 Opaque, or formless void, his welcome light, 
 And shapes the dark with splendid fantasy, 
 
CHRIST IN HADES. 169 
 
 While hovering glories stoop upon Lis beam, 
 And crimson clouds troop in the bannered east; 
 So in the gloomy steeps and utmost height, 
 Zenith, and all sides round, of teeming hell, 
 Angels on cloudy wings hung looking down ; 
 Or in the radiance hovered ; or, on high, 
 In peopled vistas opening into heaven, 
 With bosom-seraphim, transcendent shapes, 
 And awful cherubim, before unseen 
 In earth or heaven, stood creation s grand 
 And glittering guardians, not revealed till now, 
 Lest deemed allies at need ; and gazed, while Christ 
 And all the armies beatific passed, 
 In bright defile, o er Satan, where he lay 
 Along the heap that thundered in his fall, 
 Supine, with upward face : But not o erclimbed 
 By men thus easily, without wings to stead, 
 Had been the prostrate fiend. Then rose they all 
 Into the air, and swift the plumy throng, 
 Encircling, held them in their bright caress. 
 And in the midst, the cloud which that old fane 
 Made glorious with apparition of a form 
 Of human aspect, by awed priests beheld, 
 8 
 
170 CHRIST IN HADES. 
 
 Keceived its body now ; and like one cloud 
 
 Together rose the whole ; while from the air 
 
 A voice fell on the ear of each beneath. 
 
 But seemed in Satan s, sole to him addressed 
 
 " The Foe is judged." And still their eyes they turned, 
 
 And still their looks hung on the rising host, 
 
 Till seen like a receding sun, and then, 
 
 In the blank height of darkness, like a star ; 
 
 And then the darkness covered all, but still 
 
 They looked into its depths, nor stirred nor spake. 
 
NOTES. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 1. . . . sat Aldoneus discrowned. 
 
 The propriety of giving Satan, as king of Hades, the classical 
 name of Aldoneus, needs only to be suggested. 
 
 2. . . . that his pride may play at Jove. 
 
 There is perhaps no occasion for explaining why those who 
 represent in Hades the ethnic deities, sometimes give the Supreme 
 Being the name of Jove. 
 
 3. but in the west 
 
 The elect infernal queen, . . . 
 
 Astarte or Ashtaroth, the Diana of the Phenicians, and thus 
 identified with the Persephono of the Greeks. 
 
174 NOTES. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 1. In, the same world of demons and damned men. 
 
 It may not be thought superfluous, perhaps, to explain why 
 Paradise and the place to which custom gives and limits the 
 name of Hell, are made regions of the same place. 
 
 "The word Hades, which occurs eleven times in the New 
 Testament, and is very frequently used in the Septuagint transla 
 tion of the Old, never signifies in Scripture the place of torment, 
 but always the place appropriated for the common reception of 
 departed souls. There is no single word in our language that 
 has this signification. Homer, Hesiod, Plato, and other Greek 
 writers, distinguish Hades from Tartarus, which was the place of 
 punishment for the wicked." Tomline s Exposition of the Third 
 Article. 
 
 " Our English, or rather Saxon word, Ml, in its original sig 
 nification (though it is now understood in a more limited sense), 
 exactly answers to the Greek word Hades, and denotes a con 
 cealed or unseen place ; and this sense of the word is still re 
 tained in the eastern, and especially in the western counties of 
 England; to hell over a thing is to cover it." Parkhursfs Greek 
 Lexicon; word "AS^s. 
 
 "By Hell may be meant the invisible place to which departed 
 souls are carried after death ; for though the Greek word so ren 
 dered does now commonly stand for the place of the damned, 
 and has for many ages been so understood, yet, at the time of 
 writing the New Testament, it was among Greek authors used 
 
NOTES. 175 
 
 indifferently for the place of all departed souls, whether good or 
 bad ; and by it were meant the invisible regions where those 
 spirits were lodged. * * * * That the regions of the blessed 
 were known then to the Jews by the name of Paradise, as hell 
 was known by the name of Gehenna, is very clear from Christ s 
 last words, to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise. " Burnet 
 on the Third Article. 
 
 That our Lord gives the weight of his authority to the Jewish 
 opinion that Paradise and Gehenna were in the same region of 
 space the place of all departed souls, supposed by them to be 
 the under-world is proved by the parable of Dives and Lazarus, 
 in which a soul in torment and one of the blessed are made to 
 converse with each other across a gulf. 
 
 2. of earthly saints 
 
 Born ere their Saviour till that Saviour s power 
 Should break its shadowy door and set them free 
 The sad Elysium 
 
 "Inferiora [Eph. IV. 9] autcm terras infernus accipitur, ad 
 quern Dominus noster Salvatorque descendit, ut Sanctorum ani- 
 mas, quae ibi tenebantur inclusae, secum ad ccelos Victor abdu- 
 ceret." St. Jerome. 
 
 " Nihil aliud teneatis nisi quod vera fides per catholicam eccle- 
 siam docet ; quia descendens ad inferos Dominus illos solum- 
 modo ab inferni claustris eripuit, quos viventes in carne per 
 suam gratiam in fide et bona operatione scrvavit." Gregory the 
 Great. 
 
 " The end for which the soul of Christ descended into hell was 
 
176 NOTES. 
 
 not to deliver any damned souls, or to translate them from the tor 
 ments of hell unto the joys of heaven. The next consideration is, 
 whether by virtue of his descent, the souls of those which before 
 believed in him, the patriarchs, the prophets, and all the people of 
 God, were delivered from that place and state in which they were 
 before ; and whether Christ descended into hell to that end, and 
 that he might translate them into a place far more glorious and 
 happy. This hath been in the latter ages of the Church the 
 common opinion of most men, and that as if it followed necessa 
 rily from the denial of the former : He delivered not the souls of 
 the damned, therefore he delivered the souls of them which be 
 lieved, and of them alone ; till at last the schools have followed it 
 so fully that they deliver it as a point of faith and infallible cer 
 tainty, that the soul of Christ, descending into hell, did deliver 
 from thence all the souls of the saints which were in the bosom 
 of Abraham, and did confer upon them actual and essential beati 
 tude, which before they enjoyed not. And this they lay upon 
 two grounds: first, That the souls of saints departed saw not 
 God; and secondly, That Christ by his death opened the gate of 
 the kingdom of heaven." Pearson on the Creed. 
 
 3. A shape like man ; . . . 
 
 " As Christ died for us and was buried, so also it is to be be 
 lieved that he went down into hell." Article III. 
 
 "That Christ descended into hell is not expressly asserted by 
 any of the Evangelists ; but they all relate that he expired upon 
 the cross, and that after three days he again appeared alive ; 
 and therefore it may be inferred that in the intermediate time his 
 
NOTES. 177 
 
 soul went into the common receptacle of departed souls." Tomline 
 on the Third Article. 
 
 " Several places of Scripture have been produced by the an 
 cients as delivering this truth ; of which some, without ques 
 tion, prove it not ; but there are those which have always been 
 thought of greatest validity to confirm this article. First, that 
 of St. Paul to the Ephesians seems to come to very near the 
 words themselves, and to express the same almost in terms : 
 1 Now that he ascended, what is it but that |he first descended 
 into the lower parts of the earth? This many of the ancient 
 Fathers understood of the descent into hell as placed in the lower 
 parts of the earth ; and this exposition must be confessed so 
 probable, that there can be no argument to disprove it. * * * * 
 
 " The next place of Scripture brought to confirm the descent is 
 not so near in words, but thought to signify the end of that 
 descent, and that part of his humanity by which he descended. 
 For Christ, saith St. Peter, was put to death in the flesh, and 
 quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached 
 unto the spirits in prison. Where the Spirit seems to be the 
 soul of Christ, and the spirits in prison, the souls of them that 
 were in hell, or in some place at least separated from the joys of 
 heaven ; whither, because we never read our Saviour went at any 
 other time, we may conceive he went in spirit there, when his soul 
 departed from his body on the cross. This did our Church first 
 deliver as the proof and illustration of the descent, [see note 1, to 
 Book IV.] and the ancient Fathers did apply the same in like 
 manner to the proof of this article. * * * * The third, but 
 principal text, is that of David, applied by St. Peter : For 
 David spcaketh concerning him, I foresaw the Lord always be 
 fore my face ; for he is on my right hand that I should not be 
 
178 NOTES. 
 
 moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was 
 glad ; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope : because thou 
 wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither suffer thy Holy One to see 
 corruption. Thus the Apostle repeated the words of the Psalmist 
 (xvi. 8-10) and then applied them ; he being a prophet, and 
 seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his 
 soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. 
 (Acts xi. 25, &c.) Now, from this place the Article is clearly and 
 infallibly deduced thus : If the soul of Christ were not left in hell 
 at his resurrection, then his soul was in hell before his resurrec 
 tion ; but it was not there before his death ; therefore, upon or 
 after his death, and before his resurrection, the soul of Christ 
 descended into hell ; and consequently, the Creed doth truly de 
 liver, that Christ being crucified, was dead, buried, and descended 
 into hell. For as his flesh did not see corruption (by virtue of 
 that promise and prophetical expression), and yet it was in the 
 grave, the place of corruption, where it rested in hope until his 
 resurrection ; so his soul, which was not left in hell (by virtue of 
 the like promise or prediction), was in that hell where it was not 
 left, until the time that it was to be united to the body, for the 
 performing of the resurrection. We must therefore confess from 
 hence, that the soul of Christ was in hell : And no Christian can 
 deny it, saith St. Augustin : 
 
 " Quis ergo nisi infidelis negaverit fuisse apud inferos Chris 
 tum V " Pearson on the Creed. 
 
 " Seeing it is a most certain truth that our Saviour s soul did 
 immediately go into the place appointed to receive happy souls 
 after their recession from the body, and resignation into God s 
 hands ; if we take hell in a general and common sense for the 
 place or the state of souls departed ; and descending for passing 
 
NOTES. 179 
 
 thereinto (by a falling, as it were, from life, or by going away 
 together with the descent of the body ; and thence styled de 
 scending ; what appeareth visibly happening to the body being 
 accommodated unto the soul) ; if, I say, we do thus interpret our 
 Saviour s descent into hell for his soul s going into the common 
 receptacle and mansion of souls, we shall, so doing, be sure not to 
 substantially mistake." Barrow, Ser. XXVIII. 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 1. Magog and great Madai old. 
 
 I have somewhere met with the opinion, sustained by plausi 
 ble reasoning, that the descendants of Magog, the son of Japheth, 
 peopled northern and eastern Asia. That Madai s descendants 
 moved toward the east, is evidenced by what seems to be a 
 relic of the name in Media and the Medes. 
 
 2. Azracl. 
 The angel of death, in the superstition of the East. 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 1. and these words 
 
 Spake, 
 
 "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the 
 Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in 
 prison."^. Peter. 
 
180 NOTES. 
 
 "The body of Christ lay in his grave until his resur 
 rection; but his spirit, which he gave up, was with the spirits 
 which were detained in prison, or in hell, and preached unto 
 them as the place in St. Peter testifleth." The Third Article, 
 as first published in the reign of Edward VI. 
 
 "But in them [the words of St. Peter J, taken in their most 
 literal and obvious meaning, we find not only a distinct assertion 
 of the fact, that Christ descended into hell in his disem 
 bodied spirit, but, moreover, a declaration of the business 
 upon which he went thither, or in which, at least, his soul was 
 employed while it was there. Being put to death in the 
 flesh, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and 
 preached unto the spirits in prison, which were sometime dis 
 obedient. The interpretation of the whole passage turns upon 
 the expression, spirits in prison ; the sense of which I shall 
 first, therefore, endeavor to ascertain, as the key to the meaning 
 of the whole. It is hardly necessary to mention, that the 
 spirits here can signify no other spirits than the souls of 
 men ; for we read not of any preaching of Christ to any other 
 race of beings than mankind. The assertion of the Apostle, 
 therefore, is this that Christ went and preached to the souls of 
 men in prison. The invisible mansion of departed spirits, 
 though certainly not a place of penal confinement to the good, 
 is, nevertheless, in some respects a prison. It is a place of 
 seclusion from the external world a place of unfinished hap 
 piness, consisting in rest, security, and hope, more than in 
 enjoyment. It is a place into which the souls of men never 
 would have entered had not sin introduced death, and from 
 which there is no exit by any natural means for those who have 
 once entered. The deliverance of the saints from it is to be 
 
NOTES. 181 
 
 effected by our Lord s power. It is described in the old Latin 
 language as a place inclosed within an impassable fence ; and in 
 the poetical parts of Scripture it is represented as secured by 
 gates of brass, which our Lord is to batter down; and barri- 
 cadoed with huge massive iron bars, which he is to cut in 
 sunder. As a place of confinement, therefore, though not of 
 punishment, it may well be called a prison. The original word, 
 however, in the text of the Apostle, imports not of necessity so 
 much as this, but merely a place of safe-keeping. For so this 
 passage might be rendered with great exactness : He went 
 and preached to the spirits in safe-keeping. * * * * The 
 souls in custody, to whom our Saviour went in his disembodied 
 soul and preached, were those who were sometime disobedient. 
 The expression sometime were, or one while had been dis 
 obedient, implies that they were recovered, however, from that 
 disobedience, and, before their death, had been brought to re 
 pentance and faith in a Redeemer to come. To such souls he 
 went and preached. But what did he preach to departed souls 7 
 and what could be the end of his preaching 1 * * * * If ho 
 went to proclaim to them (and to proclaim or publish is the 
 true sense of the words to preach ) the glad tidings that he 
 had actually offered the sacrifice of their redemption, and was 
 about to appear before the Father as their intercessor, in the 
 merit of his own blood, this was a preaching fit to be addressed 
 to departed souls, * * * * and this, it may be presumed, 
 was tho end of his preaching." Bishop Horscly. 
 
182 NOTES. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 1. From old lapetus. 
 
 "The sons of Japhcth (Impetus); Gomer, and Magog, and 
 Madai, and Javan (loan), and Tubal, and Meshech, and 
 Tiras." Gen. x. 2. 
 
 2. And from fair Gomer. 
 
 From Gomer, Gomeria, or Cimmeria, and probably Ger- 
 mania a derivation that will seem forced only to those unac 
 customed to trace the etymology of national and local names. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 1. . . . there, with the Asar and Asynior, sit 
 The Einherier and Valkyrior. 
 
 The Asar (Asiatics) were the Gods, or, rather, a divine race 
 of men. The Asynior were the females of the race. The Einhe 
 rier were human heroes, raised by their bravery to sit in the 
 Valhalla with the Gods. The Valkyrior were the warlike 
 Houries of the Northern Paradise. 
 
 2. The Berserker, who scorn armor and arms. 
 
 "The champions of the north were called Berserker, in the 
 old tongue, from bcr, bare, and sekr, a garment ; because they 
 
NOTES. 183 
 
 wore no armor in battle. They are described by almost all the 
 northern writers as men of extraordinary stature and force, sub 
 ject to sudden and violent attacks of passion, under the influence 
 of which their fury was ungovernable, and as formidable to their 
 natural friends as to their enemies." Herbert. Hora Scandictc, 
 Note to Helga. 
 
 3. Bleak Niffelheim from Muspelheim. 
 Niffelheim, the region of cold ; Muspelheim, of heat. 
 
 4. the Song 
 
 Of Ragnarok .... 
 
 The twilight of the Gods. For this specimen of genuine 
 Norse frenzy, see Turner s History of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 BOOK VIII. 
 
 1. The Jotuns 
 
 The dark, hostile powers of Nature, they figured to them 
 selves as Jotuns, Giants huge shaggy beings, of a demoniac 
 character. Frost, Fire, Sea, Tempest these are the Jotuns. 
 Carlyk. 
 
 THE END.