Classic Poem

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; 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 gulf's Tartarean shore,
Of wild and abrupt aspect was the soil,
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. 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:
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
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 Ægina 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 Samson, regal Saul,
And David, sweeter Orpheus than harped
At hell's deep portals, with prolonged, wild sound,
Down the abysses wailing on the ear
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,
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
Gray seers, and warriors, in old times revered.
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 forever,—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:
For to my eyes methought the sun appeared,
As often to my 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 described,
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 Adam! who on earth oft came
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.”
Here stood a while 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,
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,—
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,
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,
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.
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:
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
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; 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,)
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.