Classic Poem

In the last hour, the utter lapse of time,
Shrill from the vast the voice of Satan cried—
“Hail, Lord of Heaven, Almighty Loneliness,
World-maker! thou who not in love but wrath
Didst shape this plot of sham infinitudes—
Earth, the day-fire, stars and the useless moon,
And man and creatures meaner, and called them good!
Good for how long? Lord, Lord, shall goodness end?
Where shines the light that healed thy want of me,
Light-bearer once, thy shadow-bringer now?
Behold, the unsteady sun, now glow, now gloom,
Like a spent coal blown on by wind and sand,
Is quenched with sifting dust of the dead stars.
Where is that world for which the heavens were made,
That globe unquiet of the lava-spume
Which from thine anger dript and cooled itself,
That world whereon thy breath malign, thy vast
Ponderous loom of motion, force, and rhythm
Stroking the planet-paths, at length begot
Man in thy image, infinitely small,
To squirm, and breed, and marvel at his race—
Even of us, much more of things much less,
To take the measure and impose the name,
And fear us, or desire us, or forget?
Where is that world by thee for man designed?
See where yon little whiteness near the sun
Walks virginal, a moon of innocence,
That hell reformed, which of our deathless war
Remembers nothing, nor of man's debauch
In futile lusts he never learned from me,
His godlike wallowings in the slough of love
And fattenings of his purposeless desire;
Nor of man's end remembers, nor its own
Foresees, but coldly haunts the dying sun,
Thy little world, which, being dead, is pure.”

So at the vaulted shell of utmost heaven
Challenging toward the impenetrable beyond,
The eternal questioner waited upon God.
Merely to stand in that great light he strove;
Even as a bird in a strong wind pendulous
With league-long flight only his station holds,
So beating up into the sight of God
Satan no headway made, but with fierce wing
Pushing from darkness, the orbèd vacancy
Retraced of an annihilated star.
Soon, unrebuked, he shouted up through space—

“Thou who didst build this crumbling universe,
O Boaster, who wouldst bruise me with the heel
Of man, but first wouldst play me for his soul,
Alas, the pieces and the board wear out
Ere the game quite begins! Omnipotence,
Did prudence whisper thee to this shrewd end,
Or thy weak will that could not well create?
Or hast thou played, Gambler Divine, as one
Who sits no longer at a losing game,
But sweeps the board away?”
Still unperturbed
The blessed silence of the face of God
Came luminous against Satan as he strove.
He then with moderated insolence—

“Forgive, Almighty God; for well I know
Not from thy weakness flows this huge decay,
But from thy central virtue, Change. Forgive
One like me steadfast, who from star to star
Tracked in exile my yearnings and my faith,
The azure promise of my heart of light,
Eternity, that only in me was;
Whereon man gazing fed his want therewith,
Like the cool stars to endure perpetually.
How should he dream of goodness but from thee?
And this desire was good; who then but thou
Should be his everlasting, his length of days?
Thou knowest, who knowest all, in honorable
Intent the least advantage to abjure,
Though my own nature bred it, I drove out
This strong delusion from man's clinging soul;
Me only eternal, me the evil one
He by my aid beheld; and worshiped thee
The various, the time-server, the manifold death.
Though I have helped man to a little truth,
Lord, blame not me that his excited mind
Hath thrown thee in these meshes of thyself,
Thinking, since all things alter, God must change;
Seasons of climax limit even the arc
Of godhood, flowering ever from age to age,
Full blown, then fading, then in bud again.
But why, O Prudence, who alone art wise,
Didst thou proclaim thyself Absolute Good?
Man with his maggot reason sapped thy boast:
The perfect evil must at last be good,
The perfect good be evil, for all evolve.
Lo, man hath reconciled us, who before
Diluted never our happiness of hate—
Yea, in a twilight kinship hath confused
What in our will were strange as night and day;
Evil uprooted from me I have felt,
With alien pang some graft of goodness known,
And, though I look not on thy holy face,
Wearest thou not some scars that once were mine?”
On venom more sinister meditative
Circlewise through wide heaven the Serpent swayed
Cobra-headed, darting his vibrant tongue—

“The secret of thy treacherous plan for him
Did man not solve, the terminus foresee
Of breath-departed dust and cooling earth—
Unfathomable emptiness at the last?
Yea, did he not forestall thy trick, O God,
And ere his end, annihilate thee first?
For him were not all causes but deceits
Raised by mirage in his hot, barren soul,
Thou the mere shadow of his little self
Cast large in front by me, his following light?”

Wrath-wearied, yet defiant, Satan abode;
Then baffled from the eyes inscrutable
Of the First Patience and the Ultimate Good,
Into profounder hate the fiend withdrew.