Classic Poem

SCENE — Space .

F ESTUS and Lucifer .

F ESTUS . Listen! I hear the harmonies of Heaven,
From sphere to sphere and from the boundless round
Reichoing bliss to those serenest heights
Where angels sit and strike their emulous harps
Wreathed round with flowers and diamonded with dew;
Such dew as gemmed the everduring blooms
Of Eden winterless, or as all night
The tree of Life wept from its every leaf
Unwithering. And now methinks I hear
The music of the murmur of the stream
Which through the Bridal City of the Lord
Floweth all life for ever; and the breath
Through the star-shading branches of that Tree
Transplanted now to Heaven, but once on earth,
Whose fruit is for all Beings — breathed of God.
Oh! breathe on me, inspiring spirit-breath!
Oh! flow to me, ye heart-reviving waves;
Freshen the faded soul that droops and dies.
Lucifer . The universe is but the gate of Heaven.
Lo! from this highest orb, the crown of space
And footstool unto Heaven, we can look up
And gain a glimpse of glory unconceived.
F ESTUS . See how yon angels stretch their shining arms,
Wave their star-haunting wings which gleam like glass,
And locks that look like Morning's when she comes
Triumphant in the East. Is this their joy
O'er some world penitent?
Lucifer . Lo! there it rides;
Blest to discharge of. Heaven's all peaceful shores
Its long accumulated load of life,
Its deathless freight, — pilgrims of time and space.
Yon guilty orb of hesitating light
Slow looming, there, on its dark path, goes up
At the forewritten hour, as do all worlds
To God, to judgment; and the earthquake groans
Which rend its adamantine breast forebode
Its agonizing doom.
F ESTUS . And doth not Heaven
Grieve with the lost as gladden with the saved?
Lucifer . How many immortals mourn at the decree
Of righteous wisdom, which alone to them
Is bliss sufficient, being infinite?
F ESTUS . If God hath made all, He alone it is
Who hath to answer for all.
Lucifer . He hath made.
To secondary natures it seems just
That justice should be realized, and there
Is one example extant in the skies.
F ESTUS . But wherefore did it not repent in Time?
Lucifer . What unto us is Time, stands before God
Eternity. Repentance is the grief
For and effectual abstinence from sin,
Which secondary natures without God
Cannot attain to.
F ESTUS . Cloudy and clear by turns
Thy words as Heaven. I know not what to think
Nor how to act.
Lucifer . It is natural; and none
Can aim or hit but as appointed them.
There is but one great sinner, Human nature,
Predict of every world and predicate:
The wicked one, the Enemy of God,
To be destroyed in the eternal fire
Of His wrath, even thus in Deity —
In whom as they begin must all things end.
God loveth only His own spirit, so
All that is base shall perish. From the first
These things were fixed, and are and aye shall be
Consummating, and are revealed as writ
In words always fulfilled and burning truth
Under the buried basements of the skies,
Which after overthrown shall reappear.
The unenlightened mind sees Deity
In all things, but the spiritual soul
All things in God. Now, ere we higher rise,
Look downwards from this coping of the world;
And know that down to the profoundest depth
Of utter space, where not an atom mars
The void invisible, it were easier far
To cast a line and calculate its rate,
Or pierce all space, nor cross the path of light,
Than fathom man's dark heart or sound his soul.