Classic Poem

No sooner came
I to the seat, in right opposal placed,
To that despotic empress, than they urged
Me to revivify the hateful frame —
The incarnation of that fleshly hell,
I had, for her sake whom I loved, destroyed; —
But once for all their quest refused; whereat,
The throned one brake her sceptre in her wrath,
And cried, — Have done with him! I own him not,
And have forsworn him. Let him die his death.

Thereto I answered not — within myself
Secretly praying but that God would make
The spirit fair concordant with the form,
And what was beauteous, lovely.

They forthwith —
Tempter and tempted hating me alike —
Rushed on and bound me fast; no sooner bound, —
Than from the Heavenly Father of us all,
All power I felt transfused into mine hands:
Yet let them work their will, that all might be
Accomplished in their nature, and the great
Designs of God fulfilled which He sole knew.

Three days and nights, or rather one long night,
But by diverse degrees of darkness marked,
Again it died, in foul offensive fumes
Exhaled away; so vast that carcass grim;
Around whose molten mass, too, the whole time
Were fierce and bloody combats, tribe 'gainst tribe,
In honour of the dead one, till at last,
Me on that burning and abhorred bier —
That carnal hell impersonate, all fire,
Remorseless cast they; and their sin-palled eyes
Perceived not that a Heaven-sent cloudlet caught
Safe in its soft cool bosom; there create
By love divine of God , that mercy might
The dear decrees of judgment execute,
And seathless free the Being bound and doomed.

High upwards rose, then, in Heaven's darkening face,
Wide wavering from innumerable tongues,
Like to the desert sand-cloud or simoom,
The columned execrations of the crowd,
But far below me swept; they neared not e'en
The prospect of my feet. Such malice grieved —
How grievous to the soul of love, all sin!
Yet need more made they should be won to God .

Thus praying, I to the rock returned where lay
Entranced that lovely maiden of the main
And stirless, still. Her straight I raised and bore,
Gently and lovingly, within these arms,
To a lone star as yet unblest with life,
Which round a larger and exterior orb,
The central mirror of the world, wherein
Are shadowed all things past and yet to come —
Rolls restless in the Heavens, that so she might,
Awakening, see new cause to bless her Lord.
There, all enchanting, she enchanted lay;
Beheld of all, beloved of her kind;
I, guarding.

Meanwhile, in that wretched orb
Prevailed continuous night, and all things died
That drew their life from light; the flowers their life
Breathed out in incense, and the trees laid down
Their leafy crowns, forlorn; the herbal earth
In withered, barren, senseless nakedness,
Lay like a clayey corpse.