The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 5

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Henceforward, human eyes of lovers be The only sweetest sight that I shall see, With tears between the looks raised up to me.

Ah, ah!

When, having wept all night, at break of day Above the folded hills they shall survey My light, a little trembling, in the grey.

Ah, ah!

And gazing on me, such shall comprehend, Through all my piteous pomp at morn or even And melancholy leaning out of heaven, That love, their own divine, may change or end, That love may close in loss!

Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

SCENE.--_Farther on. A wild open country seen vaguely in the approaching night._

_Adam._ How doth the wide and melancholy earth Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast, And stare with blank significance of loss Right in our faces! Is the wind up?

_Eve._ Nay.

_Adam._ And yet the cedars and the junipers Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound, And shapes which have no certainty of shape Drift duskly in and out between the pines, And loom along the edges of the hills, And lie flat, curdling in the open ground-- Shadows without a body, which contract And lengthen as we gaze on them.

_Eve._ O life Which is not man's nor angel's! What is this?

_Adam._ No cause for fear. The circle of G.o.d's life Contains all life beside.

_Eve._ I think the earth Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense Of those first laws affixed to form and s.p.a.ce Or ever she knew sin.

_Adam._ We will not fear; We were brave sinning.

_Eve._ Yea, I plucked the fruit With eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there Our G.o.d-thrones, as the tempter said,--not G.o.d.

My heart, which beat then, sinks. The sun hath sunk Out of sight with our Eden.

_Adam._ Night is near.

_Eve._ And G.o.d's curse, nearest. Let us travel back And stand within the sword-glare till we die, Believing it is better to meet death Than suffer desolation.

_Adam._ Nay, beloved!

We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand, As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait Until he gives death as he gave us life, Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin.

_Eve._ Ah, ah! dost thou discern what I behold?

_Adam._ I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes From their dilated orbits bound before To meet the spectral Dread!

_Eve._ I am afraid-- Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes Of intermittent motion, aspect vague And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth, Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.

How near they reach ... and far! How grey they move-- Treading upon the darkness without feet, And fluttering on the darkness without wings!

Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground; Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees; Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on Copious as rivers.

_Adam._ Some spring up like fire; And some coil ...

_Eve._ Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say Like what?--coil like the serpent, when he fell From all the emerald splendour of his height And writhed, and could not climb against the curse, Not a ring's length. I am afraid--afraid-- I think it is G.o.d's will to make me afraid,-- Permitting THESE to haunt us in the place Of his beloved angels--gone from us Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of G.o.d, That didst permit the angels to go home And live no more with us who are not pure, Save _us_ too from a loathly company-- Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps, As _we_ are in the purest! Pity us-- Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away From verity and from stability, Or what we name such through the precedence Of earth's adjusted uses,--leave us not To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls, Which are the more distraught and full of pain And weak of apprehension!

_Adam._ Courage, Sweet!

The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop With slow concentric movement, each on each,-- Expressing wider s.p.a.ces,--and collapsed In lines more definite for imagery And clearer for relation, till the throng Of shapeless spectra merge into a few Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand Which sweep out and around us vastily And hold us in a circle and a calm.

_Eve._ Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.

Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?

_Adam._ Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth, Which rounds us with a visionary dread, Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth, In fantasque apposition and approach, To those celestial, constellated twelve Which palpitate adown the silent nights Under the pressure of the hand of G.o.d Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour, Not a star p.r.i.c.keth the flat gloom of heaven: But, girdling close our nether wilderness, The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow,-- Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time, In twelve colossal shades instead of stars, Through which the ecliptic line of mystery Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope, Foreshowing life and death.

_Eve._ By dream or sense, Do we see this?

_Adam._ Our spirits have climbed high By reason of the pa.s.sion of our grief, And, from the top of sense, looked over sense To the significance and heart of things Rather than things themselves.

_Eve._ And the dim twelve....

_Adam._ Are dim exponents of the creature-life As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved!

By stricter apprehension of the sight, Suggestions of the creatures shall a.s.suage The terror of the shadows,--what is known Subduing the unknown and taming it From all prodigious dread. That phantasm, there, Presents a lion, albeit twenty times As large as any lion--with a roar Set soundless in his vibratory jaws, And a strange horror stirring in his mane.

And, there, a pendulous shadow seems to weigh-- Good against ill, perchance; and there, a crab Puts coldly out its gradual shadow-claws, Like a slow blot that spreads,--till all the ground, Crawled over by it, seems to crawl itself.

A bull stands horned here with gibbous glooms; And a ram likewise: and a scorpion writhes Its tail in ghastly slime and stings the dark.

This way a goat leaps with wild blank of beard; And here, fantastic fishes duskly float, Using the calm for waters, while their fins Throb out quick rhythms along the shallow air.

While images more human----

_Eve._ How he stands, That phantasm of a man--who is not _thou_!

Two phantasms of two men!

_Adam._ One that sustains, And one that strives,--resuming, so, the ends Of manhood's curse of labour.[B] Dost thou see That phantasm of a woman?

_Eve._ I have seen; But look off to those small humanities[C]

Which draw me tenderly across my fear,-- Lesser and fainter than my womanhood, Or yet thy manhood--with strange innocence Set in the misty lines of head and hand.

They lean together! I would gaze on them Longer and longer, till my watching eyes, As the stars do in watching anything, Should light them forward from their outline vague To clear configuration.

[_Two Spirits, of Organic and Inorganic Nature, arise from the ground._

But what Shapes Rise up between us in the open s.p.a.ce, And thrust me into horror, back from hope!

_Adam._ Colossal Shapes--twin sovran images, With a disconsolate, blank majesty Set in their wondrous faces! with no look, And yet an aspect--a significance Of individual life and pa.s.sionate ends, Which overcomes us gazing.

O bleak sound, O shadow of sound, O phantasm of thin sound!

How it comes, wheeling as the pale moth wheels, Wheeling and wheeling in continuous wail Around the cyclic zodiac, and gains force, And gathers, settling coldly like a moth, On the wan faces of these images We see before us,--whereby modified, It draws a straight line of articulate song From out that spiral faintness of lament, And, by one voice, expresses many griefs.

_First Spirit._ I am the spirit of the harmless earth.

G.o.d spake me softly out among the stars, As softly as a blessing of much worth; And then his smile did follow unawares, That all things fas.h.i.+oned so for use and duty Might s.h.i.+ne anointed with his chrism of beauty-- Yet I wail!

I drave on with the worlds exultingly, Obliquely down the G.o.dlight's gradual fall; Individual aspect and complexity Of gyratory orb and interval Lost in the fluent motion of delight Toward the high ends of Being beyond sight-- Yet I wail!

_Second Spirit._ I am the spirit of the harmless beasts, Of flying things, and creeping things, and swimming; Of all the lives, erst set at silent feasts, That found the love-kiss on the goblet br.i.m.m.i.n.g, And tasted in each drop within the measure The sweetest pleasure of their Lord's good pleasure-- Yet I wail!

What a full hum of life around his lips Bore witness to the fulness of creation!

How all the grand words were full-laden s.h.i.+ps Each sailing onward from enunciation To separate existence,--and each bearing The creature's power of joying, hoping, fearing!

Yet I wail!

_Eve._ They wail, beloved! they speak of glory and G.o.d, And they wail--wail. That burden of the song Drops from it like its fruit, and heavily falls Into the lap of silence.

_Adam._ Hark, again!

_First Spirit._ I was so beautiful, so beautiful, My joy stood up within me bold to add A word to G.o.d's,--and, when His work was full, To "very good" responded "very glad!"