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SATAN
^ ILibretto.
BY
CHRISTOPHER PEARSE CRANCH.
BOSTON: 0 ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1S74.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
ROBERTS BROTHERS, [n the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
CAMBRIDGE: PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.
«^
I CALL this poem a Libretto, because, as in a Cantata, Opera, or Oratorio, the verses may sug- Q> gest or accompany a music they only in part em-
X body. A Libretto is too often a mere thread on
which the composer strings his pearls, — a text for some work of art nobler than itself. While this poem makes no claim to be full-strung, it may perhaps serve to awaken a few snatches of a music containing some vital symbolic concep- tions of the grandest of all harmonies, — the Divine Order in Creation.
C. P. C.
Cambridge, December, 1873.
^
/^H that I could sinne once see !
^-^ We paint the devil foul, yet he
Hath some good in him, all agree. Sinne is flat opposite to the Almighty, seeing It wants the good of vertue, and of being.
But God more care of us hath had. If apparitions make us sad, By sight of sinne we should grow mad. Yet as in sleep we see foul death, and live, So devils are our sinnes in prospective.
George Herbert.
SATAN.
THE OVERTURE.
T TAD I — instead of unsonorous words — "*■ -^ The skill that moves in airy melodies And modulations of entrancing chords
Through mystic mazes of all harmonies, — The sounding pulses of an overture Whose grand orchestral movement might allure The listener's soul through chaos and through night, And seeming dissonance, to concord and to light, — I would allow the harsh Titanic strains
To wrestle with Apollo and with Jove ; The savage war-cries on barbaric plains
To affright the chords of wisdom and of love. For still the evolutions of old Time,
Amid the wrecks in wild confusion hurled. Would move with grander rhythm and nobler rhyme
Along the eternal order of the world. The swift contending fugue, — the wild escape
Of passions, — long-drawn wail, and sudden blast, And heavy-footed bass should weave and shape
The prelude of a symphony so vast,
6 SATAN: 1
That only to the ears Of spirits hstening from serener spheres Of thought, the differing tones would blend and twine Into the semblance of a work divine. I would unloose the soul beneath the wings
Of every instrument : I would enlist the deep-complaining strings
Of doubt and discontent ; The low sad mutterings and entangled dreams
Of viols and bassoons, Groping for light atJiwart the clouds and streams
That drown.»the laboring moons ; The tones of crude half-truth, — the good within The mysteries of evil and of sin : The trumpet-cries of anger and despair;
The mournful marches of the muffled drums ; The bird-like flute-notes leaping into air,
Ere the great human-heavenly music comes Emerging from the dark, with bursts of song And hope and victory, delayed too long.
Ah, what are all the discords of all time But stumbling steps of one persistent life
That struggles up through mists to heights sublime, Fore-felt through all creation's hngering strife ? —
The deathless motion of one undertone
Whose deep vibrations thrill from God to God alone !
A LIBRETTO.
Part I.
Daybreak. CHORUS OF WORLD-SPIRITS.
Ye interstellar spaces serene and still and clear, Above, below, around !
Ye gray unmeasured breadths of ether, sphere on sphere. We listen, but no sound Rings from your depths profound.
But ever along and all across the morning bars
Fast-flashing meteors run. The trailing wrecks of fierce and fiery-bearded stars
Scattered and lost, and won
Back to their parent sun.
Through rifts of bronzing clouds the tides of morning glow
And swell and mount apace. We watch and wait, if haply we at last may know
Some record we may trace
Upon the orbs of space.
Above, below, around we track the planets' flight.
Their paths and destinies Are intertwined with ours. Remote or near, their light
Or darkness on our eyes
A mystic picture lies.
SA TAN:
FIRST SPIRIT.
Close to the morn a small and sparkling star-world dances,
Bathed in the flaming mist, Flashing and quivering like a milHon shivered lances
Of gold and amethyst
By bursts of moonlight kissed :
A fairy realm of rapid and unimpeded sprites
That fly and leap and dart ; All fierce and tropic fervors, all swift and warm delights,
Bound and flash and start
In every fiery heart.
SECOND SPIRIT.
Deep in the dawn there floats a star of dewy fire,
So pure it seems new-born.
As though the soul of morn Were pulsing through its heart in deep divine desire Of poesy and love ; — the star of morn and eve,
Whose crystal sphere is shining
With joys beyond divining, — Passion that never tortures, and hopes that ne'er deceive.
THIRD SPIRIT.
There swims a pale green world, half drowned and
thunder-rifted, Steeped in a sea of rain. One peak alone upHfted,
A LIBRETTO. 9
The baffled lightnings play around its crags and
chasms ; So far away they flash, I hear no thunder-spasms. But now the scowling clouds are drifting from its spaces, And leave it to the wind and coming day's embraces.
FOURTH SPIRIT.
See where yon planet rolls with darkly lurid sides, Flooded and seamed and stained by drenching Stygian
tides ; Deep gorges up whose black and slimy slopes there
peep All monstrous Saurian growths that run or fly or creep ; And in and out the holes and caverns clogged with
mud, Crawl through their giant ferns to suck each other's
blood. I see them battling there in fog and oozy water. Symbols of savage lust, deformity, and slaughter.
FIFTH SPIRIT.
I see an orb above that spins with rapid motion,
Vaster and vaster growing. Belted with sulphurous clouds, and through the rents
an ocean Boihng and plunging up on a crust of fiery shore. And now I hear far off the elemental roar, And the red fire-winds blowing :
lo SATAN:
A low dull steady moan, a million miles away, Of whirling hurricanes that rage all night, all day. No life of man or beast, were life engendered there, Could bide the flaming winds and white metallic glare.
SIXTH SPIRIT.
But yonder, studded round with lamps of moonlight
tender, And arched from pole to pole with rings of rainbow
splendor, A world rolls far apart, as though in haughty scorning Of all the alien light of his diminished morning.
SEVENTH AND EIGHTH SPIRITS.
Cold, cold and dark, and farther still,
We dimly see the icy spheres, Like spectre-worlds who yet fulfil, Through slow dull centuries of years, Their circuit round the distant sun, who winds them at his will.
CHORUS.
Round and round one central orb
The wheeling planets move. And some reflect and some absorb
The floods of light and love.
A LIBRETTO. II
The rolling globe of molten stones,
The spinning watery waste, The forests whirled through tropic zones,
By circling moons embraced,
We watch their elemental strife,
We wait, that we may see Some record of their inner life,
Where all is mystery.
Their future, like their voiceless past,
Is but a clouded gleam. Our hope with fear is overcast,
Our prophecy a dream.
A Pause. The Sun rises. SECOND SPIRIT.
Look, brothers, look ! The quivering sunrise tinges
Our nearest orb of Earth. The forest fringes
Redden with joy, and all about the sun
That gilds the boundless east the cloud-banks dun
Flame into gold, and with a crimson kiss
Wake the green world to beauty and to bliss.
See how she glows with sweet responsive smile !
Hark how the waves of air lap round her ! As though she were some green embowered isle,
And the fond Ocean had just found her In Time's primeval morn of unrecorded calms. Hidden away with all her lilies and her palms ; And, flattering at her feet, had smoothed his angry mane, And moving round her kissed her o'er and o'er aofain.
12 SATAN:
THIRD SPIRIT.
And now, behold, our wings are rapid as our thought,
And nearer yet have brought Our feet, until we hover above the Asian lands
Beyond the desert sands. There, girt around by mountain peaks that cleave the skies,
A blooming valley lies ; A pathway sloping down from visionary heights,
Through shades and dappled lights, Lost in a garden wilderness of tropic trees
And flowers and birds and bees. Far off' I smell the rose, the amaranth, the spice,
The breath of Paradise. Far off" I hear the singing, through hidden groves and vales,
Of Eden's nightingales ; And, shding down through pines and moss and rocky walls.
The murmuring water-falls. And lo ! two radiant forms that seem akin to us
Walk calm and beauteous, Crowned with the light of thought, and mutual love whose blisses
Are sealed with rapturous kisses. Ah, beautiful green earth ! ah, happy, happy pair !
Can there be aught so fair, O brothers, in your vast and fiery worlds afar,
As these bright beings are ?
A LIBRETTO. 13
(A Pause.) SECOND SPIRIT.
But what is yon Shadow that creeps On the marge of her crystalhne deeps ? On the field and the river and grove,
On the borders of hope and of rest, On the Eden of wedlock and love,
On the-labor contentment hath blessed? That crawls like a serpent of mist
Through the vales and the gardens of peace, With a blight upon all it hath kissed,
And a shade that shall never decrease ? That maddens the wings of desire,
And saddens the ardors of joy, — Winged like a phantom of fire.
And armed like a fiend to destroy ?
THIRD SPIRIT.
Before me there flitted a vision, —
A vision of dawn and creation, Of faith and of doubt and division,
Of mystical fruit and temptation ; A garden of lilies and roses.
Ah ! sweeter than dreams ever fashioned ; Hopes in whose splendor reposes
A love that was pure and impassioned. But alas for the sons and the daughters
Of man in the morning of nations ! Alas for their rivers of waters !
14 SATAN:
Alas for their fruitless oblations ! The curse and the blight and the sentence
Have fallen too swift for repentance. I see it — I feel it — O brother !
It shadows one half of the garden. O Earth ! O improvident Mother !
Where left'st thou thy angel, thy warden ? Is it theirs, or the guilt of another ?
Must they die, without hope of a pardon ? What is it they suffer, O brother.
In the red rosy light of their garden ?
THE ANGEL RAPHAEL.
Beyond the imagined hmits of such space
As ye can guess, I passed, yet heard your cry.
For ye are brother-spirits. And I come.
Swifter than light, to shield you from the dread
Of earth-born shadows, and the ghostly folds
Of seeming evil curtaining round your worlds.
Yet can I bring no amulet to guard
One peaceful breast from sorrow ; for yourselves
Are girt about, as I, by that divine
Exhaustless Love, whose pledge your souls contain.
THE SPIRITS.
Ah, not for ourselves, for our brothers We plead, in their dawn overglooming !
For the death is not ours, but another's. Help ! help ! from the doom that is coming.
A LIBRETTO. IS
RAPHAEL.
To spirits time and space may be condensed
Into a throb of feeling, or a thought.
While ye were singing, as ye watched your worlds,
They budded into life, from fiery globes
Girdled with thunder, wreathed with sulphurous steam ;
Or from the slime where rude gigantic forms
Of crocodile or bat plunged through the dense
And flowerless wilds of cane, or flapped like dreams
Of darkness through the foul mephitic air.
These shapes gave way to forests, rocks, and seas,
And shapely forms of beast and bird, and man, —
The last result of wonder-working Time, —
And the vast complex tissues he hath wrought.
Of life and laws and governments and arts.
All this ye knew not, tranced in choral song:
Your music was the oblivion of all time.
THE SPIRITS.
Have we not seen the approaching doom of Earth ?
RAPHAEL.
The vision ye have had of joy and doom.
Flashing and glooming o'er two little lives,
Is truth half-typed in legend, such as fed
The people of the ancient days, distilled
From crude primordial growths of time, when sin
1 6 SATAN:
Saw the fierce flaming sword of conscience shake \
Its terror through the groves of Paradise, Grasped by Jehovah's red right hand, in wrath.
THE SPIRITS.
Was it a dream 1 We saw that red right hand.
RAPHAEL.
The events and thoughts that passed in olden time Dawn on your senses with the beams of hght That left long, long ago, those distant worlds, And flash from out the past, like present truths. It was a poet's dream ye saw. The earth. That seems so near, is many myriad leagues Away. 'Tis yours to unfold the mythic form And guess the meaning of the ancient tale.
THE SPIRITS.
We mark thy words : we know that thou art wise
And good ; and yet we hover in a mist
Of doubt. Help us ! our sight is weak and dim.
RAPHAEL.
Know, then, that men and angels can conceive Through symbols only, the eternal truths. Through all creation streams this dual ray, This marriage of the spirit with the form, —
A LIBRETTO. 1 7
The correspondence of the universe
With souls through sense, — the incessant undertone
Of melody and chord through all the worlds ; — •
The life of man reflecting life divine ;
Yea, even the blank and sterile voids that span
The dead unpalpitating space twixt star
And star, shall speak, as light hath spoken once.
Hark ! even now the unfathomable shades
Of fate begin to stir. I hear a sound
Of shuddering wings, beyond the hurrying clouds,
Beyond the stars, — yet nearer, nearer still !
DISTANT VOICES confusedly.
Behind us shines the Light of lights.
We are the Shadows, we the nights,
That blot the pure expanse of time.
And yet we weave the destined rhyme
Of creatures with the Increate,
Of God and man, free-will and fate ;
The warp and w^oof of heavens and hells ;
The noiseless round of death and birth ; The eternal protoplastic spells
That bind the sons of God to earth ; — The ceaseless web of mystery That has been and shall ever be.
RAPHAEL.
Far off I seem to hear a chorus strange, Rising and falling througli the gathering gloom.
1 8 SATAA^:
And now the congregated clouds appear To take the semblance of a Shape that bends This way, as when a whirling ocean-spout Drinks, as it moves along, the light of heaven.
Spirit, — if Spirit or Presence
Thou art. or the gloom of a symbol, —
Approach, if thou canst, to interpret
Thy name and thy work and thy essence ! (A Pause.) Behold, the Shadow spreads and towers apace, Like a dense cloud that rolls along the sea Landward, then shrouds the winding shore, the fields, The net-work of the gray autumnal woods, And the low cottage-roofs of upland farms. What seemed a vapor with a ragged fringe, Changes to wings that sweep from north to south. And, round about the mass whose cloudy dome Should be a head, I see the lambent flame Of distant lightnings play. And now a voice Of broken thunder-tones, and winds and waves Commingled, muttering unintelligible things. Approaches us. The air grows strangely chill And nebulous. Daylight hath backward stepped. And blotted with echpse the morning sun.
CHORUS OF THE WORLD-SPIRITS.
Like the pale stricken leaves of the Autumn When Winter swoops downward to whirl them
A LIBRETTO. 19
Afar from the nooks of the woodlands, And up through the clouds of the twilight, We shudder ! We hear a wind roaring And booming below in the darkness ; A voice whose low thunder is mingle^ With waves of the whispering ocean. The clouds that were pearly and golden Are steeped in a blackening crimson. The spell of a magical presence Is nearing us out of the darkness. What is it .'' No shape we distinguish ; The shadows are hopeless and voiceless. We are troubled. O help us, strong Angel ! A Form gathers out of the darkness, Awful and dim and abysmal !
RAPHAEL.
Fear not the gloomy Phantasm. Speak to him. If he will answer, ye may learn of him Some truths your books of dead theology Have never taught, nor poets, though they sang Of Eden and the primal curse of man.
THE SPIRITS.
What art thou } Speak ! whose shadow darkens thus The eye of morn ?
SATAX.
I am not what I seem.
20 SATAN:
THE SPIRITS.
Art thou that fallen angel who seduced
From their allegiance the bright hosts of heaven,
And men, and reignest now the lord of doom ?
SATAN.
I am not what I seem to finite minds ; —
No fallen angel ; for I never fell,
Though priest and poet feign me exiled and doomed
But ever was and ever shall be thus, —
Nor worse nor better than the Eternal planned.
I am the Retribution, not the Curse,
I am the shadow and reverse of God ;
The type of mixed and interrupted good ;
The clod of sense, without whose earthly base
You spirit-flowers can never grow and bloom.
THE SPIRITS.
We dread to ask, — what need have we of thee ?
SATAN.
I am that stern necessity of fate, Creation's temperament, — the mass and mould Of circumstance, through which eternal law Works, in its own mysterious way, its will.
A LIBRETTO. 21
THE SPIRITS.
Art thou not Evil, — Sin abstract and pure ?
SATAN.
There were no shadows till the worlds were made ; No evil and no sin till finite souls, Imperfect thence, conditioned in free will, Took form, projected by eternal law, Through co-existent realms of time and space.
THE SPIRITS.
Thy words are dark: we dimly catch their sense.
SATAN.
Naught evil, though it were the Prince of evil, Hath being in itself. For God alone Existeth in Himself, and good, which lives As sunshine lives, born of the Parent Sun. I am the finite shadow of that Sun, Opposite, not opposing, only seen Upon the nether side.
THE SPIRITS.
Art happy, then ?
22 SATAN:
SATAN.
Nor happy I, nor wretched. I but do My work, as finite fate and law prescribe.
THE SPIRITS.
Didst thou not tempt the woman and the man Of Eden, and beguile them to their doom?
SATAN.
No personal will am I, no influence bad Or good. I symbolize the wild and deep And unregenerated wastes of life, Dark with transmitted tendencies of race. And bhnd mischance ; all crude mistakes of will And tendency unbalanced by due weight Of favoring circumstance ; all passion blown By wandering winds ; all surplusage of force Piled up for use, but slipping from its base Of law and order ; all undisciplined And ignorant mutiny against the wise Restraint of rules by centuries old indorsed, And proved the best so long it needs no proof; All quality o'erstrained until it cracks, — Yet but a surface-crack : the Eternal Eye Sees underneath the soul's sphere, as above, And knows the deep foundations of the world
A LIBRETTO. 23
Will not be jarred or loosened by the play
Of sun and wind and rain upon the crust
Of upper soil. Nay, let the earthquake split
The mountains into steep and splintered chasms : —
Down deeper than the shock the adamant
Of ages stands, symbol no less divine
Of the Eternal Law, than heaven above.
THE SPIRITS.
Shall we, then, doubt the sacred books, — the faith That Satan was of old the foe of God ?
SATAN.
Nations have planned their Devil as they planned
Their gods. Say rather, God and Satan mixed,
A hybrid of diseased theology.
Stood at the centre of the universe,
Ormazd and Ahriman, in ceaseless war ; —
A double spirit, through whose nerves and veins
Throbbed the vast pulses of his feverish moods
Of blight and benediction. Did the Jew
Or Pagan (save the few of finer mould)
Own an unchanging God, or one, flesh-veiled,
Who like themselves was moved to wrath, revenge,
And jealousy, to petty strifes and bars
Of sect and clan, — the echo of their thought .''
24 SATAN:
THE SPIRITS.
What if it were revealed to holy men
By faith, that God had formed a spirit vast,
Who fell, rebelled, tempted the race to death ?
Whether a foe who rode upon the wind,
Or one within, in league with some sweet drift
Of natural desire, tainted yet sweet.
SATAN.
Alas ! did ever human eyes o'ertop
And pierce beyond the hemisphere of tints
That overarched their thought and hope, yet seemed
A heaven of truth ? As man is, so his God.
So, too, his spirit of evil. Evil fixed
He saw, eternal and abstract, whose tree
Thrust down its grappling tap-roots in the heart.
And poisoned where it grew ; its blighting shade
By no sweet wandering winds of heaven caressed,
No rain-drops from the pitying clouds. No birds
Of song and summer in its branches built
Their little nests of love : no hermit sought
The shivering rustle of its chilly shade.
Accursed of God it stood, — accursed and drear
It stood apart, — a thing by God and man
Hated, or pitied, as a pestilence
O'erpassing cure. So hate not me. For I
Am but the picture mortal eyes behold,
A LIBRETTO. 25
Shadowing the dread results of broken laws
Designed by Eternal Wisdom for the good
Of man, though typed as Darkness, Pain, and Fire.
THE SPIRITS.
Must not the Eternal Justice punish man And spirits — now, or in the great To-Be ? What sinner can escape His burning wrath "t
SATAN.
His name is Love. He wills no curse on men Or spirits, who condemn themselves, and hide Their faces in the murky fogs of sense And lawless passion, and the hate and feud Born of all dense inwoven ignorance. Man loves or fears the shadow of himself. God shines behind him. Let him turn and see.
[ Vanishes slowly.
26 SATAN:
Part II.
A CHORUS OF ANGELS IN THE DARKNESS.
Far in the shuddering spaces of the North
We hve. We saw a Shape Of terror rise and spread and issue forth ;
And we would fain escape The anger of his frown. We know him not,
Nor whether it be he Who claims our homage, for the shadows blot
The sun we may not see.
We lift our prayers on heavy wings to One
Who dwells beyond the sun, Whose hghtnings are decrees of life or doom,
Whose laws are veiled in gloom. Thick clouds and darkness are about thy throne
Where thou dost reign alone ; And we amid the mists and shadows grope
With faint bewildered hope. We fear thy awful judgments and thy curse
Upon thy universe. For we are told it is a fearful thing,
O thou Almighty King, To fall into thy hands. Oh, spare the rod, —
Thou art a jealous God !
A LIBRETTO. 27
O save us by the blood of Him who died
That sin might not divide Our guilty souls from heaven and Christ and thee.
And yet we dread to see Thy face. How can the trembling fugitive
Behold that face, and live !
A VOICE BEHIND THE DARKNESS.
Fear not ; for ye shall live. There is no frown Upon his face. He shall lift up your heads. Fear not, but trust him ; for his name is Love.
CHOIR OF ANGELS IN THE DISTANCE.
God who madest the tempest's winged terror,
And the smile of morn, Who art bringing truth from sin and error,
Love from hate and scorn ;
Lo, thy presence glows through all thy creatures,
Passion-stained or fair ; Saint and sinner bear the self-same features
Thy bright angels wear.
Human frailty all alike inherit ;
Yet our souls are free. Giver of all good, it is no merit
That we turn to thee.
28" SATAjV:
Thou alone art pure in thy perfection :
We thy children shine, But as our soiled garments take reflection
From thy light divine.
Thou art reaching forth thine arms for ever
Struggling souls to free, Leading man by every good endeavor
Back to heaven and thee !
CHORUS OF WORLD-SPIRITS.
The presence that awed us and chilled us Dissolves in the dews of the morning ; The darkness has vanished around us, And shrunk to the shadows that color The cloud-flakes of gold and of purple. So vanish the thoughts that obscured us, The doubt and the dread of the evil That stained the starred robe of creation ; And we hear but one music pervading The planets and suns that are shining ; The spirits that pine in the darkness, Or float in the joy of the morning.
SEMICHORUS.
Have we wronged thee, O monarch of shadows?
Have we named thee the Demon of spirits ? We know that the good and the evil
Each mortal and angel inherits —
A LIBRETTO. 29
The evil and good that are twisted
As fibres of brass and of gold — To the All-seeing Eye have a meaning
We know not. — too deep to be told. But the wise and the merciful Father,
Though they stray in the desert and wold, Will lift up his lambs to his bosom,
And gather them into his fold.
CHORUS OF HOPEFUL SPIRITS.
Praise, praise ye the poets, whose pages Were wisdom and love for the ages ; Who saw, in their marvellous trances Of thoughts and of rhythmical fancies, The manhood of man in all errors ; The hopes that have triumphed o'er terrors The great human heart ever pleading Its kindred divine, though misleading Fate held it aloof from the heaven That to spirits untempted was given.
2.
Praise, praise ye the prophets, — the sages Who lived and who died for the ages ; The grand and magnificent dreamers ; The heroes, the mighty redeemers ;
30 SA TAN:
The martyrs, reformers, and leaders ; The voices of mystical Vedas ; The bibles of races long shrouded, Who left us their wisdom unclouded, The truth that is old as their mountains, But fresh as the rills from their fountains.
SEMICHORUS.
The creeds of the past that have bound us With visions of terror around us, Like dungeons of stone that have crumbled, Beneath us lie shattered and humbled. The tyranny mitred and crested. Flattered and crowned and detested ; The blindness that trod upon Science;
The bigotry Ignorance cherished ; The armed and the sainted alliance
Of conscience and hate, — they have perished, Have melted like mists in the splendor
Of light and of beauty supernal ; Of love ever watchful and tender,
Of law ever one and eternal.
THE SONG OF A WISE SPIRIT.
The light of central suns o'erflows
The farthest bounds of time and space ;
The shadows are but passing shows And clouds upon creation's face.
A LIBRETTO. 3^
From out the chaos and the slime,
From out the whirhng winds of fire, From years of ignorance and crime.
From centuries of wild desire, The shaping laws of truth and love
Shall lift the savage from the clod ; Shall till the field, and gild the grove
With homes of man and domes of God. And Love and Science, side by side
With starry lamps of heavenly flame, Shall light the darkness far and wide,
That fixed the nations' curse and shame ; Shall bury in forgotten graves
Old Superstition's tyrant brood ; Shall break the fetters of the slaves ;
Shall bind the world in brotherhood ; Shall hurl all despots from the throne,
And lift the saviors of the race : And law and liberty alone
From sea to sea the lands embrace.
THE HYMN OF A DEVOUT SPIRIT.
The time shall come when men no more Shall deem the sin that blights the earth A taint inherited at birth,
A curse for ever to endure.
Shall see that from one common root Must spring the better and the worse, And seek to cure before they curse
The tree that drops its wormy fruit. *
32 SATAN:
For God must love, though men should hate The vine whose mildew blights its grape : And he shall give a fairer shape
To lives deformed by earthly fate.
O, praise him not that on a throne
Of glory unapproached he sits,
Nor deem a slavish fear befits The child a Father calls his own.
But praise him that in every thrill Of life his breath is in our lungs, And moves our hearts and tunes our tongues,
Howe'er rebellious to his will.
Praise him that all alike drink in
A portion of the life divine,
A light whose struggling soul-beams shine Through all the blinding mists of sin.
For sooner shall the embracing day, The air that folds us in its arms, The morning sun that cheers and warms,
Hold back their service, and decay.
Ere God who wraps the universe
With love, shall let the souls he made Fall from his omnipresent aid
O'ershadowed by a human curse.
A LIBRETTO. 2>2>
THE SPIRIT OF A POET
- sings from a bi'lght cloud on a mountain-top.
I sang of Eden and Creation's morn ;
Of fiend and angel, triumph and despair.
I caught the world's old music in the air, The strains that from a people's creed were born.
I soared with seraphs, walked with lords of doom;
Basked in the sun, and groped in utter dark.
I lit the olden legends with a spark Whose radiance but revealed eternal gloom.
I stood enveloped in a cloud o'ercharged
With thunder ; and the blind, mad bolts that flew Were heaven's decrees. They spared alone the few Whose hearts by grace supernal were enlarged.
Upon imagination's star-lit wings
I flew beyond the steadfast earth's supports ;
And stood within Jehovah's shining courts. And heard what seemed the murmur of the springs,
The streams of living and eternal youth. Was it a dream ? Hath God another word Than that between the cherubim we heard,
When Israel served the Lord with zeal and truth .'*
Are those but earth-born shadows that we saw Thronging the spaces of the heavens and hells ? Is there a newer prophet-voice that tells
The trumpet-tidings of a grander law "i
34 SATAN:
The lurid words above the fatal door, — The door itself, — the circles of despair. Are fast dissolving in serener air.
They were but dreams. They can return no more.
No more the vengeance of a demon-god ;
No more the lost souls whirling in black drifts Of endless pain. The illumined spirit lifts
The fog where once its trembling footsteps trod.
I looked, and, lo ! the abyss was all ablaze With light of heaven, and not abysmal fire ; And fain would tune to other chords my lyre,
And fain would sing the alternate nights and days, —
The days and nights that are the wings of Time ;
The love that melts away the eternal chains ;
The judgments only of remedial pains ; The hidden innocence in guilt and crime.
Behold, the light that dawneth on the earth Is but the primal light now first discerned ; And the great creeds the world hath slowly learned
Are truth evolved from forms of ruder birth.
The tides of life, divine and human, swell
And flood the desert shore, the stagnant pool. 'And sage and poet know where God hath rule
There is no cloud in heaven, — no doom in hell.
A LIBRETTO. 35
FULL CHORUS OF THE WORLD-SPIRITS.
Hear ye, O brothers, the voices around that are swell- ing in chorus, Nearer and sweeter they rise and fall through the nebulous light ; Voices of sages and prophets, while, under our foot- steps and o'er us. Roll in their orbits the worlds whose circles we tracked through the night.
Melting away in the morning, we follow their pathways no longer, Knowing the hand that has guided will bear them for ever along, Bear them for ever, and shape them to destinies fairer and stronger Than when the joyous archangels hailed their crea- tion with song.
Not with a light that is waning, not with the curse of a dooming, They shall accomplish their cycles through ages of fire and of cloud : Ever from chaos to order unfolding, progressing, and blooming, Till with the wisdom and beauty of ages on ages endowed.
2>^ ' SATAN: A LIBRETTO.
Out of the regions of discord, out of the kingdoms of evil, God in the races to come shall abolish the reign of despair. Who shall affront his decrees with the phantoms of demon and devil ? Who shall unhallow the joy of his hght, and the health of his air ?
Lo ! on the day-star itself there are spots that, coming and going, Send through the spaces mysterious thrillings, like omens of blight. And the great planets afar are convulsed, as when win- ter comes blowing Over the shuddering oceans and islands of tropical light.
Shadows are shadows ; and all that is made is illumined and shaded; Bound by the laws of its being, heaven and earth in its breath. He who hath made us will lift us, though stained and deformed and degraded, Lift us and love us, though drowned in the surges of darkness and death !
THE END.
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