Adam. God, there is power in Thee! I make appeal Unto Thy kingship.
O sinned against, great God!-My Seed, my Seed,
There is hope set on THEE-I cry to Thee,
Thou mystic Seed that shalt be!-leave us not
In agony beyond what we can bear,
Fallen in debasement below thunder-mark;
A mark for scorning-taunted and perplext
By all these creatures we ruled yesterday,
Whom Thou, Lord, rulest alway. O my Seed,
Through the tempestuous years that rain so thick
Betwixt my ghostly vision and Thy face,
Let me have token! for my soul is bruised
Before the serpent's head.
[A vision of CHRIST appears in the midst of the zodiac, which pales
before the heavenly light. The Earth Spirits grow greyer and
fainter.
Adam. This is God!-Curse us not, God, any more.
Eve. But gazing so— -so-with omnific eyes,
Lift my soul upward till it touch Thy feet!
Or lift it only not to seem too proud-
To the low height of some good angel's feet,-
For such to tread on, when he walketh straight,
And Thy lips praise him.
Spirits of the earth, I meet you with rebuke for the reproach
And cruel and unmitigated blame
Ye cast upon your masters. True, they have sinned;
And true, their sin is reckoned into loss
For you the sinless. Yet, your innocence,
Which of you praises ? since God made your acts
Inherent in your lives, and bound your hands
With instincts and imperious sanctities,
From self-defacement? Which of you disdains
These sinners, who, in falling, proved their height
Above you, by their liberty to fall?
And which of you complains of loss by them,
For whose delight and use ye have your life
And honour in creation. Ponder it!
This regent and sublime Humanity,
Though fallen, exceeds you! this shall film your sun,—
Shall hunt your lightning to its lair of cloud,-
Turn back your rivers, footpath all your seas,
Lay flat your forests, master with a look
Your lion at his fasting, and fetch down
Your eagle flying. Nay, without this rule
Of mandom, ye would perish,-beast by beast
Devouring; tree by tree, with strangling roots
And trunks set tuskwise. Ye would gaze on God
With imperceptive blankness up the stars,
And mutter, "Why, God, hast Thou made us thus ?”
And, pining to a sallow idiocy,
Stagger up blindly against the ends of life,
Then stagnate into rottenness, and drop
Heavily-poor, dead matter-piecemeal down
The abysmal spaces-like a little stone
Let fall to chaos. Therefore, over you,
Accept this sceptre; therefore, be content
To minister with voluntary grace
And melancholy pardon, every rite
And service in you, to this sceptred hand.
Be ye to man as angels be to God,
Servants in pleasure, singers of delight,
Suggesters to his soul of higher things
Than any of your highest. So, at last,
He shall look round on you, with lids too straight
To hold the grateful tears, and thank you well;
And bless you when he prays his secret prayers,
And praise you when he sings his open songs,
For the clear song-note he has learnt in you,
Of purifying sweetness; and extend
Across your head his golden fantasies,
Which glorify you into soul from sense!
Go, serve him for such price. That not in vain,
Nor yet ignobly ye shall serve, I place
My word here for an oath, mine oath for act
To be hereafter. In the name of which
Perfect redemption and perpetual grace,
I bless you through the hope and through the peace,
Which are mine,-to the Love, which is myself.
Eve. Speak on still, Christ.
In set words, I am blessed in hearkening Thee--
Speak, Christ.
CHRIST.
Speak, Adam. Bless the woman, man
Adam.
Take heart before this Presence. Lo! my voice,
Which, naming erst the creatures, did express-
God breathing through my breath-the attributes
And instincts of each creature in its name;
Floats to the same afflaí us,—floats and heaves
Like a water-weed that opens to a wave,-
A full-leaved prophecy affecting thee,
Out fairly and wide. Henceforward, rise, aspire
Unto the calms and magnanimities,
The lofty uses, and the noble ends,
The sanctified devotion and full work,
To which thou art elect for evermore,
First woman, wife, and mother.
Adam. And also the sole bearer of the Seed
Whereby sin dieth! Raise the majesties
Of thy disconsolate brows, O well-beloved,
And front with level eyelids the To come,
And all the dark o' the world.
To thy peculiar and best altitudes
Of doing good and of enduring ill,—
Of comforting for ill, and teaching good,
And reconciling all that ill and good
Unto the patience of a constant hope,-
Rise with thy daughters! If sin came by thee,
And by sin, death,-the ransom-righteousness,
The heavenly life and compensative rest
Shall come by means of thee. If woe by thee
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth
An angel of the woe thou didst achieve;
Found acceptable to the world instead
Of others of that name, of whose bright steps
Thy deed stripped bare the hills.
Something thou hast to bear through womanhood-
Peculiar suffering answering to the sin;
Some pang paid down for each new human life;
Some weariness in guarding such a life—
Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust
From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved
Too loyally, some treason: feebleness
Within thy heart,and cruelty without;
And pressures of an alien tyranny,
With its dynastic reasons of larger bones
And stronger sinews. But, go to thy love
Shall chant itself its own beatitudes,
After its own life-working.
Set on thy sighing lips, shall make thee glad:
A poor man, served by thee, shall make thee rich;
A sick man, helped by thee, shall make thee strong;
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense
Of service which thou renderest. Such a crown
I set upon thy head,-Christ witnessing
With looks of prompting love-to keep thee clear
Of all reproach against the sin foregone,
From all the generations which succeed.
Thy hand which plucked the apple, I clasp close;
Thy lips which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close,-
I bless thee in the name of Paradise,
And by the memory of Edenic joys
Forfeit and lost ;-by that last cypress tree
Green at the gate, which thrilled as we came out;
And by the blessed nightingale, which threw
Its melancholy music after us ;—
And by the flowers, whose spirits full of smells
Did follow softly, plucking us behind
Back to the gradual banks and vernal bowers
And fourfold river-courses :-by all these,
I bless thee to the contraries of these;
I bless thee to the desert and the thorns,
To the elemental change and turbulence,
And to the roar of the estranged beasts,
And to the solemn dignities of grief,-
To each one of these ends,—and to this END
Of Death and the hereafter !
Eve.
For me and for my daughters this high part,
Which lowly shall be counted. Noble work
Shall hold me in the place of garden-rest;
And in the place of Eden's lost delight,
Worthy endurance of permitted pain;
While on my longest patience there shall wait
Death's speechless angel, smiling in the east
Whence cometh the cold wind. I bow myself
Humbly henceforward on the ill I did,
That humbleness may keep it in the shade.
Shall it be so? Shall I smile, saying so?
O Seed! O King! O God, who shalt be Seed,—
What shall I say? As Eden's fountains swelled
Brightly betwixt their banks, so swells my soul
Betwixt Thy love and power!
Of foregone Eden! now, for the first time
Since God said "Adam," walking through the trees,
I dare to pluck you, as I plucked erewhile
The lily or pink, the rose or heliotrope,
So pluck I you-so largely-with both hands,
And throw you forward on the outer earth
Wherein we are cast out, to sweeten it.
Adam. As Thou, Christ, to illume it, holdest Heaven
[The CHRIST is gradually transfigured during the following phrases of dialogue, into humanity and suffering.
Thou standest mute in glory, like the sun.
Adam. We worship in Thy silence, Saviour Christ. Eve. Thy brows grow grander with a forecast woe,— Diviner, with the possible of Death!
We worship in Thy sorrow, Saviour Christ.
Adam. How do Thy clear, still eyes transpierce our souls, As gazing through them toward the Father-throne,
In a pathetical, full Deity,
Serenely as the stars gaze through the air
Straight on each other.
Thou standest mute in glory, like the moon.
CHRIST. Eternity stands alway fronting God;
A stern colossal image, with blind eyes,
And grand dim lips, that murmur evermore
God, God, God! while the rush of life and death,
The roar of act and thought, of evil and good,—
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