The Seraphim.

"I look for Angels' songs, and hear Him cry."

GILES FLETCHER.

PART THE FIRST.

[It is the time of the Crucifixion: and the Father of the Crucified has directed towards earth the angels of His heaven, of whom all have departed except the two Seraphim, Ador the Strong and Zerah the Bright One.

The place is the outer side of the shut heavenly gate.]

Ador. And the golden harps the angels bore
To help the songs of their desire,

Still burning from their hands of fire,
Lie without touch or tone,

Or canopy of angel wing,

Upon the glass-sea shore.

Zerah. Silent upon the glass-sea shore!
Ador. Instead of sounding, glittering

In the shadow from the throne-
The shadow without form, that meets
The edges of the crystal sea—
Awfuller than light derived,

And red with all those primal heats,
Whereby all life hath lived.

Zerah. Our visible God, our Heaven! and we

Go thus !

Ador.

Zerah

Ador.

Thus, now; unpausingly.
Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,
Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,—

The roar of whose descent hath died
To a still sound, as thunder into rain.
Immeasurable space spreads magnified
With that thick life, along the plane
The worlds slid out on. What a fall

And eddy of wings innumerous, crossed
By trailing curls that have not lost
The glitter of the God-smile shed
On each bowed angel's head!

And gleamed between by hands that fling
Up homage, like retorted rays,
From high instinct of worshipping,

And habitude of praise.
Rapidly they drop below us.
Pointed palm and wing and hair,
Indistinguishable, show us
Only pulses in the air

Throbbing with a fiery beat ;-
As if a new creation heard
(Late unhearing, still unseeing)
Some divine and plastic word,
And trembling at its proper being,
Did waken at our feet.

Zerah, do not wait to see.

His voice-the voice that thrills us so
As we our harpstrings-uttered Go,
Behold the Holy in His woe-
And all are gone, save thee and—

Zerah.

Thee!

Ador.

I stood the nearest to the throne,
What time the voice said Go.

And whether I was moved alone

By the storm-pathos of the tone

Which swept through Heaven the alien name of woe,

Or that the subtle glory broke

Through my strong and shielding wings,

Bearing to my finite essence

Incapacious of their presence,

Infinite imaginings—

None knoweth save the Throned who spoke.
But I, who, at creation, stood upright

And heard the God-Breath move,

Shaping the words that lightened-"Be there light,”— Nor trembled but with love;

Now fell down tremblingly,

My face upon the pavement where I towered;
As if that mine immortal were o'erpowered
By God's eternity!

Zerah. Let me wait!-let me wait!—

Ador. Oh, gaze not backward thro' the gate!
God fills our heaven with God's own solitude
Till all its pavements glow:

His Godhead being no more subdued
By itself, to glories low

Which seraphs can sustain,
What if thou, in gazing so,
Should behold but only one
Attribute, the veil undone-
And that the one to which we press
Nearest, for its gentleness—
Ay, His love!

How the deep ecstatic pain

Thy being's strength would capture!
Without a language for the rapture,
Without a music strong to come

And set the adoration free,
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be

Amid the general chorus dumb,
God-stricken to seraphic agony !-
Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise

The life-fount, whence His hand did gather
With solitary force

Our immortalities !—

Straightway how thine own would wither,
Falter like a human breath,

And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source!

My words have imaged dread.

Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
And dropt thy wings in languishment,

Overclouding foot and face;
As if God's throne were eminent
Before thee, in the place.

Yet not--not so,

O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil
All motions of the one pre-eminent Will
Which stirreth unto will and act our natures,
As human souls do stir the fleshly creatures.
Not for obeisance, but obedience,

Give motion to thy wings! Depart from hence—
The voice said "Go."

Zerah. Beloved, I depart.

His will is as a spirit within my spirit ;
A portion of the being I inherit-

His will is mine obedience.

I resemble

A flame all undefiled though it tremble-

I go and tremble.

Love me, O beloved!

O thou, who stronger art,

And standest ever near the Infinite,

Pale with excelling light!

Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,

More feeble, more afraid—

And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
As close and gentle as the loving are;

That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.
Ador. I am near thee, and I love thee.
Were I loveless, from thee gone,

Love is round, beneath, above thee—
God, the omnipresent One.

Spread the wing, and lift the brow----
Well-beloved, what fearest thou?

Zerah. I fear, I fear

Ador.

Zerah.

What fear?

The fear of earth.

Ador. Of earth, the God-create and beautiful?
From whence the sweet sea-music hath its birth,
And vernal forests lift their leaves in tune
Beneath the gracious, water-leading moon?
Where every night, the stars do put away
Meekly its darkness dull,

And look their spirit-light into the clay?
Where every day, the kingly sun doth bless

More lovingly than kings,

And stir to such harmonious happiness
All leafed and reeded things,

It seems as if the joyous shout which burst
From angel lips to see him first,

Had left a silent echo in his ray?

Zerah. Of earth-the God-create and God-accurst:
Where man is, and the thorn:

Where winds and waves have borne,
Where sun and star can roll,

No tune, no shining to the human soul:
Where Eden's lapsing rivers all are dry,
And in their stead, do flow perpetually,
Do flow and flow hot streams of human tears-
Where Eden's tree of life no more uprears
Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead
The yew-tree bows its melancholy head,
And all the undergrasses kills and seres.
Ador. A fear of earth, the weak?

Where men that faint, do strive for crowns that fade;
And stoop to clasp metallic heaps conveyed

From the green sward their delving labour scars—
When upright they might stand, and view the stars?
Where, having won the winning which they seek,
They lie beside the sceptre and the gold,
With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold;
And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?
Zerah. Of earth the terrible:

Where the blind matter brings

An awful potence out of impotence,
And all the spiritual prostrated lies,
Before the things of sense:

Where the strong human will saith "ay" or "no,"
Because the human pulse is quick or slow-
Where stronger Love succumbeth unto Change,
With only his own memories, for revenge;

And where the fearful mystery—

Ador.

Called Death?

Zerah. Nay! Death is fearful; but who saith

"To die," is comprehensible.

What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,

Though its utterance be not for thee,