By the lie in me which I keep myself,

Thou'rt a false swearer.

Were it otherwise,

What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts
To that earth-angel or earth-demon-which,
Thou and I have not solved his problem yet
Enough to argue,-that fallen Adam there,-
That red-clay and a breath! who must, forsooth,
Live in a new apocalypse of sense,

With beauty and music waving in his trees
And running in his rivers, to make glad
His soul made perfect,-if it were not for
The hope within thee, deeper than thy truth,
Of finally conducting him and his

To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,
Which affront Heaven with their vacuity?

Gab. Angel, there are no vacant thrones in Heaven

To suit thy bitter words. Glory and life
Fulfil their own depletions: and if God
Sighed you far from Him, His next breath drew in
A compensative splendour up the skies,
Flushing the starry arteries!

With a change!

Luc.
So, let the vacant thrones, and gardens too,
Fill as may please you !—and be pitiful,
As ye translate that word, to the dethroned
And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,
That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,
Am here, and will not go; while there, along
The light to which ye flash the desert out,
Flies your adopted Adam! your red-clay

In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?

Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks, I am not a fallen angel!

Gab.

Aught of those exiles?

Dost thou know

Luc.
Wordless all day along the wilderness :
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the marshalled cherubim
Shining against, not for them! and I know

Ay; I know they have fled

They dare not look in one another's face,—

As if each were a cherub!

Luc. Why, so the angels taunt! What should be more?

Gab. God is more.

Luc.

Gab.

And capable of saving. Lucifer,

I charge thee by the solitude He kept
Ere He created,-leave the earth to God!

Luc. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin!
Gab. I charge thee by the memory of Heaven
Ere any sin was done,-leave earth to God!

Luc. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon.
Gab. I charge thee by the choral song we sang,
When up against the white shore of our feet,
The depths of the creation swelled and brake,—
And the new worlds, the beaded foam and flower
Of all that coil, roared outward into space
On thunder-edges,—leave the earth to God!

Luc. My woe is on the earth, to curse thereby.
Gab. I charge thee by that mournful Morning Star
Which trembles

Luc. Hush! I will not hear thee speak

Of such things. Enough spoken. As the pine

In norland forest drops its weight of snows

By a night's growth, so, growing toward my ends,
I drop thy counsels. Farewell, Gabriel!

Watch out thy service; I assert my will.

And peradventure in the after years,

When thoughtful men bend slow their spacious brows
Upon the storm and strife seen everywhere

To ruffle their smooth manhood, and break up
With lurid lights of intermittent hope

Their human fear and wrong,-they may discern
The heart of a lost angel in the earth,

CHORUS OF EDEN SPIRITS.

(Chanting from Paradise, while Adam and Eve fly across the
Sword-glare.)

Hearken, oh hearken! let your souls, behind you,
Lean, gently moved!

Our voices feel along the Dread to find you,
O lost, beloved!

Through the thick-shielded and strong-marshalled angels
They press and pierce:

Our requiems follow fast on our evangels,-
Voice throbs in verse!

We are but orphaned Spirits left in Eden;
A time ago,

God gave us golden cups, and we were bidden
To feed you so!

But now our right hand hath no cup remaining,
No work to do;

The mystic hydromel is spilt, and staining
The whole earth through;

And all those stains lie clearly round for showing
(Not interfused!)

That brighter colours were the world's foregoing
Than shall be used.

Hearken, oh hearken! ye shall hearken surely,
For years and years,

The noise beside you, dripping coldly, purely,
Of spirits' tears!

The yearning to a beautiful, denied you,

Shall strain your powers;

Ideal sweetnesses shall over-glide you,
Resumed from ours!

In all your music, our pathetic minor
Your ears shall cross;

And all fair sights shall mind you of diviner
With sense of loss!

We shall be near, in all your poet-languors
And wild extremes,

What time ye vex the desert with vain angers,
Or light with dreams!

And when upon you, weary after roaming, Death's seal is put,

By the foregone ye shall discern the coming, Through eyelids shut.

Spirits of the Trees.

Hark! the Eden trees are stirring,
Slow and solemn to your hearing!
Plane and cedar, palm and fir,
Tamarisk and juniper,

Each is throbbing in vibration
Since that crowning of creation,
When the God-breath spake abroad,
Pealing down the depths of Godhead,
Let us make man like to God:-
And the pine stood quivering
In the Eden-gorges wooded,
As the awful word went by;
Like a vibrant-chorded string
Stretched from mountain-peak to sky!
And the platan did expand,

Slow and gradual, branch and head;
And the cedar's strong black shade
Fluttered brokenly and grand!-
Grove and forest bowed aslant
In emotion jubilant.

Voice of the same, but softer.

Which divine impulsion cleaves
In dim movements to the leaves
Dropt and lifted, dropt and lifted
In the sunlight greenly sifted,—
In the sunlight and the moonlight
Greenly sifted through the trees.
Ever wave the Eden trees

In the nightlight, and the noonlight,
With a ruffling of green branches
Shaded off to resonances;
Never stirred by rain or breeze!
Fare ye well, farewell!

The sylvan sounds, no longer audible,
Expire at Eden's door!

Each footstep of your treading

Treads out some murmur which ye heard before:
Farewell! the trees of Eden

River-Spirits.

Ye shall hear nevermore.

Hark! the flow of the four rivers-
Hark the flow!

How the silence round you shivers,
While our voices through it go,
Cold and clear.

A softer voice.

Think a little, while ye hear,-
Of the banks

Where the alders and red deer
Crowd in intermingled ranks,
As if all would drink at once,
Where the living water runs :—
Of the fishes' golden edges
Flashing in and out the sedges:
Of the swans on silver thrones,
Floating down the winding streams,
With impassive eyes turned shoreward,
And a chant of undertones,--
And the lotos leaning forward
To help them into dreams.

Fare ye well, farewell!

The river-sounds, no longer audible,
Expire at Eden's door!

Each footstep of your treading

Treads out some murmur which ye heard before:
Farewell! the streams of Eden

Bird-Spirit.

Ye shall hear nevermore.

I am the nearest nightingale
That singeth in Eden after you,
And I am singing loud and true,
And sweet,-I do not fail!

I sit upon a cypress-bough,

Close to the gate; and I fling my song
Over the gate and through the mail
Of the warden angels marshalled strong,-
Over the gate and after you!