A DRAMA OF EXILE.
45
Eve.All, 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 God'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 God,
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,—evermore
To doubt, betwixt our senses and our souls,
Which are the most 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 spaces,—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 its visionary dread,—
Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,
In fantasque apposition and approach,
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 God'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 God,
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,—evermore
To doubt, betwixt our senses and our souls,
Which are the most 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 spaces,—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 its visionary dread,—
Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,
In fantasque apposition and approach,
