58
A DRAMA OF EXILE.
Marble to marble, from my heart to Heaven,
A monument of anguish, to transpierce
And overtop your vapoury complaints
Expressed from feeble woes!
Earth Spirits.I wail, I wail!
Lucifer. For, O ye Heavens, ye are my witnesses,
That I, struck out from nature in a blot,
The outcast, and the mildew of things good,
The leper of angels, the excepted dust
Under the common rain of daily gifts,—
I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,—
To whom the highest and the lowest alike
Say, Go from us—we have no need of thee,—
Was made by God like others. Good and fair,
He did create me!—ask Him, if not fair;
Ask, if I caught not fair and silverly
His blessing for chief angels, on my head,
Until it grew there, a crown crystallised!
Ask, if He never called me by my name,
Lucifer—kindly said as "Gabriel "—
Lucifer—soft as "Michael!" while serene
I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
Answered "my Father," innocent of shame
And of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,
White angels in your niches,—I repent,—
And would tread down my own offences, back
To service at the footstool? That's read wrong:
I cry as the beast did, that I may cry—
Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep
Against the sides of this prodigious pit,
I cry—cry—dashing out the hands of wail,
On each side, to meet anguish everywhere,
And to attest it in the ecstasy
And exaltation of a woe sustained
Because provoked and chosen.
Pass along
Your wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefs,
In transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfed
A monument of anguish, to transpierce
And overtop your vapoury complaints
Expressed from feeble woes!
Earth Spirits.I wail, I wail!
Lucifer. For, O ye Heavens, ye are my witnesses,
That I, struck out from nature in a blot,
The outcast, and the mildew of things good,
The leper of angels, the excepted dust
Under the common rain of daily gifts,—
I the snake, I the tempter, I the cursed,—
To whom the highest and the lowest alike
Say, Go from us—we have no need of thee,—
Was made by God like others. Good and fair,
He did create me!—ask Him, if not fair;
Ask, if I caught not fair and silverly
His blessing for chief angels, on my head,
Until it grew there, a crown crystallised!
Ask, if He never called me by my name,
Lucifer—kindly said as "Gabriel "—
Lucifer—soft as "Michael!" while serene
I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
Answered "my Father," innocent of shame
And of the sense of thunder. Ha! ye think,
White angels in your niches,—I repent,—
And would tread down my own offences, back
To service at the footstool? That's read wrong:
I cry as the beast did, that I may cry—
Expansive, not appealing! Fallen so deep
Against the sides of this prodigious pit,
I cry—cry—dashing out the hands of wail,
On each side, to meet anguish everywhere,
And to attest it in the ecstasy
And exaltation of a woe sustained
Because provoked and chosen.
Pass along
Your wilderness, vain mortals! Puny griefs,
In transitory shapes, be henceforth dwarfed
