How happy were ye, living and possessing,
O fair half-souls capacious of full blessing!
Yet I wail!

First Spirit.

I wail, I wail! Now hear my charge to-day,

Thou man, thou woman, marked as the misdoers
By God's sword at your backs! I lent my clay
To make your bodies, which had grown 'more
flowers:

And now, in change for what lent, ye give me
The thorn to vex, the tempest-fire to cleave me—
And I wail!

Second Spirit.

I wail, I wail! Behold ye that I fasten

My sorrow's fang upon your souls dishonoured? Accursed transgressors! down the steep ye hasten,— Your crown's weight on the world, to drag it downward

Unto your ruin. Lo! my lions, scenting
The blood of wars, roar hoarse and unrelenting—
And I waill

First Spirit.

I wail, I wail! Do you hear that I wail?

I had no part in your transgression-none.
My roses on the bough did bud not pale,
My rivers did not loiter in the sun;
I was obedient. Wherefore in my centre

Do I thrill at this curse of death and winter ?----
Do I wail?

Second Spirit.

I wail, I wail! I wail in the assault

of undeserved perdition, sorely wounded! My nightingale sang sweet without a fault, My gentle leopards innocently bounded.

We were obedient. What is this convulses

Our blameless life with pangs and fever pulses ?
And I wail!

Eve. I choose God's thunder and His angels' swords To die by, Adam, rather than such words.

Let us pass out and flee.

Adam.

We cannot flee.

This zodiac of the creatures' cruelty

Curls round us, like a river cold and drear,
And shuts us in, constraining us to hear.
First Spirit.

I feel your steps, O wandering sinners, strike

A sense of death to me, and undug graves! The heart of earth, once calm, is trembling like The ragged foam along the ocean-waves: The restless earthquakes rock against each other; The elements moan 'round me- -'Mother, mother !'—

And I wail!

Second Spirit.

Your melancholy looks do pierce me through; Corruption swathes the paleness of your beauty. Why have ye done this thing? What did we do

That we should fall from bliss as ye from duty? Wild shriek the hawks, in waiting for their jesses, Fierce howl the wolves along the wildernesses—

And I wail!

Adam. To thee, the Spirit of the harmless earth, To thee, the Spirit of earth's harmless lives, Inferior creatures but still innocent,

Be salutation from a guilty mouth

Yet worthy of some audience and respect

From you who are not guilty. If we have sinned, God hath rebuked us, who is over us

To give rebuke or death, and if ye wail

Because of any suffering from our sin,
Ye who are under and not over us,
Be satisfied with God, if not with us,

And pass out from our presence in such peace
As we have left you, to enjoy revenge

Such as the Heavens have made you. Verily,
There must be strife between us, large as sin.

Eve. No strife, mine Adam? Let us not stand high Upon the wrong we did to reach disdain, Who rather should be humbler evermore Since self-made sadder. Adam! shall I speak— I who spake once to such a bitter end-

Shall I speak humbly now, who once was proud?
I, schooled by sin to more humility

Than thou hast, O mine Adam, O my king—
My king, if not the world's?

Adam.

Speak as thou wilt.

Eve. Thus, then-my hand in thine

Sweet, dreadful Spirits!

I pray you humbly in the name of God,

Not to say of these tears, which are impure—
Grant me such pardoning grace as can go forth
From clean volitions toward a spotted will,
From the wronged to the wronger, this and no more;
I do not ask more. I am 'ware, indeed,
That absolute pardon is impossible

From you to me, by reason of my sin,-
And that I cannot evermore, as once,
With worthy acceptation of pure joy,
Behold the trances of the holy hills
Beneath the leaning stars, or watch the vales
Dew-pallid with their morning ecstasy,-

Or hear the winds make pastoral peace between
Two grassy uplands,-and the river-wells

Work out their bubbling mysteries under ground,—
And all the birds sing, till for joy of song,
They lift their trembling wings as if to heave
The too-much weight of music from their heart
And float it up the æther. I am 'ware
That these things I can no more apprehend
With a pure organ into a full delight,—
The sense of beauty and of melody
Being no more aided in me by the sense
Of personal adjustment to those heights
Of what I see well-formed or hear well-tuned,
But rather coupled darkly and made ashamed
By my percipiency of sin and fall

In melancholy of humiliant thoughts.
But oh! fair, dreadful Spirits-albeit this
Your accusation must confront my soul,
And your pathetic utterance and full gaze
Must evermore subdue me, be content-
Conquer me gently--as if pitying me,
Not to say loving! let my tears fall thick
As watering dews of Eden, unreproached;

And when your tongues reprove me, make me smooth,
Not ruffled-smooth and still with your reproof,

And peradventure better while more sad.

For look to it sweet Spirits, look well to it,
It will not be amiss in you who kept

The law of your own righteousness, and keep
The right of your own griefs to mourn themselves,—
To pity me twice fallen, from that, and this,
From joy of place, and also right of wail,
'I wail' being not for me-only 'I sin.'
Look to it, O sweet Spirits!-

For was I not,

At that last sunset seen in Paradise,

When all the westering clouds flashed out in throngs
Of sudden angel-faces, face by face,

All hushed and solemn, as a thought of God
Held them suspended,—was I not, that hour,
The lady of the world, princess of life,
Mistress of feast and favour? Could I touch
A rose with my white hand, but it became
Redder at once? Could I walk leisurely

Along our swarded garden, but the grass

Tracked me with greenness? Could I stand aside A moment underneath a cornel-tree,

But all the leaves did tremble as alive

With songs of fifty birds who were made glad
Because I stood there? Could I turn to look
With these twain eyes of mine, now weeping fast,
Now good for only weeping,-upon man,
Angel, or beast, or bird, but each rejoiced
Because I looked on him? Alas, alas!
And is not this much woe, to cry 'alas!'

Speaking of joy? And is not this more shame,
To have made the woe myself, from all that joy?
To have stretched my hand, and plucked it from the
tree,

And chosen it for fruit? Nay, is not this

Still most despair,-to have halved that bitter fruit, And ruined, so, the sweetest friend I have,

Turning the GREATEST to mine enemy?

Adam. I will not hear thee speak so. Harken, Spirits!

Our God, who is the enemy of none

But only of their sin, hath set your hope

And my hope, in a promise, on this Head.
Show reverence, then, and never bruise her more
With unpermitted and extreme reproach,—