THE SERAPHIM.

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 angels of heaven have departed towards the earth, except the two seraphim, ADOR the Strong and ZERAH the Bright One.

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

Ador. O SERAPH, pause no more.

Beside this gate of heaven we stand alone.
Zerah. Of heaven!

Ador.

Our brother hosts are gone

Zerah. Are gone before.

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

Upon the glass-sea shore.

Zerah. Silent upon the glass-sea shore!
Ador. There the Shadow from the throne

Formless with infinity

Hovers o'er the chrystal sea;

Awfuller than light derived,
And red with those primæval heats
Whereby all life has lived.

Zerah. Our visible God, our heavenly seats!
Ador. Beneath us sinks the pomp angelical,

Cherub and seraph, powers and virtues, all,—
The roar of whose descent has 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 every prostrate angel's head!
What gleaming up of hands that fling
Their homage in retorted rays,

From high instinct of worshipping,
And habitude of praise.
Zerah. 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

Some divine and plastic word,

And trembling at its new-found being,
Awakened at our feet.

Ador. Zerah, do not wait for seeing.
His voice, His, 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

In hierarchical degree,

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 whether 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 shudderingly,

My face upon the pavement whence I had towered,
As if in mine immortal overpowered
By God's eternity.

Zerah. Let me wait!-let me wait!—

Ador. Nay, gaze not backward through the gate. God fills our heaven with God's own solitude Till all the pavements glow.

His Godhead being no more subdued

By itself, to glories low

Which seraphs can sustain,

What if thou, in gazing so,
Shouldst behold but only one

Attribute, the veil undone

Even that to which we dare to press
Nearest, for its gentleness-

Ay, His love!

How the deep ecstatic pain