Thy being's strength would capture!
Without language for the rapture,
Without music strong to come
And set the adoration free,
For ever, ever, wouldst thou be
Amid the general chorus dumb,
God-stricken to seraphic agony !—

Or, brother, what if on thine eyes
In vision bare should rise

The life-fount whence His hand did gather
With solitary force

Our immortalities!

Straightway how thine own would wither,
Falter like a human breath,
And shrink into a point like death,
By gazing on its source!—

My words have imaged dread.
Meekly hast thou bent thine head,
And dropt thy wings in languishment
Overclouding foot and face,

As if God's throne were eminent
Before thee, in the place.

Yet not-not so,

O loving spirit and meek, dost thou fulfil

The supreme Will.

Not for obeisance but obedience,

Give motion to thy wings. Depart from hence. The voice said 'Go.'

Zerah. Beloved, I depart.

His will is as a spirit within my spirit,
A portion of the being I inherit.

His will is mine obedience. I resemble
A flame all undefiled though it tremble;
I go and tremble. Love me, O beloved!

O thou, who stronger art,
And standest ever near the Infinite,
Pale with the light of Light!

Love me, beloved! me, more newly made,
More feeble, more afraid;

And let me hear with mine thy pinions moved,
As close and gentle as the loving are,

That love being near, heaven may not seem so far.
Ador. I am near thee and I love thee.
Were I loveless, from thee gone,

Love is round, beneath, above thee,
God, the omnipresent One.

Spread the wing, and lift the brow.

Well-beloved, what fearest thou?

Zerah. I fear, I fear—

Ador.

Zerah.

What fear?

The fear of earth.

Ador. Of earth, the God-created and God-praised.

In the hour of birth?

Where every night, the moon in light

Doth lead the waters silver-faced?
Where every day, the sun doth lay
A rapture to the heart of all

The leafy and reeded pastoral,
As if the joyous shout which burst

From angel lips to see him first, Had left a silent echo in his ray?

Zerah. Of earth-the God-created and God-curst,
Where man is, and the thorn,

Where sun and moon have borne,
No light to souls forlorn.

Where Eden's tree of life no more uprears
Its spiral leaves and fruitage, but instead
The vew-tree bows its melancholy head,
VOL. I.-7

And all the undergrasses kills and seres.

Ador. Of earth the weak,

Made and unmade?

Where men that faint, do strive for crowns that fade?
Where, having won the profit which they seek,
They lie beside the sceptre and the gold

With fleshless hands that cannot wield or hold,
And the stars shine in their unwinking eyes?
Zerah. Of earth the bold,

Where the blind matter wrings

An awful potence out of impotence,
Bowing the spiritual things

To the things of sense.

Where the human will replies

With ay and no,

Because the human pulse is quick or slow.

Where Love succumbs to Change,

With only his own memories for revenge.

And the fearful mystery

Ador.

Called Death?

Zerah. Nay, death is fearful,--but who saith

'To die,' is comprehensible.

What's fearfuller, thou knowest well,
Though the utterance be not for thee,
Lest it blanch thy lips from glory—
Ay! the cursed thing that moved
A shadow of ill, long times ago,
Across our heaven's own shining floor,
And when it vanished, some who were
On thrones of holy empire there,

Did reign--were seen-were-never more,
Come nearer, O beloved!

Ador. I am near thee. Didst thou bear thee
Ever to this earth?

When thrilling from his hand along
Its lustrous path with spheric song
The earth was deathless, sorrowless.
Unfearing, then, pure feet might press
The grasses brightening with their feet,
For God's own voice did mix its sound
In a solemn confluence oft

With the rivers' flowing round,
And the life-trees waving soft,
Beautiful new earth and strange!
Ador. Hast thou seen it since the change?
Zerah. Nay, or wherefore should I fear
To look upon it now?

I have beheld the ruined things
Only in depicturings

Of angels from an earthly mission,-
Strong one, even upon thy brow,
When, with task completed, given
Back to us in that transition,
I have beheld thee silent stand,
Abstracted in the seraph band,

Without a smile in heaven.

Ador. Then thou wast not one of those
Whom the loving Father chose
In visionary pomp to sweep
O'er Judæa's grassy places,

O'er the shepherds and the sheep,

Though thou art so tender ?—dimming,

All the stars except one star

With their brighter kinder faces,

And using heaven's own tune in hymning,

While deep response from earth's own mountains ran, 'Peace upon earth-goodwill to man.'

Zerah. 'Glory to God.'-I said amen afar.
And those who from that earthly mission are,
Within mine ears have told

That the seven everlasting Spirits did hold
With such a sweet and prodigal constraint
The meaning yet the mystery of the song,
What time they sang it, on their natures strong,
That, gazing down on earth's dark stedfastness
And speaking the new peace in promises,
The love and pity made their voices faint
Into the low and tender music, keeping

The place in heaven, of what on earth is weeping.
Ador. Peace upon earth. Come down to it.
Zerah.

I hear thereof uncomprehendingly.

Ah me!

Peace where the tempest, where the sighing is,
And worship of the idol, 'stead of His?

Ador. Yea, peace, where He is.

Whose leaves, like Eden foliage, can be swayed
By the breathing of His voice, nor shrink and fade?
Ador. There is a tree!-it hath no leaf nor root

Upon it hangs a curse for all its fruit:

Its shadow on His head is laid.
For He, the crowned Son,
Has left his crown and throne,

Walks earth in Adam's clay,

Eve's snake to bruise and slay—

Zerah. Walks earth in clay?

Ador. And walking in the day which He created.