PART II

THE WILDERNESS

IV

OF MORTMAIN

“OUR friend there—he’s a little queer,”
To Rolfe said Derwent, riding on;
“Beshrew me, there is in his tone
Naught of your new world’s chanticleer.
Who’s the eccentric? can you say?”
“Partly; but ’tis at second-hand.
At the Black Jew’s I met with one
Who, in response to my demand,
Did in a strange disclosure run
Respecting him.”—“Repeat it, pray.”—
And Rolfe complied. But here receive
Less the details of narrative
Than what the drift and import may convey.

 

A Swede he was—illicit son
Of noble lady, after-wed,
Who, for a cause over which be thrown
Charity of oblivion dead,—
Bore little love, but rather hate,
Even practiced to ensnare his state.
His father, while not owning, yet
In part discharged the natural debt
Of duty; gave him liberal lore
And timely income; but no more.
Thus isolated, what to bind
But the vague bond of human kind?
The north he left, to Paris came—
Paris, the nurse of many a flame
Evil and good. This son of earth,
This Psalmanazer, made a hearth
In warm desires and schemes for man:
Even he was an Arcadian.
Peace and good will was his acclaim—
If not in words, yet in the aim:
Peace, peace on earth: that note he thrilled,
But scarce in way the cherubs trilled
To Bethlehem and the shepherd band.
Yet much his theory could tell;
And he expounded it so well,
Disciples came. He took his stand.
Europe was in a decade dim:
Upon the future’s trembling rim
The comet hovered. His a league
Of frank debate and close intrigue:
Plot, proselyte, appeal, denounce—
Conspirator, pamphleteer, at once,
And prophet. Wear and tear and jar
He met with coffee and cigar:
These kept awake the man and mood
And dream. That uncreated Good
He sought, whose absence is the cause
Of creeds and Atheists, mobs and laws.
Precocities of heart outran
The immaturities of brain.
Along with each superior mind,
The vain, foolhardy, worthless, blind,
With Judases, are nothing loath
To clasp pledged hands and take the oath
Of aim, the which, if just, demands
Strong hearts, brows deep, and priestly hands.
Experience with her sharper touch
Stung Mortmain: Why, if men prove such,
Dote I? love theory overmuch?
Yea, also, whither will advance
This Revolution sprung in France
So many years ago? where end?
That current takes me. Whither tend?
Come, thou who makest such hot haste
To forge the future—weigh the past.
Such frame he knew. And timed event
Cogent a further question lent:
Wouldst meddle with the state? Well, mount
Thy guns; how many men dost count?
Besides, there’s more that here belongs:
Be many questionable wrongs:
By yet more questionable war,
Prophet of peace, these wouldst thou bar?
The world’s not new, nor new thy plea.
Tho’ even shouldst thou triumph, see,
Prose overtakes the victor’s songs:
Victorious right may need redress:
No failure like a harsh success.
Yea, ponder well the historic page:
Of all who, fired with noble rage,
Have warred for right without reprieve,
How many spanned the wings immense
Of Satan’s muster, or could cheat
His cunning tactics of retreat
And ambuscade? Oh, now dispense!
The world is portioned out, believe:
The good have but a patch at best,
The wise their corner; for the rest—
Malice divides with ignorance.
And what is stable? find one boon
That is not lackey to the moon
Of fate. The flood ebbs out—the ebb
Floods back; the incessant shuttle shifts
And flies, and wears and tears the web.
Turn, turn thee to the proof that sifts:
What if the kings in Forty-eight
Fled like the gods? even as the gods
Shall do, return they made; and sate
And fortified their strong abodes;
And, to confirm them there in state,
Contrived new slogans, apt to please—
Pan and the tribal unities.
Behind all this still works some power
Unknowable, thou ’lt yet adore.
That steers the world, not man. States drive;
The crazy rafts with billows strive.—
Go, go—absolve thee. Join that band
That wash them with the desert sand
For lack of water. In the dust
Of wisdom sit thee down, and rust.

 

So mused he—solitary pined.
Tho’ his apostolate had thrown
New prospects ope to Adam’s kind,
And fame had trumped him far and free—
Now drop he did—a clod unknown;
Nay, rather, he would not disown
Oblivion’s volunteer to be;
Like those new world discoverers bold
Ending in stony convent cold,
Or dying hermits; as if they,
Chastized to Micah’s mind austere,
Remorseful felt that ampler sway
Their lead had given for old career
Of human nature.
But this man
No cloister sought. He, under ban
Of strange repentance and last dearth,
Roved the gray places of the earth.
And what seemed most his heart to wring
Was some unrenderable thing:
’Twas not his bastardy, nor bale
Medean in his mother pale,
Nor thwarted aims of high design;
But deeper—deep as nature’s mine.
Tho’ frequent among kind he sate
Tranquil enough to hold debate,
His moods he had, mad fitful ones,
Prolonged or brief, outbursts or moans;
And at such times would hiss or cry:
“Fair Circe—goddess of the sty!”
More frequent this: “Mock worse than wrong:
The Syren’s kiss—the Fury’s thong!”

 

Such he. Tho’ scarce as such portrayed
In full by Rolfe, yet Derwent said
At close: “There’s none so far astray,
Detached, abandoned, as might seem,
As to exclude the hope, the dream
Of fair redemption. One fine day
I saw at sea, by bit of deck—
Weedy—adrift from far away—
The dolphin in his gambol light,
Through showery spray, arch into sight:
He flung a rainbow o’er that wreck.”

XI

OF DESERTS

THO’ frequent in the Arabian waste
The pilgrim, up ere dawn of day,
Inhale thy wafted musk, Cathay;
And Adam’s primal joy may taste,
Beholding all the pomp of night
Bee’d thick with stars in swarms how bright;
And so, rides on alert and braced—
Tho’ brisk at morn the pilgrim start,
Ere long he’ll know in weary hour
Small love of deserts, if their power
Make to retreat upon the heart
Their own forsakenness.
Darwin quotes
From Shelley, that forever floats
Over all desert places known,
Mysterious doubt—an awful one.
He quotes, adopts it. Is it true?
Let instinct vouch; let poetry,
Science and instinct here agree,
For truth requires strong retinue.

 

Waste places are where yet is given
A charm, a beauty from the heaven
Above them, and clear air divine—
Translucent ether opaline;
And some in evening’s early dew
Put on illusion of a guise
Which Tantalus might tantalize
Afresh; ironical unrolled
Like Western counties all in grain
Ripe for the sickleman and wain;
Or, tawnier than the Guinea gold,
More like a lion’s skin unfold:
Attest the desert opening out
Direct from Cairo by the Gate
Of Victors, whence the annual rout
To Mecca bound, precipitate
Their turbaned frenzy.—
Sands immense
Impart the oceanic sense:
The flying grit like scud is made:
Pillars of sand which whirl about
Or arc along in colonnade,
True kin be to the waterspout.
Yonder on the horizon, red
With storm, see there the caravan
Straggling long-drawn, dispirited;
Mark how it labors like a fleet
Dismasted, which the cross-winds fan
In crippled disaster of retreat
From battle.—
Sinai had renown
Ere thence was rolled the thundered Law;
Ever a terror wrapped its crown;
Never did shepherd dare to draw
Too nigh (Josephus saith) for awe
Of one, some ghost or god austere—
Hermit unknown, dread mountaineer.—

 

When comes the sun up over Nile
In cloudlessness, what cloud is cast
O’er Lybia? Thou shadow vast
Of Cheops’ indissoluble pile,
Typ’st thou the imperishable Past
In empire posthumous and reaching sway
Projected far across to time’s remotest day?
But curb.—Such deserts in air-zone
Or object lend suggestive tone,
Redeeming them.
For Judah here—
Let Erebus her rival own:
’Tis horror absolute—severe,
Dead, livid, honeycombed, dumb, fell—
A caked depopulated hell;
Yet so created, judged by sense,
And visaged in significance
Of settled anger terrible.
Profoundly cloven through the scene
Winds Kedron—word (the scholar saith)
Importing anguish hard on death.
And aptly may such named ravine
Conduct unto Lot’s mortal Sea
In cleavage from Gethsemane
Where it begins.
But why does man
Regard religiously this tract
Cadaverous and under ban
Of blastment? Nay, recall the fact
That in the pagan era old,
When bolts, deemed Jove’s, tore up the mound,
Great stones the simple peasant rolled
And built a wall about the gap
Deemed hallowed by the thunder-clap.
So here: men here adore this ground
Which doom hath smitten. ’Tis a land
Direful yet holy—blest tho’ banned.

 

But to pure hearts it yields no fear;
And John, he found wild honey here.

XXII

CONCERNING HEBREWS

AS by the wood drifts thistle-down
And settles on soft mosses fair,
Stillness was wafted, dropped and sown;
Which stillness Vine, with timorous air
Of virgin tact, thus brake upon,
Nor with chance hint: “One can’t forbear
Thinking that Margoth is—a Jew.”
Hereat, as for reponse, they view
The priest.
“And, well, why me?” he cried;
“With one consent why turn to me?
Am I professional? Nay, free!
I grant that here by Judah’s side
Queerly it jars with frame implied
To list this geologic Jew,
His way Jehovah’s world construe:
In Gentile ’twould not seem so odd.
But here may preconceptions thrall?
Be many Hebrews we recall
Whose contrast with the breastplate bright
Of Aaron flushed in altar-light,
And Horeb’s Moses, rock and rod,
Or closeted alone with God,
Quite equals Margoth’s in its way:
At home we meet them every day.
The Houndsditch clothesman scarce would seem
Akin to seers. For one, I deem
Jew banker, merchant, statesman—these,
With artist, actress known to fame,
All strenuous in each Gentile aim,
Are Nature’s off-hand witnesses
There’s nothing mystic in her reign:
Your Jew’s like wheat from Pharaoh’s tomb:
Sow it in England, what will come?
The weird old seed yields market grain.”
Pleased by his wit while some recline,
A smile uncertain lighted Vine,
But died away.
“Jews share the change,”
Derwent proceeded: “Range, they range—
In liberal sciences they roam;
They’re leavened, and it works, believe;
Signs are, and such as scarce deceive.
From Holland, that historic home
Of erudite Israel, many a tome
Talmudic shipped is over sea
For antiquarian rubbish.”
“Rest!”
Cried Rolfe; “e’en that indeed may be,
Nor less the Jew keep fealty
To ancient rites. Aaron’s gemmed vest
Will long outlive Genevan cloth—
Nothing in Time’s old camphor-chest
So little subject to the moth.
But Rabbis have their troublers too.
Nay, if thro’ dusty stalls we look,
Haply we disinter to view
More than one bold freethinking Jew
That in his day with vigor shook
Faith’s leaning tower.”
“Which stood the throe,”
Here Derwent in appendix: “look,
Faith’s leaning tower was founded so:
Faith leaned from the beginning; yes,
If slant, she holds her steadfastness.”
“May be”; and paused: “but wherefore clog?—
Uriel Acosta, he was one
Who troubled much the synagogue—
Recanted then, and dropped undone:
A suicide. There’s Heine, too
(In lineage crossed by blood of Jew),
Pale jester, to whom life was yet
A tragic farce; whose wild death-rattle,
In which all voids and hollows met,
Desperately maintained the battle
Betwixt the dirge and castanet.
But him leave to his Paris stone
And rail, and friendly wreath thereon.
Recall those Hebrews, which of old
Sharing some doubts we moderns rue,
Would fain Eclectic comfort fold
By grafting slips from Plato’s palm
On Moses’ melancholy yew:
But did they sprout? So we seek balm
By kindred graftings. Is that true?”
“Why ask? But see: there lived a Jew—
No Alexandrine Greekish one—
You know him—Moses Mendelssohn.”
“Is’t him you cite? True spirit staid,
He, though his honest heart was scourged
By doubt Judaic, never laid
His burden at Christ’s door; he urged—
‘Admit the mounting flames enfold
My basement; wisely shall my feet
The attic win, for safe retreat?’ ”
“And he said that? Poor man, he’s cold.
But was not this that Mendelssohn
Whose Hebrew kinswoman’s Hebrew son,
Baptized to Christian, worthily won
The good name of Neander so?”
“If that link were, well might one urge
From such example, thy strange flow,
Conviction! Breaking habit’s tether,
Sincerest minds will yet diverge
Like chance clouds scattered by mere weather;
Nor less at one point still they meet:
The selfhood keep they pure and sweet.”

 

“But Margoth,” in reminder here
Breathed Vine, as if while yet the ray
Lit Rolfe, to try his further cheer:
“But Margoth!”
“He, poor sheep astray,
The Levitic cipher quite erased,
On what vile pig-weed hath he grazed.
Not his Spinoza’s starry brow
(A non-conformer, ye’ll allow),
A lion in brain, in life a lamb,
Sinless recluse of Amsterdam;
Who, in the obscure and humble lane,
Such strangers seemed to entertain
As sat by tent beneath the tree
On Mamre’s plain—mysterious three,
The informing guests of Abraham.
But no, it had but ill beseemed
If God’s own angels so could list
To visit one, Pan’s Atheist.
That high intelligence but dreamed—
Above delusion’s vulgar plain
Deluded still. The erring twain,
Spinoza and poor Margoth here,
Both Jews, which in dissent do vary:
In these what parted poles appear—
The blind man and the visionary.”
“And whose the eye that sees aright,
If any?” Clarel eager asked.
Aside Rolfe turned as overtasked;
And none responded. ’Twas like night
Descending from the seats of light,
Or seeming thence to fall. But here
Sedate a kindly tempered look
Private and confidential spoke
From Derwent’s eyes, Clarel to cheer:
Take heart; something to fit thy youth
Instil I may, some saving truth—
Not best just now to volunteer.
Thought Clarel: Pray, and what wouldst prove?
Thy faith an over-easy glove.

 

Meanwhile Vine had relapsed. They saw
In silence the heart’s shadow draw—
Rich shadow, such as gardens keep
In bower aside, where glow-worms peep
In evening over the virgin bed
Where dark-green periwinkles sleep—
Their bud the Violet of the Dead.

XXXI

THE INSCRIPTION

WHILE yet Rolfe’s foot in stirrup stood,
Ere the light vault that wins the seat,
Derwent was heard: “What’s this we meet?
A Cross? and—if one could but spell—
Inscription Sinaitic? Well,
Mortmain is nigh—his crazy freak;
Whose else? A closer view I’ll seek;
I’ll climb.”
In moving there aside
The rock’s turned brow he had espied;
In rear this rock hung o’er the waste
And Nehemiah in sleep embraced
Below. The forepart gloomed Lot’s wave
So nigh, the tide the base did lave.

Above, the sea-face smooth was worn
Through long attrition of that grit
Which on the waste of winds is borne.
And on the tablet high of it—
Traced in dull chalk, such as is found
Accessible in upper ground—
Big there between two scrawls, below
And over—a cross; three stars in row
Upright, two more for thwarting limb
Which drooped oblique.
At Derwent’s cry
The rest drew near; and every eye
Marked the device.—Thy passion’s whim,
Wild Swede, mused Vine in silent heart.
“Looks like the Southern Cross to me,”
Said Clarel; “so ’tis down in chart.”
“And so,” said Rolfe, “ ’tis set in sky—
Though error slight of place prevail
In midmost star here chalked. At sea,
Bound for Peru, when south ye sail,
Startling that novel cluster strange
Peers up from low; then as ye range
Cape-ward still further, brightly higher
And higher the stranger doth aspire,
’Till off the Horn, when at full height
Ye slack your gaze as chilly grows the night.
But Derwent—see!”
The priest having gained
Convenient lodge the text below,
They called: “What’s that in curve contained
Above the stars? Read: we would know.”
“Runs thus: By one who wails the loss,
This altar to the Slanting Cross.”
“Ha! under that?” “Some crow’s-foot scrawl.”
“Decipher, quick! we’re waiting all.”
“Patience: for ere one try rehearse,
’Twere well to make it out. ’Tis verse.”
“Verse, say you? Read.” “ ’Tis mystical:
“ ‘Emblazoned bleak in austral skies—
A heaven remote, whose starry swarm
Like Science lights but cannot warm—
Translated Cross, hast thou withdrawn,
Dim paling too at every dawn,
With symbols vain once counted wise,
And gods declined to heraldries?
Estranged, estranged: can friend prove so?
Aloft, aloof, a frigid sign:
How far removed, thou Tree divine,
Whose tender fruit did reach so low—
Love apples of New Paradise!
About the wide Australian sea
The planted nations yet to be—
When, ages hence, they lift their eyes,
Tell, what shall they retain of thee?
But class thee with Orion’s sword?
In constellations unadored,
Christ and the Giant equal prize?
The atheist cycles—must they be?
Fomentors as forefathers we?’ ”

 

“Mad, mad enough,” the priest here cried,
Down slipping by the shelving brinks;
“But ’tis not Mortmain,” and he sighed.
“Not Mortmain?” Rolfe exclaimed. “Methinks,”
The priest, “ ’tis hardly in his vein.”
“How? fraught with feeling is the strain?
His heart’s not ballasted with stone—
He’s crank.” “Well, well, e’en let us own
That Mortmain, Mortmain is the man.
We’ve then a pledge here at a glance
Our comrade’s met with no mischance.
Soon he’ll rejoin us.” “There, amen!”
“But now to wake Nehemiah in den
Behind here.—But kind Clarel goes.
Strange how he naps nor trouble knows
Under the crag’s impending block,
Nor fears its fall, nor recks of shock.”

 

Anon they mount; and much advance
Upon that chalked significance.
The student harks, and weighs each word,
Intent, he being newly stirred.
But tarries Margoth? Yes, behind
He lingers. He placards his mind:
Scaling the crag he rudely scores
With the same chalk (how here abused!)
Left by the other, after used,
A sledge or hammer huge as Thor’s;
A legend lending—this, to wit:
“I, Science, I whose gain’s thy loss,
I slanted thee, thou Slanting Cross.”
But sun and rain, and wind, with grit
Driving, these haste to cancel it.

XXXIV

MORTMAIN REAPPEARS

WHILE now at poise the wings of shade
Outstretched overhang each ridge and glade,
Mortmain descends from Judah’s height
Through sally-port of minor glens:
Against the background of black dens
Blacker the figure glooms enhanced.
Relieved from anxious fears, the group
In friendliness would have advanced
To greet, but shrank or fell adroop.
Like Hecla ice inveined with marl
And frozen cinders showed his face
Rigid and darkened. Shunning parle
He seated him aloof in place,

Hands clasped about the knees drawn up
As round the cask the binding hoop—
Condensed in self, or like a seer
Unconscious of each object near,
While yet, informed, the nerve may reach
Like wire under wave to furthest beach.
By what brook Cherith had he been,
Watching it shrivel from the scene—
Or voice aerial had heard,
That now he murmured the wild word:
“But, hectored by the impious years,
What god invoke, for leave to unveil
That gulf whither tend these modern fears,
And deeps over which men crowd the sail?”
Up, as possessed, he rose anon,
And crying to the beach went down:
“Repent! repent in every land
Or hell’s hot kingdom is at hand!
Yea, yea,
In pause of the artillery’s boom,
While now the armed world holds its own,
The comet peers, the star dips down;
Flicker the lamps in Syria’s tomb,
While Anti-Christ and Atheist set
On Anarch the red coronet!”

 

“Mad John,” sighed Rolfe, “dost there betray
The dire Vox Clamans of our day?”
“Why heed him?” Derwent breathed: “alas!
Let him alone, and it will pass.—
What would he now?” Before the bay
Low bowed he there, with hand addressed
To scoop. “Unhappy, hadst thou best?”
Djalea it was; then calling low
Unto a Bethlehemite whose brow
Was wrinkled like the bat’s shrunk hide—
“Your salt-song, Beltha: warn and chide.”
“Would ye know what bitter drink
They gave to Christ upon the Tree?
Sip the wave that laps the brink
Of Siddim: taste, and God keep ye!
It drains the hills where alum’s hid—
Drains the rock-salt’s ancient bed;
Hither unto basin fall
The torrents from the steeps of gall—
Here is Hades’ watershed.
Sinner, would ye that your soul
Bitter were and like the pool?
Sip the Sodom waters dead;
But never from thy heart shall haste
The Marah—yea, the after-taste.”

 

He closed.—Arrested as he stooped,
Did Mortmain his pale hand recall?
No; undeterred the wave he scooped,
And tried it—madly tried the gall.

XXXV

PRELUSIVE

IN Piranezi’s rarer prints,
Interiors measurelessly strange,
Where the distrustful thought may range
Misgiving still—what mean the hints?
Stairs upon stairs which dim ascend
In series from plunged bastilles drear—
Pit under pit; long tier on tier
Of shadowed galleries which impend
Over cloisters, cloisters without end;
The height, the depth—the far, the near;
Ring-bolts to pillars in vaulted lanes,
And dragging Rhadamanthine chains;
These less of wizard influence lend
Than some allusive chambers closed.
Those wards of hush are not disposed
In gibe of goblin fantasy—
Grimace—unclean diablerie:
Thy wings, Imagination, span
Ideal truth in fable’s seat:
The thing implied is one with man,
His penetralia of retreat—
The heart, with labyrinths replete:
In freaks of intimation see
Paul’s “mystery of iniquity”:
Involved indeed, a blur of dream;
As, awed by scruple and restricted
In first design, or interdicted
By fate and warnings as might seem;
The inventor miraged all the maze,
Obscured it with prudential haze;
Nor less, if subject unto question,
The egg left, egg of the suggestion.
Dwell on those etchings in the night,
Those touches bitten in the steel
By aqua-fortis, till ye feel
The Pauline text in gray of light;
Turn hither then and read aright.

 

For ye who green or gray retain
Childhood’s illusion, or but feign;
As bride and suite let pass a bier—
So pass the coming canto here.

XXXVI

SODOM

FULL night. The moon has yet to rise;
The air oppresses, and the skies
Reveal beyond the lake afar
One solitary tawny star—
Complexioned so by vapors dim,
Whereof some hang above the brim
And nearer waters of the lake,
Whose bubbling air-beads mount and break
As charged with breath of things alive.

 

In talk about the Cities Five
Engulfed, on beach they linger late.
And he, the quaffer of the brine,
Puckered with that heart-wizening wine
Of bitterness, among them sate
Upon a camel’s skull, late dragged
From forth the wave, the eye-pits slagged
With crusted salt.—“What star is yon?”
And pointed to that single one
Befogged above the sea afar.
“It might be Mars, so red it shines,”
One answered; “duskily it pines
In this strange mist.”—“It is the star
Called Wormwood. Some hearts die in thrall
Of waters which yon star makes gall”;
And, lapsing, turned, and made review
Of what that wickedness might be
Which down on these ill precincts drew
The flood, the fire; put forth new plea,
Which not with Writ might disagree;
Urged that those malefactors stood
Guilty of sins scarce scored as crimes
In any statute known, or code—
Nor now, nor in the former times:
Things hard to prove: decorum’s wile,
Malice discreet, judicious guile;
Good done with ill intent—reversed:
Best deeds designed to serve the worst;
And hate which under life’s fair hue
Prowls like the shark in sunned Pacific blue.
He paused, and under stress did bow,
Lank hands enlocked across the brow.
“Nay, nay, thou sea,
’Twas not all carnal harlotry,
But sins refined, crimes of the spirit,
Helped earn that doom ye here inherit:
Doom well imposed, though sharp and dread,
In some god’s reign, some god long fled.—
Thou gaseous puff of mineral breath
Mephitical; thou swooning flaw
That fann’st me from this pond of death;
Wert thou that venomous small thing
Which tickled with the poisoned straw?
Thou, stronger, but who yet couldst start
Shrinking with sympathetic sting,
While willing the uncompunctious dart!
Ah, ghosts of Sodom, how ye thrill
About me in this peccant air,
Conjuring yet to spare, but spare!
Fie, fie, that didst in formal will
Plot piously the posthumous snare.
And thou, the mud-flow—evil mass
Of surest-footed sluggishness
Swamping the nobler breed—art there?
Moan, burker of kind heart: all’s known
To Him; with thy connivers, moan.—
Sinners—expelled, transmuted souls
Blown in these airs, or whirled in shoals
Of gurgles which your gasps send up,
Or on this crater marge and cup
Slavered in slime, or puffed in stench—
Not ever on the tavern bench
Ye lolled. Few dicers here, few sots,
Few sluggards, and no idiots.
’Tis thou who servedst Mammon’s hate
Or greed through forms which holy are—
Black slaver steering by a star,
’Tis thou—and all like thee in state.
Who knew the world, yet varnished it;
Who traded on the coast of crime
Though landing not; who did outwit
Justice, his brother, and the time—
These, chiefly these; to doom submit.
But who the manifold may tell?
And sins there be inscrutable,
Unutterable.”
Ending there
He shrank, and like an osprey gray
Peered on the wave. His hollow stare
Marked then some smaller bubbles play
In cluster silvery like spray:
“Be these the beads on the wives’-wine,
Tofana-brew?—O fair Medea—
O soft man-eater, furry fine:
Oh, be thou Jael, be thou Leah—
Unfathomably shallow!—No!
Nearer the core than man can go
Or Science get—nearer the slime
Of Nature’s rudiments and lime
In chyle before the bone. Thee, thee,
In thee the filmy cell is spun—
The mold thou art of what men be:
Events are all in thee begun—
By thee, through thee!—Undo, undo,
Prithee, undo, and still renew
The fall forever!”
On his throne
He lapsed; and muffled came the moan
How multitudinous in sound,
From Sodom’s wave. He glanced around:
They all had left him, one by one.
Was it because he open threw
The inmost to the outward view?
Or did but pain at frenzied thought
Prompt to avoid him, since but naught
In such case might remonstrance do?
But none there ventured idle plea,
Weak sneer, or fraudful levity.

 

Two spirits, hovering in remove,
Sad with inefficacious love,
Here sighed debate: “Ah, Zoima, say;
Be it far from me to impute a sin,
But may a sinless nature win
Those deeps he knows?”—“Sin shuns that way;
Sin acts the sin, but flees the thought
That sweeps the abyss that sin has wrought.
Innocent be the heart and true—
Howe’er it feed on bitter bread—
That, venturous through the Evil led,
Moves as along the ocean’s bed
Amid the dragon’s staring crew.”