" while serene
I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
Answered "my Father," innocent of shame
And of the sense of thunder.
I, standing in the glory of the lamps,
Answered "my Father," innocent of shame
And of the sense of thunder.
Elizabeth Browning
_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!
_Eve. _ I wail--O God!
_Lucifer. _ I scorn you that ye wail,
Who use your petty griefs for pedestals
To stand on, beckoning pity from without,
And deal in pathos of antithesis
Of what ye _were_ forsooth, and what ye are;--
I scorn you like an angel! Yet, one cry
I, too, would drive up like a column erect,
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 crystallized!
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
To your own conscience, by the dread extremes
Of what I am and have been. If ye have fallen,
It is but a step's fall,--the whole ground beneath
Strewn woolly soft with promise! if ye have sinned,
Your prayers tread high as angels! if ye have grieved,
Ye are too mortal to be pitiable,
The power to die disproves the right to grieve.
Go to! ye call this ruin? I half-scorn
The ill I did you! Were ye wronged by me,
Hated and tempted and undone of me,--
Still, what's your hurt to mine of doing hurt,
Of hating, tempting, and so ruining?
This sword's _hilt_ is the sharpest, and cuts through
The hand that wields it.
