No More Learning

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.
Go! I curse you all.
Hate one another--feebly--as ye can!
I would not certes cut you short in hate,
Far be it from me! hate on as ye can!
I breathe into your faces, spirits of earth,
As wintry blast may breathe on wintry leaves
And lifting up their brownness show beneath
The branches bare. Beseech you, spirits, give
To Eve who beggarly entreats your love
For her and Adam when they shall be dead,
An answer rather fitting to the sin
Than to the sorrow--as the heavens, I trow,
For justice' sake gave theirs.
I curse you both,
Adam and Eve. Say grace as after meat,
After my curses! May your tears fall hot
On all the hissing scorns o' the creatures here,--
And yet rejoice! Increase and multiply,
Ye in your generations, in all plagues,
Corruptions, melancholies, poverties,
And hideous forms of life and fears of death,--
The thought of death being always imminent,
Immoveable and dreadful in your life,
And deafly and dumbly insignificant
Of any hope beyond,--as death itself,
Whichever of you lieth dead the first,
Shall seem to the survivor--yet rejoice!
My curse catch at you strongly, body and soul,
And HE find no redemption--nor the wing
Of seraph move your way; and yet rejoice!
Rejoice,--because ye have not, set in you,
This hate which shall pursue you--this fire-hate
Which glares without, because it burns within--
Which kills from ashes--this potential hate,
Wherein I, angel, in antagonism
To God and his reflex beatitudes,
Moan ever, in the central universe,
With the great woe of striving against Love--
And gasp for space amid the Infinite,
And toss for rest amid the Desertness,
Self-orphaned by my will, and self-elect
To kingship of resistant agony
Toward the Good round me--hating good and love,
And willing to hate good and to hate love,
And willing to will on so evermore,
Scorning the past and damning the to-come--
Go and rejoice! I curse you.