_ Ay: I know they have fled
Silent all day along the wilderness:
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the
marshalled
cherubim
Shining against, not for them; and I know
They dare not look in one another's face,--
As if each were a cherub!
Elizabeth Browning
_ Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven
To suit thy empty words. Glory and life
Fulfil their own depletions; and if God
Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in
A compensative splendour up the vast,
Flushing the starry arteries.
_Lucifer._ What a change!
So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too
Fill as may please you!--and be pitiful,
As ye translate that word, to the dethroned
And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,
That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,
Am here and will not go; while there, along
The light to which ye flash the desert out,
Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay
In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?
Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?
Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,
I am not a fallen angel!
_Gabriel._ Dost thou know
Aught of those exiles?
_Lucifer.
_ Ay: I know they have fled
Silent all day along the wilderness:
I know they wear, for burden on their backs,
The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,
And faces of the
marshalled
cherubim
Shining against, not for them; and I know
They dare not look in one another's face,--
As if each were a cherub!
_Gabriel._ Dost thou know
Aught of their future?
_Lucifer._ Only as much as this:
That evil will increase and multiply
Without a benediction.
_Gabriel._ Nothing more?
_Lucifer._ Why so the angels taunt! What should be more?
