And as he fixed thee with his full-faced hate,
And roared, O Adam, comprehending doom,
So, gazing on the face of the Unseen,
I cry out here between the Heavens and Earth
My conscience of this sin, this woe, this wrath,
Which damn me to this depth.
And roared, O Adam, comprehending doom,
So, gazing on the face of the Unseen,
I cry out here between the Heavens and Earth
My conscience of this sin, this woe, this wrath,
Which damn me to this depth.
Elizabeth Browning
_ How he stands--yet an angel!
_Earth Spirits. _ We all wail!
_Lucifer (after a pause). _ Dost thou remember, Adam, when the curse
Took us in Eden? On a mountain-peak
Half-sheathed in primal woods and glittering
In spasms of awful sunshine at that hour,
A lion couched, part raised upon his paws,
With his calm massive face turned full on thine,
And his mane listening. When the ended curse
Left silence in the world, right suddenly
He sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff,
As if the new reality of death
Were dashed against his eyes, and roared so fierce,
(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales
Precipitately,--that the forest beasts,
One after one, did mutter a response
Of savage and of sorrowful complaint
Which trailed along the gorges. Then, at once,
He fell back, and rolled crashing from the height
Into the dusk of pines.
_Adam. _ It might have been.
I heard the curse alone.
_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!
_Lucifer. _ That lion is the type of what I am.
And as he fixed thee with his full-faced hate,
And roared, O Adam, comprehending doom,
So, gazing on the face of the Unseen,
I cry out here between the Heavens and Earth
My conscience of this sin, this woe, this wrath,
Which damn me to this depth.
_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!
_Earth Spirits. _ We all wail!
_Lucifer (after a pause). _ Dost thou remember, Adam, when the curse
Took us in Eden? On a mountain-peak
Half-sheathed in primal woods and glittering
In spasms of awful sunshine at that hour,
A lion couched, part raised upon his paws,
With his calm massive face turned full on thine,
And his mane listening. When the ended curse
Left silence in the world, right suddenly
He sprang up rampant and stood straight and stiff,
As if the new reality of death
Were dashed against his eyes, and roared so fierce,
(Such thick carnivorous passion in his throat
Tearing a passage through the wrath and fear)
And roared so wild, and smote from all the hills
Such fast keen echoes crumbling down the vales
Precipitately,--that the forest beasts,
One after one, did mutter a response
Of savage and of sorrowful complaint
Which trailed along the gorges. Then, at once,
He fell back, and rolled crashing from the height
Into the dusk of pines.
_Adam. _ It might have been.
I heard the curse alone.
_Earth Spirits. _ I wail, I wail!
_Lucifer. _ That lion is the type of what I am.
And as he fixed thee with his full-faced hate,
And roared, O Adam, comprehending doom,
So, gazing on the face of the Unseen,
I cry out here between the Heavens and Earth
My conscience of this sin, this woe, this wrath,
Which damn me to this depth.
_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!
