The crown is
fainting
on thy brow
To the likeness of a cloud,
The forehead's self a little bowed
From its aspect high and holy,
As it would in meekness meet
Some seraphic melancholy:
Thy very wings that lately flung
An outline clear, do flicker here
And wear to each a shadow hung,
Dropped across thy feet.
Elizabeth Browning
Will the vexed, accurst humanity,
As worn by him, begin to be
A blessed, yea, a sacred thing
For love and awe and ministering?
I am strong, I am strong.
By our angel ken shall we survey
His loving smile through his woeful clay?
I am swift, I am strong,
The love is bearing me along.
_Ador._ One love is bearing us along.
PART THE SECOND.
_Mid-air, above Judaea. ADOR and ZERAH are a little apart from the
visible Angelic Hosts._
_Ador._ Beloved! dost thou see?--
_Zerah._ Thee,--thee.
Thy burning eyes already are
Grown wild and mournful as a star
Whose occupation is for aye
To look upon the place of clay
Whereon thou lookest now.
The crown is
fainting
on thy brow
To the likeness of a cloud,
The forehead's self a little bowed
From its aspect high and holy,
As it would in meekness meet
Some seraphic melancholy:
Thy very wings that lately flung
An outline clear, do flicker here
And wear to each a shadow hung,
Dropped across thy feet.
In these strange contrasting glooms
Stagnant with the scent of tombs,
Seraph faces, O my brother,
Show awfully to one another.
_Ador._ Dost thou see?
_Zerah._ Even so; I see
Our empyreal company,
Alone the memory of their brightness
Left in them, as in thee.
The circle upon circle, tier on tier,
Piling earth's hemisphere
With heavenly infiniteness,
Above us and around,
Straining the whole horizon like a bow:
Their songful lips divorced from all sound,
A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,--
Bowing their steadfast solemn countenances
As if they heard God speak, and could not glow.
_Ador._ Look downward! dost thou see?
_Zerah._ And wouldst thou press _that_ vision on my words?
Doth not earth speak enough
Of change and of undoing,
Without a seraph's witness? Oceans rough
With tempest, pastoral swards
Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing
The bolt fallen yesterday,
That shake their piny heads, as who would say
"We are too beautiful for our decay"--
Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone
Earth to her earthly moan!
