--coil like the serpent, when he fell
From all the emerald splendour of his height
And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,
Not a ring's length.
From all the emerald splendour of his height
And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,
Not a ring's length.
Elizabeth Browning
_ I am afraid--
Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes
Of intermittent motion, aspect vague
And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,
Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.
How near they reach . . . and far! How grey they move--
Treading upon the darkness without feet,
And fluttering on the darkness without wings!
Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;
Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees;
Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on
Copious as rivers.
_Adam. _ Some spring up like fire;
And some coil . . .
_Eve. _ Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say
Like what?
--coil like the serpent, when he fell
From all the emerald splendour of his height
And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,
Not a ring's length. I am afraid--afraid--
I think it is God's will to make me afraid,--
Permitting THESE to haunt us in the place
Of his beloved angels--gone from us
Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,
That didst permit the angels to go home
And live no more with us who are not pure,
Save _us_ too from a loathly company--
Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,
As _we_ are in the purest! Pity us--
Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away
From verity and from stability,
Or what we name such through the precedence
Of earth's adjusted uses,--leave us not
To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,
Which are the more distraught and full of pain
And weak of apprehension!
_Adam. _ Courage, Sweet!
The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop
With slow concentric movement, each on each,--
Expressing wider spaces,--and collapsed
In lines more definite for imagery
And clearer for relation, till the throng
Of shapeless spectra merge into a few
Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand
Which sweep out and around us vastily
And hold us in a circle and a calm.
_Eve. _ Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.
Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?
_Adam. _ Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,
Which rounds us with a visionary dread,
Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,
In fantasque apposition and approach,
To those celestial, constellated twelve
Which palpitate adown the silent nights
Under the pressure of the hand of God
Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,
Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:
But, girdling close our nether wilderness,
The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow,--
Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,
In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,
Through which the ecliptic line of mystery
Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,
Foreshowing life and death.
_Eve.
Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes
Of intermittent motion, aspect vague
And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,
Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.
How near they reach . . . and far! How grey they move--
Treading upon the darkness without feet,
And fluttering on the darkness without wings!
Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;
Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees;
Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on
Copious as rivers.
_Adam. _ Some spring up like fire;
And some coil . . .
_Eve. _ Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say
Like what?
--coil like the serpent, when he fell
From all the emerald splendour of his height
And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,
Not a ring's length. I am afraid--afraid--
I think it is God's will to make me afraid,--
Permitting THESE to haunt us in the place
Of his beloved angels--gone from us
Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,
That didst permit the angels to go home
And live no more with us who are not pure,
Save _us_ too from a loathly company--
Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,
As _we_ are in the purest! Pity us--
Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away
From verity and from stability,
Or what we name such through the precedence
Of earth's adjusted uses,--leave us not
To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,
Which are the more distraught and full of pain
And weak of apprehension!
_Adam. _ Courage, Sweet!
The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop
With slow concentric movement, each on each,--
Expressing wider spaces,--and collapsed
In lines more definite for imagery
And clearer for relation, till the throng
Of shapeless spectra merge into a few
Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand
Which sweep out and around us vastily
And hold us in a circle and a calm.
_Eve. _ Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.
Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?
_Adam. _ Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,
Which rounds us with a visionary dread,
Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,
In fantasque apposition and approach,
To those celestial, constellated twelve
Which palpitate adown the silent nights
Under the pressure of the hand of God
Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,
Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:
But, girdling close our nether wilderness,
The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow,--
Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,
In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,
Through which the ecliptic line of mystery
Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,
Foreshowing life and death.
_Eve.
