Festus · Scene 4 (2/2) (1/2)
Festus* and Lucifer*.
Festus Hail beauteous Earth! Gazing o’er thee, I all Forget the bounds of beings; and I long To fill thee, as a lover pines to blend Soul, passion, yea existence, with the fair Creature he calls his own. I ask for nought Before or after death but this⁠—to lie, And look, and live, and bask, and bless myself Upon thy broad bright bosom. From thee I Sprang, and to thee I turn, heart, arm and brain. Yes, I am all thine own. Thou art the sole Parent. To rock and river, plain and wood I cry, ye are my kin. While I, O Earth! Am but an atom of thee, and a breath, Passing unseen and unrecorded like The tiny throb here in my temple’s pulse. Thou art for ever and the sacred bride Of heaven⁠—worthy the passion of our God. O! full of lights love, grace!⁠—the grace of all Who owe to thee their life; thy Maker’s love; His face’s light. All thine rejoice in thee; Thou in thyself for aye; rolling through air As seraphs’ song out of their trumpet lips Rolls round the skies of Heaven. See the sun! God’s crest upon His azure shield the Heavens. Canst thou, a spirit, look upon him?
Lucifer Ay. I led him from the void, where he was wrought, By this right hand, up to the glorious seat His brightness overshadows; built his throne On piles of gold; and laid his chambers on Beams of gold: wrapped a veil of fire around His face; and bade him reign and burn like me. There, ever since, sat warming into life These worlds as in a nest, he has and is. But fall he must. I have done, do, nought else From my first thought to this and to my last. No matter; it is beneath this mind of mine To reck of aught. I bear, have borne the ill Of ages, of eternities⁠—and must. I care not. I shall sway the world as now, Which worse and worse sinks with me as I sink, Till finite souls evanish as a vapour; Till immortality, the proud thing, perish; And God alone be and eternity. Then will I clap my hands and cry to Him, I have done! Have Thy will now! There is none but Thee. I am the first created being. I Will be the last to perish and to die.
Festus Thou art a fit monitor, methinks, of pleasure.
Lucifer To the high air sunshine and cloud are one; Pleasure and pain to me. Thou and the earth Alone feel these as different⁠—for Ye Are under them⁠—the Heavens and I above.
Festus But tell me, have ye scenes like this in Hell?
Lucifer Nay, not in Heaven.
Festus What is Heaven? not the toys Of singing, love and music? such a place Were fit for women only.
Lucifer Heaven is no place; Unless it be a place with God, allwhere. It is the being good⁠—the knowing God⁠— The consciousness of happiness and power; With knowledge which no spirit e’er can lose But doth increase in every state; and aught It most delights in the full leave to do. But why consume me with such questions? Why Add earth to Hell, in the great chain of worlds Which God in wrath hath bound about me?
Festus Why! ’Twas therefore that I closed with thee, great Fiend! That thou mightst answer all things I proposed, Or bring me those who would do.
Lucifer All these things Thou wilt know sometime, when to see and know Are one; to see a thing and comprehend The nature of it essentially; perceive The reason and the science of its being, And the relations with the universe Of all things actual or possible, Mortal, immortal, spiritual, gross. This, when the spirit is made free of Heaven, Is the divine result; proportioned still To the intelligence as human; for There are degrees in Heaven as everything, By God’s will. Unimaginable space As full of suns as is earth’s sun of atoms, Faileth to match His boundless variousness; And ever must do, though a thousand worlds, As diverse from each other as is thine From any of thy system’s, were elanced Each minute into life unendingly. All of yon worlds, and all who dwell in them, Stand in diverse degrees of bliss and being. Through the ten thousand times ten thousandth grade Of blessedness, above this world’s and man’s Ability to feel or to conceive, The soul may pass and yet know nought of Heaven, More than a dim and miniature reflection Of its most bright infinity;⁠—for God Makes to each spirit its peculiar Heaven;⁠— And yet is Heaven a bright reality, As this or any of yon worlds; a state Where all is loveliness and power and love; Where all sublimest qualities of mind, Not infinite, are limited alone By the surrounding Godhood, and where nought But what produceth glory and delight, To creature and Creator is; where all Enjoy entire dominion o’er themselves, Acts, feelings, thoughts, conditions, qualities, Spirit and soul and mind; all under God, For spirit is soul Deified;⁠—while earth, To the immortal vast, God-natured Spirit, Is but a spell, which having served to light, A lamp, is cast into consuming fire.
Festus And Hell? Is it nought but pits and chains and flames?
Lucifer An ever greatening sense of ill and woe, Aye crushing down the soul, but filling never Its infinite capacity of pain.
Festus But human nature is not infinite, And therefore cannot suffer endlessly.
Lucifer God may create in time what shall endure Unto Eternity. With Him is no Distinction, nor in that which is of Him.
Festus Then is not soul of God, but man and earth. Soul when made spirit is of earth no more, Nor time, but of Eternity and Heaven. ’Tis but when in the body, and bent down To worldly ends, that human souls become Objects of time, as most are, till the hour Comes when the soul of man shall be made one With God’s spirit; and where shall woe be then? Where, sin? where, suffering? when the mortal soul Shall be Divinised and eternised by God’s very spirit put upon it?
Lucifer How Can souls begotten to predestined doom, From and before all worlds, be deemed of earth;
Festus Things spiritual, as belonging God, Are known unto Him, and predestined from Eternity, nor these alone; but Flesh Forms not nor does it need the care of Fate.
Lucifer The object of eternal knowledge must Have like existence.
Festus Then it cannot be Bound unto torment; that would be to bring Torture on godlike essence.
Lucifer Hast not heard, How thine existence here, on earth, is but The dark and narrow section of a life Which was with God, long ere the sun was lit, And shall be yet, when all the bold bright stars Are dark as death-dust⁠—Immortality And Wisdom tending thee on either hand, Thy divine sisters? But do thou believe E’en what thou wilt. It matters not to me.
Festus Is it the nature or the deed of God To render finite follies infinite, Or to eternise sin and death in fire? For so long as the punishment endures, The crime lasts. Were it not for thy presence, Spirit! I would not deem Hell were.
Lucifer Let not My presence pass for more than it is worth, I pray, nor yet my absence. Trust me, I Could wish, with thee, that Hell were blotted out Of utmost space. ’Tis man himself aye makes His own God and his hell. But this is truth.
Festus The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike. Error is worse than ignorance. But say:⁠— How can eternal punishment be due To temporal offences, to a pulse Of momentary madness?
Lucifer Pardon me. Sin is not temporary. Nothing is, Of spiritual nature, but hath cause Immortal and immortal end in all, As spirits. Therefore till the soul shall be By grace redeified, as is the soul, So is the sin, for ever before God.
Festus Sin is not of the spirit, but of that Which blindeth spirit, heart and brain.
Lucifer Believe so. The law of all the worlds is retribution.
Festus But is it so of God?
Lucifer The laws of Heaven Are not of earth; there law is liberty.
Festus Thou thundercloud of spirits, darkning The skies and wrecking earth! Could I hate men How I should joy with thee, even as an eagle, Nigh famished, in the fellowship of storms; But I still love them. What will come of men?
Lucifer Whatever may, perdition is their meed. Were Heaven dispeopled for a ministry To warn them of their ways; were thou and I To monish them; were Heaven, and Earth, and Hell To preach at once, they still would mock and jeer As now; but never repent until too late; Until the everlasting hour had struck.
Festus Men might be better if we better deemed Of them. The worst way to improve the world Is to condemn it. Men may overget Delusion⁠—not despair.
Lucifer Why love mankind? The affections are thy systems weaknesses; The wasteful outlets of self-maintenance.
Festus The wild flower’s tendril, proof of feebleness, Proves strength; and so we fling our feelings out, The tendrils of the heart, to bear us up. O Earth! how drear to think to tear oneself, Even for an hour, from looks like this of thine; From features, oh! so fair; to quit for aye The luxury of thy side. Why, why art thou Thus glorious, and ’twere not to sate the soul, And chide us for the senseless dream of Heaven? The still strong stream sweeps onward to its end, Like one of the great purposes of God; Or like, may be, a soul like mine to Him. Along yon deep blue vein upon thy bosom, Earth? I could float for ever. See it there⁠— Winding among its green and smiling isles, Like Charity amidst her children dear; Or Peace, rejoicing in her olive wreaths, And gladdening as she glides along the lands.
Lucifer And yet all this must end⁠—must pass; drop down Oblivion like a pebble in a pit: For God shall lay His hand upon the earth, And crush it up like a red leaf.
Festus Not be? I cannot root the thought, nor hold it firm.
Lucifer This same sweet world which thou wouldst fondly deem Eternal, may be; which I soon shall see Destruction suck back as the tide a shell.
Festus It will not be yet. I’ll woo thee, world, again, And revel in thy loveliness and love. I have a heart with room for every joy: And since we must part sometime, while I may, I’ll quaff the nectar in thy flowers, and press The richest clusters of thy luscious fruit Into the cup of my desires. I know My years are numbered not in units yet. But I cannot live unless I love and am loved; Unless I have the young and beautiful Bound up like pictures in my book of life. It is the intensest vanity alone Which makes us bear with life. Some seem to live, Whose hearts are like those unenlightened stars Of the first darkness⁠—lifeless, timeless, useless⁠— With nothing but a cold night air about them; Not suns⁠—not planets⁠—darkness organized: Orbs of a desert darkness: with no soul To light its watchfire in the wilderness, And civilize the solitude one moment. There are such seemingly; but how or why They live I know not. This to me is life; That if life be a burden, I will join To make it but the burden of a song: I hate the world’s coarse thought. And this is life; To watch young beauty’s budlike feelings burst And load the soul with love;⁠—as that pale flower, Which opes at eve, spreads sudden on the dark Its yellow bloom, and sinks the air down with sweets. Let Heaven take all that’s good⁠—Hell all that’s foul; Leave us the lovely! and we will ask no more.
Lucifer To me it seems time all should end. The sky Grows gray. It is not so bright nor blue as once. Well I remember, as it were yesterday, When earth and Heaven went happy, hand in hand, With all the morning dew of youth about them; With the bright unworldly hearts of youth and truth And the maiden bosoms of the beautiful:⁠— Ere earth sinned, or the pure indignant Heavens Retreated high, nigh God; when earth was all A creeping mass alive with shapeless things: And when there were but three things in the world⁠— Monsters, mountains and water: before age Had thickened the eyes of stars; and while the sea, Rejoicing like a ring of saints round God, Or Heaven on Heaven about some newborn sun, In its sublime samesoundingness, laughed out And cried not I! Like God I never rest.
Festus God hath his rest; earth hers. Let me have mine. Yet must I look on thee, fair scene, again, Ere I depart. The glory of the world Is on all hands. In one encircling ken, I gaze on river, sea, isle, continent, Mountain, and wood, and wild, and fire-lipped hill, And lake, and golden plain, and sun, and Heaven, Where the stars brightly die, whose death is day; City and port and palace, ships and tents, Lie massed and mapped before me. All is here. The elements of the world are at my feet, Above me and about me. Now would I Be and do somewhat beside that I am. Canst thou not give me some ethereal slave, Of the pure essence of an element⁠— Such as my bondless brain hath oft times drawn In the divine insanity of dreams⁠— To stand before me and obey me, spirit?
Lucifer Call out, and see if aught arise to thee.
Festus Green dewy Earth, who standest at my feet, Singing and pouring sunshine on thy head, As näiad native water, speak to me! I am thy son. Canst thou not now, as once, Bring forth some being dearer, liker to thee Than is my race⁠—Titan or tiny fay, Stream-nymph or wood-nymph? She hath ceased to speak, Like God, except in thunder, or to look Unless in lightning. Miracles, with earth, Are out of fashion as with Heaven.
Lucifer More’s The pity. Call elsewhere! Old Earth is hard Of hearing, maybe.
Festus I beseech thee, Sea! Tossing thy wavy locks in sparkling play, Like to a child awakening with the light To laughter. Canst not thou disgulph for me, From thy deep bosom, deep as Heaven is high, Of all thy sea-gods one, or sea-maids?
Lucifer None!
Festus I half despair. Fire! that art slumbering there, Like some stern warrior in his rocky fort, After the vast invasion of the world, Hast not some flaming imp, or messenger Of empyrean element, to whom, In virtue of his nature, are both known The secrets of the burning, central, void below, And yon bright Heaven, out of whose aëry fire Are wrought the forms of angels and the thrones? Hast none at hand to do my bidding? Come! Breathe out a spirit for me! One I ask That shall be with me always, as a friend, And not like thee, who despotisest o’er The heart thou seek’st to serve. I must be free.
Lucifer All finite souls must serve; their widest sway Is but the rule of service. This fair earth Which thou dost boast so much of, why, thou see’st ’Tis but the parti-coloured, scummy dross Of the original element wherefrom The fiery worlds were framed.