Festus · Scene 10

X

Scene⁠—The centre.
Festus* and Lucifer*.
Lucifer Behold us in the fire-crypts of the world! Through seas and buried mountains tomblike tracts, Fit to receive the skeleton of Death When he is dead⁠—through earthquakes, and the bones Of earthquake-swallowed cities, have we wormed Down to the ever burning forge of fire, Whereon in awful and omnipotent ease Nature, the delegate of God, brings forth Her everlasting elements, and breathes Around that fluent heat of life which clothes Itself in lightnings, wandering through the air, And pierces to the last and loftiest pore Of Earth’s snow-mantled mountains. In these vaults Are hid the archives of the universe; And here, the ashes of all ages gone, Each finally inurned. These pillars stand, Earth’s testimony to eternity.
Festus All that is solid now was fluid once; Water, or air, or fire, or some one Permanent, permeating, element; As in this focal, world-evolving fire Like what I see around⁠—the vacuous power Whereon the world is based, e’en as wherein It rolls, I must believe.
Lucifer The original Of all things is one thing. Creation is One whole. The differences a mortal sees Are diverse only to the finite mind.
Festus This marble-walled immensity o’erroofed With pendant mountains glittering, awes my soul. God’s hand hath scooped the hollow of this world; Yea, none but His could; and I stand in it, Like a forgotten atom of the light, Some star hath lost upon its lightning flight.
Lucifer Here mayst thou lay thy hand on nature’s heart, And feel its thousand yeared throbbings cease. High overhead, and deep beneath our feet, The sea’s broad thunder booms, scarce heard; around, The arches, like uplifted continents Of starry matter, burning inwardly, Stand; and, hard by, earth’s gleaming axle sleeps, All moving, all unmoved.
Festus Age here on age Lie heaped like withered leaves. And must it end?
Lucifer God worketh slowly: and a thousand years He takes to lift His hand off. Layer on layer He made earth, fashioned it and hardened it Into the great, bright, useful thing it is; Its seas, life-crowded, and soul-hallowed lands He girded with the girdle of the sun, That sets its bosom glowing like Love’s own Breathless embrace, close-clinging as for life;⁠— Veined it with gold, and dusted it with gems, Lined it with fire, and round its heart-fire bowed Rock-ribs unbreakable: until at last Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven’s dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds. All this and thus did God; and yet it ends. The ball He rolled and rounded, melts away E’en now to its constituent atomies.
Festus It is enough. Though here were posited All secrets of existence, natural Or supernatural, dwell not here would I, Though ’twere to drain profoundest fountains. No! I love it not, the science nor the scene. I long to know again the fresh green earth, The breathing breeze, the sea and sacred stars. These recollections crowd upon my soul, As constellations on the evening skies, And will not be forgotten. Let us leave!
Lucifer Aught that reminds the exile of his home Is surely pleasant. I, friend, am content.
Festus I cannot be content with less than Heaven. O Heaven, I love thee ever! sole and whole, Living and comprehensive of all life; Thee, agy world, thee, universal Heaven, And heavenly universe! thee, sacred seat Of intellective Time, the throned stars And old oracular night;⁠—by night or day, To me thou canst not but be beautiful, Boundless, all-central, universal sphere! Whether the sun all-light thee, or the moon, Embayed in clouds, mid starry island round, With mighty beauty inundate the air;⁠— Or when one star, like a great drop of light, From her full flowing urn hangs tremulous⁠— Yea, like a tear from her the eye of night, Let fall o’er nature’s volume as she reads:⁠— Or, when in radiant thousands, each star reigns In imparticipable royalty, Leaderless, uncontrasted with the light Wherein their light is lost, the sons of fire, Arch element of the Heavens;⁠—when storm and cloud Debar the mortal vision of the eye From wandering o’er thy threshold⁠—more and more I love thee, thinking on the splendid calm Which bounds the deadly fever of these days⁠— The higher, holier, spiritual Heaven. And when this world, within whose heartstrings now I feel myself encoiled, shall be resolved, Thee I shall be permitted still perchance, To love and live in endlessly.
Lucifer All here Thou seet hath holden fellowship with gods; With eldest Time and primal matter, space, And stars, and air, and all-inherent fire, The watery deep and chaos, night, the all, And the interior immortality, And first-begotten Love. These rocks retain Their caverned footsteps printed in pure fire. Those were the times, the ancient youth of earth, The elemental years, when earth and Heaven Made one in holy bridals⁠—royal gods Their bright immortal issue: when men’s minds Were vast as continents, and not as now Minute and indistinguishable plots, With here and there acres of untilled brains; when lived The great original, broad-eyed, sunken race, Whose wisdom, like these sea-sustaining rocks, Hath formed the base of the world’s fluctuous lore:⁠— When too, by mountainous travail, human might Sought to possess the everlasting Heavens, And incommunicable, by the right Of self-acquirement and high kindred with Celestial virtues;⁠—when the mortal powers⁠— Forecounsel, wisdom, and experience, Teachers of all arts, founders of all good, With Godhood strove, and gloriously failed⁠— In failure half successful; as these scenes, Fire-fountains, and volcano-utterances, Earth-heavings, island vomitings, evince.
Festus The world hath made such comet-like advance Lately on science, we may almost hope, Before we die of sheer decay, to learn Something about our infancy. But me This troubles not. Were all earth’s mountain chains To utter fire at once, what a grand show Of pyrotechny for our neighbor moon! Let us ascend; but not through the charred throat Of an extinct volcano.
Lucifer This way⁠—down. So shalt thou thread the world at once.
Festus Haste, haste.