Festus · Scene 22 (2/2) (1/2)
Lucifer* and Festus*.
Festus Why, earth is in the very midst of Heaven! And space, though void of things, feels full of God. Hath space no limit?
Lucifer None to thee. Yet, if Infinite, it would equal God; and that To think of is most vain.
Festus And yet if not Infinite how can God exist therein?
Lucifer I say not.
Festus No. So soon when placed beside The infinite the poor immortal fails.
Lucifer Space is God’s space: Eternity is His Eternity; His, Heaven. He only holds Perfections which are but the impossible To other beings.
Festus We are things of time.
Lucifer With God time is not. Unto Him all is Present Eternity. Worlds, beings, years, With all their natures, powers, and events, The range whereof when making He ordains, Unfold themselves like flowers. He foresees Not, but sees all at once. Time must not be Contrasted with Eternity: ’tis not A second of the everlasting year. Perfections although infinite with God, Are all identical; as much of Him⁠— And holy is His mercy, merciful His wisdom, wise His love, and kind his wrath⁠— As form, extension, parts, are requisites Of matter. Spirit hath no parts. It is One substance, whole and indivisible, Whatever else. Souls see each other clear At one glance, as two drops of rain in air Might look into each other, had they life. Death does away disguise. Even here I feel Among these mighty things, that, as I am, I am akin to God;⁠—that I am part Of the use universal, and can grasp Some portion of that reason in the which The whole is ruled and founded;⁠—that I have A spirit nobler in its cause and end, Lovelier in order, greater in its powers, Than all these bright immensities⁠—how swift! And doth creation’s tide for ever flow, Nor ebb with like destruction? World on world, Are they for ever heaping up, and still The mighty measure never full?
Lucifer To act Is powers habit; alway to create, God’s; which, thus ever causing worlds, to Him Nought cumbrous more than new down to a wing, Aye multiplies at once my power and pain. I have seen many frames of being pass. This generation of the universe Will soon be gathered to its grave. These worlds, Which bear its sky-pall, soon will follow thine. I, both. All things must die.
Festus What are ye orbs? The words of God⁠—the Scriptures of the skies? For words with Him cannot be passing, nor Less real, vast, or glorious than yourselves. The world is a great poem, and the worlds The words it is writ in, and we souls the thoughts. Ye cannot die.
Lucifer Think not on death. Here all Is life, light, beauty. Harp not so on death.
Festus I cannot help me, spirit! Chide no more. As who dare gaze the sun, doth after see Betwixt him and else a dark sun in his eye; So I, once having braved my burning doom, See nought beside⁠—or that in everything. Hark, what is that I hear?
Lucifer An angel weeping⁠— Earth’s guardian angel. She is ever weeping.
Festus See where she flies, spirit-torn, round the heavens, Like a fore-feel of madness about the brain.
Angel of Earth Star, stars! Stop your bright cars! Stint your breath⁠— Repent ere worse⁠— Think of the death Of the universe. Fear doom, and fear, The fate of your kin-sphere. As a corse in the tomb, Earth! thou art laid in doom: The worm is at thy heart. I see all things part:⁠— The bright air thicken, Thunder-stricken: Birds from the sky Shower like leaves: Streamlets stop Like ice on leaves: The sun go blind: Swoon the wind On the high hill top⁠— Swoon and die: Earth rear off her cities As a horse his rider; And still, with each death-strain, Her heart-wound tear wider: The lion roar and die With his eye-balls on the sky: The eagle scream And drop like a beam: Men crowd and cry, Out on this deathful dream! A low dull sound⁠— ’Tis the march of many bones Under ground; Up! and they fling, Like a fly’s wing, Off them the grey grave-stones; They sit in their biers⁠— Father and mother, Man and wife, Sister and brother, As in life; Lady and lover⁠— Love all over. Their flesh re-appears⁠— Their hearts beat⁠— Their eyes have tears: Woe! woe! Do they speak? Stir? No! Tongues were too weak, Save to repeat Woe! But they smile In a while; For to wipe from His word The dust of years, He comes! he comes! the Lord, Man-God, re-appears; To bless, and to save From death and the grave⁠— To redeem and deliver For ever and ever! The dead rise⁠— Death dies. Go, Time, and sink Thy great thoughts in the sea! And quench thy red link! Let him flutter to rest On thy God-nursing breast, Eternity! Mother Eternity! What is for me?
Festus Poor angel! Ah! it is the good who suffer. Look! like a cloud, she has wept herself away. What of this world we view and all yon worlds? If God made not all things from nothing, how Is He creator? Something must exist If otherwise, eternal with Himself; And all things had not origin in Him.
Lucifer He made all things of Him. The visible world Is as the Christ of nature; God the maker In matter made self manifest through time. All things are formed of all things⁠—all of God. The world is made of wonders. Every day Is born a new creation. Every orb Hath its revealed word; and every race Of Being hath its judgment, or shall have.
Festus Are all these worlds, then, stocked with souls like man’s⁠— Free, fallible, and sinful?
Lucifer Ay, they are. All creature-minds, like man’s, are fallible. The seraph who in Heaven highest stands May fall to ruin deepest. God is mind⁠— Pure, perfect, sinless. Man imperfect is⁠— Momently sinning. Evil then results From imperfection. The idea of good Is owned in imperfection’s lowest form. God would not, could not, make aught wholly ill, Nor aught not like to err. Man never was Perfect nor pure, or he would be so now. Thy nature hath some excellencies⁠—these Oft thwarted by low lusts and wicked wills. What then? They are necessitate in kind, As change in nature, or as shade to light. No darkness hath the sun⁠—no weakness God: These only be the faulty qualities Of secondary natures⁠—planets, men. God hath no attributes unless To Be Be one: ’twould mix Him with the things He hath made. God is all God, as life is that which lives. I am a mighty spirit, and yet I Am but to God what lightning is to light: Lightning slays one thing⁠—light makes all things live. Bear, then, thy necessary ills with grace; No positive estate or principle Is Evil⁠—debtor wholly for its form And measure to defect⁠—defect to good. Good’s the sole positive principle in the world; It is only thus, that what God makes, He loves⁠— And must: the others are but off-shoots. Ill Is limited. One cannot form a scheme For universal evil; not even I.
Festus Can imperfection from perfection come? Can God make aught defective?
Lucifer How aught else? There are but three proportions in all things⁠— The greater⁠—equal⁠—less. God could not make A God above Himself, nor equal with⁠— By nature and necessity the Highest; So, if He make, it must be lesser minds Little and less from angels down to men, Whose natures are imperfect, as His own Must be all-perfect. These two states are not, Except as whole unto its parts, opposed; And evil is itself no ill unless Creation be.
Festus Is God the cause of evil?
Lucifer So far as evil comes from imperfection, And imperfection from the things He hath made, And what He hath made from His will to make.
Festus Oh! let me rest, be it but a moment’s pause! This endless light-like journey wearies me. Remember still my spirit toils in dust⁠— A dark close cloud.
Lucifer Alight, then, on this orb. I am not wearied: I will watch by thee. He sleeps⁠—he dreams. How far men see in dreams! In dreams they can accomplish worlds of things: The heart then suffers a fusion of all feeling Back to its youthful hours of innocence, And nakedness, and paradise; ere yet The world had wound a perishing garb around it; While yet its God came down and spake to it. Such and so great are dreams. My might, my being To him is but a dream’s. And could a state To come fill up their dream-stretched minds, they might Be gods. And may it not be so? Then man Is worth my ruining. What does he dream? With all the sway his spirit now exerts O’er time, space, thought it is but a shadowy sway, Light as a mountain shadow on a lake. Mine is the mountain’s self. A touch would shake To nought whatever his soul now feels or acts; But not a world-quake could touch aught of mine: Thus much we differ. I will not envy man. Power alone makes being bearable. And yet this dream-power is mind-power⁠—real: All things are real: fiction cannot be. A thought is real as the world⁠—a dream True as all God doth know⁠—with whom all is true. The deep dense sleep of half-dead exhaustedness! Would I could feel it. Ah! he wakes at last.
Festus Oh! I have dreamed a dream so beautiful! Methought I lay as it were here; and, lo! A spirit came and gave me wings of light, Which thrice I waved delighted. Up we flew Sheer through the shining air, far past the sun’s Broad blazing disk⁠—past where the great great snake Binds in his bright coil half the host of Heaven⁠— Past thee, Orion! who, with arm uplift, Threatening the throne of God, dost ever stand Sublimely impious; and thy mighty mace Whirling on high, down from its glorious seat Drops, crushed and shattered, many a shining world. And so the brave and beautiful of old Believed thou wast a giant made of worlds: And they were rights if thus they bodied out The immortal mind; for it hath starlike beauty, And worldlike might; and is as high above The things it scorns, and will make war with God, Though He gave it earth and Heaven, and arms to win Them both; and, spite of lust and pride, to earn them. And now thy soul informs yon hundred stars, As mine my limbs⁠—well, ’tis a noble end. What now to thee be mortal maid or goddess? Look! she who fled thee once, now loves and longs To clasp thee to her cold and beamy breast. Pine moon! thou art as far below him now, As once she was above thee, thou of the world-belt! And she who had thee, and who knew thee god, Died of her boast, and lies in her own dust. And she who loved thee, the young blushy Morning, Who caught thee in her arms, and bore thee off Far o’er the lashing seas to a lonely isle, Where she might pleasure longer and in secret⁠— That love undid thee; and it is so now: Whether the beauty seek, or flee, or have, ’Tis a like ill⁠—this beauty doubly mortal. What though the moon with madness slew thee there, Let me believe it was within the arms That loved thee even in the stroke of death, And that there snapped the lightning link of life. Kill, but not conquer, man nor mind may gods. Thou image of the Almighty error, man! Banished and banned to Heaven, by a weak world, Which makes the minds it cannot master gods And thou, the first and greatest of half-gods, Which they in olden time did star together To an idolatrous immortality; Who nationalized the Heavens, and gave all stars Unto the spirits of the good and brave, Forestalling God by ages⁠—wondrous men! And if⁠—beguiled by wine, and the low wiles Thou wouldst not creep to meet, and a drunken sleep, Like to high noon in the midst of all his might, Close by the brink of immortality⁠— The deep dominions of thy sea-sire, thou Didst lose thy light by kings who hate the great, Thou only hadst to stand up to the sun, And gain again thine eyes. So the great king, The world, the tyrant we elect, in vain Puts out the eyes of mind: it looks to God, And reaps its light again. Wherefore, revenge! Out with the sword! the world will run before thee, Orion! belted giant of the skies! Thou with the treble strain of godhood in thee! March! there is nought to hinder thee in Heaven:⁠— Past that great sickle saved for one day’s work, When He who sowed shall reap Creation’s field;⁠— Past those high diademed orbs which show to man His crown to come;⁠—up through the starry strings Of that high harp close by the feet of God, Which He, methought, took up and struck, till Heaven, In love’s immortal madness, rang and reeled; The stars fell on their faces; and, far off, The wild world halted⁠—shook his burning man⁠— Then, like a fresh-blown trumpet blast, went on, Or like a god gone mad. On, on we flew, I and the spirit, far beyond all things Of measure, motion, time and aught create; Where the stars stood on the edge of the first nothing, And looked each other in the face and fled⁠— Past even the last long starless void, to God; Whom straight I heard, methought, commanding thus: Immortal! I am God. Hie back to earth, And say to all, that God doth say⁠—Love God!
Lucifer God visits men adreaming: I, awake.
Festus And my dream changed to one of general doom. Wilt hear it?
Lucifer Ay, say on! It is but a dream.
Festus God made all mind and motion cease; and, lo! The whole was death and peace. An endless time Obtained, in which the power of all made failed. God bade the worlds to judgment, and they came⁠— Pale, trembling, corpse-like. To the souls therein Then spake the Maker: Deathless spirits, rise! And straight they thronged around the throne. His arm The Almighty then uplift, and smote the worlds Once, and they fell in fragments like to spray, And vanished in their native void. He shook The stars from Heaven like rain-drops from a bough; Like tears they poured adown creation’s face. Spirit and space were all things. Matter, death, And time, left even not a wake to tell Where once their track o’er being. God’s own light Undarkened and unhindered by a sun, Glowed forth alone in glory. And through all A dear and tremulous sense of God prevailed, Like to the blush of love upon the cheek, Or the full feeling lightening through the eye, Or the quick music in the chords of harps. God judged all creatures unto bliss or woe, According to their deeds, and faith, and His Own will: and straight the saved upraised a voice Which seemed to emulate eternity In its triumphant overblossedness. The lost leapt up and cursed God to His face⁠— A curse might make the sun turn cold to hear; And thee, in all thy burning glory, tremble, In front of all thine angels, like a chord. Rage writhed each brow into a changeless scowl. Madly they mocked at God, and dared His eye, Safe in their curse of deathlessness. To Hell They hied like storms; and, cursing all things, each Soul wrapped him in his shroud of fire for aye, With one long loud howl which seemed to deafen Heaven⁠— And then I woke.
Lucifer A wild fantastic dream! A mere mirage of mind! Come, let us leave: We have seen enough of this world.