Part V

" 'THE dim world of the dead is all alive;
All busy as the bees in summer hive;
More living than of old; a life so deep.
To you its swifter motion looks like sleep.
Whether in bliss they breathe, in bale they
burn.
His own eternal living each must earn.
We suck no honeycomb in drowsy peace,
Because ennobling natural cares all cease;

We live no life, as many dream, caressed
By some vast lazy sea of endless rest —
For there, as here, unbusy is unblest.

"Man is the wrestling-place of Heaven and
Hell,
Where, foot to foot, Angel and Dei'il dwell.
With both attractions drawing him. This gives
The perfect poise in which his freedom lives.

No one so near to heaven to lack for scope;

No one so near to hell to lose all hope.

Whichever way he wills, to left or right.
Lets in a flood of supernatural might.

He flames out hellward, and all hell is free.
Rejoicing in the gust of liberty.
To rush in on him, work its devilry!

In strength of faith, or feebleness of fear.
He bows and bends the highest heavens near.

The brightness upon Prayer's uplifted face
Reflects some spirit-presence in the place.

"Each impure nature hath its parasites,
That live and revel in unclean delights.
Like moths around aflame they swim and swarm,
Or flies about a horse, that ride the warm
And reeking air which is their atmosphere.
Their breath of life, the ranker the more dear.
They glory in the grossness of the blood.
For, reptile-like, they lay their eggs in mud.
In every darksome corner of the mind
They hang their webs, the winged life to bind;
Weaving the shadow of the Evil One
To darken 'twixt the spirit and its sun.

" If those blind Unbelievers did but know
Thro' what a perilous Unknown they go
By night and day; what furtive eyes do mark
Them fiercely from their ambush of the dark;
What motes of spirit dance in every beam;
What grim realities mix with their dream;
What serpents try to pull down fallen souls,
As earth-worms drag the dead leaves through their
holes;
What cunning sowers drop the seed by night
That flames to fatal flower in broad daylight;
What foul birds drop their eggs in innocent
nests.
To win their heat from warmth of innocent breasts:
What snaky thieves dermount each garden wall;
On life's fresh leaves what caterpillars crawl;
What cool green pleasaunces and brooding bowers
Are set with soul-traps hid among the flowers;
What Tempters in the Chamber of Sleep will break,
And with insidious whisperings keep awake
The Soul! How, toad-like, at the ear will lurk
The cunning Satan, wickedly at work:
What evil spirits hover in amorous hate
Round him who nibbles at the devils bait,
Or him who dallies, fingering the sharp edge
Of peril, or sits with feet over the ledge.
By some dark water, with his face ash-wan,
Until they urge him over; a doomed Man!
What cruel demons try to break a way,
Thro' weak brains, back to the lost world of day.
And from some little rift in nature yawns
A black abysm of madness, and Hell dawns:

What starvelings seek to drink Corruption's breath
From rosy life, more rich than rot of death;
What ghosts of drinkers old would quench their
drouth
At the wine-bibber 's dreaming stertorous mouth;
What Sirens seek to kindle at your fire
Of passion some live spark of dead desire —
They would be ready even to doubt God' s power
To shield their little life frotn hour to hour,
And many would be going, ivith idiot-grin.
Out of their mind to let the marvel in.

" But do not think the Devil hath his will.
Whate'er he doth he is God's servant still.
And in the larger light of day divine
The spark of his hell-fire shall cease to shine.
God maketh use of him.; what he intends
For evil Heaven will shape to its own ends.
With subtle wile he tries to circumvent
The Lord, and works just what the Master meant.
He hangs the dark cloud round this world of yours;
God smileth, and a rain of good down-pours.
He dug Christ's tomb so deep there sprang and
swirled
Waters of life to baptize all the world.
He strove to found the Empire of the Slave,
It crumbled in: he had but delved its grave.

" He stole upon a Nation, in disguise
Of thieves that prowled by night; day -lurking spies;
Plotters who privily set their eyes to mark
Her weakness, and garrotted her by dark!
The face of Freedom frightfully they scarred.
That men should know her not, so sadly marred,
And, seeing her in the dust, misjudge her stature;

And, finding she grew calm, mistake her nature!
They built about her; dreamed not she would stand
Up, terribly tall once more; and, in her hand —
Clencht, till the knuckles whiten with their grip —
The sword set sharp as is her red-edged lip:
And in her eyes the lightnings that should break
In blinding, black, irreparable wreck: —
Rending their roof to heaven, their walls to earth,
(The sorer travail the more glorious birth!)
An Earthquake crash .' the edifice is crowned,
And there's a heap of ruin on the ground I
Arise, to sweep them from her onward path,
Stern as the Spectre of God's whitest wrath.
Even while they clutcht the gains of their foul play
And parted them, I heard the Avengers say —
' They plant in dust a breath will blow away,
Altho' they wet it well with blood to-day.

" ' Ay, Traitor, mount your topmost pinnacle.
The merry-making Heavens would mark you well,
'Where all the gazers of the world may see
You throned upon the peak of infamy! '
So croon' d the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.

" 'Well done. Now place the crown upon your brow,
With its brave glitter all eyes dazzle now:
Lost in its splendour is that frightful stain
Branded beneath; the murder-mark of Cain! '
So croon' d the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.

" 'Well done. Now fold the Imperial Purple round,
And let a Pope's Anointed, robed and crown'd,
Thus glorify the blood so basely spilt;
Thus image to all time the loftiest guilt.'
.Si? croon' d the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait.

" ' Well done, thou faithful servant. Hell shall rise
From half her thrones to offer you their prize,
And greet your coming; meet you with a kiss
Of benison, for such a deed as this! '
So croon' d the implacable ministers of Fate,
Standing in shadow where they watch and wait"

" Was Satan sent from heaven to ruin earth? "
I asked, " or what the story of his birth? "
" Both heaven and hell are from the human race,
And every soul projects its future place:
Long shadows of ourselves are thrown before,
To wait our coming on the eternal shore.
These either clothe us with eclipse and night,
Or, as we enter them, are lost in light.

" There is no Devil such as Milton saw;

No fallen Angel's eyes divined the flaw
In God's work, whereby Man might be accurst.

The Dei'il was a murderer from the first.
Our Saviour said. But he was softly nurst
Vp from a babe in arms. A little seed
Of sin was sown that grew with little heed.

By door or window little sins will win
A way that widens for the larger sin,
As tiniest lichens, climbing up the wall.
May lend a hand to help the Ivy crawl
That is to tower a conqueror over all
The house in ruin, crumbling to the fall.

Once life is set in motion there upspring
Infinite issues to the smallest thing.

A finger's breadth in swerving as we start
May land us in the end two worlds apart.

" Our parents were not tempted by a Tree
That hung out luscious fruitage, visibly
Held in God's hand, on purpose to beguile
Their simpleness with its suggesting smile.
That is the symbol of a world within;
There was the serpent born, there bred the sin.
The trees that midmost in the Garden stood.
Took root in soul and blossomed in the blood.
Nor were they left without the inward light.
The starry presence shining thrd your night,
That shows the wrong while it reveals the right;
The magnet in the soul that points on thro'
All tempests and still trembles to be true.

" The still small voice within cried
' Do not this
Or it will lead from me, and ye will miss
The innocent brightness of your morning bliss,
And long in a wild wilderness will stray.
Farther and farther from the primal way.
Until ye lose me, darkling in a cloud
Of your own making, winding like a shroud
About the life I gave; nor feel me near
When ye do call and think there's none to hear.'
" And yet they dallied with the thought of wrong
Until they did it: looking down too long.
Like him who, on a perilous mountain ledge,
Gazes upon the gulf, dark o'er the edge.
Till he grows dizzy and, with brain a-swim,
Forgetting to look up — drops! Or, like him
Who stood and watched that Titan, face to face.
The vast Steam-Hammer, with its monster mace,
Until the blows of its recurrent sound
Snapped his last trembling hold on things around;
Mazed him and drew him nigher, slip by slip.
To thrust his hand into its crushing grip.

" They dallied with wrong-doing, and it grew
Too strong to wrestle with, and overthrew.
Eyes play with Pleasure! Looking overmuch
Sets all the blood a-tingle for the touch!
How the fruit smiles, dtlicious to the eyes;
How quietly the Snake behind it lies.
With all his weight bending the branch down
near;
The reptile music, sliding thro' the ear.
Winds round the soul, makes it a-tiptoe stand
With love-sick longing till it lifts the hand
To pluck, and feel, and smell, and taste just one
Ripe Apple, whose gold glistens so i' the sun!
But one step over the forbidden marge;
Tlie sin so little, the delight so large!
And there's the old, old story of the Fall,
Eternally repeated for us all.

" Thus is the Devil born: born every day,
Harmless at first as toothless whelps at play;
Is born in thoughts which are the quick live
seeds
That will be striving to take shape in deeds;
So would be bom did any Pair begin
Afresh; so form the protoplasm of Sin,
The pustule raised at Just a prick of pin;
The nest-egg which the Devil is hatched in.
For Man, the outcome of Creation's past.
Is flower of all earth's life from first to last:
No lower life hath ever passed away
But left its larvae in the human clay.
No reptile of the slime, no beast of prey.
But human passions personate to-day.
And these break loose to rend in deadly strife.
And will break loose, till, in the higher life.
The soul arisen to her immortal stature
Leads, Una-like, these grim necessities of Nature.
" The sin that sprang, equipped for death, in Cain,
Was gathering life for many years; had lain
In childhood nestled to the parent breast,
Who dreamed not of the wild beast he caressed
So gently; fed on his own life, with pride.
The strength that gored him in mad fratricide!
Such little sins are fibres to the root
Of that which bears ripe murder for its fruit.

" To picture what I mean: see here, a Wife,
With bosom just a-brood der life-in-life,
Who in a fury-fit snatched up a knife
And drove it at her husband. 'Twas a miss
Thd near enough to hear Death's arrow hiss!
She had not dyed her hand in human blood,
But she had dipped her Unborn in a flood
Of wrath that surged and smoked and flashed hell-flame;
Given her babe baptism in the Devil's name:
Stained the pure thing of heaven a lurid hue
With fume d the pit, the white star reddened thrd.
And from that Mother-stricken life there grew
A Murderer whose own hand that Mother slew.

" The ghosts of our own crimes long-buried will
Live after us and haunt our children still.
Our vices, hid for generations past,
Break out and tell their secret tale at last.
" Cain slew his brother. In that deed the Devil
Took visible shape; stood forth erect, as Evil
Full-statured, from the serpent form of sin
In which he had wormed a way and wriggled in,
Before he got a foothold on the earth.
" The Murderer died, and spirit-world gave birth
To a thing that stained the stainless in a cloud
So black it made the clear heaven thunder-browed;
Death at the heart. Destruction on the wing!
This was the spirit of Cain, still hovering
Over the world, to rain in ruin down.
So Tyrants climb to wear the fatal crown
That sets them on a vantage-ground, to tread
A people's life out — deal death overhead.
" From Earth sprang Satan, clothed with plumes of
power.
But, as a Bird, in the death-pangs, will tower
To fall, his exultation dropped to see
The loneliness of his eternity I
The old world-wall no longer hemmed him round;
The Boundless was his spirits only bound;
The conscious stillness ached upon the ear;
No breath of being stirring far or near.
A Waste no wing had wandered, foot had trod
No print upon; a world left out by God.
And he the only life-beat of the whole
Illimitable solitude of soul.
" What wonder he should turn to Earth again
And feel his way back to the human; fain
To win a partner that would share his pain?
" The worst of Devils feel a little ease,
Shedding their poison; giving their disease
To uninfected souls. And soon he saw
How he might take advantage of the Law
That seems to work so blindly, while Men draw
Their lots as blindly; lets the sunshine fall
On just and unjust: gives one chance for all,
Nor spares the innocent when the guilty fall;
How beauty broods with its thrice-glorious glow
Where Death is lurking quietly below I
How Providence looks on the side of Wrong
Nine times in ten if it be only strong:
How unperceived God works by common light,
Nor cleaves his cloud to lighten through our night;
How much Man has to trust Him — even for breath
To feed his life and faith to live through death.
Rare mischief may be done ere God appears
Himself in miracle. He so often hears
The cry unanswered, save in His own way
And season. Here was scope enough to play
The devil with the appearances of things;
Keep out of sight and pull the puppet-strings.
" And, at the thought, he waved abroad his wings
For larger flight, to spread himself between
Man and his Maker; weave his web unseen,
Right in the dazzle of the heavenly light;
Beat down the prayers and yearnings in mid-flight;
Make shadows in the mind to curtain day
From the dim world in which poor wretches stray:
Put out in tears the trembling inner ray
And lure them with a Will-o'-the-wisp at play
Among the quagmires waiting by the way;
Ventriloquise the voice of God within
The soul and in a guise Angelic win
From Heaven, by mirroring that heaven in
Death's stream; make spirits take the leap for love
Of that false reflex of the beauty above!
" First Man-Slayer, He reached his ghastly goal,
And then became first slayer of the soul.
" And doing evil grew a dear delight.
And so he built his kingdom of the night
And proudly waxed in power; his business thrived;
For soon the Murderer with a Murderess wived.
Whom he had wooed in secret many a day
And dragged at last along the same by-way,
To share with him the same blood-guilty fate.
And with fit offspring crown the loves of Hate.
" The Devil is no more the single soul
Of that first Murderer; it is the whole
Vast aggregate of evil spirits lost;
The cruel wreckers on that hell-bound coast.
Just as the person of the Holy Ghost
May mean the presence of a heavenly Host I
Or as ye say one spirit moves them when
One cry awakens from ten thousand men.