Ormuzd And Ahriman. Part I

Daybreak. CHORUS OF PLANETARY SPIRITS. YE interstellar spaces, serene and still and clear. Above, below, around! Ye gray unmeasured breadths of ether, — sphere on sphere! We listen, but no sound Rings from your depths profound. But ever along and all across the morning bars Fast-flashing meteors run — The trailing wrecks of fierce and fiery-bearded stars, Scattered and lost and won Back to their parent sun. Through rifts of bronzing clouds the tides of morning glow And swell and mount apace. We watch and wait if haply we at last may know Some record we may trace Upon the orbs of space. Above, below, around we track our planets' flight; Their paths and destinies Are intertwined with ours. Remote or near, their light Or darkness to our eyes A mystic picture lies. FIRST SPIRIT. Close to the morn a small and sparkling star-world dances, Bathed in the flaming mist; Flashing and quivering like a million moving lances Of gold and amethyst By slanting sunrise kissed. A fairy realm of rapid and unimpeded sprites, That fly and leap and dart; All fierce and tropic fervors, all swift and warm delights Bound and flash and start In every fiery heart. SECOND SPIRIT. Deep in the dawn floats up a star of dewy fire — So pure it seems new-born; As though the soul of morn Were pulsing through its heart in dim, divine desire Of poesy and love; — the star of morn and eve — Whose crystal sphere is shining With joys beyond divining — Passion that never tortures, and hopes that ne'er deceive. THIRD SPIRIT. There swims the pale, green Earth, half drowned and thunder-rifted, Steeped in a sea of rain. Above the watery waste Of God's primeval flood, all other land effaced — One peak alone uplifted. The baffled lightnings play around its crags and chasms; So far away they flash, I hear no thunder-spasms. But now the scowling clouds are drifting from its spaces, And leave it to the wind and coming day's embraces. FOURTH SPIRIT. Beyond, a planet rolls with darkly lurid sides, Flooded and seamed and stained by drenching Stygian tides; Deep gorges, up whose black and slimy slopes there peep All monstrous Saurian growths that run or fly or creep; And, in and out the holes and caverns clogged with mud, Crawl through their giant ferns to suck each other's blood. I see them battling there in fog and oozy water, Symbols of savage lust, deformity, and slaughter. FIFTH SPIRIT. I see an orb above that spins with rapid motion, Vaster and raster growing — Belted with sulphurous clouds; and through the rents an ocean Boiling and plunging up on a crust of fiery shore. And now I hear far off the elemental roar, And the red fire-winds blowing: A low, dull, steady moan a million miles away, Of whirling hurricanes that rage all night, all day. No life of man or beast, were life engendered there, Could bide those flaming winds, that white metallic glare. SIXTH SPIRIT. But yonder, studded round with lamps of moonlight tender, And arched from pole to pole with rings of rainbow splendor, A world rolls far apart; as though in haughty scorning Of all the alien light of his diminished morning. SEVENTH AND EIGHTH SPIRITS. Cold, cold and dark — and farther still We dimly see the icy spheres Like spectre worlds, who yet fulfil, Through slow dull centuries of years, Their circuit round the distant sun who winds them at his will. CHORUS. Round and round one central orb The wheeling planets move, And some reflect and some absorb The floods of light and love. The rolling globe of molten stones, The spinning watery waste, The forests whirled through tropic zones By circling moons embraced — We watch their element strife; We wait, that we may see Some record of their inner life, Where all is mystery. A pause. The Spirits approach the Earth. The Sun rises over the Continent of Asia. SECOND SPIRIT. Look, brothers, look! The quivering sunrise tinges Our nearest orb of Earth. The forest fringes Redden with joy; and all about the sun, That gilds the boundless east, the cloud-banks dun Flame into gold; and with a crimson kiss Wake the green world to beauty and to bliss. See how she glows with sweet responsive smile! Hark, how the waves of air lap round her! As though she were some green, embowered isle, And the fond ocean had just found her, In Time's primeval morn of unrecorded calms Hidden away with all her lilies and her palms; And flattering at her feet, had smoothed his angry mane, And moving round her kissed her o'er and o'er again. THIRD SPIRIT. And now, behold, our wings are rapid as our thought; And nearer yet have brought Our feet, until we hover above the Asian lands Beyond the desert sands. There, girt about by mountain peaks that cleave the skies, A blooming valley lies: A pathway, sloping down from visionary heights Through shades and dappled lights, Lost in a garden widerness of tropic trees And flowers and birds and bees. Far off I smell the rose, the amaranth, the spice, The breath of Paradise. Far off I hear the singing through hidden groves and vales Of Eden's nightingales; And, sliding down through pines and moss and rocky walls, The murmuring waterfalls. And lo, two radiant forms that seem akin to us, Walk, calm and beauteous, Crowed with the light of thought and mutual love, whose blisses Are sealed with rapturous kisses. Ah, beautiful green Earth! ah, happy, happy pair! Can there be aught so fair, O brothers, in yon vast unpeopled worlds afar, As these bright beings are! CHORUS OF SPIRITS. The stars in the heavens are singing Response to the wonderful story; Joy, joy to the race that is springing To cover the earth with its glory! The race that enfolds in its bosom A birthright divine and immortal; As the fruit is enwrapped in the blossom, As the garden is hid by the portal! DISTAINT VOICES. (A change to a minor key.) Sin and weakness, misery and pain, Cloud their sunlit birth; And the sons of Heaven alone remain Gods unmixed with earth. Light and darkness are the twins of fate; Undivided they, Through all realms that bear a mortal date, Hold alternate sway. Through the universe the lords of life Never at peace can be. Good and evil in a ceaseless strife Fight for victory. THIRD SPIRIT. I hear in the spaces below A discord of voices that flow In muttering tones through the air. But where are they hidden — where? There are trailings of gloom through the spaces, And far-darting cones that eclipse The splendor of planets whose faces Are dimmed by their darkening traces, And frozen by alien lips; And the dream of a swift-coming change Foretokens a destiny strange. And what is yon Shadow that creeps On the marge of her crystalline deeps? On the field and the river and grove, On the borders of hope and of rest; On the Eden of wedlock and love; On the labor contentment hath blessed? That crawls like a serpent of mist Through the vales and the gardens of peace, With a blight upon all it hath kissed, And a shade that shall never decrease? That maddens the wings of desire, And saddens the ardors of joy — Winged like a phantom of fire — Armed like a fiend to destroy! SECOND SPIRIT. Before me there flitted a vision — A vision of dawn and Creation, Of faith and of doubt and division, Of mystical fruit and temptation: A garden of lilies and roses, Ah, sweeter than dreams ever fashioned; Hopes in whose splendor reposes A love that was pure and impassioned. But alas for the sons and the daughters Of man, in the morning of nations! Alas for their rivers of waters! Alas for their fruitless oblations! The curse and the blight and the sentence Have fallen too swift for repentance. I see it, I feel it — O brother! It shadows one half of their garden. O Earth! O improvident Mother! Where left'st thou thy angel, thy warden? Is it theirs, or the guilt of another? Must they die without hope of a pardon? What is it they suffer, O brother, In the red, rosy light of their garden? THE SPIRITS. Ye Angels — ye heavenly Powers Whose wisdom is higher than ours — From the blight, from the terror defend them — Help, help! In their Eden befriend them. THE ANGEL RAPHAEL. Beyond the imagined limits of such space As ye can guess, I passed, yet heard your cry. For ye are brother spirits. And I come, Swifter than light, to shield you from the dread Of earth-born shadows, and the ghostly folds Of seeming evil curtaining round your worlds. Yet can I bring no amulet to guard One peaceful breast from sorrow; for yourselves Are girt about, as I, by that divine, Exhaustless Love, whose pledge your souls contain. THE SPIRITS. Ah, not for ourselves — but our brothers We plead, in their dawn overglooming, For the death is not theirs, but anothers. Help, help! from the doom that is coming; For they stand all alone and unguided; No Past with its lesson upholds them; Their life from their race is divided; A childhood unconscious enfolds them. Is it sin — is it death that has shrouded Their souls, or a taint in their nature? Is there hope for a future unclouded? Tell — tell us — angelical teacher! RAPHAEL. Yon earth, which claimed your closer vigilance, And seems so near to you in time and space, Is far away. Your present is its past. To spirits, worlds and æons are condensed Into a moment's feeling or a thought. While ye were singing as ye watched those orbs, They grew and grew from incandescent globes Girdled with thunder, wreathed with sulphurous steam — Or from the slime where rude gigantic forms Of crocodile or bat plunged through the dense And flowerless wilds of cane, or flapped like dreams Of darkness through the foul mephitic air. These shapes gave way to forests, rocks, and seas, And shapely forms of beast and bird and man — The last result of wonder-working Time — Man — the tall crowning flower and fruit of all — And the vast complex tissues he hath wrought Of life and laws and government and arts. All this ye knew not; tranced in choral song, Your music was the oblivion of all time. THE SPIRITS. Have we not seen the approaching doom of Earth? RAPHAEL. The vision ye have had of joy and doom Flashing and glooming o'er two little lives, Is truth half-typed in legend, such as fed The people of the ancient days, distilled From crude primordial growths of time, when sin Saw the fierce flaming sword of conscience shake Its terror through the groves of Paradise, Grasped by Jehovah's red right hand in wrath. THE SPIRITS. Was it a dream? We saw that red right hand. RAPHAEL. The events and thoughts that passed in olden time Dawn on your senses with the beams of light That left long, long ago those distant worlds, And flash from out the past like present truths. It was a poet's dream ye saw. It held A truth. 'Tis yours to unfold the mythic form, And guess the meaning of the ancient tale. THE SPIRITS. We mark thy words; we know that thou art wise And good; and yet we hover in a mist Of doubt. Help us! Our sight is weak and dim. RAPHAEL. Know then that men and Angels can conceive Through symbols only, the eternal truths. Through all creation streams this dual ray — The marriage of the spirit with the form — The correspondence of the universe With souls through sense; and that the deepest thought And firmest faith are nurtured and sustained By the great visible universe of time And space — the alphabet whose mystic forms Present all inner lessons to the soul — And thus the unseen by the seen is known. Yea, even the blank and sterile voids that span The dead unpalpitating space 'twixt star And star, shall speak, as light hath spoken once. And hark! Even now the unfathomable deeps Begin to stir. I hear a far off sound Of shuddering wings, beyond the hurrying clouds, Beyond the stars — now nearer, nearer still! DISTANT VOICES. (Confusedly, in a minor key.) Behind us shines the Light of lights. We are the Shadows, we the nights, That blot the pure expanse of time. And yet we weave the destined rhyme Of creatures with the Increate — Of God and man, free will and fate; The warp and woof of heavens and hells; The noiseless round of death and birth; The eternal protoplasmic spells Binding the sons of God to earth; — The ceaseless web of mystery That has been, and shall ever be. THE SPIRITS. Far off we seem to hear a chorus strange, Rising and falling through the gathering gloom. And now the congregated clouds appear To take the semblance of a Shape, that bends This way — as when a whirling ocean-spout Drinks, as it moves along, the light of heaven. RAPHAEL. Spirit — if Spirit or Presence Thou art, or the gloom of a symbol — Approach, if thou canst, to interpret Thy name and thy work and thy essence. ( A pause. ) Behold, the Shadow spreads and towers apace, Like a dense cloud that rolls along the sea Landward, then shrouds the winding shore, the fields, The network of rite gray autumnal woods, And the low cottage roofs of upland farms; What seemed a vapor with a ragged fringe Changes to wings, that sweep from north to south. And round about the mass whose cloudy dome Should be a head, I see the lambent flames Of distant lightnings play. And now a voice Of winds and waves and crumbling thunder tones Commingled, muttering unintelligible things, Approaches us. The air grows strangely chill And nebulous. Daylight hath backward stepped. The morning sun is blotted with eclipse. CHORUS OF THE SPIRITS. Like the pale stricken leaves of the Autumn When Winter swoops downward to whirl them Afar from the nooks of the woodlands, And up through the clouds of the twilight, We shudder! We hear a wind roaring And booming below in the darkness; A voice whose low thunder is mingled With waves of the sibilant ocean. The clouds that were pearly and golden Are steeped in a blackening crimson. The spell of a magical presence Is nearing us out of the darkness. What is it? No shape we distinguish — No voice — but a sound that is muffled, Muffled and stifled in thunder. We are troubled. Oh, help us, strong Angel! A Form gathers out of the darkness, Awful and dim and abysmal! RAPHAEL. Fear not the gloomy Phantasm. Speak to him. If he will answer, ye may learn of him What human books of dead theology Have seldom taught, or poets, though they sang Of Eden and the primal curse of man. THE SPIRITS. Spirit, or phantom — darkening earth and sky, And creeping through the soul in grim despair — What art thou? Speak! whose shadow darkens thus The eye of morn? SATAN. I am not what I seem. THE SPIRITS. Art thou that fallen Angel who seduced From their allegiance the bright hosts of heaven And men, and reignest now the lord of doom? SATAN. I am not what I seem to finite minds; — No fallen Angel — for I never fell, Though priest and poet feign me exiled and doomed; But ever was and ever shall be thus — Nor worse nor better than the Eternal planned. I am the Retribution, not the Curse. I am the shadow and reverse of God; The type of mixed and interrupted good; The clod of sense without whose earthly base You spirit-flowers can never grow and bloom. THE SPIRITS. We dread to ask — what need have we of thee? SATAN. I am that stern necessity of fate — Creation's temperament — the mass and mould Of circumstance, through which eternal law Works in its own mysterious way its will. THE SPIRITS. Art thou not Evil — Sin abstract and pure? SATAN. There were no shadows till the worlds were made; No evil and no sin till finite souls, Imperfect thence, conditioned in free-will, Took form, projected by eternal law Through co-existent realms of time and space. THE SPIRITS. Thy words are dark. We dimly catch their sense. SATAN. Naught evil, though it were the Prince of evil, Hath being in itself. For God alone Existeth in Himself, and Good, which lives As sunshine lives, born of the Parent Sun. I am the finite shadow of that Sun, Opposite, not opposing, only seen Upon the nether side. THE SPIRITS. Art happy then? SATAN. Nor happy I nor wretched. I but do My work, as finite fate and law prescribe. THE SPIRITS. Didst thou not tempt the woman and the man Of Eden, and beguile them to their doom? SATAN. No personal will am I, no influence bad Or good. I symbolize the wild and deep And unregenerated wastes of life, Dark with transmitted tendencies of race And blind mischance; all crude mistakes of will — Proclivity unbalanced by due weight Of favoring circumstance; all passion blown By wandering winds; all surplusage of force Piled up for use, but slipping from its base Of law and order; all undisciplined And ignorant mutiny against the wise Restraint of rules by centuries old indorsed, And proved the best so long it needs no proof; — All quality o'erstrained until it cracks — Yet but a surface crack; the Eternal Eye Sees underneath the soul's sphere, as above, And knows the deep foundations of the world Will not be jarred or loosened by the stress Of sun and wind and rain upon the crust Of upper soil. Nay, let the earthquake split The mountains into steep and splintered chasms — Down deeper than the shock the adamant Of ages stands, symbol no less divine Of the eternal Law than heaven above. THE SPIRITS. Shall we then doubt the sacred books — the faith That Satan was of old the foe of God? SATAN. Nations have planned their demons as they planned Their gods. Say, rather, God and Satan mixed, — A hybrid of perplexed theology, — Stood at the centre of the universe; Ormuzd and Ahriman, in ceaseless war — A double spirit through whose nerves and veins Throbbed the vast pulses of his feverish moods Of blight and benediction. Did the Jew Or Pagan, save the few of finer mould, Own an unchanging God, or one self-willed, Who, like themselves, was moved to wrath, revenge And jealousy, to petty strifes and bars Of sect and clan — the reflex of their thought? THE SPIRITS. What if it were revealed to holy men, By faith, that God had formed a spirit vast Who fell, rebelled, tempted the race to death? Whether a foe who rode upon the wind, Or one within, leagued with some sweet, strong drift Of natural desire, tainted yet sweet? SATAN. Alas, did ever human eyes transcend And pierce beyond the hemisphere of tints That overarched their thought and hope, yet seemed A heaven of truth? As man is so his God. So too his spirit of evil. Evil fixed He saw, eternal and abstract, whose tree Thrust down its grappling tap-roots in the heart, And poisoned where it grew; its blighting shade By no sweet wandering winds of heaven caressed, No raindrops from the pitiless clouds. No birds Of song and summer in its branches built Their little nests of love. No hermit sought The shivering rustle of its chilly shade. Accursed of God it stood — accursed and drear It stood apart — a thing by God and man Hated or pitied as a pestilence O'er-passing cure. So hate not me. For I Am but the picture mortal eyes behold Shadowing the dread results of broken laws Designed by eternal wisdom for the good Of man, though typed as Darkness, Pain, and Fire. THE SPIRITS. Must not the eternal Justice punish man And spirits — now and in the great To-Be? What sinner can escape his burning wrath? SATAN. The soul of man is man's own heaven or hell. God's love and justice will no curse on men Or spirits, who condemn themselves, and hide Their faces in the murky fogs of sense And lawless passion, and the hate and feud Born of all dense inwoven ignorance. Man loves or fears the shadow of himself. God shines behind him. Let him turn and see. [Vanishes slowly.] THE SPIRITS. Yet stay — speak, speak once more! Tell us what fate Awaits the human race — now on this earth Teeming with life — and in the great Hereafter! RAPHAEL. The phantom-lips are dumb: nor could they answer. The book of fate is known to One alone. THE SPIRITS. And thou — thou, sovereign Angel, knowest not? RAPHAEL. He alone knows whose being contains the all. Cease questioning. Have faith. Love reigns supreme.