Come to the light, love! Let me look on thee!
Let me make sure I have thee. Is it thou?
Is this thy hand? Are these thy velvet lips⁠—
Thy lips so lovable? Nay, speak not yet!
For oft as I have dreamed of thee, it was
Thy speaking woke me. I will dream no more.
Am I alive? And do I really look
Upon these soft and sea-blue eyes of thine,
Wherein I half believe I can espy
The riches of the sea? These dark rolled looks!
Oh God! art Thou not glad, too, he is here!⁠—
Where hast thou been so long? Never to hear,
Never to see, nor see one who had seen thee⁠—
Come now, confess it was not kind to treat
Me in this manner.

I confess, my love,
But I have been where neither tongue, nor pen,
Nor hand could give thee token where I was;
And seen, but ’tis enough! I see thee now.
I would rather look upon thy shadow there,
Than Heaven’s bright thrones for ever.

Where hast been?

Say, am I altered?

Nowise.

It is well.
Then in the resurrection we may know
Each other. I have been among the worlds,
Angels and spirits bodiless.

Great God!
Can it be so?

It is:⁠—and that both here
And elsewhere. When the stars come, thou shalt see
The track I travelled through the light of night;
Where I have been, and whence my visitors.

And thou hast been with angels all the while,
And still dost love me?

Constantly as now.
But for the time I did devote my soul
To their divine society, I knew
Thou wouldst forgive, yet dared not trust myself
To see thee, or to pen one word, for fear
Thy love should overpower the plan conceived,
And acting, in my mind, of visiting
The spirits in their space-embosomed homes.

Forgive thee! ’tis a deed which merits love.
And should I not be proud, too, who can say,
For me he left all angels?

I forethought
So thou wouldst say; but with an offering
Came I provided, even with a trophy
Of love angelic, given me for thee;
For angel bosoms know no jealousy.

Show me.

It is of jewels I received
From one who snatched them from the richest wreck
Of matter ever made, the holiest
And most resplendent.

Why, what could it be?
Jewels are baubles only; whether pearls
From the sea’s lightless depths, or diamonds
Culled from the mountain’s crown, or chrysolith,
Cat’s eye or moonstone, toys are they at best.
Jewels are not of all things in my sight
Most precious.

Nor in mine. It is in the use
Of which they may be made their value lies;
In the pure thoughts of beauty they call up,
And qualities they emblem. So in that
Thou wearest there, thy cross;⁠—to me it is
Suggestive of bright thoughts and hopes in Him
Whose one great sacrifice availeth all,
Living and dead, through all Eternity.
Not to the wanderer over southern seas
Rises the constellation of the Cross
More lovelily o’er sky and calm blue wave,
Than does to me that bright one on thy breast.
As diamonds are purest of all things,
And but embodied light which fire consumes
And renders back to air, that nought remains⁠—
And as the cross is symbol of our creed,
So let that ornament signify to thee
The faith of Christ, all purity, all light,
Through fervency resolving into Heaven.
Each hath his cross, fair lady, on his heart.
Never may thine be heavier or darker
Than that now on thy breast, so light and bright,
Rising and falling with its bosom-swell.

I thank thee for that wish, and for the love
Which prompts it⁠—the immeasurable love
I know is mine, and I with none would share.
Forgive me; I have not yet felt my wings.
Now have I not been patient? Let me see
My promised present.

Look, then⁠—they are here;
Bracelets of chrysoprase.

Most beautiful!

Come, let me clasp them, dearest, on thine arms;
For these of those are worthy, and are named
In the foundation stones of the bright city,
Which is to be for the immortal saved,
Their last and blest abode; and such their hue,
The golden green of Paradisal plains
Which lie about it boundlessly, and more
Intensely tinted with the burning beauty
Of God’s eye, which alone doth light that land,
Than our earth’s cold grass garment with the sun;
Though even in the bright, hot, blue-skied East,
Where he doth live the life of light and Heaven;
Where, o’er the mountains, at midday is seen
The morning star, and the moon tans at night
The cheek of careless sleeper. Take them, love.
There are no nobler earthly ornaments
Than jewels of the city of the saved.

But how are these of that bright city? I
Am eager for their history.

They are
Thereof prophetically, and have been⁠—
What I will show thee presently, when I
Relate the story of the angel who
Gave them to me.

Well; I will wait till then,
Or any time thou choosest: ’tis enough
That I believe thee always;⁠—but would know,
If not in me too curious to ask,
How came about these miracles? Hast thou raised
The fiend of fiends, and made a compact dark,
Sealed with thy blood, symbolic of the soul,
Whereby all power is given thee for a time,
All means, all knowledge, to make more secure
Thy spirit’s dread perdition at the end?
I of such awful stories oft have heard,
And the unlawful lore which ruins souls.
Myself have charms, foresee events in dreams;
Can prophesy, prognosticate, know well
The secret ties between many magic herbs
And mortal feelings, nor condemn myself
For knowing what is innocent; but thou!
Thy helps are mightier far and more obscure.
Was it with wand and circle, book and scull,
With rites forbid and backward-jabbered prayers,
In cross-roads or in churchyard, at full moon,
And by instruction of the ghostly dead,
That thou hast wrought these wonders, and attained
Such high transcendent powers and secrets? Speak!
Or is man’ mastery over spirits not
Of such a vile and vulgar consequence?

Were not my heart as guiltless of all mirth
As is the oracle of an extinct god
Of its priest-prompted answer, I might smile
To list such askings. Mind’s command o’er mind,
Spirit’s o’er spirit, is the dear effect
And natural action of an inward gift,
Given of God, whereby the incarnate soul
Hath power to pass free out of earth and death
To immortality and Heaven, and mate
With beings of a kind, condition, lot,
All diverse from his own. This mastery
Means but communion, the power to quit
Life’s little globule here, and coalesce
With the great mass about us. For the rest,
To raise the Devil were an infant’s task
To that of raising man. Why, every one
Conjures the Fiend from Hell into himself
When Passion chokes or blinds him. Sin is Hell.

How dost thou bring a spirit to thee, Festus?

It is my will which makes it visible.

What are those like whom thou hast seen?

They come,
The denizens of other worlds, arrayed
In diverse form and feature, mostly lovely;
In limb and wing ethereal finer far
Than an ephemeris’ pinion; others, armed
With gleaming plumes, that might o’ercome an air
Of adamantine denseness, pranked with fire.
All are of different offices and strengths,
Powers, orders, tendencies, in like degrees
As men, with even more variety;
Of different glories, duties, and delights.
Even as the light of meteor, satellite,
Planet and comet, sun, star, nebula,
Differ, and nature also, so do theirs.
With them is neither need, nor sex, nor age,
Nor generation growth, decay, nor death;
Or none whom I have known; there may be such.
Mature they are created and complete,
Or seem to be. Perfect from God they come.
Yet have they different degrees of beauty,
Even as strength and holy excellence.
Some seem of milder and more feminine
Nature than others, Beauty’s proper sex,
Shown but by softer qualities of soul,
More lovable than awful, more devote
To deeds of individual piety,
And grace, than mighty missions fit to task
Sublimest spirits, or the toil intense
Of cultivating nations of their kind;
Or working out from the problem of the world
The great results of God⁠—result, sum, cause.
These ofttimes charged with delegated powers,
Formative or destructive; those, in chief,
Ordained to better and to beautify
Existence as it is; with careful love
To tend upon particular worlds or souls;
Warning and training whom they love, to tread
The soft and blossom-bordered, silvery paths,
Which lead and lure the soul to Paradise,
Making the feet shine which do walk on them;
While each doth God’s great will alike, and both
With their whole nature’s fullness love His works.
To love them lifts the soul to Heaven.

Let me, then!
Whence come they?

Many of them come from orbs
Wherein the rudest matter is more worth
And fair than queenly gem; the dullest dust
Beneath their feet is rosy diamond:⁠—
Others, direct from Heaven; but all in high
And serious love towards those to whom they come.
None but the blest are free to visit where
They choose. The lost are slaves for ever; here
Never but on their Master’s merciless
Business, nor elsewhere. Still sometimes with these
Dark spirits have I held communion,
And in their soul’s deep shadow, as within
A mountain cavern of the moon, conversed
With them, and wormed from them the gnawing truth
Of their extreme perdition; marking oft
Nature revealed by torture, as a leaf
Unfolds itself in fire and writhes the while,
Burning, jet unconsumed. Others there are
Come garlanded with flowers unwithering,
Or crowned with sunny jewels, clad in light,
And girded with the lightning, in their hands
Wands of pure rays or arrowy starbeams; some
Bright as the sun self-lit, in stature tall,
Strong, straight and splendid as the golden reed
Whereby the height, and length, and breadth, and depth,
Of the descendant city of the skies,
In which God sometime shall make glad with man,
Were measured by the angel; (the same reed
Wherewith our Lord was mocked that angel found
Close by the Cross and took; God made it gold,
And now it makes the sceptre of His Son
Over all worlds; the sole bright rule of Heaven,
The measure of immortal life, the scale
Of power, love, bliss, and glory infinite):⁠—
Some gorgeous and gigantic, who with wings
Wide as the wings of armies in the field
Drawn out for death, sweep over Heaven, and eyes
Deep, dark as sea-worn caverns, with a torch
At the end, far back, glaring. Some with wings
Like an unfainting rainbow, studded round
With stones of every hue and excellence,
Writ o’er with mystic words which none may read,
But those to whom their spiritual state
Gives correlative meaning, fit thereto.
Some of these visit me in dreams; with some
Have I made one in visions, in their own
Abodes of brightness, blessedness, and power:
And know moreover I shall joy with them,
Ere long their sacred guest, through ages yet
To come, in worlds not now perhaps create,
As they have been mine here: and some of them
In unimaginable splendours I
Have walked with through their winged worlds of light,
Double and triple parti-coloured suns,
And systems circling each the other, clad
In tints of light and air, whereto this earth
Hath nothing like, and man no knowledge of:⁠—
Orbs heaped with mountains, to the which ours are
Mere grave-mounds, and their skies flowered with stars,
Violet, rose or pearl-hued, or soft blue,
Golden or green, the light now blended, now
Alternate; many moons and planets, full,
Crescent, or gibbous-faced, illumining
In periodic and intricate beauty,
At once those strange and most felicitous skies.

How I should love to visit other worlds,
Or see an angel!

Wilt thou now?

I dare not.
Not now at least. I am not in the mood.
Ere I behold a spirit I would pray.

Light as a leaf thy step, or arrowy
Footing of breeze upon a waveless pool;
Sudden and soft, too, like a waft of light,
The beautiful immortals come to me;
Oh, ever lovely, ever welcome they!

But why art thou, of all men, favoured thus?
To say there is a mystery in this
Or aught is only to confess God. Speak!

It is God’s will that I possess this power,
Thus to attract great spirits to mine own,
As steel magnetically charged draws steel;
Himself the magnet of the universe,
Bound whom all spirits tremble, and towards whom
All tend.

If as thou sayest, it is good:⁠—
May it be an immortal good to thee.

There is no keeping back the power we have.
He hath no power who hath not power to use.
Some of these bodies whom I speak of are
Pure spirits, others bodies soulical:
For spirit is to soul as wind to air.
They give me all I seek, and at a wish
Would furnish treasures, thrones, or palaces;
But all these things have I eschewed, and chosen
Command of mind alone, and of the world
Unbodied and all-lovely.

Is not this
Pleasure too much for mortal to be good?

All pleasure is with Thee, God! elsewhere, none.
Not silver-ceiled hall nor golden throne,
Set thick with priceless gems, as Heaven with stars,
Or the high heart of youth with its bright hopes;⁠—
Nor marble gleaming like the white moonlight,
As ’twere an apparition of a palace
Inlaid with light as is a waterfall;⁠—
Not rainbow-pinions coloured like yon cloud,
The sun’s broad banner o’er his western tent,
Can match the bright imaginings of a child
Upon the glories of his coming years;
How equal, then, the full-assured faith
Of him to whom the Saviour hath vouchsafed
The Heaven of His bosom? What can tempt
In its performance equal to that promise?
My soul stands fast to Heaven as doth a star;
And only God can move it who moves all.
There are who might have soared to what I spurned;
And like to heavenly orders human souls;
Some fitted most for contemplation, some
For action, these for thrones, and those for wheels.

Tell me what they discourse upon, these angels?

They speak of what is past or coming, less
Of present things or actions. Some say most
About the future, others of the gone,
The dim traditions of Eternity,
Or Time’s first golden moments. One there was⁠—
From whose sweet lips elapsed as from a well,
Continuously, truths which made my soul
As they sank in it, fertile with rich thoughts⁠—
Spake to me oft of Heaven, and our talk
Was of divine things always⁠—angels, Heaven,
Salvation, immortality, and God;
The different states of spirits and the kinds
Of Being in all orbs, or physical,
Or intellectual. I never tired
Preferring questions, but at each response
My soul drew back, sealike, into its depths
To urge another charge on him. This spirit
Came to me daily for a long, long time,
Whene’er I prayed his presence. Many a world
He knew right well which man’s eye never yet
Hath marked, nor ever may mark while on earth;
Yet grew his knowledge every time he came.
His thoughts all great and solemn and serene,
Like the immensest features of an orb,
Whose eyes are blue seas, and whose clear broad brow,
Some cultured continent, came ever round
From truth to truth⁠—day bringing as they came.
He was to me an all-explaining spirit,
Teaching divine things by analogy
With mortal and material. Thus of God,
He showed, as the three primal rays make one
Sole beam of Light, so the three Persons make
One God; neither without the other is.
However bright or beautiful itself
The theme he touched, he made it more so by
His own light, like a fire-fly on a flower.
And one of all I knew the most of, yet
The least can say of him; for full oft
Our thoughts drown speech, like to a foaming force,
Which thunders down the echo it creates.
Yet must I somewhat tell of him. He was
The spirit evil of the universe,
Impersonate. Oh, strange and wild to know!
Perdition and destruction dwelt in him,
Like to a pair of eagles in one nest.
Hollow and wasteful as a whirlwind was
His soul; his heart as earthquake, and engulphed
World upon world. In him they disappeared
As might a morsel in a lion’s maw,
The world which met him rolled aside to let him
Pass on his piercing path. His eyeballs burned
Revolving lightnings like a world on fire;
Their very night was fatal as the shade
Of Death’s dark valley. And his space-spread wings⁠—
Wide as the wings of Darkness when she rose
Scowling, and backing upwards, as the sun,
Giant of Light, first donned his burning crown,
Gladdening all Heaven with bis inaugural smile⁠—
Were stained with the blood of many a starry world:
Yea, I have seen him seize upon an orb,
And cast it careless into worldless space,
As I might cast a pebble in the sea.
His might upon Ibis earth was wondrous most.
He stood a match for mountains. Ocean’s depths
He clove unto their rock-bed, as a sword,
Through blood and muscle to the central bone,
With one swoop of his arm. His brow was pale⁠—
Pale as the life-blood of the undying worm
Which writhes around its frame of vital fire.
His voice blew like the desolating gust
Which strips the trees, and strews the earth with death.
His words were ever like a wheel of fire,
Rolling and burning this way now, now that:
Now whirling forth a blinding beam, now soft
And deep as Heaven’s own luminous blue⁠—and now
Like to a oonqueror’s chariot wheel they came,
Sodden with blood and slow, revolving death:
And every tone fell on the ear and heart,
Heavy and harsh and startling, like the first
Handful of mould cast on the coffined dead,
As though he claimed them his.

Entering.

Festus! who is this?
What portrait?⁠—

Wherefore comest thou? Did I not
Claim privacy one evening?

Why, indeed⁠—
I simply called, as I was on my way
To Jupiter⁠—and he’s a mouthful, mind;⁠—
To keep the proverbs, too, in countenance.
Any commands for our planetary friends?
I go. Make my excuses! Goes.

A mistake,
Dearest; but rectified. Apart. And he is gone!
Hell hath its own again. Some sorrow chills
Ever the spirit, like a cloudlet nursed
In the star-giant’s bosom.

Tell me, love,
More of these angels!

There was one I loved
Of those immortals, of a lofty air,
Dimly divine and sad, and side by side
Him whom I spake of first she oft would stand
With her fair form⁠—shadow illuminate⁠—
Like to the dark moon in the young one’s arms.
She never murmured at the doom which made
The sorrow that contained her, as the air
Infolds the orb whereon we dwell, but spake
Of God’s will alway as most good and wise.
She had but little pleasure; but her all,
Such as it was, was in devising plans
Of bliss to come, or in the tales of Time
And the sweet early earth. She was in truth,
Our earth’s own angel. Ofttimes would she dwell
With long and luminous sweetness on her theme,
Unwearying, unpausing, as a world.
The sun would rise and set; the soul-like moon,
In passive beauty and receptive light⁠—
Absorbing inspiration from the sun,
As doth from God His prophet ceaselessly⁠—
She too would rise and set; and the far stars,
The third estate of Light, complete the round
Of the divine day;⁠—still our angel spake,
And still I listened to the eloquent tongue
Which e’en on earth retained the tone of Heaven.
The shadow of a cloud upon a lake,
O’er which the wind hath all day held his breath,
Is not more calm and fair than her dear face⁠—
So sweetly sad and so consolingly,
When she spake even on the end of earth.
Save that her eye grew darker, and her brow
Brighter with thought, as with galactic light
Mid Heaven when clearest, at such times, not I
Had known that earth were dearer unto her
Than other of the visitants divine,
Which hallow oft mine hours;⁠—save, too, that then,
As though to touch but on that topic had,
Torpedo-like, numbed thought, she would straight cease
All converse suddenly, and kneel and seem
Inwardly praying with much power⁠—rise,
And vanish into Heaven. My mind is full
Of stories she hath told me of our world.
No word an angel utters lose I ever.
One I will tell thee now.

Do! let me hear!
Thy talk is the sweet extract of all speech,
And holds mine ear in blissful slavery.

’Twas on a lovely summer afternoon,
Close by the grassy marge of a deep tarn,
Nigh halfway up a mountain, that we stood,
I and the angel, when she told me this.
Above us rose the grey rocks, by our side
Forests of pines, and the bright breaking wavelets
Came crowding, dancing to the brink, like thoughts
Unto our lips. Before us shone the sun.
The angel waved her hand ere she began,
As bidding earth be still. The birds ceased singing
And the trees breathing, and the lake smoothed down
Each shining wrinkle and the wind drew off.
Time leant him o’er his scythe and, listening, wept.
The circling world reined in her lightning pace
A moment; Ocean hushed his snow-maned steeds,
And a cloud hid the sun, as does the face
A meditative hand: then spake she thus:⁠—
Scarce had the sweet song of the morning stars,
Which rang through space at the first sign of life
Our earth gave, springing from the lap of God
On to her orbit, when from Heaven
Came down a white-winged host; and in the east,
Where Eden’s Pleasance was, first furled their wings,
Alighting like to snowflakes. There they built,
Out of the riches of the soil around,
A house to God. There were the ruby rocks,
And there, in blocks, the quarried diamonds lay;
Opal and emerald mountain, amethyst,
Sapphire and chrysoprase, and jacinth stood
With the still action of a star, all light,
Like sea-based icebergs, blinding. These, with tools
Tempered in Heaven, the band angelic wrought,
And raised, and fitted, having first laid down
The deep foundations of the holy dome
On bright and beaten gold; and all the while
A song of glory hovered round the work
Like rainbow round a fountain. Day and night
Went on the hallowed labor till ’twas done.
And yet but thrice the sun set, and but thrice
The moon arose; so quick is work divine.
Tower, and roof, and pinnacle, without,
Were solid diamond. Within, the dome
Was eyeblue sapphire, sown with gold-bright stars
And clustering constellations; the wide floor
All emerald, earthlike, veined with gold and silver,
Marble and mineral of every hue
And marvellous quality, the meanest thing,
Where all things were magnificent, was gold⁠—
The plainest. The high altar there was shaped
Out of one ruby heartlike. Columned round
With alabaster pure was all. And now
So high and bright it shone in the midday light,
It could be seen from Heaven. Upon their thrones
The sun-eyed angels hailed it, and there rose
A hurricane of blissfulness in Heaven,
Which echoed for a thousand years. One dark,
One solitary and foreseeing thought,
Passed, like a planet’s transit o’er the sun,
Across the brow of God; but soon he smiled
Towards earth, and that smile did consecrate
The temple to Himself. And they who built
Bowed themselves down and worshipped in its walls.
High on the front were writ these words⁠—to God!
The heavenly built this for the earthly ones,
That in his worship both might mix on earth,
As afterward they hoped to do in Heaven.
Had man stood good in £den this had been:
He fell and Eden vanished. The bright place
Reared by the angels of all precious things,
For the joint worship of the sons of earth
And Heaven, fell with him, on the very day
He should have met God and His angels there⁠—
The very day he disobeyed and joined
The host of death blackbannered, Eden fell;
The groves and grounds, which God the Lord’s own feet
Had hallowed; the all-hued and odorous bowers
Where angels wandered, wishing them in Heaven;
The trees of life and knowledge⁠—trees of death
And madness, as they proved to man⁠—all fell;
And that bright fane fell first. No death-doomed eye
Gazed on its glory. Earthquakes gulped it down.
The Temple of the Angels, vast enough
To hold air nations worshipping at once,
Lay in its grave; the cherubs’ flaming swords
The sole sad torches of its funeral.
Till at the flood, when the world’s giant heart
Burst like a shell, it scattered east and west,
And far and wide, among less noble ruins,
The fragments of that angel-builded fane,
Which was in Eden, and of which all stones
That now are precious, were; and still shall be,
Gathered again unto a happier end,
In the pure City of the Son of God,
And temple yet to be rebuilt in Zion;
Which, though once overthrown, and once again
Torn down to its foundations, in the quick
Of earth, shall soul-like yet re-rise from ruin⁠—
High, holy, happy, stainless as a star,
Imperishable as eternity.
—The angel ended; and the winds, waves, clouds,
The sun, the woods, and merry birds went on
As theretofore, in brightness, strength and music.
One scarce could think that earth at all had fallen,
To look upon her beauty. If the brand
Of sin were on her brow, it was surely hid
In natural art from every eye but God’s.
All things seemed innocence and happiness.
I was all thanks. And look! the angel said,
Take these, and give to one thou lovest best:
Mine own hands saved from them the shining ruin
Whereof I have late told thee; and she gave
What now are greenly glowing on thine arms.
Ere I could answer, she was up, star-high!
Winging her way through Heaven.

How shall I thank thee
Enough, or that kind angel who hath made
The gift to me dear doubly? I shall be
Afraid almost to wear them, but would not
Part with them for the treasures of all worlds.
How show my thanks?

Love me as now, dear beauty!
Present or absent always, and ’twill be
More than enough of recompense for me.

Hast met that angel late-while?

I have not.
Yet oft methinks I see her, catch a glimpse
Of her sun-circling pinions or bright feet
Which fitter seem for rainbows than for earth,
Or Heaven’s triumphal arch, more firm and pure
Than the world’s whitest marble;⁠—see her seated oft
On some high snowy cloud-cliff, harp in hand,
Singing the sun to sleep as down he lays
His head of glory on the rocking deep:
And so sing thou to me.

There, rest thyself. Sings.

Oh! not the diamond starry bright
Can so delight my view,
As doth the moonstone’s changing light
And gleamy glowing hue;
Now blue as Heaven, and then anon
As golden as the sun,
It hath a charm in every change⁠—
In brightening, darkening, one.

And so with beauty, so with love,
And everlasting mind;
It takes a tint from Heaven above,
And shines as it’s inclined;
Or from the sun, or towards the sun,
With blind or brilliant eye,
And only lights as it reflects
The life-light of the sky.
He sleeps! The fate of many a gracious moral
This, to be stranded on a drowsy ear.