The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1

Through all my piteous pomp at morn or even
And melancholy leaning out of heaven,
That love, their own divine, may change or end,
That love may close in loss!
Ah, ah, Heosphoros!

Scene. —Farther on. A wild open country seen vaguely in the approaching night

Adam. How doth the wide and melancholy earth
Gather her hills around us, grey and ghast,
And stare with blank significance of loss
Right in our faces! Is the wind up?

Eve. Nay.

Adam. And yet the cedars and the junipers
Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound,
And shapes which have no certainty of shape
Drift duskly in and out between the pines,
And loom along the edges of the hills,
And lie flat, curdling in the open ground —
Shadows without a body, which contract
And lengthen as we gaze on them.

Eve. O life
Which is not man's nor angel's! What is this?

Adam. No cause for fear. The circle of God's life
Contains all life beside.

Eve. I think the earth
Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense
Of those first laws affixed to form and space
Or ever she knew sin.

Adam. We will not fear;
We were brave sinning.

Eve. Yea, I plucked the fruit
With eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there
Our god-thrones, as the tempter said, – not GOD.
My heart, which beat then, sinks. The sun hath sunk
Out of sight with our Eden.

Adam. Night is near.

Eve. And God's curse, nearest. Let us travel back
And stand within the sword-glare till we die,
Believing it is better to meet death
Than suffer desolation.

Adam. Nay, beloved!
We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand,
As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait
Until he gives death as he gave us life,
Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift
Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin.

Eve. Ah, ah! dost thou discern what I behold?

Adam. I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes
From their dilated orbits bound before
To meet the spectral Dread!

Eve. I am afraid —
Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes
Of intermittent motion, aspect vague
And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,
Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.
How near they reach … and far! How grey they move —
Treading upon the darkness without feet,
And fluttering on the darkness without wings!
Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;
Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees;
Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on
Copious as rivers.

Adam. Some spring up like fire;
And some coil …

Eve. Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say
Like what? – coil like the serpent, when he fell
From all the emerald splendour of his height
And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,
Not a ring's length. I am afraid – afraid —
I think it is God's will to make me afraid, —
Permitting these to haunt us in the place
Of his belovèd angels – gone from us
Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,
That didst permit the angels to go home
And live no more with us who are not pure,
Save us too from a loathly company —
Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,
As we are in the purest! Pity us —
Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away
From verity and from stability,
Or what we name such through the precedence
Of earth's adjusted uses, – leave us not
To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,
Which are the more distraught and full of pain