Vondel's Lucifer

"Praecipitemque immani turbine adegit"

J. van Vondel's

Lucifer

A tragedy

1654

To the invincible Prince and Lord, the Lord Ferdinand the Third, elected Emperor of Rome, Perpetual Increaser of the Empire.

As the Divine Majesty is throned amid unapproachable splendors, so, too, the Sovran Powers of the world, which owe their lustre to God, and are made in the image of the Godhead, are seated on high, crowned with glory. But as the Godhead, or, rather, the Supreme Goodness, favors the least and most humble with access to His throne, so, too, doth the temporal power deem its most insignificant subject worthy to kneel reverentially at its feet.

Inspired with this hope, my muse is encouraged from afar to dedicate to your Imperial Majesty this Tragedy of Lucifer, whose style demands a most liberal degree of that gravity and stateliness of which the poet speaks:

"Omne genus scripti gravitate Tragoedia vincit."

"Sublime in style and deep in tone,
The tragic art doth stand alone."

Though whatever of the requisite sublimity may be wanting in the style will be compensated by the subject of the drama, and the title, name, and eminence of the personage who, the mirror of all ungrateful and ambitious ones, doth here invest the tragic scene, the Heavens; from which he, who once presumed to sit by the side of God, and thought to become His equal, was cast, and justly condemned to eternal darkness.

This unhappy example of Lucifer, the Archangel, and at one time the most glorious of all the Angels, has since been followed, through nearly all the centuries, by various rebellious usurpers, of which both ancient and modern histories bear witness, showing how violence, cunning, and the wily plots of the wicked, disguised beneath a show and pretext of lawfulness, are idle and powerless so long as God's Providence protects the anointed Powers and Dynasties, to the peace and safety of divers states, which, without a lawful supreme head, could not exist in civil intercourse. Therefore, God's Oracle Himself, for the good of mankind, by one word identified the Sovran Power as His own, when He commanded that to God and to Caesar should be rendered the things that to each were due.

Christendom, so often attacked on every side, and at present beset by Turk and Tartar, like unto a ship on a stormy sea, in danger of ship-wreck, demands to the highest degree this universal reverence for the Empire, that thereby the hereditary foe of Christ's name may be repulsed, and that the Realm and its frontiers may be strengthened and rendered safe against the incursions of his savage hordes; wherefore it behooves us to praise God that it pleased Him to continue the Authority and the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, at the last Imperial Diet, before his father's death, in the son, Ferdinand the Fourth, a blessing which has filled so many nations with courage, and which causes the tragic trumpet of our Netherland Muse to sound more boldly before the throne of the High Germans concerning the vanquished Lucifer, borne along in Michael's triumph.

Your Imperial Majesty's

Most humble servant,

J.V. VONDEL.

When Joachim Sandrart van Stokou, out of Vienna, in Austria, honored me with his Majesty's portrait, adorned with festoons and other ornaments.

Deus nobis haec otia fecit.

The Sun of Austria uplifts his glorious rays
From shadow-glooms of art to bless each wondering eye.
Behold him on his throne, high towering in the sky!
Nor doth he scorn to beam on all his glance surveys.

Good Ferdinand the Third, born for the sovran crown.
A Father of the Peace, a new Augustus, shows
His Son the heights whereon the heavenly palace glows;
And teaches how with arms of Peace to win renown.

How blest the mighty realm, how blest their destinies,
O'er which his gracious eyes keep sleepless vigils kind.
And where he holds the Scales for holy Justice blind!
An Eagle brought him sword and sceptre from the skies.

A crown adorns the head which empires grand engage:
This Head adorns the Crown, and makes a golden age.

To reïnkindle your zeal for art, and at the same time to edify and to quicken your spirit, the holy tragic scene, which represents the Heavens, is here presented to your view.

The great Archangels. Lucifer and Michael, each strengthened by his followers, come on the stage, and play their parts.

The stage and the actors are, in sooth, of such nature, and so glorious, that they demand a grander style and higher buskins than I know how to put on. No one who understands the speech of the infallible oracles of the Holy Spirit will judge that we present here the story of Salmoneus, who, in Elis, mounted upon his chariot, while defying Jupiter, and imitating his thunder and lightning by riding over a brazen bridge, holding a burning torch, was slain by a thunderbolt.

Nor do we renew here the grey fable of the war of the Titans, in which disguise Poesy sought to make its auditors forget their reckless presumption and godless sacrilege, and to acquire a knowledge of nature instead; namely, that the air and the winds, locked within the hollow belly and the sulphurous bowels of the earth, seeking, at times, an outlet, accompanied by the violence of bursting rocks, and by smoke and steam and flames and earthquakes and dreadful mutterings, are vomited, and, rising heavenwards, again descend, strewing and heaping the surface of land and sea with stones and ashes.

Among the Prophets, Isaiah and Ezekiel assure us of the fall of the Archangel and his faction. In the Evangelist, Christ, truest of all oracles, with His voice, out of the Heavens, enjoins us to hear; and finally, Judas Thaddeus, His faithful apostle; which parables are worthy to be engraved in eternal diamond, and, more worthy still, upon our hearts.

Isaiah cries: "How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning! How art thou fallen to the earth, that didst wound the nations!

"And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend to Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north:

"I will ascend above the height of the clouds. I will be like the Most High.

"But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit."

God speaks through Ezekiel thus: "Thou wast the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom, perfect in beauty. Thou wast in the pleasures of the paradise of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the jasper, the chrysolite and the onyx and the beryl, the sapphire and the carbuncle and the emerald; gold was thy adornment. Thy pipes were prepared in the day thou wast created. Thou didst spread thyself like an overshadowing cherub, and I set thee on the mountain of God. Thou didst walk in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day of thy creation, until iniquity was found in thee."

Both of these parables are spoken, the one of the King of Babylon, the other of the King of Tyre, who, like unto Lucifer in pride and in splendor, were threatened and punished.

Jesus Christ refers to the fall of the rebellious Lucifer, where he says: "I saw Satan like lightning falling from Heaven."

And Thaddeus reveals the fall of the Angels and their crime, and the punishments which followed thereon, without any palliation, briefly, in this manner: "And the Angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved with everlasting chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great God."

Stayed by these golden sayings, and in particular by that of Judas Thaddeus, disciple of the Heavenly Teacher and Ambassador from the King of kings, we receive, as upon a shield of adamant, the darts of the unbelieving who would dare to cast a doubt upon the fall of the Angels.

Besides this, we are strongly supported throughout the whole period of antiquity by the most illustrious of the devout Church Fathers, who, in respect to the plot of this history, are unanimously agreed: though, lest we detain our Academic friends, we shall be content to cite only three places, the first taken out of the holy Cyprian, Bishop and martyr at Carthage, where he writes: "When he who was formerly throned in angelic majesty and accounted worthy by God and pleasing in his sight, saw man, made in God's own image, he burst into malicious hate; not, however, causing him to fall by poisoning him with this hatred, ere he himself was thereby also undone—himself made captive ere he captured, and ruined ere he brought him to ruin. While he, spurred on by envy, robbed man of the grace of immortality once given him, he himself also lost all that he had before possessed,"

The great Gregory furnishes us the second quotation: "The rebellious Angel, created to shine preëminent among hosts of Angels, is through his pride brought to such a fall that he now remains subject to the dominion of the loyal Angels."

The third and last evidence we cull from the sermons of the mellifluous St. Bernard: "Shun pride; I pray you, shun it. The source of all transgression is pride, which hath overcast Lucifer himself, shining most splendidly amongst the stars, with eternal darkness. Not only an Angel, but the chief among Angels, it hath changed into a Devil."

Pride and envy, the two causes or inciters of this horrible conflagration of discord and battle, are represented by us as a team of starred animals, the Lion and the Dragon, which, harnessed to Lucifer's battle-chariot, carry him against God and Michael; seeing that these animals are types of these two deadly sins. For the Lion, king of beasts, encouraged by his strength, in his vanity, thinks no one above him; and envy injures the envied from afar, even as the Dragon wounds his enemy a long way off by shooting poison [from his tongue].

St. Augustine, ascribing these two deadly sins to Lucifer, pictures the nature of the same most vividly, saying that pride is a love of one's own greatness; but envy is a hatred of another's happiness, the outcome of which seems clear enough. "For each one," says he, "who loves his own greatness envies his equals, inasmuch as they stand as high as he; or envies his inferiors, lest they become his equals; or his superiors, because they are above him."

Now, since the beasts themselves were abused and possessed by the damned Spirits, as in the beginning the Paradise Serpent, and in the holy age the herd of swine, that with a loud noise was precipitated into the sea, and since, also, the constellations are pictured on the Heavens in the forms of animals, as hath been thought even by the Prophets, as the Pleiades, or Seven Stars, and Arcturus, Orion, and Lucifer; so may it please you to overlook the elaborateness and the didacticism of this drama, if the unfortunate Spirits upon our stage, by means of the same, help and defend themselves: for to the infernal monsters nothing is more natural than cunning traits and the abuse of all creatures and elements, to the prejudice of the name and honor of the Most High, so far as He shall this permit.

St. John, in his Revelation, typifies the heavenly mysteries and the war in Heaven by the Dragon, whose tail drew after him a third part of the stars, supposed by the theologians to refer to the fallen Angels; wherefore in Poetry the flowered manner of expression should not be examined too narrowly, nor regulated by the subtlety of the schools.

We should also make distinction between the two kinds of characters who contend on this stage; namely, the bad and the good Angels, each kind playing its own rôle, even as Cicero and our inborn sense of verisimilitude teach us to picture each character according to his rank and nature.

At the same time we by no means deny that holy subject matter restrains and binds the dramatist more closely than worldly histories or pagan fables, notwithstanding that ancient and famous motto of the poets, expressed by Horatius Flaccus in his "Art of Poetry" in these lines:

"The painter and the bard did both this power receive,
To aid their art with all that they of use believe."

Though here it is especially noteworthy to state how we, in order to inflame the hate of the proud and envious Spirits the more strongly, did cause the mystery of the future incarnation of the Word to be partially revealed to the Angels by the Archangel Gabriel, Ambassador from God, and Herald of His Mysteries; herein to improve the matter, following not the opinion of the majority of the theologians, but only of a few, because this furnished our tragic picture richer material and more lustre. However, neither in this point nor in other circumstances of cause, time, place, and manner (which we employed to render this tragedy more powerful, more glorious, more natural, and more instructive) has it been our purpose to obscure the orthodox truth, or to establish anything after our own finding or notion.

St. Paul, the revealer of God's mysteries to the Hebrews, extols most enviably—even to the prejudice of the kingdom of the lying and tempting Spirits—the glory, might, and Godhead of the Incarnate Word, preëminent among all Angels in name, in sonship, and in heirship; in the adoration of the Angels; in His unction; in His exaltation at God's right hand; and in the eternity of His rulership as a king over the coming world, as the cause and the end of all things, and as the crowned Head of men and Angels: while the Angels, His worshippers, God's messengers, as ministering Spirits, are sent to serve man, the heir of salvation, whose nature God's Son, passing the Angels by, hath taken upon Himself in the blood of Abraham.

By occasion of this justification, I do not deem it unsuitable here, in passing, to say a few words in vindication of those dramas and dramatists that employ Biblical subjects, inasmuch as they have, occasionally, come into reproach; since, forsooth, human tastes are so various; for a difference in temperament causes the same subject to be agreeable to one which is repulsive to another.

All honorable arts and customs have their supporters and opponents, also their proper use and abuse. The holy writers of tragedy have, among the ancient Hebrews, for their example, the poet Ezekiel, who has left us, in Greek, the exodus of the twelve tribes from Egypt. Among the reverend Church Fathers, they have that bright star out of the East, Gregory of Nazianzus, who, in Greek dramatic verse, hath pictured the Crucified Saviour Himself; as also, not long since, we became indebted to the Royal Ambassador, Hugo Grotius, that great light of the learning and piety of our age, who, following in the track of St. Gregory, hath given us the Crucified One in Latin, for which immortal and edifying labor we owe him both honor and thankfulness.

Among the English Protestants, the learned pen of Richard Baker hath discoursed very freely in prose concerning Lucifer and all the acts of the rebellious Spirits.

It is true that the Fathers of the Ancient Church banished the Christian actors from the community of the Church, and that from that time forth they were strongly opposed to the drama. But let us take into consideration the time and the fact that their reasons for this were far different. At that period the world, in many places, was yet deeply sunken in heathenish idolatry. The foundations of Christianity were not yet well established, and the dramas were played in honor of Cybele, a great goddess and mother of their imagined gods, and were esteemed a serviceable expedient with which to avert the land plagues from the bodies of the people.

St. Augustine testifies how a heathen archpriest, a minister of Numa's ritual and idol service, on account of a deadly pest, first instituted the drama at Rome, sanctioning it by his authority.

Scaliger himself acknowledges that it was established for the health of the people by order of the Sibyls, so that these plays became a truly powerful incentive to the blind idolatry of the heathen, extolling their gods—a cankering abomination, whose destruction cost the first heroes of the Cross and the long-struggling Church so much sweat and blood; but being now long extirpated, hath left in Europe not a vestige behind.

That the holy old Church Fathers, therefore, for these reasons, and also because of their corrupting the public morals, and various open and shameless customs, as the employment of naked boys, women, and maidens, and other obscenities, should rebuke these plays, was needful and commendable, as, in that case, would also be so now. This being considered, let us not hold the good and the usefulness of edifying and entertaining plays too lightly.

Holy and honorable examples serve as a mirror, reflecting for our edification all virtue and piety, and teaching us, at the same time, to shun wickedness and its consequent misery.

The purpose and design of true tragedy is through terror and sympathy to stir the spectators to tenderness. Through the drama, students and growing youth are cultivated in the languages, eloquence, wisdom, modesty, good morals and manners; and these sink into their tender hearts and are impressed upon their senses, conducing towards habits of propriety and discretion, which remain with them, and to which they adhere even until old age; yea, it occurs, at times, that erratic geniuses, not to be bent or diverted by ordinary methods, are touched by this subtle art and by an exalted dramatic style, thus influenced beyond their own suspicion; even as a delicate lyre-string gives forth an answering sound when its companion string, of the same kind and nature, of a similar tone, and strung on another lyre, is caressed by a skilled hand, which, while playing, can drive the turbulent spirit out of a possessed and hardened Saul.

The history of the early Church seals this with the noteworthy examples of Genesius and Ardaleo, both actors, enlightened in the theatre by the Holy Ghost, and there converted; for they, while playing, wishing to mock the Christian Religion, were convicted of the truth, which they had learned out of their serious rôles, filled with the pith of wisdom, rather than with trifling discourse to be mouthed for hours into the air and more vexatious than instructive.

They tell us in regard to Biblical subject matter that we should not play with holy things, and, indeed, this seems to have some show of plausibility in our language, which hath given us the word play; but he that can stammer but a word or two of Greek knows that among the Greeks and Latins this word was not used in this sense; for τραγῳδία [Greek: tragoodia] is a compound word, and really means a goat-song, after the lyric contests of the shepherds, instituted for the purpose of winning a goat by singing, in which custom the tragic songs, and, following them, dramatic plays, took their origin. And if one would, nevertheless, unmercifully bring us to task on account of this word play, what then shall be done with organ play, David's harp and song play, and the play on the instrument with ten strings, and the other kinds of play on flute and stringed instruments, introduced by various sects among the Protestants into their meetings?

He, then, who appreciates this distinction will, while condemning the abuses of the dramatic art, not be ungracious towards the proper use of the same; nor will he begrudge the youth and the art-loving burghers this glorious, yea, this divine, invention, to them an honorable recreation and a refreshing amelioration of the trials of life; so that we, hereby encouraged, may with greater zeal bring Lucifer upon the stage, where he, finally smitten by God's thunderbolt, plunges down into hell—the mirror clear of all ungrateful ambitious ones who audaciously dare to exalt themselves, setting themselves against the consecrated Powers and Majesties and their lawful superiors.

Lucifer, the Archangel, chief and most illustrious of all the Angels, proud and ambitious, out of blind self-love envied God His boundless greatness; he also became jealous of man, made in God's image, to whom, in his delightful Paradise, was entrusted the sovereignty of earth.

He envied God and man the more when Gabriel, God's Herald, proclaiming all Angels to be but ministering Spirits, revealed the mysteries of God's future incarnation, whereby, the Angels being passed by, the real nature of man, united with the Godhead, might expect a power and majesty equal to God's own. Wherefore, the proud and envious Spirit, attempting to place himself on an equality with God, and to keep man out of Heaven, through his accomplices, incited to arms innumerable Angels, and led them, notwithstanding Rafael's warning, against Michael. Heaven's Field-marshal, and his legions; and ceasing the fight, after his defeat, he caused, out of revenge, the first man, and in him all his descendants, to fall, while he himself, with all his co-rebels, was plunged into hell and eternal damnation.

The scene is in the Heavens.

BELZEBUB, }
BELIAL,       }     Rebellious Chiefs.
APOLLION, }
GABRIEL,           God's Herald of Mysteries.
CHORUS OF ANGELS.
LUCIFER,           Stadtholder.
LUCIFERIANS,  Seditious Spirits.
MICHAEL,          Field-marshal.
RAFAEL,            Guardian Angel.
URIEL,               Michael's Armor-bearer.

Belzebub:

My Belial hence hath sped on aery wings
To see where lingers our Apollion,
Whom for such flight most fit Chief Lucifer
Hath sent to Earth that he might gain for him
A better sense of Adam's bliss, the state,
Where placed by Powers Omnipotent he dwells.
And lo! the time draws nigh that he return
Unto these courts. He cannot now be far.
A watchful servant heeds his master's glance
And, faithful, stays his throne with neck and shoulder. 10

Belial:

Lord Belzebub, thou Privy Councillor
Of Heaven's Stadtholder, he riseth steep
And wheels from sphere to sphere into our view;
The wind he passes by and leaves a track
Of light and splendor in his wake, where cleave,
His speedy wings the clouds; and now our air
He scents in other day and brighter sun,
Whose glow is mirrored in the crystal blue.
The heavenly globes beneath behold his flight,
As up he mounts, and each with wonder sees 20
His speed and godlike grace. He seems to them
No more an Angel but a flying fire.
No star so swiftly shoots. Behold him now,
Here upwards soaring, and within his hands
He bears a golden bough. The steep incline
He hath accomplished happily.

Belzebub:

What brings
Apollion?

Apollion:

I have, Lord Belzebub,
The low terrene observed with keenest eye.
And now I offer thee the fruits grown there
So far below these heights, 'neath other skies 30
And other sun: now judge thou from the fruit
The land and garden which even God Himself
Hath blessed and planted for mankind's delight.

Belzebub:

I see the golden leaves, all laden with
Ethereal pearls, the sparkling silvery dew.
What sweet perfume exhale those radiant leaves
Of tint unfading! How alluring glows
That pleasant fruit with crimson and with gold!
'Twere pity to pollute it with the hands.
The eye doth tempt the mouth. Who would not lust 40
For earthly luxury! He loathes our day
And food celestial, who the fruit may pluck
Of Earth. One would for Adam's garden curse
Our Paradise. The bliss of Angels fades
In that of man.

Apollion:

Too true. Lord Belzebub,
Though high our Heaven may seem, 'tis far too low,
For what I saw with mine own eyes deceives
Me not. The world's delights, yea, Eden's fields
Alone, our Paradise excel.

Belzebub:

Proceed.
We'll hear what thou shalt say. We'll hear together. 50

Apollion:

I'll pass my journey thither by nor tell
How downward sweeping through nine spheres I sped.
That swift as arrows round their centre whirl.
The wheel of sense revolves within our thoughts
Not with such speed, as I beneath the moon
And clouds dropped down. Where then aloft I hung,
On floating pinions, to survey that shore,
That Eastern landscape far that marks the face
Of that great sphere the flowing ocean rounds,
Wherein so many kinds of monsters swarm. 60
Afar I saw a lofty mount emerge,
From which a waterfall, fount of four streams,
Dashed with a roar into the vale below.
Headlong I steered my course oblique, with steep
Descent, until I gained the mountain's brow,
Whence, resting, all the nether world I viewed,
Its happy fields and glowing opulence.

Belzebub:

Now picture us the garden and its shape.

Apollion:

Round is the garden, as the world itself.
Above the centre looms the mount from which 70
The fountain gushes that divides in four,
And waters all the land, refreshing trees
And fields; and flows in unreflective rills
Of crystal purity. The streams their rich
Alluvion bring and nourish all the ground.
Here Onyx gleams and Bdellion doth shine;
And bright as Heaven glows with glittering stars;
So here Dame Nature sowed her constellations
Of stones that pale our stars. Here dazzle veins
Of gold; for Nature wished to gather all 80
Her treasures in one lap.

Belzebub:

What of the air
That hovers round whereby that creature lives?

Apollion:

No Angel us among, a breath exhales
So soft and sweet as the pure draught refreshing
That there meets man, that lightly cools his face
And with its gentle, vivifying touch
All things caresses in its blissful course:
There swells the bosom of the fertile field
"With herb and hue and bud and branch and bloom
And odors manifold, which nightly dews 90
Refresh. The rising and the setting sun
Know and observe their proper, measured time
And so unto the need of every plant
Temper their mighty rays that flower and fruit
Are all within the selfsame season found.

Belzebub:

Now tell me of man's features and his form.

Apollion:

Who would our state for that of man prefer,
When one beholdeth beings, all-surpassing,
Beneath whose sway all other beings stand!
I saw a hundred thousand creatures move 100
Before me there: all they that tread the earth
And they that cleave the clouds, or swim the stream,
As is their wont, each in his element.
Who should the nature and the attributes
Of each one know as Adam! For 'twas he
That gave them, one by one, their various names.
The mountain-lion wagged his tail and smiled
Upon his lord. And, at his sovereign's feet,
The tiger, too, his fierceness laid. The bull
Bowed low his horns; the elephant, his trunk. 110
The bear forgot his rage. The griffin heard
His call; the eagle and the dragon dread,
Behemoth and even great Leviathan.
Nor shall I tell what praise rings in man's ears,
Amid those warbling bowers, replete with songs
in many tongues; while zephyrs rustle through
The leaves, and brooks purl 'neath their sylvan banks
A murmurous harmony that wearies never.
Had but Apollion his mission then
Accomplished, sooth, in Adam's Paradise 120
He soon had lost all memory of Heaven.

Belzebub:

But what, pray, of the twain thou sawest there?

Apollion:

No creature hath on high mine eye so pleased
As those below. Who could so subtly soul
With body weave and two-fold Angels form
From clay and bone? The body's shapely mould
Attests the Maker's art, that in the face,
The mirror of the mind, doth best appear.
But wonderful! upon the face is stamped
The image of the soul. All beauty here 130
Concentres, while a god looks through the eyes.
Above the whole the reasoning soul doth hover,
And while the dumb and brutish beasts all look
Down towards their feet, man proudly lifts alone
His head to Heaven, in lofty praise to God.

Belzebub:

His praise is not in vain for gifts so rare.

Apollion:

He rules even like a god whom all must serve.
The invisible soul consists of spirit and not
Of matter, and it rules in every limb:
The brain it makes its seat, and there holds court. 140
It is immortal, nor fears aught of rust,
Or other injury. 'Tis past our sense.
Knowledge and prudence, virtue and free-will,
Are its possessions. Dumb all Spirits stand
Before its majesty. Ere long the world
Shall teem with men. It waits, from little seed,
A harvest rich in souls; and therefore God
Did man to woman join.

Belzebub:

Now say me how
Thou dost regard his rib—his lovèd spouse?

Apollion:

I covered with my wings mine eyes and face 150
That I might curb my thoughts and deep delight,
When erst she filled my gaze, as Adam led her
Into their arborous bower with gentle hand:
From time to time he stopped, in contemplation;
And gazing thus, a holy fire began
His pure breast to inflame. And then he kissed
His bride and she her bridegroom: thus on joy
Their nuptials fed—on feasts of fiery love,
Better imagined far than told, a bliss
Divine beyond all Angel ken. How poor 160
Our loneliness! For us no union sweet
Of two-fold sex, of maiden and of man.
Alas! how much of good we miss: we know
No mate or happy marriage in a Heaven
Devoid of woman.

Belzebub:

Thus in time a world
Of men shall be begotten there below?

Apollion:

The love of beauty, fashioned in the brain,
Deeply impressèd by the senses keen,
This makes their union strong. Their life consists
Alone in loving and in being loved- 170
One sweet, one mutual joy, by them indulged
Perpetually, yet e'er unquenchable.

Belzebub:

Now picture me the bride, described from life.

Apollion:

That Nature's pencil needs, nor lesser hues
Than sunbeams. Perfect are both man and wife;
Of equal beauty they, from head to foot.
By right doth Adam Eve excel in strength
Of form and majesty of bearing, as
One chosen for the sovereignty of Earth:
But Eve combines all that her bridegroom joys: 180
A tenderness of limb and softer skin
And flesh, a lovelier tint and eyes enchanting,
A charming, gracious mouth, a sweeter voice,
Whose power lies in a sound more exquisite;
Two founts of ivory and what besides
No tongue should dare to name, lest Spirits should
Be tempted. And though all the Angels now
Impress our eyes as beautiful and fair.
How ill their forms and faces would appear
If seen within the rosy morning-light 190
Of maidenhood!

Belzebub:

It seems that passion for
This feminine creature hath thy heart inflamed.

Apollion:

In that delightful blaze, my great wing-plumes
I singed. Most hard it was for me to rise
And wheel my way to this our high abode.
I parted, though with pain, and thrice turned back
My gaze. There shines no Seraph in the courts
Celestial, here on high, as she amid
Her hanging hair, that forms a golden niche
Of sunbeams that in beauteous waves roll down 200
From her fair head, and flow along her back.
So, even as from a light, she comes to view,
And day rejoices with her radiant face.
Though pearl and mother-o'-pearl seem purity,
Her whiteness even theirs surpasses far.

Belzebub:

What profits human glory, if even as
A flower of the field it fades and dies?

Apollion:

So long their garden fruit doth give, shall this
Most happy pair live by an apple sweet,
Grown on the central tree, that nurture finds 210
Beside the stream that laves its tender roots.
This wondrous tree is called the tree of life.
'Tis incorruptible, and through it man
Joys life eterne and all immortal things,
While of his Angel brothers he becomes
The peer, yea, and shall in the end surpass
Them all, until his power and sway and realm
Spread over all. For who can clip his wings?
No Angel hath the power to multiply
His being a thousand thousand times, in swarms 220
Innumerable. Now do thou calculate
What shall from this, in time, the outcome be.

Belzebub:

Great is man's might, that thus even ours out-grows!

Apollion:

Soon shall his increase frighten and astound.
Though now his sway stoops lower than the moon,
And though 'tis now determinate, he shall
Yet higher rise and place himself upon
The highest seat in Heaven. If God prevent
Not this, how then can we prevent it? For
God loves man well and for him made all things. 230

Belzebub:

What hear I there? A trumpet? Surely then
A voice will follow. Go, see, while we here
Await.

Apollion:

The Archangel Gabriel is at hand,
And in his wake the choristers of Heaven,
In the name of Him, the Highest, to unfold,
As Herald from the towering Throne of Thrones,
What there him was enjoined.

Belzebub:

We please to hear
Whatever the Archangel shall command.


GABRIEL. CHORUS OF ANGELS.

Gabriel:

Give ear, ye Angels all; give ear, ye hosts
Of Heaven. The highest Goodness, from whose breast 240
Flow all things good and all things holy, who
Of His beneficence ne'er wearied grows
And of whose teeming grace the riches never
Shall know decrease; whose might and Being transcend
The comprehension of His creatures all:
This Goodness, in the image of Himself,
Formed man, also the Angels that they might
Together here with Him securely hold
The Realm eterne—the good ne'er-comprehended.
Having the while with faithfulness maintained 250
His firm prescribed law. He also built
This wondrous universe, the world below
Made manifest, and meet for God and man,
That in this garden man might rule and there
Might multiply; acknowledge God with all
His seed; Him ever serve and e'er revere,
And thus mount up, by the stairway of the world,
The firmament of beatific light
Within, into the ne'er-created glow.
Though Spirits may seem pre-eminent, above 260
All other beings, yet God hath decreed,
Even from eternity, that man shall high
Exalted be, even o'er the Angel world;
Him destined for a glory and a crown
Of splendor not inferior to His own.
Ye shall behold the eternal Word above,
When clad in flesh and bone, anointed Lord
And Chief and Judge, mete justice to the hosts
Of Spirits, to Angels and to men alike,
From His high seat, in His unshadowed Realm. 270
There in the centre stands the holy Throne
Already consecrate. Let all the hosts
Angelic then have care to worship Him,
When He shall ride in triumph in, who hath
The human form exalted o'er our own.
Then dimly shines the bright translucent flame
Of Seraphim, beside this light of man,
This glow and radiance divine. The rays
Of Mercy shall all Nature's splendors drown.
'Tis fated thus—and stands irrevocable. 280

Chorus.

All that the Heavens ordain shall please God's hosts.

Gabriel:

So be ye faithful, ever rendering thus
Both God and man your service: since mankind
So well belovèd are by God Himself.
Who honors Adam wins his Father's heart.
And men and Angels, issuing from one stem.
Are brothers and companions, chosen for
One lot, the sons and heirs of the Most High,
A stainless line. One undivided will,
One undivided love, be this your law. 290
Ye know how all the Angel hosts into
Three Hierarchies and lesser Orders nine
Are duly separate: of Seraphim
And Cherubim and Thrones, the highest, they
Who form God's inmost Council and confirm
All His commands; the second Hierarchy,
Of Dominations. Virtues. Powers, that on
The mandates of God's secret Council wait
And minister to man's well-being and bliss.
The third and lowest Hierarchy, composed 300
Of Principalities and all Archangels
And Angels, is unto the middle rank
Subordinate, and service finds beneath
The sphere of purest crystalline, in their
Particular charge, that wide is as the vault
Of starry space. And when the world shall spread
Its widening bounds without, shall unto each
Of these some province there allotted be,
Or he shall know what town or house or being
Is to his care committed, to the praise 310
And honor of God's crown. Ye faithful ones,
Ye Gods immortal, go then and obey
Chief Lucifer, bound by your God's commands.
Bring glory to high Heaven in serving man,
Each in his own retreat, each on his watch.
Let some before the Godhead incense burn
And lay before His towering Throne their prayers,
Their wishes and their offerings for mankind,
Singing the Godhead praise until the sounds
Re-echo through the corridors of Heaven, 320
In endless jubilation. Let some whirl
The constellations and the globes of Heaven,
Or open wide the skies, or pile them high
With pregnant clouds, to bless the mount below
With sunshine, or with soft, refreshing showers
Of manna and of pure mellifluous dews;
Where God is by the happy pair adored,
The primal innocence 'mid Eden's bowers.
Let those that air and fire and earth and sea
O'er range, each, in his element, his pace 330
So moderate, as Adam may require;
Or chain in bands the lightnings, curb the storm,
Or break the ocean's fury on the strand.
Let others make a charge of man himself.
Even to a hair the sovran Deity
Knoweth the hairs upon his head. Then bear
Him gently on your hands, lest he should dash
His foot against a stone. Let one now as
Ambassador from the Omnipotent
Be sent below to Adam. King of Earth. 340
That he perform his bounden charge. I voice
The orders to my trump on high enjoined.
To these the Godhead holds you firmly bound.


Chorus of Angels:

Strophe.

Who is it on His Throne, high-seated,
So deep in boundless realms of light,
Whose measure, space nor time hath meted,
Nor e'en eternity; whose might,
Supportless, yet itself maintaineth,
Floating on pinions of repose;
Who, in His mightiness ordaineth 350
What round and in Him changeless flows
And what revolves and what is driven
Around Him, centre of His plan;
The sun of suns, the spirit-leaven
Of space; the soul of all we can
Conceive, and of the unconceivèd,
The heart, the life, the fount, the sea,
And source of all things here perceivèd,
That from Him spring, that His decree
Omnipotent and Mercy flowing 360
And Wisdom from naught did evoke,
Ere this full-crownèd palace glowing,
The Heaven of Heavens, the darkness broke?
Where o'er our eyes our wings extending
To veil His dazzling Majesty,
'Mid harmonies to Him ascending,
We fall before Him tremblingly
And kneel, confused, in awe together.
Who is it? Name, or picture then
His Being with a Seraph's feather. 370
Or is't beyond your tongue and ken?

Antistrophe.

'Tis God: Being infinite, eternal,
Of everything that being has.
Forgive us, O! Thou Power supernal,
By all that is and ever was
Ne'er fully praised, ne'er to be spoken;
Forgive us, nor incensed depart,
Since no imagining, tongue nor token
Can Thee proclaim. Thou wert. Thou art
Fore'er the same. All Angel praising 380
And knowledge is but faint and tame.
'Tis but foul sacrilege, their phrasing;
For each bears his peculiar name
Save Thee. And who can by declaring
Reveal Thy name? And who make known
Thine oracles? Who is so daring?
He who Thou art Thou art alone.
Save Thee none knows Thy power transcendent.
Who grasps Thy full divinity?
Who dares to face Thy Throne resplendent, 390
The fierce glow of eternity?
To whom the light of light revealèd?
What's hid behind Thy sacred veil,
From us Thy Mercy hath concealèd.
Such bliss transcends the narrow pale
Of our weak might. Our life is waning;
But Thine, Lord, shall know endless days.
Our being in Thine finds its sustaining!
Exalt the Godhead! Sing His praise!

Epode.

Holy! holy! once more holy! 400
Three times holy! Honor God!
Without Him is nothing holy!
Holy is His mighty nod!
Strong in mystery He reigneth!
His commands our tongues compel
To proclaim what He ordaineth,
What the faithful Gabriel
With his trumpet came expounding.
Praise of man to God redounding!
All that pleaseth God is well. 410

LUCIFER. BELZEBUB.


Lucifer:

Ye speedy Spirits, stay our chariot now,
God's Morning-star in its full zenith stands;
Its height is reached; and lo! the moment comes
When Lucifer must set before this star,
This double star that rises from below
And seeks the way above, to tarnish Heaven
With earthly glow. No more should ye adorn
Proud Lucifer's apparel with glittering crowns,
Nor gild his forehead with the glorious dawn
Of morning-star, to which Archangels kneel. 10
Another splendor sweeps into the light
Of God, whose radiance drowns our vaunted glory.
As to the eyes of man, below, the sun,
By day, puts out the stars. The shades of night
Bedim the Angels and the suns of Heaven:
For man hath won the heart of the Most High,
Within his new-created Paradise.
He is the friend of Heaven. Our slavery
Even now begins. Go hence, rejoice and serve
And honor this new race like servile slaves. 20
For God was man created; we, for him.
Let then the Angels bend their necks beneath
His feet. Let each one now upon him wait
And bear him even unto the highest Thrones
On hands or wings: for our inheritance
Shall pass to him, the chosen son of God.
We, the first-born, shall suffer in this Realm.
The son, born on that day, the sixth, and made
In the image of the Father, shall attain
The crown. And rightly unto him was given 30
The mighty sceptre, which shall cause even us,
The ones first born, to tremble and to shake.
Here holds no contradiction now: ye heard
What Gabriel's trump spake at the golden port?

Belzebub:

O! Stadtholder of God's superior Powers,
Alas! we hear too well, amid the praise
Of choristers, a discord that makes sad
The feast eterne. The charge of Gabriel
Is clear. It needs no tongue of Cherubim
To unfold its sense. Nor was there need to send 40
Apollion below, a nearer view
To gain of Adam's realm beneath the moon.
How gloriously the Godhead dealt with him
Doth well appear. He hath, for his defence,
Even given a life-guard, many thousands strong,
While He supports his rank and dignity,
As if he were the supreme Chief of Spirits.
The massive gate of Heaven stands ajar
For Adam's seed. An earth-worm that hath crawled
Out of the dust—out of a clod of clay 50
Defies thy power. Thou shalt yet man behold
O'er thee exalted, so that thou shalt fall
Upon thy knees and there, abased, adore,
With drooping eyes, his lofty eminence,
His power and high authority. He shall,
When glorified by the Omnipotent,
Yet seat himself, even by the side of God,
Empowered to reign beyond the farthest rounds
And endless circles of eternity.
That, from the bounds of time and space set free, 60
Revolve unceasingly around one God,
Who is their centre and circumference.
What clearer proof need we to see that God
Shall glorify mankind, and us degrade?
For we were born to serve, and man, to rule.
Then henceforth put the sceptre from thy hand:
There is another one below, who reigns,
Or soon shall reign. Put off thy morning rays
And wreaths of light before this sun, or else
Have care to bring him in with songs of joy 70
And triumph and with honors full divine.
We soon shall see the Heavens changed in state.
Behold! the stars look out and from their paths
Retreat, aglow with longing to receive
With reverence this new and coming light.

Lucifer:

That shall I thwart, if in my power it be.

Belzebub:

There hear I Lucifer and him behold.
Who from Heaven's face can drive the night away.
Where he appears, day's glory dawns anew.
His crescent light, the first and nighest God, 80
Shall ne'er grow dim. His word is stern command;
His will and nod a law by none transgressed.
The Godhead is in him obeyed and served,
Praised, honored, and adored. Should then a voice
More faint than his now thunder from God's Throne?
Than his be more obeyed? Should God exalt
A younger son, begot of Adam's loins,
Even over him? That would most violate
The heirship of the eldest-born and rob
His splendor of its rays. 'Neath God Himself 90
None is so great as thou. The Godhead once
Set thee the first in glory at His feet.
Then let not man dare thus our order great
Profane, nor thus cast down these vested Rights
"Without a cause, or all of Heaven shall spring
To arms 'gainst one.