Czcionka:Mniejsze АаWiększe Aa
Satan (aside)
Ay, and their own creeds.
One cause alone combines them, and one service – mine.
The Lord God
Thou sayest?
Gabriel
Man still is Man.
The Lord God
We did redeem his line
And crown him with new worship. In the ancient days
His was a stubborn neck. But now he hath found grace,
Being born anew. His gods he hath renounced, sayest thou?
He worshippeth the Christ? What more?
Gabriel
Nay, ’tis enow.
He is justified by faith. He hath no fear of Hell
Since he hath won Thy grace. All’s well with Man, – most well.
The Lord God
“All’s well”! The fair phrase wearieth. It hath a new false ring.
Truce, Gabriel, to thy word fence. Mark my questioning.
Or rather no – not thou, blest Angel of all good,
Herald of God’s glad tidings to a world subdued,
Thou lover tried of Man. I will not question thee,
Lest I should tempt too sore and thou lie cravenly.
Is there no other here, no drudge, to do that task
And lay the secret bare, the face behind the mask?
One with a soul less white, who loveth less, nay hates;
One fit for a sad part, the Devil’s advocate’s;
One who some wrong hath done, or hath been o’erborne of ill,
And so hath his tongue loosed? O for Soul with will!
O for one hour of Satan!
Satan
He is here, Lord God,
Ready to speak all truths to Thy face, even “Ichabod,
Thy glory is departed,” were that truth.
The Lord God
Thou? Here?
Satan
A suppliant for Thy pardon, and in love, not fear,
One who Thou knowest doth love Thee, ay, and more than these.
The Lord God
That word was Peter’s once.
Satan
I speak no flatteries;
Nor shall I Thee deny for this man nor that maid,
Nor for the cock that crew.
The Lord God
Thou shalt not be gainsaid.
I grant thee audience. Speak.
Satan
Alone?
The Lord God
’Twere best alone.
Angels, ye are dismissed. (The angels depart.) Good Satan, now say on.
Satan (alone with The Lord God)
Omnipotent Lord God! Thou knowest all. I speak
Only as Thy poor echo, faltering with words weak,
A far-off broken sound, yet haply not unheard.
Thou knowest the Worlds Thou madest, and Thine own high word
Declaring they were good. Good were they in all sooth
The mighty Globes Thou mouldedst in the World’s fair youth,
Launched silent through the void, evolving force and light.
Thou gatheredst in Thy hand’s grasp shards of the Infinite
And churnedst them to Matter; Space concentrated,
Great, glorious, everlasting. The Stars leaped and fled,
As hounds, in their young strength. Yet might they not withdraw
From Thy hand’s leash and bond. Thou chainedst them with law.
They did not sin, those Stars, change face, wax proud, rebel.
Nay, they were slaves to Thee, things incorruptible.
I might not tempt them from Thee.
The Lord God
And the reason?
Satan
Hear.
Thou gavest them no mind, no sensual atmosphere,
Who wert Thyself their soul. Though thou should drowse for aye,
They should not swerve, nor flout Thee, nor abjure Thy way,
Not by a hair’s breadth, Lord.
The Lord God
Thou witnessest for good.
Satan
I testify for truth. In all that solitude
Of spheres involved with spheres, of prodigal force set free,
There hath been no voice untrue, no tongue to disagree,
No traitor thought to wound with less than perfect word.
Such was Thy first Creation. I am Thy witness, Lord.
’Twas worthy of Thyself.
The Lord God
And of the second?
Satan
Stop.
How shall I speak of it unless Thou give me hope;
I who its child once was, though daring to rebel;
I who Thine outcast am, the banished thief of Hell,
Thy too long reprobate? Thou didst create to Thee
A world of happy Spirits for Thy company,
For Thy delight and solace, as being too weary grown
Of Thy sole loneliness – ’twas ill to be alone.
And Thou didst make us pure, as Thou Thyself art pure.
Yet was there seed of ill – What Spirit may endure
The friction of the Spirit? Where two are, Strife is.
Thou gavest us mind, thought, will; all snares to happiness.
The Lord God
Unhappy blinded one. How sinnedst thou? Reveal.
Satan
Lord, through my too great love, through my excess of zeal.
Listen. Thy third Creation…
The Lord God
Ha! The Earth! Speak plain.
Now will I half forgive thee. What of the Earth, of men?
Was that not then the best, the noblest of the three?
Satan
Ah, glorious Lord God! Thou hadst Infinity
From which to choose Thy plan. This plan, no less than those,
Was noble in conception, when its vision rose
Before Thee in Thy dreams. Thou deemedst to endow
Time with a great new wonder, wonderful as Thou,
Matter made sensitive, informed with Life, with Soul.
It grieved Thee the Stars knew not. Thou couldst not cajole
Their music into tears, their beauty to full praise.
Thou askedst one made conscious of Thy works and ways,
One dowered with sense and passion, which should feel and move
And weep with Thee and laugh, one that alas, should love.
Thus didst thou mould the Earth. We Spirits, wondering, eyed
Thy new-born fleshly things, Thy Matter deified.
We saw the sea take life, its myriad forms all fair.
We saw the creeping things, the dragons of the air,
The birds, the four-foot beasts, all beautiful, all strong,
All brimming o’er with joyaunce, new green woods among,
Twice glorious in their lives. And we, who were but spirit,
Envied their lusty lot, their duplicated merit,
Their feet, their eyes, their wings, their physical desires,
The anger of their voices, the fierce sexual fires
Which lit their sentient limbs and joined them heart to heart,
Their power to act, to feel, all that corporeal part
Which is the truth of love and giveth the breathing thing
The wonder of its beauty incarnate in Spring.
What was there, Lord, in Heaven comparable with this,
The mother beast with her young? Not even Thy happiness,
Lord of the Universe! What beautiful, what bold,
What passionate as she? She doth not chide nor scold
When at her dugs he mumbleth. Nay, the milk she giveth
Is as a Sacrament, the power by which he liveth
A double life with hers. And they two in a day
Know more of perfect joy than we, poor Spirits, may
In our eternity of sober loneliness.
This was the thing we saw, and praised Thee and did bless.
The Lord God
Where then did the fault lie? Thou witnessest again.
Was it because of Death, Life’s complement, – or Pain,
That thou didst loose thy pride to question of My will?
Satan
Nay, Lord, Thou knowest the truth. These evils are not ill.
They do but prove Thy wisdom. All that lives must perish,
Else were the life at charge, the bodily fires they cherish,
Accumulating ills. The creatures thou didst make
Sink when their day is done. They slough time like the snake
How many hundred sunsets? Yet night comes for rest,
And they awake no more, – and sleep, – and it is best.
What, Lord, would I not give to shift my cares and lie
Enfolded in Time’s arms, stone-dead, eternally?
No. ’Twas not Death, nor Pain; Pain the true salt of pleasure,
The condiment that stings and teaches each his measure,
The limit of his strength, joy’s value in his hand.
It was not these we feared. We bowed to Thy command,
Even to that stern decree which bade the lion spring
Upon the weakling steer, the falcon bend her wing
To reive the laggard fowl, the monster of the deep
Devour and be devoured. He who hath sown shall reap.
And we beheld the Earth by that mute law controlled,
Grow ever young and new, Time’s necklace of pure gold
Set on Creation’s neck. We gazed, and we applauded
The splendour of Thy might, Thy incarnated Godhead.
And yet – Lord God, forgive – Nay, hear me. Thou wert not
Content with this fair world in its first glorious thought.
Thou needs must make thee Man. Ah, there Thy wisdom strayed.
Thou wantedst one to know Thee, no mere servile jade,
But a brave upright form to walk the Earth and be
Thy lieutenant with all and teach integrity,
One to aspire, adorn, to stand the roof and crown
Of thy Creation’s house in full dominion,
The fairest, noblest, best of Thy created things —
One thou shouldst call Thy rose of all Time’s blossomings.
And thou evolvedst Man! – There were a thousand forms,
All glorious, all sublime, the riders of Thy storms,
The battlers of Thy seas, the four-foot Lords of Earth,
From which to choose Thy stem and get Thee a new birth.
There were forms painted, proud, bright birds with plumes of heaven
And songs more sweet than angels’ heard on the hills at even,
Frail flashing butterflies, free fishes of such hue
As rainbows hardly have, sleek serpents which renew
Their glittering coats like gems, grave brindled-hided kine,
Large-hearted elephants, the horse how near divine,
The whale, the mastodon, the mighty Behemoth,
Leviathan’s self awake and glorious in his wrath.
All these thou hadst for choice, competitors with Thee
For Thy new gift and prize, Thy co-divinity.
Yet didst Thou choose, Lord God, the one comedian shape
In Thy Creation’s range, the lewd bare-buttocked ape,
And calledst him, in scorn of all that brave parade,
King of Thy living things, in Thine own likeness made!
Where, Lord, was then Thy wisdom? We, who watched Thee, saw
More than Thyself didst see. We recognised the flaw,
The certainty of fault, and I in zeal spake plain.
The Lord God
Thou didst, rebellious Spirit, and thy zeal was vain.
Thou spakest in thy blindness. Was it hard for God,
Thinkest thou, to choose His graft, to wring from the worst clod
His noblest fruiting? Nay. Man’s baseness was the test,
The text of His all-power, its proof made manifest.
There was nought hard for God.
Satan
Except to win Man’s heart.
Lord, hear me to the end. Thy Will found counterpart
Only in Man’s un-Will. Thy Truth in his un-Truth,
Thy Beauty in his Baseness, Ruth in his un-Ruth,
Order in his dis-Order. See, Lord, what hath been
To Thy fair Earth through him, the fount and origin
Of all its temporal woes. How was it ere he came
In his high arrogance, sad creature without shame?
Thou dost remember, Lord, the glorious World it was,
The beauty, the abundance, the unbroken face
Of undulent forest spread without or rent or seam
From mountain foot to mountain, one embroidered hem
Fringing the mighty plains through which Thy rivers strayed,
Thy lakes, Thy floods, Thy marshes, tameless, unbetrayed,
All virgin of the spoiler, all inviolate,
In beauty undeflowered, where fear was not nor hate.
Thou knowest, Lord of all, how that sanct solitude
Was crowded with brave life, a thousand forms of good
Enjoying Thy sweet air, some strong, some weak, yet none
Oppressor of the rest more than Thy writ might run.
Armed were they, yet restrained. Not even the lion slew
His prey in wantonness, nor claimed beyond his due.
He thinned their ranks, – yet, lo, the Spring brought back their joy.
Short was his anger, Lord. He raged not to destroy.
Oh, noble was the World, its balance held by Thee,
Timely its fruits for all, ’neath Thy sole sovereignty.
But he! he, the unclean! The fault, Lord God, was Thine.
Behold him in Thy place, a presence saturnine,
In stealth among the rest, equipped as none of these
With Thy mind’s attributes, low crouched beneath the trees,
Betraying all and each. The wit Thou gavest him
He useth to undo, to bend them to his whim.
His bodily strength is little, slow of foot is he,
Of stature base, unclad in mail or panoply.
His heart hath a poor courage. He hath beauty none.
Bare to the buttocks he of all that might atone.
Without Thy favour, Lord, what power had he for ill?
Without thy prompting voice his violence had scant skill.
The snare, the sling, the lime, who taught him these but Thou?
The World was lost through Thee who fashioned him his bow.
And Thou hast clean forgot the fair great beasts of yore,
The mammoth, aurochs, elk, sea-lion, cave-bear, boar,
Which fell before his hand, each one of them than he
Nobler and mightier far, undone by treachery.
He spared them not, old, young, calf, cow. With pitfall hid
In their mid path they fell, by his guile harvested,
And with them the World’s truth. Henceforth all walked in fear,
Knowing that one there was turned traitor, haply near.
This was the wild man’s crime.
The Lord God
He erred in ignorance.
As yet he was not Man. Naught but his form was Man’s.
Satan
Well had he so remained. Lord God, thou thoughtest then
To perfect him by grace, among the sons of men
To choose a worthiest man. “If he should know,” saidst Thou
“The evil from the good, the thing We do allow
“From that We do forbid! If We should give him shame,
“The consciousness of wrong, the red blush under blame!
“If he should walk in light beholding truth as We!”