A DRAMA OF EXILE.
39
None saith, Stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!
And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.
Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?
Eve. Thou hast a glorious darkness.
Lucifer.Nothing more?
Eve. I think no more.
Lucifer.False Heart—thou thinkest more!
Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God,
Unwillingly but fully, that I stand
Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves
Were fashioned very good at best, so we
Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word
Which thrilled around us—God Himself being moved,
When that august work of a perfect shape,
His dignities of sovran angel-hood,
Swept out into the universe,—divine
With thundrous movements, earnest looks of gods,
And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings.
Whereof I was, in motion and in form,
A part not poorest. And yet,—yet, perhaps,
This beauty which I speak of, is not here,
As God's voice is not here; nor even my crown—
I do not know. What is this thought or thing
Which I call beauty? is it thought or thing?
Is it a thought accepted for a thing?
Or both? or neither?—a pretext—a word?
Its meaning flutters in me like a flame
Under my own breath; my perceptions reel
For evermore around it, and fall off,
As if it too were holy.
Eve.Which it is.
Adam. The essence of all beauty I call love.
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense,
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love. As form, when colourless,
Is nothing to the eye; that pine tree there,
Without its black and green, being all a blank;
And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.
Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?
Eve. Thou hast a glorious darkness.
Lucifer.Nothing more?
Eve. I think no more.
Lucifer.False Heart—thou thinkest more!
Thou canst not choose but think, as I praise God,
Unwillingly but fully, that I stand
Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves
Were fashioned very good at best, so we
Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word
Which thrilled around us—God Himself being moved,
When that august work of a perfect shape,
His dignities of sovran angel-hood,
Swept out into the universe,—divine
With thundrous movements, earnest looks of gods,
And silver-solemn clash of cymbal wings.
Whereof I was, in motion and in form,
A part not poorest. And yet,—yet, perhaps,
This beauty which I speak of, is not here,
As God's voice is not here; nor even my crown—
I do not know. What is this thought or thing
Which I call beauty? is it thought or thing?
Is it a thought accepted for a thing?
Or both? or neither?—a pretext—a word?
Its meaning flutters in me like a flame
Under my own breath; my perceptions reel
For evermore around it, and fall off,
As if it too were holy.
Eve.Which it is.
Adam. The essence of all beauty I call love.
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense,
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love. As form, when colourless,
Is nothing to the eye; that pine tree there,
Without its black and green, being all a blank;
