The vale is girdled with their walls: a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake after flake,-in heaven-defying minds

As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,

Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.

Panthea. Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises

As ocean at the enchantment of the moon

Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.

Asia. The fragments of the cloud are scattered up. The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair ;

Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain

Grows dizzy: I see thin shapes within the mist.

Panthea. A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns

An azure fire within its golden locks.

Another, and another! Hark! they speak!

SONG OF SPIRITS.

To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!

Through the shade of Sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar

Of things which seem and are,
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!

While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!

As the fawn draws the hound;
As the lightning, the vapour;
As a weak moth, the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time, both; today, tomorrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!

Through the grey void abysm,
Down, down!

Where the air is no prism,

And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of heaven

Nor the gloom to earth given,—

Where there is one pervading, One alone,— Coke w/ Down, down!

In the depth of the deep,

Down, down!—

Like veiled lightning asleep,

Evil wrin.

Like the spark nursed in embers,
The last look Love remembers,
Like a diamond which shines
On the dark wealth of mines,

A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
Down, down!

We have bound thee, we guide thee,
Down, down,

With the bright form beside thee.
Resist not the weakness!

Such strength is in meekness

That the Eternal, the Immortal,

Must unloose through life's portal

The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne,
By that alone.

SCENE IV.-The Cave of DEMOGORGON. ASIA and PANTHEA.

Panthea. What veiled Form sits on that ebon throne?
Asia. The veil has fallen.

Panthea.
I see a mighty Darkness
Filling the seat of power; and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun,
Ungazed-upon and shapeless. Neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.

Demogorgon. Ask what thou wouldst know.
Asia. What canst thou tell?

Demogorgon.

All things thou dar'st demand

Asia. Who made the living world?

Demogorgon.

Asia.

God.

Who made all

That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,

Imagination?

Demogorgon. God: Almighty God.

Asia. Who made that sense which, at the winds of Spring

In rarest visitation, or the voice

Of one beloved heard in youth alone,

Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim

The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,

And leaves this peopled earth a solitude

When it returns no more?

Demogorgon.

Merciful God.

Asia. And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
Which, from the links of the great chain of things
To every thought within the mind of man,
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels
Under the load towards the pit of death;
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate; T
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
Is howling and keen shrieks day after day;
And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?

Demogorgon.

He reigns.

Asia. Utter his name! A world pining in pain Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down! Demogorgon. He reigns.

Asia.

Demogorgon.

I feel, I know it: who?

I

He reigns.

Asia. Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth

at first,

And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne

Time fell, an envious shadow. Such the state

Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
Before the wind or sun has withered them,
And semivital worms. But he refused
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
The skill which wields the elements, the thought
Which pierces this dim universe like light,
Self-empire, and the majesty of love;

M

For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
And, with this law alone "Let man be free,"
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
To know nor faith nor love nor law, to be
Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign.
And Jove now reigned; for on the race of Man
First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove,
With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
Their shelterless pale tribes to mountain-caves :
And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,
So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded elysian flowers,
Nepenthe, moly, amaranth, fadeless blooms,
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine

Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;
And he tamed fire,-which, like some beast of prey
Most terrible but lovely, played beneath

The frown of man, and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of Power,

And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave Man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the universe;

And science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song ;

And music lifted up the listening spirit,
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;

And human hands first mimicked, and then mocked
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine,
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.

He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,

And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven

Of the wide-wandering Stars; and how the Sun

Changes his lair, and by what secret spell

The pale Moon is transformed when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea.

He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,
The tempest-wingèd chariots of the ocean,

And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then

Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,

And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.

Such, the alleviations of his state,

Prometheus gave to man: for which he hangs
Withering in destined pain. But who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God,

J

And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,

The wreck of his own will, the scorn of Earth,

The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?

Not Jove. While yet his frown shook heaven, ay when

His adversary from adamantine chains

Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare

Who is his master? Is he too a slave?

Demogorgon. All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil: Thou know'st if Jupiter be such or no.

Asia. Whom call'dst thou God?
Demogorgon.

I spoke but as ye speak,

For Jove is the supreme of living things.

Asia. Who is master of the slave? 1
Demogorgon.

If the abysm

Could vomit forth its secrets. . . . But a voice

Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;

For what would it avail to bid thee gaze

On the revolving world? what to bid speak

Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these
All things are subject but eternal Love.

Asia. So much I asked before, and my heart gave
The reponse thou hast given; and of such truths

Each to itself must be the oracle.

One more demand; and do thou answer me