The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 1. Browning Elizabeth Barrett

      Gabriel. I kneel.

      Lucifer. A heavenly answer. Get thee to thy heaven,

      And leave my earth to me!

      Gabriel. Through heaven and earth

      God's will moves freely, and I follow it,

      As colour follows light. He overflows

      The firmamental walls with deity,

      Therefore with love; his lightnings go abroad,

      His pity may do so, his angels must,

      Whene'er he gives them charges.

      Lucifer. Verily,

      I and my demons, who are spirits of scorn,

      Might hold this charge of standing with a sword

      'Twixt man and his inheritance, as well

      As the benignest angel of you all.

      Gabriel. Thou speakest in the shadow of thy change.

      If thou hadst gazed upon the face of God

      This morning for a moment, thou hadst known

      That only pity fitly can chastise:

      Hate but avenges.

      Lucifer. As it is, I know

      Something of pity. When I reeled in heaven,

      And my sword grew too heavy for my grasp,

      Stabbing through matter, which it could not pierce

      So much as the first shell of, – toward the throne;

      When I fell back, down, – staring up as I fell, —

      The lightnings holding open my scathed lids,

      And that thought of the infinite of God,

      Hurled after to precipitate descent;

      When countless angel faces still and stern

      Pressed out upon me from the level heavens

      Adown the abysmal spaces, and I fell

      Trampled down by your stillness, and struck blind

      By the sight within your eyes, – 'twas then I knew

      How ye could pity, my kind angelhood!

      Gabriel. Alas, discrowned one, by the truth in me

      Which God keeps in me, I would give away

      All – save that truth and his love keeping it, —

      To lead thee home again into the light

      And hear thy voice chant with the morning stars,

      When their rays tremble round them with much song

      Sung in more gladness!

      Lucifer. Sing, my Morning Star!

      Last beautiful, last heavenly, that I loved!

      If I could drench thy golden locks with tears,

      What were it to this angel?

      Gabriel. What love is.

      And now I have named God.

      Lucifer. Yet, Gabriel,

      By the lie in me which I keep myself,

      Thou'rt a false swearer. Were it otherwise,

      What dost thou here, vouchsafing tender thoughts

      To that earth-angel or earth-demon – which,

      Thou and I have not solved the problem yet

      Enough to argue, – that fallen Adam there, —

      That red-clay and a breath, – who must, forsooth,

      Live in a new apocalypse of sense,

      With beauty and music waving in his trees

      And running in his rivers, to make glad

      His soul made perfect? – is it not for hope,

      A hope within thee deeper than thy truth,

      Of finally conducting him and his

      To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine,

      Which affront heaven with their vacuity?

      Gabriel. Angel, there are no vacant thrones in heaven

      To suit thy empty words. Glory and life

      Fulfil their own depletions; and if God

      Sighed you far from him, his next breath drew in

      A compensative splendour up the vast,

      Flushing the starry arteries.

      Lucifer. What a change!

      So, let the vacant thrones and gardens too

      Fill as may please you! – and be pitiful,

      As ye translate that word, to the dethroned

      And exiled, man or angel. The fact stands,

      That I, the rebel, the cast out and down,

      Am here and will not go; while there, along

      The light to which ye flash the desert out,

      Flies your adopted Adam, your red-clay

      In two kinds, both being flawed. Why, what is this?

      Whose work is this? Whose hand was in the work?

      Against whose hand? In this last strife, methinks,

      I am not a fallen angel!

      Gabriel. Dost thou know

      Aught of those exiles?

      Lucifer. Ay: I know they have fled

      Silent all day along the wilderness:

      I know they wear, for burden on their backs,

      The thought of a shut gate of Paradise,

      And faces of the marshalled cherubim

      Shining against, not for them; and I know

      They dare not look in one another's face, —

      As if each were a cherub!

      Gabriel. Dost thou know

      Aught of their future?

      Lucifer. Only as much as this:

      That evil will increase and multiply

      Without a benediction.

      Gabriel. Nothing more?

      Lucifer. Why so the angels taunt! What should be more?

      Gabriel. God is more.

      Lucifer. Proving what?

      Gabriel. That he is God,

      And capable of saving. Lucifer,

      I charge thee by the solitude he kept

      Ere he created, – leave the earth to God!

      Lucifer. My foot is on the earth, firm as my sin.

      Gabriel. I charge thee by the memory of heaven

      Ere any sin was done, – leave earth to God!

      Lucifer. My sin is on the earth, to reign thereon.

      Gabriel. I charge thee by the choral song we sang,

      When up against