VIII
Scene—The Surface.
Lucifer and Festus.
Lucifer
Wilt ride?
Festus
I’ll have an hour’s ride.
Lucifer
Be mine the steeds! be me the guide!
Come hither, come hither,
My brave black steed!
And thou, too, his fellow,
Hither with speed!
Though not so fleet
As the steeds of Death,
Your feet are as sure,
Ye have longer breath.
Ye have drawn the world
Without wind or bait,
Six thousand years,
And it waxeth late;
So take me this once,
And again to my home,
And rest ye and feast ye.
They come, they come.
Festus
Tossing their manes like
Pitchy surge; and lashing
Their tails into a
Tempest; their eyes flashing,
Like shooting thunderbolts.
Lucifer
Come, know your masters, colts!
Up, and away!
Festus
Hurrah! hurrah!
The noblest pace the world e’er saw.
I swear by Heaven we’ll beat the sun,
In the longest heat that ever was run;
If we keep it up as we have begun.
Lucifer
I told thee my steeds
Were a gallant pair.
Festus
And they were not thine,
They might be divine.
Lucifer
Thine is named Ruin;
And Darkness mine.
Festus
Like all of thy deeds
Now that’s unfair.
Lucifer
A civiller and gentler beast
Thou hast never crossed at least.
Now, look around!
Festus
Why, this is France.
Nature is here like a living romance.
Look at its vines and streams and skies,
Its glancing feet and dancing eye!
Lucifer
’Tis a strange nation, light yet strong;
Fierce of heart and blithe of tongue;
Prone to change; so fond of blood
She wounds herself to quaff her own.
Festus
Oh! it’s a brave and lovely land;
And well deserving every good
Which others wish themselves alone,
Could she but herself command.
Lucifer
On! on! no more delay!
Or we’ll not ride round
The world all day.
Festus
Good horse, get off the ground!
Lucifer
Sit firm! and if our horses please,
We will take at once the Pyrenees.
’Twas bravely leapt!
Festus
Ay, this is Spain:
Europe’s last land
’Twill e’er remain;
Last in the progress of the earth;
The last in liberty;
The last in wealth and worth;
The last in bigotry.
Lucifer
Turn thy steed, and slacken rein;
Quick! we must be back again:
O’er the vale hid in the mountain,
O’er the merry forest fountain;
Ruin and Darkness! we must fly
O’er crag and rift,
Swift—swift—swift
As the glance of an eye.
Festus
That is Italy—the grave
And resurrection of the slave.
Lucifer
And there lies Greece, whose soul
Men say hath fled.
Festus
Perhaps some God may come,
And raise the dead.
Lucifer
Norward now we’ll hold our course.
Thine I think is the bolder horse;
But bear him up with a harder hand!
Bough riding this o’er Swisserland.
Festus
So all have found it who have tried;
High as their Alps the people’s pride,
Never to have bowed before
The tyrant or the conqueror.
Lucifer
Away, away! before thee lie
The fields and floods of Germany.
Festus
Well I love thee, Father-land!
Sire of Europe, as thou art!
Be free! and crouch no more, but stand!
Thy noblest son will take thy part.
Oh! sooner let the mountains bend
Beneath the clouds, when tempests lour,
Than nations stoop their sky compeering heads
In homage to some petty despot’s power!
The worm which suffers mincing into parts,
May sprout forth heads and tails, but grows no hearts.
Lucifer
There lies Austria! Famous land
For fiddlesticks and sword-in-hand.
Festus
And Poland, whom truly unhappy we call.
Unworthy to rise—unwilling to fall.
Forge into swords thy feudal chain!
Smite e’en the souls of foes in twain!
The fetters have been bound in vain
Round England’s arms: and we are free
As the souls of our sires in Heaven which be.
That earth should have so few
Men, Fathers, like to you!
Lucifer
What matter who be free or slaves;
For all there is one tyranny, the grave’s;
Or freedom, may be. On! on! haste!
Festus
What land is yonder wide, white waste?
Lucifer
Ha! ’tis Russia’s gentle realm:
Whose sceptre is the sword—whose crown, the helm.
Festus
I swear by every atom which exists,
I better love this reckless ride
O’er hill and forest, lake and river wide;
O’er sunlit plain and through the mountain mists,
Than aught which thou hast given beside.
Lucifer
See what a long long track
Of dust and fire behind,
For miles and mile aback!
And shrill and strong,
As we shoot along,
Whistles and whirrs,
Like a forest of firs
Falling, the cold north wind.
Festus
Look! my way I can only read
By the sparks from the hoof of my giant steed.
Lucifer
Where art thou now?
Festus
In Tartar land;
I know by the deserts of salt and sand.
Nor aim nor end hath a wandering life:
Rest reaps but rest, and strife but strife.
With the nations round
They ne’er have mixed;
For good or ill
They stand all still;
Their bodies but rove,
Their minds are fixed.
And yonder lies old China’s wall,
Where gods of gold do men enthral;
Gods whose gold’s their only worth.
Lucifer
Well, is not gold the god of earth?
Now southward, hey! for Hindostan!
The sun beats down both beast and man.
Insect and herb for life do gasp;
The river reeks and faints the asp.
Festus
But blithe are we,
And our steeds, I trow;
And the mane of mine
Yet bears the snow
Which fell on us
By Caucasus.
By the four beasts! but this is warm.
Lucifer
Away! away!
Nor stint nor stay;
We’ll reach the sea before yon storm.
Festus
Wilt take the sea?
Lucifer
Ay, that will we!
And swim as we ride,
Our steeds astride;
Come leap, leap off with me!
Festus
What? shall we leap
Sheer off this steep,
A mile the sea above?
Lucifer
Leap as to save
From worse than a grave
The maid thou most dost love!
Festus
There is a rapture in the headlong leap,
The wedgelike cleaving of the closing deep!
A feeling full of hardihood and power
With which we court the waters that devour.
Oh! ’tis a feeling great, sublime, supreme,
Like the extatic influence of a dream,
To speed one’s way thus o’er the sliding plain;
And make a kindred being with the main.
Lucifer
By Chaos! this is gallant sport;
A league at every breath;
Methinks if I ever have to die,
I’ll ride this rate to death.
Festus
Away, away upon the whitening tide,
Like lover hastening to embrace his bride,
We hurry faster than the foam we ride.
Dashing aside the waves which round us cling,
With strength like that which lifts an eagle’s wing
Where the stars dazzle and the angels sing.
Lucifer
We scatter the spray,
And break through the billows,
As the wind makes way
Through the leaves of willows!
Festus
In vain they urge their armies to the fight:
Their surge-crests crumble ’neath our stroke of might.
We meet and fear not; mount—now rise, now fall—
And dare, with full-nerved arm, the rage of all.
Through anger-swollen wave or sparkling spray,
Nothing it recks; we hold our perilous way
Right onward! till we feel the whirling brain
Ring with the maddening music of the main;
Till the fixed eyeball strives and strains to ken,
Yet loathes to see the shore and haunts of men;
And the blood, half starting through each ridgy vein,
In the unwieldy hand sets black with pain.
Then let the tempest cloud on cloud come spread,
And tear the stormy terrors of his head;
Let the wild sea-bird wheel around my brow,
And shriek—and swoop—and flap her wing as now!
It gladdens! on! ye boisterous billows, roll!
And keep my body; ye have ta’en my soul.
Thou element! the type which God hath given,
For eyes and hearts too earthy, of His Heaven!
Were Heaven a mockery, I would never mourn
While o’er thy bosom I might still be borne;
While yet to me the power and joy was given
To fling my breast on thine, and mingle earth with Heaven.
Lucifer
See yonder! now we quit the main;
For here’s the Cape, here’s land again—
And scour we must o’er Afric’s plain.
Festus
Away, away! on either hand
Nor town nor tower,
Nor shade nor shower—
Nothing but sun and sand.
Lucifer
See, there they are! I knew, right soon,
We would light on the mountains of the moon.
Over them! over, nought forbids!
Festus
Yonder the Nile and the Pyramids?
Hurrah! by my soul!
At every bound
I see, I feel
The earth rash round.
I see the mountains slide away—
That side night and this side day.
Lucifer
Shall we go to America!
Festus
Why, have we time?
Lucifer
Oh, plenty;
Be there, too, ere we reckon twenty.
Another run, another bound!
And we shall leave this lion ground.
Festus
The sea again! the swift bright sea!
Lucifer
Hold hard, and follow me!
Well, now we have travelled upon the waves,
Wilt travel a time beneath?
And visit the sea-born in their caves;
And look on the rainbow-tinted wreath
Of weeds, beset with pearls, wherewith
The mermaid binds her long green hair,
Or rouse the sea-snake from his lair?
Festus
Ay, ay! down let us dive!
Lucifer
Look up! we lack not stars;
And every star thou seest’s alive:
A little globe of life—light—love,
Whose every atom is a living being;
Each the other’s bosom seeing,
Each enlightening the other.
Festus
Oh! how unlike the world above,
Where each doth mainly, vainly strive
To dim or to outshine his brother!
Lucifer
Come on! come on!
Festus
Are those bright spars,
Or eyes of things which ne’er forgive,
That seem to play on us, and glare
With rage that we so far should dare
To search the hidden deeps,
Where tide, the moonslave, sleeps?
Where the wind breathes not, and the wave
Walks softly as above a grave;—
Where coral worms, in countless nations,
Build rocks up from the sea’s foundations;—
Where the islands strike their roots
Far from the old mainland;
And spring like desert-fruits,
Shook off by God’s strong hand,
Up from their bed of sand.
Look, listen! there is music in the cave,
Where ocean sleeps, and brightness in the wave
The sea-bird makes its pillow, and the star,
Last born of Heaven, its azure mirror;—far
And wide, the pale, fine, fire of ocean flows,
Softly sublime like lightnings in repose—
Till roused, anon, afar its flaming spray it throws.
Lucifer
There! now we stand
On the world’s-end-land!
Over the hills
Away we go!
Through fire, and snow,
And rivers, whereto
All others are rills.
Festus
Through the lands of silver,
The lands of gold;
Through lands untrodden,
And lands untold.
Lucifer
By strait and bay
We must away;
Through swamp, and plain,
And hurricane;
Festus
And that dark cloud of slaves
Which yet may rise;—
Though nought shall blot the bannered stars
From Freedom’s skies.
America! half-brother of the world!
With something good and bad of every land;
Greater than thee hare lost their seat—
Greater searce none can stand.
Thy flag now flouts the skies,
The highest under Heaven;
Save the red cross, whereto are given
All victories.
Lucifer
Our horses snort and snuff the sea,
And pant for where we ought to be.
Festus
Well, here we are! and as we flew in,
I said, let Darkness follow Ruin!
Lucifer
’Twas right. Spur on! Come, Darkness, come!
Think of thy well-strown stall!
Festus
For me, I care not what’s to come,
Nor for the fate by which I fall;
But I would that I were Ocean’s son,
The solitary brave,
Like yon sea-snake, to climb upon
The crest of the bounding wave.
Oh! happy, if at last I lie
Within some pearled and coral cave;
While over head the booming surge
And moaning billow shall chaunt my dirge;
And the storm-blast, as it sweepeth by,
Shall, answering, howl to the mermaid’s sigh,
And the nightwind’s mournful minstrelsy,
Their requiem over my grave.
Lucifer
Through morn and midnight, sunset and high noon,
One hour hath ta’en us;—o’er all land and sea,
O’er opening earthquake and iceberg, have we
Swept in swift safety. ’Twill be over, soon.
Behold the common, narrow sea,
Which, like a strong man’s arm,
Keeps back two foes whose lips are white,
Whose hearts with rage are warm.
Festus
England! my country, great and free!
Heart of the world, I leap to thee!
How shall my country fight
When her foes rise against her,
But with thine arm, O Sea!
The arm which thou lent’st her?
Where shall my country be buried
When she shall die?
Earth is too scant for her grave:
Where shall she lie?
She hath brethren more than a hundred,
And they all want room;
They may die and may lie where they live—
They shall not mix with her doom.
Where but within thine arms,
O sea, O sea?
Wherein she hath lived and gloried,
Let her rest be!
We will rise and will say to the sea,
Flow over her!
We will cry to the depths of the deep,
Cover her!
The world hath drawn his sword,
And bis red shield drips before him:—
But, my country, rise!
Thou canst never die
While a foe hath life to fly;
Rise land, and gore him!
Lucifer
Now get on land; and hie along
O’er forest copse, and glade;
We have but a league or two more to go
Before our journey’s made;
With speed that flings the sun into the shade!
Festus
See the gold sunshine patching,
And streaming and streaking across
The gray-green oaks; and catching,
By its soft brown beard, the moss.
Lucifer
Ah! here we get an open plain:
Here we’ll get down.
Away, good steeds! be off again!
Festus
We must be near to Town.
I am bound to thee for ever
By the pleasure of this day;
Henceforth we will never sever,
Come what come may.