FIFTH PHASE

…Hark to those sounds!

They come of tender beings angelical,

Least and most childlike of the sons of God.

FIRST CHOIR OF ANGELICALS:

PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,

And in the depth be praise:

In all His words most wonderful;

Most sure in all His ways!

To us His elder race He gave

To battle and to win,

Without the chastisement of pain,

Without the soil of sin.

The younger son He willed to be

A marvel in his birth:

Spirit and flesh his parents were;

His home was heaven and earth.

The Eternal blessed His child, and armed,

And sent him hence afar,

To serve as champion in the field

Of elemental war.

To be His Viceroy in the world

Of matter, and of sense;

Upon the frontier, towards the foe,

A resolute defence.

ANGEL:

WE now have passed the gate, and

The House of Judgment; and whereas earth

Temples and palaces are formed of parts

Costly and rare, but all material,

So in the world of spirits nought is found,

To mould withal and form into a whole,

But what is immaterial; and thus

The smallest portions of this edifice,

Cornice, or frieze, or balustrade, or stair,

The very pavement is made up of life—

Of holy, blessed, and immortal beings,

Who hymn their Maker’s praise continually.

SECOND CHOIR OF ANGELICALS:

PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,

And in the depth be praise:

In all His words most wonderful;

Most sure in all His ways!

Woe to thee, man! for he was found

A recreant in the fight;

And lost his heritage of heaven,

And fellowship with light.

Above him now the angry sky,

Around the tempest’s din;

Who once had angels for his friends,

Had but the brutes for kin,

O man! a savage kindred they;

To flee that monster brood

He scaled the seaside cave, and clomb

The giants of the wood.

With now a fear, and now a hope,

With aids which chance supplied,

From youth to eld, from sire to son,

He lived, and toiled, and died,

He dreed his penance age by age;

And step by step began

Slowly to doff his savage garb,

And be again a man.

And quickened by the Almighty’s breath,

And chastened by His rod,

And taught by Angel-visitings,

At length he sought his God:

And learned to call upon His name,

And in His faith create

A household and a fatherland,

A city and a state.

Glory to Him who from the mire,

In patient length of days,

Elaborated into life

A people to His praise!

SOUL:

THE sound is like the rushing of the wind—

The summer wind among the lofty pines;

Swelling and dying, echoing round about,

Now here, now distant, wild and beautiful;

While, scattered from the branches it has stirred,

Descend ecstatic odours.

THIRD CHOIR OF ANGELICALS:

PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,

And in the depth be praise:

In all His words most wonderful;

Most sure in all His ways!

The Angels, as beseemingly

To spirit-kind was given,

At once were tried and perfected,

And took their seats in heaven.

For them no twilight or eclipse;

No growth and no decay:

‘Twas hopeless, all-ingulfing night,

Or beatific day.

But to the younger race there rose

A hope upon its fall;

And slowly, surely, gracefully,

The morning dawned on all.

And ages, opening out, divide

The precious and the base,

And from the hard and sullen mass,

Mature the heirs of grace.

O man! albeit the quickening ray,

Lit from his second birth,

Makes him at length what once he was,

And heaven grows out of earth;

Yet still between that earth and heaven—

His journey and his goal—

A double agony awaits

His body and his soul.

A double debt he has to pay—

The forfeit of his sins:

The chill of death is past, and now

The penance-fire begins.

Glory to Him, who evermore

By truth and justice reigns;

Who tears the soul from out its case,

And burns away its stains!

ANGEL:

THEY sing of thy approaching agony,

Which thou so eagerly didst question of:

It is the face of the Incarnate God

Shall smite thee with that keen and subtle pain;

And yet the memory which it leaves will be

A sovereign febrifuge to heal the wound;

And yet withal it will the wound provoke,

And aggravate and widen it the more.

SOUL:

THOU speakest mysteries; still methinks I know

To disengage the tangle of thy words:

Yet rather would I hear thy angel voice,

Than for myself be thy interpreter.

ANGEL:

WHEN then—if such thy lot—thou seest thy Judge,

The sight of Him will kindle in thy heart,

All tender, gracious, reverential thoughts.

Thou wilt be sick with love, and yearn for Him,

And feel as though thou couldst but pity Him,

That one so sweet should e’er have placed Himself

At disadvantage such, as to be used

So vilely by a being so vile as thee.

There is a pleading in His pensive eyes

Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee.

And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself; for, though

Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast sinned,

As never thou didst feel; and wilt desire

To slink away, and hide thee from His sight;

And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell

Within the beauty of His countenance.

And these two pains, so counter and so keen,—

The longing for Him, when thou seest Him not;

The shame of self at thought of seeing Him,—

Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory.

SOUL:

MY soul is in my hand: I have no fear,—

In His dear might prepared for weal or woe.

But hark! a grand mysterious harmony:

It floods me, like the deep and solemn sound

Of many waters.

ANGEL:

We have gained the stairs

Which rise towards the Presence-chamber; there

A band of mighty angels keep the way

On dither side, and hymn the Incarnate God.

ANGELS OF THE SACRED STAIR:

FATHER, whose goodness none can know, but they

Who see Thee face to face,

By man hath come the infinite display

Of Thine all-loving grace;

But fallen man—the creature of a day—

Skills not that love to trace.

It needs, to tell the triumph Thou hast wrought,

An Angel’s deathless fire, an Angel’s reach of thought.

It needs that very Angel, who with awe,

Amid the garden shade,

The great Creator in His sickness saw,

Soothed by a creature’s aid,

And agonised, as victim of the Law

Which He Himself had made;

For who can praise Him in His depth and height,

But he who saw Him reel in that victorious fight?

SOUL:

HARK! for the lintels of the presence-gate

Are vibrating and echoing back the strain

FOURTH CHOIR OF ANGELICALS:

PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,

And in the depth be praise:

In all His words most wonderful;

Most sure in all His ways!

The foe blasphemed the Holy Lord

As if He reckoned ill,

In that He placed His puppet man

The frontier place to fill.

For even in his best estate,

With amplest gifts endued,

A sorry sentinel was he,

A being of flesh and blood.

As though a thing, who for his help

Must needs possess a wife,

Could cope with those proud rebel hosts,

Who had angelic life.

And when, by blandishment of Eve,

That earth-born Adam fell,

He shrieked in triumph, and he cried,

“A sorry sentinel;

“The Maker by His word is bound,

Escape or cure is none;

He must abandon to his doom,

And slay His darling son.”

ANGEL:

AND now the threshold, as we traverse it,

Utters aloud its glad responsive chant.

FIFTH CHOIR or ANGELICALS

PRAISE to the Holiest in the height,

I And in the depth be praise:

In all His words most wonderful;

Most sure in all His ways!

O loving wisdom of our God!

When all was sin and shame,

A second Adam to the fight

And to the rescue came.

O wisest love that flesh and blood

Which did in Adam fail,

Should strive afresh against the foe,

Should strive and should prevail;

And that a higher gift than grace

Should flesh and blood refine,

God’s Presence and His very Self;

And Essence all divine.

O generous love! that He who smote

In man for man the foe,

The double agony in man

For man should undergo;

And in the garden secretly,

And on the cross on high,

Should teach His brethren and inspire

To suffer and to die.