Halts by me that footfall: Is my gloom, after all, Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly? “Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.” A JUDGMENT IN HEAVEN. {55} ATHWART the sod which is treading for God * the poet paced with his splendid eyes; Paradise-verdure he stately passes * to win to the Father of Paradise, Through the conscious and palpitant grasses * of inter-tangled relucent dyes. The angels a-play on its fields of Summer * (their wild wings rustled his guides’ cymars) Looked up from disport at the passing comer, * as they pelted each other with handfuls of stars; And the warden-spirits with startled feet rose, * hand on sword, by their tethered cars. With plumes night-tinctured englobed and cinctured, * of Saints, his guided steps held on To where on the far crystálline pale * of that transtellar Heaven there shone The immutable crocean dawn * effusing from the Father’s Throne. Through the reverberant Eden-ways * the bruit of his great advent driven, Back from the fulgent justle and press * with mighty echoing so was given, As when the surly thunder smites * upon the clangèd gates of Heaven. Over the bickering gonfalons, * far-ranged as for Tartarean wars, Went a waver of ribbèd fire *—as night-seas on phosphoric bars Like a flame-plumed fan shake slowly out * their ridgy reach of crumbling stars. At length to where on His fretted Throne * sat in the heart of His aged dominions The great Triune, and Mary nigh, * lit round with spears of their hauberked minions, The poet drew, in the thunderous blue * involvèd dread of those mounted pinions. As in a secret and tenebrous cloud * the watcher from the disquiet earth At momentary intervals * beholds from its raggèd rifts break forth The flash of a golden perturbation, * the travelling threat of a witchèd birth; Till heavily parts a sinister chasm, * a grisly jaw, whose verges soon, Slowly and ominously filled * by the on-coming plenilune, Supportlessly congest with fire, * and suddenly spit forth the moon:— With beauty, not terror, through tangled error * of night-dipt plumes so burned their charge; Swayed and parted the globing clusters * so,—disclosed from their kindling marge, Roseal-chapleted, splendent-vestured, * the singer there where God’s light lay large. Hu, hu! a wonder! a wonder! see, * clasping the singer’s glories clings A dingy creature, even to laughter * cloaked and clad in patchwork things, Shrinking close from the unused glows * of the seraphs’ versicoloured wings.