PART THE SECOND. _Mid-air, above Judæa. ADOR and ZERAH are a little apart from the visible Angelic Hosts._ _Ador._ Beloved! dost thou see?-- _Zerah._ Thee,--thee. Thy burning eyes already are Grown wild and mournful as a star Whose occupation is for aye To look upon the place of clay Whereon thou lookest now. The crown is fainting on thy brow To the likeness of a cloud, The forehead's self a little bowed From its aspect high and holy, As it would in meekness meet Some seraphic melancholy: Thy very wings that lately flung An outline clear, do flicker here And wear to each a shadow hung, Dropped across thy feet. In these strange contrasting glooms Stagnant with the scent of tombs, Seraph faces, O my brother, Show awfully to one another. _Ador._ Dost thou see? _Zerah._ Even so; I see Our empyreal company, Alone the memory of their brightness Left in them, as in thee. The circle upon circle, tier on tier, Piling earth's hemisphere With heavenly infiniteness, Above us and around, Straining the whole horizon like a bow: Their songful lips divorcèd from all sound, A darkness gliding down their silvery glances,-- Bowing their steadfast solemn countenances As if they heard God speak, and could not glow. _Ador._ Look downward! dost thou see? _Zerah._ And wouldst thou press _that_ vision on my words? Doth not earth speak enough Of change and of undoing, Without a seraph's witness? Oceans rough With tempest, pastoral swards Displaced by fiery deserts, mountains ruing The bolt fallen yesterday, That shake their piny heads, as who would say "We are too beautiful for our decay"-- Shall seraphs speak of these things? Let alone Earth to her earthly moan! _Voice of all things._ Is there no moan but hers? _Ador._ Hearest thou the attestation Of the rousèd universe Like a desert-lion shaking Dews of silence from its mane? With an irrepressive passion Uprising at once, Rising up and forsaking Its solemn state in the circle of suns, To attest the pain Of him who stands (O patience sweet!) In his own hand-prints of creation, With human feet? _Voice of all things._ Is there no moan but ours?