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THE ANGEL OF GOOD DEEDS, with closed book. GOD sent his messenger the rain, | |
| And said unto the mountain brook, | |
| “Rise up, and from thy caverns look | |
| And leap, with naked, snow-white feet, | |
| From the cool hills into the heat | 5 |
| Of the broad, arid plain.” | |
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| God sent his messenger of faith, | |
| And whispered in the maiden’s heart, | |
| “Rise up, and look from where thou art, | |
| And scatter with unselfish hands | 10 |
| Thy freshness on the barren sands | |
| And solitudes of Death.” | |
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| O beauty of holiness, | |
| Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness! | |
| O power of meekness, | 15 |
| Whose very gentleness and weakness | |
| Are like the yielding, but irresistible air! | |
| Upon the pages | |
| Of the sealed volume that I bear, | |
| The deed divine | 20 |
| Is written in characters of gold, | |
| That never shall grow old, | |
| But through all ages | |
| Burn and shine, | |
| With soft effulgence! | 25 |
| O God! it is thy indulgence | |
| That fills the world with the bliss | |
| Of a good deed like this! | |
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THE ANGEL OF EVIL DEEDS, with open book. Not yet, not yet | |
| Is the red sun wholly set, | 30 |
| But evermore recedes, | |
| While open still I bear | |
| The Book of Evil Deeds, | |
| To let the breathings of the upper air | |
| Visit its pages and erase | 35 |
| The records from its face! | |
| Fainter and fainter as I gaze | |
| In the broad blaze | |
| The glimmering landscape shines, | |
| And below me the black river | 40 |
| Is hidden by wreaths of vapor! | |
| Fainter and fainter the black lines | |
| Begin to quiver | |
| Along the whitening surface of the paper; | |
| Shade after shade | 45 |
| The terrible words grow faint and fade, | |
| And in their place | |
| Runs a white space! | |
| |
| Down goes the sun! | |
| But the soul of one, | 50 |
| Who by repentance | |
| Hath escaped the dreadful sentence, | |
| Shines bright below me as I look. | |
| It is the end! | |
| With closèd Book | 55 |
| To God do I ascend. | |
| Lo! over the mountain steeps | |
| A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps | |
| Beneath my feet; | |
| A blackness inwardly brightening | 60 |
| With sullen heat, | |
| As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning. | |
| And a cry of lamentation, | |
| Repeated and again repeated, | |
| Deep and loud | 65 |
| As the reverberation | |
| Of cloud answering unto cloud, | |
| Swells and rolls away in the distance, | |
| As if the sheeted | |
| Lightning retreated, | 70 |
| Baffled and thwarted by the wind’s resistance. | |
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| It is Lucifer, | |
| The son of mystery; | |
| And since God suffers him to be, | |
| He, too, is God’s minister, | 75 |
| And labors for some good | |
| By us not understood! | |
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