Eve. Nay.

      Adam. And yet the cedars and the junipers

      Rock slowly through the mist, without a sound,

      And shapes which have no certainty of shape

      Drift duskly in and out between the pines,

      And loom along the edges of the hills,

      And lie flat, curdling in the open ground —

      Shadows without a body, which contract

      And lengthen as we gaze on them.

      Eve. O life

      Which is not man's nor angel's! What is this?

      Adam. No cause for fear. The circle of God's life

      Contains all life beside.

      Eve. I think the earth

      Is crazed with curse, and wanders from the sense

      Of those first laws affixed to form and space

      Or ever she knew sin.

      Adam. We will not fear;

      We were brave sinning.

      Eve. Yea, I plucked the fruit

      With eyes upturned to heaven and seeing there

      Our god-thrones, as the tempter said, – not GOD.

      My heart, which beat then, sinks. The sun hath sunk

      Out of sight with our Eden.

      Adam. Night is near.

      Eve. And God's curse, nearest. Let us travel back

      And stand within the sword-glare till we die,

      Believing it is better to meet death

      Than suffer desolation.

      Adam. Nay, beloved!

      We must not pluck death from the Maker's hand,

      As erst we plucked the apple: we must wait

      Until he gives death as he gave us life,

      Nor murmur faintly o'er the primal gift

      Because we spoilt its sweetness with our sin.

      Eve. Ah, ah! dost thou discern what I behold?

      Adam. I see all. How the spirits in thine eyes

      From their dilated orbits bound before

      To meet the spectral Dread!

      Eve. I am afraid —

      Ah, ah! the twilight bristles wild with shapes

      Of intermittent motion, aspect vague

      And mystic bearings, which o'ercreep the earth,

      Keeping slow time with horrors in the blood.

      How near they reach … and far! How grey they move —

      Treading upon the darkness without feet,

      And fluttering on the darkness without wings!

      Some run like dogs, with noses to the ground;

      Some keep one path, like sheep; some rock like trees;

      Some glide like a fallen leaf, and some flow on

      Copious as rivers.

      Adam. Some spring up like fire;

      And some coil …

      Eve. Ah, ah! dost thou pause to say

      Like what? – coil like the serpent, when he fell

      From all the emerald splendour of his height

      And writhed, and could not climb against the curse,

      Not a ring's length. I am afraid – afraid —

      I think it is God's will to make me afraid, —

      Permitting these to haunt us in the place

      Of his belovèd angels – gone from us

      Because we are not pure. Dear Pity of God,

      That didst permit the angels to go home

      And live no more with us who are not pure,

      Save us too from a loathly company —

      Almost as loathly in our eyes, perhaps,

      As we are in the purest! Pity us —

      Us too! nor shut us in the dark, away

      From verity and from stability,

      Or what we name such through the precedence

      Of earth's adjusted uses, – leave us not

      To doubt betwixt our senses and our souls,

      Which are the more distraught and full of pain

      And weak of apprehension!

      Adam. Courage, Sweet!

      The mystic shapes ebb back from us, and drop

      With slow concentric movement, each on each, —

      Expressing wider spaces, – and collapsed

      In lines more definite for imagery

      And clearer for relation, till the throng

      Of shapeless spectra merge into a few

      Distinguishable phantasms vague and grand

      Which sweep out and around us vastily

      And hold us in a circle and a calm.

      Eve. Strange phantasms of pale shadow! there are twelve.

      Thou who didst name all lives, hast names for these?

      Adam. Methinks this is the zodiac of the earth,

      Which rounds us with a visionary dread,

      Responding with twelve shadowy signs of earth,

      In fantasque apposition and approach,

      To those celestial, constellated twelve

      Which palpitate adown the silent nights

      Under the pressure of the hand of God

      Stretched wide in benediction. At this hour,

      Not a star pricketh the flat gloom of heaven:

      But, girdling close our nether wilderness,

      The zodiac-figures of the earth loom slow, —

      Drawn out, as suiteth with the place and time,

      In twelve colossal shades instead of stars,

      Through which the ecliptic line of mystery

      Strikes bleakly with an unrelenting scope,

      Foreshowing life and death.

      Eve. By dream or sense,

      Do we see this?

      Adam. Our spirits have climbed high

      By reason of the passion of our grief,

      And, from the top of sense, looked over sense

      To the significance and heart of things

      Rather than things themselves.

      Eve. And the dim twelve…

      Adam. Are dim exponents of the creature-life

      As earth contains it. Gaze on them, beloved!

      By stricter apprehension of the sight,

      Suggestions of the creatures shall assuage

      The