PRINCE LUCIFER.*

THERE is much beautiful poetry in this fantasy, for we can hardly call it a drama. We suppose the drift of it to be that while in woman perfect love cannot face death without springing to the faith in a divine law and an immortal life, in man the same experience of love and death will not pass beyond the engendering of a religious hope, though that hope may be deemed sufficiently reasonable to induce the man to concede to the woman's faith the right of governing the practical side of life, and of shaping its usages in accordance with the dictates of religions conviction. At least, this is bow we interpret the not very positive teaching of this curious poem, the scene of which is laid among the valleys of the Matterhorn and Weisshorn, in the region near Zermatt. The hero, Prince Lncifer, who, as we are reminded on the title-page, is a "son of the morning," and a "light-bringer" to Eve, the simple shepherdess who is the heroine of the poem, is supposed to be self-exiled from his own kingdom, where he had abdicated his throne—at least until his subjects would permit him to lay down all arbitrary authority, to abolish the restraints of all positive religion, and to restore the perfect liberty of love. In this voluntary exile, he saves the life of Eve and falls in love with her, gains a complete ascendency, as it would seem, over her mind, per-

• Prime Lucifer. By Alfred Austin. London Macmillan and Co.

suedes her that her Catholic faith is a dream, that it is a higher and better thing to trust to the holy instinct of love than to the bondage of marriage, and induces her to share his solitude. A child is born to them, one to whom the mother's love is passionately given ; but the child falls ill, and in spite of all the aids of medical science, is obviously dying. In a moment the mother is persuaded that it is her sin in deserting her old faith that has brought this calamity upon her, and persuades her lover to recall the Catholic priest,—whom all the village, stimulated by the example of the exiled Prince, had forsaken,—to have the dying child baptised—at least, so we infer, as the child is afterwards buried in con- secrated ground. Prince Lucifer is married to Eve by the rites of the Catholic Church, and thus the village priest recovers his ascendency. The Prince, when summoned back to his kingdom to reign in the name of the purely naturalistic system of which he had been the advocate, is, thereibre, compelled to refuse, since in the meantime he himself has surrendered to the claims of the supernatural order which ho had so vehemently abjured. None the less, the closing dialogue of the piece is apparently meant to indicate that, while the woman's love had so far prevailed over the man's doubts as to bring him to an outward conformity with religious rites, nay, even so far as to confess that some such faith as the Catholic faith may be the true explanation of the mysterious yearnings of the human heart, Prince Lucifer is very far from a convert. Indeed, we are given to understand that not only is Christianity with him a mere hope, but that even with her there remains by no means the sure faith of her youth, but only no passionate a yearning for faith that she hardly knows whether to trust her creed as the real justification of her lover's idealism, or to trust his idealism as the ethereal spirit which ordinary men translate into their creed. Eve exclaims, while under his spell, " Who once has doubted never quite believes ;" to which Lucifer replies, "Who once believed will never wholly doubt." And in this equipoise of faith in agnosticism with agnosticism in faith, the poem concludes, unless, indeed, the singular last scene, in which the village priest appears, only in order to ascribe praise to the divine Trinity,—we suppose, for the faith restored to the community,—is intended to indicate that the balance sways to the side of faith.

But in noticing a poem, we must not discuss the theory which the poem appears to involve. Otherwise, we should have to maintain that it is aft far as possible from true that the masculine intellect rests more easily in doubt than the feminine. All the great religions teachers of the world have been men, as well as all the great philosophical doubters. Men both believe and doubt more vigorously than women. It is not the woman who is apt to believe and the man to doubt, but the woman who is apt to half believe and half doubt, where guidance or sympathy fails her, and the man who is apt to push on to either utter doubt or utter faith. However, we are not concerned with Mr. Austin's moral or spiritual drift so much as with his poetry, and we cannot but say that we admire his poetry very much more than we admire his moral and spiritual drift. The following passage, for instance, expresses Feuerbach's false doctrine that men's faiths are but Brocken-shadows reflecting in gigantic pro- portions the aspirations of man's own heart, finely enough, while the concluding comment, supplied by the mocking common-sense of the man of the world, shows how helpless is the power of reasoning to supply reason with its ultimate starting-points :— "ELUDIEL.

Look how bright The lamp of the Madonna gleams and glows !

LUCIFER.

The most beneficent deity e'er conceived. Want you the brand and scope of Man, he is Maker of Gods. A novice at the trade, He made God out of winds and thunder-clouds, The unpropitious mesons, threatening moons, And the invisible ambuscade of death. Poor frightened babe, he worshipped with a wail, Clutching his mother earth, and in her face Burying his fears. Then childlike artist grown, He craved for form, and from the shapes around, Contorted, fair. the figure of himself, Moulded his deities; iu wood, in stone, Around his bed, his banquet-board, his tomb, As yet a bungler. But when youth infused Into the sap and marrow of bia brain The vernal subtleties of love, he dreamed Of Gods as fair as he himself would be, Majestic, abstract, yet 'kith solid power To make a goddess tremble ; and behold ! Under the yearning passion of his thought The embryonic marble sloughed its shell, And Gods of strength and beauty trod the earth, Their forehead high in heaven. Mighty Gods, And mighty maker of them! Had he done No other thing than thin to prove his craft, Man would have justified his birth, and thus Exonerated Nature for her failures, Too-oft abortive mother.

ABDIEL.

Pagan Prince, There Gods are dead.

LUCIFER.

The Gods all die at last-,

Or fair, or foul; for Man who perisheth Can not beget a God imperishable.

Bat be within hie workshop labours still, Inventing new Divinities. When the pulse Of amorous Manhood slackened, and his heart Pined for the fixed felicities of home, He fashioned God a father, then a child, Gave him a wife and mother, eager still, True to his artist instinct, to exalt The latest idol of himself ; and hence, When with the hearth's sweet sanctities entwined, Came sickness, death, and sorrow, his new Gods He hewed in anguish, beautiful no more, But lacerated, tender, sad, austere, Grave with the weight of disciplined desire : Ingenuous, touching, egoist Maker still !

And how, sagacious Prince, will you decree A strict and permanent divorce betwixt Man and his shadow ?

LUCIFER.

'Tis impossible.

Bat once Man knows the shadow is his own, And starts at it no more, nor grovels down Low on the ground where it is thrown, 'twill serve.

Man will be godlike when he has no Gods, Or owns them creatures of his own begetting, And loves but fears them not. Thus answer them, Or any way you will that leaves my mind Impregnable against all zompromien.

And, pray you, see the oil within that lamp

Remains replenished. [Exit LUCIFER.

ABDIEL (alone).

0 thou sophist, Man !

Reason by reason proved unreasonable, Continues reasoning still ! Confronted close, What is this Reason ? Like the peacock's tail, Just useful for a flourish, nothing more ; And when 'tie down, the world goes on the same.

Poor Lucifer ! He fancies that the brain Can banish contradiction, no that life Trembles no more than doth an even balance, With intellect and passion nicely poised

In friendly scales. Burn on, thou tranquil lamp!

Thou dost not reason."

But the most beautiful part of the poem is to be found in the -various lyrics. Take this, for eximple, where Eve is confessing her dawning passion for the Prince, her lover

:- "Eve.

"I confess' to Almighty God, to the blessed Mary ever Virgin, to

blessed Michael the Archangel, to blessed John the Baptist, to the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and to all the Saints, that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed ; through my fault, through my fault, through my exceeding fault.

Father ! since I last confessed, There is tumult in my breast Tumult that unbidden streams Onward through my days and dreams ; Something haunting every place,

Something that I cannot chase ;

Something, something I still feel

Even when in prayer I kneel ;

Voice that seemeth always near, Voice I listen for and fear; Shadow of a presence fled, Presence I desire and dread.

When the pallid morn doth break, He is waiting as I wake, Come from dreamland dim but deep, Dawning with myself from sleep; Never seen, but part of sight, Mirage both of day and night.

FATHER GABRIEL.

Both he love you, daughter dear ?

ERE.

Never, never, to my ear, Father, bath he whispered love, More than stare that shine above, Seen at night through branch and stem, Do to those that gaze at them.

But, at noon, when lie my flocks Quiet 'mong the quiet rocks, Should a lamb or start or bleat,

Straight I think I bear his feet,

Coming downward, soft and strong, Strong as torrent, soft as song.

Do I take my Rosary out, And with lips and ears devout Low recite with closed eyes The Seven Dolorous Mysteries, Fancies mundane, fancies fair,

Come betwixt me and my prayer.

Nor doth sunset take away Restlessness of dawn and day.

I still eee him when 'tie low, Feel him in the afterglow.

Twilight, shortening all we see, Seems to bring him nearer me.

When I draw around my head

The white curtains of my bed, Wandering in an Eden dim,

All my dreams are drenched with him."

Some of the lyrics put into the months of the spirits of the mountains are, though not so beautiful as this, musical and impressive,—those, for example, where the agnosticism of the fantasy has culminated, just as the encounter of love with death is threatening to break it down :-

" Tree WEIBBHORN.

Roaring, rolling, hear the torrents rolling, roaring, Roaring, racing, each with each ; Foaming forward, and imploring

For the rent they cannot reach.

TILE VISP-THAL TORRENT.

Straining, striving, see the mountains striving, straining, Straining highwaml and more high !

Yearning upward, but seer gaining On the still receding sky.

THE WEIuSnOR1.

Growling, rumbling, hear the thunders rumbling, growling,

Growling with the lust to slay ; '➢long the clefts and gorges prowling, But still finding not their prey.

Ten. VISP-THAL TORRENT.

Mortals, mortals, watch poor vain deluded mortals, Dreaming of the dim divine ; Waiting still at tight-closed portals, Locked out from an empty shrine !

THE MATTERHORN.

Dwarf Man ! that would plummet The deep to its fountains, And soar past the summit Of mists and of mountains ; Behold what avail your Strain and endeavonr ! Effort and failure, For ever and ever !"

There is not a little humour in the picture of the gravedigger Adam, who regards his constant commerce with the grave as procuring for him a kind of prophetic insight into the life of man ; nor are the dialogues of the peasants, introduced, we suppose, to show how worthless the ordinary types of human faith are, without their interest. It would not be easy, for instance, to surpass the cynical wisdom of this remark, —in the mouth of a peasant,--" But for the pleasure women get out of pain, there would be mighty little of it for them in this world." And the following is a saying which we wish journalists would lay to heart; if they did, we should have a rather sounder opinion, instead of the infinite reduplication of the image of the supposed opinion of somebody else :—" Public opinion is no more than this,--- what people think that other people think."

Though Prince Lit cl:fer appears to us little more than the poetical delineation of a drawn battle between faith and agnosti- cism, it is certainly a poem which no one can read without intellectual pleasure, though it be the production of one who, while he sees that love without faith is anguish, has not yet learnt that faith is as inseparable from reason as it is from the deeper kind of peace.