| Of the morning star enrayed, that rapt archangels prize, For see another blaze in the light of God arise! |
In this tone of almost petulant indignation the stadtholder of heaven proceeds, and only ceases to call the attention of Belzebub to the sound that reaches them from far away. It is the trumpet of Gabriel, who pronounces the same disastrous message at another of the gates of Angelborough. The melancholy of Lucifer is stirred and roused by the passionate declamations of Belzebub, who cries that an earth-worm has crept out of a clod of earth that he, the lord of heaven, might with downcast eyes and bended knees adore it. Lucifer had best not wait for the order to lay down his sceptre, but leave his throne at once, and take the lyre in hand, ready, at the first sight of man, to smite its choids with a servile plectrum. All this ironical advice is little to the taste of the prince.
| Nay, that will I resist, so be it in my power, |
he cries; and Belzebub takes instant advantage of his defiance to build him up in conceit of his own majesty and power. His ever-crescent light, the first and nearest God's, no captious decree can diminish, no upstart mortal approach. Shall a voice of lower pitch thunder from the throne? To carry out this vain design of promoting man, were to violate the sacred right of the eldest child's inheritance. Such an assumption, actually forced on the angelic orders, might provoke all heaven armed against one. Lucifer replies in a spirit of patriotic devotion, which has nothing of the rebel angel in it, but is rather inspired by the recent memories of the holy struggle of the United Provinces against Spain: "If I am a child of the light, a ruler over the light, I shall preserve my prerogative. I budge before no tyrant, nor arch-tyrant. Let who will budge, I will not yield a foot. Here is my fatherland. Let me perish, so long as I perish with this crown upon my head, this sceptre in my fist, and so many thousands of dear friends around me. That fall will tend to honor and unwithering praise,
| En liever d'eerste Vorst in eenigh lager hof, Dan in't gezalight licht de tweede, of noch een minder, |
and better to be first prince of some lower court, than in the blessed light to be second, or even less." These two lines are not less famous in Holland than is with us that single line in which Milton intensified the expression of Vondel's idea in half the number of words. But in the midst of these vague desires and unshaped instincts of defiance, the chariot of Gabriel, in whose hands the hook of God's mysteries lies folded, is driven their way, and Lucifer determines to question the herald further as to the actual import of this message that so trenches on angelic pride. Belzebub leaves him, and the two great princes meet. Lucifer addresses Gabriel with a frank statement of his doubts and apprehensions. For what purpose has the eternal Grace humiliated its children? Why has the angel nature been thus precipitated into dishonor? Will God unite eternity to a beginning, the highest to the lowest, the Creator to the created? Must innumerable godlike spirits, unweighed by bodies, how before the gross and vile element of mortal clay? He closes by entreating Gabriel to unlock the sealed book he holds, and explain to his wondering intelligence this terrible paradox. To this eloquent appeal Gabriel has no very intelligible reply to give: he repeats the statement of destiny, he charges the stadholder with obedience; but he fails to give any very salient reasons for a decree that must have startled and perplexed himself. "Obey God's trumpet! you have heard his will!" is the sum of the explanation that he has to give. Lucifer then draws a picture of the misery of those coming days, when he will have to see man sitting beside the Deity upon his throne, and watch the incense-censers swinging to the sound of thousand thousand unanimous chorales, each bar of which will dull the majesty and diamond rays of the morning star, and echo like wailing in the courts of heaven. Gabriel interposes occasionally with commonplaces about obedience, duty, and contentment, while the lament of Lucifer grows keener and shriller as he mourns beforehand over the ruin of his dignity. Nay, even of God's dignity; for he declares that if the fountain of light is to plunge its splendor into the pit of a morass, the heavens will be struck blind, the stars whirl and fall dizzily into space, and disorder and chaos rule in Paradise. It is to give God his right that he thus presumes to oppose his decree. To which Gabriel pertinently, if rather prosaically, answers: "You are very zealous for the honor of God's name; but without considering that God knows
