The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Poems [Vol. 9]

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IT fell in the ancient periods Which the brooding soul surveys, Or ever the wild Time coined itself Into calendar months and days.

This was the lapse of Uriel, Which in Paradise befell. Once, among the Pleiads walking, Seyd overheard the young gods talking; And the treason, too long pent, To his ears was evident. The young deities discussed Laws of form, and metre just, Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams, What subsisteth, and what seems. One, with low tones that decide, And doubt and reverend use defied, With a look that solved the sphere,

And stirred the devils everywhere, Gave his sentiment divine Against the being of a line. 'Line in nature is not found; Unit and universe are round; In vain produced, all rays return; Evil will bless, and ice will burn.' As Uriel spoke with piercing eye, A shudder ran around the sky; The stern old war-gods shook their heads, The seraphs frowned from myrtle-beds; Seemed to the holy festival The rash word boded ill to all; The balance-beam of Fate was bent; The bounds of good and ill were rent; Strong Hades could not keep his own, But all slid to confusion.1Open page

A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell On the beauty of Uriel; In heaven once eminent, the god Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud; Whether doomed to long gyration In the sea of generation, Or by knowledge grown too bright To hit the nerve of feebler sight.2Open page Straightway, a forgetting wind Stole over the celestial kind, And their lips the secret kept,

If in ashes the fire-seed slept. But now and then, truth-speaking things Shamed the angels' veiling wings; And, shrilling from the solar course, Or from fruit of chemic force, Procession of a soul in matter,1Open page Or the speeding change of water, Or out of the good of evil born, Came Uriel's voice of cherub scorn, And a blush tinged the upper sky, And the gods shook, they knew not why.