In this wonderful position he does nothing, nor has time to do anything. He has no sooner assumed his throne than his subjects all die off. The world has come to an end.
"Festus. Hark! thou fiend! dost hear?
Lucifer. Ay! it is the death-groan of the sons of men,
Thy subjects—King!
Festus. Why hadst thou this so soon?
Lucifer. It is God who brings it all about—not I.
Festus. I am not ready—and—it shall not be!
Lucifer. I cannot help it, monarch! and—it is!
Hast not had time for good?
Festus. One day—perchance.
Lucifer. Then hold that day as an eternity.
Festus. All round me die. The earth is one great deathbed."
Then follows a millennium, and, after that, Judgment Day. All mankind are saved, and not man only—Lucifer and all his host are re-admitted into Heaven. To Satan, his former throne—which has been preserved vacant for him—is restored, together with all his pristine glory. The drama ends in universal and eternal felicity.
Having said thus much of the plot, we may look a little closer at the philosophy and poetry of this strange performance. We shall touch as lightly as possible upon that admixture of Hegelian metaphysics and evangelical divinity, which, as we have said, constitutes the speculative portion of the work. It occupies, however, no inconsiderable space in the poem. On one occasion Festus pours into the ear of his mistress, in an unbroken harangue of about nine hundred lines, the profound knowledge he has acquired from his supernatural resources. Love is proverbially patient, and Helen listens—at least does not interrupt. Here are some fragments that will show how severely he must have tasked her apprehension. A spirit is speaking in one of the innumerable visions which everywhere obscure the poem.
"She spake, I said, the spirit, and at her word
Behold the heavens were opened as a book.
I am the world-soul, nature's spirit I,
Ere universe or constellation was,
System, or sun, or orb, or element,
Darkness, or light, or atom, I first lived;
I and Necessity, though twain in life,
Yet one in Being. Time and life are one.
But insomuch as nature is destroyed
In God's assumption to Divine estate
Of an especial soul, necessity
Ends in extreme original nothingness."
It is very tantalising to be so near the source of wisdom, and utterly unable to avail ourselves of it. How it fared with Helen we do not know; but for ourselves, it is in vain we are told,—
"Again the world-soul voiced itself, and I
Drank in the fruitful glories of her words
As earth consumes the golden skiey clouds."
These "fruitful glories" are to us mere darkness. We can just gather where some of these "clouds," by no means "golden" to our vision, came from. As, for instance, when we hear that—
"The actual and ideal meet but once,
Where pure impossibilities are facts."
Or, further on, when this world-spirit thus enlightens us:—