_Eve._--Speak no more with him, Beloved! it is not good to speak with him. Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more! We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn, Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting, Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft, We would be alone. Go.
_Luc._--Ah! ye talk the same, All of you--spirits and clay--go, and depart! In Heaven they said so; and at Eden's gate,-- And here, reiterant, in the wilderness. None saith, stay with me, for thy face is fair! None saith, stay with me, for thy voice is sweet! And yet I was not fashioned out of clay. Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?
_Luc._--False Heart--thou thinkest more! Thou canst not choose but think it, that I stand Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves Were fashioned very good at best, so we Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word Which thrilled behind us, God Himself being moved When that august mark of a perfect shape,-- His dignities of sovran angel-hood,-- Swept out into the universe,--divine With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods, And silver-solemn clash of cymbal-wings! Whereof was I, in motion, and in form, A part not poorest. And yet,--yet, perhaps, This beauty which I speak of is not here, As God's voice is not here, nor even my crown I do not know. What is this thought or thing Which I call beauty? is it thought or thing? Is it a thought accepted for a thing? Or both? or neither?--a pretext--a word? Its meaning flutters in me like a flame Under my own breath: my perceptions reel For evermore around it, and fall off, As if, it, too, were holy.
_Adam._--The essence of all beauty, I call love. The attribute, the evidence, the end, The consummation to the inward sense, Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love. As form, when colorless, Is nothing to the eye,--that pine-tree there, Without its black and green, being all a blank,-- So, without love, is beauty undiscerned, In man or angel. Angel! rather ask What love is in thee, what love moves to thee, And what collateral love moves on with thee; Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.
_Luc._--Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love I darken to the image. Beauty--love!
Let us now carry forward this connection between love and beauty in listening to a further testimony of Emerson's in a poem called _The Celestial Love_, where, instead of identifying _beauty_ and _truth_ with Keats, we find him making _love_ and _truth_ to be one.