The Angel of the Fiat

Was I born of a Voice, or a luminous beam?
Begotten of God in a rapturous dream?
Who knoweth but One, the Unknown, the Supreme?

For down in measureless time & space
A Word was heard from the focal[?] place
Of an Infinite splendor, and ancient Night – 
Shook, chilled at the mandate: “Let there be Light!”
A billow of glory rolled out at the sound
Of that Voice, overflooding the gloomy profound.
The blackness of frozen abysses became
A wide-waving sea of ethereal flame;
Then first was I conscious of being, yet felt,
Reawakening to life, that my spirit had dwelt
In an infinite Past, and buoyant I flew
O’er the tumult on pinions of purple & blue,
This, strong, iridescent, uplifting my form,
And halcyon that rides on the breast of the storm!

I fiat was heard, or, inaudible, stirred
My soul to its depth: “Be the Power of that Word.”
A spirit of God on the face of the deep,
A Voice in the shadow, a fire on the steep,
Invading the Void where the dark Anarch’s reign
Stretches blank and alone o’er the gloomy Inane[??]
Go forth and create, armed only with light
With Love for thy banner, broad, peerless, and white
By a Seraph borne high on thy conquering flight!
In the breath of that Word, o’er the inchoate world
My wings like an argosy’s sails were unfurled,
How fleet was my speeding, in a rapture obeying
The Voice all unheeding, the perils waylaying
The dauntless invades[??] of chaos & Nights
They are strong, but the only Almighty is Right!

The bastions of Darkness dissolved as I came,
In a nebulous vapor, the ghost of a flame
Pale star-dust in luminous swirls drifted o’er me
And galaxies flashed into being before me,
As white-caps are kindled, phosphoric and pale,
Wen ocean is formed by the wings of the gale,
A diamond that burns on the tip of my wand
Shoots radiate beams to your world and beyond
Like the stars on the hilt of Orion’s sword;
Down[?] gloomiest deeps are its splendors poured
And the shares of the dark in a luminous spray
The line of their waves dissolution betray.

As a farm-boy whirls his fire-tipped staff
Through a lingering smoke, with a happy laugh
At the ?? maelstrom it pictures there,
I waved my wand through the dusty air,
As blithely as he, and its gleaming tract
Was the ring of your golden Zodiac,
And nebulous helices[?] eddied around
Its spiral path in the dim profound,—
Vast whorles that deep in the infinite wound.
And wise men reading their lines, have solved
How in eons and eons the heavens are evolved
And the fathom-line of their dauntless thought
Cannot measure the vortex that whirlpool wrought!
Nor their swift dream follow the billow of light
To their ultimate strand on the Kingdom of Night.

Through ages the vast constellations alone
Could tell on this orbit’s immeasurate zone
I have harried the Anarch whose empire and throne
Are chaos and gloom, with the star of my rod
For the visible sign of the Fiat of God.
Delivered from discord the elements dance
Into order and Beauty along my advance;
From a gulf that seems infinite still, I have won
A universe throbbing with planet and sun
And worlds over worlds in the blue-vaulted hive,
Swarm countless, with beauty and gladness alive.
The monstrous is tamed to my gentle control
And my banner of love waves delight to the soul,
Ye walk by the torch of the death-dealing levin
The black of the Pit is the azure of Heaven,
The brute becomes man and the man grows divine
And crowns me a God at his gratitude’s shrine!