Lucifer in Starlight
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.Tired of his dark dominion swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their specter of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
Now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
Now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
He represents the promise of eternal freedom—yet as Meredith’s sonnet so brilliantly argues, this is a promise that evil can never fulfill.
The poem begins as if it were a blasphemous hymn of praise, with the portrait of “Prince Lucifer” rising up among the stars. He seems lofty and inspired. Yet we immediately become aware that something is wrong. Far from triumphing among the infernal fires, Lucifer is “tired of his dark dominion.” In other words, hell is boring. Its king longs to return to home.
Lucifer flies above the earth, a “rolling ball” in space. This phrase evokes the image, used by many philosophers, of the universe as a vast billiard ball table in which all things move as a result of prior causes.
The “cloud” suggests the ignorance that separates us from knowing who or what calls the shots, whether that’s a divine unmoved mover or an underlying scientific principle.
Looking down on our planet we see it populated by “sinners” hugging their “specter of repose.” Does this refer to our imagined safety from ultimate judgment?
In our dozy “repose” we are “poor prey” for the Devil. We’re so easily seduced, we don’t even offer him a challenge.
At this point, Lucifer swallows up our center of vision. He covers the world, from west to east—his black shadow extinguishing the white Arctic snows. The repetition of “now” directs our attention to his each move, unfurling his satanic majesty in our mind—yet the verb “careened” suggests his movements are restless and erratic, like an old jalopy driven by a frustrated adolescent. The ‘o’ sounds throughout the poem echo with his abiding sorrow.
He flies up and up and up through the “wider zones” of space. As he approaches his goal, his “memory” returns. His scars are “pricked”—and perhaps whatever is left of his conscience. The phrase “revolt from Awe” describes his rebellion against the God’s ineffable presence—and allies him with anyone whose only response to greatness is resentment and destruction.
I am irresistibly reminded of a shocking though sadly typical story I was recently told by an academic friend. As a lecturer on such authors as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Keats, he endeavors to pass on an appreciation of genius.
Confronted by the head of his department, he was asked to account for his approach. “Don’t you realize it’s your job to disillusion your students?” she explained. He could only stare back, aghast and disgusted.
Some would rather deny the stars ever existed than to reach out for them. In so doing, they will only ever reach a “middle height.” With no sense of value, they will only sink into mediocrity.
Lucifer cannot pierce the “brain of heaven” because there is no room for chaos at the core of existence. This is the truth. It is irrefutable that the universe is structured with staggering precision, whether it was created or not.
If it weren’t, then we’d all float off into nothingness. Science itself is based not on the rejection of this order but on the attempt to perceive and understand it, such as in the complex permutations of DNA in the human genome.
Confronted by the stars, which in their endless pattern form “the army of unalterable law,” the eternally lawless Lucifer cannot survive. He not only casts himself out of heaven but out of reality altogether.
As Meredith suggests in symbolic form, evil is essentially irrational. Being irrational, it is out of accord with the world around it. It relates only to itself and is thus doomed to fantasy—which can only end in madness, stupidity, or devastating boredom. It destroys freedom.
Goodness, by way of contrast, is rational. It relates to the external world—and by going beyond itself, it is open to the present and to the future. Far from restricting our liberty, it is the foundation of a meaningful—and exciting—life.
George Meredith (1828–1909) was an English novelist and poet during the Victorian era. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.