University of Virginia Library

ACT III.

SCENE I.

[A valley among hills covered with forests of oak and beech. Below, in the distance, a richly cultivated plain, a city with Gothic towers, and a broad river, dotted with the sails of vessels.]
POET
(passing).
Earth, thou art lovely as any star,
With rest so near, desire so far!
Peace from the tree-tops on the hill
Sinks, and the blissful fields are still;
While tender longing, pure of pain,
Dwells in the blue of yonder plain;
And all things Fancy, faring free,
May clasp or covet, come from thee!
Something of mine is everywhere,
Trodden as earth or breathed as air;
Giving, with magic sure and warm,
Voice to silence and soul to form,
Calm to passion and speed to rest,
Borrowed or lent of mine own breast
By that swift spirit that mocks the eye,
As over thee the unfeatured sky,
Heaving its blue tides, endlessly,
To planets that fail to lift the sea!
I am thy subject, yet thy king:
Give me thy speech, and let me sing!

[Exit.
GÆA.
Step to the music of the song I gave,
My Poet, homeward! Lovers, find in me
Your voiceless eloquence and balm of bliss,
That else were pain! Mine ancient life revives
With sweeter potency: I am a Soul
Responsive unto all that stirs in Man,
Transforming passion to a natural voice,
From airy murmurs of the fragrant weeds
To the hushed roar of pines, the tramp of waves,
And bellowing of the ocean-flooded throats
Of headland caverns! Wafts of odorous air,
The thousand-tinted veils of dawn and day,
The changeless Forms, that from the changing Hours
Take magic as a garment, stellar fire
Sprinkled from hollow space, and secret tides
Lifted by far, fraternal planets,—these
Have grown to speech, companionship and power.
Tired of the early mystery, my child
Hearkens, as one at entrance of a vale
Never explored, for echoes of his call;
And every lone, inviolate height returns
His fainter self, become a separate voice
In answer to his yearning! Not as dam,
With hungry mouth,—as goddess, with bowed heart
He wooes me; or as athlete, million-armed,
Summons my strength from immemorial sleep.
He comes, the truant of the ages,—comes,
The rash forgetter of his source; as lord
He comes,—lord, paramour and worshipper,
Tyrant in brain, yet supplicant in soul,
With fond compulsion and usurping love
To make me his!
Still scorned are ye, fair Forms
I sheltered? Under yonder beechen shade
Hath human longing set ye? Hide my streams
Your beauty still, my mists your loosened hair?

NYMPHS
(at a distance).
As the night-air pants;
As the wind-harp chants;
As the moonlight falls
Over foliage walls;
As gleams forerun
The smile of the sun
When clouds are parting,
Our beings are.
We are held afar
By a knowledge burning
In the heart of yearning;
For the necromancy
Of the fonder fancy
Breathes back into air
The Presences fair
It would fain restore:
We are Souls and Voices,
But Forms no more!

GÆA.
Ye highly live, more awful in the spell
Of unseen loveliness! No need to quit
Your dwellings, strike the dull sense into fear,
And win a shallow worship: Man's clear eye
Sees through the Hamadryad's bark, the veil
Of scudding Oread, hears the low-breathed laugh
Of Bassarid among the vine's thick leaves,
And spies a daintier Syrinx in the reed.
For him that loves, the downward-stooping moon
Still finds a Latmos: Enna's meadows yet
Bloom, as of old, to new Persephones;
And 'twixt the sea-foam and the sparkling air
Floats Aphrodite,—nobler far than first
These bright existences, and yours, withdrawn
To unattainable heights of half-belief,
Divine, where whole reflects the hue of Man.

NYMPHS.
In the upward pulse of the fountain;
On the sunny flanks of the mountain;
Where the bubble and slide of the rill
Is heard when the thickets are still;
Where the light, with a flickering motion,
From the last faint fringes of ocean
Is sprinkled on sand and shell;
In the ferns of the bowery dell,
And the gloom of the pine-wood dark,
And the dew-cloud that hides the lark,
The sense of Beauty shall feel us,
The touch of delight reveal us!

[Exeunt.
GÆA.
Fear not, sweet Spirits, what unflinching law,
Tracking creative secrets. Man may find
In my despotic atoms! Who denies
Confirms ye to the sense that bade him seek.
But thou, mine Eros, through whose ministry
Stole back the banished Beauty,—as, at first,
The harmless tear-like trickle of a stream
Through some Cyclopean dam, that softly wins
A vantage, till the whole collected lake
Sets its large lever to the trembling stones,
And freedom follows,—thou, who, well I know,
Hidest beneath this roof of summer leaves,
Or where the minty meadow-breath makes cool
Thine ardent brow,—appear, and speak again!

EROS.

GÆA.
Not mine to guess thy riddles,—yet I see
Near manhood in thine adolescent limbs,
Proud lustre in thine eyes, as, through the joy
That still around thee sparkles, other joy
Made prophecy, but never of an end,
And mystic sweetness in thy budded lips.
Nathless, whenever my strong spouse, the sun,
Stoops nearer, sets his bosom unto mine
And stirs all fond, sad raptures of my frame,
Then most I note thee, hurrying to and fro.
Sure in thy speed; or when he lingering leaves
My bed of long delight and summershine
With last caresses, thou on every hill
Dost walk in light, and breathest through the woods
Voluptuous odors of the yearning year!
Exalt thyself past limits of my law,
I feed thee still! What soaring mist of mine,
Sun-gilded, but the iron frost of space
Shall seize? What odor reaches to the stars?

EROS.
Nor the soul of the wandering odor, nor the light of the mist, is thine,
Who art rolled through day and darkness, at the will of a star divine;
Who claim'st the arrows of beauty, alone from its quiver sped,—
Thou readest but half the riddle in the dust that else were dead!
Thy life is blown upon thee, as a seed from another land.
And the soil, and the dew and water, are the bounty of thy hand;
But the secrets of whence and whither are mine for my children's need:
I go with the flying blossom, as I came with the flying seed!

SCENE II.

[A spacious square, at the extremity of a city. In front, a church: on one side a cemetery, with an open gateway: on the other side a market.]
PYRRHA
(looking towards the gateway).
There, out of stubborn wrong and thwarted hope
And helpless ignorance, Earth has only gained
A heavier mould; and she must heap her dead—
As the slow ages on her bare emerge
Gathered the dust for grass, the deepening sod
For forests—ere our seeds of total life
Find rootage, and with undecaying green
Redeem this desolation!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Yea, but eyes
That once behold, and souls that once believe,
Lend faith and vision as a lamp its flame!

PYRRHA.
Ay, Faith! that limits where it should enlarge,—
That sees one only color, where the sun
Brands ever three, nor suffers even them
To burn unblended!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
'T is the curse of souls
That selfless aspiration looks above
To find joy, knowledge, beauty, waiting there,
Because abandoned here!

PYRRHA.
So mine await:
They doubt me, not forbid me.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Doubt but feeds
The callow faith that has not tried its wings.
Be comforted!

PYRRHA.
Deukalion, is it time?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
How often, Pyrrha, have we watched the morn
Divinely flush—and fade! How often heard
Music, that, ere it bade us quite rejoice,
Died, echoless! Yet Patience cannot be,
Like Love, eternal, save at times it grow
To swift and poignant consciousness of self;
And something veiled from knowledge whispers now
Prometheus stirs in Hades!

PYRRHA.
Darest thou call?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
I dare not. Epimetheus slowly clears
Back through the gloom and chaos of the Past
The path of his return. The widening sphere
His keener vision measures now for Man
Discrowns Tradition, shrinks the span of Time,
And throws the primal purpose of our fate
Once more upon us. Thus the Titan stands
Nearer than when the frosty fetters burned
His limbs on Caucasus!

PYRRHA.
And also she,
Pandora, freed from long disgrace of Time,
Since now her Hebrew shadow flings away
The fabled evil! When the Past is purified,
We shall possess the Future.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Yea, our source,
As from the bosom of a mountain mist,
Leaps out of Nature, innocent at last!
In our beginning Destiny divine
Set the accordant end; and this, obscure,
Makes that with monstrous intervention dark
To human souls. Already Earth is red
With ebbing life-blood of the wounded Faiths
That shriek, and turn their faces to the wall,
And shut their vision to the holier Heir,
Who, unproclaimed, awaits his lordship. Lo!
How he who governs these austerer lands
Withholds his gifts, betrays his promises,
Gives freedom for repentance, not for change,
Nor other answer than his own, to doubt!
Foe to Medusa, in his secret dreams
He wears her triple crown,—allows, perforce,
Urania, banished from her first abodes,
Chill hospitality, an exile's fare,—
No right of home! What will his welcome be,
When Epimetheus, hand in hand with her,
Tells the new story of the human Past?

[Enter a Man and Woman.]
PRINCE DEUKALION
(to the Man).
Say, dost thou know me?

MAN.
At a distance, I
Have seen thee pass: I never heard thy name.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
I speak it not.

MAN.
Thou movest my desire
To know, yet, save the knowledge be allowed,
No less my fear: there's brightness on thy face,
As one who sees no pitfall in delight,
Nor snare in science, nor the burden bears
Of fallen nature.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Whence is thine so dark?
Art thou in love with pain?

MAN.
I cannot help
Some joys of life, and guilty dreams of more:
But He who suffered for my sake forbids
That I rejoice too greatly.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Wisdom, then,
Wilt thou accept?

MAN.
The wisdom of the world?
Nay: 'tis vain-glory.

WOMAN
(to Pyrrha).
If indeed for me
Thou hast a message, as thine eyes declare,
Thou knowest my need.

PYRRHA.
I know thine ignorance.

WOMAN.
I would have knowledge, were the entrance free.

PYRRHA.
Want forces entrance, justifies itself,
As hunger crime! But learn what Beauty is,
And this, thy present weakness and reproach,
Becomes immortal power!

WOMAN.
When I behold
Thy face, I seem to own it.

PYRRHA.
Set thou, then,
Whatever visage unto thee I wear
Within the shrine of thy desires, thereon
To brood in longings born of motherhood,
That so thy daughters shall inherit it,
And I in them be nearer!

MAN
(to the Woman).
Strange the words,
Their meaning doubtful: how shall thou and I,
Bearing Eternity's full weight alone,—
Ours all the debt, foreclosed if other coin
Save what our Faith supplies be given as due,
And poor in deeds that earn it,—how shall we
Accept such help? He wears the face of Power,
She that of Beauty; what if both mislead?

WOMAN.
Her spirit touches me, as doth the sun
A folded bud: if I become a flower,
The hue and fragrance locked within my life
Without my will are scattered.

MAN.
Come away!

[They pass on.
PYRRHA.
No more the shepherd and the shepherdess,
Our children! 'T is the wisdom of the school,
So grave in childish self-sufficiency,
That turns on Nature and disowns her bliss.
I know not what large hope awakens now:
Pandora, Titan-mother! rise and see
How speeds thy purpose!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Ere thou summon her,
Or he unsummoned rises, let us seek
The stately High-Priest who hath ruled so long
These broadening realms, advancing nobler fate
Even where he willed it not, the instrument
Of that diviner mystery than his God!
The sky-cast shadow of a Hebrew Chief
Fades o'er his altars; and the aureoled Love
That later veiled the tyranny, reveals
A change in its intensest splendor wrought
Invisibly: if he hath eyes to bear,
His ear may hearken, when Prometheus calls.

SCENE III.

[The interior of a spacious church. In the chancel a lofty altar, on the front panel whereof is carved a rayed triangle: on the top of the altar rests the Ark of the Covenant, above which towers a Cross. Calchas, High-Priest, stands upon a raised platform before the altar, clad in an ephod of gold, blue, purple and scarlet, with mitre, girdle and breast-plate of twelve stones, as described in Exodus xxxix. Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha in the nave.]
PYRRHA.
Still old the symbols!—and the spirit looks
Backward to whence they came.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
So should it look,
But free, across a conquered realm! The Past
Is Man's possession, not his mocking glimpse
Through loopholes of the jail where Reason pines.
It gives the Prophet vision, as a root
Declares the measure of the branch it feeds;
But here are teachers, who, to lead the blind,
Hoodwink themselves. What common eye can see
Past things as present, ancient miracle
To-day's dull fact, God's hand upon the man
It looks at? Over gulfs of ages these
First find their sanctity, as our dark orb
Drinks light from ether till it grows a star.

PYRRHA.
It is the heart that dares not look too near,
Nor yet too high.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
The heart, that doubts the brain,—
Feeling, divorced from knowledge,—this it is
That neither loves us nor can be estranged;
That dimly plays with our conjectured will;
Obeys, mistrusts itself and grows ashamed,—
Then turns apostate!

PYRRHA.
Nay, Deukalion, nay!—
That, born anew, retains the old desire;
That, kindled once, keeps memory of the flame;
That out of thwarted yearning, baffled peace,
And endless pangs of vain self-surgery,
Still floods all life with fond presentiment
Of thee and me!

[Sound of the organ.
CHANT.
From this body of death deliver,
This burden of woes!
We call, as they called where the river
Of Babylon flows.
Like the wail of a captive nation
Is the sound of our lamentation.
From the pleasures that still delight us;
From the daily sins that smite us;
From the difficult, vain repentance
And the dread of the coming sentence;
From the knowledge that gropes and stumbles;
From the pride of mind that humbles;
From beauteous gifts that harden,
And bliss that implores not pardon;
From the high dreams that enslave us,
We beseech Thee, save us!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Joy in Thy world divine,
And the body like to Thine;
Pride in the mind that dares
To scale Thy starry stairs,
Rising, at each degree,
The least space nearer Thee;
Strength to forget the ill,
So Thy good to fulfil;
Freedom to seek and find
All that our dreams designed,
Driven by Thine own goads
Forth on a thousand roads;
Patience to wrest from Time
Something of Truth sublime,
Or of Beauty that shall live,—
We beseech Thee, give!

CALCHAS.
(Perceiving Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha.)
I do mistrust these strangers, Since that she,
Medusa, thrust them out from all her realms,
What time she banished her of orb and star
I sheltered (threatening now with adder sting
For life revived), they wander to and fro—
Or others in their likeness,—and disturb
My settled sway. Freedom I gave, because
Free-will must choose me,—bade men seek the truth.
Because the truth conducts them back to me.
Urania, with her forward-peering eyes,
Saw not the vestments, which, to mark her mine,
I laid upon her shoulders: suddenly now,
Full-statured, with uplifted head she walks,
And drops her loosed phylacteries in the dust.
These, too!—whate'er they purpose must be mine,
If good, since other good exists not: yet
They stir some quick perversity of heart
In man and woman, teach abolished needs,
And open gates I shut—but may not bar.
They come this way. I'll question them.

PRINCE DEUKALION
(advancing).
High-Priest,
Thou shouldst proclaim us, and thou know'st us not!

CALCHAS.
Much have I heard.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
What most?

CALCHAS.
That ye do breed
Confusion.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Nay!—but out of thine we build
The ruined harmony.

CALCHAS.
Then, enemies
Ye now declare yourselves, where I but deemed
Some seed of pride had sprouted o'er its fall.
What is 't ye do?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
What thou hast never done,
Who hast one purpose where thy sons need all,
Who keep'st them puppets lest they grow to Gods!

CALCHAS.
I seek to save them.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
They will save themselves,
Not by one anchor which may drag them down,
But carried outward by all winds that blow
Into the shoreless deep! Give knowledge room,
Yea, room to doubt, and sharp denial's gust
That makes all things unstable! Tremble not
When stern Urania writes the words of Law:
Make once more Life the noble thing it was
When Gods were human, or the nobler thing
It shall be when The God becomes divine!

CALCHAS.
Blasphemer!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Curse, if so it comfort thee.
Thy weapon, too, is terror; but when men
Cease to be cowards, idle Hell shall close.

PYRRHA.
Yield what thou canst: there still is time. Give up
Dead symbols of the perished ages: doff
The trappings of a haughty alien race
Whose speech was never thine: keep but the spark
Of pure white Truth which nor repels, forbids
Nor stings, but ever broadening warms the world!
Think what thy lips have promised, how thy hand
Rent suddenly our chains! Nearest thou art
Of them that sway the torpid souls of men:
So, then, be all where thou art but a part,—
Be all, teach all, grant all, and make thyself
Eternal!

CALCHAS.
Am I not so, now?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Not yet,
Save in the taste of that thou offerest,—
Repentance.

PYRRHA.
And thou mightst be, in thy love.

CALCHAS.
Repentance? Love? What words are these you speak?
One wins the other: I announce them both,
And all beatitude that follows them.
Beyond the curse inherited by flesh,
Beyond this cloudy valley, where as rain
Fall human tears, and sighs of vain desires
Make an incessant gust, I know the way
To refuge, and the one permitted bliss
Of living souls.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Let me behold that bliss!
I have the right of entrance: fear thou not!
The phantom key thy hand yet seems to clutch
Lend me a moment; or, canst thou not yield,
Then stand aside!—O Father, is it time?

PROMETHEUS
(rises).
What matters, whether soon or late?
Thine is the burden, thine the fate.
Long hast thou waited, not too long,
For patience is the test of wrong;
And thee the slow years may allow
Some right of deeper vision now.
The trial art thou strong to bide,
Explore thy way!—there is no guide.

[Disappears.
PRINCE DEUKALION.
(Seizing the horns of the Ark upon the altar.)
I know what holy mysteries were thine
In the old days: but what art thou become?
Yield up thy spells to one who saw thee pass
Through the dusk halls where Amun-Ra was lord,
Or Nile-borne on thy barque of flowers! What lore
Of wandering souls—of life beyond the end—
Is thine to give us?
[A pause
Nothing more than this?—
Gray emptiness of space, with here and there
A flying shadow, whether man or fiend
The eye detects not: something vast of form,
Yet Hebrew-featured, stirred to mighty wrath
By hostile Gods, defending, as it seems,
A throne secure,—uncertain of His will,
And undecided if His sons shall live.
They, too, poor ghosts! must hover on the verge
Betwixt two worlds: they reach no firmer soil
Of airy substance, yet which may upbear
Thin feet of spirits, but in endless whirl
Drift through the shapeless void. I'll look no more.
[He lays his hand upon the Cross.
Symbol of Fire, the oldest, holiest!
Forget thy speech on Asia's hoary hills,
Dip thy pure arms in blood of sacrifice,
And tell me what thou heraldest!

CALCHAS.
Avaunt!

PYRRHA.
There is less profanation in his act
Than in thy prayers. Be silent,—wait the end!

[Prince Deukalion's eyes close: he slowly sinks down and lies, leaning against the altar.

SCENE IV.

THE VISION OF PRINCE DEUKALION.
As out of mist an unknown island grows,
It swam in space, surrounded with repose.
“Behold,” an airy whisper said, “the sphere
Through hope existing, as yon pit through fear;
For what men pray for—while they pray—shall last,
Since Faith creates her Future as her Past.”
No light of sun, or moon, or any star
Touched the white battlements that gleamed afar,
Or painted with strong ray the pastures wide
Between slow stream and easy mountain-side,
But over all such cold and general glow
As moonlight spreads upon a land of snow,
Yet fairer, shone; and myriads wandered there,
Giving no stir to that unbreathing air,
White as the meadow-blossoms, and as still,
And white as clouds on each unshadowed hill.
A city vast, that bore an earthly name,
With thousand pinnacles of frost and flame
Stood in the midst; and twelvefold flashed unrolled
The pavements of her avenues of gold,
Where harps and voices one high strain did pour
Of “Holy, holy, holy!” evermore.
And out the centre, from the burnished glare,
A golden stairway sloped athwart the air,
And faded upward, where a Phantom shone
That changed in form to them that gazed thereon.
These, side by side, and wing caressing wing,
Rested like wild doves on their wandering,
Innumerable: and o'er them seraphim
Winnowed rich plumes to make the glory dim,
And children's faces, kissed with sweeter light,
Circled in swarms around a Throne of white.
Shapes of no sex, too beautiful for man,
Too cold for woman, spread the rosy van
And slanted, shining, far amid the space.
Some pleasure came on each uplifted face
To see those messengers,—some rapid awe,
When that high Form, with hidden brow, they saw,—
But else their eyes were weary, and the fold
Of each white mantle slept upon the gold.
Dead seemed their hands, save when the harps they smote
And made accord of one perpetual note.
The entrance of a living spirit there
Gave a quick motion to the torpid air,
Startled the light with shadow, and breathed out
Keen earthly odors; yet of dread or doubt
Among the myriad myriads was no sign.
A listless wonder woke in souls supine,
But made no speech, for consciousness was numb,
Save to the awful voice of what must come,
As on dead continents the live sea's roar:
“Forevermore! Forevermore!”

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Angels, a moment stay
Your heavenly errands, and betray
What nature, beautiful and dim,
As in some twilight dream of power
Is born for one bright hour,
Ye have received from Him!
Shorn of all kin are ye,
Companionless, unwed
With primal mortals, loveless, passion-free,
Not living, neither dead!
Declare me this:
Is it your only bliss
To sail, soft-shining, with your wings outspread?
To cheat the ecstasy ye cannot share,
With apparitions fair?
To give each holy dream
Its warranty supreme,
The palm to promise, and the lily bear?

ANGELS.
We cannot know:
We are the feather, His the breath to blow.
Though human yearning mould
Our passive being, we are cold.
Pity, to eyes that mourn;
Passion, to hearts that burn;
Reward, to lives that dare;
Salvation, unto prayer,—
What face men look for, such we wear!
Unborn, we have no destiny,
Nor other being than to be;
Nor service, but to soar
'Twixt One Adored and many that adore.
What should we further tell?
Thou hast no message: so farewell!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
But ye, Transfigured, whose denial
Endured the life-long trial,—
Pure souls, whose only human terror
Made Thought an ambushed error,—
Who now possess, secure from losing,
The bliss of your own choosing,
Speak, are there needs ye here have sighed for,
More than on earth ye died for?

SPIRITS.
Is it permitted?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
I am here.

SPIRITS.
We tremble, yet we must not fear.
The bright temptation of thy brow
We once resisted, conquers now;
But thought unused and voice unheard
Deny us the consenting word.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Look on me, and it shall be given!

SPIRITS.
O joy! O pain!
As leaves from autumn boughs are driven,
At last, at last,
Thy will hath torn us from our Past,
And half we live again!
Yea, here is glory, here is bliss,
Arms that sustain us, lips that kiss,
And rest, and peace, and pain's reward
In that pure light which seems the Lord;
But—bliss without endeavor,
And lips that cannot part;
And rest that sleeps forever
In each immortal heart;
And light whose splendor hideth
The Face we burn to see—
What is it that divideth
Eternity and thee?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
I am eternal, even as ye.
But your concealed, undying woe
Is this: ye have not sought to know.

SPIRITS.
We did obey.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
But whom, ye may not say.
Have ye beheld Him?

SPIRITS.
Nay.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Once more upon Him call:
Uplift awakened eyes!
Though falling as ye fall,
He rises as ye rise.

SPIRITS.

SCENE V.

[A wide plain, uninhabited, dotted with ancient mounds. Epimetheus, seated on a fallen pillar, at the doorway of a half-exhumed palace, with a broken tablet in his hand.]
EPIMETHEUS.
It is the speech I heard but yesterday,
When all this buried pomp stood bright in air,
Terrace on terrace, till the topmost seemed
Fit for the feet of some descending God,
While bannered masts and galleries of sound
Hailed him, invisible; and whispered words
To consecrated ears, these tablets bore;
And the wide shadow of this power was thrown
O'er half the world. What said Prometheus then,
When, groping first on fields of unblown mist,
I sought to hold the ever-vanishing forms
With stable vision?—“'T is the Future's gift,
To know the Past!”
Yet I had mused, not slept,
Through weary ages: 't was alone their dust
That made me seem so hoary. Action, now,
And waxing knowledge, destiny fulfilled,
Restore the ardors of Titanic youth.
Though lost the primal struggle, lost the joy
That even defeat to high defiance yields,
I am at last a Power, and challenge Powers,—
A truth, and thus a terror! In my veins
Burns eager blood; I know my brow is fair,
My voice hath music, and the ears of men
Perforce must hearken, as I tell the tale
Of ever older and of mightier Pasts,
Lost tongues and sacred secrets, stolen faiths,
Perverted symbols, and the favor shed—
One tribe usurped—upon the Chosen All!

[Enter Urania.]
URANIA.
What doest thou here?

EPIMETHEUS.
I triumph!

URANIA.
Wherefore now,
More than erewhile?

EPIMETHEUS.
I have remembered that
Forgotten, when I saw nor understood;
And now remembered since I know.

URANIA.
(Taking up a handful of dust.)
And I
Have found in this the secret of all worlds.
Thy Past? I know no Past! Thou dream'st of time,—
It is not, was not! Nothing is, save Law.
Thy feet are on my paths: not heeding them
I guided thee, yet in so much of power
As may be given thee, more of freedom lies
For them that follow me and cannot turn.

EPIMETHEUS.
Proud wast thou ever.

URANIA.
Proud, because assailed,
As who, with full hands bearing gifts, is spurned.

EPIMETHEUS.
Yet pause! I am no longer slack of thought:
I know thy being. Though I give return
Of needed help, the will which sent me forth
Hath still some ancient empire over thee.

URANIA.
Yea, thou art wakened! Why should I conceal
From thee, thus proud, associate soon with him,
Thy brother, whose large vision moves with mine,
The ultimate barrier where I needs must pause?
But thou, and every Titan yoked with thee,
And every track that other knowledge treads,
And all the visions unto Faith allowed,
Reach not so far: what matter if I halt,
Not impotent, where no disturbance comes
To vex me, resting but a little while?
Push back that point where thou rememberest not
Through countless æons, still thou find'st my trail!
Grasp thou the seeds of life in sun and star,
And sink then, fainting, where I stand and smile!
'T is not subjection, but a limit, rules:
My work is baffled since I could not give
The primal impulse.

EPIMETHEUS.
Neither thou, nor he,
Prometheus!

URANIA.
Cease!—thy words renew the chill
That seizes me at each new victory.
The cry of old affections shakes my hand;
The gush of human heart's-blood comes to dim
My crystal eyesight; and a something lost,
Because unsought, perchance unsearchable,—
Unknown, because unknowable to sense,—
Assails my right.

EPIMETHEUS.
There is no enmity
Where neither can be lord: do thou thy task,
I mine, and each eternal Force its own!

SCENE VI.

[The shore of the open ocean: morning.]
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Thou lookest eastward, past the gem-like round,
The sky of opal and the sea of pearl:
I surely misinterpret not thy hope,
Or is 't thy longing?

PYRRHA.
Say, my haughty faith,
That will not pray for what it must expect.
Once have I called on Eos, but I call
No more: the silver echo of her words
Repeats itself within me, as their vows
To happy lovers. Thus it was she spake:
“Faith, when none believe,
Truth, when all deceive,
Freedom, when force restrains,
Courage to sunder chains,
Pride, when good is shame,
Love, when love is blame,—
These shall call me in stars and flame!”
Thence call I not; but, yonder, as I gaze,
The twin stars, visible no more to sense,
Glimmer, the phantoms of her eyes; the red,
Now fading, is her cheek's immortal flush,
And the loose golden opulence of her hair
These clouds untangle.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Here her face revealed
Would doubly promise, as the mirroring wave
Doubled her loveliness. The conquering Gods
Made too much haste to seize a mountain-throne:
This were their seat; but old Poseidon took
The realm that should be Jove's, where, set between
The unknown silence and the noise of earth,
Are two pure elements, pavement and dome.
Here glimpse upon the soul imagined shores;
Here Fancy out of changeful air may build
Her far-off palaces; yet what of truth,
Accepted fate or world-defying will
Exists, confirms as well its being, here.
Time is the billow, Destiny the shore.

PYRRHA.
Deukalion! Seest thou naught?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
I see the gray
Of waves that first shall darken to the sun;
The distance, where no separating line
Cuts the soft web of sky-inwoven sea;
And all the dipping rondure of the world
Beneath it, where the mighty Day looks down,
Or sadly lingers for the word and deed
Undone, unspoken!

PYRRHA.
Ah! as out of air
It suddenly grew, I see a glorious barque
With bellied canvas of the morning cloud,
The cordage of translucent vapor spun,
The hull a curve of sea-foam, foamlessly
Borne onward, silent, with unruffled prow
Approaching us! Two forms direct her speed,
And either's arm is on the other's neck,
And locks of gray and gold are mixed above
Their equal brows. Thou hast not called them?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Nay,
And yet, beholding not, I know the twain.
Oh, come ye hither from the unmeasured Deep,
And not from Hades? Come ye with the morn,
Unsummoned, though the morning's goddess fail?
Come ye, at last, whose birth reversed your fates,
United, one in knowledge, one in power?
Father, and thou, alike a father, hail!

[Prometheus and Epimetheus appear.]
PROMETHEUS.
What language hath, to-day, the sea,
To chill, inspire or menace thee?
What eager hope or spleen forlorn
Blew on thee through the gates of morn?—
Or were thy power and purpose dumb
To speak our coming, ere we come?

PYRRHA.
Not in dejection did we brood,
Hearkening the many voices of the sea.
But for the scattered spirits free
Which lure, yet mock, the captive multitude;
And for these last, who yet
Can neither learn new things, nor old forget;
And to fulfil thy plan
That woman shall be woman, man be man,
We pondered, here apart,
One wisdom for the brain and heart!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Not in dejection, no!—while every Force,
Once idle, formless, unto Man becomes
A god to labor and a child to guide;
While Space, obstructing human will no more,
Makes Time a tenfold ally; while the draught
Of knowledge, once a costly cup, invites
Free as the wayside brook to whoso thirsts,
And aspiration, trying lonely wings,
Escapes the ancient arrow! These are gains
We cannot lose; but what new justice comes
With them, to right Earth's everlasting wrong?
The weariness of work that never sees
Its consequence; chances of joy denied
To noble natures, prodigal for mean;
Helpless inheritance of want and crime;
The simplest duties never owned untaught,
The highest marred by holy ignorance;
Crowned Self, that with his impudent hollow words
Is noisiest, and Vanity that deems
His home the universe, his day all time!

PROMETHEUS.
These are, and they shall be;
Nor less, though thine impatience fret.
Man is a child upon thy knee,
And earth his cradle yet.
Unto thy voice his quickening ears
Open a little space,
Till, taught by dreams of countless years,
His eyes shall know thy face.

PYRRHA.
I stand as one that after darkness feels
The twilight: all the air is promise-flushed,
Yet strangely chill, and though the sense delight
In sweet deliverance, something in the blood
Cries for the sun. Ye know, who set my work,
It is no selfish passion. Shorn are they,
And by the fondest fate, of action's crown,
My daughters,—so, denied their part
In old divinity and balanced right
Of man's prone worship, losing thence
Some honor Time is ignorant to restore,
They need their equal half of all there is,
Uniting, not dividing, Life. Who twains
What once was one, makes both more grandly one;
Or thou and I, Deukalion, could not be!

PROMETHEUS.
Now should Pandora speak!
Withdrawn the demigoddess sits,
And silent, yet there flits
A flush across her cheek,
A soft light o'er her eye,
And half her proud lips smile:
Unto thy hope, the while,
Be this enough reply!

PRINCE DEUKALION
(to EPIMETHEUS).
What bear'st thou from thine East?

EPIMETHEUS.
The living Past
That from its grave my former being caught,
And left me youth.

PROMETHEUS.
Which, backward sent
To Man's dim childhood, where thy memory dies,
Foresees with me.

EPIMETHEUS.
And active even as thou!
I bring dread knowledge: change and overthrow,
Despair of creeds, and shaking of the shrines,
And fruitless building till the Builder come,
Are in my hands. The Gods of races I
Unseat, as Time or Tyranny of old
Unseated them, by one subversive lore
Of equal truth revealed to them that seek,
None self-elected as depositors,
But His eternal Covenant with Life
For all, forever!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Who shall teach that lore?

PROMETHEUS.
Its whisper now sets every wind of earth
Vibrating: hearken, here!—the subtle sea
Hath learned it from the happier stars, and bears
The message to his loneliest isles; the buds
Expand it in their blossoms; helpless souls
Discover it and rejoice, forebode and flee.
Truth gathers being as the fire in air,
Until, surcharged, it drops a blazing bolt
And speaks in thunder.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Who shall hurl those thrones,
Untenanted, beside all wrecks of Power,
And dwell above them, that mankind may rise?

PROMETHEUS.
He is unknown.

ECHOES.
Unknown!—yet known.

PROMETHEUS.
He is alone.

ECHOES.
Alone!—yet with His Own.