University of Virginia Library

SCENE IX.

—At the entrance to a House. Calmstorm to him Enter Waning.
Wan.
Calmstorm, bestir you!—Through the near streets
The howling beggars rush in eager troops:
They cry you've striven to crush them basely;
And down another way the people pour,
Nor will I forget, the officers of the Law
Come on, wielding their staves in terrible
Array against you.

Calm.
Alas, he seems at this quick instant
Dreadfuler to mine eye than all he speaks of.

[Aside.
Wan.
They will not, be sure, window-shatter your house
Nor on your person wreak their pent-up rage:
With hisses, howls, and every hideous cry,
With looks of scorn and finger-pointing hate,
Motions and looks remembered long after
The speedy blow, they'll make themselves known to you.
I hope that all will yet go well, but we,
Radical apart in soul, must part e'en here.

Calm.
We parted many years ago when first
You had a doubt.

Wan.
Should Darkness, Calmstorm, cover up your fame—
I was your well-wisher to the end.

[Exit Waning.
Enter Umena.
Umena.
Why sped Waning away so swiftly?

Calm.
He speeds unto his ends, and I to mine.

Umena.
I've marked, of late, when Waning talked with you
At the same minute his eye looked at you
And away: and his feet he shuffled
As one who forges fables. His friendship is, I fear,
Declining.

Calm.
It is declined to dust and nothingness.

Umena.
And is it for this you walk so much apart,
And pause perpetually, gazing at the great Earth
As if to pierce a Secret that she hides forever?

Calm.
The world, is better and worse, Umena,
Than that I deemed when first I laid my hand
Upon it, to soothe it, as I hoped,
Into a better harmony.—There is
A jar incurable through all its chords.

Umena.
O say not that its woe's not med'cinable!
For, up and down the wide world's sounding way,
The Saviour walks: the loaves and fishes still distributes
Daily, and feeds us from his fruitful hands
Within the house and on the open way.

Calm.
O, will the Power that governs us
And shapes the world, let honest Fortune blow
And waken music only! Through orders limitless
Let faculty, in each peculiar man,
Find its free range, unpewed in priestly fears,
And shackleless of slavish ordinance!

Umena.
A sadness creeps into your voice, unlike
Yourself: What evil is it shadows your brow,
And shakes your step?

Calm.
Nothing, my dear and gentle wife.
If the dark hour draws near, thief-like it comes;
I feel it not, and sleep as yet with the bright
Morning shining over me, a few hours onward.

Umena.
There is a fear that lives within his hope,
Too great for it to nourish and endure.

[Aside. Exit Umena.
Calmstorm.
The world I now have walked, for two
And thirty summers, have seen the good man
Often hang his head, and the raised villain's brow
Affront the light unblenched.
The two great wheels of time and chance roll on,
Still on their axle rides the bulky world,
And overbears justice, and truth, and manly force,
And lowly merit, downcast pure desert.
There was a Power, there is a Power,
Unto whose heart these children should be
All as one: whose mantle should enfold
The beggared crutch, and be a garment
To the gilded throat, a Power above despair,
Aloof from petty wrong, and capable
As the wide earth to do its wish.
These eyes grow dim apace, and cannot see,
As still they would, the onward masses move
Beneath the bannered fate that conquers with a look
And quells before it strikes. Why stand ye still
When through the air there springs a cry
For help?
Lift up, lift up the banner Thou!—
The new, the fair—land of too many hopes,
Too many fears!—Oh, I could weep e'en now,
At thought of what thou art, what thou may'st be:—
That I go hence shall not dethrone thee, mother!
Be fairer thou that I am gone, and I
Lie down to rest gently as any child
Pillowed in softest sleep by summer play.
The People, the howling Beggars, and the Law
Sweep towards me—the invincible hour is come—
It need not that they bear their frightful staves,
Or bring their scornful looks or tongues of hate:
The sky, the all-surrounding air, both far and near,
Is thronged beyond the presence of all hate,
With faces that for many, many days,
Loathing and fierce, have smitten me, where'er
I walked. The hour, the hour is come.

[Exit.