THIRD SCENE
Later of the same night as in the first two scenes. It is a clear,
calm night of moon and stars. A public street near the city
wall. At regular intervals the wall is rendered accessible by
flights of narrow stone steps. The inner face of the wall is
in a deep shadow which stretches out almost to the street.
HERAKLES appears, emerging from the shadow, as he
climbs the nearest flight of steps. He reaches the top of the
wall and pauses a moment in silence.
HERAKLES
I know them now ..... but me they shall not know,
Even at last! My youth was spent with them;
They were my most familiar and my friends—
My lovers and the lights of welcome to me .....
Yet they discerned me not, they knew not me! .....
And never shall they know what I become!
Death is between us now: my youth is dead,
And I am dying! ..... and I shall be reborn
Beyond their understanding and their love .....
Even now I was a very stranger to them!
How shall it be when all myself has been
Is passed away and I am born again? .....
I dare not yet believe how utterly
I shall be loveless then—even when love is
A better thing to give, and, to receive,
A more exalted thing! ..... Then I shall know,
And be unknown; I shall be friendless then
However I am heart-sick and alone!—
O tender twilights of the days gone by,
Peopled with those we loved and leave behind!—
O secret, great departures, shared by none,
Cheered by no friendly voices from the shore,
No lamps set seaward for the ship's return!—
O irremediable solitude
Of him who sails, adrift and harbourless,
Far out into the distance and the dawn!—
Speak to my heart—when shall my lover come?
Where is my friend? and how shall I be known?
And who shall know me? ..... When the Child is born,
The desolate immortal Child, I know
That in the night of his tremendous birth,
And in the dreadful solitude, he wails
And wonders and is no-wise comforted!
Shall none receive the Child? Am I at once
The knower and the known? Is there no light
From soul to soul, no love from heart to heart
Can span the abyss and flame across the cold,
Dark, dreadful spaces of my isolation? .....
I need assurance, now since love has failed
So far, and life has so far failed to prove
Myself or make me manifest to men.
Who shall assure me and bear witness to me?
Whence shall the signal—as from star to star
Rings the clear cry of the celestial choir—
Sound thro' the tragic taciturnities
Of solitude, to me? ..... to me at last!—
Love to the Lover, welcome to the Friend,
Raptures of recognition to the Lord! .....
HERAKLES pauses a moment; then turns and slowly
goes back down the steps by which he ascended. As
he descends he becomes gradually engulfed in the
deep shadow. Before he reaches the ground, the POET
and the WOMAN appear ascending to the wall by
another flight of steps, some distance away. They
reach the top and pause a moment gazing over the
landscape. When at last they begin to speak, the
sound of their voices causes HERAKLES to stop;
and he continues to stand attentive and stirless in the
shadow of the wall.
The POET
..... Where is Endymion? The moon replies,
Hence is my lover! ..... and the heart cries, Hence! .....
And hence the soul discerns the perfect friend! .....
They lure us hence, the patient hills and fields;
The streams persuade us hence—hence to the sea,
Where as of old the mythos of the life
Of man enacts its endless destiny,
And vast horizons indicate the soul! .....
Hence is the furtherance of hope—
The WOMAN
The song
You lately sang cries to the spirit, Hence!
Sing me the song again, for I would learn
The words and have it in my heart alway.
The POET
I made it on a day of happiness,
And I am glad to-night—of life, and you.
He sings.
He is on the road before us, who is Lord and Life and Lover,
He is forward in the fair-way, he is secret, swift and far;
And our eyes shall wake to find him and our hungry hearts discover,
As he leads us, where we follow; as he loves us, what we are!
Where the winds are shouting seaward, where the sea is streaming onward,
Where the Voice calls down to find us, fearless on the starlit way,
We who watch shall make the land-fall as the ship drives shoreward, sunward,
Where the mountains rise resplendent, rose-wreathed in the dawn of day!
There his heart shall be our father-house, his arms receive and hold us;—
As he knows us we are equal; as he trusts us we are free!
We shall learn surpassing secrets that no lips but his have told us,
We shall find in his embrace ourselves transformed to more than we!
And thereafter in his house shall he alone be Lord and Master;
Life shall yield to his dominion; they shall serve who once were proud;
We shall go with him together up the pathway fast and faster;
We shall see the stars surround us as his eyes dissolve the cloud!
We shall see the skies stand open; we shall hear the stars in chorus;
From the shining peaks of thought his voice shall answer, pure and high;
And the spacious gates of light shall stand asunder full before us;
And, as all alone we enter, we shall know the Lord is I!
The WOMAN
How mystic, mad and possible it seems,
How like a clearance of life's tangled skein,
To dream, to say, to sing, “I am the Lord!”
Poet! you know me better than myself .....
The POET
My poems are made of more than all I know .....
A moment of silence.
The WOMAN
Shall we go farther on?—no matter where,
So we go on .....
The POET
How the heart melts with song! .....
How the brain reels in the storm-wind of thought! .....
Come, let us go! The light is there .....
The POET and the WOMAN turn and go down the
wall, away from the spot where HERAKLES is
standing. The two figures seem to disappear in the
distance.
HERAKLES
emerging from the shadow into the moonlit street
The light!—
There where my dreams discern an excellence
Unrealized, which I am—whither I go! .....
I have but matched the beast with other beasts,
The man with other men; and when my strength,
Impatient and unused, challenged me on,
I have but guessed that haply, with the Gods
At strife, God was within me, to defy
Their curse and prove their equal and prevail!
Now let me learn to say, I am the Lord!
Since in the forward vistas of my hope,
There is the Lord, the Saviour—there am I!
For thus I am assured my end is not
Where the world ends and humble hopes go home;
Where men are crowned and beasts are satiated!—
Too well I know that I contain them all—
The serpent, wolf and jackal, ape and cur,
Lion and hog:—of old the beasts are laired
In life's primeval wilderness, the dark,
Trackless and devil-haunted waste within me! .....
Yet, in the mind's rapt outlook, I discern
That in the jungle is the Householder,
Whose patient labour has made room and home
And let the light into his dwelling-place!
Now, while he sleeps, it may be, in his stead
Garrulous ghosts and fauns infest the gloom
And in his name accomplish shameful deeds,
Shallow and eloquent sincerities,
Profession of all faiths that falsify,
And threadbare fashions of a masquerade—
While from the teeming dark they snarl and whine,
Chatter and roar and laugh, gibber and grin
With greedy eyes and fangs—the beasts, the beasts
Who harbour where his realm is unreclaimed! .....
Yet I believe he shall not sleep alway!
Nay, he shall wake and witness—and suspect
Himself is otherwise than all of these! .....
O he shall stake his life upon that vision!
And he shall wonderfully at last contrive
To bring the outlawed beasts into dominion
And hold them captive—having levelled down
The dark recesses where they crouched untamed!
He shall dispel the spectres, and return
The jungle to a fruitful harvest-field!—
And then—O then, after the victory,
He shall go forth in power and look abroad
Over the spacious acres of the soul,
All drowned in azure and tranquillity,
Where, all bearing his harness and subdued,
The mighty beasts labour and drive afar
The ploughshare of his will, and spread the seed,
And reap the harvest—and proclaim the Lord
In word and deed, and celebrate the Lord! .....
Then shall he know the Lord is I! and feel
That ecstasy of knowledge which is truth,
Which is religion, which is self and soul! .....
The voice of IOLAUS
calling in the near distance
Answer me, Lord! ..... Where art thou? ..... Speak to me! .....
IOLAUS appears.
Lord, is it thou? .....
HERAKLES
He said—the Lord is I!
End of the Third Scene.
