FOURTH SCENE
Toward midnight of the same night as in the first three scenes.
Street before the house of HERAKLES.
MEGARA and the THREE SONS OF HERAKLES are
in the house.
The voice of MEGARA low and sweet from within the house
The rose-wreathed lattice opens wide,
Beyond, the night is calm and deep;—
My little doves lie fast asleep
Like lilies fallen side by side.
They laid them down at evening;
Their eyes were clear as moonlit dew;
Across their brows the sunset threw
The golden shadow of its wing.
HERAKLES and IOLAUS enter slowly. They pause
and listen.
They kissed my face, with tender words;
Their eyelids closed as flowers close;
In dreamless, motionless repose
They fell asleep like tired birds.
HERAKLES
Iolaus.....
IOLAUS
Lord?
HERAKLES
So Pyrrha in the dark
Sang to the children of Deukalion.....
So long as there is life it shall not cease,
It shall not change, this tender lullaby,
This ancient minstrelsy of motherhood.
Wherever there is human happiness
Or human grief or life's immortal will,
The inviolate serenities of night
Shall hear the woman singing to her sons,
Her little doves—my children, Iolaus!
Who shall be men, as they shall wake from sleep,
Radiant in the morning, and the might
Of manhood! .....
The voice of MEGARA as before
My children sleep, whose lives fulfil
The soul's tranquillity and trust;
While clothed in life's immortal dust
The patient earth lies dark and still.
No rumour rises from the street;
The stars in silence dawn and die;
The moon goes up the violet sky
And treads the sea with silver feet;
And calm as inward joy, and deep,
Moonlight and starlight flood the room
Where close beside me in the gloom
Softly my little children sleep.
All night they lie against my breast
And sleep, whose dream of life begins:
Before the time of strife and sins,
Of tears and truth, they take their rest.
HERAKLES
..... They take their rest! ..... Iolaus! Iolaus!
What of the soul? Can you not feel—as I
To-night bore witness to you all—that we,
Who seem to wake in the large light of life
So sensibly, in pure reality
Lie in the shadow of sleep, lie prone and still
On the parental breast of life like children,
And take our rest?.....
IOLAUS
Yet we have witness, Lord,
Who have so wrought in the substantial world,—
Yet we have witness that we wake indeed:
Is not Erginus slain, Orchomenos
Razed and enslaved, and Herakles—
HERAKLES
Enough!—
Not by the world's coarse manifest I am!
To me no voice but mine can testify:
The violence and the glare of deeds and things
Report me in no wise:—myself alone
Proves and reveals myself: no other sign
Is there at all of me save only I!
Have I not ceaselessly been here and there,
Come hither and gone hence, ambitiously
And humanly lived out my works and days?
Have I not gone abroad seeking the soul
In vast and various venture, and returned
Weary and without wisdom after all?
When have I known myself, who know the world?
When have I felt, in trial or victory,
The choir, the torch, the festival of truth
Gladden the soul's inviolate dwelling-place? .....
Now am I no more eager of many things;
Neither am I much curious of proof,
Save as some still conviction, secretly
Wakes in the inmost mind and justifies
New lights, new values, new coherencies,
New strengths and virtues up the endless scale.
For well I know how anciently and long
The massive Sphinx has stood as now it stands,
A veiled, portentous shape of shadow and silence,
Against the nightfall in the mind's dark highway;
And well I know that, anciently as now,
To the inscrutable mystery of being
There is no voice shall answer save the clear
Silences singing in the awakened soul! .....
IOLAUS
There is no voice shall answer! ..... Is there more
Of man's inheritance than all we know?
Are we not merely men who labour and live
In the plain light, in the gross world; who rest
By night; who fall asleep at last in death;
Who feel, invincibly, darkly over us,
The harsh dominion of the inconstant Gods?
HERAKLES
Nay! We are adepts of a mystery! .....
The secret is at hand—how shall we sleep?
We are as men in awful expectation
Before the threshold of a sanctuary,—
Whose eyes grow sometimes clear in the long vigil,
Whose hearts grow sometimes mild, till they discern
The glamour of a glory on the veil,
The murmur of a music thro' the portal—
The secret, incommunicable signs
Of the God's radiant presence in his house!
The voice of MEGARA as before
My little doves, the nest is warm—
Lie close! the dawn shall come too soon.
Sleep, in the quiet of the moon!
Sleep, in the hollow of my arm!
For yesterday is all we are,
To-morrow all we yet shall be;
The end is where no eye can see.....
We only know the way is far!
We only know men grow and grieve
And die..... And death is strange and sore!
O sleep, my darlings, sleep!—before
The time returns to wake—to live!
A moment of silence.
HERAKLES
The ancient, patient, perfect love of women! .....
The service and the sacrifice of life
To life! ..... But to what end of life? ..... Her voice
Is clear and quiet as moonlit well-water
In a vessel of shining silver..... This is home!
A moment of silence.
IOLAUS
Let us enter, Lord.
HERAKLES
I shall not sleep to-night.
I know not how it is, there is within me
To-night a stern, unquiet intensity,
The strangeness of a secret unrevealed—
Almost, it seems, a fear of what I am! .....
I am as some itinerant by night,
Ignorant of his purpose and his path,
Curious of both, vigilant, fearful, fain,
Sleepless and sightless till the dawn is there! .....
I shall not stay or sleep. No more to me
The rash and resolute activities
Of manhood sound to-night their martial challenge
Into the bright arena of the world.
I am this hour inviolably alone,
And like a stranger in my solitude.....
A glitter of far lights is in my brain,
And in my heart something that is not hope,
And in my life a hushed suspense..... To-night,
Beyond the threshold and the fire-light,
Beyond the brief, familiar place of being,
Held by the narrow candle-flame of life
Against the invasive, dark, immense unknown,
I am abroad! ..... The heart's unrest is nameless
And absolute the mind's uncertainties!
Ask me not whither, where or why I go:
The spacious night surrounds me, and my spirit
Ranges magnificently unappeased! .....
IOLAUS
Why must you go abroad seeking a dream
When here at home all is so bountiful?
Here the King's daughter croons your sons asleep;
Here Creon has given over to your hands
His kingship by your mighty hands secured;
Here in all Greece your name is glorious,
Your deeds extolled, your worth proclaimed in praise;—
Here your estate is grown so high and splendid
That hardly can the range of man's ambition
Compass a nobler destiny than yours!
HERAKLES
So is the range of man's ambition brief
And scanted of his true divinity!
IOLAUS
Why is your speech so strange to-night?
HERAKLES
'T is I
Am strange! ..... And now I think my heart would break
To hear her sing again, to feel once more
The tenderness and the tranquillity
And sweetness of her love,—the delicate
Freshness of life's warm wonder in my house.
Come, let us go!—I shall not rest to-night.
IOLAUS
Where shall I follow, since you will not sleep?
HERAKLES
Let us go down into the human city,
Iolaus, where men and women with their sins
Stray in the festive street; where harp-players
And harlots and young men sit in the taverns,
And feel, all night until the daybreak stands
Pale and relentless in the waking world,
Life's wanton weed grow rankly in their souls!
Let us go down into the human city
And see how men and women love and live,
Whose feet go forward to the sepulchre,
Whose hearts are sick with tender syllables
Unspoken, and desires unsatisfied,
And liberalities no heart receives.....
Let us go down!—perchance they wait us there,
The meaning and the sign!—let us go down!
End of the Fourth Scene.
