University of Virginia Library

FIFTH SCENE

Before dawn of the next day. A street before a tavern. At intervals is heard the sound of music and voices and occasional bursts of laughter from within.

HERAKLES and IOLAUS enter.

IOLAUS
Now nothing more is left to seek or see.
Let us return. We have been long abroad;
We have been up and down the sleepless city
And far afield from where is happiness.....
Let us return.

HERAKLES
Here's still a last, least place
Where laughter is, where there is light and wine
And song.....

IOLAUS
And this is last, of all: beyond,
The lampless thoroughfare goes far away
Into the darkness, past the city wall.
Here we are come to the road's end. The earth
Lies out beyond, spacious and tranquil, where
The moonlight, like the nimbus that surrounds
A sage in meditation, quietly
And vastly and serenely luminous,
Lies, pale as dreams are pale, over the world! .....

Laughter is heard within the tavern. Then there is a moment of silence.
HERAKLES
Hark! ..... How serene is silence! ..... How austere! ....
How spacious! ..... And how small and sad a thing
Is laughter—and how sometimes terrible! .....
There is no rumour save the sound of mirth
When souls are lost! ..... I know not how it seems
To you, but I believe the Minotaur
Kept out of sight and sound like a good fellow,
And there was laughter in the labyrinth,
And it was pleasant for them who were lost—
Lost without hope, nor any vision of hope,
Nor any faith to vex them with ambition!
Hark! ..... How they laugh and sing and take no heed,
The boys, the panders, and the singing-women,
The harlot and her ruffian!—And ourselves,
Iolaus, ourselves, who keep so delicate,
Who live so chaste and private—who are we,
Who fill with rumour as of a festival
The public precincts of the House of Life?—
Who vex the soul with gilt caparisons
And go in power and pride and policy,
Panders to profit and the world's applause,
About the brilliant business of the world?
Are we not of this ribald company,
These toilers for the selfsame prize as we,
Only of less profession and renown—
These merrymakers in the labyrinth,
Who singing sit beside the sallow tapers,
Derelict, dispossessed, delinquent,—dead?
Why so we are, by God!—king, soldier, priest,
Cut-purse and prostitute—in fact the same
Poor men and women, all of us—so kin,
So far adrift, so dark, so solitary! .....
Then let's within and claim our fellowship!
They are of us—and they shall not be denied!

IOLAUS
Nay, we have seen to-night too much of this.
Let us return! The street and the night end.
Let us return—my heart is sick for home! .....

HERAKLES
O we are very far from where is home
To that within us which is comfortless—
The heart that is not patient of our thrift;
The soul that is not pleasured as we are
In safe, substantial mediocrity!
To-night, in street and tavern, anxiously,
Like children fatherless and dispossessed,
We were come out to seek our heritage;
We were come out to seek for more than all
Our lives have variously informed us of,
And more than all we know!—What rest is there,
Or where shall we go home, who have not found
Ourselves or what is ours? Whither away
And in what casement stands the lamp for us
Who drift as might a helmless derelict,
Errant with wind and tide over dark seas?
This shall we hardly learn at last to know;
And hardly shall our hearts receive the sign,
Our eyes find fire along the forward way,
Till that reprieve of freedom, peace and power
When we have saved the grain and strawed the chaff
With a most jealous fan throughout the ripe
Acreage of the spirit's harvest-field! .....
Truly I am not now as once I was,
Replete, exultant, proved, resistless, proud,
When all the Sons of Cadmus hailed me victor!
Rather my joy is quelled of all my deeds;
For worth is of myself, and I have none.....
Yet do they rate me by no means, whose choice
And crown proclaim me Lord! It well may be
You doubt me. True, I know not what it means—
And all is doubt! ..... Yet there is born within me
To-night a sense of outcast solitude,
The darkness of a flame-rent thunder-cloud,
And peril and devastation in my brain,—
While in my heart, like devious, distant fire,
The thread of hope leads thro' the labyrinth! .....
What is the whole of life—when dreams come true;
When faith is realized; when the mind unlocks
The treasure-house of truth; when, loosed and winged,
Ambition ceases of itself to be
So gross, so measured, so commensurate
With possible and perishable things? .....

The voice of the WOMAN singing in the tavern

A rumour of voices in the tavern.
IOLAUS
Poor wanton wretch!—God pity her!

HERAKLES
Not so!
Bravely she sings her heart out, and in tune,
And strictly to the measure of its truth.
She knows the cost of some things—and their worth!
And briefly she has made a song of how
Her life is bankrupt for some scraps of tinsel.
No God is wise enough to pity her,
Nor sad enough! Her tragedy is yours
And mine;—O verily this alone is all
Life's tragedy, that in the strict account
Of truth we find—whose lives were cheaply sold
At the world's price in chaplet, coin or crown—
Such meagre profit, such tremendous loss!
And be assured it is not pitiable
To sing one's heart out, as she sings, of it:
Bravely, and not too sadly—and in tune!

The rumour of voices is renewed in the tavern. Then silence. A pause.
The voice of the POET singing in the tavern

The rumour of voices breaks out in the tavern, louder than before.
HERAKLES
Hearken! ..... and hear the voice of human woe,
Crying aloud and crude and comfortless!
Hark, from the cheated and distempered mind,
This harsh and ancient outburst of despair
Proclaim we are all perdurable men
And perjured souls and hearts that still conserve
A pitiable efficiency of pain!
Then question of yourself, and you shall find
His voice is mine and yours—if we could sing!
In each of us the serpent of despair
Sleeps—or is roused and strikes his poisoned fangs
Deep in the heart and brain, till one must die,
The serpent or the soul,—unless we charm
Serpent and soul with song! For song alone
Makes tolerable to us the acrid lees,
When time and truth have trod life's wine-press out,
Which, undiluted, in thought's crystal cup,
Are of too cogent anguish to the soul.
He charms who is not strong enough to slay!
He sings who is not brave enough to know,
And in himself feel truth exemplified!
Thus, I believe, the tragic poet sings
Because he fails to do a better thing:
Up from the ruins of his failure starts
The phœnix-bird of song:—he knows the while
How far aloft God's eagle eyes the sun! .....
Had we the will, the strength, the hardihood
To let the light inform us utterly,
And so transfuse and interchange with all
Gross elements that we were born again,
Perfect and true;—had we the stern resolve
And power and passion of our sacred cause
To bear the pangs of childbirth to the end,
And die to live;—in such comparison
What were a life's magnificence of song? .....
God is within the soul—and who has been
A little toward Him, sings! There is no more
To do for one who leaves the best undone.....
The poet wakes, indeed,—but merely sings!
Yet therefore is he more than other men;
For they come hardly into wakefulness,
And briefly, and in terror and great pain,
Soon to relapse, latent and lost in sleep.....
Are we not all, in silence and alone,
Sepulchred living under dreams and dust? .....
And if at last we dreadfully revive,
Straitened and gagged in death's caparisons,
Within the unspeakable solitude and dense
Silence and brutal blackness of the grave,
'T is but to glimpse the shining star of hope
With false persuasion of transcendent joy—
And then, as faith's uplifted face dislimns,
To die immobile in the narrow night,
Our hearts constricted with a frenzied fear
Of death's deceit,—with life's supreme appeal!
The poet sings—and lives! And I believe,
Should one audacious rebel—even the soul's
Champion—who was not eased with poems, essay
His strength against the terror and the tomb,
It might be they should wonderfully yield!
Yea! till he went his way from us,—perchance
To prove the Saviour of us, on his way!

A rumour of voices; then loud applause in the tavern.
A chorus of MEN and WOMEN
singing in the tavern
Dionysos!
God begot thee, woman bore thee,
Dionysos! Now before thee
Dance the Mænads who adore thee,
Who are of thy fellowship!
Every heart is frenzied for thee,
Dionysos! every lip
Glisters with the wine we pour thee,
Crimson as the sacred stain
When the sacrifice is slain—
Dionysos!

Wild laughter and applause within the tavern.
IOLAUS
Let us go hence, go hence! Behold, the night
Grows pale and passive as a sick man's face
At daybreak as he lies asleep. It dawns.
The livid light comes down the dreadful street
Timidly as a tired vagrant child,
And stand between us here before the tavern,
Naked and shivering in its threadbare dress.

HERAKLES
When shall it be that somewhere in the soul,
Beyond our life's horizons, dark with dreams,
The Child of Light shall rise from sleep and stand
Radiantly in the silent place of peace? .....
When shall it be that he shall venture down
The strange, remote, dark thoroughfares of thought,
And stand with shining feet before the tavern,
Where all night long his servants brawl and feast,
In pale and passionless severity? .....
When shall it be his presence shall eclipse
The flickering, brief, clandestine candle-light
That lust has kindled in the House of Life? .....
When shall he enter by the dolorous door
Of love and faith, where death at last comes in,
And bind the slaves by his resistless will,
Who made his house a place of harlotry
And lies and lamentations and vain deeds
And vice and violence and vociferation? .....
When shall he rise from sleep and go abroad? .....
We know not when—yet surely they shall know
Who keep his vigil! And, within that hour,
At last the slaves' ignoble revelry,
Their spectral humours and hilarities
Shall shudder and be still!—and they shall learn
How little is the Lord indeed from home!
And men shall witness and the Gods shall know
That he is risen—the grave and gracious Lord
Is risen, and on his way! And they shall see
His light go forward, and about his feet
The flowers of spiritual trust and truth
Wake in the silent meadows deep in dusk
Beside the stream-course of the spirit's life!
And they shall hear his voice, serene as stars,
Strengthen to song, like scattered birds who wake
Crying in wet tree-twilights, as with hands
Lustrous and loving he dilates the gloom
With muffled splendour; while, superbly winged,
The deep-eyed virtues of the soul's perfection
Rise like essential perfumes, sweet and strong! .....

The voice of the POET singing in the tavern
Her eyes were dark as violet;
Her face was white as sunburnt sand.....
Because we could not understand,
Love turned and left us, hand in hand—
Her lips surrendered, red and wet!
I saw in the dishevelled dress
Only her pale, abandoned loveliness!

The voice of the WOMAN singing in the tavern
He laid his brows against my breast;
He kissed my breast with lips of flame;
His voice made music of my name;
And in the sunless house of shame
Between his arms he held me pressed!—
He knew not what it was to me,
Or what to him, thereafter, love might be!

The voice of the POET as before
I felt her heart beat hard and high;
I saw her eyes grow blurred and blind;—
There came a mist across my mind.....
Her hair fell round me soft as wind
And lustrous as a moonlit sky.....
For pleasure of her was my breath
Broken, as one who labours near to death! .....

The voice of the WOMAN as before
The desolation; the despair;
The hope; the love; the will to be
Spendthrift of the heart's treasury;
The soul's inviolate chastity
Were all of me he could not share!
He asked no more of love than this;
He gave no better than a harlot's kiss!

The voice of the POET as before
I held her all the dumb night long,
And still at daybreak she was there,
When, groping thro' the dark, dense air,
The dawn's chill fingers touched her bare
Pale body, clear and smooth as song! .....
The stealthy light fell, grey as dust,
Silently in the sordid place of lust!

The voice of the WOMAN as before
Love cannot enter by the door
Where lust comes fierce and florid in!
They play no game that love can win,
Who stake the outlawed coins of sin,—
Yet love can lose one heart the more!
For truth lies deep beneath the lie;
And Death has digged no grave where souls can die!

The voice of the POET as before
And silently I went my way;
The heart within me wailed and wept! .....
I would have kissed her as she slept—
And dared not! Like a thief I crept
Scared and alone into the day.....
And Love walked on with bleeding feet,
Heart-sick beside me in the dreadful street!

The voice of the WOMAN as before
Quenched is the flame in us whereof
Love's sacred lamp is lit; and we
Are captives as damned souls must be;
And hence from Hell shall none go free
Whose lives have lost the key of love!—
Who neither asked nor sought nor knocked,
To them alone Truth's treasure-house is locked!

A confused tumult of voices in the tavern, which gradually subsides until at last there is silence.
IOLAUS
..... On broken heartstrings is their music made
To hear them laugh and sing I half believe,
As you declare, that laughter broke their hearts.....
And they have fashioned of all shattered things
The phrase of an incomparable grief,
And called it song—which is indeed a cry
Something more strangely sad than any tears.
O come with me to the still house of joy!—
There is a sorrow in the vacant street,
And even the light is like a lamentation.....
He pauses. HERAKLES neither speaks nor stirs.
My heart is sad and strange—let us return!
There is a kind of judgment in the light—
Something austere and chaste and pitiless,
Dealing impartial justice to us all.....
Let us return—for God's sake let us go!
I can no longer bear to hear them sing!

HERAKLES
Hark—there is silence! Hark—and you shall hear,
Vast and inviolate, while they seem to sing,
The inveterate silence of the sepulchre—
Where he is lying inert as dead men lie,
Who is the deathless holy spirit of man—
Massively overwhelm their melody!
There is a sound, a semblance as of song,
A quiver of rhythmic motion in the air.....
But then and still thereafter there is silence,
Strictly distinguished to the inward ear.
Hark—and your soul shall hear it as I do!
They sing not—neither can they sing at all,
Who are as we in bondage to this world!
Their music is a shallow counterfeit,
The unsubstantial echo of a voice;—
Not the phrased splendour of essential song
Rumoured along the surface of the soul's
Deep seas of elemental harmony! .....
Hearken within yourself! Hearken within,
And hear how still, how gaunt and dumb it is! .....
O there is silence, silence in us all!
We are some handfuls of gross clay assembled,
Wherein there is a tremor and a tone,
A pitiable vibration which is song
As men rate song in their discordant lives.....
And far within is silence!—Otherwise,
Otherwise is the full free voice of man,
The one true voice, our own voice!—when there is
No silence by the altar any more;
When there, in strength and in tranquillity,
The hieratic, consecrated soul
Intones its canticle of self-reprieve,
And all its powers and liberties proclaim
The chaunt of the divine awakening! .....

The tavern door opens. A little crowd of men and women stumble noisily into the street. Among them are the POET and the WOMAN. They all pause uncertainly, staring vaguely about them.
A MAN
Here's the damned daylight back again.....

A HARLOT
God's name,
How cold it is!

The POET
As chill and chaste as death!

A MAN
Let's go back! There's no hospitality
And nothing comfortable in all this world
Save, there within, the wine and candle-light.

The POET
Save drunkenness and dark!—Is there not death?
Poor ghost! Poor tomb-dweller!—Is there not death?

A MAN
I would to God there were death—for all poets!
And silence for all singers, save of some
Small mirthful songs of bawdry and pleasant things.....

A HARLOT
Truth is, Stranger, your songs are keen as pain.

A MAN
His songs are serious—and most damnable!
Wine brings susceptibility—and dawn's
A desperate hour, when a mere song's grief
May tragically rouse the heart to tears
And vain misgivings.....

A HARLOT
As for me, I love
To weep when there is music. Give me songs
Of noble sentiment. Tears ease the heart—

A MAN
No tearful wench for me, nor tearful song!
Poets and whining women—damn such fools!
Gay hearts, gay women, gay good-fellowship,
Wine and gay music—so a man is pleased!

The POET
Eyes of the deathless Gods, look down, look down!
Behold this tragic masque of marionettes! .....
And laugh because we weep, and laugh the more
Because we laugh—and lie, and dare not live
In the confession of reality!

A MAN
Damn you, be silent! and deliver us
Of all your tedious solemnities!
Already you have robbed the night of mirth,
And now, despite the wine, nothing is left
But daylight and despondency.....

The WOMAN
In truth
I'll not believe a poet could so far
Vex and subdue your wanton hearts with words.
Are you not men of business and affairs,
Hard men of worldly practice and the world?
And he's—merely a voice! and such a voice
As you shall hardly hear or understand!
Nay, lads, I'll not believe you're out of tune
With laughter for a song's worth of strange words!
Even a poor wench can laugh!—The end of mirth
Comes only when the cheerless heart is cracked
And the frail spark of life flutters and fails! .....

The POET
..... Comes only when we learn there is more hope
Than life can give; more truth than words can say!

A HARLOT
Enough! It's bitter cold here in the dawn,
And I'll no longer wait and freeze and tire
To hear you snarl and curse at one another!—
Let's all to bed!

A MAN
The wench is right—let's go!

They all start off and move, in a straggling group, toward HERAKLES and IOLAUS, whose forms are hardly distinguishable in the grey twilight. Suddenly one of the women halts.
A HARLOT
There are strangers here—yonder!

A MAN
Two men.....
Calling
Who's there?

HERAKLES takes a step forward. A moment of silence.
A MAN
Your pardon! ..... If a man may question you,
My Lord, and since we chance to meet—who are you?

A moment of silence. HERAKLES scans the faces before him almost anxiously.
HERAKLES
I am a man who seeks—and has not found;
Who asks—and is not answered; who has knocked
Yet none has opened to him the secret door.
Do you bring news—and welcome—and the alms?

The WOMAN separates herself from the group and draws nearer to HERAKLES.
A HARLOT
What says he?

A MAN
I can hardly tell.....

A MAN
He seems
In some delusion—

The POET
Then perhaps he's drunk!—
Are we not all at dawn a little drunk?

The WOMAN
Be still! .....

The POET
What now? Why do you stare and stare? .....
I say his wine has been to many a man
Persuasion of delirious things and words,
And specious dreams of what It's all about.....

The WOMAN
Be still! Look in his eyes! .....

The POET
to HERAKLES
Your pardon, Sir!
The wench has drunk her share—
He turns to the WOMAN. The sight of her thrills and startles him. His whole mood and manner change. He draws close to her and speaks to her alone.
Tell me the news:
Is it the Secret?—Speak!

The WOMAN
speaking as tho' entranced
..... There is within
His eyes a candid infancy of light—
A birth of splendour—and a mystery!
A vigil—and a voice!—the light that leads,
Convinces and absolves—like sunlight! Far,
Far in his eyes it dawns! ..... I seem to see
So far within—so far! His eyes are like
Some sudden window, opening in the night.....
Thence may the soul stare skyward—to the stars!
Look in his eyes, if you have will to see!
All other eyes of men are closed and dark.
Look in his eyes!—O, God's within, I know!
There, in the utmost distance, there is God! .....
There is the light of God, splendid and strange! .....

HERAKLES
with passion
Are you the herald and the messenger?

The POET
Herald of hope and messenger of news! .....

HERAKLES
heedless of all save the WOMAN
Is there indeed light in the window—light
To prove the Lord is in his house and wakes,
Who has slept overlong? You say the light
Is lit, the sign is there to show he wakes
At last—and feels across his solemn brows
The rose-winged wind of venture and vast skies,
And in the chamber where he darkly slept,
Gradual and pale, the calm, sane light of dawn? .....

The WOMAN
Yours is the sign! You are the light!

HERAKLES
At last! .....
How I have sought you! O is it you indeed?
And do you bring me news at last and welcome—
News of myself and welcome to the Lord?
O can I rest assured that even now
The Lord wakes in his chamber silently,
And like a stranger and athirst for love,
And all aflame to know and to be known? .....
Know you indeed the Lord? and is he there,
The one true perfect friend, who is most friendless;—
The matchless lover, whose love none receives,
And who is loved of none? Look in my eyes!
Tell me the light is there—that I am He! .....

The WOMAN
.... You are the strength, the light, the life,—the Lord!
What shall I do that I may love you?

The POET
Speak!
Have you the strength? Have you the light—the life?

HERAKLES
speaking to the WOMAN alone
Only believe and all shall yet be well!
Love and believe! I have no more than faith
To guide me, and no more to comfort me
Than love,—and mine is still the greater need!
Mine is the greater need, for mine, at last,
Mine is the greater strength! The strength is there—
The secret strength I almost fear to feel!
Measureless is the strength and merciless—
And like a child whose eyes are vague with sleep,
Haunted with dreams and dazed with real light;—
Whose mind, with dark pre-natal memories,
Is still perplexed, and hardly yet evolved
From ancient error and the brutal grasp
Of fear, force, falsehood, destiny, and death;—
Who is not yet self-realized, self-assured,
Conscious and calm in thought, in aim, in will.
Yet, as I must believe, do you believe,
And all shall come to pass, and all be well! .....

The WOMAN
I love and I believe! I see the light;
I feel the strength that will not stay or spare;
I know the Lord; I know that he shall come
To bring me the good news!

HERAKLES
O be assured
Of victory! I love you! I shall come
Again to you ..... Be faithful till I come!

A MAN
What do they say?

A HARLOT
He bids her “Be thou faithful
Until I come!”

All laugh except HERAKLES, the WOMAN, and the POET, who remain thrilled, startled, and absorbed.
The POET
I scarce believe—and yet
He spoke as one having authority,
Having the truth's commandment clear as light
And blind as light and undissuadable;—
Being in strength creative as a God!
How shall I know? .....

The WOMAN
conscious only of HERAKLES
You will not leave me—now?

HERAKLES
I leave with you one who is more than I—
Even the soul—even the Spirit of Truth! .....
He shall be with you always to the end,
Who is the guide, the way, the comforter!
I may not rest: I love you and must go.
He shall bear witness in my stead. At last
I shall return:—and let there be a light,
His light undimmed to guide me to his house!
Be faithful—lest he fall again on sleep!

The WOMAN
I cannot leave you! Lord, I will not stay
Where you are not!—You are the way, the life;
You are the truth!

HERAKLES
I shall perchance be true
At last and perfect! ..... Now, there is within me
Labour and violence, ruin and redemption.
My soul is an invaded citadel,
A precinct where contending armies wait,
Fierce and resolved,—the death-grip is still toward! .....
And if I win at all it shall be hard!
This very hour all is in jeopardy:—
The dark whirls in my vision even now;
And like the rumour of resurgent tides
I hear the ancient curse of error cry
Up well-worn estuaries of the shaken mind! .....

Suddenly voices are heard crying in the distance, and a confused rumour as of some great commotion in the city.
IOLAUS
Lord!—do you hear? Some mischief is afoot!
The city cries as with a single voice!—
What can it be? Some great event has chanced.....
I'll find the cause of this and come again.

IOLAUS hastens away.
HERAKLES
..... What great event concerns me save the soul?
And none cry in the Agora because
The soul of man at last comes to its own!
Again from the city rises a vast rumour of voices.
Hark! ..... In my heart I hear their cries resound!
They are my soldiers and my people! Hark! .....
There in this hour my plumed battalions wait
Their leader, and my citizens their King.
They know not and they will not understand
Whither away I am gone on so far
Without them,—I, who shall not now return! .....
The die is cast, and, come what may, I take
The bounty of ambitious destinies
To be my birthright, nor shall Gods or men
Force and delude me from my utmost goal!

Again is heard the voice of a distant multitude.
The POET
How they cry out upon us,—all the world!

HERAKLES
..... Crying in vain!—O let me stay no more!
For still my heart, to hear the voice of the world—
My world of youth and conquest and renown—
Crying upon me, suffers and is not strong,
As the great heart of perfect love must be!
O, lest the good great moment, lest the vision,
Lest the redemption, now at last begun,
Suffer some wrong by reason of the heart's
Weakness and all my life's remembered joys,
Let me go forth away from them, away
From all that was and is, to what shall be—
Which, in this primal morning of the soul,
Thro' widening gateways of deliverance,
With endless promise cheers the forward way! .....

The WOMAN
Suffer me, and constrain me not to be
Without you! There is place for me to follow
Where you may go.....

HERAKLES
There are no followers
Nor captains on the soul's eternal quest!

The POET
Yet, if the torch go forward in your hand,
Shall not its splendour serve to guide us on?
Well may we question, who have sought so long,
Where you will go and whither is the way.

HERAKLES
Mine is my way and yours must be your own.
Ask me no more, nor wonder if my words
Are strict and stern—

The POET
I know the truth is hard,
Neither compassionate of any grief
Or hope or weakness or imperfect joys.
But to that soul which bears the truth, in chief,
Truth is relentless! And I say to you
That if you have not now already paid
Abundantly the incalculable cost,
Then you shall pay even to the uttermost!

HERAKLES
What is the price of truth?

The POET
What is the truth?—
There is the question!

HERAKLES
He shall answer it,
And only he who earns the right to say,
“I am the Truth!”—for he alone is true.
I stand in the beginning, and the way
Is hardly to be seen before my feet,
Which they must tread wherever it may go! .....
Ask me no questions, therefore, of the end.

The WOMAN
I am not curious, and I have no thought
Of mercy, and I have no other way
Than your way, Lord! .....

HERAKLES
O sacred human heart!
Come with me if you will, as best you may.
You are my witness how the sepulchre
Was rent and in his shroud the Sleeper stirred;
And how the prison door stood wide ajar
While momently, at least, lay out in light
The prospect of the soul's prosperities!—
You are my witness, and my heart wills well
That you, O Heart of faith! should share with me
Truth's gospel and the soul's new testament;—
Till, at the last, the Sleeper's dreams are done,
And he is waked and risen and on his way! .....

IOLAUS appears, coming in great haste.
IOLAUS
Lord! Lord! ..... I bring you news—

HERAKLES
Who brings me news
Is welcome, if his news be news indeed!—
You all who have been with me in this hour,
You know how rashly I am hazarded,
As yet with no least knowledge of the way,
Into the free, far spaces of the soul!
I go because the wind is in my sails—
But chartless, helmless, on a shadowed sea;—
And haply I shall find the fabulous
Fair Paradise of truth, and hand in hand
With the grave Gods walk perfectly at last! .....
And haply I may shipwreck on the shores
Of circumstance and dark necessities! .....
Only the strength within me is assured,—
The strength of Herakles! All else is doubt .....
And O my spirit is fain of news!

IOLAUS
The King
Demands your presence in the Agora.

A MAN
to his companions
The King? ..... He said the King!

A HARLOT
in an awed voice
What man is this?

HERAKLES
The King?—No public cares concern me now.
What will the King with me?

IOLAUS
I know but this:
An embassy comes hither from Eurystheus,
Sovereign of Argos. Heedless of the King,
They will not speak at his command; instead
They say their message is alone for you.

HERAKLES
Go on before me, I will shortly come;
Leave me, for I have need to be alone.

The WOMAN
Lord.....

HERAKLES
For a little, leave me, I will come.
This much is certain, that I will be free!
And therefore I will come to bid farewell
To rank and power and every servitude.
I will not heed the cost of what may bring
Deliverance. Leave me! I will shortly come—
And find you there where the world waits for me! .....

After a moment of hesitation they all depart: the POET first, then the WOMAN and IOLAUS; lastly the little crowd from the tavern. As these last are leaving they pause a moment to look at HERAKLES.
A MAN
My Lord, forgive me if I question you—
What is your name?

HERAKLES
Men call me Herakles.

The men and women depart, leaving HERAKLES alone.