University of Virginia Library

SEVENTH SCENE

Early morning. The beginning of this scene and the preceding scene are contemporaneous.

Thebes. The Agora.

In the Agora are CREON and ALCMENA, seated and surrounded by a body of soldiers. Immediately before the King stands AMPHITRYON; at some distance beyond stand the MESSENGERS OF EURYSTHEUS, three in number. The rest of the Agora is filled by a vast concourse of people.

AMPHITRYON
They come safe-guarded as Ambassadors,
As envoys of Eurystheus—to my son.

ALCMENA
To Herakles.....

AMPHITRYON
With insolence and pride
They dare recall our kinship and proclaim
Herakles subject of the Argive King;
Yet sworn to silence save to him they seek,
By no persuasions will their lips disclose
The serious purpose of their embassage.

AMPHITRYON seats himself beside the King.
CREON
These are strange tidings; and the veil that masques
The face of destiny seems dark indeed.....

AMPHITRYON
I fear their silence and their proud reserve.
What can their message be to Herakles?

CREON
What to their message shall your son reply?
Not in the vulgar press of circumstance
Is fate concealed, but in the soul of man!
And we have seen, last night, into the soul
Of Herakles enough, at least, to make
The question poignant and the doubt supreme!

ALCMENA
Last night! ..... I thought a stranger stood before me
Clothed in the likeness of my son..... To-day
I dare not guess what dark catastrophe
The Gods prepare to try his secret strength,
To thwart his undivined, misguided will!

CREON
I fear no secret message, nor the stroke
Of adverse fortune, nor the coward heart
Or evil purpose of Eurystheus' hate,
Nor dark catastrophe;—I fear the man
Who struck the crown of kingship from his brows
And gave us earnest of the soul's ambition!
Man fashions fate after his own design;
And in his likeness, as a mirror is,
The face of life is featured and expressed;
And he deciphers on a vacant page
His sense, his story, his significance.
Who can predict what Herakles shall see
When he lays bare the future's shrouded face?
Who can foretell what sense his soul shall find,
What stately meaning, what majestic myth,
Inscribed on life's familiar palimpsest?

ALCMENA
He is beyond recognizance! ..... My love's
Maternal arms feel vacant of my son!

CREON
..... I have played the game out to its mean mild end,
And won the world's prize, in a certain measure.
Now, being quit with fortune and grown old,
I am no longer partisan,—as needs
Man must be when his stake is in the game,—
But, disabused of life's persuasions, which
O'erbalance justice in its own defence,
I sit apart in the clear empty light
Of wisdom, as in some pale aftermath,
And grow, in justice and serenity,
Clearly and patiently contemplative.
Therefore I find for this emergency
Some thoughts which come not all inaptly in
To help our understanding of the man
Who yesternight was strange unto us all.
For I have lately, in the liberal years,
Foregone the lore of cheap philosophies
Which find an ultimate identity
In all the souls and destinies of men.
Crowds are but numbers; and at last I see
There are not merely players of the game;
There is not, high or low, only the one
Sensible and substantial prize to which
The fiat of the world gives currency,—
And which, in various ways, is always won!
There is besides the one, estranged, rare man,
Whose light of life is splendid in the soul,
Burns with a kind of glory in his strength,
And gives such special grandeur to ambition,
That he will make no terms with fortune, nor
Play for whatever prize the game affords.
He thinks to vanquish destiny, enforce
The Gods, and, by transcendent strength and toil,
Earn—what alone of all things must be earned—
The soul's prize—which is always just the soul!—
The soul, self-mastered, self-assured, self-known,
God-like! and with the deathless Gods co-heir
Of truth's ineffable eternities;—
The soul, despised, neglected and concealed,—
And yet, in truth, as in his raptured mind,
Perhaps the great prize—which is always lost!
And therefore, wisdom says, no prize at all!
But merely, for the common use of life,
A fatal lure, a frenzied hope, a dream
And madness of imaginative minds.....
So is the world's work justified! And last,
Now, when the game of life is played—and lost,—
Lost in the main, yet somehow hurried through
To the calm, threadbare, tolerable end,—
The humour of the thing comes quietly home,
As we discern how wise we were to take
The loss for granted—and enjoy the game!
We learn our weakness; learn to thank the Gods
That we were weak and had no prospect of
The prize, no lonely and supreme ambitions;
Learn, at the last, on what fantastic terms
Life is a conflict, since in fate's despite
All men may yet prove victor—save the strong!
The irony, to man's maturer mind,
Sorts with his ancient pleasant sense of things.
He marks the stress of gross necessities,
Immedicable and unalterable,
Which shape the trifling destinies of man;
He finds an average of circumstance,
Equal to all men in the true last test;
He learns how much, by temperance and fear,
The weak men of the world persuade the Gods;
And smiling with a mild and undeceived
Despair, he sees the strong men of the soul
Enforce the times to their discomfiture,
And, of the primal stuff of circumstance,
With which the long life of a common man
Is very comfortably compromised,
Contrive their stately and remorseless ruin!
Yes! ..... he discerns, beyond his private fault
And failure,—when the game is played, and lost,—
Where thought turns sick and dizzy and dismayed
On the black borders of its own abyss,—
How all men living are not ever free,
But straitly prisoned in the Mystery,
Burdened beneath the universal strength,
Merged in the flux of dark infinities.....
Which are the Gods!—in whose relentless grasp
The strong man strives and strangles and is slain.
Then, to his humour, men resemble most
Dull creatures who live down at the dense, dark,
Fathomless, dumb foundations of the sea,—
Who, if they are not pliant, and too weak,
Too yielding to resist, are broken and burst,
Crushed out of life under the passionless,
Insuperable weight of the element
In which they live and move and have their being.
Are we not justly, then, and terribly
Enough—however much we see the joke!—
Cautioned to bear with wise humility
The utmost rigours of unyielding chance,
And meet the serious issues of the soul
As I have done—with a mild gayety,
An unambitious mind and a lax will!
So may we prosper to some worldly end;
So may we gain assured maturities
And aptitudes for a well-ordered life;
So, in the lesson of many years, at last,
We earn some sense of what the Gods can do,
At best or worst, to ruin or redeem.
And therefore, by the witness of his words
Last night, I find our Herakles imperilled
Not by the Gods but by himself alone!—
For the strong man no calculus computes,
No reason reckons, no arithmetic
Demonstrates or foresees by any means.
Only we know there is no mortal peril
So dire, so desperate as to be strong!

AMPHITRYON
You are the King! and may, by word and deed,
Give aid and counsel to my son.

CREON
Alas! .....
Who is a King to counsel or advise,
To help or hinder, if a man's free will
Furthers and guides and justifies his being?
The strong receive no help as they are strong;
They spare not—and they are not ever spared
By Gods or men; the counsel of the wise,
The tender tears of love's solicitude,
Cannot deter them or persuade them home!
Alas! Strength is a hazard none may share,
A genius none may caution or advise.
The strong man and the humble man are twain
By the one real division of men's lives
And destinies: there a great gulf is fixed,
A dark abyss no rainbow-bridge can span,
Between life's level places of brief hopes,
Familiar ways, and measurable ends,
And the starred skies of thought's imagination.
To you my kingship seems a proper prize
For life's fulfilment;—but last night we learned
How the ambitious soul scorns to deserve
Life's facile, fortunate prosperities.
I think to such a one the purpose of
His will, the strength that marks his isolation,
Are to him as a passion—as a vision
Of truth, which gives his strange soul liberty
To flame its furtherance thro' the wise world! .....
Vainly for his advantage we discern
How, soon or late, with ancient irony,
The wise world, sitting at the spectacle,
Hails his surrender or his helpless ruin.
For when the mad light dawns, the waking soul
Endures no lesson save its own, receives
No truth save what itself exemplifies!

Suddenly the POET and the WOMAN appear in the open space before CREON. They are so self-absorbed that they seem unconscious of the world about them.
The POET
My heart is nervous like a place of peril.....

The WOMAN
My heart is quiet like a place of peace.
I see the light; I know he is the Lord.

The POET
Faintly I feel the promise of the Dawn
Pale on the prison windows of the soul;
And I believe, secluded in his strength,
Dazed in his light, it well may be the Lord
Is waking in the house of Herakles! .....
Whose faith shall perfectly shine out to help
My unbelief? ..... Whose witness is at hand
To certify the Truth and prove the Lord? .....
He looks about him and realizes where he is.
This is the Agora..... The King—the world—
The envoys of Eurystheus—all are here!
And we are here, who keep his vigil!—and
Hither, at last, the man shall grandly come! .....

CREON
Stranger, be welcome! By your chance strange words
I dare surmise you come from Herakles?

The POET turns and faces CREON.
The POET
After a moment's silence
O King!—you, who are old; whose eyes have seen,
Borne on the shoulders of subjected men,
The little pageant of the world go by,
Pontifical and proud, with Gods and gold
And bright caparisons of victory—
And nothing come of it!—whose ears have heard,
Beyond the high, hard music of the march,
Beyond the chorus and the canticles,
The strange, strained sob of the great human heart,
Crushed and subdued against the iron breast
Of life's obscure, supreme necessities,—
The wailing and the bitter, broken cry
Of souls disconsolate and lives foredoomed
To ruin and intolerable wrong
From Gods and men—and nothing come of it!—
You, who may haply, in your whole long life,
Once and at last have dreadfully discerned
The infinite, inscrutable darkness
Bounding the narrow precincts of the mind,
And the old, awful taciturnities,
Against whose smooth, impenetrable walls
The shouting and the singing voice of life
Shatter and die and are not heard beyond—
And nothing come of it!—O you, whose mind
Is wise with the long audience and vigil
Your life has been—and nothing come of it!—
What is your faith, and what shall be my hope
Of Herakles? Is it the very light
Of truth, the very strength of the soul's cause,
This woman has discerned radiant in him?
Is he the very guide our souls have sought
Out of the labyrinth? Is he the Saviour?—
Give me your faith, for I am sick with doubt.....
Are not the dire, dark Gods, the bitter Gods,
Ranged, leagued and armoured with the common world
Of crowds and Kings to work the man's undoing?
Well I discern where the blind, brutal hand
Of fortune stretches at him from the shadow.....
And soon the stroke shall fall! ..... Is it too soon?
Speak!—can he bear the blow? and is he yet
Full-grown in strength, and, like a God, become
Invulnerable?—or must he yield at last?
Or die far on the frontiers, overwhelmed? .....
Speak! Speak! My spirit is irresolute,
Swift and unstable as a wind-swept flame!
Give me your faith; the crucial hour is near;
He comes! He comes!—and wilful of his cause,
Here shall the soul take issue with the world!

CREON
After a slight pause; in his most temperate tones
Stranger, be welcome none the less because
You tax the patience of philosophy,
And vex a man whose age and whose estate
Give him some reason for the world's regard.
Patience may suffer; but my sole concern
Is with the perfect humour of the thing;
And since you variously enhance the joke,
Be gladly welcome! I discern in you
That taint of a poetic eloquence,
Which is perhaps the fashion of your youth,
And therefore to be leniently endured,
Yet gives a special tinge of irony
To the reflective mind which hears you speak.
Believe me, you might well be rid of it,
And of your flourish and intemperance
Of fancy, which the sane sense wearies of.
Whatever hazard of man's life is toward,
The facts are still sufficient to the end
In sight,—and ends invisible are just
Mere myth! That you impute to me a faith,
And, for yourself, indulge some fervent hope
In what vague ventures of the frenzied mind
No soothsayer of dreams can clearly tell,
Charms me—as youth will charm us!—but we find
A smile to vex down such extravagance!
Alas! we have some serious cause to fear
That the unhappy mind of Herakles
Is raptured and estranged—resolved to take
Some final issues with the Gods and men.
But we have seen, what you at last may learn,
How such pretensions of the spirit fail,—
Whose victory, I take it, is your hope.
Life, like a candle in a starless night,
Brightens and burns, or flutters and is spent,
As man's wise weakness spares the guarded flame,
Or man's rash strength resolves in all despite
To lift his torch into the spacious winds,
To blaze his path across the darknesses,
And force the elements to his own undoing.....
Only the strong go forward—and are slain!
Only the strong, defenceless, dare—and die!
Only the strong, free, fain and fearless,—fail!
Remember this! lest a worse thing than mere
Passion and ecstasy of poems befall you.

The POET
Old man, old vain mild phantom of a man!—
These many years there is no phrase of all
Your cowardly smooth wit, no attitude
Of yours I have not learned and wearied of!
Poor ancient, philosophic humourist!
I know you as you pitiably are:
Wise as the world is wise,—and ignorant
As only the dull, blatant world can be!
Tell me your lies no more, your clever lies!
Is there a man so dull he has not felt
The countless soldiery of circumstance
Charge down out of the dark against us all?
Is there a man so blind he has not seen
How fearfully the timid citizens
Of the wise world that you are master of
Armour their nakedness against the foe?
Is there a man so false he has not learned
How all in vain men dress against the shafts
Of truth their shadow-shields, and all in vain
Shape for their lives' defence the seeming gold
Of faith, the shallow silver of a sane
Philosophy,—to fit the cultured mind!—
The dull, stern bronze of patient hardihood,
Or any base alloy or mean deceit
Of weakness and respectability,—
However tried and tempered in the forge
Of the remembered usage of the world,
Fed with felled branches from the tree of time?
Is there a man so false and blind and dull
He does not know how all confinements yield,
All fashions of defence are overborne,
When the real truth's Redeemer is at hand,—
When, midst the very ruins of the House
Of Fear, the mighty soul finds place and room? .....
In the great game where each man's stake is set,
They only lose who dare not ever play
For the one prize that is not counterfeit—
And they must always lose! Only the strong
Go forward—and are saved! Only the strong,
Restless, defenceless, and companionless,
Dare—and supremely live! Only the strong,
Free, fearless, all-ambitious,—by so much
Come to the soul's sublime inheritance!
I asked no stale philosophy like yours,
Safe and sententious; and I am not apt
To take your dreadful humour,—which to me
Seems like the simper on a dead man's face!
Out of my soul's unrest I cried to you!
Out of my weakness and my heart's desire
I cried for faith, to you who had it not!—
For faith that here at last, come to his own,
Is the true, brave, divine, enfranchised man! .....
I seek my saviour! I am nothing more
Than a great voice crying upon his name,
Shouting his welcome,—for he surely comes!
My poems are the pure pæan of his advent—
And well I know he sleeps within myself!
Still, tho' I call him with a constant voice,
And, standing heart-sick in the twilight, fill
His glimmering casement with free flights of song,
He wakes not yet for all that I can do! .....
Therefore, O therefore is my hope alive
For the true man in whom the saviour wakes,
Who is my equal,—who is more than I! .....
Till, at his touch, the golden gates of light
Sunder!—till, suddenly, the pregnant soul
Wakes in the pangs of God's nativity! .....

CREON
Poor mad, mazed, dream-bedevilled, frenzied fool!—
'T is well my anger is no longer rash—

The POET
Mad to your sense I may be,—mad almost
As God is mad to those who know Him not! .....
Turning to the WOMAN
Woman, O Woman! what shall be my hope?
Would that my faith were perfect! Overlong
My heart has fed with blood the sacred flame;
Mine eyes have kept the consecrated vigil;—
And almost seemed magnificently at last
To witness to the coming of the Lord! .....
O might the tranquil eyes of wisdom read
Into the powers and prospects of the soul
A larger sense of what is possible
Than I have seen—and help my unbelief!

The voices of a great multitude sound, crying out in the distance.
The VOICES
Herakles! Herakles!

The POET
At last he comes!

CREON
Comes to relieve our small suspense, to end
The prologue and enact the—comedy!

The POET
moving swiftly to a position close beside the throne of CREON and addressing him with an earnest intensity
Old man, forego your childish pleasantries!
Your cap and bells ring sadly out of tune
Amid the solemn and celestial choirs
Which sound across their clear antiphonies,
Now as the Hero—and, it well may be,
The Saviour—yea! the truth's Redeemer comes!
Put by your mannered, threadbare attitude;
Put by your trifling wisdom of the world;
Witness and understand! Your eyes and brain
May well be clear,—for age wears out the world
In man's regard, like some embroidered silk
Worn threadbare in the gradual waste of time,
And leaves a calm, transparent vacancy,
As of pale light over a hueless sea.
Watch! and it may be you shall read the news
And see into the secret! .....

The VOICES
nearer than before
Herakles!
Herakles! Herakles!

The POET
He comes!—O King,
He is that man from whose resplendent eyes,
But lately, to the woman who had faith,
The light of Gods shone out like a strange dawn! .....

The VOICES
always nearer
Herakles! Herakles!

The POET
Behold him well!
I—I have seen his strength, and half-believed
That he is of the few indomitable
Whom the Gods hardly bring into dominion
By any means!—till I have seemed to hear
Sound in my soul the trumpets of his triumph! .....

The VOICES
close at hand
Herakles! Herakles!

The POET
He is at hand! .....
The Bridegroom comes! ..... O Heart! O Paranymph!
Let the sealed gates of love stand wide asunder,
And all the bounds of faith perish away!
And let the winged soul, from its lonely skies,
Cry out in joy, claiming the victory!

Amid a great roar of welcome from the people and the soldiers, HERAKLES appears in the open space before the King. He is accompanied by MEGARA

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303

and his Children, and followed by IOLAUS. He confronts the King and the cheering multitude in silence. Gradually the tumult subsides. Meanwhile the MESSENGERS OF EURYSTHEUS draw near the throne of CREON.
AMPHITRYON
Welcome, my son!

CREON
Thrice welcome, Herakles!
Messengers are come hither from the King
Of Argos, and will speak alone to you.

HERAKLES
It will not help that I should hear them now.
I have renounced all profits and concerns
And servitudes of proud and politic men;
For, in the strong fulfilment of my vision,
I am resolved hereafter to be free!
Therefore the envoys of Eurystheus
Now may depart in silence: I no more
Regard them, and I will not hear them now.
I must be diligent about my business,
Which brooks no more delay!—And know you well,
If you behold me now it is because
I have one thing in all the world, one thing
To all the world, and only one, to say:
Farewell!
Rumour among the people and soldiers. The King and those about him listen with anxious concern.
My heart, this one, brief, utmost time,
Returns to where it once went proudly home
And daily dwelt,—knowing no better place,
No more majestic mansion of desire,
No costlier love,—to bid you all farewell!
Farewell! I linger but to take my leave
Of all I loved; my soul is on its way;
I am impatient to begone;—farewell!
Farewell! My road is hence and hard and far;
And where it leads me I may haply learn;
And whither, if at all, it takes me home! .....
Now I but know I will be free to follow
In the steep way, my soul's way, to the light—
The light which dawns within me! O my friends—
Kin, soldiers, citizens—be well assured
That even in this mystic and majestic hour
The Lord is in my house—and wakes! ..... At dawn,
Solving the heart's incertitudes, one came
To witness to the Lord and specify
His advent—and he wakes—and all is well!
I asked—and bountifully I have received;
I sought—and I have wonderfully found;
I knocked—and now the spacious and sudden doors
Splendidly open to my furtherance! .....
I must begone! Farewell, at last, farewell!
My heart is fain; my will is on the way;
And, from the soul's eternal secret source,
Issues a strength I hardly dare to feel
Within me and upon me!—such a strength
As drives the ploughshare of its great resolve
Across the little limits of this world,
And may endure no let of God or man
Cast in the fair-way of its rash ambition! .....

CREON
Now sounds the dread, mad voice whose sense is peril.

The POET
Now sounds the trumpet-call of hope, the cry
Of the enfranchised, strong, expectant soul!

HERAKLES
Comrades and friends—companions of my youth—
Lovers of mine, whose love was health and home,
Honour and happiness to me,—farewell!
Now may your eyes discern the mystic change!
Him you behold is not that Herakles
You knew, who armed you from the temple walls,
And captained you across the battlefields,
In the dark way of death, to victory!
I am no more, no more,—O valiant sons
Of Cadmus! O my soldiers!—as I was
That day we wrapped in winding-sheets of flame
Palace and parapet and pinnacle
And all the bastioned power of proud Orchomenos!
I go away into the light from you;
I leave you; I return no more..... And yet
You shall remember how it was with us
That day the hero and the host returned
Full-flushed, in triumph, with the Minyan spoil!—
When the pale women caught our dreadful hands,
Where the red blood dried black, and wreathed our swords—
Our sinister, soiled swords of victory—
With bridal flowers, and kissed our fierce, parched mouths,
And, weeping, laughed into our shining eyes
With eager lips, song-spent and tremulous!
You shall remember!—and I leave with you
That Herakles who bids you now farewell!
An immense clamour rises from the people. The soldiers, with cries of devotion and dismay, rush forward and surround HERAKLES. They even seize his garments with restraining hands.
O manhood—memories—mood of many days
Of well-companioned tasks and victories
And exultations and familiar joys,
Evoked, impassioned in your hearts and mine!—
How shall I bear to say farewell to you?
Brothers-in-arms—O comrades—faithful friends—
It is not as my heart wills—not my heart
Is turned from you-ward!—for God knows my heart
Is yearning and irresolute and aggrieved,
And will not leave you, and laments and loves
And dares not lose what life has held so dear!
Only I know there is no way for me
But my way, and no way but yours for you;
And all ways of the world are false and blind
And barred and bounded to a mean ambition,
Which knows no more magnificent prize than mere
Exclusive profits and prosperities;
And all ways of the soul are ways of truth,
Which whoso treads them out shall learn to know
What excellence there is within himself
Which finds no hope or having tolerable
That all men may not share on equal terms!
But since, when once revealed, the truth forever
Is irremediable; and since I know
You will not come with me out of the world;
And since I may not go away with you,
Back from my prospect and my path;—farewell!
What tho' the strong heart breaks to feel your love?
Yet will the soul, the waking soul, be free! .....
Turning swiftly to MEGARA
O let us hasten hence!
Turning again to the soldiers and people, and speaking as though to all the world
Farewell! Farewell!—
Now and forevermore!

Meanwhile the MESSENGERS OF EURYSTHEUS have approached. Now one of them advances alone toward HERAKLES.
The MESSENGER
O Herakles,
Wise is your purpose now to bid farewell
To all the world!

HERAKLES
Long since I took my leave
Of Kings and of the Messengers of Kings.

The MESSENGER
Wise is your purpose—for the proud fair days
And pleasant ways of life your feet have trod,
Are changed and ended to return no more.
Farewell—O bid farewell indeed to all
These high commandments, riches, fame and friends,
Honour and eager glories of the world!
Farewell—O bid farewell to happiness;
To home and wife and child a last farewell!

HERAKLES
Rashly you speak of what you know not of.
No man alive is justified to say
What things are fit for the self-centred soul.
I bid farewell to all that is not truth
And all enslavements of the soul,—but love
Of two hearts blent together to one end
Of ecstasy and truth's eternities,
Is a great thoroughfare of liberty
Wherein the soul may walk its way well-pleased!
I bid farewell to none who go their ways,
Strong and resolved, wherever the light is.
To you, but not to them whose way is love,
Whose love is truth, I bid a last farewell.

The MESSENGER
Vain are your words, and all your thoughts are vain,
And all your hopes! O bid farewell to love,
Farewell to friendship and to hope farewell,—
Farewell, a long farewell to liberty!
No more of all these things your life shall be
Made glad and great and good!—no more! no more!
But rather inconsolable solitude,
Hardship and hunger, shame and ill-report,
Vile words and bitter usage of the world,
Labour and servitude and sacrifice,
Vigil and vagrancy shall be your lot,
Your strength's achievement and your life's reward!

The POET
to the WOMAN, grasping her arm
Watch! for the death-grip comes,—more terrible
Than fear can image or despair conceive! .....
Watch! for the dark, fierce, dread, revengeful Gods,
Out of the shadow of the Mystery,
Launch the lean lightnings of their utmost wrath!

HERAKLES
Farewell to love? ..... Farewell to liberty? .....
And what of truth? ..... And what of life itself? .....
Enough! Enough! These idle, senseless words
Merely perplex my purpose. Go your ways!
I have too long delayed to hear you,—go!

The MESSENGER
advancing a step toward HERAKLES
Born homeless by your sire's misdeeds, outcast
And exiled kinsman of the Argive King,—
Herakles! Herakles!—by birth, by race,
By right his subject,—pause and hear me speak!
For I am charged to bear the King's commands
To you, his servant—

HERAKLES
Silence! By the Gods—

The MESSENGER
The Gods enforce you to your Sovereign's will!

CREON
to the POET
See how he glares!

The POET
His eyes are like a cry
Of horror!—like a stricken, haunted place! .....

HERAKLES
to himself
..... Where is the light? ..... the light? .....
To the MESSENGERS, with violence
Begone! Begone!
I know my lineage; but I have no care
Of crowds or crowns or human servitudes!
Your King's commands are senseless words to me;
Your vain pretensions like an idiot's dream!
Enough! Begone! I have my soul to seek,
My truth to learn, my liberty to win,—
And all my labours are as yet undone!

The MESSENGER
Where are your labours?

HERAKLES
Where the light is not
To bring the light; and where the way is shut
To open out the way; and where the house
Is tenantless to rouse the Lord within!—
There are my labours and my works are these!

The MESSENGER
By strict enforcement of Eurystheus' will
And stern commandment of the deathless Gods,
Yours are the labours of a subject man,
Yours are the tasks and toil of servitude!
For where Eurystheus bids your strength to serve,
There shall your works be done; and all shall reap
Plentiful harvests of your sowing, all
Shall profit where your single strength has earned!
And, from the world's avid and thrifty hand,
No wage shall you receive, even at last,—
And no thanksgiving.....

HERAKLES
Silence!—

The MESSENGER
Herakles!
Herakles! by my voice your Sovereign speaks!
Teach your rebellious knees to kiss the dust;
Learn to obey, and humbly serve his will!

HERAKLES
Silence! Begone!—
To himself
What voice of prophecy
Cries in my heart? ..... I dare not know the truth,
Nor hear the secret answered in my soul!
It were too monstrous if the worst were true—
Too monstrous! I will doubt no more—and yet
Where is the light—my light? ..... Where is the voice,
The one puissant voice of the soul's song? .....
Why am I left in darkness and alone,
Deserted and betrayed? ..... Why do I feel
Shudder within me like a dreadful ghost
The superstition of a fatal thing? .....

The POET
I know the truth, I read the secret now! .....

CREON
starting to his feet
God! he will yield! .....

AMPHITRYON
My son!

MEGARA
My Herakles!

HERAKLES
turning upon her
You?—You?—

The POET
O were he strong enough to yield!

The WOMAN
throwing herself at the feet of HERAKLES
Lord, I believe!

HERAKLES
Your faith destroys me!

The WOMAN
Lord!—
Lord!—I believe!

HERAKLES
Then help my unbelief!
I dare not realize what the truth may be!—
So terrible it is, I half believe
There is some passing madness in my mind
By which the light is quenched, the voice is quelled!
Surely it must be so! I know but this,
I cannot see the light—and suddenly
All the serene and mighty symphonies
Of heart and brain and being are silent.....

The WOMAN
Lord! .....
Lord! ..... I believe!

HERAKLES
..... The light returns—the voice! .....
I dare not understand! ..... I dare not yield! .....

The MESSENGER
striking HERAKLES with his staff
Down in the dust, and do your master's will!

The people and soldiers cry out with a mighty voice. With the swiftness of passion, HERAKLES wrests the staff from the hand of the MESSENGER and strikes him to the ground, where he lies insensible.
HERAKLES
utterly giving way to anger
Intolerable! Intolerable!—Beware,
O Gods, O Kings, O men who try me thus!
You play like children with a deadly thing!
That heart may learn to hate you which should love;
That strength may ruin which might best redeem!
Turning upon the MESSENGERS who still confront him
Back to your kennel and your currish king!
I spare your lives which are not worth my pains!
Say to Eurystheus I may well return
From exile!—and should Herakles return,
Not one in Argos would survive to tell
The monstrous story of its devastation! .....
I would tear Tiryns from its base and cast
Its burned-out ruins on the Argive plain;
And in its place I would rear up a tower
Of the charred corpses of its citizens,
Welded in blood; and on its pinnacle
The pale head of Eurystheus should display
How he went down to death beneath my hand,
Frenzied with fear, forsaken, false, accursed!—
Go! while there still is mercy in me, go!

A great shout of relief and acclamation rises from the soldiers and people. The POET springs forward and confronts HERAKLES face to face.
The POET
shouting at HERAKLES
Coward and traitor! Traitor!—
He is roughly seized by the soldiers; struggling in their grasp, he turns to the WOMAN
Mourn! O mourn,
Daughter of desolation, mourn your loss!
O faithful heart!—Woman!—We are betrayed!
Alas! Alas! He is as one of us,
Who all are slaves and dare not undergo
The mighty labours of our liberation!
He too is abject, feeble, and afraid;
He too with mean economy prefers
The helot's hovel to the master's house;
He too will not afford the price of truth
Nor earn the soul's full freedom by his pains!

HERAKLES
fiercely, but dismayed
Whose voice assails me?

The POET
Mine!—which might have sung
Pæans and poems of you in exultation!

HERAKLES
Now by the Gods you well may die for this! .....

The POET
Slay if you will! Yet mind you well that he
Who slays himself in spirit and in truth,
Has done more murder than a sword can do!
I fear you not!—but fear me well you may,
Since I am one whose lips have learned to phrase
The truth's tremendous syllables of song!
Coward and traitor!—you have quenched the light
Of truth and shut the door of liberty!
HERAKLES stands, sobered and dizzy as from a blow. The soldiers begin to drag the POET away; he turns once more to the WOMAN.
Daughter of desolation, mourn your loss!
Weep, for the Child is slain! He slays the Child,
The Child of Light, about whose mystic birth
You were the mid-wife and the ministrant! .....

The WOMAN
to HERAKLES, with agony
Lord, I believe!

HERAKLES
What faith can make me whole? .....

The POET
as he is dragged away by the soldiers
Coward and traitor!—Traitor!—

His voice is suddenly silenced; he disappears. HERAKLES stands, heedless of everything; silent, sick, uncertain.