 | Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge |  |
339
NINTH SCENE
340
Before the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
HERAKLES stands alone near the steps of the Temple.
341
I left them in the quiet house—my sons,
My woman and my whole heart's happiness! .....
And all my life, and all my self that was
The world's great Captain in its little wars,
The pride and praise of men, I left behind!
Now, standing here by this prophetic shrine,
I am alone and exiled and bereaved,
I am forsaken, heart-sick, comfortless,—
I am resolved to read the riddle out
And search the secret till I understand! .....
Lost am I—lost! I know not where I am;
I know not where I go;—but whence I come
I know too well!—O this is all my guidance:
The passion to be other than I am
And realize self in the strict terms of truth!
The light is not—and yet the twilight is
About me, glimmering like a moonlit mist.....
And like a ghost I walk unreconciled,
Dubious and undetermined and forlorn,
Fearing the day, yet longing for the light!
O promised Dawn!—when you are come at last,
What shall your light disclose?—some spectacle
342
And loveless nights and long, laborious,
Monstrous, intolerable servitudes?—
Or shall I stand at once, as I have dreamed,
With all I love in the high place of Peace,
Dilate as with the Universal being,
Filled and fulfilled with your serenities? .....
The great doors of the Temple slowly open. In the dark twilight of His house the shrine of the God and the veil behind it are dimly visible. The PROPHETES appears upon the threshold. HERAKLES turns his face toward him.
The PROPHETES
What voice of wretchedness and wild unrest
Cries out before the House of God?
HERAKLES
My voice
Knew not the tones and tears of grief till now!
After a life of strength and high resolve
This is my hour of doubt and blind appeal,
This is my hour of agony! .....
The PROPHETES
The God
Knows neither lamentation nor unrest:
His calm perfection hears no human voice.
343
There is one voice He shall not choose but hear!
The voice of the PYTHIA sounding in ecstasy from behind the veil within the Temple. As she speaks a CHORUS of men and women, worshippers of the God, assemble upon the Temple steps.
Before the House of God
They grieve and they rejoice
Whose utmost light is of the common day,
Whose aimless feet along the trampled sod
Tread the strait precinct of the public way,
Whose lives are like a pageant passing by.....
Within the House of God
No ear receives their incoherent voice;
No eye
Is witness to the deeds their days have done!
Like mummers at a carnival
They flaunt their scant disguise, and one by one
Go out into the dark in silence, after all.....
The CHORUS
Only a windy light no eye perceives;
Only a thrill of joy, a pang of grief;
Only a voice crying where silence is,
Where none respond and the brave song is brief;
Only the plaything of blind destinies,
344
So is the life of man!
The PROPHETES
There is no shadow of imperfect things
Cast on the glory of God's excellence:
Filled with eternal light, His rapt regard
Perceives no grieved, importunate human face!
HERAKLES
There is one face He shall not fail to see!
The CHORUS
We live upon the threshold of His house,
And there like children sport with idle things;
We are a voice that weeps, a voice that sings,
A hand that traces in the senseless dust
The little hazard of our happenings.
Ours is a time for turmoil and carouse;
Ours is a time for sickness, sleep, and tears,
Labour and laughter, love and lust;
Ours is a time to come, a time to go! .....
Yet fearfully we feel, dimly we know
That all the while we live, thro' all our years,
Which run out, futile and disused, before
The threshold of His holy House, the door,
Dark with the gloom of unfamiliar fears,
Behind us, ever and alway,
Waits to receive us! ..... Yet we dread
345
Yea! tho' our hearts, unsatisfied, are rife
With doubts and questions that will not depart,
We dare not ask or seek or knock
Or lay strong hands on the unguarded lock.
Rather from day to day
We cheat the mind with work and dreams and strife,
We cheat the love-sick heart
With passion and blind love that perisheth,—
Until from all our toys we are taken away,
And in unspeakable loneliness depart! .....
Then, thro' the door of destiny and death,
Which is the door of truth's eternal life,
We men, whose times were squandered on the sill
Of the soul's dwelling-place,—
Who found not virtue, strength, or will
To slant the door and meet Him face to face,—
Unborn, unwaked, unwise, and comfortless,
Pass from life's nothing into nothingness! .....
HERAKLES
Children of men, there is one voice of power
He shall not choose but hear; one fearless face
He shall not fail to see!—My voice shall call
To rouse the Lord; my hand shall slant the door;
Mine eyes shall meet Him face to face at last! .....
346
None can endure the grandeur of His gaze;
None can receive the splendour of His speech!
HERAKLES
There is one eye His glance shall not confound!
There is one soul His speech shall not appeal!
The CHORUS
Behind us and before us
The shadow is,
Whose incommensurable silences
Never make answer to life's thundered chorus.....
And in our hands we bear the little light
Of life across the huge and haunted night
A windy mile or so;
And whence we come and whither we shall go
We know not and we fear to know! .....
The voice of the PYTHIA as before
Yet may the inward eye perceive,
Hardly, and thro' the darkness faint and far,
Truth's single, stedfast star;
And learn, by vigil, to receive
The light; and, careless of the goal,
In the divine impatience of the soul,
Forfeit all hopes and fears to follow on! .....
347
That somewhere the majestic sun
Of knowledge shines on calm immensities,
And drowns in light death's dark infinities! .....
Yet may the restless mind at last devise
Some scale and measure for the worth of things,
And rise, and valorously depart,
Led by the vision of the inward eyes,
Flushed with the rapt assurance of the heart,
Wearied and scornful of their parleyings,
Their dreams and games and profits, who before
The threshold of the shadowed door,
Build of base earth their human paradise!—
Yet may a man, at length,
Feel in the secret sources of his strength
The power to ask, to seek, to knock,
To force, if need be, the unguarded lock,
And, in the solitude where none else are,
To set the great, dark door ajar,
And live, and enter, and with words of power rouse
The Master of the House!
The CHORUS
It may be, as the Spirit saith,
That whoso slants the shadowed door,
Thereafter, deathless at the core,
Pursues his way thro' life and death
As one who walks an endless road,
348
It may be, as our dreams aver,
Beyond the door which none have passed,
The asker and the answerer,
The seeker and the truth, at last,
Are single and supremely one! .....
It may be, when the gate is won,
That whose stands within the door
Exults with love's transcendent youth
In calm eternities of truth
Where, as with God's immortal breath,
The soul forever and forever quickeneth! .....
But we, whose lives are spent before
The threshold of the House of God,
We only know it is not thus
Ever for one of us!
Rather we know not what is worst or best,
And we are wearied, and we find no rest,—
And there is haply rest beneath the sod! .....
Therefore, as life has taught us, so we deem
Time is the little way from birth to death
Which flowers and stars and countless men have trod
And found no reason of their wretchedness,
No pondered justice first or last,
No light to guide, no Saviour to redeem!
So, in the passion of our heart's distress,
Our minds inert, incurious, and afraid,
349
And worship at the shrines our fathers made.
And well we know, when all is said,
Tho' faith and hope caress their dream,
That life and death and sorrow and loneliness
Do something more to us than merely seem!
HERAKLES
O Children!—O my frightened Children!—Peace!
Children of men, it is not as you deem!—
Hear me!—I say life palters with the price
Of Truth's for-everlasting gift and grace!—
I, in my hour of weakness, I have dealt
In mean economies, and sapped my strength,
And vexed the soul's resolve with lamentation!
I too have feared and suffered!—and even now
I am afraid—I suffer—I am not strong!
I see before me with a black despair
The prospect of my desolation!—Yea,
And worse, it may be, if the worst come true!—
The prospect of a life's intolerable,
Infamous servitude! ..... And in my mind
There is a kind of madness without name
Even to think of it,—and a red mist
Of blood drowning the vision of mine eyes! .....
He pauses; then speaks again. As he speaks, he mounts the steps and crosses the threshold of the Temple.
Children of men, I bring you somewhat more
350
I have beheld the star of truth and seen
The sun of knowledge dawn over the soul.....
I have devised ascending gyres of thought,
And climbed into the prospect of perfection.....
I have turned inward from the spectacle
And florid insignificance of what
The rank world reckons as the life of man,
And set my strength against the shadowed door,
And come at last living into his house,
And called the Master with a mighty voice!
Him will I meet with face to face, and feel
His power, and hear His secrets in my ear! .....
And living as I go I shall return,
And bring you news and tidings of the Lord! .....
The PROPHETES
Forbear! No man may trespass in the House
Of God, lest desolation worse than death
Leave him bereaved and naked to the soul!
Forbear!—Inflexible as knowledge is,
Calm as perfection, merciless as truth,
So is the God—and no man may endure
His real presence and thereafter live!
The voice of the PYTHIA as before
His Spirit is
Like a vase of diamond
351
His heart of clear religious ecstasies,
Tranquil, transfigured, true humanities,
In love's grave gardens of divine delight,
Feels the immortal heart of life respond.....
His thought is spacious and serene
And like a consecrated place
Where knowledge is the soul of grace,
And truth alone is heard and seen.....
And who, with undiverted will,
As He is perfect dares to be,
And, in despite of grief and fear,
Has crossed alone the sacred sill,—
His voice He shall not choose but hear,
His face He shall not fail to see:
To him the very God is near!—
And, as his soul shall understand,
To him the Spirit and the Truth are close at hand! .....
HERAKLES makes a motion to advance into the Temple.
The PROPHETES
Forbear!
HERAKLES
Stern guardian of the Sacred Door,
I know the shining garments of the soul,
Which all must wear who enter in His house,
It well may be are robes of hueless flame
In which my human being and heart and even
352
Which tempers truth and makes perfection mild,
Must perish away and all be quite consumed.....
Yet is there that within me which compels,
And will not rest, and is resolved to go!
While all wait in silence, HERAKLES enters the Temple, approaches the altar, rends the veil, and discloses the PYTHIA seated upon the tripod. He disappears into the darkness of the inner Temple. A moment later he reappears, overthrows the tripod, and comes to the door of the Temple, dragging with him the PYTHIA. He thrusts the PYTHIA forth upon the steps, and himself remains standing within the Temple door.
The shrine is empty! Speak, false prophetess!
Where is the God?
The PYTHIA
Where else but in His house!
HERAKLES
I am alone within the House of God! .....
The PYTHIA
in utmost ecstasy
Melt in His arms! Resist not! Care not! Strive
No more, for He is quiet and merciless;
And by His means shall naught grow less,
But all that is shall greater grow! .....
353
Within His mansions none may live;
And, as He prospers, even so
All thoughts and things, transfigured, thrive!
His truth is like a shining knife
Which slays, in sense and heart and brain,
Till what was perishable is slain—
And lives!—transmuted, born again
Dilate with His immortal breath! .....
He keeps no least account with pain,
With desolation, tears, and death!
Perfect and pure as knowledge is,
He has no private end to gain;
No covenant, no terms to make;
No silences
To keep; no death to fear; no heart to break! .....
Man's eyes are clouded with distress;
The heart of man is vexed and twain;
The mind of man is caged and caught,
Nor dares with lifted wings go free;—
His eyes are quiet as calm dawns at sea,
And single, and His heart is one;
His perfect love is pitiless,
And asks no less than all that man can give,
And will not suffer that man come to naught,
And will not punish or forgive;
His mind, like some majestic sun,
Centres the vast, expanding gyres of thought! .....
354
He wakes! ..... He lives! ..... The Lord has come,
And all is glorified thereof!
Melt in His arms!—and, for the larger life,
Forfeit the life you cherished and the love
That once was all your happiness and home!
At last the Lord of Love and Life appears,
And, in His being's excellence,
The little life of hopes and fears,
The little love of self and sense
Dissolve—exalted to magnificence!
HERAKLES
to the PYTHIA, almost in appeal
Who is the Lord—the God?—and where is He?—
The PYTHIA
as before
Who asks is answered by His voice;
Who dares advance is on the road;
Whose soul is free and fain to choose,
Has made the truth's transcendent choice;
Who seeks the God has found the God;
Who knocks is Master of the House!
HERAKLES
with a great cry
Mine is the desolation and the death!
355
as before
Yours is the resurrection and the life!
HERAKLES
I am the God!
The PYTHIA
as before
There is no God but I!—
I am whatever is!
I am despair and hope and love and hate,
Freedom and fate,
Life's plangent cry, Death's stagnant silences! .....
I am the earth and sea and sky,
The race, the runner and the goal;
I am the part and I the whole;—
There is no thought nor thing but I!
Children, behold!—the East is white!
I see it dawn across the dark!—
I see the daybreak of the light
That truth has kindled in the conscious soul!
And hark, my Children!—O my Children, hark!—
For nearer now, and yet more near,
And still afar, and wordless still, I hear
The music of the soul's puissant voice
Rejoice
With festival in the heart and ecstasies
For man's deliverance!
356
Come to His own divine inheritance!
Cry welcome! for the Lord of all,
The Love, the Life, the Strength is come—
The rightful Heir, the Prodigal,
After long exile, now returneth home!
The CHORUS
Strophe I
Truly we care not for the truth,
We care not and we dare not care;—
But life and love and health and youth,
These things, we know, are sweet and fair!
Antistrophe I
Yet love is false, and life is brief,
And youth and health and hope depart,
And troubled is the human heart
With fear and agony and grief.
Strophe II
And why life is we dare not ask,
And what is death we dare not guess;
In doubt, despair, and weariness
We shirk the truth's unending task.
Antistrophe II
It may be that the truth repays
Thought's endless toil to reach its goal;
357
And wakens after many days.....
Epode
But we have neither part nor lot
With truth's far-sought and fabled grace:
Wherever is God's dwelling-place,
In all our lives we find Him not!
HERAKLES
Coward and weak and abject! ..... O my Soul!—
How long the dark persuasion of my fears
Has wrought deception, and consoled the heart
With lies of some conceivable escape! .....
How long even I have dreamed false dreams of God,
As of some other than the self I know,
To whom might meanly, secretly be shifted
The endless labour of the soul's perfection,
The mystery of being, and the deep,
Unuttered meaning of the Universe! .....
Now, self-revealed, at last, and self-confessed
The Lord, alone responsible and real,
I stand defenceless, sleepless, undeceived,—
Naked before the truth!—What more is death
Than my bereavement and my solitude?
What more is death?—and what can death do more
Than rob the Spirit of its resting-place,
358
And leave it outcast, as my soul is left,
Doomed to incessant vigil and unrest?
What more is death?—for what is life, indeed,—
The life I lose to gain death's larger life,—
With all its needs and greeds and appetites,
Its florid hungers, its satieties,
Its humble hopes and gross credulities,
Than the dark cup of Lethe to the soul?—
A prison-house, in whose captivity
The soul finds rest and slumber and reprieve?
And now, no more! no more!—O nakedness!
O desolation! O bereavement!—Where,
Where shall the Spirit now go home to rest
From vigil in the twilight of the frontiers,—
From the brave light and the persuading darkness,
The boundless solitudes and passionless
Immensities of the awakened self? .....
Where shall the soul go home? ..... And, even when
At last the mind's abysmal darknesses
Fill with some huge tranquillity of light,
How, in that revelation, shall the soul
Find place and reason and the forward path? .....
Where is there rest or comfort any more?
And whither shall the tasked adventurer
Find respite or reprieve? O nevermore,
No-whither shall he find the breast of sleep!
And know you well it is a bitter thing
359
Of death, to live—and labour, ever and ever
Afoot and sleepless with the vision of truth!
Life is a bitter thing to lose, and love
And home and wife and child and happiness
And rest and the contentment of mild joys
And small achievements and brief brilliant glories:—
These all are welcome and pleasurable things,
And bitter things to lose! ..... And know you well
It is a bitter thing to go adrift,
Companionless and without pause or end,
Into the vast dark spaces of the soul;—
To dwell, sense-stripped and naked to the core,
In the chill heights of man's divinity! .....
The PYTHIA
as before
God knows, and I, who dwell with God, I know
Truth is a bitter thing to undergo; .....
And life's perfected metamorphosis
From man to God shall hardly come to pass
Save in exceeding travail and grief and pain.
Only in anguish man is born again,
Other and more and mightier than he was! .....
Only with strange and tragic ecstasies
Of body and being, mind and heart,
Life's human chrysalis
Is torn asunder, and ruined, and rent apart,
360
Into the light of truth, the skies of liberty! .....
Yet, tho' the birth-pangs of the soul,
Which will live perfectly
With labour in its own eternity,
Are as the very agony of death,—
God knows no fraction of the human whole
Is there that wholly perisheth!
Rather in his regard, whose human eye,
After long vigil in thought's starlit sky,
Calmly enspheres the equable and vast
Clear circumspection of the eye of God,—
Who has gone on his way where none before have trod,—
Who, in a single vision, sees at last
What was and is and what shall surely be,—
Nothing of all man seems to lose is lost
When man is slain in God's nativity!
O, rather, whoso pays the utmost cost,
All things in their degree
To him in strict accounting profit most!
The CHORUS
Strophe I
How, when, and wherefore does he profit most
Who pays the utmost cost—
Tears and blood,
361
Anguish, bereavement, fear?
How does he gain his life whose life is lost?
For life is one and must alone suffice;
For life is brief and time is like a flood
Which no man has withstood;
And God is silent, and He is not here
To prove such ill things good.
Antistrophe I
How, why, and wherefore is it manifest
How of these worst things can derive the best?—
Joy from despair and strength from sacrifice;
Freedom and clear tranquillities and faith
From doubt and long, enslaved, laborious years;
And gain from loss and God from man and life from death?
What can be worth to man so great a price?
Whence comes his profit when this price is paid?
When all is over and done, is sung and said,—
When life is waste and barren with blood and tears,—
Whence shall the soul receive sufficiently? .....
What shall the soul receive for life's enforced catastrophe? .....
Strophe II
There is no answer! God, if God there be,
Hears not our voice or hears it silently.
362
Who have learned something, since we learn and live,
And who are wise at least as men are wise.
Have we not seen the glory of the skies,
Felt the wide wonder of the shoreless sea,—
And made our homes on earth, where we must be
Whether we will or no?
Have we not learned in bitterness to know
It matters nothing what we deem or do,
Whether we find the false or seek the true,
The profit of our lives is vain and small?
Have we not found, whatever price is paid,
Man is forever cheated and betrayed?—
So shall the soul at last be cheated after all!
Antistrophe II
Therefore we care not what the soul may gain
Or what the soul may lose:
Theirs be the doubt, who dream! We take the plain,
Hard, certain way, and ask no great reward,—
Knowing how much 't is certain, plain, and hard
That by no wise invention or device
May we in the least measure change or choose
What our to-morrow brings.
Wisely we ask no more than will suffice
For life's least good and lowest reckonings.
And thus, tho' we are troubled with many things,
Yet to the soul's concern our hearts are cold;
363
Yet are we cheerful with a little price.
HERAKLES
Coward and weak and abject! ..... O my Soul!—
O God within me—grave and perfect Lord
Of life!—what passions, what rebellious tears,
What wild, weak voice of longing and despair
Have cried against thee in thy dwelling-place!
How have I wronged thy courage, strength, and pride!
What lamentable lies have lured my heart!
What chill of blind alarm has tamed my blood!
What sordid thrift, what weakness, what despair,
Have poisoned all my being with lassitude!
O human souls, my equals!—Well I know
How like a plaintive and impoverished man,
How scared and weak with old captivities,
You have beheld and heard me!—Yet, perchance,
It may be even a brave man in his time
May shed some tears for a whole high life's ruin—
And take no shame of it! A man may weep! .....
But God is in the soul! He wakes in me,
And radiant in the dawn of light, uplifts
A mighty voice of ineffable music,—wings
Of song that rise where, round the heights of heaven,
Cluster the throned beatitudes! ..... Behold!
I am resolved to death, to tears and blood,
To desolation and intolerable
364
And to the best, to new nativities,
I am resolved! And I will stand apart,
Naked and perfect in my solitude,
Aloft in the clear light perpetually,—
Having afforded to the uttermost
The blood-stained, tear-drenched ransom of the soul! .....
Having by sacrifice, by sacrifice
Severed his bondage and redeemed the God—
The God I am indeed! For man is slain,
And in his death is God illustrious,
And lives! ..... And I will live, and sternly make
The grandeur of my purpose manifest,
And take my profit in the treasure-house
Of truth, where none may enter save the Soul! .....
End of the Ninth Scene.
| Poems and dramas of George Cabot Lodge | |