University of Virginia Library

TENTH SCENE

Thebes. Before the house of HERAKLES.

Nightfall.

ALCMENA and MEGARA are seated by the threshold in the last, low light of sunset. The POET and the WOMAN stand in shadow by the house-wall. The CHORUS OF OLD MEN are seated by the steps of the Temple of Hera, at some distance.

ALCMENA
My life burns dimly, like a famished lamp
Wasting at midnight, for my son's return.....

MEGARA
My life burns, and my love burns stedfast!—clear
And calm and candid as a guarded flame
Of assignation and of sacred vigil,
Quietly in the casement of his home.....

The WOMAN
My life burns keenly, like a glutted fire
Set at the pier-head by a wind-swept sea
To be his land-fall and his harbinger! .....

MEGARA
Like flowers unheeded in a desert place,
The long days one by one wither away;
The long nights, still and stainless, one by one
Turn, with the wan, weak daybreak in their hair,
Dismantled of its starry diadems,
And, chill and livid as a lifeless face,
Pass—as the vast light strengthens and it dawns! .....
And day and night find me and leave me here,
Where, solitary, about the open door,
I wait for his return, and keep his house,
And give his sons and mine lovingly bread
And care and welfare and serenity.
Yet, in despite of all I do, my life
Seems like a fruitful field unharvested
While he is far adventured and in peril
About such secret business of the soul.....

ALCMENA
It is the virtue and necessity
Of women, with such courage as we use,
Thus, by the threshold and the fire-light,
To serve life's large intent, and wait alone,
Strong and undaunted, for the man to come,
Who is abroad, eager with lusts and dreams
And pastimes..... Thus the sane and serious strength
Of life's true cause, in us exemplified,
Patient in us, prevails and shall prevail.

The WOMAN
It is the virtue and necessity
Of every soul to watch and wait alone,
Patient and faithful, till the Saviour comes! .....

The POET
Many shall come with gospels of salvation,
Mysterious and august; with ecstasies
And partial laws and rapt, peculiar creeds.
Many shall come, with mystic loves and faiths,
With strange conversions and perverted lusts,
With formal beauties and facilities.
Many shall come—the foolish, false and fond,
The mystic and the meek shall come—in vain!
And He, at last,—surely He, too, shall come!
And we, who know him not,—what secret signs
Shall prove him to our sense, shall specify
The Knower of the secrets of all hearts,
The single Truth Incarnate?—When He comes,
How shall we know the Saviour?—we, who learn,
With all our pains, such scant and partial things!
How shall His advent be revealed? What news,
What news for the insatiable generations
Eager of thought's transcendent enterprise—
What tidings of redemption and reprieve—
What chart, what guidance, what discovery—
What cup brimmed over from the Sacred Fount—
What apple from the gold Hesperides—
What irrecusable witness shall He bring
As earnest that His life has learned and loved
And served the soul's austere necessities,
And, for the liberal and resplendent Truth,
Made an eternal mansion in the Soul? .....

The WOMAN
Sternly and curiously of whoso comes,
Well may we ask; for He shall surely bring
The unimaginable and perfect proof!

The POET
Not He alone—we too must undergo
The stringent doubt! Well may we ask, indeed,
What tidings of salvation and the soul
Has any man after his Great Adventure? .....
Well may we ask!—for in our several hearts
Surely the selfsame question probes us all,
We, the Departed, who must soon return
To that strange nameless Nothing whence we came.....
Shall we return impoverished or, at last,
Rich with the truth's serene prosperities?
Shall we, to-morrow or to-morrow, turn
Into the sunset and the early stars
Brows branded with dishonour and defeat,
Or, with the sacred monstrance of the soul's
Excellent victory, elate and calm?
Shall we return from life dismayed and dazed,
Or quiet with an exceeding majesty,
As God is in His garden of great stars,
Where all things, each in its eternal kind,
Minister to the welfare of the soul? .....

The WOMAN
He is the Son of God; he is gone forth
To find his Father in a better place;
And he shall come with tidings of salvation
And news of great concern for every soul.
He is the Saviour: he shall fortify,
He shall bear up and nourish and sustain
All weakness, fears, and insufficiences—
All incapacities like mine, and all
Scrupulous infidelities like yours.
He shall return so free that he shall find
In you, in me himself exemplified,
And give our wingless, anxious pilgrimage
The audacious, free, far furtherance of his wings! .....

The CHORUS
from the steps of the Temple
Strophe I
Verily, Thou and I
And all men whatsoever who live and die,
We are of one humanity;
We are of one supreme infirmity,
One gross resemblance, one result, one cause;
We are as man has been before,
And no man of us all is more,
And no man of us all is free
And master of the inexorable laws;—
And all is always as it was,
And so it evermore shall be! .....
We are—who were not nor shall be again!
Yet do we vainly live and vain are we;
Vain is contentment and desire is vain
And hope is fruitless as a blasted tree;
Vain are the powers and labours of the brain;
Vain are the pangs that shake the human breast;
Vain is the body's brief felicity;
Vain was our youth!—and when the sober years
Leave us bereft and spent,—when more and more
We feel, upon life's darkening, lonely shore,
Violent and blind, the rising tide of tears,—
Vainly we seek for refuge, long for rest! .....
Antistrophe I
There is no refuge and no rest for us!
Tho' in a myriad tongues and ways
The old, wild voice of legend says,
“Thither He dwelt, and here of old He trod!”
Yet does the thought and the desire of God
Leave us impartial and incredulous.
For we have seen how all things pass
In sorrow, infirmity, and pain;
How all is dust that comes to dust;
How nothing is where nothing was;
How thick beneath the pleasant grass
Are strewn the corpses of the slain;—
And strive however much we will
We cannot find God's justice just!
How shall we call Him Father still,
Our Father, who returns us ill
For good, and when we ask for bread
Gives us a stone instead?
How shall we weep to Him?—He does not care!
How shall we sing to Him?—He does not hear!
How shall we love Him?—for He is not here!
How shall we know if God, indeed, be there? .....
Rather, by God forsaken and forgot,
Let us believe, at last, that He is dead,
Or never was and now is not! .....
Strophe II
Yea! to our sense, in life's fantastic trance,
Nothing there is apparent more than blind
Chance and mischance.....
We drift like derelicts with the aimless wind
Across the darkness of our ignorance.....
Our lives were kindled like a flame;
Nameless out of the nameless dark we came;
And like a flame that will no longer burn
Into the selfsame darkness we return! .....
Were we not then enraptured and unwise,
Should we believe
What the soul's secret whisper says,
And strive to find, with vision-haunted eyes,
Paths into Paradise,
Where we might walk with God in all His ways?
Shall we not rather patiently perceive,
And with an unambitious mind,
Man's witness to mankind
Touching these matters of the soul's concern?
Shall we not rather strive at last to learn
How, wisely and ingloriously, to live?
For we have seen, since human life began,
How inconsiderable is man,
How weak his mind's resolve, how brief his love,
How vain his strivings and his flights have been,
To find the freedom that he knows not of,
The light of Truth his eyes have never seen.....
Antistrophe II
Did not, of old, Bellerophon
Drive his winged courser up the stagnant night
To find if in God's house there was any light,
Or any welcome in God's house?—He said,
“There, in my Father's house, is home.
There, in His love's illimitable dome,
Are many mansions—and I am His son.
And on my Father's breast
There will I rest;
There will I lay down my exhausted head,
My broken heart, and there be cheered and stayed
There will I walk with God
In the calm ways that He is wont to tread,
Quiet and undismayed.....
There will I live, and live no longer here,
Blind and deceived! What else is there to do,
When all of life is questioned thro' and thro',
Save with a solemn joy to question God and hear
The splendour of His speech sing in my ear? .....
I am the Son of God!—and well I know
The Son can do no trespass if he go
Hardily where his Father's feet have trod.
I am the Son of Man!—and I shall be
Welcome within the Paradise of God.
There shall He bend the Sacred Tree
Of Knowledge, and auspiciously
Gather the ripened fruit for me,
And strike the rock of Death, and spread
The waters of eternal life, and break the bread
Of Truth's ineffable communion!”—
Thus he believed, and thus alone,
Bellerophon,
Launched on the quest, superbly rose, and rode
All the long lonely way, almost to God's abode! .....
Till, at the threshold of eternity,
He turned, and saw, and could not bear to see
The veiled and voiceless vacancy of death,
The blind abyss of human ignorance,
Fathomless and immeasurable beneath! .....
His brain reeled and his heart failed!—Suddenly
He knew his own shrill insignificance!
Then, from the very sill
Of the Unattainable Place,
The lightnings of the blind and nameless Will
Struck him down headlong thro' uncharted space;
Until at length—
By the divine, immitigable fire
Sapped in his spirit's inmost strength,
Seared and corrupted to the core
Of love and life and hope and all desire—
He lay dying by the sea's lamentable shore! .....
Thus was it then; with man 't is always thus!—
So was it once with Icarus
Who eyed the sun,
And rashly took unto his spirit wings,
And dared into the darkness, up and on,
To find the secret and the sense of things,
Where, in the eye of God, all stood revealed! .....
But, when the springs of knowledge were unsealed
And Truth towered flaming on his sight,
His pinions shattered in the light—
And like an eagle slain in flight,
He fell from where day promised and dawn was,
Down the deep darkness, smooth and blind as glass,
Irretrievably
Into the all-receiving sea! .....
Epode
Thus was it then—yea, thus it always is!
Man is an eyeless worm whose chrysalis
Never, despite his utmost strength, is riven!
In no rebirth, no metamorphosis,
Is it to man's imperfect nature given
To slough his gross humanity, and rise
Godlike, and walk with God in Paradise—
Free as God is, unconquerable and wise!
His mind is like a haunted house
Where veiled, vain figures walk in sleep;
His heart, where death's bereavements weep,
Where life's large, florid lusts carouse,
Is aimless, like a withered leaf
Vexed with love's vital wind of song;
The purpose of his soul is long;
The days of all his life are brief!
And since we know not what is death—
Since life is—since the end is near—
We care not who may come, we hear
No longer what the Spirit saith!
What tho' the Saviour come?—tho' deep
Within the soul,—as well may be—
There where the peaks of thought rise steep
And stedfast in eternity,
Truth murmurs at its fountain-head?—
We care not—for our faith is dead;
We hear not—lest our faith return;—
Lest we believe the truth—and learn;
Lest we believe the heart—and love;
Lest we believe the soul—and dare,
And strange disaster come thereof,
Of pinions shattered in mid-air,
Of ruin and desolation and despair! .....
Rather, since life is fugitive,
And truth's assurance none can give,
And no redemption makes us free,
We care not, hear not, nor believe!—
We live as man must always live;
We are as man must always be.....

The POET
It is not, up the shoreless seas of night
And thro' far twilights of the Mystery,
The rash adventure and the reckless flight
Of winged desires and dreams of liberty,
Veered to no lodestar at truth's stedfast pole,
Which can avail
The serious, strong, ambition of the soul.
The wings of man's brave ecstasies are frail;
The passions native to the human breast—
The secret raptures which persuade—
The unutterable longings which prevail—
Tried in the truth's tremendous test,
Prove weak and daunted and dismayed.
There is no swift and violent way,
There is no near and friendly goal;
There is a certain price to pay
And certain profit for the soul,
And certain justice!—when, at length,
Clad in the heart's clear, human flame,
Phrased in the mind and conscious of its aim,
Man's inmost spiritual strength—
No more wind-driven and sea-spent
On the waste waters of his ignorance—
Interprets life by his significance,
And lives, and earns his true enfranchisement! .....

HERAKLES appears, almost invisible in the closing dusk of nightfall. The POET perceives him, and his song ceases. He leans forward, staring into the darkness. Silence.
The POET
with a great, sudden gesture toward the figure of HERAKLES
Herakles!—

HERAKLES
intense and motionless
It is I!

ALCMENA
My son!—

The WOMAN
My Saviour!

MEGARA
Herakles!—

HERAKLES
It is I!

MEGARA
starting toward him
My Love—

HERAKLES
Be still!
Stand back! Stand back! I know you not! The dark
Closes you in—while round me and within me
Abounds the perfect and perpetual light!
Stand back! Be still! I am a soul withdrawn—
Shining and stark! ..... My strength is like a sword,
And like a fire, and like a fearful doom! .....
I have stood solitary in the place of God—
Solitary and august! ..... I know my will—

MEGARA
Herakles! Herakles!

ALCMENA
My son!—

HERAKLES
Be still!
Crowd not upon me, phantoms of the past!
I am not whom you deem!—you love me not!—
You know not me!—
To MEGARA
I am not as I was,
When last we felt in one another's breast,
Strong at the core, the pulse of life abound!
I am a stranger—you are strange to me!
The eyes, the eyes, shining with love upon me,—
The thrilled, intense face and the tender word,—
The tremulous, great joy of the stretched hands
And the surrendered heart hailing me home,—
These are no longer mine—mine to receive
Or mine to give!—No more, no more, for me,
Is any human welcome in this world! .....
There in the Temple—there, alone alone,
I died! ..... And there I lived again—and thence
I come—and I shall soon depart, alone—
Alone and nameless! ..... Had you means and will,
Well might the Truth be cogent to your sense!—
But I am like a pillar of pure flame
Whose vision blinds and whose embrace destroys!

MEGARA
I love you, Herakles.

HERAKLES
You loved me—loved me
When in the plaintive dusk of life I was—
When I was dark and cold as dust!—I am
Incarnate fire! I am the Householder,
Who in the House of Life slept overlong
And walked asleep in dreams..... And sleeps no more!
And dreams no more!—Yea! sleeps and dreams no more,
Ghosts of a vanished dream! Bear witness, you
Who see me; you who know me not, bear witness!—
I am the Unknown God! ..... And therefore woe,
Woe unto you all who hear me speak,
Yet understand no sense of all my words,
But love me for the slight glad man I was!
Press not so all persuasively upon me,
Lest you be rent as a wind-driven cloud!
For whoso comes across my purpose or
Assails my strength, he is by no means spared!
Woe unto you all! ..... Woe unto me,
Whom the Truth's justice pardons least of all—
Who am not yet at heart invulnerable—
Who am the Unknown God!—and therefore, therefore
The scourge, the victim, and the agonist,
The Saviour and the stricken sacrifice! ....

The WOMAN
The Saviour!—

The POET
Sacrifice?—the sacrifice?—
What shall I understand? O Messenger,
Is Sacrifice your good report, your news
Of great concern?—and how, in sacrifice,
How is the cost cyphered and signified?

HERAKLES
Ask me no more! Be still!—

The POET
O Herakles,
Is it the lifelong Labours? O, at last,
Is victory prepared? Are you resolved
At last to take the soul's task patiently,
And rise by sure degrees from servitude
In virtue of that work there is to do—
Gradual and long and constant as life is—
By which alone the soul exactly gains
Mastery and manumission after all?
Are you resolved and launched?—O Herakles,
Are you upon the threshold and the path?
Is it the start of all prosperities
You herald as you say farewell to us?—
Who, in the prison-house whence you go free,
Having laid down your life for the true cause,
Watch you depart into the stern, straight way
And years of endless toil, with love and faith
And exultation and heart-breaking joy! .....
O strength!—O toil!—O sacrifice!—

HERAKLES
Be still!
Silence! You know me not! You cry aloud
To craze me with the past's fantastic fears—
Frantic insanities—Eurystheus! ..... Speak
No more! I tell you, in the House of God
I stood alone, and there the man I was,
Florid and perdurable and splendid, died—
Died to revive!—and paid in sacrifice
Once and for all the price of liberty!
There is no toil, no servitude, for me!
I, who by one preëminence of strength,
By one extravagance of sacrifice,
Have wrought life's final metamorphosis,
And thus become as God is, without bond
Or any taint of man's infirmities—
What need have I to labour any more?
I, who have known myself perfectible,
And dared and died, curious of consummations—
Died to the world, and in the soul revived,
Friendless and free, inviolate and divine;—
I, who have gone the uttermost way of all
Ambition, and resolved a strict farewell
To all less things than the one perfect thing;—
I, who have seen tremendously across
The ruins of my ruthless sacrifice,
Thought's stately promise of perfection bear
The ripened fruit of its accomplishment;—
What labours are there more for me to do? .....

The POET
How can the labours cease while life remains?
Life is the heart's occasion, and the soul's
Supreme emergency! ....

HERAKLES
to himself
O patience, patience,
Desperate heart! Patience, distracted brain!
Patience!—
To the POET
O be advised, I say, to silence!
Man cannot dream at all what may betide! .....
Even as we speak together, it well may be—
Roused and released by some chance senseless word—
The universal Will shall strike athwart
Your crossed, frail threads of heart-sick human life,
And rend them all asunder! ..... O, be sure
I am resolved! Surely, if needs must be,
I will make life stark naked as a flame—
Yea, void and ruined as a flame-swept place! .....
I say, well may destruction come!—and who,
Who else shall perish of it, save they whose hearts
Love has made vulnerable? ..... What fumes of blood,
What savour of slain men, what reek of carnage
God may demand, I know not! .....

MEGARA
Herakles!
Herakles!

HERAKLES
You—be silent most of all!
This is a deadly peril! ..... I know you not! .....
Take away your eyes and your importunate face!
You are too curious of me—Go! Go! Go!
I say no tongue can tell what may betide.....
I am dead—and I have risen from the dead,
And come again to you after some days;
And I am other than I ever was—
And you I know not, and I love you not!
What tho' you were my dearest of life's best,
My love, my wife, the mother of my sons,
My very children, innocent and mild—
Natheless I know you and I love you not!
O, hark!—hark!—hark!—how the shrill demon cries—
Naming you with an old, persistent grief,
And tremulous, long lamentations! .....

MEGARA
Hark!—
Hark!—how the voice of love cries out within you!
Hark!—how the voice of truth and justice cries—
Naming your wife, your mother, and your sons,
Who know you, love you, and forsake you not—
And will not be forsaken! Who am I?—
Who are my children?—Well you know our worth!
Can you bereave them and abandon me?
I am no casual woman of your lust;
They are no bastards born of harlotry.
I am the grave companion of your life;
I am your equal—and your sons are mine!
We are the candour and the tenderness
Of home—your home!—and we are yours, are yours—
And may not thus be outraged and disclaimed!

HERAKLES
Why will you cry out in the darkness, words
I will not hear—O ghosts!—O plaintive ghosts!—
Ghosts of the vanished dream—the dream of life?
Why will you cry out in the darkness—when
The lightnings are at hand which shall dispel,
With fire and devastation and despair,
Spectres and plaintive voices and vain things? .....
Beware! lest you may learn how stern and strange
And violent is the just clear voice of doom!
Beware! Beware! You are the living sign
Of an ignoble bondage and a will
Too lax with pleasure and emolument
To rise to the sheer heights of life's occasion!
Therefore beware! be still!—Your voice allures me.....
You would betray me..... I will hear no more!

MEGARA
Verily, in the light of life's real need,
Your words say nothing to my sense. I know
My worth and yours; I know my sons and yours
Sleep in your house, secure in you and me.
Look at me well!—for I have borne your children,
And tenderly and with an infinite joy—
In nights of vigil when the exhausted flesh
Cried out for rest, and in laborious days
Of unremitting care and cheer and love—
Reared them to life and laughter, liberty
And light, and generous grandeurs of the spirit,
And exultations of the heart, and strong
Joys of the body; and maintained your house;
And made my life's concern of them and you!
Look at me well!—Will you abandon me?
Will you bereave me of my love and joy?
Shall I be left defenceless and despised,
Haply the prey and victim of chance wars
In which I well may come to servitude,
Sweat like a harlot in some conqueror's bed,
And, in a sheer excess of misery,
Die of a vile and self-inflicted death? .....

ALCMENA swiftly enters the house of HERAKLES.
HERAKLES
I know you now!—I know you as you are!
You would betray me—you would rouse within me
Passions and vile estrangements from the soul! .....
But there is of my strength sufficiently
Now to withstand you—Yea! if needs must be—

ALCMENA reappears, bringing with her the three SONS OF HERAKLES. They go to their mother.
HERAKLES
almost in frenzy
Take away the children!—Take away the children!—

MEGARA
Yea!
These are your sons!—Will you cast off your own?
Will you forsake, will you abandon them?
What?—shall the sons of Herakles be left
Victims to man's injustice and the scorn
Of an oppressive, vile, injurious world?
What?—shall the sons of Herakles be bowed
By shame, by slander outraged, and by greed
And violence shorn and spoiled, enslaved or slain?
They are the sons of Kings; they are your sons,
The sons of Herakles!—Shall they be left,
Helpless and weak, to lose the throne of Cadmus?
O look upon us well, as we stand here!
And know our worth and power,—and know your own
Heart's longing! .....

HERAKLES
..... vile estrangements! ..... stratagems!
Beware! Beware! Would you betray me thus?
Know that I will not be seduced, enslaved,
Corrupted and made captive by your means!—
And take away the children!—take them from me!—
Is there no mercy? ..... Shall it come to this? .....

MEGARA
How shall we not withstand you, O my Love,
Since you do evil in your heart and lie?
Witness!—we have no selfish will with you,
But the pure purpose of life's sacred cause,
Here in my sons incarnate—and in me.
There is no stronger purpose, and no cause
More pure and perfect. Yea! we must prevail,
Since, with the strength, in us exemplified,
Of all life's cosmic and immutable will,
Now we traverse your madness and your wrong!

HERAKLES
The Lightning falls! ..... Hear you the thunders peal? .....
See you the keen, swift flame striking to slay? .....
Nothing avails! ..... Nothing avails! ..... All's said—
All's over and said! ..... and one thing is to do,
One violent and intolerable deed
Of Sacrifice!—till the white altar glows
Crimson and shining in the white, clear light;—
Till the salt savour and the fumes of blood
Rise in the boundless air's tranquillity;—
Till the relentless sleepless Spirit knows
There is no human shadow and no bond
To dim its Truth, to thwart its Liberty!

HERAKLES grasps his great bow and takes an arrow from his quiver.
MEGARA
Why do you fix me with such bestial eyes
Of madness and revenge?
With a great cry
..... The children!

HERAKLES
Death!

He fits an arrow to the bow.
MEGARA
He will destroy the children!

The POET
He is mad!
He is stark mad!

He seizes HERAKLES, but is thrown to the ground, where he lies, stunned.
MEGARA
..... The children!

HERAKLES
Death!

ALCMENA
My boy!—
Herakles!

MEGARA
Herakles!—the children!—

HERAKLES
Death!

ALCMENA
These are your sons, your wife—

MEGARA
—your little children!
Mercy! .....

ALCMENA
Have mercy!—Herakles!—My son!—
O—

MEGARA
Spare the children!—Spare the children!—

HERAKLES
Death!

He draws his bow and kills the children one by one as they are crying for mercy.
First CHILD
Father!—No! ..... No! .....

Dies.
Second CHILD
Save me!—Mother!—

Dies.
Third CHILD
Father!—
Father!—

MEGARA
throwing herself upon the bodies of her sons
My children! ..... O my doves! ..... My Children! .....

HERAKLES
Rather rejoice! rejoice! Is not the deed
Accomplished? Blood, the blood of Sacrifice—
The dear heart's blood! ..... Behold, these were my children!—
These were my little children!—yet I slew
And spared not! God is not more pitiless,
More perfect and inexorable! ..... Rejoice!
These were my children!—and she too shall die
As they have died! None shall betray me, none
Resist me, none persuade me.....

ALCMENA
Herakles!

MEGARA
O my children! ..... O my children! ..... O my children! .....

HERAKLES
grasping his sword and rushing upon her
Silence! Silence! Silence!—Death! Death! Death!—
O let there be rejoicing, for God's sake!
Set the strong hand unto the sword, and slay! .....
And slay! ..... And slay! .....

Suddenly he sways and falls insensible to the ground.
ALCMENA
.. My boy! ..... My boy! .....

MEGARA
..... My children!