University of Virginia Library

ELEVENTH SCENE

Thebes. Before the house of HERAKLES.

Some weeks have elapsed since the close of the preceding scene.

MEGARA and ALCMENA sit together near the door of the house. The WOMAN sits upon the steps of the Temple of Hera, at some distance.

ALCMENA
I, who am almost lifeless as the dead,—
Who live—if this long vigil of despair
Is life—as he lives who was born my son,
Anguished and spent with ecstasy and pain,—
Have kept this blasted fragment of my life
Day after day by the disused, dumb door,
That if he lives and is not dead and dares
Return and comes out of his solitude,
Damned and defeated, shattered and diseased—
Who was above all men superb and strong!—
He shall not lack the refuge of one heart
At least:—and still for him my heart is sanctuary!
Where else, indeed, should he find room to weep,
Save on this withered breast that gave him suck?
What heart should be to him compassionate,
Faithful and fond in sickness as in health,
If mine were not—of whose essential blood
He was compounded and made quick and whole?
He is my son!—

The WOMAN
He is my Saviour!

ALCMENA
When,
When shall he come? No longer, as at first,
We hear him, like an inarticulate thing,
Dreadfully in the darkness crying aloud.....
He is alone and silent..... He is silent.....
He is alone..... How is it with him now,
There in the desolation of his house?
Is he become a speechless idiot
Who, gibbering, glares about the vacant rooms,
Inhuman, scared, distraught, day after day? .....
Rather, it well may be, the worst and last
Ecstasy of the soul's despair is silent! .....
Yet there are times in my exhausted brain,
When, with a sense almost of rest and peace,
I do believe my boy is dead......

The WOMAN
He lives.
He shall return.

MEGARA
My sons shall not return! .....

ALCMENA
The maniac and the dead return no more!—
Theirs is the better part!

MEGARA
My boys are dead......

ALCMENA
Only dead are fortunate!

MEGARA
My doves—
My little children, tender and very young—
My children—O my children!—Where are they?
All desolately dead!—all violently
And vilely dead, abominably murdered,
Pitiably and strangely slain!—my brave, my strong,
Beautiful children! ..... O my sons! .....

The WOMAN
He lives.

ALCMENA
Happily not! ..... I will believe he lives
No more.....

MEGARA
He cried out like a blood-sick beast,
And slew them, one by one!—their father slew them!
And they are gone, my white and innocent doves!—
Gone! ..... gone! ..... I saw the dreadful majesty
Of Death smooth their still faces, and their lips
Were dumb, and in their eyes there was no light.....
He slew them—one by one!

ALCMENA
..... and we are left
Alive!

MEGARA
..... and life shall never cease to be
A blasted thing, a bitter broken ruin,
An utter and unendurable bereavement! .....
There is no end to the abominable
Agony! ..... They are dead—my sons!—and he,
My Herakles, my love,—he is not dead!
He lives and lurks within the empty house,
A mouthing idiot, crouching like a beast,
Sullen and fierce and frenzied in his lair! .....

ALCMENA
Nay, I believe, indeed, my boy is dead,
As they are dead, who were well-nigh my children—
Happily dead out of this desperate world!
Let us believe at least he lives no more;
Rather, with joy, let us believe him dead!
For then with joy we too might soon depart
Where there is no more madness and no pain;
Where, in the Silence, God's dominion ends;
Where there is sleep which neither wakes nor dreams.....
Only the dead are fortunate!—I know
Life is an ill no mortal strength can bear!
What man could be more mighty than he was?
What heart more great? what soul more excellent?—
Yet is he failed and fallen and overcome,
Body and heart and soul! ..... O fortunate,
Fortunate are they who have died so young!
At least they shall not fall, like Herakles,
Out of a perfect and a prosperous manhood
Into foul pits of madness and despair;
Nor live to sit, bereft and blind with tears,
On the charred ruins of a wasted life,
As I do—who am mother to them all!

The WOMAN
Herakles! Herakles!—He shall return!
He lives!

ALCMENA
Be still!

MEGARA
My sons are dead! .....

ALCMENA
My boy
Is dead!—And I remember, I remember
How he was radiant and tender, proud,
Passionate, dauntless; how his eyes were grave
And clear..... And I remember little things
Of him..... And I believe a woman dies
When she remembers, as I do, such things,
Such simple, poignant, childish memories,
Of a dead child! .....

MEGARA
..... She dies, I know she dies!

THE POET appears.
The POET
O theatre of perpetual desolation—
Scene of the soul's last tragedy—where death
And ruin and dread, inexpiable deeds
Conspired with madness to the soul's defeat!—
O dumb deserted house of lamentation,
Sepulchre of the soul!—and you, and you,
Mourners before the sepulchre, poor hearts!—
What can console you or redeem you now?
Nothing avails, I know, nothing avails!
For all is lost: there is no prosperous
Expectancy, no refuge any more! .....
Therefore I will not vex you with vain words;
I will but weep with you, and then—farewell!
Farewell, O broken-hearted women, rent
And splintered wreckage from the seas of life,
Stranded upon the sterile sands of sorrow
Beside the bitter, barren fields of death!
Here have I nothing more to do but weep—
Therefore I will not stay. Yet, O be sure
I understand you with a passionate grief!
For I—I too have suffered of these things
And shared with you some portion of your pain! .....
Yet will I say farewell, for now the long,
Supreme desire, within me, and the faith
That will not rest, revive: my soul once more
Animates to its own emergency.
Life and its endless future enterprise
Call me. I feel the longing in my heart
Of new departures and the liberty
Of open skies, great winds and solitude—
Of starlight on the mountains and calm seas
At sunset and wide mornings of the world! .....
Farewell, O dispossessed and desolate hearts!—
He turns his face toward the house of HERAKLES.
And you, who filled the measure of my hopes
Of man, and roused raptures of emulation—
Farewell!
He turns to the WOMAN.
But you—rise up! Not all is lost!
O let the dead bury their dead! ..... Your place
And mine are with the living! Come away
Out of this charnel-house! Perpetually
Of all slain things fresh flowers and fruits are made,
When the new mind of man in the new world
Of thought's discovery tills virgin fields,
And the new future like a harvest blooms.....
Now is the ripe occasion. Leave the tears
Unshed, the dead unburied—come away!
We have so very little time to live,
To solve the secret and discern the light—
Such insufficient, fretful hours of dawn
And day and dusk in which to hurry on,
Home-sick and sick at heart, like strayed, sad children;—
And Home is far, and the great Nightfall comes! .....
Rise! Rise! The shattered lamp gives light to none!
All is postponed when death and madness come;
And we who live, we have no time to wait!
We face the Future! ..... He is, with his peers,
Drawn down the sunless vortex of the Past.....
Bellerophon is fallen; Icarus
Is fallen; Phaethon is fallen;—he
Is fallen! Yea, immedicably his heart
Is cancered and his soul withered and spent!
And there is nothing in an idiot's brain
Save the unendurable nothingness of death! .....

The WOMAN
rising to her feet
He shall return! He lives! He is not mad!
He shall return—

The POET
—shattered or mad or dead!

The WOMAN
I say, he lives! I say, his mind is whole!
I tell you he shall come again in power,
Stronger and more serene, more sane, more wise,
Self-mastered, certain of his path and goal,
Radiant and unashamed, inspired, resolved! .....
He shall return—

The POET
You speak fantastic things.
There is no hope, no secret that absolves;
No mystic resurrection; no rebirth;—
That were too terrible! .....

MEGARA
Too terrible! .....
Here in his madness he destroyed my sons—
His children! Here he fell—he shall not rise!
Forever and forever his soul is damned;
His life is wasted as spilt wine; his heart
Rent like a blasted tree! ..... My desolation
Is faultless!

ALCMENA
He shall never rise from this
Abyss, this degradation, this despair.....
O, let us all believe that he is dead!
I dare not think he lives!—for then, indeed,
Then, if the door were opened, we should see
Not him we know, my strong and splendid son—
Rather God knows what spent, deformed, dread thing,
What nameless monster—

MEGARA
—what poor beast of prey,
Blackened with blood!

The POET
What crazed, cringed human ruin!—

Suddenly the door of the house of HERAKLES opens. HERAKLES stands upon the threshold, calm, grave, erect, and strong. A moment of breathless silence. Then,
The WOMAN
with a great cry
Herakles! Herakles! My Saviour!—See,
My lamp still burns! ..... And now the Bridegroom comes—
At last!

ALCMENA
rising up, blind with tears
My boy!—My son!—My Herakles!—

The POET
Herakles?—Herakles?—What miracle?—
What alchemy?—He comes, serene and strong,
Mailed in the grave, fine gold of victory!
Who can believe—

MEGARA
wildly
The lie is palpable!
Grim and fantastic phantom of the past—
Herakles?—No, it must not be! Reply!—
What cheat is this?—O what abominable,
Cruel, and senseless trickery is this?
His ghost returns—but where is Herakles?
Where is the madman and the murderer?

HERAKLES
I am the madman; and the murderer
I am; and I am Herakles; and I,
I am the Resurrection and the Life,
I am the Soul, whose inmost virtue is
Thus to outlive destruction and return,
Valid with Truth's perennial victory!—
Thus to survive, despite of life and death,
With awful strength, the throes of man's despair,
The unremitting madness and defeat
And grim disaster of his mortal days!—
Thus, with the flame of truth's unfailing lamp,
To light aloft its calm, inflexible way,
There where his human vision, blind with tears,
Sees only, in the nether gulf of grief,
Vacancy and the windy darkness!—thus
To pass with man thro' all the flames of Hell,
Till the crude ore of his humanity,
Purged of its dross, refined and purified,
Yields, unalloyed, its bright immortal gold!—
And thus, in power and splendour and dominion,
To rise from man's wild weakness calm and strong;
To sing in man's disconsolate heart; to find
Faith in man's abject infidelities;
To make of man's infirmities the means
Of victory; to be imperishable;
To realize God in self and strength; to save
And serve and strive—till man is overcome!—
Till the immortal energy of Life,
Transfigured with its own divine intent,
Evolves still further to its perfect end! .....
I am the soul—the inmost, immanent,
Real and essential core of life—

MEGARA
And I?—
I, who have all my life long lived in love
And mild beneficent deeds and ways of being—
I, who am innocent, God knows!—shall I
Be as I am, forever a blasted thing,
Derelict, wrecked and spent in heart and soul,
While you, befouled with blood and infamy,
Rise like a God triumphant out of Hell?—
Shall I be damned and you be saved?—No! No!
Surely there shall be justice after all—
Justice at least!—since there is neither love
Nor mercy nor compassion in God's heart.....
There shall be justice!—justice!—

HERAKLES
In the dark,
I have endured your anguish; and my heart
Is broken; and it breaks again for you!
Verily, verily, in my solitude,
Mine was a mightier agony than yours!—
Were they not mine, the failure and the deed?
Therefore I know how mad the truth must seem
Now to your sense, as then it seemed to mine—
How mad, how dark—and O, how terrible! .....

MEGARA
Justice! ..... There shall be justice! .....

HERAKLES
Truth is just.
And truth prevails, relentless and revealed
Between us:—I, the living; you, the lost.....
Only the soul survives—only the soul
Whose self and substance are the living truth!
Therefore am I redeemed.

MEGARA
O Herakles! .....

HERAKLES
Megara!—O my dear, I know, I know! .....
Love was your virtue and your life; and I,
Even I have choked the fountains of your being
And left your love bereft, and one by one
Shattered your heart-strings—till at last there is
No breath of music in you any more! .....

MEGARA
No love, no light, no breath of life, no being!—
I am a cracked flask whence the wine of life
Is drained away to the least, utmost drop
Into the new-turned furrow of their graves! .....
You know not how it is at all with me:
I tell you I am dead as a quenched fire;
Dead as the dreadful eyes of a slain man;
Dead as the blue blank face of a drowned child;—
Dead as my sons are dead!—Yea, more than they! .....
Dead—dead—dead to the core! .....

HERAKLES
So am I dead.—
I, who was once the man you loved and knew!
It is not I—it is the Soul, the Truth—
It is the God who dwells and reigns within me—
God, whom I am when all His work is done!—
Who is so sternly indestructible,
Who is not ruined and shattered and undone,
Poisoned at life's perpetual fountain-head,
Damned and abased and irretrievably
Crushed and corrupted even to the core of being
By this incredible, bestial infamy,
My madness fostered and my hands fulfilled! .....
It is not I, it is not Herakles—
It is the Truth, which has no heart to break—
Truth, which inures by labour after all!—
It is the Soul, whose inmost life and strength
Are of so pure and terrible a temper
That even against the iron door of Death
They are not dulled, and when the stone-blind eyes
Of Destiny shed lightnings that consume
The very being and heart and mind of man,
They are not seared or shaken or appalled!
It is the thirst and hunger of the Spirit
Which, with a longing so relentless, crave
The bread and wine of truth's communion,
That, tho' the wine be mixed with blood and tears,
The bread with madness poisoned, and despair,
They will not be denied to feed the soul—
Which finds its nourishment and lives and thrives
And grows out of great error by such means!
O verily, verily the human thing
I was—the man who once was Herakles—
After this wild, irreparable wrong,
This cruel, senseless, irremediable
Accident of my own infirmities—
Is dead, is damned, is shattered, is destroyed! .....
Know me at last, Megara, Megara!
Behold me naked and ruined as I am!—
All that makes human life desirable;
All that sustains and comforts and consoles;
All that the years can give from birth to death
Of perishable, profound, pure happiness,
And honour, and the clear, sweet, tranquil sense
Of innocence, and sane, beneficent deeds;—
All, all is lost! ..... Yet when I rose at last,
In anguish, from the horror and abysm
Of lunacy, scanted, despoiled, bereft—
A shattered, beggared, blasted man!—and cried
With a terrible voice for the inevitable
Mercy of death—it came not! ..... and I knew
My strength! ..... and clear and grave within, I heard,
Thro' the tremendous silence where the dead
Cumbered the stricken field of my defeat,
The soul's voice sound victoriously! ..... I saw
The inscrutable skies of thought stand wide asunder,
Splendid with stars! ..... And then I knew, I knew
That all was lost!—for man shall lose his life
To gain his life—and more than all was found!—
Found was the sense and source and strength of life;
Found was the way, the light, the truth—the soul!

The POET
Who can believe—

HERAKLES
Bear witness to the Truth!
This is the secret I survive to tell:
To him who hath abundance shall be given;
From him who hath not shall be taken away
Even that which he hath!

MEGARA
—My love! ..... My children! .....

HERAKLES
Only the soul survives—and I survive,
Hardly and terribly enough! But now,
Now with a nameless sense of faith and fear,
Of grandeur and dismay and stern resolve,
I know I am invulnerable—I know
Life shall endure, life shall evolve in me!—
In me essential metamorphoses,
Phases and transformations of the soul!
In me new strengths and new validities!
In me conceptions, pangs, and pregnancies,
Labours and parturitions, throes of change,
Forms and conversions of the element!
In me new germs and new survivals, new
Mutations, new futurities! In me
Perfections, consummations, alchemies!
In me new life!—In me exemplified,
New life, more real, self-conscious and divine—
Perfect, immediate and complete at last!
I am the Life of life; I am the Soul;
I am the strength, the flux, the growth, the trend;
I am the future and the hope of man! .....

MEGARA
You? ..... And my hope, my future,—where are they? .....

The POET
I will believe when all is justified—
Only when all is served and saved and done.
Many shall see, some shall proclaim the truth:
Who shall perform the truth? Who shall descend,
Wearing undimmed the starlight on his brows,
And, with the soul's serene, essential strength,
Toil in dark valleys of this human world?
Who shall perform the Labours, and in all
The days and ways and destinies of life,
Bring his perfection perfectly to pass?—
What of the Labours, Herakles?

CREON and AMPHITRYON appear, followed by soldiers and populace.
ALCMENA
—The King!

CREON
Herakles—

MEGARA
Justice!—Justice!—

AMPHITRYON
Herakles.....

The POET
Only the truth is just.

The WOMAN
He is the Truth.

CREON
Wisdom is justified—

AMPHITRYON
My son! .....

HERAKLES
The truth—
Only the truth is justified!

CREON
The truth?—
What is the truth?

HERAKLES
I am the living Truth.

CREON
turning to the people
There is no strength nor power but in God,
Children of Cadmus!—Witness and believe!
Him you behold is Herakles, the man
More than a man in fortune and renown,
Virtue and strength, resolve and valiant deeds.
You will recall how yesterday he seemed
Throned in a splendid, sole preëminence,
Pattern of men and favourite of Gods
And flower of manhood—envied of the world!
So was he once superb! ..... Behold him now!
There can be now in all the world no man
So mean, so warred upon by Destiny,
So desperate as to envy Herakles!
Children of Cadmus, for that vengeance is
Of God and wisdom is denied to man—
For that the strength of Herakles was more
Than human, and his virtue and resolve
More than the virtue and resolve of men—
For that his soul grew emulous of God
And strove with God—therefore the hand of God
Fired his brain with madness, and he fell!—
Fell as a star falls, swiftly, and is spent;
Fell beyond all resource or hope..... And now,
Children of Cadmus, now behold him well,
Infamous, abject, desperate, and say
One to another, “This is Herakles!” .....

HERAKLES
Say what you will, you shall not change the truth.

CREON
Children of Cadmus, witness and believe!—
Witness the will of God exemplified;
Witness the soul's expectancy reproved;
Witness, believe, and learn—as all we must!—
Still to walk humbly in the fear of God.
So will I do—and strive as best I may
To follow in God's ways where they may go.
Therefore am I resolved—seeing, in wrath,
The hand of God heavy upon this man—
To cast him forth, unpurified, alone,
In the damnation of his monstrous guilt,
To wander in perpetual banishment! .....

A brief silence.
HERAKLES
Children of Cadmus! I have loved the truth—
I have beheld the truth—I am the Truth!
Once to the world and you I bade farewell:
I was a lover then, and the Beloved,
Shining afar, leaned to my soul's embrace!—
I was a Seer then, and in mine eyes
The visionary light kindled and cleared!—
I loved—I saw—I bade farewell—and yet
I could not go!—I merely loved and saw!
Love may persuade and light may guide the soul:
It is the work we do which shall avail!—
Only the work—the labours of the spirit
Wrought in the living substance of the truth!
Therefore I could not go when once before,
Dazed and deceived, I bade you all farewell.
But now, deliberate and determined, now,
Sane and serene, I well may take my leave;
For now at last I am indeed, indeed,
Gone from you all a long and bitter way—
Stumbled and groped and climbed, with bloody feet
And dreadful clutching hands, above you all! .....
It was the rough, dark pathway of my strength
Which was not skilled to any other road,
Yet did not fail me when my spirit knew
Its utmost need, and which survives entire,
Inflexible and irresistible,
Nourished and nerved to new necessities!
I am become the vehicle of life's
Infinite aspiration—now at last
Shaped to its perfect, true, divine intent.....

CREON
Silence! Your brain is still diseased and dark.
Therefore depart, alone and unabsolved!

HERAKLES
I ask not absolution—there is none!
There are no lustral waters in this world
Can cleanse me of their blood or take away
The stigma of their murder! As I am,
So I depart into the future, so
I make life's issue of the soul! Behold!
I am the Hero and Protagonist
Of life, the Pioneer of life's true cause!
I am the Sacrifice! My purse must pay
The long, incalculable arrears of man's
Folly and ignorance and wrath and wrong—
The price of truth, the ransom of the soul!
For, as with you and all men, so with me:
The life my father and my mother gave me
Was all compounded of the sins and woes,
Passions and appetites, credulities,
Cruelties, lies, hypocrisies of man!
So were my home, my happiness, my hope,
Builded of frailty and the stuff of dreams.....
Therefore they fell! But in the abject dust,
See! how the soul's pure gold of truth shines out,
More radiant, more resplendent, more revealed
In the broad, roofless day of devastation
Than ever it was in the kind, tranquil light
Of life's content and blind security!
And see! O see!—into the light, the light—
There where before stood the safe walls of home—
What liberal, lonely spaces stretch afar,
Endless and unrestricted, to persuade
The homeless soul to new discoveries—
New labours! .....

The POET
Labours?—

HERAKLES
I assume the task!
Mine are the labours, for the wage is mine!

The POET
The Labours—of Eurystheus?

HERAKLES
They are mine!—
Mine are the weakness, ignorance, and lust;
Mine is the mean, harsh longing of dominion;
Mine are the crime and cowardice of man;
Mine is the soul of man—the self of God!
And there shall be no vile or violent thing
Left uninformed of my divinity! .....
Therefore the Labours!—for the soul must strive,
The God must serve, until His virtue is,
In man's degraded being and abject heart,
In man's deformed, incurious, haunted mind,
In man's gross greed and dull brutalities,
Illustrious and exemplified!—till truth,
Loved and proclaimed, at last is lived and known!
Farewell!

HERAKLES departs. The people, with gestures of horror, draw aside, as tho' in fear of contamination, to let him pass.
The POET
At last! ..... At last! .....

ALCMENA
My boy! .....

AMPHITRYON
My son! .....

MEGARA
with a great cry
My Herakles! .....

The WOMAN
to the POET
Haste! Haste! The best begins!
He is before us—let us go!

The POET
You love
The truth—I see the truth.—He is the Truth!
Tho' it avail us nothing, let us go!

The POET and the WOMAN turn and depart.