University of Virginia Library

PROMETHEUS PYRPHOROS [1900]

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

• PANDORA
• PROMETHEUS
• DEUKALION
• PYRRHA
• EPIMETHEUS
• THE VOICES OF ZEUS

Scene. The plain of Haimonia. In the centre, a rude stone dwelling, in the door of which stands PROMETHEUS. The voice of PANDORA always as from within. Total obscurity, nothing on the scene being distinguishable.
DEUKALION
[crawling in].
How dark it is, how dark and miserable!

PYRRHA.
Is't thou, Deukalion?

DEU.
Ah, thy voice! It's I.
My moment's journey seems a dreadful year.
I see nothing—Where? where? is home here?

PYR.
Yes.
Thou soundest surely nearer. How—

DEU.
At last.
O woman, what is this that makes us be,
Threading like worms the cavern where before—

PYR.
Shows there as yet no daylight?

DEU.
No, nowhere.
This dark can never lift, this heavy night
Which lies and stagnates infinitely. No,
It cannot lift, I know not when it fell;
Scarce I remember how seemed the white sunlight,
So debile is my memory and the brain
Clean hollowed out.

PYR.
All round me and within
It is like pools of cold. But firewood—say,
Bring'st thou any?

DEU.
Aye, but prithee to what end?
I crawled abroad the fields there picking up
Some herbs to eat, and fuel; but this I know,
The tinder holds no longer any spark
And fire is vanished irrecoverably.

PYR.
Nay, try once more.

DEU.
Try once again forsooth!
I care not, for the trial 's vain. Once more!
I'll rub the sticks again together. No,
They breed no heat.

PYR.
I'll pile the firestuff—wait—
Lest the one spark be lost.

DEU.
The spark is dead,
I say, the light has ended, and henceforth
Misery and blackness unendurable
Stand in the eyes that saw, the hearth that burned.—
I draw no fire.

PYR.
Where art thou? Flints, here—strike again.

DEU.
So did I a thousand times and nothing leapt.
Alas!

PYR.
Ah me, how dark it is and cold.

PROMETHEUS
[aside].
It bursts the heart to see them suffer thus.

DEU.
Strange, strange how since the fatal evening all
This mound of darkness fell. Father Prometheus
Then cheated God and offered him in guile
Wind-eggs and unsubstantial things: wherefor
We people pay the wrath that never ends,
Life in the dark and obscure loneliness,—
Knowing nor when to sleep nor when to wake,
Eating what herbs we gather here, abroad
The plain grazed by the kine we cannot find.
I hear them in the dark: they toss their heads,
Having slept much too long, and wander on
And trample, or halting with outstretchèd neck
Low stubborn none knows where, far thro' the night.
[The cattle low.]
Hear them!

PANDORA
[singing].
As a poplar feels the sun's enfolding kiss,
And softly alone on the quiet plain
Yields to him all her silver trellises,
A ghost of green in the golden rain,
And trembles lightly thro' the shining air
Nearly unseen and melting in sky
Save for a shadow on the grasses there:
So over the earth and world am I.
The lips of Gods and mortals in a dream
Have lain on my lips of a summer night:
They fade like images down-stream,
But I have remained behind the light.
I give the giver more than that he sought,
And more than I give am I, much more:
As words are to an everlasting thought,
So less than the mother the child she bore.

PYR.
What says she?

DEU.
A time ago, the God of Gods
Zeus came to adore her, and the immortal arms
Closing about her gave her travailing.

PYR.
Did he so?

DEU.
Aye, like a master so he did.

PYR.
She knows perchance then something, knows perhaps
If we 're thus brutishly to suffer always and
Forever gaze upon this frozen void.—
Know'st thou our fate, Pandora? Tell me, mother!—
She has not heard.

DEU.
Or sorrow blocks her ears.
For ever since God approached her, on the ground,
Her silence threaded by dull murmurs, lone
She sits up stonelike 'gainst the rude house-wall.
On hand and knee some while ago I crawled
Up to her, and, saying our heavy troubles, passed
Over her cool immobile face my hand;
I kissed her eyes, I touched and held her chin:
But all that while she said nothing to me,
Remaining passive, silent, pitiless,
Albeit her eyes were very wide awake.

PYR.
The pensive cannot sleep.

DEU.
O misery,
Would that I were asleep a long long time,
Beyond to-morrow and the summer's end!
Nay, sometimes down my dark bewildered brain
Stumble fantastic hopes that—like the birds
I've found afield dismembered and undone,
Like beasts that shut their swimming eyes, and leaves
That eddy dizzily down the nervous wind—
So we may fail and fall, be swept away
From what we are.

PYR.
I too, Deukalion.
Labour at last is shame within the soul.
Have I not faithfully day after day
Uptorn the crusty earth and smashed the clots,
Scattering with thee the everlasting seeds?
Have I not homeward carried every day
Upon my head pitchers of spring-water
And packs of straw for bedding; and arranged
This place we live in cleanly and cheeringly?
Yes, here have I within thy warm embrace
Season on season, long with agony,
My brain sunstricken and my body sick
With travelling the dreadful acres, borne
Daughters and sons and sons and daughters; whom
At midnight then, against their crying, alone
I rocked in my exhausted arms, I suckled
And bending watched, till, as between my brows
It hammered thuds of slumber, very late
A little thin gray morning thro' the chinks
Told the disaster of another day.
And I have reared them and pitifully taught them,
My hand upon their hair, my broken truths,—
So laboured in their welfare! and in pain
So scourged their weakness! Woe is me, alas!
They never gave me thanks, no, nor so much
As looked a little in my hungry eyes.
Rather, against the time of strength, rebellious
They fret their freedom out, and last of all
Abandoning me for another world
Go down the sunset, being seen no more.

DEU.
Yes, over fields we sowed they went away,
Trampling our harvest down. And here we lie
All hedgèd in with hoar and darkness, old
For staring on the sodden vacancy.
I would I knew what thing is in my heart
To stamp away so hardly! but for it,
I'm that much tired and aching-desolate
I'd pass away in earth.

PRO.
[aside].
How horrible
Is now become their life!

PYR.
It wearies me
To think of further being, against the time
Not yet bygone. For then it needs must be
My breasts will shrivel up, my faded flesh
Starve on the joints, and all the bloom I was,
The rose and perfume of their pleasure, shrink
Into a thing of shame.

DEU.
Beyond recall
The labour of our lives now desiccates.
Our sweat was poured for nothing; we have bled
Wounded with ignorance in such a task
As irks one in the very memory of 't.

PRO.
[coming forward].
Then let us now remember nothing more,
But blindly hope in spite of all. And I
Who once defied the Gods, again to-day
Stand and demand our dignities of them.
We will not suffer thus, we will not go
Darkly and despicably tumbling down
The road of life. For we be something more;
Nor quite in vain infinite earth obeys
The plough we fashioned. All indeed is ours!
We are the crown of nature and her lord.

DEU.
O hold thy peace, desperate man! The Gods,
Thy littleness to show, have now been pleased
To take, for matter of their anger, us
Who serviceably did our common task.
Thou pil'st our suffering up. What is thy heart
To bring curse after curse upon thy children, all
For idle show in the face of destiny?

PRO.
'T is time we stood up as before, and looked,
Brushing the meshes from our forehead, forth
Upon the sunshine and the rolling corn.

DEU.
To bring upon this woman and me, upon
All generations, vanity and a life
Fatal and stupid as the stones.

PRO.
Enough,
Thou art mine enemy! For a little pain
Thou givest justice to the dogs. Aside!
Hinder my thoughts no more. Alone to-day
I shall restore the light.

PYR.
O father mine,
I nothing say who love thee evermore.
Give us the light and life, give us the hope,
That we may never question but abide
Unthinkingly by what is set before.
Lay thy two hands upon my brow, and smile
Tho' the night hide thy sweetness. Say the word,
Give us the promise. We believe thy strength.
For see, we suffer and so scarcely endure
That nothingness were better far, and ev'n
The being unborn a wholly happy thing.

PRO.
Yes, woman, word and promise hold: I swear't
By me and thee who bearest in the world
The sweeter burden and the sharper pain.
This night is not fore'er nor long, and soon
Between the cliffs of darkness issuing shall
The day its thousand arrows pour abroad
Here where we lived—and shall in other years
Live and increase, our children's children, on
To generations jealous as the Gods.
This will I do, and if they stood in rank,
Yet will I storm them, winning back the fire
And scattering the hope that cannot die.

DEU.
What misery will be ours!

PYR.
Speak to the end.
'T is sweet to dream on what not yet has been.

PRO.
'T were sure a shame to grovel at the doors
And ask a pittance, when the Lord is I.

DEU.
Necessity!

PRO.
We change and pass away,
But so in changing have some mastery, we
Revolving make progression, we endure
In virtue of desire and hope dissatisfied,
And, thro' disaster struggling, at the last
Fetch in salvation and the human end.
This for now! nay, only a little space
Of twilight is before, a dubious interval
After the night, this side of day, as tho'
We stood upon the threshold momently
Where morning meets with evening passing by.
Therefore in tears no longer dreaming, now
Turn, tho' your hearts be broken, turn your eyes
Dayward, and quelling all lament with hope
Wait for my coming homeward. I declare
I will go bring the sunlight in my hands
Back from God's citadel and home to us.

[He goes away.]
PAN.
[singing].
Before my eyes they come and go;
The shadows on my dreaming face
Move to and fro,
Yet I look further over larger ways.
For pity is not of that nor this,
And kindness stretches out her arm
On all that is,
To keep the grass-blade and the star from harm.
She kisses every dying wave
Into the sweetness of her trust,
And stoops to save
The bird that sank from heaven into dust.—
The battle hurtles long and loud
Between the mountains and the sea;
The yellow cloud
Crashes the woods in sunder tree by tree,
And struggling over land and main
The generations masterful
With greed and pain
Scatter upon the turf a brother's skull:
I walk the places where they drove
And sing my song where all is cursed.
Then, for my love,
The child will play again, the flower burst.

DEU.
What a strange mournful voice is hers!

PYR.
No, no! I feel a happiness bringing leaves
Upon the branches, and the night is less
Between now and to-morrow! Oh, to-morrow—

DEU.
Thine, woman, is a silly heart, and trust
Is in thy being like a malady.
Father Prometheus, greatest of us all,
Avails not with his majestic arrogance
To wrench from God the blessing he denies.
And we be cursed! I know not wherefore, no,
I cannot say what mischief, thine or mine,
Merited punishment: but we be cursed
Beyond our father's valour to revoke,—
And I believe, to pay his awful deed,
He will hang out in anguish crucified
Upon the giddy ramparts of the world
While we mysteriously damned shall hide
Here at night's bottom to the last of time.

EPIMETHEUS.
Deukalion!

DEU.
Here, father, this way home.

EPI.
Deukalion!

DEU.
Here, here! Thou seekest us?
What is 't?

EPI.
I've journeyed hopeless and too long,
Nothing before but darkness and behind
This endless shadow of my memory.

PYR.
Poor heart! thou lovest overmuch the past.
But happiness is toward, the night will end.

DEU.
Heed her not, Epimetheus! Thy brother
Has spoiled her brain with promises and words.

EPI.
Where is he?

DEU.
Come to fetch the fire again,
To kindle back the world to what it was.

EPI.
The fool! He struggles forward evermore,
Like one who stumbles; but the sadder thought
Never constrains him, that futurity
Is dead with phantoms of the things bygone,—

DEU.
Aye, and alive with sufferings that are.
He 's wild and rolls like whirlwind up a steep,
Leaving but ruin.

EPI.
When I consider time,
Remembering all my pastimes and the haunts
Where clustered flowers erewhile that one by one
Shone either side the path of what I was,
My bosom fills more than to hold with pain,
And yearning, like a swallow in the void,
Strains aching, dropping down, down endlessly.

PYR.
Come nearer that I rest thee in my arms.

PAN.
[singing].
Many who have only dreamed of me
Have grown unhappy and lost their years.
They gather the daisies thoughtfully,
Then throw them away and burst in tears.
Their eyes are filled—for they looked so long—
With the sunset-light of my aureole;
Their lips will quiver to utter song,
And the spring lies swelling under their soul.
For their hand in a woman's hand is laid
And between a woman's breasts their brow.
For a while they feel no longer afraid
With the sky above and the earth below:
But never the whole and the fulness come.
Their eyes are blind with another light.
They walk through echoes and have no home,
Like shadows waving upon the night.

EPI.
Pandora's voice.

PYR.
Obscure and pitiful.

DEU.
What sawest thou on thy travel?

EPI.
No daylight.
Nor anything on before; but at my back
Remembrance made a weary song, chanting
The mellow seasons that have gone away.

DEU.
And bringest nothing?

EPI.
No.

DEU.
How profitless,
Thou and thy brother, elders tho' ye be,
Worry the time out and defeat yourselves.
One storms gigantic up the heavens; thou
Triest to die with thine own memory.

PYR.
Leave him, Deukalion, for he is so sad.

DEU.
Aye, 't is we suffer their temerities,
And back and forth, to ends we know not of,
Madden between to-morrow and yesterday.

PYR.
Father, be comforted! And if it please thee,
According to thy fancy, nothing forced,
Sing us meanwhile a rune here in the night.
For song is very like a summer fern
Sweeter for dark; and we sad winter birds
Will dream a little while more pleasantly.

EPI.
[chanting].
The noise in the eternal heart abates.
The valley of the world is blotted out,
And either end the boulders on the gates
Are pushed across and shut.
The mountains in the dark are growing small.
No wind is any more upon the lea.
The stone has frittered from the waterfall
Down rivers to the sea.
The uttermost is swelling out in void,
In total night, more cold and emptier
Around the ghost of that which is destroyed,
The breath of things that were.

[A long silence.]
PYR.
Hush, for I hear him.

DEU.
Say!

PYR.
Prometheus
Is coming. All thro' my blood the pulses knock,
I see the flames—they crackle.

DEU.
Her brain is wild.

EPI.
I feel like echoes of the lost daylight—

PYR.
He comes, he comes. Nay, look how fast the light
Rolls gaining on the dark and urges back
Like windy boulders of obscurity.
His step! I hear him, I see him—Prometheus!

PRO.
[shouting from far].
This torch will light our lives. Rejoice! up, up!
I say we have the sunlight back again.

DEU.
How sharp a dazzle races the empty air!
I see nothing.

EPI.
It reddens in my two eyes,
My brain is needled thro' with pain.

PRO.
[rushing in with a torch, lights the pyre].
Rejoice,
The lost is won! Our dignities once more
Resume their proper thrones, and we are men.

PYR.
Thy forehead shines like morning! on thy neck
I lay my arms—but the light kills—

PRO.
No, come
And gladden! Logs here and pitch and all that burns,
That kindles, flames. Bring, pile it high as heaven,
Along like rivers and across like fields!
'T has dawned at last, such dawn as ne'er before
Tore the wide sky. From out bottomless chasms
Fountains jet glittering up into the sky
And hailstone sparks descend, tumbling like sand
Over the mountains swollen in conflagration.

DEU.
Stay, father, hear me!

PRO.
I have it from the Gods.
Aye, from the hearthstone of the Gods I caught
This fire and hope and knowledge won to us—
My torch be brandished in the face of Zeus!

EPI.
Brother, be softer in triumph or we die.

PRO.
Still was it night, thick night, when I at the base
Of their enormous mountain stood, around me
A blacker gloom, foliage and bearded firs,
All of a forest's heaviness: thro' which
Down from the summit wanderingly quired
Amazing echoes of a festival,
Of instruments and choral song. Below
Sounded, like vast itinerant herds afield
Under the night, the torrents rumbling on.
There I began. Sheer up the night, alone
And without fear, catching ahold of pines
To swing me higher or stay me from recoil,
I climbed. Beneath my trample brushwood crashed
In the spongy soil, and snapped the twigs short-off.
Behind, dislodged, stone after stone bounded
Down thumping to the depths. But straightaway
I groped thro' snarls of ragged boughs that scratched
My visage blind, and tore the weedy shrubs
Which like fine cordage knotted my feet back:
So floundered up the dumb dead humid night.
Soon thinned the forestry. From tree to tree
Espaced, the ground lay tamer,—moss and herbs,
A softness underfoot. Then, not a pine,
But blind and weary slopes of shale that passed
Upward in the deserted gloom. I gasped—
'T was icy still and thin, and very sweet
With unseen flowers, the last of earthly things
Carelessly blooming in immensity,
Where still I mounted like an arrow shot
Up with revenge and scorn to the midnight clouds.
Sudden the windier air froze and my feet
Crunched snow which even in such a dark as was
Shone bluely with a smothered light away
To the summit. At my throat I felt the void;
It stung my sweated face. I stamped the crust,
And step by step ascending wilfully
Laddered the cold up skyward to the end.
Just then that music, which half heard before
And undistinguished down the steeps unfurled,
Struck quicker rhythm; and looking up I saw
Mid draperies of darkness hanging vague
A halo shining downwards, in the ice
Mirrored like vapour mazed with meteors.
In a last hurry I climbed. The freezing dark
Was all a tremor of song, and finally
A dim design of snowy mansion grew
Ghostly and lucid, carved of summer cloud,
A white flame tapering at the core of space.
And then methought the appalling night and gloom
Drew like an ocean's ebb sinkingly down,
I swimming out. The floor lay luminous,
As when by pale gray weather and no wind
A glossy lake at morning falls asleep:
Whence grading to the citadel for steps
An hundred plinths of crystal led. They cut
The mild light slant along their silver edge,
Describing circles and diminishing
Toward certain columns roundly poised atop.
Up to that place of supreme glory, I
Man of the niggard earth and god at heart
Mounted out of disaster to my place.
It seemèd daylight growing and diffused,
Splendid, melodious, and of such perfume
As warms upon a meadow at afternoon
Of cloudless summer; and another light,
Neither of sun nor moon, awaked the air
To radiance wreathing on the point of all.
This was his palace, vastly and circular,
Builded of lucent marble, with a film
Hung in its height, erratic, shadowing-in
Unlikely plants and wondrous ocean-flowers.
And placed about stood pillars very firm,
Where top to bottom slender flutings ran;
And around every pillar drew a belt
Mid-high, that brake the rods of light in twain;
And there, clamped in a sconce of gold each one
And cinct with silver snakes, the torches burned
Upholding flames of the everlasting fire,
The sacred fire that having once been ours
He stole again who names his own self God.

EPI.
Alas! thy scorn will drag his vengeance down.

PRO.
Peace, man! He wronged me, and the day is mine.
One of those torches is this in my hand.
It flamed to right where the entrance is, two bright
Iron-swung sheets of brass, firm-barred across
And bolted 'gainst the fearful universe:
While inside cried aloud perennial choirs
To a single note so puissant and superb
It seemed an ocean singing to the sun.
I heard, and seized the torch. In challenge too
Wrenching the clasp, I hurled it formless down
Before their gates and turned my feet away.

[It thunders.]
PYR.
Father, be calm.

DEU.
O desolation and despair!
Thou, wretched man, shalt be our ruin.

PYR.
Hush!
The winds are up—

EPI.
It had to be—

PYR.
Like streams
Swirling before they burst.

DEU.
A thunder-cloud
Unravels down out of the burning sky.

PRO.
I say, whate'er's achieved, once and for all
Stands in defiance, and we at Nature's heart
Register signs of our nobility.
This is the symbol I have had my will,
Which down the crystal stairs into the depth
I bore, a little flame thro' darkness, won
From summits which henceforth are counted ours.
With it I 've lit the world.—Look forth, my children!
All the unfolded earth, mountain and vale
Holding their fruits aloft, the knotty crags
Scattering colour, and the prairies green
With tuft and billow of infinite grass:
Of all their life your life is nourishèd.
Follow the rivers further to the sea
And launch your enterprise! The wilful soul
Goes forward to possess, and vindicates
From strength to strength the majesty of life.

EPI.
Alas!
Nothing will teach thee infelicity.
The sunrise is not all: who shall forget
For stubbornness or greed the yesterdays
Which rivet us to the soil we come of? See,
The woman weeps.

PYR.
[to PROMETHEUS].
I'll follow on—heed not him—
Despite exhaustion for the hope—

EPI.
The hope?
What says she?

PRO.
More of truth than e'er thou knew'st.

DEU.
Oh, this it is that whets the rusty scythe!
And notwithstanding certainly we believe
It nothing profits so throughout the year
To strain, yet strain all the year thro' we must,
And for a hope! Thou mad'st it so! The worm
Which bores the parchèd glebe is happier,
The goaded oxen plodding for a bread
Not theirs, more calm—thou mad'st it so! A curse
Upon thee! May thy tortures pay our own,
Our stupid agonies that in the daylight now
Begin afresh!—I will not struggle more.

PRO.
He whines. A pity 't is the world consists
Of such: who using nature and themselves,
Suffer their task and clog with lamentation
The rush and furtherance of human things.
For hope, being had, suffices; in so much
We prosper, and the Gods are idle dreams
Strung in the void of our uncertain thoughts.

[It thunders.]
EPI.
Another day has been.

DEU.
Thunder again!
The eternal reason will be justified,
And truth descends against the haughty brain.

PYR.
How 't darkens!

PRO.
[soliloquising].
She too loses heart. At last,
Whatever be done of large and generous,
Howe'er one's life be given, and freely all
Delight, affection, quiet sacrificed
For something bolder to the good of man,—
Yet at the last he will prefer disgrace
And hug his slavery, leaving him that strove
To fight damnation and despair alone.

PYR.
Ah me, the daylight vanishes in death.

[A cloud gradually falls through the scene, and all fades in gray obscurity.]
PAN.
[singing].
As an immortal nightingale
I sing behind the summer sky
Thro' leaves of starlight gold and pale
That shiver with my melody,
Along the wake of the full-moon
Far on to oceans, and beyond
Where the horizons vanish down
In darkness clear as diamond.

EPI.
On wings of memory the night returns.
The great bird gires before he drop again.—
Sunlight and country that I knew! O sky!
Ye furl yourselves and wander shadowily
Into the endless backward of the heart.

PYR.
It blows and darkens in. Where is he?

[It thunders.]
THE VOICES OF ZEUS.
Man, come with us, come with us, come away!

PRO.
[aside].
His voice!

THE VOICES.
Come to receive thy certain pain.

PRO.
Justice of God, malignant destiny,
Delirious curse! how it confounds the brain
To see thee blast our strength, and day by day
With all thy crooked fingers here rip up
The patient fabric of our energy.
Over the endless harvest, o'er the home
We builded with great pain, for pastime thou
Spill'st putrefaction, and upon thy palm
The world shakes like an egg, to shut and crush.

THE VOICES.
Be ready, for the time is Now! We 've come
To lead thee to the edge of wilderness.

PRO.
We'll die in battle. Come near.

THE VOICES.
Thou canst not die.
'T is thine to struggle everlastingly.
Look o'er the world, unhappy wretch, and come!

PAN.
[singing].

PRO.
Pandora, how thou singest o'er my pain
Yet of my humiliation nothing! Ah,
Farewell, and let thy voice for evermore
Sweeten the dreary acres of mankind.

THE VOICES.
The day is at an end.

PRO.
But not my deed!
The light is theirs and I the giver thereof,
Long as blood beats within the human heart.—
Unhand me! Ah!

THE VOICES.
Wear now thy chains.

PYR.
Who is 't that chains? Where is he now?

PRO.
Alone,
Beyond thy arms, in other hands than thine.

THE VOICES.
Drag him on! for he balks the will of God.

PRO.
Yet does my work outstrip the penalty.
Nothing may die or live infructuous,
And I'm immortal: for I join with Being,
And nothing in the universal sphere
But is.
'T was with me for a while as with the sun
Upon the ocean: writing out in gold
The moving characters of highest day,
Which to dull creatures of the depth appeared
Fantastic and divine and possible.

THE VOICES.
Drag him away! The stubborn mind has burst.

PRO.
Many times I have died and yet shall die.
For Nature rolls on, while across the chasms
From hill to hill and round from east to west
Voices pass on the echo to the stars.
So forms are laid aside, and if I lived,
I was the cresting of the tide wherein
An endless motion rose exemplified.

THE VOICES.
Bear him away, for evening falleth in.

[The cloud lifts, PROMETHEUS has disappeared. A great sunset fills the scene.]
PAN.
[singing].

EPI.
The sunset comes to die now as of yore,—
The sad recurrence of remembered things.

PYR.
He 's gone to suffer, gone whither? Alas!
Would I knew where his bleeding head will lie
To give my breast for pillow and avert
The dreadful vengeance feeding on his soul!—
How crimsonly the day declines! Come sleep,
Deukalion, for to-morrow brings again
The sun he gave us, and the hope—the life.