University of Virginia Library

ACT I

SCENE I

[A winding path among the Mountains, up which Prince Lucifer is walking, alone. Adam comes down the path, and meets Prince Lucifer.]
LUCIFER.
Where leads this road?

ADAM.
Good sir, it leads to death,
As all roads do.

LUCIFER.
True, yokel, that it does;
But where meanwhile?

ADAM.
Mayhap to marriage, sir;
For marriage is the half-way-house to death,
Where heedless men make merry.

LUCIFER.
Hardly there!
Save one be minded, in a moonish freak,
To dally with the coy and nimble wind,
Kiss the cold glacier, court the unmelting snow,
Fondle the scaly body of the pine,
Woo the escaping cataract, embrace
The monstrous avalanche, what business here
Hath the warm insurrection of the blood,
Or quest of pillowed softness? Stair on stair
Of rugged steepness winding to the tower
Of spacious observation I behold,
But nowhere ledge or narrow shelf for love
To stretch its velvet body and prolong
Its languid gambols. Place alone is here
For austere thews, and boundings of the mind
Across the chasms of appalling thought,
Up to the crags of rimless speculation.
Love clings unto the valley, as beseems
Its pampered homeliness. The mind delights
To commerce with the icy-sharpened peak,
And controvert the lightning.

ADAM.
He is lost
In the void altitude of his own thoughts,
And recks me not. These lofty natures live
Cold as the cradle of the lauwine is,
And in destruction but impart themselves.
'Tis ill to be too near. I'll scramble down.

LUCIFER.
What was it said you? Marriage! Look you, man!
In gorge and precipice life oft hath found
Death,—true; not love.

ADAM.
Perchance you will find both.
Each is far-reaching. I will leave you, sir.

LUCIFER.
So soon! You speak too sagely for your garb.
What do you in this planet?

ADAM.
Do its work,
As all men do, but I especially.
I have an interest in all men's lives,
Doing for those no richer than myself
What for myself I cannot do.

LUCIFER.
And that?

ADAM.
A simple trade; the oldest in the world.
I dig men's graves. I shall not dig my own.

LUCIFER.
Like you that trade?

ADAM.
It likes me well enough.
I have no dread of that which all men dread,
Being so familiar with it. There they dwell,
Hamlet of houses clustering round a spire
Girt at its base with heavings of the ground.
Men are like moles, sir; when they go below,
They do disturb the earth; though whether they
Come up for air sometimes when no one looks,
What man shall say? Ghosts, spectres, mirages,
Haply are thus conceived.

LUCIFER.
Hast seen them ever?

ADAM.
See we aught else? It is a spectral world,
Wherein vague men walk ghostlike. Death is real,
And all beside mere show; and so meseems
In me is more reality since I
Shoulder his weapon.

LUCIFER.
'Tis a churlish lord,
To treat his serf no better than a stranger.
You serve death faithfully; he serves you ill.
Life is a service sweet and profitable,
Were life but long enough for men to learn it,
Or wisdom more precocious.

ADAM.
Life is too long:
But, long or short, foolish or wise, this death
Casts its still shadow half athwart our lives—

LUCIFER.
—Lending them grace and quietness. The glare
Of deathless life would be intolerable.
Where learned you to be pensive?

ADAM.
By the grave.
There, one learns all. Within the narrow bound
Of church and churchyard, whatso lore commands
Your approbation, sir, I have acquired.
I toll the bell for burial, marriage, mass.
The self-same clapper and the same worn rope
Serve for all three. Time's the sole difference;
Whose artificial measures, which I hold
Within the horny hollow of my palm,
Mislead imagination, but not mine.
Birth, wedding, dissolution, are but stops
In the one tune whose cadence still is death.

LUCIFER.
And when that music ends, what follows then?

ADAM.
A sweeter music surely, ending not.
Earth shuts, Heaven opens.

LUCIFER.
And who tells you that?

ADAM.
My own desires, and Father Gabriel.

LUCIFER.
And is that proof and warranty enough?.

ADAM.
Proof is not needed where there dwells no doubt.
You do not doubt it, sir?

LUCIFER.
I doubt all things.
But you had best believe them. See! there's more
[Giving him money.]
Than Heaven, I warrant, will ever do for you.

ADAM.
How know you but that Heaven hath lured you here
To dole me this? Deeds are God's servitors,
Or willing or reluctant. Keep my thanks!
I must descend and dig another grave.
May-be, some day, sir, I shall scoop out yours.
It shall be neat and shapely as the sheets
Smoothed by an anxious housewife.

[Adam descends the mountain.]
LUCIFER.
Fare-you-well.
Strange that this man should moralise on life,
And find no riddle in the afterward!
The riddle's in the question: ask it not,
And life, and death, and Heaven, seem plain enough.
We vex ourselves with interrogatories,
To which no answer comes. He asketh none,
And so lives answered. Till we doubt we know,
Or think we know; and what we think depends
On our complacency. Thus, thus, by him,
The janitor of death, 'tis not conceived
The door he helps to open may but lead
Into an empty chamber, dark and dumb.
Meanwhile, how bright and eloquent is life,
Here where the tide of human voices ebbs
Into a sea of silence! What a scene!
The cataracts never looking where they leap,
And, as they fall, bounding away again
From ledge to ledge in careless confidence;
The gloomy glory of the sunlit pines,
That climb up to the verge of desolation,
Finding a foothold where the chamois fails;
The passionless bosom of the barren snow;
And here, midway betwixt the vacant throne
Of sheer sublimity and yon low vale
Of human needs and passions, butterflies,
The wingëd flowers of the unsown air,
Flickering o'er crag and precipice as though
They revelled in the safety mortals find
A dizzying terror. Each slow upward stride
Bruises the secret sweetness of the thyme.
Hark! though I see them not, in pastures near
Feed flocks and herds on grasses newly green,
Carrying their music with them as they graze,
Melodious banquet. I will follow it.

[He ascends.]
THE WEISSHORN.

LUCIFER.
Lo! there they wander, on the high smooth slopes,
The many-tinkling kine; and lower down,
Among the rocks and boulders, scrambling ewes
Teased by their suckling lambs. Hark! what was that?

A VOICE.
Help! Help! This way!

LUCIFER.
I come. Now shout again.

VOICE.
Help! Help!

LUCIFER.
Good! Help is coming. Do not fear.

VOICE.
Here! Here! This way!

LUCIFER.
I see you, little waif,
Blown 'mong the boulders. But how came she there?
Wait, and I come.

EVE.
Don't leap, sir! 'Tis too sheer.

[He splits, without severing, the limb of a stout sapling, that grows on the edge of the rock, and so swings himself down.]
EVE.
Oh!

LUCIFER.
Green sap is stronger than the serest rope.
How true it holds! and, dangling in the air,
Lends a way back again. But, little maiden,
What strange freak led you to this lower ground,
Lacking an exit?

EVE.
'Twas this lamb that strayed.

LUCIFER.
And you, another lamb, strayed after it.

EVE.
I thought there was some goatherd in the hills
Would hear me call. I did not know who answered,
Or I would patiently have waited till
There dawned some humbler help.

LUCIFER.
How know you me?

EVE.
I know you not; but your smooth aspect tells
You are not native to these rugged parts.
Are you Prince Lucifer?

LUCIFER.
A simple guess.
Why do you shrink from me?

EVE.
I did not shrink,
But haply thought that, gazing round, I might
Discover some escape fear overlooked.

LUCIFER.
Look now with eyes of fearlessness, but still
No exit offers. How you hither came
Baffles my observation.

EVE.
Why, 'twas thus.
I clambered down the jutting ledges stepped
By this stray yeanling. Its light weight they bore,
But crumbled under mine; and when I thought
To reascend them, they proved false frail stairs,
Leaving me here. And then—and then—I called.
Forgive me! for my danger now is yours.

LUCIFER.
Danger, when shared, seems safety. This green limb
Will be our rescue.
[As he leaps up and pulls it down, it snaps at the fork.]
Rotten as the rock!
I never had believed your rowan boughs
Were so untrusty. Backward way is none.
Let us go lower.

EVE.
Have a care. The fall
Is deadlier still than this.

LUCIFER.
Once dropped below,
We are in touch with other ground, while here
An isolated terrace holds us fast.
Daring alone will help us. If I leap,
Have you the nerve to drop into my clutch?
It is our only safety.

EVE.
I will do
What you enjoin. But if it be your death!

LUCIFER.
Death is a coward: we will frighten him,
By showing him no fear. The ground looks soft.

EVE.
Nay, do not leap till I have said a prayer.
Wait till I cross myself.

LUCIFER.
Best close your eyes,
And hold your breath. See! I have touched the bottom
As sound as at the top. 'Tis simple now.
Further this way. The face slopes inward here,
And you will slip unhindered to my arms.

EVE.
But the poor lamb? I cannot leave it here.

LUCIFER.
Drop it, and I will catch it by the fleece
Before it touch the ground.

[She throws him the lamb.]
LUCIFER.
Scared more than hurt.
There! bleat in peace. Now, little shepherdess,
There's none to drop you; you must drop yourself,
While I against this bulging rock will lean
And safely wait your coming. Yes, like that.

[She lets herself drop.]
LUCIFER.
Windfall of mountain gossamer! the lamb
Was almost weightier.

EVE.
Not the brawniest youth
In all our valley would have done this thing,
And done it safely. O, how strong you are!

LUCIFER.
'Twas but your woman's heart that magnified
Apparent peril. That, at least, is past.
But the ascent is stern and difficult.
'Tis well for both, your lungs breathe mountain air,
Your limbs climb mountain pathways.

EVE.
My eyes swim,
And my knees totter. Past that precipice
I dare not venture.

LUCIFER.
Then look up, not down.
Give me your hand. See! I am steadfast, gazing
Into the abyss.

EVE.
Men love to play with peril.
Nay, let us back!

LUCIFER.
There is no safety backward.
Carry the lamb, and I will carry you;
[He puts the lamb in her arms, and lifts her from the ground.]
A mountain load of double innocence.
Why, I could run with you along the rim
Of gaping gorges. I feel lighter thus,
Than carrying the sole burden of myself.
You give my spirit freshness, and my feet
The nimbleness of youth. Bleat, little lamb,
We take you to your mother.

EVE.
Oh! not there!

[She faints, and her head falls on his shoulder.]
LUCIFER.
My mountain flower is drowsy on its stalk.
There's dew for its sweet petals.

[He kisses her on the mouth, and lays her on the ground.]
THE VISP-THAL TORRENT.

LUCIFER.
Alone, I had not done it. This fair load
Was ballast to my venture. Where is the rose
That made a garden of her cheek, and where
The ripe and ruddy orchard of her lips?
The snowpeaks are not paler. Rest you there,
Till I baptize you freshly from the brook.

[He goes to a brook. hard-by.]
THE MATTERHORN.

LUCIFER.
(bending over her).
Nor death, nor sleep. What is't that mimics both?
There is no contradiction in this face;
Its look is all assent. How fair were death,
Could it be forced to stay! But, of all guests,
It is the briefest visitant, and life
Already maketh haste to push it out,
And set up fresh antagonisms.

EVE.
(awaking).
Where,
Where is the lamb?

LUCIFER.
There, nibbling at the thyme.

EVE.
Where am I? I—I do remember now.
Are we both safe?

LUCIFER.
Safe as the dome of Heaven.

EVE.
I thought that I was falling through the air,
Falling, still falling, and my flock fell too,
Baaing and bleating; and the cataracts roared
Louder than even roar they in the night,
When darkness seems to lend them ampler voice.
The mountains melted into mist; the clefts,
And gorges, and ravines, made way for us;
Until my lambs were graves, and I was kneeling
In my accustomed place within the church,
Where we all worship. But no acolyte came;
The candles stood unlighted, and no flowers
Freshened the altar. Then I sought the door,
And as I dipped my finger in the stoup,
And touched my lips with holy-water, woke.

LUCIFER.
Dreams are the vapours of the soul, and have
In waking their foundation, foul or fair.
Innocent days radiate innocent dreams,
And yours are lamblike.

EVE.
But my lips are wet.

LUCIFER.
'Twas water from the brook; 'tis holy now.
Perchance it woke you, and your dream was true.
What are the mountains, inly viewed, but mist
And melting mirages? And when we fall
From heights of our conception, all things yield
Until we reach the graveyard.

EVE.
Hence the track
Back to my flock meandering mounts and dips.
I know it well.

LUCIFER.
Then show it me.

EVE.
This way.
It passes by your castle.

LUCIFER.
Go you first.
But you are faint. Rest yet a little while.

EVE.
No need. That foolish giddiness hath gone.

LUCIFER.
What do you in this solitude all day long?

EVE.
So many things. With which shall I begin?
I knit, I sing, I pray; I count the lambs.
I watch the clouds, I listen to the torrents.
I see the heavy velvet-coated bees,
Their wage within their pouch, go staggering home,
Drunk with the new must of the eglantine.
I gather saxifrage and spread it out
Smooth on my lap, then put it back again,
Lest it should die. I chant the litany,
And wonder at the whiteness of the snow
Upon the Weisshorn. Sometimes comes a sound
Deeper than thunder, less articulate,
And distant farther. Then I cross myself.
It is the avalanche, and far-off vales
Are silenced by its tumult.

LUCIFER.
Have you books?

EVE.
Yes. When the flock is couched and will not stray,
I read the lives of saints and confessors,
Martyrs and virgins, Father Gabriel
Keeps in the sacristy and lends to me.
But any living sound from that dead page
Makes me a truant, and the vaguest cloud
Says more to me than these true histories.

LUCIFER.
When Nature speaks, child, mortals should be dumb.
Keep eyes and ears for her; 'tis she instructs
In all worth learning.
[To himself.]
Strange this mountain babe,
This suckling of the hills, this wilding flower,
Should apprehend unconsciously a truth
The lettered mostly miss. How fair she is!
Simple and sweet as honeysuckled lane,
Leading we know not whither.

EVE.
There it is!

LUCIFER.
The Castle. Never was there trustier guide,
Your payment must be hospitality.
Were you within it ever?

EVE.
You forget.
Within it, yes, when there was no within.
For all was roofless till you came. It stood
Rock 'mid the rocks, a hill among the hills,
Quarried no more than is the Matterhorn.
Now all seems built and shapely.

LUCIFER.
You shall see.

[They enter the Courtyard.]

SCENE II

[Castle Tourbillon.]
COUNT ABDIEL.
Dispatches, Prince, from your late kingdom, lie,
Awaiting your good will.

LUCIFER.
Attend this maiden,
And show her what is now my only Realm.
This is Count Abdiel, who my exile shares,
Albeit he frowns upon the fantasies
That make my life a willing banishment.
I will rejoin you shortly.

ABDIEL.
A fair flower,
Culled on the mountain side; a shepherdess,
Carrying her own credentials. Let the lamb
Bleat at our heels.

EVE.
It can remain without.

ABDIEL.
Nay, let it follow; all things enter here.
Nor moat nor drawbridge nor portcullis fence
This Castle from the common air; 'tis free
To foot of man or beast. Withal, none come.
Brighten the Castle with your presence; yours
Is the first voice its walls have listened to,
Save those who dwell within them.

EVE.
O, how grand!

ABDIEL.
There is no grandeur here: Prince Lucifer
Loves but the simple and the primitive.
Why should a man whose fancy hath forsworn
The pomp and palaces of birth, annex
The tricks of splendour to his solitude?
The purple of the mountains robes his mind;
He's a philosopher.

EVE.
And what is that?

ABDIEL.
A houseless stranger in a well-roofed world,
A whimsical refuser of man's needs,
A system-seeker in a round of chance,
A palimpsest of wisdom,—O so wise,
That all our wants are folly, all our passions
Mere matter for conclusions. To despise
What others cherish,—that's philosophy.

EVE.
I do not understand.

ABDIEL.
No more do I.
Philosophers were not philosophers,
If common wisdom apprehended them.
Withal, he has this virtue: Though his brain,
As doth become its loftiness, abides
Within the curling fleeces of the mist,
The meetest maiden on the mountain side,
Yourself, or any sister of your choice,
Hath not a simpler heart.

EVE.
Then he is good.
I felt he was. He has a gentle voice.

ABDIEL.
Is gentleness then goodness? Instruments
Are good or bad according as they do
The work they were conceived for. Gentleness—
Well, heed me not. To fling a Realm away,
Because you have a maggot in your skull,
Is goodness topsy-turvy.

EVE.
But what Realm
Has he relinquished? Is it great, and rich?

ABDIEL.
The greatest in the world; a Realm whose roots
Grip the round globe, and draw their sustenance
From intervening continents: a Throne
Propped by the feet of couchëd centuries;
Older than oldest oaks, old as the sea,
And once as changeless. Faith, authority,
Reversions from the Past, invested awe,
Which none can squander, were its revenue.
And last, the crown of these, humility,
That wisdom of the heart, which reconciles
Life's contradictions with content, confirmed
His people in perpetual loyalty.

EVE.
Did they rebel?

ABDIEL.
If precedent rebel
'Gainst innovation, then they rebels were.
But if to take experience by the beard
And gird at its gray wisdom justify
The brand of insurrection, it was he,
Not they, that was the rebel. But I point
A joke too gravely. 'Tis a humorous world:
Not here among the mountains; they are grim,
And understand not laughter; Nature has
No sense of humour;—but where man abides,
O then grotesqueness balances chagrin,
And keeps life even.

EVE.
When you laugh, I hate you.
You speak to me in riddles, but I see
You love him not.

ABDIEL.
Not love him! Wherefore then
Share I his exile? Had I loved him less,
I might have worn his Crown, that empty waits
But for the head to fit it. What is love,
But faithful pity, tender tolerance
For every foible and fatuity?
Yet love's the sheerest folly of them all,
And you must let me laugh that fool away,
Or I should find his sighs unbearble.

EVE.
Perplex me not. I am a simple maiden.

ABDIEL.
Nothing so dangerous as simplicity.
Know all, fear nothing.

EVE.
Father Gabriel
Speaks from another text. But tell me plain,
Is it for conscience' sake Prince Lucifer
Leaves the Throne vacant? Did he give up much?

ABDIEL.
Yes, he relinquished all that men desire,
The pinnacles of pomp, the purple couch,
The craning of the neck, the bended knee,
And sinuous train of eager servitors.
Life was for him a well-stocked market-place,
Where he could buy all stuffs of happiness
Cheap for a smile. Wealth pressed its goods upon him,
And beauty from its winsome wares removed
The veil of prohibition, and exclaimed,
Behold and take! All these he forfeited,
To have a windy Castle on a hill,
Below the snow-line.

EVE.
Now you sneer again.
And yet the tale sounds noble.

ABDIEL.
Books, books, books.
Books and bare walls are all I have to show.
'Tis less a Castle than a library.

EVE.
Where is the Chapel?

ABDIEL.
On the snowy peaks,
In the long aisles of interlacing pines,
The dim religious light of hushed ravines,
And overhanging dome of spangled Heaven.
We are philosophers; we do not kneel
At carven altars in our orisons.
Our holy-water is the morning dew,
Welled in the stoups of purple crocuses,
Our lamps the meteors of the dreaming night,
And silent darkness is our sanctuary.
The musk-rose is our thurible, and fumes
Invisible of incense float around
The shrine of our devotion. Every throat
In bush or glade, ether or lonely moor,
Enlisted is our chorister, and sings
Matins at dawn, vespers and lauds at eve,
And benediction always. When we need
The organ's diapason, then the stops
Of whirlwind and of thunder surge and roll
With awful usurpation of the soul,
That crouching trembles. This our ritual;
And with this floating immaterial creed
So skilfully we fish, we mean to hook
The gross and greedy gullets of mankind.
How like you our Evangel?

EVE.
Earth and air,
I have been taught, are but God's tabernacle.
Therefore you worship freely nor amiss.

ABDIEL.
Or if that airy Gospel leave you lean,
We have another, warranted to drive
The soul in blinkers, that it may not heed
What it descries but dimly, but trot straight,
It knows not whither, with its load of life,
Fate flourishing the whip. A solid Creed,
Whose priests force matter to confessional,
And make it own what secret pranks it plays
With its confederate, force. Laws, sequences,
Inductions, formulas that never fail,—
This side the grave,—are mass and breviary
For its stern devotees. Who want to know
More of the stars than what their distances,
The pace they travel and the path they keep,
Are curious fools and witless heretics.

EVE.
Why do you mock me?

ABDIEL.
You I did not mock,
But truth is mockery, faithfully discharged;
And if your feelings lie across its track,
Why, then it wounds you. This, our other Creed,
Converts you not? And yet—and yet—the world
Is walked by men who hug it to their hearts,
And deem it sacramental.

Eve, perceiving an image of the Madonna, with an unlit lamp hanging before it, falls on her knees.]
EVE.
Mother mine!

[She prays in silence. Prince Lucifer re-enters, and gazes at her, till she rises.]
EVE.
Why hangs the lamp unlit before Her face,
Face that should never unillumined be,
Or day or night?

LUCIFER.
Kindle the lamp and come,
Come night or day, to see that still it burns,
The pledge of your return.

[He lights a taper and gives it to her, and she lights the lamp.]
LUCIFER.
I will attend you
Back to your flock.

EVE.
No, thitherward, alone
Let me descend. But if no altar here
Provides you worship, will you not repair
Down to our lowly chapel in the vale,
Where Father Gabriel ministers?

LUCIFER.
Where you pray,
There will I come. God wend you!

[Eve descends the mountain alone.]
THE VISP-THAL TORRENT.

SCENE III

ABDIEL.
For a word,
As easy uttered as a prayer, a song,
A jibe, a sigh, a laugh, an anything,
To disinherit and dethrone oneself,
Why, what is that but lofty lunacy?

LUCIFER.
What word?

ABDIEL.
What word but God?

LUCIFER.
Who uttered it?

ABDIEL.
Yourself.

LUCIFER.
When,—when?

ABDIEL.
This moment, when you sped
Yon dwindling wonder of the hills adown
Her flockward course. How pat the parting came,
“God wend you!”—pious, valedictory.

LUCIFER.
A courtly fiction.

ABDIEL.
All our words are fictions.
But my uncourtly philosophic Prince,
Save when a rustic petticoat is by,
Prefers the unpleasant to the pleasant ones.

LUCIFER.
An exclamation cozened from my tongue
By a surprising glimpse of what might serve
For Heaven, if Heaven were not so fanciful.
You catch men talking the old tongue sometimes
Long after they have entered the new country. 'Tis
The force of habit.

ABDIEL.
Habit is a force;
Then why oppose it?

LUCIFER.
What a winsome child!
She lent the mountains softness, and the rocks
Smiled like her gaze when it was shining on them.
The rampant torrents slackened as she stepped
Over their broken bridges, and the roar
Was changed to rippling treble when they heard
The soft mysterious minor of her voice.
Think you that she is safe? If mischief should
Hinder her steps! I should have gone with her.

ABDIEL.
Go now; 'tis not too late. O princely dupe,
Whose heart's dew deluges his head with mist,
As little danger lurks for such a maid
Among such mountains, as the streams confront
Along the channels that belong to them.
But what of the Dispatches?

LUCIFER.
True, she is
A native denizen of dangerous tracks.
And yet I saved her.

ABDIEL.
The Dispatches, Prince,
Are full of pleasant matter, and, meseems,
Open a gate for your return.

LUCIFER.
The lamb!
The little lamb! I should have kept the lamb,
Memento of our hazard. O, it must
Have been the prettiest paradox to see
The fleecy truant nestling in her arms,
Its tender shepherdess upheld by mine,
Her hazel curls against my grizzled beard,
And the immutable mountains looking on,
With a contented smile.

ABDIEL.
Were you a king,
Some courtly artist would have painted it,
And worn a title. Now, it fades on air
With the reverberation of your voice.

LUCIFER.
A King? A king! A king without a crown!
A swordless, sceptreless, assenting thing,
An idol prayed to so it grants the prayer,
Painted and gewgawed! Do they think that I,
Since born to servitude, must live a slave?
A king may win his freedom, like another:
I have won mine, and will not forfeit it.
I think as freely as the lowliest churl
In my foregone dominions, nor would change
That liberty for kingship of the world.

ABDIEL.
Read the Dispatches; you will see they meet
Your thoughts half-way.

LUCIFER.
A via media,
The by-way of the feeble. Offered half,
And half refused, I leave and keep the whole,
Their folly and my wisdom. They consent
That Love shall have the birthright of his wings,
Nor longer, like a captive eagle, blink
Chained to a nuptial perch, so only Prayer
Remain the pensioned gaoler of the mind,
Going his constant round. I will not have it.
Leave Heaven the face to frown, Earth still will cower
Before that awful Presence, and again,
Or swift or slow, the Altar on the hearth
Rivet the ancient fetters. Other Realms
Have seen the throne learn wisdom from the lips
Of the far-seeing many. But, in mine,
The Prince shall force his People to be free,
Or spurn them to their self-wrought servitude,
The phantom sceptre of a World unseen,
Unknown, and unexistent.

ABDIEL.
Look how bright
The lamp of the Madonna gleams and glows!

LUCIFER.
The most beneficent deity e'er conceived.
Want you the brand and scope of Man, he is
Maker of Gods. A novice at the trade,
He made God out of winds and thunder-clouds,
The unpropitious seasons, threatening moons,
And the invisible ambuscade of death.
Poor frightened babe, he worshipped with a wail,
Clutching his mother earth, and in her face
Burying his fears. Then childlike artist grown,
He craved for form, and from the shapes around,
Contorted, fair, the figure of himself,
Moulded his deities; in wood, in stone,
Around his bed, his banquet-board, his tomb,
As yet a bungler. But when youth infused
Into the sap and marrow of his brain
The vernal subtleties of love, he dreamed
Of Gods as fair as he himself would be,
Majestic, abstract, yet with solid power
To make a goddess tremble; and behold!
Under the yearning passion of his thought
The embryonic marble sloughed its shell,
And Gods of strength and beauty trod the earth,
Their forehead high in heaven. Mighty Gods,
And mighty maker of them! Had he done
No other thing than this to prove his craft,
Man would have justified his birth, and thus
Exonerated Nature for her failures,
Too-oft abortive mother.

ABDIEL.
Pagan Prince,
Those Gods are dead.

LUCIFER.
The Gods all die at last,
Or fair, or foul; for Man who perisheth
Can not beget a God imperishable.
But he within his workshop labours still,
Inventing new Divinities. When the pulse
Of amorous Manhood slackened, and his heart
Pined for the fixed felicities of home,
He fashioned God a father, then a child,
Gave him a wife and mother, eager still,
True to his artist instinct, to exalt
The latest idol of himself; and hence,
When with the hearth's sweet sanctities entwined,
Came sickness, death, and sorrow, his new Gods
He hewed in anguish, beautiful no more,
But lacerated, tender, sad, austere,
Grave with the weight of disciplined desire:
Ingenuous, touching, egoist Maker still!

ABDIEL.
And how, sagacious Prince, will you decree
A strict and permanent divorce betwixt
Man and his shadow?

LUCIFER.
'Tis impossible.
But once Man knows the shadow is his own,
And starts at it no more, nor grovels down
Low on the ground where it is thrown, 'twill serve.
Man will be godlike when he has no Gods,
Or owns them creatures of his own begetting,
And loves but fears them not. Thus answer them,
Or any way you will that leaves my mind
Impregnable against all compromise.
And, pray you, see the oil within that lamp
Remains replenished.

[Exit Lucifer.
ABDIEL.
(alone)
O thou sophist, Man!
Reason by reason proved unreasonable,
Continues reasoning still! Confronted close,
What is this reason? Like the peacock's tail,
Just useful for a flourish, nothing more;
And when 'tis down, the world goes on the same.
Poor Lucifer! He fancies that the brain
Can banish contradiction, so that life
Trembles no more than doth an even balance,
With intellect and passion nicely poised
In friendly scales. Burn on, thou tranquil lamp!
Thou dost not reason.

THE MATTERHORN.
Generation after generation, they come and they go:
They are brief as the clouds that melt, they are vain as the winds that blow.
They climb to the heights of ruin, they climb but they cannot stay:
They have wings that flag in the ether, they have feet that are clogged with clay.

THE WEISSHORN.
Down in the valley the hamlet is quiet with curls of smoke.
There is happiness under the faggot, there is comfort under the yoke.
'Mid the crags there is soaring and straining, the tumult of things that dare,
The lightning of vagrant passions, the thunder of vague despair.

THE MATTERHORN.
What do they want with our silence? We have eyes, but they do not heed;
We have tongues, but they do not listen. We have ears for each thought and deed.
They look on our face for a moment, they look, and wonder, and prate:
They are straws on the stream, they are flakes in the foam, they are fashioned and steered by Fate.