University of Virginia Library

PROLOGUE

The War is hatched. The Shade of Attila is dispatched from Hell to Earth.
The Scene is a dark region of rock and sand with shapes and shadows dimly discovered. In centre up-stage, a shadowy throne, on which Satan is sitting, wearing a crown of ashes. As the curtain rises shadowy arms are uplifted as in appeal. Beelzebub rises to speak.
Beelzebub.
How long, O Satan, in this outer gloom
Shall we, who shook the firmament with war,
Impotent, ineffectually bide?
Indolent malice is intolerable,
Even as that ashen crown upon thy brow!
Hark! How thy legions murmur in the dusk!
They doubt thy leading, question thy resolve.
Inaction is the bread of mutiny!
And to recover from that old defeat
We have had time, it seems, and time enough.
Proclaim some fresh adventure, that may rouse
And rally our prone armies! Let them hear
The shattering clangour of the trump of Hell,
Pealing a resurrection from this grave!

Satan.
Spirit, to me alone inferior,
I am not to be moved by mutiny.
No menace I regard but my own mind.
Too long indeed we languish in the dusk;
And dark this desert only from our doubt,
Heavy this night only from our dismay;
These fruitless antres and these dunes of sand,
This country round us, we ourselves conceive.
You ask what fresh adventure I propose?
The Earth is but half won, a minor star,
But yet a star not quite contemptible.
Some countries Christian, here or there a king,
In spiritual skirmish have we captured,
But the main field and region of grand war
Disputed lies, an indecisive plain.
The Earth is but half won, though I myself,
To achieve our purpose there, did not disdain
To crawl upon the belly of a snake.
Where Craft hath failed us, now let Force prevail!
For Eden now let Europe make amends!
Hurl we a massive Fury on the world,
With engines and artilleries of Hell,
With wail of women and cities thundered down,
Until beneath the bellowing, blind world-blow
Justice shall reel, Love, Pity, and mankind
Shall build to Force, not Faith, temples afresh.
Here is Thy sting, O Hell, Thy Victory here!
Surely our end approaches, though what end
It be we know not; this at least we know,
Our time is short, with Fury be it filled!

Moloch.
O Master, with what glee these words I hear,
I, Lord of War! Of late my mind misgives.
A most unwholesome, steamy mildness taints
The air; a sickly-stealing, vaporous calm,
Pernicious to the soul if long allowed.
Now, by thy leave such havoc I intend
As never yet encumbered battle-plain.
Where thousands have but teased this primal thirst,
Millions shall now the brimming cup supply
In multitudinous, unimagined shock!
Rise, Madness! Mother that didst bring me forth
In pangs before the making of the world,
While Famine, like a midwife, eased thy throes.
Arise now, Massacre! Thou favourite daughter,
Got in adultery 'neath a moody moon;
Awaken to the smell of infant-blood!
What matter now the cause so ye be loosed?
Here have I space at last and boundless field!

Belial.
O Lords, I scarcely know, if now I rise
In order, to address this full conclave,
I, Lord of Lies; nor would I seem to slight
The ancient, grand prerogative of Force.
Splendid is Force, but solitary, falls
And self-defeated, unrelieved by lies,
And therefore I submit, I play my part,
For only here in Hell I speak the truth.
With deference I propose, that I convey
To Earth my swollen, bilious Bureau,
To gloze defeat, or magnify success,
Doling to each land its particular lie.
Great Landlord, I complain not, but of late
I feel through crevices a draught of truth.
If any deem, that I too lightly speak
In such assembly, and appear to jest,
Remember, in losing humour we lose all;
The thought provokes a spiritual sweat,
We should be then no better than—our betters.
Our kingdom is to laugh, as theirs to love
We live by lightnings, they by steady light.
Again then I submit, I play my part.

Satan.
O son, whom of my sons I like the least,
Borne me by Prophecy, a mistress merely,
Still I perceive thy necessary part.
Dole to each land the lie that it deserves,
But in the Teuton the grand lie instil.
Music I love not, but confess to like
The pleasant humming of a prosperous lie.

Rumour.
I rise but to retail a wide report;
An island floats upon the Western wave,
Whose people never yet have bowed to Force
And will not now; a stubborn brood and free,
They sway the varying oceans of the Earth,
And that which was but island and remote
Ne'er sees the setting sun go down on her.
She against Force may bring into the field
The turbaned East and her sea-sundered sons.
Her most in our attempt we have to fear.
I give this as report, though unconfirmed.

Belial.
I am content that this report go forth,
But hold myself no way responsible.

Satan.
War is approved; not yet the means of war.
Since upon mortal men we launch this wrath,
Then must we use a mortal instrument.
Whom better then, than one who died, yet lives,
Although in sanguinary slumber bound,
Can we employ? Arise then—Attila!
Shake from thine eyes the long, infernal sleep!
Or hast thou lost in dream the thirst of blood?
Awake! A wider carnage waits thee now!

The Shade of Attila.
For that long sleep the drier are my lips.

Satan.
Attila, I dispatch thee back to Earth,
And with more horrid opportunity.
The field to thee familiar—Chalons-Plain.
I stood behind thee in thy former rage,
And now behind thee stand in rage more vast.
Once hadst thou joy in arrow and in axe,
But now exult in engines that can belch
Armies away, and lay high cities flat;
Labouring art abolish, and erase
With one loud moment silent centuries!
Dispatch thee then and enter into him
To whom I send thee as a house prepared.
Through him thy fury work, through him destroy,
While he imagines all the havoc his.
Thou scourge of God, be now the lash of Hell!
Spirit athirst to Earth! And drink thy fill!

[Attila, after making reverence, rushes upward, earthward. There is a pause; then from above is heard the wail of women and children.
Satan.
[Rising.]
A sea is in the caverns of my mind.
Be every Hell unlocked, each Fury loosed,
Pillage and Rape unleashed upon the scent!
For by that splendour wherefrom I was thrown,
And by this thunderstroke on me unhealed,
Again I challenge Heaven, the stake a star!
War to the Earth then! Unimagined War!

Curtain