The Shadow Garden (A Phantasy) |
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| THE HOUSE OF FEAR
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 | The Shadow Garden |  |
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THE HOUSE OF FEAR
A MYSTERY
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- A Man
- Hate
- Pain
- Lust
- Sin
- Love
- Sorrow
- Hope
- Despair
- Death
- Terror
- Dead Dreams
- Shadow of the Past
- Will-o'-the-Wisp
PRESENCES
Time: A mid-winter night.
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SCENE I
A vaulted and gloomy room panelled with centuried oak, hung here and there with gaunt portraits of men and women of evil aspect. A Man is discovered seated before a great hearth on which a fire is slowly dying. A sound of wind and wild rain outside the House.The Man:
Phantoms grow thick around me. Dreadful shapes
Materialise like mists that presage storm,
And the wild House grows tenanted with folk
No house of earth hath ever known before—
Spectres, chimeras of incredible things.
Their coming fills the echoing corridors
As dark delirium fills a mind with dreams.
Now 't is the fall of footsteps, now of robes
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While in the night the House with its dark eaves
Drips ceaselessly as if it wept great tears—
Huge tears, like some stone-giant left to die
'Mid petrifying forests of the Past.
What vague forebodings fill my soul with fear?—
Doom rides upon the gale, and Tempest drives.
The towers of the mansion shake with storm.
It seems the wailings of the houseless host
Of all the dead, that earth and ocean hold,
A far-off cry pursues—It is the hoarse,
Long, bitter challenge of the mindless sea
Calling the world to battle. ... What is that?
What footstep, iron on the resonant oak,
Tramples the night to terror with its stride?—
What now approaches, titan in the gloom,
In elemental armour?—Canst thou speak?—
Thou visored mystery with inscrutable gaze,
Glaring unutterable things of hate and dread,
Why dost thou point thy mailéd hand at me?—
Speak! from thy lips of iron let me hear
The message which thou bearest though it be,
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My body into marble.
[As he speaks, forms slowly detach themselves from the darkness, approaching and passing awfully in the deepening gloom.
Hate:
Thou know'st me well.
I am that ancient Hate whom thou hast held
Fast in thy heart through all the granite years.
The Man:
So, it is thou. Glare not upon me!—Oh!
Thy eyes are flames that burn me to the bone.—
Who waits behind thee?
Hate:
Old, undying Pain,
Clothed in the bloodred livery of thy House.
His eyes are on thee. Canst thou not endure?
[Passes.
The Man:
The fever of those never-turning eyes
Searches my veins with alternating ice
And fire.—Demon, take thine eyes away!
Thine eyes, that hold the agony of the slain,
And all the torture of forgotten time.
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Not while thou livest.
The Man:
Down into my heart
With all thy anguish, Bloodhound of the Years,
And lacerate it utterly! ... What shape,
What loathsome thing is that with tumid gaze
That gloats behind thee?
Pain:
Lust; the mother of Woe,
And daughter of Death and Darkness.
[Passes.
Lust:
Look on me.
Turn not thy face away. Thou art my slave.
The Man:
And once I deemed this dreadful monster fair!
O God! O God!—Thou seemest twain.—Or, no!
Breasted like Helen with destruction, lo!
What siren shape is that which towers by thee
With lamia lips and eyes?
Lust:
My sister, Sin.
The Man:
Twin hags of Hell the Pit hath vomited!—
Rather eternal night deep in the grave
Than knowledge of you.—Oh, that now again
I might be free as once I was ere Sin
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Would I might pour myself upon the storm;
Breast the lit peaks of tempest, condor-like,
The insubstantial Andes of the air,
And pass beyond the tyranny of these
Into the nothingness, that knows no name,
Where all is silence.—What have I to hope,
Shut in this House of Fear with shapes like these!
O God! Again to comrade with the stars!
Companion Beauty there among her flowers!
Clasp hands with Springtime and touch lips with Love!—
I choke with horror here! Invisible hands
Close, fumbling, round my throat.—What curse is this?—
Lust:
The ancient curse. The hands of all thy senses.
The Man:
Off, demons! off!
Sin:
Be still and listen.—There,
Behind a secret door, within a room,
White as the young divinity of Spring,
What woman lies with lilies on her breast?
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One whom I loved; dead by her own white hand.
Sin:
Sayest thou so?—But first her soul was slain.—
Beautiful her body lies. I slew her soul.
Look now! these faces; pictured women and men,
Dark-peopling these walls of carven oak—
What say their sneering eyes that stare at thee?—
They know; for they were soulless ere they died,
And long to see thee join their company.
The Man:
My soul is still my own. Their souls are lost.
Mine fears thee not though thou art full of fear.
Sin:
Yea; yet thou, too, shalt gladly give thy soul
To me and Lust, who claims thy body's pride.
The Man:
Thou with the eyes of hunger, thou who feed'st
On souls forever and art never filled,
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Sin:
They satisfy me not. More must I have
To stay my appetite and keep me fair.
The Man:
Unprofitable lips, with kisses worn,
The satiated beast in me forgets;
Ye can not lure me now!—And, barren breasts,
For whose white beauty worlds have gone to war,
No more can you awaken here in me
The old, exhausted fires of desire.
Sin:
Thou dost not know thyself nor all my power.
I know my strength as all dead men have known.
Desire sleeps; it waits my breath to wake:
Among their ashes, embers, shrunk with age,
Shall leap in crimson and consume thy soul.—
Before the burning ardours of my lips
Flames shall spring up where ashes were before.
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Mother of loathing, back into thy night!
Nothing in me is thine. I am myself;
And the old beast in me died long ago.
Sin:
The lust in thee for her who lies within
Died not with her. While that lives I have power.
The Man:
Passion was slain when Beauty's self was slain:
Therefore my soul can never turn to thee.
Lust:
Leave him to me. My part is to prepare
The banquet of the senses, where my wine
Reddens in beakers of perpetual flame.
Yea; he shall drink again and sit with me
Ringed with the burning eyes of women of Hell.
The Man:
Powerless I seem before you, terrible two!
But there is that in me you know not of,
Or, knowing, disregard: Its name is Love.
Lust:
Thy Love is lost in darkness. Long ago
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Knew it for Lust and cast it out and died.
The Man:
Yet it was Love. And when it summons me,
The gates of Night shall open and the hosts
Of Dawn rush in and quell the hosts of Hell.
Lust:
My feast, where sit desires of the world,
Is spread; and it, in spite of Heaven and God,
Shall sit with me and banquet with the dead.
The Man:
I know its strength—the strength of my great Love.
Lust:
What was that strength when first I spake in thee,
And thou wast fain to listen?
The Man:
Never more!
The beast in me is dead! Dost hear? is slain;
Never to rise again with hydra heads.
Love's falchion in its heart, it lies here—see!
Look in my eyes and know. ... What voice was that
Sighing outside the door?—O shades of night,
Why do you tremble?—'T is a voice I know.
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(outside the door):
Long have I waited here for you to open.
Love am I, lost in darkness.
The Man:
It is Love.
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SCENE II
A high hall hung entirely with arras, sinisterly depicting battles and tragedies of long-dead kings and queens. Sombre in the light of a solitary cresset suspended before it looms a door. At the far end of the hall a shadowy stair of stone leads downward into impenetrable gloom. From the opposite end of the hall the Man is seen approaching in the direction of the closed door.The Man:
I can not look away. They follow me—
The woven figures with malignant looks,—
And threaten me with spears and painted swords
The spirit of murder seems to animate.
The tapestried walls have eyes that scowl and stare.—
What and who are you, dreadful presences,
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Once more do you inhabit these wild walls
And reap again the harvest sown of death
In days long gone?—Your shadowy forms of pain
Seem here constrained to suffer and enact
All the old perished crimes that made your Past.
Endlessly up and down, now in, now out,
A ghostly interchange of gestures runs,
And looks of evil menace violence;
While over all, huge in the vaulted gloom,
The populated darkness droops and waves
Wild, tattered banners of an old defeat.—
Why am I here? This hall is full of shapes.—
And yonder stairway leads to vasty crypts,
And dungeoned cellars where no daylight comes,
And where black terrors start from dropsied walls.—
The death-moth ticks behind the tapestry;
And ever above and all around me is
The ceaseless winnowing of unearthly wings;—
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Once dreamed here, people insubstantially
The hollow night, and make a futile stir
With rags of raiment, beating to be free. ...
[As he speaks, forms gradually evolve themselves out of the darkness before him.
What is yon mist that struggles into form?
That seems to have the features of the One
Whom God cast down from Heaven with his host.
Terror:
I am the Fear that dwells here; who hath slain
The hearts in many. Canst thou look on me,
And say thou dost not tremble?—I am Fear.
The Man:
Thy skeleton hand is on me. Yea, I tremble!
What phantasms rise?—Among them one, a ghost,
Bleeding and blind.
Terror:
Look on her. This is Love.
[Is resolved into darkness.
Love:
Blind was I from my birth. The wounds are Man's.
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Beautiful and blind, what man hath wounded thee?
Love:
Thy hand and every man's.
The Man:
No hand of mine
Would do this thing and still remain a hand.
[A wailing of wintry winds is heard above rising into a cry as of lamenting hosts.
Love:
The Dreams that died are clamouring in the night.
The Man:
Outside the winter wind and icy sea
Rave to the darkness.
Dead Dreams:
Let us in. We freeze.
Why have you barred us out? Our wings are torn,
And our long hair drips constantly with rain.
Our naked feet are pierced with ancient thorns.
Beauty lies dead within and we would see.
The Man:
Yea, ye shall see, O children of my soul.—
Look! where they come, like ravens to the feast.—
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Your eyes have that dead water-look of wells
Spiders have spun erasing webs above,
Veiling the living lymph. Your robes are torn
And drip with storm as pines whose rent limbs weep
Dark resinous gum; and penury has pinched
Your forms to snail-shell thinness.
Love:
Never again
Shall you behold the beauty that lies dead,
That gave you being.—Back into the night!—
And thou, who call'dst them hither, now pass on;
Or enter here with me where Beauty lies—
The form of her whose white feet print with May
Ways of the morning: her, whose eyes commune
With the young moon and the first star of eve.
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Alas! the Beauty that we knew of old!
The Man:
I cannot enter there where Terror stands,
Or seems to stand, with eyeless eyes of night.
Dead Dreams:
Oh, let us in. Oh, let us kiss her feet!—
Love, turn us not away! We are the Dreams,
That Beauty dreamed of thee, that can not die;
But still must beat with ineffectual wings
Around this falling mansion of the soul.
Never before, never before to us,
Love, wast thou cruel. Never before wast cruel.
Love:
Your wails and tattered raiment raven-like,
Would fill the room with madness where she lies,
Where he must kneel, and meet with Him whose name
Means silence.—O dishevelled shades of night,
Back to the storm; and weave your plangent circles
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Shall you behold the face or kiss the feet,
The beautiful feet, of her who loved you well.
Dead Dreams:
Alas! Alas!—Come, let's away! away!—
Beauty is dead and Love is cruel as Death!—
We can not enter, can not kiss her now!—
Oh, that we too could die as Beauty died!
[Their voices are gradually mingled and become identified with the sound of the tempest without, as they circle fantastically above and disappear trailing away like sorrowful tatters of mist.
The Man:
What face is that, confronting, at the door?
It has the look of one who fears to die.
Its brows are as the brows that mind informs
The mists and clouds with, giving shadowy shape
Of wild transfiguration that regards
Its maker with malignant threatening.—
And now, meseems, it features my own face—
But older, darker, wilder than I know,
With all the horror of approaching death.
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I am thyself. Thou lookest on thy Self.
The Man:
Strange shape! Thou art like me and yet unlike!—
I feel that thou art shadow, yet thou seemest
Real as this arm of mine that now I clutch.—
There is no glass here. But thou hast a shape;
A shape of fear, calamitous as time,
Full of old battles, shipwrecks and lost wars,
And hapless loves, the hell-hounds of the soul.—
Shadow of the Past:
I am a mirror.—Thou shouldst know me well.
The Man:
And yet naught else is mirrored here beside:
Neither the form of Joy, that 's of the Past,
Nor Beauty that lies dead within yon room;
Only strange fear of something that impends
Forever, and postponed forever; dread,
Inevitable that still awaits me there
In old depopulated darkness.—See!
Thou changest now; thou waverest like thin heat
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Around thee all is night, and night defines
The blacker outline of thyself that speaks.
Shadow of the Past:
As I pass thou shalt!
[Slowly vanishes, as moisture fades from the surface of a mirror.
Love:
Gazest far too long
On that which profits thee and me no more.
The Man:
In these wild halls what mysteries are at home!
Each corner grows its spectres: here they rise,
Like fungi of the forest, vast, deformed,
And vanish in a moment: there they gaze
From darkness and the arras of the walls
With strange, inhuman eyes.—Now comes a light,
Vaunt-courier of some mystery, or phantom.—
Cadaverous echoes of forgotten dooms
Attend it, veiled, and of colossal stride.
[A Will-o'-the-Wisp appears above the stairs at the far end of the hall. At the same time a subterranean sound of something approaching is heard, inevitable and indescribably old.
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Raves to continually, like a beast of prey
Questing the cry of the rock-warring sea;
This ghost-house with its cave-like corridors,
And labyrinthine echoes wandering by
Or trailing phantom robes: this House of Fear,
Hung with the crumbling greatness of the Past:
Behind whose worm-bored wainscots shrieks and starves
The gnawing rat: where portraits of the dead,
With eyes of soulless speculation, stare,
As if they saw how Hope had perished; saw
And scorned the secrets of the inner gloom,
Where all Life loves lies dead, mid dust and dreams,
Wrapped in the glory of her golden hair;
This House, this ancient pile, holds nothing more,
After this passes, that my soul shall dread,
Shall shrink to face, feeling that this that comes
Epitomises all the forms of fear.
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Here will it enter. Enter thou with me.
She who lies dead within has waited long.
The Man:
This Presence that approaches—what is it?
Fain would I meet it and yet fear to meet.—
[A bell is heard, far off, hollowly striking the hour.
'T is midnight.—Hark!—Was that an owlet's scream?—
Now sleeping graveyards whisper ghosts; and tombs
Groan forth their spectres; and in haunted rooms
Death leans and leers into the sick man's dream.
Open the door: I will go in to her.
Love:
The door is open. Enter thou with me.—
Cover thy face lest Beauty make thee blind.
[As the door closes on them the cresset, hung before its entrance, flares, flickers and is suddenly extinguished. At the same time a Will-o'-the-Wisp makes itself
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Will-o'-the-Wisp:
Good! it is dark. A bat could see here now.
Let me and Darkness trip it with my light.
Naught likes me better.—Ho, my gossip, Night,
What sayest thou? Wilt dance a round with me?
Old Flibberty-Jibberty, the Foul Fiend, and Lob
Once at a witches' Sabbath taught it me—
The only dance that 's decent; one that goes
To deadman-music well at revelries
Of Imps and Warlocks when the tempest sings,
Through which each hag comes whirling on her crutch.
—A nightmare caper now! around! around!
Hey! zig-zag up! fantastically! so!—
Ho! ho! Old gammer Night! ho! ho!—What's this!—
Why, there 's no window!—Where 's the window gone?
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How shall I ever flit into the fields?—
The devil take a House like this! with doors
And never a window in its crypts and halls.
It 's like a tomb!—Ho! give me ruins! ay!—
Large outlooks, neighbour to a marsh or fen:
Ruins, with casements wide to bog and brake,
Where any ghost can show his brimstone face
And clank till cockcrow. Where I too can dance
My phosphor flicker for the wayfarer,
Who shudders by, cloak-huddled to his eyes.—
'T is a brave night for leading folks astray!
Hark! how the rain and wind are fighting now!—
Would I were in that oozy ambuscade
Of wood and marish near the ruined church
That cringes mid its graves and whispering grass!—
Ho! ho! ho! ho! There I should be at home,
And with my gipsy-fire devil him,
Old Superstition on his homeward way.—
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Behind the mangy arras?—Ho! ho! ho!—
Come out of there, old Cæsar!—'Tis no rat!—
It hath a horror as of talons in it.—
Whose bony fingers grope the rotting oak?—
Ho there! what thing art thou?
A Voice:
Death.
Will-o'-the-Wisp:
Good friend of mine.
[The Presence of Death, like an intensified darkness, makes itself apparent in the night.
What! hast thou lost thy way in this curst House?
Or dost thou search out some peculiar prey?—
I had forgot;—all 's thine that lived here once.
Ho! ho! old Ribs-and-Jaws, there 's naught for thee
To flesh thy fangs on here.—What! art thou blind?—
Thy empty sockets stare. A pity!—For
My lamp might light thee if thou hadst but eyes:
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Might make discoveries.
Death:
Out! thou vagabond fire!
Thou syllable of flame! I am not blind.—
These holes of night, though seeming eyeless pits,
Belt with a glance the world, and there behold
All things that be and all that are to be,
Whose patrimony is a little mold. ...
There is one here who appertains to me.
Will-o'-the-Wisp:
Thy grey voice rattles in thy empty skull
Thin as a dry seed in a withered pod.—
Go thy dull way of dust and leave me here
To dance with gammer Darkness.
Death:
Fire of Hell,
Come, follow me. I have a place for thee
In my economy. I like thee well.
Thy attitude of pert equality,
Of braggart egotism, but conceals
Thy real endowments.
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So.—I see thou art
The same loose wag thou wast when Hell and Sin
Ushered thee into being. Judgment Day
I'll dance to thy cracked fiddling.—Go thy way.
Death:
Thou wisp of fire, I'll snuff thee out! Thou spark!
Thou wink of arrogant flame, thou speak'st to Death!
Feel'st thou no terror at that name?—Thou imp,
Less than the filth that breathed thee! Look on me!
I have made glory ashes; the estate
Of majesty and greatness, dust and dung.
Will-o'-the-Wisp:
I am, indeed, abundantly impressed.
But I am nothing if not frivolous,
Even with my superiors, such as thou.
All recognise thy greatness. But with me
Familiarity is second nature,
And I have claims upon thee, as thou knowest.
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I will conduct myself more circumspectly,
And with a phosphor-twinkle now and then
Observe the forms, salaams, obeisances,
The deference due to thee, that all observe
When thou hold'st audience in the Courts of Night.
Death:
Thou garrulous glimmer, take thy folly off!
Dance anywhere but here.—I 've work to do.
This is the door on which I now must knock.
Will-o'-the-Wisp:
Knock! and the Fiend knock with thee! Knuckle-Bones!
I go to hang upon the topmost lintel,
To watch thee and Damnation at your business.
Now to thy hangman work. I 'm fixed to see.
[Death knocks solemnly upon the door.
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SCENE III
A room hung entirely with black. The body of a beautiful woman lying upon a bier. A taper burning at her head and feet. The Man is kneeling at her side. On the opposite side of the bier the Presence of Love is perceived, a wavering effulgence as it were of samite whiteness. On either side of the Man stand two shadows, of indistinguishable form.Love:
Two stand beside thee. Wilt thou look on them?
The Man:
Who are these spectres eyed with swords of light?
Love:
Night-born, the ministers of Death and Dreams,
Despair and Sorrow, daughters of Desire.
The Man:
Like some gaunt cedar, that the fire of God
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Tattered with tempests of the ruining world,
With all Night's ravens of dark dreams around thee.—
Why art thou here where Beauty lies in state?
Despair:
I heard the summons of a heart—and came.
Sorrow:
Look on me now: turn not thy gaze away.
The Man:
Thou with the brows of rock and ragged hair
Of tangled cloud, like some lone crag where storm
And all the wild waves of the ocean beat,
What message dost thou bear me and my heart?
I have beheld thee somewhere.—Was it there,
Before the dark beginning of this life,
In some lost star? or in the arid moon?
When Earthquake bellowed on the cosmic peaks
And continents went down in cataclysm,
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And old Oblivion ruled?—Oh, was it there,
In that pre-natal life, that turn'd to stone,
Thou gottest thy marmorean countenance?—
Thou sayest all the woe of all the world
Unto my soul with anguish of thy eyes.
Sorrow:
I am the Sorrow that can never weep;
The heartbreak of the world, that sees its dreams
Perish and pass, and Beauty's self destroyed.
Adam hath known me and the Sons of Adam;
And on the hearts of all the Daughters of Eve
I've trodden and shall tread for evermore.
The Man:
Thou hast the look, the unforgetable gaze,
Of all I've loved and lost.—Stand near to me.
I would not have thee turn thine eyes away.
[A knock is heard upon the door.
Love:
Death knocks. Art thou prepared?
The Man:
I am prepared.—
Why, who would live when all he loved is dead!
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O Death! O welcome Death!—Now may I quit
This House of Fear that God hath shut me in!—
The mystery men call God, who dowers us with
The senses which, with time, make us their slaves.—
What difficulties puts He in our way,
Bidding us master them!—His puppets we,
Who work His will—whatever that may be—
While He, calm-eyed, regards our agonies.—
When we confront Him on that Day of Days,
What will He say?—When terrible face to face,
How shall He answer us and how explain
And justify Himself for all He's done?
Sorrow:
Thy words seem wailings of the mindless sea.
Despair:
Is this His work? she who lies perished here,
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Amid imperial presences of Doom?
The Man:
Yea; even so. But wherefore dost thou ask?
Sorrow:
God had no hand in this.
The Man:
He set a task
Too difficult for Love.
Sorrow:
But not for Sin.
Despair:
'T was Sin who let the hosts of darkness in.
Sorrow:
Bow down! bow down!—What hast thou now to say?
The Man:
Nothing to thee or—God.
Love:
Bend low and pray.
The Man:
O God! O God! would that the night were gone!
Despair:
Thy night shall never go.—What of the dawn,
O watcher of the world within the night!
Death
(outside the door):
I see no promise yet of any light.
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Despair and ancient Sorrow answer me.—
Man questions; darkness answers, and the sea
That separates the silences of Life
Where Doubt and Death stand evermore at strife.
And in Man's soul a voice of centuried wrong
Ululates ever.—Oh, where now the song
That Hope once murmured me, the sweet of word?
Despair:
Hope, too, is dead, and Faith, the golden bird.
Lost, lost forever as thy soul is lost.
The Man:
Then let me die. O, thou, Love's beautiful ghost,
Fling wide the door!
Love:
This was thy punishment.—
Lift up thy face now; see what God hath sent.
The Man:
Who is this? swift on unsupported feet
Drawing æolian music with him? Stars
Helmet his head; and from his hands of light
Effulgent azure pours and irised day.
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And as with Raphael pinions covers me,
Winnowing the night with wonder.—Fair as dawn,
With mystery and marvel, there he stands,
Shimmering like light that lies on rain-weighed ferns
When over emerald hollows rumour runs
Of Morn, rose-lipp'd, who from her brows of day
Brushes the gold cloud of her hair and lets
The azure of ineffable eyes laugh through.
[The Shadows of Despair and Sorrow have dimmed till hardly distinguishable in the halo of brightness that emanates from the Presence of Hope.
Hope:
I am the last on whom thine eyes shall gaze,
As I was first to greet thee into life.—
I am the one who can not die; though slain,
I but arise again, Immortal Hope,
Forever with thee, though thou say, “Hope 's dead.”
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O shape of song and everlasting light,
Again thy eyes, like steadfast stars of morn,
Rest on the moving waters of my soul.
Hope:
Fear not. Be comforted. Peace keep thy soul.
Despair and Grief can touch thee never more.
Before my splendour, lo! their forms are mist
Swept seaward by the great winds of my joy.
The Man:
Let come what will now! thou beside me here,
I dread no more.—
[Death slowly enters through the door Love holds open.
What shape is that?
Hope:
He, to whose countenance all life must come.
Love:
Have courage. Death is swallowed up in me.
The Man:
Light breaks around me and the winds of dawn
Sweep the wild mists of tempest far to sea.
There is no darkness now, but rivered light,
Flowing from out the source of boundless day.
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The woman who lies here crowned with life's thorns,
Beckons me yonder from the daybreak!—there,
Silver and snow, above the infinite blue.
She beckons and the ancient House is rent:
Its towers fall and its foundations sink,
And the great winds of God lift high its dust
And sow it through the night that drives a-sea:
And I am free to run and shout with morn
Upon her hills, one with the Sons of Heaven,
And all the stars! ...
[Death touches him solemnly. He turns and looks smilingly into his face, and then like a child lays himself down, as it were, to sleep.
Hope:
Where now thy House of Fear?
| The Shadow Garden | |