University of Virginia Library

ACT II

Scene as before. The space below the cliffs is deserted; on the slope above, voices of men and women are heard.
First Voice.
Peer farther down! Hear'st thou the waters yet?

Second Voice.
With sea-slime and with lichen-tangled shells
The rocks are strewn, and ocean-breathing things
Gasp in the shallow pools; but the main flood
Is sunken further than the ear can hark.

They descend.
A Young Man's Voice.
Above.
A little strength, sister, a little strength!
Nay, then, I die with thee.

An Old Man's Voice.
My son, my son,
Where art thou? Answer me!

Another Voice.
Peace. He is dead.
I saw him sink upon the farther slope.
Back to him, if thou wilt; thou'lt come too late.

Chorus of Men.
The fallen must lie where they fell,
For the dead cannot succor the dead.

Chorus of Women.
O when through the valleys of hell
Shall the light of our Saviour be shed?

They descend. Others appear from above.
First Voice.
Above.
Trust not the sea! Look where the frothing lip
Curls off the giant fang! Back to the heights!

Second Voice.
Nay, fallen are the waters. It is past.

Third Voice.
The life we hurled from off the temple crag
With supplications and with piercing song,
Has made thus much appeasement. One more life
Will roll away the ocean of main dark;
Unless we be forever doomed to lie
As now, blind bulks of sleep, or hunger-bitten
To creep the stagnant bottom of the world.

Fourth Voice.
This way, 't is said, Deukalion carried him.
Follow on, yonder, where the cliff breaks down.

They descend; others follow. From the side, below the cliffs, a muttering group presses in; in their midst are Deukalion and Pyrrha, who shield Æolus against the cliff. The space about the altar is filled with indistinct figures.
Deukalion.
I am king, hear ye, am I not the king?
Higher than I is none. Take me! Why him,
Little of strength and wisdom? I am wise,
My cunning brain is stronger than a host.
Though this my spear-arm be a little fallen
From when it led you out against the north,
I am more terrible and mighty now,
An old, much-seeing spirit. In my death
The gods will taste a pleasure and be soothed.
But from this child, this playmate—look ye here—
This piece of summer's carelessness, this tuft
Of hyssop planted by the wells of glee,—
What honor should the dread gods have on him?
They shall have me, Deukalion—

A Man's Voice.
Bring not on us
With wordy shifts, the last steep horror down!
That is no babe thy withered arm hides there.
We know him; we have seen. If he might live
His name would fill the future, and make big
The story of his folk. He is our best,
Our soul of price, and him the gods demand,
Together with the maid, whose father here—
O how much more a kinglier will than thou!—

Deukalion.
Where art thou, Lykophon? Mine eyes are dim.

Lykophon.
Here by the altar.

Deukalion.
And thy child?

Lykophon.
Here too.

Deukalion.
Thy heart is firm to do it? Thou wilt live,
And think on t' after? Ay, remember that!
Hast weighed that with the rest?

Lykophon.
He was my slave,
Whose crazed old voice cried yonder of his son.
Was it to win a remnant of dim days,
A handful of poor mealtimes and to-beds,
He offered him? To watch some mornings rise,
Some evenings fall, fringing with fearful light
The cliff he hurled him from to the hungry sea?
Am I a lesser than my bondman is?

Deukalion.
Yea, ye will teach me, and I'll bear it tame!
I know what fits a king, what he must pay
In peace of soul and heart's blood for his folk.
King-drownling of an island of drowned dogs,
Wolves, snakes, and field-rats, crept from out the flood
For hunger and the hell-bred fog to rot!
Rot ye! I'll keep my own.

Lykophon.
To the crowd.
Back, back, I say!
The gods despise enforcèd offerings.
When the heart brings its dearest and its last
Then only will they hear—if then, if then!

Deukalion.
Be this life taken, what is left? O friends,
O wretched children, lift your hearts and eyes,
Look through the death-dark hither and be known
On what you ask; think on yourselves, on me,
On them that keep the heights, and who lie strewn
Along the downward path. See how the price
Doth shame the purchase!

A Man's Voice.
We have thought on these,
And find they are our brothers and our friends,
Our parents, children, wives; and that they die.

Lykophon.
Not they alone. The past, the future dies.

A Woman's Voice.
Hark what he says! He knows not, yet he says!
None of you know. I have cried unto you
And told you of it, but you will not know!
You will not listen what I carry here
Under my heart, and feed and shelter now,
That then shall be the bread and wine of the world,
The torch and sword and lyre, the water-brook,
The lion-gate and wall of many towers,
The marshaler of dances,—there, O there
Beyond the shadow and the sorrow, far
In God's new garden, his green virgin mount!

Chorus of Women.
Would, would we might be silent, for we know
Though now He puts us by,
Though now He heeds us not nor hearkeneth,
The groping of our anguish up the sky
Will wean and wear Him so
That in the vexèd sendings of his breath
He will breathe out a deeper than the gloom
Of our deep doom,
And put in death a sting sharper than death.

Distant thunder.
Chorus of Men.
Seize them and stifle up their irking lips!
He grudgeth at us, but forgetteth where
He felt our spreaded palms, and was aware
Of fierce and tedious prayer.
Yonder of us night darkens with his frown;
Far off, and all forgetfully He drips
His drowsy anger down.

The thunder rolls nearer, and terrific storm sweeps over the scene.
A Woman's Voice.
Ah, no, He smiteth us! His lightning leaps
From end to end of the world!

A Man's Voice.
His thunder shakes
The pillars of the dark. Lo, up above
The roof of darkness ruins and lets in
Thrice horrible night!

Another Voice.
Alas, the wind, the wind!
The trampling and the bellowing herds of rain
Loose on the mountain slopes! Bow down! Bow down!

Deukalion.
Gropes forward through the tempest and lifts Æolus upon the altar.
Lord, stretch thy hand and take him! He is thine.

Lykophon.
What criest thou, Deukalion?

Deukalion.
Take the child.
The gods' dark will be done! I am content.

He falls.
Lykophon.
Bending over him.
Deukalion!

Pyrrha.
Husband! Father! Speak, look up!

Lykophon.
Rising.
The king is down. Here in his mighty room
I stand up over you! Where is the priest
Who serves the altar on God's mountain top?

A Man's Voice.
Yonder he crouches, and his sacred eyes
Are set athwart; he wanders in his wit.

Lykophon.
Prepare him for his ministry....And thou,
Alcyone, sweet head! Thou keepsake life
Left me for memory, thou precious seal
Stamped with her mystic love-sign unto me,
I put her blessing on thee; and do thou
Kiss me, and put her blessing upon me
For this I do.
He lifts her upon the altar.
Weep not.—Room for the priest!

The priest advances, holding the sacrificial knife.
Pyrrha.
Flings herself before the altar.
Hold off your hands, hold off! The king is fallen,
And falling spake somewhat. But I, who drank
Of his deep will, who ever was and am
His heart's high furtherer, cry over him
Ye shall not touch them yet! Not yet ye shall!
Not till Prometheus comes or makes a sign!

Lykophon.
Thou see'st the grey eternities of time
That we have waited, till our minds are crazed
With watching, and our all o'er-hearkened ears
Hear silence roar and mutter like a sea;
And still he comes not, and no word comes past
The crouching places and close lairs of death.

A Man's Voice.
Yet he will come: his haughty soul shall not
Be hindered of its walk.

Priest.
Behind the wall
A thief was taken, and his sons at dawn
Said, “Now he comes with purchase; we will feast,”—
Even while the ravens on his glazing eyes
Were feasted, and the master of the house
Said, “I have judged him and forgotten him.”
Ye blind and credulous, ye whispering things!
Mutterers, collusioners! What wait we for?

Chorus of Women.
O that our spirits might not thus
Afflict us, making pictures on the dark,
And giving silence tongues to cry against us!
For though we shut our ears and will not hark,
And blind our eyes from seeing, he is there;
The dust of heavenly battle dims his hair,
The large gods close about him, he is down;
Now thrice three times about the shining town
The thunder-wingèd chariot drags his corse;
And now they bind him to the wingèd horse
With chains of burning light; the portent rears away
O'er prairies of insufferable day!

Chorus of Men.
'Twixt Berenice's tangled hair
And that blue region of the morning where
The bright wind-shaken Lyre
Sheds down the dawn its spilth of silver fire,
We saw him stoop and run upon the air,
Shielding from region gusts the stolen flame;
But from a steep cloud warping up the west
A curse of lightning came.
With tort-flung neck and clutchèd breast
He fell, a ruined star;
And now the char
Had quenched itself with hissing, in the sea,
But lo, again his soul flamed gloriously!
The eagle tempest, gyring from its place,
Seized him, and whirled,
And hung him on the plunging prow of the world,
To shed the anguish of his face
Upon the reefs and shoals of space,
To lighten with the splendor of his pain
Earth's pathway through the main,
Though death was all her freightage, and the breath
That swelled her sails was death.

A Man's Voice.
He will not come. I heard an old bard once
Sing of him, saying Titan Iapetos
Fathered him not; his mother Clymene,
Wandering in the morning of the world,
Suffered human embraces. 'T will be so,
For he is human-minded, and too slight
To wrest from God's hand the withholden fire.

Second Voice.
Hearken! One sings upon the upper slopes.

Third Voice.
'T is she, the other gift in mockery sent,
Pandora.

Fourth Voice.
Haunting, cruel to the heart.
She opens sunny doors, which ere we look
Are closed foreverlasting, and their place
Not to be guessed.

Fifth Voice.
This was another thing
Prometheus did. Whom the gods sent in wrath
To make us know how wondrous was the life
That inchmeal they took from us, even her
He chose out for his love, and even here
He made his bridals.

Sixth Voice.
Some say 't is not so,
But she Pandora is a child he had
Before the sea rose and the night came down,
And others say his sister, whom he fetched
From Hades, where she was with Clymene,
Being childed late, after the Titans fell.

A Woman's Voice.
Hush, hark, the pouring music! Never yet
The pools below the waterfalls, thy pools,
Thy dark pools, O my heart—!

A Young Man's Voice.
Delirious breast!
She jetteth gladness as a sacred bird,
That o'er the springtime waves, at large of dawn,
Off Delos, to the wakening Cyclades
Declares Apollo.

A Girl's Voice.

Pause.
A Woman's Voice.
Look, Pandora comes!
See, there above the cliff she glimmers down,
And darker shapes come with her.

A Man's Voice.
The big seed
Deukalion and Pyrrha sowed in hope
To reap in terror; the scarce-featured sons
Of stone, and daughters of the sullen glebe.

Deukalion.
Waking.
Pyrrha! Where art thou?

Pyrrha.
'T is my face thou feelest,
Thy groping hands are even on me, father.

Deukalion.
Who are these? How is 't with us? O wherefore
Gaze ye all thus aloft?

Pyrrha.
Pandora comes.

Deukalion.
I see naught. Since a little while mine eyes
And brain are faded. Help mine eyes to see.

Pyrrha.
She pauses on the margin of the cliff.
About her are the shapes of them who rose
Behind us, when we sowed the heavy seed.
Her either hand is on a kneeling head,
Female and male; her forehead more than theirs
Is lifted up in yearning, and her face
Is like the lyrist's when at first he waits
And drifts his heart up through the cloudy strings.

A Man's Voice.
Take heed there to the lad, where he hath risen
His height upon the altar! And the maid
Is risen. Look to them!

Pyrrha.
Children! Æolus!
What is 't with you? What search ye in the heavens?
O, to what high thing do your spirits strain
And your hands tremble up?

Æolus and Alcyone.
Looking and pointing upward.
The stars! The stars!

Pause.
Deukalion.
Why hath so deep a hush fallen on the night?
I heard a whispering cry. What whisper they?

Pyrrha.
Æolus pointed—whispering of the stars.

Deukalion.
Æolus—stars. Pyrrha!

Pyrrha.
With thee!

Deukalion.
Spakest thou
Of stars?

Pyrrha.
Ay, so he whispered!

Deukalion.
Thou—and thou?

Pyrrha.
Nothing, nothing. My soul was as a lake
Spread out in utter darkness; to its depth
There pierced a silvery trembling—

Deukalion.
Look again.
Wife, cease to pray! Look out again!

Pyrrha.
The dark
Gathers and flees, and the wide roof of night
Leans in as it would break; the mountainous gloom
Unmoors, and streameth on us like a sea.
O Earth, lift up thy gates! It is the stars!
It is the stars! It is the ancient stars!
It is the young and everlasting stars!

Pandora.
Sings.

Pyrrha.
The veil that hid the holy sky is rent;
The vapors ravel down; and a bright wind
Blows, that the planets and the shoalèd worlds
Stoop from their dance, and wheel and shout again,
Scattering influence as a mænad shakes
Pine sparks and moon-dew from her whirling hair.
And hark, below, the many-voicèd earth,
The chanting of the old religious trees,
Rustle of far-off waters, woven sounds
Of small and multitudinous lives awake,
Peopling the grasses and the pools with joy,
Uttering their meaning to the mystic night!

A Man's Voice.
Within my soul there is a rushing down
Like darkness, and my being, as a heaven,
Soareth apparent, as a heaven with stars.
A heaven hung with stars my spirit is,
And all among them walks a wind of will,
Uttering life, and purpose, and desire!

A Woman's Voice.
O for the dreaming herbs, the whispering trees,
And rustling, far-off waters of my heart!
O for the mystic night risen within me!
The multitudinous life, the busy sounds
Of woven love, the hushed and pouring love,
The pouring love and stillness of the night!

Deukalion.
Wife, wife, what falleth since?

Pyrrha.
A stir of joy
Troubles the fields of air 'twixt star and star.
Across the quivering acres, by and large,
An unimaginable Reaper goes,
And where he walks the heavens are seldom-sown;
Till o'er wan earth the spreaded heavens are bare,
Save for one mighty star that gathers light
And stands like a flushed singer telling glory.
Now he, now even he has no dominion,
For he has looked behind him to the mountains,
O, he has looked up to the lovely mountains
Of the unimagined morning, and has hearkened
The pouring of the chill, eternal urns!
Over the solemn world grey habitation
Wonders at habitation. Room by room,
The heavens tremble and put on delight,
Ignorant one to another why it is
The festal wish compels them. They are brightened
Under the feet of many breathless spirits,
Who, lifting up their hands by the springs of ocean,
Cried “Pæan!” and “O, Hymen!” As a stream
Silvereth in a wind-start, heaven is brightened
Under the speed and striving of those spirits,—
Who now, even now dissolve, and leave behind them
Only their gladness and their speed; for now
Through all its height and frame of living light,
Through all its clear creation, breathing depths
And fleeing distances, the sacred sky
Pulses and is astonished like a heart;
It looketh inward and bethinks itself,
Outward, and putteth all its question by,
To shine and soar and sing and be at one!—
Nearhand the slopes drink light, and far about
Among the mountain places, headlands, cliffs,
Lone peaks, and brotherhoods of battlement
Shout, having apprehended.—Paler grow
The gulfs of shadowy air that brim the vales;
As ocean bateth in her thousand firths,
The grey and silver air draws down the land.
The little trees that climb among the rocks
As high as they can live, pierce with their spires
The shoaling mist, swim softly into light,
And stand apparent, shapely, every one
A dream of divine life, a miracle.
Chasms are cloven in the violet
And amethystine waters of the air;
Forests and winding rivers of the plain
Are given and withdrawn; a moment since
I saw, I thought I saw a strength of hill
Uplifted far below us, built upon
With what was once a lordly place of souls,
A carved and marble place of puissant souls,
Builded to such strong music that the sea
Had hardly heaved one lintel from its post,
Or marred one face of all the sculptured men,
Or shaken from his seat one musing god.—
Again the air is cloven; I have seen
Fane-crownèd promontories, curving sweeps
Of silver shore, islands, and straits, and bays;
And bright beyond, the myriad ocean stream.
And O, beyond—beyond!—O shelter me!
Bow down! Cover your eyes!

Confused Voices.
Terrible wings!—
Light awfuller than darkness or the sea!—
O spirit of sharp flame amid the burning!

A Boy's Voice.
My hands are on my eyelids, and my knees
Shelter my face. O mother, lay thy breast
About me, and shut out the killing light,
Before my eyeballs and my brain be dead!

Deukalion.
On his knees, with outstretched hands.
Of late mine eyes were quenched, and now I see.

Pyrrha.
Thine eyelids are not open, but thy face
Searcheth into the radiance. Father, cease!
Look not upon it with thy soul. Thy face
Is terrible with beauty in the light.
I cannot look upon thy seeing face.
Take not the mortal glory on thy face!
Bow down—O let me shield thy sightless eyes!

Deukalion.
Burning is laid unto the roots of the world;
The deep spouts conflagration from her springs;
And fire feeds on the air that feeds the stars.
Out of the sea has burst, from rended deeps
Of the unthought-on rearward has leapt out
The appearance of the glory of the sun,
Filling the one side of the roaring world
With creatures and with branch-work of pale fire;
And through the woods of fire the beasts of fire,
The birds and serpents and the naked souls
Flee, that their fleeing startles the slow dead
Through all their patient kingdoms, and the gods
In their faint spheres are flown and passionate.

A Man's Voice.
My soul is among lions. God, my God,
Thou see'st my quivering spirit what it is!
O lay not life upon it! We not knew
The thing we asked for. We had all forgot
How cruel was thy splendor in the house
Of sense, how awful in the house of thought,
How far unbearable in the wild house
That thou hast cast and builded for the heart!

Lykophon.
Deukalion, speak again!

Pyrrha.
If yet thy flesh
Endure to look upon it, speak again.

Deukalion.
His soul is strong and will deliver him!
The feature of his anguish and his joy
Makes dim the light adjacent, and his soul
Is bright to overcome. He treads the glory
Over against the roaring, hitherward.
Seeing the taper of small excellent light
He lifteth in his hand, the night rolls on
Before him, and day follows after him.
The hours, the months, the seasons, and the times
Acknowledge him; the waste calls to the sown;
The islands and hoar places of the sea
Sing, as the chief of them that are taught praises.
About his torch shineth a dust of souls,
Daughters and sons, who fly into the light
With trembling, and emerge with prophecy;
And round about goeth a wind of tongues,
A wind as of the travailing of the nations;
Vast sorrow, and the cry of desperate lives
To God, and God to them crying or answering.—
Child! Æolus! My child. Where is my child?

Pyrrha.
I cannot see; the dazzle of his coming
Makes blind the place. Here, father, in thy knees!
Feel, 't is the darling head! Wild comer, when?
Hasten, have pity, we are nothing strong!
Father, how is 't with thee? Why bow'st thou down?
Thy hand is cold, thy lips are very cold.—
O gone, O gone, even at the entering-in!

A Voice.
Who are these coming down, that they are mighty
To walk with foreheads forward to the light,
Singing the mortal radiance to its face?

A Voice.
It is Pandora and the unborn men,
Deukalion's seed. She doth it of her power,
They of their weakness.

Pandora.
Sings, invisible in the light.
Ye who from the stone and clay
Unto godhood grope your way,
Hastening up the morning see
Yonder One in trinity!

The Earth Women.
Save us, flaming Three!

Pandora.
Dionysus hath the wine,
Eros hath the rose divine,
Lord Apollo hath the lyre:
Three and one is the soul's desire.

The Stone Men.
Save us, sons of fire!

A Woman's Voice.
Listen, they have passed.
They go with singing forward down the light.

Prometheus.
Below, invisible.
Thou gavest me the vessel; it is filled.

Pandora.
I am the vessel, and with thee 't is filled.

Pause.
Lykophon.
Whispers.
Pyrrha!

Pyrrha.
Who whispers me?

Lykophon.
Is he not come?
Is he not busied by the altar there?

Pyrrha.
Nay—Lo, the terrible taper! It is he!
I see him not; my spirit seeth him;
My heart acheth upon him busied there.
—Deukalion, O Deukalion!

Prometheus.
From the altar.
Pyrrha! Pyrrha!

Pyrrha.
Prometheus, saviour!

Prometheus.
Lykophon!

Lykophon.
Lo, me!

Prometheus.
Bring me your children hither.

Pyrrha and Lykophon.
Groping forward with Æolus and Alcyone.
Here are they!

Prometheus.
Unto this twain, man-child and woman-child,
I give the passion of this element;
This seed of longing, substance of this love;
This power, this purity, this annihilation.
Let their hands light the altar of the world.
'T is yours forever. I have brought it home!

The radiant mist fades; it is clear day, flooded with morning sunlight. The children apply the burning reed to the fuel, and fire flames high upon the altar. Pandora's voice is heard faintly, far below.
Pandora.
Too far, too far, though hidden in thine arms;
Too darkly far, though lips on lips are laid!
Love, love, I am afraid;
I know not where to find thee in these storms
That dashed thy changèd breast my breast upon,
Here in the estranging dawn.
Unsteadfast! who didst call and hast not stayed.
Tryst-breaker! I have heard
Thy voice in the green wood, and not deferred:—
O fold me closer, fugitive one, and say where thou art gone!
Nay, speak not, strive not, sorrow not at all!
O, dim and gradual!—
Belovèd, my belovèd, shall it be?
Keep me, keep me with thy kiss,
Save me with thy deep embrace;
For down the gulfs of spirit space,
The slow, the implacable winds, now unescapably
Wheel us downward to our bliss,
Whelm us, darken us—O lethal winds!—down to our destined place.
Swimming faint, beneath, afar—
O lover, let there be
No haste, nor clamor of thy heart to see!
But I have seen, and I whisper thee
How the rivers of peace apparent are,
And the city of bridal peace
Waits, and wavers, and hardly is,
Fades, and is folded away from sight;
And now like a lily it openeth wistfully,
Whispering through its courts of light
“How long shall we be denied?
How long must the eastern gate stand wide,
Ere these who are called shalt enter in, and the bridegroom be with the bride?”