University of Virginia Library

ACT III

An open rocky place higher in the mountains; in the rock-wall at one side is a rough-hewn open tomb; in the rear the stranded ark of Deukalion, caught amid great rocks, is outlined against snow-peaks and against a vast sunset cloud, full of shifting light. The funeral train of Deukalion winds up the steep path from below. Lykophon and a company of grown men carry the bier, beside which walk Pyrrha and Æolus.
Chorus of Old Men.
In one same breath
Uttering life and death,
Whatso his mouth seems darkly to ordain
The darkling signal of his hand makes vain,
And like a heart confused He sayeth and gainsaith.
With himself He wrestles thus
Or gives this wrestling unto us.
Whichever, it is well.
O children, we are risen out of hell,
And it is pleasant evening! Daughters, sing!
Upon his way let soft and golden mirth
Be spoken round the king,
And unto heaven be told the sweetness of the earth.

Chorus of Girls.
How shall the thought of our hearts be said,
Here, where this averted head
Lonely walks by the lonely dead?
'T were better others sang,
Not we, not we!
For when the mighty morning sprang
Terrible in gladness from the sea,
When, entering the high places of the air,
Noontide unbelievably
Possessed them, and lifted up his trophy there,—
Yea, all the noon and all the afternoon,
We could have put our secret by, we could have spoken
Well before thee, O mourner, O heart broken!
But now, but now—Mother, mother,
We have seen one coming with thee up the steep;
His mild great wing we saw him keep
Over thee like a sheltering arm,
And the shadow of one pinion fell across
To shield the bosom of thy lord from harm;
We have seen him, the dark peace-giver, Thanatos;—
But O, we have seen also another,
Winged like him, and dazzling dim,
He came up out of the sun, yet he goeth not down therewith;
For, ever warmer, closer, as the evening falleth pale,
His arm is over our necks, and his breath
Searches whispering under our hair; and his burning whisper saith
A thing that maketh the heart to cease and the limbs to fail,
And the hands to grope for they know not what;
We would not find what he whispers of, and we die if we find it not!

Chorus of Young Women.
Ere our mothers gave us birth,
Or in the morning of the earth
The high gods walked with the daughters and found them fair,
Ere ever the hills were piled or the seas were spread,
His arm was over our necks, my sisters, his breath was under our hair!
Their spirits withered and died who then
Found not the thing that his whisper said,
But we are the living, the chosen of life, who found it and found it again.
Where, walking secret in the flame,
Unbearably the Titan came,
Eros, Eros, yet we knew thee,
Yet we saw and cried unto thee!
Where thy face amid exceeding day more excellently shone
There our still hearts laughed upon thee, thou divine despaired-of one!
Though o'er and o'er our eyes and ears the heavy hair was wound,
Yet we saw thee, yet we heard thy pinions beat!
Though our fore-arms hid our faces and our brows were on the ground,
Yet, O Eros, we declare
That with flutes and timbrels meet,
Whirling garments, drunken feet,
With tears and throes our souls arose and danced before thee there!

They place the body in the hewn vault of the rock.
Pyrrha.
Go down now. I and Æolus will watch
Till dawn, when ye will come to shut the tomb
And sing him to his peace.

Lykophon.
Some few with thee
Will hold the watch, for safety.

Pyrrha.
None. Alone.

The others go down the path, leaving Pyrrha and Æolus seated by the tomb; a girl lingers behind, and when the last figure has disappeared, throws herself at Pyrrha's feet.
Rhodope.
See, it is Rhodope, thy handmaiden!
Behold, thou knowest. He loved her. She would stay.

Pyrrha.
Touching her head.
Thy heart shall take no fear. O, stay with us!

The voices of the young men are heard, descending.
Chorus of Young Men.
When, to the king's unveilèd eyes
The rended deeps and the rended skies
Seemed as a burning wood,—
Iacchos! Iacchos!
When flame took hold of the place of the dead,
And burning seized on the throne of God,
And birds and beasts and the souls of men
As a wind of burning fled,—
Iacchos!
Yea, in the blinding radiance when
The Bringer of Light by the altar stood,
Iacchos! Iacchos! Evoë!
We saw thee, we knew thee, we cried upon thee!
We had lost thee and had thee again!
Plucker of the tragic fruit,
Eater of the frantic root,
Shaker of the cones of raving, sounder of the panic flute
Over man and brute,
Iacchos!
Hunter in the burning wood,
Planter of the mystic vine,
From the spirit and the blood
Crusher of the awful wine,
Iacchos! Evoë! Iacchos!

The voice dies away in the distance. Silence.
Æolus.
Whispers to Rhodope.
See'st thou? The cloud!
Touching Pyrrha.
Mother, what means the cloud?

Pyrrha.
Raising her head.
How, child?

Æolus.
The cloud. See how it lives within!

Pyrrha.
'T will rain; he brought us back the blessèd rain,
And storm, and natural darkness, with the light.
Bows her head again.
As also to our hearts the shutting-in
Of rain and natural darkness.

Rhodope.
Looking up from Pyrrha's knees.
All the hours
Since long ago at dawn, the livelong hours
Of glory, since he brought the morning back,
The cloud has piled itself, and wondrous lights
Have been thus restless in it.

Æolus.
Where is he?

Pyrrha.
I know not, child. It may be that he sleeps,
Being weary; or he wanders with his love
To gaze upon the gladness of the world.

Rhodope.
No one has seen him since he fetched the light.
They say of him—I heard the old men say—

Pyrrha.
The sun goes down: we will be silent now.

Silence. Æolus and Rhodope, leaning together, fall asleep. Pyrrha kneels by the tomb, with hands stretched aloft upon the king's breast.
Pyrrha.
Speaks low.
Thou whom my glad heart once deliberately
Chose, and this morning suddenly with tears
Chose, and was chosen, and was made thine at last
In the destroying light—Deukalion, lord,
The day is past, the evening cometh on.
Once more to thy full-wishing lips I hold
The chalice of my heart up, husband! husband!
For night begins to pour her voices out,
And thou art stayed for on the voiceless hills.

She lifts her head and listens. In the distance Pandora's voice is heard, sharp and agonized.
Pyrrha.
For thee too, then! Even also for thee
He smote the rock; thy spirit thirsted too
Afar there in the desert of thy joy,
And came and drank against the morning ray
Waters of trembling. By the pools in haste
Thy soul stooped, plucking herb and flower of pain
That groweth newly there, by the new stream!

Rhodope.
Runs with Æolus, and crouches beside Pyrrha.
Pyrrha! Mother Pyrrha! Look, alas,
Lo, how it comes upon us! The bird! The bird!

Pyrrha.
What—where? How suddenly has darkness fallen,
And now as suddenly 't is light again!
How terribly the lion thunder roared
Leaping along the mountains to the sea!
—What saw ye? What went by us in the wind?

Rhodope.
Look where the giant wings rock down the slope!

Pyrrha.
Gazing below.
God's bird of wrath! Swift is thy wrath, O God,
Strong is thy jealousy!

Rhodope.
Awhile I slept;
Then as I looked and wondered at the cloud,
The restless lights flushed angry, and all the west
Shone stormy bright with ridges of blown fire.
The cloud flamed like a peak of the fiery isles,
Where in the western seas Hephæstos toils.
Then from yon cloven valley in the midst
Came forth the wings and shadow of the bird,
And grew towards us vaster than storm, more swift
Than I could cry upon him, and passed down.
Once o'er the plain and o'er the ocean straits,
And twice o'er the old olives by the stream
Where the folk rest to-night, his shadow wheeled,
And now he towers straight upward like a smoke,
High, high, into the evening.

Pandora's cry is heard again; she appears in the rocks above the tomb, gazing upward. After a moment she comes down and kneels beside Pyrrha, hiding her face against the rocks. Pause.
Pyrrha.
In a low voice, gazing at the cloud.
Deemest thou
That he will yield himself unmurmuring up,
Or will he make wild war along the peaks?

Prometheus enters swiftly from below, and raises Pandora. They stand clasped in each other's arms beside Pyrrha, who, still kneeling, draws herself up to gaze into the king's face, then clasps Æolus with one arm and with the other the knees of Prometheus.
Pyrrha.
Leave us not yet, before another dawn
Comes, bringing surety! For the giant dark,
Seeing thee absent, may arise again,
And Python lift unnameably his head
In hell, hearing the gods hiss him awake.

Prometheus.
Be comforted; it is established sure.
Light shall arise from light, day follow day,
Season meet season, with all lovely signs
And portents of the year. These shall not fail;
From their appointed dance no star shall swerve,
Nor mar one accent of one whirling strophe
Of that unfathomed chorus that they sing
Within the porch and laughing house of Life,
Which Time and Space and Change, bright caryatids,
Do meanwhile pillar up. These shall not fail;
But O, these were the least I brought you home!
The sun whose rising and whose going down
Are joy and grief and wonder in the heart;
The moon whose tides are passion, thought, and will;
The signs and portents of the spirit year,—
For these, if you would keep them, you must strive
Morning and night against the jealous gods
With anger, and with laughter, and with love;
And no man hath them till he brings them down
With love, and rage, and laughter from the heavens,—
Himself the heavens, himself the scornful gods,
The sun, the sun-thief, and the flaming reed
That kindles new the beauty of the world.
He draws Æolus and Rhodope to him.
For you the moon stilly imagineth
Her loiterings and her soft vicissitudes;
For you the Pleiades are seven, and one
Wanders invisible because of you;
For you the snake is burnished in the spring,
The flower has plots touching its marriage time,
The queen-bee from her wassailed lords soars high
And high and high into the nuptial blue,
Till only one heroic lover now
Flies with her, and her royal wish is prone
To the elected one, whose dizzy heart
Presageth him of ecstasy and death.
For you the sea has rivers in the midst,
And fathomless abysses where it breeds
Fantastic life; and each its tiniest drop
Flung from the fisher's oar-blade in the sun
Has rivers, abysses, and fantastic life.
For your sakes it was spoken of the soul
That it shall be a sea whereon the moon
Has might, and the four winds shall walk upon it,—
Also it has great rivers in the midst,
Uncharted islands that no sailor sees,
And fathomless abysses where it breeds
Mysterious life; yea, each its tiniest drop
Flung from the fisher's oar-blade in the sun
Has rivers, tempests, and eternal tides,
Untouched-at isles, horizons never hailed,
And fathomless abysses where it breeds
Incredible life, without astonishment.
He bends over Deukalion.
O death, majestic mood! Transfigured brow
And eyes heavy with vision, since the time
They saw creation sitting like a sphinx,
Woman and lion, riddling of herself
At twilight, in the place of parted souls—
He pauses, looks at the lighted cloud, and below at the darkening earth, where a mist is beginning to rise.
As far as being goes out past the stars
Into unthinkable distance, and as far
As being inward goes unthinkably,
Traveling the atom to its fleeing core,
Through world in world, heaven beneath wheeling heaven,
Firmament under firmament, without end,—
To-day there is rejoicing, and the folk,
Though ignorant, call us blessèd in their hearts.
Yea, He who is the Life of all this life,
Death of this death and Riser from this death,
Calleth us blessèd in his heart of hearts;
And once again, in the dim end of things,
When the sun sickens, and the heaven of heavens
Flames as a frosty leaf unto the fall,
In swoon and anguish shall his stormèd heart
Cry unto us; his cry is ringing there
In the sun's core! I heard it when I stood
Where all things past and present and to come
Ray out in fiery patterns, fading, changing,
Forevermore unfaded and unchanged.

Æolus.
Behold, alas, mother, look up!
O haste, let us be hidden in the rocks!

Pyrrha.
The wings that were a little cloud in heaven
Shed doom over the third part of the north;
And now he slants enormous down the west
Toward his throne and eyrie in the cloud.

In the background, about the ark of Deukalion, the figures of the Stone Men and Earth Women emerge, and stand darkly outlined against the sunset cloud. Prometheus speaks low to Pandora, who falls at his feet.
Pandora.
I would be there with thee, love. O, not here!

Prometheus.
Stooping over her.
There where I go thou art; there, even now
Thou cried'st me to thee, and I come, I come.
He lays her in Pyrrha's arms, and disappears in the rocks; he emerges on a higher level behind, and turns westward.
Pausing beside the ark.
O rude and dazèd spirits! Ye shall grope
And wonder toward a knowledge and a grace
That now we dream not of; then loneliness
Shall flee away, and enmity no more
Be spectral in the houses and the streets
Where walk your primal hearts in the large light
That floods the after-earth.
He raises his arms over them.
Out of these stones
I build my rumoring city, basèd deep
On elemental silence; in this soil
I plant my cool vine and my shady tree,
Whose roots shall feed upon the central fire!

He crosses a rocky stretch leading to the western heights over which the cloud rests, and disappears in a mist-filled pass. Æolus and Rhodope creep closer to Pyrrha and Pandora, sheltering themselves from the chill of the rising mist, which slowly covers the scene. There is a long silence, broken by faint peals of thunder.
Æolus.
Whispers.
Mother, the mist was grey and thick to breathe
But now; and now 't is thin, and flushes red
As if all round the forests were aflame.

Rhodope.
Whispers.
Hush! See'st thou not it is the mighty cloud,
That flames more fiery when the thunder speaks?

Heavy thunder; Pandora starts wildly up.
Pyrrha.
Drawing her down.
Thou spirit bird, that sangest all night long
And mad'st sweet utterance from the secret shade
Where his wild heart spread coolness in the sun,
For thee to flit and sing,—O look not out!
Still hide thee in my breast!
Pandora sinks back. Pyrrha whispers to Rhodope.
Rise thou, and look!

Rhodope.
Rises and speaks in a low voice.
Over against the region where he went
Thunder has torn the curtain of the mist,
And out of moving darkness soars the cloud
Like as a shadowed ruby, but above
Like as an opal and a sardine stone
Sun-touched to the panting heart; and in the midst
Are shapes throned on the moving of the lights,
Who ride the wrathful lights, and are the lights.
Up through the driving fringes of the mist
Battle a living splendor and a gloom.
O, while the shapes gather and wait at gaze,
That pharos of our peril in the straits,
That treader of the cups of gladness out
In the sun's vineyard for us—Mother! Mother!
Look hither, look at last, for it is time.
Up through the crud and substance of the cloud
Prometheus wrestles with the bird of God!

Pyrrha rises, lifting Pandora.
Æolus.
Look how the sudden wind has quenched the cloud,
And them that were therein; and how its blowing
Shoulders the mist away from the keen stars
That rushed out at the fading of the lights!
Look you, the cloud comes on us in the wind!
It tramples down the mountains, and above
Reaches abroad in darkness, blotting out
Place upon place of stars.

Rhodope.
The smoky air
Climbs up and eddies round us and falls down,
Rolling and spreading wider than the world!

As the cloud advances, Pandora goes toward it with outstretched hands, and pauses beside the prow of the ark, among the Stone Men and Earth Women, while deeper and deeper darkness drifts over the scene. The voices of Pyrrha and Pandora are heard as from the midst of the cloud.
Pyrrha.
Vast sorrow, and the voice of broken souls;
A cry as of all kinds and generations,
Times, places, and tongues; or as a mother
Heareth her unborn child crying for birth.

Pandora.
Sings.
A thousand æons, nailed in pain
On the blown world's plunging prow,
That seeks across the eternal main,—
Down whatever storms we drift,
What disastrous headlands lift,
Festal lips, triumphant brow,
Light us with thy joy, as now!

Pyrrha.
A sound of calling and of answering;
Answer or watch-cry of all desperate lives
To God, and God to them calling or answering.

The Stone Men and Earth Women sing, their voices growing fainter as they descend the valley behind.
The Stone Men and Earth Women.
We have heard the valleys groan
With one voice and manifold;
Stone is crying unto stone,
Mould is whispering unto mould.

The Stone Men.
Hear them whisper, hear them call,
“All for one, and one for all,
Dig the well and raise the wall.”

The Earth Women.
“For the nations to be born,
Root away the bitter thorn,
Reap and sow the golden corn.”

Rhodope.
To Pyrrha.
Hear'st thou this yet that thou didst whisper of,
Or is all silence now even to thee?

Pyrrha does not answer. Pandora's voice is heard, also from the valley behind, but more distant.
Pandora.
Sings.

Rhodope.
To Æolus.
Doth not the cloud go by us? Yonder, see,
A star looks dimly through. And there, and there
'T is all awake with stars!

Pandora.
Sings.

Rhodope.
How swiftly now,
As if it had a meaning in its haste,
The cloud-bank fades and dwindles in the north!

Starlight and silence. After a time, dawn begins to break in the east. Pyrrha rises and kneels again by the tomb. As the light increases, Æolus and Rhodope climb higher among the rocks and watch for the rising of the sun. Below, the voices of the young men are heard.
Chorus of Young Men.
Ascending.