University of Virginia Library

SCENE II

A mountain glade and forest. Midnight.
Shepherd.
Here stand, if thou wilt see, by this great bole.
This way they passed, and hither should return.
But pray thee, gentle god, when they draw near
Abate the splendor of thy face, fold close
Thine eyed and irised plumage. God thou art,
But thou must needs be mighty to escape
The hill girls when they rage! From these old boughs
The climbing moon will soon pour deeper shade
To screen thee more.

Raphael.
How looked they when they passed?

Shepherd Boy.
Coney, how passed the hailstorm o'er, quotha!
Patter! patter! 't was sung beneath i' the dark.
I lost a birch cup full of whortleberries
Scrambling to cover when I heard their songs.
But when they burst across the glade, I peeped,
And saw their breasts gleam through their angry hair.
Evoë! they had snared the village lad
They hanker for so long. I hear them talk,
Dawdling on well-curbs with their water-skins
Or picking the May-apples.

Shepherd.
'T is the lad
Who sat mute at the merry threshing-stead,
Turned from their orgies in the sacred wood
With large bright eyes unamorous, and sang
In lonesome places piercing lonesome songs
Of other lives and other gods than theirs—
Perchance of thee and thy bright-wingèd mates,
If mates be thine, for god thou surely art.

Shepherd Boy.
To-night they have him limed! Brow of the hawk,
Throat of the hermit-thrush, and ring-dove eyes!

Shepherd.
He came across the moon-drench dragged by three
Whose bodies shone like the peeled willow wand;
The little snakes they knot into their hair
Lipping his neck, where oozed the red of grapes
From his crushed garland; his hands flung aloft
To the symbol of their fierce licentious god.
His eyes were large and fixed, his lips apart,
As I have seen him in the lonesome woods,
But madder than the maddest bacchant there!

Raphael.
Who cometh yonder?

Shepherd.
Where?

Raphael.
Across the glade.

Shepherd.
I see nought.

Raphael.
There, behind the trailing mist.
The moonlight gathers to a ghostly shape,
Unearthly silver, throbbing like a heart!
It seems a beast and rider.
The shepherds make off.
Ah, I know
That icy influence, and the voice I know,
First heard in Heaven when time began to be,—
A voice above our voices, and a hush
Beneath our hush, freezing the heart with fear,
With fear the heart even of spirit-kind. ...

The Angel of the Pale Horse.
Sings.

Raphael.
What makes thine errand here?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Still as of old.

Raphael.
I think thou art way-wandered. Here is life.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
My horse's feet err not; they are way-wise.

Raphael.
Stand by me in the shade of these old boughs,
And let no anger fan thy wings alight
Or flake the nostrils of thy horse with fire
When the young bacchants halloo down the steep.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Thou feedest thy giddy and half-human mind
Still on these little spectacles of change,
Forgetting Heaven's great woes!

Raphael.
What woe can come
Into those courts of old beatitude?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
Hast thou not felt its presence there?

Raphael.
Yes—nay—
I know not ... When I enter Heaven gate,
Fear comes upon me, for I seem to feel
Some subtle waning of accustomed joy,
Some dying off of music—thin, minute,
As the single cricket amid chorusing fields,
Whose ceasing breaks the rapture. Often, too,
Wan faces shun me in the woods of light
And voices of vague dolor die away
Along the living lilies as I come.
But this I held a phantasy of dream,
Bred of too earnest looking on the blight
That falls on mortal things.

Angel of the Pale Horse.
It is no dream;
Though more mysterious, more dark than dream.
Momently fades the splendor, momently
Silence and dissonance like eating moths
Scatter corruption on the choiring orbs.

Raphael.
No one declares the cause?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
The cause is here,
Here in the vagrant courses of the moon,
Who makes her lair and wanders for her love
After her own loose law; in yonder stars,
Gay spendthrifts of their plentitude of fire;
In this most dissolute earth, who decks herself
With gorgeous phantasy, and delicate whim,
And paces forth before the worlds to dance
A maiden measure, modest lids downcast
To hide her harlot's guile; but more than these,
And more than all, unutterably more,
Here in the wild and sinful heart of man,—
Of all the fruits upon creation's vine
The thirstiest one to drain the vital breast
Of God, wherein it grows.

Raphael.
Too fiery sweet
Gushes the liquor from the vine He set,
Man the broad leaf and maid the honeyed flower!

The shepherds creep back, and stand peering from behind the tree at the angels.
Raphael.
Musing.
What if they rendered up their wills to His?
Hushed and subdued their personality?
Became as members of the living tree?

Angel of the Pale Horse.
A whisper grows, various from tongue to tongue,
That so He will attempt. Those who consent
To render up their clamorous wills to Him,
To merge their fretful being in his peace,
He will accept: the rest He will destroy.

The boy whispers to Raphael.
Raphael.
What wilt thou, little friend?

Shepherd Boy.
Hither, sweet god!
But let the ghostly centaur stay behind.

Shepherd.
Lean o'er this rock and look into the gorge.
See how their torches dip from ledge to ledge.
They race beside some shape the torrent bears:
The eddies seize it now, and leaning out
Over the pool they stop to howl their hymns,
And, now it plunges, how they madden down
With laughter keen above the drumming foam.

Raphael.
Is 't not a man's torn trunk?

Shepherd Boy.
See those behind
Grasping the antlers of the lunging stag,
That bellows when their torches bite his flanks!
I know the witch who rides him!

Raphael.
Come away
That is a bleeding head she holds aloft
Above the clutching of her comrades' hands!

Shepherd Boy.
No more thou 'lt shun their orgies in the wood,
Throat of the hermit-thrush and ring-dove eyes!
Throat of the mourning thrush, thy songs are done;
Sad ring-dove eyes, the lids have shut you in!

Shepherd.
That is his harp the dancers bear before,
Mocking his solemn songs of other gods
And other lives than theirs.

Raphael.
Musing.
Those who consent
He will accept: the rest He will destroy!

Shepherd Boy.
Look! look! the ghostly centaur goeth down.