University of Virginia Library

ACT II.

SCENE I.

[A wayside shrine, opposite a fountain. Fragments of antique sculpture— among others the head of a Muse—appear in the wall of a vineyard, bordering the road. Prince Deukalion, seated on a rude stone bench, beside the fountain.]
PRINCE DEUKALION.

[Shepherd and Shepherdess come foward and kneel before the shrine. After devotions made, they rise.]
SHEPHERD.
To her, Our Lady, Lily, Star of the Sea,
Five hundred have I told upon these beads;
To him, now, fifty: since he keeps the keys,
Somewhat he may expect. Save that our saints
Grow covetous of prayer as priests of pay,
And sins provoke in order to absolve,
Our faith were easy.

SHEPHERDESS.
She, if any, hears!
Her eyes are tender, and her virgin breast
Fed not more lovingly the Child of God,
Than mine feeds mine.

SHEPHERD.
Ay, safe by chrism and cross
Is he: no demons near his cradle hide!
Fast goes with feast, the penance with the gift,
Like good and evil seasons: pay your dues
And make them debtors! 'T is a plain account
Heaven keeps with earth, unless the stewards lie.

SHEPHERDESS.
And, after her, how fair the martyr-youth
Who sees his coming crown, and will not heed
The arrow quivering in his golden side!
Lover to maids, to me a brother, son
To women age-despoiled,—could once his eyes
Droop downward, he would pity, love and save.

SHEPHERD.
[Exeunt, singing.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
In these new names extinguished miracles
Sweetly renew themselves: disparaged types,
Torn from the pagan world and set in ours,
Become again divine. But, stay! who comes
With brow unbound and visionary eyes,
And nervous hands that clutch as if they sought
The antique plectrum and the chorded shell?
No wayside orison arrests his feet,
Yet doth he pause; a dream within his blood
Casts old divinity on yonder Muse,
And far Ægean echoes in his ears
Reach the forgotten sense.

THE YOUTH
(to himself).
Be it sacrilege,
I must adore thee! Yea, with hands that touch
The wounds of him upon thy ruin throned,
Approach thee; none of all the hosts that save
So gaze serenely over strife and time,
Beholding Beauty, being beautiful!
I know not if I know thee; yet I know
What in my soul endeavors to thyself—
Seeks consecration! Vacant are thine eyes.
Cold thine insulted brow and mute thy lips,
Yet, Goddess, to thy menial place I bend,
And give thee honor!

[He stoops and kisses the lips of the Muse.
PRINCE DEUKALION.
She will give it back.

THE YOUTH
(after a pause).
Who, then, art thou? No pulse in all my soul
Hast thou abashed; but, rather, force and flame
Of scarcely self-confessed ambition rise
As I behold thee: Somewhat of her face
Grows into broader majesty in thine,
But human, as in them that must endure.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
As thou must! Out of all that was I come,
Awaiting all that shall be; they that know,
Behold me ever.

THE YOUTH.
Let me know, behold!
Thou seem'st the shape of what I dare to dream.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Do thou my work! Through hates and battles walk;
Eat bitter bread of strangers; lose thy land;
Give up thy gentle love, to find once more,
An angel guide, the lily in her hand;
Scourge brazen power, and hunt hypocrisy
To where it hides, the olden Hades lost,
In tortured circles of your later Hell;
Become a voice where terror sheathes itself
In music, Pity, a dove in whirlwinds tossed,
Pleads out of agony, and primal Love
And highest Wisdom set alike for thee
The gate of Dis, the mount of Paradise!

THE YOUTH.
Thou speak'st as mine own soul.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
The sight unsealed,
Without the courage, seeing, to advance,
Were but a curse; but thou shalt be a name
Which is eternal power, and from thy pangs,
As by fierce heat, the chains be fused apart,
Which now the tears of ages rust in vain.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

[Grand hall of a palace. Medusa, seated on a throne of gold, a triple crown upon her head. Four Messengers standing near.]
MEDUSA.
Say to the East, her gateway of return
Stands open, though the hinges creak with rust:
Whence came the light her darkness dare not bide.
The seven lamps of Dawn have followed us,
And grown to suns, above, beneath our feet,
On right hand and on left: the Day is ours.
[Exit First Messenger.
Say to the South, the savor of her gifts
Delights us as of old: the faint, thin breath
Of her ascetic watches, sprinkled blood
Of self-inflicted penance, speech grown hoarse
In solitude, and visions born of brains
Dishumanized, have reached us and refreshed!
[Exit Second Messenger.
Say to the West, we ask no more than she
Erewhile hath given, eager and whole assent;
So flashing back the surplus of her light
As a strong sunset fires the unwilling East!
[Exit Third Messenger.
Say to the North, the firmest hand is love's!
Except in force there is no help: in faith
Abides no jealousy. We hear her threats
In patience, as the frowardness of will
That brooks no other, until taught by loss.
Let her find freedom, and, as heretofore,
Finding, be cheated! Dreams of passing days,—
Selected truth of ages,—which shall stand?
Foreseeing penitence, we pardon now!
[Exit Fourth Messenger.
(Sola.)
Not vainly did I bide my time: for Power,
A tree of cautious growth, shows stunted top
Until the meshes of its wandering roots
Have crept in secret to the choicest clay;
Then, shooting firm and spreading boughs abroad,
Resistance withers, rival force lacks room
Beneath its shade. Now, planted for all time,
Kings are my vassals, Knowledge bids me fix
Her bounds of liberty! By failure taught
To seem to lose for sake of later gain;
With small success, until the greater come,
Content; forgetful never of the end,
What hinders me to make my single will,
Sheathed in invulnerable divinity,
The world's one law?
[A pause; she listens.
“Growth is the law,—or death.”
Who spake? Or was it some last echo blown
From ended struggles? Growth is mine to give!
Have I kept life for all that in the Past
Men clung to, fed the old, barbaric sense
With what it loves, and paved an easy way
Between two worlds to suit the halting crowd,—
And am not potent? 'T is the single life,
Proud of small gifts, defiant in brief power,
That mocks the broad authority of time.
Through vice or perfect virtue comes alike
Obedience; this because it questions not,
And that, from need of pardon. Having these,
Whatever third between them lies must soon
Bend, or be crushed: I rule, while I exist!

[Enter Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha.]
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Hail, Cæsar's heiress!

MEDUSA.
Who art thou? And why
Such greeting?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
I declare thee as thou art.
The phantom purple underneath thy stole
We see, who nursed thy young humility
That now is pride, intrusted thee with strength
To be the strength of men, and made thee free,
That each soul's freedom find its root in thine!
How much of duty in thy power survives?

MEDUSA.
I meet the needs and the desires of men.
What they expect, I give; the seed whereof,
Sown ignorantly on all the fields of the Past
By dead Religions, I have reaped for them.
The passion and delight of sacrifice;
The comfort out of self-abasement won;
The lofty symbols, flattering lower sense
Until the thing it touches seems divine;
The sweet continuance of miracle
That Faith implores, to feel its Lord renewed;
The sanctioned ear, where Guilt may find release
And surety of pardon,—these I give.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
These only? Treadest thou thy children down,
Lest they should grow beyond thee? Hast thou peace
For Man's illimitable questions and desires?

MEDUSA.
Yea! Through obedience, peace for each and all.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Art thou, then, more than man? Through him thou art.

MEDUSA.
Thy speech offends: the race-begotten child
Is its own father's lord.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Prove lordship, then!—
Display the rights bestowed, to balance them
Thou hast usurped! Man's reverence is thine:
Where bides thy reverence for Man? The Mind
That, seated in the universe of things,
Needs all its heritage,—the haughty doubt,
Twin-born with knowledge and of equal right,
Hast thou made free?

MEDUSA.
I make not error free.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Art thou, alone, establisher of truth?—
Not also Man who made thee, the high God
Whose will permits thee?

PYRRHA.
Tell me what keen charm
Thou usest, that my daughters turn to thee?

MEDUSA.
Knowest thou thyself and askest?

PYRRHA.
Yea, I know
The strength and weakness of an instinct foiled.
Sexless thyself, the secret of the sex
Is lightly caught by thee; yet, be thou skilled
To weave ecstatic visions from hot blood,
And call heaven down to fill Love's emptiness,
There dwells a soul in woman past thy reach,
A need that spurns thy tinkling toys, a claim
Beyond thy lullabies of sense and sound,
And sweet division of Divinity
'Twixt us and Man!

MEDUSA.
Thine?—or felt by all?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
A myriad speak, though single be the voice!
We know thee, Gorgon! Though the tonsured head
Keep down thy sprouting snakes, the triple crown
Hide their renewal, yet thy stony glance
Betrays the ancient beauty, and its dread!
Why hast thou turned from that defenceless love
Which equalized all lives of men, to use
The mystery of terror? Why made stone
The souls that moved before thee, save in chains?
Many thy keys of power, for thou hast learned
To govern weakness: hast thou then forgot
That force and freedom live?

MEDUSA.
Perchance in dreams.

PRINCE DEUKALION
(advancing).
Before thee, here, I stand! One Power decrees
Thy life and mine: subdue me if thou canst!
My children made thee, and shall overthrow!
Take strength from all the Past, on dreams presumed
Build empire, and exalt thyself,—I am,
I was, I shall be!

PYRRHA.
I no less!

MEDUSA
(sinking down upon her throne).
Away!

CHORUS
(without).
As a bed where the weary sleep,
As a chest where our gems we keep
Art thou, our Mother!

ANTI-CHORUS.
Spare us! we stand despoiled
Of the goods for which we toiled:
Thine is the hand that foiled;
There is none other.

CHORUS.
We bow, and our joys endure;
Assent, and the Future is sure;
Thy rule is highest.

ANTI-CHORUS.
We ask, as thy gifts decrease,
Knowledge that brings us peace,
Freedom, the soul's release,—
But thou deniest!

CHORUS.
Power and Mystery thine,
Surely art thou divine,
To reign forever!

ANTI-CHORUS.
Power, the child of Will,
Dares and defies thee still:
Even God shall not kill
Man's endeavor!

SCENE III.

[Night. An open grassy glade, between groves of ancient oak and ilex trees, in a deep mountain valley. The full orb of the moon hanging low in the west.]
PYRRHA
(sola).
In this pure shadow every rocky scar
Is healed: there is no lightest lisp of leaf:
The waters, only, never lose their song,
But in their swift, dissolving syllables
Some soft response to mine immortal hope
Endeavors for a voice. Most, unto me,
The time is holy: wherefore not to him?
Not weariness of baffled toil alone,
Nor late revenges of subjected sense,
Dare shape his dreams. Our primal task the same,
Our purpose one, our equal bliss through each
Ordained, at need I summon him to me:
From toil, uniting while it seems to part;
From visions of thyself, renewed
To quicken men's discouraged fortitude;
By the twin right of one inseparate heart,
Which speaking, other voice is dumb,—
I bid thee come!
If thee I most may comfort, or me thou,
What need to question now?
We take, even as we give,
Nor, save in our unreckoned bounties, live!
Deukalion-Pyrrha, all myself in thee
Compels thee unto me!
[A pause. Prince Deukalion appears.]
One moment, ere thou speakest, let me gaze!
Though some bright rosier flush of waxing life
Forsake thy features, marbled by the moon,
Thine eyes remain, and out of shadow send
A happy splendor: am I fair to thee?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Fair and so near! Ah, Love, couldst thou be mine,
Save first myself were mine!

PYRRHA.
Then I were less
Than thou believest; but my heart forgives
The over-fondness of complete desire.
I venture further, dream diviner end:
Each lost in each, one body as one soul;
Endless renewals of surprise and bliss;
A twofold touch of life, all knowledge grown
A double power through interchanging sense,
As light should warm at will, and heat illume;
Two mingling tones to every passion's voice;
Twin-rays from eyes, as shines from sky and stream
The single star—but that were Deity!
We will not look beyond the task designed.
Guide thou thy sons as I my daughters; teach
Respondent honor to heroic blood
That wastes itself in self-forgetting toil;
Give rank and right, and exercise of rule;
With lighter weapons of one temper arm
The softer strength, and in one squadron set,
To fight the world's long battle!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Force is kind,
That once oppressed, and honors fade unworn.

PYRRHA.
A favor on a helm,—a tourney's crown!
Cross-hilted swords, in dying unction held,
Crimsoning scarf or glove! In lordly bower,
Or under oriel, lute and lay espoused
In adoration that purveys to sense,
While lowly virtue is a jest of fools!
What she bestows, the Head whom all obey,
Degrades while it exalts, a sanctity
Conferred on bondage! Why, methinks, the world
Is but a monstrous wizard, weaving spells,
And chanting, under breath, some siren-song,
That none escape!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Pyrrha, I read thy mind;
But till the snakes upon Medusa's head
Shall turn to tresses, and be loosed to dry
Man's bruisèd feet, or Man himself shall rise
And crush them under his avenging heel,
We must endure to wait.

PYRRHA.
How long?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Not long!
There are who know me, whose allegiance went
In flame aloft, to fall in thunder back.
The winds of earth are wafting to and fro
The ashes of great lives, that seem, to Her,
The Gorgon, dust; yet are unquenchable,
Immortal fiery seeds of voice and act,
Her hate increases when it would destroy.
So Arnold lives, and Abelard: so he,
The youth I chose, shall with consuming song
Burn his broad way through ages! Thou and I
Before one onset walk; and thou shalt change
The old dependence into loftier aid.

PYRRHA.
Exact one space, where we may stand alone,
And unassailed!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Pyrrha! when proudest thou,
Dearest and most desired! Full-limbed and fair,
Such perfect beauty in thy lifted head
It cannot be defiant, such clear truth
In thy large eyes, such glory as a mist
Around thee—
[Seizing her hands.
Let it be a dream—no more!
Thy hands, a dream, and, ere the vision end,
Once let me know the lips that shall be mine!

[Thunder. The Shadow of Prometheus rises.]
PROMETHEUS.
Not yet!
Slow-paced is Fate:
All crowns come late.
Couldst thou forget?

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Since my proud task began,
Nor more nor less than Man
Am I, or may become.

PROMETHEUS.
Haste is not speed,
And Passion mars the deed;
And Love's too-early pæan soon is dumb.

PYRRHA.
But in thy scheme lie burning
Keen sparks of yearning,—
The hope that dies not,
The voice that lies not,
The dream, more bright at each returning!
Within thy reed of stolen fire
Came down the Gods' desire,
Not their chill calm of changeless being.

PROMETHEUS.
Whence they, foreseeing
Far overthrow,
Through what of them in you was planted,
Made me your Expiator!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
The One we know,
God, Father and Creator,
Himself to Man his nature granted!

PROMETHEUS.
He standeth sure.
A spark of Him in all,—
The form of faith that dies,
The tenets that surprise,—
Though falling as ye fall,
He rises as ye rise:
He will endure!

[The moon sets: a faint light in the eastern sky.
PYRRHA.
Father, thou readest in my heart
What I implore, ere thou depart!

PROMETHEUS.
Though a sudden darkness fills
All the hollows of these hills,
White and large, against the gray,
Sparkles Phosphor's chilly ray;
And the mountain-brows are wan
In the weakness of the dawn.
But the little streak that lies
At the bottom of the skies,
As the remnant-wine in cup,
Fast shall fill and mantle up,
And, where yellow coldly grows,
Burn to gold and flush to rose.
Look, and hearken, if there be
Message in the morn for thee!

[Prometheus disappears.
PYRRHA.
Wait, my Deukalion! hand in hand,
With quiet pulses, beating bliss in each,
And the immortal faith that asks no speech,
Again beside me stand!
Even now the glowing tide
Throws its first foam of fiery cloud, and wide
The heads of mountain-peaks
Feel day's fresh blood upon their pallid cheeks:
Already sings aloft the awakened lark:
Whether she come or fail, the Hour
Brings consolation and swift power,
And I am strangely happy,—Hark! Oh, hark!

EOS
(unseen).
Mother of them to be,
Who wast first designed in the Past
To be fulfilled at the last,
Why calleth thy soul to me?

PYRRHA.
For the beauty my daughters wear
Is made to itself a snare!

EOS.
Beauty alike shall soften and save,
Till Force shall feel,
As the galley's keel
Is lifted and sped by the lovely wave!
Under the law that holds me afar,
And Fate's immutable bar,
By the secret of something all divine,
The heart in my bosom answers thine!

PYRRHA.
Not yet uncurtain thine eyes!
I ask no more.

EOS.
The slow swift ages wait in the skies;
The ghosts are eager on Heaven's floor.
What Darkness sowed the Light shall reap,
And Evil that reviled,
Impregnate in her drunken sleep,
Shall bear a purer child!

[A pause.
PYRRHA.
The roses fade, the music melts away.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
It is another day!

SCENE IV.

[The Roman Capitol. Medusa, throned on a platform, in front of an ancient church, in the walls of which are seen columns of a Doric temple. An immense multitude gathered together.]
MEDUSA.
Who all possesses, dares be generous;
And here, where fell the guardian god of Rome,
Touched by a babe's soft hand,—where Cæsar's crown,
Descending, stopped when Tibur's Sibyl spake,
Foreseeing mine,—shall go indulgence forth!
No bounty equals that which Power bestows
That might withhold: the senses must not starve,
Lest the soul clamor. Out of what I hoard,
Prepared for me, the harvest of the Past,
Some ears may well be scattered.
Who demands?

[Two step forth: the Poet, in a red mantle, his head crowned with laurel; the Painter, bearing tablet and pencils.]
THE POET.
Faithful to all thou seemest, I have sung;
Hate is my portion, yet I sing no less.
Love for Love's sake instructed first my tongue,
That Truth so speak, and Justice so redress.
I am a voice, and cannot more be still
Than some high tree that takes the whirlwind's stress
Upon the summit of a lonely hill.
Be thou a wooing breeze, my song is fair;
Be thou a storm, it pierces far and shrill,
And grows the spirit of the starless air:
Such voices were, and such must ever be,
Omnipotent as love, unforced as prayer,
And poured round Life as round its isles the sea!

THE PAINTER.
Faithful to all thou seemest, I have made
Thy glories visible, in beauty, grace,
Pain, death, and triumph! I have set thy saints,
In tints exalting life above itself,
And aureoled faces caught from ecstasy,
For endless worship. Vassal unto thee
Therein, the separate service now outruns
My vassalage; for beauteous Art compels
Her Beauty's freedom!

MEDUSA
(aside).
Freedom? still the moon
These children cry for.
Yet for thee there pleads
No crownless Muse, of them that haunt the ways
Of men, and think they live: thine never lived!
But of the others whoso linger still,
Long out of service, living on men's alms,
Decoying pity through their old respect
And fallen honor,—let them now appear!
[Enter The Muses.]
So much of dignity in ruin lives?
Save that some faces smile, and some are calm
With certainty of ancient place renewed,
Ye were defiant: but your pride is fair!
It suits me well to find dependent now
Such haught existences: as I grant leave,
Ye may endure: in them who served the old,
The newer faith rewards like loyalty.
First of the triple triads those advance,
Who nearest, lightest-natured, cheerfullest,
Were loved of men, and made the moment speed!

EUTERPE, THALIA AND TERPSICHORE.
In the woods and highlands
We linger near;
By the shores and islands,
When skies are clear.
Delight of existence,
In the feet that fly,
Calls from the distance
Our glad reply;
But the joys are sweeter
That to all belong,
When the foot gives the metre,
The heart the song!
No more you banish
Than a cloud the sun:
We only vanish
To be re-won!

MEDUSA.
Good service offers!—'t is the must of youth,
The hum, and surge, and sparkle of fresh blood,
That must have sway: be these my vintagers,
So mine the later wine! Yea, let the vats
Even over-foam, 't is sign of potent fire
Stored in the vessels when my seal is set,
And acrid strength of age. Without excess
Were less restraint: here may indulgence lie!
Go, altarless yet worshipped,—ye are free!

MELPOMENE, POLYHYMNIA AND ERATO.
When Music fails, and Joy is dumb
To men's exalted need, we come.
Our swords of sharper beauty cleave
The spells of senses that deceive,
And out of yearning, pain and power,
We call, and rule, one glorious hour!
Time cannot mar nor Conquest wrong
The swift, majestic march of Song,
Or Faith, in man's august desire,
Quench the least atom of her fire.
The Thought that strays, afar, alone,
We guide to speech and charm to tone:
The breathless Passions pause, to see
Their rage resolved to harmony;
The terror of their language wooed
To music, and to law subdued;
Till all things dread, fair, fugitive,
Touched by eternal Beauty, live!

MEDUSA.
These are suspect: whom shall they rule—or serve?

[A pause.
THE POET.
Me, if none other! Yonder multitude
Scarce knoweth what it loves, yet loves no less,—
Enjoys, forgets, discards and craves again,
Breathing high thoughts unconsciously as air:
Without them, stifled! Those are welcome now,
Who bring the sportive liberty of life
To the sad world's late holiday; but these,
Seldom as odors on the arid hills,
Still keep their fond surprises!

MEDUSA.
Under guard,
Then, let the Three go forth! They reach too high.
Who plucks on tip-toe at the dangling grape
Pulls down the vine: what's Passion but revolt?
What, save the music of illicit minds,
Is Poetry? Yet purposed deeds may sleep,
Lulled by the measure of their own wild dreams.
The accumulate store, saved from the wrecks of Time,
Frayed raiment, spangled thick with Pagan gems,
Is hoarded in my vaults; but at my will
Be spent the treasure!—easy luxury
To brains that else might coin, or claim, or steal.
These Three, of men surmised or coveted,
May walk the world henceforth; but under guard!

CALLIOPE AND CLIO.
Daughters, whom Zeus and she,
Wide-browed Mnemosyne,
Gave to the sons of earth,
In wisdom, might and mirth
Divinely so to lead
That word is wed with deed;
And action, rhythmic grown,
Stands as in sculptured stone;
And noble speech commands
Service of swords and hands;
We wait, but do not ask
Continuance of our task!

MEDUSA.
Thou, of the keen, persuasive, perfect voice.
Thee I require!—despite the haughty flash
Of thine unshrinking eyes, I know the spell
That rules thee: wait, I'll feed thy tongue with fire!
Thou, too, whose stylus wanders restlessly
Across the empty tablets, at my feet
Sit down, and write me legends! I have store:
Pain, penitence, and power and miracle,
Glory, disaster, blessing,—by one soul
Informed, linking the ages in one scheme
Grander than all thy fables!
Who art thou,
The last, who speakest not? Thine eyes are set
Like one who sees not, thine attentive ear
Hearkens to something far away. Most fair
Wert thou, could Beauty, careless of delight,
Wear Wisdom's mask.—What Lamia lingers here?
[Aside.
No supplication, nay, but pity shines
From those firm eyes: I cannot look them down!
Is it the coldness of the serpent blood
So chills me? Serpent?—one of us must writhe
When the end comes; but ages lie between.

URANIA.
The clear lamp, colorless,
Of high Truth I possess.
Hope, Will and Faith may spurn,
While fresh their torches burn,
What, kindling now afar,
Seems but a dying star:
Yet, wheeling as it must,
This little orb of dust
Not more the Law divine
Establishes, than mine.
Shall Faith permit me? Nay,
Thine standeth in my way!
The strong, unshaken mind
May shun me, but must find;
Devotion, bowed to thee,
Is upward blown to me,
Who over Change and Time
Stand single, strong, sublime!

MEDUSA
(rising suddenly).
Seize the blasphemer! What!—from air she came,
To air returns? Or doth some shadow still
Glide past yon hoary columns?—She is gone!
Set double guards around our borders! Bar
With fire and steel her entrance! Say, shall we
Hold parley with such immemorial hate,
Or, being Life to men, permit this Death
Her darts to scatter?
Take, new-wrought for you,
My children, chosen of the seed of Earth,
The timbrels and the flutes of joy; the pomp
Of color, music, marble, gems and gold;
The tender pardon of the whispered sin;
The symbols, fitting to the weary mind
An easy load, so keeping truth alive
In dusky mysteries; and, shadowing God's,
The universal watchfulness of Power!
[Exit Medusa: the multitude retires.

THE POET.
(Solus, gazing down upon the ruins of the Forum.)
Urania!—not thy face that earliest wooed me,
And from these ancient ashes called the fire!
Thy sister, even in marble sleep, subdued me
Unto free Song's untamable desire;
And he, in whom I feel myself united
To deed and word and vision that inspire,—
Life's homeless Prince, alone in dreams invited,—
Is of thy race, and waits afar for thee.
What now thou art, Spirit so spurned and slighted.
I know not, nor can guess what thou shalt be:
But through the light of Day thine eyes are burning,
Thy feet are on the mountains and the sea;
The holy planets, going and returning,
Keep thy clear paths untangled in the sky:
Thy wisdom shall replace our hoodwinked yearning.
Thy living laws the mysteries that die!

SCENE V.

[A pass among the High Alps.]
EPIMETHEUS
(solus).
Bright Earth! The echo of the fateful words:
“Rise, Brother!” scarce in twilight Hades dies,
And I behold thee! Bath of dazzling Day,
Take these spent limbs, revive the old Titan blood,
Sharp wine of mountain-ether! Are yon snows
Our Caucasus?—yon melting distances
The meads of Phasis, or, on Morning's side,
The Caspian and the far Chorasmian plain?
Here, now, the hoary, storm-tormented peaks
Stand silent: muffled thunders from below
Make brief disturbance: slopes of tender turf,
Untrampled by the steer, and flowers uncropped,
Smile a faint summer down the hollow dells,
And dark with lifeless water lies the lake.
There wheels a vulture, giving to the blue
The shade or sparkle of his slanted wings,
But seeking other quarry: not for me
Is torture, save the pang of growing sight,
And slow remembrance of the things that were.
The Past, that 'mid her ruins lay a-swooned,
In me recovers: pulse by pulse must I
Recall my life, and word by word my speech,
And age by age my knowledge!
[Enter Urania.]
Also thou,
Whom, eminent in Babylon, I saw,—
Or wise in secrets of the Memphian stars,
Or hermitess on Samos, royal guest
In Academe,—endurest?

URANIA.
I endure.

EPIMETHEUS.
Where wast thou?

URANIA.
Waiting in the dust of earth
And the eternal splendor of the stars.

EPIMETHEUS.
Has thy day dawned?

URANIA.
Yea, ever is at dawn,
So men but lift their eyes!

EPIMETHEUS.
Where goest thou?

URANIA.
To them that seek me.

EPIMETHEUS.
Goddess, I return
To draw the forfeit forces of my youth
From dull, forgetful age: be thou my help!

URANIA.
Learn what to ask, I give: not mine to guess
The need of others. Epimetheus, thou,
A yearning shadow, must create thyself
And thine equality of final power.
Not yet thou knowest me; but, as I go,
Speak, soft, unsilenced Spirit of the Wind,
Speak, kindred Spirits of the Snow and Stream,
Declare my being!

[She descends the northern side of the pass.
EPIMETHEUS.
Spirits, I listen: speak!

SPIRIT OF THE WIND.
From the parched Numidian waste,
From the hills of hot Fezzàn,
I sprang with a boundless haste
That only the stars outran;
Over mountain and Midland Sea
That strove to tire or tame,—
Over Etna and Stromboli
That pierced me with smoke and flame;
Till I laid, in the first desire
That bended my pinions low,
The cheek of the sylph of fire
On the breast of the gnome of snow!
For the powers of ruin, that meet
In the vaults of space, must die
When the spirit that stays my feet
Is lord of the tender sky!
I come, to wither and slay;
I pause, to quicken and spare;
And the fate of the world I weigh
In the trembling balance of air!

SPIRIT OF THE SNOW.
Homeless atoms, born in the sky,
Cling to the ledges bleak and high,
Fill the crevice and hide the scar,
And give the sunrise a rosy star!—
Gather and grow, till a shield is won
To blunt the spear of the angry sun;
Till from the heart of my chill repose
Power awakens and purpose grows,—
Out of my torpor the glacier goes!
Silent, certain, it crouches and crawls
Down the gorges in frozen falls,
And crystal turrets of azure walls,
Tearing the granite from crest and dome,
Hurling the torrent forth in foam!
Shepherding here my downy flock,
There I shatter the ribs of rock;
Stayed by a hand and slain by a breath,
There I am terror, and doom, and death!

SPIRIT OF THE STREAM.
Over the mosses and grasses
The white cloud passes,
Silent and soft as a dream;
And the earth, in her shy embraces,
Conceals the traces
Of the secret birth of the Stream:
Till my threads are braided and woven,
And speed through the cloven
Channels, and gather, and sink,
And wind, and sparkle, and dally,
With song in the valley,
And shout from the terrible brink!
Then the whirl of the wind divides me,
And the rainbow hides me,
As I midway scatter in air;
And I bathe with endless showers
The feet of the flowers,
And the locks of the forest's hair:
Till proudly, with waters wedded,
My strength is bedded
By meadow, and slope, and lea;
And the lands at last deliver
Their tribute river
To the universal Sea!

THE THREE SPIRITS
(as Echoes).
Thou, to power and empire born,
Stay one arrow of the Morn;
Pluck one feather from the wing
Of the wild Wind's wandering;
Breathe to air the flakes that blow
From the chambers of the Snow;
Hold one speck of drifting Force
From the measures of its course;
Then of these hast thou the chain
Binding Man's immortal brain!

[Enter Prince Deukalion and Pyrrha.]
PRINCE DEUKALION.
What faint, clear music of the elements
Makes all these mountains rhythmic, and this air?
Thou hearest, Pyrrha?

PYRRHA.
Not the same that fell
From fair Ionian stars, and found afar
Reverberant echoes on the mounts of Song;
But Earth awakens! Hope I breathe, and power,
Losing my burden of remembered ill.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
New realms, yet not unknown, invite us. See,
How, yonder, where the piny gorges fall
Northward, it spreads!—a land of tempered air,
Where Beauty's enemy, rough Toil, abides,
And all the joyous Muses bind their brows
With straightening fillets: never Daphne shakes
Her glossy head, or Pallas' hoary tree
Makes moonlight on the hills. But Druid oaks,
Univied, stretch their stubborn arms abroad,
The firs bend black beneath their weight of snow.
The gray walls gloom, fire mocks the absent sun,
And Life, no more a lightsome gift of Earth,
Defends itself by battle: voices there
Call thee and me.

PYRRHA.
So but my daughters call,
They shall behold me! Under placid brows
Of Nymph or Goddess, and the chaste cold breasts,
And beating through the snow of perfect limbs,
Is Woman! Beauty's soft inheritress,
Let her uplift her downcast lids, and see
Power abnegated, dignity unworn,
And equal freedom sheltering equal love.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
There lies Medusa's secret: with such bait
Long hath she fished; but thou shalt dis-immure
Her slaves, and give them their abolished sex!
[Perceiving Epimetheus.
Here were a face—save that the kindled eye,
And April bourgeoning of sunny locks
Around the seamless forehead, might deceive—
I looked upon in Hades: is it thou?

EPIMETHEUS.
Am I so young then? What Prometheus mused
I know not yet. With sight indrawn he sat,
And seemed to listen, while our starless air
One weary hour hung dead,—then hoarsely spake.
“Rise, Brother!” and the thin, gray, crowding ghosts
Whirled on and would have risen; but I was here!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
What doest thou?

EPIMETHEUS.
I listen.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Unto whom?

EPIMETHEUS.
The Wind, the Snow, the Stream. The mighty Muse
Bearing an orb, the star upon her brow,
Commanded speech of them, and passed beyond
To Thrace or Scythia.

PRINCE DEUKALION.
She?—and thou?—Again,
O Pyrrha, let our severed hands unite!
Not mine the eternal secret of the Gods
To fathom, yet their purpose in my blood
Beats prophecy.
Go, Epimetheus, sunward,
And seek thy childhood in the dust of ages!
Burrow in buried fanes: wash clean the altars,
And spell forgotten words on mouldering marble.
Perchance thy limbs shall fail, thy lids be weary,
And thou shalt sleep; fear not, I will awaken!
Thy brother's words fulfil: “Take one new comfort,
Still Epimetheus lives!” and now the morning
Shall not withhold the unseen eyes of Eos!

[Exit Epimetheus.
PYRRHA
(as they descend the pass).
Arching aisles of the pine, receive us;
Dells of alder and willow, be fair!
Something of ancient beauty leave us,—
Gift for promise, and deed for prayer!

ECHOES.
In the shadows of the pine
Beauty waiteth, still divine:
She is thine!

PRINCE DEUKALION.
Will of manhood and blood of valor,
Leap as of old to the day at hand:
Free of doubt and of craven pallor,
Rise and ransom the captive land!

ECHOES.
In the forge and in the mine
Weapons for the battle shine:
They are thine!

[Exeunt