 | Prince Deukalion |  |
SCENE II.
[A spacious square, at the extremity of a city. In front, a church: on one side a cemetery, with an open gateway: on the other side a market.]PYRRHA
(looking towards the gateway).
There, out of stubborn wrong and thwarted hope
And helpless ignorance, Earth has only gained
A heavier mould; and she must heap her dead—
As the slow ages on her bare emerge
Gathered the dust for grass, the deepening sod
For forests—ere our seeds of total life
Find rootage, and with undecaying green
Redeem this desolation!
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Yea, but eyes
That once behold, and souls that once believe,
Lend faith and vision as a lamp its flame!
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Ay, Faith! that limits where it should enlarge,—
That sees one only color, where the sun
Brands ever three, nor suffers even them
To burn unblended!
PRINCE DEUKALION.
'T is the curse of souls
That selfless aspiration looks above
To find joy, knowledge, beauty, waiting there,
Because abandoned here!
PYRRHA.
So mine await:
They doubt me, not forbid me.
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Doubt but feeds
The callow faith that has not tried its wings.
Be comforted!
PYRRHA.
Deukalion, is it time?
PRINCE DEUKALION.
How often, Pyrrha, have we watched the morn
Divinely flush—and fade! How often heard
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Died, echoless! Yet Patience cannot be,
Like Love, eternal, save at times it grow
To swift and poignant consciousness of self;
And something veiled from knowledge whispers now
Prometheus stirs in Hades!
PYRRHA.
Darest thou call?
PRINCE DEUKALION.
I dare not. Epimetheus slowly clears
Back through the gloom and chaos of the Past
The path of his return. The widening sphere
His keener vision measures now for Man
Discrowns Tradition, shrinks the span of Time,
And throws the primal purpose of our fate
Once more upon us. Thus the Titan stands
Nearer than when the frosty fetters burned
His limbs on Caucasus!
PYRRHA.
And also she,
Pandora, freed from long disgrace of Time,
Since now her Hebrew shadow flings away
The fabled evil! When the Past is purified,
We shall possess the Future.
104
Yea, our source,
As from the bosom of a mountain mist,
Leaps out of Nature, innocent at last!
In our beginning Destiny divine
Set the accordant end; and this, obscure,
Makes that with monstrous intervention dark
To human souls. Already Earth is red
With ebbing life-blood of the wounded Faiths
That shriek, and turn their faces to the wall,
And shut their vision to the holier Heir,
Who, unproclaimed, awaits his lordship. Lo!
How he who governs these austerer lands
Withholds his gifts, betrays his promises,
Gives freedom for repentance, not for change,
Nor other answer than his own, to doubt!
Foe to Medusa, in his secret dreams
He wears her triple crown,—allows, perforce,
Urania, banished from her first abodes,
Chill hospitality, an exile's fare,—
No right of home! What will his welcome be,
When Epimetheus, hand in hand with her,
Tells the new story of the human Past?
[Enter a Man and Woman.]
PRINCE DEUKALION
(to the Man).
Say, dost thou know me?
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At a distance, I
Have seen thee pass: I never heard thy name.
PRINCE DEUKALION.
I speak it not.
MAN.
Thou movest my desire
To know, yet, save the knowledge be allowed,
No less my fear: there's brightness on thy face,
As one who sees no pitfall in delight,
Nor snare in science, nor the burden bears
Of fallen nature.
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Whence is thine so dark?
Art thou in love with pain?
MAN.
I cannot help
Some joys of life, and guilty dreams of more:
But He who suffered for my sake forbids
That I rejoice too greatly.
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Wisdom, then,
Wilt thou accept?
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The wisdom of the world?
Nay: 'tis vain-glory.
WOMAN
(to Pyrrha).
If indeed for me
Thou hast a message, as thine eyes declare,
Thou knowest my need.
PYRRHA.
I know thine ignorance.
WOMAN.
I would have knowledge, were the entrance free.
PYRRHA.
Want forces entrance, justifies itself,
As hunger crime! But learn what Beauty is,
And this, thy present weakness and reproach,
Becomes immortal power!
WOMAN.
When I behold
Thy face, I seem to own it.
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Set thou, then,
Whatever visage unto thee I wear
Within the shrine of thy desires, thereon
To brood in longings born of motherhood,
That so thy daughters shall inherit it,
And I in them be nearer!
MAN
(to the Woman).
Strange the words,
Their meaning doubtful: how shall thou and I,
Bearing Eternity's full weight alone,—
Ours all the debt, foreclosed if other coin
Save what our Faith supplies be given as due,
And poor in deeds that earn it,—how shall we
Accept such help? He wears the face of Power,
She that of Beauty; what if both mislead?
WOMAN.
Her spirit touches me, as doth the sun
A folded bud: if I become a flower,
The hue and fragrance locked within my life
Without my will are scattered.
MAN.
Come away!
[They pass on.
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No more the shepherd and the shepherdess,
Our children! 'T is the wisdom of the school,
So grave in childish self-sufficiency,
That turns on Nature and disowns her bliss.
I know not what large hope awakens now:
Pandora, Titan-mother! rise and see
How speeds thy purpose!
PRINCE DEUKALION.
Ere thou summon her,
Or he unsummoned rises, let us seek
The stately High-Priest who hath ruled so long
These broadening realms, advancing nobler fate
Even where he willed it not, the instrument
Of that diviner mystery than his God!
The sky-cast shadow of a Hebrew Chief
Fades o'er his altars; and the aureoled Love
That later veiled the tyranny, reveals
A change in its intensest splendor wrought
Invisibly: if he hath eyes to bear,
His ear may hearken, when Prometheus calls.
| Prince Deukalion | |