University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

—A street. First Citizen, Second Citizen, &c.
First Cit.
On the high open square,
Dripping a spray of blood from the red storm
Of multitudes that beat against him—
His sword piercing in silence the calm ground—
Cathedral-like he stands and looks to Heaven:
Nor words nor prayers would pierce his solitude.
Look therefore for the rending of the temple
That inwalls his mighty spirit: He can
But stand in silence endless, and so die.

Third Cit.
He weeps not, nor sobs?

First Cit.
Murmurs no more than ocean
Gone to rest for a whole summer's night.

Third Cit.
Alas! alas! a word were worth a world,
From that true spirit now! The city darkens on us,
As I think what sight the city witnesses
In this up-breaking heart.

First Cit.
Behold, this way the mournful pageant moves,
Calmstorm, unheralded and unpursued:
Alone, yet in his sad white features see
The ruins of a world more than in columns
Desert-struck, down-broken empire's ways,
And arches desolate. He yet will speak again.

Third Cit.
Be silent as the earth
The hour before 'twas walked by man!

Enter Calmstorm.
Calm.
I see it now, I see it now—the fatal force
That dwells in men like me; that summons,
By some sad potency, all devil-like
And hideous qualities—to rend the caller.
Could ye not stay your hands from me,—whose hand
And heart and spirit were yours to the last strain!
Was I the image where was gathered up
All that you hate, and hating, would destroy,
And not a worker with you to o'erthrow
Such idols!
I see them now anew! I hear them now anew!
For all my past days are lighted up
To view by this late blaze!—
And now, as then in the ensanguined west,
The furnace-fiery throng pursue me from afar,
Their eager eyes outrun their steps, although their feet
Are winged,—their hands are swifter than their sight,
Their hate before them all!
An open field of large rough-bearded men,
Who've cast away each hook that holds them
To the world of house, of temple, and of judgment-seat,
They stand amassed, and I before them stand—
The guilty and the free—arraigner and arraigned;
And as the torches on their faces flash,
They lift me up on high—they look on me,
I look on them; the court's arrayed in full,—
There is a shuffle, and a quick-breathed talk,
As of a dark offence; when from the throng
A shout of “guilty” springs—a thousand arms
Flung in the air, as one and all at once,
Clash into a loud and long resounding,
Like the sea, and thousand-throated
As the bison bulls trampling the green immeasurable,
“Guilty” again strikes up against the unmoved heaven.
Juror, and judge, and criminal, they wrap me
In their hideous arms, and storm-like sweep away
Confusion in the earth, the heaven, the troubled air.
Blighted forever be that tree, accursed
The hand that set it!

First Cit.
Ah, woeful hour! the branches black, e'en now
Upon his countenance lie, and shakes he
Darkly, as they shook when swayed the chill wind
Their double life, amid the dreary wood.

[Aside.
Calm.
These limbs, these limbs that bear me now erect,
Knit by these hungry cords, and by that evil hand;
I smote him while these arms were free, that back
He reeled, indenting deep his followers—
A man whom I had keenly once rebuked,
For certain dark and most outrageous wrongs—
He put a spell in every knot, yet closer knit
By the fierce eyes of many lookers-on,
That, vulture-like, drank up each motion of his hand:
The unhoused wood, the lean untended wolf,
My neighbor only—the long, dull, changeless day,
And the dead night;
The heavens were shivered as a glass, in haste;
The earth reliable, crumbled away beneath
My feet, and fell like dust, or seemed to fall
Into the under void: the infinite of stars,
And the mooned whiteness of the rolling night,
Paled to an idle glimmer far away.
Alone remained
The mournful waving of the dark-leaved branch,
And the sad swaying of its painful trunk.
And this re-echoes that with blood and hate,
And overwhelming hopelessness.
I now should lean, an arm on each, upon
The pillars of the world. They've crumbled from me;
And I stand a naked man, too capable
Of decline for it to need me any more!
There was a time once, on the other side
Of this walled darkness, where felicity
And the young faith, sweet-throated omens, sung:
I had a hope, which at its glowing birth
Was full of joy.—It smiled and shook its locks,
And looked upon me tranquil, bright, and free—
An infancy prompting an after-life
Of all best things.
It filled the earth with joy, it filled the heavens,
And in its golden light men walked or seemed
Angels, whose free, glad feet murmured
Along the earth, murmured at every fall;
The golden light has passed away,
Unto another planet, to another sphere.
Oh, dark and chill seems the sad earth,
And clanking chains I hear, and wailing tongues;
And far in the thick onward time,
Behold the sadness that enwraps the world
Unrent, forever and forever, still unrent—
Look on that fair young Hope, it pines and dies
An outcast on the threshold of the world.
Thou Land, Colossus-like, that spread'st thyself,
Until, a foot on either shore, thou may'st
Thy neck unconquerable stoop, and bathe
Thy sinewy arms wide as thou wilt and deep,
In the salt greenness of the two great seas,
And have no watcher of thy lonesome sport!
Ye masses of mankind, thou Populous Heart!
[Casting his sword on the ground.
Lie there, thou ancient champion,
Until another hand, and worthier
Of thy wielding, lift thee, or lie forever.
I will not mar thy serviceable blade
Longer with this vain breath, nor with the air,
A shieldless and invulnerable foe,
Bemock thee more!

[He falls.
First Cit.
Oh let him fall not on the earth unpropped!

Calm.
Kind friend, good friends, why take you thus
My hand, and look on me in this wild way?
The world and I are near our parting;
I would have been its friend, but am its beggar:
The counsel that I take with her, henceforth
Must be as secret as the eyeless worm.
What light is that that flashes yonder up?
What faces do I see? What voices hear
Innumerable? Reach me thine hand, dark spirit,
And help me over the perilous flood
Upon whose brink I stand—

First Cit.
See, how his hand
Wanders the air, as if it sought another,
Stretched to him from above!

Calm.
The heavens are bowed in blackness at my gaze,
And then, again, the tinkling of the pastoral bells
Comes up—
Good-bye, good-bye to all, and lay me
By the swift river's bank, where first I dreamed
This dream. And let the Hope sit by my grave.
Umena knows it,—alas!

[He dies.
[Slinely, Darkledge, Waning, Dorcas, &c., approaching and gazing on.
Third Cit.
Life's lightning
From his marble limbs is gone.

First Cit.
And the sphered thunder of his speech
Is now forever still!

[Curtain falls.