University of Virginia Library

ACT I.

SCENE I

.—Evening. The tents of Aran. Noema and Irad in front of the chief tent.
NOEMA
Come, Irad, come, the hour for rest is here;
The sun is no more with us; see, the west,
Through the moist air, glows like thy cheeks bedewed
With the sweet sweat of pastime's unpaid toils,
And the first star peers o'er the mountain-top.
The very birds are sleeping: why not thou?
Thou must to rest.

IRAD
I am not tired, mother.
One little moment more, just one, I beg,
Then will I come. I should not sleep; indeed
I never was more wakeful. And then see,
I have not finished building up my tower,
Which wants its roof. One second more, just one.

NOEMA.
Well, just a second, Irad. . . . Strange! how strange!
Childhood should chafe 'gainst manhood's kindest friend,
And sleep, which comes to carelessness, should be
By carelessness pushed off! whilst care, rich care,
Would give its flocks and herds, ay all its store,
So it might drop its leaden plummet down,
For one brief night, into the depths of slumber.
Oh, may the eve ne'er come to thee, my child,
When thou shalt call on sleep, and find it deaf
Even as the ear of one thou pinest for,
And canst not move: deaf as that stony Fate
'Gainst whose closed doors our hearts still thump in vain!
Now, come, sweet boy, until to-morrow leave
Thy toys and sports, and pray at mother's knee
And she will smooth the pillows of thy crib,
And sing thine eyelids into drowsiness.

IRAD.
But father said that I might wait for him:
He will be coming soon.

NOEMA.
He will be late,—
Too late, to-night, for thee to bide his coming;
But he shall visit thy repose, and breathe
A father's blessing on thine innocent dreams.
Hearken, dear Irad, to thy mother's voice,
And do her bidding.

IRAD.
O yes, mother dear!
I was not fretful, disobedient,
But only thought you had not heard perhaps
What father said,—that I might wait for him.
Why should he be so late to-night? You know
That all our pretty lambs are big and strong,
Frisk, leap, and run, yes faster than can I,
And have to kneel to tup their mother's dugs,
Whilst we as yet are far from harvest-time,
And the young corn-fields wear a brighter green
E'en than the meadows ere the kingcups come.
It is the season he is home betimes;
What keeps him, mother?

NOEMA
(aside).
Oh, he must not know!
Nor must the dew of his young life be spilt
By shaking doubt! How shall I answer him?
What keeps thy father, didst thou ask? Why, boy,
A thousand things, as thou wilt know some day,
When life no longer splits in equal halves
Of bed and holiday: a world of thought,
For thee, and me, and distant progeny;
Of ever-shifting suits of homely care,
More frequent than the gorgeous liveries
Even of restless pomp. . . . Now, to thy prayer.

IRAD.
Yes, mother, straight. But I must show you first
My tower,—the tower which I myself have made
With my own hands. Look here!

[Irad holds up a miniature tower in fresh clay.
NOEMA.
Why, what is this?
Why hast thou made so trivial a gaud,
When thou hast scores of playthings, fairer far?

IRAD.
It is for use, not beauty, mother. This,
This is the tower that is to scale the skies,
And bring us riches without stint or toil.

NOEMA.
Oh, he hath told thee, then! Is't possible
He from thy budding spirit should have torn
The tender hull, making an entrance there
For cankering thought and blight rebellious!
With unpaternal hands, man's poison poured
Into the sweet pure wine of Infancy,
And dropped infection in the very veins
He should have saved from all contagion!
Oh! impious!

[She lets the tower fall, which breaks into fragments.
IRAD.
O mother! see! you have destroyed my tower.

NOEMA.
Yes! as the high God will that Tower destroy
With which they think to pierce the firmament
And wrench the enclosed lightnings from his grasp!
Oh, it is madness! Men are mad sometimes,
And from the heights of strength they topple o'er
Into insanity! No more of it!
Thy father did not mean to tell thee, child,
And he has changed his purpose since the morn:
Be sure of that. . . . And, Irad, ne'er again
Defile thy little hands with such gross work,
That were but given thee to be clasped in prayer.
Now kneel, and clasp them, and repeat with awe
The words I taught thee ere thy lips had ceased
To do their double duty at my breast,
Of feeding thee with life and me with joy.
Begin.

IRAD
(kneels at her feet and prays aloud).

NOEMA
(kissing Irad tenderly).
Good child! 'twas sweetly said. O Irad! ne'er
Be these petitions from thy lips divorced,
So thou dost love me.

IRAD.
Never shall they, mother!

NOEMA.
Then come, and I will lay thee in thy nest;
And the still Night shall be thy canopy,
Like a broad branch which hangs, but never moves,
Over some absent song-bird's unfledged brood.

[Mother and Child go into the tent. The last streaks of sunset disappear, and an intense twilight follows, which infuses into the air and sky a deeper radiance. noema returns alone, and gazes out with an air of melancholy.

SCENE II.

NOEMA.
Oh, how intensely beautiful! The earth
Hath lost its look of gross reality,
And, like the air, waxeth impalpable.
The foliaged trees seem shapes of atmosphere,
And the tall trunks themselves mere bars of light.
The hill-tops and the firmament have blent
In the dread hush of close communion.
There is no sound, save the Euphrates flowing,
Which throws the silence into deeper shade.
O'erhead, the sky wears such transparency,
It seems a wonder that I see not through;
Save that I chance were blinded if I saw
What lies the other side. . . . How beautiful!
It is the hour when, in my inmost being,
I feel a something alien to myself,
Which sets me 'gainst myself rebellious:
A consciousness of kindred unallowed
With the deep gloaming, with the distant sky,
And advent of the silent-speaking stars:
A leaven of unrest, a dumb desire,
A wistfulness of longing that I might
Slough off this torpid chrysalis of flesh,
And nothing be but wings and gossamer
Blown through the empty spaces of the air!
O words! poor words! how behind thought ye lag!
Like crippled forms that, still importunate,
With hurrying gait and plaintive breath pursue,
But cannot catch us up! . . . In such a strait,
Silence and sighs alone are eloquent. [She sits silent and rapt in contemplation. At length she speaks again.

How strangely bright gloweth the star of eve!
Surely it never burned so bright since first
God's summons called it from the starless void.
How near it seems! and every moment nearer!
Yet no! 'tis not the star, but from its breast
A fiery scintillation broken off,
Which darts adown the unresisting air,
It cleaves and leaves behind. Withal, 'tis not
A shooting star; for, lo! it is not quenched,
Nor swallowed up, but still, as it descends,
Grows larger, larger, yet less luminous.
No, 'tis no star; it wears half mortal mien.
It is a wingëd Spirit that doth come,
Commissioned with celestial messages,
Or a belated denizen of air
Strayed far beyond the heavenly boundaries.
How motionless it poises, as in doubt
If to touch earth or sail away again.
Lo! it descends, and on the shell alights
Of this gross sphere. How like, yet how unlike,
One in whose garb youth and first manhood meet,
When beauty shares with strength dominion,
And knowledge gains the ear of innocence!
Yet ne'er was mortal brow like that, which wears
No touch of sadness and no trace of toil;
And though his limbs have form, I can no more
Betwixt them and the air discriminate,
Than in this hour betwixt the day and night.
He doth not yet perceive me, though his feet,
Silent, and slow, and musically move
More closely towards me. . . . Yes, it is a Spirit;
For he is naked, yet he knows no shame,
And I no fear. I wonder will he speak to me?
It may be I am too corporeal
For spiritual sight.

[The Spirit perceives Noema and advances towards her.
AFRAEL.
What star is this?

NOEMA.
This is no star, O dread refulgent Spirit!
This is the Earth thou seëst.

AFRAEL.
This, the Earth!
Then in the thought of Spirits how 'tis wronged!
I fancied it was foul, misshapen, rude,
And of a temper most ungenial;
Worse and most worthless of the worlds, and left
To be the butt of spiteful elements.
But it is fair as any single orb
I yet have scanned in my discursive flights
Among the planetary spheres that roll
Glibly upon the unsubstantial air.

NOEMA.
Yes, it is fair sometimes, and did this eve
Assume a bright complexion, even as though
Expecting a superior visitant.
I would my lord were nigh to bid you cheer.
To such a lofty guest even men would plead
Their imperfection; but a woman's state
Too lowly is to welcome thee, or crave
Excuse for such a greeting.

AFRAEL.
Thou art meek,
Yet doest the Earth's honours graciously;
Nor could I wish for any to amend
Thy salutation. But wherein do men,
Of whom thou speakest, differ from such as thou?

NOEMA.
They are our larger, stronger selves, to whom
We reverence owe and dumb obedience;
The delegates of God, who formed us both,
But did depute the former to control
The vain unstable motions of the weak;
And our volitions with their will they curb,
As Heaven curbs Earth.

AFRAEL.
Men must be godlike, then?

NOEMA.
'Tis said they are. I scarce have found them so.
But they are stout of limb and stern of heart,
Intrepid, stalwart, nigh invincible,
Cope with all odds, laugh in the tempest's face,
And beard obstruction, whilst we crouch at home,
Dropping our feeble tears upon the ground.
They work for us, and we belong to them,
As scents and blossoms to the strenuous breeze,
Which wafts them where it wills, nor reason gives
Save power to do it.

AFRAEL.
I would I were a man!

NOEMA.
What! Thou!—a Spirit!—be a man, and pay
The forfeit of thine immortality!
Oh! what a miser's bargain wouldst thou make,
Didst thou secrete the treasure of thy life,
Which now returns thee endless happiness,
In the dark cavern of a human heart,
To have it purloined by the greed of death!
We do not live for ever as thou dost.

AFRAEL.
Not live for ever! What, then, do ye do?

NOEMA.
We die, women and men.

AFRAEL.
What is to die?

NOEMA.
It is to bid adieu to joy and pain,
And never meet them more: to sleep with Night,
Nor to awake from her cold-clutching arms;
Never to see the sun again, nor greet
The rising moon with rapture, and the stars
With eyes o'erbrimming with delicious tears:
For the quick-flowing senses to become
A stagnant pool, fetid and nauseous,
Whence is no issue, and the very hands
Which stream of their own being called it once,
Fill up with earth, lest it should poison them,
And bring them level with itself. That's death!

AFRAEL.
But thou, thou wilt not die!

NOEMA.
O yes, I shall.
And every generation yet unborn
Will at its birth be dedicate to death,
And seal a compact with oblivion.

AFRAEL.
What will become, then, of those cheeks that seem
To wear an immortality of bloom,
Those golden tresses steeped in glorious noon,
And eyes for which I travel vainly back
Through the scoured Spheres to find comparison:
That brow seraphic, those cherubic lips,
That gently-penetrating voice which sounds
Like the last ripple of the nightingale
Just ere the silence groweth smooth again?

NOEMA.
The worms will have my cheeks, the dust my lips,
And in the socket of mine eyes the snail
Itself ensconce, and, though curled snugly there,
Deem it a sorry penthouse. For my voice,
'Twill, like the nightingale's, break off, but ne'er,
Like to the nightingale's, its note resume,
But perish on the unsympathising air.

AFRAEL.
Then all thy sort will in the end die out,
And this fair Earth be left untenanted.

NOEMA.
Not so. Our race doth still renew itself
By means unknown to Spirits. Man's delight
Is to embrace these carnal substances,
Thou dost too much extol; whilst woman's is
The passionate joy of pain which ends in joy
From which all pain hath passed: to bear him sons,
Who shall repeat the vigour of their sire,
And daughters who shall wax to comeliness
And warm with pride his chill declining years,
Then when their mother comely is no more.
And this is compensation e'en for death,—
To feel the little lips tight on your breast,
To have the little arms around your throat,
And hear the little voice lisping your name
In efforts made by love articulate.
This is pure bliss!

AFRAEL.
And thou hast known it?

NOEMA.
Yes.

AFRAEL.
Hast sons and daughters then?

NOEMA.
I have a son,
Just one: a little fellow, fast asleep,
Whom I had kissed and lullabied to rest,
Just ere thou camest. Shall I show him thee?

AFRAEL.
So, an thou wilt. He must be fair as Heaven,
If he resembles thee.

[Noema goes into the tent and brings out Irad, in her arms, asleep.
NOEMA.
This is my boy.
Is he not beautiful?

AFRAEL
(with a look of disappointment).
A pretty thing.
But he hath swarthy cheeks and jet-black curls,
And is not like to thee in aught.

NOEMA.
It is
His sire that mostly lives in him.

AFRAEL.
But why
Are his lids closed, and he so motionless?
This is not death?

NOEMA.
My darling dead! Forefend
That such a stroke befall! that I should lose
My dearest sweet and sole companion,
Who is to me what dew is to the flowers,
Themselves distil, and are fed back by it.
This is the daily mimicry of death,
Without its closing action. This is sleep,
Wherein our senses grow centripetal,
And gather round the kernel of the heart,
Which on the morrow gives them back again,
Dispensing life, motion, and energy.
I wish that you could see him at his play.

[She carries Irad back into the tent and returns without him.
AFRAEL.
May I ask more? Spirits are curious:
To feel and know is all our appetite.
And I would learn if men and women have
The power to fashion creatures like themselves,
And multiply their image, as they will.

NOEMA.
They have that power.

AFRAEL.
Why then indeed ye are
Liker to God than any I have heard of.

NOEMA.
Oh, say not so, for that sounds blasphemy.
We have the dark dread power to conjure life,
But not to keep alive; and mortal fates
Are no more godlike than the leaves that fall,
When fresh leaves come from the same origin.

AFRAEL.
There's something stranger here than thou conceiv'st,
Though I no more unriddle it than thou.
But if the dimpled cherub whom I saw
With folded wings but now within thine arms,
Be born of thee, why art not like the leaves
Whom new leaves threaten,—sapless, shrunk, and sere?
Thou hast a something Spirits do not have,
Who know nor fruit nor blight and ever keep
The blossom of existence, first they wear;
But, though unlike to these, and as to me
It seems, superior far, thou still art young,
And own'st the dewy radiance of the morn.

NOEMA.
I am nor young nor old, mortals would say:
A mother mid-way betwixt youth and age,
Like to the moon, when yet but half eclipsed.

AFRAEL.
It needs must be they see with mortal eyes,
For, to my seeing, youth and age have met,
By some divine attraction, in thy cheeks,
And made a rare complexion. All excess,
As all defect, is banished from thy brow,
And thou art perfect in thy motherhood.
Oh, I could stay and praise thee through the night,
If skies were not importunate, nor I
Must needs,—as loath I never felt before,—
Take all unwillingly my heavenward way.

NOEMA.
Hast thou a lodge in Heaven, and yet canst want
To be a tenant for one instant here,
Where there breathes nought but want unsatisfied,
And bliss that bursts like bubbles in the blowing?
Can that strange malady of mortal blood,
Which still unweds us from ourselves, and woos
That which with self will ne'er amalgamate,
Infect the veins of Spirits? Thy abode
Is in the Heaven of Heavens. What's Earth to thee?

AFRAEL.
The only Heaven that I yet have seen!
Thou misconceiv'st. I am not of the blest,
If such there be,—and if there be, no more
Envy I them,—who see the face of God.
The stars which are fast tingling into sight,
And myriads which thou canst not scan, are all
The native spot of Spirits, and I dwell
In one of these, whither I now return.
But on! if there be kindliness on Earth,
It must within thy bosom have found space;
And art thou kindly, thou wilt bid my feet
Again be lost where thou mayst still be found.
Say, will my wings be welcome?

NOEMA.
Nought so much.
But see! on yon horizon I behold
My lord approaching. Wilt not wait for him?

AFRAEL.
No, not this eve.

NOEMA.
Forgive me if I err,
Through human appetite; and Spirits perchance
Live not as we. But I have fruit, and wine,
Bread, and fresh herbs, if thou wilt eat of them.

AFRAEL.
What doth sustain such loveliness as thine,
Could for no Spirit be unmeet. Withal
We live upon the Universe we see,
And drink its all-sufficing elements.
The glory of the heavens when they open,
Slowly before the up-coming of the sun,
Thy warmth of mid-day skies, the moist decline
Of drooping day, the nightly silences,
And music of the many-cadenced rain,
Colour, and light, and shapes fantastical,
Of plain, and hill, and cloudy pinnacle,
And ever-shifting subtleties of air,
All that we see and feel of fair and far,
Is to us sustenance, as I this eve
Have on thy beauty made a rare repast;
Which other Spirits will nourish, when to-night
We sit amid the watchfires of the skies,
And tell each other tales of all the worlds.
And I shall tell of thy supremacy.
Farewell! thou unmatched mortal!

[He raises and waves his wings over Noema, and soars into the air singing.
NOEMA.
How sweetly doth he sing, still as he soars,
As though his wings were buoyed by melody,
And music were the wind that wafts him on!
Likely he singeth yet, though now, alas!
The heavenly distance to my clouded sense
Denies the strain, and I can but descry,
Dimly, the outline of celestial limbs,
Cleaving the twilight on the sails of song.
Alack! he dwindles, glimmering, into space,
And lo! goes out; and now, for all I cling
With straining eyes into that point of air
Where last he glowed, then vanished, I behold
Only the skyey vista tenantless.
O that I knew in what bright star he dwells,
That I might gaze towards him with straight eyes,
And watch at least the road whereby he went!
I never thought to ask him; for my lips,
As he discoursed, deferring to my ears,
Which drunk his honeyed questioning, forgot
To ply their curious office. So I gaze
Into the darkness, and surmise him not,
Nor whitherward he turned his final way.
Yet he hath left a something in the air,
A something all around me that was not
Here ere his coming, and which lingers still
Behind his blank departure: something soft,
And warm, and near, as unseen odours are,
When flowers that breathed them have been ta'en away.
I felt it when he o'er me waved his wings,
Just ere his lightsome feet forsook the Earth,
And, rising, took their native element:
I feel it still!

[Aran approaches. Noema rises, and advances dutifully towards him.

SCENE III.

NOEMA.
Welcome, my spouse and lord!

ARAN.
Is the meal drest?

NOEMA.
It is, and waits within.

ARAN.
Then let us to't at once. I crave for food,
And drink, and rest, and truce to weariness.

NOEMA.
My lord is spent with toil.

ARAN.
Who would not be?
But there be toils shall have an end, and mar
The stern Taskmaster's trade for whom we slave,
Son after sire, age after age, unpaid
Save with the pittance of life's menial wage.
No longer will we bear the daily dole
Of food and sleep, ending in famished death.
If there be God or Gods, Gods will we be,
Not slowly-dying drudges. Soon the Tower
Will mount in surging spirals to the sky,
And from its tall intrepid battlements
Will we storm Heaven, its tyranny dislodge,
Or with it strike a compact that shall yield
Its secrets to our knowledge, and secure
Wealth without sweat, and life unplagued by death.
Ay, we have done a good day's work this day,
Though none have paid us for it.

NOEMA.
Oh, my lord!
Thy words wing shafts of terror to my heart.
Hear me a moment, even though I be
But a weak woman, and thy subject wife.
Assailing Heaven, thou dost but build for Hell,
And the foundations of your Tower will sink
Where Lucifer and all his rebels lie,
Further from hope than worst mortality.

ARAN.
Then let us sink, if sink in sooth we must,
But not till after exercise of strength
That shall torment His anger, and at least
Ruffle the surface of His proud neglect:
Not die, like camels, silent, 'neath the load
We to the journey's end submissive bore,
Because our hearts were steeped in sufferance.
'Tis something to be whelmed in endless Hell,
And nourish hate, not Hell itself can quench;
No, nor yet Heaven! But still to be a thing
To moil and die 'neath Heaven's indifference—
This is a doom weak women well may bear.
We were no longer men, did we endure it!

NOEMA.
And yet it is a doom which, Aran, thou,
And thine, and all mankind must bear. Dost think
That to suit mortal passion Heaven will make
Mortals immortal, even for woe and wrath?
Spirits have immortality of joy,
And demons immortality of pain.
But we, a lesser and a lower race,
An adumbration of the two and set
Betwixt the upper and the nether world,
In this frail compound even mixtures own
Of joy that passes and of pain that dies.
This is man's lot: nothing will alter it.

ARAN.
Nothing can leave it worse. So will we strive
To make it better. For we can but die,
Or still live baffled, as we are baffled now.
And what is it we ask? Pale dreamers may
Demand the eternal secrets: I, for one,
Claim food, and drink, and raiment, and the joys
Which come of fulness, ease, and certainty;
A life of even pleasure, edged with death,
When these can please no more. 'Tis all I seek.

NOEMA.
That were a sordid craving. Is't for these
Thou dost arraign the Lord Omnipotent,—
That, having made thee man, He did not make
Thee wholly beastlike? Oh, sir! pardon me
If I do fail in duty! But thine aims,
Thus carnally contained, revolt me more
Than if thou blasphemously shouldst aspire
To be nor beast nor man, but very God!

ARAN.
Ay, ay, I pardon thee: I pity rather.
These are the morbid phantasies which find
An empty chamber in thy woman's brain,
And therein scamper idly. . . . Carnal aims!
Be very God! Who builds a Tower, now?
Thou hast the same disease as we in sooth,
But, us unlike, know'st not its name nor cure.
Fine words are women's drapery for facts.
We call it misery; ye call it woe.
We curse our wrongs and pain, whilst ye drop tears,
Bootless as dew, over the canker, grief.

NOEMA.
Nay, call not grief a canker! Canker kills,
But grief doth make us cruelly alive,
And our most torpid pulses sensitive;
Doubles the day by banishing the night,
And chokes us with each mouthful; whilst Time sits,
Droning his weary minutes in our ears,
Till every second seemeth infinite,
Ay, longer than whole centuries of joy.
If grief would murder, 'twere no longer grief;
But he prefers to torture, and to keep
His victim still alive, and quivering;
And, with him paragoned, why canker is
An angel of compassion! Yet against grief
What boots it to rebel? It is the shadow
Which still accompanies our sun of joy;
And when the shadow blots out all the shine,
I fall not unto railing, but, forlorn,
I steep my soul in silence, and I pray.

ARAN.
Pray! I am weary of the word. Why pray,
When ne'er an answer cometh to our prayers?
Have we not prayed, we, and our sires, and, back,
Their sires, for lives on miserable lives,
Burning the flesh of goats, the fat of kine,
Ay, sacrificing yeanlings when their dams
Were smit with barrenness; yielding our last
In the vain hope still to propitiate
The Power that took our first? I am sick of prayer!
When did prayer keep the murrain from our herds,
Or once avert the vultures? Have our flocks
More teeming wombs, thicker or softer fleece?
Or doth the sprouting soil no longer crack
For lack of moisture, stubbornly denied,
That in untimely torrents it may swoop
On the slow-ripening grain, and beat it flat?
These are the fruits of prayer! We pray, whilst He
Hideth aloft in churlish majesty,
Rolling His wanton thunder o'er our heads,
And splitting with His lightning, flashed for sport,
The trunk that gave us shelter. No! the hour
For prayer is past; the hour for deeds is here,
Whose stroke shall render prayer superfluous!

NOEMA.
Alas! thou dost not heed me. But one boon,
One last, one only boon, I yet would urge.
Oh! leave at least to piety and me
The tender, dark-eyed darling of my womb.
Leave me my Irad! Him thou canst not need,
Nor the promote thy direful strategy.
He is so young, so helpless, and so dear.
How couldst thou bare to ears thus innocent
That bold immodest purpose? Think, sir, think,
Though 'twas the seed of thy rebellious loins,
'Twas my long-suffering womb that fostered him;
Sheltered his yet sheathed senses from all hurt,
And fed him with the rain of my life's blood.
Who was it communed with him, while as yet
His life was dim and shapeless as a dream?
Who opened to the light his pretty cheeks,
And kissed his eyelids into consciousness?
Taught him thy name? moulded his little lips
Into a filial welcome? Who but I?
And when enlarging thought could apprehend
The august sense of father, I it was
Who did project thine image into Heaven,
And told him of another Father there.
Oh! how wouldst thou be patient if one came
'Twixt thee and him, and spurred him to rebel
Against thy sceptre and authority?
Nay, make him not a rebel,—for my sake,
If not for thine! I bore, I suckled him,
Tended and shaped. Oh, he is very me!
I have lain nights awake to give him sleep;
And better hadst thou wrenched him from my breast,
And ta'en the nipple with it, than that now
Thou shouldst him tear from Heaven and my poor heart!

ARAN.
Well, be it as thou wilt. He is a child,
And thou a woman: ye are fairly yoked.
And both will reap the harvest of our act,
Who would not sow the seed. Now, to our meal.

NOEMA.
Hadst thou come timelier to-night, we might
Have entertained an unaccustomed guest.
A Spirit from I know not where, but clad
In garb of airy beauty, settled here,
Just after sunset.

ARAN.
Spake he of the Tower?

NOEMA.
No syllable. But he discoursed so sweetly
Of Earth, and stars, and all that moves between,—
I would that thou hadst heard him.

ARAN.
Not so I:
I have no stomach for such windy food.
I feared perchance he hither came to balk,
Celestial marplot, our terrestrial plans,
Sent by the Arch-designer of our doom.
But if he only fooled thee with fresh dreams,
Foibles, and follies of thy female breast,
It touches me but little; and I yield
Monopoly of such a guest to thee,
Who art a fitting hostess. Food, now, food!

[Aran ]goes in. Noema lingers awhile without.
NOEMA.
(sol.)
Because I am a woman! Is it then
So small a thing? Just large enough for man
To see and step aside from, lest he crush!
Yet what can crush worse than indifference,
Or that misplaced compassion which denies
All common kinship? Yon superior Spirit
Disowned me not, but wished that he were man,
Because I am a woman. That was a note
Showed him attuned to heavenly harmony.
Oh! with what nectared yet decorous words
Did he extol me,—almost as though he loved!
Yet 'twas not love which made that Spirit deem
My plain defects perfection, but, perchance,
That spiritual insight which perceives
Imperfect nought, leaving to lower man
To find things faulty through his faultiness.
This very Earth which we so oft reproach,
He lauded likewise, though his tenderest tones,
I own, were kept for me. Yet, yet, 'tis sure
It was not love. 'Twere as impossible
Spirit should be enamoured of the flesh,
As that forked bolts should flash from stormful waves,
Or the fresh clouds pelt briny torrents down.
And it may be that Spirits are seduced
By the false tricks of specious novelty,
Like creatures of a weaker source and end,
And in the glamour of some newer world,
He will forget me, and will come no more.
That were a loss indeed to leave life blank,
And make to-morrow dead as yesterday.
Oh! he will come. He said he would; and I
Bade not adieu, but welcome, when he went.
To want a Spirit, surely were not sin!
Can it be wrong to love—wings and a voice?
And were I with him now, what could befall,
Or fare between us there, to derogate
From carnal homage still exacted here,
And given, if all unwillingly? Ay, there it is!
True love makes false love loathing, and one hour
Of spiritual intercourse bequeathes
A life of shrinking from terrestrial lips.
And I must sleep in Aran's arms to-night!
Oh, horrible!

[She goes in.