P S . ; - ^ ■ ; i ■ i < 10 'v^McOMlr. •»«*«*IN« Mi^ijt*)*! [X. m O '»'! »—•"•■! 14 AftitMi ifSttH V':uMd'** « iM>i>«>»rt i^AMAri M m»l Class COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. ERIS BOOKS BY Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff THE SONG OF YOUTH WOVEN OF DREAMS ATYS ALCESTIS ERIS From the Original Pastel by Paul Hellen Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff HI ERIS DRAMATIC ALLEGORY BY "Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1914 COPYRIGHT, I914. BY MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY All Rt£hts Reserved K r r. •( •1 *> • ■ Jill -7 1914 ©CI.A376593 a TO HENRI BERGSON *' La vie est un combat entre le spectre du passe et I'elan vers Tavenir." — Bergson, " The mind Is Its own place and In Itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." — Milton, *' Make not thy thoughts thy prison." — Shakespeare. *' Where but to think Is to be full of sorrow." — Keats. CHARACTERS: Man Thought, A Demon The Past, A Spirit The Future, A Spirit Eris: A Dramatic Allegory Scene: A Wide Plain Man AM alone, yet nevermore alone ! For In the aching abyss of the air Tremble a thousand phantasms of the brain, A conjured mimicry of things unseen, A seething maelstrom of distorted shapes That smirk and gibe with tongues of bitter hate, Strange eyeless gnomes and painted fairies bright That wander 'mid the shadows; and black bats Having the forms of men. ... By night, by day I walk amidst this maddening multitude, I hearken to the chatter of strange voices, I watch strange antic loves that go unnamed On earth; and oft I feel the ghostly touch Of frenzied kisses that the world would scorn, — (The far forgotten world of things unreal!) I laugh with apish revels, harlot joys, ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY I take unto my bosom wandering ghouls That have lain dead and cankerous many years, And I caress weird dreams that mock my lips. . . At midnight when the moon is hanging low White lads come forth and bare their ivory limbs Romping like snow-deer 'neath the laurel boughs Singing wild wanton songs of vanished hours When Charmides was playing on his lute. . . . At dawnrise elfin creatures of the sky, — Pale dr}^ads from the star-paths, call to me, Weaving bright dewy garlands for my hair. And from far myrtle islands of my fancy They waft the scent of amaranth and musk. Winding my body with fantastic flowers White as the bosom of a Paphian dove I Sometimes the wind on fair Daedalian wings Brings me a vision on the married air. And as of old I tremble 'neath the touch Of damask lips and dark dishevelled tress,- And from the turgid heaven music pours, Torrential tunes that float upon the breeze, While in my lonely heart a lost grief swells Immortal as the black-browed Niobe, And from some perfumed Cytherean isle Love calls me with his piteous pale eyes. 2 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY I am encompassed by a wilderness, A desert of illimitable dream, And my enfettered spirit sadly strays Within the rampart of tormenting thought. . . . [Enter Thought, Thought Could you then live without me? Man Ah, too well, Cruel tyrant, demon of my souFs unrest! Thought I am the spirit's agent, thus decreed To dwell imprisoned in the temporal shell, I am the force of an empyrean realm Consecrated to confines terrestrial. Man How admirably has Nemesis devised This alien sphere of earth to tenant you Unto the last commiserating hour When mortal shall be freed of your dominion! 3 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Am I your slave condemned to endless weal? O, Sisyphean shade, for at your will I twinge with pain, or my poor soul commits A thousand follies In the name of joy, — While you observe me silently, O fiend, Your visage kindled by a Titan glee! Thought I am the Universe ! I am a part Of the great cosmic heart that gave me birth, 'Midst the Innumerable harmonies Wrought by the birth-pangs of my mother, Chaos, The choral of a million sphered stars Quivered the sky, and from the cavernous springs The rainbow-skirted daylight trembled forth Illumining the muffled dark with light. And all the amber-fretted seas and heavens. The almond vales and wild enmarbied cliffs. The dusky groves and anthemed surfy shores From east to west encircling the wide globe Shone with the glory of my natal hour! Man You deem yourself a deity forsooth? 4 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Thought Yea, I can swell Aeolian lyres with song, And vesture day with an Incarnate joy. My touch can turn the darkness into dawn Or waken Amphlon lutes to minstrelsy; The burgeoning fields shout forth a wondrous bloom, The sky peals thunder at my giant tread. Man Accursed shadow that withholds the sun! Accursed torture-chamber of the soul! You are the grave of the unburied dead. . . . Thought I hold the secrets of the Infinite, The alchemy of human suffering, And the Impalpable beauty of the stars. Man Source of the miseries of unhappy man! The sepulchre of hope. Thought Nay, the throne of joy! ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man (aside^ supplicating) Ah, to have one brief hour of soothing ease Within a leafy glade where I could rest Unmindful of this monstrous weariness, Unmindful of this stress man calls the brain, Unmindful of the presence of this demon. . . . Only a little space to find sweet peace Crowned by a vaporous serenity Amid soft voices of the cooing birds, My brow soothed by the mossy forest's cheek, My weary soul bathed in oblivion ! Thought I am the brother of oblivion . . . Wrought of the Void, I hold the spell of sleep. Man I cry to my lost Love, deliver me ! And when I hear his wide wings In the sky I dream that peace emerges with the dawn, I dream that Love will yield nepenthine calm, And like a child I cower 'neath his touch When lo ! I find thought hidden In Love's breast, The canker in the petal of the rose! 6 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Thought Love Is my child, my child of aureate dew Whom the mosses mothered and Apollo kissed, His coronal Is hawthorn and he culls The beauty of the constellated dome. Man I brave the fresh storm In Its furious blast, 'Naked I leap from bough to rivulet Hastening through fields of marigold when dusk Is luminous with white tranquillity; I follow quiet birds unto their nests, I hear the sylvan voices of the night When plumed stars are quivering In the west; Darkling, I roam beside the glaucous sea Watching pled day unwind her auburn hair; I drink the rainbow-foam of pebbled seas, I bathe in Hesperus^ blazing glow, and romp With careless children seeking butterflies Blown like pink rose-buds 'gainst the turquoise sky; I wade In amber pools that woo the clouds And hear the nymphs of Amphitrite sing; I gather shells and kiss their tinted lips Seeking to drain the delved minstrelsy, I hunt for honey with the humming-bird ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY In scarlet-tasselled vines that creep the rocks; I climb the mountain's summ^it where the snow Purples the glacial crests like gemmed crowns. I watch the eagle in his splendid flight Envious of his iniinite disdain, Or follow some fallen star that smites the dark; And then I wander by dim sleeping lakes All scent and lily-blossom where the swans Prune their white wings in stately idleness And bright bees murmur on their amorous quest Beneath the heavy shadows of the trees. Weary, I seek the battled ways of men Mingling within the noise of multitudes Where sin and sorrow stalk uncomforted. I see the hea\^'-hearted human throng, I listen to their chatter of despair Goaded, as they, by idle dreams of gold, And pleasure that is false and pitiful . . . Harassed, I lind again the vernal lanes Far from the gilded city's dreary din, And when the dawn has s^^-ung the vaulted sky And through the glow of Lucifer, wheeled clouds Flutter like azure halcyons, and the w^oods Are tinkling with the Naiads' vibrant songs I seek the desolate grave-yards of the dead 8 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Where grateful spirits slumber 'neath the sod, Unthinking In their calm Incom.parable ; I linger hoping to partake of peace, Feeling the silence greet me like a kiss, Where scent and blossom marry the sweet air And the globed dew Is like a rainbow wand Imparting some celestial harmony. Alas, I am denied the sleeper's peace, In every perfumed lair, in glade or grove. In flower-inwoven field or tawny mount I cannot free myself from you, O Thought — The viper lurking in the Auroral air! Thought Man wItTiout me Is but a puling clod. Alan Mortal divest of you remains sublime Clad in the primal beauty of the race, The savage splendour of the orient past. The god endowed with unalloyed sublime ! Thought There is no god but thought. The human mind Contains the spark of arch-divinity. 9 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY. Man Knowledge is suffering; the cerebral realm Maddened with ceaseless image knows no peace Ah, only to the child the world is sweet When on the threshold of experience, Unmindful of the misery of life, Bathed in the glow of iridescent hope, Still purified in instinct and desire, Unclouded by the sullen mist of thought. Thought You cannot vanquish me while life endures. Man Even the heart's dream no longer is a dream When carrion doubt destroys its comeliness. Thought Then would you be released as madmen are. Cleft from the gyves of reason and cast out Adrift upon a sea of aimless shadow? Man Yea! sent adrift upon some azure wave To weave the gauzy fabric of my dream 10 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY From rainbows or from painted butterflies, Or reach down In the myriad sea and find Some spangled fish to be my paramour I To swoon upon the silvery breath of dawn Caressed by roseate sunbeams from the sky My body wound In some white wreath of foam, Or pluck a radiant star-beam down to earth And tread its shimmering aisles in ecstasy! Thought You envy those that are bereft of me? Man They who think not have every hope of joy Environed by dull air and empty ease ! Thought I bring you beauty. I am beauty's womb, The source of all inebriating vision, I wave Apollo's wand that woos the soul With vistas of illimitable loveliness. Bright towers of chrysoprase and coral beds In fair Uranian realms. Would you renounce The hope of future things, and the sweet past? II ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man I am so weary of dead livid hours, Dead joys that mock me with their phantom guile, Dead kisses like fresh wounds upon my lips, Dead passions in their haunting melancholy. I would be rid of every moment past. Of every corpse and carrion memory, ^Sublime, unsuffering, without human taint Untrammelled by despair, hate, envy, fear. By fallacy, and cant, and caste and custom, As when in some anterior age I slept A babe and suckled in the kissing sun ! [The Past, a fantastic fairy, half witch, flits back and forth.^ Man Look, yonder flits your progeny ! It roams Like some false painted spectre o'er a tomb; Ah, long ago I buried it with tears. But lo, your venom power waked the dead! See how the sombre eyes cajole my gaze. And the stark frame in hideous mimicry Shudders its oldtime lure ! The cerecloth falls And once again I see the spectral shape Of vanished love, dust-shrouded yet still fair I Upon my maddened lips lost kisses rain 12 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY And on my bosom swoons a girlish form, Fragrant with summer spice and wooing breath And locks dark clustered like an ebon cloud. Her mouth is like the breath of some fresh grave, Salt with the cankered mould of brackish earth . , (Love that is death, and death that is but love!) Thought To suffer is the destiny of man. As long as I live, so the past must live I Ma n Is there no spot on earth where I am free Of your cruel vigilance? Thought Perchance in sleep Death's nursling child. Man Nay, slumber does not ease, For dark is shot with dreams of other lives, And haunted with wild images terrible, The stalking spirits of the world of Void, The ghoulish phantoms of my nether brain! 13 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Thought Only in Death is there consummate peace. Man Death holds aloof from me like some dread foe. [^The Future, a tinselled and bizarre fairy, flits hack and forth with pleading seductive smiles.'] Behold! another malison, the Future! Life is a futile war between the Past And the longed-for tomorrow. There is no peace Nor no today. The present is a dream. Thought Robbed of my domination man would own Only the glittering aura of an hour! Man [Exit. Ephemeral present, exquisite and fleet! The flash of a diaphanous butterfly. The aroma of some white-crowned hyacinth, The soft lips of a lover sealing mine, The myriad-tinted rainbow In its flight, — The sweet-sucked honey from a blooming flower, 14 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY The dying beauty of a summer day, The last bird's note at nightfall through the dusk, The wavy glimmer of a field of wheat, The yellow feather of a new-blown moon ! The Past Would you renounce my glory evermore? {Sings. Would you forsake The joy I bring, No more partake Of phlltred spring? Man Go from me! I disdain your mock delight. Obsessed by demons of an eerie world My days and nights are shaken by your spell. The Past O, once I was a maiden beautiful With starry locks, a shy impassioned girl You took to be your bride long years ago. When you were young and amorous and glad. You loved each little curl that hung my brow 15 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY And your fond hands knew rapturously by rote Each hidden beauty-nook that once was mine, And our blithe footsteps strayed in fairy lanes Through blossoming springs in scented rose-wreathed vales. {Sings, I was beautiful, fair. With stars in my hair, A silvery girl You took for your bride In amorous pride. You loved each curl That clustered my face. And your sweet embrace Found every hid nook Of my beauty's grace. We loved: and we took Paths amid fair lands Through the April weather In the wind together. Our rose-wreathed hands And our nimble feet Rapturous, fleet. Man Can the dead speak? Are you a lonely wraith? (Oh, memory that will never know a grave!) i6 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY The Past I am she you loved. Look on me, — my lips ache To rest on yours. Yea, I am she you lost So perilously fair, for whom you gave All human things that you might touch my mouth. My kiss was heaven and doom, and our desire Once kindled the gray night with scarlet flame. \_Sings. I am she, I am she Whom you loved! I cry from Eternity, I call you to me. I am she Whom you loved, Perilously fair. With stars in my hair . . . Death ne'er could conspire To thwart love's desire; I am radiant yet, You could never forget In the shroud of the tomb Where the wild flowers bloom. Ma n I feel like one who sees the whirling world Smitten with sudden fire. Within my heart 17 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY The quickened spring leaps In torrential bloom As when my love lay panting in my arms Submissive like an ebon-tressed child. The Past Beneath the cypress shades in Italy, Fainting with kisses, long entwined we lay, The silver lake a mirror for our love. The little birds that twittered in the pools Chanting majestic chorals for our joy. The crystal air was like a marriage chime, The sky was shining with a thousand gems. You were so white and trembling on the grass ! [Sings. The radiant day In vanished May In the cypress shade Where entwined we lay. The pale lake made A mirror for your body cool; Nearby gold birds were bathing in a pool. The crystal air Was like a kiss, and fainting thus The calm skies envied us. You were so white and fair ! i8 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man I shall expire remembering; the dream Is but a fugitive breath upon the breeze. . . . Tell me, fair demon, are you woman's beauty Or the incarnate spirit of all pain? The Past I am Love; the fusion of two entitles, The blind goal of man's unenlightened ways, His pitfall and his beautiful sad hope. His solace and his Incommensurate doom, Twin-brother of white death, I waft the dawn And fair ambrosial fancies for his soul. I am the voice of music and of stars, I am the gate of Immortality, I am the one wild hour of perfectness! [Sings. I am Love, — the shining goal Of every human soul. The solace and the doom. The glory and the gloom, Death's fatal fair caress, I am the song of sun and stars, The portal that unbars A moment's perfectness! 19 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man Cease, cease ! what woman are you In disguise What fairness consummate, Incarnadine? Are you Pandora cast forth from the sky Curst with the magic evil of her wiles? Or are you radiant Helen come again To wreck a thousand hearths with passion's flame, Or are you Cleopatra's serpent kiss That felled a kingdom? Are you Phryne white Whose glorious nakedness was Hellas' pride? Are you Antigone who roamed the earth Crowned In a watery diadem of tears, Or yet Aspasia, wisdom's paramour, Or Llllth, the first sin-tainted mate of man, Or Phaedra whose wild ardour was despair; Are you Yseulte whose dream-enfiltered love Allured her to immltlglble doom. Or Balkis, Sheba's queen the sorceress Whose pompous armies stirred the sullen east? > Or are you Deborah, of Israel's power. Or winged Apollo's unrequited love Cassandra, whose fair lips rewarded Troy, Or are you she whom Matho died to win Salammbo, dusky maiden of the South? O, are you lovely Sappho, lyric-crowned, She whom Favonius envied of her song 20 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY When Lesbian vales were glimmering with girls And many voiced lyres of minstrelsy. Or are you Izeyl whom great Buddha sought Within the Himalayan-shadowed plains, Or yet Francesca, tawny tressed one Slain In the shameful rapture of her love, Or Mary the Immaculate bride of heaven, Or fair Zenobia, or Beatrice The fleshless dream of singing centuries! The Past I am all women; yet I am but one. [Sings, I am all women, The breath of an eternal May, I am she you loved And cast away! Man O, you are Proserpine whose kiss was doom ! You are the ghost that stalks the moon's white orb, Driving men mad with beauty terrible. I would smite love as some unholy thing ! The Past You cannot kill what once you loved. It crawls With the red worms within the sepulchre ! [Sings. 21 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY O Love's fair bloom Fades not within the tomb. As deathless as some re-Incarnate dove Is love ! Man An end there must be to my suffering! [ The spirit of the Future flits hack and forth.^ The Future I am the oracle of hope; my song Awakes new life upon the sodden earth, And when I spread my ralnbow-tlnted wings The frosted streams leap blithely and the birds Break Into sudden chanting: man's dull heart Thrills at my name : I am his mortal quest. [Sings. I am the hope of the sad. My song makes all the weary glad. When I spread my wings The snow-frosted springs Burst from the earth, Bright summer sings And beauty has birth, 22 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man's heart Is aflame At the sound of my name. Come to my breast, I am your quest ! Man In youth you were my horizon of joy, You lured me with your painted wings of fire, I worshipped you, and sought your Illusive lore As a lover dreams of the unknown caress. But you were cruel and nurtured me on guile . . . Go from me! You can grant me no new grace I have not had, grown weary of, and lost I The Future New love I promise to your lonely heart And halcyon dreams and fair felicitous hours, > Worship again with youth's credulity And I shall bless you with a soothing hope. I promise new love And the joy thereof. Dreams for your heart; O, quaff my nectar sweet, Come kneel beneath my feet And your woe will depart I 23 [Sings, ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man Your promises are but delusion's snare ! Future I am the vestal luminance of life, I tend the heart-sick with a brimming hope. [Sings. I am the lustral glow That lights the earth's sad face, Man is glad at my embrace, He must perish if I go ! Man You are the undawned dream that dies still-born, Begotten in the sterile womb of faith. Future I bid you laugh and live and love anew, I offer compensation for the past And when my song is heard upon the earth The world grows golden with renascent light. [Sings. Come unto me and smile, Forego the sorry past awhile; 24 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY And hear the sylvan meadow as It sings Awakened by the glimmer of my wings ! Man Taunt me no more with your tormenting wiles ! \^Exit Future. I cannot longer bear this martyrdom, This gloom bedlmming the fair face of earth, This demon In whose grasp I writhe and weep This pageant of despair, — this strumpet Thought! [Enter Thought, Thought What will you do to free yourself of me? Man I would Caduceus' opiate-rod were mine The serpent-twined amulet of ease! I shall away from this enhaunted spot. Quitting my natal clime for other lands. Seeking In some Invisible far realm A respite sweet, wandering where men are not, Within the perfumed valleys of the east . . . 25 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Perhaps some crystal morning I shall wake And find my spirit chastened of its curse, Crowned in renascent splendour like a flower May-freshened in some scintillating vale, And clarified by space like a bright comet Sundered of time and all locality. Thought Your quest Is futile; — but essay, begone- The trackless sands hold promise of deep peace. Man Farewell! farewell! yon wind shall be my guide And I shall soar dew-gemmed on the dawn Wreathed in the raiment of a snowy cloud Seeking some freedom from my soul's dark curse. 26 Scene II : A Larissan Vale (Greece) Man HAT spell pursues my soul that I should find No peace in passage through this em- battled world? I traversed seas, I hid beneath the earth, I gazed upon the faces of the stars And wandered In still vales of almond bloom; I climbed enmarbled cliffs to glimmering caves And watched the auburn day illume the sky, I scaled blue cragginess on misty mounts And waded In the muffled dark of clouds, I sought the tawny splendour of old fanes Hidden In lampless shadows, and I watched The dusk grow crimson on the architraves, I fed my weary eyes on ancient crypt And rose-ensanguined ivory and gem; I went by stealth across the Nubian sands To gaze upon the supine majesty Of Rameses within his earthen tomb! I strayed Thessalian meadows where the lark 27 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY. Wooed the pale lips of lonely Irises, And Hermes In his august splendour, smiled. I roamed with jaguars in the jungled night And slept on weedy marshes with my bow Where Marsyas' music murmured In the glade; I sought strange grottoes in a wooded cleft And bathed In murky streamlets cavernous Beneath the unsunned spaces of the earth; I viewed the tinted Kremlin of the North Crossing Siberia's wilderness of plain; I followed rapid rivers In their course Wading In brackish forests where the owl Hooted In dismal solitude: I scaled Bright crimson rills In flowering Tripoli; And knelt In awe before the Taj Mahal On shoals of seas sequestered In the east. I heard strange desert melodies and laughed With painted harlots In the candlelight, I saw weird Bedouin dances 'neath the moon And woman's nakedness became a curse. I stood by blazing craters, and the night Grew blood-red with majestic Etna's flame, I mused by sapphlrine bay, and watched the rose Spangling the hillside with Its lambent flame Within cerulean Islands In the sea. I heard the tongues of seers and savages 28 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Chanting their hymns of wisdom and of lust; I climbed the crumbling castles of the Rhine, Stepping from crag to crag on dizzy height Where birds made fairy anthems and the air Was shot with sunbeams from a heavenly bow. In Lombardy I followed blue canals And hunted golden willow-buds in May, I knelt beside the tomb of Juliet Mingling my tears with aeoned anguish past, I roamed where emperor and poet dreamed In Veroneslan sun . . . The watery vale Of Vaucluse held me spellbound with its lore, And ghostly Laura touched me by the hand. . . . In Venice I spread sail with Capulet And plied an oar across the green lagoons The soft air vibrant with the minstrels' song; I dreamed in Pisa's woodland and the gulf Of Lerici, where once again I heard The lyric echo of pure Shelley's voice. On Passtum's glory and on Dougga's mount I studied metope and fluted frieze Hearing the voice of Carthaginian kings Watching their phantom barks come up the bay. In Syracusan caves I roused the cries Of DIonysius' Greeks engulfed In rock, 29 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY And Czesar's shadow led me through old Rome. I followed Hadrian's footprints to El-Djem Where gazing on the prairie coliseum My soul stood rapt in beauty's silent awe. In Lesbian valleys, myrtle-grown and sweet I strayed to the old tunes of Mytilene Where white Gyrinna played her dolorous lyre; I saw again the fairness of young girls Full bosomed and defiant as they passed Sun-lit with amorous longing on their lips, And lads who walked with shuddering hips that touched, iXwin-lilies on a swaying stalk of dream! I paced Girgenti's ruins and a throng Of ancient bards held converse with my soul; I heard the pastoral chants of Theocritus, And Plato's wisdom echoed through the walls, While weeping for lost beauty, Phaon pale Wandered in shadowy silence on the hill. Haunted by visions old, at length I sought The desert's glory of infinitude Hoping to find in Allah's sea of sand Serenity at last, — beneath the skies 30 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Of orient sapphire, tended by soft winds, 'Tis said man is no longer slave of Thought But soars in spirit-peace like the wide sun That sprinkles all the heavens with its jewels. Breeze-borne and bodiless I yearned to be Absolved of every mortal human woe And pinnacled in the unpavilioned dome Wooed by ineffable, Elysian calm . . . Alas! alas! my quest has brought no peace, I have not found in all my wanderings An instant's freedom from the demon Thought, The ravenous monster, greedy of its prey. The deathless vampire sealed upon my soul. Reason is false ! give back the infinite vision When man was wooed by concerts of the stars ! Life is an empty search for perfectness, And instinct, once sublime, is steeped in shame! The Universe is a prism and each chant Of shower or grain of dust, or eager stream, Each dewdrop trembling on a flower's lip. Each sable-breasted banner of the night. Each moon, each planet in the limpid vault. Each inarticulate harbinger of Spring, Each chiming wind, illusive eye of dawn. Each aureole of sunlight in the blue, Each bud dilating and each tranced cloud 31 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Is but reflection of Infinitude, The singing voice of an eternal beauty. And, Thought, are you the attenuated spark That in a primal state of perfectness Once lit with magic sense the soul of man, The breath of ageless Immortality, The messenger of an anterior life, The conquering silence of eternity Corrupted by the pestilential earth Whose doom is degradation and despair? And are you given your terrestrial guise To haunt man with the sin of other lives. Your tyranny the penance of old wrong, — Each aeon but a conquest of the spirit Veering toward Its triumphal harmony. O Thought, must we be comrades to the end, Till some gigantic flood shall sweep us far Amid the demolished debris of mankind Annihilated by the Ultimate Void? Courage, my soul ... I must not yield my quest. Undaunted I shall seek unto the last . . . Onward, forever onward I shall fare From these still vales to some transcendent slope Beyond all mortal bourne . . . Perhaps aloft Bathed in primeval space, I shall be free 1 32 - Scene III : Mount Parnassus. Man iT last I find the summit of the world! Where sky and earth seem melting In caress, Where no birds sing, and the clear hyaline Hangs like a mirrored crystal o'er my head. Here nothing lives, no mortal foot has trod These unfrequented crags. The fields are gone And the last lyric of the nightingale I left late lingering on the violet air. There Is no sound. The mighty throne of Zeus Hides like a cloud-veiled mist within the heavens; I am so near divinity it seems That I could tread the pathway of the stars; Sweet martial music radiates the breeze And harp tunes never heard by man before, — Wild minstrelsy aerial, and notes Of zephyrine softness swimming from the blue. The summit of the world! ... the dazzling sphere Beyond the bourne of mortal visitation; 33 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY This august wilderness of solitude Is beauty's rapt empyrean unalloyed Where the pure spirit tastes of errant joy Poised on the sunny auras of the sky. How beautiful is all this azure scene! Blent blue and amber mist upon the w^ave Where rise the snow-peaks of the Sporades Wreathed in a swooning cloud of amethyst. Below the Delphian valleys lean away Where once Apollo slew the Pythian dragon ; Like pale wraiths trembling in an emerald haze The islands of the Archipelago, And far the outline of Mount Athos peers; Ossa and Pelion rise beneath the shade Of grim Olympus, towering in the mist, — And southward stretch the golden Phokian plains Abrim with lakes that glitter serpentine; Slumbering beyond the radiant Attic fields The snowy flanks of Helikon appear, And at the sea's edge, dim Arcadia, Kellene and fair Chalmos lie asleep Gilded by dying sun-glow. The white crown Of Amphossa beneath the Kronan hill, — And then, — the open sea's infinitude — The shimmer and the promise of the wave Inviolate and merciless as doom . . . 34 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY The pigmy world lies like a phantom vale, Ye crags of giant mountains, ye are mine ! Ye mists innumerable encompassing me, Ye avalanches crashing 'neath my feet, Ye glacial pits that shine like molten moons, Ye jewelled valleys shimmering far below, Ye sulphurous volcanoes, ye wild clouds That race like silver steeds across the sky. Ye rushing streams and blasted shrubs, ye rivers And plumed ranges of unending peaks. Ye forests of primeval oak and pine. Ye lakes, and whirling planets of the dome, Here I am free at last to own my soul ! \_Enter Thought. Thought You frolic like a madman In the wind. Your antic mirth has shaken all the sky. Man What wraith is this that greets my startled sight? . . . Thought No apparition but reality. 35 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man I faint ... I tremble . . . am I crazed at last, And is this ghost a mirage of the mind? Thought Come nearer. I am animate and warm. Man It was but a dream ... a joy ephemeral, A fairy vision hovering In my brain. . . . Thought You rave as one beset with visions wild, Your countenance Is strange and In your eyes Delirium Is brooding . . . Man O, kind Death, Befriend me in this ultimate hour of need! Thought You sought to rend the veil, — to transcend self, But it was futile, you are firmly bound 36 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY To me forever In the coil of pain The pain begotten of the woman's womb, The immemorial tragedy of birth. Man (aside) Envelope me within the cosmic heart Freed of my separate hideous entity, Blown with the winged dust from whence I came ! Thought You suffer as all men. A similar curse Scourges each separate individual soul, The burden of the bloom of deathless light. The ageless ache of human consciousness. . . . Alan I have been ever lonely among men, My passions were not theirs; my spirit trod An alien path of exile miserable, I was a stranger wandering on earth, I could not love as others love. I sought Some strange impossible loveliness unknown. The moon-kiss of the dryad in the stream. Some perfectness beyond all mortal bourne. 37 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Thought It was the spirit seeking liberty Rebellious In Its gyve of mortal flesh. Man No longer can I bear this stress of sorrow . . . Thought {approaching cliff's edge) Gaze down upon yon cliff where the colled mists Like writhing serpents hiss in white embrace, The earth Is hid, and the huge ebon crags Close in about us with their giant clasp. Man This deep abyss is seething with wild things, Strange birds and reptiles and enhungered beasts That claw each other with the will to live, Who knows but that they suffer even as I . . . Thought The cavern echoes with their mating cries! Man The symbol of immortal misery. 38 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Thought Yon sorry pit Is life. ... It calls to you To join the maelstrom of Its anguished throng, Its pestilential brothel of despair! Man And yet above the placid dome of heaven Dissolves In azure beams, while In the east The quiet air is jewelled like a crown, And the young wind Is like a soft caress. . , . Thought We are alone beneath the face of God, And silence beckons with Its shadowy wings. Man How beautiful, how calm Is yonder sky! Thought Come nearer to this rugged precipice. . . . Hark how a loose stone echoes like a sob In its mad riot down the mountain-side ! Man Afar I see the hawthorn boughs in bud Beckoning me like a shining bower of peace . . . 39 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Thought Do you hear the rushing of the torrent streams Crumbling the earth with crashing thunder-moan? Man (fainting) A dizziness ... a gentle music lulls My senses, and my spirit Is upborne On opalescent images of dream. Thought Even wilder melodies are in the air, The roar of fathomless charnels dim and dark. Man (wearily) master, let me rest my head awhile My weary aching brow upon your breast. ... A feebleness o'ercomes me . . . and a cloud Of blinding dust reels In my throbbing eyes. 1 see flower-checkered fields of asphodel And infinite mild meadowlands of sleep. Thought The Cyclopean thunder moans aloud. 40 ERIS: A DRAMATIC ALLEGORY Man {more wearily) I seem to see the giddy planets reel, If this is death it is too beautiful 1- Can it be the end — ? No! no! to live, to live! To conquer, not to die — [Grapples with Thought. Demon, let me live! Thought Nay, peace has come at last, O, vanquished mortal! How pitiful this unquenched will to live. Through me your spark of being came to birth. Through me it perishes like a blown leaf Tottering against the crimson of the sky. [^They struggle together. Man I sink ... I gasp . . . the dizzy earth recedes! [Plunges over cliff. Thought (assuming a sudden intenser magnitude rises out of the dust of Man.) At last to conquer after seons of strife — The reeling stars man's silent sepulchre. 41 ^;;in'Hi-nini^l!^;|i;H!:Hii!i;iOH '■™,S\ °^ CONGRESS 018 378 356 7 iililii