Epilogue

A game of checkers?

Well, I don’t mind.

I move the Will.

You’re playing it blind.

Then here’s the Soul.

I must preside at the stars’ convention.

Very well, my lord, but I beg to mentionI’ll give this game my direct attention.

A game indeed! But Truth is my quest.

Beaten, you walk away with a jest.I strike the table, I scatter the checkers.(A rattle of a falling table and checkers flying over a floor.)Aha! You armies and iron deckers,Races and states in a cataclysm—Now for a day of atheism!

Good evening, Loki!

The same to you!

Now for the breath of life. As I rememberYou have done right to mold your creatures first,And stand them up.

From gravitationI make the will.

Out of sensationComes his ill.Out of my mirrorSprings his error.Who was so cruelTo make him the slaveOf me the sorceress, you the knave,And you the plotter to catch his thought,Whatever he did, whatever he sought?With a nature dualOf will and mind,A thing that sees, and a thing that’s blind.Come! to our dance! Something hated himMade us over him, therefore fated him.

Passion, reason, custom, ruels,Creeds of the churches, lore of the schools,Taint in the blood and strength of soul.Flesh too weak for the will’s control;Poverty, riches, pride of birth,Wailing, laughter, over the earth.Here I have you caught again.Enter my web, ye sons of men.

Look in my mirror! Isn’t it real?What do you think now, what do you feel?Here is treasure of gold heaped up;Here is wine in the festal cup.Tendrils blossoming, turned to whips,Love with her breasts and scarlet lips.Breathe in their nostrils.

Falsehood’s breath,Out of nothingness into death.Out of the mold, out of the rocks,Wonder, mockery, paradox!Soaring spirit, groveling flesh,Bait the trap, and spread the mesh.Give him hunger, lure him with truth,Give him the iris hopes of Youth.Starve him, shame him, fling him down,Whirled in the vortex of the town.Break him, age him, till he curseThe idiot face of the universe.Over and over we mix the clay,—What was dust is alive to-day.

Thus is the hell-born tangle woundSwiftly, swiftly round and round.

(Waving his trumpet.)You live! Away!

How strange and new!I am I, and another, too.

I was a sun-dew’s leaf, but nowWhat is this longing?—

Earth belowI was a seedling magnet-tippedDrawn down earth—

And I was grippedElectrons in a granite stone,Now I think.

Oh, how alone!

My lips to thine. Through thee I findSomething alone by love divined!

Begone! No, wait. I have bethought me, friends;Let s give a play.

Oh, yes, a play! That’s very well, I think,But who will be the audience? I must throwIllusion over all.

And I must shiftThe scenery, and tangle up the plot.

Well, so you shall! Our audience shall comeFrom yonder graves.

(He blows his trumpet slightly louder than before. The scene changes.A stage arises among the graves. The curtain is down, concealing thecreatures just created, illuminated halfway up by spectral lights.BEELZEBUB stands before the curtain.)

(A terrific blast of the trumpet.)Who-o-o-o-o-o!

The Judgment day!

Be quiet, if you pleaseAt least until the stars fall and the moon.

Save us! Save us!

Ladies and gentlemen, your kind attentionTo my interpretation of the scene.I rise to give your fancy comprehension,And analyze the parts of the machine.My mood is such that I would not deceive you,Though still a liar and the father of it,From judgment’s frailty I would retrieve you,Though falsehood is my art and though I love it.Down in the habitations whence I rise,The roots of human sorrow boundless spread.Long have I watched them draw the strength that liesIn clay made richer by the rotting dead.Here is a blossom, here a twisted stalk,Here fruit that sourly withers ere its prime;And here a growth that sprawls across the walk,Food for the green worm, which it turns to slime.The ruddy apple with a core of corkSprings from a root which in a hollow dangles,Not skillful husbandry nor laborious workCan save the tree which lightning breaks and tangles.Why does the bright nasturtium scarcely flowerBut that those insects multiply and grow,Which make it food, and in the very hourIn which the veined leaves and blossoms blow?Why does a goodly tree, while fast maturing,Turn crooked branches covered o’er with scale?Why does the tree whose youth was not assuringProsper and bear while all its fellows fail?I under earth see much. I know the soil.I know where mold is heavy and where thin.I see the stones that thwart the plowman’s toil,The crooked roots of what the priests call sin.I know all secrets, even to the core,What seedlings will be upas, pine or laurel;It cannot change howe’er the field’s worked o’er.Man’s what he is and that’s the devil’s moral.So with the souls of the ensuing dramaThey sprang from certain seed in certain earth.Behold them in the devil’s cyclorama,Shown in their proper light for all they’re worth.Now to my task: I’ll give an exhibitionOf mixing the ingredients of spirit.

Come, crucible, perform your magic mission,Come, recreative fire, and hover near it!I’ll make a soul, or show how one is made.

This hectic flame makes all the world afraid:It was a soldier’s scourge which ate the bone.His daughter bore the lady of the action.And died at thirty-nine of scrofula.She was a creature of a sweet attraction,Whose sex-obsession no one ever saw.

Lo! this denotes aristocratic strainsBack in the centuries of France’s glory.

And this the will that pulls against the chainsHer father strove until his hair was hoary.Sorrow and failure made his nature cold.He never loved the child whose woe is shown,And hence her passion for the things which goldBrings in this world of pride, and brings alone.The human heart that’s famished from its birthTurns to the grosser treasures, that is plain.Thus aspiration fallen fills the earthWith jungle growths of bitterness and pain.Of Celtic, Gallic fire our heroine!Courageous, cruel, passionate and proud.False, vengeful, cunning, without fear o’ sin.A head that oft is bloody, but not bowed.Now if she meet a man—suppose our hero,With whom her chemistry shall war yet mix,As if she were her Borgia to his Nero,’Twill look like one of Satan’s little tricks!However, it must be. The world’s great gardenIs not all mine. I only sow the tares.Wheat should be made immune, or else the WardenShould stop their coming in the world’s affairs.But to our hero! Long ere he was bornI knew what would repel him and attract.Such spirit mathematics, fig or thorn,I can prognosticate before the fact.

This is a grandsire’s treason in an orchardAgainst a maid whose nature with his mated.

And this his memory distrait and tortured,Which marked the child with hate because she hated.Our heroine’s grand dame was that maid’s own cousin—But never this our man and woman knew.The child, in time, of lovers had a dozen,Then wed a gentleman upright and true.And thus our hero had a double nature:One half of him was bad, the other good.The devil must exhaust his nomenclatureTo make this puzzle rightly understood.But when our hero and our heroine metThey were at once attracted, the repulsionWas hidden under Passion, with her netWhich must enmesh you ere you feel revulsion.The virus coursing in the soldier’s blood,The orchard’s ghost, the unknown kinship ’twixt them,Our hero’s mother’s lovers round them stood,Shadows that smiled to see how Fate had fixed them.This twain pledge vows and marry, that’s the play.And then the tragic features rise and deepen.He is a tender husband. When awayThe serpents from the orchard slyly creep in.Our heroine, born of spirit none too loyal,Picks fruit of knowledge—leaves the tree of life.Her fancy turns to France corrupt and royal,Soon she forgets her duty as a wife.You know the rest, so far as that’s concerned,She met exposure and her husband slew her.He lost his reason, for the love she spurned.He prized her as his own—how slight he knew her.(He waves a wand, showing a man in a prison cell.)Now here he sits condemned to mount the gallows—He could not tell his story—he is dumb.Love, says your poets, is a grace that hallows,I call it suffering and martyrdom.The judge with pointed finger says, “You killed her.”Well, so he did—but here’s the explanation;He could not give it. I, the drama-builder,Show you the various truths and their relation.(He waves his wand.)Now, to begin. The curtain is ascending,They meet at tea upon a flowery lawn.Fair, is it not? How sweet their souls are blending—The author calls the play “Laocoon.”

Only an earth dream.

With which we are done.A flash of a cometUpon the earth stream.

A dream twrice removed,A spectral confusionOf earth’s dread illusion.

These are the ghostsFrom the desolate coasts.Would you go to them?Only pursue them.Whatever enshrined isWithin you is you.In a place where no wind is,Out of the damps,Be ye as lamps.Flame-like aspire,To me alone true,The Life and the Fire.

The springtime is come, the winter departed.She wakens from slumber and dances light-hearted.The sun is returning,We are done with alarms,Earth lifts her face burning,Held close in his arms.The sun is an eagleWho broods o’er his young,The earth is his nurslingIn whom he has flungThe life-flame in seed,In blossom desire,Till fire become life,And life become fire.

I slip and I vanish,I baffle your eye;I dive and I climb,I change and I fly.You have me, you lose me,Who have me too well,Now find me and use me—I am here in a cell.

You are there in a cell?Oh, now for a rodWith which to divine you—

Nay, child, I am God.

When the waking waters rise from their beds of snow, under the hill,In little rooms of stone where they sleep when icicles reign,The April breezes scurry through woodlands, saying “Fulfill!Awaken roots under cover of soil—it is Spring again.”Then the sun exults, the moon is at peace, and voicesCall to the silver shadows to lift the flowers from their dreams.And a longing, longing enters my heart of sorrow, my heart that rejoicesIn the fleeting glimpse of a shining face, and her hair that gleams.I arise and follow alone for hours the winding way by the river.Hunting a vanishing light, and a solace for joy too deep.Where do you lead me, wild one, on and on forever?Over the hill, over the hill, and down to the meadows of sleep.

Over the soundless depths of space for a hundred million milesSpeeds the soul of me, silent thunder, struck from a harp of fire.Before my eyes the planets wheel and a universe defiles,I but a luminant speck of dust upborne in a vast desire.What is my universe that obeys me—myself compelled to obeyA power that holds me and whirls me over a path that has no end?And there are my children who call me great, the giver of life and day,Myself a child who cry for life and know not whither I tend.A million million suns above me, as if the curtain of nightWere hung before creation’s flame, that shone through the weave of the cloth,Each with its worlds and worlds and worlds crying upward for light,For each is drawn in its course to what?—as the candle draws the moth.

Orbits unending,Life never ending,Power without end.

Wouldst thou be lord,Not peace but a sword.Not heart’s desire—Ever aspire.Worship thy power,Conquer thy hour,Sleep not but strive,So shalt thou live.