SCENE: A forest glade
_On the left, a green bank and a pool, back of which is a
thicket; on the right, a vista, beneath boughs, of a
distant volcano, rising through the wet light of dawn._
EGIL’S VOICE
[_Outside._]
Help—O! help—O!
SHRILL VOICES
[_Outside._]
A troll! a troll! a troll!
[_Enter, right_, EGIL, _running. He is completely
surrounded and swarmed over by little children in bright
spring garb. One little girl has climbed upon his
shoulder, where she clings._]
THE CHILDREN
Heigh! hold him fast. Troll! troll!
EGIL
Help, gentle greenwood!
Am I but now escaped men’s prison walls
To fall into this ambush of thine elves!
Save me, you wrens and warblers! Fetch me wings!
THE CHILDREN
[_Taking hands, dance about him, singing._]
Thrice, thrice,
Thrice around thee!
Star-wise
Our steps surround thee;
Now yield thee, yield thee, proud Sir Troll!
Body and soul
Our spells have bound thee.
EGIL
Thrice, thrice,
Thrice around me!
Star-wise
Your steps surround me.
Now yield I me and pay my toll—
Body and soul
As ye have bound me.
[_He lies down, pretending death; each child places his foot
upon him, with a shout. At this he springs up, laughing,
seizes a little boy and girl, and, seating himself on a
log, places them on his knees. The others cluster about
him._]
Ha, sirrah! is this maid thy sister?
THE LITTLE BOY
Yes,
She’s mine.
EGIL
What wouldst thou do if I should steal her?
THE LITTLE BOY
I’d kill you.
EGIL
Ha! wouldst let him?
THE LITTLE GIRL
Oh, of course;
He is my brother.
EGIL
’Tis a brother’s right
To kill, I see.
THE LITTLE GIRL
In play, you know.
EGIL
In play.
THE CHILDREN
Come play! Come play!
EGIL
What now?
THE CHILDREN
[_Severally._]
Fox and wild geese!
Glass-mountain, Spinning-fairy, Cat-skin, Crows,
Frog-bridegroom!
THE LITTLE GIRL
_I_ know what!
EGIL
[_Takes both her hands, smiling._]
Well, what?
THE LITTLE GIRL
I’ll be
Red Riding-hood, and you shall be the wolf.
[_Egil drops her hands and rises._]
THE LITTLE BOY
I’m the good hunter and these are my men.
EGIL
[_Vassal-like to the little boy._]
Beseech you, sir, may I not play your part?
I’d fain be the good hunter.
THE LITTLE BOY
Granted, earl.
I’d fainer be the wolf.
[_To the children._]
Come! gather your flowers.
EGIL
And when you’ve filled your laps and aprons up
With wind-flowers and arbutus, bring them here.
Mind! ’tis our lady Thordis’ wedding-day.
THE CHILDREN
[_Running from the little boy._]
The wolf! the wolf!
[_Passing left into the wood, they are seen for some time
gathering flowers and watching, in their game, the
stealthy approachments of the little boy._]
EGIL
O freedom! happy world!
Hark, how they laugh, with bubbling undersong
Sweetening the over-choir of the birds.
And I—I, too, can laugh; can loose my soul
Free-wing’d into the open with a cry
Unfetter’d as a lark.
[_Looking up into the tree-tops, he laughs again._]
O rarest laughter!
O medicine of the long-languish’d mind!
O welling of the heart’s sweet waters up,
Washing the acid tang of cynic woe
Sere from the spirit’s lips. O benison
Of innocence! And have I lived before
This hour? Is not this day creation’s dawn?
[_Flinging himself upon the bank._]
These children, with their lifted flowerlike faces,
These flowers, with their dewy childlike eyes,
These parting vapours on the golden hills,
Yea, all these leaves of little twinkling grass
Whose roots strike down to tears of yesterday—
Now shine like things immaculate, new-born,
And I, and they, like issue of one mother,
The offspring of an universal birth.
Oh, what exceeding power hath loveliness
For her beholder!
[_Where he lies thus rapt in the sylvan landscape, the
first sunlight breaks through the wood, and by it the_
SHADOW _of a man is thrown sharply, from the
left, across the reclining form of Egil. At the same
time, from the right, is heard Arfi’s voice, singing._]
THE VOICE OF ARFI
Thy heart, love, give or take
Or cast away;
Mine shall not break
Forever and a day;
For lovers kiss their mates where thoughts are kind.
Love lives within the mind—the mind—the mind.
[_Slowly having risen to his feet, Egil perceives
the human shadow and starts._]
EGIL
Yorul!
[_The shadow recedes, left, from the scene._]
Yorul, stay!
Come back!
THE VOICE OF ARFI
The redstart and the rose,
The clear sunrise,
What mortal knows
Their grace to immortalise?
Seek them again, where Death can never find,
By love, within the mind—the enamour’d mind.
EGIL
It must not be.—Yorul!—What, I
Was mad, who now am sane and innocent.
Come back! It shall not—Yorul!
THORDIS
[_Calls outside._]
Egil!
EGIL
[_Pausing._]
She!
[_Enter, right_, THORDIS _and_ ARFI.
_They are dressed in white, the dwarf being quaintly
garlanded. They are followed by_ WULDOR.
_Thordis goes gaily toward Egil, extending both her
hands._]
THORDIS
Deserter! runagate!—Look, Arfi, here’s
Our truant brought to bay. And will not yield!
And will not even surrender up his eyes
To his imploring gaolers.—O proud brother!
Not even a hand-clasp in return for all
Thy struck-off shackles?
[_Taking her hands, he still looks off left._]
EGIL
Lady!
THORDIS
Still no eyes
For mortals? Quite enamoured of a wood-sprite?
Alas! we’ve broke a tryst and she has flown!
Call her: perchance she’ll hear.
EGIL
[_Looking upon Thordis._]
Lady!—
[_Quickly then turning away, speaks under his breath
to Wuldor._]
A word,
A word!
ARFI
He’s deeply moved.
THORDIS
He’s deeply changed.
Saw you his eyes when they turned full on me,
And he said, “Lady”? There were tears in them,
Tears, and yet through them glowed the ancient fire,
Not now in wrath, but tenderness.
EGIL
[_Aside to Wuldor._]
Overtake him;
The oath he swore to Egil—tell him—Egil
Now countermands. Bid him do nothing; go!
[_Watches Wuldor off, left. Arfi, quietly looking
at him, speaks to Thordis._]
ARFI
You love him dearly?
THORDIS
Very dearly.
EGIL
Brother,
Thordis, your hands again!
ARFI
[_Smiling._]
Have you despatched
Wuldor to find the lady wood-sprite?
EGIL
Friends,
Were we less deeply known to one another,
And chiefly I to you—what thing I was,
What now, perchance, am grown—well, I suppose
’Twere custom, were it not? to wreathe our lips
With honey-blossoms of superfluous
Congratulation: you are to be wed,
And I am free, and my emancipation
Owes all itself to you.—“Heaven be with you!”
“I thank you well,” “Joy is to me!”—But these
Things being said, and rung with all the chimes
Of truth, I beg of you let now these hands
Speak the unsaid remainder for our hearts
In silence.
[_The three hold hands._]
ARFI
[_After a pause._]
Vaster powers than we have wrought
This friendship. Whom the gods join hand in hand
Their fates thenceforth are mingled.
THORDIS
[_Loosening her hands with a laugh._]
So, dear lord,
Be merry!
ARFI
[_Speaks low, with a smile._]
Have I not divinest reason?
This is the place.
THORDIS
Arfi! The sacred pool?
ARFI
The pool of Freyja—there! The wood-folk call it
Her mirror, for they say that once i’ the year,
Ever at May-day, the fresh goddess comes
To sit beside it with her elves, whilst they
Comb her bright hair.
THORDIS
And then she peers within it?
ARFI
As you do now.—Sweetest, good-bye!
THORDIS
Good-bye?
But where are you going?
ARFI
The wood pathway to heaven.
I’m going to hasten that laggard priest, your father,
To make him make you mine.
EGIL
Stop! You’re alone.
ARFI
Well?
EGIL
[_Embarrassed._]
Will it be now?
ARFI
Am I not written large
With bridal runes? Hang not these garlands thick
As invocations from an inn-house gable?
“Here light ye down, fair guests! Light down, light down,
Dear lady, at the sign of the ‘_Green Bridegroom_!’”—
Farewell, sweetheart. This day is clothed in green
For joy. I will return with Ingimund
As swift as longing.
EGIL
Stay; we must be wise.
You must not leave me here alone with her.
ARFI
Why? Are you not my brother?
EGIL
I am he
Who vowed against you hatred and revenge.
ARFI
Also you are my brother.
EGIL
I am he
That with a brutish fang struck at your life.
ARFI
Good-bye, dear brother.
EGIL
Wait! Was I not then
Your brother—_then_? Will not a brother lust?
A brother covet? Are not beauty, grace,
Lures to a brother’s eyes? Are brothers’ souls
By nature kin? Or is that name a spell
To render heart and mind innocuous
That else might murder, ravish? Oh, be not
So rash as put your trust in me because
I am your brother.
ARFI
[_Returning to Egil, embraces him._]
Lad, keep this with you.
I would not be so rash as _not_ to trust
In you a power more august than yourself
For all the joy and honour which this day
Holds out to me.—Adieu! This day is joy’s.
[_Exit, right._]
EGIL
Now we’re alone. How is it with you—sister?
THORDIS
Strangely, my brother; how is it with you?
EGIL
O God!
How many waking dawns and desperate nights
Have I, in sharp imagination, moaned
For this sweet hour, to stand—as now
I stand—alone with you, in liberty.
THORDIS
And now that time has come.
[_She reaches to him her hand;
he does not take it._]
EGIL
Now it is come,
But ah! how sternly different is this truth
From all I dreamed. Can this be freedom? See!
What hangs upon these arms? They wear no chains.
Why, then, do they not catch you breathless up
And bear you hence in rapture? In your eyes—
Lo! veilless I behold your virgin soul!
And yet she does not fly, nor I pursue.
THORDIS
What should she fear?
EGIL
What should she not?—These eyes
Renouncing hers; these hands that dare not press
Her vesture’s hem, lest they consume like coals
That robèd sanctuary; these desires
That burn around her like the hedge of flames
Round Brunhild’s bower; this waiting dawn, this hush
And solitary wood—What fear? Herself,
Herself that, all resolved to beauty, breathes
Herself unto these eyes, these hands, this dawn,
These leash’d desires!
THORDIS
You love me, you would say.
Why should you not?
EGIL
I have renounced you.
THORDIS
Me,
But not your love for me. Surely that still
Is happiness.
EGIL
Why, yes, I must be happy;
For this is pain, and pain is very sweet
To those who love; and this is bitter sweet
To breathe the name of “sister” ’gainst your cheek
Where but so late the sigh of “sweetheart” stole
Warm from my brother’s lips.—O lure and vision!
Do you not see? I have climbed up to you
Out of the rank abyss; this is the verge:
One word, one look, from you must hurl me back,
Or save me.
THORDIS
Look.
EGIL
How have you dared to trust me?
THORDIS
When have we ever ceased to trust you?
EGIL
“We”?
THORDIS
Arfi and I. Oh, he is very wise.
His judgment is as gracious as a child’s
That in the wonderland of its own wisdom
Imagines nothing baser than itself.
EGIL
But I _am_ baser.
THORDIS
Hath it proved so?
EGIL
[_After a pause._]
No!
No; thanks to you and him and my own pain,
It shall not prove so. This at last is power
And innocence; this—this at last is freedom.
Now when I clasp your hand I clasp his also—
My saviour’s; now beneath your face, for shrine,
I will confess my spirit to you both,
For are you not my gods? You have created
My heaven and hell, and builded my path heavenward.
Now from your eyes nothing—nothing within
This heart shall be concealed.
THORDIS
[_Smiling._]
What then is your secret?
[_On the edge of the scene, left, unobserved by them,
reappears the human_ SHADOW.]
EGIL
[_Slowly rises._]
My secret?
THORDIS
Come, sit with me on this bank,
And I will be a listening stream, a bird,
An opening flower, to overhear you.
[_He follows and sits beside her; the Shadow
slowly moves toward them._]
EGIL
But—
THORDIS
That thought which falters now behind your lips.
EGIL
I have no thought which hides from you.
[_The Shadow moves between them. Egil starts
up with a cry._]
Again!
Again it falls upon me!
THORDIS
What?
EGIL
’Tis gone.
THORDIS
What’s gone?
EGIL
It is no matter.
THORDIS
A surprise!
I see: a wedding-day surprise for us.
EGIL
No, but a lie. I lied to you. Last night
I told you I renounced you, but I lied.
THORDIS
Egil!
EGIL
It was the music, the harp-demon;
It blinded and then tempted me; it lured me
To obtain my freedom falsely. But to-day,
This morning when my body fetterless
Roamed in this wood-side, and the little children
Climbed over me in laughter, and I too
Laughed with them, and all nature laughed and echoed
“Thou art emancipated!”—I was healed;
Then I was healed and now all’s well again;
All’s well; no harm shall come to him.
THORDIS
To whom?
I do not understand.
EGIL
You have no need;
I claim your own assurance. Will you trust me?
THORDIS
So well that, now you have put your secret by,
I will tell mine.
EGIL
What secret can you have
For me?
THORDIS
You have been wicked; so perhaps
Have I.
EGIL
[_Smiling._]
You!
THORDIS
[_Showing her hand._]
Look! look there.
EGIL
A scar.
THORDIS
The mark
Of fangs.
EGIL
What thing has dared to give you pain?
THORDIS
Have you forgot?
EGIL
Ah me! I had forgot.
Cannot you, too, forget?
THORDIS
I would not; that’s
My secret. Yes, this scar is dear to me.
EGIL
That sign of blasphemy, of him—the werewolf—
THORDIS
Is dear to me.
EGIL
Thordis!
THORDIS
I loved the wolf.
It was a life to nourish and protect,
A being alien and mysterious,
Yearning and captive. It was terrible,
And yet so eager, swift, and passionate
It fascinated me. It was ignoble,
Cruel, yet infinite of promise; cunning,
Malicious, yet beautifully animate,
Sublimely animal.
EGIL
O pain!
THORDIS
To take it
Into my bosom, foster its wild growth
From hour to hour, to watch from day to day
The fierce light of its eyes glow deeper, milder,
To nestle it only to set it free—these joys
Were pangs to me.
EGIL
[_Low._]
Have pity!
THORDIS
Then it was
So lordly, so imperious of strength,
In grace so sinuous, in pride so ardent—
Who had not been enamoured of it?
EGIL
Cease!
It wrought some monstrous spell to make you wanton.
THORDIS
If that be wantonness which fain would take
No joy of loving but the giving joy.
EGIL
But for that beast you turned your thoughts from Arfi?
THORDIS
You do not understand; Arfi and I
Are one; it needs no murmured wedding vows
To make us that. But I am beautiful,
And all who look upon me love to press
Nearer and touch my gown, and when I pass
I feel the ruddy mantling of their cheeks
And the wild admiration start; and these
Are joys to Arfi as to me, and we
Return their love.
EGIL
Even so you loved me?
THORDIS
No,
More than all those, for you alone of those
Had need of me.—And so you have my secret.
I fear indeed it is a wicked one;
For I have been like a too-doting nurse
That lets her heart hang backward in regret
And whispers her loved one, “Grow, but do not leave me!”
EGIL
For what then have I grown, O gods?
THORDIS
For this:
To be yourself, and free of that nurse-bondage.
EGIL
Free! but alone, adrift! Oh, take me back
Into the bosom of your care. Once more
Nestle me there, the wild thing!
THORDIS
That once more
So you might struggle for your freedom? Nay,
The wild thing now is dead.
[_Enter Wuldor, left; he goes to Egil._]
WULDOR
I cannot speak
With him. When I approached, he fled from me,
Silent. I called, but both his hands he pressed
Over his ears, and silently among
The trees eluded me.
EGIL
[_Seizing Wuldor’s wrists, speaks huskily._]
I have not willed this;
They cannot lay this crime on me—these gods,
For I have annulled it, I have cancelled it.
Come here, look in my heart; is it not clean?
Woe thou mayest see there, yearning, pain, but not—
Say, canst thou see there—murder? Answer not,
But go! What will come _will_ come; what have I
To do with it? Go, go, I say.
[_Exit Wuldor, right, looking darkly._]
THORDIS
You are ill,
Your gestures—they are wild.
EGIL
Why should they not be?
The wild thing is not dead, but is exalted.
Gods, why should we, your hinds, coin and devise
Dreams of emancipation! We are quibblers
And hypocrites, damned, every slave of us,
To hug our chains in secret. Rather than
Acknowledge what we are, the mind outwits
The heart, the heart hoodwinks the mind, the tongue
Cajoles and counterplots them both, while truth—
[_Breaks into laughter._]
THORDIS
Tell me the truth.
EGIL
Again? Another version?
Why, listen then: I love you; not in the awful,
Serene idea of self-sacrifice,
But passion, which of right demands return
Of passion, nature’s just and ancient barter.
I want you; I demand you—all yourself.
I offer all myself.
THORDIS
What of your brother?
EGIL
I ask you nothing which he does not ask.
He offers nothing which I do not offer.
There was a difference between us once,
Not now.
THORDIS
Hath he not made you what you are?
EGIL
Yes, he and you.
THORDIS
And in requital now
You would seduce his bride?
EGIL
No, not seduce;
Demand. Yes, though I seem to rave, I speak
Love and conviction. Judge me, dear my lady.
You chose between us brothers when we were
Contrasted in our souls as some meek bard
Of pity, with a beast. Look on us now
Again, before it be too late, and choose
Between us now.
THORDIS
I have chosen once for all.
EGIL
But have you chosen blindly?
[_Points into the wood._]
Do you see,
By yonder pine, that wild crab-apple tree?
THORDIS
I see a tree just bursting into flower.
EGIL
Is not it beautiful?
THORDIS
’Tis ravishing.
EGIL
Last winter, had you passed, you might have seen it
Writhing its frozen limbs there like a thing
Accurst, all pinched and scrambled by the pangs
Of screaming winds; you would have shrunk from it
Beneath the verdurous pine, in whose sad boughs
The same winds sung like voices of tuned lyres.
THORDIS
It may be so.
EGIL
Yet now behold it, now!
A pale-rose pyre of fragrance and of flame,
Wherein, like sacrificial spirits, sit
The tawny and vermilion birds, and strike
Their silvery chants in unison, and hung
Amid the tangled bloom, in murmurous choirs,
The blazing gold bees shrill their mellow horns.
Look, Thordis, look again! If you were Freyja,
Herself, goddess of spring, which would you choose
For shelter now, and joy?
THORDIS
[_Gazing at him._]
Ah me!
EGIL
If spring—
If spring and the sweet south can so transform,
What cannot love? Your warmth, your breath, your soul,
Soft on my numbness, my deformity,
Breathed, and I sprung—a burning tree of bloom—
Beside you. Have you eyes for flights unseen?
Hearing for choirs unheard? Here, too, beside you
Fierce swarms of golden fancies work in song
The fecund pollen of my passion, here
A thousand bird-wing’d visions nest them down
Into the heart of me, to chant your praise.
You that have so transformed me, you repulse me
Now?
[_Enter right, in the background, Arfi; he pauses unseen._]
THORDIS
Take your eyes from mine.
EGIL
You love me; you
Who fostered me, the wild thing, love me still.
My secret scar is on you; you are mine,
Not his.
THORDIS
Oh, leave me!
EGIL
Yet you seize my hand.
THORDIS
Leave me, leave me!
EGIL
Yet you take me to your heart.
THORDIS
A myriad loves the heart hath, but one mate.
Once only may the cry of soul and body
Be answered; the great need can be but once.
EGIL
Now is the great need come.
THORDIS
How may we know?
EGIL
I am your being’s master. If his soul
Were listening to us now, I would cry out:
“I have outgrown thee, brother. What thou art
I am and more, for I have wrung from thee
Thy potent mind, and forged it to my passions
To make a lordlier instrument. Mine, therefore,
Not thine, the ordainèd need of her. Mine!”
THORDIS
Love me!
[_He kisses her. Arfi moves into the thicket and disappears.
Thordis, putting Egil from her, draws a dagger upon
herself._]
Ah, my betrayer! It is ended.
EGIL
[_Seizing the knife from her._]
No;
You shall not choose so. If that name indeed
Be mine, keep silence now, while I avenge
The kiss of thy seducer.
[_As he turns the knife upon himself, Thordis cries out._]
THORDIS
Egil!
EGIL
Love!
[_Springing to her, beside the pool, he recoils._]
Impending image! persecuting shape!
Depart.
THORDIS
Alas! are we both mad?
EGIL
Remove
The prying horror of thine eyes. Not now—
At this the utmost instant of my joy
Intrude not now.
THORDIS
Whom do you speak to?
EGIL
[_Staring past Thordis into the pool._]
There!
Look, we have murdered him. It comes to tell us;
It points at thee, to say thou, too, art guilty.
We have betrayed and killed him, thou and I.
See, see! It kneels and craves our sanction.—Rise,
Remorseless shadow! Go! I give it thee.
[_He hurls the dagger into the pool. As he staggers back,
Thordis rests his head on her shoulder._]
THORDIS
Peace, brain and heart!
VOICES
[_Far away, right, sing._]
How should the bed, the bridal bed,
Freyja, be spread?
Pine garlands at the foot, rose garlands at the head.
EGIL
Is it gone?
THORDIS
Nothing is there.
Rest, rest, poor dreamer!
THE VOICES
[_Sing._]
What on the maid, the bride and maid,
Freyja, be laid?
The rose’s innocence, ere those fresh garlands fade.
EGIL
Hark! the bridal virgins!
[_Thordis shrinks from him._]
Stay, Thordis; now the awful need is come.
While yet we are alone in the great silence,
Now, now, before they find it, pale and red,
Heaped in the path of roses, now—be mine.
THORDIS
Freyja, help me! Freyja, goddess and maiden!
EGIL
His soul descends upon us both, and seals
This act with blood of sacrifice. His blood
Our nuptial rite hath reddened.
THORDIS
Save me!
EGIL
Hush!
This is the vernal god, the appalling arm
That clasped the world i’ the primal age, and moaned—
“Let there be life!”—Hush, love; do not you hear
The stealing saps stir through the forest, feel
The seeking joys of all wild, mating things
Throb in their blood and ours, their kindred,—
THORDIS
[_Breaking from him._]
Help!
Help, Arfi!
[_She escapes, right, into the wood. As Egil pursues her,
there steps from the thicket, into his path, Arfi.
Egil pauses._]
EGIL
May the dead be summoned back
To curse us with forgiveness?—Spirit, be stern
And not compassionate. Come in your wounds,
Fell and disfigured, not benignly thus.
Oh, not your love-your vengeance! Not your love!
[_Shields his eyes with his arms. As he does so, Arfi, with
a serene gesture, is about to speak, when from the
thicket Yorul springs silently out and stabs him. Arfi
falls motionless; Yorul withdraws. Slowly Egil looks
again._]
Yea, now thou hast resumed thy murder-garment,
And hast drawn on thy bridal-robe of wounds,
And laid thee at my feet in vengeance. Now
This is indeed thy vengeance—brother! master!
[_Stoops beside the body._]
VOICES OF THE VIRGINS
[_Sing, near._]
What o’er the man the maid shall wed,
Freyja, be shed?
The pine’s immortal breath, ere those green boughs are dead.
[_Starting up, fearful, Egil hales the body toward the left,
but having reached the centre pauses, as the laughter
of children rises in the way before him. Turning, he
is dragging the body down scene, when the children,
scampering in, left, with their aprons and baskets
full of wild flowers, run towards him. Finger on lip,
he motions them silence; their laughter and shouts die
away, awed_.]
EGIL
He is asleep; the bridegroom is asleep.
Scatter your wild flowers over him. Look, he smiles,
He’ll laugh when he awakes and sees them.—Soft!
THE CHILDREN
[_Whispering, gather in a circle and, pleased as at some game
of mystery, heap the flowers upon Arfi, and sing low._]
Flowers bring
And fairy numbers!
Sweet Spring
His spirit cumbers.
Still be highhole! still be thrush!
Hush! hush!
Now he slumbers.
[_Treading softly, with covert laughter and “hushes,” the
children steal away. Heaped over the body of Arfi and
completely concealing it, they have left behind them a
great pile of arbutus, violets, and other flowers. Some
of these Egil is replacing more carefully, when the pile
is shaken from within, and up through it rises the form_
BALDUR. _Dazzled, Egil kneels._]
BALDUR
Hail, brother!
EGIL
Art thou sunlight, or a voice?
BALDUR
This is the word of Odin!
[_Egil sinks prostrate._]
If the wolf
Seduce to his desire his brother’s bride,
He shall be lord with her of heaven and earth
And hell, and by their passion the serene
And stablished beacons of the gods shall be
Eclipsed in night, anarchical and void,
Where, staggering with lust, the blinded world
Reels back to chaos and the primal dark.
EGIL
[_Hiding his face._]
And if the wolf renounce her?
BALDUR
He shall perish,
Slain by his own self-mastery, and all
The spirits of light, freed from that awful dread,
Shall strew his charnel, singing.
EGIL
Ah! but she—
BALDUR
She falters yet; she hangs upon his will.
The lure of imperfection is the sin
Of gods, the lure of godhood that of mortals.
She wavers still.
EGIL
Bright shadow, golden voice,
Say what thou art.
BALDUR
Baldur, the son of Odin.
EGIL
[_Starts up._]
Then I—?
BALDUR
Fenris, the wolf-god!
[_He sinks again into the flowers, and is gone._]
EGIL
Ah! the dream!
The dream is true; the truth is visionary.
[_From the left, two or three of the children return from
the wood, and stand silent. From the right, the lutes
and pipes of the bridal procession grow louder, and
shortly enter the virgins_, INGIMUND, _Thordis,
Wuldor, and others, as Egil still stands lost in
soliloquy._]
“And there, in slumber, even as mortals dream,
Slumb’ring, that they are bright, immortal gods,
You shall be mortals, and shall walk as men,
Forgetful of your immortality.”
THORDIS
Was not he with you, father?
INGIMUND
He went before
A little space, to greet you first.—My child,
Why do you cling to me?
EGIL
[_Approaching her._]
Goddess and maiden!
THORDIS
He’s mad. Save us! We both are mad.
INGIMUND
Thy brother,
Where is he?
EGIL
Father, he hath gone before
A little space, but left thy word with me.
INGIMUND
_My_ word?
EGIL
The word of truth.
[_A little girl, moving back some of the flowers, has
disclosed the dead body of Arfi, blood-stained._]
THE LITTLE GIRL
He’s still asleep.
THORDIS
[_Goes to it with a cry._]
Arfi!
WULDOR
I thought it, Ingimund; he’s murdered.
INGIMUND
His bane! What hand struck this?
EGIL
Lo, I will tell;
The dream must end. Thou saidest: He shall perish,
And all the spirits of light, freed from that dread,
Shall strew his charnel, singing.
INGIMUND
Madman! Thou—
YORUL
[_Entering from the thicket._]
_I_ murdered him.
THORDIS
[_Starting up from the body._]
Yorul!
YORUL
[_Showing dagger._]
His blood is here.
EGIL
Yet shall the dreamers wake, the truth prevail.
YORUL
’Twas I! This hand—
EGIL
And shall that hand put out
The beacons of the gods with primal dark,
And hurl the blinded world to chaos?
THORDIS
Egil!
Thou art innocent! Oh, in this blank of death
That truth remains.
EGIL
[_Turning upon Yorul._]
Scourge and seductor!
INGIMUND
[_To Egil._]
Speak!
Hath this man done this deed?
EGIL
[_Slowly._]
Yes; it was Yorul.
[_Yorul is seized._]