Silence, you beast!
[_He changes his tone to a winning softness._]
I hate these family quarrels: it is so
Like fratricide. I am a rebel, well?
Soft! You are not, and we are knit so close
It would be shame for a son to be so honoured
And the father still unknown: come, Koelue’s (so _my_) father,
I’ll tell my plans—you’ll beg to be rebel then.
Look round on the night—
Old as the first, bleak, even her wish is done;
She has never seen, though dreamt perhaps of the sun,
Yet only dawn divides; could a miracle
Destroy the dawn, night would be mixed with light,
No night or light would be, but a new thing:
So with these slaves, who perhaps have dreamt of freedom,
Egypt was in the way; I’ll strike it out
With my ways curious and unusual.
I have a trouble in my mind for largeness,
Rough-hearted, shaggy, which your grave ardours lack:
Here is the quarry quiet for me to hew;
Here are the springs, primeval elements,
The roots’ hid secrecy, old source of race,
Unreasoned reason of the savage instinct.
I’d shape one impulse through the contraries
Of vain ambitious men, selfish and callous,
And frail life-drifters, reticent, delicate—
Litheness thread bulk, a nation’s harmony:
These are not lame nor bent awry, but placeless
With the rust and stagnant. All that’s low I’ll charm,
Barbaric love sweeten to tenderness,
Cunning run into wisdom, craft turn to skill;
Their meanness, threaded right and sensibly,
Change to a prudence envied and not sneered;
Their hugeness be a driving wedge to a thing
Ineffable and useable, as near
Solidity as human life can be:
So grandly fashion these rude elements
Into some newer nature, a consciousness
Like naked light seizing the all-eyed soul,
Oppressing with its gorgeous tyranny
Until they take it thus—or die.
[_While speaking, he places his hand on the unsuspecting Egyptian’s head
and gently, caressingly, pulls his hair back until his chin is above
his forehead, and holds him so till he is suffocated. In the darkness
ahead is seen the glimmer of javelins and spears: it is Prince Imra’s
cohorts come to arrest_ MOSES.]