RUDOLPH-- No.
CANZLER-- (_Returning to the stump._)
The question, Hartzel, is not what they've done;
It's what they think they have a right to do.
They own, they think, our bodies and our brains.
There is no thing or thought or word or deed
Can take its way, but must report to them
And square itself and do a bondman's work.
They have a right, they think, to chop the North,
Lop off her great green boughs and graft instead
The South's pale branches.
FRITZ-- To bear bastard fruit.
CANZLER--The oak's red blood must nourish olive leaves.
They would remake the world Val-father made
And take the seasons from his great right hand.
We must be like them or be not at all.
Like them in manhood, Hartzel?
FRITZ-- No; in Faith.
And even their gods know not the Saxon tongue.
RUDOLPH--If a man speak Val-father's name, he dies.
MAX--And we must die if we be not baptized.
FRITZ--Must even ask of them what we may eat!
CANZLER--Why is it not enough to be a man?
To do a man's work and to live a life
Free like the wild deer, and to grow like these?
(_He looks about upon the trees._)
You, Hartzel, have lived longer than we have
And you have seen more seasons, and you know
In father Woden's forests how the trees
Grow as they will, acknowledging no lord
But him who made them to be lordless, and
Obeying no law save that law that bids
Each be itself and bring forth its own fruit.
In all the populous forests of this world
There is no tyrant tree that lifts its head
Above the rest and says, "Obey my law."
For each tree hath its own law in itself,
And no tree hears another, but each hears
The voice of father Woden in the loam
Laying the law of selfhood on each seed.
The seed bursts and the law starts toward the sky.
The acorn lays it softly on the oak,
The chestnut on the chestnut, and the pine
Upon the loftiest mountain hears its cone
Whispering with father Woden in the air,
Learning the law it taketh to the ground.
Thus by that law that each tree be itself,
This forest hath become a stalwart state,
A nation governed by one law, a vast
Green kingdom of ten thousand happy trees
With father Woden monarch in the boughs.
The law of selfhood is the law of trees;
Who says the law of sameness governs man?
Because the South has not the girth of trunk
To bear Val-father's weight upon its boughs,
Must he climb down from ours and let the South
Climb up and with its law bind leaf and limb?
Did he, who made these oaks to grow and spread
Their branches, make our branching minds to be
Pinched to a point and put inside a ring?
HARTZEL--But they say that they got that ring from some
God that once came down--
CANZLER-- From their southern skies?
Who gave the southern cypress mouth to speak
Val-father's law unto the northern pine?
God, do you say, come down to bind men? _God?_
A _God_ that _binds?_ (_Looking up at the trees._)
I see no ring on these.
FRITZ--Loki is a smith. He made their ring.
CANZLER--Where in our northern sagas will you find
A track of any shackle-bearing god?
In all the past has any such a god
Come down the northern sky? All round the walls
Of Midgard stand the Asas guarding man
Against whatever brings bonds.
(_Selma comes from the cottage with a bucket._)
FRITZ-- Sons of Lok.
CANZLER--The southern gods may bring down shackles, but
The northern hammer breaks the shackles off.
SELMA-- (_From back among the trees._)
I'm going after water, Father.
CANZLER--And one shall come to take that hammer up.
MAX--The Asas walk the walls of Midgard still.
(_Selma goes out left._)
RUDOLPH --Val-father made the mountain rocks to be
The bastions of the oppressed.
FRITZ-- He made the grave.
(_He sits down on the log and takes his head
between his hands._)
CANZLER--"In him shall be the strength of all your dead."
No, Hartzel; as Fritz says, their ring was wrought
Far in the south at that old fire that burns
Eternal mid the hills. Of old they forged
Law for our fathers, and, with iron hands,
Welded it on them. For five hundred years
The noise of that old furnace filled the world,
And from her red mouth link on link her hands
Drew one continuous shackle, and the North
Walked heavily, until Val-father's spear
Flashed southward. Then the noise stopped. The great beast,
That wore for head and neck those seven hills,
Roused her and saw her whelps come bleeding back
And heard wild Tyr holloing the tribes for dogs
Round her on every side, and rose at bay
And clawed through bloody foam and ceased and saw
Her hills go round and round and with a crash
Stretched her vast skeleton over all the south.
HARTZEL--Then she is dead.
CANZLER-- Rome dead?
HARTZEL-- If she is bones.
CANZLER---Bones, Hartzel, are not dead. The life returns.
The ghastly thing moves in the silent night
When swords are sleeping and the ear hears not.
Old hands scratch round old battle-fields and there
The skulls that wore the helmet don the hood,
And when the morning breaks no man will say.
"The thing that stands there is the thing that fell."
Our father found it so. For after that
Great hunt down in the south, the tribes lay down
And slept and woke and saw--they knew not what.
It wore a sword, but had no hauberk on.
'Twas robed in black and on each shoulder sat
What seemed an eagle in a vulture's plumes.
They, too, thought bones were dead, and seeing no
Mark of their swords upon it nor anywhere
The indenture of those old hills in the south,
They showed it all the paths among the tribes.
FRITZ--Welcomed it to their homes.
MAX-- And took its ring.
RUDOLPH--And then lay down and slept and never woke.
CANZLER--If Rome is dead, whence all these harried lands,
Wigmodia and the Phalias, East and West?
RUDOLPH--There, even to this day, the clay is red.
CANZLER--If Rome is dead, what is this thing that now
On hands and knees creeps on us toward the north
Gathering flesh for its bones as it comes?
HARTZEL--Most of them have gone over to their Faith.
CANZLER--Most of them? Most of them lie, as Wiglaf says,
Piled on the dark shore where the ships come not.
FRITZ--Between the ring and sword they chose the sword.
CANZLER--What is this thing that says, "Accept this Faith,"
But the same thing that to our fathers said,
"Accept this Law"? It is the same old Rome.
The snake hath cast her skin but not her fangs.
Witness the rivers red. Witness the charred
Track of the dragon and these silent lands.
Has she not gathered flesh? Has she not clothed
Her limbs and filled her bowels with the North?
Climb to the clouds and call the Saxon race
And who will answer? Silence.
RUDOLPH-- And the streams
Moaning and hurrying red waves to the sea.
CANZLER--There is a day that would but cannot die.
That day--
MAX AND RUDOLPH--At Verden.
CANZLER-- When our fathers died
Unarmed, defenceless, butchered, Hartzel.
Ah, that day hides her face among the years
But cannot hide her hand. Val-father has-- (_Closing his fingers._)
Her wrist in his grasp and holds that hand aloft
To drip and rouse the North, and it shall drip
Till Ragnarok shall swallow it up at last
And vomit it out to bleed forevermore.
Four thousand and five hundred in one day!
Till set of sun, all day the axes swang,
And when night fell the Aller's waters slipped
Thick through the headless bodies in her bed.
Oh, for once more a day like Dachtelfeld! (_He turns away._)
RUDOLPH--Val-father's spear shall flash again, Canzler.
There shall a horn wind that shall rouse the tribes
And strew those bones again.
FRITZ-- Let's wind it now.
HARTZEL (_To Canzler._)--Do you think we should leave here?
RUDOLPH-- Yes.
FRITZ-- No.
MAX-- No.
Our Wittikind shall come and--
CANZLER-- They shall hear
The North's great hammer ringing round the world.
Max, you tell Conrad that we meet to-night.
Have Herman come. (_Max goes out left._)
And, Rudolph, you go down--
HARTZEL-- (_Touching, him with his staff_.)
Canzler, you said just now the point was not
What they have done.
CANZLER-- Nor is it.
HARTZEL-- Then why this
Summoning of the men? Are we to have war?
(_Fritz and Rudolph, talking together, walk back
among the trees._)
CANZLER--Hartzel, the past and present are two limbs
On one tree. Though the one bears withered leaves
And these on this around us here are green,
The trunk is the same; the sap is the same;
The new fruit is the old fruit. What to-day
Is Wiglaf fleeing to the ocean isles
But the whole Saxon race? What is his harp
In ashes but our homes and all this land?
Are those graves yonder old? Were these, our scars,
(_Opening his bosom._)
Handed down from our fathers? When we start
Alarmed in the night, is it the past we fear?
There is no past to things that have been dead.
It is a scabbard empty of its sword.
What shall we do? Accept their Faith?
HARTZEL-- No, no.
CANZLER--Without it, we must steal the air we breath
And thank Val-father if we get it then.
Their blades are out; shall we not lift our shields?
Wolves are we? Wolves are not hunted so.
Bears have the caves; must our cave be the grave?
There is no room there. How then can we die?
After his great meal, Death hath lain him down.
Famine, the gleaner, has the field. There is
No plot unreaped, no sheaf unflailed. The barns
Are stuffed to breaking with the dead. And we,
In this great carnage, in this harvest-home,
The last few straws whisked from the threshing-floor,
Hunted by that old Hunger of the south
From field to wood, from wood to darker wood,
Far up strange rivers and--down under them--
Hartzel, remember; when we fall, there goes
Down the whole North. We alone stand. Of all
Val-father's oaks, there's but one acorn left
That can re-forest and make green the North.
Rudolph and you and I and the rest, save one,
Are, as it were, its protecting shell. Off there,
A sword is coming toward us, and shall we
With hands down take the point and hear the unborn
Wail of that child that should have filled the north
With shouts and wound his horn upon its hills?
Behind him, in array, the dead tribes come
On fire for the south; their umbered shields
Upon the gunwales lour; and shall the snake
Swallow the haven where that host must land?
See the North die? Never. (_He turns as if to call Rudolph._)
HARTZEL--Accept their Faith,
We need not.
CANZLER--Die?
HARTZEL--We need not. (_A pause._) We might flee.
CANZLER-- (_Emphatically._)
Canzler will never vote to flee.
FRITZ-- Hear that?
Canzler will never vote to flee. (_Coming forward._)
Nor Fritz, chief.
CANZLER--Where could we flee?
FRITZ-- We have already fled.
CANZLER--No.
(_Hartzel turns and, with his face to the ground,
walks slowly left._)
RUDOLPH--Canzler, listen to me.
(_Unnoticed, Conrad appears coming through the
trees on the right. Several young squirrels
hang from the belt about his waist and in
his right hand is a cross-bow. Upon his left
shoulder he carries the crucifix which he has_
_pulled up, post and all._)
CANZLER-- The red ax
They swung at Verden swings clear round the North
And her great head falls.
(_With a jolt Conrad sets the crucifix down and
leans it against one of the large trees._)
Where did that come from?
CONRAD--Over on the road; by the bridge.
(_Canzler goes toward it. Fritz quickly says
something to Rudolph. The latter walks lack
in the rear._)
RUDOLPH-- (_As if to draw him away._)
Canzler, here.