SCENE X.
A Bridge in a City—Midnight—Walter alone.
WALTER.
Adam lost Paradise—eternal tale
Repeated in the lives of all his sons.
I had a shining orb of happiness,
God gave it me; but sin passed over it
As small-pox passes o'er a lovely face,
Leaving it hideous. I have lost for ever
The Paradise of young and happy thoughts,
And now stand in the middle of my life
Looking back through my tears—ne'er to return.
I've a stern tryst with Death, and must go on,
Though with slow steps and oft-reverted eyes.
'Tis a thick, rich-hazed, sumptuous autumn night;
The moon grows like a white flower in the sky;
The stars are dim. The tired year rests content
Among her sheaves, as a fond mother rests
Among her children; all her work is done.
There is a weight of peace upon the world;
It sleeps: God's blessing on it. Not on me!
Oh, as a lewd dream stains the holy sleep,
I stain the holy night, yet dare not die!
I knew this river's childhood, from the lake
That gave it birth, till, as if spilt from heaven,
It floated o'er the face of jet-black rocks,
Graceful and gauzy as a snowy veil.
Then we were pure as the blue sky above us,
Now we are black alike. This stream has turned
The wheels of commerce, and come forth distained;
And now trails slowly through a city's heart,
Drawing its filth as doth an evil soul
Attract all evil things; putrid and black
It mingles with the clear and stainless sea.
So into pure eternity my soul
Will disembogue itself.
Good men have said
That sometimes God leaves sinners to their sin,—
He has left me to mine, and I am changed;
My worst part is insurgent, and my will
Is weak and powerless as a trembling king
When millions rise up hungry. Woe is me!
My soul breeds sins as a dead body worms!
They swarm and feed upon me. Hear me, God!
Sin met me and embraced me on my way;
Methought her cheeks were red, her lips had bloom;
I kissed her bold lips, dallied with her hair:
She sang me into slumber. I awoke—
It was a putrid corse that clung to me,
That clings to me like memory to the damned,
That rots into my being. Father! God!
I cannot shake it off, it clings, it clings;—
I soon will grow as corrupt as itself. [A pause.
God sends me back my prayers, as a father
Returns unoped the letters of a son
Who has dishonoured him.
Have mercy, Fiend!
Thou Devil, thou wilt drag me down to hell.
Oh, if she had proclivity to sin
Who did appear so beauteous and so pure,
Nature may leer behind a gracious mask.
And God himself may be——I'm giddy, blind,
The world reels from beneath me.
[Catches hold of the parapet.
(An outcast approaches.) Wilt pray for me?
GIRL (shuddering).
'Tis a dreadful thing to pray.
WALTER.
Why is it so?
Hast thou, like me, a spot upon thy soul
That neither tears can cleanse nor fires eterne?
GIRL.
But few request my prayers.
WALTER.
I request them.
For ne'er did a dishevelled woman cling
So earnest-pale to a stern conqueror's knees,
Pleading for a dear life, as did my prayer
Cling to the knees of God. He shook it off,
And went upon His way. Wilt pray for me?
GIRL.
Sin crusts me o'er as limpets crust the rocks.
I would be thrust from ev'ry human door;
I dare not knock at heaven's.
WALTER.
Poor homeless one!
There is a door stands wide for thee and me—
The door of hell. Methinks we are well met.
I saw a little girl three years ago,
With eyes of azure and with cheeks of red,
A crowd of sunbeams hanging down her face;
Sweet laughter round her; dancing like a breeze.
I'd rather lair me with a fiend in fire
Than look on such a face as hers to-night.
But I can look on thee, and such as thee;
I'll call thee "Sister;" do thou call me "Brother."
A thousand years hence, when we both are damned,
We'll sit like ghosts upon the wailing shore,
And read our lives by the red light of hell.
Shall we not, Sister?
GIRL.
O thou strange, wild man!
Let me alone: what would you seek with me?
WALTER.
Your ear, my Sister. I have that within
Which urges me to utterance. I could accost
A pensive angel, singing to himself
Upon a hill in heaven, and leave his mind
As dark and turbid as a trampled pool,
To purify at leisure.—I have none
To listen to me, save a sinful woman
Upon a midnight bridge.—She was so fair,
God's eye could rest with pleasure on her face.
Oh, God, she was so happy! Her short life,
As full of music as the crowded June
Of an unfallen orb. What is it now?
She gave me her young heart, full, full of love:
My return—was to break it. Worse, far worse;
I crept into the chambers of her soul,
Like a foul toad, polluting as I went.
GIRL.
I pity her—not you. Man trusts in God;
He is eternal. Woman trusts in man,
And he is shifting sand.
WALTER.
Poor child, poor child!
We sat in dreadful silence with our sin,
Looking each other wildly in the eyes:
Methought I heard the gates of heaven close,
She flung herself against me, burst in tears,
As a wave bursts in spray. She covered me
With her wild sorrow, as an April cloud
With dim dishevelled tresses hides the hill
On which its heart is breaking. She clung to me
With piteous arms, and shook me with her sobs,
For she had lost her world, her heaven, her God,
And now had nought but me and her great wrong.
She did not kill me with a single word,
But once she lifted her tear-dabbled face—
Had hell gaped at my feet I would have leapt
Into its burning throat, from that pale look.
Still it pursues me like a haunting fiend:
It drives me out to the black moors at night,
Where I am smitten by the hissing rain,
And ruffian winds, dislodging from their troops,
Hustle me shrieking, then with sudden turn
Go laughing to their fellows. Merciful God!
It comes—that face again, that white, white face,
Set in a night of hair; reproachful eyes,
That make me mad. Oh, save me from those eyes!
They will torment me even in the grave,
And burn on me in Tophet.
GIRL.
Where are you going?
WALTER.
My heart's on fire by hell, and on I drive
To outer blackness, like a blazing ship.
[He rushes away.