CRASSUS. Ah! but your soul is in your breath.
ALICIA. Only as the graven image of death Which men call life, and ignorantly adore!
CRASSUS. Spare me! I cannot bear you more.
ALICIA. Then will I drown you. Lock your fingers fast In mind, and let our mouths mix at the last.[The stuatue of PAN is seen to be alive.]
PAN. Shrill, shrill Over the hill! The hunter is hot - this is the kill! Scream! Scream! Dissolving the dream Of life, the knife to the heart of the wife! The fountain jets Its flood of blood, And the moss that it wets Is an amethyst flame of violets.
Who shall escape Murder and rape What I am alive in my solemn shape? Shrill, shrill, Over the hill! The hunter is hot - this is the kill! The heart of the home Is a fury of foam; The storm is awake, and the billows comb. But though I be Their frenzy of glee, I am also the passionless soul of the sea!
Mine eyes glint fire, And my cruel lips curl; Mine the desire Of the god and the girl; But fierier and fleeter, And subtler and sweeter Than the race of the rhythm, the march of the metre, Is the shrilling, shrilling Of the knife in the killing That ends, when it must, (O the throb and the thrust!) In a death, in the dust, The silence, the stillness, of satiate lust, The solemn pause When the veil withdraws And man looks on his god, on the Causeless Cause. Still, still, Under the hill! The hunter is dead - this is the kill!
CRASSUS. Pan spoke.
ALICIA. Pan never speaks till man is dumb, And only then if he be like a child Silently curled within its mother's womb, Or feeding at her breast. There is a wild Way also - when his dumbness is of death. And there's a first and second death. Remember To die so that no god's or angel's breath May quicken into life the wasted ember!
CRASSUS. I am dead now.