How can you tell it from the will of hell?
(Voices from the thrones.)
First Throne
Here I sit spinning
From what beginning
Did I begin?
Second Throne
Give me the thread!
I will assign him
Grief to refine him,
Thorns for his head.
Toil never ending
Up from his birth
This shall be leaven
To lift him from earth
Up into heaven.
(Many souls are crowded into the meadow. A figure takes from the lap of Lachesis lots and scatters them.)
Second Phantom
Who honors heaven, heaven wins.
Not here your fate on earth begins.
I only show you where you stood
Amid the fates and now your work
Of justice and of brotherhood.
You’re weary, yet you cannot shrink
The task assumed—how it increases!
A giant hand thrust in releases
The numbered lots of mortal life,
There from the apron of Lachesis,
And throws them to the multitude
Awaiting mortal strife.
Second Throne