Poe. I brought her to this land of ice and snow!
Mrs. C. No. Destiny brought her. We lost our home. Your work was here—and she would not stay behind you.
Poe. A man would have saved her!
Mrs. C. O, my boy, do not take this burden on your soul! For once spare yourself!
Poe. I can not even give her food!
Mrs. C. (Restraining him) My son, she sleeps.
Poe. Yes ... sleep ... let me not rob her of that too! Be quiet ... just be quiet ... while she dies. (Seats himself with strange calmness) Come, mother, let us be cheerful. Take this chair. Let us be rational. Let us think. Death is strange only because we do not think enough. God must breathe. Life is the exhalation, death the inhalation of deity. He breathes out, and the Universe flames forth with all her wings—her suns and clusters of suns—down to her mote-like earth, the butterfly of space, trimmed with its gaudy seasons, and nourishing on its back the parasitical ephemeran, Man!
Mrs. C. My love—
Poe. Be calm, mother. Be calm. Then the great inbreathing begins. The creative warmth no longer goes out. The parasites vanish first, then the worlds on which they ride, and last the mighty suns,—all sink into the still, potential unity, and await the recurrent breath which may bear another universe, unlike our own, where the animate may control the inanimate, the organic triumph over the inorganic,—(rising) ay, man himself may dominate nature, control the relentless ecliptic, and say to the ages of ice and fire ‘Ye shall not tread on me!’
Mrs. C. Edgar!