Hud. A rare, hot sermon,
But I'm not Providence, that from my hand
Must pour unfailing bounty.
Cha. Humble, sir?
I thought you claimed a power that gave the world
The shape you chose.
Hud. But I must use the stuff
I find here. That I can't remake or change.
So must my world show flaws and ugly spots
Due to its substance, not to my good pattern.
Cha. That stuff, sir, is the same that lifted us
From four feet up to two! The elements
That played like death upon it but aroused
Their conqueror. In the embrace of winds
It made us ships and gave us wings. From dust,
The very dust that choked it, grew the dream
That lifts it deathless, an eternized God.
And surely as your grip makes it a slave,
You teach it freedom. In your clutch 'twill find
Once more the need creative, and upswell
With power that shall leave you by the way
As heaving seas leave straws upon the sand.
You shall be nothing. As a dream that dies
With waking—lost so utterly
The sleeper knows not that it was—so you
Shall be a vanished thing that man born free
Can not reclothe in guess!
Hud. Peonia's sun
Has touched your wits. You still think of revolt?
Cha. I think of victory.
Hud. Your comedy
Is past its hour. Come, Chartrien, give it up.
Confess the war is done.
Cha. Bolderez' guns
Will make confession of another sort.
Hud. O, ho! I see a light. You have not heard
The morning news. Bolderez has come in.
Cha. Come in? Your couriers flatter you. He holds
The heights of Gila with five thousand men.