Hud. Fanatic! Fool!
Have I not tried to teach you——
Cha. Teach yourself!
Hud. Come, come!
Cha. I mean the words. The race has learned
Its lesson while you've played with sand. At last
The dumb, trod way has spoken 'neath man's feet,
And by that word uncovered he has learned
What he shall not be,—knows what heights of sun
Are his, and seeing takes his road,—no more
Battering in wild and bruisèd ignorance
A destiny of stone. Ay, consciousness
Has wakened in itself the unknown god
That gives the race its eyes. You, you a king?
Who do not know that every man is heir
To kingship that must leave such thrones as yours
Outcoursed and little recked as the strewn toys
Of childhood!
Hud. Mud-sill dynasties. You know
That I am master.
Cha. Master? You believe
That man, at top of conquest, who has made
Nature his weariless serf, and set the yoke
From his own neck on her divinities,
Will seal to you—weak, myriadth part of him—
Those wizard captives bending to the dream
Of his new world? Gird you with fortune that
He wrenched from stony ages?—let you gorge
The magic fruit snatched by his perilled being
In starward battle up the abysmal steep?
Hud. I am a fact,—not words.
Cha. You can believe it?
At last on dawn-browed heights, with victor foot
On mysteries bound the genii of his wish,
He'll trail his hopes to kennel? Let you pluck
His universe unflowered, and shrink life
To growling brevity 'tween lash and bone?
A slave to you? Obstructive clod,
Who could not stir with one life-budding dream
Though holy imagination tipped with fire
Should score her script upon you!
[A physical pain overcomes Hudibrand. Hernda runs to his side. He regains composure, his manner forbidding solicitude]
Hud. I am patient.
One word of mine would send you manacled
To prison. If you are here to lay down arms——