Pyrr. True in Athens!
But you've another name. I've heard you called
The young philosopher. Play you at that.
'Twill tire naught but the tongue. Yours will go far.
Bia. Nay, spare me toil of spirit searching through
Earth, sea, and sky for phrases magical
To wrap creation in, as 'twere a babe
Each man might call his own could he but find
Some good-wife fancy to deliver it.
No other hope?
Pyrr. They name you poet, too.
Build round your spirit an Elysian cheat
And buzz it through upon a golden wing.
Is that not idle enough?
Bia. You touch me now
With flattery's gold point. I wince and love
The pain. Yet I'd not be a frolic breath
At play with Spring and florets in the dew,
Or move in rhymèd courtesies before
The smile or frown of gods. Trick my dear soul
In May-day rags to catch a languid eye.
Babble of moods and minds, how some think this,
Some that, and some have never thought. Drone how
On such a day one struck another down,
Or led a fleet, or laid a city wall.
Pyrr. What would you sing then, pray?
Bia. I would not sing.
Was there not poetry before men spake?
I'd go behind the broidered veil we've wrought
Before the face of one that we loved much
And then forgot for beauty of the shroud.
The old lere's lost, the new but irks our dream.
We listen to ourselves, while round us ever
Are worlds that vainly pluck us to their doors,
Giving us sign in lightning, heat, and wave,
In flake of snow, flint-spark, and crystal rock,
In stones that make the iron creep, and color,
Fair flag and challenge to our shuttered minds.
Pyrr. [Moving nearer] Oh!
Bia. [Seeming to forget her]
Round our lives is life whose destiny
Is that frontier no word of ours has crossed,
But man to come shall plant and harvest there,
Where his soul sets the plough.
Pyrr. [Softly] You know that too?
Bia. That life shall warm his barest common way
Of in and out. In field and market-place,
He'll lay his cheek 'gainst its unbodied love
And flush translations of its silent touch.
Then will be poets! Thought that now must fail
In bird-wing flight, shall from a violet's eye
O'erlook the sun. Till then I will not sing.