LeV. Gives her a singing and forefeeling heart
Whose courage cleaves renunciation's cloud
That swathes her splendor and would sighing keep
Her livid 'mong the stars!
Her. You would divide
Omnipotence with God, and arrogant,
Assume the bigger half. But there are woes
That even your hope, though it go winged and armored,
Must fall before.
LeV. Not one that I'll not face
Until its features mould me destiny.
The shape of radiance it shall wear for man
'Neath an unslandered Heaven! I could not live
If in the life about me I saw not
The world within this world, and sped my hope
The way that it shall take.
Her. Is not that way
Called Peace, Emilio?
LeV. Not the peace that spills
More blood than war, builds bigger jails, and leaves
More waifs to suck the stunting, poisonous breast
Of Charity! Peace as white ashes spread
Upon injustice' fly-blown wrack——
Her. [Leaving him] You are
A revolutionist!
LeV. And black to you,
For revolution leads into the horizon,
And must be figured dark to rearward eyes
Though God beyond gives welcome.
Her. [Coming gently back] May we not
Be patient even as Christ, who found this world
The home of poverty and left it so?
Did he not say the poor are ever with us?
LeV. You too must tap that last and golden nail
In th' pauper's coffin!
Her. It is the nail of truth,
If Christ spoke true.