DEATH Nay, thou hast failed.
[Lifting the scroll of Prospero, which he has taken from Caliban, Death makes a gesture to his followers.]
Bear her to Setebos!
[Then, laying his hand upon Caliban, he turns with him backward, as a group of the gray-cloaked Shapes raise the limp form of Miranda to a cloth-draped bier, and thus bear her downward toward the cell’s mouth. In dim processional, as they go, they raise again their dirge:]
THE DIRGE Gray—gray—gray: Love, be sin-born of Misgiving! Life, be a garment of dullness, drab from the loom! Bleak—bleak—bleak: Death, Death is lord of the living: Not in the clay but the heart of man lies the tomb.
[Disappearing in the cell below, their chant dies away. Above them, from the left, Ariel returns, alone. Searching in the dusk, half fearfully, he calls:]
ARIEL Miranda—mistress: He hath vanished. Nowhere Can I find trace of him. Yea, and my Spirits They, too—they, too, are gone, lost in the grayness: All have deserted us! Miranda—mistress! Where art thou? Gone, thyself?—and I alone! O gray, that hast engulfed a world of beauty, Where shall I find them ever more—my master, My star-bright mistress? Hear me, Yellow Sands! If you have beheld them, answer now my prayer! [Outstretching his arms toward the Sands.] Prospero! Prospero!—Master!
[From far across the Sands bursts a mellow radiance, and the rich voice of Prospero calling in answer:]
PROSPERO Ariel! Ariel! Ho, bird!
[Springing into light upon the farthest wave-lines of the Yellow Sands, Prospero comes returning, surrounded by the Spirits of Ariel, clad all in green and bearing in their midst a garlanded May-pole. Marching joyously across the circle toward Ariel, all in radiant glow, they come shouting a choral song:]