EGIL This!—the chase! To sit block-building like a little child? To ask vague questions that await strange answers? No! do not mock me! Summon the great hunt. Hand me a torch into my gripping palm, Point where to leap, and let the whirlwinds sing And the great jungles crash in conflagration. The wolf! reveal the wolf! that I may rend The demon limb from limb.
ARFI He rages blind Now in your eyes.
EGIL [Controlling himself, shudders.] Emancipate me!
ARFI Come; Here let us sit, as we were boys again, And pile our blocks.
THORDIS Go, Egil! Build with him. The forest-sprite has led you to her temple.
[Going to the tapestry frame, while Egil joins Arfi, she begins to work upon the embroidery, observing from time to time their block-building.]
EGIL A temple! Still they mock me.—’Tis a toy.
ARFI Why, true, a toy, and yet a temple, if The mind bring incense here, and the bow’d heart Make sacrifice.
EGIL We are not pigmies, we, To creep under this gable.
ARFI Are we not? Are we so great? Who hath not stood beneath A sparrow’s egg-shell, speckled o’er with stars, And dwindled there with wonder? Who so small But hath, to quench desire, drunk of the sun Or set his parch’d lips to the moon’s pale rim? So great, so small, neither and both, our stature Waxes and wanes, inconstant as a shadow ’Twixt night and noon and night. This temple, lad, Will be as cramped or spacious as the spirit Which consecrates it.