EGIL Dark! Thou speakest darkness.
ARFI Listen! This house of toy-wood is the altar Where you must supplicate the immortal gods For freedom.
EGIL So; the immortal gods! What, then, Are they that I should sue to them for freedom?
ARFI They are the powers of the inevitable To whom we mortals must submit our wills Or perish.
[Egil’s structure falls.]
EGIL Ah! it breaks. What made it fall?
ARFI A god: the same that holds these prison walls Stone upon stone; the same that mortises The rock-seams of the solid hills, and hangs Aloft the glittering roof-tree of the world.— You builded weak, and the god chided you.
EGIL Are then the gods so near?
ARFI In all our acts We feel the might of their invisible hands, But only in prayer behold them face to face.
EGIL In prayer?