EGIL [Vassal-like to the little boy.] Beseech you, sir, may I not play your part? I’d fain be the good hunter.
THE LITTLE BOY Granted, earl. I’d fainer be the wolf. [To the children.] Come! gather your flowers.
EGIL And when you’ve filled your laps and aprons up With wind-flowers and arbutus, bring them here. Mind! ’tis our lady Thordis’ wedding-day.
THE CHILDREN [Running from the little boy.] The wolf! the wolf!
[Passing left into the wood, they are seen for some time gathering flowers and watching, in their game, the stealthy approachments of the little boy.]
EGIL O freedom! happy world! Hark, how they laugh, with bubbling undersong Sweetening the over-choir of the birds. And I—I, too, can laugh; can loose my soul Free-wing’d into the open with a cry Unfetter’d as a lark. [Looking up into the tree-tops, he laughs again.] O rarest laughter! O medicine of the long-languish’d mind! O welling of the heart’s sweet waters up, Washing the acid tang of cynic woe Sere from the spirit’s lips. O benison Of innocence! And have I lived before This hour? Is not this day creation’s dawn? [Flinging himself upon the bank.] These children, with their lifted flowerlike faces, These flowers, with their dewy childlike eyes, These parting vapours on the golden hills, Yea, all these leaves of little twinkling grass Whose roots strike down to tears of yesterday— Now shine like things immaculate, new-born, And I, and they, like issue of one mother, The offspring of an universal birth. Oh, what exceeding power hath loveliness For her beholder!
[Where he lies thus rapt in the sylvan landscape, the first sunlight breaks through the wood, and by it the Shadow of a man is thrown sharply, from the left, across the reclining form of Egil. At the same time, from the right, is heard Arfi’s voice, singing.]
THE VOICE OF ARFI Thy heart, love, give or take Or cast away; Mine shall not break Forever and a day; For lovers kiss their mates where thoughts are kind. Love lives within the mind—the mind—the mind.
[Slowly having risen to his feet, Egil perceives the human shadow and starts.]
EGIL Yorul! [The shadow recedes, left, from the scene.] Yorul, stay! Come back!