ACT IV
Scene: The rune-stone.
A white-rose bush, beside it, in bloom; a flame on the altar; sunset.
Enter Egil, alone.
EGIL Put it away? To put all from me—all— Or else despoil! Renounce, or with a kiss Consume the bright seduction! Mar—relinquish, In either path, to suffer; yet to see Myself at last for what I am, to know The inexorable bars, the nudging rafters, The starry lych-gate and the pit of tears Of this my soul and penthouse.—And the escape! To know that I—myself the miracle I worshipped—am a god, a sovereign lord Of nature, powerful to make the bounds And marches of the heaven my petty fiefs Of mind,—yet what a god! A clawed usurper, That snatches from the shoulders of the gods The green and azure cloth of summer-time, This human tapestry of spring and harvest Star-wrought with sanguine hearts and golden sheaves, And tears it, tooth-meal, for a wolf’s lair.—This, This also must have challenge: Might not Egil O’ermaster Fenris? Can the mind o’ermaster The will?
[Supplicating the rune-stone.]
O mystery, that made us two Yet one, resolve thyself and this and seal it! To put all, all away, or with a kiss consume?
[Pausing, he breaks a white rose, and holding it near and nearer the altar-flame watches it—as though for a sign—till it scorches; then snatching it back, extinguishes the flame. While he is bending over thus, Thordis enters,—in her hands a rope of twined arbutus-flowers. All in white, she is very pale; approaching behind Egil, she watches over his shoulder the rose petals and the flame. Suddenly, throwing the rope of arbutus over his head, she winds it about him. Turning, he drops the rose, and they gaze at each other, anguished.]