[While Quercus calls, from all sides Birds of many species and colors—like Ornis human in form—gather, and peer from the edges of the scene. To these Tacita now beckons, and by her gesture summons to her dance, while Quercus plays joyously on his pipe.]
ORNIS
Bird and faun and man and fairy,
Gather now to sanctuary!
[Tacita first dances alone, then with Quercus; then, inviting and leading them all in pied procession, she marshals all away into her woodland shrine.]
FINIS
AFTERWORD
In the original production of this masque, referred to in the Foreword, the sanctuary stage was devised by Mr. Joseph Lindon Smith in two planes—the natural and the supernatural, harmoniously blended.
The natural plane, in the foreground, was a leaf-strewn plot of earth; the supernatural, in the background, was a constructed stage some eighteen inches higher, sloping slightly upward toward the back, covered with smooth canvas, practical for dancing, so painted as to suggest a weathered outcropping of rock, overgrown in places by moss and greensward.
This constructed stage was divided from the foreground earth by the trunk of a felled maple tree, straight in line and inconspicuous in color.