SCENE I.: _Outside a college in Thebes. Egyptian students pass by.

MOSES _alone in meditation_.

[_Enter_ MESSENGER.]

MESSENGER

[_Handing papyrus._] Pharaoh’s desires.

MOSES

[_Reads._] To our beloved son, greeting. Add to our thoughts of you, if possible to add, but a little, and you are more than old heroes—not to bemean your genius, who might cry “Was that all!” We pile barriers everywhere: we give you idiots for tools, tree stumps for swords, skin sacks for souls. The sixteenth pyramid remains to be built: we give you the last draft of slaves. Move! Forget not the edict. PHARAOH.

MOSES

[_To_ MESSENGER.] What is the edict?

MESSENGER

The royal paunch of Pharaoh dangled worriedly, Not knowing where the wrong: viands once giant-like Came to him thin and thinner—what rats gnawed? Horror, the swarm of slaves! The satraps swore Their wives’ bones hurt them when they lay abed, That before were soft and plump: the people howled They’d boil the slaves three days to get their fat, Ending the famine. A haggard council held Decrees the two hind molars, those two staunchest Busy labourers in the belly’s service, to be drawn From out each slave’s greased mouth, which soon From incapacity will lose the habit Of eating.

MOSES

Well, should their bones stick out to find the air, I’ll make a use of them for pleasantness— Droll demonstrations of anatomy.

MESSENGER

And when you’ve ended find ’twas one on sharks.

[MOSES _signs to_ MESSENGER _to go. Exit_ MESSENGER.]

MOSES

Fine! Fine! See, in my brain What madmen have rushed through And like a tornado Torn up the tight roots Of some dead universe: The old clay is broken For a power to soak in and knit It all into tougher tissues To hold life; Pricking my nerves till the brain might crack It boils to my finger-tips, Till my hands ache to grip The hammer—the lone hammer That breaks lives into a road Through which my genius drives. Pharaoh well peruked and oiled, And your admirable pyramids, And your interminable procession Of crowded kings, You are my little fishing rods Wherewith I catch the fish To suit my hungry belly. I am rough now, and new, and will have no tailor. Startlingly, As a mountain-side Wakes aware of its other side When from a cave a leopard comes, On its heels the same red sand, Springing with acquainted air, Sprang an intelligence Coloured as a whim of mine, Showed to my dull outer eyes The living eyes underneath. Did I not shrivel up and take the place of air, Secret as those eyes were, And those strong eyes call up a giant frame? And I am that now.

Pharaoh is sleek and deep; And where his love for me is set—under The deeps, on their floor, or in the shallow ways, Though I have been as a diver—never yet Could I find.... I have a way, a touchstone! A small misdemeanour, touch of rebelliousness; To prick the vein of father, monitor, foe, Will tell which of these his kingship is. If I shut my eyes to the edict, And leave the pincers to rust And the slaves’ teeth as God made them, Then hide from the summoning tribunal, Pharaoh will speak; and I’ll seize that word to act. Should the word be a foe’s I can use it well As a poison to soak into Egypt’s bowels; A wraith from old Nile will cry “For his mercy they break his back” And I shall have a great following for this, The rude, touched heart of the mauled, sweaty horde, Their rough tongues fawn at my hands, their red-streaked eyes Glitter with sacrifice. Well! Pharaoh bids me act.... Hah! I’m all a-bristle.... Lord, his eyes would go wide If he knew the road my rampant dreams would race! I am too much awake now—restless, so restless. Behind white mists invisibly My thoughts stood like a mountain; But Power, watching as a man, Saw no mountain there— Only the mixing mist and sky And the flat earth. What shoulder pushed through those mists Of gay fantastic pastimes And startled hills of sleep?

[_He looks in a mirror._]

Oh, apparition of me, Ruddy flesh soon hueless, Fade and show to my eyes The lasting bare body; Soul-sack fall away And show what you hold! Sing! Let me hear you sing.

A VOICE

[_Sings._]

Upon my lips, like a cloud To burst on the peaks of light, Sit cowled impossible things To tie my hands at their prime and height. Power, break through their shroud; Pierce them so thoroughly, Thoroughly enter me, Know me for one dead; Break the shadowy thread, The cowering spirit’s bond Writ by illusions blond!

Ah! Let the morning pale Throb with a wilder pulse: No delicate flame shall quail With terror at your convulse. Thin branches whip the white skies To lips and spaces of song That chant a mood to my eyes.... Ah! Sleep can be overlong.

MOSES

Voices thunder, voices of deeds not done: Lo, on the air are scrawled in abysmal light Old myths never known and yet already forgone, And songs more lost, more secret than desert light: Martyrdoms of uncreated things, Virgin silences waiting a breaking voice— As in a womb they cry, in a cage beat vain wings Under life, over life: is their unbeing my choice?

Dull wine of torpor—the unsoldered spirit lies limp. Ah! If she would run into a mould, Some new idea unwalled To human by-ways, an apocalyptic camp Of utterest and ulterior dreaming, Understood only in its gleaming, To flash stark naked the whole girth of the world.

I am sick of priests and forms, This rigid dry-boned refinement: As ladies’ perfumes are Obnoxious to stern natures, This miasma of a rotting god Is to me. Who has made of the forest a park? Who has changed the wolf to a dog? And put the horse in harness? And man’s mind in a groove?

I heard the one spirit cry in them, “Break this metamorphosis, Disenchant my lying body; Only putrefaction is free, And I, Freedom, am not. Moses! Touch us, thou!”

There shall not be a void or calm, But a fury fill the veins of time— Whose limbs had begun to rot, Who had flattered my stupid torpor With an easy and mimic energy, And drained my veins with a paltry marvel More monstrous than battle; For the soul ached and went out dead in pleasure.

Is not this song still sung in the streets of me?

A naked African Walked in the sun Singing—singing Of his wild love.

I slew the tiger With your young strength (My tawny panther) Rolled round my life.

Three sheep, your breasts And my head between, Grazing together On a smooth slope.

Ah! Koelue! Had you embalmed your beauty, so It could not backward go Or change in any way, What were the use if on my eyes The embalming spices were not laid To keep us fixed, Two amorous sculptures passioned endlessly? What were the use if my sight grew And its far branches were cloud-hung, You small at the roots like grass; While the new lips my spirit would kiss Were not red lips of flesh, But the huge kiss of power? Where yesterday soft hair through my fingers fell A shaggy mane would entwine; And no slim form work fire to my thighs, But human Life’s inarticulate mass Throb the pulse of a thing Whose mountain flanks awry Beg my mastery—mine! Ah! I will ride the dizzy beast of the world My road—my way.