Moses

Silence, you beast!

[He changes his tone to a winning softness.]

I hate these family quarrels: it is so Like fratricide. I am a rebel, well? Soft! You are not, and we are knit so close It would be shame for a son to be so honoured And the father still unknown: come, Koelue’s (so my) father, I’ll tell my plans—you’ll beg to be rebel then. Look round on the night— Old as the first, bleak, even her wish is done; She has never seen, though dreamt perhaps of the sun, Yet only dawn divides; could a miracle

Destroy the dawn, night would be mixed with light, No night or light would be, but a new thing: So with these slaves, who perhaps have dreamt of freedom, Egypt was in the way; I’ll strike it out With my ways curious and unusual. I have a trouble in my mind for largeness, Rough-hearted, shaggy, which your grave ardours lack: Here is the quarry quiet for me to hew; Here are the springs, primeval elements, The roots’ hid secrecy, old source of race, Unreasoned reason of the savage instinct. I’d shape one impulse through the contraries Of vain ambitious men, selfish and callous, And frail life-drifters, reticent, delicate— Litheness thread bulk, a nation’s harmony: These are not lame nor bent awry, but placeless With the rust and stagnant. All that’s low I’ll charm, Barbaric love sweeten to tenderness, Cunning run into wisdom, craft turn to skill; Their meanness, threaded right and sensibly, Change to a prudence envied and not sneered; Their hugeness be a driving wedge to a thing

Ineffable and useable, as near Solidity as human life can be: So grandly fashion these rude elements Into some newer nature, a consciousness Like naked light seizing the all-eyed soul, Oppressing with its gorgeous tyranny Until they take it thus—or die.

[While speaking, he places his hand on the unsuspecting Egyptian’s head and gently, caressingly, pulls his hair back until his chin is above his forehead, and holds him so till he is suffocated. In the darkness ahead is seen the glimmer of javelins and spears: it is Prince Imra’s cohorts come to arrest MOSES.]

THE END.