Page:Semiramis and other plays (IA semiramisotherpl00darg).djvu/203

 Hel. (In sudden alarm) I hear a step! Poe. (Looking at her reproachfully) Listen better, you will hear God's footfall. Hel. Some one is up. Poe. And do you care? Would you put a stain upon this hour? This flower of love perfect from the skies? Hel. Ah, it is gone. Poe. (Wildly) O, you will leave me, Helen! You can not stay! For I will play the madman to thy sense when I am sanest, and like a shivering Atlas shake thy world when most thou wouldst be still. This body wraps more lives then one, my girl. When I was born no pitying angel dipped my spirit-fire in Lethe. I weep with all the dead as they my brothers were, and haunt the track of time to shudder with his ghosts. Wilt fare with me, brave Helen? Wilt tread the nadir gloom and golden path of suns? Canst gaze with me into the fearful, grey infinitude— Hel. That grey infinitude is yet the circle of your being. The mind can not leave itself. You are always in your own country. Why should you fear? Poe. The mind that can not leave itself knows nothing. Not the 'I am' but 'Thou art' is God. O, there is a realm of which imagination is but a shadow—where the mind is burnt away in His vision's fire, and thought becomes celestial angel of itself! And you turn back with the first step—already I am alone— Hel. No! I, too, have hung upon the boundaries of the world to catch God's flying dreams! O, trust me! Thou shalt fling no lance but I will cast it on to gleam in a farther sun! Bring me roses from Jupiter, I'll bring thee lilies from Uranus! O,— Poe. Mine, by Heaven! (Catches her to him) Here we'll begin the immortal pilgrimage! We need not wait for death! From world to world—