A mountainous, treeless landscape covered with snow and ice. The Sun appears as a red, rayless sphere amidst mist wrack. Dim daylight. In the foreground an Eskimo hut among a few stunted birches and junipers. ADAM as a broken-down aged man supporting himself with a staff, descends from the hillside, with LUCIFER.
ADAM
Why walk we in this endless snowy waste,
Where death doth gaze on us with hollow eyes?
Only a seal the stillness breaks, that dives
Beneath the water, startled at our tread.
The very herbage wearies of the strife;
Only dwarfed bushes midst the lichen sway;
The moon glares red behind a veil of mist
Like to a lamp within a graveyard vault.
Lead me away to where the palm-trees grow,
To that sweet land of fragrance and the sun,
Where now at length the soul of man has grown
To reach complete awareness of its strength.
LUCIFER
There are we now. This red globe is thy Sun.
Our feet do stand on the meridian.
Too strong for science destiny hath proved.
ADAM
O dreadful world - to die were good alone!
I should not weep for what I leave behind.
Ah, Lucifer, once stood I long ago
Beside the cradle of the race of man;
And saw what glowing hopes within it rocked;
How many battles have I truly fought;
Now, as upon this giant sepulchre,
Whereon her mourning pall hath Nature cast,
I muse on Earth, the first and last of men:
I would fain know how my race met its end;
In noble conflict fell it worthily,
Or, miserably waning, did it pass
Inglorious, unworthy of lament?
LUCIFER
Ah, if of thy great spirit thou art vain,
As thou delightest yet to name that force
That sends the blood pulsating through thy veins,
And doth the heart of youth with hopes inspire,
Seek not to contemplate thy latter end,
And stand by thine own death-bed. ’Tis a time
For an examination marvellous
Of reckonings without the master made.
The brain’s delirium shall drive away
The glowing visions that life’s fever brings;
And who shall know the seeming from the true?
The feeble cry that ends the final fight,
Mocks bitterly the battles of our life.
ADAM
Why fell I not when I had risen high,
When strength and spirit in my heart I felt?
Far better were it so than that I heard
An austere spirit speak my epitaph
In cold indifference, who hath not shared
My conflict and doth not share in my death.
LUCIFER
Once more thy race appeareth in the tears
That mark the harsh awakening of thy mind
From fond illusion to reality.
Be not disquieted, thy race yet lives.
See, yonder stands a dwelling place of man,
And there the owner doth the threshold cross.
An ESKIMO comes out of a hut, prepared for hunting seal.
ADAM
This stunted form, this brutish countenance;
This, of my greatness, the usurping heir?
Why hast thou let me see this, Lucifer?
The comfort is more grievous than the pain.
THE ESKIMO
Are there yet gods that bear rule over us?
See now, they have appeared to me on earth.
Yet who shall say if they be good or ill?
’Twere safer if I hide myself from them.
He is about to retreat.
LUCIFER
A word with thee!
THE ESKIMO kneeling
Be merciful, my lord.
The first seal that I take shall be for thee
A sacrifice. Destroy me not, I pray.
LUCIFER
By what right dost thou sacrifice a seal
To save thy life by taking other life?
THE ESKIMO
Because I am the stronger: for I see
The fish doth eat the worm; the seal, the fish:
And thus, in turn, myself I eat the seal.
LUCIFER
And the Great Spirit thou dost serve for food!
THE ESKIMO
I know full well, but yet the little time
In which he deigns to let me live my life
I purchase with a sacrifice of blood.
ADAM
Thus speaks the craven!
LUCIFER
Hast thou done aught else?
Only this difference ’twixt thou and him.
He offers thee a seal, and thou mankind
To that divinity which thou hast formed
In thine own image as he hath in his.
THE ESKIMO
I see that thou art wroth, and feel the cause;
That in my need I dared to raise my sighs
To that Sun-god beneficent and bright,
That asks not; only giveth; and who once
Here too, our old tales tell us, reigned of old.
Oh pardon me, and I will curse him now.
ADAM
Almighty God, look down and veil thine eyes.
How fallen Man, Creation’s masterpiece!
THE ESKIMO to Lucifer
Thy comrade is sore angered, lacks he food?
LUCIFER
Nay, he is wroth because he hungers not.
ADAM
At such a time dull jesting comes amiss.
LUCIFER
It is the truth, no jest. Thy reasoning
Becomes a man well fed. Thy friend has of
An empty stomach the philosophy.
Ye will not thus with argument prevail
Against each other. But ye both would reach
At once agreement, if he now were filled
And thou didst hunger. Yea, ’tis even so,
Whatever be the fancies in thy heart,
The beast within you hath the foremost claim,
And only when the beast he hath assuaged,
Doth man deem in his foolishness and pride,
The first part of his being he may scorn.
ADAM
Well do thy words became thee, Lucifer,
Who ever dost delight in dragging down
All sacred things into the dust and mire.
Each great resolve, each deed of fair renown,
Are but the steam above a kitchen fire?
The foolish issue then of circumstance,
All bound alike by law material?
LUCIFER
Yet is it otherwise? Or dost thou think
Leonidas had died within the pass,
If that, instead of bread and barley broth,
In a republic which no money knew,
Within a palace he had tasted of
The dainty meats of eastern luxury?
Had Brutus died, if he had hastened back
To find the charms of Portia, and rest
From heat of battle after food and wine?
Whence cometh crime and whence nobility?
Is not the one by want and foul air bred?
The other by sunlight and liberty?
Are both in form and spirit not revealed
Within the image of posterity?
How many who have said that they have made
With themselves settlement of their accounts,
And then have hanged themselves upon a tree;
But if unsought for hands have cut them down,
Then, the reviving contact of new life
Has made them to forget their settlement.
Had Hunyadi not come upon the earth,
Born to a worthy nation; if within
A Saracen’s tent his cradle had been rocked,
Where would have been the Champion of the Cross?
If Luther had been Pope of Rome, perchance,
And Leo, Doctor of Theology
Within a German university,
Mayhap the second had reformed the first,
The first against the second hurled his ban.
What fate had been Napoleon’s, unless
A nation’s blood had smoothed his mighty course?
Perchance to moulder in some barracks dim.
ADAM laying his fingers on Lucifer’s mouth
Enough, all things as thou dost shew them thus,
So real and so manifest do seem
Yet all the more pernicious. Fools alone
Doth superstition blind, and they see not
The spirit which doth act and move midst us.
A good man, none the less, would recognize
His brother, if thy doctrine slew him not.
LUCIFER
Speak with thy comrade then; one lesson more
In knowledge of thyself will harm thee not.
ADAM
Live on yet many in this dreary land?
THE ESKIMO
Yea, many surely, more than I can count
Upon my fingers. True, I beat to death
Them that dwelt nigh me, but ’tis all in vain.
For ever come new folk, and seals are few.
Oh, if thou be a god, I pray thee grant
That there be less of men and more of seals.
ADAM
Enough, enough. Come, Lucifer, away!
LUCIFER
Nay, let us look at least upon his wife.
ADAM
I will not look, for if that man sink low,
Our eyes upon an evil sight do gaze,
It calls forth in our hearts alone contempt,
But woman, the ideal, poetry’s
Embodiment, if she sink low,
She were a form of horror! Forth from hence!
Meanwhile LUCIFER has led ADAM to the hut; now he kicks open the door and within, EVE is seen as the wife of the ESKIMO. ADAM halts, struck with astonishment, upon the shreshold.
LUCIFER
Nay, findest thou not one thou know’st in her?
Embrace her, else our friend were mortally
Offended if thou do not treat his wife
With all the honour courtesy requires.
ADAM
I her embrace, who held Aspasia
Within these arms! This woman, in whose face
I see yet dawn the features that were hers,
But like as though, whilst yet her lips did kiss,
She became beast.
THE ESKIMO entering the hut
Wife, guests are come to us.
See that thou dost them hearty welcome bid.
EVE falls on ADAM’s neck and draws him into the hut.
EVE
I bid thee welcome, stranger, rest within.
ADAM releasing himself
Come, aid me, Lucifer. Away from hence!
Back from the future to the present, lead.
Show me no more the fury of my fate,
The battles fought in vain. Let me think well,
If I may yet the will of God defy.
LUCIFER
Adam awake! Thy dream hath reached its end.