Wrong ventured out against me and braved :

And I'U be glad to see aU breathing pleasure

Burn as foolishly to naught

As a moth in candle flame.
If I but have my will to watch over those

Who injured me bawling hoarse heartless fear.
They are all gone but HUFF, SHALE and the
DOWSER.
. Shale

As for you, let you and the women make
Your howling scare of this; I'll stand and laugh.
But if it truly were the End of the World,
I'ld be the man to face it out, not you :

215



Lascelles I who have let life go delighted through me,

Aber- Not you, who've sulkt away your chance of life

crombie In mumping about being paid for goodness.
[Going.
Huff {after him)
You wait, you wait !



[He follows the rest.
Dowser (alone) Naught but a plague of flies !

I cannot do with noises, and light fools
Terrified round me; I must go out and think
Where there is quiet and no one near. O, think !
Life that has done such wonders with its think

ing,
And never daunted in imagining;
That has put on the sun and the shining night.
The flowering of the earth and tides of the sea,
And irresistible rage of fate itself,
AH these as garments for its spirit's journey —

now this life, in the brute chance of things,
Murder'd, uselessly murder'd ! And naught else
For ever but senseless rounds of hurrying motion
That cannot glory in itself. O no !

1 will not think of that; I'll blind my brain
With fancying the splendours of destruction;
When like a burr in the star's fiery mane
The crackling earth is caught and rusht along.
The forests on the mountains blazing so.
