  Lincoln is sitting absorbed in thought in an office of the executive mansion, where he has been in consultation with his cabinet. A telegraph instrument has ceased to click, but the wires are droning. Lincoln suddenly falls into a sleep, at once profound and trance-like. In the vision members of his cabinet and secretaries move in and out of the room. Lincoln So there are five? A Voice Yes, five to two. Seward’s Voice A month Has gone by and no policy. You should Take hold yourself, or on a cabinet member Devolve the task. Lincoln Whatever’s to be done Is mine to do. Seward’s Voice Fort Sumpter leave alone! If we employ armed force we have begun A civil war—without armed force we fail. We cannot take the fort and keep the fort, Unless we subjugate the States as well. No, let us not first draw the sword. Lincoln To say— A Voice Yes, five to two. Seward’s Voice Your cabinet opposes The Fort’s provisioning. Lincoln The property And military posts, the forts which were In our possession when the government Came to my hands, I shall defend and hold. I shall collect the duties, but beyond Such things make no invasion. A Voice And the mails? Another Voice Fort Sumpter has been shelled! Seward’s Voice So I forewarned you. Another Voice That was an error. Another Voice May I ask a question? Will you invade the country to collect The duties, or relieve a fort alone Where duties are in question? Lincoln My inaugural— Another Voice To hell with forts and duties—free the slaves! Seward’s Voice Drop slavery! Before the people raise The question: Is it Union or Disunion! Another Voice I say to let the erring Sisters go. Another Voice I care more for the principles— Another Voice Be still! I’m sick of principles— The Same Voice The principles Of local democratic government are worth Twice over all the niggers. Another Voice Senator, You are most eloquent when full of drink. Another Voice Would you unite the North? Maneuver them To fire upon the Fort. Another Voice The time has come To open up the question with the sword: Is this a league, is this a nation, which? Another Voice What do you want, a tariff or a bank? Take off your nigger mask, you centralist! Another Voice A contract broken by a signatory Absolves the other signatory. Another Voice Yes The Yankee cotton spinner— Another Voice Singing psalms! Another Voice The radicals have brought us to this pass, This agitation, hatred sectional. Douglas’ Voice All seem to overlook this vital matter: The President can use the military Where only States request it. Another Voice You forget The act of ’75. Douglas’ Voice I don’t forget. The act of ’75 does not apply, Except to laws resisted, where a marshall Is overpowered. Another Voice And there is no marshall, There is no judge in the seceded States. Another Voice You will appoint one, so you promised. Lincoln Yes. Douglas’ Voice Then, sir, what cause is there for apprehension? Who dares to say your President will pursue A policy of war, unless he call On Congress for the means and for the power? Another Voice I ask about Fort Sumpter—are there ships With cargoes of provisions on their way?— Another Voice Yes, they have sailed. Other Voices No! No! Another Voice Oh, yes, the seven governors from the North Have changed his policy. He now intends To overthrow the federative law. O great conspiracy—O seven-headed Apocalyptic Beast! The vision grows confused. Lincoln seems to himself to attempt to arise from the chair but is unable First Phantom Twice have I seen this fateful scene before. Second Phantom The depths are moving, but no waters roar. A mountain silence clasps the air and sea. Look through the glassy fathoms far below: Beneath us glides the ocean’s dizzy floor Which we skim over with a swallow’s speed. First Phantom I see a shadowy shore and precipices. Yes, this portends my spirit’s earthly woe. Second Phantom You shall not shrink! What though your heart shall bleed Its last drop out walking the abysses, You must go forth—the hour has struck for you! As youth may choose its work or happiness; Now you must steer the boat through fog and blast. This rock encircled water is no less Than your soul captured in the trap of Fate. Far over stands ’twixt earth and heaven a gate Where souls depart and enter into Time, You must set foot upon this shore and climb And blindly your election make, renew Your will and spirit. First Phantom Tell me what to do? Second Phantom Heal, if you can, the nation’s growing scars, Let harmony come out of harsh discord. First Phantom Suppose the seven States first draw the sword? Have they not drawn it now? Second Phantom All bloody wars Furnish great argument to place the blame For the first blow. But even if it’s blood That blots the bond of human brotherhood, Behold the pangs that flow from human pride When slaughter by such blood is justified. First Phantom What shall I do with giants who rebel? Second Phantom You do but traffic in a word, a name, A word it is with which you may inflame To mob-like fury a judicious nation— So you may enter on an usurpation. First Phantom What do you say? Am I a tyrant then? Second Phantom Already have you thought of arming men Without the sovereign sanction of the law. First Phantom But if I don’t mad Treason will have gained Such progress that it will have quite attained Its purpose to bind down and overawe Conciliation or resistance even. Second Phantom You arrogate the very will of heaven, As tyrants do, and in your purpose find A small reflection of the eternal mind. What do you know of this? But if you rest On human will and thought you must concede A contradiction in your dream, who break The law a rebel spirit to arrest. Once you were faithful to a better creed, That men may found new nations when the old No longer have the people’s fair consent. Rights are not hostile. If this be a right How may you overthrow it with your might? First Phantom Have you not heard this story of me told: At New Orleans I saw the children cry When from the auction block their sire was sold. I then resolved to strike this curse a blow If ever Heaven gave My arm the strength. It is my deepest hate. Second Phantom This is the thought then lying further back In your fanatic spirit, child of woe, Reached through a devious and hidden track! For this you will prepare your country’s grave. You will free some, but only to enslave A wider realm of being. First Phantom I would know What may be best. Second Phantom The country is at peace. You do not dare to ask your Congress for Troops on the Southern people to make war. First Phantom I do not need to ask. I have enrolled An oath with God the Nation to uphold. Second Phantom But if you call the troops will you not ask Congress to validate your powers’ increase And sharpening of the sword for such a task? You do not answer. Well, if this may be Do you not contemplate a tyranny? First Phantom What is this rupture but a mere defection, What might be called rebellion, insurrection Against the laws, which I must overthrow, As others did before me from the first? No word writ in the charter of the nation Has made provision for its termination. Second Phantom But not to argue this—you have reversed Your mind upon the right of revolution. First Phantom Not for a righteous or a holy cause. Second Phantom You test it in your own soul’s resolution. But tell me when there are no writs or laws How are you acting? First Phantom But I still command The property and forts, and other places Belonging to the Nation. Second Phantom Understand Their territory all such forts embraces And sovereignty thereover is resumed. You cannot have a war on that account, When they would pay you for the places lost. First Phantom First the rebellious spirit must surmount The barriers that keep them home with us. They cannot leave us, cannot take and hold What is not theirs, or what if they had sold They could not grant. Second Phantom That is but bloody gold. And what you say if acted on will bring A million deaths. First Phantom They are responsible For all the consequences if they cling To this rebellious purpose. Second Phantom To compel This fortress’s provisioning Will be a blow first struck. It is the law: The first blow of a war is struck by him Who makes the first blow needful to be struck. First Phantom You put the woven substance in a ruck. I leave the issue of a war with them. They shall not be assailed, nor may they have Conflict with me unless they first aggress The government. Second Phantom Oh, then they must withdraw Resistance to your plan. First Phantom Well, I confess No open plan, as yet. But now attend: I have an oath in heaven registered The Union to preserve, protect, defend; They have no oath the Union to destroy. Second Phantom What is the Union but a verbal toy Like Justice, Beauty, Liberty or Truth? And as for them they need not take an oath, They need but act. First Phantom The Union is unbroken, is a pact Which cannot be erased or torn apart By less than half of those who gave it breath. Second Phantom How does a State sink partly into death By joining other States? Can it accede And thereby lose its virtue to secede? First Phantom The Union is much older than accession. Second Phantom Some Union, not the Union which you rule. The states which formed the old Confederacy Withdrew to form the Union. Liberty Is older than all States. Her handmaiden has always been secession. First Phantom These arguments are used but to befool The minds who loathe the wrong they would conceal. No justice will be lost by him who waits. Second Phantom They ask a council for the general weal Of all the States these matters to arrange Without the flow of blood. First Phantom I shall not change What I have said: If God who rules above, Almighty Ruler of all nations, deems Eternal truth with them, or with our side, That truth eternal ever must abide. Second Phantom But after all the truth is that which seems The truth to you. And if mankind you love, Why draw the sword to justify such truth? Has any warrior of the world said more? First Phantom The people may be trusted to restore All broken rights, to them I leave all things. Second Phantom What do you say? These dubious wanderings Travel along a pathway scarcely smooth. You vowed to let no forces intermit The Nation’s laws in no place, save the means Which should be requisite, Were by the people from your arms withheld. You do not let them choose when you’ve compelled Their action by your act, which intervenes Their virgin will and what you do before You learn its voice. Yes, so arise all wars! What people ever had a chance to voice ’Twixt war and peace? Kings leave them to deplore The initial step while fighting to retrieve Or mitigate its ills. Your counselors Have spoken, and your counselors believe The pending step unwise. So at the last Out of all dialectics stand two men Each judging, each appealing to the shrine Of God, Eternal Justice, all unknown, Save as they see reflections of them cast In their refracted speculations—then What is it but the clash of sovereignties Grown firmer from offense and wounded pride? Yet cunning to manipulate decrees With forethought in successive acts to hide Provocative offenses, put in fault The other sovereign for the first assault. First Phantom One man may risk his life, or suffer wrong, He has no other but himself at stake. A ruler has been chosen to be strong, And save his people for his people’s sake. The clearest vision, most commanding power, Interprets and must rule the hour, Must call its purest sense of duty God. Must stake its being now, in worlds to come Before what thrones of judgment chance to be. One phase alone of life’s immensity For things unseen, the path he never trod Strewn with his errors. Yet he may be free By acting through that genesis and win Approval for the warp. No soul has room For growth in love, but may it also thrive To needed power in thought. If heaven require Excess in either, while the other shrinks In heaven’s ends, should heaven then requite The sacrifice with penitential fire? It is enough that whosoever drinks Of such success finds bitterness within, The cup on earth. Can anyone begrudge The work before me, sword that I possess? Nor do I of another’s motives judge. If rights conflict not, yet one master right Attuned to highest law must still prevail And lesser laws must fail. The winds of destiny may bear me far, Which out of deepest heaven are arising. I have one compass and one guiding star, One altar for my spirit’s sacrificing: The Union is my soul’s profoundest love. Second Phantom If you knew heaven’s wish you might fulfill it, Seen heaven’s law revealed, then you might will it, What man can say he knows the word thereof? Oh, not alone you dedicate your life You give the Nation’s blood and spirit too. If you could know the Nation would renew Its strength in years or cycles from your thought, And through your godlike daring might be wrought To finer triumphs in the time to come, You would have warrant to pronounce the doom Of blood and tears to fertilize the soil, Where at the start revenge and hate will grow. But what unending sorrow may recoil Upon your purposes, who do not know? First Phantom What are these cliffs of purple which we near? Gray castes of stagnant mists above them lie. The boat glides downward as if in a sphere Of liquid crystal mowing, dizzily The forked rocks point upward to the sky— Have I then died? Second Phantom There is a place of moss Whereon the prow must strike lest it be crushed. First Phantom This is the world’s end. How the air is hushed! Second Phantom Come now! You have been ferried well across. There! We have landed. Hear the whispering keel. First Phantom I’m growing faint. Second Phantom Much still must I reveal. We two must stand on yonder highest rock. First Phantom It cannot be! Second Phantom I will the door unlock. They may not be away. First let me knock. (He knocks on the cliff. The vision grows cloudy.) (They leave the heights and descend, approaching a mysterious place where heaven and earth are connected by gates.) First Phantom I can no further walk or fly. Second Phantom You enter at these gates near by. First Phantom I fall through space. Your hand, my friend. Second Phantom Quietly like a star descend. (They pass through the gates into a meadow.) First Phantom What is this meadow which I see? Second Phantom Here come the souls of men to be. Can you remember what you said Among the living and the dead: I would know heaven’s deepest law And flood the world of men with light, I would bring justice and be just. First Phantom Out of each soul’s prenatal night Something of what you say returns. The soul descending into dust Loses its memory as it burns Less brightly when the spirit wanes. Second Phantom Behold that pillar of splendor shining And bound to earth and heaven by chains! You see the distaff to it fixed And in the distaff whorls of iron, Each rising to a higher rim, And on each whirling rim a siren Chants, as you hear, her solemn hymn. First Phantom I hear it with the singing mixed Of one upon whose giant knee The distaff turns to hands that reach From thrones which stand at equal spaces. Second Phantom The giant is Necessity, The Fates are reaching from the thrones. First Phantom Such garlands for such darkened faces! What are these solemn monotones, Which are not music, are not speech? Second Phantom They labor through Eternity. The Universe of visible things Turns with the distaff here again. The dead come back with questionings And would choose better than before. Some say that Agamemnon chose The loneliness of eagle wings In hatred of his mortal woes. First Phantom From dreams like these I must be free! I know, Dread phantom, you are nothing but myself. You stand before me lately, mocking elf, Too much, and follow me where’er I go. What this portends I know not, death I fear. But what seems just to do I shall perform. A nation’s destiny is mine to steer, A people’s hope is on me in the storm. Behind these voices when they sing or laugh I hear the droning of the telegraph: Come! I would study now the last dispatches. Second Phantom No meaning it is clear your soul attaches To thrones, or sirens, or the giant knees. You have not fixed upon a policy. First Phantom I shall be guided— Second Phantom By necessity— First Phantom Well, yes, but by the will of God as well. Second Phantom How can you tell it from the will of hell? (Voices from the thrones.) First Throne Here I sit spinning From what beginning Did I begin? Second Throne Give me the thread! I will assign him Grief to refine him, Thorns for his head. Toil never ending Up from his birth This shall be leaven To lift him from earth Up into heaven. (Many souls are crowded into the meadow. A figure takes from the lap of Lachesis lots and scatters them.) Second Phantom Who honors heaven, heaven wins. I only show you where you stood Amid the fates and now your work Of justice and of brotherhood. You’re weary, yet you cannot shrink The task assumed—how it increases! A giant hand thrust in releases The numbered lots of mortal life, There from the apron of Lachesis, And throws them to the multitude Awaiting mortal strife. Second Throne One fluttered to his hand. He ran Between the thrones, the distaff under Which swayed and rolled upon her knees. The chains that bound it clanked and creaked. The far-off depths the lightening streaked Uprolled the deep symphonic thunder Which rumbled like a chariot, till Its echoes died and all was still, Save for the tinkling pipe and purl As faster sped the seventh whorl. We nodded, laughing at the game, And said: He’s dreaming Pericles Who gave his soul to ancient Greece. What will he do with such a name? Second Phantom Do you remember? First Phantom I remember A dream I had in early youth: My birth was humble, still I dreamed To consecrate my life to Truth And for the truth to be esteemed. I love the Republic, I would see Its soil and all its people free! (The Furies enter.) The Thrones Heaven and God are under us. Reveal We never may what end the law achieves. He shall be free who with increasing zeal Still labors and believes. The Furies You may deceive this fellow with such stuff; We have seen history woven long enough To know the good men plan at least by half Results in evil. The Thrones Be the epitaph Of him who moulds his being by this thought: “He doubted, failure marked the work he wrought.” The Furies What is the law, then, that he must obey? The Thrones The law that has most universal sway. The Furies What may that be? Is it to choose the good? The Thrones You know his dream of human brotherhood. The Furies He must seize power such dreams to realize. In usurpation great corruption lies. First Phantom What is this shape I deal with? It is whole, Inseparable forever, with a soul. It is a life of undivided breath. To break its body is to give it death. The Furies There might be two souls where before was one. First Phantom From heaven’s battlements a clarion Shivers the mystic chords of memory, Stretched forth from every grave and battle-field, My life may pay the forfeit—let it be. Destroy me if you will, I shall not yield To anarch forces. The Furies Then by tyranny You’ll break the giants if they dare rebel. Men through the giants only may be free. Destroy them or enchain them and you quell The Titan powers by whom there came Freedom’s Promethean flame. The Thrones Whence is the Voice, Which sings the eternal theme Of giants whirled Beneath the thunderbolts of Strength supreme; Of angels who have made the fateful choice, From heaven headlong hurled? Of Odin, in Valhalla, keeping guard Against the malice of the giant world, Slaying the mighty Ymir? And what was their reward Who warred upon the Thunderer For sovereignty for pity of mankind?— Go bear in pain the burden of the earth, Or under mountains blind Breathe hateful fire, Or moan your agony and fallen wrath Chained to the rocks, So shall thought rule, not force, or their desire Which is the law of music not of bread Or lower ordinance. Do you now tread, Do you bring fire, or quell disharmony, Destroy the Titans? In all time and space Freedom is only for the wise and free! The Thrones A hand like lightning from a thunder cloud Reaches from heaven to the apron’s folds, And takes the inscrutable lots, And scatters them among the spectral crowd. On them are written labors, wars and plots. Thus are they thrown, like snow they fall where’er They may be driven by the unseen air, Which moves so thinly here no eye beholds Its coming and its going. They shall fall Where chance may govern. Look! These two shall find Their fate and incarnation, work above This meadow under earth. Not wholly blind Shall they select the soul they would be like— That they may will in part—the rest shall be Ruled by the working of a destiny Of our appointing when the hour shall strike Commissioned under seal to say “Arise The hour has struck.” First Phantom My other self, your hand. Second Phantom We must be one, not two. First Phantom We must not stand In strength, intentions, visions separate. (The two phantoms become one.) The Thrones O soul, now one which just before was two, What is your deepest love? The Phantom It is the True. I love the Right, the Good, confederate And in this order, ruling, not apart: If this may be, mind, conscience, heart In harmony and balanced equipoise, I would possess, and I would have a voice To sway with truth. The Thrones Choose then O soul your fate! The Phantom Down bending I obey. What have I done? First Throne Come Destiny and over-watch your son. The Destiny Behold I loved and kept the public good Forever in my eye. At my command Were many armies, cities, islands, realms Which I ruled over with a master hand. I forced compliance, so my power withstood Internal quarrels and the foreign sword. But when I left the life of earth they came Around my bed, a worthy group, and spoke My trophies and authority and fame. Not one took notice of my greatest deeds: No father’s heart for my fault ever broke, Nor wailing woman tore her widow’s weeds. Law, Freedom, Progress, Virtue, Beauty, Truth, Humility, Religion, Knowledge lay Along the pathway of my city’s youth. Ill fortune forced imperial temptation And these divided even by heaven sundered Leaving to Empire and to Riches sway O’er Beauty, Knowledge, Progress, till the day Of hatred, envy, bitter disputation, All good was sunk. Its walls and temples thundered, My city on the hill was crushed and fell Through lust of riches, from its elevation. Study my problem and my spirit well. Yours are not greatly different—beware Great riches for your country lest they come With weakness and debasement for a snare. And to this end curb studied greed and those Spirits luxurious, and adventuresome, And those unjust, their hatred, guile oppose. Right is a thing ’twixt equals, and the strong Do what they can, the weak must suffer wrong. The fury and revenge which yet may rage Around your fallen brothers, when you ride Triumphant. Second Throne Now conduct him to our side Beneath the distaff in my hand. Thus is his fate forever ratified. (The Image Passes.) Third Throne Now hither bring him,—thus I breathe my spell. His doom is now made irreversible. The Throne of Necessity Pass under me. Now of this cup drink deep. There, he has drunk it and so falls in sleep. Now guard him, Destiny! (A sound of cannon. Lincoln awakes. The Secretary of War enters.) The Secretary of War Fort Sumter has been fired on! Lincoln Call the troops! |
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