I'm always bad at seeing 'em, even my own.

Dowser:

A fool's! 'Twill cheer you when the earth blows up.

Like as it were all gunpowder.

Vine:

You mean The star will b.u.t.t his burning head against us?

'Twill knock the world to flinders, I suppose?

Dowser:

Ay, or with that wild, monstrous tail of his Smash down upon the air, and make it bounce Like water under the flukes of a harpooned whale, And thrash it to a poisonous fire; and we And all the life of the world drowned in blazing!

Vine:

'Twill be a handsome sight. If my old wife Were with me now! This would have suited her.

'I do like things to happen!' she would say; Never shindy enough for her; and now She's gone, and can't be seeing this!

Dowser:

You poor fool.

How will it be a sight to you, when your eyes Are scorcht to little cinders in your head?

Vine:

Whether or no, there must be folks outside Willing to know of this. I'll scatter your news.

[He goes.]

[A short-pause: then SOLLERS breaks out.]

Sollers:

No, no; it wouldn't do for me at all; Nor for you neither, Merrick? End of the World?

Bogy! A parson's tale or a bairn's!

Merrick:

That's it.

Your trade's a gift, easy as playing tunes.

But Sollers here and I, we've had to drill Sinew and muscle into their hard lesson, Until they work in timber and glowing iron As kindly as I pick up my pint: your work Grows in your nature, like plain speech in a child, But we have learnt to think in a foreign tongue; And something must come out of all our skill!

We shan't go sliding down as glib as you Into notions of the End of the World.

Sollers:

Give me a tree, you may say, and give me steel, And I'll put forth my shapely mind; I'll make, Out of my head like telling a well-known tale, A wain that goes as comely on the roads As a ship sailing, the lines of it true as gospel.

Have I learnt that all for nothing?--O no!

End of the World? It wouldn't do at all.

No more making of wains, after I've spent My time in getting the right skill in my hands?

Dowser:

Ay, you begin to feel it now, I think; But you complain like boys for a game spoilt: Shaping your carts, forging your iron! But Life, Life, the mother who lets her children play So seriously busy, trade and craft,-- Life with her skill of a million years' perfection To make her heart's delighted glorying Of sunlight, and of clouds about the moon, Spring lighting her daffodils, and corn Ripening gold to ruddy, and giant seas, And mountains sitting in their purple clothes-- Life I am thinking of, life the wonder, All blotcht out by a brutal thrust of fire Like a midge that a clumsy thumb squashes and smears.

Huff:

Let me but see the show beginning, though!

You'ld mind me then! O I would like you all To watch how I should figure, when the star Brandishes over the whole air its flame Of thundering fire; and naught but yellow rubbish Parcht on the perishing ground, and there are tongues Chapt with thirst, glad to lap stinking ponds, And pale glaring faces spying about On the earth withering, terror the only speech!

Look for me then, and see me stand alone Easy and pleasant in the midst of it all.

Did you not make your merry scoff of me?

Was it your talk, that when yon shameless pair Threw their wantoning in my face like dirt, I had no heart against them but to grumble?

You would be saying that, I know! But now, Now I believe it's time for you to see My patient heart at last taking its wages.

Sollers:

Pull up, man! Screw the brake on your running tongue, Else it will rattle you down the tumbling way This fellow's gone.

Merrick:

And one man's enough With brain quagged axle-deep in crazy mire.

We won't have you beside him in his puddles, And calling out with him on the End of the World To heave you out with a vengeance.

Huff:

What you want!

Have I not borne enough to make me know I must be righted sometime?--And what else Would break the hardy sin in them, which lets Their souls parade so daring and so tall Under G.o.d's hate and mine? What else could pay For all my wrong but a blow of blazing anger Striking down to shiver the earth, and change Their strutting wickedness to horror and crying?

Merrick:

Be quiet, Huff! If you mean to believe This dowser's stuff, and join him in his bedlam, By G.o.d, you'll have to reckon with my fist.