ift and a leap
The ninth wave curls, and breaks upon the beach,
And rushes up it, swallowing the sand?
I am that ocean.... Now, you understand?

CRASSUS.
Alicia! O! this is unbearable.
Surely this wave washes the shore of hell!

ALICIA.
Each follows each
Remorseless and indifferent as Nature
Is to each creature.

CRASSUS.
Wonderful, wonderful woman!
[She throws her head back, and laughs]

ALICIA.
Now, you think
You know my secret. I have given you drink,
And you are wise. But hush! to all emotion
Save this the pulse and swell of Ocean
For at the last with mouth and fingers wried
All must proclaim the triumph of the tide.

CRASSUS.
Ah! still you mock me with your cruel laugh.

ALICIA.
It is your foolish epitaph.

CRASSUS.
But this can be no mockery. Heave and sway
And curl and thrust - these waves are not at play.

ALICIA.
You feel the ocean breaking on the shoal;
But passionless and moveless is its soul.

CRASSUS.
Ah! but your soul is in your breath.

ALICIA.
Only as the graven image of death
Which men call life, and ignorantly adore!

CRASSUS.
Spare me! I cannot bear you more.

ALICIA.
Then will I drown you. Lock your fingers fast
In mind, and let our mouths mix at the last.
[The stuatue of PAN is seen to be alive.]

PAN.
Shrill, shrill
Over the hill!
The hunter is hot - this is the kill!
Scream! Scream!
Dissolving the dream
Of life, the knife to the heart of the wife!
The fountain jets
Its flood of blood,
And the moss that it wets
Is an amethyst flame of violets.

Who shall escape
Murder and rape
What I am alive in my solemn shape?
Shrill, shrill,
Over the hill!
The hunter is hot - this is the kill!
The heart of the home
Is a fury of foam;
The storm is awake, and the billows comb.
But though I be
Their frenzy of glee,
I am also the passionless soul of the sea!

Mine eyes glint fire,
And my cruel lips curl;
Mine the desire
Of the god and the girl;
But fierier and fleeter,
And subtler and sweeter
Than the race of the rhythm, the march of the metre,
Is the shrilling, shrilling
Of the knife in the killing
That ends, when it must,
(O the throb and the thrust!)
In a death, in the dust,
The silence, the stillness, of satiate lust,
The solemn pause
When the veil withdraws
And man looks on his god, on the Causeless Cause.
Still, still,
Under the hill!
The hunter is dead - this is the kill!

CRASSUS.
Pan spoke.

ALI