Where else can I be quiet? Now there's an end Of daring, 'tis the one place my life has made Where I may try to dare in thought. I mind, When I stood in the midst of those bare women, All at once, outburst with a rising buzz, A mob of flying thoughts was wild in me: Things I might do swarmed in my brain pell-mell, Like a heap of flies kickt into humming cloud. I beat them down; and now I cannot tell For certain what they were. I can call up Naught venturesome and darting like their style; Very tame braveries now!--O Shale's the man To smile upon the End of the World; 'tis Shale Has lived the bold stiff fashion, and filled himself With thinking pride in what a man may do.-- I wish I had seen those women more than once! Vine: Well, here's an upside down! This is old Huff! What have you been in your heart all these years? The man you were or the new man you are? Huff: Just a dead flesh! Merrick: Nay, Huff the good man at least Was something alive, though snarling like trapt vermin. But this? What's this for the figure of a man? 'Tis a boy's smutty picture on a wall. Huff: I was alive, was I? Like a blind bird That flies and cannot see the flight it takes, Feeling it with mere rowing of its wings. But Shale--he's had a stirring sense of what he is. [Shouting outside. Then SOLLERS walks in again, very quiet and steady. He stands in the middle, looking down on the floor.] Vine: What do they holla for there? Sollers: The earth. Merrick: The earth? Sollers: The earth's afire. Huff: The earth blazing already? [Shouts again.] O, not so soon as this? Vine: What sort of a fire? Sollers: The earth has caught the heat of the star, you fool. Merrick: I know: there's come some dazzle in your eyes From facing to the star; a lamp would do it. Huff: It will be that. Your sight, being so strained, Is flashing of itself. Sollers: Say what you like. There's a red flare out of the land beyond Looking over the hills into our valley. The thing's begun, 'tis certain. Go and see. Vine: I won't see that. I will stay here. Sollers: Ay, creep Into your oven. You'll be cooler there.-- O my God, we'll all be coals in an hour! [Shouts again.] Huff: And I have naught to stand in my heart upright, And vow it made my living time worth more Than if my time had been death in a grave! [Several persons run in.] The Crowd: 1. The river's the place! 2. The only safe place now! 3. Best all charge down to the river! 4. For there's a blaze, A travelling blaze comes racing along the earth. Sollers: 'Tis true. The air's red-hot above the hills. The Crowd: