But Eos proceeds to warn Deukalion and Pyrrha of long trial, and of many disappointments, closing thus:
"When darkness falls, And what may come is hard to see; When solid adamant walls Seem built against the Future that shall be; When Faith looks backward, Hope dies, Life appals, Think most of Morning and of me!
This sketch of the first Act of Taylor's work is so typical of the remainder that I need not add quotations from the second, or third, or fourth Act: the explicit modernness of the treatment, the spirituality, the personality, of it, everywhere forms the most striking contrast to the treatment of Æschylus; and I will close the case as to _Prince Deukalion_ by quoting the subtle and wise words of Prometheus which end the play. The time is the future: the coming man and woman, Deukalion and Pyrrha, after long trial, and long separation, are at last allowed to marry, and to begin their earthly life. These are Prometheus' parting words to them. It would be difficult to imagine one plane of thought farther removed from another than is that of the time-spirit which here speaks through Taylor, from the time-spirit which speaks through Æschylus. Remembering the relations between man and inexorable nature, between man and the exterminating god which we saw revealed by the Prometheus of Æschylus, listen to these relations prophesied by the Prometheus of Taylor,--
(In Æschylus, when once "destiny" is about, all retrieval grows absurd.)
'Tis this shall set your children free. The forces of your race employ To make sure heritage of joy; Yet feed, with every earthly sense, Its heavenly coincidence,-- That, as the garment of an hour, This, as an everlasting power. For Life, whose source not here began, Must fill the utmost sphere of Man, And so expanding, lifted be Along the line of God's decree, To find in endless growth all good; In endless toil, beatitude. Seek not to know Him; yet aspire As atoms toward the central fire! Not lord of race is He, afar,-- Of Man, or Earth, or any star, But of the inconceivable All; Whence nothing that there is can fall Beyond Him, but may nearer rise, Slow-circling through eternal skies. His larger life ye cannot miss, In gladly, nobly using this. Now, as a child in April hours Clasps tight its handful of first flowers, Homeward, to meet His purpose, go! These things are all ye need to know.