A Cloud of Seraphim
(Fluttering nigh.) He dreams of Beauty! We will not die! Hail! Hail!
A Cloud of Seraphim
He smiles on Beauty! We will not die! Hail! Hail!
Ambition
(A hovering, terrible figure in the gloom.) He rests and drools! All is light and song! He thinks not on death!
(The shadows recede into the darkness, to all but nothingness; the endless legions of suns twinkle; the clouds of CHERUBIM and SERAPHIM swirl and turn.)
SCENE III: THE HOUSE OF DEATH
SCENE: A chamber of unimaginable horrors, vast, murky, involute, in which serpents twist and writhe; tortured figures crawl and groan; beasts of many heads and paws prowl to and fro, and all slimy odorous forms interlace in welters and sloughs and draperies and festoons. At the center, the Throne of the Lord, a mound of unclean beasts and serpents, hung over by clouds of evil spirits; his present embodied thoughts. At his side, huddled in despair, faint, pale shadows of their former selves, the thinnest of dreams—BEAUTY, REASON, PITY, HOPE, LOVE. Before him in glowering fullness, grown to vast proportions, AMBITION, and behind him the legions of his fancy, black and fulgurous, drawn close about. Insane, fevered, maundering, the LORD OF THE UNIVERSE bellows of destruction.