d snow!

Mrs. C. No. Destiny brought her. We lost our home. Your work was
here--and she would not stay behind you.

Poe. A _man_ would have saved her!

Mrs. C. O, my boy, do not take this burden on your soul! For
once spare yourself!

Poe. I can not even give her food!

Mrs. C. (Restraining him) My son, she sleeps.

Poe. Yes ... sleep ... let me not rob her of that too! Be quiet
... just be quiet ... while she dies. (Seats himself with
strange calmness) Come, mother, let us be cheerful. Take
this chair. Let us be rational. Let us think. Death is
strange only because we do not think enough. God must
breathe. Life is the exhalation, death the inhalation of
deity. He breathes out, and the Universe flames forth with
all her wings--her suns and clusters of suns--down to her
mote-like earth, the butterfly of space, trimmed with its
gaudy seasons, and nourishing on its back the parasitical
ephemeran, Man!

Mrs. C. My love--

Poe. Be calm, mother. Be calm. Then the great inbreathing
begins. The creative warmth no longer goes out. The
parasites vanish first, then the worlds on which they
ride, and last the mighty suns,--all sink into the still,
potential unity, and await the recurrent breath which may
bear another universe, unlike our own, where the animate
may control the inanimate, the organic triumph over the
inorganic,--(rising) ay, man himself may dominate nature,
control the relentless ecliptic, and say to the ages of
ice and fire 'Ye shall not tread on me!'

Mrs. C. Edgar!

Poe. I beg your pardon. We must be calm. (Resumes his seat) But
God will not stop breathing (with bitter sarcasm) though
your daughter--and my wife--is dying. (Mrs. Clemm weeps.
He turns to the window) Do you know that elephants once
nibbled boughs out there where the snow is falling? They
ran a mighty race--and died--but no tears were shed. In
the records of the cosmos, if man is written down at all,
I think he will be designated as the 'weeping animal.'

Mrs. C. Are you human?

Poe. I regret that I belong to that feeble and limited variety
of creation, but with the next self-diffusion of the
concen