Percy MacKaye

“ Its production came about by a spontaneous and glad cooperation of artists, neighbors, lovers of nature, imbued with a deep feeling in common—concern for the welfare of wild birds. In this important concern its enactors were happily encouraged by the sympathetic presence of the President of the United States and the participation of his family.
Swift and spontaneous as its production was, however, the masque in its reasons for being was not unpremeditated. It took its origin from two important sources, rarely, if ever, associated—nature study, and the art of the theatre. ”

“ Your budding apple boughs;
Show your ancestral elms
60Gaunt limbed with leprosy, which overwhelms
Their green old age in death;
Or those swift locust clouds, whose breath
Blasts the ripe loveliness of Spring ”

“ ALWYN
With loveliness more deep than eyes discover.
STARK
So, ’tis a bargain, then?
ALWYN
Sit by me here;
And if your musings cause no fear,
You shall behold her in her secret dances.
50STARK
By Hercules! I’m half prepared to love her!
[He sits on the log beside Alwyn. Ornis still stands apart, under Shy’s protection. Quercus enters, beckoning backward into the wood.]
51 VIII
Tacita. Alwyn. Ornis. Stark. (Shy. Quercus.)
ALWYN
Now, Tacita, shy pagan nymph, appear! ”

“ Ornis, who reigns among your ancient boughs
30Spirit of birds and sister of our race,
Man. Stir your spell-enchanted feet,
And by their moods arouse
Her hidden grace
To heed us, and hold speech from realms unseen.
[To mysterious music, Tacita treads a dance of invocation, appealing in pantomime to the unseen spirit of wings, which flits and sings and broods in the boughs above her. Alwyn and Shy watch her, rapt and expectant.
Suddenly a sharp gun-shot sounds, shivering the music, which ceases. Through the boughs, a bird falls fluttering to the earth.]
31 VI
Ornis. ”

“ By the same art, the fascinating designs, embossings, xicolorings, of insect forms could be symbolized in spectacles of astonishing beauty, motivated dramatically to the real and tremendous human relation which that ignored but pestiferous race bears to human society and the state ”

“ The movement to-day for the conservation of our birds and their more intimate study might well take on significant, lovely forms of symbolic expression in pageants, festivals and the drama of the civic theatre. ”

“ The forms of popular art, therefore, are limited only by the ideas of man.”
It is thus as an illustration of one of the multiform xiigenres of the civic theatre’s potential art that this little masque has its main significance.
Before the actual establishment of the Civic Theatre among us, the opportunities of the working dramatist to make tangible contributions by his art to its repertory are, of course, very scant and at best groping and experimental. One such as the present may serve, however, to suggest certain immediate, practical possibilities. ”

“ Wings, wings! swift wings, shy wings, eternal wings!
Where shall I follow?
Ah, joy—jubilant melody—
And morning! Joy—I follow!
I dream, and drink from your immortal springs!
[Tacita disappears. Stark beholds Ornis.]
53 IX
Stark. Ornis. (Alwyn. Quercus. Shy.)
STARK
What are you?
ORNIS
[Appealing with half-fearful affection.]
Brother!—brother!
STARK
[With sudden cry and gesture.]
Ha, my net!
The shy bird shall be captured ’live!
[From his shoulder he looses the net, and flings it over Ornis, seizing the meshes.]
Now, Joy,
I hold you fast!
ORNIS
[Struggling.] ”

“ No brooding-place of yours—but I was in the breeze;
[To Quercus.]
And ever to your whistle
I pipe the last note from the nearest thistle.
[Tacita appears remotely.]
O beautiful my brothers!
O dryad dear, I thank you! In your dawn,
How brave it is to speak with Man and Faun
As mates and fellows. Quick! Fetch me still others.
[A crashing resounds in the thicket. Tacita disappears.]
Who’s coming now?
SHY
Still others—our fellow man.
ORNIS
I hear a breaking bough.
ALWYN
Kind hearts and cruel are one clan. ”

“ The complete programme of the original production of the masque, as first enacted at Meriden, New Hampshire, by members of the Cornish Colony and the Meriden Bird Club, is printed in the Afterword of this volume.
xvii
THE PRELUDE
xviii
THE LITTLE GIRL FALLS INTO REVERIE
xix THE PRELUDE
Wandering in the quiet of the bird sanctuary, a little girl hears the voice of a hermit thrush, and meditates this song:
THE SONG
While walking through a lonely wood
I heard a lovely voice:
A voice so fresh and true and good
It made my heart rejoice. ”

“ This scroll, itself a sheet of parchment-like paper from the original press of Benjamin Franklin, had been inscribed by Mr. Stephen Parrish with a Sonnet-Epilogue,
71
Cardinal Bird and Hummingbird
73composed by the author of the masque and signed by all of its participants, with their real names opposite the species of birds they severally impersonated.
Moving slowly forward to music till he stood before President and Mrs. Wilson, where they sat near the centre of the first row of the audience, the Cardinal Bird, with simple dignity, read from the scroll this
EPILOGUE
Addressed to Mrs. ”

“ Ornis, my trail divides:
There lie the ashes of the thing I was.
Henceforth, I walk with you—
[Turning to Alwyn and Shy.]
and these.
ALWYN
A compact, then, we three: that when we go
Forth from these gracious trees
Into the world, we go as witnesses
Before the men who make our country’s laws,
And by our witness show
In burning words
The meaning of these sylvan mysteries:
Freedom and sanctuary for the birds!
Say, is our compact sworn?
STARK
I swear.
SHY
And I.
[Enter Quercus and Tacita.]
63 X
Tacita. Quercus. Stark. Ornis. Shy. Alwyn.
STARK
[To Ornis.] ”

“ To these Tacita now beckons, and by her gesture summons to her dance, while Quercus plays joyously on his pipe.]
ORNIS
Bird and faun and man and fairy,
Gather now to sanctuary!
[Tacita first dances alone, then with Quercus; then, inviting and leading them all in pied procession, she marshals all away into her woodland shrine.]
FINIS
69 AFTERWORD In the original production of this masque, referred to in the Foreword, the sanctuary stage was devised by Mr. Joseph Lindon Smith in two planes—the natural and the supernatural, harmoniously blended. ”

“ If this Bird Masque shall help, in the slightest degree, to illustrate them, it will do its ephemeral service in the only permanent sanctuary of men as of birds—imagination.
Percy MacKaye.
Cornish, New Hampshire,
October, 1913.
xv PERSONS OF THE MASQUE [1]
in the order of their appearance
QUERCUS, faun
ALWYN, poet
SHY, naturalist
TACITA, dryad
ORNIS, bird spirit
STARK, plume hunter PARTICIPANTS IN PANTOMIME
Hunter Attendants of Stark
Many species of birds—in human form, garbed symbolically SCENE
The sylvan glade of a bird sanctuary. ”

“ Yankee Fantasies. Five One-Act Plays.
Mater. An American Study in Comedy.
Anti-Matrimony. A Satirical Comedy.
To-morrow. A Play in Three Acts.
Sanctuary. A Bird Masque.
A Thousand Years Ago. A Romance of the Orient.
Poems.
Uriel, and Other Poems.
Lincoln: A Centenary Ode.
The Playhouse and the Play. Essays.
The Civic Theatre. Essays.
At all booksellers
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES moved page 2 to end. ”