HE characters are three Chinese, two negroes
and a girl.

The scene represents a forest of heavy trees
on a hilltop in eastern Pennsylvania. To the
right is a road, obscured by bushes. It is about

four o'clock of a morning in August, at the present time. When the curtain rises, the stage is dark. The limb of a tree creaks. A negro carrying a lantern passes along the road. The sound is repeated. The negro comes through the bushes, raises his lantern and looks through the trees. Discerning a dark object among the branches, he shrinks back, crosses stage, and goes out through the wood to the left.

A second negro comes through the bushes to the right. He carries two large baskets, which he places on the ground just inside of the bushes. Enter three Chinese, one of whom carries a lantern. They pause on the road.

*Copyright, 1916, by Wallace Stevens: dramatic rights reserved.

Second Chinese. All you need,

To find poetry,

Is to look for it with a lantern. [The Chinese laugh.]
Third Chinese. I could find it without,

On an August night,

If I saw no more

Than the dew on the barns.

[The Second Negro makes a sound to attract their attention. The three Chinese come through the bushes. The first is short, fat, quizzical, and of middle age. The second is of middle height, thin and turning gray; a man of sense and sympathy. The third is a young man, intent, detached. They wear European clothes.]

Second Chinese. [Glancing at the baskets.]

Dew is water to see,

Not water to drink:

We have forgotten water to drink.

Yet I am content

Just to see sunrise again.

I have not seen it

Since the day we left Pekin.

It filled my doorway,

Like whispering women.

First Chinese. And I have never seen it.

If we have no water,

Do find a melon for me

In the baskets.

Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise

[The Second Negro, who has been opening the baskets, hands the First Chinese a melon.]

First Chinese. Is there no spring?

[The negro takes a water bottle of red porcelain from one of the baskets and places it near the Third Chinese.] Second Chinese. [To Third Chinese.] Your porcelain water bottle.

[One of the baskets contains costumes of silk, red, blue and green. During the following speeches, the Chinese put on these costumes, with the assistance of the negro, and seat themselves on the ground.]

Third Chinese. This fetches its own water.

[Takes the bottle and places it on the ground in the center of the stage.]

I drink from it, dry as it is,

As you from maxims, [To Second Chinese.]

Or you from melons. [To First Chinese.]
First Chinese. Not as I, from melons.

Be sure of that.

Second Chinese. Well, it is true of maxims.

[He finds a book in the pocket of his costume, and reads from it.]

"The court had known poverty and wretchedness; humanity had invaded its seclusion, with its suffering and its pity."

[The limb of the tree creaks.] Yes it is true of maxims,

Just as it is true of poets,