I quicken him to heavier pain? The fever | |
Of this tumultuous night, the grief too of | |
20 | His wound, though slight, may cause all this, and shake |
Me more to see than him to suffer. No: | |
Let Nature use her own maternal means, — | |
And I await to second, not disturb her. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
multiplied the stars, | |
25 | And gave them to me as a realm to share |
From you and with you! I would not so purchase | |
The empire of eternity. Hence – hence – | |
Old hunter of the earliest brutes! and ye, | |
Who hunted fellow-creatures as if brutes! | |
30 | Once bloody mortals – and now bloodier idols, |
If your priests lie not! And thou, ghastly beldame! | |
Dripping with dusky gore, and trampling on | |
The carcasses of Inde – away! away! | |
Where am I? Where the spectres? Where – No – that | |
35 | Is no false phantom: I should know it ’midst |
All that the dead dare gloomily raise up | |
From their black gulf to daunt the living. Myrrha! | |
MYRRHA | |
Gather like night dew. My beloved, hush – | |
40 | Calm thee. Thy speech seems of another world, |
And thou art lord of this. Be of good cheer; | |
All will go well. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
’Tis flesh; grasp – clasp – yet closer, till I feel | |
Myself that which I was. | |
MYRRHA | |
45 | For what I am, and ever must be – thine. |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Ah, Myrrha! I have been where we shall be. | |
MYRRHA | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
are lords, | |
And kings are — But I did not deem it so; | |
50 | I thought ’twas nothing. |
MYRRHA | |
Unto the timid, who anticipate | |
That which may never be. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Sleep shows such things, what may not death disclose? | |
MYRRHA | |
55 | Has not already shown to those who live |
Embodied longest. If there be indeed | |
A shore where mind survives, ’twill be as mind, | |
All unincorporate: or if there flits | |
A shadow of this cumbrous clog of clay, | |
60 | Which stalks, methinks, between our souls and heaven, |
And fetters us to earth – at least the phantom, | |
Whate’er it have to fear, will not fear death. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
A legion of the dead. | |
MYRRHA | |
65 | The dust we tread upon was once alive, |
And wretched. But proceed: what hast thou seen? | |
Speak it, ’twill lighten thy dimm’d mind. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
MYRRHA | |
Which can impair both strength and spirit: seek | |
70 | Rather to sleep again. |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Dream; though I know it now to be a dream | |
What I have dreamt: – and canst thou bear to hear it? | |
MYRRHA | |
Which I participate with you in semblance | |
75 | Or full reality. |
SARDANAPALUS | |
I tell you: after that these eyes were open, | |
I saw them in their flight – for then they fled. | |
MYRRHA | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Here – here – even where we are, guests as we were, | |
80 | Myself a host that deem’d himself but guest, |
Willing to equal all in social freedom; | |
But, on my right hand and my left, instead | |
Of thee and Zames, and our custom’d meeting, | |
Was ranged on my left hand a haughty, dark, | |
85 | And deadly face – I could not recognise it, |
Yet I had seen it, though I knew not where: | |
The features were a giant’s, and the eye | |
Was still, yet lighted; his long locks curl’d down | |
On his vast bust, whence a huge quiver rose | |
90 | With shaft-heads feather’d from the eagle’s wing, |
That peep’d up bristling through his serpent hair. | |
I invited him to fill the cup which stood | |
Between us, but he answer’d not – I fil’d it – | |
He took it not, but stared upon me, till | |
95 | I trembled at the fix’d glare of his eye: |
I frown’d upon him as a king should frown – | |
He frown’d not in his turn, but look’d upon me | |
With the same aspect, which appall’d me more, | |
Because it changed not; and I turn’d for refuge | |
100 | To milder guests, and sought them on the right, |
Where thou wert wont to be. But — | |
[ | |
MYRRHA | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
banquet – | |
I sought thy sweet face in the circle – but | |
Instead – a grey-hair’d, wither’d, bloody-eyed, | |
105 | And bloody-handed, ghastly, ghostly thing, |
Female in garb, and crown’d upon the brow, | |
Furrow’d with years, yet sneering with the passion | |
Of vengeance, leering too with that of lust, | |
Sate: – my veins curdled. | |
MYRRHA | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
110 | Her right hand – her lank, bird-like right hand – stood |
A goblet, bubbling o’er with blood; and on | |
Her left, another, fill’d with – what I saw not, | |
But turn’d from it and her. But all along | |
The table sate a range of crowned wretches, | |
115 | Of various aspects, but of one expression. |
MYRRHA | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
It was so palpable, I could have touch’d them. | |
I turn’d from one face to another, in | |
The hope to find at last one which I knew | |
120 | Ere I saw theirs: but no – all turn’d upon me, |
And stared, but neither ate nor drank, but stared, | |
Till I grew stone, as they seem’d half to be, | |
Yet breathing stone, for I felt life in them, | |
And life in me: there was a horrid kind | |
125 | Of sympathy between us, as if they |
Had lost a part of death to come to me, | |
And I the half of life to sit by them. | |
We were in an existence all apart | |
From heaven or earth — And rather let me see | |
130 | Death all than such a being! |
MYRRHA | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
The hunter and the crone; and smiling on me – | |
Yes, the enlarged but noble aspect of | |
The hunter smiled upon me – I should say, | |
135 | His lips, for his eyes moved not – and the woman’s |
Thin lips relax’d to something like a smile. | |
Both rose, and the crown’d figures on each hand | |
Rose also, as if aping their chief shades – | |
Mere mimics even in death – but I sate still: | |
140 | A desperate courage crept through every limb, |
And at the last I fear’d them not, but laugh’d | |
Full in their phantom faces. But then – then | |
The hunter laid his hand on mine: I took it, | |
And grasp’d it – but it melted from my own; | |
145 | While he too vanish’d, and left nothing but |
The memory of a hero, for he look’d so. | |
MYRRHA | |
And thine no less. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
The female who remain’d, she flew upon me, | |
150 | And burnt my lips up with her noisome kisses; |
And, flinging down the goblets on each hand, | |
Methought their poisons flow’d around us, till | |
Each form’d a hideous river. Still she clung; | |
The other phantoms, like a row of statues, |