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 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
I. CONSTANTINE IN THRACE.
(A.D. 324.)
ARGUMENT.
The Emperor Constantine, the day before he reaches Byzantium, projects the building of Constantinople upon its site, esteeming that site the fittest for the metropolis of a Christian Empire, or, more properly, of a Christian Caliphate, one and universal, to be created by him. He resolves, that task completed, to be baptized; but not till then, his Belief being but a half belief.
Ha, Pagan City! hast thou heard the tidings,
Rome, the world's mistress, whom I never loved!
Whilst yet a boy I read of thy renown,
Thy Kings, thy Consuls, and thine Emperors,
Thy triumphs, slow but certain, in all lands,
Yet never yearned to see thy face. Thy heart
Was as my heart—averse, recalcitrant.
I left my charge; I clave that British sea;
I crossed the snowy Alps; I burst thy chain;
I drowned thy tyrant in the Tiber's wave,
Maxentius, him whose foot was on thy neck:
I sat lip-worshipp'd on thy Palatine Hill;
But well I knew that to that heart of thine
Nero's black memory was a welcomer thing
Than I, a son of that Rome-bated North,
For all my glories. Hast thou heard the tidings?
The Cross of Christ is found! By whom? Not thee!
Thou grop'st and grovel'st in the gold-stream's bed
Not there where lies the Cross! I, Constantine
The Unbaptized, am cleaner thrice than thou—
I found it through my mother! The Cross is found!
Rome, the world's mistress, whom I never loved!
Whilst yet a boy I read of thy renown,
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Thy triumphs, slow but certain, in all lands,
Yet never yearned to see thy face. Thy heart
Was as my heart—averse, recalcitrant.
I left my charge; I clave that British sea;
I crossed the snowy Alps; I burst thy chain;
I drowned thy tyrant in the Tiber's wave,
Maxentius, him whose foot was on thy neck:
I sat lip-worshipp'd on thy Palatine Hill;
But well I knew that to that heart of thine
Nero's black memory was a welcomer thing
Than I, a son of that Rome-bated North,
For all my glories. Hast thou heard the tidings?
The Cross of Christ is found! By whom? Not thee!
Thou grop'st and grovel'st in the gold-stream's bed
Not there where lies the Cross! I, Constantine
The Unbaptized, am cleaner thrice than thou—
I found it through my mother! The Cross is found!
I left thee: I had heard a mighty voice:
Eastward it called me: there Licinius reigned,
Who made the inviolate Empire twain, not one:
One crown suffices earth. Licinius fell:
I saw him kneeling at his conqueror's feet
I saw him seated at his conqueror's board:
I spared him, but dethroned. New tumults rose:
Men said they rose through him. Licinius died;
'Twas rumoured, by my hand: I never loved him:
The truth came out at last: I let it be.
Eastward it called me: there Licinius reigned,
Who made the inviolate Empire twain, not one:
One crown suffices earth. Licinius fell:
I saw him kneeling at his conqueror's feet
I saw him seated at his conqueror's board:
I spared him, but dethroned. New tumults rose:
Men said they rose through him. Licinius died;
'Twas rumoured, by my hand: I never loved him:
The truth came out at last: I let it be.
He died: that day the Empire stood uncloven,
One as in great Augustus' regal prime,
One as when Trajan reigned and Adrian reigned—
Great kings, though somewhat flecked with Christian blood:—
Whom basest Emperors spared the best trod down;
I judge them not for that: not yet had dawned
That day when Faith could be the base of Empire.
The Antonines came later, trivial stock,
Philosophers enthroned. Philosophers!
I never loved them: Life to me was teacher:
That great Cæsarian Empire is gone by:
'Twas but the old Republic in a mask
With Consul, Tribune, Pontiff rolled in one:
A great man wrought its ruin, Diocletian:
The greatest save those three who built it up:
He split his realm in four. Amid the wreck
What basis now subsists for permanent empire?
Religion. Of Religions one remains:
The rest are dead Traditions, not Religion.
The old gods stand in ivory, stone, and gold
Dozing above the dust-heaps round their feet:
The Flamen dozes on the altar-step:
The People doze within the colonnades:
The Augurs pass each other with a smile:
The Faith that lives is Christ's. Three hundred years
The strong ones and the wise ones trod it down:
Red flames but washed it clean—I noted that:
This day the Christian Empire claims its own.
The Christian Empire—stranger things have been;
Christ called His Church a Kingdom. Such it is:
The mystery of its strength is in that oneness
Which heals its wounds, and keeps it self-renewed.
It rises fair with order and degree,
And brooks division none. That realm shall stand;
I blend therewith my Empire; warp and woof
These twain I intertwine. Like organism
Shall raise in each a hierarchy of powers
Ascending gradual to a single head,
The Empire's head crowned in the Empire's Church.
The West dreamed never of that realm twin-dowered
With spiritual sway and temporal: the East,
I think, was never long without such dream,
Yet shaped not dream to substance. Persia failed:
Failed when by Greek Mythology infected;
Earlier, the Assyrian and the Babylonian;
Colossal structures these, but scarcely noble:
The Alexandrian Empire later came
And more deserved to live. Not less 'twas doomed:
The Conqueror lacked material; he had naught
To work on save the dialectics keen
And Amphionic song of ancient Greece.
His dream was this—an Empire based on Mind,
The large Greek Mind. Mind makes a base unstable:
Large minds have ever skill to change their mind:
Then comes the fabric down. He died a youth,
A stripling; ay, but had his scheme been sound
'Tis likely he had lived. Religion lives.
Perhaps a true Faith only could sustain
A permanent Empire's burthen. Mine is true:
Whoso denies its truth that man shall die.
One as in great Augustus' regal prime,
One as when Trajan reigned and Adrian reigned—
Great kings, though somewhat flecked with Christian blood:—
Whom basest Emperors spared the best trod down;
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That day when Faith could be the base of Empire.
The Antonines came later, trivial stock,
Philosophers enthroned. Philosophers!
I never loved them: Life to me was teacher:
That great Cæsarian Empire is gone by:
'Twas but the old Republic in a mask
With Consul, Tribune, Pontiff rolled in one:
A great man wrought its ruin, Diocletian:
The greatest save those three who built it up:
He split his realm in four. Amid the wreck
What basis now subsists for permanent empire?
Religion. Of Religions one remains:
The rest are dead Traditions, not Religion.
The old gods stand in ivory, stone, and gold
Dozing above the dust-heaps round their feet:
The Flamen dozes on the altar-step:
The People doze within the colonnades:
The Augurs pass each other with a smile:
The Faith that lives is Christ's. Three hundred years
The strong ones and the wise ones trod it down:
Red flames but washed it clean—I noted that:
This day the Christian Empire claims its own.
The Christian Empire—stranger things have been;
Christ called His Church a Kingdom. Such it is:
The mystery of its strength is in that oneness
Which heals its wounds, and keeps it self-renewed.
It rises fair with order and degree,
And brooks division none. That realm shall stand;
I blend therewith my Empire; warp and woof
These twain I intertwine. Like organism
Shall raise in each a hierarchy of powers
Ascending gradual to a single head,
The Empire's head crowned in the Empire's Church.
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With spiritual sway and temporal: the East,
I think, was never long without such dream,
Yet shaped not dream to substance. Persia failed:
Failed when by Greek Mythology infected;
Earlier, the Assyrian and the Babylonian;
Colossal structures these, but scarcely noble:
The Alexandrian Empire later came
And more deserved to live. Not less 'twas doomed:
The Conqueror lacked material; he had naught
To work on save the dialectics keen
And Amphionic song of ancient Greece.
His dream was this—an Empire based on Mind,
The large Greek Mind. Mind makes a base unstable:
Large minds have ever skill to change their mind:
Then comes the fabric down. He died a youth,
A stripling; ay, but had his scheme been sound
'Tis likely he had lived. Religion lives.
Perhaps a true Faith only could sustain
A permanent Empire's burthen. Mine is true:
Whoso denies its truth that man shall die.
The Church had met in synod, for a man
Had made division in that ‘seamless robe’
Regal this day. Arius schismatic stood
For what? A doctrine! Fool! and knew he not
Religion is a Law, and not a Doctrine.
The Church had met in synod at Nicæa,
Nicæa near Byzantium. There was I:
The Church in synod sat and I within it.
Flocking from every land her bishops came;
They sat and I in the midst, albeit in Rome
My title stood, ‘Pontifex Maximus.’
They came at my command, by me conveyed.
A man astonished long I sat; I claimed
To sit ‘a bishop for the things without.’
Amid those bishops some were Confessors
Maimed by the fire or brand. I kissed their wounds:
None said, ‘What dost thou 'mid the Prophet Race?’
They saw I honoured God, and honoured me.
I, neither priest nor layman; I, that ne'er
Had knelt a Catechumen in the porch,
Her Emperor, yet an Emperor unbaptized,
I sat in the synod. At the gates stood guards:
Not all were Christian: two, the best, were bold:
One from Danubius winked at me; and one
From Rhenus smiled at me. The weeks went by,
And in me daily swelled some spirit new:
I know it now; it was the imperial spirit.
When rose that contest I had willed at first
The doctrine questioned should be trivial deemed,
And license given, ‘think, each man, what he will.’
The fires had burned too deep for that: I changed:
I sided with the strong, and kept the peace.
Had made division in that ‘seamless robe’
Regal this day. Arius schismatic stood
For what? A doctrine! Fool! and knew he not
Religion is a Law, and not a Doctrine.
The Church had met in synod at Nicæa,
Nicæa near Byzantium. There was I:
The Church in synod sat and I within it.
Flocking from every land her bishops came;
They sat and I in the midst, albeit in Rome
My title stood, ‘Pontifex Maximus.’
They came at my command, by me conveyed.
A man astonished long I sat; I claimed
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Amid those bishops some were Confessors
Maimed by the fire or brand. I kissed their wounds:
None said, ‘What dost thou 'mid the Prophet Race?’
They saw I honoured God, and honoured me.
I, neither priest nor layman; I, that ne'er
Had knelt a Catechumen in the porch,
Her Emperor, yet an Emperor unbaptized,
I sat in the synod. At the gates stood guards:
Not all were Christian: two, the best, were bold:
One from Danubius winked at me; and one
From Rhenus smiled at me. The weeks went by,
And in me daily swelled some spirit new:
I know it now; it was the imperial spirit.
When rose that contest I had willed at first
The doctrine questioned should be trivial deemed,
And license given, ‘think, each man, what he will.’
The fires had burned too deep for that: I changed:
I sided with the strong, and kept the peace.
That was my triumph's hour: then came the fall.
I made return to Rome. Twelve years gone by
My sword had riven the Western tyrant's chain:
Since then the tyrant of the East had perished:
The world was echoing with my name. I reached
The gate Flaminian and the Palatine;
I looked for welcome such as brides accord
Their lords new-laurelled. Rome, a bride malign,
Held forth her welcome in a poisoned cup:
Mine Asian garb, my ceremonious court,
Its trappings, titles, and heraldic gear,
To her were hateful. Centuries of bonds
Had left her swollen with Freedom's vacant name:
A buskined greatness trampled still her stage:
By law the gods reigned still. The senate sat
In Jove's old temple on the Capitol:
My fame Nicæan edged their hate. The priest
Shouldering through grinning crowds to sacrifice
Cast on me glance oblique. Fabii and Claudii
Whose lives hung powerless on their Emperor's nod
Eyed me as he who says, ‘This man is new.’
One festal morning to some pagan fane
The whole Equestrian Order rode—their wont—
In toga red. I saw, and laughing cried,
‘Better their worship than their horsemanship!’
That noon the rabble pressed me in the streets
With wrong premeditate; hissed me; spat at me;
That eve they brake my statues. Choice was none
Save this, to drown the Roman streets in blood
Or feign indifference. Scorn, twelve years of scorn—
Changed suddenly to hate. A fevered night
Went by, and morning dawned.
My council met;
I made return to Rome. Twelve years gone by
My sword had riven the Western tyrant's chain:
Since then the tyrant of the East had perished:
The world was echoing with my name. I reached
The gate Flaminian and the Palatine;
I looked for welcome such as brides accord
Their lords new-laurelled. Rome, a bride malign,
Held forth her welcome in a poisoned cup:
Mine Asian garb, my ceremonious court,
Its trappings, titles, and heraldic gear,
To her were hateful. Centuries of bonds
Had left her swollen with Freedom's vacant name:
A buskined greatness trampled still her stage:
By law the gods reigned still. The senate sat
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My fame Nicæan edged their hate. The priest
Shouldering through grinning crowds to sacrifice
Cast on me glance oblique. Fabii and Claudii
Whose lives hung powerless on their Emperor's nod
Eyed me as he who says, ‘This man is new.’
One festal morning to some pagan fane
The whole Equestrian Order rode—their wont—
In toga red. I saw, and laughing cried,
‘Better their worship than their horsemanship!’
That noon the rabble pressed me in the streets
With wrong premeditate; hissed me; spat at me;
That eve they brake my statues. Choice was none
Save this, to drown the Roman streets in blood
Or feign indifference. Scorn, twelve years of scorn—
Changed suddenly to hate. A fevered night
Went by, and morning dawned.
Then came that fateful hour, my wreck and ruin.
Aye, for the plot long brewing now was ripe;
Fausta, my wife, hated her rival's son,
Mine eldest born, my Crispus; hated him
Most fiercely since his victory at Byzantium,
Yea more than hated for his Mother's sake,
The glory and the gladness of my youth
By me for Empire's sake repudiated,
The sweetness of whose eyes looked forth from his.
Fausta but one hope nursed—to crown her sons,
My second brood, portioning betwixt those three
My realm when I was dead.
My brothers holp her plot. She watched her time:
She waited till the eclipse which falls at seasons
Black on our House was dealing with my soul;
Then in that council-hall her minions rose;
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Amongst them of my counsellors some the best;
They brought their letters forged and spurious parchments,
And made it plainer seem than sun or moon
That he it was, my Crispus, Portia's child,
Who, whilst his sire was absent at Nicæa,
Month after month had plotted 'gainst him, made
His parricidal covenant with Rome:
The father was to fall in civil broil,
Her son to reign. Their league the day gone by
When that mad tumult in the streets assailed me,
Had made its first assay.
That hour the Fates
Around me spread their net: that hour the chains
Of Œdipus were tangled round my feet:
I stood among them blind. Such blindness fell
Upon me twice before. The noontide flamed:
I, in full council sitting—I since youth
A man of marble nerve and iron will,
A man in whom wild fancy's dreams alike
And fleshly lusts had held no part, subdued
By that Religion grave, a great Ambition;
I self-controlled, continent in hate itself,
Deliberate and foreseeing—I that hour
Down on that judgment-parchment pressed my seal:
That was my crime, the greatest earth has known;
My life's one crime. I never wrought another.
Around me spread their net: that hour the chains
Of Œdipus were tangled round my feet:
I stood among them blind. Such blindness fell
Upon me twice before. The noontide flamed:
I, in full council sitting—I since youth
A man of marble nerve and iron will,
A man in whom wild fancy's dreams alike
And fleshly lusts had held no part, subdued
By that Religion grave, a great Ambition;
I self-controlled, continent in hate itself,
Deliberate and foreseeing—I that hour
Down on that judgment-parchment pressed my seal:
That was my crime, the greatest earth has known;
My life's one crime. I never wrought another.
'Twas rage pent up 'gainst her I could not strike,
Rome, hated Rome! I smote her through my son,
Her hope, the partner of her guilt. That night
My purpose I repented. 'Twas too late:
The ship had sailed for Pola. Tempest dire,
By demons raised, brake forth: pursuit was vain.
Within his Istrian dungeon Crispus died.
I willed that he, but not his fame, should perish;
Therefore that deed was hid. With brow sun-bright,
Hell in my heart, I took my place at feasts:
At last the deed was blabbed.
Rome, hated Rome! I smote her through my son,
Her hope, the partner of her guilt. That night
My purpose I repented. 'Twas too late:
The ship had sailed for Pola. Tempest dire,
By demons raised, brake forth: pursuit was vain.
85
I willed that he, but not his fame, should perish;
Therefore that deed was hid. With brow sun-bright,
Hell in my heart, I took my place at feasts:
At last the deed was blabbed.
My mother loved—
My mother, Helena, the earth's revered one,
Cybéle of the Christians termed by Greeks—
Loved well my Crispus for his mother's sake,
Wronged, like herself, by royal nuptials new,
And hated Fausta with her younger brood.
She brake upon my presence like a storm:
With dreadful eyes and hands upraised she banned me:
She came once more, that time with manifest proof
Of Fausta's guilt. The courtiers not denied it;
My brothers later; last the Accursed herself
Confessed it; nay she made thereof her boast.
Two days I sat in darkness: on the third
I sent to judgment Fausta and her crew:
That act I deem the elect of all my acts.
They died: at eve I rose from the earth and ate.
My mother, Helena, the earth's revered one,
Cybéle of the Christians termed by Greeks—
Loved well my Crispus for his mother's sake,
Wronged, like herself, by royal nuptials new,
And hated Fausta with her younger brood.
She brake upon my presence like a storm:
With dreadful eyes and hands upraised she banned me:
She came once more, that time with manifest proof
Of Fausta's guilt. The courtiers not denied it;
My brothers later; last the Accursed herself
Confessed it; nay she made thereof her boast.
Two days I sat in darkness: on the third
I sent to judgment Fausta and her crew:
That act I deem the elect of all my acts.
They died: at eve I rose from the earth and ate.
But fifteen months before, I at Nicæa
Had sat a god below! No more of that!
'Twas false, the rumour that by night, disguised,
I knelt before a pagan shrine, and sought
Pagan lustration from a pagan priest,
And gat for answer that for crime like mine
Earth held lustration none.
I built great fanes,
Had sat a god below! No more of that!
'Twas false, the rumour that by night, disguised,
I knelt before a pagan shrine, and sought
Pagan lustration from a pagan priest,
And gat for answer that for crime like mine
Earth held lustration none.
Temples which all the ages shall revere:
Saint Peter's huge Basilica; Saint John's;
I roamed from each to each, like him who sought
A place for penitence, and found it not;
86
I, loving not, had raised her!—forth I fared,
Never thenceforth to see her. Rome has reigned:
She had her thousand years. Unless some greatness
Hidden from man remains for man, her doom
Draws near her—dust and ashes.
I went forth:
I deemed the God I served had cast me off:
The Pagan world I knew my foe: the Christian
Thundered against me from a thousand shores:
There was a dreadful purpose in my soul:
It was my Mother saved me! She, keen-eyed,
Discerned the crisis; kenned the sole solution.
In expiation of my crime she sped
A holy pilgrim to the Holy Land:
She spread her hands above the sacred spot
As when the Mother-Beast updrags to light
The prey earth-hidden for her famished young:
Instinct had led her to it: she dug and dug;
She found the world's one treasure, lost till then,
That Cross which saved the world. With lightning speed
The tidings went abroad: I marched: last night
I raised mine eyes to heaven. I ne'er was one
Of spirit religious, though my life was pure,
Austerely pure amid an age corrupt:
I never was a man athirst for wonders;
My fifty years have witnessed three alone:
The first was this—while yet Maxentius lived,
My army nearing Rome, I marked in her,
Though bondslave long, a majesty divine;
She seemed earth's sum of greatness closed in one:
Some help divine I needed to confront her:
That help was given: I looked aloft: I saw
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My battle-sign, ‘Labarum.’ Yesternight
Once more I saw it! He that hung thereon
Spake thus: ‘Work on, and fear not.’
Those two visions,
The first, the third, shine on me still as one:
The second was of alien race and breed.
New-throned in Rome I doubted oft her future:
One night I watched upon Mount Palatine,
My seat a half-wrought column. It had lain
For centuries seven rejected, none knew why,
By earlier builders: in more recent times
Ill-omened it was deemed, yet unremoved.
The murmur from the City far beneath
Had closed my eyelids. Sudden by me stood
A queenly Form, the Genius of great Rome;
Regal her face; her brow, though crowned, was ploughed
With plaits of age. She spake: ‘Attend my steps.’
Ere long I marked her footing the great sea
Eastward: I followed close. Then came a change:
Seven hills before me glittered in her light:
Save these the world was dark. I looked again:
On one of these she stood. Immortal youth
Shone splendid from her face no longer furrowed;
And all her form was martial. On her head
She bore a helm, and in her hand a spear
High-raised. She plunged that spear into the soil,
And spake: ‘Build here my City and my Throne;’
Then vanished from my sight. High up I heard
The winnowing of great wings. The self-same sound
Had reached me while that Goddess trod the sea:
'Twas Victory following that bright crest for aye.
Morn broke: I knew that site; it was Byzantium;
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Not on the plain far-famed that once was Troy,
A dream of mine in youth. Some Roman Bard
In song denounced that dream:
Byzantium! Ay!
The site is there: there meet the double seas
Of East and West. The Empire rooted there
Shall stand the wide earth's centre, clasping in one—
That earlier Rome was only Rome rehearsed—
The Alexandrian and Cæsarean worlds:
Atlas and Calpé are our western bound;
Ganges shall guard our Eastern. To the North
Not Rhenus, not Danubius—that is past—
But Vistula and far Boristhenes;
And farther northern seas. Those Antonines,
Boasted their sageness, limiting their realm:
They spared Rome's hand to freeze her head and heart:
An Empire's growth surceased, its death begins:
Long death is shame prolonged. Five hundred years
That last great war shall dure. Let Persia tremble!
Rome's sole of Rivals! Distance shields her now:
My Rome shall fix on her that eye which slays:
She like a gourd shall wither. Crispus my son,
That task had been for thee!
Ha, Roman Nobles!
Your judgment-time approaches! Shadows ye!
Shadows long since are ye! Those shades shall flit:
My City shall be substance, not a shadow.
Ye slew the Gracchi; they shall rise and plague you:
Ye clutched the Italian lands; stocked them with slaves;
Then ceased the honest wars: your reign shall cease:
Again, as when Fabricius left his farm
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The hands of Latium, Umbria, and Etruria,
In honourable households bred, made strong
By labour on their native fields, shall fence
Their mother-land from insult. Mercenaries!
Who made our Roman armies mercenary?
Slave-lords that drave the free men from the soil!
Your mercenaries bought and sold the realm!
In sport or spleen they chose Rome's Emperors!
The British hosts chose me. I, barbarous styled,
I Constantine decree that in the ranks
Of Rome the Roman blood, once more supreme,
Shall leave scant place for hirelings ill to trust;
The army to the Emperor shall belong,
Not he to it, henceforth.
On these seven hills—
The seven of Rome, with them compared, are pigmies—
I build earth's Empire City. They shall lift
High up the temples of the Christian Law
Gold-domed, descried far off by homeward fleets,
Cross-crowned in record of my victory
At Rome, and Crispus' victory at Byzantium,
To it shall flock those senators of Rome
Their Roman brag surceased. Their gods shall stand,
Grateful for incense doles diminishing daily,
If so they please, thronging the lower streets,
These, and the abjects of the Emperors dead;—
Ay, but from those seven hills to heaven shall rise
The Apostolic Statues, and mine own,
Making that race beneath ridiculous,
Above the Empire which that city crowns,
Above its Midland, Euxine, Caspian seas,
Above its Syrian Paradises lulled
By soft Orontes' and Euphrates' murmurs,
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Of those five Indian rivers o'er whose marge
The Man of Macedon fixed his eastward eyes,
Above all these God's Angels keeping watch
From East to West shall sweep, for aye sustaining
My Standard, my ‘Labarum’!
It shall last,
That Empire, till the world herself decays,
Since all the old Empires each from each devolved
It blends, and marries to a Law Divine.
Its throne shall rest on Right Hereditary,
Not will of splenetic legions or the crowd;
Its Sovereigns be the Elect of God, not man;
Its nobles round their Lord shall stand, sun-clad
In light from him reflected; stand in grades
Hierarchal, and impersonating, each,
Office and function, not the dangerous boast
Of mythic deeds and lineage. Age by age
Let those my Emperors that wear not names
Of Cæsar or Augustus, but my name,
Walk in my steps, honouring my Church aright:
My Empire and My Church must dwell together
The one within the other. Which in which?
The Empire clasps the world; clasps then the Church;
To shield that Church must rule her. Hers the gain:
I, who was never son of hers, enriched her
Making the ends o' the earth her heritage:
I ever knew 'tis poverty not wealth
That kindles knave to fanatic: silken saints
Like him of Nicomedia, my Eusebius,
Mate best with Empire's needs. When death draws nigh,
I, that was ever jealous lest the Font
Might give the Church of Christ advantage o'er me,
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My royal for my chrysome robe. Let those
Who through the far millenniums fill my throne
In this from me take pattern. Wise men choose
For wisest acts wise season.
Hark that trump!
The army wakens from its noontide rest:
Ere sunset fires its walls I reach Byzantium.
II. CONSTANTINE AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
(A.D. 337.)
ARGUMENT.
The Emperor Constantine at Constantinople, a few days before his death, revolves his past life and the failure of his design for the creation of an Imperial Church under the Emperor's sway. He calls to mind several of the causes which have forced him with his own hand to break up the boasted unity of his Empire: but he suspects also the existence of some higher and hidden cause. His career he declares to have ended in frustration; yet he suddenly deerees a new military expedition.
Their prayers and flatteries are more rankly base
Than those of humbler flatterers. I'll not read it:
Place it, Euphorbos, by yon desk. 'Tis well:
The sea-wind curls its page but wafts me not
Its perfumed fetor. Leave me.
From the seas,
The streets, the Forum, from the Hippodrome,
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But chiefly from the base of that huge pillar
Whereon Apollo's statue stood, now mine,
Its eastern-bending head rayed round with gold—
Say, dost thou grudge thy gift, Helopolis?—
The multitudinous murmur spreads and grows.
Wherefore? Because a life ill-spent has reached
Its four-and-sixtieth year, perhaps its last.
Give me that year when first I fought with beasts
In Nicomedia's amphitheatre;
Gallerius sent me there to slay me there:
Not less he laughed to see that panther die;
Laughed louder when I charged him with his crime.
Give me that year when first my wife—not Fausta—
That year when launching from the British shore
I ceased not till my standard, my Labarum,
Waved from the walls of Rome. When Troy had fallen
That brave and pious exile-prince, Æneas,
Presaged the site of Rome: next, Romulus
Laid the first stone: Augustus laid the second:
I laid the last: I would have crowned their work:—
Rome from her flung me for my northern birth:
Eastward I turned.
Three empires to the ground
I trod. My warrant! Unauthentic they:
Their ruling was misrule. Huge, barbarous hosts
I hurled successive back o'er frozen floods:
Yet these, the labours of my sword, were naught:
The brain it was that laboured. I have written
The laws that bind a province in one night:
Such tasks have their revenge. O for a draught
Brimmed from the beaming beaker of my youth
Though all Medea's poisons drugged its wave,
93
O'er-swept its purple margin! Give me youth!
At times I feel as if this total being
That once o'er-strode the subject world of man,
This body and soul insensibly had shrunk
As shrinks the sculptor's model of wet clay
In sunshine, unobserved by him who shaped it
Till some chance-comer laughs—
I touch once more dead times: their touch is chill:
My hand is chill, my heart.
I thought and wrought.
No dreamer I. I never fought for fame:
I strove for definite ends; for personal ends:
Helpful to man and me. Sacred Religion
I honoured not for mysteries occult
Hid 'neath her veil, as Alexandria boasts
Faithful to speculative Greece, its mother;
I honoured her because with both her hands
She stamps the broad seal of the Moral Law,
Red with God's Blood, upon the heart of man,
Teaching self-rule through rule of Law, and thus
Rendering the civil rule, the politic rule
A feasible emprise. My Empire made,
At once I sheathed my sword. For fifteen years
I, warrior-bred, maintained the world at peace.
In that I erred. What came of that, my error?
A realm's heart-sickness and soul-weariness,
The schism of classes warring each on each
And all to ruin tending, spite of cramps
Bound daily round the out-swelling wall. 'Twas vain!
Some Power there was that counter-worked my work
With hand too swift for sight, which, crossing mine,
Set warp 'gainst woof and ever with my dawn
Inwove its night. What hand was that I know not:
Perchance it was the Demon's of my House;
A sanguinary House by breed and nurture,
Perchance a Hand Divine.
No dreamer I. I never fought for fame:
I strove for definite ends; for personal ends:
Helpful to man and me. Sacred Religion
I honoured not for mysteries occult
Hid 'neath her veil, as Alexandria boasts
Faithful to speculative Greece, its mother;
I honoured her because with both her hands
She stamps the broad seal of the Moral Law,
Red with God's Blood, upon the heart of man,
Teaching self-rule through rule of Law, and thus
Rendering the civil rule, the politic rule
A feasible emprise. My Empire made,
At once I sheathed my sword. For fifteen years
I, warrior-bred, maintained the world at peace.
In that I erred. What came of that, my error?
A realm's heart-sickness and soul-weariness,
The schism of classes warring each on each
And all to ruin tending, spite of cramps
Bound daily round the out-swelling wall. 'Twas vain!
Some Power there was that counter-worked my work
With hand too swift for sight, which, crossing mine,
Set warp 'gainst woof and ever with my dawn
Inwove its night. What hand was that I know not:
94
A sanguinary House by breed and nurture,
Perchance a Hand Divine.
I had two worlds—neither was made by me—
The Pagan and the Christian, glorious both—
To shape and blend in one—
One past her day, one nascent. Thus I mused—
Old Pagan Rome vanquished ignobler lands,
Then won them to herself through healing laws:
Thus Christian Rome must vanquish Pagan Rome,
The barbarous races next: both victories won,
Thus draw them to her, vanquishing their hearts
Through Law divine. What followed? Pagan Rome
Hates Christian Rome for my sake daily more;
Gnashes her teeth at me. ‘Who was it,’ she cries,
‘That laid the old Roman Legion prone in dust
Cancelling that law which freed it from taxation?
Who quelled the honest vices of the host
By laws that maimed all military pride?
Who hurled to earth the nobles of old race
And o'er them set his titular nobles new
And courtier prelates freed from tax and toll?
Who ground our merchants as they grind their corn?’
False charges all; they know them to be false:
The Roman legion ere my birth was dead:
Those other scandals were in substance old;
My laws were needfullest efforts to abate them.
They failed: when once the vital powers are spent
Best medicines turn to poisons. ‘God,’ 'tis writ,
‘Made curable the nations:’ Pagan Rome—
Who cures the dead? To her own level Rome
By equal laws had raised the conquered nations;
Yea; but by vices baser far than theirs
Below their level Rome had sunk herself;
The hordes she lifted knew it and despised her:
I came too late: the last, sole possible cure
Hastened, I deem, the judgment.
The Pagan and the Christian, glorious both—
To shape and blend in one—
One past her day, one nascent. Thus I mused—
Old Pagan Rome vanquished ignobler lands,
Then won them to herself through healing laws:
Thus Christian Rome must vanquish Pagan Rome,
The barbarous races next: both victories won,
Thus draw them to her, vanquishing their hearts
Through Law divine. What followed? Pagan Rome
Hates Christian Rome for my sake daily more;
Gnashes her teeth at me. ‘Who was it,’ she cries,
‘That laid the old Roman Legion prone in dust
Cancelling that law which freed it from taxation?
Who quelled the honest vices of the host
By laws that maimed all military pride?
Who hurled to earth the nobles of old race
And o'er them set his titular nobles new
And courtier prelates freed from tax and toll?
Who ground our merchants as they grind their corn?’
False charges all; they know them to be false:
The Roman legion ere my birth was dead:
Those other scandals were in substance old;
My laws were needfullest efforts to abate them.
They failed: when once the vital powers are spent
Best medicines turn to poisons. ‘God,’ 'tis writ,
‘Made curable the nations:’ Pagan Rome—
Who cures the dead? To her own level Rome
By equal laws had raised the conquered nations;
Yea; but by vices baser far than theirs
Below their level Rome had sunk herself;
95
I came too late: the last, sole possible cure
Hastened, I deem, the judgment.
Diocletian
Affirmed that Christians, whether true or false,
At best were aliens in his scheme of empire,
At worst were hostile. Oft and loud he sware
That only on the old virtues, old traditions,
The patriot manliness of days gone by,
The fierce and fixed belief in temporal good
And earthly recompense for earthly merit,
Rome's Empire could find base. That Emperor erred
In what he saw not. What he saw was true.
I saw the old Rome was ended. What if I,
Like him, have missed some Truth those Christians see?
Men call that Race Baptized the illuminated.
The Race Baptized! To me it gave small aid!
An Empire's Faith must first be Faith in Empire:
Religious Faith comes next. To me Faith came,
A lightning flash, that hour when first I cried
‘My Empire's bound must be the Northern Seas’:
If not, some prophet from Arabian sands,
For Faith is hottest in the South, will rise
And snatch my destined crown.
The Race Baptized! A poor half Faith was theirs
In Charity dissolved. That Sin amerced
My faithful people of Faith's centre firm
Round which a Universe might have hung self-poised,
And barred my Northern March. The Cleric Counsel
Was evermore for peace. The Imperial purpose
Then first a limit knew to just Ambition:—
For that cause lies beyond my hand this day
In mass immeasurable that Race Barbaric
Likelier perchance to absorb more late my Empire
Than be in it absorbed.
I missed my spring: no second chance was granted:
I failed: none know it: I have known it long.
My counsels still were sage; yet nothing prospered,
Then dropped the strong hands baffled. Slowly, surely
The weed became the inheritor of all:
The tribute withered: offices of state
Were starved: and from the gold crown to her feet
Beneath her regal robe the Empire shrank:
Fair was the face; the rest was skeleton;
Dead breast; miscarrying womb. A hand not mine
Had counterworked my work. In rage of shame
Or seeking humblest peace at vilest cost,
There were that voluntary changed to slaves!
A priest made oath to me, ‘There's many a man
Sir, in your realm, who gladly, while I speak,
Would doff his human pride and hope immortal,
And run a careless leveret of the woods
Contented ne'er to see his Maker's Face
Here or in worlds to come.’ Death-pale he sware it!
What help? I worked with tools: my best were rotten,
Some Strong One worked against me.
Affirmed that Christians, whether true or false,
At best were aliens in his scheme of empire,
At worst were hostile. Oft and loud he sware
That only on the old virtues, old traditions,
The patriot manliness of days gone by,
The fierce and fixed belief in temporal good
And earthly recompense for earthly merit,
Rome's Empire could find base. That Emperor erred
In what he saw not. What he saw was true.
I saw the old Rome was ended. What if I,
Like him, have missed some Truth those Christians see?
Men call that Race Baptized the illuminated.
The Race Baptized! To me it gave small aid!
An Empire's Faith must first be Faith in Empire:
Religious Faith comes next. To me Faith came,
A lightning flash, that hour when first I cried
‘My Empire's bound must be the Northern Seas’:
If not, some prophet from Arabian sands,
For Faith is hottest in the South, will rise
And snatch my destined crown.
The Race Baptized! A poor half Faith was theirs
In Charity dissolved. That Sin amerced
My faithful people of Faith's centre firm
Round which a Universe might have hung self-poised,
And barred my Northern March. The Cleric Counsel
Was evermore for peace. The Imperial purpose
Then first a limit knew to just Ambition:—
For that cause lies beyond my hand this day
In mass immeasurable that Race Barbaric
96
Than be in it absorbed.
I missed my spring: no second chance was granted:
I failed: none know it: I have known it long.
My counsels still were sage; yet nothing prospered,
Then dropped the strong hands baffled. Slowly, surely
The weed became the inheritor of all:
The tribute withered: offices of state
Were starved: and from the gold crown to her feet
Beneath her regal robe the Empire shrank:
Fair was the face; the rest was skeleton;
Dead breast; miscarrying womb. A hand not mine
Had counterworked my work. In rage of shame
Or seeking humblest peace at vilest cost,
There were that voluntary changed to slaves!
A priest made oath to me, ‘There's many a man
Sir, in your realm, who gladly, while I speak,
Would doff his human pride and hope immortal,
And run a careless leveret of the woods
Contented ne'er to see his Maker's Face
Here or in worlds to come.’ Death-pale he sware it!
What help? I worked with tools: my best were rotten,
Some Strong One worked against me.
I thought to rule my people through their Priests:
The spiritual power hath passed to men their foes.
Of late I made my youngest son a Cæsar:
I craved for him the blessing of God's Church:
I sought it not from prelates of my court:
I cast from me away the imperial pride:
I sent an embassage of princes twelve
In long procession o'er the Egyptian sands
To where within his lion-cinctured cave
Sits Anthony the Hermit. Thus he answered:
‘Well dost thou, Emperor, in adoring Christ:
Attend. Regard no more the things that pass:
Revere what lasts, God's judgment and thy Soul:
Serve God, and help His poor.’ His words meant this:
‘That work thou wouldst complete is unbegun;
Begin it Infant crowned.’
Three years of toil
The spiritual power hath passed to men their foes.
Of late I made my youngest son a Cæsar:
I craved for him the blessing of God's Church:
I sought it not from prelates of my court:
I cast from me away the imperial pride:
I sent an embassage of princes twelve
In long procession o'er the Egyptian sands
To where within his lion-cinctured cave
97
‘Well dost thou, Emperor, in adoring Christ:
Attend. Regard no more the things that pass:
Revere what lasts, God's judgment and thy Soul:
Serve God, and help His poor.’ His words meant this:
‘That work thou wouldst complete is unbegun;
Begin it Infant crowned.’
With all earth's fleets and armies in my hand
Raised up this sovereign city. Mountains cleft
Sheer to the sea, and isles now sea-submerged,
Surrendered all their marbles and their pines;
And river-beds dried up yielded their gold
To flame along the roofs of palace halls
And basilics more palatial. Syrian wastes
Gave up their gems; her porphyries Egypt sent;
Athens and Rome their Phidian shapes eterne:
My work was not in hope but in despair,
I made an Empire's Picture, not an Empire:
My Empire had existence, but not life:
The child it was of Rome's decrepitude,
Imbecile as its sire. No youth-tide swelled
Its heart, or nerved its arm, or lit its eye:
Its sins themselves had naught of youth within them.
On Rome the shadow of great times was stayed;
The shadow and the substance here alike
Were absent; and the grandeur of the site
But signalized its lack. To the end Rome nursed
Some rock-flower virtues sown in years of freedom:
Maro and Flaccus thrilled the Palatine
With music of great thoughts. Pagan was Rome:
Ay, but the Catacombs were under Rome,
What if her one sole hope be buried there
98
That Rome was mine.
In it alone there wagged no tongue against me,
I left it for some future man;—for whom?
Old Sabine Numa can he come again
To list Egeria's whisper; or those priests
White-robed that, throned on Alba Longa's height,
Discoursed of peace to mortals? Romulus?
Augustus? These have left their Rome for ever:
With me they left it. Who shall be our heirs?
No man—till some new Deluge sweeps it clean.
Haply some barbarous race may prove that wave:
Haply, that wave back-driven or re-engulfed
Within some infinite ocean's breast unknown,
From the cleansed soil a stem may yet ascend;
A tree o'er-shade the earth.
That Rome I left:
I willed to raise an Empire great like Rome,
And yet in spirit Rome's great opposite,
What see I? Masking in a Name divine
A City like to Rome but worse than Rome;
A Rome with blunted sword and hollow heart,
And brain that came to her second-hand,
Weak, thin, worn out by one who had it first,
And, having it, abused. I vowed to lift
Religion's lordliest fane and amplest shrine:
My work will prove a Pagan reliquary
With Christian incrustations froz'n around.
It moulders. To corruption it hath said,
‘My sister;’ to the wormy grave, ‘My home.’
I willed to raise an Empire great like Rome,
And yet in spirit Rome's great opposite,
What see I? Masking in a Name divine
A City like to Rome but worse than Rome;
A Rome with blunted sword and hollow heart,
And brain that came to her second-hand,
Weak, thin, worn out by one who had it first,
And, having it, abused. I vowed to lift
Religion's lordliest fane and amplest shrine:
My work will prove a Pagan reliquary
With Christian incrustations froz'n around.
It moulders. To corruption it hath said,
‘My sister;’ to the wormy grave, ‘My home.’
Not less that city for a thousand years
May keep its mummied mockery of rule
Like forms that sleep 'neath Egypt's Pyramids
Swathed round in balm and unguent, with blind eyes.
That were of dooms the worst.
My hope was this
May keep its mummied mockery of rule
Like forms that sleep 'neath Egypt's Pyramids
Swathed round in balm and unguent, with blind eyes.
99
That that high mercy of the Christian Law
Tempering the justice of the Roman Law,
Might make a single Law, and bless the world:
But Law is for the free man, not the slave:
I look abroad o'er all the earth: what see I?
One bondage, and self-willed.
I never sinned
As David sinned—except in blood—in blood:
Was this my sin, that not like him I loved?
Or this, that, sworn to raise o'er all the earth
Christ's realm, I drew not to His Church's font?—
To that a fatal obstacle I kenned:
The Church's son could ne'er have shaped her course.
As David sinned—except in blood—in blood:
Was this my sin, that not like him I loved?
Or this, that, sworn to raise o'er all the earth
Christ's realm, I drew not to His Church's font?—
To that a fatal obstacle I kenned:
The Church's son could ne'er have shaped her course.
Once more I sat in council at Nicæa:
In honour next to mine there stood a man—
I never loved that man—with piercing eye
And wingèd foot whene'er he moved; till then
Immovable as statue carved from rock;
That man was Athanasius. Late last year
A second sacred council sat at Tyre:
It lifted Arius from Nicæa's ban:
From Alexandria's Apostolic throne
Her Patriarch, Athanasius, it deposed:
Her priesthood and her people sued his pardon;
He was seditious, and I exiled him:
That was my last of spiritual acts.
Was it well done? Arius since then hath died:
Since then God's Church is cloven.
I willed her One.
In honour next to mine there stood a man—
I never loved that man—with piercing eye
And wingèd foot whene'er he moved; till then
Immovable as statue carved from rock;
That man was Athanasius. Late last year
A second sacred council sat at Tyre:
It lifted Arius from Nicæa's ban:
From Alexandria's Apostolic throne
Her Patriarch, Athanasius, it deposed:
Her priesthood and her people sued his pardon;
He was seditious, and I exiled him:
That was my last of spiritual acts.
Was it well done? Arius since then hath died:
Since then God's Church is cloven.
Not less 'twas I dissolved her unity.
My Empire too is cloven, and cloven in five.
No choice remained. I never was the man
100
My sons, my nephews, ineffectual these!
Since childhood left them I have loved them not,
And late have learned that they conspire against me.
No zeal parental warps my life's resolve
To leave my Empire one and only one:
Yet now a net is round me. To bequeath
To one mid those incapables an Empire
Were with the sceptre's self to break that Empire,
To slay it at the moment of its birth,
To raise the war-cry o'er my funeral feast,
And, ere the snapt wand lay upon my grave,
To utter from that grave my race's doom
And yield the labour of my life a prey
To Vandal and to Goth.
Conviction came:
It comes to all; slowliest to him who knows
That Hope must flee before its face for ever:
Conviction that my Empire's Unity,
Must end, a dream. That Knowledge—that Conviction—
It came at first a shadow, not a shape;
It came again, a Phantom iron-handed:
It took me by the hand from plausive hosts;
It took me by the hand from senate halls;
It took me by the hand from basilic shrines;
It dragged me to the peak ice-cold; to depths
Caverned above earth's centre. From that depth
I saw no star; I heard no ‘De Profundis.’
One night, the revel past, I sat alone
Musing on things to come. In sleep I heard
The billow breaking 'gainst the huge sea-wall,
Then backward dragged, o'erspent. For hours I mused:
101
Alternate. Both exhausted, what remains?
Endurance. Night is near its term. The morn
Will see my last of Acts, a parchment writ,
A parchment signed and sealed.’ Sudden I heard
Advancing as from all the ends of earth
Tramp of huge armies to the city walls:
Then silence fell. Anon my palace courts
Were thronged by warring hosts from every land
Headed by those disastrous Rivals Five
My sons, my nephews. Long that strife rang out;
First in the courts, then nearer shrieks I heard:
Amid the orange-scented colonnades
And inmost alabaster chambers dim;
And all the marble pavements gasped in blood,
And all the combatants at last lay dead:
Then o'er the dead without and dead within
A woman rode; one hand, far-stretched, sustained
A Portent—what I guessed—beneath a veil:
She dropped it at my feet: it was a Head.
She spake: ‘The deed was thine: take back thine own!
Bid Crispus bind in one thy shattered Empire!
Son of that earlier wife—the wife well-loved.’
Then fires burst forth as though all earth were flame,
And thunders rolled abroad of falling domes,
And tower, and temple, and a shout o'er all,
‘The Goth, the Vandal!’ 'Twas not these that roused me;
It was a voice well-loved, for years unheard,
‘Father, grieve not! That deed was never thine!’
Standing I woke, and in my hand my sword.
This was no vision; 'twas a dream; no more:
Next day at twelve I wrote my testament:
102
That Empire, vaster far than those of old,
That Empire long divided, late by me
Consolidated, and by Christian Law
Lifted to heights that touch on heaven, that Empire
This hand that hour divided into five.
This hand it was which wrote that testament;
This hand which pressed thereon the Imperial Seal:
Then too I heard those shouting crowds. Poor fools!
They knew not that the labour of my life
Before me stood that hour, a grinning mask
Disfleshed by death. That was my Act supreme;
Like Diocletian's last; 'twas abdication:
How oft at his I scoffed!
They scoff not less
The ripples of yon glittering sea! they too
Shoot out their lips against me! They recall
That second crisis in my vanished years,
When from this seat, Byzantium then, forth fled
Vanquished Licinius. There from yonder rock,
Once more I see my fleet steer up full-sailed,
Glassing its standards in the Hellespont,
Triumphant; see the Apostate's navy load
The Asian shore with wrecks.
It was my Crispus ruled my fleet that hour!
That victory I saw was his, not mine:
His was the heroic strength that awes mankind,
The grace that wins, the majesty that rules them.
Had he but lived! Well spake my dying sister
Wedded to that Licinius whom I slew,
‘God for thy sins will part from thee thy realm.’
I heard that whisper as my city's walls
Ascended, daily. Night by night I heard
The tread of Remus by his brother slain
Circling the walls half-raised of Rome. He slew
His Brother only. I—Well, well! 'Tis past!
In age I built a City. So did Cain.
The ripples of yon glittering sea! they too
Shoot out their lips against me! They recall
That second crisis in my vanished years,
When from this seat, Byzantium then, forth fled
Vanquished Licinius. There from yonder rock,
Once more I see my fleet steer up full-sailed,
Glassing its standards in the Hellespont,
Triumphant; see the Apostate's navy load
The Asian shore with wrecks.
It was my Crispus ruled my fleet that hour!
That victory I saw was his, not mine:
His was the heroic strength that awes mankind,
The grace that wins, the majesty that rules them.
Had he but lived! Well spake my dying sister
Wedded to that Licinius whom I slew,
‘God for thy sins will part from thee thy realm.’
I heard that whisper as my city's walls
Ascended, daily. Night by night I heard
The tread of Remus by his brother slain
103
His Brother only. I—Well, well! 'Tis past!
In age I built a City. So did Cain.
My portion in that City is yon church
Named of the Apostles: there I reared my tomb:
Around it rise twelve kingly cenotaphs
In honour of the Twelve Apostles raised;
These are my guards against the Powers Unblest:
Within that circle I shall sleep secure:
Thou Hermit of the Egyptian cave, be still!—
Ye too be mute, O mocking throngs far off!
Be mute, sweet song and adulating hymn!—
What scroll is that wind-curled? Ha! Persia's missive!
Named of the Apostles: there I reared my tomb:
Around it rise twelve kingly cenotaphs
In honour of the Twelve Apostles raised;
These are my guards against the Powers Unblest:
Within that circle I shall sleep secure:
Thou Hermit of the Egyptian cave, be still!—
Ye too be mute, O mocking throngs far off!
Be mute, sweet song and adulating hymn!—
What scroll is that wind-curled? Ha! Persia's missive!
I ever scorned that Persia! I reject
Her mendicant hand, stretched from her bed of roses;
She that of Cyrus made of old her boast,
That tamed the steed, and spake the truth; and rais'd
The one sole possible rival of my Rome;
An Empire based on God and on His Law,
A mighty line of kings hereditary,
And, raising, proved my work was feasible!
This day she whines and fawns; one day she dragged
A Roman Emperor through her realm in chains,
By name Valerian. Roman none forgives her!
I'll send no answer; yet I'll read her missive.
Her mendicant hand, stretched from her bed of roses;
She that of Cyrus made of old her boast,
That tamed the steed, and spake the truth; and rais'd
The one sole possible rival of my Rome;
An Empire based on God and on His Law,
A mighty line of kings hereditary,
And, raising, proved my work was feasible!
This day she whines and fawns; one day she dragged
A Roman Emperor through her realm in chains,
By name Valerian. Roman none forgives her!
I'll send no answer; yet I'll read her missive.
‘The Great King thus to Constantine of Rome:
Galerius stole from Persia, while she slept,
Five provinces Caucasian. Yield them back!
If not, we launch our armies on thy coasts
And drag thee chained o'er that rough road and long
Trod by Valerian.’ Let me read once more:
Writ by his hand, and by his sigil sealed!
So be it! My boyhood's vision stands before me!
From Ganges' mouths to Calpé's Rock one realm!
Insolent boy! Well knows he I am old:
I was: I am not: youth is mine once more:
To-morrow in my army's van I ride.
Euphorbos! Sleep'st thou? Send me heralds forth!
Summon my captains! Bid these mummers cease!—
The error of my life lies plain before me,
That fifteen years of peace.
Galerius stole from Persia, while she slept,
Five provinces Caucasian. Yield them back!
If not, we launch our armies on thy coasts
And drag thee chained o'er that rough road and long
Trod by Valerian.’ Let me read once more:
Writ by his hand, and by his sigil sealed!
So be it! My boyhood's vision stands before me!
104
Insolent boy! Well knows he I am old:
I was: I am not: youth is mine once more:
To-morrow in my army's van I ride.
Euphorbos! Sleep'st thou? Send me heralds forth!
Summon my captains! Bid these mummers cease!—
The error of my life lies plain before me,
That fifteen years of peace.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |