 | Timoleon |  |
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Scene II.
—A Chamber in the Citadel of Ortygia.Deinarchus, Isias, Demaretus, Neon, seated in council, await the arrival of Timoleon.
Deinarchus.
Was ever yet such hopeless-seeming task
So fondly dared, so fortunately done?
Corinth will not believe it.
Demaretus.
Yestermorn
Two mighty powers colleaguing overawed
And penned us in our suburbs: now, to-night,
One by mad panic is dispersed, and one
Driven from his fastness by our fierce assault
Leaves all the field unchallenged.
Neon.
'Twill be said
The gods, and not Timoleon, won the day.
Deinarchus.
Indeed the common sort do so regard him
As the elected instrument of heaven;
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And much portentous rumour noised abroad
Hath holp confirm them in their phantasy.
Neon.
I would ye had seen him lead the main array
This morning o'er Anapus: it were strange
But ye had shared their fond credulity.
Demaretus.
I and Deinarchus from Epipolæ
Were part beholders—for the northern slopes
Scarce checked our onset—how he stormed the town,
Scaling the heights to southward.
Isias.
On the east
I met but feigned resistance; all the brunt
And heat of this day's action fell to him.
Deinarchus.
Methinks the foe was conquered ere we joined,
The war-heart in them numbed and frozen quite
By Mago's cold desertion.
Demaretus.
In success
Lies still the crown of honour: Mago fled
As fearing Hiketas was false to him;
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His very foes appear his pensioners,
And their worst plots but masks of amity.
Isias.
How think ye he will use what he hath won?
Demaretus.
As who casts treasure to the squandering sea:
Ah! much I fear he'll yield the gripe of power
And hard-earned harvest of our conquering arms
To the weak fingers of a scrambling mob,
Till license grow more sick than tyranny.
Ye know me, friends, no tyrant's man am I,
But flocks need shepherding, when wolves are by.
Deinarchus.
For our own sakes we must not suffer it:
What! foil the wrestler, and refuse the prize!
Neon.
His conscience is so fine a colander,
'Twill ne'er sift heaps for pride to perch upon;
The very dust of honour scarce gets through,
Much less the coarse stuff of ambition.
But see! he comes: we shall know more anon.
[Enter Timoleon.
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Brave comrades, hail! and Corinth's thanks to each;
I dare anticipate her just award
For the great labours of this happy day:
So far as any man have praise herein,
It shall be shared by all indifferently;
Our threefold venture was thrice fortunate,
Nor no man failed in aught: yet, if the palm
Of all this conflict were assigned to one,
I'd say 'tis Neon's, whose expedient zeal
Falling at vantage on the eastern ports
First gave us foothold for to-day's exploit;
Hereto will all assent: for my part I
Abjure all merit save of duty done,
So plain I trace the handiwork of heaven:
For, first, the weight of half our enterprise
Was lifted from us with no help of ours—
We woke, and it had vanished! now to-night,
The very topmost of our hope is scaled,
And not one slain to sigh for! add to this
The scattered powers of conquered Hiketas
Break their allegiance, and turned back from flight
Do hourly flock to us.
Neon.
Lord General,
To one whose fame is bruited through the world
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And needs must seem superfluous; from the heart
Nathless we greet thy triumph.
Deinarchus.
But that I dread
The verdict of presumption, I would urge
That no misprisal of thy proper worth,
No self-abatement, fearing to be great,
Seduce thee from thine office, to forego
The trust which heaven itself commits to thee.
Timoleon.
Ye shall not find me backward; at this hour,
When all are wearied, and night wears apace,
And every eye but ours is slumber-bound,
I ask ye hither and trespass on your rest,
To apprise you of my purpose, that hereby,
Measuring the scope and working of my mind,
Ye might not blame its suddenness: meanwhile
Ye have conjectured something of my thought—
Your faces tell the tale: 'tis briefly this:—
To-morrow morn the public criers shall go
Their circuit of the city, to proclaim
Freedom in Syracuse; I reinstate
In the full rights of old enfranchisement
Without distinction all her citizens:
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That ancient model framed by Diocles—
With help of wisest State-artificers
Shall be with all expediency repaired:
Next, that I may not for one single day
Be damned in men's opinion, while they view
This time-dishonoured hold of gloomy power,
I herewithal invoke, who can, to aid
With axe and bar, who will, with mere main strength,
Its demolition, that to dust may come
The Dionysian fortress; in its stead
A common hall for judgment shall be reared,
First need of a free people. Furthermore,
Because the ways are desolate, and Despair
Sits gaping in the market, and rich men
Are not, but slain or banished, I invite
From all far countries the returning steps
Of exiles, whencesoe'er of Italy,
Or Hellas, or of utmost ocean-lands,
My heralds may convene them: and, lest these
Redeem not her impoverishment, that wealth
Once more may traffic in her silent streets
And fertilize her furrows, we will seek
Strange settlers to our city; there shall gleam
White sails of foreign men from over sea,
And Corinth shall conduct them, shall with pomp
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Anew, with happier omen than of old.
Deinarchus.
My lord, we trusted rather to have learnt
Thyself wouldst brace thee to the yoke of power;
The ox is loosed and out, that would not draw,
But the wain stirs not, and the mire is deep.
Demaretus.
Sir, we have heard your hope for Syracuse;
Such consummation is far off as yet,
Though all desire it, no man more than I.
The broken limb needs binding ere it hold,
Nor call for crutch to help the body's weight;
One starved from childhood, penned in poisonous air,
Arrives not at man's stature, though he chance
To light on a large house with food enough.
Neon.
Yet if the vigour of new blood might be
Drawn from health's very centre, and infused
Into the sickly vessels, who'ld despair
Of renovation and organic growth?
Demaretus.
Wait then: though thought o'erleap the interval,
In act 'tis vain to anticipate a cure.
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How destitute of counsel as of power,
Are they whom thou deliveredst from what foes,
How manifold and mighty! These are fled
But for a moment, a brief interval,
Which should be spent in arming Syracuse
Against their fierce renewals: 'tis a time
For stern compulsion, not for compliments,
For martial training and the soldiers' law,
For him, whose sword hath rescued, to bear rule,
Not bandy with the shifting populace.
By perilous degrees this height was clomb,
To be abandoned now! Sir, bear with me,
I know not by what argument thou seek'st
To undo all thy labour: dost thou say
This city's weak, beset by enemies,
Therefore I raze her bastion of defence?
Her people helpless as a gasping shoal
Caught in some wave-scooped hollow, therefore I,
On whose flood only they can ride to sea,
Do ebb and leave them? Were't not that cold fear
Mates with Timoleon as hoar-frost with fire
By heaven I'ld think that he, whom warrior's bulk
Could ne'er make tremble, was o'ercome at last,
Out-daunted by the shadow of a shame.
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Thy counsel lacks not weight, but in the main
'Tis shot beside the mark: thou dost confound
With lawful aid usurped authority:
Not seizing this must I withhold the other?
Who thrusts me from mine office? I am still
Defender of this people; more than that,
Though Corinth's self command, I cannot be.
Thou say'st their foes are imminent: more need
That these find something worthier to defend
Than chains and degradation, and hereto
Of one they trust, to help them: but in truth
Who'ld speak of trust, while such a monstrous ‘fie!’
Stands up to contradict him? which being down,
Then first they'll know the rapture to be free,
And learn to do as freemen. O they have had
Their fill of tyrants—will no more of them:
But should I force their loyalty, what gain?
To be suspected, sure, betrayed, as like,—
For tyranny breeds traitors—and at last
To leave them where I found them, and give place
To some more vile adventurer, having made
No breach i' the cursèd circle.—But enough,
I overtask your patience: and yet stay;—
The rest have spoken, or I know their minds;
But what saith Isias?
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I crave pardon, sir;
I am but a plain soldier, no wise skilled
(An I offend not with the phrase) to crack
Such nuts as these, nor aught indeed but skulls;
Indifferent apt to govern or obey,
Where trumpets sound and armies are afield,
Nor loth to lead my fellows to the breach,
And having stormed to keep it: but for the broil
Of civil factions and the war of words—
Your learned wranglings who shall make the laws,
And whether one shall wrench, or all evade,—
I care not for such chamber-chivalry,
Nor shall not meddle with it: so being asked
Whether I count it wisdom, having won,
To keep the prize or yield it, this or that,
I square my answer to the soldier's rule,
That serves me for a better, ‘might is right.’
Timoleon.
Sirs, I have heard your counsels; naught remains,
But that I scrutinise their weight, and act
By what the scale determines.—Now to rest.
The Generals.
Good-night, my lord.
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Good-night.
[Exeunt Generals
—So Dion fell,
Seduced by such-like arguments, a man,
Who marred the perfect picture of a life
By one black smutch at ending. More than he
None loathed the vice of greatness; yet he dreamed
Of arbitrary power, as 'twere a garb,
Which, made for base men, might take shape to fit
The limbs of noble action: so he doffed
The saving robe of honour, and did on
The poison that consumed him.
Seduced by such-like arguments, a man,
Who marred the perfect picture of a life
By one black smutch at ending. More than he
None loathed the vice of greatness; yet he dreamed
Of arbitrary power, as 'twere a garb,
Which, made for base men, might take shape to fit
The limbs of noble action: so he doffed
The saving robe of honour, and did on
The poison that consumed him.
True it is
There have been upright rulers, loyal kings,
Princes yet patriots—but the time is o'er—
Who not by sufferance, but with heart's consent
Of all men, pioneered the pathless way
To freedom; such as deemed 'twas pitiful
Being base-hearted to be born a king,
Much more by force to usurp it; who girt on
Their kinghood as a panoply of proof,
Sworn leaders of a service fraught with pain,
Not idly, as the badge of insolence
And all misdoing. Yea, 'tis a noble dream—
To stablish judgment and do equity,
To raise the humble, not to override them,
Nursing the weak limbs of an infant state;
To flash upon men's darkness like the dawn,
And so to soar above reproachful cloud,
Distorting fog of envy, and all taint
Of earthly attribute, as now at length
Arrived the empyræan of pure fame—
Ah! what?—to sink below the horizon's rim,
Droop nightward, and yield up the reins of day
To the chance hand and heady charioting
Of some rash Phaethon, to plunge in fire
Or wrench the fixèd pole!—
There have been upright rulers, loyal kings,
Princes yet patriots—but the time is o'er—
Who not by sufferance, but with heart's consent
Of all men, pioneered the pathless way
To freedom; such as deemed 'twas pitiful
Being base-hearted to be born a king,
Much more by force to usurp it; who girt on
Their kinghood as a panoply of proof,
Sworn leaders of a service fraught with pain,
Not idly, as the badge of insolence
And all misdoing. Yea, 'tis a noble dream—
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To raise the humble, not to override them,
Nursing the weak limbs of an infant state;
To flash upon men's darkness like the dawn,
And so to soar above reproachful cloud,
Distorting fog of envy, and all taint
Of earthly attribute, as now at length
Arrived the empyræan of pure fame—
Ah! what?—to sink below the horizon's rim,
Droop nightward, and yield up the reins of day
To the chance hand and heady charioting
Of some rash Phaethon, to plunge in fire
Or wrench the fixèd pole!—
Ho! there, who knocks?
[Enter Lysias, a soldier, bearing a letter.
Lysias.
My lord, as one kept watch upon the wall
Some half-hour since, pacing it up and down,
He spied this letter dropped upon his path,
As 'twere from heaven.
Timoleon
(glancing at it).
Or, say, cast up from hell? [He reads.
‘To great Timoleon, our deliverer,
Certain chief citizens of Syracuse
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Wait but the signal to declare themselves
Obedient vassals to his sovereign power,
Being ready to yield up, or, at a word,
Surprise and bind the movers of the mob,
To crush the dangerous and forestall sedition.’—
. . . So this craves instant action.—Lysias!
Lysias.
My lord!
Timoleon.
Take thou this proclamation;
See it be cried at dawn through Syracuse,
And bid our captain of the watch come hither:
This to the late commander of the fort—
All useful arms and properties of war
To be transported hence three hours ere noon.
Yet tarry—of what temper is the night?
Lysias.
The night was passionate and scowling-dark,
But it is past, my lord.
Timoleon.
In truth so soon?
How day forgets us in these gloomy walls!
Yon window should look east: uncurtain it;
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The birth-dawn of a people.
Lysias.
Behold! my lord,
As 'twere a ship on fire far out to sea.
Timoleon.
Behold! indeed. Ay, Lysias, thou wert right;
Put out my glimmering lamp: the sun is risen!
| Timoleon | |