University of Virginia Library

King Crœsus dreamed a dream: the live-long day
His heart was swollen with imperial pride,
And his eye surfeited with blaze of gems
And gleamy metals, and his weak ear soothed
By fair-tongued Lydians: but in the still night
King Crœsus dreamed a dream: 'twas Nemesis
That out of the mute darkness wove that dream.
He slept, and in his sleep he saw his son,
Atys, the beautiful, the chosen Atys,
The youthful warrior,—him he saw in dark
Confused embrace with hazy struggling forms,
Masses, which peopled all the blank of night,
Like bruised embossing on a lance-worn shield.
He could not extricate from thence, nor clear
One object which man's eye should recognize;
Only he saw Atys—Atys he saw,
His son, undoubted, manifest: ah woe!
Only he saw Atys,—torn with the point
Of some invisible implement; he saw
The point, and Atys, and his own child's blood.
Such was the dream King Crœsus dreamed that night.

There is a sound as of a nuptial feast
Throughout the low-roofed Sardis; tabor, lute
And Phrygian pipe in sweet accord are there,
Making such music as the easterns love,
Monotonous and wailing: there are lights
And cries and banquet sounds, and all the throng
Of nuptial celebration. Dark and dim
From Mother Dindymene's sacred hill
Hermus flows down into the noisy plain,
Where night is turned to day, and hurries on
His waters troubled with the unwonted glare
Into the quiet, misty distance. Oh
Strange apparition is a flowing stream
By a gay city in the obscure night!
It is the nuptial feast of Atys. Ay,
And will King Crœsus baffle destiny,
And flaunt the venerable Nemesis
With nuptial feasts and women's chambers? No—
For though the warrior's arms be laid aside,
And though the boar-spear for the hunt be thrown
In some neglected corner, though the walls
That rang with armor wave with tapestry,—
Yet sooner shall the soil instead of fruit
Bring forth sharp-pointed things, and mortals reap
Lance-heads for harvests, than the holy path
Of orderly and reverend fate be turned
This way or that. Mute matter and the beasts
Achieve Heaven's wrath or love upon the earth.

What ails the King? Why seeks he never now
The vaulted treasure-house, the metals, gems,
And costly inwrought works? His restless eye
Is palled with brightness, and his regal pride—
That hath gone down, ay, sunk, for ever sunk
In the deep ocean of paternal love.
Yet wherefore looketh he with curious search
Through all the palace and among his guards
And on state days and in the public place,
Lest a keen weapon or some pointed thing
Should come nigh Atys? He would charm the life
Of the brave, princely boy; he would rob fate
(And cannot kings do all things?) of the prize.
It is the Dream: that Dream is in his heart,
Stirring, like spring within the unconscious earth
Setting the unborn summer in array.

The power that wove the Dream doth also work
Out in the world. The toils of Nemesis
Are closing round thee, Crœsus! oh how near!

There came a stranger to the Lydian court,
A man of unclean hands, a fratricide,
And yet withal a gentle being, one
Whose noble blood of Phrygia's royal line
Was least of his endowments; one of those
Whose fortune is a mystery on the earth,
A painful problem, gendering thought and tears
Even in the sage, and in the unrestrained
A refuge oft for easy misbelief—
As though by some dread fate perversely thrown
Upon the very opposite of all
Their passions and propensions, not allowed
To hit the scope at which their nature aims.
Men are they, by compulsion of the world
And the disturbing force of circumstance
Led forth, like victims, out of their own sphere
To act some other spirit's destiny:
Who pass away, still having in themselves
A better destiny all unfulfilled,
A holier, milder being unevolved.

Such was Adrastus, with a gentle tinge
Of softness and a partial hallowing
Of deep romance, an almost wayward love
Of sadness, and a clinging to the woe
Which had exhausted and absorbed the hope
Of his whole being. He had shed the blood
Of his own brother most unwittingly,
And came to Crœsus that from him he might
Receive the expiation of the times,—
A cleansing power, most rightly gathered up
Into the state and person of the prince,
A portion of divinity enthroned,
Like a peculiar instinct, in a king,
Who, by his unity no less than by
His height, doth adumbrate the One Supreme.
With running water and the kingly word
Adrastus was made clean, and dwelt, a guest
Of Crœsus, I might almost say, a son.
When by the hearth the stranger's shadow fell
King Crœsus knew not that it was the cloud
Of Nemesis upon his royal house:
So little venerable in our sight
Is present Providence—when past, how great!

All things concur with Nemesis: she sent
A fugitive from Phrygia thus to be
Her shadow and her symbol in the house
Of the great king whom she had singled out
To teach men, by his eminence and griefs,
The righteousness of Heaven. In other lands
She makes fresh preparation, and the ring
Of destiny is slowly narrowing in;
The victim cannot stir, he cannot do
A transitory act, but he therein
Is riveting the future on himself.
Crœsus! awake! Thy Dream is on thee,—rise!

Whence are these foreign husbandmen, who throng
The audience-hall at Sardis, suppliants rude?
They are from pastoral Mysia, come to tell
How a huge boar from rough Olympus robs
The sheep-folds, thins the lowing kine, and treads
The vineyards and the flax and silky maize
Beneath his feet. “Will Crœsus deign to send
“His princely son and famous Lydian dogs
“And hunters of renown, to free the land,
“And leave his name all o'er the Mysian fields
“Fragrant as incense to the pastoral tribes?”
To whom the King made answer: “Speak no more
“Of Atys; he must tarry with his bride,
“Whom it were graceless at this hour to leave.
“The hounds and hunters ye are free to take,
“And rid fair Mysia of the uncouth beast.”

It grieved the heart of Atys; he was grieved
That he should be shut out from manly toils,
From winning love, and walking in men's eyes
A prince by deeds as well as royal birth.
He came unto his father and knelt down,
Knelt down before his father and his King,
And sued with piteous words: “O royal Sire!
“With our progenitors it was esteemed
“That battlefield and hunting-ground should be
“The theatres of princes:—Hath the law
“Been changed in Lydia that thou shuttest me
“From such employ? Father! what cowardice,
“Or what faint spirit hast thou marked in me?
“How shall I come and go within the streets
“Of this great Sardis, how endure the eyes
“That speak worse words than those men would address
“Unto me if I were not prince? Dear Sire!
“My very bride will point me with her finger,
“And call me ‘Woman,’ wishing that she had
“A man to be the father of her sons!
“I pray thee let me go unto this hunt,
“Or reason with me why I should not go.”
Crœsus was mindful of his bygone youth,
Which was an echo to the young man's words.
A teardrop stood within the proud King's eye;
He was a father, and he wept and smiled.
“O Atys, my son Atys, I have not,
“The gods forfend it! aught in thee observed
“Unprincely, or beneath the graciousness
“Born to the sons of kings. I had a dream,”
(And here a trembling passed upon the King)
“A dream one night, when I had spent the day
“Amid my treasures: I would not disturb
“The quiet happiness of thy young life
“By speaking of the vision, but I kept
“The burden at my heart, and there it lay
“The secret cause of my unwonted mien
“And gesture; nay, in many little ways
“It hath unkinged me. Atys! it declared
“Thy span of life to be but brief: it spoke
“Of death by weapon-point. Therefore it was
“I hastened on thy nuptials, if so be
“I might for my life-time enjoy thy life,
“A theft, a stolen joy, the spoil of fate.
“Thou art my chosen son, nay art thou not
“Mine only one, thy brother being deaf,
“To whom the outer world is but a show
“Like wind-tossed trees upon the mountain top,
“Or Hermus lapsing mutely through the town,
“Too gentle, as the stricken always are,
“Not one whom men could bow to as a king?”

Young Atys listened, not without some awe,
For he had piety towards the gods,
And dreams and portents were unto his soul
Its faith and fear, not wholly without love.

O the sweet science of our youth, to find
A way wherein our wills may go, a cause
For action in the very reasonings
Whereby men prove to us we should not act!
Thus Atys spoke, the princely casuist,
Pouring his honey in a father's ear:—
“O father! blessèd art thou for the love
“Wherewith thou hast thus loved me! yet indeed
“Its very fervor leadeth thee astray
“From the true purport of the dream. 'Tis thus:
“I am to die by point of iron spear.
“Father, dear father! are the tusks of boars
“In that green Mysia made of iron points?
“Elsewhere they are of bone! Now art thou not,
“Dear father! art thou not a timorous king
“And an unwise? Why truly I shall think
“It is my mother governs Lydia now,
“So good, so kind, and yet so timorous,
“So very full of sweet maternal wiles.”
He shook his flaxen hair from off his brow,
And looked and laughed into the old King's face:
And the King laughed again at his rude boy,
Atys, the beautiful, the flaxen-haired.
Crœsus! beware, the Dream is on thee now!
But the Dream wrought; he let young Atys go:
Fathers are evil pleaders with their sons.

King Crœsus sat within his audience-hall,
Fixed like a statue on his marble throne,
Silent and troubled, like a man who feels
He hath done that which he shall one day rue.
How cold, how weak the words of Atys seemed
Now that the youth was gone; yea, he was gone,
Atys, the beautiful, the flaxen-haired,
Whose eloquence was his young face and not
His reasonings, his light laugh and not his speech.
For a sweet look and for a pretty gibe
Atys, the flaxen-haired, was sold to fate.
A daily bargain is it on the earth;
Forsooth to-day a hundred sons have been
To bondage sold in foolishness of love
Which is not love, through weakness falling short.
O father Crœsus—yet it was the Dream.
The Dream hath reached King Crœsus. And behold!
Where'er he turns dread Nemesis is there.
Things turn to Nemesis beneath his touch.
His servants are the slaves of fate: his guest
Fate's shadow, and the sunbeam in the eye
Of Atys is the light of fate; the shake
Of his long flaxen hair belonged to fate.
The royal house is compassed by a Power
Which hath absorbed all wills into its own.
Sorrow and mirth, the hour of kingly pride
Within the treasure-house, the nuptial feast,
The blood in Phrygia spilled, the mountain boar,
The husbandmen, the fame of Lydian dogs,
The kneeling boy, the gibe, the flaxen hair,—
All grow into one shadow, and advance
Upon King Crœsus, like an angry god.
King Crœsus saw it not; he did not know
He was become the centre of his Dream.
Alas! King Crœsus, we are all like thee,
Fate teaching us the worship of free-will.

King Crœsus sat within the audience-hall,
Silent and troubled: Atys had gone forth
To make his preparations for the hunt.
The monarch bade them call the Phrygian prince;
Adrastus stood before him. “Noble guest!”
King Crœsus spake, “amid the royal state
“Wherewith thou seest me compassed, at my heart
“A hot uneasy secret hath lain hid,
“Which threatens now to bring forth bitter fruit
“Of dire affliction. I have cleansed thy hands,
“And given thee kingly greeting, and a home,
“And appanage, and all things meet for thee,
“As though thou hadst been Atys, my true son.
“Nay, stranger, I recount not these small things
“As debts for which thou art to pay me back
“Measure for measure; nor upbraidingly
“As though the kindness lay too light on thee.
“I seek return most different in kind,
“I would thou shouldst go forth unto this hunt.
“Thou art a gentle, princely man; I trow
“Atys would be as safe beneath thy charge
“As though King Crœsus went with him. The land
“Is wild, and there are perils of the way;
“Haply a father magnifies them, yet
“I would that Atys went with thee, my guest!
“And thou too hast great sires, unto whose deeds
“'Twere well to link thine own; thy stalwart prime
“Without achievements should not thus elapse:
“Adrastus! thou art born a Phrygian prince,
“The column of an old and generous name!”
“Monarch and father!” thus Adrastus said,
“I should not otherwise have sought this hunt.
“A sorrow-stricken man should not essay
“To join himself unto his peers: the gods
“Have taken him apart unto themselves,
“Clouding his days; nor have I now a soul
“For martial enterprise, or glorious deeds
“Of princely prowess, isolated thus
“From my long line of royal ancestors,
“Thro' exile, ay, thro' worse than exile dead.
“Yet for thy sake I go, content to have
“Thy joy for my reward in that sweet hour
“When I shall give back Atys to thine arms.”

King Crœsus left the audience-hall assured.
Ah! he hath drawn the Dream unto himself,
And of his own free will embraced his fate.
There is not now a fibre in his heart
At which that Vision pulls not every hour.

Methinks I see the glittering plain outspread
At sunny dawn, and Hermus flowing by,
And the blue mountains, north and south and east,
With Sypylus, which half fills up the west,
Catching the sunrise, in whose rifted crags
The thunder tolls all summer, day and night,—
And the white walls of Sardis, and the King
Waving his last farewell from near the gate.
And o'er the Acropolis I see the snow
On Tmolus, where the long-lived shepherds dwell,
Tending their sable goats upon the downs
With purple saffron streaked, while breezy morn
Wafts o'er the plain from out the shrubby glens
That aromatic breath so dear to Pan.
And old Pactolus guides his lucid stream
Between two lips of ruddy sand, which glow
Like webs of golden tissue in the sun.
Far off the tomb of Alyattes gleams
Through the low mist, whose sluggish climbing folds
Its lofty cone o'ertops, and shoots on high,
Clearing its way into the radiant air.
And in the wind the lake of Gyges seems
Of silver shot with black, whose bright expanse
Regions of plumy marsh-plants intersect,
From out whose nodding coverts at that hour
The countless swans rise up to greet the morn
With tuneless pipings, which, with resonance
Conjoined of insect-swarms, that from the lake
Keep off the restless thirsty herds, are now
The only sounds that desolately thrill
That solitary shore of Lydian tombs.
Then the brave band of men and dogs went on
O'er hill and dale, and, when the sunbeams glanced
Upon the spear-points of the horsemen there,
It was the brightness of the Dream that moved
With them to its fulfilment constantly.

Atys, with beamy spear-points girdled round,
Beguiled Adrastus somewhat of his woe,
Recounting stories of the famous hunts,
Which he had heard within the banquet hall
By rhapsodists recited to the King
From Lydian chronicles: and then he spake
Of his young bride, or bade Adrastus note
The plumage of the bird that darted by,
Or the thick fleets of rapid ortolans
Which swam along the surface of the maize,
Or on a sudden sank and disappeared.
He asked the name of this or that blue cone
Which glimmered in the sun, or thoughtlessly
He pointed to the dogs, and asked the prince
If there were such in Phrygia, then confused
He talked of other things scarce knowing what.
Then languor seized him, and the weariness
Of the tame distance, and they had some hours
Of silent riding; but a bubbling brook,
And hunter's fare and slumber in the shade
Of single plane trees, such as here and there,
Like tents, rise up in those unwoody parts,
Refreshed the youth, and ever from his talk
Adrastus gathered peace and freshness too.
And thus they travelled to the Mysian border,
In its green mountain-glens to meet the Dream.

How beautiful are still and starry nights
On the great plains of Asia! And how clear
The yellow moon in glossy-foliaged dells
Where shrunken brooks are tinkling through the night!
Oh I shall think unto my dying day,
When I outlive the strength of roving youth,
How beautiful are nights on Asia's plains!
The dome of heaven scarce arched above the earth
With the low hanging moon, and lustrous stars
Orblike and swollen with unusual light,
The night-wind, fragrant with a thousand gums,
Moaning, as weary of its homeless life
Over those countless leagues of inland steppe,
The little tents, the smouldering fire of wood,
The scattered arms, the horses on the plain,
Dim, dusky figures, feeding or at rest:—
What Atys and Adrastus saw is still
Seen nightly in that old unchanging land.

Amid the green and bosky roots, from which
Mysian Olympus rises, there doth lurk
A stony hollow, thickly overgrown
With arbutus and straight lentiscus shoots
And ragged stone-pines: there land-turtles dwell,
And bright innocuous snakes, and cruel boars.
And by the Mysian shepherds thither led
After most blythe reception, Atys stood,
And Prince Adrastus and the Lydian band;
And in the midst the boar at bay. The chace
With all its wonted stirring circumstance
Aroused the spirit of the Phrygian prince,
And, with the power of old past times, relaxed
Grief's pressure; and he hurled his lance
With fierce unsteady eagerness, nor hit
The raging boar: but youthful Atys fell.
The brittle shoots of the lentiscus broke
Beneath the fall, and to the naked sky
The closing eyes of Atys were upturned.
And in that stony hollow, which to-day
The aromatic summer gently fills
As calm as though no blood had been shed there,
Rifling the placid beauty of the place,
Was Atys, youthful Atys in his blood,
Atys the beautiful, the flaxen-haired.
There lay the hope of Crœsus; thither came
The old King's Dream for its accomplishment.

There is a cry in Sardis; Hermus hears:
'Tis not the clamor of the nuptial feast,—
Atys is dead, they wail for Atys. Where
Art thou, young bride of Atys? And the King—
Where is King Crœsus? Who will dare to say
Unto the King that Atys hath been slain,
Atys, the beautiful, the flaxen-haired?
He who went out at dawn, who marked the birds,
Whose youth ran over with him, like a well,
And when his spirits wearied him, he slept
Beneath the plane, because his heart was light—
Who saw the stars at midnight in the sky,
Who looked into that hollow and knew not
It was his grave—he is among the dead!
O weep for Atys, Atys mid the dead!
And Sardis wept for Atys.

Crœsus called
For vengeance on Adrastus, called on Zeus
The god of expiations: he assailed
The powers of Heaven with clamorous prayers, and filled
The streets with imprecations, such alone
As agony could wring from out the heart
Of a bereaved and stricken parent. “Curse,
“O curse the impious stranger, god of hearths!
“O curse Adrastus, thou dread power who reign'st
“O'er mortal friendship! curse me that dark man!”

Slow the procession moves along the streets
Of twilight Sardis. See! the white form comes,—
Atys, the prince, returning to his home.
King Crœsus gazed upon the slayer there,
An apparition, wan as the cold corpse
Upon the swaying bier: King Crœsus gazed,
And he unprayed his curse, his passion sank,
Sank down, and in his soul he pitied him;
And beautiful and touching were his words,
Albeit he then remembered with a pang
How once Adrastus spake of the sweet hour
When he should give back Atys to his arms:
That hour had come;—it had no name in words!
“Stranger!” (for by that title he addressed
The prince, scarce knowing whether it enhanced
Or lessened his mishap, that it befel
By stranger's hand) “I will not seek to add
“By word of mine to thine exceeding woe:
“Nay, rather I would bid thee take good heart,
“Although environed by calamity.
“Adrastus! it was God who slew my son,
“The holy God who warned me by the Dream.
“Adrastus! it was God who by thy hand
“Laid Atys low, and quelled King Crœsus' pride.
“Wretched Adrastus! be consoled for this—
“It was not thou, but God:—yet why by thee,
“Yea, wherefore by thy hand, most rightly dear
“For thy true princely heart, and for thy griefs?”

Thus spoke King Crœsus most benignant words:
For his whole mind was raised and magnified,
Made merciful and quiet as a god's,
By the extremity of mortal woe.
Oh what a royal heart had that old man!

Sardis remembered many a long, long year
The funeral of Atys; how the King
Hung o'er the motionless white frame, and wept
And wept and spoke not, how the thrilling wail
Of the young bride resounded on the plain
Throughout the dim expanse, and how the prince,
The rapt Adrastus, spoke not, did not seem
To hear or see, but was as if he strove
With some dull baffling mist within his soul.
All gazed upon Adrastus; yet no eye
In the whole crowd of Sardians had a look
Of rage or hatred; for the King's great soul
Had passed into his people.

Midnight came:
The glowing light of the red pile sunk down.
Hermus, who had been troubled with the glare
Of nuptial lamps, and with the smoke and sparks
Of the dull wine-quenched pyre, now calmly ran
Past the low fresh-turfed barrow where the bones
And ashes lay. There were no feet of men,
No Sardian lingering from the mournful crowd,
Around the grave; but night, calm night was there.
The silent darkness rested on the plain,
By the swift rushing river undisturbed.
Adrastus stood beside the mound in thought,
The prince, the gentle heart, twice stained with blood.
He knew that there was suffering on the earth;
But he, yea, he was singled out from men
For awful woe, bent, laden, trampled down,
A gazing-stock for all posterities,
His being brought beneath some special law
Of the invisible world, so marked and sealed
That he should not claim kindred with his kind.
And in the darkness of his pagan faith
The princely-hearted victim deemed he saw
A right, uncensured, to self-sacrifice.
Therefore he slew himself upon the grave;
Not from despair, nor goaded by remorse,
Nor to escape the dogging steps of fate;
But, mastered by an instinct of deep love
For earth and for his fellows, did he sit
In judgment on himself, and, so condemned,
With solemn self-collection did he slay
Himself upon the barrow newly raised,
That he might abrogate that fearful law
Which had hung evil round him like a cloak.

King Crœsus mourned for Atys two whole years
Within his latticed halls: his pride was spent;
And from that cloud of sorrow he emerged,
With heart and eye chastised, a royal sage;
And with a melancholy gentleness
Of thought and aspiration so endowed,
Men marvelled at the wisdom then outpoured
From lips which learned their sole philosophy
From suffering: such transfiguration wrought
The love of God within the pagan's soul:
And such the working of a heaven-sent dream
To sanctify that ancient Lydian King.