The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Parmenio and Philotas.
Phi.
You are a greater man, sir, than you know,
And bear your honours meekly. Pray you pardon
My sometimes halting reverence.

Par.
Here's a change!
I have warned you oft to bate your perilous pride
Saying, “My son be less.” Your whim is now
To show all humbleness.

Phi.
I should be humble
To one who for his master has a god:
Unseen I heard the king expound his schemes,
Hephestion mildly plausive.

Par.
Schemes! What schemes?

Phi.
Kneel, Hercules, and Dionysus tremble!
Tremble, thou Caucasus that hid'st thy head
In snows eterne! Our great stage-king has sworn
To plant his buskin on thy wintry scalp!

Par.
What seeks the boy?

Phi.
From eastern Caucasus
Two rivers rush, the Indus and the Oxus,
One south, one north. He'd tie them, tail to tail,
Like foxes caught, to test their strength and prowess;
Next, on those heights he seeks some herb to enrich
The Stagyrite's medicine shop: and, lastly, thence
He'd o'er-gaze Scythia, which with proximate place
Is honour'd in the order of his conquests.

Par.
Renounce great Persia for a realm of bears!
I march with him no more!

Phi.
You shall not need:
Besieging Tyre, he sent you to Damascus
To seal up sacred balms, and perfume-phials,
And inventory the wardrobe of Darius.
In Egypt, you had no conspicuous place:
Now, for like cause, the Caspian Gates you pass not,
Ecbatana your charge. Upon his treasure
He bids you sit like an old hen, and hatch it
While he strides on to victory. Snows of age
With what auspicious calm ye crown old heads,
And hearts virile no more!

Par.
The king's a madman:—
The worse for us! Free him from that conceit
That he's a god, the man of men were he:
Since Marathon we have seen none other like him.

Phi.
One-half his victories come but of his blindness,
And noting not the hindrance.

Par.
At Granicus—
But that was chance. At Issus he was greater:
I set small store on Egypt or on Tyre:
Next came Arbela. Half a million foes
Melted like snow. To him Epaminondas
Was as the wingless creature to the wing'd.

Phi.
I grant his greatness were his godship sane!
But note his brow; 'tis Thought's least earthly temple:
Then mark, beneath, that round, not human eye,
Still glowing like a panther's! In his body
No passion dwells; but all his mind is passion,
Wild intellectual appetite and instinct
That works without a law.

Par.
But half you know him.
There is a zigzag lightning in his brain

That flies in random flashes, yet not errs:
His victories seem but chances:—link those chances,
And under them a science you shall find,
Though unauthentic, contraband, illicit,
Yea, contumelious oft to laws of war.
Fortune, that as a mistress smiles on others,
Serves him as duty-bound: her blood is he,
Born in the purple of her royalties.
On me she frown'd long time: these mailèd fists
Smote her on breast and brow for thirty years,
From Athos westward to the Illyrian coasts,
Ere yet she learn'd to love me. He too loves me!
Though jealous of my fame.

Phi.
You dream, good father!
A tent's small fissure and a moonless night
Help'd me to better knowledge. Thus he spake:
“Hephestion, till Arbela's fight I loved him:
I know him now, poor shell of that he was,
For baggage-tendence best.”

Par.
Blunderer and traitor!
He placed me at Arbela, naked of friends,
Amid unnumber'd foes. He lied, and lies!

Phi.
How far to India, father?

Par.
'Tis earth's bound:
Beyond is nothing save the rising sun.

Phi.
'Tis the beginning of his last ambition.
Phœbus Apollo, stand on guard! this youth
Will take a leap into thy flaming chair;
He'll clutch thee by the bright locks never shorn;
Far forth o'er earth he'll cast thee, there to tend
Once more Admetus' herds! I tell you, father,
Three times that night I heard him boast his schemes;
Heard, and not laugh'd. 'Twas Scythia, first; then India.

Par.
I reck not of his injuries to myself;—
But shall a new Cambyses drown in sands
The best and bravest army bred by Greece?
Not so, Parmenio living!

Phi.
Other help
Greece lacks this hour. The camp is full of murmurs;
Vacant of aid.

Par.
Your drift?

Phi.
A word suffices:
Better a man should perish than a people.

Par.
(after a long silence).
The day grows chill.

Phi.
A hundred ways there are—

Par.
Hark! 'Tis the royal trumpet. Son, be patient:
The gods are helpful.

Phi.
Pious hand is his
That helps the helpful gods!

Par.
We've time before us:
Likeliest, a thousand hidden dangers 'scaped,
He'll dash his bark against some mountainous rock,
And vanish in flat seas. And yet, it may be
That growing years will tame him.

Phi.
It were needful:
If ere that time he perish in his cups
One man there lives on whom the whole Greek host
Would fix its gaze.

Par.
His name?

Phi.
'Twas once Parmenio:—
The man from war to war the battle's king;
The man who grudged no soldier drink or victual,
Nor sold his life for nought; the man who now
Holds in his charge an empire's treasure. Well!
If you're sent back, you'll know I fabled not.

University of Virginia Library

Scene I.—The Road to Rhagæ near the Caspian Gates.