The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Alexander, Hephestion.
Alex.
The time is come; you stare;—the time decreed;
Of Empire safe henceforth, or lost for ever:
With a fierce joy I clasp this chief of battles
Which dares me in my day of seeming peace.
What think you of my fortunes?

Heph.
More and more
They are like yourself: they wear a royal aspect.

Alex.
False! I am substance; and my fortunes hollow!
To keep that little handful of my Greeks
In girl-proud severance from the conquered world
A dream it was, a dream!

Heph.
You said so early.

Alex.
To dispossess them of that dream-dominion;—
I told you this must be:—Craterus—yourself—
Seleucus—all—conspired in one reply,
“The Greek will rather die.”

Heph.
We knew, and said it.

Alex.
I sought evasions; I deferred the time;
I marched to Scythia, then to India on,
Trusting that mellowing years might work a change.
Prerogatives I linked, yet kept apart,
To native hands conceding civil functions,
Reserving still the warlike for the Greek;
What find I now returning? Faction's fruits:
The cry comes up:—discords, corruptions, slaughters,
The honour of great houses violated,
Their lands laid waste—
These things must end: this missive comes to end them:
Three years ago I pledged my royal word
Asian recruits should stand at one with Greeks;
A month, and thirty thousand join my ranks:
Come weal, come woe, I keep my sacred pledge.

Heph.
All Greece will rise in storm.

Alex.
A storm shall meet it.

Heph.
Till now you have lived for ever in their praise.

Alex.
To breathe applauses is to breathe an air
Defiled by breath of men: I stand, and stood
On the mountain-tops, breathing the breath of gods.
Fear nought: I see my way. Those Asian Empires
Were things mechanic.

Heph.
Greek and Asian equalled,
The Greek supremacy has died at birth.

Alex.
You see but half. Equality, when based
On merit, means supremacy of Greek;
For mind is merit, and the great Greek mind
Supreme in nature's right. Our Greece shall rule
Like elemental gods with nature blent,
Yet not in nature merged.

Heph.
The first inception—

Alex.
I had foreseen it; and I'll have no first:
Three changes I have welded into one.
Thanks to Parmenio's death, the treasure's mine:
It buys an Empire's safety. Half my Greeks
Stagger beneath a load of debt: I'll pay it:
That's change the first. I'll wed the races next:
My bravest and my best—that's change the second—
Shall marry Asian maids, by me so dowered
As Hope had feared to hope. My generals, likewise,
Shall mate the noblest ladies in the land;
Which done, all war henceforth were household war.
At that high marriage-feast mine earlier pledge
Shall stand redeemed. Persian shall rise to Greek:
Ay, but Greek soldiers rise to Asian kings!
That's change the third. I blend these three in one.

Heph.
The gods inspired that scheme! Their help go with it!

Alex.
The gods are with me ever: but the Fates—
Those whom the immortals dread, I too may fear.

Heph.
Touching the gods, I mark in you a change:
At first you honoured much this Persian Faith,
A Faith that soared, and yet went deep, insisting
For ever on the oppugnancy divine
'Twixt Good and Ill, unlike those nymph-like Fancies,
Glad offspring of Hellenic poet-priests,
That, draped in Faith's grave garb, yet loosely zoned,
But glide above the surfaces of things,
And tutor us with smiles. That time is past.
You honour still Egyptian rites and Asian;
Persian no more.

Alex.
The man that founds an Empire
Must measure all things by the needs of Empire:
This Magian Faith will prove refractory:
That truth it claims to hold, and hold alone,

Burns in its eye, and eyes of them that serve it,
A portion of their never-quenchèd Fire:
Its spirit is the spirit of domination:
I'll own no Persian worship.

Heph.
Is this just?
You smile on Persia's court, upon its camp,
Its nobles, and its merchants, and its peasants;
Upon the noblest thing it hath you frown.
Its domination means that Truth should rule,
It seeks no thrones: you find no foe, but make one.

Alex.
'Tis so. I ever make my choice of foes
Not less than friends. I know this Faith must hate me:
Like it there's none: the rest at heart are brothers;
Their priests alike contented to be ruled,
Their rites not hard to reconcile. Moreover,
I know Calanus now: his Faith for me
Holds something Persia's lacks. The Indian Seer
Who scorns both kingly throne and beggar's cloak,
Contemplative unvested 'neath the palms,
Seems than the Magian more abstruse in lore
And seated farther back in lordlier depths
Of world-defying pride.

Heph.
His pride I doubt not:
When first you found him on the banks of Indus
In meditation 'mid his brethren throned,
They to the greeting of a king vouchsafed not
So much as this—the uplifting of their eyes.

Alex.
Not less he joined my march—though on conditions.

Heph.
The Indian's faith may soar as high as heaven:
His pride is narrow as the Cynic's tub.

Alex.
You hate Calanus.

Heph.
What I love is Truth

'Tis great: and therefore humbleness must win it,
Not pride, if won at all.

Alex.
We know but this—
We walk upon a world not knowable
Save in those things which least deserve our knowing.
Yet capable, not less, of task sublime.
My trust is in my work: on that I fling me,
Trampling all questionings down.

Heph.
From realm to realm
You have chased the foe like dreams.

Alex.
I sometimes think
That I am less a person than a power,
Some engine in the right hand of the gods,
Some fateful wheel that, rolling round in darkness,
Knows this—its work; but not that work's far scope.
Hephestion, what is life? My life, since boyhood,
Hath been an agony of means to ends:
An ultimate end I find not. For that cause,
On-reeling in the oppression of a void,
At times I welcome what I once scarce brooked,
The opprobrium of blank sleep—
Enough of this. Discoursing of my plan
I passed unnamed its needfullest part: you guess it:
My marriage must inaugurate the rest,
And yours, with mine: our captains, one and all,
Will shape their course by yours.

Heph.
I understand not.

Alex.
Brothers till now we are not save in love:
Within our children's veins one blood shall flow,
Children of sisters. Now you know my meaning.

Heph.
I hear a music as of gods borne nigh;
See nought.

Alex.
The scheme's not policy alone:
'Tis expiation likewise. Hearken, Hephestion:

Above the body of Darius dead
I vowed to reinstate his Royal House,
My own just rights secured, nor hid my vow,
Sending that holy corse to Sisygambis,
The mother of the murdered, for the tomb.
Of those fair sisters—children then they were—
I chose the younger, destining my crown
For her fair brows. Arsinbe to you
(I named her once, but thought the theme unwelcome)
My fancy gave. I find this may not be:
Old Persia rests on laws immutable:
The eldest daughter of the Royal House
Must share the oldest throne on earth, and chief,
Except her sire's. A marriage less than this
To Persia were a stain, to Greece a weakness.
These things are nought. The maids are good alike:
You'll have the lovelier bride, the nobler I
In Asian heraldry. That setting sun
Dazzles my eyes, or else you're pale, Hephestion,
You that paled never 'mid Gedrosian sands:—
We buried many there. Deny the army
The lists of the dead.

Sel.
(entering).
So please the king, his council—

Alex.
I shall divulge this marriage to the council,
And show this missive from the agèd queen
So lofty, sad, yet grateful. I had forgotten:—
Those spoils that Xerxes filched, those statues twinned
That shine in brass before the palace portals,
Harmodius and Aristogeiton styled,
(I deem them unauthentic, like the merit
Of those seditious boors whose names they boast)
To Athens send, ordaining for their site

100

Great Theseus' temple. Be it done ere morn.

[Alexander departs, followed by Seleucus.
Heph.
'Twas all but won: 'tis lost, and lost for ever!
To her no loss: she knew not of my love:
I half foresaw, and sent her never message.
'Twas but a child! Ah yes, yet childish eyes
Shining through darkness could illume my dreams,
Star-like could pierce the low-hung battle-cloud,
In victory's hour could wake in me a heart
Tenderly righteous. Palace of Old Tyre!
Dark groves wherein the night-bird sang by day!—
'Twas but a child! Ah yes, yet childish hands
'Mid burning wastes could bind my brow with wreaths
Cold as the northern morn; a childish voice,
Still heard 'mid Lydian measures, could expel
Their venomed softness leaving them but plaintive.
Must all end thus? Oh mockery, mockery, mockery!
Shall one be zealous for my body's health,
Make inquisition of mine alter'd cheek,
Adventure to exalt that fame I laugh at,
The dignities I spurn, my golden fortunes,
Yet, there where only lives my spirit, lay
A hand more callous than his courser's hoof,
And crush that thing he feels not?—Down, base thoughts!
The crisis of his fortunes is upon him:
A perilous crisis; it may be a fatal.
I will not fail him at his utmost need:
His love is with me, though he knew me never—
Ill time were this, ill time for traitor's work!
Her duty's plain: necessity goes with it—
The thing that is must be.

University of Virginia Library

Scene II.—Palace at Susa.