University of Virginia Library

Scene VI.—A Terrace of the Queen-mother's Palace at Susa.

Arsinoe, Hephestion.
Ars.
You knew her: that is well.

Heph.
Who knew your mother
Till death shall reverence woman's kind. In her,
Though doubly-dowered, a mother and a queen,
There lived a soft perpetual maidenhood,
An inexperienced trust, timid, yet frank,
Shy, yet through guilelessness forgetting shyness.
She seemed a flower-like creature come to fruit:
She moved among her babes, an elder sister;
Then, wakened by an infant cry or laugh,
Full motherhood returned.

Ars.
Had you but known her
In later days, and in her deeper woe!
It nought embittered her. Flower-like you called her:
She was a flower that sweetened with like breath
The darkness and the day: she turned from none:
Her heart was liberal in accepting comfort
Such as the least might minister. In griefs
She died; but not from grief.

Heph.
It was her death
That changed you first to grave?

Ars.
Not that alone;
The guidance of her orphans fell to me,
And taught me soon my weakness. You, Hephestion,
Have known severer labours, cares more stern;
Have won great battles; captured mighty cities;
You—none but you—could knit those rival chiefs:—
“His weight of duties seemed but weight of wings,”
The king spake thus.

Heph.
His fortunes were the wind
That raised those wings aloft.

Ars.
You owe him much.

Heph.
You think so? Ha!

Ars.
You loved him; and you served him:
What kindness equals this—to accept our aid?
What anguish bitterer than the aid rejected?
He told me of a fame so wide—

Heph.
I spurn it!
To me 'twas ever little: now 'tis nought.

Ars.
You praise him; yet you will not I should praise him:
I praise him ill in truth. The king was kind:
He sent me ofttimes greeting. You sent none:—
“Children,” thus mused I, “seem so soon forgotten.”

Heph.
I see a glare in the sky. What light is that?

Ars.
Our Persian moon, ascending, sends before her
A splendour as of morn.

Heph.
The sun sets red:
The heaped clouds totter round his burning halls
Like inward-tumbling bulwarks of a city
Consumed by flames of war—by earthquake rocked—
Twin dooms!—I would—

Ars.
Hephestion, look not on them:
They fling upon your face a threatening light,
Hiding that face I knew. Beside me stand:
Watch we that moon. The West is like the past;
The East grows bright; the eternal hope is hers.
We stand between these two. Your hand is hot:
Your tasks consume you: pray you to remit them!
My prayer will soon have won a bolder right:
Your king, that knew not of my young ambition,
Has crowned it, as you know.

Heph.
The crown? You sought it!

Ars.
To be your sister was that young ambition—
One to a child so gentle, to a woman
Must needs be gentler, sister of his wife,
And wife of one far less his king than friend:
You'll make me know him, teach me how to serve him,
My censor, yet my brother.

Heph.
Oh my sister!
The ambitions of this world could ne'er be yours:—
The doubt's not there. Arsinoe, are you happy?

Ars.
Is happiness much worth? I am at peace.

Heph.
Youth craves delight.

Ars.
Not always. If in others
We deem the greediness for joy ignoble,
Almost immodest, what were it in me?
I am the daughter of a fallen house:
My father died deserted and betrayed,
Vanquished, discrowned, with none but foes for mourners:
My mother— Oh, Hephestion, it were sin
In me to crave delight!

Heph.
Unceasing vigils,
Unsparing labours, dangers, ay, and worse,
Domestic treasons—these have been the lot
Of him you wed. The immeasurable soul
That in him, sea-like, swells to the light sustains him:—
The afflictions which he feels not for himself,
You needs must feel and fear.

Ars.
Feel them I may:
I know not if I ever feared; I think
I never shall. Fear not for me, Hephestion.
Not wholly sorrows were the sorrows past:
Those that must come will not be wholly sorrows.
Oh, there's a sweetness spread o'er all the earth
Grief's trampling foot makes sweeter! Stormiest clouds
Sweep on in splendour to some heavenly music
By us unheard. Hephestion, I can trust
That Power who will not always keep His secret:
The life He sends must needs, though sad, be great;
The death he sends be timely. Life is peace
To those who live for duty. Purer peace
Will find us after death.

Heph.
The moon is risen:
I see it not, but see you in its light
Like some young warrior, silver-mailed and chaste;
Or liker yet to her, my childhood's wonder,
Great Artemis, as I saw her statue first
Against the broad full moon, while snows high heaped
Ridged her dark wintry porch. Farewell, Arsinoe!
There was a mist that brooded on my spirit:
That mist is raised. To you no ill can come
That virtue will not change to its own essence:
Your life, if long, will prove a glorious life;
If short—you wish it short—revive in glory:
The king will give you of his great, strong heart
What he can spare to woman, and revere
More than he loves. He honoured once your Faith:
Would it were his!

Ars.
I think that will not be.

Heph.
My tasks are heavy now: until this marriage
We meet not oft.

Ars.
See you that grove, Hephestion,
Still dark, yet glistening in the ascended moon?
A grave lies there that covers one you knew.
She was my friend. My heart was held to hers
So oft in watches of the long, sweet night
And couch partaken, that a part thereof
Went down with her into that grave. One day
Beside that spot we spake: she died soon after.
She sent to you a message. We will sit
The eve before this bridal by that grave.
Something I'll tell you of her; but not much;
Show you a book of Persian songs that pleased her;
And haply read you one. Till then farewell.