University of Virginia Library

Scene IV.—Hanging Gardens at Babylon.

Ptolemy, the Magian, Astar.
Ast.
War with the West! Your king has changed his purpose.

Ptol.
Sharp grief hath changed it. Grief, that should be gentle,
To him is storm. Fiercely it bears him on
Through Action's angriest skies.

Ast.
The king is strong:
His eye is bright and keen, but glad no more:
That iron Will still clutches its Hephestion.

Ptol.
The tyranny of love outlives its use.
He loves Hephestion as of old. Not less
His friend's benigner power—he's false to that:
Hephestion was for peace: the royal mind
Broods but on wars.

Ast.
His household life is past:
His Persian wife, the sweetest of all ladies,
And lordliest-souled, attends her widowed sister
Far off. He'd have it so.

Ptol.
He destined first
Ten years to moulding of the East—

Ast.
Ten years!
These insect tribes beat quick their filmy wings,
Live quickly, quickly die! Great Persia spent
A hundred years knitting her realm in one:
The spirit of Cyrus in her kings lived on:
Cold airs from Median hills strengthened their arm:
Our Magian sages—we too are from Media—
Ordered alike religion and the state:
Our nobles then were frugal, just, severe;
They never shunned a foe, nor feared a truth:
We conquered Asia's western half, and Egypt:
Her idols knew it. But for Marathon—

Ptol.
I thought you of a temper more sedate:
With us philosophy laughs passion down.

Ast.
Sir, truth that lives not militant on earth
Traffics with falsehood in complicity,
More false than she, as sinning against light.
Our Faith was warlike while a heart was in it:
So long we conquered. But a vanquished race
Finds this revenge, its direst, and its last:—
With poison of its vices it infects
In time its conqueror's blood. 'Twas so with us:
The lands we vanquished mixed our light with night:
Then temples first confined our boundless worship;
Then first with Oromasdes Zeus had part;
Then first was weakness deemed a kingdom's wisdom,
Promiscuous tolerance her maternal love;—
I say they lied! 'Tis not a mother's arms
That open are at all times, and to all!

Ptol.
Themes speculative these that end in heats:
Our king, you see, moves on.

Ast.
Moves on! you err!
I say his course is retrograde, not onward.
This city's Babylon!

Ptol.
What then?

Ast.
The seat
Of earth's first empire:—sordid 'twas, and base:
Its gods were idols viler far than Egypt's,
For hers concealed a meaning. Our great Xerxes
Brought low the boastings of their brick-built tower
Your king rebuilds it, fawns on Babylon,
Would renovate a demon-haunted ruin:
I have heard him laud Semiramis herself:—
He heir of Cyrus!

Ptol.
Persian, have a care!
You need our king.

Ast.
Greek! I have ne'er denied it:
Ah, would I might! A realm's not wholly fallen
Till this, the last dishonour, it has reached,
To need its conqueror. This marriage blends us:
I, that abhorred it, worked against it never;
These hands were pressed upon that contract's seal.
The effect? Look forth from those o'erhanging gardens!
Far down, a priest-procession winds in pomp;
Who are they? Magians? Greeks? Not so! Chaldæans!
They hymn your king!

Ptol.
He loves not slaves: o'er earth
He wills to build one Greece.

Ast.
He builds meanwhile
The tomb of all the greatness earth can know,
Gold-smeared without; within a heap of bones.
“He wills to build one Greece!” Her kingdom's Thought:
Greece must do penance ere she wins that kingdom,
He drowns his Greece with gold: slays her with honours:
He breeds a Greece to undo the work of Greece:
He'll leave on earth nor honest ignorance,
Nor knowledge just. He'll raise a pigmy race
To mock dead Titans. From the highway dust
He'll quicken with corruption's base conception
Sophists in swarm. The locust-cloud will spread,
And leave the world a waste.

Ptol.
Your augury's ill:
The mind of Greece—

Ast.
The heart of Greece is rotten!
That soil, whence intellect's root in darkness springs:
'Twas false to heaven; and now, malicious grown,
Is false to nature. At their feasts I've heard them,
Defend worse sin with dialectic leprous!
I raised my head at last, and answered thus—
Nations have vanished 'neath a conqueror's tread;
Nations have perished, worn by civil strife;
Nations have withered, famine-plagued: but Greece,
The beautiful, the wise, the once heroic,
Shall die in prime a suicide, nor leave,
Amerced of household ties by fleshly shames,
A child to inearth the corpse.

An Attendant
(entering).
Sirs, be ye prompt!
The royal barge approaches,

Ast.
(to Ptolemy).
Join him thou!
Philosopher of Greece, your lord lacks tendance!