University of Virginia Library

Scene VIII.—Alexander's Chamber.

Alexander, Ptolemy.
Alex.
We're stayed in the midst.

Ptol.
Sire, may the mighty gods—

Alex.
I'm hindered of my own: my march is hindered!
That march was ordered for the third day hence:
This bends it to the fifth.

Ptol.
Too quickly pass—

Alex.
Thus much the malice of o'erweening gods,
Or else their negligence, can fret our course!
I'm maimed, and tamed, and shamed: but mind can act
When the outward act is barred. Six audiences
I have given. The chief of my Thessalian horse
Had failed to impress his blacksmiths. Nehordates
Had sent no corn to Opis.

Ptol.
Sire, your eyes
Are blood—all blood. Where is it you feel the pain?

Alex.
I have wrestled oft with pain, and flung it ever:
Save for that fire in brain, and heart, and hand,
I am well enough. My strength as yet is whole.
To work! You need the map. Despatch, this even,
Heraclides to the Caspian, there to build
A fleet for exploration: let him search
If thence a passage lead not to the Euxine:
That found, a six weeks' march were spared, and more,
'Twixt Hellespont and Indus.

Ptol.
One hour, my king,
But one, give rest to that—

Alex.
Recall Nearchus!
Command that he forbear those Arab pirates:
Bid him through help of theirs—an army with him—
Circle all Afric, reach the Atlantic Pillars:
Thence, eastward curving on the midland sea,
He'll meet, near Carthage, or that coast Italic,
Our westward-marching host. You're staring, sir!

Ptol.
All shall be done.

Alex.
Ere sunset send to Egypt:
We need a road to coast her sea. Her sands
Are fire that blasts my eyes.

Ptol.
The brain o'er heated
Recalls Gedrosia's waste.

Alex.
My brain's not touched:
I watch it: if there rise beyond its verge
A cloud, the slenderest, of bewildered thought,
You'll learn it thus—I close my lips for ever.

Ptol.
Your thoughts are strong, my king, distinct, and plain.

Alex.
A light of conflagration makes them plain:
'Tis sent me from a pyre.

Ptol.
Immortal gods!
Grant to this sufferer the balm of sleep!

Alex.
Sleep! Can you guard me 'gainst ill dreams in slumber?
I'll tell you one. I died; and lay in death
A century 'mid those dead Assyrian kings
In their old tomb by yonder stagnant lake.
Then came a trumpet-blast that might have waked,
Methought, a sleeping world. It woke not them.
I could not rise: I could not join the battle:
Yet I saw all.

Ptol.
What saw you, sire?

Alex.
Twelve tents,
Each with my standard. On twelve hills they stood
Which either on their foreheads blazoned wore,
Or from my spirit's instinct took, great names,
Cithæron, Hæmus, Taurus, Libanus,
Parapomisus, and huge Caucasus,
With other five, and Athos in the midst.
Then from my royal tents on those twelve hills,
Mailed in mine arms, twelve Alexanders crowned
With all their armies rushed into a plain
Which quaked for fear, and dashed across twelve floods,
Euphrates, Issus, Tigris, Indus, Oxus,
And others with great names. They met — those Twelve—
And, meeting, swelled in stature to the skies,
And grappled, breast to breast, and fought, and died
Save four that, bleeding, each on other stared,
And leaned upon their swords. As thus they stood,
Slow from that western heaven which domes the accursed—
Rome's bandit brood—there moved a cloud night-black,
Which, onward-gathering, mastered all the East,
And o'er it rained a rain of fire. The earth
Split, and the rivers twelve in darkness sank;
The twelve great mountains crumbled to the plain;
The bones of those twelve armies ceased from sight:
Then from the sun that died, and dying moon,
And stars death-sentenced, fell great drops of blood
Large as their spheres, till all the earth was blood;
And o'er that blood-sea rang a female cry,
“The Royal House is dead.”

Ptol.
My king, my friend—

Alex.
Phylax is dust. You cannot bid him tend me!

Ptol.
Olympias, prescient, sent you, sire, from Greece
But late its wisest leech. How oft you've said,
“A mother's prayers are hard to be withstood!”

Alex.
I loved her in the old days: nor years, nor wars
Disturbed that image. But a greater love
In its great anguish tramples out all others.
Impostors are they all—those heart-affections:
They're dupes that make us dupes—
There's not on earth a confidence unflawed:
I think he kept from me at Tyre a secret
Touching that princess. I from him concealed
That warning strange at Hierosolyma,
Whereof, it may be, my contempt more late
When, old Parmenio doomed, I marched to India,
Bore me ill fruit. Betwixt that warning strange
And this, my sickness, was there aught in common?

Ptol.
It may be, sire, there was,

Alex.
Ere yet that darkness
Hurled by injurious and malignant Fates
Against this unsubverted head, had found me—
The Fates that hustle heroes out of life;
The Fates that hustled gods into the abyss;
The unobsequious Fates that mock all things—
In diligent musings at Ecbatana
I thus resolved; to see once more that priest:
Then came that death—
And in the gloomy raptures of just wrath
That mood went by. I marched to Babylon:
Then came the end. Who sings?

Ptol.
Poor Hebrew slaves;
They weed the palace court.

Alex.
That song's amiss.

Ptol.
Sire, for your army's sake,
Which, like a wounded warrior, moans in sleep,
Your Empire's sake, that, immature and weak,
Is threatened in its cradle—

Alex.
'Tis so: 'tis so:
It lacks completion; and the years, the months,
The hours, like ravening wolves that hunt a stag,
Come up upon my haunches. Six o' the clock
On the fifth morn! At noon we cross Euphrates:
That hour you'll learn my plans:
I'll cast this sickness from me, like the rags
Flung from some lazar-house! Whose step is that?

Ptol.
Sire, there is none.

Alex.
Let not Seleucus near me!
Those onsets of his blundering, blind devotion,
So unlike his that perished—

Ptol.
Sire, none comes.

Alex.
Be strong! What shall be must. Shake not: bend nearer!
I have a secret; one for thee alone:
'Twas not the mists from that morass disastrous,
Nor death of him that died, nor adverse gods,
Nor the Fates themselves; 'twas something mightier yet,
And secreter in the great night, that slew me.
[Seleucus enters.
Welcome, Seleucus!

Sel.
Sire, I come unbidden:
This Ptolemy—has Greece but one who loves you?

Alex.
[Seleucus departs reluctantly.

[As Ptolemy is departing.
Ptol.
Macedonian Pella?
Old ties are strong. You said, when leaving Greece,
“Pella, not Athens, if I die.”

Alex.
Not Pella.

Ptol.
This Babylon, where he you loved lies dead?

Alex.
'Mid sands Egyptian—by the Ammonian grove—
In my great Father's fane.