University of Virginia Library

PHILOCTETES

A METRICAL DRAMA

PHILOCTETES
Greatly thou broodest on the sacred wave,
Ray of the amber god. The old sere earth
Opens her eyes and wakens. O thou flame,
Elder than Zeus, thou art to other men
As a god leading them to their desire,
And happy works about the ancient fields;
And gentle things they love are at their side
Brightening to wake them, and not any tear
Is in their halls: but golden as a dream
The fair day flows to even, and the night
Wraps many blessings round her. So the gods
Consent to leave the man a little while,
And overlook their vengeance. Do they so?
Ay, give him bride and children with meek eyes,
And lovely ways and little tender lips,
In his own image. And the man desires
Nothing; the earth is good, he says, and fair,
The flower of time, sweet love. Ay me, but I,
So utterly broken, dare I wander in dream
By their beatitude? The tainted thing,
Scorn of all heroes, leper of the host,
With human loving what have I to do?
Pain and my loathsome curse are truly mine.
God's wisdom—so they call it—gives me these
And keeps their native venom fresh and green.
I tell thee, Zeus, and thy new brood with thee,
Blind rulers, that dishonoured as I am,
I most would scorn, whom all men scorn, a man
To be malignant as ye gods can be.
For time had healed my evil long ago
But ye withheld its healing. Nature loves
And will not leave in pain her children long:
No poison may endure her affluent year,
Filling the brain with the light health of fields.
So did the ancient gods; but thou, O Zeus,
Bringest a bitter mist on the sweet day:
Thou settest night with all her orbs to watch
The pulses of my torment's tidal pain.
Thou hast bound my brow with fire, and nerve by nerve
Hast drawn the long fierce poison like a thread,
For years unwasting, ample to destroy.
And yet thou never gavest me to end
My life beneath thine anger. Is it much
To pray to be as nothing since my breath
So utterly offends thee: gentle and mild,
I covet death the assuager, but thou sayest
“His finger shall not heal thee.” O sick heart,
And very painful limbs, and feeble soul,
Is it worth while for this great lord above
To vex you thus? What pastime can it be
If giants ruin ant-hills? Strong art thou,
Jealous and most resentful; the calm years
Flow, and thy vengeance livelier burns always.
But I a man would pity on my spear
To keep a foeman writhing, tho' he had made
My home a silence, and had given my son
To the grey earth a soulless shadow of sleep.
But towards the gods man's evil has little way,
His good a wing full feeble, both are vain:
Therefore I ask, how sinning have I made
The immortal brow uneasy under its crown
Of domination? Is mere man's offence
To live beyond the offender? For he goes
Under his barrow in a little time,
And all his brain that held the thought is dust;
Doth the third race born from him know his name?
Shall then his wrong perplex the enduring gods?

CHORUS
O thou in ancient days,
The peer of heroes, on whose brow a boy
Glory had breathed with her fair lips, and gave
The archer string; O comrade of the great
Athlete, whose soul from Œta in angry fume
Scaled an unwilling heaven, and sits alway
Beside the purple tables and the cloud,
Allowed an equal godhead, one more throne—
Thou, Philoctetes,
Unwilling colonist
Of rugged Lemnos, mother-land of mine;
She cannot feed the multitudinous
Flocks of the loamy mainland, poor indeed
And yet my country; whom the hoary deep
Sustains with scaly herds, whom pasture none
Delights, but the wave palaces
Of ocean weedy-thresholded—
Fallen art thou, my hero, such a plague
Hath Zeus devised.
And all men left thee when they saw his hand
Was heavy to destroy.
They cast thee from the glory of their war
A tainted thing. They made
No share of battle with thee. So their oars
Ceased at this Lemnos for a little while
And left thee the chance guest
Of a poor nation feeding on the sea.
And yet we reverence thee, O archer king,
Disrooted strangely now from glory's earth,
Because thou grewest once
Comely, and broad, and fair.
We have fed full on days,
And know in life a most unstable hour.
Man standeth for a little and he falls;
Therefore we give his pride
No knee or praising hands,
But if our aid in pain can solace thee
'Tis thine, afflicted king.

Philoctetes—Phimachus
PHIMACHUS
I come with dawn as is my wont to come,
And I have brought thee herbs of healing ways
To lull thy wound, my hero, as is meet
And use with me these many years, and yet
Still earlier than my coming I have heard
The low voice of thy moaning all these years.
And still the god afflicts thee eminent
Of sorrows; and the full black cloud recedes
No fold of thunder, ripe to the very lips
With venom on thy life. The still year goes
About us, and the vivid buds begin
In the rock niches, and the soft time flows
Full of all triumph blossomy; there is change
When autumn sheaves all nature up in death.
Change in thine anguish none; for as this sea
Relaxes not her turmoil, though the rocks
Are full of summer, so thy pain endures
The change of seasons stabler aye than they.
But we accept these gods that round the year,
And eat our bread and crush a little wine,
And thank them; even if we breathe we lift
The hand of praise, for the worst living thing
In life, pain only, even as pain, is more
Than Orcus and the soulless fluttering shades.
Praise thou the gods for this mere power to praise.

PHILOCTETES
You'd have me thank Zeus with this pain upon
My brain, because he will not stamp me out,
Like my old master Heracles, into
The vapours of the pyre! Not so, to him
The savour of my pain is sweet. No worm
Writhes upon earth but he takes pastime in it;
And his god-children learn the trick of him
And ply their lesser vengeances. But he
The master-serpent keeps the subtlest poison
And claims to use it as a king alone.
The under-thrones of heaven may glut their lips
On their more watery vintages of harm.
He may destroy, he only, with the full
Ripe relish of a creature's agony,
All-mighty and all-cruel. For he sits
In the old mild gods' seat, has done away
The kind grey dotard Saturn, snapt like wool
His father's light and golden sceptre-shaft,
As useless as the brittle columned stalk
Of a dried wood-kex. Sons ye were, and next
His love and near his glory; but ye held
Council with anger and an evil lust
Of thronedom, saying, “Saturn shall not rule,
He could not hate, a sorry god indeed;
Would slough his state off and sit down with men
And chatter like a brother, and have heed
Of crop and season, the old idiot god;
And see the trees grow and have joy in them
And healthy herds at pasture, and the bees
Out at their labour happy. But we crept
Upon him, for he trusted us his sons,
But we with hate hated, eternally
Had hated his beneficence, and hate
Had strengthened us to watch with smiling faces
While the deep vengeance griped us keen below;
Ages we watched, the ripe hour came, and then
We strangled him at cup-time with low laughs
And set his grey face underneath our heels.
And stampt him out immortal as he was
Into an inane ghost and emptiness
Hard on annihilation; for our natures
Had thriven on hatreds to a strength beyond
His easier essence; and he had given away
One half his primal virtue in sheer acts
Of large creative kindness. And, O then,
We laughed and cried, Love men now to thy core,
In that thou art a spectre weak as sleep
Under the gloom. But surely now is shed
Upon our brows dominion, eminence
Of empire. Lo, the thunder, a tame hound,
Is resting at our footstool. Chiefly we
Can lust and hate, and therefore are we lords.”

PHIMACHUS
Hero, this anger-fuel to thy pain
Is doubled anguish. Is it wise to shed
Oil on the flame without it fierce enough?
Ay, and these gods may hear thee, and their king
Loves not man's question how he came by rule.

PHILOCTETES
I have outpast the limit of all fear,
I am too wretched for his deaths to care
The feeding on me. Fear him, happier souls;
Shall he regard the murmur of such a thing
As Philoctetes, shall he fear my lips?
Zeus sits in far too firm a chair to dread
The ripples of our protest, weak as foam;
And our rebuke is like a summer wind
Touching his stern lip-corners and no more;
Or crisping perhaps, as thistle-down, one lock
Aside of the square high forehead arrogant.
Nay, rather stifle in behind thy teeth
The moaning of thy torment, crush together
Thy corded lips when it swells up thro' thee;
He will not see the tremulous lids so far—
Be pale—so pale—but move not, nay, nor curse.
'Twill vex him if his grinding scourges seem
To have dulled in over-use their ancient edge;
If this thy plague doth call him father, who sits
Watching his vengeance ripen like a flower,
Between his cloudy cushions where he leans
Calm o'er the grey-green troubled earth below,
With many sweet oppressions in his eye,
Anarch and upstart, and misruler Zeus.

PHIMACHUS
Be wise and be not angry, for he hears;
Ay, far away he hears it, in the thin
Essential azures mist-less. Ay, and calls,
Who knows? if angered, to loose on to thee
A subtler demon. Who art thou to gauge
The arm-reach of his evil? Canst thou sound
The treasures of his poison? For these gods
Lengthen at will their fathom-line of craft
And all contrivance, never striking ground.

PHILOCTETES
Ay me, the soulless herds graze on and fear
No scathe; they do not count the days in care.
That core of evil, knowing ill shall be,
Is not assigned them. And the baby feeds,
Milks at the breasts and smiles, and owneth not
Allegiance yet to knowledge that shall make
The fair earth bitter to his wiser eyes.
Give us the old gods back; this hard new king,
Why doth he reign in that he reigns so ill?

CHORUS

PHILOCTETES
Ay, fallen are ye, my Titans, this new god
Cements his throne firm down with creatures' wrong:
Pain is the sceptre ruling him his earth.
Why have I pain? My master why had he?
The great and best bare chiefly as he bore.
He had vexed the gods with looking heaven in face
And saying, “Do I owe thee anything
Save my discomfort?” And ye know the tale
Bitter and stale, yet never stale its fear;
How not the hated one alone can feed
Their vengeance, crush'd and done with from the earth;
Why a mere man thus rights himself. The fiends
Are wiser, gracious wisdom: they contrive
A winding and hereditary curse
To keep the ancestral blood-taint live and warm.
And so the seeds of torture creep between
The veins of the innocent children, whose meek eyes
Had never known the sweet air, when the sire
Roused the high gods. Subtle ye are and wise
In vengeance, surely gods and good and great.
So I the attendant of this Heracles
Did him some feeble comfort at his end,
And this was treason to their vengeful hands.
More, I beheld how his worst agonies
Were nobler than the soft and sumptuous hours,
When the Olympians sate themselves to the core
On splendid passion, draining radiant-eyed
In their cloud-precincts all deliciousness.
Which thing to have thought is death: but death is mild.
Therefore they gave me torment nine-year long.
For I will tell how it was with Heracles;
For when he drew the accursed garment on
And felt the poison eat his flesh to the bone,
Nor could he tear it from him, baleful web,—
He knew the mighty horror of his doom
Inevitable, clothing him throughout
With creeping flame intensest. And he said,
“My death is on me, comrade, in thy love
I charge thee nowise leave me till the end.
'Twill be a full brief service, for I climb
This Œta, there I sacrifice and die.
And so we clomb together. All day long
We toiled up Œta and the evening fell
One red great ball of sun; and flared and split
The radiance: and he ever moaning clomb,
Moaning and shuddering, and huge agonies
Of sweat were on the muscles of his limbs,
And in his eyes a terrible dumb pain.
And now he clomb, and now in torment sat
With set teeth on some boulder, swaying slow
His head and rugged beard; and all his breast
Lay heaving and the volumes of its breath
Went up in dry hot vapour. Or he sat
Staring as in amazement. And I went
And touched him and he moved not, and again
I touched him. Suddenly the whole man leapt
Straightened on the instant and addressed himself
To the sheer hill and leaning clomb. At length
It ceased into a level desolate
As death, a summit platform: the near clouds
Racked over us until the hill itself
Seemed giddy with their motion. Cruel winds
Flapt icily at our heated limbs, and seem'd
To bite away in very cruelty
The few blank shivering grasses in the peat,
Or tugged the fangs of heath long dead in cold.
And when he saw the horror of the place
He stayed himself and called with a great voice, “Here.”
Suddenly calling it. And I began
To pile an altar at his word of all
The hill-side nourished, birch and pine and stunt
Grey sallow of the peat-tops. He that time
Tore at his flesh or heavily sobbing rolled
Against the shaley edges. And in fear
I built it, tremble-handed, dizzy-eyed;
And when it rose he turned his face and cried,
“O comrade, is all ready?” And I said,
“All ready, master.” Then I lit a brand
Of resinous pine storm-riven, as I strake
Two clear hill pebbles, gave blue fire free birth;
So stood with a great beating heart to wait
The issue, ready with my torch. But he
Climbing disspread upon the wood his vast
And throbbing frame. And after a deep breath,
He gathered up his final strength to speak.
And reached his hand, and thus his speech found way:—
“This is the end, and I am bounded here,
And all my ancient triumph is decayed.
One agony enwraps me, scalp to heel;
So I am made derision to the gods
That smile above my torment. This is he
The eminent of labours, conqueror,
The universal athlete, whose rash arm
Would stifle down the evils of the earth.
Behold, in what a mesh of woven pain
The deity confounds him. Think not thou
Hereafter, simple-hearted as was I,
To stand between the gods and their desire
That man receive no comfort only woes.
They hate for us to stand upon our strength
And love our degradation chiefly. Thou
Consider this, my friend, and think no shame
To let them have their wills, and stand aside,
Seeing my end, and all this ruined flesh
I thought so strong in beautiful living power;
And, lo, a little poison quenches all
Into a writhing worm, ensheathed with fire;
The smoke-sighs of whose torment shall ascend
A music to the sleepy gods, a dream
Lulling the dew of pleasure in their eyes
With echoes of mine infelicity.
Have they not cursed these mortals long ago?
And every curse is fruitful as a seed:
And woe to him who dares disroot but one
Thro' foolish loving of his fellow-men.
And now I die: fire only reaps away
This stain upon me. But, O comrade, learn
I may bequeath thee something, tho' I seem
So utterly naked of all honour now,
Because thou hast not left a stricken man.
Guard thou mine arrows, they to guard are thine.
The gall of hydra on their barbs is death.
And once a strange seer told me they should end
A mighty war of Hellas soon to be.
This fell not out in any day of mine.
Therefore, if blind-eyed Eris fling this dread
Upon the measure of thy time, rejoice,
For I have given thee its remedial power,
To use as thy heart bends thee. Any way
Guard these at least for ancient love of mine.”
And his voice brake; and then he mightily called,
“Light it!” and I forbore; and he called twice,
“If thou dost love me, light it;” and I lit.
Then came the rushing creature of the flame
Over and under, writhing into spire
And branch and eager inward-licking rings,
And mighty stifling pine-smoke, volumed round.
And I endured no longer to behold,
Exceedingly unnerved, and wailing fled
Down the sheer hill, till in a secret vale
I found a corner, and there grovelling lay,
And brought my face into my hands, and hid
The daylight and its doings out. Yet still
Sung in mine ears the horrible hiss of the flame.
Until, a great while after, I had heart,
Again ascending, from the smoulder'd pyre
To gather very reverently his bones.
These I concealed in mounded sepulture,
Guarding the arrows, which I treasure now
To feed my vengeance. Thus died Heracles.

CHORUS

PHILOCTETES
Ay, they are throned, so is it; and their feet
Are on our necks. They hate us and will hate.
And this is terrible: yet worse than all
Beware the tyrant's friendship. Where is he,
Ixion, to whose hand the nectar cup
Lay like the meat of mortals every day?
The hand in hand with brother deities,
Whose friendly arms were on his neck, and his
Large ease of heaven. And even goddesses
Flush'd when the man commended. Is there change
After a little? Ay, and terrible change.
Where has the tyrannous friendship thrust him down?
Chained to a wheel in hell. Above the same
Banquet continues: not a thought about
A certain vacant place; does any guest
Whisper a name wiped out from glory, and say
“Alas!” lest it reach Zeus along the board?
And, if the arch-god heard it, Ganymede
Would fill another beaker less in heaven.
And they must banquet on and put it down
The pale face out of memory, and the ring
Laugh with a tremble in their laugh, and shake
The wine against their lips; and yet the cups
Are glorious: and the easy goddesses,
Armed by their lords at feast, lend the old smiles,
And bend the same great eyes, and brighten on
The love-talk ever, laugh it coyly down,
Or flutter on the ripple of a jest—
And he, Ixion, turns in horrible gyres,
Orbit on orbit everlasting through
The long light and the night, cycles of years.

PHIMACHUS
Ay, but Ixion sinned, so hast not thou.
He could not bear the glory and the light.
The mere man, with man's frailty, dazed and blind
Bare not the exaltation, trembling stood
Before the frequence, with his spots of earth
Thick on him, and his feet bound down by weeds:
And so he howls upon the rocks of hell:
He fell: and wheels for ever and shall wheel.

PHILOCTETES
Why should I howl my heart out on this rock?

PHIMACHUS
Fate ere thy mother's mother drew her milk
Decreed this anguish on thee: bear it thou.

PHILOCTETES
Why single me for agony from the herd?

PHIMACHUS
The hunter draws his arrow to the head
And looses on a thickly feeding drove,
And lets the arrow have its choice and way
He cares not which he strikes so he strike well.

PHILOCTETES
But this is chance and not necessity.

PHIMACHUS
Ay, to the archer chance, but to the beast
Sobbing and bleeding, with the barb of steel
That breeds the darkness, 'tis necessity.
Fate sowed the seed: the appointed hours it lay
Sleeping, then ripened; lo! the fruit is death.

PHILOCTETES
Death is the fruit, ay so: but this same flower
Of pain is long in ripening into it.

PHIMACHUS
Let but the end rush down on us, and all
Before is made as nothing. Pain is then
Even with all deliciousness. The man
Is mock'd no longer with the fair false dream
He bears within his thought, but may not find
In the green earth so marred with pain and sin.
And so in joy he lifts his eyes to death.
And there is lovely calm, established sleep,
Ordained for ever, beautiful and strong.

PHILOCTETES
To know bad things have ending healeth much,
And they will end: for, as all beautiful life
Is yoked to narrow unenduring time,
So evil hath not linked unto herself
As yet eternal days. Something it is,
To know this, softening sorrow it cures not.
Pain nor respects the after or before,
An hour of agony would spoil a god
And make him loathe his old beatitudes.
Tell him these were, as these shall be again,
And he will answer only, “Give me change
Now, now, the eminent and absorbing now:
For I am sick of memory, loose me now.”
The sting hath thrust out all things but desire
To have done with it, utterly blind beyond.

PHIMACHUS
Surely thy pain is much, and it might rend
A Titan's nerve to answer it with calm
Endurance. Yet, may be, this came because
Thou wentest to the wars with these ill kings,
And seeing thee herded up in enterprize
With these, Zeus drew his plague upon thy head
For their misdoing and no thing of thine,
For the gods sort their vengeance in no ways.

PHILOCTETES
Surely I set mine oar to row with men
Utterly evil, whose savage sensual fear
Could well appraise a virgin daughter's blood
Against a puff of wind, to feed their sails
Of vengeance, with the demon powers of the sea.

PHIMACHUS
Why camest thou to Aulis then at all?

PHILOCTETES
An oath unwilling bound me as the rest.

PHIMACHUS
Was then the king so greedy to be gone,
To choose a ready breeze before his child?

PHILOCTETES
Ay, for when calm was idle, men began
To laugh down his supremacy, and some
Made question with their souls, “Why are we here
It is a foolish quarrel.” But with the joy
Of moving forward, and in the flash and jar
Of the armament, its reason was put by.

PHIMACHUS
Ay, and they lightly went upon the bond
Of a light idle word to the low imminent
Thunder of future sorrow. For man's soul
Laughs at the rain with a full sun o'erhead,
Improvident, and yet the rain must come.
And so they make a laughter against themselves
And gather into their bosom pain and death.
And so man's spirit stumbles on till its grave.

PHILOCTETES
Spirit of man, to whom these petty stings
Of pain, that seem so utterly mighty now,
Are but the vestments robing the pure ray
Of thy nobility. O life of man
Greatly afflicted and so great indeed
In spite of thine afflictions: Thou whose prayer
Asketh not love but respite from the gods,
With leave to go about thy ways in peace,
And set thy yearling son upon thy knees
In peace a little while, until he learn
Thy face a little, and the look of thine eyes,
And then the shades may take thee: since indeed
Thou hast left on earth remembrance and some root
To strike down thro' the ages. Why is this
That we should vex our souls that after us,
Our name should linger on, faint echo of love,
In some men's mouths? I know not: O thou earth,
Mother and moulder of this painful breed
Thou callest men, denying them the ease
Thou hast allotted to the beast and flower.
Or, if thou hast not denied it, then these gods
Have marred what thou hast made a gracious thing,
Infusing mischiefs in the lordly brain
And hatreds of its brothers and unrest
And mean revenges. And the wide full earth
Broadens her mother arms in love to us,
And morning takes the hills with a sweet noise,
And down the length of night the crescent dips
In flakes of bluish heaven, and blind we stand
In glories hating all things, both ourselves
And most of all our brothers. And the gods
See this and smile and jest it over their cups,
“How these poor worms will wrangle, when we have made
Even in peace their life a bitter thing.”
Is there no solace? Will no comfort come?
Nay, this whole universe is mad with pain,
As I am, and to hide it smiles to the heaven,
And all her flowers she sets about are lies
To veil her desolation and god's curse.
As some poor woman smiles, and tries to please
One wearied of her beauty for the love
He bare her long ago, and whom she loves
Still, tho' she knows how very mean he is.
Therefore, I say, let Hope be dead, as the Love
Of the old gods is dead, and with the rest
Let us go bury Patience. Time it is
That these old-world delusions ran to end.
Zeus will not weep their ending. Let them go.
And I, the fool that spake of comfort, curse
My Hope of comfort and the brain that bred
The thought that Zeus would pity any more.

PHIMACHUS
Behold, O prince, another comforter,
More suasive than thy comrade, Ægle comes,
As she is wont. Already in thine eye
The ancient glory kindles. Blest is she
To soothe away the demon of thy pain.
And fair and good and gentle in her hand
All healing prospers.

Ægle.—Philoctetes
PHILOCTETES
Thou comest to me like music, and my pain
Ebbs out before thee. Thou dost lay thy hand
In comfort on the throbbing and it dies.
Thou bringest about me thy light beautiful hair
And thy sweet serviceable hands and warm
Bendings beside me helpful, the live glance
Sweetening the tact of aidance. More than this
The very footstep smooths my soul, when I
Hardly endure the quick hot noise of the fly
Battering the edges of the leaves; and more
The pure and glistening pity on the threads
Of each unlifted eyelash, or the light
Beneath them softened and dissolved and changed
If my old pain is on me at the worst.
Or the soft folded lips at murmuring
Unworded consolation nearest sighs,
When speech, even thine, would jar upon the abyss
Of my worst hour: when poison feeds along
The chorded veins and everything is made
A black cloud and a sickness and a strife,
As tho' one flame strove with its brother fires
About my wasted flesh their wretched prey.
I have outpast all things but pity, sweet,
And men have cast me by the way to die,
Loathed, left, and done with as a noisome thing.
And yet these men were friends, as men account
Of friendship: and this pest dishonouring me
I in their cause encountered. I with these
Felt my new manhood round me, as with these
I once had felt my mother's cheek and breast,
And all their kindly ways, as mothers use,
That most their own may thrive and lay broad limbs
About the cradle, jealous tenderly
And in much love if haply they perceive
Another's child more lusty than their own.—
And I, the god-abhorred, was worthy once
To reap such nurture; I the tainted thing,
Was pleasure to a mother's lips: she made
Her still delight about me all day long.
To her the infant babblings were as sounds
Of music and all wisdom. She would pore
Upon the unformed features, tracing out
Her dream of all I should be great and fair.
And she would talk her hope to the dumb babe,
And feign its fancied answers manifold,
Out of much love: and call around in pride
Her sisters when it smiled upon a light
Or gaudy flower, and vainly towards them caught,
With tangled nerveless finger-buds. All these
Are made a silence. I shall never hear
The voice of children round me. Even she
That bare me coming to my sight would fall
Into one great and shuddering sigh, may be
Would leave me as god's curse, whom no man aids
Nor may for ever, fall'n and utterly done.
For who shall dare go fix his “nay” upon
What god hath said shall be, who with this done
Ever evaded yet unscathed to reap
The green earth at his quiet? Therefore well
They leave me and have left me. Therefore all
Earth and her joys, except a little rill
Of pity, are secluded utterly
From the maimed beast, that once was man; until
The pain abolish him that chains him down,
As with a fetter, to this island rock,
With the fair sound of battle in his ears,
The rumour wafted; that he champ and grind
His chain more fiercely, eating down his heart
In bitterness and anguish till the end.

ÆGLE
O hero, had I wisdom in my brain
As ample as the pity which dissolves
My very nature, seeing thee so great
Greatly afflicted, silent in the joy
Of time, a life secluded, an orphan soul—
Since it is given thee to endure these dregs
Of bitterness—I then might comfort thee.
But a mere maid most simple I can bring
Nothing to help thee save a few warm tears.
For thou art wise and I am no such thing:
And heroes speak thy name, but I am set
To graze my kids unnoticed in a small
Corner of this small island. So shall I
Meet at God's hand hereafter silent days,
And no man after I am dead shall say
She lived in any honour, no not one.
But the sea fed the labour of her sires
Ignoble, and the earth is on her breast,
Ay, and so sleep she.—But for thee remain,
My hero, excellent enduring days,
When thou hast trodden all this venom out
Of thy fair nature; and a king with kings,
With all that resonant glory in thy wake,
Thou standest twixt the sun and the firm soil
Leader of nations beautiful and strong:
Think, in that day of Ægle near her kids
Here in her narrow island. And she sings
Maybe some snatch about thee, as a bird
May sing about a star that long ago
Beamed right down on her nest, but now is moved
Out of her zenith on with other stars.
So let me lead to browse my meek crisp ewes;
So let me at our millet sheaving-in
Aid with my basket, or a little hymn
Heartening the reaper. This is mine and meet
For me hereafter: but I know this thing,
That then thy earnest painful eyes shall be
A memory and no presence, and I shall go
About my daily duties very still.

PHILOCTETES
Fairness is woman's fame, and to have lived fair
Is excellent. A merely beautiful thing
By life alone and moving so fulfils
Its nature. All that look thereon are brought
To bless it, and rich joy flows every way
To all within its influence, leaving them
Heartened by sympathy and beautified.
But noise becomes not any maiden's name.
Man beats about the world and shapes result
In what his brain and hand accomplishes,
Thus finding fame. But often like a fool
In seeking fame finds death. For this one thing
Is certain, that the strange and far-away
Is dearest to the spirit of a boy.
But those old common duties and desires,
Monotonies of home and kindred love,
He lays them by disdaining: in his hall
The bride may chaunt alone her cradle song.
Fortunate islands beckon him away:
And nobly fronted in the yellow dawn
Their cliffs are gleaming: night goes down behind:
And one by one the stars break from the grey.
Ye surely now find haven. Can ye hear
The boughs at music and the infinite voice
Of the sweet inland waters? Swallows cry
And flit between the aloes: the lark goes
Away in heaven: the almond orchards heave.
The harbour margin is one marble stair,
Copsed in with myrtle: and the maidens sing,
“The heroes come, they come,” and hold their arms
Seaward.—Ah, fools and blind, Charybdis churns
In all her caverns yonder and your keels
Are driving on her.

ÆGLE
Nay, my hero, nay,
I hunger not the ferment of such days.
I have not spoken like a vain weak girl,
Restless and shallow, whimpering after change,
Or wearing out a shallow trivial heart
In aspiration vague and vast. Shall I
Have envy if these others move in song
When earth has taken them a hundred years?
Is this their consolation to have made
Their life one long disaster? As for me
So I may stay and tend thee till I die
Here in my narrow island, I demand
Nothing beyond. My silly chiding means
My only fear lest any change should come
Between us. Selfish am I, and I think
Sometimes, that I would rather have thee here
Wounded and in thy sorrow, shame on me,
Than sound and whole away about the world
Every one's hero—jealous am I and base.
But somehow always in those after times
The old way of sitting here would come on me,
Maybe at spring the saddest, for they say
Old thoughts grow most unruly when the first
Bird calls out to the wood. I know not sure,
But when my brother left me this I know,
That tho' the day went well enough with me,
There came a vague trouble with the edge of dusk,
And then the loneness grew, ay me, with power.
But the old kind and motherly face of earth,
After a little, healed me to myself
With her old beauty, and the pleasure of trees
And all the quiet wonder of the flower.

CHORUS

Philoctetes—Phimachus
PHIMACHUS
My lips are burning with my tidings, King,
These may the god bend wholly well to thee,
My hero, with brave recompense for this
Thy pain and thy immurement. Reach thine eyes
To yonder imminent glory of full sail,
A noble galley: this is one of these
That tasted calm at Aulis. See, she bears
Upon our island with a steady pride;
And her prow heaps the churning wave in curves
On either side its bladed edge, and spills
The foamy ridges backwards. O my chief,
Hellas remembers late her archer son.
Nine years she has made her puny wars in vain
Without thee. Now she vails her pride and creeps
To kiss thy feet entreating. Rouse thyself;
This is the very hour of thy revenge.
Therefore be glad and answer proudly these,
Remembering how they have given into thy breast
Measure of malice and all weary days.

Philoctetes

Ulysses—Pyrrhus
ULYSSES
Persuasion, Pyrrhus, is a difficult thing,
And very intricate the toil of words
Whereby to smoothe away the spiteful past
From a proud heart on edge with long disease.
For round the sick man, like a poison'd mist,
His wrongs are ever brooding. He cannot shake
These insects of the shadow from his brow
In the free bountiful air of enterprise.
Therefore expect reproaches of this man
And bitter spurts of anger; for much pain
Hath nothing healed his wound these many years.
And only Hellas in her needy hour
Could so abase me that I come to-day
To crave of such a mean dishonoured head
These arrows and her safety. Let this be;
If Hellas thrive, my glory let it go.
And yet past doubt we wronged him in that day.
We wronged him not indeed so much in this,
That then we cropped away this limb diseased
Out of our enterprise and cast it by
As carrion—for expedience is the bond
And crowning rule of conquest.—But in this
He may and will find wrong; for having said
“Begone, thou art useless,” now we gather up
The thing neglected from our rubbish heap
With “Thou alone canst save us.” I contrived
The advice to leave him here, and counselled well
As time was then, since wrongly. Gods confound
The wisest chiefly, making witless brains
Stumble on right, that in mean instruments
Their power may tread more strongly through the world
And own no rival in the brain of man.

PYRRHUS
But when a man has trick of words as thou,
He cares not on which side he bears his tongue,
Rejoicing rather in the weak and worse
So that his art shine chief. But common lips
Stumble unless emotion bear the rein.
Words hurry down in anger; and sense of wrong
Is voluble and there is little craft
To speak well, feeling strongly. But with thee
These natural helps are nothing, eloquent
In any cause so Hellas speed thereby.
Yet would I rather steal, as Diomede once,
The steeds of Rhesus, than encounter here
With a smooth lying face this sick weak hound,
To cheat him back with words whom ye have left
So many years, a proverb in our camp
Of what may well be spared our kingly eyes.
And yet necessity is king and more
Than Zeus, and therefore speak and I will aid:
For here behold him trailing at his cave
Sick limbs, and now be chiefly orator,
Knowing all Hellas leans upon thy tongue.

Philoctetes—Ulysses—Pyrrhus
ULYSSES
I bid thee hail, great archer, I am come
The unwilling deputy of Greece, with him
Thou seest Pyrrhus, dead Achilles' son;
Because I know thou bearest a bitter brain
Against me chiefly of the host, in that
I counselled they should leave thee; as indeed
Is all fair truth, and I love truth and lay
This deed as bare as sunlight, tho' it mar
My pleading undissembled: truth is best.
And in some sort I own thee injured then,
But only as the variable gods
Have bent the bow of future quite athwart
Our dreams of sequel. Since indeed I said
To all the island rulers ringed and set
Low-browed in counsel by the moan of the sea;
Surely this man is stricken of the gods,
And stricken to his death, for I have seen
Wounds many and wounds grievous, but not one
That bears a clearer signet of the wrath
Of the immortals: for when man wounds man
The man or dies or lives, but never bears
A flesh so utterly tainted. But this strange
Affliction of the serpent, savours more
Of an immortal cause, than real fang
Of some poor worm; unless indeed the god
Sent it and gave it venom to exceed
Its nature; choosing thus as instrument
A worm to ambush power, nor strike him down,
Without an intercepted agency,—
As Phœbus often strikes right into the brain
Of the harvester and kills him like a stone—
But, either way, God dooms him, said I then:
And tho' I love this man and long have used
His friendly converse, who am I to dare
Gainsay the gods and save him? He must go
Lest he infect the army saved, and I
Postpone my friendship to the cause of Greece.
And so spoke out right sternly, wide off heart,
Nor faltered, lest apparent tenderness
Should thwart the emphasis of what I held
The gods would have me speak against my grain
To their high hand obsequious, and the sense
Of duty, higher than the bond of friend.
Tho' I refrain my tears, my voice will fail.
And so we left thee and these many years
Have camped with bitter fortune, tried beyond
The wish of thy revenge, if thou indeed
Art vengeful still. And as the slow years went,
I thought of thee at Lemnos in thy pain
Lonely; and doubted in my soul if well
I had done to leave thee; for I dared no more
Interpret the gods' will, so much, so deeply
They had vexed us many ways with many woes.
And still I thought I have rashly sundered him
From us as deeply guilty: he shall come
And bear his pain among us, one more doomed
Is nothing in a host which all the gods
Afflict continual years. But all the kings
Denied it yet in conclave when I sought
To bring thee. Last in this tenth year I come
With bare permission, having borne my front
Thro' much reproof in craving it. 'Tis done
And there's an end on't. But to thee begins
New life henceforward, and the god hath shed
Thy woes as night behind thee. In our camp
The craft of old Machaon waits to heal
Thine anguish, potent over every beast
That crawls and sheds his venom till the gods
Straighten his coils in death. The winds are fair,
Come, I have done, forgive me, learn again
To breathe full-breasted pleasure into life,
Hero with heroes, whole and sound and brave.

PYRRHUS
Nay, Prince, the arrows?

ULYSSES
Thrust not thou thy foot
Officiously into the careful web
Of woven consolation: one word more
Is yet too much and spoils it.

PHILOCTETES
Excellent liar,
Thou hast not schooled this Pyrrhus to thy mind.
Words has he spoken four and yet the truth;
Why this is simple work, for yonder king
Will deal by the hour his windy rhetoric,
And, if he make cloud, ether, god, and star,
His witnesses, he is lying most be sure.
And he will weep you, truth how rare she is;
And he will weep you, how men see his deeds
Wrongly. Ah, noble spirit and free good man;
Naming him perhaps arch-liar of that pack
Of wild curs on the Hellespont that snarl
And snarl long years, and dare not bite down Troy.
And when a nobler creature falls than they,
They batten on his carrion with one mind,
And growl not on each other while the meal
Fats them—But thee, Ulysses, I behold,
With wonder I behold thee; that a man,
Canst stand in the broad sun, and lie away
Thy very soul with words and words again,
To which there is no answerable thing
Under thy bosom: for thou shouldest be—
Thou art a prince and rulest a fair isle;
Hast meat enough and with a certain sort
A certain honour. Canst not live without
This beggar trick of lying? Some lean knave
Get him a crust so. Is the game so sweet
That thou wouldst rather take the devious lane
Than the straight chariot road with other men?
Why hath God set no brand upon thy face
To teach the simple nations what a knave
Roams over them? His tongue drops honey: his lip
Smiles gently, smoothly, innocently mild:
His heart is as the very lees of hell.
Ay, he will reel you off the name of the gods,
And weep the earth's impiety and sigh
The innocent old days back, searching the while
Ay, when he holds your hand, with his mild eyes
Where he may surest stab and end you out.
This is Ulysses, this the pious king,
The complete warrior, guileless, eloquent,
Who gives the gods such reverence, that he seems
Another god beside them, not their slave
And earthly henchman. So the rumour runs
In simple narrow Hellas about his name.
Now marvel, nations, at his pious deeds,
He turns his sick friend on a rock to die,
The righteous man. He stirs no finger nail
To aid him, careful lest the affliction grow
Of some god's planting: and he chiefly fears
The gods, wise, good, and honourable king.
Nay, but consider this: for other men
Are not enough religious to forget
Their pity quite, mere foolish kindly souls;
Whom Zeus shall never call to the empire seat,
Shall never gird with glory or give leave
After his royal model to vex men.
Ulysses was ambitious? No, not he.
He never cast me out to rid away
A rival from his empire. Nay, he did it
Of pure god-reverence. Who was I to stand
Between him and their worship? Yet he loved
Me much, so much, that his sheer pity chose
Some spot where soonest I should die, and shed
This troublesome anguish from me. Mean was I
To reap such kindness, and an ingrate slave
To claim to go on living after all;
When a most pious king and wise good man,
Who loves me, for he said so, of his grace
Had given me leave to die upon this rock.
And mark this man's forgiveness, spite of all,
Now would he bring me to the host again
And heal old scores. These men are merely kind:
They've selfish reason none to wish me back.
So says this oracle of truth. Forgive?
Why then he has so much too to forgive:
And all the injury is on his side,
And he will overlook it. Nay, this is
Too much, have heed, Ulysses, as thou goest,
Lest the gods snatch thee suddenly to their thrones,
Envying the unrighteous earth so good a man!

PYRRHUS
By heaven, this man is wronged, and bitterly wronged,
I cannot phrase it wherein he is wronged;
But I have sense enough of right, as I
Know where to strike at vantage the bayed beast,
But cannot give the rule of where and when.

ULYSSES
I have no answer in these ironies,
Which, as the offspring of thy wound and pain,
I pass unnoticed. Nay, as the mouth of Greece,
And now her legate, I may have no ears
For private insult. Nor indeed shall word
Of one so maimed provoke me. I have striven
These many years with slander in the cause
Of Hellas.

PHILOCTETES
Therefore hail and prosper long,
But take thy windy speeches otherwhere,
Babies there are and fools enough to gape
When thou dost deal thy slippery periods.
I care not to see lies tost up and down,
Over and under, as the jugglers use
Their snakes. 'Tis pretty play enough, but I
Have suffered somewhat in the game and bring
Small liking to the pastime. Therefore cease.
There is small audience on the shingles here.
Pack up thy wordy wares, man, and begone:
The yawning crowd disperse: the show is done—
But thou, O Pyrrhus, art of better stuff
Than to be herded up with this bald fox,
Whose few old tricks are stale and threadbare jest
Thro' either army, and a laughter grown
Most weary, since so often laughed that men
Look almost sad upon the jest outworn,
And say, “Doth this thing lead us to our wars?
But now I go to this Thessalian land
And Melibœa where my father reigns,
If, for I see the pity in thy face,
I shall find convoy, Pyrrhus, in thy ship,
To mine own land. Regard not thou the wrath
Or bluster of this disconcerted thing
That struts and calls himself a king of men.
After thou hast discharged this piety
To my great need, and set the sick man home,
Among the kindly faces and the ways
Of childhood and the hands of kin, to die—
Resume, if so thou wilt, the jar of spears
And tug another year at Ilion's wall.
And spill thy large heroic heart away
In aiding these unworthy; knowing not
Them worthless in thy grand simplicity.
But spare—I know thou wilt—a little rest
Of warring home to row me, and dispatch
This fox without his errand to the host;
That the broad heroes at their tent doors laid
May jeer him as he slinks along with eyes
Grounded, a tongueless cur in a lion's hide,
Armed as a hero, with his liar's face.
And thou the while in safety pilot me
Till thou lift out and lay my ruin'd limbs
Upon the beach Thessalian underneath
The sea-built halls of Pœan, eminent
To watch the floor of waters, and give heed
To pirate or the stranger sail, and drive
The slaves and cattle in before he strand
His keels, and pelt him from the rocks again
To sea with loss of heroes and light spoil.
So shall my father love thee and reward.
So shalt thou go again with many stores
Of wool and garments, weaving-maids, and much
Slaughter of beeves, old banquet cups, and all
The garniture of heroes. So thy soul
Shall greatly triumph in these gifts, and hold
Delighted way toward Ilium.

PYRRHUS

ULYSSES
This hound is gone trailing his weak huge limbs
Under the deepened ledges of his cave,
And Pyrrhus props his lean side like a son.
So I am baffled by a fool and boy.
They seek, brave pair, the arrows, ere he goes,
Craftily hidden away to baulk our need.
And had I other here save this soft boy,
This weak soft youngling with his mother's milk
Scarce dry upon his lips, who thrusts himself
So easily to thwart me—Had I one
As Diomede, or even a lesser man
Who'd hold his arm and lips, and let me fend,—
I'd strangle Philoctetes as he crawls
Out from his cave emerging, clutch the darts
And rid the isle of carrion. A shrewd stroke
Of policy. Consider, at one blow
This mulish knave dead as the earth he has long
Polluted, and no less the very keys
Of Ilium's capture mine—mine. How I'd grind
The kings into my very chariot-knaves,
And spin the war out to my soul's desire;
And fan them into fevers, down and up,
With hope one day and scorning next; and live
Exceeding sweetly.—And yet the risk of it;
For this same milky Pyrrhus, his word given,
Will keep to't, as some stupid wether keeps
A sheep-track leading nowhere. He will fight:
Fight? Ay, would Pyrrhus fight. And I should quench
My light for Hellas, which may not be done.
I will go pace this beach a little while,
And with my breast take counsel; for weak fate
Hath made an idiot lord of wisest men.

CHORUS

Ulysses—Pyrrhus
ULYSSES
O Pyrrhus, thou hast misconceived my drift,
Utterly headstrong thou hast stricken down
This Hellas, humouring a mad foolish man,
Who neither knows our meaning or his own.
And thou, new warrior in our nine year toil,
Whom I had yoked as comrade to myself,
Tho' thou hadst hardly dipped thine hand in war;
And chose thee out before these other kings
Older and wiser; for I said, he is young,
He will obey me, and, obeying, more
Profit than other's wisdom. For this thing
Is chiefly good, when one guides well, the rest
Footing the road he leads them with one mind.
But thou hast broken off from the safe band
And taken across a very perilous tract
After some marish meteor. Like a steed
Unbacked thou startest from the battle road
Because this madman by the hedge is set
Jingling his wrongs. Let the Greek cause go rot,
Since certain kings neglected to ensure
Most delicate lodgement for this raw disease
Called Philoctetes. Up, ye lazy kings,
Bathe one and all his ulcers, take his gibes
Demurely crouching, for Achilles' son
Will have it so or blast you with his ire.

PYRRHUS
Being set to do this thing thy words are wind.

ULYSSES
Ay, and this done on Greece a bitter gale.

PYRRHUS
Justice is more than fifty armaments.

ULYSSES
When the Greeks curse, will justice fatten thee?

PYRRHUS
The brave do right nor heed result like knaves.

ULYSSES
The blind ox butts the wall and brains himself.

PYRRHUS
He is no hero who has pity none.

ULYSSES
And of a girl each wounded cur draws tears.

PYRRHUS
Wounded some day thou wilt thyself bewail.

ULYSSES
Not if Achilles' kin has dealt the spear—
Behold the man returns, creeps from the thick
Eaves of his cave; these words are very vain,
Go thou thy way but rail not. To his face
At least we will not shame this Hellas here:
Hereafter more—so will you—but now peace.

Ulysses—Pyrrhus—Philoctetes
PYRRHUS
Peace as thou wilt but as I said I go—
Lo thou, Ulysses, what is here, regard
This Philoctetes he is changed, is changed,
Some god hath surely wrought upon his face.
Speak man, thou tremblest very much, hast lost
Thy voice and breath together? This is I,
Pyrrhus, art mazed? Keep thine eyes fast on mine.
There is a wild sea yonder, nothing more.
Thou knowest us now—ay surely—see he clears
The film and wildness from his look: no word
Yet and the lips move—lay him thus—nay so.
Patience, the man will beat back yet to life.

PHILOCTETES
I can speak now—can speak—yet how to speak?
Moisten my lips with wine to strengthen me.
My master, I have seen him, Heracles,
Ay, plainly as the shadow of thy sword
Is sharp in sunlight upon yonder rock
Before thy feet. Now am I strong to speak;
And I will tell this wonder from the first.
See, man, see, Pyrrhus, I am calm, most calm;
I can speak temperate words and hold your hand;
Ay, look about me on the cloud and wave;
And know the same old stable world; as if
There were no wonders, but the daily march
Of nature, that disturbs not one cloud wisp,
Tho' Zeus himself should slide from Heaven in flame,
But would send up next morning her old sun
And set him all the same. And men would go
About their trivial labour, feed and sleep
And talk their homely matters all the same.
And I that loiter in my telling, tell
Unwillingly, I know not why. It seems
Unholy almost to commune of it here
In the large sun and with the everyday
Unaltered look of the world. And yet he said,
“Reveal it,” therefore hearken. To this cave
Ye saw me enter, Pyrrhus bearing me,
And all my soul was glad with homeward cheer.
Him I dismissed within a little way,
For only I must search the innermost fold
Of the cave's windings seawrought. Here beneath
An altar, hewn myself these many years
Of living rock, I had hoarded time as long
The arrows of my master: for he seem'd
Worthy an altar, as the man I had known
Nearest the ancient gods to suffer and love
Sublimely, and I knew he must be great
Since the new god-brood utterly hated him,
And gave such death and labour to his hand.
Therefore I, kneeling, drew with reverent hand
These arrows from the altar, naming him,
Thrice, Heracles, and rising to be gone
Felt more than saw an excellent great light
Rise from the altar, shape itself, and beat
In on my brain like music; giving glare
And terror, woven with strange breathing sense
Of joy in pain, and pain fused back in joy.
It held me very dumb and very still.
All eye and ear, my lips were baked to the teeth:
And then the gradual feature line by line
Moulded itself upon the screen of light.
And, as the Iris marks its bounds and bands
From merest haze to her sharp-chorded seven,
He came above it there complete at last.
So that the casual stranger who had seen
Him once would say “the same,” and yet great change
Was on him like a god. The old look of pain
So rolled away in radiances. White jets
And little spikes of flame shot in and out
The crispy locks immortal, interlaced
With rosy shuddering shocks and sheets of light.
And yet I saw the glories of his eyes
Were human yet and loved me, as a soft
Suffusion veiled their immortality.
Then his lips trembled, and I heard a sound
As of a single bird in a great wood,
With sunlight blinding down thro' every branch,
And utter silence else over and round.
“Comrade, well done: not vainly hast thou borne
Pain hand in hand with greatness. My old robe
Of agony hath even effect in thee.
But be thou comforted beholding me,
And know that it is noblest to endure:
So shalt thou reach my brightness. And now hear
And do this thing I tell thee. Go not thou
Homewards, return thou to the host with these.
It must be that my arrows shall take Troy.
Learn to forgive, tho' these deserve it not.
Go thou and prosper, so shalt thou ascend
To some fair throne beside me, lord of pain,
Fed with full peace and reaping grand reward.”
And darkness rushed between us.

PYRRHUS
Lo, this man
Has dazed away his living spirit again
By this strange tale. Hath he no comrade here
To tend him? This were better than our care.
Let us go search the isle for such a man.
As for this chief we neither know his ways,
Nor the remedial helps of his disease
Intricate. Time is flowing as we stay;
Ay, for the hour is urgent that we bring
These arrows and this leader in our ship,
Since now he bears so fair a mind to go;
And this thing seen, hero or spectral shade,
Hath moved him, where our lips were merely noise
Of babies wrangling with a sleepy man.

Ægle—Philoctetes
ÆGLE
Look up, my hero, 'tis thine Ægle's hand
Sustains thee: rumour of the old fishermen
Has told me all thy vision: I behold
The echo of its glory in thy face,
And with thy joy my heart leaps up in tune.
Thou goest with these men to thine old renown.
The host has spoken in their mouths thy praise:
And called thee with one calling as a god
To lead them up against the obstinate walls.
And these thou shalt prevail against, and thou
Only, tho' much fair flower of men and steeds
The black earth holds before them wasted down.
Ay, many a boy has gone to the great wars
And made his sisters buckle on his mail,
So restless to begone; and on his head
The old sire has laid his hand and blest his way,
While the sail flapt. And he, the young one, bears
A spirit very proud and tells his soul,
“There is no reach of hero effort laid
Beyond the power I know within myself
To grasp and make it mine—thoroughly mine.”
And he, poor heart, has withered with the herd
For all his youthful glowing. But to thee,
Remains, my hero, this one excellent thing,
To gather in one swathe these dead men's deeds
And end the reaping of the field of war;
To be the column-top that sees the light
First and the glory on it, tho' all the tiers
That built thee up see nothing. And this much
Is Ægle's little tendril of a claim,
Upon thy love, my hero, a full weak thing;
That she in all thy worst disparagement
Believed thee greatest, and foresaw these kings
Would so believe thee, when time led their slow
Dull hearts to wisdom: this thine Ægle knew.
And now my soul to the very core is glad
At this thine exaltation. In this thing
I shall find recompense when thou art gone:
Now therefore go, and Ægle blesses thee.

PHILOCTETES
Ægle, I go: this vision and these kings
Persuade me: yet I cannot bend my soul
To leave thee; and how ask thee to forgo
Thy kindred, following a sick wounded man?
For, lo, I am going to a strange land, with all
The dread of war about it and rough ways
Whereon no damsel loves to cast her eyes.
And, more than this, consider if thou goest
Thou wilt have there to lean on no one thing,
Except a man the gods perplex with pain.
But here, if wearied out with tending me,
The faces of thy childhood bring thee ease.
And so thy mighty pity bears thee thro'
A labour hardly with these aids endured:
Here canst thou rest a little from the sick man.
Here hast thou sister choirs at pleasant song
Driving the shuttle briskly. Thou canst leave
My cave an hour with little noiseless feet
And leave my woes behind thee. And their love
Will hearten thee to endure the atmosphere
Again of my affliction. No such thing
Shall wait thee yonder: faces crafty and hard;
Men who have sold their hearts to thrust themselves
Forward in blaring consequence; mock-heroes,
Mock-kings, unkinged by noisy passions that tear
To shreds the inward majesty of the man.
With these, the herd and drove, flatterer and fool,
Jumbled together in wild enterprise,
And caring most to bicker among themselves.
And thou, detesting these and all their ways,
Wilt only have as comfort one sick man,
And to endure his humours. Which may not be.
Therefore, my darling, bless thee and remain:
Seeing the years shall bring thee ample amends,
When thou forgettest all this careworn face.
Then may'st thou love some other, whom the gods
Behold with eyes more gracious. Then to thee
Sweet and calm joys of wife and motherhood,
And little earnest faces and nestling heads,
Shall recompense thy holy and tender care
Which I can never recompense, and all
Thy pity on a very abject thing.

ÆGLE
I may go with thee, beautiful and sweet,
Excellent tiding, I may go with thee!
Nay, let this word be set about with gold
To keep against my bosom or in my hair
For ever. O my Lemnos, thou art made
A thing of nothing when he bids me go.
O valleys of my childhood, there is fallen
A mightier spirit on my soul than your
Poor gentle influence, erewhile so sweet.
O sister choirs, weave on and prosper fair;
For never more shall Ægle link the buds
Among you, never watch the careful beeves
Treading the grain, never see build the swallow
Against her father's roof, never take more
Her pitcher to the well—All quite, quite gone.
Ay, so it is, I must be weeping since
There are some tears against my hand, and how
They came I know not: for I am very glad.
My sisters, nay, I am not hard, I weep;
But all about me seems to have bloomed into
Such shining, that my heart sings like a bird;
Must sing, tho' all are weeping, sing and sing.
There is a god that draws me and his steps
Ye too shall know hereafter.

PHILOCTETES
In God's name
Go with me then. O excellent heart and dear
Of woman, and thou, Ægle, dearest head,
Give me thy lips. How should I give thee praise,
Since love exceeds all praising? Brave, meek dove,
Thou hast chosen a sad nest for thyself, wherein
The pretty shining plumage of thy youth
Shall flake away to dimness; and I reap
In this thy loss all harvest. Hear, thou sun,
And thou immeasurable sea, and all
Lispings of margin woods, this woman here
Has given away in pity her great soul
To tend a wounded creature all his days,
Ay, such a leprous thing as I may be.
Her if I called divine, ye scornful gods,
I should dishonour deeply: since indeed
These ways are little your ways. She is more,
My bird of comfort, than your scathing light
Which ye reach out for harming man alone.
Ye have made our pain your pastime; and I smile
That human pity, deem'd so vile of gods,
Can cheat their careful vengeance of its sting.
Therefore I say the thunder only of Zeus
Shall part this Ægle from me.

Ulysses—Pyrrhus—Ægle—Philoctetes—Phimachus
PHILOCTETES
And, you kings,
Behold I come late warrior to the war,
Wounded I come since ye would have it so;
And a strange voice has spoken on your side
That this world owns not. Ready am I and tame,
Great kings, to do your bidding; and this maid
Will lead me to your ships and go with me,
And Phimachus, old comrade, aids our way.
Ye make it nothing that I tamely go?
Nay, by the light and by this maiden here,
My vengeance was as sweet as life to a boy.
And now I throw it down and cast it by,
Wherefore? Nay, not ye heavens for anything
That this ignoble fool can understand
In his false rhetoric. If to such a man
I seem the crazy and uncertain jest
Of dream and vision; if to such a soul
To love the memory of a comrade dead
Seem but a girl's perfection, a sick whim
To let my anger go when one I loved,
Speaking behind the cloud and veil of time
So bids me—Why it must be always so;
The lesser nature never yet conceived
Nobility above it, nay but held
As folly what it could not understand
With its mole eyes, ignoble; ay, but thou,
Pyrrhus, I see this in thy glittering eyes,
Canst understand me somewhat. Nay then, boy,
This womanly dew is braver on thy lids
Than this man's easy dog-like laughter sits
Sneering his soul down—Ay, and Ægle too
With thy sweet eyes new flooded into rain;
Why this is an old tale to thee, my child,
A most sad old one. You have wept by me.
When there was no one else would come or care.
And you have crept and given your little palm
To nest in mine, when your voice broke, as all
The comfort you could give me. Ah, dear head,
Have I so wrongly put mine anger by?
Doth thy sweet bosom scorn me for this thing
Refusing vengeance? Soft as light in cloud
Thou givest answer with a rainy smile.
Sneer on, Ulysses, now if thou canst sneer;
Being so more wretched tho' a painless man
Than I in any sorrow, tho' a king
Of woes with mortals; since some love me still:
But thee, poor worm, no fellow-creature loves,
Altho' they use thy cunning in their wars.
Sneer on, poor instrument of venom, I think
That I can bear such sneering, ay, and more.
But, ere I leave these precincts of my pain,
I will speak something to these Lemnians here;
A simple word, my kings, and easily said,
No wordy toil of Ithacensian lips.
Hear, O ye Lemnians, hear a full brief word
Before I go, for surely from this day
My voice shall be a silence on your rocks,
My face a dimness with a few old men
Remembered hardly. As day fathers day
'Tis meet my memory pass; ay, meet that all
Change and be changed. So roll the stars along
And the great world is crown'd with silent lights
Watching her changes, and no thing endures.
Wherefore ye fosterers of the broken man,
Whom ye denied not strangered when his own
Despised the sharing with him light and air,—
Prosper, ye kindly fishing folk, and thrive
Always of Zeus; knowing your simple ways
Are more than royal hatreds. Eat sweet bread
Because ye love no fellow-creature's scathe.
And I, this farewell spoken, speak no more,
This only—He is noble and utterly great,
Noble and great he only, who can say,
Whatever plague the strong great gods impose,
“Be it done but I am free. My spirit knows
Its freedom tho' ye crush me quite away.
My last dim thought upon the very edge
Of silence shall breathe ‘freedom.’ For no hand
Of god or demon can abolish this.”

CHORUS
Man, let them have their way.
Let them, O man, prevail:
Mighty and more than thou,
How should their anger fail?
Why settest thou thy baby palms
To wrestle down the thews that may not tire?
Why wilt thou vex thyself to be as they,
Weakling of sorrow and sleep?
Why wilt thou thrust about the world for peace?
God is at peace alone.
Take from their careless hands
The morsels of their pity as they fall:
Take from their scornful brows
The curse, and call them just.
Nay, thou art foolish to have any pride:
They use thee as they choose.
Count every happy dream
As stolen from the envy of their power.
Turn at the last to slumber, if no great woe
Hath taken thee, secure,
That under the warm earth to vex thy sleep
Their hands can never come.