I.
CONSTANTINE IN THRACE.
(A.D. 324.)
ARGUMENT.
The Emperor Constantine, the day before he reaches Byzantium,
projects the building of Constantinople upon its site,
esteeming that site the fittest for the metropolis of a Christian
Empire, or, more properly, of a Christian Caliphate, one and
universal, to be created by him. He resolves, that task completed,
to be baptized; but not till then, his Belief being but
a half belief.
Ha, Pagan City! hast thou heard the tidings,
Rome, the world's mistress, whom I never loved!
Whilst yet a boy I read of thy renown,
Thy Kings, thy Consuls, and thine Emperors,
Thy triumphs, slow but certain, in all lands,
Yet never yearned to see thy face. Thy heart
Was as my heart—averse, recalcitrant.
I left my charge; I clave that British sea;
I crossed the snowy Alps; I burst thy chain;
I drowned thy tyrant in the Tiber's wave,
Maxentius, him whose foot was on thy neck:
I sat lip-worshipp'd on thy Palatine Hill;
But well I knew that to that heart of thine
Nero's black memory was a welcomer thing
Than I, a son of that Rome-bated North,
For all my glories. Hast thou heard the tidings?
The Cross of Christ is found! By whom? Not thee!
Thou grop'st and grovel'st in the gold-stream's bed
Not there where lies the Cross! I, Constantine
The Unbaptized, am cleaner thrice than thou—
I found it through my mother! The Cross is found!
I left thee: I had heard a mighty voice:
Eastward it called me: there Licinius reigned,
Who made the inviolate Empire twain, not one:
One crown suffices earth. Licinius fell:
I saw him kneeling at his conqueror's feet
I saw him seated at his conqueror's board:
I spared him, but dethroned. New tumults rose:
Men said they rose through him. Licinius died;
'Twas rumoured, by my hand: I never loved him:
The truth came out at last: I let it be.
He died: that day the Empire stood uncloven,
One as in great Augustus' regal prime,
One as when Trajan reigned and Adrian reigned—
Great kings, though somewhat flecked with Christian blood:—
Whom basest Emperors spared the best trod down;
I judge them not for that: not yet had dawned
That day when Faith could be the base of Empire.
The Antonines came later, trivial stock,
Philosophers enthroned. Philosophers!
I never loved them: Life to me was teacher:
That great Cæsarian Empire is gone by:
'Twas but the old Republic in a mask
With Consul, Tribune, Pontiff rolled in one:
A great man wrought its ruin, Diocletian:
The greatest save those three who built it up:
He split his realm in four. Amid the wreck
What basis now subsists for permanent empire?
Religion. Of Religions one remains:
The rest are dead Traditions, not Religion.
The old gods stand in ivory, stone, and gold
Dozing above the dust-heaps round their feet:
The Flamen dozes on the altar-step:
The People doze within the colonnades:
The Augurs pass each other with a smile:
The Faith that lives is Christ's. Three hundred years
The strong ones and the wise ones trod it down:
Red flames but washed it clean—I noted that:
This day the Christian Empire claims its own.
The Christian Empire—stranger things have been;
Christ called His Church a Kingdom. Such it is:
The mystery of its strength is in that oneness
Which heals its wounds, and keeps it self-renewed.
It rises fair with order and degree,
And brooks division none. That realm shall stand;
I blend therewith my Empire; warp and woof
These twain I intertwine. Like organism
Shall raise in each a hierarchy of powers
Ascending gradual to a single head,
The Empire's head crowned in the Empire's Church.
The West dreamed never of that realm twin-dowered
With spiritual sway and temporal: the East,
I think, was never long without such dream,
Yet shaped not dream to substance. Persia failed:
Failed when by Greek Mythology infected;
Earlier, the Assyrian and the Babylonian;
Colossal structures these, but scarcely noble:
The Alexandrian Empire later came
And more deserved to live. Not less 'twas doomed:
The Conqueror lacked material; he had naught
To work on save the dialectics keen
And Amphionic song of ancient Greece.
His dream was this—an Empire based on Mind,
The large Greek Mind. Mind makes a base unstable:
Large minds have ever skill to change their mind:
Then comes the fabric down. He died a youth,
A stripling; ay, but had his scheme been sound
'Tis likely he had lived. Religion lives.
Perhaps a true Faith only could sustain
A permanent Empire's burthen. Mine is true:
Whoso denies its truth that man shall die.
The Church had met in synod, for a man
Had made division in that ‘seamless robe’
Regal this day. Arius schismatic stood
For what? A doctrine! Fool! and knew he not
Religion is a Law, and not a Doctrine.
The Church had met in synod at Nicæa,
Nicæa near Byzantium. There was I:
The Church in synod sat and I within it.
Flocking from every land her bishops came;
They sat and I in the midst, albeit in Rome
My title stood, ‘Pontifex Maximus.’
They came at my command, by me conveyed.
A man astonished long I sat; I claimed
To sit ‘a bishop for the things without.’
Amid those bishops some were Confessors
Maimed by the fire or brand. I kissed their wounds:
None said, ‘What dost thou 'mid the Prophet Race?’
They saw I honoured God, and honoured me.
I, neither priest nor layman; I, that ne'er
Had knelt a Catechumen in the porch,
Her Emperor, yet an Emperor unbaptized,
I sat in the synod. At the gates stood guards:
Not all were Christian: two, the best, were bold:
One from Danubius winked at me; and one
From Rhenus smiled at me. The weeks went by,
And in me daily swelled some spirit new:
I know it now; it was the imperial spirit.
When rose that contest I had willed at first
The doctrine questioned should be trivial deemed,
And license given, ‘think, each man, what he will.’
The fires had burned too deep for that: I changed:
I sided with the strong, and kept the peace.
That was my triumph's hour: then came the fall.
I made return to Rome. Twelve years gone by
My sword had riven the Western tyrant's chain:
Since then the tyrant of the East had perished:
The world was echoing with my name. I reached
The gate Flaminian and the Palatine;
I looked for welcome such as brides accord
Their lords new-laurelled. Rome, a bride malign,
Held forth her welcome in a poisoned cup:
Mine Asian garb, my ceremonious court,
Its trappings, titles, and heraldic gear,
To her were hateful. Centuries of bonds
Had left her swollen with Freedom's vacant name:
A buskined greatness trampled still her stage:
By law the gods reigned still. The senate sat
In Jove's old temple on the Capitol:
My fame Nicæan edged their hate. The priest
Shouldering through grinning crowds to sacrifice
Cast on me glance oblique. Fabii and Claudii
Whose lives hung powerless on their Emperor's nod
Eyed me as he who says, ‘This man is new.’
One festal morning to some pagan fane
The whole Equestrian Order rode—their wont—
In toga red. I saw, and laughing cried,
‘Better their worship than their horsemanship!’
That noon the rabble pressed me in the streets
With wrong premeditate; hissed me; spat at me;
That eve they brake my statues. Choice was none
Save this, to drown the Roman streets in blood
Or feign indifference. Scorn, twelve years of scorn—
Changed suddenly to hate. A fevered night
Went by, and morning dawned.
My council met;
Then came that fateful hour, my wreck and ruin.
Aye, for the plot long brewing now was ripe;
Fausta, my wife, hated her rival's son,
Mine eldest born, my Crispus; hated him
Most fiercely since his victory at Byzantium,
Yea more than hated for his Mother's sake,
The glory and the gladness of my youth
By me for Empire's sake repudiated,
The sweetness of whose eyes looked forth from his.
Fausta but one hope nursed—to crown her sons,
My second brood, portioning betwixt those three
My realm when I was dead.
My brothers holp her plot. She watched her time:
She waited till the eclipse which falls at seasons
Black on our House was dealing with my soul;
Then in that council-hall her minions rose;
They spake; they called their witnesses suborned,
Amongst them of my counsellors some the best;
They brought their letters forged and spurious parchments,
And made it plainer seem than sun or moon
That he it was, my Crispus, Portia's child,
Who, whilst his sire was absent at Nicæa,
Month after month had plotted 'gainst him, made
His parricidal covenant with Rome:
The father was to fall in civil broil,
Her son to reign. Their league the day gone by
When that mad tumult in the streets assailed me,
Had made its first assay.
That hour the Fates
Around me spread their net: that hour the chains
Of Œdipus were tangled round my feet:
I stood among them blind. Such blindness fell
Upon me twice before. The noontide flamed:
I, in full council sitting—I since youth
A man of marble nerve and iron will,
A man in whom wild fancy's dreams alike
And fleshly lusts had held no part, subdued
By that Religion grave, a great Ambition;
I self-controlled, continent in hate itself,
Deliberate and foreseeing—I that hour
Down on that judgment-parchment pressed my seal:
That was my crime, the greatest earth has known;
My life's one crime. I never wrought another.
'Twas rage pent up 'gainst her I could not strike,
Rome, hated Rome! I smote her through my son,
Her hope, the partner of her guilt. That night
My purpose I repented. 'Twas too late:
The ship had sailed for Pola. Tempest dire,
By demons raised, brake forth: pursuit was vain.
Within his Istrian dungeon Crispus died.
I willed that he, but not his fame, should perish;
Therefore that deed was hid. With brow sun-bright,
Hell in my heart, I took my place at feasts:
At last the deed was blabbed.
My mother loved—
My mother, Helena, the earth's revered one,
Cybéle of the Christians termed by Greeks—
Loved well my Crispus for his mother's sake,
Wronged, like herself, by royal nuptials new,
And hated Fausta with her younger brood.
She brake upon my presence like a storm:
With dreadful eyes and hands upraised she banned me:
She came once more, that time with manifest proof
Of Fausta's guilt. The courtiers not denied it;
My brothers later; last the Accursed herself
Confessed it; nay she made thereof her boast.
Two days I sat in darkness: on the third
I sent to judgment Fausta and her crew:
That act I deem the elect of all my acts.
They died: at eve I rose from the earth and ate.
But fifteen months before, I at Nicæa
Had sat a god below! No more of that!
'Twas false, the rumour that by night, disguised,
I knelt before a pagan shrine, and sought
Pagan lustration from a pagan priest,
And gat for answer that for crime like mine
Earth held lustration none.
I built great fanes,
Temples which all the ages shall revere:
Saint Peter's huge Basilica; Saint John's;
I roamed from each to each, like him who sought
A place for penitence, and found it not;
Then from that city doomed—O! to what heights
I, loving not, had raised her!—forth I fared,
Never thenceforth to see her. Rome has reigned:
She had her thousand years. Unless some greatness
Hidden from man remains for man, her doom
Draws near her—dust and ashes.
I went forth:
I deemed the God I served had cast me off:
The Pagan world I knew my foe: the Christian
Thundered against me from a thousand shores:
There was a dreadful purpose in my soul:
It was my Mother saved me! She, keen-eyed,
Discerned the crisis; kenned the sole solution.
In expiation of my crime she sped
A holy pilgrim to the Holy Land:
She spread her hands above the sacred spot
As when the Mother-Beast updrags to light
The prey earth-hidden for her famished young:
Instinct had led her to it: she dug and dug;
She found the world's one treasure, lost till then,
That Cross which saved the world. With lightning speed
The tidings went abroad: I marched: last night
I raised mine eyes to heaven. I ne'er was one
Of spirit religious, though my life was pure,
Austerely pure amid an age corrupt:
I never was a man athirst for wonders;
My fifty years have witnessed three alone:
The first was this—while yet Maxentius lived,
My army nearing Rome, I marked in her,
Though bondslave long, a majesty divine;
She seemed earth's sum of greatness closed in one:
Some help divine I needed to confront her:
That help was given: I looked aloft: I saw
In heaven the God-Man on His Cross, henceforth
My battle-sign, ‘Labarum.’ Yesternight
Once more I saw it! He that hung thereon
Spake thus: ‘Work on, and fear not.’
Those two visions,
The first, the third, shine on me still as one:
The second was of alien race and breed.
New-throned in Rome I doubted oft her future:
One night I watched upon Mount Palatine,
My seat a half-wrought column. It had lain
For centuries seven rejected, none knew why,
By earlier builders: in more recent times
Ill-omened it was deemed, yet unremoved.
The murmur from the City far beneath
Had closed my eyelids. Sudden by me stood
A queenly Form, the Genius of great Rome;
Regal her face; her brow, though crowned, was ploughed
With plaits of age. She spake: ‘Attend my steps.’
Ere long I marked her footing the great sea
Eastward: I followed close. Then came a change:
Seven hills before me glittered in her light:
Save these the world was dark. I looked again:
On one of these she stood. Immortal youth
Shone splendid from her face no longer furrowed;
And all her form was martial. On her head
She bore a helm, and in her hand a spear
High-raised. She plunged that spear into the soil,
And spake: ‘Build here my City and my Throne;’
Then vanished from my sight. High up I heard
The winnowing of great wings. The self-same sound
Had reached me while that Goddess trod the sea:
'Twas Victory following that bright crest for aye.
Morn broke: I knew that site; it was Byzantium;
So be it! There shall stand the second Rome,
Not on the plain far-famed that once was Troy,
A dream of mine in youth. Some Roman Bard
In song denounced that dream:
Byzantium! Ay!
The site is there: there meet the double seas
Of East and West. The Empire rooted there
Shall stand the wide earth's centre, clasping in one—
That earlier Rome was only Rome rehearsed—
The Alexandrian and Cæsarean worlds:
Atlas and Calpé are our western bound;
Ganges shall guard our Eastern. To the North
Not Rhenus, not Danubius—that is past—
But Vistula and far Boristhenes;
And farther northern seas. Those Antonines,
Boasted their sageness, limiting their realm:
They spared Rome's hand to freeze her head and heart:
An Empire's growth surceased, its death begins:
Long death is shame prolonged. Five hundred years
That last great war shall dure. Let Persia tremble!
Rome's sole of Rivals! Distance shields her now:
My Rome shall fix on her that eye which slays:
She like a gourd shall wither. Crispus my son,
That task had been for thee!
Ha, Roman Nobles!
Your judgment-time approaches! Shadows ye!
Shadows long since are ye! Those shades shall flit:
My City shall be substance, not a shadow.
Ye slew the Gracchi; they shall rise and plague you:
Ye clutched the Italian lands; stocked them with slaves;
Then ceased the honest wars: your reign shall cease:
Again, as when Fabricius left his farm
To scourge his country's foes, Italian hands
The hands of Latium, Umbria, and Etruria,
In honourable households bred, made strong
By labour on their native fields, shall fence
Their mother-land from insult. Mercenaries!
Who made our Roman armies mercenary?
Slave-lords that drave the free men from the soil!
Your mercenaries bought and sold the realm!
In sport or spleen they chose Rome's Emperors!
The British hosts chose me. I, barbarous styled,
I Constantine decree that in the ranks
Of Rome the Roman blood, once more supreme,
Shall leave scant place for hirelings ill to trust;
The army to the Emperor shall belong,
Not he to it, henceforth.
On these seven hills—
The seven of Rome, with them compared, are pigmies—
I build earth's Empire City. They shall lift
High up the temples of the Christian Law
Gold-domed, descried far off by homeward fleets,
Cross-crowned in record of my victory
At Rome, and Crispus' victory at Byzantium,
To it shall flock those senators of Rome
Their Roman brag surceased. Their gods shall stand,
Grateful for incense doles diminishing daily,
If so they please, thronging the lower streets,
These, and the abjects of the Emperors dead;—
Ay, but from those seven hills to heaven shall rise
The Apostolic Statues, and mine own,
Making that race beneath ridiculous,
Above the Empire which that city crowns,
Above its Midland, Euxine, Caspian seas,
Above its Syrian Paradises lulled
By soft Orontes' and Euphrates' murmurs,
Above its Persian gardens, and the rush
Of those five Indian rivers o'er whose marge
The Man of Macedon fixed his eastward eyes,
Above all these God's Angels keeping watch
From East to West shall sweep, for aye sustaining
My Standard, my ‘Labarum’!
It shall last,
That Empire, till the world herself decays,
Since all the old Empires each from each devolved
It blends, and marries to a Law Divine.
Its throne shall rest on Right Hereditary,
Not will of splenetic legions or the crowd;
Its Sovereigns be the Elect of God, not man;
Its nobles round their Lord shall stand, sun-clad
In light from him reflected; stand in grades
Hierarchal, and impersonating, each,
Office and function, not the dangerous boast
Of mythic deeds and lineage. Age by age
Let those my Emperors that wear not names
Of Cæsar or Augustus, but my name,
Walk in my steps, honouring my Church aright:
My Empire and My Church must dwell together
The one within the other. Which in which?
The Empire clasps the world; clasps then the Church;
To shield that Church must rule her. Hers the gain:
I, who was never son of hers, enriched her
Making the ends o' the earth her heritage:
I ever knew 'tis poverty not wealth
That kindles knave to fanatic: silken saints
Like him of Nicomedia, my Eusebius,
Mate best with Empire's needs. When death draws nigh,
I, that was ever jealous lest the Font
Might give the Church of Christ advantage o'er me,
Will humbly sue for baptism, doffing then
My royal for my chrysome robe. Let those
Who through the far millenniums fill my throne
In this from me take pattern. Wise men choose
For wisest acts wise season.
Hark that trump!
The army wakens from its noontide rest:
Ere sunset fires its walls I reach Byzantium.
