The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Parmenio and Philotas.
Phi.
You are a greater man, sir, than you know,
And bear your honours meekly. Pray you pardon
My sometimes halting reverence.

Par.
Here's a change!
I have warned you oft to bate your perilous pride
Saying, “My son be less.” Your whim is now
To show all humbleness.

Phi.
I should be humble
To one who for his master has a god:
Unseen I heard the king expound his schemes,
Hephestion mildly plausive.

Par.
Schemes! What schemes?

Phi.
Kneel, Hercules, and Dionysus tremble!
Tremble, thou Caucasus that hid'st thy head
In snows eterne! Our great stage-king has sworn
To plant his buskin on thy wintry scalp!

Par.
What seeks the boy?

Phi.
From eastern Caucasus
Two rivers rush, the Indus and the Oxus,
One south, one north. He'd tie them, tail to tail,
Like foxes caught, to test their strength and prowess;
Next, on those heights he seeks some herb to enrich
The Stagyrite's medicine shop: and, lastly, thence
He'd o'er-gaze Scythia, which with proximate place
Is honour'd in the order of his conquests.

Par.
Renounce great Persia for a realm of bears!
I march with him no more!

Phi.
You shall not need:
Besieging Tyre, he sent you to Damascus
To seal up sacred balms, and perfume-phials,
And inventory the wardrobe of Darius.
In Egypt, you had no conspicuous place:
Now, for like cause, the Caspian Gates you pass not,
Ecbatana your charge. Upon his treasure
He bids you sit like an old hen, and hatch it
While he strides on to victory. Snows of age
With what auspicious calm ye crown old heads,
And hearts virile no more!

Par.
The king's a madman:—
The worse for us! Free him from that conceit
That he's a god, the man of men were he:
Since Marathon we have seen none other like him.

Phi.
One-half his victories come but of his blindness,
And noting not the hindrance.

Par.
At Granicus—
But that was chance. At Issus he was greater:
I set small store on Egypt or on Tyre:
Next came Arbela. Half a million foes
Melted like snow. To him Epaminondas
Was as the wingless creature to the wing'd.

Phi.
I grant his greatness were his godship sane!
But note his brow; 'tis Thought's least earthly temple:
Then mark, beneath, that round, not human eye,
Still glowing like a panther's! In his body
No passion dwells; but all his mind is passion,
Wild intellectual appetite and instinct
That works without a law.

Par.
But half you know him.
There is a zigzag lightning in his brain

That flies in random flashes, yet not errs:
His victories seem but chances:—link those chances,
And under them a science you shall find,
Though unauthentic, contraband, illicit,
Yea, contumelious oft to laws of war.
Fortune, that as a mistress smiles on others,
Serves him as duty-bound: her blood is he,
Born in the purple of her royalties.
On me she frown'd long time: these mailèd fists
Smote her on breast and brow for thirty years,
From Athos westward to the Illyrian coasts,
Ere yet she learn'd to love me. He too loves me!
Though jealous of my fame.

Phi.
You dream, good father!
A tent's small fissure and a moonless night
Help'd me to better knowledge. Thus he spake:
“Hephestion, till Arbela's fight I loved him:
I know him now, poor shell of that he was,
For baggage-tendence best.”

Par.
Blunderer and traitor!
He placed me at Arbela, naked of friends,
Amid unnumber'd foes. He lied, and lies!

Phi.
How far to India, father?

Par.
'Tis earth's bound:
Beyond is nothing save the rising sun.

Phi.
'Tis the beginning of his last ambition.
Phœbus Apollo, stand on guard! this youth
Will take a leap into thy flaming chair;
He'll clutch thee by the bright locks never shorn;
Far forth o'er earth he'll cast thee, there to tend
Once more Admetus' herds! I tell you, father,
Three times that night I heard him boast his schemes;
Heard, and not laugh'd. 'Twas Scythia, first; then India.

Par.
I reck not of his injuries to myself;—
But shall a new Cambyses drown in sands
The best and bravest army bred by Greece?
Not so, Parmenio living!

Phi.
Other help
Greece lacks this hour. The camp is full of murmurs;
Vacant of aid.

Par.
Your drift?

Phi.
A word suffices:
Better a man should perish than a people.

Par.
(after a long silence).
The day grows chill.

Phi.
A hundred ways there are—

Par.
Hark! 'Tis the royal trumpet. Son, be patient:
The gods are helpful.

Phi.
Pious hand is his
That helps the helpful gods!

Par.
We've time before us:
Likeliest, a thousand hidden dangers 'scaped,
He'll dash his bark against some mountainous rock,
And vanish in flat seas. And yet, it may be
That growing years will tame him.

Phi.
It were needful:
If ere that time he perish in his cups
One man there lives on whom the whole Greek host
Would fix its gaze.

Par.
His name?

Phi.
'Twas once Parmenio:—
The man from war to war the battle's king;
The man who grudged no soldier drink or victual,
Nor sold his life for nought; the man who now
Holds in his charge an empire's treasure. Well!
If you're sent back, you'll know I fabled not.

Scene II.—At Rhagæ.

Seleucus, Craterus, and Ptolemy.
Sel.
Too late! The hunted stag has ta'en the leap;
His lair is cold.

Cra.
The king will storm at this:
He's quicklier moved than once: I mark him changing:
He wills not opposition to his will.
Since first he breathed this Asian air of kingship
Divinity of kings hath touch'd him much:
First, in his blood it play'd, like other lusts:
It mounted next to fancy's seat; and now,
His eye usurping, purples all his world.
Injury to kings he deems not injury only,
But sacrilege.

Sel.
Craterus, I scorn your words,
I say I scorn them! Ptolemy, our wisest,
In sophist balance never weighs his king,
Nor scans him from the critic's fancied height.

Cra.
A speculative man that knows not men,
A man whose blood flows sweetly through his veins,
Leaving at every point a sleepy pleasure
That needs must overflow to all our race
In vague, complacent kindness. All his thoughts
In orbits as of planets curving go,
And grasp, like them, blank space. Your minds majestic,
Like Ptolemy's, are oft but stately triflers.

Sel.
Has the king faults? So be it! He can afford them.

Scene III.—Rhagæ.

Alexander attended by Parmenio, Hephestion, and other Generals, and surrounded by soldiers.
Alex.
Darius is fled forth. I have chased a shadow:
He'll raise new hosts; and I from realm to realm,
From year to year must hunt him. Lords, three days
Here we make rest perforce. Thus much, Parmenio,
You cost me at Arbela!

Par.
Gods of Greece!
Hear ye this man? My hand it was, my hand,
Raised from the dust your late-crown'd Macedon:
And lo! this day the heir of all this greatness
Upbraids me as a boy!

Alex.
I said, and say it:
Arbela all but won, to prop your squadrons
You call'd me back: Darius made escape:
I saw his chariot sink beneath the hills
Lit by the last gleam of a sun that set;
Let him that dares deny it.

Par.
I deny it!
My best and bravest from my squadrons drain'd,
Me with a trivial force your blindness placed
'Mid countless foes. With less consummate skill
Than mine that hour your whole left wing had perish'd.
In wrath, not fear, I warn'd you of your error:
You saw it, and you made retreat aghast:
Ere you had reach'd us the Thessalian horse
With fortunate charge piercing the Persian ranks
Had given us air to breathe. You spurn'd my counsel,
Or earlier than Arbela's fight began

Had come its glorious ending.

Alex.
Aye! your counsel!
You will'd me to attack the foe by night:
I answer'd that I steal not victory:
The craven craft trips in the cloak that hides it
And falls to the earth. With slender force like mine
The worst defeat were victory incomplete:—
This Persian foe is as a mist that melts,
Re-forms, and swells against me. Oh, your counsels!
I scorn'd them from the first, or foot of mine
Had trod not Persian soil.

Par.
Shade of dead Philip!
Make answer in my name!

Alex.
You counsell'd me
Beside Granicus, not to cross the stream:
At Ephesus—by auguries back'd, and omens
That deepliest dint the craziest brain—you counsell'd
To fight by sea, not land, the Persian fleet
My ships exceeding fourfold, and with theirs
Phœnicia's mated. Issus won, you counsell'd
Naked to leave the Asian coasts, their prey
Their appanage, who, sailing from safe ports
Had raised revolted Greece from north to south
And barr'd me from return.

Par.
This too I counsell'd—
Omit not from that inventory of sins
So diligently register'd, my greatest—
To dash the red torch from a wanton's hand;
Flameless to leave royal Persepolis,
And shame the drunken revel!

Alex.
Hoary dotard!
Darest thou remind me of that sole offence
Which spots my sun-like fame? All-reverend mocker,

At whose false breath dead bones of seeming truth
In blasphemy are flesh'd, of shames thou speakest!
One shame there rests—not merited—not mine—
On me and Greece! I spared to file my tongue
With thy transgression till this hour. Damascus
Madden'd, beholding from her centuried throne
The unutterable, obscene, impious act,
When they whom thou hadst bribed to sell their trust,
A long procession, from her gates advanced,
Their treasure in the midst, unarm'd, unfearing,
Old nobles, women, gown'd defenceless priests,
And thou, the fool-led pupil of that son
Whose boyish babble tunes thy senile drivel,
Perfidiously didst on them launch thy power,
And in their own blood drown.

Par.
It is a lie!
The impeachment is a lie; the man a liar!
That deed I wrought not, and I knew not of it:
In the rear I rode. Captains of Macedon,
Your ears have heard. I brand him for a liar!
Your king has lied, and lies!

Alex.

Caitiff and coward!
The grey hair—well thou know'st it—saves that head
Which else this sword had from thy shoulders swept.
I am requited justly who, unjustly
In glorious offices above thy peers
Stayed thee so long, for those high tasks unmeet
Which by Hephestion or by Ptolemy,
In silence were vicariously discharged.
I strip thee of all functions to the last:—

Take from him chain and sword!

[After a pause.

I stand rebuked;

And, gazing on your countenances, lords,
Remember that the ruins of a man
Have in them ruin's claims.
The man who smote his king upon the face,
Who on his forehead nail'd the name of lie,
Shall live, but not beside him, and not near,
Honours shall keep, but sway no battle field,
Back to Ecbatana! Get thee hence, Parmenio!
And guard its citadel with Harpalus,
A pardon'd man like thee. My purpose stood
Thou thence shouldst join us with our Thracian aids:
It shall not be; for I distrust thy sword,
Though one time sharp; distrust, detest thy counsel,
Yet trust thy faithfulness to guard my gold
And keep my Median capital in awe.
Depart: work waits. Thy son shall take no hurt
From his sire's fall. On earth we meet no more.

Par.
King—for that pride which maddens, and will wreck you,
Demands such lessening titles—I depart.
I too, like you, have mused, and changed my purpose:
That which it was, and is, let no man ask.
This is the ending of a life-long league.
I laid my strong sword by your cradle's side;
I taught you how to walk, and how to run,
To ride, to swim; and when you sought to fly
I bade you to beware.
Could all this thing be painted, patch'd, adjusted,
Reduced to spleen of fancy, proven a dream,
This day from out the starry count of time
Be blotted, cancell'd, buried, and trod out,
I'd not so have it, for my heart is changed.
My head, you say, through age hath lost its cunning;
My heart hath insight still: I see your end:

I'll whisper it to Philip in the shades,
For I shall see him soon.
You shall succeed, and your success be ruin:
You shall achieve a name: in after years
The byeword it shall live of madness crown'd:
By night the dagger, and the spear by day
From you shall glance: snow-wastes and burning sands
To you obsequious, shall but choke the just:
Yet all your greatness shall be changed to bane:
Your virtues shall not walk in Virtue's ways,
But glorify your vices, and the beam
Of your bright mind blacken that mind to madness:
The empire you shall build in cloudy wreck
Shall melt around your deathbed premature,
Which shall not be a warrior's: that first realm,
Your father's work and mine, to dust shall fall;
The Royal House evanish as a wind,
Your mother, and your sisters, sons, and wife,

Alexander's whole family was thus cut off. His wife, Arsinoe, and her sister Drypetis, the wife of Hephestion, were treacherously invited to Babylon, and there murdered by Roxana (the beautiful daughter of the Bactrian, Oxyartes), whom Alexander had married immediately after capturing her and her father during his march through Sogdiana. Roxana herself was put to death by order of Cassander, together with Alexander's son by her, then sixteen years of age, who bore his father's name. Hercules, the son of Alexander by Barsine, was murdered by Polysperchon at the instigation of Cassander. Yet more tragic was the fate of that wonderful woman, Alexander's mother, Olympias. Cassander had never forgotten the persistent enmity of Olympias to his father, Antipater. The day of his triumph came at last. He entered Macedonia, and after various vicissitudes of fortune, Olympias was obliged to take refuge in Pydna, with a large number of royal and noble persons attached to her court. The siege of Pydna was long and terrible; but the horrors of plague and of famine became at last unendurable; Olympias found herself deserted by her army, and Macedonia was in the hands of Cassander. At his instance the kinsmen of those whom Olympias had put to death in her hour of triumph accused her in a general assembly. There were none to plead her cause, and she was condemned to death. The aged queen was equal to the occasion. She clothed herself in her royal robes, and leaning on two of her women, came with a haughty mien to meet the party of soldiers which had been sent to despatch her. They stood before her helpless, overcome by the majesty of her aspect, and the great recollections connected with her name. Cassander then sent her accusers to be her executioners. The end is thus related by the historian Justin: ‘They slew her as she stood, not shrinking from sword, or wounds, nor clamouring aloud in womanly fashion, but meeting her death in a manner becoming her great race, so that in his dying mother Alexander might still be seen. In death she wrapped her person round in her robes, and covered her face with her hair, that nothing might attend her close inconsistent with the royal dignity.’

Struck down successive by a vassal hand
In bloody, base, and ignominious death.
Lords, give ye way. Some blood-drops in my brain
At times make dim mine eyes; but help I need not.
Who's this? Hephestion? Tell my son, Philotas,
That after-musings on this morn's discourse
Have somewhat changed my sentence. Home, they say,
Is best for age. I seek it. Eighty years
I have made my home on horseback. Sirs, farewell.

[Parmenio departs.
Alex.
To business! We have heard of clamours late
From men with homeward cravings. Let them know
That, though their service-time is unexpired,

We grant them to depart, nor that alone,
But praised of him they served. We give the horse
Two thousand talents: to the rest we grant
For every man the tenth part of a talent,
Their pay continuing till they set their feet
On Grecian shores.

Ant.
We're weak without the horsemen.

Alex.

Or with them, or without them, we are weak;
But these, with glory gladden'd and with gain,
Where'er they move—and wealth will make them restless—
Shall noise our name, and send our camp recruits
For each man lost, a score. To Grecian horsemen
Electing to abide we give three talents,
Foot-soldiers in proportion. Epocillus
Escorts them to the coast, and Menes thence
Shall steer them to Eubœa. Macedonians

Are free not less.

[A shout.

We bide! There's none will go.

Alex.
So be it! The satrapy of conquer'd Media
On Oxodates we confer, a Mede,
But one by King Darius wrong'd—thence safe;
With him, for military government,
Joining Tlepomenus of Macedon.
The garrison at Ecbatana late left,
And with it three battalions of the Phalanx,
By Cleitus led, will make us soon forget
Those fissures in our ranks. Lords, fare ye well!
On the fourth morn once more we chase Darius:
I have heard that he has traitors in his ranks:
No friends are they of mine.

Scene IV.—The Persian Camp.

Darius lies on the ground, bleeding. A Greek soldier gives him water to drink from his helmet.
Dar.
Sir, you have stain'd, I fear, your scarf. I thank you
For this good office. Kings should have more than thanks
For friendly service. Bessus and his knaves
Have fled before your face.

Sol.
Ye gods! Ye gods!

Dar.
My friends have been my foes; a foe my friend:—
Likewise your king show'd reverence to my mother:
Tell him I stretch'd to him my hand in death.
Persia, farewell!

[Dies. Alexander arrives with Hephestion, Eumenes, and Philotas.
Sol.
Behold the Persian king!

Alex.
(after long silence).
If that reproof had lodged upon thy brow,
Or any sneer had curl'd that quiet lip,
I could have brook'd it better. See, Hephestion,
How humble he doth look, and unupbraiding;
How charitable, peaceful, and content!
What hath he found? An empire he hath lost,
And lo, he smiles in death! Remove that cloak:
Lo, there the wounds through which his life-blood rush'd—
The blood of Cyrus! Traitors foul and fell!
King, he that caused thy death strove yet to save thee:

Me too those sacrilegious daggers struck,
My fame and me, through that deep-trenchèd breast:
I'll slay them on thy grave.

Phi.
'Twas true! Darius
Of Persia's sons was comeliest.

Eum.
Of her daughters
They say his queen was fairest. Issus lost,
How soon she slept in death!

Heph.
Alas, Arsinoe!

Alex.
(removing his own mantle).
Take, crownless monarch, take, insensate clay,
From whom thine empire like a vesture slid,
This mantle immemorial of my house;
Wear it as thou had'st conquer'd Macedon,
Yea, wear it in thy grave.
The king is dead. The royal obsequies
By ancient use are his successor's care:
I'll have his body to his mother borne
With ceremonial of the Persian wont,
With Magian death-dirge, and procession long,
The silver altars moving at his head,
The Sacred Fire ascending; in the rear
Those mystic youths that emblem night and day,
Three hundred, and three score, and five. A sun
For ever rising, o'er the bier shall shine,
Persia's high pledge of immortality.
Thus to the burial-place of eastern kings
Darius shall be borne, and with them sleep.
Why stand ye silent, lords? Battle is battle,
Kings too must die. To Hecatompylus!
Hephestion, move we on. This thing is ill:
But who of men is greater than the Fates?
Less than my empire what is mine I'd give.

To undo this deed. This deed, though not undone,
Another deed shall expiate. Till that hour
I must forget him.

Scene V.—The Southern Shore of the Caspian.

Ptolemy, Seleucus, Craterus, Antigonus, Cassander.
Cra.
Hyrcania's bears are her best citizens;
Their borrow'd coats protect us from her storms
Intolerable else.

Cas.
Her mountains pass'd,
All else looks gentle, even those hurrying waves
Spray-dimm'd and whitening 'neath the hustling gale,
And the vapours Fury-like along them scudding.

Ptol.
I hate not mountains when they keep their distance;
When near, they're vile—crazed Nature's bombast vein,
Or worse, her Delphic vein, suggesting meanings
Which or she cannot or she will not speak,
Yearnings unutterable, at least unutter'd,
Vexatious and disquieting. The edge
Of yonder cliff is like a Memnon's head,
Seen sideways.

Alex.
(arriving with Heph.)
'Tis more like Darius' mother
As once I saw her, gazing on dark skies
An hour and more unmoving.

Heph.
Craterus, mark,
In the purple glens those wandering isles of light!
Down each green vale a tempest sweeps, and bears
A rainbow smoke that cannot make a rainbow,

Still, as the promontory's gate is reach'd,
Blown loose in the misty air!

Sel.
How fresh and biting
The odour from the weeds on yonder shelf,
Sway'd by the brine! No foot of man till now
Printed these sands!

Alex.
What! soldiers turn'd to poets!
Fancy is best when imping action's wings:—
Forth with your fancies, then! Were gods your slaves,
What fortunes would ye choose? Speak one and all!
Ptolemy, Seleucus, Antigonus, and Cassander, cry aloud together—
A kingdom!

Alex.
Why, an empire costs no more!
I'd rather be a hunter on the hills
Than wall'd by one small, limitable kingdom!
The gods you serve have thrift. Note this Hephestion,
Imagination is economist,
And vastest ends move less its appetite
Than small things near and easier of acquest.
Say, next, what kingdoms choose ye?

Ptol.
Give me Egypt;
'Tis much in little with its fruitful Nile.

Sel.
Syria for me: I grant it desert-cumber'd:
Aye, but 'tis ample!

Anti.
Mine be Lesser Asia!
'Tis Greece grown softer—maid to matron changed,
Asperities subdued—a mould benigner,
A grace less saucy, but a richer smile.
The round green mountains are as thrones of gods:

The white fane glances far o'er violet seas:
The sands are golden ore: there wealth and wit
Have made a pleasant sort of random bridal.
I'll build my house on Taurus' slopes that look
To Aphrodite's isle.

Cas.
For me the old land,
Our Macedon and Thrace! The climate's rough;
The hearts are sound.

Alex.

Fair kingdoms, lords, I wish you,
Albeit not those. A future too have I:
Dubious it is, yet bright. See ye yon clouds,
The near, and those beyond snow-white and still
Which gaze on us from some austerer world,
Thronging like phantom kings, with ice-cold crown?
These nearer clouds are like my daily battles
Wherein I ever triumph; those remote,
And minatory more, are fates not fortunes,
That bide their time. For fortunes and for fates
I stand alike prepared. What mean those horsemen?
Forth, sirs, and meet them: Craterus, abide,

Hephestion likewise.

[The rest depart.

These desire a kingdom,
Yet these are they that most with jealous eye
Mislike my royal leanings. They misdeem them:
The empire I desired was military,
And naked as the statues of the gods,
Not ceremonious, Persian, gilt with pomps
Like that which now draws near.
I saw it coming, and I waved it from me;
I march'd to Egypt; I deferred the time;
But these, my fates, are closing gradually round,
Nor am I wont to fly. Asian and Greek
Henceforth must be as one. I know my people:

They'll say, “Shall Persia, now a dotard grown,
By help of Greece have lordship over Greece
That scourged her in her prime?” I answer thus,
I came to rule a world, and not to make one;
My empire is of men.

Heph.
Sir, Greek is Greek:
The Greek will feast with Persian or with Mede,
Will pray with Syrian, or with Bactrian dance,
But equall'd in the ranks of war he'll march
With Greek alone.

Alex.
'Tis not this Persia only:—
Assyria, Babylonia, Susiana,
Armenia, Media,—this we learn but late!
Greece is to these but as a drop to ocean;
She yields me but a handful of recruits:
I stand confuted by each conquest new,
Soon won, but kept at cost: horizons fresh
Outface me still with kingdom beyond kingdom.
To overrun a world, and then forsake it—
That means but glory: I demand an empire.

Heph.
With time your strength—

Alex.
No friend of mine is Time;
I have to build an empire in few years:
My armies must be Greek at once, and Persian:
Persia that sees in me a conqueror now,
Must find in me her king. How win her love?
The vanquish'd must connive, or victory's self
Digs its own grave in the end. Abuses old
I with far-reaching and vindictive hand
Drag from their pride of place. Barbaric hordes,
With whom the Persian traffick'd, I hunt down
For easing of the poor, that so their tribute
Be paid in steel, not gold. Yet Artabazus,
The faithfullest to Darius while he lived,

To me now faithful for his country's sake,
Still whispers, “Wouldst thou win the Persian's love?
Win first his awe.” Never was Persian yet
Who, empire plain before him, could discern it,
Though proved by gifts, or patent in destructions,
Without the obeisance, pageants, adorations

That stamp the man a God.

[The generals return.
Eum.
(holding up a letter).
From Artabazus.

Alex.
(reading).
“Bessus, but late a traitor fugitive,
More late hath donn'd the Persian diadem,
Assumed the sacred name of Artaxerxes,
And, claiming kinship with the royal house,
Stands up a king. The Bactrians join his hosts.”
So! I foresaw it! Said I not, Hephestion,
He that would rule them through the sense must rule,
Must walk apparell'd in their customed pomps
And rituals of their throne?

Heph.
I fear 'tis true.

Alex.
You fear: I laugh: they're not so all unlike us:
The Greek is proud of self, and, self abated,
Stands gall'd: the Persian's pride is in his king,
And, stinted of his trappings, starves in the cold:
In either country greatness wears the buskin,
Plays now his part, who, being great, appears such,
Now his, the man's that's greater than he seems—
With worm-like scruples, and with bat-like doubts
I have traffick'd all too long.

A Messenger
(entering).
From Greece a missive.

Alex.
(reading).
Antipater writes thus: “Keenwitted Greece
Grudges no triumph that allures you eastward

Imperilling your return. Sparta, but now,
Close-linked with Thrace, at Megalopolis
Launched twenty thousand men. I march'd to meet her:
Our victory bled us badly.”—Battles of flies!
Here's more: “Expect not plentiful recruits;
Revolt has left us few.”

Eum.
Will leave him fewer.

Alex.
I thank thee, Zeus! My path is plain henceforward!
Send edicts, Eumenes, to my eastern realms:
Bid them to lodge their youths, the best and noblest,
Straightway in schools where they shall learn at once
Greek arms, Greek letters. These, their training perfect,
We with our Phalanx will incorporate,
Distinctions, save of merit, knowing none.
Command them that they gird me in three years
With thirty thousand such. Write, and at once.

Scene VI.—The mountains in Aria.

Philotas, Antisthenes the sophist, Phylax the physician.
Phi.
How the cold bites! When sets the sun, Death's hood
Descends on yonder snows. Antisthenes,
You sup with me. O'er twenty leagues in Media
My hunters spread their nets that I might dine
While fish from Persia gamboll'd in my tanks:
Now fare we as we may.

Ant.
I'll trust your luck:
The king, because his soldiers' bread is black,

Devours hard crusts himself.

Phy.
Great Esculapius!
Who sinn'd this time? What drags this idiot hither?

Phi.
You know not! Aristotle, his sage master,
In every science train'd him, one except:
He's come abroad to learn geography!

Ant.
I suffer'd less tracking Egyptian sands
To Ammon's fane—his father's.

Phy.
I feigned sickness
And cheated Ammon! Still I pitch my tent
With those keen heads that see in earth and heaven
The unalarming reign of Matter only,
Midway their flowery haunt unvex'd by gods,
And, peacefuller yet, the innocuous bourn of Nought.
Religions mean but priestcraft.

Ant.
Cobwebs! Rend them!

Phi.
I tell you, no! men must have gods to swear by.

Ant.
Here are three atheists; and the worst are you.

Phy.
Yea, thrice the worst!

Phi.
I stand by law and order;
We cannot live without our “Ho!” and “Ha!”
Religion is a nation's interjection:
Let statesmen look to that!

Phy.
Statesmen may pass:
They have this merit—that they war on priests:
Impartial science loathes them both alike,
Will strangle both—unless they slay each other:
But here, a priest and statesman, roll'd in one,
Grows to a god. Oh, to have heard that whisper
From Ammon's shrine!

Phi.
The king divulged it not:
He's great in silence.

Ant.
There was heard a rumour—
It died by slow degrees, but now revives—
That Zeus, at Ammon served in serpent form,
Is father of this king.

Phy.
A priestly lie!
I have track'd it to its den. The Mænad women,
When spring bewitches earth snow-crusted still
And the last frosts resist yet yield to sunshine,
Partake the madness of that mother old;
Then, raging on the Thyrsus-smitten hills,
O'er Thrace they roam, and hymn their Dionysus,
That god whose altar 'neath the Athenian rock
Sends up its smoke while round it on the stage
The moon-struck chorus dancing hurls its chaunt,
And the Æschylean tragedy, with tales
Of king-bewildering Passion crown'd by Fate,
Freezes men's hearts. Thus raging, fancies black,
Audacities of nature unfulfill'd
Inbreathed through those that would be more than nature,
Earth-fires, that mock the lightning of the heavens,
Assail them. Poison-flowers they suck unscathed,
And from the serpent rive his poison-fangs
Amorous of pain, spleenful not less to inflict it,
Boastful to sport with death! With these Olympias,
In her fierce youth, unwed but marriageable,
Walk'd in her pride, and learn'd their arts: more late
At Samothracia's Mysteries met with Philip,
They loved, and wed. In wedlock's stormy dawn,
At times for sport, at times to flout her lord,
She tamed a snake, and now for crown would wear it,
Now for her zone. The legend thence arose
Of Zeus, a serpent.

Ant.
Each man is a poet

In his own art. Beneath your pestle, Phylax,
A fire-eyed Muse leaps up!

Phy.
I track'd the tale—

Ant.
Which Alexander fathers not, but fosters:
His pride still grows.

Phi.
Meantime his Persian pomps
Sharpen Greek daggers. Thus much Dimnus whispers.

Ant.
Likewise his anger-fits: the royal pages
Taste these the oftenest. Hermolaus, late,
While the king rush'd—they hunted—on a boar,
Flinging a javelin graceless but well aim'd,
Laid the beast dead. The king gave word to scourge him:
This youth has vowed revenge, albeit the wrong
Is little noised. But hush! He comes; say nought;

He needs no whetting.

[Hermolaus joins them.
Phi.
Gentle Hermolaus,
This heinous outrage, dinn'd through camp and court,
Deplored by all, to me is worse than grievous:
I knew your father. Silence friends that prate!
Shames to great houses, bruited once, live long,
In Macedon long; longer in garrulous Greece.
Antisthenes, be true to time, and with you
Bring Hermolaus. Keep me sound, good Phylax!
I swim in glories, pleasures, golden fortunes:
One peccant nerve in all this frame ajar,
What were all these? We've quails—I think—for supper.

Scene VII.—Alexander's Tent on the Jaxartes.

Alexander and Craterus.
Alex.
That's shout the third: whatmoves their rage?

Cra.
Philotas
Should answer that: he's masterful in gibes:
The soldiers say that once, to spite a woman,
He kiss'd a viper's mouth: the viper died.
He's venom-tongued, and mischievous more for this—
He holds his sneers for truths.

Alex.
In Egypt first
I learn'd his malice. For his father's sake
I will'd not his disgrace, and so advanced him:
The man's not won.

Cra.
He scorns your Persian pomps;
Scoffs at that legend of your birth divine:
There are who swear that in the Ammonian fane
You learn'd the secret.

Alex.
This was what I learn'd,
That earth is mine to rule. The legend's little;
Baseless 'tis not, nor now unseasonable.
Whence comes the soul? We know not. What if souls
Heroic, from the great heart of some god
Forth-flashing as a beam from sun or star,
Blend, thus detach'd, with soul-expectant frames
Worthiest such mate, and stamp the demi-god,
While meaner souls float blind down streams Lethean?

Cra.
All men are children of the Power Divine.

Alex.
All men, I grant, win a creative touch
From hand divine. The hand is not the heart!
If heroes issue from the heart of gods
As from the head of Zeus Athenè sprang,

I say they are sons of gods. If here on earth
We grant a father's god-like name to those
Who generate these our earthly bulks, why then
Grudge to our spirits' sire a father's title?
This is that truth which, in its mean disguise,
My soldiers recognize.

Cra.
Philotas saith
'Tis base to kneel before the sceptred hand.

Alex.
Because himself is base. This is the baseness—
To quick or dead, the sceptred or unsceptred,
To yield the meed of worship not deserved:
From them that have deserved it to withhold it
Is theft, and may be sacrilege. Who comes?

[Hephestion and Perdiccas enter hurriedly.
Per.
Dimnus, a known conspirator, and proven—

Alex.
I heard it three hours since.

Heph.
Dimnus is dead:
He sware that, living, they should take him never.

Alex.
I like not that.

Per.
Philotas schemed the plot.

Alex.
I saw Philotas; charged him with his crime.
He knelt; he wept; protested innocence;
Had deem'd the rumour but an empty tale:
I sent him forth absolved.

Per.
This letter cancels
That absolution. Sir, 'tis from Parmenio;
He weighs the plot; approves it; urges caution
Which, wed with valour, breeds alone success:
We found it 'mid the traitor's papers. Read!

Alex.
(after reading).
What is it that you demand?

Per.
This man, Philotas,
By you from dust uplifted to the heights,
This man who might have flown, by preference blind
And native instinct, creeping through base life,

Hath, like the worm that slimes his path, made vile
The paths he crawl'd upon. This man of old
Walk'd with Amyntas, him that, Philip dead,
Schemed for your throne. This man, three days or more—
He not denies it—cognizant of the plot,
Held him in silence till the hour itself
Of butchery decreed. You ask, what claim we?
Sir, this your army claims—the right to live:
This plot is neither plot the first, nor second;
And we are here to warn you that your host
Which oft for wanton risking of his life
Hath censured its great chief, this day condemns him
As one who, set apart and seal'd by gods,
Perils his army, and his empire perils,
Yea, with conspirators himself conspires,
Boy-like to boast great heart.

Alex.
Their fears are vain:
On my last field, grey-headed, I shall die,
Circled by subject kings. What seek my soldiers?

Per.
They make two claims; first, that the great Assembly
Should sift and judge the crime; next, that the award,
Once pass'd, should take effect without appeal.

Alex.
(after musing).
We grant them both demands. Call in those Indians.

Scene VIII.—On the Jaxartes.

Philotas in prison, and Phylax.
Phi.
You've let me blood full oft—cured many a headache:
The king with sharper steel than yours, old friend,
Will cure to-day's. The surfeit long of life

Ceases at set of sun. Can'st cure my heartache?

Phy.
'Tis vengeance you demand?

Phi.
You have read my soul
That, sitting in mine eyes and all ways turning
To watch those dreadful ministers of fate,
Sees something still behind. 'Twould sweeten death!

Phy.
One day I vowed to avenge you.

Phi.
Can I trust you?
They say the mirthful nature does not love:
And yet I think I somewhat loved you, Phylax:
No hypocrite were you. I knew that much.

Phy.
You'd have me kill this king?

Phi.
Not him—Hephestion!
'Tis there he's vulnerable. Be it done
When the Alexandrian star is at its highest.
That too will set.

Phy.
I have pledged my faith.

Phi.
Remember!
An ice-film gathers on my shivering blood.
Oh happy days of youth! They'll laugh at me
A shadow 'mid the shades, as I have laugh'd
At Homer's ghosts bending to victim blood
A sieve-like throat incapable of joy!
Tell me these things are fables. I'd not live
A second time; for life's too dangerous!
We come from nothing; and another nothing,
A hoary Hunger, couchant at Death's gate,
Waits to devour us.

Phy.
(Placing his hand on the heart of Philotas).
Slowly, faintly, slowly :—
The failure's there.

Phi.
Murderers! The law's against them
For if I knew that plot, or if I will'd it,

I spared to join it. Murderers!—lawless murderers!
I tripped an inch at this side Fortune's goal:
Parmenio king, his successor were I.

Phy.
Their plea is equity—the culprit's plea
Then when his law-plea fails.

Phi.
Is that a jibe?
He needs must jeer and gibber!—Vengeance! Vengeance!
Happy the serpent that with death for death
Enriches its last pang! Olympias only
Escaped its tooth. Once more I laugh! Forget not—
I've left you in my will a hundred talents.
Ah, hark! a step—

Scene IX.—A Hill close to the Jaxartes.

Alexander, Hephestion, Eumenes.
Heph.
Beyond that infinite, pale, grassy plain
Rise those white peaks like pyramids o'er sands:
Is this your northern limit?

Alex.
Scythia's horse
Watch still their chance. They are no way barbarous:
I guess them at twelve thousand. Stealthily,
In ever widening gyres they near the bank,
Poor gilded swarmers in their warmthless sun:—
I have baulked their game. Resume we our dispute!
What if the race of gods began with men?
If nature, evermore through strife educing
Stronger from strong, throned on Olympus, first
The heroic-proved of men as demi-gods,

And these through strife worked out the gods that rule?
Concede me this as true, and man's ambition
May kindred claim with gods.

Heph.
Concede it! never.
Greatness, be sure, came never from below:
That thought would drag from heaven itself its greatness:
Rather the gods themselves make manifest
One higher still than they.
Sir, there are whispers, trust me, from beneath—
These should be trampled and not parleyed with:
Esteem such thoughts among them.

Alex.
This, that's great
My thought suggests; an infinite progression.

Heph.
Nay, but a finite mocking infinite
And murdering what it mocks:—the highest term
In such a series but repeats the first
Exaggerating still inherent flaws,
And in a nakeder shape, though vaster scale,
Showing man's nature shamed.

Alex.
The gods have passions,
Not minds alone: in this they are like to men.

Heph.
They act like men who have them:—that proves little:
Our ignorance doubtless misconceives their acts:
'Twas not Apollo's spite that sentenced Marsyas:
Twas no earth-instinct on Endymion smiled:
The self-same acts, in gods, in men, in beasts,
Know difference large. Acts lawful in the man
Are crimes in boys.

Alex.
A race of gods hath fallen:
Then Zeus in turn may fall. I find no thrones
Whereon the gods themselves may sit secure:

I find to man's advance no term or limit;
No certain truth amid contending rites;
No base for Faith.

Heph.
Then man must live by Hope.

Alex.
And whence our hope?

Heph.
From all things good around us,
From all things fair—the brightness of the world,
The glory of its rivers and its seas,
The music in the wandering of its winds,
The magic in the spring-flowers fresh accost,
The gladdening sweetness and pure grace of woman,
The questioning eyes of childhood. With one voice
They preach one hope—that virtue shall be crowned
One day, and Truth be known.

Alex.
The trumpet! Hark!
We Greeks must wrangle on in the battle's mouth!
Six kingdoms have I clutched within two years;
The seventh shall be the greatest.

Ant.
(entering).
Tidings, sire!
The Satrap of Aria yields submission.

[Perdiccas and Craterus enter.
Alex.
The Satrap keeps his office. Craterus, speak:
The Assembly of the Army, hath it judged?

Cra.
The court was faithful to procedure's law,
And, spite the wrathful host that stormed around,
Pronounced not judgment till Philotas, first
Heard in his own defence, but after, tortured,
Had made confession full, his proper guilt,
The crime of Dimnus and of Hermolaus,
His sire's complicity. The traitor pushed
Before its time the plot, though hatched by others,
Lest he who guards your treasure-house far off
Might drop ere all was ripe. The High Tribunal

Proceeded to the award—death to Philotas,
Death to Parmenio, and the rest. The host
Raged in its joy; so oft his pride had galled them;
So often had they gaped on frosty roads
While passed his baggage train. His sister's husband
Raised the first stone.

Alex.
How died he?

Cra.
Ill enough.

Per.
A traitor died this day.

Cra.
A traitor proved.

Alex.
A man whose death was needful died this day;
Likewise a man whose guilt was probable
Well-nigh to certainty—but yet not certain,
Since cowards, tortured, may confess things false.
Philotas or conspired or else connived,
And each of these is capital, or changed
From keen to dullard in a sort that's death
In nature's capital code. I, in his place,
Had ta'en small umbrage at my days abridged:
There lived nor scope nor purpose in his life
Which death could mar.

Cra.
For instant doom they clamoured,
Fearing your leniency—

Alex.
I am not lenient:
When prodigal I have seemed, and lax in pardons,
'Twas with a politic aim. Nor am I cruel:
For needful warning I have shed man's blood,
Full often to the bound extreme of justice,
Seldom beyond. I say not that the bound
In wrath or peril never was transgressed.
It was no will of mine to try this man:
But, judged and sentenced, never had I spared him
Certain thenceforward in my blood to seek,
Likeliest at some high crisis of my empire,

Ablution for his name. Lo, there! They launch
A flag of truce.

Ptol.
(arriving).
The Scythians send us envoys.
With proffer of firm peace. Their terms are these:
North of the river their old hunting-grounds
Remain their own: this granted, they, in turn,
Acknowledge, sire, for yours, the manifold realms
From that wide water to the mountain bound
And limitless beyond to the Indian deep,
Thenceforth your sworn allies.

Alex.
Their terms are just;
Accept them, and engross. Those Indian Heralds—

Ant.
(entering).
That murderer, Satabarzanes, is slain;
And Spitamenes, honouring his own head,
Surrenders Bessus.

Alex.
Let the self-same court
That judged Philotas judge this bloodier traitor;
When sentenced, be he sent to Sysigambis,
The dead king's mother: her award is mine.
Alas for old Parmenio!

Heph.
Bid him live!

Alex.
His guilt is mixed and tangled with that other's:
The father spared, the son had foully died.

Heph.
The time to come—

Alex.
As ignorantly on this,
And in its ignorance as confidently,
Shall pass its judgment as on things beside:
Its plaudits I shall have for things ill done:
Its censure for the needful and the just:
Too much, no doubt, of both.

Heph.
Slay not Parmenio!

Alex.
Shall I for propping of a flag-staff bent

Trouble a half-raised empire's base? Hephestion
Save that I know thee in the battle-field
Except myself the foremost, there are times
When I could deem thee weakling. To your tasks,
Friends, one and all.
[The Generals depart.
Hephestion's cause is stronger than he knows:
Parmenio's death will much offend the army;
Their panic quenched, their loves will back to him:
Yet he must die. He'll hear of his son's death
Ere my best speed could reach Ecbatana:
The troops around him there are as his children,
And, with the imperial treasury at his beck,
Nations will be his friends.
Parmenio's death will much offend the army,
Bound by old memories more to him than me:
New wars will aptliest teach it to forget—
To India then! Thus stands my doubt resolved!
To that through all this tanglement I leant,
Yet knew it not till now.
Yon priest at Hierosolyma forbade it—
'Tis strange how oft that man before me stands—
Spake much of “Term and Limit.” That's for others:
To grasp a world for me is feasible;
To keep a half-world, not.

Scene X.—Susa. The Cypress Cemetery.

Arsinoe, Amastris.
Ama.
Return ere long, my gentle litter-bearers—
How cool this cypress shade! how fair this spot
So soon to be my grave! Chide not, Arsinoe;
I would not die; I would not be unhappy:
I would live blest, and making blest. Ah me!

I think, I think that I was gathering strength
Till came those tidings from Arbela's field
Of my brave brothers dead. Others I loved:
I loved but these in hope.

Ars.
Hope still, my cousin:
Hope more! The day that lifts you from these arms
Will give you back your brothers!

Ama.
I have hope,
Though scarce like yours. Oh for a strong-winged hope,
Swan-like to soar, lighting that dim domain
Eclipsed by death's cold shade! I loved the Songs:
Am I ungrateful if at times I feel
Like one that trusts and has not found?

Ars.
Beloved,
Things greater than the things we loved and found not
One day shall find us. Let me see your book:
'Tis that you read in Tyre's old palace garden—

Ama.
The day we saw him last.

Ars.
Hephestion?

Ama.
Him:
Your eyes grow large.

Ars.
That day you scarce were near us.

Ama.
His love wasfor the child and not the maiden:
I left him with you then and many a time
Before that morning. Cousin, here's a song:
Read it; my eyes grow dim.

Ars.
It is of Cyrus.

Ama.
We'll not read that. Assyrians wept that day
As we weep now: the Babylonian air
Was thick with sobs: above Chaldæa's plain
Like a great wind the orphans' cry rang out:

The bards are less than generous.

Ars.

And for that cause
Unjust. Here's one that's not a song of triumph.

[Reads.

Marriage Song.

I

Love begins upon the heights
As on tree-tops in the spring
April with green foot alights
While the birds are carolling:
Ay, but April ends with May:
Love must have the marriage-day!

II

Love begins upon the heights
As o'er snowy summits sail
First the dewy matin lights
Destined soon to reach the vale:
Ay, but maidens must not grieve
That morn of love hath noon and eve.

III

Love is Dream and Vision first:
Proud young Love the earth disdains;
But his cold streams, mountain-nursed,
Warm them in the fruitful plains
Ere the marriage-day is sped:
Peal the bells! The bride is wed!

Ama.
If Love indeed begins upon the heights,
'Twere well he ended there. His starry feet

Would thus their splendour best retain. It may be
Maidens that, loving well, unwedded die,
In this are happier yet than those who find
Love's loveliest human home.

Ars.
I would not wed;
And you have turned from many a suit—scarce gently.

Ama.
Arsinoe! you will wed, who would not wed;
I die, who would not die. Our life's amiss!
I must not say it:—no, our life is gentle:
You'd rather live ill-matched than fail in duty;
I'd rather die than prove to friendship false,
Of love unworthy. Each will have her best.

Ars.
O friend, my earliest friend, my best! how much
I owe to you! how hard had been without you!
In the deep bosom of your boundless love
I breathed a generous and a healing clime:
In all our sorrows you, yourself an orphan,
Out of your poverty for me had wealth,
And pitied me so sweetly that perforce
Self-pity left me, and I smiled through tears.
You only lived in others. The Songs you loved
Served you full well: they clothed your spirit with light:
In them you bathed as in some wood-girt stream
Crystalline ever. I, upon the bank,
But felt the dew upon its breath, the drops
Showered from your hand:—they cooled an aching forehead.

Ama.
Ah! ere we clothe us with that water-light,
We drop the warm, protecting garb of earth!
Who feigned the nymphs feigned them invulnerable
By bitter north-wind, or the hunter's dart.
My mother said the Songs would teach me sorrow—

They taught me sorrow and joy; would leave me weak—
They left me weak and strong. I lived in others;
But you for others lived. Arsinoe,
Should he return you'll lead him to this spot;
You'll give him here this book of songs:—he knew it—
Read him some few—not this, for he is blithesome,
This song as plaintive as the voice of child
Heard lonely from the harvest field afar
When twilight wraps the land. Bordering the scroll
Are golden stars, and little pictured fancies:
Here is the mother-bird that feeds her brood
From her own bleeding breast; and here's a young one
That bends above the on-rushing stream, athirst,
And yet afraid to drink:—the spray is bending:—
Most are the work of others: one was mine,
Ere yet this hand had learned its trick of shaking.
If you should name my name, mark well his face
So bright that day, and note if he remembers.
Say that we spake of him—that I was happy
In life—in death. You'll say not that I loved him.
Give me one kiss. You're welcome, merry maidens,
Albeit so soon returned. Set down my litter.

University of Virginia Library

ACT III.

Scene I.—The Road to Rhagæ near the Caspian Gates.