The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Ptolemy, Seleucus, Eumenes, and Antigonus.
Ptol.
Wait we the king: he lags not far behind us.
Sirs, be ye wary in your homeward letters;
The Greeks are reverential of the gods:
The fane of Esculapius razed to earth
In vengeance for Hephestion's death, may move them.

Eum.
Ulysses, keenest-witted of man's race,
Made boast, “No Greek with hand so large as mine
Has paid the gods their dues.”

Ant.
The Medes are wroth:
Their mules and horses shorn, they deemed the rite
The obsequious tribute of a royal mourning:
When from their city walls the summit fell
The rite was new: they frowned.

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Ptol.
So frowned the Persians,
Their “Quenchless Fire” extinguished.

Sel.
Let them frown!
When that mute tent rolled forth its thunder-peals
I drew my breath. I said, “The king will live.”

Ptol.
There lives no Greek that wept not for Hephestion:
Men say, “The army's strength remains: its youth—
The beauty of the battle—victory's gladness—
These, these are dead.” 'Twas not his words or deeds:
For this they loved him—that the good in each
Flowered in his presence, making fresh the soul.

Sel.
His cavalry shall bear his name for ever:
Henceforth who rules it as his vicar rules,
Armed with his ring. His sister-tended bride
Delights her sad sick-bed with his last words,
“My faithful, true, and honourable wife:”
If any happy lived, and timely died,
It is the man we miss.

Eum.
He, too, died timely—
Phylax—the king struck never wholesomer stroke!
The soldiers grudged him burial; for which cause
The four-legged cynics of his sect interred him.

Sel.
The king draws near: he sees it now, yon city,
The tower; the palace-front; the hanging gardens;
The cliff-like walls unending!

Eum.
A procession!

[A sacerdotal procession advances. At the same time Alexander joins them, attended by Generals.
Chaldœan Priest
(kneeling to Alexander).
Berosus, and the priesthood of Chaldæa

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In us, dread sovereign, at your feet—

Alex.
Speak on.

Chaldœan Priest.
Since first that royal face made bright our world,
Since first that royal voice sent forth command
To raise once more the temple of great Belus—
[The other priests cry out:
“At Persia's cost! at hated Persia's cost”—

Chaldœan Priest continues.
High as it stood ere marred by Xerxes' crime,
Our prayer was this, to welcome earth's supreme
To Babylon, his seat. Vain hopes of man!
The omens frown on us.

Alex.
The worse for them!

Chaldœan Priest.
Approach not Babylon, at least, with brow
Dusk from a sunset sky! Make circuit first
Round gate and wall: and enter, face to east!

Alex.
What thinks of omens Ptolemy, our wisest?

Ptol.
Sir, than the sceptics I am sceptic more:
They scoff to boast their wit: I scoff at witlings.
Sir, Reason rules but in her own domain,
Beyond whose lawful bounds, her “Yea” and “Nay”
I hold for equal weights in equal scales
That rest in poise. Of things beyond the sense,
Whereon in part this visible order rests,
As spirits, ghosts, auguries, and mystic warnings
Reason says nought: their sphere and ours are diverse:
We know not if at points they intersect;
If—casual, or by laws—their inmates touch.
Our world's a part, and not a whole: its surface
We pierce at points: the depth remains unknown.
Sir, in these labyrinths there be phrenzies twain,

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Unreasoning each, whereof the proudest errs
From Reason's path most far.

Alex.
Reason but walks
Secure in footprints of Experience old,
Whose testimony is diversely reported.

Ptol.
The affirmative experience is strong;
The negative is nought, and breeds us nothing.

Alex.
What help remains where Reason speaks not?

Ptol.
Instinct:
And as material instincts plainlier show
In bird and beast than man, so spiritual instincts
Speak plainlier haply through the popular voice
Than censure of the wise.

Alex.
The people trust them:
To ignore such things they count as ignorance:
And deem themselves more knowing than the great:
To spurn them were to chill the popular heart
In the hour of need. I make the city's circuit,
And enter not till morn—What ho! a herald!
And pale with haste!

Messenger
(arriving).
The river's banks have burst,
The harvest's lost! uncounted herds are drowned,
And eastward of the city all is flood:—
All entrance there is barred.

Alex.
So ends the doubt:
Westward! The shortest road is ever best.

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Scene II.—Palace Terrace at Babylon.

Ptolemy, Seleucus, Eumenes, Cassander.
Eum.
You shall do wisely, sir, not angering him:
The king is triply altered since you saw him:
Antipater, your father, should know this:—
He is sad, and stern, and proud.

Cas.
My father's honour
Is sacred as your king's. Year following year,
Olympias, haughtiest of her sex, and subtlest,
Scorning an equal, hating a superior,
Warred on his worth. He deigned her no reply:
He kept his charge, old Macedon, in peace:
Yearly he sent his king recruits, and ever
Held his firm foot upon revolted Greece.
He's strong in truth.

Ptol.
The king can bear all truth;
Yet trusts not truth when braggart. This remember;
Be ceremonious when you see him first:
Hating these pomps, he hates those too that grudge them.

Sel.
Hephestion's death some whit disturbed the king:
The obsequies complete, he brightens daily:
Would you had seen the pyre!

Ptol.
Describe that pyre:
'Twill make him understand the royal sorrow:
It was grief's madness—yet its beauty too.

Sel.
Sir, 'twas a work of nations in a month:
A mile of Babylon's huge wall went down
To fashion forth its base: the cost thereof
Had ten times built the Athenian Parthenon:

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'Twas earth's supremest structure, seen, and lost.
Forests down-felled sent forth its colonnades,
Huge pines, that, range o'er range to heaven ascending,
Forgat not yet their friends, the winds, but sighed
As on their native hills. In silver robes
Those far-retiring columns shone, sun-touched,
Tier above tier; the level spaces 'twixt them
Gold-zoned in circling cornices distinct
With sculptured frieze Titanic—giant wars,
The strength upheaved of earth assailing heaven
Kept down by overhanging weight of gods.
Seen 'gainst the blue, were Syren shapes that lured
The seeming mariner to death; with these,
White groups of sea-nymphs weeping round a wreck:
So fine the art, half Asian and half Greek,
That, from their wreathèd conchs and shells unwinding,
The tube-enthrallèd zephyrs breathed around
Such strains as sailors hear on haunted shores:
Far off the song was sweetest, saddest near.

Eum.
To me 'twas marvellous most by night.

Sel.
The stars
Died out: the purple vault deepened to black
Above that lower firmament of lights
Which seemed a heaven more festive, nearer earth
A many-shining city of the gods.
All night the wind increased, till that strange music
Swelled to a dirge so deep that some who heard
Went mad, they say, and died.

Eum.
When midnight came
The king gave word. The omnipresent fire
Leaped to mid-heaven. The packed horizon showed
As though the innumerous glebe had turned to man;

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And each face pale as death!

Ptol.
You have seen the site:
'Twill need the gales of many a stormy winter
To clear away those ashes.

Cas.
True: chest-deep
My horse staggered among them. Griefs like these
Tread out our lesser woes. The king would teach us
The transience of man's greatness and his joy:
Now know I why he built of wood not stone:
He built us up a lesson.

Eum.
What? that grief
Is transient likewise?

Cas.
Nay, I meant not that.

Ptol.
He taught a nobler lesson. Has he learned it?

Scene III.—Hall of the Palace of Babylon.

Alexander on his throne surrounded by his Generals. The nobles of Babylon and the neighbouring provinces are ranged round the hall.
Alex.
I have had enough of councils. We'll be brief:
The Grecian embassies shall take precedence
In the order of their temples' dignity,
First Elis, Delphi second, Corinth third.
Whence come the others?

Eum.
Sire, from Carthage one;
She sinned with Tyre: four from Italian States,
The Bruttians, the Lucanians, the Tyrrhenians,
And that new city, Rome.

Alex.
A bandit's den!
Its earliest citizens were robber tribes;
And, faithful to their past, they are leagued this day

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With Antium's pirates. Drive them home! One day
They'll know a Grecian heel. To the work in hand.
Princes of long-dejected Babylon
That yearly bent her brow more near the ground,
Rejoice! her days of mourning are gone by.
I had decreed never to see this city,
Chief seat of Earth's first empire and her worst.
What changed that edict? Sirs, the advancing knowledge
That that true Empire shaped and made by me—
That Empire which, the hour Parmenio died,
I vowed, from Scythia marching on to India,
Should know no limit and no term—that Empire
High as the mind of man and wide as earth—
The knowledge that that Empire ne'er can die.
That knowledge mine, I willed to weld in one
The first link and the last in the chain of Empires;
Once here, the spirit of the past came o'er me:
The earliest seat of Empire claimed its right:
The on-flowing tide of power, 'gainst nature's law
At my command rolled back. A conqueror's hand,
Forgetting this, that victory should be just,
Was heavy on your nation, sirs, of old,
Grudged you your great Euphrates, sluiced it hence,
Dried up its city-channel: I restore it.
I have dug for you a harbour: Indian fleets
Therein shall sway their masts with lighter crafts
Freighted from Egypt, and our Grecian Isles
With help of broad canals from Syrian shores
By Grecian science planned, by Asian gold
'Mid deserts excavated. Yestereve
Your eyes beheld a pledge of this high future,
The meeting of two fleets, from India one,

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The other, recent from Ægean waves,
Dragged overland to Thapsacus, and thence
Launched on Euphrates' stream. Assyrian lords,
Your Babylon shall sit among her meads
An inland Tyre, secure: your Temple and Tower,
Passing the height of Egypt's pyramids,
Revindicate their state. He nothing erred
Who fixed of old in Babylon the seat
Of eastern Empire. Round her throne shall stand
Persepolis, Susa, and Ecbatana,
Handmaids, not rivals. In the West shall rise
Cities like these. Half-way! twixt East and West
In single majesty supreme o'er all
Shall Alexandria reign.

[Acclamation from all sides: “It is the voice of a god,” during which Cassander enters the hall. He approaches the king, but without making the customary “Adoration.”
Alex.
Who's he that enters like the forest beast
Irreverent, and unshamed? Remove the man.
[Cassander is forcibly removed.
The rest is brief. My purpose was—men knew it—
To spend ten years consolidating in peace
The eastern world. That purpose I discard:
I trust the years no more: presuming death
Strikes down the loftiest as the lowliest head,
Rendering no count. I seek the West at once.
West joined to East, and raised by subjugation,
Since to be wisely ruled alone is freedom,
Shall leave my work complete. Two mighty armies
Divide the triumph. Southward one shall coast
The midland sea through Egypt to Cyrene
And on through Lybia to the Atlantic deep;
Northward the other, from Illyria's shore

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To far Iberia's verge. From you I need
Fully fifty thousand soldiers in three months:
Your bravest. To subdue the West, and mould it,
Demands three years: for these the queen is regent,
Not more among my captains to rebate
Envy's fell tooth, than in requital just
Of royal gifts which I revere in her,
Enough. Call in those Grecian embassies.
[First enter the Envoys from the Greeks assembled at the Olympic games: the eldest speaks—
King, and our lord, the Greeks with reverence true,
Though not without misgiving, heard that edict
But lately from Ecbatana sent to them,
Remanding to their homes all Grecian exiles—

Alex.
Does Greece accept that ordinance?

Envoys
(with hesitation).
Greece accepts.
[Next, ambassadors from all the Greek States enter, habited like heralds deputed with offerings to temples. They advance to Alexander with golden crowns, and kneeling, lay them at his feet. The eldest speaks—
To Alexander, Philip's conquering son,
The States of Greece concede, unanimous,
Honours divine, and hail him as a god.

Scene IV.—Hanging Gardens at Babylon.

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

Ptol.
Sharp grief hath changed it. Grief, that should be gentle,

136

To him is storm. Fiercely it bears him on
Through Action's angriest skies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ast.
Sir, truth that lives not militant on earth
Traffics with falsehood in complicity,
More false than she, as sinning against light.
Our Faith was warlike while a heart was in it:

137

So long we conquered. But a vanquished race
Finds this revenge, its direst, and its last:—
With poison of its vices it infects
In time its conqueror's blood. 'Twas so with us:
The lands we vanquished mixed our light with night:
Then temples first confined our boundless worship;
Then first with Oromasdes Zeus had part;
Then first was weakness deemed a kingdom's wisdom,
Promiscuous tolerance her maternal love;—
I say they lied! 'Tis not a mother's arms
That open are at all times, and to all!

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

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

Ptol.
What then?

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

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

Ast.
Greek! I have ne'er denied it:
Ah, would I might! A realm's not wholly fallen
Till this, the last dishonour, it has reached,
To need its conqueror. This marriage blends us:
I, that abhorred it, worked against it never;
These hands were pressed upon that contract's seal.

138

The effect? Look forth from those o'erhanging gardens!
Far down, a priest-procession winds in pomp;
Who are they? Magians? Greeks? Not so! Chaldæans!
They hymn your king!

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

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

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

Ast.
The heart of Greece is rotten!
That soil, whence intellect's root in darkness springs:
'Twas false to heaven; and now, malicious grown,
Is false to nature. At their feasts I've heard them,
Defend worse sin with dialectic leprous!
I raised my head at last, and answered thus—
Nations have vanished 'neath a conqueror's tread;
Nations have perished, worn by civil strife;
Nations have withered, famine-plagued: but Greece,

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The beautiful, the wise, the once heroic,
Shall die in prime a suicide, nor leave,
Amerced of household ties by fleshly shames,
A child to inearth the corpse.

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

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

Scene V.—The Lake of Pallacopas, near Babylon.

Alexander in the Royal Barge, attended by Artabazus, Seleucus, Antigonus, Peucestas, and others.
Alex.
Ten thousand men at break of day, Peucestas!
The spot is there! we'll cut through yonder rock:
O'er-pround Euphrates there shall find a channel—
To work ere noon!

Peu.
It shall be ordered, sir.

Sel.
A mystery of sadness girds this region:
Those trackless wastes, half water and half land,
Those low-hung, hueless clouds above them streaming,
The piping of the willow-bending wind,
Upon the horizon far yon city-wall—
Some curse is on this spot!

Alex.
Misrule's that curse:
In ignorant kindness noxious as in hate:
The country drowned, the city drained of waters—
Old Xerxes did his work! Look well around:
We need a fortress next, wherein to entrench
The warders of our strait. I see a crag:
Steer to its base.

Art.
A tomb it is of kings.

140

Alex.
Those slaves whom late we passed knee-deep in water
With bloodshot eyes half blinded by the glare
And light thin frames, were not of stock Chaldæan:
Whence came they?

Art.
Sire, from Hierosolyma:
The Assyrian razed their city, burned their Temple,
To exile dragged them—greybeards, women, babes:
In fifty years the Assyrian's empire fell:
Cyrus, the Persian, loved that Hebrew people
And loosed them from their bonds. Some few remained:
Their progeny are those you marked but now.

Alex.
A vision rose before me as I watched them:
I too have stood in Hierosolyma:
My will was fixed to look on it once more:
Chance, or some humour, on my way from Egypt—
Near it I marched—made hindrance, and I passed.

Art.
Sir, you have shown much kindness to that people:
A race that scarce can live, yet never dies:
They are always ill at ease. Their ancient Law
Forbade their task—rebuilding Belus' temple:—
'Tis six leagues off, yet there it rises plain:
Your clemency vouchsafed a licit toil:
They deepen yonder channel.

Alex.
Better thus:
The Persians scorn the Assyrians, they, the Hebrews:
Between the rival races, and their gods,
I hold the balance just. What strain is that?
The Persian and the Babylonian barges
Since morn have followed mine with hymn, or chaunt:
This has a different note.

141

The Song.

We sate beside the Babylonian river:
Within the conqueror's bound, weeping we sate:
We hung our harps upon the trees that quiver
Above the onrushing waters desolate.

A song they claimed—the men our task who meted—
“A song of Sion sing us, exile band!”
For song they sued, in pride around us seated:
How can we sing it in the Stranger's land?

Alex.
That song's a dirge, with notes of anger in it:
I hate the grief that nothing is save grief.

Art.
Sire, these are maidens of that Hebrew race.

Sel.
They have passed the osier banks. Once more that strain!

The Song.

If I forget thee, Salem, in thy sadness,
May this right hand forget the harper's art!
If I forget thee, Salem, in my gladness,
My tongue dry up, and wither, like my heart!

Daughter of Babylon, with misery wasted,
Blest shall he be, the man who hears thy moans;
Who gives thee back the cup that we have tasted;
Who lifts thy babes, and hurls them on the stones!

Alex.
That race can boast a history. Search its annals!

Sel.
Our Grecian songs, for all their grace and light,
Measured with such were as a wind-tossed tress
Matched with yon sailing rack.

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Art.
A galley comes—
Those Babylonian braggarts make their revel.

Chaldæan Song.

Belus shall reign! Higher, each day, and higher
Rises his temple. Crouch, pale Hebrew slave!
Proud Persian lord, thy never-quenchèd fire
Trembles like death-flames o'er a murderer's grave.
Ashur, rejoice!—

Alex.
The ages pass, like winds;
The old wrong remains, rooted like tombs and moves not:
All may be done through Time; yet Time does nought.
Let kings look well to that. We have reached our goal.
Is that a tomb?

Art.
The Assyrian monarchs, sir,
Squandered their lives in banquets, yet desired
A solitary precinct for their graves:
They reverenced Death:—the Greeks but deck and mock it.
Those dusky crypts that pierce the sedge-girt rock,
Are sepulchres of kings.

[As Alexander turns, a gust blows his Causia into the water. The diadem that girdled it remains suspended on the reeds at the base of the tomb. A sailor plunges into the lake, and swims to the tomb, but, in his desire to keep the royal diadem dry, inadvertently sets it on his head. Thus crowned he re-enters the royal barge.

143

A Sailor.
The omen's ill!

2nd Sailor.
The omen's black as night!

Sel.
(drawing his sword).
I'll drown it in his blood!

Alex.
Give him a talent
In guerdon for his bath and his good will,
And, when we land, the scourge, to teach him manners.
Omens! That priest Chaldæan spake of such:
Passing this morn his city-gates, I laughed:
I wore a cope of lead three months:—to-day
I am stronger than at Tyre!

Sel.
May it please you, sir,
The wind hath changed: we need three hours, or more,
To reach the city.

Alex.
Mark that spot: 'tis there
I build my fortress. Now to Babylon: haste!
Drops fall apace: yon circlets on the mere
Denote them heavy. Hark, a distant thunder!
The heat is changed to cold. Our Artabazus
Is old for summer drenchings.

Art.
Twenty years
Press down my seventy. Sire, I should have passed
Long since, yet may outlive the three years' child.

Scene VI.—A Street in Babylon.

Amyntas and Socrates.
Amy.
The royal throne was on the dais set:
The generals' seats were ranged at either side:
The Persian guard kept watch around the hall,
Waiting earth's Master. Sudden, in the midst

144

A Nubian stood—the meanest of his race;
A moment more, and on that regal seat
The ill-featured shadow sat. They dared not touch him:
The throne makes holy all that rests thereon:
They beat their breasts with wailing long and loud.
The king arrived. Still sat that slave all calm
With smile like that on idol faces vast
Throned 'mid Egyptian sands.

Soc.
They stoned him, doubtless?

Amy.
The king forbade it. On the rack that slave
Confessed no crime: confederates he had none;
Was conscious of no purpose. Like a shaft
Some inspiration from on high had pierced him;
He pushed his spade into Euphrates' slime,
He pushed his way into the royal palace,
And round him stared, enthroned. The king said little:
He took his place, and bade them hold debate.
Now know you why, forth-issuing, men were pale;
Why, here and there, in groups or pairs they whispered;
Why hung that storm upon Seleucus' brow.
Never hath royal throne endured this wrong
That changed not owner soon. The king will die.

Soc.
A rush of citizens. Hark! Hark! they come!

Citizens
(hurrying past).
The king is sick, they say! To the palace on! On!

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Scene VII.—The Palace at Babylon. Ante-room of the Royal Apartment.

Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Eumenes, Peucestas, Perdiccas, various Priests, and the Magian, Astar.
Ptol.
Sirs, know the truth: this sickness is to death:
The king must die.

Greek Priest.
This thing I feared since first
I marked him drifting from his native gods
To alien—yea, to Belus.

Per.
Gods, sir priest,
Grudge not each others' gains. To gods of Greece
Each morn he offered duteous sacrifice,
In sickness or in health. To foreign gods
He was observant more, since gods less known
Are formidable more than customed gods,
Like-minded with ourselves. In this he erred—
When certain Brahmins roused their king to war,
Of that high race he crucified full six
To awe the rest. That hour I feared! that hour
No priest protested!

Ant.
Yea, and at Sangala,
The city his already, he smote and slew
Ten thousand warriors. I would give this head
That deed had never been!

Sel.
Idiots! be mute!—
This thing he did; that thing he left undone;
Was born in such a year; in such was married;
Why, lords, men speak as if our king were dead
And they the embalmers, or the grave-diggers!
He's sick. The tempest drenched him. Shall a shower

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Wash out the one great glory from the earth?
We hid his sickness first: the secret's known:
Since then, the world's gone mad.

Chaldœan Priest.
The strength of prayer
Is his, and shall be. We Chaldæan priests
Nor incense stint, nor victim.

Greek Priest.
Not a throne
Brightens Olympus but our prayer hath beat it!

Egyptian Priest.
Serapis knows if we have prayed or not,
He in whose image all the metals blend
As all divinities are one in essence;
Serapis knows.

Sel.
I see a Magian there:
He stands, and speaks not: let the Magian speak.

Ast.
Sir, since the quenching of their Sacred Fire
The Magian race stands silent. Be it so.

A Royal Page
(entering).
The king has sent for Ptolemy.

Scene VIII.—Alexander's Chamber.

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

Ptol.
Sire, may the mighty gods—

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

Ptol.
Too quickly pass—

Alex.
Thus much the malice of o'erweening gods,
Or else their negligence, can fret our course!
I'm maimed, and tamed, and shamed: but mind can act

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When the outward act is barred. Six audiences
I have given. The chief of my Thessalian horse
Had failed to impress his blacksmiths. Nehordates
Had sent no corn to Opis.

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

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

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

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

Ptol.
All shall be done.

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

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

Alex.
My brain's not touched:
I watch it: if there rise beyond its verge

148

A cloud, the slenderest, of bewildered thought,
You'll learn it thus—I close my lips for ever.

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

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

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

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

Ptol.
What saw you, sire?

Alex.
Twelve tents,
Each with my standard. On twelve hills they stood
Which either on their foreheads blazoned wore,
Or from my spirit's instinct took, great names,
Cithæron, Hæmus, Taurus, Libanus,
Parapomisus, and huge Caucasus,
With other five, and Athos in the midst.
Then from my royal tents on those twelve hills,
Mailed in mine arms, twelve Alexanders crowned
With all their armies rushed into a plain
Which quaked for fear, and dashed across twelve floods,
Euphrates, Issus, Tigris, Indus, Oxus,
And others with great names. They met — those Twelve—
And, meeting, swelled in stature to the skies,

149

And grappled, breast to breast, and fought, and died
Save four that, bleeding, each on other stared,
And leaned upon their swords. As thus they stood,
Slow from that western heaven which domes the accursed—
Rome's bandit brood—there moved a cloud night-black,
Which, onward-gathering, mastered all the East,
And o'er it rained a rain of fire. The earth
Split, and the rivers twelve in darkness sank;
The twelve great mountains crumbled to the plain;
The bones of those twelve armies ceased from sight:
Then from the sun that died, and dying moon,
And stars death-sentenced, fell great drops of blood
Large as their spheres, till all the earth was blood;
And o'er that blood-sea rang a female cry,
“The Royal House is dead.”

Ptol.
My king, my friend—

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

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

Alex.
I loved her in the old days: nor years, nor wars
Disturbed that image. But a greater love
In its great anguish tramples out all others.
Impostors are they all—those heart-affections:
They're dupes that make us dupes—
There's not on earth a confidence unflawed:
I think he kept from me at Tyre a secret
Touching that princess. I from him concealed
That warning strange at Hierosolyma,

150

Whereof, it may be, my contempt more late
When, old Parmenio doomed, I marched to India,
Bore me ill fruit. Betwixt that warning strange
And this, my sickness, was there aught in common?

Ptol.
It may be, sire, there was,

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

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

The Song.

Behold, He giveth His belovèd sleep,
And they shall waken in a land of rest:
Behold, He leadeth Israel like a sheep:
His pasture is the mountain of the Blest.

Blessed are they whose hands are pure from guilt;
Who bore the yoke from childhood, yet are free:
Jerusalem is as a city built
Wherein the dwellers dwell in unity.

Alex.
That song's amiss.

Ptol.
Sire, for your army's sake,
Which, like a wounded warrior, moans in sleep,

151

Your Empire's sake, that, immature and weak,
Is threatened in its cradle—

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

Ptol.
Sire, there is none.

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

Ptol.
Sire, none comes.

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

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

Alex.

Welcome, my brave Seleucus! In five days
We march, at earliest dawn. A month shall find us
Nighing old Egypt's coast. This scroll be yours:
It is a code for Alexandria's rule:
Therein I have made you lord. Till morn, farewell.

[Seleucus departs reluctantly.

I note you shaken, Ptolemy: learn thence

152

Philosophy's a crutch for strength to play with:
It mocks us when we're weak. On the fifth day—

Farewell.

[As Ptolemy is departing.

Return. Your tablets—I would see them.
Write down—the duty this of Eumenes—
He cheats his tasks—write down my burial place.
Likeliest you guess it.

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

Alex.
Not Pella.

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

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

Scene IX.—Ecbatana.

Arsinoe
(On a balcony of Drypetris' Palace).

She sleeps. Thou blessed sleep that most dost bless us
When we in thy great gift forget the gift,
Oh, call us not ingrate! She sleeps: there's nought
Like sleep to help a heavy heart; not music;
That brings her back the memory of old times;
Not love like mine; that whispers of another's;
Not flowers nor song of birds, nor airs sweet-laden:
If these poor flatteries force a smile upon her,
Brief infidelity how soon avenged,
The unwonted apparition leaves her dim;
And those sad eyes make inquest without words,
“Shall we no more behold him?”

153

Silent stars
That flash from yonder firmament serene,
Ye have no portion in these pangs of earth;
Ye mock not man with infirm sympathy:
I thank you for your clear, unpitying brightness
That freezes Time's deceits. The Lord of Light
Sternly in you hath writ his four great Names
Truth, Justice, Wisdom, Order. Ye endure:
Our storms sweep o'er you but they shake you not:
Darkness, your foe, but brings your hour of triumph:
Your teaching is—to bear.

The Lord of Light—
Is it a woman's weakness that would wish him
Another, tenderer name, the Lord of Love?
A love that out of love created all things;
A love that, warring ever, willeth peace;
A patient love, from ill educing good;
A conquering love, triumphant over death?
Ah me! No land there is that clasps this Faith!
To hold it were to feel from heaven a hand
Laid on the aching breast of human kind,
Laid on our own, and softer than the kiss
Of some imagined babe. Come quickly, Death!
Beyond thy gate is Truth.

A Lady
(entering).
Madam, but now
Your sister woke, and gently breathed your name,
But slept ere I could answer.

Ars.

Watch beside her:
When next she moves, make sign.

Eternal Truth,
Why has our Persia missed you? Truth she loved:
She trained her sons in valour and in truth:
And yet in vain for you our Magians strained
Their night-dividing eyes! From sceptred watchers

154

Turned she her all-pure countenance to reward
More late some humbler vigil? It must be!
The unceasing longing cannot be in vain:
The agony of virtue crownless here,
And great love sorrow-crowned. If earth can find,
Indeed, no answer to her children's cry,
Wandering from yon bright host a star will lead
The lowliest of her wanderers, lowly and wise,
In age still faithful to their childhood's longing,
To where in some obscurest spot lies hid
The saviour-soul of self-subsistent Truth,
Some great world-conquering, world-delivering Might,
The future's cradled Hope.

The Lady
(re-entering).
Madam, she wakes.

Scene X.—The Palace of Babylon.

In the centre of the council hall is a pallet on which Alexander lies. The royal pages kneel at each side. Around, or in groups at the entrance, stand Eumenes, Cassander, Ptolemy, Amyntas, Socrates, Peucestas, Perdiccas, Seleucus, and other Generals.
Ptol.
It is a six days' journey: ere the noon
That young, pale queen in far Ecbatana's palace
Will break our seal, and read.

Soc.
(near the gate of the hall).
The day draws near:
The scared, wan dawn blends in yon cave of death
With the red torch-light.

Amy.
Eight brief days ago
That was a hall of council whence the world

155

Waited her sentence. I could deem its air
Was thick with phantom shapes. Is all hope lost?

Soc.
At midnight hope surceased. The fever sank;
With it his strength. He bade them bear him hither:
He speaks not since.

Amy.
In yon black palace lies
The agèd queen! from window on to window
The lights pass quick. There's sorrow there. 'Tis cold!

Soc.
You shake.

Amy.
They woke me sudden with the news.

Ant.
(entering).
The Persian has his trouble as the Greek.
Old Sisygambis sinks from hour to hour:
She came from Susa hither, vexed by dreams,
Found the king sick; foodless she sits since then
Upon the palace floor. Dread gifts, men say,
Of prophecy are hers. A funeral veil
O'erhangs her glittering eyes and plaited forehead:
Her Magians stand around: the royal children
Kneel at her feet.

Soc.
In great Serapis' temple
Four generals watched from early night to morn,
Hoping some intimation from the god:
Nor oracle nor vision was vouchsafed.
At last Seleucus, kneeling at the shrine,
Besought, “Shall the sick king, a suppliant, lay him
Beneath the healing shadow of this fane?”
'Twas answered, “Where he lies, there let him bide.”

Amy.
That meant, that here abiding, he shall live.

Ant.
It meant, that death is better than to live.

Ptol.
(near the pallet).
Seleucus, you were with him?

156

Sel.
Half the night
My tears bedewed his hand.

Ptol.
Knew he things round him?

Sel.
He knew them well; and knew of things beyond.
Long time he watched, or seemed to watch, the passions
Of some great fight that makes a world or mars,
And saw all lost. “Parmenio fought against me:
'Twas death's cold river gave him back his youth,”
He muttered. Next he spake as to some priest:
And seemed to grasp his wrist, and reasoned with him—
I caught no word—two hours with lips foam-flecked,
As one who proudly pleads, yet pleads for life;
Then ceased, and slept.

Eum.
Keep silence at the gates!

Ant.
(drawing near).
The soldiers will to see him.

Ptol.
Let it be:
'Tis now too late for aught to work him ill.

[The soldiers stream in, circling successively the royal pallet, till the whole hall is thronged.
Sel.
The soldiers' friend! He hears their stifled moaning:
His eye is following them; he fain would stretch
His hand toward them!

Eum.
Speak to him, Ptolemy!

Ptol.
Sire, it is come! the king is king in death:
Speak the king's ordinance. Who shall wear his crown?

Alex.

The worthiest head.

[A long silence.
Ptol.
Once more his lips are moving:
Perdiccas, you are keen of ear: bend low—
Bend to his lips.

157

Eum.
His fingers move: he slides
The royal ring into Perdiccas' hand.

Ptol.
Hear you no words?

Per.
I think he said, “Patroclus.”

Ptol.
Once more?

Per.
He said, “Achilles followed soon.”

Ptol.
Bend down once more.

Per.
He spake it plain: I heard it;
“Patroclus died: Achilles followed soon.”

Sel.
And died in saying it. 'Tis past. He's gone!

Ptol.
The greatest spirit that ever trod this earth
Has passed from earth. He, swifter than the morn
O'er-rushed the globe. Expectant centuries
Condensed themselves into a few brief years
To work his will; and all the buried ages
Summed their old wealth, to enrich, for man's behoof,
With virtuous wisdom one Olympian mind
Which, grappling all things — needing not experience—
Yet scorned no diligence, the weapons shaped,
Itself, that hewed its way, nor left to others
The pettiest of those cares that, small themselves,
Are rivets which make whole the mail of greatness.
The world hath had its conquerors: one alone
Conquered for weal of them who bowed beneath him,
And in the vanquished found his firmest friends
And passionatest mourners.
The world hath had its kings: but one alone
To whom a kingdom meant a radiant fabric,
No tyrant's dungeon-keep, no merchant's mart,
But all intelligential, so combining
All interests, aspirations, efforts, aims,
That man's great mind, therein made one o'er earth,
Might show all knowledge in its boundless glass,

158

As the sea shows the sun. Rough Macedon,
Boast; yet be just! Thou wert this wonder's nurse:
A mightier was his mother. Earth, take back
Thy chief of sons! Henceforth his tomb art thou.

Sel.
Lords, he is gone who made us what we are;
And we, remanded to our nothingness,
Have that, not words, to offer him for praise.
There stand among us some that watched his boyhood;
They have had their wish; he lived his life. The gods,
Feared they the next step of their earthly rival,
Who pressed so near their thrones? Your pardon, lords!
He's dead who should this day have praised the dead,
Happiest in this, he died before his friend.
Lords, we have lived in festival till now,
And knew it not. The approaching woes, they best
Shall measure greatness gone. The men who 'scape,
Building new fortunes on the wreck-strewn shore,
Shall to their children speak in life's sad eve
Of him who made its morning. Let them tell
His deeds but half, or no man will believe them:
It may be they will scarce themselves believe,
Deeming the past a dream. That hour, their tears
Down-streaming unashamed like tears in sleep
Will better their poor words: who hear shall cry.
Pale with strong faith, “There lived an Alexander.”

[A passage opens in the crowd, and Astar stands up beside the body of Alexander.
Ast.
Conquerors of Persia, now yourselves death-conquered,
Another royal corse makes dumb the world.
The mother of Darius, Sisygambis,

159

As o'er the horizon's verge the rising sun
Lifted its Persia-worshipped forehead, dropped
Her brow discrowned down on the dust, and died.

Ptol.
Empire o'er empire topples: Persia first
Above her, she that vanquished Persia—Greece.

University of Virginia Library

ACT V.

Scene I.—The Road to Babylon.

Scene II.—Palace Terrace at Babylon.

Scene III.—Hall of the Palace of Babylon.

Scene IV.—Hanging Gardens at Babylon.

Scene V.—The Lake of Pallacopas, near Babylon.

The Song.

The Song.

Chaldæan Song.

Scene VI.—A Street in Babylon.

Scene VII.—The Palace at Babylon. Ante-room of the Royal Apartment.

Scene VIII.—Alexander's Chamber.

The Song.

Scene IX.—Ecbatana.

Scene X.—The Palace of Babylon.