University of Virginia Library

BOOK IV.

THE SCROLL AND ITS INTERPRETERS.

The garden of a villa near Alexandria, overlooking the sea. Noon. Zozomen, Euphorbos, and Ben Enoch, meeting each other.
ZOZOMEN.
Welcome, Euphorbos! Welcome, learnèd Jew!

EUPHORBOS and BEN ENOCH.
Zozomen, hail!

ZOZOMEN.
Here, while we keep in view
The striving city, we evade the strife
Which, pleased, we witness. In the webs of life
Hark to the hum of those unhappy swarms
That cannot disengage their legs and arms
From out the meshes, more than flies that sing,
Caught by the crafty many-handed thing
That in the unperceived impalpable snare
Squats, spins, spies, and devours.

EUPHORBOS.
Ay, the air
Of Summer's strongest noon is ever cool
Under these myrtle boughs,—our sylvan school.
Here breathe we Spring, while, all beneath our gaze,
The grass burns white against the stubborn blaze,
And the bruised day on rocky anvils steams,
Beat by incessant strokes of strong sunbeams.

ZOZOMEN.
Look yonder, friends, and laugh to see those four
Brown wretches sweating down the stifled shore,
To where, between the wharves, the sea-folk swarm
Round yonder galley; each with brawny arm
And straining neck outthrust, on bended back
Uppropping as he plods, his heavy pack
Of parti-colour'd stuff. I oft have stood
Still by the hour, and in like mirthful mood,
To watch brown beetles o'er a sandy road
Uprolling stoutly each his cumbrous load,
—(White balls of dust, they pack their eggs therein,
I fancy)—each with hairy chest and chin
Smother'd and choking 'neath the earthy globe
It costs so much to stir so feebly. Probe
The satisfaction which it causes you
(Standing in midst of their minute ado)
To watch these creatures toiling, and you'll find
It comes not from superior strength of mind
So much, nor strength of body, as from these
Converted into consciousness of ease
By the supreme disdain with which you view
The thing that tasks the toiling, moiling crew.
Your nothing done, because of much perceived,
Is worth more, doubtless, than the much achieved
Towards their little seen, by creatures born
Beneath you, whom benignantly you scorn
Too much to hurt or help them.

BEN ENOCH.
The chief gain
Of life is, certes, theirs that can abstain,
And stand apart. Man first grows something, then
When first he separates himself from men.
Life's lowest and least choice results we know
And recognise in what the Many do
Together: life's augustest grace alone
Is witness'd in the achievement of the One.
Bees, emmets, beavers, to each other seem
As helpful, in their life's collective scheme,
As men to men. In this alone alone doth lie
Man's difference from the beasts: that man saith “I,”
Naming himself, but those “We” only.

EUPHORBOS.
Well,
The insects yet do yonder slaves excel.
For they (the insects at their toil) at least
Toil for themselves, and furnish their own feast.
But those men toil for others, whom, indeed,
They know not, or not love. Fagg'd hands that feed
Mouths not their own. True, Zozomen (alack
That so it is!), well-pleased, the sense comes back
From chance employment on such dusty scene,
To find meanwhile, among these branches green,
His fellow senses, in full ease, supplied
By cool sounds and sweet smells with all the pride
Of a most perfect idleness. But see!
The white half-moon, by yonder old pine tree,
In keener curve of clearer crescent now
Bites the blue air. Time to begin, I trow!
And Enoch brings us treasures in his sleeve.
Is it the scroll, Ben Enoch?

BEN ENOCH.
By your leave.
My mother's great-great-grandsire, as you know,
In your renown'd Librarium, long ago,
Had charge of those three chambers, where were stored
The Hebrew and Assyrian rolls. The sword
Of the first Cæsar on this city lay
Not lightly: but ere Rome's revolted prey,
Recaptured thus, her wrath was pastured on,
This great-great-grandsire of my mother, gone
To Thebes, in search of knowledge,—his life's end,
Was by an old Egyptian seer, his friend,
Forewarn'd of what was doing. Wherefore he
Return'd not, knowing that which was to be.
And in the farthest East he died at last,
Leaving this scroll. Which to explain surpass'd
Even his skill, though least among the seers
He was not. Natheless I, nigh fourscore years
Searching out truth, have in myself found light
Whereby to see, and set in all men's sight,
The meaning of this mystery. It is writ
All in straight strokes, like thorns. Perusing it,
I find the sense runs, not alone from left
To right, but right to left, as in a weft
Of cross-spun threads, and also vertical:
The text alliterated, duplex, all
Instinct with double import; and the tongue
That antique Syrian which survives among
Some parts of Ezra's scripture, where he cites
The letter which the Persic king indites.
Such is the text. Upon the marge thereof
I find a commentary cramp and tough
In Hebrew with no vowel points, by a hand
Unknown, which I surmise Ben Shishak's. And
All this I have unriddled, and writ out,
—The essence of it,—not the form, no doubt;
For all made up of sounds too volatile
For transmutation is the antique style:
. . . . Even your elastic language locks not these
In its clear limbec, whence their light troop flees
In brilliance, bursting swift the brittle bond,
To fade i' the boundless infinite beyond,
Dispersed like falling stars. But what I deem,—
Nay, hold for certain,—the substantial theme
Of thought that underlies the illusive text,
Here in my hand I hold,—plain, unperplext,
Set forth in current Greek.

EUPHORBOS and ZOZOMEN.
Read, prithee read,
Ben Enoch!

BEN ENOCH.
Then, to please you . . . Since, indeed,
I know that, not alone, in earlier age,
Milesian Thales, and that Samian sage,
Anaximander, and Parmenides,
But not long since, Plotinus, and with these
(Not to name all those Greeks that follow them)
Latins no few, who tho' of Rome, condemn
No less the dull inapprehensive scorn
Of their o'erweening West for Knowledge born
Beyond the palms, before the pyramids,
Where Earth's first Morn first oped her ardent lids,
Were fain to slake their thirst of things divine
At that same urn whence now I pour this wine
O' the old bright East. . . . . .

EUPHORBOS and ZOZOMEN.
Read, Enoch! read to us
The parchment with less preface.

BEN ENOCH.
Well then, thus:
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(He says.)
(He reads.)
(He says.)
(Reads.)
(Says.)
(Reads.)
(He says.)
(Reads.)
(He says.)

ZOZOMEN.
What's saved affords
No indication of what's lost. Divine
Who may what means that “Fatal Feminine,”
I cannot. And methinks no such strange phrase
Was needed to imply, what none gainsays,
That woman, ever since the world began,
Hath been a beauteous mischief unto man.

BEN ENOCH.
No. I dismiss that meaning.

EUPHORBOS.
And elect
What other?

BEN ENOCH.
One, which doth, indeed, deject
And sorrow me most sorely. For I see
That man, being twofold, body and soul, must be
Against himself divided ever more;
Never at unison with life; so sore
The strife is 'twixt the body and soul. In just
So much as, discontented with mere dust
—Which is its native natural element,
The body, prompted by the spirit pent
Within it (which—a prisoner—doth conspire
Against its hapless gaoler), may desire
To pacify the querulous spirit, and do
Its mandates, run its errands to and fro,
In search of joys not for the body meant,
The soon-tired body's certain discontent
Dismays the spirit. And man fails that way.
Whilst, in so much as, willing to obey
The bidding of the body, heard in turn,
And humour thus the helpmate it would spurn
But cannot, the compliant spirit spares,
To deck the burthen its associate bears,
Some casual grace, some flying flavour lends
To spice the joys whereon the body spends
Its fleshly appetite,—the spirit's soon
Enkindled scorn of its own wasted boon,
And prompt disgust of what it deign'd to do,
Dismays the body. Man fails this way, too.
But, say the spirit triumphs. And what then?
Death. For it kills the body. Or, again,
Suppose the body triumphs? Again, death.
It kills the spirit. Whilst, with hinder'd breath,
The two conspire each other's failure, life
Indures, indeed: but how indures? At strife.
But in this scroll a hope, methinks,—nay, more,
A promise, seem'd vouchsafed. What I deplore
Is that, enough remaining of the scroll
To testify that, could we read the whole,
Fulfilment of that promise would be shewn,
The missing end, which cannot now be known,
Leaves, by extinguisht founts, desire awaked
To fiercer thirst, with all that thirst unslaked.
So bright the opening promise! But just here,
Here where both text and comment disappear
In a great gap of doubt, . . . man's prosperous march
Seems stopp'd by Sense, just where thro' Time's near arch
First gleams the Spirit's glorious goal. As when
That Carthaginian host, with Rome in ken,
At Capua caught, forewent the long-wisht end
Deserved by toil thus far endured, to spend
On pleasure premature, upon its way,
Forces first arm'd to seize a nobler prey.
The conquer'd, thus, the conquerors captive take.
Thus would-be Cæsars turn, with worlds at stake,
By captive Cleopatras captured fast,
Let worlds escape them, and are lost at last:
Thus, the Ideal Beauty, by the sense
Itself hath kindled into vehemence
O'ertaken, is in sensuous fetters fasten'd:
Thus man's defeat his first success hath hasten'd:
Thus, the old question vain returns again;
And, just where all seem'd gain'd, all's lost for men.
Which things perplex me.

EUPHORBUS.
Hush! we are o'erheard.
Who is yon stranger?

ZOZOMEN.
Not a leaflet stirr'd
Among the myrtles: on the path no stone
Cried out: and thro' the gates not any one
Can pass unchallenged. How, then, came he here?

BEN ENOCH.
A man of most strange aspect.

EUPHORBOS.
He draws near.

ZOZOMEN.
Mark him!

THE STRANGER
(approaching).
Peace be unto you, brethren. Much
I marvel, O Ben Enoch, that on such
A mind as thine, inquisitive of all
Light's rays, such mere interposition small
Should cast such shadow. A man's hand, no doubt,
Is not so small but what it can shut out
God's sun, if only thro' a single hole
The sunlight enters. But to thee the whole
O' the world is open'd. Seest thou not, altho'
The conquer'd do the conquerors conquer, slow
But sure from out such conquest comes a new
And nobler triumph born of both? Thou, Jew,
Were not the Roman master (as he is)
Of all thy race, how should thine master his
By knowledge, veil'd from Lars and Lucumon,
Yet view'd by Israel ere the Roman won
A rood of barren earth for that first plough
Beneath whose yoke the world's self labours now?
The Ideal thus, tho' by the Sensuous held
In bondage for a while, doth work and weld
All to itself, till form be fill'd with soul.
And, if indeed the story of thy scroll
Holds ancient warrant, as thou dost believe,
Deem'st thou the toil of Matter could so grieve
A Spirit's nature as therefrom to get
Most pitiful participation, yet
The toil of Spirit—stronger far than this,
And nobler much—receive of Him, that is
Father of Spirits, no assistance meet,
Even from the fugitive semblance of defeat
Securing future triumph? . . . triumph miss'd
By man in Adam, won for man in Christ!
Which, tho', indeed, for all achieved by one,
Must yet again by each be made his own,
In his own fashion, after his own kind,
Ere all possess the gain of each combined.
Meanwhile, one man's life marks where life may reach.
One ripple only touching on the beach,
Thou say'st “The whole sea spreads thus far.” But one
Of the chain's many links holds fast the stone
The mason's engine lifts: yet say'st thou not
“The whole chain's motion moves the stone?” I wot
Thou hast much to learn, Ben Enoch.

(He passes.)
EUPHORBOS
(after a pause).
Come and gone
Incredibly! and with announcement none,
More than the sudden shadow on the grass
Of a cloud passing.

ZOZOMEN.
Thou didst let him pass
Too lightly.

BEN ENOCH.
There was that upon my mind,
Whilst yet his eye was on me, I could find
No answer to his speech.

ZOZOMEN.
Nor I.

EUPHORBOS.
Didst scan
His face?

BEN ENOCH
I think it was no living man.
I think it was Elias.

EUPHORBOS.
Could he speak
Our language, Jew? For this man's speech was Greek.

ZOZOMEN.
What if it were—once more vouchsafed to us,—
He of Tyana, that taught Ephesus
Things inconceivable . . . since of his death
No man is certain?

EUPHORBOS.
Such-like rumour saith
The same of Heavenly John, whom Christus told
How God to him had granted to behold,
Whilst yet on Earth, the coming of the Day
Of Renovation. For that man, some say,
Is yet among us: and at sundry times,
Of sundry folk, in many different climes,
Hath certainly been seen. And whensoe'er
The man hath shown himself at unaware,
Great things have happen'd. Him I think it was
That hath been with us, and is gone. Because
Did he not name the man, or god, whom we
From some of the new Jews have heard to be
The founder of their sect,—bowing his head
The while he spake? Moreover it doth spread,
This sect, already, even amongst ourselves
Who walk with Plato: even on mine own shelves
I keep a book—'tis barbarous Greek, indeed,—
About that selfsame Christus and his creed,
Ascribed to this same John . . .

BEN ENOCH and ZOZOMEN.
We'll follow him.
Went he this way?

EUPHORBOS.
No. Where the air is dim
Deep in yon tamarisk thicket.

BEN ENOCH.
Would I knew
What he would have us think he knows!

ZOZOMEN.
I too.

EUPHORBOS.
Hark!

A DISTANT VOICE.
Kai to pneuma kai hê nymphê . . .

EUPHORBOS.
There!

THE VOICE.
Legousin Elthe . . .

ZOZOMEN.
Yonder! where the air
Is dim . . .

THE VOICE.
Kai ho akouon eipato
Elthe!

EUPHORBOS.
That voice again! in tones, as tho'
The man's hand beckon'd while his mystic hymn
To us he chaunts.

BEN ENOCH.
Shall we not follow him?

OMNES.
Most certainly.

ZOZOMEN.
But if it be, indeed,
Only a phantom which the air doth breed
Not seldom, near the setting of the sun,
Out of the womb of Eve—an eidolon
That hath no substance save what it hath power
To suck from mortal sense at this dim hour
Which ushers in the night, . . . all search were vain.

EUPHORBOS.
And I am bidden . . .

THE VOICE.
Elthe!

BEN ENOCH.
Hark, again!

EUPHORBOS.
I cannot. Follow, you. I cannot. I
Am bidden to the great festivity
Which What's-his-name,—the new-made Consul's choice,—
This very night . . .

THE VOICE.
Elthe!

BEN ENOCH.
Again that voice!

ZOZOMEN.
By Bacchus! I too must away. To night
Myself am one of those his friends invite
To hear our bran-new poet, Proteus, read
His bran-new Epic . . .

BEN ENOCH.
And for me, indeed,
Philemon, the Librarian, waits by this,
To overlook that learnèd work of his
Which crowns the labours of Ben Shittag, who
Reform'd erewhile the Kabala,—a Jew
Whom the Greek justly honours. Yet 'tis sad.
I would have follow'd.

EUPHORBOS.
I too, if I had
The time . . .

ZOZOMEN.
And I.

BEN ENOCH.
But weightier matters . . .

EUPHORBOS.
Then
Farewell, Ben Enoch. Farewell, Zozomen.

ZOZOMEN.
Farewell, Euphorbos. Farewell worthy Jew.

BEN ENOCH.
And, gentle friends, a like farewell to you.

(They disperse.)
TIME
(passing in the silence).
Go, fools! It tasks a century's search to espy
What oft a moment drops in passing by.