University of Virginia Library

FROM AN UNFINISHED DRAMA, CALLED ÆNEAS AND DIDO.

Scene: A Terrace overlooking the Sea, before Dido's Palace at Carthage. Moonlight.
Mercury.
Far cradled in the sacred secret west
My dwelling lies, from every taint of ill
Bastioned, and belted round inviolably,
By azure oceans glassed in boundless calm,
O'er whose clear face not ever mortal keel
Passes to blur the blue transparency.
There is no cold nor frost, nor any care,
Nor any tread of sinward-hastening feet
Pollutes the soil; but the pure opulent Earth
Pours forth her wealth for those that ever are,
And gods behold their father face to face.
And there some souls—so fate decrees—of men,
Some—very few—may hard admittance win,
Purged and made holy by the lustral wave
Of the soul's blood, spilt in the war with flesh,
And over flesh victorious. But from this
Hard fight most shrink—most even of these elect,
Deadened by the gross senses, and no less
By those great foes to calmness, love and hate,
Not bridled in. But that such sad defeat
Befall not now my strenuous care must be;
For I am Maïa's son, the wanderer god,
The pinion-footed, golden-wanded god,
Whom with a matter of no mean import
Freighted the sire now sends; and here I stand
Before this palace, seeking speech of one—
One of the holy elect, who, led astray
By too-encroaching love, without high aid
Must miss for ever the steep road to fame.
And, therefore, hither am I sent of Jove,
To unglue the eyelids of his sleeping soul,
Stuck with such fatal rheum. Ha!—this is he!
But not alone—his beautiful curse is with him;
Dear curse, more deadly in that she is dear.
They come to hear the voices of the night;
They come to look into each other's eyes,
And tie fresh vows about them. Ha, dark Queen!
Thou little know'st one burning word of mine
Can smoulder up that hemp of lovers' knots;
But thou shalt soon be taught. I'll wait awhile,
And view thee viewless, till more fitting time.

Enter Æneas and Dido.
Æneas.
Oh, light and silence of the summer night,
How thy voice fills me, though the words are lost—
All lost save one, which, ever like a mist
Seen flung above some unseen waterfall,
Rises. That word is love. O queen! mine own,
Look in my eyes. There was a hungry season,
When, inarticulate as a wave that creeps
With its white lips into a whispering shell,
My soul received these voices, knowing not
What is to love; but through the famishing days
A hunger haunted me, without the knowledge
To seek for food; and, like a hunted stag,
Driven to the verge of some sheer precipice,
And wild to spring somewhither, from my lips
My spirit hung; till love, revealed through thee,
Came beyond hope, as breaks the sudden moon
On one who, wandering blindly round his home,
Seems to himself far strayed into strange ways.
My Dido, speak.

Dido.
O Trojan, cleave to me!
None can love more than I; most will love less.
Oh, use me not as thy soul's stepping-stone,
Climbing, as some men climb, to loftier calm!
Tread not my poor neck down in death to rise,
If rise thou canst.

Æneas.
Rest, for I cannot rise.

Dido.
I trust thee. Yet—deep in my heart there lurks
Some cold disquiet. Warm me with thy words,
And tell me of the growing of thy love.

Scene, the same. Time, towards morning. A storm rising. Mercury meanwhile has been troubling the mind of Æneas with thoughts of Italy, and his destined work there.
Dido.
Will not you look on me? Ah, what means this—
Your pale, changed face? And why so wistfully
Goes ever to the seaward your wan gaze?
What strange thoughts stir you now?

Æneas.
My memories
Rise like a storm and stir me. In mine ears
Harsh shrieks and hollow rumour of armour and arms
Sound like a dream, and windy manes and plumes
Of horses and of heroes waver and toss
Dreamlike and dim; and all the plains of Troy
Move once again with clouds of battle-dust
That meet like thunder-clouds, and through the dark
I see the javelins lighten, and I hear
The round shields boom like timbrels, mid the shouts
Of fighting men and falling. Hark! the wind
Rises, and wheeling voices of the air
Sing in our ears, and ever sweep to sea—
The sea where no land is, nor any home
But storm, and calm, and freedom. Storm—ay, storm!
I feel it, it will come, it is in my hair—
The sweet, wild, infant storm. Ah me, my love,
Do not you feel the wild wind in your hair?
What! Are my words wild, too? What is it I say?
What have my memories to do with storm?
Ah, I have seen— Have I not made my nest,
As the white, wandering, homeless sea-bird does,
On the storms and wide free places of man's life—
Battle, and wreck, and ruin? Have I not been
Nursling of many storms? Ah, me! that night
Wherein my eyes were opened, and I saw,
Staring aghast, where all the towers of Troy
Loomed high like dreams above the fiery clouds—
Suddenly saw how all the quivering haze
Was full of stalking Presences, that went
Tall as the towers, and breasting drifts of flame—
The cloudy immortal forms of ruining gods!
And there, far off, remote from all the rest,
Prankt on the topmost crag of masonry,
Was one—a lonely terror in the night,
Shining, who held in hand a shield that shone,
And who a burning nimbus round her hair,
Wore like a meteor, and who looked with eyes
That did out-stare the furnace. My blood froze.
'Twas Pallas' self. I knew her. This was she.
I knew the scaly arms of cyanos;
I knew the grey gleam of the owl-like eyes;
I knew the end was come; and down from heaven
I knew the night had fallen, a snare of doom;
And under it our god-built Pergamus—
One darkness ruddy with a thousand fires.