 | A Dramatic Scene |  |
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A DRAMATIC SCENE.
Pharaoh's Palace: Pharaoh Enthroned in State—Court—Officers —Ambassadors, &c.Enter
Joseph.
I cast myself at Pharaoh's royal feet:
Thou didst desire my presence; lo! I am here.
Pharaoh.
Ruler in Egypt, this is my command:—
Ambassadors from several potent states
Are here in Council: they are come to me
Loaded with treasure, royal brotherhood,
To purchase, and entreat our utmost aid,
For that the hand of famine being abroad
Hath fallen rudely on their several powers.
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Which in its desolation withereth
These powers to the bone. O ruler, say
What counsel in thy wisdom canst thou give.
Remember thee we are for nought in this,
Setting aside both interest and desire,
Longing to aid them in their languishment;
And thy decision is as Fate's decree,
From which I can admit of no appeal.
Joseph.
This is a general matter of much weight.
The fate of Egypt trembles in the scale;
So I commend it to the King of heaven—
The God of justice is the God of love,
And chastisement is love where sin is death.
Two things must be considered severally:
The Will supreme, and then the will of man.
To purge the nations He has seen it wise
They should be yielded up to famine's arms:
But He hath made exception of this land,
Revealing to the ear of Egypt's King
The secret movements of his destiny.
So far His will is manifest and clear;
But in these revelations I perceive
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Nor was provision made for other states
Of Egypt's succours beyond Egypt's self.
So far 'tis doubtful if 'twas His intent
That Egypt should become a granary
To bind the hands of His just punishment.
Turn we from revelation wrath divine
And question human judgment, we perceive
The surplus of the seven years of wealth
More than sufficient for the years of dearth:
But as this surplus is but Egypt's own,
Of which these nations plenty form no part,
Ponder well that your beneficence
Strain not upon your own security,
And thus so much as you shall cede to them
In just proportion shall you lack yourself.
First, therefore, King, do justice to thine own,
Nor sacrifice their rights to stranger hands:
O profit by the means that God has given,
And tempt not thou the Providence divine.
Pharaoh.
Behold, Ambassadors, yourselves have heard
Justice and wisdom; common prudence bids
I should deny your suit: it grieves me sore.
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Following your several necessities,
Shall be well furnished for your journey back.
Joseph.
Stay yet awhile and listen to the King.
Thus it appeareth, but it is not so;
For the two questions still in presence weigh:—
First the permission of His holy will,
Which may be judged by the abundance given;
Second, beyond the shadow of a doubt,
That Egypt's privilege be all secure.
To solve this doubt I have forecast with care
Egypt's resources for the time to come—
The utmost limit of the seven years.
After sufficiency of all the best
Has been reserved in full perfection,
A marvellous surplus still remains in hand.
Permitting, as I said, within abuse
Of a vast profitable charity.
Pharaoh hath but to say, Do thus and thus!
Pharaoh.
Truly, as you say, 'tis wonderful
That the abundance in exception made
Equals the general dearth and penury.
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'Tis nothing strange to him whose spirit dwells
Within the knowledge of our Deity.
God's blessing has no limit, and its love
Filleth the wide immensity of heaven,
Its charity overfloods upon the earth.
Pharaoh.
'Tis great and glorious and wondrous indeed.
Joseph.
For full two years our parsimonious hands
Furnish the fainting nations who still live.
E'en as the racing rivers of the earth
Into the ocean pour their waters out,
So from the states which circle Egypt round
Flows the strong current of their foreign gold:
The royal treasury which was a lake
Has now become a sea. Fear not, O King,
Wisdom and prudence and sweet charity
Will make great Pharaoh greater than he is;
For I prophetical repeat once more,
In the five years of famine yet to come
The surplus is enough to furnish forth
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That the abundance given for seven years,
Being preserved in full perfection,
Was so replete, immeasurably vast,
That Egypt's King may plate his thoughts with gold
And on his royal head may wear a crown—
Mysterious light incomparably bright,
Formed of the lives of men, millions of stars
Surpassing all the jewels of the mine,
Or rocks, or mountains, or the sombre depths,
The unsounded oozy bottom of the sea.
'Tis a proud thought, O King of Kings, that all
The mighty nations come to vail their pride
And draw their daily breath at Pharaoh's hand,
The special gift of Jacob's Deity.
Pharaoh.
To you, Ambassadors, I recommend
A serious counsel for your governors:
Be frugal in the aid that may be given,
Fearing it be the last.
1st Ambassador.
Great Pharaoh, live!—
I speak for all these honoured potentates.—
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Their gratitude, their envy, and their love—
Their envy, above all, that Egypt is thrice blessed
In thee, great King, thy ruler, and his God.
[Exeunt Ambassadors.
Pharaoh.
How is it, Joseph, when a lord in power
Grows into greater power, and doth possess
In full security, his sov'reign's grace,
His face shoots forth more beams than doth the sun?
Men flock to gild them at their lucent rays,
And the lie fortune casts his golden net,
Whose smile is glory and whose frown a grave.
But thou, thou wearest a sober cheerfulness,
A certain sweet and modest majesty;
And from the very first you never joyed,
Nor met your grandeur with an equal smile.
Joseph.
The joy I feel is like the God I serve,
Invisible as vast:
And will not quit the middle of my heart
To bask upon the surface of my face;
Because I am not, nor will ever be,
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His glory and His honour doth absorb
My action, soul, and my identity:—
An insect that's attracted by the sun,
A wandering atom in his glorious space,
So am I, lost in Love's humility.
Ah! couldst thou feel the ardour of a soul
Abandoned to the glory of its God,
Where all the faculties so melt and blend,
Adoring His eternal majesty,
In love, obedience, sweet amenity,—
You would not wonder.
Pharaoh.
This is very strange:
I never felt thus in our sacrifice:
Yet Egypt's gods are older than the stars,
Coeval with the moon, gigantic powers
And such as yet were never known or seen
In any nation on the earth besides.
Perplexity and doubt and feverish hope,
A certain awe near neighbour to despair—
As dreading their oracular decree—
Are the chief sentiments which they inspire;
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And the soul's ecstasy is all unknown:
Whence comes this difference 'twixt our deities?
Joseph.
Ah! mighty Pharaoh, question me no more:
Oft hast thou spoken of the benefits
Thou didst intend to heap upon my head,
And wonderest at my want of gratitude.
'Tis true I calculate on naught to come
Save in the holy will of Him I serve;
For man is fickle and fantastical,
And ever writes “To-morrow” in the sand.
In answering thee I might give grave offence
And turn these favours into punishment.
Thus the decree of Providence were crossed
In its mid-execution and design;
Nor is there aught of honour to be gained:
The God of Jacob is his God alone.
Pharaoh.
I am amazed at this, and something more
Than curiosity doth urge me on,
For that thy God is all invisible,
Yet hath such empire o'er the human heart.
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In my resolves: once more I do command—
What is the difference twixt thy God and mine?
Joseph.
I bend in all obedience to the King,
Though 'tis a dangerous thing you ask of me.—
Humble thy royal ear unto the truth;
Nor fear, nor stripes, imprisonment, or death
Shall check my tongue or limit my report
When there is question of the living God.
Thy gods are legion; in their separate wills
Each one lays claim to universal power:
Behold the first and chief absurdity.
Then they are made of wood and stone and earth,
O'ercoloured with a thousand mysteries
Without beginning and without an end.
And though they were thrice older than the moon,
And she again a thousand times her age,
Still they are nought but wood and stone and earth;
The son but worships what the father made,
The type of ignorance in their substances.
O King, the sacred majesty of truth
Lives not in mean equivocation.
Such are thy oracles with double tongue,
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More often dumb in utter ignorance.
Witness thy dream. Great Pharaoh did command
Of all the magi and of all the gods
Of Egypt to develop in his ear
This secret which sore troubled his repose.
Was not their silence, ignorance, or disdain
Worthless alike unto their worshippers?
Behold the King, abandoned by his gods,
Abandons them in turn; obliged to seek
Another Deity at stranger hands,
And thus by hazard stumbles on the truth.
To which is due conviction, gratitude—
Or his, whom he has served from infancy
With an enslaved spirit led by fear?
Or mine to whom he turned in despair?
Who at a word unfolds the secret page
Of sweet salvation to th' Egyptian King
And his devoted land, who else were lost
In the dumb ignorance of Egypt's gods?
The faith that springeth not from heavenly grace
Is doubly blind, O King.
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I am not myself;
A strange confusion worketh in my mind,
Where mystery and truth in strife contend,
Like two great powers for the mastery.
What thou hast said against our deities
I leave between our deities and thee:
Their proper honour is their proper cause.
In spite of my convictions from the first
A power invisible doth sway my heart,
Making me love thy fearless honesty.
Now speak thou of thy God.
Joseph.
A heart all burning must a prophet own;
A tongue like lightning whose all riving fire
Lays bare the marble entrails of the rock;
A voice like thunder when it broke the spell,
And the first shock of its artillery
Rolled over chaos: Lo! when silence pale
Woke sudden from her supine lethargy,
Gathering her robe of misty centuries,
Fled trembling from her solitary throne,
Before instinctive new created life,
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Then his imagination should be veiled,
Seeing the outward heavens as a sheet
Of outspread azure sown with living sparks,
The sea a water drop and the sphered globe,
Rolling attractive round the sun in space;
Himself no bigger than a plate of gold,
And man for what he is.
Then by inverted power he might take in
(Its standard being its proper excellence)
A ray of that high glory which resides
In vast immensity mysterious,
Whose attribute demands no more than space,
Where knowledge merges into prescience.
Therein resides his procreative Will,
Which by a thought in silence all sublime,
A word, from nothingness created all
By the enkindling of His passive will;
And all of which, except the soul of man,
Shall pass away to nothingness again:
Nothing that is shall be save that alone.
Then what am I, O King, in this decree
Unless it be the shadow of a shade?
A prophet must be faith personified,
Having nor life, nor will, desire, design,
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And all dissolved in human charity.
O earthly power of Egypt's majesty,
Say that you stood erect on yonder cloud,
That moulds its glowing beauty in the east;
And being so high with vision magnified,
Seeing beyond the circle of the earth,
E'en to the silver walls that shut out space;
And piercing through the centre of the world,
Could take in either heaven; then multiply
The lost immensity ten thousandfold;—
Yet still it were too narrow and confined
For the immeasurable limit where
The living God sits throned for evermore.
What that the mind of man can designate
Is vast enough to hold eternity:
Ah! then the spirit of this mighty power
That was, and is, and shall for ever be—
Oh! what is He?
The glory of his own magnificence;
Burning in beauty as he sat alone,
Himself enough for his Divinity.
At length that love too strong to be restrained,
Primeval essence of his Deity,
O'erflowed its bounds, and charity had life;
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In subtle spirit beauty exquisite—
The bright angelic hosts who straightway thronged,
Myriads on myriads, countless, numberless,
E'en as the sands upheaved by the wind,
Or water drops descending from the sky,
Or leaves in autumn when the eastern blast
Searches the forests and lays bare the groves;
And still they come thicker than flakes of snow
Silvering the space of northern hemisphere,
A tribute to his bounty and his love.
Now as that love which had created them
Was in its essence perfect and entire,
Permitting that supremacy divine,
Following in degree of each perfection,
Should be partaken by the new create;
So nothing less than like abandonment,
Or could they offer or could He receive,
Hence 'tis a principle progenerate
Of the eternal wisdom that the will—
The seat of merit, justice, liberty—
Is of a free unbiassed quality,
Open to make election good or bad:—
Ah! there it is in the good or evil scales,
Pre-eminence in presence and two wills—
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Or infinite or finite God's and man's.
Oh wondrous wisdom, procreative power,
Preserving still the balance of the world,
Which in the will of man goes all to wreck;
For he who leads the blind foresees the gulf,
And with a hand prepared, a second will,
Recovers his permission and restores
The ruin that his enemies have made—
Malice and folly both obliterate:
And on its axis evermore renewed
The world rolls on towards the final hour.
Ah! the perfection, as it was, should be
The will of God, the will of man but one.
Hard to imagine, harder to believe,
That spirits formed at His paternal hands
Should swerve in their election:—So it was
For following their chief a grievous third,
Ungrateful, ignominious, and vile,
Rose 'gainst their Maker. “I will reign,” said he,
“Blinded alike with ignorance and pride,
And my swoll'n heart shall rule: and I will be
Equal to the Omnipotent.” The words
Still lingered on his self-devoted lips,
And he and his measure their utmost length
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A realm of glory for a realm of fire
For spirits ethereal that can never die.
With jealous eye let man o'er-read his heart,
Lest there the hated spark should burn, concealed—
Rebellion in sophisticated garb,
Cloak of distinction 'twixt the fool and wise:
There is no middle course, or love or hate,
The God of heaven or the prince of hell.
Ah! who is he so hardy or so blind
To join the demon and to share his fate?
But the angelic band who loving sealed
The freedom of the will in gratitude,
Bending, adoring, and in saintly choirs,
Singing eternal harmony celest,
Their being gave, and love for love returned;
And thus confirmed in everlasting grace
Were taken to the bosom of their God,
Exalted, raised on their eternal thrones
Of emerald, sapphire, and translucent gold,
With crowns more rich in lustre than the stars,
Possessors of the eternal treasury,
Beauty and peace, celestial harmony,
Absorbed in ecstasies of sleepless love,
Blissful for ever and for evermore.
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Now by my sword of justice, but your words
Create a mutiny within my breast;
For needs I must and do applaud, admire,
Yet sacrifice amiss—I do possess
The attributes of faith yet have it not,
Perforce believing in my unbelief;
Descend to earth and speak thou now of man,
Is he too creature of thy Deity?
Joseph.
The jewel'd sceptre that you wield, O King,
Is it not thine? yet how much more thine own
Hadst thou created it of empty space,
And formed it of thy fancy and thy will!
Time was when man was not, and now he is.
Ah! once again the fathomless abyss
Of God's paternal love did kindling rise,
Creating man in his perfection;
Gave him a body graceful to behold,
A temple sacred in its purity,
A brain to govern, and a heart to love;
And breathed within him an immortal soul
Linking his nature to his Deity.
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Virtue and vice are open to his choice—
The gates of heaven and the gates of hell:
Yet naught unholy e'er can enter heaven,
Where reigns the truth in calm sublimity.
Pharaoh.
Ruler in Egypt, favoured of thy God,
Foreseeing and foreknowing, ever wise,—
Mount the imperial steps unto our throne,
And (mutual honour) sit thou by our side.
I see my kingdom as a thronged ship
Carrying a gallant sail before the wind:
Behold her founder on the secret rocks,
Wreck'd beyond hope in famine's lingering grasp;
Thy wisdom, Hebrew, saved us from this doom,
And he must needs be faithful to his King
Who is so favoured: faithful to his God.
How truly 'tis exemplified in thee,
Knowledge is power!
Joseph.
A sleeping giant is a giant still:
To know is not to do: Wisdom is power,
And wisdom but begins where knowledge ends.
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Knowledge is thus a means unto an end.
The Power supreme, ere it created man,
Was passive knowledge—power in action,
Which in its sov'reign wisdom peopled space.
The knowledge had existed from the first,
And so it might have rested till the end:
Then man's immortal soul had never been.
Weigh every act in wisdom's golden scales—
In such a soil the tree will grow to heaven,
Though rooted in the earth.
The mind of man, that wondrous element,
One of his chiefest works omnipotent,
Was first created in its purity;
And complicated thought, good action,
In meet and peaceful harmony combined,
Till an unruly movement of the will
Gave birth to passion! Then straightway
This giant, blind and deaf and boisterous,
Like sudden tempest in a day serene,
Planted with violence and rebellion
Upon the scarce defended citadel
(For conscience is a latent quality);
Calm in its confidence the human mind,
Dethroned reason, lost the greater half
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Then the half traitor with the will combined,
The fair and false imagination—
That vessel rudderless with silken sails,
Fitful and eager for each varying wind
Impulsive mistress of the elements;
Whose ribs of burnished and refulgent gold,
And planks encrusted over like a mine,
Dazzles in jewels fascinates the eye
As if a rainbow had become opaque
In its transparent gorgeousness, and all
Its liquid beauty blest with silvery light
Fixed and substantial;
While the ethereal weepeth tears of joy:
Thus she and her twin sister Fancy sail
Over the surface of the wondering world.
The highest point of intellect in man
Is that which was and ever ought to be—
A reasoning imagination,
Leaving a wide gap in Eternity.
O Egypt's King, thy servant bending low
Prostrates himself before thy royal throne,
Asking a boon at thy all gracious hands—
A boon wherein the secret happiness
Of Pharaoh's servant liveth or must die.
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Rise, Joseph, rise; the spirit of the King
Doth yearn to serve thee. Tell me then, I pray,
To whom is Egypt? or to him who reigns
Or who preserved both Egypt and the King?
'Tis justice and not generosity.
The self-same breath that beareth thy desire
Doth execute thy will.
Joseph.
Pharaoh doth know
A weary distance in the Canaan land
I left my father and my brethren:
The doubt and danger of their life or death
Long cast a shadow o'er thy servant's heart.
Now God hath so directed circumstance
That I am master of their destinies;
E'en now they grapple feebly with their fate,
And 'neath the hand of famine must lay low—
To rest in Canaan and their graves is one.
Pharaoh.
There's no comparison in these demands.
Those we have sent away with scant supply
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Was gentle pity's superfluity.
Thou art the bread of Egypt: shall thy sire
Fall by the well and die of hollow want?
Give me the map of our vicinity;
Of all the country winding round about
Within the precincts of our royal state
I know no land so sweetly watered,
So rich, so fertile, prosperous as this;
Besides, it touches on thy government,
And therefore will not tempt thee from our side.
Take thou this Ramasis unto thy sire
And all his house. The day that they come in
Command the heralds at the city gates
At trumpet's sound proclaim our royal will:
Where Pharaoh loves there let the people bow
And woe to him, stranger or Egypt born,
Who honors not thy sire and brethren:
The highest of the land shall fear the King.
Look to thy government and so farewell.
[Exit Pharaoh and Court.
| A Dramatic Scene | |