University of Virginia Library

The night before he sailed for Sicily,
Timoleon, leader of a noble band,
Did to the partners of his glorious toil
These words address, or words much like to these—

‘Friends, fellows with me in one grand emprise,
Who wait but for the early light, prepared
Soon as the pale east glimmers into gold,
Boldly to launch into the open sea;
Friends, who shall not the temper of your souls
One jot abate, till Sicily once more
Is nurse of beauteous arts, of kindly men,
And haunt once more of Presences divine;
Some pages in the story of my life
To you are known; 'twere well you should know all.
The Sun-god with his crown of light and robes
Of rosy red is yet far off, and gives
No signals of his coming: hearken then;
The story may do more than cheat the time.

‘My brother,—he was known to some of you;
By some, I think, was loved. I loved him well;
And bear upon my body to this hour
The print of Argive spears, which, meant for him,
Prone lying, headlong from his saddle thrown,
I took for mine on one disastrous day.
Well pleased I saw him step by step ascend
From high to higher, till our common weal
Owned none that owned a greater name than his.
But ah! the pang, when great among the great
Seemed not to him enough: he must be all;
And so, misusing power too lightly lent,
He changed our laws at will, and citizens
Sent uncondemned, untried, to bloody dooms.
In vain I warned him there was wrath abroad,
That this proud city of the double sea
Had never unto tyrants bowed the neck,
And would not now; and more than this I did.
Two taking with me of our chief of men,
A suppliant at his feet I knelt, I fell;
Only to find, too often found before,
Derision and a fierce resolve that bad
Should grow to worse. In the end I stood aside,
And in my mantle, weeping, hid my face,
While the dread deed that should make Corinth free
Was acted. When the rumour of it spread,
Some said it was well done, and some said ill;
Some called me fratricide, and some were fain
To honour, as men honour saviour gods.
I could have borne the praise, or borne the blame,
And lived my own life, little heeding either;
But presently thick darkness fell on me,
When she that bare, and once had loved us both,
Stern mother, took the part of her dead son
Against the living; me saw never more,
Refused to look upon my face again,
And, granting no forgiveness, lived and died.

‘I meanwhile, laden with a mother's curse,
By those avenging goddesses pursued,
That fright the doers of strange deeds of blood,
In solitary places far astray,
On the wild hills, beside the lone sea-shore,
Wandered, a man forbidden and forlorn:
The glory and the gladness of my youth,
Its unreturning opportunities,
All gone;—how then I hated streets and schools,
And all the faces that one met in them;
And hated most of all myself, until
It little lacked but that with hands profane
I had laid waste the temple of my life,
And ended all.

‘While thus it fared with me,
The slow years dragging on their sullen length,
A cry of anguish travelled o'er the deep
From that fair island of the western wave,
Dear to the goddess of the foodful earth,
Dear to the pale Queen of the underworld;
Which now, as daughter unto mother fleeing,
Bemoaned her sad self, wrecked and shorn and torn
Scorched and consumed in Moloch's furnace fires,
A solitude of hate,—where nothing lived,
But what deserved to die,—till now the grass
Grew rank in her untrodden streets, and worse
Than wild beasts harboured in her marble halls.

‘You know the rest,—what pity filled all hearts
When the sad story of her wrongs was heard,
Which now is Cynosure of all our eyes;
And yet withal how hard it proved to choose
A captain of the liberating host;
And some cried one, and some another name,
While this man doubted of himself, and that
Was doubted of by others; till at last
One from the concourse cried ‘Timoleon,’
Name strange to lips of men for twice ten years.
Some say it was a voice from heaven, and some
The word of a plain simple countryman.
I know not. It perchance was both in one.
But this or that, all hailed it as the thought
And inspiration of the holy gods:
And one whose word went far, bespake me thus:
“Do well, and we shall count thee tyrant-slayer:
Do ill, and name we name not shall be thine.”
So be it; by this law I will be judged.

‘The end proves all; and that is still to come;
And yet sometimes I nigh persuade myself
I have drunk out the bitter of my life;
And if I only keep the truth, and keep
My hands and heart from things accursed, you few,
My few, shall scatter Afric's alien hordes,
Chase worse than wild beasts from their treacherous lairs;
The stars shall in their courses fight for us;
And all the elements shall work for us;
And the sweet gods of Hellas, by the shrieks
Of immolated children scared away,
These, girt already for their glad return,
Shall show how easy all things prove for them
That have immortal Helpers on their side.
And there shall wait on me, on me who seemed
Exiled for ever from the tenderness
Of human hearts, from all things good and fair,
The golden tribute of a people's love.
And when my work is ended, multitudes
Apparelled all in white, and crowned with flowers,
As for a great day of high festival,
Shall with large tears of sorrow and of joy
Bear me, a victor, to my funeral pyre:
So limns itself the future to my sight.

‘But lo! enough. The day is breaking fast,
And we are called. Hyperion's eager steeds,
The tempest-footed coursers of the dawn,
Are straining up the slope of eastern heaven,
And from their fiery nostrils blow the morn.’