The poems posthumous and collected of Thomas Lovell Beddoes

A large hall in the ducal castle. Through the windows in the back ground appears the illuminated city.
Enter Isbrand and Siegfried.
Isbr.
By my grave, Siegfried, 'tis a wedding-night.
The wish, that I have courted from my boyhood,
Comes blooming, crowned, to my embrace. Methinks,
The spirit of the city is right lovely;
And she will leave her rocky body sleeping,
To-night, to be my queenly paramour.
Has it gone twelve?

Siegfr.
This half hour. Here I've set
A little clock, that you may mark the time.

Isbr.
Its hand divides the hour. Are our guards here,
About the castle?

Siegfr.
You've a thousand swordsmen,
Strong and true soldiers, at the stroke of one.

Isbr.
One's a good hour; a ghostly hour. To-night
The ghost of a dead planet shall walk through,
And shake the pillars of this dukedom down.
The princes both are occupied and lodged
Far from us: that is well; they will hear little.

135

Go once more round, to the towers and battlements:
The bell, that strikes, says to our hearts ‘Be one;’
And, with one motion of a hundred arms,
Be the beacons fixed, the alarums rung,
And tyrants slain! Be busy.

Siegfr.
I am with them.

[Exit.
Isbr.

Mine is the hour it strikes; my first of life.
To-morrow, with what pity and contempt,
Shall I look back new-born upon myself!

Enter a servant.

What now?

Servant.
The banquet's ready.

Isbr.

Let it wait awhile:
The wedding is not ended. That shall be
No common banquet: none sit there, but souls
That have outlived a lower state of being.
Summon the guests.

[Exit servant.

Some shall have bitter cups,
The honest shall be banished from the board,
And the knaves duped by a luxurious bait.

Enter the Duke, Thorwald, and other guests.

Friends, welcome hither in the prince's name,
Who has appointed me his deputy
To-night. Why this is right: while men are here,
They should keep close and warm and thick together,

136

Many abreast. Our middle life is broad;
But birth and death, the turnstiles that admit us
On earth and off it, send us, one by one,
A solitary walk. Lord governor,
Will you not sit?

Thorw.
You are a thrifty liver,
Keeping the measure of your time beside you.

Isbr.
Sir, I'm a melancholy, lonely man,
A kind of hermit: and to meditate
Is all my being. One has said, that time
Is a great river running to eternity.
Methinks 'tis all one water, and the fragments,
That crumble off our ever-dwindling life,
Dropping into't, first make the twelve-houred circle,
And that spreads outwards to the great round Ever.

Thorw.
You're fanciful.

Isbr.
A very ballad-maker.
We quiet men must think and dream at least.
Who likes a rhyme among us? My lord governor,
'Tis tedious waiting until supper time:
Shall I read some of my new poetry?
One piece at least?

Thorw.
Well; without further preface,
If it be brief.

Isbr.

A fragment, quite unfinished,
Of a new ballad called ‘The Median Supper.’
It is about Astyages; and I
Differ in somewhat from Herodotus.

137

But altering the facts of history,
When they are troublesome, good governors
Will hardly visit rigorously. Attention!

(reads)

“Harpagus, hast thou salt enough,
“Hast thou broth enough to thy kid?
“And hath the cook put right good stuff
“Under the pasty lid?”

“I've salt enough, Astyages,
“And broth enough in sooth;
“And the cook hath mixed the meat and grease
“Most tickling to my tooth.”

So spake no wild red Indian swine,
Eating a forest rattle-snake:
But Harpagus, that Mede of mine,
And king Astyages so spake.

“Wilt have some fruit? Wilt have some wine?
“Here's what is soft to chew;
“I plucked it from a tree divine,
“More precious never grew.”

Harpagus took the basket up,
Harpagus brushed the leaves away;
But first he filled a brimming cup,
For his heart was light and gay.

138

And then he looked, and saw a face,
Chopped from the shoulders of some one;
And who alone could smile in grace
So sweet? Why, Harpagus, thy son.

“Alas!” quoth the king, “I've no fork,
“Alas! I've no spoon of relief,
“Alas! I've no neck of a stork
“To push down this throttling grief.

“We've played at kid for child, lost both;
“I'd give you the limbs if I could;
“Some lie in your platter of broth:
“Good night, and digestion be good.”

Now Harpagus said not a word,
Did no eye-water spill:
His heart replied, for that had heard;
And hearts' replies are still.

How do you like it?

Duke.
Poetry, they say,
Should be the poet's soul; and here, methinks,
In every word speaks yours.

Isbr.

Good. Do'nt be glad too soon.
Do ye think I've done? Three minutes' patience more.

A cannibal of his own boy,
He is a cannibal uncommon;

139

And Harpagus, he is my joy,
Because he wept not like a woman.

From the old supper-giver's pole
He tore the many-kingdomed mitre;
To him, who cost him his son's soul,
He gave it; to the Persian fighter:
And quoth,
“Old art thou, but a fool in blood:
“If thou hast made me eat my son,
“Cyrus hath ta'en his grandsire's food;
“There's kid for child, and who has won?

“All kingdomless is thy old head,
“In which began the tyrannous fun;
“Thou'rt slave to him, who should be dead:
“There's kid for child, and who has won?”

Now let the clock strike, let the clock strike now,
And world be altered!

(The clock strikes one, and the hour is repeated from the steeples of the city.)

Trusty time-piece,
Thou hast struck a mighty hour, and thy work's done;
For never shalt thou count a meaner one. [He dashes it on the ground.

Thus let us break our old life of dull hours,
And hence begin a being, counted not

140

By minutes, but by glories and delights. (He steps to a window and throws it open.

Thou steepled city, that dost lie below,
Time doth demand whether thou wilt be free.
Now give thine answer.

(A trumpet is heard, followed by a peal of cannon. Beacons are fixed, &c. The stage is lined with soldiery.)
Thorw.
Traitor, desperate traitor!
Yet betrayed traitor! Make a path for me,
Or, by the majesty that thou offendest,
Thou shalt be struck with lightning in thy triumph.

Isbr.

All kingdomless is the old mule,
In whom began the tyrannous fun;
Thou'rt slave to him, who was thy fool;
There's Duke for Brother; who has won?

Take the old man away.

Thorw.
I go: but my revenge
Hangs, in its unseen might, godlike around you.

[Exit guarded.
Isbr.

To work, my friends, to work! Each man his way.
These present instants, cling to them; hold fast;
And spring from this one to the next, still upwards.
They're rungs of Jacob's heaven-scaling ladder:
Haste, or 'tis drawn away.

[Exeunt cæteri.

141

O stingy nature,
To make me but one man! Had I but body
For every several measure of thought and will,
This night should see me world-crowned.

Enter a messenger.

What news bring'st thou?

Messr.
Friends of the governor hold the strongest tower,
And shoot with death's own arrows.

Isbr.

Get thee back,
And never let me hear thy voice again,
Unless to say, “'tis taken.” Hark ye, sirrah;
Wood in its walls, lead on its roof, the tower
Cries, “Burn me!” Go and cut away the draw-bridge,
And leave the quiet fire to himself:
He knows his business.

[Exit messenger.
Enter Ziba armed.

What with you?

Ziba.
I'll answer,
When one of us is undermost.

Isbr.
Ha! Midnight,
Can a slave fight?

Ziba.
None better. Come; we'll struggle,
And roar, and dash, and tumble in our rage,
As doth the long-jawed, piteous crocodile
With the blood-howling hippopotamus,

142

In quaking Nile.

Isbr.

Not quite so great; but rather,
Like to a Hercules of crockery
Slaying a Nemean lion of barley-sugar,
On a twelfth cake.

[They fight: Ziba is disarmed.

Now darest thou cry for mercy?

Ziba.
Never. Eternity! Come give me that,
And I will thank thee.

Isbr.

Something like a man,
And something like a fool. Thou'rt such a reptile,
That I do like thee: pick up thy black life:
I would not make my brother King and Fool,
Friend Death, so poor a present. Hence!

[Exit Ziba.

They're busy.
'Tis a hot hour, which Murder steals from Love,
To beget ghosts in.

[Enter Siegfried.

Now?

Siegfr.
Triumph! They cannot stand another half hour.
The loyal had all supped and gone to bed:
When our alarums thundered, they could only
Gaze from their frighted windows: and some few
We had in towers and churches to besiege.
But, when one hornet's nest was burnt, the rest
Cried quarter, and went home to end their naps.

143

Isbr.
'Twas good. I knew it was well planned.
Return,
And finish all. I'll follow thee, and see
How Mars looks in his night-cap. [Exit Siegfried.

O! it is nothing now to be a man.
Adam, thy soul was happy that it wore
The first, new, mortal members. To have felt
The joy of the first year, when the one spirit
Kept house-warming within its fresh-built clay,
I'd be content to be as old a ghost.
Thine was the hour to live in. Now we're common,
And man is tired of being merely human;
And I'll be something more: yet, not by tearing
This chrysalis of psyche ere its hour,
Will I break through Elysium. There are sometimes,
Even here, the means of being more than men:
And I by wine, and women, and the sceptre,
Will be, my own way, heavenly in my clay.
O you small star-mob, had I been one of you,
I would have seized the sky some moonless night,
And made myself the sun; whose morrow rising
Shall see me new-created by myself.
Come, come; to rest, my soul. I must sleep off
This old plebeian creature that I am.

[Exit.

University of Virginia Library

Scene IV.