University of Virginia Library

Scene VIII.

—A Wood. Enter Callirrhoë, hiding some thing in her robe.
Callirrhoë.
Alone at last; deep in the shady hills,
The dark heights I have yearned for. Far below
A pyre is burning. Leap, ye glowing flames,
Leap up to me! Coresus, it avails
Nothing to heap thee with my proffered love.
Do we lay food and wine about the dead,
When the stiff lips are barred, to make amends
For past refusal to the trembling mouth?
Had I done evil deeds, I might atone;
The gods are gracious, and make clean from guilt.
But simply to have lived my summer through
And borne no roses! Nothing compensates
For dearth, for failure, when the season's past.
Ah me, ah me! and he besought my love
As wildly, passionately, as the dead
Beseech their burial. My heart aches with tears.
What do I see? Far down that alley'd green
Glimmers the statue of a human form;
Immovable it sits.
The aspect is Machaon's; yet I scarce
Dare give him speech, so inaccessible
He looks; aloof in spirit, like a god
Hardened against his suppliants

Machaon
(to himself).
The plague
Had spent itself; I clearly marked its course,
Tracked and predicted the returning health,
Dependent on no priestly sacrifice.
And yet what glory rested on the girl
Who could put life by for her people's peace.
And when he lay—Coresus—at her feet:—
I have watched many death-beds, seen where Death
Was the chief ministrant about the face,
Washing, and laying out the spirit's corse;—
With him it was quite otherwise; life there
Laid death to rest. It was rare dying, that!
Life uppermost at end of the hard strife;
Death forced to terms in the ensuing peace
Involving full subjection. I have brought
Word to Dione of that death. Poor child,
I think she loved him; when I said he died
To save Callirrhoë, she grew as white
As the white sheep-skin of her nebris-fringe,
And cried, “She was not worthy of his love;
She never loved him!”

Callirrhoë.
False, false; oh! she lied
And bore true witness to me all in one.
I never loved him, never.
Confession is the bitterest penalty
When wrongèd Love is plaintiff. I confess;
With this addition, that I love him now
With woman's rapture, when the man she loves
Is god for adoration. I am come
Humbly to supplicate I may receive
Initiation in the Bacchic rites,
And die his Mænad.

Machaon.
It would please him best
You should declare allegiance to the god,
And make all Calydon subservient
To the strange worship. Men acclimatize
To new emotion rapidly; it takes
Time to develop custom. Clear the truth
By uproar of the Asiatic band
Concealed, and overclamoured.

Callirrhoë.
You discern
There is a truth?

Machaon.
Rather a mystery
I would unravel. I have looked abroad,
And learnt to use life deftly as a tool
Keen-edged to execute my purposes.
I had no pleasure; I just won my ends,
Toiled and was served; there was no music born.
Whereas these Mænads, eager as hot Pan,
Catch up all life as the peculiar reed
To make sweet passage for their spirit's breath;
And Nature leaves her shyness, shows her mind,
This sullen Nature, laughing in my face,
Like an idiot, his imbecility
Made resonant
By shrieking echo from the void within.
Deep in the forest here, I found a faun
Coresus loved; I captured him, and tried
To tame his wildness; he would none of me,
Was stubborn, restive; when I made him feel
His master could not come to him again,
The creature blanched and shivered, and fled scared,
As though the news were mortal.

Callirrhoë.
Can it be!
A little, wizen body lies along
Yon root o' hazel; and a powdery heap
Of bones is close about; the hand still grips
A horny cone that purple-patches it.

Machaon.
Oh, bring me there! He went to the dead deer.
[They come to the hazel.]
'Tis he; and Death is spread all over him,
Death that looks startled at itself, as if
It had mis-settled, falling on a prey
Unnatural to its appetite. Ah me!
How brutal, coarse, and ignorant I stand
Beside this sweet stray in humanity;
A thing so passionately gay, it seemed
The fresh, warm juice that fills the hyacinth,
And pulses sudden verdure through the pines,
Leapt in his veins; the laughter of the spring
Flowed through him; Nature's vehemence and Youth's
Met in his rapture. Now I see him wear
Death's hoary aspect, shrunken and defaced,
The youth o' the world is gone.

Callirrhoë.
You say he loved
Coresus. I have never looked on one
Who loved him, and I never loved him—Oh!
Dione, you shall yet efface that word!

Machaon.
Here is another sacrifice. For me,
I taught this boy mortality, an art
Of which he was most innocent.

Callirrhoë.
Machaon, it is natural to die
Wherever love is; and Coresus gave
To this poor faun the faculty of love
That stirs the mortal craving. Be content!

Machaon.
Coresus killed him!

Callirrhoë.
If you'd have it so.

Machaon.
Better a plagueful of the city dead
Than this strange life miscarried; 'tis as if
A part of Nature were herself extinct
Coresus cursed all Calydon; here, here,
Machaon, is thy work!

Callirrhoë.
Most surely here,
Where Love hath made the great discovery
Of Death, a grey coast she must civilize.

Machaon.
Oh, never, never can man carry there
The Hestian flames; ne'er in the mother-shores
Of our humanity include that realm.

Callirrhoë.
Who dwell but with themselves grow impotent;
They have no Past; the Past is what hath been
Other than now; the Future is a guest
Comes not to them
Who will admit no novel influence.
Such can but iterate themselves. It needs
Heaven to transmute our days to yesterdays,
And touch our morrows with the mystery
Of hope; when men remembered and desired,
Straightway they worshippèd. Machaon, be
The priest of Dionysus.

Machaon.
You forget;
They would reject me, mindful of my scoffs.

Callirrhoë.
I know a way to win obedience.
Go quickly; gather the great scattered band.
I will await you; but the oath is sworn.

Machaon.
I would not leave that little corpse, except
To learn the secret how he came to die.
I am Machaon, and still curious.

[Exit.
Callirrhoë.
Dead of Coresus' love, poor little one;
Dead, dead for him? And he but stroked thy head,
And showed thee kindness; while for me, oh, see!
I bring this from him.
[Stabs herself with the sacrificial knife.
We will both be dead,
Dead with Coresus!

[Dies.
[Re-enter Machaon with Dione.]
Machaon.
Dione, come to her; look not so hard.
She was the stillest girl in Calydon,
Shy, and a little proud; be pitiful.
[Discovering Callirrhoë's body.
Fool that I was to leave her to herself,
And not divine she bound me to that oath,
To steal to her Coresus! Oh, my boy,
Thou dost not lie so orphanlike; 'tis well.

Mænads
(within).
Swiftly, ye Mænads, come to see this girl
Who brought the curse on Calydon; leap down
The rocks, encompass her!

1st Mænad.
Yonder's his pyre!
That mounting flame! She lit it; murder her!

Machaon.
Shriek on; the quiet of the dead is safe
As a babe's innocence.

2nd Mænad.
She is our prey.

Machaon.
A heap of leaves will shroud
Safe from espial any woodland thing.
[Covers faun.
Fair vot'ries of the civilizing god,
What delicate urbanity ye need!
Dione!

Dione.
He was our deliverer.
See, there! From that high ridge above the pyre,
A flitting form—no bat's wing!—there again
A Mænad tightens round her neck the coils
Of a live serpent, pressing in the fangs
Fiercely her finger-tips;—these will not live
Without Coresus.

Machaon.
Bare her corpse and speak.
For me, I'll watch them till the fever falls—
I have great patience with delirium.

[Hides.
[Enter Mænads.]
Dione.
This is a Mænad, see!

1st Mænad.
Her hair is tressed.
This face hath known no workings of the god;
It is an unsacked city. Ye are fools,
Duped by a stolen nebris.

Dione.
She came here
To join our company; she would not die
Till she had owned the Bromian, and bound
One who was witness of the sacrifice,
A mighty novice, to proclaim the king.

2nd Mænad.
Where is he? Where? All men have mocked at us.
We have come back half-murdered from the town,
Coresus hath forsaken us; he thought
No more of the barbarian women when
The Greek's white bosom glistened Woe to us!
Far are our homes across the sea, our priest
Is slain. Woe, woe! Our god delivers not.

Machaon
[advancing].
Most mightily he succours. Shame on ye,
Doubting your great divinity, the while
Cursed Calydon breathes the young spring-tide air.
I saw Coresus die; your great priest fell,
As Semele sank glowing with the god;
Life flooded him; he was immersed in life.
The power
That draws the white milk bubbling to your mouths
From the hard scaurs, brake out munificent
From kindled lips: this girl stayed not to weep,
Stooped not to kiss her lover; she stood up
Pleading, inspired, prophetic, eloquent,
Inciting the great multitude to praise
The city's saviour and Coresus dead.

1st Mænad.
She is a Mænad; she is one of us!

Machaon.
She would not slay herself where the great life
Had been laid down, though passionate to die.
She came here to the woods, and finding me,
Bound me to be your leader. Solemnly
I swore to bear true witness to the deeds
I had beheld. Believe me, I have looked,
Looked deep into your secret things, and own
The rustic deity who pressed the grape
A god that makes humanity august,
Fulfilling it with mystery and joy.

Mænad.
We take you, we accept you as our priest.

Dione.
The holy ritual . . .

Machaon.
Shall be observed.
If man need god as his ideal self,
He needs the picture of his life sublimed;
And we will put
Before men's eyes the picture of high deeds,
Their hearts will emulate. They shall see acts
Like hers, who poured her unpolluted life
A frank libation; shall again behold
Coresus, with the sacrificial knife,
And how he sheathed it. We will praise the god
By sculpture of the deeds he hath inspired;
Yet not in fixity, for you shall track
Each passion from its quick'ning to its pyre;—
Desires that momently disclose themselves,
In chasmic shock, as the Symplegades
Rift to the Euxine, must be held apart,
As by Athene's cleaving arms, access
Forced to the inmost heart. In you I see
Human emotion, action in the rough;
Your agitated gestures shall become
Rhythmic in tidal refluence, your hoarse shrieks
Sonorous intonations. Ye shall dance
And thunder in your mighty mountain hymns,
While I recount
The Evian conflicts, victories, and ye,
With glorious inroad of irruptive praise,
In chorus shall conclude the chronicle.
Do ye accept the doom, ye Bacchanals?

Mænads.
Take us, your garland-bearing company,
Adown the heights; their echoes shall resound
With flute and timbrel, and triumphant shout.

Machaon.
Soon as the sunrise vexes your closed eyes,
Spring from your coverts; rouse the sisterhood,
And, parting into ordered ranks your band,
Assemble here, that we, in solemn train,
May bear this maiden down the wooded steeps
Of Calydon for burial.

Dione.
The faun?

Machaon.
Hush, hush!
I'll bury him at day-break in the wood
While the dew keeps all quiet. Now, begone.
[Exeunt Dione and Mænads.
The white troops through the moonlight steal away;
The last pale nebris glimmers on the hills.
Now can I bare myself
To the white skin o' my spirit unto thee,
Great Evius!—finding not the wherewithal
To worship by the altar, but in life.
As I am Bacchanal, I will relax
No effort till mankind be broken in
By discipline of pleasure to true want
In commerce and in dream.—There is a stir
I' the heap of leaves. A few more silver hours,
And I must put them both away from me;—
Callirrhoë
Must go to her Coresus; and the boy—
I'll lay him in the sunny grass-plot, where
No other faun shall vex him with its dance.