University of Virginia Library

ACT I.

Scene I.

—The Temple of Bacchus, Calydon. Anaitis and other Mænads asleep on the steps. Enter Coresus.
Coresus.
She sleeps: what wearied wildness in that arm
That crowns the head above the twisted vine's
Noon-faded leaves! Spent agitation gives
Strange calmness to her face. There is no calm
Like that upon the sea after the wind
Hath frenzied its blue breast,—as prophecy
The bosom of a Pythoness,—and passed.
She wakes and gathers up diffused dark limbs,
Springing from slumber as a wild beast springs
Forth from its lair.

Anaitis.
Coresus!

Coresus.
Snatch not up
The thyrsus with so tremulous a grasp!
To-night there is high revel in the hills,
Mystic assembly in the deep recess
Of cloven altitudes; meanwhile, for rest
The women lie in heaps about the court,
Their dappled fawn skins laid aside for heat,
Their ruined wreaths of scarlet briony
And fennel-staves lying athwart the limbs,
That gleam the clearer in the glow of sleep.
So shall they stay till eventide. What dream,
Anaitis, thus hath broken thy repose?

Anaitis.
A dream I had—the altar!—Drops of gore!

Coresus.
Ay, thou rememberest how the hinds were torn
In the last chase. Dione cried to see
The fleecy fringes of her nebris dyed
In blood, and fled. Then didst thou catch her hair,
And fling her, as a slender ivy-wand,
Amid the bloody fragments. Thought of this,—
Her horror, thy o'erhasty violence,—
Hath trampled with rough footstep on thy rest.

Anaitis.
It was the altar: one for sacrifice
Was kneeling.

Coresus.
Yea, Dione, suppliant
Beneath thy chastening hand.

Anaitis.
Dione! No.
It was thy blood, Coresus, was the priest's!

Coresus.
Would the god suffer it? Anaitis, wake,
Be sober; I have work for thee to do!
Go forth, and to the maids of Calydon
Break the rich tidings that I bore to thee.

Anaitis.
Whom dost thou seek to gather to our band?

Coresus.
I know two maidens. One is Nephele,
The daughter of Megillus, a fleet roe,
Tethered, as goat, to graze, pulling the cord,
Not pasturing. Go, loose, and bring her here.

Anaitis.
An easy task. . . .

Coresus.
Not therefore meet for thee.
There is a girl: beside the sycamore,
Once when a mighty storm was gathering,
She came alone for water to the brook.
Her water-pot was rested on a ledge
Of stone, and she, her large arms rounding it,
Was looking up. From the cerulean
The glittering fire outbroke. It played on her;
I caught her face tempestuous with delight.
But momently
I looked on her; the crowd was gathering,
The swarthy bull was waiting for the knife,
And, ere the heavier thunder shook the shrine,
Its neck was severed. O Anaitis, there
Is the true Mænad! The wide difference
'Twixt love and love, and oh! the wider room
'Twixt pieties! from the profaner sort
That wreathes its victim as it roasts its flesh,
With the same hands, same temper; then the stir,
The flutter of fresh life religion brings
To common youthful ardour! but the few,
Who learn it not from custom, suddenly
Behold it, as Narcissus his fair form;
Would peril all for its embrace, discern
In it the image of the unknown self,
And leap to it adoring. Even thus
Will that still girl feel the entrancing awe
Of the great mysteries. And dare I dream
To-night, beneath the silver firs, in sight
Of the full-breathing heavens, she shall clasp
The thyrsus, loose the honey-golden locks,
Give her fair bosom to the breeze, her soul . . . ?
Anaitis, win her!

Anaitis.
Win her for yourself.

Coresus.
Till now the highest favour I could grant
Was to make known my will. Five wandering years
As faithful comrade of my rest and march
Thou hast been with me, not incapable
Of lofty energies, needs, sympathies,
Beyond thy sex. Now I behold thee shrink,
Shrink to mere woman in thy jealousy.
No helpful comrade, a base sycophant,
Whom one must bribe.

Anaitis.
'Tis false. My thyrsus bears
A steely summit and my breast is soft;
Thus will I slay Coresus' sycophant!

Coresus.
Mad fury! stay thine hand!

Anaitis.
And dost thou care,
Care that Anaitis bleed not?

Coresus.
Well, that day
The panther caught thee in his hungry paw,
I slew him; but I do not care to herd
With beasts as fierce as he, perfidious!

Anaitis
[crouching at his feet].
My master, pardon! thou didst rescue me.
Dost keep still the great scar.

Coresus.
Look not so wild!
Thou shalt not seek to move Callirrhoë,
Who wouldst but fright her with thy maniac face,
The sweetly-ordered one! But if to-night
The bright-cheek'd Nephele join not the dance,
Thou shalt endure still harder words of me.

Anaitis.
And if I bring her?

Coresus.
I will consecrate
To Dionysus. That is thy reward.

[Exeunt.

Scene II.

—Callirrhoë's Home. She is spinning.
Callirrhoë
(sings).
[Enter Nephele.]
What mean these crimson vine-leaves round thy feet,
My Nephele? Why is thy hair unbound,
Thy polished cheek rent with the bramble scar,
And thy bright lips discoloured? What! In tears?

Nephele.
Callirrhoë, oh! hide me in thy gown;
It is so perilous a grief, a shame
So wild and strange that I must tell thee of;
I tremble to remember it, and more
To tell it open-faced. To the red bower
Of oleander, by the forest-stream,
Where thou and I in girlish solitude
So oft have hidden for sweet conference,
I went, and looking up, saw—not thy clear
Calm brows, Callirrhoë—a face as bright
As burnished shield, with hair that looked alive,
And cloak of shining hide. I lay as still
As if a leopard couched there; but she came,
The wondrous creature, threw her spells on me,
And emptied my young heart as easily
As from a pomegranate one plucks the seeds.
And then she drew me, in caressing arms,
By secret pathways, to the temple-gates,
Where stood Coresus.

Callirrhoë.
The new Bacchic priest?
My father likes him not, thinks that the gods,
In scorn of mortal insolence, connive
At this chaotic fury in men's wits.

Nephele.
Callirrhoë, had you been there I think
You would have saved me. It seemed different
When great Coresus turned and looked on me.
He is himself a god. He beckoned me,
As the mild bull Agenor's child. We drank;
I let him loose and wreathe my hair alone.
He asked me—had I strength to dedicate
Myself to the delivering god. I felt
The Mænads gather round me. I was doomed,
And as a bride, half-swooning in the flare
Of Hymen's torches is borne blindly off,
I was caught up by the great choric throng,
And in a daze of wonder found myself
Whirling the thyrsus. . . . It may be I swooned.
When I awoke it was quite still. I thought
To creep home quietly, but my strange dress,
And a deep shame and wonder at myself,
Made me seek shelter with thee.

Callirrhoë.
Yes, thou shalt
Rest thee in mine own bed, and afterwards
I will anoint thy cheeks and braid thy hair,
Thou foolish child; and when less piteous
Thine aspect, I will give thee thy full due
Of blame. Now to my room.
[Exeunt.
[Re-enter Callirrhoë.]
(Sings.)
Well, I must scold her for her wilfulness,
And take her back, in penitence and tears,
To her old tasks. My spindle strikes the ground.
How strong of brain and heart perforce must be
The Fates who spin our lives, from the confused
And tangled mass of Destiny withdrawing
Fibres that form the web of our existence.
Oh! work terrific, solemn! Yet I'd be
A kind fate to my brother and my sire.
This thread should be the love of Nephele.
For when Emathion tells her father's praise,
“Not Omphale more cunning at the loom.”
And when I question archly—“Thou the god
Caught in her toils?” he turns from me and laughs.
And for my father. . . . But necessity
Dominates fate! Then is it well, indeed,
I cannot spin their lives for those I love;
Else had I died sooner than twist the black,
Thick thread of blindness through my father's days.
I wish Emathion would come! 'Tis late.
“See that the gods thy spinning love.”
[Noise without.]
'Tis he, my glorious brother, radiant
From the palæstra.

[Enter Emathion.]
Emathion.
At the spindle still,
My nimble-fingered, grave Callirrhoë?
Like feast day, I put by the work. The gods
Love not late spinning.

Callirrhoë.
I have nearly done.
Be patient, for I'm spinning you your life.
Twisting such threads of deep-dyed happiness,
As might inspire with proud impiety,
And ruin you.

Emathion.
What doom hangs in this thread?
Say, does the fibre run along with gold?

Callirrhoë.
A thing more precious.

Emathion.
Health, strong-sighted age,
Still beautiful?

Callirrhoë.
Nay, will you urge me still?

Emathion.
I'll threaten you ere long.

Callirrhoë.
Well, 'tis the love
Of Nephele. Good brother, you were warned,
And now!—But where's our father, for at noon
Your careful hand was guardian to his steps
That would to town? You have not left him lone,
Sightless among the crowd of seeing men?

Emathion.
I left him chatting with a hoary friend
Of tedious, ancient days, of unknown wars,
And men, whose names were but a link of sounds
Unto my recent ears. 'Tis wonderful
How old men when together will re-thrash
The out-thrashed past!

Callirrhoë.
I know that age's tardy converse, dull
With iterated stale experience,
Chafes youth's hot-blooded moods as station'd rock
The running stream. 'Tis easier far for me,
Who lead so still a life, to keep from fret;
The lake is always quiet round the stone.
Emathion, forgive; but the old man
Complains he rarely sees you with his hand,
Who wast his eyes' great object. Oftener
Be near to him. . . .

Emathion.
Poor father, I will sit
My hand in his when next he fills the hearth.

Callirrhoë.
My kind Emathion! I dare not pass
The door, now darkness mixes with the light,
Like dark wine spreading through clear water, yet
I'm ill at ease. Our father should be here.
'Tis growing dark, oh, not for him! But still
'Tis late. Emathion, step out and look.

Emathion.
Callirrhoë,
He told me I might leave him.

Callirrhoë.
Yes, I know.
[Exit Emathion.
So beautiful,
So gentle and so kind! I'm glad I told
About my father's plaint. Poor old blind eyes,
That cannot see him in his loveliness,
Most pity-worthy is your lack of sight!
I'm tired of spinning! In the viny sweeps
Of sunshine on the hills, if a god lurk,
Deliverer of women from their toil
In household darkness to the broad sweet light,
Do they so ill to flee to him for joy?
“Can it be meant,” I often ask myself,
“Callirrhoë, that thou shouldst simply spin,
Be borne of torches to the bridal-bed,
Still a babe's hunger, and then simply die,
Or wither at the distaff, who hast felt
A longing for the hills and ecstasy?”
The fair twinned sister of the Delian
Must empty the rich passions of her heart
Where purple arbute-boughs encompass her,
In safest silence, or the bosky oak
Lets not a sigh escape. She must be mute,
The fair twinned sister of the Delian.
For him, the sunshine and the song; for her,
The virgin lip and the inviolate shade.
Hear me, thou holy Huntress, and protect
My thoughts from lawless wandering beyond bound
Of thy own sacred precincts. Steps! of two!
Dear father!

[Enter Machaon and Emathion.]
Machaon.
He is safe at Cleitophon's.
I came lest you should fear, and on my way
I met my friend.

Callirrhoë.
My kind Machaon, thanks!
I own that anxious fear had just looked in
At door o' my heart. But enter.

Emathion.
Yes, I'd have
These Mænads cleared away. I hate their cries.

Machaon.
As peacock-shrieks at night.

Emathion.
I hate their wild
Contorted forms.

Machaon.
Like pines on Cithæron.
Your sister goes for water to the stream
That makes your doorway pleasant at all hours.
A rare and lusty maiden! Why, the jar
Sits on her head with firmer majesty
Than Rhea's towery crown. Lo, she returns,
With red and watery fingers, and a pot
Filled justly to the brim. Callirrhoë,
Give me a draught!

Callirrhoë.
The little twy-eared bowl—
Emathion, fetch it.

Emathion.
I don't know its place.

Callirrhoë.
I'll go.

[Exit.
Machaon.
'Tis pity you're too old to learn
(To Callirrhoë, who re-enters).
A cup-bearer to whom the gods should rise.
And now I've risen, I must straightway home.
My mother had my supper on the board—
A quail! I have not told you that I met
Megillus—in his head a thunder-storm,
Of which the lightning flashed from out his eyes.
It seems his daughter's made off to the hills.

Emathion.
Never!

Machaon.
Why, cheeks are Tyrian in a trice,
Emathion? Well, well! good-bye, fair friend.

[Exit.
Callirrhoë.
Brother, 'tis true. She lies upon my bed.
She was deceived, is sorry. Take her home.
If you would take her home, she might be spared
From punishment and tears—two gloomy blights
You should protect your rose from.

Emathion.
She has thorns.
I will not meet her parents.

Callirrhoë.
Fetch her nurse.

Emathion.
She ill deserves protection, yet in this
I'll be her slave to-night. Callirrhoë,
I threw the discus far beyond the rest.

Callirrhoë.
I'm very glad.

Emathion.
You only love too much
Your idle brother. I must have a kiss!
You were too dread for touch of mortal lip
While you were spinning Fate.

[Exit.
Callirrhoë.
The twilight falls
In showers of darkness. She will tell me all
The mystery of the effulgent night,
Up in the bluer dark among the stars,
Will Nephele. They say the new god shares
Pan's maziest secrets in deep fellowship;
That the birds speak and even the brooks reveal
The thoughts of their clear currents. Every day
I fill my pitcher by the bubbling stream,
Close to the sycamore. It seems a girl
Full of sweet impulse. I would gather her
To my still bosom, and receive her love;
But we are sundered. What if this new god
Of the warm vineyards and the budding trees
Could draw her trembling spirit to the brink?
It cannot be;
Else had our fathers known and worshipped him.
I reverence my father's old grey head;
I reverence antiquity, the hoar
Aspect of Time. What folly to revere
The headstrong, blustering present, Time's untrained,
Immodest youth! The elder age alone,
With Nestor-like authority, can hush
To-day's rough disputants. I hear its voice
Proclaiming the eternal pieties
These Mænads have be-mocked. I'll wake the child,
Ere my thoughts grow too angry; strip from her
The ivy meshes, cleanse her lips from stain,
And dress her in white vesture meet for maid.

[Exit

Scene III.

—Beneath a sycamore tree. Callirrhoë resting.
Enter Coresus at a distance.
Coresus.
How beautiful
The face, how fixed in its forlorness, wan
As Ariadne, when she kept the coast
Of Naxos, ever straining for a sail.
Ay, but Eleleus sought her with acclaim,
Crowned her, and set her bride-wreath in the stars.
Oh, how I love her! how I burn for her!
And yet I fear her obstinate as him
From whom as from the grape its purple coat
Iacchus tore the skin. Heaven ravish her!
Coresus is too weak.
Callirrhoë,
I seek for a strayed maiden, Nephele
Her name, a bearer of the Bacchic reed,
Lost on the hills last night. I oft have seen
Ye two together on the temple-steps
Or washing at the brook. Where is she fled?

Callirrhoë.
She's safe within her father's house, ashamed
Of her wild yester-revel and revolt
From seemliness and maiden modesty.
Seek not again to capture her!

Coresus.
I seek
To ransom, not enslave, Callirrhoë,
Calling all men to the Deliverer.
Look in mine eyes, and say if servitude
Be not your daily portion. Can you set
Your limbs free to the rhythm of your soul?
Is there a passion in you that dare speak?
Are not your bosom's offspring, young desires,
Served to you mutilate, a sick'ning food
By the world's impious custom? Spurn the feast
As the Divinity the Libyan dish!

Callirrhoë.
These are wild words, bewildering to the brain.

Coresus.
As heaven's inrush. Be brave, Callirrhoë;
Ask yourself have you not a deeper need
Than the stale rites of customary gods
Can satisfy? and speak in earnestness.
Tell me about yourself!

Callirrhoë.
I oft have longed
For speech with the dark sea and glittering hills,
For stories of the world, for wider care
And love of creatures other than myself.
Can your god give me these?

Coresus.
He came to bring
Life, more abundant life, into a world
That doled its joys as a starved city doles
Its miserable scraps of mummying bread.
He came to gladden and exalt, all such
Must suffer. Call men to the battle, swords
Clash the response; bid them arouse themselves
From foolish habit, customary sloth,
In bestial ignorance of your intent,
They trample, tear you. Dionysus thus
Suffered; he still endures at Calydon
Men's insolence in his rejected priest—
Though founder of fair laws, of citied life,
And guide to the untrodden paths of peace.

Callirrhoë.
The potent rioter! Of old the gods
Gave culture by the harp, the helm, the plough,
Not by the ivy-wand.

Coresus.
Seems it so strange
That Semele's sublime audacity
Should be the origin of life urbane?
We must be fools; all art is ecstasy,
All literature expression of intense
Enthusiasm: be beside yourself.
If a god violate your shrinking soul,
Suffer sublimely.

Callirrhoë.
Yet I hold it true,
Divinity oft comes with quiet foot.

Coresus.
To give a moment's counsel or to guard
From instant peril. When a god forsakes
Olympus to infuse divinity
In man's mean soul, he must confound, incite,
O'erwhelm, intoxicate, break up fresh paths
To unremembered sympathies. Nay, more,
Accompany me further in my thought,—
Callirrhoë, I tell you there are hours
When the Hereafter comes and touches me
O' the cheek. I see the triumph of the King,
The gleaming crag of the Acropolis,
The mustered city spectatorial
Of vast emotion on the hollowed hill.
In the midst the Bromian altars. Oh, he sways
That peopled amplitude, that press of life,
With so intense a tyranny he holds
The reins of its very breath. Men may not stand
Beholding, when the conflict's at the heat;
The event's cold ere it reaches them. There, there
They watch as mothers watch their wrestling sons,
Fell Mora with humanity in clutch,
The dying hero with the victor lip,
The lordless creature, dominant and lone.

Callirrhoë.
I tremble at your god, for terrible
In wrath I fear him; though you speak him fair.
I surely know
That he provokes men to unnatural deeds,
And once stirred frenzied mother as a fell
Tigress to murder her deluded son.

Coresus.
More shalt thou hear; more horrible detail
Of the avenger. Of a churlish king
Sudden he seized the recreant body, lashed
Its members severally limb by limb
To horses fleeter than strong Phœbus reins;
Nor shuddered when the dull Edonian
Left a mere sputtering trail behind the hoofs.

Callirrhoë.
Peace, peace, Coresus; he will bring us woes,
Woes on my father, on Emathion,
On Calydon, my city, if he bears
A breast so ruthless. I will hear no more.

Coresus.
Turn not away, Callirrhoë; by goads
The ox-souled must be driven; yield response
To Heaven's desire of thee; love humanly.
Love is the frenzy that unfolds ourselves;
Before it seize us we are ignorant
Of our own power as reed-bed of the pipe.
The rushes sang not; from Pan's burning lips
Syrinx sucked music. Wert thou lute to love
There were a new song of the heaven and earth.
I have been foolish frighting thee with things
Too wonderful for a soul-snooded girl
To bear the thought of; think of them no more;
Think but of me, no veiled divinity,
Coresus, a mere man, a suppliant
Clasping your knees in his extremity;
Craving the alms of your great love, and yet
Withal so ravenous at heart, he scarce
Can bide the time of his petitioning.

Callirrhoë.
I have not loved—

Coresus.
Till now. You cannot say
You love not.

Callirrhoë.
That I will not yield my love
To Bacchic priest, I can. From earliest days
I have been trained in the old pieties;
And oft 'mid common household work have smiled
To think how like the blessèd gods my hands
From chaos could educe a tiny world
Of perfect order. My dear father's peace
I will not wreck, as Nephele; he ne'er
Shall miss his daughter at the evening board,
Nor sadder, find her truant to herself,
Indocile, indolent. It cannot be
That any but a mocking messenger
Can come in Heaven's name to set the child
Against the parent.

Coresus.
As unseasoned wood
That smokes and will not kindle is flung by
For any refuse purpose, while the train
Of torchlight sinuous winds among the hills,
A starry serpent, so art thou cast out,
An apathetic slave of commonplace,
Sluggish and irreceptive of true life,
From all high company of heavenly things.
Go to your home.

Callirrhoë.
Oh Heaven shelter it!

Coresus.
Go home, Callirrhoë; ask if all be well
Within the city: do not fear men's looks,
Or any whispering about the streets.
The temple-rites reclaim me; from your loom
You have been too long absent. Go in peace.

[Exeunt severally.

Scene IV.

—A Bower in a Garden. Enter Emathion.
Emathion.
How beautiful is life and youth and love;
How fair are girls and boys—how more than fair
My Nephele!
Her brow is of as clear and warm a whiteness
As a young egg that lies in the dove's nest!
She comes! I'll hide!

[Hides.
[Enter Nephele.]
Nephele.
He is not here. Naughty Emathion.

Emathion
[apart].
But only just outside.

Nephele.
It is unkind! He vow'd to keep his time.

Emathion
[aloud].
And only kept his vow.

Nephele.
You naughty boy!

Emathion.
If you will call him good, he'll break his vow,
And run away directly.

Nephele.
Naughty boy!

Emathion.
If you will call him good, he'll keep his vow,
And come and sit by you.

Nephele.
He's a good boy.

Emathion.
Look at those roses, they are near each other,
And what do they keep doing?

Nephele.
Nothing much.

Emathion.
Why, lightly touching.

Nephele.
There's a wind that makes them.

Emathion.
Love be our wind!

[Kisses her.
Nephele.
There's some one stepping past.
'Tis Hylia and her father.

Hylia.
He hath asked,
Hath asked my love.

Acephalus.
He is an amorous youth!
Go wed—but don't forget old father, girl.

Hylia.
Oh no, nor mother. I will come across
And kiss you every morning.

Acephalus.
Do not cry.
Astynous, if he saw, would think I said
You should not marry him, and yet he'd see
It was not rain of grief, but the first dew
O' the dawn of joy.

[They pass on.
Nephele.
I wish my father loved me.
He beats me; you won't?

Emathion.
Beat you! Horrible!
I cannot beat a dog. Don't talk of it.
Look at that cyclamen!—
The little flowery satyr, all white ears.
It must not hear of anything but love.
I love you—let it hear that you love me.

Nephele.
I love you.

Emathion.
Nephele,
Thus should life be one chord of youth, love, joy!

Scene V.

—Temple of Dionysus. Before the Altar.
Enter Coresus and Anaitis.
Coresus.
Gall thrown in sweetest wine will make the cup
As bitter as 'twas sweet. Throw poison in,
And it is venomous as cockatrice.
The goblet of my love holds now a draught
'Twere death to wet the lips with. She has scorned
My god, my passion, as she might refuse
A gift of oleander some light boy
Would lay in her pale bosom. So she spurned
The human gift of my man's utter love,
So great, it grew Titanic in its bulk,
With swelling sinews of immense desire,
And laid its own magnificent excess
At her feet for her to wonder at and scorn.
Woe, woe to her!
About the columns booms a shout of woe,
Responsive to my menace. 'Tis the god
Sealing my malediction. Now instead
Of that grand prostrate love, hate's feller form
Encounters her—a Herculean power
Equipped for vengeance. I will make her quail,
Anaitis! Those proud lips that scorned my love
Shall blanch and quiver. Dost thou think of it,
My love, Anaitis?

Anaitis.
Ay, an icy girl,
With veins that knew not summer.

Coresus.
With a heart
Colder than coldest marble in a vault.

Anaitis.
Thou hatest her?

Coresus.
As light-bereaving death.

Anaitis.
Then let me spread my hair upon her!

Coresus.
Nay.
To tear the lovely branches of her limbs
From their white trunk were suffering too small,
Too easy.

Anaitis.
Let me tear her. 'Tis enough.
I'm hungry for her.

Coresus.
Woman-tiger, nay!
Thou shalt not tear her.

Anaitis.
Let me curse her then—
Call madness, bid it plunge its scarlet brand
Within her brain to burn as stubble.

Coresus.
Nay.
On her no curse; but on her city set
Long-famished plague. That curse as flicker cast
Athwart the mourner's face from glaring pyre
That feeds on what is precious, will evoke
Worse agonies than the sharp pangs of death.

Anaitis.
My arms are lifted upward. Lift up thine.

Coresus.
I lift them to a god who can chastise.

Anaitis.
Speak, call, nay shout to Heaven!

Coresus.
Bacchus, hear
Thine injured priest, thou great Revenger, hear!
Throughout the city let quick murrain breed;
Drive Sleep away from his grim brother Death,
And then let Death pass single through the gates.
Let hardy limbs grow slack, crook up and fall—
Then burn and stiffen. Populate the streets
With Hades' ghosts, long, fleshless, pallid men.
Let the foul body know no laving hand;
And let no flowers touch the hideous face;
The mouth receive no coin; no bed be dressed;
No jar of water stand before the door.
Let the whole city be one house of death,
The gates its theshold, and humanity
Its single corpse. Be Vesta's flame extinct,
While ravening funereal fires leap high
Fierce from consuming corpses. Let strange fear
Flap wings unseen that beat upon the heart
Bestilling it with terror. Thus revenge!

Anaitis.
Hear!

Coresus.
Hear!

[Thunder and lightning.
Anaitis.
The lightning flares, the thunder rolls!

Coresus.
Our prayer is heard!

Anaitis.
And granted by the god.

Coresus.
Dreadful the “yes” of the omnipotent.

Anaitis.
Silence, not thunder, were a dreadful thing.

Coresus.
The tomb is wide as mouth of tragic mask.

Anaitis.
Wide for the god's and for thine enemies.

Coresus.
Io triumphe! Io! for the sign!

Anaitis.
The silence is as dreadful as when corpse
With all the wailing women hath been borne
Away, and the house echoes to no step
Or voice.

Coresus.
And in this silence it may be
That Destiny receives within her womb
Plague; and ere night descend—
The rapid birth may be accomplish'd—Doom
Rent by Fulfilment, and, 'mid human shrieks,
The slaughterous child of wrath be recognised.
During the throes of the great birth, my brain
Is restless. I must rove, I cannot rest.

Anaitis.
Woe to the arms that first receive the child.

Coresus.
Woe to the city of whose life 'tis heir!

[Exeunt severally.

Scene VI.

—A Wood. Enter Dione.
Dione.
Oh, the deep woods!
I feel they hide within their inmost hearts
Some strange and thrilling secret, mighty, dark,
Unshared by mountain, sea, or Heaven's self.
My childhood felt its burthen when the shade
Of the green darkness grew about the path
I followed for dropt nut or lonely bloom.
Oh, to be friend to the great forest, earn
Its trust, and penetrate its green reserve!
Within the bosky dells,
And breathless gloom of the dense leaves, I've grown
Familiar with the gentle happy fauns,
And mystic dryads with dun crowns of oak.
Yet these too share the mystery of their woods,
They feel it, round their simple lips it lurks,
But cannot take expression.—Angry steps
Crack the curled arbute-leaves upon the ground.
The feet are brown! I'm very lonely here!
Coresus! but I tremble at his brow.

Coresus.
Ye gods!
A hurricane is raging in my heart,
And shaking the foundations of my life
Almost to ruin. Round me all is still,
So still, I could throw up my arms and beat
The bushes till they whirled, only to make
What is without me more like that within.
To think the vaulted world holds not a breeze,
And all its winds are packed into this heart!
Come, storm; come, crackling gale and tempest, come!
I'd bear the wild contention of my breast.
But outer calm, dark green serenity,
Coo of a ring-dove; it is maddening,
Provocative of torment and impatience
That makes the torment worse!

Dione
[aside].
It is a song!
Who sings thus timely? 'Tis a little faun
Coresus loves, with buoyant happiness
Almost in flight. I'll slip away and watch.
[Hides at a distance.

Faun
(singing).

Coresus.
My silly faun, glad that thou hadst thy wish;
Would that a flower encompassed mine, and not
A stricken city!
A blossom holds a bee, a city plague.
My childish faun immures the murmuring bee,
I the malignant plague. How far apart,
How sundered by such difference of choice,
Are he and I!

Faun.
I'm tired.

Coresus.
And yesterday
We gathered chestnuts and our laughter mixed!

Faun.
Listen, you do not listen; I am tired.

Coresus.
I hear! Ha, boy, thine eyes agaze! Laugh, boy!
Thou wilt not laugh? Thy face was cut for smiles.

Faun.
I love you.

Coresus.
Pretty faun, methinks thou dost.

Faun.
I had a little heap o' hazel nuts
I counted underneath the silver fir.
A squirrel came, his tail along his back,
And looked at me until I gave him half.

Coresus.
'Twas a bold squirrel!—O my god, my god!
Scatter my wild prayer, even as the wind
Disperses foam the wrathful sea uplifts.
Scatter it thus! Oh, I was deeply moved!
Had I no cause?—no cause? That could not be.
I suffered scorn, insufferable wrong,
Shame ineffaceable! I marked her mouth,
I saw it push out as a bud of rose;
It parted into blossom, and for scent
I got a taunt, still in my nostrils rank.
I'll give her fragrance, smell of rotting friends;
She shall draw in the odours of sweet death.
She shall—But tell me of the pigeon's nest.

Faun.
Why, yester-morn an egg lay on the twigs,
On the hard twigs.
I pitied it, and laid it on the moss
At foot o' the tree. This morning it was cold;
And so I pitied it again, and put
It back. To-morrow I shall find it warm.
Shall I not, master?

Coresus.
Yes.—She would not love
A Bacchic priest, she said. Because I serve
Religion am I then unfit for Love?
What! does religion blurr the face or dwarf
The stature, lame the feet, or make one shoulder
O'ertop the other?
Because I strike with sacrificial knife,
A woman stabs my honour with her tongue.
Because I pour libations to the god,
A woman empties all her scorn on me.
A priest's love, like a sinewless old hound,
Is kicked aside! My office is a brand
That stamps me despicable in the eyes
Of the one being I have ever loved
To my love's height and stretch of my heart's arms.—
And is the ant-hill busy?

Faun.
Yes, indeed.
The ants are busy day and night, and yet
I think they're sometimes idle, for they run
About my hand and to and fro; I call
That play, and laugh at them.

Coresus.
She scorned the priest,
Then did she scorn the god. My wrath is holy,
Sacred and priestly. Ay, Callirrhoë,
Priestly, I say.

Faun.
You're dull as the old owl,
Who, when I dance, looks straight before his beak,
And, when I laugh, turns round his eye on me!
I do not like the owl.

Coresus.
Be still, be still.
It's growing dark. My heart's a cataract
Of whirling blood; my veins are furious channels
Of crimson passion. I am drunk with wrath,
I stagger, and the trees appear to writhe.
What, have they got the plague? And all the people
Will writhe their arms like that?

Faun.
I wonder if the woodpecker would cease
His knocking to the dryad in the tree
If I ran up?

Coresus.
I wonder if the first
Blue corpse is carried out in Calydon.

Faun.
I'll try his true love for the hidden girl.

Coresus.
And I will see if any yet be dead.
[Exit wildly.
Dione [advancing.].
Weep not. He's sad, and doth not love thee less.
I'll with thee to the ant-hill. Show the way,
And dance along.

[Exeunt.