University of Virginia Library

Scene I

Jericho: the garden of the royal pleasure-house. In front a bathing-tank; above it terraces masked by balm-shrubs. A voice is heard calling:

Mariamne! Mariamne!
Can she have slipped down from the parapet?

[Herod is seen through the branches.
Herod.
Or has she crept to the smooth tanks to breathe
The air of the water?
No, the bathing-tanks
Are guarded for some sport,
[Cries and laughter of unseen swimmers.
And there is congregation on the shores.
If she could know, if she could but conceive!
A moment's absence tightens all my breath!
Mariamne! Mariamne!
How often I evoke her to the echo!
Mariamne! Very oft
I call down to my soul to her, and there
She answers in abundance, as the corn
That the large waters woo to sudden tilth.
I would that she were only in my soul!
. . . On every element
I call to do her injury. . . . I love her
The way I hate a foe I cannot strike.
[The sound of laughter and cries is now close.
My Gauls at play!—
[To a boy, who rests on the edge of the tank.
Child, you are bathing? Child,
To watch your seats!

Aristobulus.
But I must rest a little.

Herod.
Lay your clothes on you; rest within my tent.

Aristobulus
(laughing and pointing to the Gauls).
Not while this rank of glittering teeth and eyes
Is fastened on me—no!
Your Gauls can swim; they challenge,
Till I am turned to dolphin, or a boat
Shot by Phœnician skill to sea. Their challenge
Must have a royal answer. I must triumph,
Must I not, Herod?—or my royal blood
Were undistinguished in this drowsy pool.
I rest for safer triumph. Then to dive
Under the water and there hear the shouts
Of the people who applaud my art and worship
Outside my crystal walls!

Herod.
Are you a god?
I sometimes fear that you may be Apollo.
Caress me, O my dear!
You sail away?

[Aristobulus dives. Herod gazes out as if he had lost something.
Aristobulus
(reappearing at Herod's feet).
Ha, brother!—this my homage.

Herod.
O plunged swan,
Is this your homage?
Dive down in the water!
You dazzle me too much.

Aristobulus.
I am scarcely breathed.

Herod.
No. . . . I would have you, all your beauty, held
Safe down in yonder crystal. I would hear
No more of homage, triumph, god or man,
Ambition, rivalry. I would stoop down,
And hear the pond lap over you, and know
Your sovereign, lovely body safe beneath.
Safe . . . Do you stare?
Ay, safe as gods are in their hyaline,
Assuaging and eternal, armed with distance
As with a silver mail. . . . Aristobulus!
A perfect priest and king for shawms to greet,
But in retirement, safe. . . . Aristobulus!—
And only mine.
[He bends above Aristobulus.
. . . You are her very image.
Why have the sons and daughters of old kings
These lids, this arrogance of lip?
My wilful,
Why do you lie and rest so in the sun,
Idling your powers away?
[To certain of the Gauls, who have been following his every word and motion.
Dive, dive!
My Beauty,
Have you no breath for this?
. . . The smiling water
Must be your element—to play with it,
As birds play with the air around.
Delicious
The water and the musky scents!

[They remain still and enjoying.
Aristobulus.
See, Herod,
Your divers reappear.

Herod
(hastily rising).
You love the water!
I am jealous. Drink,
Drink of it till you are a very god!
[He watches the bubbles on the surface of the water, then climbs the terraces.
Close-covered as the dead be those I love . . .
Sunk down, and to the source
Of my desire. . . . Death, death!

[His voice rolls out like a peal of low thunder in a radiant sky.