SALEMENES | |
That easy, far too easy, idle nature, | |
Which I would urge thee. O that I could rouse thee! | |
Though ’twere against myself. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
65 | The man would make me tyrant. |
SALEMENES | |
Think’st thou there is no tyranny but that | |
Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice – | |
The weakness and the wickedness of luxury – | |
The negligence – the apathy – the evils | |
70 | Of sensual sloth – produce ten thousand tyrants, |
Whose delegated cruelty surpasses | |
The worst acts of one energetic master, | |
However harsh and hard in his own bearing. | |
The false and fond examples of thy lusts | |
75 | Corrupt no less than they oppress, and sap |
In the same moment all thy pageant power | |
And those who should sustain it; so that whether | |
A foreign foe invade, or civil broil | |
Distract within, both will alike prove fatal: | |
80 | The first thy subjects have no heart to conquer; |
The last they rather would assist than vanquish. | |
SARDANAPALUS: | |
SALEMENES: | |
A natural love unto my infant nephews; | |
85 | Faith to the king, a faith he may need shortly, |
In more than words; respect for Nimrod’s line; | |
Also, another thing thou knowest not. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
SALEMENES | |
Yet speak it; | |
I love to learn. | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
90 | Never was word yet rung so in my ears — |
Worse than the rabble’s shout, or splitting trumpet: | |
I’ve heard thy sister talk of nothing else. | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
SALEMENES | |
95 | Unto the echoes of the nation’s voice. |
SARDANAPALUS | |
As thou hast often proved – speak out, what moves thee? | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
SALEMENES | |
For they are many, whom thy father left | |
100 | In heritage, are loud in wrath against thee. |
SARDANAPALUS | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
SALEMENES | |
In mine a man who might be something still. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
105 | Have they not peace and plenty? |
SALEMENES | |
More than is glorious; of the last, far less | |
Than the king recks of. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
But the false satraps, who provide no better? | |
SALEMENES | |
110 | Beyond his palace walls, or if he stirs |
Beyond them, ’tis but to some mountain palace, | |
Till summer heats wear down. O glorious Baal! | |
Who built up this vast empire, and wert made | |
A god, or at the least shinest like a god | |
115 | Through the long centuries of thy renown, |
This, thy presumed descendant, ne’er beheld | |
As king the kingdoms thou didst leave as hero, | |
Won with thy blood, and toil, and time, and peril! | |
For what? to furnish imposts for a revel, | |
120 | Or multiplied extortions for a minion. |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Forth as a conqueror. By all the stars | |
Which the Chaldeans read – the restless slaves | |
Deserve that I should curse them with their wishes, | |
125 | And lead them forth to glory. |
SALEMENES | |
Semiramis – a woman only – led | |
These our Assyrians to the solar shores | |
Of Ganges. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
SALEMENES | |
130 | Not vanquish’d. With but twenty guards, she made |
Good her retreat to Bactria. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Left she behind in India to the vultures? | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
That she had better woven within her palace | |
135 | Some twenty garments, than with twenty guards |
Have fled to Bactria, leaving to the ravens, | |
And wolves, and men – the fiercer of the three, | |
Her myriads of fond subjects. Is | |
Then let me live in ignominy ever. | |
140 | SALEMENES |
Semiramis, the glorious parent of | |
A hundred kings, although she fail’d in India, | |
Brought Persia, Media, Bactria, to the realm | |
Which she once sway’d – and thou | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
145 | She but subdued them. |
SALEMENES | |
That they will need her sword more than your sceptre. | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
I’ve heard my Greek girls speak of such – they say | |
He was a god, that is, a Grecian god, | |
150 | An idol foreign to Assyria’s worship, |
Who conquer’d this same golden realm of Ind | |
Thou prat’st of, where Semiramis was vanquish’d. | |
SALEMENES | |
That he is deem’d a god for what he did. | |
155 | SARDANAPALUS |
Not much as man. What, ho! my cupbearer! | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
And ancient conqueror. Some wine, I say. | |
[ | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
160 | Which bears the name of Nimrod’s chalice. Hence, |
Fill full, and bear it quickly. | |
[ | |
SALEMENES | |
A fitting one for the resumption of | |
Thy yet unslept-off revels? | |
[ | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
If these barbarian Greeks of the far shores | |
165 | And skirts of these our realms lie not, this Bacchus |
Conquer’d the whole of India, did he not? | |
SALEMENES | |
SARDANAPALUS | |
Which may be his, and might be mine, if I | |
170 | Thought them worth purchase and conveyance, are |
The landmarks of the seas of gore he shed, | |
The realms he wasted, and the hearts he broke. | |
But here, here in this goblet is his title | |
To immortality – the immortal grape | |
175 | From which he first express’d the soul, and gave |
To gladden that of man, as some atonement | |
For the victorious mischiefs he had done. | |
Had it not been for this, he would have been | |
A mortal still in name as in his grave; | |
180 | And, like my ancestor Semiramis, |
A sort of semi-glorious human monster. | |
Here’s that which deified him - let it now | |
Humanise thee; my surly, chiding brother, | |
Pledge me to the Greek god! | |
SALEMENES | |
185 | I would not so blaspheme our country’s creed. |
SARDANAPALUS |