Selected Poems (132 page)

I quicken him to heavier pain? The fever

Of this tumultuous night, the grief too of

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His wound, though slight, may cause all this, and shake

Me more to see than him to suffer. No:

Let Nature use her own maternal means, —

And I await to second, not disturb her.

SARDANAPALUS
[
awakening
]: Not so – although ye

multiplied the stars,

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And gave them to me as a realm to share

From you and with you! I would not so purchase

The empire of eternity. Hence – hence –

Old hunter of the earliest brutes! and ye,

Who hunted fellow-creatures as if brutes!

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Once bloody mortals – and now bloodier idols,

If your priests lie not! And thou, ghastly beldame!

Dripping with dusky gore, and trampling on

The carcasses of Inde – away! away!

Where am I? Where the spectres? Where – No – that

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Is no false phantom: I should know it ’midst

All that the dead dare gloomily raise up

From their black gulf to daunt the living. Myrrha!

MYRRHA
: Alas! thou art pale, and on thy brow the drops

Gather like night dew. My beloved, hush –

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Calm thee. Thy speech seems of another world,

And thou art lord of this. Be of good cheer;

All will go well.

SARDANAPALUS
: Thy
hand
– so – ’tis thy hand;

’Tis flesh; grasp – clasp – yet closer, till I feel

Myself that which I was.

MYRRHA
:At least know me

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For what I am, and ever must be – thine.

SARDANAPALUS
: I know it now. I know this life again.

Ah, Myrrha! I have been where we shall be.

MYRRHA
: My lord!

SARDANAPALUS
: I’ve been i’ the grave – where worms

are lords,

And kings are — But I did not deem it so;

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I thought ’twas nothing.

MYRRHA
:So it is; except

Unto the timid, who anticipate

That which may never be.

SARDANAPALUS
:Oh, Myrrha! if

Sleep shows such things, what may not death disclose?

MYRRHA
: I know no evil death can show, which life

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Has not already shown to those who live

Embodied longest. If there be indeed

A shore where mind survives, ’twill be as mind,

All unincorporate: or if there flits

A shadow of this cumbrous clog of clay,

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Which stalks, methinks, between our souls and heaven,

And fetters us to earth – at least the phantom,

Whate’er it have to fear, will not fear death.

SARDANAPALUS
: I fear it not; but I have felt – have seen –

A legion of the dead.

MYRRHA
:And so have I.

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The dust we tread upon was once alive,

And wretched. But proceed: what hast thou seen?

Speak it, ’twill lighten thy dimm’d mind.

SARDANAPALUS
:Methought –

MYRRHA
: Yet pause, thou art tired — in pain — exhausted; all

Which can impair both strength and spirit: seek

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Rather to sleep again.

SARDANAPALUS
:Not now – I would not

Dream; though I know it now to be a dream

What I have dreamt: – and canst thou bear to hear it?

MYRRHA
: I can bear all things, dreams of life or death,

Which I participate with you in semblance

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Or full reality.

SARDANAPALUS
: And this look’d real,

I tell you: after that these eyes were open,

I saw them in their flight – for then they fled.

MYRRHA
: Say on.

SARDANAPALUS
: I saw, that is, I dream’d myself

Here – here – even where we are, guests as we were,

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Myself a host that deem’d himself but guest,

Willing to equal all in social freedom;

But, on my right hand and my left, instead

Of thee and Zames, and our custom’d meeting,

Was ranged on my left hand a haughty, dark,

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And deadly face – I could not recognise it,

Yet I had seen it, though I knew not where:

The features were a giant’s, and the eye

Was still, yet lighted; his long locks curl’d down

On his vast bust, whence a huge quiver rose

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With shaft-heads feather’d from the eagle’s wing,

That peep’d up bristling through his serpent hair.

I invited him to fill the cup which stood

Between us, but he answer’d not – I fil’d it –

He took it not, but stared upon me, till

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I trembled at the fix’d glare of his eye:

I frown’d upon him as a king should frown –

He frown’d not in his turn, but look’d upon me

With the same aspect, which appall’d me more,

Because it changed not; and I turn’d for refuge

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To milder guests, and sought them on the right,

Where thou wert wont to be. But —

[
He pauses
.]

MYRRHA
:What instead?

SARDANAPALUS
: In thy own chair – thy own place in the

banquet –

I sought thy sweet face in the circle – but

Instead – a grey-hair’d, wither’d, bloody-eyed,

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And bloody-handed, ghastly, ghostly thing,

Female in garb, and crown’d upon the brow,

Furrow’d with years, yet sneering with the passion

Of vengeance, leering too with that of lust,

Sate: – my veins curdled.

MYRRHA
:Is this all?

SARDANAPALUS
:Upon

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Her right hand – her lank, bird-like right hand – stood

A goblet, bubbling o’er with blood; and on

Her left, another, fill’d with – what I saw not,

But turn’d from it and her. But all along

The table sate a range of crowned wretches,

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Of various aspects, but of one expression.

MYRRHA
: And felt you not this a mere vision?

SARDANAPALUS
:No:

It was so palpable, I could have touch’d them.

I turn’d from one face to another, in

The hope to find at last one which I knew

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Ere I saw theirs: but no – all turn’d upon me,

And stared, but neither ate nor drank, but stared,

Till I grew stone, as they seem’d half to be,

Yet breathing stone, for I felt life in them,

And life in me: there was a horrid kind

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Of sympathy between us, as if they

Had lost a part of death to come to me,

And I the half of life to sit by them.

We were in an existence all apart

From heaven or earth — And rather let me see

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Death all than such a being!

MYRRHA
:And the end?

SARDANAPALUS
: At last I sate, marble, as they, when rose

The hunter and the crone; and smiling on me –

Yes, the enlarged but noble aspect of

The hunter smiled upon me – I should say,

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His lips, for his eyes moved not – and the woman’s

Thin lips relax’d to something like a smile.

Both rose, and the crown’d figures on each hand

Rose also, as if aping their chief shades –

Mere mimics even in death – but I sate still:

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A desperate courage crept through every limb,

And at the last I fear’d them not, but laugh’d

Full in their phantom faces. But then – then

The hunter laid his hand on mine: I took it,

And grasp’d it – but it melted from my own;

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While he too vanish’d, and left nothing but

The memory of a hero, for he look’d so.

MYRRHA
: And was: the ancestor of heroes, too,

And thine no less.

SARDANAPALUS
: Ay, Myrrha, but the woman,

The female who remain’d, she flew upon me,

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And burnt my lips up with her noisome kisses;

And, flinging down the goblets on each hand,

Methought their poisons flow’d around us, till

Each form’d a hideous river. Still she clung;

The other phantoms, like a row of statues,