Sri Aurobindo. Collected Plays and Stories

A rocky and surf-beat margin of land walled in with great frowning cliffs.
Cireas, Diomede.

Cireas

Diomede? You here so early and in this wild wanton weather!

Diomede

I can find no fault in the weather, Cireas; it is brilliant and frolicsome.

Cireas

The rain has wept itself out and the sun has ventured into the open; but the wind is shouting like mad and the sea is still in a mighty passion. Has your mistress Andromeda sent you then with matin-offerings to Poseidon, or are you walking here to whip the red roses in your cheeks redder with the sea-wind¹?

Diomede

My mistress cares as much for your Poseidon as I for your glum beetle-browed priest Polydaon. But you, Cireas? are you walking here to whip the red nose of you redder with the sea-wind² or to soothe with it³ the marks of his holiness’s cudgel?

Cireas

I must carry up these buckets of sea-water to swab down the blue-haired old fellow in the temple. Hang the robustious storm-shaken curmudgeon! I have rubbed him and scrubbed him and bathed him and swathed him for these eighteen years, yet he never sent me one profitable piece of wreckage out of his sea yet. A gold bracelet, now, crusted with jewels, dropped from the arm of some drowned princess, or a sealed casket velvet-lined with a priceless vase carried by the Rhodian merchants: that would not have beggared him! And I with so little could have bought my liberty.

Diomede

Maybe ’twas that he feared. For who would wish to lose such an expert body-servant as you, my Cireas?

Cireas

Zeus! if I thought that, I would leave his unwashed back to itch for a fortnight. But these Gods are kittle cattle to joke with. They have too many spare monsters about in their stables trained to snap up offenders for a light breakfast.

Diomede

And how prosper the sacrifices, Cireas? I hope you keep your god soothingly and daintily fed in this hot summer season?

Cireas

Alack, poor old Poseidon! He has had nothing but goats and sea-urchins lately, and that is poor food for a palate inured to homme à la Phénicienne, Diomede. It is his own fault, he should provide wreckage more freely. But black Polydaon’s forehead grows blacker every day: he will soon be as mad as Cybele’s bull on the headland. I am every moment in terror of finding myself tumbled on the altar for a shipwrecked Phoenician and old Blackbrows hacking about in search of my heart with his holy carving-tools.

Diomede

You should warn him beforehand that your heart is in your paunch hidden under twenty pounds of fat: so shall he have less cutting-exercise and you an easier exit.

Cireas

Out! would you have me slit for a water-god’s dinner? Is this your tenderness for me?

Diomede

Heaven forbid, dear Cireas. Syria would lose half her scampishness if you departed untimely to a worse world.

Cireas

Away from here, you long sauciness, you thin edge of naughty satire. But, no! First tell me, what news of the palace? They say King Phineus will wed the Princess Andromeda.

Diomede

Yes, but not till the Princess Andromeda weds King Phineus. What noise is that?

Cireas

It was the cry of many men in anguish.

He climbs up a rock.

Diomede

Zeus, what a wail was there! surely a royal

Huge ship from Sidon or the Nile has kissed

Our ragged beaches.

Cireas

A Phoenician galley

Is caught and spinning in the surf, the men

Urge desperate oars in vain. Hark, with a crash

She rushes on the boulders’ iron fangs

That rip her tender sides. How the white ship

Battered against them by the growling surf

Screams like a woman tortured! From all sides

The men are shaken out, as rattling peas

Leap from a long and bursting sheath: these sink

Gurgling into the billows, those are pressed

And mangled on the jaggèd rocks.

Diomede

O it must be

A memorable sight! help me up, Cireas.

Cireas

No, no, for I must run and tell old Blackbrows

That here’s fresh meat for hungry grim Poseidon.

He climbs down and out running.

Diomede

You disobliging dog! This is the first wreck in eighteen months and I not to see it! I will try and climb round the rock even if my neck and legs pay the forfeit.

She goes out in the opposite direction.

The same.
Perseus descends on winged sandals from the clouds.

Perseus

Rocks of⁴ the outland jaggèd with the sea,

You slumbering promontories whose huge backs

Jut into azure, and thou, O many-thundered

Enormous Ocean, hail! Whatever lands

Are ramparted with these forbidding shores,

Yet if you hold felicitous roofs of men,

Homes of delightful laughter, if you have streams

Where chattering girls dip in their pitchers cool

And dabble their white feet in the chill lapse

Of waters, trees and a green-mantled earth,

Cicalas noisy in a million boughs

Or happy cheep of common birds, I greet you,

Syria or Egypt or Ionian shores,

Perseus the son of Danaë, who long

Have sojourned only with the hail-thrashed isles

Wet with cold mists and by the boreal winds

Snow-swathed. The angry voices of the surf

Are welcome to me whose ears have long been sealed

By rigorous silence in the snows. O even

The wail of mortal misery I choose

Rather than that intolerable hush;

For this at least is human. Thee I praise,

O mother Earth and thy guardian Sea, O Sun

Of the warm south nursing fair life of men.

I will go down into bee-murmuring fields

And mix with men and women in the corn

And eat again accustomed food. But first

This galley shattered on the sharp-toothed rocks

I fly to succour. You are grown dear to me,

You smiling weeping human faces, brightly

Who move, who live, not like those stony masks

And Gorgon visions of that monstrous world

Beyond the snows. I would not lose you now

In the dead surges of the inhuman flood.

He descends out of sight.
Iolaus enters with Cireas, Dercetes and soldiers.

Iolaus

Prepare your ambush, men, amid these boulders,

But at the signal, leave your rocky lairs

With level bristling points and gyre them in.

Cireas

O Poseidon Ennosigaios, man-swallower, earth-shaker, I have swabbed thee for eighteen years. I pray thee tot up the price of those swabbings and be not dishonest with me nor miserly. Eighteen by three hundred and sixty-five by two, that is the sum of them: and forget not the leap years either, O great Poseidon.

Iolaus

Into our ambush, for I hear them come.

They conceal themselves.
Perseus returns with Tyrnaus and Smerdas.

Perseus

Chaldean merchants, would my speed to save

Had matched the hawk’s when he swoops down for slaughter.

So many beautiful bodies of strong men

Lost in the surge, so many eager hopes

Of happiness now quenched would still have gladdened

The sunlight. Yet for two delightful lives

Saved to the stir and motion of the world

I praise the Gods that help us.

Tyrnaus

Thou radiant youth

Whose face is like a joyous god’s for beauty,

Whatever worth the body’s life may have,

I thank thee that ’tis saved. Smerdas, discharge

That hapless humour from thy lids! If riches

Are lost, the body, thy strong instrument

To gather riches, is not lost, nor mind,

The provident director of its labours.

Smerdas

Three thousand pieces of that wealthy stuff,

Full forty chests all crammed with noble gems,

All lost, all in a moment lost! We are beggars.

Tyrnaus

Smerdas, not beggared yet of arm or brain.

Smerdas

The toil-marred peasant has as much.

Perseus

Merchant,

I sorrow for thy loss: all beautiful things

Were meant to shine in the bright day, and grievous

It is to know the senseless billows play with them.

Yet life, most beautiful of all, is left thee.

Is not mere sunlight something, and to breathe

A joy? Be patient with the gods; they love not

Rebellion and o’ertake it with fresh scourgings.

Smerdas

O that the sea had swallowed me and rolled

In my dear treasure! Tell me, Syrian youth,

Are there not divers in these parts, could pluck

My wealth from the abyss?

Perseus

Chaldean merchant,

I am not of this country, but like thyself

Hear first today the surf roar on its beaches.

Smerdas

Cursed be the moment when we neared its shores!

O harsh sea-god, if thou wilt have my wealth,

My soul, it was a cruel mercy then to leave

This beggared empty body bared of all

That made life sweet. Take this too, and everything.

Iolaus (stepping forward)

Thy prayer is granted thee, O Babylonian.

The soldiers appear and surround Perseus and the merchants.

Cireas

All the good stuff drowned! O unlucky Cireas! O greedy Poseidon!

Smerdas

Shield us! what are these threatening spear-points?

Tyrnaus

Fate’s.

This is that strange inhospitable coast

Where the wrecked traveller in his own warm blood

Is given guest-bath. (draws) Death’s dice are yet to throw.

Iolaus

Draw not in vain, strive not against the gods.

This is the shore near the temple where Poseidon

Sits ivory-limbed in his dim rock-hewn house

And nods above the bleeding mariner

His sapphire locks in gloom. You three are come,

A welcome offering to that long dry altar,

O happy voyagers. Your road is straight

To Elysium.

Perseus

An evil and harsh religion

You practise in your land, stripling of Syria,

Yet since it is religion, do thy will,

If thou have power no less than will. And yet

I deem that ere I visit death’s calm country,

I have far longer ways to tread.

Tyrnaus (flinging away his sword)

Take me.

I will not please the gods with impotent writhing

Under the harrow of my fate.

They seize Tyrnaus.

Smerdas

O wicked fool!

You might have saved me with that sword. Ah youth!

Ah radiant stranger! help me! thou art mighty.

Perseus

Still, merchant, thou wouldst live?

Smerdas

I am dead with terror

Of these bright thirsty spears. O they will carve

My frantic heart out of my living bosom

To throw it bleeding on that hideous altar.

Save me, hero!

Perseus

I war not with the gods for thee.

From belching fire or the deep-mouthed abyss

Of waters to have saved the meanest thing

That wears man’s kindly semblance, is a joy.

But he is mad who for another’s ease

Incurs the implacable pursuit of heaven.

Yet since each man on earth has privilege

To battle even against the gods for life,

Sweet life, lift up from earth thy fellow’s sword;

I will protect meanwhile thy head from onset.

Smerdas

Alas, you mock me! I have no skill with weapons

Nor am a fighter. Save me!

The Syrians seize Smerdas.

Help! I will give thee

The wealth of Babylon when I am safe.

Perseus

My sword is heaven’s; it is not to be purchased.

Smerdas and Tyrnaus are led away.

Iolaus

Take too this radiance.

Perseus (drawing his sword)

Asian stripling, pause.

I am not weak of hand nor feeble of heart.

Thou art too young, too blithe, too beautiful;

I would not disarrange thy sunny curls

By any harsher touch than an embrace.

Iolaus

I too could wish to spare thy joyous body

From the black knife, whoe’er thou art, O stranger.

But grim compulsion drives and angry will

Of the sea’s lord, chafing that mortal men

Insult with their frail keels his rude strong oceans.

Therefore he built his grisly temple here,

And all who are broken in the unequal war

With surge and tempest, though they evade his rocks,

Must belch out anguished blood upon that altar

Miserably.

Perseus

I come not from the Ocean.

Iolaus

There is no other way that men could come;

For this is ground forbidden to unknown feet.

(smiling)

Unless these gaudy pinions on thy shoes

Were wings indeed to bear thee through the void!

Perseus

Are there not those who ask nor solid land

For footing nor the salt flood to buoy their motions?

Perhaps I am of these.

Iolaus

Of these thou art not.

The gods are sombre, terrible to gaze at,

Or, even if bright, remote, grand, formidable.

But thou art open and fair like our blue heavens

In Syria and thy radiant masculine body

Allures the eye. Yield! it may be the God

Will spare thee.

Perseus

Set on thy war-dogs. Me alive

If they alive can take, I am content

To bleed a victim.

Iolaus

Art thou a demigod

To beat back with one blade a hundred spears?

Perseus

My sword is in my hand and that shall answer.

I am tired of words.

Iolaus

Dercetes, wait. His face

Is beautiful as Heaven. O dark Poseidon,

What wilt thou do with him in thy dank caves

Under the grey abysms of the salt flood?

Spare him to me and sunlight.

Polydaon and Phineus enter from behind.

Dercetes

Prince, give the order.

Iolaus

Let this young sungod live.

Dercetes

It is forbidden.

Iolaus

But I allow it.

Polydaon (coming forward)

And when did lenient Heaven

Make thee a godhead, Syrian Iolaus,

To set thy proud decree against Poseidon’s?

Wilt thou rescind what Ocean’s Zeus has ordered?

Iolaus

Polydaon –

Polydaon

Does a royal name on earth

Inflate so foolishly thy mortal pride,

Thou evenest thyself with the Olympians?

Beware, the blood of kings has dropped ere now

From the grey sacrificial knife.

Iolaus

Our blood!

Thou darest threaten me, presumptuous priest?

Back to thy blood-stained kennel! I absolve

This stranger.

Polydaon

Captain, take them both. You flinch?

Are you so fearful of the name of prince

He plays with? Fear rather dark Poseidon’s anger.

Phineus

Be wise, young Iolaus. Polydaon,

Thy zeal outstrips the reverence due to kings.

Iolaus

I need not thy protection, Tyrian Phineus:

This is my country.

He draws.

Phineus (aside to Polydaon)

It were well done to kill him now, his sword

Being out against the people’s gods; for then

Who blames the god’s avenger?

Polydaon

Will you accept,

Syrians, the burden of his sacrilege?

Upon them for Poseidon!

Dercetes

Seize them but slay not!

Let none dare shed the blood of Syria’s kings.

Soldiers

Poseidon! great Poseidon!

Perseus

Iolaus,

Rein in thy sword: I am enough for these.

He shakes his uncovered shield in the faces of the soldiers: they stagger back covering their eyes.

Iolaus

Gods, what a glory lights up Syria!

Polydaon

Amazement!

Is this a god opposes us? Back, back!

Cireas

Master, master, skedaddle: run, run, good King of Tyre, it is scuttle or be scuttled. Zeus has come down to earth with feathered shoes and a shield made out of phosphorus.

He runs off, followed more slowly by Dercetes and the soldiers.

Phineus

Whate’er thou art, yet thou shalt not outface me.

He advances with sword drawn.

Hast thou Heaven’s thunders with thee too?

Polydaon (pulling him back)

Back, Phineus!

The fiery-tasselled aegis of Athene

Shakes forth these lightnings, and an earthly sword

Were madness here.

He goes out with Phineus.

Iolaus

O radiant strong immortal,

Iolaus kneels to thee.

Perseus

No, Iolaus.

Though great Athene breathes Olympian strength

Into my arm sometimes, I am no more

Than a brief mortal.

Iolaus

Art thou only man?

O then be Iolaus’ friend and lover,

Who com’st to me like something all my own

Destined from other shores.

Perseus

Give me thy hands,

O fair young child of the warm Syrian sun.

Embrace me! Thou art like a springing laurel

Fed upon sunlight by the murmuring waters.

Iolaus

Tell me thy name. What memorable earth

Gave thee to the azure?

Perseus

I am from Argolis,

Perseus my name, the son of Danaë.

Iolaus

Come, Perseus, friend, with me: fierce entertainment

We have given, unworthy the fair joyousness

Thou carriest like a flag, but thou shalt meet

A kinder Syria. My royal father Cepheus

Shall welcome, my mother give thee a mother’s greeting

And our Andromeda’s delightful smile

Persuade thee of a world more full of beauty

Than thou hadst dreamed of.

Perseus

I shall yet be glad with thee,

O Iolaus, in thy father’s halls,

But I would not as yet be known in Syria.

Is there no pleasant hamlet near, hedged in

With orchard walls and green with unripe corn

And washed with bright and flitting waves, where I

Can harbour with the kindly village folk

And wake to cock-crow in the morning hours,

As in my dear Seriphos?

Iolaus

Such a village

Lurks near our hills,– there with my kind Cydone

Thou mayst abide at ease, until thou choose,

O Perseus, to reveal thyself to Syria.

I too can visit thee unquestioned.

Perseus

Thither

Then lead me. I have a thirst for calm obscurity

And cottages and happy unambitious talk

And simple people. With these I would have rest,

Not in the laboured pomp of princely towns

Amid pent noise and purple masks of hate.

I will drink deep of pure humanity

And take the innocent smell of rain-drenched earth,

So shall I with a noble untainted mind

Rise from the strengthening soil to great adventure.

They go out.

The Palace of Cepheus. A room in the women’s apartments.
Praxilla, to her enters Diomede.

Diomede

O Praxilla, Praxilla!

Praxilla

So, thou art back, thou tall inutility? Where wert thou lingering all this hour? I am tired of always whipping thee. I will hire thee out to a timber-merchant to carry logs from dawn to nightfall. Thou shalt learn what labour is.

Diomede

Praxilla, O Praxilla! I am full to the throat with news. I pray you, rip me open.

Praxilla

Willingly.

She advances towards her with an uplifted knife.

Diomede (escaping)

A plague! can you not appreciate a fine metaphor when you hear it? I never saw so prosaic a mortal. The soul in you was born of a marriage between a saucepan and a broomstick.

Praxilla

Tell me your news. If it is good, I will excuse you your whipping.

Diomede

I was out on the beach thinking to watch the seagulls flying and crying in the wind amidst the surf dashing and the black cliff-heads –

Praxilla

And could not Poseidon turn thee into a gull there among thy natural kindred? Thou wert better fitted with that shape than in a reasonable human body.

Diomede

Oh then you shall hear the news tell itself, mistress, when the whole town has chewed it and rechewed it.

She is going.

Praxilla

Stop, you long-limbed impertinence. The news!

Diomede

I’ll be hanged if I tell you.

Praxilla

You shall be whipped, if you do not.

Diomede

Well, your goddess Switch is a potent divinity. A ship with men from the East has broken on the headland below the temple and two Chaldeans are saved alive for the altar.

Praxilla

This is glorious news indeed.

Diomede

It will be a great day when they are sacrificed!

Praxilla

We have not had such since the long galley from Cnossus grounded upon our shores and the temple was washed richly with blood and the altar blushed as thickly with hearts of victims as the King’s throne with rubies. Poseidon was pleased that year and the harvest was so plentiful, men were brought in from beyond the hills to reap it.

Diomede

There would have been a third victim, but Prince Iolaus drew sword on the priest Polydaon to defend him.

Praxilla

I hope this is not true.

Diomede

I saw it.

Praxilla

Is the wild boy

In love with ruin? Not the King himself

Can help him if the grim sacrificant

Demand his fair young head: only a god

Could save him. And he was already in peril

From Polydaon’s gloomy hate!

Diomede

And Phineus’.

Praxilla

Hush, silly madcap, hush; or speak much lower.

Diomede

Here comes my little queen of love, stepping

As daintily as a young bird in spring

When he would take the hearts of all the forest.

Andromeda enters.

Praxilla

You have slept late, Andromeda.

Andromeda

Have I?

The sun had risen in my dreams: perhaps

I feared to wake lest I should find all dark

Once more, Praxilla.

Diomede

He has risen in your eyes,

For they are full of sunshine, little princess.

Andromeda

I have dreamed, Diomede, I have dreamed.

Diomede

What did you dream?

Andromeda

I dreamed my sun had risen.

He had a face like the Olympian Zeus

And wings upon his feet. He smiled upon me,

Diomede.

Praxilla

Dreams are full of stranger fancies.

Why, I myself have seen hooved bears, winged lions,

And many other monsters in my dreams.

Andromeda

My sun was a bright god and bore a flaming sword

To kill all monsters.

Diomede

I think I’ve seen today

Your sun, my little playmate.

Andromeda

No, you have not.

I’ll not have any eyes see him but mine:

He is my own, my very own.

Diomede

And yet

I saw him on the wild sea-beach this morning.

Praxilla

What mean you, Diomede?

Diomede (to Andromeda)

You have not heard?

A ship was flung upon the rocks this morning

And all her human burden drowned.

Andromeda

Alas!

Diomede

It was a marvellous sight, my little playmate,

And made my blood with horror and admiration

Run richer in my veins. The great ship groaned

While the rough boulders dashed her into pieces,

The men with desperate shrieks went tumbling down

Mid laughters of the surge, strangled twixt billows

Or torn by strips upon the savage rocks

That tossed their mangled bodies back again

Into the cruel keeping of the surge.

Andromeda

O do not tell me any more! How had you heart

To look at what I cannot bear to hear?

For while you spoke, I felt as if the rocks

Were tearing my own limbs and the salt surge

Choking me.

Diomede

I suppose it must have hurt them.

Yes, it was pitiful. Still, ’twas a sight.

Meanwhile the deep surf boomed their grandiose dirge

With fierce triumphant voices. The whole scene

Was like a wild stupendous sacrifice

Offered by the grey-filleted grim surges

On the gigantic altar of the rocks

To the calm cliffs seated like gods above.

Andromeda

Alas, the unhappy men, the poor drowned men

Who had young children somewhere whom they loved!

How could you watch them die? Had I been a god,

I would not let this cruel thing have happened.

Diomede

Why do you weep for them? they were not Syrians.

Praxilla

Not they, but barbarous jabbering foreigners

From Indus or Arabia. Fie, my child,

You sit upon the floor and weep for these?

Andromeda

When Iolaus fell upon the rocks

And hurt himself, you did not then forbid me

To weep!

Praxilla

He is your brother. That was loving,

Tender and right.

Andromeda

And these men were not brothers?

They too had sisters who will feel as I should

If my dear brother were to die so wretchedly.

Praxilla

Let their own sisters weep for them: we have

Enough of our own sorrows. You are young

And softly made: because you have yourself

No griefs, but only childhood’s soon-dried tears,

You make a luxury of others’ woes⁵.

So when we watch a piteous tragedy,

We grace with real tears its painted sorrows.

When you are older and have true things to weep for,

Then you will understand.

Andromeda

I’ll not be older!

I will not understand! I only know

That men are heartless and your gods most cruel.

I hate them!

Praxilla

Hush, hush! You know not what you say.

You must not speak such things. Come, Diomede,

Tell her the rest.

Andromeda (covering her ears with her hands)

I will not hear you.

Diomede (kneeling by her and drawing her hands away)

But I

Will tell you of your bright sungod.

Andromeda

He is not

My sungod or he would have saved them.

Diomede

He did.

Andromeda (leaping to her feet)

Then tell me of him.

Diomede

Suddenly there dawned

A man, a vision, a brightness, who descended

From where I know not, but to me it seemed

That the blue heavens just then created him

Out of the sunlight. His face and radiant body

Aspired to copy the Olympian Zeus

And wings were on his feet.

Andromeda

He was my sungod!

Diomede

He caught two drowning wretches by the robe

And drew them safe to land.

Andromeda

He was my sungod.

Diomede, I have seen him in my dream.

Praxilla

I think it was Poseidon come to take

His tithe of all that death for the ancient altar,

Lest all be engulfed by his grey billows, he

Go quite unhonoured.

Diomede

Hang up your grim Poseidon!

This was a sweet and noble face all bright

With manly kindness.

Andromeda

O⁶ I know, I know.

Where went he with those rescued?

Diomede

Why, just then

Prince Iolaus and his band leaped forth

And took them.

Andromeda (angrily)

Wherefore took them? By what right?

Diomede

To die according to our Syrian law

On dark Poseidon’s altar.

Andromeda

They shall not die.

It is a shame, a cruel cold injustice.

I wonder that my brother had any part in it!

My sungod saved them, they belong to him,

Not to your hateful gods. They are his and mine,

I will not let you kill them.

Praxilla

Why, they must die

And you will see it done, my little princess.

You shall! Where are you going?

Andromeda

Let me go.

I do not love you when you talk like this.

Praxilla

But you are Syria’s lady and must appear

At these high ceremonies.

Andromeda

I had rather be

A beggar’s daughter who devours the remnants

Rejected from your table, than reign a queen

Doing such cruelty.

Praxilla

Little passionate scold!

You mean not what you say. A beggar’s daughter!

You? You who toss about if only a rose-leaf

Crinkle the creamy smoothness of your sheets,

And one harsh word flings weeping broken-hearted

As if the world had no more joy in store.

You are a little posturer, you make

A theatre of your own mind to act in,

Take parts, declaim such childish rhetoric

As that you speak now. You a beggar’s daughter!

Come, listen what became of your bright sungod.

Diomede

Him too they would have seized, but he with steel

Opposed and tranquil smiling eyes appalled them.

Then Polydaon came and Phineus came

And bade arrest the brilliant god. Our Prince,

Seized by his glory, with his virgin point

Resisted their assault.

Andromeda

My Iolaus!

Diomede

All suddenly the stranger’s lifted shield

Became a storm of lightnings. Dawn was blinded:

Far promontories leaped out in the blaze,

The surges were illumined and the horizon

Answered with light.

Andromeda (clapping her hands)

O glorious! O my dream!

Praxilla

You tell the actions of a mighty god,

Diomede.

Diomede

A god he seemed to us, Praxilla.

The soldiers ran in terror, Polydaon

Went snorting off like a black whale harpooned,

And even Phineus fled.

Andromeda

Was he not killed?

I wish he had been killed.

Praxilla

This is your pity!

Andromeda (angrily)

I do not pity tigers, wolves and scorpions.

I pity men who are weak and beasts that suffer.

Praxilla

I thought you loved all men and living things.

Andromeda

Perhaps I could⁷ have loved him like my hound

Or the lion in the park who lets me pat his mane.

But since he would have me even without my will

To foul with his beast touch, my body abhors him.

Praxilla

Fie, fie! you speak too violently. How long

Will you be such a child?

Diomede

Our Iolaus

And that bright stranger then embraced. Together

They left the beach.

Andromeda

Where, where is Iolaus?

Why is he long in coming? I must see him.

I have a thousand things to ask.

She runs out.

Diomede

She is

A strange unusual child, my little playmate.

Praxilla

None can help loving her, she is in charm

Compelling: but her mind is wry and warped.

She is not natural, not sound in fancy,

But made of wild uncurbed imaginations,

With feelings as unruly as winds and waves

And morbid sympathies. At times she talks

Strange childish blasphemies that make me tremble.

She would impose her fancies on the world

As better than the eternal laws that rule us!

I wish her mother had brought her up more strictly,

For she will come to harm.

Diomede

Oh, do not say it!

I have seen no child in all our Syria like her,

None her bright equal in beauty. She pleases me

Like days of sunlight rain when spring caresses

Warmly the air. Oh, here is Iolaus.

Praxilla

Is it he?

Diomede

I know him by the noble strut

He has put on ever since they made him captain.

Andromeda comes running.

Andromeda

My brother comes! I saw him from the terrace.

Enters Iolaus. Andromeda runs and embraces him.

Oh, Iolaus, have you brought him to me?

Where is my sungod?

Iolaus

In heaven, little sister.

Andromeda

Oh, do not laugh at me. I want my sungod

Whose face is like the grand Olympian Zeus’

And wings are on his feet. Where did you leave him

After you took him from our rough sea-beaches?

Iolaus

What do you mean, Andromeda?

Diomede

Some power

Divine sent her a dream of that bright strength

Which shone by you on the sea-beach today,

And him she calls her sungod.

Iolaus

Is it so?

My little wind-tossed rose Andromeda!

I shall be glad indeed if Heaven intends this.

Andromeda

Where is he?

Iolaus

Do you not know, little rose-sister,

The great gods visit earth by splendid moments

And then are lost to sight? Come, do not weep;

He is not lost to Syria.

Andromeda

Iolaus,

Why did you take the two poor foreign men

And give them to the priest? My sungod saved them,

Brother,– what right had you to kill?

Iolaus

My child,

I only did my duty as a soldier,

Yet grieve I was compelled.

Andromeda

Now will you save them?

Iolaus

But they belong to dread Poseidon now!

Andromeda

What will be done to them?

Iolaus

They must be bound

On the god’s altar and their living hearts

Ripped from their blood-choked breasts to feed his hunger.

Andromeda covers her face with her robe.

Grieve not for them: they but fulfil their fate.

These things are in the order of the world

Like plagues and slaughters, famines, fires and earthquakes,

Which when they pass us by killing their thousands,

We should not weep for, but be grateful only

That other souls than the dear heads we loved

Have perished.

Andromeda

You will not save them?

Praxilla

Unhappy girl!

It is impiety to think of it.

Fie! Would you have your brother killed for your whimsies?

Andromeda

Will you not save them, brother?

Iolaus

I cannot, child.

Andromeda

Then I will.

She goes out.

Iolaus

Does she mean it?

Praxilla

Such wild caprices

Are always darting through her brain.

Iolaus

I could not take

Poseidon’s wrath upon my head!

Praxilla

Forget it

As she will too. Her strange imaginations

Flutter awhile among her golden curls,

But soon wing off with careless flight to Lethe.

Medes enters.

Iolaus

What is it, Medes?

Medes

The King, Prince Iolaus,

Requires your presence in his audience-chamber.

Iolaus

So? Tell me, Medes, is Poseidon’s priest

In presence there?

Medes

He is and full of wrath.

Iolaus

Go, tell them I am coming.

Medes goes out.

Praxilla

Alas!

Iolaus

Fear not.

I have a strength the grim intriguers dream not of.

Let not my sister hear this, Diomede.

He goes.

Praxilla

What may not happen! The priest is dangerous,

Poseidon may be angry. Let us go

And guard our child from peril of this shock.

They go.

Act II

The audience-chamber in the Palace of Cepheus.
Cepheus and Cassiopea, seated.

Cassiopea

What will you do, Cepheus?

Cepheus

This that has happened

Is most unfortunate.

Cassiopea

What will you do?

I hope you will not give up to the priest

My Iolaus’ golden head? I hope

You do not mean that?

Cepheus

Great Poseidon’s priest

Sways all this land: for from the liberal blood

Moistening that high-piled altar grow our harvests

And strong Poseidon satisfied defends

Our frontiers from the loud Assyrian menace.

Cassiopea

Empty thy treasuries, glut him with gold.

Let us be beggars rather than one bright curl

Of Iolaus feel his gloomy mischiefs.

Cepheus

I had already thought of it. Medes!

Medes enters.

Waits Polydaon yet?

Medes

He does, my lord.

Cepheus

Call him, and Tyrian Phineus.

Medes goes out again.

Cassiopea

Bid Tyre save

Andromeda’s loved brother from this doom;

He shall not have our daughter otherwise.

Cepheus

This too was in my mind already, queen.

Polydaon and Phineus enter.

Be seated, King of Tyre: priest Polydaon,

Possess thy usual chair.

Polydaon

Well, King of Syria,

Shall I have justice? Wilt thou be the King

Over a peopled country? or must I loose

The snake-haired Gorgon-eyed Erinnyes

To hunt thee with the clamorous whips of Hell

Blood-dripping?

Cepheus

Be content. Cepheus gives nought

But justice from his mighty seat. Thou shalt

Have justice.

Polydaon

I am not used to cool my heels

About the doors of princes like some beggarly

And negligible suitor whose poor plaint

Is valued by some paltry drachmas. I am

Poseidon’s priest.

Cepheus

The prince is called to answer here

Thy charges.

Polydaon

Answer! Will he deny a crime

Done impudently in Syria’s face? ’Tis well;

The Tyrian stands here who can meet that lie.

Cassiopea

My children’s lips were never stained with lies,

Insulting priest, nor will be now; from him

We shall have truth.

Cepheus

And grant the charge admitted,

The ransom shall be measured with the crime.

Polydaon

What talk is this of ransom? Thinkst thou, King,

That dire Poseidon’s grim offended godhead

Can be o’erplastered with a smudge of silver?

Shall money blunt his vengeance? Shall his majesty

Be estimated in a usurer’s balance?

Blood is the ransom of this sacrilege.

Cassiopea

Ah God!

Cepheus (in agitation)

Take all my treasury includes

Of gold and silver, gems and porphyry

Unvalued.

Polydaon

The Gods are not to be bribed,

King Cepheus.

Cassiopea (apart)

Give him honours, state, precedence,

All he can ask. O husband, let me keep

My child’s head on my bosom safe.

Cepheus

Listen!

What wouldst thou have? Precedence, pomp and state?

Hundreds of spears to ring thee where thou walkest?

Swart slaves and beautiful women in thy temple

To serve thee and thy god? They are thine. In feasts

And high processions and proud regal meetings

Poseidon’s followers shall precede the King.

Polydaon

Me wilt thou bribe? I take these for Poseidon,

Nor waive my chief demand.

Cepheus

What will content thee?

Polydaon

A victim has been snatched from holy altar:

To fill that want a victim is demanded.

Cepheus

I will make war on Egypt and Assyria

And throw thee kings for victims.

Polydaon

Thy vaunt is empty.

Poseidon being offended, who shall give thee

Victory o’er Egypt and o’er strong Assyria?

Cepheus

Take thou the noblest head in all the kingdom

Below the Prince. Take many heads for one.

Polydaon

Shall then the innocent perish for the guilty?

Is this thy justice? How shall thy kingdom last?

Cepheus

You hear him, Cassiopea? he will not yield,

He is inexorable.

Polydaon

Must I wait longer?

Cepheus

Ho Medes!

Medes enters.

Iolaus comes not yet.

Medes goes out.

Cassiopea (rising fiercely)

Priest, thou wilt have my child’s blood then, it seems!

Nought less will satisfy thee than thy prince

For victim?

Polydaon

Poseidon knows not prince or beggar.

Whoever honours him, he heaps with state

And fortune. Whoever wakes his dreadful wrath,

He thrusts⁸ down into Erebus for ever.

Cassiopea

Beware! Thou shalt not have my child. Take heed

Ere thou drive monarchs to extremity.

Thou hopest in thy sacerdotal pride

To make the Kings of Syria childless, end

A line that started from the gods. Thinkst thou

It will be tamely suffered? What have we

To lose, if we lose this? I bid thee again

Take heed: drive not a queen to strong despair.

I am no tame-souled peasant, but a princess

And great Chaldea’s child.

Polydaon (after a pause)

Wilt thou confirm

Thy treasury and all the promised honours,

If I excuse the deed?

Cepheus

They shall be thine.

He turns to whisper with Cassiopea.

Phineus (apart to Polydaon)

Dost thou prefer me for thy foeman?

Polydaon

See

In the queen’s eyes her rage. We must discover

New means; this way’s not safe.

Phineus

Thou art a coward, priest, for all thy violence.

But fear me first and then blench from a woman.

Polydaon

Well, as you choose.

Iolaus enters.

Iolaus

Father, you sent for me?

Cepheus

There is a charge upon thee, Iolaus,

I do not yet believe. But answer truth

Like Cepheus’ son, whatever the result.

Iolaus

Whatever I have done, my father, good

Or ill, I dare support against the world.

What is this accusation?

Cepheus

Didst thou rescue

At dawn a victim from Poseidon’s altar?

Iolaus

I did not.

Polydaon

Dar’st thou deny it, wretched boy?

Monarch, his coward lips have uttered falsehood.

Speak, King of Tyre.

Iolaus

Hear me speak first. Thou ruffian,

Intriguer masking in a priest’s disguise,–

Polydaon

Hear him, O King!

Cepheus

Speak calmly. I forbid

All violence. Thou deniest then the charge?

Iolaus

As it was worded to me, I deny it.

Phineus

Syria, I have not spoken till this moment,

And would not now, but sacred truth compels

My tongue howe’er reluctant. I was there,

And saw him rescue a wrecked mariner

With his rash steel. Would that I had not seen it!

Iolaus

Thou liest, Phineus, King of Tyre.

Cassiopea

Alas!

If thou hast any pity for thy mother,

Run not upon thy death in this fierce spirit,

My child. Calmly repel the charge against thee,

Nor thus offend thy brother.

Phineus

I am not angry.

Iolaus

It was no shipwrecked weeping mariner,

Condemned by the wild seas, whom they attempted,

But a calm god or glorious hero who came

By other way⁹ than man’s to Syria’s margin.

Nor did rash steel or battle rescue him.

With the mere dreadful waving of his shield

He shook from him a hundred threatening lances,

This hero hot from Tyre and this proud priest

Now bold to bluster in his monarch’s chamber,

But then a pallid coward,– so he trusts

In his Poseidon!

Polydaon

Hast thou done?

Iolaus

Not yet.

That I drew forth my sword, is true, and true

I would have rescued him from god or devil

Had it been needed.

Polydaon

Enough! He has confessed!

Give verdict, King, and sentence. Let me watch

Thy justice.

Cepheus

But this fault was not so deadly!

Polydaon

I see thy drift, O King. Thou wouldst prefer

Thy son to him who rules the earth and waters:

Thou wouldst exalt thy throne above the temple,

Setting the gods beneath thy feet. Fool, fool,

Knowst thou not that the terrible Poseidon

Can end thy house in one tremendous hour?

Yield him one impious head which cannot live

And he will give thee other and better children.

Give sentence or be mad and perish.

Iolaus

Father,

Not for thy son’s, but for thy honour’s sake

Resist him. ’Tis better to lose crown and life,

Than rule the world because a priest allows it.

Polydaon

Give sentence, King. I can no longer wait,

Give sentence.

Cepheus (helplessly to Cassiopea)

What shall I do?

Cassiopea

Monarch of Tyre,

Thou choosest silence then, a pleased spectator?

Thou hast bethought thee of other nuptials?

Phineus

Lady,

You wrong my silence which was but your servant

To find an issue from this dire impasse,

Rescuing your child from wrath, justice not wounded.

Cassiopea

The issue lies in the accuser’s will,

If putting malice by he’ld only seek

Poseidon’s glory.

Phineus

The deed’s by all admitted,

The law and bearing of it are in doubt.

(to Polydaon)

You urge a place is void and must be filled

On great Poseidon’s altar, and demand

Justly the guilty head of Iolaus.

He did the fault, his head must ransom it.

Let him fill up the void, who made the void.

Nor will high heaven accept a guiltless head,

To let the impious free.

Cassiopea

Phineus,–

Phineus

But if

The victim lost return, you cannot then

Claim Iolaus; then there is no void

For substitution.

Polydaon

King,–

Phineus

The simpler fault

With ransom can be easily excused

And covered up in gold. Let him produce

The fugitive.

Iolaus

Tyrian,–

Phineus

I have not forgotten.

Patience! You plead that your mysterious guest

Being neither shipwrecked nor a mariner

Comes not within the doom of law. Why then,

Let Law decide that issue, not the sword

Nor swift evasion! Dost thou fear the event

Of thy great father’s sentence from that throne

Where Justice sits with bright unsullied robe

Judging the peoples? Calmly expect his doom

Which errs not.

Cassiopea

Thou art a man noble indeed in counsel

And fit to rule the nations.

Cepheus

I approve.

You laugh, my son?

Iolaus

I laugh to see wise men

Catching their feet in their own subtleties.

King Phineus, wilt thou seize Olympian Zeus

And call thy Tyrian smiths to forge his fetters?

Or wilt thou claim the archer bright Apollo

To meet thy human doom, priest Polydaon?

’Tis well; the danger’s yours. Give me three days

And I’ll produce him.

Cepheus

Priest, art thou content?

Polydaon

Exceed not thou the period by one day,

Or tremble.

Cepheus (rising)

Happily decided. Rise

My Cassiopea: now our hearts can rest

From these alarms.

Cepheus and Cassiopea leave the chamber.

Iolaus

Keep thy knife sharp, sacrificant.

King Phineus, I am grateful and advise

Thy swift departure back to Tyre unmarried.

He goes out.

Polydaon

What hast thou done, King Phineus? All is ruined.

Phineus

What, have the stripling’s threats appalled thee, priest?

Polydaon

Thou hast demanded a bright dreadful god

For victim. We might have slain young Iolaus:

Wilt thou slay him whose tasselled aegis smote

Terror into a hundred warriors?

Phineus

Priest,

Thou art a superstitious fool. Believe not

The gods come down to earth with swords and wings,

Or transitory raiment made on¹⁰ looms,

Or bodies visible to mortal eyes.

Far otherwise they come, with unseen steps

And stroke invisible,– if gods indeed

There are. I doubt it, who can find no room

For powers unseen: the world’s alive and moves

By natural law without their intervention.

Polydaon

King Phineus, doubt not the immortal gods.

They love not doubters. If thou hadst lived as I,

Daily devoted to the temple dimness,

And seen the awful shapes that live in night,

And heard the awful sounds that move at will

When Ocean with the midnight is alone,

Thou wouldst not doubt. Remember the dread portents

High gods have sent on earth a hundred times

When kings offended.

Phineus

Well, let them reign unquestioned

Far from the earth in their too bright Olympus,

So that they come not down to meddle here

In what I purpose. For your aegis-bearer,

Your winged and two-legged lion, he’s no god.

You hurried me away or I’ld have probed

His godlike guts with a good yard of steel

To test the composition of his ichor.

Polydaon

What of his flaming aegis lightning-tasselled?

What of his wingèd sandals, King?

Phineus

The aegis?

Some mechanism of refracted light.

The wings? Some new aerial contrivance

A luckier Daedalus may have invented.

The Greeks are scientists unequalled, bold

Experimenters, happy in invention.

Nothing’s incredible that they devise,

And this man, Polydaon, is a Greek.

Polydaon

Have it your way. Say he was merely man!

How do we profit by his blood?

Phineus

O marvellous!

Thou hesitate to kill! thou seek for reasons!

Is not blood always blood? I could not forfeit

My right to marry young Andromeda;

She is my claim to Syria. Leave something, priest,

To Fortune, but be ready for her coming

And grasp ere she escape. The old way’s best;

Excite the commons, woo their thunderer,

That plausible republican. Iolaus

Once ended, by right of fair Andromeda

I’ll save and wear the crown. Priest, over Syria

And all my Tyrians thou shalt be the one prelate,

Should all go well.

Polydaon

All shall go well, King Phineus.

They go.

A room in the women’s apartments of the Palace.
Andromeda, Diomede, Praxilla.

Andromeda

My brother lives then?

Praxilla

Thanks to Tyre, it seems.

Diomede

Thanks to the wolf who means to eat him later.

Praxilla

You’ll lose your tongue some morning; rule it, girl.

Diomede

These kings, these politicians, these high masters!

These wise blind men! We slaves have eyes at least

To look beyond transparency.

Praxilla

Because

We stand outside the heated game unmoved

By interests, fears and passions.

Andromeda

He is a wolf, for I have seen his teeth.

Praxilla

Yet must you marry him, my little princess.

Andromeda

What, to be torn in pieces by the teeth?

Diomede

I think the gods will not allow this marriage.

Andromeda

I know not what the gods may do: be sure,

I’ll not allow it.

Praxilla

Fie, Andromeda!

You must obey your parents: ’tis not right,

This wilfulness. Why, you’re a child! you think

You can oppose the will of mighty monarchs?

Be good; obey your father.

Andromeda

Yes, Praxilla?

And if my father bade me take a knife

And cut my face and limbs and stab my eyes,

Must I do that?

Praxilla

Where are you with your wild fancies?

Your father would not bid you do such things.

Andromeda

Because they’ld¹¹ hurt me?

Praxilla

Yes.

Andromeda

It hurts me more

To marry Phineus.

Praxilla

O you sly logic-splitter!

You dialectician, you sunny-curled small sophist,

Chop logic with your father. I’m tired of you.

Cepheus enters.

Andromeda

Father, I have been waiting for you.

Cepheus

What! you?

I’ll not believe it. You? (caressing her) My rosy Syrian!

My five-foot lady! My small queen of Tyre!

Yes, you are tired of playing with the ball.

You wait for me!

Andromeda

I was waiting. Here are

Two kisses for you.

Cepheus

Oh, now I understand.

You dancing rogue, you’re not so free with kisses:

I have to pay for them, small cormorant.

What is it now? a talking Tyrian doll?

Or a strong wooden horse with silken wings

To fly up to the gold rims of the moon?

Andromeda

I will not kiss you if you talk like that.

I am a woman now. As if I wanted

Such nonsense, father!

Cepheus

Oh, you’re a woman now?

Then ’tis a robe from Cos, sandals fur-lined

Or belt all silver. Young diplomatist,

I know you. You keep these rippling showers of gold

Upon your head to buy your wishes with.

Therefore you packed your small red lips with honey.

Well, usurer, what’s the price you want?

Andromeda

I want,–

But father, will you give me what I want?

Cepheus

I’ld give you the bright sun from heaven for plaything

To make you happy, girl Andromeda.

Andromeda

I want the Babylonians who were wrecked

In the great ship today, to be my slaves,

Father.

Cepheus

Was ever such a perverse witch?

To ask the only thing I cannot give!

Andromeda

Can I not have them, father?

Cepheus

They are Poseidon’s.

Andromeda

Oh then you love Poseidon more than me!

Why should he have them?

Cepheus

Fie, child! the mighty gods

Are masters of the earth and sea and heavens,

And all that is, is theirs. We are their stewards.

But what is once restored into their hands

Is thenceforth holy: he who even gazes

With greedy eye upon divine possessions,

Is guilty in Heaven’s sight and may awake

A dreadful wrath. These men, Andromeda,

Must bleed upon the altar of the God.

Speak not of them again: they are devoted.

Andromeda

Is he a god who eats the flesh of men?

Praxilla

O hush, blasphemer!

Andromeda

Father, give command,

To have Praxilla here boiled for my breakfast.

I’ll be a goddess too.

Cepheus

Praxilla!

Praxilla

’Tis thus

She talks. Oh but it gives me a shivering fever

Sometimes to hear her.

Cepheus

What mean you, dread gods?

Purpose you then the ruin of my house

Preparing in my children the offences

That must excuse your wrath? Andromeda,

My little daughter, speak not like this again,

I charge you, no, nor think it. The mighty gods

Dwell far above the laws that govern men

And are not to be mapped by mortal judgments.

It is Poseidon’s will these men should die

Upon his altar. ’Tis not to be questioned.

Andromeda

It shall be questioned. Let your God go hungry.

Cepheus

I am amazed! Did you not hear me, child?

On the third day from now these men shall die.

The same high evening ties you fast with nuptials

To Phineus, who shall take you home to Tyre.

(aside)

On Tyre let the wrath fall, if it must come.

Andromeda

Father, you’ll understand this once for all,–

I will not let the Babylonians die,

I will not marry Phineus.

Cepheus

Oh, you will not?

Here is a queen, of Tyre and all the world;

How mutinous-majestically this smallness

Divulges her decrees, making the most

Of her five feet of gold and cream and roses!

And why will you not marry Phineus, rebel?

Andromeda

He does not please me.

Cepheus

School your likings, rebel.

It is most needful Syria mate with Tyre.

And you are Syria.

Andromeda

Why, father, if you gave me a toy, you’ld ask

What toy I like! If you gave me a robe

Or vase, you would consult my taste in these!

Must I marry any cold-eyed crafty husband

I do not like?

Cepheus

You do not like! You do not like!

Thou silly child, must the high policy

Of Princes then be governed by thy likings?

’Tis policy, ’tis kingly policy

That made this needful marriage, and it shall not

For your spoilt childish likings be unmade.

What, you look sullen? what, you frown, virago?

Look, if you mutiny, I’ll have you whipped.

Andromeda

You would not dare.

Cepheus

Not dare!

Andromeda

Of course you would not.

As if I were afraid of you!

Cepheus

You are spoiled,

You are spoiled! Your mother spoils you, you wilful sunbeam.

Come, you provoking minx, you’ll marry Phineus?

Andromeda

I will not, father. If I must marry, then

I’ll marry my bright sungod! and none else

In the wide world.

Cepheus

Your sungod! Is that all?

Shall I not send an envoy to Olympus

And call the Thunderer here to marry you?

You’re not ambitious?

Praxilla

It is not that she means;

She speaks of the bright youth her brother rescued.

Since she has heard of him, no meaner talk

Is on her lips.

Cepheus

Who is this radiant coxcomb?

Whence did he come to set my Syria in a whirl?

For him my son’s in peril of his life,

For him my daughter will not marry Tyre.

Oh, Polydaon’s right. He must be killed

Before he does more mischief. Andromeda,

On the third day you marry Tyrian Phineus.

He goes out hurriedly.

Diomede

That was a valiant shot timed to a most discreet departure. Parthian tactics are best when we deal with mutinous daughters.

Praxilla

Andromeda, you will obey your father?

Andromeda

You are not in my counsels. You’re too faithful,

Virtuous and wise, and virtuously you would

Betray me. There is a thing full-grown in me

That you shall only know by the result.

Diomede, come; for I need help, not counsel.

She goes.

Praxilla

What means she now? Her whims are as endless as the tossing of leaves in a wind. But you will find out and tell me, Diomede.

Diomede

I will find out certainly, but as to telling, that is as it shall please me – and my little mistress.

Praxilla

You shall be whipped.

Diomede

Pish!

She runs out.

Praxilla

The child is spoiled herself and she spoils her servants. There is no managing any of them.

She goes out.

Of strength and sweetness¹⁴.

An orchard garden in Syria by a river-bank: the corner of a cottage in the background.
Perseus, Cydone.

Cydone (sings)

O the sun in the reeds and willows!

O the sun with the leaves at play!

Who would waste the warm sunlight?

And for weeping there’s the night.

But now ’tis day.

Perseus

Yes, willows and the reeds! and the bright sun

Stays with the ripples talking quietly.

And there, Cydone, look! how the fish leap

To catch at sunbeams. Sing yet again, Cydone.

Cydone (sings)

O what use have your foolish tears?

What will you do with your hopes and fears?

They but waste the sweet sunlight.

Look! morn opens: look how bright

The world appears!

Perseus

O you Cydone in the sweet sunlight!

But you are lovelier.

Cydone

You talk like Iolaus.

Come, here’s your crown. I’ll set it where ’tis due.

Perseus

Crowns are too heavy, dear. Sunlight was better.

Cydone

’Tis a light crown of love I put upon you,

My brother Perseus.

Perseus

Love! but love is heavy.

Cydone

No, love is light. I put light love upon you,

Because I love you and you love Iolaus.

I love you because you love Iolaus,

And love the world that loves my Iolaus,

Iolaus my world and all the¹² world

Only for Iolaus¹³.

Perseus

Happy Cydone,

Who can lie here and babble to the river

All day of love and light and Iolaus.

If it could last! But tears are in the world

And must some day be wept.

Cydone

Why must they, Perseus?

Perseus

When Iolaus becomes King in Syria

And comes no more, what will you do, Cydone?

Cydone

Why, I will go to him.

Perseus

And if perhaps

He should not know you?

Cydone

Then it will be night.

It is day now.

Perseus

A bright philosophy,

But with the tears behind. Hellas, thou livest

In thy small world of radiant white perfection

With eye averted from the night beyond,

The night immense, unfathomed. But I have seen

Snow-regions monstrous underneath the moon

And Gorgon caverns dim. Ah well, the world

Is bright around me and the quick lusty breeze

Of strong adventure wafts my bright-winged sandals

O’er mountains and o’er seas, and Herpe’s with me,

My sword of sharpness.

Cydone

Your sword, my brother Perseus?

But it is lulled to sleep in scarlet roses

By the winged sandals watched. Can they really

Lift you into the sky?

Perseus

They can, Cydone.

Cydone

What’s in the wallet locked so carefully?

I would have opened it and seen, but could not.

Perseus

’Tis well thou didst not. For thy breathing limbs

Would in a moment have been charmed to stone

And these smooth locks grown rigid and stiffened, O Cydone,

Thy happy heart would never more have throbbed

To Iolaus’ kiss.

Cydone

What monster’s there?

Perseus

It is the Gorgon’s head who lived in night.

Snake-tresses frame its horror of deadly beauty

That turns the gazer into marble.

Cydone

Ugh!

Why do you keep such dreadful things about you?

Perseus

Why, are there none who are better turned to stone

Than living?

Cydone

O yes, the priest of the dark shrine

Who hates my love. Fix him to frowning grimness

In innocent marble. (listening) It is Iolaus!

I know his footfall, muffled in the green.

Iolaus enters.

Iolaus

Perseus, my friend,–

Perseus

Thou art my human sun.

Come, shine upon me; let thy face of beauty

Become a near delight, my arm, fair youth, possess thee.

Iolaus

I am a warrant-bearer to you, friend.

Perseus

On what arrest?

Iolaus

For running from the knife.

A debt that must be paid. They’ll not be baulked

Their dues of blood, their strict account of hearts.

Or mine or thine they’ll have to crown their altars.

Perseus

Why, do but make thy tender breast the altar

And I’ll not grudge my heart, sweet Iolaus.

Who’s this accountant?

Iolaus

Poseidon’s dark-browed priest,

As gloomy as the den in which he lairs,

Who hopes to gather Syria in his hands

Upon a priestly pretext.

Cydone

Change him, Perseus,

Into black stone!

Perseus

Oh, hard and black as his own mood!

He has a stony heart much better housed

In limbs of stone than a kind human body

Who would hurt thee, my Iolaus.

Iolaus

He’ld hurt

And find a curious pleasure. If it were even

My sister sunbeam, my Andromeda,

He’ld carve her soft white breast as readily

As any slave’s or murderer’s.

Perseus

Andromeda!

It is a name that murmurs to the heart

Iolaus

Three days you are given to prove yourself a god!

You failing, ’tis my bosom pays the debt.

That’s their decree.

Cydone

Turn them to stone, to stone!

All, all to heartless marble!

Perseus

Thy father bids this?

Iolaus

He dare not baulk this dangerous priest.

Perseus

Ah, dare not!

Yes, there are fathers too who love their lives

And not their children: earth has known of such.

There was a father like this once in Argos!

Iolaus

Blame not the King too much.

Cydone

Turn him to stone,

To stone!

Iolaus

Hush, hush, Cydone!

Cydone

Stone, hard stone!

Iolaus

I’ll whip thee, shrew, with rose-briars.

Cydone

Will you promise

To kiss the blood away? Then I’ll offend

Daily, on purpose.

Iolaus

Love’s rose-briars, sweet Cydone,

Inflict no wounds.

Cydone

Oh yes, they bleed within.

Iolaus

The brow of Perseus grows darkness!

Perseus

Rise,

And be my guide. Where is this temple and priest?

Iolaus

The temple now?

Perseus

Soonest is always best

When noble deeds are to be done.

Iolaus

What deed?

Perseus

I will release the men of Babylon

From their grim blood-feast. Let them howl for victims.

Iolaus

It will incense them more.

Perseus

Me they have incensed

With their fierce crafty fury. If they must give

To their dire god, let them at least fulfil

With solemn decency their fearful rites.

But since they bring in politic rage and turn

Their barbarous rite into a trade of murder,

Nor rite nor temple be respected more.

Must they have victims? Let them take and slay

Perseus alone. I shall rejoice to know

That so much strength and boldness dwells in men

Who are mortal.

Iolaus

Men thou needst not fear; but, Perseus,

Poseidon’s wrath will wake, whose lightest motion

Is deadly.

Perseus

Mine is not harmless.

Iolaus

Against gods

What can a mortal’s anger do?

Perseus

We’ll talk

With those pale merchants. Wait for me; I bring

Herpe my sword.

Cydone

The wallet, Perseus! leave not the dear wallet!

Perseus goes out towards the cottage.

Iolaus

My queen, have I your leave?

Cydone

Give me a kiss

That I may spend the hours remembering it

Till you return.

Iolaus (kissing her)

Will one fill hours, Cydone?

Cydone

I fear to ask for more. You’re such a miser.

Iolaus

You rose-lipped slanderer! there! Had I the time

I would disprove you, smothering you with what

You pray for.

Cydone

Come soon.

Iolaus

I’ll watch the sun go down.

In your dark night of tresses.

Perseus returns.

Perseus

Come.

Iolaus

I am ready.

Cydone

Stone, brother Perseus, make them stone for ever.

Perseus and Iolaus go out.

(sings)

“Marble body, heart of bliss

Or a stony heart and this,

Which of these two wilt thou crave?

One or other thou shalt have.”

“By my kisses shall be known

Which is flesh and which is stone.

Love, thy heart of stone! it quakes.

Sweet, thy fair cold limbs! love takes

With this warm and rosy trembling.

Where is now thy coy dissembling?

Heart and limbs I here escheat

For that fraudulent deceit.”

“And will not marble even grow soft,

Kissed so warmly and so oft?”

Curtain

Act III

The women’s apartments of the Palace.
Andromeda, Diomede.

Andromeda

All’s ready, let us go.

Diomede

Andromeda,

My little mistress whom I love, let me

Beseech you by that love, do not attempt it.

Oh, this is no such pretty wilfulness

As all men love to smile at and to punish

With tenderness and chidings. It is a crime

Full of impiety, a deed of danger

That venturous and iron spirits would be aghast

To dream of. You think because you are a child,

You will be pardoned, because you are a princess

No hand will dare to punish you. You do not know

Men’s hearts. They will not pause to pity you,

They will not spare. The people in its rage

Will tear us both to pieces, limb from limb,

With blows and fury, roaring round like tigers.

Will you expose yourself to that grim handling

Who cry out at the smallest touch of pain?

Andromeda

Do not delay me on the brink of action.

You have said these things before.

Diomede

You shall not do it.

I will not go with you.

Andromeda

So you expose me

To danger merely and break the oath you swore;

For I must do it then unhelped.

Diomede

I’ll tell

Your mother, child, and then you cannot go.

Andromeda

I shall die then on the third day from this.

Diomede

What! you will kill yourself, and for two strangers

You never saw? You are no human maiden

But something far outside mortality,

Princess, if you do this.

Andromeda

I shall not need.

You threaten me with the fierce people’s tearings,

And shall I not be torn when I behold

My fellows’ piteous hearts plucked from their bosoms

Between their anguished shrieks? I shall fall dead

With horror and with pity at your feet:

Then you’ll repent this cruelty.

She weeps.

Diomede

Child, child!

Hush, I will go with you. If I must die,

I’ll die.

Andromeda

Have I not loved you, Diomede?

Have I not taken your stripes upon myself,

Claiming your dear offences? Have I not lain

Upon your breast, stealing from my own bed

At night, and kissed your bosom and your hands

For very love of you? And I had thought

You loved me: but you do not care at last

Whether I live or die.

Diomede

Oh hush! I love you,

I’ll go with you. You shall not die alone,

If you are bent on dying. I’ll put on

My sandals and be with you in a moment.

Go, little princess. I am with you; go.

She goes.

Andromeda

O you poor shuddering men, my human fellows,

Horribly bound beneath the grisly knife

You feel already groping for your hearts,

Pardon me each long moment that you wrestle

With grim anticipation. O, and you,

If there is any god in the deaf skies

That pities men or helps them, O protect me!

But if you are inexorably unmoved

And punish pity, I, Andromeda,

Who am a woman on this earth, will help

My brothers. Then, if you must punish me,

Strike home. You should have given me no heart;

It is too late now to forbid it feeling.

She is going out. Athene appears.

What is this light, this glory? who art thou,

O beautiful marble face amid the lightnings?

My heart faints with delight, my body trembles,

Intolerable ecstasy beats in my veins;

I am oppressed and tortured with thy beauty.

Athene

I am Athene.

Andromeda

Art thou a goddess? Thy name

We hear far off in Syria.

Athene

I am she

Who helps and has compassion on struggling mortals.

Andromeda (falling prostrate)

Do not deceive me! I will kiss thy feet.

O joy! thou art! thou art!

Athene

Lift up thy head,

My servant.

Andromeda

Thou art! there are not only void

Azure and cold inexorable laws.

Athene

Stand up, O daughter of Cassiope.

Wilt thou then help these men of Babylonia,

My mortals whom I love?

Andromeda

I help myself,

When I help these.

Athene

To thee alone I gave

This knowledge. O virgin, O Andromeda,

It reached thee through that large and noble heart

Of woman beating in a little child.

But dost thou know that thy reward shall be

Betrayal and fierce hatred? God and man

Shall league in wrath to kill and torture thee

Mid dire revilings.

Andromeda

My reward shall be

To cool this anguish of pity in my heart

And be at peace: if dead, O still at peace!

Athene

Thou fearst not then? They will expose thee, child,

To slaughter by the monsters of the deep

Who shall come forth to tear thy limbs.

Andromeda

Beyond too

Shall I be hated, in that other world?

Athene

Perhaps.

Andromeda

Wilt thou love me?

Athene

Thou art my child.

Andromeda

O mother, O Athene, let me go.

They linger in anticipated pangs.

Athene

Go, child. I shall be near invisibly.

She disappears. Andromeda stands with clasped hands straining her eyes as if into infinity. Diomede returns.

Diomede

You are not gone as yet? what is this, princess?

What is this light around you! How you are altered,

Andromeda!

Andromeda

Diomede, let us go.

They go out.

In the Temple of Poseidon.
Cireas.

Cireas

I am done with thee, Poseidon Ennosigaios, man-slayer, ship-breaker, earth-shaker, lord of the waters! Never was faithful service so dirtily rewarded. In all these years not a drachma, not an obolus, not even a false coin for solace. And when thou hadst mocked me with hope, when a Prince had promised me all my findings, puttest thou me off with two pauperized merchants of Babylon? What, thou takest thy loud ravenous glut of the treasures that should have been mine and roarest derision at me with thy hundred-voiced laughters? Am I a sponge to suck up these insults? No! I am only moderately porous. I will break thy treasury, Poseidon, and I will run. Think not either to send thy sea-griffins after me. For I will live on the top of Lebanon, and thy monsters, when they come for me, shall snort and grin and gasp for breath and return to thee baffled and asthmatic.

As he talks Iolaus and Perseus enter.

Iolaus

What, Cireas, wilt thou run? I’ll give thee gold

To wing thy shoes, if thou wilt do my bidding.

Cireas

I am overheard! I am undone! I am crucified! I am disembowelled!

Iolaus

Be tranquil, Cireas, fool, I come to help thee.

Cireas

Do you indeed! I see, they have made you a god, for you know men’s minds. But could old father Zeus find your newborn godhead no better work than to help thieves and give wings to runaways? Will you indeed help me, god Iolaus? I can steal then under thy welcome protection? I can borrow Poseidon’s savings and run?

Iolaus

Steal not: thou shalt have gold enough to buy

Thy liberty and farms and slaves and cattle.

Cireas

Prince, art thou under a vow of liberality? or being about to die, wilt thou distribute thy goods and chattels to deserving dishonesty? Do not mock me, for if thou raise hopes again in me and break them, I can only hang myself.

Iolaus

I mock thee not, thou shalt have glut of riches.

Cireas

What must I do? I’ld give thee nose and ears

For farms and freedom.

Perseus

Wherefore dost thou bribe

This slave to undo a bond my sword unties?

Iolaus

I shrink from violence in the grim god’s temple.

Cireas

Zeus, art thou there with thy feathers and phosphorus? I pray thee, my good bright darling Zeus, do not come in the way of my earnings. Do not be so cantankerously virtuous, do not be so damnably economical. Good Zeus, I adjure thee by thy foot-plumes.

Iolaus

Cireas, wilt thou bring forth the wretched captives

Who wait the butcher Polydaon’s knife

With groanings? we would talk with them. Wilt thou?

Cireas

Will I? Will I? I would do any bad turn to that scanty-hearted rampageous old ship-swallower there. I would do it for nothing, and for so much gold will I not?

Iolaus

And thou must shut thine eyes.

Cireas

Eyes! I will shut mouth and nose and ears too, nor ask for one penny extra.

Iolaus

Dost thou not fear?

Cireas

Oh, the blue-haired old bogy there? I have lived eighteen years in this temple and seen nothing of him but ivory and sapphires. I begin to think he cannot breathe out of water; no doubt, he is some kind of fish and walks on the point of his tail.

Perseus

Enough, bring forth the Babylonian captives.

Cireas

I run, Zeus, I run: but keep thy phosphorus lit and handy against Polydaon’s return unasked for and untrumpeted.

He runs out.

Perseus

O thou grim calmness imaged like a man

That frownst above the altar! dire Poseidon!

Art thou that god indeed who smooths the sea

With one finger, and when it is thy will,

Rufflest the oceans with thy casual breathing?

Art thou not rather, lord, some murderous

And red imagination of this people,

The shadow of a soul that dreamed of blood

And took this dimness? If thou art Poseidon,

The son of Cronos, I am Cronos’ grandchild,

Perseus, and in my soul Athene moves

With lightnings.

Iolaus

I hear the sound of dragging chains.

Cireas returns with Tyrnaus and Smerdas.

Perseus

Smerdas and thou, Tyrnaus, once again

We meet.

Smerdas

Save me, yet save me.

Perseus

If thou art worth it,

I may.

Smerdas

Thou shalt have gold. I am well worth it.

I’ll empty Babylonia of its riches

Into thy wallet.

Perseus

Has terror made thee mad?

Refrain from speech! Thine eyes are calm, Tyrnaus.

Tyrnaus

I have composed my soul to my sad fortunes.

Yet wherefore sad? Fate has dealt largely with me.

I have been thrice shipwrecked, twice misled in deserts,

Wounded six times in battle with wild men

For life and treasure. I have outspent kings:

I have lost fortunes and amassed them: princes

Have been my debtors, kingdoms lost and won

By lack or having of a petty fraction

Of my rich incomings: and now Fate gives me

This tragic, not inglorious death: I am

The banquet of a god. It fits, it fits,

And I repine not.

Perseus

But will these help, Tyrnaus,

To pass the chill eternity of Hades?

This memory of glorious breathing life,

Will it alleviate the endless silence?

Tyrnaus

But there are lives beyond, and we meanwhile

Move delicately amid aerial things

Until the green earth wants us.

Perseus (shearing his chains with a touch of his sword)

Yet awhile

Of the green earth take all thy frank desire,

Merchant: the sunlight would be loth to lose thee.

Smerdas

O radiant helpful youth! O son of splendour!

I live again.

Perseus

Thou livest, but in chains,

Smerdas.

Smerdas

But thy good sword will quickly shear them.

Perseus

Thou wilt give me all Babylonia holds

Of riches for reward?

Smerdas

More, more, much more!

Perseus

But thou must go to Babylon to fetch it.

Then what security have I of payment?

Smerdas

Keep good Tyrnaus here, my almost brother.

I will come back and give thee gold, much gold.

Perseus

You’ld leave him here? in danger? with the knife

Searching for him and grim Poseidon angry?

Smerdas

What danger, when he is with thee, O youth,

Strong radiant youth?

Perseus

Yourself then stay with me,

And he shall bring the ransom from Chaldea.

Smerdas

Here? here? Oh God! they’ll seize me yet again

And cut my heart out. Let me go, dear youth,

Oh, let me go; I’ll give thee double gold.

Perseus

Thou sordid treacherous thing of fears, I’ll not

Venture for such small gain as the poor soul

Thou holdest, nor drive with danger losing bargains.

Smerdas

Oh, do not jest! it is not good to jest

With death and horror.

Perseus

I jest not.

Smerdas

Oh God! thou dost.

Diomede (without)

Cireas!

Cireas (jumping)

Who? who? who?

Iolaus

Is’t not a woman’s voice?

Withdraw into the shadow: let our swords

Be out against surprise. Hither, Tyrnaus.

Diomede

Cireas! where are you, Cireas? It is I.

Cireas

It is the little palace scamp, Diomede.

Plague take her! How she fluttered the heart in me!

Iolaus

Say nothing of us, merchant, or thou diest.

Iolaus, Perseus and Tyrnaus withdraw into the dimness of the Temple. Andromeda and Diomede enter.

Cireas

Princess Andromeda!

Perseus (apart)

Andromeda!

Iolaus’ rosy sister! O child goddess

Dropped recently from heaven! Its light is still

Upon thy face, thou marvel!

Iolaus

My little sister

In these grim precincts, who so feared their shadows!

Andromeda

Cireas, my servant Diomede means

To tell you of some bargain. Will you walk yonder?

Cireas and Diomede walk apart talking.

Art thou, as these chains say, the mournful victim

Our savage billows spared and men would murder?

But was there not another? Have they brought thee

From thy sad prison to the shrine alone?

Smerdas

He,– he,–

Andromeda

Has terror so possessed thy tongue,

It cannot do its office? Oh, be comforted.

Although red horror has its grasp on thee,

I dare to tell thee there is hope.

Smerdas

What hope?

Ah heaven! what hope! I feel the knife even now

Hacking my bosom. If thou bringst me hope,

I’ll know thee for a goddess and adore thee.

Andromeda

Be comforted: I bring thee more than hope.

Cireas!

Cireas

You’ll give me chains? you’ll give me jewels?

Andromeda

All of my own that I can steal for you.

Cireas

Steal boldly, O honey-sweet image of a thief, steal and fear not. I rose for good luck after all this excellent morning! O Poseidon, had I known there was more to be pocketed in thy disservice than in thy service, would I have misspent these eighteen barren years?

Andromeda

Undo this miserable captive’s bonds.

Smerdas

What! I shall be allowed to live! Is’t true?

Andromeda

No, I’ll undo them, Cireas; I shall feel

I freed him. Is there so much then to unlink?

O ingenuity of men to hurt

And bind and slay their brothers!

Smerdas

’Tis not a dream,

The horror was the dream. She smiles on me

A wonderful glad smile of joy and kindness,

Making a sunshine. Oh, be quicker, quicker.

Let me escape this hell where I have eaten

And drunk of terror and have slept with death.

Andromeda

Are you so careless of the friend who shared

The tears and danger? Where is he? Cireas!

Tyrnaus (coming forward)

O thou young goddess with the smile! Behold him,

Tyrnaus the Chaldean.

Andromeda (dropping the chain which binds Smerdas)

Already free!

Who has forestalled me?

Tyrnaus

Maiden, art thou vexed

To see me unbound?

Andromeda

I grudge your rescuer the happy task

Heaven meant for me of loosening your chains.

It would have been such joy to feel the cold

Hard irons drop apart between my fingers!

Who freed you?

Tyrnaus

A god as radiant as thyself,

Thou merciful sweetness.

Andromeda

Had he not a look

Like the Olympian’s? Was he not bright like Hermes

Or Phoebus?

Tyrnaus

He was indeed. Thou knowst him then?

Andromeda

In dreams I have met him. He was here but now?

Tyrnaus

He has withdrawn into the shadow, virgin.

Smerdas

Why do you leave me bound, and talk, and talk,

As if Death had not still his fingers on me?

Andromeda (resuming her task)

Forgive me! Tyrnaus, did that radiant helper

Who clove thy chains, forget to help this poor

Pale trembling man?

Tyrnaus

Because he showed too much

The sordid fear that pities only itself,

He left him to his fate.

Andromeda

Alas, poor human man!

Why, we have all so many sins to answer,

It would be hard to have cold justice dealt us.

We should be kindly to each other’s faults

Remembering our own. Is’t not enough

To see a face in tears and heal the sorrow,

Or must we weigh whether the face is fair

Or ugly? I think that even a snake in pain

Would tempt me to its succour, though I knew

That afterwards ’twould bite me! But he is a god

Perhaps who did this and his spotless radiance

Abhors the tarnish of our frailer natures.

Smerdas

Oh, I am free! I fall and kiss thy robe,

O goddess, O deliverer.

Andromeda

You must

Go quickly from this place. There is a cave

Near to those unkind rocks where you were shipwrecked,

A stone-throw up the cliff. We found it there

Climbing and playing, reckless of our limbs

In the sweet joy of sunshine, breeze and movement,

When we were children, I and Diomede.

None else will dream of it. There have I stored

Enough of food and water. Closely lurk

Behind its curtains of fantastic stone:

Venture not forth, though your hearts pine for sunlight,

Or Death may take you back into his grip.

When hot pursuit and search have been tired out,

I’ll find you golden wings will carry you

To your Chaldea.

Smerdas

Can you not find out divers

Who’ll rescue our merchandise from the sunk rocks

Where it is prisoned?

Tyrnaus

You have escaped grim murder,

Yet dream of nothing but your paltry gems!

You will call back Heaven’s anger on our heads.

Smerdas

We cannot beg our way to far Chaldea.

Andromeda

Diving is dangerous there: I will not risk

Men’s lives for money. I promised Cireas what I have,

And yet you shall not go unfurnished home.

I’ll beg a sum from my brother Iolaus

Will help you to Chaldea.

Smerdas

O my dear riches!

Must you lie whelmed beneath the Syrian surge

Uncared for?

Andromeda (to Diomede)

Take them to the cave. Show Cireas

The hidden mouth. I’ll loiter and expect you

Under the hill-side, where sweet water plashes

From the grey fountain’s head, our fountain. Merchants, go;

Athene guard you!

Tyrnaus

Not before I kneel

And touch thy feet with reverent humble hands,

O human merciful divinity,

Who by thy own sweet spirit moved, unasked,

Not knowing us, cam’st from thy safe warm chamber

Here where Death broods grim-visaged in his home,

To save two unseen, unloved, alien strangers,

And being a woman feared not urgent death,

And being a child shook not before God’s darkness

And that insistent horror of a world

O’ershadowing ours. O surely in these regions

Where thou wert born, pure-eyed Andromeda,

There shall be some divine epiphany

Of calm sweet-hearted pity for the world,

And harsher gods shall fade into their Hades.

Smerdas

You prattle, and at any moment, comes

The dreadful priest with clutch upon my shoulder.

Come! come! you, slave-girl, lead the way, accursèd!

You loiter?

Andromeda

Chide not my servant, Babylonian.

Go, Diomede; darkness like a lid

Will soon shut down upon the rugged beach

And they may stumble as they walk. Go, Cireas.

Diomede and Cireas go out, followed by the merchants.

Alone I stand before thee, grim Poseidon,

Here in thy darkness, with thy altar near

That keeps fierce memory of tortured groans

And human shrieks of victims, and, unforced,

I yet pollute my soul with thy bloody nearness

To tell thee that I hate, contemn, defy thee.

I am no more than a brief-living woman,

Yet am I more divine than thou, for I

Can pity. I have torn thy destined prey

From thy red jaws. They say thou dost avenge

Fearfully insult. Avenge thyself, Poseidon.

She goes out: Perseus and Iolaus come forward.

Perseus

Thou art the mate for me, Andromeda!

Now, now I know wherefore my eager sandals

Bore me resistlessly to thee and Syria.

Iolaus

This was Andromeda and not Andromeda.

I never saw her woman till this hour.

Perseus

Knew you so ill the child you loved so well,

Iolaus?

Iolaus

Sometimes we know them least

Whom most we love and constantly consort with.

Perseus

How daintily she moved as if a hand

She loved were on her curls and she afraid

Of startling the sweet guest!

Iolaus

O Perseus, Perseus!

She has defied a strong and dreadful god,

And dreadfully he will avenge himself.

Perseus

Iolaus, friend, I think not quite at random

Athene led me to these happy shores

That bore such beautiful twin heads for me

Sun-curled, Andromeda and Iolaus,

That I might see their beauty marred with death

By cunning priests and blood-stained gods. Fear not

The event. I bear Athene’s sword of sharpness.

They go out.

He said he was compelled¹⁶.

Darkness. The Temple of Poseidon.
Polydaon enters.

Polydaon

Cireas! Why, Cireas! Cireas! Knave, I call you!

Is the rogue drunk or sleeps? Cireas! you, Cireas!

My voice comes echoing from the hollow shrine

To tell me of solitude. Where is this drunkard?

A dreadful thing it is to stand alone

In this weird temple. Forty years of use

Have not accustomed me to its mute threatening.

It seems to me as if dead victims moved

With awful faces all about this stone

Invisibly here palpable. And Ocean

Groans ever like a wounded god aloud

Against our rocky base, his voice at night

Weirdly insistent. I will go and talk

With the Chaldeans in their chains: better

Their pleasing groans and curses than the hush.

He goes out and after a while comes back, disordered.

Wake, sleeping Syria, wake! Thou art violated,

Thy heart cut out: thou art outraged, Syria, outraged,

Thy harvests and thy safety and thy sons

Already murdered! O hideous sacrilege!

Who can have dared this crime? Could the slave Cireas

Have ventured thus? O no, it is the proud

God-hating son of Cepheus, Iolaus,

And that swift stranger borne through impious air

To upheave the bases of our old religion.

They have rescued the Chaldeans. Cireas lies

Murdered perhaps on the sound-haunted cliffs

Who would have checked their crime. I’ll strike the gong

That only tolls when dread calamity

Strides upon Syria. Wake, doomed people, wake!

He rushes out. A gong sounds for some moments. It is silent and he returns, still more disordered.

Wake! Wake! Do you not hear Poseidon raging

Beneath the cliffs with tiger-throated menace?

Do you not hear his feet upon the boulders

Sounding, a thunderous report of peril,

As he comes roaring up his stony ramparts

To slay you? Ah, the city wakes. I hear

A surge confused of hurrying, cries and tumult.

What is this darkness moving on me? Gods!

Where is the image? Whose is this awful godhead?

The Shadow of Poseidon appears, vague and alarming at first, then distinct and terrible in the darkness.

Poseidon

My victims, Polydaon, give me my victims.

Polydaon (falling prostrate)

It was not I, it was not I, but others.

Poseidon

My victims, Polydaon, give me my victims.

Polydaon

O dire offended god, not upon me

Fall thy loud scourges! I am innocent.

Poseidon

How art thou innocent, when the Chaldeans

Escape? Give me my victims, Polydaon.

Polydaon

I know not how they fled nor who released them.

Gnash not thy blood-stained teeth on me, O Lord,

Nor slay me with those glaring eyes. Thy voice

Thunders, a hollow terror, through my soul.

Poseidon

Hear me, unworthy priest. While thou art scheming

For thy own petty mortal aims abroad,

I am insulted in my temple, laughed at

By slaves, by children done injurious wrong,

My victims snatched from underneath my roof

By any casual hand, my dreadful image

Looking deserted on: for none avenges.

Polydaon

Declare thy will, O Lord, it shall be done.

Poseidon

Therefore I will awake, I will arise,

And you shall know me for a god. This day

The loud Assyrians shall break shouting in

With angry hooves like a huge-riding flood

Upon this country. The pleasant land of Syria

Shall be dispeopled. Wolves shall howl in Damascus,

And Gaza and Euphrates bound a desert.

My resonant and cliff-o’ervaulting seas,

Black-cowled, with foaming tops thundering shall climb

Into your lofty seats of ease and wash them

Strangled into the valleys. From the deep

My ravening herds pastured by Amphitrite

Shall walk upon your roads, devour your maidens

And infants, tear your strong and armèd men

Helplessly shrieking like weak-wristed women,

Till all are dead. And thou, neglectful priest,

Shalt go down living into Tartarus

Where knives fire-pointed shall disclose thy breast

And pluck thy still-renewing heart from thee

For ever: till the world cease shall be thy torments.

Polydaon

O dreadful Lord!

Poseidon

If thou wouldst shun the doom,

And keep my Syria safe, discover then

The rescuer of the Babylonian captives

And to the monsters of my deep expose

For a delicious banquet. Offer the heart

Of Iolaus here still warmly alive

And sobbing blood to leave his beautiful body;

Slaughter on his yet not inanimate bosom

The hero for whose love he braved my rage,

And let the sacrilegious house of Cepheus

Be blotted from the light. Thy sordid aims

Put from thy heart: remember to be fearless.

I will inhabit thee, if thou deserve it.

He disappears thundering.

Polydaon

Yes, Lord! shall not thy dreadful will be done?

Phineus enters and his Tyrians with torches.

Phineus

Wherefore has the gong’s ominous voice tonight

Affrighted Syria? Are you Polydaon

Who crouch here?

Polydaon (rising)

Welcome, King Phineus.

Phineus

Who art thou?

Thine eyes roll round in a bright glaring horror

And rising up thou shak’st thy gloomy locks

As if they were a hungry lion’s mane

Preparing for the leap. Speak, Polydaon.

Polydaon

Yes, I shall speak, of sacrilege and blood,

Its terrible forfeit, and the wrath of Heaven.

Cepheus enters with Dercetes and Syrian soldiers, Therops, Perissus and a throng of Syrians; scores of torches.

Cepheus

What swift calamity, O Polydaon,

Has waked to clamorousness the fatal gong

At which all Syria trembles? What is this face

Thou showest like some grim accusing phantom’s

In the torches’ light? Wherefore rangst thou the bell?

Polydaon

It rang the doom of thee and all thy house,

Cepheus.

Cepheus

My doom!

Phineus (aside)

I glimpse a striking plot

And ’tis well-staged too.

Polydaon

The victims are released,

The victims bound for terrible Poseidon.

Thou and thy blood are guilty.

Cepheus

Thou art mad!

Polydaon

’Tis thou and thy doomed race are seized with madness,

Who with light hearts offend against Poseidon.

But they shall perish. Thou and thy blood shall perish.

Cepheus

O, thou appalst me. Wherefore rings out thy voice

Against me like a clamorous bell of doom

In the huge darkness?

Polydaon

Poseidon’s self arose

In the dim night before me with a voice

As angry as the loud importunate surge

Denouncing thee. Thou and thy blood shall perish.

Phineus

Cepheus, let search be made. Perhaps the victims

Have not fled far, and all may yet be saved.

Cepheus

Scour, captains¹⁵, scour all Syria for the fugitives.

Dercetes and thy troop, down to the coast,

Scan every boulder: out, out, Meriones,

Callias, Oridamas and Pericarpus,

Ring in the countryside with cordons armed,

Enter each house, ransack most private chambers,

But find them.

Dercetes and the captains go out with their soldiers, the people making way for them.

Polydaon

People of Syria, hearken, hearken!

Poseidon for this sacrilege arouses

The Assyrian from the land and from the sea

His waves and all their sharp-toothed monsters: your men

Shall be rent and disembowelled, your women ravished,

Butchered by foemen or by Ocean’s dogs

Horribly eaten: what’s left, the flood shall swallow.

Cries and groans.

Voices

Spare us, Poseidon, spare us, dread deity!

Polydaon

Would you be spared? Obey Poseidon, people.

Therops

Thou art our King, command us.

Polydaon

Bring the woman,

Chaldean Cassiopea, and her daughter.

Tell them that Syria’s King commands them here.

Therops and others go out to do his bidding.

Phineus

What mean you, priest?

Cepheus

Wherefore my queen and princess?

Polydaon

I do the will of terrible Poseidon.

Thou and thy blood shall perish.

Phineus

Thou then art mad!

I thought this was a skilful play. Thinkst thou

I will permit the young Andromeda,

My bride, to be mishandled or exposed

To the bloody chances of wild popular fury

In such a moment?

Polydaon

Phineus, I know not what thou wilt permit:

I know what terrible Poseidon wills.

Phineus

Poseidon! thou gross superstitious fool,

Hast thou seen shadows in the night and tookst them

For angry gods?

Polydaon

Refrain from impious words,

Or else the doom shall take thee in its net.

Phineus

Refrain thyself from impious deeds, or else

A hundred Tyrian blades shall search thy brain

To look for thy lost reason.

Polydaon (recoiling)

Patience, King Phineus!

It may be, thou shalt have thy whole desire

By other means.

Dercetes returns.

Dercetes

One of the fugitives is seized.

Polydaon

Where, where?

Dercetes

Creeping about the sea-kissed rocks we found him

Where the ship foundered, babbling greedily

Of his lost wealth, in cover of the darkness.

Polydaon

Now we shall know the impious hand. Tremble,

Tremble, King Cepheus.

Cepheus (aside)

I am besieged, undone.

No doubt it is my rash-brained Iolaus

Ruins us all.

Soldiers enter, driving in Smerdas.

Smerdas (groaning)

I am dragged back to hell.

I am lost and nothing now can save me.

Polydaon

Chaldean,

The choice is thine. Say, wilt thou save thy life

And see the green fields of thy land once more

And kiss thy wife and children?

Smerdas

You mock me, mock me!

Polydaon

No, man! thou shalt have freedom at a price

Or torture gratis.

Smerdas

Price? price? I’ll give the price!

Polydaon

The names of those whose impious hands released thee:

Which if thou speak not, thou shalt die, not given

To the dire god, for he asks other victims,

But crushed with fearful tortures.

Smerdas

O kind Heaven!

Have mercy! Must I give her up,– that smile

Of sweetness and those kindly eyes, to death?

It is a dreadful choice! I cannot do it.

Polydaon

It was a woman did this!

Smerdas

I’ll say no more.

Cepheus

I breathe again: it was not Iolaus.

Polydaon

Seize him and twist him into anguished knots!

Let every bone be crushed and every sinew

Wrenched and distorted, till each inch of flesh

Gives out its separate shriek.

Smerdas

O spare me, spare me:

I will tell all.

Polydaon

Speak truth and I will give thee

Bushels of gold and shipment to Chaldea.

Smerdas

Gold? Gold? Shall I have gold?

Polydaon

Thou shalt.

Smerdas (after a pause)

The youth

You would have taken on the beach, arrived,

And his the sword bit through my iron fetters.

Polydaon

Palter not! Who was with him? Thou shalt have gold.

Smerdas

Young Iolaus.

Cepheus

Alas!

Phineus

Thus far is well.

Polydaon

Thou hast a shifty look about the eyes.

Thou spokest of a woman. Was’t the Queen?

Hast thou told all? His face grows pale. To torment!

Smerdas (groaning)

I will tell all. Swear then I shall have gold

And safety.

Polydaon

By grim Poseidon’s head I swear.

Smerdas

O hard necessity! The fair child princess,

Andromeda, with her young slave-girl came,

She was my rescuer.

There is a deep silence of amazement.

Phineus

I’ll not believe this! could that gentle child

Devise and execute so huge a daring?

Thou liest: thou art part of some foul plot.

Polydaon

He has the accent of unwilling truth.

Phineus, she is death’s bride, not thine. Wilt thou

Be best man in that dolorous wedding? Forbear

And wait Poseidon’s will.

Phineus (low)

Shall I have Syria?

Polydaon

When it is mine to give thee.

Therops returns.

Therops

The Queen arrives.

Polydaon

Remove the merchant.

The soldiers take Smerdas into the background. Cassiopea enters with Andromeda and Diomede, Nebassar and the Chaldean Guard.

Cassiopea

Keep ready hands upon your swords, Chaldeans.

What is this tumult? Wherefore are we called

At this dim hour and to this solemn place?

Polydaon

Com’st thou with foreign falchions, Cassiopea,

To brave the Syrian gods? Abandon her,

Chaldeans. ’Tis a doomed head your swords encompass.

Cassiopea

Since when dost thou give thy commands in Syria

And sentence queens? My husband and thy King

Stands near thee; let him speak.

Polydaon

Let him. There stands he.

Cassiopea

Why hidest thou thine eyes, monarch of Syria,

Sinking thy forehead like a common man

Unkingly? What grief o’ertakes thee?

Polydaon

You see he speaks not.

’Tis I command in Syria. Is’t not so,

My people?

Therops

’Tis so.

Polydaon

Stand forth, Andromeda.

Cassiopea

What would you with my child? I stand here for her.

Polydaon

She is accused of impious sacrilege,

And she must die.

Cassiopea (shuddering)

Die! Who accuses her?

Polydaon

Bring the Chaldean.

Diomede

Oh, the merchant’s seized

And all is known. Deny it, my sweet lady,

And we may yet be saved.

Andromeda

Oh poor, poor merchant!

Did I unloose thy bonds in vain?

Diomede

Say nothing.

Andromeda

And why should I conceal it, Diomede?

What I had courage in my heart to do,

Surely I can have courage to avow.

Diomede

But they will kill us both.

Andromeda

I am a princess.

Why should I lie? From fear? But I am not afraid.

Meanwhile the soldiers have brought Smerdas to the front.

Polydaon

Look, merchant. Say before all, who rescued thee?

She was it?

Smerdas

It is she. Oh, do not look

With that sad smile upon me. I am compelled.

Polydaon

Is this the slave-girl?

Smerdas

It is she.

Cassiopea

This wretch

Lies at thy bidding. Put him to the question.

Polydaon

I’ll not permit it.

Perissus

Why, man, it is the law. We’ll not believe

Our little princess did the crime.

Cassiopea

Syrians,

Look at this¹⁷ paltering priest. Do you not see

It is a plot, this man his instrument

Who lies so wildly? He’ll not have him questioned.

No doubt ’twas he himself released the man,–

Who else could do it in this solemn temple

Where human footsteps fear to tread? He uses

The name of great Poseidon to conceal

His plottings. He would end the line of Cepheus

And reign in Syria.

Perissus

This sounds probable.

Voices

Does he misuse Poseidon’s name? unbind

Victims? Kill him!

Cassiopea

Look how he pales, O people!

Is’t thus that great Poseidon’s herald looks

When charged with the god’s fearful menaces?

He diets you with forgeries and fictions.

Cries

Let him be strangled!

Phineus

This is a royal woman!

Polydaon

Well, let the merchant then be put to question.

Perissus

Come and be tickled, merchant. I am the butcher.

Do you see my cleaver? I will torture you kindly.

Smerdas

O help me, save me, lady Andromeda.

Andromeda

Oh, do not lay your cruel hands upon him.

I did release him.

Cassiopea

Ah, child Andromeda.

Perissus

You, little princess! Wherefore did you this?

Andromeda

Because I would not have their human hearts

Mercilessly uprooted for the bloody

Monster you worship as a god! because

I am capable of pain and so can feel

The pain of others! For which if you I love

Must kill me, do it. I alone am guilty.

Polydaon

Now, Cassiopea! You are silent, Queen.

Lo, Syrians, lo, my forgeries and fictions!

Lo, my vile plottings! Enough. Poseidon wills

That on the beach this criminal be bound

For monsters of the sea to rend in fragments,

And all the royal ancient blood of Syria

Must be poured richly forth to appease and cleanse.

Cassiopea

Swords from the scabbard! gyre in your King from harm,

Chaldeans! Hew your way through all opposers!

Thou in my arms, my child Andromeda!

I’ll keep my daughter safe upon my bosom

Against the world.

Polydaon

What dost thou, Babylonian?

Cassiopea

To the palace,

My trusty countrymen!

Polydaon

Oppose them, soldiers!

They cheat the god of the crime-burdened heads

Doomed by his just resentment.

Dercetes

We are few:

And how shall we lay hands on royalty?

Polydaon

Nebassar, darest thou oppose the gods?

Nebassar

Out of my sword’s way, priest! I do my duty.

Polydaon

Draw, King of Tyre!

Phineus

’Tis not my quarrel, priest.

Nebassar and the Chaldeans with drawn swords go out from the Temple, taking the King and Queen, Andromeda and Diomede.

Polydaon

People of Syria, you have let them pass!

You fear not then the anger of Poseidon?

Perissus

Would you have us spitted upon the Chaldean swords? Mad priest, must we be broached like joints and tossed like pancakes? We have no weapons. Tomorrow we will go to the Palace and what must be done shall be done. But ’tis not just that many should be slain for the crime of one and the house of Syria outrooted. Follow me and observe my commands, brave aristocracy of the shop, gallant commoners of the lathe and anvil, follow Perissus. I will lead you tonight to your soft downy beds and tomorrow to the Palace.

All the Syrians go out, led by Therops and Perissus.

Phineus

Thou hast done foolishly in this, O priest.

Hadst thou demanded the one needful head

Of Iolaus, it was easy: but now

The tender beauty of Andromeda

Compels remorse and the astonished people

Recoil from the bold waste of royal blood

Thou appointest them to spill. I see that zeal

And frantic superstition are bad plotters.

Henceforth I work for my sole hand, to pluck

My own good from the storms of civic trouble

This night prepares.

He goes out with his Tyrians.

Polydaon

O terrible Poseidon,

Thyself avenge thyself! hurl on this people

The sea and the Assyrian. Where is the power

Thou saidst should tarry with me? I have failed.

He remains sunk in thought for a while, then raises his head.

Tomorrow, Syrian? tomorrow is Poseidon’s.

Curtain

Act IV

The countryside, high ground near the city of Cepheus.
A crowd of Syrians, men and women, running in terror, among them Chabrias, Megas, Baltis, Pasithea, Morus, Gardas, Syrax.

Baltis (stopping and sinking down on her knees)

Ah, whither can we run where the offended

Poseidon shall not reach us?

Chabrias

Stop, countrymen;

Let’s all die here together.

Others

Let’s stop and die.

Megas

Run, run! Poseidon’s monsters howl behind.

Pasithea

O day of horror and of punishment!

Syrax

Let us stay here; it is high ground, perhaps

The monster will not reach us.

Damoetes enters.

Damoetes

I have seen the terror near, and yet I live.

It vomits fire for half a league.

Syrax

It is

As long as a sea-jutting promontory.

Damoetes

It has six monstrous legs.

Syrax

Eight, eight; I saw it.

Megas

Chabrias, it caught thy strong son by the foot,

And dashed his head against a stone, that all

The brains were scattered.

Chabrias

Alas, my son! I will

Go back and join you in the monster’s jaws.

He is stopped by the others.

Damoetes

It seized thy daughter, O Pasithea,

And tore her limbs apart, which it devoured

While yet the trunk lay screaming under its foot.

Pasithea

Oh God!

She swoons.

All

Lift her up, lift her up. Alas!

Megas

These sorrows may be ours.

Baltis

Ah Heaven, my son!

I did not wake him when this news of horror

Plucked me from sleep.

Gardas

My wife and little daughter

Are in my cottage where perhaps the monster

Vomits his fiery breath against the door.

I will go back.

Morus

Let us go back, Damoetes.

Damoetes

I’ll not go back for twenty thousand wives

And children. Life is sweet.

Many voices

Let us not go.

They stop Gardas.

Megas

What noise is that?

Baltis

Run, run, ’tis some new horror.

All are beginning to run. Therops enters.

Therops

Where will you run? Poseidon’s wrath is near you

And over you and behind you and before you.

His monsters from the ooze ravage howling

Along our shores, and the indignant sea

Swelled to unnatural tumultuous mountains

Is climbing up the cliffs with spume and turmoil.

Damoetes

O let us run a hundred leagues and live.

Therops

Before you is another death. Last night

The Assyrians at three points came breaking in

Across the border and the frontier forces

Are slain. They torture, burn and violate:

Young girls and matrons, men and boys are butchered.

Salvation is not in your front and flight

Casts you from angry gods to men more ruthless.

I wonder not that you are silent, stunned

With fear: but will you listen, countrymen,

And I will show you a cure for these fierce evils.

Voices

Oh tell us, tell us, you shall be our king.

Megas

We’ll set thy image by the great Poseidon’s

And worship it.

Therops

What is the unexampled cause of wrath

Which whelms you with these horrors? Is’t not the bold

Presumptuous line of Cepheus? Is’t not your kings

Whose pride, swollen by your love and homage, Syrians,

Insults the gods, rescues Poseidon’s victims

And with a sacrilegious levity

Exposes all your lives to death and woe?

There is the fount of all your misery, Syrians,

For this the horror eats you up,– your kings.

Cries

Away with them! throw them into the sea – let Poseidon swallow them!

Therops

But most I blame the fell Chaldean woman

Who rules you. What is this Cepheus but a puppet

Dressed up in royal seemings, pushed forth and danced

At her caprice? Unhappy is the land

That women rule, that country more unhappy

That is to heartless foreigners a prey.

But thou, O ill-starred Syria, two worst evils

Hast harboured in a single wickedness.

What cares the light Chaldean for your gods,

Your lives, your sons, your daughters? She lives at ease

Upon the revenues of your hard toil,

Depending on favourites, yes, on paramours,–

For why have women favourites but to ease

Their sensual longings? – and insults your deities.

Do you not think she rescued the Chaldeans

Because they were her countrymen, and used

Her daughter, young Andromeda, for tool

That her fair childish beauty might disarm

Wrath and suspicion? then, the crime unearthed,

Braved all and set her fierce Chaldeans’ swords

Against the good priest Polydaon’s heart,–

You did not hear that? – the good Polydaon

Who serves Poseidon with such zeal! Therefore

The god is angry: your wives, sisters, daughters

Must suffer for Chaldean Cassiopea.

Cries

Let us seize her and kill, kill, kill, kill her!

Damoetes

Burn her!

Morus

Roast her!

Megas

Tear her into a million fragments.

Chabrias

But are they not our kings? We must obey them.

Therops

Wherefore must we obey them? Kings are men,

And they are set above their fellow-mortals

To serve us, friends,– not, surely, for our hurt!

Why should our sons and daughters bleed for them,

Syrians? Is not our blood as dear, as precious,

As human? Why should these kings, these men, go clad

In purple and in velvet while you toil

For little and are hungry and are naked?

Cries

True, true, true!

Gardas

This is a wonderful man, this Therops. He has a brain, countrymen.

Damoetes

A brain! He is no cleverer than you or I, Morus.

Morus

I should think not, Damoetes!

Damoetes

We knew these things long ago and did not need wind-bag Therops to tell us!

Morus

We have talked them over often, Damoetes.

Megas

We’ll have no more kings, countrymen.

Cries

No kings, no kings!

Gardas

Or Therops shall be king.

Cries

Yes, Therops king! Therops king!

Damoetes

Good king Lungs! Oh, let us make him king, Morus,– he will not pass wind in the market-place so often.

Therops

Poseidon is our king; we are his people.

Gods we must worship; why should we worship men

And set a heavenly crown on mortal weakness?

They have offended against great Poseidon,

They are guilty of a fearful sacrilege.

Let them perish.

Cries

Kill them! let us appease Poseidon.

Chabrias

Worship Heaven’s power but bow before the king.

Therops

What need have we of kings? What are these kings?

Chabrias

They are the seed of gods.

Therops

Then, let them settle

Themselves their quarrel with their Olympian kindred.

Why should we suffer? Let Andromeda

Be exposed and Iolaus sacrificed:

Then shall Poseidon’s wrath retire again

Into the continent of his vast billows.

Chabrias

If it must be so, let it come by award

Of quiet justice.

Therops

Justice! They are the judges

Who did the crime. Wherefore dost thou defend them?

Thou favourest then Poseidon’s enemies?

Cries

Kill him too, kill Chabrias. Poseidon, great Poseidon! we are Poseidon’s people.

Damoetes

Let him join his son and by the same road.

Morus

Beat his brains out – to see if he has any. Ho! ho! ho!

Therops

Let him alone: he is a fool. Here comes

Our zealous good kind priest, our Polydaon.

Polydaon enters.

Cries

Polydaon! Polydaon! the good Polydaon! Save us, Polydaon!

Polydaon

Ah, do you call me now to save you? Last night

You did not save me when the foreign swords

Were near my heart.

Megas

Forgive us and protect.

Damoetes

You, lead us to the palace, be our chief.

Morus

We’ll have no kings: lead, you: on to the palace!

Megas

Poseidon shall be king, thou his vicegerent.

Gardas

Therops at thy right hand!

Cries

Yes, Therops! Therops!

Polydaon

Oh, you are sane now, being let blood by scourgings!

Unhurt had been much better. But Poseidon

Pardons and I will save.

Cries

Polydaon for ever, the good Polydaon, Poseidon’s Viceroy!

Polydaon

Swear then to do Poseidon’s will.

Cries

We swear!

Damoetes

Command and watch the effect!

Polydaon

Will not the tongue

Of Cassiopea once more change you, people?

Damoetes

We’ll cut it out and feed her dogs with it.

Polydaon

Shall Iolaus bleed? Andromeda

Be trailed through the city and upon the rocks,

As the god wills, flung naked to his monsters?

Cepheus and Cassiopea die?

Cries

They shall!

Megas

Not one of them shall live.

Polydaon

Then come, my children.

Damoetes

But the beast! Will it not tear us on the road?

Polydaon

It will not hurt you who do Poseidon’s will.

I am your safeguard; I will march in front.

Cries

To the palace, to the palace! We’ll kill the Chaldeans, strangle Cepheus, tear the Queen to pieces.

Polydaon

In order, in good order, my sweet children.

The mob surges out following Polydaon and Therops: only Damoetes, Chabrias, Baltis and Pasithea are left.

Damoetes

Come, Chabrias, we’ll have sport.

Chabrias

My dead son calls me.

He goes out in another direction.

Baltis

Pasithea, rise and come: you’ll see her killed

Who is the murderess of your daughter.

Pasithea

Let me

Stay here and die.

Damoetes

Lift her up. Come, fool.

They go out, leading Pasithea.

Cydone’s Garden.
Cydone, Iolaus, Perseus.

Cydone

Perseus, you did not turn him into stone?

Iolaus

You cruelty! must one go petrifying

One’s fellows through the world? ’Twould not be decent.

Cydone

He would have been so harmless as a statue!

Perseus

The morning has broken over Syria and the sun

Mounts royally into his azure kingdom.

I feel a stir within me as if great things

Were now in motion and clear-eyed Athene

Urging me on to high and helpful deeds.

There is a grandiose tumult in the air,

A voice of gods and Titans locked in wrestle.

Diomede enters.

Diomede

Ah, prince!

She bursts into tears.

Iolaus

Diomede, what calamity?

Diomede

Flee, flee from Syria, save thyself.

Iolaus

From Syria!

Am I alone in peril? Then I’ll sit

And wait.

Diomede

Poseidon’s monsters from the deep

Arise to tear us for our sin. The people

In fury, led by Polydaon, march

Upon the palace, crying, “Slay the King,

Butcher the Queen, and let Andromeda

And Iolaus die.” O my sweet playmate,

They swear they’ll bind her naked to the rocks

Of the sea-beach for the grim monster’s jaws

To tear and swallow.

Iolaus

My sword, my sword, Cydone!

Diomede

Oh, go not to the fierce and bloody people!

Praxilla stole me out, hiding my face

In her grey mantle: I have outrun the wind

To warn you. Had the wild mob recognised¹⁸ me,

They would have torn me into countless pieces,

And will you venture near whose name they join

With death and cursings? Polydaon leads them.

Cydone

Had he been only stone!

Iolaus

My sword!

Cydone gives him the sword.
Perseus goes out to the cottage.

Diomede

You’ll go?

What will you do alone against ten thousand?

Iolaus

To die is always easy. This canaille

I do not fear; it is a coward rabble.

Diomede

But terror gives them fierceness: they are dangerous.

Iolaus

Keep Diomede for your service, love,

If I am killed; escape hence with your mother

To Gaza; she has gold: you may begin

A life as fair there. Sometimes remember me.

Cydone

Diomede, will you comfort my dear mother?

Tell her I am quite safe and will be back

By nightfall. Hush! this in your ear, Diomede.

Escape with her under the veil of night,

For I shall not come back. Be you her daughter

And comfort her sad lonely age, Diomede.

Iolaus

What do you mean, Cydone?

Cydone

Are you ready?

Let us be going.

Iolaus

Us, sweet lunatic?

Cydone

Often you’ve said that you and I are only one,

I shall know now if you mean it.

Iolaus

You shall not give

To the rude mob’s ferocious violence

The beautiful body I have kissed so often.

You’ll not obey me?

Cydone

No.

Iolaus

Leave this you shall not.

Cydone

I do not know how you will stop me.

Iolaus

Shrew!

You shall be stopped by bonds. Here you’ll remain

Tied to a tree-trunk by your wilful wrists

Till all is over.

Perseus returns, armed.

Cydone

I’ll bring the tree and all and follow you.

Iolaus

Oh, will you, Hercules?

Perseus

Forbid her not,

My Iolaus; no tress of her shall fall.

I have arisen and all your turbulent Syria

Shall know me for the son of Zeus.

Iolaus

Perseus,

Art thou indeed a god? What wilt thou do,

One against a whole people? What way hast thou?

Perseus

This is no hour to speak or plan, but to act.

A presence sits within my heart that sees

Each moment’s need and finds the road to meet it.

Dread nothing; I am here to help and save.

Iolaus

I had almost forgotten; the might thou hast shown

Is a sufficient warrant.

Cydone

I shall come back,

Diomede.

Perseus

My grip is firm on Herpe,

Athene’s aegis guards my wrist; herself

The strong, omnipotent and tranquil goddess

Governs my motions with her awful will.

Have trust in me. Borne on my bright-winged sandals

Invisibly I will attend your course

On the light breezes.

He goes out followed by Iolaus and Cydone.

Diomede

I am too tired to follow,

Too daunted with their mad-beast howls. Here let me hide

Awaiting what event this war of gods

May bring to me and my sweet-hearted lady.

O my Andromeda! my little playmate!

She goes out towards the cottage weeping.

A room commanding the outer Court of the Palace.
Nebassar, Praxilla.

Praxilla

I have seen them from the roof; at least ten thousand

March through the streets. Do you not hear their rumour,

A horrid hum as of unnumbered hornets

That slowly nears us?

Nebassar

If they are so many,

It will be hard to save the princess.

Praxilla

Save her!

It is too late now to save anyone.

Nebassar

I fear so.

Praxilla

But never is too late to die

As loyal servants for the lords whose bread

We have eaten. At least we women of the household

Will show the way to you Chaldeans.

Nebassar

We are soldiers,

Praxilla, and need no guidance on a road

We daily tread in prospect. I’ll bring my guards.

He goes out saluting Cassiopea who enters.

Cassiopea

Swift Diomede must have reached by now,

Praxilla.

Praxilla

I hope so, madam.

She goes out to the inner apartments.

Cassiopea

Then Iolaus

Is safe. My sad heart has at least that comfort.

O my Andromeda, my child Andromeda,

Thou wouldst not let me save thee. Hadst thou too gone,

I would have smiled when their fierce fingers rent me.

Cepheus enters.

Cepheus

The mob is nearing; all my Syrian guards

Have fled; we cannot hope for safety now.

Cassiopea

Then what is left but to set rapid fire

To the rafters and prevent on friendly swords

The rabble’s outrage?

Cepheus

Was it for such a fate

Thou camest smiling from an emperor’s palace,

O Cassiopea, Cassiopea!

Cassiopea

For me

Grieve not.

Cepheus

O Lady, princess of Chaldea,

Pardon me who have brought thee to this doom.

Yet I meant well and thought that I did wisely:

But the gods wrest our careful policies

To their own ends until we stand appalled

Remembering what we meant to do and seeing

What has been done.

Cassiopea

With no half soul I came

To share thy kingdom and thy joys; entirely

I came, to take the evil also with thee.

Cepheus

Is there no truth in our high-winging ideals?

My rule was mild as spring, kind as the zephyr:

It tempered justice with benevolence

And offered pardon to the rebel and sinner;

I showed mercy, the rare sign of gods and kings.

In this too difficult world, this too brief life

To serve the gods with virtue seemed the best.

A nation’s happiness was my only care:

I made the people’s love my throne’s sure base

And dreamed the way I chose true, great, divine.

But the heavenly gods have other thoughts than man’s;

Their awful aims transcend our human sight.

Another doom than I had hoped they gave.

Cassiopea

A screened Necessity drives even the gods.

Over human lives it strides to unseen ends;

Our tragic failures are its stepping-stones.

Cepheus

My father lived calm, just, pitiless, austere,

As a stern god might sway a prostrate world:

Admired and feared, he died a mighty king.

My end is this abominable fate.

Cassiopea

Another law than mercy’s rules the earth.

Cepheus

If I had listened to thee, O Cassiopea,

Chance might have taken a fairer happier course.

Always thou saidst to me, “The people’s love

Is a glimmer on quicksands in a gliding sea:

Today they are with thee, tomorrow turn elsewhere.

Wisdom, strength, policy alone are sure.”

I thought I better knew my Syrian folk.

Is this not my well-loved people at my door,

This tiger-hearted mob with bestial growl,

This cry for blood to drink, this roar of hate?

Always thou spok’st to me of the temple’s power,

A growing danger menacing the State,

Its ambition’s panther crouch and serpent pride

And cruel craft in a priest’s sombre face:

I only saw the god and sacred priest.

To priest and god I am thrown a sacrifice.

The golden-mouthed orator of the market-place,

Therops, thou bad’st me fear and quell or win

Gaining his influence to my side. To me

He seemed a voice and nothing but a voice.

Too late I learn that human speech has power

To change men’s hearts and turn the stream of Time.

Thy eyes could read in Phineus’ scheming brain.

I only thought to buy the strength of Tyre

Offering my daughter as unwilling price.

He has planned my fall and watches my agony.

At every step I have been blind, have failed:

All was my error; all’s lost and mine the fault.

Cassiopea

Blame not thyself; what thou hadst to be, thou wert,

And never yet came help from vain remorse.

It is too late, too late. To die is left;

Fate and the gods concede us nothing more.

Cepheus

But strength to meet the doom is always ours.

In royal robes and crowned we will show ourselves

To our people and look in the eyes of death and fate.

What is this armoured tramp?

The Chaldean guards enter with Nebassar at their head.

Captains

O King, we come

To die with thee, the soldiers of Chaldea;

For all in Syria have abandoned thee.

Cepheus

I thank you, soldiers.

Cries outside

Poseidon, great Poseidon! we are Poseidon’s people. In, in, in!

Kill the cuckold Cepheus, tear the harlot Cassiopea.

Cepheus

Voices of insolent outrage

Proclaim the heartless rabble. On the steps

Of our own palace we’ll receive our subjects.

Cassiopea

This, this becomes thee, monarch.

Nebassar

Soldiers, form

With serried points before these mighty sovereigns.

The mob surges in, Therops and Perissus at their head, Polydaon a little behind, Damoetes, Morus and the rest. Praxilla and others of the household come running in.

Mob

On them! on them! Cut the Chaldeans to pieces!

Therops

Halt, people, halt: let there be no vain bloodshed.

Cassiopea

Here is a tender-hearted demagogue!

Therops

Cepheus and Cassiopea, ’tis vain and heinous

To dally with your fate; it will only make you

More criminal before the majesty

Of the offended people.

Cepheus

Majesty!

Cassiopea

An unwashed majesty and a wolf-throated!

Therops

Insolent woman, to thee I speak not. Cepheus,–

Cepheus

Use humbler terms. I am thy King as yet.

Therops

The last in Syria. Tell me, wilt thou give up

Thy children to the altar, and thyself

Surrender here with this Chaldean woman

For mercy or judgment to the assembled will

Of Syria?

Cassiopea

A tearing mercy, a howling judgment!

Polydaon

Therops, why do you treat with these? Chaldeans!

And you, Praxilla! women of the household!

Bring out the abominable Andromeda

Who brought the woe on Syria. Why should you vainly

Be ripped and mangled?

Cries of women

Bring out Andromeda!

Bring out the harlot’s daughter, bring her out!

Cries of men

Andromeda! Andromeda! Andromeda!

Bring out this vile Andromeda to die!

Andromeda enters from the inner Palace, followed by slave-girls entreating and detaining her.

Praxilla (sorrowfully)

Wilt thou be wilful even to the end?

Cassiopea

Alas, my child!

Andromeda

Mother, weep not for me. Perhaps my death

May save you; and ’tis good that I should die,

Not these poor innocent people. Against me

Their unjust god is wroth.

Cepheus

O my poor sunbeam!

Andromeda (advancing and showing herself to the people)

O people who have loved me, you have called me

And I am here.

A fierce roar from the mob.

Therops

How she shrinks back appalled!

Praxilla

God! What a many-throated howl of demons!

Their eyes glare death. These are not men and Syrians.

The fierce Poseidon has possessed their breasts

And breathed his awful blood-lust into all hearts

Deafening the voice of reason, slaying pity:

Poseidon’s rage glares at us through these eyes,

It is his ocean roar that fills our streets.

Cries from the mob.

Baltis

Seize her! seize her! the child of wickedness!

Voices of women

Throw her to us! throw her to us! We will pick

The veins out of her body one by one.

Damoetes

Throw her to us! We will burn her bit by bit.

Morus

Yes, cook her alive; no, Damoetes? Ho, ho, ho!

Voices of men

She has killed our sons and daughters: kill her, kill her!

Voices of women

She is the child of her wicked mother: kill her!

Mob

Throw her to us! throw her to us!

Megas

We’ll tear her here, and the furies shall tear her afterwards for ever in Hell.

Therops

Peace, people! she is not yours, she is Poseidon’s.

Andromeda

Alas, why do you curse me? I am willing

To die for you. If I had known this morn

The monster’s advent, I would have gone and met him

While you yet slept, and saved your poor fair children

Whose pangs have been my own. Had I died first,

I should not then have suffered. O my loved people,

You loved me too: when I went past your homes,

You blessed me always; often your girls and mothers

Would seize and bind me to their eager breasts

With close imprisonment, kiss on their doorways

And with a smiling soft reluctance leave.

O do not curse me now! I can bear all,

But not your curses.

Perissus

Alack, my pretty lady!

What madness made you do it?

Polydaon

She has rewarded

Your love by bringing death upon you, Syrians,

And now she tries to melt you by her tears.

Mob

Kill her, kill her! Cut the Chaldeans to pieces! We will have her!

Pasithea

O do not hurt her! She is like my child

Whom the fierce monster tore.

Megas

Unnatural mother!

Would you protect her who’s cause your child was eaten?

Pasithea

Will killing her give back my child to me?

Megas

No, it will save the children of more mothers.

Damoetes

Gag up her puling mouth, the white-faced fool!

Voices

Tear, tear Andromeda! Seize her and tear her!

Women

Let us only get at her with our teeth and fingers!

Nebassar

Use swords, Chaldeans.

Polydaon

Order, my children, order!

Chaldean, give us up Andromeda,

And save your King and Queen.

Nebassar

What, wilt thou spare them?

Cassiopea

Thou wilt not give my child to him, Nebassar?

Thou dar’st not!

Nebassar

Queen, ’tis better one should die

For all.

Polydaon

I swear to thee, I will protect them.

Cassiopea

Trust not his oaths, his false and murderous oaths.

Nebassar

He is a priest: if we believe him, nothing

We lose, something may gain.

Megas

What wilt thou do?

The people do not like it. See, they mutter.

Polydaon

Let me have first their daughter in my grip,

Be sure of the god’s dearest victim. People,

I am Poseidon’s priest and your true friend.

Leave all to me.

Cries

Leave all to Polydaon! the good priest knows what he is doing.

Polydaon

Soldier¹⁹, give up the Princess.

Nebassar

Shall she be only given to Poseidon?

Will you protect her from worse outrage?

Polydaon

I will.

Praxilla

Look! what a hideous triumph lights the eyes

Of that fierce man. He glares at her with greed

Like a wild beast of prey, and on his mouth

There is a cruel unclean foam. Nebassar,

O do not give her.

Nebassar

If there were any help!

Go forth, O princess, O Andromeda.

Cassiopea

My child! my child!

Andromeda

Give me one kiss, my mother.

We shall yet meet, I think. My royal father,

Andromeda farewells you, whom you loved

And called your sunbeam. But the night receives me.

Cepheus

Alas!

Damoetes

How long will these farewells endure?

They are not needed: you shall meet presently

If Death’s angels can collect your tattered pieces.

Cassiopea

O savage Syrians, let my curses brood

Upon your land, an anguished mother’s curse.

May the Assyrian come and flay you living,

Impale your sons, rip up your ravished daughters

Before your agonising eyes and make you feel,

Who drag my child from me to butcher her,

The horror that you do. I curse you, Syrians.

Andromeda

Hush, mother, mother! what they demand is just.

Nebassar

Lead back the King and Queen into the Palace,

Women. We too will from this sad surrender

Remove our eyes.

Cassiopea

I will not go. Let them tear her

Before me: then surely Heaven will avenge me.

Cepheus

Come, Cassiopea, come: our death’s delayed

By a few minutes. I will not see her slain.

Cepheus and Praxilla go in, forcibly leading Cassiopea; they are followed by the slave-girls and then by Nebassar and the Chaldeans: Andromeda is left alone on the steps.

Cries (of the mob surging forward)

Drag her, kill her, she is ours.

Polydaon

Therops and thou, Perissus, stand in front

And keep the people off, or they will tear her,

Defraud Poseidon.

Perissus

Cheer up, my princess, come!

You shall be cleanly killed.

Therops

People of Syria,

Rob not Poseidon of his own! ’tis not the way

To turn his anger.

Voices

Right, right! leave her to Poseidon: out with her to the sea-monster.

Gardas

Therops is always right.

Damoetes

We will have her first: we will dress his banquet for him: none shall say us nay.

Morus

Good; we will show Poseidon some excellent cookery. Ho, ho, ho!

Megas

No, no, no! To the rocks with her! Strip her, the fine dainty princess, and hang her up in chains on the cliff-face.

A woman

Strip her! Off with her broidered robe and her silken tunic! Why should she wear such, when my daughter carries only coarse woollen?

A woman (shaking her fist)

Curse the white child’s face of thee: it has ruined Syria. Die, dog’s daughter.

Damoetes

Is she to die only once who has killed so many of us? I say, tie her to one of these pillars and flog her till she drops.

Morus

That’s right, skin her with whips: peel her for the monster, ho, ho, ho!

Baltis

Leave her: Hell’s tortures shall make the account even.

Polydaon

In order, children: let all be done in order.

Therops

She droops like a bruised flower beneath their curses,

And the tears lace her poor pale cheeks like frost

Glittering on snowdrops. I am sorry now

I had a hand in this.

Andromeda

You two have faces

Less cruel than the others. I am willing

To die,– oh, who would live to be so hated?

But do not let them shame or torture me.

Perissus

Off! off! thick-brained dogs, loud-lunged asses! What do you do, yelping and braying here? Will you give a maimed meal to Poseidon’s manhound? Do you know me not? Have you never heard of Perissus, never seen Perissus the butcher? I guard Poseidon’s meat, and whoever touches a morsel of it, I will make meat of him with my cleaver. I am Perissus, I am the butcher.

Voices

It is Perissus, the good and wealthy butcher. He is right. To the rocks with her!

Voices of women

Bind her first: we will see her bound!

Perissus

In all that is rational, I will indulge you.

Where is a cord?

Cries

A cord, who has a cord?

Damoetes

Here is one, Perissus. ’Tis rough and strong and sure.

Perissus

Come, wear your bracelets.

Andromeda

O bind me not so hard!

You cut my wrists.

She weeps.

Perissus

You are too soft and tender.

There, dry your eyes,– but that, poor slip, you cannot.

See, I have tied you very lightly: say not

That this too hurts.

Andromeda

I thank you; you are kind.

Perissus

Kind! Why should I not be kind? Because I am a butcher must I have no bowels? Courage, little Princess: none shall hurt thee but thy sea-monster and he, I am sure, will crunch thy little bones very tenderly. Never had man-eater such sweet bones to crunch. Alack! but where is the remedy?

Polydaon

Now take her to the beach and chain her there

Upon the rocks to bear her punishment.

Perissus, lead her forth! We’ll follow you.

Cries

Not I! not I!

Damoetes

You’ld kill us, Polydaon?

Poseidon’s anger walks by the sea-beaches.

Polydaon

The fierce sea-dragon will not hurt you, friends,

Who bring a victim to Poseidon’s altar

Of the rude solemn beaches. I’ll protect you.

Cries

We’ll go with Polydaon! with the good Polydaon!

Polydaon

Perissus, go before. We’ll quickly come.

Perissus

Make way there or I’ll make it with my cleaver.

Heart, little Princess! None shall touch thee. Heart!

Perissus and others make their way out with Andromeda.

Polydaon

Hem, people, hem the Palace in with myriads:

We’ll pluck out Cepheus and proud Cassiopea.

Cries

Kill Cepheus the cuckold, the tyrant! Tear the harlot Cassiopea.

Therops

Is this thy sacred oath? Had not Nebassar²⁰

Thy compact, priest?

Polydaon

I swore not by Poseidon.

Wilt thou oppose me?

Therops

Thy perjury too much

Favours my private wishes. Yet would I not

Be thou with such a falsehood on my conscience.

Polydaon

Why, Therops, be thyself and thou shalt yet

Be something great in Syria.

Damoetes

Where’s Iolaus?

Shall he not also die?

Polydaon

Too long forgotten!

O that I should forget my dearest hatred!

By this he has concealed himself or fled

And I am baulked of what I chiefly cherished.

Therops

Oh, do them justice! the great house of Syria

Were never cowards. The prince has been o’erwhelmed

On his way hither with rash sword to rescue:

So Aligattas tells, who came behind us.

He’s taken to the temple.

Polydaon

Heard you?

Mob

Hurrah!

Baltis

But what’s the matter now with our good priest?

His veins are all out and his face is blood-red!

Damoetes

This joy is too great for him.

Polydaon

I am a god,

A god of blood and roaring victory.

Oh, blood in rivers! His heart out of his breast,

And his mother there to see it! and I to laugh

At her, to laugh!

Therops

This is not sanity.

Polydaon (controlling himself with a great effort)

The sacrilegious house is blotted out

Of Cepheus. Let not one head outlive their ending!

Andromeda appoints the way to Hades

Who was in crime the boldest, then her brother

Yells on the altar: last Cepheus and his Queen –

Cries

Tear her! let the Chaldean harlot die.

Polydaon

She shall be torn! but not till she has seen

The remnants of the thing that was her daughter:

Not till her sweet boy’s heart has been plucked out

Under her staring eyes from his red bosom.

Till then she shall not die. But afterwards

Strew with her fragments every street of the city.

Cries

Hear, hear Poseidon’s Viceroy, good Polydaon!

Megas

In! in! cut off their few and foreign swordsmen.

Cries

In! in! let not a single Chaldean live.

The mob rushes into the Palace; only Therops and Polydaon remain.

Polydaon

Go, Therops, take good care of Cassiopea,

Or she will die too mercifully soon.

Therops (aside)

How shall we bear this grim and cruel beast

For monarch, when all’s done? He is not human.

He goes into the Palace.

Polydaon

I have set Poseidon’s rage in human hearts;

His black and awful Influence flows from me.

Thou art a mighty god, Poseidon, yet

And mightily thou hast avenged thyself.

The drama’s nearly over. Now to ring out

The royal characters amid fierce howlings

And splendid, pitiless, crimson massacre,–

A great finale! Then, then I shall be King.

(As he speaks, he gesticulates more wildly and his madness gains upon him.)

Thou luckless Phineus, wherefore didst thou leave

So fortunate a man for thy ally?

The world shall long recall King Polydaon.

I will paint Syria gloriously with blood.

Hundreds shall daily die to incarnadine

The streets of my city and my palace floors,

For I would walk in redness. I’ll plant my gardens

With heads instead of lilacs. Hecatombs

Of men shall groan their hearts out for my pleasure

In crimson rivers. I’ll not wait for shipwrecks.

Assyrian captives and my Syrian subjects,

Nobles and slaves, men, matrons, boys and virgins

At matins and at vespers shall be slain

To me in my magnificent high temple

Beside my thunderous Ocean. I will possess

Women each night, who the next day shall die,

Encrimsoned richly for the eyes’ delight.

My heart throngs out in words! What moves within me?

I am athirst, magnificently athirst,

And for a red and godlike wine. Whence came

The thirst on me? It was not here before.

’Tis thou, ’tis thou, O grand and grim Poseidon,

Hast made thy scarlet session in my soul

And growest myself. I am not Polydaon,

I am a god, a mighty dreadful god,

The multitudinous mover in the sea,

The shaker of the earth: I am Poseidon

And I will walk in three tremendous paces

Climbing the mountains with my clamorous waters

And see my dogs eat up Andromeda,

My enemy, and laugh in my loud billows.

The clamour of battle roars within the Palace!

I have created it, I am Poseidon.

Sitst thou, my elder brother, charioted

In clouds? Look down, O brother Zeus, and see

My actions! they merit thy immortal gaze.

He goes into the Palace.

Scene 4

On the road to the sea-shore.
Phineus and his Tyrians.

Phineus

A mightier²¹ power confounds our policies.

Is’t Heaven? is’t Fate? What’s left me, I will take.

’Tis best to rescue young Andromeda

From the wild mob and bear her home to Tyre.

She, when the roar is over, will be left

My claim to Syria’s prostrate throne, which force,

If not diplomacy shall re-erect

And Tyre become the Syrian capital.

I hear the trampling of the rascal mob.

Cries outside

Drag her more quickly! To the rocks! to the rocks!

Glory to great Poseidon!

Phineus

Tyrians, be ready.

Perissus and a number of Syrians
enter leading Andromeda bound.

Syrians

To the rocks with her, to the rocks! bind her on the rocks.

Phineus

Pause, rabble! Yield your prey to Tyrian Phineus.

Lift up thy lovely head, Andromeda!

For thou art saved.

Perissus

Who art thou with thy nose and thy fellows and thy spits?

Phineus

Knowst thou me not? I am the royal Phineus.

Yield up the Princess, fair Andromeda.

Perissus

Art thou the royal Phineus and is this long nose thy sceptre? I am Perissus, the butcher. Stand aside, royal Phineus, or I will chop thee royally with my cleaver.

Andromeda

What wilt thou with me, King of Tyre?

Phineus

Sweet rose,

I come to save thee. I will carry thee,

My bride, far from these savage Syrian tumults

To reign in loyal Tyre. Thou art safe.

Andromeda (sorrowfully)

Safe!

My father and my mother are not safe

Nor Iolaus: nor is Syria safe.

Will you protect my people, when the god,

Not finding me, his preferable victim,

Works his fierce will on these?

Phineus

Thou car’st for them?

They have o’erwhelmed thee with foul insult, bound thee,

Threatened thy lovely limbs with rascal outrage

And dragged to murder!

Andromeda

But they are my people.

Perissus, lead me on. I will not go with him.

Phineus

Thou strange and beautiful and marvellous child,

Wilt thou or wilt thou not, by force I’ll have thee.

Golden enchantment! thou art too rare a thing

For others to possess. Run, rascal rabble!

On, Tyrians!

Perissus

Cleavers and axes to their spits!

Andromeda

King Phineus, pause! I swear I will prefer

Death’s grim embrace rather than be thy wife

Abandoning my people. ’Tis a dead body

Thou wilt rescue.

Phineus

Is thy resolve unshakable?

Andromeda

It is.

Phineus

Die then! To Death alone I yield thee.

He goes out with his Tyrians.

Perissus

So then thou art off, royal Phineus! so thou hast evaporated, bold god of the Hittites! Thou hast saved thy royal nose from my cleaver.

Syrians

On to the rocks! Glory to great Poseidon.

They go leading Andromeda.

Scene 5

The sea-shore.
Andromeda, dishevelled, bare-armed and unsandalled, stripped of all but a single light robe, stands on a wide low ledge under a rock jutting out from the cliff with the sea washing below her feet. She is chained to the²² rock behind her by her wrists and ankles, her arms stretched at full length against its side. Polydaon, Perissus, Damoetes and a number of Syrians stand near on the great rocky platform projecting from the cliff of which the ledge is the extremity.

Polydaon

There meditate affronts to dire Poseidon.

Rescue thyself, thou rescuer of victims!

I am sorry that thy marriage, sweet Andromeda,

So poorly is attended. I could have wished

To have all Syria gazing at thy nuptials

With thy rare Ocean bridegroom! Thy mother most

Should have been here to see her lovely princess

So meetly robed for bridal, with these ornaments

Upon her pretty hands and feet. She has

Affairs too pressing. We do some surgery

Upon thy brother Iolaus’ heart

To draw the bad blood out and make it holy,

And she must watch the skilful operation.

Do not weep, fair one. Soon, be confident,

They’ll meet thee in that wide house where all are going.

Think of these things until thy lover comes.

Farewell.

Perissus

Art thou mad, priest Polydaon? How thou grinnest and drawest back thy black lips from thy white teeth in thy rapture! Hast thou gone clean mad, my skilful carver of hearts! art thou beside thyself, my ancient schoolmate and crony?

Syrians

To the temple! To the temple!

Polydaon

Let one remain above the cliff

And watch the monster’s advent and his going.

Till I have news of dead Andromeda

The sacrifice cannot begin. Who stays?

Damoetes

Not I!

All

Nor I! nor I! nor I!

Damoetes

As well stay here with the girl and be torn with her!

Perissus

Do you quake, my brave shouters? must you curl your tails in between your manly legs? I will stay, priest, who fear neither dog nor dragon. I am Perissus, I am the butcher.

Polydaon

I’ll not forget thy service, good Perissus.

Perissus

Will you then make me butcher-in-chief to your viceroy in Damascus and shall I cut my joints under the patronage of King Polydaon? To the temple, Syrian heroes! I will go and cross my legs on the cliff-top.

They go. Andromeda is left alone.
Curtain

Act V

The sea-shore.
Andromeda chained to the cliff.

Andromeda

O iron-throated vast unpitying sea,

Whose borders touch my feet with their cold kisses

As if they loved me! yet from thee my death

Will soon arise, and in some monstrous form

To tear my heart with horror before my body.

I am alone with thee on this wild beach

Filled with the echo of thy roaring waters.

My fellowmen have cast me out: they have bound me

Upon thy rocks to die. These cruel chains

Weary the arms they keep held stiffly out

Against the rough cold jaggèd stones. My bosom

Hardly contains its thronging sobs; my heart

Is torn with misery: for by my act

My father and my mother are doomed to death,

My dear kind²³ brother, my sweet Iolaus,

Will cruelly be slaughtered; by my act

A kingdom ends in miserable ruin.

I thought to save two fellowmen: I have slain

A hundred by their rescue. I have failed

In all I did and die accursed and hated.

I die alone and miserably, no heart

To pity me: only your hostile waves

Are listening to my sobs and laughing hoarsely

With cruel pleasure. Heaven looks coldly on.

Yet I repent not. O thou dreadful god!

Yes, thou art dreadful and most mighty; perhaps

This world will always be a world of blood

And smiling cruelty, thou its fit sovereign.

But I have done what my own heart required of me,

And I repent not. Even if after death

Eternal pain and punishment await me

And gods and men pursue me with their hate,

I have been true to myself and to my heart,

I have been true to the love it bore for men,

And I repent not.

She is silent for a while.

Alas! is there no pity for me? Is there

No kind bright sword to save me in all this world?

Heaven with its cold unpitying azure roofs me,

And the hard savage rocks surround: the deaf

And violent Ocean roars about my feet,

And all is stony, all is cold and cruel.

Yet I had dreamed of other powers. Where art thou,

O beautiful still face amid the lightnings,

Athene? Does a mother leave her child?

And thou, bright stranger, wert thou only a dream?

Wilt thou not come down glorious from thy sun,

And cleave my chains, and lift me in thy arms

To safety? I will not die! I am too young,

And life was recently so beautiful.

It is too hard, too hard a fate to bear.

She is silent, weeping. Cydone enters: she comes and sits down at Andromeda’s feet.

Cydone

How beautiful she is, how beautiful!

Her tears bathe all her bosom. O cruel Syrians!

Andromeda

What gentle touch is on my feet? Who art thou?

Cydone

I am Cydone. Iolaus loves me.

Andromeda

My brother! lives he yet?

Cydone

He lives, dear sweetness,

And sent me to you.

Andromeda (joyfully)

It was a cruel lie!

He’s free?

Cydone

No, bound and in the temple. Weep not.

Andromeda

Alas! And you have left him there alone?

Cydone

The gods are with him, sister. In a few hours

We shall be all together and released

From these swift perils.

Andromeda

Together and released!

Oh yes, in death.

Cydone

I bid you hope. O child,

How beautiful you are, how beautiful,

Iolaus’ sister! This one white slight garment

Fluttering about you in the ocean winds,

You look like some wind-goddess chained in play

By frolic sisters on the wild sea-beaches.

I think all this has happened, little sister,

Just that the gods might have for one brief hour

You for a radiant vision of childish beauty

Exposed against this wild stupendous background.

Andromeda

You make me smile in spite of all my grief.

Did you not bid me hope, Cydone?

Cydone

And now

I bid you trust: for you are saved.

Andromeda

I am.

I feel it now.

Cydone

Your name’s Andromeda?

Andromeda

Iolaus calls me so.

Cydone

I think he cheats me.

You are Iolaus changed into a girl.

Come, I will kiss you dumb for cheating me

With changes of yourself.

Kisses her.

If I could have

My Iolaus always chained like this

To do my pleasure with, I would so plague him!

For he abuses me and calls me shrew,

Monster and vixen and names unbearable,

Because he’s strong and knows I cannot beat him.

Andromeda

The world is changed about me.

Cydone

Heaven’s above.

Look up and see it.

Andromeda

There is a golden cloud

Moving towards me.

Cydone

It is Perseus. Sweetheart,

I go to Iolaus in the temple,–

I mean your other fair boy-self. Kiss me,

O sweet girl-Iolaus, and fear nothing.

She goes out over the rocks.

Andromeda

I shall be saved! What is this sudden trouble

That lifts the bosom of the tossing deep,

Hurling the waves against my knees? Save me!

Where art thou gone, Cydone? What huge head

Raises itself on the affrighted seas?

Where art thou, O my saviour? Come! His eyes

Glare up at me from the grey Ocean trough

Hideous with brutish longing. Like great sharp rocks

His teeth are in a bottomless dim chasm.

She closes her eyes in terror. Perseus enters.

Perseus

Look up, O sunny-curled Andromeda!

Perseus, the son of Danaë, is with thee

To whom thou now belongest. Fear no more

Sea-monsters nor the iron-souled Poseidon,

Nor the more monstrous flinty-hearted rabble

Who bound thee here. This huge and grisly enemy

That rises from the flood, need not affright thee.

Thou art as safe as if thy mother’s arms

Contained thee in thy brilliant guarded palace

When all was calm, O white Andromeda!

Lift up thy eyes’ long curtains: aid the azure

With thy regards, O sunshine. Look at me

And see thy safety.

Andromeda

O thou hast come to me!

It was not only a radiant face I dreamed of.

Perseus

In time to save thee, my Andromeda,

Sole jewel of the world. I go to meet

Thy enemy, confronting grim Poseidon.

Andromeda

O touch me ere you go that I may feel

You are real.

Perseus

Let my kiss, sweet doubting dreamer,

Convince thee. Now I dart like a swift hawk

Upon my prey and smite betwixt the billows.

Watch how I fight for thee. I will come soon

To gather thee into my grasp, my prize

Of great adventure.

He goes out.

Andromeda

The music of his name

Was in my brain just now. What must I call thee?

Perseus, the son of Danaë! Perseus!

Perseus, Athene’s sword! Perseus, my sungod!

O human god of glad Andromeda!

Forgive, Athene, my lack of faith. Thou art!

How like a sudden eagle he has swooped

Upon the terror, that lifts itself alarmed,

Swings its huge length along the far-ridged billows

And upwards yawns its rage. O great Athene!

It belches fiery breath against my Perseus

And lashes Ocean in his face. The sea

Is tossed upon itself and its huge bottoms

Catch chinks of unaccustomed day. But the aegis

Of Perseus hurls the flame-commingled flood

Back in the dragon’s eyes: it shoots its lightnings

Into the horizon like fire-trailing arrows.

The world surprised with light gazes dismayed

Upon the sea-surrounded war, ringed in

With foam and flying tumult. O glorious sight,

Too swift and terrible for human eyes!

I will pray rather. Virgin, beautiful

Athene, virgin-mother of my soul!

I cannot lift my hands to thee, they are chained

To the wild cliff, but lift my heart instead,

Virgin, assist thy hero in the fight.

Descend, armipotent maiden, child of Zeus,

Shoot from his godlike brain the strength of will

That conquers evil: in one victorious stroke

Collecting hurl it on the grisly foe.

Thou, thou art sword and shield, and thou the force

That uses shield and sword, virgin Athene.

The tumult ceases and the floods subside.

I dare not look. And yet I will. O death,

Thou tossest there inertly on the flood,

A floating mountain. Perseus comes to me

Touching the waves with airy-sandalled feet,

Bright and victorious.

Perseus returns.

Perseus

The grisly beast is slain that was thy terror,

And thou mayst sun the world with smiles again,

Andromeda.

Andromeda

Thou hast delivered me, O Perseus, Perseus,

My sovereign!

Perseus

Girl, I take into my arms

My own that I have won and with these kisses

Seal to me happy head and smiling eyes,

Bright lips and all of thee, thou sunny Syrian.

All thy white body is a hero’s guerdon.

Andromeda

Perseus!

Perseus

Sweetly thou tak’st my eager kisses

With lovely smiles and glorious blushing cheeks

Rejoicing in their shame.

Andromeda

I am chained, Perseus,

And cannot help myself.

Perseus

O smile of sweetness!

I will unravel these unworthy bonds

And rid thee of the cold excuse.

Andromeda

My chains?

They do not hurt me now, and I would wear them

A hundred times for such a happy rescue.

Perseus

Thou tremblest yet!

Andromeda

Some sweet and sudden fear

O’ertakes me! O what is it? I dare not look

Into thy radiant eyes.

Perseus

Sweet tremors, grow

Upon her. Never shall harsher fears again

O’ertake you, rosy²⁴ limbs, in Perseus’ keeping.

How fair thou art, my prize Andromeda!

O sweet chained body, chained to love not death,

That with a happy passiveness endures

My touch, once more, once more. And now fall down

Clashing into the deep, you senseless irons,

That took a place my kisses only merit.

Princess of Syria, child of imperial Cepheus,

Step forward free.

Andromeda (falling at his feet and embracing them)

O Perseus, O my saviour!

Wilt thou not also save those dear to me

And make this life thou givest worth the giving?

My father, mother, brother, all I love,

Lie for my fault shuddering beneath the knife.

Perseus

It was a glorious fault, Andromeda.

Tremble not for thy loved ones. Wilt thou trust

Thy cherished body in my arms to bear

Upward, surprising Heaven with thy beauty?

Or wilt thou fear to see the blue wide Ocean

Between thy unpropped feet, fathoms below?

Andromeda

With you I fear not.

Perseus

Cling to me then, sweet burden,

And we will meet our enemies together.

He puts his arms round her to lift her and the curtain falls.

The Temple of Poseidon.
Polydaon, Therops, Dercetes, Cydone, Damoetes and a great number of Syrians, men and women. Iolaus stands bound, a little to the side: Cepheus and Cassiopea, surrounded by armed men.

Polydaon

Cepheus and Cassiopea, man and woman,

Not sovereigns now, you see what end they have

Who war upon the gods.

Cassiopea

To see thy end

My eyes wait only.

Polydaon

Let them see something likelier.

Is’t not thy son who wears those cords, and that

An altar? What! the eyes are drowned in tears

Where fire was once so ready? Where is thy pride,

O Cassiopea?

Cassiopea

There are other gods

Than thy Poseidon. They shall punish thee.

Polydaon

If thou knewst who I am, which is most secret,

Thou wouldst not utter vain and foolish wishes.

When thou art slain, I will reveal myself.

Cassiopea

Thou hast revealed thyself for what thou art

Already, a madman and inhuman monster.

Cepheus

My queen, refrain from words.

Damoetes

Perissus comes.

Cassiopea

Ah God!

Therops

Look, the Queen swoons! Oh, look to her!

Perissus enters.

Polydaon

Yes, raise her up, bring back her senses: now

I would not have them clouded. News, Perissus!

Thy face is troubled and thy eyes stare wildly.

Perissus

Stare, do they? They may stare, for they have cause.

You too will stare soon, Viceroy Polydaon.

Therops

What rare thing happened? The heavens were troubled strangely,

Although their rifts were blue. What hast thou seen?

Perissus

I have seen hell and heaven at grips together.

Polydaon

What do I care for hell or heaven? Your news!

Did the sea-monster come and eat and go?

Perissus

He came but went not.

Polydaon

Was not the maiden seized?

Perissus

Ay, was she, in a close and mighty grasp.

Polydaon

By the sea-beast?

Perissus

’Tis said we all are animals;

Then so was he: but ’twas a glorious beast.

Polydaon

And was she quite devoured?

Perissus

Why, in a manner,–

If kisses eat.

Polydaon

Ha! ha! such soft caresses

May all my enemies have. She was not torn?

What, was she taken whole and quite engulfed?

Perissus

Something like that.

Polydaon

You speak with difficult slowness

And strangely. Where’s your blithe robustness gone,

Perissus?

Perissus

Coming, with the beast. He lifted her

Mightily from the cliff to heaven.

Polydaon

So, Queen,

Nothing is left thee of Andromeda.

Perissus

Why, something yet, a sweet and handsome piece.

Polydaon

You should have brought it here, my merry butcher,

That remnant of her daughter.

Perissus

It is coming.

Polydaon

Ho, ho! then you shall see your daughter, Queen.

Dercetes

This is a horrid and inhuman laughter.

Restrain thy humour, priest! My sword’s uneasy.

Therops

It is a scandal in Poseidon’s temple.

Polydaon

Do you oppose me?

(to Therops)

Wilt thou resist Poseidon,

Misguided mortal?

Dercetes

He glares and his mouth works.

This is a maniac. Does a madman rule us?

Therops

There has been much of violence and mad fierceness,

Such as in tumults may be pardoned. Now

It is the tranquil hour of victory

When decency should reign and mercy too.

What do we gain by torturing this poor Queen

And most unhappy King?

Polydaon

Hear him, O people!

He favours great Poseidon’s enemies.

Therops turns traitor.

Damoetes

He rails at the good priest.

Cries

Therops a traitor!

Megas

Therops, thou favour kings?

Thou traitor to Poseidon and his people?

Gardas

I say, hear Therops. He is always right,

Our Therops; he has brains.

Cries

Hear Therops, Therops!

Therops

Let them be punished, but with exile only.

I am no traitor. I worked for you, O people,

When this false priest was with the King of Tyre

Plotting to lay on you a foreign chain.

Cries

Is it so? Is it the truth? Speak, Polydaon.

Polydaon

Must I defend myself? Was it not I

Who led you on to victory and turned

The wrath of dire Poseidon? If you doubt me,

Be then the sacrifice forbidden; let Cepheus

And Cassiopea reign; but when the dogs

Of grim Poseidon howl again behind you,

Call not to me for help. I will not always pardon.

Cries

Polydaon, Polydaon, Poseidon’s mighty Viceroy! Kill Therops! Iolaus upon the altar!

Polydaon

Now you are wise again. Leave this Therops.

Bring Iolaus to the altar here.

Lay bare his bosom for the knife.

Therops

Dercetes,

Shall this be allowed?

Dercetes

We must not dare offend

Poseidon. But when it’s over, I’ll break in

With all my faithful spears and save the King

And Cassiopea. Therops, ’twould be a nightmare,

The rule of that fierce priest and fiercer rabble.

Therops

With all the better sort I will support thee.

Perissus

Therops, my crowd-compeller, my eloquent Zeus of the market-place, I know thy heart is big with the sweet passion of repentance, but let it not burst into action yet. Keep thy fleet sharp spears at rest, Dercetes. There are times, my little captain, and there is a season. Watch and wait. The gods are at work and Iolaus shall not die.

Polydaon

We only wait until our mighty wrath

Is shown you in the mangled worst offender

Against our godhead. Then, O Cassiopea,

I’ll watch thy eyes.

Perissus

Behold her, Polydaon.

Perseus and Andromeda enter the temple.

Cries

Andromeda! Andromeda! who has unchained her? It is Andromeda!

Cepheus

It is the spirit of Andromeda.

Therops

Shadows were ne’er so bright, had never smile

So sunny! she is given back to earth:

It is the radiant wingèd Hermes brings her.

Dercetes

’Tis he who baffled us upon the beach.

I see the gods are busy in our Syria.

Andromeda runs to Cassiopea and clasps and kisses her knees, the soldiers making way for her.

Cassiopea (taking Andromeda’s face between her hands)

O my sweet child, thou livest!

Andromeda

Mother, mother!

I live and see the light and grief is ended.

Cassiopea (lifting Andromeda into her arms)

I hold thee living on my bosom. What grief

Can happen now?

Cepheus

Andromeda, my daughter!

Polydaon (awaking from his amazement)

Confusion²⁵! Butcher, thou hast betrayed me. Seize them!

They shall all die upon my mighty altar.

Seize them!

Perseus (confronting him)

Priest of Poseidon and of death,

Three days thou gav’st me: it is but the second.

I am here. Dost thou require the sacrifice?

Polydaon

Art thou a god? I am a greater, dreadfuller.

Tremble and go from me: I need thee not.

Perseus

Expect thy punishment. Syrians, behold me,

The victim snatched from grim Poseidon’s altar.

My sword has rescued sweet Andromeda

And slain the monster of the deep. You asked

For victims? I am here. Whose knife is ready?

Let him approach.

Therops

Who art thou, mighty hero?

Declare unto this people thy renown

And thy unequalled actions. What high godhead

Befriends thee in battle?

Perseus

Syrians, I am Perseus,

The mighty son of Zeus and Danaë.

The blood of gods is in my veins, the strength

Of gods is in my arm: Athene helps me.

Behold her aegis, which if I uncover

Will blind you with its lightnings; and this sword

Is Herpe, which can pierce the earth and Hades.

What I have done, is by Athene’s strength.

Borne from Seriphos through pellucid air

Upon these wingèd shoes, in the far west

I have traversed unknown lands and nameless continents

And seas where never came the plash of human oars.

On torrid coasts burned by the desert wind

I have seen great Atlas buttressing the sky,

His giant head companion of the stars,

And changed him into a hill; the northern snows

Illimitable I have trod, where Nature

Is awed to silence, chilled to rigid whiteness;

I have entered caverns dim where death was born:

And I have taken from the dim-dwelling Graiae

Their wondrous eye that sees the past and future:

And I have slain the Gorgon, dire Medusa,

Her head that turns the living man to stone

Locking into my wallet: last, today,

In Syria by the loud Aegean surges

I have done this deed that men shall ever speak of.

Ascending with winged feet the clamorous air

I have cloven Poseidon’s monster whose rock-teeth

And fiery mouth swallowed your sons and daughters.

Where now has gone the sea-god’s giant stride

That filled with heads of foam your fruitful fields?

I have dashed back the leaping angry waters;

His Ocean-force has yielded to a mortal.

Even while I speak, the world has changed around you.

Syrians, the earth is calm, the heavens smile;

A mighty silence listens on the sea.

All this I have done, and yet not I, but one greater.

Such is Athene’s might and theirs who serve her.

You know me now, O Syrians, and my strength

I have concealed not. Let no man hereafter

Complain that I deceived him to his doom.

Speak now. Which of you all demands a victim?

He pauses: there is silence.

What, you have howled and maddened, bound sweet women

For slaughter, roared to have the hearts of princes,

And are you silent now? Who is for victims?

Who sacrifices Perseus?

Therops

Speak! is there

A fool so death-devoted?

Perseus

Claims any man victims?

Cries

There’s none, great Perseus.

Perseus

Then, I here release

Andromeda and Iolaus, Syrians,

From the death-doom: to Cepheus give his crown

Once more. Does any man gainsay my action?

Would any rule in Syria?

Cries

None, mighty Perseus.

Perseus

Iolaus, sweet friend, my work is finished.

He severs his bonds.

Iolaus

O mighty father, suffer me for thee

To take thy crown from the unworthy soil

Where rude hands tumbled it. ’Twill now sit steady.

Dercetes, art thou loyal once again?

Dercetes

For ever.

Iolaus

Therops?

Therops

I have abjured rebellion.

Iolaus

Lead then my royal parents to their home

With martial pomp and music. And let the people

Cover their foul revolt with meek obedience.

One guiltiest head shall pay your²⁶ forfeit: the rest,

Since terror and religious frenzy moved

To mutiny, not their sober wills, shall all

Be pardoned.

Cries

Iolaus! Iolaus!

Long live the Syrian, noble Iolaus!

Iolaus

Andromeda, and thou, my sweet Cydone,

Go with them.

Cepheus

I approve thy sentence, son.

Dercetes and his soldiers, Therops and the Syrians leave the temple conducting Cepheus and Cassiopea, Andromeda and Cydone.

Iolaus

Now, Polydaon,–

Polydaon

I have seen all and laughed.

Iolaus, and thou, O Argive Perseus,

You know not who I am. I have endured

Your foolish transient triumph that you might feel

My punishments more bitter-terrible.

’Tis time, ’tis time. I will reveal myself.

Your horror-starting²⁷ eyes shall know me, princes,

When I hurl death and Ocean on your heads.

Perseus

The man is frantic.

Iolaus

Defeat has turned him mad.

Perissus

I have seen this coming on him for a season and a half. He was a fox at first, but this tumult gave him claws and muscles and he turned tiger. This is the end. What, Polydaon! Good cheer, priest! Roll not thy eyes: I am thy friend Perissus, I am thy old loving schoolmate; are we not now fellow-craftsmen, priest and butcher?

Polydaon

Do you not see? I wave my sapphire locks

And earth is quaking. Quake, earth! rise, my great Ocean!

Earth, shake my foemen from thy back! clasp, sea,

And kiss them dead, thou huge voluptuary.

Come barking from your stables, my sweet monsters:

With blood-stained fangs and fiery mouths avenge me

Mocking their victory. Thou, brother Zeus,

Rain curses from thy skies. What, is all silent?

I’ll tear thee, Ocean, into watery bits

And strip thy oozy basal rocks quite naked

If thou obey me not.

Iolaus (advancing)

He must be seized

And bound.

Perseus

Pause. See, he foams and clutches!

Polydaon falls to the ground.

Is sentenced.

Perissus

Polydaon, old crony, grows thy soul too great within thee? dost thou kick the unworthy earth and hit out with thy noble fists at Heaven?

Iolaus

It was a fit; it is over. He lies back white

And shaking.

Polydaon

(As he speaks, his utterance is hacked by pauses of silence. He seems unconscious of those around him, his being is withdrawing from the body and he lives only in an inner consciousness and its vision.)

I was Poseidon but this moment.

Now he departs from me and leaves me feeble:

I have become a dull and puny mortal.

(half rising)

It was not I but thou who fearedst, god.

I would have spoken, but thou wert chilled and stone.

What fearedst thou or whom? Wast²⁸ thou alarmed

By the godhead lurking in man’s secret soul

Or deity greater than thy own appalled thee?...

Forgive, forgive! pass not away from me.

Thy power is now my breath and I shall perish

If thou withdraw.... He stands beside me still

Shaking his gloomy locks and glares at me

Saying it was my sin and false ambition

Undid him. Was I not fearless as thou bad’st me?

Ah, he has gone into invisible

Vast silences!... Whose, whose is this bright glory?

One stands now in his place and looks at me.

Imperious is his calm Olympian brow,

The sea’s blue unfathomed depths gaze from his eyes,

Wide sea-blue locks crown his majestic shape:

A mystic trident arms his tranquil might.

As one new-born to himself and to the world

He turns from me with the surges in his stride

To seek his Ocean empire. Earth bows down

Trembling with awe of his unbearable steps,

Heaven is the mirror of his purple greatness....

But whose was that dimmer and tremendous image?...

A horror of darkness is around me still,

But the joy and might have gone out of my breast

And left me mortal, a poor human thing

With whom death and the fates can do their will....

But his presence yet is with me, near to me....

Was I not something more than earthly man?...

(with a cry)

It was myself, the shadow, the hostile god!

I am abandoned to my evil self.

That was the darkness!... But there was something more

Insistent, dreadful, other than myself!

Whoever thou art, spare me!... I am gone, I am taken.

In his tremendous clutch he bears me off

Into thick cloud; I see black Hell, the knives

Fire-pointed touch my breast. Spare me, Poseidon....

Save me, O brilliant God, forgive and save.

He falls back dead.

Perseus

Who then can save a man from his own self?

Iolaus

He is ended, his own evil has destroyed him.

Perseus

This man for a few hours became the vessel

Of an occult and formidable Force

And through his form it did fierce terrible things

Unhuman: but his small and gloomy mind

And impure dark heart could not contain the Force.

It turned in him to madness and demoniac

Huge longings. Then the Power withdrew from him

Leaving the broken incapable instrument,

And all its might was spilt²⁹ from his body. Better

To be a common man mid common men

And live an unaspiring mortal life

Than call into oneself a Titan strength

Too dire and mighty for its human frame,

That only afflicts the oppressed astonished world,

Then breaks its user.

Iolaus

But best to be Heaven’s child.

Only the sons of gods can harbour gods.

Perissus

Art thou then gone, Polydaon? My monarch of breast-hackers, this was an evil ending. My heart is full of woe for thee, my fellow-butcher.

Iolaus

The gods have punished him for his offences,

Ambition and a hideous cruelty

Ingenious in mere horror.

Perseus

Burn him with rites,

If that may help his soul by dark Cocytus.

But let us go and end these strange upheavals:

Call Cireas from his hiding for reward,

Tyrnaus too, and Smerdas from his prison,

Fair Diomede from Cydone’s house.

Humble or high, let all have their deserts

Who partners were or causes of our troubles.

Iolaus

There’s Phineus will ask reasons.

Perseus

He shall be satisfied.

Perissus

He cannot be satisfied, his nose is too long; it will not listen to reason, for it thinks all the reason and policy in the world are shut up in the small brain to which it is a long hooked outlet.

Perseus

Perissus, come with me: for thou wert kind

To my fair sweetness; it shall be remembered.

Perissus

There was nothing astonishing in that: I am as chock-full with natural kindness as a rabbit is with guts; I have bowels, great Perseus. For am I not Perissus? am I not the butcher?

They go out: the curtain falls.

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 6.- Collected Plays and Short Stories: Part One.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 561 p.

The audience-chamber of the Palace.
Cepheus, Cassiopea, Andromeda, Cydone, Praxilla, Medes.

Cepheus

A sudden ending to our sudden evils

Propitious gods have given us, Cassiopea.

Pursued by panic the Assyrian flees

Abandoning our borders.

Cassiopea

And I have got

My children’s faces back upon my bosom.

What gratitude can ever recompense

That godlike youth whose swift and glorious rescue

Lifted us out of Hell so radiantly?

Cydone

He has taken his payment in one small white coin

Mounted with gold; and more he will not ask for.

Cassiopea

Your name’s Cydone, child? your face is strange.

You are not of the slave-girls.

Cydone

O I am!

Iolaus’ slave-girl, though he calls me sometimes

His queen: but that is only to beguile me.

Andromeda

Oh, mother, you must know my sweet Cydone.

I shall think you love me little if you do not

Take her into your bosom: for she alone,

When I was lonely with my breaking heart,

Came to me with sweet haste and comforted

My soul with kisses,– yes, even when the terror

Was rising from the sea, surrounded me

With her light lovely babble, till I felt

Sorrow was not in the same world as she.

And but for her I might have died of grief

Ere rescue came.

Cassiopea

What wilt thou ask of me,

Even to a crown, Cydone? thou shalt have it.

Cydone

Nothing, unless ’tis leave to stand before you

And be for ever Iolaus’ slave-girl

Unchidden.

Cassiopea

Thou shalt be more than that, my daughter.

Cydone

I have two mothers: a double Iolaus

I had already. O you girl-Iolaus,

You shall not marry Perseus: you are mine now.

Oh, if you have learned to blush!

Andromeda (stopping her mouth)

Hush, you mad babbler!

Or I will smother your wild mouth with mine.

Perseus and Iolaus enter.

Cepheus

O welcome, brilliant victor, mighty Perseus!

Saviour of Syria, angel of the gods,

Kind was the fate that led thee to our shores.

Cassiopea (embracing Iolaus)

Iolaus, Iolaus, my son!

My golden-haired delight they would have murdered!

Perseus, hast thou a mother?

Perseus

One like thee

In love, O Queen, though less in royalty.

Cassiopea

What can I give thee then who hast the world

To move in, thy courage and thy radiant beauty,

And a tender mother? Yet take my blessing, Perseus,

To help thee: for the mightiest strengths are broken

And divine favour lasts not long, but blessings

Of those thou helpest with thy kindly strength

Upon life’s rugged way, can never fail thee.

Cepheus

And what shall I give, seed of bright Olympus?

Wilt thou have half my kingdom, Argive Perseus?

Perseus

Thy kingdom falls by right to Iolaus

In whom I shall enjoy it. One gift thou hadst

I might have coveted, but she is mine,

O monarch: I have taken her from death

For my possession.

Cepheus

My sunny Andromeda!

But there’s the Tyrian: yet he gave her up

To death and cannot now reclaim her.

Iolaus

Father,

The Babylonian merchants wait, and Cireas:

The people’s leaders and thy army’s captains

Are eager to renew an interrupted

Obedience.

Cepheus

Admit them all to me: go, Medes.

As Medes goes out, Diomede enters.

Andromeda

Diomede! playmate! you too have come quite safe

Out of the storm. I thought we both must founder.

Diomede

Oh, yes, and now you’ll marry Perseus, leave me

No other playmate than Praxilla’s whippings

To keep me lively!

Andromeda

Therefore ’tis you look

So discontent and sullen? Clear your face,

I’ll drag you to the world’s far end with me,

And take in my own hands Praxilla’s duty.

Will that please you?

Diomede

As if your little hand could hurt!

I’m off, Praxilla, to pick scarlet berries

In Argolis and hear the seabirds’ cries

And Ocean singing to the Cyclades.

I’ll buy you brand new leather for a relic

To whip the memory of me with sometimes,

Praxilla.

Praxilla

You shall taste it then before you go.

You’ll make a fine fair couple of wilfulnesses.

I pity Perseus.

Andromeda

You are well rid of us,

My poor Praxilla.

Praxilla

Princess, little Princess,

My hands will be lighter, but my heart too heavy.

Therops and Dercetes enter with the Captains of the army, Cireas, Tyrnaus and Smerdas.

All

Hail, you restored high royalties of Syria.

Therops

O King, accept us, be the past forgotten.

Cepheus

It is forgotten, Therops. Welcome, Dercetes.

Thy friend Nebassar is asleep. He has done

His service for the day and taken payment.

Cassiopea

His blood is a deep stain on Syria’s bosom.

Dercetes

On us the stain lies, Queen: but we will drown it

In native streams, when we go forth to scourge

The Assyrian in his home.

Therops

Death for one’s King

Only less noble is than for one’s country.

This foreign soldier taught us that home lesson.

Cassiopea

Therops, there are kings still in Syria?

Therops

Great Queen,

Remember not my sins.

Cassiopea

They are buried deep,

Thy bold rebellion,– even thy cruel slanders,

If only thou wilt serve me as my friend

True to thy people in me. Will this be hard for thee?

Therops

O noble lady, you pay wrongs with favours!

I am yours for ever, I and all this people.

Cireas (to Diomede)

This it is to be an orator! We shall hear him haranguing the people next market-day on fidelity to princes and the divine right of queens to have favourites.

Iolaus

Cireas, old bribe-taker, art thou living? Did Poseidon forget thee?

Cireas

I pray you, Prince, remind me not of past foolishness. I have grown pious. I will never speak ill again of authorities and divinities.

Iolaus

Thou art grown ascetic? thou carest no longer then for gold? I am glad, for my purse will be spared a very heavy lightening.

Cireas

Prince, I will not suffer my young piety to make you break old promises; for if it is perilous to sin, it is worse to be the cause of sin in others.

Iolaus

Thou shalt have gold and farms. I will absolve

Andromeda’s promise and my own.

Cireas

Great Plutus!

O happy Cireas!

Iolaus

Merchant Tyrnaus, art thou for Chaldea?

Tyrnaus

When I have seen these troubles’ joyous end

And your sweet princess, my young rescuer,

Happily wedded.

Iolaus

I will give thee a ship

And merchandise enough to fill thy losses.

Perseus

And prayers with them, O excellent Chaldean.

The world has need of men like thee.

Smerdas (aside)

I quake.

What will they say to me? I shall be tortured

And crucified. But she with her smile will save me.

Iolaus

Smerdas, thou unclean treacherous coward soul!

Smerdas

Alas, I was compelled by threats of torture.

Iolaus

And tempted too with gold. Thy punishment

Shall hit thee in thy nature. Farmer Cireas!

Cireas

Prince Plutus!

Iolaus

Take thou this man for slave. He’s strong.

Work him upon thy fields and thy plantations.

Smerdas

O this is worst of all.

Iolaus

Not worse than thy desert.

For gold thou lustest? earn it for another.

Thou’lt save thy life? it is a freedman’s chattel.

Smerdas

O speak for me, lady Andromeda!

Andromeda

Dear Iolaus,–

Cepheus

My child, thou art all pity;

But justice has her seat, and her fine balance

Disturbed too often spoils an unripe world

With ill-timed mercy. Thy brother speaks my will.

Iolaus

Thou hast increased thy crime by pleading to her

Whom thou betrayedst to her death. Art thou

Quite shameless? Hold thy peace!

Andromeda

Grieve not too much.

Cireas will be kind to thee; wilt thou not, Cireas?

Cireas

At thy command I will be even that

And even to him.

Noise outside.

Cepheus

What other dangerous clamour

Is at our gates?

Perissus enters, brandishing his cleaver.

Perissus

Pull out that sharp skewer of thine, comrade Perseus, or let me handle my cleaver.

Cepheus

Thou art angry, butcher? Who has disturbed thy noble serenity?

Perissus

King Cepheus, shall I not be angry? Art thou not again our majesty of Syria? And shall our majesty be insulted with noses? Shall it be prodded by a proboscis? Perseus, thou hast slaughtered yonder palaeozoic ichthyosaurus; wilt thou suffer me to chop this neozoan?

Perseus

Calmly, precisely and not so polysyllabically, my good Perissus. Tell the King what is this clamour.

Perissus

My monarch, Phineus of Tyre has brought his long-nosed royalty to thy gates and poke it he will into thy kingly presence. His blusterings, King, have flustered my calm great heart within me.

Cepheus

Comes he alone?

Perissus

Damoetes and some scores more hang on to his long tail of hook-nosed Tyrians; but they are all rabble and proletariate, not a citizen butcher in the whole picking. They brandish skewers; they threaten to poke me with their dainty iron spits,– me, Perissus, me, the butcher!

Cepheus

Phineus in arms! This is the after-swell

Of tempest.

Perseus

Let the Phoenician enter, comrade.

Perissus goes out.

Look not so blank. This man with all his crew

Shall be my easy care.

Phineus enters the hall with a great company, Tyrians with drawn swords, Damoetes, Morus and others; after them Perissus.

Cepheus

Welcome, Tyre.

Cassiopea

Thou breakest armed into our presence, Phineus.

Had they been earlier there, these naked swords

Would have been welcome.

Phineus

I am not here for welcome,

Lady. King Cepheus, wilt thou yield me right,

Or shall I take it with my sword?

Cepheus

Phineus,

I never have withheld even from the meanest

The least thing he could call his right.

Phineus

Thou hast not?

Who gives then to a wandering Greek my bride,

Thy perfect daughter?

Cassiopea

She was in some peril,

When thou wert absent, Tyre.

Phineus

A vain young man,

A brilliant sworder wandering for a name,

Who calls himself the son of Danaë,

And who his father was, the midnight knows.

This is the lord thou giv’st Andromeda,

Scorning the mighty King of ancient Tyre.

Cepheus

He saved her from the death to which we left her,

And she was his,– his wife, if so he chose,

Or, conquered by the sword from grim Poseidon,

His then to take her as he would from that moment.

Phineus

Do his deeds or thy neglect annul thy promise?

Iolaus

King Phineus, wilt thou take up and lay down

At pleasure? Who leaves a jewel in the mud,

Shall he complain because another took it?

Praxilla

And she was never his; she hated him.

Phineus

I’ll hear no reasons, but with strong force have her,

Though it be to lift her o’er the dearest blood

Of all her kin. Tyrians!

Andromeda takes refuge with Perseus.

Abandon, princess,

The stripling bosom where thou tak’st thy refuge.

Thou hast mistook thy home, Andromeda.

Iolaus

’Tis thou mistakest, Phineus, thinking her

A bride who, touched, shall be thy doom. Get hence

Unhurt.

Phineus

Prince Iolaus, the sword that cut

Thy contract to Poseidon, cuts not mine,–

Which if you void, thou and thy father pay for it.

Perseus

Phineus of Tyre, it may be thou art wronged,

But ’tis not at his hands whom thou impugnest.

Her father gave her not to me.

Phineus

Her mother then?

She is the man, I think, in Syria’s household.

Perseus

Her too I asked not.

Phineus

Thou wooedst then the maid?

It shall not help thee though a thousand times

She kissed thee yes. Pretty Andromeda,

Wilt thou have for thy lord this vagabond,

Wander with him as beggars land and sea?

Despite thyself I’ll save thee from that fate

Unworthy of thy beauty and thy sweetness,

And make thee Queen in Tyre. Minion of Argos,

Learn, ere thou grasp at other’s goods, to ask

The owner, not the owned.

Perseus

I did not ask her.

Phineus

Then by what right, presumptuous, hast thou her?

Or wherefore lies she thus within thy arm?

Perseus

Say, by what right, King Phineus, thou wouldst take her,

Herself and all refusing?

Phineus

By my precontract.

Perseus

Thou gavest her to Death, that contract’s broken.

Or if thou seekest to revoke thy gift,

Foregather then with Death and ask him for her.

The way to him is easy.

Phineus

Then by my sword,

Not asking her or any, because I am a king,

I’ll take her.

Perseus

If the sword is the sole judge,

Then by my own sword I have taken her, Tyrian,

Not asking her or any, who am king

O’er her, her sovereign. This soft gold is mine

And mine these banks of silver; this rich country

Is my possession and owes to my strong taking

All her sweet revenues in honey. Phineus,

I wonder not that thou dost covet her

Whom the whole world might want. Wrest her from me,

Phoenician; to her father she belongs not.

(opening his wallet)

King Phineus, art thou ready? Yet look once more

On the blue sky and this green earth of Syria.

Phineus

Young man, thou hast done deeds I’ll not belittle.

Yet was it only a sea-beast and a rabble

Whom thou hast tamed; I am a prince and warrior.

Wilt thou fright me with thy aegis?

Perseus

Not fright, but end thee;

For thou hast spoken words deserving death.

Come forth into the open, this is no place

For battle. Marshal thy warlike crew against me,

And let thy Syrian mob-men help with shouts:

Stand in their front to lead them; I alone

Will meet their serried charge, Dercetes merely

Watching us.

Phineus

Thou art frantic with past triumphs:

Argive, desist. I would not rob thy mother

Of her sole joy, howe’er she came by thee.

The gods may punish her sweet midnight fault,

To whom her dainty trickery imputes it.

Perseus

Come now, lest here I slay thee.

Phineus

Thou art in love

With death: but I am pitiful, young Perseus;

Thou shalt not die. My men shall take thee living

And pedlars hawk thee for a slave in Tyre,

Where thou shalt see sometimes far off Andromeda,

A Queen of nations.

Perseus

Thou compassionate man!

But I will give thee, hero, marvellous death

And stone for monument, which thou deservest;

For thou wert a great King and famous warrior,

When still thou wert living. Forth and fight with me!

Afterwards if thou canst, come for Andromeda;

None shall oppose thy seizure. Behind me, captain,

So that the rabble here may not be tempted

To any treacherous stroke.

Phineus goes out with the Tyrians, Damoetes and the Syrian favourers of Phineus, followed by Perseus and Dercetes. Cireas behind them at a distance.

Cepheus

Sunbeam, I am afraid.

Andromeda

I am not, father.

Cepheus

Alone against so many!

Iolaus

Shall I go, father,

And stand by him?

Cepheus

He might be angry. Hark!

The voice of Phineus.

Iolaus

He cries some confident order.

Cepheus

The Tyrians shout for onset; he is doomed.

There is a moment’s pause, all listening, painfully.

Iolaus

The shouts are stilled; there is a sudden hush.

Cepheus

What can it mean? This silence is appalling.

Dercetes returns.

What news? Thou treadest like one sleeping, captain.

Dercetes

O King, thy royal court is full of monuments.

Cepheus

What meanest thou? What happened? Where is Perseus?

Dercetes

King Phineus called to his men to take alive

The Greek; but as they charged, great Perseus cried,

“Close eyes, Dercetes, if thou car’st to live,”

And I obeyed, yet saw that he had taken

A snaky something from the wallet’s mouth

He carries on³⁰ his baldric. Blind I waited

And heard the loud approaching charge. Then suddenly

The rapid footsteps³¹ ceased, the cries fell dumb

And a great silence reigned. Astonishment

For two brief moments only held me close;

But when I lifted my sealed lids, the court

Was full of those swift charging warriors stiffened

To stone or stiffening, in the very posture

Of onset, sword uplifted, shield advanced,

Knee crooked, foot carried forward to the pace,

An animated silence, life in stone.

Only the godlike victor lived, a smile

Upon his lips, closing his wallet’s mouth.

Then I, appalled, came from that place in silence.

Cepheus

Soldier, he is a god, or else the gods

Walk close to him. I hear his footsteps coming.

Perseus returns, followed by Cireas³².

Hail, Perseus!

Perseus

King, the Tyrians all are dead,

Nor needst thou build them pyres nor dig them graves.

If any hereafter ask what perfect sculptor

Chiselled these forms in Syria’s royal court,

Say then, “Athene, child armipotent

Of the Olympian, hewed by Perseus’ hand

In one divine and careless stroke these statues

To her give glory.”

Cepheus

O thou dreadful victor!

I know not what to say nor how to praise thee.

Perseus

Say nothing, King; in silence praise the Gods.

Let this not trouble you, my friends. Proceed

As if no interruption had disturbed you.

Cireas

O Zeus, I thought thou couldst juggle only with feathers and phosphorus, but I see thou canst give wrinkles in magic to Babylon and the Medes. (shaking himself) Ugh! this was a stony conjuring³³. I cannot feel sure yet that I am not myself a statue.

Perissus (who has gone out and returned)

What hast thou done, comrade Perseus? Thou hast immortalised his long nose to all time in stone! This is a woeful thing for posterity; thou hadst no right to leave behind thee for its dismay such a fossil.

Cepheus

What now is left but to prepare the nuptials

Of sweet young sunny-eyed Andromeda

With mighty Perseus?

Perseus

King, let it be soon

That I may go to my blue-ringed Seriphos,

Where my mother waits and more deeds call to me.

Cassiopea

Yet if thy heart consents, then three months give us,

O Perseus, of thyself and our sweet child,

And then abandon.

Perseus

They are given.

Andromeda

Perseus,

You give and never ask; let me for you

Ask something.

Perseus

Ask, Andromeda, and have.

Andromeda

Then this I ask that thy great deeds may leave

Their golden trace on Syria. Let the dire cult

For ever cease and victims bleed no more

On its dark altar. Instead, Athene’s name

Spread over all the land and in men’s hearts.

Then shall a calm and mighty Will prevail

And broader minds and kindlier manners reign

And men grow human, mild and merciful.

Perseus

King Cepheus, thou hast heard; shall this be done?

Cepheus

Hero, thou cam’st to change our world for us.

Pronounce; I give assent.

Perseus

Then let the shrine

That looked out from earth’s breast into the sunlight,

Be cleansed of its red memory of blood,

And the dread Form that lived within its precincts

Transfigure into a bright compassionate God

Whose strength shall aid men tossed upon the seas,

Give succour to the shipwrecked mariner.

A noble centre of a people’s worship,

To Zeus and great Athene build a temple

Between your sky-topped hills and Ocean’s vasts:

Her might shall guard your lives and save your land.

In your human image of her deity

A light of reason and calm celestial force

And a wise tranquil government of life,

Order and beauty and harmonious thoughts

And, ruling the waves of impulse, high-throned will

Incorporate in marble, the carved and white

Ideal of a young uplifted race.

For these are her gifts to those who worship her.

Adore and what you adore attempt to be.

Cepheus

Will the fiercer Grandeur that was here permit?

Perseus

Fear not Poseidon; the strong god is free.

He has withdrawn from his own darkness and is now

His new great self at an Olympian height.

Cassiopea

How can the immortal gods and Nature change?

Perseus

All alters in a world that is the same.

Man most must change who is a soul of Time;

His gods too change and live in larger light.

Cepheus

Then man too may arise to greater heights,

His being draw nearer to the gods?

Perseus

Perhaps.

But the blind nether forces still have power

And the ascent is slow and long is Time.

Yet shall Truth grow and harmony increase:

The day shall come when men feel close and one.

Meanwhile one forward step is something gained,

Since little by little earth must open to heaven

Till her dim soul awakes into the Light.

¹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: sea-breezes

² 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: sea-breezes

³ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: them

⁴ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: on

⁵ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: woe

⁶ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: Oh

⁷ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: would

⁸ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: throws

⁹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: ways

¹⁰ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: in

¹¹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: they’d

¹² 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: thy

¹³ In 1972 ed. the phrase "Only for Iolaus" is spoken by Perseus

¹⁴ In 1972 ed. the phrase "Of strength and sweetness" is spoken by Iolaus below

¹⁵ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: captain

¹⁶ In 1972 ed. the phrase "He said he was compelled." is absent

¹⁷ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: the

¹⁸ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: recognized

¹⁹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: Soldiers

²⁰ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: Nabassar

²¹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: mighty

²² 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: a

²³ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: kind dear

²⁴ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: your rosy

²⁵ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: Confusions

²⁶ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: you

²⁷ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: staring

²⁸ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: Wert

²⁹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: split

³⁰ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: in

³¹ 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 6: onset

³² In 1972 ed. this and next line are in reverse order