Poetry · Merope (2/2) (2/2) (5/7)

| Merope | O thou long-lost, long seen in dreams alone, But now seen face to face, my only child! Why wilt thou fly to lose as soon as found My new-won treasure, thy belovèd life? Or how expectest not to lose, who com’st With such slight means to cope with such a foe? Thine enemy thou know’st not, nor his strength. The stroke thou purposest is desperate, rash⁠— Yet grant that it succeeds;⁠—thou hast behind The stricken king a second enemy Scarce dangerous less than him, the Dorian lords. These are not now the savage band who erst Follow’d thy father from their northern hills, Mere ruthless and uncounsell’d tools of war, Good to obey, without a leader naught. Their chief hath train’d them, made them like himself, Sagacious, men of iron, watchful, firm, Against surprise and sudden panic proof: Their master fall’n, these will not flinch, but band To keep their master’s power: thou wilt find Behind his corpse their hedge of serried spears. But, to match these, thou hast the people’s love? On what a reed, my child, thou leanest there! Knowest thou not how timorous, how unsure, How useless an ally a people is Against the one and certain arm of power? Thy father perish’d in this people’s cause, Perish’d before their eyes, yet no man stirr’d: For years, his widow, in their sight I stand, A never-changing index to revenge⁠— What help, what vengeance, at their hands have I?⁠— At least, if thou wilt trust them, try them first: Against the King himself array the host Thou countest on to back thee ’gainst his lords: First rally the Messenians to thy cause, Give them cohesion, purpose, and resolve, Marshal them to an army⁠—then advance, Then try the issue; and not, rushing on Single and friendless, give to certain death That dear-belov’d, that young, that gracious head. Be guided, O my son! spurn counsel not: For know thou this, a violent heart hath been Fatal to all the race of Hercules. | | The Chorus | With sage experience she speaks; and thou, O Aepytus, weigh well her counsel given. | | Aepytus | Ill counsel, in my judgment, gives she here, Maidens, and reads experience much amiss; Discrediting the succour which our cause Might from the people draw, if rightly us’d: Advising us a course which would, indeed, If follow’d, make their succour slack and null. A people is no army, train’d to fight, A passive engine, at their general’s will; And, if so us’d, proves, as thou say’st, unsure. A people, like a common man, is dull, Is lifeless, while its heart remains untouch’d; A fool can drive it, and a fly may scare: When it admires and loves, its heart awakes; Then irresistibly it lives, it works: A people, then, is an ally indeed; It is ten thousand fiery wills in one. Now I, if I invite them to run risk Of life for my advantage, and myself, Who chiefly profit, run no more than they⁠— How shall I rouse their love, their ardour so? But, if some signal, unassisted stroke, Dealt at my own sole risk, before their eyes, Announces me their rightful prince return’d⁠— The undegenerate blood of Hercules⁠— The daring claimant of a perilous throne⁠— How might not such a sight as this revive Their loyal passion tow’rd my father’s house? Electrify their hearts? make them no more A craven mob, but a devouring fire? Then might I use them, then, for one who thus Spares not himself, themselves they will not spare. Haply, had but one daring soul stood forth To rally them and lead them to revenge, When my great father fell, they had replied:⁠— Alas! our foe alone stood forward then. And thou, my mother, hadst thou made a sign⁠— Hadst thou, from thy forlorn and captive state Of widowhood in these polluted halls, Thy prison-house, rais’d one imploring cry⁠— Who knows but that avengers thou hadst found? But mute thou sat’st, and each Messenian heart In thy despondency desponded too. Enough of this!⁠—Though not a finger stir To succour me in my extremest need; Though all free spirits in this land were dead, And only slaves and tyrants left alive⁠— Yet for me, mother, I had liefer die On native ground, than drag the tedious hours Of a protected exile any more. Hate, duty, interest, passion call one way;]: Here stand I now, and the attempt shall be. | | The Chorus | Prudence is on the other side; but deeds Condemn’d by prudence have sometimes gone well. | | Merope | Not till the ways of prudence all are tried, And tried in vain, the turn of rashness comes. Thou leapest to thy deed, and hast not ask’d Thy kinsfolk and thy father’s friends for aid. | | Aepytus | And to what friends should I for aid apply? | | Merope | The royal race of Temenus, in Argos⁠— | | Aepytus | That house, like ours, intestine murder maims. | | Merope | Thy Spartan cousins, Procles and his brother⁠— | | Aepytus | Love a won cause, but not a cause to win. | | Merope | My father, then, and his Arcadian chiefs⁠— | | Aepytus | Mean still to keep aloof from Dorian broil. | | Merope | Wait, then, until sufficient help appears. | | Aepytus | Orestes in Mycenae had no more. | | Merope | He to fulfil an order rais’d his hand. | | Aepytus | What order more precise had he than I? | | Merope | Apollo peal’d it from his Delphian cave. | | Aepytus | A mother’s murder needed hest divine. | | Merope | He had a hest, at least, and thou hast none. | | Aepytus | The Gods command not where the heart speaks clear. | | Merope | Thou wilt destroy, I see, thyself and us. | | Aepytus | O suffering! O calamity! how ten, How twentyfold worse are ye, when your blows Not only wound the sense, but kill the soul, The noble thought, which is alone the man! That I, to-day returning, find myself Orphan’d of both my parents⁠—by his foes My father, by your strokes my mother slain!⁠— For this is not my mother, who dissuades, At the dread altar of her husband’s tomb, His son from vengeance on his murderer; And not alone dissuades him, but compares His just revenge to an unnatural deed, A deed so awful, that the general tongue Fluent of horrors, falters to relate it⁠— Of darkness so tremendous, that its author, Though to his act empower’d, nay, impell’d, By the oracular sentence of the Gods, Fled, for years after, o’er the face of earth, A frenzied wanderer, a God-driven man, And hardly yet, some say, hath found a grave⁠— With such a deed as this thou matchest mine, Which Nature sanctions, which the innocent blood Clamours to find fulfill’d, which good men praise, And only bad men joy to see undone? O honour’d father! hide thee in thy grave Deep as thou canst, for hence no succour comes; Since from thy faithful subjects what revenge Canst thou expect, when thus thy widow fails? Alas! an adamantine strength indeed, Past expectation, hath thy murderer built: For this is the true strength of guilty kings, When they corrupt the souls of those they rule. | | The Chorus | Zeal makes him most unjust: but, in good time, Here, as I guess, the noble Laias comes. | | Laias | Break off, break off your talking, and depart Each to his post, where the occasion calls; Lest from the council-chamber presently The King return, and find you prating here. A time will come for greetings; but to-day The hour for words is gone, is come for deeds. | | Aepytus | O princely Laias! to what purpose calls The occasion, if our chief confederate fails? My mother stands aloof, and blames our deed. | | Laias | My royal sister?⁠ ⁠… but, without some cause, I know, she honours not the dead so ill. | | Merope | Brother, it seems thy sister must present, At this first meeting after absence long, Not welcome, exculpation to her kin: Yet exculpation needs it, if I seek, A woman and a mother, to avert Risk from my new-restor’d, my only son?⁠— Sometimes, when he was gone, I wish’d him back, Risk what he might; now that I have him here, Now that I feed mine eyes on that young face, Hear that fresh voice, and clasp that gold-lock’d head, I shudder, Laias, to commit my child To Murder’s dread arena, where I saw His father and his ill-starr’d brethren fall: I loathe for him the slippery way of blood; I ask if bloodless means may gain his end. In me the fever of revengeful hate, Passion’s first furious longing to imbrue Our own right hand in the detested blood Of enemies, and count their dying groans⁠— If in this feeble bosom such a fire Did ever burn⁠—is long by time allay’d, And I would now have Justice strike, not me. Besides⁠—for from my brother and my son I hide not even this⁠—the reverence deep, Remorseful, tow’rd my hostile solitude, By Polyphontes never fail’d-in once Through twenty years; his mournful anxious zeal To efface in me the memory of his crime⁠— Though it efface not that, yet makes me wish His death a public, not a personal act, Treacherously plotted ’twixt my son and me; To whom this day he came to proffer peace, Treaty, and to this kingdom for my son Heirship, with fair intent, as I believe:⁠— For that he plots thy death, account it false; | | | To Aepytus. | | | Number it with the thousand rumours vain, Figments of plots, wherewith intriguers fill The enforcèd leisure of an exile’s ear:⁠— Immers’d in serious state-craft is the King, Bent above all to pacify, to rule, Rigidly, yet in settled calm, this realm; Not prone, all say, to useless bloodshed now.⁠— So much is due to truth, even tow’rds our foe. | | | To Laias. | | | Do I, then, give to usurpation grace, And from his natural rights my son debar? Not so: let him⁠—and none shall be more prompt Than I to help⁠—raise his Messenian friends; Let him fetch succours from Arcadia, gain His Argive or his Spartan cousins’ aid; Let him do this, do aught but recommence Murder’s uncertain, secret, perilous game⁠— And I, when to his righteous standard down Flies Victory wing’d, and Justice raises then Her sword, will be the first to bid it fall. If, haply, at this moment, such attempt Promise not fair, let him a little while Have faith, and trust the future and the Gods. He may⁠—for never did the Gods allow Fast permanence to an ill-gotten throne.⁠— These are but woman’s words;⁠—yet, Laias, thou Despise them not! for, brother, thou, like me, Wert not among the feuds of warrior-chiefs, Each sovereign for his dear-bought hour, born; But in the pastoral Arcadia rear’d, With Cypselus our father, where we saw The simple patriarchal state of kings, Where sire to son transmits the unquestion’d crown, Unhack’d, unsmirch’d, unbloodied, and have learnt That spotless hands unshaken sceptres hold. Having learnt this, then, use thy knowledge now. | | The Chorus | Which way to lean I know not: bloody strokes Are never free from doubt, though sometimes due. | | Laias | O Merope, the common heart of man Agrees to deem some deeds so horrible, That neither gratitude, nor tie of race, Womanly pity, nor maternal fear, Nor any pleader else, shall be indulg’d To breathe a syllable to bar revenge. All this, no doubt, thou to thyself hast urg’d⁠— Time presses, so that theme forbear I now: Direct to thy dissuasions I reply. Blood-founded thrones, thou say’st, are insecure; Our father’s kingdom, because pure, is safe. True; but what cause to our Arcadia gives Its privileg’d immunity from blood, But that, since first the black and fruitful Earth In the primeval mountain-forests bore Pelasgus, our forefather and mankind’s, Legitimately sire to son, with us, Bequeaths the allegiance of our shepherd-tribes, More loyal, as our line continues more?⁠— How can your Heracleidan chiefs inspire This awe which guards our earth-sprung, lineal kings? What permanence, what stability like ours, Whether blood flows or no, can yet invest The broken order of your Dorian thrones, Fix’d yesterday, and ten times chang’d since then?⁠— Two brothers, and their orphan nephews, strove For the three conquer’d kingdoms of this isle: The eldest, mightiest brother, Temenus, took Argos: a juggle to Cresphontes gave Messenia: to those helpless Boys, the lot Worst of the three, the stony Sparta, fell. August, indeed, was the foundation here! What followed?⁠—His most trusted kinsman slew Cresphontes in Messenia; Temenus Perish’d in Argos by his jealous sons: The Spartan Brothers with their guardian strive:⁠— Can houses thus ill-seated⁠—thus embroil’d⁠— Thus little founded in their subjects’ love, Practise the indulgent, bloodless policy Of dynasties long-fix’d, and honour’d long? No! Vigour and severity must chain Popular reverence to these recent lines; Be their first-founded order strict maintain’d⁠— Their murder’d rulers terribly avenged⁠— Ruthlessly their rebellious subjects crush’d.⁠— Since policy bids thus, what fouler death Than thine illustrious husband’s to avenge Shall we select?⁠—than Polyphontes, what More daring and more grand offender find? Justice, my sister, long demands this blow, And Wisdom, now thou see’st, demands it too: To strike it, then, dissuade thy son no more; For to live disobedient to these two, Justice and Wisdom, is no life at all. | | The Chorus | The Gods, O mistress dear! the hard-soul’d man, Who spar’d not others, bid not us to spare. | | Merope | Alas! against my brother, son, and friends, One, and a woman, how can I prevail?⁠— O brother! thou hast conquer’d; yet, I fear.⁠ ⁠… Son! with a doubting heart thy mother yields⁠ ⁠… May it turn happier than my doubts portend! | | Laias | Meantime on thee the task of silence only Shall be impos’d; to us shall be the deed. Now, not another word, but to our act! Nephew! thy friends are sounded, and prove true: Thy father’s murderer, in the public place, Performs, this noon, a solemn sacrifice: Go with him⁠—choose the moment⁠—strike thy blow! If prudence counsels thee to go unarm’d, The sacrificer’s axe will serve thy turn. To me and the Messenians leave the rest, With the Gods’ aid⁠—and, if they give but aid As our just cause deserves, I do not fear. Aepytus*, Laias, and Arcas* go out. |