175 Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back As from a stream in winter, though the chill Be but a moment's. I have one resource Still in my science?I can call the dead, And ask them what it is we dread to be:
180 The sternest answer can but be the Grave, And that is nothing?if they answer not? The buried Prophet answered to the Hag Of Endor;9 and the Spartan Monarch drew From the Byzantine maid's unsleeping spirit
i85 An answer and his destiny?he slew That which he loved, unknowing what he slew, And died unpardon'd?though he call'd in aid The Phyxian Jove, and in Phigalia roused The Arcadian Evocators to compel
190 The indignant shadow to depose her wrath,1 Or fix her term of vengeance?she replied In words of dubious import, but fulfill'd. If I had never lived, that which I love Had still been living; had I never loved,
195 That which I love would still be beautiful? Happy and giving happiness. What is she? What is she now??a sufferer for my sins? A thing I dare not think upon?or nothing. Within few hours I shall not call in vain?
200 Yet in this hour I dread the thing I dare: Until this hour I never shrunk to gaze On spirit, good or evil?now I tremble, And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart, But I can act even what I most abhor,
205 And champion human fears.?The night approaches. [Exit.]
SCENE 3. The Summit of the Jungfrau Mountain.
Enter FIRST DESTINY.2
The moon is rising broad, and round, and bright; And here on snows, where never human foot
9. The Woman of Endor, at the behest of King Pausanias, author of the Description of Greece, Saul, summoned up the spirit of the dead prophet adds the details that King Pausanias, in the vain Samuel, who foretold that in an impending battle attempt to purge his guilt, had called for aid from the Philistines would conquer the Israelites and Jupiter Phyxius and consulted the Evocators at kill Saul and his sons (I Samuel 28.7?19). Phigalia, in Arcadia, who had the power to call up I. Plutarch relates that King Pausanias ('the the souls of the dead. Spartan Monarch') had accidentally killed Cleon-2. The three Destinies are modeled on both the ice ('the Byzantine maid'), whom he desired as his witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth and the three mistress. Her ghost haunted him until he called up Fates of classical mythology, who, in turn, spin, her spirit to beg her forgiveness. She told him, measure, and then cut the thread of an individual's enigmatically, that he would quickly be freed from life. his troubles; soon after that, he was killed. Another
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IMANFRED, ACT 2 / 65 3
Of common mortal trod, we nightly tread, And leave no traces; o'er the savage sea, The glassy ocean of the mountain ice, We skim its rugged breakers, which put on The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam, Frozen in a moment?a dead whirlpool's image; And this most steep fantastic pinnacle, The fretwork of some earthquake?where the clouds Pause to repose themselves in passing by? Is sacred to our revels, or our vigils; Here do I wait my sisters, on our way To the Hall of Arimanes,3 for to-night Is our great festival?'tis strange they come not.
A Voice without, singing
The Captive Usurper,4 Hurl'd down from the throne, Lay buried in torpor, Forgotten and lone; I broke through his slumbers, I shivered his chain, I leagued him with numbers?
He's Tyrant again! With the blood of a million he'll answer my care, With a nation's destruction?his flight and despair.
Second Voice, without
The ship sail'd on, the ship sail'd fast, But I left not a sail, and I left not a mast; There is not a plank of the hull or the deck, And there is not a wretch to lament o'er his wreck; Save one, whom I held, as he swam, by the hair, And he was a subject well worthy my care; A traitor on land, and a pirate at sea? But I saved him to wreak further havoc for me!
FIRST DESTINY, answering
The city lies sleeping; The morn, to deplore it, May dawn on it weeping: Sullenly, slowly, The black plague flew o'er it? Thousands lie lowly; Tens of thousands shall perish? The living shall fly from
The sick they should cherish; But nothing can vanquish The touch that they die from.
Sorrow and anguish,
3. The name is derived from Ahriman, who in the to Napoleon's escape from his captivity on the dualistic Zoroastrian religion was the principle of island of Elba in March 1815. After his defeat at darkness and evil. the Battle of Waterloo he was imprisoned on 4. Napoleon. The song of the first Voice alludes another island, St. Helena, in October 1815.
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65 4 / GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
And evil and dread,
Envelope a nation? The blest are the dead, Wh o see not the sight
Of their own desolation.?
This work of a night? This wreck of a realm?this deed of my doing? For ages I 've done, and shall still be renewing!
Enter the SECOND and THIRD DESTINIES.
THE THREE Our hands contain the hearts of men, Our footsteps are their graves; We only give to take again The spirits of our slaves!
FIRST DESTINY Welcome!?Where's Nemesis?5 SECOND DESTINY At some great work; But what I know
