Together won this fair Messenian land—
Alas, that, how to rule it, was our broil!
He had his counsel, party, friends—I mine;
He stood by what he wish’d for—I the same;
I smote him, when our wishes clash’d in arms—
He had smit me, had he been swift as I.
But while I smote him, Queen, I honour’d him;
Me, too, had he prevail’d, he had not scorn’d.
Enough of this!—since then, I have maintain’d
The sceptre—not remissly let it fall—
And I am seated on a prosperous throne:
Yet still, for I conceal it not, ferments
In the Messenian people what remains
Of thy dead husband’s faction; vigorous once,
Now crush’d but not quite lifeless by his fall.
And these men look to thee, and from thy grief—
Something too studiously, forgive me, shown—
Infer thee their accomplice; and they say
That thou in secret nurturest up thy son,
Him whom thou hiddest when thy husband fell,
To avenge that fall, and bring them back to power.
Such are their hopes—I ask not if by thee
Willingly fed or no—their most vain hopes;
For I have kept conspiracy fast-chain’d
Till now, and I have strength to chain it still.
But, Merope, the years advance;—I stand
Upon the threshold of old age, alone,
Always in arms, always in face of foes.
The long repressive attitude of rule
Leaves me austerer, sterner, than I would;
Old age is more suspicious than the free
And valiant heart of youth, or manhood’s firm,
Unclouded reason; I would not decline
Into a jealous tyrant, scourg’d with fears,
Closing in blood and gloom, his sullen reign.
The cares which might in me with time, I feel,
Beget a cruel temper, help me quell;
The breach between our parties help me close;
Assist me to rule mildly: let us join
Our hands in solemn union, making friends
Our factions with the friendship of their chiefs.
Let us in marriage, King and Queen, unite
Claims ever hostile else; and set thy son—
No more an exile fed on empty hopes,
And to an unsubstantial title heir,
But prince adopted by the will of power,
And future king—before this people’s eyes.
Consider him; consider not old hates:
Consider, too, this people, who were dear
To their dead king, thy husband—yea, too dear,
For that destroy’d him. Give them peace; thou can’st.
O Merope, how many noble thoughts,
How many precious feelings of man’s heart,
How many loves, how many gratitudes,
Do twenty years wear out, and see expire!
Shall they not wear one hatred out as well?
Thou hast forgot, then, who I am who hear,
And who thou art who speakest to me? I
Am Merope, thy murder’d master’s wife …
And thou art Polyphontes, first his friend,
And then … his murderer. These offending tears
That murder draws … this breach that thou would’st close
Was by that murder open’d … that one child
(If still, indeed, he lives) whom thou would’st seat
Upon a throne not thine to give, is heir,
Because thou slew’st his brothers with their father …
Who can patch union here? … What can there be
But everlasting horror ’twixt us two,
Gulfs of estranging blood? … Across that chasm
Who can extend their hands? … Maidens, take back
These offerings home! our rites are spoil’d to-day.
Not so: let these Messenian maidens mark
The fear’d and blacken’d ruler of their race,
Albeit with lips unapt to self-excuse,
Blow off the spot of murder from his name.—
Murder!—but what is murder? When a wretch
For private gain or hatred takes a life,
We call it murder, crush him, brand his name:
But when, for some great public cause, an arm
Is, without love or hate, austerely rais’d
Against a Power exempt from common checks,
Dangerous to all, to be but thus annull’d—
Ranks any man with murder such an act?
With grievous deeds, perhaps; with murder—no!
Find then such cause, the charge of murder falls:
Be judge thyself if it abound not here.—
All know how weak the Eagle, Hercules,
Soaring from his death-pile on Oeta, left
His puny, callow Eaglets; and what trials—
Infirm protectors, dubious oracles
Construed awry, misplann’d invasions—us’d
Two generations of his offspring up;
Hardly the third, with grievous loss, regain’d
Their fathers’ realm, this isle, from Pelops nam’d.—
Who made that triumph, though deferr’d, secure?
Who, but the kinsmen of the royal brood
Of Hercules, scarce Heracleidae less
Than they? these, and the Dorian lords, whose king
Aegimius gave our outcast house a home
When Thebes, when Athens dar’d not; who in arms
Thrice issued with us from their pastoral vales,
And shed their blood like water in our cause?—
Such were the dispossessors: of what stamp
Were they we dispossessed?—of us I speak,
Who to Messenia with thy husband came—
I speak not now of Argos, where his brother,
Not now of Sparta, where his nephews reign’d:—
What we found here were tribes of fame obscure,
Much turbulence, and little constancy,
Precariously rul’d by foreign lords
From the Aeolian stock of Neleus sprung,
A house once great, now dwindling in its sons.
Such were the conquer’d, such the conquerors: who
Had most thy husband’s confidence? Consult
His acts; the wife he chose was—full of virtues—
But an Arcadian princess, more akin
To his new subjects than to us; his friends
Were the Messenian chiefs; the laws he fram’d
Were aim’d at their promotion, our decline;
And, finally, this land, then half-subdued,
Which from one central city’s guarded seat
As from a fastness in the rocks our scant
Handful of Dorian conquerors might have curb’d,
He parcell’d out in five confederate states,
Sowing his victors thinly through them all,
Mere prisoners, meant or not, among our foes.
If this was fear of them, it sham’d the king:
If jealousy of us, it shamed the man.—
Long we refrain’d ourselves, submitted long,
Construed his acts indulgently, rever’d,
Though found perverse, the blood of Hercules:
Reluctantly the rest; but, against all,
One voice preach’d patience, and that voice was mine.
At last it reach’d us, that he, still mistrustful,
Deeming, as tyrants deem, our silence hate,
Unadulating grief conspiracy,
Had to this city, Stenyclaros, call’d
A general assemblage of the realm,
With compact in that concourse to deliver,
For death, his ancient to his new-made friends.
Patience was thenceforth self-destruction. I,
I his chief kinsman, I his pioneer
And champion to the throne, I honouring most
Of men the line of Hercules, preferr’d
The many of that lineage to the one:
What his foes dar’d not, I, his lover, dar’d;
I, at that altar, where mid shouting crowds
He sacrific’d, our ruin in his heart,
To Zeus, before he struck his blow, struck mine:
Struck once, and aw’d his mob, and sav’d this realm.
Murder let others call this, if they will;
I, self-defence and righteous execution.
Alas, how fair
