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;
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.
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.
Which way to lean I know not: bloody strokes
Are never free from doubt, though sometimes due.
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
MesseniaL 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 Gods, O mistress dear! the hard-soul’d man,
Who spar’d not others, bid not us to spare.
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!
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.
Strophe 1
O Son and Mother,
Whom the Gods o’ershadow
In dangerous trial,
With certainty of favour!
As erst they shadow’d
Your race’s founders
From irretrievable woe:
When the seed of Lycaon
Lay forlorn, lay outcast,
Callisto and her Boy.
Antistrophe 1
What deep-grass’d meadow
At the meeting valleys—
Where clear-flowing Ladon,
Most beautiful of waters,
Receives the river
Whose trout are vocal,
The Aroanian stream—
Without home, without mother,
Hid the babe, hid Arcas,
The nursling of the dells?
Strophe 2
But the sweet-smelling myrtle,
And the pink-flower’d oleander,
And the green agnus-castus,
To the West-Wind’s murmur,
Rustled round his cradle;
And Maia rear’d him.
Then, a boy, he startled,
In the snow-fill’d hollows
Of high Cyllene,
The white mountain-birds;
Or surpris’d, in the glens,
The basking tortoises,
Whose striped shell founded
In the hand of Hermes
The glory of the lyre.
Antistrophe 2
But his mother, Callisto,
In her hiding-place of the thickets
Of the lentisk and ilex
In her rough form, fearing
The hunter on
