King Lear's Wife; The Crier by Night; The Riding to Lithend; Midsummer-Eve Part 29

_TO B. J. FLETCHER_

_O RARE Ben Fletcher, oft I bless Your rotund Jacobean name; If the great crew could still express Their hearts in their dim place of Fame, As once at Globe or Mermaid-ales, With love your liking they would greet For country things and queens' mad tales And lines with sounding feet._

_But in this troublous newer time Such fellows have not filled your days, So it is left for me to chime These quieter verses of your praise: For a fair theme I need not strive While manhood knows as boyhood knew The joys of art, the joys of life, I have received from you._

_What days could ever be so long As those our pristine Summers poised O'er a charmed valley isled among Their bright slow-breaking tides unnoised?

Then _Dials_ were new and came to stir A pa.s.sionate thirst within the eyes; Each dawn was a discoverer Of poets unearthly wise._

_First-comer of my friends, the years Behold much friends.h.i.+p fade and set; The shrunken world imparts its fears, Most men their early power forget.

But art stays true for us, and we In it are steadfast: for a sign Its wonder joins us changelessly Your name stands here with mine._

March 8th, 1909.

ARGUMENT

Antiochus Theos, one of the h.e.l.lenic Kings of the East of the line of Seleucus, reigned in Antioch. He had espoused Laodice his kinswoman, according to the usage of his race; but after many years he put her from him, and took to wife Berenice, daughter and sister of Ptolemys of Egypt, for reasons of state.

Laodice withdrew to Ephesus and kept court there: long affection, resurgent, sent Antiochus thither to join her. Shortly afterward he died at Ephesus in Laodice's care.

Berenice and Laodice then warred, each to gain the kingdom for her child: the infant son of Berenice disappeared, and eventually Seleucus II., the son of Laodice, held the throne of Antiochus.

In the course of their wars Laodice retired from Ephesus on finding that Sophron, the governor of the city, secretly trafficked with the party of Berenice.

While she sat in some adjacent city Sophron unsuspiciously rejoined her counsels; she immediately devised his death, but he, being warned by his old love Danae, the queen's favourite, saved himself by flight.

PERSONS:

LAODICE, a Queen of the Seleucid House in Asia.

DANAe, MYSTA, RHODOGUNE, BARSINE, and other Waiting-Women.

Three Women-Musicians.

SOPHRON, Seleucid Governor of Ephesus.

_In Smyrna._ B.C. 246.

LAODICE AND DANAe

_Behind the curtain a woman sings to the accompaniment of a harp and a bell._

I WILL sing of the women who have borne rule, The severe, the swift, the beautiful; I will praise their loftiness of mind That made them too wise to be true or kind; I will sing of their calm injustice loved For the pride it fed and the power it proved.

Once in Egypt a girl was queen Ashamed that her womanhood should be seen; She wore a beard, she called herself king, She was uneasy with governing; She believed a king was greater than she, So she found a king and his mastery.

In Smyrna sits a queen to-night Who does not s.h.i.+ne by another's light; She has laid her husband on time's dust-heap, But for that she holds not her t.i.tle cheap; New radiance comes on woman by her, New force in woman is seen to stir.

She has taken the land and the sea from men; She has shewn men the power of their source again....

_The curtain rises._

_A lofty chamber of mingled h.e.l.lenic and Asiatic architecture is seen.

The walls are of black stone: on the right a portal toward the front of the stage is concealed by a curtain embroidered with parrots and Babylonian branch-work; high and toward the back is a double window, with open cedar lattices, of an inner room: high in the opposed wall is a short arcade with a projecting gallery. An open colonnade extends across the rear wall at two-thirds of its height; its pillars support the roof: the platform of this colonnade is accessible by an open stair recessed in the wall._

_QUEEN LAODICE reclines on a great divan set toward the left centre of the chamber. The musicians whose singing and playing have just ceased kneel on a Persian carpet before her: between them and the portal stands a tall brazier whence a wavering heat rises. A golden evening sky is visible through the colonnade, where DANAe leans against a pillar._

LAODICE.

BE silent now; I let you sing too much.

I am awaiting now too many things To bear this fret of waiting till you end And I can think again. Be quietly gone.

_The women go out._

DANAe.

You bade them sing to make one moment brief.

LAODICE.

What are you watching like a larger cat, Sweetheart, little heart, noiseless and alert?

You shall not watch me like a prim wise cat.

DANAe.

I watch a girl sway slightly, near the tide, As if rehearsing dance-steps in her heart; She hangs lit snakes of sea-weed down her bosom; She takes a letter from her bunchy hair....

_She laughs and leans over, holding the pillar._

LAODICE.

Find me a s.h.i.+p, s.h.i.+ps; dark ones, strange ones.

I must have s.h.i.+ps, so find them, little heart; And, more than all, a s.h.i.+p of Antioch.

DANAe.

How tiny a girl looks under these deep rocks....

LAODICE _yawns._ Madam, I have searched well; yet until now No deep-sea s.h.i.+p has pa.s.sed the promontory; Now a great s.h.i.+p with tawny sails comes on, An ocean-threatening centaur for its prow.

LAODICE.

That is from Ephesus, not Antioch....

I purge one thought thereby and make repayment.

I am taken with an inward s.h.i.+vering: Perhaps I am cold with night--come down and warm me.

_DANAe descends and reclines by LAODICE._

Haughty and pa.s.sive and obedient, May not my queen's bosom receive your head?

When I worked empery in Ephesus That Sophron, governor--did he not love you?

DANAe.