-11_Act Three-Scene-3.htm

Darkness. The Temple of Poseidon.
Polydaon enters.  

POLYDAON

Cireas! Why, Cireas! Cireas! Knave, I call you!

Is the rogue drunk or sleeps ? Cireas! you, Cireas!

My voice comes echoing from the hollow shrine

To tell me of solitude. Where is this drunkard ?

A dreadful thing it is to stand alone

In this weird temple. Forty years of use

Have not accustomed me to its mute threatening.

It seems to me as if dead victims moved

With awful faces all about this stone

Invisibly here palpable. And Ocean

Groans ever like a wounded god aloud

Against our rocky base, his voice at night

Weirdly insistent. I will go and talk

With the Chaldeans in their chains: better

Their pleasing groans and curses than the hush.

He goes out and after a while

comes back, disordered.

Wake, sleeping Syria, wake. Thou art violated,
Thy heart cut out: thou art outraged Syria, outraged,
Thy harvests and thy safety and thy sons
Already murdered! O hideous sacrilege!
Who can have dared this crime? Could the slave Cireas
Have ventured thus ? O, no, it is the proud
God-hating son of Cepheus, Iolaus,
And that swift stranger borne through impious air
To upheave the bases of our old religion.
They have rescued the Chaldeans. Cireas lies
Murdered perhaps on the sound-haunted cliffs
Who would have checked their crime. I’ll strike the gong
That only tolls when dread calamity
Strides upon Syria. Wake, doomed people, wake.

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He rushes out. A gong sounds for

some moments. It is silent and he returns,

still more disordered.

Wake! Wake! Do you not hear Poseidon raging
Beneath the cliffs with tiger-throated menace?
Do you not hear his feet upon the boulders
Sounding, a thunderous report of peril,
As he comes roaring up his stony ramparts
To slay you? Ah, the city wakes. I hear
A surge confused of hurrying, cries and tumult.
What is this darkness moving on me? Gods!
Where is the image? Whose is this awful godhead?

The shadow of Poseidon appears, vague

and alarming at first, then distinct and

terrible in the darkness.

POSEIDON

My victims, Polydaon, give me my victims.

POLYDAON (falling prostrate)

It was not I, it was not I, but others.

POSEIDON

My victims, Polydaon, give me my victims.

POLYDAON

O dire offended god, not upon me
Fall thy loud scourges! I am innocent.

POSEIDON

How art thou innocent, when the Chaldeans
Escape ? Give me my victims, Polydaon.

POLYDAON

I know not how they fled nor who released them.
Gnash not thy blood-stained teeth on me, O Lord,  

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Nor slay me with those glaring eyes. Thy voice
Thunders, a hollow terror, through my soul.

POSEIDON

Hear me, unworthy priest. While thou art scheming

For thy own petty mortal aims abroad,

I am insulted in my temple, laughed at

By slaves, by children done injurious wrong,

My victims snatched from underneath my roof

By any casual hand, my dreadful image

Looking deserted on: for none avenges.

POLYDAON

Declare thy will, O Lord, it shall be done.

POSEIDON

Therefore I will awake, I will arise,
And you shall know me for a god. This day
The loud Assyrians shall break shouting in
With angry hooves like a huge-riding flood
Upon this country. The pleasant land of Syria .
Shall be dispeopled. Wolves shall howl in Damascus,
And Gaza and Euphrates bound a desert.
My resonant and cliff-o’ervaulting seas,
Black-cowled, with foaming tops thundering shall climb
Into your lofty seats of ease and wash them
Strangled into the valleys. From the deep
My ravening herds pastured by Amphitrite
Shall walk upon your roads, devour your maidens
And infants, tear your strong and armed men
Helplessly shrieking like weak-wristed women,
Till all are dead. And thou, neglectful priest,
Shalt go down living into Tartarus
Where knives fire-pointed shall disclose thy breast
And pluck thy still-renewing heart from thee
For ever: till the world cease shall be thy torments.  

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POLYDAON

O dreadful Lord!

POSEIDON

If thou wouldst shun the doom,
And keep my Syria safe, discover then
The rescuer of the Babylonian captives
And to the monsters of my deep expose
For a delicious banquet. Offer the heart
Of Iolaus here still warmly alive
And sobbing blood to leave his beautiful body;

Slaughter on his yet not inanimate bosom,
The hero for whose love he braved my rage,
And let the sacrilegious house of Cepheus
Be blotted from the light. Thy sordid aims
Put from thy heart: remember to be fearless.
I will inhabit thee, if thou deserve it.

He disappears thundering.

POLYDAON

Yes, Lord! shall not thy dreadful will be done?

Phineus enters and his Tyrians with torches.

PHINEUS

Wherefore has the gong’s ominous voice tonight
Affrighted Syria? Are you Polydaon
Who crouch here ?

POLYDAON (rising)

Welcome, King Phineus.

PHINEUS

Who art thou?
Thine eyes roll round in a bright glaring horror
And rising up thou shak’st thy gloomy locks
As if they were a hungry lion’s mane
Preparing for the leap. Speak, Polydaon.

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POLYDAON

Yes, I shall speak, of sacrilege and blood,

Its terrible forfeit, and the wrath of Heaven.

Cepheus enters with Dercetes and Syrian
soldiers, Therops, Perissus and a throng
of Syrians; scores of torches.

CEPHEUS

What swift calamity, O Polydaon,

Has waked to clamorousness the fatal gong

At which all Syria trembles ? What is this face

Thou showest like some grim accusing phantom’s

In the torches’ light? Wherefore rang’st thou the bell?

POLYDAON

It rang the doom of thee and all thy house,
Cepheus.

CEPHEUS

My doom!

PHINEUS (aside)

I glimpse a striking plot
And ’tis well-staged too.

POLYDAON

The victims are released,
The victims bound for terrible Poseidon.
Thou and thy blood are guilty.

CEPHEUS

Thou art mad!

POLYDAON

‘Tis thou and thy doomed race are seized with madness

Who with light hearts offend against Poseidon.

But they shall perish. Thou and thy blood shall perish.  

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CEPHEUS

O, thou appal’st me. Wherefore rings out thy voice
Against me like a clamorous bell of doom
In the huge darkness ?

POLYDAON

Poseidon’s self arose
In the dim night before me with a voice
As angry as the loud importunate surge
Denouncing thee. Thou and thy blood shall perish.

PHINEUS

Cepheus, let search be made. Perhaps the victims
Have not fled far, and all may yet be saved.

CEPHEUS

Scour, captain, scour all Syria for the fugitives.
Dercetes and thy troop, down to the coast,
Scan every boulder: out, out, Meriones,
Callias, Oridamas and Pericarpus,
Ring in the country-side with cordons armed,
Enter each house, ransack most private chambers,
But find them.

Dercetes and the captains go
out with their soldiers, the people
making way/or them.

POLYDAON

People of Syria, hearken, hearken!
Poseidon for this sacrilege arouses
The Assyrian from the land and from the sea
His waves and all their sharp-toothed monsters: your men
Shall be rent and disembowelled, your women ravished,
Butchered by foemen or by Ocean’s dogs
Horribly eaten: what’s left, the flood shall swallow.

Cries and groans.  

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VOICES

Spare us, Poseidon, spare us, dread deity!

POLYDAON

Would you be spared? Obey Poseidon, people.

THEROPS

Thou art our King, command us.

POLYDAON

Bring the woman,
Chaldean Cassiopea, and her daughter.
Tell them that Syria’s King commands them here.

Therops and others go out to do his bidding.

PHINEUS

What mean you, priest?

CEPHEUS

Wherefore my queen and princess ?

POLYDAON

I do the will of terrible Poseidon.
Thou and thy blood shall perish.

PHINEUS

Thou then art mad!
I thought this was a skilful play. Think’st thou
I will permit the young Andromeda,
My bride, to be mishandled or exposed
To the bloody chances of wild popular fury
In such a moment?

POLYDAON

Phineus, I know not what thou wilt permit:

I know what terrible Poseidon wills.  

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PHINEUS

Poseidon! thou gross superstitious fool,

Hast thou seen shadows in the night and took’st them

For angry gods ?

POLYDAON  

Refrain from impious words,
Or else the doom shall take thee in its net.

PHINEUS

Refrain thyself from impious deeds, or else
A hundred Tyrian blades shall search thy brain
To look for thy lost reason.

POLYDAON (recoiling)

Patience, King Phineus!
It may be, thou shalt have thy whole desire
By other means.

Dercetes returns.

DERCETES

One of the fugitives is seized.

POLYDAON

Where, where?

DERCETES

Creeping about the sea-kissed rocks we found him
Where the ship foundered, babbling greedily
Of his lost wealth, in cover of the darkness.

POLYDAON

Now we shall know the impious hand. Tremble,
Tremble, King Cepheus.

CEPHEUS (aside)

I am besieged, undone.  

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No doubt it is my rash-brained Iolaus
Ruins us all.

Soldiers enter, driving in Smerdas.

SMERDAS (groaning)

I am dragged back to hell.
I am lost and nothing now can save me.

POLYDAON

Chaldean,
The choice is thine. Say, wilt thou save thy life
And see the green fields of thy land once more
And kiss thy wife and children ?

SMERDAS

You mock me, mock me!

POLYDAON

No, man! thou shalt have freedom at a price
Or torture gratis.

SMERDAS

Price ? price ? I’ll give the price.

POLYDAON

The names of those whose impious hands released thee;

Which if thou speak not, thou shalt die, not given
To the dire god, for he asks other victims,
But crushed with fearful tortures.

SMERDAS

O kind Heaven!
Have mercy! Must I give her up,— that smile
Of sweetness and those kindly eyes, to death ?
It is a dreadful choice! I cannot do it.  

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POLYDAON

It was a woman did this!

SMERDAS

I will say no more.

CEPHEUS

I breathe again: it was not Iolaus.

POLYDAON

Seize him and twist him into anguished knots!
Let every bone be crushed and every sinew
Wrenched and distorted, till each inch of flesh
Gives out its separate shriek.

SMERDAS

O spare me, spare me:

I will tell all.

POLYDAON

Speak truth and I will give thee
Bushels of gold and shipment to Chaldea.

SMERDAS

Gold? Gold? Shall I have gold?

POLYDAON

Thou shalt.

SMERDAS (after a pause)

The youth
You would have taken on the beach, arrived,
And his the sword bit through my iron fetters.

POLYDAON

Palter not! Who was with him? Thou shalt have gold.  

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SMERDAS

Young Iolaus.

CEPHEUS

Alas!

PHINEUS

Thus far is well.

POLYDAON

Thou hast a shifty look about the eyes.

Thou spokest of a woman. Was’t the Queen?

Hast thou told all? His face grows pale. To torment!

SMERDAS (groaning)

I will tell all. Swear then I shall have gold
And safety.

POLYDAON

By grim Poseidon’s head I swear.

SMERDAS

O hard necessity! The fair child princess,
Andromeda, with her young slave-girl came,
She was my rescuer.

There is a deep silence of amazement.

PHINEUS

I’ll not believe this! could that gentle child
Devise and execute so huge a daring?
Thou liest: thou art part of some foul plot.

POLYDAON

He has the accent of unwilling truth.
Phineus, she is death’s bride, not thine. Wilt thou
Be best man in that dolorous wedding? Forbear ^
And wait Poseidon’s will.  

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PHINEUS (low)

Shall I have Syria?

POLYDAON

When it is mine to give thee.

Therops returns.

 THEROPS

The Queen arrives.

POLYDAON

Remove the merchant.

The soldiers take Smerdas into the background,
Cassiopea enters with Andromeda and Diomede,
Nebassar and the Chaldean guard.

CASSIOPEA

Keep ready hands upon your swords, Chaldeans.
What is this tumult? Wherefore are we called
At this dim hour and to this solemn place ?

POLYDAON

Com’st thou with foreign falchions, Cassiopea,

To brave the Syrian gods? Abandon her,

Chaldeans. ‘Tis a doomed head your swords encompass.

CASSIOPEA

Since when dost thou give thy commands in Syria
And sentence queens ? My husband and thy King
Stands near thee; let him speak.

POLYDAON

Let him. There stands he.

CASSIOPEA

Why hidest thou thine eyes, monarch of Syria,
Sinking thy forehead like a common man  

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Unkingly? What grief o’ertakes thee?

POLYDAON

You see he speaks not.
Tis I command in Syria. Is’t not so,

My people ?

THEROPS

Tis so.

POLYDAON

Stand forth, Andromeda.

CASSIOPEA

What would you with my child? I stand here for her.

POLYDAON

She is accused of impious sacrilege,
And she must die.

CASSIOPEA (shuddering)

Die! Who accuses her?

POLYDAON

Bring the Chaldean.

DIOMEDE

Oh, the merchant’s seized
And all is known. Deny it, my sweet lady,
And we may yet be saved.

ANDROMEDA

Oh poor, poor merchant!
Did I unloose thy bonds in vain?

DIOMEDE

Say nothing.  

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ANDROMEDA

And why should I conceal it, Diomede?
What I had courage in my heart to do,
Surely I can have courage to avow.

DIOMEDE

But they will kill us both.

ANDROMEDA

I am a princess.
Why should I lie? From fear? But I am not afraid.

Meanwhile the soldiers have brought Smerdas to the front.

POLYDAON

Look, merchant. Say before all who rescued thee?
She was it?

SMERDAS

It is she. Oh, do not look
With that sad smile upon me. I am compelled.

POLYDAON

Is this the slave-girl?

SMERDAS

It is she.

CASSIOPEA

This wretch
Lies at thy bidding. Put him to the question.

POLYDAON

I’ll not permit it.

PERISSUS

Why man, it is the law. We’ll not believe
Our little princess did the crime.  

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CASSIOPEA

Syrians!
Look at the paltering priest. Do you not see
It is a plot, this man his instrument
Who lies so wildly? He’ll not have him questioned.
No doubt ’twas he himself released the man, —
Who else could do it in this solemn temple
Where human footsteps fear to tread? He uses
The name of great Poseidon to conceal
His plottings. He would end the line of Cepheus
And reign in Syria.

PERISSUS

This sounds probable.

VOICES

Does he misuse Poseidon’s name? unbind
Victims? Kill him!

CASSIOPEA

Look how he pales, O people!
Is’t thus that great Poseidon’s herald looks
When charged with the god’s fearful menaces?
He diets you with forgeries and fictions.

CRIES

Let him be strangled!

PHINEUS

This is a royal woman.

POLYDAON

Well, let the merchant then be put to question.

PERISSUS

Come and be tickled, merchant. I am the butcher.
Do you see my cleaver? I will torture you kindly.  

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SMERDAS

O help me, save me, lady Andromeda.

ANDROMEDA

Oh, do not lay your cruel hands upon him.
I did release him.’

CASSIOPEA

Ah, child Andromeda.

PERISSUS

You, little princess! Wherefore did you this ?

ANDROMEDA

Because I would not have their human hearts
Mercilessly uprooted for the bloody
Monster you worship as a god! because
I am capable of pain and so can feel
The pain of others! For which if you I love
Must kill me, do it. I alone am guilty.

POLYDAON

Now, Cassiopea! You are silent. Queen.

Lo, Syrians, lo, my forgeries and fictions!

Lo, my vile plottings! Enough. Poseidon wills

That on the beach this criminal be bound

For monsters of the sea to rend in fragments,

And all the royal ancient blood of Syria

Must be poured richly forth to appease and cleanse.

CASSIOPEA

Swords from the scabbard! gyre in your King from harm,
Chaldeans! Hew your way through all opposers!
Thou in my arms, my child Andromeda!
I’ll keep my daughter safe upon my bosom
Against the world.  

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POLYDAON

What dost thou, Babylonian?

CASSIOPEA

To the palace,

My trusty countrymen!

POLYDAON

Oppose them, soldiers!
They cheat the god of the crime-burdened heads
Doomed by his just resentment.

DERCETES

We are few:

And how shall we lay hands on royalty ?

POLYDAON

Nebassar, darest thou oppose the gods ?

NEBASSAR

Out of my sword’s way, priest! I do my duty.

POLYDAON

Draw, King of Tyre!

PHINEUS

‘Tis not my quarrel, priest.

Nebassar and the Chaldeans with drawn swords
go out from the Temple, taking the King and
Queen, Andromeda and Diomede.

POLYDAON

People of Syria, you have let them pass!
You fear not then the anger of Poseidon?

PERISSUS

Would you have us spitted upon the Chaldean swords? Mad  

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priest, must we be broached like joints and tossed like pan-cakes? We have no weapons. Tomorrow we will go to the Palace and what must be done shall be done. But ’tis not just that many should be slain for the crime of one and the house of Syria outrooted. Follow me and observe my commands, brave aristocracy of the shop, gallant commoners of the lathe and anvil, follow Perissus. I will lead you tonight to your soft downy beds and tomorrow to the Palace. 

All the Syrians go out led by Therops and Perissus.

PHINEUS

Thou hast done foolishly in this, O priest.
Hadst thou demanded the one needful head
Of Iolaus, it was easy: but now
The tender beauty of Andromeda
Compels remorse and the astonished people
Recoil from the bold waste of royal blood
Thou appointest them to spill. I see that zeal
And frantic superstition are bad plotters.
Henceforth I work for my sole hand, to pluck
My own good from the storms of civic trouble
This night prepares.

He goes out with his Tyrians.

POLYDAON

O terrible Poseidon,
Thyself avenge thyself! hurl on this people
The sea and the Assyrian. Where is the power
Thou said’st should tarry with me? I have failed.

He remains sunk in thought for a

while, then raises his head.

Tomorrow, Syrian? tomorrow is Poseidon’s.

C u r t a i n

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