Act Three
The chamber of Eric.
SCENE I
Eric, Harald.
ERIC
At dawn have all things ready for my
march.
I come not back without the head of Swegn
Or else his living body. Send to me¹
Aslaug the dancing-girl.
Harald goes out.
I have resumed
The empire with²
the knowledge of myself.
For this strong angel Love, this violent
And glorious guest, let it possess my heart
Without a rival, not invade the brain,
Not with imperious discord cleave my soul
Jangling its various³
harmonies, nor turn
The manifold music of humanity
Into a single and a maddening note.
Strength in the nature,4
wisdom in the mind,
Love in the heart complete the trinity
Of glorious manhood. There was the wide flaw, —
The coldness of the radiance that I was.
This was the vacant gap5
I could not fill.
It left my soul the torso of a god,
A great design unfinished and my works
Mighty and crude like things admired that pass,
Bare of the immortality that keeps
The ages. O, the word they spoke was true!
¹Alternative
to two lines:
Let none be near tonight. Send here to me
²and
³ordered
4spirit, 5space
Page – 522
‘Tis Love, ’tis Love fills up the gulfs¹ of Time.
By Love we find our kinship with the stars,
The spacious uses of the sky. God’s image
Lives nobly perfect in the soul he made,
Reflected in the nature of a man.²
Aslaug enters.
Thou com’st to me! I give thee grace no more.
What hast thou in thy bosom?
ASLAUG
Only a heart.
ERIC
A noble heart, though wayward. Give it me,
Aslaug, to be the secret of the dawns,
The heart of sweetness housed in Aslaug’s breast
Delivered from revolt and ruled by love.
ASLAUG
Why hast thou sent for me and forced to come?
Wilt thou have pity on me even yet
And on thyself?
ERIC
I am a warrior, one
Who have known not mercy. Wilt thou teach it me ?
I have learned, Aslaug, from my soul and Life
The great wise pitiless calmness of the gods,
Found for my strength the proud swift blows they deal
At all resistance to their absolute walk,
Thor’s hammer-stroke upon the unshaped world.
Its will is beaten on a dreadful forge,
Its roads are hewn by violence divine.
Is there a greater and a sweeter way?
Knowest thou it ? Wilt thou lead me there ? Thy step
Swift and exultant, canst thou tread its flowers ?
¹gaps
² When Love completes the godhead in a man.
Page – 523
ASLAUG
I know not who inspires thy speech; it probes.
ERIC
My mind tonight is full of Norway’s needs.
Aslaug, she takes thy image.
ASLAUG
Mine. O if
Tonight I were not Norway!
ERIC
Thou knowest Swegn?
ASLAUG
I knew and I remember.
ERIC
Yes, Swegn, — a soul
Brilliant and furious, violent and great,
A storm, a wind-swept ocean, not a man.
That would seize¹ Norway ? that will make it one ?
But Odin gave the work to me. I came
Into this mortal frame for Odin’s work.
ASLAUG
So deify ambition and desire!
ERIC
If one could snap this mortal body, then
Swegn even might rule, — not govern himself, yet govern
All Norway! Aslaug, canst thou rule thyself?
‘Tis difficult for great and passionate hearts.
ASLAUG
Then Swegn must die that Eric still may rule!
¹That will hold
Page – 524
Was there no other way the gods could find?
ERIC
A deadly duel are the feuds of kings.
ASLAUG
They are so.
She feels for her dagger.
ERIC
Aslaug, thou feelest for thy heart?
Unruled, it follows violent impulses,
This way, that way; working calamity,
Dreams that it helps the world. What shall I do,
Aslaug, with an unruly noble heart ?
Shall we not load it with the chains of love,
And rob it of its treasured pain and wrath
And bind it to its own supreme desire ?
Richly ‘twould beat beneath an absolute rule
And sweetly liberated from itself
By a golden bondage.
ASLAUG
And what of other impulses it holds?
Shall they not once rebel ?
ERIC
They shall keep still;
They shall not cry nor question; they shall trust.
ASLAUG
It cannot be that he reads all my heart!
The gods play with me in his speech.
ERIC
Thou knowest
Why thou art called?
Page – 525
ASLAUG
I know why I am here.
ERIC
Few know that, Aslaug, why they have come here,
For that is heaven’s secret. Sit down beside me,
Nearer my heart. No hesitating! Come.
I do not seize thy hands.
ASLAUG
They yet are free.
Is it the gods who bid me to strike soon?
My heart reels down into a flaming gulf.
If thou wouldst rule with love, must thou not spare
Thy enemies ?
ERIC
When they have yielded. Is thy choice made ?
Whatever defence thou hast against me yet
Use quickly, before I seize these restless hands,
And thy more restless heart that flees from bliss.
Aslaug rises trembling.
ASLAUG
Desired’st thou me not to dance tonight,
O King, before thee?
ERIC
It was my will. Is it thine
Now ? Dance, while yet thy limbs are thine.
ASLAUG
I dance
The dance of Thiordis with the dagger, taught
To Hertha in Trondhjem and by her to me.
Page – 526
ERIC
(smiling)
Aslaug, my dancing-girl, thou and thy dance
Have daring, but too little subtlety.
ASLAUG
(moving to a distance)
What use to struggle longer in the net?
Vain agony, since he watches and he knows!
I’ll strike him suddenly. One who was fit
For what I purpose, would not shrink at all
Finding the abyss about her either way,
But striking cleanse the touch in her own blood.
So might one act who was not her heart’s prey.
ERIC
Wilt thou play vainly with that fatal toy?
Dance now!
ASLAUG
My limbs refuse.
ERIC
They have no right.
ASLAUG
O gods, I did not know myself till now,
Thrown in this furnace. Odin’s irony
Shaped me from Olaf’s seed! I am in love
With chains and servitude and my heart desires,
Fluttering, like a wild bird within its cage,
A tyrant’s harshness.
ERIC
Wilt thou dance ? or wait
Till the enamoured motion of thy limbs
Remember joy of me ? So would I have
Thy perfect movement¹ grow a dream of love.
¹motion
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But that shall be when Norway’s only mine,
Swegn taken. Tomorrow at the dawn I march¹
Towards vehement² battle and the sword of Swegn
Bring back to be thy plaything, a support
Appropriate to thy action in the dance.
Aslaug, it shall replace thy dagger.
ASLAUG
Fate
Still drives me with his speech, and Eric calls
My weakness on to slaughter Eric. Yes,
But he suspects, he knows. Yet will I strike,
Yet will I tread down my rebellious heart,
And when ’tis done, I’ll strike myself and finish
With grief and shame and love.
ERIC
Where is thy chain
I gave thee, Aslaug? I would watch it rise,
Rubies of passion on a bosom of snow,
And climb again upon thy breast aheave³
With the sea’s rhythm as thou dancest. Dance
Weaving my life a measure with thy feet,
And of thy dancing I will weave the stroke
That conquers Swegn.
ASLAUG
The necklace ? I will bring it.
Rubies of passion! Blood-drops still of death!
She goes out.
ERIC
The power to strike has gone out of her arm
And only in her stubborn thought survives.
¹Alternative to two lines:
Tomorrow at the dawning will I march
²violent
³And climb forever on thy breast aheave
Page – 528
She thinks that she will strike. Let it be tried!
He lies back and feigns to
sleep. Aslaug returns.
ASLAUG
Now I could slay him! But he will open his eyes
Appalling with the beauty of his gaze.
He did not know of peril! All he has said
Was only at a venture thought and spoken, —
Or spoken by Fate? Sleeps he his latest sleep?
Might I not touch him only once in love —
And none know of it but death and I —
Whom I must slay like one who hates ? Not hate,
O Eric, but the hard necessity
The gods have sent upon our lives, — two flames
That meet to quench each other. Once, Eric! then
The cruel rest. Why did I touch him? I am faint!
My strength ebbs from me. O thou glorious god,
Why wast thou Swegn’s and Aslaug’s enemy?
We might so easily have loved. But death
Now intervenes and claims thee at my hands —
And this alone he leaves to me, to slay thee
And die with thee, our only wedlock. Death!
Whose death? Eric’s or Swegn’s? For one I kill.
Dreadful necessity of choice! His breath
Comes quietly and with a happy rhythm,
His eyes are closed like Odin’s in heaven’s sleep.
If I must strike, it could be only now;¹
For Time is like a sapper, mining still
The little resolution that I keep.
Swegn’s death or life upon that little stands.
Swegn’s death or life and such an easy stroke!
Yet so impossible to lift my hand!
To wait ? To watch more moments these closed lids,
This quiet face and try to dream that all
Is different! But the moments are Fate’s thoughts
¹I must strike blindly out or not at all;
Page – 529
Watching us.¹ While I pause, my brother’s slain,
Myself I am doomed a concubine and slave!
I must not think of him! Close, O mind, close, O eyes!
Free the unthinking hand to its harsh work.
She lifts twice the dagger and lowers
it twice, then flings it on the ground, falling
on her knees at Eric’s feet.
Eric of Norway, live and do thy will
With Aslaug, sister of Swegn and Olaf’s child,
Aslaug of Trondhjem! For her thought is grown²
A harlot and her heart a concubine,
Her hand her brother’s murderess.
ERIC
Thou hast broken
At last!
ASLAUG
Ah, I am broken by my weak
And evil nature. Spare me not, O King,
One vileness, one humiliation known
To tyranny. Be not unjustly merciful!
For I deserve and I consent to all.
ERIC
Aslaug!
ASLAUG
No, I deny my name and parentage.
I am not she who lived in Trondhjem: she
Would not have failed, but slain even though she loved.
Let no voice call me Aslaug any more.
ERIC
Sister of Swegn, thou knowest that I love.
Daughter of Olaf, shouldst thou not aspire
¹me.
²now
Page – 530
To sit by me on Norway’s throne ?
ASLAUG
Desist!
Thou shalt not utterly pollute the seat
Where Olaf sat. If I had struck and slain,
I would deserve a more than regal chair;
But not on such must Norway’s diadem rest,
A weakling with a hand as impotent
And faltering as her heart, a sensual slave
Whose passionate body overcomes her high
Intention. Rather do thy tyrant will.
King, if thou spare me, I will slay thee yet.
ERIC
Recoil not from thy heart, but strongly see
And let its choice be absolute over thy soul.
Its way once taken thou shalt find thy heart
Rapid; for absolute and extreme in all,
In yielding as in slaying thou must be,
Sweet violent spirit whom thy gods surprise.
Submit thyself without ashamed reserve.
ASLAUG
What more canst thou demand than I have given?
I am prone to thee, prostrate, yielded.
ERIC
Throw from thee
The bitterness of thy self-abasement. Find
That thou hast only joy in being mine.
Thou tremblest?
ASLAUG
Yes, with shame and grief and love.
Thou art my Fate and I am in thy grasp.
Page – 531
ERIC
And shall it spare thee ?
ASLAUG
Spare Swegn. I am in thy hands.
ERIC
Is’t a condition ? I am lord of thee
And lord of Swegn to slay him or to spare.
ASLAUG
No, an entreaty. I am fallen here,
My head is at thy feet, my life is in thy hands.
The luxury of fall is in my heart.
ERIC
Rise up then, Aslaug, and obey thy lord.
ASLAUG
What is thy will with me?
ERIC
This, Aslaug, first.
Take up thy dagger, Aslaug, dance thy dance
Of Thiordis with the dagger. See those near me;
For I shall sit nor, shouldst thou strike, defend.
What thy passion chose, let thy fixed heart confirm;
My life and kingdom twice are in thy hands
And I will keep them only as thy gift.
ASLAUG
So are they thine already; but I obey.
Eric, my King and Norway’s, my life is mine
No longer, but for thee to keep or break.
ERIC
Swegn’s life I hold. Thou gavest it to me
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With the dagger.
ASLAUG
It is thine to save.
ERIC
Norway
Thou hast given casting it forever away
From Olaf’s line.
ASLAUG
What thou hast taken, I give.
ERIC
At last thyself without one refuge left
Against my passionate strong devouring love.
Thou seest I spare thee nothing.
ASLAUG
(faintly)
I am thine.
Do what thou wilt with me.
ERIC
Because thou hast no help.
ASLAUG
I have no help. My gods have brought me here
And given me into thy dreadful hands.
ERIC
Thou art content at last that they have breathed
This plot into thy mind to snare thy soul
In its own violence, bring to me a slave,
A bright-limbed prisoner and thee to thy lord?
Thy dagger could no more have touched my heart¹
Though undefended, than a wind the sun:
¹breast,
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Fate and thy love were my friends within thy heart.
See Odin’s sign to thee.
ASLAUG
I know it now.
I recognise with, prostrate heart my fate
And I will quietly put on my chains
Nor ever strive or wish to break them more.
ERIC
Yield up to me the burden of thy fate
And treasure of thy limbs and priceless life.
I will be careful of the golden trust.
It was unsafe with thee. And now submit
Gladly at last. Surrender body and soul,
O Aslaug, to thy lover and thy lord.
ASLAUG
Compel me; they cannot resist thy will.
ERIC
But I will have thy heart’s surrender, not
The body only. Give me up thy heart.
Open its secret chambers, yield their keys.
ASLAUG
O Eric, is not my heart already thine,
My body thine, my soul into thy grasp
Delivered? I rejoice that God has played
The grand comedian with my tragedy
And trapped me in the snare of thy delight.
ERIC
Aslaug, the world’s sole woman! thou cam’st here
To save for us our hidden hopes of joy
Parted by old confusion. Some day surely
The world too shall be saved from death by Love.
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Thou hast saved Swegn, helped Norway. Aslaug, see,
Freya within her niche commands this room
And incense burns to her. Nor Thor for thee,
But Freya.
ASLAUG
Thou for me! not other gods.
ERIC
Aslaug, thou hast a ring upon thy hands:
Before Freya give it me and wear instead
This ancient circle of Norwegian rites.
The thing this means shall bind thee to our joy,
Beloved, while the upbuilded worlds endure.
Then if thy spirit wander from its home,
Freya shall find her thrall and lead her back
A million years from now.
ASLAUG
A million lives!
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