Lines 3387–3825

"Why--genius! That's the grandeur, that 's the gold--
That 's you--superlatively true to touch--
Gold, leaf or lump--gold, anyhow the mass
Takes manufacture and proves Pallas' casque
Or, at your choice, simply a cask to keep
Corruption from decay. Your rivals' hoard
May ooze forth, lacking such preservative:
Yours cannot--gold plays guardian far too well!
Genius, I call you: dross, your rivals share;
Ay, share and share alike, too! says the world,
However you pretend supremacy
In aught beside that gold, your very own.
Satire? 'Kratinos for our satirist!'
The world cries. Elegance? 'Who elegant
As Eupolis?' resounds as noisily.
Artistic fancy? Choros-creatures quaint?
Magnes invented 'Birds' and 'Frogs' enough,
Archippos punned, Hegemon parodied,
To heart's content, before you stepped on stage.
Moral invective? Eupolis exposed
'That prating beggar, he who stole the cup,'
Before your 'Clouds' rained grime on Sokrates;
Nay, what beat 'Clouds' but 'Konnos,' muck for mud?
Courage? How long before, well-masked, you poured
Abuse on Eukrates and Lusikles,
Did Telekleides and Hermippos pelt
Their Perikles and Kumon? standing forth,
Bareheaded, not safe crouched behind a name,--
Philonides or else Kallistratos,
Put forth, when danger threatened,--mask for face,
To bear the brunt,--if blame fell, take the blame,--
If praise ... why, frank laughed Aristophanes
'They write such rare stuff? No, I promise you!'
Rather, I see all true improvements, made
Or making, go against you--tooth and nail
Contended with; 't is still Moruchides,
'T is Euthumenes, Surakosios, nay,
Argurrhios and Kinesias,--common sense
And public shame, these only cleanse your sty!
Coerced, prohibited,--you grin and bear,
And, soon as may be, hug to heart again
The banished nastiness too dear to drop!
Krates could teach and practise festive song
Yet scorn scurrility; as gay and good,
Pherekrates could follow. Who loosed hold,
Must let fall rose-wreath, stoop to muck once more?
Did your particular self advance in aught,
Task the sad genius--steady slave the while--
To further--say, the patriotic aim?
No, there 's deterioration manifest
Year by year, play by play! survey them all,
From that boy's-triumph when 'Acharnes' dawned,
To 'Thesmophoriazousai,'--this man's-shame!
There, truly, patriot zeal so prominent
Allowed friends' plea perhaps: the baser stuff
Was but the nobler spirit's vehicle.
Who would imprison, unvolatilize
A violet's perfume, blends with fatty oils
Essence too fugitive in flower alone;
So, calling unguent--violet, call the play--
Obscenity impregnated with 'Peace'!
But here 's the boy grown bald, and here 's the play
With twenty years' experience: where 's one spice
Of odor in the hogs'-lard? what pretends
To aught except a grease-pot's quality?
Friend, sophist-hating! know,--worst sophistry
Is when man's own soul plays its own self false,
Reasons a vice into a virtue, pleads
'I detail sin to shame its author'--not
'I shame Ariphrades for sin's display!'
'I show Opora to commend Sweet Home'--
Not 'I show Bacchis for the striplings' sake!'

"Yet all the same--O genius and O gold--
Had genius ne'er diverted gold from use
Worthy the temple, to do copper's work
And coat a swine's trough--which abundantly
Might furnish Phoibos' tripod, Pallas' throne!
Had you, I dream, discarding all the base,
The brutish, spurned alone convention's watch
And ward against invading decency
Disguised as license, law in lawlessness,
And so, re-ordinating outworn rule,
Made Comedy and Tragedy combine,
Prove some new Both-yet-neither, all one bard,
Euripides with Aristophanes
Co-operant! this, reproducing Now
As that gave Then existence: Life to-day,
This, as that other--Life dead long ago!
The mob decrees such feat no crown, perchance,
But--why call crowning the reward of quest?
Tell him, my other poet,--where thou walk'st
Some rarer world than e'er Ilissos washed!

"But dream goes idly in the air. To earth!
Earth's question just amounts to--which succeeds,
Which fails of two life-long antagonists?
Suppose my charges all mistake! assume
Your end, despite ambiguous means, the best--
The only! you and he, a patriot-pair,
Have striven alike for one result--say, Peace!
You spoke your best straight to the arbiters--
Our people: have you made them end this war
By dint of laughter and abuse and lies
And postures of Opora? Sadly--No!
This war, despite your twenty-five years' work,
May yet endure until Athenai falls,
And freedom falls with her. So much for you!
Now, the antagonist Euripides--
Has he succeeded better? Who shall say?
He spoke quite o'er the heads of Kleon's crowd
To a dim future, and if there he fail,
Why, you are fellows in adversity.
But that 's unlike the fate of wise words launched
By music on their voyage. Hail, Depart,
Arrive, Glad Welcome! Not my single wish--
Yours also wafts the white sail on its way,
Your nature too is kingly. All beside
I call pretension,--no true potentate,
Whatever intermediary be crowned,
Zeus or Poseidon, where the vulgar sky
Lacks not Triballos to complete the group.
I recognize--behind such phantom-crew--
Necessity, Creation, Poet's Power,
Else never had I dared approach, appeal
To poetry, power, Aristophanes!
But I trust truth's inherent kingliness,
Trust who, by reason of much truth, shall reign
More or less royally--may prayer but push
His sway past limit, purge the false from true!
Nor, even so, had boldness nerved my tongue
But that the other king stands suddenly,
In all the grand investiture of death,
Bowing your knee beside my lowly head--
Equals one moment!

"Now, arise and go!
Both have done homage to Euripides!"

Silence pursued the words: till he broke out--

"Scarce so! This constitutes, I may believe,
Sufficient homage done by who defames
Your poet's foe, since you account me such;
But homage-proper,--pay it by defence
Of him, direct defence and not oblique,
Not by mere mild admonishment of me!"

"Defence? The best, the only!" I replied.
"A story goes--When Sophokles, last year,
Cited before tribunal by his son
(A poet--to complete the parallel),
Was certified unsound of intellect,
And claimed as only fit for tutelage,
Since old and doting and incompetent
To carry on this world's work,--the defence
Consisted just in his reciting (calm
As the verse bore, which sets our heart a-swell
And voice a-heaving too tempestuously)
That choros-chant 'The station of the steed,
Stranger! thou comest to,--Kolonos white!'
Then he looked round and all revolt was dead.
You know the one adventure of my life--
What made Euripides Balaustion's friend.
When I last saw him, as he bade farewell,
'I sang another "Herakles,"' smiled he;
'It gained no prize: your love be prize I gain!
Take it--the tablets also where I traced
The story first with stulos pendent still--
Nay, the psalterion may complete the gift,
So, should you croon the ode bewailing Age,
Yourself shall modulate--same notes, same strings--
With the old friend who loved Balaustion once.'
There they lie! When you broke our solitude,
We were about to honor him once more
By reading the consummate Tragedy.
Night is advanced; I have small mind to sleep;
May I go on, and read,--so make defence,
So test true godship? You affirm, not I,
--Beating the god, affords such test: I hold
That when rash hands but touch divinity,
The chains drop off, the prison-walls dispart,
And--fire--he fronts mad Pentheus! Dare we try?"

Accordingly I read the perfect piece.

HERAKLES

Amphitruon. Zeus' Couchmate,--who of mortals knows not me,
Argive Amphitruon whom Alkaios sired
Of old, as Perseus him, I--Herakles?
My home, this Thebai where the earth-born spike
Of Sown-ones burgeoned: Ares saved from these
A handful of their seed that stocks to-day
With children's children Thebai, Kadmos built.
Of these had Kreon birth, Menoikeus' child,
King of the country,--Kreon that became
The father of this woman, Megara,
Whom, when time was, Kadmeians one and all
Pealed praise to, marriage-songs with fluted help,
While to my dwelling that grand Herakles
Bore her, his bride. But, leaving Thebes--where I
Abode perforce--this Megara and those
Her kinsmen, the desire possessed my son
Rather to dwell in Argos, that walled work,
Kuklopian city, which I fly, myself,
Because I slew Elektruon. Seeking so
To ease away my hardships and once more
Inhabit his own land, for my return
Heavy the price he pays Eurustheus there--
The letting in of light on this choked world!
Either he promised, vanquished by the goad
Of Heré, or because fate willed it thus.
The other labors--why, he toiled them through;
But for this last one--down by Tainaros,
Its mouth, to Haides' realm descended he
To drag into the light the three-shaped hound
Of Hell: whence Herakles returns no more.
Now, there 's an old-world tale, Kadmeians have,
How Dirké's husband was a Lukos once,
Holding the seven-towered city here in sway
Before they ruled the land, white-steeded pair,
The twins Amphion, Zethos, born to Zeus.
This Lukos' son,--named like his father too,
No born Kadmeian but Euboia's gift,--
Comes and kills Kreon, lords it o'er the land,
Falling upon our town sedition-sick.
To us, akin to Kreon, just that bond
Becomes the worst of evils, seemingly;
For, since my son in the earth's abysms,
This man of valor, Lukos, lord and king,
Seeks now to slay these sons of Herakles,
And slay his wife as well,--by murder thus
Thinking to stamp out murder,--slay too me,
(If me 't is fit you count among men still,--
Useless old age,) and all for fear lest these,
Grown men one day, exact due punishment
Of bloodshed and their mother's father's fate.
I therefore, since he leaves me in these domes,
The children's household guardian,--left, when earth's
Dark dread he underwent, that son of mine,--
I, with their mother, lest his boys should die,
Sit at this altar of the savior Zeus
Which, glory of triumphant spear, he raised
Conquering--my nobly-born!--the Minuai.
Here do we guard our station, destitute
Of all things, drink, food, raiment, on bare ground
Couched side by side: sealed out of house and home
Sit we in a resourcelessness of help.
Our friends--why, some are no true friends, I see!
The rest, that are true, want the means to aid.
So operates in man adversity:
Whereof may never anybody--no,
Though half of him should really wish me well,--
Happen to taste! a friend-test faultless, that!

Megara. Old man, who erst did raze the Taphian town,
Illustriously, the army-leader, thou,
Of speared Kadmeians--how gods play men false!
I, now, missed nowise fortune in my sire,
Who, for his wealth, was boasted mighty once,
Having supreme rule,--for the love of which
Leap the long lances forth at favored breasts,--
And having children too: and me he gave
Thy son, his house with that of Herakles
Uniting by the far-famed marriage-bed.
And now these things are dead and flown away.
While thou and I await our death, old man,
These Herakleian boys too, whom--my chicks--
I save beneath my wings like brooding bird.
But one or other falls to questioning.
"O mother," cries he, "where in all the world
Is father gone to? What 's he doing? when
Will he come back?" At fault through tender years,
They seek their sire. For me, I put them off,
Telling them stories; at each creak of doors,
All wonder "Does he come?"--and all a-foot
Make for the fall before the parent knee.
Now then, what hope, what method of escape
Facilitatest thou?--for, thee, old man,
I look to,--since we may not leave by stealth
The limits of the land, and guards, more strong
Than we, are at the outlets: nor in friends
Remain to us the hopes of safety more.
Therefore, whatever thy decision be.
Impart it for the common good of all!
Lest now should prove the proper time to die,
Though, being weak, we spin it out and live.

Amph. Daughter, it scarce is easy, do one's best,
To blurt out counsel, things at such a pass.

Meg. You want some sorrow more, or so love life?

Amph. I both enjoy life, and love hopes beside.

Meg. And I; but hope against hope--no, old man!

Amph. In these delayings of an ill lurks cure.

Meg. But bitter is the meantime, and it bites.

Amph. Oh, there may be a run before the wind
From out these present ills, for me and thee,
Daughter, and yet may come my son, thy spouse!
But hush! and from the children take away
Their founts aflow with tears, and talk them calm,
Steal them by stories--sad theft, all the same!
For, human troubles--they grow weary too;
Neither the wind-blasts always have their strength,
Nor happy men keep happy to the end:
Since all things change--their natures part in twain;
And that man's bravest therefore, who hopes on,
Hopes ever: to despair is coward-like.

Choros. These domes that overroof,
This long-used couch, I come to, having made
A staff my prop, that song may put to proof
The swan-like power, age-whitened,--poet's aid
Of sobbed-forth dirges--words that stand aloof
From action now: such am I--just a shade
With night for all its face, a mere night-dream--
And words that tremble too: howe'er they seem,
Devoted words, I deem.

O of a father ye unfathered ones,
O thou old man, and thou whose groaning stuns--
Unhappy mother--only us above,
Nor reaches him below in Haides' realm, thy love!
--(Faint not too soon, urge forward foot and limb
Way-weary, nor lose courage--as some horse
Yoked to the car whose weight recoils on him
Just at the rock-ridge that concludes his course!
Take by the hand, the peplos, any one
Whose foothold fails him, printless and fordone!
Aged, assist along me aged too,
Who,--mate with thee in toils when life was new,
And shields and spears first made acquaintanceship,--
Stood by thyself and proved no bastard-slip
Of fatherland when loftiest glory grew.)--
See now, how like the sire's
Each eyeball fiercely fires!
What though ill-fortune have not left his race?
Neither is gone the grand paternal grace!
Hellas! O what--what combatants, destroyed
In these, wilt thou one day seek--seek, and find all void!

Pause! for I see the ruler of this land,
Lukos, now passing through the palace-gate.

Lukos. The Herakleian couple--father, wife--
If needs I must, I question: "must" forsooth?
Being your master--all I please, I ask.
To what time do you seek to spin out life?
What hope, what help see, so as not to die?
Is it you trust the sire of these, that 's sunk
In Haides, will return? How past the pitch,
Suppose you have to die, you pile the woe--
Thou, casting, Hellas through, thy empty vaunts
As though Zeus helped thee to a god for son;
And thou, that thou wast styled our best man's wife!
Where was the awful in his work wound up,
If he did quell and quench the marshy snake
Or the Nemeian monster whom he snared
And--says, by throttlings of his arm, he slew?
With these do you outwrestle me? Such feats
Shall save from death the sons of Herakles
Who got praise, being naught, for bravery
In wild-beast-battle, otherwise a blank?
No man to throw on left arm buckler's weight,
Not he, nor get in spear's reach! bow he bore--
True coward's-weapon: shoot first and then fly!
No bow-and-arrow proves a man is brave,
But who keeps rank,--stands, one unwinking stare
As, ploughing up, the darts come,--brave is he.
My action has no impudence, old man!
Providence, rather: for I own I slew
Kreon, this woman's sire, and have his seat.
Nowise I wish, then, to leave, these grown up,
Avengers on me, payment for my deeds.

Amph. As to the part of Zeus in his own child,
Let Zeus defend that! As to mine, 't is me
The care concerns to show by argument
The folly of this fellow,--Herakles,
Whom I stand up for! since to hear thee styled--
Cowardly--that is unendurable.
First then, the infamous (for I account
Amongst the words denied to human speech,
Timidity ascribed thee, Herakles!)
This I must put from thee, with gods in proof.
Zeus' thunder I appeal to, those four steeds
Whereof he also was the charioteer
When, having shut down the earth's Giant-growth--
(Never shaft flew but found and fitted flank)--
Triumph he sang in common with the gods.
The Kentaur-race, four-footed insolence--
Go ask at Pholoé, vilest thou of kings,
Whom they would pick out and pronounce best man,
If not my son, "the seeming-brave," say'st thou!
But Dirphus, thy Abantid mother-town,
Question her, and she would not praise, I think!
For there 's no spot, where having done some good,
Thy country thou might'st call to witness worth.
Now, that allwise invention, archer's-gear,
Thou blamest: hear my teaching and grow sage!
A man in armor is his armor's slave,
And, mixed with rank and file that want to run,
He dies because his neighbors have lost heart.
Then, should he break his spear, no way remains
Of warding death off,--gone that body-guard,
His one and only; while, whatever folk
Have the true bow-hand,--here 's the one main good,--
Though he have sent ten thousand shafts abroad,
Others remain wherewith the archer saves
His limbs and life, too,--stands afar and wards
Away from flesh the foe that vainly stares
Hurt by the viewless arrow, while himself
Offers no full front to those opposite,
But keeps in thorough cover: there 's the point
That 's capital in combat--damage foe,
Yet keep a safe skin--foe not out of reach
As you are! Thus my words contrast with thine,
And such, in judging facts, our difference.
These children, now, why dost thou seek to slay?
What have they done thee? In a single point
I count thee wise--if, being base thyself,
Thou dread'st the progeny of nobleness.
Yet this bears hard upon us, all the same,
If we must die--because of fear in thee--
A death 't were fit thou suffer at our hands,
Thy betters, did Zeus rightly judge us all.
If therefore thou art bent on sceptre-sway,
Thyself, here--suffer us to leave the land,
Fugitives! nothing do by violence,
Or violence thyself shalt undergo
When the gods' gale may chance to change for thee!
Alas, O land of Kadmos,--for 't is thee
I mean to close with, dealing out the due
Revilement,--in such sort dost thou defend
Herakles and his children? Herakles
Who, coming, one to all the world, against
The Minuai, fought them and left Thebes an eye
Unblinded henceforth to front freedom with!
Neither do I praise Hellas, nor shall brook
Ever to keep in silence that I count
Towards my son, craven of cravens--her
Whom it behooved go bring the young ones here
Fire, spears, arms--in exchange for seas made safe,
And cleansings of the land, his labor's price.
But fire, spears, arms,--O children, neither Thebes
Nor Hellas has them for you! 'T is myself,
A feeble friend, ye look to: nothing now
But a tongue's murmur, for the strength is gone
We had once, and with age are limbs a-shake
And force a-flicker! Were I only young,
Still with the mastery o'er bone and thew,
Grasping first spear that came, the yellow locks
Of this insulter would I bloody so--
Should send him skipping o'er the Atlantic bounds
Out of my arm's reach through poltroonery!