Part 21 (1/2)

Thou seest now why, when the people came Crying wildly to be given up to death, I bade them wait five days?--That I at last Might stamp the image of my glorious dream Upon the world, even though it be wax And the fires are kindling that must melt it out.

Judith, thou hast now five days more to live This life of beautiful pa.s.sion and sweet sense: And now my love comes to thee like an angel To call thee out of thy visionary love For lost Mana.s.ses, out of ghostly desire And shadows of dreams housing thy soul, that are Vainer than mine were, dreams of dear things which death Hath for ever broken; and lead thy life To a brief shadowless place, into an hour Made splendid to affront the coming night By pa.s.sion over sense more grandly burning Than purple lightning over golden corn, When all the distance of the night resounds With the approach of wind and terrible rain, That march to torment it down to the ground.

Judith, shall we not thus together make Death admirable, yea, and triumph through The gates of anguish with a prouder song Than ever lifted a king's heart, who rode Back from his war, with nations whipt before him, Into trumpeting Nineveh?

_Judith_.

Thou fool, Death is nothing to me, and life is all.

But what foul wrong have I done to thee, Ozias, That thou shouldst go about to put such wrong Into my life as these defiling words?

_Ozias_.

Is it defilement to hear love spoken?

_Judith_.

Yes! thou hast soiled me: to know my beauty, Wherewith I loved Mana.s.ses, and still love, Has all these years dwelt in thy heart a dream Of favourite l.u.s.t,--O this is foul in my mind.

_Ozias_.

I meant not what thou callest l.u.s.t, but love.

_Judith_.

What matters that? Thou hast desired me.

And knowing that, I feel my beauty clutch About my soul with a more wicked shame Than if I lived corrupt with leprosy.

_Ozias_.

Wilt thou still let the dead have claim on thee?

Judith, wilt thou be married to a grave?

_Judith_.

I am married to my love; and it is vile, Yea, it is burning in me like a sin, That when my love was absent, thy desire Shouldst trespa.s.s where my love is single lord.

_Ozias_.

This is but superst.i.tion. Love belongs To living souls. It is a light that kills Shadows and ghosts haunting about the mind.

Yea, even now when death glooms so immense Over the heaven of our being, Love Would keep us white with day amid the dark Down-coming of the storm, till the end took us.

And joy is never wasted. If we love, Then although death shall break and bray our flesh, The joy of love that thrilled in it shall fly Past his destruction, subtle as fragrance, strong And uncontrollable as fire, to dwell In the careering onward of man's life, Increasing it with pa.s.sion and with sweetness.

Duty is on us therefore that we love And be loved. Wert thou made to set alight Such splendour of desire in man, and yet, For a grave's sake, keep all thy beauty null, And nothing be of good nor help to thy kind?

_Judith_.

Help? What help in me?

_Ozias_.

To let go forth The joy whereof thy beauty is the sign Into the mind of man, and be therein Courage of golden music and loud light Against his enemies, the eternal dark And silence.

_Judith_.

Ah, not thus. Yet--could I not help?-- Why talk we? What thing should I say to thee To pierce the pride of l.u.s.t wrapping thy heart?

How show thee that, as in maidens unloved There is virginity to make their s.e.x Shrink like a wound from eyes of love untimely, So in a woman who hath learnt herself By her own beauty sacred in the clasp Of him whom her desire hath sacred made, There is a fiercer and more virgin wrath Against all eyes that come desiring her?

[_A Psalm of many voices strikes their ears, and through the street pa.s.s old men chanting, followed and answered by a troop of young men_.

_Chorus: Old Men_.

Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord G.o.d of our strength?

Wilt thou still be blindly trying us? Wilt thou not at length Believe the crying of our words, that never our knees have bent To foreign G.o.ds, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones Wors.h.i.+pt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, and groans?

_Young Men_.

And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee, Hath G.o.d paid to purchase our purity?