Jean. O don't be silly. How can you fall in love with a dead man? And what good could he do you, if you did? One loves for kisses and for hugs and the rest; A spunky fellow,—that's the thing to love. But a dead man,—pah, what a foolery!

Katrina. O yes, to you; for Love's a game for you. 'Twill turn out dangerous maybe, but still,—a game.

Jean. Yes, the best kind of game a girl can play, And all the better for the risk, Katrina. But where the fun would be in Love if he You played with had not heart to jump, nor blood To tingle, nothing in him to go wild At seeing you betray your love for him, Beats me to understand. You'ld be as wise Blowing the bellows at a pile of stone As loving one that never lived for you. It isn't just to make a wind you blow, But to turn red fire into white quivering heat. Whatever she's after, 'tis not love, my girl: I know what love is. But perhaps she saw The poor lad living? Even had speech with him?

Katrina. Not she; Mary has never known a lad I did not know as well. We've shared our lives As if we had been sisters, and I'm sure She's never been in love before.

Jean. Before? Don't talk such sentimental nonsense—

Katrina. Why, If Love-at-first-sight can mean anything, Surely 'tis this: there's some one in the world Whom, if you come across him, you must love, And you could no more pass his face unmoved Than the year could go backwards. Well, suppose He dies just ere you meet him; and he dead, Ay, or his head alone, is given your eyes, It is enough: he is the man for you, All as if he were quick and signalling His heart to you in smiles.

Jean. Believe me, dear, You've no more notion of the thing called Love Than a grig has of talking. But I have, And I'm off now to practise with my notions.

Katrina. Now which is the real love,—hers or Mary's?

VI

Before Dawn, At the Scottish Gate.

Mary. Beloved, beloved!—O forgive me That all these days questioning I have been, Struggled with doubts. Your power over me, That here slipt through the nets death caught you in, Lighted on me so greatly that my heart Could scarcely carry the amazement. Now I am awake and seeing; and I come To save you from this post of ignominy. A ladder I have filched and thro' the streets Borne it, on shoulders little used to weight. You'll say that I should not have bruised myself?— But it is good, and an ease for me, to have Some ache of body.—Now if there's any chink In death, surely my love will reach to thee, Surely thou wilt be ware of how I go Henceforth through life utterly thine. And yet Pardon what now I say, for I must say it. I cannot thank thee, my dear murder'd lad, For mastering me so. What other girls Might say in blessing on their sweethearts' heads, How can I say? They are well done to, when Love of a man their beings like a loom Seizes, and the loose ends of purposes Into one beautiful desire weaves. But love has not so done to me: I was A nature clean as water from the hills, One that had pleased the lips of God; and now Brackish I am, as if some vagrom malice Had trampled up the springs and made them run Channelling ancient secrecies of salt. O me, what, has my tongue these bitter words In front of my love's death? Look down, sweetheart, From the height of thy sacred ignominy And see my shame. Nay, I will come up to thee And have my pardon from thy lips, and do The only good I can to thee, sweetheart.

* * * * *

I have done it: but how have I done it? And what's this horrible thing to do with me? How came it on the ground, here at my feet? O I had better have shirkt it altogether! What do I love? Not this; this is only A message that he left on earth for me, Signed by his spirit, that he had to go Upon affairs more worthy than my love. We women must give place in our men's thoughts To matters such as those. God, God, why must I love him? Why Must life be all one scope for the hawking wings Of Love, that none the mischief can escape?— Well, I am thine for always now, my love, For this has been our wedding. No one else, Since thee I have had claspt unto my breast, May touch me lovingly.— Light, it is light! What shall I do with it, now I have got it? O merciful God, must I handle it Again? I dare not; what is it to me? Let me off this! Who is it clutches me By the neck behind? Who has hold of me Forcing me stoop down? Love, is it thou? Spare me this service, thou who hast all else Of my maimed life: why wilt thou be cruel? O grip me not so fiercely. Love! Ah no, I will not: 'tis abominable—



JEAN

I

The Parlour of a Public House. Two young men, MORRIS and HAMISH.

Hamish. Come, why so moody, Morris? Either talk, Or drink, at least.

Morris. I'm wondering about Love.

Hamish. Ho, are you there, my boy? Who may it be?

Morris. I'm not in love; but altogether posed I am by lovers.

Hamish. They're a simple folk: I'm one.

Morris. It's you I'm mainly thinking of.

Hamish. Why, that's an honour, surely.

Morris. Now if I loved The girl you love, your Jean, (look where she goes Waiting on drinkers, hearing their loose tongues; And yet her clean thought takes no more of soil Than white-hot steel laid among dust can take!)—

Hamish. You not in love, and talking this fine stuff?

Morris. I say, if I loved Jean, I'ld do without All these vile pleasures of the flesh, your mind Seems running on for ever: I would think A thought that was always tasting them would make The fire a foul thing in me, as the flame Of burning wood, which has a rare sweet smell, Is turned to bitter stink when it scorches flesh.

Hamish. Why specially Jean?

Morris. Why Jean? The girl's all spirit!

Hamish. She's a lithe burd, it's true; that, I suppose, Is why you think her made of spirit,—unless You've seen her angry: she has a blazing temper.— But what's a girl's beauty meant for, but to rouse Lust in a man? And where's the harm in that,— In loving her because she's beautiful, And in the way that drives me?—I dare say My spirit loves her too. But if it does I don't know what it loves.

Morris. Why, man, her beauty Is but the visible manners of her spirit; And this you go to love by the filthy road Which all the paws and hoofs in the world tread too! God! And it's Jean whose lover runs with the herd Of grunting, howling, barking lovers,—Jean!—

Hamish. O spirit, spirit, spirit! What is spirit? I know I've got a body, and it loves: But who can tell me what my spirit's doing, Or even if I have one?

Morris. Well, it's strange, My God, it's strange. A girl goes through the world Like a white sail over the sea, a being Woven so fine and lissom that her life Is but the urging spirit on its journey, And held by her in shape and attitude. And all she's here for is that you may clutch Her spirit in the love of a mating beast!

Hamish. Why, she has fifty lovers if she has one, And fifty's few for her.

Morris. I'm going out. If the night does me good, I'll come back here Maybe, and walk home with you.

Hamish. O don't bother. If I want spirit, it will be for drinking. [MORRIS goes out. Spirit or no, drinking's better than talking. Who was the sickly fellow to invent That crazy notion spirit, now, I wonder? But who'd have thought a burly lout like Morris Would join the brabble? Sure he'll have in him A pint more blood than I have; and he's all For loving girls with words, three yards away!

JEAN comes in.

Jean. Alone, my boy? Who was your handsome friend?

Hamish. Whoever he was he's gone. But I'm still here.

Jean. O yes, you're here; you're always here.

Hamish. Of course, And you know why.

Jean. Do I? I've forgotten.

Hamish. Jean, how can you say that? O how can you?

Jean. Now don't begin to pity yourself, please.

Hamish. Ah, I am learning now; it's truth they talk. You would undo the skill of a spider's web And take the inches of it in one line, More easily than know a woman's thought. I'm ugly on a sudden?

Jean. The queer thing About you men is that you will have women Love in the way you do. But now learn this; We don't love fellows for their skins; we want Something to wonder at in the way they love. A chap may be as rough as brick, if you like, Yes, or a mannikin and grow a tail,— If he's the spunk in him to love a girl Mainly and heartily, he's the man for her.— My soul, I've done with all you pretty men; I want to stand in a thing as big as a wind; And I can only get your paper fans!

Hamish. You've done with me? You wicked Jean! You'll dare To throw me off like this? After you've made, O, made my whole heart love you?

Jean. You are no good. Your friend, now, seems a likely man; but you?— I thought you were a torch; and you're a squib.

Hamish. Not love you enough? Death, I'll show you then.

Jean. Hands off, Hamish. There's smoke in you, I know, And splutter too. Hands off, I say.

Hamish. By God Tell me to-morrow there's no force in me!

Jean. Leave go, you little beast, you're hurting me: I never thought you'ld be so strong as this. Let go, or I'll bite; I mean it. You young fool, I'm not for you. Take off your hands. O help! [MORRIS has come in unseen and rushes forward.

Morris. You beast! You filthy villainous fellow!—Now, I hope I've hurt the hellish brain in you. Take yourself off. You'll need a nurse to-night. [HAMISH slinks out. Poor girl! And are you sprained at all? That ruffian!

Jean. O sir, how can I thank you? You don't know What we poor serving girls must put up with. We don't hear many voices like yours, sir. They think, because we serve, we've no more right To feelings than their cattle. O forgive me Talking to you. You don't come often here.

Morris. No, but I will: after to-night I'll see You take no harm. And as for him, I'll smash him.

Jean. Yes, break the devil's ribs,—I mean,—O leave me; I'm all distraught.

Morris. Good night, Jean. My name's Morris.

Jean. Good night, Morris—dear. O I must thank you. [She suddenly kisses him. Perhaps,—perhaps, you'll think that wicked of me?

Morris. You wicked? O how silly!—But—good night. [He goes.

Jean. The man, the man! What luck! My soul, what luck!

II

JEAN by herself, undressing. Yes, he's the man. Jean, my girl, you're done for, At last you're done for, the good God be thankt.— That was a wonderful look he had in his eyes: 'Tis a heart, I believe, that will burn marvellously! Now what a thing it is to be a girl! Who'ld be a man? Who'ld be fuel for fire And not the quickening touch that sets it flaming?— 'Tis true that when we've set him well alight (As I, please God, have set this Morris burning) We must be serving him like something worshipt; But is it to a man we kneel? No, no; But to our own work, to the blaze we kindled! O, he caught bravely. Now there's nothing at all So rare, such a wild adventure of glee, As watching love for you in a man beginning;— To see the sight of you pour into his senses Like brandy gulpt down by a frozen man, A thing that runs scalding about his blood; To see him holding himself firm against The sudden strength of wildness beating in him! O what my life is waiting for, at last Is started, I believe: I've turned a man To a power not to be reckoned; I shall be Held by his love like a light thing in a river!

III

MORRIS by himself. It is a wonder! Here's this poor thing, Life, Troubled with labours of the endless war The lusty flesh keeps up against the spirit; And down amid the anger—who knows whence?— Comes Love, and at once the struggling mutiny Falls quiet, unendurably rebuked: And the whole strength of life is free to serve Spirit, under the regency of Love. The quiet that is in me! The bright peace! Instead of smoke and dust, the peace of Love! Truly I knew not what a turmoil life Has been, and how rebellious, till this peace Came shining down! And yet I have seen things, And heard things, that were strangely meaning this,— Telling me strangely that life can be all One power undisturbed, one perfect honour,— Waters at noonday sounding among hills, Or moonlight lost among vast curds of cloud;— But never knew I it is only Love Can rule the noise of life to heavenly quiet. Ah, Jean, if thou wilt love me, thou shalt have Never from me upon thy purity The least touch of that eager baseness, known, For shame's disguising, by the name of Love Most wickedly; thou shalt not need to fear Aught from my love, for surely thou shalt know It is a love that almost fears to love thee.

IV

The Public House. MORRIS and JEAN.

Jean. O, you are come again!

Morris. Has he been here, That blackguard, with some insolence to you?

Jean. Who?

Morris. Why, that Hamish.

Jean. Hamish? No, not he.

Morris. I thought—you seemed so breathless—

Jean. But you've come Again! May I not be glad of your coming? Yes, and a little breathless?—Did you come Only because you thought I might be bullied?

Morris. O, no, no, no, Only for you I came.

Jean. And that's what I was hoping.

Morris. If you could know How it has been with me, since I saw you!

Jean.

What can I know of your mind?—For my own Is hard enough to know,—save that I'm glad You've come again,—and that I should have cried If you'd not kept your word.

Morris. My word?—to see Hamish does nothing to you?

Jean. The fiend take Hamish! Do you think I'ld be afraid of him?—It's you I ought to be afraid of, were I wise.

Morris. Good God, she's crying!

Jean. Cannot you understand?

Morris. O darling, is it so? I prayed for this All night, and yet it's unbelievable.

Jean. You too, Morris?

Morris. There's nothing living in me But love for you, my sweetheart.

Jean. And you are mine, My sweetheart!—And now, Morris, now you know Why you are the man that ought to frighten me!— Morris, I love you so!

Morris. O, but better than this, Jean, you must love me. You must never think I'm like the heartless men you wait on here, Whose love is all a hunger that cares naught How hatefully endured its feasting must be By her who fills it, so it be well glutted!

Jean. I did not say I was afraid of you; But only that, perhaps, I ought to be.

Morris. No, no, you never ought. My love is one That will not have its passion venturous; It knows itself too fine a ceremony To risk its whole perfection even by one Unruly thought of the luxury in love. Nay, rather it is the quietness of power, That knows there is no turbulence in life Dare the least questioning hindrance set against The onward of its going,—therefore quiet, All gentle. But strong, Jean, wondrously strong!

Jean. Yes, love is strong. I have well thought of that. It drops as fiercely down on us as if We were to be its prey. I've seen a gull That hovered with beak pointing and eyes fixt Where, underneath its swaying flight, some fish Was trifling, fooling in the waves: then, souse! And the gull has fed. And love on us has fed.

Morris. Indeed 'tis a sudden coming; but I grieve To hear you make of love a cruelty. Sweetheart, it shall be nothing cruel to you! You shall not fear, in doing what love bids, Ever to know yourself unmaidenly. For see! here's my first kiss; and all my love Is signed in it; and it is on your hand.— Is that a thing to fear?—But it were best I go now. This should be a privacy, Not even your lover near, this hour of first Strange knowledge that you have accepted love. I think you would feel me prying, if I stayed While your heart falters into full perceiving That you are plighted now forever mine. God bless you, Jean, my sweetheart.—Not a word? But you will thank me soon for leaving you: 'Tis the best courtesy I can do. [He goes.

Jean. O, and I thought it was my love at last! I thought, from the look he had last night, I'd found That great, brave, irresistible love!—But this! It's like a man deformed, with half his limbs. Am I never to have the love I dream and need, Pouring over me, into me, winds of fire?

HAMISH comes in.

Hamish. Well? What's the mood to-night?—The girl's been crying! This should be something queer.

Jean. It's you are to blame: You brought him here!

Hamish. It's Morris this time, is it? And what has he done?

Jean. He's insulted me. And you must never let me see him again.

Hamish. Sure I don't want him seeing you. But still, If I'm to keep you safe from meeting him—

Jean. To look in his eyes would mortify my heart!

Hamish. Then you'ld do right to pay me.

Jean. What you please.

Hamish. A kiss?

Jean. Of course; as many as you like— And of any sort you like.



KATRINA

I

On the sea-coast. Three young men, SYLVAN, VALENTINE, and FRANCIS.

Valentine. Well, I suppose you're out of your fear at last, Sylvan. This land's empty enough; naught here Feminine but the hens, bitches, and cows. Now we are safe!

Francis. Horribly safe; for here, If there are wives at all, they are salted so They have no meaning for the blood, bent things Philosophy allows not to be women.

Valentine. But think of the husbands that must spend their nights Alongside skin like bark. It is the men That have the tragedy in these weather'd lands.

Francis. No thought of that! We are monks now. And, indeed, This is a cloister that a man could like, This blue-aired space of grassy land, that here, Just as it touches the sea's bitter mood, Is troubled into dunes, as it were thrilled, Like a calm woman trembling against love.

Sylvan. Woman again!—How, knowing you, I failed So long to know the truth, I cannot think.

Francis. And what's the truth?

Sylvan. Woman and love of her Is as a dragging ivy on the growth Of that strong tree, man's nature!

Valentine. Yes. But now Tell us a simpler sort of truth. Was she—-

Sylvan. She? Who?

Valentine. Katrina, of course: who else, when one Speaks of a she to you?

Sylvan. And what about her?

Valentine. Was she too cruel to you, or too kind?

Sylvan. Ah, there's no hope for men like you; you're sunk Above your consciences in smothering ponds Of sweet imagination,—drowned in woman!

Francis. Ay? Clarence and the Malmesey over again; 'Twas a delightful death.

Valentine. But you forget. Sylvan, we've come as your disciples here.

Sylvan. Yes, to a land where not the least desire Need prey upon your mettle. There are hours A god might gladly take in these basking dunes,— Nothing but summer and piping larks, and air All a warm breath of honey, and a grass All flowers—sweet thyme and golden heart's-ease here! And under scent and song of flowers and birds, Far inland out of the golden bays the air Is charged with briny savour, and whispered news Gentle as whitening oats the breezes stroke. What good is all this health to you? You bring Your own thoughts with you; and they are vinegar, Endlessly rusting what should be clear steel.

Francis. I do begin to doubt our enterprise, The grand Escape from Woman. It lookt brave And nobly hazardous afar off, to cease All wenching, whether in deed or word or thought. And yet I fear pride egged us. We had done Better to be more humble, and bring here A girl apiece.

Valentine. Yes, Sylvan; you must think The cloister were a thing more comfortable With your Katrina in it?

Sylvan. My Katrina! And do you think, supposing I would love, I'ld bank in such a crazy safe as that Katrina? One of those soft shy-spoken maids, Who are only maids through fear? Whose life is all A simpering pretence of modesty? If it was love I wanted, 'twould not be A dish of sweet stewed pears, laced with brandy. But I can do without a woman's kisses.

Valentine. Can you?—You know full well, in the truth of your heart, That there's no man in all the world of men Whose will woman's beauty cannot divide Easily as a sword cuts jetting water.

Sylvan. Have you not heard, that even jetting water May have such spouting force, that it becomes A rod of glittering white iron, and swords Will beat rebounding on its speed in vain?— Of such a force I mean to have my will.

[He sits and stares moodily out to sea. His companions whisper each other.

Valentine. Here, Francis! Look you yonder. O but this, This is the joke of the world!

Francis. Hallo! a girl! And, by the Lord, Katrina!—But why here?

Valentine. She's followed him, of course; she's heard of this Mad escapade and followed after him.

Francis. She has not seen us yet. Now what to do?

Valentine. Quick! Where's your handkerchief? Truss his wrists and ankles, And pull his coat up over his head and leave him! He won't get free of her again; she'll lead His wildness home and keep him tame for ever. Now!

[They fall on him, bind him, and blindfold him.

Sylvan. What are you doing? Whatever are you doing? Hell burn you, let me go!

Valentine. There's worse to come.

[They make off, and leave SYLVAN shouting. KATRINA runs in.

Katrina. Dear Heaven! Were they robbers? Have they hurt you?

[She releases him. He stands up.

Sylvan. Katrina!

Katrina. Sylvan!

Sylvan. How did you plot this? I thought I'd put leagues between you and me.

Katrina. Why have you come here?

Sylvan. To find you, it seems. But what you're doing here, that I'ld like to know.

Katrina. I came to see my grandmother: she lives All by herself, poor grannam, and it's time She had some help about the house, and care.

Sylvan. Let's have a better tale. You followed me.

Katrina. Sylvan, how dare you make me out so vile?

Sylvan. How dare you mean to make this body of mine A thing with no thought in it but your beauty?

Katrina. You shall not speak so wickedly. You've had The half of my truth only: here's the whole. It was from you I fled! I hoped to make My grannam's lonely cottage something safe From you and what I hated in you.

Sylvan. Love?— Ah, so it's all useless.

Katrina. I feared to know You wanted me,—horribly I feared it. And now you've found me out.

Sylvan. Is this the truth?— No help for it, then.

Katrina. O, I'm a liar to you!

Sylvan. Strange how we grudge to be ruled! rather than be Divinely driven to happiness, we push back And fiercely try for wilful misery.— Dearest, forgive me being cruel to you, You who are in life like a heavenly dream In the evil sleep of a sinner.

Katrina. No, you hate me.

Sylvan (kissing her). Is this like hatred?

Katrina (in his arms). Sylvan, I have been So wrencht and fearfully used. It was as if This being that I live in had become A savage endless water, wild with purpose To tire me out and drown me.

Sylvan. Yes, I know: Like swimming against a mighty will, that wears The cruelty, the race and scolding spray Of monstrous passionate water.

Katrina. Hold me, Sylvan I'm bruised with my sore wrestling.

Sylvan. Ah, but now We are not swimmers in this dangerous life. It cannot beat upon our limbs with surf Of water clencht against us, nor can waves Now wrangle with our breath. Out of it we Are lifted; and henceforward now we are Sailors travelling in a lovely ship, The shining sails of it holding a wind Immortally pleasant, and the malicious sea Smoothed by a keel that cannot come to wreck.

Katrina. Alas, we must not stay together here. Grannam will come upon us.

Sylvan. Where is she?

Katrina. Yonder, gathering driftwood for her fire. There is a little bay not far from here, The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach; And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,— Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds The bottom of the bay deep strewn with seaweed, A barn full of the harvesting of storms; And at full tide, the little hampered waves Lift up the litter, so that, against the light, The yellow kelp and bracken of the sea, Held up in ridges of green water, show Like moss in agates. And there is no place In all the coast for wreckage like this bay; There often will my grannam be, a sack Over her shoulders, turning up the crust Of sun-dried weed to find her winter's warmth.

Sylvan. Is that she coming?

Katrina. O Sylvan, has she seen us?

Sylvan. What matter if she has?

Katrina. But it would matter!

Sylvan. Katrina, come with me now! We'll go together Back to my house.

Katrina. No, no, not now! I must Carry my grannam's load for her: 'tis heavy.

Sylvan. We must not part again.

Katrina. No, not for long; For if we do, there will be storms again, I know; and a fierce reluctance—O, a mad Tormenting thing!—will shake me.

Sylvan. Then come now!

Katrina. Not now, not now! Look how my poor grannam Shuffles under the weight; she's old for burdens. I must carry her sack for her.

Sylvan. Well, to-night!

Katrina. To-night?—O Sylvan! dare I?

Sylvan. Yes, you dare! You will be knowing I'm outside in the darkness, And you will come down here and give me yourself Wholly and forever.

Katrina. O not to-night!

Sylvan. I shall be here, Katrina, waiting for you. [He goes.

The old woman comes in burdened with her sack.

Grandmother. Katrina, that was a young man with you.

Katrina. O grannam, you've had luck to-day; but now It's I must be the porter.

Grandmother (giving up the sack). Ay, you take it. It's sore upon my back. You should have care Of these young fellows; there's a devil in them. Never you talk with a man on the seashore Or on hill-tops or in woods and suchlike places, Especially if he's one you think of marrying.

Katrina. Marrying? I shall never be married!

Grandmother. Pooh! That's nonsense.

Katrina. I should think 'twas horrible Even to be in love and wanting to give Yourself to another; but to be married too, A man holding the very heart of you,—

Grandmother. He never does, honey, he never does.— We're late; come along home.

II

In SYLVAN'S house. SYLVAN and KATRINA talking to each other and betweenwhiles thinking to themselves.

Sylvan. How pleasant and beautiful it is to be At last obedient to love! (To know Also, I've sold myself,—is that so pleasant?)

Katrina. I cannot think, why such a glorious wealth As this of love on our hearts should be spent. What have we done, that all this gain be ours? (Nor can I think why my life should be mixt, Even its dearest secrecy, with another.)

Sylvan. Ay, there's the marvel! If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven! (Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul. Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with? Who is it,—the world, or the devil, or God—that wants To buy me from myself?)

Katrina. And then how vain To think we can hold back from being enricht! It is not only offered—

Sylvan. No, 'tis a need As irresistible within our hearts As body's need of breathing. (That I should be So avaricious of his gleaming price!)

Katrina. And the instant force it has upon us, when We think to use love as a privilege! We are like bees that, having fed all day On mountain-heather, go to a tumbling stream To please their little honey-heated thirsts; And soon as they have toucht the singing relief, The swiftness of the water seizes them.

Sylvan. And onward, sprawling and spinning, they are carried Down to a drowning pool.

Katrina. O Sylvan, drowning? (Deeper than drowning! Why should it not be Our hearts need wish only what they delight in?)

Sylvan. Well, altogether gript by the being of love. (Yes, now the bargain's done; and I may wear, Like a cheated savage, scarlet dyes and strings Of beaded glass, all the pleasure of love!)

Katrina. It is a wonderful tyranny, that life Has no choice but to be delighted love! (I know what I must do: I am to abase My heart utterly, and have nothing in me That dare take pleasure beyond serving love. Thus only shall I bear it; and perhaps— Might I even of my abasement make A passion, fearfully enjoying it?)

Sylvan. You are full of thoughts, sweetheart?

Katrina. And so are you: A long while since you kist me! (What have I said? O fool so to remind him! I shall scarce Help crying out or shuddering this time!— Ah no; I am again a fool! Not thus I am to do, but in my heart to break All the reluctance; it must have on me No pleasure; else I am endlessly tortured.) Then I must kiss you, Sylvan!

[She kisses him.

Sylvan. Ah, my darling! (God! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound Must shake a fiddle when the strings are snatcht! Will she make the life in me all a slave Of my kist body,—a trembling, eager slave? It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense, The shivering delight upon my skin, Of her lips touching me.) My beloved,— It may be it were wise, that we took care Our pleasant love come never in the risk Of being too much known.

Katrina. O what a risk To think of here! Love is not common life, But always fresh and sweet. Can this grow stale?

[She kisses him again.

Sylvan. O never! I meant not so.—Yes, always sweet! (She must not kiss me! Ah, it leaves my heart Aghast, and stopt with pain of the joy of her; And her loved body is like an agony Clinging upon me. O she must not kiss me! I will not be a thing excruciated To please her passion, an anguish of delight!)



PART III

VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION



JUDITH

I

THE BESIEGED CITY OF BETHULIA

JUDITH (at the window of an upper room of her house).

This pitiable city!—But, O God, Strengthen me that I bend not into scorn Of all this desperate folk; for I am weak With pitying their lamentable souls. Ah, when I hear the grief wail'd in the streets, And the same breath their tears nigh strangle, used To brag the God in them inviolate And fighting off the hands of the heathen,—Lord, Pardon me that I come so near to scorn; Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!— Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish Until Assyrian swords drown it in death;— These, and abandoned words like these, I hear Daylong shrill'd and groan'd in the lanes beneath. What needeth Holofernes more? The Jews, The People of God, the Jews, lament their fortune; Their souls are violated by the world; Jewry is conquered; and the crop of men Sown for the barns of God, is withered down, Like feeblest grass flat-trodden by the sun, In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire Can do no more destruction on this folk: A fierce untimely mowing now befits This corn incapable of sacred bread, This field unprofitable but to flame! What should the choice of God do for a people, But give them souls of temper to withstand The trying of the furnace of the world?— And they are molten, and from God's device Unfashion'd, crazed in dismay; yea, God's skill Fails in them, as the skill a founder put In brass fails when the coals seize on his work. For this fierce Holofernes and his power, This torture poured on the city, is no more Than a wild gust of wicked heat breathed out Against our God-wrought souls by the world's furnace. No new thing, this camp about the city: Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men But fearfully image, like a madman's dream, The fierce infection of the world, that waits To soil the clean health of the soul and mix Stooping decay into its upward nature. Soul in the world is all besieged: for first The dangerous body doth desire it; And many subtle captains of the mind Secretly wish against its fortune; next, Circle on circle of lascivious world Lust round the foreign purity of soul For chance or violence to ravish it. But the pure in the world are mastery. Divinely do I know, when life is clean, How like a noble shape of golden glass The passions of the body, powers of the mind, Chalice the sweet immortal wine of soul, That, as a purple fragrance dwells in air From vintage poured, fills the corrupting world With its own savour. And here I am alone Sound in my sweetness, incorrupt; the rest (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour; The world has meddled with them. They have broacht The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows. Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, When they should have no fortune but themselves And the God in them, and be sealed therein. Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, Where only love may drink, and only—alas!— The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, For him and God, and for my sacred self! But hark, a troop of new woe comes this way, Making the street to ring and the stones wet With cried despair and brackish agony.

CITIZENS lamenting in the street below. They have crawled back like beasts dying of thirst, The life all clotted in them. They went out Soldiers, and back like beaten dogs they came Breathing in whines, slow maimed four-footed things On hands and knees degraded, groaning steps. Their brains were full of battle, they were made Of virtue, brave men; now in their brains shudder Minds that cringe like children burnt with fever. Often they stood to face the enemies' ranks All upright as a flame in windless air, Wearing their arm and the bright skill of swords Like spirits clad in flashing fire of heaven; And now in darken'd rooms they lie afraid And whimper if the nurse moves suddenly.— Ah God, that such an irresistible fiend, Pain, in the beautiful housing of man's flesh Should sleep, light as a leopard in its hunger, Beside the heavenly soul; and at a wound Leap up to mangle her, the senses' guest!— That in God's country heathen men should do This worse than murder on men full of God!

Judith. What matter of new wailing do your tongues Wear in this shivering misery of sound?

A Citizen. The captains which were chosen to go out And treat with Holofernes have come back.

Judith. And did the Ninevite demon treat with them?

A Citizen. The words they had from him were flaying knives, And burning splinters fixt in their skinless flesh, And stones thrown till their breasts were broken in.

Judith. What, torture our embassage?

A Citizen. Yea, for he means Nothing but death to all the Jews he takes.

Another. There was a jeering word tied round the neck Of each tormented man: "Behold, ye Jews, These chiefs of yours have learnt to crawl in prayer Before the god Nebuchadnezzar; come, Leave your city of thirst and your weak god, And learn good worship even as these have learnt."

Another. I saw them coming in: O horrible! With broken limbs creeping along the ground—

Judith. Were I a man among you, I would not stay Behind the walls to weep this insolence; I'ld take a sword in my hand and God in my mind, And seek under the friendship of the night That tent where Holofernes' crimes and hate Sleep in his devilish brain.

A Citizen. There is no night Where Holofernes sleeps, as thou couldst tell. Didst thou not shut thyself up in thine ease Away from the noise and tears of common woe. Come to the walls this evening, and I'll show thee The golden place of light, the little world Of triumphing glory framed in midst of the dark, Pillar'd on four great bonfires fed with spice, Enclosing in a globe of flame the tent Wherein the sleepless lusts of Holofernes Madden themselves all night, a revel-rout Of naked girls luring him as he lies Filling his blood with wine, the scented air Injur'd marvellously with piping shrills Of lechery made music, and small drums That with a dancing throb drive his swell'd heart Into desires beyond the strength of man.

Judith. And this beast is thine enemy, God!

Another Citizen. Nor beast, Nor man, but one of those lascivious gods Our lonely God detests, Chemosh or Baal Or Peor who goes whoring among women.

Another. And now come down braving in God's own land, Pitching the glory of his fearful heaven All night among God's hills.

Judith. You fools, he is A life our God could snap as a woman snaps Thread of her sewing.

A Citizen. Who shall break him off, Who on the earth, from his huge twisted power?

Another. For in his brain, as in a burning-glass Wide glow of sun drawn to a pin of fire, Are gathered into incredible fierceness all The rays of the dark heat of heathen strength.

Another. His eyes, they say, can kill a man.

Another. And sure No murder could approach his naming nights.

Another. Unless it came as a woman at whose beauty His lust hath never sipt; for into his flesh To drink unknown desirable limbs as wine Torments him still, like a thirst when fever pours A man's life out in drenching sweats.

Judith. Peace, peace; The siege hath given you shameless tongues, and minds No more your own: yea, the foul Ninevite Hath mastered you already, for your thoughts Dwell in his wickedness and marvel at it. Hate not a thing too much, lest you be drawn Wry from yourselves and close to the thing ye hate.

A Citizen. We know thy wisdom, Judith; but our lives Belong to death; and wisdom to a man Dying, is water in a broken jar.

Judith. Yea, if thou wilt die of a parching mouth.

A Citizen. Thou art rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine. But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood Hastens us on to maniac agony. The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud: The water left to us is pestilent. And therefore have we asked the governors For death: and it is granted us.

Another. Five days Hath Prince Ozias bidden us endure.

Another. For there are still fools among us who dare trust God has not made a bargain of our lives.

Another. We are a small people, and our war is weak: Who knows whether our God doth not desire Armies and great plains full of spears and horses, And cities made of bronze and hewn white stone And scarlet awnings, throng'd with sworded men, To shout his name up from the earth and kill All crying at the gates of other heavens; And hath grown tired of peaceable praise and folk That in a warren of dry mountains dwell, Whose few throats can make little noise in heaven.

A Young Man. For sure God's love hath wandered to strange nations; His pleasure in the breasts of Jerusalem Is a delight grown old. Yea, he would change That shepherd-woman of the earthly cities, Whose mind is as the clear light of her hills, Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling; And poureth his desire out, belike, Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad, Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts; Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire, Full of the sound of amazing flames of music.

Another. Yea, what can Israel offer against her, Whom the rich earth out of her mines hath shod, And crowned with emeralds grown in secret rocks, Who on her shoulders wears the gleam of the sea's Purple and pearls, and the flax of Indian ground Is linen on her limbs cool as moonlight, And fells of golden beasts cover her throne; Whose passion moves in her thought as in the air Melody moves of flutes and silver horns: What can Jerusalem the hill-city Offer to keep God's love from Babylon?

Judith. What but the beauty of holiness, and sound Of music made by hearts adoring God? You that speak lewdly of God, you yet shall see Jerusalem treading upon her foes. But what was that of five days one of you spoke?

A Citizen. Ozias sware an oath: hast thou not heard?

Judith. No, for I keep my mind away from your tongues Wisely. Who walks in wind-blown dust of streets, That hath a garden where the roses breathe?

A Citizen. I have no garden where the roses breathe; I have a city full of women crying And babies starving and men weak with thirst Who fight each other for a dole of water.

Another. Not only thou hast pleasant garden-hours, Judith, here in Bethulia; the Lord Death Has bought the city for his garden-close, And saunters in it watching the souls bloom Out of their buds of flesh, and with delight Smelling their agony.

Another. But in five days Either our God will turn his mind to us, Or, if he careth not for us nor his honour, Ozias will let open the main gate And let the Assyrians end our dreadful lives.

Judith. O I belong to a nation utterly lost! God! thou hast no tribe on the earth; thy folk Are helpless in the living places like The ghosts that grieve in the winds under the earth. Remember now thy glory among the living, And let the beauty of thy renown endure In a firm people knitted like the stone Of hills, no mischief harms of frost or fire; But now dust in a gale of fear they are. They have blasphemed thee; but forgive them, God; And let my life inhabit to its end The spirit of a people built to God.— So you have given God five days to come And help you? You would make your souls as wares Merchants hold up to bidders, and say, "God, Pay us our price of comfort, or we sell To death for the same coin"? Five days God hath To find the cost of Jewry, or death buys you?

A Citizen. Here comes Ozias: ask him.

Judith. Hold him there.

[JUDITH comes down into the street.

Ozias. Judith, I came to speak with thee.

Judith. And I Would speak with thee. What tale is this they tell That thou hast sworn to give this people death?

Ozias. In five days those among us who still live Will have no souls but the fierce anguish of thirst. If God ere then relieves us, well. If not, We give ourselves away from God to death.

Judith. Darest thou do this wickedness, and set Conditions to the mercy of our God?

Ozias. Death hath a mercy equal unto God's.— Look at the air above thee; is there sign Of mercy in that naked splendour of fire? Too Godlike! We are his: he covers us With golden flame of air and firmament Of white-hot gold, marvellous to see. But whom, what heathen land hated of God, Do his grey clouds shadow with comfort of rain? Over our chosen heads his glory glows: And in five days the torment in his city Will be beyond imagining. We will go Through swords into the quiet and cloud of death.

Judith. Ozias, wilt thou be an infamy? Bethulia fallen, all Judea lies Open to the feet and hoofs of Assyria.

Ozias. Yea, and what doth Judea but cower down Behind us? There's no rescue comes from there. We are alone with Holofernes' power.

Judith. But if we hold him off, will he not grant The meed of a brave fight, captivity?— Or we may treat with him, make terms for yielding.

Ozias. We know his mind: he hath written it plain In the torn flesh of our ambassadors. His mind to us is death; we can but choose Between sharp swords and the slow slaying of thirst.

Judith. He may torment us if we yield.

Ozias. He may. But not to yield is grisly and sure torment.

Judith. There must be hope, if we could reckon right!

Ozias. Well, thou and God have five days more to build A bridge of hope over our broken world. And, for the town even now fearfully aches In scalding thirst, not five days had I granted, Had it not been for somewhat I must say Secretly to thee.

Judith. Secretly? Then here; Send off these men to labour at their groans Elsewhere; for not within my house thou comest; I'll have no thoughts against God in my house.

[OZIAS disperses the citizens.

Ozias. Judith, we are two upright minds in this Herd of grovelling cowardice. We should, To spiritual vision which can see Stature of spirit, seem to stand in our folk Like two unaltered stanchions in the heap Of a house pulled down by fire. I know thy soul Tempered by trust in God against this ruin; But not in God, but in mortality Thy soul stands founded; and death even now Is digging at thy station in the world; And as a man with ropes and windlasses Pulls for new building columns of wreckt halls Down with a breaking fall, so death has rigged His skill about us, so he will break us down, Ruin our height and courage; and as stone, Carved with the beautiful pride of kings, hath made, Hammer'd to rubble and ground for mortar, walls Of farms and byres, our kill'd and broken natures, With all their beauty of passion, yea, and delight In God, death will shape and grind up to new Housing for souls not royal as we are, New flesh and mind for mean souls and dull hearts: For death is only life destroying life To roof the coming swarms in mortal shelter Of flesh and mind experienced in joy.

Judith. Thy specious prologue means no good, I trow. Thou wert to tell me wherefore for five days We may pretend to be God's people still; Why thou didst not make us over to death Soon as the folk began to wail despair.

Ozias. This reasoning will tell thee why.—No need, I think, to bring up into speech the years Since in the barley-field Manasses lay Shot by the sun. I tried (nor failed, I think), To hold thy soul up from its hurt, and be Somewhat of sight to thee, until thy long Blind season of disaster should be changed. Always I have found friendship in thine eyes; And pleasant words, and silences more pleasant, Have made us moments wherein all the world Left our sequester'd minds; so that I dared Often believe our friendliness might be The brink of love.

Judith. Stop! for thou hast enough Disgraced mine ears.

Ozias. I pray thee hear me out. The dream of loving thee and being loved Hath been my life; yea, with it I have kept My heart drugg'd in a long delicious night Colour'd with candles of imagined sense, And musical with dreamt desire. I said, The day will surely come upon the world, To scatter this sweet night of fantasy With morning, pour'd on my dream-feasted heart Out of thine eyes, Judith. And yet I still Feared for my dream, even as a maiden fears The body of her lover. But, in the midst Of all this charm'd delaying,—behold Death Leapt into our world, lording it, standing huge In front of the future, looking at us! 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 passion and sweet sense: And now my love comes to thee like an angel To call thee out of thy visionary love For lost Manasses, 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 passion 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 Manasses, and still love, Has all these years dwelt in thy heart a dream Of favourite lust,—O this is foul in my mind.

Ozias. I meant not what thou callest lust, 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 trespass where my love is single lord.

Ozias. This is but superstition. 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 passion 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 lust wrapping thy heart? How show thee that, as in maidens unloved There is virginity to make their sex 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 pass old men chanting, followed and answered by a troop of young men.

Chorus: Old Men. Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord God 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 gods, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones Worshipt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, and groans?

Young Men. And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee, Hath God paid to purchase our purity? Though lust starve in our flesh, still he devises fire To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire. With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here, Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher: Tribes who better than we deal with the gods their lords, For they pleasantly sin, yet the gods sharpen and drive their swords.

Old Men. Hast thou not tried us enough, Jehovah? Hast thou found any fire Will draw from our hearts a smoke of burn'd idolatrous desire? There is none in us, Lord: no other God in us but thee; Only thy fires make our clean souls glitter with agony. Pure we are, pure in our prayers, pure our souls look to thee, Lord; And to be shewn to the world devoured by evil is our reward.

Young Men. We whose hearts were alone giving our God renown, Under the wheels of hell we are fallen down! False the heaven we built, fashion'd of purity; 'Tis heathen heavens, made out of sin, stand high. Come, make much of our God! Comfort his ears with song, Lest his pride the gods with their laughter wrong, Seeing, huddled as beasts held by a fearful night Full of lions and hunger, his folk crouch to the heathen might.

Old Men. Jehovah, still we refrain from crying to the infamous gates That open easily into the heavens thy mind of jealousy hates. Power is in them: hast thou no power? Wilt thou not beware Lest thy mood now press our minds to venturous despair?

Young Men. Fool'd, fool'd, fool'd are our lives, held by the world in jeer; With crazed eyes we behold veils of enormous fear Hiding dreadfully those marvellous gates and stairs Where the heathen delighted with sin throng with their prosperous prayers.

Old Men. Yea, hung like the front of pestilent winds, thunderous dark before The way into the heathen heavens, terrible curtains pour, Webs of black imagination and woven frenzy of sin; And yet we know power on earth belongs to those within.

Young Men. Yea, through Jehovah's jealousy, Burning dimly at last we see The great brass made like rigid flame, The gates of the heavens we dare not name. Take hold of wickedness! Yea, have heart To tear the darkness of sin apart; And find, beyond, our comforted sight Flash full of a glee of fiery light,— The gods the heathen know through sin, The gods who give them the world to win!

Judith. This may I not escape. My world hath need Of me who still hold God firm in my mind. It is no matter if I fail: I must Send the God in me forth, and yield to him The shaping of whatever chance befall.— Ozias! hateful thou hast made thyself To me; for thou hast hatefully soiled my beauty, My preciousest, given me to attire my soul For her long marriage festival of life. Yet I must make request to thee, and thou Must grant it. When the sun is down to-night, Quietly set the main gate open: I Will pass therethrough and treat with Holofernes.

Ozias. What, wilt thou go to be murdered by these fiends?

Judith. Ask nothing, but do simply my request.

Ozias. I will: so thou shalt know the reverent heart I have for thee, although its worship thou So bitterly despisest; but thy will Shall be a sacred thing for me to serve. Thou hast thy dangerous demand, because It is thou who askest, it is I who may Grant it to thee,—this only! Yea, I will send Thy heedless body among risks that thou, Looking alone at the great shining God Within thy mind, seest not; but I see And sicken at them. Yet do I not require Thy purpose; whether thy proud heart must have The wound of death from steel that has not toucht The peevish misery these Jews call blood; Whether thy mind is for velvet slavery In the desires of some Assyrian lord— Forgive me, Judith! there my love spoke, made Foolish with injury; and I should be Unwise to stay here, lest it break the hold I have it in. I go, and I am humbled. But thou shalt have thy asking: the gate is thine. [He goes.

Judith. How can it harm me more, to feel my beauty Read by man's eyes to mean his lust set forth? Yea, Holofernes now can bring no shame Upon me that Ozias hath not brought. But this is chief: what balance can there be In my own hurt against a nation's pining? God hath given me beauty, and I may Snare with it him whose trap now bites my folk. There is naught else to think of. Let me go And set those robes in order which best pleased Manasses' living eyes; and let me fill My gown with jewels, such as kindle sight, And have some stinging sweetness in my hair.— Manasses, my Manasses, lost to me, Gone where my love can nothing search, and hidden Behind the vapours of these worldly years, The many years between me and thy death; Thine ears are sealed with immortal blessedness Against our miserable din of living; Through thy pure sense goeth no soil of grief. Forgive me! for thou hast left me here to be hurt And moved to pity by the dolour of men. The garment of my soul is splasht with sorrow, Sorrowful noise and sight; and like to fires Of venom spat on me, the sorrow eats Through the thin robe of sense into my soul. And it is cried against me, this keen anguish, By my own people and my God's;—and thou Didst love them. Therefore thou must needs forgive me, That I devise how this my beauty, this Sacred to thy long-dead joy of desire, May turn to weapon in the hand of God; Such weapon as he hath taken aforetime To sword whole nations at a stroke to their knees,— Storms of the air and hilted fire from heaven, And sightless edge of pestilence hugely swung Down on the bulk of armies in the night. Such weapon in God's hand, and wielded so, A woman's beauty may be now, I pray; A pestilence suddenly in this foreign blood, A blight on the vast growth of Assyrian weed, A knife to the stem of its main root, the heart Of Holofernes. God! Let me hew him down, And out of the ground of Israel wither our plague!

II

BEFORE THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES

Holofernes. Night and her admirable stars again! And I again envying her and questioning! What hast thou, Night, achieved, denied to me, That maketh thee so full of quiet stars? What beauty has been mingled into thee So that thy depth burns with the peace of stars?— I now with fires of uproarious heat, Exclaiming yellow flames and towering splendour And a huge fragrant smoke of precious woods, Must build against thy overlooking, Stars, And against thy terrible eternal news Of Beauty that burns quietly and pure, A lodge of wild extravagant earthly fire; Even as under passions of fleshly pleasure I hide myself from my desiring soul.

[Enter Guards with JUDITH.

Guard 1.

We found this woman wandering in the trenches, And calling out, "Take me to Holofernes, Assyrians, I am come for Holofernes."

Guard 2.

She would not, for no words of ours, unveil, And something held us back from handling her.

Guard 1.

We think she must be beautiful, although She is so stubborn with that veil of hers.

Guard 2.

We minded my lord's word, that he be shewn All the seized women which are strangely fair.

Holofernes. Take off thy veil.

Judith. I will not.

Holofernes. Take thy veil From off thy face, Jewess, or thou straight goest To entertain my soldiers.

Judith. I will not.

Holofernes. Am I to tear it, then?

Judith. My lord, thou durst not.

Holofernes. Ha, there is spirit here. I have the whim, Jewess, almost to believe thee: I dare not! But tell me who thou art.

Judith. That shalt thou know Before the night has end.

Holofernes. Take off thy veil.

Judith. Alone for Holofernes am I come.

Holofernes. And there is only Holofernes here. These fellows are but thoughts of mine; my whole Army, that treads down all the earth and breaks The banks of fending rivers into marsh, Is nought but my forth-going imagination. Where I am, there is no man else: if I Appeared before thee in a throng of spears, I'ld stand alone before thee, girt about By powers of my mind made visible.

Judith. For captured peasants or for captured kings Such words would have the right big sound. But I Am woman, and I hear them not: I say I will not, before any man but thee, Make known my face; I am only for thee. When I have thee alone and in thy tent I will unveil.

Holofernes (to the Guards). What! Staring?—Hence, you dogs!

III

IN THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES

Holofernes (alone with Judith). Thou art the woman! Thou hast come to me!— O not as I thought! not with senses blazing Far into my deep soul abiding calm Within their glory of knowledge, as the vast Of night behind her outward sense of stars. Now am I but the place thy beauty brightens, And of myself I have no light of sense Nor certainty of being: I am made Empty of all my wont of life before thee, A vessel where thy splendour may be poured, After the way the great vessel of air Accepts the morning power of the sun. Now nothing I have known of me remains, Save that, within me, far as the world is high Beneath this dawn that gilds my spirit's air, Some depth, more inward even than my soul, Troubles and flashes like the shining sea. O Jewish woman, if thou knewest all The hunger and the tears the punisht world Suffers by cause of thee, and of my dream That thou wert somewhere hidden in mankind! I could not but obey my dream, and toil To break the nations and to sift them fine, Pounding them with my warfare into dust, And searching with my many iron hands Through their destruction as through crumbs of marl, Until my palms should know the jewel-stone Betwixt them, the Woman who is Beauty,— Nature so long hath like a miser kept Buried away from me in this heap of Jews! Now that we twain might meet, women and men In every land where I have felt for thee Have taken desolation for their home, Crying against me,—and against thee unknowing. Ah, but I had given over to despair The mind in me, I ground the stubborn tribes, I quarried them like rocks and broke them small And ground them down to flinders and to sands; But never gleamed the jewel-stone therein, Naught but the common flint of earth I found. And in a dreary anger I kept on Assailing the whole kind of man, because Some manner of war my soul must needs inhabit. Like a man making himself in drunken sleep A king, my soul, drunk with its earthly war, Kept idle all its terrible want of thee, Believed itself managing arms with God; Yea, when my trampling hurry through the earth Made cloudy wind of the light human dust, I thought myself to move in the dark danger Of blinding God's own face with blasts of war! Until my rage forgot his crime against me, His hiding thee, the beauty I had dreamt. Yea and I filled my flesh with furious pleasure, That in the noise of it my soul should hear No whispering thought of desperate desire. Nevertheless, I knew well that my heart's Sightless imagination lifted his face Continually awake for news of thee. But 'twas infirm and crazy waking, like As when a starving sentry, put to guard The sleep of a broken soldiery that flees Through winter of wild hills from hounding foes, Hath but the pain of frozen wounds, and fear Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal. And lo, As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, As out of the night behind him into the heart, Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, His frozen waking is the ease of death. So I am killed by thee; all the loud pain Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, Wherein with blinded and unhearing face My hope of thee yet stood and strained to look And listen for thy coming,—all this life Is killed before thee; yea, like marvellous death, Spiritual sense invests my heart's desire; And round the quiet and content thereof, The striving hunger of my fleshly sense Fails like a web of hanging cloth in fire.— Tell me now, if thou knowest, why thou hast come!

Judith. Sufficeth not for us that I have come?— Let not unseemly things live in my mouth; Yet I would praise thee as thou praisest me, But in a manner that my people use, Things to approach in song they list not speak. And song, thou knowest, inwrought with chiming strings, Sweetens with sweet delay loving desire: Also thine eyes will feed, and thy heart wonder.— Balkis was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down. Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became. Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air. Joylessly she wandered there, And saw her city's azure white Lying under the great night, Beautiful as the memory Of a worshipping world would be In the mind of a god, in the hour When he must kill his outward power; And, coming to a pool where trees Grew in double greeneries, Saw herself, as she went by The water, walking beautifully, And saw the stars shine in the glance Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance Passing, pale and wonderful, Across the night that filled the pool. And cruel was the grief that played With the queen's spirit; and she said: "What do I hear, reigning alone? For to be unloved is to be alone. There is no man in all my land Dare my longing understand; The whole folk like a peasant bows Lest its look should meet my brows And be harmed by this beauty of mine. I burn their brains as I were sign Of God's beautiful anger sent To master them with punishment Of beauty that must pour distress On hearts grown dark with ugliness. But it is I am the punisht one. Is there no man, is there none, In whom my beauty will but move The lust of a delighted love; In whom some spirit of God so thrives That we may wed our lonely lives? Is there no man, is there none?"— She said, "I will go to Solomon."

Holofernes. I shall not bear it: dreamed, it hath made my life Fail almost, like a storm broken in heaven By its internal fire; and now I feel Love like a dreadful god coming to do His pleasure on me, to tear me with his joy And shred my flesh-wove strength with merciless Utterance through me of inhuman bliss.— I must have more divinity within me.— Come to me, slave! [Calling out to his attendants.

Judith. Thou callest someone? Alas! O, where's my veil?—Cry him to stay awhile!—

Holofernes. Thou troubled with such whimsy!—But 'tis no one, A mere sexless thing of mine.

Judith. He is coming! I threw my veil—where?—I must bow my face Close to the ground, or his eyes will find me out; And—O my lord, hold him back with thy voice! [She has knelt down. Hold him in doubt to enter a moment, while I loosen my hair into some manner of safety Against his prying.

Holofernes. Slave, dost thou hear me? Come!— I marvel, room for such a paltering mood Should be within thy mind, now so nearly Deified with the first sense of my love. [A Eunuch comes in.

Holofernes. Wine! The mightiest wine my sutlers have; Wine with the sun's own grandeur in it, and all The wildness of the earth conceiving Spring From the sun's golden lust: wine for us twain! And when thou hast brought it, burn anear my bed Storax and cassia; and let wealth be found To cover my bed with such strife of colour, Crimson and tawny and purple-inspired gold, That eyes beholding it may take therefrom Splendid imagination of the strife Of love with love's implacable desire.

Judith (still kneeling). I must lean on thee now, my God! A weight Of pitiable weakness thou must bear And move as it were thine own strength; tell my heart How not to sicken in abomination, Show me the way to loathe this vile man's rage, Now close to seize me into the use of his pleasure, With the loathing that is terrible delight. So that not fainting, but refresht and astonisht And strangely spirited and divinely angry My body may arise out of its passion, Out of being enjoyed by this fiend's flesh. Then man my arm; then let mine own revenge Utter thy vengeance, Lord, as speech doth meaning; Yea, with hate empower me to say bravely The glittering word that even now thy mind Purposes, God,—the swift stroke of a falchion!

Holofernes. Woman, beloved, why art thou fixt so long Kneeling and downward crookt, and in thy hair Darkened?—Ah, thy shoulders urging shape Of loveliness into thy hair's pouring gleam!

Judith. Needs must I pray my Jewish God for help Against my bridal joys. For I do fear them.

Holofernes. I also: these are the joys that fear doth own.

IV

At the Gate of Bethulia. On the walls, on either side of the Gate, are citizens watching the Assyrian camp; OZIAS also, standing by himself.

Ozias. When wilt thou cure thyself, spirit of the earth, When wilt thou cure thyself of thy long fever, That so insanely doth ferment in thee?— 'Tis not man only: the whole blood of life Is fever'd with desire. But as the brain, Being lord of the body, is served by blood So well that a hidden canker in the flesh May send, continuous as a usury, Its breeding venom upward, till in the brain It vapour into enormity of dreaming: So man is lord of life upon the earth; And like a hastening blood his nature wells Up out of the beasts below him, they the flesh And he the brain, they serving him with blood; And blood so loaden with brute lust of being It steams the conscious leisure of man's thought With an immense phantasma of desire, An unsubduable dream of unknown pleasure; Which he sends hungering forth into the world, But never satisfied returns to him. Who hath found beauty? Who hath not desired it? 'Tis but the feverish spirit of earthly life Working deliriously in man, a dream Questing the world that throngs upon man's mind To find therein an image of herself; And there is nothing answers her entreaty.— I climb towards death: it is not falling down For me to die, but up the event of the world As up a mighty ridge I climb, and look With lifted vision backward down on life. So high towards death I am gone, listless I gaze Where on the earth beneath me, into the fires Of that Assyrian strength, our siege of fate, Judith, the dream of my desire of beauty, Goes daring forth, to shape herself therein, Seeking to fashion in its turbulence Some deed that will be likeness of herself. For now I know her purpose: and I know She will be murdered there. Against the world The beauty I have lived in, my loved dream, Goes, wild to master the world; and she will Therefore be murdered. It is nothing now; Wind from the heights of death is on my brow.

Talk among the other watchers. It must be, God is for us. Such a mind As this of Judith's could not be, unless God had spoken it into her. She is His special voice, to tell the Assyrians Terrible matters.

Is she God's? I think 'Tis Holofernes hath her now.

If not, Upon his soldiers he hath lavisht her.

Not he. Now they have known her, his filled senses Never will leave go our wonderful Judith.

Ay, wonderful in Jewry. But there are In Babylon women so beautiful, They make men's spirits desperate, to know Flesh cannot ever minister enough Delight to ease the craving they are taskt with.

Who talks of Babylon when God even now Is training her fierce champion, Holofernes, Into the death a woman holds before him?

A woman killing Holofernes!

Ay; Be she abused by him or not, I know God means to give her marvellous hands to-night. I know it by my heart so strangely sick With looking out for the first drowsy stir In that huge flaming quiet of the camp. Now fearfuller qualm than famine eagerly Handles my life and pulls at it,—my faith's Hunger for being fed with sounds and visions: The firelight mixt with a trooping bustle of shadows, The silence suddenly shouting with surprise, That tells of men astounded out of sleep To find that God hath dreadfully been among them.

We have mistaken Judith.

Even as now God is mistaken by your doubting hearts.

She that has dealt with such a pride of spirit In all her ways of life, so that she seemed To feel like shadow, falling on the light Her own mind made, the common thoughts of men; Ay, she that to-day came down into our woe And stood among the griefs that buzz upon us, Like one who is forced aside from a bright journey To stoop in a small-room'd cottage, where loud flies Pester the inmates and the windows darken; This she, this Judith, out of her quiet pride, And out of her guarded purity, to walk Where God himself from violent whoredom could Scarcely preserve her shuddering flesh! and all For our sake, for the lives she hath in scorn, This horrible Assyrian risk she ventures.

There should be prayer for that. Let us ask God To bind the men, whose greed now glares upon her, In some strange feebleness; surely he will; Surely not with woman's worst injury Her noble obedience he will reward! Let us ask God to bind these men before her.

They are not his to bind: else, were they here? They are the glorying of Nebuchadnezzar's Heart of fury against our God, sent here Like insolent shouting into his holy quiet. God could not bind these bragging noises up In Nebuchadnezzar's heart; it is not his, But made by Babylonian gods or owned By thrones that hold the heavens over Nineveh. For all these outland greatnesses, these kings Whose war goes pealing through the world, these towns Infidel and triumphant, reaching forth Armies to hug the world close to their lust,— What are they but the gods making a scorn Of our God on the earth? Then how can he Alter these men from wicked delight? or how Keep Judith all untoucht among their hands, When his own quietness he could not keep Unbroken by the god's Assyrian insult?

But with a thunder he can shatter this Intruding noise, and make his quiet again.

And in their lust he can entangle them, Deceiving them far into Judith's beauty, Which is his power, and lop them from their gods.

Their outrage will be ornament upon her!

Out of the hands of the goblins she will come Not markt with shame, but wearing their vile usage Like one whom earthly reign covers with splendour.

The ignominy they thought of shall be turned To shining, yea, to announcing through the world How God hath used her to beguile the heathen. It begins! Now it begins! Lo, how dismay Is fallen on the camp in a strange wind: The ground, that seemed as spread with yellow embers, Leaps into blazing, and like cinders whirled And scattered up among the flames, are black Bands of frantic men flickering about!

Ozias! seest thou how our enemies Are labouring in amazement? How they run Flinging fuel to light them against fear?

Now they begin to roar their terror: now They wave and beckon wordless desperate things One to another.

Hear the iron and brass Ringing above their voices, as they snatch The arms that seem to fight among themselves, Seized by their masters' anguish; dost thou hear The clumsy terror in the camp, the men Hasting to arm themselves against our God, Ozias?

Ozias. Lions have taken a sentinel.

A Citizen. Judith hath taken Holofernes.

Judith's voice outside, under the gate. Yea, And brought him back with her. Open the gates.

The Citizens. Open the gates. Bring torches. Wake, ye Jews! Hail, Judith, marvellously chosen woman! How bringst thou Holofernes? Show him to us.

Judith. Dare you indeed behold him?

A Citizen. Is he bound?

Judith. Drugged rather, with a medicine that God Prepared for him and gave into my hands. Open the gates! It is a harmless thing, The Holofernes I have made your show; You may gaze blithely upon him. I have tamed The man's pernicious brain. Open the gates! What, are your hands still nerveless? But my hands, The hands of a woman, have done notable work.

The Gates open. JUDITH appears, standing against the night and the Assyrian fires. Torches and shouting in the town.

Citizens. Judith! Judith alone! Where is thy boast Of Holofernes captured?

Judith. I am alone, Indeed; and you are many; yet with me Comes Holofernes, certainly a captive.

Ozias. What trifle is this?

Judith. Trifle? It is the word. A trifle, a thing of mere weight, I have brought you From the Assyrian camp. My apron here Is loaded now more heavily, but as meanly As an old witch's skirt, when she comes home From seeking camel's-dung for kindling; yet My burden was, an hour ago, the world Where you were ground to tortures; it was the brain Inventing your destruction.—Look you now! [Holding up the head of HOLOFERNES. This is the mouth through which commandment came Of massacre and damnation to the Jews; Here was the mind the gods that hate our God Used to empower the agonies they devised Against us; here your dangers were all made, Your horrible starvation; and the thirst Those wicked gods supposed would murder you, Here a creature became, a ravenous creature; Yea, here those mighty vigours lived which took, Like ocean water taking frost, the hate Those gods have for Jehovah, shaping it Atrociously into the war that clencht Their fury about you, frozen into iron. Jews, here is the head of Holofernes: take it And let it grin upon our highest wall Over against the camp of the Assyrians. [She throws them the head. Ay, you may worry it; now is the jackals' time; Snarl on your enemy, now he is dead.

Ozias. Judith, be not too scornful of their noise. There are no words may turn this deed to song: Praise cannot reach it. Only with such din, Unmeasured yelling exultation, can Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now, Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing, A dignity like carved Egyptian stone; Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it; It is abroad like powder in a wind, Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide, Thou having roused the ungovernable waters My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower. My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed In joy or fear, disturbance without name, Out of the rivers it is fallen in Can snatch no substance it may shape to words Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise. We are all abasht by thee, and only know To worship thee with shouts and astounded passion.

Judith. Yes, now the world has got a voice against me: At last now it may howl a triumph about me.

Ozias. This, nevertheless, my thought can seize from out The wildness that goes pouring past it. God, Wondrously having moved thee to this deed, Hath shown the Jews a wondrous favouring love. Thee it becomes not, standing though thou art On this high action, to think scorn of men Whom God thinks worthy of having thee for saviour.

Judith. This is a subtle flattery. What know I Of whom God loves, of whom God hates? I know This only: in my home, in my soul's chamber, A filthy verminous beast hath made his lair. I let him in; I let this grim lust in; Not only did not bolt my doors against His forcing, but even put them wide and watcht Him coming in, to make my house his stable. What though I killed him afterward? All my place, And all the air I live in, is foul with him. I killed him? Truly, I am mixt with him; Death must have me before it hath all him.

Ozias. In thee, too, are the floods, the wild rivers, Overrunning thy thought, the nameless mind? How else, indeed? Nay, we are dull with joy: Of thee we thought not, out of the hands of outrage Coming back, although with victory coming. But this makes surety once more of my thought, And gives again my reason its lost station; For it may come now in my privilege (A thing that could cure madness in my brain) That thou from me persuasion hast to endure What well I know thy soul, thy upright soul, Feels as abominable harness on it Fastening thee unwillingly to crime,— The wickedness that hath delighted in thee.

Judith. Ay? Art thou there already? Tasting, art thou, What the Assyrians may have forced on me, Ere thou hast well swallowed thy new freedom? Indeed, I know this is the wine of the feast Which I have set for thee and thy Bethulia; And 'tis the wine makes delicate the banquet.

Ozias. Wait: listen to me. 'Tis I now must be wise And thou the hearkener. Not without wound (So I make out, at least, thy hurrying words) Comest thou back to us from conquering. And such a wound, I easily believe, As eats into thy soul and rages there; Yea, I that know thee, Judith, know thy soul Worse rankling hath in it from heathen insult Than flesh could take from steel bathed in a venom Art magic brewed over a charcoal fire, Blown into flame by hissing of whipt lizards. Yet is it likely, by too much regarding, Thy hurt is pamper'd in its poisonous sting. Wounds in the spirit need no surgery But a mind strong not to insist on them. See, then, thou hast not too much horror of this; Who that fights well in battle comes home sound?— Much less couldst thou, who must, with seeming weakness, Invite the power of Holofernes forth Ere striking it, thy womanhood the ambush. For thou didst plan, I guess, to duel him In snares, weaving his greed about his limbs, Drawn out and twisted winding round his strength By ministry of thy enticing beauty; That when he thought himself spending on thee Malicious violence, and thou hadst made him Languish, stupid with boasting and delight, Thy hands might find him a tied quiet victim Under their anger, maiming him of life. Now, thy device accomplisht, wilt thou grudge Its means? Wilt thou scruple to understand Thy abus'd sex will show upon thy fame A nobler colour of glory than a soldier's Wounded bravery rusting his habergeon? Nay, will not the world rejoice, thou being found Among its women, ready such insolence To bear as is unbearable to think on, Thereby to serve and save God and his people?

Judith. The world rejoice over me? Yea, I am certain.

Ozias. Then art thou too fastidious. It is weak To make thyself a shame of being injured; And is it injury indeed? Nay, is it Anything but a mere opinion hurt? Not thou, but customary thought is here Molested and annoyed; the only nerve Can carry anguish from this to thy soul, Is that credulity which ties the mind Firmly to notional creature as to real. Advise thee, then; dark in thyself keep hid This grief; and thou wilt shortly find it dying.

A Citizen. Judith, Pardon our ecstasy. 'Tis time thou hadst Our honour. But first tell us all the event, That in thy proper height thou with thy deed May stand against our worship.

Judith. Why do you stop Your shouts, and glare upon me? Have you need Truly to hear my tale? I think, not so. Ozias here, as he hath whiled at ease Upon the walls my stay in the camp yonder, Hath fairly fancied all that I have done, And more exactly, and with a relishing gust, All that was done to me. Ask him, therefore; If he hath not already entertained Your tedious leisure with my story told Pat to your liking, enjoyed, and glosst with praise.— And yet, why ask him? Why go even so far To hear it? Ask but the clever libidinousness Dwelling in each of your hearts, and it will surely Imagine for you how I trained to my arms Lewd Holofernes, and kept him plied with lust, Until his wild blood in the end paused fainting, And he lay twitching, drained of all his wits;— But there was wine as well working in him, Feebling his sinews; 'twas not all my doing, The snoring fit that came before his death, The routing beastly slumber that was my time. You know it all! Why ask me for the tale?

Ozias. Comfort her: praise her. She is strangely ashamed Of Holofernes having evilly used her.

A Citizen. We will contrive the triumph of our joy Into some tune of words, and bring thee on, Accompanied by singing, to thy house.

Judith. I pray you, rather let me go alone. You will do better to be searching out All sharpen'd steel that may take weapon-use. The Assyrians are afraid: it is your time.

[They surround JUDITH and go with her.

CHORUS of Citizens praising JUDITH and leading her to her house. Over us and past us go the years; Like wind that taketh sound from jubilee And aloud flieth ringing, Over us goeth the speed of the years, Like loud noise eternally bringing The greatness women have done.

Deborah was great; with her singing She hearten'd the men that the horses had dismayed; Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, alone Stood singing where the men were horribly afraid, Singing of God in the midst of fear; When archers out of Hazor were Eating the land like grasshoppers, And darkness at noon was plundering the air Of the light of the sun's insulted fires, Red darkness covering Sisera's host As Jewry was covered by the Canaanite's boast: For the earth was broken into dust beneath The force of his chariots' thundering tyres, Nine hundred chariots of iron.

Deborah was great in her prophesying; But, though her anger moved through the Israelites, And the loose tribes her indignant crying Bound into song, fashion'd to an army; And before the measure of her song went flying, Like leaves and breakage of the woods Fallen into pouring floods, The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin; Not by her alone God's punishment was done On Canaan intending a monstrous crime, On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor; Two women were the power of God that time.

Yea, and sullenly down Into its hiding town, Even though the lightning were still in its heart, The broken dragon, drawing in its fury, Had croucht to mend its shatter'd malice, Had lifted its head again and spat against God. But God its endlessly devising brain, Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera, Into the hands of another woman brought: In nets of her persuasion She that wild spirit caught, She fasten'd up that uncontrollable thought. Sisera spake, and the crops were flames; Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills. But weary, trusting his entertainment, He came to Jael, the Kenite woman; A woman who gave him death for a bed, And with base tools nailed down his murderous head Fast to the earth his rage had fed With men unreckonably slain.

But than these wonderfully greater, Judith, art thou; The praise of both shall follow like a shadow After thy glory now, Who alone the measureless striding, The high ungovern'd brow, Of Assur upon the hills of the world Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding, Like a shot beast, down from his towering, By his own lamed Mightiness hurl'd To lie a filth in disaster. Deborah and Jael, famously named, Like rich lands enriching the city their master, Bring thee now their most golden honour. For the beauty of thy limbs was found By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound Of Deborah's singing, though hers was a song That had for its words thousands of men. But thou thyself, looking upon them, Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally. They thought it terrible to see thee coming; They falter'd in their impiousness, Their hearts gave in to thee; they went Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent Where Holofernes would have thee in to him, Yea, for his slayer waiting, Waiting thee to entertain, Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael Waited for Sisera her slain.

Judith. Have done! Do you think I know not why your souls Are so delighted round me? Do you think I see not what it is you praise?—not me, But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me.

A Citizen. Did we kill Holofernes?

Judith. No: nor I. That corpse was not his death. He is alive, And will be till there is no more a world Filled with his hidden hunger, waiting for souls That ford the monstrous waters of the world. Alive in you is Holofernes now, But fed and rejoicing; I have filled your hunger. Yea, and alive in me: my spirit hath been Enjoyed by the lust of the world, and I am changed Vilely by the vile thing that clutcht on me, Like sulphurous smoke eating into silver. Your song is all of this, this your rejoicing; You have good right to circle me with song! You are the world, and you have fed on me.

A Citizen. We are the world; yes, but the world for ever Honouring thee.

Judith. How am I honoured so, If I no honour have for the world, but rather Hold it an odious and traitorous thing, That means no honour but to those whose spirits Have yielded to its ancient lechery?— Defiled, defiled!

A Citizen. Thou wert moved by our grief: Was that a vile thing?

Judith. That was the cunning world. It moved me by your grief to give myself Into the pleasure of its ravenous love.

A Citizen. Judith, if thy hot spirit beareth still Indignant suffering of villainy, Think, that thou hast no wrong from it. Such things Are in themselves dead, and have only life From what lives round them. And around thee glory Lives and will force its splendour on the harm Thy purity endured, making it shine Like diamond in sunlight, as before Unviolated it could not.

Judith. Ay, to you I doubt not I seem admirable now, Worthy of being sung in loudest praise; But to myself how seem I?

A Citizen. Surely as one Whose charity went down the stairs of hell, And barter'd with the fiends thy sacredest For our deliverance.

Judith. And that you praise!— I was a virgin spirit. Whence I come I know not, and I care not whither I go. One fearful knowledge holds me: that I am A spirit walking dangerously here. For the world covets me. I am alone, And made of something which the world has not, Unless its substance can devour my spirit. And it hath devoured me! In Holofernes It seized me, fed on me; and then gibed on me, With show of his death scoffing at my rage,— His death!—He lay there, drunken, glutted with me, And his bare falchion hung beside the bed,— Look on it, and look on the blood I made Go pouring thunder of pleasure through his brain!— And like a mad thing hitting at the madness Thronging upon it in a grinning rout, I my defilement smote, that Holofernes. But does a maniac kill the frenzy in him, When with his fists he beats the clambering fiends That swarm against his limbs? No more did I Kill my defilement; it was fast within me; And like a frenzy can go out of me And dress its hideous motions in my world. For when I come back here, behold the thing I murdered in the camp leaps up and yells! The carrion Holofernes, my defilement, Dances a triumph round me, roars and rejoices, Quickened to hundreds of exulting lives.

A Citizen. God help thee in this wildness! Are we then As Holofernes to thee?

Judith. You are naught But the defilement that is in me now, Rejoicing to be lodged safely within me. You are the lust I entertained, rejoicing To wreak itself upon my purity. The stratagems of my ravishment you are, Rejoicing that the will you serve has dealt Its power on me. O, I hate you not. You and your crying grief should have blown past My heart like wind shaking a fasten'd casement. But I must have you in. Myself I loathe For opening to you, and thereby opening To the demon which had set you on to whine Pitiably in the porches of my spirit. You are but noise; but he is the lust of the world, The infinite wrong the spirit, the virgin spirit, Must fasten against, or be for ever vile.

A Citizen. But is it naught that we, the folk of God, Are safe by thee?

Judith. God hath his own devices. But I would be God's helper! I would be Known as the woman whom his strength had chosen To ruin the Assyrians!—O my God, How dreadfully thou punishest small sins! If it is thou who punishest; but rather It is that, when we slacken in perceiving The world's intent towards us, and fatally, Enticed out of suspicion by fair signs, Go from ignoring its proposals, down To parley,—thou our weakness dost permit. In all my days I from the greed of the world Virginal have kept my spirit's dwelling,— Till now; yea, all my being I have maintained Sacredly my own possession; for love But made more beautiful and more divine My spirit's ownership. And yet no warning, When I infatuate went down to be Procuress of myself to the world's desire, Did God blaze on my blindness, no rebuke. Therefore I am no more my virgin own, But hatefully, unspeakably, the world's. To these now I belong; they took me and used me. I have no pride to live for; and why else Should one stay living, if not joyfully proud? For I have yielded now; mercilessly What is makes foolish nothing of what was. To know the world, for all its grasping hands, For all its heat to utter its pent nature Into the souls that must go faring through it, Availing nothing against purity, Made always like rebellion trodden under,— By this was life a noble labour. Now I have been persuaded into the world's pleasure: And now at last I will all certainly Contrive for myself the death of Holofernes.

[OZIAS comes behind her and catches the lifted falchion.

Judith. It was well done, Ozias.

Ozias. I have watcht Thy anguish growing, and I lookt for this.

Judith. Thou knowest me better than I know myself. What moves in me is strange and uncontrolled, That once I thought was ruled: thou knew'st me better.— Indeed thou must forgive me; what was I To take so bitterly thy suit? What right Had I to give thee anger, when thou wouldst Brighten thy hopeless death with me enjoyed, I, even from that anger, going to be Holofernes' pleasure?—Thou knewest me better, And therefore shalt forgive me. Ay, no doubt My spirit answered thee so fiercely then Because it felt thee reading me aright, How a mere bragging was my purity. But now to pardon askt, I must add thanks.— I had forgot Manasses! Even love Was driven forth of me by these loud mouths! Whether in death he waits for me, I know not; But it had been an unforgivable thing To have made this the end; not to have gone To death as unto spousals, leaving life As one sets down a work faithfully done, And knows oneself by service justified, Worthy of love, whether love be or not. But, soiled with detestation, to have thrown Fiercely aside the garment of this light; Proved at the last impatient, death desiring Like a mere doffing of foul drenched clothes; Release from the wicked hindering mire of sorrow; A comfortable darkness hiding me Out of the glowing world myself have made An insult, domineering me with splendour;— O such a death had turned, past all forgiving, My insult to Manasses, and searcht him out, Even where he is quiet, with the blaze, Ranging like din, of this contempt, this triumph. Not crying out such hateful news should I Flee hunted into death, unto my love. From this, Ozias, thou hast saved me. Now I am to learn my shame, that not amazed, But practised in my burden, I at last, When my time comes, may all in gladness fare The road made sacred by Manasses' feet.

[JUDITH goes into her house.

Ozias (addressing the citizens). You do well to be stricken silent here. Terrible Holofernes slain by a woman Was something wonderful, to be noised aloud; But this is a wonder past applauding thought, This grief darkening Judith, in the midst Of the new shining glory she herself Has brought to conquer in our skies the storm. You do well to be dumb: for you have seen Virginity. That spirit you have seen, Seen made wrathfully plain that secret spirit, Whereby is man's frail scabbard filled with steel. This, cumbered in the earthen kind of man, Which ceaseless waters would be wearing down, Alone giveth him stubborn substance, holds him Upright and hard against impious fate. All things within it would the world possess, And have them in the tide of its desire: Man hath his nature of the vehement world; He is a torrent like the stars and beasts Flowing to answer the fierce world's desire. But like a giant wading in the sea Stands in the rapture, and refusing it, And looking upward out of it to find Who knows what sign?—spirit, virginity; A power caught by the power of the world; The spirit in whose unknown hope doth man Deny the mastery of his fortune here; Virginity, whose pride, impassion'd only To be as she herself would be, nor thence To loosen for the world's endeavouring, And, though all give the rash obedience, stand Her own possession,—this virginity, This pride of the spirit, asking no reward But to be pride unthrown, this is the force Whereby man hath his courage in the strange Fearful turmoil of being conscious man. Yea, worshipping this spirit, he will at last Grow into high divine imagination, Wherein the envious wildness of the world Yieldeth its striving up to him, and takes His mind, building the endless stars like stone To house his towering joy of self-possessing. This made you dumb; ignorant knowledge of this, Blind vision of virginity's mightiness, Did chide the exclamation in your hearts. And think not you have seen, in Judith's grief, Virginity drown'd in the pouring world. For what is done is naught; what is, is all: And Judith is virginity's appointed. Even by her injury she showeth us, As fire by violence may be revealed, How sovereign is virginity.— But let us now consult what way her grief, Which is not to be understood by us, May spend itself, with naught to urge its power. Let us within our walls keep close this tale, Close as the famine and the thirst were kept Devouring us by the Assyrians. Let there be no news going through the land Out of Bethulia but this: that we At Judith's hands had our deliverance, But she from Holofernes and his crew Unwilling and astonisht reverence, As they were men with minds opprest by God.