No More Learning

Rejoice! thou dost rejoice? then madness does.

_Vashti_.
I know not that: but certainly I know
A mind, that has been feeling for long time
The greatness of some hovering event
Poised over life, will rejoice marvellously
When the event falls, suddenly seizing life:
Like faintness when a thunderstorm comes down,
That turns to exulting when the lightning flares,
Shattering houses, making men afraid.
And this is my event: I am its choice.
Yea, not as a storm, but as an eagle now
It stoops on me; and, though I am its prey,
I am lifted by majestic wings, my soul
Is clothed in swiftness of a mighty soaring.

_3rd Woman_.
What glory can her wondrous eyes behold?

_4th Woman_.
Seemeth her flesh to glow! and her throat pants
As one who feels a god within her, come
Out of his heaven to enjoy her.

_2nd Woman_.
Ay,
Now it is true, the Queen is beautiful;
She could, so looking, enrage love in one
Whose blood a hundred years had frozen dry.

_1st Woman_.
Ah, but I fear thee, Queen: this dreadful mood
Will break the pleasantness of friendship thou
Hast kept for me, as a ship in a gale is broken.

_Vashti_.
Ay, very like: and the event will rouse
Such work in the water where your comfort sails,
More than my fortune will to pieces blow;
You too I think will get some perilous tossing
From what proves my destruction.

_2nd Woman_.
And, so knowing,
For mere insane delight in violent things,
Wilt thou awake in the fickle mood of men
Again that ancient ignominy which once,
Till beauty freed them, loaded the souls of women?

_3rd Woman_.
Truly, long time will work what now thou doest.

_Vashti_.
I know not rightly what I here begin;
No more than one, who stands in midst of wind
On a tall mountain, knows what breaking down
The earth must have ere the wind's speed is done,
And it hath drawn out of the drenched soil
The clinging vapours, and made bright the air.

_2nd Woman_.
But we'll not have thee disobedient.
The King's mind is a summer over us;
Thou with a storm wilt fill him, and the hail
That shatters thee will leave us bruised and weeping.

_Vashti_.
Be sulky in his arms: the weather soon
Will pleasantly favour thee again.

_4th Woman_.
No, no;
Not because from our heaven of man's mind
Thou wilt bring down on us a rain of scorn,
But because thou art wicked, thou must go
And tell the King the wine was rash in thee.