No More Learning

But---- [_He pauses_.

_Myr. _ What instead?

_Sar. _ In thy own chair--thy own place in the banquet--
I sought thy sweet face in the circle--but
Instead--a grey-haired, withered, bloody-eyed,
And bloody-handed, ghastly, ghostly thing,
Female in garb, and crowned upon the brow,
Furrowed with years, yet sneering with the passion
Of vengeance, leering too with that of lust,
Sate:--my veins curdled. [24]

_Myr. _ Is this all?

_Sar. _ Upon
Her right hand--her lank, bird-like, right hand--stood 110
A goblet, bubbling o'er with blood; and on
Her left, another, filled with--what I saw not,
But turned from it and her. But all along
The table sate a range of crowned wretches,
Of various aspects, but of one expression.

_Myr. _ And felt you not this a mere vision?

_Sar. _ No:
It was so palpable, I could have touched them.
I turned from one face to another, in
The hope to find at last one which I knew
Ere I saw theirs: but no--all turned upon me, 120
And stared, but neither ate nor drank, but stared,
Till I grew stone, as they seemed half to be,
Yet breathing stone, for I felt life in them,
And life in me: there was a horrid kind
Of sympathy between us, as if they
Had lost a part of death to come to me,
And I the half of life to sit by them.
We were in an existence all apart
From heaven or earth----And rather let me see
Death all than such a being!

_Myr. _ And the end? 130

_Sar. _ At last I sate, marble, as they, when rose
The Hunter and the Crone; and smiling on me--
Yes, the enlarged but noble aspect of
The Hunter smiled upon me--I should say,
His lips, for his eyes moved not--and the woman's
Thin lips relaxed to something like a smile.
Both rose, and the crowned figures on each hand
Rose also, as if aping their chief shades--
Mere mimics even in death--but I sate still:
A desperate courage crept through every limb, 140
And at the last I feared them not, but laughed
Full in their phantom faces. But then--then
The Hunter laid his hand on mine: I took it,
And grasped it--but it melted from my own;
While he too vanished, and left nothing but
The memory of a hero, for he looked so.

_Myr. _ And was: the ancestor of heroes, too,
And thine no less.

_Sar. _ Aye, Myrrha, but the woman,
The female who remained, she flew upon me,
And burnt my lips up with her noisome kisses; 150
And, flinging down the goblets on each hand,
Methought their poisons flowed around us, till
Each formed a hideous river. Still she clung;
The other phantoms, like a row of statues,
Stood dull as in our temples, but she still
Embraced me, while I shrunk from her, as if,
In lieu of her remote descendant, I
Had been the son who slew her for her incest. [25]
Then--then--a chaos of all loathsome things
Thronged thick and shapeless: I was dead, yet feeling-- 160
Buried, and raised again--consumed by worms,
Purged by the flames, and withered in the air!
I can fix nothing further of my thoughts,
Save that I longed for thee, and sought for thee,
In all these agonies,--and woke and found thee.

_Myr. _ So shalt thou find me ever at thy side,
Here and hereafter, if the last may be.