Amy Levy

“ Light of sweet sunlight, play and spray of waves?
When all around the air is charged and chill,
And all the place is drear and dark with hate?
Alas, alas, this people loves me not!
This strong, fair people, marble-cold and smooth
As modelled marble. I, an alien here,
That well can speak the language of their lips,
The language of their souls may never learn.
And in their hands, I, that did know myself
Ere now, a creature in whose veins ran blood
Redder, more rapid, than flows round most hearts,
Do seem a creature reft of life and soul. ”

“ Ægeus.
Cease, my friend;
It is enough. You judged this thing aright;
This woman was dark and evil in her soul;
Black to her fiend-heart’s root; a festering plague
In our fair city’s midst.
{56} Nikias.
Spake I not true?
[Night; outside the city. Medea leaning against a rock.]
Here let me rest; beyond men’s eyes, beyond
The city’s hissing hate. Why am I here?
Why have I fled from death? There’s sun on the earth,
And in the shades no sun;—thus much I know;
And sunlight’s good. ”

“ Of this fair world, and of the holy gods?
Then followed days of sadness, as I grew
To learn my woman-mind had gone astray,
And I was sinning in those very thoughts—
For maidens, mark, such are not woman’s thoughts—
(And yet, ’tis strange, the gods who fashion us
Have given us such promptings) ....
Fled the years,
Till seventeen had found me tall and strong,
And fairer, runs it, than Athenian maids
Are wont to seem; I had not learnt it well—
My lesson of dumb patience—and I stood
At Life’s great threshold with a beating heart,
And soul resolved to conquer and attain.... ”

“ Mark Jason there; how firm his lithe, straight limbs;
How high his gold-curled head, crisped like a girl’s.{46}
And yet for all his curled locks and smooth tones
Jason is very strong. I never knew
A man of such a strange and subtle strength.
Ægeus.
The Colchian speaks no word; and her swart hands,
Which waved, a moment since, and beat the air
In mad entreaty, are together clasped
Before her white robe in an iron clasp.
And her wild eyes, which erst did seek the heav’ns,
And now her lord and now again the earth,
Are set on space and move not. ”

“ And ever grows to look with the world’s eye
Upon a woman, tho’ his, body and soul.
[She goes within.]
[The two citizens come forward.]
Nikias.
I, in this thing, do hold our Jason wise;
Kreon is mighty; Glaukê very fair.
Ægeus.
An ’twere for that—the Colchian’s fair enough.
Nikias.
I like not your swart skins and purple hair;
Your black, fierce eyes where the brows meet across.
By all the gods! when yonder Colchian
Fixes me with her strange and sudden gaze,
Each hair upon my body stands erect!
Zeus, ’tis a very tiger, and as mute!
{39} Ægeus. ”

“ I do bethink me of my Colchian home.
To-day, that I am lone and weary and sad,
I fain would call back days of pride and hope;
Of pride in strength, when strength was all unprov’d,
Of hope too high, too sweet, to be confined
In limits of conception.{36}
I am sad
Here in this gracious city, whose white walls
Gleam snow-like in the sunlight; whose fair shrines
Are filled with wondrous images of gods ”

“ With knowing God works all things for the best,
And Nature never stumbles.” Then again,
“The common good,” and still, “the common, good;{14}”
And what a small thing was our joy or grief
When weigh’d with that of thousands. Gentle Tom,
But you might wag your philosophic tongue
From morn till eve, and still the thing’s the same:
I am myself, as each man is himself—
Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves
With his own love, no other’s. Friend, the world
Is but one man; one man is but the world. ”

“ Nikias.
O ye gods,
She is a pregnant horror as she stands.
Ægeus.
She speaks; her voice sounds as a sound far off.
Medea.
As you have said, O Jason, let it be.{47}
I for my part am nothing loth to break
A compact never in fair justice framed,
Seeing how much one gave and one how much.
For you, you thought: This maid has served me well,
And yet may serve me. When I touch her palm
The blood is set a-tingle in my veins;
For these things I will make her body mine.
And I, I stood before you, clean and straight,
A woman some deemed fair and all deemed wise ”

“ They say the woman had a fiend at heart,
And afterwards—Hush, hush, I dream’d a dream.
How cold the air blows; how the night grows dark,
Wrapping me round in blackness. Darker too
Grows the deep night within. ”

“ Ægeus.
O evil deed! O essence of all evil
Stealing the shape of woman!
Nikias.
After that
All is confusion; from all sides surged up
The people, cursing, weeping. ’Thwart the din
Each other moment the strained ear might catch
Medea’s name, or Jason’s, or the King’s;
And women wailed out “Glaukê” through their tears.
Then sudden came a pause; the angry roar
Died down into a murmur; and the throng
Grew still, and rolled aside like a clov’n sea.{55}
And Jason strode between them till he reached
His own home’s threshold where the twain lay dead,
Long gazed he on their faces ”

“ And through the changing guises all things wear
Inevitable Law I recognise:
Yet in my heart a hint of feeling lies
Which half a hope and half is a despair.
{90}
Translated from Geibel.
O SAY, thou wild, thou oft-deceived heart,
What mean these noisy throbbings in my breast?
After thy long, unutterable woe
Wouldst thou not rest?
Fall’n from Life’s tree the sweet rose-blossom lies,
And fragrant youth has fled. What made to seem
This earth as fair to thee as Paradise,
Was all a dream. ”

“ One man gets meat for two,
The while another hungers. If I stand
Without the portals, seeing others eat
Where I had thought to satiate the pangs
Of mine own hunger; shall I then come forth
When all is done, and drink my Lord’s good health
In my Lord’s water? Shall I not rather turn
And curse him, curse him for a niggard host?
O, I have hungered, hungered, through the years,
Till appetite grows craving, then disease;{20}
I am starved, wither’d, shrivelled.
Peace, O peace!
This rage is idle; what avails to curse
The nameless forces, the vast silences
That work in all things. ”

“ With the birds, and the greyness and greenness,
And the men in caps and gowns.
All they that dwell within thee,
To leave are ever loth,
For one man gets friends, and another
Gets honour, and one gets both. ”

“ Love, beauty, sunlight, nameless joy of life.
There’s too much patience in the world, I think.
We have grown base with crooking of the knee.
Mankind—say—God has bidden to a feast;
The board is spread, and groans with cates and drinks ”

“ We men and women are complex things!
A hundred tunes Fate’s inexorable hands
May play on the sensitive soul-strings.{85}
Webs of strange patterns we weave (each owns)
From colour and sound; and like unto these,
Soul has its tones and its semitones,
Mind has its major and minor keys. ”

“ All things there found if but One thing were lost,
Thus calm and still and silent here should lie,
Watching and waiting,—waiting passively.
The dark has faded, and before mine eyes
Have long, grey flats expanded, dim and bare ”

“ Feasting at life’s great banquet with wide throat.”
Then sudden, stepping from my leafy screen,
Holding the swelling wine-skin o’er my head,
With breast that heaved, and eyes and cheeks aflame,
Lit by a fury and a thought, I spake:
“By all great powers around us! can it be
That we poor women are empirical?
That gods who fashioned us did strive to make
Beings too fine, too subtly delicate,
With sense that thrilled response to ev’ry touch
Of nature’s, and their task is not complete? ”

“ Grew nearer ev’ry beating of the pulse.
Forth from the inmost chambers fled the slaves,
Made fleet with sudden fear; the little ones{53}
With arms outspread rushed to the Colchian,
And clung about her limbs and caught her robe,
Hiding their faces.
And Medea stood
Calm as a carven image. As the sound
Of wrath and lamentation drew more near,
The pale lips seemed to smile. But when she saw
Her children clinging round her, she stretched forth
One strong, swart hand and put the twain away,
And gathered up the trailing of her robe. ”

“ It is the way with women! Some, I think,
Did deem her fierce; gods! she was meek enough,{48}
Content with what I gave; when I gave not
Nothing importunate.
Ah, Jason, pause.
You never knew Medea. You forget,
Because so long she bends the knee to you,
She was not born to serfdom.
I have knelt
Too long before you. I have stood too long
Suppliant before this people. You forget
A redder stream flows in my Colchian veins
Than the slow flood which courses round your hearts,
O cold Corinthians, with whom I long have dwelt
And never ere this day have known myself. ”

“ Most horrid death and anguish worse than death;
Deeds that shall make the shores of Hades sound
With murmured terror; with an awful dread
Shall move the generations yet unborn;
A horror and a horror in the land.
Jason.
Shrew, triple-linked with Hell, get you within.
Shame not my house! ’Tis your own harm you work.
[Medea goes within. Jason moves off slowly. Ægeus and Nikias go off conferring in whispers.]
SCENE II. [Time—After an interval; the evening of the same day. Scene—A street. A crowd of people running to and fro.]
Nikias. ”

“ O cruel, cruel sunlight, get thee gone!
O dear, dim shades of eve, come swiftly on!
That when quick lips, keen eyes, are closed in sleep,
Through the long night till dawn I then may weep.
{65} Magdalen.
ALL things I can endure, save one.
The bare, blank room where is no sun;
The parcelled hours; the pallet hard;
The dreary faces here within;
The outer women’s cold regard ”

“ The live green things upstart;
Ice-bound, ice-crown’d dwells winter
For ever in my heart.{75}
Upon the bridge I linger,
Near where the lime-trees grow;
Above, swart birds are circling,
Beneath, the stream runs slow.
A stripling and a maiden
Come wand’ring up the way;
His eyes are glad with springtime,
Her face is fair with May.
Of warmth and sun and sweetness
All nature takes a part;
The ice of all the ages
Weighs down upon my heart.
{76} The Sick Man and the Nightingale.
(FROM LENAU.)
SO late, and yet a nightingale? ”

“ And robbed my life of many things.
I will not chide; ere this I knew
That Love had wings.
You’ve robbed my life of many things—
Of love and hope, of fame and pow’r.
So be it, sweet. You cannot steal
One golden hour.
{62} A Greek Girl.
I MAY not weep, not weep, and he is dead.
A weary, weary weight of tears unshed
Through the long day in my sad heart I bear ”

“ That love divided is larger love;—
We’ll leave those things to the bards, my dear.{72}
For you never wrote a verse, you see;
And I—my verse is not fair nor new.
Till the world be dead, you shall love but me,
Till the stars have ceased, I shall love but you.
EPILOGUE.
Thus ran the words ”

“ Here comes our Jason striding ’thwart the streets.
Gods! what a gracious presence!
Ægeus.
I perceive
The Colchian on the threshold. By her looks,
Our idle talk has reached her listening ears.
[Enter Jason. Medea reappears on the threshold.]
{40}
Nikias.
Let’s draw aside and mark them; lo, they meet.
[The two citizens withdraw, unperceived, to a further corner of the stage.]
Medea.
’Tis false, ’tis false. O Jason, they speak false!
Jason.
Your looks are wild, Medea; you bring shame
Upon this house, that stand with hair unbound
Beyond the threshold. Get you in the house. Medea. ”

“ Wrote books, I think, and things for newspapers.{73}
Short in her temper—eyes would flash and flame
At times, till I was frightened. Paid her rent
Most regular, like a lady.
Ten years back,
They say (at least Ann Brown says) , ten years back
The lady had a lover. Even then
She must have been no chicken.
Three months since
She died. Well, well, the Lord is kind and just.
I did my best to tend her, yet indeed
It’s bad for trade to have a lodger die.
Her brother came, a week before she died:
Buried her, took her things, threw in the fire
The littered heaps of paper. ”