Edmund Gosse

“ It is now for the Father of Heaven, and these his children, to resume their immortality and to regain their incomparable abodes. Be it my reward for the joyous labour of bringing the good news, to be the first to kiss these awful and eternal feet.
[Iris flings herself before Zeus in adoration, and folds her wings about her face. As she touches him, his deity blazes forth from him. When Iris rises again, she glances round at the Gods with gratified astonishment, for all of them have become brilliant and young.] ”

“ I can be myself, even here, on a beech-wood peak in the cold sea.
[Enter up the steps Zeus, leaning heavily on Ganymede, and attended by many other Gods.]
Eros, Poseidon, and Pallas.
Hail! father and king!
Zeus.
I can push on no farther. Why have I brought you here? [Gazing round.] Nay, it is you who have brought me here. [He moves up the scene.] I have a demon in my legs, that swells them, breaks them, crushes me down. [To Ganymede.] You are careless; stiffen your shoulder, it slopes like a woman's. I have lost my thunderbolt, I have lost everything. ”

“ Persephone.
Are we to be driven hence still farther towards the confines of immensity, father?
[Pg 206] Zeus.
I know not.
Kronos.
More journeys, more weary, weary journeys?
Zeus.
I know but what I tell you ... that I foresee a change. [A silence.] How breathless is the air. Not the outline of a leaf is shaken against the sky.
Phœbus.
But the mist grows thinner, and high up in it I see a faint blueness.
Zeus.
I do not—nothing but the bewildering woolly whiteness, that chills my eyeballs.... [With a sudden vivacity.] Ah! yes ... it is the sea! Is Poseidon here? ”

“ Pallas.
Is life, then, to resolve itself for us into a chain of exhilarating pangs?
Æsculapius.
Life will now be for you, for all of us, a perpetual combat with a brine that half supports, half drags us under; a continual creeping and balancing on a chamois path around the forehead of a precipice. A headache will be the breaking of a twig, a fever a stone that gives way beneath your foot, to lose the use of an organ will be to let the alpenstock slip out of your starting fingers. ”

“ Circe.
You never can be a mortal like the barbarians, for you have been a force ruling the sea, and the flowers, and the winds, and twisting the blood of man and woman in your fingers like a living skein of soft red silk. ”

“ What inspires the implacable destroyer to pursue us, and with this imposing and miraculous navy, to the shore of that harmless exile in which we were endeavouring to forget his existence, I know not. But let us at least preserve that dignity which [Pg 214] has survived our deity. Whatever may be now in store for us—if the worst of all things be now hurrying to complete our annihilation—let us meet it with simplicity. Let us meet it with an even mind.
Circe.
Oh, see! what are those filaments of blue and violet and grassy green which flutter in the cordage of the three ships?
Phœbus. ”

“ She appears, in her splendour, at the top of the stairs, and looks round upon the Gods. Without exception, in the magnificence of her presence they look grey and old and dim. She hesitates a moment, and then kneels before the throne of Zeus.]
Iris.
Father and lawgiver! Imperial Master of Heaven! The rebellion in Olympus is over. The usurper has fallen under the weight of his own presumption, lower [Pg 217] than the lowest chasms of Hades, chained for all eternity by the fetters of his own insolence and madness. It is not needful for you, Zeus, to punish or to be clement. ”

“ Already he forgets Olympus. [After a pause.] It is very thoughtful of you, Circe, to take so much trouble about us.
Circe.
I have been anxious about you both. All the rest of us ought to be able to console ourselves, but I am afraid that you will find it very difficult to live in the new way.
[Pg 23] Rhea.
Kronos will soon have forgotten that there was an old way; and as for me, Circe, I have seen so much and wandered in so many places, that one is as another to me.
Kronos.
Is it Zeus who has driven us forth?
Circe.
Oh no! Zeus has led us hither. ”

“ Wild swans winging Through the blue, Spiders springing To a clue, Till the sparkling drops renew All that ever Youth's endeavour Had determined to undo. White and blue are hoards of treasure, For the panting hands of pleasure To go dropping, dropping, dropping, Without measure Through and through. Zeus. ”

“ It is useless, Rhea, to torment Kronos.
Rhea.
I shall watch him, all day long. For I, too, am weary. Do not propose to me, with your restless energy, any fresh interests. Let me sit, with my cold hands folded in my lap, and look at Kronos, nodding, nodding. It is very kind of Circe, but we are too old for love; and of you, but we are too old for amusement. Let us rest, Hermes, rest and sleep; perhaps dream a little, dream of the far-away past.
[Circe and Persephone enter from the left.]
[Pg 33] Persephone [to Hermes] .
My mother requires so much activity of mind and body. ”

“ Æsculapius.
It has never been enough for me. The impenetrable immortality of all our bodies has been a constant source of exasperation to me.
Pallas.
Is it not much to know?
Æsculapius.
Yes; but it is more to do. The most perfect theory carries a monotony and an emptiness about with it, if it is never renovated by practice. In Olympus the unbroken health of all the inmates, which we have accepted as a matter of course, has been more advantageous to them than it has been to me. ”

“ And whither should we go, Eros? We have lost our golden home, our only home. We have lost the old white world of empire; any grey corner of the world of stillness is good enough for us. I will eat, and lie down, and rest without that long, awful heave of the intolerable ocean. ”

“ Where there is no one to notice that errors are committed, no errors are committed. As the person of most experience in the whole world, I do not mind stating my ripe opinion that a fault which has no effect upon political conditions is in no sensible degree a fault at all. Pallas would contend the point, I suppose, but I am at ease. I shall not allow the conduct of my children, except as it shall regard myself, to affect my good-humour in the slightest degree.
[Pg 164] [Phœbus enters, slowly pacing across the terrace.]
Zeus.
Your planet seems to have recovered something of its tone, Phœbus. ”

“ We are fallen, fallen!... And yet a nameless mirth, flooding my veins, And yet a sense of limpid happiness And buoyancy and anxious fond desire Quicken my being. It is much to see The perfected geography of thought Spread out before the gorged intelligence, A map from further detail long absolved. But ah! when we have tasted the delight Of toilsome apprehension, how return To that satiety of mental ease Where all is known because it merely is? ”

“ Rebellion everywhere, everywhere the servant risen against the master, everywhere our spells and portents broken. I rule the sea still, but it is as a man holds in a wild horse with a hard rein: it obeys with hatred, it [Pg 10] would obey not one moment after the master's hand was withdrawn.
Eros.
How cold it is. But I am not disconsolate. Nor should you be, Poseidon, for you will have the sea to occupy your thoughts. Hephæstus will help you to break it in. He at least should be consoled, for in our fallen estate his magical ingenuity will employ his brain. ”

“ It is kind of you, Circe, to suggest such a thing. No doubt it would be very pleasant. But I feel, of course, the hollowness of the whole concern. We must be careful not to deceive the barbarians.
Circe.
Certainly ... oh! yes, certainly. But ... I am sure it would be so good for them to have a ritual to follow. We should not absolutely assert to them that you still exist as an immortal, but I do not see why we should insist on tearing every illusion away from them. ”

“ Eros.
Your dejection passes beyond all bounds. You cannot have been shown the singularly cheerful little jewel which Pallas [Pg 175] has brought with her? It raises every one's spirits.
Heracles.
It will not raise mine; for all of you, Eros, have been immortals from the beginning, and your mortality is a new and pungent flavour on the moral palate. ”

“ I, on the other hand, leave very rarely, and with peculiar reluctance, the rock-crystal tower from which I watch the world, myself unavoidable and unattainable. My arrows penetrate every disguise, every species of physical and spiritual armour, but they are not turned against my own heart. I have always been graceful and inconspicuous in my attitudes. The image of Eros, with contorted shoulders and projected elbows, aiming a shaft at himself, is one which the Muse of Sculpture would shudder to contemplate.
[Pg 123] Hera.
Then what was the meaning of your apparent infatuation for Psyche? ”

“ How cold the air is! Ah! it is raining over in the other island, and the brown fields grow like the yellow fields, melt into a mere white mist behind the slate-coloured sea. Here is one of the barbarians.
[Poseidon slowly appears at the top of the steps.]
Poseidon.
Ah, you here alone, Eros?
[Pg 9] Eros [aside] .
It is Poseidon! How old and bluff he looks! [To Poseidon.] My mother is within. [Smiling.] She was angry with you, Poseidon, but her anger is fallen.
Poseidon.
Adversity brings us all together. It was once I who burned with anger against her. Why was she angry? ”

“ Zeus gave me an orb and sceptre to console me. I used to play cup and ball with them behind his throne.
Rhea [in a solicitous aside to Hermes] .
Oh! it is not true. Kronos' mind now wanders so strangely. He thinks that it is Zeus who has turned him out of Olympus.
Hermes [in the same tone] .
Do not distress him, Rhea, by contradiction and explanation. I will find modes [Pg 32] of amusing him a little every day, and, for the rest, let him doze in the sunshine. His mind is worn so smooth that it fails any longer to catch in ideas as they flit against it. They pass off, glide away. ”

“ Knowledge not the aim, so much As pleasure in the toil that leads to knowledge, We shall build, although the house before our eyes Crumble, and we shall gladden in the toil Although it never leads to habitation— Building our goal, though never a fabric rise. ”

“ Dismal, sooty, raven-coloured robes of the Eumenides!
Nike.
And it may be present even where no final conquest can ensue?
Æsculapius.
Ah! how white they grow! How the serpents drop out of their tresses.
Nike.
I am feeling forward with my finger-tips, like a blind woman searching.... And the real splendour of victory may consist in the helpless mortal state; may blossom there, while it only budded in our immortality?
Æsculapius.
May consist, really, of the effort, the desire, [Pg 200] the act of gathering up the will to make the plunge. ”

“ Phœbus.
That memory which is nothing but a plain [Pg 210] reproduction on the mirror of the mind is a tame concern, Pallas. It transfers, without modification, all that is dull, and squalid, and unessential. The only memory which is worthy of those who have tasted immortality is that which has in some degree been fortified. To recollect with enjoyment is to select certain salient facts from an experience and to be oblivious of the rest ”

“ Depend upon it, it is not a temple at all. What Hermes was present at was unquestionably some gathering of local politicians. Poor these barbarians may be, but they could not excuse by poverty such a neglect of the decencies as he describes. No flowers, no bright robes, no music of stringed instruments, no sacrifice—it is quite impossible that the meanest of sentient beings should worship in such a manner. And as for the picture which you saw behind what you took to be the altar, I question not that it is used to keep in memory some ancestor who suffered from the tyranny of his masters. ”

“ Zeus.
But where is Olympus? I hardly know you. [Gazing blankly about him.] Are you my children? You [to Pallas] gaze [Pg 16] at me with eyes like those I hated most.
Eros.
Whose eyes, father and king?
Zeus.
I will not say. Are you sure [to Poseidon] that is not a vulture? I am torn, see, here under my beard, by a thorn. I can feel pain at last, I, who could only inflict it.
Eros.
Pallas has something in a box——
Zeus [vehemently] .
There is nothing in any box, there is nothing in any island, there is nothing in all the empty caskets of this world which can give me any happiness. ”

“ Poseidon.
We have never needed to be ingenious. It has been enough for us to command, to wield the elements like weapons, to say it shall be and to see it is.
Eros.
To see it is not, and yet to make it be, perhaps this may be a joy in store for us. For Hephæstus, certainly; for you, if you are [Pg 11] wise; but for me, ah! what will there be? My arrows break against old hearts, and now we all are old.
[Pallas Athene comes rapidly down the steps from the house and speaks while still behind Eros.] ”