John Masefield

“ Jehu.
That shows how close your enemies can come.
Even to your very court.
Joram.
He should be silenced.
Ahab.
He is a gallant fellow, without judgment.
But he presumes too much, he and his dreams.
Prophet.
(Crying aloud.) O King, a vision is vouchsafed to me!
I see! I see! Hearken to what I see.
I see a red bull trampling down God’s foes;
He neezes fire and all his fell is fire;
His shoulder is a mountain rough with forest;
His eye the wrath of God; he stamps the cities.
Go up against the Syrians, like this bull.
Joram.
There is the voice of God.
Jehu.90
Ay, truly, Prince. ”

“ Jezebel.
Then go; declare it to the priests,
That they may now declare it to the people:
The King is dead and now his son is King;
King Joram is the King in Israel.
Pashur.
You are too quick. Joram is not the King.
Jehu, anointed by the Prophet’s oil,
Has killed your Joram with an arrow shot
Under his arm, and out right through his heart,
Killing him in his chariot as he drove.
And he has killed his ally, and has flung
Your Joram’s body, bloody as it is,
Down into Naboth’s vineyard, to the dogs.
Now Bidkar, captain of the charioteers,
Drives the good Jehu hither to be crowned. ”

“ Rose-Flower.
“I will go to some lone island where I am not made a story,
Where my beauty made no widow, nor no orphan wanting bread;
Where no human sorrow suffers the disaster of my glory,
And my eyes may lose the vision of the hauntings of the dead.”
Moon-Blossom.72
“Day and night the dead men haunt me, whom the madness of my caring
Brought from home and wives and children to be bones upon the plain;
All the panther-like for beauty, all the lion-like for daring,
And they lie among the bindweed now, uncovered by the rain.” ”

“ Exit Jezebel.
Enter Prophet.
Prophet.
Pharmas! Ashobal! Hark! Is Pharmas there?
It is full noon, but Pharmas is not here,
No, nor Ashobal. But there seems to be
Less danger than I feared: I was not questioned,
And men go unmolested to the feast.
Enter Ashobal.
Here is Ashobal. Where is Pharmas, friend?
Ashobal.
Gone to the Queen again, with ink and seals.
There is this news: the King and Queen have talked
And Ahab now is in his room again,
Moodily sharpening his sword, and muttering.18
I myself think that Ahab has gone mad.
Prophet.
No word from Jehu yet, of Ahaziah? ”

“ Straightway he wooed Queen Helen to be his,
And won her love, and cried to Nireus then,
“O Nireus, help to save us from this den,
Lend us your ship to bring us out of this.”
So Nireus, though his heart was torn with pain,
Well knowing what would come, yet took the pair
To many-towered Troy and left them there,
To live in love and be the city’s bane.
Moon-Blossom.
When Menelaus knew of Helen’s flight,
He led all Greece in arms to punish Troy,
Nireus went with him in the fleet, and joy
Ceased in the world, for all men went to fight. ”

“ Enter Jezebel.
Jezebel.
Ay, hearken to the utterance of the crown.
You are all come to hear a war declared.
Now I, the crown, declare it unto you.
I declare war upon our enemies.
They are all present, standing in this place,
Waiting the execution of our sword.
(To Prophet.) This man, the madman from the desert, first,
Who rages like a desert-storm, that kills
With sand, burning hot sand, pitiless sand.
(To Joram.) This next, the hater of his house, our son,
Who, for a wound that pains him would be glad
That thousand others should be sick with wounds.
(To Jehu.) ”

“ And ever he grieved for Paris, and thought of the beautiful Queen.
Rose-Flower.
Then he came to a sea of terror, where monsters rose from the sea,
Things with the beaks of birds and arms like the suckers of vines:
Things like ghosts in the water coming motionlessly
To tatter the flesh of men with teeth like the cactus-spines.
Moon-Blossom.
Over unending water ever he held his course,
Birds that were curses followed, crying around and above:
“Nireus, broken by beauty, broken again by remorse,43
Goes to the breaking of death for killing his friend and love.” ”

“ She was too good a woman to be Queen
In such a land as this, at such a time.
Would she had gone! Her women have escaped.
And I am freed from prison by the rabble.
Wisdom is gone from the city,
The killer alone is obeyed,
A man without law, without pity,
Who was fed by the King he betrayed.
The debt that was owing is paid,
By a new deed of murder that cries
To the gods who are Kings in the skies.
Though the ways of the gods are most wise,
They are dark, they make me afraid. ”

“ Jezebel.16
Gods save us, he is mad, or over-wrought
Up to the point of madness; now, indeed,
We have been conquered, for we have no King
Save one distraught with trouble. How am I
To help in this?
So ends my queenship with him. It is well
That I have called Prince Ahaziah home.
But, till he come, I govern, I am King,
And one act of a King must now be done:
This rebels’ feast to Naboth must be stopped. ”

“ Lord Jehu and the Prophet, hand and mouth
To violence and unwise ways of life,
Violent and brainless both, as lightning is.
When violence and madness are in league,3
Destruction comes.
And they are coming now,
Here to the palace of the King and Queen,
To plot their evil with our followers.
I will go hence, to pray that Ahaziah
May come in time to thwart their wickedness. ”

“ If I give up my father’s heritage,
If I commit into polluted hands,
Red with the blood of offerings to false gods,
The earth my father worked and worshipped in.
It is my vineyard and it shall be mine,
By God’s red hand the King should be ashamed;
You too would be ashamed were you not shameless,
To tempt a poor man’s soul with merchandise ”

“ Nireus answered, “Ah, not thus, not so, Queen Helen, surely,
Are those who died for love of you, to win you or to keep!
If they gave their lives, they gave them as a man gives frankly, purely,
Without question, comment or complaint,
The strong heart equal with the faint,
All content to see your beauty and to tread hard ways to sleep. ”

“ Betrayed, my Prophet and my sweet Ashobal,
Betrayed.... By whom?
By all the gods, this harlot is a man.
She hears of us, at once decides to strike,
Sends for the cavalry to cut our throats,
Calls Ahaziah to be King until
Her Ahab be a man again, and so
Bids for her husband’s crown. There are the facts.
Ashobal.
Even so I judged it, from the way she spoke.
8 Prophet.
Then we had better scatter into hiding,
For we are lost.
Jehu.
True, brother Prophet, all our heads are loose,
But yet not lost.
Prophet.
But what are we to do?
Jehu.
Stop Ahaziah in his coming here. ”

“ Refusing food and drink; refusing speech
With me, his wife; neglecting court and state;
Letting rebellion grow, and seeing no man
Except our younger son, evil Prince Joram,
Who longs for war against the Syrians.
So I, the Queen, not knowing what may come
When the King sickens and the people rage,
Have sent for help, called home our eldest son,
Prince Ahaziah, from his frontier post
With all his horsemen. He should soon be here.
With Ahaziah and his horsemen here
We shall be safer from our enemies,
The Teshbon prophet and the soldier Jehu,
The captain of the horse under the King. ”

“ There they left her alone in the wreck of the thing overdear
That the gods cannot grant to mankind, but unite to destroy.
75
FOURTH ACT
Jezebel.
I shall not look upon my son again!
How many million mothers must have felt
As I, with a dead child. How many lives
Have been made lightless thus.
For no child ever dies without the breaking
Of someone’s heart.
And yet the world goes on.
I shall go on, perhaps for many years,
And in my heart’s most secret corridor
Will be a shrine, where I shall watch my son,
Lonely as Helen in her tower at Troy
When Paris had been killed. ”

“ Jezebel.
What is that noise of evil that I hear?
Rose-Flower.
The prophet speaking in the market-place.
Moon-Blossom.
All afternoon his voice has shouted evil.
Jezebel.
It is as red as blood within this room.
They have gone out to war; is it not so?
I have been thinking till it all seems plain.
We are amusements only
In mightier life than ours.104
God knows, we are not amusement to ourselves.
I am no Queen. I have no son; no husband ”

“ She came to the fort on the crag, the panther-women’s abode.
Rose-Flower.
Hearing her horse’s stamp, they brought her into the yard,
Those women fierce from the killing of lion or boar or man;
They came with their torches round her, they stared at her hard,
They knew her for Helen the Queen from whom their sorrows began.
For years they had longed for her coming, to have her to kill,
Her beauty a throat for their knives, her body a prey—
Helen, who ruined their lovers, the root of their ill—74
She said: “I am Helen. Avenge yourselves on me. You may.” ”

“ Jehu.
The hag!
Prophet.
These women of false gods shall die the death.
Jehu.
Yes, unless we die first. Thank you, Ashobal,
You bring the message in the nick of time.
Why has she sent for them? Is Ahab dying?
No; he is ill, not dying. By the gods,
The harlot may be plotting against Ahab
To crown her son? ”

“ Ahab.
The priests alone can judge of blasphemy.
Which do you call my hirelings?
Prophet.
The accursed
Idolaters who follow on your Queen.
Enter Jezebel.
Jezebel.
I am the Queen. Where is the man who dares
Call those who follow me accurst?
Prophet.
Here, devil.
Here is the man who dares call you and them
Accurst as murderers of Naboth dead.
Ahab.
You say that priests condemned him for blaspheming.
Prophet.
You stirred the priests to prosecuting him.
Ahab.
No, not in any way soever, Prophet.
Prophet.52
Then you, co-devil with him, did this thing. ”

“ Jezebel.41
Which brings the greater woe; to pass an evil,
Or break your Being’s law to combat it?
The allotted sorrow ever has a gateway.
Curtain.
THIRD CHORUS
Rose-Flower.
Nireus sailed; and a strange wind blew him to islands unseen before,
Where the gods sat throned on the crags with peace on their marvellous faces,
Clouds and the smoke of fire, that glittered and changed, they wore!
And unto them came the crying of all man’s sorrowful races.
Moon-Blossom.
They cried to him as he passed, “You are seeking and you shall find,
Not in the way you hope, not in the way foreseen ”

“ The wind is fair for Syme; let us start.
Here, where long ago I lost you, I retrieve you;
Let us leave this town of broken heart
For the peace of Syme Harbour and the mirth of Syme mart,
And the calm of knowing sorrow at an end,
And the quiet of the memory of a friend.”
Together.
Then they sailed for Syme Island, and the gods were with their going,
For their beauty came upon them both, with youth and strength and peace;
Now they rule and live forever in a spring forever blowing,
High in Syme where the sun is bright and skylarks never cease.
102
FIFTH ACT
Rose-Flower. ”

“ As you well know.
Naboth.
I’ll have no slave-tilled vineyard.
Jezebel.
Men cannot live without the work of others;
You yourself do not. Did you make that robe,
Those shoes, that pouch? But we are wandering.
Let me, the Queen, make offer for your vineyards.
I offer the King’s vineyards as before,
And with them, the three marrowy olive-groves
Which Shemer planted.
Naboth.
Shemer! And what more?
Micaiah.
What more?
Ashobal.
Good heaven, you surely ask no more?
Naboth.
I do. It’s not enough.
Jezebel.
Then name your price.
Naboth.35
I cannot be buyer and seller both. ”

“ The Council is composed of manly and godly men, the best of our country, whose wills are worth the weighing. They bid me say, sir, this, that they deplore that such a King should have for counsellor one who brings peace with Syria, and the death of an upright man whom they esteemed.
Ahab.
By this counsellor they mean your mother, the Queen?
Joram.
Sir, you are ever wise and they ever respectful. They feel that a foreign influence is not for your people’s good, nor for justice in your people’s causes.
Jezebel.59
My son, speak openly, for the people’s good. ”

“ Beauty and peace
And our forgiveness,
And all our thanks
For what she was.”
Moon-Blossom.
As they ceased speaking
They faded from him,
The island faded,
Nireus was at sea.
He and his men
Were all grown old,
Thirty years
Had fallen on them.
Together.
As old men failing
They came to Sparta;
All unavailing
Their coming was.
Helen was gone48
And none knew whither,
To search for peace
Or to find release.
Over the seas
In lands and islands
Nireus sought her,
But could not find.
For the gods retire
When men desire,
Though it burn like fire
And make men blind. ”

“ Peace, Joram: let him speak.
Micaiah.
Sir, I will speak.
In dreams, last night, in the dark night, ere cocks crowed,
I saw a downland empty to the sky.
Joram.
That is the way these fellows use to talk;
They’d talk another way, had I my will.
Micaiah.
And suddenly I saw all Israel
Scattered upon that downland frantically,
Like sheep without a shepherd. The Lord said:
“These have no master now; let them go home.”
Ahab.
And how do you interpret this your dream?
Micaiah.
That if you go this warfare, you, the master
Of Israel, will die.
Ahab.
How die?
Micaiah.86
I do not know. ”

“ Jehu.
Fine talk, to keep the army lingering.
Ahab.
Have you some other vision to reveal?
Micaiah.
A sort of vision.
Prophet.
Ay, a sort of vision.
There is one way of vision, only one,
Vouchsafed to men, you false one, with false gods. ”