No More Learning

Let them perceive
That, having Vashti, there is none like thee:
Others are men; but thou art he whose spirit
Is station'd in the beauty of the queen,
Whose flesh knows such amazement as before
Never beneath the lintels of man's sense
Came, an especial messenger from Heaven.

_Ahasuerus_.
Bring her! let the Queen come crowned before us!
Slaves, fetch here all your light to shine upon
My Vashti's beauty; let there be clear floor;
Make the air worthy her with camphire lit
And frankincense; and fill the hall with flames.
Then gaze, kings, and stare, hunger with your eyes
Upon her face; but within brakes of fear
Fasten your wills, and move not from your seats.
Exult, you thron'd nations, that to your sight
She shall be lent, the pleasure of the king,
She whom to visit so inflames my soul,
That I can judge how God burns to enjoy
The beauty of the Wisdom that he made
And separated from himself to be
Wife to the divine act, mother of heavens. --
Let Vashti come and stand before the kings!


III

VASHTI AND THE KING'S WOMEN AT THEIR FEAST

_1st Woman_.
Queen, is it well to be so sorrowful?

_2nd Woman_.
And when the King our lord spendeth on us
This festival out of his rich heart, to shoot
Thy looks upon us as thou wouldst rebuke us?

_Vashti_.
Your pardon: do I trouble your greed?

_1st Woman_.
Our greed?
Rather our gratitude----

_2nd Woman_.
That we have share
In these devices of the King's own cooks,
These costly breads,--

_1st Woman_.
And these delicious meats,
These sauces mixt of spicy treacle and balm.

_3rd Woman_.
And wines, purple and blue and like gold fire,
Made of the colours of the morning sea
And fragrance wild as woman's need of love.

_Vashti_.
Enjoy them then: who lets you?

_3rd Woman_.
Thou dost, Queen.
Thou sittest with hands folded in thy robe,
And in the midst of delicacies wilt fast.

_1st Woman_.
We see thine eyes upon them as they were
Wickedness.

_2nd Woman_.
'Tis rare bounty that we women
Halve with the King his festival.

_3rd Woman_.
And thou,
It seems, scarce findest it thankworthy.

_Vashti_.
Again,
Your pardon: but ye need not gaze on me. --
And yet, why am I sorrowful? In truth,
Is it a sorrow that so leans upon me?
I know not. But my soul knoweth right well
That I am watched.

_3rd Woman_.
Then in thy conscience, Queen,
Thou feelest the King requiring thanks of thee.

_Vashti_.
Be careful of thy tongue,--and of the wine. --
Who watches me? Eyes are fixt on my soul,
Eyes of desire. I think some great event
Hath pusht its spirit forward of its time,
To stand here quietly waiting, into my mind
Inflicting its strange want of me, and ready
To fetch my heart, and ready to take my hand
And lead me away shrinking: is it Death?
It is some marvellous thing: for I know surely
Behind it crowd out of their discipline
The coming hours to watch me seized, and stare
With questioning brows on me, and lift lean hands
From under gowns of shadow to point me out
One to another, saying: "This is she:
How will she bear it, think ye? "--Is it not cold?
Was there not wind just then? --The flames are steady.

_1st Woman_.
No wind at all: the air's like one closed room.

_2nd Woman_.
There is no talk like this at the King's feast,
I warrant. Were we not best be merry,
And thank the King so for these wines and sweets?

_Vashti_.
Yes, let us not forget our thankfulness;
For is not, sisters, everything we have
Mere gift?

_2nd Woman_.
My beauty pays for what I get.

_Vashti_.
I would, 'twere not so.

_2nd Woman_.
Queen, I doubt thee not.

_Vashti_.
Pert little fool, where lies thy beauty, then?
Thou hast it not: its place is not thy flesh,
But the delighting loins of men, there only.
Thy beauty! And thou knowest not that man
Hath forged in his furnace of desire our beauty
Into that chain of law which binds our lives--
Man, please thyself, and woman, please thou man.
But thou wilt have thy beauty pence, thou sayest?
And what's thy purchase? Listen, I will tell thee:
Just that thou art not whipt and drudged: the rest,
All that thou hast beyond, is gift.

_2nd Woman_.
Why not?

_Vashti_.
Truly, for thee, why not?

_2nd Woman_.
Wouldst thou, 'twere yours?

_1st Woman_.
Thou shudderest again; what ails thee, Queen?

_Vashti_.
I would have lived in beauty once.

_2nd Woman_.
In whose?

_Vashti_.
I know the King finds relish in thy looks,
Wench, and I have no care to grudge thy pride;
But when thy face is named throughout the world
For wonder, I will bear thy impudence.

_1st Woman_.
But tell us, Queen, thy thought; for we have made
An end almost of eating; and it seems
It will be somewhat strange, pleasing our mood.

_Vashti_.
Strange you will find it doubtless; but scarce pleasing,
Unless 'tis pleasing to have news of danger.
Listen! your lives are propt like a rotten house.
Your souls, that should have noble lodging here,
Have crept like peasants into huts that have
No force within their walls, but must be shored
With borrowed firmness. Yea, man's stubborn lust
To feed his heart upon your beauty, is all
The strength your lives have, all that holdeth you
Safe in the world,--propt like a rotten house.

_1st Woman_.
Shall woman then not love to have man's love?

_3rd Woman_.
To feed his heart on us, thou sayest? O yea!
And how can a woman know such might of living
As when upon her breast she feels the man,
The man of her desire, like sacrament
Feeding his heart, yea and his soul, on her?

_Vashti_.
Are we for nought but so to nourish him?

_3rd Woman_.
Thou art too proud, O Queen, too proud and lonely,
And goest apart to have thy thought too much.
'Tis known, too much thought dazes oft a mind,
Till it can learn nought of the signèd evil
God hath put in the faces of evil notions,
That spiritual sight may ken them coming
Sly and demure, and safely shut the brain
Ere they be in and swell themselves to lordship.
Hence is it that an evil thought in thee
Hath dared so far, and played its wickedness
Strangely within thee, braving even into speech.

_1st Woman_.
Strangely indeed thy brain's inhabited.
What, is there aught prosperity for woman
But to be shining in the thought of man?

_Vashti_.
I wisht to prosper in the life I had,
That the Gods might approve the flourishing
Their heavenly graft of soul took from my flesh.
Therefore I wisht to love. And I did love. --
There came Ahasuerus conquering
Into my father's land. My fancying hate
Had made a man-beast of him, a thing, like man,
Tall in his walk, but in the mood of his eyes
A beast, and in the noise of his mouth a beast.
He came, and lookt at me; and, in a while,
I saw that he was speaking to me there.
And all the maiden went in me before him,
Swifter than in a moon which looks against
The morning, all the silver courage fails. --
How cam'st thou to the King?

_1st Woman_.
Sold to him, I.

_2nd Woman_.
Bought by him, I: for he had heard of me.

_Vashti_.
I also, sold or bought; nay, rather paid:
Paid like cash to him, that as servant king
My father might have life, and a throne in life.
It mattered nothing then. [_The_ QUEEN _pauses_.
Often in early summer, as I walkt
A girl singing her happiness, beside
The high green corn, holding all earth my own,
I saw, as my feet and my voice past by,
How in its hiding some croucht little beast
Startled, and filled a space of the gentle corn
With plunging quivering fear. And always then
My heart answer'd the fear that shook the corn,
With a sudden doubt in its beating; for I knew
Within my life such rousing of dismay
I myself should watch, with seizing wonder.
It was so: in the midst of my new love,
That promist such a plenty in my soul,
At last some sleeping terror leapt awake,
And made the young growth shiver and wry about
Inwardly tormented. Yea, and my heart
It was, my heart in its hiding of green love,
That took so wildly the approaching sound
Of something strangely fearful walking near.

_3rd Woman_.
A queer tale, this.

_1st Woman_.
A spectre visited you?

_Vashti_.
Indeed, a spectre.

_1st Woman_.
That have I never seen.
Was it the kind with nose and mouth grown sharp
To an eagle's bill, and claws upon its fingers,
The curve of them pasted with a bloody glue?

_Vashti_.
The spectre was--my beauty.

_3rd Woman_.
It is as I said.
O Queen, send for a wise man in the morning;
And let him leech thy spirit.

_4th Woman_.
I've heard, the best
Riddance for evil notions in the mind,
Is for a toad to sit upon the tongue;
While, breathed against the scalp, some power of spells
Loosens the clasp the notion hath digg'd deep
Into the soul; so that it passeth down,
Shaken and mastered, and creeps into the toad,--

_3rd Woman_.
Which gives a foolish kick or start to feel it,--

_4th Woman_.
Then the trapt notion may be easily burnt.

_Vashti_.
Yea? --I think mine would not burn easily.
With fire, with such indignant fire as pride
Yields, when it must destroy itself to feel
The power of the world touch it with humbling flame,--
With such a fire, whose heat you know not of,
Have I assayed this--notion, didst thou say?
And it stood upright, with its shape unquencht,
And lived within the fire.

_3rd Woman_.
Thou hast it wrong.

_4th Woman_.
Thou hast not understood the cure we meant.

_2nd Woman_.
Stop brabbling, fools; I would hear the Queen's mind.

_1st Woman_.
I too; I hate a thing I cannot skill;
And thee and all that lives in thee, O Queen,
I would keep friendly to my spirit; yet
I do suspect something amazing in thee.

_Vashti_.
And if thou seest not how slippery
Is women's place in the world of men, 'tis like
Thou wilt amazedly the vision take,
When I have led thee up my tower of thought.

_2nd Woman_.
How are we dangerous? Are we not women,
Man's endless need?

_Vashti_.
Ay, and therein the danger!
Is it not possible he hate the need?
For not as he were a beast it urges him:
He is aware of it, he knows its force,--
The kind of beasts is in their blood alone,
But man is blood and spirit. And in him,
As in all creature, is the word from God,
"Utter thyself in joy. "

_2nd Woman_.
And we his joy.

_Vashti_.
But such an one that may become, perhaps,
Something not utterance, but strict commanding,
Yea, mastery, like the dancing in the blood
Of one bitten by spiders. And it is Spirit,
Spirit enjoying woman, that hath sent
A beating poison in the blood of man,
The poison which is lust. Spirit was given
To use life as a sense for ecstasy;
Life mixt with Spirit must exult beyond
Sex-madden'd men and sex-serving women,
Into some rapture where sweet fleshly love
Is as the air wherein a music rings.
But blood hath captured Spirit; Spirit hath given
The strength of its desire of joy to make
What ecstasy it may of woman's beauty,
And of this only, doing no more than train
The joys of blood to be more keen and cunning;
As men have trained and tamed wild lives of the forests,
Breeding them to more excellent shape and size
And tireless speed, and to know the words of men.
So the wise masterful Spirit rules the joys
That come all fierce from roaming the dark blood;
They are broken to his desire, they are wily for him,
A pack of lusts wherewith the Spirit hunts
Pleasure; and the chief prey the pleasure hid
In woman.

_1st Woman_.
What joys are these?

_Vashti_.
What joys?
The joys of rutting beasts, tamed to endure,
Tamed to be always swift to answer Spirit,
Yet fiercer for their taming, wilder hungers;
So that the Spirit, if he hunt them not,
Fears to be torn by them in mutiny.
Now know you woman's beauty! 'Tis these joys,
The heat of the blood's desires, changed and mastered
By the desire of spirit, trained to serve
Spirit with lust, spirit with woman enjoy'd.

_2nd Woman_.
Queen, I am beautiful, and cannot boast
Thy subtle thinking; and to one like me,
What matters whence come beauty, so I have it?
Let it be but the witless mating of beasts,
Tamed and curiously knowing itself
And cunning in its own delight: What then?
The nightingale desires his little lass,
And that brings out of his heart a radiant song;
A man desires a woman, and for song
Out of his heart comes beauty, that like flame
Reaches towards her, and covers her limbs with light.
If it so please thee, say that neither loves
Aught but his life's desire, fashioning it
Adorably to marvellous song and beauty.
What then? Enough that the wonder lights on me,
To me is paid the worship of the wonder.

_Vashti_.
O well I know how strong we are in man;
His senses have our beauty for their god,
And his delight is built about us like
Towering adoration, housing worship. --
The spirit of man may dwell in God: the world,
From the soft delicate floor of grass to those
Rafters of light and hanging cloths of stars,
Is but the honour in God's mind for man,
Wrought into glorious imagination.
But women dwell in man; our temple is
The honour of man's sensual ecstasy,
Our safety the imagined sacredness
Fashion'd about us, fashion'd of his pleasure.
Beauty hath done this for us, and so made
Woman a kind within the kind of man.
Yea, there is more than this: a mighty need
Hath man made of his woman in the world.
Now man walks through his fate in fellowship
Of two companion spirits; ay, and these
With double mastery go on with him.
The one in black disgraceful weeds is Toil;
She sows with never-ending gesture all
The path before his feet, cursing the way
She drags him on with growth of flouting crops,
Urchin thistles, and rank flourishing nettles.
But the other has a wear of woven gleam,
And with soft hand beseeches him his face
Away from the hardships of his hurt stung feet,
That with his eyes he may desire her looks:
And she is Beauty of Woman, man's dear blessing.
And if you would be wise, be well afraid
To think you have more office than to be
A sweet delicious while amid man's hours
Of worldly labour: we are too precious, so.
Yet see you not how this that Spirit hath done
Is also dangerous? --For there are mightier needs!
There's no content for Spirit in the world
Till he has striven out of bounded fate,
And sent an infinite desire forth
Into the whole eternity of things.
Yea, spirit ails with loathing secretly
The irremediable force of being;
Unless, with free expatiate desire,
He shape into the endless burning flux
Of starry world blindly adventuring
Some steady righteous destiny for Spirit:
Even as dreaming brain fashions the fume
Of life asleep to marshall'd imagery.
But we are in the way of this: and man,
The more he needs to announce upon the world,
Over him going like a storming air,
That fashioning word which utters the divine
Imagination working in him like anger;
The more he finds his virtue caught and clogged
In the fierce luxury he hath made of woman.
Thence are we sin, thence deliciously
Persuading man refuse his highest ardour.
Too easily kindled was the ecstasy
Of fleshly passion, with a joyous flame
Too readily answering the Spirit's fire!
He burns with us alone, so fragrantly
His noblest vigour swoons delighted. Yea,
Women, I tell you, not far now is man
From hating us, so passionate the joy
Of loving us, so mightily drawing down
Into the service of his pleasure here
All forces of his being. The pleasure soon
Becomes a shame, scarce to be spoken aloud;
And in best minds, either detested doting
Man's joy in woman's beauty will become;
Or a strict binding fire, holding him down
In lust of beauty where no beauty is.

[_The_ KING'S MESSENGER _comes in_.

_Messenger_.
To Vashti, to the Queen of the world, to her
In whom the striving beauty of the world
Hath made perfection, from the King I come.
And the King bids me say, Rise from thy feast;
For thou must be to-night thyself a feast:
The vision of thy loveliness must now
Feed with astonishment my vassals' hearts.
Therefore thou art to come.

_Vashti_.
And tell the King
I will not come.

_Messenger_.
What was there in my words
Thou dost not understand? --I say, the King
Would show thy beauty to his under-kings,
That with this also they may be amazed
And utterly fear his fortune.

_Vashti_.
So. Go back,
Tell the King I have hearkened to his message,
And tell him I will not come.

_Messenger_.
What sickness shall I say has lighted on thee,
So that thou canst not come?

_Vashti_.
Thou weariest me.
Say this to the King, Vashti will not come.
Are they not plain, my words? Canst thou not learn
them?

_Messenger_.
Give me some softer speech. Must I not fear
I shall earn whipping if I take these words?

_Vashti_.
I pray thee, go. Thou art a trouble here;
Seest thou not how all these feasting women
Pause, and the pleasure is distrest in them?
Thou hast thy message: say, She will not come. --
Back to the King, now!

_Messenger_.
I am whipt for this.

[_He goes_.

_Vashti_.
It seems, my sisters, we have changed our moods.
But now, my mind was heavy, you were blithe;
And in a moment, you, behold, are fixt
Gazing like desperate things, while I rejoice.

_1st Woman_.
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.

_Vashti_.
I must!

_3rd Woman_.
Thou must indeed: words such as thine
Never were impudent in men's ears before.

_2nd Woman_.
We will not have thee disobedient.

_1st Woman_.
Here comes another: gentle words, my Queen,
Let him take from thee now, and swiftly follow
Contrite, and let the beauty of thy grief
Bend pleading against the King's furious eyes.

[_The_ POET _comes in, and kneels_.

_Poet_.
I will not ask thee what strange anger sent
That blaze of proud contempt in the King's face:
But ere the voice of the King seals up thy life
In an unalterable judgment, I
Am granted now to come as his last message:
And, as I will, to speak. Here then I am
Not as commanding, but on my knees beseeching,
And for myself beseeching.

_Vashti_.
What hast thou
To do with this? and wherefore wert thou chosen?

_Poet_.
I was to praise the splendour of the King;
And I made thee his splendour; and the King,
Knowing my truth, would have thee brought, to break
All the pride of his under-kings, already
Desperate with his riches, and now seeing
What marvellous fortune also hath his love,
How marvellously delighted.

_Vashti_.
Get thee back:
And tell the King 'tis time his judgment fell.

_Poet_.
Not till thou hearest me.

_Vashti_.
I will not hear thee.
Wouldst thou go on before me, and say, Look,
This is the woman which I told you of,
You kings; does she not, as I said, stir up
Quaking desire through all your muscles? Look,
And thank the King for showing you his lust! --
I will not hear thee.

_Poet_.
Dost thou not know, my Queen,
That, when I taught thee songs, thou taughtest me
The divine secret, Beauty? My small tunes
Were games to thee; but now I am he who knows
How man may walk upon Eternity
Wearing the world as a god wears his power,
The world upon him as a burning garment;
For I am he whose spirit knoweth beauty,--
And thou art the knowledge, Queen! Therefore thou must
Come with me to the kings of all the nations;
For the whole earth must know of thee. These kings,
Though it be but a lightning-moment struck
Upon the darkness of their ignorant hearts,
Must know what I know; that there is a beauty,
Only in thee shown forth in bodily sign,
Which can of life make such triumphant glee,
The force of the world seems but man's spirit utter'd.

_Vashti_.
And what am I to know? --This must, no doubt,
Content me, that we are as wine, and men
By us have senses drunk against his toil
Of knowing himself, for all his boasting mind,
Caught by the quiet purpose of the world,
Burnt up by it at last, like something fallen
In molten iron streaming. But I know
Not drunken may man's soul master his world;
And I now make for woman a new mood,
Wherein she will not bear to know herself
A heady drug for man. --I will not come.

_Poet_.
I, who have brought thy insult on the King,
Will scarce escape his judgment. But not this
My pleading. Seest thou not how wonderfully
The mean affairs of living fill with gleam,
Like pools of water lying in the sun,
Because above men's minds renown of thee,
The certain knowledge of beauty, now presides?
It must not be that thou, for a whim of scorn,
Wilt let thyself be made unseen, unheard of.
Beauty is known in thee; but, without thee,
It is a rumour buzzing hardly heard.
And without beauty men are scurrying ants,
Rapid in endless purpose unenjoyed;
Or newts in holes under the banks of ponds,
Feeding and breeding without sound or light.
For the one thing that is the god in man
Is a delight that admirably knows
Itself delighted; and it is but beauty.
And thou art beauty known.

_Vashti_.
Truly, I say,
I know not how to bear it; that for you
To feel yourselves, though in the depth of the world,
Dizzy, and thence as if elate on high,
We women are devised like drunkenness.
And what are we to make of ourselves here,
When in the joy of us you think the world
No more than your spirits crying out for joy?
Is this your love, to dream a god of man,
And women to keep as wine to make you dream? --
Now, back! or the eunuchs handle thee.

[_He goes_.

_Vashti_.
You will not hear of me after this night,
And thus I say farewell. It may be, far
In time not yet appointed, our life's spirit
Will know its fate, through all the thickets of grief,
As simply and as gladly as one's eyes
Greet the blue weather shining behind trees.
Yea, and I think there will be more than this:
Is not the world a terrible thing, a vision
Of fierce divinity that cares not for us?
Do we not seem immortal good desire,
Mortally wronged by capture in swift being
Made of a world that holds us firm for ever?
And yet is it not beautiful, the world?
How read you that? How is our wrong delightful?
Thus it is: Spirit finding the world fair,
Is spirit in dim perception of its own
Radiant desire piercing the worldly shadow.
But what is dim will become glorious clear:
All in a splendour will the Spirit at last
Stand in the world, for all will be naught else
But Spirit's own perfect knowledge of itself;
Yea, this dark mighty seeming of the world
Is but the Spirit's own power unsubdued;
And as the unruled vigours of thought in sleep
Crowd on the brain, and become dream therein;
So the strange outer forces of man's spirit
Are the appearing world. But all at last,
Subdued, becomes self-knowing ecstasy,
The whole world brightens into Spirit's desire.
This is for Spirit to be lord of life;
And man, with foolish hope looking for this,
Takes the ravishing drunkenness he hath
From us, for knowledge of the Spirit's power.
But it will come by love. It will be twain
Who go together to this height of mastery
Over the world, governing it as song
Is govern'd by the heart of him who sings;
But never one by means of one shall reach it:
Not man alone, nor woman alone, but each
Enabling each, together, twain in one.

[_The_ KING'S MESSENGER _comes in_.

_Messenger_.
I speak to the rebellious woman Vashti.
Thou art no more a Queen; thou hast no place
In the King's house, nor in the life of men:
Thus art thou judged. Go forth now; let the night
Befriend thee, for no other friend thou hast,
For the day shall reveal thee to men's eyes,
And they, obedient to the King, will hate thee.
Therefore be gone: and as the beasts have homes
In the wild ground, have thy home from henceforth.

_Vashti_.
Gives the King reason for this judgment?

_Messenger_.
Yea;
Because thou art a danger to all marriage,
Because men are dishonoured in their rule
Of women by thy insult, thou art judged.

_2nd Woman_.
But if the King had heard her crazy words
He would have put her where they tame with thongs
Maniacs.

_4th Woman_.
When the King hath slept, we will
To-morrow crave his presence, and will stand
In humble troop before him, thanking him
For that his virtue hath this wicked woman
Purged from among us, saved us from infection.

_1st Woman_.
Alas, my Queen! where lies thy journey now?

_Vashti_.
Ay, where to go? What shelter for me now
Will any of the dwelt earth dare to give?
My beauty as a branding now will mark me;
And shame will run before me, and await
My coming, wheresoever I would lodge.
For out of Shushan to the ends of the earth
Great news runs, with a hidden soundless speed
Through secret channels in the folks' dim mind,
As water races through smooth sloping gutters.
Swifter than any feet could bear the tale,
Going unheard, already posts abroad
A buried river, and will soon burst up
In towns and markets, far as the width of day,
A bubbling clamour, wonderful wild news:
"Vashti the Queen is judged and forced to go
Roaming the earth, outcast and infamous;
Look out for her! Be ready, if she comes,
With stones and hooting voices! "--Fare you well,
Women whom once I knew. You are quit of me:
Pardon me if I add, And I of you.


IV

Into the darkness fared the outcast Queen;
Fearless her face, and searching with proud gaze
The impenetrable hour. Behind her burned
The sky, held by the open kiln of the town
In a great breath of fire, yellow and red,
From out the festival streets, and myriad links.
Still might she taste, and still must choke to taste,
The fragrance of sweet oils and gums aflame
Capturing the cool night with spicy riches;
Still after her through the hollow moveless air
The sounded ceremonies came, the cry
Of dainty lust in winding tune of fifes,
The silver fury of cymbals clamouring
Like frenzy in a woman-madden'd brain;
And drumming underneath the whole wild noise,
Like monstrous hatred underneath desire,
The thunder of the beaten serpent-skins.
Yea, in the town behind her, flaring Shushan,
She heard Man, meaning to adore himself,
Throned on the wealth of earth as God in heaven,
And making music of his glorying thought,
Merely betray the mastery of his blood,
His sexual heart, his main idolatry,--
Woman, and his lust to devour her beauty,
Himself devoured ceaselessly by her beauty.
And well she knew, to herself bitterly smiling,
How the King seated amid his fellow-kings
Devised his grievous rage, feeling himself
Insulted in his dearest mind, his rule
Over the precious pleasure of his women
Wounded: how the man's wrath would hiss and swell
Like gross spittle spat into red-hot coals.
But as the Queen fared through the blinded hour,
Sudden against the darkness of her eyes
There came a wind of light. Crimson it was,
With smokey lightnings braided, in its first
Swift surge into the gloom before her face;
But it began to golden, and became
Astonishingly white. And as she stood
With rigour in her nerves, a mighty shudder
Ravish the light, and in the midst appeared
Vision, a goddess, terrible and kind;
And to the Queen the goddess spoke, in voice
That healed her anger with its quietness.

_Ishtar_.
I am the goddess Ishtar, and thou art
My servant. Wilt any of thou help me?

_Vashti_.
Am I then one whom gods may help? I am
By men judged hateful: surely I am thereby
Made over to the demons, and not thine.

_Ishtar_.
Yet art thou mine, because thou knowest well
Thou disobeyest me.

_Vashti_.
How do I so?

_Ishtar_.
I am the goddess of the power of women,
And passion in the hearts of men is my
Divinity.

_Vashti_.
Yea, then I disobey thee.

_Ishtar_.
And yet thou shalt not fear me wronging thee:
Tell me, O thou Despair, whither thou goest?

_Vashti_.
Thy taunt goes past me; I am not despair.

_Ishtar_.
Verily, but thou art. Is not thy mind
A hot revolter from the service due
To my divinity, passion in men's hearts?
Is there aught else that thou mayst serve? Thou knowest
There is naught else: therefore thou art Despair.

_Vashti_.