No More Learning

I do begin to doubt our enterprise,
The grand Escape from Woman. It lookt brave
And nobly hazardous afar off, to cease
All wenching, whether in deed or word or thought.
And yet I fear pride egged us. We had done
Better to be more humble, and bring here
A girl apiece.

_Valentine_.
Yes, Sylvan; you must think
The cloister were a thing more comfortable
With your Katrina in it?

_Sylvan_.
My Katrina!
And do you think, supposing I would love,
I'ld bank in such a crazy safe as that
Katrina? One of those soft shy-spoken maids,
Who are only maids through fear? Whose life is all
A simpering pretence of modesty?
If it was love I wanted, 'twould not be
A dish of sweet stewed pears, laced with brandy.
But I can do without a woman's kisses.

_Valentine_.
Can you? --You know full well, in the truth of your heart,
That there's no man in all the world of men
Whose will woman's beauty cannot divide
Easily as a sword cuts jetting water.

_Sylvan_.
Have you not heard, that even jetting water
May have such spouting force, that it becomes
A rod of glittering white iron, and swords
Will beat rebounding on its speed in vain? --
Of such a force I mean to have my will.

[_He sits and stares moodily out to sea. His companions
whisper each other_.

_Valentine_.
Here, Francis! Look you yonder. O but this,
This is the joke of the world!

_Francis_.
Hallo! a girl!
And, by the Lord, Katrina! --But why here?

_Valentine_.
She's followed him, of course; she's heard of this
Mad escapade and followed after him.

_Francis_.
She has not seen us yet. Now what to do?

_Valentine_.
Quick! Where's your handkerchief? Truss his wrists and ankles,
And pull his coat up over his head and leave him!
He won't get free of her again; she'll lead
His wildness home and keep him tame for ever.
Now!

[_They fall on him, bind him, and blindfold him_.

_Sylvan_.
What are you doing? Whatever are you doing?
Hell burn you, let me go!

_Valentine_.
There's worse to come.

[_They make off, and leave_ SYLVAN _shouting_.
KATRINA _runs in_.

_Katrina_.
Dear Heaven! Were they robbers? Have they hurt you?

[_She releases him. He stands up_.

_Sylvan_.
Katrina!

_Katrina_.
Sylvan!

_Sylvan_.
How did you plot this?
I thought I'd put leagues between you and me.

_Katrina_.
Why have you come here?

_Sylvan_.
To find you, it seems.
But what you're doing here, that I'ld like to know.

_Katrina_.
I came to see my grandmother: she lives
All by herself, poor grannam, and it's time
She had some help about the house, and care.

_Sylvan_.
Let's have a better tale. You followed me.

_Katrina_.
Sylvan, how dare you make me out so vile?

_Sylvan_.
How dare you mean to make this body of mine
A thing with no thought in it but your beauty?

_Katrina_.
You shall not speak so wickedly. You've had
The half of my truth only: here's the whole.
It was from you I fled! I hoped to make
My grannam's lonely cottage something safe
From you and what I hated in you.

_Sylvan_.
Love? --
Ah, so it's all useless.

_Katrina_.
I feared to know
You wanted me,--horribly I feared it.
And now you've found me out.

_Sylvan_.
Is this the truth? --
No help for it, then.

_Katrina_.
O, I'm a liar to you!

_Sylvan_.
Strange how we grudge to be ruled! rather than be
Divinely driven to happiness, we push back
And fiercely try for wilful misery. --
Dearest, forgive me being cruel to you,
You who are in life like a heavenly dream
In the evil sleep of a sinner.

_Katrina_.
No, you hate me.

_Sylvan (kissing her)_.
Is this like hatred?

_Katrina (in his arms)_.
Sylvan, I have been
So wrencht and fearfully used. It was as if
This being that I live in had become
A savage endless water, wild with purpose
To tire me out and drown me.

_Sylvan_.
Yes, I know:
Like swimming against a mighty will, that wears
The cruelty, the race and scolding spray
Of monstrous passionate water.

_Katrina_.
Hold me, Sylvan
I'm bruised with my sore wrestling.

_Sylvan_.
Ah, but now
We are not swimmers in this dangerous life.
It cannot beat upon our limbs with surf
Of water clencht against us, nor can waves
Now wrangle with our breath. Out of it we
Are lifted; and henceforward now we are
Sailors travelling in a lovely ship,
The shining sails of it holding a wind
Immortally pleasant, and the malicious sea
Smoothed by a keel that cannot come to wreck.

_Katrina_.
Alas, we must not stay together here.
Grannam will come upon us.

_Sylvan_.
Where is she?

_Katrina_.
Yonder, gathering driftwood for her fire.
There is a little bay not far from here,
The shingle of it a thronging city of flies,
Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach;
And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,--
Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships.
An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds
The bottom of the bay deep strewn with seaweed,
A barn full of the harvesting of storms;
And at full tide, the little hampered waves
Lift up the litter, so that, against the light,
The yellow kelp and bracken of the sea,
Held up in ridges of green water, show
Like moss in agates. And there is no place
In all the coast for wreckage like this bay;
There often will my grannam be, a sack
Over her shoulders, turning up the crust
Of sun-dried weed to find her winter's warmth.

_Sylvan_.
Is that she coming?

_Katrina_.
O Sylvan, has she seen us?

_Sylvan_.
What matter if she has?

_Katrina_.
But it would matter!

_Sylvan_.
Katrina, come with me now! We'll go together
Back to my house.

_Katrina_.
No, no, not now! I must
Carry my grannam's load for her: 'tis heavy.

_Sylvan_.
We must not part again.

_Katrina_.
No, not for long;
For if we do, there will be storms again,
I know; and a fierce reluctance--O, a mad
Tormenting thing! --will shake me.

_Sylvan_.
Then come now!

_Katrina_.
Not now, not now! Look how my poor grannam
Shuffles under the weight; she's old for burdens.
I must carry her sack for her.

_Sylvan_.
Well, to-night!

_Katrina_.
To-night? --O Sylvan! dare I?

_Sylvan_.
Yes, you dare!
You will be knowing I'm outside in the darkness,
And you will come down here and give me yourself
Wholly and forever.

_Katrina_.
O not to-night!

_Sylvan_.
I shall be here, Katrina, waiting for you.
[_He goes_.

_The old woman comes in burdened with her sack_.

_Grandmother_.
Katrina, that was a young man with you.

_Katrina_.
O grannam, you've had luck to-day; but now
It's I must be the porter.

_Grandmother (giving up the sack)_.
Ay, you take it.
It's sore upon my back. You should have care
Of these young fellows; there's a devil in them.
Never you talk with a man on the seashore
Or on hill-tops or in woods and suchlike places,
Especially if he's one you think of marrying.

_Katrina_.
Marrying? I shall never be married!

_Grandmother_.
Pooh!
That's nonsense.

_Katrina_.
I should think 'twas horrible
Even to be in love and wanting to give
Yourself to another; but to be married too,
A man holding the very heart of you,--

_Grandmother_.
He never does, honey, he never does. --
We're late; come along home.

II

_In_ SYLVAN'S _house_. SYLVAN _and_ KATRINA _talking to
each other and betweenwhiles thinking to themselves_.

_Sylvan_.
How pleasant and beautiful it is to be
At last obedient to love! (_To know
Also, I've sold myself,--is that so pleasant_? )

_Katrina_.
I cannot think, why such a glorious wealth
As this of love on our hearts should be spent.
What have we done, that all this gain be ours?
(_Nor can I think why my life should be mixt,
Even its dearest secrecy, with another_. )

_Sylvan_.
Ay, there's the marvel! If to enter life
Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages,
As they let sacking soldiers take home loot:
But we are shuffled into life like puppets
Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then
Made spenders of the joys current in heaven!
(_Not such a marvel neither, if this love
Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul.
Who's the old trader that has lent this girl
The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with?
Who is it,--the world, or the devil, or God--that wants
To buy me from myself? _)

_Katrina_.
And then how vain
To think we can hold back from being enricht!
It is not only offered--

_Sylvan_.
No, 'tis a need
As irresistible within our hearts
As body's need of breathing.
(_That I should be
So avaricious of his gleaming price! _)

_Katrina_.
And the instant force it has upon us, when
We think to use love as a privilege!
We are like bees that, having fed all day
On mountain-heather, go to a tumbling stream
To please their little honey-heated thirsts;
And soon as they have toucht the singing relief,
The swiftness of the water seizes them.

_Sylvan_.
And onward, sprawling and spinning, they are carried
Down to a drowning pool.

_Katrina_.
O Sylvan, drowning?
(_Deeper than drowning! Why should it not be
Our hearts need wish only what they delight in_? )

_Sylvan_.
Well, altogether gript by the being of love.
(_Yes, now the bargain's done; and I may wear,
Like a cheated savage, scarlet dyes and strings
Of beaded glass, all the pleasure of love_! )

_Katrina_.
It is a wonderful tyranny, that life
Has no choice but to be delighted love!
(_I know what I must do: I am to abase
My heart utterly, and have nothing in me
That dare take pleasure beyond serving love.
Thus only shall I bear it; and perhaps--
Might I even of my abasement make
A passion, fearfully enjoying it_? )

_Sylvan_.
You are full of thoughts, sweetheart?

_Katrina_.
And so are you:
A long while since you kist me! (_What have I said?
O fool so to remind him! I shall scarce
Help crying out or shuddering this time! --
Ah no; I am again a fool! Not thus
I am to do, but in my heart to break
All the reluctance; it must have on me
No pleasure; else I am endlessly tortured_. )
Then I must kiss you, Sylvan!

[_She kisses him_.

_Sylvan_.
Ah, my darling!
(_God! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound
Must shake a fiddle when the strings are snatcht!
Will she make the life in me all a slave
Of my kist body,--a trembling, eager slave?
It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense,
The shivering delight upon my skin,
Of her lips touching me_. ) My beloved,--
It may be it were wise, that we took care
Our pleasant love come never in the risk
Of being too much known.

_Katrina_.
O what a risk
To think of here! Love is not common life,
But always fresh and sweet. Can this grow stale?

[_She kisses him again_.

_Sylvan_.
O never! I meant not so. --Yes, always sweet!
(_She must not kiss me! Ah, it leaves my heart
Aghast, and stopt with pain of the joy of her;
And her loved body is like an agony
Clinging upon me. O she must not kiss me!
I will not be a thing excruciated
To please her passion, an anguish of delight! _)




PART III

VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION




JUDITH


I

THE BESIEGED CITY OF BETHULIA

JUDITH (_at the window of an upper room of her house_).

This pitiable city! --But, O God,
Strengthen me that I bend not into scorn
Of all this desperate folk; for I am weak
With pitying their lamentable souls.
Ah, when I hear the grief wail'd in the streets,
And the same breath their tears nigh strangle, used
To brag the God in them inviolate
And fighting off the hands of the heathen,--Lord,
Pardon me that I come so near to scorn;
Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed
The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn! --
Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead
Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses
Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone
Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls
Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds
Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams:
The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime
Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick
That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea,
Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh
Sodden of infants: and no hope alive
Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish
Until Assyrian swords drown it in death;--
These, and abandoned words like these, I hear
Daylong shrill'd and groan'd in the lanes beneath.
What needeth Holofernes more? The Jews,
The People of God, the Jews, lament their fortune;
Their souls are violated by the world;
Jewry is conquered; and the crop of men
Sown for the barns of God, is withered down,
Like feeblest grass flat-trodden by the sun,
In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire
Can do no more destruction on this folk:
A fierce untimely mowing now befits
This corn incapable of sacred bread,
This field unprofitable but to flame!
What should the choice of God do for a people,
But give them souls of temper to withstand
The trying of the furnace of the world? --
And they are molten, and from God's device
Unfashion'd, crazed in dismay; yea, God's skill
Fails in them, as the skill a founder put
In brass fails when the coals seize on his work.
For this fierce Holofernes and his power,
This torture poured on the city, is no more
Than a wild gust of wicked heat breathed out
Against our God-wrought souls by the world's furnace.
No new thing, this camp about the city:
Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men
But fearfully image, like a madman's dream,
The fierce infection of the world, that waits
To soil the clean health of the soul and mix
Stooping decay into its upward nature.
Soul in the world is all besieged: for first
The dangerous body doth desire it;
And many subtle captains of the mind
Secretly wish against its fortune; next,
Circle on circle of lascivious world
Lust round the foreign purity of soul
For chance or violence to ravish it.
But the pure in the world are mastery.
Divinely do I know, when life is clean,
How like a noble shape of golden glass
The passions of the body, powers of the mind,
Chalice the sweet immortal wine of soul,
That, as a purple fragrance dwells in air
From vintage poured, fills the corrupting world
With its own savour. And here I am alone
Sound in my sweetness, incorrupt; the rest
(They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour;
The world has meddled with them. They have broacht
The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst
Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows.
Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world,
And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state,
When they should have no fortune but themselves
And the God in them, and be sealed therein.
Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness,
Where only love may drink, and only--alas! --
The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him,
For him and God, and for my sacred self!
But hark, a troop of new woe comes this way,
Making the street to ring and the stones wet
With cried despair and brackish agony.

CITIZENS _lamenting in the street below_.
They have crawled back like beasts dying of thirst,
The life all clotted in them. They went out
Soldiers, and back like beaten dogs they came
Breathing in whines, slow maimed four-footed things
On hands and knees degraded, groaning steps.
Their brains were full of battle, they were made
Of virtue, brave men; now in their brains shudder
Minds that cringe like children burnt with fever.
Often they stood to face the enemies' ranks
All upright as a flame in windless air,
Wearing their arm and the bright skill of swords
Like spirits clad in flashing fire of heaven;
And now in darken'd rooms they lie afraid
And whimper if the nurse moves suddenly. --
Ah God, that such an irresistible fiend,
Pain, in the beautiful housing of man's flesh
Should sleep, light as a leopard in its hunger,
Beside the heavenly soul; and at a wound
Leap up to mangle her, the senses' guest! --
That in God's country heathen men should do
This worse than murder on men full of God!

_Judith_.
What matter of new wailing do your tongues
Wear in this shivering misery of sound?

_A Citizen_.
The captains which were chosen to go out
And treat with Holofernes have come back.

_Judith_.
And did the Ninevite demon treat with them?

_A Citizen_.
The words they had from him were flaying knives,
And burning splinters fixt in their skinless flesh,
And stones thrown till their breasts were broken in.

_Judith_.
What, torture our embassage?

_A Citizen_.
Yea, for he means
Nothing but death to all the Jews he takes.

_Another_.
There was a jeering word tied round the neck
Of each tormented man: "Behold, ye Jews,
These chiefs of yours have learnt to crawl in prayer
Before the god Nebuchadnezzar; come,
Leave your city of thirst and your weak god,
And learn good worship even as these have learnt. "

_Another_.
I saw them coming in: O horrible!
With broken limbs creeping along the ground--

_Judith_.
Were I a man among you, I would not stay
Behind the walls to weep this insolence;
I'ld take a sword in my hand and God in my mind,
And seek under the friendship of the night
That tent where Holofernes' crimes and hate
Sleep in his devilish brain.

_A Citizen_.
There is no night
Where Holofernes sleeps, as thou couldst tell.
Didst thou not shut thyself up in thine ease
Away from the noise and tears of common woe.
Come to the walls this evening, and I'll show thee
The golden place of light, the little world
Of triumphing glory framed in midst of the dark,
Pillar'd on four great bonfires fed with spice,
Enclosing in a globe of flame the tent
Wherein the sleepless lusts of Holofernes
Madden themselves all night, a revel-rout
Of naked girls luring him as he lies
Filling his blood with wine, the scented air
Injur'd marvellously with piping shrills
Of lechery made music, and small drums
That with a dancing throb drive his swell'd heart
Into desires beyond the strength of man.

_Judith_.
And this beast is thine enemy, God!

_Another Citizen_.
Nor beast,
Nor man, but one of those lascivious gods
Our lonely God detests, Chemosh or Baal
Or Peor who goes whoring among women.

_Another_.
And now come down braving in God's own land,
Pitching the glory of his fearful heaven
All night among God's hills.

_Judith_.
You fools, he is
A life our God could snap as a woman snaps
Thread of her sewing.

_A Citizen_.
Who shall break him off,
Who on the earth, from his huge twisted power?

_Another_.
For in his brain, as in a burning-glass
Wide glow of sun drawn to a pin of fire,
Are gathered into incredible fierceness all
The rays of the dark heat of heathen strength.

_Another_.
His eyes, they say, can kill a man.

_Another_.
And sure
No murder could approach his naming nights.

_Another_.
Unless it came as a woman at whose beauty
His lust hath never sipt; for into his flesh
To drink unknown desirable limbs as wine
Torments him still, like a thirst when fever pours
A man's life out in drenching sweats.

_Judith_.
Peace, peace;
The siege hath given you shameless tongues, and minds
No more your own: yea, the foul Ninevite
Hath mastered you already, for your thoughts
Dwell in his wickedness and marvel at it.
Hate not a thing too much, lest you be drawn
Wry from yourselves and close to the thing ye hate.

_A Citizen_.
We know thy wisdom, Judith; but our lives
Belong to death; and wisdom to a man
Dying, is water in a broken jar.

_Judith_.
Yea, if thou wilt die of a parching mouth.

_A Citizen_.
Thou art rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine.
But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood
Hastens us on to maniac agony.
The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks
Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud:
The water left to us is pestilent.
And therefore have we asked the governors
For death: and it is granted us.

_Another_.
Five days
Hath Prince Ozias bidden us endure.

_Another_.
For there are still fools among us who dare trust
God has not made a bargain of our lives.

_Another_.
We are a small people, and our war is weak:
Who knows whether our God doth not desire
Armies and great plains full of spears and horses,
And cities made of bronze and hewn white stone
And scarlet awnings, throng'd with sworded men,
To shout his name up from the earth and kill
All crying at the gates of other heavens;
And hath grown tired of peaceable praise and folk
That in a warren of dry mountains dwell,
Whose few throats can make little noise in heaven.

_A Young Man_.
For sure God's love hath wandered to strange nations;
His pleasure in the breasts of Jerusalem
Is a delight grown old. Yea, he would change
That shepherd-woman of the earthly cities,
Whose mind is as the clear light of her hills,
Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling;
And poureth his desire out, belike,
Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad,
Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods
Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts;
Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire,
Full of the sound of amazing flames of music.

_Another_.
Yea, what can Israel offer against her,
Whom the rich earth out of her mines hath shod,
And crowned with emeralds grown in secret rocks,
Who on her shoulders wears the gleam of the sea's
Purple and pearls, and the flax of Indian ground
Is linen on her limbs cool as moonlight,
And fells of golden beasts cover her throne;
Whose passion moves in her thought as in the air
Melody moves of flutes and silver horns:
What can Jerusalem the hill-city
Offer to keep God's love from Babylon?

_Judith_.
What but the beauty of holiness, and sound
Of music made by hearts adoring God?
You that speak lewdly of God, you yet shall see
Jerusalem treading upon her foes.
But what was that of five days one of you spoke?

_A Citizen_.
Ozias sware an oath: hast thou not heard?

_Judith_.
No, for I keep my mind away from your tongues
Wisely. Who walks in wind-blown dust of streets,
That hath a garden where the roses breathe?

_A Citizen_.
I have no garden where the roses breathe;
I have a city full of women crying
And babies starving and men weak with thirst
Who fight each other for a dole of water.

_Another_.
Not only thou hast pleasant garden-hours,
Judith, here in Bethulia; the Lord Death
Has bought the city for his garden-close,
And saunters in it watching the souls bloom
Out of their buds of flesh, and with delight
Smelling their agony.

_Another_.
But in five days
Either our God will turn his mind to us,
Or, if he careth not for us nor his honour,
Ozias will let open the main gate
And let the Assyrians end our dreadful lives.

_Judith_.
O I belong to a nation utterly lost!
God! thou hast no tribe on the earth; thy folk
Are helpless in the living places like
The ghosts that grieve in the winds under the earth.
Remember now thy glory among the living,
And let the beauty of thy renown endure
In a firm people knitted like the stone
Of hills, no mischief harms of frost or fire;
But now dust in a gale of fear they are.
They have blasphemed thee; but forgive them, God;
And let my life inhabit to its end
The spirit of a people built to God. --
So you have given God five days to come
And help you? You would make your souls as wares
Merchants hold up to bidders, and say, "God,
Pay us our price of comfort, or we sell
To death for the same coin"? Five days God hath
To find the cost of Jewry, or death buys you?

_A Citizen_.
Here comes Ozias: ask him.

_Judith_.
Hold him there.

[JUDITH _comes down into the street_.

_Ozias_.
Judith, I came to speak with thee.

_Judith_.
And I
Would speak with thee. What tale is this they tell
That thou hast sworn to give this people death?

_Ozias_.
In five days those among us who still live
Will have no souls but the fierce anguish of thirst.
If God ere then relieves us, well. If not,
We give ourselves away from God to death.

_Judith_.
Darest thou do this wickedness, and set
Conditions to the mercy of our God?

_Ozias_.
Death hath a mercy equal unto God's. --
Look at the air above thee; is there sign
Of mercy in that naked splendour of fire?
Too Godlike! We are his: he covers us
With golden flame of air and firmament
Of white-hot gold, marvellous to see.
But whom, what heathen land hated of God,
Do his grey clouds shadow with comfort of rain?
Over our chosen heads his glory glows:
And in five days the torment in his city
Will be beyond imagining. We will go
Through swords into the quiet and cloud of death.

_Judith_.
Ozias, wilt thou be an infamy?
Bethulia fallen, all Judea lies
Open to the feet and hoofs of Assyria.

_Ozias_.
Yea, and what doth Judea but cower down
Behind us? There's no rescue comes from there.
We are alone with Holofernes' power.

_Judith_.
But if we hold him off, will he not grant
The meed of a brave fight, captivity? --
Or we may treat with him, make terms for yielding.

_Ozias_.
We know his mind: he hath written it plain
In the torn flesh of our ambassadors.
His mind to us is death; we can but choose
Between sharp swords and the slow slaying of thirst.