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a monologue from
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SARDANAPALUS
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SARDANAPALUS: I saw, that is, I dreamed myself
- Here—here—even where we are, guests as we were,
- Myself a host that deemed himself but guest,
- Willing to equal all in social freedom;
- But, on my right hand and my left, instead
- Of thee and Zames, and our customed meeting,
- Was ranged on my left hand a haughty, dark,
- And deadly face; I could not recognise it,
- Yet I had seen it, though I knew not where:
- The features were a giant's, and the eye
- Was still, yet lighted; his long locks curled down
- On his vast bust, whence a huge quiver rose
- With shaft-heads feathered from the eagle's wing,
- That peeped up bristling through his serpent hair.
- I invited him to fill the cup which stood
- Between us, but he answered not; I filled it;
- He took it not, but stared upon me, till
- I trembled at the fixed glare of his eye:
- I frowned upon him as a king should frown;
- He frowned not in his turn, but looked upon me
- With the same aspect, which appalled me more,
- Because it changed not; and I turned for refuge
- To milder guests, and sought them on the right,
- Where thou wert wont to be. But—
- In thy own chair—thy own place in the banquet—
- I sought thy sweet face in the circle—but
- Instead—a grey-haired, withered, bloody-eyed,
- And bloody-handed, ghastly, ghostly thing,
- Female in garb, and crowned upon the brow,
- Furrowed with years, yet sneering with the passion
- Of vengeance, leering too with that of lust,
- Sate—my veins curdled! Upon
- Her right hand—her lank, bird-like, right hand—stood
- A goblet, bubbling o'er with blood; and on
- Her left, another, filled with—what I saw not,
- But turned from it and her. But all along
- The table sate a range of crowned wretches,
- Of various aspects, but of one expression.
- It was so palpable, I could have touched them.
- I turned from one face to another, in
- The hope to find at last one which I knew
- Ere I saw theirs: but no—all turned upon me,
- And stared, but neither ate nor drank, but stared,
- Till I grew stone, as they seemed half to be,
- Yet breathing stone, for I felt life in them,
- And life in me: there was a horrid kind
- Of sympathy between us, as if they
- Had lost a part of death to come to me,
- And I the half of life to sit by them.
- We were in an existence all apart
- From heaven or earth—And rather let me see
- Death all than such a being!
- At last I sate, marble, as they, when rose
- The Hunter and the Crone; and smiling on me—
- Yes, the enlarged but noble aspect of
- The Hunter smiled upon me—I should say,
- His lips, for his eyes moved not—and the woman's
- Thin lips relaxed to something like a smile.
- Both rose, and the crowned figures on each hand
- Rose also, as if aping their chief shades—
- Mere mimics even in death—but I sate still:
- A desperate courage crept through every limb,
- And at the last I feared them not, but laughed
- Full in their phantom faces. But then—then
- The Hunter laid his hand on mine: I took it,
- And grasped it—but it melted from my own;
- While he too vanished, and left nothing but
- The memory of a hero, for he looked so.
- Aye, Myrrha, but the woman,
- The female who remained, she flew upon me,
- And burnt my lips up with her noisome kisses;
- And, flinging down the goblets on each hand,
- Methought their poisons flowed around us, till
- Each formed a hideous river. Still she clung;
- The other phantoms, like a row of statues,
- Stood dull as in our temples, but she still
- Embraced me, while I shrunk from her, as if,
- In lieu of her remote descendant, I
- Had been the son who slew her for her incest.
- Then—then—a chaos of all loathsome things
- Thronged thick and shapeless: I was dead, yet feeling—
- Buried, and raised again—consumed by worms,
- Purged by the flames, and withered in the air!
- I can fix nothing further of my thoughts,
- Save that I longed for thee, and sought for thee,
- In all these agonies—and woke and found thee.
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