Re-enter CUPBEARER, with wine.

Sar. [taking the cup from him]. Noble kinsman, If these barbarian Greeks of the far shores And skirts of these our realms lie not, this Bacchus

Conquer'd the whole of India, did he not?

are

Sal. He did, and thence was deem'd a deity. Sar. Not so:-of all his conquests a few columns Which may be his, and might be mine, if I Thought them worth purchase and conveyance, The landmarks of the seas of gore he shed, The realms he wasted, and the hearts he broke. But here, here in this goblet is his title To immortality-the immortal grape From which he first express'd the soul, and gave To gladden that of man, as some atonement For the victorious mischiefs he had done. Had it not been for this, he would have been A mortal still in name as in his grave; And, like my ancestor Semiramis, A sort of semi-glorious human monster. Here's that which deified him-let it now Humanise thee; my surly, chiding brother, Pledge me to the Greek god.

Sal.
For all thy realms
I would not so blaspheme our country's creed.
Sar. That is to say, thou thinkest him a hero,
That he shed blood by oceans; and no god,
Because he turn'd a fruit to an enchantment,
Which cheers the sad, revives the old, inspires
The young, makes weariness forget his toil,
And fear her danger; opens a new world
When this, the present, palls. Well, then I pledge
thee

And him as a true man, who did his utmost
In good or evil to surprise mankind.

[Drinks.

Sal. Wilt thou resume a revel at this hour? Sar. And if I did, 'twere better than a trophy, Being bought without a tear. But that is not My present purpose: since thou wilt not pledge

me,

Continue what thou pleasest. [To the CUPBEARER.]

Boy, retire. [Exit CUPBEARER.

(1) "For this expedition he took only a small chosen body of the phalanx, but all his light troops. In the first day's march he reached Anchialus, a town said to have been

Sal. I would but have recall'd thee from thy dream;

Better by me awaken'd than rebellion.

Sar. Who should rebel? or why? what cause? pretext ?

I am the lawful king, descended from

A race of kings who knew no predecessors.
What have I done to thee, or to the people,
That thou shouldst rail, or they rise up against me?
Sal. Of what thou hast done to me, I speak not.
Sar.

But Thou think'st that I have wrong'd the queen: is't

not so?

Sal. Think! Thou hast wrong'd her!
Sar.
Patience, prince, and hear me.
She has all power and splendour of her station,
Respect, the tutelage of Assyria's heirs,
The homage and the appanage of sovereignty.
I married her, as monarchs wed-for state,
And loved her as most husbands love their wives.
If she or thou supposedst I could link me
Like a Chaldean peasant to his mate,
Ye knew nor me, nor monarchs, nor mankind.
Sal. I pray thee change the theme: my blood
disdains

Complaint, and Salemenes' sister seeks not
Reluctant love, even from Assyria's lord!
Nor would she deign to accept divided passion
With foreign strumpets and Ionian slaves.
The queen is silent.

Sar.
And why not her brother?
Sal. I only echo thee the voice of empires,
Which he who long neglects not long will govern.
Sar. The ungrateful and ungracious slaves! they

murmur

Because I have not shed their blood, nor led them
To dry into the desert's dust by myriads,

Or whiten with their bones the banks of Ganges;
Nor decimated them with savage laws,
Nor sweated them to build up pyramids,
Or Babylonian walls.

Sal.
Yet these are trophies
More worthy of a people and their prince
Than songs, and lutes, and feasts, and concubines,
And lavish'd treasures, and contemned virtues.

Sar. Or for my trophies I have founded cities; There's Tarsus and Anchialus both built In one day-what could that blood-loving beldame, My martial grandam, chaste Semiramis, Do more except destroy them?

Sal.

'Tis most true;

Sal. A worthy moral, and a wise inscription, For a king to put up before his subjects!

Sar. Oh, thou wouldst have me doubtless set up edicts

"Obey the king-contribute to his treasure-
Recruit his phalanx-spill your blood at bidding-
Fall down and worship, or get up and toil."
Or thus-"Sardanapalus on this spot
Slew fifty thousand of his enemies.

These are their sepulchres, and this his trophy."
I leave such things to conquerors; enough
For me, if I can make my subjects feel
The weight of human misery less, and glide
Ungroaning to the tomb: I take no license
Which I deny to them. We all are men.

Sal. Thy sires have been revered as gods—
Sar.
In dust
And death, where they are neither gods nor men.
Talk not of such to me! the worms are gods;
At least they banqueted upon your gods,
And died for lack of further nutriment.

Those gods were merely men; look to their issue-
I feel a thousand mortal things about me,
But nothing godlike,—unless it may be
The thing which you condemn, a disposition
To love and to be merciful, to pardon

The follies of my species, and (that's human)
To be indulgent to my own.

Sal.

Alas!

And thine and mine; and in another day
What is shall be the past of Belus' race.
Sar. What must we dread?
Sal.
Ambitious treachery,
Which has environ'd thee with snares; but yet
There is resource: empower me with thy signet
To quell the machinations, and I lay
The heads of thy chief foes before thy feet.
Sar. The heads-how many?
Sal.
Must I stay to number
When even thine own's in peril? Let me go;
Give me thy signet-trust me with the rest.

Sar. I will trust no man with unlimited lives.
When we take those from others, we nor know
What we have taken, nor the thing we give.
Sul. Wouldst thou not take their lives who seek
for thine ?

singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play; all other human joys are not worth a fillip.' Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to civil order a people disposed to turbulence, rather than to recommend immoderate luxury, may perhaps reasonably be questioned. What, indeed, could be the object of a king of Assyria in founding such towns in a country so distant from his capital, and so divided from it by an immense extent of sandy desert and lofty mountains, and, still more, how the inhabitants could be at once in circumstances to abandon themselves to the intemperate joys which their prince has been supposed to have recommended, is not obvious; but it may deserve ob

Sal. That thou this night forbear the banquet In the pavilion over the Euphrates.

Sar. Forbear the banquet! Not for all the plotters

That ever shook a kingdom! Let them come,
And do their worst: I shall not blench for them
Nor rise the sooner; nor forbear the goblet;
Nor crown me with a single rose the less;
Nor lose one joyous hour.-I fear them not.
Sal. But thou wouldst arm thee, wouldst thou
not, if needful?

Sar. Perhaps. I have the goodliest armour, and
A sword of such a temper; and a bow
And javelin, which might furnish Nimrod forth:
A little heavy, but yet not unwieldy.

And now I think on't, 'tis long since I've used

servation that, in that line of coast, the southern of Lesser Asia, ruins of cities, evidently of an age after Alexander, yet barely named in history, at this day astonish the adventurous traveller by their magnificence and elegance. Amid the desolation which, under a singularly barbarian government, has for so many centuries been daily spreading in the finest countries of the globe, whether more from soil and climate, or from opportunities for commerce, extraordinary means must have been found for communities to flourish there; whence it may seem that the measures of Sardanapalus were directed by juster views than have been commonly ascribed to him; but that monarch having been the last of a dynasty ended by a revolution, obloquy on his memory would follow of course from the policy of his successors and their partiThe inconsistency of traditions concerning Sardanapalus is striking in Diodorus's account of him."-MITFORD'S Greece, vol. ix. p. 311, 312, 313.

sans.

To revel and to rail; it irks me not.
I would not give the smile of one fair girl
For all the popular breath that e'er divided
A name from nothing. What are the rank tongues
Of this vile herd, grown insolent with feeding,
That I should prize their noisy praise, or dread
Their noisesome clamour ?

Sul.

You have said they are men; As such their hearts are something. Sar.

So my dogs' are;
And better, as more faithful:-but, proceed;
Thou hast my signet :-since they are tumultuous,
Let them be temper'd, yet not roughly, till
Necessity enforce it. I hate all pain,

Given or received; we have enough within us,
The meanest vassal as the loftiest monarch,
Not to add to each other's natural burthen
Of mortal misery, but rather lessen,
By mild reciprocal alleviation,

The fatal penalties imposed on life:

But this they know not, or they will not know.

I have, by Baal! done all I could to soothe them :

I made no wars, I added no new imposts,

I interfered not with their civic lives,

I let them pass their days as best might suit them:
Passing my own as suited me.

Sal.
Thou stopp'st
Short of the duties of a king; and therefore
They say thou art unfit to be a monarch.

Sar. They lic.-Unhappily, I am unfit
To be aught save a monarch; else for me
The meanest Mede might be the king instead.

Sal. There is one Mede, at least, who seeks to

be so.

Sar. What mean'st thou P-'tis thy secret; thou

desirest

Few questions, and I'm not of curious nature.
Take the fit steps; and since necessity
Requires, I sanction and support thee. Ne'er
Was man who more desired to rule in peace
The peaceful only if they rouse me, better
They had conjured up stern Nimrod from his ashes,
"The mighty hunter." I will turn these realms
To one wide desert chase of brutes, who were,
But would no more, by their own choice, be human.
What they have found me, they belie; that which
They yet may find me-shall defy their wish
To speak it worse; and let them thank themselves.
Sal. Then thou at last canst feel?
Sar.
Ingratitude ?

Feel! who feels not

Sal. I will not pause to answer With words, but deeds. Keep thou awake that energy Which sleeps at times, but is not dead within thee, And thou may'st yet be glorious in thy reign, As powerful in thy realm. Farewell!

[Exit SALEMENES. Farewell!

Sar. [solus]. He's gone; and on his finger bears my signet, Which is to him a sceptre. He is stern As I am heedless; and the slaves deserve To feel a master. What may be the danger, I know not: -he hath found it, let him quell it. Must I consume my life-this little lifeIn guarding against all may make it less ? It is not worth so much! It were to die Before my hour, to live in dread of death,

Tracing revolt; suspecting all about nie,
Because they are near; and all who are remote,
Because they are far. But if it should be so-
If they should sweep me from earth and empire,
Why, what is earth or empire of the earth?"
I have loved, and lived, and multiplied my image;
To die is no less natural than those
Acts of this clay! "Tis true I have not shed
Blood as I might have done, in oceans, till
My name became the synonyme of death-
A terror and a trophy. But for this
I feel no penitence; my life is love:
If I must shed blood, it shall be by force.
Till now, no drop from an Assyrian vein
Hath flow'd for me, nor hath the smallest coin
Of Nineveh's vast treasures e'er been lavish'd
On objects which could cost her sons a tear :
If then they hate me, 'tis because I hate not:
If they rebel, 'tis because I oppress not.
Oh, men! ye must be ruled with scythes, not

;

I suffer'd them--from slaves and nobles when they falter from the lips I love, lips which have been press'd to mine, a chill comes o'er my heart, a cold sense of the falsehood

Of this my station, which represses feeling

In those for whom I have felt most, and makes me
Wish that I could lay down the dull tiara,
And share a cottage on the Caucasus

To try so much? When he who is their ruler
Forgets himself, will they remember him?
Sar. Myrrha !

Myr. Frown not upon me; you have smiled Too often on me not to make those frowns Bitterer to bear than any punishment

flowers.

To think of aught save festivals. Thou hast not
Spurn'd his sage cautions ?
Sar.
What?-and dost thou fear?
Myr. Fear!-I'm a Greek, and how should I fear
death?

A slave, and wherefore should I dread my freedom?

Sar. Then wherefore dost thou turn so pale?
Myr.

I love.
Sar. And do not I! I love thee far-far inore
Than either the brief life or the wide realm
Which, it may be, are menaced ;-yet I blench not.
Myr. That means thou lovest nor thyself nor

Although a Greek, and born a foe to monarchs-
A slave, and hating fetters-an Ionian,
And, therefore, when I love a stranger, more
Degraded by that passion than by chains!
Still I have loved you. If that love were strong
Enough to overcome all former nature,
Shall it not claim the privilege to save you?

Sar. Save me, my beauty! Thou art very fair,
And what I seek of thee is love-not safety.
Myr. And without love, where dwells security?
Sar. I speak of woman's love.
Myr.

The very first Of human life must spring from woman's breast, Your first small words are taught you from her lips,

Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs

Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing,
When men have shrunk from the ignoble care
Of watching the last hour of him who led them.
Sar. My eloquent Ionian! thou speak'st music;
The very chorus of the tragic song

I have heard thee talk of as the favourite pastime
Of thy far father-land. Nay, weep not calm thee.
Myr. I weep not-but I pray thee, do not speak
About my fathers or their land.

Sar.

Thou speakest of them. Myr.

Yet oft

True true constant thought Will overflow in words unconsciously;

But when another speaks of Greece, it wounds me. Sar. Well, then, how wouldst thou save me, as

thou saidst ?

Myr. By teaching thee to save thyself, and not Thyself alone, but these vast realms, from all The rage of the worst war-the war of brethren.

Sar. Why, child, I loathe all war and warriors; I live in peace and pleasure; what can man Do more!

Myr.

Alas! my lord, with common men There needs too oft the show of war to keep The substance of sweet peace; and, for a king, 'Tis sometimes better to be feared than loved. Sar. And I have never sought but for the last. Myr. And now art neither.

Sar.
Dost thou say so, Myrrha ?
Myr. I speak of civic popular love, self-love,
Which means that men are kept in awe and law,
Yet not oppress'd-at least, they must not think so,
Or if they think so, deem it necessary,

To ward off worse oppression, their own passions.
A king of feasts, and flowers, and wine, and revel,
And love, and mirth, was never king of glory.
Sar. Glory! what's that?
Myr.
Ask the gods of thy fathers.
Sar. They cannot answer: when the priests speak
for them,

'Tis for some small addition to the temple.

To revel and to rail; it irks me not.
I would not give the smile of one fair girl
For all the popular breath that e'er divided
A name from nothing. What are the rank tongues
Of this vile herd, grown insolent with feeding,
That I should prize their noisy praise, or dread
Their noisesome clamour ?

Sul.

You have said they are men; As such their hearts are something. Sar.

So my dogs' are;
And better, as more faithful:-but, proceed;
Thou hast my signet :-since they are tumultuous,
Let them be temper'd, yet not roughly, till
Necessity enforce it. I hate all pain,

Given or received; we have enough within us,
The meanest vassal as the loftiest monarch,
Not to add to each other's natural burthen
Of mortal misery, but rather lessen,
By mild reciprocal alleviation,

The fatal penalties imposed on life:

But this they know not, or they will not know.

I have, by Baal! done all I could to soothe them:

I made no wars, I added no new imposts,

I interfered not with their civic lives,

I let them pass their days as best might suit them:
Passing my own as suited me.

Sal.
Thou stopp'st
Short of the duties of a king; and therefore
They say thou art unfit to be a monarch.

Sar. They lic.-Unhappily, I am unfit
To be aught save a monarch; else for me
The meanest Mede might be the king instead.

Sal. There is one Mede, at least, who seeks to

be so.

Few questions, and I'm not of curious nature.
Take the fit steps; and since necessity
Requires, I sanction and support thee. Ne'er
Was man who more desired to rule in peace
The peaceful only if they rouse me, better
They had conjured up stern Nimrod from his ashes,
"The mighty hunter." I will turn these realms
To one wide desert chase of brutes, who were,
But would no more, by their own choice, be human.
What they have found me, they belie; that which
They yet may find me-shall defy their wish
To speak it worse; and let them thank themselves.
Sal. Then thou at last canst feel?
Sar.
Ingratitude ?
Sal.
I will not pause to answer
With words, but deeds. Keep thou awake that
energy

Feel! who feels not

Which sleeps at times, but is not dead within thee,
And thou may'st yet be glorious in thy reign,
As powerful in thy realm. Farewell!

[Exit SALEMENES. Farewell!

Sar. [solus]. He's gone; and on his finger bears my signet, Which is to him a sceptre. He is stern As I am heedless; and the slaves deserve To feel a master. What may be the danger, I know not: -he hath found it, let him quell it. Must I consume my life-this little lifeIn guarding against all may make it less? It is not worth so much! It were to die Before my hour, to live in dread of death,

Tracing revolt; suspecting all about me,
Because they are near; and all who are remote,
Because they are far. But if it should be so-
If they should sweep me from earth and empire,
Why, what is earth or empire of the earth?
I have loved, and lived, and multiplied my image;
To die is no less natural than those

Acts of this clay! 'Tis true I have not shed
Blood as I might have done, in oceans, till
My name became the synonyme of death-
A terror and a trophy. But for this
I feel no penitence; my life is love:
If I must shed blood, it shall be by force.
Till now, no drop from an Assyrian vein
Hath flow'd for me, nor hath the smallest coin
Of Nineveh's vast treasures e'er been lavish'd
On objects which could cost her sons a tear:
If then they hate me, 'tis because I hate not:
If they rebel, 'tis because I oppress not.

Oh, men! ye must be ruled with scythes, not sceptres,

And mow'd down like the grass, else all we reap
Is rank abundance, and a rotten harvest
Of discontents infecting the fair soil,
Making a desert of fertility.-
I'll think no more.

Sar.

-Within there, ho!

Enter an ATTENDANT.

Slave, tell

The Ionian Myrrha we could crave her presence. Attend. King, she is here.

Thou dost almost anticipate my heart;
It throbb'd for thee, and here thou comest: let me
Deem that some unknown influence, some sweet
oracle

Communicates between us, though unseen,
In absence, and attracts us to each other.
Myr. There doth.

Sar. What is it? Myr.

I know there doth, but not its name :

In my native land a god, And in my heart a feeling like a god's, Exalted; yet I own 'tis only mortal; For what I feel is humble, and yet happyThat is, it would be happy; but

[MYRRIA pauses.

There comes

Sar. For ever something between us and what We deem our happiness; let me remove The barrier which that hesitating accent Proclaims to thine, and mine is seal'd. Myr. Sar. My lord-my king-sire-sovereign; thus it is

For ever thus, address'd with awe.

My lord!

I ne'er

Can see a smile, unless in some broad banquet's
Intoxicating glare, when the buffoons
Have gorged themselves up to equality,
Or I have quaffed me down to their abasement.
Myrrha, I can hear all these things, these names,
Lord-king-sire-monarch-nay, time was I
prized them;