_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 G.o.d 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 a.s.syrians end our dreadful lives.

_Judith_.

O I belong to a nation utterly lost!

G.o.d! 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, G.o.d; And let my life inhabit to its end The spirit of a people built to G.o.d.-- So you have given G.o.d five days to come And help you? You would make your souls as wares Merchants hold up to bidders, and say, "G.o.d, Pay us our price of comfort, or we sell To death for the same coin"? Five days G.o.d 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 G.o.d ere then relieves us, well. If not, We give ourselves away from G.o.d to death.

_Judith_.

Darest thou do this wickedness, and set Conditions to the mercy of our G.o.d?

_Ozias_.

Death hath a mercy equal unto G.o.d's.-- Look at the air above thee; is there sign Of mercy in that naked splendour of fire?

Too G.o.dlike! 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.syria.

_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 amba.s.sadors.

His mind to us is death; we can but choose Between sharp swords and the slow slaying of thirst.

_Judith_.

He may torment us if we yield.

_Ozias_.

He may.

But not to yield is grisly and sure torment.

_Judith_.

There must be hope, if we could reckon right!

_Ozias_.

Well, thou and G.o.d have five days more to build A bridge of hope over our broken world.

And, for the town even now fearfully aches In scalding thirst, not five days had I granted, Had it not been for somewhat I must say Secretly to thee.

_Judith_.

Secretly? Then here; Send off these men to labour at their groans Elsewhere; for not within my house thou comest; I'll have no thoughts against G.o.d in my house.

[OZIAS _disperses the citizens_.

_Ozias_.

Judith, we are two upright minds in this Herd of grovelling cowardice. We should, To spiritual vision which can see Stature of spirit, seem to stand in our folk Like two unaltered stanchions in the heap Of a house pulled down by fire. I know thy soul Tempered by trust in G.o.d against this ruin; But not in G.o.d, but in mortality Thy soul stands founded; and death even now Is digging at thy station in the world; And as a man with ropes and windla.s.ses Pulls for new building columns of wreckt halls Down with a breaking fall, so death has rigged His skill about us, so he will break us down, Ruin our height and courage; and as stone, Carved with the beautiful pride of kings, hath made, Hammer'd to rubble and ground for mortar, walls Of farms and byres, our kill'd and broken natures, With all their beauty of pa.s.sion, yea, and delight In G.o.d, death will shape and grind up to new Housing for souls not royal as we are, New flesh and mind for mean souls and dull hearts: For death is only life destroying life To roof the coming swarms in mortal shelter Of flesh and mind experienced in joy.

_Judith_.

Thy specious prologue means no good, I trow.

Thou wert to tell me wherefore for five days We may pretend to be G.o.d's people still; Why thou didst not make us over to death Soon as the folk began to wail despair.

_Ozias_.

This reasoning will tell thee why.--No need, I think, to bring up into speech the years Since in the barley-field Mana.s.ses lay Shot by the sun. I tried (nor failed, I think), To hold thy soul up from its hurt, and be Somewhat of sight to thee, until thy long Blind season of disaster should be changed.

Always I have found friendship in thine eyes; And pleasant words, and silences more pleasant, Have made us moments wherein all the world Left our sequester'd minds; so that I dared Often believe our friendliness might be The brink of love.

_Judith_.

Stop! for thou hast enough Disgraced mine ears.

_Ozias_.

I pray thee hear me out.

The dream of loving thee and being loved Hath been my life; yea, with it I have kept My heart drugg'd in a long delicious night Colour'd with candles of imagined sense, And musical with dreamt desire. I said, The day will surely come upon the world, To scatter this sweet night of fantasy With morning, pour'd on my dream-feasted heart Out of thine eyes, Judith. And yet I still Feared for my dream, even as a maiden fears The body of her lover. But, in the midst Of all this charm'd delaying,--behold Death Leapt into our world, lording it, standing huge In front of the future, looking at us!