Thou seest now why, when the people came Crying wildly to be given up to death, I bade them wait five days?--That I at last Might stamp the image of my glorious dream Upon the world, even though it be wax And the fires are kindling that must melt it out.

Judith, thou hast now five days more to live This life of beautiful pa.s.sion and sweet sense: And now my love comes to thee like an angel To call thee out of thy visionary love For lost Mana.s.ses, out of ghostly desire And shadows of dreams housing thy soul, that are Vainer than mine were, dreams of dear things which death Hath for ever broken; and lead thy life To a brief shadowless place, into an hour Made splendid to affront the coming night By pa.s.sion over sense more grandly burning Than purple lightning over golden corn, When all the distance of the night resounds With the approach of wind and terrible rain, That march to torment it down to the ground.

Judith, shall we not thus together make Death admirable, yea, and triumph through The gates of anguish with a prouder song Than ever lifted a king's heart, who rode Back from his war, with nations whipt before him, Into trumpeting Nineveh?

_Judith_.

Thou fool, Death is nothing to me, and life is all.

But what foul wrong have I done to thee, Ozias, That thou shouldst go about to put such wrong Into my life as these defiling words?

_Ozias_.

Is it defilement to hear love spoken?

_Judith_.

Yes! thou hast soiled me: to know my beauty, Wherewith I loved Mana.s.ses, and still love, Has all these years dwelt in thy heart a dream Of favourite l.u.s.t,--O this is foul in my mind.

_Ozias_.

I meant not what thou callest l.u.s.t, but love.

_Judith_.

What matters that? Thou hast desired me.

And knowing that, I feel my beauty clutch About my soul with a more wicked shame Than if I lived corrupt with leprosy.

_Ozias_.

Wilt thou still let the dead have claim on thee?

Judith, wilt thou be married to a grave?

_Judith_.

I am married to my love; and it is vile, Yea, it is burning in me like a sin, That when my love was absent, thy desire Shouldst trespa.s.s where my love is single lord.

_Ozias_.

This is but superst.i.tion. Love belongs To living souls. It is a light that kills Shadows and ghosts haunting about the mind.

Yea, even now when death glooms so immense Over the heaven of our being, Love Would keep us white with day amid the dark Down-coming of the storm, till the end took us.

And joy is never wasted. If we love, Then although death shall break and bray our flesh, The joy of love that thrilled in it shall fly Past his destruction, subtle as fragrance, strong And uncontrollable as fire, to dwell In the careering onward of man's life, Increasing it with pa.s.sion and with sweetness.

Duty is on us therefore that we love And be loved. Wert thou made to set alight Such splendour of desire in man, and yet, For a grave's sake, keep all thy beauty null, And nothing be of good nor help to thy kind?

_Judith_.

Help? What help in me?

_Ozias_.

To let go forth The joy whereof thy beauty is the sign Into the mind of man, and be therein Courage of golden music and loud light Against his enemies, the eternal dark And silence.

_Judith_.

Ah, not thus. Yet--could I not help?-- Why talk we? What thing should I say to thee To pierce the pride of l.u.s.t wrapping thy heart?

How show thee that, as in maidens unloved There is virginity to make their s.e.x Shrink like a wound from eyes of love untimely, So in a woman who hath learnt herself By her own beauty sacred in the clasp Of him whom her desire hath sacred made, There is a fiercer and more virgin wrath Against all eyes that come desiring her?

[_A Psalm of many voices strikes their ears, and through the street pa.s.s old men chanting, followed and answered by a troop of young men_.

_Chorus: Old Men_.

Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord G.o.d of our strength?

Wilt thou still be blindly trying us? Wilt thou not at length Believe the crying of our words, that never our knees have bent To foreign G.o.ds, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones Worshipt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, and groans?

_Young Men_.

And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee, Hath G.o.d paid to purchase our purity?

Though l.u.s.t starve in our flesh, still he devises fire To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire.

With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here, Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher: Tribes who better than we deal with the G.o.ds their lords, For they pleasantly sin, yet the G.o.ds sharpen and drive their swords.

_Old Men_.

Hast thou not tried us enough, Jehovah? Hast thou found any fire Will draw from our hearts a smoke of burn'd idolatrous desire?

There is none in us, Lord: no other G.o.d in us but thee; Only thy fires make our clean souls glitter with agony.

Pure we are, pure in our prayers, pure our souls look to thee, Lord; And to be shewn to the world devoured by evil is our reward.

_Young Men_.

We whose hearts were alone giving our G.o.d renown, Under the wheels of h.e.l.l we are fallen down!

False the heaven we built, fashion'd of purity; 'Tis heathen heavens, made out of sin, stand high.

Come, make much of our G.o.d! Comfort his ears with song, Lest his pride the G.o.ds with their laughter wrong, Seeing, huddled as beasts held by a fearful night Full of lions and hunger, his folk crouch to the heathen might.

_Old Men_.

Jehovah, still we refrain from crying to the infamous gates That open easily into the heavens thy mind of jealousy hates.

Power is in them: hast thou no power? Wilt thou not beware Lest thy mood now press our minds to venturous despair?

_Young Men_.

Fool'd, fool'd, fool'd are our lives, held by the world in jeer; With crazed eyes we behold veils of enormous fear Hiding dreadfully those marvellous gates and stairs Where the heathen delighted with sin throng with their prosperous prayers.

_Old Men_.

Yea, hung like the front of pestilent winds, thunderous dark before The way into the heathen heavens, terrible curtains pour, Webs of black imagination and woven frenzy of sin; And yet we know power on earth belongs to those within.

_Young Men_.

Yea, through Jehovah's jealousy, Burning dimly at last we see The great bra.s.s made like rigid flame, The gates of the heavens we dare not name.

Take hold of wickedness! Yea, have heart To tear the darkness of sin apart; And find, beyond, our comforted sight Flash full of a glee of fiery light,-- The G.o.ds the heathen know through sin, The G.o.ds who give them the world to win!

_Judith_.

This may I not escape. My world hath need Of me who still hold G.o.d firm in my mind.

It is no matter if I fail: I must Send the G.o.d in me forth, and yield to him The shaping of whatever chance befall.-- Ozias! hateful thou hast made thyself To me; for thou hast hatefully soiled my beauty, My preciousest, given me to attire my soul For her long marriage festival of life.

Yet I must make request to thee, and thou Must grant it. When the sun is down to-night, Quietly set the main gate open: I Will pa.s.s therethrough and treat with Holofernes.

_Ozias_.

What, wilt thou go to be murdered by these fiends?

_Judith_.

Ask nothing, but do simply my request.

_Ozias_.

I will: so thou shalt know the reverent heart I have for thee, although its worship thou So bitterly despisest; but thy will Shall be a sacred thing for me to serve.

Thou hast thy dangerous demand, because It is thou who askest, it is I who may Grant it to thee,--this only! Yea, I will send Thy heedless body among risks that thou, Looking alone at the great shining G.o.d Within thy mind, seest not; but I see And sicken at them. Yet do I not require Thy purpose; whether thy proud heart must have The wound of death from steel that has not toucht The peevish misery these Jews call blood; Whether thy mind is for velvet slavery In the desires of some a.s.syrian lord-- Forgive me, Judith! there my love spoke, made Foolish with injury; and I should be Unwise to stay here, lest it break the hold I have it in. I go, and I am humbled.

But thou shalt have thy asking: the gate is thine.

[_He goes_.

_Judith_.

How can it harm me more, to feel my beauty Read by man's eyes to mean his l.u.s.t set forth?

Yea, Holofernes now can bring no shame Upon me that Ozias hath not brought.

But this is chief: what balance can there be In my own hurt against a nation's pining?