II
(The same night. Nero’s private chamber in his villa at Baiae. Nero is discovered asleep in his state robes on a couch, where he has evidently thrown himself down, overcome by the stupor incident to the feast of the night. Beside the couch is a writing stand, bearing writing materials. A few lights burn dimly. Nero groans, cries out, and, as though terrified by a nightmare, sits up, trembling and staring upon some projected vision of his sleep. He is yet only half awake.)
Nero
Oh—oh—begone, blear thing!—She is not dead!
You are not she—my mother!—Ghastly head—
Trunkless—and oozing green gore like the sea,
Wind-stabbed! Begone! Go—do not look at me—
I will not be so tortured!—Eyes burned out
With scorious hell-spew!—Locks that grope about
To clutch and strangle!
(He has got up from the couch and now struggles with something at his throat, still staring at the thing.)
Off! Off!
(In an outburst of terrified tenderness extends his arms as toward a woman.)
Mother—mother—come
Into these arms—speak to me—be not dumb!
Stare not so wildly—kiss me as of old!
Be flesh again—warm flesh! Oh green and cold
As the deep grave they gave you!
‘Twas not I!
Mother, ‘twas not my will that you should die—
‘Twas hers!—I hate her! Mother, pity me!
Oh, is it you?—Sole goddess of the sea
I shall proclaim you! Pity! I shall pour
The hot blood of your foes on every shore,
A huge libation! Hers shall be the first!
I swear it! May my waking be accursed,
My sleep a-swarm with furies if I err!
(He has advanced a short distance toward what he sees, but now shrinks back burying his face in his robe.)
Go!—Spare me!—Guards! Guards!
(Three soldiers, who have been standing guard without the chamber, rush in and stand at attention.)
Seize and shackle her!
There ‘tis!—eh?
(He stares blankly, rubs his eyes.)
It is gone!
(Blinks at soldiers, and cries petulantly.)
What do you here?
First Soldier
Great Caesar summoned us.
Nero
(Glancing nervously about.)
The night is blear—
Make lights! I will not have these shadow things
Crawling about me! Poisoners of kings
Fatten on shadows! Quick there, dog-eyed scamp,
Lean offal-sniffer! Kindle every lamp!
(Soldier tremblingly takes a lamp and lights a number of others with its flame. Stage is flooded with light.)
By the bronze beard I swear there shall be lights
Enough hereafter, though I purge the nights
With conflagrating cities, till the crash
Of Rome’s last tower beat up the smouldering ash
Of Rome’s last city!
So—I breathe again!
Some cunning, faceless god who hated men
Devised this curse of darkness! What’s the hour?
Second Soldier
The third watch wanes.
Nero
Too late! Too late! The power
Of Nero Caesar can not stay the sun!
The stars have marched against me—it is done!
And all Rome’s legions could not rout this swarm
Of venom-footed moments!
—She was warm
One little lost eternity ago.
(With awakening resolution.)
‘Twas not my deed! I did not wish it so!
Some demon, aping Caesar, gave the word
While Lucius Aenobarbus’ eyes were blurred
With too much beauty!
Oh, it shall be done!
Ere these unmothered eyes behold the sun,
She shall have vengeance, and that gift is mine!
(To First Soldier.)
Rouse the Praetorians! Bid a triple line
Be flung about the palace!
(To Second Soldier.)
Send me wine—
Strong wine to nerve a resolution!
(To Third Soldier.)
You—
Summon Poppaea!
(The Soldiers go out.)
This deed I mean to do
Unties the snarl, but broken is the thread.
Would that the haughty blood these hands will shed
Might warm my mother! that the breath I crush—
So—(clutching air) from that throat of sorceries, might rush
Into the breast that loved and nurtured me!
The heart of Nero shivers in the sea,
And Rome is lorn of pity!
Could the world
And all her crawling spawn this night be hurled
Into one woman’s form, with eyes to shed
Rivers of scalding woe, her towering head
Jeweled with realms aflare, with locks of smoke,
Huge nerves to suffer, and a neck to choke—
That woman were Poppaea! I would rear
About the timeless sea, my mother’s bier,
A sky-roofed desolation groined with awe,
Where, nightly drifting in the stream of law,
The vestal stars should tend their fires, and weep
To hear upon the melancholy deep
That shipless wind, her ghost, amid the hush!
Alas! I have but one white throat to crush
With these world-hungry fingers!
(From behind Nero, enter Page—a little boy—bearing a goblet of wine on a salver. Nero turns, startled.)
Ah!—You!—You!
Page
I bring wine, mighty Caesar.
(Nero passes his hand across his face, and the expression of fright leaves.)
Nero
So you do—
I saw—the boy Brittanicus!—One sees—
Things—does one not?—such eerie nights as these?
Page
(With eager boyish earnestness.)
With woozy heads?
Nero
(Irritably.)
The wine!
(The Page, startled, presents the salver, from which Nero takes the goblet with unsteady hand. Page is in the act of fleeing.)
Stay!
(Page stops and turns tremblingly.)
Never dare
Again to look like—anyone! Beware!
(Page’s head shakes a timid negative. Nero stares into goblet and muses.)
Blood’s red too. Ah, a woman is the grape
Ripe for the vintage, from whose flesh agape
Glad feet tonight shall stamp the hated ooze!
It boils!—See!—like some witch’s pot that brews
Venomous ichor!—Nay—some angry ghost
Hurls bloody breakers on a bleeding coast!—
’Tis poisoned!—Out, Locusta’s brat!
(Hurls goblet at Page, who flees precipitately.)
‘Twas she!
The hand that flung my mother to the sea
Now pours me death!
Alas, great Hercules
Too long has plied the distaff at the knees
Of Omphale, spinning a thread of woe!
Was ever king of story driven so
By unrelenting Fate? Lo, round on round
The slow coils grip and choke—a mother drowned,
Her wrathful spirit rising from the dead—
A gentle wife outcast, discredited,
With sighs to wake the dread Eumenides!
Some thunder-hearted, vaster Sophocles,
His aeon-beating blood the stellar stream,
Has flung on me the mantle of his dream,
And Nero grapples Fate! O wondrous play!
With smoking brand aloft, the haggard Day
Gropes for the world! Pursued by subtle foes,
Superbly tragic ‘mid a storm of woes,
The fury-hunted Caesar takes the cue!
One time-outstaring deed remains to do,
Then let the pit howl—Caesar sings no more!
Go ask the battered wreckage on the shore
Who sought his mother in a sudden sleep,
To be with her forever on the deep
A twin ship-hating tempest!
(Enter Anicetus excitedly.)
Anicetus
Lost! We’re lost!
The Roman ship yaws rock-ward tempest-tossed
And Nero is but Lucius in the wreck!
Nero
Croak on! Each croak’s a dagger in that neck,
You vulture with the hideous dripping beak,
The clutching tearing talons that now reek
With what dear sacred veins!
Anicetus
O Caesar, hear!
So keen the news I bear you, that I fear
To loose it like the arrow it must be.
I know not why such wrath you heap on me;
I know what peril deepens ‘round my lord;
How, riven by the lightning of the sword,
The doom-voiced blackness labors round his head!
Nero
Say what I know, that my poor mother’s dead—
So shall your life be briefer!
Anicetus
Would ‘t were so!
Nero
(A light coming into his face.)
She lives?
Anicetus
Yea, lives—and lives to overthrow!
Nero
Not perished?
Anicetus
—And her living is our death!
Nero
She moves and breathes?
Anicetus
—And potent is her breath
To blow rebellion up!
Nero
(Rubbing his eyes.)
Still do I sleep?
Is this a taunting dream that I may weep
More bitterly? Or some new foul intrigue?
Anicetus
‘Tis bitter fact to her who swam a league,
And bitter fact to Nero shall it be!
At Bauli now, still dripping from the sea,
She crouches snarling!
Nero
(In an outburst of joy.)
Oh, you shall not die,
My best-loved Anicetus! Though you lie,
Sweeter these words are than profoundest truth!
They breathe the fresh, white morning of my youth
Upon the lampless night that smothered me!
O more than human Sea
That spared my mother that her son might live!
What bounty can I give?
I—Caesar—falter beggared at this gift
Of living words that lift
My mother from the regions of the dead!
Ah—I shall set a crown upon your head,
Snip you a kingdom from Rome’s flowing robe!
I’ll temple you in splendors! Yea, I’ll probe
Your secret heart to know what wishes pant
In wingless yearning there, that I may grant!
(Pause, while Anicetus regards Nero with gloomy face.)
What sight thus makes your face a pool of gloom?
Anicetus
The ghost of Nero crying from his tomb!
Nero
(Startled.)
Eh?—Nero’s ghost—mine?
Anicetus
Even so I said.
The doomed to perish are already dead
Who woo not Fate with swift unerring deeds!
That breathless moment when the tigress bleeds
Is ours to strike in, ere the tigress spring!
What could it boot your servant to be king
While any moment may the trumpets cry,
Hailing the certain hour when we shall die—
Caesar, the deaf, and his untrusted slave?
Peer deep, peer deep into this yawning grave
And tell me who shall fill it!—Wind and fire,
Harnessed with thrice the ghost of her dead sire,
Your mother is tonight! She knows, she knows
How galleys founder when no tempest blows
And moonlight slumbers on a glassy deep!
The beast our wound has wakened shall not sleep
Till it be gorged with slaughter, or be slain!
Lull not your heart, O Caesar! It is vain
To dream this cub-lorn tigress will not turn.
Lo, flaring through the dawn I see her burn,
A torch of revolution! Hear her raise
The legions with a voice of other days,
Worded with pangs to fret their ancient scars!
And every sword-wound of her father’s wars
Will shriek aloud with pity!
Nero
(During Anicetus’ speech he has shown growing fear.)
Listen!—There!
You heard it?—Did you hear a trumpet blare?
Anicetus
‘Tis but the shadow of a sound to be
One rushing hour away!
Nero
(In panic.)
Where shall I flee?—
I, the sad poet whom she made a king!
At last we flesh the ghost of what we sing—
We bards!—I sang Orestes.
(His face softens with a gentler thought.)
Ah—I’ll go
To my poor heartsick mother. Tears shall flow,
The tears of Lucius, not imperial tears.
I’ll heap on her the vast, too vast arrears
Of filial love. The Senate shall proclaim
My mother regnant with me—write her name
Beside Augustus with the demigods!
Yea, lictors shall attend her with the rods,
And massed Praetorians tramp the rabble down
Whene’er her chariot flashes through the town!
One should be kind to mothers.
Anicetus
Yea, and be
Kind to the senseless fury of the sea,
Fondle the tempest in a rotten boat!
Nero
What would you, Anicetus?
Anicetus
Cut her throat!
(Nero gasps and shrinks from Anicetus.)
Nero
No, no!—her ghost!—one can not stab so deep—
One can not kill these tortures spawned of sleep!
No, no—one can not kill them with a sword!
Anicetus
Faugh! One good thrust—the rest is air, my lord!
(Enter Page timorously. Nero turns upon him.)
Page
(Frightened.)
Spare me, good Caesar!—Agerinus—
Nero
Go!
Bid Agerinus enter!
(Page flees. Nero to Anicetus menacingly.)
We shall know
What breath from what damned throat tonight shall hiss!
(Enter Agerinus, bowing low.)
Agerinus
My mistress sends fond greetings and a kiss
To her most noble son, and bids me say,
She rests and would not see him until day.
The royal galley, through unhappy chance,
Struck rock and foundered; but no circumstance
So meagre might deprive a son so dear
Of his beloved mother! Have no fear,
The long swim leaves her weary, but quite well.
She knows what tender love her son would tell
And yearns for dawn to bring him to her side.
Nero
(To Anicetus.)
So! Spell your doom from that! You lied! You lied!
I’ll lance that hateful fester in your throat!
Yea, we shall prove who rides the rotten boat
And supplicates the tempest!
(With a rapid motion, Nero draws Agerinus’ sword from its sheath. Anicetus shrinks back. Nero cries to Agerinus.)
Wait to see
The loving message you bear back from me!
(Nero brandishing the sword, makes at Anicetus. As he is about to deliver the stroke, enter Poppaea from behind. She has evidently been quite leisurely about her toilet, being dressed gorgeously; and wearing her accustomed half-veil. Her manner is stately and composed. She approaches slowly. Nero stops suddenly in the act to strike Anicetus, and stares upon the beautiful apparition. Anger leaves his face, which changes as though he had seen a great light.)
Poppaea
(Languidly.)
My Nero longed for me?
(Nero with his free hand brushes his eyes in perplexity.)
Nero
I—can not—tell—
What—‘twas—I wished—I wished—
Poppaea
(Haughtily.)
Ah, very well.
(She walks slowly on across the stage. Nero stares blankly after her. The sword drops from his hand. As Poppaea disappears, he rouses suddenly as from a stupor.)
Nero
Ho! Guards!
(Three soldiers enter. Nero points to Agerinus.)
There—seize that wretch who came to kill Imperial Caesar!
(Agerinus is seized. Nero turns to Anicetus.)
Hasten! Do your will!
(Nero turns, and with an eager expression on his face, goes doddering after Poppaea.)