Abide,
And thou shalt know as I know.
Enter Giorgio Schiavone
Speak. I say,
Speak. What thou art I know: and what I am
Thou knowest—and yet thou knowest not.
GIORGIO
Holiest sire,
Last night I kept my boat on Tiber—Sire,
The thing I saw was nothing of my deed—
It shook me out of sleep to see it—Lord,
Have mercy: look not so upon me.
ALEXANDER
Dog,
Speak, while thy tongue is thine.
GIORGIO
Two men came down
And peered along the water-side: and two
Came after—men whose eyes raked all the night,
Searching the shore—I lay beneath my boat—
Beside it on the darkling side—and saw.
Then came a horseman—Sire, his horse was white—
The moonshine made his mane like dull white fire—
And on his crupper heavily hung a corpse,
Arms held from swaying on this side, legs on that,
I know not which on either—but the men
Held fast that held: and hard on Tiber side
They swung the crupper towards the water—sharp
And swift as man may steer a horse—and caught
And slung their dead into the stream: and he
Drifted, and caught the moon across his face
That shone like life against it: and the chief
Till then sat silent as the moon at watch,
And then bade hurl stones on the drifting dead
And sink him out of sight; and seeing this done,
Rode thence, and they strode after.
ALEXANDER