CHRISTUS. Woman, thy faith hath saved thee! Go in peace!
THE SECOND PASSOVER.
I
BEFORE THE GATES OF MACHAERUS
MANAHEM. Welcome, O wilderness, and welcome, night And solitude, and ye swift-flying stars That drift with golden sands the barren heavens, Welcome once more! The Angels of the Wind Hasten across the desert to receive me; And sweeter than men's voices are to me The voices of these solitudes; the sound Of unseen rivulets, and the far-off cry Of bitterns in the reeds of water-pools. And lo! above me, like the Prophet's arrow Shot from the eastern window, high in air The clamorous cranes go singing through the night. O ye mysterious pilgrims of the air, Would I had wings that I might follow you!
I look forth from these mountains, and behold The omnipotent and omnipresent night, Mysterious as the future and the fate That hangs o'er all men's lives! I see beneath me The desert stretching to the Dead Sea shore, And westward, faint and far away, the glimmer Of torches on Mount Olivet, announcing The rising of the Moon of Passover. Like a great cross it seems, on which suspended, With head bowed down in agony, I see A human figure! Hide, O merciful heaven, The awful apparition from my sight!
And thou, Machaerus, lifting high and black Thy dreadful walls against the rising moon, Haunted by demons and by apparitions, Lilith, and Jezerhara, and Bedargon, How grim thou showest in the uncertain light, A palace and a prison, where King Herod Feasts with Herodias, while the Baptist John Fasts, and consumes his unavailing life! And in thy court-yard grows the untithed rue, Huge as the olives of Gethsemane, And ancient as the terebinth of Hebron, Coeval with the world. Would that its leaves Medicinal could purge thee of the demons That now possess thee, and the cunning fox That burrows in thy walls, contriving mischief!
Music is heard from within.
Angels of God! Sandalphon, thou that weavest The prayers of men into immortal garlands, And thou, Metatron, who dost gather up Their songs, and bear them to the gates of heaven, Now gather up together in your hands The prayers that fill this prison, and the songs That echo from the ceiling of this palace, And lay them side by side before God's feet!
He enters the castle.