FOURTH ACT
Jezebel.
I shall not look upon my son again!
How many million mothers must have felt
As I, with a dead child. How many lives
Have been made lightless thus.
For no child ever dies without the breaking
Of someone’s heart.
And yet the world goes on.
I shall go on, perhaps for many years,
And in my heart’s most secret corridor
Will be a shrine, where I shall watch my son,
Lonely as Helen in her tower at Troy
When Paris had been killed.
Would I had been beside him when he fell,
And fallen with him to the pit of death!
Better die so, not mangled in the war,
A young man, beautiful in youth, as thou wert;
Not troubled yet by life; not yet a King;
Thou hast been only young and now art dead.
With all life’s faults, I want you back in life,
Not dead, my son, beyond my touch and speech,
But here, moving and speaking, being mine.
My help and stay and wisdom and assuagement
As in the past. You, who gave no farewell,
Speak to me from the grave, O lovely son.
(There is a sighing.)
Was that an answer from the dead, or birds
Flying away before the winter comes?
My son, if you are there, speak to my spirit.
(There is a sighing.)
What message do you bring, that you are here?
What do you come to tell me?
The Voice.