4th Woman.
Seemeth her flesh to glow! and her throat pants
As one who feels a god within her, come
Out of his heaven to enjoy her.
2nd Woman.
Ay,
Now it is true, the Queen is beautiful;
She could, so looking, enrage love in one
Whose blood a hundred years had frozen dry.
1st Woman.
Ah, but I fear thee, Queen: this dreadful mood
Will break the pleasantness of friendship thou
Hast kept for me, as a ship in a gale is broken.
Vashti.
Ay, very like: and the event will rouse
Such work in the water where your comfort sails,
More than my fortune will to pieces blow;
You too I think will get some perilous tossing
From what proves my destruction.
2nd Woman.
And, so knowing,
For mere insane delight in violent things,
Wilt thou awake in the fickle mood of men
Again that ancient ignominy which once,
Till beauty freed them, loaded the souls of women?
3rd Woman. Truly, long time will work what now thou doest.
Vashti.
I know not rightly what I here begin;
No more than one, who stands in midst of wind
On a tall mountain, knows what breaking down
The earth must have ere the wind's speed is done,
And it hath drawn out of the drenched soil
The clinging vapours, and made bright the air.
2nd Woman.
But we'll not have thee disobedient.
The King's mind is a summer over us;
Thou with a storm wilt fill him, and the hail
That shatters thee will leave us bruised and weeping.
Vashti.
Be sulky in his arms: the weather soon
Will pleasantly favour thee again.
4th Woman.
No, no;
Not because from our heaven of man's mind
Thou wilt bring down on us a rain of scorn,
But because thou art wicked, thou must go
And tell the King the wine was rash in thee.