Ad. Beware! beware!
Ion. Thou hast! I see thou hast! Thou art not marble, And thou shalt hear me! Think upon the time When the clear depths of thy yet lucid soul Were ruffled with the troublings of strange joy, As if some unseen visitant from heaven Touched the calm lake, and wreathed its images In sparkling waves; recall the dallying hope That on the margin of assurance trembled, As loath to lose in certainty too blest Its happy being; taste in thought again Of the stolen sweetness of those evening walks, When pansied turf was air to wingèd feet, And circling forests, by ethereal touch Enchanted, wore the livery of the sky, As if about to melt in golden light, Shapes of one heavenly vision; and thy heart, Enlarged by its new sympathy with one, Grew bountiful to all!
Ad. That tone! that tone! Whence came it? from thy lips? It cannot be The long-hushed music of the only voice That ever spake unbought affection to me, And waked my soul to blessing. O sweet hours Of golden joy, ye come! your glories break Through my pavilion’d spirit’s sable folds. Roll on! roll on!—Stranger, thou dost enforce me To speak of things unbreathed by lip of mine To human ear: wilt listen?
Ion. As a child.
Ad. Again! that voice again! Thou hast seen me moved As never mortal saw me, by a tone Which some light breeze, enamoured of the sound, Hath wafted through the woods, till thy young voice Caught it to rive and melt me. At my birth This city, which, expectant of its prince, Lay hushed, broke out in clamorous ecstasies; Yet, in that moment, while the uplifted cups Foamed with the choicest product of the sun, And welcome thundered from a thousand throats, My doom was sealed. From the hearth’s vacant space, In the dark chamber where my mother lay, Faint with the sense of pain-bought happiness, Came forth in heart-appalling tone, these words Of me, the nursling: “Woe unto the babe! Against the life which now begins shall life, Lighted from thence, be armed, and, both soon quenched, End this great line in sorrow!” Ere I grew Of years to know myself a thing accursed, A second son was born, to steal the love Which fate had else scarce rifled: he became My parents’ hope, the darling of the crew Who lived upon their smiles, and thought it flattery To trace in every foible of my youth— A prince’s youth—the workings of the curse. My very mother—Jove! I cannot bear To speak it now—looked freezingly upon me.
Ion. But thy brother—
Ad. Died. Thou hast heard the lie, The common lie that every peasant tells Of me, his master,—that I slew the boy. ’Tis false! One summer’s eve, below a crag Which, in his wilful mood, he strove to climb, He lay a mangled corpse: the very slaves, Whose cruelty had shut him from my heart, Now coined their own injustice into proofs To brand me as his murderer.
Ion. Did they dare Accuse thee?
Ad. Not in open speech: they felt I should have seized the miscreant by the throat, And crushed the lie half-spoken with the life Of the base speaker: but the tale looked out From the stolen gaze of coward eyes, which shrank When mine have met them; murmured through the crowd That at the sacrifice, or feast, or game, Stood distant from me; burnt into my soul, When I beheld it in my father’s shudder!
Ion. Didst not declare thy innocence?