Merchant.
Ah yes,
Go, my good Bahram, fetch the evening drink.
[Exit BAHRAM. ]
Thou mirror of my mother, dwells no glimmer
In thee of her sweet pallid smile, to rise
As from the dewy mirror of a well-spring?
Her smile, the faintest, loveliest I have known,
Was like the flutter of a tiny birdling,
That sleeps its last upon the hollowed hand.
[Stands before the mirror.]
No, naught but glass. Too long it empty stood.
Only a face that does not smile—my own.
My Self, beheld with my own eyes, so vacant
As if one glass but mirrored forth another,
Unconscious.—Oh for higher vision yet,
For but one moment infinitely brief,
To see how stands upon her spirit's mirror
My image! Is't an old man she beholds?
Am I as young as oft I deem myself,
When in the silent night I lie and listen
To hear my blood surge through its winding course?
Is it not being young, to have so little
Of rigidness or hardness in my nature?
I feel as if my spirit, nursed and reared
On nourishment so dreamlike, bloodless, thin,
Were youthful still. How else should visit me
This faltering feeling, just as in my boyhood,
This strange uneasiness of happiness,
As if 'twould slip each moment from my hands
And fade like shadows? Can the old feel this?
No, old men take the world for something hard
And dreamless; what their fingers grasp and hold,
They hold. While I am even now a-quiver
With all this moment brings; no youthful monarch
Were more intoxicated, when the breezes
Should waft to him that cryptic word "possession."
[He nears the window.]
Ah, lovely stars, are ye out there as ever?
From out of this unstable mortal body
To look upon your courses in your whirling
Eternal orbits—that has been the food
That bore with ease my years, until I thought
I scarcely felt my feet upon the earth.
And have I really withered, while my eyes
Clung to yon golden suns, that do not wither?
And have I learned of all the quiet plants,
And marked their parts and understood their lives,
And how they differ when upon the mountains,
Or when by running streams we find them growing,—
Almost a new creation, yet at bottom
A single species; and with confidence
Could say, this one does well, its food is pure,
And lightly bears the burden of its leaves,
But this through worthless soil and sultry vapors
Has thickened stems, and bloated, swollen leaves ...
And more ... and of myself I can know nothing,
And heavy scales are crusted on my eyes,
Impeding judgment ...
[He hastily steps before the mirror again.]
Soulless tool!
Not like some books and men caught unawares:
Thou never canst reveal the hidden truth
As in a lightning flash.
Servant (returning).
My master.