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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 138
…A Health, my lord ! This wine is marvellous dry ! Scented like clover reaching up the broad Edge of some glacier in my northern marches. CHAU Look, how she writhes — speechless distemperature Her shriek within her gorge that parches ! GOVINDA Boy, bid that cup-slave from Ferozapur Make me an ode of this — nay, while I think ! An elegy. CHAU Please your majesty to drink ? GOVINDA Thanks, brother. Well, my gipsy girl divined
1910 · PDF PAGE 137
… mart From an old Greek — a vile old man ! He told me she was a Bohemian ; And by a fabulous conjuring with cards Indeed she can divine. CHAU So can our bards. These girls are shifty. GOVINDA Maybe so ; but list ! (I pray you) She can take an amethyst And see a thousand visions. CHAU So can I
1910 · PDF PAGE 143
90 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY. CHAU I wager thirty loads of merchandise Most precious — sandalwood and gold and spice And jewels, and divine medicaments, And goat-hair broideries, and silken tents — And thirty diamonds of the purest water, It is a daughter ! ALEXANDER I take it — and yours too, my lord. Maybe You both are wrong. GOVINDA True, this much mystery Veils the whole matter — it were hard to say. CHAU Shang Ti ! how fierce a bray The amorous ass gives. MIRIAM Heave, o heave, my sides ! Stretch ! Split ! This pang decides
1910 · PDF PAGE 145
…olds the two and seventy Jinn That Solomon screwed in. ALEXANDER More like, the wine that Dionysus spilled From Cyprus grapes distilled. CHAU We lose our wagers ? It may be Best to unscrew it, and to see.
1910 · PDF PAGE 150
THE BLUE DWARF. 97 GOVINDA Dance, o thou mannikin Dwarf and malign To the clink of Earth’s pannikin Drained of its wine ! CHAU Dance, to the scream Of strangled humanity, The delirious dream Of the Vampires of Vanity ! The kings rise, bow, and depart. THE KINGS Away, away like the wanton wind ! One to the groves of ilex tall ; One to the plains of infinite Ind ; One beyond the Mongol wall. As we met, so we part. Three great kings and one true heart !
1910 · PDF PAGE 135
82 THE WORLD’S TRAGEDY. GOVINDA The sweat is on thy forehead like bright stars Amid the milk of the great galaxy. CHAU Thy body gapes like a valley of deodars Between two snowy hills in Tartary. ALEXANDER Ho ! Ho ! a million rats Herald the brat’s First yelp. A vast company of rats issue from her, and rush squeaking into the darkness. MIRIAM God be mine help ! Adrammelek exacts a death For every dance with Astoreth. GOVINDA Cling to the ass-god, quean ! Now while his loud obscene
1910 · PDF PAGE 148
…d in a neat surtout of blue With the head of a goat and the nose of a Jew And the... GOVINDA Would your Pasiphae challenge him lightly ? CHAU Truly, a marvel. Come, little man ! We kiss your hands, and sail back home Over the desert and over the foam. ALEXANDER And I go back to the grove of Pan. GOVINDA What is thy name ? I will proclaim Thy marvellous fame From the Gulf of Kutch to the shores of Orissa. MIRIAM I pray your Majesty, call him Issa.
1910 · PDF PAGE 142
THE BLUE DWARF. 89 And all my joy and all her crimson flux Sprang in a mingled river to the West. GOVINDA See how she tears her breast ! CHAU She is like a wounded horse Gored by some old rogue-elephant. For now the mouth springs open, and a yell Like the shriek of the throat of hell Bursts, and is choked by a vomit of black worms. ALEXANDER All this most critically confirms Our calculations. Boy ! the long pale glass Fashioned of ambergris and chrysopras. Fill it with the old, the ripe Satyrion, And bear it to their Majesties. Anon We shall se…
1910 · PDF PAGE 146
…idden of shame. But yet my body feeds on flame As if some masterpiece Were wrought — I know not how — pray cease ! Leave me with these ! CHAU Midden or maiden, we must see the birth Of thy black womb. Why do these moans disturb our mirth ? I will have thee lashed to shreds By this vile groom Unless thou quit thy prating. THE HAG Here’s pay for months of waiting. She detaches the placenta. A black old rotten wine-skin, mangy goat Patched with bat, stork, and stoat !
1910 · PDF PAGE 147
…he bottle back, washed bright. Yes, this is certainly the seal Of Solomon. GOVINDA Ifeel That we are on the brink of some strange sight. CHAU The whole event has seemed improbable. Scribes, you record this well ! Or I will have you sliced with the keen steel My cook keeps razor-sharp for salted swine. Nine thousand cuts, nine hundred cuts, And ninety cuts and nine Cut exquisitely fine, And the last slash in your guts If by an hair’s breadth your recital Obscure the true, omit the vital ! ALEXANDER Out springs the screw. Ho ! the mannikin slim a…
1910 · PDF PAGE 141
…VINDA The third should be the final period. What portent may we look for ? ALEXANDER By this dial We must wait yet a little, majesties ! CHAU I tell you of the Oracle. I took (So that it might be an exhaustive trial) A snow-white bird with purple tail-feathers Wherein pale flames of gold mingled and shook. Here, too, my wisest ministers Gathered to solve the riddle of the Star. But so the balky brute Crushed in this gnarled fist Maintained the unequal war That at the dagger-sweep Strongly she leapt — I missed !
1910 · PDF PAGE 140
THE BLUE DWARF. 87 CHAU I who am come from the remote abode Beyond the highest snows, Beyond the swiftest river, Was moved thereto by a strange goad — Stranger, my lords, than all your wisdom knows ! For in the city of gold and jade Beyond where my vassal Tartars shiver I have a dagger gold-inlaid Sharp as an arrow from the heavenly quiver ; Its hilt of clustered fires, a crusted jewel Fashioned in the likeness of a demon-king Most exquisitely cruel : — Daily I try my luck By the Oracle of the Bleeding Duck. GOVINDA Look ! what a horrid horde o…
1910 · PDF PAGE 129
…mn procession, and seat themselves at the central stall. GOVINDA Say, my brother, is the vision That thou sawest in the grove Answered ? CHAU Doth the exact division Of the azimuth rightly prove That the star points hither truly ?
1910 · PDF PAGE 136
…ssed and gilt From the point to the gross hilt With the babe-gold of thy bright skin, Wolfing it in As the dragon swallows up the moon ! CHAU See, she will swoon. This is magnificent. I would not lose the event — Ho ! boy, bring wine ! Black wine in jars of jade Cooled all these months in hoarded snow ! Black wine with purple starlight in its bosom, Oily and sweet as the soul of a brown maid Brought from the forenoon’s archipelago, Her brows bound bright with many a scarlet blossom — Like the blood of the slain that flowered free When we met th…
1910 · PDF PAGE 132
…d ; Hurt the humble, strew the stake With the faggots ; gild the rood That for many a year shall brand With its blight full many a land. CHAU I have brought him frankincense. He shall dull therewith the sense Of his slaves, that they may be Docile in their slavery. He shall fill their aching minds
1910 · PDF PAGE 52
…XANDER, a wise king, ruling An ox. Macedon, Babylonia, etc. ZAKARIAH, an ass. TWO SATYRs. GOVINDA, king of the Indies. A fair man child. CHAU, SON of HEAVEN, king of Tar- TWO NYMPHS. tary and China. MIRIAM a Syrian Girl. A company of rats. A white-robed youth. A company of toads. Legions of apes, worms and monsters. A brass bottle containing a Mannikin AGRIPPA, a Roman century. In blue. PUBLIUS, his lieutenant. ISSA, the grown man thereof. A Roman guard. MAGDA, an odalisque. An hag. JOHN, a young scribe. A blue-faced baboon. BYSTANDERS.