Chapter V: Part III: Virginity and Perfection (1)

JUDITH

I

THE BESIEGED CITY OF BETHULIA

JUDITH (_at the window of an upper room of her house_).

This pitiable city!--But, O God, Strengthen me that I bend not into scorn Of all this desperate folk; for I am weak With pitying their lamentable souls. Ah, when I hear the grief wail'd in the streets, And the same breath their tears nigh strangle, used To brag the God in them inviolate And fighting off the hands of the heathen,--Lord, Pardon me that I come so near to scorn; Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!-- Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish Until Assyrian swords drown it in death;-- These, and abandoned words like these, I hear Daylong shrill'd and groan'd in the lanes beneath. What needeth Holofernes more? The Jews, The People of God, the Jews, lament their fortune; Their souls are violated by the world; Jewry is conquered; and the crop of men Sown for the barns of God, is withered down, Like feeblest grass flat-trodden by the sun, In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire Can do no more destruction on this folk: A fierce untimely mowing now befits This corn incapable of sacred bread, This field unprofitable but to flame! What should the choice of God do for a people, But give them souls of temper to withstand The trying of the furnace of the world?-- And they are molten, and from God's device Unfashion'd, crazed in dismay; yea, God's skill Fails in them, as the skill a founder put In brass fails when the coals seize on his work. For this fierce Holofernes and his power, This torture poured on the city, is no more Than a wild gust of wicked heat breathed out Against our God-wrought souls by the world's furnace. No new thing, this camp about the city: Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men But fearfully image, like a madman's dream, The fierce infection of the world, that waits To soil the clean health of the soul and mix Stooping decay into its upward nature. Soul in the world is all besieged: for first The dangerous body doth desire it; And many subtle captains of the mind Secretly wish against its fortune; next, Circle on circle of lascivious world Lust round the foreign purity of soul For chance or violence to ravish it. But the pure in the world are mastery. Divinely do I know, when life is clean, How like a noble shape of golden glass The passions of the body, powers of the mind, Chalice the sweet immortal wine of soul, That, as a purple fragrance dwells in air From vintage poured, fills the corrupting world With its own savour. And here I am alone Sound in my sweetness, incorrupt; the rest (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour; The world has meddled with them. They have broacht The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows. Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, When they should have no fortune but themselves And the God in them, and be sealed therein. Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, Where only love may drink, and only--alas!-- The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, For him and God, and for my sacred self! But hark, a troop of new woe comes this way, Making the street to ring and the stones wet With cried despair and brackish agony.

CITIZENS _lamenting in the street below_. They have crawled back like beasts dying of thirst, The life all clotted in them. They went out Soldiers, and back like beaten dogs they came Breathing in whines, slow maimed four-footed things On hands and knees degraded, groaning steps. Their brains were full of battle, they were made Of virtue, brave men; now in their brains shudder Minds that cringe like children burnt with fever. Often they stood to face the enemies' ranks All upright as a flame in windless air, Wearing their arm and the bright skill of swords Like spirits clad in flashing fire of heaven; And now in darken'd rooms they lie afraid And whimper if the nurse moves suddenly.-- Ah God, that such an irresistible fiend, Pain, in the beautiful housing of man's flesh Should sleep, light as a leopard in its hunger, Beside the heavenly soul; and at a wound Leap up to mangle her, the senses' guest!-- That in God's country heathen men should do This worse than murder on men full of God!

_Judith_. What matter of new wailing do your tongues Wear in this shivering misery of sound?

_A Citizen_. The captains which were chosen to go out And treat with Holofernes have come back.

_Judith_. And did the Ninevite demon treat with them?

_A Citizen_. The words they had from him were flaying knives, And burning splinters fixt in their skinless flesh, And stones thrown till their breasts were broken in.

_Judith_. What, torture our embassage?

_A Citizen_. Yea, for he means Nothing but death to all the Jews he takes.

_Another_. There was a jeering word tied round the neck Of each tormented man: "Behold, ye Jews, These chiefs of yours have learnt to crawl in prayer Before the god Nebuchadnezzar; come, Leave your city of thirst and your weak god, And learn good worship even as these have learnt."

_Another_. I saw them coming in: O horrible! With broken limbs creeping along the ground--

_Judith_. Were I a man among you, I would not stay Behind the walls to weep this insolence; I'ld take a sword in my hand and God in my mind, And seek under the friendship of the night That tent where Holofernes' crimes and hate Sleep in his devilish brain.

_A Citizen_. There is no night Where Holofernes sleeps, as thou couldst tell. Didst thou not shut thyself up in thine ease Away from the noise and tears of common woe. Come to the walls this evening, and I'll show thee The golden place of light, the little world Of triumphing glory framed in midst of the dark, Pillar'd on four great bonfires fed with spice, Enclosing in a globe of flame the tent Wherein the sleepless lusts of Holofernes Madden themselves all night, a revel-rout Of naked girls luring him as he lies Filling his blood with wine, the scented air Injur'd marvellously with piping shrills Of lechery made music, and small drums That with a dancing throb drive his swell'd heart Into desires beyond the strength of man.

_Judith_. And this beast is thine enemy, God!

_Another Citizen_. Nor beast, Nor man, but one of those lascivious gods Our lonely God detests, Chemosh or Baal Or Peor who goes whoring among women.

_Another_. And now come down braving in God's own land, Pitching the glory of his fearful heaven All night among God's hills.

_Judith_. You fools, he is A life our God could snap as a woman snaps Thread of her sewing.

_A Citizen_. Who shall break him off, Who on the earth, from his huge twisted power?

_Another_. For in his brain, as in a burning-glass Wide glow of sun drawn to a pin of fire, Are gathered into incredible fierceness all The rays of the dark heat of heathen strength.

_Another_. His eyes, they say, can kill a man.

_Another_. And sure No murder could approach his naming nights.

_Another_. Unless it came as a woman at whose beauty His lust hath never sipt; for into his flesh To drink unknown desirable limbs as wine Torments him still, like a thirst when fever pours A man's life out in drenching sweats.

_Judith_. Peace, peace; The siege hath given you shameless tongues, and minds No more your own: yea, the foul Ninevite Hath mastered you already, for your thoughts Dwell in his wickedness and marvel at it. Hate not a thing too much, lest you be drawn Wry from yourselves and close to the thing ye hate.

_A Citizen_. We know thy wisdom, Judith; but our lives Belong to death; and wisdom to a man Dying, is water in a broken jar.

_Judith_. Yea, if thou wilt die of a parching mouth.

_A Citizen_. Thou art rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine. But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood Hastens us on to maniac agony. The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud: The water left to us is pestilent. And therefore have we asked the governors For death: and it is granted us.

_Another_. Five days Hath Prince Ozias bidden us endure.

_Another_. For there are still fools among us who dare trust God has not made a bargain of our lives.

_Another_. We are a small people, and our war is weak: Who knows whether our God doth not desire Armies and great plains full of spears and horses, And cities made of bronze and hewn white stone And scarlet awnings, throng'd with sworded men, To shout his name up from the earth and kill All crying at the gates of other heavens; And hath grown tired of peaceable praise and folk That in a warren of dry mountains dwell, Whose few throats can make little noise in heaven.

_A Young Man_. For sure God's love hath wandered to strange nations; His pleasure in the breasts of Jerusalem Is a delight grown old. Yea, he would change That shepherd-woman of the earthly cities, Whose mind is as the clear light of her hills, Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling; And poureth his desire out, belike, Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad, Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts; Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire, Full of the sound of amazing flames of music.

_Another_. Yea, what can Israel offer against her, Whom the rich earth out of her mines hath shod, And crowned with emeralds grown in secret rocks, Who on her shoulders wears the gleam of the sea's Purple and pearls, and the flax of Indian ground Is linen on her limbs cool as moonlight, And fells of golden beasts cover her throne; Whose passion moves in her thought as in the air Melody moves of flutes and silver horns: What can Jerusalem the hill-city Offer to keep God's love from Babylon?

_Judith_. What but the beauty of holiness, and sound Of music made by hearts adoring God? You that speak lewdly of God, you yet shall see Jerusalem treading upon her foes. But what was that of five days one of you spoke?

_A Citizen_. Ozias sware an oath: hast thou not heard?

_Judith_. No, for I keep my mind away from your tongues Wisely. Who walks in wind-blown dust of streets, That hath a garden where the roses breathe?

_A Citizen_. I have no garden where the roses breathe; I have a city full of women crying And babies starving and men weak with thirst Who fight each other for a dole of water.

_Another_. Not only thou hast pleasant garden-hours, Judith, here in Bethulia; the Lord Death Has bought the city for his garden-close, And saunters in it watching the souls bloom Out of their buds of flesh, and with delight Smelling their agony.

_Another_. But in five days Either our God will turn his mind to us, Or, if he careth not for us nor his honour, Ozias will let open the main gate And let the Assyrians end our dreadful lives.

_Judith_. O I belong to a nation utterly lost! God! thou hast no tribe on the earth; thy folk Are helpless in the living places like The ghosts that grieve in the winds under the earth. Remember now thy glory among the living, And let the beauty of thy renown endure In a firm people knitted like the stone Of hills, no mischief harms of frost or fire; But now dust in a gale of fear they are. They have blasphemed thee; but forgive them, God; And let my life inhabit to its end The spirit of a people built to God.-- So you have given God five days to come And help you? You would make your souls as wares Merchants hold up to bidders, and say, "God, Pay us our price of comfort, or we sell To death for the same coin"? Five days God hath To find the cost of Jewry, or death buys you?

_A Citizen_. Here comes Ozias: ask him.

_Judith_.
Hold him there.

[JUDITH _comes down into the street_.

_Ozias_. Judith, I came to speak with thee.

_Judith_. And I Would speak with thee. What tale is this they tell That thou hast sworn to give this people death?

_Ozias_. In five days those among us who still live Will have no souls but the fierce anguish of thirst. If God ere then relieves us, well. If not, We give ourselves away from God to death.

_Judith_. Darest thou do this wickedness, and set Conditions to the mercy of our God?

_Ozias_. Death hath a mercy equal unto God's.-- Look at the air above thee; is there sign Of mercy in that naked splendour of fire? Too Godlike! We are his: he covers us With golden flame of air and firmament Of white-hot gold, marvellous to see. But whom, what heathen land hated of God, Do his grey clouds shadow with comfort of rain? Over our chosen heads his glory glows: And in five days the torment in his city Will be beyond imagining. We will go Through swords into the quiet and cloud of death.

_Judith_. Ozias, wilt thou be an infamy? Bethulia fallen, all Judea lies Open to the feet and hoofs of Assyria.

_Ozias_. Yea, and what doth Judea but cower down Behind us? There's no rescue comes from there. We are alone with Holofernes' power.

_Judith_. But if we hold him off, will he not grant The meed of a brave fight, captivity?-- Or we may treat with him, make terms for yielding.

_Ozias_. We know his mind: he hath written it plain In the torn flesh of our ambassadors. His mind to us is death; we can but choose Between sharp swords and the slow slaying of thirst.

_Judith_. He may torment us if we yield.

_Ozias_. He may. But not to yield is grisly and sure torment.

_Judith_. There must be hope, if we could reckon right!

_Ozias_. Well, thou and God have five days more to build A bridge of hope over our broken world. And, for the town even now fearfully aches In scalding thirst, not five days had I granted, Had it not been for somewhat I must say Secretly to thee.

_Judith_. Secretly? Then here; Send off these men to labour at their groans Elsewhere; for not within my house thou comest; I'll have no thoughts against God in my house.

[OZIAS _disperses the citizens_.

_Ozias_. Judith, we are two upright minds in this Herd of grovelling cowardice. We should, To spiritual vision which can see Stature of spirit, seem to stand in our folk Like two unaltered stanchions in the heap Of a house pulled down by fire. I know thy soul Tempered by trust in God against this ruin; But not in God, but in mortality Thy soul stands founded; and death even now Is digging at thy station in the world; And as a man with ropes and windlasses Pulls for new building columns of wreckt halls Down with a breaking fall, so death has rigged His skill about us, so he will break us down, Ruin our height and courage; and as stone, Carved with the beautiful pride of kings, hath made, Hammer'd to rubble and ground for mortar, walls Of farms and byres, our kill'd and broken natures, With all their beauty of passion, yea, and delight In God, death will shape and grind up to new Housing for souls not royal as we are, New flesh and mind for mean souls and dull hearts: For death is only life destroying life To roof the coming swarms in mortal shelter Of flesh and mind experienced in joy.

_Judith_. Thy specious prologue means no good, I trow. Thou wert to tell me wherefore for five days We may pretend to be God's people still; Why thou didst not make us over to death Soon as the folk began to wail despair.

_Ozias_. This reasoning will tell thee why.--No need, I think, to bring up into speech the years Since in the barley-field Manasses lay Shot by the sun. I tried (nor failed, I think), To hold thy soul up from its hurt, and be Somewhat of sight to thee, until thy long Blind season of disaster should be changed. Always I have found friendship in thine eyes; And pleasant words, and silences more pleasant, Have made us moments wherein all the world Left our sequester'd minds; so that I dared Often believe our friendliness might be The brink of love.

_Judith_. Stop! for thou hast enough Disgraced mine ears.

_Ozias_. I pray thee hear me out. The dream of loving thee and being loved Hath been my life; yea, with it I have kept My heart drugg'd in a long delicious night Colour'd with candles of imagined sense, And musical with dreamt desire. I said, The day will surely come upon the world, To scatter this sweet night of fantasy With morning, pour'd on my dream-feasted heart Out of thine eyes, Judith. And yet I still Feared for my dream, even as a maiden fears The body of her lover. But, in the midst Of all this charm'd delaying,--behold Death Leapt into our world, lording it, standing huge In front of the future, looking at us! Thou seest now why, when the people came Crying wildly to be given up to death, I bade them wait five days?--That I at last Might stamp the image of my glorious dream Upon the world, even though it be wax And the fires are kindling that must melt it out. Judith, thou hast now five days more to live This life of beautiful passion and sweet sense: And now my love comes to thee like an angel To call thee out of thy visionary love For lost Manasses, out of ghostly desire And shadows of dreams housing thy soul, that are Vainer than mine were, dreams of dear things which death Hath for ever broken; and lead thy life To a brief shadowless place, into an hour Made splendid to affront the coming night By passion over sense more grandly burning Than purple lightning over golden corn, When all the distance of the night resounds With the approach of wind and terrible rain, That march to torment it down to the ground. Judith, shall we not thus together make Death admirable, yea, and triumph through The gates of anguish with a prouder song Than ever lifted a king's heart, who rode Back from his war, with nations whipt before him, Into trumpeting Nineveh?

_Judith_. Thou fool, Death is nothing to me, and life is all. But what foul wrong have I done to thee, Ozias, That thou shouldst go about to put such wrong Into my life as these defiling words?

_Ozias_. Is it defilement to hear love spoken?

_Judith_. Yes! thou hast soiled me: to know my beauty, Wherewith I loved Manasses, and still love, Has all these years dwelt in thy heart a dream Of favourite lust,--O this is foul in my mind.

_Ozias_. I meant not what thou callest lust, but love.

_Judith_. What matters that? Thou hast desired me. And knowing that, I feel my beauty clutch About my soul with a more wicked shame Than if I lived corrupt with leprosy.

_Ozias_. Wilt thou still let the dead have claim on thee? Judith, wilt thou be married to a grave?

_Judith_. I am married to my love; and it is vile, Yea, it is burning in me like a sin, That when my love was absent, thy desire Shouldst trespass where my love is single lord.

_Ozias_. This is but superstition. Love belongs To living souls. It is a light that kills Shadows and ghosts haunting about the mind. Yea, even now when death glooms so immense Over the heaven of our being, Love Would keep us white with day amid the dark Down-coming of the storm, till the end took us. And joy is never wasted. If we love, Then although death shall break and bray our flesh, The joy of love that thrilled in it shall fly Past his destruction, subtle as fragrance, strong And uncontrollable as fire, to dwell In the careering onward of man's life, Increasing it with passion and with sweetness. Duty is on us therefore that we love And be loved. Wert thou made to set alight Such splendour of desire in man, and yet, For a grave's sake, keep all thy beauty null, And nothing be of good nor help to thy kind?

_Judith_. Help? What help in me?

_Ozias_. To let go forth The joy whereof thy beauty is the sign Into the mind of man, and be therein Courage of golden music and loud light Against his enemies, the eternal dark And silence.

_Judith_. Ah, not thus. Yet--could I not help?-- Why talk we? What thing should I say to thee To pierce the pride of lust wrapping thy heart? How show thee that, as in maidens unloved There is virginity to make their sex Shrink like a wound from eyes of love untimely, So in a woman who hath learnt herself By her own beauty sacred in the clasp Of him whom her desire hath sacred made, There is a fiercer and more virgin wrath Against all eyes that come desiring her?

[_A Psalm of many voices strikes their ears, and through the street pass old men chanting, followed and answered by a troop of young men_.

_Chorus: Old Men_. Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord God of our strength? Wilt thou still be blindly trying us? Wilt thou not at length Believe the crying of our words, that never our knees have bent To foreign gods, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones Worshipt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, and groans?

_Young Men_. And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee, Hath God paid to purchase our purity? Though lust starve in our flesh, still he devises fire To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire. With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here, Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher: Tribes who better than we deal with the gods their lords, For they pleasantly sin, yet the gods sharpen and drive their swords.

_Old Men_. Hast thou not tried us enough, Jehovah? Hast thou found any fire Will draw from our hearts a smoke of burn'd idolatrous desire? There is none in us, Lord: no other God in us but thee; Only thy fires make our clean souls glitter with agony. Pure we are, pure in our prayers, pure our souls look to thee, Lord; And to be shewn to the world devoured by evil is our reward.

_Young Men_.
We whose hearts were alone giving our God renown,
Under the wheels of hell we are fallen down!
False the heaven we built, fashion'd of purity;
'Tis heathen heavens, made out of sin, stand high.
Come, make much of our God! Comfort his ears with song,
Lest his pride the gods with their laughter wrong,
Seeing, huddled as beasts held by a fearful night
Full of lions and hunger, his folk crouch to the heathen might.

_Old Men_. Jehovah, still we refrain from crying to the infamous gates That open easily into the heavens thy mind of jealousy hates. Power is in them: hast thou no power? Wilt thou not beware Lest thy mood now press our minds to venturous despair?

_Young Men_. Fool'd, fool'd, fool'd are our lives, held by the world in jeer; With crazed eyes we behold veils of enormous fear Hiding dreadfully those marvellous gates and stairs Where the heathen delighted with sin throng with their prosperous prayers.

_Old Men_. Yea, hung like the front of pestilent winds, thunderous dark before The way into the heathen heavens, terrible curtains pour, Webs of black imagination and woven frenzy of sin; And yet we know power on earth belongs to those within.

_Young Men_.
Yea, through Jehovah's jealousy,
Burning dimly at last we see
The great brass made like rigid flame,
The gates of the heavens we dare not name.
Take hold of wickedness! Yea, have heart
To tear the darkness of sin apart;
And find, beyond, our comforted sight
Flash full of a glee of fiery light,--
The gods the heathen know through sin,
The gods who give them the world to win!

_Judith_. This may I not escape. My world hath need Of me who still hold God firm in my mind. It is no matter if I fail: I must Send the God in me forth, and yield to him The shaping of whatever chance befall.-- Ozias! hateful thou hast made thyself To me; for thou hast hatefully soiled my beauty, My preciousest, given me to attire my soul For her long marriage festival of life. Yet I must make request to thee, and thou Must grant it. When the sun is down to-night, Quietly set the main gate open: I Will pass therethrough and treat with Holofernes.

_Ozias_. What, wilt thou go to be murdered by these fiends?

_Judith_. Ask nothing, but do simply my request.

_Ozias_. I will: so thou shalt know the reverent heart I have for thee, although its worship thou So bitterly despisest; but thy will Shall be a sacred thing for me to serve. Thou hast thy dangerous demand, because It is thou who askest, it is I who may Grant it to thee,--this only! Yea, I will send Thy heedless body among risks that thou, Looking alone at the great shining God Within thy mind, seest not; but I see And sicken at them. Yet do I not require Thy purpose; whether thy proud heart must have The wound of death from steel that has not toucht The peevish misery these Jews call blood; Whether thy mind is for velvet slavery In the desires of some Assyrian lord-- Forgive me, Judith! there my love spoke, made Foolish with injury; and I should be Unwise to stay here, lest it break the hold I have it in. I go, and I am humbled. But thou shalt have thy asking: the gate is thine. [_He goes_.

_Judith_. How can it harm me more, to feel my beauty Read by man's eyes to mean his lust set forth? Yea, Holofernes now can bring no shame Upon me that Ozias hath not brought. But this is chief: what balance can there be In my own hurt against a nation's pining? God hath given me beauty, and I may Snare with it him whose trap now bites my folk. There is naught else to think of. Let me go And set those robes in order which best pleased Manasses' living eyes; and let me fill My gown with jewels, such as kindle sight, And have some stinging sweetness in my hair.-- Manasses, my Manasses, lost to me, Gone where my love can nothing search, and hidden Behind the vapours of these worldly years, The many years between me and thy death; Thine ears are sealed with immortal blessedness Against our miserable din of living; Through thy pure sense goeth no soil of grief. Forgive me! for thou hast left me here to be hurt And moved to pity by the dolour of men. The garment of my soul is splasht with sorrow, Sorrowful noise and sight; and like to fires Of venom spat on me, the sorrow eats Through the thin robe of sense into my soul. And it is cried against me, this keen anguish, By my own people and my God's;--and thou Didst love them. Therefore thou must needs forgive me, That I devise how this my beauty, this Sacred to thy long-dead joy of desire, May turn to weapon in the hand of God; Such weapon as he hath taken aforetime To sword whole nations at a stroke to their knees,-- Storms of the air and hilted fire from heaven, And sightless edge of pestilence hugely swung Down on the bulk of armies in the night. Such weapon in God's hand, and wielded so, A woman's beauty may be now, I pray; A pestilence suddenly in this foreign blood, A blight on the vast growth of Assyrian weed, A knife to the stem of its main root, the heart Of Holofernes. God! Let me hew him down, And out of the ground of Israel wither our plague!

II

BEFORE THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES

_Holofernes_. Night and her admirable stars again! And I again envying her and questioning! What hast thou, Night, achieved, denied to me, That maketh thee so full of quiet stars? What beauty has been mingled into thee So that thy depth burns with the peace of stars?-- I now with fires of uproarious heat, Exclaiming yellow flames and towering splendour And a huge fragrant smoke of precious woods, Must build against thy overlooking, Stars, And against thy terrible eternal news Of Beauty that burns quietly and pure, A lodge of wild extravagant earthly fire; Even as under passions of fleshly pleasure I hide myself from my desiring soul.

[_Enter Guards with_ JUDITH.

_Guard_ 1.

We found this woman wandering in the trenches, And calling out, "Take me to Holofernes, Assyrians, I am come for Holofernes."

_Guard_ 2.

She would not, for no words of ours, unveil,
And something held us back from handling her.

_Guard_ 1.

We think she must be beautiful, although
She is so stubborn with that veil of hers.

_Guard_ 2.

We minded my lord's word, that he be shewn
All the seized women which are strangely fair.

_Holofernes_. Take off thy veil.

_Judith_.
I will not.

_Holofernes_. Take thy veil From off thy face, Jewess, or thou straight goest To entertain my soldiers.

_Judith_.
I will not.

_Holofernes_. Am I to tear it, then?

_Judith_.
My lord, thou durst not.

_Holofernes_. Ha, there is spirit here. I have the whim, Jewess, almost to believe thee: I dare not! But tell me who thou art.

_Judith_. That shalt thou know Before the night has end.

_Holofernes_.
Take off thy veil.

_Judith_. Alone for Holofernes am I come.

_Holofernes_. And there is only Holofernes here. These fellows are but thoughts of mine; my whole Army, that treads down all the earth and breaks The banks of fending rivers into marsh, Is nought but my forth-going imagination. Where I am, there is no man else: if I Appeared before thee in a throng of spears, I'ld stand alone before thee, girt about By powers of my mind made visible.

_Judith_. For captured peasants or for captured kings Such words would have the right big sound. But I Am woman, and I hear them not: I say I will not, before any man but thee, Make known my face; I am only for thee. When I have thee alone and in thy tent I will unveil.

_Holofernes (to the Guards)_.
What! Staring?--Hence, you dogs!

III

IN THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES

_Holofernes (alone with Judith)_. Thou art the woman! Thou hast come to me!-- O not as I thought! not with senses blazing Far into my deep soul abiding calm Within their glory of knowledge, as the vast Of night behind her outward sense of stars. Now am I but the place thy beauty brightens, And of myself I have no light of sense Nor certainty of being: I am made Empty of all my wont of life before thee, A vessel where thy splendour may be poured, After the way the great vessel of air Accepts the morning power of the sun. Now nothing I have known of me remains, Save that, within me, far as the world is high Beneath this dawn that gilds my spirit's air, Some depth, more inward even than my soul, Troubles and flashes like the shining sea. O Jewish woman, if thou knewest all The hunger and the tears the punisht world Suffers by cause of thee, and of my dream That thou wert somewhere hidden in mankind! I could not but obey my dream, and toil To break the nations and to sift them fine, Pounding them with my warfare into dust, And searching with my many iron hands Through their destruction as through crumbs of marl, Until my palms should know the jewel-stone Betwixt them, the Woman who is Beauty,-- Nature so long hath like a miser kept Buried away from me in this heap of Jews! Now that we twain might meet, women and men In every land where I have felt for thee Have taken desolation for their home, Crying against me,--and against thee unknowing. Ah, but I had given over to despair The mind in me, I ground the stubborn tribes, I quarried them like rocks and broke them small And ground them down to flinders and to sands; But never gleamed the jewel-stone therein, Naught but the common flint of earth I found. And in a dreary anger I kept on Assailing the whole kind of man, because Some manner of war my soul must needs inhabit. Like a man making himself in drunken sleep A king, my soul, drunk with its earthly war, Kept idle all its terrible want of thee, Believed itself managing arms with God; Yea, when my trampling hurry through the earth Made cloudy wind of the light human dust, I thought myself to move in the dark danger Of blinding God's own face with blasts of war! Until my rage forgot his crime against me, His hiding thee, the beauty I had dreamt. Yea and I filled my flesh with furious pleasure, That in the noise of it my soul should hear No whispering thought of desperate desire. Nevertheless, I knew well that my heart's Sightless imagination lifted his face Continually awake for news of thee. But 'twas infirm and crazy waking, like As when a starving sentry, put to guard The sleep of a broken soldiery that flees Through winter of wild hills from hounding foes, Hath but the pain of frozen wounds, and fear Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal. And lo, As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, As out of the night behind him into the heart, Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, His frozen waking is the ease of death. So I am killed by thee; all the loud pain Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, Wherein with blinded and unhearing face My hope of thee yet stood and strained to look And listen for thy coming,--all this life Is killed before thee; yea, like marvellous death, Spiritual sense invests my heart's desire; And round the quiet and content thereof, The striving hunger of my fleshly sense Fails like a web of hanging cloth in fire.-- Tell me now, if thou knowest, why thou hast come!

_Judith_.
Sufficeth not for us that I have come?--
Let not unseemly things live in my mouth;
Yet I would praise thee as thou praisest me,
But in a manner that my people use,
Things to approach in song they list not speak.
And song, thou knowest, inwrought with chiming strings,
Sweetens with sweet delay loving desire:
Also thine eyes will feed, and thy heart wonder.--
Balkis was in her marble town,
And shadow over the world came down.
Whiteness of walls, towers and piers,
That all day dazzled eyes to tears,
Turned from being white-golden flame,
And like the deep-sea blue became.
Balkis into her garden went;
Her spirit was in discontent
Like a torch in restless air.
Joylessly she wandered there,
And saw her city's azure white
Lying under the great night,
Beautiful as the memory
Of a worshipping world would be
In the mind of a god, in the hour
When he must kill his outward power;
And, coming to a pool where trees
Grew in double greeneries,
Saw herself, as she went by
The water, walking beautifully,
And saw the stars shine in the glance
Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance
Passing, pale and wonderful,
Across the night that filled the pool.
And cruel was the grief that played
With the queen's spirit; and she said:
"What do I hear, reigning alone?
For to be unloved is to be alone.
There is no man in all my land
Dare my longing understand;
The whole folk like a peasant bows
Lest its look should meet my brows
And be harmed by this beauty of mine.
I burn their brains as I were sign
Of God's beautiful anger sent
To master them with punishment
Of beauty that must pour distress
On hearts grown dark with ugliness.
But it is I am the punisht one.
Is there no man, is there none,
In whom my beauty will but move
The lust of a delighted love;
In whom some spirit of God so thrives
That we may wed our lonely lives?
Is there no man, is there none?"--
She said, "I will go to Solomon."

_Holofernes_. I shall not bear it: dreamed, it hath made my life Fail almost, like a storm broken in heaven By its internal fire; and now I feel Love like a dreadful god coming to do His pleasure on me, to tear me with his joy And shred my flesh-wove strength with merciless Utterance through me of inhuman bliss.-- I must have more divinity within me.-- Come to me, slave! [_Calling out to his attendants_.

_Judith_. Thou callest someone? Alas! O, where's my veil?--Cry him to stay awhile!--

_Holofernes_. Thou troubled with such whimsy!--But 'tis no one, A mere sexless thing of mine.

_Judith_. He is coming! I threw my veil--where?--I must bow my face Close to the ground, or his eyes will find me out; And--O my lord, hold him back with thy voice! [_She has knelt down_. Hold him in doubt to enter a moment, while I loosen my hair into some manner of safety Against his prying.

_Holofernes_. Slave, dost thou hear me? Come!-- I marvel, room for such a paltering mood Should be within thy mind, now so nearly Deified with the first sense of my love. [_A Eunuch comes in_.

_Holofernes_. Wine! The mightiest wine my sutlers have; Wine with the sun's own grandeur in it, and all The wildness of the earth conceiving Spring From the sun's golden lust: wine for us twain! And when thou hast brought it, burn anear my bed Storax and cassia; and let wealth be found To cover my bed with such strife of colour, Crimson and tawny and purple-inspired gold, That eyes beholding it may take therefrom Splendid imagination of the strife Of love with love's implacable desire.

_Judith (still kneeling)_. I must lean on thee now, my God! A weight Of pitiable weakness thou must bear And move as it were thine own strength; tell my heart How not to sicken in abomination, Show me the way to loathe this vile man's rage, Now close to seize me into the use of his pleasure, With the loathing that is terrible delight. So that not fainting, but refresht and astonisht And strangely spirited and divinely angry My body may arise out of its passion, Out of being enjoyed by this fiend's flesh. Then man my arm; then let mine own revenge Utter thy vengeance, Lord, as speech doth meaning; Yea, with hate empower me to say bravely The glittering word that even now thy mind Purposes, God,--the swift stroke of a falchion!

_Holofernes_. Woman, beloved, why art thou fixt so long Kneeling and downward crookt, and in thy hair Darkened?--Ah, thy shoulders urging shape Of loveliness into thy hair's pouring gleam!

_Judith_. Needs must I pray my Jewish God for help Against my bridal joys. For I do fear them.

_Holofernes_. I also: these are the joys that fear doth own.

IV

_At the Gate of Bethulia. On the walls, on either side of the Gate, are citizens watching the Assyrian camp;_ OZIAS _also, standing by himself_.

_Ozias_. When wilt thou cure thyself, spirit of the earth, When wilt thou cure thyself of thy long fever, That so insanely doth ferment in thee?-- 'Tis not man only: the whole blood of life Is fever'd with desire. But as the brain, Being lord of the body, is served by blood So well that a hidden canker in the flesh May send, continuous as a usury, Its breeding venom upward, till in the brain It vapour into enormity of dreaming: So man is lord of life upon the earth; And like a hastening blood his nature wells Up out of the beasts below him, they the flesh And he the brain, they serving him with blood; And blood so loaden with brute lust of being It steams the conscious leisure of man's thought With an immense phantasma of desire, An unsubduable dream of unknown pleasure; Which he sends hungering forth into the world, But never satisfied returns to him. Who hath found beauty? Who hath not desired it? 'Tis but the feverish spirit of earthly life Working deliriously in man, a dream Questing the world that throngs upon man's mind To find therein an image of herself; And there is nothing answers her entreaty.-- I climb towards death: it is not falling down For me to die, but up the event of the world As up a mighty ridge I climb, and look With lifted vision backward down on life. So high towards death I am gone, listless I gaze Where on the earth beneath me, into the fires Of that Assyrian strength, our siege of fate, Judith, the dream of my desire of beauty, Goes daring forth, to shape herself therein, Seeking to fashion in its turbulence Some deed that will be likeness of herself. For now I know her purpose: and I know She will be murdered there. Against the world The beauty I have lived in, my loved dream, Goes, wild to master the world; and she will Therefore be murdered. It is nothing now; Wind from the heights of death is on my brow.

_Talk among the other watchers_. It must be, God is for us. Such a mind As this of Judith's could not be, unless God had spoken it into her. She is His special voice, to tell the Assyrians Terrible matters.

Is she God's? I think
'Tis Holofernes hath her now.

If not,
Upon his soldiers he hath lavisht her.

Not he. Now they have known her, his filled senses
Never will leave go our wonderful Judith.

Ay, wonderful in Jewry. But there are In Babylon women so beautiful, They make men's spirits desperate, to know Flesh cannot ever minister enough Delight to ease the craving they are taskt with.

Who talks of Babylon when God even now Is training her fierce champion, Holofernes, Into the death a woman holds before him?

A woman killing Holofernes!

Ay; Be she abused by him or not, I know God means to give her marvellous hands to-night. I know it by my heart so strangely sick With looking out for the first drowsy stir In that huge flaming quiet of the camp. Now fearfuller qualm than famine eagerly Handles my life and pulls at it,--my faith's Hunger for being fed with sounds and visions: The firelight mixt with a trooping bustle of shadows, The silence suddenly shouting with surprise, That tells of men astounded out of sleep To find that God hath dreadfully been among them.

We have mistaken Judith.

Even as now
God is mistaken by your doubting hearts.

She that has dealt with such a pride of spirit In all her ways of life, so that she seemed To feel like shadow, falling on the light Her own mind made, the common thoughts of men; Ay, she that to-day came down into our woe And stood among the griefs that buzz upon us, Like one who is forced aside from a bright journey To stoop in a small-room'd cottage, where loud flies Pester the inmates and the windows darken; This she, this Judith, out of her quiet pride, And out of her guarded purity, to walk Where God himself from violent whoredom could Scarcely preserve her shuddering flesh! and all For our sake, for the lives she hath in scorn, This horrible Assyrian risk she ventures.

There should be prayer for that. Let us ask God To bind the men, whose greed now glares upon her, In some strange feebleness; surely he will; Surely not with woman's worst injury Her noble obedience he will reward! Let us ask God to bind these men before her.

They are not his to bind: else, were they here? They are the glorying of Nebuchadnezzar's Heart of fury against our God, sent here Like insolent shouting into his holy quiet. God could not bind these bragging noises up In Nebuchadnezzar's heart; it is not his, But made by Babylonian gods or owned By thrones that hold the heavens over Nineveh. For all these outland greatnesses, these kings Whose war goes pealing through the world, these towns Infidel and triumphant, reaching forth Armies to hug the world close to their lust,-- What are they but the gods making a scorn Of our God on the earth? Then how can he Alter these men from wicked delight? or how Keep Judith all untoucht among their hands, When his own quietness he could not keep Unbroken by the god's Assyrian insult?

But with a thunder he can shatter this
Intruding noise, and make his quiet again.

And in their lust he can entangle them, Deceiving them far into Judith's beauty, Which is his power, and lop them from their gods.

Their outrage will be ornament upon her!

Out of the hands of the goblins she will come Not markt with shame, but wearing their vile usage Like one whom earthly reign covers with splendour.

The ignominy they thought of shall be turned To shining, yea, to announcing through the world How God hath used her to beguile the heathen. It begins! Now it begins! Lo, how dismay Is fallen on the camp in a strange wind: The ground, that seemed as spread with yellow embers, Leaps into blazing, and like cinders whirled And scattered up among the flames, are black Bands of frantic men flickering about!

Ozias! seest thou how our enemies Are labouring in amazement? How they run Flinging fuel to light them against fear?

Now they begin to roar their terror: now They wave and beckon wordless desperate things One to another.

Hear the iron and brass Ringing above their voices, as they snatch The arms that seem to fight among themselves, Seized by their masters' anguish; dost thou hear The clumsy terror in the camp, the men Hasting to arm themselves against our God, Ozias?

_Ozias_.
Lions have taken a sentinel.

_A Citizen_. Judith hath taken Holofernes.

_Judith's voice outside, under the gate_. Yea, And brought him back with her. Open the gates.

_The Citizens_. Open the gates. Bring torches. Wake, ye Jews! Hail, Judith, marvellously chosen woman! How bringst thou Holofernes? Show him to us.

_Judith_. Dare you indeed behold him?

_A Citizen_.
Is he bound?

_Judith_. Drugged rather, with a medicine that God Prepared for him and gave into my hands. Open the gates! It is a harmless thing, The Holofernes I have made your show; You may gaze blithely upon him. I have tamed The man's pernicious brain. Open the gates! What, are your hands still nerveless? But my hands, The hands of a woman, have done notable work.

_The Gates open_. JUDITH _appears, standing against the night and the Assyrian fires. Torches and shouting in the town_.

_Citizens_. Judith! Judith alone! Where is thy boast Of Holofernes captured?

_Judith_. I am alone, Indeed; and you are many; yet with me Comes Holofernes, certainly a captive.

_Ozias_. What trifle is this?

_Judith_. Trifle? It is the word. A trifle, a thing of mere weight, I have brought you From the Assyrian camp. My apron here Is loaded now more heavily, but as meanly As an old witch's skirt, when she comes home From seeking camel's-dung for kindling; yet My burden was, an hour ago, the world Where you were ground to tortures; it was the brain Inventing your destruction.--Look you now! [_Holding up the head of_ HOLOFERNES. This is the mouth through which commandment came Of massacre and damnation to the Jews; Here was the mind the gods that hate our God Used to empower the agonies they devised Against us; here your dangers were all made, Your horrible starvation; and the thirst Those wicked gods supposed would murder you, Here a creature became, a ravenous creature; Yea, here those mighty vigours lived which took, Like ocean water taking frost, the hate Those gods have for Jehovah, shaping it Atrociously into the war that clencht Their fury about you, frozen into iron. Jews, here is the head of Holofernes: take it And let it grin upon our highest wall Over against the camp of the Assyrians. [_She throws them the head_. Ay, you may worry it; now is the jackals' time; Snarl on your enemy, now he is dead.

_Ozias_. Judith, be not too scornful of their noise. There are no words may turn this deed to song: Praise cannot reach it. Only with such din, Unmeasured yelling exultation, can Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now, Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing, A dignity like carved Egyptian stone; Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it; It is abroad like powder in a wind, Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide, Thou having roused the ungovernable waters My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower. My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed In joy or fear, disturbance without name, Out of the rivers it is fallen in Can snatch no substance it may shape to words Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise. We are all abasht by thee, and only know To worship thee with shouts and astounded passion.

_Judith_. Yes, now the world has got a voice against me: At last now it may howl a triumph about me.

_Ozias_. This, nevertheless, my thought can seize from out The wildness that goes pouring past it. God, Wondrously having moved thee to this deed, Hath shown the Jews a wondrous favouring love. Thee it becomes not, standing though thou art On this high action, to think scorn of men Whom God thinks worthy of having thee for saviour.

_Judith_. This is a subtle flattery. What know I Of whom God loves, of whom God hates? I know This only: in my home, in my soul's chamber, A filthy verminous beast hath made his lair. I let him in; I let this grim lust in; Not only did not bolt my doors against His forcing, but even put them wide and watcht Him coming in, to make my house his stable. What though I killed him afterward? All my place, And all the air I live in, is foul with him. I killed him? Truly, I am mixt with him; Death must have me before it hath all him.

_Ozias_. In thee, too, are the floods, the wild rivers, Overrunning thy thought, the nameless mind? How else, indeed? Nay, we are dull with joy: Of thee we thought not, out of the hands of outrage Coming back, although with victory coming. But this makes surety once more of my thought, And gives again my reason its lost station; For it may come now in my privilege (A thing that could cure madness in my brain) That thou from me persuasion hast to endure What well I know thy soul, thy upright soul, Feels as abominable harness on it Fastening thee unwillingly to crime,-- The wickedness that hath delighted in thee.

_Judith_. Ay? Art thou there already? Tasting, art thou, What the Assyrians may have forced on me, Ere thou hast well swallowed thy new freedom? Indeed, I know this is the wine of the feast Which I have set for thee and thy Bethulia; And 'tis the wine makes delicate the banquet.