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H A N N I B A L
HANNIBAL

A DRAMA IN FIVE Acts
BY
JOHN CLARK
CAPETOWN
PARTER BROS. & CO.
LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co.
1908
r2.º
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
CARTHAGINIANS
HANNIBAL
HASDRUBAL
} brothers to Hannibal
MAGO
MAHARBAL
HANNO
CARTHALO
DU CARIUs, a Gaul serving in Hannibal's army
A Suffete
Priests
An Ancient
A Campmaster
An Elephantarch
A Sentinel
TOramatis Personae—continued-
ROMANS
ITLAMINIUs
VARRO
PAULUs
LENTULus
NERO
SEMPRONIUS TUDITANUs
CoRvINUs
ATILIUs
A Legatus
A Primipilus
A Decurion
An Armourbearer
A Subcenturion
TAANACH, a Prophetess attached to the service
of Baal -
ΜyRRHA, her assistant
A PRAEFIcA
Officers, Soldiers, Spies, Citizens
Chorus
scene: Italy and Africa
6
Act I
Chorus I
-*
H A N N I B A L
Enter Chorus
The chorus I, my hero Hannibal,
Two oldtime warring folks my History,
Who bravely played their part on worldly stage,
As piece- and pawn men of grim Destiny.
Caught in the whirl and welter of the times,
They shocked and reeled, and rushed again to
smite wº.
Their blows predestinate, two arbiters
Where only one could live and legislate,
Where co-equality was brainish dream
Of peaceful fantast doging to his hurt,
Where yeasty hell-broth bubbled up its fumes
Of envy, hate, and wrong. Of such our theme.
But specially, my gentles, of the stock
That sailed the globe, and taught its parts com-
4}^{2}^{262
In brotherhood, that warred imperially
For honour and for realm, that mauled the Greek
And staggered Rome to tottering point, that yet,
Despite of pilot, foundered near the port
Of promise, sunken since in vasty night
Of things forgot and overpast, were’t not
That one resplendent man jets starry light
Across the far earpanse, and daggles us,
Nigh surfeited of warrior asterisms.
9 £3 & &
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE I
'Tis him we try to figure in our play
With halo of the mind, bedimmed, Suspect,
And, such our sore default, with sordid lack
Of circumstance and space that girt him round
Right martially. Lo, see him come adown
The Alpine slope, first harrower of the mount, -
Our great Epigonus, and fervidly,
As victor-orator, eachilarate
The troubled soldiery. List him avow -*
His sire- and self-begotten creed, and, scanned
By visionary witch, express, unscared,
His rule and theoric of manjulness.
Attend with praise a folk's remembrancer.
And me, the Chorus to this History
Admit to tolerance, of your charity.
ACT I
Act I, 1 SCENE I—An Alpine slope winding up a lofty
bank. In the near distance masses of troops.
Horsemen are seen to ride about. Enter
three Officers in conversation.
First Anon we enter the Italian plains,
Officer And see the country we have come to add
To Carthage' realm. 'Tis said our Hannibal
Doth purpose by a leader's speech to expand
Our budding hopes to flowerage of resolve.
Second So whisper hath it. And the buds nigh missed
Officer Their burgeoning by nipping of the frosts
Of hill and heart.
* * >
* * * * *
* • * tº
*.
* , a
• *, * * , s , , , “ IO
t zº * ~ * * {
*
g HANNIBAL **
ACT I, SCENE 2 ---
Third See yonder, all the groups
Officer Converge, and horsemen ride around and swift,
And hither comes a messenger. * **
Horseman Hoia -
The We hear. Wha c: P --º-º:
Officers e t new S :
Horseman Ye all must bring your men,
And fast, to hear the general speak his wish. -
First Well-timed the summons. Let us haste to obey.
Officer Already an assembly seems convoked, -º-
And hurry is the word. The men themselves
Divine that something calls, and run amain,
And I no longer can abide.
Second and ---
Third Nor we.
Officers
Act I, 2 SCENE II—The same. Hannibal from a mound
on the slope addresses the army.
Hannibal My soldiers, men of Spain and Africa, **.
(For both are mine, mine by my country's trust
And danger’s hallowing bond), we now have
passed
O'er rivers and o'er frozen Alpine heights,
Iberia to Italia all the way;
And underneath you lie the plains of Po,
The garden of the Gaul, whom Rome hath spoiled,
Ally full sure given us by hate, and gods
Who venge the broken oath, the treaty spurned.
~ ^. II
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE 2
Reflect, my men. Yon toilsome path which last
Retards our way is e'en the wall of Rome,
Ascend its steep and cross its height, then you
Have scaled the walls and stood upon the top
Of Rome's sole fastness, having refuge none
Save nature's barriers, no anchorage
Couched sure in grappling hearts of loyal men.
Rome's Sons alone are foes, and verily they
Are units, amateurish warriors,
However brave and blindly venturesome,
Not foemen worthy of Hamilcar’s sons,
And Carthage' arm, and weight auxiliar
Of nations pressing on to goal foreseen.
This past, we reach the level, where, like a flood
That winter makes resistless, we roll on,
Submerging all that fronts our rush, both towns
And puny men. A people tyrannous,
A race forsworn by act aggressive done
And impious atheism, have ranged with us
Both men and deities. My soldiers tried,
Ye messengers of Fate, swords of her will,
The gods fulfil your noble high emprise,
And bring you near the starting place, from
which,
After a foray ill-opposed and Swift,
We’ll batter down the city insolent,
And her most truculent sons send to regale
The vengeance of our folk, unless they cower
As sheep, and meekly hold forth neck for yoke
Of empire and of right by us imposed.
For naught but distance now us separates
From Roman Capitol; within our clutch
We have our enemies’ life, and home of power;
I 2
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE 2
And with access of allied might we'll hurl
Us o'er the wolf-cub's brood, as wolvish they
As was their founder's dam, made meek by Mars,
Till then a Savage beast. Our path is honour,
Our end is empire. I the guide, and you
The means, may more, each one a little whole
Of Carthage' marshalled might. We extend our
fame
By deeds on Italy’s soil, and Tyrian gods
Will help us spread our city's dominance
And their more widely-spaced domain. 'Tis writ
In Punic oracles that one from Spain
Shall head an Afric band of warriors
Whose flood shall merge the West, and threat
The East with undulating swell. I am
From Spain, and you are Carthaginians
|By blood or Barca's brand. My father's men,
'Tis not in vain, I know, that we have striven
To teach you war, and how by it to rule
'Mong men of sluggish aptitudes or worse,
Forgetting not, the while, Sagacity
And use of armoury assigned by gods
To thinking men. We've conquered, and deserved
To conquer, for our right is manifold,
Not uninspired by glory, and desire
To punish guilt, and vent a vengeance due
On cruelty unabashed. These say we all.
Now for myself I make this utterance proud:
“To-day I've reached the summit of desire—
To be the War-God of a willing host,
And light the torch of strife in Italy,
Reeping unsoiled the heirloom of my choice,
My childhood's cult, my youth's incentive strong,
1,3
*.
HANNIBAL
Act I, 3
First
- Officer
ACT I, SCENE 3
And now my manhood's task. . . Revenge on
Rome.”
Hereafter you will tell your children’s boys:
“The son of Barca led us forth to war,
With him we conquered Rome, an easy task,
After we’d conquered snow, and Alp, and land,
And stream, and fainting of the human heart.”
-º-
SCENE III—Near the same spot. An encamp-
ment of the army. On the outskirts the
Officers again converse.
Our general hath meetly spoke and steeled
And thrilled the wavering hearts. But yesterday
A Spanish targeteer, just where the pass
Displayed its worst of craggy path and slope,
And edge sheer-cut and top begloomed with cloud,
Threw down his sword, adjuring heaven to spare
A simple-witted host, dragged on by one bespelled
To his and their sure doom. Then rushing on
To where the general reined in his steed,
His shield amid the pawing feet he hurled
And knelt, the image of a suppliant—
Palms up, and face besmirched with coward fear.
The godlike Barca raised him in his seat,
His brow besprent with anger's flush, his eyes
Agleam with holy fire, that of the elect
- Whose lives are consecrate to noble ends
Crowned by both gods and men; whose part it is
To utter yea to Nature’s seeming nay,
Looking unblenched upon the fearsome tasks
Of Fame. With such a front our hero fixed
I4
HANNIBAL
.*
ACT I, SCENE 3 -
The rebel trembler—half-repentant now
Of his both weak and blatant dastardy—
And Spake: “Thou craven-heart, unworthy son
Of Spain, the land of dogged soldiers true,
Hast thou not seen how on our previous way
The obstacles we faced we brushed aside,
And aye anew did thus, sure proof that Fate
Will deal us fortune in no scanty doles,
But brimful and galore? Does Alp affright
To oath’s forgetfulness and soldier's bond ;
Unkept? . . . Why, comrade of the fluttering
Soul, -
Thy panic's o'er, thy ill is exorcised.
'Twas but the momentary infliction
Of jealous mountain-spirit. Take up thy shield,
And God shield thee, as me, from sinking self
And perilous state.” You know the Barcine
- mode,
High-souled but friendly, rigid but benign.
Second I know the fashion, I have seen it oft,
Officer The manly look, the soldier's sympathy,
The smile that glimmers out of fortitude
And quickly brightens into fellow-love,
This aspect and the other, aquiline
And god-begotten, god-fraught, like as if
Heaven's suzerain sun and subject moon had
deigned
To make of him ally, and o'er the world,
Like levin-bolt of thundering deity,
His fiat lay to admire or fear. God save
Our Punic Thunderer, say I. But what
Ensued P
--- …”
- I5
HANNIBAL
First
Officer
Third
Officer
ACT I, SCENE 3
The Spaniard slunk shamefacedly
Unto his fellows, who eyed him askance
But loud huzzaed their leader.
Who approach F
The camp’s upbroken. I hear the tread of men.
'Tis soldiers of the vaward on the march,
Who sing their steps. You hear the jovial tones,
And now the popping words. The speech hath
wrought.
Enter soldiers on the march singing
When Barca's son goes forth to war,
The rushing river falls,
The nodding mountains courteous are,
The clouds above are thralls:
And so are we of the Spanish host—and so are
the warlike Gauls.
'Twas Brennus scorned to rust at home,
And dashed hosts South like waves;
Our fathers burned and flouted Rome,
And made the wolf-men slaves:
And so shall we of the Gaulish stock—and so
shall the Spanish braves.
With Barca's son our lot is cast,
Whom gods and glory nerve;
To march, to fight, to moil, to fast
We swear, and scorn to Swerve :
And this swear we of the Punic race—and all
zwho Carthage serve.
I6
HANNIBAL
Act I, 4
Taanach
Hannibal
Taanach
ACT I, SCENE 4
SCENE IV—The outer part of the tent of
Taanach.
My lord, mine Alpine hero hath prevailed
O'er men and mount, bedazzling the one
Like lodestar, and by stellar influence
Banning the other's earth-born obstacles.
Abreast his task so far, he seeks the cheer
Of priestess. Taanach, what discerns thine eye
In watches of the night from mirror dim
Of the all-beckoning future? Not that I
Am amorous of encouragement from dreams,
Or e'en the wakeful eye of prescience pure.
A firming of my purposes I seek,
A light upon my swimmer's lonely path
Across the sea of life and destiny.
Such light as makes the goal more sure and rays
The road of doom, where man appropriates
Behests of fate by force of will, and makes
Vicegerency his role.
Beware, my son,
The risks of rash initiative. Aye seek
To win upon thy energy the Smile
Of Gods—this at the least, self-marked howe'er
Thy policy may be—for these expect
Obeisance from all mortals, and ’tis right
That free careerers in terraqueous tracts
And in the air should have all hail from those,
The few, whose will, alone, though but awhile,
Propels them on a self-determined path.
Besides, our country hath its special gods,
The gods of race, of soil, and of the main
B 17
HANNIBAL l
I’
...--~~"
Hannibal
ACT I, SCENE 4
(The which, if minor, are magistral still),
Whom Dido brought from Tyre, or found at
home,
Whom Punic traffickers have honoured, since
They dared the sea, and o'er its vasty ways
Have driven their galleys bold. Such must be
SL11"e
For country's errand and for weal, and such
shall be
For thee, if Taanach's prayers aught avail.
Admit their tried and triple cognizance.
Leal priestess, I agree. I but desire
To achieve my task, to run my race, to salve
My Soul, to place my country on a peak
*Mong nations, with laurel to enwreathe her brow,
To make our city like a pharos shine,
Seen to the Alps, to Gades, and old Tyre,
To bruit abroad the name of Hamilcar,
Who, being dead, in me yet lives, his son and
heir.
This is my aim. My means must have regard
Of self, ideal, task, incentive great.
These are the guides of heroes, these are mine.
Man is, if not the peer of gods, at least
Their minor fellow or their adjutant.
I tell thee, Taanach, manhood is not that,
Which, weltering passively, is soon submerged,
Like inert wreckage, by impact of life;
And gods, who feel a neighbour quick and Sane,
Deflect, applaud, assist. No Scowl deforms
The face of these, since they annihilate
Or tolerate. 'Tis weakness or ’tis pride
I8
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE 4
That ruins mortals, pride that apes to be
The pivot of the universe, and nerves that quail
Before the threats of earth or other men.
Of these I’ve none. A free course must I have,
And parallelism seek: I cross the path
Of none of cosmic or of civic deities.
The grand initiative is ta'en, was ta'en
Before Saguntum fell; and I was vowed
Thereto by father's dedication.
My father's will was of the gods, else I,
Till now, had not so prospered, so prevail. 3.
Taanach. A hero thou, and sprung from hero sire.
The favouring prophecies the gods constrained
My mouth to utter then at Eryx’ mount
Shall be fulfilled to thee, and proxied high
By father and by fate, thou’lt psalm in deeds
Our country’s story.
Hannibal So, but what of now.
* I asked thee late to peer ahead for light
That might bring sureness, straightness to my
race,
And present dash. I crave reply.
Taanach Attend.
Within the inner tent, great Baal before,
Confirmèd by his altar and his spirit,
I’ll shape to thee my vision of the night.
Half-blurred it is, till cleared by waking will,
And vivifying god-sent consciousness.
None else must list the bodings of a mind
God-rapt and god-entranced; but Myrrha here
Shall first for us intone a song to Baal.
I9
HANNIBAL
Myrrha
Taanach
ACT I, SCENE 4
Come, philomel and priestess both in one,
Let thy pure voice and pious soul begin
To bend to usward the Phoenician Lord.
O Sun-crowned Spirit of the Heaven,
God, and no vicegod, Thou,
What seventy times repeated seven
Can tell thy mystic brow—
Its lines of power,
And threats that lour,
Its thoughts the vortices that leaven.
O Master of the Mighty Wain
That seats Divine Ostent,
Thou curber of reneging rein,
Godhead magnificent,
O make appear
Thy presence near,
And with thy firmness his sustain.
O Baal, our Carthage' God and Tyre's,
Whom ancestors invoked—
Not vainly for the heart’s desires,
When thy vast semblance smoked,
And hundreds burned,
In thee inurned—
Relight my sleep’s prophetic fires.
O mighty God of godlike deeds,
Thine emulous adjutant
Craves seeing eye in stressful needs,
And strong arm militant.
Let priestess' voice
Bestead his choice
Of self-set means to follow redes.
Ž3.
HANNIBAL
Act I, 5
Taanach
ACT 1, SCENE 5
SCENE V–The inner part of the tent of Taanach,
before an image of Baal.
On yesternight, my son, towards mid-dark,
Meseemed to pass into another's power,
To have my inner vision kinged and ruled,
To have my brain a pageant-hall, wherein,
Upon the summons of almighty mage,
Were passed, weird-wise, before me shapes and
SCC1162S
Of dark but real significance, the which,
If memory serve and Baal illume, I’ll form
To thee again.
Ushered by rushing noise,
Mayhap the hustling of the sentient Night
By air-dividing entities of thought
From matrices divine, my visioned guests,
Without apparitors, essayed their tasks.
Festive at times they seemed, though outwardly,
For from their eyes looked the internal soul
That scans and weighs the future seriously;
At others, clad in maulēd battle-weeds
Or garb of woe, they stabbed or sobbed their way.
And battle-morns and foughten fields I saw,
And all the stir of charging chivalry.
Whenas I gazed upon the rioting show,
And wonder, tremor, triumph, in their turn
Beset my brain, the thrills of sympathy
Were fleshed to nerves that thrummed and pulled
my will
Into the sombre game resistlessly.
(Anew I feel my mind storm-piloted)
I moved in thought among the serried files:
21.
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE 5
Instinctively, it seemed, I chose my place;
I knew my leaders, folk and friends, not dimmed,
But indistinct in partial likelihood.
(Again, methinks, I con the semblances)
I swayed, I veered, I rushed amain with them,
A witness and an actor too.
Give heed,
The warder of my brain reports me guests,
Whom I admit, regreet, survey, and name.
Yonder, behold, a woodland palace rude,
Upreared upon a plain that foots a slope,
Green-mounded, dotted with arboreal growths,
And cleft slantwise by an impetuous stream.
The amphitheatred hills upclimb afar
And vastily; above, and all about,
A paly-tinted azure roofs and rounds
The scenic advent of the eventide.
The sunset draws anigh, and figures move
Upon the turfy terraces, aspect
And outline strong, while o'er the silvan bounds
Companioned warriors stroll in deep converse.
And helms of Carthaginians I note,
And fell-bedizened heads of Gauls, who seem
—To me swept near—a fickle-eyed folk,
Like all their race.
|But see, dislimned the whole,
Dissolved in turmoil of a mighty fight,
Like thinner sounds dispelled by noisy crack.
The brattling falchions swinge the shields.
The spears,
Mad-hurtling, bear the flying death. The shouts
Of combatants outvie the weapons’ din.
On either side there swift succeed a rush,
22
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE 5
A rout, a rally, but with our friends, these there,
The advantage seems to stay. My spirit with them
Strikes death. I list the thud—so near I feel—
Of bodies falling.
All unwoven now,
The living tapestry, and shred in air,
Viewless as that. Another show I hail,
For towards a camp there ride a cavalcade
And single horseman flauntingly. Victory-
Is horsed with them and outcries rend the air.
The outrider looks like thee and like thy sire,
The God of War, outborne on wings of fame,
And pennoned by a conqueror's streaming plume,
Hamilcar, and out-Hamilcared.
O sight
Most pleasuring, abide, and sear thy lines
Upon the roll of Time, unalterable,
And unerasable, and manifold.
But no, it fades . . . and cities twain appear,
Both great, both turmoiled, both of regnant air,
The one, that on the left, with templed mount,
And height of rocks and circumjacent hills,
Stone-strong in core and in periphery,
With tawny stream careering panicless
And free; the other, and familiar,
With cone-like roofs of fanes heptagonal,
And stable tiers of homes, by whiteness ringed
Of shivering foam upon an emerald Sea,
With water-courses blanching verdurous plains
In sinuous tracery.
In this sparse knots
Of anguished beings haunt the Streets, grouped
round -
- 23
HANNIBAL
Hannibal
ACT I, SCENE 5
Calm men that flout disaster and despair
By looks and words; in that processions
Throng thick to thank the gods, and Earth
Becomes the banqueter of smiling Heaven
To feast of incense and leal-tongued acclaim,
As if spoil-bearing Victory's nuncio had
But lately brought an Empire's earnest sure.
A glorious scene and putatively ours,
Which may great Baal verify.
But lo,
On my sinister side a kindly light
Enfolds the holy mount and quick outspreads,
Till slopes are lit and all the city bathed
In mellow mercy of the solar flame.
My dexter darling's darkened now. Anon,
The whole, both sight and sound, speeds off, save
rack
And rumbling noise, compact to appall and knell.
The repetition’s incomplete: it ends
In louring, misty, baffling mock-belief.
Such as is given, 'tis for thee, my son,
To name disheartening or heartening.
For me, I cannot think that dreams divine,
So cheering in their tenor, can e'er be
A chousing of the gods. 'Tis clear that thou
—And clearer 'twas in first obsession—
And thine, in estimate of heaven's court,
Are warriors of proof, renown, Success,
And world-rewelding force.
Priestess, my path
I see, and will o'errun amain. 'Tis dull
To crave, ’tis dull to miss, a beacon's light
24.
HANNIBAL
ACT I, SCENE 5
Upon the shore of Aftertime. The gods
Are sphinxlike, and 'tis better, better far,
To play the man than earn the lackwit’s palm
Of prayerful poltroonery. Henceforth
Self-steered, my eye on father's star and mine,
By laxness or fool-fury unattaint,
I’ll oar or sail my way, and, Taanach,
Do thou bestead me with the gods. Thou may'st.
A CT II
ACT II
Enter Chorus
Chorus II Ticinus draws me neart to colloquy,
And you, if my conveyance ye accept,
Where Scipio, a name funest, debarred
The Punic path and earned rebuff and rout.
Who dares obstruct Mars' nursling at his play,
Or Boreas blustering with his Alpine blast?
Who dares the Libyan lion intercept,
Gambolling on the rivage Cispadame?
Not Scipio, nor yet Sempronius,
Not he just thrown, nor he of Trebia.
To thwart him, none, to baffle him there's naught,
Scipiades too young, nor yet self-taught.
“Flaminius,” Rome said, “gives him the avaunt,
Flaminius, the Terror of the Gaul,
The which, as our narration will supply,
Did not so grisly show, for in his eyes
The Punic dust wrought blindness, o'er his head
The Punic terror did out-terror all
His bravery and cast him stript, much as
Apollo stripped a rival insolent.
Alack, the fatal pass, the fatal craft,
The Roman dared to match him against Mars,
And he not Diomede, and Fate estranged,
And gat the meed of his hybristic act.
Now is our hero near the peak of wish,
JJ
29
HANNIBAL
ACT II, SCENE I
A slayer of his thousands ten times o'er;
A router of the Roman consulars;
A snatcher designate of diadem …--
From city queened and throned on high, for gods
Crown art o'er outworn rule, themselves thereby.
The great protagonist surveys the field,
And casts to reap the fruitage of success.
He cons his plan and calls it good anew :
To wit, to uproot Rome's confidence in self:
To pass as herald over Italy,
Emblazoning the parcels of his feats;
To shake apart allies unsutured to
The Roman rule, and others malcontent.
Behold Ticinus, Trebia, Trasimene,
The two in prologue, and the third i' the scene.
Act II, 1 SCENE I–In the outskirts of Arretium. Flamin-
ius at the head of his army. Corvinus con-
werses with him.
Corvinus Pray hear me, consul, Speak the words I must.
I play the part of a remonstrant ill
And backwardly, but so constrain our straits
That I do dare your wrath. The portents are
So stern and thick, the stake's so great, the man
So crafty, our commanders so outpeered,
The north so tickle, that one duly feels
Divine arrest laid on your haste. Pray slack
The marching till your colleague be at call.
Let not your bravery mislead, for men
And things are vocal of delay. Pray pause.
3O
HANNIBAL.
Flaminius
Act II, scENE 1
Corvinus, cease this pious babblement.
Enough I’ve learned in the late conference
Of parlous state. Art as infect as they,
Poor shivering souls that cannot see or hear
Vagaries of mishandled brute or bird,
Or whim of freakish Nature, but they deem
Their fate and that of country co-enwrapt?
Corvinus
Flaminius
A squeaking mouse, a calf's brainsickly rush,
A timorous pull at firm-set standard fright -
And numb their aspen hearts. There's danger?
Yes,
If such fool pietists compel our course.
Who is this Hannibal whom Romans sky?
A conqueror resistless hitherto.
Needs must you grant so much.
I do, and add
Thereto, “Success and accident are not --
Copartnered aye, nor e'en companioned ; luck
And craftiness not twinned inseparate.”
O shame, Corvinus, dost thou doubt the Spirit
And might of Rome overagainst the ruse
And rush of our stipendiary’s Son,
Half Hercules and half Vulpecula.
A creeping march, “No, no, enough of pause,
And of endurance meek, more than enough.”
We hasten hurriedly to avenge our folk,
And tarnished history. The hour has come.
Rome rises o'er her foe with uplift arm :
I am justiciar and Sword as well,
Let colleague glean after my sickle fell.
3I
s HANNIBAL
Act II, 2
Mago
Hannibal
ACT II, SCENE 2
SCENE II—Hannibal’s camp between Cortona and
Trasimenus. Mago and Hannibal converse.
The scouts deliver that Flaminius
Is posting here outbreathing slaughter huge
And threatening—the second sure, the first
Ironical and self-invoked—and thinks
To rout our troops and shame your captaincy.
This hot-head consul plays my game of war,
And his own proper dooming. Let him rave,
And tramp, and rush into the snare. As foul
And seeming-fair a spot we have at hand,
As ever gulled a warring roysterer.
I know my man, a conqueror of the Gaul,
The brave outstepper of a forward folk,
Enduring and compact, that oweth more
To kindly weather than to piloting.
Let face a Pontius, they are undone;
Let come a Pyrrhus, and they cry them cowed;
Let one but pass from victory manifest
To victory great, in onward crescent move
And for a space, with cult of conquered tribe
And restive town, then, not their doggedness,
And not their far-branched rule can e'er outweigh
The science warlike, politic our sire
Passed on to his inheritors. Stout heart,
My Mago! Fortune smiles, let's do our part.
32
HANNIBAL.
ACT II, SCENE 3
Act II, 3 SCENE III—Within a pass at the foot of the
hills near Cortona, Trasimnenus in the near
distance. Soldiers marching. Enter Fla-
"minius and Armourbearer.
Flaminius The vaward has just sighted Punic posts,
And combating is near. Now is your turn,
My soldiers, both to clinch your arguments
By acts, and, further, print them in the flesh
Of blatancy, to wit, that hitherto
Through laxity and lurdan ease of ours
The foe has won; that Roman soldiers are
Not derogate; that Roman derring-do
And Roman worth compel to approve their past
The God of Battles; that Rome's suzerainty
In war and peace is justified of right;
That this so tardy duel and severe
In issue hath been and shall ever be,
To Romeward, usward; that, o'erhung a prize
For dust and heat of strenuous battling wild,
The Roman runs to goal before his peer,
Self-wreathed and militant.
Enter soldiers from various quarters calling
“The foe is nigh”
So be it then—
Or now, or late, a combat to the end,
A mellay thick and fierce, the centre we;
The strife of steel with foemen ringing round,
The sword-arm stabbing, launching out amain.
Make haste, and arm ye for the fray, to thrust,
And fend. Behind the vibrant, trusty Sword
No fear can chill, nor breed incestuously
C 33
HANNIBAL
Flaín inius
Armour-
bearer
Ducarius
ACT II, SCENE 3
The lot of hazardise, the which, with fear
For dam and unmanned feebleness for sire,
A cognate pair, begets its parentage.
Let Sword to work, sword helps when gods are
deaf :
Strike Sword, our Stator and our Sospita.
[Eareunt Soldiers
Do on mine armour, comrade of the shield,
Thou honest dart-averter, henchman true,
Behold for me and thee a boisterous day,
A day of dash and press and hew and slay,
A day Olympian, if brief in hours,
A scrimmage-tussle where each combatant
Is demigod to hurtle and to fell.
My Lord and Master I shall fend thee well,
Seek thou to tower grim or rout pell-mell,
Be it on floor of heaven or marl of hell.
Enter Ducarius with some Gaulish horsemen
Where is the Scourge of Gallia, where the hound
That bayed the Insubrian from his own roof-
tree,
And coursed, deep-jowled, a peasantry to earth;
That spoiled our fields and slew our tribe in
heaps.
The shades of brothers will less wildly look
In the drear-lighted plains of Acheron,
If this arch-murderer is sent to earn
His murderer's meed beside the justly damned.
See, yonder gleams the glint of Splendid arms,
It is the man: this lance shall make him ghost.
[Exit
34
HANNIBAL
Act II, 4
Hannibal
ACT II, SCENE 4
Re-enter Ducarius, and Gauls bearing the helmet
of Flaminius on a lance
Lift high the helmet of our enemy.
The consular head is low, the Roman’s down,
His blood is let that gored us on our land,
His power is spilt that dealt Our Soil away,
His doom is cast that judged us landless churls,
His house is desolate that widowed wives,
No more chills Gaul a Roman consul’s frown.
Aloft the helmet of our enemy,
'Tis quenching time of Roman tyranny.
SCENE IV—Another part of the same. Hannibal
and Mago speak of the victory.
The victory rests with us, as was ordained,
No strength could rend the toils that I had set;
No effort could the wingless victims free
From dole and death, for hill and plain and lake
Obtruded triple greeting grim, the lists
Of Hannibal, which fools call wiles. Most sure
They fought like stouthearts of vainglorious
stock, *
Like brutes of brawn, unbrained and ignorant.
They’re minions of success and accident.
Whoso can dash his war with artifice
Holds them in hollow of his hand, and fear
We'll yet inject and tremors of the soul,
With which instilled, and the conviction
That fate is froward, our intent is served.
35
HANNIBAL
Mago
Hannibal
Act II, 5
ACT II, SCENE 5
Once damp its soldiers, and a people melts
To harmless ooze; the army is a nation's heart,
Scare it and all is fluttering, scare it
And eagles grow a pigeon-pinioned folk.
Towards which this day will bring us leagues.
The third
Of battles won's an earnest of the fourth,
And that . . .
And that of Rome itself enthralled.
Our Sky’s unovercast, and azuring
To rarest blue, a bright and Barcid heaven.
Meseems our noble sire looks down o'erjoyed
On this estate, mayhap his furthering.
A radiance lights his demigod's aspect,
And tones his warrior's brow of majesty,
My sire, of whom I barely mind myself,
Whose cease retarded Carthage' phoenix' rise,
But glorified our natal destiny.
Ay, ay, though dead, he liveth yet in wish
And will of family trinity. But stay,
We slur the pressing now, it falls to pass
The news by person throughout Italy,
And first to inter our dead with soldiers’ rites:
The rest we leave to rustics or to kites.
SCENE V—On the shore of Lake Trasimenus the
morning after the battle. A trench dug and
ready to be filled. Gravediggers standing by.
Enter a Praefica, Peasants, and Peasant-
º/O7?? (???.
36
HANNIBAL
Praefica
Chorus of
Peasant-
ić) O}}!.6%
Praefica
ACT II, SCENE 5
Soldiers of morningtide, corpses of e'en,
Shent so ungently ere ripe the affray,
Ne'er shall their soilure unquality teen,
Though so bedraggled with gore and with clay.
For on the foughten field, like paladin,
Valiantly dying in warrior's way,
God’s gift they gambled with dicerlike mien,
Recklessly daring unbattled assay.
Bury the soldiers that died for their land,
Flouting dishonour by Trasimene's strand.
Bury the soldiers,
Bury them fair;
Earth, hold them fondly,
Cast on thy care.
See the boon sunshine
Sacring their grave;
Nature enjoins us
Cherish the braze.
Sing ye the dauntless,
Sing ye and sigh;
Patriots, whisper
Hail and good-bye.
Romans, do tears for misfortunes avail,
Tears for our heroes so bloodical and Thaiined,
Trapped by the trickster that lureth to bale,
Marknight and tourney-despiser unshamed?
Vengeance be yours, only fainthearts bewail,
Vengeance is holy when honour’s defamed,
Solemn reprisals cure commonwealth's ail,
Romans should rear them like Titans untained.
Follow the valiant that fought for their land,
Bearding the Afer by Trasimene's strand.
37
HANNIBAL
ACT II, SCENE 5
Chorus of Follow the valiant,
Peasants Follow them migh,
In their ensample
Let us affy.
Drive forth the foenen,
Drive them pell-mell,
Mimicking luckless
Heroes that fell.
Die for our country,
Die and survive,
Murmured on brothers'
Lips and alive.
3
8
A CT III
ACT III
Enter Chorus
Chorus III Arouse thee, foundress of a city great,
Sichaeus' bride ere Byrsa was a state :
Arouse thee from thy gloom disconsolate.
If earthly rumour reach thy sullen plains,
Not so deject thy looks: assuaged thy pains.
For, forth the battle that he now darraigns,
Thy venger brings unto the Aeneadae
Dishonour, drilled and captained by Dismay—
Now doth the flood-tide of my hero show,
And bears him on its breast right jocundly,
Upheaving him to meet the host that Rome
Had proudly mustered in Apulia.
If thus speak sooth: if he not rather be
Some power Tritonian that, of itself,
Piles waz’es at wish to horse its purposes.
Howe'er 'tis said, the Might of Hannibal
O'erbeareth all opposing obstacles.
Two camps o'erspread the banks of Aufidus;
Tzwo rival armies front them threatingly;
Two chieftains urge their followers to proof–
Here vaunts the Roman, here the Barcid prompts
His men to strike their vantage home, convinced
That Rome now plumbs the trough of her descent,
Unconsciously, and unassured of rise.
4I
HANNIBAL
CHORU S III
Now wedded are a procreant pair, not oft
Espoused—Success, Desert, the latter male,
With loins of an Avenger-Architect.
Can Rome resist the auspicious union, -
The access of glory, force, and nuptialled state:
But one assertion more, Maharbal said,
Would make the Capitol consentient.
So thought not Hannibal; he knew or foe
Or task, the latter aye, the former soon,
If not forthright. Deem not that I, misproud,
Enfeoffed to Carthage' cause, disglorify
The lustre of the Roman name. No chill
Mispriser I, or makebate malapert,
As witness this our play : 'tis ruth that makes
Me homager of patriotism fordone,
And honest spite, for that anarchic Fate
Could mammock into shreds a plan mature.
Divert your minds a space from Rome's rebound
And luck ordained, the meed of doggedness
And Scipionian worth, and joy with me
Within the town by Dido built and famed.
Here Mago's rousing message sets ago.g
The streets; and priests and citizens with Sounds
Of shawm, and sackbut, psaltery, and fife
Make glad the air, enlist the sum o'erhead:
The varletry, made greathearts by the news,
Respond to timbrel’s beat and cymbal's clang.
Applaud with me, my friends, a folk's acclaim
To hero pinnacling on mount of fame
Their ancient town, and capturing the gods
By victories won at honour-making odds.
42
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE I
Act III, 1 SCENE I–The Battlefield of Cannae. Within
the Carthaginian lines. Hannibal converses
with his Ancient.
Hannibal May the event of battle bring success
As great as is the fortune now. All tends
To assure my hopes, my guesses e'en are sooth.
Their ground, their mass, their disposition
All flatter my forecast. I have enough
To play my convex-crescent into round
Of doom, and make them moon-struck. E'en
The sun and wind are my allies, and glare
And dust conspire to blind the Roman gulls.
My star sheds influence, and, omen sure,
My confidence in self's unshrunk.
Ancient The host
Hath like affects, renowner of the past,
Enfeoffed to thy belief, and homager
Of gests of demi-Baal, e'en thine. This morn
The footmen, horsemen, and auxiliars
Of either arm most jovially conversed
In war-prate of our chances—victory,
And sack, and sight, not far removed then,
Of homeland, hearth and own familiar folk,
And happy mutual boons.
Hannºtb Ye gods, a chord
Within rethrums these last. But all in turn,
Apace. To horse. I must address our files
In this embattled hour of certainty.
His Oration to his Soldiers
Brief words suit best our time and our intent,
And your enthusiasm. My veterans
HANNIBAL
Act III, 2
Vazzo
ACT III, SCENE 2
Of march, of strife, and of success, assume,
For so the gods in grace provide, the gift
Of crowning mercy, yours, and mine through you,
By all preamble of the wont of war.
The foe outnumbers us. The task is hard
And doom-inviting: such it always was.
By that much is your valour architraved
And friezed, the cornice now ye must suradd.
Shall Roman horde give pause to those that
banned
To naught the thousand thousand bars they met?
Shall Varro win where failed Flaminius P
With them is rush in perpetuity
Of failure; ours the calmly-gathering plan
That, tempered by a timeous stratagem,
Bears on to goal of wished accomplishment.
Yonder is rout, I make you sure, my men;
With us the past hath stormed the future's wall,
And weepeth on to secular fixedness.
Shall we at Cannae pale that flushed o'erall?
Shall hearts that erstwhile throbbed to martial
tread .**
Now beat to pluckless coward’s drearihead?
SCENE II—The same. Within the Roman lines.
Warro converses with a Legatus.
This compact mass, to speak restrainedly,
Must hold its own and more, ay must, if Rome
Is Rome, and true to self, o'erpower the less,
And scare them off the field in rout
44
HANNIBAL
Legatus
Vapºro
ACT III, SCENE 2
Towards the littoral. Say, legate, say,
Vaunt I unduly, trumpeting ourselves
As likely conquerors? Is Barcid Mars
A sturdier foe than the Ausonian,
Sabellian, Samnite, or the torquate Gaul,
Or than the Epirote whom our fathers cowed
Into encomiast.
Our reynard chief
Is Somewhat spilled, both he and men and craft.
Not always chouse the cautelous, nor aye
The swift Numidians achieve. Belike
The honest warrior is justified
Betimes of his integrity; despite
His doubling, bubbling ways Sir Overreach
Is nulled in war. Straight thrust and forward
rush,
With crowd of chargers, that's my rule of fight.
And mine, provided that the passioning heart
Is Swoln with no ignoble private gust,
But wth the pulse of ancientry, such great
Diastole as mads and moves a man
To duplicate in self his race's deeds.
The which I must excite in soldier's breast,
For, yond, deployed to sight, the enemy’s line
Asserts its aim and our necessity.
His Oration to his Soldiers
Soldiers of Rome, of city raised on highth
Of site and temperament, foredoomed to rule
And headship of our Italy. Need ye,
For goad, or voice or cheer of mine. No whit,
By sonties of our Jove. The peacefullest plains,
45
HANNIBAL
Act III, 3
Hannibal
ACT III, SCENE 3
The fairest tilth, the fattest wealth of your
Estate are ravaged by a cateran chief
And crew of scatterlings. Too long we’ve pined,
And tholed, and fleeted chance. The tide's at
flood :
Embark and sail our argosies to port.
The period of the meteor is near past.
We’ll souse it in a drench of blood, and, if
The fire-ball spark in meteoric death,
Such is its garish end by law of life.
“Be Italy cleared. Be Italy cleared by us:”
Such battle-proem I recite. The rest
Is with your arms, and swords, and hearts' access
Of noble fury mounting on the past,
And fire-distent to rend the ravager.
Discrown the potentate belligerent.
Be Romans, be Italians, play the man:
Sweep off our soil the hustling African.
SCENE III—The same. Enter Hannibal and
Mago.
How toward these Romans were, they graced our
wish,
And erred, as we had hoped, consumedly,
Presenting all the vantage we desired—
A heap of frantic fighters treading heels,
And not assailants in relays. They’re lost,
Already they have passed the line that bounds
Recovery ; they surge to usward, fix
Themselves in grip unanswerable and fell,
46
HANNIBAL
Mago
Act III, 4
Lentulus
Paulus
ACT III, SCENE 4
Like Milo in the cleft. See that all goes
As prearranged—an easy back in midst,
The sides enveloping the fated host,
Like wings of Azrael.
Rest confident.
All's known, all's grasped, all's in preparedness,
Why, every soldier's thy confederate,
And helper : no surcease of effort lames
The African and Spaniard, and the Gaul,
Unbaffled and unhindered, spaniels still
The victor's forward steps. All’s fair for us,
The sun, the wind, the foemen jeopardous.
SCENE TV—Another part of the Field. Enter
Paulus wounded and Lentulus.
The heavens forfend such loss and sacrifice.
Hear me. Hard by, a trooper holds my horse:
Which mount and flee. Not yours this folly's
guilt
And sad event. With you the commonweal
Had jumped the fiat. Ate, Ate drove
Us on in blindfold overweeningness,
Leave me to die, to expiate, perhaps,
Some rank offence of country, proffering
Stark patriotism oblation worthiest, in Spirit
Of Curtius, or, like the Decii,
Devoted 'gainst a coming victory.
47
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 5
Act III, 5 SCENE V–Another part of the Field where cross-
Varro
roads meet. Enter Varro in flight with some
horsemen.
And this, you say, leads to Venusia,
'Fore God, a dolorous path, but for the nonce.
Not yet is reached the turning point and pause
Of ill; still must the winepress trodden be;
Irrefragable is the doomsman now
But not eterne. It cannot be that Rome
For centuries has worsted every foe
Autochthonous, and weathered every storm
Of fate, to crouch before a foreigner,
And melt before the breath of Africus.
Our fathers owned the soil, our heritage;
They govern it from their graves; their term-
lessness
Is of the soil and in the air, a subtlety
Of intermixture, fraught with permanence
Of seated hill, and level plain, and vital air.
'Tis we, by right divine, are Italy's lords,
And no exotic rule can graft itself
Into the antique stock. Our darkening
Is but a moment’s length, 'twill lift and leave
Us sunned upon by Phoebus Redux’ face.
‘Dear country’ is the noonstar of our thoughts,
Which shineth aye, let be eclipse extern,
And aye resuns us into ardency
To hurl the invader hence discomfited.
Nil desperandum, holy our emprise,
Nil desperandum, country never dies.
Enter Hannibal and Officers on horseback
48
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 5
.*
Hannibal At this place, when the remnant of the host
Was sinking fast to stillness 'neath our swords,
I saw a group of horse. Methought that sure,
The other consul, he that played our part,
Terentius, like his colleague Fabian,
Might swell our net—for his the escort showed,
And means of flight—and so I sent a troop,
Whom ye see riding from the outskirts there,
To envelope and possess. Two consuls ta'en
And victory might have forthwith imparched
The marrow of our foe, and cor’sives held
Against the state's distempered wound, might
have
O'erdriven their fortitude to the perilous brink
That leaves no choice but crook the knee or shoot
The precipice. Not so disastered are their hopes:
The consul lives, the state holds on to live.
The longer respite chance procureth them,
The greater downfall I decern. Slow Fate
May niggle to her doom, when I’m ally
And prickspur, ‘thorough, quick’ reciprocate.
Let me but reach the chair of Destiny,
My will shall sceptre it o’er Italy.
Enter Sempronius Tuditanus and following, on
the road to Camusium
Seympromius’Twas as I said: we hewed our way amain,
Tuditants And made the greater camp. With comrades
hence
We meet no bar, nor shall. Who dare gainsay
That greatheart swordsmen are the pioners
That most accomplish in the game of war.
Forerunners, combatants, and conquerors,
D 49
HANNIBAL
Act III, 6
Maharbal
(to his
soldiers)
ACT III, SCENE 6
Self-righting, self-propelling disputants,
Dictators by the law of deeds, they make,
Unmake, enfree, enslave, enthrone, discrown,
And all by soul and stroke. Praise, laud the
Sword,
The Scourge and sceptre of the armipotent;
Praise, laud the soldier's tool, the citizen's staff,
The city’s mace. Like bolt to Jupiter,
Like thyrsus to the Bacchanal, so is
The Sword to Rome—her weapon and her palm.
Greathearts of Italy, so long as Rome
Has steel and will and soldiers of our mood,
Her empery stands. Let’s to Canusium,
And what’s beyond, the sworder's day shall come.
SCENE VI—Another part of the Field. Maharbal
exhorts Hannibal.
Shout praise, my men, unto our paladin,
Our peerless imp of fame invincible,
Our martial statist, warrior paragon,
The nonpareil of generals since the days
Of Philip's son Hammonian. Huzza.
Rides up to Hannibal
By thee, twice-double victor, honour's cleared,
By thee, twice-double victor, country’s crowned,
By thee, twice-double victor, conquest's sure.
Our future path winds Safely, upward-borne,
Unto the peak of fame, Rome the first stage,
And one of ease. Let me with plump of horse,
50
HANNIBAL
Hannibal
Maharbal
ACT III, SCENE 6
Mine own Numidians, make the Capitol,
Or ere the panic-stricken hares find time
Or spirit their burrow to defend. 'Tis known,
Ere now, that hildings, pricked amain and sore
By sharp despair, have them discased of fear,
And donned a bravery that served their need.
On, on to Rome, and let me wind the horn
That sounds ‘downfall, surrender' up its slopes,
And drops upon its stream the echoic dole.
Maharbal, nay, it likes me not. Anon,
And soon, perhaps, we’ll ride the final raid,
Enthral our foemen, harry quick their lairs,
And toss their aeries from the rocks. But so,
If all is sure: and then, about the ribs
Our dagger damns and pricks the cursed life
Into a deathly impotence of harm.
Have patience, man, I am as fell as thou.
It is the hour, I feel, let us depart.
Why not this first, the rest anon, at ease.
The kernel is the nut, the shell we’ll pound
Again. Parch up the Source, and issuing streams
Will pass us o'er dry-shod; the citadel
Of attercop pash down, redundantly
Wave all the outworks. If 'tis Italy's heart
We woo, then let the conqueror-bridegroom wear,
As over-lord of former lord, Some star
Attesting stronger sword and mannishness,
Disastering Roman lights for aye. Send us,
And in five days, I’ll spread for thee a board
Upon the Capitol, a Saliar feast,
But to the Baalim. Thine eye frowns ‘No’
5I
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 7
On my insistence. Be it so. How vain,
Ye gods, to brew the drink and miss the draught.
[Eacit
Hannibal What if he's right, my sworder martialist,
(solus) My hotspur of the horse. Mayhap I’ll rue
My pausefulness and circumspection.
Now that mine enemy is all amort, --
My feelings pluck me on to end the duel,
If duel, not rather titanomachy -
Against the gods of ill; but such an end
Deserves centuple certainty of means.
For sire’s and Carthage' sake I’ll wait; ay, too,
Because a sure finale ought to crown
My slowly-climbing self; and such a mace
I’ll weld upon mine anvil as, with ring
Engirt and narrowed, dasheth quick to knees.
Act III, 7 SCENE VII—In Carthage. A Thanksgiving
Service to the Gods.
Priest of O Gladdener of thine own Punic folk,
Baal Of Oldtime Canaan and the tents of Shem,
Of island Tyre and quint Phoenician,
Of Palestina and the orient kings,
What time they feared thee and diffused thy cult,
Creator and Preserver of all life.
Thou Joy of Worlds, thou radiant Brooch of
Heaven,
Disperser of the dark and chaos’ wrack;
God of the Noon, of sunlight's fecund ray;
52
Chorus of
Priests of
Baal
Priest of
Melcart
HiAIN IN LE5AL,
ACT III, SCENE 7
Thou ever-smiler e'en behind eclipse,
Ineffable essence of untarnished might;
Great Fashioner of ever-cycling times—
To thee our hearts, with gratitude distent
And welling o'er with pride, turn wonderingly
And full, amazed at thy fourtimes uplift
Right arm, offensive, signalling offence
To all thy emanant gods; and love-infused
For sake of land, for sake of puissant god
Of chosen folk. We thank thee, Baal, adore
Thine orb eterne, resplendent, effluent
To us of genial fire, and to our foes
Of scorching heat and loosened knees. For aye,
For aye thy might's assured. For aye as sure
Be Carthage’ place 'mong nations. Sing, attune
To us for aye the heartstrings of our Lord.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the treacherous foe,
Worsted on the field of battle,
Smitten by our Baal below.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the treacherous foe,
Frighted by our War-God’s rattle,
Blasted by the Sun-God’s bow.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the treacherous foe.
Thou God of deeds and of the ringing blows
That rhythm the tasks impossible into act,
Assertor of the god-crowned claim of might
To scatter in a trice the bonds of time,
And loosen momently an age's load;
Thou lord of thews that shook the clasp of beasts,
53
HANNIBAL.
Chorus of
Priests of
Melcart
ACT III, SCENE 7
And tamed the Earthborn, mothered in the fray;
Archthrottler of the orc and sea-born swarms
Of dread, of monstrous efts that haunt the meres.
Of ancient loneliness, and all the brood
That prowl from fen or fell, the scourge of gods
On men for fault, or lapse, or lack of heart—
Thine is the arm that hath upheld us, thine
The club that hath abased the foe. All hail,
The vindicator of our rightfulness,
The fugleman of virile Deity,
And famousēd for fight in man’s behoof,
Thou harrier of heaven to thy domain,
Embattled Lord of Hardihood benign.
The werewolves of the Palatine, they thought
To have us on the hip, but thou didst close
For us, and cast them down in ringing fall.
Thee we adore, and chant thy praise for feats
Enow, pancratiast of strength and ruth,
But more for that on battle's razor-edge
Thy might smote by the arm of Hannibal,
And mauled the would-be robber to his knees
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the seven-browed head,
Like the marish beast Lernean,
Romne hath felt the hand of dread.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the seven-browed head,
Melkart, by the great Barcean,
Hath his labour outpeered.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the seven-browed head.
}
54
HANNIBAL
Priest of
Tanit
Chorus of
Priests of
Tanit
ACT III, SCENE 7
Goddess of peace and of the dear desires
That course the veins and madden all the blood,
Our Tanit, or what name soe'er be that
By which the sons of Shem petition thee,
Rabbetna, and Mylitta, Ashtoreth,
Elissa, Anaitis, Derceto,
No War-God’s spouse, as she of Javan's stock,
But brooder o'er the vast, and world’s nurse
To cosmic shape and thrilling life of sense;
Goddess of increase—of the furrowed earth,
And of love-laden zephyrs that instil
In man and beast the frenzy of their kind,
Jo I-bringer to the eye and to the flesh,
Our Lady sensuous and passionate;
Thou Shepherdess of frolic lamb and herd
And all unhandled juvenals, we laud
Thy deity again alert, and sing
Thy reawakened wish as arbitress
To sit and doom the bloody-minded to
The shambles’ hall. The warraying freebooters,
Peace-breakers, and the anti-taborer
Thou hast abashed to wash-pots of thy folk.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the Roman pride:
Proud the ramp that now hath stumbled,
Haught the grimness now outvied.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the Roman pride:
Tanit hath the wolf-orbs humbled,
And our terror terrified.
Fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen is the Roman pride.
55
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 8
Act III, 8 SCENE VIII—The same. A Meeting of the
Mago
Senate.
Mine elders, city fathers, Shophetim,
From host armipotent an envoy I
Am come, most gracious, to revere your seats
As servitor of State, to greet your ears
With news of battle told into their porch
By hot-foot and participant verity.
From host, and from the Man, your country’s
sword,
The soldier's God, our Afric’s burgonet,
Success's minion, to proclaim his feats
Of war, and rule Sequacious of these same,
If so ye will: and so, 'fore heaven, ye must.
The zenith of our glory has been reached,
To you it falls to bless the escalade
With favour and with poise. Abashed lies Rome,
And, down-Smit, dares not raise her eyes to view
Our stellar state. Your task is set, is ease.
Rush on the cowerer the while he stoops,
Half-dazed and shiftless how to turn.
Enlarge, and nerve our arm offensive. Stead
The army for its final dash upon
Rome's house of life, whose cease brings power,
And monarchy, and slaking vengeance craved.
Shall you withhold what gods have given,
acclaim,
And countenance, and impulse, you who now,
By act of ours, just touch the goal desired—
An empery, a thronèd seat, with foot
On foe; who now nod on the Western world,
Like stablished gods in Sceptred potency.
56
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 8
Resinew us, ye gods, to the utterance,
And eke your honour by our chosen reward.
Myself am jeweller and gold-bestower,
Conveyer of some legacies from your foes,
Signs manual, authentic, privy-Seals.
Behold these rings, adornments of the knights,
Symbolic of their rank and property,
They send to you, mementos of their fall,
In heaps, galore. Do but, for weights of these,
Give answering tale of man and beast, and on
The Capitol we'll write the ichabod
Of Rome, the proem of our Puniciom.
Disburse the state's or men's uphoarded gold,
To none more due than to the signory’s
Increasers, reavers of such treasure-trove.
Rome reels and totters from her very base,
About to strew the plain; her gods succumb
To ours. Who knows but they, with us conjunct,
Crave access to their state, discerning swing .
Adown from heaven the golden chain that soon
Will link our city to the Sovran Throne.
Hanno My friends, the babbler of the brotherhood
Hath spoke, the springald of the trinity,
And that on gala-day of war. What’s said
To pluck us on to lavishness, or e'en
To confident support. There's naught, yea
naught. -
Accept the braggart sworder's tale, the froth,
All rainbow-hued to hide its bloody tinge,
The martialist’s expanse of battled plain
Oe’rflown by Punic emblems of success;
Accept the sounded blatancy of deed,
57
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 8
And deem that in our ears a gospel trump
Hath made clear verities reverberate;
Accept the rings as troth-plight tokens from
A giglot Fortune—warranty there’s none
That this so lauded victory shall outpeer
The rest by access of allies, or, e'en
By jot or tittle, bate the expanse of time
That we must age in, ere in Italy
We plume it over Rome outfought, outworn.
The Roman still finds passage in his land,
And still athwart its bounds conveys his will,
Despite your army and its chief. Nay more,
The Italian still subserves his polity,
For lictor still compels the civic bow,
And still the conscript's limbs centurion.
What base exists to prop our credence that
This fight is aught but Chance's luring bribe
To maggot-minded general and folk;
That these so garish-mounded rings are not
The shower of gold that ravished Danae.
See how our foster-child and mercenary,
The Spaniard, under Roman tutelage,
Resiles, and spurns your earth-annexing aims.
Shall we, in quest of phantoms, throne a sept
Of soldiers, slavelike droop our brows and crook
Our knees before an army's autocrat,
A King o’Camps, a mock-Olympian,
Tricked out by self and satellites as Mars.
Be it that a Gradivus' progress he,
O'er Alp and plain hath made, and gainst our
foes
Hath battled martially, the easier, then,
He can retrace his steps, reclimb the mount,
58
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 8
Regain the Iberus, and our feudatory
Reclaim to service and the arts of peace.
With which, our strength, and wealth our
weapon, we,
Defensive and offensive, more exalt the State
Than Hannibal with all his glory, gules
And quater-plumed. Across his shield there is
This bend sinister, poverty of state -
And folk. He hath increased our name and
fame !
The former never failed, and to the fame
The sanest cry is “Hold, enough.” Are we,
For one man's sake, and in the sole behoof
Of vampire pragmatists of war, to spill
Our blood and gold P Must we maintain for aye
A host and camp to clap and realm our peer,
Misnaméd demi-Mars. By Byrsa, No.
Let him, with vantage got, impose a peace *...
And giant fine, for sure he can, else vain
This cock-a-hoop proclaiming: then retire,
The foe half-dead, perhaps not ingrate for
The moiety we leave. With coffers drained,
Revenues pawned for years, Rome sags, while
We
Expand by multiple increase, and crush
Her halt and modestly confined comport.
Suffete Compatriots, we’ve heard the twain, and know
Our mind thereby, for none, whate'er his
thought,
Seems like to follow Hanno in the plea
To let occasion slip, and be austere --
When Fortune smiles. In word, as late in deed,
The cause of Mago hath prevailed. Unblest
59
HANNIBAL
ACT III, SCENE 8
The mouth that minisheth the army's fame,
Its gests decrieth, callous mouth and cold.
But, hear, the riot of the throng without,
Spasmodic, surges now in gathering shout :
Enter Citigens singing
Mago brings us victory,
Victory, victory:
Mago brings us victory,
Give him means for more.
We are the soldiers' sponsors,
Sponsors, sponsors:
We are the soldiers' sponsors,
Let them have galore.
A CT IV
ACT IV
Enter Chorus
Chorus IV Fortune and fellowmen are things unsure,
Distracting the Alcidae of the world:
The first proves oft a curst and shrewish jade
In aftertime of her companionship,
Withdrawing her momentum niggardly,
And via enly displacing stages planned;
Our fellowmen are reeds to lean upon,
Treacherous, weak-stemmed, tangling, and not
wnthorned.
'Tis writ how for six years our chieftain made
Stout head 'gainst spiteful circumstance,
Approving him, as erst, no berserker,
But demigod of war—'tis writ by foe.
For lack of demiurgus’ power he missed
His mark : no more had he, as once in Spain,
The making of his means. See him assault
Round Capua the Roman leaguer, thrill
With fear a vantaged host, ungraspable,
Unmastered, crested by shekinah dread
Forbidding all offence. Next watch him hie
To Rome, with twilight terror in his train,
Half cockatrice, half mastiff, darting awe
Right o'er a stopping threshold, baying doom
The length of his chain, like giant under spell
That stays an uplift club from crashing down;
63
HANNIBAL
Act IV, 1
Elephant-
arch
Carthalo
ACT IV, SCENE I
Like some unichored deity, to whom
All things are common, saving only one
That’s sacrosanct, all deeds allowed,
Save one, forbid by heavenly taboo.
Honour my hero, steadfast under straits,
Self-conscious of his stable soul, untouched
In purposing, no breakvow palterer.
None lets him come, none lets him go like god
In wrath, half-foiled but not undone, a foe
Of adamant, ubiquitous as firm.
From Cannae I have passed to Capua,
Suggesting all between, an interim
Rich in redound of praise to patience
And puissance of my belligerent.
We bring you to the gate of Rome to hear
The ruffling legate vent his Roman jeer,
And his centurion, a nobler man,
Outspeak the caution of the veteran.
SCENE T-Before Capua. Carthalo instructs his
Elephantarch.
I am to rush my elephants you say
Upon the mound, hard by the turret-fort,
And clear it, making for the stative camp,
Wherefrom in force the Consuls will have gone
To meet the imminent attack.
That is your task,
And press it grimly through : not yet's forgot
The terror of the Pyrrhic days, the great
Lucanian kine, our Afric’s beasts of war,
The lurching, dorsal throng of javelined Mars.
64
HANNIBAL
Elephant-
arch
Carthalo
Act IV, 2
A tilius
ACT IV, SCENE 2
It shall be passed through hands amain.
My massive trumpeters quadrupedal,
Caparisoned, and turreted, and manned,
Deliver their fanfare; and bellicose,
With bestial frenzy long to mad, to Stamp
Into the soil the bosoms of our foe.
At this point of the assault we must achieve
The general's intent. All hangs on us.
'Tis here that ingress must be had. Within,
The city is expectant, need but eye
Our dash upon this focus wide-surveyed
And strong, when, forthwith, deeds to oust and
SC3.1 &
The Roman shall ensue. This done, all's done.
The hostile rally ends in craven ebb;
The advancing wave, resilient, decuman,
Of Punic Overflow will flood the fields
Until it reach the marches Latian,
On track of the outbattered enemy's flight, -
And deluge e'en the septicolline site.
SCENE II—The saille. Atilius and a Prinnipilus
CO41,7) (27°S 62.
We'll hold our own, despite his generalship,
Despite his guile, for sure's our ringing wall,
And Sure our men, and the Campanian,
By cribbed and purposed hustling terrorised,
Already shrinks before the grip of doom;
And, were it not for Bostar's goad and cheer,
Who, like taskmaster proffering a nod,
E. 65
HANNIBAL.
Primipilus
ACT IV, SCENE 3
Knows how to glad his wintry day with warmth,
Would have succumbed ere now.
- - - Our spies report
That Sooner than is thought he'll make a dash
Aggressive, shedding some occulted ruse
A tilius
That will, I fear, perturb and snare our men.
Let him appear to-night, 'twill not avail,
No longer in the open field is he -
The panic-worker, and behind our lines
We have the vantage o'er the Punic fox,
Whose craft is less than magic, and must spill
Before a background unremoved—no play
On wings, no hoax in rear, no lure in front
For blindly-dashing men. Now time's with us,
And we abreast and calm. You'll say “The
sieged • .
Will sally.” Let them. 'Tis not Capua
That will outbrave, outwit the Roman fence;
And Bostar's not ubiquitous, and, if
Subcen-
t?!?? Oh,
Act IV, 3
Atilius
He were, only a brave man wrestling firm
To woo the smile that Fortune flings at men,
And often, ere it cheer us, chills again.
Enter a Subcenturion
Our lines are broke, soldiers and elephants
Are massed and shot upon your privy trench,
And all is turmoil, Hannibalian wiles,
SCENE III—Near the same place. After the
repulse of the Assault. .2
Foiled and flung off, with us and round the wall,
The would-be saviour of the Capuan,
66
HANNIBAL
Primipilus
Atilius
ACT IV, SCENE 3
And erstwhile hammer of our folk, is lost
By this to domination of our soil,
And e'en to long sojourn in Italy.
He plays the part of lion, whom a pack
Of wolves have snapped i' the face, and howled
to fear,
His leonine and vulpine force frustrate.
Back, back to Libya, and lair of brutes
Sore-wounded and disconsolate. The wolf
Rebuffs the lion, galls his heels. Evoe.
Hardly we won and naught too soon. Our lines
Were pierced. Of the elephants some filled the
ditch
And passed the assailants, others, pushing far,
Bore fear and shade of panic to the camp,
Which, for a flash on edge of rout, anigh
Replucked us by reversion to the days } }
Of Swiftly oozing spirit, when as's worth
Of beast and lure stampeded our raw troops,
Had not a chosen few by practice houghed
The roving panicmongers, ripped their guts.
Not so was o'er the risk, for, in the moil
Of conflict fearful and confused, a voice
Exhorting flight and safety up the hills
Repeatedly enticed, a Punic stroke,
Though fathered on the consuls. But, all thanks
To Jove the Stayer, we gat calm and 'scaped
Being gulls. A rumour runs that Hannibal
Makes northwards. Know you what new guile's
afoot.
One more essay he makes, the very last,
The slovenliest—a dash on Rome. Shall he
67
HANNIBAL
Act IV, 4
First Shy
Camp-
117 a Ste?’
First Spy
ACT IV, SCENE 4
That failed 'fore Capua achieve 'fore Rome;
Shall he that melts to save his satellite
Amate the ardour metropolitan?
Pshaw, never shall the Roman battlements
Vail their proud tops before the Capuan rat,
And never shall the god Capitoline
On Seated hill dart less his arm or eyne.
SCENE IV—Hannibal's Camp near Rome. Spies
make reports.
Where may I come to speech with Him—your
head.
Is he within the camp P I’ve news of weight.
Who is't that needs his presence. Ah, I know
Thee now, thou’rt one of the Italian spies
That serve our lord on quests of haste and risk.
Stay here, he’s sure to pass this way anon.
He did but late return from Rome and made
Towards his inconspicuous tent. Methought
He was but ill at ease. How irks at Rome
The thought of sack? Do not the citizens
Beteem their minds consider terms of peace,
To escape the soldiery's exacted toll
On captured town 2
Deem not the hold for ta'en.
While some are panicked, others brave, serene,
Contemplate naught adverse. But there's your
lord
Advancing by the bank, Him must I greet
And sharpen by my news. A knife for Rome !
68
HANNIBAL
Hannibal
First Spy
Haunibal
ACT IV, SCENE 4
E.rit Campmaster. Spy goes to meet Hannibal
and returns with him over the stage
This morn you saw fresh troops for Spain pass
forth
The Western gate, and much resolve inflame
The Senders and the sent; but all you say
Is not of hope.
Pale fear and lax despair
Bemock the active spirits, and women’s wail
Unnerves the men and deafs the gods. Unmoved
And firm-lipped, like such souls as warranty
An issue fair unto a stormtide fierce,
The antique caste, despite the gloom, achieve
Intendment and devoir, a stiff-necked crew,
Self-figured as the chosen folk of heaven.
It is enough, you’ve throughly earned your wage
And my approof. Continue in the path.
[Eacit spy
How madding is this contumacious folk
That never since the woe Apulian
Will face me square, but dogs and backs and
thwarts
And lags, and stumbles aye to rise again,
Most like a sour contender with his fists
|Before a Pollux of the craft, whose brawn
Is better than his skill, and steads him well
Against the fire and flourish of his foe.
Or like a devil-fish that wears its heart
Beyond the reach of an assailant's knife,
And safely combateth, limb-wounded oft
69
HANNIBAL
ACT IV, SCENE 4
But aye heart-whole. What if I missed the flood
And now am ebbed.
Enter Campinaster
Camp- Another spy, my lord,
771a Ster Begs entrance, and declares his message grave
And worth instant report.
|
Hannibal Admit him straight.
This quality of servitor hath holp
Me hitherto.
Enter Second Spy
The burden of your lips,
And quick.
Second Spy Not yet the Roman pride's abased
Enough. The piece of ground on which you've
camped
Was sold to-day, at noon, mid rivalry
Of bidders and the plaudits of the mob,
Though these are sooterkins begot of pride,
And on a mind now rides the billow’s crest.
Now swiftly wallows in the bottom trough.
Hannibal They've auctioned me away. Not so they earn
(aside) Desire. This land is mine by right of war
And soon or late T’ll write the sasine out
Upon the Rock of Rome. (To Spy) I thank
you, friend,
Go hence, and merit further speedy praise.
[Evit Spy
This calls for present answer and in kind,
Else I, the victor, seem a froth of war
7o
HANNIBAL
ACT IV, SCENE 5
To be outblown, an accident, and so
To be ignored, a dowle upon the cap
Of fortune, or a bur upon her sleeve,
Things migratory to a wind or rub.
To mate their insolence, my will proclaim
Unmoved, irrefragable, imminent,
If there be need to prove to eyes the sun,
The bankers’ shops that line the market-place,
The spear being implement of sale as war,
I’ll sell, I, proxy of the auctioneer,
An earnest that they’re chattels of my spear.
Act IV, 5 SCENE V–Before Rome.
A tilius I told you true, the Libyan quails 'fore Rome.
He scampered off, when from the Capitol
A home-bolt might him reach ; a bidental
He feared. Not such to us, we’d fence it off
To Jove the Temenite, and give the god
Another flamen. Erst the holy geese
Cackled the Gaulish doom, Our Afer dire
Has geese in’s heart that flap him home to roost.
Primipilus Not yet, saving your legateship, not yet
The warlike Swindger's down, his axe unhelved.
You speak as patriot, as is most fit,
And I admire; but I’m Sir Wait-the-end.
I’ve seen the man at work for seventeen years,
His puissant overthrow of consulars,
His warring cozenage, his wildering craft
Alert in force and wrinkled deep in guile.
71
HANNIBAL
Atilints
ACT IV, SCENE 5
Come, come, my Nestor of the Punic wars,
Don't shake your sapient beard. The nightmare's
past.
We are awake and posting to the noon,
Our highday noon of glorious acquist.
Recall youth's derring-do, my veteran,
The day is gone for caution Fabian.
A CT V
ACT V
Enter Chorus
Chorus V Now comes the ebbtide in this History,
Hard on the promise of a swollen flood,
Which Italy seemed like to overrun
Beneath the waves of rolling Punicalom.
Another victor feel the recusant Alps
On passage to the battlefield desired,
Co-challenger of Rome to mortal fight,
And not unworthy of his mate and sire.
The baffler of Scipio in Spain,
The anchor of his brother's hopes, he comes,
In ardour of accomplishment and soul,
To what a fate—to all-annulling end;
To obscuration by misdeeming Chance;
To point a grim Neronian jest; to be
His own, and Fate's, and Dcath's ambassador.
If any doubt that worth's oft flicked to death
By callous finger called Mishap, or Force,
Or Ahriman; that patience and resource
That star a man among his kind confront
The doom of froth and beggary; and that
Heroics fine and veritable, displayed
'Gainst nature and 'gainst man, have like award,
Or so one wildly thinks, with losel farce,
Let him consider Hasdrubal. Were 't not
75
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE I
That soul availeth aye, high soul and true,
Availeth aye with moral self and God,
Transcendent self immutable, despite
Perdition of one's temporal aims; were’t not
That los consoleth aye, the los that comes
From oligarchs of Areopagus,
Such lot would scare Time's heroes as Time's
fools.
Lo, such the moon, the aristeia, and
The fail of Hannibalian soldiering.
We've lifted you above the outside strife
In Spain and Sicily, as not germane
To our assay, and beggared of his lead :
We've passed you quick from Hasdrubal to Nero,
And back again. We leave you with our hero—
His cheeks are ashen that ne'er blenched before,
His hands atremble that the truncheon bore.
Act V, 1 SCENE I–Near the Metaurus. Group of Priests
of Melcart. Hasdrubal and his Officers.
Soldiers hard by.
First Priest'Tis fitting that our sacred brotherhood
Essay by special rite its tutelar lord
To move, and bring his presence near our hearts,
That so, diffused thorough the host, it spur
And lift our manliness towards the highth
Of bravery, from whence in easy swoop
We fright and raven the obstructive foe;
That so our leader with wise hardihood
76
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE I
And surer goal may jolt and push aside
The gathering hosts of Rome, and speed
Towards the rendezvous, where dual brain
May mete the blow long-planned that cleaves the
Crest
And travels sunderingly adown the chine
Of rampant wolf, so late half-cowed but yet
Full-fanged. Our lord awaits the supplicant,
And, almost wanton of his deity,
He bends alistening from his throned seat
Beside the Baalim. Invoke his name
At once and loud, for, hitherto, self-moved
And folk-enamoured he hath blest our path
From Pyrenean peak to dizzy Alp,
Called Nature's bars, but stanchions of our god
To pivot winding ways or swing his frame.
Not uselessly, nor yet to ingrates dull
And dumb hath Melcart given this boon in fee,
This, and the Iberian benefits afore,
For he high-purposed is, a king of deeds
That rattle down the scale of passiveness,
And set aslope a marking hand upon
The dial of time; and we, the vassalage,
The reverent liegemen of our lord, have thrills,
And words, and leaping prayers. Our god his
gests
Shall round, and with septuple mural crown,
Tiaraed o'er victorious brows, shall wreathe
His folk auxiliar. This pray ye all,
And this we priests extort from willing sire
By force of soul outpoured in gratitude,
And adjuration never to belie
Our faith, his name, and patriot godhead fair.
77
HANNIBAL
Chorus of
Priests
Second
Priest
ACT V, SCENE I
Statueless Godhead, nonpareil,
Splendour earcelling, Might sempiterne,
Flouter of images, Suffete stern,
Endless thine efforts, curbless as well,
Energumen withouten quell.
God of our city, God of Tyre,
Stablish our army, stablish our chief,
Thine our campaigning, thine our relief,
Prompted and speeded by honour and ire,
Hero-planned, heaven-sent world-desire.
Glory tº Melcart, glory to him,
Climber of mountain, courier of sea,
Earner of confraternity
With celestial Anakim.
Never gone
The lustre that orbs thy face;
/ Never done
The zworship that craves thy grace.
Our god doth list the beating loud hosannas
That wing, outpinioned, the empyreal stair,
And brush the throne-steps of divinity
Reposeful, jealous of his worshippers.
Anon he’ll answer, and, updriven, anon,
Ablaze with purpose and resistlessness,
He'll bound into his sightless lightning-car
And flash obliquely to a waiting world.
Let us intreat and goad him to his part
Of helper and compatriot: needs must
He cheer a folk forwandered in the cause
Of home, the mirror he of foreign tasks
Attacked and thrown. Our very wanderings
78
HANNIBAL
Chorus of
Priests
ACT V, SCENE I
Endear us to the toiling god that scoured
The earth with hardihood beneficent
And fierce, exemplar, pattern in the heavens
Of godhead human-souled. Again let us,
His priests, proclaim the aye-embattled force,
The clamant deeds that caused the heavens bow
Acknowledgment, and made his fanes abut
The world’s extremities. Outvying each,
From Tyrus, Carthage, and westmost Gadire
The tripled cries upsoar; but our appeal
Shall sound reverberate through the vault of
heaven,
Compelling aid. By bravery of heart
And hope we’ll draw him sheer to earth. Sing
Out
The song of Melcart militant and kind.
Ye priests enthral his ear. Great and paternal
god,
The sons of Hamilcar, thy son by line
And name, invoke thine act co-operant.
Templed archwanderer, roamer, but God,
Victor o'er monsters, victor o'er fears
Erstwhile appalling adventurers
Oestrus-ydriven by glory's prod,
Questant of danger on paths untrod.
Lord Karchedonian, earthly king,
Worshipped in Gades, twy-pillared in Tyre,
Godlike epiphany, puissant sire,
Source of the Barcids, heaven's atheling,
Listen thy priesthood, deliverance bring.
A 79
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE I
Glory to Melcart, glory to men
Melcart-minded, Hamilcar-sired,
Scions of Godhead, Byrsa-inspired,
Ordinant ever, aggressive again.
Fashion us
The victory, Rome the rout;
Fashion thus
Each issue of battling-bout.
Hasdrubal Upborne the hymning, Swift and clangorous,
Like trumpet brays it to the charge, and whist
Awhile, it waits as doomster, final nod,
Or ere the tartantara be yblown
That maketh hearing doing, doing done;
Like the processional blare that, whiffler-like,
Heralds monarchal hour of pageantry,
Meseems your song the prescient forerunner
Of might daemonian, early manifest
And felt in our behoof; or like, most fit,
Half prayer, half claim of wailful, urgent men
Assaulting, starting, rousing from his calm
Epicurean, short and hardly earned,
The toiler of the gods, occult in might.
Soldiers, my brethren of the task, and priests,
Soldiers ye, too, for each is militant,
And, portioned with the fire of his deity,
Disdains to flicker in the cribbing round
Of wont, but leaps devouring without let—
The psalmodists have sung my litany,
And to the godhead I revere, the spirit
That re-incarnates his intensity,
In each a share, upstirring firm resolve
And hope. Upon the eve of fight we stand,
8O
- HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE I
And fight that dubs us minions of the gods,
Or evil-starred degenerates convict.
As warrior fosterlings of warrior sire
We dare paternal deity to avouch
Us sons and antitypes. Shall we neglect
To pluck the rose of honour from occasion’s
Hand, purblind, nerveless like the nidderings,
Or shall the Hannibalian storm-cloud burst
With thunderous, routing terror on the plains
Of Italy, and we, mock-paladins,
Like wraith-mists quivering in tremulous life,
Affright, and by the act of energy
Earn dissolution, the foe scarce blanched P
Outbanned the thought so brainsickly conceived
With us our Melcart, guide, exemplar, god,
And all his storied feats, and favours done,
Mere earnest of the greatest deed to be—
The Armageddon of the Roman power:
With us Hamilcar’s spirit, the round and top
Of Carthage' dauntless, proud regality,
Her auspex, Providence, and Nemesis,
Her tiger-spring adriinistrator wise,
Inexpiable, vigilant, sincere:
With us uplift that arm belligerent,
The consummator of a father's plans,
The nimbus of whose glory scared and scares,
Medusa-wise, the wavering ranks of foes,
Our towering Hannibal’s, my brother's, might:
With us the confidence begot of round
Of masteries o'er mountain, foe, and flood,
O'er ever-fleeing rim of space that mocked,
Horizoned 'fore the gaze, our Tantalus' eyes,
And aye allured the trudging soldiers' march:
F 8I
HANNIBAL º
All
Act V, 2
Livian
Officer
All
ACT V, SCENE 2
With us the certainty of stablishing
A Titan’s aim, the patriot’s desire
To load the axe that threats to annihilate
The staggering queller of our phoenix rule,
Our Scourge that was ; to make the fellow-blade
Of shears that slit the life of Rome; to turn
To avalanche the crushing mass that gins
To roll upon the septicolline town;
To play the millstone that the grinder needs
To triturate upon a nether base
The victims of his mill. So becks our task,
Soldiers and priests, the time is now, the hour
Is nigh, we must, we will, be prevalent,
For country’s and for honour's sake.
We will.
We’ll die for Carthage and the Barcidae.
2’
SCENE II—A Roman camp in the same neigh-
bourhood. Soldiers of Livius and Nero
earchange greetings. A Livian and a Nero-
nian Officer converse.
Let us speak soldiers’ welcome, comrades mine,
To Nero's men, this afternoon arrived
From South and sight of Hannibal,
Our brothers and our co-mates in the task
Of freeing Italy from Terror's twain,
The Aloidae of our cowering.
Hurrah, hurrah, the men Neronian,
Swift steppers from the South, the African
82
HANNIBAL ---
Neronian
Officer
Livian
Officer
ACT V, SCENE 2
They've foundly nasked, and now they face the
brother,
Bestriders of the path, and quellers o' pother.
Livians, most welcome is your outsung greeting,
Your frank outburst of ringing compliment,
And earnest of the praise we both shall make
Our meed. At last our Italy's uprisen,
And stands irate and truculent, in act
And power to strike the adjudicating blow.
Success has horsed her and awaits the nod
Of trothing Jove, or ere she usward sweep
To be familiar of our Italy;
And men and women, old and young, detect
All sounds, rehearsal-wise, attuning them
To join the concert sylvan and aerial.
As in Dodona, where the oracles
Of Jove were known from tinkling forth the
trees,
So here, o'er more than latter half of our
Swift march, from mountain and from plain,
from tilth
And forest, prescient Sounded clash and chime
Of cymballed hands, afar and wonderly
Tinkling our triumph. The old campaigner,
No John a’ Dreams, ear-kissing whispers harks
Of shouts resounding all the Sacred Way,
And presses to our ranks, to list again,
Belaurelled and bethronged, the shouts that din
And deify.
So send it quickly Jove,
And whatso god hath thus far brought you
prompt.
83
HANNIBAL
Neronian
Officer
Livian
Officer
Neronian
Officer
ACT V, SCENE 2
How came ye from the African P. Have ye
Put drag on his advance, Outfoxed the fox P
IDoth he haste after, or have ye clean outrun,
We give you joy, his vigilance and ken?
We’ve choused the chouser, and the Claudian
craft
Hath won it o'er the Punic gull. Our horn
Uplifted is, our spirits rise therewith
Unto the height of roving haggards, poised,
Awaiting chance, to dash adown upon
The feathered tribesmen, and our chance is near
And in the skilled dispose of falconer.
'Tis heartening; and 'tis fitting that our Mars
Should lustily, if late, award in kind
His fatherhood; and do the soldiers thrill
Response unto the glad vocality? -
Ay, so : they’ve sung two-thirds their march's
Space,
From Swordsman's gaiety, and pride of race
lnbreathed into them by the patriot air.
But gayest of the lively, hurrying host,
And with the trolling spirit most infect,
Was yon decurion amid a group
Of legionaries, satellites within
His sunny scope, a friend of Ennius,
Our Scipio's bard. Beside our line of march
The galliard rode, by favour of the chiefs,
And confidently sang a rousing lilt,
Like braggadocio centaur ere he drove
A prey.
84
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 2
Livian t Can we, ere the other watch takes o'er
Officer Our post, enjoy Tyrtaeus carolling
To our content.
Neronian I’ll be your warrantise.
Officer Ho, soldier, hie thee to that quiring group,
And hither bring the leader of the catch,
To sing his patriot strain of yesterday.
The decurion approaches and sings
Five hundred years of pilum and sword
Have ironed the arm of Rome;
She hath brawn to resist a thousand tugs,
And still send a death-thrust home :
From of old
'Twas foretold
That etermity’s the dower -
Of her rule and vestal power,
The chaplet that adorneth her Capitol.
• Sure of final victory,
Piecemeal we’ll rend it hungerly, **
And steal from Fortune's laggard hand the fate-
apportioned dole.
There's Porsena, Pyrrhus, Pontius,
Brennus and Hamilcar;
There's Caudium and Allia,
And a hundred mishaps of war:
Not war-masters,
Not disasters
Can block her path to the goal,
Cam halter her forward soul,
.**
85
*-
HANNIBAL
Act V, SCENE 3
Or untemper steel so doughtily, steadily
wrought.
Heart unharried, sight unblurred,
Deeds ancestral mind-upstirred,
She'll weapon her way discerningly, belying the
**-- past in taught. * - /
The war-craft, the zwiles of Hannibal
Shall break on her doggedness;
She’s a rock to resist the sapper's pick,
She's escarpèd above access:
Foiled the father,
Sons the rather,
Though victory's the refrain
Of the belligerent twain,
We'll baffle, trouble, and huddle back to bounds.
Jo triumphe, bold our assay,
Io triumphe, ours is the day,
The sons of Ilia's wolf-cub babes shall raven
Bellona's hounds.
Act V, 3 SCENE III–In Hasdrubal's tent a little before
dawn.
Hasdrubal A little of the craft that gudgeons Rome,
-*. Co-mated with a pinch of family luck,
And I, o'erreaching Livius, a path
Shall orient, from whence, deflex, I’ll rush
Me southward quick to the Consult of Doom.
The goal of all our efforts looms anear,
A race's, father’s, brother’s, and mine own ;
A
- 86
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 3
*~
The shrine to which we’ve pilgrimed all our
thoughts
Stands fair for entrance and for prayerful mood,
Commemorative of our thanks and deeds;
The great Troö ató, from whence we'll move the
world, -
Presents its secular point of leverage
To demiurgic hand. . . And to our use
|A trumpet sounds and
startles Hasdrubal
The great occasion that the Punic Fates -
Have been travailing of these hundred years,
Since that we overcame Agathocles,
Is nigh delivery. . . (There sounded trump-
[Again a trumpet sounds
Mere echo of the first). Embossed, enthroned
On South and North of Middle Sea we’ll drive
A compass o'er the earth, and place extremes
Of Coromandel, Cassiterides
In our periphery.
The Ho, General,
Sentinel of The dawn, and with it our curst enemy
the Tent Seems swollen in strength, and twice I’ve heard
withal
A trumpet bray.
Hasdrubal Art sure 'twas twice outblown f
I, too, seemed so to hear. -
Sentinel - Yea twice. Mine ears,
Assailed, twice registered the fact within.
87
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 4
Hasdrubal Can aught untoward have occurred to mar
(T
Sen
Act V, 4
Neronian
Officer
Livian
Officer
O
tinel)
Our strategy, or end my Hannibal 2
What means the double fanfare you just heard?
Ye gods, is envy then your attribute, -
The cup dashed from the lips answer to cult
Of fanes and noble aping of yourselves?
But stay, a temporary check, perhaps, is all
That this betokens, a pert fly in mouth
Of speeding conqueror, a scabbard's trip.
'Tis obscuration of the Tyrian sun
Before the flower of Carthage' rule's un-
sheathed. |
Enow of earnest-pennies for the nonce:
Report retreat, and hurry here amain
The officers: it serves to hear their thoughts.
‘Fore God, the Libyan lion backs as well
As springs, and backward now the game must be,
Until or scare is cleared or course is plain.
ScENE IV—The Battlefield at the Metaurus.
Nero essays to turn the enemy's left wing,
and encourages his soldiers to rout their
army.
I bring, my general, the tribune here,
Whom Livius hath sent to explain his straits
Of fight flung back and battailous assault,
The foe aye passioning against his force.
'Tis thus he struggles, and he deems the hour
So big in issue that he does not wait
88
HANNIBAL
Nero
ACT V, SCENE 4
Until his single arm assert itself,
And stiffen to Briarean might. Each pause,
Each rally hearts the foe, and frights the scales
Of Jove from settling down to our content.
I know the risk, I know the chance, I’ve staked
Our all upon’t, nor feel like gambler spent.
(To his own Hie thee towards our right, my stable wing,
Officer)
And bid them circumvent the enemies' left,
The while they leave a fictive front before
The doltish Gaul, secure in 's post. Thereon,
For us is Mars, forerun by Pan. (To Livian -
Officer) Do you
Attend my pensive canter, for it me
Behoves to speak an allocution
That shall, by Tiber, or by Acheron,
By heaven, or by hell, by love, or fear,
By soul, by ancientry, or by revenge,
Incite my soldiers to outdaunt our foe,
..f
He rides off after his officer to the addressing of
the soldiers
Soldiers and Romans, see the foe in grip
With Fate, and Fors. Fortuna militant
For Rome. Go, smite the invaders down. Each
blow
Unlinks the gyves that fetter Italy,
And cramp in bondage to the warlike vice
Our land Saturnian. Yon writhing mass
That tumbles forward, backward, and oblique,
Is one of Fate's o'erseething cauldron-pots
For you to tend to what event ye will.
89
HANNIBAL
Act V, 5
Hasdrubal
ACT V, SCENE 5
If slurred the boiling, then there brews a bulk
Of liquor heady, quite unpotable,
Which yet must needs be gulped; if stirred and
dashed
By Sworded legionary’s rush and sweat,
Ye'll strain for all a nectarous draught of peace.
Free Rome, and free the world from tyranny
That rests and moves on hireling soldiers’ tasks;
From traffickers in others’ thews and risks.
One hour of patriot bravery, and the day
Is won to honour, rule domestic and
Imperial for us and ours, both now
And afterwards within the Italian bounds,
Or towards the world’s extremes. One hour
gives sway, '.
Gives doom. Where bounds or bends the enemy,
There reels or rules the Roman empery.
SCENE V—Another part of the same. The Car
thaginian right wing. Enter Hasdrubal ,
with disturbed and baffled look. He speaks
as one offended by events, but undaunted.
If naught avails to win accomplishment;
If purposes as high as demigod
E’er planned to bring into his natal soil
Redound of benefits, to himself renown,
Snap brokenly and skelter down the wind;
If every whipster consul overreach
The primy Hannibalian mastercraft;
If Tyrian star be sunk in dateless night;
If ‘reverent Baalite' be holiday badge
90
HANNIBAL.
ACT V, SCENE 5
For credulous, errant butt of hoodman-blind,
And invocated Melcart's name confer
No periapt against the whimsies of
The goddess Chance, puckish and wantoning;
If gods make dalliance with her and deny
Their thronèd right divine—then I, a chief
Of farce, need swelter in the toils of war
No more, need no more wait the dawning of
The reaper's morn. No harvest-field, alas,
For Barcid hook, but an Aceldama.
But be the event as black as looks, with blood
Outpoured to soak the Libyan sands, 'twill ne'er
Befoul the scutcheon of the Barcidae,
Hung high on temple-wall of World-Fame,
Nor splotch the red rose of unstainable hue
That marks the rubrics of their history.
Let me as Barcid die that Barcid lived,
Intense, unblenched, high-hearted, and with will
To push my purposes in the Unseen.
If, like the Sun-God, I must pass in red,
My act transmigratory shall commix
The colours of the vanishing. I’d ne'er
Admit a passive capture, nor a flight
Diffuse and safe. A soldier’s death be mine
'Mid shambles of my hand. Farewell, both light,
And earth, and human face, and lustre of
The brave. I loved ye all. Dash hence, charge
there.
Fool Fate must blush to take me off, but not
My father to receive his son. 'Tis great
To dare and win, 'tis great, methinks, as well,
To dare and paean our huge fail, to say,
With enemies' speech, Fuerunt Barcidae.
9I
- HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 6, SCENE 7
Act V, 6 SCENE VI—The Battlefield. Nero despatching
a messenger to throw Hasdrubal's head into
Hannibal’s camp, speaks.
Nero Let death's head grin a greeting to the King
Of Conquest, and announce his heritage
Of isolation, ruin, exit forced;
Of looks submiss and state stipendiary;
Of fief Iberian, reft and recusant,
A buffer of the foe; of sourest lot
On earth, to play Sir Puny after Mars;
Of Carthage rearward-hemmed by Afric sand,
And dogged in front by Roman quinquereme
Prowling anear; of Roman suzerainty
From all the points of wind and heaven, in-
breathed
Like air, and visible as outstaring light.
Such message brings the head, a nuncio
Ghoulish but sure: and ’tis the Claudian way
To have no sentimental curtseyings
'Tween men and foes, to do, as haps, the deed
By which a state's advantaged, ruthlessly.
Act V, 7 SCENE VII—Hannibal's camp in Apulia. He
utters a lament over Hasdrubal.
Hannibal Unsightly, sad, beyond the reach of words,
Such charnel present of a friend from foes:
What messenger hath e'er conveyed thy news!
Such dumbly-eloquent lips as ne'er before
Told horror's tale to wildly-listening ears;
92
HANNIBAL -
ACT V, SCENE 7
Such closed eyes, apert thorough the lids,
As ne'er before shot confirmation clear
Before and after words. Ye gods whom men
Implore, conspired ye have 'gainst me, and mine,
And country, made a pact with bloody wolves.
My country's doom I dread, I recognise -
That Heaven hath kinder been to Rome than she
Deserves who ground the Gaul, and servitude
Wished to impose on us, now fully near,
Only deferred and scarce-to be escaped.
O Hasdrubal, my noble father's son,
My mother's child, thy closéd eyes suggest,
Like temple-gates shut on oblation vain,
The mewing-up of Heaven's influence,
Worshipfully invoked to spread abroad
Its kindly light, its reassuring rays.
The gods of Carthage are asleep, or do
Slumbrously hear their suppliants’ litanies.
Else had they not deafly ignored my prayers -----
And wrecked a doughty paladin, not dashed
A radiant boy so darkly to the ground,
For boy my brother always is to me.
We so clung to each other then in Spain,
Hamilcar still alive and planning gests,
He, dreamy boy, I, ardent youth, and chained
Most pleasingly by oath, that our converse
Was more than that of youth to father's son,
|But measured rather scale of adept's lore
Instilled in willing ear of learner. Man
I played, and he was boy to list and clap
My manhood. Something too, nay much, I
gained
From one whose dreaminess was prefixed porch
93
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 7
Unto a divination got from gods.
Not younger much in years but younger far
In tenderness, my Hasdrubal, in thee
I saw what boyhood was, in thee mine own,
Its trustfulness that never dreameth change.
Its warmth. Sometimes I did discharge on thee
My gloom paternal, warmly nursed and grasped.
My charge had aged the natural boy within :
I never pitied the Iberian, -
My stepping-stone to great accomplishment,
As thou oft didst, thy pity that did stem
My tears by opposing flow that dolorous time
Hamilcar fell in grievous tribal war.
O let me lift the lids of thy dear eyes,
And gaze again into thy woman’s orbs,
As melting erst as are Himilce’s own,
Ah me, they are bloodshot now and somnolent.
Did red rush here to match thy gory neck,
Or didst thou blood exude instead of tears 2
This glassy senseless gaze, how much unlike
The humid love-light quick that flooded them, ,
When I to thee did speak of holy task, ---
Of family vendetta ‘gainst curst Rome,
Of father’s honour and of country’s good.
Droop, eyelids, droop, and hide the piteous stare
Of one whose looks shed bliss or soul on all
That came within the happy, light-strewn round:
The foe was gentle, sending me thy head.
For thee and this thy death I bear a grudge
Against the gods. I’ve only now my task- -
To tread the Roman down—and that, in spite
Of fate and changeful fortune's staggering
blows.
94.
HANNIBAL
Myrrha
Taanach
ACT V, SCENE 7
Perhaps the gods of Carthage will awake,
And save their sons from Roman tyranny ;
Perhaps they were aggrieved at my success,
Too long, they thought, for mortal's good. If
SO, *
My Sorrow and my grudge I’ll both uproot,
And run before the wind of deity's blast
Along the appointed way. Reserved I hold
- Fulfilment of my oath. I’ll not deflect
My steps from this, gods frown, gods smile, men
doubt.
'Fore holy powers I took my oath and have
Three parts fulfilled its bond, and yet my arm
Has sinews strong enough to add the fourth
To former—yet, Ye Gods, my chiefest was
This man, my sinew, arm, my sweet of life,
My Hasdrubal. Enough. I’ve promptings now
Of triple force, paternal, manliest,
Fraternal, goads aforetime twain, now three.
Enter Myrrha and Taanach
Our Dioscuri meet no more
Their thoughts to share;
The bands that were whilere,
The natal threads, have been by Fury shore,
And riven is the compact brotherly.
Sing woe, sing woe for warlike chivalry
Now single-sceptred, doubly-kinged before.
The twy-topped might of Hamilcar
O'erawes no more : -
For from the farther shore
The Death-God shot his embarbed bolt afar,
95
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 7
And smote and slew the sackless Hasdrubal.
Ah, wellaway, the uncolumned capital/
And, wellaway, the unbodied avatar !
Myrrha O brother-pearl of Carthage' carcanet,
Twin of the jewel that flaws not Helios'
YayS,
Co-heir of splendour, morn’s or noon’s
(ºf 10,362.
Uptorn from ouch and deep in darkness set,
-- Thou gloom'st, berimmed with night,
All paled thy light,
With sheenless glage of death o'erflet.
Taanach Plucked from the chaplet on our country's head,
Thou full-blown flower of honour and re-
110707t, -
Thy pride deject, thy petals dashed adown,
We weep thy floridness deflowered and dead,
- We wail thy burgeoning time,
We wail thy prinne
Blood-boltered, bedraggled, evanished.
[Ereunt
Enter Chorus
The maine of Hannibal beguiled its boys,
Triuinphing o'er the sequel of his story:
Was it the gust of youth that gat us joys
Effacing Roman glamour, Roman glory,
Or did the sense of tears then operate
More strongly in our freshets of esteem :
- And is it years misprise the unfortunate,
Their cause misunderstand, themselves mis-
deemn 2
- 96
HANNIBAL
ACT V, SCENE 7
Methinks that, if Melpomene would deign
To voice her mind thorough tragedian,
The world, both old and young, could scarce
refrain
From honouring my lordly African.
Be kind, my gentles, register applause,
Like me and Cato, to a conquered cause.
97
so. WAYLOR & S
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