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 AUTHOR OF LYTERIA. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICK NOR AND FIELDS 
 
 M DCCC LVI.
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by 
 
 J. P. QUINCT, 
 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 H. 0. HOOGHTON AND COMPANY.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE structure of the following drama is in 
 tended to resemble that of the Greek tragedy. 
 It is written upon an event, rather than a plot ; 
 the scene is laid in the open air before the 
 temporary abode of royalty, and the action is 
 limited to a single night. The attempt has 
 been made to invest a character with some 
 thing of the dignity and moral power of the 
 tragic chorus. The division into acts is in 
 compliance with modern usage ; the pauses 
 being no longer than those that must be sup 
 posed in many of the best models of classic 
 composition. 
 
 2062130
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 THERE are few instances of retributive justice more 
 solemnly striking, than may be gathered from notices of 
 the death of the third Caesar, in the writings of Suetonius 
 and Tacitus. A vigorous constitution, strengthened by the 
 simple habits of early life, enabled Tiberius for a time to re 
 sist, not only the diseases that his later excesses poured upon 
 him, but also the poison that was covertly administered by 
 those in the interest of his successor. Stung and nettled by 
 the taunts and execrations that arose about him, we read, that 
 the dying tyrant would at one time strive to conceal the depth 
 of his infamies, and at another, for very despair, would pub 
 lish them in reckle ss bravado to the world. Feeble in body 
 and a prey to superstitious fears, Tiberius journeyed for the 
 last time towards Rome. Frightened by a fancied prodigy, 
 and seized by mortal illness, that he dared not acknowlege to 
 those about him, the emperor, when within sight of the city, 
 turned suddenly, and gave the order to press back again to 
 Capri. By increasing the extravagance of his debaucher 
 ies, by an occasional display of physical power, and by the 
 constant scorn with which he affected to treat his physician, 
 Chariclcs, the unhappy man sought to disguise his true condi 
 tion from Caligula and his adherents. In vain, however, was 
 every artifice his death was too surely seen to be approach 
 ing; and finally Charicles acknowledged to those about him that 
 (7)
 
 Till INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the end must soon come. For this event measures were imme 
 diately taken councils were held in private and despatches 
 sent to the army and its commanders. Efforts were once made 
 to induce Tiberius to appoint a successor ; but even in the ago 
 nies of death, he grasped the signet ring strongly upon his 
 hand, and refused to allow it to be taken. Yet not only was the - 
 tortured monarch made to realize the plots formed against him, 
 and the contempt of those who should have been bound to 
 his interest by personal favor and lavish liberality ; but a 
 punishment of strange severity was reserved for him. For 
 upon recovering from a fainting fit, that had been mistaken 
 for death, he found Caligula clothed with the insignia of roy 
 alty, and surrounded by a band of fawning courtiers. The 
 whole party, paralyzed with terror at his unexpected resusci 
 tation, for a time gazed stupidly upon the maddened tyrant. 
 Finally, Tiberius was thrown upon a bed, where, at the order 
 of Macro, he was deprived of life by suffocation. 
 
 Most of the incidents, as will be seen by a reference to the 
 note at the close of the volume, are to be found in the histo 
 rians already mentioned. A slight dramatic license has been 
 taken in their arrangement and amplification. 
 
 The characters of Tiberius and his successor are intended 
 to be consistent with their historical representation the for 
 mer having, as we are assured, something of the scholar and 
 the poet mingled with the voluptuary, the tyrant, and the 
 atheist ; and the latter screening at times his detestable qual- 
 ties under a crafty pretence of modesty and moderation. 
 
 In writing the part of Charicles, who is simply mentioned 
 as a physician in the train of Tiberius, not employed to pre 
 scribe, but assisting with friendly advice, the imagination may 
 be allowed some liberty. So likewise in Ennia, the wife of 
 Macro, historically known as mistress and promised empress 
 of Caligula.
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 CAIUS C.ESAR CALIGULA. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 EXJUA. 
 
 The scene is an open space before the villa of Lucullus. At 
 the base of the hill upon which the villa stands, are buildings 
 for the accommodation of soldiers, retainers, and others. The 
 action commences about sunset. 
 
 (9)
 
 ACT I. 
 
 Luculhis, Crassus. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 COMMANDS he then the shelter of our villa 
 For a night only ? 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 This, I cannot tell ; 
 
 For a strange madness sways Tiberius now, 
 And none may guess his pleasure ; when we stood 
 Scarcely two leagues from Rome, with travel spent, 
 And joyed to see her domes and palaces 
 Indent our northern sky the Emperor, 
 Gazing upon the city, staggered back 
 As if Fate s finger touched him ; straight he cried, 
 " Turn all our horses, we ll again to Capri ! " 
 And so, unkemped and wearied, back we toil, 
 Till some fresh freak shall seize him, or till Death, 
 
 (ID
 
 12 CHARICLES: 
 
 The only Brutus left these craven times, 
 Shall dare to strike the monster. 
 
 LUCULLTJS. 
 
 Soft, I pray, 
 
 We may not yet give word unto the hope 
 That eager dwells within us. 
 
 CKASSUS. 
 
 Nay, the end 
 
 Hurries upon him, although desperate will 
 Still wields the body. At Circejus here, 
 In the full circus, when all eyes grew bright 
 As the speech faded on his rigid lip, 
 And pain s dull gripe wrinkled his face in sufferance, 
 Two massive lances from the guards he snatched, 
 Rushed to the front, and shouting to the crowd 
 " Ccesar is mighty yet ! " 
 With certain aim transfixed the panting boar, 
 That made the soldiers pastime. Nerving thus 
 His arm to one great effort that drained off 
 The dying strength of nature, back he reeled, 
 And carried by his hirelings, left the games 
 A shattered mass of grossness.
 
 A DKAMATIC POEM. 13 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Charicles 
 Was with him when he fell ? 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 Yes ; to recall 
 
 A life that crimsons the hard cheek of earth, 
 And shames the patient heaven ! Strange it is 
 That wise physician whose well-governed mind 
 And vigorous frame conjure the chains that time 
 Binds on his latter years, and show them garlands 
 Strange such as he should use his hard-earned skill, 
 To cheat infernal gods of their ripe victim ! 
 
 LUCULLTTS. 
 
 Tis whispered here that comradeship of youth, 
 When this luxurious reveller bore arms 
 Nobly against the Germans, knit so close 
 The love of Charicles to this our tyrant, 
 That now, of all the crowd of sycophants, 
 Soldiers, relations, courtesans, who press 
 About the dying monarch, he alone 
 Stands firm and faithful to keep back the throng,
 
 14 CHARICLES : 
 
 Who curse the lagging energies of life, 
 And aid the fates to do their welcome office. 
 
 CBASSUS. 
 
 The ring of soldier s steel breaks from below ! 
 The horsemen, that by some half-hour precede 
 The Emperor, already fill the court. 
 
 LUCULLTJS. 
 
 Can he be Macro who still sits his steed 
 
 While all descend about him ? no ; he wants 
 
 The crafty courtesy that could supplant 
 
 The powerful Sejanus ! Dignity 
 
 That cannot palter, in his stillness lives. 
 
 A knight detains his stirrup Ah, his step 
 
 To earth wears cautiousness like age. He speaks 
 
 To those about him, while he bares his head 
 
 In salutation. Whitened locks like those 
 
 Mark only one in all the monarch s train. 
 
 Tis the physician Charicles ! 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 His mien 
 Cannot be counterfeit : It is indeed
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 15 
 
 That brave old man who hither bends his steps. 
 
 The freshness and the vigorous trust of youth 
 
 Still cling about him, as the kindly vine 
 
 With its fond verdure wraps the storm-stripped trunk 
 
 In richer beauty, than when summer birds 
 
 Wantoned among its branches. He displays 
 
 A virtue not of impulse, or that temper 
 
 Whose native mien shows fairly, but has grown 
 
 To all that men should honor by hard toil 
 
 And daily self-denial. As we praise 
 
 The fair conception that the artist strikes 
 
 From shapeless matter rudely shivering 
 
 And tearing without pity through the rock, 
 
 Until his thought toils slowly into form 
 
 So let us reverence him who doth not spare 
 
 To chafe and rend his being, till it shrink 
 
 To beauty more divine than any craft 
 
 Can mimic to the sense. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 This Charicles, 
 
 So have I heard, and your report confirms, 
 Deserves the high commending of a man 
 Who dares revere a truth, before the crowd
 
 16 CHARICLES : 
 
 Are scourged to worship it, whose loyalty 
 To true nobility ungarlanded 
 Is ever constant yet whose generous heart 
 Hoodwinks his judgment to the benefit 
 Even of this Tiberius. 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 He is here ; 
 
 Few of our modern youth who climbed that hill 
 Would breathe so easily. 
 
 (Enter Charicles.} 
 
 You speed to-day ; 
 
 We thought that Charicles could ill be spared 
 By his great patient. But perhaps even now 
 Rome s prayers are answered, and Tiberius lies 
 Beyond the help of leech-craft. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Sir, he lives ; 
 
 And in a sudden gust of strength that Will 
 Drove through the shrinking fibres, spurned my aid, 
 And bade me quit his presence ; lest the people, 
 While a physician waited at his side, 
 Should fancy Caesar mortal !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 17 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 Stay not then 
 
 A moment in this villa ! he will repent 
 This rashness, and again demand thy arm 
 To battle off his doom. Leave him to those 
 Who dare not stay the vengeance the high gods 
 Devise for their blasphemers. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 I must not 
 
 Desert the final moments of a man 
 Whom friendship past has dowered with a claim, 
 That in his sad necessity dispels 
 The difference of years. We combatted 
 Together by the Rhine ; and earlier still 
 In that fierce Rhaetian war when the rough Alps 
 Leagued all their bulk against us. I have seen 
 Tiberius, tentless, stretched upon the earth, 
 While meanest soldiers with their blankets screened 
 Cold starlight from their faces ! Through long nights 
 He gave command that any who had doubt 
 Of the next day s success, should break his rest, 
 And hear him tell again the well-laid plans 
 2
 
 18 CHARICLES : 
 
 That promised victory. Our studies too 
 
 Waked better sympathy : the Cassars hold 
 
 A spirit quick to seize what lesser men 
 
 By grappling and hard toil with grief attain, 
 
 And his bright wit, quick-flashing on the task, 
 
 Dispersed all doubts that shrouded the coy truth. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Methinks that Charicles may claim discharge 
 From old indebtedness, in saving him 
 Whom Rome calls master, from a blacker deed 
 Than history shall whisper. I have heard, 
 From one who served at Capri, of a feast 
 Where poison lurking in the wine-brimmed cups, 
 Should banquet all to silence had not he 
 Who planned this infamy, summoned in haste 
 A certain skilled physician, who prepared 
 An antidote, that saved the guilty man 
 From his own vile contriving. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Such report 
 
 May be as empty as the thousand tales 
 Men fable of their rulers. When we know
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 19 
 
 The open baseness of this sullied man, 
 
 We need not crimes that secret rumorers breathe 
 
 To make our pity fuller. 
 
 CKASSUS. 
 
 Hast thou then 
 
 No harsher word than pity, for this scourge 
 Of the vexed earth ! this mercy-mocking fiend ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 None, none, sir, for he suffers. While the gods 
 
 Delayed their retribution, there was room 
 
 For other feeling. Now, when every grief 
 
 Pours on his naked head when thick ning pangs 
 
 Gnaw through the aching frame and the hot thoughts, 
 
 Surging in chaos, rise and beat against 
 
 The rock where reason lingers when the men, 
 
 Who fawned upon his greatness, plot his death 
 
 And friendless, helpless Age in sorrow drifts 
 
 To that dark ocean, where unsightly wrecks 
 
 Of powers that cursed their holder, heave and toss 
 
 In ghastly impotence then, anger melts, 
 
 Leaving compassion, awe, and tenderness.
 
 20 CHAKICLES : 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 Yonder are those untouched by any sense 
 That dulls their instant profit Caius Caesar, 
 And with him Ennia, whom he promises 
 Success shall make his empress ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Let me then 
 
 Withdraw unnoticed, for the Emperor 
 Must arrive speedily. I would put off 
 This garment soiled by travel, and prepare 
 To minister in these emergencies. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Then follow, sir, our villa welcomes all 
 Though Caius would not seek to shelter one 
 Who comes to guard what he, for greater cause 
 Than doth possess us all, plots to destroy ; 
 While Macro s haughty and ungoverned wife, 
 Sold by her lord s ambition and her own, 
 Shall brook thy presence little : So have care, 
 Her hate may prove most deadly !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 21 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Fear thee not ; 
 
 For I have marked this woman, and observed 
 Her spirit swell beneath indignities, 
 Which to the world she carries mockingly, 
 la her there fails that mediating sense 
 To temper down the bright ideal of thought, 
 That it may warm to healthiness the life 
 Scorched by excess of lustre. She is formed 
 Of fine perceptions, through which every breath 
 Vibrates to joy or agony unknown 
 To coarse and passionless existences. 
 Such beings are developed in convulsion : 
 Their energies unused refuse to rust, 
 But do ferment and strive for mastership. 
 Strange, to confess the thousand accidents 
 That make us as we are ! Do we part here ? 
 
 LUCTJLLUS. 
 
 This way for thee. I go below to greet 
 The Emperor : his coming will be sudden. 
 
 (Exeunt Lucullus and Charicles.)
 
 22 CHARICLES : 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 How hardly stands the time when we must hail 
 These selfish plotters, who for private gain 
 V\ r ould push Tiberius to his eager grave, 
 As Rome s best patriots ; when our fingers yearn 
 To doff our caps to this Caligula, 
 As one whose very blackness must show fair, 
 Contrasted with that arch-oppressor s wrongs, 
 That scourge the patient earth to bitterness ! 
 (Enter Cams Ccesar and Ennia.} 
 
 CAIUS. 
 Ha, Crassus ! Was it Charicles who left thee ? 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 Ay, sir, he came but now. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Mistake ! mistake ! 
 
 He should have fled to Rome out of the reach 
 Of daily insult and indignity, 
 That pays his care to lengthen out a life,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 23 
 
 Whose blood coins riches for the man who steals it. 
 Speed after him, say I have words to speak 
 That shall ring profit ! Quickly bid him come ! 
 
 [Exit Crassus. 
 
 Foiled by this man again ! when I have gained 
 The popular voice, which may to-morrow call 
 A rival to take up the falling crown. 
 The guards, as yet fresh-bribed, are well prepared 
 To hail me monarch. Tis to-night this night 
 The sluggish deputation from the senate, 
 Bought by long fawning, should arrive to wait 
 His death, to call me instantly to fill 
 The lofty seat he drops from : and this night 
 The old man dies ! This must be compassed, must, 
 Despite this crafty leech who long enough 
 Hath shut us from our hope. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Tiberius drained 
 
 The drugs that Macro mixed, and yet defies thee : 
 Truly our Charicles bears spells that raise 
 Immortal aid to thwart thy purposes.
 
 24 CHARICLES : 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 He must be gained at any sacrifice ; 
 And, Ennia, thou canst do it. Well I know 
 The crafty words and winning speciousness 
 Of a shrewd woman and a fair one too. 
 Thy weapons are more delicate and sure, 
 Than bribes and threats that I might vainly use 
 In pressing this great suit. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Here is one man 
 
 Might stand uncovered in the blaze of day, 
 And let the wholesome sunshine search him through, 
 To show no fleck upon him ! Canst thou not 
 Find better uses for these purchased wiles, 
 Than to obscure the single honest light 
 By which we gauge our proper infamies ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Waste not these doughty words on him who twirls 
 Thee and thy future as a brittle reed 
 Between his fingers \ Thou art mine. Reflect 
 How I could bruise the life that I have sworn 
 Shall wear imperial greatness !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 25 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 As thou say st, 
 
 I am most helpless. On and upward then 
 It is my course and thine. If I have skill 
 In reading stubborn men, no promises 
 Of profit, or foreshadowed retribution 
 Can sway this Charicles impregnable 
 On all pai ts, save that spot where honor waves 
 Her insubstantial sceptre. But let me 
 (If fortune so far help us) show him cause 
 Why this man s death must truly glorify 
 Him who invites it show that both his gods 
 And feeble senators will count him blest, 
 Whose hand frees Rome from Capri s guilty lord,- 
 And he is ours to use ! 
 
 CAITJS. 
 
 And having used, 
 
 To punish, for the days of hope deferred 
 That he hath cost us. I shall call thee empress 
 Ere the dead east shall redden ; but to-night, 
 We work ! No sleep or revel must intrude 
 Betwixt our deed and hope. We father still
 
 26 CHAEICLES : 
 
 The future in the present, and our fate 
 
 Is not stretched out before us, but is shot 
 
 By our own effort through the blank hereafter, 
 
 Where only fools run blindly. Charicles 
 
 Returns : to thy persuading I may owe 
 
 The crown we both shall wear. Be resolute 
 
 In every subtle art that captives men 
 
 From their own judgment. Ennia ! I trust thee. 
 
 \_Exit Caius Caesar. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 I shall be faithful, and will have success 
 
 If mortal art can reach it. Then away, 
 
 Thou image and perception of a fate, 
 
 That wanders cruelly before my steps, 
 
 Showing a sad, calm glory which doth mock 
 
 My flushed and squandered being ! Let me quell 
 
 The phantom, and press on 
 
 And in a mazy whirl of vivid life, 
 
 Surfeit this restless soul. Our Charicles 
 
 Worships that servile spirit, which resigns 
 
 Fortune s best gifts for some fantastic good 
 
 Begot in reason s dotage. He bows not 
 
 With other men to the unbending will 
 
 Of him who triumphs ; but refuses still
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 27 
 
 To pay the natural tribute which the crowd 
 Render stern purpose, that breaks destiny, 
 And dazzles men with what it steals from them. 
 He is of those to whom substantial things, 
 Clouded by fancy, seem as mockeries 
 And who would sway the universe by dreams 
 That die upon their acting. 
 
 (Enter Charicles.) 
 
 It shows ill, 
 
 Physician, when such reverent locks appear 
 Midst curled and scented parasites. We thought 
 That spurned by this mad patient, thou had st fled 
 Beyond recalling, that his folly might 
 Glare on his dying eyes. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Until the last 
 
 I wait beside him. The physician sees 
 Poor nature stripped of all the snares she throws, 
 In her bright hours, for fickle sympathy. 
 All hearts can feel when loveliness is touched 
 With the quick shaft of sorrow when the soul 
 Quits earth in perfumed robes of sentiment, 
 And genius, dolphin-like, from the dull lash
 
 28 CHARICLES : 
 
 Of its own agony weaves robes of light, 
 And bleeds in changing beauty ; but when pain 
 Strikes vulgar want or selfish luxury, 
 When the torn breast bares to the gazer s view 
 Vice, cruelty, and wretchedness, that strive 
 And mutiny gainst fainting reason, then 
 Tis our place to stand firmly, and support 
 With human pity what remains of man, 
 To kind oblivion. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 So dost thou wrong- 
 Snatching the healing cordials of the earth 
 To pour through bloated veins, while younger lives, 
 Still capable of good, perish unheeded ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 He who hath knowledge to renerve the pulse, 
 May not thence arrogate the power to give 
 Or hold his skill, from any suffering. 
 All life alike claims his large sympathy : 
 The dews of heaven the sombre cypress feed, 
 Like the gay poppy.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 29 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 A starved Pestilence 
 
 Sits pressing his foul lip, and from his breath 
 Drinks hateful sustenance ! Thy fatal spell, 
 That holds this sordid life, oppresses earth. 
 The senate has defied him, and the throng 
 Bun wildly in the streets, and call aloud 
 That his dead bones for oft his death is rumored 
 Be thrown like carrion to the yellow stream 
 That cleanses Rome. Tiberius to the Tiber 
 This is the cry that dies upon the breeze 
 That even now sweeps by us. As a god 
 Shall he be worshipped, who the state shall free 
 From this incumbent horror. Caius Caesar, 
 Whom nobles, senate, people, long to crown, 
 Shall hold him in his heart, who boldly strikes 
 The blow to-night ; or but forgets to shield 
 Tiberius from the hands that are not shamed 
 To do their country service ! 
 
 Charicles, 
 
 I thought to have been temperate in my speech 
 But craft and cautiousness fit not the time 
 Or business. Freely have I spoken ; so 
 Return thou answer.
 
 30 CHARICLES : 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 The blanched locks I wear 
 Should cover no ambition. As the ear 
 Dulls to the harmonies of sense, the words 
 Of sober duty closely press themselves 
 About the listening heart. Transgression must 
 Scourge its fooled victim though its knotted whips 
 Fret not those younger days, when our fresh strength 
 Leaps laughingly to pleasure s winning pipe. 
 Thou art most beautiful ; I cannot think 
 That even Capri can have all debauched 
 A soul enshrined thus fairly. Do not seek 
 To bitter the high place that shall be thine 
 By shedding royal blood tho thick with guilt 
 That thee and thine has patroned. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 While we speak, 
 
 The young Tiberius hurries to the side 
 Of the crazed dotard, who in some mad freak 
 May lift him to the throne ; then there must flow 
 More blood and richer, than supplies the veins 
 Of one shrunk tyrant !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 31 
 
 CHABICLES. 
 
 Nay, if as thou say st 
 The empire claim thy Caius for her lord, 
 Be sure that her great voice shall drown the cries 
 Of a dream-flattered youth. My daily craft 
 Has given skill to read the signs that Death 
 Stamps on the brow of the worn wretch he bids 
 To slumber in his chamber*. Ere the sun 
 Shall thrice revisit us, this man shall lie 
 Beyond the thrust of malice. Do not snatch 
 So rudely at a life, that while we speak 
 Melts from between thy hope and its fulfilment. 
 (Re-enter Caius Ccesar.) 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Hast thou sped well ? Speak, woman, 
 For our stained uncle, stung with pain and travel, 
 Now rages in the court ! Physician, say, 
 Is our suit granted ? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 What is honest, sir, 
 There needs no suit to press. Proposals base
 
 82 CHARICLES : 
 
 Cling not to my remembrance ; and perchance 
 The sight of this grieved man, whose failing steps 
 His menials scarce support to where we stand, 
 Shall banish them from yours, and turn this guilt 
 To sober admiration at the doom 
 The god-defier tastes. 
 
 The Emperor ! 
 
 (Enter Tiberius, attended. He is followed by 
 Lucuttus, and many others.) 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Hail, friends ! Ha, Charicles, what brought thee here ? 
 Twas not my order. Take thy face from hence ! 
 Our tree, though something bent, is still well sapped, 
 And needs no gardening. Speed thee to Rome 
 There suck the purses of the credulous crowd, 
 The food of priests and doctors ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 As a friend, 
 
 An early and a true one, I entreat 
 Your leave to tarry.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 33 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 As a friend, then, stay 
 
 For we have need of such. "Tis said the people 
 Armed with petitions, ay, and with clubs too, 
 Pour from the neighboring country to besiege 
 Our final night on their curst continent ! 
 To-morrow s dawn embarks us all for Capri. 
 If thou dost stay, bewitch thy sober face 
 With wine and garlands ; or if thou wilt deign 
 The reek of slaughter won with ruder arms 
 Than thy familiar physic join my guards, 
 And hew these beggars to the thirsty earth, 
 Which from plebeian blood elaborates 
 A blooming vesture to out-do and shame 
 Our gewgawed lemans ! 
 
 Orders were despatched 
 To have a banquet ready ! Is it served ? 
 I have heard something of the sunny grape, 
 Whose essence cribbed in your sealed jars too long, 
 Craves resurrection to renew its summer 
 In these chilled hearts we bear. Am I not answered ! 
 Is t ready! Ha! 
 
 3
 
 34 CHARICLES : 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 The nimble servants speed 
 With loyalty still anxious in your service. 
 Our tables bending with their choicest load 
 Shall soon invite your highness. But this coming 
 Was something sudden. We entreat your patience. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Twas not well done ! Feasts constantly replenished 
 Should have awaited us. When we descend 
 From our fair island, and do deign to tread 
 The vulgar earth men live on, you should know 
 How Caesar must be welcomed ! 
 
 Ennia, 
 
 Mix for me wine as thou wert wont at Capri, 
 And bring it straight, for faintness is upon me ! Haste, I say ! 
 
 [Exit Ennia. 
 
 See there our doctor ; how from far he smells 
 His chance of meddling profit. Keep thy drugs 
 For slaves and frightened women ! Know our faintness 
 Is caused by travel and already passes ; 
 What canst thou do, poor leech ! fatten on fools ! 
 When the time comes, we die.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 35 
 
 CHAKICLES. 
 
 Ay, sir, we die. 
 
 But if the time should lag, man can select 
 Some drug whose active potency is proved 
 Swift to wind up the hours ; and when the pulse 
 Strikes off a day at every maddening beat, 
 He can choose yet again, and with a drop, 
 Distilled from other vegetable life, 
 Undo the deadly errand of the first. 
 Holds Caesar not, unrecognized, perchance, 
 Some old example in his memory 
 That fits the saying ! 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Cease thy prating, peace ! 
 I keep no memories : but for a jest, 
 I ll practise thee with seeming, and feign aches 
 And knotted cramps, that shall thy craft o erwhehn ! 
 Say on this spot a gnawing horror pressed 
 Storming the seat of life, and sending forth, 
 Gainst this dependency and that, fierce pains 
 That burned into the flesh. Say that this brow 
 Pent in a sullen madness, that must soon 
 Burst through the cracking flood-gates of the will,
 
 36 CHARICLES : 
 
 And rage in every fibre that this hand 
 Uncertain, palsied, could no longer clutch 
 The potency that warmed the sluggish clay 
 With a faint show of being add to all 
 A tortured consciousness, weak to repel 
 The blazing thoughts that a blood-craving fate 
 Rained thick upon the brain ! If such a wretch, 
 Steeped thus in fullest aggregate of woe, 
 Cumbered the earth what couldst thou do for him ? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Nothing ; but smooth the painful path to death. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Art thou foiled now ! drug then the foolish crowd 
 When evils league to crush a monarch s life, 
 They scorn man s frail resistance. Yet thou know st 
 We are yet free from pangs, that shall dispel 
 The soft enchantments of the sensuous world, 
 Ere we are called to leave it. Thou hast seen 
 This arm more truly hurl the death-fraught lance 
 Than any practised stripling. Well, sir, judge 
 Are we not Cassar still ! only a little weary.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 37 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Seek stillness, then ; the only medicine 
 To soothe the ill thou bearest. Put away 
 This purposed madness of red revelry 
 Relax the cords that bind thy troubled soul 
 To worldly pettiness. Withdraw apart 
 For fickle sleep is soonest won alone. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Alone ! alone ! each nauseous drug thou own st 
 Were sweet to such a horror. We have climbed 
 The Alpine heights together grasping oft 
 The rugged shrub, whose roots more firmly cling 
 To their dead rock, than any gaudy flower 
 To the warm earth that feeds it : thus it is 
 When every joy has perished, the starved heart 
 Cleaves with its total being to a world 
 Barren of any comfort. Solitude ! 
 I loathe its deadly presence, and grow sick 
 Even as the brain now dreams it. 
 
 Charicles, 
 
 A word apart with thee, that the vexed soul 
 May cast the fiend that haunts it. Thou hast dreamed 
 Some show of truth in the weak jugglery
 
 38 CHARICLES : 
 
 Fashioned by priestly knaves to drain their dupes ! 
 Perchance to this foul tenement we hold 
 Thy folly gives a subtler principle 
 Than self-informing matter ! Thy faint heart 
 Projects its best of being from itself, 
 And as a god adores it as a god 
 Cursed and dethroned by all the miseries 
 That plough the world thou giv st him. Nay, no word- 
 Till I have scared thee with a prodigy, 
 That shah 1 out-wonder thy weak phantasy ! 
 Thou hast beheld Apollo s marbled form 
 Stand in our hall at Capri stand as fixed 
 As our strong watch-tower, whose deep-seated base 
 Grows to the stable earth. What thought hadst thou 
 When this perfection sunned thee with its life ? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 The thought of one whose study contemplates 
 Maimed and diseased mankind. In awe I stood 
 Before the stone-cast dream, that mirrored forth 
 A human form ransomed from every flaw 
 Prophetic of infirmity and death ! 
 Long silently I marvelled ; till at length, 
 Drawing its fire from the fooled gazer s eye,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 39 
 
 A consciousness divine inhabited 
 This shrine too noble for mortality. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 This image, sir mark me, I pray thee now 
 A mass of stone, dead, senseless, chilly, mute, 
 Ay, so thou think st it, heaved its rigid arm, 
 And, as alone in speechless trance I stood 
 Before the vital marble, breathed my name 
 In voice whose terrible music fills my soul ; 
 Which, for a moment s calmness, must yield up 
 The rash prediction to thy doubting ear. 
 " God-mocking monarch " these the very words, 
 Echoed by night and day have they not sunk 
 Deep, deep into my being ! " know the doom, 
 That tardy justice for her scoffers rears, 
 Breaks on thy guilty head. No hand of thine 
 Shall place this spotless marble in the niche 
 Whereto tis destined! This stained island jly 
 Thy friends desert thee E en the very stones, 
 That thou hast heaped in palaces and towers, 
 In fragments strew the earth ! Away to die 
 To die upon the shore whose tainted sands 
 ShaU shame to hide thee ! "
 
 40 CHARICLES : 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Sir, these sombre words 
 Were but the fancies of a troubled mind, 
 Which, sick with apprehension, turned its dreams 
 To horrors palpable. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 And thus thou think st them- 
 Thou, so weakly duped ! 
 Teeming with boyish faith, thy heart can feel 
 The breath of deity in monstrous forms, 
 That strew the bitter earth. In stream and grove, 
 The slavish soul thou bearest paints a god, 
 Steeped in our human frailties ; hopes, fears, hates, 
 Loves, virtues, crimes, spawned of thy impotence, 
 Thou giv st the natural essence named by thee 
 Creator, Jove, or Pho3bus ! Doubt this sense 
 Question the miracle these eyes have seen ! 
 Hug dead delusions defraud reason still ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 The studies I have followed, and yet more, 
 Such observation as our cautious craft
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 41 
 
 Hails as its best instructor, teach disease 
 May trick the eye with fancies, that shall grow 
 In the red light of frenzy from the brain 
 Stealing a motion, form, and utterance, 
 To cheat the mind that gets them. Then distrust 
 The false impressions that the senses draw 
 From worlds of their creation. But go forth 
 When the pure soul, unscorched by feverish draughts, 
 Hovers from earth with every fervent note, 
 That swells in nature s anthem there receive 
 Undoubting, such belief as the young breeze 
 Wafts in upon thy spirit. Know the calm 
 That falls so softly on the passive mind 
 Is not begot of falsehood ! know the Power, 
 That clothed with life, light, action, sweeps us on 
 Towards Beauty and Perfection, is no dream, 
 Howe er our weak conception bodies it ! 
 (A Messenger enters.) 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Thou art from Capri, fellow ! Are thy galleys, 
 That shall to-morrow bear us to our isle, 
 Safe anchored in the bay ?
 
 42 CHARICLES : 
 
 MESSENGER. 
 
 They wait the will 
 
 Of Caesar ; if again he choose to tread 
 The spot that Jove has manifestly cursed. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Ah. frightened knave ! What say st thou ! 
 
 MESSENGER. 
 
 That which these eyes have seen. This morning, sir, 
 
 As our calmed vessels slowly float from shore, 
 
 The rock-girt island seemed to toss its bulk 
 
 Like our frail bark when winter s tempest blows. 
 
 Thy stony palaces were bent and swayed 
 
 Like the weak mast we govern. Then the tower, 
 
 Proud, lofty mass that frowns upon the deep, 
 
 Reeling from side to side, quivered and fell 
 
 In thunder on the beach ! A sudden breeze 
 
 Now rising from the south, swelled our dead sails, 
 
 And bore us trembling from this scene of havoc. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 Physician, hast thou ears or are they fooled
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 43 
 
 Like eyes of mine ! Frenzy, thy breath is on me ! 
 
 Wine ! wine there ; bring it quickly ! This grotesque 
 Fantastic fable should be quenched and drowned 
 With all the sable shapes that flock to it. 
 (Emnia returns.) 
 
 ENNIA (apart to Gains). 
 The wine is mixed by Macro potently 
 To lull all pain asleep. I am enough 
 Fouled in your service, and will do no more. 
 Be thou the cup-bearer, if yet thy will, 
 Uncancelled by remorse, thrust at his life. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 I have no fear to act the thing I think 
 Like whim-besotted women. Give it me ! 
 
 Caesar, the wine is craftily infused 
 Thus spiced and freshly mingled, marvel not 
 That simple men in ecstasy supreme 
 Called him divine who gave it ! 
 
 Ennia, see, 
 How eagerly he lifts it to his lips.
 
 44 CHARICLES : 
 
 Soon are we safely anchored to that shore 
 That long has fled before our quickened hope. 
 
 CHARICLES 
 
 (advancing, takes the cup from Tiberius, and pours the 
 
 wine upon the earth). 
 
 Give something to the gods ! Thy guilty court 
 Dwelt not at Capri when its towers were razed ! 
 One poor libation meanly pays such mercy ! 
 
 TIBERIUS (after a pause). 
 There is but one of all this scented band 
 That durst so honor them. Yet heed thee, heed, 
 Lest thou presume too long on friendship past, 
 And one day bleed for like officiousness. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 The festal music that now rings within, 
 Calls Caesar to the feast our hasting zeal 
 Has heaped to match his order. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Life freshens at the sound, and the warmed heart 
 Leaps to the melody ! Physician, come,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 45 
 
 Pour thy libations to a mortal god 
 
 Whom it shall profit something. Have we garlands ? 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 This is the youth who bears them. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Crown me, boy ; 
 
 This yielding band of roses soothes the brow 
 That aches with costly metal ! 
 
 Is the earth firm ! 
 
 Methought it shook and heaved but now like that 
 He told us of at Capri ! Prodigy ! 
 Ye all are stable, while I stagger here 
 As one who walks the galley s slippery deck, 
 When tempests lift our navies. To the feast 
 We should reel after. Help me on, I say, 
 The will of Caesar lives ! yet fitfully 
 It flashes : Charicles thy hand thy hand 
 How cold it seizes mine. Upon thy life 
 No word ! on on Ca3sar rules Caesar still ! 
 
 Lucullus, well this thirsty throng shall prove 
 The wine your jars have ripened ; while our band
 
 46 CHARICLES : 
 
 Of dancers and trained singers shall show thee 
 
 What gods we keep at Capri. Ha, our wreath 
 
 Has fallen Bring another ! Ennia, 
 
 The flush upon thy cheek rivals these flowers. 
 
 Our race, good Caius, ever won the smile 
 
 Of Roman beauty thou art one of us ! 
 
 The music quickens. "Why stand prating here 
 
 And let the ruddy moment of delight 
 
 Solicit us in vain ! On to our revel ! 
 
 [Exeunt. 
 
 The Act closes.
 
 ACT H. 
 
 Ennia enters from the villa. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 A moment pour thy cooling breath, oh night, 
 Athwart my restless bosom. Ye cold stars, 
 Freeze up those quickened feelings which at times 
 As even now they do struggle beneath 
 The weight of years and folly. Should the heart 
 Still nourish its own venom fret and waste 
 A languid being in the narrow path 
 Where custom binds it ! No ; though cramped by man, 
 Toyed, wheedled, slaved, at last we break the chain, 
 Renounce all mercy, tenderness, remorse, 
 And glut our starving passion. Let no dream 
 Of rest, revived affection, or of rays 
 Familiar hope once flickered, touch the soul 
 That fate sweeps on to power ! 
 (47)
 
 48 CHARICLES : 
 
 Music again 
 
 Charges the air with pity ; mortal grief 
 Pours forth its plaint in harmonies of art, 
 Snatches the strolling breeze, and clogs its flight 
 Toned with a human sorrow. Hence ! oh hence, 
 Thou language of the soul that mocks our life, 
 By rumoring a being all refined 
 From the dull dross that drags this feebleness, 
 Earthward from whence twas fashioned ! 
 
 The young moon, 
 
 Bedded in fleecy vapor, streams repose 
 Vainly on this torn spirit. Glimmer on, 
 Thou passive, icy wonder, which our priests 
 Have mantled in a woman s fickleness ! 
 Hadst thou the choler, rancor, spite, hate, love, 
 That ravens on her breast, thy drowsy beams 
 "Would sparkle sharply through the scattered night, 
 And dumb with awe thy quaking worshippers. 
 Sea gust ! who sportest with the floating mists, 
 That heave and drift above me lift my soul 
 To wander freely among airy things, 
 Grotesque imaginations, that may dull 
 This aching need of loving born to crave, 
 Sting, perish, never to be satisfied !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 49 
 
 Away thou life most false and incomplete ! 
 Yearn, languish all my being ! then create 
 Ideal nothings, worthy to provoke 
 Thy possible delirium of bliss, 
 The energy and madness of thy love. 
 Flit then before me fair, absorbing shape 
 Wrapped in unearthly power, let my life, 
 Spurning its selfish action, melt in thine 
 And quicken there to ripeness ! 
 
 Loud debauch 
 
 Swells through the opening gates ! Some parasites 
 Reel forth to chill their fever-whirling blood 
 From the cold breast of night ! This wooded path 
 Shall shield me from their banter and light talk. 
 (As the doors of the villa open, a burst of revelry is heard. 
 Then enter Charicles.) 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Close up your doors again ! Shut drunken mirth 
 And mad disorder in the tainted cell, 
 That dulls their guilty jangle to the ear 
 Of modest nature ! 
 
 Let me worship here. 
 The sainted benediction of the night 
 4
 
 50 CHARICLES : 
 
 Floats softly through her temple. Every breath 
 
 Charged with the fragrance of the blooming earth, 
 
 Wafts absolution to the soul that feels 
 
 All error, foolishness, and doubt apart 
 
 From its true being. We do flaw ourselves, 
 
 So nobly fashioned, deeming we may not 
 
 Wipe out the stain our youthful wildness trucked 
 
 For pleasure coveted. We are not mocked, 
 
 Feeling that man must triumph over sense, 
 
 Which now he combats weakly. Aching, scarred 
 
 At every pore, the clay-enchanting life 
 
 Deserts the baffled soldier ; yet we know 
 
 Those thrusts and buffets that his dying arm 
 
 Drops feebly on his victor, still shall earn 
 
 A life immortal on the painted page, 
 
 That chronicles to the remotest time 
 
 The patriot s fruitless courage ! Oh thou god, 
 
 Or gods, or natural principle of right, 
 
 Which blindly we must worship ! shall we not 
 
 Receive again unmaimed the soul we lose, 
 
 Battling with evil that has vanquished us ! 
 
 ENNI A (coming forward ) . 
 Does the physician, doubting his own art,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 51 
 
 Beseech night s chilly finger to retard, 
 
 And time the throbbing of the hurried heart 
 
 Even like an unskilled woman ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 The live air 
 
 Pours subtler vigor through the healthy frame, 
 Than any draught wrung from the soothing weed, 
 Or quick ning root, at bitter need expert 
 To minister to man. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Your patient, sir 
 
 Does he still suffer, play the boy, and mock 
 The hand that holds dominion in his grasp ? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 The frenzy of his revel ebbs ; the eye, 
 That flashed with fearless lustre, dully falls 
 Upon the wanton throng. The lips that late 
 (So thou hast seen) flung sparks of ribald jest 
 On all that nature hallows, murmur now 
 And ooze a childish prattle. Caius Caesar, 
 Silenced in wonder, gazes fearfully
 
 52 CHARICLES : 
 
 Upon his sinking kinsman, seeing well 
 The sudden culmination of his hope 
 Outstrip conspiracy and parricide. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 There is a mercy yet ! The wretch shall die 
 By Heaven s stroke, not ours Assurance blest, 
 I clasp thee ! And perchance before the last, 
 His conscious mind may calmly designate 
 Our Caius his successor : then we rule 
 Untortured by the furies rumor feigns 
 Shall haunt usurpers. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 It can hardly be 
 
 The mind shall so resume its healthy function, 
 As to prepare in calmness for an end, 
 That, recognized, must hurl the startled soul 
 Into chaotic torture. Memories past, 
 And images of terror, uncontrolled 
 By manly will, mingle with present things, 
 And in a sore perplexity of sense, 
 Crush out the feeble reason. Life will end 
 In a vague dream, unbroken into time,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 58 
 
 While unconnectedly the avenging thoughts, 
 Draped all in ghastly horror, dimly flit 
 About the jaded brain. So far as art 
 Foretells what shall be, by experience 
 Of what has been, thus shall the monarch die. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 And thus we climb to power ; power, that will make 
 
 Our lives decay as his ! So we still pant 
 
 For an ideal existence, to supply 
 
 The stimulus to being, which we crave 
 
 To thrust us from this passionless routine 
 
 Of present meanness, folly, and contempt 
 
 At the poor show we witness. The fooled soul 
 
 Must struggle on, not turn upon itself 
 
 In sickening revolution. Oh sir, say 
 
 For from thy presence seems to flow a charm 
 
 That wrests the question from me is there not 
 
 Some cunning trick to turn to harmony 
 
 The discords, harsh and clashing, that repel 
 
 The love, the peace we covet ? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 * 
 
 We are not left
 
 54 CHARICLES : 
 
 To totter down to death, swayed to and fro 
 
 By every breath of passion. Mastership 
 
 Of our own thought, won and preserved 
 
 Through effort, shall invest the craving mind 
 
 "With calmness ; but this faculty divine 
 
 Comes slow and rarely to our fickle race. 
 
 Yet those there are, who can the will command, 
 
 Banish the frivolous degrading doubt, 
 
 And singly turn the workings of the soul 
 
 To one great object. Such a quality 
 
 Is priest and sovereign unto him who holds it. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 I recognize a wisdom in thy words 
 
 That we can never reach. To know a peace 
 
 Beyond, above us, is the misery 
 
 That mocks our impotence ! Art thou a man 
 
 So wrapt and crusted in with smoky dreams, 
 
 That no conception of a happiness, 
 
 Not won but hourly grasped at, goads thy soul ? 
 
 CHAKICLES. 
 
 Strength to conceive the thing we may not gain 
 
 
 
 Shall bless or curse us, at our proper choice.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 
 
 To strive for good, not to abide in good, 
 Is destiny most noble. We are palled 
 In our vexed youth to find the thing we love 
 Melt from our grasp ; then, waking, we perceive 
 That the hot hope that struggled in the mind 
 Repelled the sober blessing nature pours 
 Most tenderly on all. Bosomed in peace, 
 We prison our own souls, and torture them 
 With petty toys Fate dances in the air, 
 Which touched, must fade and turn to bitterness. 
 (Enter Gains Ccesar.) 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Physician, thou hast saved us ! and shalt tell 
 
 The doubting world Tiberius died untouched 
 
 By mortal instrument. He labors now, 
 
 And fights off death but feebly ; and we hope 
 
 Before the last, he shall be urged to name 
 
 Ourselves to take the throne. Our title then 
 
 Cannot be shaken. I withdraw awhile, 
 
 Lest some should say through tricking, and by fright, 
 
 I wrung the crown from him : but go thou in, 
 
 To witness what my zealous partisans 
 
 Shall plague him into uttering. Men will deem
 
 56 CHARICLES I 
 
 Thy evidence unpurchased. Tarry not 
 Know it shall profit all. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 I am obedient. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 How meekly our sage scholar bows his head 
 To win the smile of Power ! His plans, most noble 
 But their expression in the life, how mean ! 
 Nay pardon, Charicles, my shrewish tongue 
 Libelled the heart most foully ; thou art not 
 Wrenched from thy course by interest or threat ; 
 But envying thee too much, I seize suspicion, 
 And doubting thee, loathe less my tarnished self. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 I go to hush the brawling company, 
 Who siege the bloated fragment of a man, 
 That I have once called friend. Humanity 
 Shall not be wholly driven from the wretch, 
 Who lingers there, self-filed and desolate ! 
 
 [ Charicles returns to the villa.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Answer him not ! Check not his shallow whims, 
 For now I prize his presence, who shall give 
 The people surety that the steps I mount, 
 Are spotted not by blood. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Art thou secure 
 If he names no successor, or another ? 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Tis but a new assurance that I seek 
 Of what is now most certain. Grant he dies 
 Not naming me his heir then I shall rise 
 By clamor of the army, and paid throats 
 Of vassal senators paid to pretend 
 A general call to power ; yet the sway 
 Yielded by act of his I doubly gripe, 
 And dare the gods to cast me ! 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Yet tis strange, 
 How in the presence of this Charicles,
 
 58 CHARICLES : 
 
 Our plotted height of power crumbles to meanness. 
 
 These eager hopes in vapid languor die, 
 
 And my soul feels the weary ache of climbing. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Look on me then, and shelter here thy weakness. 
 Think when thy hand shall wield imperial sway, 
 When from thine eye, power, like its beauty, flashes, 
 How thou mayst burn, ay, brand with usury, 
 Into the hearts of certain jealous matrons, 
 Old scorn and spite ! 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 There, thou hast made me strong ! 
 My sinking nerve is fed, and I am thine. 
 
 (Enter Lucuttus, followed by attendants bearing 
 torches.} 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Why do these torches taint the wholesome air 
 With their thick smoke ? 
 
 LUCTJLLUS. 
 
 The Emperor orders it ;
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 59 
 
 For he would drink the wandering breeze of night, 
 Yet cannot brook the darkness. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Hath he waked 
 
 From that dull stupor which we thought the chill 
 Of instant death ? Hath he named no successor ? 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 None, sir. His sinews tough, tho wrenched and torn 
 
 By mortal agony, cord in the soul. 
 
 When some essayed to take the signet ring, 
 
 The type of all his power, feigning his words 
 
 Had bid thee wear it, lo ! a sudden strength 
 
 Poured through the dying frame ; up, up, he sprang, 
 
 With furious gesture cowed the cringing throng, 
 
 And gasped for the physician. Charicles, 
 
 Even at the instant entering, caught the moan, 
 
 And hurried to his side. Then self-abandoned, 
 
 The dotard clove to him as child to nurse, 
 
 And bade him quench the ceaseless fire that scorched 
 
 The citadel of life.
 
 60 CHARICLES : 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Then Charicles 
 
 Would damp this heated reveller in the dew, 
 That chills our festal garments ? 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Craving strong 
 
 For the free air Tiberius uttered oft, 
 Ere the physician yielded to his prayer 
 A slow concession. Then the fear of darkness 
 O erwhelmed him, and these torch-bearers are sent 
 To temper the obscurity he dreads. 
 
 (Tiberius, supported by attendants, enters. Charicles 
 follows.) 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Ay, here I breathe more freely ; and these throbs, 
 That beat so heavily the spirit out, 
 Are timed to slower measure : I had pressed 
 The bound extreme, where human misery 
 Tears out a passage through her prison house, 
 And mingles with the ether ; but this blast 
 Kindles the life within me ; I rule still !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 61 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Are you not weary, uncle ? The gray haze 
 
 Of morning glimmered on the distant hills, 
 
 Ere your red torches gave the world new darkness. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Weary ? no, no ! I m fresh and strong, good Caius, 
 And can outfeast the maddest of you all ! 
 Ay, bout and brawl with any curly youth, 
 High-flushed with nimble Bacchus ! 
 
 Take away 
 
 These flowers ; freshened by the dew-fraught air, 
 Their odor sickens me. Nay, Charicles, 
 Come closer leave me not for I would drain 
 A portion of thy calmness. Dreams of horror, 
 And fears unutterable fix their clutch 
 Here, here, even in the heart ! Lo ! I may not, 
 I cannot grapple with their thronging host ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Mark you, Lucullus, how he mumbles there, 
 And whispers the physician. The thick words, 
 That quiver from his lips, break on my ear
 
 fi2 CHARICLES : 
 
 In music ; murmuring, another hour 
 Shall seat me monarch ! 
 
 Have the messengers 
 
 Sent by the senate yet arrived to greet us ? 
 One of our servants passed them on the road, 
 And warned their speedy coming. Do the lights 
 That flash and hurry through the court below 
 Announce their presence ? 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Some unwonted stir 
 Troubles the night ; no other cause can bring it. 
 
 CAIIJS. 
 
 Come, we will meet this mission ; for to bend 
 
 Most humbly to these reverent senators, 
 
 And their unwashed supporters, is our part, 
 
 At least to-day : to-morrow ! Well, no boasts. 
 
 Come, Ennia, show these vassals what an eye, 
 
 And regal brow, shall dignify their crown ! 
 
 Then follow, friends, and lift your voices up 
 
 In sudden acclamation, when they say 
 
 The senate have preferred me. Bring your torches,- 
 
 For he can die by moonlight. After us all !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 63 
 
 (Caius Caesar descends the hill, followed by all but 
 Tiberius and Charicles.) 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Let me lie here. Carpet the chilly earth 
 With your thick cloaks ; so, I am patient now. 
 Why is this bustle ? The black breath of night 
 Is heavy on us yet : I must depart 
 At sunrise, and ere night we shall carouse 
 At Capri. Ha ! why go these lights from us ? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 See where the moon rolls back the draping cloud, 
 To bathe in modest splendor every leaf, 
 That flutters drowsy whispers to the breeze. 
 We want no torches ; let them go unquestioned. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Nay, I cannot support the maze of fiends 
 That mock me with their laughter ! Bid them return, 
 And let their tapers scare these busy thoughts 
 That thicken in the darkness, for their light, 
 Warm with domestic memories, should quench out 
 These shapes projected from the sable night
 
 64 CHA.RICLES : 
 
 In livid streaks of fire ! Yet tis most strange, 
 This potent fever, which doth shrivel up 
 My very life, ay, scalds each separate vein, 
 May not blaze forth, and lighting all the world, 
 Beacon our race from whelming misery. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Look up, old man, and with an effort cast 
 Thy soul upon the universe. Implore 
 The peace that rained upon thy boyish head, 
 When, all untented, thou didst purely share 
 The spacious couch of nature. For those orbs, 
 Whose daily changes, so the learned dream, 
 Direct our lives, stream something of their power, 
 To bear above the feeble aches of earth 
 Their trusting worshippers. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Weak, weak, and bound 
 So strongly to its loathsome dwelling here, 
 The spirit may not mount. The light that streams 
 E en through these darkened portals of the brain, 
 Withers the feeble remnant of a life 
 That lurks about me. Mutter not of peace ;
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 65 
 
 The very word bruited upon the night 
 Scalds the dry lip it passes. Think of him, 
 God Hercules, whom the grief-painting Greek 
 Gave mighty verse to blazon forth all pain, 
 That could be fixed in language ! Dost thou not 
 Recall that misery intrenched in speech ! 
 The virgin-chorus of immortal pity ! 
 Are they not vivid still ? 
 
 CHAKICLES. 
 
 Faintly they show ; 
 
 For cares and busy years despoil the mind 
 Of its best treasures. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Yet those verses now 
 Blossom afresh within me, and my grief 
 All that is physical outwells in words, 
 That utter the extremity of ill 
 Our shrinking frame can suffer ! But, oh here ! 
 Here, in the centre, grows an agony 
 That mocks expression : Thou life-blighting pest 
 Immedicable thought ! thy potent fangs, 
 Fleshed deep into the being, rankle on, 
 5
 
 66 CHAEICLES ! 
 
 And taint with blackest pestilence the blood, 
 That trickles through the heart. Oh Charicles, 
 Drug, poison, kill, this wolfish Memory, 
 That from vacuity coins wretchedness ! 
 
 Why are these voices ? Why went Caius Caesar 
 So suddenly from hence ? 
 
 CHAKICLES. 
 
 The senate, sir, 
 
 Send, of their gravest members, certain men 
 To hail an emperor, and confer with him, 
 Touching oppression and high-handed wrong, 
 That crimson all the country. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Let them chafe 
 
 In their own capitol ! Ill-timed this visit : 
 We have no mind to hear their stale complaint. 
 They shall partake the doom Procillius knew, 
 He and his brother rebels, who would thrust 
 Petitions hi our face : Now strongly gyved, 
 In Roman dungeons they wear out their lives !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 67 
 
 But why went Caius to them ? He will not 
 
 Cringe, twist, and stoop before these reckless dolts. 
 
 I know him, subtle, crafty, troublesome, 
 
 To commoners ; but / have raised him up, 
 
 And, bounteous in my largess, steeped his youth 
 
 In every riot and voluptuous joy 
 
 That sense can hanker for. Peevish restraint 
 
 Harassed his frolics never : he partook 
 
 Each melting madness hot-lipped Pleasure flung 
 
 About our island ! He is bound to me 
 
 By every chain that patronage and gifts 
 
 Can rivet on the man fed by their bounty ! 
 
 They climb the hill A throng of men I see, 
 
 But none distinctively. Are these the fools 
 
 Who so desire to belch their petty griefs, 
 
 That they must steal unbidden to my presence, 
 
 And after bleed for it ? Well, let them come ! 
 
 And yet this crowd strikes marvel to my soul 
 
 Death ! Are those guards of mine, who cheer the traitors ? 
 
 Where s Caius Caesar? 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 At the head he walks,
 
 68 CHARICLES : 
 
 Clasping the hand of one, whose dignity 
 Acknowledged by the rest, proclaims him chief 
 And spokesman of this mission. 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Traitor ! Ha 
 
 Blast the suspicion ! Let me up, I say, 
 For I am young and supple ! Does he dare 
 Or do these clamors thrilling in my ears 
 Cheat my eyes also ! 
 (Enter Gains Caesar, Lucullus, guards, Messengers, and 
 
 others.) 
 
 Well, what means this throng 
 Who are these base intruders ? Answer me, 
 Or I shall grow and blaze before your sight, 
 Yea, rain down fire upon ye, that shall singe 
 With torture exquisite the very breath 
 That pants your stale complaining ! Answer me. 
 
 CAIUS (aside to his party). 
 Be patient, friends. This burst of dying rant 
 Shall harm you nothing see, he reels and staggers, 
 Grasping his servants for support ! Again 
 If he demand your business, hide it not.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 69 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Speak, Caius ! lest the rage that fills me here, 
 Break through the mesh of doubt, and marshal thee 
 The way Procillius and his comrades went, 
 To clank out treason to the sunless vault, 
 That tombs their wretchedness. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Pray you look there ! 
 Come from the throng, Procillius ! follow ye, 
 Whom the just senate frees from base restraint, 
 And honors as the country s patriots ! 
 You threat me with their company, I claim it ! 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Is this a dream firm-frozen in the brain, 
 That flies not with its ghastly comrades ? Hence, 
 Hence, hideous fantasy ! 
 
 Caius, these fiends, 
 
 Whom here thou seest so thickly grouped about, 
 Feign treachery in thee in thee, who knew 
 E en in thy freshest youth each quaint device, 
 That goaded luxury could think ; each subtle tinge
 
 70 CHARICLES : 
 
 Long-wantoned fancy could to pleasure add 
 Was lavished at thy word ! Ingratitude, 
 Nay, black rebellion, to thy king and patron 
 Fie ! tis too monstrous ! Make a lesser He, 
 Ye torturing powers, for this too gross deceit 
 Bounds harmless from me ! 
 
 MESSENGER. 
 
 Listen then to those 
 Sent by the senate, to declare the will 
 Of Romans, too long crushed beneath the rule 
 Of thy curst monarchy. Though gored and torn 
 By foul oppression, Rome has found the strength 
 To curb thy dying havoc. She defies 
 The carnage-craving dotard, stung to death 
 With his own infamies. The noble men, 
 Condemned to waste in dungeons, walk our streets, 
 Freed by the senate ; and, by them despatched, 
 We linger here till the quick hours shall give 
 Our state a better ruler ; till we shout, 
 Long reign Caligula the emperor ! 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 Delusions fall from me, and fancies melt
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 71 
 
 To bitter truth. Shiver these senators, 
 
 Ye direful pains, more cruel than man s wrath 
 
 Can heap upon his fellow ! lo, I claim 
 
 Your seething ministry to scorch these knaves ! 
 
 Wrench ye and twist the cords that bind their souls 
 
 In mortal agony but break no thread ! 
 
 Make them groan out eternity in minutes, 
 
 Trail their foul bodies through the jeering world, 
 
 Rend, shatter, mangle them, that they may know 
 
 A little half of what Tiberius feels, 
 
 And he shall cry you, cease ! glutted and drunk 
 
 With satisfaction. 
 
 Oh, I faint again ! 
 
 Where is Procillius ! Softly let me lie 
 Here, on the cold wet earth ! Oh, Charicles, 
 Wring from the brain these bitter memories, 
 From the hot heart draw out this latest grief, 
 Though the life follow it. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Conceive these plagues 
 But earth-born fantasies, alike unreal, 
 Alike all impotent to grieve or touch 
 The manliest part of life.
 
 72 CHARICLES : 
 
 Throw thy mind upward to the fresh ning dawn ; 
 
 Mark where the poet Phoebus doth again 
 
 Write his rich fancies on the glowing mists, 
 
 That drape his eastern chamber ! 
 
 How like a lover every burnished rack 
 
 Drinks his young inspiration ! till informed 
 
 And filled with music, the thick harmonies 
 
 Gush forth to charm our world with prophecy 
 
 Of her lord s coming. 
 
 Listen ! the touch of morning on the plain, 
 
 Makes every tree a lyre : Lo, how it sends 
 
 A soothing energy through every vein, 
 
 And pours abundance into weed and leaf, 
 
 Through measureless creation ! E en to die 
 
 Once more to mix with the creative stream, 
 
 That bounds exultant in the waking brute, 
 
 Blooms in the flower, and bursting grandly on 
 
 Through heaven s high chamber hurls the blazing globes, 
 
 Twinkled in pallid clusters down to earth 
 
 To blend our fluttering, uncertain thought 
 
 With passionless eternity to die 
 
 To breathe in simple confidence the soul 
 
 Forth to embrace the morning were but sweet 
 
 At such an hour as this !
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 73 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Tangled in snares 
 
 With nimble torments rent 
 
 What words can goad the fancy to depart 
 
 From the vexed bulk that holds it ! I have dwelt, 
 
 Ay, wrestled daily, with such mighty throes, 
 
 As treble singly the extremest plunge 
 
 Of man s conception. I am Caesar yet ! 
 
 Away, and let me up ! for I am strong, 
 
 Strong, to chastise these traitors. Though the breath 
 
 Shall hoarsely rattle in the gasping throat 
 
 Though the thick words shall heavily presage 
 
 The cheerless end of nature though the dawn 
 
 Scowls on me I am strong ! and do defy 
 
 This rebel senate ! Seize this crazy wretch, 
 
 And his crime-clotted comrades. Come, despatch. 
 
 Then on to Capri ! There we do contemn 
 
 Your saucy insurrection. Pent and walled 
 
 In our strong island, we do hold your threats 
 
 A theme for laughter merely. Barriers 
 
 Shall there defend our frolics, while we send 
 
 Armies to crush and scourge these carping dolts 
 
 Into submission. Come, despatch, I say !
 
 74 CHARICLES : 
 
 These guards move slowly ! Are they still ungyved ? 
 I cannot see them plainly Charicles- 
 Be near me still ay, let me clutch this sword, 
 For we can fight our younger battles o er 
 If need shall be ! Now lead me to the house. 
 Arouse our servants ! All the galleys wait. 
 Nay, bustle here, come come. Away for Capri ! 
 ( Tiberius, supported by Charicles and attendants, 
 is led into the villa.) 
 
 The Act closes.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 75 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 Caius Ccesar, Ennia. 
 
 CAITJS. 
 
 WE have attained the summit ! All the guards 
 
 Have softly echoed the great cry for us, 
 
 Which we have wrung from Rome. Their voices wait 
 
 The speedy word that shall announce his death, 
 
 To cleave the air with clamor ! We may breathe 
 
 And bask our languid person in the sun : 
 
 A little moment more shall seat thee empress, - 
 
 Reality absorbs thy haunting hope, 
 
 And thou canst envy no one ! 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Baseless vaunt ! 
 
 Can any gaudy pomp of royalty, 
 Or costly harness, which the state binds on 
 To those who rule it, satisfy the soul
 
 7f) CHARICLES : 
 
 That restless dwells within us ! Hope fulfilled 
 Is but a dream and fable ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Yet the truth 
 
 Now spurns thy doubting ! See these friends appear, 
 Hasting to tell the best. 
 
 (Enter Crassus and Lucullus.) 
 
 What am I now ? 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 The Emperor ! 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Caligula, the lord 
 Of Rome, and father of her people, hail ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Ha, I have grown ; but not above the friends 
 Who were the first to greet me. Well, how died 
 The terror-stricken tyrant ? 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 In a swoon 
 He faded from the earth ; upon his vexed
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 77 
 
 And tortured life, the dreaded shade of death 
 
 Descended suddenly. His guilty soul, 
 
 Quite vanquished with its griefs, so faintly passed, 
 
 We might not mark the moment. Now his trunk, 
 
 Stretched pale and lifeless in the hall within, 
 
 Is food for mockery and bitter gibes, 
 
 To the poor knaves he lorded. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 It is well. 
 
 Did Macro snatch the state-conferring ring 
 And purple mantle from him ? These must show, 
 And instantly, on his successor yet 
 Yet I am loth to take them from the body. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 They are stripped from him. Macro rent them off, 
 Crying their richness and authority 
 Befit a better ruler ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Orders were 
 
 To do e en thus he is a friend most faithful ! 
 Lucullus, we go in to deck ourselves
 
 78 CHARICLES : 
 
 In these god-given trappings. But speed thou, 
 
 Who here art master, to the court below, 
 
 Where all the guards are quartered, where a throng, 
 
 Drawn from the neighboring country, press and flock 
 
 About this reverent mission quick to hear 
 
 How beats the city s pulse. At once proclaim 
 
 The tyrant s death and having wasted tune 
 
 In question and reply, (for we must robe 
 
 To play the regal part,) lead to this place 
 
 All who may hear thy voice ! Thou hast received 
 
 The Emperor s orders. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 To fulfil them all. 
 
 \Exit. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Go thou before me, Crassus ; I would not 
 Approach him suddenly. Call Charicles 
 Nay, he is here already. We have need 
 Of one the people trust, he must remain 
 Till we are strongly fixed. 
 
 (Enter Charicles.) 
 
 Receive our welcome ! 
 Although we rise like yonder sun hi power,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 79 
 
 Like him we throw our benefits to all, 
 
 To thee as to the others ! Stay awhile ; 
 
 For having seen, ay, and foretold as well, 
 
 This death that is our life the peevish tongue 
 
 Of scandal cannot touch us. Crassus, come, 
 
 Lead us where lies the decorated scarf 
 
 Of our new state ! We must return a monarch ! 
 
 \_Exeunt Gains Caesar and Crassus. 
 
 CHAKICLES. 
 
 Does the intrepid consort share the joy, 
 That she has toiled to compass ? 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Joy ! alas, 
 
 The very word doth shrivel on the lip. 
 Well, well thou know st how empty is the thing 
 That we have gained or seized most shamelessly. 
 Are we not limited and hedged about 
 When most our schemes have prospered? Screened 
 
 from us 
 
 By the black veil that curtains time to come, 
 Lingers our best of life. A jealous hope, 
 Crushed love, and honor lost forever, prey
 
 80 CHARICLES : 
 
 Upon us. Canst thou understand the pang 
 Of passions disappointed canst thou dream 
 All that a woman knows, who bears a heart 
 More finely touched and delicately wrought, 
 Than those who herd about her ! No, alas ! 
 Thy stern and healthy holiness of soul 
 Can never paint the weary thing it is, 
 When the blythe hope and confidence of youth, 
 Drain drop by drop away. This intellect 
 Outgrows your mock religions. Then to see 
 What toys we are to men to be deceived, 
 Cajoled by promises, enslaved, betrayed, 
 By flattery insulted ! this, ay this, 
 Is woman s happiest state. Unrecognized 
 Her life s young fervor, and her sympathies 
 Keen, eager, sparkling with the freshest tide 
 Poured from the cup of nature, are repelled 
 And stagnate into silliness or crime, 
 As she is crushed, or, burning into power, 
 Crushes her wronger ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Woman, I perceive 
 Through all these bitter words a spot in thee,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 81 
 
 That the gross clasp of flattery hath not touched. 
 Oh could it be, the fatal seal that hangs 
 Above this future greatness, might not fall 
 To stamp it into being there were hope ; 
 But now, I fear the breath that feebly plays 
 In yon deserted chamber, will quench out 
 Thy best of life in parting ! 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Hopes or prayers 
 
 Alike are worthless ; for this blotted life 
 Hath passed already ; and our Caius stands 
 Supreme and perfect master over thee, 
 As over all below us. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 No, not yet : 
 
 For know the semblance of that certainty 
 That seats Caligula is counterfeit ; 
 And Caius, like a tinselled player struts, 
 To ape the monarch merely. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Ha, deceived !
 
 82 CHARICLES : 
 
 Dwells yet about his heart the little heat 
 
 That makes and unmakes men ! Are we then mocked, 
 
 Fooled, fooled, unto the last ! But tis not so 
 
 Or Charicles were near his wretched charge. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Twere madness now ; else would the curious crowd 
 
 Press busily about him, and wrench out 
 
 The life that loiters faintly. I must seem 
 
 Deluded as the rest, who parted straight 
 
 From the spoiled body. Yet a trusted slave, 
 
 Obedient to my order, waits beside 
 
 This friend-abandoned couch, and cherishes 
 
 The slow returning life. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Tell Caius not 
 
 What shadows dress his person, when he comes 
 To take the people s homage ; or his hand, 
 Bloodied enough already, shall dispatch 
 This new created phantom ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Twere the same
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 83 
 
 To him, who ever shall be shadow-cloaked 
 
 Nor guess the coarse delusion ; but to thee, 
 
 In whom I note that vivid restless eye 
 
 That looks beyond the present, this weak show 
 
 Shall never harden to reality. 
 
 Then let it fall away and go thou forth 
 
 Purged and regenerate. Nerve thy saddened soul 
 
 To put away these empty fantasies, 
 
 That trick thee on to ruin. Know, thy will, 
 
 Steeled first in self-denial, may dispel 
 
 These baffling doubts that jeopard all thyself I 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 It is too late ! I know not how to cringe 
 Before the god your cunning fellows feign 
 To patron trampled woman. For there are 
 Enough, too many, faint and weary souls, 
 Whom you can hold degraded and content, 
 Tickled to mumm and mumble off their strength, 
 As the sleek priest directs. My spirit spurns 
 This refuge men have built us, and I stand 
 Erect to suffer to despair, perchance 
 But proud to hold reason unravished still !
 
 84 CHARICLES : 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Thou hast not found the mission of those lives, 
 That swell with power forever barred from action. 
 Tis hard, most hard to learn ; for we do strive, 
 Ay, madly throe and grapple with our fate, 
 Too blind to grasp the sober recompense, 
 That compensating nature ever pours 
 Where she has much denied. The destiny 
 Of a proud woman who hath soul and mind 
 Too large to fill with priestly mockeries, 
 Which are, and ever will be, man s device 
 To busy and to rule her though it seem 
 Most bitter, may beget a sober joy 
 Unimaged to the worldling. Battle not 
 With thy restricted fate ; but gently yield 
 To what has been ordained. Thou hast no room, 
 Rightly to show the genius and the strength 
 That riot hot within thee ! Some may not 
 Spin out their schemes for trapping to themselves 
 The glossy reek of flattery, that shall taint 
 Those who most fairly win it. Then pass out 
 Into the world about us ; let this sun, 
 Streamed through the opened portals of the sense,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 85 
 
 Caress and ripen all thy sullen mind. 
 
 Tis only when ambition s galling spur, 
 
 Bound in by cords thick-twisted through the heart, 
 
 Is by long sufferance dulled and deadened out, 
 
 That we receive existence, and therein 
 
 Do learn to triumph nobly. Our despair 
 
 Falls as a mantle as we leave the broil 
 
 For the world s painted honors, and receive 
 
 From nature and ourselves the strength that brings 
 
 A perfect consolation. Ennia, 
 
 I speak no foolish theories ; but have lived 
 
 And learnt most bitterly the truth I utter. 
 
 Hear me ! nor weakly cast away thyself, 
 
 That may be saved still saved from wretchedness ! 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 It is too late too late : A woman s life 
 Hath regular degrees to climb or fall, 
 And as we press on each, the former sinks 
 Behind us. We can never pause or turn 
 Fate whips us sternly on ! Yet sir, believe, 
 Could I have felt thy presence ere I stood 
 Before the golden gates of womanhood,
 
 86 CHARICLES : 
 
 I had received these gifts of form and strength, 
 To cast aside fragrant with purer use. 
 
 (Re-enter Gains Ccesar, followed by Crassus and 
 attendants.) 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Are we too soon arrived ! Our court and guards, 
 Are they not here to greet us ? 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 Nay, they climb 
 
 In glittering mass to hail thee, see, they toil 
 And labor to the summit. Now they catch 
 Thy regal robe flash welcome in the sun ! 
 Lucullus waves his hand what shouts are those 
 That answer ! All their caps leap to the air, 
 And hark ! they cry " The god Caligula ! " 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 The god Caligula ! Physician, see 
 
 Where now I stand to shame thy medicines ! 
 
 Unless thy skill find quick ning for the dead, 
 
 As physic for the living, I am firm. 
 
 The bond is broke that held thy mumbling lord
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 87 
 
 Before the place I craved. This jocund crowd 
 Takes little thought of that gaunt spectacle, 
 That coldly presses the wine-spotted stones. 
 What is the profit of thine honesty 
 Thrust quite aside, unrecognized, displaced 
 Before this sweeping surge of sycophants ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 We toil to be forgotten ; and at night 
 
 Unnoticed sink to silence. Tis decreed. 
 
 The sober daily duties of men s lives 
 
 Win from the world no statues. Yet a tone 
 
 Worthy the chords celestial that are placed 
 
 Harmonious in our grasp, shall ripple on 
 
 And softly range the ages. We must toil 
 
 To be forgotten ; yet not so the good 
 
 Or ill our life shall furnish. That impressed 
 
 On those around us, and by them bequeathed 
 
 To all who follow after, hurtles still 
 
 Through the world s heart of being : therein lies 
 
 Our certain immortality. Reflect, 
 
 Thou future monarch ! dare not trifle now, 
 
 For every act of thine peals far and wide, 
 
 Its proper note of shame or blessedness.
 
 88 CHABICLES : 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 We ask nor drug nor counsel ; thou art kept 
 
 To tell this crowd our uncle was consumed 
 
 By his own foul diseases, not dispatched 
 
 By rumored treason. This thy work ! Tis mine, 
 
 To greet these heralds of my dignity. 
 
 (Enter Lucullus, followed by a crowd of guards, 
 citizens, fyc.) 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Brothers and soldiers, freed from bloody bondage 
 Beneath a tyrannous and galling yoke, 
 Lift up your voices give the heaven your caps 
 Cry, Hail Caligula the Emperor ! 
 
 (A great clamor.) 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 For this most fresh and cheering welcome, thanks. 
 Know we stand here untarnished ; The grey wretch, 
 Abhorred by Heaven, by Heaven has been dethroned. 
 Our hands are bloodless ; and for proof we bring 
 This grave physician. Charicles, declare 
 Tiberius death, and how our spotless self
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 89 
 
 Stayed not his breath from lingering to this hour, 
 Our wish and effort were that he should live. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 That wish is granted ! Bend thine eyes but there, 
 Nay, tis no apparition ! Lift again 
 Your pliant voices See, how strong he walks ! 
 Shout welcome to the god Tiberius ! 
 
 (As Charicles speaks, the doors of the villa open and 
 
 discover Tiberius stripped of his royal garments. 
 
 He breaks from an attendant who supports him, and 
 
 comes forward^ 
 
 TIBERIUS. 
 
 Palsy these limbs numb every nerve in death 
 
 The stifling fury waked by such revolt 
 
 Would vent itself through bones that had bleached out 
 
 A century in the sun ! Then let me grow 
 
 And tower in my wrath until I swell 
 
 To bulk tremendous, and so toppling down 
 
 Crush out this league of robbers ! 
 
 Caius Caesar, 
 
 Have I not fed thy gross and lawless youth 
 With license that is proverbed ! Must I whine
 
 90 CHARICLES I 
 
 And crouch to thee for leave to die to die, 
 
 As peacefully as dog or slave, unracked 
 
 Save by the easy wrenches of decay 
 
 Not gored and galled by black ingratitude 
 
 Of a pride-bloated kinsman ! Dost thou hear 
 
 These jangling words denounce thee ? Seize him, slaves ! 
 
 Bind fast this puppet monarch ! nay, keep place, 
 
 I, who have wrestled with such ghastly throes 
 
 As would have parched an army into dust, 
 
 Can blight him singly ! Ha now now, he melts 
 
 And shrivels at my breath scorched in the blaze, 
 
 That bursts about my veins, he wails for mercy 
 
 Ay, clench thy teeth ! Pray for thy life to crack ! 
 
 We two shall seethe in agony forever 
 
 Oh satisfaction ! bitter and most blest ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Appalling sight ! Keep this crazed babbler from me ! 
 
 I charge ye, drag him hence ; for though as mortal 
 
 A terror steals upon me, and I shake 
 
 At this enormous prodigy yet ye, 
 
 On whom the deadly flashings of his eye 
 
 Are not so thickly poured, may drive away 
 
 This spectre, ay, and stifle out the voice
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 91 
 
 That growls these curses on the dizzy head, 
 Crowned by your acclamation. 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Friends, arise, 
 
 It is too late to turn. Come press we on, 
 And in a mass bear this sick tyrant back 
 Into the hall. The morning sky affords 
 A roof too fair for one distempered thus ! 
 Your voices given, there is no room for choice 
 Obey the Emperor proclaimed but now ! 
 Clear were his words ! Off with Tiberius ! 
 
 [ A great confusion. Tiberius is seized and borne into 
 
 the villa. Lucullus and Crassus follow hastily, and 
 
 after them Charicles.~\ 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 So thou hast gained the summit of all hope, 
 
 And leav st ambition, and that gnawing ache 
 
 After the unattainable, that marks 
 
 The brow, and wrinkles up the soul, far, far 
 
 In the hot plain below ! Incautious man ! 
 
 Thy empty boast still frights the laughing breeze, 
 
 Thy regal stride streaked in the passing mist,
 
 92 CHARICLES : 
 
 Still throws fantastic shadows ! Strive again, 
 Again, adore some phantom of the mind, 
 By fancy changed to an external thing, 
 That lives in thy hereafter ! 
 
 CAITJS. 
 
 Woman, cease 
 
 This is no time for mocking. We have gauged 
 Our bliss too soon ; for it should seem there dwells 
 A power beyond us, whose behest can change 
 Our certainties to dreams and emptiness. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Then pause to ponder wisely ; nor despise 
 This scathed and blighted warning of a fate, 
 That lurks with horror to crush out the reign, 
 Blood-stained and monstrous in its infamy. 
 And let that spark of highest life to man, 
 That hid by bestial riot and debauch, 
 Still frets and festers in us, kindle up 
 And light thee from the curses of a world ! 
 
 CAITJS. 
 
 Peace, woman ! what we learn by prodigies,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 93 
 
 That plant their lessons in the living eye, 
 Words but dilute and weaken. We are taught 
 By hard experience, as the chafing tide 
 Smooths the rough pebble to a polished gem. 
 Our policy, when once the height is gained, 
 Shall work reforms most needed, and restrain 
 This court of sottish brawlers ; for I quail 
 At thought of end so black and direful. 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 Build thus thy safety, Caius ; for we know 
 In the hot chase for luring dignities, 
 Ambition cannot bend to study form, 
 But bubbles onward, as the nimble brook 
 Leaps by the flowers that fringe its sedgy bed, 
 And hurries reckless to the sea to find 
 The waters salt and bitter, that from far 
 Glanced merrily, and beckoned to the hills. 
 Oh, keep about thee better friends than those, 
 Who now in bloody passion seek the life, 
 That nourished all their rankness ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Nay, these men
 
 94 CHARICLES : 
 
 Do patriots solemn work, and recompense 
 Rich and abundant rarely patriots pay 
 Shall line their chests with silver. Yet I keep, 
 If princely favors are not powerless, 
 This calm physician ; for tis wise to trust 
 A royal life to hands unparched by bribes. 
 Hark ! how the growing tumult swells within 
 And breathes a tone of triumph ! No dismay 
 Again shall wrinkle the new day in horror ! 
 
 (Lucullus, Crassus, and Charicles enter. The crowd 
 follow in confusion. Among them are those bearing 
 the body of Tiberius, which is cast upon the earth.) 
 
 LUCULLUS. 
 
 Again we do salute Caligula ! 
 
 There lies this pampered and remorseless man, 
 
 The wreck and ghastly refuse of misrule ! 
 
 The naming lights of lust and cruelty, 
 
 Have one by one gone out. The dazzling beam 
 
 Of mid-day cannot tinge his night to show 
 
 How dead the darkness lies. Come and behold, 
 
 At length this mockery of humanity 
 
 Hath wearied out his scourgers.
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 95 
 
 CRASSUS. 
 
 And again, 
 
 Caligula, we hail thee sovereign, 
 And ruler of this empire ; and we pray, 
 That schooled by this black pageantry of death 
 Ignoble and unpitied, our new lord 
 Will tender well the fabric he sustains, 
 And purge this Asiatic luxury 
 From court and state, before it crushes out 
 Our ancient manhood, and that hardiness 
 Wherewith the past frowns on us. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 But we doubt 
 
 Our right to rule e en now. Physician, say 
 Is he yet past reviving ? if it be 
 He cannot wake to curse me, why, I take 
 The title you have offered, and shall build 
 With moderation, and determined zeal 
 The state you bid me govern. Yet declare 
 If dead Tiberius be ! speak, Charicles, 
 For on thy word, still shackled to the truth, 
 My soul shall float to empire.
 
 96 CHARICLES : 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Govern then 
 
 In quiet awe ; feeling the weighty trust 
 This hour bestows. Tiberius hath lost 
 His lease of black oppression : speak we not 
 Of his disgraces further. How he died 
 I may not wholly answer ; for the crowd 
 Thronged thick about the bed, and only swayed 
 As something heaved and struggled in the midst, 
 More and more feeble grew the frequent throes, 
 Till suddenly a stillness fell on all, 
 And then the muffled mystery of death 
 Shuddered along the chamber ! From the face, 
 When Macro first uncovered its fixed lines, 
 The startled crowd retreated, and I saw 
 Caligula was monarch. If a doubt 
 Still linger, lift that mantle from the brow 
 It covers. Thou shalt find a surer proof 
 Of thy high place, than human breath can utter. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 No let it lie : I will not look again 
 Upon this stainer of our race and honor,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 97 
 
 This Caesar but in title, unallied 
 
 Unto the blood of Julius. Tis declared 
 
 That jealous zeal shall build again our state, 
 
 To simple firmness and contented strength. 
 
 And ye, whose clamors thrust us where we stand, 
 
 Be near our person, where your fervent cares 
 
 Shall win advantage. Crassus and Lucullus, 
 
 Friends both, are not forgotten ; nay another, 
 
 By liberal favor, shall retain the place 
 
 That he has filled most faithfully and well : 
 
 Know, Charicles, our bounty bids thee wait 
 
 About us as physician, to protect 
 
 Our life ; as thou hast shielded that he bore, 
 
 Who was thy friend and master. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Pardon, sir ; 
 
 The intervention of a solemn calm 
 Between repose and action, rounds the life 
 That nature offers man and no light cause 
 Should break this interval. I sought this court, 
 That tender skill of old companionship 
 Might somewhat soothe the anguish of a wretch, 
 Abandoned to the plots and mockeries, 
 7
 
 98 CHAKICLES : 
 
 Of those who shared his loathsome revelries, 
 
 And to the scorn of all. Look ! he has passed 
 
 His retribution I am needed not. 
 
 In private quiet let me linger out 
 
 A few short days ere my release shall come. 
 
 For even now impressions, newly faint, 
 
 Dislimn and vanish, and before the dawn 
 
 The consciousness bounds into action quick 
 
 By instinct to devote to life the hours 
 
 That hurry through the closing gates of Time. 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Depart then at thy pleasure ! Twas our wish 
 To cheer with profit, and society, 
 The desolation, doubts, and thick ning pains 
 Which are the legacy that Age receives 
 To sting him bitterly to craving death. 
 But since alone, inactive for the world, 
 Thou would st wear out the remnants of the mind- 
 So shall it be depart in peace and safety. 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Age is not desolate : our memory 
 Concentrates on the flash of happiness,
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 99 
 
 That has shot by us, and in mercy leaves 
 
 All else to night, and silence. The serene, 
 
 Pale twilight, vespered by soft-flowing notes, 
 
 That hail the parting of the garish day, 
 
 Melts lovingly to darkness : so the mind, 
 
 That feeds itself with labor, and retains 
 
 In wholesome discipline its tenement, 
 
 Shall fade most tranquilly to pleasant rest. 
 
 Uncramped by pain, uncrutched by doltish creed, 
 
 Nature invites the weary to lie down, 
 
 To rest and live at once ; to rest the thought 
 
 To charm these jaded pulses of the brain, 
 
 To dull the face, that burning through long nights, 
 
 Mocks the dark void that shattered love has left ; 
 
 And yet to live in pure and passive life, 
 
 To harp the tempest in the vocal oak, 
 
 To gaze undazzled at the face of day 
 
 In the light-craving blossom, or refined 
 
 To airy vapor, drink the sunset in, 
 
 And rain its golden glories down to men 
 
 In liberal profusion. To the soul 
 
 Uncloyed by narrow fable, unensnared 
 
 By the foul grasp of passion, this, the end 
 
 Of nature, is her favor last and best.
 
 100 CHARICLES : 
 
 ENNIA. 
 
 And is this all ! thou, who hast studied oft 
 The final shudder or the rarer smile, 
 As through the languid limbs oblivion 
 Diffuses its repose has nothing flashed 
 To light that grand conception of our race, 
 Which builds up temples and inspires song ? 
 Shall we not think this consciousness hath life, 
 Distinct from form and fabric, and may rise 
 An exhalation, viewless near the earth, 
 But thick ning to a shape, as drifting on 
 Through thinner air, it basks in light unshrouded ! 
 
 CHARICLES. 
 
 Nay ! this majestic possibility 
 
 The phantom that the fervid blood of youth 
 
 Imbues with life, or grasping superstition 
 
 Fevers for selfish profit manly thought 
 
 Fails to redeem from shadow. Our research 
 
 Sees how the soul elaborates itself 
 
 From the coarse nurture that supplies the frame, 
 
 With means to grow and perish ; and we mark 
 
 How they are one, together. We observe
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 101 
 
 A morsel undemanded to repair 
 
 The wastes of daily use, or an excess 
 
 In pleasure or in toil, unseat your gods 
 
 And fashion new religions shrivel up 
 
 In frowns and cruelty the face of Jove, 
 
 Zeus, Apis, Belus, or what other name 
 
 Man gives the deity diseases make 
 
 Of that, for which his art can find no shape, 
 
 His language no expression adequate. 
 
 Then blemish not thy future, that shall change 
 
 As damps, or study, or enfeebling lusts 
 
 Mope in the wearied brain ; but calmly deem 
 
 Perfection is before us, clearly glassed 
 
 In each pure fancy that the heart conceives, 
 
 Yet feels too noble for the wavering will 
 
 To strike into existence. Our best life 
 
 Breaks from the present, and flows strongly on 
 
 To chafe and fret the barrier, that fate 
 
 Builds round our little knowledge. It may be 
 
 The glowing particle that wields thine arm, 
 
 That loves and suffers through these instruments, 
 
 Shall learn to cast them, and yet bear and know. 
 
 Or it may be this chance-commingled mass 
 
 Of energy and weakness, shall dissolve,
 
 102 CHARICLES : A DRAMATIC POEM. 
 
 Again to mix with less impurity 
 In other life, built on the best of thine. 
 And thus, still changing, purifying still, 
 All that is guiltless in thy life shall live 
 Pervading time coursing its stream forever ! 
 
 CAIUS. 
 
 Farewell physician ! We respect thy wish 
 Depart with honorable furtherance. 
 But let the rest now follow us within : 
 There shall our plans be faithfully unrolled 
 How best to use your gift ; for know ye all 
 Since fate that dallied with our expectation 
 Hath lifted us to place we shall rebuke, 
 By clemency and sober watchfulness, 
 The grave oppressions that disturb this land. 
 
 THE END.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 (103)
 
 NOTE. 
 
 To the brief introduction prefixed to the preceding poem, ihe 
 notice of a few incidents is added. 
 
 The action of the Emperor in the circus at Circejus is taken from 
 Suetonius. The personal exposure and military discipline of Ti 
 berius when in Germany, are related almost in the words of that 
 writer. The cry of " Tiberius to the Tiber," with which the in 
 dignant populace received the body of the Emperor, has been an 
 ticipated. The fancied address of Apollo, and the sudden fall of 
 the tower of Capri,* are suggested in a passage from the same his 
 torian t The arrival of a special deputation from the Senate to 
 salute Caligula, although not historical, is by no means improb 
 able. Its dramatic introduction may be justified as the simplest 
 expression of the universal feeling of hatred and defiance for the 
 dying tyrant, and anxiety for the enthronement of his successor. 
 The rage of Tiberius upon learning the release of certain prisoners 
 by the Senate, and his resolution to hurry to Capri, and there brave 
 his enemies, is taken from the writer already quoted. Both Taci 
 tus and Suetonius name the villa of Lucullus as the place where 
 Tiberius suddenly died. As the latter historian gives several 
 accounts of the manner of his death, and seems equally doubtful 
 about them all, the narrative of Tacitus (as given in the introduc 
 tion) has been followed. The liberal promises and hearty deter- 
 
 * The reader will have noticed that the modern name Capri has been substi 
 tuted for the Caprecr, of the ancients. 
 
 t Supremo natali suo Apollinem Timenitem et amplitudinis et artis eximise 
 advectum Syracusis, ut in bibliotheca novi templi poneretur, viderat per quie- 
 tern affirmantem sibi, non posse se ab ipso dedicari. Et ante paucos quam obi- 
 ret dies turns Phari terrae motu Capreis concidit. 
 
 (105)
 
 106 NOTE. 
 
 initiations of reform with which Caligula concludes the drama are 
 strictly in accordance with history. If we can trust Suetonius no 
 prince ever began his reign with a more noble and enlightened 
 policy, or so devotedly attached to his person those whom he gov 
 erned. A positive insanity has sometimes been suggested as pal 
 liating the subsequent atrocities associated with his name. 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to remind any reader that the uncer 
 tainty regarding a future state of personal existence, attributed to 
 one of the characters at the close of the poem, is supposed to come 
 from one ignorant of Divine Revelation upon that point. Whether 
 a reasonable assurance of such existence is independent of special 
 revelation, is a question upon which the author expresses no opin 
 ion it being sufficient for his purpose that many men of mature 
 judgment and enlarged culture have thought it was not. As an 
 swering an objection to the different treatment of this subject in a 
 former drama, it may be worth while to remark, that in an age of 
 simplicity and faith, human beings swayed by the strongest emo 
 tion of youth a passion which in its first intensity seems to bear 
 the impress of immortality may arrive at conclusions unnatural, 
 in an age of luxury and skepticism, to one long past the period of 
 life when the affections govern and absorb the being.
 
 tti/
 
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