Esop. While it pains thee to tell it, keep thy silence; but when utterance is a solace, then impart it. Rhodope. They remind me (oh! who could have had the cruelty to relate it?) that my father, my own dear father.. Esop. Say not the rest: I know it: his day was come. Rhodopè. . . . sold me, sold me. You start you did not at the lightning last night, nor at the rolling sounds above. And do you, generous Æsop! do you also call a misfortune a disgrace? Æsop. If it is, I am among the most disgraceful of men. Didst thou dearly love thy father? Rhodope. All loved him. He was very fond of me. Asop. And yet sold thee! sold thee to a stranger! Rhodope. He was the kindest of all kind fathers, nevertheless. Nine summers ago, you may have heard perhaps, there was a grievous famine in our land of Thrace. Esop. I remember it perfectly. Rhodope. O poor Asop! and were you too famishing in your native Phrygia? Esop. The calamity extended beyond the narrow sea that separates our countries. My appetite was sharpened; but the appetite and the wits are equally set on the same grindstone. Rhodope. I was then scarcely five years old: my mother died the year before: my father sighed at every funeral, but he sighed more deeply at every bridal, song. He loved me because he loved her who bore me: and yet I made him sorrowful whether I cried or smiled. If ever I vexed him, it was because I would not play when he told me, but made him, by my weeping, weep again. Esop. And yet he could endure to lose thee! he, thy father! Could any other? could any who lives on the fruits of the earth, endure it? O age, that art incumbent over me! blessed be thou; thrice blessed! Not that thou stillest the tumults of the heart, and promisest eternal calm, but that, prevented by thy beneficence, I never shall experience this only intolerable wretchedness. Rhodopè. Alas! alas! Esop. Thou art now happy, and shouldst not utter that useless exclamation. Rhodope. You said something angrily and vehemently when you stepped aside. Is it hot enough that the handmaidens doubt the kindness of my father? Must so virtuous and so wise a man as Esop blame him also? Esop. Perhaps he is little to be blamed; certainly he is much to be pitied. Rhodope. Kind heart! on which mine must never rest! Esop. Rest on it for comfort and for counsel when they fail thee: rest on it, as the deities on the breast of mortals, to console and purify it. Rhodope. Could I remove any sorrow from it, I should be contented. Esop. Then be so; and proceed in thy narrative. Rhodope. Bear with me a little yet. My thoughts have overpowered my words, and now themselves are overpowered and scattered. Forty-seven days ago (this is only the fortyeighth since I beheld you first) I was a child; I was ignorant, I was careless. Esop. If these qualities are signs of childhood, the universe is a nursery. Rhodope. Affliction, which makes many wiser, had no such effect on me. But reverence and love (why should I hesitate at the one avowal more than at the other?) came over me, to ripen my understanding. Esop. O Rhodopè! we must loiter no longer upon this discourse. Rhodope. Why not? Esop. Pleasant is yonder beanfield, seen over the high papyrus when it waves and bends: deep laden with the sweet heaviness of its odgur is the listless air that palpitates dizzily above it: but Death is lurking for the slumberer beneath its blossoms. Rhodope. You must not love then!... but may not I? Esop. We will . . . but . Rhodope. We! O sound that is to vibrate on my breast forever! O hour! happier than all other hours since time began! O gracious Gods! who brought me into bondage! Esop. Be calm, be composed, be circumspect. We must hide our treasure that we may not lose it. Rhodope. I do not think that you can love me; and I fear and tremble to hope so. Ah, yes; you have said you did. But again you only look at me, and sigh as if you repented. Esop. Unworthy as I may be of thy fond regard, I am not unworthy of thy fullest confidence: why distrust me? Rhodope. Never will I . . . never, never. To know that I possess your love, surpasses all other knowledge, dear as is all that I receive from you. I should be tired of my own voice if I heard it on aught beside: and, even yours is less melodious in any other sound than Rhodopè, Esop. Do such little girls learn to flatter? Rhodope. Teach me how to speak, since you could not teach me how to be silent. Esop. Speak no longer of me, but of thyself; and only of things that never pain thee. Rhodope. Nothing can pain me now. Esop. Relate thy story then, from infancy. Rhodope. I must hold your hand: I am afraid of losing you again. Esop. Now begin. Why silent so long? Rhodope. I have dropped all memory of what is told by me and what is untold. Esop. Recollect a little. I can be patient with this hand in mine. Rhodope. I am not certain that yours help to recollection. Esop. Shall I remove it? is any Rhodopè. O! now I think I can recall the whole story. What did you say? did you ask any question? Esop. None, excepting what thou hast answered. Rhodope. Never shall I forget the morning when my father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth fringed with silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked wistfully into the cornchest. I, who thought there was something worth seeing, looked in also, and, finding it empty, expressed my disappointment, not thinking however about the corn. A faint and transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out; and I know not what flowers he gathered, but he gathered many; and some he placed in my bosom, and some in my hair. But I told him with captious pride, first that I could arrange them better, and again that I would have only the white. However, when he had selected all the white, and I had placed a few of them according to my fancy, I told him (rising in my slipper) he might crown me with the remainder. The splendour of my apparel gave me a sensation of authority. Soon as the flowers had taken their station on my head, I expressed a dignified satisfaction at the taste displayed by my father, just as if I could have seen how they appeared! But he knew that there was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, and perhaps we divided the latter (alas! not both) pretty equally. He now took me into the market-place, where a concourse of people was waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and looked at me; some commending, others disparaging; but all agreeing that I was slender and delicate, that I could not live long, and that I should give much trouble. Many would have bought the chlamys, but there was something less salable in the child and flowers. Æsop. Had thy features been coarse and thy voice rustic, they would all have patted thy checks and found no fault in thee. Rhodope. As it was, every one had bought exactly such another in time past, and been a loser by it. At these speeches I perceived the flowers tremble slightly on my bosom, from my father's agitation. Although he scoffed at them, knowing my healthiness, he was troubled internally, and said many short prayers, not very unlike imprecations, turning his head aside. Proud was I, prouder than ever, when at last several talents were offered for me, and by the very man who in the beginning had undervalued me the most, and prophesied the worst of me. My father scowled at him, and refused the money. I thought he was playing a game, and began to wonder what it could be, since I never had seen it played before. Then I fancied it might be some celebration because plenty had returned to the city, insomuch that my father had bartered the last of the corn he hoarded. I grew more and more delighted at the sport. But soon there advanced an elderly man, who said gravely, "Thou hast stolen this child: her vesture alone is worth above a hundred drachmas. Carry her home again to her parents, and do it directly, or Nemesis' and the Eumenides 2 will overtake thee." Knowing the estimation in which my father had always been holden by his fellow-citizens, I laughed again, and pinched his ear. although naturally choleric, burst forth into no resentment at these reproaches, but said calmly, "I think I know thee by name, O He, 1 the goddess who avenges wrongs 2 the Furies, who also are regarded as avengers guest! Surely thou art Xanthus the Samian. Deliver this child from famine." Again I laughed aloud and heartily; and, thinking it was now my part of the game, I held out both my arms and protruded my whole body towards the stranger. He would not receive me from my father's neck, but he asked me with benignity and solicitude if I was hungry: at which I laughed again, and more than ever: for it was early in the morning, soon after the first meal, and my father had nourished me most carefully and plentifully in all the days of the famine. But Xanthus, waiting for no answer, took out of a sack, which one of his slaves carried at his side, a cake of wheaten bread and a piece of honey-comb, and gave them to me. I held the honey-comb to my father's mouth, thinking it the most of a dainty. He dashed it to the ground; but, seizing the bread, he began to devour it ferociously. This also I thought was in play; and I clapped my hands at his distortions. But Xanthus looked on him like one afraid, and smote the cake from him, crying aloud, "Name the price." My father now placed me in his arms, naming a price much below what the other had offered, saying, "The gods are ever with thee, O Xanthus; therefore to thee do I consign my child.' But while Xanthus was counting out the silver, my father seized the cake again, which the slave had taken up and was about to replace in the wallet. His hunger was exasperated by the taste and the delay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning round in the old woman's bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw my beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless. The more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away; and many were soon between us. Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of famine long before: alas! and he had suffered them for me. Do I weep while I am telling you they ended? I could not have closed his eyes; I was too young; but I might have received his last breath; the only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you now think him blamable, O Esop? Esop. It was sublime humanity: it was forbearance and self-denial which even the immortal gods have never shown us. He could endure to perish by those torments which alone are both acute and slow; he could number the steps of death and miss not one: but he could never see thy tears, nor let thee see his. O weakness above all fortitude! Glory to the man who rather bears a grief corroding his breast, than permits it to prowl beyond, and to prey on the tender and compassionate! Women commiserate the brave, and men the beautiful. The dominion of Pity has usually this extent, no wider. Thy father was exposed to the obloquy not only of the malicious, but also of the ignorant and thoughtless, who condemn in the unfortunate what they applaud in the prosperous. There is no shame in poverty or in slavery, if we neither make ourselves poor by our improvidence nor slaves by our venality. The lowest and highest of the human race are sold: most of the intermediate are also slaves, but slaves who bring no money in the market. Rhodope. Surely the great and powerful are never to be purchased: are they? Esop. It may be a defect in my vision, but I cannot see greatness on the earth. What they tell me is great and aspiring, to me seems little and crawling. Let me meet thy question with another. What monarch gives his daughter for nothing? Either he receives stone walls and unwilling cities in return, or he barters her for a parcel of spears and horses and horsemen, waving away from his declining and helpless age young joyous life, and trampling down the freshest and the sweetest memories. Midas1 in the highth of prosperity would have given his daughter to Lycaon, rather than to the gentlest, the most virtuous, the most intelligent of his subjects. Thy father threw wealth aside, and, placing thee under the protection of Virtue, rose up from the house of Famine to partake in the festivals of the Gods. Release my neck, O Rhodopè! for I have other questions to ask of thee about him. Rhodope. To hear thee converse on him in such a manner, I can do even that. Æsop. Before the day of separation was he never sorrowful? Did he never by tears or silence reveal the secret of his soul? Rhodope. I was too infantine to perceive or imagine his intention. The night before I became the slave of Xanthus, he sat on the edge of my bed. I pretended to be asleep: he moved away silently and softly. I saw him collect in the hollow of his hand the crumbs I 1 the type of avarice 2 a king of Arcadia noted for his impiety had wasted on the floor, and then eat them, and then look if any were remaining. I thought he did so out of fondness for me, remembering that, even before the famine, he had often swept up off the table the bread I had broken, and had made me put it between his lips. I would not dissemble very long, but said: 'Come, now you have wakened me, you must sing me asleep again, as you did when I was little." He smiled faintly at this, and, after some delay, when he had walked up and down the chamber, thus began: "I will sing to thee one song more, my wakeful Rhodopè! my chirping bird! over whom is no mother's wing! That it may lull thee asleep, I will celebrate no longer, as in the days of wine and plenteousness, the glory of Mars, guiding in their invisibly rapid onset the dappled steeds of Rhæsus.1 What hast thou to do, my little one, with arrows tired of clustering in the quiver? How much quieter is thy pallet than the tents which whitened the plain of Simöis! 2 What knowest thou about the river Eurotas ?3 What knowest thou about its ancient palace, once trodden by assembled Gods, and then polluted by the Phrygian? What knowest thou of perfidious men or of sanguinary deeds? "Pardon me, O goddess who presidest in Cythera! I am not irreverent to thee, but ever grateful. May she upon whose brow I lay my hand, praise and bless thee for ever more! "Ah, yes! continue to hold up above the coverlet those fresh and rosy palms clasped together: her benefits have descended on thy beauteous head, my child! The Fates also have sung, beyond thy hearing, of pleasanter scenes than snow-fed Hebrus; 5 of more than dim grottos and sky-bright waters. Even now a low murmur swells upward to my ear: and not from the spindle comes the sound, but from those who sing slowly over it, bending all three their tremulous heads together. I wish thou couldst hear it; for seldom are their voices so sweet. Thy pillow intercepts the song perhaps lie down again, lie down, my Rhodope! I will repeat what they are saying: "Happier shalt thou be, nor less glorious, 1 A Thracian hero; Rhodopè was from Thrace. 2 a river near Troy 3 Cf. Lycidas, 1. 63. than even she,1 the truly beloved, for whose return to the distaff and the lyre the portals of Tænarus flew open. In the woody dells of Ismarus, and when she bathed among the swans of Strymon, the nymphs called her Eurydicè. Thou shalt behold that fairest and that fondest one hereafter. But first thou must go unto the land of the lotos, where famine never cometh, and where alone the works of man are immortal.' "O my child! the undeceiving Fates have uttered this. Other powers have visited me, and have strengthened my heart with dreams and visions. We shall meet again, my Rhodope, in shady groves and verdant meadows, and we shall sit by the side of those who loved us. He was rising: I threw my arms about his neck, and, before I would let him go, I made him promise to place me, not by the side, but between them: for I thought of her who had left us. At that time there were but two, O Æsop. You ponder: you are about to reprove my assurance in having thus repeated my own praises. I would have omitted some of the words, only that it might have disturbed the measure and cadences, and have put me out. They are the very words my dearest father sang; and they are the last yet, shame upon me! the nurse (the same who stood listening near, who attended me into this country) could remember them more perfectly: it is from her I have learnt them since; she often sings them, even to herself. Esop. So shall others. There is much both in them and in thee to render them memorable. Rhodope. Who flatters now? Æsop. Flattery often runs beyond Truth, in a hurry to embrace her; but not here. The dullest of mortals, seeing and hearing thee, would never misinterpret the prophecy of the Fates. If, turning back, I could overpass the vale of years, and could stand on the mountaintop, and could look again far before me at the bright ascending morn, we would enjoy the prospect together; we would walk along the summit hand in hand, O Rhodopè, and we would only sigh at last when we found ourselves below with others. 1 a river near Sparta 4 Venus Eurydice; for her story, see Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 185-8. Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts, They bring me tales of youth and tones of love, Among their kindred in their native place. Yet every one her gown received from me Cried she, "is large and sweet." She held one forth, Whether for me to look at or to take She knew not, nor did I; but taking it Would best have solved (and this she felt) her doubt. I dared not touch it; for it seemed a part TO ROBERT BROWNING There is delight in singing, though none hear Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale, So varied in discourse. But warmer climes 10 Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on |