FullReads

NEO.
My heart is full, and groaning o’er thy woes.

PHI.
Nay, yet have comfort. This affliction oft
Goes no less swiftly than it came. I pray thee,
Stand fast and leave me not alone!

NEO.
Fear nought.
We will not stir.

PHI.
Wilt thou remain?

NEO.
Be sure of it.

PHI.
I’ll not degrade thee with an oath, my son.

NEO.
Rest satisfied. I may not go without thee.

PHI.
Thy hand, to pledge me that!

NEO.
There, I will stay.

PHI.
Now, now, aloft!

NEO.
Where mean’st thou?

PHI.
Yonder aloft!

NEO.
Whither? Thou rav’st. Why starest thou at the sky?

PHI.
Now, let me go.

NEO.
Where?

PHI.
Let me go, I say!

NEO.
I will not.

PHI.
You will kill me. Let me go!

NEO.
Well, thou know’st best I hold thee not.

PHI.
O Earth,
I die. receive me to thy breast! This pain
Subdues me utterly, I cannot stand.

NEO.
Methinks he will be fast in slumber soon
That head sinks backward, and a clammy sweat
Bathes all his limbs, while from his foot hath burst
A vein, dark bleeding. Let us leave him, friends,
In quietness, till he hath fallen to sleep.

CHORUS
Lord of the happiest life,
Sleep, thou that know’st not strife,
That know’st not grief,
Still wafting sure relief,
Come, saviour now!
Thy healing balm is spread
Over this pain worn head,
Quench not the beam that gives calm to his brow.

Look, O my lord, to thy path,
Either to go or to stay
How is my thought to proceed?
What is our cause for delay?
Look! Opportunity’s power,
Fitting the task to the hour,
Giveth the race to the swift.

NEO.
He hears not. But I see that to have ta’en
His bow without him were a bootless gain
He must sail with us. So the god hath said
Heaven hath decreed this garland for his head:
And to have failed with falsehood were a meed
Of shameful soilure for a shameless deed.

CH.
God shall determine the end–
But for thine answer, friend,
Waft soft words low!
All sick men’s sleep, we know,
Hath open eye;
Their quickly ruffling mind
Quivers in lightest wind,
Sleepless in slumber new danger to spy.

Think, O my lord, of thy path,
Secretly look forth afar,
What wilt thou do for thy need?
How with the wise wilt thou care?
If toward the nameless thy heart
Chooseth this merciful part,
Huge are the dangers that drift.

The wind is fair, my son, the wind is fair,
The man is dark and helpless, stretched in night.
(O kind, warm sleep that calmest human care!)
Powerless of hand and foot and ear and sight,
Blind, as one lying in the house of death.
(Think well if here thou utterest timely breath.)
This, O my son, is all my thought can find,
Best are the toils that without frightening bind.

NEO.
Hush! One word more were madness. He revives.
His eye hath motion. He uplifts his head.

PHI.
Fair daylight following sleep, and ye, dear friends,
Faithful beyond all hope in tending me!
I never could have dreamed that thou, dear youth,
Couldst thus have borne my sufferings and stood near
So full of pity to relieve my pain.
Not so the worthy generals of the host;–
This princely patience was not theirs to show.
Only thy noble nature, nobly sprung,
Made light of all the trouble, though oppressed
With fetid odours and unceasing cries.
And now, since this my plague would seem to yield
Some pause and brief forgetfulness of pain,
With thine own hand, my son, upraise me here,
And set me on my feet, that, when my strength
After exhaustion shall return again,
We may move shoreward and launch forth with speed.