The open sea - Edgar Lee Masters

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       GOD AND MY COUNTRY

       THE DUNES OF INDIANA

       NATURE

       THE OPEN SEA

       Table of Contents

       BRUTUS AND ANTONY

       (Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in Rome.) BC 20

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      BRUTUS AND ANTONY

      Part I

      (Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in Rome)

      B.C. 20

      How shall I write this out? I do not write.

       Talk to you? Yes, and tell of Antony,

       And how I knew him. There at Philippi

       I let myself be captured, so to give

       Time to escape to Brutus—made pretense

       That I was Brutus, and so Brutus flies

       And I am captured. Antony forgives me,

       And to his death I was his faithful friend.

       Well, after Actium, in Africa,

       He roamed with no companions but us two,

       Our friend Aristocrates, here, myself,

       And fed upon his bitter heart. Our guest

       Nods truth to what I say, he knows it all.

       And after certain days in solitude

       He seeks his Cleopatra. As for her,

       She was the sovereign queen of many nations;

       Yet that she might be with her Antony,

       Live with him and enjoy him, did not shun

       The name of mistress, and let Fulvia keep

       Her wifehood without envy. As for him,

       A lover’s soul lives in the loved one’s body,

       And where bode Cleopatra, there his soul

       Lived only, though his feet of flesh pursued

       The Parthian, or Cæsar’s hateful heir. …

       And if this Antony would wreathe his spear

       With ivy like a thyrsus; from the chamber

       Of his beloved rush to battle, helmet

       Smelling of unguents and of Egypt; leave

       Great action and great enterprise to play

       Along the seashore of Canopus with her;

       And fly the combat, not as Paris did,

       Already beaten, with lift sail, desert

       The victory that was his, yet true it is

       His rank, his eloquence, his liberal blood,

       His interest in all grades and breeds of men,

       His pity and his kindness to the sick,

       His generous sympathies, stamped Antony

       A giant in this dusty, roaring place

       Which we call earth. Who ruined Antony?

       Why, Brutus! For he gave to Antony

       The truth of which the Queen of Egypt stood

       As proof in the flesh:—Beauty and Life. His heart

       Was apt to see her for mad days in Rome,

       And soul created sateless for the cup

       Of ecstasy in living.

       On a day

       Myself and Aristocrates and Antony,

       We two companioning him in Africa,

       Wandering in solitary places, Antony

       Brooding on Actium, and the love that kept

       His soul with Cleopatra, up he speaks,

       And asks us if we knew what Brutus said,

       While nearing death, to Cassius. “No,” we said.

       And Antony began to tell of Brutus:—

       How all his life was spent in study, how

       He starved his body, slept but briefly, cut

       His hours of sleep by practice; fixed his thought

       On virtue and on glory; made himself

       A zealot of one purpose: liberty;

       A spirit as of a beast that knows one thing:

       Its food and how to get it; over its spirit

       No heaven keeps of changing light; no stars

       Of wandering thought; no moons that charm

       Still groves by singing waters, and no suns

       Of large illumination, showing life

       As multiform and fathomless, filled with wings

       Of various truth, each true as other truth.

       This was that Brutus, made an asp by thought

       And nature, to be used by envious hands

       And placed to Cæsar’s breast. So Antony

       Discoursed upon our walk, and capped it off

       With Brutus’ words when dying. They were these:

       “O virtue, miserable virtue, bawd and cheat;

       Thou wert a bare word and I followed thee

       As if thou hadst been real. But even as evil,

       Lust, ignorance, thou wert the plaything too

       Of fortune and of chance.”

       So Antony

       Consoled himself with Brutus, sighed and lapsed

       To silence; thinking, as we deemed, of life

       And what it yet could be, and how ’twould end;

       And how to join his Cleopatra, what

       The days would hold amid the toppling walls

       Of Rome in demolition, now the hand

       Of Cæsar rotted, and no longer stayed

       The picks and catapults of an idiot world!

       So, as it seemed, he would excuse himself

       For Actium and his way in life. For soon

       He speaks again, of Theophrastus now,

       Who lived a hundred years, spent all his life

       In study and in writing, brought to death

       By labor; dying lay encompassed by

      

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