PERSEUS THE DELIVERER

Part - I

The Legend of Perseus

ACRISIUS, the Argive king, warned by an oracle that his daughter's son would be the agent of his death, hoped to escape his doom by shutting her up in a brazen tower. But Zeus, the King of the Gods, descended into her prison in a shower of gold and Danae bore to him a son named Perseus. Danaë and her child were exposed in a boat without sail or oar on the sea, but here too fate and the gods intervened and, guided by a divine protection, the boat bore her safely to the Island of Seriphos. There Danaë was received and honoured by the King. When Perseus had grown to manhood the King, wishing to marry Danae, decided to send him to his death and to that end ordered him to slay the Gorgon Medusa in the wild, unknown and snowy North and bring to him her head the sight of which turned men to stone. Perseus, aided by Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, who gave him the divine sword Herpe, winged shoes to bear him through the air, her shield or aegis and the cap of invisibility, succeeded in his quest after many adventures. In his returning he came to Syria and found Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopea, King and Queen of Syria, chained to the rocks by the people to be devoured by a sea-monster as an atonement for her mother's impiety against the sea-god, Poseidon. Perseus slew the monster and rescued and wedded Andromeda.

In this piece the ancient legend has been divested of its original character of a heroic myth; it is made the nucleus round which there could grow the scenes of a romantic story of human temperament and life-impulses on the Elizabethan model. The country in which the action is located is a Syria of romance, not of history. Indeed a Hellenic legend could not at all be set in the environments of the life of a Semitic people and its early Aramaean civilisation: the town of Cepheus must be looked at as a Greek colony with a blonde Achaean dynasty ruling a Hellenised people who worship an old Mediterranean deity under a 

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Greek name. In a romantic work of imagination of this type these outrages on history do not matter. Time there is more than Einsteinian in its relativity, the creative imagination is its sole disposer and arranger; fantasy reigns sovereign; the names of ancient countries and peoples are brought in only as fringes of a decorative background; anachronisms romp in wherever they can get an easy admittance, ideas and associations from all climes and epochs mingle; myth, romance and realism make up a single whole. For here the stage is the human mind of all times: the subject is an incident in its passage from a semi-primitive temperament surviving in a fairly advanced outward civilisation to a brighter intellectualism and humanism — never quite safe against the resurgence of the dark or violent life-forces which are always there subdued or subordinated or somnolent in the make-up of civilised man — and the first promptings of the deeper and higher psychic and spiritual being which it is his ultimate destiny to become.

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PERSONS OF THE DRAMA

PALLAS ATHENE.

POSEIDON.

PERSEUS, son of Zeus and Danaë.

CEPHEUS, King of Syria.

IOLAUS, son of Cepheus and Cassiopea.

POLYDAON, priest of Poseidon.

PHINEUS, King of Tyre.

THEROPS, a popular leader.

PERISSUS, a citizen butcher.

DERCETES, a Syrian captain.

NEBASSAR, captain of the Chaldean Guard.

CIREAS, a servant in the temple of Poseidon.

MEDES, an usher in the palace.

CASSIOPEA, princess of Chaldea, Queen of Syria.

ANDROMEDA, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopea.

CYDONE, mistress of Iolaus.

PRAXILLA, head of the palace household in the women's apartments.

DIOMEDE, a slave-girl, servant and playmate of Andromeda.

SCENE : The city of Cepheus, the seashore, the temple of Poseidon on the headland and the surrounding country.

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Prologue

The Ocean in tumult, and the sky in storm: Pallas Athene appears in the heavens, with lightnings playing over her head and under her feet.  

ATHENE

Error of waters rustling through the world,

Vast Ocean, call thy ravenous waves that march

With blue fierce nostrils quivering for prey,

Back to thy feet. Hush thy impatient surges

At my divine command and do my will.

VOICES OF THE SEA

Who art thou layest thy serene command

Upon the untamed waters ?

ATHENE

I am Pallas,

Daughter of the Omnipotent.

VOICES

What wouldst thou?

For we cannot resist thee; our clamorous hearts

Are hushed in terror at thy marble feet.

ATHENE

Awake your dread Poseidon. Bid him rise

And come before me.

VOICES

Let thy compelling voice

Awake him: for the sea is hushed.

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ATHENE

Arise,

Illimitable Poseidon! let thy blue

And streaming tresses mingle with the foam

Emerging into light.

Poseidon appears upon the waters.

POSEIDON

What quiet voice

Compels me from my rocky pillow piled

Upon the floor of the enormous deep ?

VOICES

A whiteness and a strength is in the skies.

POSEIDON

How art thou white and beautiful and calm,

Yet clothed in tumult! Heaven above thee shakes

Wounded with lightnings, goddess, and the sea

Flees from thy dreadful tranquil feet. Thy calm

Troubles me: who art thou, dweller in the light?

ATHENE

I am Athene.

POSEIDON

Virgin formidable

In beauty, disturber of the ancient world!

Ever thou seekest to enslave to man

The eternal Universe, and our huge motions

That shake the mountains and upheave the seas

Wouldst with the glancing visions of thy brain

Coerce and bridle.

ATHENE

Me the Omnipotent

Made from His being to lead and discipline

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The immortal spirit of man, till it attain

To order and magnificent mastery

Of all his outward world.

POSEIDON

What wouldst thou of me ?

ATHENE

The powers of the earth have kissed my feet

In deep submission, and they yield me tribute,

Olives and corn and all fruit-bearing trees,

And silver from the bowels of the hills,

Marble and iron ore. Fire is my servant.

But thou, Poseidon, with thy kindred gods

And the wild wings of air resist me. I come

To set my feet upon thy azure locks,

O shaker of the cliffs. Adore thy sovereign.

POSEIDON

The anarchy of the enormous seas

Is mine, O terrible Athene: I sway

Their billows with my nod. Man's feeble feet

Leave there no traces, nor his destiny

Has any hold upon the shifting waves.

ATHENE

Thou severest him with thy unmeasured wastes

Whom I would weld in one. But I will lead him

Over thy waters, thou wild thunderer,

Spurning thy tops in hollowed fragile trees.

He shall be confident in me and dare

The immeasurable oceans till the West

Mingles with India, and reach the northern isles

That dwell beneath my dancing aegis bright,

Snow-weary. He shall, armed with clamorous fire,

Rush o'er the angry waters when the whale

Is stunned between two waves and slay his foe

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Betwixt the thunders. Therefore I bid thee not,

O azure strong Poseidon, to abate

Thy savage tumults: rather his march oppose.

For through the shocks of difficulty and death

Man shall attain his godhead.

POSEIDON

What then desir'st thou.

Athene?

ATHENE

On yonder inhospitable coast

Far-venturing merchants from the East, or those

Who put from Tyre towards Atlantic gains,

Are by thy trident fiercely shaken forth

Upon the jagged rocks, and who escape,

The gay and savage Syrians on their altars

Massacre hideously, thee to propitiate,

Moloch-Poseidon of the Syrian coasts,

Dagon of Gaza, lord of many names

And many natures, many forms of power

Who rulest from Philistia to the north,

A terror and a woe. O iron King,

Desist from blood, be glad of kindlier gifts

And suffer men to live.

POSEIDON

Behold, Athene,

My waters! see them lift their foam-white tops

Charging from sky to sky in rapid tumult:

Admire their force, admire their thunderous speed.

With green hooves and white manes they trample onwards.

My mighty voices fill the world, Athene.

Shall I permit the grand anarchic seas

To be a road and the imperious Ocean

A means of merchandise ? Shall the frail keels

Of thy ephemeral mortals score its back

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With servile furrows and petty souls of men

Triumphing tame the illimitable sea?

I am not of the mild and later gods,

But of that elder world; Lemuria

And old Atlantis raised me crimson altars,

And my huge nostrils keep that scent of blood

For which they quiver. Return into thy heavens,

Pallas Athene, I into my deep.

ATHENE

Dash then thy billows up against my aegis

In battle! think not to hide in thy deep oceans;

For I will drive thy waters from the world

And leave thee naked to the light.

POSEIDON

Dread virgin!

I will not war with thee, armipotent.

ATHENE

Then send thy champion forth to meet my champion,

And let their conflict govern ours, Poseidon.

POSEIDON

Who is thy champion ?

ATHENE

Perseus, the Olympian's son,

Whom Danae in her strong brazen tower,

Acrisius' daughter, bore, by heavenly gold

Lapped into slumber: for of that shining rain

He is the beautiful offspring.

POSEIDON

The parricide

That is to be ? But my sea-monster's fangs

And fiery breathings shall prevent that murder.

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Farewell, Athene.

ATHENE

Farewell, until I press

My feet upon thy blue enormous mane

And add thy Ocean to my growing empire.

Poseidon disappears into the sea.

He dives into the deep and with a din

The thunderous divided waters meet

Above his grisly head. Thou wingest, Perseus,

From northern snows to this fair sunny land,

Not knowing in the night what way thou wendest;

But the dawn comes and over earth's far rim

The round sun rises, as thyself shalt rise

On Syria and thy rosy Andromeda,

A thing of light. Rejoice, thou famous hero!

Be glad of love, be glad of life, whose bosom

Harbours the quiet strength of pure Athene.

She disappears into light.  

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