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THE BLUE DWARF. 97 GOVINDA Dance, o thou mannikin Dwarf and malign To the clink of Earth’s pannikin Drained of its wine ! CHAU Dance, to the scream Of strangled humanity, The delirious dream Of the Vampires of Vanity ! The kings rise, bow, and depart. THE KINGS Away, away like the wanton wind ! One to the groves of ilex tall ; One to the plains of infinite Ind ; One beyond the Mongol wall. As we met, so we part. Three great kings and one true heart !
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III THE BLUE DWARF
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THE BLUE DWARF. I09 JOHN Crystal clear. ISSA I came from heaven. JOHN We guessed it. ISSA Guess again ! What follows ? JOHN — Er — ISSA To humbug me is vain. Guess ! JOHN Well, to come from heaven — Thou com’st to reign ? ISSA I die — thou mark’st me ? JOHN Truly : plain as plain !
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THE BLUE DWARF. I07 JOHN The upshot ? ISSA I am sick of everything. JOHN Of me, Lord ? ISSA Thou the least, sweet queen and king. But — finally — in sooth, lad — even of thee. JOHN Lord, have I failed in love ? ISSA Failure must be. Not by thy fault, but fixed in every feature Of Mistress Smirking Whore, our Mother Nature, Whose filthy dugs our poisoned kisses suck. Pah ! the whole world is just a mass of muck. JOHN Wait, master ! that’s a Phrase.
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THE BLUE DWARF. 85 When the wine fills me. Pray you ! His slave presents wine to Govinda, who drinks. GOVINDA Health, my lord ! This wine is marvellous dry ! Scented like clover reaching up the broad Edge of some glacier in my northern marches. CHAU Look, how she writhes — speechless distemperature Her shriek within her gorge that parches ! GOVINDA Boy, bid that cup-slave from Ferozapur Make me an ode of this — nay, while I think ! An elegy. CHAU Please your majesty to drink ? GOVINDA Thanks, brother. Well, my gipsy girl divined
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THE BLUE DWARF. I03 Fighting the leanness of thy lechery That hags thee — Faugh ! MAGDA Art thou not lewd with me ? ISSA Ay ! and the rot of Egypt pays me for’t. MAGDA To match thy rotten soul, thou pimping ort ! Marrowless bone ! Dry fig ! ISSA Enough, black bitch ! The Seventy shall stone thee for a witch. MAGDA More than enough. I’ll call thy darling itch, Thy— He fists her in the abdomen. ISSA Take the name back to thy bloated belly ! Speak, and I kick thy carcass to a jelly !
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THE BLUE DWARF. 95 Dressed in a neat surtout of blue With the head of a goat and the nose of a Jew And the... GOVINDA Would your Pasiphae challenge him lightly ? CHAU Truly, a marvel. Come, little man ! We kiss your hands, and sail back home Over the desert and over the foam. ALEXANDER And I go back to the grove of Pan. GOVINDA What is thy name ? I will proclaim Thy marvellous fame From the Gulf of Kutch to the shores of Orissa. MIRIAM I pray your Majesty, call him Issa.
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THE BLUE DWARF. III JOHN Even of me ? ISSA Yes — no — yes — what thou wilt. All’s one. JOHN I see. Then thou wilt slay thyself ? ISSA ’Twere too much trouble, Having cut the corn, to clear away the stubble. Hire thou a knave to slay me. JOHN Lord, I dare not. ISSA Denounce me to the Seventy — I care not. Indeed, since Death is Death, small odds the plan of it ! I’ll rather choose to get what fun I can of it. JOHN I have it, Lord ! Well make thy death suggest
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THE BLUE DWARF. 9I For life or death. Now ! — — Stretch ! — Plague on the wretch ! Friends, ease me — with a scimitar ! ALEXANDER We learnt not that from the dark Star. MIRIAM Why then, be cursed ! My belly is about to burst. The hag and the baboon come forward. THE HAG Ho ! we will lift the prudish latch. Dear apeling, hold the torches while I catch This monster. So. Dispatch ! MIRIAM God ! let it be a boy. I would enjoy His love. Who hath come forth with such keen pain Owes keener pleasure, going back again. A curse upon that Dove.
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THE BLUE DWARF. 89 And all my joy and all her crimson flux Sprang in a mingled river to the West. GOVINDA See how she tears her breast ! CHAU She is like a wounded horse Gored by some old rogue-elephant. For now the mouth springs open, and a yell Like the shriek of the throat of hell Bursts, and is choked by a vomit of black worms. ALEXANDER All this most critically confirms Our calculations. Boy ! the long pale glass Fashioned of ambergris and chrysopras. Fill it with the old, the ripe Satyrion, And bear it to their Majesties. Anon We shall se…
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THE BLUE DWARF. 93 MIRIAM Have ye no pity, kings, at this disease ? O then I am a mere muck-midden of shame. But yet my body feeds on flame As if some masterpiece Were wrought — I know not how — pray cease ! Leave me with these ! CHAU Midden or maiden, we must see the birth Of thy black womb. Why do these moans disturb our mirth ? I will have thee lashed to shreds By this vile groom Unless thou quit thy prating. THE HAG Here’s pay for months of waiting. She detaches the placenta. A black old rotten wine-skin, mangy goat Patched with bat, stork,…
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THE BLUE DWARF. II3 At their phylacteries, my clever stroke At God, my break-and-build-the-temple joke : And make the fell indictment yet completer With my bewildering pun on ’ rock ’ and ’ Peter ’ ! JOHN It shall be done. ISSA Nay, thou wouldst feel remorse. Let the whole matter simply take its course ! Our Youdesh is a thief ; so, sure to rat. He’ll raise their camel to conceal his gnat. JOHN How choice a metaphor ! How terse ! How dry ! Apt as thy’ camel and the needle’s eye’. ISSA Agreed, then ! Now if Brothers Louse and Bug Will let me be,…
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THE BLUE DWARF. 77 ALEXANDER Brothers, all is proven duly. Memory joins with astrolabe : This the maiden — hers the babe. MIRIAM Who are ye ? I would be alone. Now the loose and heaving zone Frets me. Go, my mates, carouse With the cuckold of the house With his adze and awl and chisel ! Zakariah with gilded pizzle And this bull grown sleek and smooth To an ox suffice, in sooth, Love’s exalted task — and thus Kings are grown superfluous. Ai ! but now the monster splits me Struggling in his bloody cage. Is it in his sport or rage ? Answer that, t…
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THE BLUE DWARF. 87 CHAU I who am come from the remote abode Beyond the highest snows, Beyond the swiftest river, Was moved thereto by a strange goad — Stranger, my lords, than all your wisdom knows ! For in the city of gold and jade Beyond where my vassal Tartars shiver I have a dagger gold-inlaid Sharp as an arrow from the heavenly quiver ; Its hilt of clustered fires, a crusted jewel Fashioned in the likeness of a demon-king Most exquisitely cruel : — Daily I try my luck By the Oracle of the Bleeding Duck. GOVINDA Look ! what a horrid horde o…
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…. By the Balance reaching forth To the south and to the North Have I consecrated thee Co-victim with humanity. O mis-begotten, miscreate Dwarf as thou wast, the child of hate ; Thou who hast felt the sordidness Of thine own effect on thine own distress ; Art come thereby to the stature of man By my power, who am Pan. And by this death shalt laugh to know Thy father’s final overthrow. My soul the heights and depths has spanned. I hold the star-streams in mine hand. I am the master of life and death And of every spirit that quickeneth. Yea ! in t…
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THE BLUE DWARF. I05 ISSA Undone me quite, Nagged me with sordid greediness all night, Greed for my gold, my person — all I have. Saith not the prophet : “ Cruel as the grave ” ? That grinning mask, that musk-rat, hath enriched Her rags by every inch of me that itched ; And for one itch hath planted me another, The “ friend that sticketh closer than a brother ”. Ten groans of mine for every grin of hers ! What saith the prophet ? — “ Whited sepulchres ! ” JOHN Nay, Lord, the phrase unique is all thine own. ISSA Then write it down, an nothing les…
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THE BLUE DWARF. 8I In this flask of crystal lurks Bruised virility of Turks, Boiled with wine and ambergris — Every drop an hour of bliss ! This cornelian box contains Datura-seeds and sparrow-brains, Mixed and smoothed with asses’ fat. Here the marrow of a bat Concecrated by a wizard And the seed-cells of a lizard Banned by a Thessalian witch, Lie like twins — royally rich In this casket wrought with gems Fit for Mogul diadems. MIRIAM O dogs, kings, gods, begone ! Bone splits from bone. I am ripped up like a sweating sow On the horn of a buffa…
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THE BLUE DWARF. 83 Bray deafens us — now cling To the lewd stark dripping thing Thou has caressed and gilt From the point to the gross hilt With the babe-gold of thy bright skin, Wolfing it in As the dragon swallows up the moon ! CHAU See, she will swoon. This is magnificent. I would not lose the event — Ho ! boy, bring wine ! Black wine in jars of jade Cooled all these months in hoarded snow ! Black wine with purple starlight in its bosom, Oily and sweet as the soul of a brown maid Brought from the forenoon’s archipelago, Her brows bound brigh…
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THE BLUE DWARF. 79 All a pirate’s hoarded store From the islands of the West Gathered far with blood and tears For three score and seven years. All this wealth of virgin gold This thy babe shall helt and hold. He shall buy the souls of priests ; Forge men chains, and make them beasts ; Give the carrion soldier meat, And corrupt the judgment-seat. With it he shall seethe the snake Of his faith in fire-hot blood ; Hurt the humble, strew the stake With the faggots ; gild the rood That for many a year shall brand With its blight full many a land. C…
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III THE BLUE DWARF SCENE, a stable containing three stalls. In the first, an ox ; in the second, the girl Miriam ; in the third, the ass Zakariah. The first is chewing the cud peaceable ; the second, stretched naked on the straw, holds her sides and groans ; the third lifts up his voice ever and anon in a formidable bray. The stable is lighted by two torches held respectively by an old and withered hag, her two remai- ning teeth — long yellow fangs — exposed in a grin ; and by a blue faced baboon, who revels in his corner in the filth. THE HAG,…