Eric

ACT ONE

Eric’s Palace at Yara.

Scene 1

ERIC
Eric of Norway, first whom these cold fiords,
Deep havens of disunion, from their jagged
And fissured crevices at last obey,
The monarch of a thousand Vikings! Yes,
But how long shall that monarchy endure
Which only on the swiftness of a sword
Has taken its restless seat? Strength’s iron hound
Pitilessly bright behind his panting prey
Can guard for life’s short splendour what it won.
But when the sword is broken or when death
Proves swifter? All this realm with labour built
Dissolving like a transitory cloud
Becomes the thing it was, cleft, parcelled out
By discord. I have found the way to join,
The warrior’s sword, builder of unity,
But where’s the way to solder? where? O Thor
And Odin, masters of the northern world,
Wisdom and force I have; some strength is hidden
I have not; I would find it out. Help me,
Whatever power thou art who mov’st the world,
To Eric unrevealed. Some sign I ask.

ASLAUG (singing, outside)
Love is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine.
Iron is broken, the sword
Sleeps in the grave of its lord.
Love is divine.
Love is the hoop of the gods
Hearts to combine.

ERIC
Is that your answer? Freya, mother of heaven,
Thou wast forgotten. The heart! the seat is there.
For unity is sweet substance of the heart
And not a chain that binds, not iron, gold,
Nor any helpless thought the reason knows.
How shall I seize it? where? give me a net
By which the fugitive can be snared. It is
Too unsubstantial for my iron mind.

ASLAUG (singing, outside)
When Love desires Love,
Then Love is born.
Nor golden gifts compel,
Nor even beauty’s spell
Escapes his scorn.
When Love desires Love,
Then Love is born.

ERIC (calling)
Who sings outside? Harald! who sings outside?

HARALD (entering)
Two dancing-girls from Gothberg. Shall they come?

ERIC
Admit them.
Harald goes out.
From light lips and casual thoughts
The gods speak best as if by chance, nor knows
The speaker that he is an instrument
But thinks his mind the mover of his words.
Harald returns with Aslaug and Hertha.

HARALD
King Eric, these are they who sang.

ERIC
Women,
Who are you? or what god directed you?

ASLAUG
The god who rules all men, Necessity.

ERIC
It was thou who sangst!

ASLAUG
My lips at least were used.

ERIC
Thou sayest. Dost thou know by whom?

ASLAUG
By Fate.
For she alone is prompter on our stage,
And all things move by an established doom,
Not freely. Eric’s sword and Aslaug’s song,
Music and thunder are the rhythmic chords
Of one majestic harp. With equal mind
She breaks the tops that she has built; her thrones
Are ruins. She treads her way foreseen; our steps
Are hers, our wills are blinded by her gaze.

ERIC
I think the soul is master. Who art thou?

HERTHA
Expelled from Gothberg with displeasure fierce,
Norwegians by the wrathful Swede constrained,
To Norway we return.

ERIC
Why went you forth?

HERTHA
From a bleak country rich by spoil alone
Of kinder populations, far too cold,
Too rough to love the sweetness of a song,
The rhythm of a dance, with need for spur,
We fled to an entire and cultured race,
Whose hearts come apt and liberal from the gods
Are steel to steel, but flowers to a flower.

ERIC
And wherefore war they upon women now?

ASLAUG
By thy aggressions moved.

ERIC
A nobler choice
Of vengeance I will give them, though more hard.
(to Gunthar who enters)
Gunthar, thou comest from the front. What news?

GUNTHAR
Swegn, earl of Trondhjem, lifts his outlawed head.
By desperate churls and broken nobles joined
He moves towards the Swede.

ERIC
Let Sigurd’s force
Cut off from Sweden and his lair the rude
Revolted lord. He only now resists,
Champion of discord, remnant like our seas,
The partisan and pattern of the past.
They waste their surge of strength in sterile foam,
Hungry for movement, careless what they break,
Splendid, disastrous, active for no fruit.
Such men are better with the gods than here
To trouble earth. Taken, let him not live.

ASLAUG
Taken! Our words are only an arrogant breath,
Who all are here, the doomer and the doomed,
As captives of a greater doom than ours,
To live or die.

HERTHA
Be silent.

ASLAUG
I silence my heart
Which has remembered what all men forget,
That Olaf of the seas was Norway’s head
And Swegn his son.

ERIC
Will you remain with me?
Though from my act there flowed on you distress,
Make me be fountain of your better days;
Your loss shall turn a fall to splendid gains.

HERTHA
Thy royal bounty shall atone for much.

ASLAUG (low, to herself )
Nobler atonement’s needed.

ERIC
It is yours.
Harald, make room for them within my house.
Gunthar, we will converse some other hour.
(alone)
Love! If it were this girl with antelope eyes
And the high head so proudly lifted up
Upon a neck as white as any swan’s!
But how to sway men’s hearts rugged and hard
As Norway’s mountains, as her glaciers cold,
The houses of their violent desires,
Whose guests are interest and power and pride?
Perhaps this stag-eyed woman comes for that,
To teach me.

 

Scene 2

Hertha, Aslaug.

ASLAUG
Hertha, we dance before the man tonight.
Why not tonight?

HERTHA
Because I will not act
Lifting in vain a rash frustrated hand.
When all is certain, I will strike.

ASLAUG
To near,
To strike while all posterity applauds!
For Norway’s poets to the end of time
Shall sing in phrases noble as the theme
Of Aslaug’s dance and Aslaug’s dagger.

HERTHA
Yes,
If we succeed, but who will sing the praise
Of foiled assassins? Shall we risk defeat?
While we sleep flung in a dishonoured tomb,
And Swegn of Norway roams until the end
The desperate snows and forest silences
Hopeless, proscribed, alone?

ASLAUG
No more defeat!
Too often, too deeply have we drunk that cup!

HERTHA
The man we come to slay,—

ASLAUG
A mighty man!
He has the face and figure of a god,
A marble emperor with brilliant eyes.
How came the usurper by a face like that?

HERTHA
His father was a son of Odin’s stock.

ASLAUG
His fable since he rose! A pauper house
Of one poor vessel and a narrow fiord
And some bare pine-trees possessor,—this was he,
The root he sprang from.

HERTHA
But from this to tower
In three swift summers undisputed lord
Of Norway, before years had put their growth
Upon his chin! If not of Odin’s race,
Odin is for him. Are you not afraid,
You who see Fate even in a sparrow’s flight,
When Odin is for him?

ASLAUG
Aslaug is against.
He has a strength, an iron strength, and Thor
Strikes hammerlike in his uplifted sword.
But Fate alone decides when all is said,
Not Thor, nor Odin. I will try my fate.

HERTHA
He is a pure usurper, is he not?
Norway’s election made him king, men say.

ASLAUG
Left Olaf Sigualdson no heirs behind?
Was his chair vacant?

HERTHA
Of Trondhjem; but they cried,
The inland and the north were free to choose.

ASLAUG
As rebels are.

HERTHA
Discord was seated there.
To the South rejoicing in her golden gains,
Crying, “I am Norway”, all the rude-lipped North
Blew bronze refusal and its free stark head
To breathe cold heaven was lifted like its hills.
We sought the arbitration of the sword,
That sharp blind last appeal. The sword has judged
Against our claim.

ASLAUG
The dagger overrides.

HERTHA
When it is keen and swift enough! O yet,
If kindly peace even now were possible!
The suzerainty? it is his. We fought for it,
We have lost it. Let it rest where it has fallen.

ASLAUG
Better our barren empire of the snows!
Better with reindeer herding to survive,
Or else a free and miserable death
Together!

HERTHA
It is well to be resolved.
Therefore I flung the doubt before your mind,
To strike more surely. Aslaug, did you see
The eyes of Eric on you?

ASLAUG (indifferently)
I am fair.
Men look upon me.

HERTHA
You see nothing more?

ASLAUG (disdainfully)
What is it to me how he looks? He is
My human obstacle and that is all.

HERTHA
No, Aslaug, there’s much more. Alone with you,
Absorbed,—you see it,—suddenly you strike
And strike again, swift great exultant blows.

ASLAUG
It is too base!

HERTHA
Unlulled, he could not perish.
Have you not seen his large and wakeful gaze?
This is our chance. Must not Swegn mount his throne?

ASLAUG
So that I have not to degrade myself,
Arrange it as you will. You own a swift,
Contriving, careful brain I cannot match.
To dare, to act was always Aslaug’s part.

HERTHA
You will not shrink?

ASLAUG
I sprang not from the earth
To bound my actions by the common rule.
I claim my kin with those whom Heaven’s gaze
Moulded supreme, Swegn’s sister, Olaf’s child,
Aslaug of Norway.

HERTHA
Then it must be done.

ASLAUG
Hertha, I will not know the plots you weave:
But when I see your signal, I will strike.

HERTHA (alone)
Pride violent! loftiness intolerable!
The grandiose kingdom-breaking blow is hers,
The baseness, the deception are for me.
It was this, the assumption, the magnificence,
Made Swegn her tool. To me his lover, counsellor,
Wife, worshipper, his ears were coldly deaf.
But, lioness of Norway, thy loud bruit
And leap gigantic are ensnared at last
In my compelling toils. She must be trapped!
She is the fuel for my husband’s soul
To burn itself on a disastrous pyre.
Remove its cause, the flame will sink to rest,—
And we in Trondhjem shall live peacefully
Till Eric dies, as some day die he must,
In battle or by a revolting sword,
And leaves the spacious world unoccupied.
Then other men may feel the sun once more.
Always she talks of Fate: does she not see,
This man was born beneath exultant stars,
Had gods to rock his cradle? He must possess
His date, his strong and unresisted time
When Fate herself runs on his feet. Then comes,—
All things too great end soon,—death, overthrow,
The slow revenges of the jealous gods.
Submitting we shall save ourselves alive
For a late summer when cold spring is past.

Scene 3

Eric, Aslaug.

ERIC
Come hither.

ASLAUG
Thou hast sent for me?

ERIC
Come hither.
What art thou?

ASLAUG
What thou knowest.

ERIC
Do I know?

ASLAUG (to herself )
Does he suspect? (aloud) I am a dancing-girl.
My name is Aslaug. That thou knowest.

ERIC
Where
Did Odin forge thy sweet imperious eyes,
Thy noble stature and thy lofty look?
Thou dancest,—yes, thou hast that motion; song,
The natural expression of thy soul,
Comes from thy lips, floats, hovers and returns
Like a wild bird which wings around its nest.
This art the princesses of Sweden use,
And those Norwegian girls who frame themselves
On Sweden.

ASLAUG
It may be, my birth and past
Were nobler than my present fortunes are.

ERIC
Why cam’st thou to me?

ASLAUG (to herself )
Does Death admonish him
Of danger? does he feel the impending stroke?
Hertha could turn the question.

ERIC
Why soughtst thou out
Eric of Norway? Wherefore broughtst thou here
This beauty as compelling as thy song
No man can gaze on and possess his soul?

ASLAUG
I am a dancing-girl; my song, my face
Are my best stock. I carried them for gain
Here to the richest market.

ERIC
Hast thou so?
I buy them for a price. Aslaug, thy body too.

ASLAUG
Release me! Wilt thou lay thy hands on death?
(wrenching herself free)
All Norway has not sold itself thy slave.

ERIC
This was not spoken like a dancing-girl!

ASLAUG (to herself )
What is this siege? I have no dagger with me.
Will he discover me? will he compel?

ERIC
Though Norway has not sold itself my slave,
Thou hast. Remember what thou art, or else
Thou feignst to be.

ASLAUG (to herself )
I am caught in his snare.
He is subtle, terrible. I see the thing
He drives at and admire unwillingly
The marble tyrant.

ERIC
Better play thy part
Or leave it.
If thou wert fashioned nobler than thou feignst,
Confess that mightier name and lay thyself
Between my hands. But if a dancing-girl,
I have bought thee for a hire, thy face, thy song,
Thy body. I turn not, girl, from any way
I can possess thee, more than the sea hesitates
To engulf what it embraces.

ASLAUG
Thou speakest words
I scorn to answer.

ERIC
Or to understand?
Thou art an enemy who in disguise
Invad’st my house to spy upon my fate.

ASLAUG
What if I were?

ERIC
Thou hast too lightly then
Devised thy chains and close imprisonment,
Too thoughtlessly adventured a divine
And glorious stake, this body, heaven’s hold,
This face, the earth’s desire.

ASLAUG
What canst thou do?
I do not think I am afraid of death.

ERIC
Far be death from thee who, if heaven were just,
Wouldst walk immortal! Thou seest no nearer peril?

ASLAUG
None that I tremble at or wish to flee.

ERIC
Let this shake thee that thou art by thy choice
Caged with the danger of the lion’s mood,
Helpless hast seen the hunger of his eyes
And feelst on thee the breath of his desire.

ASLAUG (alarmed)
I came not here to spy.

ERIC
Why cam’st thou then?

ASLAUG
To sing, to dance, to earn.

ERIC
Richly then earn.
Thou hast a brain, and knowest why I looked
On thee, why I have kept thee in my house.
My house! what fate has brought thy steps within?
Thou, thou hast found the way to my desire!
Thinkst thou thy feet have entered to escape
As lightly as a wild bee from a flower,
The lair and antre of thy enemy?
Disguise? Canst thou disguise thy splendid soul?
Then if thy face and speech more nobly express
The truth of thee than this vocation can,
Reveal it and deserve my clemency.

ASLAUG (violently)
Thy clemency!
(restraining herself )
I am a dancing-girl;
I came to earn.

ERIC
Thou art obstinate in pride!
Choose yet.

ASLAUG
I have not any choice to make.

ERIC
Wilt thou still struggle vainly in the net?
Because thou hast the lioness in thy mood,
Thou thoughtst to play with Eric! It is I
Who play with thee; thou liest in my grasp,
As surely as if I held thee on my knees.
I am enamoured of thy golden hair,
Thy body like the snow, thy antelope eyes,
This neck that seems to know it carries heaven
Upon it easily. Thy song, thy speech,
This gracious rhythmic motion of thy limbs
Walking or dancing, all the careless pride
That undulates in every gesture and tone,
Have seized upon me smiling to possess.
But I have only learned from Fate and strength
To seize by force, master, enjoy, compel,
As I will thee. Enemy and prisoner,
Or dancing-girl and purchased chattel, choose!
Thou wilt not speak? thou findest no reply?

ASLAUG
Because I am troubled by thy violent words.
I cannot answer thee, or will not yet.
(turning away)
How could he see this death? Is he a god
And knows men’s hearts? This is a terrible
And iron pressure!

ERIC
What was thy design?
To spy? to slay? For thou art capable
Even of such daring.

ASLAUG (to herself )
Swiftly, swiftly done
It might be still! To put him off an hour,
Some minutes,—O, to strike!

ERIC
What hast thou chosen?

ASLAUG (turning to him)
King, mend thy words and end this comedy.
I have laughed till now and dallied with thy thoughts,
A little amazed. Unfearing I stand here,
Who come with open heart to seek a king,
Pure of all hostile purpose, innocent
Of all the guileful thoughts and blood-stained plans
Thou burdenest thy fierce suspicions with.
This is the Nemesis of men who rise
Too suddenly by fraud or violence
That they suspect all hearts, yes, every word
Of sheltering some direr violence,
Some subtler fraud, and they expect their fall
Sudden and savage as their rise has been.

ERIC
Thou art my dancing-girl and nothing more?
Assume this chain, this necklace, for thy life.
Nor think it even thy price.
She dashes the necklace to the ground.
Thou art not subtle!

ASLAUG (agitated)
It is not so that women’s hearts are wooed.

ERIC
Yet so I woo thee, so do all men woo
Enamoured of what thou hast claimed to be.
Art thou the dancing-girl of Norway still
Or some disguised high-reaching nobler soul?

ASLAUG (suddenly)
I am thy dancing-girl, King Eric. Look,
I lift thy necklace.

ERIC
Take it, yet be free.
Thou canst not slip out from my hands by this.
No feigned decision will I let thee make,
But one which binds us both. I give thee time,
In hope thy saner mind will yet prevail,
Not courage most perverse, though ardent, rule.
Only one way thou hast to save thyself:
Reveal thy treason, Aslaug, trust thy king.
Aslaug, alone, lifts the chain, admires
it and throws it on a chair.

ASLAUG
You are too much like drops of royal blood.
She lifts it again.
A necklace? No, my chain! Or wilt thou prove
A god’s death-warrant?
She puts it round her neck.
Hertha, Hertha, here!
(to Hertha, as she enters)
O counsellor, art thou come?

HERTHA
I heard thee call.

ASLAUG
I called. Why did I call? See, Hertha, see
How richly Norway’s Eric buys his doom!

HERTHA
He gave thee this? It is a kingdom’s price.

ASLAUG
A kingdom’s price! the kingdom of the slain!
A price to rid the nations of a god.
O Hertha, what has earth to do with gods,
Who suffers only human weight? Will she
Not go too swiftly downward from her base
If Eric treads her long?

HERTHA
Sister of Swegn,
There are new lustres in thy face and eyes.
What said he to thee?

ASLAUG
What did Eric say,
Eric to Aslaug, sister of King Swegn?
A kingdom’s price! Swegn’s kingdom! And for him,
My marble emperor, my god who loves,
This mortal Odin? What for him? By force
Shall he return to his effulgent throne?

HERTHA
You were not used to a divided mind.

ASLAUG
Nor am I altered now, nor heart-perplexed.
But these are thoughts which naturally arise.

HERTHA
He loves you then?

ASLAUG
He loves and he suspects.

HERTHA
What, Aslaug?

ASLAUG
What we are and we intend.

HERTHA
If he suspects!

ASLAUG
It cannot matter much,
If we are rapid.

HERTHA
If we spoil it all!
I will not torture Swegn with useless tears
Perishing vainly. I will slay and die.
He shall remember that he wears his crown
By our great sacrifice and soothe his grief
With the strong magnificent circle, or else bear it
A noble duty to the nobly dead.
(after a moment’s reflection)
Child, you must humour him, you must consent.

ASLAUG
To what?

HERTHA
To all.

ASLAUG
Hast thou at all perused
The infamy which thou advisest?

HERTHA
Yes.
I do not bid you yield, but seem to yield.
Even I who am Swegn’s wife, would do as much.
But though you talk, you still are less in love,
Valuing an empty outward purity
Before your brother’s life, your brother’s crown.

ASLAUG
You know the way to bend me to your will!

HERTHA
Give freedom, but no licence to his love,
For when he thinks to embrace, we shall have struck.

ASLAUG
And, Hertha, if a swift and violent heart
Betrayed my will and overturned your plans?
Is there no danger, Hertha, there?

HERTHA
Till now
I feared not that from Aslaug, sister of Swegn.
But if you fear it!

ASLAUG
No, since I consent.
You shall not blame again my selfishness,
Nor my defect of love.

HERTHA (alone)
Swegn then might rule!
(with a laugh)
I had almost forgotten Fate between
Smiling, alert, and his too partial gods.

Scene 4

ERIC
They say the anarchy of love disturbs
Gods even: shaken are the marble natures,
The deathless hearts are melted to the pang
And rapture. I would be, O Odin, still
Monarch of my calm royalty within,
My thoughts my subjects. Do I hear her come?
(to Aslaug who enters)
Thou com’st? thou art resolved? thou hast made thy choice?

ASLAUG
I choose, if there is anything to choose,
The truth.

ERIC
Who art thou?

ASLAUG
Aslaug, who am now
A dancing-woman.

ERIC
And afterwards? Hast thou then
Understood nothing?

ASLAUG
What should I understand?

ERIC
What I shall do with thee. This earthly heaven
In which thou liv’st shall not be thine at all.
I t was not fashioned for thy joy but mine
And only made for my immense desire.
This hast thou understood?

ASLAUG (pale and troubled)
Thou triest me still.

ERIC
I saw thee shake.

ASLAUG
It is not easily
A woman’s heart sinks prostrate in such absolute
Surrender.

ERIC
Thy heart? Is it thy heart that yields?
O thou unparalleled enchanting frame
For housing of a strong immortal guest,
If man could seize the heart as palpably,
The form, the limbs, the substance of this soul!
That, that we ask for; all else can be seized
So vainly! Walled from ours are other hearts:
For if life’s barriers twixt our souls were broken,
Men would be free and one, earth paradise
And the gods live neglected.

ASLAUG
This heart of mine?
Purchase it richly, for it is for sale.

ERIC
Yes, speak.

ASLAUG
With love; I meant no more.

ERIC
With love?
Thou namest lightly a tremendous word.
If thou hadst known this mightiest thing on earth
And named it, should it not have upon thy lips
So moving an impulsion for a man
That he would barter worlds to hear it once?
Words are but ghosts unless they speak the heart.

ASLAUG
I have yielded.

ERIC
Then tonight. Thou shak’st?

ASLAUG
There is
A trouble in my blood. I do not shake.

ERIC
Thou heardst me?

ASLAUG
Not tonight. Thou art too swift,
Too sudden.

ERIC
Thou hast had leisure to consult
Thy comrade smaller, subtler than thyself?
Better hadst thou chosen candour and thy frank soul
Consulted, not a guile by others breathed.

ASLAUG
What guile, who give all for an equal price?
Thou giv’st thy blood of rubies; I my life.

ERIC
Thou hast not chosen then to understand.

ASLAUG
Because I sell myself, yet keep my pride?

ERIC
Thou shalt keep nothing that I choose to take.
I see a tyranny I will delight in
And force a oneness; I will violently
Compel the goddess that thou art. But I know
What soul is lodged within thee, thou as yet
Ignorest mine. I still hold in my strength,
Though it hungers like a lion for the leap,
And give thee time once more; misuse it not.
Beware, provoke not the fierce god too much;
Have dread of his flame round thee.

ASLAUG (alone)
Odin and Freya, you have snares! But see,
I have not thrown the dagger from my heart,
But clutch it still. How strange that look and tone,
That things of a corporeal potency
Not only travel coursing through the nerves
But seem to touch the seated soul within!
It was a moment’s wave, for it has passed
And the high purpose in my soul lives on
Unconquerably intending to fulfil.

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