TO B. J. FLETCHER
Reading edition
O RARE Ben Fletcher, oft I bless Your rotund Jacobean name; If the great crew could still express Their hearts in their dim place of Fame, As once at Globe or Mermaid-ales, With love your liking they would greet For country things and queens' mad tales And lines with sounding feet. But in this troublous newer time Such fellows have not filled your days, So it is left for me to chime These quieter verses of your praise: For a fair theme I need not strive While manhood knows as boyhood knew The joys of art, the joys of life, I have received from you. What days could ever be so long As those our pristine Summers poised O'er a charmed valley isled among Their bright slow-breaking tides unnoised? Then Dials were new and came to stir A passionate thirst within the eyes; Each dawn was a discoverer Of poets unearthly wise. First-comer of my friends, the years Behold much friendship fade and set; The shrunken world imparts its fears, Most men their early power forget. But art stays true for us, and we In it are steadfast: for a sign Its wonder joins us changelessly Your name stands here with mine.
March 8th, 1909.
ARGUMENT
Antiochus Theos, one of the Hellenic Kings of the East of the line of Seleucus, reigned in Antioch. He had espoused Laodice his kinswoman, according to the usage of his race; but after many years he put her from him, and took to wife Berenice, daughter and sister of Ptolemys of Egypt, for reasons of state.
Laodice withdrew to Ephesus and kept court there: long affection, resurgent, sent Antiochus thither to join her. Shortly afterward he died at Ephesus in Laodice's care.
Berenice and Laodice then warred, each to gain the kingdom for her child: the infant son of Berenice disappeared, and eventually Seleucus II., the son of Laodice, held the throne of Antiochus.
In the course of their wars Laodice retired from Ephesus on finding that Sophron, the governor of the city, secretly trafficked with the party of Berenice. While she sat in some adjacent city Sophron unsuspiciously rejoined her counsels; she immediately devised his death, but he, being warned by his old love Danaë, the queen's favourite, saved himself by flight.
PERSONS:
Laodice, a Queen of the Seleucid House in Asia.
Danaë, Mysta, Rhodogune, Barsine, and other Waiting-Women.
Three Women-Musicians.
Sophron, Seleucid Governor of Ephesus.
In Smyrna. B.C. 246.