O Mariamne, question not! You know the spell that knits me into you, You know that every day makes it more potent. Ah, but your heart must feel I have no strength To battle my own cause if you refuse Assurance that your heart-beats twin my own. Oh tell me, is that heart fiery or cold? And then I can tell you if Antony Will call me brother or condemn me straight To hunger-death in the earth-embowelled dungeon Whose blackness prisoned up Jugurtha’s death. You’re dumb? Oh be not dumb! How keen I feel That such confession scarce beseems a king; ’Tis not his part to yoke his neck beneath The common lot of man, ’tis not his part To bind his inmost on another’s life, He should be knit unto his God alone. I am not fashioned thus; when you last year Were sick to death, then I was busy too About self-slaughter that I might not live To see your death; and now that you know this Know yet another thing. If I should chance, Yes I, to be a-dying, I could do What you dread at Salome’s hands, I could A poison mix and give it you in wine, That even in death I might be sure of you. MAR. And were you to do that you would recover! HEROD. No, no! I would have shared the half with you! Now speak your heart. Were pardon in your grace For such o’erbrimming measure of love as this? MAR. If after quaffing such a drink I had Surviving breath to utter one last word, I’d call a curse on you with that last word. (_Aside._) Yea, all the sooner were it done the surer That I myself, if death should call you hence, Could in my pain stretch hands to grasp my dagger. That deed the heart can do, but suffer never! HEROD. In yester-evening’s fire there was a woman Consumed with her dead husband: ’gainst essay At rescue made she brindled up: this woman Of course meets your contempt? MAR. Who tells you that? She scorned at least to be an altar victim And sacrificed herself, a deed that proves She prized her dead love more than all the world. HEROD. And you, and I? MAR. If you dare tell yourself You’ve put me in the scales against the world, What could be left to keep me in the world? HEROD. The world! The world has many a sovereign still, And none among them but were fain to share His throne with you, not one who for your sake Would not abandon bride and oust his wife The very morn after his wedding-night. MAR. Is Cleopatra dead that you speak thus? HEROD.