BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE PERSEUS THE DELIVERER was originally published in serial form in the weekly Bande Mataram, Calcutta, 1907. Subsequently it was included in Collected Poems and Plays of Sri Aurobindo, published in 1942, with the exception of two scenes which were not available at that time. The missing scenes (Act II, Scenes 2 & 3) were later found and included in the 1955 edition.   VASAVADUTTA exists in several versions, not all of them complete. What seems to be the last complete version has this note at the end: "Revised and recopied between April 8th and April 17th, 1916." An earlier version has a similar entry at the end: "Copied Nov. 2, 19

  Act One   SCENE I   An inner room of the palace in Avunthie. Chunda Mahasegn, seated; Gopalaca. MAHASEGN Vuthsa Udayan drives my fortune back. Our strengths retire from one luxurious boy, Defeated. GOPALACA I have seen him in the fight And I have lived to wonder. O, he ranges As lightly through the passages of war As might the moonbeam feet of some bright laughing girl, Her skill concealing in her reckless grace, The measures of a rapid dance. MAHASEGN If this dawn Brings its portentous morning to our gates, Our suns are ended. Yet I had great

SCENE IV     The hall in the palace. Timocles, Phayllus. TIMOCLES O, all the sweetness and the glory gathered Into one smiling life, the others left Barren, unbearable, bleak, desolate, A hell of silence and of emptiness Impossible for mortal souls to imagine, Much less to suffer. My mother does this wrong to me! Why should not we, kind brothers all our lives, — O, how we loved each other there in Egypt! — Divide this prize? Let his be Syria's crown, — Oh, let him take it! I have Rodogune. PHAYLLUS He will consent? TIMOCLES Oh, yes, and wi

SCENE II       A hall in the palace. Phayllus, Theras. THERAS His fortune holds. PHAYLLUS He has won great victories And stridden exultant like a god of death Over Grecian, Syrian and Armenian slain; But being mortal at each step has lost A little blood. His veins are empty now. Where will he get new armies ? His small force May beat Nicanor's large one, even reach Antioch, To find the Macedonian there. They have landed. He is ours, Theras, this great god of tempest, Our captive whom he threatens, doomed to death While he yet conquers.                                        Ti

SCENE V     A room in Vasavadutta's apartments. VASAVADUTTA I govern no longer what I speak and do.. Is this the fire my mother spoke of? Oh, It is sweet, it is sweet. But I will not be mastered By any equal creature. Let him serve Obediently and I will load his lovely head With costliest favours. He's my own, my own, My slave, my toy to play with as I choose, And shall not dare to play with me. I think he dares; I do not know, I think he would presume. He's gentle, brilliant, bold and beautiful. I'll send for him and chide and put him down, I'll chide him harshly; he must not presume. O,1 have forgotten almo

Act Five SCENE I     Eric, Gunthar, Swegn, Aslaug, Hertha. ERIC Not by love only, but by force and love. ' This man must lower his fierceness to the fierce, He must be beggared of the thing left, his pride And know himself for clay. He could not honour¹ This unfamiliar movement of my soul But would contemn and think my seated strength Had changed to trembling. Sound² the audience-gong,³ Herald. The master of my stars is he Who owns no master. Odin, what is this play, Thou playest with thy world, of fall and rise,, Of death, birth, greatness, ruin? The time m

SCENE II   The same. Perseus descends on winged sandals from the clouds. PERSEUS Rocks on the outland jagged with the sea, You slumbering promontories whose huge backs Jut into azure, and thou, O many-thundered Enormous Ocean, hail! Whatever lands Are ramparted with these forbidding shores, Yet if you hold felicitous roofs of men, Homes of delightful laughter, if you have streams Where chattering girls dip in their pitchers cool And dabble their white feet in the chill lapse Of waters, trees and a green-mantled earth, Cicalas noisy in a million boughs Or happy cheep of

SCENE II   A room in the women's apartments of the palace. Andromeda, Diomede, Praxilla. ANDROMEDA  My brother lives then? PRAXILLA Thanks to Tyre, it seems. DIOMEDE Thanks to the wolf who means to eat him later. PRAXILLA You'll lose your tongue some morning; rule it, girl. DIOMEDE These kings, these politicians, these high masters! These wise blind men! We slaves have eyes at least To look beyond transparency. PRAXILLA Because We stand outside the heated game unmoved By interests, fears and passions. ANDROMEDA He is a wolf, for

Act Three   The palace in Antioch.   SCENE I     The Audience Chamber in the palace. Nicanor, Phayllus and others seated;  Eunice, Philoctetes.., Thoas  apart near the dais. THOAS Is it patent ? Is he the elder ? do we know ? EUNICE Should he not rule? THOAS If Fate were wise, he should. EUNICE Will Timocles sack great Persepolis ? Sooner, I think, Phraates will couch here, The mighty, steadfast, patient subtle man, And from the loiterer take, the sensualist Antioch of the Seleucidae. THOAS Perhaps. But shall I rise against the country's laws

SCENE III       Before the Syrian hills. Antiochus' tent. Antiochus, Thoas, Leosthenes, Philoctetes. PHILOCTETES This is Phayllus' work, the Syrian mongrel. Who could have thought he'ld raise against us Greece And half this Asia ? ANTIOCHUS He has a brain. THOAS                       We feel it. This fight's our latest and one desperate chance Still smiles upon our fate. ANTIOCHUS Nicanor yields it us, Scattering his armies; for if we can seize, Before he gathers in his distant strengths, This middle pass, Antioch comes with it. So I find it best and think the gods d