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SARDANAPALUS
A monologue from the play by Lord Byron
download the complete text of Marino Faliero
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Lord Byron: Six Plays. Lord Byron. Los Angeles: Black Box Press, 2007. |
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- MYRRHA: Why do I love this man? My country's daughters
- Love none but heroes. But I have no country!
- The slave hath lost all save her bonds. I love him;
- And that's the heaviest link of the long chain—
- To love whom we esteem not. Be it so:
- The hour is coming when he'll need all love,
- And find none. To fall from him now were baser
- Than to have stabbed him on his throne when highest
- Would have been noble in my country's creed:
- I was not made for either. Could I save him,
- I should not love him better, but myself;
- And I have need of the last, for I have fallen
- In my own thoughts, by loving this soft stranger:
- And yet, methinks, I love him more, perceiving
- That he is hated of his own barbarians,
- The natural foes of all the blood of Greece.
- Could I but wake a single thought like those
- Which even the Phrygians felt when battling long
- 'Twixt Ilion and the sea, within his heart,
- He would tread down the barbarous crowds, and triumph.
- He loves me, and I love him; the slave loves
- Her master, and would free him from his vices.
- If not, I have a means of freedom still,
- And if I cannot teach him how to reign,
- May show him how alone a King can leave
- His throne.
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