SRI AUROBINDO
Collected Plays and Short Stories
Part One
Eric, Harald.
At dawn have all things ready for my march.
I come not back without the head of Swegn
Or else his living body. Send to me1
Aslaug the dancing-girl.
The empire with2 the knowledge of myself.
For this strong angel Love, this violent
And glorious guest, let it possess my heart
Without a rival, not invade the brain,
Not with imperious discord cleave my soul
Jangling its various3 harmonies, nor turn
The manifold music of humanity
Into a single and a maddening note.
Strength in the nature,4 wisdom in the mind,
Love in the heart complete the trinity
Of glorious manhood. There was the wide flaw, —
The coldness of the radiance that I was.
This was the vacant gap5 I could not fill.
It left my soul the torso of a god,
A great design unfinished and my works
Mighty and crude like things admired that pass,
Bare of the immortality that keeps
The ages.
O, the word they spoke was true! 
'Tis Love, 'tis Love fills up the gulfs6 of Time.
By Love we find our kinship with the stars,
The spacious uses of the sky. God's image
Lives nobly perfect in the soul he made,
Reflected in the nature of a man.7
Thou com'st to me! I give thee grace no more.
Only a heart.
A noble heart, though wayward. Give it me,
Aslaug, to be the secret of the dawns,
The heart of sweetness housed in Aslaug's breast
Delivered from revolt and ruled by love.
Why hast thou sent for me and forced to come?
Wilt thou have pity on me even yet
And on thyself?
I am a warrior, one
Who have known not mercy. Wilt thou teach it me?
I have learned, Aslaug, from my soul and Life
The great wise pitiless calmness of the gods,
Found for my strength the proud swift blows they deal
At all resistance to their absolute walk,
Thor's hammer-stroke upon the unshaped world.
Its will is beaten on a dreadful forge,
Its roads are hewn by violence divine.
Is there a greater and a sweeter way?
Knowest thou it? Wilt thou lead me there? Thy step
Swift and exultant, canst thou tread its flowers? 
I know not who inspires thy speech; it probes.
My mind tonight is full of Norway's needs.
Tonight I were not Norway!
Thou knowest Swegn?
I knew and I remember.
Yes, Swegn, — a soul
Brilliant and furious, violent and great,
A storm, a wind-swept ocean, not a man.
That would seize8 Norway? that will make it one?
But Odin gave the work to me. I came
Into this mortal frame for Odin's work.
So deify ambition and desire!
If one could snap this mortal body, then
Swegn even might rule, — not govern himself, yet govern
All Norway! Aslaug, canst thou rule thyself?
'Tis difficult for great and passionate hearts.
Then Swegn must die that Eric still may rule!
Was there no other way the gods could find?
A deadly duel are the feuds of kings.
They are so.
Aslaug, thou feelest for thy heart?
Unruled, it follows violent impulses,
This way, that way; working calamity,
Dreams that it helps the world. What shall I do,
Aslaug, with an unruly noble heart?
Shall we not load it with the chains of love,
And rob it of its treasured pain and wrath
And bind it to its own supreme desire?
Richly 'twould beat beneath an absolute rule
And sweetly liberated from itself
By a golden bondage.
And what of other impulses it holds?
They shall keep still;
They shall not cry nor question; they shall trust.
It cannot be that he reads all my heart!
The gods play with me in his speech.
Thou knowest
Why thou art called? 
I know why I am here.
Few know that, Aslaug, why they have come here,
For that is heaven's secret. Sit down beside me,
Nearer my heart. No hesitating! Come.
They yet are free.
Is it the gods who bid me to strike soon?
My heart reels down into a flaming gulf.
If thou wouldst rule with love, must thou not spare
Thy enemies?
When they have yielded. Is thy choice made?
Whatever defence thou hast against me yet
Use quickly, before I seize these restless hands,
And thy more restless heart that flees from bliss.
Desired'st thou me not to dance tonight,
O King, before thee?
Now? Dance, while yet thy limbs are thine.
I dance
The dance of Thiordis with the dagger, taught
To Hertha in Trondhjem and by her to me. 
Aslaug, my dancing-girl, thou and thy dance
Have daring, but too little subtlety.
What use to struggle longer in the net?
Vain agony, since he watches and he knows!
I'll strike him suddenly. One who was fit
For what I purpose, would not shrink at all
Finding the abyss about her either way,
But striking cleanse the touch in her own blood.
So might one act who was not her heart's prey.
Wilt thou play vainly with that fatal toy?
My limbs refuse.
They have no right.
O gods, I did not know myself till now,
Thrown in this furnace. Odin's irony
Shaped me from Olaf's seed! I am in love
With chains and servitude and my heart desires,
Fluttering, like a wild bird within its cage,
A tyrant's harshness.
Wilt thou dance? or wait
Till the enamoured motion of thy limbs
Remember joy of me? So would I have
Thy perfect movement9 grow a dream of love. 
But that shall be when Norway's only mine,
Swegn taken. Tomorrow at the dawn I march10
Towards vehement11 battle and the sword of Swegn
Bring back to be thy plaything, a support
Appropriate to thy action in the dance.
Aslaug, it shall replace thy dagger.
Fate
Still drives me with his speech, and Eric calls
My weakness on to slaughter Eric. Yes,
But he suspects, he knows. Yet will I strike,
Yet will I tread down my rebellious heart,
And when 'tis done, I'll strike myself and finish
With grief and shame and love.
Where is thy chain
I gave thee, Aslaug? I would watch it rise,
Rubies of passion on a bosom of snow,
And climb again upon thy breast aheave12
With the sea's rhythm as thou dancest. Dance
Weaving my life a measure with thy feet,
And of thy dancing I will weave the stroke
That conquers Swegn.
The necklace? I will bring it.
Rubies of passion! Blood-drops still of death!
The power to strike has gone out of her arm
And only in her stubborn thought survives. 
She thinks that she will strike. Let it be tried!
Now I could slay him! But he will open his eyes
Appalling with the beauty of his gaze.
He did not know of peril! All he has said
Was only at a venture thought and spoken, —
Or spoken by Fate? Sleeps he his latest sleep?
Might I not touch him only once in love —
And none know of it but death and I —
Whom I must slay like one who hates? Not hate,
O Eric, but the hard necessity
The gods have sent upon our lives, — two flames
That meet to quench each other. Once, Eric! then
The cruel rest. Why did I touch him? I am faint!
My strength ebbs from me. O thou glorious god,
Why wast thou Swegn's and Aslaug's enemy?
We might so easily have loved. But death
Now intervenes and claims thee at my hands —
And this alone he leaves to me, to slay thee
And die with thee, our only wedlock. Death!
Whose death? Eric's or Swegn's? For one I kill.
Dreadful necessity of choice! His breath
Comes quietly and with a happy rhythm,
His eyes are closed like Odin's in heaven's sleep.
If I must strike, it could be only now;13
For Time is like a sapper, mining still
The little resolution that I keep.
Swegn's death or life upon that little stands.
Swegn's death or life and such an easy stroke!
Yet so impossible to lift my hand!
To wait? To watch more moments these closed lids,
This quiet face and try to dream that all
Is different!
But the moments are Fate's thoughts 
Watching us.14 While I pause, my brother's slain,
Myself I am doomed a concubine and slave!
I must not think of him! Close, O mind, close, O eyes!
Free the unthinking hand to its harsh work.
She lifts twice the dagger and lowers
it twice, then flings it on the ground, falling
on her knees at Eric's feet.
Eric of Norway, live and do thy will
With Aslaug, sister of Swegn and Olaf's child,
Aslaug of Trondhjem! For her thought is grown15
A harlot and her heart a concubine,
Her hand her brother's murderess.
Thou hast broken
At last!
Ah, I am broken by my weak
And evil nature. Spare me not, O King,
One vileness, one humiliation known
To tyranny. Be not unjustly merciful!
For I deserve and I consent to all.
Aslaug!
No, I deny my name and parentage.
I am not she who lived in Trondhjem: she
Would not have failed, but slain even though she loved.
Let no voice call me Aslaug any more.
Sister of Swegn, thou knowest that I love.
Daughter of Olaf, shouldst thou not aspire 
To sit by me on Norway's throne?
Desist!
Thou shalt not utterly pollute the seat
Where Olaf sat. If I had struck and slain,
I would deserve a more than regal chair;
But not on such must Norway's diadem rest,
A weakling with a hand as impotent
And faltering as her heart, a sensual slave
Whose passionate body overcomes her high
Intention. Rather do thy tyrant will.
King, if thou spare me, I will slay thee yet.
Recoil not from thy heart, but strongly see
And let its choice be absolute over thy soul.
Its way once taken thou shalt find thy heart
Rapid; for absolute and extreme in all,
In yielding as in slaying thou must be,
Sweet violent spirit whom thy gods surprise.
Submit thyself without ashamed reserve.
What more canst thou demand than I have given?
I am prone to thee, prostrate, yielded.
Throw from thee
The bitterness of thy self-abasement. Find
That thou hast only joy in being mine.
Yes, with shame and grief and love.
Thou art my Fate and I am in thy grasp.
And shall it spare thee?
Spare Swegn. I am in thy hands.
Is't a condition? I am lord of thee
And lord of Swegn to slay him or to spare.
No, an entreaty. I am fallen here,
My head is at thy feet, my life is in thy hands.
The luxury of fall is in my heart.
Rise up then, Aslaug, and obey thy lord.
What is thy will with me?
This, Aslaug, first.
Take up thy dagger, Aslaug, dance thy dance
Of Thiordis with the dagger. See those near me;
For I shall sit nor, shouldst thou strike, defend.
What thy passion chose, let thy fixed heart confirm;
My life and kingdom twice are in thy hands
And I will keep them only as thy gift.
So are they thine already; but I obey.
Eric, my King and Norway's, my life is mine
No longer, but for thee to keep or break.
Swegn's life I hold.
Thou gavest it to me
With the dagger.
It is thine to save.
Norway
Thou hast given casting it forever away
From Olaf's line.
What thou hast taken, I give.
At last thyself without one refuge left
Against my passionate strong devouring love.
Thou seest I spare thee nothing.
Because thou hast no help.
I have no help. My gods have brought me here
And given me into thy dreadful hands.
Thou art content at last that they have breathed
This plot into thy mind to snare thy soul
In its own violence, bring to me a slave,
A bright-limbed prisoner and thee to thy lord?
Thy dagger could no more have touched my heart,16
Though undefended, than a wind the sun:
Fate and thy love were my friends within thy heart.
I know it now.
I recognise with prostrate heart my fate
And I will quietly put on my chains
Nor ever strive or wish to break them more.
Yield up to me the burden of thy fate
And treasure of thy limbs and priceless life.
I will be careful of the golden trust.
It was unsafe with thee. And now submit
Gladly at last. Surrender body and soul,
O Aslaug, to thy lover and thy lord.
Compel me; they cannot resist thy will.
But I will have thy heart's surrender, not
The body only. Give me up thy heart.
Open its secret chambers, yield their keys.
O Eric, is not my heart already thine,
My body thine, my soul into thy grasp
Delivered? I rejoice that God has played
The grand comedian with my tragedy
And trapped me in the snare of thy delight.
Aslaug, the world's sole woman! thou cam'st here
To save for us our hidden hopes of joy
Parted by old confusion. Some day surely
The world too shall be saved from death by Love.
Thou hast saved Swegn, helped Norway. Aslaug, see,
Freya within her niche commands this room
And incense burns to her. Nor Thor for thee,
But Freya.
Thou for me! not other gods.
Aslaug, thou hast a ring upon thy hands:
Before Freya give it me and wear instead
This ancient circle of Norwegian rites.
The thing this means shall bind thee to our joy,
Beloved, while the upbuilded worlds endure.
Then if thy spirit wander from its home,
Freya shall find her thrall and lead her back
A million years from now.
A million lives!
Aslaug
The world has changed for me within one night.
O surely, surely all shall yet go well,
Since Love is crowned.
When I must leave thee. For the dawn looks pale
Into our chamber and these first rare sounds
Expect the arising sun, the daylight world.
Eric, thou goest hence to war with Swegn,
My brother?
What thinks thy heart?
That Swegn shall live.
Thou know'st his safety from deliberate swords.
None shall dare touch the head that Aslaug loves.
Yet if some evil chance came edged with doom
Which Odin and my will shall not allow
Or in the fight his splendid rashness slew,
Thou wouldst not hold me guilty of his death,
Aslaug?
Fate orders all and Fate I now
Have recognised all the world's mystic will
That loves and labours.
Because it labours and loves
Our hearts, our wills are counted, are indulged.
Aslaug, for these few days in hope and trust
Anchor thy mind. I shall bring back thy joy,
Because I go with mercy and from love.
Swegn lives. A heart, not iron gods, o'errules.17
1 Alternative to two lines:
Let none be near tonight. Send here to me
2 and
3 ordered
4 spirit,
5 space
6 gaps
7 When Love completes the godhead in a man.
8 That will hold
9 motion
10 Alternative to two lines:
Tomorrow at the dawning will I march
11 violent
12 And climb forever on thy breast aheave
13 I must strike blindly out or not at all;
14 me.
15 now
16 breast,
17 Swegn lives. A Mind, not iron gods, with laws
Deaf and inevitable, overrules.
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