Born in 1868, Stephen Phillips is best known as the author of Herod (1900), Paola and Francesca (1899), and Ulysses (1902); a poetic playwright who succeeded in reviving, for a brief interval, the blank verse drama on the modern stage. Hailed at first with extravagant and almost incredible praise, Phillips lived to see his most popular dramas discarded and his new ones, such as Pietro of Siena (1910), unproduced and unnoticed.
Phillips failed to "restore" poetic drama because he was, first of all, a lyric rather than a dramatic poet. In spite of certain moments of rhetorical splendor, his scenes are spectacular instead of emotional; his inspiration is too often derived from other models. He died in 1915.
FRAGMENT FROM "HEROD"
Herod speaks:
I dreamed last night of a dome of beaten gold
To be a counter-glory to the Sun.
There shall the eagle blindly dash himself,
There the first beam shall strike, and there the moon
Shall aim all night her argent archery;
And it shall be the tryst of sundered stars,
The haunt of dead and dreaming Solomon;
Shall send a light upon the lost in Hell,
And flashings upon faces without hope.—
And I will think in gold and dream in silver,
Imagine in marble and conceive in bronze,
Till it shall dazzle pilgrim nations
And stammering tribes from undiscovered lands,
Allure the living God out of the bliss,
And all the streaming seraphim from heaven.
BEAUTIFUL LIE THE DEAD
Beautiful lie the dead;
Clear comes each feature;
Satisfied not to be,
Strangely contented.
Like ships, the anchor dropped,
Furled every sail is;
Mirrored with all their masts
In a deep water.
A DREAM
My dead love came to me, and said:
'God gives me one hour's rest,
To spend with thee on earth again:
How shall we spend it best?'
'Why, as of old,' I said; and so
We quarrelled, as of old:
But, when I turned to make my peace,
That one short hour was told.
