This etext may not be copied, stored, or retransmitted in any form, except as noted below. Do not place a copy of this file on your own web site, not even if you leave the LitGothic credit in it; if you want to make etexts available to the wired world, do the work yourself. If you want to direct people visiting your site to these texts, I thank you for it, but only provide links directly to the texts here. Feel free to print out a copy for personal use, or a number of copies for classroom use, but that's it.
PERSONS REPRESENTED
Melveric, Duke of Munsterberg.
Adalmar, His son.
Athulf, his son
Wolfram, a knight. Brother of Isbrand
Isbrand, the court-fool. brother of Wolfram
Thorwald, Governor in the Duke's absence.
Mario, a Roman.
Siegfried, a courtier.
Ziba, an Egyptian slave.
Homunculus Mandrake, Zany to a mountebank.
Sibylla.
Amala, Thorwald's daughter.
Ioan.
Knights, Ladies, Arabs, Priests, Sailors, Guards, and other attendants.
The Dance of Death.
Scene: in the first act at Ancona, and afterwards in Egypt: in the latter acts at the town of Grüssau, residence of the Duke of Munsterberg, in Silesia.
Time: the end of the thirteenth century.
ACT I Scene I
Port of Ancona
Enter Mandrake and Joan
MANDRAKE:
Am I a man of gingerbread that you should mould me to your liking? To have my way, in spite of your tongue and reason's teeth, tastes better than Hungary wine; and my heart beats in a honey-pot now I reject you and all sober sense: so tell my master, the doctor, he must seek another zany for his booth, a new wise merry Andrew. My jests are cracked, my coxcomb fallen, my bauble confiscated, my cap decapitated. Toll the bell; for oh! for oh! Jack Pudding is no more!
JOAN:
Wilt thou away from me then, sweet Mandrake? Wilt thou not marry me?
MANDRAKE:
Child, my studies must first be ended. Thou knowest I hunger after wisdom, as the red sea after ghosts: therefore will I travel awhile.
JOAN:
Whither, dainty Homunculus?
MANDRAKE:
Whither should a student in the black arts, a journeyman magician, a Rosicrucian? Where is our country? You heard the herald this morning thrice invite all christian folk to follow the brave knight, Sir Wolfram, to the shores of Egypt, and there help to free from bondage his noble fellow in arms, Duke Melveric, whom, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, wild pagans captured. There, Joan, in that Sphynx land found Raimund Lully those splinters of the philosopher's stone with which he made English Edward's gold. There dwell hoary magicians, who have given up their trade and live sociably as crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. There can one chat with mummies in a pyramid, and breakfast on basilisk's eggs. Thither then, Homunculus Mandrake, son of the great Paracelsus; languish no more in the ignorance of these climes, but aboard with alembic and crucible, and weigh anchor for Egypt.
[Enter Isbrand.
ISBRAND:
Good morrow, brother Vanity! How? soul of a pickle-herring, body of a spagirical toss-pot, doublet of motley, and mantle of pilgrim, how art thou transmuted! Wilt thou desert our brotherhood, fool sublimate? Shall the motley chapter no longer boast thee? Wilt thou forswear the order of the bell, and break thy vows to Momus? Have mercy on Wisdom and relent.
MANDRAKE:
Respect the grave and sober, I pray thee. To-morrow I know thee not. In truth, I mark that our noble faculty is in its last leaf. The dry rot of prudence hath eaten the ship of fools to dust; she is no more sea worthy. The world will see its ears in a glass no longer; So we are laid aside and shall soon be forgotten; for why should the feast of asses come but once a year, when all the days are foaled of one mother? O world, world! The gods and fairies left thee, for thou wert too wise; and now, thou Socratic star, thy demon, the great Pan, Folly, is parting from thee. The oracles still talked in their sleep, shall our grand-children say, till Master Merriman's kingdom was broken up: now is every man his own fool, and the world's sign is taken down.
(He sings.)
Folly hath now turned out of door
Mankind and Fate, who were before
Jove's harlequin and clown:
For goosegrass-harvest now is o'er;
The world's no stage, no tavern more,
Its sign, the Fool's ta'en down.
ISBRAND:
Farewell, thou great-eared mind: I mark, by thy talk, that thou commencest philosopher, and then thou art only a fellow-servant out of livery. But lo! here come the uninitiated---
[Enter Thorwald, Amala, Wolfram, Knights and Ladies.
THORWALD:
The turning tide; the sea's wide leafless wind,
Wherein no birds inhabit and few traffic,
Making his cave within your sunny sails;
The eager waves, whose golden, silent kisses
Seal an alliance with your bubbling oars;
And our still-working wishes, that impress
Their meaning on the conscience of the world,
And prompt the unready Future,---all invite you
Unto your voyage. Prosperous be the issue,
As is the promise, and the purpose good!
Are all the rest aboard?
WOLFRAM:
All. 'Tis a band
Of knights, whose bosoms pant with one desire,
And live but in the hope to free their prince:
All hearts beat merrily, all arms are ready.
MANDRAKE:
All, sir Knight; even the very pigs and capons, and poor dear great Mandrake must be shipped too.
WOLFRAM:
Who is this saucy fellow, that prates between?
ISBRAND:
One of the many you have made. Yesterday he was a fellow of my colour and served a quacksalver, but now he lusts after the mummy country, whither you are bound. 'Tis a servant of the rosy cross, a correspondent of the stars; the dead are his boon companions, and the secrets of the moon his knowledge. But had I been cook to a chameleon, I could not sweeten the air to his praise enough. Suffice it, of his wisdom Solomon knew less than a bee of fossil flowers, or the ambrosian demigods of table beer. We fools send him as our ambassador to Africa; take him with you, or be yourself our consul.
WOLFRAM:
Aboard then in all speed; and sink us not with thy understanding.
MANDRAKE:
I thank thee, Knight. Twice shalt thou live for this, if I bottle eternity.
[Exit, with JOAN.
THORWALD:
These letters yet, full of most weighty secrets:
Wherein, of what I dare but whisper to thee,
Since the dissemblers listen to our speech;
Of his two sons, whose love and dread ambition,
Crossing like deadly swords, teach us affright;
And of the uncertain people, who incline
Daily more to the present influence,
Forgetting all that their sense apprehends not;
I have at large discoursed unto the duke:
And may you find his spirit strong to bear
The bending load of such untoward tidings,
As must press hard upon him.
AMALA:
And forget not
Our duke, with gentle greetings, to remind
Of those who have no sword to raise for him,
But whose unarmed love is not less true,
Than theirs who seek him helmed. Farewell, sir knight;
They say you serve a lady in those lands,
So we dare offer you no token else
But our good wishes.
WOLFRAM:
Thanks, and farewell to all;
And so I take my leave.
AMALA:
We to our homes;
You to the homeless waves; unequal parting.
WOLFRAM:
The earth may open, and the sea o'erwhelm;
Many the ways, the little home is one;
Thither the courser leads, thither the helm,
And at one gate we meet when all is done.
[Exeunt all but Wolfram and Isbrand.
ISBRAND:
Stay: you have not my blessing yet. With what jest shall I curse you in earnest? Know you this garb, and him who wears it, and wherefore it is worn? A father slain and plundered; a sister's love first worn in the bosom, then trampled in the dust: our fraternal bond, shall it so end that thou savest him whom we should help to damn? O do it, and I shall learn to laugh the dead out of their coffins!
WOLFRAM:
Hence with your dark demands: let's shape our lives
After the merciful lesson of the sun,
That gilds our purpose. See the dallying waves
Caress invitingly into their bosom
My fleet ship's keel, that at her anchor bounds
As doth the greyhound at her leader's hand,
Following her eye beams after the light roe.
ISBRAND:
Away then, away! Thus perish our good Revenge! Unfurl your sails: let all the honest finny folk of ocean, and those fair witty spinsters, the mermaids, follow your luckless boats with mockery: sea serpents and sea-dogs and venomous krakens have mercy on your mercy, and drag you down to the salt water element of pity! What, O! what spirit of our ancestral enemies would dare to whisper through our father's bones the tale of thy apostacy? Deliver him from the Saracens' irons, or the coil of the desert snake, who robbed our sire's grey hairs of a kingdom, his heart of its best loved daughter, and trod him down a despairing beggar to the crowned corpses of our progenitors? Save him, who slew our hopes; who cozened us of our share of this sepulchral planet, whereon our statues should have stood sceptred? Revenge, Revenge lend me your torch, that I may by its bloody fire see the furrows of this man's countenance, which once were iron, like the bars of Hell gate, and devilish thoughts peeped through them; but now are as a cage of very pitiful apes.
WOLFRAM:
Should we repent this change? I know not why.
We came disguised into the court, stiff limbed
With desperate intent, and doubly souled
With murder's devil and our own still ghosts.
But must I not relent, finding the heart,
For which my dagger hungered, so inclined
In brotherly affection unto me?
O bless the womanish weakness of my soul,
Which came to slay, and leads me now to save!
ISBRAND:
Hate! Hate! Revenge and blood! These are the first words my boys shall learn. What accursed poison has that Duke, that snake, with his tongue, his fang, dropped into thine ear? Thou art no brother of mine more: his soul was of that tune which shall awaken the dead: for thine! if I could make a trumpet of the devil's antlers, and blow thee through it, my lady's poodle would be scarce moved to a hornpipe. O fie on't! Thou my brother? Say when hast thou undergone transfusion, and whose hostile blood now turns thy life's wheels? Who has poured Lethe into thy veins, and washed thy father out of heart and brains? Ha! be pale, and smile, and be prodigal of thy body's movements, for thou hast no soul more. That thy sire placed in thee; and, with the determination to avenge him, thou hast driven it out of doors. But 'tis well so: why lament? Now I have all the hatred and revenge of the world to myself to abhor and murder him with.
WOLFRAM:
Thou speak'st unjustly, what thou rashly think'st;
But time must soften and convince: now leave me,
If thou hast nothing but reproach for pastime.
ISBRAND:
Be angry then, and we will curse each other. But if thou goest now to deliver this man, come not again for fear of me and our father's spirit: for when he visits me in the night, screaming revenge, my heart forgets that my head wears a fool's cap, and dreams of daggers: come not again then!
WOLFRAM:
O think not, brother, that our father's spirit
Breathes earthy passion more: he is with me
And guides me to the danger of his foe,
Bringing from heaven, his home, pity and pardon.
But, should his blood need bloody expiation,
Then let me perish. Blind these eyes, my sire,
Palsy my vigorous arm, snow age upon me,
Strike me with lightning down into the deep,
Open me any grave that earth can spare,
Leave me the truth of love, and death is lovely.
[Exit.
ISBRAND:
O lion-heartedness right asinine!
Such lily-livered meek humanity
Saves not thy duke, good brother; it but shines
Sickly upon his doom, as moonbeams breaking
Upon a murderer's grave-digging spade.
Or fate's a fool, or I will be his fate.
What ho! Sir Knight! One word---Now for a face
As innocent and lamblike as the wool
That brings a plague.
[Re-enter Wolfram.
WOLFRAM:
What will you more with me?
ISBRAND:
Go, if you must and will; but take with you
At least this letter of the governor's,
Which, in your haste, you dropped. I must be honest,
For so my hate was ever. Go.
WOLFRAM:
And prosper!
[Exit.
ISBRAND:
Now then he plunges right into the waters!
O Lie, O Lie, O lovely lady Lie,
They told me that thou art the devil's daughter.
Then thou art greater than thy father, Lie;
For while he mopes in Hell, thou queen'st it bravely,
Ruling the earth under the name of Truth,
While she is at the bottom of the well,
Where Joseph left her.
Song from the ship.
To sea, to sea! The calm is o'er;
The wanton water leaps in sport,
And rattles down the pebbly shore;
The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort,
And unseen Mermaids' pearly song
Comes bubbling up, the weeds among.
Fling broad the sail, dip deep the oar:
To sea, to sea! the calm is o'er.
To sea, to sea! our wide-winged bark
Shall billowy cleave its sunny way,
And with its shadow, fleet and dark,
Break the caved Tritons' azure day,
Like mighty eagle soaring light
O'er antelopes on Alpine height.
The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!
ISBRAND:
The idiot merriment of thoughtless men!
How the fish laugh at them, that swim and toy
About the ruined ship, wrecked deep below,
Whose pilot's skeleton, all full of sea weeds,
Leans on his anchor, grinning like their Hope.
But I will turn my bosom now to thee,
Brutus, thou saint of the avenger's order;
Refresh me with thy spirit, or pour in
Thy whole great ghost. Isbrand, thou tragic fool,
Cheer up. Art thou alone? Why so should be
Creators and destroyers. I'll go brood,
And strain my burning and distracted soul
Against the naked spirit of the world,
Till some portent's begotten.
Scene II
The African Coast: a woody solitude near the sea. In the back ground ruins overshadowed by the characteristic vegetation of the oriental regions. The Duke and Sibylla; the latter sleeping in a tent.
DUKE:
Soft sleep enwrap thee: with his balm bedew
Thy young fair limbs, Sibylla: thou didst need
The downy folding of his arms about thee.
And wake not yet, for still the starless night
Of our misfortune holds its ghostly noon.
No serpent shall creep o'er the sand to sting thee,
No springing tiger, no uncouth sea-monster,
(For such are now the partners of thy chamber,)
Disturb thy rest: only the birds shall dare
To shake the sparkling blossoms that hang o'er thee,
And fan thee with their wings. As I watch for thee,
So may the power, that has so far preserved us,
Now in the uttermost, now that I feel
The cold drops on my forehead, and scarce know
Whether Fear shed them there, or the near breath
Of our pursuing foes has settled on it,
Stretch its shield o'er us.
[Enter Ziba.
What bring'st, Ziba? Hope?
Else be as dumb as that thou bring'st, Despair.
ZIBA:
Fruits: as I sat among the boughs, and robbed
The sparrows and their brothers of their bread,
A horde of casqued Saracens rode by,
Each swearing that thy sword should rest ere night
Within his sheath, his weapon in thy breast.
DUKE:
Speak lower, Ziba, lest the lady wake.
Perhaps she sleeps not, but with half-shut eyes
Will hear her fate. The slaves shall need to wash
My sword of Moslem blood before they sheath it.
Which path took they?
ZIBA:
Sleeping, or feigning sleep,
Well done of her: 'tis trying on a garb
Which she must wear, sooner or later, long:
'Tis but a warmer lighter death. The ruffians,
Of whom I spoke, turned towards the cedar forest,
And, as they went in, there rushed forth a lion
And tore their captain down. Long live the lion!
We'll drink his tawny health: he gave us wine.
For, while the Moors in their black fear were flying,
I crept up to the fallen wretch, and borrowed
His flask of rubious liquor. May the prophet
Forgive him, as I do, for carrying it!
This for to-day: to-morrow hath gods too,
Who'll ripen us fresh berries, and uncage
Another lion on another foe.
DUKE:
Brave Arab, thanks. But saw'st thou from the heights
No christian galley steering for this coast?
ZIBA:
I looked abroad upon the wide old world,
And in the sky and sea, through the same clouds,
The same stars saw I glistening, and nought else.
And as my soul sighed unto the world's soul,
Far in the north a wind blackened the waters,
And, after that creating breath was still,
A dark speck sat on the sky's edge: as watching
Upon the heaven-girt border of my mind
The first faint thought of a great deed arise,
With force and fascination I drew on
The wished sight, and my hope seemed to stamp
Its shape upon it. Not yet is it clear
What, or from whom, the vessel.
DUKE:
Liberty!
Thou breakest through our dungeon's wall of waves,
As morning bursts the towery spell of night.
Horse of the desert, thou, coy arrowy creature,
Startest like sunrise up, and, from thy mane
Shaking abroad the dews of slumber, boundest
With sparkling hoof along the scattered sands,
The livelong day in liberty and light.
But see, the lady stirs. Once more look out,
And thy next news be safety.
[Exit ZIBA.
Hast thou gathered
Rest and refreshment from thy desert couch,
My fair Sibylla?
SIBYL:
Deeply have I slept.
As one who hath gone down unto the springs
Of his existence and there bathed, I come
Regenerate up into the world again.
Kindest protector, 'tis to thee I owe
This boon, a greater than my parents gave.
Me, who had never seen this earth, this heaven,
The sun, the stars, the flowers, but shut from nature
Within my dungeon birthplace lived in darkness,
Me hast thou freed from the oppressor's chain,
And godlike given me this heaven, this earth,
The flowers, the stars, the sun. Methinks it were
Ingratitude to thank thee for a gift
So measurelessly great.
DUKE:
As yet, sweet lady,
I have deserved but little thanks of thine.
We've not yet broken prison. This wall of waves
Still towers between us and the world of men;
That too I hope to climb. Our true Egyptian
Hath brought me news of an approaching ship.
When that hath borne thee to our German shore,
And thou amongst the living tastest life,
And gallants shall have shed around thy presence
A glory of the starry looks of love,
For thee to move in, thank me then.
SIBYL:
I wish not
To leave this shady quiet bower of life.
Why should we seek cruel mankind again?
Nature is kinder far: and every thing
That lives around us, with its pious silence,
Gives me delight: the insects, and the birds
That come unto our table, seeking food,
The flowers, upon whose petals Night lays down
Her dewy necklace, are my dearest playmates.
O let us never leave them.
DUKE:
That would be
To rob thy fate of thee. In other countries
Another godliker mankind doth dwell,
Whose works each day adorn and deify
The world their fathers left them. Thither shalt thou,
For among them must be the one thou'rt born for.
Durst thou be such a traitress to thy beauty
As to live here unloving and unloved?
SIBYL:
Love I not thee? O, if I feel beside thee
Content and an unruffled calm, in which
My soul doth gather round thee, to reflect
Thy heavenly goodness: if I feel my heart
So full of comfort near thee, that no room
For any other wish, no doubt, remains;
Love I not thee?
DUKE:
Dear maiden, thou art young.
Thou must see many, and compare their merits
Ere thou canst choose. Esteem and quiet friendship
Oft bear Love's semblance for awhile.
SIBYL:
I know it;
Thou shalt hear how. A year and more is past
Since a brave Saxon knight did share our prison;
A noble generous man, in whose discourse
I found much pleasure: yet, when he was near me,
There ever was a pain which I could taste
Even in the thick and sweetest of my comfort:
Strange dread of meeting, greater dread of parting:
My heart was never still: and many times,
When he had fetched me flowers, I trembled so
That oft they fell as I was taking them
Out of his hand. When I would speak to him
I heard not, and I knew not what I said.
I saw his image clearer in his absence
Than near him, for my eyes were strangely troubled;
And never had I dared to talk thus to him.
Yet this I thought was Love. O self deceived!
For now I can speak all I think to thee
With confidence and ease. What else can that be
Except true love?
DUKE:
The like I bear to thee,
O more than all that thou hast promised me:
For if another being stepped between us,
And were he my best friend, I must forget
All vows, and cut his heart away from mine.
SIBYL:
Think not on that: it is impossible.
DUKE:
Yet, my Sibylla, oft first love must perish;
Like the poor snow-drop, boyish love of Spring,
Born pale to die, and strew the path of triumph
Before the imperial glowing of the rose,
Whose passion conquers all.
[Enter ZIBA.
ZIBA:
O my dear lord, we're saved!
DUKE:
How? Speak quickly.
Though every word hath now no meaning in't,
Since thou hast said 'she's saved.'
ZIBA:
The ship is in the bay, a christian knight
Steps from his boat upon the shore.
DUKE:
Blest hour!
And yet how palely, with what faded lips
Do we salute this unhoped change of fortune!
Thou art so silent, lady; and I utter
Shadows of words, like to an ancient ghost,
Arisen out of hoary centuries
Where none can speak his language. I had thought
That I should laugh, and shout, and leap on high:
But see this breath of joy hath damped my soul,
Melted the icy mail, with which despair
Had clad my heart and sealed the springs of weakness:
And O! how feeble, faint, and sad I go
To welcome what I prayed for. Thou art silent;
How art thou then, my love?
SIBYL:
Now Hope and Fear
Stand by me, masked in one another's shapes;
I know not which is which, and, if I did,
I doubt which I should choose.
[Enter a Knight.
KNIGHT:
Hither, Sir Knight---
DUKE:
What knight?
KNIGHT:
What knight, but Wolfram?
DUKE:
Wolfram, my knight!
SIBYL:
My day, my Wolfram!
DUKE:
Know'st him?
SIBYL:
His foot is on my heart; he comes, he comes.
[Enter Wolfram, knights and attendants.
WOLFRAM:
Are these thy comrades?
Then, Arab, thy life's work and mine is done.
My duke, my brother knight!
DUKE:
O friend! So call me!
Wolfram, thou comest to us like a god,
Giving life where thou touchest with thy hand.
WOLFRAM:
Were it mine own, I'd break it here in twain,
And give you each a half.
DUKE:
I will not thank thee,
I will not welcome thee, embrace and bless thee;
Nor will I weep in silence. Gratitude,
Friendship, and Joy are beggar'd, and turned forth
Out of my heart for shallow hypocrites:
They understand me not; and my soul, dazzled,
Stares on the unknown feelings that now crowd it,
Knows none of them, remembers none, counts none,
More than a new-born child in its first hour.
One word, and then we'll speak of this no more:
At parting each of us did tear a leaf
Out of a magic book, and, robbing life
Of the red juice with which she feeds our limbs,
We wrote a mutual bond. Dost thou remember?
WOLFRAM:
And if a promise reaches o'er the grave
My ghost shall not forget it. There I swore
That, if I died before thee, I would come
With the first weeds that shoot out of my grave,
And bring thee tidings of our real home.
DUKE:
That bond hast thou now cancelled thus; or rather
Unto me lying in my sepulchre
Comest thou, and say'st, "Arise and live again."
WOLFRAM:
And with thee dost thou bring some angel back.
Look on me, lady.
SIBYL: (aside)
Pray heaven, it be not
The angel of the death of one of you,
To make the grave and the flowers' roots amends.
Now turn I to thee, knight. O dared I hope,
Thou hast forgotten me!
WOLFRAM:
Then dead indeed
Were I, and my soul disinherited
Of immortality, which love of thee
Gave me the proof of first. Forgotten thee!
Ay; if thou be not she, with whom I shared
Few months ago that dungeon, which thy presence
Lit with delight unknown to liberty;
If thou be not Sibylla, she whose semblance
Here keepeth watch upon my breast. Behold it:
Morning and night my heart doth beat against it.
Thou gavest it me one day, when I admired,
Above all crystal gems, a dewdrop globe
Which, in the joyous dimple of a flower,
Imaged thee tremulously. Since that time
Many a secret tear hath mirrored thee,
And many a thought, over this pictured beauty.
Speak to me then: or art thou, as this toy,
Only the likeness of the maid I loved?
But there's no seeming such a one. O come!
This talking is a pitiful invention:
We'll leave it to the wretched. All my science,
My memory, I'd give for this one joy,
And keep it ever secret.
SIBYL:
Wolfram, thou movest me:
With soul-compelling looks thou draw'st me to thee:
O! at thy call I must surrender me,
My lord, my love, my life.
DUKE:
Thy life! O lives, that dwell
In these three bosoms, keep your footings fast,
For there's a blasting thought stirring among you.
They love each other. Silence! Let them love;
And let him be her love. She is a flower,
Growing upon a grave. Now, gentle lady,
Retire, beseech you, to the tent and rest.
My friend and I have need to use those words
Which are bequeathed unto the miserable.
Come hither; you have made me master of them:
Who dare be wretched in the world beside me?
Think now what you have done; and tremble at it.
But I forgive thee, love. Go in and rest thee.
SIBYL:
And he?
DUKE:
Is he not mine?
WOLFRAM:
Go in, sweet, fearlessly.
I come to thee, before thou'st time to feel
That I am absent.
[Exit Sibylla, followed by the rest.
DUKE:
Wolfram, we have been friends.
WOLFRAM:
And will be ever.
I know no other way to live.
DUKE:
'Tis pity.
I would you had been one day more at sea.
WOLFRAM:
Why so?
DUKE:
You're troublesome to-day. Have you not marked it?
WOLFRAM:
Alas! that you should say so.
DUKE:
That's all needless.
Those times are past, forgotten. Hear me, knight:
That lady's love is mine. Now you know that,
Do what you dare.
WOLFRAM:
The lady! my Sibylla!
I would I did not love thee for those words,
That I might answer well.
DUKE:
Unless thou yield'st her---
For thou hast even subdued her to thy arms,
Against her will and reason, wickedly
Torturing her soul with spells and adjurations,---
Unless thou giv'st her the free will again
To take her natural course of being on,
Which flowed towards me with gentle love:---O Wolfram,
Thou know'st not how she filled my soul so doing,
Even as the streams an ocean:---Give her me,
And we are friends again. But I forget:
Thou lovest her too; a stern, resolved rival;
And passionate, I know. Nay then, speak out:
'Twere better that we argued warmly here,
Till the blood has its way.
WOLFRAM:
Unworthy friend!
My lord---
DUKE:
269 Forget that I am so, and many things
270 Which we were to each other, and speak out.
271 I would we had much wine; 'twould bring us sooner
272 To the right point.
WOLFRAM:
272 Can it be so? O Melveric!
273 I thought thou wert the very one of all
274 Who shouldst have heard my secret with delight.
275 I thought thou wert my friend.
DUKE:
275 Such things as these,
276 Friendship, esteem, faith, hope, and sympathy,
277 We need no more: away with them for ever!
278 Wilt follow them out of the world? Thou see'st
279 All human things die and decay around us.
280 'Tis the last day for us; and we stand bare
281 To let our cause be tried. See'st thou not why?
282 We love one creature: which of us shall tear her
283 Out of his soul? I have in all the world
284 Little to comfort me, few that do name me
285 With titles of affection, and but one
286 Who came into my soul at its night-time,
287 As it hung glistening with starry thoughts
288 Alone over its still eternity,
289 And gave it godhead. Thou art younger far,
290 More fit to be beloved; when thou appearest
291 All hearts incline to thee, all prouder spirits
292 Are troubled unto tears and yearn to love thee.
293 O, if thou knew'st thy heart-compelling power,
294 Thou wouldst not envy me the only creature
295 That holds me dear. If I were such as thou,
296 I would not be forgetful of our friendship,
297 But yield to the abandoned his one joy.
WOLFRAM:
298 Thou prob'st me to the quick: before to-day,
299 Methought thou could'st from me nothing demand
300 And I refuse it.
DUKE:
300 Wolfram, I do beseech thee;
301 The love of her's my heaven; thrust me not from her;
302 I have no hope elsewhere: thrust me not from her;
303 Or thou dost hurl me into hell's embrace,
304 Making me the devil's slave to thy perdition.
WOLFRAM:
305 O, would to heaven,
306 That I had found thee struggling in a battle,
307 Alone against the swords of many foes!
308 Then had I rescued thee, and died content,
309 Ignorant of the treasure I had saved thee.
310 But now my fate hath made a wisher of me:
311 O woe that so it is! O woe to wish
312 That she had never been, who is the cause!
DUKE:
313 He is the cause! O fall the curse on him,
314 And may he be no more, who dares the gods
315 With such a wish! Speak thou no more of love,
316 No more of friendship here: the world is open:
317 I wish you life and merriment enough
318 From wealth and wine, and all the dingy glory
319 Fame doth reward those with, whose love-spurned hearts
320 Hunger for goblin immortality.
321 Live long, grow old, and honour crown thy hairs,
322 When they are pale and frosty as thy heart.
323 Away. I have no better blessing for thee.
324 Wilt thou not leave me?
WOLFRAM:
324 Should I leave thee thus?
DUKE:
325 Why not? or must I hate thee perfectly?
326 And tell thee so? Away now I beseech you!
327 Have I not cut all ties betwixt us off?
328 Why, wert thou my own soul, I'd drive thee from me.
329 Go, put to sea again.
WOLFRAM:
329 Farewell then, Duke
330 Methinks thy better self indeed hath parted,
331 And that I follow.
[Exit.
DUKE:
331 Thither? Thither? Traitor
332 To every virtue. Ha! What's this thought,
333 Shapeless and shadowy, that keeps wheeling round,
334 Like a dumb creature that sees coming danger,
335 And breaks its heart trying in vain to speak?
336 I know the moment: 'tis a dreadful one,
337 Which in the life of every one comes once;
338 When, for the frighted hesitating soul,
339 High heaven and luring sin with promises
340 Bid and contend: oft the faltering spirit,
341 O'ercome by the fair fascinating fiend,
342 Gives her eternal heritage of life
343 For one caress, for one triumphant crime.---
344 Pitiful villain! that dost long to sin,
345 And dar'st not. Shall I dream my soul is bathing
346 In his reviving blood, yet lose my right,
347 My only health, my sole delight on earth,
348 For fear of shadows on a chapel wall
349 In some pale painted Hell? No: by thy beauty,
350 I will possess thee, maiden. Doubt and care
351 Be trampled in the dust with the worm conscience!
352 Farewell then, Wolfram: now Amen is said
353 Unto thy time of being in this world:
354 Thou shalt die. Ha! the very word doth double
355 My strength of life: the resolution leaps
356 Into my heart divinely, as doth Mars
357 Upon the trembling footboard of his car,
358 Hurrying into battle wild and panting,
359 Even as my death-dispensing thought does now.
360 Ho! Ziba!
[Enter Ziba.
Hush! How still, how full, how lightly
I move since this resolve, about the place,
Like to a murder-charged thunder cloud
Lurking about the starry streets of night,
Breathless and masked,
365 O'er a still city sleeping by the sea.
366 Ziba, come hither; thou'rt the night I'll hang
367 My muffled wrath in. Come, I'll give thee work
368 Shall make thy life still darker, for one light on't
369 Must be put out. O let me joy no more,
370 Till Fate hath kissed my wooing soul's desire
371 Off her death-honied lips, and so set seal
372 To my decree, in which he's sepulchred.
373 Come, Ziba, thou must be my counsellor.
[Exeunt.
Scene III.
A Tent on the sea-shore: sun-set. Wolfram and Sibylla.
WOLFRAM:
1 This is the oft-wished hour, when we together
2 May walk upon the sea-shore: let us seek
3 Some greensward overshadowed by the rocks.
4 Wilt thou come forth? Even now the sun is setting
5 In the triumphant splendour of the waves.
6 Hear you not how they leap?
SIBYL:
6 Nay; we will watch
7 The sun go down upon a better day:
8 Look not on him this evening.
WOLFRAM:
8 Then let's wander
9 Under the mountain's shade in the deep valley,
10 And mock the woody echoes with our songs.
SIBYL:
11 That wood is dark, and all the mountain caves
12 Dreadful, and black, and full of howling winds:
13 Thither we will not wander.
WOLFRAM:
13 Shall we seek
14 The green and golden meadows, and there pluck
15 Flowers for thy couch, and shake the dew out of them?
SIBYL:
16 The snake that loves the twilight is come out,
17 Beautiful, still, and deadly; and the blossoms
18 Have shed their fairest petals in the storm
19 Last night; the meadow's full of fear and danger.
WOLFRAM:
20 Ah! you will to the rocky fount, and there
21 We'll see the fire-flies dancing in the breeze,
22 And the stars trembling in the trembling water,
23 And listen to the daring nightingale
24 Defying the old night with harmony.
SIBYL:
25 Nor that: but we will rather here remain,
26 And earnestly converse. What said the Duke?
27 Surely no good.
WOLFRAM:
27 A few unmeaning words,
28 I have almost forgotten.
SIBYL:
28 Tell me truly,
29 Else I may fear much worse.
WOLFRAM:
29 Well: it may be
30 That he was somewhat angry. 'Tis no matter;
31 He must soon cool and be content.
[Enter Ziba.
ZIBA:
31 Hail, knight!
32 I bring to thee the draught of welcome. Taste it.
33 The Grecian sun ripened it in the grape,
34 Which Grecian maidens plucked and pressed: then came
35 The desart Arab to the palace gate,
36 And took it for his tribute. It is charmed;
37 And they who drink of such have magic dreams.
WOLFRAM:
38 Thanks for thy care. I'll taste it presently:
39 Right honey for such bees as I.
[Enter a Knight.
KNIGHT:
39 Up, brave Wolfram!
40 Arouse thee, and come forth to help and save.
WOLFRAM:
41 Here is my sword. Who needs it?
SIBYL:
41 Is't the Duke?
42 O my dark Fear!
KNIGHT:
42 'Tis he. Hunting in the forest,
43 A band of robbers rushed on us.
WOLFRAM:
How many?
KNIGHT:
44 Some twelve to five of us; and in the fight,
45 Which now is at the hottest, my sword failed me.
46 Up, good knight, in all speed: I'll lead the way.
WOLFRAM:
47 Sibylla, what deserves he at our hands?
SIBYL:
48 Assist him; he preserved me.
WOLFRAM:
48 For what end?
SIBYL:
49 Death's sickle points thy questions. No delay:
50 But hence.
[Enter a second Knight.
WOLFRAM:
51 Behold another from the field,---
52 Thy news?
2nd KNIGHT:
53 My fellow soldiers all
54 Bleed and grow faint: fresh robbers pour upon us,
55 And the Duke stands at bay unhelmed against them.
WOLFRAM:
56 Brave comrade, keep the rogues before thee, dancing
57 At thy sword's point, but a few moments longer;
58 Then I am with thee. Farewell thou, Sibylla;
59 He shall not perish thus. Rise up, my men,
60 To horse with sword and spear, and follow flying.
61 I pledge thee, lady. (takes the goblet)
Ziba (dashing it to the ground).
61 Flow wine, like Moorish gore.
62 Ha! it rings well and lies not. 'Tis right metal
63 For funeral bells.
WOLFRAM:
63 Slave, what hast thou done?
ZIBA:
64 Pour thou unto the subterranean gods
65 Libations of thy blood: I have shed wine.
66 Now, will ye not away?
WOLFRAM:
66 Come hither, dark one:
67 Say, on thy life, why hast thou spilt that wine?
ZIBA:
68 A superstitious fancy: but now hence.
69 'Twas costly liquor too.
WOLFRAM:
69 Then finish it.
70 'Twas well that fortune did reserve for you
71 These last and thickest drops here at the bottom.
ZIBA:
72 Drink them? forbid the prophet!
WOLFRAM:
72 Slave, thou diest else.
ZIBA:
73 Give me the beaker then.---O God, I dare not.
74 Death is too bitter so: alas! 'tis poison.
SIBYL:
75 Pernicious caitiff!
WOLFRAM:
75 Patience, my Sibylla!
76 I knew it by thy lying eye. Thou'rt pardoned.
77 I may not tread upon the toothless serpent.
78 But for thy lord, the Saracen deal with him
79 As he thinks fit. Wolfram can aid no murderer.
SIBYL:
80 Mercy! O let me not cry out in vain:
81 Forgive him yet.
WOLFRAM:
81 The crime I do forgive:
82 And Heaven, if he's forgiven there, preserve him!
83 O monstrous! in the moment when my heart
84 Looked back on him with the old love again,
85 Then was I marked for slaughter by his hand.
86 Forgive him? 'Tis enough: 'tis much. Lie still
87 Thou sworded hand, and thou be steely, heart.
[Enter a third Knight wounded.
3rd KNIGHT:
88 Woe! woe! Duke Melveric is the Arabs' captive.
SIBYL:
89 Then Heaven have mercy on him!
WOLFRAM:
89 So 'tis best:
90 He was o'erthrown and mastered by his passion,
91 As by a tiger. Death will burst the fetters.
3rd KNIGHT:
92 They bind him to a pillar in the desart,
93 And aim their poisoned arrows at his heart.
WOLFRAM:
94 O Melveric, why didst thou so to me?
95 Sibylla, I despise this savage Duke,
96 But thus he shall not die. No man in bonds
97 Can be my enemy. He once was noble;
98 Once very noble. Let me set him free,
99 And we can then be knightly foes again.
100 Up, up, my men, once more and follow me.
101 I bring him to thee, love, or ne'er return.
SIBYL:
102 A thousand tearful thanks for this. O Wolfram! [Exeunt severally.
Scene IV.
A forest: the moonlit sea glistens between the trees. Enter Arabs with the Duke.
1st ARAB:
1 Against this column: there's an ancient beast
2 Here in the neighbourhood, which to-night will thank us
3 For the ready meal.
[they bind the Duke against a column.
2nd ARAB:
3 Christian, to thy houris
4 Boast that we took thy blood in recompense
5 Of our best comrades.
1st ARAB:
5 Hast a saint or mistress?
6 Call on them, for next minute comes the arrow.
DUKE:
7 O Wolfram! now methinks thou lift'st the cup.
8 Strike quickly, Arab.
1st. ARAB:
8 Brothers, aim at him.
[Enter Wolfram and knights.
WOLFRAM:
9 Down, murderers, down.
2nd ARAB:
10 Fly! there are hundreds on us.
(Fight---the Arabs are beaten out and pursued by the knights.)
WOLFRAM: (unbinding the Duke)
11 Thank heaven, not too late! Now you are free.
12 There is your life again.
DUKE:
12 Hast thou drunk wine?
13 Answer me, knight, hast thou drunk wine this evening?
WOLFRAM:
14 Nor wine, nor poison. The slave told me all.
15 O Melveric, if I deserve it from thee,
16 Now canst thou mix my draught. But be't forgotten.
DUKE:
17 And wilt thou not now kill me?
WOLFRAM:
17 Let us strive
18 Henceforward with good deeds against each other,
19 And may you conquer there. Hence, and for ever,
20 No one shall whisper of that deadly thought.
21 Now we will leave this coast.
DUKE:
21 Ay, we will step
22 Into a boat and steer away: but whither?
23 Think'st thou I'll live in the vile consciousness
24 That I have dealt so wickedly and basely,
25 And been of thee so like a god forgiven?
26 No: 'tis impossible .. Friend, by your leave---
[takes a sword from a fallen Arab.
27 O what a coward villain must I be,
28 So to exist.
WOLFRAM:
28 Be patient but awhile,
29 And all such thoughts will soften.
DUKE:
29 The grave be patient,
30 That's yawning at our feet for one of us.
31 I want no comfort. I am comfortable,
32 As any soul under the eaves of Heaven:
33 For one of us must perish in this instant.
34 Fool, would thy virtue shame and crush me down;
35 And make a grateful blushing bondslave of me?
36 O no! I dare be wicked still: the murderer,
37 My thought has christened me, I must remain.
38 O curse thy meek, forgiving, idiot heart,
39 That thus must take its womanish revenge,
40 And with the loathliest poison, pardon, kill me:
41 Twice-sentenced, die! [Strikes at Wolfram.
WOLFRAM:
41 Madman, stand off.
DUKE:
42 I pay my thanks in steel.
43 Thus be all pardoners pardoned.
[Fight: Wolfram falls.
WOLFRAM:
44 Murderer! mine and my father's! O my brother,
45 Too true thy parting words .. Repent thou never!
DUKE:
46 So then we both are blasted: but thou diest,
47 Who daredst to love athwart my love, discover,
48 And then forgive, my treachery. Now proclaim me.
49 Let my name burn through all dark history
50 Over the waves of time, as from a light-house,
51 Warning approach. My worldly work is done.
[Ziba runs in.
ZIBA:
52 They come, they come; if thy thought be not yet
53 Incarnate in a deed, it is too late.
54 Is it a deed?
DUKE:
54 Look at me.
ZIBA:
54 'Tis enough.
DUKE:
55 See'st? Know'st? Be silent and be gone.
[Ziba retires: the knights re-enter with Sibylla.
KNIGHT:
56 O luckless victory! our leader wounded!
SIBYL:
57 Bleeding to death! and he, whom he gave life to,
58 Even his own, unhurt and armed! Speak, Wolfram:
59 Let me not think thou'rt dying.
WOLFRAM:
59 But I am:
60 Slain villanously. Had I stayed, Sibylla---
61 But thou and life are lost; so I'll be silent.
SIBYL:
62 O Melveric, why kneel'st not thou beside him?
63 Weep'st not with me? For thee he fell. O speak!
64 Who did this, Wolfram?
WOLFRAM:
64 'Tis well done, my Sibylla:
65 So burst the portals of sepulchral night
66 Before the immortal rising of the sun.
SIBYL:
67 Who did this, Melveric?
DUKE:
67 Let him die in quiet.
68 Hush! there's a thought upon his lips again.
WOLFRAM:
69 A kiss, Sibylla! I ne'er yet have kissed thee,
70 And my new bride, death's lips are cold, they say.
71 Now it is darkening.
SIBYL:
71 O not yet, not yet!
72 Who did this, Wolfram?
WOLFRAM:
72 Thou know'st, Melveric:
73 At the last day reply thou to that question,
74 When such an angel asks it: I'll not answer
75 Or then or now.
[Dies. Sibylla throws herself on the body; the Duke stands motionless; the rest gather round in silence. The scene closes.
A voice from the waters.
76 The swallow leaves her nest,
77 The soul my weary breast;
78 But therefore let the rain
79 On my grave
80 Fall pure; for why complain?
81 Since both will come again
82 O'er the wave.
83 The wind dead leaves and snow
84 Doth hurry to and fro;
85 And, once, a day shall break
86 O'er the wave,
87 When a storm of ghosts shall shake
88 The dead, until they wake
89 In the grave.
ACT II
Scene I
The interior of a church at Ancona. The Duke, in the garb of a pilgrim, Sibylla and Knights, assembled round the corpse of Wolfram, which is lying on a bier.
Dirge.
1 If thou wilt ease thine heart
2 Of love and all its smart,
3 Then sleep, dear, sleep;
4 And not a sorrow
5 Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
6 Lie still and deep,
7 Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
8 The rim o' the sun to-morrow,
9 In eastern sky.
10 But wilt thou cure thine heart
11 Of love and all its smart,
12 Then die, dear, die;
13 'Tis deeper, sweeter,
14 Than on a rose bank to lie dreaming
15 With folded eye;
16 And then alone, amid the beaming
17 Of love's stars, thou'lt meet her
18 In eastern sky.
KNIGHT:
19 These rites completed, say your further pleasure.
DUKE:
20 To horse and homewards in all haste: my business
21 Urges each hour. This body bury here,
22 With all due honours. I myself will build
23 A monument, whereon, in after times,
24 Those of his blood shall read his valiant deeds,
25 And see the image of the bodily nature
26 He was a man in. Scarcely dare I, lady,
27 Mock you with any word of consolation:
28 But soothing care, and silence o'er that sorrow,
29 Which thine own tears alone may tell to thee
30 Or offer comfort for; and in all matters
31 What thy will best desires, I promise thee.
32 Wilt thou hence with us?
SIBYL:
32 Whither you will lead me.
33 My will lies there, my hope, and all my life
34 Which was in this world. Yet if I shed tear,
35 It is not for his death, but for my life.
36 Dead is he? Say not so, but that he is
37 No more excepted from Eternity.
38 If he were dead I should indeed despair.
39 Can Wolfram die? Ay, as the sun doth set:
40 It is the earth that falls away from light;
41 Fixed in the heavens, although unseen by us,
42 The immortal life and light remains triumphant.
43 And therefore you shall never see me wail,
44 Or drop base waters of an ebbing sorrow;
45 No wringing hands, no sighings, no despair,
46 No mourning weeds will I betake me to;
47 But keep my thought of him that is no more,
48 As secret as great nature keeps his soul,
49 From all the world; and consecrate my being
50 To that divinest hope, which none can know of
51 Who have not laid their dearest in the grave.
52 Farewell, my love,---I will not say to thee
53 Pale corpse,---we do not part for many days.
54 A little sleep, a little waking more,
55 And then we are together out of life.
DUKE:
56 Cover the coffin up. This cold, calm stare
57 Upon familiar features is most dreadful:
58 Methinks too the expression of the face
59 Is changed, since all was settled gently there;
60 And threatens now. But I have sworn to speak
61 And think of that no more, which has been done---
62 Now then into the bustle of the world!
63 We'll rub our cares smooth there.
KNIGHT:
63 This gate, my lord;
64 There stand the horses.
DUKE:
64 Then we're mounted straight.
65 But, pri'thee friend, forget not that the Duke
66 Is still in prison: I am a poor pilgrim.
[Exeunt.
[Enter Isbrand and Siegfried attended.
ISBRAND:
Dead and gone! a scurvy burthen to this ballad of life. There lies he, Siegfried; my brother, mark you; and I weep not, nor gnash the teeth, nor curse: and why not, Siegfried? Do you see this? So should every honest man be: cold, dead, and leaden-coffined. This was one who would be constant in friendship, and the pole wanders: one who would be immortal, and the light that shines upon his pale forehead now, through yonder gewgaw window, undulated from its star hundreds of years ago. That is constancy, that is life. O moral nature!
SIEGFRIED:
'Tis well that you are reconciled to his lot and your own.
ISBRAND:
Reconciled! A word out of a love tale, that's not in my language. No, no. I am patient and still and laborious, a good contented man; peaceable as an ass chewing a thistle; and my thistle is revenge. I do but whisper it now: but hereafter I will thunder the word, and I shall shoot up gigantic out of this pismire shape, and hurl the bolt of that revenge.
SIEGFRIED:
To the purpose: the priests return to complete the burial.
ISBRAND:
Right: we are men of business here. Away with the body, gently and silently; it must be buried in my duke's chapel in Silesia: why, hereafter. [The body is borne out by attendants.] That way, fellows: the hearse stands at the corner of the square: but reverently, 'tis my brother you carry.
[Exeunt.
Scene II
A hall in the ducal castle of Munsterberg in the town of Grüssau in Silesia. Thorwald, Adalmar, Athulf, Isbrand, Siegfried; the Duke, disguised as a pilgrim; Amala; and other ladies and knights; conversing in various groups.
ATHULF:
1 A fair and bright assembly: never strode
2 Old arched Grüssau over such a tide
3 Of helmed chivalry, as when to-day
4 Our tourney guests swept, leaping billow-like,
5 Its palace-banked streets. Knights shut in steel,
6 Whose shields, like water, glassed the soul-eyed maidens,
7 That softly did attend their armed tread,
8 Flower-cinctured on the temples, whence gushed down
9 A full libation of star-numbered tresses,
10 Hallowing the neck unto love's silent kiss,
11 Veiling its innocent white: and then came squires,
12 And those who bore war's silken tapestries,
13 And chequered heralds: 'twas a human river,
14 Brimful and beating as if the great god,
15 Who lay beneath it, would arise. So sways
16 Time's sea, which Age snows into and makes deep,
17 When, from the rocky side of the dim future,
18 Leaps into it a mighty destiny,
19 Whose being to endow great souls have been
20 Centuries hoarded, and the world meanwhile
21 Sate like a beggar upon Heaven's threshold,
22 Muttering its wrongs.
SIEGFRIED:
22 My sprightly Athulf,
23 Is it possible that you can waste the day,
24 Which throws these pillared shades among such beauties,
25 In lonely thought?
ATHULF:
25 Why I have left my cup,
26 A lady's lips, dropping with endless kisses,
27 Because your minstrels hushed their harps. Why did they?
28 This music, which they tickle from the strings,
29 Is excellent for drowning ears that gape,
30 When one has need of whispers.
SIEGFRIED:
30 The old governor
31 Would have it so: his morning nap being o'er,
32 He's no more need of music, but is moving
33 Straight to the lists.
ATHULF:
33 A curse on that mock war!
34 How it will shake and sour the blood, that now
35 Is quiet in the men! And there's my brother,
36 Whose sword's his pleasure. A mere savage man,
37 Made for the monstrous times, but left out then,
38 Born by mistake with us.
ADALMAR: (to Isbrand)
38 Be sure 'tis heavy.
39 Once lance of mine a wolf shut his jaws on
40 But cracked it not, you'll see his bite upon it:
41 It lies among the hunting weapons.
ISBRAND:
41 Ay,
42 With it I saw you once scratch out of life
43 A blotted Moor.
ADALMAR:
43 The same; it poises well,
44 And falls right heavy: find it.
[Exit Isbrand.
SIEGFRIED:
44 For the tilt,
45 My brave lord Adalmar?
ATHULF:
45 What need of asking?
46 You know the man is sore upon a couch;
47 But upright, on his bloody-hoofed steed
48 Galloping o'er the ruins of his foes,
49 Whose earthquake he hath been, then will he shout,
50 Laugh, run his tongue along his trembling lip,
51 And swear his heart tastes honey.
SIEGFRIED:
51 Nay, thou'rt harsh;
52 He was the axe of Mars; but, Troy being felled,
53 Peace trims her bower with him.
ATHULF:
53 Ay; in her hand
54 He's iron still.
ADALMAR:
54 I care not, brother Athulf,
55 Whether you're right or wrong: 'tis very certain,
56 Thank God for it, I am not Peace's lap-dog,
57 But Battle's shaggy whelp. Perhaps, even soon,
58 Good friend of Bacchus and the rose, you'll feel
59 Your budding wall of dalliance shake behind you,
60 And need my spear to prop it.
ATHULF:
60 Come the time!
61 You'll see that in our veins runs brother's blood.
A LADY:
62 Is Siegfried here? At last! I've sought for you
63 By every harp and every lady's shoulder,
64 Not ever thinking you could breathe the air
65 That ducal cub of Munsterberg makes frightful
66 With his loud talk.
SIEGFRIED:
66 Happy in my error,
67 If thus to be corrected.
[Re-enter Isbrand.
ISBRAND:
67 The lance, my lord:
68 A delicate tool to breathe a heathen's vein with.
The LADY:
69 What, Isbrand, thou a soldier? Fie upon thee!
70 Is this a weapon for a fool?
ISBRAND:
Madam, I pray thee pardon us. The fair have wrested the tongue from us, and we must give our speeches a tongue of some metal---steel or gold. And I beseech thee, lady, call me fool no more: I grow old, and in old age you know what men become. We are at court, and there it were sin to call a thing by its right name: therefore call me a fool no longer, for my wisdom is on the wane, and I am almost as sententious as the governor.
The LADY:
Excellent: wilt thou become court-confessor?
ISBRAND:
Ay, if thou wilt begin with thy secrets, lady. But my fair mistress, and you, noble brethren, I pray you gather around me. I will now speak a word in earnest, and hereafter jest with you no more: for I lay down my profession of folly. Why should I wear bells to ring the changes of your follies on? Doth the besonneted moon wear bells, she that is the parasite and zany of the stars, and your queen, ye apes of madness? As I live I grow ashamed of the duality of my legs, for they and the apparel, forked or furbelowed, upon them constitute humanity; the brain no longer: and I wish I were an honest fellow of four shins when I look into the note-book of your absurdities. I will abdicate.
The LADY:
Brave! but how dispose of your dominions most magnanimous zany?
ISBRAND:
My heirs at law are manifold. Yonder minister shall have my jacket; he needs many colours for his deeds. You shall inherit my mantle; for your sins, (be it whispered,) chatter with the teeth for cold; and charity, which should be their great-coat, you have not in the heart.
The LADY:
Gramercy: but may I not beg your coxcomb for a friend?
ISBRAND:
The brothers have an equal claim to that crest: they may tilt for it. But now for my crown. O cap and bells, ye eternal emblems, hieroglyphics of man's supreme right in nature; O ye, that only fall on the deserving, while oak, palm, laurel, and bay rankle on their foreheads, whose deserts are oft more payable at the other extremity: who shall be honoured with you? Come candidates, the cap and bells are empty.
The LADY:
Those you should send to England, for the bad poets and the critics who praise them.
ISBRAND:
Albeit worthy, those merry men cannot this once obtain the prize. I will yield Death the crown of folly. He hath no hair, and in this weather might catch cold and die: besides he has killed the best knight I knew, Sir Wolfram, and deserves it. Let him wear the cap, let him toll the bells; he shall be our new court-fool: and, when the world is old and dead, the thin wit shall find the angel's record of man's works and deeds, and write with a lipless grin on the innocent first page for a title, 'Here begins Death's Jest-book.'---There, you have my testament: henceforth speak solemnly to me, and I will give a measured answer, having relapsed into court-wisdom again.
The LADY:
72 How the wild jester would frighten us!
73 Come, Siegfried:
74 Some of us in a corner wait your music,
75 Your news, and stories. My lord Adalmar,
76 You must be very weary all this time,
77 The rest are so delighted. Come along, [to Siegfried]
78 Or else his answer stuns me.
ADALMAR:
78 Joyous creature!
79 Whose life's first leaf is hardly yet uncurled.
ATHULF:
80 Use your trade's language; were I journeyman
81 To Mars, the glorious butcher, I would say
82 She's sleek, and sacrificial flowers would look well
83 On her white front.
ADALMAR:
83 Now, brother, can you think,
84 Stern as I am above, that in my depth
85 There is no cleft wherein such thoughts are hived
86 As from dear looks and words come back to me,
87 Storing that honey, love. O! love I do,
88 Through every atom of my being.
ATHULF:
88 Ay,
89 So do we young ones all. In winter time
90 This god of butterflies, this Cupid sleeps,
91 As they do in their cases; but May comes;
92 With it the bee and he: each spring of mine
93 He sends me a new arrow, thank the boy.
94 A week ago he shot me for this year;
95 The shaft is in my stomach, and so large
96 There's scarcely room for dinner.
ADALMAR:
96 Shall I believe thee,
97 Or judge mortality by this stout sample
98 I screw my mail o'er? Well, it may be so;
99 You are an adept in these chamber passions,
100 And have a heart that's Cupid's arrow cushion
101 Worn out with use. I never knew before
102 The meaning of this love. But one has taught me,
103 It is a heaven wandering among men,
104 The spirit of gone Eden haunting earth.
105 Life's joys, death's pangs are viewless from its bosom,
106 Which they who keep are gods: there's no paradise,
107 There is no heaven, no angels, no blessed spirits,
108 No souls, or they have no eternity,
109 If this be not a part of them.
ATHULF:
109 This in a Court!
110 Such sort of love might Hercules have felt
111 Warm from the Hydra fight, when he had fattened
112 On a fresh slain Bucentaur, roasted whole,
113 The heart of his pot-belly, till it ticked
114 Like a cathedral clock. But in good faith
115 Is this the very truth? Then have I found
116 My fellow fool. For I am wounded too
117 E'en to the quick and inmost, Adalmar.
118 So fair a creature! of such charms compact
119 As nature stints elsewhere; which you may find
120 Under the tender eyelid of a serpent,
121 Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose,
122 By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see,
123 Like water from a crystal overfilled,
124 Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave
125 Her fair sides to the ground. Of other women,
126 (And we have beauteous in this court of ours,)
127 I can remember whether nature touched
128 Their eye with brown or azure, where a vein
129 Runs o'er a sleeping eyelid, like some streak
130 In a young blossom; every grace count up,
131 Here the round turn and crevice of the arm,
132 There the tress-bunches, or the slender hand
133 Seen between harpstrings gathering music from them:
134 But where she is, I'm lost in her abundance,
135 And when she leaves me I know nothing more,
136 (Like one from whose awakening temples rolls
137 The cloudy vision of a god away,)
138 Than that she was divine.
ADALMAR:
139 Fie sir, these are the spiced sighs of a heart,
140 That bubbles under wine; utter rhyme-gilding,
141 Beneath man's sober use. What do you speak of?
ATHULF:
142 A woman most divine, and that I love
143 As you dare never.
ADALMAR:
143 Boy, a truce with talk.
144 Such words are sacred, placed within man's reach
145 To be used seldom, solemnly, when speaking
146 Of what both God and man might overhear,
147 You unabashed.
ATHULF:
147 Of what? What is more worthy
148 Than the delight of youth, being so rare,
149 Precious, short-lived, and irrecoverable?
ADALMAR:
150 When you do mention that adored land,
151 Which gives you life, pride, and security,
152 And holy rights of freedom; or in the praise
153 Of those great virtues and heroic men,
154 That glorify the earth and give it beams,
155 Then to be lifted by the like devotion
156 Would not disgrace God's angels.
ATHULF:
156 Well sir, laud,
157 Worship, and swear by them, your native country
158 And virtues past; a phantom and a corpse:
159 Such airy stuff may please you. My desires
160 Are hot and hungry; they will have their fill
161 Of living dalliance, gazes, and lip-touches,
162 Or eat their master. Now, no more rebuking:
163 Peace be between us. For why are we brothers,
164 Being the creatures of two different gods,
165 But that we may not be each other's murderers?
ADALMAR:
166 So be it then! But mark me, brother Athulf,
167 I spoke not from a cold unnatural spirit,
168 Barren of tenderness. I feel and know
169 Of woman's dignity; how it doth merit
170 Our total being, has all mine this moment:
171 But they should share with us our level lives:
172 Moments there are, and one is now at hand,
173 Too high for them. When all the world is stirred
174 By some preluding whisper of that trumpet,
175 Which shall awake the dead, to do great things,
176 Then the sublimity of my affection,
177 The very height of my beloved, shows me
178 How far above her's glory. When you've earned
179 This knowledge, tell me: I will say, you love
180 As a man should.
[He retires.
ATHULF:
180 But this is somewhat true.
181 I almost think that I could feel the same
182 For her. For her? By heavens 'tis Amala,
183 Amala only, that he so can love.
184 There? by her side? in conference! at smiles!
185 Then I am born to be a fratricide.
186 I feel as I were killing him. Tush, tush;
187 A phantom of my passion! But, if true---
188 What? What, my heart? A strangely-quiet thought,
189 That will not be pronounced, doth answer me.
[Thorwald comes forward, attended by the company.
THORWALD:
190 Break up! The day's of age. Knights to the lists,
191 And ladies to look on. We'll break some lances
192 Before 'tis evening. To your sports, I pray;
193 I follow quickly.
[He is left alone with the Duke.]
193 Pilgrim, now your news:
194 Whence come you?
DUKE:
194 Straightway from the holy land,
195 Whose sanctity such floods of human blood,
196 Unnatural rain for it, will soon wash out.
THORWALD:
197 You saw our Duke?
DUKE:
197 I did: but Melveric
198 Is strangely altered. When we saw him leap,
199 Shut up in iron, on his burning steed
200 From Grüssau's threshold, he had fifty years
201 Upon his head, and bore them straight and upright,
202 Through dance, and feast, and knightly tournament.
THORWALD:
203 How! Is he not the same? 'Tis but three years
204 And a fourth's quarter past. What is the change?
205 A silvering of the hair? a deeper wrinkle
206 On cheek and forehead?
DUKE:
206 I do not think you'd know him,
207 Stood he where I do. No. I saw him lying
208 Beside a fountain on a battle-evening:
209 The sun was setting over the heaped plain;
210 And to my musing fancy his front's furrows,
211 With light between them, seemed the grated shadow
212 Thrown by the ribs of that field's giant, Death;
213 'Twixt which the finger of the hour did write
214 'This is the grave's.'
THORWALD:
214 How? Looked he sorrowful?
215 Knows he the dukedom's state?
DUKE: (giving letters to Thorwald)
215 Ask these. He's heard
216 The tidings that afflict the souls of fathers;
217 How these two sons of his unfilially
218 Have vaulted to the saddle of the people,
219 And charge against him. How he gained the news,
220 You must know best: what countermine he digs,
221 Those letters tell your eyes. He bade me say,
222 His dukedom is his body, and, he forth,
223 That may be sleeping, but the touch of wrong,
224 The murderer's barefoot tread will bring him back
225 Out of his Eastern visions, ere this earth
226 Has swung the city's length.
THORWALD:
226 I read as much:
227 He bids me not to move; no eye to open,
228 But to sit still and doze, and warm my feet
229 At their eruption. This security
230 Is most unlike him. I remember oft,
231 When the thin harvests shed their withered grain,
232 And empty poverty yelped sour-mouthed at him,
233 How he would cloud his majesty of form
234 With priestly hangings, or the tattered garb
235 Of the step-seated beggar, and go round
236 To catch the tavern talk and the street ballad,
237 And whispers of ancestral prophecies,
238 Until he knew the very nick of time,
239 When his heart's arrow would be on the string;
240 And, seizing Treason by the arm, would pour
241 Death back upon him.
DUKE:
241 He is wary still,
242 And has a snake's eye under every grass.
243 Your business is obedience unto him,
244 Who is your natal star; and mine, to worm,
245 Leaf after leaf, into the secret volume
246 Of their designs. Already has our slave,
247 The grape juice, left the side-door of the youngest
248 Open to me. You think him innocent.
249 Fire flashes from him; whether it be such
250 As treason would consult by, or the coals
251 Love boils his veins on, shall through this small crevice,
252 Through which the vine has thrust its cunning tendril,
253 Be looked and listened for.
THORWALD:
253 Can I believe it?
254 Did not I know him and his spirit's course,
255 Well as the shape and colour of the sun,
256 And when it sets and rises? Is this he?
257 No: 'tis the shadow of this pilgrim false,
258 Who stands up in his height of villany,
259 Shadowy as a hill, and throws his hues
260 Of contradiction to the heavenly light,
261 The stronger as it shines upon him most.
262 Ho! pilgrim, I have weighed and found thee villain.
263 Are thy knees used to kneeling? It may chance
264 That thou wilt change the altar for the block:
265 Prove thou'rt his messenger.
DUKE:
265 I wait your questions.
266 The very inmost secret of his heart,
267 Confided to you, challenge from me.
THORWALD:
267 First,
268 A lighter trial. If you come from him,
269 Tell me what friend he spoke of most.
DUKE:
269 Of thee.
THORWALD:
270 Another yet;
271 A knight?
DUKE:
271 There is no living knight his friend.
THORWALD:
272 O ill guessed, palmer! One, whom Melveric
273 Would give his life, all but his virtue for,
274 Lived he no more, to raise him from the dead.
DUKE:
275 Right; he would give his soul; Thorwald, his soul:---
276 Friendship is in its depth, and secrets sometimes
277 Like to a grave.---So loved the Duke that warrior.
THORWALD:
278 Enough, his name;---the name?
DUKE:
278 Ay, ay, the name---
279 Methinks there's nothing in the world but names:
280 All things are dead; friendship at least I'll blot
281 From my vocabulary. The man was called---
282 The knight---I cannot utter't---the knight's name---
283 Why dost thou ask me? I know nothing of him.
284 I have not seen or heard of him, of---Well,
285 I'll speak of him to no man more---
THORWALD:
285 Tremble then
286 When thou dost hear of---Wolfram! thou art pale:
287 Confess, or to the dungeon---
DUKE:
287 Pause! I am stuffed
288 With an o'erwhelming spirit: press not thou,
289 Or I shall burst asunder, and let through
290 The deluging presence of thy DUKE: Prepare:
291 He's near at hand.
THORWALD:
291 Forbid it, Providence!
292 He steps on a plot's spring, whose teeth encircle
293 The throne and city.
DUKE: (disrobing)
293 Fear not. On he comes,
294 Still as a star robed in eclipse, until
295 The earthy shadow slips away. Who rises?
296 I'm changing: now who am I?
THORWALD:
296 Melveric!
297 Munsterberg, as I live and love thee!
DUKE:
297 Hush!
298 Is there not danger?
THORWALD:
298 Ay: we walk on ice
299 Over the mouth of Hell: an inch beneath us,
300 Dragon Rebellion lies ready to wake.
301 Ha! and behold him. Enter Adalmar.
ADALMAR:
302 Lord Governor, our games are waiting for you.
303 Will you come with me? Base and muffled stranger,
304 What dost thou here? Away.
DUKE:
304 Prince Adalmar,
305 Where shall you see me? I will come again,
306 This or the next world. Thou, who carriest
307 The seeds of a new world, may'st understand me.
308 Look for me ever. There's no crack without me
309 In earth and all around it. Governor,
310 Let all things happen, as they will. Farewell:
311 Tremble for no one.
ADALMAR:
311 Hence! The begging monk
312 Prates emptily.
DUKE:
312 Believe him.
THORWALD:
312 Well, lead on;
313 Wert thou a king, I would not more obey thee.
[Exit with Adalmar.
DUKE:
314 Rebellion, treason, parricidal daggers!
315 This is the bark of the court dogs, that come
316 Welcoming home their master. My sons too,
317 Even my sons! O not sons, but contracts,
318 Between my lust and a destroying fiend,
319 Written in my dearest blood, whose date run out,
320 They are become death-warrants. Parricide,
321 And Murder of the heart that loved and nourished,
322 Be merry, ye rich fiends! Piety's dead,
323 And the world left a legacy to you.
324 Under the green-sod are your coffins packed,
325 So thick they break each other. The days come
326 When scarce a lover, for his maiden's hair,
327 Can pluck a stalk whose rose draws not its hue
328 Out of a hate-killed heart. Nature's polluted,
329 There's man in every secret corner of her,
330 Doing damned wicked deeds. Thou art old, world,
331 A hoary atheistic murderous star:
332 I wish that thou would'st die, or could'st be slain,
333 Hell-hearted bastard of the sun.
334 O that the twenty coming years were over!
335 Then should I be at rest, where ruined arches
336 Shut out the troublesome unghostly day;
337 And idlers might be sitting on my tomb,
338 Telling how I did die. How shall I die?
339 Fighting my sons for power; or of dotage,
340 Sleeping in purple pressed from filial veins;
341 To let my epitaph be, "Here lies he,
342 Who murdered his two children?" Hence cursed thought!
343 I will enquire the purpose of their plot:
344 There may be good in it, and, if there be,
345 I'll be a traitor too.
[Exit.
Scene III.
A retired gallery in the ducal castle. Enter Isbrand and Siegfried.
ISBRAND:
1 Now see you how this dragon egg of ours
2 Swells with its ripening plot? Methinks I hear
3 Snaky rebellion turning restless in it,
4 And with its horny jaws scraping away
5 The shell that hides it. All is ready now:
6 I hold the latch-string of a new world's wicket;
7 One pull and it rolls in. Bid all our friends
8 Meet in that ruinous church-yard once again,
9 By moonrise: until then I'll hide myself;
10 For these sweet thoughts rise dimpling to my lips,
11 And break the dark stagnation of my features,
12 Like sugar melting in a glass of poison.
13 To-morrow, Siegfried, shalt thou see me sitting
14 One of the drivers of this racing earth,
15 With Grüssau's reins between my fingers. Ha!
16 Never since Hell laughed at the church, blood-drunken
17 From rack and wheel, has there been joy so mad
18 As that which stings my marrow now.
SIEGFRIED:
18 Good cause,
19 The sun-glance of a coming crown to heat you,
20 And give your thoughts gay colours in the steam
21 Of a fermenting brain.
ISBRAND:
21 Not alone that.
22 A sceptre is smooth handling, it is true,
23 And one grows fat and jolly in a chair
24 That has a kingdom crouching under it,
25 With one's name on its collar, like a dog,
26 To fetch and carry. But the heart I have
27 Is a strange little snake. He drinks not wine,
28 When he'd be drunk, but poison: he doth fatten
29 On bitter hate, not love. And, O that duke!
30 My life is hate of him; and, when I tread
31 His neck into the grave, I shall, methinks,
32 Fall into ashes with the mighty joy,
33 Or be transformed into a winged star:
34 That will be all eternal heaven distilled
35 Down to one thick rich minute. This sounds madly,
36 But I am mad when I remember him:
37 Siegfried, you know not why.
SIEGFRIED:
37 I never knew
38 That you had quarrelled.
ISBRAND:
38 True: but did you see
39 My brother's corpse? There was a wound on't, Siegfried;
40 He died not gently, nor in a ripe age;
41 And I'll be sworn it was the duke that did it,
42 Else he had not remained in that far land,
43 And sent his knights to us again.
SIEGFRIED:
43 I thought
44 He was the duke's close friend.
ISBRAND:
44 Close as his blood:
45 A double-bodied soul they did appear,
46 Rather than fellow hearts.
SIEGFRIED:
46 I've heard it told
47 That they did swear and write in their best blood,
48 And her's they loved the most, that who died first
49 Should, on death's holidays, revisit him
50 Who still dwelt in the flesh.
ISBRAND:
50 O that such bond
51 Would move the jailor of the grave to open
52 Life's gate again unto my buried brother,
53 But half an hour! Were I buried, like him,
54 There in the very garrets of death's town,
55 But six feet under earth, (that's the grave's sky,)
56 I'd jump up into life. But he's a quiet ghost;
57 He walks not in the churchyard after dew,
58 But gets to his grave betimes, burning no glow-worms,
59 Sees that his bones are right, and stints his worms
60 Most miserly. If you were murdered, Siegfried,
61 As he was by this duke, should it be so?
SIEGFRIED:
62 Here speaks again your passion: what know we
63 Of death's commandments to his subject-spirits,
64 Who are as yet the body's citizens?
65 What seas unnavigable, what wild forests,
66 What castles, and what ramparts there may hedge
67 His icy frontier?
ISBRAND:
67 Tower and roll what may,
68 There have been goblins bold who have stolen passports,
69 Or sailed the sea, or leaped the wall, or flung
70 The drawbridge down, and travelled back again.
71 So would my soul have done. But let it be.
72 At the doom-twilight shall the ducal cut-throat
73 Wake by a tomb-fellow he little dreamt of.
74 Methinks I see them rising with mixed bones,
75 A pair of patch-work angels.
SIEGFRIED:
75 What does this mean?
ISBRAND:
76 A pretty piece of kidnapping, that's all.
77 When Melveric's heart's heart, his new-wed wife,
78 Upon the bed whereon she bore these sons,
79 Died, as a blossom does whose inmost fruit
80 Tears it in twain, and in its stead remains
81 A bitter poison-berry: when she died,
82 What her soul left was by her husband laid
83 In the marriage grave, whereto he doth consign
84 Himself being dead.
SIEGFRIED:
84 Like a true loving mate.
85 Is not her tomb 'mid the cathedral ruins,
86 Where we to-night assemble?
ISBRAND:
86 Say not her's:
87 A changeling lies there. By black night came I,
88 And, while a man might change two goblet's liquors,
89 I laid the lips of their two graves together,
90 And poured my brother into hers; while she,
91 Being the lightest, floated and ran over.
92 Now lies the murdered where the loved should be;
93 And Melveric the dead shall dream of heaven,
94 Embracing his damnation. There's revenge.
95 But hush! here comes one of my dogs, the princes;
96 To work with you. [Exit Siegfried.]
96 Now for another shape;
97 For Isbrand is the handle of the chisels
98 Which Fate, the turner of men's lives, doth use
99 Upon the wheeling world.
Enter ATHULF:
99 There is a passion
100 Lighting his cheek, as red as brother's hate:
101 If it be so, these pillars shall go down,
102 Shivering each other, and their ruins be
103 My step into a dukedom. Doth he speak?
ATHULF:
104 Then all the minutes of my life to come
105 Are sands of a great desart, into which
106 I'm banished broken-hearted. Amala,
107 I must think thee a lovely-faced murderess,
108 With eyes as dark and poisonous as nightshade;
109 Yet no, not so; if thou hadst murdered me,
110 It had been charitable. Thou hast slain
111 The love of thee, that lived in my soul's palace
112 And made it holy: now 'tis desolate,
113 And devils of abandonment will haunt it,
114 And call in Sins to come, and drink with them
115 Out of my heart. But now farewell, my love;
116 For thy rare sake I could have been a man
117 One story under god. Gone, gone art thou.
118 Great and voluptuous Sin now seize upon me,
119 Thou paramour of Hell's fire-crowned king,
120 That showedst the tremulous fairness of thy bosom
121 In heaven, and so didst ravish the best angels.
122 Come, pour thy spirit all about my soul,
123 And let a glory of thy bright desires
124 Play round about my temples. So may I
125 Be thy knight and Hell's saint for evermore.
126 Kiss me with fire: I'm thine.
ISBRAND:
126 Doth it run so?
127 A bold beginning: we must keep him up to't.
ATHULF:
128 Isbrand!
ISBRAND:
128 My prince.
ATHULF:
128 Come to me. Thou'rt a man
129 I must know more of. There is something in thee,
130 The deeper one doth venture in thy being,
131 That drags us on and down. What dost thou lead to?
132 Art thou a current to some unknown sea
133 Islanded richly, full of syren songs
134 And unknown bliss? Art thou the snaky opening
135 Of a dark cavern, where one may converse
136 With night's dear spirits? If thou'rt one of these,
137 Let me descend thee.
ISBRAND:
137 You put questions to me
138 In an Egyptian or old magic tongue,
139 Which I can ill interpret.
ATHULF:
139 Passion's hieroglyphics;
140 Painted upon the minutes by mad thoughts,
141 Dungeoned in misery. Isbrand, answer me;
142 Art honest, or a man of many deeds
143 And many faces to them? Thou'rt a plotter,
144 A politician. Say, if there should come
145 A fellow, with his being just abandoned
146 By old desires and hopes, who would do much,---
147 And who doth much upon this grave-paved star,
148 In doing, must sin much,---would quick and straight,
149 Sword-straight and poison-quick, have done with doing;
150 Would you befriend him?
ISBRAND:
150 I can lend an arm
151 To good bold purpose. But you know me not,
152 And I will not be known before my hour.
153 Why come you here wishing to raise the devil,
154 And ask me how? Where are your sacrifices?
155 Eye-water is not his libation, prayers
156 Reach him not through earth's chinks. Bold deeds and thoughts,
157 What men call crimes, are his loved litany;
158 And from all such good angels keep us! Now sir,
159 What makes you fretful?
ATHULF:
159 I have lost that hope,
160 For which alone I lived. Henceforth my days
161 Are purposeless; there is no reason further
162 Why I should be, or should let others be;
163 No motive more for virtue, for forbearance,
164 Or anything that's good. The hourly need,
165 And the base bodily cravings, must be now
166 The aim of this deserted human engine.
167 Good may be in this world, but not for me;
168 Gentle and noble hearts, but not for me;
169 And happiness, and heroism, and glory,
170 And love, but none for me. Let me then wander
171 Amid their banquets, funerals, and weddings,
172 Like one whose living spirit is Death's Angel.
ISBRAND:
173 What? You have lost your love and so turned sour?
174 And who has ta'en your chair in Amala's heaven?
ATHULF:
175 My brother, my Cain; Adalmar.
ISBRAND:
175 I'll help thee, prince:
176 When will they marry?
ATHULF:
177 I could not wish him in my rage to die
178 Sooner: one night I'd give him to dream hells.
179 To-morrow, Isbrand.
ISBRAND:
179 Sudden, by my life.
180 But, out of the black interval, we'll cast
181 Something upon the moment of their joy,
182 Which, should it fail to blot, shall so deform it,
183 That they must write it further down in time.
ATHULF:
184 Let it be crossed with red.
ISBRAND:
184 Trust but to me:
185 I'll get you bliss. But I am of a sort
186 Not given to affections. Sire and mother
187 And sister I had never, and so feel not
188 Why sin 'gainst them should count so doubly wicked,
189 This side o' th' sun. If you would wound your foe,
190 Get swords that pierce the mind: a bodily slice
191 Is cured by surgeon's butter: let true hate
192 Leap the flesh wall, or fling his fiery deeds
193 Into the soul. So he can marry, Athulf,
194 And then---
ATHULF:
194 Peace, wicked-hearted slave!
195 Darest thou tempt me? I called on thee for service,
196 But thou wouldst set me at a hellish work,
197 To cut my own damnation out of Lust:
198 Thou'ldst sell me to the fiend. Thou and thy master,
199 That sooty beast the devil, shall be my dogs,
200 My curs to kick and beat when I would have you.
201 I will not bow, nor follow at his bidding,
202 For his hell-throne. No: I will have a god
203 To serve my purpose: Hatred be his name;
204 But 'tis a god, divine in wickedness,
205 Whom I will worship. [Exit.
ISBRAND:
206 Then go where Pride and Madness carry thee;
207 And let that feasted fatness pine and shrink,
208 Till thy ghost's pinched in the tight love-lean body.
209 I see his life, as in a map of rivers,
210 Through shadows, over rocks, breaking its way,
211 Until it meet his brother's, and with that
212 Wrestle and tumble o'er a perilous rock,
213 Bare as Death's shoulder: one of them is lost,
214 And a dark haunted flood creeps deadly on
215 Into the wailing Styx. Poor Amala!
216 A thorny rose thy life is, plucked in the dew,
217 And pitilessly woven with these snakes
218 Into a garland for the King of the grave. [Exit.
ACT III.
Scene I.
An apartment in the ducal castle. The Duke and Thorwald.
DUKE:
1 Let them be married: give to Adalmar
2 The sweet society of woman's soul,
3 As we impregnate damask swords with odour
4 Pressed from young flowers' bosoms, so to sweeten
5 And purify war's lightning. For the other,
6 Who catches love by eyes, the court has stars,
7 That will take up in his tempestuous bosom
8 The shining place she leaves.
THORWALD:
8 It shall be done:
9 The bell, that will ring merrily for their bridal,
10 Has but few hours to score first.
DUKE:
10 Good. I have seen too
11 Our ripe rebellion's ringleaders. They meet
12 By moonrise; with them I: to-night will be
13 Fiends' jubilee, with heaven's spy among them.
14 What else was't that you asked?
THORWALD:
15 The melancholy lady you brought with you?
DUKE:
16 Thorwald, I fear her's is a broken heart.
[Page 70]
17 When first I met her in the Egyptian prison,
18 She was the rosy morning of a woman;
19 Beauty was rising, but the starry grace
20 Of a calm childhood might be seen in her.
21 But since the death of Wolfram, who fell there,
22 Heaven and one single soul only know how,
23 I have not dared to look upon her sorrow.
THORWALD:
24 Methinks she's too unearthly beautiful.
25 Old as I am, I cannot look at her,
26 And hear her voice, that touches the heart's core,
27 Without a dread that she will fade o' th' instant.
28 There's too much heaven in her: oft it rises,
29 And, pouring out about the lovely earth,
30 Almost dissolves it. She is tender too;
31 And melancholy is the sweet pale smile,
32 With which she gently doth reproach her fortune.
DUKE:
33 What ladies tend her?
THORWALD:
33 My Amala; she will not often see
34 One of the others.
DUKE:
34 Too much solitude
35 Maintains her in this grief. I will look to't
36 Hereafter; for the present I've enough.
37 We must not meet again before to-morrow.
THORWALD:
38 I may have something to report . . .
DUKE:
38 Ho! ZIBA: Enter ZIBA:
ZIBA:
38 Lord of my life!
[Page 71]
DUKE:
39 I bought this man of Afric from an Arab,
40 Under the shadow of a pyramid,
41 For many jewels. He hath skill in language;
42 And knowledge is in him root, flower, and fruit,
43 A palm with winged imagination in it,
44 Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave,
45 And on them hangs a lamp of magic science
46 In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts
47 Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead:
48 So said his master when he parted with him.
49 I know him skilful, faithful: take him with you;
50 He's fit for many services.
THORWALD:
50 I'll try him:
51 Wilt thou be faithful, Moor?
ZIBA:
51 As soul to body.
THORWALD:
52 Then follow me. Farewell, my noble pilgrim. [Exeunt Thorwald and ZIBA:
DUKE:
53 It was a fascination, near to madness,
54 Which held me subjugated to that maiden.
55 Why do I now so coldly speak of her,
56 When there is nought between us? O! there is,
57 A deed as black as the old towers of Hell.
58 But hence! thou torturing weakness of remorse;
59 'Tis time when I am dead to think on that:
60 Yet my sun shines; so courage, heart, cheer up:
61 Who should be merrier than a secret villain? [Exit.
[Page 72]
Scene II.
Another room in the same. Sibylla and AMALA:
SIBYL:
1 I would I were a fairy, Amala,
2 Or knew some of those winged wizard women,
3 Then I could bring you a more precious gift.
4 'Tis a wild graceful flower, whose name I know not;
5 Call it Sibylla's love, while it doth live;
6 And let it die that you may contradict it,
7 And say my love doth not, so bears no fruit.
8 Take it. I wish that happiness may ever
9 Flow through your days as sweetly and as still,
10 As did the beauty and the life to this
11 Out of its roots.
AMALA:
11 Thanks, my kind Sibylla:
12 To-morrow I will wear it at my wedding,
13 Since that must be.
SIBYL:
13 Art thou then discontented?
14 I thought the choice was thine, and Adalmar
15 A noble warrior worthy of his fortune.
AMALA:
16 O yes: brave, honourable is my bridegroom,
17 But somewhat cold perhaps. If his wild brother
18 Had but more constancy and less insolence
19 In love, he were a man much to my heart.
20 But, as it is, I must, I will be happy;
[Page 73]
21 And Adalmar deserves that I should love him.
22 But see how night o'ertakes us. Good rest, dear:
23 We will no more profane sleep's stillest hour.
SIBYL:
24 Good night, then. [Exeunt.
Scene III.
A church-yard with the ruins of a spacious gothic cathedral. On the cloister walls the Dance of Death is painted. On one side the sepulchre of the Dukes with massy carved folding doors. Moonlight. Enter Isbrand and Siegfried.
ISBRAND:
1 Not here? That wolf-howled, witch-prayed, owl-sung fool,
2 Fat mother moon hath brought the cats their light
3 A whole thief's hour, and yet they are not met.
4 I thought the bread and milky thick-spread lies,
5 With which I plied them, would have drawn to head
6 The state's bad humours quickly.
SIEGFRIED:
6 They delay
7 Until the twilight strollers are gone home.
ISBRAND:
8 That may be. This is a sweet place methinks:
9 These arches and their caves, now double-nighted
10 With heaven's and that creeping darkness, ivy,
11 Delight me strangely. Ruined churches oft,
12 As this, are crime's chief haunt, as ruined angels
[Page 74]
13 Straight become fiends. This tomb too tickleth me
14 With its wild-rose branches. Dost remember, Siegfried,
15 About the buried Duchess? In this cradle
16 I placed the new dead: here the changeling lies.
SIEGFRIED:
17 Are we so near? A frightful theft!
ISBRAND:
17 Fright! idiot!
18 Peace; there's a footstep on the pavement. Enter the DUKE:
18 Welcome!
19 I thank you, wanderer, for coming first.
20 They of the town lag still.
DUKE:
20 The enterprise,
21 And you its head, much please me.
ISBRAND:
21 You are courteous.
DUKE:
22 Better: I'm honest. But your ways and words
23 Are so familiar to my memory,
24 That I could almost think we had been friends
25 Since our now riper and declining lives
26 Undid their outer leaves.
ISBRAND:
26 I can remember
27 No earlier meeting. What need of it? Methinks
28 We agree well enough: especially
29 As you have brought bad tidings of the DUKE:
DUKE:
29 If I had time,
30 And less disturbed thoughts, I'd search my memory
31 For what thou'rt like. Now we have other matters
32 To talk about.
[Page 75]
ISBRAND:
32 And, thank the stingy star-shine,
33 I see the shades of others of our council. Enter Adalmar and other conspirators.
34 Though late met, well met, friends. Where stay the rest?
35 For we're still few here.
ADALMAR:
35 They are contented
36 With all the steps proposed, and keep their chambers
37 Aloof from the suspecting crowd of eyes,
38 Which day doth feed with sights for nightly gossip,
39 Till your hour strikes.
ISBRAND:
39 That's well to keep at home,
40 And hide, as doth Heaven's wrath, till the last minute.
41 Little's to say. We fall as gently on them,
42 As the first drops of Noah's world-washing shower
43 Upon the birds' wings and the leaves. Give each
44 A copy of this paper: it contains
45 A quick receipt to make a new creation
46 In our old dukedom. Here stands he who framed it.
ADALMAR:
47 The unknown pilgrim! You have warrant, Isbrand,
48 For trusting him?
ISBRAND:
48 I have.
ADALMAR:
48 Enough. How are the citizens?
49 You feasted them these three days.
ISBRAND:
49 And have them by the heart for't.
50 'Neath Grüssau's tiles sleep none, whose deepest bosom
51 My fathom hath not measured; none, whose thoughts
[Page 76]
52 I have not made a map of. In the depth
53 And labyrinthine home of the still soul,
54 Where the seen thing is imaged, and the whisper
55 Joints the expecting spirit, my spies, which are
56 Suspicion's creeping words, have stolen in,
57 And, with their eyed feelers, touched and sounded
58 The little hiding holes of cunning thought,
59 And each dark crack in which a reptile purpose
60 Hangs in its chrysalis unripe for birth.
61 All of each heart I know.
DUKE:
61 O perilous boast!
62 Fathom the wavy caverns of all stars,
63 Know every side of every sand in earth,
64 And hold in little all the lore of man,
65 As a dew's drop doth miniature the sun:
66 But never hope to learn the alphabet,
67 In which the hieroglyphic human soul
68 More changeably is painted, than the rainbow
69 Upon the cloudy pages of a shower,
70 Whose thunderous hinges a wild wind doth turn.
71 Know all of each! when each doth shift his thought
72 More often in a minute, than the air
73 Dust on a summer path.
ISBRAND:
73 Liquors can lay them:
74 Grape-juice or vein-juice.
DUKE:
74 Yet there may be one,
75 Whose misty mind's perspective still lies hid.
ISBRAND:
76 Ha! stranger, where?
[Page 77]
DUKE:
77 A quiet, listening, flesh-concealed soul.
ISBRAND:
78 Are the ghosts eaves-dropping? None, that do live,
79 Listen besides ourselves. (A struggle behind: Siegfried drags Mario forward.)
79 Who's there?
SIEGFRIED:
79 A fellow,
80 Who crouched behind the bush, dipping his ears
81 Into the stream of your discourse.
ISBRAND:
81 Come forward.
Mario.
82 Then lead me. Were it noon, I could not find him
83 Whose voice commands me: in these callous hands
84 There is as much perception for the light,
85 As in the depth of my poor dayless eyes.
ISBRAND:
85 Thy hand then.
Mario.
86 Art thou leader here?
ISBRAND:
86 Perchance.
Mario.
87 Then listen, as I listened unto you,
88 And let my life and story end together,
89 If it seem good to you. A Roman am I;
90 A Roman in unroman times: I've slept
91 At midnight in our Capitolian ruins,
92 And breathed the ghost of our great ancient world,
93 Which there doth walk: and among glorious visions,
94 That the unquiet tombs sent forth to me,
95 Learned I the love of freedom. Scipio saw I
[Page 78]
96 Washing the stains of Carthage from his sword,
97 And his freed poet, playing on his lyre
98 A melody men's souls did sing unto:
99 Oak-bound and laurelled heads, each man a country;
100 And in the midst, like a sun o'er the sea,
101 (Each helm in the crowd gilt by a ray from him,)
102 Bald Julius sitting lonely in his car,
103 Within the circle of whose laurel wreath
104 All spirits of the earth and sea were spell-bound.
105 Down with him to the grave! Down with the god!
106 Stab, Cassius; Brutus, through him; through him, all!
107 Dead.---As he fell there was a tearing sigh:
108 Earth stood on him; her roots were in his heart;
109 They fell together. Cæsar and his world
110 Lie in the Capitol; and Jove lies there,
111 With all the gods of Rome and of Olympus;
112 Corpses: and does the eagle batten on them?
113 No; she is flown: the owl sits in her nest;
114 The toge is cut for cowls; and falsehood dozes
115 In the chair of freedom, triple-crowned beast,
116 King Cerberus. Thence I have come in time
117 To see one grave for foul oppression dug,
118 Though I may share it.
ISBRAND:
118 Nay: thou'rt a bold heart.
119 Welcome among us.
Mario.
119 I was guided hither
120 By one in white, garlanded like a bride,
121 Divinely beautiful, leading me softly;
[Page 79]
122 And she doth place my hand in thine, once more
123 Bidding me guard her honour amongst men;
124 And so I will, with death to him that soils it:
125 For she is Liberty.
ADALMAR:
125 In her name we take thee;
126 And for her sake welcome thee brotherly.
127 At the right time thou comest to us, dark man,
128 Like an eventful unexpected night,
129 Which finishes a row of plotting days,
130 Fulfilling their designs.
ISBRAND:
130 Now then, my fellows,
131 No more; but to our unsuspected homes.
132 Good night to all who rest; hope to the watchful.
133 Stranger, with me. [To Mario. [Exeunt: manet DUKE:
DUKE:
134 I'm old and desolate. O were I dead
135 With thee, my wife! Oft have I lain by night
136 Upon thy grave, and burned with the mad wish
137 To raise thee up to life. Thank God, whom then
138 I might have thought not pitiful, for lending
139 No ear to such a prayer. Far better were I
140 Thy grave-fellow, than thou alive with me,
141 Amid the fears and perils of the time. Enter ZIBA:
142 Who's in the dark there?
ZIBA:
142 One of the dark's colour:
143 Ziba, thy slave.
[Page 80]
DUKE:
143 Come at a wish, my Arab.
144 Is Thorwald's house asleep yet?
ZIBA:
144 No: his lights still burn.
DUKE:
145 Go; fetch a lantern and some working fellows
146 With spade and pickaxe. Let not Thorwald come.
147 In good speed do it. [Exit ZIBA:
147 That alone is left me:
148 I will abandon this ungrateful country,
149 And leave my dukedom's earth behind me; all,
150 Save the small urn that holds my dead beloved:
151 That relic will I save from my wrecked princedom;
152 Beside it live and die. (Enter Thorwald, Ziba, and gravediggers.)
152 Thorwald with them!
153 Old friend, I hoped you were in pleasant sleep:
154 'Tis a late walking hour.
THORWALD:
154 I came to learn
155 Whether the slave spoke true. This haunted hour,
156 What would you with the earth? Dig you for treasure?
DUKE:
157 Ay, I do dig for treasure. To the vault,
158 Lift up the kneeling marble woman there,
159 And delve down to the coffin. Ay, for treasure:
160 The very dross of such a soul and body
161 Shall stay no longer in this land of hate.
162 I'll covetously rake the ashes up
163 Of this my love-consumed incense star,
[Page 81]
164 And in a golden urn, over whose sides
165 An unborn life of sculpture shall be poured,
166 They shall stand ever on my chamber altar.
167 I am not Heaven's rebel; think't not of me;
168 Nor that I'd trouble her sepulchral sleep
169 For a light end. Religiously I come
170 To change the bed of my beloved lady,
171 That what remains below of us may join,
172 Like its immortal.
THORWALD:
172 There is no ill here:
173 And yet this breaking through the walls, that sever
174 The quick and cold, led never yet to good.
ZIBA:
175 Our work is done: betwixt the charmed moonshine
176 And the coffin lies nought but a nettle's shade,
177 That shakes its head at the deed.
DUKE:
177 Let the men go. [Exeunt labourers.
178 Now Death, thou shadowy miser,
179 I am thy robber; be not merciful,
180 But take me in requital. There is she then;
181 I cannot hold my tears, thinking how altered.
182 O thoughts, ye fleeting, unsubstantial family!
183 Thou formless, viewless, and unuttered memory!
184 How dare ye yet survive that gracious image,
185 Sculptured about the essence whence ye rose?
186 That words of her should ever dwell in me,
187 Who is as if she never had been born
[Page 82]
188 To all earth's millions, save this one! Nay, prithee,
189 Let no one comfort me. I'll mourn awhile
190 Over her memory.
THORWALD:
190 Let the past be past,
191 And Lethe freeze unwept on over it.
192 What is, be patient with: and, with what shall be,
193 Silence the body-bursting spirit's yearnings.
194 Thou say'st that, when she died, that day was spilt
195 All beauty flesh could hold; that day went down
196 An oversouled creation. The time comes
197 When thou shalt find again thy blessed love,
198 Pure from all earth, and with the usury
199 Of her heaven-hoarded charms.
DUKE:
199 Is this the silence
200 That I commanded? Fool, thou say'st a lesson
201 Out of some philosophic pedant's book.
202 I loved no desolate soul: she was a woman,
203 Whose spirit I knew only through those limbs,
204 Those tender members thou dost dare despise;
205 By whose exhaustless beauty, infinite love,
206 Trackless expression only, I did learn
207 That there was aught yet viewless and eternal;
208 Since they could come from such alone. Where is she?
209 Where shall I ever see her as she was?
210 With the sweet smile, she smiled only on me;
211 With those eyes full of thoughts, none else could see?
212 Where shall I meet that brow and lip with mine?
213 Hence with thy shadows! But her warm fair body,
[Page 83]
214 Where's that? There, mouldered to the dust. Old man,
215 If thou dost dare to mock my ears again
216 With thy ridiculous, ghostly consolation,
217 I'll send thee to the blessings thou dost speak of.
THORWALD:
218 For heaven's and her sake restrain this passion.
DUKE:
219 She died. But Death is old and half worn out:
220 Are there no chinks in't? Could she not come to me?
221 Ghosts have been seen; but never in a dream,
222 After she'd sighed her last, was she the blessing
223 Of these desiring eyes. All, save my soul,
224 And that but for her sake, were his who knew
225 The spell of Endor, and could raise her up.
THORWALD:
226 Another time that thought were impious.
227 Unreasonable longings, such as these,
228 Fit not your age and reason. In sorrow's rage
229 Thou dost demand and bargain for a dream,
230 Which children smile at in their tales.
ZIBA:
230 Smile ignorance!
231 But, sure as men have died strong necromancy
232 Hath set the clock of time and nature back;
233 And made Earth's rooty, ruinous, grave-floored caverns
234 Throb with the pangs of birth. Ay, were I ever
235 Where the accused innocent did pray
236 Acquittal from dead lips, I would essay
237 My sires' sepulchral magic.
DUKE:
237 Slave, thou tempt'st me
238 To lay my sword's point to thy throat, and say
[Page 84]
239 "Do it or die thyself."
THORWALD:
239 Prithee, come in.
240 To cherish hopes like these is either madness,
241 Or a sure cause of it. Come in and sleep:
242 To morrow we'll talk further.
DUKE:
242 Go in thou.
243 Sleep blinds no eyes of mine, till I have proved
244 This slave's temptation.
THORWALD:
244 Then I leave you to him.
245 Good night again. [Exit Thorwald.
DUKE:
245 Good night, and quiet slumbers.
246 Now then, thou juggling African, thou shadow,
247 Think'st thou I will not murder thee this night,
248 If thou again dare tantalize my soul
249 With thy accursed hints, thy lying boasts?
250 Say, shall I stab thee?
ZIBA:
250 Then thou murder'st truth.
251 I spoke of what I'd do.
DUKE:
251 You told ghost-lies,
252 And held me for a fool because I wept.
253 Now, once more, silence: or to-night I shed
254 Drops royaller and redder than those tears. Enter Isbrand and Siegfried.
ISBRAND:
255 Pilgrim, not yet abed? Why, ere you've time
256 To lay your cloak down, heaven will strip off night,
257 And show her daily bosom.
DUKE:
257 Sir, my eyes
[Page 85]
258 Never did feel less appetite for sleep:
259 I and my slave intend to watch till morrow.
ISBRAND:
260 Excellent. You're a fellow of my humour.
261 I never sleep o' nights: the black sky likes me,
262 And the soul's solitude, while half mankind
263 Lie quiet in earth's shade and rehearse death.
264 Come, let's be merry: I have sent for wine,
265 And here it comes. [It is brought in.
265 These mossy stones about us
266 Will serve for stools, although they have been turrets,
267 Which scarce aught touched but sunlight, or the claw
268 Of the strong-winged eagles, who lived here
269 And fed on battle-bones. Come sit, sir stranger;
270 Sit too, my devil-coloured one; here's room
271 Upon my rock. Fill, Siegfried
SIEGFRIED:
271 Yellow wine,
272 And rich be sure. How like you it?
DUKE:
273 Better ne'er wetted lip.
ISBRAND:
274 Then fill again. Come, hast no song to-night,
275 Siegfried? Nor you, my midnight of a man?
276 I'm weary of dumb toping.
SIEGFRIED:
276 Yet you sing not.
277 My songs are staler than the cuckoo's tune:
278 And you, companions?
DUKE:
278 We are quite unused.
ISBRAND:
279 Then you shall have a ballad of my making.
SIEGFRIED:
280 How? do you rhyme too?
ISBRAND:
281 Sometimes, in rainy weather.
[Page 86]
282 Here's what I made one night, while picking poisons
283 To make the rats a sallad.
DUKE:
283 And what's your tune?
ISBRAND:
284 What is the night-bird's tune, wherewith she startles
285 The bee out of his dream, that turns and kisses
286 The inmost of his flower and sleeps again?
287 What is the lobster's tune when he is boiling?
288 I hate your ballads that are made to come
289 Round like a squirrel's cage, and round again.
290 We nightingales sing boldly from our hearts:
291 So listen to us.
Song by Isbrand.
292 Squats on a toad-stool under a tree
293 A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom,
294 Crying with frog voice, "What shall I be?
295 Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me
296 Scarcely alive in her wicked womb.
297 What shall I be? shall I creep to the egg
298 That's cracking asunder yonder by Nile,
299 And with eighteen toes,
300 And a snuff-taking nose,
301 Make an Egyptian crocodile?
302 Sing, 'Catch a mummy by the leg
303 And crunch him with an upper jaw,
304 Wagging tail and clenching claw;
305 Take a bill-full from my craw,
[Page 87]
306 Neighbour raven, caw, O caw,
307 Grunt, my crocky, pretty maw!'
308 "Swine, shall I be you? Thou'rt a dear dog;
309 But for a smile, and kiss, and pout,
310 I much prefer your black-lipped snout,
311 Little, gruntless, fairy hog,
312 Godson of the hawthorn hedge.
313 For, when Ringwood snuffs me out,
314 And 'gins my tender paunch to grapple,
315 Sing, 'Twixt your ancles visage wedge,
316 And roll up like an apple.'
317 "Serpent Lucifer, how do you do?
318 Of your worms and your snakes I'd be one or two;
319 For in this dear planet of wool and of leather
320 'Tis pleasant to need neither shirt, sleeve, nor shoe,
321 And have arm, leg, and belly together.
322 Then aches your head, or are you lazy?
323 Sing, 'Round your neck your belly wrap,
324 Tail-a-top, and make your cap
325 Any bee and daisy.'
326 "I'll not be a fool, like the nightingale
327 Who sits up all midnight without any ale,
328 Making a noise with his nose;
329 Nor a camel, although 'tis a beautiful back;
330 Nor a duck, notwithstanding the music of quack,
[Page 88]
331 And the webby, mud-patting toes.
332 I'll be a new bird with the head of an ass,
333 Two pigs' feet, two mens' feet, and two of a hen;
334 Devil-winged; dragon-bellied; grave-jawed, because grass
335 Is a beard that's soon shaved, and grows seldom again
336 Before it is summer; so cow all the rest;
337 The new Dodo is finished. O! come to my nest."
SIEGFRIED:
338 A noble hymn to the belly gods indeed:
339 Would that Pythagoras heard thee, boy!
ISBRAND:
340 I fear you flatter: 'tis perhaps a little
341 Too sweet and tender, but that is the fashion;
342 Besides my failing is too much sentiment.
343 Fill the cups up, and pass them round again;
344 I'm not my nightly self yet. There's creation
345 In these thick yellow drops. By my faith, Siegfried,
346 A man of meat and water's a thin beast,
347 But he who sails upon such waves as these
348 Begins to be a fellow. The old gods
349 Were only men and wine.
SIEGFRIED:
349 Here's to their memory.
350 They're dead, poor sinners, all of them but Death,
351 Who has laughed down Jove's broad, ambrosian brow,
352 Furrowed with earth-quake frowns: and not a ghost
353 Haunts the gods' town upon Olympus' peak.
ISBRAND:
354 Methinks that earth and heaven are grown bad neighbours,
[Page 89]
355 And have blocked up the common door between them.
356 Five hundred years ago had we sat here
357 So late and lonely, many a jolly ghost
358 Would have joined company.
SIEGFRIED:
358 To trust in story,
359 In the old times Death was a feverish sleep,
360 In which men walked. The other world was cold
361 And thinly-peopled, so life's emigrants
362 Came back to mingle with the crowds of earth:
363 But now great cities are transplanted thither,
364 Memphis, and Babylon, and either Thebes,
365 And Priam's towery town with its one beech.
366 The dead are most and merriest: so be sure
367 There will be no more haunting, till their towns
368 Are full to the garret; then they'll shut their gates,
369 To keep the living out, and perhaps leave
370 A dead or two between both kingdoms.
DUKE:
370 Ziba;
371 Hear'st thou, phantastic mountebank, what's said?
ZIBA:
372 Nay: as I live and shall be one myself,
373 I can command them hither.
ISBRAND:
373 Whom?
ZIBA:
373 Departed spirits.
DUKE:
374 He who dares think that words of human speech,
375 A chalky ring with monstrous figures in it,
376 Or smoky flames can draw the distant souls
377 Of those, whose bones and monuments are dust,
[Page 90]
378 Must shudder at the restless, broken death,
379 Which he himself in age shall fall into.
ISBRAND:
380 Suppose we four had lived in Cyrus' time,
381 And had our graves under Egyptian grass,
382 D'you think, at whistling of a necromant,
383 I'd leave my wine or subterranean love
384 To know his bidding? Mummies cannot pull
385 The breathing to them, when they'd learn the news.
ZIBA:
386 Perhaps they do, in sleep, in swoons, in fevers:
387 But your belief's not needed. [To the Duke].
387 You remember
388 The damsel dark at Mecca, whom we saw
389 Weeping the death of a pale summer flower,
390 Which her spear-slain beloved had tossed to her
391 Galloping into battle?
DUKE:
391 Happy one!
392 Whose eyes could yield a tear to soothe her sorrows.
393 But what's that to the point?
ZIBA:
393 As those tears fell,
394 A magic scholar passed; and, their cause known,
395 Bade her no longer mourn: he called a bird,
396 And bade it with its bill select a grain
397 Out of the gloomy death-bed of the blossom.
398 The feathery bee obeyed; and scraped aside
399 The sand, and dropped the seed into its grave:
400 And there the old plant lay, still and forgotten,
401 By its just budding grandsons; but not long:
402 For soon the floral necromant brought forth
[Page 91]
403 A wheel of amber, (such may Clotho use
404 When she spins lives,) and, as he turned and sung,
405 The mould was cracked and shouldered up; there came
406 A curved stalk, and then two leaves unfurled,
407 And slow and straight between them there arose,
408 Ghostily still, again the crowned flower.
409 Is it not easier to raise a man,
410 Whose soul strives upward ever, than a plant,
411 Whose very life stands halfway on death's road,
412 Asleep and buried half?
DUKE:
412 This was a cheat:
413 The herb was born anew out of a seed,
414 Not raised out of a bony skeleton.
415 What tree is man the seed of?
ZIBA:
415 Of a ghost;
416 Of his night-coming, tempest-waved phantom:
417 And even as there is a round dry grain
418 In a plant's skeleton, which being buried
419 Can raise the herb's green body up again;
420 So is there such in man, a seed-shaped bone,
421 Aldabaron, called by the Hebrews Luz,
422 Which, being laid into the ground, will bear
423 After three thousand years the grass of flesh,
424 The bloody, soul-possessed weed called man.
ISBRAND:
425 Let's have a trick then in all haste, I prithee.
426 The world's man-crammed; we want no more of them:
427 But show me, if you will, some four-legged ghost;
428 Rome's mother, the she-wolf; or the fat goat
[Page 92]
429 From whose dugs Jove sucked godhead; any thing;
430 Pig, bullock, goose; for they have goblins too,
431 Else ours would have no dinner.
ZIBA:
431 Were you worthy,
432 I'd raise a spirit whom your conscience knows;
433 And he would drag thee down into that world,
434 Whither thou didst send him.
ISBRAND:
434 Thanks for the offer.
435 Our wine's out, and these clouds, whose blackest wombs
436 Seem swelling with a second centaur-birth,
437 Threaten plain water. So good night. [Exit with Siegfried.
DUKE:
438 Obstinate slave! Now that we are alone,
439 Durst thou again say life and soul has lifted
440 The dead man from the grave, and sent him walking
441 Over the earth?
ZIBA:
441 I say it, and will add
442 Deed to my word, not oath. Within what tomb
443 Dwells he, whom you would call?
DUKE:
443 There. But stand off!
444 If you do juggle with her holy bones,
445 By God I'll murder thee. I don't believe you,
446 For here next to my heart I wear a bond,
447 Written in the blood of one who was my friend,
448 In which he swears that, dying first, he would
449 Borrow some night his body from the ground,
450 To visit me once more. One day we quarrelled,
451 Swords hung beside us and we drew: he fell.
[Page 93]
452 Yet never has his bond or his revenge
453 Raised him to my bed-side, haunting his murderer,
454 Or keeping blood-sealed promise to his friend.
455 Does not this prove you lie?
ZIBA:
455 'Tis not my spell:
456 Shall I try that with him?
DUKE:
456 No, no! not him.
457 The heavy world press on him, where he lies,
458 With all her towers and mountains!
ZIBA:
458 Listen, lord.
459 Time was when Death was young and pitiful,
460 Though callous now by use: and then there dwelt,
461 In the thin world above, a beauteous Arab,
462 Unmated yet and boyish. To his couch
463 At night, which shone so starry through the boughs,
464 A pale flower-breathed nymph with dewy hair
465 Would often come, but all her love was silent;
466 And ne'er by day-light could he gaze upon her,
467 For ray by ray, as morning came, she paled,
468 And like a snow of air dissolv'd i' th' light,
469 Leaving behind a stalk with lilies hung,
470 Round which her womanish graces had assembled.
471 So did the early love-time of his youth
472 Pass with delight: but when, compelled at length,
473 He left the wilds and woods for riotous camps
474 And cities full of men, he saw no more,
475 Tho' prayed and wept for, his old bed-time vision,
476 The pale dissolving maiden. He would wander
[Page 94]
477 Sleepless about the waste, benighted fields,
478 Asking the speechless shadows of his thoughts
479 "Who shared my couch? Who was my love? Where is she?"
480 Thus passing through a grassy burial-ground,
481 Wherein a new-dug grave gaped wide for food,
482 "Who was she?" cried he, and the earthy mouth
483 Did move its nettle-bearded lips together,
484 And said "'Twas I---I, Death: behold our child!"
485 The wanderer looked, and on the lap of the pit
486 A young child slept as at a mother's breast.
487 He raised it and he reared it. From that infant
488 My race, the death-begotten, draw their blood:
489 Our prayer for the diseased works more than medicine;
490 Our blessings oft secure grey hairs and happy
491 To new-born infants; and, in case of need,
492 The dead and gone are re-begotten by us,
493 And motherlessly born to second life.
DUKE:
494 I've heard your tale. Now exorcise: but, mark!
495 If thou dost dare to make my heart thy fool,
496 I'll send thee to thy grave-mouthed grandam, Arab.
ZIBA:
497 Wilt thou submit unmurmuring to all evils,
498 Which this recall to a forgotten being
499 May cause to thee and thine?
DUKE:
499 With all my soul,
500 So I may take the good.
ZIBA:
500 And art thou ready
[Page 95]
501 To follow, if so be its will, the ghost,
502 Whom you will re-imbody, to the place
503 Which it doth now inhabit?
DUKE:
503 My first wish.
504 Now to your sorcery: and no more conditions,
505 In hopes I may break off. All ill be mine,
506 Which shall the world revisit with the being
507 That lies within.
ZIBA:
507 Enough. Upon this scroll
508 Are written words, which read, even in a whisper,
509 Would in the air create another star;
510 And, more than thunder-tongued storms in the sky,
511 Make the old world to quake and sweat with fear;
512 And, as the chilly damps of her death-swoon
513 Fall and condense, they to the moon reflect
514 The forms and colours of the pale old dead.
515 Laid there among the bones, and left to burn,
516 With sacred spices, its keen vaporous power
517 Would draw to life the earliest dead of all,
518 Swift as the sun doth ravish a dew-drop
519 Out of a flower. But see, the torch-flame dies:
520 How shall I light it?
DUKE:
520 Here's my useless blood-bond;
521 These words, that should have waked illumination
522 Within a corpse's eyes, will make a tinder,
523 Whose sparks might be of life instead of fire.
524 Burn it.
ZIBA:
524 An incense for thy senses, god of those,
[Page 96]
525 To whom life is as death to us; who were,
526 Ere our grey ancestors wrote history;
527 When these our ruined towers were in the rock;
528 And our great forests, which do feed the sea
529 With storm-souled fleets, lay in an acorn's cup:
530 When all was seed that now is dust; our minute
531 Invisibly far future. Send thy spirit
532 From plant of the air, and from the air and earth,
533 And from earth's worms, and roots, again to gather
534 The dispersed being, 'mid whose bones I place
535 The words which, spoken, shall destroy death's kingdom,
536 And which no voice, but thunder, can pronounce.
537 Marrow fill bone, and vine-like veins run round them,
538 And flesh, thou grass, mown wert thou long ago,---
539 Now comes the brown dry after-crop. Ho! ghost!
540 There's thy old heart a-beating, and thy life
541 Burning on the old hearth. Come home again!
DUKE:
542 Hush! Do you hear a noise?
ZIBA:
542 It is the sound
543 Of the ghost's foot on Jacob's ladder-rungs.
DUKE:
544 More like the tread upon damp stony steps
545 Out of a dungeon. Dost thou hear a door
546 Drop its great bolt and grate upon its hinges?
ZIBA:
547 Serpentine Hell! That is thy staircase echo, [aside.
548 And thy jaws' groaning. What betides it?
DUKE:
549 Thou human murder-time of night,
[Page 97]
550 What hast thou done?
ZIBA:
551 My task: give me to death, if the air has not
552 What was the earth's but now. Ho there! i' th' vault.
A Voice.
553 Who breaks my death?
ZIBA:
554 Draw on thy body, take up thy old limbs,
555 And then come forth tomb-born.
DUKE:
555 One moment's peace!
556 Let me remember what a grace she had,
557 Even in her dying hour: her soul set not,
558 But at its noon Death like a cloud came o'er it,
559 And now hath passed away. O come to me,
560 Thou dear returned spirit of my wife;
561 And, surely as I clasp thee once again,
562 Thou shalt not die without me.
ZIBA:
562 Ho! there, Grave,
563 Is life within thee?
The Voice.
563 Melveric, I am here.
DUKE:
564 Did'st hear that whisper? Open, and let in
565 The blessing to my eyes, whose subtle breath
566 Doth penetrate my heart's quick; and let me hear
567 That dearest name out of those dearest lips.
568 Who comes back to my heart? (Mandrake runs out of the sepulchre.)
ZIBA:
568 Momus of Hell, what's this?
DUKE:
569 Is this thy wretched jest, thou villanous fool?
570 But I will punish thee, by heaven; and thou too [To Mandrake.
[Page 98]
571 Shalt soon be what thou shouldst have better acted.
MANDRAKE:
Excuse me: as you have thought proper to call me to the living, I shall take the liberty of remaining alive. If you want to speak to another ghost, of longer standing, look into the old lumber-room of a vault again: some one seems to be putting himself together there. Good night, gentlemen, for I must travel to Egypt once more. [Exit.
DUKE:
572 Thou disappointed cheat! Was this a fellow,
573 Whom thou hadst hired to act a spectral part?
574 Thou see'st how well he does it. But away!
575 Or I will teach thee better to rehearse it.
ZIBA:
576 Death is a hypocrite then, a white dissembler,
577 Like all that doth seem good! I am put to shame. [Exit.
DUKE:
578 Deceived and disappointed vain desires!
579 Why laugh I not, and ridicule myself?
580 'Tis still, and cold, and nothing in the air
581 But an old grey twilight, or of eve or morn,
582 I know not which, dim as futurity,
583 And sad and hoary as the ghostly past,
584 Fills up the space. Hush! not a wind is there,
585 Not a cloud sails over the battlements,
586 Not a bell tolls the hour. Is there an hour?
587 Or is not all gone by, which here did hive,
588 Of men and their life's ways? Could I but hear
589 The ticking of a clock, or some one breathing,
590 Or e'en a cricket's chirping, or the grating
[Page 99]
591 Of the old gates amidst the marble tombs,
592 I should be sure that this was still the world.
593 Hark! Hark! Doth nothing stir?
594 No light, and still no light, besides this ghost
595 That mocks the dawn, unaltered? Still no sound?
596 No voice of man? No cry of beast? No rustle
597 Of any moving creature? And sure I feel
598 That I remain the same: no more round blood-drops
599 Roll joyously along my pulseless veins:
600 The air I seem to breathe is still the same:
601 And the great dreadful thought, that now comes o'er me,
602 Must remain ever as it is, unchanged.---
603 This moment doth endure for evermore;
604 Eternity hath overshadowed time;
605 And I alone am left of all that lived,
606 Pent in this narrow, horrible conviction.
607 Ha! the dead soon will wake! My Agnes, rise;
608 Rise up, my wife! One look, ere Wolfram comes;
609 Quick, or it is too late: the murdered hasten:
610 My best-beloved, come once to my heart . .
611 But ah! who art thou? (The gates of the sepulchre fly open and discover Wolfram.)
WOLFRAM:
611 Wolfram, murderer,
612 To whose heart thou didst come with horrid purpose.
DUKE:
613 Lie of my eyes, begone! Art thou not dead?
614 Are not the worms, that ate thy marrow, dead?
615 What dost thou here, thou wretched goblin fool?
[Page 100]
616 Think'st thou, I fear thee? Thou man-mocking air,
617 Thou art not truer than a mirror's image,
618 Nor half so lasting. Back again to coffin,
619 Thou baffled idiot spectre, or haunt cradles:
620 Or stay, and I'll laugh at thee. Guard thyself,
621 If thou pretendest life.
WOLFRAM:
622 Is this thin air, that thrusts thy sword away?
623 Flesh, bones, and soul, and blood that thou stol'st from me,
624 Upon thy summons, bound by heart-red letters,
625 Here Wolfram stands: what wouldst thou?
DUKE:
625 What sorcery else,
626 But that cursed compact, could have made full Hell
627 Boil over, and spill thee, thou topmost damned?
628 But down again! I'll see no more of thee.
629 Hound to thy kennel, to your coffin bones,
630 Ghost to thy torture!
WOLFRAM:
630 Thou returnest with me;
631 So make no hurry. I will stay awhile
632 To see how the old world goes, feast and be merry,
633 And then to work again.
DUKE:
633 Darest thou stand there,
634 Thou shameless vapour, and assert thyself,
635 While I defy, and question, and deride thee?
636 The stars, I see them dying: clearly all
637 The passage of this night remembrance gives me,
638 And I think coolly: but my brain is mad,
639 Else why behold I that? Is't possible
[Page 101]
640 Thou'rt true, and worms have vomited thee up
641 Upon this rind of earth? No; thou shalt vanish.
642 Was it for this I hated thee and killed thee?
643 I'll have thee dead again, and hounds and eagles
644 Shall be thy graves, since this old, earthy one
645 Hath spat thee out for poison.
WOLFRAM:
645 Thou, old man,
646 Art helpless against me. I shall not harm thee;
647 So lead me home. I am not used to sunlight,
648 And morn's a-breaking.
DUKE:
648 Then there is rebellion
649 Against all kings, even Death. Murder's worn out
650 And full of holes; I'll never make't the prison,
651 Of what I hate, again. Come with me, spectre;
652 If thou wilt live against the body's laws,
653 Thou murderer of Nature, it shall be
654 A question, which haunts which, while thou dost last.
655 So come with me. [Exeunt.
[Page 102]
ACT IV.
Scene I.
An apartment in the Governor's palace. The Duke and an attendant.
DUKE:
1 Your lord sleeps yet?
Attend.
1 An hour ago he rose:
2 About this time he's busy with his falcons,
3 And then he takes his meal.
DUKE:
3 I'll wait for him. [Exit Attendant.
4 How strange it is that I can live to day;
5 Nay look like other men, who have been sleeping
6 On quiet pillows and not dreamt! Methinks
7 The look of the world's a lie, a face made up
8 O'er graves and fiery depths; and nothing's true
9 But what is horrible. If man could see
10 The perils and diseases that he elbows,
11 Each day he walks a mile; which catch at him,
12 Which fall behind and graze him as he passes;
13 Then would he know that Life's a single pilgrim,
14 Fighting unarmed amongst a thousand soldiers.
15 It is this infinite invisible
16 Which we must learn to know, and yet to scorn,
17 And, from the scorn of that, regard the world
[Page 103]
18 As from the edge of a far star. Now then
19 I feel me in the thickest of the battle;
20 The arrow-shower pours down, swords hew, mines open
21 Their ravenous mouths about me; it rains death;
22 But cheerly I defy the braggart storm,
23 And set my back against a rock, to fight
24 Till I am bloodily won. Enter Thorwald.
THORWALD:
24 How? here already?
25 I'm glad on't, and to see you look so clear
26 After that idle talk. How did it end?
DUKE:
27 Scarcely as I expected.
THORWALD:
27 Dared he conjure?
28 But surely you have seen no ghost last night:
29 You seem to have supped well and slept.
DUKE:
29 We'd wine,
30 And some wild singing. Of the necromancy
31 We'll speak no more. Ha! Do you see a shadow?
THORWALD:
32 Ay: and the man who casts it.
DUKE:
33 Tis true; my eyes are dim and dull with watching.
34 This castle that fell down, and was rebuilt
35 With the same stones, is the same castle still;
36 And so with him. Enter Wolfram.
THORWALD:
37 What mean you?
DUKE:
37 Impudent goblin!
[Page 104]
38 Darest thou the day-light? Dar'st be seen of more
39 Than me, the guilty? Vanish! Though thou'rt there,
40 I'll not believe I see thee. Or is this
41 The work of necromantic Conscience? Ha!
42 'Tis nothing but a picture: curtain it.
43 Strange visions, my good Thorwald, are begotten,
44 When Sleep o'ershadows waking.
THORWALD:
44 Who's the stranger?
45 You speak as one familiar.
DUKE:
45 Is aught here
46 Besides our-selves? I think not.
THORWALD:
46 Yet you gaze
47 Straight on the man.
DUKE:
47 A villanous friend of mine;
48 Of whom I must speak well, and still permit him
49 To follow me. So thou'rt yet visible,
50 Thou grave-breaker! If thou wilt haunt me thus,
51 I'll make thee my fool, ghost, my jest and zany.
52 'Tis his officious gratitude that pains me:
53 The carcase owes to me its ruinous life,
54 (Between whose broken walls and hideous arches
55 You see the other world's grey spectral light;)
56 Therefore he clings to me so ivily.
57 Now, goblin, lie about it. 'Tis in truth
58 A faithful slave.
WOLFRAM:
58 If I had come unsummoned,
59 If I had burst into your sunny world,
60 And stolen visibility and birth
[Page 105]
61 Against thy prayers, thus shouldst thou speak to me:
62 But thou hast forced me up, remember that.
63 I am no fiend, no foe; then let me hear
64 These stern and tyrannous rebukes no more.
65 Wilt thou be with the born, that have not died?
66 I vanish: now a short farewell. I fade;
67 The air doth melt me, and, my form being gone,
68 I'm all thou see'st not. [He disappears.
DUKE:
69 Dissolved like snow in water! Be my cloud,
70 My breath, and fellow soul, I can bear all,
71 As long as thou art viewless to these others.
72 Now there are two of us. How stands the bridal?
THORWALD:
73 This evening 'twill be held.
DUKE:
73 Good; and our plot
74 Leaps on your pleasure's lap; here comes my gang;
75 Away with you. [Exit Thorwald.
75 I do begin to feel
76 As if I were a ghost among the men,
77 As all, whom I loved, are; for their affections
78 Hang on things new, young, and unknown to me:
79 And that I am is but the obstinate will
80 Of this my hostile body. Enter Isbrand, Adalmar, and Siegfried.
ISBRAND:
81 Come, let's be doing: we have talked whole nights
82 Of what an instant, with one flash of action,
83 Should have performed: you wise and speaking people
[Page 106]
84 Need some one, with a hatchet-stroke, to free
85 The Pallas of your Jove-like headaches.
DUKE:
85 Patience:
86 Fledging comes after hatching. One day more:
87 This evening brings the wedding of the prince,
88 And with it feasts and maskings. In mid bowls
89 And giddy dances let us fall upon them.
SIEGFRIED:
90 Well thought: our enemies will be assembled.
ISBRAND:
91 I like to see Ruin at dinner time,
92 Firing his cannons with the match they lit
93 For the buck-roasting faggots. But what say you
94 To what concerns you most? [to Adalmar.
ADALMAR:
94 That I am ready
95 To hang my hopeful crown of happiness
96 Upon the temple of the public good.
ISBRAND:
97 Of that no need. Your wedding shall be finished;
98 Or left, like a full goblet yet untasted,
99 To be drunk up with greater thirst from toil.
100 I'll wed too when I've time. My honest pilgrim,
101 The melancholy lady, you brought with you,
102 Looks on me with an eye of much content:
103 I have sent some rhymed love-letters unto her,
104 In my best style. D' you think we're well matched?
ADALMAR:
105 How? Would you prop the peach upon the upas?
ISBRAND:
106 True: I am rough, a surly bellowing storm;
[Page 107]
107 But fallen, never tear did hang more tender
108 Upon the eye-lash of a love-lorn girl,
109 Or any Frenchman's long, frost-bitten nose,
110 Than in the rosecup of that lady's life
111 I shall lie trembling. Pilgrim, plead for me
112 With a tongue love-oiled.
DUKE:
112 Win her, sir, and wear her.
113 But you and she are scarcely for one world.
ISBRAND:
114 Enough; I'll wed her. Siegfried, come with me;
115 We'll talk about it in the rainy weather.
116 Pilgrim, anon I find you in the ruins,
117 Where we had wine last night. [Exit with Siegfried.
ADALMAR:
118 Would that it all were over, and well over!
119 Suspicions flash upon me here and there:
120 But we're in the mid ocean without compass,
121 Winds wild, and billows rolling us away:
122 Onwards with hope!
DUKE:
122 Of what? Youth, is it possible
123 That thou art toiling here for liberty,
124 And others' welfare, and such virtuous shadows
125 As philosophic fools and beggars raise
126 Out of the world that's gone? Thou'lt sell thy birth-right
127 For incense praise, less tickling to the sense
128 Than Esau's pottage steam?
ADALMAR:
128 No, not for these,
129 Fame's breath and praise, its shadow. 'Tis my humour
[Page 108]
130 To do what's right and good.
DUKE:
130 Thou'rt a strange prince.
131 Why all the world, except some fifty lean ones,
132 Would, in your place and at your ardent years,
133 Seek the delight that lies in woman's limbs
134 And mountain-covering grapes. What's to be royal,
135 Unless you pick those girls, whose cheeks you fancy,
136 As one would cowslips? And soo hills and valleys
137 Mantled in autumn with the snaky plant,
138 Whose juice is the right madness, the best godship?
139 Have men, and beasts, and woods, with flower and fruit
140 From all the earth, one's slaves; bid the worm eat
141 Your next year's purple from the mulberry leaf,
142 The tiger shed his skin to line your car,
143 And men die, thousands in a day, for glory?
144 Such things should kings bid from their solitude
145 Upon the top of Man. Justice and Good,
146 All penniless, base, earthy kind of fellows,
147 So low, one wonders they were not born dogs,
148 Can do as well, alas!
ADALMAR:
148 There's cunning in thee.
149 A year ago this doctrine might have pleased me:
150 But since, I have remembered, in my childhood
151 My teachers told me that I was immortal,
152 And had within me something like a god;
153 Now, by believing firmly in that promise,
154 I do enjoy a part of its fulfilment,
155 And, antedating my eternity,
[Page 109]
156 Act as I were immortal.
DUKE:
156 Think of now.
157 This Hope and Memory are wild horses, tearing
158 The precious now to pieces. Grasp and use
159 The breath within you; for you know not, whether
160 That wind about the trees brings you one more.
161 Thus far yourself. But tell me, hath no other
162 A right, which you would injure? Is this sceptre,
163 Which you would stamp to dust and let each varlet
164 Pick out his grain of power; this great spirit,
165 This store of mighty men's concentrate souls,
166 Which kept your fathers in god's breath, and you
167 Would waste in the wide, smoky, pestilent air
168 For every dog to snuff in; is this royalty
169 Your own? O! when you were a boy, young prince,
170 I would have laid my heart upon your spirit:
171 Now both are broken.
ADALMAR:
171 Father?
DUKE:
171 Yes, my son:
172 We'll live to be most proud of those two names.
173 Go on thy way: I follow and o'erlook.
174 This pilgrim's shape will hang about and guard thee,
175 Being but the shadow of my sunniness,
176 Looking in patience through a cloudy time. [Exeunt.
[Page 110]
Scene II.
A garden. Sibylla and ATHULF:
ATHULF:
1 From me no comfort. O you specious creatures,
2 So poisonous to the eye! Go! you sow madness:
3 And one of you, although I cannot curse her,
4 Will make my grave a murderer's. I'll do nought;
5 But rather drink and revel at your bridal.
6 And why not Isbrand? Many such a serpent
7 Doth lick heaven's dew out of as sweet a flower.
8 Wed, wed! I'll not prevent it.
SIBYL:
8 I beseech thee,
9 If there be any tie of love between thee
10 And her who is thy brother's.
ATHULF:
10 Curse the word!
11 And trebly curse the deed that made us brothers!
12 O that I had been born the man I hate!
13 Any, at least, but one. Then---sleep my soul;
14 And walk not in thy sleep to do the act,
15 Which thou must ever dream of. My fair lady,
16 I would not be the reason of one tear
17 Upon thy bosom, if the times were other;
18 If women were not women. When the world
19 Turns round the other way, and doing Cain-like
[Page 111]
20 Passes as merrily as doing Eve-like,
21 Then I'll be pitiful. Let go my hand;
22 It is a mischievous limb, and may run wild,
23 Doing the thing its master would not. [Exit.
SIBYL:
24 Then no one hears me. O! the world's too loud,
25 With trade and battle, for my feeble cry
26 To rouse the living. The invisible
27 Hears best what is unspoken; and my thoughts
28 Have long been calling comfort from the grave. (Wolfram suddenly appears, in the garment of a monk.)
WOLFRAM:
29 Lady, you called me.
SIBYL:
29 I?
WOLFRAM:
29 The word was Comfort:
30 A name by which the master, whose I am,
31 Is named by many wise and many wretched.
32 Will you with me to the place where sighs are not;
33 A shore of blessing, which disease doth beat
34 Sea-like, and dashes those whom he would wreck
35 Into the arms of Peace? But ah! what say I?
36 You're young and must be merry in the world;
37 Have friends to envy, lovers to betray you;
38 And feed young children with the blood of your heart,
39 Till they have sucked up strength enough to break it.
40 Poor woman! Art thou nothing but the straw
41 Bearing a heavy poison, and, that shed,
[Page 112]
42 Cut down to be stamped on? But thou'rt i' th' blade;
43 The green and milky sun-deceived grass:
44 So stand till the scythe comes, take shine and shower,
45 And the wind fell you gently.
SIBYL:
45 Do not go.
46 Speak as at first you did; there was in the words
47 A mystery and music, which did thaw
48 The hard old rocky world into a flood,
49 Whereon a swan-drawn boat seemed at my feet
50 Rocking on its blue billows; and I heard
51 Harmonies, and breathed odours from an isle,
52 Whose flowers cast tremulous shadows in the day
53 Of an immortal sun, and crowd the banks
54 Whereon immortal human kind doth couch.
55 This I have dreamt before: your speech recalled it.
56 So speak to soothe me once again.
WOLFRAM: (aside)
56 Snake Death,
57 Sweet as the cowslip's honey is thy whisper:
58 O let this dove escape thee! I'll not plead,
59 I will not be thy suitor to this innocent:
60 Open thy craggy jaws; speak, coffin-tongued,
61 Persuasions through the dancing of the yew-bough
62 And the crow's nest upon it. (aloud) Lady fair,
63 Listen not to me, look not on me more.
64 I have a fascination in my words,
65 A magnet in my look, which drags you downwards,
66 From hope and life. You set your eyes upon me,
67 And think I stand upon this earth beside you:
[Page 113]
68 Alas! I am upon a jutting stone,
69 Which crumbles down the steeps of an abyss;
70 And you, above me far, grow wild and giddy:
71 Leave me, or you must fall into the deep.
SIBYL:
72 I leave thee never, nor thou me. O no!
73 You know not what a heart you spurn away;
74 How good it might be, if love cherished it;
75 And how deserted 'tis; ah! so deserted,
76 That I have often wished a ghost would come,
77 Whose love might haunt it. Turn not thou, the last.
78 Thou see'st I'm young: how happy might I be!
79 And yet I only wish these tears I shed
80 Were raining on my grave. If thou'lt not love me,
81 Then do me the next office; show me only
82 The shortest path to solitary death.
WOLFRAM:
83 You're moved to wildness, maiden. Beg not of me.
84 I can grant nothing good: quiet thyself,
85 And seek heaven's help. Farewell.
SIBYL:
85 Wilt thou leave me?
86 Unpitying, aye unmoved in cheek and heart,
87 Stern, selfish mortal? Hast thou heard my prayer;
88 Hast seen me weep; hast seen my limbs to quiver,
89 Like a storm-shaken tree over its roots?
90 Art thou alive, and canst thou see this wretch,
91 Without a care?
WOLFRAM:
91 Thou see'st I am unmoved:
92 Infer the truth.
[Page 114]
SIBYL:
92 Thy soul indeed is dead.
WOLFRAM:
93 My soul, my soul! O that it wore not now
94 The semblance of a garb it hath cast off;
95 O that it was disrobed of these mock limbs,
96 Shed by a rocky birth unnaturally,
97 Long after their decease and burial!
98 O woe that I must speak! for she, who hears,
99 Is marked for no more breathing. There are histories
100 Of women, nature's bounties, who disdained
101 The mortal love of the embodied man,
102 And sought the solitude which spirits cast
103 Around their darksome presence. These have loved,
104 Wooed, wedded, and brought home their moonstruck brides
105 Unto the world-sanded eternity.
106 Hast faith in such reports?
SIBYL:
106 So lonely am I,
107 That I dare wish to prove them true.
WOLFRAM:
107 Dar'st die?
108 A grave-deep question. Answer it religiously.
SIBYL:
109 With him I loved, I dared.
WOLFRAM:
109 With me and for me.
110 I am a ghost. Tremble not; fear not me.
111 The dead are ever good and innocent,
112 And love the living. They are cheerful creatures,
113 And quiet as the sunbeams, and most like,
114 In grace and patient love and spotless beauty,
115 The new-born of mankind. 'Tis better too
[Page 115]
116 To die, as thou art, young, in the first grace
117 And full of beauty, and so be remembered
118 As one chosen from the earth to be an angel;
119 Not left to droop and wither, and be borne
120 Down by the breath of time. Come then, Sibylla,
121 For I am Wolfram!
SIBYL:
121 Thou art come to fetch me!
122 It is indeed a proof of boundless love,
123 That thou hadst need of me even in thy bliss.
124 I go with thee. O Death! I am thy friend,
125 I struggle not with thee, I love thy state:
126 Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now;
127 And let me pass praying away into thee,
128 As twilight still does into starry night. [The scene closes.
Voices in the air.
129 As sudden thunder
130 Pierces night;
131 As magic wonder,
132 Wild affright,
133 Rives asunder
134 Men's delight:
135 Our ghost, our corpse; and we
136 Rise to be.
137 As flies the lizard
138 Serpent fell;
[Page 116]
139 As goblin vizard,
140 At the spell
141 Of the wizard,
142 Sinks to hell:
143 Our life, our laugh, our lay
144 Pass away.
145 As wake the morning
146 Trumpets bright;
147 As snow-drop, scorning
148 Winter's might,
149 Rises warning
150 Like a spright:
151 We buried, dead, and slain
152 Rise again.
Scene III.
A garden, under the windows of Amala's apartment. ATHULF:
ATHULF:
1 Once more I'll see thee, love, speak to thee, hear thee;
2 And then my soul shall cut itself a door
3 Out of this planet. I've been wild and heartless,
4 Laughed at the feasts where Love had never place,
5 And pledged my light faith to a hundred women,
[Page 117]
6 Forgotten all next day. A worthless life,
7 A life ridiculous! Day after day,
8 Folly on folly! But I'll not repent.
9 Remorse and weeping shall not be my virtues:
10 Let fools do both, and, having had their evil,
11 And tickled their young hearts with the sweet sins
12 That feather Cupid's shafts, turn timid, weep,
13 Be penitent. Now the wild banquet's o'er,
14 Wine spilt, lights out, I cannot brook the world,
15 It is so silent. And that poisonous reptile,
16 My past self, is a villain I'll not pardon.
17 I hate and will have vengeance on my soul:
18 Satirical Murder, help me . . Ha! I am
19 Devil-inspired: out with you, ye fool's thoughts!
20 You're young, strong, healthy yet; years may you live:
21 Why yield to an ill-humoured moment? No!
22 I'll cut his throat across, make her my wife;
23 Huzza! for a mad life! and be a Duke!
24 I was born for sin and love it.
24 O thou villain,
25 Die, die! Have patience with me, heavenly Mercy!
26 Let me but once more look upon that blessing,
27 Then can I calmly offer up to thee
28 This crime-haired head. Enter Amala as bride, with a bridesmaid.
28 O beauty, beauty!
29 Thou shed'st a moony night of quiet through me.
[Page 118]
30 Thanks! Now I am resolved.
Bridesm.
30 Amala, good night:
31 Thou'rt happy. In these high delightful times,
32 It does the human heart much good to think
33 On deepest woe, which may be waiting for us,
34 Masked even in a marriage-hour.
AMALA:
34 Thou'rt timid:
35 'Tis well to trust in the good genius.
36 Are not our hearts, in these great pleasures godded,
37 Let out awhile to their eternity,
38 And made prophetic? The past is pale to me;
39 But I do see my future plain of life,
40 Full of rejoicings and of harvest-dances,
41 Clearly, it is so sunny. A year hence
42 I'll laugh at you for this, until you weep.
43 Good night, sweet fear.
Bridesm.
43 Take this flower from me,
44 (A white rose, fitting for a wedding-gift,)
45 And lay it on your pillow. Pray to live
46 So fair and innocently; pray to die,
47 Leaf after leaf, so softly. [Exit.
AMALA:
48 ---Now to my chamber; yet an hour or two,
49 In which years must be sown.
ATHULF:
49 Stay Amala;
50 An old acquaintance brings a greeting to you,
51 Upon your wedding night.
AMALA:
52 His brother Athulf! What can he do here?
53 I fear the man.
[Page 119]
ATHULF:
53 Dost love him?
AMALA:
53 That were cause
54 Indeed to fear him. Leave me, leave me, sir:
55 It is too late. We cannot be together
56 For any good.
ATHULF:
56 This once we can. O Amala,
57 Had I been in my young days taught the truth,
58 And brought up with the kindness and affection
59 Of a good man! I was not myself evil,
60 But out of youth and ignorance did much wrong.
61 Had I received lessons in thought and nature,
62 We might have been together, but not thus.
63 How then? Did you not love me long ago?
64 More, O much more than him? Yes, Amala,
65 You would have been mine now. A life with thee,
66 Heavenly delight and virtue ever with us!
67 I've lost it, trod on it, and crush'd it. Woe!
68 O bitter woe is me!
AMALA:
68 Athulf, why make me
69 Rue the inevitable? Prithee leave me.
ATHULF:
70 Thee bye and bye: and all that is not thee.
71 Thee, my all, that I've forfeited I'll leave,
72 And the world's all, my nothing.
AMALA:
72 Nay; despond not.
73 Thou'lt be a merry, happy man some day,
74 And list to this as to a tale of some one
75 You had forgotten.
ATHULF:
75 Now no need of comfort:
[Page 120]
76 I'm somehow glad that it did thus fall out.
77 Then had I lived too softly; in these woes
78 I can stand up, and show myself a man.
79 I do not think that I shall live an hour.
80 Wilt pardon me for that my earlier deeds
81 Have caused to thee of sorrow? Amala,
82 Pity me, pardon me, bless me in this hour;
83 In this my death, in this your bridal, hour.
84 Pity me, sweet.
AMALA:
84 Both thee and me: no more!
ATHULF:
84 Forgive!
AMALA:
85 With all my soul. God bless thee, my dear ATHULF:
ATHULF:
86 Kiss I thy hand? O much more fervently
87 Now, in my grief, than heretofore in love.
88 Farewell, go; look not back again upon me.
89 In silence go. [Exit AMALA:
89 She having left my eyes,
90 There's nothing in the world, to look on which
91 I'd live a moment longer. Therefore come,
92 Thou sacrament of death: Eternity,
93 I pledge thee thus. [He drinks from a vial.
93 How cold and sweet! It seems
94 As if the earth already began, shaking,
95 To sink beneath me. O ye dead, come near;
96 Why see I you not yet? Come, crowd about me;
97 Under the arch of this triumphal hour,
98 Welcome me; I am one of you, and one
[Page 121]
99 That, out of love for you, have forced the doors
100 Of the stale world. Enter Adalmar.
ADALMAR:
101 I'm wearied to the core: where's Amala?
102 Ha! Near her chambers! Who?
ATHULF:
102 Ask that to-morrow
103 Of the marble, Adalmar. Come hither to me.
104 We must be friends: I'm dying.
ADALMAR:
104 How?
ATHULF:
104 The cup,
105 I've drank myself immortal.
ADALMAR:
105 You are poisoned?
ATHULF:
106 I am blessed, Adalmar. I've done't myself.
107 'Tis nearly passed, for I begin to hear
108 Strange but sweet sounds, and the loud rocky dashing
109 Of waves, where time into Eternity
110 Falls over ruined worlds. The wind is fair,
111 The boat is in the bay,
112 And the fair mermaid pilot calls away.
ADALMAR:
113 Self poisoned?
ATHULF:
113 Ay: a philosophic deed.
114 Go and be happy.
ADALMAR:
114 God! What hast thou done?
ATHULF:
115 Justice upon myself.
ADALMAR:
115 No. Thou hast stolen
116 The right of the deserving good old man
117 To rest, his cheerful labour being done.
[Page 122]
118 Thou hast been wicked; caused much misery;
119 Dishonoured maidens; broken fathers' hearts;
120 Maddened some; made others wicked as thyself;
121 And darest thou die, leaving a world behind thee
122 That groans of thee to heaven?
ATHULF:
122 If I thought so---
123 Terrible would it be: then I've both killed
124 And damned myself. There's justice!
ADALMAR:
124 Thou should'st have lived;
125 Devoting every minute to the work
126 Of useful, penitent amendment: then,
127 After long years, you might have knelt to Fate,
128 And ta'en her blow not fearing. Wretch, thou diest not,
129 But goest living into hell.
ATHULF:
129 It is too true:
130 I am deserted by those turbulent joys.
131 The fiend had made me death-drunk. Here I'll lie,
132 And die most wretchedly, accursed, unpitied
133 Of all, most hated by myself. O God,
134 If thou could'st but repeal this fatal hour,
135 And let me live, how day and night I'd toil
136 For all things to atone! Must I wish vainly?
137 My brother, is there any way to live?
ADALMAR:
138 For thee, alas! in this world there is none.
139 Think not upon't.
ATHULF:
139 Thou liest: there must be:
140 Thou know'st it, and dost keep it secret from me,
141 Letting me die for hate and jealousy.
[Page 123]
142 O that I had not been so pious a fool,
143 But killed thee, 'stead of me, and had thy wife!
144 I should be at the banquet, drinking to her,
145 Kissing her lip, in her eye smiling...
145 Peace!
146 Thou see'st I'm growing mad: now leave me here,
147 Accursed as I am, alone to die.
ADALMAR:
148 Wretched, yet not despised, farewell my brother.
ATHULF:
149 O Arab, Arab! Thou dost sell true drugs.
150 Brother, my soul is very weary now:
151 Speak comfortably to me.
ADALMAR:
151 From the Arab,
152 From Ziba, had'st the poison?
ATHULF:
152 Ay. 'Twas good:
153 An honest villain is he.
ADALMAR:
153 Hold, sweet brother,
154 A little longer hold in hope on life;
155 But a few minutes more. I seek the sorcerer,
156 And he shall cure thee with some wondrous drug.
157 He can, and shall perform it: rest thee quiet:
158 Hope or revenge I'll bring thee. [Exit.
ATHULF:
158 Dare I hope?
159 O no: methinks it is not so unlovely,
160 This calm unconscious state, this breathless peace,
161 Which all, but troublesome and riotous man,
162 Assume without resistance. Here I'll lay me,
163 And let life fall from off me tranquilly.
[Page 124]
[Enter singers and musicians led by Siegfried; they play under the windows of Amala's apartment, and sing.]
Song.
By female voices.
164 We have bathed, where none have seen us,
165 In the lake and in the fountain,
166 Underneath the charmed statue
167 Of the timid, bending Venus,
168 When the water-nymphs were counting
169 In the waves the stars of night,
170 And those maidens started at you,
171 Your limbs shone through so soft and bright.
172 But no secrets dare we tell,
173 For thy slaves unlace thee,
174 And he, who shall embrace thee,
175 Waits to try thy beauty's spell.
By male voices.
176 We have crowned thee queen of women,
177 Since love's love, the rose, hath kept her
178 Court within thy lips and blushes,
179 And thine eye, in beauty swimming,
180 Kissing, we rendered up the sceptre,
181 At whose touch the startled soul
182 Like an ocean bounds and gushes,
[Page 125]
183 And spirits bend at thy controul.
184 But no secrets dare we tell,
185 For thy slaves unlace thee,
186 And he, who shall embrace thee,
187 Is at hand, and so farewell.
ATHULF:
188 Shame on you! Do you sing their bridal song
189 Ere I have closed mine eyes? Who's there among you
190 That dare to be enamoured of a maid
191 So far above you, ye poor rhyming knaves?
192 Ha! there begins another.
Song by Siegfried.
193 Lady, was it fair of thee
194 To seem so passing fair to me?
195 Not every star to every eye
196 Is fair; and why
197 Art thou another's share?
198 Did thine eyes shed brighter glances,
199 Thine unkissed bosom heave more fair,
200 To his than to my fancies?
201 But I'll forgive thee still;
202 Thou'rt fair without thy will.
203 So be: but never know,
204 That 'tis the hue of woe.
205 Lady, was it fair of thee
[Page 126]
206 To be so gentle still to me?
207 Not every lip to every eye
208 Should let smiles fly.
209 Why didst thou never frown,
210 To frighten from my pillow
211 Love's head, round which Hope wove a crown,
212 And saw not 'twas of willow?
213 But I'll forgive thee still;
214 Thou knew'st not smiles could kill.
215 Smile on: but never know,
216 I die, nor of what woe.
ATHULF:
217 Ha! Ha! That fellow moves my spleen;
218 A disappointed and contented lover.
219 Methinks he's above fifty by his voice:
220 If not, he should be whipped about the town,
221 For vending such tame doctrine in love-verses.
222 Up to the window, carry off the bride,
223 And away on horseback, squeaker!
SIEGFRIED:
224 Peace, thou bold drunken fellow that liest there!---
225 Leave him to sleep his folly out, good fellows. [Exit with musicians.
ATHULF:
226 Well said: I do deserve it. I lie here
227 A thousand-fold fool, dying ridiculously
228 Because I could not have the girl I fancied.
229 Well, they are wedded; how long now will last
230 Affection or content? Besides 'twere possible
[Page 127]
231 He might have quaffed a like draught. But 'tis done:
232 Villanous idiot that I am to think on't.
233 She willed it so. Then Amala, be fearless:
234 Wait but a little longer in thy chamber,
235 And he will be with thee whom thou hast chosen:
236 Or, if it make thee pastime, listen sweet one,
237 And I will sing to thee, here in the moonlight,
238 Thy bridal song and my own dirge in one.
He sings.
239 A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet,
240 A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet,
241 A bridal-bed and a bier.
242 Thine be the kisses, maid,
243 And smiling Love's alarms;
244 And thou, pale youth, be laid
245 In the grave's cold arms.
246 Each in his own charms,
247 Death and Hymen both are here;
248 So up with scythe and torch,
249 And to the old church porch,
250 While all the bells ring clear:
251 And rosy, rosy the bed shall bloom,
252 And earthy, earthy heap up the tomb.
253 Now tremble dimples on your cheek,
254 Sweet be your lips to taste and speak,
255 For he who kisses is near:
[Page 128]
256 By her the bridegod fair,
257 In youthful power and force;
258 By him the grizard bare,
259 Pale knight on a pale horse,
260 To woo him to a corpse.
261 Death and Hymen both are here;
262 So up with scythe and torch,
263 And to the old church porch,
264 While all the bells ring clear:
265 And rosy, rosy the bed shall bloom,
266 And earthy, earthy heap up the tomb.
ATHULF:
267 Now we'll lie down and wait for our two summoners;
268 Each patiently at least. Enter AMALA:
268 O thou kind girl,
269 Art thou again there? Come and lay thine hand
270 In mine; and speak again thy soft way to me.
AMALA:
271 Thy voice is fainter, Athulf: why sang'st thou?
ATHULF:
272 It was my farewell: now I'll sing no more;
273 Nor speak a great deal after this. 'Tis well
274 You weep not. If you had esteemed me much,
275 It were a horrible mistake of mine.
276 Wilt close my eyes when I am dead, sweet maid?
AMALA:
277 O Athulf, thou might'st still have lived.
[Page 129]
ATHULF:
277 What boots it,
278 And thou not mine, nor even loving me?
279 But that makes dying very sad to me.
280 Yet even thy pity is worth much.
AMALA:
280 O no;
281 I pity not alone, but I am wretched,---
282 Love thee and ever did most fervently,
283 Still hoping thou would'st turn and merit it.
284 But now---O God! if life were possible to thee,
285 I'd be thy friend for ever.
ATHULF:
286 O thou art full of blessings!
287 Thou lovest me, Amala: one kiss, but one;
288 It is not much to grant a dying man.
AMALA:
289 I am thy brother's bride, forget not that;
290 And never but to this, thy dying ear,
291 Had I confessed so much in such an hour.
292 But this be too forgiven. Now farewell.
293 'Twere not amiss if I should die to-night:
294 Athulf, my love, my only love, farewell.
ATHULF:
295 Yet one more minute. If we meet hereafter,
296 Wilt thou be mine? I have the right to thee;
297 And, if thou promise, I will let him live
298 This life, unenvied, with thee.
AMALA:
298 I will, Athulf:
299 Our bliss there will be greater for the sorrow
300 We now in parting feel.
ATHULF:
300 I go, to wait thee. [Exit AMALA:
301 Farewell, my bliss! She loves me with her soul,
[Page 130]
302 And I might have enjoyed her, were he fallen.
303 Ha! ha! and I am dying like a rat,
304 And he shall drink his wine, twenty years hence,
305 Beside his cherished wife, and speak of me
306 With a compassionate smile! Come, Madness, come,
307 For death is loitering still. Enter Adalmar and ZIBA:
ADALMAR:
307 An antidote!
308 Restore him whom thy poisons have laid low,
309 If thou wilt not sup with thy fellow fiends
310 In hell to-night.
ZIBA:
310 I pray thee strike me not.
311 It was his choice; and why should he be breathing
312 Against his will?
ATHULF:
312 Ziba, I need not perish.
313 Now my intents are changed: so, if thou canst,
314 Dispense me life again.
ADALMAR:
314 Listen to him, slave,
315 And once be a preserver.
ZIBA:
315 Let him rise.
316 Why, think you that I'd deal a benefit,
317 So precious to the noble as is death,
318 To such a pampered darling of delight
319 As he that shivers there? O, not for him,
320 Blooms my dark Nightshade, nor doth Hemlock brew
321 Murder for cups within her cavernous root.
322 Not for him is the metal blessed to kill,
[Page 131]
323 Nor lets the poppy her leaves fall for him.
324 To heroes such are sacred. He may live,
325 As long as 'tis the Gout and Dropsy's pleasure.
326 He wished to play at suicide, and swallowed
327 A draught, that may depress and shake his powers
328 Until he sleeps awhile; then all is o'er.
329 And so good night, my princes. [Exit.
ADALMAR:
329 Dost thou hear?
ATHULF:
330 Victory! victory! I do hear; and Fate hears,
331 And plays with Life for one of our two souls,
332 With dice made of death's bones. But shall I do't?
333 O Heaven! it is a fearful thing to be so saved!
ADALMAR:
334 Now, brother, thou'lt be happy.
ATHULF:
334 With thy wife!
335 I tell thee, hapless brother, on my soul,
336 Now that I live, I will live; I alone;
337 And Amala alone shall be my love.
338 There's no more room for you, since you have chosen
339 The woman and the power which I covet.
340 Out of thy bridal bed, out of thy throne!
341 Away to Abel's grave. [Stabs Adalmar
ADALMAR:
341 Thou murderous fiend!
342 I was thy brother. [dies.
ATHULF: (after a pause)
343 How long a time it is since I was here!
344 And yet I know not whether I have slept,
345 Or wandered through a dreary cavernous forest,
[Page 132]
346 Struggling with monsters. 'Tis a quiet place,
347 And one inviting strangely to deep rest.
348 I have forgotten something; my whole life
349 Seems to have vanished from me to this hour.
350 There was a foe whom I should guard against;
351 Who is he?
AMALA: (from her window)
351 Adalmar!
ATHULF: (in a low voice)
352 Hush! hush! I come to thee.
353 Let me but see if he be dead: speak gently,
354 His jealous ghost still hears.
AMALA:
354 So, it is over
355 With that poor troubled heart! O then to-night
356 Leave me alone to weep.
ATHULF:
356 As thou wilt, lady.
357 I'm stunned with what has happened. He is dead.
AMALA:
358 O night of sorrow! Bear him from the threshold.
359 None of my servants must know where and why
360 He sought his grave. Remove him. O poor Athulf,
361 Why did'st thou it? I'll to my bed and mourn. [retires.
ATHULF:
362 Hear'st thou, corpse, how I play thy part?
363 Thus had he
364 Pitied me in fraternal charity,
365 And I lain there so helpless. Precious cup,
366 A few drops more of thy somniferous balm,
367 To keep out spectres from my dreams to-night:
368 My eyelids thirst for slumber. But what's this,
[Page 133]
369 That chills my blood and darkens so my eyes?
370 What's going on in my heart and in my brain,
371 My bones, my life, all over me, all through me?
372 It cannot last. No longer shall I be
373 What I am now. O I am changing, changing,
374 Dreadfully changing! Even here and now
375 A transformation will o'ertake me. Hark!
376 It is God's sentence muttered over me.
377 I am unsouled, dishumanized, uncreated;
378 My passions swell and grow like brutes conceived;
379 My feet are fixing roots, and every limb
380 Is billowy and gigantic, till I seem
381 A wild, old, wicked mountain in the air:
382 And the abhorred conscience of this murder,
383 It will grow up a lion, all alone,
384 A mighty-maned, grave-mouthed prodigy,
385 And lair him in my caves: and other thoughts,
386 Some will be snakes, and bears, and savage wolves:
387 And when I lie tremendous in the desart,
388 Or abandoned sea, murderers and idiot men
389 Will come to live upon my rugged sides,
390 Die, and be buried in me. Now it comes;
391 I break, and magnify, and lose my form.
392 And yet I shall be taken for a man,
393 And never be discovered till I die.
394 Terrible, terrible: damned before my time,
395 In secret! 'Tis a dread, o'erpowering phantom. (He lies down by the body, and sleeps: the scene closes.)
[Page 134]
Scene IV.
A large hall in the ducal castle. Through the windows in the back ground appears the illuminated city. Enter Isbrand and Siegfried.
ISBRAND:
1 By my grave, Siegfried, 'tis a wedding-night.
2 The wish, that I have courted from my boyhood,
3 Comes blooming, crowned, to my embrace. Methinks,
4 The spirit of the city is right lovely;
5 And she will leave her rocky body sleeping,
6 To-night, to be my queenly paramour.
7 Has it gone twelve?
SIEGFRIED:
7 This half hour. Here I've set
8 A little clock, that you may mark the time.
ISBRAND:
9 Its hand divides the hour. Are our guards here,
10 About the castle?
SIEGFRIED:
10 You've a thousand swordsmen,
11 Strong and true soldiers, at the stroke of one.
ISBRAND:
12 One's a good hour; a ghostly hour. To-night
13 The ghost of a dead planet shall walk through,
14 And shake the pillars of this dukedom down.
15 The princes both are occupied and lodged
16 Far from us: that is well; they will hear little.
[Page 135]
17 Go once more round, to the towers and battlements:
18 The bell, that strikes, says to our hearts 'Be one;'
19 And, with one motion of a hundred arms,
20 Be the beacons fixed, the alarums rung,
21 And tyrants slain! Be busy.
SIEGFRIED:
21 I am with them. [Exit.
ISBRAND:
22 Mine is the hour it strikes; my first of life.
23 To-morrow, with what pity and contempt,
24 Shall I look back new-born upon myself! Enter a servant.
24 What now?
Servant.
25 The banquet's ready.
ISBRAND:
25 Let it wait awhile:
26 The wedding is not ended. That shall be
27 No common banquet: none sit there, but souls
28 That have outlived a lower state of being.
29 Summon the guests. [Exit servant.
29 Some shall have bitter cups,
30 The honest shall be banished from the board,
31 And the knaves duped by a luxurious bait. Enter the Duke, Thorwald, and other guests.
32 Friends, welcome hither in the prince's name,
33 Who has appointed me his deputy
34 To-night. Why this is right: while men are here,
35 They should keep close and warm and thick together,
[Page 136]
36 Many abreast. Our middle life is broad;
37 But birth and death, the turnstiles that admit us
38 On earth and off it, send us, one by one,
39 A solitary walk. Lord governor,
40 Will you not sit?
THORWALD:
40 You are a thrifty liver,
41 Keeping the measure of your time beside you.
ISBRAND:
42 Sir, I'm a melancholy, lonely man,
43 A kind of hermit: and to meditate
44 Is all my being. One has said, that time
45 Is a great river running to eternity.
46 Methinks 'tis all one water, and the fragments,
47 That crumble off our ever-dwindling life,
48 Dropping into't, first make the twelve-houred circle,
49 And that spreads outwards to the great round Ever.
THORWALD:
50 You're fanciful.
ISBRAND:
50 A very ballad-maker.
51 We quiet men must think and dream at least.
52 Who likes a rhyme among us? My lord governor,
53 'Tis tedious waiting until supper time:
54 Shall I read some of my new poetry?
55 One piece at least?
THORWALD:
55 Well; without further preface,
56 If it be brief.
ISBRAND:
56 A fragment, quite unfinished,
57 Of a new ballad called 'The Median Supper.'
58 It is about Astyages; and I
59 Differ in somewhat from Herodotus.
[Page 137]
60 But altering the facts of history,
61 When they are troublesome, good governors
62 Will hardly visit rigorously. Attention!
(reads)
63 "Harpagus, hast thou salt enough,
64 "Hast thou broth enough to thy kid?
65 "And hath the cook put right good stuff
66 "Under the pasty lid?"
67 "I've salt enough, Astyages,
68 "And broth enough in sooth;
69 "And the cook hath mixed the meat and grease
70 "Most tickling to my tooth."
71 So spake no wild red Indian swine,
72 Eating a forest rattle-snake:
73 But Harpagus, that Mede of mine,
74 And king Astyages so spake.
75 "Wilt have some fruit? Wilt have some wine?
76 "Here's what is soft to chew;
77 "I plucked it from a tree divine,
78 "More precious never grew."
79 Harpagus took the basket up,
80 Harpagus brushed the leaves away;
81 But first he filled a brimming cup,
82 For his heart was light and gay.
[Page 138]
83 And then he looked, and saw a face,
84 Chopped from the shoulders of some one;
85 And who alone could smile in grace
86 So sweet? Why, Harpagus, thy son.
87 "Alas!" quoth the king, "I've no fork,
88 "Alas! I've no spoon of relief,
89 "Alas! I've no neck of a stork
90 "To push down this throttling grief.
91 "We've played at kid for child, lost both;
92 "I'd give you the limbs if I could;
93 "Some lie in your platter of broth:
94 "Good night, and digestion be good."
95 Now Harpagus said not a word,
96 Did no eye-water spill:
97 His heart replied, for that had heard;
98 And hearts' replies are still.
99 How do you like it?
DUKE:
99 Poetry, they say,
100 Should be the poet's soul; and here, methinks,
101 In every word speaks yours.
ISBRAND:
101 Good. Do'nt be glad too soon.
102 Do ye think I've done? Three minutes' patience more.
103 A cannibal of his own boy,
104 He is a cannibal uncommon;
[Page 139]
105 And Harpagus, he is my joy,
106 Because he wept not like a woman.
107 From the old supper-giver's pole
108 He tore the many-kingdomed mitre;
109 To him, who cost him his son's soul,
110 He gave it; to the Persian fighter:
111 And quoth,
112 "Old art thou, but a fool in blood:
113 "If thou hast made me eat my son,
114 "Cyrus hath ta'en his grandsire's food;
115 "There's kid for child, and who has won?
116 "All kingdomless is thy old head,
117 "In which began the tyrannous fun;
118 "Thou'rt slave to him, who should be dead:
119 "There's kid for child, and who has won?"
120 Now let the clock strike, let the clock strike now,
121 And world be altered! (The clock strikes one, and the hour is repeated from the steeples of the city.)
121 Trusty time-piece,
122 Thou hast struck a mighty hour, and thy work's done;
123 For never shalt thou count a meaner one. [He dashes it on the ground.
124 Thus let us break our old life of dull hours,
125 And hence begin a being, counted not
[Page 140]
126 By minutes, but by glories and delights. (He steps to a window and throws it open.
127 Thou steepled city, that dost lie below,
128 Time doth demand whether thou wilt be free.
129 Now give thine answer. (A trumpet is heard, followed by a peal of cannon. Beacons are fixed, &c. The stage is lined with soldiery.)
THORWALD:
129 Traitor, desperate traitor!
130 Yet betrayed traitor! Make a path for me,
131 Or, by the majesty that thou offendest,
132 Thou shalt be struck with lightning in thy triumph.
ISBRAND:
133 All kingdomless is the old mule,
134 In whom began the tyrannous fun;
135 Thou'rt slave to him, who was thy fool;
136 There's Duke for Brother; who has won?
137 Take the old man away.
THORWALD:
137 I go: but my revenge
138 Hangs, in its unseen might, godlike around you. [Exit guarded.
ISBRAND:
139 To work, my friends, to work! Each man his way.
140 These present instants, cling to them; hold fast;
141 And spring from this one to the next, still upwards.
142 They're rungs of Jacob's heaven-scaling ladder:
143 Haste, or 'tis drawn away. [Exeunt cæteri.
[Page 141]
143 O stingy nature,
144 To make me but one man! Had I but body
145 For every several measure of thought and will,
146 This night should see me world-crowned. Enter a messenger.
146 What news bring'st thou?
Messr.
147 Friends of the governor hold the strongest tower,
148 And shoot with death's own arrows.
ISBRAND:
148 Get thee back,
149 And never let me hear thy voice again,
150 Unless to say, "'tis taken." Hark ye, sirrah;
151 Wood in its walls, lead on its roof, the tower
152 Cries, "Burn me!" Go and cut away the draw-bridge,
153 And leave the quiet fire to himself:
154 He knows his business. [Exit messenger. Enter Ziba armed.
154 What with you?
ZIBA:
154 I'll answer,
155 When one of us is undermost.
ISBRAND:
155 Ha! Midnight,
156 Can a slave fight?
ZIBA:
156 None better. Come; we'll struggle,
157 And roar, and dash, and tumble in our rage,
158 As doth the long-jawed, piteous crocodile
159 With the blood-howling hippopotamus,
[Page 142]
160 In quaking Nile.
ISBRAND:
160 Not quite so great; but rather,
161 Like to a Hercules of crockery
162 Slaying a Nemean lion of barley-sugar,
163 On a twelfth cake. [They fight: Ziba is disarmed.
163 Now darest thou cry for mercy?
ZIBA:
164 Never. Eternity! Come give me that,
165 And I will thank thee.
ISBRAND:
165 Something like a man,
166 And something like a fool. Thou'rt such a reptile,
167 That I do like thee: pick up thy black life:
168 I would not make my brother King and Fool,
169 Friend Death, so poor a present. Hence! [Exit ZIBA:
169 They're busy.
170 'Tis a hot hour, which Murder steals from Love,
171 To beget ghosts in. [Enter Siegfried.
171 Now?
SIEGFRIED:
172 Triumph! They cannot stand another half hour.
173 The loyal had all supped and gone to bed:
174 When our alarums thundered, they could only
175 Gaze from their frighted windows: and some few
176 We had in towers and churches to besiege.
177 But, when one hornet's nest was burnt, the rest
178 Cried quarter, and went home to end their naps.
[Page 143]
ISBRAND:
179 'Twas good. I knew it was well planned.
180 Return,
181 And finish all. I'll follow thee, and see
182 How Mars looks in his night-cap. [Exit Siegfried.
183 O! it is nothing now to be a man.
184 Adam, thy soul was happy that it wore
185 The first, new, mortal members. To have felt
186 The joy of the first year, when the one spirit
187 Kept house-warming within its fresh-built clay,
188 I'd be content to be as old a ghost.
189 Thine was the hour to live in. Now we're common,
190 And man is tired of being merely human;
191 And I'll be something more: yet, not by tearing
192 This chrysalis of psyche ere its hour,
193 Will I break through Elysium. There are sometimes,
194 Even here, the means of being more than men:
195 And I by wine, and women, and the sceptre,
196 Will be, my own way, heavenly in my clay.
197 O you small star-mob, had I been one of you,
198 I would have seized the sky some moonless night,
199 And made myself the sun; whose morrow rising
200 Shall see me new-created by myself.
201 Come, come; to rest, my soul. I must sleep off
202 This old plebeian creature that I am. [Exit.
[Page 144]
ACT V.
Scene I.
An apartment in the ducal castle. Isbrand and Siegfried.
SIEGFRIED:
1 They still wait for you in their council chamber,
2 And clamorously demand the keys of the treasure,
3 The stores of arms, lists of the troops you've hired,
4 Reports of your past acts, and your intentions
5 Towards the new republic.
ISBRAND:
5 They demand!
6 A phrase politer would have pleased me better.
7 The puppets, whose heart strings I hold and play
8 Between my thumb and fingers, this way, that way;
9 Through whose masks, wrinkled o'er by age and passion,
10 My voice and spirit hath spoken continually;
11 Dare now to ape free will? Well done, Prometheus!
12 Thou'st pitied Punch and given him a soul,
13 And all his wooden peers. The tools I've used
14 To chisel an old heap of stony laws,
15 The abandoned sepulchre of a dead dukedom,
16 Into the form my spirit loved and longed for;
[Page 145]
17 Now that I've perfected her beauteous shape,
18 And animated it with half my ghost;
19 Now that I lead her to our bridal bed,
20 Dare the mean instruments to lay their plea,
21 Or their demand forsooth, between us? Go;
22 And tell the fools, (you'll find them pale, and dropping
23 Cold tears of fear out of their trembling cheek-pores;)
24 Tell them, for comfort, that I only laughed;
25 And bid them all to sup with me to-night,
26 When we will call the cup to counsel.
SIEGFRIED:
26 Mean you
27 Openly to assume a kingly power,
28 Nor rather inch yourself into the throne?
29 Perhaps---but as you will.
ISBRAND:
29 Siegfried, I'm one
30 That what I will must do, and what I do
31 Do in the nick of time without delay.
32 To-morrow is the greatest fool I know,
33 Excepting those who put their trust in him.
34 In one word hear, what soon they all shall hear:
35 A king's a man, and I will be no man
36 Unless I am a king. Why, where's the difference?
37 Throne-steps divide us: they're soon climbed perhaps:
38 I have a bit of FIAT in my soul,
39 And can myself create my little world.
40 Had I been born a four-legged child, methinks
41 I might have found the steps from dog to man,
42 And crept into his nature. Are there not
[Page 146]
43 Those that fall down out of humanity,
44 Into the story where the four-legged dwell?
45 But to the conclave with my message quickly:
46 I've got a deal to do. [Exit Siegfried.
46 How I despise
47 All such mere men of muscle! It was ever
48 My study to find out a way to godhead,
49 And on reflection soon I found that first
50 I was but half created; that a power
51 Was wanting in my soul to be its soul,
52 And this was mine to make. Therefore I fashioned
53 A will above my will, that plays upon it,
54 As the first soul doth use in men and cattle.
55 There's lifeless matter; add the power of shaping,
56 And you've the crystal: add again the organs,
57 Wherewith to subdue sustenance to the form
58 And manner of one's self, and you've the plant:
59 Add power of motion, senses, and so forth,
60 And you've all kinds of beasts; suppose a pig:
61 To pig add reason, foresight, and such stuff,
62 Then you have man. What shall we add to man,
63 To bring him higher? I begin to think
64 That's a discovery I soon shall make.
65 Thus, owing nought to books, but being read
66 In the odd nature of much fish and fowl,
67 And cabbages and beasts, I've raised myself,
68 By this comparative philosophy,
69 Above your shoulders, my sage gentlemen.
[Page 147]
70 Have patience but a little, and keep still,
71 I'll find means, bye and bye, of flying higher. [Exit.
Scene II.
Another apartment. The Duke, Siegfried, Mario, Ziba and conspirators.
A conspirator (to Siegfried)
1 Said he nought else?
SIEGFRIED:
1 What else he said was worse.
2 He is no more Isbrand of yesterday;
3 But looks and talks like one, who in the night
4 Hath made a bloody compact with some fiend.
5 His being is grown greater than it was,
6 And must make room, by cutting off men's lives,
7 For its shadowy increase.
Conspir.
7 O friends, what have we done?
8 Sold, for a promise, still security,
9 The mild familiar laws our fathers left us;
10 Uprooted our firm country.
ZIBA:
10 And now sit,
11 Weeping like babes, among its ruins. Up!
12 You have been cheated; now turn round upon him.
13 In this his triumph pull away his throne,
14 And let him into hell.
Another conspir.
14 But that I heard it
[Page 148]
15 From you, his inmost counsel and next heart,
16 I'd not believe it. Why, the man was open;
17 We looked on him, and saw our looks reflected;
18 Our hopes and wishes found an echo in him;
19 He pleased us all, I think. Let's doubt the worst,
20 Until we see.
DUKE:
20 Until you feel and perish.
21 You looked on him, and saw your looks reflected,
22 Because his soul was in a dark deep well,
23 And must draw down all others to increase it:
24 Your hopes and wishes found an echo in him,
25 As out of a sepulchral cave, prepared
26 For you and them to sleep in. To be brief,
27 He is the foe of all; let all be his,
28 And he must be o'erwhelmed.
SIEGFRIED:
28 I throw him off,
29 Although I feared to say so in his presence,
30 And think you all will fear. O that we had
31 Our good old noble Duke, to help us here!
DUKE:
32 Of him I have intelligence. The governor,
33 Whose guards are bribed and awed by these good tidings,
34 Waits us within. There we will speak at large:
35 And O! may justice, for this once, descend
36 Like lightning-footed vengeance.
Mario.
36 It will come;
37 But when, I know not. Liberty, whose shade
38 Attends, smiles still in patience, and that smile
39 Melts tyrants down in time: and, till she bids,
[Page 149]
40 To strike were unavailing. [Exeunt all but Siegfried and ZIBA:
ZIBA:
40 Let them talk:
41 I mean to do; and will let no one's thoughts,
42 Or reasonable cooling counsels, mix
43 In my resolve to weaken it, as little
44 As shall a drop of rain or pity-water
45 Adulterate this thick blood-curdling liquor.
46 Siegfried, I'll free you from this thankless master.
SIEGFRIED:
47 I understand. To-night? Why that is best.
48 Man's greatest secret, like the earth's, the devil,
49 Slips through a key-hole or the smallest chink.
50 In plottings there is still some crack unstopped,
51 Some heart not air-tight, some fellow who doth talk
52 In sleep or in his cups, or tells his tale,
53 Love-drunk, unto his secret-selling mistress.
54 How shall't be done though?
ZIBA:
54 I'm his cup-bearer;
55 An office that he gave me in derision,
56 And I will execute so cunningly
57 That he shall have no lips, to laugh with, long;
58 Nor spare and spurn me, as he did last night.
59 Let him beware, who shows a dogged slave
60 Pity or mercy! For the drug, 'tis good:
61 There is a little, hairy, green-eyed snake,
62 Of voice like to the woody nightingale,
63 And ever singing pitifully sweet,
64 That nestles in the barry bones of death,
[Page 150]
65 And is his dearest pet and play-fellow.
66 The honied froth about that serpent's tongue
67 Deserves not so his habitation's name,
68 As doth the cup that I shall serve to him. [Exeunt.
Scene III.
A meadow. Sibylla and ladies, gathering flowers.
SIBYL:
1 Enough; the dew falls, and the glow-worm's shining:
2 Now let us search our baskets for the fairest
3 Among our flowery booty, and then sort them.
Lady.
4 The snow-drops are all gone; but here are cowslips,
5 And primroses, upon whose petals maidens,
6 Who love to find a moral in all things,
7 May read a lesson of pale bashfulness;
8 And violets, that have taught their young buds whiteness,
9 That blue-eyed ladies' lovers might not tear them
10 For the old comparison; daisies without number,
11 And butter-cups and lilies of the vale.
SIBYL:
12 Sit then; and we will bind some up with rushes,
13 And wind us garlands. Thus it is with man;
14 He looks on nature as his supplement,
[Page 151]
15 And still will find out likenesses and tokens
16 Of consanguinity, in the world's graces,
17 To his own being. So he loves the rose,
18 For the cheek's sake, whose touch is the most grateful
19 At night-fall to his lip; and, as the stars rise,
20 Welcomes the memories of delighting glances,
21 Which go up as an answer o'er his soul.
Lady.
22 And therefore earth and all its ornaments,
23 Which are the symbols of humanity
24 In forms refined, and efforts uncompleted,
25 Graceful and innocent, temper the heart,
26 Of him who muses and compares them skilfully,
27 To glad belief and tearful gratitude.
28 This is the sacred source of poesy.
SIBYL:
29 While we are young, and free from care, we think so.
30 But, when old age or sorrow brings us nearer
31 To spirits and their interests, we see
32 Few features of mankind in outward nature;
33 But rather signs inviting us to heaven.
34 I love flowers too; not for a young girl's reason,
35 But because these brief visitors to us
36 Rise yearly from the neighbourhood of the dead,
37 To show us how far fairer and more lovely
38 Their world is; and return thither again,
39 Like parting friends that beckon us to follow,
40 And lead the way silent and smilingly.
41 Fair is the season when they come to us,
[Page 152]
42 Unfolding the delights of that existence
43 Which is below us: 'tis the time of spirits,
44 Who with the flowers, and like them, leave their graves:
45 But when the earth is sealed, and none dare come
46 Upwards to cheer us, and man's left alone,
47 We have cold, cutting winter. For no bridal,
48 Excepting with the grave, are flowers fit emblems.
Lady.
49 And why then do we pluck and wreathe them now?
SIBYL:
50 Because a bridal with the grave is near.
51 You will have need of them to strew a corpse.
52 Ay, maidens, I am dying; but lament not:
53 It is to me a wished for change of being.
54 Yonder behold the evening star arising,
55 Appearing bright over the mountain-tops;
56 He has just died out of another region,
57 Perhaps a cloudy one; and so die I;
58 And the high heaven, serene and light with joy,
59 Which I pass into, will be my love's soul,
60 That will encompass me; and I shall tremble,
61 A brilliant star of never-dying delight,
62 Mid the ethereal depth of his eternity.
63 Now lead me homewards: and I'll lay me down,
64 To sleep not, but to rest: then strew me o'er
65 With these flowers fresh out of the ghosts' abodes,
66 And they will lead me softly down to them. [Exeunt.
[Page 153]
Scene IV.
The ruined cathedral, the sepulchre, and the cloisters; on which latter is painted the Dance of Death. In the foreground a large covered table, with empty chairs set round it. Moonlight. The clock strikes twelve; on which is heard a
Song in the air.
1 The moon doth mock and make me crazy,
2 And midnight tolls her horrid claim
3 On ghostly homage. Fie, for shame!
4 Deaths, to stand painted there so lazy.
5 There's nothing but the stars about us,
6 And they're no tell-tales, but shine quiet:
7 Come out, and hold a midnight riot,
8 Where no mortal fool dare flout us:
9 And, as we rattle in the moonlight pale;
10 Wanderers shall think 'tis the nightingale. (The Deaths, and the figures paired with them, come out of the walls: some seat themselves at the table, and appear to feast, with mocking gestures; others dance fantastically to a rattling music, singing)
11 Mummies and skeletons, out of your stones;
12 Every age, every fashion, and figure of Death:
[Page 154]
13 The death of the giant with petrified bones;
14 The death of the infant who never drew breath.
15 Little and gristly, or bony and big,
16 White and clattering, grassy and yellow;
17 The partners are waiting, so strike up a jig,
18 Dance and be merry, for Death's a droll fellow.
19 The emperor and empress, the king and the queen,
20 The knight and the abbot, friar fat, friar thin,
21 The gipsy and beggar, are met on the green;
22 Where's Death and his sweetheart? We want to begin.
23 In circles, and mazes, and many a figure,
24 Through clouds, over chimnies and corn-fields yellow,
25 We'll dance and laugh at the red-nosed grave-digger,
26 Who dreams not that Death is so merry a fellow.
Poem section
(One with a scythe, who has stood sentinel, now sings)
27 Although my old ear
28 Hath neither hammer nor drum,
29 Methinks I can hear
30 Living skeletons come.
31 The cloister re-echoes the call,
32 And it frightens the lizard,
33 And, like an old hen, the wall
34 Cries "cluck! cluck! back to my gizzard;
35 "'Tis warm, though it's stony,
36 "My chickens so bony."
[Page 155]
37 So come let us hide, each with his bride,
38 For the wicked are coming who have not yet died. (The figures return to their places in the wall.) Enter Isbrand, the Duke, Siegfried, Mario, Wolfram as fool, and conspirators, followed by Ziba and other attendants.
ISBRAND:
39 You wonder at my banqueting-house perhaps:
40 But 'tis my fashion, when the sky is clear,
41 To drink my wine out in the open air:
42 And this our sometime meeting-place is shadowy,
43 And the wind howleth through the ruins bravely.
44 Now sit, my gentle guests: and you, dark man, [to WOLFRAM:
45 Make us as merry as you can, and proudly
46 Bear the new office, which your friend, the pilgrim,
47 Has begged for you: 'twas my profession once;
48 Do justice to that cap. (They sit round the table, and partake of the feast, making gestures somewhat similar to those mocked by the figures.)
DUKE:
49 Now, having washed our hearts of love and sorrow,
50 And pledged the rosiness of many a cheek,
51 And, with the name of many a lustrous maiden,
52 Ennobled enough cups; feed, once again,
53 Our hearing with another merry song.
[Page 156]
ISBRAND:
54 'Tis pity that the music of this dukedom,
55 Under the former government, went wrong,
56 Like all the rest: my ministers shall look to't.
57 But sing again, my men.
SIEGFRIED:
57 What shall it be,
58 And of what turn? Shall battle's drum be heard?
59 The chase's trumpet? Shall the noise of Bacchus
60 Swell in our cheeks, or lazy, sorrowing love
61 Burthen with sighs our ballad?
ISBRAND:
61 Try the piece,
62 You sang me yesternight to sleep with best.
63 It is for such most profitable ends
64 We crowned folks encourage all the arts.
Song.
65 My goblet's golden lips are dry,
66 And, as the rose doth pine
67 For dew, so doth for wine
68 My goblet's cup;
69 Rain, O! rain, or it will die;
70 Rain, fill it up!
71 Arise, and get thee wings to-night,
72 Ætna! and let run o'er
73 Thy wines, a hill no more,
74 But darkly frown
75 A cloud, where eagles dare not soar,
76 Dropping rain down.
[Page 157]
ISBRAND:
77 A very good and thirsty melody:
78 What say you to it, my court poet?
WOLFRAM:
79 Good melody! If this be a good melody,
80 I have at home, fattening in my stye,
81 A sow that grunts above the nightingale.
82 Why this will serve for those, who feed their veins
83 With crust, and cheese of dandelion's milk,
84 And the pure Rhine. When I am sick o' mornings,
85 With a horn-spoon tinkling my porridge-pot,
86 'Tis a brave ballad: but in Bacchanal night,
87 O'er wine, red, black, or purple-bubbling wine,
88 That takes a man by the brain and whirls him round,
89 By Bacchus' lip! I like a full-voiced fellow,
90 A craggy-throated, fat-cheeked trumpeter,
91 A barker, a moon-howler, who could sing
92 Thus, as I heard the snaky mermaids sing
93 In Phlegethon, that hydrophobic river,
94 One May-morning in Hell.
Song.
95 Old Adam, the carrion crow,
96 The old crow of Cairo;
97 He sat in the shower, and let it flow
98 Under his tail and over his crest;
99 And through every feather
100 Leaked the wet weather;
101 And the bough swung under his nest;
102 For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
[Page 158]
103 Is that the wind dying? O no;
104 It's only two devils, that blow
105 Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
106 In the ghosts' moonshine.
107 Ho! Eve, my grey carrion wife,
108 When we have supped on kings' marrow,
109 Where shall we drink and make merry our life?
110 Our nest it is queen Cleopatra's skull,
111 'Tis cloven and cracked,
112 And battered and hacked,
113 But with tears of blue eyes it is full:
114 Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo.
115 Is that the wind dying? O no;
116 It's only two devils, that blow
117 Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
118 In the ghosts' moonshine.
ISBRAND:
119 Pilgrim, it is with pleasure I acknowledge,
120 In this your friend, a man of genuine taste:
121 He imitates my style in prose and verse:
122 And be assured that this deserving man
123 Shall soon be knighted, when I have invented
124 The name of my new order; and perhaps
125 I'll make him minister. I pledge you, Fool:
126 Black! something exquisite.
ZIBA:
126 Here's wine of Egypt,
127 Found in a Memphian cellar, and perchance
[Page 159]
128 Pressed from its fruit to wash Sesostris' throat,
129 Or sweeten the hot palate of Cambyses.
130 See how it pours, thick, clear, and odorous.
ISBRAND:
131 'Tis full, without a bubble on the top:
132 Pour him the like. Now give a toast.
WOLFRAM:
132 Excuse me:
133 I might offend perhaps, being blunt, a stranger,
134 And rustically speaking rustic thoughts.
ISBRAND:
135 That shall not be: give us what toast you will,
136 We'll empty all our goblets at the word,
137 Without demur.
SIEGFRIED:
137 Well, since the stranger's silent,
138 I'll give a toast, which, I can warrant you,
139 Was yet ne'er drunk. There is a bony man,
140 Through whom the sun shines, when the sun is out;
141 Or the rain drops, when any clouds are weeping;
142 Or the wind blows, if Oeolus will; his name,
143 And let us drink to his success and sanity;---
144 But will you truly?
ISBRAND:
144 Truly, as I said.
SIEGFRIED:
145 Then round with the health of Death, round with the health
146 Of Death the bony, Death the great; round, round.
147 Empty yourselves, all cups, unto the health
148 Of great King Death!
WOLFRAM:
149 Set down the cup, Isbrand, set the cup down.
150 Drink not, I say.
SIEGFRIED:
150 And what's the matter now?
[Page 160]
ISBRAND:
151 What do you mean, by bidding me not drink?
152 Answer, I'm thirsty.
WOLFRAM:
152 Push aside the boughs:
153 Let's see the night, and let the night see us.
ISBRAND:
154 Will the fool read us astronomic lectures?
WOLFRAM:
155 Above stars; stars below; round the moon stars.
156 Isbrand, don't sip the grape-juice.
ISBRAND:
156 Must I drink,
157 Or not, according to a horoscope?
158 Says Jupiter, no? Then he's a hypocrite.
WOLFRAM:
159 Look upwards, how 'tis thick and full, how sprinkled,
160 This heaven, with the planets. Now, consider;
161 Which will you have? The sun's already taken,
162 But you may find an oar in the half moon,
163 Or drive the comet's dragons; or, if you'd be
164 Rather a little snug and quiet god,
165 A one-horse star is standing ready for you.
166 Choose, and then drink.
ISBRAND:
166 If you are sane or sober,
167 What do you mean?
WOLFRAM:
167 It is a riddle, sir,
168 Siegfried, your friend, can solve.
SIEGFRIED:
168 Some sorry jest.
WOLFRAM:
169 You'll laugh but palely at its sting, I think.
170 Hold the dog down; disarm him; grasp his right.
171 My lord, this worthy courtier loved your virtues
[Page 161]
172 To such excess of piety, that he wished
173 To send you by a bye-path into heaven.
174 Drink, and you're straight a god---or something else.
A conspirator.
175 O murderous villain! Kill him where he sits.
ISBRAND:
176 Be quiet, and secure him. Siegfried, Siegfried;
177 Why hast thou no more genius in thy villany?
178 Wilt thou catch kings in cobwebs? Lead him hence:
179 Chain him to-night in prison, and to-morrow
180 Put a cord round his neck and hang him up,
181 In the society of the old dog
182 That killed my neighbour's sheep.
SIEGFRIED:
182 I do thank thee.
183 In faith, I hoped to have seen grass grow o'er you,
184 And should have much rejoiced. But, as it is,
185 I'll willingly die upright in the sun:
186 And I can better spare my life than you.
187 Good night then, Fool and Duke: you have my curse;
188 And Hell will have you some day down for hers:
189 So let us part like friends. My lords, good sleep
190 This night, the next I hope you'll be as well
191 As I shall. Should there be a lack of rope,
192 I recommend my bowstring as a strong one.
193 Once more, farewell: I wish you all, believe me,
194 Happily old, mad, sick, and dead, and cursed. [Exit guarded.
ISBRAND:
195 That gentleman should have applied his talent
196 To writing new-year's wishes. Another cup!
[Page 162]
WOLFRAM:
197 He has made us dull: so I'll begin a story.
198 As I was newly dead, and sat beside
199 My corpse, looking on it, as one who muses
200 Gazing upon a house he was burnt out of,
201 There came some merry children's ghosts, to play
202 At hide-and-seek in my old body's corners:---
ISBRAND:
203 But how came you to die and yet be here?
WOLFRAM:
204 Did I say so? Excuse me. I am absent,
205 And forget always that I'm just now living.
206 But dead and living, which are which? A question
207 Not easy to be solved. Are you alone,
208 Men, as you're called, monopolists of life?
209 Or is all being, living? and what is,
210 With less of toil and trouble, more alive,
211 Than they, who cannot, half a day, exist
212 Without repairing their flesh mechanism?
213 Or do you owe your life, not to this body,
214 But to the sparks of spirit that fly off,
215 Each instant disengaged and hurrying
216 From little particles of flesh that die?
217 If so, perhaps you are the dead yourselves:
218 And these ridiculous figures on the wall
219 Laugh, in their safe existence, at the prejudice,
220 That you are anything like living beings.
221 But hark! The bell tolls, and a funeral comes. (A funeral procession crosses the stage; the pall borne by ladies.)
[Page 163]
Dirge.
222 We do lie beneath the grass
223 In the moonlight, in the shade
224 Of the yew-tree. They that pass
225 Hear us not. We are afraid
226 They would envy our delight,
227 In our graves by glow-worm night.
228 Come follow us, and smile as we;
229 We sail to the rock in the ancient waves,
230 Where the snow falls by thousands into the sea,
231 And the drowned and the shipwrecked have happy graves. (The procession passes out.
DUKE:
232 What's this that comes and goes, so shadow-like?
Attendant.
233 They bear the fair Sibylla to her grave.
DUKE:
233 She dead!
234 Darest thou do this, thou grave-begotten man,
235 Thou son of Death? (To Wolfram.
WOLFRAM:
235 Sibylla dead already?
236 I wondered how so fair a thing could live:
237 And, now she is no more, it seems to me
238 She was too beautiful ever to die!
ISBRAND:
239 She, who was to have been my wife? Here, fellow;
240 Take thou this flower to strew upon her grave,
241 A lily of the valley; it bears bells,
[Page 164]
242 For even the plants, it seems, must have their fool,
243 So universal is the spirit of folly;
244 And whisper, to the nettles of her grave,
245 "King Death hath asses' ears."
Mario. (stabbing Isbrand)
245 At length thou art condemned to punishment
246 Down, thou usurper, to the earth and grovel!
247 The pale form, that has led me up to thee,
248 Bids me deal this; and, now my task is o'er,
249 Beckons me hence. [Exit.
ISBRAND:
249 Villain, thou dig'st deep:
250 But think you I will die? Can I, that stand
251 So strong and powerful here, even if I would,
252 Fall into dust and wind? No: should I groan,
253 And close my eyes, be fearful of me still.
254 'Tis a good jest: I but pretend to die,
255 That you may speak about me bold and loudly;
256 Then I come back and punish: or I go
257 To dethrone Pluto. It is wine I spilt,
258 Not blood, that trickles down. Enter Thorwald with soldiers.
THORWALD:
259 Long live duke Melveric, our rightful sovereign!
260 Down with the traitorous usurper, Isbrand!
All.
261 Long live duke Melveric!
ISBRAND:
261 Duke Isbrand, long live he!
262 Duke Melveric is deposed.
[Page 165]
THORWALD:
262 Receive the homage
263 Of your revolted city.
DUKE:
263 Thorwald, thanks.
264 The usurper has his death-wound.
THORWALD:
264 Then cry, Victory!
265 And Long life to duke Melveric! once more.
ISBRAND:
266 I will live longer: when he's dead and buried,
267 A hundred years hence, or, it may be, more,
268 I shall return and take my dukedom back.
269 Imagine not I'm weak enough to perish:
270 The grave, and all its arts, I do defy.
WOLFRAM:
271 Meantime Death sends you back this cap of office.
272 At his court you're elected to the post:
273 Go, and enjoy it. (He sets the fool's cap on Isbrand's head.
ISBRAND:
274 Bye and bye. But let not
275 Duke Melveric think that I part unrevenged:
276 For I hear in the clouds about me voices,
277 Singing
278 All kingdomless is thy old head,
279 In which began the tyrannous fun;
280 He fetches thee, who should be dead;
281 There's Duke for Brother! Who has won?
282 I jest and sing, and yet alas! am he,
283 Who in a wicked masque would play the Devil;
[Page 166]
284 But jealous Lucifer himself appeared,
285 And bore him---whither? I shall know to-morrow,
286 For now Death makes indeed a fool of me. [dies.
DUKE:
287 Where are my sons? I have not seen them lately.
288 Go to the bridegroom's lodgings, and to Athulf's,
289 And summon both. [Exit attendant.
WOLFRAM:
289 They will be here; and sooner
290 Than you would wish. Meanwhile, my noble Duke,
291 Some friends of mine behind us seem to stir.
292 They wish, in honour of your restoration,
293 In memory also of your glorious deeds,
294 To present masque and dance to you. Is't granted?
DUKE:
295 Surely; and they are welcome, for we need
296 Some merriment amid these sad events.
WOLFRAM:
297 You in the wall there then, my thin light archers,
298 Come forth and dance a little: 'tis the season
299 When you may celebrate Death's Harvest-home. (A dance of Deaths. In the middle of it enter Amala, followed by a bier, on which the corpse of Adalmar is borne. The dance goes out.)
DUKE:
300 What's this? Another mummery?
WOLFRAM:
300 The antimasque,
301 I think they call it; 'tis satirical.
AMALA:
302 My lord, you see the bridal bed that waits me.
303 Your son, my bridegroom, both no more, lies here,
[Page 167]
304 Cold, pale, abandoned in his youthful blood:
305 And I his bride have now no duty else,
306 But to kneel down, wretched, beside his corpse,
307 Crying for justice on his murderers.
DUKE:
308 Could my son die, and I not know it sooner?
309 Why, he is cold and stiff. O! now my crown
310 Is sunk down to the dust, my life is desolate.
311 Who did this deed? Enter ATHULF:
WOLFRAM:
311 Athulf, answer thou!
AMALA:
312 O no! Suspect not him. He was last night
313 Gentle, and full of love, to both of us,
314 And could imagine ne'er so foul a deed.
315 Suspect not him; for so thou mak'st me feel
316 How terrible it is that he is dead,
317 Since his next friend's accused of such a murder:
318 And torture not his ghost, which must be here,
319 Striving in vain to utter one soul-sound,
320 To speak the guiltless free. Tempt not cruelly
321 The helplessness of him who is no more,
322 Nor make him discontented with the state,
323 Which lets him not assert his brother's innocence.
DUKE: (to ATHULF: )
323 Answer! Thou look'st like one, unto whose soul
324 A secret voice, all day and night, doth whisper,
325 "Thou art a murderer." Is it so? Then rather
326 Speak not. Thou wear'st a dagger at thy side;
[Page 168]
327 Avenge the murdered man, thou art his brother;
328 And never let me hear from mortal lips
329 That my son was so guilty.
ATHULF:
329 Amala,
330 Still love me; weep some gentle drops for me;
331 And, when we meet again, fulfil thy promise.
332 Father, look here! (He kisses Amala's hand and stabs himself.
AMALA:
333 O Athulf! live one moment to deny it;
334 I ask that, and that only. Lo! old man,
335 He hath in indignation done the deed.
336 Since thou could'st think him for an instant guilty,
337 He held the life, which such a base suspicion
338 Had touched, and the old father who could think it,
339 Unworthy of him more: and he did well.
340 I bade thee give me vengeance for my bridegroom,
341 And thou hast slain the only one who loved me.
342 Suspect and kill me too: but there's no need;
343 For such a one, as I, God never let
344 Live more than a few hours. (She falls into the arms of her ladies.
DUKE:
345 Thorwald, the crown is yours; I reign no more.
346 But when, thou spectre, is thy vengeance o'er?
WOLFRAM:
347 Melveric, all is finished, which to witness
348 The spirit of retribution called me hither.
349 Thy sons have perished for like cause, as that
350 For which thou did'st assassinate thy friend.
351 Sibylla is before us gone to rest.
[Page 169]
352 Blessing and Peace to all who are departed!
353 But thee, who daredst to call up into life,
354 And the unholy world's forbidden sunlight,
355 Out of his grave him who reposed softly,
356 One of the ghosts doth summon, in like manner,
357 Thee, still alive, into the world o' th' dead. (Exit with the Duke into the sepulchre. The curtain falls.
[Page 170]
L'ENVOI.
358 Who findeth comfort in the stars and flowers
359 Apparelling the earth and evening sky,
360 That moralize throughout their silent hours,
361 And woo us heaven-wards till we wish to die;
362 Oft hath he singled from the soothing quire,
363 For its calm influence, one of softest charm
364 To still his bosom's pangs, when they desire
365 A solace for the world's remorseless harm.
366 Yet they, since to be beautiful and bless
367 Is but their way of life, will still remain
368 Cupbearers to the bee in humbleness,
369 Or look untouched down through the moony rain,
370 Living and being worlds in bright content,
371 Ignorant, not in scorn, of his affection's bent.
372 So thou, whom I have gazed on, seldom seen,
373 Perchance forgotten to the very name,
374 Hast in my thoughts the living glory been,
375 In beauty various, but in grace the same.
376 At eventide, if planets were above,
377 Crowning anew the sea of day bereft,
378 Swayed by the dewy heaviness of love,
379 My heart felt pleasure in the track thou'dst left:
[Page 171]
380 And so all sights, all musings, pure and fair,
381 Touching me, raised thy memory to sight,
382 As the sea-suns awakes the sun in air,---
383 If they were not reflections, thou the light.
384 Therefore bend hitherwards, and let thy mildness
385 Be glassed in fragments through this storm and wildness.
386 And pardon, if the sick light of despair
387 Usurp thy semblance oft, with tearful gleam
388 Displaying haunted shades of tangled care
389 In my sad scenes: soon shall a pearly beam,
390 Shed from the forehead of my heaven's queen,---
391 That front thy hand is pressed on,---bring delight.
392 Nor frown, nor blame me, if, such charms between,
393 Spring mockery, or thoughts of dreadest night.
394 Death's darts are sometimes Love's. So Nature tells,
395 When laughing waters close o'er drowning men;
396 When in flowers' honied corners poison dwells;
397 When Beauty dies: and the unwearied ken,
398 Of those who seek a cure for long despair,
399 Will learn. Death hath his dimples everywhere;
400 Love only on the cheek, which is to me most fair.
[Page]
FINIS.
