University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

The Castle of St. Elmo, commanding a view of Naples and the Bay.
Arezzi and Cimbelli.
CIMBELLI.
But why so fast Arezzi? hills like this
Need cooler time of day; or one whose veins
Are shrunken conduits to diluted wine
At last let dry; whose flesh was fed on salads;
A thing of kid-skin bleach'd; a moon adorer—
Endymion's proxy—lord of dreams and visions—
A loving Lent-observing priest of Cupid—
A natural ghost—a sigh-embodied spectre—
Anacreon's cricket—

AREZZI.
Rest that tongue a little,
Thy legs do well enough, but who can prate,
Or hear thee prate untir'd? It is as hard
To drag thee chattering on a hill like this,
As to Vesuvius' top if trudg'd in silence.

CIMBELLI.
Well then, go mount alone: I seat me here,
And so adieu! Wouldst drive me like an ass?
Whip me because I tarry?

AREZZI.
Thou didst stop
To bray, not rest. Come rouse thee—one step more,
And we are there.

CIMBELLI.
They cannot land so soon,
The fleet lies two miles off. And why the summit?
Why to the top of all? That we may stand
So much the nearer to the sun, and melt
So much the faster?

AREZZI.
Good goose, that we may see
So much the farther.

CIMBELLI.
Good or not, the goose
Is bilious liver'd, and hates roasting there.
What hinders that we see as clearly hence?
Is there a boat upon the bay, a sail,
I might have said a sea-bird—on the beach,
A net hung up, a mast, a rope, an oar,
But we may see it here?

AREZZI.
Well, then, sit still.

CIMBELLI.
Behold the end of fasting! surfeits choke
Such thriftless abstinence! They say it clears
The visual organ, strengthens and extends
All sorts of seeing, both of mind and body,
Within us and without us: but alas!
This lover grows stone blind. Cupid transforms
His servant to his likeness—as the god,
So blinks the worshipper. Farewell then tears,
And sighs, and empty bellies! I would see,
As I see now, Vesuvius lift unbent
His feathery column whitening toward the skies,
And that pure Heaven behind him—see the isles
Rest on the smooth blue waves—the mountain sides
Look dark and high—the populous shores beneath
Black with their swarming multitudes—mast heads
And city roofs all thronged.

AREZZI.
A race, a race—
Now eyes, now tongue! If the new king should need
In his new realm a poet—one who sees
A shrimp a mile, the nails in Pegasus' shoes,
Castalia's minnows, and on Pindus' side
How green the grasshoppers—

[Cannons are fired.
CIMBELLI.
I pray be still!

AREZZI.
The ears start last: what dost thou hear, Cimbelli?

CIMBELLI.
How long the flash and smoke foreran the sound!
It is the duke—he leaves his ship for land,
That inmost barge is his.

AREZZI.
A hundred more
Attend him home, or meet him.

CIMBELLI.
They which bear
Their double banners gaily in the stern,
Have with them sweetest music.

AREZZI.
Thou canst hear
The flutes, but I cannot.

CIMBELLI.
What hear them here!
Said I, I heard them?

AREZZI.
Didst thou not, even now,
Commend the music, call it sweet, Cimbelli?

CIMBELLI.
And so it is, no doubt. Marry, these pipers
Shall learn the Duke's good-morrow to his Bride,
And play your Farewell Elegy—they are
The best in Naples.

AREZZI.
O! my soul is sick,
And this is murder to it.—

[Cannons are heard again.
CIMBELLI.
The guns again!
This shot is from the castle; when he lands,
The mole will give the third.

AREZZI.
Nay, hark! even still
The echo rolls around us—Ischia answers—
And now the mountains!—It was here that once
I watched, by night, the tempest, till this rock
Shook from its roots; and in the light'nings blaze—
Though all was fourfold darkness when they ceased—
I saw Vesuvius and the waves between,
As plain as I do now.

CIMBELLI.
What thing on earth,
Or what beneath it, could tempt wise men here
In such a night as this?

AREZZI.
Ill spirits, of whom
The worst was Jealousy.

CIMBELLI.
Sweet Count, good bye—
Nay, do not move: I would not knowingly make
This devil's best friends mine own. He is a coxcomb,
Apt to take things awry, turn blue to black,
And white to yellow—he might grow scrupulous of myself,
And so I leave you— (going out he meets Savelli.)

Bless us! who comes next?
The same we spoke about!

AREZZI.
Good day, good father.

SAVELLI.
It is the better that I find you here;
And yet not good, Arezzi.

CIMBELLI.
World! O! world!
All sort of men are moonstruck or possessed,
Priests, elders, bachelors, and those with wives—
All wretched, all forlorn, all prone to darkness,
All tempted, vexed, tormented! I would find
Some wizard, with his almanack, to learn
The worst at once.

SAVELLI.
Young man this mirth is folly.
There wants no almanack to tell the wise
Ill jests are jests ill-timed.

CIMBELLI.
But hear me, father—
There is a reason for my mirth.

SAVELLI.
What is it?

CIMBELLI.
One little spark remains to light mankind,
And that grows dim. Wouldst take my bellows from me,
Leave us in utter darkness, shake thine ears
Because, forsooth, I puff to keep thee warm?—
Buffet thy friend?—

SAVELLI.
I do repent Cimbelli,
My heart was sore, and thou didst touch it roughly.

CIMBELLI.
Poor hearts! one bruised, one broken! Love like Death,
Smites all alike—the teacher and the taught!
Nor heeds he now the old man's length of beard,
The wise man's depth of knowledge, or with both
The churchman's height of grace!—

SAVELLI.
Be merry ever,
We will not chide again—'twere just to bear
Our griefs ourselves—

CIMBELLI.
What griefs?—

SAVELLI.
Go, go—no matter.

AREZZI.
Say what they are.—

SAVELLI.
The father of our house
Is taken from us!—

CIMBELLI.
Who?

SAVELLI.
Our abbot.

CIMBELLI.
Gone?

SAVELLI.
Departed yesterday.

CIMBELLI.
What dead—deceased!
The abbot dead?

SAVELLI.
He left us here at noon.

CIMBELLI.
S'blood let him go then! by that beard, I thought
To hear of some worse mischief—flames, volcanos;
A battle lost—another nunnery building—
An earthquake, deluge, famine—that the vines
Were withered to the roots—that men must drink
Henceforth from brooks like sheep! and while this dread
Made my teeth chatter—lo! it ends—“the abbot
“Deceased, departed, taken from us, gone—
“The father of our house!”—He might have had
My leave to go, and all his children with him.
Frightened to death for this!—What, did he keep
The cellar key, and take it in his pocket?
Will no one wear his mitre—no kind pate
Through love or charity?

AVELLI.
The task were easy
To find a head, but hard to chuse one fit.
The covering seems too costly for a block,
Too weighty for a shell so cracked and empty
As this of thine.

CIMBELLI.
Among so many shorn,
There are your sheep's-heads, lamb's-heads, ram's-heads, goat's-heads;
The last have beards to wear, but truck their horns
In change for fleeces with the flock. Come, prithee
Why shouldst not thou be abbot?

SAVELLI.
Count, farewell!
I have not strength to-day for wars like these:
The daw pursues the raven.—I will keep
A graver word or two for you.

CIMBELLI.
The Count—
Who stands regardless there, like some church cock,
Too high in air to hear the preacher's doctrine—
Hath present need of wisdom: as for me,
I have enough. Stand fast, and take my place—
Exhort, admonish. I must hence to court,
Where grave words gender spleen, and true ones, sport.

[Exit.
SAVELLI.
You should go too, Arezzi.

AREZZI.
I should, but cannot.

SAVELLI.
You will be asked for, and this splenetic court
May read your could not—would not.

AREZZI.
Let it do so:
Both versions are the true.

SAVELLI
Come, come—the wise
Will learn to fondle what they do not love.
This harlot Naples, paints her cheeks to day
And feasts a younger lover. He went out
A duke, and if men's certainties prove true,
Returns a king. Prince Andria rules the state
As vizier to our sultan. You should haste
To welcome both—their subject, ward, and cousin.

AREZZI.
Heaven keeps me of a humble mind, and so
Their ward and subject—for the cousin, it makes me
Thankful enough. A twofold service needs
A threefold patience: this word kinsman seems
Like gilded collar on some great man's dog,
His master's wealth, not his.

SAVELLI.
Mark me, my son,
Who cannot stand, may kneel. Such collars bind
The neck of almost all: the days are gone
When Naples was without them, and might call
Her nobles, men. Dogs' natures need dogs' chains;
Spain holds the whip and whistles to her whelps—
Ware contumacy, Count!

AREZZI.
Patience, just Heaven!
Who is it that provokes our shame and mocks
Our fetters, but yourself?

SAVELLI.
Well, so I do,
And ought to do, and will do—till I find
The lash too heavy for the back. Be humble—
The patience that you pray for comes at last
To render baseness easier. What I hate
Is this ambiguous and unnatural thing
Which wags its idiot head about the streets,
And must be worshipped—honor, in good sooth!
Nobility, what not! pure blood! high lineage!
Patrician pride!—why, prithee, gentle Count—
And gentle seems the Count's addition here—
Is pride for you or me? should slaves look greatly?
And those, whose masters are a subject's servants,
Boast of their ancestry?—We! these rocks beneath us
Seem to upbraid the coward for his boasts,
And teach us shame! the feet of heroes trod
Even where we stand, while Pleasure and Repose
Prepared their myrtles in the cool alcove,
Or spread the purple couch for glorious toil.
These are the mountains where they gazed—we see
Their tombs and temples round us—we usurp
The labor of their hands, and build our homes
With fragments left from their's—we know their shapes,
Boast of their lineage, read their wills as heirs,
And fix their statues in our groves and halls!
We slaves do this! Spain sends barbarian kings
To rule in Naples:—Scipio's bondmen now
May scourge his children!

AREZZI.
Wherefore this to me?

SAVELLI.
That shame may teach thee meekness, my proud son.
Go, show thy duty toward the duke—he is
Too mighty for a rival, now; so smile
And kiss his princely hand, and he will be
Thy gracious master. Thou shalt have, in time,
Some other wife.

AREZZI.
If not, I hope to find
Some better comforter. Bless thee, Savelli!
Thou shalt preach patience to the fiends, and stir
Their fires around them while they hear. Look down,
And out of all those thousands, chuse one man
So manacled in spirit as I, or fenced
So close by circumstance from what he would;
And see which stirs the first.

SAVELLI.
Ah! thus it is—
Life swarms with hindrances: its pebbles grow
To rocks and stumbling blocks. Our gnats and flies
Are vulture-winged. The cobwebs of the world
Catch and enchain its giants. One dares much,
But cannot—why? he fills a place at court.
A second is in love. A third sits patient
As kinsman to a kinsman of the Duke.
This has a guardian near the throne—the other
Was once his highness' playmate. While we hang,
Entangled by our feathers half life through,
From twigs like these, that merciless hand draws near—
Gently indeed at first, yet hard as Death's—
To grasp the courtier's wand, the kinsman's honors,
The ward's whole patrimony—it thrusts apart
The lover and his mistress—but it leaves
The patriot's doubts! If all men felt as we do,
Rome had found kinder matrons for her kings,
And Brutus gloried in his son!—but come.

[Exeunt.