 | The Mighty Magician |  |
Scene II.
Entrance to the mountain cavern. Cipriano, in a magician's dress, with wand, &c.What! do the powers of earth, and air, and hell,
Against their upstart emperor rebel?
Lo, in obedience to the rubric dark
The dusky cheek of earth with mystic mark
Of pentagram and circle I have lined,
And hung my fetters on the viewless wind,
And yet the star of stars, for whose ascent
I ransack all the lower firmament,
In unapparent darkness lags behind.
Whom once again with adjuration new
Of all the spirits whom these signs subdue,
Whether by land or water, night or day,
Whether awake or sleeping, yea or nay,
I summon now before me.—
Enter slowly a veiled Figure of Justina.
The Figure.
What dark spell
From the sequester'd sadness of my cell,
Through the still garden, through the giddy street,
And up the solitary mountain-side,
Leads me with sleep-involuntary feet?—
Cipr.
'Tis she, as yet though clouded!—oh divine
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The Figure.
Cipriano!—
Cipr.
At last here,
In such a chamber where ev'n Phœbus fails
To pierce, and baffled breezes tell no tales,
At last, to crown the labour of a year
Of solitary toil and darkness—here!—
And at a price beside—but none too dear—
Oh year-long night well borne for such a day!
Oh soul, for one such sense well sold away!
Oh Now that makes for all the past amends,
Oh moment that eternal life transcends
To such a point of ecstasy, that just
About to reap the wishes that requite
All woes—
The Figure
(unveiling a skull and vanishing as it speaks).
Behold, the World and its delight
Is dust and ashes, dust and ashes, dust—
Cipr.
(flinging down his Wand).
Lucifer! Lucifer! Lucifer!—
Luc.
My son!
Cipr.
Quick! With a word—
How now?—
With a word—at once—
With all your might—
Luc.
Well, what with it?—
Cipr.
The charm—
Shatter it! shatter it, I say!—Is't done?
Is't vanisht—
Luc.
What has thus unsensed you?
Cipr.
Oh!—
You know it—saw it—did it—
Luc.
Come—be a man:
What, sacred with a mere death's-head?
Cipr.
Death's, indeed!—
Luc.
What was it more?—
Cipr.
Justina's seeming self—
After what solitary labour wrought,
And after what re-iterated charms,
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Within the very circle of these arms,
Then to death's grisly lineaments resign'd
Slipt through them, and went wailing down the wind
“Ashes and dust and ashes”—
Nay, nay, pretend not that the fault was mine—
The written incantation line by line
I mutter'd, and the mystic figure drew;
You only are to blame—you only, you,
Cajoling me, or by your own cajoled,
Bringing me fleshless death for the warm life
For which my own eternal life is sold.
Luc.
You were too rash,—I warn'd you, and if not,
Who thinks at a first trial to succeed?
Another time—
Cipr.
No, no! No more of it!
What, have I so long dabbled with the dead,
That all I touch turns to corruption?
Was it indeed herself—her living self—
Till underneath my deadly contact slain;
Or having died during the terrible year
I have been living worse than dead with you,
What I beheld not she, but what she was,
Out of the tomb that only owns my spell
Drawn into momentary lifeliness
To mock me with the phantom of a beauty
Whose lineaments the mere impalpable air
Let in upon disfeatures—Was it she?
Luc.
She lives, and shall be yours.
Cipr.
Not if herself,
In more than all her living beauty breathing,
Came to efface that deadly counterfeit!—
Oh, what have I been doing all this while,
From which I wake as from a guilty dream,
But with my guilt's accomplice at my side
To prove its terrible reality!
Where were my ears, my eyes, my senses! where
The mother-wit which serves the common boor,
Not to resent that black academy,
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And not to know no good could come of it!—
My better self—the good that in me grew
By nature, and by good instruction till'd,
Under your shadow turn'd to poisonous weed;
And ev'n the darker art you bribed me with,
To master, if by questionable ways,
The power I sigh'd for in my better days,
So little reaching to the promised height,
As sinking me beneath the lowest fiend,
Who, for the inestimable self I sold,
Pays the false self you made me with false gold!
Luc.
When will blind fury, falling foul of all,
Light where it should? Suppose a fault so far,
As knowledge working through unpractised hands
Might fail at first encounter; all men know
How a mere sand will check a vast machine;
And in these complicated processes
An agency so insignificant
As to be wholly overlookt it was
At the last moment foil'd us.
Cipr.
But she lives!
Lives—from your clutches saved, and saved from mine—
Ev'n from that only shadow of my guilt
That could have touch'd her, saved—unguilty shame,
That now is left with all the guilt to me.
Oh that I knew a God in all the heav'ns
To thank, or ev'n of Tartarus—ev'n thee,
Thee would I bless, whatever power it be
That with that shadow saved her, and mock'd me
Back to my better senses. If not she,
What was it?
Luc.
What you saw.
Cipr.
A phantom?
Luc.
Well,
A phantom.
Cipr.
But how raised?
Luc.
What if by her?
She is a sorcerer as her father was.
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A sorcerer! She a sorcerer! oh, black lie
To whiten your defeat! and, were it true,
Oh mighty doctor to be foil'd at last
By a mere woman!—If a sorcerer,
Then of a sort you deal not with, nor hell—
And ev'n Olympus likes the sport too well—
Raising a phantom not to draw me down
To deeper sin, but with its ghastly face
And hollow voice both telling of the tomb
They came from, warning me of what complexion
Were all the guilty wishes of this world.
But let the phantom go where gone it is—
Not of what mock'd me, but what saved herself,
By whatsoever means—aye, what was it,
That pitiful agency you told me of
So insignificant, as overlookt
At the last moment thwarted us?
Luc.
What matter?
When now provided for, and which when told
You know not—
Cipr.
Which I will be told to know—
For as one ris'n from darkness tow'rd the light,
A veil seems clearing from before my sight—
She is a sorcerer, and of the kind
That old Lisandro died suspected of?—
Oh cunning doctor, to outwit yourself,
Outwitted as you have been, and shall be
By him who if your devilish magic fail'd
To teach its purposed mischief,
Thus on his teacher turns it back in full
To force him to confess the counter-power
That foil'd us both.
(He catches up his wand.)
Luc.
Poor creature that you are!
Did not the master from his scholars hold
One sleight of hand that masters all the rest,
What magic needed to compel the devil
To convict those who find him out too late?
Yet to increase your wrath by leaving it
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I shall not answer—
Cipr.
Then if your own hell
Cannot enforce you; by that Unknown Power
That saved Justina from your fangs, although
Yourself you cannot master, if you know,
I charge you name him to me!—
Luc.
(after a great flash of lightning, and thunder).
Jesus Christ!
Cipr.
(after a pause).
Ev'n so!—Christ Jesus—Jesus Christ—the same
That poor Lisandro died suspected of,
And I had heard and read of with the rest
But to despise, in spite of all the blood
By which the chosen few their faith confest—
The prophet-carpenter of Nazareth,
Poor, persecuted, buffeted, reviled,
Spit upon, crown'd with thorns, and crucified
With thieves—the Son of God—the Son of man,
Whose shape He took to teach them how to live,
And doff'd upon the cross to do away
The sin and death you and your devil-deities
Had heap'd on him from the beginning?
Luc.
Yea!—
Cipr.
Of the one sun of Deity one ray
That was before the world was, and that made
The world and all that is within it?
Luc.
Yea!
Cipr.
Eternal and Almighty then: and yet
Infinite Centre as he is of all
The all but infinite universe he made,
With eyes to see me plotting, and with ear
To hear one solitary creature pray,
From one dark corner of his kingdom?
Luc.
Yea!
Cipr.
All one, all when, all where, all good, all mighty,
All eye, all ear, all self-integrity—
Methinks this must be He of whom I read
In Greek and Roman sages dimly guess'd,
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In this poor carpenter of Nazareth,
With poor Justina for his confessor—
And now by thee—by thee—once and again
Spite of thyself—for answer me you must,
Convicted at the bar of your own thunder—
Is this the God for whom I sought so long
In mine own soul and those of other men,
Who from the world's beginning till to-day
Groped or were lost in utter darkness?
Luc.
Yea!
Cipr.
Enough; and your confession shall be mine—
Luc.
And to like purpose; to believe, confess,
And tremble, in the everlasting fire
Prepared for all who Him against their will
Confess, and in their deeds deny him—
Cipr.
Oh,
Like a flogg'd felon after full confession
Releast at last!
Luc.
To bind you mine for ever.
Cipr.
Thine! What art thou?
Luc.
The god whom you must worship.
Cipr.
There is no God but one, whom you and I
Alike acknowledge, as in Jesus Christ
Reveal'd to man. What other god art thou?
Luc.
Antichrist! He that all confessing Christ
Confess; Satan, the Serpent, the first Tempter,
Who tempted the first Father of mankind
With the same offer to a like result
That I have tempted thee with; yea, had power
Even Him in his humanity to tempt,
Though Him in vain; the god of this world; if
False god, true devil; true angel as I was,
Son of the morning, Lucifer, who fell
(As first I told thee, had'st thou ears to hear)
For my rebellion down from heaven to hell
More terrible than any Tartarus,
Where over those who fell with me I reign.
Whom, though with them bound in the self-same chain
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To reach my hands out of my prison-house
On all who like me from their God rebel,
As thou hast done.
Cipr.
Not when for God I knew him.
Luc.
Aye, but who but for pride and lust like mine
Had known Him sooner—
Cipr.
And had sooner known
But for thy lying gods that shut Him out.
Luc.
Which others much less wise saw through before.
Cipr.
All happy they then! But all guilty I,
Yet thus far guiltless of denying Him
Whom even thou confessest.
Luc.
But too late—
Already mine, if not so sworn before,
Yet by this bond—
Cipr.
For service unperform'd!
But unperform'd, or done, and payment due,
I fling myself and all my debt on Him
Who died to undertake them—
Luc.
He is the Saviour of the innocent,
Not of the guilty.
Cipr.
Who alone need saving!
Luc.
Damnation is the sinner's just award,
And He is just.
Cipr.
And being just, will not
For wilful blindness tax the want of light:
And All-good as Almighty, and therefore
As merciful as just, will not renounce
Ev'n the worst sinner who confesses Him,
And testifies confession with his blood.
Which, not to waste a moment's argument,
Too like the old logic that I lost my life in,
And hangs for ever dead upon the cross;
I will forthwith shout my confession,
Into the general ear of Antioch,
And from the evidence of thine own mouth,
Not thee alone, but all thy lying gods,
Convict; and you convicting before God,
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Trust by my own blood mixing with the tide
That flow'd for me from the Redeemer's side,
From those few damning drops to wash me free
That bound me thine for ever—
Lucifer
(seizing him).
Take my answer—
Cipriano
(escaping).
Oh, Saviour of Justina, save Thou me!
| The Mighty Magician | |