University of Virginia Library

ACT II

SCENE I

[In Franklin's cottage. Urania alone in the kitchen, baking, and shaping the dough into loaves.]
URANIA
(singing).
Now that milch-cows chew the cud,
Everywhere are roses, roses;
Here a-blow, and there a-bud,
Here in pairs, and there in posies.
Roses from the gable's cliff
With pale flaky petals strowing
All the garden path, as if
Frolic Summer took to snowing.

[There is a knock at the outer door.]
URANIA.
Enter and welcome. I am too intent
To greet you at the threshold. Enter, I say.
Nor loaf nor oven will wait; so pass within.

[Abaddon enters.]
URANIA
(going on with her work).
The very visitor I wanted.

ABADDON
(aside).
So!
The spell has worked prodigiously. (To Urania)
Fair lady,
I in my pack to-day have gauds so deft,
They would make plainness comely, slattern limbs
Natty and trim as Venus when she rose
Up from her rippling pillow on the sea,
Flushed with the rosy daintiness of dawn,
With her own mould for corset, and the fringe
Of wind-blown lace for flounce and furbelow.
[He puts his pack on the table, and opens it.]
Now, look on this cuirass!

URANIA.
Please mind my loaves,
[She puts them, one after the other, in the oven.]
I'll heed you presently.

ABADDON
(holding up the cuirass).
See! they who clasp
This firm but frolic jerkin to their waist,
Need be no more beholden unto Nature,
Who is an artist accidentally,
As sooth she was when she imagined You,
But far too often works with niggard hand,
Or else the plastic matter of the flesh
Disposes disproportionately. Now this,
This animated breast, compelling buckler—
Look on them well!—appear as if repoussed
Upon the very lines of Juno's mould,
Its dimpled crevices and swelling curves,
A paragon of rounded sensuousness.

URANIA
(turning round, after having put the last loaf in the oven).
And do they wear that lubricating lie,
That fleshless falsehood! Palpitating maids
Puff themselves out with hollow buxomness,
To lead some breathless gaby at their heels
A scentless paper-chase! You might as well
Stick candles in the sockets of a skull,
And swear it lives. Pack up your trumpery.

ABADDON.
I thought you wanted me.

URANIA.
And so I did;
But for the marketing of honest stuff,
To make sweet childhood simpler: something plain,
Rustic, and true, yet best of all its sort,
Nowise inferior, though the sort be scorned
By shoddy splendour.

[He shows her summer stuffs for gowns.]
URANIA
(choosing one of them).
This comports with her,
And with her frolic limbs will fall and flow,
Her natural drapery.

ABADDON.
Nothing for yourself?
The Duke will come again.

URANIA.
What duke?

ABADDON.
Why, he
That cast a shoe and lingered with you while
The dial darkened onward, nor bethought
To heed the admonition of its shadow.
That was Duke Fortunatus.

URANIA.
Was it? Well?

ABADDON.
Should he return, as verily he will,
Would you not like to look your comeliest?
A duke! a Duke!

URANIA.
His name will not behold me,
But he himself; and, should he come again,
Like any other accidental guest,
Will find me what I am.
[She folds up the material, and pays for it.]
Thank you. And now,
You to your outer work, and I to mine.
Stay, I will fetch a horn of home-brewed ale,
To speed you on your way.

ABADDON
(alone).
How good they smell,
These household crusts a-baking! Judged by them,
There's not a scent in my distillery,
But savours of the polecat.

[Urania returns with a horn of ale.]
ABADDON
(having quaffed it).
My reverence, lady.

[He shoulders his pack and departs. Urania gives a look at the loaves in the oven, then examines afresh the stuff she has bought, gets her scissors, and begins cutting it.]
URANIA.
How like her name my fosterling will look,
Frocked in this pretty stuff! Like apple-blossom
On tender tree not yet allowed to bear
Burden of fruit, its daintiness will show
Fair promise of a ripeness yet to be.
The strange untimely winter of his mind
Melted before the sunniness and song
Of her unclouded nature; and her heart
Seemed further to expand with his expansion.
I think they loved each other at first sight,
So must I make her comely to his gaze,
To please them both. ... So he is Duke Fortunatus.
I mind me of the name. These designations
Are advertised by every common tongue,
Which, seeming thus familiar with the far,
Feign for themselves in turn a false distinction.
He needs no label to be recognised.
Urbanity was in his gait and speech,
By sadness more ennobled.

SCENE II

[As Abaddon reaches the garden gate he meets Fortunatus just dismounting.]
ABADDON.
Good morrow to your Grace. A goodly day.
Have you so quickly cast another shoe,
Here not a summer month ago? Mefears
Your farrier is a fumbler.

FORTUNATUS.
Pride of Life!
Be that the name by which you still are known.

ABADDON.
It is, where I just come from. But for you
I have another. Lust of the Flesh, we call it.
The Pagan Proteus and the Christian Devil
Are kin, and sooth all Nature's progeny
Are wonderfully like. Without an alias,
How could I journey through this thankless world
That brands me an impostor, and would fain
Curtail my freedom? Hence when Vice awhile
Falls out of fashion, and the chase grows hot,
I fling away my feathers, and appear
In Virtue's vestments grave-caparisoned.
That answers just as well. For mortal states,
Distorted from their birth, perforce must use
All things awry, and Virtue's very self,
Fooled to the perch and apex of perfection
By my complacency—a trick I have—
Straight pitches headlong. Now, you are not virtuous,
So need I practise no disguise with you.
Lust of the Flesh—behold me! She's within,
Baking with alabaster arms the loaves
Of household continence. She is alone.
In! in! And Pride of Life, and Lust of the Flesh,
Twin names, godfather your prosperity!

[He goes on his way, and Fortunatus leads his horse to the stable. As he does so, he hears Urania singing.]

FORTUNATUS.
How sweet is unsophisticated song,
Heard accidentally; for then the voice,
Having no vain collusion with the ear,
Sounds innocently true. Sing on! sing on!
Till there be nothing in the midsummer air
Save You, and roses.

SCENE III

FORTUNATUS.
Over your lintel Greeting is engraved,
And so I enter.

URANIA.
All may enter here,
Who want its inmates.

FORTUNATUS.
And I wanted you,
Be the avowal not too frank,—and April:
April, that plaything of the primroses,
Your blithe unmothered sock-lamb of the Spring,
Who crept into my heart that afternoon,
And warmed its wintriness.

URANIA.
She is happy, haying:
Thinking 'tis she that puts the swathes a-cock,
And piles them on the wain; her grand-dad's shadow,
As close and as superfluous; yet, like it,
Gift of the sun himself. You will find them both
Out in the meadow to the right, beyond
The orchard-gate.

FORTUNATUS.
Will you not come with me?

URANIA.
When I have done the work I have to do.

FORTUNATUS
(looking at the stuff she has purchased from ABADDON).
A woman's work; right suitable, withal
More timely, is it not, for night than noon?

URANIA.
You know women's hours, I see, our trysts with time,
And that the needle points to westering day,
And not due south, as now. Yet 'tis not that
Which keeps me from the hayfield, but this task,
[She opens the oven door.]
A King once did, and did it slovenly,
As I tell April.

FORTUNATUS.
But his thoughts were fixed
On far-off things.

URANIA.
The nearest should be farthest
For uncrowned mortals; and these homely pans
Forbid me go afield.

FORTUNATUS.
What pretty stuff!
You bought it from Abaddon?

URANIA.
Instantly,
To make a frock for April, and he pressed
A thousand things upon me, newly coined
To cog the curious.

FORTUNATUS.
He knows human nature.

URANIA.
Then am I neither natural nor human,
For I bought nothing.

FORTUNATUS.
This stuff proves you both.

URANIA.
Why are you wise enough to reason thus,
And yet at heart keep wintry? Wisdom lends
Colour and temperature to every season,
Leading the footsteps of subservient time
Which way it will.

FORTUNATUS.
Unwisely then have I
Followed the slow irreparable days,
Knowing not where nor whither, till they led
My bridle to your porch; since when, my thoughts
Have journeyed here so often, that my feet
Were forced at length to bear them company.

URANIA.
Timely you come. I want a messenger
To carry to the field the mid-day meal.
'Tis near the stroke, and everything is ready,
The pasties hot, the cider freshly drawn,—
All, save a carrier.

FORTUNATUS.
Then give me the basket.

URANIA.
There! shoulder it like that. And, mind, your thoughts
Be on the way not truant to your task.
That very thoughtlessness the thoughtful scorn
In life's meek sumpters, guarantees our loads
Securely to their goal.

FORTUNATUS.
Then will I think
Of nothing but the pasties and the cider,
Unless it be your coming, when your loaves
Turn nut-brown in the baking.

SCENE IV

[The hayfield.]
APRIL
See, grand-dad, see!
Dinner is coming. Who is it that brings it?
[She runs forward to meet Fortunatus.]
O, it is you! I had begun to think
You had forgotten grand-dad and Urania.

FORTUNATUS
(putting down the basket, lifting her in his arms, and kissing her).
And you as well! moist wilding of the woods,
Your absence has been near me all the while.

APRIL.
I am so glad you have come. But let me help.
It is too heavy for you to carry alone.

FRANKLIN
(approaching them).
Welcome, once more! and welcome none the less
For what you bring. You'll share our meal with us?

FORTUNATUS.
Gladly, if April's appetite can spare
A place for yet a third.

[They take their repast together, under a hedgerow; at the end of which April runs about, playing, while Fortunatus and Franklin remain seated.]
FRANKLIN
(taking a volume of “Horace” from the bottom of the basket).
The basket was not emptied; one more dish
Lurks at the bottom, scarcely one to tempt
April's untutored palate, doubtless packed
Before Urania knew fair chance had sent
Yet more congenial company than this,
To round the restful hour with.

FORTUNATUS.
Read it me.

FRANKLIN.
Nunc mihi res, non me rebus subjungere conor.
[Closing the book.]
Man is the lord, not slave, of circumstance.
If the rich past bequeath him only leisure,
He to that precious legacy should add
The gain of labour; while if labour be
His sole inheritance, he wisely will
Buy leisure with its superfluity.

FORTUNATUS.
Which have you done?

FRANKLIN.
The first,—if selfishly,
As sometimes I am hazarded to think,
Since that the burden I evaded falls
On other shoulders.

FORTUNATUS.
Do you then repent you?

FRANKLIN.
No; for that burden, burdensome to me,
To most men seems the lightest load that life
Can lay on mortals, and, if found too heavy,
May be laid down, since rank, wealth, idleness,
Are accidents not substance of our birth,
Mere garments to discard.

FORTUNATUS.
And have you found
In labour yoked with leisure full content?

FRANKLIN.
Yes. But observe, 'tis chosenly I live,
Not in compulsion; for when growth once adds
Reason to instinct, man must understand
The Universe he lives in and himself,
Or find in Reason only a fresh load,
Badly adjusted.

FORTUNATUS.
How is he to know?

FRANKLIN.
I did not speak of Knowledge. There are men,
Seem to know all things knowable, withal
Understand nothing; even as though they had
Circled the earth and yet conceive it flat.
'Tis Understanding that defines the march
Betwixt the wise and foolish.

FORTUNATUS.
What is wisdom?

FRANKLIN.
First to observe What Must Be, and obey it.
Next to discern What May Be, and to choose
Rightly among life's possibilities.
Life is an opportunity; and hence
It doth behove us never to confound
The real with the specious, but perceive
What is of value, what is valueless.
The rest pertains to Will, which, once convinced,
Convinced, I mean, with sovran certainty,
Perforce must follow Wisdom. That is all.

FORTUNATUS.
Yes, that is all. 'Tis little, yet 'tis much,
And few possess it. Yet, till seized by all,
Seems it not lack of charity to live
Content with having it?

FRANKLIN.
Not so! Remember
Obedience to What Must Be. No one man,
In the short transit of his single course,
Can hope to sway the millions of mankind.
But he can mould himself, and haply those
Who travel in his orbit, kindred, friends,
Unto them radiating wisdom's warmth,
Rejoiced to share it with them. Why should you,
Because the world is foolish, not be wise?
Not cheerful, should it be perversely sad?
Give wingëd Perseus shelter, Perseus sent
By Pallas' self, and he will not impose
The earth upon your shoulders, far too small
For that intolerable penal task.
Times there have been, and time will be again,
When Fancy offers to diseased mankind
Prompt panaceas, sure phalansteries.
There are none such; and faith in them begets
First disillusion, then despondency,
With all its pestilent base brood, lame doubt,
Distrust of greatness, disbelief in good,
Divorce betwixt the spirit and the flesh,
Adultery with matter;—crowning curse,
Abortion of the pregnant boon of life.
To pamper self-complacency, and seem
Yet wearier and more worthless than they are,
The sufferers give their malady a new name,
And call it Pessimism. The thing is old.
Man's follies all are old, old is the cause,
Old is the remedy. Walk toward the light,
The shadows fall behind. Yet do not walk,
Imagining that it never will be night,
But love alike the darkness and the dawn,
And in your heart it always will be noon.

APRIL
(running up to FRANKLIN).
To work! To work! O lazy grand-dad! See,
Urania comes. The village clock hath chimed,
And leaves you gossiping still. It is not I,
This time, that is the truant.

FRANKLIN
(rising).
Kiss me, sweet,
And I shall work the blither.

APRIL
(to FORTUNATUS).
You will help?
We want as many hands as we can get;
For if you cannot take a swarm of bees,
We all can ted the hay. Why, look at me!

[They all join in the haymaking, singing as they do so.]
APRIL
sings.
When the ladysmocks have faded,
When the lanes are arched and shaded,
When the lambs have lost their fleeces,
When the mid-day heat increases,
When the keen-eyed kestrel hovers
Round the hatching pheasant-covers,
When, that now the grass is tedded,
Loving lad and lass are wedded,
And we stack and thatch the clover,
Then the sweet springtime is over,

URANIA.
Over, over,

FRANKLIN.
Over, over;

ALL.
Then the sweet springtime is over.

URANIA
sings.
When the brooks are brimmed and bawling,
When the leaves are falling, falling,
When the threshing-flail is lifted,
When the wheat is bruised and sifted,
When the reaper swathes his sickle,
When the cider-presses trickle,
When we rake and burn the rubble,
When the stripling hunts the stubble,
Watching Roy, and whistling Rover,
Then the summer days are over,

APRIL.
Over, over,

FRANKLIN.
Over, over;

ALL.
Then the summer days are over.

FRANKLIN
sings.
When the slow team scoops the furrow,
Dormice sleep and hedgehogs burrow,
When the roasting chestnuts sputter,
When the house-slut bars the shutter,
When the rain-vat fills and freezes,
When the swineherd coughs and wheezes,
And when homeward to the haggard
Wind the cattle, lowing, laggard,
Followed by the drowsy drover,
Then the autumn days are over,

URANIA.
Over, over,

APRIL.
Over, over;

ALL.
Then the autumn days are over.

FORTUNATUS
sings.
When the lambing ewes are hurdled,
When the cream floats rich and curdled,
When the throstle trills and trebles,
When betwixt the shining pebbles
And the runnel past them sailing
Poiseth, motionless, the grayling;
When the primrose-sheeted covers
Couches are for dreaming lovers,
When the foal and broodmare hinny,
And in every cut-down spinney
Ladysmocks grow mauve and mauver,
Then the winter days are over,

APRIL.
Over, over,

URANIA.
Over, over;

ALL.
Then the winter days are over.

[Franklin, Urania, and Fortunatus spend the afternoon in the hayfield, helping to rake up the hay, and to pile it on the wains. When the last cart is loaded, April, flushed with exercise and excitement, runs up to Fortunatus.]
APRIL
Now on this last load must we climb and ride,
Or 'twill be sure to heat.
[To Fortunatus.]
You must mount first,
And drag me and Urania after you.
O yes, Urania! you must ride, you must,
While grand-dad leads the way.

[Fortunatus climbs to the top of the wain, and helps April and Urania to do the same. The three then sit on the hay, April on Fortunatus's knee, and with her arm round his neck. Franklin walks at the horse's head. The other haymakers cluster round the cart, and, as it moves on to the stack, they all sing.]

SCENE V

[Urania's garden. Fortunatus is pacing the garden alone. Urania comes out of the house, singing.]
URANIA.
Everywhere are roses, roses!

[Seeing Fortunatus, she breaks off her song.]
FORTUNATUS.
Indeed there are, and roses without thorns,
Flouting the proverb. You have meshed delight,
And hold it captive.

URANIA.
It is free to go,
But, having freedom of its wings, it stays,
Or, flitting, swift returns.

FORTUNATUS.
Even like me,
Who, loving liberty, am loth to leave
While you and all your roses are abloom.
Tell me their names.

URANIA.
Their names? They have no name,
Save of my christening; for I lack the craft
Of learnëd catalogues, so that I know them
Less by their fame than by their character.
This is “Unspoken Love.” Eye it, and say
If it be sponsored fittingly. To me
Its many-folded petals seem to muffle
Some secret rapture beating at its heart.
Love told is loving tarnished, and this rose
Is of its nature unsurrendering.
There's not the faintest blush upon its cheek,
And only by its incense could you guess
Its dreams are chastely passionate. It is
A rose enraptured with a thought unshaped,
A longing unconfessed.

FORTUNATUS
(holding out his hand).
Give me the rose,
That I may learn from it to hide my love,
Or kiss from it its secret.

URANIA
(touching another rose).
This is called
“Felicity of Home”: a round red rose,
Open as day, domestic as the night,
With never a fancy or a fault to hide;
An unromantic rose, but O so wholesome—
Smell it, and say!—so serviceable-sweet,
That when its frail virginity is shed,
Embalmed with orris, clove, angelica,
Woodruff, and marjoram, it hourly scents
And sanctifies a household, keeps it fresh,
And shows it orderly.

FORTUNATUS.
A rose too good
To gather for my wearing.

URANIA.
Then there is this,
Fantastically clept “The Poet's Dream”:
Yet not without some pardon, for it roams,
Rambles, and climbs, no pillar, porch, nor wall,
Will satisfy its vagrancy; and should
You dare to prune its wanderings, or check
Its heavenward necessity, it dies.
And so I let it gipsy as it will,
Most careless and capricious of the roses,
And therefore most desired; a rose too free
To bloom in bondage.

FORTUNATUS.
O wise, wilding, rose! ...
You are a fairy godmother, and well
You moralise your garden.

URANIA.
'Tis alive;
And is not our morality akin
With character of bird, and beast, and flower,
Our simpler forebears, in whose face we see
Foreshadowings of man's fuller, graver life?

FORTUNATUS.
You have the Secret. We are kindred all,
From mindless flower to flowering mind, and this,
Synopsis of the Past.

URANIA.
And of the Future
Blossom and bud, perpetually opening.
With Man 'tis always Springtime.

FORTUNATUS.
But, with men,
Autumn or Winter, mostly. Nay, forgive me.
Here in your garden—anywhere with you—
It would be always Summer.

URANIA.
Rest you here,
Under the tangle of “The Poet's Dream.”
Father will join you shortly. I must go,
And see if April sleeps.

FORTUNATUS.
Abed already!
I had hoped afresh to fold her on my knee
And feel again the velvet of her cheek.
Can I not see her sleeping?

URANIA.
Not to-day.
There is a feverish current in her veins,
Begotten of the haying and your presence.
She has for you a strange expectancy,
A strange remembering; and your coming back,
After a timely absence that had seemed
To her imagination endless long,
Hath made mid summer simmer in her blood,
That will in sleep subside.

FORTUNATUS.
Kiss her for me,
Just where the slumbering forehead meets the hair.
And, sleeps she sound, come back! come back!—yourself,
Sweeter than all your roses!

[Urania goes into the house.]

SCENE VI

[Franklin and Fortunatus at supper in the garden.]
FRANKLIN.
Our handmaid lingers; we must sup without her.
Her little one is ailing, and she sits
By April's coverlet. She spread the cloth;
'Tis we must eat the meal.

FORTUNATUS.
'Tis often thus,
In this imperfectly adjusted world.

FRANKLIN.
It is for us to adjust it. Man is free
To make it odd or even.

FORTUNATUS.
Is he free?
An old-world new-world question, never solved.

FRANKLIN.
Yet surely it is soluble. Man's Will
Is finite like his other faculties,
And, like his other faculties, may be
Dwarfed or expanded. We are bound, in part,
And, where we are bound, submission unto Fate
Is wise surrender. But, in part, we are free,
And, in that space of liberty, the Will
May be enlarged by watchful exercise.
No attribute is perfect: why then Will?
Its imperfection is its life, its strength,
Keeping it active.

FORTUNATUS.
Action! action! action!
The orator's receipt is likewise yours;
And I by action have expelled to-day
Invaders of the mind's serenity.
But would all forms of action thus suffice?

FRANKLIN.
No, action may be noble or ignoble,
And only noble action breeds content,
Refreshment, and repose. The noblest is
The peasant's and the poet's: loftiest, this;
That, the most even and accessible.

FORTUNATUS.
Have poets then refreshment and repose?
Are they content?

FRANKLIN.
Wise poets needs must be;
Feeling most keenly, understanding best,
With ampler vision, deeper scrutiny,
And fantasy more soaring; firmer grasp
Of this substantial earth, more frequent glimpse
Of that Beyond, the lightnings of the mind
Open by fitful flashes; crowning all,
The articulate delight of Orphic song,
That seems to solve the riddles of the world
With musical responses.

FORTUNATUS.
But, alas!
Poets are few, and poets that are wise
Are—well, where are they? Sleeping in their graves.

FRANKLIN.
Or, haply, in their cradles; and, meanwhile,
To be a peasant, wise or otherwise,
Is no ill lot. The uncertain certainty
Of the recurring seasons gives to Will,
Action, and hope, unfailing appetite,
With ample fare to feed on. The last sheep
Was scarcely shorn, when scythes had to be ground;
And almost ere the wheaten sheaves be stacked,
The hops, as though aware that food and drink
Are twin, if drink the younger, fill the air
With hints of homely banquets yet to be.

FORTUNATUS.
But leisure, change, and travel,—are not these
Auxiliaries of wisdom, full as needed
As work, and will, and Nature's discipline?

FRANKLIN.
Yes, lest we wax too trite and circular.
Thrice hath Urania pastured in the vales,
The cherry-peopled vales, moist, green, and cool,
Scooped by the rivalry of Alp with Alp,
And, times uncounted, have we reaped together
The endless harvest of the golden towns
That ripen in the sun of Italy;
And oftener still we have ploughed our native land
With the keen edge of curiosity,
Whetted by born affection. But the wise
Live anchored mostly, and in wanderings rare
Find confirmation of the bliss of home;
And rustic service leaves them ample space
For helpful holiday.

FORTUNATUS.
But in these lone
Sequestered silences of chase and pool,
This wildwood realm of antiquated boughs,
But tenanted by foxglove and by fern,
Wherein you hedge your honeysuckled home,
Though Love might brood there aptly, only doves
Ponder on constancy, or dappled does,
Fair damsels of the forest-glade, disport
Their beauty inaccessible and gleam
Coy phantoms of possession.

FRANKLIN.
Who shall say?
In intervals of fancy have I deemed
That, in a world pure-fashioned by the Will,
Love would be each one's secret, known of none
Save the belovëd; and the wise who are strong,
Even in this conditioned sphere of sense,
Nest like the nightingale, which, rarely seen,
In curtained joy instinctively abides.
Love is a rustic, almost a recluse,
A haunter of the gloaming and the dew,
Lit by the evening star. In arid towns,
Lust borrows the vocabulary of Love,
And masquerades romantically till
Day doffs the domino. Better abide,
Unloving and unloved, in lonely lanes,
Yet knowing well what Love is, than consort
With meretricious mummers.

FORTUNATUS.
See, the moon,
Unneeded by the summer night, whose way
Is lighted half by lingering yesterday,
Half by approaching morrow, glistens through
The intercepting leaves. I must away,
And carry through the lengthening forest-tracks
Remembrance and regret.

SCENE VII

[Fortunatus is leading his horse to the garden gate. Just ere he reaches it, Urania stands before him in the moonlight. He tethers his horse, and leans with her over the gate.]
URANIA.
The moon will bear you company to-night,
And silver with her half-superfluous beams
Your sylvan journey.

FORTUNATUS.
Would that it were you,
Suspended not in Heaven, too like to her,
But earthly as myself, who shared my ride
Through fantasies of forest.
[He gazes at her.]
White, pure white,
All save the glimmering hair, and that one rose
Promoted to your breast! Sleeps she, then, sound,
That you have quit your vigil to console
The solitary night?

URANIA.
She slumbers, husht,
The kiss between her forehead and her hair,
Remembered as your message, having stilled
The ripple of her questions.

FORTUNATUS.
Wherefore, then,
Roamed you in veiled felicity aloof,
Denying us your voice? Our converse lacked
The minor key, too masculine throughout,
And therefore inconclusive.

URANIA.
There are thoughts,
Need silence to be listened to, and such
Were mine to-night, unfitted to compete
With definite debate.
[Suddenly a nightingale sings overhead.]
How late in June
Flutes that contiguous nightingale, so soon
To flute no more!

FORTUNATUS.
Alas! romantic bird!
Now buxom Summer swelters 'mong her swathes,
The homely misselthrush will sing you down,
And every ditty will be heard save yours.

URANIA.
Why dwell you on these contrasts, sad in thought,
And scarce, in language, manifest? To me,
The nightingale is jocund as the lark,
The lark pathetic as the nightingale,
Both, sweet as sadness, sad as sweetness' self.

FORTUNATUS.
I wish that you could make my sadness sweet,
As well indeed you might. Within your voice
Despondency subsists not, and your thoughts,
Mildly imperious as the morning sun,
Banish from life its misty mournfulness.

URANIA.
It is your fancy crowns me. Use it, rather,
To lift yourself unto the sovran throne
Of cheerful wisdom.

FORTUNATUS.
So I might, if you
Would deign to be its consort, or permit
Me, lowlier, to be yours. Urania!
I never thought to love again, or lose
The sense of loneliness high longings breed,
Unshared, unsatisfied, so half forsworn.
Absolve me for that faithlessness, now I,
Beholding you, return unto my faith,
And, humble penitent, confess that Love,
Begotten by the mind upon the heart,
Not the mere waif of fantasy or sense,
Can liberate life's longings, and redeem
Material servitude. And yet—and yet—
What if the fancy, and the senses too,
Enforce their claim, and fervid youth revived
By spell of hazel hair, of hazel eyes,
Need the old words—“I love you!—Sweet! be mine!”—
No wonder that I stammer, for my heart
Is where my voice should be—the old, old words,
The old, old want, yet different from the old,
As you from all else differ—highest, best—
And, highest, best, most longed-for and most loved!

[He lays his hand on hers.]
URANIA.
Why did we listen to that nightingale
Or I to you? We cannot answer it,
Though it be preternaturally sweet;
And I with selfish ears, spell-bound and husht,
Have hearkened to your heart, forgetting quite
Mine may not set its music unto yours.
[He withdraws his hand.]
Nay, do not take your tenderness away.
Listening, I sometimes think that you are he
Who found my nature long ago, and holds
It captive in his own.

FORTUNATUS.
Are you betrothed?

URANIA.
I am betrothed to him, not he to me.

FORTUNATUS.
Knows he your troth?

URANIA.
No, nor will ever know it,
Save some celestial accident reveal
Our oneness to each other.

FORTUNATUS.
And shall this,
This mirage of the mind, this viewless vision,
This covenant uncovenanted, seal
The avenues of choice to living love,
Here faltering on your threshold, suing low
For leave to cross it?

URANIA.
Sue not, I beseech you!
There is persuasion in your voice, and I
Must never be persuaded. O sir, see!
It is not suitable that you should plead
To one who still would nothing have to give
Had she the giving of it. It is not mine,
Or—well, it should be yours. You are sad, but noble,
Your nobleness your own, while my poor wisdom
Is echoed from my sire. I am not wise;
I am nothing, save, for a moment, the bright cheat
Imagination makes me.

FORTUNATUS.
See you him often?

URANIA.
I see him always; were it not for him,
I should see nothing else. He hath become
A portion of my sight as of my thought.
Hark! how again yon nightingale propels
Its yearning upward! 'Tis his voice I hear.
He wanders in the garden, he abides
In every rose; and when the autumn leaves
Huddle in shallows of my winding walks,
I think myself his comfort, if he came,
As come he doth not, to keep winter warm.
Ofttimes I fancy April is his child,
No more a woodland waif unparented,
That I may love and tend her for his sake.

FORTUNATUS.
I would that I were he!

URANIA.
I would you were!
But if I falsely welcomed you for him,
He would be gone, and you have banished him.
How could I love you, then? ... Go—go—before—
Nay, stay a little while, that I may know
You quit me not with feet of bitterness.
I should have loved you, had I loved not him.
I was so happy: I am hapless now.
[She withdraws her hand, and half repels him.]
There! Go! There is no magic in the moon
To lighten such a darkness!

FORTUNATUS
(folding his arms round her, and looking intently into her face).
Nay! attend!
Be this not love, it mimics it so close,
I will not take your answer.

URANIA.
But you must!
I do not love you.

FORTUNATUS
(liberating her).
Wherefore should you love,
In deed or dream, you born but to be loved?
It is a wasteful world, wherein we see
The loveliest apparitions suddenly dropped
By Time, the gaoler of Eternity,
Into the dark deep oubliette of death;
And Time will be oblivious of this hour.
But when the elder whitens at your gate,
As now it doth, in undiscovered years,
And some belated nightingale laments
The pity of this night ...
Remember that I loved you.
[He kisses her forehead, mounts his horse, then looks back a moment.]
Latest and loveliest of my dreams, farewell!

SCENE VIII

[Fortunatus reins in his horse from a gallop, and advances through the forest at a foot's pace.]
FORTUNATUS.
“There is no magic in the moon,” she said,
“To lighten such a darkness.” What is dark,
What, light? what, life? what, death? save shifting shadows,
Now come, now gone, with movement meaningless!
“I was so happy: I am hapless now.”
That change will change afresh, to change again,
In sterile oscillation. Thus we pass,
With mere monotonous mutability,
From cradle unto sepulchre, the van
Of other shadows, fleeting as ourselves.
Yet the boughs seem more luminous to-night,
Because she lives! Paceth she still the garden,
Regretfully remindful? or recurs
To him, the unforgotten? Doth she gaze
On April's sleep, and her unravelled hair
Fall in unmurmuring ripples to her feet?
Nay, but surmise no more: the truth's enough!
Imagination makes it but more bitter.

[He again breaks into a gallop, till he reaches a round clearing in the forest, where he sees Abaddon sitting on the ground, surrounded by a circle of twenty-four glowworms. Abaddon raises his hand deprecatingly, that the silence may not be broken. Shortly he rises to his feet, with an exclamation of impatience.]
ABADDON.
I never knew that spell to fail before.

FORTUNATUS.
What spell, nocturnal wizard?

ABADDON.
Sooth, the spell
Of male desire and female vanity,
The most infallible philtre ever brewed.
But you have thrown your vantages away,
And handicap my cunning. Why, an oaf
That never handled anything more dainty
Than the plough's tail, had done the business better.

FORTUNATUS.
What business, pray?

ABADDON.
Your business, Duke, and mine:
Appropriation of as rare a piece
Of comeliness and virtue as the world
Has seen since Eve found Eden wearisome.
The Serpent managed better, though he had
No odds like yours. A maiden all recluse,
And yet to you accessible;—to you!—
A sultry summer night, scented and still,
Enchanted by the dewy moon, the wail
Of a fond faltering nightingale;—what more
Could the most amorous pessimist conceive,
To second his seductions?

FORTUNATUS
(springing from his horse, and seizing ABADDON by the throat).
Fool or fiend!
Caitiff or conjuror! Do you dare avow
You eavesdropped to our colloquy, and lurked,
A listener at the gate!
[Withdrawing his grip.]
Your windpipe's iron!

ABADDON.
You cannot choke the Devil. ... Beside, good Duke,
Mingle a little reason with your wrath.
How could I now conceivably be here,
Circled by these my shining servitors,
If I had ambushed by Urania's garden
To intercept your secret? You have fled
From the lost battle hotly, for I heard
Your horse-hoofs hammering hollow on the sod
As I sate here divining. Come! be fair.
We have been partners often, though you gave
But little thought to your auxiliary,
And many a melting morsel have you owed
To the concurrence of the Pride of Life,
When Lust of the Flesh unaided must have fed
On its own appetite. But now when I
Crave, just for once, your potency in turn,
You abdicate your eminence, and sue
In sentimental syllables as though
You were a mendicant and she a queen.
Why, a shock-headed yokel of the wain,
Concupiscent chawbacon, would have lagged
Longer than you, seducing maiden pique
And curiosity to whet themselves
Upon the edge of waiting. Words—words—words!
And with no action suited to the word!
Oft thus are women wooed, but never won.

FORTUNATUS.
True love is simple.

ABADDON.
Ay, a simpleton,
And hence receives a simpleton's reward.
I do believe you would have married her!

FORTUNATUS.
What reverence offers, that I offered her,
Leaving her nature sovran arbiter
Anent the ceremonial shows of love.

ABADDON.
And happily she foils, by her refusal,
Your courtly homage. We are baffled, both!
I by your simpleness, and you by hers.
Enough to vex a saint, do men not say?
Then think how it must irritate the Devil!

FORTUNATUS.
Whom are you bent to injure? her, or me?

ABADDON.
To injure! Nay, you rate yourself too cheap.
You would have lured her most bewitchingly,
Had you but longed for her less, and she been lulled
By the enchantment of the luscious lie,
Till—well, till fancy flags. But you, an expert
In evanescent rapture, needs must crave
Monotony of wedlock, and exchange
A week of kisses for a life of yawns,
O Duke, turned dotard!

FORTUNATUS.
You are the Devil indeed!

ABADDON.
Reproach me not. I am the Pride of Life,
And follow my vocation. Where is the man,
Doglike submissive when you flout his trade,
As mine is flouted by Urania?
Poor devil! poor duke! for you are flouted too,
And I disdained in lordly company.

FORTUNATUS.
What do you with those lanthorns of the ground,
Now when the moon monopolises heaven,
And every leaf whereon is globed the dew
Shines like a little cup of liquid light?

ABADDON.
Because her too effulgent beams have paled
Heaven's dwarfer orbs, and these terrestrial stars,
Collated by my necromancy, yield
A kindred revelation. Not alone
By constellation or the wayward flight
Of wild goose and of mallard, or the croak
Of marish frog, or palimpsest of palm,
But by all correlated shows of life,
Movement, or law, can patient subtlety
Construct an alphabet whereby mind may
Surmise in part the vague significance
Of enigmatic Nature. ... Test their power,
Propounding them some question. If they answer,
Their mellow phosphorescence comes and goes
In legible pulsations: they are ranged
In order alphabetical that rounds
To Omega from Alpha.

FORTUNATUS.
Who is he,
Urania loves?

ABADDON.
That, will they not disclose,
Save that you have some spell to me unknown
To intimidate their secret. I have plied
With incantations of the earth and air
Their steadfast cressets, and they will not wink
The faintest intimation. Hold have I none
Over the uncarnal motions of the mind,
Which, till allied with matter, do not find
A lurking-place in casual substances
That may betray them.

FORTUNATUS.
Ply them again, withal,
And bid them answer whom Urania loves.

ABADDON.

FORTUNATUS.
But She hath answered that she doth not love me.

ABADDON.
'Tis likelier that a woman lies than they,
Or that they ken what she herself ignores.
Ply them again—now—now that they are trim
To signify their secrets. ... Sceptic duke!
Let me interrogate their burnished wicks,
And force from them the undiscovered thoughts
That haunt the Underworld. Respond anew,
Who begat April, Springtime's castaway?
Look! look again! how every lettered light,
Like to a coruscating topaz, flows,
Then ebbs with mystic meaning. Eye them sharp,
They answer—FORTUNATUS.

FORTUNATUS.
Press them then
Who was the mother that unmothered her,
Abandoned 'mong the bluebells?

ABADDON.
Look! they swoon,
And darken in their sockets, as though you had,
By pressing them too close, extinguished them.
There! they are out!

FORTUNATUS.
But conjure them again,
And make them throb oracularly till
That parentage be known. I'll ask no more.

ABADDON.
You might as well interrogate the stars
In day's meridian, as enforce their light
When once they are sunk and set.
[He gathers up the glowworms, and scatters them broadcast.]
Nay, let them keep
Their secret news in bank and holly-bush,
Till next I summon them. But come, your Grace,
We two might puzzle out, without their aid,
This mystery of motherhood, so you
Will call your past affections to the task.
Remember you The Nameless One?

FORTUNATUS.
Alack!
Plainlier than any ever named or known.

ABADDON.
Ay, ay, because she left you;—you more wont
To leave than be relinquished. Men remember
When they're forgotten; when remembered, they
Themselves forget. But wherefore did she quit you?

FORTUNATUS.
Because she sought to reign upon my hearth,
And share the sceptre of the marriage-ring,
And I denied her; for in truth she was
No blossom of my plucking, but a flower
Another had culled and thankless thrown away
As children drop their posy once 'tis gathered.
Yet half the freshness of the bud still lurked
In her unhulled virginity, and since
I tenderly disposed her, she conceived
There was no abdication I would not
Sign for another smile, poor Nameless One!

ABADDON.
True was her tale then! though they ofttimes lie,
Dissembling their own waywardness.

FORTUNATUS.
But how
Heard you her tale?

ABADDON.
She faded in my care.
The wriggling worms have got her beauty now,
Paying no tax for their propinquity,
Yet more familiar with her costly flesh
Than any the richest, rarest, of you all.
She loved you best, because you were a duke;
And yet she loved you best. That way they love,
Just as they love to lie beneath a quilt
Of ostentatious softness. Had a Prince
But come her way, she would have loved him better.
But, since none did so—well, you were her Prince,
Until she could not wheedle you withal
To label her a Princess. Then she fled,
But not alone, projecting to return
And cozen you more femininely when
The hope within her womb smiled on her breast.

FORTUNATUS.
What of the child?

ABADDON.
It smiled, but never there!
Finding an orphan darkness in the light
Its mother gave it, as herself went out.

FORTUNATUS.
But what to you was mother, or babe, or—

ABADDON.
Nay!
The Devil is not ungrateful, and I thus
Paid her for many an innocent her lips
Had kissed into perdition. By my pack!
I know not, of the twain, if she or you
Have served more fruitfully the Pride of Life
And Lust of the Flesh; and so I took the babe,
And, when matured to winsomeness, exposed
Its dimples in the primroses where next
Urania, foresting, was timed to pass.

[A troop of unbroken colts come galloping through the forest, and startle Fortunatus's horse. He goes to quieten and secure it. Returning, he finds Abaddon has vanished.]
FORTUNATUS.
What ho!

A VOICE.
What ho!

FORTUNATUS
(mounting his horse).
I'll gallop through the forest, till I find
This juggling newsman of the night.

[As he breaks into a gallop, he sees, emerging from an avenue, a hundred yards ahead, but at right angles to that along which he is himself advancing, Abaddon, astride of one of the wild colts, tearing along at full speed, followed by the whole troop.]
FORTUNATUS.
What ho!

ABADDON.
What ho! lord duke! Come on! and race the Devil!

SCENE IX

[Urania's garden. Urania is pacing slowly, in the moonlight; shortly she is joined by her father.]
FRANKLIN.
Is April sleeping?

URANIA.
Yes, refreshingly.

FRANKLIN.
Observe you not a likeness in the curves
About her mouth and his, though plastic hers,
And his arrested by the serious years?

URANIA.
Mere fancy, father! Rather should I say,
Were that not yet more fanciful, that he
In voice and lineament re-echoes you.

FRANKLIN.
Your fancy for my fancy; futile both:
Though verily I marvelled when to-day
He trolled our song, and chimed the final strophe
Familiarly as we? I never knew
A voice that was not of my kindred chant
That local ditty carolled by my nurse,
And by me taught to April and to you.
Who may he be?

URANIA.
He is Duke Fortunatus

FRANKLIN.
That is he not! ... Urania, let us sit,
While I to you disclose what haply you
Will deem I might have whispered you before.
Hear first the tale, and, when the tale is told,
The plea shall follow. ... I am Duke Fortunatus;
And thus it seems he must be of my kin.
Sick in my youth of splendour, but too weak
To bear its burdens sternly, I resolved
To shuffle that luxurious fardel off
To other shoulders, and myself assume,
Unknown to all, the lowlier tasks that mate
With Understanding and wise Happiness.
Perhaps it was a selfish abdication;
Withal, a selfishness I cannot rue.
I vanished, and the world conceived me dead.
The dukedom to a distant kinsman passed,
Who gloried in his trappings, but enjoyed
His harness briefly; unto whom, 'twould seem,
Succeeded he we entertained to-day.
I to myself sufficiency reserved
For study and for travel;—last, for home,
Here where your mother died and you were born.
Why did I hug my secret? Sweet, forgive!
But if upon the fantasies of pomp
Men gaze with clownish awe, men born with thews
And masculine conceptions, is it strange
That women, daintier in their nerves and needs,
Should reverence vulgar opulence, and rank
That gives to splendour grace and dignity?
Nay, have it as you will; perhaps I wronged you.
Perhaps I wronged your mother. But I gave,
Not the poor gauds you might have both regretted
And blamed me for withholding, but such wealth
As—nay, 'tis poor—but, rich enough for me,
And so I hoped, child, rich enough for you.

URANIA.
'Tis wealth I would not barter for all titles
And pomp in the world.

FRANKLIN.
Yet now indeed you must;
For I discern how deeply I have wronged him.
See! I have laid upon his life a load
'Neath which he staggers; so must I resume it,
Now I can carry it as though 'twere not,
And set him free, before it be too late,
To learn to walk erect.

URANIA.
How sad he seems!
So sad, that I myself could almost weep
His unsubstantial sorrow.

FRANKLIN.
Find him woe.
His sense of happiness will wake when grief
Hath half withdrawn her curtain. Well, good-night,
And more of this to-morrow.

SCENE X

[Midnight. Urania's chamber.]
APRIL
(sleepily).
Urania, has he gone? Ask him to come:
I want to say good-night before he goes.

URANIA.
He is deep within the forest, long ere this.
Hark! that is midnight strikes.

APRIL.
I am so sorry.
When will he come again?

URANIA.
Nay, you must sleep.
Lie still, and close your eyes.
[April drops off again into slumber.]
Ay, when? When? When!
“Latest and loveliest of my dreams, farewell!”
'Twas thus he left me. We are dreamers, both.
Yet never farewell to mine! which neither time
Nor the seductions of a visible presence
Can banish from my gaze. Had he but sued
Before the dedication of my thought
To one exclusive longing, it is sure
His heart's vibration would have sounded mine,
And made harmonious what's discordant now.
With what a lonely dignity he breathed
His hope, with what sad dignity resigned!
O, I am crimsoned with confusion, when
I hear again his halting utterance
Accompany the nightingale, and think
'Tis he that asked, and I that dared withhold!
And yet the consecrated past forbids
A less unnatural answer.
[She takes the volume out of which she previously read, and folds it to her heart as she composes herself to sleep.]
O my love!
Lie in the bosom of my sleep to-night,
So I may still be lapped in constancy,
And know no other dream but thee,—but thee!