University of Virginia Library

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.
A fair and bright assembly: never strode
Old arched Grüssau over such a tide
Of helmed chivalry, as when to-day
Our tourney guests swept, leaping billow-like,
Its palace-banked streets. Knights shut in steel,
Whose shields, like water, glassed the soul-eyed maidens,
That softly did attend their armed tread,
Flower-cinctured on the temples, whence gushed down
A full libation of star-numbered tresses,
Hallowing the neck unto love's silent kiss,
Veiling its innocent white: and then came squires,
And those who bore war's silken tapestries,
And chequered heralds: 'twas a human river,
Brimful and beating as if the great god,
Who lay beneath it, would arise. So sways
Time's sea, which Age snows into and makes deep,
When, from the rocky side of the dim future,
Leaps into it a mighty destiny,
Whose being to endow great souls have been
Centuries hoarded, and the world meanwhile
Sate like a beggar upon Heaven's threshold,
Muttering its wrongs.

Siegfr.
My sprightly Athulf,
Is it possible that you can waste the day,
Which throws these pillared shades among such beauties,
In lonely thought?

Athulf.
Why I have left my cup,
A lady's lips, dropping with endless kisses,
Because your minstrels hushed their harps. Why did they?
This music, which they tickle from the strings,
Is excellent for drowning ears that gape,
When one has need of whispers.

Siegfr.
The old governor
Would have it so: his morning nap being o'er,
He's no more need of music, but is moving
Straight to the lists.

Athulf.
A curse on that mock war!
How it will shake and sour the blood, that now
Is quiet in the men! And there's my brother,
Whose sword's his pleasure. A mere savage man,
Made for the monstrous times, but left out then,
Born by mistake with us.

Adalm.
(to Isbrand)
Be sure 'tis heavy.
Once lance of mine a wolf shut his jaws on
But cracked it not, you'll see his bite upon it:
It lies among the hunting weapons.

Isbr.
Ay,
With it I saw you once scratch out of life
A blotted Moor.

Adalm.
The same; it poises well,
And falls right heavy: find it.

[Exit Isbrand.
Siegfr.
For the tilt,
My brave lord Adalmar?

Athulf.
What need of asking?
You know the man is sore upon a couch;
But upright, on his bloody-hoofed steed
Galloping o'er the ruins of his foes,
Whose earthquake he hath been, then will he shout,
Laugh, run his tongue along his trembling lip,
And swear his heart tastes honey.

Siegfr.
Nay, thou'rt harsh;
He was the axe of Mars; but, Troy being felled,
Peace trims her bower with him.

Athulf.
Ay; in her hand
He's iron still.

Adalm.
I care not, brother Athulf,
Whether you're right or wrong: 'tis very certain,
Thank God for it, I am not Peace's lap-dog,
But Battle's shaggy whelp. Perhaps, even soon,
Good friend of Bacchus and the rose, you'll feel
Your budding wall of dalliance shake behind you,
And need my spear to prop it.

Athulf.
Come the time!
You'll see that in our veins runs brother's blood.

A Lady.
Is Siegfried here? At last! I've sought for you
By every harp and every lady's shoulder,
Not ever thinking you could breathe the air
That ducal cub of Munsterberg makes frightful
With his loud talk.

Siegfr.
Happy in my error,
If thus to be corrected.

Re-enter Isbrand.
Isbr.
The lance, my lord:
A delicate tool to breathe a heathen's vein with.

The Lady.
What, Isbrand, thou a soldier? Fie upon thee!
Is this a weapon for a fool?

Isbr.

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?

Isbr.

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?

Isbr.

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?

Isbr.

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.

Isbr.

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.
How the wild jester would frighten us!
Come, Siegfried:
Some of us in a corner wait your music,
Your news, and stories. My lord Adalmar,
You must be very weary all this time,
The rest are so delighted. Come along,
[to Siegfr.
Or else his answer stuns me.

Adalm.
Joyous creature!
Whose life's first leaf is hardly yet uncurled.

Athulf.
Use your trade's language; were I journeyman
To Mars, the glorious butcher, I would say
She's sleek, and sacrificial flowers would look well
On her white front.

Adalm.
Now, brother, can you think,
Stern as I am above, that in my depth
There is no cleft wherein such thoughts are hived
As from dear looks and words come back to me,
Storing that honey, love. O! love I do,
Through every atom of my being.

Athulf.
Ay,
So do we young ones all. In winter time
This god of butterflies, this Cupid sleeps,
As they do in their cases; but May comes;
With it the bee and he: each spring of mine
He sends me a new arrow, thank the boy.
A week ago he shot me for this year;
The shaft is in my stomach, and so large
There's scarcely room for dinner.

Adalm.
Shall I believe thee,
Or judge mortality by this stout sample
I screw my mail o'er? Well, it may be so;
You are an adept in these chamber passions,
And have a heart that's Cupid's arrow cushion
Worn out with use. I never knew before
The meaning of this love. But one has taught me,
It is a heaven wandering among men,
The spirit of gone Eden haunting earth.
Life's joys, death's pangs are viewless from its bosom,
Which they who keep are gods: there's no paradise,
There is no heaven, no angels, no blessed spirits,
No souls, or they have no eternity,
If this be not a part of them.

Athulf.
This in a Court!
Such sort of love might Hercules have felt
Warm from the Hydra fight, when he had fattened
On a fresh slain Bucentaur, roasted whole,
The heart of his pot-belly, till it ticked
Like a cathedral clock. But in good faith
Is this the very truth? Then have I found
My fellow fool. For I am wounded too
E'en to the quick and inmost, Adalmar.
So fair a creature! of such charms compact
As nature stints elsewhere; which you may find
Under the tender eyelid of a serpent,
Or in the gurge of a kiss-coloured rose,
By drops and sparks: but when she moves, you see,
Like water from a crystal overfilled,
Fresh beauty tremble out of her and lave
Her fair sides to the ground. Of other women,
(And we have beauteous in this court of ours,)
I can remember whether nature touched
Their eye with brown or azure, where a vein
Runs o'er a sleeping eyelid, like some streak
In a young blossom; every grace count up,
Here the round turn and crevice of the arm,
There the tress-bunches, or the slender hand
Seen between harpstrings gathering music from them:
But where she is, I'm lost in her abundance,
And when she leaves me I know nothing more,
(Like one from whose awakening temples rolls
The cloudy vision of a god away,)
Than that she was divine.

Adalm.
Fie sir, these are the spiced sighs of a heart,
That bubbles under wine; utter rhyme-gilding,
Beneath man's sober use. What do you speak of?

Athulf.
A woman most divine, and that I love
As you dare never.

Adalm.
Boy, a truce with talk.
Such words are sacred, placed within man's reach
To be used seldom, solemnly, when speaking
Of what both God and man might overhear,
You unabashed.

Athulf.
Of what? What is more worthy
Than the delight of youth, being so rare,
Precious, short-lived, and irrecoverable?

Adalm.
When you do mention that adored land,
Which gives you life, pride, and security,
And holy rights of freedom; or in the praise
Of those great virtues and heroic men,
That glorify the earth and give it beams,
Then to be lifted by the like devotion
Would not disgrace God's angels.

Athulf.
Well sir, laud,
Worship, and swear by them, your native country
And virtues past; a phantom and a corpse:
Such airy stuff may please you. My desires
Are hot and hungry; they will have their fill
Of living dalliance, gazes, and lip-touches,
Or eat their master. Now, no more rebuking:
Peace be between us. For why are we brothers,
Being the creatures of two different gods,
But that we may not be each other's murderers?

Adalm.
So be it then! But mark me, brother Athulf,
I spoke not from a cold unnatural spirit,
Barren of tenderness. I feel and know
Of woman's dignity; how it doth merit
Our total being, has all mine this moment:
But they should share with us our level lives:
Moments there are, and one is now at hand,
Too high for them. When all the world is stirred
By some preluding whisper of that trumpet,
Which shall awake the dead, to do great things,
Then the sublimity of my affection,
The very height of my beloved, shows me
How far above her's glory. When you've earned
This knowledge, tell me: I will say, you love
As a man should.

[He retires.
Athulf.
But this is somewhat true.
I almost think that I could feel the same
For her. For her? By heavens 'tis Amala,
Amala only, that he so can love.
There? by her side? in conference! at smiles!
Then I am born to be a fratricide.
I feel as I were killing him. Tush, tush;
A phantom of my passion! But, if true—
What? What, my heart? A strangely-quiet thought,
That will not be pronounced, doth answer me.

(Thorwald comes forward, attended by the company.)
Thorw.
[He is left alone with the Duke.

Duke.
Straightway from the holy land,
Whose sanctity such floods of human blood,
Unnatural rain for it, will soon wash out.

Thorw.
You saw our Duke?

Duke.
I did: but Melveric
Is strangely altered. When we saw him leap,
Shut up in iron, on his burning steed
From Grüssau's threshold, he had fifty years
Upon his head, and bore them straight and upright,
Through dance, and feast, and knightly tournament.

Thorw.
How! Is he not the same? 'Tis but three years
And a fourth's quarter past. What is the change?
A silvering of the hair? a deeper wrinkle
On cheek and forehead?

Duke.
I do not think you'd know him,
Stood he where I do. No. I saw him lying
Beside a fountain on a battle-evening:
The sun was setting over the heaped plain;
And to my musing fancy his front's furrows,
With light between them, seemed the grated shadow
Thrown by the ribs of that field's giant, Death;
'Twixt which the finger of the hour did write
‘This is the grave's.’

Thorw.
How? Looked he sorrowful?
Knows he the dukedom's state?

Duke.
(giving letters to Thorwald)
Ask these. He's heard
The tidings that afflict the souls of fathers;
How these two sons of his unfilially
Have vaulted to the saddle of the people,
And charge against him. How he gained the news,
You must know best: what countermine he digs,
Those letters tell your eyes. He bade me say,
His dukedom is his body, and, he forth,
That may be sleeping, but the touch of wrong,
The murderer's barefoot tread will bring him back
Out of his Eastern visions, ere this earth
Has swung the city's length.

Thorw.
I read as much:
He bids me not to move; no eye to open,
But to sit still and doze, and warm my feet
At their eruption. This security
Is most unlike him. I remember oft,
When the thin harvests shed their withered grain,
And empty poverty yelped sour-mouthed at him,
How he would cloud his majesty of form
With priestly hangings, or the tattered garb
Of the step-seated beggar, and go round
To catch the tavern talk and the street ballad,
And whispers of ancestral prophecies,
Until he knew the very nick of time,
When his heart's arrow would be on the string;
And, seizing Treason by the arm, would pour
Death back upon him.

Duke.
He is wary still,
And has a snake's eye under every grass.
Your business is obedience unto him,
Who is your natal star; and mine, to worm,
Leaf after leaf, into the secret volume
Of their designs. Already has our slave,
The grape juice, left the side-door of the youngest
Open to me. You think him innocent.
Fire flashes from him; whether it be such
As treason would consult by, or the coals
Love boils his veins on, shall through this small crevice,
Through which the vine has thrust its cunning tendril,
Be looked and listened for.

Thorw.
Can I believe it?
Did not I know him and his spirit's course,
Well as the shape and colour of the sun,
And when it sets and rises? Is this he?
No: 'tis the shadow of this pilgrim false,
Who stands up in his height of villany,
Shadowy as a hill, and throws his hues
Of contradiction to the heavenly light,
The stronger as it shines upon him most.
Ho! pilgrim, I have weighed and found thee villain.
Are thy knees used to kneeling? It may chance
That thou wilt change the altar for the block:
Prove thou'rt his messenger.

Duke.
I wait your questions.
The very inmost secret of his heart,
Confided to you, challenge from me.

Thorw.
First,
A lighter trial. If you come from him,
Tell me what friend he spoke of most.

Duke.
Of thee.

Thorw.
Another yet;
A knight?

Duke.
There is no living knight his friend.

Thorw.
O ill guessed, palmer! One, whom Melveric
Would give his life, all but his virtue for,
Lived he no more, to raise him from the dead.

Duke.
Right; he would give his soul; Thorwald, his soul:—
Friendship is in its depth, and secrets sometimes
Like to a grave.—So loved the Duke that warrior.

Thorw.
Enough, his name;—the name?

Duke.
Ay, ay, the name—
Methinks there's nothing in the world but names:
All things are dead; friendship at least I'll blot
From my vocabulary. The man was called—
The knight—I cannot utter't—the knight's name—
Why dost thou ask me? I know nothing of him.
I have not seen or heard of him, of—Well,
I'll speak of him to no man more—

Thorw.
Tremble then
When thou dost hear of—Wolfram! thou art pale:
Confess, or to the dungeon—

Duke.
Pause! I am stuffed
With an o'erwhelming spirit: press not thou,
Or I shall burst asunder, and let through
The deluging presence of thy duke. Prepare:
He's near at hand.

Thorw.
Forbid it, Providence!
He steps on a plot's spring, whose teeth encircle
The throne and city.

Duke.
(disrobing)
Fear not. On he comes,
Still as a star robed in eclipse, until
The earthy shadow slips away. Who rises?
I'm changing: now who am I?

Thorw.
Melveric!
Munsterberg, as I live and love thee!

Duke.
Hush!
Is there not danger?

Thorw.
Ay: we walk on ice
Over the mouth of Hell: an inch beneath us,
Dragon Rebellion lies ready to wake.
Ha! and behold him.

Enter Adalmar.
Adalm.
Lord Governor, our games are waiting for you.
Will you come with me? Base and muffled stranger,
What dost thou here? Away.

Duke.
Prince Adalmar,
Where shall you see me? I will come again,
This or the next world. Thou, who carriest
The seeds of a new world, may'st understand me.
Look for me ever. There's no crack without me
In earth and all around it. Governor,
Let all things happen, as they will. Farewell:
Tremble for no one.

Adalm.
Hence! The begging monk
Prates emptily.

Duke.
Believe him.

Thorw.
Well, lead on;
Wert thou a king, I would not more obey thee.

[Exit with Adalmar.
Duke.
Rebellion, treason, parricidal daggers!
This is the bark of the court dogs, that come
Welcoming home their master. My sons too,
Even my sons! O not sons, but contracts,
Between my lust and a destroying fiend,
Written in my dearest blood, whose date run out,
They are become death-warrants. Parricide,
And Murder of the heart that loved and nourished,
Be merry, ye rich fiends! Piety's dead,
And the world left a legacy to you.
Under the green-sod are your coffins packed,
So thick they break each other. The days come
When scarce a lover, for his maiden's hair,
Can pluck a stalk whose rose draws not its hue
Out of a hate-killed heart. Nature's polluted,
There's man in every secret corner of her,
Doing damned wicked deeds. Thou art old, world,
A hoary atheistic murderous star:
I wish that thou would'st die, or could'st be slain,
Hell-hearted bastard of the sun.
O that the twenty coming years were over!
Then should I be at rest, where ruined arches
Shut out the troublesome unghostly day;
And idlers might be sitting on my tomb,
Telling how I did die. How shall I die?
Fighting my sons for power; or of dotage,
Sleeping in purple pressed from filial veins;
To let my epitaph be, “Here lies he,
Who murdered his two children?” Hence cursed thought!
I will enquire the purpose of their plot:
There may be good in it, and, if there be,
I'll be a traitor too.

[Exit.