University of Virginia Library

Scene V.

—The Hall of Voragine.
Volupsa, Cœlis.
‘I haste to you, Volupsa; let me hear
Your voice in its dear, human melody!
Give mine ears shelter; save mine eyes the glare
Of hideous visions whence to you I fly.
To the enchanted haunts I go no more;
Let me through you my ill-timed life explore.’
So Cœlis speaks; Volupsa says:
‘What ails you? Strangely sounds your speech;
Though it be kind, its wilderment effrays
The love I bear you, to its inmost reach.’

CŒLIS.
What ails me, ask not! would you hear it
And suffer in this peril too?
Though I told all I yet must bear it;
'Tis not for one so loved to share it;
My trying lot falls not on you.
What ails me? Not the body's ill:
It is a malison in serpent shape,
That never mortal shall escape,
Entwines itself about my strangled will.

VOLUPSA.
O Cœlis!

CŒLIS.
Call me by the name no more;—
Call me the Last Laocoon!
The Serpent's eyes on me have shone
As glared they on the priest of yore.

VOLUPSA.
Cœlis! can I not calm you?

CŒLIS.
I am calm!
But soothe me with your dimpling cheek;
Let your soft eyes in light my soul embalm,
That through them I may see the things I seek.

VOLUPSA.
Yes, I will smile.

CŒLIS.
Such smile avert;
It draws not soul to soul in love's desire:
Your lips seem with a snake begirt!
The flame of love is clear; I see but smouldering fire.

VOLUPSA.
Cœlis, be calm, be strong! Repeat
To me the ills you suffer; often
When nothing else a grief can soften,
Fond souls in unison may meet.

CŒLIS.
Shall I relate how one who drank
At nectar-springs, 'neath the foamed poison sank?
And what a gulph now underlies
The heaven where hope ere it has blossomed dies!
Yet sought I not the awful one,
Whose words, whose aspect froze my blood to stone!

VOLUPSA.
Yet rest awhile.

CŒLIS.
Rest comes:
This hurried soul it soothes, this pain benumbs.

VOLUPSA.
How so?

CŒLIS.
You do not hear the music throbbing;
It brings me peace; the rage abates:
You cannot hear the fitful sobbing
That on the burst of rapture waits.
No soul so modulates its mortal voice!
The fall, the rise, the all-resistless swell
That holds emotion's wondrous argument,
Sways hidden nature with its conquering spell:
Absent is word, is thought, is doubt, is choice,
All heavenward lost in this divine consent!
As in a tranquil sleep we choose
Our dreams from things whereon we love to muse,
I call on her who o'er the forest hovers;
It is her voice that to my senses cleaving,
I hear from holy depths upheaving
A music she alone to me discovers.

VOLUPSA.
What voice? what can this rapture mean?

CŒLIS.
The voice of Psyche, Nature's only queen!
It is not human; o'er the wintry rime
It floats into the summer-time;
It lifts me to the place afar
Where the pure hope-blossoms are.
It is a voice that love-attuned pursues me;
That, when I question, bursts into a song.
Why doth it not to you belong
Who with your gentle love suffuse me?
Then through the mirror of your mind
Might I the never-ending prospect find.

VOLUPSA.
Cœlis! I am so wretched!

CŒLIS.
You elude
This search for life; only my miseries
In you, as in a second mirror, rise;
On them, again, within your soul I brood.

VOLUPSA.
I leave you, Cœlis.

CŒLIS.
Stay!

VOLUPSA.
But not to hear
More than a woman's heart can bear?