University of Virginia Library

SCENE III

[Lucifer and Abdiel going up the mountain towards Castle Tourbillon.]
LUCIFER.
Were I yon presbyter, I had conceived
Some variation from his ancient text.
Be pure. Agreed! But love is purity,
The rest abomination.

ABDIEL.
Which is which?
That hedge thrives best 'neath which there runs a ditch.
Consult the boar, the turbot, and the wren,
They will provide an answer. Men, though men,
Have their foundation deep down in the brutes,
And topmost boughs are suckled by the roots.

LUCIFER.
She is the purest maid who loves the most;
Who loves the least, the maiden most unclean.
For let ascetic skulls and wintry dames
Inculcate chaste stagnation as they may,
In her spring season Nature will ferment.
Bid May be March, go countermand the sap
Of trickling oaks, forbid the nightingale
To wail and warble to the vernal moon,
Stop the careering throstle in his song,
And tell the womb of seasonable June
Bear snow, not roses; then expect to find
Maidenhood chill as frosty infancy,
Nor thrill with outward longings. O these priests,
These footpads rather, who with thievish hands
Take Nature by the throat and bid her yield
Her wealth or her existence!

ABDIEL.
A fair thing;
Comely as autumn, winsome as the spring;
Half blossom and half fruit. Who would not cull
A rose so sweet, a hip so beautiful?
The sunshine-shadow of mid summer lies
Half hidden in the hazel of her eyes;
And something in her footstep and her seeming
Allures like waking, yet illudes like dreaming.
Yet, sooth to please the sacristy, this flower
Must wilt from drouth, that pineth for a shower.

LUCIFER.
You rave as though you loved her.

ABDIEL.
If it be
That I love her, I love all such as she.
When once again the wilding briar blows,
Fix you your fancy on some single rose?
When nights wax long and pathways darkened are,
Will you be guided but by one bright star?
This draught, or that, will quench your thirst, my brother;
And one sweet maid's as sweet as any other.

LUCIFER.
There spoke the boar, the turbot, and the wren.
The universal base of brutal lust
Soars tapering to a fine particular love,
Flame passing into ether. One fair face,
One comprehensive, one exclusive face,
Flower of all flowers, for every flower in one—
Fie on your similes! A love like this
Lights every path and quenches every thirst.

ABDIEL.
Will it quench yours? Then, sure, 'twill be the first.
The empty loves, from which you once quaffed deep,
Lie thick as potsherds on a midden-heap.

LUCIFER.
O, you evade distinction! Lusts, not love.
Who loves the costly clusters reared in heat,
The splendours of the hothouse, gorgeous blooms,
Lascivious tendrils, enervating scents,
The flowers of the seraglio? Who culls these
With hand of hesitating eagerness,
Presses their formal petals to his lips,
Or hides them 'neath his pillow, that his dreams
May by a secret theft be perfumëd?
No, 'tis the simple wilding of the hedge,
The blossom of the bramble, the musk-rose,
Startles the tear in gazing tenderness,
And melts imagination into love.
The tropic blooms of the abjurëd past,
That forced themselves upon the fancy, faugh!
Were savoured and forgotten. But this flower
Of shrinking loveliness enchains the sense,
And takes the memory captive.

[Lucifer passes into the Castle.]
ABDIEL.
(alone).
Thus—thus—thus—
Reasons my self-discrowned Idealist,
Enforcing satisfaction. Reason? Reason!
Thou bawd, thou pimp, thou pandar to the passions,
Thou servile drudge, thou doubling advocate,
Thou specious lackey, lithe apologist,
Mere sycophant and shadow of the Will!
Never was keen point sharpened by the heart,
But the head straightway fledged it to the mark.
Let Will but set its appetite on war,
And Reason promptly will invent offence,
And furnish blood with arguments. Let lust
Muster its threat of lurid thunder-clouds,
Lo! Reason, shimmering through the sultry wrack,
Will span it with a rainbow!