University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

Gaspar and Gelosa. Gelosa playing with the sand.
Gelosa
(letting the sand fall slowly through her fingers).
See, Gaspar, how I hold the hours of love,
Or bid the merry minutes flit away.

Gaspar.
Time should be captive in those pretty hands,
With none to ransom him, had I my way.
Yet must I break the spell and hustle in
The rough world's business. Wherefore, little one,
This long delay? You lacked not courage once.

Gelosa.
Still am I in the bondage of my youth;
All my life long I feared that silent man
Who came across the garden from the tower,
Ate, slept, or to and fro athwart the grass
Trod one same path with bended head and back,
And shunned all company with this lower world.
She whose proud love and gold alike he spent,
She who did love him as the worst are loved
By those sad hearts who best know how to love,
Got but few words and bitter; but for her
I had not cared to see his face again.

Gaspar.
Men say his silence guards such fateful power
As makes yon stars the vassals of his will,
Turns baser metals into golden coin,
And wrings all secrets from the miser Time.

Gelosa.
And yet he knew not that one summer night
A little maid—Gelosa was her name—
Had stolen out beneath his starry slaves
To learn the subtle alchemy of love
That turns all fates to gold, nor lacks the power
To prophesy the sweetness of to-morrow.
Methinks he knew but little, knowing not
What love will dare; or haply knew too much
For all the gentler uses of the world
When, like a landlord with too full an inn,
He thrust out Love, that ever might have been
The fairest guest his learning entertained.

Gaspar.
Nor I more welcome. I could laugh to think
How patiently I took the beggar's “Nay”
He cast in scorn. “What! wed a landless squire,
Who spends in folly what he won in blood!—
None but a scholar wins my niece's lands.”

Gelosa.
My lands indeed; if certain tales be true,
He married them these many years ago.

Gaspar.
Ay, and may keep them if he be but wise.
Fair over Arno tower my castle walls,
With vine-clad hillsides rolling to the plain.
Nothing I owe you save your own sweet self.
A scholar, I! Not troubled will you be
By reason of my studies. I shall learn
Love from your eyes; your lips shall be my law,
And if their ripe decisions please me not,
The fount of justice at its very source
I shall know how to bribe. I brought you here
Because you willed it,—ay, and save for that
I care but little how this errand thrives.

Gelosa.
Kiss, kiss away the thoughts that trouble me;
The lapsing days will bring some pleasant chance.

Gaspar.
Who trusts that multitude of counsellors
Wins sad unrest.

Gelosa.
Oh, let my errand wait.
How very silent is the sea to-night!
The little waves climb up the shore and lay
Cool cheeks upon the ever-moving sands
That follow swift their whispering retreat.
I would I knew what things their busy tongues
Confess to earth.

Gaspar.
Let me confess you, sweet!
Tell me again you love me.

Gelosa.
Small my need.
'T is in my eyes; 't is on my lips; my heart
Beats to this music all the long day through.
A bird am I that have one single note
For song, for prayer, for thanks, for everything.

Gaspar.
You cannot know how passing sweet it is
To change the camp, the field, the storms of war,
For this and you; to watch the gray moon wane
And see the slumbrous sea leap here and there
To silver dreams.

Gelosa.
The hand of time seems stayed,
And joy to own the ever constant hours,
So full of still assurance is the night.
Love hath the quiet certainty of heaven,
Rich with the promise of unchanging years.

[Voices are heard near by.
Gaspar.
Hush, my Gelosa! Who be these that come?

[Enter Galileo and Uberto, who sit down among the dunes close by.
Gelosa.
My uncle and his friend, the Florentine.

Gaspar.
Hark you, he speaks your name. He said, “Gelosa.”
He called you—was it Gelosetta, love?
Why, I shall call you Gelosetta too.

Gelosa.
Distance and absence leave him this one friend,
A scholar grave, and gentle as the gentlest.

Gaspar.
And that is Galileo! I recall
One day in Florence walking with the Duke,
A man most studious of his fellow-men,
We saw this scholar wandering to and fro
Intent of gaze where Giotto's campanile
Athwart the plaza casts its length of shade.
The Duke had speech with him. A serious face,
With eyes that seemed to search beyond the earth,
Large, open, steady, like Luini's saints.

Gelosa.
More sweet than mine?

Gaspar.
I'll tell you when 't is day.
A mighty student of bright eyes am I;
Now there I'll match my science with the best.
Those Florentines, who never want for wit
To label love or hate, say he's moon-mad,
And hath for mistresses the starry host
That wink at him by night.

Gelosa.
Not Solomon
Had half so many. Yet for earthly love
He lacks not time nor honest appetite;
He never starved his heart to feed his head.
Hush! now he speaks again. The time may serve
To learn my uncle's mood.

Galileo.
This niece of yours—

Uberto.
Not ever greatly mine. The wayward child
Grew to the wilful woman, ignorant,
Untrained, and wild, a dreamer by the sea,—
Nor hers the housewife's knowledge. I have lived
Companionless of nobler intercourse,—
As to a friend I speak,—my wife wrapped up
In household cares and tendance of the poor,
Death busy with my manhood's friends. I tread
An ever lonelier road.

Galileo.
So seem all ways
To him who, yearning for too distant good,
Sees not the sweetness of the common path.
Life hath two hands for those who fitly live:
With one it gives, with one it takes away;
The willing palm still finds the touch of love,
And he alone has lost the art to live
Who cannot win new friends. Unwise are they
Who scorn the large relationship of life.
Yon restless sea, the sky, the bird, the flower,
The laugh of folly, and the ways of men,
The woman's smile, the hours of idleness,
The court, the street, the busy market-place,—
All that the skies can teach, the earth reveal,—
Are wisdom's bread. Alas! the common world
Hath lessons no philosophy can spare;
The tree that ever spreads its leaves to heaven
Casts equal anchors 'neath the soil below.
With man it is as with the world he treads:
No little stone of yonder pebbled beach
Could cease to be, and this great rolling orb
Feel not its loss. Enough of this to-night.
Count me your gains a little. Years have gone
Since last we met: what good things have they brought?

Uberto.
To-morrow I will tell you all. To-night
My mind is ill at ease; come, let us go,
But, as my love is valued by your own,
Speak not again of that unthankful child.

Galileo.
And yet I loved her. Have it as you will.

[Exeunt Galileo and Uberto.
Gelosa.
O Gaspar, said I not that age was hard?
Be but your youth as kind.

Gaspar.
Almost I thank
The misery that doubly sweetens love.
Strange seemed my life to him. To me, as strange
This corner-pickled shrivel of a man,
That all things dreaming never waked enough
To win the sanity of open eyes.
One day in Rimini, before a mirror,
So near I stood, my breath the image blurred.
Duke Francis, laughing, o'er my shoulder gazed;
Said I was like some men he knew, and went,
And would not read the riddle. Now 't is clear.
The man that hath no mirror save himself
Blurs the clear image conscience shows us all.
Now for a schoolless, helmet-dinted head,
The guess is not so bad.—What, tears again?
Tears for this man who in your childhood scorned
Its glad prerogatives of love and trust?
A thoughtless falcon, bold and wild of wing,
Like to my lover-self, had better kept
God's pledge to childhood.

Gelosa.
Nay, no tears have I
For him who cost me many. But for her,
The simple, kindly dame who had no will
That was not his,—I am more sad for her,
Because she never learned the woman's art
To traffic with her sadness. Yet had she
A childless youth; the children of old age,
Love, solace, cheerful days of quietness,
Dead as the little ones she never knew.
Though sad at best the husbandry of years,
Time in the happy face no furrow cuts
That is not wholesome; but the loveless hours
Of uncompanioned sorrow and neglect
Make records sore with shame as are the scars
A master's whip leaves on the beaten slave.
Has life no answering scourge for them that sin?

Gaspar.
For less than this, ay, for a moment's wrong,
I have seen men die young.

Gelosa.
Come, let us go.
The night has lost its grace. These memories
Serve but to stir dead hates. To bed,—to bed.
Like his, my mind is very ill at ease;
I would his hurt were equal to my own.