University of Virginia Library

SCENE II

EVE.
Lucifer!

LUCIFER.
Shepherdess!
Your flock is coming; flock of my stray thoughts
And vagrant longings, hudding to your call.
Secure them in your fold!

EVE.
My Prince! My teacher!
I do begin to see with your far eyes,
To feel with your fine touch. But help me more.
To follow every zigzag of your mind
Seems easy, natural. But you must lead;
I do not know the way.

LUCIFER.
Your hand—your mind—
Let me feel both, complete companionship;
And shortly, Eve, nor you nor I will know
Which leads, which follows.

EVE.
I would rather follow.
I have read, and read, all that you bid me read;
And, yes, I understand, in part,—in part.
Now shall we climb the terrace, or the woods?
Which would you like the best?

LUCIFER.
The terrace, child;
First mentioned, therefore foremost in your thoughts.
We have one way, one will.

EVE.
The time seemed long.

LUCIFER.
Nay, be not so impatient. Time will come
When you will chide with Time he did not lag.
Each momentary want that's touched but brings
Us nearer to the moment no one wants;
And every stage accomplishëd by hope
Marks one more milestone to the door of death.

EVE.
And yet I did not waste the time in wishing
Its length would end. I studied till the stroke
Set my heart free. But wherefore do you speak
So frequently of death?

LUCIFER.
Because of life,
Life the sole good and object that we know.
Omit death's certain sharpness, life would lack
The salt that lends it savour; we should live,
Of living unaware. [Count Abdiel comes along the terrace.]

What says Count Abdiel?
Is it not absolute that we prize life,
Because we lose it?

ABDIEL.
Life is a poor play,
With death for anti-climax.

LUCIFER.
Rather say,
A touching tragedy, complete by death;
In action manifold, but still the tale
Closes with awe.

ABDIEL.
Prince, when I write a play,
You shall be critic. As for life you praise,
It opens feebly, and the interest flags
Long ere the close.

LUCIFER.
Nay, but perform it well,
'Twill serve to please,—audience and actor both.

ABDIEL.
'Tis all rehearsal. Just as we know our part,
'Tis taken from us, and some novice thumbs
The rôle we have mastered. . . . But your dialogue
Demands my exit. With your pleasure, Prince.

[Abdiel descends the mountain.]
EVE.
He is your friend, and yet I do not like him.
He leaves a bitter meaning in the air
Whene'er he goes.

LUCIFER.
In softly swelling youth,
He was not handled tenderly enough;
And as the part we bruise matures the first,
His heart was gone before his head was ripe.
That sort of man we should commiserate,
Not reprehend o'ermuch. To see aright,
The head and heart must focus on the point,
While he discerns but singly, so amiss.

EVE.
Should see, like you! Life, even death itself,
Takes a serener aspect from your voice,
And, while I listen, I am helped to feel
That—that—nay, help me!—I am lame of speech—
What is it I would say?

LUCIFER.
That life is good?

EVE.
Yes; and to feel that life is good, not ill,
Seems to have made me other than I was;
As in that sudden season when the kine
Quit long confinement within wintry fold
For summer pastures;—something like to that.
For I was taught by Father Gabriel
To look on life as Alpine climbers do
The mountain they ascend; a Heaven at top,
But, as I clomb, crevasses all the way,
Hidden and cruel pitfalls. So I lived,
Alarmed at being alive. Now, now, in life
I find a friend, who feared an enemy.
This is the change that changes all the rest.

LUCIFER.
How quick you apprehend! 'Tis true, then, true,
You find life good?

EVE.
It seems so good,—with you.
Without you haply 'twere not good at all.
Nay—nay—I tremble lest that it should then
Be worse than heretofore.

LUCIFER.
Dear tender heart!
That fain would look but only where I point.
Yet life is good, in every circumstance.
Fling open all the windows of your being,
And let the universal air invade
And winnow the stifling chambers of the past.
For if we firmly grasp that life is good,
It then becomes imperative to live,
Live freely, fearlessly.

EVE.
Then show me how.
For like a willing leaf upon a stream,
I follow all the currents of your talk,
Now here, now there, but faithful everywhere.

LUCIFER.
Commend your speech, not mine; for you are born
Of Nature, and it is from her, I note,
You sucked your utterance. 'Tis her alphabet
That shapes your words, and serves you to express
Thoughts that would else be dumb. The flocks, the streams,
The mountains and their hazard pathways, lend you
Materials for speech.

EVE.
Because I know them.

LUCIFER.
You know them, for you feel them.

EVE.
But my speech
Must sound so rude and simple to your ears.

LUCIFER.
Not simpler than the cataracts, not more rude
Than the spontaneous whisperings of the wind
'Mong ripening wheat-stems. Most speech is unreal,
And foreign to the purposes of thought;
Unreal, those who utter it. But you
Have from the infant-teacher, Nature, learnt
Your tongue, and so have nothing to unlearn.

EVE.
But, O, how much to learn!

LUCIFER.
Then learn it quick!
There is another tutor unto whom,
When Nature hath her rudiments instilled,
She passes on her pupil. Grounded well
In elements of Nature, man is ripe
With an intelligent longing to imbibe
The logic and the poetry of Love.
For Love hath this distinction, it combines
Necessity with freedom, use with joy.
Not all the iron fetters tyrants forge
Are half so binding as love's liberty;
Nor narrowest housewife bends with readier knees
Unto domestic office. Lowliest task
And loftiest aspiration are the poles
On which the perfect sphere of love revolves.
You follow with assent?

EVE.
As doth the moon,
Which you have told me borrows from the sun
Her paler light. Whate'er you say sounds true,
Because you say it. This at least I know,
That no domestic office were too mean,
No task too low, for me to do for you.
O, if you were a shepherd, not a Prince,
How warm should be your hut, how bright your crook,
How brimming hot the cauldron on your hearth,
How snowy white your pillow! I would sing,
Sing through my work, until I heard your voice,
And your returning presence was my song.
If this be love, then I am full of it.
I know no more.

LUCIFER.
My sweet, true shepherdess!
Nay, an you will, I will be shepherd too,
And clip the July fleeces for your hands
To spindle me a jacket.

EVE.
No, not that.
But since you are no shepherd, and I cannot
Comfort your coming with some savoury broth,
Or clothe you with my distaff, then I must
That new and lofty service undertake
You bend and offer me. For I am sure
That I would crawl upon the knees of love,
I who lack wings, wherever you would bid me.

LUCIFER.
Wings will you never lack; and do not doubt
Our love will yet, as swallows ofttimes do,
Have commerce in the air!

[The bell in the tower strikes slowly thrice.]
EVE.
So soon to part!

LUCIFER.
Then stay!

EVE.
No, I will go; for if I stayed
I still should want to stay. Eternity
Would never in its farthest chime bring round
The stroke of the reminding hour when I
Should from your voice be willing to depart.
But to obey you hath a sweetness in it
That honeys o'er the sting of separation.
But tell me ere I go—see, I am going—
Am I a little nearer to the height
To which you beckon?

LUCIFER.
O higher far than I, by something got
From somewhere, where no man hath ever been.
Lend me your instinct, and sublimest reason
Were beggared in the effort to repay you!

[He kisses her on the forehead.]
EVE.
Into my heart could but your wisdom sink,
We never need be parted.

LUCIFER.
Lovely student!
When steals the shadow of the Matterhorn
On to the Weisshorn, we again shall meet.

EVE.
I, just a little wiser.

[Eve leaves him.]
LUCIFER.
(alone).
Sweet! How sweet!
She minds me of a tardy spring that crowds
The primrose and anemone together;
For childlike candour lingers in her gaze,
Though there already mantles to her cheek
The white and pink of maiden consciousness.
Yet must I wait, nor let impatience tread
On the close skirt of reverence. 'Twere ill
To pry too closely on a brooding love,
Or it might leave its nest, and its warm hopes
Never be fledged. Wait! wait! Yet it was just
That I who have with incandescent mind
Burnt up the tares and rubbish of the time,
Should find the strain of this fresh flower to grace
My exile with a garden.

[Abdiel comes along the terrace.]