University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

Alonzo's Studio.
Alonzo,
alone.
With every breath the fertile air is sweeter,
Each fragrant hour with sunnier beauty flushed.
If at its base life is so glad and great,
What will it be upon its boundless top?
Like wildered traveller on white Alpine crest,
I shall lack faculty: I lack it now.
My senses reel under their perfumed load;
And glittering visions throng, faster and grander
Than my slow hand can seize. Too weak am I
For my strong inwardness. A very God
In plastic swiftness I should be, to body
The blazing forms that sprout upon my brain,
Peopling the silent temples of the mind
With gorgeousness. But I shape only shadows.
Courage and Faith: these be my arms and armor.
Imagined beauty breeds upon the soul;
What though the offspring wear no present feature,
Warm Time shall ripen into sinewy life
The boldest thoughts' most choice imaginations,
Therewith to build the great hereafter. Glorious,
Divine 'twill be, one tiniest stone to bring
To the majestic pile. [Knocking at the door.]

Who's there? come in.
Enter Filippo.
Filippo!

Fil.
Dear Alonzo!—Oh! I see
Thou art thyself; thou art but changed, to be
Still more thyself.

Alon.
And thou: these four short years
Have only sported with thy youth.

Fil.
And I
With them. I shame to tell thee, dear Alonzo,
I am as light as aye, and learn no wisdom.

Alon.
Nay; to the true, Wisdom comes of herself,
And takes delight in coming; while the false,
With all their might, can't win her confidence.
Ere thou art gray, graybeards shall be thy pupils.
But what, save my good angel, brings thee hither?

Fil.
Florence brings me to Florence. I am one
Of the great flock that hither bleating runs,
To be, here in this beauteous pen of learning,
Fleeced of our ignorance. Then thou art here;
And thy good angel ever has been mine.
Lastly—I've come to seek a wife.

Alon.
A wife!

Fil.
About a score of years ago, my father—
With that farsightedness that fathers have—
From Padua spied one in a cradle here.

Alon.
Infant betrothment signed by parents.

Fil.
Ay;
On one condition, that on either part
The contract might at will be abrogated.
And so it is; unless myself rebind it,
The lady and her father both consenting.
Now hear my scheme. That I be not prejudged
For good or ill, and be more free to judge,
I will be seen unknown, and see unpledged.
Therefore, in Florence I am not Filippo
Of Padua, but Valerio a Venetian.
Knowest thou the rich Roberto?

Alon.
Roberto!

Fil.
'Tis he who was to be my father-in-law.

Alon.
What thou hast partly forfeited! the flower
Of Tuscany.

Fil.
So fair?

Alon.
In drawing her
My hopeless pencil seizes grace ideal;
And shall my image near her perfectness,
I shall be bold to cope unseen Madonnas.

Fil.
Show me this painted image.

Alon.
'Tis not here,
And barely touched. Twice only have I seen her.
At noon she sits again. This suits thy plot.
First thou shalt see Da Vinci's great cartoon,
And then the masterpiece of Nature. Come.

[Exeunt.