University of Virginia Library

Scene I.—Sunset. Interior of a Gothic Chapel. Monuments, arms, banners, &c. Through an open door and porch in the background are seen a garden and graveyard (as in preceding scenes). The rays of the setting sun, passing through a stained window, between the tombs, fall in prismatic colours on the face and figure of the child, Muriel, who is kneeling. Orval is standing beside his son.
Orval.
Pray, Muriel, pray, my son, for the repose
Of thy dead mother's soul.

Muriel.
Mater Regina!
Ave Veronica! pro nobis ora!
Queen of the flowers and stars!

Orval.
That is no part,
Boy, of thy prayer. Thou hast changed the words of it.
Think, child, again. Pray for thy mother's soul.
This is the day, and this the hour, she died,
Ten years ago. Pray for her soul's peace.

Muriel.
Hail
Veronica! Mater Regina, hail!
Thou movest among the holy angels of God,
As the moon moveth through the stars of heaven:
And from their folded wings the angels pluck
Pure purple plumes, and strew them at thy feet:
And over these thou walkest, clad in mild
And melancholy splendour, as the moon
Walks o'er the purple wavelets of the sea.

Orval.
Boy, boy! what is this talk?

Muriel.
The words pierce through me,
And pass from out of me. I cannot help it.

Orval.
Rise, son. God listens not to prayers like thine.
Alas! thy mother thou hast never known.
How, therefore, should'st thou love her?

Muriel.
Deeply, Father.
I see my Mother often.

Orval
(starting).
Where?

Muriel.
In dreams.
Dreams? Everywhere I see her. Yesterday,
For instance, when . . .

Orval.
When . . . Boy, what say'st thou?

Muriel.
Father,
How pale she is! but oh how beautiful!

Orval
(troubled).
Doth she speak ever?

Muriel.
Ay, last night . . .

Orval.
Last night?

Muriel.
Methought I saw her down the darkness floating,
Vested in white, wan as a star-beam veil'd
In wandering mist. And ever as she flew
This song she sang, which in my soul still sounds.

Orval.
What sang she?

Muriel.
I can sing it. But the tune,
The music, and the magic of it all,
Are gone! gone . . . gone!

Orval.
The words, Muriel? the words?

Muriel
(sings).

Orval.
Veronica,
Merciless Pythoness, whose spirit, fed fierce
From troubled Memory's sad prophetic springs,
Still shrieks for sacrifice! Wilt thou destroy
Even thine own child? Is not my cup of doom
Fill'd to the bitter brim? Must my son pay
Thy vengeance for his father's crime? and I
Dig out my heart to hold another grave?
Is thy revenge, wrong'd one, not sated yet?
Revenge? What am I raving? Is not she
At rest, in Heaven? These are the common cheats
Of childhood's easily self-deceiving brain,
Whose uncorrected custom is to clothe
With mimic imagery our own crude troops
Of bodily feelings, till they front the eye
Garb'd in a borrow'd life, and seem to be
The individual external shapes
Of things not shaped within us.

Muriel.
Now again.
Father, I hear my mother's voice. Her form
I see not.

Orval.
Where, child, dost thou hear the voice?

Muriel.
Yonder, among the graves and cypresses,
Where the sun's light is fading fast.

Orval.
The voice
What is it saying?

Muriel.
Singing,
(Sings.)

Orval
(musingly).
Is it possible
That the last word upon a dying lip,
The last thought of a parting soul, should be
The thought and word of all eternity?
O horrible! . . . if, after all, among
The blessed souls in Heaven (for, surely, she
Is with them) there be spirits who are . . . . mad!

Muriel.
My mother's voice grows faint. I lose it, Father,
There, in the light that's going from the graves.

Orval.
Dreadful Corrector of man's pride! hast thou
Predestined, then, the child of my last hopes
To a life of madness,—an untimely grave?
Mercy! O from Thy feeble creature, doom'd
To breast a bruising world, take not away
Thy guiding gift of Reason! Architect
Of this inimitable monument
(Not built by hands, nor reparable here)
To the most sorrowful memory of a soul
That sleeps, I trust, in sempiternal peace,
Shatter not what Thyself hast made so fair!
Behold how desolate am I! who gaze
Around my life as, round a wasted land,
A watchman gazes, from a ruin'd tower:
An eminence above a solitude!
Pity my child, and pluck him from the clutch
Of those infernal persecutors all
That persecute me still. To me Thou hast given
Strength to support the burthen and the strain
Of fierce intolerable thought. But him?
A single thought, intense as those that burn
Nightly and daily here, might scorch and snap
The slender thread of his most delicate life.
God! God! For ten long weary wastes of years,
Neither by day, nor yet by night, have I
Known rest. And men have envied me my lot!
And in the clumsy catalogue, this blind
Ill-judging world compiles for ignorant Fame,
I have been number'd with the fortunate!
There is no human heart that knows what pains,
What torments from within and from without,
What fearful memories, what foreboded ills,
Thou hast imposed on mine. God, Thou hast spared
My reason, but to stone hast stricken my heart.
For I have gazed in the Gorgonian eyes
Of that most Beauteous Horror: and henceforth
The heart is ice, the imagination fire.
Father of Love, grant me to love my child!
Creator, spare thy creature!
Rise, boy. Sign
The cross, and come. Peace to thy mother's soul!