University of Virginia Library

I. VOL. I.

THE SECOND BROTHER;

AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

• Marcello; Brother of the Duke of Ferrara.
• Orazio; Brother of the Duke of Ferrara.
• Varini; Noble.
• Michele; Noble.
• Battista; Noble.
• Ezril; a Jew.
• Melchior.
• Valeria; Varini's daughter and Orazio's wife.
• Armida.
• Rosaura.
• A Female Attendant.
• Gentlemen, ladies, guards, and attendants.

Scene, Ferrara.

ACT I.

Scene I.

A street in Ferrara.
Michele and Battista meeting: Marcello at the side.
Michele.
Fair shine this evening's stars upon your pleasures,
Battista Sorbi!

Batt.
Sir, well met to-night:
Methinks our path is one.

Mich.
And all Ferrara's.
There's not a candle lit to-night at home;
And for the cups,—they'll be less wet with wine
Than is the inmost grain of all this earth
With the now-falling dew. None sit in doors,
Except the babe, and his forgotten grandsire,
And such as, out of life, each side do lie
Against the shutter of the grave or womb.
The rest that build up the great hill of life,
From the crutch-riding boy to his sweet mother,
The deer-eyed girl, and the brown fellow of war,
To the grey head and grandest sire of all
That's half in heaven,—all these are forth to-night;
And there they throng upon both sides the river,
Which, guessing at its hidden banks, flows on,
A water-stream betwixt two tides of flesh:—
And still the streets pour on.

Batt.
And where go they?
To the feast, the wine, the lady-footed dance—
Where you, and I, and every citizen
That has a feathered and a jewelled cap,
And youthful curls to hang beside it brownly,—
To the Duke's brother, Lord Orazio's palace.

Marc.
(aside).
Orazio! what of him?

Mich.
Ay, that's a man
After the heart of Bacchus! By my life,
There is no mortal stuff, that foots the earth,
Able to wear the shape of man, like him,
And fill it with the carriage of a god.
We're but the tools and scaffolding of men,
The lines, the sketch, and he the very thing:
And, if we share the name of manhood with him,
Thus in the woods the tattered, wool-hung briar,
And the base, bowing poplar, the winds' slave,
Are trees,—and so's the great and kingly oak,
Within whose branches, like a soul, does dwell
The sun's bold eagle:—as the villain fox,
The weazel, and the sneaking cur are beasts,—
While he, whose wine is in a giant's heart,
The royal lion has no bigger name.
Let men be trees, why then he is the oak;
Let men be beasts, he is their lion-master;
Let them be stars, and then he is a sun,
A sun whose beams are gold, the night his noon,
His summer-field a marble hall of banquets,
With jasper, onyx, amber-leaved cups
On golden straws for flowers, and, for the dew,
Wine of the richest grape. So let's not talk
And breathe away the time, whose sands are thawed
Into such purple tears, but drink it off.

Batt.
Why then, away! let's fit our velvet arms,
And on together.—

Marc.
(advancing.)
Nobles of Ferrara,
My gentle lords, have pity for a man,
Whom fortune and the roundness of the world
Have, from his feeble footing on its top,
Flung to deep poverty. When I was born,
They hid my helplessness in purple wraps,
And cradled me within a jewelled crown.
But now—O bitter now!—what name of woe,
Beyond the knowledge of the lips of hell,
Is fitted to my poor and withering soul,
And its old, wretched dwelling?

Batt.
What is this?
Methinks that a præ-adamite skeleton,
Burst from the grave in a stolen cloak of flesh,
Ragged and threadbare, from a witch's back,
Who lived an hundred years, would scarcely seem
More miserably old.

Mich.
Enter a Gentleman.

Gent.
He's coming through this street,
Orazio, wrapt, like Bacchus, in the hide
Of a specked panther, with his dancing nymphs,
And torches bright and many, as his slaves
Had gathered up the fragments of the sun
That fell just now. Hark! here his music comes.

(Enter Orazio, between Armida and Rosaura, attended.)
Oraz.
Thrice to the moon, and thrice unto the sun,
And thrice unto the lesser stars of night,
From tower and hill, by trump and cannon's voice,
Have I proclaimed myself a deity's son:
Not Alexander's father, Ammon old,
But ivied Bacchus, do I call my sire.
Hymn it once more.

Oraz.
Now break that kiss, and answer me, my Hebe;
Has our great sire a planet in the sky,—
One of these lights?

Rosau.
Not yet, I think, my lord.

Oraz.
My lord? my love! I am the Lord of Love;
So call me by my dukedom.—He has not?
We'll make him one, my nymph: when those bright eyes
Are closed, and that they shall not be, I swear,
'Till I have loved them many thousand hours,—
But when they are, their blue enchanted fire
Cupid shall take upon a torch of heaven,
And light the woody sides of some dim world,
Which shall be Bacchus' godson-star.

Rosau.
Alas!
Their fire is but unsteady, weak, and watery,
To guess by your love's wavering.

Oraz.
Wine in a ruby!
I'll solemnize their beauty in a draught,
Pressed from the summer of an hundred vines.
Look on't, my sweet. Rosaura, this same night
I will immortalize those lips of thine,
That make a kiss so spicy. Touch the cup:
Ruby to ruby! Slave, let it be thrown,
At midnight, from a boat into mid-sea:
Rosaura's kiss shall rest unravished there,
While sea and land lie in each other's arms,
And curl the world.

Batt.
Beggar, stand back, I say.

Marc.
No; I will shadow your adored mortal,
And shake my rags at him. Dost fear the plague?
Musk-fingered boy, aside!

Oraz.
What madman's this?

Rosau.
Keep him away from me!
His hideous raggedness tears the soft sight,
Where it is pictured.

Marc.
Your clutch is like the grasping of a wave:
Off from my shoulder!—Now, my velvet fellow,
Let's measure limbs. Well, is your flesh to mine
As gold to lead, or but the common plaister
That wraps up bones? Your skin is not of silk;
Your face not painted with an angel's feather
With tints from morning's lip, but the daubed clay;
These veiny pipes hold a dog's lap of blood.
Let us shake hands; I tell thee, brother skeleton,
We're but a pair of puddings for the dinner
Of Lady worm; you served in silks and gems,
I garnished with plain rags. Have I unlocked thee?

Oraz.
Insolent beggar!

Marc.
Prince! but we must shake hands.
Look you, the round earth's sleeping like a serpent,
Who drops her dusty tail upon her crown
Just here. Oh, we are like two mountain peaks,
Of two close planets, catching in the air:
You, King Olympus, a great pile of summer,
Wearing a crown of gods; I, the vast top
Of the ghosts' deadly world, naked and dark,
With nothing reigning on my desolate head
But one old spirit of a murdered god,
Palaced within the corpse of Saturn's father.
Then let's come near and hug. There's nothing like thee
But I thy contrast.—Thou'rt a prince, they say?

Oraz.
That you shall learn. You knaves, that wear my livery,
Will you permit me still to be defiled
By this worm's venom? Tread upon his neck,
And let's walk over him.

Marc.
Forbear, my lord!
I am a king of that most mighty empire,
That's built o'er all the earth, upon kings' crowns;
And poverty's its name; whose every hut
Stands on a coronet, or star, or mitre,
The glorious corner-stones.—But you are weary,
And would be playing with a woman's cheek:
Give me a purse then, prince.

Oraz.
No, not a doit:
The metal, I bestow, shall come in chains.

Marc.
Well, I can curse. Ay, prince, you have a brother—

Oraz.
The Duke,—he'll scourge you.

Marc.
Nay, the second, sir,
Who, like an envious river, flows between
Your footsteps and Ferrara's throne.

Oraz.
He's gone:
Asia, and Africa, the sea he went on,
Have many mouths,—and in a dozen years,
(His absence' time,) no tidings or return,
Tell me We are but two.

Marc.
If he were in Ferrara—

Oraz.
Stood he before me there,
By you, in you,—as like as you're unlike,
Straight as you're bowed, young as you are old
And many years nearer than him to death,
The falling brilliancy of whose white sword
Your ancient locks so silverly reflect,—
I would deny, outswear, and overreach,
And pass him with contempt, as I do you.—
Jove! how we waste the stars: set on, my friends.

Batt.
But the old ruffian?

Oraz.
Think of him to-morrow.
See, Venus rises in the softening heaven:
Let not your eyes abuse her sacred beams,
By looking through their gentleness on ought
But lips, and eyes, and blushes of dear love.

[Exit Orazio with his retinue.
Marc.
(solus.)
Then who hath solitude, like mine, that is not
The last survivor of a city's plague,
Eating the mess he cooked for his dead father?
Who is alone but I? there's fellowship
In churchyards and in hell: but I!—no lady's ghost
Did ever cling with such a grasp of love
Unto its soft dear body, as I hung
Rooted upon this brother. I went forth
Joyfully, as the soul of one who closes
His pillowed eyes beside an unseen murderer,
And like its horrible return was mine,
To find the heart, wherein I breathed and beat,
Cold, gashed, and dead. Let me forget to love,
And take a heart of venom: let me make
A stair-case of the frightened breasts of men,
And climb into a lonely happiness!
And thou, who only art alone as I,
Great solitary god of that one sun,
I charge thee, by the likeness of our state,
Undo these human veins that tie me close
To other men, and let your servant griefs
Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in
Salt scorn and steaming hate!

Enter Ezril.
Ezr.
How now, my lord?

Marc.
Much better, my kind Jew. They've weeded out
A troublesome wild plant that grew upon me,
My heart: I've trampled it to dust, and wept it
Wetter than Nilus' side. Out of the sun!
And let him bake it to a winged snake.
—Well, you've been shouldered from the palace steps,
And spurned as I?—No matter.

Ezr.
Nay, my lord!
Come with me: lay aside these squalid wrappings:
Prepare that honoured head to fit a crown,
For 'twill be empty of your brother soon.

Marc.
What starry chance has dropped out of the skies?
What's this? Oh! now if it should but be so,
I'll build a bridge to heaven. Tell me, good Jew;
Excellent Ezril, speak.

Ezr.
At your command
I sought the ducal palace, and, when there,
Found all the wild-eyed servants in the courts
Running about on some dismaying errand,
In the wild manner of a market crowd,
Waked, from the sunny dozing at their stalls,
By one who cries “the city is on fire;”
Just so they crossed, and turned, and came again.
I asked of an old man, what this might mean;
And he, yet grappling with the great disaster
As if he would have killed it, like a fable,
By unbelief, coldly, as if he spoke
Of something gone a century before,
Told me, the Duke in hunting had been thrown,
And lay on his last bed.

Marc.
Ha! well! what next?
You are the cup-bearer of richest joy.—
But it was a report, a lie.—Have done—
I read it on your lip.

Ezr.
It was too true.
I went to his bedside, and there made trial
Of my best skill in physic, with the zeal
Due to my sovereign.

Marc.
Impious, meddling fool!
To thrust yourself 'twixt heaven and its victim!

Ezr.
My lord, I think you would not have said so
In the sad chamber of the writhing man.
He lay in a red fever's quenchless flames,
Burning to dust: despairing of my skill,
I sat myself beside his heart, and spoke
Of his next brother. When he heard of you,
He bade be summoned all his counsellors,
To witness his bequeathing his dominion
Wholly to you.

Marc.
Why did you let me wait?
Come, let's be quick: he keeps beneath his pillow
A kingdom, which they'll steal if we're too late.
We must o'ertake his death.

[Exeunt.

Scene II.

A saloon in Orazio's palace, brilliantly lighted: at the bottom of the stage open folding-doors, through which a banqueting-room is seen, with a table, at which Orazio and his guests, feasting, are partially visible.
Orazio and Armida come forward.
Armid.
What! wrap a frown in myrtle, and look sad
Beneath the shadow of an ivy wreath?
This should not be, my lord.

Oraz.
Armida dear,
I'm weary of their laughter's empty din.
Methinks, these fellows, with their ready jests,
Are like to tedious bells, that ring alike
Marriage or death. I would we were alone—
Asleep, Armida.

Armid.
They will soon be gone:
One half-hour more—

Oraz.
No, it could not be so:—
I think and think—Sweet, did you like the feast?

Armid.
Methought, 'twas gay enough.

Oraz.
Now, I did not.
'Twas dull: all men spoke slow and emptily.
Strange things were said by accident. Their tongues
Uttered wrong words: one fellow drank my death,
Meaning my health; another called for poison,
Instead of wine; and, as they spoke together,
Voices were heard, most loud, which no man owned:
There were more shadows too than there were men;
And all the air, more dark and thick than night,
Was heavy, as 'twere made of something more
Than living breaths.—

Armid.
Nay, you are ill, my lord:
'Tis merely melancholy.

Oraz.
There were deep hollows
And pauses in their talk; and then, again,
On tale, and song, and jest, and laughter rang,
Like a fiend's gallop. By my ghost, 'tis strange.—

Armid.
Come, my lord, join your guests; they look with wonder
Upon your lonely mood.

Oraz.
It is the trick
Of these last livers to unbuild belief:
They'd rob the world of spirit. Then each look,
Ay, every aspect of the earth and sky,
Man's thought and hope, are lies.—Well; I'll return,
And look at them again.

(He approaches the door of the inner room: from which Michele advances.)
Mich.
You're tired, my lord.
Our visit's long: break off, good gentlemen:
The hour is late.

Oraz.
(Exeunt Michele and Armida through the folding door: Orazio is following them, but is stopped by the entry of an Attendant, from the side.

Attend.
A lady, in the garment of a nun,
Desires to see you.

Oraz.
Enter Valeria, introduced by Attendant, who withdraws.

Valer.
I am the bearer of another's will:
A woman, whose unhappy fondness yet
May trouble her lord's memory,—Valeria,—
Your's for a brief, blessed time, who now dwells
In her abandoned being patiently,
But not unsorrowing, sends me.

Oraz.
My wronged wife!
Too purely good for such a man as I am!
If she remembers me, then Heaven does too,
And I am not yet lost. Give me her thoughts,—
Ay, the same words she put into thine ears,
Safe and entire, and I will thank thy lips
With my heart's thanks. But tell me how she fares.

Valer.
Well; though the common eye, that has a tear,
Would drop it for the paleness of her skin,
And the wan shivering of her torch of life;
Though she be faint and weak, yet very well:
For not the tincture, or the strength of limb,
Is a true health, but readiness to die.—
But let her be, or be not.—

Oraz.
Best of ladies!
And, if thy virtues did not glut the mind,
To the extinction of the eye's desire,
Such a delight to see, that one would think
Our looks were thrown away on meaner things,
And given to rest on thee!

Valer.
These words, my lord,
Are charitable; it is very kind
To think of her sometimes: for, day and night,
As they flow in and out of one another,
She sits beside and gazes on their streams,
So filled with the strong memory of you,
That all her outward form is penetrated,
Until the watery portrait is become
Not hers, but yours:—and so she is content
To wear her time out.

Oraz.
Softest peace enwrap her!
Content be still the breathing of her lips!
Be tranquil ever, thou blest life of her!
And that last hour, that hangs 'tween heaven and earth,
So often travelled by her thoughts and prayers,
Be soft and yielding 'twixt her spirit's wings!

Valer.
Think'st thou, Orazio, that she dies but once?
All round and through the spaces of creation,
No hiding-place of the least air, or earth,
Or sea, invisible, untrod, unrained on,
Contains a thing alone. Not e'en the bird,
That can go up the labyrinthine winds
Between its pinions, and pursues the summer,—
Not even the great serpent of the billows,
Who winds him thrice around this planet's waist,—
Is by itself, in joy or suffering.
But she whom you have ta'en, and, like a leaven,
With your existence kneaded, must be ever
Another—scarce another—self of thine.

Oraz.
If she has read her heart aloud to you,
Or you have found it open by some chance,
Tell me, dear lady, is my name among
Her paged secrets? does she, can she love me?—
No, no; that's mad:—does she remember me?

Valer.
She breathes away her weary days and nights
Among cold, hard-eyed men, and hides behind
A quiet face of woe: but there are things,—
A song, a face, a picture, or a word,—
Which, by some semblance, touch her heart to tears.
And music, starting up among the strings
Of a wind-shaken harp, undoes her secresy,—
Rolls back her life to the first starry hour
Whose flower-fed air you used, to speak of love;
And then she longs to throw her bursting breast,
And shut out sorrow with Orazio's arms,—
Thus,—O my husband!

Oraz.
Sweetest, sweetest woman!
Valeria, thou dost squeeze eternity
Into this drop of joy. O come, come, come!
Let us not speak;—give me my wife again!—
O thou fair creature, full of my own soul!
We'll love, we'll love, like nothing under heaven,—
Like nought but Love, the very truest god.
Here's lip-room on thy cheek:—there, shut thine eye,
And let me come, like sleep, and kiss its lid.
Again.—What shall I do? I speak all wrong,
And lose a soul-full of delicious thought
By talking.—Hush! Let's drink each other up
By silent eyes. Who lives, but thou and I,
My heavenly wife?

Valer.
Dear Orazio!

Oraz.
I'll watch thee thus, till I can tell a second
By thy cheek's change. O what a rich delight!
There's something very gentle in thy cheek,
That I have never seen in other women:
And, now I know the circle of thine eye,
It is a colour like to nothing else
But what it means,—that's heaven. This little tress,
Thou'lt give it me to look on and to wear,
But first I'll kiss its shadow on thy brow.
That little, fluttering dimple is too late,
If he is for the honey of thy looks:
As sweet a blush, as ever rose did copy,
Budded and opened underneath my lips,
And shed its leaves; and now those fairest cheeks
Are snowed upon them. Let us whisper, sweet,
And nothing be between our lips and ears
But our own secret souls.—

(A horn without.
Valer.
Heaven of the blest, they're here!

Oraz.
Who, what, Valeria?
Thou'rt pale and tremblest: what is it?

Valer.
Alas!
A bitter kernel to our taste of joy,
Our foolish and forgetful joy. My father!
Destruction, misery—

Enter Varini and attendants.
Varin.
Turn out those slaves,—
Burst the closed doors, and occupy the towers.—

Oraz.
Varini's self! what can his visit bring!

Valer.
Look there; he's walking hither like a man,
But is indeed a sea of stormy ruin,
Filling and flooding o'er this golden house
From base to pinnacle, swallowing thy lands,
Thy gold, thine all.—Embrace me into thee,
Or he'll divide us.

Oraz.
Never! calm thyself.—
Now, Count Varini, what's your business here?
If as a guest, though uninvited, welcome!
If not, then say, what else?

Varin.
A master, spendthrift!
Open those further doors,—

Oraz.
What? in my palace!

Varin.
Thine! what is thine beneath the night or day?
Not e'en that beggar's carcase,—for within that
The swinish devils of filthy luxury
Do make their stye.—No lands, no farms, no houses,—
Thanks to thy debts, no gold. Go out! Thou'rt nothing,
Besides a grave and a deep hell.

Valer.
Orazio,
Thou hast Valeria: the world may shake thee off,
But thou wilt drop into this breast, this love,—
And it shall hold thee.

Oraz.
What? lost already!
O that curst steward! I have fallen, Valeria,
Deeper than Lucifer, though ne'er so high,—
Into a place made underneath all things,
So low and horrible that hell's its heaven.

Varin.
Thou shalt not have the idiot, though she be
The very fool and sickness of my blood.—
Gentlemen, here are warrants for my act,—
His debts, bonds, forfeitures, taxes and fines,
O'erbalancing the worth of his estates,
Which I have bought: behold them!—For the girl,
Abandoned, after marriage, by the villain,—
I am her father: let her be removed;
And, if the justice of my rightful cause
Ally you not, at least do not resist me.

Mich.
What are these writings?

Batt.
Bills under the Duke's seal,
All true and valid.—Poor Orazio!

Oraz.
Why, the rogue pities me! I'm down indeed.

Valer.
Help me! Oh! some of you have been beloved,
Some must be married.—Will you let me go?
Will you stand frozen there, and see them cut
Two hearts asunder?—Then you will,—you do.—
Are all men like my father? are all fathers
So far away from men? or all their sons
So heartless?—you are women, as I am;
Then pity me, as I would pity you,
And pray for me! Father! ladies! friends!—
But you are tearless as the desart sands.—
Orazio, love me! or, if thou wilt not,
Yet I will love thee: that you cannot help.

Oraz.
My best Valeria! never shalt thou leave me,
But with my life. O that I could put on
These feeble arms the proud and tawny strength
Of the lion in my heart!

Varin.
Out with the girl at once!

Rosaur.
Forgive them, sir, we all of us beseech.

Varin.
Lady, among you all she's but one sire,
And he says no.—Away!

Valer.
Have pity, my sweet father! my good father!
Have pity, as my gentle mother would,
Were she alive,—thy sainted wife! O pardon,
If I do wish you had been rent asunder,
Thus dreadfully; for then I had not been;—
Not kissed and wept upon my father's hand,
And he denied me!—you can make me wretched:—
Be cruel still, but I will never hate you.—
Orazio, I'll tell thee what it is:
The world is dry of love; we've drunk it all
With our two hearts—

Oraz.
Farewell, Valeria!
Take on thy last dear hand this truest kiss,
Which I have brought thee from my deepest soul.—
Farewell, my wife!—

Valer.
They cannot part us long.—
What's life? our love is an eternity:
O blessed hope!

(She is forced out.
Oraz.
Now then, sir; speak to me:
The rest is sport,—like rain against a tower
Unpalsied by the ram. Go on: what's next?

Varin.
Your palaces are mine, your sheep-specked pastures,
Forest and yellow corn-land, grove and desart,
Earth, water, wealth: all, that you yesterday
Were mountainously rich and golden with,
I, like an earthquake, in this minute take.
Go, go: I will not pick thee to the bones:
Starve as you will.

Oraz.
How, sir! am I not wealthy?
Why, if the sun could melt the brazen man
That strode o'er Corinth, and whose giant form
Stretched its swart limbs along sea, island, mountain,
While night appeared its shadow,—if he could,—
Great, burning Phœbus' self—could melt ought of him,
Except the snow-drift on his rugged shoulder,
Thou hast destroyed me!

Varin.
Thanks to these banquets of Olympus' top
From whence you did o'erturn whole Niles of wine,
And made each day as rainy as that hour
When Perseus was begot, I have destroyed thee,
Or thou thyself; for, such a luxury
Would wring the gold out of its rocky shell,
And leave the world all hollow.—So, begone;
My lord, and beggar!

Batt.
Noble, old Varini,
Think, is it fit to crush into the dirt
Even the ruins of nobility?
Take comfort, sir.

Oraz.
Who am I now?
How long is a man dying or being born?
Is't possible to be a king and beggar
In half a breath? or to begin a minute
I'th' west, and end it in the furthest east?
O no! I'll not believe you. When I do,
My heart will crack to powder.—Can you speak?
Then do: shout something louder than my thoughts,
For I begin to feel.

Enter a Messenger.
Mess.
News from the court:
The Duke—

Oraz.
My brother—speak—
Was he not ill, and on a perilous bed?
Speak life and death,—thou hast them on thy tongue,—
One's mine, the other his:—a look, a word,
A motion;—life or death?

Mess.
The Duke is dead.

(Battista and the other guests kneel to Orazio,
Batt.
Then we salute in thee another sovereign.

Oraz.
Me then, who just was shaken into chaos,
Thou hast created! I have flown, somehow,
Upwards a thousand miles: my heart is crowned.—
Your hands, good gentlemen; sweet ladies, yours:—
And what new godson of the bony death,—
Of fire, or steel, or poison,—shall I make
For old Varini?

Varin.
Your allegiance, sirs,
Wanders: Orazio is a beggar still.

Batt.
Is it not true then that the duke is dead?

Oraz.
Not dead? O slave!

Varin.
The Duke is dead, my lords;
And, on his death-bed, did bestow his crown
Upon his second brother, Lord Marcello,—
Ours, and Ferrara's, Duke.

Oraz.
I'll not believe it:
Marcello is abroad.

Varin.
His blest return,
This providential day, has saved our lives
From thine abhorred sway. Orazio, go:
And, though my clemency is half a crime,
I spare your person.

Oraz.
I'll to the palace.
When we meet next, be blessed if thou dost kiss
The dust about my ducal chair.

(Exit.
Varin.
I shall be there,
To cry Long live Marcello! in thine ear.—
Pray pardon me the breaking of this feast,
Ladies,—and so, good night.

Rosaur.
Your wish is echoed by our inmost will:
Good night to Count Varini.

(Exeunt guests.
Attend.
My lord—

Varin.
What are they, sirrah?

Attend.
The palace-keys.
There is a banquet in the inner room:
Shall we remove the plate?

Varin.
Leave it alone:
Wine in the cups, the spicy meats uncovered,
And the round lamps each with a star of flame
Upon their brink; let winds begot on roses,
And grey with incense, rustle through the silk
And velvet curtains:—then set all the windows,
The doors and gates, wide open; let the wolves,
Foxes, and owls, and snakes, come in and feast;
Let the bats nestle in the golden bowls,
The shaggy brutes stretch on the velvet couches,
The serpent twine him o'er and o'er the harp's
Delicate chords:—to Night, and all its devils,
We do abandon this accursed house.

[Exeunt.

ACT II.

Scene I.

An apartment in Varini's palace.
Enter Valeria and a female attendant.
Attend.
Will you not sleep, dear lady? you are weary,
And yet thus eager, quick, and silently,
Like one who listens for a midnight sign,
You wander up and down from room to room,
With that wide, sightless eye,—searching about
For what you know not. Will you not to bed?

Valer.

Attend.
I am not weary:
Believe me now, I am not.

Valer.
But, my child,
Those eyelids, tender as the leaf of spring,—
Those cheeks should lay their roseate delicacy
Under the kiss of night, the feathery sleep;
For there are some, whose study of the morn
Is ever thy young countenance and hue.
Ah maid! you love.

Attend.
I'll not deny it, madam.
O that sweet influence of thoughts and looks!
That change of being, which, to one who lives,
Is nothing less divine than divine life
To the unmade! Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another's thought,
As in a glory. I was dark before,
As Venus' chapel in the black of night:
But there was something holy in the darkness,
Softer and not so thick as other where;
And, as rich moonlight may be to the blind,
Unconsciously consoling. Then love came,
Like the out-bursting of a trodden star,
And what before was hueless and unseen
Now shows me a divinity, like that
Which, raised to life out of the snowy rock,
Surpass'd mankind's creation, and repaid
Heaven for Pandora.

Valer.
Innocently thought,
And worthy of thy youth! I should not say
How thou art like the daisy in Noah's meadow,
On which the foremost drop of rain fell warm
And soft at evening; so the little flower
Wrapped up its leaves, and shut the treacherous water
Close to the golden welcome of its breast,—
Delighting in the touch of that which led
The shower of oceans, in whose billowy drops
Tritons and lions of the sea were warring,
And sometimes ships on fire sunk in the blood
Of their own inmates; others were of ice,
And some had islands rooted in their waves,
Beasts on their rocks, and forest-powdering winds,
And showers tumbling on their tumbling self,—
And every sea of every ruined star
Was but a drop in the world-melting flood.—

Attend.
Lady, you utter dreams.

Valer.
Let me talk so:
I would o'erwhelm myself with any thoughts;
Ay, hide in madness from the truth. Persuade me
To hope that I am not a wretched woman,
Who knows she has an husband by his absence,
Who feels she has a father by his hate,
And wakes and mourns, imprisoned in this house,
The while she should be sleeping, mad, or dead.—
Thou canst, and pity on thine eyelid hangs,
Whose dewy silence drops consent,—thou wilt!
I've seen thee smile with calm and gradual sweetness,
As none, that were not good, could light their cheeks:—
Thou wilt assist me. Harden not those lips,
Those lovely kissings let them not be stone
With a denial!

Attend.
But your father's anger,—
The watchful faith of all the servants—

Valer.
Fear not:
Lend me thy help. O come,—I see thou wilt.—
Husband, I'll lay me on thine aching breast
For once and ever.—Haste! for see, the light
Creates for earth its day once more, and lays
The star of morn's foundation in the east.
Come—come—

[Exeunt.

Scene II.

Place before the ducal palace.
Guards driving Orazio from the gate.
Guard.
Back! desperate man: you cannot pass—

Oraz.
By heaven, I must and will:—

Guard.
By the duke's order,
The gates are locked on all to-day.

Oraz.
By mine,
By the duke's brother's order, or his force,
Open at once yon gates. Slave, by my blood,
But that I think thou know'st me not, I'd make
That corpse of thine my path. Undo, I say,
The knitting of this rebel house's arms,
And let their iron welcome be around me.
My sword is hungry: do't.

Guard.
Advance no further:
Another step, and all our swords shake hands
Within your breast.

Oraz.
Insolent worm of earth,
To earth and worms for this!

[He draws his sword.
Guard.
Strike all! strike strong!
Strike through him right.

[They fight.
Enter Ezril from the palace.
Ezr.
Peace, on your lives, you traitors!
What! would you stain the holy throne of justice,
The pure and peaceful temple of the law,
The sacred dwelling of Ferrara's soul,
With the foul juices of your drunken veins?
Put up your impious swords.

Guard.
Pardon our hasty and forgetful choler:
We but defend our duke against the outrage
Of this intemperate brawler.

Oraz.
Cut him to shreds, and fling him to the dogs.—
You wait upon the duke, sir?

Ezr.
I am one
Of Lord Marcello's followers.

Oraz.
Pray you then,
Speak to your Lord Marcello: let him know
These house-dogs, these his ducal latch-holders
Dare keep the bolt against his brother's knock.

Ezr.
Are you then—?

Oraz.
I am Lord Orazio.—
Be quick!—O nature, what a snail of men!
The morn is frosty, sir: I love not waiting.—

Ezr.
Now all the mercy of the heavens forbid
That thou should'st be that rash and wretched neighbour
Of the duke's crown, his brother!

Oraz.
Marcello is my brother; I am his;
If coming of one mother brother us:
He is the duke, and I Orazio;
He elder, younger I.—If Jove and Neptune,
And the third Pluto, being Saturn's boys,
Lying in Rheas' womb and on her breast,
Were therefore brethren, so are he and I,—
Marcello's mother's son, his grandame's grandson,
Marcello's father's babe, his uncle's nephew,
His nephew's uncle, brother of his brother,
Or what you like,—if this same word of brother
Sours the sore palate of a royal ear.

Ezr.
Better thou wert the brother of his foe
Than what thou art, a man of the same getting;
As, out of the same lump of sunny Nile,
Rises a purple-winged butterfly,
And a cursed serpent crawls.

Oraz.
Heart-withered, pale-scalped grandfather of lies!
Age-hidden monster! Tell me what thou meanest,
And then I'll stab thee for thy falsehood.—

Ezr.
Hold him!
Your swords between us!—Now, the duke condemns thee;
And by his mother's, and his father's grave,
And by the dead, that lies within this palace,
His brother's sacred corpse, he dreadly swears;
And by the heaven those three loved souls
Dwell and are blest in, twice he dreadly swears:
By which dread oath, and hate of all thy crimes,
The duke condemns thee,—mixing in his sentence,
Sweet mercy, tearful love, and justice stern,—
To banishment for ever from this hour.

Oraz.
O reddest hour of wrath and cruelty!
Banished!—Why not to death?

Ezr.
The pious hope,
That bitter solitude and suffering thought
Will introduce repentance to thy woes,
And that conduct thee to religious fear
And humbleness, the lark that climbs heaven's stairs
But lives upon the ground:—Go forth, Orazio;
Seek not the house or converse of a citizen,
But think thyself outside the walls of life:
If in Ferrara, after this decree,
Your darkest, deepest, and most fearful fear
Falls on thy shoulder, digs beneath thy feet,
And opens hell for thee.—So, pass away!

Oraz.
Stay, for an instant; listen to a word:
O lead me to his throne! Let me but look
Upon the father in my brother's face!
Let me but speak to him this kindred voice,
Our boyish thoughts in the familiar words
Of our one bed-room; let me show to him
That picture which contains our double childhood,
Embracing in inexplicable love,
Within each other's, in our mother's, arms;
Thou'lt see rejoicing, O thou good old man,
The rigour melting through his changed eyes
Off his heart's roots, between whose inmost folds
Our love is kept.

Ezr.
Impossible and vain!
Content thee with thy doom, and look for love
Over the sea-wide grave. Let us be gone!

[Exit with Guards.
Oraz.
Let me write to him,—send a message to him,—
A word, a touch, a token! old, benevolent man,
Stay with me then to comfort and advise:
Leave one of these beside me: throw me not
Alone into despair!—He's gone; they're gone;
They never will come back; ne'er shall I hear
The sweet voice of my kinsmen or my friends:
But here begins the solitude of death.
I was,—I am; O what a century
Of darkness, rocks, and ghostly tempest opens
Between those thoughts! Within it there are lost
Dearest Valeria,—Marcello, whose heart came
From the same place as mine,—and all mankind;
Affection, charity, joy: and nothing's cast
Upon this barren rock of present time,
Except Orazio's wreck! here let it lie.

[Throws himself down.
Enter Varini and Attendants.
Varin.
Not in the city? Have you asked the guards
At bridge and gate,—the palace sentinels?

Attend.
We have,—in vain: they have not seen her pass.

Varin.
And did you say Valeria,—my Valeria,—
Heaven's love,—earth's beauty?

Oraz.
(starting up)
Mine eternally!
Let heaven unscabbard each star-hilted lightning,
And clench ten thousand hands at once against me,—
Earth shake all graves to one, and rive itself
From Lybia to the North! in spite of all
That threatens, I will stun the adulterous gods,—
She's mine! Valeria's mine! dash me to death,—
From death to the eternal depth of fire,—
I laugh and triumph on the neck of fate:
For still she's mine for ever! give me her,
Or I will drag thee to a sea-side rock,
That breaks the bottoms of the thunder-clouds,
And taking thee by this old, wicked hair,
Swing thee into the winds.—

Varin.
I would, wild man,
That I could quench thine eyes' mad thirst with her.
She's gone, fled, lost. O think not any more—
Let us forget what else is possible,—
Yea hope impossibly! the city streets,
The quay, the gardens,—is there yet a place
Within night's skirt unsearched?

Oraz.
The wood of wolves:—

Varin.
Merciful god! that frightful forest grows
Under the darksome corner of the sky
Where death's scythe hangs: its murder-shading trees
Are hairs upon Hell's brow. Away: away!
And never dare to turn on me again
Those eyes, unfilled with—speak to me never,
Until you cry—“Behold Valeria!”
And drop her on my bosom.

Oraz.
We'll wind the gordian paths off the trees' roots,
Untie the hilly mazes, and seek her
Till we are lost. Help, ho!

[Exit with attendants.
Varin.
[He sits down on the palace-step.

Enter Valeria.
Valer.
I know not what it means. None speak to me:
The crowded street, and solid flow of men,
Dissolves before my shadow and is broken.
I pass unnoticed, though they search for me,
As I were in the air and indistinct
As crystal in a wave. There lies a man:—
Shall I intreat protection and concealment,
And thaw the pity of his wintry head?
—No time: they come like arrows after me:—
I must avoid them.

[Exit.
Enter Ezril and attendants.
Ezr.
Pursue, o'ertake, stay, seize that hurrying girl:
Muffle her face and form, and through the bye-ways
Convey her to the palace. Hasten, hounds!

[Exeunt.
Varin.
[Some of his attendants return.

Attend.
A veil and mantle.—

Varin.
Both Valeria's!
Where's she they should have wrapped?

Attend.
'Twas all we found.

Varin.
Where?

Attend.
On the grass this purple cloak was dropped,
Beside the river.

Varin.
And the veil,—which way?
Further on shore, or near those deadly waves?

Attend.
The veil, my lord,—

Varin.
'Tis drenched and dropping wet:
Would I were drowned beside her! thou wert white;
And thy limbs' wond'rous victory over snow
Did make the billows thirsty to possess them.
They drank thee up, thou sweet one, cruelly!
Who was in heaven then?

Enter Orazio and Attendants, bearing a corpse that is carried up the stage.
Oraz.
My love, art dead?
Wilt thou not ope thy lips, lift up thine eyes?
It is the air, the sun—

Attend.
(to Varini.)
We've found the corpse.

Orazio.
Her corpse! O no! she is Valeria still:
She's scarce done living yet: her ghost's the youngest!
To-morrow, she'll be—Oh what she will be?
No she,—a corpse, and then—a skeleton!—

Varin.
Hast looked upon her?

Attend.
Death has marred her features,—
So swollen and discoloured their delight,
As if he feared that Life should know her sweet one,
And take her back again.

Varin.
If it be so,
I'll see her once: that beauty being gone,
And the familiar tokens altered quite,
She's strange,—a being made by wicked Death,
And I'll not mourn her. Lead me to the corpse.

[Exit with attendants.
Oraz.
Henceforth, thou tender pity of mankind,
Have nought to do with weeping: let war's eyes
Sweat with delight; and tears be ta'en from grief,
And thrown upon the rocky cheek of hate!
For mark! that water, the soft heap of drops,—
Water, that feigns to come from very heaven
In the round shape of sorrow,—that was wont to wash
Sin from the new-born babe, is hard and bloody;
A murderer of youth; cold death to those
Whose life approved thy godhead, piteous virtue!

Enter Ezril and guards.
Ezr.
Here still, unhappy man? then take the doom
You wooe so obstinately.—To the dungeon,—
To the deepest chamber of the dayless rock:
Away, and down with him!

Oraz.
I care not whither.
Thou canst not drag me deeper, wrap me darker,
Or torture me as my own thoughts have done.

[Exeunt.

ACT III.

Scene I.

A room in the ducal palace.
Marcello alone.
Marc.
I have them all at last; swan-necked Obedience;
And Power that strides across the muttering people,
Like a tall bridge; and War, the spear-maned dragon:—
Such are the potent spirits he commands,
Who sits within the circle of a crown!
Methought that love began at woman's eye:
But thou, bright imitation of the sun,
Kindlest the frosty mould around my heart-roots,
And, breathing through the branches of my veins,
Makest each azure tendril of them blossom
Deep, tingling pleasures, musically hinged,
Dropping with starry sparks, goldenly honied,
And smelling sweet with the delights of life.
At length I am Marcello.

Enter Ezril.
Ezr.
Mighty Duke,
Ferrara's nobles wait on you, to proffer
The homage of their coronets.

Marc.
I shall not see them.

Ezr.
It was the ancient usage of the state,
In every age.—

Marc.
Henceforth, be it forgotten!
I will not let the rabble's daily sight
Be my look's playmate. Say unto them, Ezril,
Their sovereigns of foretime were utter men,
False gods, that beat an highway in their thoughts
Before my car; idols of monarchy,
Whose forms they might behold. Now I am come,
Be it enough that they are taught my name,
Permitted to adore it, swear and pray
In it and to it: for the rest I wrap
The pillared caverns of my palace round me,
Like to a cloud, and rule invisibly
On the god-shouldering summit of mankind.
Dismiss them so.

Ezr.
'Tis dangerous,—

Marc.
[Exit Ezril.

Re-enter Ezril.
Ezr.
They are departing, with the unequal pace
Of discontent and wonder.

Marc.
Send them home
To talk it with their wives: sow them with books
Of midnight marvels, witcheries, and visions:
Let the unshaven Nazarite of stars
Unbind his wondrous locks, and grandame's earthquake
Drop its wide jaw; and let the church-yard's sleep
Whisper out goblins. When the fools are ripe
And gaping to the kernel, thou shalt steal,
And lay the egg of my divinity
In their fermenting sides.—Where is my brother?
The first I'll aim at.

Ezr.
'Mid the poisonous dregs of this deep building,
Two days and their two nights have had his breath
All of one colour to his darkened eyes.
No voice has fed his ears, and little food
His speech-robbed lips.

Marc.
'Tis well. This is a man
Whose state has sunk i'th' middle of his thoughts:
And in their hilly shade, as in a vale,
I'll build my church, making his heart the quarry.
Take him his meal, and place a guard around
The wood below: the rest of my instructions,
For we must juggle boldly, shall be whispered
Secretly in my closet.

Ezr.
Will you not
First cast this ragged and unseemly garb,
And hang your sides with purple?

Marc.
No: these rags
Give my delight a sting. I'll sit in them;
And, when I've stretched my dukedom through men's souls,
Fix on its shore my chair, and from it bid
Their doubts lie down.—Wilt help me?

Ezr.
Duke, thou art
A fathomless and undiscovered man,
Thinking above the eagle's highest wings,
And underneath the world. Go on: command:
And I am thine to do.

[Exeunt.

Scene II.

A dungeon of Cyclopean architecture: Orazio lying on the ground.
Enter Marcello and Ezril.
Marc.
Thou hast her then, in secret and secure?

Ezr.
Not firmer or more quietly this body
Holds its existing spirit.

Marc.
Excellent Ezril!
Thanks, thanks: my gratitude is snail-paced slow,
So heavy is its burthen.—See'st thou yonder?

Ezr.
The husband: where his sorrow, strong in error,
Has spurned him down.

Marc.

Oraz.
Didst thou say, Rise? I stand. Where am I now,
And how?

Marc.
Alive, and in Ferrara.

Oraz.
Why, first there is a life, and then a death,
And then a life again, whose roof is death;
So I have heard. 'Tis true: and though I am
Beside you, there's a grave divides our beings,
Which is the second gate of birth to me.—
Leave me to weep and groan.

Marc.
What ails thee thus?
Thy nature is o'erturned, thy features all
Forget joy's offices. These sinking eyes,
Whose sight is but a secondary service,
The ashy hiding of thy cheeks,—its cause?

Oraz.
Am I so like to marble in my form,
So wicked at the heart? No; thou art bad:
A charitable man would never ask.
And if thou e'er hadst love, or been once human,—
Loved, grieved, or hoped,—thou'dst feel what I have lost.
My wife is dead! thou know'st not what I mean,
And therefore art accurst. Now let me weep.—

Marc.
Thou dost me wrong. Lament! I'd have thee do't:
The heaviest raining is the briefest shower.
Death is the one condition of our life:
To murmur were unjust; our buried sires
Yielded their seats to us, and we shall give
Our elbow-room of sunshine to our sons.
From first to last the traffic must go on;
Still birth for death. Shall we remonstrate then?
Millions have died that we might breathe this day:
The first of all might murmur, but not we.
Grief is unmanly too.—

Oraz.
Because 'tis godlike.
I never felt my nature so divine,
As at this saddest hour. Thou'dst have me busy
In all the common usage of this world:
To buy and sell, laugh, jest, and feast, and sleep,
And wake and hunger that I might repeat 'em;
Perchance to love, to woo, to wed again.—

Marc.
The wonted wheel.—

Oraz.
O how I hate thee for't!
I've passed through life's best feelings;—they are her's;
Humanity's behind me. Ne'er I'll turn,
But, consecrated to this holy grief,
Live in her memory: heaven has no more.

Marc.
Yes, she is there. Let not thy woes be impious,
Lest ye should never meet; but anchor thee
On the remembrance that thou there wilt meet
Her deepest self, her spirit.

Oraz.
Thou talk'st to me of spirits and of souls:—
What are they? what know I or you of them?
I love no ghost: I loved the fairest woman,
With too much warmth and beauty in her cheek,
And gracious limbs, to hold together long.
To-day she's cold and breathless, and to-morrow
They'll lay her in the earth; there she will crumble:
Another year no place in all the world,
But this poor heart, will know of her existence.
Can she come back, O can she ever be
The same she was last night in my embrace?
No comfort else, no life!

Marc.
She can.

Oraz.
What didst thou speak?
Blaspheme not nature: wake not hope to stab it:
O take not comfort's sacred name in vain!
Wilt say it now again?

Marc.
There is a way,
Which, if thy heart's religion could permit,—

Oraz.
What's that but she? Do it, whate'er it is;
I take the sin to me. Come, what will come,—
And what but pain can come?—for that will be
All paradise concentrate in a minute,
When she,—but she is dead; I saw her corpse;—
Upon my soul thou liest unfathomably:
No god could do it.

Marc.
I have earned the taunt.
Seven heavens do fold the secret from thine eye:
Be happily incredulous. Perchance
It were a cursed and unhallowed rite:
Let's think it all a fiction. So farewell!

Oraz.
Thou dost not go; thou shalt not leave me thus:
No; by the power thou speakest of, I do swear
It shall be tried: if unsuccessful, then
We shall be what we are.

Marc.
Not its success
I doubt, but its impiety. O be quick
To fear perdition!

Oraz.
Can I fear aught further
Than what I feel?

Marc.
The sting of grief speaks here,
And not the tongue of thought. A month, a year
Pass in reflection: after such a time,
If thou demand'st the same, I'll then assist thee.

Oraz.
What? dost thou think I'll live another month
Without her? No. I did not seek this knowledge:
Thou hast created hope, unbidden, in me;
Therefore, I charge thee, let it not be killed!
I pray not, I beseech thee not, again;
But I command thee, by my right to bliss,
Which I have lost in trusting thee, to do it,
Without an instant's loss.

Marc.
Must it be so?
To-morrow night in the Cathedral vault
Valeria will be buried: meet me there.

Oraz.
Thou wilt not fail?

Marc.
I will not, on my life.

Oraz.
Then she is mine again,
All and for ever.

Marc.
(aside.)
As thou shalt be mine.

[Exeunt severally.

ACT IV.

Scene I.

The Campo Santo. Night.
Enter Marcello, Ezril, and Melchior leading Valeria.
Valer.
Whither, and by what law of man or nature,
Do ye thus lead me? Awe of sacred justice,
Dread of the clenched punishment that follows
The tremulous shoulder of pale, muffled guilt,—
Do they not gaze from every silent bed
In this sad place?

Melch.
Sheathe that nurse's tongue.
There's wooing 'twixt the moon and Death to night:
This is his cabinet.

Marc.
'Beseech you, lady,
Break not this still submission, and so force us
To stir our power from 'ts feigned, complacent sleep.

Valer.
Force! dost thou know me, that thou threaten'st force?

Melch.
Why, thou'rt some wealthy sinner, very like,
Whose gloves are worn with lips of richest princes:—
It recks not here. The unfashionable worm,
Respectless of the crown-illumined brow,
The cheek's bewitchment, or the sceptred clench,
With no more eyes than Love, creeps courtier-like,
On his thin belly, to his food,—no matter
How clad or nicknamed it might strut above,
What age or sex,—it is his dinner-time.
—Now with what name, what coronal's shade, wilt scare
Our rigour to the wing?

Valer.
I have a plea,
As dewy-piteous as the gentle ghost's
That sits alone upon a forest-grave,
Thinking of no revenge: I have a mandate,
As magical and potent as e'er ran
Silently through a battle's myriad veins,
Undid their fingers from the hanging steel,
And drew them up in prayer: I am a woman.
O motherly remembered be the name,
And, with the thought of loves and sisters, sweet
And comforting! therefore be piteous to me.
O let my hand touch yours! I could do more
By its sad tremors than my tongue.

Melch.
Away!
We own a mood of marble. There's no earth
In any crevice of my well-built spirit,
Whence woman's rain could wake the weedy leaves
Of the eye-poison, pity.

Marc.
If I were
Another man than this, Nature's cast child,
Renounced by Life and Death of common men,
And placed by wrongs upon an island-peak,
Methinks I could relent.

Melch.
Draw up thyself.
This bearskin, charity, is a great coat
For ragged, shivering sin: thine Indian hate,
That shivers, like the serpent's noontide tongue,
With poisonous, candid heat, must trample on it.

Valer.
O icy hearts! but no; soft ice doth melt,
And warms contritely;—I renounce the words,
And roll away the tender side of Heaven
To bare its lightnings. I am innocent,—
As white as any angel's lily wing;
And if you wrong me, mark! I will not weep,
Nor pray against your souls, nor curse your lives,
Nor let my madness wake all things that are
To roll destruction on you,—but be silent,
Secret, as happiness, to man and God,
And let the judgment ripen silently,
Under your feet and o'er you,—mighty, quiet,
Deadly and tedious, as a silent hell.
Now, what ye dare, begin!

Marc.
Our purpose glides,
Calm and remorseless as this human orb,
Whose moon, thou see'st, bestows an equal beam
Upon the odorous gardens we passed by,
And the gaunt lips of this new-opened grave.
Canst thou reproach our want of charity,
Beholding this, and all the thoughts it lends?

Melch.
'Tis a fit oracle for such an hour,
And has the caverns of its inspirations,
More true than Delphian, underneath our being.
Let's speak to it.

Ezr.
What would'st thou?

Melch.
It may teach
This tremulous lady resignation, sir.—
Ho, there! thou maker of this earthen bed;
Thou porter of the gates, art thou below?
Whose grave is this thou digg'st? [OMITTED]

TORRISMOND;

AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.

PERSONS REPRESENTED.

• Duke of Ferrara.
• Torrismond; his son.
• The Marquis Malaspina.
• Cyrano; his son.
• Amadeus; a young nobleman.
• Garcia; Courtier.
• Gomez; Courtier.
• Melchior; Courtier.
• Gaudentio; Courtier.
• Veronica; Malaspina's daughter.
• Elvira; her attendant.
• Erminia; Melchior's sister.

Scene; Ferrara.

ACT I.

Scene I.

An apartment in the ducal palace.
Enter the Duke, Courtiers, and attendants.
Duke.
Who has seen Torrismond, my son, tonight?

Garcia.
My lord, he has not crossed me, all the day. (To Gomez aside.)

You need not say we saw him pass the terrace,
All red and hot with wine. The duke is angry:
Mark how he plucks his robe.

Duke.
Gomez, nor you?

Gomez.
Your Grace, in Garcia's answer
Beheld the face of mine. I have not lent him
A word to-day.

Duke.
Nor you? none of you, sirs?—
No answer! have ye sold yourselves to silence?
Is there not breath, or tongue, or mouth among you,
Enough to croak a curse?—Nay: there's no wonder.
Why do I ask? that know you are his curs,
His echo-birds, the mirrors of his tongue.
He has locked up this answer in your throats,
And scratched it on your leaden memories.
What do I ask for? well: go on, go on;
Be his sop-oracles, and suck yellow truth
Out of the nipple of his jingling pouch.
But tell me this, dogs, that do wag your tails
Round this dwarf Mercury, this gilded Lie-god,
Will you set out and beg with him to-morrow?

Garcia.
Why, my good lord?

Duke.
Because, my evil slave,—
Because unless he can these sunbeams coin,
Or, like a bee in metals, suck me out
The golden honey from their marly core,
He's like to board with the cameleon:
Because I will untie him from my heart,
And drop him to the bottom of the world:—
Because I'll melt his wings.—Enough!

Garcia.
With pardon,
You are too rough.—

Duke.
Too rough! were I as loud
As shaggy Boreas in his bearish mood,—
Did I roll wheels of thunder o'er your souls,
And break them into groans,—weep yourselves waves,
And kneel beneath my storming. Worms ye are,
Born in the fat sides of my pouring wealth:—
Lie there and stir not, or I dash you off.

Garcia.
My lord—

Duke.
I am no lord, sir, but a father:
My son has stuck sharp injuries in my heart,
And flies to hide in your obscurity.
Cover him not with falsehoods; shield him not;
Or, by my father's ashes,—but no matter.
You said I was a duke: I will be one,
Though graves should bark for it. You've heard me speak:
Now go not to your beds until my son
(—It is a word that cases not a meaning,—)
Come from his riots: send him then to me:
And hark! ye fill him not, as ye are wont,
To the lip's brim with oily subterfuges.—
I sit this evening in the library.

An attend.
Lights, lights there for the duke!

Duke.
For the duke's soul I would there were a light!
Well; on thy flinty resolution strike,
Benighted man! The sun has laid his hair
Up in that stone, as I have treasured love
In a cold heart;—but it begins to boil,
And, if it breaks its casket, will be out.
Find me a book of fables: he, whose world
Grows in his thoughts, methinks, alone is happy.
So now good-night; and do as I have said.

Garcia.
We shall.—Good dreams, your grace!

Duke.
Good acts, you mean.
He who does ill, awake, and turns to night
For lovely-painted shades,
Is like a satyr grinning in a brook
To find Narcissus' round and downy cheek.

(Exit with attendants: manent Garcia and Gomez.
Gomez.
I never saw my lord so sad and angry:
His blood foamed, white with wrath, beneath his face,
Rising and falling like a sea-shore wave.
What boils him thus?

Garcia.
Perhaps some further outrage,
Reported of his son; for the young lord,
Whose veins are stretched by passion's hottest wine,
Tied to no law except his lawless will,
Ranges and riots headlong through the world;—
Like a young dragon, on Hesperian berries
Purplely fed, who dashes through the air,
Tossing his wings in gambols of desire,
And breaking rain-clouds with his bulging breast.
Thus has he been from boy to youth and manhood,
Reproved, then favoured; threatened, next forgiven;
Renounced, to be embraced: but, till this hour,
Never has indignation like to this,
With lightning looks, black thoughts, and stony words,
Burst o'er the palace of their love, which stretches
From heart to heart.

Gomez.
I fear that both will shake;
And that fair union, built by interchange
Of leaning kindnesses, in the recoil
May fall between, and leave no bridge for pardon.

Garcia.
The little that we can, then let us strive
To hold them in the lock of amity:
For which our thoughts let us compare within.

[Exeunt.

Scene II.

A banqueting room in Malaspina's palace.
Cyrano, Amadeus, Torrismond, and other young lords, drinking.
Amad.
Another health! Fill up the goblets, sirrah!
This wine was pressed from full and rolling grapes
By the white dance of a Circassian princess,
Whose breast had never aught but sunlight touched,
And her own tears: 'tis spicy, cool, and clear
As is a magic fount where rainbows grow,
Or nymphs by moonlight bathe their tremulous limbs;
And works an intellectual alchemy,
Touching the thoughts to sunshine. Now, to whom,—
To what young saint, between whose breathing paps
Love's inspiration lies,—shall we devote
This last and richest draught: with whose soft name
Shall we wash bright our hearts? Say, Cyrano.

Cyran.
Let Torrismond be sponsor for this bowl.
He sate so still last night, that by plump Cupid,
That merry, cherry-lipped, delicious god,
Whose name is writ on roses, I must think
He's paid away his soul in broken sighs,
Glass oaths, and tears of crocodilish coinage,
For one quick finger-kiss. Ask him, what name,
Made to be written upon hearts and trees,
And grace a sonnet, shall be sugar here,
Making the juice steam music.

Torris.
I beseech you,
Waste not this Araby of words on me:
I'm dull, but not in love.

Cyran.
Not ancle-deep?
What means a leaning head, eye-lids ajar,
And lips thick-sown with whispers? Sir, I say,
Before to-morrow you'll be soused in love,
To the ear's tip. In truth, it will be so;
Sure as an almanac.

Torris.
I lay my fate
Upon your mercy: e'en tie love-knots in it,
If you've nought else to do. Good Cyrano,
And you, sirs, all pray drink. I fear the fog
Of my most stupid dulness spreads.

Amad.
We'll drink
One cup,—one more liquid delight, my friends;
Then for the masquerade at Signor Paulo's.—

Cyran.
Ay; dedicated to the sweet To be,
The lady Future of our comrade's love.

A guest.
What rhymes unborn are shut within that word!

Amad.
(They drink.

Torris.
To night, I thank you,
It is against my will; indeed I cannot;
I'm vilely out of tune,—my thoughts are cracked,
And my words dismal. 'Pray you, pardon me:
Some other night we will, like Bacchanals,
Shiver the air with laughter and rough songs,
And be most jovial madmen.

Amad.
Be it so,
If be it must. We bid you, sir, farewell.

Torris.
[Exeunt Amadeus and others: manent Torrismond and Cyrano.

Cyran.
If it does not offend you, suffer me—

Torris.
Offend me! No; thou dost not, Cyrano;
I do offend myself. Hadst thou but eyes
To see the spirit toiling in this breast,
How low a wretch should I appear to thee;
How pitifully weak! Now tell me, sir,—
I shrink not from the truth, although it stab,
And beg it from your mouth,—what think you of me?

Cyran.
Of you, my lord?

Torris.
Yes, yes; my words, my manners,
My disposition, will,—how seem they to you?

Cyran.
Sir, my heart speaks of you as one most kind;
Spirited and yet mild: a man more noble
Breathes not his maker's air.

Torris.
Stay, my good friend;
I did not ask for flattery.

Cyran.
Nor I answer it;
Saying, that here I shake him by the hand
That has no better in humanity:
A fine, free spirit.

Torris.
You had better say
A whirring, singing, empty wine-bubble,
Like one of these that left us. So I was;
Vain, futile, frivolous; a boy, a butterfly,—
In semblance: but inside, by heaven! a depth
Of thoughts most earnest, an unfuelled flame
Of self-devouring love. Cyrano, Cyrano,
I yearn, and thirst, and ache to be beloved,
As I could love,—through my eternal soul,
Immutably, immortally, intensely,
Immeasurably. Oh! I am not at home
In this December world, with men of ice,
Cold sirs and madams. That I had a heart,
By whose warm throbs of love to set my soul!
I tell thee I have not begun to live,
I'm not myself, till I've another self
To lock my dearest, and most secret thoughts in;
Change petty faults, and whispering pardons with;
Sweetly to rule, and Oh! most sweetly serve.—

Cyran.
Have you no father,—nor a friend? Yet I,
I, Torrismond, am living, and the duke.

Torris.
Forgive me, sir, forgive me: I am foolish;
I've said I know not what, I know not why;
'Tis nothing,—fancies; I'll to bed;—'tis nothing;
Worth but a smile, and then to be forgotten.
Good-night: to-morrow I will laugh at this.

Cyran.
I'll say no more but that I hope you will.

[Exit.
Torris.
I knew it would be so. He thinks me now
Weak, unintelligible, fanciful,—
A boy shut up in dreams, a shadow-catcher:
So let him think. My soul is where he sees not,
Around, above, below. Yes, yes; the curse
Of being for a little world too great,
Demanding more than nature has to give,
And drinking up, for ever and in vain,
The shallow, tasteless skimmings of their love,
Through this unfathomable fever here.—
A thought of comfort comes this way; its warmth
I feel, although I see it not. How's this?
There's something I half know; yes, I remember,—
The feast last night: a dear, ingenuous girl
Poured soft, smooth hope upon my dashing passions,
Until they tossed their billowy selves to sleep.
I'll seek her, try her: in this very garden
Often she walks; thither I'll bear my wishes,
And may she prove the echo of their craving!

[Exit.

Scene III.

A garden by moonlight.
Veronica, Elvira and other female attendants.
Veron.
Come then, a song; a winding, gentle song,
To lead me into sleep. Let it be low
As zephyr, telling secrets to his rose,
For I would hear the murmuring of my thoughts;
And more of voice than of that other music
That grows around the strings of quivering lutes;
But most of thought; for with my mind I listen,
And when the leaves of sound are shed upon it,
If there's no seed remembrance grows not there.
So life, so death; a song, and then a dream!
Begin before another dewdrop fall
From the soft hold of these disturbed flowers,
For sleep is filling up my senses fast,
And from these words I sink.

Elvira.
She sees no longer: leave her then alone,
Encompassed by this round and moony night.
A rose-leaf for thy lips, and then good-night:
So life, so death; a song, and then a dream!

[Exeunt Elvira and attendants, leaving Veronica asleep.
Enter Torrismond.
Torris.
Herself! her very self, slumbering gently!
Sure sleep is turned to beauty in this maid,
And all the rivalry of life and death
Makes love upon her placid face. And here,
How threads of blue, wound off yon thorny stars
That grow upon the wall of hollow night,
Flow o'er each sister-circle of her bosom,
Knotting themselves into a clue for kisses
Up to her second lip. There liquid dimples
Are ever twinkling, and a sigh has home
Deep in their red division,—a soft sigh,
Scarce would it bow the summer-weeds, when they
Play billows in the fields, and pass a look
Of sunshine through their ranks from sword to sword,
Gracefully bending. On that cheek the blush
That ever dawns dares be no common blush,
But the faint ghost of some dishevelled rose
Unfurls its momentary leaves, and bursts
So quick the haunted fairness knows it not.
O that this gaze could be eternity!
And yet a moment of her love were more.
Were there infection in the mind's disease,
Inoculation of a thought, even now
Should she, from all the windings of her dream,
Drink my impetuous passion, and become
All that I ask. Break from your buds, dear eyes,
And draw me into you.

Veron.
(awaking.)
Who's there? I dreamt:—
As I do love that broad, smooth-edged star,
And her young, vandyked moons that climb the night
Round their faint mother, I would not have had
Another eye peeping upon that dream,
For one of them to wear upon my breast;
And I'll not whisper it, for fear these flags
Should chance to be the green posterity
Of that eaves-dropping, woman-witted grass,
That robbed the snoring wasps of their least voice,
To teach their feathery gossips of the air
What long, and furry ears king Midas sprouted;
And I'll not think of it, for meditation
Oft presses from the heart its inmost wish,
And thaws its silence into straying words.

Torris.
(aside.)
I am no man, if this dream were not spun
By the very silk-worm, that doth make his shop
In Cupid's tender wing-pit, and winds fancies
In lovers' corner thoughts, when grandam Prudence
Has swept the hearth of passion, thrown on cinders,
And gone to bed:—and she is not a woman,
If this same secret, buried in her breast,
Haunt not her tongue,—and hark! here comes its ghost.

Veron.
A fable and a dream! Here, in this garden,
It seemed I was a lily:—

Torris.
(aside.)
So you are,
But fitter for Arabian paradise,
Or those arched gardens where pale-petalled stars,
With sunlight honeying their dewy cores,
Tremble on sinuous, Corinthian necks,—
Where Morn her roses feeds, her violets Night.

Veron.
And to my lily-ship a wooer came,
Sailing upon the curvous air of morn,
(For 'twas a sunny dream, and a May sky
The lid of it;) and this imagined suitor,
A glass-winged, tortoise-shell, heart-broken bee,
Was—he you know of, heart. How did he bend
His slender knee, doffing his velvet cap,
And swearing, by the taste of Venus' lip,
If I did not accept his airy love,
The truest heart, that ever told the minutes
Within an insect's breast, should shed its life
Around the hilt of his unsheathed sting.
And then this tiny thunderer of flowers,
Quite, quite subdued, let down a string of tears,
(Little they were, but full of beeish truth,)
Almost a dew-drop-much, on the fair pages
Of transmigrated me; whereon, O Love!
Thou tamed'st the straightest prude of Flora's daughters;
For I did pity Torrismond the bee,
And let him, if his life lived in my love,
Have that for courtesy.—

Torris.
(coming forward)
O lady! then
Will you deny him now? when here he kneels,
And vows by heaven, and by the sacred souls
Of all the dead and living, in your pity
His hope is folded, in your soul his love,
And in that love his everlasting life.

Veron.
Out on my tongue, the naughty runaway!
What has he heard? Now, if this man should be
Vain, selfish, light, or hearted with a stone,
Or worthless any way, as there are many,
I've given myself, like alms unto an idiot,
To be for nothing squandered.

Torris.
Lady, speak!
And for my truth, O that my mind were open,
My soul expressed and written in a book,
That thou might'st read and know! Believe, believe me!
And fear me not, for, if I speak not truth,
May I speak never more, but be struck dumb!
May I be stripped of manhood and made devil,
If I mean not as truly unto thee,
Though bold it be, as thou unto thyself!
I will not swear, for thou dost know that easy:
But put me to the proof, say, ‘kill thyself;’
I will outlabour Hercules in will,
And in performance, if that waits on will.
Shall I fight sword-less with a youthful lion?
Shall I do ought that I may die in doing?
Oh! were it possible for such an angel,
I almost wish thou hadst some impious task,
That I might act it and be damned for thee.
But, earned for thee, perdition's not itself,
Since all that has a taste of thee in it
Is blest and heavenly.

Veron.
Stop! You frighten me:
I dare not doubt you.

Torris.
Dare not? Can you so?

Veron.
I dare not, for I cannot. I believe you:
It is my duty.

Torris.
To the dutiful
Their duty is their pleasure. Is it not?

Veron.
'Twas a rash word; it rather is my fate.

Torris.
It is my fate to love; thou art my fate,
So be not adverse.

Veron.
How can I say further?
I do believe you: less I'll not avow,
And more I cannot.

Torris.
Stay, Veronica!
This very night we both of us may die,
Or one at least: and it is very likely
We never meet; or, if we meet, not thus,
But somehow hindered by the time, the place,
The persons. There are many chances else,
That, though no bigger than a sunny mote,
Coming between may our whole future part,—
With Milo's force tear our existence up,
And turn away the branches of each life,
Even from this hour, on whose star-knotted trunk
We would engraft our union; it may sever us
As utterly as if the world should split
Here, as we stand, and all Eternity
Push through the earthquake's lips, and rise between us.
Then let us know each other's constancy:
Thou in my mind, and I in thine shall be;
And so disseparable to the edge
Of thinnest lightning.—

Veron.
Stay: be answered thus.
If thou art Torrismond, the brain of feather;
If thou art light and empty Torrismond,
The admiration, oath, and patron-saint
Of frivolous revellers, he whose corky heart,
Pierced by a ragged pen of Cupid's wing,
Spins like a vane upon his mother's temple
In every silly sigh,—let it play on:—

Torris.
It is not so; I vow, Veronica—

Veron.
If you unpeopled the Olympian town
Of all its gods, and shut them in one oath,
It would not weigh a flue of melting snow
In my opinion. Listen thus much more:
If thou art otherwise than all have held
Except myself; if these, which men do think
The workings of thy true concentrate self,
Have been indeed but bubbles raised in sport
By the internal god, who keeps unseen
The fountains of thine undiscovered spirit;
If, underneath this troubled scum of follies,
Lies what my hopes have guessed:—why guess thy wishes,
What it may be unto Veronica.

Torris.
What need of doubts and guesses? make me firm;
With fixed assurance prop my withering hopes,
Or tear them up at once: give truth for truth.
I know it is the custom to dissemble,
Because men's hearts are shallow, and their nature
So mean, ill-nurtured, selfish, and debased,
They needs must paint and swaddle them in lies,
Before the light could bear to look upon them.
But as thou art, thus unalloyed and fresh
From thy divine creation, soul and body,
Tread artifice to dust, and boldly speak
Thine innocent resolve.

Veron.
Thus then I say:
As I believe thee steadfast and sincere,
(And, if it be not so, God pity me!)
I love thee dearly, purely, heartily;
So witness heaven, and our own silent spirits!

Torris.
And by my immortality I swear,
With the like honesty, the like to thee,
Thou picture of the heavens!

Veron.
Hark! some one comes:—
Now we must part. Henceforth remember thou,
How in this azure secresy of night,
And with what vows, we here have dedicated
Ourselves, and our eternity of being,
Unto each other in our maker's presence.
Good-night then, Torrismond.

Torris.
And such to thee,
As thou to me hast given, fairest fair!
Best good! of thy dear kind most ever dear!

[Exeunt severally.

Scene IV.

An apartment in the ducal palace.
Enter the Duke and courtiers.
Duke.
Yes, was it not enough, good Garcia,—
Blood spilt in every street by his wild sword;
The reverend citizens pelted with wrongs,
Their rights and toil-won honours blown aside,
Torn off, and trampled 'neath his drunken foot;
The very daughters of the awful church
Smeared in their whiteness by his rude attempts;
The law thus made a lie even in my mouth;
Myself a jest for beer-pot orators;
My state dishonoured;—was it not enough
To turn a patience, made of ten-years' ice,
Into a thunderbolt?

Garcia.
It was too much:
I wonder at your grace's long endurance.
Did you ne'er chide him?

Duke.
No, never in his life:
He has not that excuse. My eyes and ears
Were frozen-closed. Yet was it not enough
That his ill deeds outgrew all name and number,
O'er-flowed his years and all men's memories?
Gaudentio, I was mild; I bore upon me
This world of wrongs, and smiled. But mark you now,
How he was grateful.—Tell them, Melchior.

Melch.
Linked, as it is surmised, with Lutherans,
And other rebels 'gainst his father's state,
He has not only for their aid obtained
From me, the steward of the dukedom, money,
But also robbed, most treacherously robbed,
By night, and like a thief, the public treasury.

Gauden.
I'll not believe it; and he is a villain,
Ay, and the very thief, that did the thing,
Who brings the accusation.

Duke.
Knave, I think
Thou wert my son's accomplice.

Melch.
Nay, my lord,
He says what all would say, and most myself,
But that these facts—

Gauden.
What facts? What witnesses?
Who saw? Who heard? Who knows?

Duke.
Our trusty steward.

Gauden.
A Spanish Jew! a godless, heartless exile,
Whose ear's the echo of the whispering world.
Why, if he only knows, and saw, and heard,
This Argus-witness, with his blood-hound nose,
Who keeps a fairy in his upright ear,
Is no more than a black, blind, ugly devil,
Nick-named a lie.

Duke.
Be silent, slave, or dead.
I do believe him: Garcia, so dost thou?
All honest men, good Melchior, like thyself,—
For that thou art, I think, upon my life,—
Believe thee too.

Melch.
It is my humble trust:
And, in the confidence of honesty,
I pray you pardon this good servant's boldness. (aside)

God help the miserable velvet fellow!
It seems he has forgot that little story,
How he debauched my poor, abandoned sister,
And broke my family into the grave.—
That's odd; for I exceeding well remember it,
Though then a boy.

Duke.
Gaudentio, thou dost hear
Why I forgive thee: but be cautious, sir.

Gauden.
Cautious,—but honest,—cautious of a villain.

Duke.
[Exeunt Courtiers.
Enter Torrismond.

Torris.
Why then well parted, for I'm going to bed.
I'm weary; so, good-night.

Duke.
Stay; I must speak to you.—

Torris.
To-morrow then, good father, and all day.
But now no more than the old sleepy word,
And so again, good-night.

Duke.
Turn, sir, and stay:
I will be brief, as brief as speech can be.—
Seek elsewhere a good night: there is none here.
This is no home for your good nights, bad son,
Who hast made evil all my days to come,
Poisoned my age, torn off my beauteous hopes
And fed my grave with them.—Oh! thou hast now,
This instant, given my death an hundred sinews,
And drawn him nearer by a thousand hours.
But what of that? You'd sow me like a grain,
And from my stalk pick you a ducal crown.
But I will live.—

Torris.
That you may live and prosper
Is every day my prayer, my wish, my comfort.
But what offence has raised these cruel words?

Duke.
That I may live, you plot against my life;
That I may prosper, you have cured my fortunes
Of their encrusted jaundice,—you have robbed me.
So, for your prayers and wishes I do thank you;
But for your deeds I wish and pray Heaven's vengeance.

Torris.
Is this your own invention, or—O nature!
O love of fathers! could a father hear
His offspring thus accused, and yet believe?
Believe! Could he endure, and not strike dead,
The monster of the lie? Sir, here or there,
In you, or your informers, there's a villain,
A fiend of falsehood: so beware injustice!

Duke.
I never was unjust, but when I pardoned
Your bloody sins and ravening appetites,—
For which Heaven pardon me, as I repent it!
But I'll not play at battledore with words.
Hear me, young man, in whom I did express
The venom of my nature, thus the son,
Not of my virtuous will, but foul desires,
Not of my life, but of a wicked moment,
Not of my soul, but growing from my body,
Like thorns or poison on a wholesome tree,
The rank excrescence of my tumid sins,—
And so I tear thee off: for, Heaven doth know,
All gentler remedies I have applied;
But to this head thy rankling vice has swelled,
That, if thou dwellest in my bosom longer,
Thou wilt infect my blood, corrode my heart,
And blight my being: therefore, off for ever!

Torris.
O mother, thou art happy in thy grave!
And there's the hell in which my father lies,
The serpent that hath swallowed him!

Gaudentio rushes in.
Gauden.
(As he enters, to those without, the other courtiers, who also enter but remain at the side.)
Away!
Let me come in! . . Now, I beseech you, lords,
Put out this anger; lay a night of sleep
Upon its head, and let its pulse of fire
Flap to exhaustion. Do not, sir, believe
This reptile falsehood: think it o'er again,
And try him by yourself; thus questioning,
Could I, or did I, thus, or such a fault,
In my beginning days? There stands before you
The youth and golden top of your existence,
Another life of yours: for, think your morning
Not lost, but given, passed from your hand to his,
The same except in place. Be then to him
As was the former tenant of your age,
When you were in the prologue of your time,
And he lay hid in you unconsciously
Under his life. And thou, my younger master,
Remember there's a kind of god in him,
And after heaven the next of thy religion.
Thy second fears of God, thy first of man,
Are his, who was creation's delegate,
And made this world for thee in making thee.

Duke.
A frost upon thy words, intended dog!
Because thy growth has lost its four-legged way
And wandered with thee into man's resemblance,
Shalt thou assume his rights? Get to thy bed,
Or I'll decant thy pretext of a soul,
And lay thee, worm, where thou shalt multiply.
Sir slave, your gibbet's sown.

Torris.
Leave him, Gaudentio,
My father and your master are not here;
His good is all gone hence, he's truly dead;
All that belonged to those two heavenly names
Are gone from life with him, and changing cast
This slough behind, which all abandoned sins
Creep into and enliven devilishly.

Duke.
What! stand I in thy shadow? or has Momus
Opened a window 'twixt thy heart and mine?
'Tis plated then!

Torris.
We talk like fighting boys:—
Out on't! I repent of my mad tongue.
Come, sir; I cannot love you after this,
But we may meet and pass a nodding question—

Duke.
Never! There lies no grain of sand between
My loved and my detested. Wing thee hence,
Or thou dost stand to-morrow on a cob-web
Spun o'er the well of clotted Acheron,
Whose hydrophobic entrails stream with fire;
And may this intervening earth be snow,
And my step burn like the mid coal of Ætna,
Plunging me, through it all, into the core
Where in their graves the dead are shut like seeds,
If I do not—O but he is my son!
If I do not forgive thee then—but hence!
Gaudentio, hence with him, for in my eyes
He does look demons.—

Melch.
(to Torrismond.)
Come out with me and leave him:
You will be cool, to-morrow.

Torris.
That I shall;
Cool as an ice-drop on the skull of Death,
For winter is the season of the tomb,
And that's my country now.

Duke.
Away with him!
I will not hear.—Where did I leave my book?
Or was it music?—Take the beggar out.
Is there no supper yet?—O my good Melchior!
I'm an eternal gap of misery.—
Let's talk of something else.

Torris.
O father, father! must I have no father,
To think how I shall please, to pray for him,
To spread his virtues out before my thought,
And set my soul in order after them?
To dream, and talk of in my dreaming sleep?
If I have children, and they question me
Of him who was to me as I to them;
Who taught me love, and sports, and childish lore;
Placed smiles where tears had been; who bent his talk,
That it might enter my low apprehension,
And laughed when words were lost.—O father, father!
Must I give up the first word that my tongue,
The only one my heart has ever spoken?
Then take speech, thought, and knowledge quite away,—
Tear all my life out of the universe,
Take of my youth, unwrap me of my years,
And hunt me up the dark and broken past
Into my mother's womb: there unbeget me;
For 'till I'm in thy veins and unbegun,
Or to the food returned which made the blood
That did make me, no possible lie can ever
Unroot my feet of thee. Canst thou make nothing?
Then do it here, for I would rather be
At home nowhere, than here nowhere at home.

Duke.
Why ask'st thou me? Hast thou no deeds to undo,
No virtues to rebuy, no sins to loose?
Catch from the wind those sighs that thou hast caused;
Out of large ocean pick the very tears,
And set them in their cabinets again.
Renew thyself, and then will I remember
How thou camest thus. Thou art all vices now
Of thine own getting. My son Torrismond
Did sow himself under a heap of crime,
And thou art grown from him: die to the root,
So I may know thee as his grave at least.—
Now, Melchior, we'll away.

Melch.
Not yet, my lord:
I wait upon this gentleman.

Duke.
Is't so?
Why then, begone! Good morrow to you, sirs.
Farewell! and be that word a road to death
Uncrossed by any other! Not a word!

[Exit with courtiers: manent Torrismond and Melchior.
Melch.

Torris.
What shall we do?—why, all.
How many things, sir, do men live to do?
The mighty labour is to die: we'll do't,—
But we'll drive in a chariot to our graves,
Wheel'd with big thunder, o'er the heads of men.

[Exeunt.
[OMITTED]

DRAMATIC SCENES AND FRAGMENTS.

I. ERMINIA ABBANDONATA.

Erminia and female attendant.
Attend.
Come lift your head from that sad pillow, lady,
Let comfort kiss thee dry. Nay, weep no more:
Oh! sure thy brain has emptied all its tears,
Thy breast outsighed its passion, leaving room
For sleep to pour her sweetness into them,
And the cored sleep of sleep, tranquillity,
That opens but one window of the soul,
And, with her hand on sorrow's face, does keep her
Dark in her bed and dayless. Quiet now—
Will you take peace?

Ermin.
Good-night; you must go in:
The door of life is shut upon me now;
I'm sepulchred alone. Look in the west;
Mark you the dusty, weary traveller,
That stumbles down the clouds?

Attend.
I see the sun
Silently dying.

Ermin.
Weep till your sight is found.—
I have been one that thought there was a sun,
A joyful heat-maker; and, like a child
By a brook's side spooning the sparkles out,
I caught at his reflection in my soul,
And found 'twas water painted with a lie,
Cold, bitter water; I have cried it out.
Sometimes you may see some one through the clouds
Stepping about the sky,—and then, in sooth,
He robs some mountain of its child, the day,
And lays it at the sea's door: but for that
I' the west, 'tis the fat, unwholesome star,
The bald fool-planet, that has men upon it,
And they nick-name it ‘world.’
And oh! this humpy bastard of the sun,
It was my slave, my dog, and in my lap
Laid down its load of pleasure every night,
And spun me sunshine to delight my eyes,—
Carried my cities, and did make me summer,
And flower-limbed spring, and groves with shady autumn:
But now the whelp rolls up his woody back,
And turns it on me, and so trundles down,
Leaving this bit of rock for me to live on,
And his round shadow to be cold in. Go!
Follow the rabble clinging at his heels,
Get thee a seat among his rags.—Dost know
That Momus picked a burnt-out comet up
From Vulcan's floor, and stuck a man upon it;
Then, having laught, he flung the wick away,
And let the insect feed on planet oil:—
What was't? Man and his ball.

Attend.
O dearest lady!
Let not your thoughts find instruments of mirth
So on the shore where reason has been wrecked,
To lay them in your brain along with grief;
For grief and laughter, mingled in the skull,
Oft boil to madness. Did you hear my words?

Ermin.
Ay, comfort was among them,—that's a play-thing
For girls, a rattle full of noisy lies
To fright away black thoughts, and let the sun
In on the breast. For madness, though I hold it
Kinder to man's enjoyment than true sense,
And I would choose it, if they lay before me,
Even as a grape beside an adder's tongue,
To squeeze into my thoughts as in a cup,
Hating the forked and the bitter truth,—
I cannot find it. If my brain were capable
Of this dear madness, should it not be now
All in a bubble with't? What can make mad,
If not the abandonment of one, whose love
Is more true life than the veins' crimson sap?
Leonigild has cut my heart away,
And flung it from him: if I could be so,
Should I not be tempestuously mad?

Attend.
Alas! his cruelty looked like a snake
Upon Medusa's temple.

Ermin.
Had I been waked
By torchlight in my eyes, and by a voice
That said “your babes are burning, stabbed your husband,—
“Room on your bosom for their murderer's kisses!”
Why, that to this were tickling to a stab,
A pin-wound to an hell-jawed, laughing gash.
You saw me spurned by him who was—Oh! was!—
What was he? not a father, son, or husband,—
Lend me a word.—

Attend.
Indeed your love was much;
Your life but an inhabitant of his.

Ermin.
Loved him! 'tis not enough; the angels might,—
They might think what I mean, but could not speak it.
I dreamt it was the day of judgment once,
And that my soul, in fear of hidden sins,
Went with his stolen body on its shoulders,
And stood for him before the judgment seat:—
O that I now were damned as I was then!
But that same body, that same best-loved soul
Cursed, spurned me yesterday. Should I not rave,
Rave, my girl, rave?

Attend.
So most women would,
So all would wonder that another did not.

Ermin.
Why now, I rave not, laugh not, think not, care not;
But it is well; so far, I said, 'twas well.
Next was I not abandoned on the rock,
That I might starve? and then you know I prayed,
And when 'twas done, behold! there comes a boat,
Climbing about the waves; I thought and said,
O bless thee, ocean! hither dost thou come,
On the same errand as thy birds returning
Unto their hungry nest; thus has sweet nature
Sown kindness in thy great, and its small, bosom!
And, as I spoke, the waves came sporting on,
And laid their burthen, like a pillow, here:
Look! it's my brother dead. Should I not rave,
Rave, my girl, rave? What comet-dragon is there,
That makes the air bleed fire with galloping rage,
But should be dove-like in my simile?

Attend.
Alas! such things,
Such sudden pluckings by the heart as these,
People the mad-house, and cram up the grave!

Ermin.
Therefore I laugh: methinks, when I do tell it,
That I am supping up a draught of wine.
Would you know why there's death, and tears, and blood,
And wrenching hearts out by their shrieking roots,
Which are more tender than the mailed quick,
Or the wet eye-ball? I will tell you this,—
But O! be secret as rocks under sea,—
When the world draws the winter o'er his head,
Capping himself so whitely round his Alp,
Muffling his feet with ice, and beds him so;
Then underneath the coverlid and cloak
He has a poisonous strumpet in his arms,
On whom he gets confusion, war, disease,
Prodigies, earthquakes, blights: she's in his blood,
The hell-wombed witch, hagged and hideous nature!
But I'll unwind her.—Nay, I jest, my child:
Leave me; seek something—What is it we want?
O true! 'tis food: take this, and try the huts.

Attend.
'Tis needful truly: I'll procure it quick,
And turn the hour back I go upon.
A little then, good bye.

(Exit.
Ermin.
Yes, I do see
The wronger, and will cut her from my heart,—
Pare myself of her utterly. Thou nature,
Living or dead, thou influence or thou ruler,
I invocate the heaven to hear my charge.
Who tied my heart unto Leonigild
With gordian love-knots of its thousand strings,
Then tore them all away to bleed and wither?
Was it not nature?
Who quickened next that heart a lovely babe,
And when its little smile had learnt its mother,
When thought was rising in its heavenly eye,
Bade the grave jump and snap it? The same nature.
Here lies a brother in my dead embrace,
Loved after, as before, his human life;
For in each other's unborn arms we lay,
Bedfellows in our mother. Who poisoned him,
Alone among the horrible sea-waves,
And then—O murderess above fratricide,
To kill the sister with the brother's corpse!—
Sent him a gift to me? Again 'twas nature.
I had a husband; nature widowed me:—
A child; she kidnapped it to earth a tree:—
A brother; him she murdered with her waves:—
Me she would madden:—therefore I defy,
Curse, and abandon Nature henceforth ever.
And, though I cannot creep up to my mother,
Or flow back to my father's veins again,—
Resex or uncreate me; thus much can I:
I will spunge out the sweetness of my heart,
And suck up horror; woman's thoughts I'll kill,
And leave their bodies rotting in my mind,
Hoping their worms will sting; although not man,
Yet will I out of hate engender much,—
I'll be the father of a world of ghosts,
And get the grave with a carcase. For the rest,
I will encorpse me in my brother's garments,
Pick me a heart out of a devil's side,
And so, my own creator, my own child,
Tread on the womb of nature, unbegotten.
Now then, ye waves, I step on you again,
And into my new self, my life outlived:
Come back and kneel, thou world; submit thy side,
And take me on thy neck again, new-made,
Fiend-hearted, woman-corpsed, but man-arrayed.

II. AN APOTHEOSIS.

Dianeme and female attendants.
Dianeme.
Sing on, sing ever, and let sobs arise
Beneath the current of your harmony,
Breaking its silvery stillness into gushes
Of stealing sadness: let tears fall upon it,
And burst with such a sound, as when a lute-string,
Torn by the passion of its melody,
Gasps its whole soul of music in one sound,
And dies beneath the waves of its own voice!
Be pale thou mooned midnight, and ye stars
Shed fluttering tremours of inconstant light
Upon the moaning billows; timid leaves
O'erwhelm yourselves with shadow, and give out
Your dewy titterings to the air no more!
Clouds, clouds, dark, deadly clouds, let not the moon
Look on his grave!—It is too light: the day
Will rise before I die: how old is evening?

Attend.
The tide of darkness now is at its height.
Yon lily-woven cradle of the hours
Hath floated half her shining voyage, nor yet
Is by the current of the morn opposed.

Dianeme.
The hour is coming: I must give my soul
To the same moment on whose precious air
My Casimir soared heavenward, for I know
There are a million chambers of the dead,
And every other minute but the same
Would bear me to the one where he is not,
And that were madness. Bring me yon sick lily,—
Yon fevered one.

Attend.
Choose any other, lady,
For this is broken, odourless, and scorched,—
Where Death has graved his curse.

Dianeme.

[She dies.

III. The Israelite amid Philistines.

Enter Ezril dragged in by two Venetians.
Ezril.
Help! help, you kindly people of this place!
Help for the helpless old! Have mercy, sirs!
Oh! it is in your hearts, deny it not;
Shut not your ears to its enchanting tongue.
It will unlock a heaven in your souls,
Wherein my pardon and my pity sits.
I kneel to you, as you unto your god:
Reject me not, teach him not cruelty.
Be heavenly, as you can.

1st Venet.
Hush! frosty jew!
Or take my answer from this tongue of steel.

Ezril.
When you are old, and fearful,
With age's wintry winds shaking your limbs,
Thus may you cry, thus may you wring your hands,—

1st Venet.
And thus be struck. Once more have silence with thee,
Or death possess me if I stab thee not.
Now comrade, shall we let the coward live?

2nd Venet.
Wilt thou betray us, dotard?

Ezril.
By my life,
If you will grant me it to swear upon,
Never!

1st Venet.
It is a rubbed and brittle oath,
As what 'tis sworn: break one, thou breakest both.
I'll snap thy being like a frozen breath,
If thou breathest falsely.

Ezril.
If I kill my truth,
Drive thy revenge into my midmost heart.

1st Venet.
Hark, once again! Where wert thou journeying, jew,
With gold-stuffed panniers, thus?

Ezril.
To Venice town.—
Alas! remind me not of my dear riches,
The beauteous jewels of my bosom; take them.—
I would that I were stouter in my soul,
That I dared die!—Be gentle with the sacks;
They're full of fair, white silver: as I tied them,
I felt their strings run tickling through my veins.

1st Venet.
O ho! here's royal booty, on my soul:
A draught of ducats! By this silver sight
I love thee, bushy dog, and thou shalt live
To sweep the corners of men's souls again.
Be comforted. Let's toss them on our shoulders,
And swim the Po.

2nd Venet.
First, look you here, old man:
There's a clenched hand; dost see?

Ezril.
'Tis hard as iron: (aside)

Hell melt it so!

2nd Venet.
And in't a sword:—

Ezril.
(aside)
As sharp as are the teeth
Of my heart's father, a fierce curse of thee.—
What then, sir?

2nd Venet.
Speak once of us,
Look after us, or press that foot of thine
Upon yon lip of Po, where Venice grows,—
They're in thy muddy body to the wrist.

[Exeunt Veneti.
Ezril.

Enter Marcello.
Marcello.
Hail, country of my birth!
We're met in season; winter in us both,
The fruit picked from us, poor and snowy-scalped,
And almost solitary. I did turn
An ermined shoulder on thee, when I stepped
Out of thine airy door of earth and sky,
Upon that watery threshold;
And now I face thee with a ragged front:
A coin of Fate's cross-stamp, that side a Duke,
And this, which Time turns up, (so hell might stick
Upon the back of heaven,) a scratched despair! [OMITTED]

IV. Lovers' Identity.

Erminia.
Is it Zenobio?

Zenobio.
Ay, that's my body's name, for my dear soul
Is not so called: when you would speak of that,
Which is myself more than the thing you see,
Only say “Erminia.”—And what readeth she,
Who called Zenobio?

Erminia.
An unhappy tale
Of two who loved, with so unusual faith,
That their affection rose up into heaven,
And there was deified: (for the blind child,
Whom men of this late world invoke and swear by,
Is the usurper of that first love's name,
Indeed an idol, a false deity:)
—A pedant's dream!

Zenobio.
We know it to be so.
For not externally this love can live,
But in the soul, as life within the body:
And what is Love alone? Are there not two?
—But, dearest, you were telling—

Erminia.
Of this pair:
One from the beauty and the grace of youth,
One, innocent and youthful, perished.
The other,—what could she, O widowed thing!
With but a pale and fading memory
Left in the hollow of her heart?

Zenobio.
What could she?
But let her deathly life pass into death,
Like music on the night-wind; moaning, moaning,
Until it sleeps.

Erminia.
Worse, worse, much worse than that,
Or aught else of despair or common madness.
Cheerfully did she live, quietly end
A joyous age alone! This is to me
More woeful, and more murderous of hope,
Than any desperate story.

Zenobio.
So it would be,
If thought on with the general sense of man.
But know this surely: in that woman's breast
Lived the two souls, that were before divided.
For otherwise, be sure, she could not live;
But so, much happier than ever.

V. Prison Thoughts.

Scene, a dungeon: Orazio solus.
Orazio.
I'll speak again:
This rocky wall's great silence frightens me,
Like a dead giant's.
Methought I heard a sound; but all is still.
This empty silence is so deadly low,
The very stir and winging of my thoughts
Make audible my being: every sense
Aches from its depth with hunger.
The pulse of time is stopped, and night's blind sun
Sheds its black light, the ashes of noon's beams,
On this forgotten tower, whose ugly round,
Amid the fluency of brilliant morn,
Hoops in a blot of parenthetic night,
Like ink upon the chrystal page of day,
Crossing its joy! But now some lamp awakes,
And, with the venom of a basilisk's wink,
Burns the dark winds. Who comes?

Enter Ezril.
Ezril.
There's food for thee.
Eat heartily; be mirthful with your cup;
Though coarse and scanty.

Orazio.
I'll not taste of it.
To the dust, to the air with the cursed liquids
And poison-kneaded bread.

Ezril.
Why dost thou this?

Orazio.
I know thee and thy master: honey-lipped,
Viper-tongued villain, that dost bait intents,
As crook'd and murderous as the scorpion's sting,
With mercy's sugared milk, and poisonest
The sweetest teat of matron charity! [OMITTED]

VI. Man's petty Universe contrasted with the True.

Scene: the abyss of Space: Ambrosius and Cynthia in the car, returning to the earth. Ambrosius loquitur.
O what a deep delight it is to cleave,
Out-darting thought, above all sight and sound,
And sweep the ceiling of the universe,
Thus with our locks! How it does mad the heart,
How dances it along the living veins,
Like hot and steaming wine! How my eyes ache
With gazing on this mighty vacancy!
O Universe of earth and air and ocean,
Which man calls infinite, where art thou now?
Sooner a babe should pierce the marble ear
Of death, and startle his tombed ancestor,
'Mid Hell's thick laughter, shrieks, and flamy noises,
With cradle-pulings, than the gathered voice
Of every thunder, ocean, and wild blast,
Find thee, thou atom, in this wilderness!
This boundless emptiness, this waveless sea,
This desert of vacuity, alone
Is great: and thou, for whom the word was made,
Art as the wren's small goblet of a home
Unto the holy vastness of the temple! [OMITTED]

VII. Recognition.

Soft! Stand away! those features—Do not stir!
Be breathless if thou canst!.. The trembling ray
Of some approaching thought, I know not what,
Gleams on my darkened mind. It will be here
Directly: now I feel it growing, growing,
Like a man's shadow, when the sun floats slowly
Through the white border of a baffled cloud:
And now the pale conception furls and thickens.
'Tis settled.—Yes—Beroe!—How dare thy cheek
Be wan and withered as a wrinkling moon
Upon the tumbled waves? Why camest thou here?
I dreamt of thee last night, as thou wert once,
But I shall never dream of thee again.

VIII. Reception of Evil Tidings.

IX. A Ruffian.

There's a fellow
With twisting root-like hair up to his eyes,
And they are streaked with red and starting out
Under their bristling brows; his crooked tusks
Part, like a hungry wolf's, his cursing mouth;
His head is frontless, and a swinish mane
Grows o'er his shoulders:—brown and warty hands,
Like roots, with pointed nails.—He is the man.

X. Recollection of Early Life.

Leaf after leaf, like a magician's book
Turned in a dragon-guarded hermitage
By tress-disheveling spirits of the air,
My life unfolds.

XI. A Crocodile.

Hard by the lilied Nile I saw
A duskish river-dragon stretched along,
The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled
With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl:
And on his back there lay a young one sleeping,
No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads,
And a small fragment of its speckled egg
Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout;
A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch
The baulking, merry flies. In the iron jaws
Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul
Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew
A snowy troculus, with roseate beak
Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.

XII. “Bona de Mortuis.”

Ay, ay: good man, kind father, best of friends—
These are the words that grow, like grass and nettles,
Out of dead men, and speckled hatreds hide,
Like toads, among them.

XIII. Rosily dying.

I'll take that fainting rose
Out of his breast; perhaps some sigh of his
Lives in the gyre of its kiss-coloured leaves.
O pretty rose, hast thou thy flowery passions
Then put thyself into a scented rage,
And breathe on me some poisonous revenge.
For it was I, thou languid, silken blush,
Who orphaned thy green family of thee,
In their closed infancy: therefore receive
My life, and spread it on thy shrunken petals,
And give to me thy pink, reclining death.

XIV. Speaker's Meaning dimly descried.

I know not whether
I see your meaning: if I do, it lies
Upon the wordy wavelets of your voice,
Dim as an evening shadow in a brook,
When the least moon has silver on't no larger
Than the pure white of Hebe's pinkish nail.

XV. Anticipation of Evil Tidings.

I fear there is some maddening secret
Hid in your words, (and at each turn of thought
Comes up a scull,) like an anatomy
Found in a weedy hole, 'mongst stones and roots
And straggling reptiles, with his tongueless mouth
Telling of murder.

XVI. Midnight Hymn.

And many voices marshalled in one hymn
Wound through the night, whose still, translucent moments
Lay on each side their breath; and the hymn passed
Its long, harmonious populace of words
Between the silvery silences, as when
The slaves of Egypt, like a wind between
The head and trunk of a dismembered king
On a strewn plank, with blood and footsteps sealed,
Vallied the unaccustomed sea.

XVII. Concealed Joy.

Just now a beam of joy hung on his eye-lash;
But, as I looked, it sunk into his eye,
Like a bruised worm writhing its form of rings
Into a darkening hole.

XVIII. Life a Glass Window.

Let him lean
Against his life, that glassy interval
'Twixt us and nothing; and, upon the ground
Of his own slippery breath, draw hueless dreams,
And gaze on frost-work hopes. Uncourteous Death
Knuckles the pane, and [OMITTED]

XIX. A Dream.

Last night I looked into a dream; 'twas drawn
On the black midnight of a velvet sleep,
And set in woeful thoughts; and there I saw
A thin, pale Cupid, with bare, ragged wings
Like skeletons of leaves, in autumn left,
That sift the frosty air. One hand was shut,
And in its little hold of ivory
Fastened a May-morn zephyr, frozen straight,
Made deadly with a hornet's rugged sting,
Gilt with the influence of an adverse star.
Such was his weapon, and he traced with it,
Upon the waters of my thoughts, these words:
“I am the death of flowers, and nightingales,
And small-lipped babes, that give their souls to summer
To make a perfumed day with: I shall come,
A death no larger than a sigh to thee,
Upon a sunset hour.”—And so he passed
Into the place where faded rainbows are,
Dying along the distance of my mind;
As down the sea Europa's hair-pearls fell
When, through the Cretan waves, the curly bull
Dashed, tugging at a stormy plough, whose share
Was of the northern hurricane—

XX. Metaphor of Rain.

An amorous cloud
Lets down her rustling hair over the sun.

XXI. Meditation.

The bitter past
And the untasted future I mix up,
Making the present a dream-figured bowl
For the black poison, which is caked and moulded,
By the inside of the enchasing thoughts,
Even as I taste it.

XXII. Sweet to Die.

Is it not sweet to die? for, what is death,
But sighing that we ne'er may sigh again,
Getting at length beyond our tedious selves;
But trampling the last tear from poisonous sorrow,
Spilling our woes, crushing our frozen hopes,
And passing like an incense out of man?
Then, if the body felt, what were its sense,
Turning to daisies gently in the grave,
If not the soul's most delicate delight
When it does filtrate, through the pores of thought,
In love and the enamelled flowers of song?

XXIII. Extreme Acclivity.

Its impossible ascent was steep,
As are the million pillars of a shower
Torn, shivered, and dashed hard against the earth,
When Day no longer breathes.

XXIV. Rain.

The blue, between yon star-nailed cloud
The double-mountain and this narrow valley,
Is strung with rain, like a fantastic lyre.

XXV. Life's Uncertainty.

A.
The king looks well, red in its proper place
The middle of the cheek, and his eye's round
Black as a bit of night.

B.
Yet men die suddenly:
One sits upon a strong and rocky life,
Watching a street of many opulent years,
And Hope's his mason. Well! to-day do this,
And so to-morrow; twenty hollow years
Are stuffed with action:—lo! upon his head
Drops a pin's point of time; tick! quoth the clock,
And the grave snaps him.

A.
Such things may have been;
The crevice 'twixt two after-dinner minutes,
The crack between a pair of syllables,
May sometimes be a grave as deep as 'tis
From noon to midnight in the hoop of time.
But for this man, his life wears ever steel
From which disease drops blunted. If indeed
Death lay in the market-place, or were—but hush!
See you the tremble of that myrtle bough?
Does no one listen?

B.
Nothing with a tongue:
The grass is dumb since Midas, and no Æsop
Translates the crow or hog. Within the myrtle
Sits a hen-robin, trembling like a star,
Over her brittle eggs.

A.
Is it no more?

B.
Nought: let her hatch.

XXVI. Kisses.

Her kisses are
Soft as a snow-tuft in the dewless cup
Of a redoubled rose, noiselessly falling
When heaven is brimful of starry night.

XXVII. Subterranean City.

Can it then be, that the earth loved some city,
Another planet's child, so long, so truly,
That here we find its image next her heart,
Like an abandoned, melancholy thought?

XXVIII. Dream of Dying.

Shivering in fever, weak, and parched to sand,
My ears, those entrances of word-dressed thoughts,
My pictured eyes, and my assuring touch,
Fell from me, and my body turned me forth
From its beloved abode: then I was dead;
And in my grave beside my corpse I sat,
In vain attempting to return: meantime
There came the untimely spectres of two babes,
And played in my abandoned body's ruins;
They went away; and, one by one, by snakes
My limbs were swallowed; and, at last, I sat
With only one, blue-eyed, curled round my ribs,
Eating the last remainder of my heart,
And hissing to himself. O sleep, thou fiend!
Thou blackness of the night! how sad and frightful
Are these thy dreams!

XXIX. Insignificance of the World.

Why what's the world and time? a fleeting thought
In the great meditating universe,
A brief parenthesis in chaos.

XXX. Sleeper's Countenance contemplated.

Duke.
There smiles methinks
A cherished dream, that lies upon her lips
As the word love deep written in a rose,
With which the story of our youth begins.
Could'st thou but see whose image so delights her!

Ziba.
Her thoughts are far from us in early childhood:
For 'tis our wont to dream of distant friends
And half-forgotten times.

XXXI. A beautiful Night.

How lovely is the heaven of this night,
How deadly still its earth! The forest brute
Has crept into his cave, and laid himself
Where sleep has made him harmless like the lamb.
The horrid snake, his venom now forgot,
Is still and innocent as the honied flower
Under his head: and man, in whom are met
Leopard and snake, and all the gentleness
And beauty of the young lamb and the bud,
Has let his ghost out, put his thoughts aside
And lent his senses unto death himself.

XXXII. Humble Beginnings.

Why, Rome was naked once, a bastard smudge,
Tumbled on straw, the denfellow of whelps,
Fattened on roots, and, when a-thirst for milk,
He crept beneath and drank the swagging udder
Of Tyber's brave she-wolf; and Heaven's Judea
Was folded in a pannier.

XXXIII. A Countenance foreboding Evil.

Thy gloomy features, like a midnight dial,
Scowl the dark index of a fearful hour.

XXXIV. A lofty Mind.

His thoughts are so much higher than his state,
That, like a mountain hanging o'er a hut,
They chill and darken it.

XXXV. Sorrow.

Sorrow! Hast thou seen Sorrow asleep,
When thick sighs break the wholeness of her mouth,
And one tear trembles in her upward eye,
Part clammy on the dark threads of her lash,
Part yet within her dream? One moony night
I found her so, a pale, cold babe, and beauteous,
In slumber, as Consumption, just before
She's christened Death. I pressed her in my arms,
And took upon my lip the hurrying tear
Off her warm neck.

XXXVI. Sad and cheerful Songs contrasted.

Sing me no more such ditties: they are well
For the last gossips, when the snowy wind
Howls in the chimney till the very taper
Trembles with its blue flame, and the bolted gates
Rattle before old winter's palsied hand.
If you will sing, let it be cheerily
Of dallying love. There's many a one among you
Hath sung, beneath our oak trees to his maiden,
Light bird-like mockeries, fit for love in spring time.
Sing such a one.

XXXVII. A subterranean City.

I followed once a fleet and mighty serpent
Into a cavern in a mountain's side;
And, wading many lakes, descending gulphs,
At last I reached the ruins of a city,
Built not like ours but of another world,
As if the aged earth had loved in youth
The mightiest city of a perished planet,
And kept the image of it in her heart,
So dream-like, shadowy, and spectral was it.
Nought seemed alive there, and the bony dead
Were of another world the skeletons.
The mammoth, ribbed like to an arched cathedral,
Lay there, and ruins of great creatures else
More like a shipwrecked fleet, too vast they seemed
For all the life that is to animate:
And vegetable rocks, tall sculptured palms,
Pines grown, not hewn, in stone; and giant ferns,
Whose earthquake-shaken leaves bore graves for nests.

XXXVIII. Man's anxious, but ineffectual, Guard against Death.

Luckless man
Avoids the miserable bodkin's point,
And, flinching from the insect's little sting,
In pitiful security keeps watch,
While 'twixt him and that hypocrite the sun,
To which he prays, comes windless pestilence,
Transparent as a glass of poisoned water
Through which the drinker sees his murderer smiling;
She stirs no dust, and makes no grass to nod,
Yet every footstep is a thousand graves,
And every breath of her's as full of ghosts
As a sunbeam with motes.

XXXIX. A Day of surpassing Beauty.

The earth is bright, her forests all are golden;
A cloud of flowers breathes blushing over her,
And, whispering from bud to blossom, opens
The half-awakened memory of the song
She heard in childhood from the mystic sun.
There is some secret stirring in the world,
A thought that seeks impatiently its word:
A crown, or cross, for one is born to day.

XL. The slight and degenerate Nature of Man.

Antediluvianus loquitur.
Pitiful post-diluvians! from whose hearts
The print of passions by the tide of hours
Is washed away for ever and for ever,
As lions' footmark on the ocean sands;
While we, Adam's coevals, carry in us
The words indelible of buried feelings,
Like the millennial trees, whose hoary barks
Grow o'er the secrets cut into their core.

XLI. A Night-Scene.

The lake, like her, heaves gently
Its breast of waves under a heaven of sleep,
And pictures in its soothed, transparent being
The depth of worlds o'erhanging: o'er the pillow,
Washed by the overflowing, flowery locks,
A silver promise of the moon is breathed:
And the light veil of hieroglyphic clouds
The curious wind rends ever and anon,
Revealing the deep dream of Alpine heights,
Which fill the distance of its wondering spirit,
And on its hectic cheeks the prophecies
Do fearfully reflect, that flicker up
Out of the sun's grave underneath the world.

XLII. Dirge.

No tears, no sighings, no despair,
No trembling dewy smile of care,
No mourning weeds,
Nought that discloses
A heart that bleeds;
But looks contented I will bear,
And o'er my cheeks strew roses.
Unto the world I may not weep,
But save my sorrow all, and keep
A secret heart, sweet soul, for thee,
As the great earth and swelling sea— [OMITTED]

XLIII. Mourners consoled.

Dead, is he? What's that further than a word,
Hollow as is the armour of a ghost
Whose chinks the moon he haunts doth penetrate.
Belief in death is the fell superstition,
That hath appalled mankind and chained it down,
A slave unto the dismal mystery
Which old opinion dreams beneath the tombstone.
Dead is he, and the grave shall wrap him up?
And this you see is he? And all is ended?
Ay this is cold, that was a glance of him
Out of the depth of his immortal self;
This utterance and token of his being
His spirit hath let fall, and now is gone
To fill up nature and complete her being.
The form, that here is fallen, was the engine,
Which drew a mighty stream of spiritual power
Out of the world's own soul, and made it play
In visible motion, as the lofty tower
Leads down the animating fire of heaven
To the world's use. That instrument is broken,
And in another sphere the spirit works,
Which did appropriate to human functions
A portion of the ghostly element.—
This then is all your Death.

XLIV. A great Sacrifice self-compensated.

True I have had much comfort gazing on thee,
Much too perhaps in thinking I might have thee
Nearly myself, a fellow soul to live with.
But, weighing well man's frail and perilous tenure
Of all good in the restless, wavy world,
Ne'er dared I set my soul on any thing
Which but a touch of time can shake to pieces.
Alone in the eternal is my hope.
Took I thee? that intensest joy of love
Would soon grow fainter and at last dissolve.
But, if I yield thee, there is something done
Which from the crumbling earth my soul divorces,
And gives it room to be a greater spirit.
There is a greater pang, methinks, in nature
When she takes back the life of a dead world,
Than when a new one severs from her depth
Its bright, revolving birth. So I'll not hoard thee,
But let thee part, reluctant, though in hope
That greater happiness will thence arise.

XLV. “Love is wiser than Ambition.”

Amala.
O give not up the promise of your time
For me: for what? an evanescent woman,
A rose-leaf scarce unfolded ere it falls. Your days
Should be a wood of laurels evergreen:
Seek glory!

Athulf.
Glory! To be sung to tuneless harps!
A picture, and a name; to live for death!
Seek glory? Never. The world's gossip Fame
Is busy in the market-place, the change,
At court or wrangling senate, noting down
Him of the fattest purse, the fabulous crest,
The tongue right honied or most poisonous.
If Glory goes among the bristling spears,
Which war is mowing down; or walks the wave,
When Fate weighs kingdoms in their battle-fleets;
Or watches the still student at his work,
Reading the laws of nature in the heavens,
Or earth's minutest creature; she may find me:
If not, I am contented with oblivion,
As all the other millions. My sweet fair,
One little word of confidence and love,
From lips beloved, thrilleth more my heart
Than brightest trumpet-touch of statued Fame.
My bird of Paradise, tell me some news
Of your own home.

Amala.
My home should be your heart:
What shall I tell of that?

Athulf.
Can you not see?
Surely the love that burns before thy image,
As sunny as a burning diamond,
Must shed its light without.

XLVI. The Murderer's haunted Couch.

Isbr.
[he seizes the sleeping Duke.

Duke.
Angel of Death!
Can it be? No, 'tis a grave-digging vision:
The world is somewhere else. Yet even this
Methought I dreamt, and now it stands beside me,
Rattling in iron.

Isbr.
Ay, the murderer's vision
Is ever so: for at the word, “I'm murdered,”
The gaolers of the dead throw back the grave-stone,
Split the deep ocean, and unclose the mountain,
And let the buried pass. I am more real
Than any airy spirit of a dream,
As Death is mightier, stronger, and more faithful
To man, than Life.

Duke.
Wolfram!—Nay thy grasp
Is warm, thy bosom heaves, thou breath'st, imposter—
Let iron answer iron, flesh crush flesh;
Thou art no spirit, fool.

Isbr.

[Exit.
Duke.
Hold! mercy! . . . 'Tis enough . . .
Curse shoulders curse, as in a bloody river.
I will no more.

XLVII. Human Life: its value.

Think, what I plead for: for a life! the gift
Of God alone, whom he, who saves't, is likest.
How glorious to live! Even in one thought
The wisdom of past-times to fit together,
And from the luminous minds of many men
Catch a reflected truth; as, in one eye,
Light, from unnumbered worlds and furthest planets
Of the star-crowded universe, is gathered
Into one ray.—

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

ALFARABI; THE WORLD-MAKER.

A rhapsodical fragment.

'Twas in those days
That never were, nor ever shall be, reader,
But on this paper; golden, glorious days,
Such as the sun, (poor fellow! by the way,
Where is he? I've not seen him all this winter,)—
Never could spin: days, as I said before,
Which shall be made as fine as ink can make them;
So, clouds, avaunt! and Boreas, hence! to blow
Old Ætna's porridge. We will make the sun
Rise, like a gentleman, at noon; clasped round
With the bright armour of his May-day beams;
The summer-garland on his beaming curls,
With buds of palest brightness; and one cloud—
Yes, (I'm an Englishman,) one snow-winged cloud,
To wander slowly down the trembling blue;
A wind that stops and pants along the grass,
Trembles and flies again, like thing pursued;
And indescribable, delightful sounds,
Which dart along the sky, we know not whence;
Bees we must have to hum, shrill-noted swallows
With their small, lightning wings, to fly about,
And tilt against the waters:—that will do.
And now, dear climate, only think what days
I'd make if you'd employ me: you should have
A necklace, every year, of such as this;
Each bead of the three hundred sixty five—
(Excuse me, puss, (&) I could'nt get you in,)
Made up of sunshine, moonshine, and blue skies:
Starlight I'd give you in:—but where are we?
I see: 'twas in those days that Alfarabi lived;
A man renowned in the newspapers:
He wrote in two reviews; raw pork at night
He ate, and opium; kept a bear at college:
A most extraordinary man was he.
But he was one not satisfied with man,
As man has made himself: he thought this life
Was something deeper than a jest, and sought
Into its roots: himself was his best science.
He touched the springs, the unheeded hieroglyphics
Deciphered; like an antiquary sage
Within an house of office, which he takes
For druid temple old, here he picked up
A tattered thought, and turned it o'er and o'er
'Till it was spelled; the names of all the tenants,
Pencilled upon the wall, he would unite;
Until he found the secret and the spell
Of life. 'Twas not by Logic, reader;
Her and her crabbed sister, Metaphysics,
Left he to wash Thought's shirt, the shirt bemired
On that proverbial morning. By his own mind,
The lamp that never fails us, dared we trust it,
He read the mystery; and it was one
To the dull sense of common man unknown,
Incomprehensible; a miracle
Of magic, yet as true and obvious,
For thoughtful ones to hit on, as the sun.
He knew the soul would free itself in sleep
From her dull sister, bear itself away,
Freer than air: to guide it with his will,
To bear his mortal sight and memory,
On these excursions, was the power he found.
He found it, and he used it. For, one night,
By the internal vision he saw Sleep,
Just after dinner, tapping at the door
Of his next neighbour, the old alderman.
Sleep rode a donkey with a pair of wings,
And, having fastened its ethereal bridle
Unto the rails, walked in. Now, Alfarabi!
Leap, Alfarabi! There! the saddle's won:
He kicks, he thwacks, he spurs,—the donkey flies.
On soared they, like the bright thought of an eye,
'Mid the infinity of elements.
First through the azure meads of night and day,
Among the rushing of the million flames,
They passed the bearded dragon-star, unchained
From Hell, (of old its sun,) flashing its way
Upon those wings, compact of mighty clouds
Bloodshot and black, or flaring devilish light,
Whose echo racks the shrieking universe,
Whose glimpse is tempest. O'er each silent star
Slept like a tomb that dark, marmoreal bird,
That spell-bound ocean, Night,—her breast o'erwrit
With golden secresies. All these he passed,
One after one: as he, who stalks by night,
With the ghost's step, the shaggy murderer
Leaves passed the dreamy city's sickly lamps.
Then through the horrid twilight did they plunge,
The universe's suburbs; dwelling dim
Of all that sin and suffer; midnight shrieks
Upon the water, when no help is nigh;
The blood-choaked curse of him who dies in bed
By torch-light, with a dagger in his heart;
The parricidal and incestuous laugh;
And the last cries of those whom devils hale
Quick into hell; deepened the darkness.
And there were sounds of wings, broken and swift;
Blows of wrenched poniards, muffled in thick flesh;
Struggles and tramplings wild, splashes and falls,
And inarticulate yells from human breasts.
Nought was beheld: but Alfarabi's heart
Turned in his bosom, like a scorched leaf,
And his soul faded. When again he saw,
His steed had paused. It was within a space
Upon the very boundary and brim
Of the whole universe, the outer edge
Which seemed almost to end the infinite zone;
A chasm in the almighty thoughts, forgotten
By the omnipotent; a place apart,
Like some great, ruinous dream of broken worlds
Tumbling through heaven, or Tartarus' panting jaws
Open above the sun. Sky was there none,
Nor earth, nor water: but confusion strange;
Mountainous ribs and adamantine limbs
Of bursten worlds, and brazen pinions vast
Of planets ship-wrecked; many a wrinkled sun
Ate to the core by worms, with lightnings crushed;
And drossy bolts, melting like noonday snow.
Old towers of heaven were there, and fragments bright
Of the cerulean battlements, o'erthrown
When the gods struggled for the throne of light;
And 'mid them all a living mystery,
A shapeless image, or a vision wrapt
In clouds, and guessed at by its fearful shade;
Most like a ghost of the eternal flame,
An indistinct and unembodied horror
Which prophecies have told of; not wan Death,
Nor War the bacchanal of blood, nor Plague
The purple beast, but their great serpent-sire,
Destruction's patriarch, (dread name to speak!)
The End of all, the Universe's Death.
At that dread, ghostly thing, the atmosphere
And light of this, the world's, black charnel house,
Low bowed the Archimage, and thrice his life
Upraised its wing for passage; but the spell
Prevailed, and to his purposed task he rose.
He called unto the dead, and the swart powers,
That wander unconfined beyond the sight
Or thought of mortals; and, from the abyss
Of cavernous deep night, came forth the hands,
That dealt the mallet when this world of ours
Lay quivering on the anvil in its ore,—
Hands of eternal stone, which would unmesh
And fray this starry company of orbs,
As a young infant, on a dewy morn,
Rends into nought the tear-hung gossamer.
—To work they went, magician, hands, and Co,
With tongs and trowels, needles, scissors, paste,
Solder and glue, to make another world:
And, as a tinker, 'neath a highway hedge,
Turns, taps, and batters, rattles, bangs, and scrapes
A stew-pan ruinous,—or as, again,
The sibylline dame Gurton, ere she lost
Th'immortal bodkin, staunched the gaping wound
In Hodge's small-clothes famed,—so those great hands
Whisked round their monstrous loom, here stitching in
An island of green vallies, fitting there
A mountain extra with a hook and eye,
Caulking the sea, hemming the continents,
And lacing all behind to keep it tight.
'Tis done,—'tis finished; and between the thumb
Depends, and the forefinger,—like a toy,
Button with pin impaled, in winter games
That dances on the board,—and now it flies
Into the abyssal blueness, spinning and bright,
Just at old Saturn's tail. The necromancer
Puffed from his pipe a British climate round,
And stars and moon, and angels beamed upon it.
Just as it joined the midnight choir of worlds,
It chanced a bearded sage espied it's sweep,
And named it Georgium Sidus.

THE ROMANCE OF THE LILY.

PYGMALION.

LINES WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF THE ‘PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.’

Write it in gold—A spirit of the sun,
An intellect a-blaze with heavenly thoughts,
A soul with all the dews of pathos shining,
Odorous with love, and sweet to silent woe
With the dark glories of concentrate song,
Was sphered in mortal earth. Angelic sounds
Alive with panting thoughts sunned the dim world.
The bright creations of an human heart
Wrought magic in the bosoms of mankind.
A flooding summer burst on poetry;
Of which the crowning sun, the night of beauty,
The dancing showers, the birds, whose anthems wild
Note after note unbind the enchanted leaves
Of breaking buds, eve, and the flow of dawn,
Were centred and condensed in his one name
As in a providence,—and that was Shelley.

SONNET:

TO TARTAR, A TERRIER BEAUTY.

Snow-drop of dogs, with ear of brownest dye,
Like the last orphan leaf of naked tree
Which shudders in bleak autumn; though by thee,
Of hearing careless and untutored eyes,
Not understood articulate speech of men,
Nor marked the artificial mind of books,
—The mortal's voice eternized by the pen,—
Yet hast thou thought and language all unknown
To Babel's scholars; oft intensest looks,
Long scrutiny o'er some dark-veined stone
Dost thou bestow, learning dead mysteries
Of the world's birth-day, oft in eager tone
With quick-tailed fellows bandiest prompt replies,
Solicitudes canine, four-footed amities.

LETTER TO B. W. PROCTER, ESQ.

FROM OXFORD; MAY, 1825.

In every tower, that Oxford has, is swung,
Quick, loud, or solemn, the monotonous tongue
Which speaks Time's language, the universal one
After the countenance of moon or sun,—
Translating their still motions to the earth.
I cannot read; the reeling belfry's mirth
Troubles my senses; therefore, Greek, shut up
Your dazzling pages; covered be the cup
Which Homer has beneath his mantle old,
Steamy with boiling life: your petals fold
You fat, square blossoms of the yet young tree
Of Britain-grafted, flourishing Germany:
Hush! Latin, to your grave:—and, with the chime,
My pen shall turn the minutes into rhyme,
And, like the dial, blacken them. There sits,
Or stands, or lounges, or perhaps on bits
Of this rag's daughter, paper, exorcises,
With strange black marks and inky wild devices,
The witch of worlds, the echo of great verse,
About the chasms of the universe,
Ringing and bounding immortality.—
Give him thy bosom, dark Melpomene,
And let him of thy goblet and thine eye
Exhaust the swimming, deep insanity.
He hath the soul, O let it then be fed,
Sea after sea, with that which is not read,
Nor wrung by reasoning from a resolute head,
But comes like lightning on a hill-top steeple;
Heaven's spillings on the lofty laurelled people.
Verse to thee, light to thee, wings upraise thee long
In the unvacillating soar of song,
Thou star-seed of a man! But do not dare
To tempt thy Apollonian god too far,
Clogging and smoking thy young snake, Renown,
In the strait, stony shadows of the town,
Lest he grow weak, and pine, and never be
What he was born, twin to Eternity.
So come, shake London from thy skirts away:
So come, forget not it is England's May.
For Oxford, ho! by moonlight or by sun:
Our horses are not hours, but rather run
Foot by foot faster than the second-sand,
While the old sunteam, like a plough, doth stand
Stuck in thick heaven. Here thou at morn shalt see
Spring's dryad-wakening whisper call the tree,
And move it to green answers; and beneath,
Each side the river which the fishes breathe,
Daisies and grass, whose tops were never stirred,
Or dews made tremulous, but by foot of bird.
And you shall mark in spring's heaven-tapestried room
Yesterday's knoppe, burst by its wild perfume,
Like woman's childhood, to this morning's bloom;
And here a primrose pale beneath a tree,
And here a cowslip longing for its bee,
And violets and lilies every one
Grazing in the great pasture of the sun,
Beam after beam, visibly as the grass
Is swallowed by the lazy cows that pass.
Come look, come walk,—and there shall suddenly
Seize you a rapture and a phantasy;
High over mountain sweeping, fast and high
Through all the intricacies of the sky,
As fast and far a ship-wrecked hoard of gold
Dives ocean, cutting every billow's fold.
These are the honey-minutes of the year
Which make man god, and make a god—Shakespeare.
Come, gather them with me. . If not, then go,
And with thee all the ghosts of Jonson's toe,
The fighting Tartars and the Carthaginians:
And may your lady-muse's stiff-winged pinions
Be naked and impossible to fly,
Like a fat goose pen-plucked for poetry.
A curse upon thy cream to make it sour:
A curse upon thy tea-pot every hour;
Spirits of ice possess it! and thy tea,
Changed at its contact, hay and straw leaves be!
A cold and nipping ague on thine urn!
And an invisible canker eat and burn
The mathematic picture, near your fire,
Of the grave, compass-handed, quiet sire!
No more.—Be these the visions of your sorrow
When you have read this doggrel through to-morrow,
And then refuse to let our Oxford borrow
You of the smoky-faced, Augustan town,
And unpersuaded drop the paper down.

ANOTHER LETTER TO THE SAME.

FROM GÖTTINGEN; MARCH, 1826.

To-day a truant from the odd, old bones
And rinds of flesh, which, as tamed rocks and stones
Piled cavernously make his body's dwelling,
Have housed man's soul: there, where time's billows swelling
Roll a deep, ghostly, and invisible sea
Of melted worlds antediluvially,
Upon the sand of ever-crumbling hours,
God-founded, stands the castle, all its towers
With veiny tendrils ivied:—this bright day
I leave its chambers, and with oars away
Seek some enchanted island, where to play.
And what do you that in the enchantment dwell,
And should be raving ever? a wild swell
Of passionate life rolling about the world,
Now sun-sucked to the clouds, dashed on the curled
Leaf-hidden daisies, an incarnate storm
Letting the sun through on the meadows yellow,
Or anything except that earthy fellow,
That wise dog's brother, man. O shame to tell!
Make tea in Circe's cup, boil the cool well,
The well Pierian, which no bird dare sip
But nightingales. There let kettles dip
Who write their simpering sonnets to its song,
And walk on sundays in Parnassus' park:—
Take thy example from the sunny lark,
Throw off the mantle which conceals the soul,
The many-citied world, and seek thy goal
Straight as a star-beam falls. Creep not nor climb,
As they who place their topmost of sublime
On some peak of this planet, pitifully.
Dart eagle-wise with open wings, and fly
Until you meet the gods. Thus counsel I
The men who can, but tremble to be, great:
Cursed be the fool who taught to hesitate,
And to regret: time lost most bitterly!
And thus I write, and I dare write, to thee,
Not worshipping, as those are wont to do,
Who feed and fear some asinine review.
Let Jaggernaut roll on; but we, whose sires
Blooded his wheels and prayed around his fires,
Laugh at the leaden ass in the god's skin.
Example follows precept. I have been
Giving some negro minutes of the night,
Freed from the slavery of my ruling spright
Anatomy the grim, to a new story,
In whose satiric pathos we will glory.
In it despair has married wildest mirth,
And, to their wedding-banquet, all the earth
Is bade to bring its enmities and loves,
Triumphs and horrors: you shall see the doves
Billing with quiet joy, and all the while
Their nest's the scull of some old king of Nile.
But he who fills the cups, and makes the jest,
Pipes to the dancers, is the fool o'th' feast,—
Who's he? I've dug him up and decked him trim,
And made a mock, a fool, a slave of him,
Who was the planet's tyrant, dotard death;
Man's hate and dread. Not, with a stoical breath,
To meet him, like Augustus, standing up;
Nor with grave saws to season the cold cup,
Like the philosopher; nor yet to hail
His coming with a verse or jesting tale,
As Adrian did and More:—but of his night,
His moony ghostliness, and silent might
To rob him, to uncypress him in the light,
To unmask all his secrets; make him play
Momus o'er wine by torch-light,—is the way
To conquer him, and kill; and from the day,
Spurn'd, hiss'd, and hooted, send him back again,
An unmask'd braggart to his bankrupt den.
For death is more “a jest” than life.—You see
Contempt grows quick from familiarity.
I owe this wisdom to Anatomy.—
Your muse is younger in her soul than mine:
O feed her still on woman's smiles and wine,
And give the world a tender song once more;
For all the good can love and can adore
What's human, fair, and gentle. Few, I know,
Can bear to sit at my board, when I show
The wretchedness and folly of man's all,
And laugh myself right heartily. Your call
Is higher and more human: I will do
Unsociably my part, and still be true
To my own soul; but e'er admire you,
And own that you have nature's kindest trust,
Her weak and dear to nourish,—that I must.
Then fare, as you deserve it, well, and live
In the calm feelings you to others give.

THE BODING DREAMS.

LOVE'S LAST MESSAGES.

THE GHOSTS' MOONSHINE.

FROM THE GERMAN.

THE PHANTOM-WOOER.

A DIRGE.

(WRITTEN FOR A DRAMA.)

To-day is a thought, a fear is to-morrow,
And yesterday is our sin and our sorrow;
And life is a death,
Where the body's the tomb,
And the pale sweet breath
Is buried alive in its hideous gloom.
Then waste no tear,
For we are the dead; the living are here,
In the stealing earth, and the heavy bier.
Death lives but an instant, and is but a sigh,
And his son is unnamed immortality,
Whose being is thine. Dear ghost, so to die
Is to live,—and life is a worthless lie.—
Then we weep for ourselves, and wish thee good bye.

ANOTHER DIRGE.

(FOR A YOUNG MAIDEN.)

Hushed be sighing, near the string,
O'er whose tremors deep we sing
The youngest Death, who hath no fears,
Blood, nor pang, nor any tears.
Hushed be sighing!
Fair and young as Venus' child,
Only paler, and most mild;
End of all that's dear and young,
Thee we mean, soft Drop of roses;
Hush of birds that sweetest sung,
That beginn'st when music closes;
The maiden's Dying!

BRIDAL SERENADE.

Maiden, thou sittest alone above,
Crowned with flowers, and like a sprite
Starrily clothed in a garment white:
Thou art the only maiden I love,
And a soul of fondness to thee I bring,
Thy glorious beauty homaging,—
But ah! thou wearest a golden ring.
Maiden, thou'st broken no vow to me,
But undone me alone with gentleness,
Wasting upon me glances that bless;
And knew'st that I never was born for thee.
No hope, no joy; yet never more
My heart shall murmur; now 'tis o'er,
I'll bless thee dying at thy door.

DIRGE.

To her couch of evening rest
'Neath the sun's divinest west,
Bear we, in the silent car,
This consumed incense star,
This dear maid whose life is shed,
And whose sweets are sweetly dead.

DIRGE AND HYMENEAL:

SUPPOSED TO BE SUNG AS THE FUNERAL AND WEDDING PROCESSIONS CROSS EACH OTHER AT THE CHURCH-DOOR.

DIAL-THOUGHTS.

DREAM-PEDLARY.

BALLAD OF HUMAN LIFE.

SONG, ON THE WATER.

LOVE-IN-IDLENESS.

THE REASON WHY.

THE TWO ARCHERS.

THE RUNAWAY.

SONG ON THE WATER.

ALPINE SPIRIT'S SONG.

SONG: TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE.

SONG OF THE STYGIAN NAIADES.

THE LILY OF THE VALLEY.

A LAMENT.

In the twilight, silent smiled
All alone the daisy's eyelid,
Fringed with pink-tipped petals piled.
—In the morning 'twas no more;
In its place a gout of gore.
Break of day was break of heart,
Since, dear maiden, dead thou art.

DIRGE.

Let dew the flowers fill;
No need of fell despair,
Though to the grave you bear
One still of soul—but now too still,
One fair—but now too fair.
For, beneath your feet, the mound,
And the waves, that play around,
Have meaning in their grassy, and their watery, smiles;
And, with a thousand sunny wiles,
Each says, as he reproves,
Death's arrow oft is Love's.

EPITAPH.

The form's divinity, the heart's best grace,
Where are they? Have they their immortal throne
Upon thy maiden's thought, and peerless face,
Thou cold-eyed reader? Yet, beneath this stone
Dust lies, weeds grow: and this is the remain
Of one best union of that deathless twain.

POETIC FRAGMENTS.

THE TREE OF LIFE.

THE NEW-BORN STAR.

THRENODY.

No sunny ray, no silver night,
Here cruelly alight!
Glare of noon-tide, star of e'en,
Otherwhere descend!
No violet-eyed green,
With its daisies' yellow end,
The dewy debt receive of any eye!
It is a grave: and she doth lie
'Neath roses' root,
And the fawn's mossy foot,
Under the sky-lark's grassy floor,
Whose graceful life held every day,—
As lilies, dew—as dews, the starry ray—
More music, grace, delight than they.
When stars are few let light be here,
Of the softest, through the boughs
Berry-laden, sad and few;
And the wings of one small bird,
His form unseen, his voice unheard— [OMITTED]

LINES, WRITTEN AT GENEVA; JULY, 1824.

The hour is starry, and the airs that stray,
Sad wanderers from their golden home of day,
On night's black mountain, melt and fade away
In sorrow that is music. Some there be
Make them blue pillows on Geneva's sea,
And sleep upon their best-loved planet's shade:
And every herb is sleeping in the glade;—
They have drunk sunshine and the linnet's song,
Till every leaf's soft sleep is dark and strong.
Or was there ever sound, or can what was
Now be so dead? Although no flowers or grass
Grow from the corpse of a deceased sound,
Somewhat, methinks, should mark the air around
Its dying place and tomb,
A gentle music, or a pale perfume:
For hath it not a body and a spirit,
A noise and meaning? and, when one doth hear it
Twice born, twice dying, doubly found and lost,
That second self, that echo, is its ghost.
But even the dead are all asleep this time,
And not a grave shakes with the dreams of crime:—
The earth is full of chambers for the dead,
And every soul is quiet in his bed;
Some who have seen their bodies moulder away,
Antediluvian minds,—most happy they,
Who have no body but the beauteous air,
No body but their minds. Some wretches are
Now lying with the last and only bone
Of their old selves, and that one worm alone
That ate their heart: some, buried just, behold
The weary flesh, like an used mansion, sold
Unto a stranger, and see enter it
The earthquake winds and waters of the pit,
Or children's spirits in its holes to play. [OMITTED]

STANZAS. (FROM THE IVORY GATE.)

[OMITTED]

LINES WRITTEN IN SWITZERLAND.

DOOMSDAY.

THRENODY.

[OMITTED]