 | Sylvia |  |
Scene IV.
Slowly as Twilight lifts her veil
To show her wint'ry forehead pale
Unto the frore Antarctic world,
A lurid curtain is upfurled,
Disclosing the huge pedestals
That prop the necromantic walls;
But still so heavily it looms,
Clouds under clouds with volumy wombs,
That scarce it seems indeed to rise,
Too ponderous for the fleecy skies.
At length, by inch and inch, appear
The portals of the Sorcerer;
And yawning like a charnel-gate
Oped to admit a corse of state,
The bossy valves scream as they swing
On brazen hinge, scarce opening
Their slothful jaws for their own king.
Enter
Ararach
and Fiends with
Romanzo
prisoner.
To show her wint'ry forehead pale
Unto the frore Antarctic world,
A lurid curtain is upfurled,
Disclosing the huge pedestals
That prop the necromantic walls;
But still so heavily it looms,
Clouds under clouds with volumy wombs,
171
Too ponderous for the fleecy skies.
At length, by inch and inch, appear
The portals of the Sorcerer;
And yawning like a charnel-gate
Oped to admit a corse of state,
The bossy valves scream as they swing
On brazen hinge, scarce opening
Their slothful jaws for their own king.
Ararach.
Enter before us!—
I will not have him torn with thongs, nor pierced
With barbed instruments; nor pincht, nor crampt;
These are but laughing pains to such wild tortures
As I'll afflict him with: he shall not bellow
His furnace pains shut in an ox of brass,
Like him whose craft was proved upon himself;
Nor shall his lopt or lengthen'd form be stretch'd
On iron bed, accommodately fill'd
By every guest, pygmy, or stout, or tall.
Trite code of agonies! that writhe the frame
But hardly wring the mind. Peasants who have
Their feelings in their flesh, and none more inward,
Shrink at the bloody pincers: but high natures
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That reach no deeper.—I will plague him there!
In a refined, imaginative way;
And work upon his sensibility,
Not on his senses, which he'd reck as much
As the wild Indian at the stake, or he
Who burnt his hand for bravery.—What ho!
Is the stage rear'd?
Fiend.
Dismiel, the machinist,
Is hard about it, lord: you hear the clang,
And music of his anvil, which doth sing
At every stroke, like a cathedral bell,
And every iron tingles in the hand
Of his accomplices.
Ararach.
Go! quicken him
With a few stings i' the elbow.—And thou, too,
See if my quaint device go smoothly off,
Ere the Phantasma pass before his eyes,
Whom we would entertain with feats and shows
As such a guest deserves. If one particular
Fail in the presentation, even by chance,
I'll hold thee punishable: Mark it well!
[Exit. The Fiends vanish.
| Sylvia | |