University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

DAPHNE and SYLVIA.
DAPHNE.
Wilt thou, then, Sylvia, waste the bloom of youth,
Rejecting, sullenly, the joys of love?
Say, shall a mother's tender, moving name,
Never be music to thy callous ear!
Can thy obdurate soul conceive no bliss,
To see thy sportive children round thee play?
Nay, humanize thy breast; put on the woman;
Nor be a rebel to the voice of nature.

SYLVIA.
Let other nymphs court the delights of love;
If love indeed has more delights than pains;
A hardy, Amazonian life be mine:
Let but my bow with happy negligence
Be slung, my quiver gracefully depend;
And I shall think my person well adorned.
Let me the timid hare, or stag pursue;
Let me the foremost brave the fiercer savage,
Urge the nice aim, and bring him to the ground;
And I shall never, Daphne, want employment
To keep the working mind enough in action.
Let other maids of a more languid frame,
Their souls enervate with destructive love.

DAPHNE.
Insipid pleasures! an unnatural life!
And if those rustic occupations please thee,
It is because thou hast not proved sublimer.
Thus to the world yet in its infant state,
Acorns and water were a sweet repast;
The food of animals in better times!
For Ceres gives us now her golden grain,
And wine exhilarates the heart of man.
Did but the happiness once reach thy soul,
Such as a heart loving and loved enjoys,
Thou wouldst repent, thou wouldst with sighs exclaim
—Alas! I've missed the road to Happiness!
The time is lost that is not passed in love!
How long I've lived a vegetable life,
How long I've wanted sentimental being!
Oh! my past time! how many lonely nights,
How many dull unsocial days I've wasted,
That might have been laid out on mutual love,
Which gains new zest, and rises on enjoyment!
Once more, refine thy breast; put on the woman,
Nor be a rebel to the voice of nature.
Life's flower will fade; regret may come too late.

SYLVIA.
When I repent, when I with sighs exclaim,
As thy luxurious fancy painteth me,
Retorted rivers to their springs shall flow;
The wolf shall fly the lamb, the hound the hare;
The bear shall quit the land, and seek the sea;
The dolphin flounce upon our towering Alps.

DAPHNE.
I know the obstinate caprice of youth:
Such as my Sylvia is, was Daphne too.
My person, and my face, resembled thine.
Like thine my hair in flaxen ringlets waved.
My lips were just of that vermilion hue;
And on my cheeks the rose by fine degrees
Was in the lily lost. My passion then,
(The passion of an unexperienced maid)
Was but to tend the nets, to lime the twigs;
To whet the dart, and trace the timorous deer;
And if I met a shepherd's amorous eye,
I, savage-like, fixed mine upon the ground,
In shame, and rage; nay I despised my charms;
I hated them, because they pleased another.
As if it had been crime, and infamy,
To raise a passion wrought in human nature.
But how our sentiments are changed by time!
And what strange revolutions in us work
The service, merit, ardent supplications
Of an importunate and constant lover!
I was subdued, I own it; and the arms,
With which the victor gained, at length, his conquest,
Were, humble patience, sighs, and warm complaints,
Assisted by a female sympathy,
That pleads the cause of an impassioned lover.
The shades oracular of one short night
Threw more illumination on my mind,
Than many a hundred suns had done before.
I chid my folly, and with keen regret,
I said—the emblems which I long have worn
As thy disciple, Cynthia, now I quit—
I quit my bow, my passion for the chace;
Sport for untutored souls, but not for mine:
Love hath reclaimed me to my sex's joys.
With such humanity, I yet would hope,
Amyntas will his Sylvia's mind impress,
And mollify to love that heart of stone.
That heart by every title he should gain.
What more engaging youth adorns our hamlets?
Did ever shepherd burn with warmer love?
Say, do not rival nymphs bleed for Amyntas?
Yet can their flame, or can thy cruel scorn,
One moment turn his constant thoughts from thee;
Can'st thou pretend his birth discredits thine?
The fair Cydippe was thy mother; she
Claimed for her sire our noble river-god;
And is not he Silvanus' son, of whom
Pan is the father, the great god of shepherds?
Look in the mirror of the chrystal stream,
And Sylvia, thou must own that Amaryllis
Possesses beauty not less rare than thine.
Yet he rejects her smiles, and courts thy frowns.
Suppose (determined man can do strange things,
Heaven grant the supposition may be vain!)
That he, by thy disdain at length, enraged,
Turns all his thoughts on Amaryllis' charms;
And forms her, by imagination's power,
Into his object of connubial bliss?
What then will be thy mind? how will it bear
To think him irretrievably another's?
To think him happy in a rival's arms?
To see him give thee back thy haughty scorn?

SYLVIA.
Amyntas, as he pleases, may bestow
His heart, and person; 'tis not my concern.
He never can be mine: why should I then
Envy the fortune of the maid he chuses?
Nay—were he mine, I never could be his:
Affection shrinks; it withers on compulsion.

DAPHNE.
Whence your aversion to him?

SYLVIA.
From his love.

DAPHNE.
Effect inhuman from a cause benign!
Obdurate son sprung from a gentle sire!
Thou counteractest nature's general laws.
Do the mild sheep engender ravenous wolves?
Do snowy swans produce the sooty crow?
Sylvia, you either trifle with your friend,
Or with yourself, misled by female whim.

SYLVIA.
Amyntas's design makes me dislike him;
The man who proffers love I count my foe;
Under the specious word destruction lurks;
And while Amyntas passed his hours with me
In general converse, and in light amusement,
I own, my Daphne, I esteemed the swain.
But when he talked of serious, fatal love,
Disgust succeeded straight my friendship for him.

DAPHNE.
You quite mistake the object of your swain:
He means to make himself and Sylvia happy.

SYLVIA.
Daphne, I'll give no longer my attention
To such discourse; propose some other theme.

DAPHNE.
Thou supercilious girl! yet prithee tell me;
Art thou determined to accept no lover?

SYLVIA.
Whoe'er should make the proffer, I'd reject him;
I'd deem him a betrayer; one who lay
In artful, flowery ambush for my honour.
Such you call lovers; I call deadly foes.

DAPHNE.
The mild creation contradicts thy spleen.
Yonder the sheep are grazing, harmless race!
And if we knew not their innoxious life,
Their very bleat bespeaks their innocence.
Say, does the ram conspire against his ewe;
Does his breast harbour any black design?
The lordly bull, so dreadful in his wrath,
Whose roar, and levelled head, and pawing hoof,
Wither the stoutest mortal with affright,
Is to his heifer mild; to her he shows
No rougher treatment than his clumsy love.
Dost thou imagine that the faithful turtle
Intends hostility against his mate?
The constant pair seek a sequestered shade,
Far from the noise, the violence of man:
There do they perch, and in the soft caress,
And tender dialogue they pass the day.
Their voice announces their pathetic souls,
Their souls pathetic, breathing nought but love.
And while they coo, the corresponding woods,
The rugged rocks, seem to admire their flame.
Canst thou suppose the spring, the smiling spring,
When love diffuses all his genial influence,
A season that produces gloomy passions?
Now the gay period reigns; mark it's effects.
Observe the dove, seated on yonder elm;
With soothing murmur how he bills his mate.
Hark the sweet nightingale on yonder spray;
What harmony distends his little throat!
'Tis love's warm imagery that fires his breast;
And pours his raptured sentiments in musick.
The shifting scenes of love are all before him;
I hear it in the changes of his voice.
Listen, my Sylvia—now in short, timid accents,
He supplicates his mistress—but in vain;
Now he laments, and as he feels her rigour,
Breathes forth a lengthened, liquid, dying note—
Oh! his complaint has won her:—he concludes
In joyful flourishes, in strains of triumph.
'Tis love that animates his varied song;
He says in every note—“I love, I love.”
Even the dark adder, at this social season,
Intent on love, forgets his baleful poison:
The fierceness of the tiger is subdued,
The lordly lion, king of beasts is humbled.
Why on the brute creation need I dwell?
The mighty power of love pervades the trees.
See how the amorous vines embrace their elms;
Beeches for beeches, rugged oaks for oaks
Express their inclination by their dress,
Their whispering rustle, and consenting wave.
Wouldst thou then rank thyself below the plants,
Dead to the lively sentiments of love?
Shake off thy prejudice; put on the woman,
Nor be a rebel to the voice of nature.

SYLVIA.
Well, Daphne, when I hear the sighs of plants,
I frankly will consent to be a lover.

DAPHNE.
Sylvia, thy folly only can be equalled
By thy insensibility to love.
Dost thou then make advice, and argument
The ill-timed subject of insipid banter?
But go, thou foolish maid; the time will come
When thou in vain severely wilt repent
Thy inattention to my friendly lessons.
I speak not of that mortifying time
When thou shalt fly the mirror of the stream,
Where oft thy face thou viewest, and perhaps,
Unfeeling as thou art, dost oft admire it:
The time when thou shalt fly the limpid fountain,
Dreading to see the ruins of thy beauty,
The furrows of old age, thy withered hue,
Spoiled of the lily, and the rose, for ever;
The certain havock of life's cruel winter.
No, Sylvia, this is not the dreadful time,
Nor this the evil of which I forewarn thee;
'Tis common, and 'tis therefore not so galling.
Canst thou not recollect what sage Elpinus
Told, a few days ago, the fair Lycoris?—
Lycoris, who as deeply should imbibe
Soft passion from Elpinus' noble song
As he receives it from Lycoris' eye;
If mortals once could love by reason's laws.
Battus, and Thyrsis heard Elpinus tell it,
Both finished masters in the art of love.
He told it in Aurora's sacred cave,
Where, o'er the portal awfully is written,
“Be feet profane far from this hallowed place.”
He told us—and he said he had the truth
From the great bard, who sung of arms and love,
And dying left him his harmonious flute;
—That in the nether world there is a cave,
Gloomy and drear, where lazy Acheron
Sends forth sulphureous, pestilential vapour;
And in that cave, he said, ungrateful women
Would live eternally, by Heaven's decree,
In darkness, frantick grief, and Stygian anguish.
Sylvia, if you persist to steel your heart,
Expect a mansion in that dire abode.
Well do the wretches in another state,
Deserve to suffer unremitted torment,
Whom tears of misery never moved in this.

SYLVIA
What did Lycoris then; how did she answer
This strange denunciation?

DAPHNE.
Art thou anxious
To know another's conduct?—mend thy own.
She answered with her eyes.

SYLVIA.
I understand not that:
The eye is mute; how can it form an answer?

DAPHNE.
A novice thou to love's expressive language!
The soft and strong emotions of the soul
In magick beams are darted from the eye.
She smiled on her Elpinus with her eyes:
I marked them—these were their distinct expressions.
“Dear swain, my person, and my heart are thine.
Implore the deities of love no more.
No further testimony can I give thee
Of my affection now; this is enough
For modest nymph to give, chaste swain to take.
Enough thou wilt esteem it, if Elpinus
Honest as bright believes Lycoris' eyes;
If they deserve at once his faith and love.”

SYLVIA.
What reason had he to suspect their truth?

DAPHNE.
What? didst thou never hear what Thyrsis wrote
In love's dehrium, on Lycoris' eyes?
When the poor shepherd, stung to amorous frenzy,
Roamed through the lonely woods, to feed his passion,
Object of pity to the nymphs, and swains:
And so extravagant his passion was,
Their pity was accompanied with mirth
But his warm verse was not ridiculous.
I read the lines myself, which he had written
On many a tree; and with the trees they grew.
“Destructive eyes, false mirrors of the heart!
I, to my sorrow know the lies you've told me:
Yet what avails it me to know your lies,
If I still wish to view the basilisk,
And catch fresh ruin from your fatal rays?”

SYLVIA.
Daphne, I'm wasting here my precious time,
Harangued, in vain, by thy luxurious fancy.
I had forgotten that in Elicetum
A numerous hunting party meets to-day.
Thither I go; but in the wonted stream
First will I bathe, and cleanse me from the dust
Of yesterday; 'twas a fatiguing chace;
The stag our game, which I, with warm career
Pursued, the foremost; overtook, and killed.
Daphne farewell.

DAPHNE.
Sylvia farewell, but know
What to our gentle sex we women owe;
Know, that the boisterous pleasure of the chace
Is not the province of the female race.
It brutifies the temper of a man;
How distant is it then from woman's plan!
Our spirits ought to keep a tender strain,
Refine delight, and blunt the sting of pain.
Abjure the chace; be present to thy mind,
The sphere by heaven to rural charms assigned.—
Let rough barbarians bound o'er hill and plain,
Be ours the task to bless the humble swain;
The sameness of his station to beguile,
Crown his gay hours, and make his labour smile:
And when the business of the day is done,
When he hies homeward with the setting sun,
To give him sweet ideas of his cot,
And make him triumph in his peaceful lot;
To make him there expect domestick joy,
The wife assiduous, and the prattling boy;
To draw Elysium on our state below,
And bliss which wealth and grandeur never know.