University of Virginia Library

THE SEARCH AFTER PROSERPINE.

A MASQUE.

SCENE I. IN SICILY.

Ceres, Fountain Nymphs.
CERES.

FOUNTAIN NYMPHS.

CERES.
Fair nymphs! whose music o'er the meadows gliding
Hath been your gentle herald, and for me
A guide obsequious to this spot—fair nymphs!
Fair graceful nymphs, my daughter's sweet companions,
Say, say but where she dwells; asking from me,
In turn, what boon you will.

NYMPHS.
Alas, we know not!

CERES.
May the pure ripple of your founts for ever
Leap up, unsoiled, against their verdurous banks;
May your fresh kisses ripple up as lightly,
As softly, and with undiscovering noise,
Against the embowering arms of prisoning lovers,
Shadowing those crystal bowers.

NYMPHS.
We have no lovers.

CERES.
No, and need none. Alas, Proserpina,
Thou wert as these! so innocent no fountain,
Nor half so gay; no flower so light, so fair.
Ah, fair mild Nymphs, my daughter's sweet companions!
May Jove, as ye run by, make blind the eyes
Of Wood-gods and the Fauns; in matted ivy
Tangle their beards; catch them in sudden clefts
Of deep-mossed stems, till ye have glided by—
But tell me where she dwells.

NYMPHS.
Goddess! we know not.

CERES.
Tell me then how ye lost her.

NYMPHS.
We were playing,
After our caverned sleep, which the high Gods
Sent us while Phœbus flamed too near the earth:
We played, like summer bees involved, and sang;
Some combing pearls from sandy slopes, some blowing
In shells, or lily-tubes our watery conchs;
When suddenly rolled forth long thunder peals
Far, far below. Earth shook; trembling we sank
Into our beds, amazed: when up we floated
A divine darkness hovered o'er the earth,
And from that moment we have had no flowers;
No flower since then in flower-famed Sicily!
And we no more behold Proserpina,
That played with us so sweetly. We have made
A melody that tells of her, and sing it,
Lest we should grieve.

CERES.
Yes, I have heard your song.
Still the same tale—the words themselves unchanged
—Know you no more?

NYMPHS.
Goddess, not wide our knowledge!
Phœbus cares nought for Nymphs, lonely flower-bathers;
Nor other prophet see we. Yet of late
Our vales are flushed with new strange visitants;
Their tumult ofttimes, as the sun descends,
Shakes us within our lily-paved pavilions;
And when we look abroad along the marge,
The inland vales, shaggy with pine and ilex,
That catch like nets those boy-nymphs, the light Zephyrs,
Are filled with riot. From all sides they rush,
Mad Gods, with russet brows the west outfacing,
And wands tossed high: in songs the lawns are drowned.
Help us, great Jove! Fair Goddess, once it chanced
As this red festival came reeling by,
Over the fount in which trembling we lay,
Some Wood-god crushed a wreath of poisonous berries,
Laughing; and our bright home all crimson grew,
So that we wept. I pray you, gentle Goddess,
Protect us from these Gods.

CERES.
Ha! Bacchus here!
I thought my little late-born enemy
Lay hid in Hellas—What, and merry grown,
With revellers! then haply he hath stolen
My beauteous child. Mild nymphs, my child's companions!
Mild, silver-footed nymphs with silver songs!
Where dwell those Wood-gods when they come not hither?

NYMPHS.
At Naxos, Fame reports; and unblessed isle.

CERES.
Farewell, sweet nymphs—from them, and from all perils
May Jove defend you well! I seek those Gods,
And I will pray them that they hurt you not.

NYMPHS.

SCENE II. NAXOS.

Ceres, Wood-gods.
CERES.
A Bacchic wood! the pine stems and old oaks
Are swathed with crimson under their green shadows!
A wilderness of wood! within its depths
Armies of men might lurk. Above the trees
A gloom voluptuous undulates and hovers
Like a dark fleece of wind-dewed gossamer.
The caverns, as I pass them, mildly breathe
A colder current of wine-scented air
Into my face. Ha, ha,—a tiger's roar!
And now a din of resonant wild laughter
That makes the forest like a reed-pipe ring.
The very beasts have caught the infectious madness,
And ramp, with sport irreverent, on high Gods.
Down, leopard, down—ha, myriad-mooned panther,
Away! 'tis well for you this almond branch
Is sheathed in flowers Sicilia feeds no more;
That cry had else been louder. Hark, they come!

FAUNS AND WOOD-GODS.

CERES.
O Fauns and Satyrs of the merry forests!
Sharp-hoofed, long-horned, nymph-dreaded deities!
Grant me this hour your aid! Secrets I know
Of herbs grass-hidden and medicinal blooms
Whereof one leaf, into your cups distilled,
Would make them rise into a fount of foam
Wide as the broad arch of yon flowering myrtle:
Those secrets shall be yours—only restore me
My infant child.

FAUNS.
O venerable Goddess!
Large-browed, large-eyed, presence august and holy!
In our green forests dwells no infant child.

CERES.
But she is now in truth no infant child
As when I laid her 'mid the sacred flowers
Of Sicily, with Nymphs for her young nurses
And tender playmates.

FAUNS.
Venerable Goddess!
No child have we beheld, nor ever shall,
With mien like thine.

CERES.
Ah! she was not like me!
I was her mother; but like her no more
Than the dark ground is like some flower star-bright,
That from it springs, and o'er it waves in beauty!

FAUNS.
In Sicily you lost her?

CERES.
Wood-gods, yes.

FIRST FAUN.
And I remember now in that soft isle
Such creature we beheld as you have lost,
Upon a vernal bank she sat alone
Among the aërial mounds and honeyed meadows;
Wearied she seemed, yet smiled in weariness,
And, as a garden, was with bright flowers crowned;
Many she held upon her lap, and many
Fell down about her feet; her feet gleamed through them.
Strange fear, albeit to fear unused, we felt,
And, beckoning to each other, slow retired.
Since then in vain we seek her.

CERES.
Woodland Gods!
Was she not fair?

SECOND FAUN.
So fair that on the earth
Is left no longer any shape of beauty.
Well spake you, calling her your infant child.
Such light was on her brow—within her eyes
Such gleam immediate of celestial gladness,
A child she seemed, by that inspiring clime
Divinely ripened in one summer day
To full perfection of virginal beauty.
Not far the playmate nymphs their wild hymns sang,
Like birds new-touched by the enamouring season:
While we went back, dreading the wrath of Jove.

CERES.
Since she is lost those songs are heard no more.
In vain the sea-worn mariners suspend
Long time their oars amid the drifting spray;
In vain the home-bound shepherds pause and listen;
Nor any flower is seen.

FAUNS.
Maternal Goddess!
Still in one spot lingers a wreath of flowers.

CERES.
'Tis strange—those flowers, where are they?

FAUNS.
At the entrance
Of a long glen, that sinks in dimness down
From the proud pastures arched along the sea.

CERES.
Ha, Woodland Gods! that was her place of play;
A haunt unknown to men.

FAUNS.
Hark, hark, 'tis Bacchus!

CERES.
But tell me, Gods—

FAUNS.
We thirst, we thirst for wine;
Give, give us wine, and we will stay with you;
Roll it in deep floods forth, from cleft and cavern.

CERES.
Stay, Wood-gods, stay!

FAUNS.
(They rush past singing.)

CERES.
To Sicily once more. Lo! how these vines
Have grown about me! never infant yet
Tangled like this young Bacchus his embraces;
Not one upon the earth! another year,
And half my kingdom he'll have won from me
As Hermes robbed Apollo of his herd.
No feastful, sunlit mound, or yellow hill,
Will sing, at evening, anthems unto me;
No shelving corn-field on the mountain-slope
Make westering Phœbus, while askance he peers
Down through the pale stems, green with jealousy.
Parnassian weed, away! ah, lost Proserpina!
Thou, thou wert as my flowers—unsought for mine,
And then, once mine, more dear than all my wealth!
The Gods, in their Olympian mansions, know
Nothing of grief: children they too have lost;
But never mourned as I have. Surely I
Have caught from Earth some portion of her sadness,
And heart maternal of Humanity.
To Sicily once more. O fair Sicilia!
Those flowers they saw, whence came they, and what mean they?
That must my search discover; I must see them;
When I behold them I shall see once more
What I in vain desire—my child's fair eyes.
Down, vine-wreaths, down! I break from you away.

SCENE III. SICILIAN SEA.

(Nereids sing.)
GLAUCE.
Fair Sisters, ocean-cradled, wave-revered!
Holds not this evening well the morning's pledge?
Salt gust no more; nor airy arc, down-showering
Into the dim green, rain of sunny gems
Or crowns celestial; crystal chasm no more
By harsh winds crushed to murmuring foam abysses;
But, wide o'er all, a plenitude of light
Serene as that which sits on Jove's great brow;
And breeze as equable as Juno's breath.

AUTONOE.
And, Sisters, mark! along yon opal Heaven,
And sea of agate and chalcedony
The promised pageant spreads. We shall behold
The mighty head of Jove, rich-tressed, supreme,
Sacred and strong and fair and venerable,
With golden sceptre and obedient eagle:
And we shall gaze on Juno's large mild eyes,
And the sea-born Queen of Beauty, her who runs
Over the swelling hearts of Gods and men
As Thetis glides over the ocean waves;
And, dearer still to us, the graceful form
Of Hebe, solitary nymph of Heaven,
Alone among the Gods and yet not lonely.
Thus Iris spake.

EUDORA.
Fair Iris! dropped she then
This morn from Heaven, her ocean spoils to gather?
I knew it not, for on the Libyan sands
All day I rolled a great smooth shell, too great
To clasp or carry: but my tears are past,
Since we shall gaze upon high Gods.

GLAUCE.
Lo, there!
How the red west inflames the deep! Methinks
That merry God, conqueror of many a land,
His banners over ocean too is waving;
To Britain will he drive us, end of earth?
See, I have dropped my bracelet!

AUTONOE.
Over ocean
That God advances; dark-rimmed Naxian shores
Already with his tendril nets are swathed,
Yea and the Naxian billows; all day long
We toss them backward from our foam-white bosoms,
And beds of billows, to their beds of sand.

EUDORA.
And maids of earth he mocks at worse than us.
Last eve, by yonder meadow I was floating,
Pillowing my cheek upon a sleepy wave,
And hearkening to an inland pipe remote,
When suddenly the purpled shore resounded
With tumult harsh; and concourse I beheld
Of Wood-gods on the sands, leaping and laughing!
And why? because a gentle maid of earth
That with her mortal playmate had been straying,
Beneath the bank, oppressed perhaps with sleep,
(Who knows? I know not), when she thought not of it,
In vine-nets prisoned lay: The Wood-gods mocked!
Bacchus such puissance hath—

GLAUCE.
How wretched those
That dwell on Earth! alas, I pity them!
On that rough, heavy, element opaque
What lovely light can glimmer? None can tell
Wherefore the high Gods shaped the hump-backed Earth!

EUDORA.
Nay, Sister, when the forests slant as now
From the round mountains to the wine-black sea,
And Phœbus on their gold and vermeil roof
Looks brightly, while the winds rush under them,
Then hath the Earth her beauty—yea, a gleam
Like our Autonoe, when her sun-loved tresses
Upon a green rock loosening she flings forth,
Laughing, into some monster's briny eyes.

AUTONOE.
You speak well, Sister, courteous like the Gods;
And blossoming fruit-trees, spangled with sea spray,
Are fair indeed at sunrise: Earth hath gleams,
As Nubian slaves their gems; yet how forlorn
And like a slave's her downcast countenance!
Her hues are not like ocean's, coloured lights,
But coloured shades, dim shadows painted o'er;
Yea and the motions of her trees and harvests
Resemble those of slaves, reluctant, slow,
By outward force compelled; not like our billows,
Springing elastic in impetuous joy,
Or indolently swayed.

EUDORA.
Not less o'erawed
Are those that dwell on Earth, harsh-speaking Mortals.
One eve, it chanced, into a glen I wandered,
In garb a boy: unwonted weight I felt;
The shades moved not; dull odours thronged the air;
Up from the ground a dense, blunt sound was rushing;
All creatures ranged, as though beneath their feet
Down to earth's centre chains unseen were hung,
And languid browsed as from necessity,
Not joy, their faint sighs leaving on the grass.
All things were sad; sadly I wandered on
To where there lay a something large and black,
And panting; some Immortal deeming it,
With reverence I was passing, when, behold!
Hard by there stood a company of Mortals,
Wailing; and myrrh on myrrh, and oil on oil,
O'er it in grief they flung; it was a pyre.
Homeward I turned abashed, and weeping much
For Man's unhappy race, so fair, yet sad,
By Jove's great wrath oppressed and shame of death.
Yes, and weep still; for know you, gentle Sisters,
Though Gods themselves should dwell upon the Earth,
Grief they must feel; the affliction men call love,
Or hunger, or the grave.

AUTONOE.
Down, Sisters, down!
In sorrow footing the bright ocean-way
I see that form half human, all divine:
'Tis Ceres; plunge we down! No nymph she loves
Save her child's mates.

GLAUCE.
Yea, and of those is jealous.

SCENE IV. THE SICILIAN SHORE.

Ceres, Fountain Nymphs.
CERES.
(Fountain Nymphs sing.)

CERES.
O Nymphs, where found you that despondent song?
And why this funeral chime? She is immortal.

NYMPHS.
Immortal truly, venerable Goddess!
And yet in Erebus she dwells; and plays
No more; no flowers to play with finds she there.

CERES.
How know you this?

NYMPHS.
Last eve we wandered forth,
By fugitive rainbows lured and rain-washed grass,
To that deep valley where we lost our playmate;
And for the first time past it. In one spot
We found, with joy astonished, crowds of flowers;
Flowers of all kinds, each larger than its kind,
And brighter; wandering here and there among them,
Behold two mighty chariot tracks! deep fissures,
Burning and black, to where the opposing bank
Locked in and barred the vale: the rocks were split;
Dull vapours hovering o'er them. In a moment
The truth flashed on us, and we heard, yea felt
Once more, that subterraneous thunder roll.
The King of Darkness, Monarch sole below,
Looked up and saw thy child, and thirsted for her;
And snatched her to his shades:—In Erebus
Thy daughter dwells.

CERES.
No song, no fable this!
Ah flower! pure lily among the unfruitful shades!
White lonely lamp of all the Elysian darkness!
Ah child! the daughter of an unblest fate,
Thou hast no Mother now: thou hast forgotten
That e'er thou hadst a Mother—Woe, woe, woe!
The imperial diadem doth mock that brow,
The sceptre doth subdue that little hand
More than the Shades, thy subjects! Gentle Nymphs,
Let me behold that spot.

FIRST NYMPH.
With slow, sad foot
(On gray autumnal eves, the Nymphs themselves
With slow, sad foot, o'er the dim grass steal on)
Advance; no bounding step, fair sister Nymphs;
No bounding step, or jubilant, reckless song.
Lo, there the gleam! a breeze, a sigh divine
Is ever sweeping o'er those tremulous flowers!
Troubling their dews that fall not, held, like tears
In melancholy eyes—O fair, fair flowers!
Ye, as she dropped you, instantly took root,
And fade not ever. Immortality
Ye caught from the last pressure of those hands;
Immortal were ye though the world should die.

NYMPHS.

HERMES.
Hermes, mild herald of the Gods, I come,
Bearing the grace of Jove, upon my lips
Distilled—high kiss of heavenly benediction.
Goddess to Mortals and Immortals dear,
Be of good cheer: Proserpina, beloved
Of all the blest Olympians, sceptred sits
In Tartarus; sole pride of him that sways
The world heroic of Departed Souls;
A child although a Queen; and, though a spouse,
Yet virgin ever; tempering the deep heart
Of Pluto, and to all the Shades as dear
As Dian to the night, or to the waves
The foam-dividing star of Aphrodite.
Sacred and well beloved—a Mystery—
Fares she not well? Maternal Goddess! raise
The large dejected orbs of thy fair eyes,
And gaze on him upon whose brow doth meet
The light of all the Gods giving command:
Look up and speak!

CERES.
Mild herald Mercury!
Thy voice is in mine ears; winged and sweet
Ever its tones; brightening all hearts, like Heaven
When Jove looks up: but now, unwonted softness
Melts through their pauses. Dost thou pity me?
Then herald God, auspicious guide of Shades,
Mighty art thou in the Unbeloved Abode;
Restore, restore my child!

HERMES.
Not comfort only,
Deep-bosomed Goddess, grave, and dulcet-voiced,
But aid I bear: and need there is of both.
Alone she sits beyond the utmost bound
Of laughter from the Gods, or shaft Phœbean,
And thou art justly restless for thine own.
Hear then the ordinance of Jove; descend!
Yon rock shall like a billow arch thy way;
Descend into the Stygian waste; behold
Once more thy tender daughter face to face;
Kiss her once more, once more upon thy knee
And in thine arms possess her. This is much:
Yet more: if seed not yet of flower or fruit
Unblessed have touched her lips, henceforth and ever
With thee she dwells in sweet society.
Descend! the Will of Jove, before thee running,
Makes smooth thy path, and the Caducean charm
Waved from this wand, around thy feet shall beckon
A quire of bright Immortals fit to grace
The steps of a departing Deity.
Ethereal Seasons! from the snowy clouds,
Your ambient nests on cold autumnal days,
Hover once more about this spot; and ye
Gift-feathered Hours, at Heaven's wide gate for ever
On broad and billowy wing suspense, the cord
Aerial, that detains you, bursting, fly
With unreverting faces to the earth,
And breathe a sudden spring on valley and plain:
And ye, infantine Zephyrs, on whose lips
The Gods have breathed; thou too, delight of Heaven,
Iris! descend; and o'er the shadowy glen
Thy many-coloured scarf from both thy hands
Fling wide, and cast the brightest of thy smiles
Upon the head of this descending Power.

FIRST NYMPH.
Behold! into the chasm she walks.

SECOND NYMPH.
(The Hours sing.)
(The Zephyrs sing.)
(Hours and Zephyrs sing together.)
(Sicilian Nymphs singing.)

IRIS.
I have but leaped from out my airy lustres
To plant my white foot palpably on Earth.
Fair nymphs, this shadow soon, too soon, will reach
The front now bright of that descended Goddess.
Her lost one she hath found—alas, too late:
Seeds of a Stygian fruit have passed her lips!
Three fatal seeds! Proserpina hath sucked
Into her being the dark element.
And yet lament not! Ceres' self shall learn
Comfort and divine solace from her child,
What the Gods could not give, her child, though sad,
Yet fraught with sweetness of Elysian wisdom,
Bestows upon the Mother. From this hour
Let every mortal Mother that hath given
A child from her own heart into the Shades,
Live and take comfort; they shall meet again.
Let every mourner in the Past who buries
An innocent delight, be sure henceforth
That in the Future, a large treasure-house,
It doth await him. Gentle Nymphs, weep not;
Those parted lips, those smooth and candid brows
Were not for mourners fashioned, sigh or shadow,
But for pure breathing of celestial airs,
And gracing a light garland.

NYMPHS.
Mild-eyed Goddess!
Must we no more behold Proserpina?
Must flower-famed Sicily have no more flowers?

IRIS.
(Nymphs descend, singing.)