The Fountain of Youth :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Fountain of Youth

A Fantastic Tragedy in Five Acts. By Eugene Lee-Hamilton

Lee-Hamilton, Eugene

[section]

THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.

ACT I.

II.

III.

II.

III.

IV.

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ACT I.

SCENE I.

(A room in the ancestral castle of Ponce de Leon, full of astrological instruments and alchemistic crucibles.)
Ponce de Leon.

Child of the Sunrise, amber-pinion'd spirit,
Swift God of Youth, whom still, with panting heart,
I follow on the river of the years,
Seeming each moment to have clutched at last
Thy dazzling shape, and made thee mine for ever,
Is all in vain, is all my labour lost?
Have twenty years of effort to distil
Thy clear divine elixir only served
To bring me to the brink of loathed age,
To strew the first thin snows upon my brow,
And leave me in the grasp of black Despair?
Have I not laboured in my lonely workshop
By Saturn's cold blear eye, and then as vainly
Beneath the burning blood-red eye of Mars?
Have I not tried, at peril of my life,
To make it with the venom of the asp,

And with the spittle of the rabid wolf,
And with the mingled juice of plants so deadly
That, save the shelter of my mask of glass,
Their life-abhorring and pestiferous fumes
Would then and there have turned my clear thin blood
To black and heavy treacle?—O Youth, Youth,
What sacrifices have I left unoffered
To make thee ever mine?—And must I now,
In spite of all, behold this strong right hand
Shake with the palsy,—this unswerving foot,
Which still can climb the steepest mountain-side,
Grow vague and shuffling,—this unwrinkled skin
Become a creasy vellum, where the years
Have writ their countless cares,—and this keen eye
Become a cloudy lens, through which the shapes,
Which now I see distinct, will be as dim
As the pale memories which will flit like ghosts
Across my frozen heart?—O rosy Youth,
Swift Wearer of the sandals of the Dawn,
Such cannot be the miserable end
Of thy fierce votary.—The great elixir
Is not the only means of stemming age:
Is there not also that transcendent fount,
That bubbling, rippling diamond of which men
Have drunk in magic dreams,—one draught whereof
Can make the wrinkled mask drop off for ever?
Has any man a doubt that it exists
Upon some spot or other of the world?
But whither turn our steps? The two or three
Who in the course of centuries have reached it
Have locked the glorious secret in their breast,
Or left but dark and closely-guarded hints.
Yet there is one who speaks,—the great Astralphus.
Let me take down his book and read the passage.

(He takes down a heavy volume, and reads a passage to himself aloud.)

‘The fountain stands within the Wood of Ancients,
A pale and perilous enchanted forest
Of gnarled and leafless trees, gray wrinkled trunks,
Which once were men and women. There are gathered
All those within whose hearts the spark of youth
Died wholly out before they died themselves.
Their feet are twisted roots. Their bony fingers
Are warped and knotted twigs. Their frozen tears
Are now dry vitreous gums in crooked trickles,
While beard and hair are gray and tufted mosses,
Floating and fluttering in the passing wind,
Which tries to wake them with vague prophecies;
And if you place your ear against the trunk,
You hear the faint, monotonous ticking heart,
Which never quickens, never beats more slow.
No sound the gnarled trees utter, save you prick
The trunk with your sword's point as you go by;
And then they give a faint, dull moan of pain.
Eternal twilight wraps the forest round.’

Can aught be more precise? He writes like one
Who surely has been there. And here again,
Where he describes the dangers of the journey:

‘The Wood of Ancients is beset with peril
And full of dread enchantments, and, they say,
That he who has to cross it, should he cease
To look ahead, or should he let the cold
And numbness grasp him in their lethargy,—
Or should he stop, if only for one instant,
Doubting of youth and of his journey's goal,—

His feet at once take root; his stiffened arms
Turn straightway into branches, and strong creepers
Twine round his trunk and bind him down for ever.’

A monstrous fate; but one which I would risk
In very blitheness, if I had the chance.
It is not I who would feel doubt of youth.
Now let us see how he describes the water:

‘The fount itself, when once the wood is crossed,
Gleams in an opal basin in the centre
Of a great labyrinth bathed in floods of sun,
And guarded day and night by seven dragons,
Armoured in scales of solid natural gold,
With ruby-studded wings and claws of steel.
At night, the garden, lit by luminous flowers,
Is filled by countless butterflies of fire;
The leaves of thin sheet emerald never fall;
The fruit are of red gold, that can be eaten,
With pips and kernels made of precious stones.’

A tantalizing picture; but, Astralphus,
Thou mighty wizard monk, why torture thus
Our hopes and dreams, and then withhold the clue?
Oh, thou art cruel! Strange: I recollect
That Michael of Ravenna and the Dutchman,
And, if I err not, Paul of Trebizond,
In commentating on this very passage,
Identify the garden of Astralphus
With that of the Hesperides. If so,
The Fount lies evening-wards and to the West.
What if it lay in that new world of islands
Discovered by Columbus? there no search
Has ever yet been made. The thought is strange:
Is it a revelation? O fool, fool!

Had I not wasted twenty years in seeking
The great elixir, had I not grown gray
In groping through the galleries of Error,
But sought instead the glorious fount of youth,
I might be kneeling on this very day
Beside its dazzling mirror, and be casting
One long last look upon my whitening hair,
About to plunge in laughing waves of joy,
And stand transformed, in godlike strength and beauty,
Trickling with youth; but thought has worn me out:
The nights have brought so little rest of late;
My temples ache; I think that I could sleep.

(He lies down in a large armchair and goes to sleep.—Enter Spirits of Youth and Age, who circle alternately round his chair, singing in a low voice.)

Chorus of Spirits of Age.

With a little invisible chisel
We work on the stone of the brow,
Where the locks are beginning to grizzle,
And thinner and thinner are now;
And deeper we furrow and deeper
By day on the cheek of the reaper,
And by night on the cheek of the sleeper,
With a little invisible plough.

The snow we have gathered and sifted
In the tiniest feathery flakes,
The wretch that has fevered and shifted
Shall find on his head as he wakes.

No sunshine shall melt it, of heaven,
Nor the splinter of ice we have driven
Through the heart that has struggled and striven,
And tightened with infinite ache.

We blow on his hand, and it trembles
As trembles a tremulous tree;
With fetter unseen, that resembles
A felon's, we palsy his knee;
We perch on his neck and his shoulder,
And curve them, as older and older
He groweth, and colder and colder,
Still trying to shuffle and flee.

We deaden his eye as it glistens,
And wrap him in thickening haze;
We sit in his ear, and he listens
In vain on the murmurous ways;
We creep in his heart and destroy
The germs of affection and joy,
And the bubbles of pleasure that buoy
The years and the months and the days.

And though for a little he lingers
And clings to the gathering gloom,
Our silent invisible fingers
Inclose him in meshes of doom;
And quicker we draw him and quicker,
With heart that is sicker and sicker,
Through the night that is thicker and thicker
By invisible strings to the tomb.

Thou thinkest to fool us, O dreamer,
Though ever we hiss in thy ears,
And hopest in Youth, the redeemer,
To baffle the numbness of years:

But, lo, we have sought and have found thee,
And we hover above and around thee,
And tighter and tighter have bound thee
With pitiless nooses of years.

Ponce de Leon
(murmuring in his sleep).
Ay! but beyond the Wood of Ancients there is the
labyrinth; and in the middle of the labyrinth there is a
fountain, trickling and sparkling in waves of molten
diamond. The seven dragons circle round and round
it; I hear the clashing of their golden scales above the
ceaseless gurgling of the water.

Spirits of Youth.

In the auriferous,
Ripe and graniferous,
Full and lactiferous,
Bosom of Earth
Life is eternally
Quivering vernally,
Fiercely, diurnally,
Panting for birth.

Mustering under us,
Elements wonderous
Cry with a thunderous
Voice for the air.
Hearest the shout of them?
While thou dost doubt of them
Springeth up out of them
Youth ever fair.

All that is boiling,
Sprouting, uncoiling,
Through the earth toiling,
Once it was old;
Out of senility,
Out of debility,
Bursteth fertility,
Grain as of gold.

Space is inanity,
Time is but vanity;
And for humanity
Nought is but youth.
Thou that art shivering,
Look at it quivering,
Saving, delivering,
Radiant as Truth.

Nature is making it,
Ever awaking it,
Out of age taking it;
Yea, out of death.
Birth, death, infinity,
These are a trinity,
One great divinity;
Youth is its breath.

Earth the unshakable
Teemeth with breakable,
Old and forsakable
Chrysalis shells.
All is transmutable
If it seem suitable
To the Inscrutable:
Trust in the spells.

(Enter a servant announcing a Jew, a Moor and a Gipsy. His entrance awakes Ponce de Leon, who orders that they be admitted.)
Ponce de Leon.
Approach ye three, who, differing from each other
In race and creed, all differ from myself;
I see suspicion darting in your eyes,
But cast your fears behind you and approach.
If I have summoned you within my doors,
Ye need not quake: it is not to extort
Apostasy or treasure, but for counsel.
Unlike and hostile as our races are,
Unlike as we may be in hue and feature,
In thought and act, in natural loves and hates,
Two things we have in common—youth and age.
The same hard winter strews our heads with frost,
The same invisible load weighs down our backs;
The same inexorable law is writ
Upon our brows in wrinkles year by year;
We pant with equal and unslakable thirst
For one same draught of youth. I therefore pray you
If all or any of you should possess,
In the traditions of your several peoples,
A knowledge of the ever-dazzling waters
Known as the Fount of Youth—of which one drop
Would make us hale for ever—to impart
Such knowledge to me now. Speak first, O Jew.

Rabbi Ezdrel.
My hoary head, O most magnificent sir,
Bears cruel witness that my steps have never
Approached the Fount you speak of; and my race,
Which wears the wrinkles of three thousand years

Upon the aching tablet of its brow,
And on whose back the cudgel of the world
Still falls from age to age, might say the same.
By many waters have we sat and wept,
Whether or not we ever shall sit down
Beside the gurgle of that magic water
I cannot tell; nor can I tell you whither
To turn your footsteps to attain its brink.
But I can tell you what strange thing befell
The great King Solomon when he yearned towards it;
Is it not written in the Book of Jashel
For all to read?
He was the mightiest king
Between the four far corners of the world;
All that the breadth and bowels of the earth,
All that the depth and surface of the sea
Could yield was his. The genii who obeyed
The circles of his royal wizard wand
Built him hareems of sandal wood and gold,
With ivory doors and courts of trellised silver.
In endless stream the countless caravans
Brought to his gate the spikenard and the myrrh,
The gold of Ophir and the Tyrian purple,
The leopard skins, the peacocks and the pearls
Of subject peoples. Every warlike tribe,
Famed for its slave-girls, sent its whitest tribute.
Glory he had and boundless subtle wisdom;
One gift alone, one unreplenished treasure,
Was dwindling day by day: his beard was whitening,
And cold and dearth were settling on his heart.
He called a great assembly of the genii:
They flocked from east and north, from west and south,
Darkening the sky; but none could give him youth.
Then Solomon bethought him of a Fountain

Whose waters made men young, which he had heard of,
Belonging to the queen of seven islands,
Beyond the Pillars of Eternal Storm;
And he resolved to send a ship to crave
A single gourdful. And he filled the ship
With costliest presents, with enormous rubies,
With gem-embroidered carpets, massive sceptres,
With eggs of ostrich in a golden setting,
With dwarf gazelles, begemmed of horn and hoof,
With frankincense in chiselled jasper vases,
And pictured targes of the hammered gold.
And fearing in the corners of his prudence
Lest any aged mariner should steal
The priceless draught of youth, he chose a crew
Of strong adventurous youths with life before them.
They were to sail for forty days and nights;
And looking on the whitening of his beard,
Counting the days, he waited their return.
Six months went by; but on the far horizon
The ship at last was seen, and young and old
Crowded the shore to meet it. But with wonder
Beyond all words, they found that it contained
A crew of wrinkled, tottering, white-haired men,
Toothless and blear of eye and curved of spine,
Whose palsied arms could scarcely pull the ropes—
The same, same men who, half a year before,
Had left exulting in their youth and strength.
They brought no draught of youth, nay, not one drop,
But gibbered in their dotage; all save one,
Less crazy than the rest, who, ere he died,
Imparted unto Solomon alone
A tale of mad, unwhisperable horror,
Which none can ever know.

Ponce de Leon.
I thank thee, Jew.
Thy spirit-crazing and abrupt narration
Would have thrown back my soul upon its haunches
Save for one thing: thou saidst thy Seven Islands
Lay past the Pillars of Eternal Storm,
Which can be none but those of Hercules,
And so thou, too, confirming all my clues,
Dost send me to the West. And so, O Moor,
If aught there lurketh in the ancient vellums
Or in the dreams and stories of thy race
Of what I seek, I pray thee keep it not
Within the inner chambers of thy breast,
But give it open wording.

Aben Hamet.
Many a book
Hath been composed, most lofty sir, to lighten
The sleeplessness of caliphs, and the wonders
Therein contained are not less great in number
Than are the stars and circling orbs of heaven;
For, as the poet excellently saith,
‘The ocean of the wondrous hath no shores,
And those who sail thereon may sail for ever.’
But one most marvellous and thrilling volume
Eclipses all the others ever written,
And he who hath not read the Yellow Book
Of Hassan of Aleppo knoweth not
What wonder means. In all that deals with magic,
With dreams, enchantments, philtres, transformations,
Afreets, ghouls, demons, and the world of genii,
There is no such authority on earth.
Know, therefore, that the ever-dazzling Fount,

Whose magic wave can wash the wrinkles off,
Lies in the Valley of the Seven Moons.

Ponce de Leon.
And where lies that?

Aben Hamet.
Behind the setting sun,
A thousand miles to westward of the West.

Ponce de Leon.
Ha! west of West? How all confirms my thought!
But tell me more about thy magic valley.

Aben Hamet.
A ring of black basaltic cloud-capped peaks
Surround it with eternal rock and chasm,
So dread and dizzy that no wingless thing
Has reached its lowest ridges, and the birds,
Scared by the lifeless horror, fly no higher.
Alone the shadowy genii, now and then,
Soar through the vapours on their demon wings,
And sit upon some livid shelf of rock,
Above a black intolerable abyss,
To rest their load of curse. There is no gap,
However narrow, in the monstrous rampart;
And he who seeks the valley has to pass
By subterranean paths through Nature's entrails,
Through endless caverns filled with ghosts, and snakes.
The snakes in the obscurity wind round
The adventurer's feet, or from the unseen roof
Let themselves down and grasp him by the throat;
And if he be not quick in disentangling

His pinioned limbs, they keep him there for ever.
The caverns of the ghosts are farther on,
And are less dark. The phantoms start
From out the rock, and whisper in his ear
Secrets so horrible that few are those
Who, hearing, go not mad. And here and there
Upon the ground there lies a shapeless shape,
Which might be human. These are those who perished,
And whom the drippings from the vault above
Have changed to petrifactions. Then, midway
Along the chain of caverns is the lake
Of Tidal Fire, which he who seeks for youth
Must cross upon a slippery reef of rocks,
Uncovered only when the fiery tarn
Is at low ebb. It is a doubtful race
Between the adventurer and the molten lava,
Which creeps and creeps in waves of silent fire,
And never ceases rising, lighting up
The whole huge cavern with a lurid glare,
Terrifically splendid. Further on
Are many other caverns, each one full
Of some new crazing horror, and described
With the minutest detail in the Book
Of Hassan of Aleppo—but whose name
I have forgot, save two—the cavern which is called
The Passage of the Ever Dropping Stones,
Where lumps of rock keep dropping from the roof,
To crush the wretch who runneth in the dark;
And one with deep, deep pools, all full of sharks,
Which from eternal darkness have no eyes,
And through the midst of which he has to swim.
The last of all the caverns opens out
Into the Valley of Eternal Moonlight.
The seven moons, eternally at the full,

Cast seven shadows, and display the Fountain
Leaping for ever in a tank of pearl
Towards them, as with vain, incessant longings;
Then falling back in folds of luminous spray
Into the pearly basin, like the tail
Of Omar's battle steed.

Ponce de Leon.
But does thy Hassan
Tell us where lies the entrance?

Aben Hamet.
Ay, he doth,
With uttermost precision.

Ponce de Leon.
Well?

Aben Hamet.
The years
Are many since I read it, and the details
Are blurred upon the tablets of my mind
Beyond recovery. Hassan's Yellow Book
Was kept in the Alhambra, and the Christians
Destroyed it with a thousand other treasures
When they besieged Grenada.

Ponce de Leon.
May the curse
Of Heaven consume them!

Aben Hamet.
What, you curse your own?

Ponce de Leon.
Nay, nay; I meant the Moslem, for not having
Placed it elsewhere in time. And so the Moor
Leaves me no little wiser than the Jew;
Now for the Gipsy. Why, the fellow's gone!

Rabbi Ezdrel.
He was in the room only a minute back; and drinking
in the Moor's description as if it had been the water of
youth itself.

Ponce de Leon.
And, by the Lord, the rascal has taken my gold
chain!

Aben Hamet.
I miss the jewelled brooch upon my girdle. Oh!
Allah! Allah! why did I ever enter the house of the
uncircumcised?

Rabbi Ezdrel.
Oh, my shekels! I had six doubloons in my purse.
Oh, my sweet little doubloons—he has taken my little
doubloons.

(A voice is heard singing in the garden below:)
Where the gipsy tinker tinkles,
On a kettle all of gold,
Is the fount that takes the wrinkles
From the forehead of the old.
The three run to the window, but can see no one.) [Exeunt omnes.

SCENE II.

(Rosita's chamber.)
Rosita.
What sounds are those, which, blending with my dreams,
Still charm, as echo, my awakened ear?

Maria.
I think you ought to know.

Rosita.
Perhaps I do,
In the small corner where we keep sweet thoughts.

Maria.
Hark! now the tinkling has begun again;
And if you listen, in another minute
He will repeat his song.——There, it begins.

Rosita.
Open the lattice, that the words may reach me.

Aubade.

Awake! the steeds of Phœbus
Are pawing, maned with light,
To leap the cloudy fences
Between the day and night;

And Phœbus' self is springing,
Flame-sandal'd, on his car,
To whirl the dust behind him
Of every conquered star.

So leaps my love towards thee
At every break of day,
And bounds o'er bar and barrier
To whirl thy soul away.

See, see, how heaven's horses
Have sprung with meteor hoofs
Upon the sleeping cornfields
And sleeping cottage-roofs.

The valleys half are conquered,
The stars are put to rout;
Awake, awake, Rosita,
The night is trampled out.

Rosita.
Give me that yellow briar-rose from the vase,
That I may throw it.

Maria.
We have a saying in my native province
That when a woman bears a flower's name,
And throws a man that flower from a window,
She throws her own self with it.

Rosita (aside).
He has caught it!
If souls can nestle in a flower's petals,
Mine has been thrown in that one, and he has it.

Maria.
Your birthday, madam, opens well.

Rosita.
My birthday?
Ay, so it is. And I had quite forgotten.
Indeed, indeed, I would that it were not;
My heart is over heavy for a birthday.

Maria.
What, in despite of singer and of song?

Rosita.
Alas! because of singer and of song.
Juan de Alvareda is the son
Of our worst enemy, of one whose name
Few care to whisper in my father's presence;
What hope of ever getting his consent?
If he were caught—

Maria.
Your father is too busy
With his own schemes to interfere with yours.

Rosita.
My father's schemes? Ay, that is what is casting
The ugly cloud, and darkening my birthday.
Of late he has some project in his mind
Which bodes us little good; and every day
He drops some hint that fills my heart with fear!
He now has always round him, as thou knowest,
Adventurers and seekers from the Indies,
Whose sight I cannot bear: one above all,
His favourite, Agrippa, seems to throw
An evil shadow on the sunny path,
I scarce know why; perhaps it is the way
In which he stares at me whene'er we meet.

Maria.
I like the man as little as yourself,
Or any of the westward-sailing knaves.
Which dress will you put on upon your birthday,
The silver cloth, with stomacher of seed-pearl,
Or puce with gold pomegranates?

Rosita.
Which thou wilt:
It matters little in what silk or satin
I clothe my apprehensions: for myself,
I fain would wear my plain familiar frock
Of every day. But hark, what noise is that?
What women's voices sound beneath the window?

Maria.
It is a chorus of the reapers, madam;
A band of girls and women of the village
Who bring a wreath of cornflow'rs for your birthday,
As large as any cart-wheel; only look,
What motley streamers bind it!

Rosita.
Go thou down,
And take the harvest wreath, and give them largess. [Exit Maria.

Their gift is very welcome. Was it not
Amid the ruddy ripeness of the corn
That he and I first met, that day of days?
Would I were one of them, and he a peasant,
That with my shining sickle I might go,
And bathe at sunset in the sea of grain,
Free, without fear, and wait the great slow wave

Which evening sets in motion through the wheat—
The signal of his coming. Oh, how sweet
Would be the safety of a cottage hearth,
However humble, for the years to come,
Instead of this sad future of vague fear!
How sweet to meet in open, fearless love,
And not, as now, with danger and intrigue,
When every meeting is perhaps a parting—
A parting, and for ever! Though my brow
Would be less white than now, and the blue veins
Be tanned away upon my sunburnt arm,
Both Juan and the future would be mine.
But hush, my thoughts! I hear my father's step
Approaching slowly through the gallery.

(Enter Ponce de Leon.)
Ponce de Leon.
Come, let thy father kiss thy sweet young face,
The fairest thing on which his eyes can look,
Until they rest upon the radiant brow
Of youth that has no end. See here, Rosita;
I bring thee something dainty for thy birthday—
A necklace made of unfamiliar beads,
In far Hispaniola wrought by Indians,
Each bead unlike the rest. What! not content?
I thought the gift would make thee dance for joy.

Rosita.
I would they came from any other place.

Ponce de Leon.
Thou art a silly and fantastic child;
But I can well afford to miss thy thanks

For this small gew-gaw made by Indian cunning:
Have I not in reserve the gift of gifts,
The dazzling, potent, and ineffable drops
That shall preserve the sparkle of thine eye,
The dimple on thy cheek for evermore?
That which the daughters of magnificent kings
In vain have yearned for, shall it not be thine?
Thine, and for ever?
(Aside)
The unconscious child!
I see an omen in her very beauty:
If God hath given her such eyes as hers
And chiselled features of such rare perfection,
It is because they are marked out by Heaven
To last for ever and have no decay;
Because she shall be dowered with the glory
Of sharing my first draught.

Rosita.
I have no wish
For an eternal youth, an endless beauty;
My mother had it not, so why should I?
I wish to share the common lot of mortals;
I wish to be, when comes the natural time,
A little silver-haired great-grandmother,
All shrunk and bent, with little twinkling eyes,
Who sits and spins beside the blazing hearth,
And tells the children fairy-tales all day.

Ponce de Leon.
Oh, hideous blasphemy and monstrous vision!
Oh, most unnatural wish! But, thanks to Heaven,
Thy youth shall be preserved upon thy cheek
In all its rosiness and sunny charm,
Despite thyself. And now, Rosita, listen:

I brought thee this rare string of Indian beads,
That it might coax thy soul to greet with pleasure
A startling piece of news. I have resolved
To take thee to the Indies of the West.

Rosita.
Merciful Virgin! so my fear was true.

Ponce de Leon.
I have resolved to sell these lands and walls,
And stake my fortune on a venturous sail
Beyond Hispaniola.

Rosita.
Sell these walls!
Sell these broad, fertile lands! Your very fathers,
Dead in their graves, will shudder and turn round.

Ponce de Leon.
Poor buried fools! If they had had the wit
To do as I do, they would not to-day
Be dead and mouldering bones, but living men,
Quick with the breath of youth.

Rosita.
Sell these broad acres,
And hand them to the stranger; leave each thing
That is familiar and most dear to see!
You cannot mean it, nor can I believe it;
Oh, can you look on these ancestral portraits,
And harbour such a thought before their face?

Ponce de Leon.
Poor ghosts of paint and canvas, each of whom,
Had they not in their piteous dulness rooted

Their lives, like trees, to their inherited clods,
But sought the Fount of Youth, as their descendant,
Would now be flesh and blood; it is not they
Who shall arrest me in my life's great scheme,
Just as begins the sunrise of success.
And now no more discussion; I forbid it.
But what are those cracked voices that I hear
Rise from outside? What hideous, loathsome song
Of crazed decrepitude? Quick, shut the window!
It makes me sick, the cackling squalls are more
Than ears can bear.

Rosita.
It is the village elders,
Who come to wish me joy. [Exit Ponce de Leon.

Alas! alas!

Chorus of Village Elders.

We stand on the edge of the grave,
And look back in the sunset of gold
On the fields we have tilled, and that gave
More wheat than the garners could hold.

We have warmed us awhile in the sun.
We have drunk of the quickening light;
Shall we murmur now noontide is done,
And shrink from the chill of the night?

We cumber the land, and must leave,
That others may till it and reap,
And twirl at the spindle or weave,
While we shall eternally sleep.

The earth, she has given us grain,
And filled with the vintage the casks,
And filled with the olives the wain;
Shall we grudge her the bones which she asks?

The bird, it must drop from on high,
That another may sing in its stead;
The beast of the forest must die,
That another may feed as it fed.

With the leaves that are waving above,
And the leaves that are crumbling beneath,
Through the pathway of labour and love
We have reached to the country of Death.

But, Lady, thy feet are still wet
With the dew of thy opening life;
Thou knowest not, Lady, as yet
The yearning for end of the strife.

And Youth for a little is strong,
In the beauty of dimple and eye;
We bring thee the tribute and song,
Of Age that is willing to die!

[Re-enter Maria.
Maria.
Come, dry your tears; your father's mind may change.

Rosita.
Thou knowest him but little if thou thinkest
That he will turn upon the steps of purpose.
One drop of what he sails for to the Indies
Is dearer to his bosom than my life;
I felt it coming.

Maria.
Let me see the necklace
Of Indian beads.

Rosita.
Yes, take it from my neck;
Were every bead that runs beneath my finger
A pill of poison, full of silent peril,
It could not be more ominous of ill.

Maria.
Do you put credence in the Fount of Youth?

Rosita.
I know not if the Fount of Youth exists;
But well I know what does—the Fount of Sorrow;
And all who dangle on my father's pleasure
Sooner or later have to drink of that.

SCENE III.

(Dressing-room of Ferdinand the Catholic, at Valladolid.)
Ferdinand.
Hand me my dagger and my chain of gold;
And now my rings. I can recall the time
When my white bony fingers were so plump
That I could scarcely force these same rings on,
Or force them off; and now they trickle off
Each moment of themselves.

Villarica.
Your grace has thinned
From overmuch of thought, and not from years.
Believe me, 'tis not age, but care and study;
Your grace needs but repose to gain in flesh.

Ferdinand.
I would my ribs and fingers had remained
As plump as hath thy flattery; that continues
In all its fat exuberance. But now tell me
Who stands the first inscribed for private audience
Upon this morning's list?

Villarica.
He whom your grace
Vouchsafes to see to please the Duke of Arcos.

Ferdinand.
That Ponce de Leon? Save that I have given
Arcos my word, I would not waste my patience
In listening to his plan; and, as it is,
I mean he shall not have ten minutes' audience.
Another of those swindlers of the West!
As if I had not wasted thought enough,
And ships and money, on the irksome rogues
Who promise all such wonders: to begin
With that arch-knave Columbus, in whose dreams
My good lamented queen put such sweet faith.
Oh, we were so persuaded of the gains;
It was so clear and easy: you had only
To find the East by sailing to the West,
And reach the sun by flying to the moon,
And all the treasures of auriferous Ind

Would flow into your lap in streams of ingots.
We were to reach the ruby-rolling rivers
Beyond Bagdad, the porcelain-towered cities
Of the great Khan of Tartary, and what not,
In which the streets were paved with slabs of silver,
The houses roofed with tiles of solid gold,
The very beggars dressed in yellow silk,
With pearls upon the bonnets they extended
To beg for diamond pence. Much gold we got!
A little less than thou wouldst find to-day
In any goldsmith's shop in any street
Of Cordova or Burgos.

Villarica.
Yet, sweet lord,
That Genoese set up your royal standard
In many an island where it flutters still;
And I can keenly recollect the day
When he returned from his first venturous voyage,
Amid the wild ovations of the throng,
Bringing back Indians with him.

Ferdinand.
Bringing Indians?
A dozen red-skinned savages, wild scoundrels,
With nothing but a nose-ring for attire—
Fit raiment for the isles of swamp and ague
From which they came!—And while we lost our time
In crazy Western plans, the Portuguese,
By creeping patiently toward the East,
Round Taprobana and the Cape of Storms,
Have reached to Muscat and to Calicut,
Made treaties with the sultans, plundered cities,

And filled their ships with gold. No, no, my friend;
Talk not to me of farther Western schemes.

Villarica.
Will your grace see him?

Ferdinand.
Let the knave come in,
Since I have pledged my word to give him audience;
But bid him to be prudent in his speech.

(Enter Ponce de Leon.)
Ponce de Leon.
I bow in awestruck silence and obedience
Before the ample splendour of your grace.

Ferdinand.
And so thou, too, hast framed a wondrous scheme,
A Western expedition that shall pour
More red and virgin gold into my coffers
Than all the ships of Christendom can carry?

Ponce de Leon.
I crave the humblest pardon of my liege:
My liege is misinformed. I am not come
To offer to your grace new mines of gold,
But, with your gentle and most royal license,
To rid you of your silver.

Ferdinand.
Of my silver?
My friends and courtly flatterers do that
Most perfectly already.

Ponce de Leon.
I am come
To offer to your sovereignty the means
By which the clear white silver on your brow
Shall be transmuted back to youth's dark locks.

Ferdinand.
Art thou a merchant of Venetian hair-dye?

Ponce de Leon.
Your sovereignty hath made me bite my lip;
But could I have for half a score of minutes
The perfect patience of your royal ear,
Methinks that I could fetter your attention.

Ferdinand.
Speak on; but not in riddles. I will listen.

Ponce de Leon.
I know as well as any that the West,
The Indies of Columbus, have belied
Our dreams of gold and gems; but they contain
Another treasure of such wondrous value,
Of such extreme ineffable price to him
Who first shall make it his, that all the gold
Which men have clutched at in their wildest dreams
Would be but dross beside it.

Ferdinand.
What is that?

Ponce de Leon.
The Fount of Youth. We know from informations
Most certain and undoubtable that the spring
Which man has panted for through countless ages,
In every clime, with wistful, infinite thirst,
Lies in the Western Indies, in a realm
North of Hispaniola, named Bimini,
Whose king, the sole possessor of the secret,
And named the Ever-Beautiful, hath reigned
Six hundred years.

Villarica
(to himself)
Bad for the heir-apparent!

Ponce de Leon.
No shapes of magic guard the potent spring;
No circling dragons watch it night and day;
No evil angels sit beside its brink,
To mirror their dark wings within its waves.
It hath nor spell nor supernatural essence,
But is mere natural water, one slight rill,
Which in its bright limpidity hath flowed
Through subterranean channels, over beds
Of mineral ore, and salts unknown to man,
Or through a filter of medicinal mosses
Of such high potency and healing virtue
That they can stop the onward march of age,
Create anew the tissues of the body,
And fill with sap the withered roots of life.

Ferdinand.
What guards it, then?

Ponce de Leon.
The dreadful guard of Nature:
Inextricable forests and morasses,

Haunts of the panther and all clawed assassins,
In whose pestiferous depths and clueless tangle
No white man yet has ventured; where the twilight
In every tree awakes a vampire bat,
Who fans the sleeper with his leathery wings
Of monstrous span, and sucks his blood at night;
Where there are trees whose dark and silent leaves
Distil a subtle vapour that converts
Sleep into death, and strange and treacherous flowers,
Whose scent breeds madness, till the forest rings
With crazy laughter; where among the grasses
Lurk porcupines that shoot a venomed quill,
The wound whereof turns black like flesh of mushroom;
Where there are snakes that make a running noose
Around your throat and strangle you in sleep,
Ere you can feel their twist. Man-eating Indians,
Whose poisoned arrows, shot by unseen hand,
In every vein change blood to liquid fire,
Infest the dreadful zone.

Ferdinand.
And thou proposest
To ransack such a region for a rill,
A hidden trickling thread?

Ponce de Leon.
Were that my thought,
Your sovereign's splendour well might call me mad.
My plan is this: to land a small picked force,
Armed with three falconets and ample powder,
On the Biminian coast, and with the help
Of disaffected tribes to boldly march
Upon the capital and seize the king,

And then extort the secret as his ransom.
Part of the expedition I could pay
Out of my private fortune, if your grace
Would furnish me three caravels and sailors.
The conquest would be fruitful to the Church;
For, having made the monarch's body ours,
We should attack his soul, and win it back
From his unholy Gods. The Holy Office
Would find the means of teaching to his people
The greater sweetness of our kinder faith.

Ferdinand.
If he has reigned for these six hundred years,
I fear his errors must be deeply rooted.
What is the name of thy Biminian king?

Ponce de Leon.
Atalpa Ever-young, so please your grace.

Ferdinand.
North of Hispaniola didst thou say?
How far to north?

Ponce de Leon.
Three hundred leagues of water
Is what I reckon, but it is uncertain.

Ferdinand.
I cannot grant thee longer speech to-day,
But I will give thee in the coming week
Another ampler audience; and meanwhile
Write out thy scheme more fully. Kiss my hand.
[Exit Ponce de Leon.

Strange, strange, most strange. Is this a madman's dream,
Based on mere air, or hath it weight and substance?
What think'st thou, Villarica?

Villarica.
Like your grace,
I chew the cud of my perplexity.
It seems to me unnatural that the fount
Be natural water: supernatural liquid
Would be more natural far.

Ferdinand.
The fount exists,—
That much is certain and unquestioned fact,—
Upon some point or other of the world:
Then why not in the Indies? 'Twould be strange
Were I to live to bless that rogue Columbus
For finding those unprofitable islands.
Whether the draught would keep me as I am,
And merely keep all further years at bay,
Or place me back in manhood's strongest moment,
Such as I was on that triumphant morning,
When Isabel and I rode side by side
Into the trembling alleys of Granada,
At last made ours!—The wide and general use
Of such a cordial would be full of peril,
And soon would over-populate the earth.
'Twould have to be confined to my own self,
And to the finder, by most strict engagement,
Or all would drink and live: a pretty thing
If Gaffer Maximilian or the Pope
Were made eternal each upon his throne!
An endless King of France would never do:

But were the King of Aragon immortal
The case were somewhat different.—How time flies!
How white my hair has grown in this last year;
And my old hands, how thin and white and veiny!
A little more—and I shall have to bid
The goldsmith come to tighten all my rings.