University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

Daphne, Sylvia, Chorus.
DAPHNE.
My Sylvia, may propitious winds disperse
The false report of thy unhappy fate;
If any ill is now impending o'er thee,
Oh! may they quickly waft it far away,
And from my friend repel each future evil.
I see thee well; thanks to protecting Heaven!
But never did I think to see thee more:
So dreadful was the news Nerina brought us.
Would she had lost her speech, or we our hearing!

SYLVIA.
My danger certainly was very great;
Strong were the grounds she had to think me dead.

DAPHNE.
But it was foolish, it was cruel in her,
To shock us with her premature account:
But now our spirits are composed; pray tell me
The nature of the danger you were in,
And how, by Providence, 'twas only danger.

SYLVIA.
Into the wood I chased, with warm pursuit,
A wolf enormous, wounded by my arrow:
But soon I lost him in it's intricacies.
On my return this wolf again I spied;
I could not be mistaken; for the dart,
With which I pierced his neck, was still lodged there.
With other wolves I saw him o'er a carcase,
I know not of what animal, so much
By their rapacity it's form was mangled.
The savage seemed to know his adversary;
For to me straight he flew with bloody jaw.
I failed not to assume my wonted courage;
A dart I brandished, ready for the charge.
Thou knowest my address, and that my aim
But seldom wanders from the destined object.
I seized the juncture of his proper distance,
And launched my javelin; but the javelin erred;
It missed the wolf; and smote a neighbouring tree:
A fiercer onset now he meditated;
A baleful fire glared in his angry eye;
And with keen tusks he churned the whitened foam.
To flight I took me; for I had no arms;
And with as eager pace did he pursue me.
Hear now an accident, by which my flight
Was interrupted, and my fear augmented.
The veil came loose, in which my hair was fastened;
And waving, as I ran precipitately,
It was entangled in a branch: I felt
That something stopped my course; but what it was
I did not recollect, through headlong fear.
I freed myself by one impetuous spring;
But with my veil some hair I left behind.
Fear winged my feet with such a rapid flight,
That I escaped the raging wolf's pursuit,
Soon cleared the forest, and got safely home.
O'erjoyed I was again to meet my Daphne;
Though I was struck to see thee gaze upon me,
As if affrighted to behold thy friend.

DAPHNE.
Thou livest; but we are not all alive.

SYLVIA.
Daphne, what meanest thou; dost thou regret
That from the jaws of death I have escaped?
Can Sylvia's welfare give her Daphne pain?

DAPHNE.
No surely; I rejoice to see thou livest;
But we have lost a friend; for him I grieve.

SYLVIA.
Whom have we lost?

DAPHNE.
Amyntas is no more

SYLVIA.
Amyntas is no more?—How did he die?

DAPHNE.
I know not how; nor dare I to assert
That he is dead; but 'tis too probable.

SYLVIA.
What is it that I hear? I'm thunder-struck;
To what dost thou impute his death?

DAPHNE.
To thine.

SYLVIA.
I know not what thou meanest.

DAPHNE.
Of thy death
He heard the hasty news, and he believed it.
And this belief hath driven him to self-slaughter;
Or by the noose, or dagger he hath died,
Or other implement of desperate love.

SYLVIA.
Thy apprehension of his death is vain,
As vainly thou didst fear that I was dead.
However harsh the cup of life may be,
We still love life; 'tis nature's general law;
We fret, and we complain; sometimes despair,
And with our threats alarm our fearful friends;
But commonly these agitations end
In shrinking back into ourselves, and living on.

DAPHNE.
O Sylvia, Sylvia, little dost thou know
How love torments a heart of flesh and blood;
For thine is petrified, and cannot feel:
And how can an obdurate, barren soul
Be struck with pictures which it ne'er imagines!
Would we these pictures to that soul explain?
'Tis to the blind man to harangue on colours;
'Tis to the deaf to teach the charms of musick.
For hadst thou been of sympathetick mould,
Thou wouldst have loved this warm and constant shepherd
More than thy visual orb; that little mirrour
At which thou takest in the fair creation;
More than the spirit which informs thy body.
Alas! I have but too substantial grounds
To fear, nay, to be sure, that he is dead.
When from the Satyr he had rescued thee,
And with such cruelty when thou hadst left him,
Too well I marked the frenzy of his love.
A dart's keen point he to his breast directed,
Determined by despair to urge it forwards.
I the rash act prevented; but the weapon
Was with his blood distained, before I seized it.
And if I had not checked it opportunely,
It would have then transfixed that faithful heart,
Which thy inhuman rigour hath pierced through
With a more painful wound, and no less fatal.
Yet though thou then wast naked, I must tell thee,
Thou wouldst have done much honour to thy sex,
If, out of gratitude, thou hadst embraced him.
Our souls should sometimes point us out decorum;
Tis in nice cases too refined for rules;
As equity sometimes takes place of law.
Mechanick motion leave to vulgar souls;
Leave them to coxcombs, to coquettes and prudes;
For these disfigurements of human kind
Are copied from the cities into hamlets.
The prude, by many lessons from her glass,
Her look, originally warm, and lewd,
Converts to chastity's severest winter.
The gay coquette elaborately flutters;
Her easy airs are the result of study:
The coxcomb languishes, and dies by art.
Not so the simple, generous, virtuous mind;
'Tis better taught, and takes it's cue from nature.

SYLVIA.
Oh! I repent my treatment of Amyntas!

DAPHNE.
Sufficient reason hast thou to repent;
For when he heard the tidings of thy death,
Forthwith he fainted; soon as he recovered,
Away he went in desperate, frantic mood;
And surely he hath struck the fatal blow.

SYLVIA.
What, art thou sure?

DAPHNE.
Alas! I cannot doubt it!

SYLVIA.
Good Heavens? how couldst thou be so indolent
As not to follow him, and try to find him,
And by thy diligence prevent the deed.
Quick let us fly—let us seek every where;
We yet may save him from his desperate hand.
If the idea of my death so shocked him,
And o'er his life spread such a horrid gloom,
My safety to his mind will gild the scene.

DAPHNE.
I did pursue him; but he ran so swiftly,
I could not overtake him;—I endeavoured
To trace his flight; but my attempt was vain.
Whither then wouldst thou have us go to seek him;
Since where he is we cannot even conjecture?

SYLVIA.
Alas, but if we find him not, he'll die;
Die an untimely death by his own hand.

DAPHNE.
Thou unrelenting woman, dost thou grieve
Because thou wilt not perpetrate the deed
With thy own hand; dost thou then wish to be
His homicide, as thou has been his tyrant?
Will not thy savage nature let thee see
That it befits thee ill to murder him?
But do not thus repine; for thou mayst claim,
Howe'er he dies, the glory of his death:
Thy fancy may be glutted with his blood;
Thou givest his misfortunes their completion;
The arm thou springest which inflicts the blow.

SYLVIA.
How thine, and how my own reproaches rack me!
I'm galled to think how rigid I was to him;
Yet that severity proceeded not
From any pleasure in barbarity;
But from the delicacy of my virtue.
Now of that delicacy the excess
I know, and shall repent it while I live.

DAPHNE.
Good Heavens! with what new language you surprize me!
Dost thou begin to grow compassionate?
Say, from it's hardness does thy heart relent?
Are my eyes just? and dost thou really weep?
Whence flow those tears? are they the tears of love?

SYLVIA.
No—not the tears of love; but tears of pity.

DAPHNE.
That's well;—thou now approachest Cupid's precincts;
For pity is the harbinger of love,
Sure as the lightning's flash announces thunder.

CHORUS.
Nay oft the subtle god, to spread his empire,
Afraid lest undisguised he should alarm
The virgin's tender, timid breast, puts on
The unsuspected garb of innocence;
And often this luxurious deity,
The more effectually to work his plot,
Is metamorphosed into rigid virtue,
Or takes the milder dress of soft compassion.
Thus he by slow, and unperceived approaches
Secures a lodgment in the coldest bosom;
And soon it's citadel, the heart he makes
His own, and breathes into it all his flame.

DAPHNE.
Her grief refuses utterance to her voice.
Sylvia, I now am well convinced thou lovest,
But thou hast caught the tender flame too late.
The god, whose power thou hast profanely spurned,
With dreadful vengeance now asserts his empire.
When the bee shoots it's sting, it parts with life;
Like it unfortunate Amyntas dies.
He, at his death, a cruel heart transfixes,
Which was impenetrable while he lived,
Unfeeling to a warm, yet virtuous passion.
And if thy amiable spirit, loth
To quit it's well known scenes for Pluto's gloom,
Yet hovers round it's melancholy friends;
Look down with pleasure on thy nymph's distress,
Enjoy her sighs, an incense due to thee;
Enjoy her plaintive words, thy well-earned vows;
Enjoy the copious streaming of her tears,
A fit libation to thy injured manes.
In life a lover, only loved in death;
Unsatisfactory, capricious fate!
But since thy destiny hath been so barbarous,
That thou couldst only purchase from thy mistress
Her love with the surrender of thy life,
The price enormous thou hast freely paid,
And fallen a martyr to the purest passion,
Quite sublimated from terrestrial matter.

CHORUS.
Dear was this price for love to him who payed it,
And nought but infamy to the receiver.

SYLVIA.
Oh, that my love could but redeem his life!
Oh that my death could him to life restore,
If he in truth is dead—for still I hope.

DAPHNE.
Ah Sylvia! thy repentance comes too late,
It's good precluded by the voice of fate;
With the frail human kind a common ill;
When right we cannot act, we rightly will.
Thus frequently the disobedient son,
The time to expiate his offences gone,
Regrets his impious treatment of his sire,
The parent's breath just ready to expire:
He, who in vice hath wasted all his youth,
Neglectful then of each important truth,
Wishes, in life mature, to grow more wise;
Feels virtue's charms, procrastinates, and—dies.