University of Virginia Library

Scene I.—A Garden.

Enter Raymond, conducted by Hope.
HOPE
Will you rest here?

RAYMOND
A little further on;
I want to feel the green beneath my feet,
To reach yon lilies if I stretch my hand,
To be quite sure that where I turn my face
The steady sunbeams walk across the lake;
Are we right now?

HOPE
Aye, to an inch. How well
Your fancy measures!

RAYMOND
O, my certainty!
My grasp is stronger than your glance. I work
Like a poor prisoner, scanning through and through
His little stock of unfamiliar words
Till they become a language. Step by step,
Testing remembrances, collecting facts,
Resolving doubts, I pass, slow, tranquil, sad,
And undisturbed by beauty or by fear,
Regions of wonder and appeal, where you,
Beset, enchanted, tempted, checked, compelled,
Gaze, linger, and learn nothing.

HOPE
Say it not!

RAYMOND
How? Tears in that true voice (touches her cheek)
.
And in those eyes!
O, how should eyes that see shed any tears!
What ails you?

HOPE
Nothing but the pang of words.
You break my heart, not meaning it. I know
All that you lose and all that I possess;
There's not an hour of our unequal day
When I forget that hard comparison;
The thought lies patient in my soul; the word
Wounds like a weapon.

RAYMOND
This my pain, in you
Becomes my healing. When you weep for me
You draw my tears away—my selfish heart
Beholds and comforts its reflected grief
And then forgets it for a little while
As if it were another's. Therefore, sweet,
Grudge not your gentle remedy, but give
Like a flower, drawing raindrops to its root
And giving blossoms to the sky.

HOPE
I give
Myself, you know it. Whatsoe'er in me
Has force or help, being mine must needs be yours;
Would it were better! Take me as I am,
A trinket for your neck, not even a gem,
Only a keepsake!

RAYMOND
Thus you play for ‘no’
And win it; ah, no trinket for my neck,
Staff for my hand—a blind man's metaphor
With twice the truth of fact! Come, change the strain
And tell me of the day.

HOPE
The day is fresh
As the first made—a new experiment
That wonders at itself—this early sky
Is vague and tender as an infant's love
When it cries ‘father’ to each face it meets:
There may be clouds to come; methinks they lurk
Under the fields of primrose light, not showing
Their grey crests to the sun; biding their time
With that slow air which trembles in the woods
Full of such whispered threats and promises
‘Trust me’ and ‘trust me not’ that no man knows
Which shall achieve fulfilment; all things wait
Upon the lips of Time, till he pronounce
The sentence of the day, ‘be fair or foul,’
So severing in a moment dark from light;
Meantime the hues of heaven and earth put on
A passion and a sweetness, as of those
Who think they shall die young, and so are set
To do their utmost with their little span;
I did not know suspense was beautiful
Till now.

RAYMOND
You paint me nothing. Try again,
The weather is not vaguer than your talk;
I want no poem, but a catalogue.

HOPE
Thus then again. Just at your feet, the grass
Hides yet some scattered dewdrops and is bright;
I read the landscape by this key, and trace
A dew-perspective to its farthest bound
In silvered lights and blue transparent shades
Sprinkled with morning; and the rounded edge
Of woods, and all the melting downward lines
Which prove the tender haze I cannot see.
On every branch of these near pines, the light
Lies like a stroke of frost; black underneath;
Between, the warm tree-colour burns its way,
But all the gathered sheaves of leafage keep
A strange moon-lustre of their own; the lake
Is a blank tremulous glitter, touched and flecked
With shadows of invisible reeds; beyond,
Stretches the folded distance, lucent, pale,
And tranquil as the breadths of holy thought
Whereon a saint reposes ere he dies.

RAYMOND
Right—in the distance only dwells Repose,
Near us we count the changes. No events?
Has the day's work begun for us alone?
Is all the world asleep?

HOPE
Yon watchful spire
Rings out its hymn scarce audible for us,
And tangled in the murmur of the wheel
Where the deft mill spins water—

RAYMOND
(interrupting)
Nay, no sounds!
I am your teacher there. In every note
I hear a hundred shades and feel them all,
Divining whence they rise and what they mean,
And how they blend themselves for general ears,
Rough unisons to them, to me a store
Of possible symphonies; a plot, a web,
With all its threadlets separate in my hand.
What else?

HOPE
Upon the lake a speck—dark—definite,
No shadow but a coming boat. It cuts
The sunshine like a new resistless thought
Passing through severed day dreams to its goal.
Now could I fancy, love, that you and I
Were two poor prisoners, watching anxiously
A freight of doom or freedom. Shall we say
That if it pass the stair it carries doom,
But if it pause there, freedom?

RAYMOND
As you will. (Aside)

She treads on truth, not knowing.
(Aloud)
Give account;
Where is this destiny?

HOPE
Beneath the limes;
Her prow is to the stair; nay, but she turns;
She mocked us with a brittle chance, which fell
Before we grasped it. We must set ourselves
To face the worst—she passes.

RAYMOND
By heaven's light,
Which I may never see, she shall not pass!
Look and be sure!

HOPE
Why, what a voice of fire!
You play too fiercely.

RAYMOND
Has she passed the stair?

HOPE
I told you—no, she cheats,—she tacks again;
Love, you are right—she lands!

RAYMOND
(clasping her)
Freedom and Hope!