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140
Scene II.
Don Carlos and Christina[The scene is a sequestered arbour in an obscure part of the royal garden. Here amid the shrubs and fragrant bushes of that teeming southern land have these two been accustomed to meet. As the curtain rises they are clasped in a silent embrace.]
Christina
[drawing slightly apart from him]
Dear, all the palace rings with thee; thy charge
And headlong, wild, improbable assault,
That from Granada flung the Moor surprised;
And I have listened, glowing secretly.
I said no word, but gloried to myself.
My very silence was more proud than words.
But ah! before the heroic news came in,
The King, thy father, 'pointing you his heir,
Spoke of an alien marriage politic,
To be a barrier and a wall to Spain.
Then, ah, forgive my weakness, I fell back,
Borne to the air.
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This moment I have left
My father for the first time wroth and sad;
For well you know that he and I have lived
Transparent as two friends, no shade between us.
He broke to me this marriage in blind joy:
I answered not; dear, dear, what could I say?
Last he appointed I must answer him
To-night. The embassy from Portugal
Expects from me a “Yes” that will be “No.”
Christina
Carlos, I feel that I should go from you.
[He starts and clasps her more closely to him.]
I stand between you and the public weal.
Belovéd, howsoe'er these lips are sweet,
You shall not set my kiss before a throne,
Prefer a lonely woman to the State.
[He starts impatiently.]
No! hear me to the end. You shall fulfil
This marriage, Love, the issue is too vast;
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Of all this murmuring nation. But the heir
That shall be born—
[She comes close to him, whispering in his ear.]
our child already lives.
Carlos
You mean?
Christina
For the first time I have felt it stir
Within me; then I swooned amid the court.
Carlos
[In wild agitation]
Then doubly, trebly, am I now resolved,
Since two lives hang on me, and now not one,
That you shall be my wife, and publicly
Raised to the dazzling splendour I inherit.
O pale the anointing oil, and dim the crown,
If thou wert not beside me sitting; or
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The applause, and battle glistening in the sun,
And we will quit the splendour hand in hand,
Walking together like two simple folk,
Who love and cannot see the earth for love.
Christina
No, no! I must renounce the very life;
The gold presented cup of crimson wine;
And I will be to you as are the dead,
If one can die, and yet consume in flame.
Ah, but renunciation hath a fire,
It is not cold; God knows it is not cold.
What battle like this battle? I forsake
Deliberately, as a woman can,—
For to a man possession is the sum,
The charm, the mystery and azure light;
So strong my love of you; I'll pass away;
And fear not that our babe shall ever know
Who is his father; I will cherish him
By the slow stream and grasses far from courts.
Even now he feels out blindly toward the sun,
Moving in me as in a world obscure.
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If thou, for we are mystically knit,
Shouldst hear a pretty babble in the night,
Out of strange fields, and know it is thy son,
Yet still be strong; I'll see thee nevermore.
[Suddenly clasping him to her.]
No more! Ah! but thou'lt come, if only once!
And I shall run and hurl me on thy heart,
And as out of great darkness see a light.
But no, come not to me! I'll not forget;
I shall go down, filled with thee, to the grave.
And still I tell thee, put my arms aside!
A boy thou wast, now seek the sterner task!
Carlos
A boy! I am no boy; deep in my blood,
Too deep, a moment ever to be moved,
My thought of you. Is't the mere touch of lips,
To feel my circling arm about your waist,
To murmur verses under fading stars?
Why you encircle me as doth the air,
And nothing breathes or moves apart from you.
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Since first I saw you, on a fated night,
From the dark palace casement secretly,
Leaning with loosened hair to midnight lilies,
O then more solemn grew the woods, the hills
More strange, the mere more perilous still,
More lone the bird, returning in red light,
And ah! that moon new brought upon the heaven!
Thou art more sweet than souls of evening flowers
In a dim world, and ere a star hath come.
Vain, vain the throne! for thou alone art real!
But see, the sun is falling down in gold,
And with the night I must await the King.
You'll leave me not?
[Again clasping her close.]
Christina
I will not. Yet I fear.—
[He tears himself away as the light rapidly darkens.]
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