University of Virginia Library

ACT I

SCENE I

[The terrace of the Duke's castle. Fortunatus, with Adrian at his side, and a number of domestics behind. A crowd of Rustics approach.]
RUSTIC.
Sir, shall we sing?

FORTUNATUS.
Ay, let us hear you.

ADRIAN
(raising his hand).
Now!

The Ploughmen
sing.
Three cheers for Winter,
That blows upon the horn,
That makes the branches splinter,
And threshes out the corn:
When chimney-stacks are shaken,
And flooded is the ditch,
And the gammer salts the bacon,
And the lasses sit and stitch,
Or thread the melted tallow
To cheer the longsome nights,
And the ploughland oozeth fallow,
And the black frost nips and bites;
When we close and bar the shutter,
As the wet winds wail and sob,
And we watch the chestnuts sputter
And crackle on the hob;
When the Yule log lights the rafter,
And the gossip tells the tale,
And the house is filled with laughter,
And the mugs are filled with ale:
Three cheers for Winter!

The Shepherds
sing.
Three cheers for Springtime,
That makes the pastures strong,
When, blithe upon the wing, Time
Comes bursting into song:
When celandine and oxslip
Are dotted all about,
And the young ones on their frocks slip,
And sally forth and shout;
When lifted is the wattle,
And emptied is the shed,
And the dewy-fetlocked cattle
Roam afield for board and bed;
When we ply the rake and harrow,
And bark the oaken bole,
And the lean sow drops her farrow,
And the broodmare drops her foal;
When the buxom lambs are bleating,
And the cuckoo never stops,
And the glad swain and his sweeting
Are cuddling in the copse:
Three cheers for Springtime!

The Mowers
sing.
Three cheers for Summer,
When posies smell once more,
And morrice-man and mummer
Come dancing to the door:
When open stands the casement,
And walls that dripped with snow
Are hung from eave to basement
With roses all ablow;
When grass is scythed and tedded,
And work is paid-for play,
And lad and lass are wedded,
And tumble in the hay;
When everything increases,
And mother makes the jams,
While we shear the curly fleeces,
And wean the lusty lambs;
When the youngsters pitch the wicket
Upon the village green,
And the elders watch the cricket,
And talk of what hath been:
Three cheers for Summer!

The Reapers
sing.
Three cheers for Autumn,
When jolly shocks of grain,
And the brawny arms that wrought 'em,
Ride homeward on the wain;
When the early rime-frost dapples
The tender woodland leaves,
And the juicy ruddled apples
Are stored behind the eaves;
When unto green hop-garden
Pour all the village folk,
And the cobnuts swell and harden,
And the oasts are lit and smoke;
When steams the harvest-supper
With joints of beef and boar,
And lower dance with upper
Upon the granary floor;
When the yeoman counts his earning,
And the yokel's wage is known,
And the maiden feels a yearning
For a fireside of her own:
Three cheers for Autumn!

They All sing.
Then three cheers, my hearties,
And together three times three,
For whatsoe'er your part is,
Or whoso ye may be,
Be yours to spud the thistles,
To scoop and bank the ditch,
To souse and scrape the bristles,
And to cut up chine and flitch,
To peel and twist the withy,
To tend the lambing ewe,
To smite upon the stithy
And hammer out the shoe;
To find the emmet maggots,
To stake and tie the hops,
Or to stack the hazel faggots
In spinney and in copse;
To mount the market waggon,
Or to whistle by the shaft,
Now lift the home-brewed flagon,
And drain a goodly draught:
With three cheers, my hearties!

FORTUNATUS.
A May-day tune, pitched in no whining key,
Nor sung to sorrow. Feeling thus, you do
Wisely to rhyme not over-ruefully.
But, be the burden jocund or morose,
Singing is drouthy work. Thanks then, and hence
To fill your windpipes with more melody,
Cool-casked within the cellar.
[The Rustics depart.]
There they go,
Jostling and joking; bellied with the ale
Brewed on my Birthday, when the Age was young.
Birthday or death-day, 'tis all one to them,
So it be marked with malt. Bulged out with beer,
No devil's date they would not celebrate
As vocally as mine.
[The domestics retire.]
Ah! hopeful Adrian,
There's more felicity in a tun of ale
Than all the Hedonists. Twelve sweltering hours,
A sleep upon the settle then and there,
A wench to cuddle, and then ale, more ale;
These are the pleasures primitive that make
Invention folly, progress slavery,
Imposed by some taskmaster out of sight,
And our fastidious fineries the mirage
Of mortal travel. Shall we go within?

SCENE II

[The Duke's library.]
ADRIAN
(sitting at a table with papers before him).
To-morrow, then, you leave this fair domain,
And journey townward?

FORTUNATUS.
Even so it is,
Since so it must be. Custom, like the moon,
This way and that swayeth the bitter course
Of sterile being. You will come with me?

ADRIAN.
Gladly. But there are matters, ere you go,
Exacting your attention. These are they.
Will you dispatch them now?

FORTUNATUS.
Now will be then,
Would you but wait. But, since I try your patience,
Scan we these unadministered bequests
From deceased yesterdays. Why cannot Time,
Ebbing, rake back the litter of its flow,
Not leave it stranded?

ADRIAN.
Time's foreshore is ours;
And we, the lords of opportunity,
May find a treasure from its unplumbed deep
Among the refuse.

FORTUNATUS.
Thus you humour me,
Mending my mouldy metaphor. So to work.
Of work or weariness we have our choice,
Mocking alternatives. We prove the one,
To find the other better; bootless both,
Save to accelerate or retard the time
When neither load nor leisure wearies more.

ADRIAN
Now shall we hear the vicar?

FORTUNATUS.
Yes, the Church;
Precedence for the Church. The weakest first,
Weakest and most importunate.

ADRIAN.
He craves
For a new lectern.

FORTUNATUS.
What! Is the old worn out?
Time makes an end sometimes of uselessness.

ADRIAN.
No: stolen from its place. Some virtuoso,
Some lover of archaic furniture,
Fancied and filched it.

FORTUNATUS.
Give him then a new one,
The fellow of the old, and none will steal it.
Our unoriginal age collects the tools,
Spoons, corals, papboats, bellows, thuribles,
Of man's inventive childhood. Simple vicar!
He is the veriest curio of them all,
He, not the lectern; and he lives and thrives
On this strange mania for the obsolete.
Give lectern, rood-screen, pulpit, altar-rails,
All, anything, he wills.

ADRIAN.
The belfry gapes.
At the last funeral-dirge the tiles slid down,
Albeit they tolled so gingerly.

FORTUNATUS.
They would
Have tumbled from the timbers, one and all,
Had they rung timely music. Christening-bells,
And marriage-peals, shaken so wrongfully,
Should be reserved for requiems. Then it is
We should rejoice, if ever. Must man weep,
It should be at the cradle, not the grave.
Rebuild the belfry.

ADRIAN.
Next, the schoolmaster
Petitions for another wing. The standards
Are crammed to overflowing.

FORTUNATUS.
Happy birds,
Unhappy urchins, in an age like ours!
Birdnesting's out of fashion. Pothooks cramp
The hand that should be limber for the plough
And supple for the sickle. I forgot.
Lecterns survive, sickles are out of date.
Give him two wings—he's sure to need them both,
The yokels breed so fast—to teach their brood
How fine it is to be a city clerk,
Scribe, politician, rogue, philanthropist,
While carting muckheaps is a scullion's work,
Hedging and ditching feudal servitude,
And porridge food for porkers.

ADRIAN.
You are asked
Will you adjudicate between the hands
That work the mines and those that lease them from you,
Anent the hours of work. Those plead that eight
Suffice a day's existence underground.

FORTUNATUS.
Where do they plan to spend the rest, and how?
In yawning at the cross-ways, swopping pups,
Listening to shrill upbraiding from their wives,
Dazed on a bench or drunk upon the floor,
As little better for the sun as if
It never rose again, and all their days
Lapsed underground? But, give them what they ask,
Till they ask more; then, give them that as well.

ADRIAN.
But the leaseholders of your mines aver
It will be equal to the royalty
They pay to you.

FORTUNATUS.
The royalty foregone
Will make it even. Answer yes to all,
And leave all thereby discontended still,
With satisfaction surfeited. Our hinds,
Wiser than our mechanics, willing work
From dawn to dark, the changeful seasons through.
Unconsciously they copy Nature's pace,
And tick with Nature's minutes, solemn, slow,
Staid as their parlour-clocks. She never stops,
Knowing that rest is wearier than fatigue;
And they, who have no knowledge, imitate
The instinct they are suckled on. Wise hinds,
Wise in the trudging ignorance that asks
No question or from life or death, but walks
Still at a funeral pace along the road
That ends, without a guide-post, at the grave.

ADRIAN.
Nay, hear them now. The home-farm woodlanders
Ask sixpence more a cant, and billhooks shouldered
At five on Saturdays.

FORTUNATUS.
Alas! poor rustics!
They too have ta'en the virus of the time,
And sicken for more leisure to discover
The heaviest load of all is life itself,
Forgotten, or half felt not, by the backs
That bow beneath a faggot. Conscious man
Is a poor fretful invalid that turns,
First on this side, then that, in hope to find
The other easier. Luckless woodlanders!
They too demand more time for consciousness,
More leisure to be wretched. Give it them;
'Twere bootless to refuse. More sick we are,
The more must we be humoured.

ADRIAN.
You remember
That in the shire there is a vacancy,
And each side craves your aid and influence.

FORTUNATUS.
Then give it to them both, and so increase
Their bootless passions still more bootlessly.
Of all our feigned affections, there is none
So hollow, selfish, and injurious,
As what we christen Patriotism.

ADRIAN
(lifting flowers out of a basket).
Here are roses,
With morning dew upon their maiden faces,
Fair as the daughters they would fain have sent,
Who proffer these instead.

FORTUNATUS.
Ay, fairer still,
And scarce more fleeting. Adrian, flowers are best.
While they are sweet, they are sweet, nothing but sweet,
And, when they fade, forgetfulness absorbs
Their beauty and our worship. Woman wanes
Slowly, and still needs incense though the bloom
Hath vanished from the altar.

ADRIAN.
Here are gifts,
More numerous than your years, unscanned, unopened,
Though well I ween the givers are, themselves,
More often wooed than wooers.

FORTUNATUS.
The which spoils all.
There is no quality, how rich soe'er,
Bestowed by Fate, but straightway Fate itself
Will contradict its exercise and make
It void or venomous. The hand that gives
Injures the hand that takes. The rich, the great,
The mighty, the magnificent, are wooed,
Not for themselves; hence are not wooed at all.
Beauty from faithfulness absents its gaze,
To keep its eye on splendour. 'Tis a world
Where all is bought, and nothing's worth the price.
Now, may I go?

ADRIAN
(rising).
Yes! and the air of heaven
Waft to you saner thoughts!

[Exit Fortunatus.
ADRIAN
(alone).
Poor Fortunatus!
Poor in his boundless opulence and power.
Where got he this disease? Better not ponder
Too deeply on that question, lest I too
Should fall a-moaning. Against sickly thought,
Action's the prophylactic.

SCENE III

FORTUNATUS
(on horseback).
On then, still on! Swift motion for awhile
Dispels despondency; but, when we pause,
How quickly, like a phial that contains
Some nauseous medicine, thought secretes anew
The sediment of sorrow. Thus, when Man
Matures to meditation, and his blood
Slackens to foot-pace, plainly he discerns
The mockery of being. Look on these woods!
Unto the eye of April, April flowers
Are fair because both lack significance;
And April music unto April ears
Is sweet since meaningless. Thought, final phase
Of that incorporated force which drives
Our carnal substance blindly onward, blurs
Nature's expressionless smooth passive face,
By making it our mirror, where we see
Reflected our desires, our dreams, our doubts,
With death for background; death, lewd grinning satyr,
Who gloats on, with anticipating eyes,
The naked self-complacency of life.
The unmeditative primrose asks not why
It blooms then fades, nor doth the bluebell feel
The pathos of its passing; but man comes,
And with unquiet questioning infects
The woodland with his woe. The impulsive note
Sung by yon cuckoo conscienceless, when heard
By human ear, sounds like melodious guilt,
The mocking Mephistopheles of Love.
The nightingale that bubbleth 'mong the leaves
With such sweet insolicitude it asks
No dullard night to sleep away its song,
Misread by melancholy man, bewails
A woe it understands not, thoughtless bird.
Thus staid reflection's shadow falls athwart
The cheerful seeming of the Spring, and makes
May sadder than December.
[His horse stumbles.]
Nearly down!
Art tired, good beast? No, he hath cast a shoe.
So far, too, from his stall.

[A voice is heard singing.]

[As he sings the last line, Abaddon emerges from the forest, in the guise of a Pedlar, gaily attired, with a cock's plume in his hat, and carrying a smart pack.]
FORTUNATUS.
Who may you be?

ABADDON.
I am the Pride of Life.

FORTUNATUS.
The devil you are!

ABADDON.
The Devil I am, that's certain,
Though you will not believe it, since 'tis true.

FORTUNATUS.
What has become of Mephistopheles?

ABADDON.
Retired—'twas time—on an annuity,
Invested in a publishing-house that issues
Sceptical volumes of philosophy.
Not a bad trade, withal not good enough
For a brisk age like this, and so I took
His business over, paying a percentage
Upon my earnings. Lucifer grows old,
And does not understand the Modern Spirit;
Now, sir, you see I do.

FORTUNATUS.
You are a humourist.

ABADDON.
So would you be, were you the Pride of Life,
And not its dupe. I have nothing here for you.
Still, look upon my shrewd time-serving things.
[He opens his pack.]
Corsets and laces wherewith burgeoning maids
Make themselves buxom of a market-day
For reeking hinds: kerchiefs, and collars, and cuffs,
With gaudy garters for their dimpled knees,
Dimpled with sitting upon Sunday stiles,
Or Monday scrubbings. Do they what they will,
Their thoughts are on my satchel. Lord! how many,
As we stand here, are longing for this lace,
Venetian point—at least I tell 'em so—
And practise, or permit, some twilight theft,
To flaunt this flimsy finery. It is worth
A library of doubt, and makes more converts
Than all the Encyclopædists.

FORTUNATUS.
But why here,
In this remote afforested expanse,
With haply now a hamlet, now a farm,
Surely too desert to be worth the damning,
Bear you your pack? Why not in denizened towns,
Where mortals are as thick as trees are here?

ABADDON.
Sometimes I visit them, but not for that.
Towns can be trusted to corrupt themselves,
My unpaid partners, and my journeys thither
Are taken when my stock-in-trade runs low
And needs replenishing. These simpering curls,
When duly dangling on a pleated throat,
Will move as many sheep's-eyes, many sighs,
As the most real ringlets; and no rose
Born of the wind, engendered of the snow,
Or blushingly begotten, can provoke
Homage more hot than this vermilion
Packed in a pouncet-box.
[He holds up more things.]
Sachets and scents
To render lasses sweet as lavender,
When comes the time to lay it 'twixt the sheets
And perfume dreaming. 'Tis right pleasant work,
They are cogged so easily.

FORTUNATUS.
You have books, I see.

ABADDON.
Yes, but the newest and the lightest only,
Leavened with pictures. Lucifer begged hard
I would take over all his stock-in-trade
Of sceptical polemics. I refused;
It has grown so monstrous musty.

FORTUNATUS.
Have you poems?

ABADDON.

FORTUNATUS.
But have you nothing for the lads to buy?

ABADDON.

Only some men are producers, that's certain. But
all women consume, and can no more withstand gay
gear than men can resist winsome faces. Have the
right bait, and the fish will soon follow. Once the
women are on your side, the game's won. Lucifer
knew that, when he was young, and plied Eve with
the sweet pulp of an untasted fruit, not Adam with
the hard hollow husk of Free Will and Fate. Now
he's in his dotage, he argues in the Reviews.
Having reasoned so long, he now understands nothing.

FORTUNATUS.
But is it fair to fool the fairest fair,
And make a market of maids' weaknesses?

ABADDON.

Well, I'll tell you a secret; only mind you bury it
in that part of your memory where gratitude resides.
Women are not damned: only a few at least, those
who mountebank man, and so accompany him, for his
worst punishment, to the hell hereafter. Decoy-ducks
are not put in the larder.

FORTUNATUS.
Then, whither do they fare them when they die?

ABADDON.

I call that a right cunning song, and I used to sell
it by the gross. Now they won't look at it.

FORTUNATUS.
There never was a time when simplest maid
Dimpled her pillow with a wanton dream,
Slumbering on such a guileless melody.
Tears from the heart, pure tears from purest well,
Love's virgin disillusion, chance might flow
The faster for that ditty; but, believe me,
There's no damnation in a song like that.

ABADDON.

Who can say? Damnation has many doors; and
the Ivory Gate attracts many whom golden portals

would alarm, and those of brass disgust. But 'tis a
plausible song. I wonder who wrote it.

FORTUNATUS.
One whom I knew in youth, fantastic swain,
To whom this passionless panorama, Life,
Appeared a throbbing wonder-world.

ABADDON.
In flesh
Abides he still?

FORTUNATUS.
He went behind the scene,
And scanned the paint and pulleys. Caring not
To live as actor or as audience then,
He waiteth for the dropping of the curtain.

ABADDON.
A Pessimist? His doom concerns me not.
He is damned already.

FORTUNATUS.
I have cast a shoe.
Know you a farrier in these sylvan wastes
Can furnish me another?

ABADDON.
No. But stay.
Franklin the woodreeve hammers out his own,
Vulcan no less than each symbolic god
That stands for mortal mastery. There's nothing
In the wide range of man's necessity—
Mark you, I say necessity alone—
Not wrought by Franklin and Urania.

FORTUNATUS.
Who is Urania?

ABADDON.
She is his daughter, sir;
The pair the very wisest twain on earth.
My empire ceases at their rustic gate,
Arrested by their wisdom, faithful watch-dog
That scares all nether vagabonds, and keeps
Their unlocked lives secure from larceny.
Sometimes upon their wicket do I lean,
What time Urania's roses, damask-red,
Flecked with Madonna lilies, are ablow,
And wonder why their secret, plain as June,
Remains their own.

FORTUNATUS.
What is their secret, 'sooth?

ABADDON.
That would be telling. Go, and find it out;
Though odds are, you will miss it, like the rest.
My trade is not in jeopardy, though they,
Could they convert Archbishops to their creed,
Would make me bankrupt.

FORTUNATUS.
What, then, do they do?

ABADDON.
He tends the kine; Urania brims the pail,
Coaxing the udders with her lissom fingers,
Sweet as the milk they drain. She skims the cream,
And, with her sleeves tucked up, and white round arms,
Tipped at the elbow with a rosy bud,
Makes the churn sing like boulder-baffled stream.
He threshes out the wheat; she strains the balm,
Kneading and baking cottage loaves that smell
Of every homely virtue. When he rives
The rough sere remnants of the fallen thorn,
A wimple on her head, and kirtled short,
She pegs the snow-white linen in the wind,
And, singing back her way into the threshold,
Compounds the custard, or with nimble hands
Shells the first pods of summer, dainty-white
In bleachëd tucker, modest pinafore,
A heavenly earthliness.

FORTUNATUS.
How know you this,
Prohibited her door?

ABADDON.
Forbidden? No;
Only, still foiled. I enter when I will,
But with her florid voice Urania flouts
The pick of all my pack. Times, she will buy,
But not for show, only for usefulness:
And yet her choice hath more of fancy in it,
More taste, discrimination, true conceit,
Than vanity bestows on simpletons.
She hath no littleness, no passions neither,
Only majestic motions of the mind,
Steered by a steadfast heart. His daughter, sir,
His very daughter, daughter of his loins,
His love, his wisdom.

FORTUNATUS.
Is he very wise?

ABADDON.
He is strong and gentle. Who is that, is all.

FORTUNATUS.
You, for the Devil that you boast to be,
Seem much in love with comeliness and virtue.

ABADDON.
To know and reverence Good, and yet do evil,
Is the infernal penalty of the Past.

FORTUNATUS.
That's true.

ABADDON.
It is, of Devil and man alike.
Well, after all, we are brothers. Plague on your megrims!
You have half infected me with Pessimism.
Even the Devil has his dark hours, though living
With power to laugh and injure is merry work.
My world's not coming to an end as yet,
While such as you inhabit it, good Duke!

[He shoulders his pack.]
FORTUNATUS.
You know me, then?

ABADDON.
[He plunges into the forest, humming as he does so:]

FORTUNATUS
(alone).
A wise and witty vagrant. I forgot me,
Following the deep dark windings of his mirth,
To pay my footing.
[Taking out his purse.]
Even the Devil, they say,
Should have his due. What ho!

A VOICE.
What ho!

FORTUNATUS.
See here!

A VOICE.
See here!

FORTUNATUS.
Ridiculous! I have lost his trail.
It seems as if the forest had a voice.
Into the hollow of some pollard hornbeam
He hath shrunk, and screens him. 'Tis another prank
Whereby he dupes the sadness of existence
With spurious foolery ... What ho!

A VOICE.
What ho!

FORTUNATUS.
Perhaps he was right. The Devil is an echo
Of search unsatisfied.

SCENE IV

[Fortunatus reaches the rustic gate of Urania's garden, and dismounts. He hears a voice singing.]

FORTUNATUS.
How sovranly she sings, as though her voice
Had taken the ether captive, and the air
Lived on the linked enchantment of her tones.
Like to a covert nightingale she nests,
Continuously carolling unseen,
Whileas one halts to hearken. All the place
Seems magical with music, and there is
A bland and delicate texture in the air,
Which the unsounding shuttle of the winds
Hath woven into velvet.

A VOICE
(singing).
But the rook, and the bee, and the granaried corn,
Laugh, yaffel, laugh from tree to tree.

[Urania appears before him, in the garden walk, as he stands by his horse's head.]
FORTUNATUS.
O, pray, sing on!
Like to the afternoon, I paused to listen,
Suspended eavesdropper,—praying to be pardoned.

URANIA.
No need for pardon; all good things belong
To those that find them good, and you repay
Your pleasure with your presence.

FORTUNATUS.
Then your home
Belongs to me in fee, for have I never
Felt anything so fair.

URANIA.
Conceive it yours,
Yet not in fee, for none of us possess
More than the lease and usufruct of life,
Which is enough; too many think, too much,
Craving for more.

FORTUNATUS.
My horse had cast a shoe,
And in the forest met I one who said
I haply might replace it by the favour
Of those that dwell herein; a merry fellow,
Who entertained me with capricious jests
And rhyming raillery. He only needed
The cap and bells you sang of silverly,
To seem a mummer of the younger days,
With just the russet of our mournful time,
To sober the old habit of his mirth.

URANIA.
It must have been Abaddon.

FORTUNATUS.
That is a name
Which in the lumber-room of memory fills
Some undiscovered place; by himself christened
The Pride of Life.

URANIA.
A pedlar?

FORTUNATUS.
Yes, the same.
He moved so blithely 'mong the primroses,
The cuckoo's gibe, the wildwood pleasantness,
And melted into leafage so alert,
I could have deemed him dryad had his flouts
Not proved him alien to simplicity.

URANIA.
My father is afield, but shortly will
Call the kine home, and then will serve your need.
The stable lies behind; give me your horse.
Regale yourself with flowers till I return;
For May hath quickened a hundred into life,
That yesterday were dreaming.

[Urania leads his horse away.]
FORTUNATUS
(alone).
What an equerry!
She placed her hand upon the bridle rein
With such a gentle empery, I could
Not help depute my duty to her will.
Right was the pedlar; never have I seen
That which we know, and that for which we crave,
In visible perfection thus annealed:
Nature still showing through the enamelled grace
That surfaces the woman. But there lurks
Deception somewhere to befool the sense
For further disillusion. Of all shows
In this phenomenal fantastic world,
The slippery, fugitive, elusive stuff
From which imagination loves to weave
Its gossamer affections, there is none
So unsubstantial as a woman's seeming.
She can deceive, when man deceives no more;
A mirage in the desert, desert proved
By fatuous fancy thousand times bewrayed,
Life's earliest, latest, longest-lingering cheat;
Persistent in Appearance; when approached,
A nimbused nothingness.

[Urania re-enters the garden.]
URANIA.
Like you my garden?

FORTUNATUS.
It hath revoked the forfeit of the Fall;
'Tis Paradise regained.

URANIA.
The early roses,
Pinched by pernicious visitings of March,
This year will blossom tardily. But crown-imperials
Encouraged by the dry, undripping Spring,
Have thrust their tasselled canopies aloft
Before their feast is due. Do you not find
Nature's unpunctuality retrieves
Our too precise forebodings, filling up
All disappointing vacancies with gifts
Not reckoned in our calendar?

FORTUNATUS.
You must
Have rare and expert gardeners, to salute
Maytime with such a rivalry of flowers.

URANIA.
My gardener curtsies to you. I am he.

FORTUNATUS.
I have seen terraces and trim parterres,
Long-winding walks and trellises festooned,
With gaudy pleasances, but none like this.
What is your secret?

URANIA.
I have no secret, sir,
Save loving be a secret. Skill have I none,
Save such as tender observation lends,
And wage which these irregularly pay
With most usurious interest, when they smile.
Here are no curious blooms, but simply those
With which the homely cottager arrays
His narrow plot, filched from the roadway side;
Sweet-smelling stocks, last year not thrown away,
With double-rocket, limber columbine,
Frank rustic oxslips freckled by the sun,
Not like auriculas with powdered faces,
Too careful of their seeming.

FORTUNATUS.
How they mingle,
Lilac with peach-blossom, guelder-roses white
With saffron dust of bronze-leafed barbary.
Your garden is an orchard, and your herbs,
From pansies undistinguishable, share
The company of flowers.

URANIA.
Kind Nature loves
Concord, not contrast. It is man divides
With observation too fragmentary,
Her universal purpose.

FORTUNATUS.
What are these?

URANIA.
These are day-lilies, ignorant of the night,
But making by succession swift amends
For their ephemeral sojourn. Have you not
A garden of your own? Will you not sit?

[They sit on a rustic bench.]
FORTUNATUS.
A garden have I, but 'tis scarcely mine,
More than the sceptre to a King belongs
Who reigns but doth not govern. Mine it were,
Could wage but make it so. But yours seems yours
By some inherent tenure.

URANIA.
Is yours large?

FORTUNATUS.
Not large to look on.

URANIA.
But too large to love,
Too large to tend? Each accidental bloom
Is rooted in my heart, lives in my gaze,
And for a helpmate hath the nursing hand.

FORTUNATUS.
Sometimes in loitering vacancy of mood
I pick the wilted roses from their stalk,
Or shrivelled bells of the campanulas.
For that my hand may serve. Mefears its touch
Hath no creation in it, and my heart
Would prove an arid soil for such fair plants
As prosper in your moist fresh territory.

URANIA.
You do not love your garden.

FORTUNATUS.
What is love?

URANIA.
'Tis observation, patience, vigilance,
And infinite indulgence. Love is wisdom
In tender operation; having no rights,
But, though a spendthrift, hourly growing richer
By unusurious giving.

FORTUNATUS.
Where learned you that?

URANIA.
I learned it in my garden, in my home,
And somewhat in my heart; experience training
The shoots of instinct.

FORTUNATUS.
Love you but your garden?

URANIA.
Should we not love whate'er is lovable?
Beauty because 'tis beautiful, and sadness
Because 'tis sad, and sorrow most of all?
The wrinkled leaves of Autumn are as dear
As Spring's predicting blossoms, so the heart
Demands no payment for its lavishness.
Yet doth my garden teach me Love gets back
More than it hath capacity to give.
Look on it now! the churlishness of Winter
Forgiven and forgotten.

FORTUNATUS.
Winter reverts,
And the amenable tendrils that absorb
Your fondling fingers will return you then
Callous oblivion.

URANIA.
Not, if I remember,
Remember and await. They will renew
Their incense and thanksgiving once again.
Love never is lost.

FORTUNATUS.
Not lost! I ne'er have found it.
Man, shackled to his shadow, cannot move
Without the base companionship of self;
And Love, colossal egotist, would drag
The whole world after it, to reach some goal
Which with the winning vanishes. Desire
Is death in gay disguise, and ravenous nature
Feeds on our fond affections when they slacken.

[A voice is heard singing.]
If you love me, if you love me,
Stay in Heaven, and shine above me,
Stooping not to where we cherish
Yearnings that but pale and perish;
But make longing fond and fonder
For the unreachable Up-yonder.

FORTUNATUS.
Surely it is a childish voice that sings,
Although the words and melody be born
Of mature melancholy?

URANIA.
It is April,
My callow April, canticles aloud,
With throat as blithe and ignorant as the lark's,
Sad rhymes I sometimes murmur to myself
To make me happier.

FORTUNATUS.
Who may April be?

URANIA.
Gift of the woods, a fosterling of Spring.
A thrush was singing in a silvery thorn,
Striving to silence every note but his.
But over him the fleeting cuckoo called,
Unchecked and unashamed, and in the thicket,
Where leaves as yet were sparse, a nightingale
Fluted aloud, but unobtrusively.
Primrose and windflower carpeted the ground,
And, in an open space the woodlanders
Had lately cleared, lay April all alone,
A mould of waxen dimples, still unweaned,
Feeding its fancy with one chubby hand,
Its blue eyes gazing up at the blue sky,
And over its unwondering face a look
Of half-awake half-slumberous content.

FORTUNATUS.
Where was its mother?

URANIA.
Nowhere to be found,
Though I outcalled the cuckoo:—cuckoo, sooth,
That left this hazard egg within our nest,
[April comes running up the garden-walk.]
Now hatched to what you see.

APRIL.
Urania, a swarm! a virgin swarm!
A swarm of bees upon the midmost bough
Of grand-dad's favourite apple-tree, Northern Spy;
As thick, as thick, as thick as are the blossoms.
[April claps her hands.]
A swarm in May, a swarm in May,
Is worth a waggon-load of hay.

URANIA.
Nay, curtsey to this courteous gentleman,
And tell him who you are.

APRIL.
I am April, sir.

FORTUNATUS.
Indeed you are. Then give me April's greeting,
Kissing old Winter ere he takes farewell.

APRIL.
You are not Winter; you are more like Summer.
Why should you go? You go because I come.
See, I will flit away again, and leave
You and my sister-mother to your talk.
Grand-dad can take the swarm.

FORTUNATUS.
Nay, do not go;
And if you stay, I will petition leave
To linger still.

URANIA.
We pray you.

FORTUNATUS
(to APRIL).
When I go,
I would behind me you were pillioned,
Where Care is said to sit.

APRIL.
I will be careful.

FORTUNATUS.
She knows no other meaning of the word.
O happy carelessness!

URANIA.
Now to the swarm.
Fetch you a cloth to spread upon the grass,
And pluck the beanstalk that is most in flower,
And I will bring the ladder and the hive.

APRIL.
And don't forget the sugar and the ale.

FORTUNATUS
(alone).
I did not think that in this agëd world
There lingered so much youthful happiness.
Is it because these joys themselves are young,
That still they please; while pleasures late conceived
Affect us feebly even from their birth?

[Urania and April return.]
APRIL
(to FORTUNATUS).
Will you not take the swarm?

FORTUNATUS.
I know not how.

APRIL.
Urania will teach you.
[While Urania prepares to take the swarm, April recites.]
When the bees begin to swarm,
Would you house them well and warm,
Make them fill up comb and cell,
Daub the hive with hydromel,
And around it and between
Sweep the blossom of the bean.
Smear, and you will need no veil,
Face and arms with sweetened ale.
Rub fresh elder-leaves along
Branches near to where they throng.
Poise the hive, ere they begin
Flight afresh, then shake them in.

[Urania mounts the ladder with the empty hive.]
APRIL.
They never sting Urania: I believe
They'd swarm within the hollow of her hand,
Or hive within her apron, if she bade them.

FORTUNATUS
(aside).
She limes them with her sweetness, and they hover
Harmless about her head as though she were
Queen-Mother of the cluster.

APRIL.
To her curls
Some drowsy stragglers cling.

FORTUNATUS
(aside).
Deeming them anthers
Of honeyed bell-flower swaying in the wind,
As sways the branch she leans on.

URANIA
(descending with the hive, and placing it on the cloth on the grass).
There! it is done.
The Queen is safe within, and loiterers will
Rejoin their comrades ere the evening star
Summon the golden drones of crowded heaven
To swarm upon the night. Now, April, say
Those other lines you know about the bees.

APRIL
(reciting).
A swarm in May, a swarm in May,
Is worth a waggon-load of hay.
For then they sip the nectared wine
That wells within the columbine,
Wake drouthy with the dawn and drink
The dewy spices of the pink,
Into the tulip's chalice dive
To filch its vintage for their hive,
And carry hence, as off they flee,
The gold-dust of the barbary.
Around the foxglove's silent bells
Their mid-day music swerves and swells:
As the frail-folded leaves unclose,
They suck the sweetness of the rose;
Unto the lily-stamens cling
With honeyed feet and pollened wing,
From fields of swaying clover steal
Delicious draught and sugared meal,
And mix, from every tasselled tree,
The mortar for their masonry.

FORTUNATUS.
Where did you learn these seasonable rhymes?

APRIL.
I learned them from Urania—
[Kissing Urania's hand.]
Did I not?

URANIA.
Stay, dear, and entertain this gentleman,
Till I return!

[Urania leaves them.]
FORTUNATUS.
Do you know many rhymes?

APRIL.
Yes, for Urania says verse sheds the husk
And is the core of everything that's good.
You also know some poetry by heart,
Do you not, sir?

FORTUNATUS.
Once on a time I did;
And there is music mastered in the years
When I was young as you, that lingers still
In intervals of memory.

APRIL.
Say it me.
Tell me a tale. May I sit on your knee,
Or shall I tire you?

FORTUNATUS.
Nay, sweet April maid,
Perch here.
[Lifting her on to his knee.]
Perch there for ever! Shall the tale
Be in verse or prose?

APRIL.
In verse, of course; unless
You like prose better.

FORTUNATUS.
I remember none
That is not sad.

APRIL.
Sad songs sometimes are sweet.

FORTUNATUS.

APRIL.
Is there no more? It should not end like that.

FORTUNATUS.
Alas! sweet! endless sorrow is the end.
Nothing comes after that.

APRIL.
You make me weep.

FORTUNATUS.
As April should sometimes.

APRIL.
But I had rather
The knight had slain the bandits and espoused
His lady-love for ever.

FORTUNATUS
(absently).
Think it so,
Then so it was; for mind has mastery
Over the past and future. 'Tis the present
Embarrasses the fancy. ... But, forgive me. ...
I know another tale, if not so brief,
Yet somewhat happier.

APRIL.
O, then, tell it me.
I love the long ones, when they end in joy.

FORTUNATUS.

APRIL.
And are the roses blooming there to-day?
How I should like to see them!

FORTUNATUS.
I am told
They clamber there no longer, since men came
Who disbelieved the story: so, they died.
What faith creates, doubt kills.

APRIL.
So grand-dad says;
And all he says is true. Would you not like
To see his study, full of learned books?
Grand-dad knows everything.

[They enter, hand-in-hand. Fortunatus scans the book-shelves, filled with the works of the poets, sages, and historians of all ages.]
FORTUNATUS.
And does he read them all?

APRIL.
Yes, all, and then
Explains them to Urania; those, I mean,
She does not understand without his help;
And some day he will do the same for me.
You—you can read them all, for you are a man?

FORTUNATUS.
Once on a time, I understood them better
Than haply now. ... (Aside)
One's little learning rusts
With the disuse of life; whereas this man
Has annalists and poets of all time
For comrades and familiars of his leisure,
Yet girds a leathern apron round his loins
To play the farrier to my helplessness. ...
Where is the stable?

APRIL.
I will show it you.

[On reaching the stable, they find Franklin shoeing the horse, and Urania holding up the horse's hoof.]
FORTUNATUS.
Nay, you confound me with your useful grace,
And stooping dignity. I pray you, let—me!

URANIA.
See, it is done. Now, April, to the larder!

[Urania and April quit them, and Franklin conducts Fortunatus back to the garden.]
FRANKLIN.
There is no office in this needful world
But dignifies the doer, if done well;
And she brings dignity to all she does,
Lending her mind and hand, whenever wanted.
My part shows feebler; for, although 'twill serve,
The shoe is but a makeshift.

FORTUNATUS.
Did I stand
Stammering my thanks until the day was done,
I still should be your debtor. Thank you! thank you!

FRANKLIN.
Nay, then repay us with your company,
And share the meal we take when evening strews
The quiet of long shadows on the grass,
And friendly converse satisfies like prayer.
I will rejoin you shortly.

FORTUNATUS
(alone).
What man is this,
Who unto brawny and bucolic thews,
Rustic complexion, sweating craftsmanship,
And yokel's occupation, joins a port
Of simple elevation, now alas!
In court and palace well-nigh moribund;
Who does a smithy's work with kingly hands,
And from the lowliest labour glances up
With brow of meditation? Opposites,
Within this hospitable calm abode,
By some strange craft are amicably wed,
And life's rude contradictions reconciled.
For such a sire to engender such a daughter,
Congenitally noble, gentle, wise,
Is within nature's narrow competence.
But whence came such a stock? And is it choice,
Or some felicitous fortuity,
Planted them here?
[Fortunatus remains in meditation till he sees Franklin returning.]
Hither he wends, his work-day garb foregone,
Wearing the aspect of that goodliest thing
Matured by time, an English gentleman.

[Franklin leads Fortunatus to a spot in the garden where Urania and April have prepared supper.]
FRANKLIN.
How grateful, when the functions of the day
Finish their cheerful course, to sit within
The waving curtain of this leafy lime,
And eat the bread, and drink the draught, that's earned.

FORTUNATUS.
I have earned neither, though you give me both,
And come an idle vagrant to your board.

FRANKLIN.
Nay, you have ridden from far, and exercise
Is one of leisure's worthiest offices.
Do you not find the canopy of heaven
And carpet of the ground a richer room,
More varied and luxurious to the sense,
Than circumscribing wall and stagnant roof?

FORTUNATUS.
In such an hour as this. But rarely is it,
In our capricious ether, we can live
As free and unconditioned as to-day.

FRANKLIN.
Do you not think we quarrel overmuch
With the conditions that we cannot change?
The seasons are not ours to rule, and hence
Unto their fitful government the wise
Accommodate their senses.

FORTUNATUS.
But is will
So sure an anæsthetic it can blunt
The alertness of the nerves to heat and cold,
And make them face mercurial temperature
As though it stood for ever at fixed fair?

FRANKLIN.
Will leagued with action, yes. While opulent ease
Cowers from the sleety hurricane and warms
Its passive pulses by the velvet hearth,
See poor laborious lowliness, though clad
In floating flimsiness and wetly shod,
But every sinew braced to use, extort
From steely wind and parsimonious frost
A comfortable glow and tingling warmth.
'Tis not the seasons that have changed, but we.
The poets who of old extolled the Spring
Minded no more the blustering sheen of March
Than do the windflowers or the primroses.
Not overfed, nor overclad, nor drugged
To counteract gross surfeiting, they felt
Gust, cloud, or shower, as little as the lambs:
We fill up crack and cranny, and ensconce
In snug alcove our padded limbs, and then
Rail at the heavens for using wrongfully
Our artificial senses.

FORTUNATUS.
You should blame,
Not man, but Fate, which stimulates the mind
To invent the arts that undermine the body.
The dupe and victim of his faculties,
Man lies on the soft couch himself hath made,
Proud of his enervating power, and christens
With the fond name of Progress each new link
Enslaving him to matter.

FRANKLIN.
Who shall say
If the wind drives the cloud, or cloud the wind?
But long as man feels consciousness of choice,
Essential or fantastic, let man choose.
We feed not on the poisons we discover,
Nor fall upon the sword our wit hath sharpened.
Why then should man to matter fall a slave,
Being first so much its master that it yields
Its secrets to his seeking, nor reject
Its less ennobling aid and services?
Let man do all things, but remain himself,
And, 'mid progressive splendour, still maintain
The lordly rule of simple appetite.

[Urania beckons to April, and they retire.]
FORTUNATUS.
Was it by choice or accident you fixed
Your home in this delectable retreat?
And, having proved it, are you well content
With your aloof and narrow territory?

FRANKLIN.
Life is as large as we ourselves do make it.
But little room is needed for the scope
Of individual faculty, desire,
And practicable duty. If we fill
More space than nature hath allotted us,
We waste ourselves in tenuous expansion,
And all our force but drifts to feebleness.

FORTUNATUS.
And are you happy?

FRANKLIN.
Yes, if happiness
Be to have little, but to want no more,
And know, withal, this little is the sum
Of all worth having. Work, Love, Nature, Art,
From these the sane intelligence constructs
The four-walled citadel wherein it dwells
Impregnable to Fate.

FORTUNATUS.
But not to Death!
Patient besieger who invests us all,
And starves all out at length.

FRANKLIN.
Yet not to him
The fortress is surrendered. It is held
By all the wise and brave whose progeny,
Or others by their high example taught,
Retain the key of life, and leave death still
Encamped without.

FORTUNATUS.
Are you then satisfied
To bid farewell to Work, Love, Nature, Art,
Remitting these to others, while you pass
Into the loveless and unnatural ground,
Where you will work no more, and storied stone,
Is Art's last word to you, you will not hear?

FRANKLIN.
There was a time I had a feud with Death.
The hardest lesson wisdom has to learn
Is, having learnt to love and reverence life,
To learn serenely to relinquish it.
We do not purchase life; it is a gift,
Which we are free to forfeit, when we will,
Unto the Unseen Hand that gave it us.
The wise, the brave, retain it as a boon
Until the Giver himself demands it back.
Behold to what a goodly world we come!
For us the spacious bounty of the air,
The impregnable pavilion of heaven,
And silent muster of the disciplined stars.
For us the sun replenished, and for us
The punctual patience of the lonely moon;
The planetary seasons moving round
Their stately soundless orbits, fostering life
In blade, leaf, flower, blossom, and reddening fruit;
The mountains motionless, the mobile sea,
Freshness of dawn and frankincense of eve,
And vestal hush of meditative night.
Paupers we come into a world prepared
As for some regal guest; prepared, arrayed,
With temples, shrines, and statues of the gods,
Cathedrals where unfaltering twilight dwells,
Subduing souls to sympathy and prayer:
Lakes, woods, and waterfalls, and cities girt
With walls majestic circling sumptuous tombs
Of sceptres superseded, thrones interred,
Prodigious pageant open to us all.
And if to greet the superficial sense
Of each fresh, eager, welcome visitant,
These splendours are unfolded, think of those,
More precious, immaterial bequests,
Left by the mighty ancestors of thought:
Story and song in many a human tongue
Magnificently sounded, epics pitched
In high heroic key by bards that tuned
Their instruments to chariot wheels enlocked,
Helm-plumes unhorsed, and women wailing round
The wind-blown smoke of crackling funeral pyres.
For us, for all, who hither nothing bring
Save naked insignificance, the choir
Or archangelic poets have composed
Their universal music, stately hymn,
Mellifluous lyric, undulating ode,
And tragedy tremendous steadying life
With awful issues. Sages, seers, and saints,
Sounders of earth and searchers of the sky,
Heroes and hierophants, have left behind
The testament of science, wisdom, love.
Compared with this inheritance, bequeathed
By all to each, the wisest, worthiest,
And most improving occupant of life,
Can leave but little; while the barren herd,
Who feed upon the pasture of all time,
Live sleek, lie soft, lament themselves, and die,
Are thankless wastrels.

FORTUNATUS.
From your glowing picture
Life's shadows are omitted; pain and woe,
Carnage, disease, man's discontent with man,
The instability of love, the blight,
The melancholy mildew, swift or slow,
That blasts the fairest blossoms of the heart,
Pitiful yearning, pitiless denial,
Vast vista leading nowhere!

FRANKLIN.
You forget,
The moon casts darker shadows than the sun,
Having less light. Seen with meridian gaze,
The proud exclusive privilege of grief,
The sovereignty of sorrow throning man
Above the unsentient and the oblivious world,
His disappointments, failures, doubts, regrets,
Ennoble his mortality, and keep
His aspirations humble, tender, quick
To understand and sympathise with weakness.
Let cloudy sorrow gather as it may,
So long as hope, though lowly, doth not set,
Upon the gloomy wrack behold! there shines
The rainbow of man's tears.

FORTUNATUS.
Alas! I fear
These wise reflections comfort but the wise.
The poor, the lowly, who inherit woe,
Yet share not time's magnificent bequests,
In such a rich dispensary will find
Small medicine for their ills.

FRANKLIN.
The poor, the lowly,
Are wiser than our leisured wisdom deems.
Allotted tasks and homely wants secrete
No pessimistic poison. Life is well
Would we leave life alone. 'Tis restless thought,
Having no home nor duties definite,
Hence free to range and raven where it will,
Disturbs weak hearts with vague imaginings.

FORTUNATUS.
Go preach this in the highway, and be stoned.

[Urania and April return, carrying flowers and an empty basket. This they fill with what is left of the meal.]
FRANKLIN.
Into the highway Wisdom wanders not,
But works within the ample territory
Annexed unto its threshold. Each can do
But little, but if each would do that little,
All would be done. The individual task
Is for the individual life enough,
And, if performed ungrudgingly, absolves
The individual conscience.

FORTUNATUS.
May I ask
Where go you with your basket and your flowers?

FRANKLIN.
There is no lovelier hamlet in the land
Than that to which they wend. Its antique church,
Perched on the summit of a grassy hill,
Looks down on cottage garden, cottage roof,
Almshouse and school, sawpit, and forge, and inn,
Picture of rustic plenty, health, and peace.

URANIA.
Yet sickness sometimes lifts the humble latch,
And behind woodbined threshold penury lurks,
And ever do we find some pallid hand
Outstretched to hail our coming.

APRIL.
And we meet
No wicked King upon the way to change
The food to flowers, and so we carry these
To deck the village chancel, entering through
Its lowly Door of Humility.

FORTUNATUS.
Fare you well,
Sweet fosterling of Spring; and when I come,
If come I may, where blithely you abide,
May I find April always!
[He lifts her up and kisses her, then turns to Urania.]
Gracious maiden,
Who beautify life's burdens, and ennoble
Life's lowliest offices, I pray you deign
Take my poor homage with my richest thanks.
[He mounts his horse, and rides homeward through the forest.]
I! I have no more youth than autumn hath,
When time, with useful sickle in his hand,
Bends to his homely reaping. Love and I
Are all a hot and parching summer apart,
And I await the winter. ... Never again!
Though well I can recall the sweetness of it:
The moonlight, and the starlight, and the song
Of dewy-throated nightingale—O, I know,
Even as the nightingale itself, each note,
Each glad, sad, sharp, unsatisfying note,
That ripples up the clear ascent of love,
But to subside and sink into itself,
Silent as bare volcano that no more
Surges, yet sleeps not, and still brooding low
In its own hollow entrails, slow consumes
Itself to ashes. Cheat! thief! murderer! liar!
Thou art the cruellest, bitterest thing in the world,
The poisonous honey in the fleshly flower.
Yet why not cull the flower itself and leave
The poison undistilled? Thus do the wise.
Am I a child, I should do otherwise?
'Tis but a choice of bitters. But she! But she?
O, she hath morning in her gaze, and noon
For garland and for girdle. Is she fixed,
Deep-rooted in her garden, hedgëd round
Against the wildwood passion of her kind?
Pluck strongly, and the stalk of prudence snaps.
Savour the sweetness, wear, then fling away. ...
This is the place that nimble vagabond
Chose for his vanishing. ... What ho!

A VOICE.
What ho!

FORTUNATUS.
The voice
Sounds like an echo, yet not twin to mine.
The answering woodland is transmuting it,
Making it fanciful.
[He rides on, at a foot's pace, and shortly perceives Abaddon sitting on a stile.]
Ha! there you sit,
As idle as a dial when the sun
Sulks in the clouds. Have none, then, smiled on you
Since late we parted? Any one would think
It is the very season made for selling.

ABADDON.
And so it is. But, apprehend you not,
When misselthrushes flute and maidens quit
The pruning of their roses to attend
A dulcet duke, I trade by deputy.
Hath she not all the heavens in her face,
Yet earth in every footstep?

FORTUNATUS.
She is fair
As dewdrops in the morning.

ABADDON.
Tell her that,
And I will hang my pack upon a tree,
And whistle through the greenwood, unconcerned,
Your summer pensioner.

FORTUNATUS.
And wherefore so?
You would not sell one ribbon more or less,
For love-song of my chanting.

ABADDON.

FORTUNATUS.
Who spoke of marriage? 'Tis a musty word.

ABADDON.
Keep yourself fresh, lord duke. I see you know.
Return and woo Urania in her garden,
When nubile rose and modest mignonette
Scent the white chamber of a maiden's mind
With treacherous ecstasy. My duty to you.
[He leaps from the stile, and vanishes into the wood singing.]

[Fortunatus breaks into a rapid trot, not drawing rein till he reaches his own lands, shortly after sunset. Then, riding slowly, he shortly recites aloud.]
FORTUNATUS.

SCENE V

[In Urania's chamber.]
APRIL
(sitting up in her crib).
Was he not kind and gentle? How I wish
I knew who he is, that I might pray for him,
Adding his name to yours and grandpapa's.
You love him, do you not?

URANIA.
Love is a word
Best kept for home and those high homeless thoughts
We meditate but see not. I love you,
My dear, near April, Father, and my Garden,
The poor, the dead, all that is sad or noble,
Famed or afar. Between the two extremes
Of close and unattainable there lies
A world of liking, sweet, but not of love.
He is a stranger.

APRIL.
But if he lived with us—
I almost think he would, if grand-dad asked him—
Then you could love him?

URANIA.
Maybe. Good-night. Sleep sound.
We'll talk of that to-morrow.

[She kisses April, who settles herself to sleep, and then walks to the open window and listens to the nightingales.]
URANIA
(to herself).
Childhood drowns
The fancies of to-day in rippling slumber,
Waking to-morrow unto fresh affections.
But love, if once matured within the mind,
Is love to-day, to-morrow, and for ever.

APRIL.
[Urania takes up a volume that lies on a table by the side of her own bed, opens it, and reads aloud.]

[She sees April has fallen asleep.]
URANIA.
Asleep! how swift she hath been lullabied
By that she understands not! Thus it is.
'Tis the unknown that soothes and folds us round
With its dark curtain. To the known we wake,
To find it inefficient.
[She returns to the open window and again gazes out.]
“Rapt in a dream, slow-moving toward the dawn.”
Who wrote that must be noble. But who wrote it?
Again the Unknown, making impossible
All known, ignoble love!

SCENE VI

[The Duke's library.]
FORTUNATUS
(asleep in a chair, and talking in his sleep).

That does not rhyme. I once had the trick.
Now I suppose it too has gone—gone with love?
Why do not love and gone rhyme? There is reason

in them, and kinship. Love rhymes with above; yet
they are a universe apart. Love should rhyme with
—Urania! Urania rhymes with nothing. And
yet—What a misleading thing is verse! Lust
chimes with trust; ay, but with dust also. That's
the proper ending.