University of Virginia Library

SCENE II

A Part of the Garden near a Moon-Dial
Larkspur:
What are these moth-like creatures, winged with film,
And star- and moon-dust, dancing down the night?
A light glows through them as through globéd rain
A firefly's glimmer, green and silver green.

Candytuft:
Elves of the Star- and Moon-light. Every bud,
That pushes its sweet way into God's air
Within me, leaps at impact of their feet:
And every flow'r 's agog to see them pass,
And breathes a deeper breath of pure perfume.—
Listen! I hear the music of their hearts
Keep time to their wild wings.—Light thrids their limbs
As fragrance veins the petals of a rose.
I swoon with ecstasy.—They touch me now.

Larkspur
(as the Elves appear):
Take care lest joy should kill thee.

Candytuft:
It is grief,
Not joy, that kills. ... See where they come! they come,
Dazing the winds with wonder. Hear them speak.

Elves of the Starlight:
A madder whirl! madder around the Rose!—
Hey, Trip and Trixy, Thistlepuff and Foam,
Mothfeather, Fernseed, Wink and Rippleray,
Wing-tip to tip and toe to twinkling toe,
Trip it and spin it. Make the Flowers grow.—
A thousand buds must break ere dawn of day.

Elves of the Moonlight:
Faster and faster! ... Here 's an humblebee!
Gone dead asleep deep in this hollyhock!—
There 's comfort for you! Hear him how he snores.—
Ho there! what Inn is this? What drink do y' sell?—
A boozing den, forsooth, for lazy bees!—
A right fair house, but needs good cleaning out.
Hey ho, thou tippler, drunk with honeydew,
Out, out, thou burly braggart!—Art the host?—
We'll ruin thy business!—Look! he never moves. ...
Here, Batwing, tease him with a whip of web:
Imp-ride him now as Nightmares ride digestion. ...
Well done!—He doth protest?—Out, out with him!
With all the goblin gold that weighs his thighs,
And sack of honey in his shaggy paunch.—
This is no wayside-tavern for fat bees.

Elves of the Starlight:
What rakehell flower's this with swaggering plume!—
A Cockscomb!—Well!—pranked with a butterfly.—
Off with thy finery, thou swashbuckler!
Thy butterfly-order with its bossy gold.—
One would imagine thee a titled prince
Or belted knight, plebeian that thou art!—
Here is the royalty where it belongs,
This splendour crowned with crystal and strange gold,
This regal Lily with its silken air.
There let it dream.—Here comes a snail our way.

Elves of the Moonlight:
Two snails!—And there slides down a sleepy slug.—
Off, thou Obesity! wouldst gnaw this rose?—
Bring here those gossamers that line and loop
With moon-thin wefts the bugled honeysuckles.
Bridle these vermin with their silvery silk,—
And rein them taut by their astonished horns.
Now prick them with ambition, not unreal,
And let a vision of a feast to be
Grow in their heads of ooze.—Ho, Foxfire, there!
Drag up a mushroom from the glowworm soil,
Yonder among the weeds; and let it be
The set goal for a race between these three.—
Up! stride their slimy backs.—Away! away!—
Who wins now? Spark or Twinkle? Ripple-ray? ...
Prick them into the race with thorns of burrs.—
Ay; let them feel the metal of your spurs.—
The snail that wins shall have the largest share
O' th' pinkest part o' the plump fungus there.

Elves of the Starlight:
Here is a Moth, as delicate as a dream,
Hovering above this rosebud's heart of flame—
As 'twere a candle where it would be singed.—
What message does it bear?—The creature waves
Its plumy head as if it mocked at us,
And kept its information for the flowers.

The Moth:
Your revels here have scandalised the Garden.
Where Grief goes Folly should be circumspect.

Elves of the Starlight:
Ho! here 's a howdy-do! A thing of down
And flossy white, a sort of butterfly,
That once was but a crawling, obscene worm,
Turned old philosopher to lecture us
On our behaviour! ... Ring it round and round!
Dizzy it till it drop! A tangled whirl
Of fluffy wings and plumes.—We are thy betters;
And when thou dost correct us—be advised.
Lie there now, wretched, till thou gather sense.

Elves of the Moonlight:
Two shadows wander this way. One is fair,
With eyes of dreaming azure, deep as night,
And hair like moonlight on a leaping stream.
And one is dark, with eyes of sadness, soft
As pansies velveted with dreams and dew,
And hair like night upon a sleeping stream.

Elves of the Starlight:
These are the Lovers whom in ancient days
We saw here roaming through the purple dusk.
Misfortune overtook them and the change
For which we have no name. Their Shadows now
Revisit the old places of their love,
Earth-bound by grief and loss of innocence.
Draw near and hearken.

[The Shadows appear.
Shadow of the Man:
Elfins haunt these walks.
The place is most propitious and the time.—
See how they trip it!—There one rides a snail.
And here another teases at a bee.—
In spite of grief my soul could almost smile.—
Elfins! frail spirits of the Stars and Moon,
'T is manifest to me 't is you we see.—
We never knew, or cared, once.—Would we had!—
Our lives had proved less empty; and the joy,
That comes with beautiful belief in everything
That makes for childhood, had then touched us young
And kept us young for ever; young in heart—
The only youth man has. But man believes
In only what he contacts; what he sees;
Not what he feels most. Crass, material touch
And vision are his all. The loveliness,
That ambuscades him in his dreams and thoughts,
Is merely portion of his thoughts and dreams
And counts for nothing that he reckons real;
But is, in fact, less insubstantial than
The world he builds of matter-of-fact and stone.
That great inhuman world of evidence,
Which doubts and scoffs and steadily grows old
With what it christens wisdom.—Did it know,
The wise are only they who keep their minds
As little children's, innocent of doubt,
Believing all things beautiful are true.

Shadow of the Woman:
This is the Loveliness, uncomprehended,
Imperishable, and full of faery tricks,
Invisible once, that oft we felt here when
Our mortal steps went wandering mid these Flowers.
Impossible creatures of the Stars and Moon,
What do ye here?—What revels do ye hold?
What wonders do ye work? ... In days long gone
I felt you round me, but I could not see.
I did not dream 't was Elfland that bewitched
My heart with dreams and gentled it with love.

Elves of the Starlight:
This Garden is our work-shop, playground too.—
We dance the Flowers open as we once
Danced dreams into your heart.—Here is a bud.—
Watch us at work. A lump of lead, you see,
Transformed to mother-of-pearl.—Our part observe,
Is to bring Loveliness into the world.—
What think you of a child, a minute old,
That prattles wisdom as this infant does.

Moonflower
(that has just been born):
What bliss is this! what sudden, silken joy
Of swift awakening!—Did music give me life?
Kissing my dewy eyelids while I slept,
Saying Be born! ... And who are these? and you?—
Fair presences who touched me into being?—
And why am I? and what am I? and whence?

Elves of the Moonlight:
So apt at questions and a moment born!—
O young inquisitor, we are the Elves.—
The Wind will answer all thy questions, sweet,
And press his angry kisses on thy mouth.
Keep all thy questions for him, fragrant one.—
We have no reason for the things we do,
But simply do them for the beauty of it.
Thou art thy own sweet reason for thyself,
Being beautiful, and need'st not ask wherefore.—
But why and whence—the wise, instructing Wind
Will answer that, and tell thee marvellous things,
And woo thee with harsh kisses of his mouth,
And fill thee with sad wisdom ere thou die.
For to be wise is to be sad, they say,
And death will come in time, all Flowers know.

Moonflower:
And what is death? What does it mean to die?—
I do not wish to die. Life is too sweet.

Elves of the Starlight:
The never-dying Wind will tell thee that.
Enough now that thou livest. These are dead,—
These two sad Shadows bending o'er a Rose,—
But have a certain life, we know not of,
After they die, or change; for men must die,
And flowers must die; but we—we never die.
We are the dreams that keep the world's heart young;
The dreams the world refuses oft to see.—
Facts pass and perish, but the dreams endure.
This is the only immortality.

[Elves pass on.
Shadow of the Man:
Here is the Rose that once we found so sweet.
One bloom is withering and one bloom is blown,
And a frail moth clings to the heart of one.

Shadow of the Woman:
Perhaps it is a dream materialised;
The pale thought of some dead rose come to tell
The living rose the secret of all death.

The Moth:
I am the kiss that twilight gives to night,
That darkness dreams of, lends material form.
I bear white messages from flower to flower
No words may syllable nor any speech.
I messenger between the dusk and dew,
And thrill to life the seed within the bloom.
There is no privacy that shuts me out.
I am th' expression of what beauty means,
Fanning frail wings of moonlight 'thwart the moon;
The intimate of dreams that darkness dreams.

Shadow of the Man:
Yea, we are answered. 'T is a symbol only,
This pallid life, that messengers back and forth,
Between the dusk and dawn, among the Flowers.—
All, all is mystery. Questions profit naught.
Result in nothing.—Let us farther seek,
Between the Fountain and the Wind.

Shadow of the Woman:
I see
A Firefly flicker there, beneath the thorns.
Come, let us go. Haply 't will show us soon
Some answer, long deferred, for all this grief;—
Some reason, long withheld of Heaven and God;—
And reunite us in some fairer place
With the sweet soul of that we lost long since,
The Innocence of earth gone with our dreams.—
The light says follow, but 't is far away,
And wanders over graves. ... Come, let us go.

[They pass on.
The Beetle:
Thank mercy they are gone! Now I can eat

Snapdragon:
There is that Beetle bungling at my ear.
What a voracious beast it is.—Be gone.

The Beetle:
I would but whisper something in thy ear.—
What dost thou think now of those two just gone?

Snapdragon:
That they 're inquisitive of what concerns
Not me or thee. What sickness, eh, is theirs?
Is it the blight, or, haply, the red-spider?
Or something worse than plagues the flowers have,
I wonder. Haply, did they ask of me,
I could inform them of the thing they seek;
For I am gossip of the Gnomes, who dwell
Beneath the rocks there by the mossy wall,
And who, each night, make me their confidant,
In payment for the loan of these my blossoms
They wear as night-caps.

The Beetle:
They are very fine.
I love thy blossoms too. Come, lean them down,
And let me see what colour streaks each crown.

Snapdragon:
Feed not so fiercely. Thou hast torn my blooms.
Thy harsh feet rend my leaves; thy mandibles pierce.
Off, vampire!—Ha!—Didst get a fall?—Lie there.
Be gentler next time. What wind blew thee hither?

The Beetle:
No wind; but that sweet leaf which suppered me
Last eve, and music of our cricket friend,
Who still persists in serenading thee.
Some day some Gnome will steal his fiddlebow,
Or crack the stretched strings of his violin,
And hang him with them from thy windowed leaves
For all thy Flowers to gape at.—Tell me now,
What dost thou give him for that rusty tune?

Snapdragon:
Honey of praise and fragrance-dewed applause
Dropped from my golden throat, thou wingéd fang!

The Beetle:
Oh, if thou 'rt angry, as I think thou art,
I will get hence. I know a Flower now
That greets me like a brother. 'T will be glad
To house me for the night. So, fare thee well.

[Passes on.
Snapdragon:
Play up, my Cricket. Snap thy fiddle strings;
I listen with my twenty delicate ears.

The Cricket:
I heard the Elfins but an hour agone
Trip to my music, therefore still I play.—
'T is for no Snapdragon, nor any Flower,
I keep my fiddle tight. My strings are stretched
For better folk than Flowers.—Eh?—Go to!—
Here come my people. Tinkle I must again,
A nimble melody for nimble feet.

[Elves appear.
Elves of the Moonlight:
Those Shades are gone.—
Would they were gone for ever!
Why bring their troubles here?—They disarrange
Our midnight revels.—Would they slay this Rose?—
Oft have they stood above it whispering,
And every time the Rose let fall a bloom,
A crimson heart-drop.—This will never do.
We must search out their sorrow, and preserve
The gladness of our Garden. Why, look here,
Even our Snapdragon, the jolliest flower
That ever tossed its bonnets to the Wind,
Is melancholy, hangs its heads in grief. ...
Where passed those Shadows, tell us, lovely Rose?

The Rose:
Into the shadow of yon twisted thorn,
Where two dim graves raise low their weedy mounds,
And where the Firefly trims its phantom lamp.

Elves of the Moonlight:
We dare not follow there. We can not dance,
Or flutter faery feet where mortals lie
In clay and darkness.—Come, we will go hence.—
A sorry business hovering round their graves!
Unhappy in their lives and sad in death,
What may deliver them, except themselves,
Or that sweet spirit, Inexperience,
Born of their dreams, but lost before they died?
That would release them, could it now be found,
From their unhappiness.—We can not help.—
Come, let us go away. Our life is joy;
And joy is part of immortality.—
So let us hence and dance till daybreak there
Where the pale Fountain tosses wild its hair.

The Cricket:
And I will follow with my tinkling tune.
Elves could not do without me and—the moon.