University of Virginia Library

Scene 1

(Mirandola. A magnificent apartment in Charles Stuart's palace, as in Act First, Scene the First. Enter Charles Stuart and Flora.)
Charles Stuart
Now do mine eyes behold all that my soul
Hath pictured to me in my dreams—infinite perfection in thy form,
Of angel beauty, whom my dying friend,
In the last moments of his parting soul,
Bade me remember.

Flora
Ah, you were his friend.

Charles Stuart
And now thy beauty steals upon me in
The likeness of that being gone. Thou art—
If ever beauty mirrored back in truth,
The likeness of her parentage—thou art
Indeed Macdonald's child. Why do you weep?

Flora
Oh, how my soul could love him, did he live,
Seeing it loves him so now he is dead.

Charles Stuart
I recollect the hour when first my heart
Was stirred to passion by the birth of love;
For when my heart first mixed itself with thine,
And each beat bounding unto each, thy voice
Stole on my raptured soul as soft as if
The spirit of the solitude had sighed.
Man is deluded when he hopes to build
Ambitious temple on unhallowed ground.
He lays his corner stone upon the bones
Of man-made cement by their own dear blood.
The more I see of thee, the more I hate
The vanities of kings.

Flora
How much great good
Could you bestow on man, were you to teach
Them what you know.

Charles Stuart
Had I the power to make
My voice a trumpet for mankind, I would
Arouse the Present to a dignity
Of Self, and make it live in centuries
Of years to come. I would send forth my thoughts
As on eagle wings, through all the dark
Abysmal future where sits raven Time
In silence, on her peaceful years unfledged,
And scatter them to all mankind—where each
Should grow to Liberty's triumphant tree,
And fill the earth with one continuous shade—
Beneath whose oaky boughs forever green,
The generations yet unborn should sit,
And see their present joys in other years,
Fulfilled with prophet's eyes as mine to me.

Flora
What is it makes the vain, ambitious man,
Unsurp the rights of other men?

Charles Stuart
The love
Of power—that bastard offspring of a want
Of something good to do.

Flora
If all men have
Their natural gifts—those gifts which make them men,
They all have natural rights which they should use
Proportioned to those gifts. If they are not
All equal in those several gifts, they have
Enough to make them men, therefore, they all
Profess an equal right—should use that right.

Charles Stuart
One subject of our realm we have to lose.
Poor Madalena, she is sad indeed;
And I am sad to think of her.

Flora
She is;
And takes Sir Ronald's death but ill at heart.

Charles Stuart
I thought if I could only see her wed,
I would be happy for the rest of life.

Flora
You might have known such interest for your sake,
Betrayed ambition to that sake.

Charles Stuart
I did not think
Her aught but what she seemed.

Flora
She acted well
For she deceived Sir Ronald all the while.

Charles Stuart
She lay upon his bosom like the swan
Upon clear waters, while his soul grew white
To image back her form. She was his joy;
And now she dies for Ronald's sake.

Flora
She does,
Singing her own death song, like that same Swan,
Which, matchless, will not seek another love.

Charles Stuart
But she has found her mate—she takes the veil—
And what she could not find on earth, she hopes
To find in Heaven.

Flora
It is most strange, that what
We most desire on earth, to lose it here,
We seek in Heaven.

Charles Stuart
It gives no joy to think
That what we valued here, shall meet us there;
For what is most like Heaven on earth, we hope
To find in Heaven.

Flora
If we profess on earth
That which is most like Heaven, we shall be most
Like Heaven possessing it. If we seek Heaven,
We shall profess the joy of that we seek.

Charles Stuart
In some degree we shall. She goes tonight.
Then will she look her last upon the earth.
The wavy grandeur of the sloping hills,
Which look so beautiful in morning's light,
As if they were the mighty graves of gods—
The rising stepstones to the Deity;
The honest oneness of the verdant fields;
The soft retiring mystery of the vales;
And all the sweet variety of view,
Which once was pleasing to her soul.

Flora
Alas,
How different from her aspect while your Page!

Charles Stuart
Ah, sorrow works sad havoc with the heart!

Flora
But, what if he should come—would she have power
To wed him then?

Charles Stuart
If she should wed High Heaven,
And, after, break that vow for aught on earth,
She would be forfeiting that Heaven.

Flora
Alas!
Is he not all the Heaven she ever sought?
The very Heaven for which she makes the vow?
Then, if she take the veil to seek that Heaven,
To find that Heaven is not to break that vow.

Charles Stuart
By all the ties of contract it is so.

Flora
Ah, that is what the priest would say. As for
Myself, I do not think that aught on earth
Could make me break the vow I made to you.

Charles Stuart
Then why her vow to Heaven?

Flora
Because the vow
She made to Ronald was before the one
She makes to Heaven—the cause of that to Heaven.

Charles Stuart
It is no less a heavenly vow.

Flora
Then she
Can wed him if he come.

Charles Stuart
How is she now?

Flora
No more the Minstrel Boy.

Charles Stuart
Her fate is sad.
Does she not sing?

Flora
Ah, like the dying Swan!
The saddest songs you ever heard. He yet may live
And Hope is better than Despair, if he
Should never come.

Charles Stuart
That is an Angel's truth
And spoken by an Angel. Come, my love,
For as before the rising of the sun,
The mountain's tops are gilded by his beams,
Gladdening the verdant prospect all around,
So does thy soul betoken on thy face
The pleasing sigh of coming good. Come on.