University of Virginia Library

Scene II.

Garden of a villa near the sea and bordering on a road. Enter Uberto, who walks to and fro. Night of the day after the last act.
Uberto.
For gold, for lands, for any bribe of power
The soldier wastes the substance of the poor,
Sets ravage free and spills the innocent blood,
Yet sleeps as soundly. Shall I hesitate,
Checked by the memory of an outworn love,
A thoughtless woman and a foolish girl?
My friend—but he has won the laurel crown.
Dim continents of thought before me lie;
Their harvests wait the vigor of the scythe,
While in my heart the tardy blood of age
Unequal throbs. The mind, as tremulous
As these thin hands, has lost its certain grasp;
Pass, ye weak phantasies that bar my way,—
Children of habit,—I will do this thing!

Enter Emilia.
Emilia
(aside).
Now help me, Mary Mother, in my need.
Perhaps some memory of our joyous youth—

Uberto.
What, not abed?

Emilia.
I cannot sleep of late.
As if life were not long enough, the days
Live through the night, and mock with time's excess.

Uberto.
Why vex my soul with that of which each hour
Tells the sad tale?

Emilia.
Let us forget, Uberto!
Just half a century gone, when you and I,
Just fifty years ago this very night,
Walked 'neath the flowering locust, how I blessed
The kindly shade that hid my blushing cheek.
Not redder was the moon that night of May.

Uberto.
Still shall it mock the cheek of other loves
When you and I are dead. Oh, cruel time!
You lost the plaything of a pretty face;—
What was your loss to mine? What comfort lies
In useless babble o'er a squandered past?
Lo, when the eager spirit, worn with toil,
Has gathered knowledge, won its lordliest growth,
This robber comes to plunder memory
And lash with needless anguish to the grave.
We scorn the miser who in death laments
The gold he cannot carry; let us jest
At him whose usury of knowledge stops.

Emilia.
How know you that it doth? To me it seems
As if no office of our mortal frame
Has more the signet of immortal use
Than just this common gift of memory.
Forgive the thoughts that come I know not whence,—
I think our Galileo said it once,—
The ghosts that haunt the peaceful hours of night
Are not more unaccountable of man
Than the dead thoughts of life that, at a touch,
A taste, an odor, rise, we know not whence,
To scare us with the unforgotten past.
Your knowledge is not like the miser's gold,
For this world's usage only. Yet, perchance,
'T is like in this, that what it was on earth,
Self-ful, or helpful of another's pain,
May set what interest on that gathered hoard
The soul falls heir to in a world to come.

Uberto.
Alas, were I but sure that after death
I still should carry all life's nobler seed
To ripen largely under other skies,
I should not mourn at death.

Emilia.
Why is it, friend,
That I, for whom this life so little holds,
Should in its cup of emptied sweetness find
The pearl content, and with calm vision see
The stir of angel wings 'neath death's black cloak?
And life, ah, life might still be sweet to me!
O husband, had you been as some have been,
We might have lived a length of tranquil days,
With love slow moving through its autumn-time
To merge in loving friendship, and at last
To find the cloistered peace of patient age,
Tranquil and passionless, and so have walked
Like little children through life's wintry ways
To meet what fate the kindly years decreed.

Uberto.
Alas, the best is ever to be won!
There is no rose but might have been more red,
There is no fruit might not have been more sweet,
There is no sight so clear but sadly serves
To set the far horizon farther still.

[Voices are heard on the road back of them.
Emilia
(aside).
Heart of my hearts! It is the little one!
My Gelosetta! Will he know the voice?

Gelosa
(on the road as she goes by with Gaspar).
Can the rosebud ever know
Half how red the rose will grow?
Can the May-day ever guess
Half the summer's loveliness?

Uberto.
What voice is that?

Emilia.
Some wandering village girl.

Uberto.
No, 't was Gelosa's.

Emilia.
Would indeed it were!
Ah, that were joy! Alas, 't is but the girl
I helped last winter, one the plague cast out
With other Florentines. (Aside.)
Would I could see!

Uberto.
Come back again to drain our meagre purse
Ay, there's the man,—a woman and a man.

A man's voice sings.
'T is better to guess than to see,
'T is better to dream than to be.
The best of life's loving
Is lost in the proving,
'T is better to dream than to be.
The joy of love's sweetness
Is lost with completeness,
'T is better to dream than to be.

Emilia.
A pair of lovers! She has found her mate.

Uberto.
Already doth your cynic lover sing
The death and funeral of love and trust.
Thrice happy these with wingless instincts born.
Perhaps is best the woman's ordered life,
Market and house, the husband and the child.

Emilia.
Mother of God! and I that have no child!

Uberto.
St. Margaret! but you women-folk are tender.
Behind a hedge Gaspar and Gelosa, while Uberto continues.
Forget my haste, Emilia; all my mind
Dwells on the nearness of one fateful hour.

Emilia.
Again the dream that through these weary years
Has turned your life from God, and home, and me,—
To win for you that doubtful cup of youth.
Think yet, Uberto, on the thing you do;
It cannot be that I, grown drear and old,
The very death-tide oozing round my feet,
Shall see you glad and young. It cannot be
Earth holds for me that agonizing hour.

[Uberto remains silent.
Gaspar
(to Gelosa apart).
No answer hath he. Now speak you to him.
It seems the wise man hath no wiser dreams
Than fools are heir to.

Gelosa.
Heard you all he said?

Gaspar.
Ay, all I cared to hear. Come, let us go.
Seek you his wife alone. Forget this fool.

Gelosa.
Didst hear, my Gaspar? Can it be he owns
A cup which, drained, shall fetch his youth again?
Men say the thing has been in other days.
To leave her old and withered were to add
A crime, unthought of yet, to sin's dark list.

Gaspar.
Less base it were to stab her where she stands.

[Exit Emilia silently.
Gelosa.
Hush! she has left him,—left him. Were I she,
I would crawl out at midnight to his tower.
Deep would I drain the damnèd cup of life,
And wander back a maiden fair and young,
To curse his age with jealous misery.
Or I would kill him as he lay asleep,
And keep him old forever,—that would I.

Gaspar.
Now here's a wicked lady. Should I chance
To fall in love with larger length of days,
I shall be very careful of my diet.
Comes now the Florentine. The play were good,
Were you not in the plot. They say in Florence
The Pope will have it that this man of stars
Shall spread no gossip as to worlds that roll,
Nor play at Joshua with the Emperor Sun.
To be so wise that all the world's a fool
Might breed uneasy life.

Gelosa.
Perhaps; and yet,—
You know we little women will have thoughts,—
I was but thinking that for one to own
A soul for actions great beyond compare,
A mind for thoughts that have the native flight
Of eaglets rising from the parent nest,
To soar so high they cast no earthward shade,
Might bring a very childhood of content.

Gaspar.
There's ever music in your Umbrian heart
That lived where Dante died. Yet vain the thought;
For me the world may skip, or stop, or turn
Back-somersaults as likes the blessed Pope.
Where got you, love, these riddles of the brain,
These comments on a world you never knew?

Gelosa.
A certain soldier taught me. Ah, you smile!
To greatly love is to be greatly wise.
God were less wise were He not also love.
Ah, there's a riddle only love can read!

Enter Galileo. To Uberto, still seated.
Galileo.
Far have I sought you through the ilex grove,
Among Emilia's roses, in your tower.

Uberto.
My tower—you saw—

Galileo.
Saw nothing. (Aside.)
He distrusts me.

Uberto.
Forgive me. You shall see, shall hear, tonight.

Galileo.
Those many years that I, a jocund lad,
To you, my elder, turned for counsel, help,
Came back to me to-day. You were more kind
Than brothers are. Ah, happy, studious hours!
What was the Pope to me, or I to him?
A cardinal was as the farthest star,
Outside the orbit of my hopes and fears.
I came to you to share some idle days,
To get again within your life of thought,
To question and be questioned.

Uberto.
Wherefore not?

Galileo.
A messenger who followed me with haste
Bids me to Rome to answer as I may.
My sin you know.

Uberto.
What answer can you make?

Galileo.
Alas, it moves! This ever-patient globe
Moves, with the Pope and me; would move without.
Could I but summon God to answer them!
If He has whispered in my listening ear
This secret, guarded since the morn of time,
How shall I say I know not it nor Him?
A man may love or not, rejoice or not,
May hate or not, but what he thinks is sped
In word-winged arrows of eternal flight.

Uberto.
And you, the archer, you who loosed the string,
What harm if you should say this was not yours?—
This troubling doctrine long ago was born;
Sages in Egypt knew it. Or, at need,
Say that the world is stiller than a snail.
Say what you will, but live to draw anew
That bow of thought which you alone can draw.

Galileo.
Death is more wise than any wisest thought
The living man can think; death is more great
Than any life; and as for that stern hour
I meet in Rome next week, I know not now
How I shall judge my judge.

Uberto.
The fate I fear,
I fear for you, but would not for myself.
Ay, at this hour would I change lives with you;
For come what may, chains, prison, rack, or axe,
You will have lived so largely that no fate
Can pain your age with sense of unfulfilment.
But I have all things willed, yet nothing done.

Galileo.
I cannot think your solitary years
Have won us nothing, as you seem to say.
My hours are few and I go hence to-morrow
Perhaps no more to hear a friendly voice,
Or guess the starry secrets of the night.

Uberto.
Be patient with me. Many a year ago,
At twilight walking by the darkened sea,
The sudden glory of a broadening thought
Smote me with light as if through doors cast wide
To one in darkness prisoned. Then I saw
Dimly, as if at dusk, vast open space
Of things long guessed, but waiting fuller light.
What could I but despair? The hand and brain
No longer did my errands. There was set
A task for youth and vigor. Steadily
I gave my age to win the gift of youth,
That youth might help my quest.
That charm I sought
Which vexed the soul of old philosophy.
I won it, friend! To-night I drain this cup.
Like autumn leaves the withered years shall fall,
And sudden spring be mine. With wisdom clad,
With knowledge, not of youth, assured of time,
I shall speed swiftly to my certain goal.
The midnight calls my steps to yonder tower,
Where youth, the bride, awaits my joy's delay.
You have my secret. Oh, my God, if youth,
This second youth, should mock me like the first,
And bring no larger gain!

Galileo.
In this wild search
Great minds have perished. Where you think to win,—
In this the masters failed. Their wasted thoughts
Are in huge volumes scattered. It may be.
The strange is only what has never been,
And every century gives the last the lie.
But if 't is so, there's that within your cup
Might stay the wiser hand. Ay, if 't is so!

Uberto.
If? if 't is so? It is! Not vain the work
That filled these longing years. For no base end
These wasting vigils and these anxious days.
The gains I win shall lessen human pain.
One re-created life to man shall bring
Uncounted centuries in the gathering sum.

Galileo.
I too am of that sacred guild whose creed,
Before Christ died or Luke the healer lived,
Taught temperance, honor, chastity, and love.
I neither doubt the harvest nor the power
To reap its glorious fruit. And yet—and yet—
If the strong river of your flowing life
You shall turn back to be again the brook,
Is 't natural to think 't will float great ships,
Or with its lessened vigor turn the wheel?
Enough of me. I go to meet my fate.
Would I could stay!

Uberto.
Ah! when in Pisa's dome
You watched the lamp swing constant in its arc,
You gave to man another punctual slave,
And bade it time for us the throbbing pulse;
Joyful I guessed the gain for art and life.
Not that frail English boy Fabricius taught,
Not sad Servetus, nor that daring soul,
Our brave Vesalius, e're had matched your power
To read the riddles of this mortal frame.
And then you left us. Would our strange machine
Had kept your toil, and cheated yon fair stars!

Galileo.
We do but what we must. Some instinct guides.
To-night, when all the morrow world seems dim
And life itself a thing of numbered hours,
With clearing vision still for you I doubt.
Life hath its despot laws. You more than I
Know all their tyrant rigor. Tempt it not,
Lest failure, anguish, lurk within the cup.
Think sanely of this venture; let it pass.
Fill full, God helping, all the time He leaves.
Set 'gainst the darkness of death's nearing hour
In wholesome light all human action shines.
This dream is childlike; you will wake to tears.
Ask of your life if you have life deserved.
What did you with the gift? You had of it
All that another hath, or long or short.
Not time, but action, is the clock of man.
I should go happier hence if I could set
Your fatal cup aside. Nay, sorrow not;
Thank God for me. I have not vainly lived.
Truth have I served, and God, in serving her:
That heritage is deathless as Himself.
Something the thinker of the poet hath;
Our Dante was no mean philosopher:
With prophet eyes I see a freer day,
When thought shall mock at Kaiser and at Pope.
How can they think to chain the viewless mind,
Which is the very life within the life,
And in the irresponsible hours of sleep
Brings thought unto fruition? Yea, ethereal!
Of all God's mysteries most near to Him;
Instinctively creative, like the woman,
Pledged by conception's joy to labor's toil.
Grieve not for me. All that is best shall live.
There is no rack for thought; no axe, no block,
Can silence that.

Uberto.
But what, dear friend, if I
Should bid you laugh at pope or cardinal?
Take you this cup of mine. Take this and live.
In youth's disguise lie safely, freedom, life.

Galileo
(aside).
Not stranger in its orbit moves my world
Than man, its habitant. Why, here is one
Could squander years and cheat a woman's love,
Yet turn to offer this. Not I, indeed!
(Aloud.)
Life has been very dear to me, Uberto,
For that it has and that it has not been.
How many in their tender multitude
The cobweb ties of friendship, labor, love,
I knew not till this cruel storm of fate
Did thread them thick with jewels numberless.
And yet life owns no bribe would bid me back
To live it o'er anew. I can but thank you.

Uberto.
Is it only they who have no life of worth
Would live it o'er again?

Galileo.
That is not all.
Vainly and long would we have talked of it
In other days. No life is what it seems.
If thought were man's whole company in life,
Who would not live it o'er? But from our side
Friends, comrades, fall and torture us with loss.
Who is there born would will to live again
Such anguish as the happiest have known?
This is the heart's half only; more there is.
But the night wastes.

[Rises.
Uberto.
To-morrow you go hence?
Write me from Rome. Before the day is spent
I shall have won or lost. Good-night, good friend.

[Exeunt both.
Gaspar.
These learned folks are not more gay to hear
Than Lenten priests. I gave their riddles up
This half-hour since. And you?

Gelosa.
I heard it all.
Love, friendship, reason, all alike are vain.

Gaspar.
Had I a moment in his secret den,
That draught of his should give eternal life
To weeds that rot around the moat below.
[Gelosa whispers.
The jest were good. Is there no peril in it?

Gelosa.
None, Gaspar. Wait for me beside the gate.
Quick, ere the chance be lost! 'T is past eleven.
Oh, he will like my jest. Come, this way, come!