University of Virginia Library

SCENE I.

[A valley among hills covered with forests of oak and beech. Below, in the distance, a richly cultivated plain, a city with Gothic towers, and a broad river, dotted with the sails of vessels.]
POET
(passing).
Earth, thou art lovely as any star,
With rest so near, desire so far!
Peace from the tree-tops on the hill
Sinks, and the blissful fields are still;
While tender longing, pure of pain,
Dwells in the blue of yonder plain;
And all things Fancy, faring free,
May clasp or covet, come from thee!
Something of mine is everywhere,
Trodden as earth or breathed as air;
Giving, with magic sure and warm,
Voice to silence and soul to form,
Calm to passion and speed to rest,
Borrowed or lent of mine own breast
By that swift spirit that mocks the eye,
As over thee the unfeatured sky,
Heaving its blue tides, endlessly,
To planets that fail to lift the sea!
I am thy subject, yet thy king:
Give me thy speech, and let me sing!

[Exit.
GÆA.
Step to the music of the song I gave,
My Poet, homeward! Lovers, find in me
Your voiceless eloquence and balm of bliss,
That else were pain! Mine ancient life revives
With sweeter potency: I am a Soul
Responsive unto all that stirs in Man,
Transforming passion to a natural voice,
From airy murmurs of the fragrant weeds
To the hushed roar of pines, the tramp of waves,
And bellowing of the ocean-flooded throats
Of headland caverns! Wafts of odorous air,
The thousand-tinted veils of dawn and day,
The changeless Forms, that from the changing Hours
Take magic as a garment, stellar fire
Sprinkled from hollow space, and secret tides
Lifted by far, fraternal planets,—these
Have grown to speech, companionship and power.
Tired of the early mystery, my child
Hearkens, as one at entrance of a vale
Never explored, for echoes of his call;
And every lone, inviolate height returns
His fainter self, become a separate voice
In answer to his yearning! Not as dam,
With hungry mouth,—as goddess, with bowed heart
He wooes me; or as athlete, million-armed,
Summons my strength from immemorial sleep.
He comes, the truant of the ages,—comes,
The rash forgetter of his source; as lord
He comes,—lord, paramour and worshipper,
Tyrant in brain, yet supplicant in soul,
With fond compulsion and usurping love
To make me his!
Still scorned are ye, fair Forms
I sheltered? Under yonder beechen shade
Hath human longing set ye? Hide my streams
Your beauty still, my mists your loosened hair?

NYMPHS
(at a distance).
As the night-air pants;
As the wind-harp chants;
As the moonlight falls
Over foliage walls;
As gleams forerun
The smile of the sun
When clouds are parting,
Our beings are.
We are held afar
By a knowledge burning
In the heart of yearning;
For the necromancy
Of the fonder fancy
Breathes back into air
The Presences fair
It would fain restore:
We are Souls and Voices,
But Forms no more!

GÆA.
Ye highly live, more awful in the spell
Of unseen loveliness! No need to quit
Your dwellings, strike the dull sense into fear,
And win a shallow worship: Man's clear eye
Sees through the Hamadryad's bark, the veil
Of scudding Oread, hears the low-breathed laugh
Of Bassarid among the vine's thick leaves,
And spies a daintier Syrinx in the reed.
For him that loves, the downward-stooping moon
Still finds a Latmos: Enna's meadows yet
Bloom, as of old, to new Persephones;
And 'twixt the sea-foam and the sparkling air
Floats Aphrodite,—nobler far than first
These bright existences, and yours, withdrawn
To unattainable heights of half-belief,
Divine, where whole reflects the hue of Man.

NYMPHS.
In the upward pulse of the fountain;
On the sunny flanks of the mountain;
Where the bubble and slide of the rill
Is heard when the thickets are still;
Where the light, with a flickering motion,
From the last faint fringes of ocean
Is sprinkled on sand and shell;
In the ferns of the bowery dell,
And the gloom of the pine-wood dark,
And the dew-cloud that hides the lark,
The sense of Beauty shall feel us,
The touch of delight reveal us!

[Exeunt.
GÆA.
Fear not, sweet Spirits, what unflinching law,
Tracking creative secrets. Man may find
In my despotic atoms! Who denies
Confirms ye to the sense that bade him seek.
But thou, mine Eros, through whose ministry
Stole back the banished Beauty,—as, at first,
The harmless tear-like trickle of a stream
Through some Cyclopean dam, that softly wins
A vantage, till the whole collected lake
Sets its large lever to the trembling stones,
And freedom follows,—thou, who, well I know,
Hidest beneath this roof of summer leaves,
Or where the minty meadow-breath makes cool
Thine ardent brow,—appear, and speak again!

EROS.

GÆA.
Not mine to guess thy riddles,—yet I see
Near manhood in thine adolescent limbs,
Proud lustre in thine eyes, as, through the joy
That still around thee sparkles, other joy
Made prophecy, but never of an end,
And mystic sweetness in thy budded lips.
Nathless, whenever my strong spouse, the sun,
Stoops nearer, sets his bosom unto mine
And stirs all fond, sad raptures of my frame,
Then most I note thee, hurrying to and fro.
Sure in thy speed; or when he lingering leaves
My bed of long delight and summershine
With last caresses, thou on every hill
Dost walk in light, and breathest through the woods
Voluptuous odors of the yearning year!
Exalt thyself past limits of my law,
I feed thee still! What soaring mist of mine,
Sun-gilded, but the iron frost of space
Shall seize? What odor reaches to the stars?

EROS.
Nor the soul of the wandering odor, nor the light of the mist, is thine,
Who art rolled through day and darkness, at the will of a star divine;
Who claim'st the arrows of beauty, alone from its quiver sped,—
Thou readest but half the riddle in the dust that else were dead!
Thy life is blown upon thee, as a seed from another land.
And the soil, and the dew and water, are the bounty of thy hand;
But the secrets of whence and whither are mine for my children's need:
I go with the flying blossom, as I came with the flying seed!