Scene I.
A Hacienda near Tezcuco, Mexico. Young
Don Carlos alone looking out on the
moonlit mountain.
Don Carlos.
Popocatapetl looms lone like an island,
Above white cloud-waves that break up against him;
Around him white buttes in the moonlight are flashing
Like silver tents pitch'd in the fair fields of heaven
While standing in line, in their snows everlasting,
Flash peaks, as my eyes into heaven are lifted,
Like mile-stones that lead to the city Eternal.
Ofttime when the sun and the sea lay together,
Red-welded as one, in their red bed of lovers,
Embracing and blushing like loves newly wedded,
I have trod on the trailing crape fringes of twilight,
And stood there and listen'd, and lean'd with lips parted,
Till lordly peaks wrapp'd them, as chill night blew over,
In great cloaks of sable, like proud somber Spaniards,
And stalk'd from my presence down night's corridors.
When the red-curtained West has bent red as with weeping
Low over the couch where the prone day lay dying,
I have stood with brow lifted, confronting the mountains
That held their white faces of snow in the heavens,
And said, “It is theirs to array them so purely,
Because of their nearness to the temple eternal”:
And childlike have said, “They are fair resting places
For the dear weary dead on their way up to heaven.”
But my soul is not with you tonight, mighty mountains:
It is held to the levels of earth by an angel
Far more than a star, earth fallen or unfall'n,
Yet fierce in her follies and headstrong and stronger
Than streams of the sea running in with the billows.
Very well. Let him woo, let him thrust his white whiskers
And lips pale and purple with death, in between us;
Let her wed, as she wills, for the gold of the graybeard.
I will set my face for you, O mountains, my brothers,
For I yet have my honor, my conscience and freedom,
My fleet-footed mustang, and pistols rich silver'd;
I will turn as the earth turns her back on the sun,
But return to the light of her eyes never more,
While noons have a night and white seas have a shore.
Ina, approaching.
Ina.
“I have come, dear Don Carlos, to say you farewell,
I shall wed with Don Castro at dawn of tomorrow,
And be all his own—firm, honest and faithful.
I have promised this thing; that I will keep my promise
You who do know me care never to question.
I have mastered myself to say this thing to you;
Hear me: be strong, then, and say adieu bravely;
The world is his own who will brave its bleak hours.
Dare, then, to confront the cold days in their column;
As they march down upon you, stand, hew them to pieces,
One after another, as you would a fierce foeman,
Till not one abideth between two true bosoms.”
[Don Carlos, with a laugh of scorn, flies from
the veranda, mounts horse, and disappears.]
Ina
(looking out into the night, after a long
silence).
How doleful the night hawk screams in the heavens,
How dismally gibbers the gray coyote!
Afar to the south now the turbulent thunder,
Mine equal, my brother, my soul's one companion,
Talks low in his sleep like a giant deep troubled;
Talks fierce in accord with my own stormy spirit.
