University of Virginia Library

Scene II.

—The Sea-shore, near Hastings.
Leolf
(alone).
Rocks that beheld my boyhood! Perilous shelf
That nursed my infant courage! Once again
I stand before you—not as in other days
In your grey faces smiling—but like you
The worse for weather. Here again I stand,
Again and on the solitary shore
Old ocean plays as on an instrument,
Making that ancient music, when not known!
That ancient music, only not so old
As He who parted ocean from dry land
And saw that it was good. Upon mine ear,
As in the season of susceptive youth,
The mellow murmur falls—but finds the sense
Dull'd by distemper; shall I say—by time?
Enough in action has my life been spent
Through the past decade, to rebate the edge
Of early sensibility. The sun
Rides high, and on the thoroughfares of life
I find myself a man in middle age,
Busy and hard to please. The sun shall soon
Dip westerly,—but oh! how little like
Are life's two twilights! Would the last were first
And the first last! that so we might be soothed
Upon the thoroughfares of busy life
Beneath the noon-day sun, with hope of joy
Fresh as the morn—with hope of breaking lights,
Illuminated mists and spangled lawns
And woodland orisons and unfolding flowers,
As things in expectation.—Weak of faith!
Is not the course of earthly outlook thus
Reversed from Hope, an argument to Hope
That she was licensed to the heart of man
For other than for earthly contemplations,
In that observatory domiciled
For survey of the stars? The night descends,
They sparkle out.—Who comes? 'Tis Wulfstan's daughter.

Enter Emma.
Emma
(to Ernway in the side-scene).
Go now and bring my father.—Good my Lord,
I fear you've fallen in love with solitude.

Leolf.
A growing weakness-not so tyrannous yet
But that I still can welcome from my heart
My pretty friend.

Emma.
I thank you, my good Lord.

Leolf.
You find me here discoursing to the sea
Of ebbs and flows; explaining to the rocks
How from the excavating tide they win
A voice poetic, solacing though sad,
Which when the passionate winds revisit them
Gives utterance to the injuries of time.
Poets, I told them, are thus made.

Emma.
My Lord,
It is not thus through injury, I would hope,
That you are made poetical?

Leolf.
Indeed
There's much that has gone wrong with me, my friend.
How wears the world with you?

Emma.
Truly, my Lord,
I see so little of it, I thank God!
That like a wedding garment seldom used
It keeps its shine.

Leolf.
Why, then, the world wears well:
But where's the wedding garment?

Emma.
Why, my Lord,
'Tis here—for I was married as you see me.

Leolf
Was married, say you?

Emma.
Yes, my Lord, last week;
O' Wednesday, God forgive me!

Leolf.
This is strange!
I pray you say to whom?

Emma.
Alack, my Lord!
To a poor foolish follower of your Lordship's—
Poor Ernway.

Leolf.
What! to him?

Emma.
For fault of better.
Maids that are beggars cannot, you know, be choosers.

Leolf.
Well, if you like him I am glad you have him,
And I will mend his fortunes for your sake.

Emma.
I care not for his fortunes. Oh, my Lord
Your pardon! But I care for nothing now
Save only this,—that you should break the news
To my dear father, and on my behalf
Crave his forgiveness; for he dreams not of it.

Leolf.
He will but dream when he has heard it. Still
This life, and all that it contains, to him
Is but a tissue of illuminous dreams
Filled with book-wisdom, pictured thought, and love
That on its own creations spends itself.
All things he understands, and nothing does.
Profusely eloquent in worthiest praise
Of action, he will talk to you as one
Whose wisdom lay in dealings and transactions;
Yet so much action as might tie his shoe
Cannot his will command; himself alone
By his own wisdom not a jot the gainer.
Of silence and the hundred thousand things
'Tis better not to mention, he will speak,
And still most wisely.—But, behold him there!
Led by your bridegroom, (is it not?) who now
Runs back.

Emma.
Some fifty yards he has to come,
And holding us before him full in sight,
It may be he will find his way to join us.
But lest he wander and forget himself,
I will conduct him hither.

[Exit.
Leolf.
Ernway! Him!
Poets have said that 'tis the immortal mind
And not the face or form that moves to love.
They spoke as they would have it. Yet 'tis strange
That such a maid should so bestow herself.
But with her courage and her confidence,
Her soft sagacity and ready wit,
Mixes the woman's weakness. For the sire,
He will but aptly moralize the theme,
And then forget the fact.

Enter Emma with Wulfstan the Wise.
Wulfstan.
For from his youth
His converse hath been profitable; yea,
In teaching him instruction made rebound
And I was wiser for my pains. In truth,
I have considered and have studied him
With peradventure more of curious care
And critical inquiry than befits
A friend so inward; and I'll vouch for this,
That though, as you have said, the vernal bloom
Of his first spirits fading leaves him changed,
'Tis not to worse. His mind is as a meadow
Of various grasses, rich and fresh beneath,
But o'er the surface some that come to seed
Have cast a colour of sobriety.
For he was ever ...

Emma.
But, my dearest father,
He stands before you.

[Exit.
Wulfstan.
By my life, 'tis true!
Well met, my good Lord and my excellent friend!
My daughter warns me of some tiding strange,
Surprising, unimaginable, by you
To be delivered.

Leolf.
Strange it needs must seem;
But should it grieve you, call to mind, I pray,
The precept I have heard a thousand times
From your own lips: philosophy, you said,
If ministering not to practice, were more vain
Than a child's rattle, for the infant's mind
The rattle doth in practice hold at rest.

Wulfstan.
'Tis true; for just philosophy and practice
Are of correlative dependency,
Neither without the other apt or sound
Or certain. For philosophy itself
Smacks of the age it lives in, nor is true
Save by the apposition of the present;
And truths of olden time, though truths they be,
And living through all time eternal truths,
Yet want the seasoning and applying hand
Which Nature sends successive; else the need
Of wisdom should wear out and wisdom cease,
Since needless wisdom were not to be wise;
For surely if...

Leolf.
The theme I have to broach
Respects a certain marriage, which for my sake,
Though it will certes take you unprepared,
Yet you must leniently look upon
And auspicate with smiles.

Wulfstan.
A marriage say you?
My good Lord, I rejoice in your resolve.
To marry wisely is to double wisdom,
And breed a progeny of bright rewards,
Which wisdom single, monachal or lay,
Woefully wants. For think what it must be
To watch in solitude our own decay,
Jealously asking of our observation
If ears, or eyes, or brains, or body fail,
And not to see the while new bodies, brains,
New eyes, new ears, about us springing fresh,
And to ourselves more precious than are ours.
But this it is...

Leolf.
I give you my consent
That a wise marriage is the crowning act
Which queenly Wisdom's sovereignty secures;
For love is wisdom, when 'tis innocent:
But for myself...

Wulfstan.
The season comes with you
When love that's innocent may well be wise.
But not inevitably one with wisdom
Is innocent love at all times and with all.
Love changes with the changing life of man:
In our first youth, sufficient to itself,
Heedless of all beside, it reigns alone,
Revels or storms and spends itself in passion:
In middle age—a garden through whose soil
The roots of neighbouring forest trees have crept,—
It strikes on stringy customs bedded deep,
Perhaps on alien passions; still it grows
And lacks not force nor freshness; but this age
Shall aptly choose as answering best its own
A love that clings not nor is exigent,
Encumbers not the active purposes
Nor drains their source; but proffers with free grace
Pleasure at pleasure touched, at pleasure waived,
A washing of the weary traveller's feet,
A quenching of his thirst, a sweet repose
Alternate and preparative, in groves
Where loving much the flower that loves the shade
And loving much the shade that that flower loves,
He yet is unbewildered, unenslaved,
Thence starting light and pleasantly let go
When serious service calls.

Leolf.
'Tis all most wise,
And worded well. But you mistake my drift;
'Tis of your daughter's marriage, not of mine,
I am to speak.

Wulfstan.
My daughter, my good Lord!
Must she be married?

Leolf.
'Twas her will to be;
And upon Wednesday she gave it way.

Wulfstan.
Was married upon Wednesday! It is strange!
She was a child but yesterday, and now
A woman and a wife! On Wednesday—
And unto whom, I pray you, was she married?

Leolf.
To one whose comeliness in woman's eye
Excels the gifts of fortune that he wants;
To one whose innocence in the eye of Heaven
Excels the excellence of an erring wit:
To Ernway.

Wulfstan.
You astonish me, my Lord.
It is most strange; indeed, 'tis singular!
She never mentioned it to me.

Leolf.
In that
She missed of what was filially due
To a kind parent, for which lapse through me
She craves forgiveness.

Wulfstan.
I have lost my child!

Leolf.
Nay, nay, my worthy friend.

Wulfstan.
My Lord, 'tis so;
She is my daughter, but no more my child;
And therein is a loss to parents' hearts
Exceeding great.

Enter an Officer.
Officer.
My Lord, there's news from court;
They seek you at the castle, whither is come
Oscar, that's so much trusted of Earl Athulf,
With letters.

Leolf.
Of what purport, did he say?
Does all go well?

Officer.
To take his word, my Lord,
They speak of nothing but prosperity.
My Lord Archbishop, with a loyal will,
Abets the coronation, in whose wake
Comes my Lord Abbot Dunstan, his lean cheek
Surprised with smiles. So smoothly runs the realm
Missives are sent to each confederate Earl
To bid his power disband; and these to you
Are of that import.

Leolf.
Is it so? Oh, Athulf!
Art thou not over-reached? I fear it much.
Dunstan in smiles? A presage to be feared.
I would I were at Kingston with my power.
Conceive you what this smiling may portend?

Wulfstan.
You read it as the scholiast of mankind
Should ever read their acts, conjunctively,
Interpreting the several by the whole.

Leolf.
Then, Hederic, we will expedite the levies.
The daylight's lengthened by yon rounding moon.
Long marches and short nights—and so to Kingston.