University of Virginia Library

IPPOLITO DI ESTE.

1. [FIRST PART.]

Ippolito.
Now all the people follow the procession
Here may I walk alone, and let my spirits
Enjoy the coolness of these quiet aisles.
Surely no air is stirring; every step
Tires me; the columns shake, the ceiling fleets,
The floor beneath me slopes, the altar rises.
Stay! here she stept: what grace! what harmony!
It seem'd that every accent, every note
Of all the choral music, breath'd from her:
From her celestial airiness of form
I could have fancied purer light descended.
Between the pillars, close and wearying,
I watcht her as she went: I had rusht on;
It was too late; yet, when I stopt, I thought
I stopt full soon: I cried, Is she not there?
She had been: I had seen her shadow burst
The sunbeam as she parted: a strange sound,
A sound that stupified and not aroused me,
Fill'd all my senses: such was never felt
Save when the sword-girt Angel struck the gate,
And Paradise wail'd loud and closed for ever.
She should return; the hour is past away.
How can I bear to see her (yet I will)
Springing, she fondly thinks, to meet the man
I most abhor, my father's base-born son,
Ferrante!

Rosalba
(entering).
What! I called him? in my haste
To languish at his beauty, to weigh down
His eyelids with my lips for gazing on me:
Surely I spoke the name, and knew it not
Until it bounded back and smote me so!

Ippolito.
Curses upon them both! [Advancing toward her.

Welcome, sweet lady!

Rosalba.
Lord Cardinal! you here? and unattended?

Ippolito.
We wait the happy lover, do we not?

Rosalba.
Ferrante then betrayed the secret to you!
And are you come to honour with your presence . .

Ippolito.
Has the Duke sign'd the contract?

Rosalba.
For what bride?
Ferrante writes Ferrante plain enough;
And I do think, altho' I once or twice
Have written it instead of mine, at last
I am grown steadier, and could write Rosalba.

Ippolito.
Sport not with one your charms have cast too low.

Rosalba.
Sport not with one your hand would raise too high.

Ippolito.
Again that taunt! the time may come, Rosalba,
When I could sanctify the blissful state
I have aspired to.

Rosalba.
Am not I mere ice?
Show not I girlish forwardness, the fears
Of infancy, the scruples of old age?
Have not you said so? and said more . . you hate them?
How could you bear me, or what wish from me?

Ippolito.
That which another will not long retain.

Rosalba.
You know him little and me less.

Ippolito.
I know
Inconstancy in him.

Rosalba.
And what in me?

Ippolito.
Intolerance for his betters.

Rosalba.
Ignorance,
But not intolerance of them, is my fault.

Ippolito.
No?

Rosalba.
Call it thus, and cast it on the rest.

Ippolito.
Some are there whose close vision sees but one
In the whole world, and would not see another
For the whole world, were that one out of it.

Rosalba.
Are there some such? O may they be my friends!
O how, before I know them, I do love them!

Ippolito.
After no strife, no censure, no complaint,
Have not your tears been seen, when you have left him,
Thro' tediousness, distaste, dislike, and grief
(Ingenuous minds must feel it, and may own it)
That love, so rashly promist, would retire,
Hating exaction, circumvention, bonds?

Rosalba.
Such grief is yet unknown to me. I know
All tears are not for sorrow: many swell
In the warm depths of gratitude and bliss;
But precious over all are those that hang
And tremble at the tale of generous deeds.
These he relates when he might talk, as you do,
Of passion: but he sees my heart, he finds
What fragrance most refreshes it.
How high,
O Heaven! must that man be, who loves, and who
Would still raise others higher than himself
To interest his beloved!
All my soul
Is but one drop from his, and into his
Falls, as earth's dew falls into earth again.

Ippolito.
Yet would it not be wise to trust a friend
Able to counsel in extremes and straits?

Rosalba.
Is it not wise in darkness and in storm
To trust the wave that lashes us, and pray
Its guidance on the rocks whereto it tends?
I have my guide, Lord Cardinal! he alone
Is ship and pilot to me, sea and star:
Counsel from others, knowing him, would be
Like worship of false gods; in me no less
Than profanation and apostacy.

Ippolito.
We may retire; he comes not here to-day.

Rosalba.
Then will I not retire, but lay my head
Upon the feet of any pitying saint
Until he comes, altho' it be to-morrow.

Ippolito.
To-morrow he may fail: the sovran will
By rescript has detained and must delay him.

Rosalba.
Lead, lead me to Ferrante.

Ippolito.
Were I worthy.

Rosalba.
Proud cruel man! that bitter sneer bodes ill.
May not I see him?

Ippolito.
He may not see you.

Rosalba.
O let him! well my memory can supply
His beauteous image; I can live on love
Saturate, like bees with honey, long drear days;
He must see me, or cannot rest; I can.

2. SECOND PART.

Ippolito, Ferrante, and Giulio, in prison.
Ippolito.
Reasons of state, I fear, have dictated
This something like severity; God grant
Here be no heresy: do both avow it,
Staring in silence at discovery?

Giulio.
No order forced me hither; I am come
To share my brother's fate, whate'er it be,
And mitigate his sufferings.

Ippolito.
May they cease!

Giulio.
Those words would have dissolved them into air,
Spoken but twenty furlongs from these bars.

Ippolito.
I would do much to serve you; but my faith
And my allegiance have two other lords,
The duke my brother, and the pope my God.
Ferrante then says nothing?

Ferrante.
He well knows
Thy hatred and its cause.

Ippolito.
Why should I hate you, . . .
My father's son, they say?

Ferrante.
They say! His blood
Runs in these veins, pure, for pure blood was hers
Who loved the youthful lover, and who died
When falser vows estranged the matchless prince.

Ippolito.
He saw his error.

Ferrante.
All men do when age
Bends down their heads, or gold shines in their way.

Ippolito.
Altho' I would have helpt you in distress,
And just removed you from the court awhile,
You call'd me tyrant.

Ferrante.
Calléd thee tyrant? I?
By Heaven! in tyrant there is something great
That never was in thee. I would be killed
Rather by any monster of the wild
Than choakt by weeds and quicksands, rather crusht
By maddest rage than clay-cold apathy.
Those who act well the tyrant, neither seek
Nor shun the name; and yet I wonder not
That thou repeatest it, and wishest me;
It sounds like power, like policy, like courage,
And none who calls thee tyrant can despise thee.
Go, issue orders for imprisonment,
Warrants for death: the gibbet and the wheel,
Lo! the grand boundaries of thy dominion!
O what a mighty office for a minister
(And such Alfonso's brother calls himself)
To be the scribe of hawkers! Man of genius!
The lanes and allies echo with thy works.

Giulio.
Ah! do not urge him; he may ruin you;
He may pursue you to the grave.

Ferrante.
He dares not:
Look at his collar! see the saint he wears!
The amber saint may ask too much for that.

Ippolito.
Atheist! thy scoffs encourage every crime,
And strip thee, like a pestilence, of friends:
Theirs is the guilt to march against the law,
They mount the scaffold, and the blow is thine.

Ferrante.
How venom burnishes his adder's crest,
How eloquent on scaffolds and on laws!
If such a noisome weed as falsehood is
Give frothy vigour to a worm like thee,
Crawl, eat, drink, sleep upon it, and farewell.

Ippolito
(to Giulio).
Take you the sentence, and God be with both!

[Goes.
Giulio.
What sentence have we here?

Ferrante.
Unseal and read it.

Giulio
(reading).
Of sight! of sight! of sight!

Ferrante.
Would you escape,
My gentle Giulio? Run not thus around
The wide light chamber, press not thus your brow
Against the walls, with your two palms above.
Seek you the door then? you are uncondemned
To lose the sight of one who is the bloom
And breath of life to you: the bolts are drawn
On me alone. You carry in your breast
Most carefully our brother's precious gift:
Well, take it anywhere, but do not hope
Too much from any one. Time softens rocks,
And hardens men.

Giulio.
Pray then our God for help.

Ferrante.
O my true brother, Giulio! why thus hang
Around my neck and pour forth prayers for me?
Where there are priests and kinsmen such as ours,
God hears not, nor is heard. I am prepared
For death.

Giulio.
Ah! worse than death may come upon you,
Unless Heaven interpose.

Ferrante.
I know the worst,
And bear one comfort in my breast that fire
And steel can ne'er force from it: she I love
Will not be his, but die as she hath lived.
Doubt you? that thus you shake the head and sigh.

Giulio.
Far other doubt was mine: even this shall cease.

Ferrante.
Speak it.

Giulio.
I must: God pardon me!

Ferrante.
Speak on.

Giulio.
Have we not dwelt in friendship from our birth,
Told the same courtier the same tale of joy,
And pointed where life's earliest thorn had pierced
Amid the sports of boyhood, ere the heart
Hath aught of bitter or unsound within?

Ferrante.
We have indeed.

Giulio.
Has my advice been ill?

Ferrante.
Too often ill-observed, but always good.

Giulio.
Brother, my words are not what better men
Would speak to you; and yet my love, I think,
Must be more warm than theirs can ever be.

Ferrante.
Brother's, friend's, father's, when was it like yours?

Giulio.
Which of them ever said what I shall say?

Ferrante.
Speak; my desires are kindled, my fears quencht.

Giulio.
Do not delay to die, lest crueller
Than common death befal you.

Ferrante.
Then the wheel
Is ordered in that schedule! Must she too
Have her chaste limbs laid bare? Here lies the rack;
Here she would suffer ere it touch the skin.
No, I will break it with the thread of life
Ere the sound reach her. Talk no more of Heaven,
Of Providence, of Justice. Look on her.
Why should she suffer? what hath she from Heaven
Of comfort or protection?

Giulio.
Talk not so.
Pity comes down when Hope hath flown away.

Ferrante.
Illusion!

Giulio.
If it were, which it is not,
Why break with vehement words such sweet illusion?
For were there not above but empty air,
Nought but the clear blue sky where birds delight,
Soaring o'er myriad worlds of living dust
That roll in columns round the noontide ray,
Your heart would faint amid such solitude,
Would shrink in such vacuity; that heart
(Ferrante! can you hide its wants from me?)
Rises and looks around and calls aloud
For some kind Being, some consoling bosom,
Whereon to place its sorrows, and to rest.

Ferrante.
Oh! that was here . . I cannot look beyond.

Giulio.
Hark! hear you not the people? to the window!
They shout and clap their hands when they first meet you
After short absence; what shall they now do?
Up! seize the moment; show yourself.

Ferrante.
Stay, Giulio!
Draw me not thither; speak not of my wrongs;
I would await but not arouse their vengeance,
And would deserve but court not their applause.
Little of good shall good men hope from them,
Nothing shall wiser. [Aside.

O were he away!
But if I fail, he must die too, being here.

Giulio.
Let me call out: they are below the grate:
They would deliver you: try this one chance.
Obdurate! would you hold me down? They're gone!

Ferrante.
Giulio! for shame! weep not, or here I stay
And let vile hands deform me.

Giulio.
They shall never.

Ferrante.
What smoke arises? Are there torches under?
Surely the crowd has past: 'tis from the stairs.

Giulio.
Anticipate the blow.

Ferrante.
One more must grieve!
And will she grieve like you, too tender Giulio!
Turn not away the head, the hand. What hold you?
Give, give it me. 'Tis keen. They call you forth.
Tell her . . no, say not we shall meet again,
For tears flow always faster at those words . .
May the thought come, but gently, like a dream.