 | The Tragedy of Pardon |  |
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PROLOGUE
A laboratory in the royal palace at Dublin. It is so dusk that the various objects are only seen as shades of deeper darkness.Queen Iseult looms beside an alembic in the foreground.
Brangaena kneels further back adjusting flax on a spindle.
Queen.
Where art thou?
Brangaena.
Here.
Queen.
The Love-Charm is combined!
It waits to live.
Brangaena.
Before the incantation,
Tell me for whom I gathered on the hills
The maddening colt's-foot that the mares and stallions
Wrench from the dust to feed their rushing flames;
For whom, on the sea-shore, sea-holly's root?
Queen.
My child, who, loses all, shall lose not love,
Or she will walk the earth of men a shade;
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And silent are the deeps from birth to death
If love move not with widely ruling stroke
The billows of the heart of woman's breast.
Brangaena.
Great Queen, great wisdom!
Queen.
Thou shalt pour the wine
For Mark of Cornwall and my child Iseult.
But, sweet, beware: not even a dew-drop's droplet
Must pass thy lips. It is so terrible,
The senses were obsequious to one touch,
As if to transport.
Brangaena.
In my careful hands
It shall be guarded as within thy hands.
Queen.
Brangaena, I will plight my child to Love,
By deeply working minerals, by juices
That thrust the force of Venus through the blades,
And fragrant, piercing flower-hearts, or control it
In secret tubers. As within my womb
I fashioned her for life, so now I fashion
Within this marvellous alembic's chalice
Her fuller fate, her love's nativity.
Draw out thy wheel and twist the double threads;
Thou wilt hear music through the air: spin on.
[Brangaena sits at the distaff. Queen Iseult touches the vessel with her sceptre.
O ancient Love, of Chaos bred
From seeding darkness of the void;
O link of all the germens spread
Through hollow gales by hate deployed,
Fuse with a star-pang from the stars,
That are thy torches never spent,
The faculties within this vase,
Each touching each, yet continent.
From seeding darkness of the void;
O link of all the germens spread
Through hollow gales by hate deployed,
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That are thy torches never spent,
The faculties within this vase,
Each touching each, yet continent.
Unite them, till of joy they found
A sway like that that holds the earth
And sea and fire and ether bound;
A sway that is grown old at birth,
That is a freshness in the tomb.
Oh, sweep like beauty through their tide,
And be thy benison the doom
That never more they shall divide!
A sway like that that holds the earth
And sea and fire and ether bound;
A sway that is grown old at birth,
That is a freshness in the tomb.
Oh, sweep like beauty through their tide,
And be thy benison the doom
That never more they shall divide!
Hold firm the twisted threads; bring me a flask.
[She pours from the alembic.
See, how this nectar plunges kiss in kiss;
Smell how the breath of it is like a land's
Where all the groves of trees are florulent.
Swift, I must close it! Twine the double threads
About the vial's neck. This little crystal
Can laugh Pandora's chest to ridicule,
For joy as well as sorrow is within,
Necessity that puts out feeble hope,
The lightning that Jove brought with him to bed
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The currents that for ever wash the steps
Of Ocean's palace-cave, two horoscopes,
And the great motion Life, the calm of Death,
With marriage of all these till Love shall end.
| The Tragedy of Pardon | |