University of Virginia Library

ACT II.

SCENE I.

A Portico.
Yamos, Orooko, &c.
Yamos.
Welcome, Orooko, give me yet thy hand;
Come, be not sad, but make our meeting joyous.
You were to me a loving father once,
And I am still to you a faithful son.

Orooko.
I feel towards you as I always felt,
But here are sights afflicting to my eyes,
Turning the pleasure of this hour to woe.

Yamos.
To me, to all, your re-appearance here,
Is cheerful as the sunbeams after night.

Orooko.
And night it has been, Yamos, since we parted;
A night of dreams, whose phantoms still deceive,
O let me hope that thou wilt 'waken from them.

Yamos.
And yet these gorgeous objects rising round,
The tow'ring city, and these royal ensigns
Of arts and polity, should teach my friend,
All is not fantasy.—The sleep was yours.
Like the sun-loving bird that sleeps in winter,
And wak'ning in the spring, finds Nature new;
Cover'd with blossoms and resounding songs,
You come among us wond'ring at the change.

Orooko.
The arts, the ornaments which you admire,
Are as the speckles and the glittering eye
Of the fell snake, and these increasing sounds,
The stir of labor in your guilty town,
But as the rattle that announces death.

Yamos.
Is there then nothing that can please your eye
In all this new magnificence?

Orooko.
No, nothing.

Yamos.
Would you we should resign the social arts—
The various pleasures industry makes ours,
And sink into barbarity again.

Orooko.
I wish you only to cast off the vices,
Which with these gaudy garments you put on.
The virtues need no robes, they ever move
In healthy vigor, naked like your sires.
But these gay trappings of civilization
Are but the covers of offensive sores.—
As I came sadly to this spacious dwelling,
Two stately edifices met my view;—
One was too great, too lofty as I thought
For any use of man; the other seem'd
Too closely strong, even for the fiercest beasts.
What are they, sir?

Yamos.
One is a temple hallow'd,
Open and free for our religious rites.

Orooko.
What! does the God, the stranger has reveal'd,
Live like a creature local and limited.

Yamos.
The God we worship is the God of Nature,
The spirit of the ocean and the earth!

Orooko.
Then wherefore have you built to him a house,
When the whole universe is full of him?
In light and blossoms, and melodious sounds,
We know his beauty; in the fruits and sleep,
And in the gladness of the blameless breast,
We feel his bounty and enjoy his care;
The skies so vast and inaccessible,
With their infinitude of stars attest
To us his greatness; in the strength of hills,
The deep foundations of the steadfast earth
And the long fetching of his breath in tempests,
We own his mighty power; and when we question
Why we do live and all this world should be,
We recognise his undiscover'd Nature.
Is it to Him that you have built a house?

Yamos.
You will but see our works in your own way;
We have not rear'd the church for his abode,
But as a place in which we may remember
That he exists, and should be there adored.

Orooko.
Does then your knowledge, your civilization,
Tend to make you forget him? Royal Yamos,
Our fathers never dreaded such a chance.
They heard him in the roaring of the waves;
They trembled at his anger in the thunder;
They fear'd the flapping of his wings in storms;
They hail'd his smiling in the dawn of morn;
They felt his kindness in the warmth of day,
And like tired children in their mother's lap,
They trusted to him in the nightly sleep.
O he was every-where and they were with him.
But for what purpose is your other fabric?

Yamos.
It is a prison, an appointed lodge,
For such as wrongful injure one another.

Orooko.
Stop, Yamos, stop. O swift retrace your steps,
To that simplicity that once was yours.
Already lo, your new-found arts require
Inventions to remind you of the God.
Already they have taught you to prepare
Abodes for men, men worse than savage beasts;
If in a few short moons all these are needful,
Think what shall rise when future ages come.
If there are men that must be shut in dungeons,
The bad in time may overtop the good,
And make them to their wicked purposes
Offer themselves in hideous sacrifice.

Yamos.
I will no longer now debate with you.
Come in and see the Queen, and if you can,
Restore her errant love again to me.

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.

An apartment.
Arak and Mora.
Arak.
Why will you, Mora, ever thus avoid me,
Why ever thus averted turn your eyes?
O look upon me; let me see again,
That gracious loveliness which won my heart,
But still, O still, must I in vain address you,
Your cold and alter'd looks in vain deplore?

Mora.
Leave me, good Arak, leave me to myself,
I would I were deserving of thy love.

Arak.
Alas, what frenzies now are rife among us!
Yamos bewails his consort's faded love,
And must I, Mora, also mourn for thine?

Mora.
It had been better, had we never known
These gay and festal arts Antonio teaches,
Than thus to feel all ties of truth relax'd.
Surely from them this sad perversion springs!

Arak.
O say not so, believe not so, dear maid;
Say rather he has taught us to cast off
Our savage nature, and with purer thoughts
So temper'd and refin'd our base desires
That we are rais'd into a nobler state.
Alas, perchance the passion of my heart,
Is but some dross of my barbarity,
Not yet remov'd. Ah it appears to thee
So gross and foul, that thou hast turn'd away,
Tir'd of my fondness, and with royal Idda
Delighted shar'st his ever-varying wisdom.

Mora.
O spare me, Arak, spare me, noble youth!

Arak.
Ha! why is this? O wherefore do you weep?

Mora.
Most true it is that I have been too oft
A happy listener to Antonio's voice.

Arak.
And mine no more is pleasant to your ear.

Mora.
But grieve not, Arak. I am innocent.

Arak.
Innocent! could you have e'er been guilty?
Guilty! of what! you are not yet my wife,
And if your heart be chang'd, though I must mourn,
Alas, must languish without hope of cure,
Why should the change be link'd to thoughts of guilt?
No, Mora, no. I long have fear'd this truth:
Antonio's virtues, like the solar beams
Which by their brightness quench the dim dull hearth,
Have all thy former love for me extinguish'd.
But gentle maid, to me for ever dear,
I will no more molest thee with my suit.
But speedily with all my earnest thoughts
Devise the means to make thee blest with him.

Mora.
O Arak, Arak, you know not the man.

[Exeunt.

SCENE III.

Another apartment.
Orooko, Yamos, and Idda.
Orooko.
Why do you chide your lord, why is his love
Thus bitterly repell'd?

Yamos.
'Tis her disease;
Be not, Orooko, wroth with her, but try
Some kind appeasing med'cine to allay
This fretful ecstasy of peevish thought.

Idda.
I am not ill, old man, trouble me not.
I want no med'cines, but the cooling charm
Of your desir'd absence. Give it me?

Orooko.
I do not think you ill of malady,
But some infection taints the conscious mind.
What fatal wrong have you done to your lord,
That you look on him with such eyes of hate,
While love and tenderness so melts in him?

Yamos.
All things, Orooko, seem to thee revers'd.

Orooko.
Tis meet I should converse with her alone.

Yamos.
Bear with him, Idda, let him have his way,
He is a man full of most bounteous feeling,
And comes obedient—not to my command,
But to the gentle spirit of himself
To cure your bosom's pain. I beg, Orooko,
That you will mercifully hear her chidings,
Think what she once was to me, loving kind;
O this dire change but serves to make her dearer.
Yes, the remembrance of our former love
Stands in bright contrast to the void of loss,
Making the beauteous and delightful past,
Compar'd with the unhappy vacant present,
Like the sad lesson of a rosy child
That smiling gambols round a yawning grave.
Be kindly in your speech—and if her thoughts
Be touch'd with aught that hath perplex'd their course,
In pitying care the remedy apply.
[Exit Yamos.

Idda.
Well, Sir, what would you?

Orooko.
How! so soon at ease?
Then you do fear the King as well as hate him?
What is the wrong that you have done to him?
That you should dread his sight, and in his presence
Be weak and trembling, looking with such eyes
Upon that goodly and most gracious man,
As if he were some creature venomous?
What is the cause?

Idda.
Came you not here to find it?

Orooko.
Such maladies as yours were never known,
When all were true to their forefathers' virtues,
Therefore the cause—Ay, lady, mark my words,
The cause must come from this new state of things.
Why do you look at me in such amaze?
Then it is true, and your apostasy
Has changed the frame and temper of your heart.
O ere more horror falls in curses on you,
Abjure the subtile stranger's unblest rites;
And on the mountain's top, that altar rais'd,
By all-seen Nature to the all-felt God,
Lift thy pale hands and deprecate thy doom.
What! do you smile, and scornfully at this—
The mind has then no part in your disease—
You mock my piety, and when I bid
You turn repentant from the stranger's Gods,
You do not hear me as a proselyte,
But with the heartless and contemptuous scorn
Of one that reverenc'd not any God.

Idda.
I wonder much that you, so wise reputed,
Should waste your ineffectual breath on me.

Orooko.
[aside]
They have built dungeons for those that do ill—
This woman must be one that has done ill,
For she no longer hath that modesty
With which our faithful mothers heard reproof.
Your royal husband called me from the woods,
With herbs and simples to relieve your ail;
But the disease is far beyond the search
Of all the inquisition of my skill,
And I may sorrowing to the woods return.

[Exeunt.

SCENE IV.

A garden.
Arak and Antonio.
Arak.
That the fair Mora loves you tenderly,
And has for you forgone her love to me,
I doubt no more, nor can I blame the change,
When I contrast my naked ignorance,
With that rich-crown'd, that flowing vestured knowledge,
Which makes you ever to my wond'ring eyes,
Appear the sovereign wisdom of all times.
But while my tongue thus says, what I should say,
My heart, alas, still in its savage grossness,
Yearns at the sacrifice and speaks in tears.

Ant.
No: generous Arak, thy true heart is right,
And 'tis thy judgment that mistakes in this.
I am not worthy of fair Mora's love;
Reclaim her yet, re-win her for thyself,
Would she were worthy thee, and I like thee,
Could merit her by so resigning her.

Arak.
O hapless Mora, fated like thy lover,
To feel the anguish of rejected passion!—
Have you no charm that you can give to me,
To lure her truant heart to its first love!
Or some endearing cordial for yourself,
To make you see her with fond eyes like mine?
But see, Orooko comes. If he can turn
The Queen's affection to her lord again,
Perchance his skill may Mora's too reclaim.

Ant.
[aside]
O Heavens, what horror am I doom'd to suffer?
[Arak during this soliloquy has advanced towards Orooko.]
How the pure fancies of this guileless race
Make the foul odium of my guilt appear!
They look on me as on the orb of day;
O little think they that the light they worship
Gleams but from dead and guilty rottenness,
Compar'd to which they are themselves Heaven's stars.

[Enter Orooko, and Arak returns.]
Orooko.
Unhappy Arak! I will speak to him.

Ant.
[to Orooko.]
Have you been able to relieve the Queen?

Orooko.
[to Ant.]
You only can do that,—why do you start?
The ill that taints her bosom came by you—
And you should, Sir, in bringing such disease,
Have brought with it the needful antidote.
Are such distempers common in your country?

Ant.
I fear they are.

Orooko.
The gentle Mora too,
Arak's betroth'd, has caught the same infection;
Sir, you seem greatly mov'd. I mean no harm,
I only grieve that with the arts you teach,
Such fearful and appalling reprobation,
Should thus destroy the ties of faithful love.

Arak.
But Mora is not, like her royal Mistress,
Afraid and angry when I speak to her.
She owns her love and treats me as a brother.

Orooko.
She owns her love! what love?

Arak.
Love for Antonio!

Ant.
(aside)
Ha! he has caught the truth!

Arak.
What means all this?

Orooko.
Leave us, dear Arak—leave us for a while.
[Exit Arak.
Stay, Sir, you must remain, a word, a word.
The giant bark that brought you to our coast
Seem'd as it welter'd on the surfy shore,
Some monstrous thing presaging woe to us.
From all the haunts of all our woody land,
Successive came our wand'ring tribes, to see
The awful sight. And with compassion mov'd
Our youthful monarch, Yamos, took thy hand
And plac'd thee by himself, an honor'd guest.
At that dire hour your dreadful work began.
You taught us arts—divided us in bands,
These for the chace, and those to seed the soil,
And when your tongue had learnt our simple speech,
You spoke of life and worlds beyond the stars,
And call'd our ancient rites of gratitude,
To the great Spirit—aimless superstition.

Ant.
In doing so, I know that I did well.

Orooko.
The proof of that must show in the effect.
But I proceed—Dissensions rose among us—
Your altars prosper'd, while with hapless me
A few undaunted faithful chose the woods.
Here, here enchanted by your seeming wisdom,
Thousands on thousands swarm'd to raise the town,
And it was rais'd. For this eternal temple,
High in whose measureless concave the sun
A lamp of everlasting splendor shines,
You have th'Apostates from their father's God,
Led to a mansion built by their own hands,
And made them kneel before such feeble emblems,
As the soft-breathing of a bird, might quench;
And you have dungeons rear'd.

Ant.
O let me fly—

Orooko.
Fly! whither. No.—You shall hear all your works,
Now answer me.—The gentle Mora loves you,—
For you her heart has turn'd from gen'rous Arak,
And yet she sees him with nor hate, nor fear—
Thy pallid visage tells me all I ask.—
Go to thy temples, prisons, knowledge, arts,
And find some means to purge our tainted tribes,
From these new sins that thou hast brought with them.