University of Virginia Library

Scene II.

—The Palace Gardens. Gemma singing. Lorenzo approaches unperceived.
Gem.
(singing)

Lor.
Why will you sing these Danish songs?

Gem.
Oh me!
How softly you approached—I never heard you!

Lor.
A creature winged like Gemma can be caught
Only by cunning. Why will you sing always
These Danish songs?

Gem.
Because I know no others—
I learnt them from the mermaids—and besides
You mock my accent when I try Venetian—
Now sing to me.

Lor.
The only songs I know
Are sad ones, and bring back sad memories—
I have no joy in music.

Gem.
Ah, how strange!
Do all sweet things then pain you?

Lor.
'T is my nature.
E'en when I stand before a happy future,
The past is always lingering in the background,
And fascinates mine eyes, 'spite of myself.

Gem.
Are you unhappy then? now, even now?

Lor.
Yes, now, sweet Princess.

Gem.
Why?

Lor.
Because I know not
If you would miss me were I now to leave you,
And never more return.

Gem.
You leave me! you!

Lor.
Sweet Gemma, if you bid me, I will stay.

Gem.
What should I do, how live, if you were gone?

Lor.
So cruel am I, I could almost go,
To have the joy of knowing that you missed me.

Gem.
How strange I missed you not before I knew you?

Lor.
See, you were like that wreathing trumpet-flower
Which loiters idly o'er the balustrade,
Till it has found yon cypress, round whose spires
It clings with all its blossoms. And, in truth,
That moment when I lifted from your brow,
With such a beating heart, the magic wreath,
And the clear, sea-like purple of your eyes,
Dawned dazzlingly upon your startled face,
You seemed in me to find the thing you sought—
Methought your blush was like a half-shy child's
That hides its face and smiles. It was as if
You had been dreaming of me all the time,
And were but half awake.

Gem.
And so I was!
Oh, had I words to tell you how I felt,
That moment in my life's eventless story,
Which flashed upon me its first novelty.
It seizes on me suddenly again—
Whene'er I see you unawares—as 't were
For the first time—that flash of warm blue sea
Beyond the balcony, seen through green leaves
As through a bower; the curving mountain side,
The strange rich colouring spread o'er its broad canvass;
The hot and perfumed sunshine, and all round
The softened uproar of a crowd of bells—
And you yourself—you smiled on me so sweetly,
And said such strangely sweet and graceful things...
I loved you from that moment without knowing it.

Lor.
And I had loved you long before it. Oh!
How anxiously, impatiently, I watched you!
Whene'er I passed in sight of land, there came
A restless dread lest other eyes should catch
A glimpse of my one treasure!

Gem.
But how was it
You took such pains to seek and carry off
A bride you had not seen?

Lor.
'T was an adventure
Which roused the fancy of a man just then
Weary of all he saw. Had you been guarded
By all the boisterous giants of Valhalla,
I should have ventured still. Yet, when I neared
Fulfilment of my aim, my mind misgave me—
Shall I confess it, Gemma? I began
To tremble lest the hidden gem of Zetland
Should prove not worth the outlay of such hopes,
Lest you should prove unlovely, soulless, cold,
Or anything, in truth, but what you are.

Gem.
And how soon were you reassured in me?

Lor.
The moment I first saw that sleeping face.
Yet, oft and oft, as I walked up and down,
The thought you might not love me, so oppressed me,
I almost could have snatched you in my arms,
And flung you still unconscious to the waves,
Rather than wait my fate.

Gem.
Oh could you doubt it?
What strange and dreadful things you say with smiles!
And had I died in truth, when all but you
Thought me a corpse—died ere my life began,
Known no existence but that twilight world!
Like a chill blast as from my funeral vault,
Comes the remembrance back to me e'en now,
That I was happy—oh, but tell me, will you
Love me as Harold did?

Lor.
Far more, believe me,
And with a love less selfish. You shall be
The centre here of an adoring world—
Knights, poets, artists shall be privileged
To circle round my star, and carry back
Its image to the tented battle-field,
Or dream it into poetry and painting.
But tell me, in my turn, will you love me
As you loved Harold?

Gem.
Oh, a thousand times more!

Lor.
But still you loved him?

Gem.
As a child its guardian,
Or, as an elder brother. For the rest,
So far away, so long ago seems now
The life that was, I but remember it
As a tale told to me, and scarce believe
That Gemma was myself.

Lor.
Forget her then,
And say once more, you love me most.

Gem.
Oh, yes!
I could no more have dreamed such love as this
From what I felt for him, than I could guess—
When sometimes he would bring me, for a token,
The dried-up effigy of a thing that bloomed
In some strange, hazardous spot, some mountain fastness,
Or palace garden of his enemies—
How to restore from thence the living flower,
Or from that single flower to realise
The multitudinous glow, the mingled perfume
Of nature's sumptuous nosegay, which this isle
Holds in her happy hands.

Lor.
Thrice-fortunate he
Who opened, ere too late, your dungeon door!
Now you are come into the world for which
You were created, nor less welcome there
Because some dewdrops from a colder clime
Still linger, to our fancies, on your beauty.
You have the generous ardour of the south,
Born in you with those deep Venetian eyes,
And the sweet northern sensibility,
Taught in a pale and melancholy land—
But only here could you be understood,
There your rich sparkling fancies, and fond yearnings
Would have found no companion—I can read them
As easily as I count this rose's petals!
You are to me no mystery—to be first
Worshipped and wondered at, then wearied of—
Rather the favourite poem which we read
A thousand times, and fancy we alone
Take all the measure of its genius—oh,
What poem like the heart of her we love!
Come, let us pace beneath these trelliced vines!

[They wander away together.