 | Gemma of The Isles |  |
Scene XI.
—On board Harold's ship. Harold, Thorbrand, and other Northmen.Thor.
It was a noble victory! But you look—
Oh, how unlike yourself! You have no wound
You have not told us of?
Har.
No, Thorbrand.
Thor.
Then
You mourn for Sigurd! Do not mourn for him,
For Sigurd died as Northmen love to die—
The deck beneath him, the blue sky above him,
And the slain corpses of his enemy round him.
Har.
Sigurd was brave, and true, and dear to me,
And brave, and true, and dear, were all who fell—
And yet I am not mourning for them.
Thor.
Then
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Moved, fought, as in a dream—from right to left
You dealt destruction like a passionless fate,
Resistless, but incapable of rage.
Victorious, next you spurned your victory,
And flung success and vengeance to the winds!
But yesterday your soul all love and hate,
To-day you yield your bride and spare your foe!
What has come over you?
Har.
Oh, Thorbrand, hearken!
For the last time we've battled side by side!
As surely as my flag to-day has triumphed,
As surely as the haughty flag of Venice
Has dropped before me like a frost-cut leaf,
As surely as my race was born from Odin,
Ne'er shall I lead you more, ye northern ravens,
To grapple, beak and claw, by land or sea,
With rolling ship, or rock-built castle.
Thor.
Harold!
Har.
No more my heart shall beat a march to battle,
Nor shall my soul ever drink rapture more
At the great feast of swords, whence it was wont
To rise intoxicate. My course is run,
Thou, Thorbrand, take my earldom and my fleet,
Be what I was—in me my race expires.
Thor.
Harold! now say, what mean you?
Har.
To your hands
I give my leadership. My old companions!
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As you have followed me!
Thor.
Oh see, they weep!
How can you bear to leave us? Well I knew,
When you resigned the darling of your heart
To him whom most you hate, some spell had seized you!
Har.
Hush! if you love me, if you dread my curse,
Swear to me, one and all, with lifted hands,
Ne'er to pluck fruit or blossom from one tree,
Fire but a blade of grass, or shed the blood
Of so much as a wild-dove's nestling brood,
In one of Gemma's isles.
All.
We swear it, Harold!
Thor.
Ill-fated day!—But whither will you go?
How will you live henceforth?
Har.
Henceforth, methinks,
I shall be likest to that desolate cape
Which stands and gazes as it stood and gazed,
Since earth began, a never-wearied watcher,
Cold and incurious o'er an unknown sea.
E'en so my future is an Arctic waste,
With frozen winter for a pioneer!
I know a spot in Iceland, where no echo
Could reach me, from the past, where boiling springs
Tell to grave rocks and melancholy sward,
The story of a pain-wrung passionate heart.
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And dream away my life.
Thor.
And this the end!
Oh, we have shared such glorious hours together,
By land and sea, in war, in wilds unknown,
Drunk with the passion and the pride of danger!
How have we clung to dizzy precipices,
As 't were suspended over the whole world,
And gazed unfaltering on its map below,
Or, coffined in a glacier, on our way
To storm the she-bear's den, have scarcely hewn
A door with-strenuous axe-strokes back to life—
Or, grappling with the monster's dire embrace,
Swooned from the gory duel to awake—
Have we not each in turn such wakings known?—
Beneath the cold innumerable stars,
Beside her carcase, stiffening in the snow!
How many times across how many seas,
Have felt death's cup cold at our very lips—
In the dark night, on unknown waters, heard
The noise of unseen breakers on our bow—
Been balanced on the whirlpool's roaring brink,
Or on frail rafts adrift 'neath skies of fire,
In waking trance have heard the gush of streams—
Have followed visions of more beauteous peril,
Where the far-shining rivers guided us
Through greenly shadowing trees, fast anchored on
Wide golden seas of meadow—woodland swells
Melting away to the blue skies of June—
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And warriors came to meet us, where we held
Our revels in the palaces of princes,
And, laden with their spoils, came conquerors home!
Oh, what to thee was Gemma in those hours?
What is a girl's love to such joys as these?
Chance made her dear to thee, and chance may make
Another dearer!
Har.
There 's no throw of the dice
Can bring that chance to me.
Thor.
Still, still I say
You are bewitched. Oh, for a counter-charm
To call your true self from the Dwerga's halls,
And chase away the spectral counterfeit!
You, in the noblest moment of your years,
You, the most minstrel-honoured of your race,
Fling by a future clanging with your deeds,
To dream a hermit's dream and be forgotten!
Oh, may I never love, if love did this!
Har.
I am made so, Thorbrand.
Thor.
But you are so made
You cannot stay in your self-chosen tomb.
Like that dead pair of heroes sepulchred
Deep in the rock, who for a thousand years
Kept up a ghostly warfare in the dark—
All the vast hollow echoing with the thunder—
Your thoughts will fight together in that gloom
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Lashed by the horror of a new despair,
You headlong rush into the world again.
You know not yet your future.
Har.
Since this morning,
I know it, Thorbrand. Nothing that can happen
Can change it now.
Thor.
Alas! I say no more—
At least remain our leader till we leave
These seas—ha, Harold!
Har.
Ay, the storm at last!
| Gemma of The Isles | |