 | The Queen of the Hid Isle |  |
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ACT II.
Scene I.
—The Garden of Amanda's Palace.Elzir.
Here will I hide me 'mid these myrtle shrubs,
And watch the passage of their loves. You spirits
That dwell in viewless odours and vague lights,
And loiter ghostlike through the labyrinths
Of the pale leaves and colourless floriage
On wings bedewy with the breath of night;
And ye that people the moon's scattering rays
And the thin stellular beams of crowded heaven,
Kissing the lake's face with a golden kiss
On all her dimples, leaving rapid prints
Of hurrying footsteps down the running stream,
And making massy shade in the deep coigns
Of every buttress mirrored in the moat,
Have so becharmed the hour and drenched with love
All winds, and sights, and echoes of the night,
That human frailties now, like all wild beasts,
Come forth from nestling in the heart's recess
To prey and roam. Now is his feeble hour:
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Chorus of Spirits.
Spirits we of sound and fragrance
From the everglades and streams,
Roaming minstrels, fairy vagrants,
Bringing love, and bringing dreams.
From the everglades and streams,
Roaming minstrels, fairy vagrants,
Bringing love, and bringing dreams.
Garth and garden's sleepiest posies
We have sipped, and with us bear
Drowsy smells of rich corn-roses,
Droning noise of wings in air.
We have sipped, and with us bear
Drowsy smells of rich corn-roses,
Droning noise of wings in air.
Dreamlike transient evanescence
Of delight is on our wings;
Now the heart's full efflorescence!
Now the burst of bubbling springs!
Of delight is on our wings;
Now the heart's full efflorescence!
Now the burst of bubbling springs!
Enter Hermadon and Amanda.
Herm.
I have no heart for it.
Aman.
No heart for love?
For love, whose tears make sorrow smile?
Herm.
No tears
For piteous love, no smiles for woe's relief
Have I, who may not love nor sorrow.
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What?
Nor love nor sorrow—and a mortal man!
Herm.
Not as the world loves or the world grieves may I.
Aman.
Love not and grieve not as men love or grieve,
For they change ever; but love only me.
Grieve only when I slight thee, which shall be
Never: so never grieve; or, if thou must,
Grieve but for pity of excessive love,
Because it cannot be put out by tears,
With kisses slaked, or close embraces fed,
But ever more with fever and fell thirst
And ravening wolfish famine must be torn
The soul that feels the Dipsas-bite of love.
For what close bonds can quench the insatiable will,
The self-escaping heavenward flame of love,
Save that I were incorporate made with thee,
One flesh in truth—ah no! one spirit as light
As the high-soaring lark, the swift-winged prayer
That the earth offers up unto the sun?
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To bring the cureless back to healthsome hues,
To quench the unquenchable, and limits fix
To the illimitable soul of man,—
Aspiring after freedom and full scope
To soar about the circles of the heavens
On angel's wings, a seraph-soul fulfilled
Of thought and self-approof and perfect will,
A cherub bathed in love,—is but to heap
Dry fodder on the ravin of fierce fire,
Which no man tames nor any shall feed full.
Aman.
Yet dip thy finger in the streams of heaven,
And touch my parched tongue with a moment's peace.
Herm.
Of heaven's rills shall no man give to drink,
E'en though he quaff himself.
Aman.
What! play the churl
With love, and save it in a miser's coffer!
Herm.
No wilful miser, not of love, but peace.
Of love thou hast enough; surcease of love
Is that thou wouldst, and I have not to give.
Aman.
Hast not to give! Yet take this token-ring
And be my knight.
Herm.
A sweet sense steals on me,
A starry influence, a mystic lure,
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And sealing up mine eyes with kisses. Sweet,
I'll be thy knight who may not be thy lord.
Put on the ring.
Aman.
Here by this other one.
Herm.
That other! What? How came it on my hand?
Whence gotten? By whom given? A thought strikes fire,
Some keen refracted ray of shattered light
From memory's twisted mirror. Take thy ring:
I cannot be thy knight.
Aman.
Nor love, nor knight?
Herm.
I cannot. Yet my heart says, Wherefore not?
How am I born a slave, bound, fettered, gyved,
Not free as other men?
Aman.
What! art thou sworn
Never to love (rash vow!), or wedded, is it?
And yet forgetful who thy bride may be,
It is so long ago, and thou a youth!
Herm.
A curse upon this unseen power, I say,
That holds me. It takes likeness of a face,
A woman's face, and stares into my own
With awful deep reproach and wild amaze
Among the myrtle bushes. It is gone.
Ah! wherefore was I born more straitly mewed
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Than all men else by poverty or crime?
I will be free. Come hence from this cursed place.
'Tis haunted. I will be thy knight, thy love,—
But take me hence.
[Exeunt Amanda and Hermadon.
Enter Chauntval and Eulice.
Chaun.
The lily-asphodel
Breathes on the night: the jasmine clinging sighs
About the white balusters like a bride
All down this marble terrace. Sit thee down
Under the balsam-tree. How the leaves shine
Lacquered with moonlight! I will play to thee
Upon the soft-stringed angelot.
Eulice.
Some tune
Suiting the hour, most tender but not sad.
Chaun.
'Twill quarrel with the moonlight and the moon
For heartaches that they give as tunefully
As the low bubbling of the nightingale
There in the shadow of the orchard trees.
The peaches and the bloomy nectarines
Hang yearning for the sunlight on the wall,
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Which ever flowers in music. Listen, love,
And hear the flowering of the plant.
Eulice.
It swims
Into mine ears with honeyed murmurings
Like the air-beat of many gauzy wings.
Chaun.
It is our sweetest Provençe rhapsody;
It will not mix with aught but perfumed air
In gardens, by fair ladies in the night,
Their frounced hair glittering gold through coils of pearls,
Under the olives or the arbute trees,
With kissings of the lute and archilute.
Eulice.
It tinkles as the Cities of the Plain
With many broken lute-strings, heard afar
Through the night air by the sad Patriarch
Fearing for Lot.
Chaun.
Fair lady, though love died,
Sweet passion lived in those doomed palaces,
And made the cities vocal.
Eulice.
But the fire—
The fire that came next day!
Chaun.
Think not of it.
Take the bandore and strike across the strings;
And as the tones of men and maidens mix,
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So shall our voices and our lute-strains wed.
[They play in concert.
Catch up the dying music on thy lip,
And concentrate its essence in one kiss.
Eulice.
Nay, sir, the very night is full of eyes.
Wait till the moon-rise. Then, when sleep hath sealed
The heavy-lidded globes of all faint watchers
Shall you ascend the ivy's lattice-work
Upon a leafy ladder to my love,
And we will drink of love's acanthice wine
Until bright morning pearls the ivy-buds.
But hark! a step.
Chaun.
Seek we some duskier shade.
Eulice.
This leads to the oak-coppice. Come with me.
[Exeunt Chauntval and Eulice.
Enter Clarimonde.
Clar.
Alone! 'tis better so. I am alone,
And shall be ever till I find the queen.
Yond stranger spake of her as of his dame,
Nay, as of his dame's handmaid, one to win
And cast aside.
(Elzir approaches, hiding.)
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All round the verges of the dawn and dark,
From brim to brim of oceans, over sands
Biting the bare feet as with dust of fire,
Or making my foot-armour melt my flesh,
So hot it grew, have sought her day and night,
Have seen no glimpse of her imagined face,
And touched no whiteness of her hand.
Elzir.
(Aside.)
Poor knight!
Fairies no more than women may be won
By bare long-suffering. Love is child of Fate,
Loves not the loving but the lovable,
And clothes the rich but rends the poor man's heart;
And rich and poor are poor or rich by birth,
As Nature fills the heart with dross or gold.
Clar.
But hither comes he. For one loved of gods,
Like a base hawk that runs check from the hand,
He lightly stoops to mortals. I will go.
[Exit Clarimonde.
Elzir.
She folds him in her arms. She kisses him.
She lures him on. As one star-struck he follows.
Enter Hermadon and Amanda.
Aman.
I pray you listen to me. Sit awhile.
Who is this queen that binds you?
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'Tis no queen;
For love to you, outsoaring with swift stroke
The buzzard flight of that old sluggish love,
Hath seized and borne me off. Nay, 'tis no queen
That holds me from thee, but some haunting dream
Of faith deep-plighted with my knightly vow.
Aman.
A dream is but a dream. The fragrant night
Breathes them upon our eyelids by the score,
And often makes our sleep a Paradise.
Let not these brooding seraphs, whose soft wings
So fan our lids and brush our murmuring lips,
Be turned to vampires and suck up our breath
And leave us lifeless. Oh, forget it straight.
Herm.
But here, here in a chamber of my brain,
In some aloof recess, it broods and pines,
A bodement of strange ill, a memory
Of vanished good.
Aman.
But still a dream.
Herm.
A curse!
I would it might be blotted from my thoughts!
I see her cold face looking into mine,
Full of immortal jealousy and love.
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Peering out from the laurels with green eyes,
She draws me to her. Love, I cannot stay.
She slays me like the basilisk. There! there!
O queen! O goddess! take me from this world
Out of this trial. Let me fly to thee.
I come! I'll clasp thee, die, and be at peace.
[Hermadon rushes to Elzir. She vanishes.
Chorus of Spirits.
Thou chief of the chosen,
The hour is not yet;
The life-stream is frozen,
The ice-wall is set.
It bars thee from heaven,
It binds thee to earth,
Till all be forgiven
In darkness and dearth.
The hour is not yet;
The life-stream is frozen,
The ice-wall is set.
It bars thee from heaven,
It binds thee to earth,
Till all be forgiven
In darkness and dearth.
The exile of spirits
Live thou among men,
Whose vision inherits
The walls of their den;
Who feel with blind fingers
And grope in the gloom,
Whose destiny lingers
From the womb to the tomb.
Live thou among men,
Whose vision inherits
The walls of their den;
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And grope in the gloom,
Whose destiny lingers
From the womb to the tomb.
Scene II.
—A Grove beyond the Gardens.Clar.
I am sick at heart to see them dally so
And feel my life so lonely. On this bank
So violet-enamelled, under shade
Of the great maple-trees, will I recline,
Deep in the glumes of the rich flowering grass.
The orchids hang in long festoons of flowers
From tree to tree their twined anguineal coils;
The coral-trees bristle with crimson spikes,
And feathery aigrets top the tasseled reeds
With tufts of scarlet yellowed by the moon;
And flower-cups like soft alembics drenched
With magic liquors send forth fumes of sleep.
There is a poisonous stillness in the place:
The upas and the shumac are at hand:
The nightshade and the spindle-berry tree
In purple blooms and carmine bunches vie
To make death odorous and beautiful.
Why should I ever seek this airling queen?
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When here at hand is death's own morphia?
My heart is all annealed to liquid love,
Which there is none to cool. Shall it go waste?
Shall all my days be vain? Nay, better die.
What! die and leave the quest? Never, I swear!
Perchance e'en now the queen is nigh at hand,
The road draws near a close. But soft; who comes?
There, 'mid the florulent bushet's under-wood,
I saw some female shape—Eulice belike,
Or fair Amanda. Will they follow here?
And is there nowhere peace?
Elzir.
Fair stranger knight,
I crave you of your courtesy what path
Leads to the castle?
Clar.
This whereon you stand.
Elzir.
I am forwandered and forwearied, sir,
With tracking up and down in the cold dews
(Nay, look not on me as a basilisk
That kills with touch of eyes), and I were fain
Of rest and lodgment. Pray you lead the way
Among the boles of these bewildering trees.
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No candent robe like surf of fire or snow,
No glamour, no pale lady of the woods,
But a poor wearied maid.
Clar.
I know not fear,
But for one moment my heart stayed for joy,—
Now keeps her music steady. I had thought
At first you were not earthly. Now I see
The merest maiden half bestraught with fear
And weariness.
Elzir.
And did you feel no dread,
Deeming me nymph or goddess?
Clar.
Nay, but joy.
I took you for some say, some glamoured dame,
Perchance that queen to whom my days are sworn,
Who sits beneath the nickar-tree and weaves
In the Hid Isle.
Elzir.
The queen of the Hid Isle?
Clar.
The same. But ah! 'tis gone, my golden dream.
Elzir.
Here's one will be your lady for amends,
For I have lost my knight.
Clar.
Beseech you, maid,
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To an immortal love.
Elzir.
Who aims too high
O'ershoots the mark. Mortal to mortal hearts
Are best beseen, and each thing to its kind.
Will you not wear my colours and my glove
Pinned to your brasset at all tourneyings,
And fight for me? I am in mine own land
A queen.
Clar.
Queen or no queen, it may not be.
I am the pursuivant of heavenly Love,
And may not taste of earthly.
Elzir.
Love on love
Is built as tower on tower that would touch heaven.
Love is a ladder for the angels' feet,
A tree built up by storeys, growth on growth,
And heavenly love a flower that tops the plant
The root whereof drinks nutriment from earth,
And is but earthy. Love is a torch-race,
And each to each hands on the blazing brand,
The sacred inextinguishable brand.
Love merges into love by faint degrees:
There are no gaps in Nature: first the high
Melts into higher ere to highest caught:
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The love of man before the love of gods.
The lowest is self-love. From forth of self
Man yearns to woman, woman yearns to man.
Next, in the sphere and circle of our love
We clasp all breathing things and beauteous,
All forms of earth and sky. Next from that fruit
We squeeze the essence, and love Beauty pure,
Led to her by all lovely arts. She is
The Hid Isle's queen, and such the path to her.
Clar.
Temptress and witch! I know thee who thou art,
The stumbling-block of all pure-hearted knights,
The unhallowed Venus.
Elzir.
Rest you well, fair sir!
You crave to be a seraph and to know:
I point the path of knowledge. You would lift
The camis off the Queen of Beauty's limbs
And look on Nature naked, not through gauze:
I rend the veil for you. You would behold
The Hid Isle's queen: I offer me your guide.
You turn and spurn me.
Clar.
Nay, I know you not.
How should I trust your truth?
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Truth is a gem
Locked in a casket; the key lies at hand.
Some find the key at once and lift the lid.
To others if you offer it, they gibe,
And set off seeking over sea and land.
“Tell me not 'tis so easy.” So they sneer,
And they are lost. Ye cannot change the heart.
The statue is of one piece with the rock
Whence it was hewn, granite or marble pure,
Basalt, or crumbling tuff. Some you may smooth,
Some never.
Clar.
You shall not mistrain my steps
For all your evil bodements. I will keep
The pure path and the clean.
Elzir.
So were you best.
All miry ways lead to the supreme slough.
I never sought to moil the purity
Of your clean heart: but purity and love
Never were foes save unto eyes impure.
Clar.
Peace, lady, and I pray you pardon me
If like a churl I wrangled with a queen.
But I bethought me of old tales which speak
Of evil dames that haunt lake-lumined woods,
With misty tresses and with lamping eyes
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By white cascades and on smooth river-lawns
Belled with the hoary spray of waterfalls,
Or gleaming ghostlike through the duskier woods,
Leaving a white track with their odorous robes,
A snake-like, leprous, sleepy trail of fire
Under the plashes of the flowery trees,
Over the velvet mosses and the ferns.
E'en such I deemed thee after thy plain speech
Bespoke thee other than the queen I love,
And when thy loftier utterance showed thee more
Than mere forwandered maiden seeking rest,
And therefore feared thee, and mistrustful fear
Bred the rude haste of a discourteous tongue.
Elzir.
Have my free pardon: give me conduct hence:
Or, since I may not be thy queen (and that
I will ask never more), point thou the way,
And I will go alone. Gainsay me not.
I would not have you with me. Sir, obey.
Clar.
Then yonder is the ingate of the wood,
Where through the embowèd arches you see light.
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Then a long vista of white abel-trees,
Which past, you will behold a sudden light
That breaks in rainbows from the grainèd glass
Of agatine and shot prismatic panes,
And hear the choiring anthem. Hard foreby
Is the fair castle porch. Above the gate
You will see two stone cupids with bent bows
Entailed with branching scroll-work all about.
There blow the horn. Now, lady, by your grace
I will pass onward.
[Exit Clarimonde.
Elzir.
Fare you well, kind sir.
Oh, blindness baffling fickle jealousy!
I would not change my faithless for this faith,
My recreant for this slave. Year after year
He seeks me. Lo, I give myself to him:
He flies as from a devil; knows me not,
Talks with me deeming me some common stray,
Mere maiden and mere mortal, or at best
An evil wraith, a goblin of the wood.
I will lure back my hawk and gyve him fast
With golden jesses, let this kestrel be.
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Scene III.
—Amanda's Bower.Enter Amanda leading Hermadon.
Aman.
Here sit and rest. Forget that evil dream,
And tell me of thy doughty deeds of arms.
I'll bring thee water in a golden ewer
Mixed with the rose-bud's thrice-distillèd juice,
And in a silver basin lave thy hands.
Bid me ungird thy glaive; uncase thy breast
Of all this rigid gold. About thy neck
I'll hang a chain of pearls, and clothe thy limbs
In a brave silken camis, and thine head
With samite chaperon. These rustling weeds
Shall better fit than baldric and cuirass,
Gorget and burganet of burnished gold,
For Love's dear warfare. Set thy warrior feet
In these fair slippers, sewn with small seedpearls
And stitched with finest twire of silken floss:
Unbind those jarring cuishes: put aside
Thy breastplate: sit down in thine hacqueton:
Undo this jewelled belt, and let it go
After the cruel sword, its bosom friend;
It is too heavy. Arm thee with the lute,
And lift its delicate strings to strains of love.
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O lady! I was noursled in mine arms,
And cannot breathe in silk.
Aman.
I have heard say
That warriors practise fight with weightier blades,
And handsel first the lighter in the fray;
So then, being bred in steel, you cannot swoon
Under this gauzy cassock.
Herm.
Nay, I know not.
My limbs feel molt, as it were venomous flame
And clung to them, eating away the flesh.
Aman.
Here is but cloth and sleeves purfled with gold,
No fire.
Herm.
Ay, fire that thrids my marrow through
With piercing pangs of love.
Aman.
Repeat that word.
It falls more sweetly from thy lips than dew
Out of the rose's heart.
Herm.
It is indeed
A heart-drop of distillèd agony,
Squeezed out by sorrow.
Aman.
Nay, be merry, love.
Herm.
Merry I might be, but for some vague sense,
Some haunting dream. Ah, God! across my eyes
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Telling me I was born for higher things.
Aman.
Thus let me wipe it off with one sweet kiss.
Herm.
I felt your lips like the cold kiss of Death,
Or as his bony finger on my brow,
Death of my higher soaring spirit of life,
That leaves this sepulchre for evermore.
Song of Spirits without.
For evermore, for evermore,
Carillon lily-bells ring out,
And all above and all about
Thin astral echoes sink and soar
For evermore!
Carillon lily-bells ring out,
And all above and all about
Thin astral echoes sink and soar
For evermore!
For evermore, for evermore,
Forever safe whate'er betide,
Who once hath kist the heavenly bride,
Though keenly pierced and baffled sore,
For evermore!
Forever safe whate'er betide,
Who once hath kist the heavenly bride,
Though keenly pierced and baffled sore,
For evermore!
For evermore, for evermore,
Unmarred by fretting wasp or bee,
The canker and the blight, shall be
The perfume in the rose's core
For evermore!
Unmarred by fretting wasp or bee,
The canker and the blight, shall be
The perfume in the rose's core
For evermore!
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How sweet the night-wind playing on the leaves
A harp-like melody! How sweet a scent
Comes in with it of fainting marjoram
And balsamed calamint!
Herm.
Heard you no voice?
Aman.
'Tis but the wind, the chantress of the night,
That makes wild lute-strings of the ivy-stems,
And pours all round the turret her high voice,
Mixed with the groanful music of the pines
And chiming bells among the silver stars
Uprisen from the cloister.
Herm.
And no voice?
No tuneful warning voice, sublimely glad
Yet gently chiding? Hark! they sing again.
Chorus of Spirits
without.
Be faithful to thy destiny,
And learn in bondage to be free.
The stars above in bonds of love
Are to the sun chained—thou to me.
And learn in bondage to be free.
The stars above in bonds of love
Are to the sun chained—thou to me.
Be faithful to thy destiny,
And learn in bondage to be free.
The fickle sea, the shifting sea,
Obeys the moon. Obey thou me.
And learn in bondage to be free.
The fickle sea, the shifting sea,
Obeys the moon. Obey thou me.
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You seem not well. Here is a beaker drenched
With frory wine cold as the crystal beads
That drop from rocks on mountain-pinnacles,
But with a sense of fire under the snow.
See how the concave of the golden cup
Reddens across the rose-blush of the wine
A carmine redder than carbuncle stones.
Drink it all down and live again.
Herm.
Nay, love;
The fit is past. It launched me through the side,
That voice, e'en like a dagger. I am well.
Aman.
Then kiss me and forget.
Herm.
I will forget.
I swear it. Kiss me.
Spirits.
Kisses thrown in air
Wear sweet love away
Little by little,
Till it grow despair,
Losing day by day
Some jot or tittle;
For though lovers swear,
Lasting loves are rare;
Loving faiths decay,
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Fading year by year,
Broken day by day,
Little by little.
Herm.
Nay, thou wilt alter; hers is deathless love.
Here I am but a pilgrim and a shadow,
Flitting phantasmal through a shifting dream,
Groping among delusions. There I live,
A real being, in communion high
With her, and, brooded by her outstretched wings,
Made one with her forever. Let me go.
Give me mine arms.
Aman.
Nay, gentle prisoner!
Look where they stood! You are my captive knight.
But I will keep thee as some tender maid
Prisons a starling in a wicker cage,
To let it peck upon her rosy nails
And bite her cherry lips with angry love,
With spiteful tenderness. Nay, frown not so.
Your heart is glamoured: you are all mine own:
You have drunk magic wine, a love-philtre,
More potent never brewed in crucible
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You are my slave.
Herm.
It flashes in on me.
I know all now. Save me, my Queen Elzir.
Chorus of Spirits
without.
Forever safe, whate'er betide,
Who once hath kist the heavenly bride.
| The Queen of the Hid Isle | |