The Queen of the Hid Isle An Allegoric Poem |
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Scene I.
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 | The Queen of the Hid Isle |  |
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.
| The Queen of the Hid Isle | |