University of Virginia Library

Scene I.

—A Beautiful Grove.
Eulice.
Here, in the grove under the citron-trees,

The loves of Eulice and Chauntval.

He bade me tarry. How quick my heart beats!
Is it with haste o'erpast or love to come?
I will disrobe me of this heavy cloak,
And loose the cincture of my breathless waist,
And sit down in the moss. He hath well chosen.
'Tis a fit place for love. The dormant air
Swoons with its weight of perfume; the green heaven
Of leaves glitters with constellated flowers,
And all the grass engrailed with cyclamens
And clustering glomes of wondrous scarlet blooms.
No noyous insects flit in the strange air;
Only the burnished plumes of humming-birds,
And rainbow-painted sails of royal moths,
And steel-blue adderflies with needle shape
And filmy changes of prismatic wings,
And many a wondrous green habiliment,
That, like a breastplate of enamelled metal,
Sheathes up the drumbling beetle for the wars.
Yonder the red scales of the topaz-bird,
The overlapping plates of plumy mail,
Nestling among the florulent parasites,
Flame like the clear-cut edges of a gem,
Or mark his flying path with rubious flames
Through the wood's twilight green. How silver-clear
The meagre brooklet drops her chinking coins
Driblet by driblet on to the smooth rock,
Then wanders in a streak of silver green,
Chamfering through the glade her narrow way!
And how the birds sing!

Chaun.
What! before me, love?

Eulice.
The fonder feet are ever first at tryst
And the more eager lips.

Chaun.
The fairer one
Should be less eager, and the beautiful
Than the soul seeking beauty. Therefore, love,
You have usurped my right.

Eulice.
I have usurped
The place of worshipper, which should be mine,
And left to thee the niche that holds the god,
Which had I filled, I had usurped indeed,
Who now am no usurper.

Chaun.
Yet change parts;
Be you the saint, and I will kiss your feet.

Eulice.
You would waste kisses if you kissed my feet
That cannot taste them. Give them to my lips.

Chaun.
Then thus I greet their coralline delights
In melting joy. No red anemone,
No sea-flower of the ocean branching out
Under the burning Ethiopian sea
On shelving twilight rock, is ruddier.
What say you to the place? Have I done well?

Eulice.
You have chosen, as a poet, a sweet spot,
A fairer garden than the Hesperides'.

Chaun.
Feel what a couch of deep elastic moss
For comfort, and what colour for delight.
Have you a name for it? A wine-red hue
Deepening to russet brown, the brown to bronze
And fierce ferruginous hues of rich red rust.
Here will we lie and twitter in a nest
Of downier lining than the robin builds,
And when we are aweary of sweet play,
I'll bring you flowers and fruit. The orange boughs
And flush cornelian trees shall furnish us
With wild-wood dainties, Nature's confiture;
And the clear brook shall cool our fevered lips
With the pure wine the dipping fern-leaves drink.
And I have brought the lute.

Eulice.
Oh, sit by me
And pick up from the strings that tune once more
Which in the lamp-lit gardens first you played
Upon that night of franchised revelry,
And won my heart.

Chaun.
Then you must rest on me
With all your shoulder and your white arm's weight,
And make electric flashes in my brain;
Else cannot I play it so as then I did.

Eulice.
Will that serve?

Chaun.

Eulice.
That tune enfires the very air with love,
And drowns the brook, and silences the birds,
And makes the air pant quick. Sing it again,
But drop the lute and twist about my neck
Thy liberated arm,—for I would dream,—
And sing it in mine ear.

Enter Amanda.
Aman.
What have we now?
My dame Eulice and Chauntval!

Eulice.
Pardon, lady.

Aman.
Eulice, I little deemed thee light of mood,

Earthly Love reproveth Light Passion.

Whom I have kept to be about my bed
And share my board. And you, Sir Troubadour,
Who were my guest, have recompensed me well,
Making my virgin friend thy belamour.
Yet thou shalt make amends, and thou, Eulice,
Shalt have thy love.

Chaun.
I pray you, gentle queen,
Bid me go fight against the Saracens
Or seek the phœnix in Egyptian land,
Or where the Ethiop feels the scorching sun
Go groping for the fountains of the Nile,
But bid me not put bondage on my love,
Or even flowery fetters on my limbs,
For I was born for freedom.

Eulice.
He speaks well.
Chauntval, I am not wroth with thee for this,
As many a maid of milder mould had been.
I am thy counterfeit, even such as thou,
Or we had never loved each other so!
I was not fashioned for a faithful wife:
I would not wed and hate thee.

Chaun.
Sweet Eulice!
Gracious, you hear her.

Aman.
Go, you light-o'-loves!
You quick, hot sparrows, sickly cooing doves,
That peck and flutter for a moment's sport.
You, lady, I will pardon for this once,
But, for I am not rich in pardons, know
Thou hast my whole store of them, having this.
You, Chauntval, ere the sun thrice set and rise
I bid begone, or dearly it aby,
From all the circle of my fair domains,
And ne'er again be seen about my court.

Chaun.
Fair queen, I bow to thy most righteous doom,
And thank thee in behalf of this dear dame,
Who stands so shamefast, for thy grace to her.
Farewell, Eulice. 'Tis hard to part so soon,
Before the cloying of the sweet.

Eulice.
Three days
Our lady gives thee. Bide with us for two,
And, gentle queen, I pray you join my prayer
With thy command.

Aman.
Well, be it as you will;
But breed no further scandal to our court.
Come, lovers, we will banquet you to-night,
And once again; but after you must part.