 | The Queen of the Hid Isle |  |
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ACT IV.
Scene I.
—A Dungeon under Amanda's Castle. Hermadon in chains.Herm.
Forsaken both of Love and that strong sense
Of antenatal glory and a home
In worlds than this beyond compare more sweet,
Which till this hour has borne me up through all,
I am a prisoner, armless, helpless, lost:
A prisoner to my truth, which if I sold
I might be free and loved,—loved of a queen.
Chorus of Spirits
without.
There is no greater queen
Than she who saves thee;
Who sees, herself unseen,
What death engraves thee;
Who breaks the dismal scene
And unenslaves thee.
Herm.
True, I am prisoned, but my soul is free.
I gaze upon the walls, the walls recede;
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Tapped by the wizard rod of gramarye,
And through the gap I see fair moonlit fields
Cloaked to my sight with haze of loving tears
(I know not if it be the rising dews
That make this vapour or my weeping eyes
That brim to look on beauty's nakedness),
Mountains and seas and streams and sleepful lakes
Swathed in a grapy purple atmosphere
The pale enubilous hues of autumn night,
The early twilight blossoming with stars.
I feel wings growing; out at the grated window
My soul flies forth, moving her winnowing vans
Over the peaks, and skimming the sea-foam
With gossamery touch that feels no damp.
I fly forth out of my great solitude:
I visit cities! All their gable-spikes,
And spiry pointels, and blue spheric domes
(Bubbles the hue of livid cyanite),
Gleam under me like the broad stellular heavens,
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That palpitates and breathes with white-hot fire,
All clustered round one loadstar goldenly,
One cynosure of all the circling heavens,
A temple of white marble globy-roofed
Like the clear upturned mirror of a shield,
With a great glassy convex of leaved gold
Poised on slim moon-white shafts of fluted stone,
A bright basilica. As in a hive
The bees, so in its hollow music booms.
The people pour into and out of it;
And all around the lithe anguineal curves
Of sinuous streets and lamp-lit garden-walks
Glitter and coruscate with astral lights.
I see, too, obelisks of strange blue stone
That point like needled splints of malachite;
And at their base young wanton lovers meet.
Their whispering reaches me: and I hear the strings
Of gitterns at the windows and in the streets,
And one high tenor voice from one white square,
From a lone figure whose cloaked shadow falls
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It pierces heaven with frantic pleas of love.
There is a river too runs through the town;
And by one marble flight of palace-stairs,
At a dark angle, sweeps a lady's robe
(I hear the white silk rustling through the hum
Of all the city voices). A boat waits;
She enters it. I hear them kissing. See,
They have forgot to fly in ecstasy
Of meeting. The light skiff is still fast bound
To the white wharf. With stealthy tiger-pace
One follows down the steps. A blue sword gleams.
A dark blot like an ink-pool on the slabs!
A grume of blood that trickles down the steps!
All in phantasmal dumb-show. Then a scream.
I turn away. A deep fervescent glow
Calls off my gaze. The people flock to it.
It is the theatre. The flambeaus flare:
The fanfare sounds: the rising tiers are filled.
The roof is open. I can see the stage
All in a glow of light, a gate of heaven,
An opened Paradise. The swaying lamps
Flicker between the rows of thronging heads.
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Electric storm of many violins
Thrills up, and makes my blood dance in mid-air.
It ceases. Then the rattle of many hands.
Then all are silent. What is't draws their tears?
Is it the woes of sweet Antigone,
Self-doomed Alcestis, or Polyxena,
Or bleeds a maid at Aulis, or, thence borne,
Now priestess of the inhuman Tauric fane,
Flies with her brother and stolen Artemis?
Or sits a blind and exiled wanderer
At white Colonus in the sacred grove,
Thence by a whirlwind borne away to heaven?
Or moans the sufferer of the dismal isle?
Or rather in the silver-sided bath
Does Agamemnon, caught in purple net,
Groan thrice? Or bear they offerings to his tomb,
Drink-offerings, while the avenger is at hand?
Or speaks Prometheus hanging from his rock
To hornèd Io and the ocean nymphs?—
Then the night deepens. Light by light goes out,
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Save here and there some tremulous taper throws
A swordy beam of white light o'er the street
From upper windows, where I guess what loves
Amid what snowy draperies exult.
All round a foamy mist breaks up and swathes,
All evanescent shapes and tree-tops blurred,
Orchard, and garth, and garden, in white brume,
Where fen-fires play and meteors flash and fade,
And goblins, gnomes, and ghouls hold revelry,
Or sometimes fly into the town, and there,
In the deep shadow and shine on moonlit roofs,
Peep at each other round the chimney-stacks,
Or stare in at the grates of prisons.
Woe!
The spell is broken. I am here again,
All the entrancement vanished; here embarred,
Mewed up, and pent in prison. That one word
Turned me to stone with a Gorgonian stare.
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without.
A dream, a dream is broken,
But the dreaming soul lives on.
It shall hear the words then spoken,
It shall see the stars that shone:
The dream-words and the dream-stars bright
That lit that magic-garden
Shall come again some dim sweet night
And our oblivion pardon.
The dream-caresses on our brow
Shall be the same they were but now,
And we shall see those other friends
That never tire or harden,—
Our dream-friends we forget awake,
Who wait us in that other world,
Re-recognised and loved, and make
The day worth living for the sake
Of the inner dream it carries furled,
At sleep-fall of the night uncurled,
For those who live 'twixt break and break,
Half here, half in the spirit-world.
Herm.
True, holy voice, I shall regain my dream;
But meanwhile I am dead and desolate.
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Aman.
Nay, for I would be with thee if thou wouldst.
Herm.
Most cruel! is it thou? Nay, free me soon,
Or I must die.
Aman.
Pledge but thy troth of love,
And from the enwombing darkness of this cave
I will release thee into healthsome air.
Herm.
It cannot be.
Aman.
Then I, who might command
Or slay, now as a suppliant sue to thee.
My land is threatened with a swarm of foes
That round its ringèd ramparts roar in arms,
Its sea-walls garreted with bristling towers,
Land-threatened, and from sea by armèd ships,
Whose bulwarks glitter hung with thousand shields
Of warriors sworn against my land and me,
Of him who vaunts a griffon on his targe,
His helmet gauded with a crimson plume,
Brother of Balder, whom you slew. He cries
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Go forth, and fight and conquer.
Herm.
Happy chance
The hour that sent this man against thy land!
I will go forth. But, queen, I cannot fight
Save in my magic arms.
Aman.
They are at hand;
My pages carry them. A cunning smith
Awaits thee to encase against this fray.
Herm.
Then I am free. Most gladly, gracious one,
Will I engird myself in thy behalf,
And come back like a conqueror, never fear,
Having first driven these rebels from thy realms.
Scene II.
—The Army of Amanda assembled before her Castle.Aman.
Here, in the face of all my warriors,
I will equip thee. Page, give me the sword.
My champion, take thou back at penitent hands,
And with this falchion break their scimitars.
Herm.
I thank thee, queen, and shall not spare to smite.
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And see I set thine helmet on thy head.
Look visored thus upon their turbaned swarms!
Eulice.
Shows he not grand, shadowed with falling flakes
And vacillant feather-fronds of ostrich plume
Dyed blood-red, rioting o'er the globy gold
Like flame-tongues lambent round a molten sun?
Chaun.
By heaven, I will go with thee, though I smite
But with my lute upon their Paynim pates,
Since go I must from hence.
Herm.
Ay, come with me:
Thou art my brother. Join we common cause
Against this horde, this wild unruly folk
Of peasant slaves, that from the burning East
Threaten descent to swamp these smiling fields
Of love and beauty, and make all our world
One howling waste of hideousness—the dark
And deadly people of the Philistines.
Clar.
I will not go, for in my secret heart
I love this people, and I mind me still
Of my old bruises in that former fray,
Got in defence of thee; at thought whereof,
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I will be neutral. Therefore, gracious queen,
Count me excused.
Herm.
Good sir, we need you not.
Bring in Gelwedrun.
(Page leads in Gelwedrun.)
Ah, mine Erebus,
My black Abaddon, my destroying angel!
Bear me on wings of darkness to this fray.
Aman.
Farewell! go forth and conquer.
Eulice.
Fare you well,
Sweet Chauntval! one more kiss. See! take this scarf,
And for a gorget wrap it round thy neck;
For though I care not greatly if thou slay
Or thou be slain, since thou art banished hence,
Yet have I loved thee for thy beauty's sake
As dear as e'er I loved a man, as deep
As I have love for anything. Farewell!
Chaun.
Farewell! Such love as ours breaks easily
Without one heartache. Yet your kiss and favour
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Farewell!
Clar.
I will go make a pilgrimage
Unto the Holy Sepulchre.
Chaun.
Oh, be off!
| The Queen of the Hid Isle | |