 | The Queen of the Hid Isle |  |
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ACT V.
Scene I.
—The Gardens of Amanda's Castle.Elzir.
The blood of Spring, ebullient with flowers
Of foamy snow, that sprinkle the black thorn
Here in the regions of weak mortal men,
Where Summer reigns but half the ice-locked year,
Bells every bough with knobs of gummy green,
And beryl buttons, and small pearly studs,
Sheathed buds, and glittering bosses of pale gold,
And soft red globules bursting into flowers.
I long to see the first, now rolled up tight,
Unfold itself into a petalled star,
A lipped corolla, or flamy nucleus fringed
With iris-coloured rays, unravelling
The golden tissues from their mystic knot
Like a round globe of jelly on a rock
That opes into a sprouting coral flower
And reaches out its arms into the blue.
There be creative kisses in the air
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And men, reviving after bitter days,
And gladsome beasts. The crystal spars of frost,
That crusted the green earth with fretwork fine
Of hoary silver and grey filigree,
And shiny cobwebs of fine crossing thread
That crumbled to sharp powder at the touch,
Biting the finger like brayed splints of glass,
Are fled in fumes of evanescent breath
Along the ebbing path of the bleak wind,
Following to the place of dreams forgot
Winter's white fading footprints on the hills.
The day comes round to claim again my love,
To strike the blinding film from his clear eyes
And breathe away the mist. Now is he mocked
With cloudy colours that keep out the day,
The clear blue day, with gorgeous-painted plumes
Flying from east to west, bright-coated heralds
That fools deem fairer than the approaching king,
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I must draw dack the fringes of the clouds
And let in the clear colourless white sun.
But soft! he comes, and with him his false love,
Happy and pitiable above all sorrow.
She purposes to wed with him to-day,
Ere which befall I will pass lightly hence
And fetch the wingèd barque of his return.
Now must I bury me in the May-blossom
And watch these pairing birds.
Aman.
Nay, not a day.
When shall we have a fairer though we wait
For the full roses? I have strewn the bed
With golden broideries, and made the feast,
And called artificers from many lands
To build a palace with a roof of gold,
To carve us screens of ivory, and stud
The inner walls with scrolls of jewel-flowers.
You shall be monarch over all my lands
And hold the lives of myriads. Thronging slaves
Shall serve in peace and follow you in war,
And fan fair dreams into your sleeping eyes,
Shred perfumes, and distil into your ears
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The winding sensuous ingates to the heart,
Shall be as channeled courses for full floods
Of tidal joy, that flow and never ebb,
Filling thy life with moonlight reveries
And the soft tumult of the waves of love.
Herm.
Well, be it so. My love, that could not learn
To be your slave, may be your emperor.
You make me monarch, sitting in your throne
Of the red orient; for from this land
Leading battalions of electric steel,
I will go forth and conquer all the world!
Aman.
Nay, you shall love me first.
Herm.
A year or twain
I will stay with you, nurturing my soul
And growing golden plumage for my flight.
Aman.
Yea, my right royal eagle, in the rings
Where the bright coruscation of thine eyes,
Eclipsed and reappearing like two stars,
Makes interchange of darkness and of light,
I'll have the mirror of my soul, and beam
Into thine own the radiance of my trust,
Making thee full of an unvanquished hope,
Such to believe thyself as I believe thee;
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Full-winged for flight, sharp-taloned for the fray.
But hither comes Eulice to give me joy
And tell us all is ready for the bridal.
Eulice.
Hail, queen! The halls are decked, the chambers strewn,
In the high galleries music awaits
To charm the passage of the feast. Thy guards
Wait in their richest arms, thy senators
In rigid robes of gold. I bade attend,
In blazoned purple tabards flecked with vair,
The pursuivants with clarion-throated tubes,
To blare the tidings from the castle-roof
To the far country; and on every hill
Cressets are raised to kindle at night's noon
And quench the fleering stars. The garden trees
Are hung with lamps, and the paths purple-strewn
With drapets and with tapestries. All the founts
Run wine, and in the hamlets and the towns
Men carry brimming flagons to the squares,
Whither the people throng in festal gear.
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Come! time is priceless when high pleasures wait
The accomplishment of the deceitful hour.
We hold joy like a slippery golden snake,
That writhes away, and lets our fingers close
On empty air, that clasped his wheeling coils
And puffed-out nape, contracted suddenly.
Joy is a bud that never grows a flower
(For green blight frets or foul worms eat it up),
Youth's earnest of fair manhood, beauty's frail
And premature disclosure in a child;
An eve of moonlight and clear heavens, for which
Red tempests lie in wait ambushed in clouds
Of burning blood 'neath the pale mountain-peaks;
A yellow harvest smutted in the ear;
A fair spring day that sings of winter's close,
Choked by fresh frost; an early dream of love
Sucked in by the wild whirlpool of the world.—
Bid the court hither. Let them hail me bride,
And thee, less proud to be a king. Thy brows
I'll print with power, thou mine with worthier lips.
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So be it, love. I have pledged thee my faith,
And never was forsworn.
Aman.
Here is the court.
Guards, do those supple honours to your king
You might not to your hero. Both are one,
Or on this day shall be so. We proclaim
In our joint names a feast of bridal joys.
Our land this day is wed to Victory,
That ever dwells in this her favourite's hand.
My lord, make answer to your people's love
And duty.
Eulice.
Surely, queen, he hears you not:
His eyes are fixed far off.
Aman.
My lord is ill.
(Distant music.)
Eulice.
Queen, mark you yonder, where the river swerves
With swift circumfluous course, like a reined steed,
Round the land's first abuttal. The clear tide
That swells with vitreous wave 'twixt the green banks
Mirrors a barque that shines as it were sheathed
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With opals; and I see a linkèd team
Of silver-feathered swans that draw the boat
By traces of green weed and twisted grass,
All habited in like caparison.
One in the stern stands up, in her left hand
Gathering the glossy ribands of the reins,
And in her right she holds a pearly oar
And steers. Her brows are bound with daylilies,
And the arched agate prow of the frail car
Is heaped with wild festoons of water-plants
That trail their starry flowers in the pale flood.
And 'twixt her eyes, upon her temples white,
A burning chrysolite shines greener than
An emerald, much like a great green star.
Her robes are candent silk, and cling to her
Like fire or frost or vapour, the white folds
Gathered and locked with gold about the waist.
Her bare feet are firm planted on the deck,
Whose slippery metal on its polished face
Mirrors the whiteness of her ankles fine:
No dizening bands or buskins garnish them,
But they are naked. 'Neath the boat's high stern
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And farther in its wake the defluous curves
Broil in green bubbles, meeting without foam,
And dimple away in little whirling rings
Far down the river.
Herm.
Thou art come, Elzir!
I have long waited for deliverance
In numb forgetfulness. I know thee now.
Elzir.
I come to claim mine own. Your purposed king,
Queen, is a king of faëry, and my love.
Had you forgot what day he came to you,
And in what guise, a champion lent by Heaven?
Seemed he as one to bind with silken cords,
A hawk to gyve with jesses, a tame hound
To collar with the circlet of your crown,
To kill his freedom and bring low his pride,
Shut out from free communion with his kind?
Or seemed he anywise a mate for you?
Aman.
Spirit, if I have sinned presumptuously,
Love be my mediator, who made me sin,
And whom o'er all I injure by my sin,—
Aspiring-humble Love, that spans the gulf
'Twixt god and man by the heart's effluent power
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But Love, that having lifted, casts us down
With mild correction, loving equal mates,
And bidding like to like give level love.
Elzir.
You are forgiven, for atonement dwells
For love unworthy in the waking pain
That finds itself unworthy and alone.
You may not keep him.
Aman.
Ah sweet Hermadon,
Is there no hope? Beseech her!
Herm.
Love of loves!
Lives there no cure for this? I would not stay,
But I have pity.
Elzir.
Either you must come,
And do this cruelty, or forever rest
A frigid mortal. Your life's mingled flood,
Half-earthly, half of heaven, runs on a point,
The spur of a great mountain: on this side,
Or yet on that, a channel waits for you.
You cannot tunnel through the mountain's heart.
There is no third way.
Herm.
Wherefore was I born,
Or this choice laid upon me? I look back,
And call to mind my home in the Hid Isle.
No woman's love can kindle the cold world,
But having lived there with the burning flowers
Fanned by the ocean-winds, I still must seem
A stranger here, an exile. The damp air
Weighs on me, and the cold of human hearts
Like a wet robe on flame. The energic heat
Of my soul's passion, stifled, preys on me.
I grope in gloom: I struggle with dead weights:
I am pressed flat under whole seas of death.
I shoot the burning arrows of my hate;
They fall in sand. I loose my carrier-dove
With scrolls of love. It faints in the thin air,
Too thin to feed it with keen breath of life
Or buoy its soaring wings. I would be gone,
Lest I become a demon, an Apollyon,
And fill the world with wreck and ravages,
Destroying all things that deserve not life.
Yet when I think of thee, my gentle queen,
It pains my heart. If I were but as one
To whom the earth were kindred, and could rest,
As others rest, upon her kindly lap,
I would not leave thee. I bleed for thy pain,
But the impetuous impulse of a power
Stronger than pity bears me hence. A fire,
A whirlwind-cloud of flame chariots me hence
Unto the calm seats of the blessèd ones,
To mine Olympian home. I cannot stay.
I will not stay. I will not doubt and fear,
And love with half a heart a mortal love.
Lead me from her, Elzir. Hark! in the air
The soft vibrations of immortal lutes.
I feel a great peace growing in my soul.
Or this choice laid upon me? I look back,
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No woman's love can kindle the cold world,
But having lived there with the burning flowers
Fanned by the ocean-winds, I still must seem
A stranger here, an exile. The damp air
Weighs on me, and the cold of human hearts
Like a wet robe on flame. The energic heat
Of my soul's passion, stifled, preys on me.
I grope in gloom: I struggle with dead weights:
I am pressed flat under whole seas of death.
I shoot the burning arrows of my hate;
They fall in sand. I loose my carrier-dove
With scrolls of love. It faints in the thin air,
Too thin to feed it with keen breath of life
Or buoy its soaring wings. I would be gone,
Lest I become a demon, an Apollyon,
And fill the world with wreck and ravages,
Destroying all things that deserve not life.
Yet when I think of thee, my gentle queen,
It pains my heart. If I were but as one
To whom the earth were kindred, and could rest,
As others rest, upon her kindly lap,
I would not leave thee. I bleed for thy pain,
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Stronger than pity bears me hence. A fire,
A whirlwind-cloud of flame chariots me hence
Unto the calm seats of the blessèd ones,
To mine Olympian home. I cannot stay.
I will not stay. I will not doubt and fear,
And love with half a heart a mortal love.
Lead me from her, Elzir. Hark! in the air
The soft vibrations of immortal lutes.
I feel a great peace growing in my soul.
Where have I been, Elzir? I have dreamed long.
And is this dying, or waking, or new birth?
And is this dying, or waking, or new birth?
Elzir.
Come! for they tarry for thee in thy home.
(The barque bears him away.)
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| The Queen of the Hid Isle | |