 | The Mighty Magician |  |
ACT II.
Scene I.
—The sea-shore; a storm raging.Cipriano
(cavalierly drest).
Oh, mad, mad, mad, ambition! to the skies
Lifting to drop me deep as Hades down!—
What! Cipriano—what the once so wise
Cipriano—quit his wonted exercise
Among the sober walks of old renown,
To fly at love—to swell the wind with sighs
Vainer than learning—doff the scholar's gown
For cap and feather, and such airy guise
In which triumphant love is wont to go,
But wins less acceptation in her eyes—
The only eyes in which I cared to show—
My heart beneath the borrow'd feather bleeding—
Than in the sable suit of long ago,
When heart-whole for another's passion pleading.
She loves not Floro—loves not Lelio,
Whose quarrel sets the city's throat agape,
And turns her reputation to reproof
With altercation of some dusky shape
Haunting the twilight underneath her roof—
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The guilty one of the distracted three,
She closest veils herself, or waves aloof
In scorn; or in such self-abasement sweet
As sinks me deep and deeper at her feet,
Bids me return—return for very shame
Back to my proper studies and good name,
Nor waste a life on one who, let me pine
To death, will never but in death be mine.
Oh, she says well—Oh, heart of stone and ice
Unworthy of the single sacrifice
Of one true heart's devotion! Oh divine
Creature, whom all the glory and the worth
That ever ravaged or redeem'd the earth
Were scanty worship offered at your shrine!
Oh Cipriano, master-fool of all
The fools that unto thee for wisdom call;
Of supercilious Pallas first the mock,
And now blind Cupid's scorn, and laughing-stock;
Who in fantastic arrogance at odds
With the Pantheon of your people's gods
Ransack'd the heavens for one more pure and whole
To fill the empty temple of the soul,
Now caught by retribution in the mesh
Of one poor piece of perishable flesh—
What baser demon of the pit would buy
With all your ruin'd aspirations!
Lucifer
(within).
I!—
Cipr.
What! The very winds and waters
Hear, and answer to the cry
She is deaf to!—Better thrown
On distracted nature's bosom
With some passion like my own
Torn and tortured: where the sun
In the elemental riot
Ere his daily reign half done,
Leaves half-quencht the tempest-drencht
Welkin scowling on the howling
Wilderness of waves that under
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Roar of thunder, black'ning, whit'ning,
Fling them foaming on the shore—
Let confusion reign and roar!—
Lightnings, for your target take me!
Waves, upon the sharp rock break me,
Or into your monstrous hollow
Back regurgitating hurl;
Let the mad tornado whirl me
To the furthest airy circle
Dissipated of the sky,
Or the gaping earth down-swallow
To the centre!—
Lucifer
(entering).
By-and-bye.
Cipr.
Hark again! and in her monstrous
Labour, with a human cry
Nature yearning—what portentous
Glomeration of the storm
Darkly cast in human form,
Has she bolted!—
Luc.
As among
Flashes of the lightning flung
Beside you, in its thunder now
Aptly listen'd—
Cipr.
What art thou?
Luc.
One of a realm, though dimly in your charts
Discern'd, so vast that as from out of it
As from a fountain all the nations flow,
Back they shall ebb again; and sway'd by One
Who, without Oriental over-boast,
Because from him all kings their crowns derive,
Is rightfully saluted King of kings,
Whose reign is as his kingdom infinite,
Whose throne is heaven, and earth his footstool, and
Sun, moon, and stars his diadem and crown.
Who at the first disposal of his kingdom
And distribution into sea and land—
Me, who for splendour of my birth and grand
Capacities above my fellows shone,
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Me he made captain of the host who stand
Clad as the morning star about his throne.
Enough for all ambition but my own;
Who discontented with the all but all
Of chiefest subject of Omnipotence
Rebell'd against my Maker; insolence
Avenged as soon as done on me and all
Who bolster'd up rebellion, by a fall
Far as from heav'n to Hades. Madness, I know;
But worse than madness whining to repent
Under a rod that never will relent.
Therefore about the land and sea I go
Arm'd with the very instrument of hate
That blasted me: lightnings anticipate
My coming, and the thunder rolls behind;
Thus charter'd to enlarge among mankind,
And to recruit from human discontent
My ranks in spirit, not in number, spent.
Of whom, in spite of this brave gaberdine,
I recognize thee one: thee, by the line
Scarr'd on thy brow, though not so deep as mine;
Thee by the hollow circles of those eyes
Where the volcano smoulders but not dies:
Whose fiery torrent running down has scarr'd
The cheek that time had not so deeply marr'd.
Do not I read thee rightly?
Cipr.
But too well.
However come to read me—
Luc.
By the light
Of my own darkness reading yours—how deep!
But not, as mine is, irretrievable:
Who from the fulness of my own perdition
Would, as I may, revenge myself on him
By turning to fruition your despair—
What if I make you master at a blow,
Not only of the easy woman's heart
You now despair of as impregnable,
And waiting but my word to let you in,
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That shall not only with the knowledge, but
Possess you with the very power of him
You sought so far and vainly for before:
So far All-eyes, All-wise, Omnipotent—
If not to fashion, able yet to shake
That which the other took such pains to make—
As in the hubbub round us; I who blurr'd
The spotless page of nature at a word
With darkness and confusion, will anon
Clear it, to write another marvel on.—
By the word of power that binds
And loosens; by the word that finds
Nature's heart through all her rinds,
Hearken, waters, fires, and winds;
Having had your roar, once more
Down with you, or get you gone.
Cipr.
With the clatter and confusion
Of the universe about me
Reeling—all within, without me,—
Dizzy, dazzled—if delusion,
Waking, dreaming, seeing, seeming—
Which I know not—only, lo!
Like some mighty madden'd beast
Bellowing in full career
Of fury, by a sudden blow
Stunn'd, and in a moment stopt
All the roar, or into slow
Death-ward-drawing murmur, leaving
Scarce the fallen carcase heaving,
With the fallen carcase dropt.—
Behold! the word scarce fallen from his lips,
Swift almost as a human smile may chase
A frown from some conciliated face,
The world to concord from confusion slips:
The winds that blew the battle up dead slain,
Or with their tatter'd standards swept amain
From heav'n; the billows of the erected deep
Roll'd with their crests into the foaming plain;
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And smooth her ruffled locks, as from a rent
In the black centre of the firmament,
Revenging his unnatural eclipse,
The Lord of heav'n from its ulterior blue
That widens round him as he pierces through
The folded darkness, from his sovereign height
Slays with a smile the dragon-gloom of night.
Luc.
All you have heard and witness'd hitherto
But a foretaste to quicken appetite
For that substantial after-feast of power
That I shall set you down to take your fill of:
When not the fleeting elements alone
Of wind, and fire, and water, floating wrack,
But this same solid frame of earth and stone,
Yea, with the mountain loaded on her back,
Reluctantly, shall answer to your spell
From a more adamantine heart stone-cold
Than hers you curse for inaccessible.
What, you would prove it? Let the mountain there
Step out for witness. Listen, and behold.
Monster upshot of upheaving
Earth, by fire and flood conceiving;
Shapeless ark of refuge, whither,
When came deluge creeping round,
Man retreated—to be drown'd—
Now your granite anchor, fast
In creation's centre, cast,
Come with all your tackle cleaving
Down before the magic blast—
Cipr.
And the unwieldy vessel, lo!
Rib and deck of rock, and shroud
Of pine, top-gallanted with cloud,
All her forest-canvas squaring,
Down the undulating woodland
As she flounders to and fro
All before her tearing, bearing
Down upon us—
Luc.
Anchor, ho!—
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With but one jewel, worthy welcome more
Than ever full-fraught Argosy awaited
At last descried by desperate eyes ashore;
From the first moment of her topsail showing
Like a thin cobweb spun 'twixt sea and sky;
Then momently before a full wind blowing
Into her full proportions, till athwart
The seas that bound beneath her, by and bye
She sweeps full sail into the cheering port—
Strangest bark that ever plied
In despite of wind and tide,
At the captain's magic summons
Down your granite ribs divide,
And show the jewel hid inside.
Cipr.
Justina!—
Luc.
Soft! The leap that looks so easy
Yet needs a longer stride than you can master.
Cipr.
Oh divine apparition, that I fain
Would all my life as in Elysium lose
Only by gazing after; and thus soon
As rolling cloud across the long'd-for moon,
The impitiable rocks enclose again!—
But was it she indeed?
Luc.
She that shall be,
And yours, by means that, bringing her to you,
Possess you of all nature, which in vain
You sigh'd for ere for nature's masterpiece.
And thus much, as I told you, only sent
As foretaste of that great accomplishment,
Which if you will but try for, you can reach
By means which, if I practise, I can teach.
Cipr.
And at what cost?
Luc.
You that have flung so many years away
In learning and in love that came to nothing,
Think not to win the harvest in a day!
The God you search for works, you know, by means
(That your philosophers call second cause),
And we by means must underwork him—
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Well?—
Luc.
To comprehend, and, after, to constrain
Whose mysteries you will not count as vain
A year in this same mountain lock'd with me?—
Cipr.
Where she is?—
Luc.
As I told you, where shall be.
At least this mountain after a short labour
Has brought forth something better than a mouse;
And what then after a whole year's gestation
Accomplish under our joint midwifery,
Under a bond by which you bind you mine
In fewer and no redder drops than needs
The leech of land or water when he bleeds?
Let us about—but first upon his base
The mountain we must study in replace,
That else might puzzle your geography.
Come, take your stand upon the deck with me,
Till with her precious cargo safe inside,
And all her forest-colours flying wide,
The mighty vessel put again to sea—
What, are you ready?—Wondrous smack,
As without a turn or tack
Hither come, so thither back,
And let subside the ruffled deep
Of earth to her primæval sleep.—
How steadily her course the good ship trims,
While Antioch far into the distance swims,
With all her follies bubbling in the wake;
Her scholars that more hum than honey make:
Muses so chaste as never of their kind
Would breed, and Cupid deaf as well as blind:
For Cipriano, wearied with the toil
Of so long working on a thankless soil,
At last embarking upon magic seas
In a more wondrous Argo than of old,
Sets sails with me for such Hesperides
As glow with more than dragon-guarded gold.
| The Mighty Magician | |