University of Virginia Library

Scene II.

—The same.
Enter Beatrice and Francesca.
BEATRICE.
The wind is sharp as steel, and all the sky
That is not red as molten iron black
As iron long since molten. How the flowers
Cringe down and shudder from the scourge! I would
Galasso's ship were home in harbour.

FRANCESCA.
Here?
What comfort wouldst thou give him?

BEATRICE.
What should I give?
Hadst thou some gentler maiden's mercy in thee,
Thou might'st, though death hung shuddering on his lips
And mixed its froth of anguish with the sea's,
Revive him.

FRANCESCA.
I, Beatrice?

BEATRICE.
Who but thou,
Francesca?

FRANCESCA.
Mock not, lest thy scoff turn back
Like some scared snake to sting thee.

BEATRICE.
Nay, not I:
Dost thou not mock me rather, knowing I know
Thou lov'st him as I love not? as I love
Alvise?

FRANCESCA.
There is none I love but God.
Thou knowest he doth not love me.

BEATRICE.
Dost thou dream
His love for me is even as thine for him,
Born of a braver father than is hate,
A fairer mother than is envy? Me
He loves not as he hates my lover: thou
Mayst haply set—as in this garden-ground
Half barren and all bitter from the sea
Some light of lilies shoots the sun's laugh back—
Even in the darkness of his heart and hate
Some happier flower to spring against thy smile
And comfort thee with blossom.

FRANCESCA.
Thou shouldst be not
So fast a friend of mine: we were not born
I a Mariani, a Signorelli thou,
To play, with love and hate at odds with life,
Sisters.

BEATRICE.
I know not in what coign of the heart
The root of hate strikes hellward, nor what rains
Make fat so foul a spiritual soil with life,
Nor what plague-scattering planets feed with fire
Such earth as brings forth poison. What is hate
That thou and I should know it?

FRANCESCA.
I cannot tell.
Flowers are there deadlier than all blights of the air
Or hell's own reek to heavenward: springs, whose water
Puts out the pure and very fire of life
As clouds may kill the sunset: sins and sorrows,
Hate winged as love, and love walled round as hate is,
With fear and weaponed wrath and arm-girt anguish,
There have been and there may be. Wouldst thou dream now
This flower were mortal poison, or this flasket
Filled full with juice of colder-blooded flowers
And herbs the faint moon feeds with dew, that warily
I bear about me against the noonday's needs,
When the sun ravins and the waters reek
With lustrous fume and feverous light like fire,
Preservative against it?

BEATRICE.
Sure, the flower
Could hurt no babe as bright and soft as it
More than it hurts us now to smell to: nor
Could any draught that heals or harms be found
Preservative against it.

FRANCESCA.
Yet perchance
Preservative this draught of mine might prove
Against the bitterness of life—of noon,
I would say—heat, and heavy thirst, and faintness
That binds with lead the lids of the eyes, and hangs
About the heart like hunger.

BEATRICE.
I am athirst;
Thy very words have made me: and the noon
Indeed is hot. Let me drink of it.

FRANCESCA.
Drink.

BEATRICE.
The wells are not so heavenly cold. What comfort
Thou hast given me! I shall never thirst again,
I think.

FRANCESCA.
I am sure thou shalt not—till thou wake
Out of the next kind sleep that shall fall on thee
And hold thee fast as love, an hour or twain hence.

BEATRICE.
I thank thee for thy gentle words and promises
More than for this thy draught of healing. Sleep
Is half the seed of life—the seed and stay of it—
And love is all the rest.

FRANCESCA.
Thou art sure of that?
Be sure, then.

BEATRICE.
How should I be less than sure of it?
Alvise's love and thine confirm and comfort
Mine own with like assurance. All the wind's wrath
That darkens now the whitening sea to southward
Shall never blow the flame that feeds the sun out
Nor bind the stars from rising: how should grief, then,
Evil, or envy, change or chance of ruin,
Lay hand on love to mar him? Death, whose tread
Is white as winter's ever on the sea
Whose waters build his charnel, hath no kingdom
Beyond the apparent verge and bourn of life
Whereon to reign or threaten. Love, not he,
Is lord of chance and change: the moons and suns
That measure time and lighten serve him not,
Nor know they if a shadow at all there be
That fear and fools call death, not seeing each year
How thick men's dusty days and crumbling hours
Fall but to rise like stars and bloom like flowers.

[Exeunt.