University of Virginia Library

Scene III.

A garden by moonlight.
Veronica, Elvira and other female attendants.
Veron.
Come then, a song; a winding, gentle song,
To lead me into sleep. Let it be low
As zephyr, telling secrets to his rose,
For I would hear the murmuring of my thoughts;
And more of voice than of that other music
That grows around the strings of quivering lutes;
But most of thought; for with my mind I listen,
And when the leaves of sound are shed upon it,
If there's no seed remembrance grows not there.
So life, so death; a song, and then a dream!
Begin before another dewdrop fall
From the soft hold of these disturbed flowers,
For sleep is filling up my senses fast,
And from these words I sink.

Song.

Elvira.
She sees no longer: leave her then alone,
Encompassed by this round and moony night.
A rose-leaf for thy lips, and then good-night:
So life, so death; a song, and then a dream!

[Exeunt Elvira and attendants, leaving Veronica asleep.
Enter Torrismond.
Torris.
Herself! her very self, slumbering gently!
Sure sleep is turned to beauty in this maid,
And all the rivalry of life and death
Makes love upon her placid face. And here,
How threads of blue, wound off yon thorny stars
That grow upon the wall of hollow night,
Flow o'er each sister-circle of her bosom,
Knotting themselves into a clue for kisses
Up to her second lip. There liquid dimples
Are ever twinkling, and a sigh has home
Deep in their red division,—a soft sigh,
Scarce would it bow the summer-weeds, when they
Play billows in the fields, and pass a look
Of sunshine through their ranks from sword to sword,
Gracefully bending. On that cheek the blush
That ever dawns dares be no common blush,
But the faint ghost of some dishevelled rose
Unfurls its momentary leaves, and bursts
So quick the haunted fairness knows it not.
O that this gaze could be eternity!
And yet a moment of her love were more.
Were there infection in the mind's disease,
Inoculation of a thought, even now
Should she, from all the windings of her dream,
Drink my impetuous passion, and become
All that I ask. Break from your buds, dear eyes,
And draw me into you.

Veron.
(awaking.)
Who's there? I dreamt:—
As I do love that broad, smooth-edged star,
And her young, vandyked moons that climb the night
Round their faint mother, I would not have had
Another eye peeping upon that dream,
For one of them to wear upon my breast;
And I'll not whisper it, for fear these flags
Should chance to be the green posterity
Of that eaves-dropping, woman-witted grass,
That robbed the snoring wasps of their least voice,
To teach their feathery gossips of the air
What long, and furry ears king Midas sprouted;
And I'll not think of it, for meditation
Oft presses from the heart its inmost wish,
And thaws its silence into straying words.

Torris.
(aside.)
I am no man, if this dream were not spun
By the very silk-worm, that doth make his shop
In Cupid's tender wing-pit, and winds fancies
In lovers' corner thoughts, when grandam Prudence
Has swept the hearth of passion, thrown on cinders,
And gone to bed:—and she is not a woman,
If this same secret, buried in her breast,
Haunt not her tongue,—and hark! here comes its ghost.

Veron.
A fable and a dream! Here, in this garden,
It seemed I was a lily:—

Torris.
(aside.)
So you are,
But fitter for Arabian paradise,
Or those arched gardens where pale-petalled stars,
With sunlight honeying their dewy cores,
Tremble on sinuous, Corinthian necks,—
Where Morn her roses feeds, her violets Night.

Veron.
And to my lily-ship a wooer came,
Sailing upon the curvous air of morn,
(For 'twas a sunny dream, and a May sky
The lid of it;) and this imagined suitor,
A glass-winged, tortoise-shell, heart-broken bee,
Was—he you know of, heart. How did he bend
His slender knee, doffing his velvet cap,
And swearing, by the taste of Venus' lip,
If I did not accept his airy love,
The truest heart, that ever told the minutes
Within an insect's breast, should shed its life
Around the hilt of his unsheathed sting.
And then this tiny thunderer of flowers,
Quite, quite subdued, let down a string of tears,
(Little they were, but full of beeish truth,)
Almost a dew-drop-much, on the fair pages
Of transmigrated me; whereon, O Love!
Thou tamed'st the straightest prude of Flora's daughters;
For I did pity Torrismond the bee,
And let him, if his life lived in my love,
Have that for courtesy.—

Torris.
(coming forward)
O lady! then
Will you deny him now? when here he kneels,
And vows by heaven, and by the sacred souls
Of all the dead and living, in your pity
His hope is folded, in your soul his love,
And in that love his everlasting life.

Veron.
Out on my tongue, the naughty runaway!
What has he heard? Now, if this man should be
Vain, selfish, light, or hearted with a stone,
Or worthless any way, as there are many,
I've given myself, like alms unto an idiot,
To be for nothing squandered.

Torris.
Lady, speak!
And for my truth, O that my mind were open,
My soul expressed and written in a book,
That thou might'st read and know! Believe, believe me!
And fear me not, for, if I speak not truth,
May I speak never more, but be struck dumb!
May I be stripped of manhood and made devil,
If I mean not as truly unto thee,
Though bold it be, as thou unto thyself!
I will not swear, for thou dost know that easy:
But put me to the proof, say, ‘kill thyself;’
I will outlabour Hercules in will,
And in performance, if that waits on will.
Shall I fight sword-less with a youthful lion?
Shall I do ought that I may die in doing?
Oh! were it possible for such an angel,
I almost wish thou hadst some impious task,
That I might act it and be damned for thee.
But, earned for thee, perdition's not itself,
Since all that has a taste of thee in it
Is blest and heavenly.

Veron.
Stop! You frighten me:
I dare not doubt you.

Torris.
Dare not? Can you so?

Veron.
I dare not, for I cannot. I believe you:
It is my duty.

Torris.
To the dutiful
Their duty is their pleasure. Is it not?

Veron.
'Twas a rash word; it rather is my fate.

Torris.
It is my fate to love; thou art my fate,
So be not adverse.

Veron.
How can I say further?
I do believe you: less I'll not avow,
And more I cannot.

Torris.
Stay, Veronica!
This very night we both of us may die,
Or one at least: and it is very likely
We never meet; or, if we meet, not thus,
But somehow hindered by the time, the place,
The persons. There are many chances else,
That, though no bigger than a sunny mote,
Coming between may our whole future part,—
With Milo's force tear our existence up,
And turn away the branches of each life,
Even from this hour, on whose star-knotted trunk
We would engraft our union; it may sever us
As utterly as if the world should split
Here, as we stand, and all Eternity
Push through the earthquake's lips, and rise between us.
Then let us know each other's constancy:
Thou in my mind, and I in thine shall be;
And so disseparable to the edge
Of thinnest lightning.—

Veron.
Stay: be answered thus.
If thou art Torrismond, the brain of feather;
If thou art light and empty Torrismond,
The admiration, oath, and patron-saint
Of frivolous revellers, he whose corky heart,
Pierced by a ragged pen of Cupid's wing,
Spins like a vane upon his mother's temple
In every silly sigh,—let it play on:—

Torris.
It is not so; I vow, Veronica—

Veron.
If you unpeopled the Olympian town
Of all its gods, and shut them in one oath,
It would not weigh a flue of melting snow
In my opinion. Listen thus much more:
If thou art otherwise than all have held
Except myself; if these, which men do think
The workings of thy true concentrate self,
Have been indeed but bubbles raised in sport
By the internal god, who keeps unseen
The fountains of thine undiscovered spirit;
If, underneath this troubled scum of follies,
Lies what my hopes have guessed:—why guess thy wishes,
What it may be unto Veronica.

Torris.
What need of doubts and guesses? make me firm;
With fixed assurance prop my withering hopes,
Or tear them up at once: give truth for truth.
I know it is the custom to dissemble,
Because men's hearts are shallow, and their nature
So mean, ill-nurtured, selfish, and debased,
They needs must paint and swaddle them in lies,
Before the light could bear to look upon them.
But as thou art, thus unalloyed and fresh
From thy divine creation, soul and body,
Tread artifice to dust, and boldly speak
Thine innocent resolve.

Veron.
Thus then I say:
As I believe thee steadfast and sincere,
(And, if it be not so, God pity me!)
I love thee dearly, purely, heartily;
So witness heaven, and our own silent spirits!

Torris.
And by my immortality I swear,
With the like honesty, the like to thee,
Thou picture of the heavens!

Veron.
Hark! some one comes:—
Now we must part. Henceforth remember thou,
How in this azure secresy of night,
And with what vows, we here have dedicated
Ourselves, and our eternity of being,
Unto each other in our maker's presence.
Good-night then, Torrismond.

Torris.
And such to thee,
As thou to me hast given, fairest fair!
Best good! of thy dear kind most ever dear!

[Exeunt severally.