SCENE IX.
A Lawn—Sunset—Walter lying at Violet's feet.
VIOLET.
You loved, then, very much, this friend of thine?
WALTER.
The sound of his voice did warm my heart like wine.
He's long since dead; but if there is a heaven,
He's in its heart of bliss.
VIOLET.
WALTER.
We read and wrote together, slept together;
We dwelt on slopes against the morning sun,
We dwelt in crowded streets, and loved to walk
While Labour slept; for, in the ghastly dawn,
The wildered city seemed a demon's brain,
The children of the night its evil thoughts.
Sometimes we sat whole afternoons, and watched
The sunset build a city frail as dream,
With bridges, streets of splendour, towers; and saw
The fabrics crumble into rosy ruins,
And then grow grey as heath. But our chief joy
Was to draw images from everything;
And images lay thick upon our talk,
As shells on ocean sands.
VIOLET.
From everything!
Here is the sunset, yonder grows the moon,
What image would you draw from these?
WALTER.
Why, this.
The sun is dying like a cloven king
In his own blood; the while the distant moon,
Like a pale prophetess, whom he has wronged,
Leans eager forward, with most hungry eyes,
Watching him bleed to death, and, as he faints,
She brightens and dilates; revenge complete,
She walks in lonely triumph through the night.
VIOLET.
Give not such hateful passion to the orb
That cools the heated lands; that ripes the fields,
While sleep the husbandmen, then hastes away
Ere the first step of dawn, doing all good
In secret and the night. 'Tis very wrong.
Would I had known your friend!
WALTER.
Iconoclast!
'Tis better as it is.
VIOLET.
Why is it so?
WALTER.
Because you would have loved him, and then I
Would have to wander outside of all joy,
Like Neptune in the cold. [A pause.
VIOLET.
Do you remember
You promised yesterday you'd paint for me
Three pictures from your life?
WALTER.
I'll do so now.
On this delicious eve, with words like colours,
I'll limn them on the canvass of your sense.
VIOLET.
Be quick! be quick! for see, the parting sun
But peers above yon range of crimson hills,
Taking his last look of this lovely scene.
Dusk will be here anon.
WALTER.
And all the stars!
VIOLET.
Great friends of yours; you love them overmuch.
WALTER.
I love the stars too much! The tameless sea
Spreads itself out beneath them, smooth as glass.
You cannot love them, lady, till you dwell
In mighty towns; immured in their black hearts,
The stars are nearer to you than the fields.
I'd grow an Atheist in these towns of trade,
Were 't not for stars. The smoke puts heaven out;
I meet sin-bloated faces in the streets,
And shrink as from a blow. I hear wild oaths,
And curses spilt from lips that once were sweet,
And sealed for Heaven by a mother's kiss.
I mix with men whose hearts of human flesh,
Beneath the petrifying touch of gold,
Have grown as stony as the trodden ways.
I see no trace of God, till in the night,
While the vast city lies in dreams of gain,
He doth reveal himself to me in heaven.
My heart swells to Him as the sea to the moon;
Therefore it is I love the midnight stars.
VIOLET.
I would I had a lover who could give
Such ample reasons for his loving me,
As you for loving stars! But to your task.
WALTER.
Wilt listen to the pictures of my life?
VIOLET.
Patient as evening to the nightingale!
WALTER.
'Mong the green lanes of Kent—green sunny lanes—
Where troops of children shout, and laugh, and play,
And gather daisies, stood an antique home,
Within its orchard, rich with ruddy fruits,
For the full year was laughing in his prime.
Wealth of all flowers grew in that garden green,
And the old porch with its great oaken door
Was smothered in rose-blooms, while o'er the walls
The honeysuckle clung deliriously.
Before the door there lay a plot of grass,
Snowed o'er with daisies,—flower by all beloved,
And famousest in song—and in the midst,
A carvèd fountain stood, dried up and broken,
On which a peacock perched and sunned itself;
Beneath, two petted rabbits, snowy white,
Squatted upon the sward.
A row of poplars darkly rose behind,
Around whose tops, and the old-fashioned vanes,
White pigeons fluttered, and o'er all was bent
The mighty sky, with sailing sunny clouds.
One casement was thrown open, and within,
A boy hung o'er a book of poesy,
Silent as planet hanging o'er the sea.
In at the casement open to the noon
Came sweetest garden-odours, and the hum—
The drowsy hum—of the rejoicing bees,
Heavened in blooms that overclad the walls;
And the cool wind waved in upon his brow,
And stirred his curls. Soft fell the summer night.
Then he arose, and with inspired lips said,—
"Stars! ye are golden-voicèd clarions
To high-aspiring and heroic dooms.
To-night, as I look up unto ye, Stars!
I feel my soul rise to its destiny,
Like a strong eagle to its eyrie soaring.
Who thinks of weakness underneath ye, Stars?
A hum shall be on earth, a name be heard,
An epitaph shall look up proud to God.
Stars! read and listen, it may not be long."
VIOLET (leaning over him).
I'll see that grand desire within your eyes—
Oh, I only see myself!
WALTER.
Violet!
Could you look through my heart as through mine eyes,
You'd find yourself there, too.
VIOLET.
Hush, flatterer!
Yet go on with your tale.
WALTER.
Three blue days passed,
Full of the sun, loud with a thousand larks;
An evening like a grey child walked 'tween each.
'Twas in the quiet of the fourth day's noon,
The boy I speak of slumbered in the wood.
Like a dropt rose at an oak-root he lay,
A lady bent above him. He awoke;
She blushed like sunset, 'mid embarrassed speech;
A shock of laughter made them friends at once,
And laughter fluttered through their after-talk,
As darts a bright bird in and out the leaves.
All day he drank her splendid light of eyes;
Nor did they part until the deepening east
Gan to be sprinkled with the lights of eve.
VIOLET.
Go on! go on!
WALTER.
June sang herself to death.
They parted in the wood, she very pale,
And he walked home the weariest thing on earth.
That night he sat in his unlighted room,
Pale, sad, and solitary, sick at heart,
For he had parted with his dearest friends,
High aspirations, bright dreams golden-winged,
Troops of fine fancies that like lambs did play
Amid the sunshine and the virgin dews,
Thick-lying in the green fields of his heart.
Calm thoughts that dwelt like hermits in his soul,
Fair shapes that slept in fancifullest bowers,
Hopes and delights,—He parted with them all.
Linked hand in hand they went, tears in their eyes,
As faint and beautiful as eyes of flowers,
And now he sat alone with empty soul.
Last night his soul was like a forest, haunted
With pagan shapes; when one nymph slumbering lay,
A sweet dream 'neath her eyelids, her white limbs
Sinking full softly in the violets dim;
When timbrelled troops rushed past with branches green.
One in each fountain, riched with golden sands,
With her delicious face a moment seen,
And limbs faint-gleaming through their watery veil.
To-night his soul was like that forest old,
When these were reft away, and the wild wind
Running like one distract 'mong their old haunts,
Gold-sanded fountains, and the bladed flags.
[A pause.
It is enough to shake one into tears.
A palace full of music was his heart,
An earthquake rent it open to the rain;
The lovely music died—the bright throngs fled—
Despair came like a foul and grizzly beast,
And littered in its consecrated rooms.
Nature was leaping like a Bacchanal
On the next morn, beneath its sky-wide sheen
The boy stood pallid in the rosy porch.
The mad larks bathing in the golden light,
The flowers close-fondled by the impassioned winds,
The smells that came and went upon the sense,
Like faint waves on a shore, he heeded not;
He could not look the morning in the eyes.
That singing morn he went forth like a ship;
Long years have passed, and he has not returned,
Beggared or laden, home.
VIOLET.
Ah, me, 'tis sad!
And sorrow's hand as well as mine has been
Among these golden curls. 'Tis past, 'tis past;
It has dissolved, as did the bank of cloud
That lay in the west last night.
WALTER.
I yearned for love,
As earnestly as sun-cracked summer earth
Yearns to the heavens for rain—none ever came.
VIOLET.
Oh, say not so! I love thee very much;
Let me but grow up like a sweet-breathed flower
Within this ghastly fissure of thy heart!
Do you not love me, Walter?
WALTER.
By thy tears
I love thee as my own immortal soul.
Weep, weep, my Beautiful! Upon thy face
There is no cloud of sorrow or distress.
It is as moonlight, pale, serene, and clear.
Thy tears are spilt of joy, they fall like rain
From heaven's stainless blue.
Bend over me, my Beautiful, my Own.
Oh, I could lie with face upturned for ever,
And on thy beauty feed as on a star!
[Another pause.
Thy face doth come between me and the heaven—
Start not, my dearest! for I would not give
Thee in thy tears for all yon sky lit up
For a god's feast to-night. And I am loved!
Why did you love me, Violet?
VIOLET.
The sun
Smiles on the earth, and the exuberant earth
Returns the smile in flowers—'twas so with me.
I love thee as a fountain leaps to light—
I can do nothing else.
WALTER.
Say these words again,
And yet again; never fell on my ear
Such drops of music.
VIOLET.
Alas! poor words are weak,
So are the daily ills of common life,
To draw the ingots and the hoarded pearls
From out the treasure-caverns of my heart.
Suffering, despair, and death alone can do it:
Poor Walter! [Kisses him.
WALTER.
Gods! I could out-Anthony
Anthony! This moment I could scatter
Kingdoms life halfpence. I am drunk with joy.
This is a royal hour—the top of life.
Henceforth my path slopes downward to the grave—
All's dross but love. That largest Son of Time,
Who wandered singing through the listening world,
Will be as much forgot as the canoe
That crossed the bosom of a lonely lake
A thousand years ago. My Beautiful!
I would not give thy cheek for all his songs—
Thy kiss for all his fame. Why do you weep?
VIOLET.
To think that we, so happy now, must die.
WALTER.
That thought hangs like a cold and slimy snail
On the rich rose of love—shake it away—
Give me another kiss, and I will take
Death at a flying leap. The night is fair,
But thou art fairer, Violet! Unloose
The midnight of thy tresses, let them float
Around us both. How the freed ringlets reel
Down to the dewy grass! Here lean thy head,
Now you will feel my heart leap 'gainst thy cheek;
Imprison me with those white arms of thine.
So, so. O sweet upturnèd face! (Kisses her.) If God
Told you to-night He'd grant your dearest wish,
What would it be?
VIOLET.
That He would let you grow
To your ambition's height. What would be yours?
WALTER.
A greater boon than Satan's forfeit throne!
That He would keep us beautiful and young
For ever, as to-night. Oh, I could live
Unwearied on thy beauty, till the sun
Grows dim and wrinkled as an old man's face.
Our cheeks are close, our breaths mix like our souls.
We have been starved hereto; Love's banquet's spread,
Now let us feast our fills.
VIOLET.