SCENE VIII.
Evening—A Room in a Manor—Mr. Wilmott, Arthur, Edward—Walter seated a little apart.
WALTER.
She grows on me like moonrise on the night—
My life is shaped in spite of me, the same
As ocean by his shores. Why am I here?
The weary sun was lolling in the west,
Edward and I were sauntering on the shore
Yawning with idleness; and so we came
To kill the tedium of slow-creeping days.
On such slight hinges an existence turns!
How frequent in the very thick of life
We rub clothes with a fate that hurries past!
A tiresome friend detains us in the street,
We part, and turning, meet fate in the teeth.
A moment more or less had 'voided it.
Yet through the subtle texture of our souls,
From circumstance each draws a different hue.
The sunlight falls upon a bed of flowers,
From the same sunlight one draws crimson deep,
Another azure pale. Edward and I
See Violet each day, her silks brush both,
She smiles on both alike—My heart! she comes.
[Violet enters and crosses the room.
O God! I'd be the very floor that bears
Such a majestic thing! Now feed, my eyes,
On beauteous poison, Nightshade, honey sweet.
[A silence.
VIOLET.
There is a ghastly chasm in the talk,
As if a fate hung in the midst of us,
Its shadow on each heart. Why, this should be
A dark and lustrous night of wit and wine,
Rich with quick bouts of merry argument,
And witty sallies quenched in laughter sweet,
Yet my voice trembles in a solitude,
Like a lone man in a great wilderness.
MR. WILMOTT.
Arthur, you once could sing a roaring song,
That to the chorus drew our voices out;
'Twere no bad plan to sing us one to-night.
Come, wash the roughness from your throat with wine.
ARTHUR.
What sort of song, Sirs, shall I sing to you—
Dame Venus panting on her bed of flowers,
Or Bacchus purple-mouthed astride his tun?
Now for a headlong song of blooded youth,
Give 't such a welcome as shall lift the roof off—
Sweet friends, be ready with a hip hurrah!
Arthur sings.
A fig for a draught from your crystalline fountains,
Your cold sunken wells,
In mid forest dells,
Ha! bring me the fiery bright dew of the mountains,
When yellowed with peat-reek, and mellowed with age,
O, richest joy-giver!
Rare warmer of liver!
Diviner than kisses, thou droll and thou sage!
Fine soul of a land struck with brightest sun-tints,
Of dark purple moors,
Of sleek ocean-floors,
Of hills stained with heather like bloody footprints;
In sunshine, in rain, a flask shall be nigh me,
Warm heart, blood and brain, Fine Sprite deify me!
I've drunk 'mong slain deer in a lone mountain shieling,
I've drunk till delirious,
While rain beat imperious,
And rang roof and rafter with bagpipes and reeling.
I've drunk in Red Rannoch, amid its grey boulders:
Where, fain to be kist,
Through his thin scarf of mist,
Ben-More to the sun heaves his wet shining shoulders!
I've tumbled in hay with the fresh ruddy lasses,
I've drunk with the reapers,
I've roared with the keepers,
And scared night away with the ring of our glasses!
In sunshine, in rain, a flask shall be nigh me,
Warm heart, blood, and brain, Fine Sprite deify me!
Come, string bright songs upon a thread of wine,
And let the coming midnight pass through us,
Like a dusk prince crusted with gold and gems!
Our studious Edward from his Lincoln fens,
And home quaint-gabled hid in rooky trees,
Seen distant is the sun in the arch of noon,
Seen close at hand, the same sun large and red,
His day's work done, within the lazy west
Sitting right portly, staring at the world
With a round, rubicund, wine-bibbing face—
Ha! like a dove, I see a merry song
Pluming itself for flight upon his lips.
Edward sings.
My heart is beating with all things that are,
My blood is wild unrest;
With what a passion pants yon eager star
Upon the water's breast!
Clasped in the air's soft arms the world doth sleep,
Asleep its moving seas, its humming lands;
With what an hungry lip the ocean deep
Lappeth for ever the white-breasted sands;
What love is in the moon's eternal eyes,
Leaning unto the earth from out the midnight skies!
Thy large dark eyes are wide upon my brow,
Filled with as tender light
As yon low moon doth fill the heavens now,
This mellow autumn night!
On the late flowers I linger at thy feet,
I tremble when I touch thy garment's rim,
I clasp thy waist, I feel thy bosom's beat—
O kiss me into faintness sweet and dim!
Thou leanest to me as a swelling peach,
Full-juiced and mellow, leaneth to the taker's reach.
Thy hair is loosened by that kiss you gave,
It floods my shoulders o'er;
Another yet! Oh, as a weary wave
Subsides upon the shore,
My hungry being with its hopes, its fears,
My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest,
Yet strong as is despair, as weak as tears,
Doth faint upon thy breast!
I feel thy clasping arms, my cheek is wet
With thy rich tears. One kiss! Sweet, sweet, another yet!
I sang this song some twenty years ago,
(Hot to the ear-tips, with great thumps of heart),
On the gold lawn, while, Cæsar-like, the sun
Gathered his robes around him as he fell.
ARTHUR.
Struck by some country cousin, a rosy beauty
Of the Dutch-cheese order, riched with great black eyes,
Which, when you planned a theft upon her lips,
Looked your heart quite away!
Oh, Love! oh, Wine! thou sun and moon o' our lives,
What oysters were we without love and wine!
Our host, I doubt not, vaults a mighty tun,
Wide-wombed and old, cobwebbed and dusted o'er.
Broach! and within its gloomy sides you'll find
A beating heart of wine. The world's a tun,
A gloomy tun, but he who taps the world
Will find much sweetness in 't. Walter, my boy,
Against this sun of wine's most purple light
Burst into song.
WALTER.
I fear, Sir, I have none.
ARTHUR.
Hang nuts in autumn woods? Then 't is your trade,
Spin us a new one. Come! some youth love-mad,
Reading the thoughts within his lady's eyes,
Earnest as One that looks into the Book,
Seeking the road to bliss—
Clothe me this bare bough with your sunny flowers.
WALTER.
The evening heaven is not always dressed
With frail cloud-empires of the setting sun,
Nor are we always in our singing-robes.
I have no song, nor can I make you one;
But, with permission, I will tell a tale.
ARTHUR.
If short and merry, Heaven speed your tongue;
If long and sad, the Lord have mercy on us!
WALTER.
Within a city One was born to toil,
Whose heart could not mate with the common doom
To fall like a spent arrow in the grave.
'Mid the eternal hum, the boy clomb up
Into a shy and solitary youth,
With strange joys and strange sorrows, oft to tears
He was moved, he knew not why, when he has stood
Among the lengthening shadows of the eve,
Such feeling overflowed him from the sky.
'Mong crowds he dwelt, as lonely as a star
Unsphered and exiled, yet he knew no scorn.
Once did he say, "For me, I'd rather live
With this weak human heart and yearning blood,
Lonely as God, than mate with barren souls;
More brave, more beautiful, than myself must be
The man whom truly I can call my Friend;
He must be an Inspirer, who can draw
To higher heights of Being, and aye stand
O'er me in unreached beauty, like the moon;
Soon as he fail in this, the crest and crown
Of noble friendship, he is nought to me.
What so unguessed as Death? Yet to the dead
It lies as plain as yesterday to us.
Let me go forward to my grave alone,
What need have I to linger by dry wells?"
Books were his chiefest friends. In them he read
Of those great spirits who went down like suns,
And left upon the mountain-tops of Death
A light that made them lovely. His own heart
Made him a Poet. Yesterday to him
Was richer far than fifty years to come.
Alchymist Memory turned his past to gold.
When morn awakes against the dark wet earth,
Back to the morn she laughs with dewy sides,
Up goes her voice of larks! With like effect
Imagination opened on his life,
It lay all lovely in that rarer light.
He was with Nature on the sabbath-days;
Far from the dressed throngs and the city bells
He gave his hot brows to the kissing wind,
While restless thoughts were stirring in his heart.
"These worldly men will kill me with their scorns,
But Nature never mocks or jeers at me;
Her dewy soothings of the earth and air
Do wean me from the thoughts that mad my brain.
Our interviews are stolen, I can look,
Nature! in thy serene and griefless eyes
But at long intervals; yet, Nature! yet,
Thy silence and the fairness of thy face
Are present with me in the booming streets.
Yon quarry shattered by the bursting fire,
And disembowelled by the biting pick,
Kind Nature! thou hast taken to thyself;
Thy weeping Aprils and soft-blowing Mays,
Thy blossom-buried Junes, have smoothed its scars,
And hid its wounds and trenches deep in flowers.
So take my worn and passion-wasted heart,
Maternal Nature! Take it to thyself,
Efface the scars of scorn, the rents of hate,
The wounds of alien eyes, visit my brain
With thy deep peace, fill with thy calm my heart,
And the quick courses of my human blood."
Thus would he muse and wander, till the sun
Reached the red west, where all the waiting clouds,
Attired before in homely dun and grey,
Like Parasites that dress themselves in smiles
To feed a great man's eye, in haste put on
Their purple mantles rimmed with ragged gold,
And congregating in a shining crowd,
Flattered the sinking orb with faces bright.
As slow he journeyed home, the wanderer saw
The labouring fires come out against the dark,
For with the night the country seemed on flame:
Innumerable furnaces and pits,
And gloomy holds, in which that bright slave, Fire,
Doth pant and toil all day and night for man,
Threw large and angry lustres on the sky,
And shifting lights across the long black roads.
Dungeoned in poverty, he saw afar
The shining peaks of fame that wore the sun,
Most heavenly bright, they mocked him through his bars,
A lost man wildered on the dreary sea,
When loneliness hath somewhat touched his brain,
Doth shrink and shrink beneath the watching sky,
Which hour by hour more plainly doth express
The features of a deadly enemy,
Drinking his woes with a most hungry eye.
Ev'n so, by constant staring on his ills,
They grew worse-featured; till, in his great rage,
His spirit, like a roused sea, white with wrath,
Struck at the stars. "Hold fast! Hold fast! my brain!
Had I a curse to kill with, by yon Heaven!
I'd feast the worms to-night." Dreadfuller words,
Whose very terror blanched his conscious lips,
He uttered in his hour of agony.
With quick and subtle poison in his veins,
With madness burning in his heart and brain,
With words, like lightnings, round his pallid lips,
He rushed to die in the very eyes of God.
'Twas late, for as he reached the open roads,
Where night was reddened by the drudging fires,
The drowsy steeples tolled the hour of One.
The city now was left long miles behind,
A large black hill was looming 'gainst the stars,
He reached its summit. Far above his head,
Up there upon the still and mighty night,
God's name was writ in worlds. Awhile he stood,
Silent and throbbing like a midnight star,
He raised his hands, alas! 'twas not in prayer—
He long had ceased to pray. "Father," he said,
"I wished to loose some music o'er Thy world,
To strike from its firm seat some hoary wrong,
And then to die in autumn with the flowers,
And leaves, and sunshine I have loved so well.
Thou might'st have smoothed my way to some great end—
But wherefore speak? Thou art the mighty God.
This gleaming wilderness of suns and worlds
Is an eternal and triumphant hymn,
Chanted by Thee unto Thine own great self!
Wrapt in Thy skies, what were my prayers to Thee?
My pangs? My tears of blood? They could not move
Thee from the depths of Thine immortal dream.
Thou hast forgotten me, God! Here, therefore, here,
To-night upon this bleak and cold hill-side,
Like a forsaken watch-fire will I die,
And as my pale corse fronts the glittering night,
It shall reproach Thee before all Thy worlds."
His death did not disturb that ancient Night.
Scornfullest Night! Over the dead there hung
Greats gulfs of silence, blue, and strewn with stars—
No sound—no motion—in the eternal depths.
EDWARD.
Now, what a sullen-blooded fool was this,
At sulks with earth and Heaven! Could he not
Out-weep his passion like a blustering day,
And be clear-skied thereafter? He, poor wretch,
Must needs be famous! Lord! how Poets geck
At Fame, their idol. Call 't a worthless thing,
Colder than lunar rainbows, changefuller
Than sleeked purples on a pigeon's neck,
More transitory than a woman's loves,
The bubbles of her heart—and yet each mocker
Would gladly sell his soul for one sweet crumb
To roll beneath his tongue.
WALTER.
Alas! the youth
Earnest as flame, could not so tame his heart
As to live quiet days. When the heart-sick Earth
Turns her broad back upon the gaudy sun,
And stoops her weary forehead to the night,
To struggle with her sorrow all alone,
The moon, that patient sufferer, pale with pain,
Presses her cold lips on her sister's brow,
Till she is calm. But in his sorrow's night
He found no comforter. A man can bear
A world's contempt when he has that within
Which says he's worthy—when he contemns himself,
There burns the hell. So this wild youth was foiled
In a great purpose—in an agony,
In which he learned to hate and scorn himself,
He foamed at God, and died.
MR. WILMOTT.
Rain similes upon his corse like tears—
The youth you spoke of was a glowing moth,
Born in the eve and crushed before the dawn.
VIOLET.
He was, methinks, like that frail flower that comes
Amid the nips and gusts of churlish March,
Drinking pale beauty from sweet April's tears,
Dead on the hem of May.
EDWARD.
A Lapland fool,
Who, staring upward as the Northern lights
Banner the skies with glory, breaks his heart,
Because his smoky hut and greasy furs
Are not so rich as they.
ARTHUR.
Mine is pathetic—
A ginger-beer bottle burst.
WALTER (aside).
And mine would be
The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.
[Mr. Wilmott, Arthur, and Edward, converse—Violet approaches Walter.
VIOLET.
Did you know well that youth of whom you spake?
WALTER.
Know him! Oh, yes, I knew him as myself—
Two passions dwelt at once within his soul,
Like eve and sunset dwelling in one sky.
And as the sunset dies along the west,
Eve higher lifts her front of trembling stars,
Till she is seated in the middle sky,
So gradual, one passion slowly died,
And from its death the other drew fresh life,
Until 't was seated in his soul alone—
The dead was Love—the living, Poetry.
VIOLET.
Alas! if Love rose never from the dead.
WALTER.
Between him and the Lady of his Love
There stood a wrinkled worldling ripe for hell.
When with his golden hand he plucked that flower,
And would have smelt it, lo! it paled and shrank,
And withered in his grasp. And when she died,
The rivers of his heart ran all to waste;
They found no ocean, dry sands sucked them up.
Lady! he was a fool—a pitiful fool.
She said she loved him, would be dead in spring—
She asked him but to stand beside her grave—
She said she would be daisies—and she thought
'Twould give her joy to feel that he was near.
She died like music; and, would you believe 't?
He kept her foolish words within his heart
As ceremonious as a chapel keeps
A relic of a saint. And in the spring
The doting idiot went!
VIOLET.
What found he there?
WALTER.
Laugh till your sides ache! Oh, he went, poor fool!
But he found nothing save red-trampled clay,
And a dull sobbing rain. Do you not laugh?
Amid the comfortless rain he stood and wept,
Bare-headed, in the mocking, pelting rain.
He might have known 'twas ever so on earth.
VIOLET.
You cannot laugh yourself, Sir, nor can I.
Her unpolluted corse doth sleep in earth,
Like a pure thought within a sinful soul.
Dearer is earth to God for her sweet sake.
WALTER.
'Tis said our nature is corrupt; but she
O'erlaid hers with all graces, ev'n as Night
Wears such a crowd of jewels on her face,
You cannot see 'tis black.
VIOLET.
How looked this youth?
Did he in voice or mien resemble you?
Was he about your age? Wore he such curls?
Such eyes of dark sea-blue?
WALTER.
Why do you ask?
VIOLET.
I thought just now you might resemble him.
Were you not brothers?—twins? Or was the one
A shadow of the other?
WALTER.
What mean you?
VIOLET.
That like the moon you need not wrap yourself
In any cloud; you shine through each disguise;
You are a masker in a mask of glass.
You've such transparent sides, each casual eye
May see the heaving heart.
WALTER.
Oh, misery!
Is 't visible to thee?
VIOLET.
'Tis clear as dew!
Mine eyes have been upon it all the night,
Unknown to you.
WALTER.
The sorrowful alone
Can know the sorrowful. What woe is thine,
That thou canst read me thus?
VIOLET.
A new-born power,
Whose unformed features cannot clearly show
Whether 'tis Joy or Sorrow. But the years
May nurture it to either.
WALTER.
To thee I'm bare.
My heart lies open to you, as the earth
To the omniscient sun. I have a work—
The finger of my soul doth point it out;
I trust God's finger points it also out.
I must attempt it; if my sinews fail,
On my unsheltered head men's scorns will fall,
Like a slow shower of fire. Yet if one tear
Were mingled with them, it were less to bear.
VIOLET.
I'll give thee tears.—
WALTER.
That were as queenly Night
Would loosen all the jewels from her hair,
And hail them on this sordid thing, the earth.
Thy tears keep for a worthier head than mine.
VIOLET.
I will not cope with you in compliment.
I'll give you tears, and pity, and true thoughts;
If you are desolate, my heart is open;
I know 'tis little worth, but any hut,
However poor, unto a homeless man,
Is welcomer than mists or nipping winds.
But if you conquer Fame——
WALTER.
With eager hands
I'll bend the awful thing into a crown,
And you shall wear it.
VIOLET.
Oh, no, no!
Lay it upon her grave. [Another silence.
ARTHUR.
Run out again!
We should he jovial as the feasting gods,
We're silent as a synod of the stars!
The night is out at elbows. Laughter's dead.
To the rescue, Violet! A song! a song!
VIOLET sings.
Upon my knee a modern minstrel's tales,
Full as a choir with music, lies unread;
My impatient shallop flaps its silken sails
To rouse me, but I cannot lift my head.
I see a wretched isle, that ghost-like stands,
Wrapt in its mist-shroud in the wint'ry main;
And now a cheerless gleam of red-ploughed lands,
O'er which a crow flies heavy in the rain.
I've neither heart nor voice!
[Rises and draws the curtain.
You've sat the night out, Masters! See, the moon
Lies stranded on the pallid coast of morn.
ARTHUR.
Methinks our merriment lies stranded, too.
Draw the long table for a game of bowls.
You will be captain, Edward,—Gods! he yawns.
[To Walter.
Your thunder, Jove, has soured these cream-pots all.
MR. WILMOTT.