TABLEAU WITH RECITALS.
Characters.
Poet.—A young man with long hair and wide linen collar turned down over coat collar.
Statue.—Personated by a young woman in white, with arms bare.
(The Poet speaks.)
Thou holdest me, thou holdest me,
O marble presence, cold and fair.
I cannot draw my feet past thee
Within thy niche above the stair.
I found thee in a mossy cave—
The entrance to a buried shrine;
The rocks around a shudder gave
As thence I bore my prize divine.
What master wrought thee long ago—
Who but Pygmalion’s scholar apt?
The rose upon thy cheek of snow
Ofttimes he saw in vision rapt.
The day upspringing in thine eye
He fancied now, and now it seemed
A hovering smile, a gradual sigh,
Thy lips from silence dead redeemed;
But, dying ere the moment ripe
When thou should’st gather vital fire,
He left thee, a half-conscious type
Of Love and Love’s unvoiced desire.
Thou holdest me, thou holdest me,
O marble presence, cold and fair!
Now let thy prisoned soul be free,
Thy breast its long-sealed fate declare.
(The Statue speaks.)
Thou troublest me, thou troublest me!
A thousand years unused to speech,
Why should the charm dissolve for thee,
Or why to thee my secret teach?
Not Paros, nor Pentelicus,
E’er held me in its quarried hill;
Nor master’s chisel carved me thus,
With lofty thought and patient skill.
Ah, surely, not Pygmalion’s hand
Unprisoned me, through loving art—
I, who in marble moveless stand,
Once held quick veins and pulsing heart;
Love, changed to hate, wrought this cold change
I froze beneath his bitter eye;
Love, changed to Hate—transformer strange—
Forbade me live, forbade me die!
Thou troublest me, thou troublest me;
No further question; go thy way!
He, only, who could set me free,
Hath long since crumbled back to clay!
Thy soul in peace if thou would’st save,
And give forgetfulness to mine,
Restore me to that mossy cave,
The entrance to a buried shrine!
Edith M. Thomas.