II
In SYLVAN'S house. SYLVAN and KATRINA talking to each other and betweenwhiles thinking to themselves.
Sylvan.
How pleasant and beautiful it is to be
At last obedient to love! (To know
Also, I've sold myself,—is that so pleasant?)
Katrina.
I cannot think, why such a glorious wealth
As this of love on our hearts should be spent.
What have we done, that all this gain be ours?
(Nor can I think why my life should be mixt,
Even its dearest secrecy, with another.)
Sylvan.
Ay, there's the marvel! If to enter life
Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages,
As they let sacking soldiers take home loot:
But we are shuffled into life like puppets
Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then
Made spenders of the joys current in heaven!
(Not such a marvel neither, if this love
Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul.
Who's the old trader that has lent this girl
The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with?
Who is it,—the world, or the devil, or God—that wants
To buy me from myself?)
Katrina.
And then how vain
To think we can hold back from being enricht!
It is not only offered—
Sylvan.
No, 'tis a need
As irresistible within our hearts
As body's need of breathing. (That I should be
So avaricious of his gleaming price!)
Katrina.
And the instant force it has upon us, when
We think to use love as a privilege!
We are like bees that, having fed all day
On mountain-heather, go to a tumbling stream
To please their little honey-heated thirsts;
And soon as they have toucht the singing relief,
The swiftness of the water seizes them.
Sylvan.
And onward, sprawling and spinning, they are carried
Down to a drowning pool.
Katrina.
O Sylvan, drowning?
(Deeper than drowning! Why should it not be
Our hearts need wish only what they delight in?)
Sylvan.
Well, altogether gript by the being of love.
(Yes, now the bargain's done; and I may wear,
Like a cheated savage, scarlet dyes and strings
Of beaded glass, all the pleasure of love!)
Katrina.
It is a wonderful tyranny, that life
Has no choice but to be delighted love!
(I know what I must do: I am to abase
My heart utterly, and have nothing in me
That dare take pleasure beyond serving love.
Thus only shall I bear it; and perhaps—
Might I even of my abasement make
A passion, fearfully enjoying it?)
Sylvan. You are full of thoughts, sweetheart?
Katrina.
And so are you:
A long while since you kist me! (What have I said?
O fool so to remind him! I shall scarce
Help crying out or shuddering this time!—
Ah no; I am again a fool! Not thus
I am to do, but in my heart to break
All the reluctance; it must have on me
No pleasure; else I am endlessly tortured.)
Then I must kiss you, Sylvan!
[She kisses him.
Sylvan.
Ah, my darling!
(God! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound
Must shake a fiddle when the strings are snatcht!
Will she make the life in me all a slave
Of my kist body,—a trembling, eager slave?
It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense,
The shivering delight upon my skin,
Of her lips touching me.) My beloved,—
It may be it were wise, that we took care
Our pleasant love come never in the risk
Of being too much known.
Katrina.
O what a risk
To think of here! Love is not common life,
But always fresh and sweet. Can this grow stale?
[She kisses him again.
Sylvan.
O never! I meant not so.—Yes, always sweet!
(She must not kiss me! Ah, it leaves my heart
Aghast, and stopt with pain of the joy of her;
And her loved body is like an agony
Clinging upon me. O she must not kiss me!
I will not be a thing excruciated
To please her passion, an anguish of delight!)