ACT I
Scene I.—A retired Grove near Antioch.
Enter Cipriano, Eusebio, and Julian, with books.
Cipr. This is the place, this the sequester’d spot
Where, in the flower about and leaf above,
I find the shade and quiet that I love,
And oft resort to rest a wearied wing;
And here, good lads, leave me alone, but not
Lonely, companion’d with the books you bring:
That while the city from all open doors
Abroad her gaping population pours,
To swell the triumph of the pomp divine
That with procession, sacrifice, and song
Convoys her tutelary Zeus along
For installation in his splendid shrine;
I, flying from the hubbub of the throng
That overflows her thoroughfares and streets,
And here but faintly touches and retreats,
In solitary meditation may
Discount at ease my summer holiday.
You to the city back, and take your fill
Of festival, and all that with the time’s,
And your own youth’s, triumphant temper chimes;
Leaving me here alone to mine; until
Yon golden idol reaching overhead,
Dragg’d from his height, and bleeding out his fires
Along the threshold of the west, expires,
And drops into the sea’s sepulchral lead.
Eusebio. Nay, sir, think once again, and go with us,
Or, if you will, without us; only, go;
Lest Antioch herself as well as we
Cry out upon a maim’d solemnity.
Julian. Oh, how I wish I had not brought the books,
Which you have ever at command—indeed,
Without them, all within them carry—here—
Garner’d—aloft—
Euseb. In truth, if stay you will,
I scarcely care to go myself.
Cipr. Nay, nay,
Good lads, good boys, all thanks, and all the more,
If you but leave it simply as I say.
You have been somewhat over-tax’d of late,
And want some holiday.
Julian. Well, sir, and you?
Cipr. Oh, I am of that tougher age and stuff
Whose relaxation is its work. Besides,
Think you the poor Professor needs no time
For solitary tillage of his brains,
Before such shrewd ingatherers as you
Come on him for their harvest unawares?
Away, away! and like good citizens
Help swell the general joy with two such faces
As such as mine would only help to cloud.
Euseb. Nay, sir—
Cipr. But I say, Yea, sir! and my scholars
By yea and nay as I would have them do.
Euseb. Well, then, farewell, sir.
Cipr. Farewell, both of you.
[Exeunt Eusebio and Julian.
Away with them, light heart and wingèd heel,
Soon leaving drowsy Pallas and her dull
Professor out of sight, and out of mind.
And yet not so perhaps; and, were it so,
Why, better with the frolic herd forgetting
All in the youth and sunshine of the day
Than ruminating in the shade apart.
Well, each his way and humour; some to lie
Like Nature’s sickly children in her lap,
While all the stronger brethren are at play;
When ev’n the mighty Mother’s self would seem
Drest out in all her festival attire
In honour of the universal Sire
Whom Antioch as for her own to-day
Propitiates. Hark, the music!—Speed, good lads,
Or you will be too late. Ah, needless caution!
Ev’n now already half way down the hill,
Spurr’d by the very blood within their veins,
They catch up others, who catching from them
The fire they re-inflame, the flying troop
Consuming fast to distance in a cloud
Of dust themselves have kindled, whirls away
Where the shrill music blown above the walls
Tells of the solemn work begun within.
Why, ev’n the shrieking pipe that pierces here,
Shows me enough of all the long procession
Of white-robed priest and chanting chorister,
The milkwhite victim crown’d, and high aloft
The chariot of the nodding deity,
Whose brazen eyes that, as their sockets see,
Stare at his loyal votaries. Ah, me!—
Well, here too happier, if not wiser, those
Who, with the heart of unsuspicious youth,
Take up tradition from their fathers’ hands
To pass it on to others in their turn;
But leaving me behind them in the race
With less indeed than little appetite
For ceremonies, and to gods, like these,
That, let the rabble shout for as they please,
Another sort begin to shake their heads at,
And heaven to rumble with uneasily
As flinging out some antiquated gear.
So wide, since subtle Greece the pebble flung
Into the sleeping pool of superstition,
Its undulation spreads to other shores,
And saps at the foundation of our schools.
—Why, this last Roman, Caius Plinius—
Who drawing nature’s growth and history
Down to her root and first cause—What says he?—
Ev’n at the very threshold of his book
A definition laying, over which
The clumsy mimic idols of our shrines
Stumble and break to pieces—oh, here it is—
‘Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quærere,
Imbecillitatis humanæ reor’—
‘All visible effigies of God
But types of human imbecility.’—
But what has Antioch to say to that,
Who at such cost of marble and of gold
Has built the very temple into which
She drags her tutelary Zeus to-day?—
Zeus veritable God, this effigy
Is none of him at all! But then, alas!
This same Quapropter follows a premiss
That elbows out Zeus with his effigy.
For—as I gather from his foreign word—
Wherever, or Whatever, Deity—
Si modo est alius—if distinct at all
From universal Nature—it must be
One all-informing, individual Whole,
All eye, all ear, all self, all sense, all soul—
Whereas this Zeus of ours, though Chief indeed—
Nay, because chief of other gods than he,
Comes from this Roman’s hand no God at all!—
This is a knotty question.
Lucifer (without). Nor while I
Tangle, for you, good doctor, to untie.
Cipr. What! The poor bird scarce settled on the bough,
Before the fowler after him! How now?
Who’s there?
Lucifer (entering habited as a Merchant). A stranger; therefore pardon him,
Who somehow parted from his company,
And lost in his own thoughts (a company
You know one cannot lose so easily)
Has lost his way to Antioch.
Cipr. Antioch!
Whose high white towers and temples ev’n from here
Challenge the sight, and scarce a random line
Traced by a wandering foot along the grass
But thither leads for centre.
Luc. The old story,
Of losing what one should have found on earth
By staring after something in the clouds—
Is it not so?
Cipr. To-day too, when so many
Are flocking thither to the festival,
Whose current might have told—and taken—you
The way you wish’d to go.
Luc. To say the truth,
My lagging here behind as much I think
From a distaste for that same festival
(Of which they told us as we came along)
As inadvertency—my way of life
Busied enough, if not too much, with men
To care for them in crowd on holidays,
When business stands, and neither they nor I
Gaping about can profit one another;
And therefore, by your leave—but only so—
I fain would linger in this quiet place
Till evening, under whose dusky cloak
I may creep unobserved to Antioch.
Cipr. (aside) Humane address, at least. And why should I
Grudge him the quiet I myself desire?—
(Aloud) Nay, this is public ground—for you, as me,
To use it at your pleasure.
Luc. Still with yours—
Whom by your sober suit and composed looks,
And by this still society of books,
I take to be a scholar—
Cipr. And if so?
Luc. Ill brooking idle company.
Cipr. Perhaps;
But that no wiser traveller need be—
And, if I judge of you as you of me,
Though with no book hung out for sign before,
Perchance a scholar too.
Luc. If so, more read
In men than books, as travellers are wont.
But, if myself but little of a bookman,
Addicted much to scholars’ company,
Of whom I meet with many on my travels,
And who, you know, themselves are living books.
Cipr. And you have travell’d much?
Luc. Ay, little else,
One may say, since I came into the world
Than going up and down it: visiting
As many men and cities as Ulysses,
From first his leaving Troy without her crown,
Along the charmèd coasts he pass’d, with all
The Polyphemes and Circes in the way,
Right to the Pillars where his ship went down.
Nay, and yet further, where the dark Phœnician
Digs the pale metal which the sun scarce deigns
With a slant glance to ripen in earth’s veins:
Or back again so close beneath his own
Proper dominion, that the very mould
Beneath he kindles into proper gold,
And strikes a living Iris into stone.
Cipr. One place, however, where Ulysses was,
I think you have not been to—where he saw
Those he left dead upon the field of Troy
Come one by one to lap the bowl of blood
Set for them in the fields of Asphodel.
Luc. Humph!—as to that, a voyage which if all
Must take, less need to brag of; or perchance
Ulysses, or his poet, apt to err
About the people and their doings there—
But let the wonders in the world below
Be what they may; enough in that above
For any sober curiosity,
Without one’s diving down before one’s time:
Not only countries now as long ago
Known, till’d, inhabited, and civilized;
As Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with all their arts,
Trades, customs, polities, and history:
But deep in yet scarce navigated seas,
Countries uncouth, with their peculiar growths
Of vegetation or of life; where men
Are savage as the soil they never till;
Or never were, or were so long ago,
Their very story blotted from the page
Of earth they wrote it on; unless perchance
From riot-running nature’s overgrowth
Of swarming vegetation, peeps some scarce
Decypherable monument, which yet,
To those who find the key, perchance has told
Stories of men, more mighty men, of old,
Or of the gods themselves who walk’d the world
When with the dews of first creation wet.
Cipr. Oh knowledge from the fountain freshly drawn
Without the tedious go-between of books!
But with fresh soul and senses unimpair’d
What from the pale reflexion of report
We catch at second hand, and much beside
That in our solitary cells we miss.
Luc. Ay, truly we that travel see strange things,
Though said to tell of stranger; some of us,
Deceived ourselves, or seeking to deceive,
With prodigies and monsters which the world,
As wide and full of wonders as it is,
Never yet saw, I think, nor ever will:
Which yet your scholars use for clay and straw
Of which to build your mighty folios—
For instance, this same bulky Roman here,
Whose leaf you turn’d, I doubt impatiently,
When my intrusion rustled in the leaves—
Cipr. Hah! But how knew you—
Luc. Nay, if some stray words
Of old familiar Latin met my ear
As I stood hesitating.
Cipr. (holding up the book). This at least
You read then?
Luc. One might say before ’twas written.
Cipr. But how so?
Luc. Oh, this same sufficient Roman,
What is he but another of the many
Who having seen a little and heard more
That others pick’d as loosely up before,
Constructs his little bird’s-nest universe
Of shreds and particles of false and true
Cemented with some thin philosophy,
All filch’d from others, as from him to be
By the next pilfering philosopher,
Till blown away before the rising wind
Of true discovery, or dropt to nothing
After succeeding seasons of neglect.
Cipr. (aside) A strange man this—sharp wit and biting word.
(Aloud) Yet surely Man, after so many ages
Of patient observation of the world
He lives in, is entitled by the wit
Vouchsafed him by the Maker of the world
To draw into some comprehensive whole
The stray particulars.
Luc. Ay, and forsooth,
Not only the material world he lives in;
But, having of this undigested heap
Composed a World, must make its Maker too,
Of abstract attributes, of each of which
Still more unsure than of the palpable,
Forthwith he draws to some consistent One
The accumulated ignorance of each
In so compact a plausibility
As light to carry as it was to build.
Cipr. But, since (I know not how) you hit upon
The question I was trying when you came;
And, spite of your disclaiming scholarship,
Seem versed in that which occupies the best—
If Pliny blunder with his single God,
As in our twilight reason well he may,
Confess however that a Deity
Plural and self-discordant, as he says,
Is yet more like frail man’s imagination,
Who, for his own necessities and lusts,
Splits up and mangles the Divine idea
To pieces, as he wants a piece of each;
Not only gods for all the elements
Divided into land, and sea, and sky;
But gods of health, wealth, love, and fortune; nay,
Of war and murder, rape and robbery;
Men of their own worse nature making gods
To serve the very vices that suggest them,
Which yet upon their fellow-men they visit
(Else were an end of human polity)
With chain and fine and banishment and death.
So that unless man made such gods as these,
Then are these gods worse than the man they made.
And for the attributes, which though indeed
You gibe at us for canvassing, yourself
Must grant—as whether one or manifold,
Deity in its simplest definition
Must be at least eternal—
Luc. Well?—
Cipr. Yet those
Who stuff Olympus are so little that,
That Zeus himself, the sovereign of all,
Barely escaped devouring at his birth
By his own father, who anticipated
And found some such hard measure for himself;
And as for Zeus’ own progeny—some born
Of so much baser matter than his brain,
As from his eggs, which the all-mighty swan
Impregnated, and mortal Leda laid;
And whose two chicken-deities once hatcht
Now live and die on each alternate day.
Luc. Ay, but if much of this be allegory
In which the wisdom of antiquity
Veils the pure Deity from eyes profane—
Cipr. —Deity taking arms against itself
Under Troy walls, wounding and wounded—ay,
And, trailing heavenly ichor from their wounds,
So help’d by others from the field to one
Who knew the leech’s art themselves did not.
Luc. Softly—if not to swear to allegory,
Still less to all the poets sing of heaven,
High up Parnassus as they think to sit.
Cipr. But these same poets, therefore sacred call’d,
They are who these same allegories spin
Which time and fond tradition consecrate;
What might have been of the divine within
So overgrown with folly and with sin
As but a spark of God would such impure
Assimilation with himself abjure,
Which yet with all the nostril that he may
Zeus snuffs from Antioch’s sacrifice to-day.
Besides, beyond the reach of allegory
The gods themselves in their own oracles
Doubly themselves convict—
As when they urge two nations on to war,
By promising the victory to each;
Whereby on one side their omniscience
Suffers, as their all-goodness on the other.
Luc. What if such seeming contradictions aim
Where human understanding cannot reach?
But granting for the sake of argument,
And for that only, what you now premise;
What follows?
Cipr. Why, that if, as Pliny writes,
Deity by its very definition
Be one, eternal, absolute, all wise,
All good, omnipotent, all ear, all eyes,
Incapable of disintegration—
If this be Deity indeed—
Luc. Then what?
Cipr. Simply—that we in Antioch know him not.
Luc. Rash leap to necessary non-conclusion
From a premiss that quarrels with itself
More than the deity it would impugn;
For if one God eternal and all wise,
Omnipotent to do as to devise,
Whence this disorder and discordance in—
Not only this material universe,
That seems created only to be rack’d
By the rebellion of its elements,
In earthquake and tempestuous anarchy—
But also in the human microcosm
You say created to reflect it all?
For Deity, all goodness as all wise,
Why create man the thing of lust and lies
You say reflects himself in his false god?—
By modern oracle no more convicted
Of falsehood, than by that first oracle
Which first creation settled in man’s heart.
No, if you must define, premise, conclude,
Away with all the coward squeamishness
That dares not face the universe it questions;
Blinking the evil and antagonism
Into its very constitution breathed
By him who, but himself to quarrel with,
Quarrels as might the many with each other.
Or would you be yourself one with yourself,
Catch hold of such as Epicurus’ skirt,
Who, desperately confounded this confusion
Of matter, spirit, good and evil, yea,
Godhead itself, into a universe
That is created, roll’d along, and ruled,
By no more wise direction than blind Chance.
Trouble yourself no more with disquisition
That by sad, slow, and unprogressive steps
Of wasted soul and body lead to nothing:
And only sure of life’s short breathing-while,
And knowing that the gods who threaten us
With after-vengeance of the very crimes
They revel in themselves, are nothing more
Than the mere coinage of our proper brain
To cheat us of our scanty pleasure here
With terror of a harsh account hereafter;—
Eat, drink, be merry; crown yourselves with flowers
About as lasting as the heads they garland;
And snatching what you can of life’s poor feast,
When summon’d to depart, with no ill grace,
Like a too greedy guest, cling to the table
Whither the generations that succeed
Press forward famish’d for their turn to feed.
Nay, or before your time self-surfeited,
Wait not for nature’s signal to be gone,
But with the potion of the spotted weed,
That peradventure wild beside your door
For some such friendly purpose cheaply grows,
Anticipate too tardy nature’s call:
Ev’n as one last great Roman of them all
Dismiss’d himself betimes into the sum
Of universe; not nothing to become;
For that can never cease that was before;
But not that sad Lucretius any more.
Cipr. Oh, were it not that sometimes through the dark,
That walls us all about, a random ray
Breaks in to tell one of a better day
Beyond—
Enter Lelio and Floro, as about to fight.
Lelio. Enough—these branches that exclude the sun
Defy all other inquisition.
No need of further way.
Floro. Nor further word;
Draw, sir, at once—
Lelio. Nay, parry that yourself
Which waited not your summons to be drawn.
Cipr. Lelio, and Floro?
Floro. What, will the leaves blab?
Lelio. And with their arms arrest a just revenge?
Cipr. And well indeed may trees begin to talk,
When men as you go babbling.
Floro. Whoso speaks
And loves his life, hold back.
Lelio. I know the voice,
But dazzled with the darkness—Cipriano?
Cipr. Ay; Cipriano, sure enough; as you
Lelio and Floro.
Floro. Well, let that suffice,
And leave us as you find us.
Cipr. No, not yet—
Floro. Not yet!
Lelio. Good Cipriano—
Cipr. Till I know
How it has come to pass that two such friends,
Each of the noblest blood in Antioch,
Are here to shed it by each other’s hands.
Lelio. Sudden surprise, and old respect for you,
Suspend my sword a moment, Cipriano,
That else—
Floro. Stand back, stand back! You are a scholar,
And better versed in logic than the laws
Of honour; and perhaps have yet to learn
That when two noblemen have drawn the sword,
One only must return it to the sheath.
Lelio. ’Tis so indeed—once more, stand off.
Cipr. And once more
Back, both of you, say I; if of your lives
Regardless, not of mine, which thus, unarm’d,
I fling between your swords—
Lelio, I look to you—Floro, as ever
Somewhat hot-headed and thrasonical—
Or do you hold with him the scholar’s gown
Has smother’d all the native soldiery
That saucy so-call’d honour to itself
Alone mis-arrogates? You are deceived:
I am like you by birth a gentleman,
Under like obligation to the laws
Of that true honour, which my books indeed
May help distinguish from its counterfeit,
But, older as I am, have yet not chill’d
From catching fire at any just affront—
And let me tell you this too—those same books,
Ancient and modern, tell of many a hand
That, turning most assiduously the leaf,
When the time came, could wield as well the sword.
I am unarm’d: but you, with all your swords,
I say you shall not turn them on each other
Till you have told me what the quarrel is;
Which after hearing if I own for one
That honour may not settle with good word,
I pledge my own to leave it to the sword.
Now, Lelio!—
Lelio. One answer does for both:
He loves where I love.
Floro. No—I thus much more—
He dares to love where I had loved before;
Betrayed friendship adding to the score
Of upstart love.
Lelio. You hear him, Cipriano?
And after such a challenge—
Cipr. Yet a moment.
As there are kinds of honour, so of love—
And ladies—
Lelio. Cipriano, Cipriano!
One friend my foe for daring love where I,
Let not another, daring doubt that he
Honours himself in so dishonouring me—
Floro. Slanting your sharp divisions on a jewel
That if the sun turn’d all his beams upon
He could not find, or make, a flaw—
Cipr. Nor I then,
With far less searching scrutiny than Phœbus—
I am to understand then, such a fair
Jewel as either would in wedlock wear.
Floro. And rather die than let another dare.
Cipr. Enough, enough! of Lelio’s strange logic,
And Floro’s more intelligible rant,
And back to sober metaphor. Which of you
Has this fair jewel turn’d her light upon?
Floro (after a pause). Why, who would boast—
Lelio. Indeed, how could she be
The very pearl of chastity she is,
Turn’d she her glances either left or right?
Cipr. Which therefore each, as he obliquely steals,
Counts on as given him only—
Floro. To have done
With metaphor and logic, what you will,
So as we fall to work;
Or if you must have reason, this, I say,
Resolves itself to a short syllogism—
Whether she give or we presume upon—
If one of us devote himself to win her,
How dares another cross him?
Cipr. But if she
Not only turn to neither, but still worse,
Or better, turn from both?
Lelio. But love by long devotion may be won,
That only one should offer—
Floro. And that one
Who first—
Lelio. Who first!—
Cipr. And all this while, forsooth,
The lady, of whose purity one test
Is her unblemisht unpublicity,
Is made a target for the common tongue
Of Antioch to shoot reproaches at
For stirring up two noblemen to blood.
From which she only can escape, forsooth,
By choosing one of two she cares not for
At once; or else, to mend the matter, when
He comes to claim her by the other’s blood.
Lelio. At least she will not hate him, live or dead,
Who staked his life upon her love.
Cipr. Small good
To him who lost the stake; and he that won—
Will she begin to love whom not before
For laying unloved blood upon her door;
Or, if she ever loved at all, love more?
Is this fair logic, or of one who knows
No more of woman’s honour than of man’s?
Come, come, no more of beating round the bush.
You know how I have known and loved you both,
As brothers—say as sons—upon the score
Of some few years and some few books read more—
Though two such fiery fine young gentlemen,
Put up your swords and be good boys again,
Deferring to your ancient pedagogue;
If cold by time and studies, as you say,
Then fitter for a go-between in love,
And warm at least in loyalty to you.
These jewels—to take up the metaphor
Until you choose to drop it of yourselves,—
These jewels have their caskets, I suppose—
Kindred and circumstance, I mean—
Lelio. Oh such
As by their honourable poverty
Do more than doubly set their jewel off!
Cipr. Ev’n so? And may not one, who, you agree,
Proof-cold, against suspicion of the kind,
Be so far trusted, as, if not to see,
To hear, at least, of where, and how, enshrined?
Floro. I know not what to answer. How say you?
Lelio. Relying on your honour and tried love—
Justina, daughter of the old Lisandro.
Cipr. I know them; her if scarcely, yet how far
Your praises short of her perfections are;
Him better, by some little service done
That rid him of a greater difficulty,
And would again unlock his door to me—
—And who knows also, if you both agree,
Her now closed lips; if but a sigh between
May tell which way the maiden heart may lean?
Floro. Again, what say you, Lelio?
Lelio. I, for one,
Content with that decision.
Floro. Be it so.
Cipr. Why, after all, behold how luckily
You stumbled on this rock in honour’s road,
That serves instead for Cupid’s stepping-stone.
And when the knightly courage of you both
Was all at fault to hammer out the way,
Who knows but some duenna-doctor may?
And will—if but like reasonable men,
Not angry boys, you promise to keep sheathed
Your swords, while from her father or herself
I gather, from a single sigh perhaps,
To which, if either, unaware she turns;
Provided, if to one, the other yield;
But if to neither, both shall quit the field.
What say you both to this?
Lelio. Ay—I for one.
Floro. And I; provided on the instant done.
Cipr. No better time than now, when, as I think,
The city, with her solemn uproar busy,
Shuts her we have to do with close within.
But you must come along with me, for fear
Your hands go feeling for your swords again
If left together: and besides to know
The verdict soon as spoken.
Lelio. Let us go.
[Exeunt.
Lucifer (re-appearing). Ay, Cipriano, faster than you think;
For I will lend you wings to burn yourself
In the same taper they are singed withal.—
By the quick feelers of iniquity
That from hell’s mouth reach through this lower world,
And tremble to the lightest touch of mischief,
Warn’d of an active spirit hereabout
Of the true God inquisitive, and restless
Under the false by which I rule the world,
Here am I come to test it for myself.
And lo! two fools have put into my hand
The snare that, wanting most, I might have miss’d;
That shall not him alone en-mesh, but her
Whom I have long and vainly from the ranks
Striv’n to seduce of Him, the woman-born,
Who is one day to bruise the serpent’s head—
So is it written; but meanwhile my hour
On earth is not accomplisht, and I fain
Of this detested race would hinder all
From joining in the triumph of my fall
Whom I may hinder; and of these, these twain;
Each other by each other snaring; yea,
Either at once the other’s snare and prey.
Oh, my good doctor, you must doubt, you must,
And take no more the good old gods on trust;
To Antioch then away; but not so fast
But I shall be before you, starting last.
[Exit.
Scene II.—A room in Lisandro’s house.
Enter Lisandro, Justina, and Livia.
Justina. At length the day draws in.
Lisandro. And in with it
The impious acclamation that all day,
Block up our doors and windows as we may,
Insults our faith, and doubly threatens it.
Is all made fast, Justina?
Just. All shall be, sir,
When I have seen you safely to your rest.
Lis. You know how edict after edict aim’d
By Rome against the little band of Christ—
And at a time like this, the people drunk
With idol-ecstasy—
Just. Alas, alas!
Lis. Oh, gladly would I scatter these last drops
That now so scarcely creep along my veins,
And these thin locks that tremble o’er the grave,
In such a martyrdom as swept to heav’n
The holy Paul who planted, and all those
Who water’d here the true and only faith,
Were ’t not for thee, for fear of thee, Justina,
Drawing you down at once into my doom,
Or leaving you behind, alone, to hide
From insult and suspicion worse than death—
I dare not think of it. Make fast; keep close;
And then, God’s will be done! You know we lie
Under a double danger.
Just. How so, sir?
Lis. Aurelio and Fabio, both, you know,
So potent in the city, and but now
Arm’d with a freshly whetted sword of vengeance
Against the faith, but double-edged on us,
Should they but know, as know they must, their sons
Haunting the doors of this suspected house.
Just. Alas, alas!
That I should draw this danger on your head!
Which yet you know—
Lis. I know, I know—God knows,
My darling daughter; but that chaste reserve
Serves but to quicken beauty with a charm
They find not in the wanton Venus here:
Drawn as they are by those withdrawing eyes
Irradiate from a mother’s, into whose
The very eyes of the Redeemer look’d,
And whom I dare not haste to join in heav’n
At cost of leaving thee defenceless here.
Just. Sufficient for the day! And now the day
Is done. Come to your chamber—lean on me—
Livia and I will see that all is fast;
And, that all seen to, ere we sleep ourselves,
Come to your bedside for your blessing. Hark!
Knocking ev’n now! See to it, Livia.
(She leads out Lisandro, and returns.)
Oh, well I got my father to his chamber!
What is it?—
Livia. One would see your father, madam.
Just. At such an hour! He cannot, Livia;
You know, the poor old man is gone to rest—
Tell him—
Livia. If not your father, then yourself,
On matter that he says concerns you both.
Just. Me too!—Oh surely neither of the twain
We both so dread?
Livia. No, madam; rather, one
I think that neither need have cause to fear,—
Cipriano.
Just. Cipriano! The great scholar,
Who did my father service, as I think,
And now may mean another; and God knows
How much, or quickly, needed!
Livia. So he says.
Just. What shall I do! Will not to-morrow—
Cipriano (entering). Oh, lady,
You scarce can wonder more than I myself
At such a visit, and at such an hour,
Only let what I come to say excuse
The coming, and so much unmannerly.
Just. My father is withdrawn, sir, for the night,
Never more wanting rest; I dare not rouse him,
And least of all with any troubled news.
Will not to-morrow—
Cipr. What I have to say
Best told to-night, at once; and not the less
Since you alone, whom chiefly it concerns,
Are here to listen.
Just. I!—Well, sir, relying
On your grave reputation as a scholar,
And on your foregone favour to my father,
If I should dare to listen—
Cipr. And alone?
Just. Livia, leave us.
[Exit Livia.
Cipr. Oh, lady—oh, Justina—
(Thus stammers the ambassador of love
In presence of its sovereign)—
You must—cannot but—know how many eyes
Those eyes have wounded—
Just. Nay, sir,—
Cipr. Nay, but hear.
I do not come for idle compliment,
Nor on my own behalf; but in a cause
On which hang life and death as well as love.
Two of the noblest youths in Antioch,
Lelio and Floro—Nay, but hear me out:
Mine, and till now almost from birth each other’s
Inseparable friends, now deadly foes
For love of you—
Just. Oh, sir!
Cipr. I have but now
Parted their swords in mortal quarrel cross’d.
Just. Oh, that was well.
Cipr. I think, for several sakes—
Their own, their fathers’, even Antioch’s,
That would not lose one of so choice a pair;
And, I am sure you think so, lady, yours,
So less than covetous of public talk,
And least of all at such a fearful cost.
Just. Oh, for all sakes all thanks!
Cipr. Yet little due
For what so lightly done, and it may be
So insufficiently; this feud not stopt—
Suspended only, on a single word—
Which now at this unseasonable hour
I stand awaiting from the only lips
That can allay the quarrel they have raised.
Just. Alas, why force an answer from my lips
So long implied in silent disregard?
Cipr. Yet, without which, like two fierce dogs, but more
Exasperated by the holding back,
They will look for it in each other’s blood.
Just. And think, poor men, to find their answer there!
Oh, sir, you are the friend, the friend of both,
A famous scholar; with authority
And eloquence to press your friendship home.
Surely in words such as you have at will
You can persuade them, for all sakes—and yet
No matter mine perhaps—but, as you say,
Their fathers’, Antioch’s, their own—
Cipr. Alas!
I doubt you know not in your maiden calm
How fast all love and logic such as that
Burns stubble up before a flame like this.
Just. (aside). And none in heaven to help them!
Cipr. All I can
But one condition hardly wringing out
Of peace, till my impartial embassy
Have ask’d on their behalf, which of the twain—
How shall I least offend?—you least disdain.
Just. Disdain is not the word, sir; oh, no, no!
I know and honour both as noblemen
Of blood and station far above my own;
And of so suitable accomplishments.
Oh, there are many twice as fair as I,
And of their own conditions, who, with half
My wooing, long ere this had worn the wreath
Tied with a father’s blessing, and all Antioch
To follow them with Hymenæal home.
Cipr. But if these fiery men, do what one will,
Will look no way but this?—
Just. Oh, but they will;
Divert their eyes awhile, a little while,
Their hearts will follow; such a sudden passion
Can but have struck a shallow root—perhaps
Ere this had perish’d, had not rival pride
Between them blown it to this foolish height.
Cipr. Disdain is not the word then. Well, to seek,
What still as wide as ever from assent—
Could you but find it in your heart to feel
If but a hair’s-breadth less—say disesteem
For one than for another—
Just. No, no, no!
Even to save their lives I could not say
What is not—cannot—nay, and if it could
And I could say that was that is not—can not—
How should that hair’s-breadth less of hope to one
Weigh with the other to desist his suit,
Both furious as you tell me?
Cipr. And both are:
But ev’n that single hair thrown in by you
Will turn the scale that else the sword must do.
Just. But surely must it not suffice for both
That they who drew the sword in groundless hope
Sheathe it in sure despair? Despair! Good God!
For a poor creature like myself, despair!
That men with souls to which a word like that
Lengthens to infinite significance,
Should pin it on a wretched woman’s sleeve!
But as men talk—I mean, so far as I
Can make them, as they say, despair of that
Of which, even for this world’s happiness,
Despair is better hope of better things—
Will not my saying—and as solemnly
As what one best may vouch for; that so far
As any hope of my poor liking goes,
Despair indeed they must—why should not this
Allay their wrath, and let relapsing love
In his old channel all the clearer run
For this slight interjection in the current?
Why should it not be so?
Cipr. Alas, I know not:
For though as much they promised, yet I doubt
When each, however you reject him now,
Believes you might be won hereafter still,
Were not another to divide the field;
Each upon each charging the exigence
He will not see lies in himself alone,
Might draw the scarcely sheathèd sword at once;
Or stifled hate under a hollow truce
Blaze out anew at some straw’s provocation,
And I perhaps not by to put it out.
Just. What can, what can be done then?
Cipr. Oh Justina,
Pardon this iteration. Think once more,
Before your answer with its consequence
Travels upon my lip to destiny.
I know you more than maiden-wise reserved
To other importunities of love
Than those which ev’n the pure for pure confess;
Yet no cold statue, which, however fair,
Could not inflame so fierce a passion; but
A breathing woman with a beating heart,
Already touch’d with pity, you confess,
For these devoted men you cannot love.
Well, then—I will not hint at such a bower
As honourable wedlock would entwine
About your father’s age and your own youth,
Which ev’n for him—and much less for yourself—
You would not purchase with an empty hand.
But yet, with no more of your heart within
Than what you now confess to—pity—pity,
For generous youth wearing itself away
In thankless adoration at your door,
Neglecting noble opportunities;
Turning all love but yours to deadly hate—
Sedate, and wise, and modestly resolved,
Can you be, lady, of yourself so sure—
(And surely they will argue your disdain
As apt to yield as their devotion)—
That, all beside so honourably faced,
You, who now look with pity, and perhaps
With gratitude, upon their blundering zeal,
May not be won to turn an eye less loath
On one of them, and blessing one, save both?
Just. Alas! I know it is impossible—
Not if they wasted all their youth in sighs,
And even slavish importunities,
I could but pity—pity all the more
That all the less what only they implore
To yield; so great a gulf between us lies.
Cipr. What—is the throne pre-occupied?
Just. If so,
By one that Antioch dreams little of.
But it grows late: and if we spoke till dawn,
I have no more to say.
Cipr. Nor more will hear?
Just. Alas, sir, to what purpose? When, all said,
Said too as you have said it—
And I have but the same hard answer still;
Unless to thank you once and once again,
And charge you with my thankless errand back,
But in such better terms,
As, if it cannot stop ill blood, at least
Shall stop blood-shedding ’tween these hapless men.
Cipr. And shall the poor ambassador who fail’d
In the behalf of those who sent him here,
Hereafter dare to tell you how he sped
In making peace between them?
Just. Oh, do but that,
And what poor human prayer can win from Heaven,
You shall not be the poorer. So, good-night!
[Exit.
Cipr. Good-night, good-night! Oh Lelio and Floro!
If ever friends well turn’d to deadly foes,
Wiser to fight than I to interpose.
[Exit.
Lucifer (passing from behind). The shaft has hit the mark; and by the care
Of hellish surgery shall fester there.
[Exit.