Eight Dramas of Calderon

by Pedro Calderón de la Barca

ACT II

Scene I.—The sea-shore; a storm raging.

Cipriano (cavalierly drest). Oh, mad, mad, mad ambition! to the skies

Lifting to drop me deep as Hades down!—

What! Cipriano—what the once so wise

Cipriano—quit his wonted exercise

Among the sober walks of old renown,

To fly at love—to swell the wind with sighs

Vainer than learning—doff the scholar’s gown

For cap and feather, and such airy guise

In which triumphant love is wont to go,

But wins less acceptation in her eyes—

The only eyes in which I cared to show—

My heart beneath the borrow’d feather bleeding—

Than in the sable suit of long ago,

When heart-whole for another’s passion pleading.

She loves not Floro—loves not Lelio,

Whose quarrel sets the city’s throat agape,

And turns her reputation to reproof

With altercation of some dusky shape

Haunting the twilight underneath her roof—

Which each believes the other:—and, for me,

The guilty one of the distracted three,

She closest veils herself, or waves aloof

In scorn; or in such self-abasement sweet

As sinks me deep and deeper at her feet,

Bids me return—return for very shame

Back to my proper studies and good name,

Nor waste a life on one who, let me pine

To death, will never but in death be mine.

Oh, she says well—Oh, heart of stone and ice

Unworthy of the single sacrifice

Of one true heart’s devotion! Oh divine

Creature, whom all the glory and the worth

That ever ravaged or redeem’d the earth

Were scanty worship offer’d at your shrine!

Oh Cipriano, master-fool of all

The fools that unto thee for wisdom call;

Of supercilious Pallas first the mock,

And now blind Cupid’s scorn, and laughing-stock;

Who in fantastic arrogance at odds

With the Pantheon of your people’s gods

Ransack’d the heavens for one more pure and whole

To fill the empty temple of the soul,

Now caught by retribution in the mesh

Of one poor piece of perishable flesh—

What baser demon of the pit would buy

With all your ruin’d aspirations?

Lucifer (within). I!—

Cipr. What! The very winds and waters

Hear, and answer to the cry

She is deaf to!—Better thrown

On distracted nature’s bosom

With some passion like my own

Torn and tortured: where the sun

In the elemental riot

Ere his daily reign half done,

Leaves half-quencht the tempest-drencht

Welkin scowling on the howling

Wilderness of waves that under

Slash of whirlwind, spur of lightning,

Roar of thunder, black’ning, whitening,

Fling them foaming on the shore—

Let confusion reign and roar!—

Lightnings, for your target take me!

Waves, upon the sharp rock break me,

Or into your monstrous hollow

Back regurgitating hurl;

Let the mad tornado whirl me

To the furthest airy circle

Dissipated of the sky,

Or the gaping earth down-swallow

To the centre!—

Lucifer (entering). By-and-bye.

Cipr. Hark again! and in her monstrous

Labour, with a human cry

Nature yearning—what portentous

Glomeration of the storm

Darkly cast in human form,

Has she bolted!—

Luc. As among

Flashes of the lightning flung

Beside you, in its thunder now

Aptly listen’d—

Cipr. What art thou?

Luc. One of a realm, though dimly in your charts

Discern’d, so vast that as from out of it

As from a fountain all the nations flow,

Back they shall ebb again; and sway’d by One

Who, without Oriental over-boast,

Because from him all kings their crowns derive,

Is rightfully saluted King of kings,

Whose reign is as his kingdom infinite,

Whose throne is heaven, and earth his footstool, and

Sun, moon, and stars his diadem and crown.

Who at the first disposal of his kingdom

And distribution into sea and land—

Me, who for splendour of my birth and grand

Capacities above my fellows shone,

Star of the Morning, Lucifer, alone—

Me he made captain of the host who stand

Clad as the morning star about his throne.

Enough for all ambition but my own;

Who discontented with the all but all

Of chiefest subject of Omnipotence

Rebell’d against my Maker; insolence

Avenged as soon as done on me and all

Who bolster’d up rebellion, by a fall

Far as from heaven to Hades. Madness, I know;

But worse than madness whining to repent

Under a rod that never will relent.

Therefore about the land and sea I go

Arm’d with the very instrument of hate

That blasted me: lightnings anticipate

My coming, and the thunder rolls behind;

Thus charter’d to enlarge among mankind,

And to recruit from human discontent

My ranks in spirit, not in number, spent.

Of whom, in spite of this brave gaberdine,

I recognize thee one: thee, by the line

Scarr’d on thy brow, though not so deep as mine;

Thee by the hollow circles of those eyes

Where the volcano smoulders but not dies:

Whose fiery torrent running down has scarr’d

The cheek that time had not so deeply marr’d.

Do not I read thee rightly?

Cipr. But too well;

However come to read me—

Luc. By the light

Of my own darkness reading yours—how deep!

But not, as mine is, irretrievable:

Who from the fulness of my own perdition

Would, as I may, revenge myself on him

By turning to fruition your despair—

What if I make you master at a blow,

Not only of the easy woman’s heart

You now despair of as impregnable,

And waiting but my word to let you in,

But lord of nature’s secret, and the lore

That shall not only with the knowledge, but

Possess you with the very power of him

You sought so far and vainly for before:

So far All-eyes, All-wise, Omnipotent—

If not to fashion, able yet to shake

That which the other took such pains to make—

As in the hubbub round us; I who blurr’d

The spotless page of nature at a word

With darkness and confusion, will anon

Clear it, to write another marvel on.—

By the word of power that binds

And loosens; by the word that finds

Nature’s heart through all her rinds,

Hearken, waters, fires, and winds;

Having had your roar, once more

Down with you, or get you gone.

Cipr. With the clatter and confusion

Of the universe about me

Reeling—all within, without me,—

Dizzy, dazzled—if delusion,

Waking, dreaming, seeing, seeming—

Which I know not—only, lo!

Like some mighty madden’d beast

Bellowing in full career

Of fury, by a sudden blow

Stunn’d, and in a moment stopt

All the roar, or into slow

Death-ward-drawing murmur, leaving

Scarce the fallen carcase heaving,

With the fallen carcase dropt.—

Behold! the word scarce fallen from his lips,

Swift almost as a human smile may chase

A frown from some conciliated face,

The world to concord from confusion slips:

The winds that blew the battle up dead slain,

Or with their tatter’d standards swept amain

From heaven; the billows of the erected deep

Roll’d with their crests into the foaming plain;

While the scared earth begins abroad to peep

And smooth her ruffled locks, as from a rent

In the black centre of the firmament,

Revenging his unnatural eclipse,

The Lord of heaven from its ulterior blue

That widens round him as he pierces through

The folded darkness, from his sovereign height

Slays with a smile the dragon-gloom of night.

Luc. All you have heard and witness’d hitherto

But a foretaste to quicken appetite

For that substantial after-feast of power

That I shall set you down to take your fill of:

When not the fleeting elements alone

Of wind, and fire, and water, floating wrack,

But this same solid frame of earth and stone,

Yea, with the mountain loaded on her back,

Reluctantly, shall answer to your spell

From a more adamantine heart stone-cold

Than her’s you curse for inaccessible.

What, you would prove it? Let the mountain there

Step out for witness. Listen, and behold.

Monster upshot of upheaving[11]

Earth, by fire and flood conceiving;

Shapeless ark of refuge, whither,

When came deluge creeping round,

Man retreated—to be drown’d—

Now your granite anchor, fast

In creation’s centre, cast,

Come with all your tackle cleaving

Down before the magic blast—

Cipr. And the unwieldy vessel, lo!

Rib and deck of rock, and shroud

Of pine, top-gallanted with cloud,

All her forest-canvas squaring,

Down the undulating woodland

As she flounders to and fro

All before her tearing, bearing

Down upon us—

Luc. Anchor, ho!—

Behold the ship in port! And what if freighted

With but one jewel, worthy welcome more

Than ever full-fraught Argosy awaited,

At last descried by desperate eyes ashore;

From the first moment of her topsail showing

Like a thin cobweb spun ’twixt sea and sky;

Then momently before a full wind blowing

Into her full proportions, till athwart

The seas that bound beneath her, by and bye

She sweeps full sail into the cheering port—

Strangest bark that ever plied

In despite of wind and tide,

At the captain’s magic summons

Down your granite ribs divide,

And show the jewel hid inside.

Cipr. Justina!—

Luc. Soft! The leap that looks so easy

Yet needs a longer stride than you can master.

Cipr. Oh divine apparition, that I fain

Would all my life as in Elysium lose

Only by gazing after; and thus soon

As rolling cloud across the long’d-for moon,

The impitiable rocks enclose again!—

But was it she indeed?

Luc. She that shall be,

And yours, by means that, bringing her to you,

Possess you of all nature, which in vain

You sigh’d for ere for nature’s masterpiece.

And thus much, as I told you, only sent

As foretaste of that great accomplishment,

Which if you will but try for, you can reach

By means which, if I practise, I can teach.

Cipr. And at what cost?

Luc. You that have flung so many years away

In learning and in love that came to nothing,

Think not to win the harvest in a day!

The God you search for works, you know, by means

(That your philosophers call second cause),

And we by means must underwork him—

Cipr. Well!—

Luc. To comprehend, and, after, to constrain

Whose mysteries you will not count as vain

A year in this same mountain lock’d with me?—

Cipr. Where she is?—

Luc. As I told you, where shall be

At least this mountain after a short labour

Has brought forth something better than a mouse;

And what then after a whole year’s gestation

Accomplish under our joint midwifery,

Under a bond by which you bind you mine

In fewer and no redder drops than needs

The leech of land or water when he bleeds?

Let us about—but first upon his base

The mountain we must study in replace,

That else might puzzle your geography.

Come, take your stand upon the deck with me,

Till with her precious cargo safe inside,

And all her forest-colours flying wide,

The mighty vessel put again to sea—

What, are you ready?—Wondrous smack,

As without a turn or tack

Hither come, so thither back,

And let subside the ruffled deep

Of earth to her primæval sleep.—

How steadily her course the good ship trims,

While Antioch far into the distance swims,

With all her follies bubbling in the wake;

Her scholars that more hum than honey make:

Muses so chaste as never of their kind

Would breed, and Cupid deaf as well as blind:

For Cipriano, wearied with the toil

Of so long working on a thankless soil,

At last embarking upon magic seas

In a more wondrous Argo than of old,

Sets sails with me for such Hesperides

As glow with more than dragon-guarded gold.

[Exeunt.

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