FROM “A MASQUE OF YOUTH”
[The scene is laid in a circular space of grass in a garden, enclosed by a stone balustrade broken at intervals by statues of sylvan deities. A background of cypresses. An assembly of dim figures.
Right, the Muse of Tragedy upon a raised throne. Centre, a great convoluted shell, in which a naked youth lies sleeping.]
Melpomene. (She is crowned with vine-leaves, shod with the cothurnus, and carries in her hand a tragic mask.)
She addresses
the assembly.
O population beautiful and strange
Haunting the curtained boundaries of youth,
Children among immortals, swift of range,
Light-footed, gay of glance, evasive, shy,
Truth robed in fantasy, truth in untruth
That all men apprehend and most pass by,
—You that come crowding and inquisitive
With covert laugh, quick hands, and eyes that live,
Wingèd and whispering and fugitive,
Wide generosities and proud beliefs,
Flamboyant hopes and lovely rainbow griefs,
Rare reverence, lusty audacity,
Faith with bound eyes, arrogant certainty,
Slim fancy with her finger to her lips,
Bright-haired adventure, mother of all ships,
Pale wanton nymphs, quarry of men and gods,
She addresses
the assembly.
AND dappled centaurs from the dappled woods,—
Draw near.—Here lies, that all may see him well,
A naked Youth within a conchèd shell,
Asleep, in nudity most beautiful.
His arm is flung beneath his lovely head,
He sleeps as sound as in his mortal bed;
Yet him the dolphins hither bore
And all the waters founted with their spouting,
The river-horses galloped by the shore,
And little wine-drunk sons of love ran shouting,
But he lies victim to the poppy-bell.
She tells the
occasion of the
masque.
NOW set I forth in briefest argument
The causes of our present tournament,
Saying how tender Grief and laughing Joy
Strove for possession of the mortal boy,
—As once upon the traveller of old
The sun shone warmly and the wind blew cold,—
And ages long endured their pleasant strife
Renewed with each young adolescent life,
And neither triumphed, for in early years
Youth freely gave to Grief his secret tears
(Grief for grief’s sake, which youth to Youth endears),
And sorrows of his melancholy heart,
And Joy, her garlands drooping, stood apart;
Till Love drew near to play his part.
She tells of
Youth in
Love.
AH! then forgotten were the mournful days.
Youth crowned his head with flowers and with bays;
He flung the leopard-skin about his loins,
And bracelets jangled at his wrists like coins,
Nor was the triumph of his singing mute
When at his lips the windy flute
Mingled its treble with the chords of praise
And melody hung scented round his ways.
Proud in his beauty and his sinews’ girth
He strode in strength and conquest on the earth,
Or measured down the terraced olive-groves
Intrepid footsteps with the centaur’s hooves.
The pleasant valleys echoed with his mirth,
And in the morning resonant and still
His voice was heard like music on the hill.
So ever ran the course of youth the same,
And Joy and Grief strove on; Grief could not claim
That Love had played unfairly in the game
Since often some poor weeping love-lorn child
Returned to her with sorrow wild,
And cast his broken flute upon the ground
And all his ornaments with tears defiled.
Now Joy this pretty mortal boy has found
And brought him hither, that by our consent
The rivals try their strength, and one be crowned.
Conditional thereon, that Love be bound
To take no action in the tournament.
They press
forward round
the shell.
1st Spirit.
HOW richly stirs his craving blood to-night
For songs of freedom all among the stars!
Thoughts like a flock of birds in summer light
Circle beyond the reach of lifted arms,
And deeds beyond the scope of life’s alarms
Float into sight,
And pass, yet undefined, through heaven’s bars.
2nd Spirit.
IT is the hour of twilight, still, profound,
When dreams and visions in their legions fly
On fancy’s horses mounted, robed and crowned
With streaming flames, an aureole of fire,
And pass, the eagle shapes of man’s desire,
Towards the sunset bound,
In wingèd ride across the evening sky.
3rd Spirit.
HE stirs disquieted, he stirs again.
The stamping hoofs of that proud galaxy
In passing struck from space the spangled rain
And flung the ardent fragments down to him
That scorched his mortal soul through vision dim.
O shackled soul in pain
Tortured by glimpses of divinity!
2nd Spirit.
WHAT shall we sing in praise of youth? the free,
The clarion years, the redolent years of youth?
Youth that loved gold and scarlet pageantry
And caught the fringe upon the robe of truth?
1st Spirit.
GAY youth, that goes, with some familiar friend,
On quest of hopes heroic, quest of shores
Untravelled, with the heart of conquerors,
Eager and brave, and talking without end
Of high, magnificent, and cleanly things
Rich as the sunset, swift as cormorants’ wings
That sweep the waters,—youth, whose destiny
Sails like a ship upon a virgin sea.
2nd Spirit.
WHOSE heart is as a glowing forge at night
Wherein the blacksmith, gleaming with his sweat
Like some gigantic negro in the light
Of angry fires that touch his limbs of jet,
Strikes at the clanging anvil of his thought.
3rd Spirit.
SING to him, sing! till he be so distraught,
So drunken and enraptured,
That all his heart be captured.
Folly (to Adventure).
GIPSY, what have you in your pack
Bound with old thongs across your back?
Poplin, dimity, huckaback,
Who draws the prize?
Tumble your treasures out on the grass:
A wine-dark ruby, a shine of brass,
Aladdin’s lamp, and a magic glass,
And a last surprise.
Dip in your hands, you wayward crew,
The peddler caters for all of you;
You press, like a crowd of girls, anew,
With your eager eyes;
Dip in your hands, there are treasures free,
Curious pearls, and chalcedony,
And the cap of invisibility,
But the thing you will none of you ever see
Is the last surprise.
Imagination.
I am the swift omnipotent magician;
All bounty’s in my gift, all songs unsung,
All slumbering chords, all undiscovered crafts
Baffling their premature interpreters;
No law’s beyond my searching; I’ll condemn
No vice, despise no sorrow, scorn no joy,
Deride no virtue, throw no stone at Pilate,
But sweep my mantle round humanity
And round the pomp of nature; naught I’ll find
Too mean, too great, too little, or too spacious;
Mine be the secrets both of hearts and stars,
(Small, measureless hearts; great, measurable stars;)
And love’s old barbarous reiteration
I’ll tolerate, and the great self-less peace
Like the deep sea’s perpetual repose.
I’ll not be parsimonious of my wealth.
I’ll fill your heaven with many coloured moons
And hang such variable tides upon them
As strew the astonished fish along the shores.
I’ll bring the planets nearer: I’ll attract
Saturn within his hoop of shining rings;
I’ll summon a great conclave of the comets
Which hitherto were strangers to each other,
And man, at nightfall standing on the crest
Of a familiar hill, shall marvelling stare
Into an unfamiliar firmament.
I’ll show you Jupiter’s rebel satellite
That on the outer fringe of measured space
Backwards revolves, striving against the law
That chains her anger to an irksome orbit.
I’ll dry the seas and bring the unknown lands
To light, that on unchristened continents
Man stray dry-foot from Africa to Asia.
Oh, what new rivers then, what deep, deep lakes,
What caverns and what cliffs, what strange ravines,
What deserts, what denuded leagues of plain,
Should offer to his swarming multitude!
Peaks shall be islands, islands shall be peaks,
When I reverse the ordering and make
A mountainous Pacific continent,
A Himalayan archipelago.
And all the daily and the lovely things,
—The fawn’s late bed of bracken, newly warmed,
The nets of fishermen through water sinking,
Drawn up all hoar with flake of silver scales
And round clear drops that tremble from the mesh,—
These little things, these nimble shy delights,
With the quick magic of significance
I’ll not despise to startle into being.