SYLVIA.
To PHILANDER.
Oh, my charming Philander! How very ill have you recompensed my last lost commands? Which were that you should live; and yet at the same moment, while you are reading of the dear obligation, and while my page was waiting your kind return, you desperately exposed your life to the mercy of this innocent rival, betraying unadvisedly at the same time my honour, and the secret of your love, and where to kill or to be killed, had been almost equally unhappy: it was well my page told me you disarmed him in this rencounter; yet you, he says, are wounded, some sacred drops of blood are fallen to the earth and lost, the least of which is precious enough to ransom captive queens: oh! Haste Philander, to my arms for cure, I die with fear there may be danger----haste, and let me bathe, the dear, the wounded part in floods of tears, lay to my warm lips, and bind it with my torn hair: oh! Philander, I rave with my concern for thee, and am ready to break all laws of decency and duty, and fly without considering, to thy succour, but that I fear to injure thee much more by the discovery, which such an unadvised absence would make. Pray heaven the unlucky adventure reach not Bellfont; Foscario has no reason to proclaim it, and thou art too generous to boast the conquest, and my page was the only witness, and he is as silent and as secret as the grave: but why, Philander, was he sent me back without reply? What meant that cruel silence----say, my Philander, will you not obey me?----Will you abandon me? Can that dear tongue be perjured? And can you this night disappoint your Sylvia? What have I done, oh obstinately cruel, irreconcileable----what, for my first offence? A little poor resentment and no more? A little faint care of my gasping honour, could that displease so much? Besides I had a cause, which you shall see; a letter that would cool love's hottest fires, and turn it to devotion; by heaven it was such a check----such a surprise----but you yourself shall judge, if after that I could say less, than bid eternally farewell to love--at least to thee--but I recanted soon; one sad dear word, one soft resenting line from thee, gained love the day again, and I despised the censures of the duller world: yes, yes, and I confessed you had overcome, and did this merit no reply? I asked the boy a thousand times what you said, how and in what manner you received it, chid him, and laid your silent fault on him, till he with tears convinced me, and said he found you hastening to the grove,--and when he gave you my commands----you looked upon him with such a wild and fixed regard, surveying him all over while you were opening it----as argued some unusual motion in you; then cried, 'Be gone--I cannot answer flattery'----Good heaven, what can you mean? But 'ere he got to the farther end of the grove, where still you walked a solemn death-like pace, he saw Foscario pass him unattended, and looking back saw your rencounter, saw all that happened between you, then ran to your assistance just as you parted; still you were roughly sullen, and neither took notice of his proffered service, nor that you needed it, although you bled apace; he offered you his aid to tie your wounds up----but you replied--'Be gone, and do not trouble me'----Oh, could you imagine I could live with this neglect? Could you, my Philander? Oh what would you have me do! If nothing but my death or ruin can suffice for my atonement, I will sacrifice either with joy; yes, I'll proclaim my passion aloud, proclaim it at Bellfont, own the dear criminal flame, fly to my Philander's aid and be undone; for thus I cannot, no, I will not live, I rave, I languish, faint and die with pain; say that you live, oh, say but that you live, say you are coming to the meadow behind the garden-grove, in order to your approach to my arms: oh, swear that all your vows are true; oh, swear that you are Sylvia's; and in return, I will swear that I am yours without reserve, whatever fate is destined for your
SYLVIA.
I die with impatience, either to see or hear from you; I fear it is yet too soon for the first----oh therefore save me with the last, or I shall rave, and wildly betray all by coming to Dorillus his farm, or seeking you where-ever you cruelly have hid yourself from
SYLVIA.
To SYLVIA.
Ah, Sylvia, how have you in one day destroyed that repose I have been designing so many years! Oh, thou false----but wondrous fair creature! Why did heaven ordain so much beauty, and so much perfidy, so much excellent wit, and so much cunning, (things inconsistent in any but in Sylvia) in one divine frame, but to undo mankind: yes, Sylvia, thou wert born to murder more believing men than the unhappy and undone Philander. Tell me, thou charming hypocrite, why hast thou thus deluded me? Why? oh, why was I made the miserable object of thy fatal vow-breach? What have I done, thou lovely, fickle maid, that thou shouldst be my murderer? And why dost thou call me from the grave with such dear soft commands as would awake the very quiet dead, to torture me anew, after my eyes (curse on their fatal sense) were too sure witnesses of thy infidelity? Oh, fickle maid, how much more kind it had been to have sent me down to earth, with plain heart-breaking truth, than a mean subtle falsehood, that has undone thy credit in my soul? Truth, though it were cruel, had been generous in thee; though thou wert perjured, false, forsworn----thou shouldst not have added to it that yet baser sin of treachery: you might have been provoked to have killed your friend, but it were base to stab him unawares, defenceless and unwarned; smile in my face, and strike me to the heart; soothe me with all the tenderest marks of my passion----nay, with an invitation too, that would have gained a credit in one that had been jilted over the world, flattered and ruined by all thy cozening sex, and all to send me vain and pleased away, only to gain a day to entertain another lover in. Oh, fantastic woman! destructive glorious thing, what needed this deceit? Hadst thou not with unwonted industry persuaded me to have hasted to Cesario, by heaven, I had dully lived the tedious day in traversing the flowery meads and silent groves, laid by some murmuring spring, had sigh'd away the often counted hours, and thought on Sylvia, till the blessed minute of my ravishing approach to her; had been a fond, believing and imposed on coxcomb, and never had dreamt the treachery, never seen the snake that basked beneath the gay, the smiling flowers; securely thou hadst cozened me, reaped the new joys, and made my rival sport at the expense of all my happiness: yes, yes, your hasty importunity first gave me jealousy, made me impatient with Cesario, and excuse myself to him by a hundred inventions; neglected all to hasten back, where all my joys, where all my killing fears and torments resided--but when I came----how was I welcomed? With your confirming billet; yes, Sylvia, how! Let Dorillus inform you, between whose arms I fell dead, shame on me, dead-- and the first thought my soul conceived when it returned, was, not to die in jest. I answered your commands, and hastened to the grove, where----by all that is sacred, by thyself I swear (a dearer oath than heaven and earth can furnish me with) I did resolve to die; but oh, how soon my soft, my silent passion turned to loud rage, rage easier to be borne, to dire despair, to fury and revenge; for there I saw, Foscario, my young, my fair, my rich and powerful rival, he hasted through the grove, all warm and glowing from the fair false one's arms; the blushes which thy eyes had kindled were fresh upon his cheeks, his looks were sparkling with the new-blown fire, his heart so briskly burnt with a glad, peaceful smile dressed all his face, tricked like a bridegroom, while he perfum'd the air as he passed through it----none but the man that loves and dotes like me is able to express my sense of rage: I quickly turned the sword from my own heart to send it to his elevated one, giving him only time to----draw--that was the word, and I confess your spark was wondrous ready, brisk with success, vain with your new-given favours, he only cried--'If Sylvia be the quarrel--I am prepared----' And he maintained your cause with admirable courage I confess, though chance or fortune luckily gave me his sword, which I would fain have rendered back, and that way would have died; but he refused to arm his hand anew against the man that had not took advantage of him, and thus we parted: then it was that malice supported me with life, and told me I should scorn to die for so perfidious and so ruinous a creature; but charming and bewitching still, it was then I borrowed so much calmness of my lessening anger to read the billet over, your page had brought me, which melted all the rough remaining part of rage away into tame languishment: ah, Sylvia! This heart of mine was never formed by nature to hold out long in stubborn sullenness; I am already on the excusing part, and fain would think thee innocent and just; deceive me prettily, I know thou canst soothe my fond heart, and ask how it could harbour a faithless thought of Sylvia--do-- flatter me, protest a little, swear my rival saw thee not, say he was there by chance----say any thing; or if thou sawest him, say with how cold a look he was received----Oh, Sylvia, calm my soul, deceive it flatter it, and I shall still believe and love thee on----yet shouldest thou tell me truth, that thou art false, by heaven I do adore thee so, I still should love thee on; should I have seen thee clasp him in thy arms, print kisses on his cheeks and lips, and more----so fondly and so dotingly I love, I think I should forgive thee; for I swear by all the powers that pity frail mortality, there is no joy, no life, no heaven without thee! Be false! Be cruel, perjured, infamous, yet still I must adore thee; my soul was formed of nothing but of love, and all that love, and all that soul is Sylvia's; but yet, since thou hast framed me an excuse, be kind and carry it on;----to be deluded well, as thou canst do it, will be the same to innocence, as loving: I shall not find the cheat: I will come then---- and lay myself at thy feet, and seek there that repose, that dear content, which is not to be found in this vast world besides; though much of my heart's joy thou hast abated; and fixed a sadness in my soul that will not easily vanish---- oh Sylvia, take care of me, for I am in thy power, my life, my fame, my soul are all in thy hands, be tender of the victims, and remember if any action of thy life should shew a fading love, that very moment I perceive the change, you shall find dead at your feet the abandoned