The Immortal Lure

by Cale Young Rice

To hear Messer Giorgione—who is gentle
And honourable to women who are weak.
To—heal Messer Giorgione—then to die!
Giorgione. Rather to kill!
Isotta.Why, it may be. If love
Still leads me, it were best that it be slain.
Giorgione. The love of a wanton?
Isotta (slowly). Who beholds her body
Given ... to unabated eyes—yet lives?
I think it must be so.
Giorgione.Alluring lies!
Out of pale lips of treachery but lies!
You have returned to me, whom you have cursed
With craving for you,
With an immortal love,
Because this lisping Luzzi,
With whom you fled, weary of falsity,
Has cast you off.
Isotta (gently). Kind Luzzi!
Giorgione.Ah! and blind?
Not knowing that you now are here again,
Where you disrobed to my adoring soul,
But thinking that you wait him with fair eyes
Of fond expectancy—as once for me!
Believing that your breath is beating only
With ecstasy for him!
Isotta.He is—but Luzzi!
Giorgione. And I but Giorgione, smiling quean!

[She turns paler.

But Giorgione, a vassal to your sway?
Back to your orgies! and may Venus, goddess
Of black adulteries, but not of love,
Be with them! May your blood, that I believed
Vestal to all but me, run vile with passions
As any nymph's of Bacchus!
May your body,
That I have painted here, be to all time
An image of soul-cheating chastity!

[His words have struck her down—and overwhelm him.

O, I am lost, lost, lost forevermore.

[Falls into a seat.

Isotta (at length, from the couch, gathering strength).
No, I have come for saving, Giorgione.
Now I can speak—but there is little time,
(Strangely) For Night is coming.
Giorgione (startled to questioning). Isotta?
Isotta.The still Night,
With Death's dark Gondola to waft me o'er.

[Then as he realizes.

Nay, stay, stay! leave me not. There is no help.
For it must be.... A voice Beyond has said it.
And ere I drift out on the darkening ebb——
Giorgione. Isotta!
Isotta.Peace must be Giorgione's too.
Giorgione. Speak—yet it cannot be—my heart is dead.
Isotta. Then it shall rise again.—O Giorgione,
My lover once and lord, could you believe,
Even tho I went away from you and with
Another, that unchastity could touch
This body which had been holy to you?
Giorgione. Isotta!
Isotta.It is true that I deceived you,

[With mystic fervor.