The Nurse—Hérodiade
NURSE. You live, Princess? or do I see your shade?
Your fingers at my lips and all their rings
Cease to proceed in an unlearned-of age....
Hérodiade. Recede.
The immaculate blond torrent of my hair
Freezes my limbs with horror when it bathes
Their solitude, and interlaced with light
My hair’s immortal. Me a kiss would murder,
Would kill, if beauty were not death, oh woman....
Driven by what allurement, should I know?
What morn forgotten by the prophets pours
O’er dying distances, these dismal feasts?
And you have seen me enter, nurse of winter,
The heavy prison built of stone and iron
Where aged lions drag the centuries,
And fatal, I advanced, with shielded hands,
Through desert-perfume of these ancient kings:
But have you still beheld my very dread?
I stop to dream of exiles, and I strip,
As near a pond whose gush of water welcomes,
The pallid lilies in me, smitten, charmed
My eyes pursue the languor of the wreck
Descend, in silence, through my reverie,
The lions part my indolence of robe
And gaze on feet whose curves would calm the sea.
Quiet the shudder of your crumbling flesh,
And mimicking the fashions of my hair
So fierce that makes you fear their shock of manes,
Come, help, as thus you dare no longer see me,
Within a mirror nonchalantly combing.
Nurse. My child, unless you wish to sample myrrh
Gay in its sealèd bottles, would you prove
The grave funereal virtue of the essence
Ravished from roses’ dim senility?
Hérodiade. Leave there those perfumes! Nurse, do you not know
I hate them, do you wish me then, to feel
My languid frame drown in their drunkenness?
I crave: my hair of flowers not created
To strew oblivion of human anguish,
But gold, for ever virgin of the spices,
In cruel flashes and in heavy pallor,
Will mark the sterile chilliness of metals,
Having reflected you, my native jewels,
Vases and arms, from solitary childhood.
Nurse. Pardon, oh queen, for age eclipsed the plea
With which you deign to vindicate my mind
Grown sallow as an old or gloomy book....
Hérodiade. Enough! before me hold this mirror. Mirror!
Cold water frozen hard within your frame
By weariness; how often, dream-tormented
And searching for my memories, like leaves
Beneath the hole profound within your ice,
In you I seemed a shadow, but, what horror
At dusk when in your fountain I have known
The nudity of my dishevelled dream!
Nurse, am I beautiful?
Nurse. In truth, a star,
But this tress tumbles....
Hérodiade. Check in your offence
Which chills my blood towards its source, and quell
This gesture of notorious irreligion:
Tell me, in grim emotion what sure demon
Throws you this kiss, these perfumes, should I breathe it?
And, oh my heart, this hand still sacrilegious,
Since I believe you wished to touch me, say
They are a day which will not be extinguished
Without calamity upon the tower....
Oh day Hérodiade beholds with dread!
Nurse. Indeed, a strange day, from which heaven guard you!
You wander, lonely shadow, recent passion,
Looking within you, premature in terror:
Even as an immortal exquisite,
And hideously beautiful, my child
As....