Plac. Some pleasing objects do her mind employ; For on her face I read a wandering joy.
SONG.
Dam.Ah how sweet it is to love! Ah how gay is young desire! And what pleasing pains we prove When we first approach love's fire! Pains of love be sweeter far Than all other pleasures are.
Sighs, which are from lovers blown, Do but gently heave the heart: Even the tears they shed alone, Cure, like trickling balm, their smart. Lovers when they lose their breath, Bleed away in easy death.
Love and time with reverence use, Treat them like a parting friend: Nor the golden gifts refuse, Which in youth sincere they send: For each year their price is more, And they less simple than before.
Love, like spring-tides full and high, Swells in every youthful vein; But each tide does less supply, Till they quite shrink in again: If a flow in age appear, 'Tis but rain, and runs not clear.
At the end of the Song a Dance of Spirits. After which Amariel, the Guardian-Angel of St Catharine, descends to soft music, with a flaming sword. The spirits crawl off the stage amazedly, and Damilcar runs to a corner of it.
Amar. From the bright empire of eternal day, Where waiting minds for heaven's commission stay, Amariel flies: A darted mandate came From that great will which moves this mighty frame; Bid me to thee, my royal charge, repair, To guard thee from the dæmons of the air; My flaming sword above them to display, (All keen, and ground upon the edge of day;) The flat to sweep the visions from thy mind, The edge to cut them through that stay behind. Vain spirits, you, that, shunning heaven's high noon, Swarm here beneath the concave of the moon, What folly, or what rage, your duty blinds, To violate the sleep of holy minds? Hence, to the task assigned you here below! Upon the ocean make loud tempests blow; Into the wombs of hollow clouds repair, And crush out thunder from the bladdered air; From pointed sun-beams take the mists they drew, And scatter them again in pearly dew; And of the bigger drops they drain below, Some mould in hail, and others stamp in snow.
Dam. Mercy, bright spirit! I already feel The piercing edge of thy immortal steel: Thou, prince of day, from elements art free; And I all body when compared to thee. Thou tread'st the abyss of light, And where it streams with open eyes canst go: We wander in the fields of air below, Changelings and fools of heaven; and thence shut out, Wildly we roam in discontent about: Gross heavy-fed, next man in ignorance and sin, And spotted all without, and dusky all within. Without thy sword I perish by thy sight; I reel, and stagger, and am drunk with light.
Amar. If e'er again thou on this place art found, Full fifty years I'll chain thee under ground; The damps of earth shall be thy daily food, All swoln and bloated like a dungeon toad: And when thou shalt be freed, yet thou shalt lie Gasping upon the ground, too faint to fly, And lag below thy fellows in the sky.