Canute [aside]. The fool!
I cannot speak.—;Take her my silence, Thane.
Act I, Scene 4
The Cup of Water, published in the same volume with Canute, is an idyll whose delicate beauty one almost fears to touch. That it too astonishingly carries a problem one would hardly guess; and even in face of the poet’s confession of the fact, and her anxiety lest the problem should be misunderstood, one would demur that here again her practice has been better than her precept. For these exquisite love-scenes, these magnanimous friends and lovers, and this clear greatness of thought issuing simply in noble action might bear some relation to a ‘marriage question’ in Utopia, but would have little enough to do with such a problem in the actual world. That, however, is rather a cause for rejoicing to those who can delight in the ideal beauty of the work, and who can see in its ethical audacity an innocence which only could dare to follow up so boldly a logical attack upon the conventions of morality.
The theme was adopted from a projected poem of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; but in taking it over our poet has moralized it far from its origin. The story as she tells it is concerned with the love of a young king, Almund, for a peasant-girl, his renunciation of her from motives of loyalty, and his ultimate discovery that in giving her up he has sinned against something in her and in himself which has a deeper sanction than loyalty—;that, in a word, fulfilment is a higher good than renunciation. But this he finds out too late:
Almund. I shall find
All the great years of Hell inadequate
To mourn this mighty error and defeat—;
To put such gift away, and youth and manhood
Stirring within me! Act III, Scene 2
. . . . .
Oh, we must learn
To drink life’s pleasures if we would be pure,
Deep, holy draughts.... Act III, Scene 2
. . . . .
Love, Love, Love,
Without which we are made of the mere clay
Of the world’s agèd floor. Act II, Scene 1
In the first scene the King and his friend Hubert have encountered Cara in the forest, and have begged of her a drink of water. She does not know them, and is unconscious that both are enchanted by her wild prettiness. She fills her cup with water, and brings it straight to Almund, though Hubert teasingly tries to intercept it; and the King desires her to serve his friend first. The merest touches put us in possession of the tragic knot—;that both of the young men love her and that she loves Almund; but that he, in the moment of realizing his passion, feels upon him the bonds of honour to his betrothed wife and loyalty to his friend. As they ride away, his mind is full of the conflict:
Almund [aside]. She is mine.
The water came not straighter from the earth,
Than she herself to me.
Hubert. You are unmindful.
I vainly prate to one in reverie—;
Indifferent to my fortune.
Almund. May you win her!
You are my friend.
Hubert. I doubt not she will listen;
The small, cold cheek grew ruddy. We shall wed,
When you espouse your Millicent.