Now the king-star
Is falling down below the rocks—and blue
As a sea-deep is the hollow we must tempt;
It is blue: one venturing bird
Makes it gigantic with a little shake,
An arietta.... We must drop down lower
Than the bird’s song—it is not from the ground.
Look, my Juanito!
Aside I hitch my shoulders through this narrow
And windy crevice of the barbican.
I am as agile and as thin as you,
I feel as young—
Case-hardened from that pestilence, a tower
Among my race; strong as La Mota;
A creature that but needs to touch the earth
To be Antaeus and invincible.
You shall descend first—death for you or freedom.
Then welcome death or freedom! Could I, Juan,
Leave you behind—
We who sailed out together, desolate,
And for three years have tasted unenjoyed
Sleep, and the vigil that has been our lives?
We do not on a peradventure part:
You have the lighter bones, the cord will bear you
Down to the grass so featly, it will signal
Its eagerness to me.... Juanito,
How full a man you come from these three years!
Will everything be changed as you?
JUANITO.
Oh, no!
Those who have loved you cannot love you more;
They cannot grow in that. Her Excellence
Your sister will be happy
Beyond the last hope of her weariness
At the free news.
CESARE.
Lucrezia! I can watch her—
How at Ferrara all her life goes by;
How, from her sun-red towers, across the plain
She is looking out, and cannot see the prison
That stifles me: her eyes as they look out
Turn Amor into stone.
When will the rope be brought?
How soon? This Garcia de Magona will not
Betray me as Gonsalvo at the last?
JUANITO.
Garcia is safe; he burns to furnish you.
CESARE.
How wider
The steepness stretches, the tranquillity!
What does it promise? It is Fortune’s Pit,
That gapes in Spain, that swallowed me awhile
In Rome and Naples, and then cast me out
Alive upon this pinnacle. And now....
The world will be my chess-board, I survey
Until occasion hail me. There is Louis
Of France would set his horse to tread with mine;
The Emperor hates as Pope the Rovere;
Gonzaga lord of Mantua will espouse
My fellowship, Ferrara is fraternal;
My brother of Navarre; to whom I fly,
Strangely accordant....
[He gazes out in concentrated reverie. A key is turned softly at the door; Garcia de Magona enters, bringing ropes.