Ard. To mortals, yes.
For so our lives are knit, and part to part
Keep sound and whole. But pledges unto God
Man cannot make or keep till he may bind
The Will that journeys with the launchèd world.
So might His rivers say "Here will we rest,
And worship thee," nor run into the sea,
And God must be content though all his fields
Burn waterless. So might the winds vow Him
Unbroken calm, and God who needs his storms
Must still his own desire while his dear earth
Goes pestilent.
Ber. Unsentient things! He shares
His will with man.
Ard. But not to enslave his own.
Christ seals no bond the lips lay on the soul
That is each instant new as life, as change,
As the importuning world. Ah, he who sells
To one hour's narrow need the zenith light
Of unborn days would snuff out time and know
No rising sun. Himself would be a slavedom
Where never Christ would walk.
Ber. Is 't Ardia speaks?
Ard. Truth speaks, not I. If man must vow,
Let it not be to love no woman,—wear
The vest of fire, and in a sunless cell
Chain Heaven-arteried life,—then peering out,
Cling to the nested eaves transfixed to see
His fled desires wear the horizon flame.
But let him vow his Christ shall shrink no vein
Of broad and pauseless being; ay,—shall keep
Sweet surgence with his blood, climb with his spirit
Time's lifting hills, and hold in watch with him
The unshrouding pinnacles where love puts off
The old clouds for the dawn. Forsworn? O, heart
Cell-bound, thy very vows deny thy Christ.
Who serve him wear no chains.
Ber. You think me true?
And yet I felt your wounded, doubting eyes
Raining me scorn. Why was it, Ardia?
Ard. Scorn?
I have forgot why 'twas—or shall forget.
Ber. And there was pity too, that dropped your lids.
And would have sheltered me. Is that forgot?
Ard. Nay, that.... I'll tell you that. I thought of Love,
Man's angel, and the heart-lone way of him
Who missed and found her not. Never to take
More courage from the fall of her sure feet
On heights that wind between death and the stars;
Or where his road burns through the shadeless sands,
Reach for the hand with fountains in its touch
And feel the palm-breath round him. Not to know
Her eyes when night is come, and there's no star;
Her breast, that pillowing the darkened waste,
Keeps warm the bitten earth and gives him dream
To meet and match the dawn. So wept my thoughts,
Forgetting that you are no wanderer,
But kingly housed will rule a tamèd realm.
Or should a harvest come of spears, not grain,
Yet is your princess brave and beautiful,
And bears, may be, a mating heart. Love then
Will come to you——
Ber. My princess?