'Twas too well acted, but what wealth of goodness
Was there.
Merchant.
The greatest goodness, if 'twas really
Naught but a pose assumed.
Sobeide (passionately).
I beg thee, husband,
This one thing: ruin not our life together.
As yet 'tis young and blind as tiny fledglings,
A single speech like this might swiftly slay it!
I shall not be an evil wife to thee:
I mean that slowly I shall find, perhaps,
In other things a little of that bliss
For which I held out eager fingers, thinking
There was a land quite full of it, both air
And earth, and one might enter into it.
I know by now that I was not to enter ...
I shall be almost happy in that day,
All longing, painless, shared 'twixt past and present,
Like shining sunlight on the fresh green trees,
And like an unburdened sky behind the garden
The future: empty, yet quite full of light ...
But we must give it time to grow:
As yet confusion everywhere prevails.
Thou must assist me, it must never happen
That with ill-chosen words thou link this present
Too strongly to the life which now is over.
They must be parted by a wall of glass,
As airtight and as rigid as in dreams.
(At the window.)
That evening must not come, that should discover
Me sitting at this window without thee:
—Just not to be at home, not from the window
Of my long girlhood's chamber to look out
Into the darkness, has a dangerous,
Peculiar and confusing power, as if
I lay upon the open road, no man's possession,
As fully mine as never in my dreams!
A maiden's life is much more strictly ruled
By pressure of the air, than thou conceivest,
To whom it seems most natural to be free.
The evening ne'er must come, when I should thus
Stand here, with all the weight of heavy shadows,
My parents' eyes, all, all behind me thrust,
Involved in yon dark hangings at my back,
And this brave landscape with the golden stars,
The gentle breeze, the bushes, thus before me.
(With growing agitation.)
The evening ne'er must come, when I should see
All this with eyes like these, to say to me:
Here lies a road that shimmers in the moonlight:
Before the gentle breeze the next light cloudlet
Impels to meet the moon, a man could run
That road unto its end, between the hedges,
Then comes a cross-road, now a planted field,
And then the shadow of the standing corn,
At last a garden! There his hand would touch
At once a curtain, back of which is all:
All kissing, laughing, all the happiness
This world can give promiscuously flung
About like balls of golden wool, such bliss
That but a drop of it on parchéd lips
Suffices to be lighter than a flame,
To see no more of difficulty, nor
To understand what men call ugliness!
(Almost shrieking.)
The evening ne'er must come, that with a thousand
Unfettered tongues should cry to me: why not?
Why hast thou never run in dark of night
That road? Thy feet were young, thy breath sufficient:
Why hast thou saved it, that thou mightst have plenty
To weep a thousand nights upon thy pillow?