CYTHERA.
CYTHERA.
Personages of the play.
| Colette | Young Girls. | |
| Sylvie | ||
| Hou-Ché | A Chinese Girl. | |
| Ombrage | A Young Poet. | |
| Cassandre | An Old Peasant. | |
| Sophron | A Philosopher. | |
| Yves | Young Artists. | |
| Amis | ||
| Gaspard | ||
| Celadon | ||
| Antony | A Boy. | |
| Father Bernadine | An Aged Priest. | |
| Peregrina | A Stranger Lady. | |
| Hermes | Her Companion. | |
Courtiers, Ladies, Children, and Musicians.
Period.The early eighteenth century.
The action takes place in a glade of tall old trees just touch'd by Autumn. To the left is a gardenarchitecture, baluster, and slowly dropping fountain. Thro' a clearing to the right a blue lagoon melts into a background of misty peaks, and the gilded masts and half-furl'd rainbow sails of an otherwise unseen galley appear.
The Farandôle sweeps down and across the glade from right to left.
THE FARANDÔLE.
We'll to the woods no more, lopp'd is the laurel now,
The glory gay despoil'd, and leafless every bough!
The fair crowns cut away, that grew so green before,
Passionate pilgrims pass, we'll to the woods no more!
We'll to the woods no more, the green glades nymph bereft
In order'd columns fall, like swathe by scythesman left.
The woodland shrine is fell'd, we lov'd so well of yore,
Poor pilgrims dis-possess'd, we'll to the woods no more.
Ah fall'n, fall'n low, the pillars of our fane!
Whose leaf-enwoven walls may rise no more again.
From high pil'd roof of boughs, from shadow-dappl'd floor,
Passionate pilgrims pass! We'll to the woods no more!
Ombrage.(Looking after the dancers):
Passionate pilgrims, so your passions pass,
I deem'd the laurel would outlast your loves,
The bay grow greenly yet when you were grey,
But they have fall'n and your loves abide,
Light loves as little lasting as the leaves
Renew'd each spring-tide, aye, and better so,
Since fleeting love is like the wayside well
You drink of, passing, but enduring love
Is bitter and unfathomable, salt as brine,
Mysterious as an unsounded sea.
(Sylvie appears left and listens a moment.)
Sylvie:
What do you murmur, moody wanderer?
Watching the dancers with a jaundic'd eye!
Is nothing lovely in this gay green world?
Ombrage:
Much that is lovely, little to be lov'd,
Friends who are fickle, women who are false
And planets unpropitious.
Sylvie:
O, have done,
You are the world's eternal malcontent,
You nurse a grudge 'gainst all humanity!
Your sensibility's so exquisite,
The Zephyr seems to you a boreal blast,
The Summer sunshine not to be endur'd.
Methinks had you the power, you would call
Some all-annihilating ruin down
Upon this old earth. When the bearded star
Last Autumn seem'd to threat the beechen woods
So low it hung, so fiery-menacing,
I'd watch you gaze on it as tho' you pray'd
Some conflagration hasten on the day
Supreme when Earth, dismasted, derelict,
Shall roll thro' space her all-dispeopled hull
Drifting, abandon'd on the tide of stars
To split in shatter'd wrack athwart the prow
Of some huge planet's hostile oncoming.
What is it that you lack, that you lament,
What makes you go so sadly, in the sun?
Ombrage:
I seek a beauty Earth has not to give,
And I am tangl'd in as curs'd a web
As ever the weaving sisters wrought awry.
Sylvie:
I wish you clearer vision, and sunnier mind,
What seek you fairer than this glade of ours,
Where the Court ladies with their gallants dance,
And like a butterfly the Eastern girl
The Jesuits sent from China for the Queen,
Flutters and poises, while the rippl'd lake
Glimmers in sunlit silver thro' the green.
Ombrage:
So you perceive it, thus to me appears
Thisto your visionso enchanted glade,
Trees heavy foliag'd and soon to fall,
Too old to stand for many winters more
Against the melancholy of a lake
Whence fever wakes at starset, and a sward
Where ladies over-ripe and listless swains,
These young too long, and these too early old
Exchange their vows and murmur'd madrigal
With lip-devotion from the heart afar,
With words of flame that melt not lips that freeze,
In faded light of yellow afternoon
They drowse their disillusion with a dance,
Subduing sorrow to a saraband,
Attuning madness to the minuet
And passion to the pavane,
(To the dancers.)
While you may,
O silken shepherd of the gilded crook,
And masquerading satin shepherdess
Your single lamb perfum'd with bergamot,
Play your brocaded pastoral! play on
Your comedy of mimic love and hate,
With trivial interlude of muted strings
Or far-off winding of a huntsman's horn.
Soon the long-brooding thunderstorm shall break
Crashing athwart your dainty passionless play,
As when there peals the solemn organ-blast
Sonorous, of the deep Autumnal wind
Dirge of cicala and of butterfly
Drowning the languid songs of Summertide!
STAR-GAZER'S SONG.
Ombrage.(Sings):
Star-stricken-constellation-cross'd
I call to the clear unanswering sky,
'Where lurks my foe, inimical stars?
Silver Procyon, ruby Mars?
A gem of the glittering galaxy?'
Was it Aldeboran's rusted gold
Mis-rul'd my wayward destiny?
Whose was the influence malign?
Emerald Altair, was't thine?
Thine leaden Saturn, heavy and old?
Or Opaline Algol's evil eye?
Hou-Ché.(To Ombrage):
You count yourself star-stricken, what of me?
The Weaving Sisters wrought me webs of woe,
The Oxen trod me underfoot, the Sieve
Sav'd me the sorrow, letting 'scape the joy.
The Watery Stars dropp'd rain of tears on me,
The northward pointing Dipper never pour'd
Me draught of gladness, only wine of myrrh.
My Father of a hundred cars was Lord,
His sway extending to the four far seas
And when he slept in pretious jade in-urn'd
My brother chose his bed in flowers to make
And lay him down beneath the willow tree,
Till driv'n from rule by a familiar foe
He drank of dragon's blood, and ended all.
Then was I sold to an Ambassador,
And overseas, a slave, in alien court
I please your princes with my strange array
An exile, in a foreign land, en'slav'd,
Sure there are many more ill-starr'd than you.
Father Bernadine:
Surely the Golden Age rolls round again
Since this fair summer came to bless our shore,
Each day brings a fresh wonder to the birth,
Or turns some wonted beauty fairer still,
More meekly musical these crooning doves
More iris-hued their neck, more coralline
The little feet that follow where she goes,
This Stranger-Lady, pilgrim from the sea,
Around whose galley, day-long, dolphins play!
Sophron:
Aye, sea-gulls who at starkest winter-tide
Still shun the inland neighbourhood of man,
Come idly circling all the noonday through,
And shake with wings aslant the rose-leaves down
Upon their Siren-Mistress!
Father Bernadine:
The lagoon
Warmer and bluer growing at every tide
Bears from the open ocean to our shore
A sand more silver, amber and ambergris.
Treasure of rosy-hued or emerald weed,
Dyed with intenser colour, fairer shells
Than I had thought our cold sea held in store,
But sure some genial influence abroad
Breathes from the deep or showers from on high,
For on the gray wall of our abbey grange
An old vine droops, tho' trebly secular
With weight of grapes beyond man's memory,
And as gold day turns silver evening
We mark, rose-flaming in a violet sky
The planet Hesper burn as bright, as clear
As wedding torch of epithalamy
Lit for this old world's spousal with a star!
(Father Bernadine and Sophron pass out left.)
(Enter Colette, Sylvie, and young men.)
Colette:
Here let us rest, one cannot dance all day!
Our farandôle is finish'd, soon the Court
Will tread their study'd stately minuet,
Pacing and pausing as the cadence falls.
Sylvie:
Bring me a draught from yonder brimming urn
A drowsy river-nymph lets lean, and drip,
Just now it were as welcome as a cup
Drawn from the faëry people's wishing-well,
'The well in the wood, where the dearest dream comes true'
Our grandames, spinning, us'd to sing us of.
Colette:
I had forgotten the strange old spinning song.
'The well in the wood, where the dearest dream comes true,
The wood where grows the herb of Heart-content,
O'er which the trusting youth or maiden, bent,
Finds dream-fulfilment, aye, and Hearts'-ease too!'
That's but the burthen, I forget the song!
Yves:
I fear that well ran dry long years ago,
But far in the beechen wood the sources spring
Which feed this fountain, think to your content,
This is the true well's water, drink and dream
And waking have your wish!
All:
The cup, the cup!
Amis:
If that be all, drink you at any spring,
'Twill serve your purpose, act but steadfastly,
Waste no while wishing, will and dare and do!
The dream-sick soul is barren, the virile mind
Begets and brings his purpose to the birth,
Moulding the plastic forces of his life
That way or this as bids a strenuous will.
So dare to live your poem and your play
Nor keep distinct the deed and the desire,
The act's anticipation, and the act!
Celadon:
If we had found the woodland wishing-well,
What would you wish for?
Amis:
What does youth and prime
And old age wish for, Very Beauty.
Sophron:
Aye!
But what is Very Beauty, seeking which
Sculptor, painter, and poet have differing aims,
Young Anthony still scribbles in his book
Whilst Yves the Sonnet's sequence still pursues,
Yet each is longing for and seekingwhat?
And where to find it, that we all would know.
Gaspard:
Maybe that I can tell you, there are days
When Nature seems so near to us, so kind,
So comprehending, you might almost deem
All Earth were standing tiptoe, in a hush
Breathless, expectant of some spoken word
Breath'd from the sky or whisper'd from the sea
A spell to heal the hurt of the wounded world,
To win discordant stars to tune again.
So must we dwell with Nature till the hour
When she reveal her secret!
Amis:
Art for me!
For art is nature better'd.
Gaspard:
Say you so?
Amis:
Nature is like the ever-flowing spring
Running to waste at whiles, and breaking bounds,
Art is the wilful water canaliz'd,
Stor'd for refreshment and for pleasure baths
Breaking in fountains to delight the eye.
Since Beauty dwell alone in mind of man
Nature knows not that she is beautiful,
And those ideas which all confusédly
And all obscurely Nature may present
Art orders, varys, harmonizes, clears.
Sophron:
How, then, define your beauty what it is?
Gaspard:
Diversity reduc'd to unity,
The multiple made simple.
Amis:
Nay, for me,
A certain consonance of things diverse.
Celadon:
The outcome of an order'd energy,
Contrast and correspondence.
Yves:
Symmetry,
Variety, or regularity.
Sophron:
You seem but ill-agreéd, and I affirm
That art of Sculptor, Painter, Poet, Bard
Is Charm and Pleasure, never Strength and Life.
Truth is the only living Beauty. You
Who prate of Very Beauty Visible,
You seemat least to us Philosophers
Most like to children playing on the shore
To one who has explor'd the middle sea,
The sunless depth where groves unearthly wave,
Of giant weed and growth unfathomable.
Who, safe escap'd the dreadful Remora
And clasping polyp, comes to shore again,
Breathing a deep draught of the living air,
Shaking the tangled weed from breast and brow,
To find his deeds of deep discovery
Discounted and disputed, travers'd, weigh'd,
As false or true, by forward babbling boys
Who guage the dim recesses of the deep
By ankle-deep exploring of the bay!
Truth is a pearl that lies in the deep sea
A snowy peak that towers overhead,
Your 'Beauty's' but a mocking mirage!
Ombrage:
Aye,
But we who on the desert border dwell
Prefer the mirage to the wilderness,
The imag'd waters to the barren sands,
We know that brackish springs for us must serve,
We seek no draught of water from that lake,
Yet love its very unreality,
Catching a fancy'd coolness from its blue,
A feign'd refreshment from its waving palms,
Content, so that it veil the burning sand
That rings us round about, inevitably.
Yves.(To Sophron):
And since you say that unattainable
Your Truth, that is the only Beauty dwells
Thron'd on a high crag, out of reach, afar,
Past waters ferryless, unfordable,
Unnavigable lakes and bridgeless streams,
How know you but that some delusive mist
Colour the sheer peak to a lovely hue,
A black rock masquing in a painted veil,
Unlovely, barren?
Celadon:
Fairer, better far
Than sterile Truth, a fertile Fantasy!
A lovely dream than dun reality!
Father Bernadine:
Let be, let be, to all who love her well
Still Beauty speaks a universal tongue
Unknowing strife of Babel-jargoning,
And Art can make you from your servitude
Of task unlovely, uncongenial toil,
Free citizens of dear Callipolis
The Soul's ideal city! Never deem
That Beauty is a thing remote, ensky'd
Outside our daily being, think her not
A parasite upon the Tree of Life,
But that fair bough's supremest blossoming.
Essential Beauty mortals never know
But Nature's beauty, its reflection,
Partaker in it, but by matter marr'd
The fair face mirror'd in a metal dim.
Still when very Beauty comes to birth
Led of a legend, steering by a star,
The world's Wise Men set forth on pilgrimage,
And if they find it they are bless'd indeed,
And if they seek it still, and never find
Yet are they bless'd in seeking, till life's end,
When, as we hope, the very Beauty's self
May in a distant country smile on each
Who thought, who sought, who wrought, who fought for her!
Colette:
Have you then nothing you would say to me?
Each day's the same, we wander hand in hand
You never tell me that my eyes are blue
Nor mark the 'sunshine captive in my hair,'
That is what someone tells meyou are dumb,
Yet once you used to say you loved me, lost
You seem, by daylight, blinking like an owl
Who waits for sunset.
Gilles:
Aye, the Moon for me!
For I am of the lunar brotherhood.
She gazed upon us in our cradle-sleep
And with her whiteness all our cheeks grew pale.
Our wild eyes open'd wider, wondering,
Are glaucous as the grey moon-glassing sea,
Minions we of the fantastick Moon
Who sways her wistful wayward votaries,
And dowers them with kinship to the tides,
With wills that shift like reefs of quaking sand,
With fitful calm and fickle energy.
Our wits unstable wax and wane with Her!
Colette:
Fantastick truly the Moon's minions,
Who leave the world that roars beside their gate
To listen in an echo-breathing shell
How murmur dreamy memories of the sea.
Who mourn the bud when full the blossom blows
The blossom as the fruit succeeds the flower,
And, all too late, the fruit when boughs are bare!
Who, when they should be doing dream so late
They sleep the clock round, wilder'd with false fires,
Waking, deem sunset sunrise, dusk the dawn,
The star of evening the morning star.
Fantastick truly is the moonstruck crew!
Gilles:
But when we leave this uncongenial earth,
Then is our guerdon, then our great reward,
Departing, happy, the luminous path we take
Where melts the mirror'd brightness of our star
Reticulate in silver on the sea,
And happy, follow the green and silver way
Up to the regent of our lunacy,
Our Goddess, Mistress, Queen and Mother Moon.
Colette:
Mock me no more with moonshine promises
Go and be happy with a moon-maiden!
Sylvie:
Again I tell you, only for the child
And for the sake of Ysabeau, my friend
Who left her baby motherless, for them
I may consent to marry you, but now
We'll talk no more of it, I'll rest me here,
They spoke of Beauty but a while ago.
Cassandre:
You think too much of Beauty, 'tis a thing
Outside of our existence, which beseems
Great churches or the palaces of Kings
But has no place within a cottage door,
For poor folks Beauty is utility,
And fitness, home-spun habit and grogram gown.
Care for the woven web and plenishing gear
And healthful labour shall be your concern,
With no fantastick care for Beauty.
Sylvie:
Nay,
You will not chide me, leaning at the loom,
If from the lattice I may gaze at whiles
Upon the giant pear-tree at your door,
I us'd to dream the fairies lov'd the tree
And I would garland it each holyday,
At dawn and twilight it would whisper me
A message from the fairies.
Cassandre:
Ah, the pear,
With all its bounteous blossom, it fruited ill,
I fell'd it lately, grubb'd the root away,
And turn'd its place into the cabbage garth.
It may not murmur to you any more
Of fairies dancing under the cold blue moon
But whisper you of hearth-warm sanctities,
And fireside duty, and the cares of home,
Gilding our pewter as the log flames high.
Sylvie:
Fell'd the old pear tree, silver in the moon?
That shower'd each springtime down its scented snow
Which melted not on brow or bosom, nay,
You should have ask'd me 'ere you fell'd the tree
That was my childhood's glory, and the grace
Of that poor cottage; O, I thought to take
Your dead wife's place, because I lov'd her child,
But now I see you'll never understand
One mood of mine, and I should sit and hear
A voice that cry'd at midnight by the door,
A footfall lingering, loth to leave the place
Where late she rul'd her household, I should feel
A sighing presence as the log burn'd low,
And mark a gray shade bend a moment's space
To blessif ghost may blessthe cradled babe,
The mother left behind her, friend farewell,
Seek a bride elsewhere, I am not for you!
Cassandre:
Here is a pretty coil about a tree!
PEREGRINA'S SONG.
Far, very far, steer by my star,
Leaving the loud world's 'wildering clamour,
In the mid-sea waits you maybe
The isle of glamour where Beauty reigns
From coasts of commerce and myriad-marted
Towns of traffic by wide seas parted,
Past shoals unmapp'd and by reefs uncharted
The single-hearted my isle attains!
Under a sky cloudless and high,
The blue sea's pearl and the green world's wonder
Dreams thro' her day by that fair bay
Where no waves thunder, where no winds veer,
No friends forgetful, for hearts remember
When no change mars and no years dismember,
Where the flame sinks never to ashen ember
Where no December deflowers the year.
Each soul may find faith to her mind,
Seek you the peace of the groves Elysian,
Or the ivy twine and the wands of vine,
The Dionysian, Orphic rite?
To share the joy of the Mænad's leaping
In frenzy'd train thro' the dusk glen sweeping
The dew-drench'd dance, and the star-watch'd sleeping,
Or temple-keeping, in Vestal white?
Ye who regret suns that have set
Lo, each God of the ages golden
Here is enshrin'd, ageless and kind,
Unbeholden the dark years through.
Their faithful oracles yet bestowing
By laurel's whisper and clear stream's flowing
Or the leafy stir of the Gods own going
In oak-trees blowing may answer you!
In my fair land perfected stand
What artist's dreaming and poet's leisure
Only in thought fashion'd and wrought
For very pleasure, for Beauty's sake.
The bronze cast fair to the heart's desire,
The sweet song fashion'd of tears and fire
No languid string and no jarring wire,
Where no hands tire, no voices break!
Yves:
Thank you, sweet Lady, for your silver song.
We at the noon of this sweet Summer's day
Told of our aspirations and desires,
And you have wound them in a melody
And show'd us there the Beauty that we crav'd
And fairer than we deem'd it.
Peregrina:
So young sir,
Men still love Beauty?
Yves:
Ease and wealth and power
Men for the most part follow, but a few,
And those few young men very Beauty seek.
That seems the tragedy of growing old,
To lose the dear ideal you saw and sought
With happy fever all your April days,
Renounce your dream and sit contented down
To beef and broth, ambrosia all forgot!
Peregrina:
Yet here is a happy boy who dreams awake,
What is your name, who lean upon your book,
And so intently scan the festal scene,
Drawing the dancers in their shadowy glade?
Antony:
My name is Antony.
Peregrina:
Ah, once I knew
An Antony who lost the world for love,
As you for Beauty you shall still pursue,
A Beauty subtler, more evasive yet,
A vision fainter, fairer, farther still
Than ever your eye may mark, your hand translate!
That fleeting vision seeking, you shall know
The soul of Sorrow in the guise of Joy,
The sob that breaks thro' all the lilt of lutes,
Madness of Mirth that turns to tears so soon,
And still the shadowy sighing in the song!
Not the green rapture of the riotous Spring
Shall sway your brooding fancy, not the noon,
But Autumn's tenderer, more regretful tone,
The strange sea-green of skys crepuscular,
The bitter even-scent of box and bay,
The glimmering whiteness of the garden gods,
Thro' earlier falling dusk of the yellowing year,
These most shall match your mood, when sunset brings
The violet sky holding one hopeless star,
The tragic dusk that deepens to dispair!
Father Bernadine:
He is a strange child, for he will not play
With other urchins, racing, or at ball.
His pencil never absent from his hand
As tho' he fear'd that night would fall too soon,
He'll watch the fountains all an Autumn day,
Mount and descend against the sky serene,
Until the gloaming deepen thro' the glade.
Peregrina:
His hand shall falter and his purpose fail
Attainment, as the sky-aspiring jets
Of frustrate fountains falling back in spray
Sink sighing to their marble bason's pen,
Missing the goal they strove for, with a sob
To find the stars so unattainable.
Still seeking very Beauty, as a moth
Flitting across a hall of festal lights
May feverishly beat a little hour
Against an alabaster-guarded lamp,
Craving the flame, in passionate impotence,
Vainly, and passing leave for only trace
The delicate dusk that deck'd a downy wing,
So evanescent, so ephemeral
Out of the dark emerging, into the dark
Returning.
Father Bernadine:
Let him only love the light,
And seek it earnestly, all will be well!
Peregrina:
Who is this gentle, placid, kind old man
Whose long white locks frame so serene a face?
Ombrage:
He is our good priest, Father Bernardine.
Peregrina:
So there are priests yet, servants of what Gods?
Is this a priestess this so rainbow-hued,
Like some bright Eastern bird?
Hou-Ché:
No Lady, no!
Incense I burn no more to any Gods,
Mine own forsook me, and the new are strange,
But you, O mistress, I would choose to serve
Likest a lady on a lotus set
Out Goddess of all Beauty and all Love
Who smil'd on me 'neath favourabler skys.
And I believe you come from far away
From some more happy to this sadder star!
Peregrina:
To me as unto you their Gods are strange,
For, in the temples I was us'd to know,
Inscrutable and immemorial,
Clad in their strict and all-encincturing
Close-pleated vesture hieratical
The old Gods sate and watch'd the world go by.
Their writhen mouth and long-drawn dreaming eyes
Frozen to smiling immobility,
Their calm brows set in vague unearthly gaze
Contemplative of unimagin'd space,
Looking beyond the incense and the lights,
Impassive of the pains, the pray'rs of men!
Hou-Ché:
Sought or unsought still the old Gods endure!
Near to my home, the other side the world,
A God awaits his vanish'd worshippers,
Deep in the still recesses of a wood
Where once a mighty city teem'd with men
A myriad fires smok'd, a thousand bells
Called from the temples years and years along!
Temple and town have pass'd to nothingness,
But still among the cedars secular,
Deep in the dim wood still the sun salutes
The musing golden God who agelessly,
Breathing no incense but the pillar'd pines
Deathlessly dreams the lagging years away.
Peregrina:
Alas, no more thro' dewy underwoods
Do Dionysos' frenzy'd worshippers
Dight in the dappl'd vesture of a fawn,
These rosy-hued thro' Coan garment seen,
These frankly white but for their ivy-crown,
These wreathing verdant clusters of the vine,
Purple and amber twined with trailing green,
With clash of cymbal and with sobbing flute
Divide the darkness with opposing song
Of rousing rapture, or a low lament;
But now you serve some stern ascetic God,
You seem to count it shame that a form be fair,
And muffle you like vestals!
Hermes:
Nakedness
In the palaistra or among the vines
Bathed of the dew, and sunshine-sanctified,
Was God-like once that Beast-like is to-day!
All innocent joys and frank are turned morose
And harmful made, albeit more sweet by you
Who spice each joy with savour of a sin!
Yet tho' the vile impute his villainy
To Beauty, still the marble Goddess stands
A statue scribbled by the lounger's coal
With trivial inscription, or unclean,
Calm and impassive, heedless of the stain,
Since one night's dew shall wash her white once more.
Colette.(To Peregrina):
Lady, fair stranger, like a soothsayer
You prophesied for little Antony,
I have afriend, you mark him yonder, Gilles,
Have you no cure for his moon-madness?
Peregrina:
Aye!
He is of those who fear, too much, the sun,
The gold great sun who all our lives should light,
Too much you minister to the maddening moon,
Mother of all Thessalian Sorcery,
Strange spells and enigmatic oracles,
Come forth into the sunlight from the dusk,
And find how fair are flowers of the earth!
(Peregrina, smiling, joins hands of Gilles and Colette.)
Ombrage.(To Peregrina):
Lady, or Goddess, for you seem to me
Fairer than mortal, come from very far,
Those glens and glades where Mænads dance and dwell
You told us lately of. Are those your home?
'Ere you shall pass as strangely as you came,
Leave us some message for our comfort. Tell
Us Beauty-seekers how we may attain,
How we may hope to hale our Goddess down
From coursing on the high star-haunted hills,
She only breathes that thin transcendant air,
Drinking the clear spring at its icy source,
And we who fain would climb, grow faint and fall,
Since Very Beauty, true Philosophy
Dwell far, so far!
Peregrina:
O single-hearted, seek!
What though the quest should seem as vain as his,
Who strives to trace the sources of the Nile,
Yet sometime it has chanc'd clear vision'd men
Have almost found the very Beauty's fount,
As Spring-diviners with their speaking staves,
Threading the forest light on hidden wells.
Sculptor, musician, painter, poet, aye
The poet chiefly maybe, as he leans
To catch the echo of Her flying feet,
To mark the flutter of Her waving veil,
Still seeking Beauty as a blind man light,
A babe the breast, seaman the pilot star.
If but Her shadow fall across his book
His verse is ageless attar, in a vase
Close-seal'd against the tyranny of Time.
You take it from it's shelf, and lift the lid,
Scent of a long dead Summer breathes again
Subtle and sweet as this last June's, that pass'd
With all her thronging roses!
Hermes:
Carve or sing,
Model or paint, but ever in your work
Set what is best in Beauty's honour, grave
Your golden sentence with a golden pen,
For Style is the expression fair and feat
Of exquisite impression. So the die
The minter presses on the molten gold
Gives out the perfect medal to the world.
Each face of guardian God or hero-head,
Their clear-cut brows bound with the victor's palm,
With towers crown'd or bays, or ears of corn,
As power or plenty, wealth or glory will,
And Genius that God-engraven die
We call.
Sylvie:
Must Beauty ever be richly hous'd
In splendid palace roof'd of fretted gold
With pretious marble colonnades arow?
Peregrina:
Nay, often with the simplest, Beauty dwells
If flaw'd your agate, your cornelian,
Your oriental alabaster be,
Still may a fragment fashion'd to a cup
Sweeten the homely draught of every day.
Even a beechen bowl is beautiful,
A cedar, fallen, makes a fragrant press,
Or breathes it's sweetness out in glowing fire.
Nothing so grand that it awake not joy,
Nothing so slight but you may joy in it,
Fragrance of flowers, cool of water-spring,
A Gothic Fane's capricious fantasy
As in an Attic Temple's line and law,
Savour of fruit as warmth of winter fire
The silver stars, the splendour of the sun,
The placid and the vex'd complaining sea!
Ombrage:
Lady, have you no oracle for me,
What of my future?
Peregrina:
Like the wandering bird
That builds no nest, that has no resting-place,
That never furls a travel-weary wing,
But evermore, reposeless voyager
Drifting in tempest, floating in the calm,
Oars with untiring flight the deep of heav'n,
You'll wander the wide world thro', preferring still
To calm of Summertide the Winter's storm,
Leaning to hear, in Autumn, by the sea
The myriad voices of the deep's despair,
Lamenting some irreparable wrong,
Some incommunicable agony,
Or listen thro' the sunny Autumn noon
To sky and ocean's speechful silences.
Still leaving the order'd hearth, the guarded flame,
To follow a glimmering lure of wandering lights,
The faltering fires of some failing star,
You'll know the insistent summons of the dusk,
The unquiet prompting of the wooing woods,
That stirs the ageless sylvan in his sleep,
That calls the slumb'ring woodman to wake.
The Faun, the Centaur harbours in you yet,
Thrilling responsive to the night-fall's spell,
As passing to the wizard woods you find
A philtre in the drenching of the dew;
And ever waking or sleeping you shall hear
A soft wind blowing from behind the moon,
From past the sunset, from beyond the stars,
Whispering you remembrance and regret,
A sweet regret, a poignant memory
That once you met with Beauty face to face,
And that She pass'd from you upon Her way!
But what blows hither as the night-wind wakes?
Ombrage:
The first sun-wither'd leaves come rustling down,
Approaching Autumn's avant-couriers
Clad in the russet of his liveries,
Heralding in tumultuous Equinox.
Soon shall the flail o' the wind, the threshing rains
Winnow the wet woods with the vans of storm.
Peregrina:
Already Autumn, I must seek my ship
And steer a far course to my Island Home,
The lost Atlantis.
Ombrage:
Not Cythera, then?
Peregrina:
Not to the old Cythera, ruin'd now
By generations of barbaric men,
An arid rock where all the groves are dead,
The Lover's roses as the Sybil's bay
And Poet's laurel, only now remain
For wine and honey spill'd and spoil'd and sped,
Cliffs amber yellow like dun honeycomb
Rising at evening from the wine-hued sea
Violet.
Ombrage:
Mourning, for a present past
That rose from those fair waters long ago.
Yet stlll that presence broods upon the sea,
And I shall go the gladder all my days
Nursing the memory, the sweet regret
For that I once have seen the living light,
A flame late litten at that sacred fire
An emanation of the Essential Beauty,
Which burns for ever in the Absolute
Immutable, immortal, immanent,
Many and diverse be the lamps that hold
From age to age the ever-burning flame,
But one the light that shines within them still!
Peregrina:
Impending Autumn threatens, I must pass
Before the swallow, soon to greet again
The denizens of the dear elder world,
Oread, Centaur, Nereid, and Faun,
Who wait for me in my far island home.
Hermes:
Yet even here they are not wholly dead,
In gallant horseman and a perfect horse
The once-dissever'd Centaur lives again,
For heart-whole heady rapture of the chase,
The forest-haunting lad is half a Faun,
Spoiling the vineyard, harrying the hive,
The wine-warm'd peasant a Silenus seems.
The girl who meets her lover in the woods,
Who bathes at noontide in the forest pool
Is almost Nymph.
Peregrina:
Aye, still Eternal Youth
As Dionysos cries upon the hills
Holloaing up the hunt, each April-tide
As young Adonis wakes again from sleep,
With the divine renascence of the year.
So long as the native gladness of the world,
The pure primæval passion of the Spring
Breathe in the soft wind, pulse in the sea wave,
Stir in the blood and beacon from the eye,
Reigns, and shall reign the Universal Pan,
Who is not dead, who never died at all,
Nor ever can die whilst the world endure!
Peregrina:
(To the group in foreground.)
Farewell good people, dwell you here secure,
And lead you still your comfortable lives
Thrill'd by no passion, stung by no despair,
Your dense peace vex'd by no fraternal strife,
Of mind and soul and body's enmity,
Of earthly influence warring with the sky's.
Ombrage:
Yet who shall say they are not happiest, these,
Whose dull soul never quickens with a pang,
Who never know the dear divine unrest,
The stirring of a worthy discontent,
Fretted by no such fever as attends
The sprouting of the vans celestial
Which wither'd from us when to earth we fell!
The clods' indifference to a wooing star,
Is theirs, and crass contentment of the clod.
(To the By-standers.)
But shun you Beauty as a very bane
Which like the sea in equinoctial might
May break the dyke that guards your sluggish lives,
Sweeping unwonted currents on your calm,
Ruinous, overwhelming
Peregrina:
So farewell,
For I withdraw me to my island home.
Ombrage:
You pass, you leave us?
Peregrina:
Yonder lies my barque,
Twinning herself upon the crystal tide,
So clear so sharp her mere reflection.
You wonder which is shadow, and which is ship,
If both be real or both a fantasy
Moulded of magic this mid-August eve,
And I must pass upon that galley of dream
To my fair island of unfading May
Set in a sea of sempiternal Spring.
Follow me, find me, thro' the ivory gate
Lies the way thither, to the happy land,
The fortunate isle where the dearest dream comes true!
Gilles:
The Moon is far, here's for the moon-flower!
ISLAND FORTUNATE.
Fare fortunately mariners! who steer neath Summer skys
To nearer ports, for surer gain, full freighted argosies.
Your trafficking unhinder'd be by harms the Fates inflict
The blind oncoming of the berg, or galley derelict.
Better ye deem to tempt the deep than moulder at the quay,
Sure, what the heedful merchant dare, wehow much rathermay.
All ocean patent to our quest, who seek with hearts elate
The shining happy palaces of Island Fortunate.
We pass'd a convoy guarded fleet in sunset waters rock'd
The careful coasters cried to us, the men of battle mock'd
As half regretfully we gazed where floating fair and free
The pennons of the fighting ships dipp'd silken to the sea.
We know not how their traffic throve, nor how the battle sped
But these we left to count their pelf, and these to tell their dead.
As vain their dream of petty gain, as theirs of martial state
To us who sought the wide world through for Island Fortunate.
What waits us, once our goal attain'd? For each one as I deem
The utter realising of his every dearest dream.
I think that as our wave-worn ship drops anchor in that bay
A honey-colour'd harvest-moon will mock the paler day
Lighting the league-long gardens up, whose hidden hollows hold
The ruddy glow of oranges, the citron's paler gold,
Whilst,sunder'd half a life-time long by some untoward fate
Lost lovers wait to welcome us to Island Fortunate.
Our company grows still the less, for certain of our train
A seeming Eldorado once gleam'd golden from the main,
I think that on that barren reef some specious magic burn'd,
Never our comrades came again, never their boat return'd.
And some one long long Winter slept and waked no more in Spring,
And some were lost who rowed at night to hear the mermaid sing.
More witching music they had heard had they but heart to wait
Melody passing sirens' song, in Island Fortunate.
Young-hearted as at setting forthgrey-headed, say the churls?
'Tis that the sea-spray dusts with white our salt-encumber'd curls.
Still in a wild and wintry waste we fare upon our quest
Not elsewhere can we find a home, nor otherwhere a rest.
To catch what wind of Heaven may blow, our sails are still unfurl'd,
We sail the vast uncharted deep, the wondrous water-world
Somewhere to find, somewhere to see, somehow to win, though late
The fair far haven in the sea of Island Fortunate.
Cradled by some consoling dream he who should vigil keep
An hour before a shameful death, sinks smiling into sleep.
And Mirage-mock'd, the cast-away, scanning a sail-less sea
Leaps headlong down the glassy deep in meadow green to be;
It turns the wasted wilderness to water'd paradise
Last vision, as the sandstorm blinds the dying pilgrim's eyes.
Our life is ruled by Mirages, and just beyond the gate
Whether of Horn or Ivory lies Island Fortunate.