SCENE VI.--The Field of Bannockburn. The Scotch Reserve. To them enter

Bruce.

Bruce. Most noble souls who wait so patiently!

Your splendid faith is in the air about you;

Your steady eyes shine like a galaxy;

Your presence comforts me: pressed in the fight,

The thought of you, like balm upon a wound,

Softened the thriftless aching of my heart.

The English waver; on the hill behind

Our followers fright them, marching in array

Bannered and armed, a legion out of heaven.

The tide of battle turns, and victory

Needs only you to launch it bravely forth.

Now--I would bid you think, but that the thought

Eludes me, like a homely, old-known song,

Wreathing in fitful gusts beyond the sense--

Now will the lofty keystone of our life

Be pitched in heaven for ever. We have dreamt

Our prayers into fulfilment many a time:

to-day we wrestle, and the victory's ours:

And yet I feel so scantly what it means

That I'm ashamed. Enough: I know you all.--

Now for our homes, our children, and our wives,

For freedom, for our land, for victory!

And cry our old cry, Carrick!

Soldiers. Carrick and victory!

[They go out.

SMITH: A TRAGIC FARCE

(Crieff, 1886)

PERSONS

Smith.

Hallowes.

Graham.

Brown.

Jones.

Robinson.

Two Men-servants.

Magdalen.

Topsy.

Scene: London and Garth.

Time: The Present.

SMITH

ACT I

SCENE.--A Room in a Public-House. Glasses on the table. Brown is

discovered talking excitedly; Jones, attempting to interrupt him; and

Robinson, in a corner with a newspaper.

Brown. Truth is an airy point between two cliffs

Of adamant opinion: safest he

Who foots it far from either beetling brink.

Hallowes, now: he goes hanging on the verge

His martyr-face and aspirations strung

With bent keys. If his starting eyes behold

Some tartan star, or other fire-flaught born

Of pallid brains ill-nourished on bleached blood,

It is the truth--truth absolute! And down,

Loosing his hold to clasp his fervid hands,

He'll crash, and spill his life on stones untrod.

Robinson. Fair--very fair, indeed!

Jones. So would not you!

The Bastille Column or St. Paul's at noon,

Where crowds may see your glossy frock-coat fly,

And wax pathetic o'er the exotic spray

That slips the button-hole in middle air,

And twinkling after, lights upon the mess

Of limbs and oozing blood that late was you.

Robinson. Come, let each other be! no answer, Brown;

Because I want to open up a point.

That fellow, Smith--the point is suicide--

He said the other day--why, it was here!--

He would have coffee; we had brandy: well--

You know he speaks to everybody; so,

He cries to Topsy, there, who brought the drink--

He spoils the barmaids with his high-flown talk:

I tried it, and they laughed at me; but he!

He talks philosophy, religion, books:

And they can talk it too, with him. Well, then----

Brown. Pure innocence: the man's a baby.

Jones. Yes.

Uncultured, too; he lacks the college stamp.

Robinson. Well, then, my point----

Brown. Oh, never mind your point!

You've hit it, Jones; "uncultured" is the word.

Give me a man who knows what language means:

No forging sudden bolts that gild the fact,

A bright enough reality before:

Who never says a thing a thousand ways,

Nibbling with slippery sleight-of-tongue, till chance

Expose the end to bite. Give me a man

Whose mind is ready as a lawyer's desk,

Each pigeon-hole accountable for this,

Each drawer containing that, and nothing else.

Jones. Whose thinking's done; whose automatic mind

Strikes the same absolute response each time.

Brown. A man who knows the best of everything;

Consummate, bland; whom novelty annoys,

Guessing what musty masquerade it is

Of some dispute of Lamech and his wives.

Jones. Smith's a mere savage, barbarous as a Lapp:

A handsome creature, but elliptical.

Brown. Something awanting to complete the sense!

Robinson. Fair, very fair! But here's a point: you men

Since you began to go about with Smith,

Have caught a little of his style of talk;

You can't deny his power.

Brown. Power?--seething blood.

Give Jones, or such a man, Smith's body--why,

You'd have the hero of the age! Power? stuff!

Jones. Admit the power--potential as a troop;

But where's the captain?

Brown. Ay; his brain's a mess

Of sodden sawdust; it ferments and fumes:

But, let me say, wood-spirit's not champagne,

In spite of fables to the contrary.

Jones. Labels, you mean.

Robinson. Fair--very fair, by Jove!

Do you go north this year?

Brown. I do, this week.

Robinson. So soon! Health and a happy holiday!

Jones. Your good health and a pleasant time in Garth!

Robinson. Here's a point, Brown. Hallowes--he talks of Garth:

I thought the place was only known to you.

Brown. Hallowes discovered it a year ago:

And there I met him.

Jones. So: I understand

How such an out-at-elbows man as he

Is known to you: there you had no one else.

Brown. Exactly: with his simple ecstasies

He made good sport when Maudlin took the dumps.

Jones. When do you wed your cousin?

Brown. In a month.

Jones. Is the day fixed?

Brown. I go to have it fixed.

Robinson. Your cousin, Magdalen ... By Jove, here's Smith!

Enter Smith.

Smith. You here! Has Hallowes been?

Brown. No; not to-night.

Are you to meet him?

Smith. Yes.

Brown. He'll not appear:

He acts the people's notion of a poet.

He has a double memorandum-book--

Engagements to be broken--to be kept;

And most of those he makes are for the first:

"Sorry I failed you," when he sees you; "but"--

And you are left to gather that the Muse

Hugged him so close he couldn't get away.

Smith. He'll not fail me.

Jones. Don't be too sure of that.

I've known him break with me a dozen times.

Smith. Perhaps he's braver than your other friends.

Jones. The satire's deep.

Brown. A little underbred--

Hallowes, I mean.

Robinson. Still he's a graduate.

Jones. Finished apprentice; but he shuns the stress

Of competition with the journeymen,

Whereby alone dexterity is gained.

Brown. A fledgling knight who flies the eager fray

Where sword whets sword.

Robinson. He herds with nobody,

I've noticed that. But here's a point: I, you,

Smith--everybody wants to know the man;

He--won't be known: no one can equal him

In turning forth the dark slide when you think

Acquaintance burns to intimacy. Smith,

Only you see his lantern blazing bright;

How's that?

Brown. Speak for yourself, sir. This I know,

He rather courted me. His fitful wisp,

However, I assure you, Robinson,

Leads to a quaking bog of egotism.

Jones. Where I have floundered more than once. A month--

Three weeks ago when he gave up his post

In--Holofernes' School--the Cambridge man's--

That very day I met him here alone.

"I'm done with it," he cried. "These squalid years

Of mental boot-blacking are ended now--

The shameful pedagogy. Ah," he said,

With lips that shook and molten eyes, his voice

Hushing and sparkling as his passion tore

A ragged way through wordy wildernesses,

Or spread, where image failed, in shallows vague,

The margin lost in rushy verbiage,

"Shameful! a devil's compact! I, for food

Have made myself a grindstone, edging souls

Meant most for flying: I, in piteous mouths,

That yearned for sweetest manna, crammed rough stones

And loathsome scorpions: children, youths, the light

Of God brought newly down by love,

Straining to shine on all the flowers of earth,

Of heaven, of poetry, have I swathed up

In noisome fog of the dead letter--I,

Who dare aspire to be a child for ever.

Intolerance in religion never dreamt

Such fell machinery of Acts and Codes

As now we use for nipping thought in bud,

And turning children out like nine-pins, each

As doleful and as wooden. Never more

Shall I put hand to such inhuman work!"

To come with this to me, who teach, and mean

To start a boarding-school next year!

Brown. By Jove!

The net result of solitude. This world,

This oyster with its valves of toil and play,

Would round his corners for its own good ease,

And make a pearl of him if he'd plunge in.

Smith. Then you would change the diamonds into pearls,

The rubies and the opals?

Robinson. Very fair!

Brown. Better a pure pearl than a damaged diamond.

Jones. And in this matter we may all be pearls.

Smith. Be worldlings, truly. I would rather be

A shred of glass that sparkles in the sun,

And keeps a lowly rainbow of its own,

Than one of those so trim and patent pearls

With hearts of sand veneered, sewed up and down

The stiff brocade society affects.

Robinson. Fair, very fair!

Jones. Be quiet, parroquet!

Are we such pearls?

Smith. Pearls! This is what you are:

The commonest type of biped crawling here.

Take it thus crudely: you would not believe

A subtle phrase in full, but think I meant

Less than the words might bear, deeming me dull--

Barbarian you call me ...

Brown. Who said that?

Smith. The friends of gossips gossip, little Brown.

Brown. The great Smith gossips too, then.

Smith. What! You fool!

You dare to bandy words with me! Begone!

Get out of here the three of you!

Jones. He's mad.

Smith. You sots, you maggots, shavings, asteroids!

A million of you wouldn't make a man!

Out, or I'll strike you, monkeys, mannikins!

[All go out; then re-enter Smith, followed by Topsy with salver, etc.

Smith. You're looking fresh: You've had a holiday?

Topsy. I've had my week.

Smith. Where were you?

Topsy. At the coast.

Smith. Now, tell me, what of all you saw, remains?

Topsy. Oh, well--there's many a thing! There's----

Ah! there's this! One morning early that I stood alone,

And saw the green sea from a windy cliff,

With small, white, curling waves, like shavings pinned

Upon a watered silk.

Smith. Oh! how was that?

Topsy. There was a great Scotch lady long ago--

I read it in a penny paper there;

That made me think of it; and she was poor,

And wore, instead of ribbons, shavings once,

And was the belle and made a match that night.

Here's Mr. Hallowes, sir.

Smith. The same for him.

Enter Hallowes. Topsy goes out, and returns as before, and goes out again.

Hallowes. Smith, I congratulate you. Come, your hand.

Smith. Thank you; I'm very pleased indeed. On what?

Hallowes. On the great gladness you're about to feel.

I've lost my post--dismissed--incompetence.

Smith. So soon! I said three months: it's just three weeks.

Business is worse than teaching, then.

Hallowes. Oh, worse!

Give me a week to coin its condemnation!

Business--the world's work--is the sale of lies:

Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more

In every branch becomes the sale of money:

Why, goods are now the means of bartering gold!

Smith. It fits these reeling times of tail-wagged dogs.

Hallowes. But wish me joy.

Smith. Joy, friend, till pain be ease!

Hallowes. Now will I tell you what I mean to do.

Garth's in the North, a hamlet like a cave,

Nestling unknown in tawny Merlin's side,

A mount, brindled with scars and waterways.

The windows, Argus-eyed with knotted panes

That under heavy brows of roses blink

Blind guard, have never wept with hailstones stung;

No antique, gnarled, and wrinkled, roundwood porch,

Whiskered with hollyhocks in this old thorpe

Has ever felt the razor of the East:

No rail, no coach, no tourist passes there:

But in the brooding evening from her seat,

A worn tree-trunk, the toothless beldame leaps

As lithe as superstition, says a saw,

And kills the toad that in the channel hops;

Far up the mountain children's voices ring;

The quoiters cry; and past the ivied inn

A chastened brook tells all its pebbled beads;

Between the bourtrie-bushes and the thorns

The commonest bird that sings is wonderful,

So empty are the spaces of the air

From any breath of modern weariness.

There will I live and walk the mountain-side,

Looking across the strath upon a stream,

A beakerful of water, spilt along

A winding strip of green and bosky spray,

That showers in silver when light-fingered winds

Turn up the leaves: a ridge, fire-reared and low,

Of coppice-covered hills, scalloped against

A loftier mass of purple, nobly borne,

Gives body to the sunset: night and day,

Asleep or waking, earth in heaven's lap lies.

Smith. And is this to be wholly holiday?

Hallowes. I shall make poetry--a line a day,

If nothing more. I'm twenty: I may count

On ten years yet. Three thousand lines, each line

A very mountain from whose sun-gilt crest

The stormy world a peaceful picture seems.

I shall upheave and range a chain like this:

Realms shall rejoice in it: my fame shall grow

For ever like the sward.

Smith. Let fame alone.

Hallowes. You misconceive: fame is the breath of power:

What valid work was ever for itself

Wrought solely, be it war, art, statesmanship?

Nothing can be its own reward and hold

Rank above patience, or whatever game,

Angling or avarice, is selfisher.

O watering palates! and, O skyey grapes!

O purple path above the milky way!

Give me to dream dreams all would love to dream;

To tell the world's truth; hear the world tramp time

With satin slippers and with hob-nailed shoes

To my true singing: fame is worth its cost,

Blood-sweats, and tears, and haggard, homeless lives.

How dare a man, appealing to the world,

Content himself with ten! How dare a man

Appeal to ten when all the world should hear!

How dare a man conceive himself as else

Than his own fool without the world's hurrah

To echo him!

Smith. But if the world won't shout

Till he be dead?

Hallowes. Let him address the street:

No subtle essences, ethereal tones

For senses sick, bed-ridden in the down

Of culture and its stifling curtains. Gusts

From bean-fields and the pine-woods, thought and deed

Of the young world bursting its swaddling bands

Before the upturned eyes and warning palms

Of fangless Use and Wont, his nurses hoar--

These find an echo everywhere.

Smith. The world

Still follows culture, though.

Hallowes. Maybe. But it

Follows itself, and shall, Narcissus-like,

Perish of self-love.

Smith. Echo, what of her?

Hallowes. She shall be re-incarnate by the word

That she shall hear.

Smith. What word?

Hallowes. It is not said.

Smith. Who shall pronounce it?

Hallowes. Who knows?--You, or I?

Smith. Well said! We'll go together to the North.

Hallowes. What! are you free?

Smith. I am. You want to write:

I want to think. When shall we start?

Hallowes. To-morrow.

Smith. So soon! But you are right: one must become

Fanatic--be a wedge--a thunder-bolt,

To smite a passage through the close-grained world.

[They go out.

ACT II

SCENE.--An arbour in Graham's orchard. Enter Smith, Hallowes, and Graham.

Graham. Now, rest you here; I've business in the house:

And when I come I'll bring my daughter. Ha!

[To Hallowes.] She lives on poetry; you'll soon be friends;

[To Smith.] While you and I and Brown will talk again

Of London. What!--you called it--let me see--

The running sore, the ringworm of the earth.

Good, very good.

[Goes out.

Hallowes. You'll make excuse for me.

Smith. Why are you so reluctant to remain?

Hallowes. You do not see the meaning of the knight.

We trespass in his wood: he meets us; storms,

And plays his gamekeeper. Our witty talk

Changes his character, and--we are here:

But mark, on trial; else, not his arbour,

But his drawing-room.

Smith. He brings his daughter, though.

Hallowes. True; but you see our humour was so broad.

Smith. Therefore he does not take us to his house?

Suppose it so, is he the less a man?

Why, it's a powerful thing to do.

Hallowes. Indeed!

Snobbish, say I.

Smith. Away, man! Use that word!

A poet, too! Oh, I could rail at it! Snob!

It's a modern word; and so is cad:

None use them but deservers of them. Faugh;

So bitterly I hate them, into sense

My spleen spins slovenly. We all are men.

Doomsday of nicknames! I behold it dawn.

An inky cloud, with thick corrosive stench,

Blots out the heavens, and like a palimpsest

Shows name on name in smoking characters,

A leprous scroll, too filthy to o'er-read:

Beneath them, branded deep athwart the cloud

In letters huge from which the light scales off,

The most inhuman, most ungodly word,

Sinner. But lo! the rotten-fuming signs

Smoulder and writhe, and run like mercury,

Flooding the cloud, which belches into flame

And shrivels up beyond the bounds of space!

A rose-dipped pencil washes suddenly

A blush along the east, whereon appears

In molten gold, Man, Woman; and I know

That we are all one race, and these nicknames,

Phantasmal charnel-lights of self-contempt.

Hallowes. You know I have not always strength of wing

To soar like you right to God's point of view.

Pardon the word. Now, you must let me go.

Smith. You give no cause: poetic mood won't do.

I see a mental sickness in your eye:

What is it, Hallowes?

Hallowes. Why, my money's done:

And day by day from London packets come--

Dramas and poems, essays and reviews,

Returned with thanks, returned with thanks.

Smith. Just so.

Ten pounds I have: take half: when this is spent

Then we return with thanks to London town.

You have your ticket?

Hallowes. Oh, yes!

Smith. Cheer up, then!

We have a fortnight yet. Sit down and talk

Of comfortable things. We'll meditate

Upon return-tickets for a while:

How beautifully suited to our need,

Spendthrifts like us! Devise some praise for them.

Hallowes. O let me go! I have my note-book here.

I'll climb to Merlin-top and write all night

Under the moon or till you follow me.

Smith. Away then, since you must! Good luck, good rhymes!

Hallowes goes out. Enter Magdalen without seeing Smith.

[Aside.] These plaited coils of hair, the golden lid

Of the rich casket where her live thoughts lie:

Her cheek is tinged with sunset? Has she eyes?

Her body sways: the crimson-blazoned west

Like organ-music surges through her blood.

My seeming aimless visit to the North--

The time--the circumstance!--I yield myself!

This is the woman whom my soul will love.

She moves this way, backward, to sit. I'll speak.

Lady.

[Magdalen wheels round.

Her eyes are living sapphires!

Magdalen. What!

Smith. I love you.

Magdalen. Sir!

Smith. I love you, lady.

Magdalen [about to go]. Sir!

Smith. Lady, stay.

My body and my soul assembled here,

At war till now, are wedded by your glance:

You make that man which chaos was before:

And this is love. I dreaded love: I knew

It should with such a pang lay hold of me.

I am not mad although I tremble thus:

It is the inspiration of my love.

Fly not, repulse me not, and do not fear:

I would tear up my body with my hands,

And hide you in my heart did evil threat:

I am as tame to you as wild things are

To those that cherish them. Be confident,

For I shall guard my dreams from harming you

As faithfully as time his vigil keeps.

Magdalen. I do not fear.

Smith. Speak louder, speak again.

Like rose-leaves that enrich the greedy earth

The tremulous whispering bedews my heart.

Speak, speak!

Magdalen. Who are you, sir?

Smith. A mellow voice,

Falling like thistledown, melting like snow,

Golden and searching as a sunny wine.

It bore a question: Who am I? A man.

Magdalen [aside]. I think so too.--What do you want with me?

Smith. Our language is too worn, too much abused,

Jaded and over-spurred, wind-broken, lame,--

The hackneyed roadster every bagman mounts.

I cannot tell you what I want with you,

Unless you understand the depth of this:

I want for you heroic happiness.

Magdalen. How might I win this happiness?

Smith. Be mine:

I am the enemy of all the world:

Dare it with me: be mine.

Magdalen. I know you not.

I am engaged to one I do not love;

My father swears that I must marry him:

It is a common misery, so stale

That I contemned it: and I know you not:

But I have courage. Let me think a while.

Smith. Think my thought; be impatient as I am;

Obey your nature, not authority:

Because the world, enchanted by the sun,

The moon, the stars, with charms of time and space,

Of seasons, tides, of darkness and of light,

Weaves new enchantment everlastingly,

Whirled in a double spell of day and year,

A self-deluded sorcerer, winding round,

Close to its smothered heart, coil after coil

Of magic zones, invisible as air--

Some, Cytherean belts; some, chains; and some,

Noisome and terrible as hooded snakes.

Magdalen. What do you mean? what spells? what sorcery?

Smith. The hydra-headed creeds; the sciences,

That deem the thing is known when it is named;

And literature, thought's palace-prison fair;

Philosophy, the grand inquisitor

That racks ideas and is fooled with lies;

Society, the mud wherein we stand

Up to the eyes, whence if I drag you forth,

Saving your soul and mine, there shall ascend

A poisonous blast that may o'ertake our lives.

Magdalen. I feel a meaning in your eloquence;

I see my poor thoughts made celestial

Like faded women Jove hung in the sky.

Obey my nature, sir? How shall I know

The voice of nature from the thousand cries,

That clamour in my head like piteous birds,

Filling the air about a lonely isle

With ringing terror when the hunter comes.

Smith. Shut out the storm and heed the still, small voice.

Magdalen. Have pity. Yet I think the woman's dream

Is given me--the strong deliverer

To pluck her from the dragon's jaws unharmed.

What can I say? Rest still your eyes on mine,

And I shall dare to speak. I love you, sir;

And I have loved you since I was a girl--

You, only you. Good-bye. Oh, in my life--

A miracle, I think, as this world goes--

I met the living image of my dream,

And was found worthy to be loved! Good-bye.

I seem to see my daughter at my knees,

Listening with violet eyes of heaven-wide awe,

The virgin story I shall utter once

To her, only to her.

Smith. And so, you go

To hell.

Magdalen. Ay, even so: my father's word

Is plighted to this man, and so is mine.

Perhaps, that I may know this is no dream--

Sir, will you kiss me?

[He folds her in his arms and kisses her.

Smith. You are faint, my love.

Magdalen. Oh, have pity, sir!

Smith. I will have pity.

[Goes out carrying her. Then enter Brown. He goes out after them, and

re-enters running as the curtain falls.

ACT III

SCENE.--The top of Mount Merlin: a precipice on one side: rocks on the

other. Hallowes is discovered lying with a note-book by his side.

Hallowes. O noblest hour in my ignoble life!

Hunger and squalor, and delirious rhymes;

No past, no future; one unending now

Of meanest misery, most miserable

When fairest dreams gilded the starless night,

And words in choirs flew singing through my brain

Melodious thunder, for then most I knew

The yawning wants and gnawing cares of life.

To sink to that inanity abhorred,

The wretch whose early fervour, burnt away,

Leaves him, for lack of ease to smite his thought

To white-heat--since the brazier of youth,

That needs no sweat, is cold--incapable

Of any meaning, but with loathsome itch

That still essays, and still produces nought,

Or horribly emits untempered scraps--

Toads, cinders, snakes, nameless aborted things,--

The hideous castings witchcraft vomited;

Maybe to live on grudging charity

Of friends estranged; sneered at by smug success;

Called poetaster: such had been my life;

But I have chosen death. Death--and the moon

Hangs low and broad upon the eastern verge

Above a mist that floods the orient,

Filling the deep ravines and shallow vales,

Lake-like and wan, embossed with crested isles

Of pine and birch. Death--and the drops of day

Still stain the west a faintest tinge of rose

The stars cannot o'erwash with innocence.

Death--and the mountain-tops, peak after peak,

Lie close and dark beneath Orion's sword.

Death--and the houses nestle at my feet,

With ruddy human windows here and there

Piercing the velvet shade--deep in the world,

Old hedge-rows and sweet by-paths through the corn!

The river like a sleepless eye looks up.

Pale shafts of smoke ascend from homely hearths,

And fade in middle air like happy sighs.

Death--and the wind blows chill across my face:

The thin, long, hoary grass waves at my side

With muffled tinkling.... Not yet! No; my life

Has not ebbed all away: I want to live

A little while.... Is the moon gone so soon?

They've put the shutters to, down there.... The wind

Is warm.... Death--is it death? ... I had no chance....

Perhaps I'll have another where I go....

Another chance.... How black!...

[Dies.

Enter Smith carrying Magdalen.

Magdalen. I think now I can walk again.

Smith. No need;

We've reached the summit: see, the circling world!

Does this seem madness still?

Magdalen. Mad happiness:

I know we should be here. Ah! there's a man!

Smith. My friend, the poet. He has chosen well:

The cream-white moon, this high peak of the earth--

The earth, itself the one Parnassus-mount.

Magdalen. And have you climbed the hill only for him

Bearing me half the way? But answer not:

I only wish to feel that I am yours;

And that this knowledge may be fully mine,

Call me my name. You do not know my name?

Smith. And wish not: you are woman; I am man.

Why should we limit all the thought of this,

Shrouding the Infinite with names? Our life

Is haunted by these ghosts ourselves have raised.

O lady, we shall never know the truth,

What man, what love, what God is, till we cease

To talk of them--which all do in the grave.

Magdalen. How strange it seems to me and yet not strange:

Death, life, I care not which, so I am yours.

Smith. And I yours, now, for ever.--Hallowes!--What!--

Asleep?--pale ... dead! ... This was a man too slight,

Too sweet to live. I think he has done well:

For had he stayed strung naked on life's wheel,

Broken by every circumstance of woe,

He had gone mad. This sight would pierce my heart,

But that yours bucklers mine. A girl-like boy!

He used to talk of euthanasia:

How has he killed himself? Here's blood! He said

That should he ever need to take his life

Thus gently would he ope a sluice and die.

I loved him. I shall weep some other time.

What has he written here?

While Smith examines the note-book enter Graham, Brown, and two

Men-servants.

Scored and re-scored,--

Illegible.

Magdalen. Oh!--my father!

Graham. So, sir!

What Jupiter are you that walk away

With ladies over mountains in the night!

What radiant devil rather! With an art,

Seven times refining the seducer's dross,

You brand the reputation curelessly.

And leave the spotless sufferer to pine,

The guiltless-guilty in a hell of woe.

Or are you but a thundering, blundering fool,

Mad, not malignant? Do you understand?

to-morrow all the county shall declare,

And shortly London echo how Graham's girl--

Graham, the old fool, who never stirred from Garth,

And out of harm's way kept his daughter snug,

Filtering her reading, her acquaintanceship--

Never a man but Brown, her lord to be--

How she, when he, too confident because

She just had named the day, brought home that night--

The first time since his daughter turned fifteen--

Two men, wild London fellows--hark, away,

With both among the heather, o'er the moor!

For there's your friend, I see, sir. Do you see?

What's to do? Who is to suffer? Speak, sir!

Maudlin, he stares at you; you, at the ground--

But that is well, Brown, speak to him--to them.

Brown. Love holds my tongue, sir.

Graham. What! do you love him?

Why, now, as we came panting up the hill,

You swore he was a mean adventurer,

Poor as a rat, and friendless as a toad:

A scribbling, bibbling, fribbling, poet, he

Who takes it all so coolly there.

Smith. He's dead.

Graham. Dead!--O my God!--my head--my heart is split:

No hiding now. O man, man, you have done

Worse than you think! In every ha'penny rag,

Cried in the streets, the talk of billiard-rooms--

My daughter Magdalen!--my happiness,

My poem, picture, my divinity!

I haven't fired a gun, or touched a card,

Donned buckskin, made a bet, for five long years.

I've led a dog's life; done dog's duty too;

And been as happy as a faithful dog:

And all to save my daughter from the taint

That taints me, taints the world, and taints the best:

I've no fine names for it; I know it's there.

I've taught her everything--professors, books:

Made her a--what's the word?--a paragon:

And now I've got my nephew here, young Brown,

Who had a grandfather, who had one too--

An Oxford man, a wholesome, handsome boy,

Rich, well-disposed, to marry her: and here,

Safe in my pocket, is their honeymoon--

A map, I mean, where I will follow them--

I've marked in red the route they'll take, you see--

Before I go to bed. I'll have my fling

After they're married--do you understand?

My poem out, my picture on the line,

I'll dance, and sing, and dine, and wine, and shine!

My God, Magdalen, don't stand staring there!

The moon can't help you, bouncing as it is.

I'm going mad. Brown, take my daughter home.

Magdalen. Father I cannot, now, go home to-night,

Unless he comes with us.

Graham. He! whom? What! him?

Magdalen. Father, for him you sacrificed yourself,

Not knowing how you wrought on fate's behalf.

Most loving and most noble father, thanks:

My heart is aching with deep thankfulness.

Never had daughter such a holy time

Of preparation: any other life

Would not have made me meet for him.

Graham. Girl! girl!

Be quiet, now!--Brown, tell us what to do!

Brown. Keep cool, as I am. Smith, I know your power:

You are the kind of man that healthy girls

Yield to at once, you know.

Graham. What's this? What's this?

You've lost your head, I think.

Magdalen. O father, look!

See with my eyes. He's worth a million Browns.--

[To Brown.] Sir, pardon me. You are a worthy man,

And much above the common stamp, I know.

Father, this man--I do not know his name--

Is all the world to me.

Graham. You little fool!

[He hands Magdalen over to Brown and the servants.

Now, sir, I'll pay you down a thousand pounds

To keep this quiet.... Oh, the murdered man!

Ay; he's been murdered: here's the murderer:

That's the way out of it! Ha, ha! my buck,

We'll have you clapped in jail.

Brown. That wouldn't do.

I'll add another thousand. Keep our names ...

Smith. Magdalen!

Magdalen. Yours, only yours.

Graham. Be quiet!

What's to be done? See you here, ravisher--

But stop a bit: we're all assuming. Brown,

Perhaps there is some satisfactory--

Some explanation, plausible at least.

Sir, have you anything to say?

Smith. Much. First:

You are my enemy, and I am yours.

Rancorous debates, and wars, and martyrdoms

Give tolerance the most forlorn of hopes;

But with the impartial moon for ensign, here

I dare assay to make my foe my friend.

Even one who overlooked the world with me,

And saw it, as I see it, a flying shuttle,

Weaving a useless web of mystery

That shrouds itself--even he, whose piteous blood

Stains this green mountain-brow the soft clouds kiss,

And sweet wild winds freshen continually,

Had not discerned the reason of our deed:

How much less you, who never think at all!

But you must listen: you must try to think.

And see how simple is our presence here:

The way to town is five miles by the road,

And two across the hill; so this I chose,

Being shorter, and because my friend had said

He would await my coming. She and I

Are on our way to London.

Graham. You are mad:

You've made her mad. Good-night.

[He is about to lead Magdalen away but Smith holds him.

Smith. Not so: We are not mad, but you--the world is mad.

You and the world would make her such a thing

As poets still cry out on. Mine she is,

Mine by the love that, as we had been gods

Meeting in golden Tempe, dawned and shone

Full-beamed at once. What is more sane than love?

The universe is chaos without love....

Graham. Hold off!

Smith. Be still!--Women are made by men:

The nations fade that hold their women slaves:

The souls of men that pave their hell-ward path

With women's souls lose immortality.

What station in our heart's economy--

The hidden household where our naked thoughts

Stand at the windows innocent as babes,

Or crouch in corners shamefaced and undone,

Though none may pass but he whose thoughts they are:

What home, or what foul den we keep them in,

These complements of us, these plastic things

Our fancy fashions to the shape we please--

That is the test of sanity. Behold,

Your daughter, being throned within my heart,

Has straight become a queen!

Graham. What noise is that?

Smith. A cry within the wind. Have you ne'er heard

Prophetic voices muffled in the blast?

Old man, you've done a high thing for your child;

But all is naught if you constrain her now.

Give me the woman whom my soul has chosen,

Give me the woman who has chosen me.

Graham. Poor fool! no frantic whim will change my plan.

[Graham and Brown lead Magdalen out. Smith attempts to take her from them

but the servants interfere. He hurls them both to the ground: they rise

and run out. Smith goes out, and re-enters backward with Magdalen on one

arm, keeping Graham and Brown off with the other. He stops at the edge of

the cliff.

Smith. Back, or we plunge together.

Graham. Hold! [Aside.] That sound!

How could they know? But yet, they saw us go.

It is the village coming up the hill!

They'll rescue us. Brown, we must seem to yield.

This is a madman, no idealist.

Brown. Stark, staring mad.

Graham. Of course. We might have known.

Why, I could laugh. Come on, we'll humour him.--

Conclusions reached with salience, sir, are oft

Wiser than those we plod to; for the mind

Tires on the dusty round-about; and so

I think you have deserved my daughter.

Smith. Ha!

Then you are but a worldling after all:

I know your thought: I've met it face to face

A hundred times; and though it owns it not,

It means that all it cannot understand

Is madness, and that highest God is mad.

Is it because the moon is in a cloud

You speak this folly now?--a human voice!

Some people on the hill! I see your drift.--

Magdalen Graham ...

Magdalen. Yours, always, only yours.

Brown. I warn you, monstrous rogue, abduction earns

A lengthy term of penal servitude.

Smith. Inept fool!--Lady, life, the shooting star,

Is no more worth than is the miser's gold,

The cultured man's impressions, lust's delight;

It is a prison innocence may break;

A moment mere of immortality.

Magdalen. Watch for the moon: she slips her sable shawl,

And silver lace. Behold!

Smith. The happy night

Heaves a deep long-drawn sigh of sweet content.

Magdalen. Oh, if the world would look on us like that!

Smith. The world for you and me is one blank stare--

A basilisk would shrivel up our souls.

Magdalen. O these hoarse shouts and fiendish empty shrieks!

How near the people are! Can we not go?

Smith. Yes, we can go where none will follow us.

We two could never love each other more

Than now we do; never our souls could mount

Higher on passion's fire-plumed wings; nor yet

Could laughter of our children's children pierce

With keener pangs of happiness our hearts.

I have a million things to tell my love,

But I will keep them for eternity.

Good earth, good mother earth, my mate and me--

Take us.

[He leaps with her over the precipice. Graham rushes forward, but falls

fainting. Enter villagers, shouting and laughing.

SCARAMOUCH IN NAXOS: A PANTOMIME

(Crieff, 1888)

PERSONS

Bacchus.

Silenus.

Sarmion.

Glaucus.

Scaramouch, a Showman.

Harlequin, in the employment of Scaramouch.

Ariadne.

Ione, daughter to Glaucus.

Columbine, in the employment of Scaramouch.

Satyrs.

Bacchantes.

Sailors.

Scene: Naxos.

PROLOGUE.

Silenus. Gentle readers--I would fain say, hearers, but I am afraid I

shall never fool it on the stage--I am very fond of Pantomimes. I don't

know whether I like this one so well as I liked those which I witnessed

when I was a boy. It is too pretentious, I think; too anxious to be more

than a Pantomime--this play in which I am about to perform. True Pantomime

is a good-natured nightmare. Our sense of humour is titillated and

strummed, and kicked and oiled, and fustigated and stroked, and exalted

and bedevilled, and, on the whole, severely handled by this self-same

harmless incubus; and our intellects are scoffed at. The audience, in

fact, is, intellectually, a pantaloon, on whom the Harlequin-pantomime

has no mercy. It is frivolity whipping its schoolmaster, common-sense; the

drama on its apex; art, unsexed, and without a conscience; the reflection

of the world in a green, knotted glass. Now, I talked to the author, and

showed him that there was a certain absence from his work of this kind of

thing; but he put his thumbs in his arm-pits, and replied with some

disdain, "Which of the various dramatic forms of the time may one conceive

as likeliest to shoot up in the fabulous manner of the beanstalk,

bearing on its branches things of earth and heaven undreamt of in

philosophy? The sensational dramas? Perhaps from them some new development

of tragic art; but Pantomime seems to be of best hope. It contains in

crude forms, humour, poetry, and romance. It is the childhood of a new

poetical comedy." Then I saw where he was, and said, "God be with you,"

and washed my hands of him. But I'll do my best with my part.

SCENE I.--A Wood.

Silenus, sitting. Harlequin and Columbine posturing about him. Satyrs and

Bacchantes dancing round the group.

Song.

Sing of dancing, sing of wine,

Satyrs and Bacchantes, sing.

Harlequin and Columbine,

Leap within our frantic ring.

Dance, the skies are violet;

Dance, our lips with wine are wet;

Sing, heigh-ho, the shade is mellow!

Twist and twine from dusk till dawn;

Feet and hoofs beat bare the lawn.

Bacchus is a noble fellow!

From our garlands grapes are flung,

And we tread them in the grass;

Ivy, in our tresses strung,

Streams behind us as we pass.

Dance, the skies are violet;

Dance, our lips with foam are wet;

Sing, the beechen shade is mellow!

Bend and bound with one accord;

Foot it firm, and trench the sward.

Bacchus is a splendid fellow!

Round we spin; our starry eyes

Glimmer through our tossing manes.

Time is ending; wisdom dies;

We are drunk; and Bacchus reigns.

Dance, the skies are violet;

The dust with juice of grapes is wet;

Sing, the deepening shade is mellow!

Dance the night into the day;

Dance into eternity.

Bacchus is the only fellow!

Harlequin. Now, you may tell them; now, that they think of Bacchus

but as one of themselves--a wine-bibber, and the inventor of wine-bibbing.

Silenus. Do you disparage wine-bibbing?

Harlequin. May my mask grow to my face, and my sword to my arm, if I

do not think it a most intellectual pursuit!

Columbine. For what do you take us?

Silenus. No enigmas: I am not good at riddles in the evening; for the

tedious parched hours of this torrid July, and the labour of moistening

them make me sweat brains; but if I have not enough left to say what I

take you for I would be glad to mount spontaneously to heaven in a chariot

of fire--I mean by combustion. You, my good Harlequin, I take to be the

son of Mercury and one of the furies.

Harlequin. Which one?

Silenus. Know you not your own mother? She whom Hermes mistook for

Aphrodite: it's an old story now, as your joints might tell you, for you

are a most degenerate Harlequin. Now do I remember Bathylus and Pylades,

sweet youths both.

Harlequin. Were they Harlequins?

Silenus. Harlequins! They were anything. Their very hands were

garrulous as beldames, and their fingers more exclamatory than Marsyas

under the knife of Apollo. You are a mere grasshopper and a magpie--a very

signboard. You are like your father in nothing but the lightness of your

heels, and the nimbleness of your pilfering.

Harlequin. In what am I like my mother?

Silenus. In greed, and in that you are appointed to be my torment.

But you serve me, too, or I would discard you. Moreover, you amuse me. You

are a walking firmament: your spangles are the milky way, and your belt

the zodiac. Sometimes you are Orion, and swagger out with sword on thigh

to ogle the Pleiades. You are the bad angel of pleasantry, because you

are, as it were, humour run to seed, and become a science: you are a mere

name, and the thing which you once were is in limbo; wherefore you suit

these times, and are well matched with my sweet Columbine.

Columbine. What am I?

Silenus. What short flounces and limelight have made you. What do

these woods know of fleshings? Doff them for shame, and go naked.

Columbine [aside]. Swell till you burst, old pumpkin! We'll make a

pantaloon of you before we've done.

Silenus. What are you muttering? Do you hear? You must go naked with

a tiger's skin.

Harlequin. She shall. But see, they are ripe for your address.

Silenus. I say, wine-bibbing is noble, and drunkenness a virtue. Give

me a drink, and let me go to sleep.

Harlequin. Have you forgotten?

Silenus. I thank Jove I have. To forget is Elysium; regret is hell. I

would put it better if I weren't so sleepy.

Harlequin. This will rouse you.

[Gives him wine.

Silenus [drinks]. Aurora is in this wine: already I feel her chariot

prancing through my veins. I have drunken of the sun. Children----[Aside.]

What was I to say? There was some plot.

Harlequin [aside]. You are Bacchus.

Silenus. I am the new Bacchus----

Harlequin [aside]. No, no; you are the old Bacchus!

Silenus. --and the old Bacchus, and Bacchus altogether; and that

maiden-faced Bacchus, who these many generations has roamed about the

world striking men with fury and madness, is not the son of Semele, but a

pampered and audacious old mountain-rover, none other than my ancient,

Silenus, disguised. And this is the meaning of the fable that says I was

dead and buried for a time. What greater burial could there be than the

eclipse of Bacchus by Silenus! Well then, I am Bacchus: Proserpina nursed

me.

Harlequin. The true Bacchus is come again!

All. Long live the true Bacchus!

Silenus. There shall be no more rations, but all shall drink as much

as they please; for ever since I stepped out of Jove's thigh I have been a

hard drinker. [Aside.] Do I not do it well? Observe how I throw in these

back-handers about my parentage--casually--before I am aware; and I blush

and hem, for I would not be thought proud.--Children, rumour has

confounded me with my father, Jupiter. Think it not: I am plain Bacchus,

whose only claims on the world are that he invented wine, and is a good

fellow, and a hard drinker. Fear me not, for I am harmless.

All. Long live Bacchus!

Silenus. Columbine, where is Ariadne?

Columbine. I do not know, but we must find her.

Silenus. We must.--I have no chariot.

Harlequin. You shall have one.

Silenus. And tigers?

Harlequin. I fear you can't have tigers: there are none on the island.

Silenus. Then you must get me some cats instead. And now I bethink

me, cats will please me better. They were dangerous reptiles, those

tigers, and I am growing old: my charms have not the power they once had.

Harness me some half-dozen tabbies: they shall serve well enough. I have

somewhat more to say, and I will say it seriously.

[Rises.

Drinkers and drunkards, gentle profligates,

In praise of drinking to be curious

Would task Apollo and his morning lyre,

With fresh and dulcet brains and strings new-strung,

So often has the art been sung and said:

And yet good reasons for it scarce are known:

One that consoles me I will offer you.

We are immortals--all of us, divine;

But people of inferior intellect.

Wherein consists our chief capacity?

In drinking deep: and some have sprightly toes.

Well, here's my reason. What is genius? This:

Perception of our bent and tireless zeal

To track it out against the wind of fate.

Have we not followed with a quenchless thirst

Deep drinking?

All. We have, most noble Bacchus.

Silenus. Are we not plagued with headaches in the morning?

All. We are, we are.

Silenus. Some of our noses, too, are rubicund.

All. Most true.

Silenus. Our eyes are bulging, blazing amethysts.

1st Satyr. Grapes, bursting grapes.

Silenus. The women's hair is dank as Panope's,

Uncrisped and colourless, as limp as hay.

Bacchantes. Alas! alas!

Silenus. Their cheeks are hollow, and their arms are thin.

Bacchantes. Alack-a-day!

Silenus. We all are rebels.

1st Satyr. Outcasts.

1st Bacchante. Unsexed.

2nd Bacchante. Lost.

Silenus. Then are we geniuses. Now, hear my reason.

1st Satyr. Your reason!

2nd Satyr. Why, we thought we had it now!

Silenus. Erroneous conclusion; for to say

That we have geniuses for drinking deep,

And drink accordingly, is but to say

We drink because we're dry: that's not enough.

Reason there is for genius evermore,

Could we discover it.

1st Satyr. Then tell us ours.

Silenus. Patience and drink a little.

[All drink.

Mine alderliefest prodigals, the truth

Is simply this, that we're inferior.

1st Bacchante. We know it.

Silenus. Well said! That's it! We know it!

Inferior, and we know it. Consider, then,

What dreadful thought is this--what dire dismay--

Inferior, yet immortal! We tried, we failed;

Failure was our familiar: so we chose,

Rather than miss our aim eternally,

To aim to miss, making success secure:

That is the reason of our geniuses.

Were we of those to whom death ministers,

We might strain struggling, staggering--but no!

What is the highest life that mortals live?

A finger-length--time, fame, oblivion--

A slate, a pencil, and a sponge! Then drink.

Song and dance, in which Silenus joins.

Dance and sing, we are eternal;

Let us still be mad with drinking:

'Tis a madness less infernal

Than the madness caused by thinking.

Death, cease whetting missiles for us;

Lurk not in the grave's dark portal;

Bring your dead, and join the chorus;

Drink, for we are all immortal.

Drink, my gallants; reel and rhyme

Though our souls are second-rate

We are none the less sublime:

Drink, and give the lie to fate!

Silenus. I know another song like that; but if drunkenness is no

excuse for plagiarism, what is?

[Silenus, Satyrs, and Bacchantes go out.

Enter Scaramouch.

Harlequin. Welcome, great chief!

Columbine. Hail, noble champion!

Scaramouch. How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Have you secured our venerable

Bacchanalian friend?

Harlequin. We have.

Scaramouch. Where is he? Now, don't tell me he's in your pocket. I'm

not yet better of that fairy you caught me.

Harlequin. Was she not a success?

Scaramouch. O Harlequin! O Columbine! I had her advertised on posters

as big as mainsails. I paid municipalities fortunes to permit policemen

to be my sandwich-men.

Harlequin. And a very good use to put them to.

Scaramouch. Now don't: I can't stand it. Listen: I offered a prize of

a thousand guineas to whoever would make a new joke about policemen,

introducing my fairy. Twenty-one thousand jokes were sent in: I read these

jokes.

Harlequin. Heroic soul!

Scaramouch. Nay, I am better. Do not flatter me.--Well, I published

an hourly bulletin of the fairy's progress to the capital, with gratis

supplements of original novels by the chief living writers. I hired and

shut up six theatres, and bought the Crystal Palace to exhibit her in. Age

of glass and iron! there came a thing about the size of a small tadpole!

Harlequin. Well, I never said she was a giantess.

Scaramouch. No; but my bills had her as big as a ballet-girl. The

crowd--there was a crowd the first and only night--couldn't see it; so

they wrecked the Palace and went off in a body to the performing fleas,

and a stray cat ate the fairy. Now, how big is Bacchus?

Harlequin. Too big for a cat to eat: in fact, I don't believe any cat

in Christendom, even Whittington's, which bearded a king, would dare to

look at him. I only saw him once, and I've no desire to see him again. He

withered me, sir, with a look: I am limp still.

Scaramouch. Paper, pens, and ink! I thought you said you had him?

Harlequin. No, sir; we have only got his venerable Bacchanalian

friend.

Scaramouch. People and pantomimes! what am I to do!

Harlequin. Ship Silenus instead. Why, even supposing we could get

hold of Bacchus, he would be of no use for our purpose.

Columbine. He would be a worse bargain than the fairy, unless you

passed him off for Ariadne.

Scaramouch. In the name of the living tinker, how?

Harlequin. Because not a soul would believe that the big beardless

boy which Bacchus looks was he. Now, this old wine-skin, Silenus, is just

the idea your worthy patrons have of what Bacchus must be after a supposed

debauch extending from end to end of the Christian era.

Scaramouch. And is he willing to play Bacchus?

Harlequin. As willing as a grub is in May to be a butterfly.

Bacchus has placed him and some other drouths of his crew under guard, and

limited them to so many drinks a day, for they were as dissipated as

porters. I helped them to escape on condition that they should sail with

us; which was a bargain. But they were more difficult to manage than a

crew ashore after a three months' voyage. Imagine, now: they have gone off

in search of Ariadne. By good chance they took the way to the beach.

Scaramouch. Is Ariadne in the wood?

Harlequin. Not at all: but they have all shipped such a sea of liquor

that they would believe anything. Silenus told them to go and find

Ariadne, and they straightway comprehended that she was in the vicinity.

Scaramouch. I suppose we couldn't lay hands on her?

Columbine. On Ariadne? you might as well try to lay hands upon a star.

Scaramouch. Stripes and stirrups! a glorious idea! To have a

well-preserved planet or a three-tailed comet on exhibition! Naxos and

night! but that would be stupendous.

For a caravan is the only plan;

Hurry my toms and trulls!

Ho-ye-ho, and a rumble-low! Pay your penny, and see the show:

This is the age of gulls.

[ They go out dancing.

SCENE II.--The Sea-shore.

Enter Ione.

Ione. O wind, and do you wander all the night,

Moving the broad, black clouds, heavy and high,

And lifting, there and yonder, with a kiss,

The wet plumes of the sea? O sweet west wind,

Stay here and tell me secrets for a while!

Whence do you come and whither are you bound?

What music are you singing to yourself,

Sometimes with muffled syllables that fall,

And break their meaning on the hearts they touch?

Is this the wind that turned against her mouth

Forsaken Ariadne's wrathful sighs?

I see her leaning on her clenched right hand,

As she awakes and knows the flying sail,

And thinks that even to her has man been false,

Hatred and scorn--no sorrow, love, nor dread--

Starting in tears from both her angry orbs.--

My foot is wet! The tide is thronging up

With jocund whispers, and the press of waves

Scatters in pearly laughter on the sand.

Surely the moon is arming for the night:

O, now, I see her silver harness gleam

Behind the dusky curtains of her tent!

While the wind, swelling, sounds a trumpet-note,

She showers her bounteous shadow on the sea,

A largesse to the waves that toss their caps:

And now she leaps into the lists of heaven.--

What creature in her shadow floats this way?

It is a boat, and one sits at the helm!

[Hides behind a rock.

The sail is silken, and the hull, pearl-clad;

It leaps from wave to wave: the sweet, salt spray,

Like odoured tresses loosened in the dance,

Streams from the prow. This is some god: he lands.--

If he be man, the men that I have known

Are of a lower order. How the moon

Shines on him! and his eyes drink in her light.

He cannot know our world. Now on the sea,

Now on the shore, he flings his looks about;

And yet again, the moon. What if he be

Endymion! O, would I were the moon!

What! has he seen me?

[Sarmion enters and leads her from her hiding-place.

Are you man or god?

[He makes a sign.

Can you not speak? Poor mariner, he's dumb!

What shall I do with him? Be not afraid;

No one shall harm you, for my father owns

The land here and the shore. I left our house

Without his knowledge and against his will

That I might see the sea alone at night:

I never felt such ecstasy before:

I will frequent the strand, and with the moon

Keep company. You love the moon, I think?

[Within.] Ione, Ione!

My father's voice!

Enter Glaucus.

Glaucus. Well, why don't you introduce me?

Ione. Are you angry?

Glaucus. O no! I have run a mile through thorns and bents and sand,

but I am not angry. I may be hot and out of breath, and my head may steam

like a punch-bowl, but I am not angry. I fell ten or twelve times and

harrowed the soil with my countenance, but I am not angry. My daughter,

sir--this is my daughter, the sauciest madcap in Naxos--runs out of the

house when she should be asleep, to meet you in this unwholesome

moonlight, and she asks me if I am angry! Why, sir, a man who could be

angry in these circumstances would be a man of an infinitesimal mind. My

body may be one bruise; my heart may be broken into cat's meat; but I am

not angry: do not think it.

[Ione and Glaucus talk apart.

Ione. This is a god.

Glaucus. A what?

Ione. One of the minor gods.

Glaucus. I wouldn't have thought it. What's his name?

Ione. I do not know. He slid down a moonbeam in that boat you see,

and sailed ashore five minutes ago. He has not spoken yet, nor will he

speak. I think he has done something for which Jove is punishing him with

dumbness.

Glaucus. Poor fellow! I'd sooner be blind.

Ione. I believe you, father. I think you should ask him to the house.

Glaucus. Do you? Are they not rather ticklish customers, these gods?

Ione. No; they are charming company.

Glaucus. Oh!--But this is an anonymous god. People would laugh at us,

and call him an impostor.

Ione. We can give him a name. Endymion will do.

Glaucus. What god is he?

Ione. God of the moon.

Glaucus. Endymion, god of the moon. Well, I'll invite him.--Good

sir--I mean, good .... Ione, how shall I address him?

Ione. Address him by his name.

Glaucus. Endymion, will your godship be pleased so far to favour my

humble abode as to take up your quarters there for the night.

[Sarmion passes his hand through Ione's hair.

[Aside.] Thus do the gods turn the insolence of men into courtesy. He

seems smitten with Ione. Suppose, now, my daughter were to marry a god:

she would become a goddess; and I, the father of a goddess and the

father-in-law of a god, would, perforce, be made a god also--a minor god.

I would have been contented to be a baronet; in my dreams I have sometimes

beheld myself a lord; but to be a god!--Ha! you are getting on together. I

wonder, now, Endymion, for what you were made dumb. Do you know the dumby

alphabet? No; well; you can write it down when we go home. Ione, I want to

speak to you.

[Glaucus and Ione talk apart.

Would you like your father to be a god,--a minor god?

Ione. No.

Glaucus. But I would develop godlike qualities, of which the chief is

tolerance. I begin to feel more dignified and wiser already. Then, as

these qualities, by friction with other gods, and a rational indulgence in

ambrosia and nectar, become brighter and solider, my minority may end, and

they may give me a seat at Jove's table on Olympus, Ione, think; a little

intrigue has brought about a greater matter than a divorce: Juno must be

old! her successor--you do not listen: give your eyes to him and your ears

to me.

Ione. I will. You were saying that you would like to be a god.

Glaucus. After all, I am a well-made man; and Endymion looks no more.

Ione. But he is disguised.

Glaucus. It may be that I am disguised too.

Ione. I doubt it: no god could be disguised so completely as not to

know his own identity.

Glaucus. Still, here is a god punished with dumbness: Jupiter may

have punished me with oblivion of a brilliant past.

Ione. What god could you possibly be?

Glaucus. Probably just a god. Doubtless there are gods of nothing in

particular, merely decorative.

Ione. Doubtless.

Glaucus. Well, I would rather be that than no god at all.

Ione. I fear it.

Glaucus. Endymion, you must tell me in writing when we go home, if

one of the chief minor gods was punished some fifty years ago by the loss

of all knowledge of his own identity.

Ione. Father, he does not know a word you say:

He understands no language I can speak--

[Aside.] Except that of my eyes. If I can read

The fire of his they tell me priceless tales.

Enter Silenus, Satyrs, and Bacchantes.

Silenus. Ha! Ariadne!--Theseus, not yet fled!

Or who are you? But you are Ariadne.

[He is about to take her hand when Sarmion interferes.

Bacchantes, bind him!

[After a short struggle Sarmion is bound.

Glaucus. I declare! Take care what you are about, my good women; and

you, old man, conduct yourself more respectfully in the presence of

immortals. This is Endymion, and I am a nameless god.

Silenus. Nameless and noteless, you! Endymion, this?

Never! I saw Endymion long ago

Before the stars were tarnished: with his crook

Sloped in his hand he wandered down a hill;

The night shone round him: this youth is not he.

Men are not made so now, though this is one

Who may remind me of the elder time.

But you, most lovely lady, seem to me

The very image of the golden age.

Glaucus. My daughter!

Silenus. She is Ariadne now,

For I am Bacchus. Fill my cup again;

If I cease drinking I grow melancholy.

[A Bacchante fills his cup and he drinks.

Glaucus. Pardon, most potent god!

Enter Scaramouch, Harlequin, and Columbine.

Silenus. Ha! Harlequin!

Scaramouch. Is that Bacchus?

Harlequin. Yes.

Scaramouch. Capital!--How d'ye do? how d'ye do?

Silenus. What irrepressible person is this?

Harlequin. Scaramouch.

Silenus. I do not know the name.

Scaramouch. Lamps and limpets, no! It is not in Lemprière, but it is

a good name.

Silenus. It is well you think so. What are you?

Scaramouch. I am the gentleman Harlequin told you of--he who has the

honour to be your majesty's most obedient servant and impresario.

Silenus. The showman! Well, I suppose there must be showmen.

Scaramouch. Shawms and psalteries, I should think so! I can

demonstrate to you that there is nothing pays but showmanship.

Glaucus [aside]. This is a wise fellow.

Silenus. You shall demonstrate nothing to me; but get us all on board

your vessel as soon as possible.

Scaramouch. As practical as a man! I thought all you gods were a kind

of moon-struck, plaster-of-Paris, posturing, and, to say the truth,

frequently indecent parcel of patriarchs. It shall appear in your

advertisement, sir, 'As practical as a man.' May I be dipped in wax if it

don't. The terms, sir: do you accept the offer Harlequin made?

Silenus. You must be the son of a puppet.

Scaramouch. Puppies and patchwork, why?

Silenus. From your habit of unexpected, disjointed, and inept

gesticulation, which has its exact counterpart in your pattering speeches

and preposterous preludes.

Scaramouch. What am I to do? The world is old; it has been satiated

with originality, and in its dotage cries bitterly for entertainment. A

public man must therefore be extravagant in order to distinguish

himself. My felicitous alliteration and prompt non-blasphemous oaths

constitute my note, which is the literary term for trade-mark--a species

of catch-word, in fact. Sweetness and light! do you understand me?

Silenus. Showman and sharper, you speak shrewdly, and I accept your

terms. Come, where are your boats?

Scaramouch. Oakum and orchids, there is only one!

Silenus. One! you need a fleet.

Scaramouch. Break me and splice me, if I understand!

Silenus. How else will you ship the company before morning?

Scaramouch. Company!--Harlequin, explain.

Harlequin. It is true I only bargained for Bacchus, but he seems to

think I meant the whole crowd.

Silenus. All, or none.

Scaramouch. Never! there was a bargain. Business!--O sacred word! Now

you attack me on my weak point, which is also my strong one.

[Blows a whistle. Enter two Sailors.

With reverential firmness remove our Bacchanalian friend.

[Silenus mesmerises the Sailors as they advance.

Mesmers and mystogogues! none of that! Secure the god; although he nod he

cannot shake the spheres.

Sailors. Ay, ay, sir.

1st Sailor. Our timbers are rooted.

2nd Sailor. Our flippers are frozen to our sides.

Scaramouch. Good, my men. I shall find you an engagement as supers

when we go home; but this is not the stage.

Sailors. Ay, ay, sir.

1st Sailor. I'm in as good form as calf's-foot jelly, and as frisky

as a pyramid.

2nd Sailor. And I'm as strong as water, and stiffer a deal than grog.

Scaramouch. Ha! ha! very fine indeed. Now, truss him up and away. Do

you hear? stop that acting.

Sailors. Ay, ay, sir.

1st Sailor. Acting? I call it doing nothing.

2nd Sailor. I can't even scratch my head.

Scaramouch [draws his sword]. Death, distinctly, if you do not leap

your own height when I count three. One, two----

[Silenus makes passes and they leap.

Scaramouch [sheathes his sword]. Back to thy bed, bright babe of

Birmingham! Arrest the god.

[The Sailors advance, but are again mesmerised by Silenus.

Sea lubbers, dare you rouse me further?

Sailors. Ay, ay, sir.

Scaramouch [draws his sword]. Homer and homicide, then die!

[Silenus mesmerises Scaramouch just as his sword pricks 1st Sailor.

1st Sailor. Do not prolong my agony: run me through at once: the

point pricks me, sir: in or out, one or other.

Scaramouch. Magic and mastodons, I can do neither! Great Bacchus, is

this a trick or no?

Silenus. That depends on you, good Scarabee. If you consent to ship

all my friends, it is a trick; but if you do not, you will find it a

serious matter to stand there till you rot.

Scaramouch. Every mother's son and daughter of them--the whole

island, anything you like. This power of yours is worth a kingdom.

[Silenus releases them.

Silenus. Embark Ariadne in the boat you have, and send back others

for the rest. Tow this egg-shell shallop with you: it is precious: its

workmanship is divine.

Scaramouch. Ariadne!

Silenus. Yes; that is she.

Scaramouch. Shiver my timbers! this will be the greatest combination

on record.

Silenus. Columbine, attend your mistress.

Columbine. Mistress Ariadne, I am to be your waiting-maid.

Ione. I am not Ariadne.

Glaucus [aside to Ione]. You are! you must be! Don't you see this is

Bacchus, and the dumb fellow an impostor. Bacchus says he's not Endymion.

Ione [aside to Glaucus]. It was I called him Endymion. He's no

impostor.

Glaucus [aside to Ione]. Don't argue.--Great Bacchus, Ariadne is a

little bashful as becomes a maiden honoured with the attention of your

godship.

Silenus. What are you?

Glaucus. Her father--at least I have been so for eighteen years. I

begin to doubt whether she be my child or no, since your godship perceives

that she is Ariadne--a fact which I recognised the moment you mentioned

it; and since certain quakings have overcome my being, revealing to me

that this lodgment of clay is, as it were, a long-slumbering volcano,

about to waken into full and luminous godhood.

Silenus. Know then, that she is not your child; she is a king's

daughter.

Glaucus. Princess Ariadne, I beseech you humbly to pardon any trouble

I may have given you as a father. I here formally renounce, what was never

mine, all control over your royal highness. And now, Bacchus, let us sift

to the bottom this mythological mystery. First of all, what god am I? Of

course I know I am only a minor one in the meantime, so do not scruple to

tell me, however insignificant my rank may be.

Silenus. We will discuss it, friend, over a bottle.--Harlequin,

remove Ariadne and this youth. Good people, accompany them with singing

to the shore.

Ione. Adventures throng upon me.

Song.

The boat is chafing at our long delay,

And we must leave too soon

The spicy sea-pinks and the inborne spray,

The tawny sands, the moon.

Keep us, O Thetis, in our western flight!

Watch from thy pearly throne

Our vessel, plunging deeper into night

To reach a land unknown.

[Harlequin, Columbine, Ariadne, Sarmion, go out.]

SCENE III.--The same.

Silenus, Scaramouch, and Glaucus sitting round a rock. Bacchantes set

bottles of wine and go out.

Silenus. Taste this, good Scarab. My little godling, drink.

[All drink.

Scaramouch. Body and bouquet! what is this?

Silenus. Wine, sir, crushed from grapes the sun never ripened.

Glaucus. Is this to be bought?

Silenus. What! are you still buying and selling here? Come, drink

again. [All drink.] Does it not search into the dark corners and irrigate

the waste places of the brain? This will make you gods, truly. And you

still buy and sell below the moon?

Scaramouch. The old story, sir--

East and west, and north and south,

Under the crescent, or under the cross,

One song you hear in every mouth,

"Profit and loss, profit and loss."

Silenus. Is it so? I should have expected some change.

Glaucus. Where have you been not to know that the divine institution

of buying and selling is as vigorous as ever?

Silenus. I did not know it was divine, and I have been with Bacchus

among the stars.

Scaramouch. Roads and railways! what does he mean?

Silenus. And is money still the cure for all the ills of life? Is it

still the talisman, eh!--my brand-new demigod? And the great and glorious

institution of rich and poor, good spick-and-span divinity--is the world

not tired of that gift of the gods yet?

Glaucus. This is empty railing: there must always be rich and poor.

Silenus. Let the rich hope so. But drink: these thoughts unnerve me.

[All drink.

Scaramouch. Good Bacchus, great Bacchus, you must be careful. Such a

slip in public as you made just now would ruin us.

Silenus. What slip did I make?

Scaramouch. You talked of being with Bacchus; now, you are Bacchus.

Silenus. So I am. Well, it was a slip.

Scaramouch. Tell us about the stars.

Silenus. Aha! good Scarab, we travelled about from planet to planet,

from orb to orb, and each fresh sphere grew an original wine. As pebbles

to grapes, are grapes to the fruits they crush there. Damsels, Hebes all,

gather and tread them, and their ankles are stained with purple all the

year round: the wine-presses and the vats are made of scented wood: the

season never changes: there is no night, no death, no rich and poor.

Glaucus. Glorious, Bacchus, glorious! But it seems to me that we

three may now fitly discuss my mythological rank.

Silenus. We may, good codling. Let us see. There was a god some five

decades ago who lost caste abominably--no, it is longer; because during

the last score centuries we Bacchanalians have been out of hearing of the

faintest mundane murmur, beyond cry of Olympus, conquering the realms of

space, and now visit the earth solely for Ariadne's pleasure: she had a

desire to see once more her bower in Naxos.

Glaucus. To whom might I appeal, then? Is there no register of gods?

Scaramouch. None but Lemprière.

Silenus. It matters not: if you feel confident that you are a god you

must be one.

Glaucus. But any one might be a god at that rate.

Silenus. Surely, surely; confidence makes gods and goddesses of the

merest mortality.

Scaramouch. Mars and martyrdom! I shall be a god too.

Silenus. Do, good Scrub, do: be a god: be the god of gulls.--I have

it! Drink again. [All drink.] By-the-bye, what has your name been

hitherto?

Glaucus. Glaucus.

Silenus. Then, Glaucus, know that thou art not Glaucus, but my

squire, Silenus. I am right glad to see thee, old one. Thou hast been a

wanderer long.

Glaucus. I thank thee, Bacchus. But I have no memory of my name or

character. If thou----

Silenus. Nay, thou must not 'thee' and 'thou' me. I am thy superior,

and in my familiarity and my cups so address thee, showing my pleasure in

thy return. Use respectable pronouns, Silenus. I am not angry with thee:

in coming to thyself thou wilt doubtless make many mistakes, which I

without resentment shall promptly correct.

Glaucus. Ah! great Bacchus, I seem, now, to remember with what

reverence I regarded your godliness: it is the first hint my consciousness

supplies of my identity. Will your great highness tell me more of myself?

Silenus. I will, Silenus. Thou art one of those whom the bulk of gods

and men pity: but thou art not truly pitiable. It is certain that thou art

not a respectable immortal, for thou keepest late hours, and dost allow

thy company to choose itself. I hear that thou art, or would'st be,

perennially drunk: thou seemest to have as many stomachs as a cow, and art

as bald as a vulture; and after thy godliness thy most indubitable

attribute is certainly not thy cleanliness. No; thou art not respectable,

therefore art thou pitied; but thou dost not pity thyself, wherefore I

love thee. I respect the unsubduable temper of thy soul, which, in the

perdition of all that mortality and immortality consider barely necessary

for the mere toleration of existence, still retains its diamond edge,

flashing from the worn-out scabbard, keen and serviceable for offence or

defence.

Glaucus. But, my lord Bacchus, I shall reform.

Silenus. Never, by Styx, thou fool! I tell thee, wert thou to change

one thought of thy brain, or could'st thou obliterate one dream of thy

youth, or cancel an action of thy prime, thou would'st endanger the

stability of the universe. Go to: if thou reformest thou losest

immortality and mortality, and shalt cease to be.

Glaucus. With all due respect for your godship, I do not like my

character.

Silenus. Dost thou think I like mine?

Glaucus. But when I was Glaucus----

Silenus. Thou wert a fool and respectable, and did'st admire thyself.

Go to.

Scaramouch. Gall and wormwood! what sound is that?

Silenus. I hear no sound.

Scaramouch. A sort of tinkling.

Silenus. O Hecate! it is the silver cymbals.

Scaramouch. What cymbals?

Silenus. Listen.

Glaucus [aside]. The old wine-skin's going to faint.

Silenus. He comes! he comes! great Bacchus comes! My heart!

Now, foolish creatures, will you see a god.

But me, alas! what punishment for me?

Some wine! [Drinks.] I'll dull my sense and show no shame.

[Empties his bottle.

This wine has lost its virtue.--Do you hear?

These cymbal-players all were ladies once,

Matrons and maids, close-robed from head to heel:

Wild panthers' skins, zoned slackly, vest them now;

Their milk-white limbs like moonbeams softly glance

From tree to tree: and through the night they come.

Scaramouch. Would I could hear them! But I tremble.

Glaucus. What does all this mean? [Rises, drunk.] Bacchus is here,

and Bacchus is there, and I'm a god, and can't understand it. I have a

crude suspicion that I have taken too much wine, which a man may do once

or twice in his life. My opinions about drunkenness are strong, but I will

keep them to myself. Suffice it to say that I have never been drunk

without good reason, and I'm not drunk now. I know the difference--any man

knows the difference between exhilaration and drunkenness. I'm exhilarated

now; I'm not drunk. I seem to remember another man some time or

other--several men, in fact, at various times--saying that they were only

exhilarated. It's a common thing to say in certain circumstances: it's a

platitude. I'm not drunk. Do you think I'm drunk?

Scaramouch. Drams and drachmas! as drunk's a fiddler!

Glaucus. Liar! liar, definitely! Put me to the test. Bacchus--give me

a back!

[Runs at Silenus, and falls.

Silenus. These are the satyrs playing pandean pipes,

These rippling flames of sound: the muffled notes

Are tabors. How the music dwindles! Hark!

From some far isle it seems to reach our ears,

To reach our ears and faint: the tide-mark there

Is out of hearing. I should say they pass

A knoll that lies between us, or the road

Winds backward, and the forest is more dense.

Scaramouch. They may be going back.

Silenus. No, Bacchus comes for me.

Scaramouch. Perhaps they've lost the way.

Silenus. Ha! ha! when Bacchus loses himself in a wood Silenus will

drink the sea.

Scaramouch. The sound again! It is as you say: one would think it

journeyed over sea. It grows and gathers, and now it travels from its own

quarter: it is very near.

Silenus. He comes in all his state: the chariot-wheels

Like silent billows roll; from side to side

The tigers' heads between their velvet paws,

Like lilies eyed with flame, sway noiselessly,

Or, poised on high, breathe odours to the moon.

Taller than Ariadne by a head

He stands with her upon the chariot-floor:

They have been lovers since he found her here:

His arm is round her neck; one loyal hand

Droops on her shoulder, and the other holds

A careless rein: her face lifts up to his

The deep, sweet melancholy of desire;

And he looks down, high mystery in his eyes--

The passionate love of these sweet centuries;

Unstaunched, uncloyed.

Scaramouch. But, where?--where?

Silenus. In the wood.

I know how Bacchus travels. Here they come.

Scaramouch. But the tigers: we shall be eaten alive.

Silenus. My good Scrub, the tigers of Bacchus know of daintier food

than such marrowless bones and savourless flesh as you and I. The best

thing you can do is to stretch yourself there beside Glaucus, and pretend

that you are drunk. Bacchus may be angry at those who have carried me off,

and his immediate punishment might be severe: he will do nothing to one

who is in the power of wine, and by the time you can be reasonably sober

his ire will have gone like the beads from a goblet.

Scaramouch. I would not do so for a man, but gods may be encountered

by such sleights. Honestly, I have soused my brains a little. You do not

lie comfortably, Glaucus. Come--why, he is sound asleep! I'll make a

pillow of him.

[Lies down with his head on Glaucus.

Enter Satyrs and Bacchantes, followed by Bacchus and Ariadne in a chariot

drawn by tigers. They descend.

Bacchus. Well, runagate, who are your friends?

Silenus. My foes:

They fell at the first bottle: I have won.

Scaramouch [aside]. I could drink him out in brandy; but these

planetary wines are not for this world.

Bacchus. How often have you run away?

Silenus. Seven times.

Bacchus. Seven times you've risked disaster. You are old,

Feeble and foolish----

Silenus. Oh! not foolish, Bacchus!

Bacchus. Hare-brained at least----

Ariadne. But chide him not, dear lord.

Bacchus. Well, then, I will not: he is found. Be wise,

My ancient friend, and know your happiness.

[Bacchantes surround Silenus and bind him with ivy.

Scaramouch [aside]. These are gentle divinities.

Ariadne. Here, by this sea, I waked, how long ago!

Here, by this sea, you found me.

Bacchus. Would you be

My bride again?

Ariadne. O no! each day, each hour

I am your bride; and as the days and years

Gather behind us, every happiness--

And that is every minute of my life--

Doubles the joy of that which went before:

And yet the past is as a galaxy

Wherein no star excels the radiant throng.

Bacchus. Not that fair hour when first you loved me?

Ariadne. No:

I have no memory. I am striving now

To summon up the time when here you came,

And made me an immortal and your bride.

I might as well compel my thoughts to search

For some unnoted dream that I forgot

The moment after I had told you, love,

New wakened from the sleep I dreamed it in.

Bacchus. But memory goes afoot--invalid here:

Love has a high-commanding minister,

Imagination; and it serves alone

Beings who yield their moods and bow their minds

To its obedient masterdom: stout thought,

That trudges, blind and lame, the dusty way,

And memory, that casts its broken net

In Lethe's waves, keep not among your train--

Fit servants these for mortals.

Ariadne. So I do--

I banish them: but still there clings to me

Something of earth.

Bacchus. I love you best for that.

A goddess born is tame, secure of heaven,

And there is nothing to endow her with;

But you derive divinity from me,

Yet keep the passionate heart that mortals have.--

Now, I am at the morn I found you here:

Come, Ariadne, leap into the past.

Ariadne. I cannot.

Bacchus. See, the flying traitor's sail!

Ariadne. No, no! This night--this hour is in my blood.

The brine, the sea-pinks, and the soaring moon

Seem thoughts of mine which now I body forth;

And these, and all the beauties of the world

Breathe of my love for you.

Bacchus. I found you here

With crimson cheeks and nostrils wide, asleep;

Your hair dishevelled, and your mantle torn.

Ariadne. No, no!

You cannot drive me back. I see, indeed,

A picture of our meeting; but not mine.

My fancy like a wayward messenger

Despatched to gather roses, on its wings

Bearing their scent, flies empty-handed home.

Bacchus. What picture, Ariadne?

Ariadne. That we saw

In Athens, when we last alighted there.

Do you remember how it made us smile

Until we felt that love had painted it;

And then we found it true and beautiful?

Bacchus. Yes: and the poet.

Ariadne. Oh! some mortals still

Love us, and deem us worthy of a song.

But for the subject of their art, I vow

They needs must know it better than myself

Who am the heroine: their feigning hangs

A veil before my fancy.--Come away:

Back where the water gurgles through the fern,

Dewing the feathery fronds, and hyacinths

Spread like a purple smoke far up the bank.

[Steps into the chariot.

Enter Harlequin and Columbine. Scaramouch rises.

Harlequin. Bacchus!

[Is running out.

Bacchus. Stay.

Harlequin. Pardon, great Bacchus!

Scaramouch. Pardon!

Bacchus. What men are you, infesters of this isle?

Scaramouch. From England come we, Bacchus--England. Ha! Know you

not England, land of shams and shows?

Bacchus. Is patriotism dead in England, then,

That travellers thus traduce their native land?

What make you here?

Scaramouch. We came to hire you, sir:

I am a showman: but we took instead

Silenus here, who, pardon me, agrees

More closely with the popular idea

Of what you're like than you yourself do. Now,

What must I do? I most distinctly see

That you would be a more attractive show;

But I have made a contract with Silenus.

Then, here's the Ariadne I suppose,

And I have just returned from shipping one!

What's to be done? Stalactites, storms, and strums,

Will you come, too? Name your own price: look here:

You'll be yourself; Silenus himself, too;

And Ariadne will be Ariadne.

For her I've shipped--why, ladies have their starts,

Their turns, their maggots, and their fantasies,

Their hypochondrias, their aches, their pains,

Their dreams by day and night, their whims, their nothings;

And should her ladyship lie in the clutch,

The grip, the throes, or, to be more precise,

The mood, or mode, or manner of a qualm,

The madam I have shipped could take her place,

And be her under-study as it were.

Yea, by the very doom of destiny,

I have a substitute for you, my lord--

Endymion, they call him--in the ship!

So, Bacchus, if it happened, as it might--

And who has better reason?--that you sipped,

Or tippled, or indulged, or----Heaven forgive me!

[Falls on his knees.

Take off your eyes: they scorch me through and through!

Bacchus [to Harlequin].

You, with the wooden sword, I know your trade:

You shall do feats with that untempered blade.

[To Ariadne.] Should you not like to see these substitutes?

Ariadne. Rarely.

Bacchus [to Harlequin]. Strike, knave; and deeper than the roots

Of aged oaks, as deep as is the sea,

Wide as the Aegean, and as Olympus high,

Your striking shall be felt. Come nearer me;

Now strike, until your sword in splinters fly.

[Harlequin strikes the earth with his sword.

SCENE IV.--Transformation from the Sea-shore to the Bower of Ariadne.

Song.

Through the air, through the air,

We are borne; from our hair

A spicy odour is shaken:

We sing as we sail;

The strong trees quail,

And the dreaming doves awaken.

The pale screech-owl

That, cheek by jowl,

Goes ravening with night,

Thinks day has come,

And hurries home

Half-starved, to shun the light.

An eagle above us screams;

But a star blows a silver horn,

And a faint far echo floats

From the depths of the lakes, and the streams

Warble the shadowy notes.

A young lark thinks it morn,

And sings through our flying crowd,

That seems to his eager soul

Like a low-hung dawning cloud.

The bells of midnight toll;

The night-flowers tell the hour;

And the stately planets roll,

As we fly to our lady's bower.

SCENE V.--The Bower of Ariadne.

Enter Bacchus and Ariadne, Sarmion and Ione, Harlequin and Columbine,

Glaucus, Scaramouch, Satyrs, and Bacchantes.

Song.

Here are brackens, green and gold,

Fit for plumes of Titans old;

And we see them by the light

That immortals shed at night:

Bosky rooms where to and fro

Shadowy dryads come and go;

Bubbling springs where naiads peep,

Mossy couches where they sleep.

Here beneath this tree-topped hill

Pan oft comes to pipe his fill,

Making all the valley ring;

Here the Muses sometimes sing:

And here upon this midnight hour

We visit Ariadne's bower.

Ariadne [to Sarmion]. Who may you be?

Ione. He cannot speak.

Ariadne. Not speak!

Bacchus. Silenus knows a remedy for that.

Silenus. None better.

[Gives Sarmion wine in a goblet.

This would loosen dead men's tongues.

Sarmion. My name is Sarmion. Whence I come I know not:

I know I live; and now I have command

Of speech and of my thoughts, thanks to this wine.

I first remember being on the sea:

My shallop leapt from wave to wave: I thought

For ever to go sailing through the night:

My molten life welled from my heart and streamed

In murmuring flame through all its channels, fanned

By cooling winds: I watched the wanton waves

That melted in each other till I slept.

When I awoke the moon shone overhead,

And made along the sea a path of light,

Wherein I sailed: the beauty of it all

Blanched me with rapture; but before I knew

My shallop grounded, and I sprang on shore.

I looked about me for a silver stair

To mount up to the moon, and seeing none

Began to be dismayed, when suddenly

I came upon this lady, whom I love.

[To Ione.] Lady, I love you. How I longed to say

"I love you!"--We were carried to a ship,

And thence arrived here borne upon a cloud.

Bacchus. I know you now, and what and whence you are.

I think this lady loves you in return: ask her and see.

[Sarmion and Ione talk apart.

[To Scaramouch.] So, you are he would make of me a show.

Scaramouch. It is my vocation. It may be an inferior calling, but

there are worse. It is not so honourable as being a god, doubtless, but it

is a decent kind of beggary.

Bacchus. I understand you have been prosperous.

Scaramouch. On the whole I have. I am not yet a millionaire, but I

have capital. I--don't look at me like that!

Bacchus. Prosperity has spoiled you, sir, I see:

You need to view the world with other eyes.

Come, Harlequin, that splinter of your sword

Shall work an old-world metamorphosis.

Strike him between the shoulders.

[Harlequin strikes Scaramouch.

To an ape

Be changed: and in that form you shall be caught,

And pass on exhibition for a year

From John-o'-Groat's to Land's End, up and down:

Thereafter you shall be a man again.

Scaramouch. Monkeys, menageries and misery! Bacchus, Bacchus, think

what you do! Do I merit such a fate? Make me a toad, a rat, a cockroach!

Heavens! a monkey in a cage! Straw, stench, and filth; and little boys

to tickle me with sticks, and throw me nuts! A blinking bleared baboon! A

chattering, gibbering, jabbering----

[Scaramouch rushes out transformed to an ape.

Bacchus [to Glaucus]. Come hither.

Glaucus [aside]. Now shall I grow young again, and be the god I

am--and yet I tremble.

Bacchus. You look like one who thinks himself of note.

Glaucus. Surely, sir, surely. I am Silenus, your high godship's

faithful old servant. I wish I could see myself. Have I undergone a change

similar to your godship's? When I last saw you--I remember nothing since I

fell asleep by the sea-shore--you were an old blown blue-bottle; now you

are as I see you. Am I now a god? Have I cast my slough?

Silenus. Oho! I have a word to say. You must know that I played

Bacchus in my wanderings. This vain old coxcomb took it into his head that

he must be a god, whereupon I persuaded him that he was myself, though all

Olympus knows there's not much of the god about me.

Glaucus. What! have I been played upon like a kettledrum? Is this all a

drean?

Bacchus. Well, are you still an immortal?

Glaucus. No--no; I am a foolish old man.

Bacchus. I'm glad you think so: you can now go home.

Glaucus. My daughter, sir?

Bacchus. Is safe. Farewell.

[Glaucus goes out.

[To Harlequin and Columbine.] Come here.

Harlequin and Columbine. Mercy! mercy!

Bacchus. Will you return, or will you follow me?

Harlequin and Columbine. O send us back!

Bacchus. A wretched choice: but go.

[Harlequin and Columbine go out.

Sarmion, what says the lady to your love?

Sarmion. O words of wonder, of enchantment--sweet,

And yet so strong, so tender and so bold,

That any ears save mine would miss the sense,

The savour, the aroma that they bear.

Ariadne. You love him, then?

Ione. Yes.

Ariadne. And you told him so?

Ione. I did.

Ariadne. What wondrous language could you use

That he should be so frenzied?

Ione. I but spoke

The language of my heart.

Bacchus. Well answered, girl.--

Our time is brief, for we have far to go

Before this side of earth can roll again

Out of its shadow. Listen, lovers.

Silenus. Peace.

Bacchus. Sarmion, you are descended from a race

Inhabiting a star above the moon.

Spirits they are, and by a subtle thought

Spirits are born to them. Those sultry clouds

That surge in slumbrous ranks like golden waves,

Or on the skyline of the earth build up,

Agleam with topaz and with sardonyx,

Towards evening, high pavilions and towers,

That change to lofty crests and gorges deep

The fancy cannot fathom, are more dense,

More gross than the ethereal continents

Of yonder orb, washed by a sinuous sea

Guiltless of storm, thinner and lovelier

Than the divided azure. In a dream

You had a vision of an earthly maid;

And, still asleep, your life, on fire for her,

Shaped to itself the body that you have--

The first to be incarnate of your race:

And then the secret limbec of your love

Distilled the wing'd and airy boat of pearl

That bore you to the earth. Here you awoke,

The past, forgot--the present, wonder all.

Ariadne. But shall we visit soon this star of his?

Bacchus. Sometime we shall.--Sarmion, this choice is yours:

Either to give Ione up, and be

Again a free thought in your natal sphere,

Whose whole dimensions, tense and rare, are pierced

By dwellers there, and give as easy way

As summer air to swallows, as the deep

To sporting dolphins; or to have your love

And with her the imprisonment of earth,

Where spirit must be draped in mortal flesh,

Where motion's shackled, and where ways are hewn,

Where life is conscious, and where death ends all.

Sarmion. I choose Ione. What with her must come

I scarcely understand; but there can fall

No present woe so bitter as would be

Her absence from my life.

Ione. O love, think well!

Here are disease and care; I shall grow old;

And poverty may catch us in its net.

Sarmion. Your voice is music, but you speak of things

Unknown to me.

Ione. Then, though my heart must break,

Return, return! This world is not for you!

A thousand daily pitfalls mesh the path

Of those who here are native: faults in friends,

Denials, tarryings, storm, and heat and cold,

Things loathsome, incomplete; falsehood, and wrath:

O I am ill at saying what I mean!

Think; if these pitiful disquietings

Have power to kill the joy in us, who come

Of blood that never beat in other veins

Than those of men and women, still abused

By buffetings of chance on every side,

What misery, what terror will there be

For you, whose life has known no bolts, no bars,

No stumbling-blocks, no weariness, no care!

And, chief of all, when you begin to find,

How weak, how foolish, and how fond I am!

Sarmion. Have you to suffer daily miseries?

Then here I stay. Gaunt wretchedness, advance:

If I may have this maiden for my mate,

No sting, no stroke of yours can make me quail;

And while I live I cannot be so bruised

But some sound part of me shall have the strength

To bear the blows intended for my love.

Ione. Now, God forbid! 'Tis I shall be your shield.

Ariadne. Come here and kiss me.

[Ariadne embraces Ione.

Bacchus. This is well, indeed.--

We must, ere dawn, away to India:

You two shall be transported through the air

To Glaucus' house.

Ione. How far are we from home?

Bacchus. Three miles, I think.

Ione. O, pray you, let us walk!

Sarmion, three miles together through the wood

Shimmering with moonlight, full of smothered sound,

And ghostly shadow, and the mingled scent

Of flowers and spices, and the cooling earth!

It is a very lifetime of delight!

Bacchus. Good-night then, and farewell.

Ariadne. Farewell.

Ione. Farewell.

Sarmion. All happiness go with you into Ind.

[Sarmion and Ione go out.

Ariadne. This star, my love--I burn to see this star.

Bacchus. You shall upon your birthday.

Ariadne. Two weeks hence,

As mortals count! Well, I can wait.

Bacchus. Lead on.