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Act III
Before Alaciel's house.
GUENDOLEN But what you tell me is not credible. Could Love at the prime vision slip your fence And his red bees wing humming to your heart? What, at the premier interchange of eyes Seed bulged into the bud, the bud to flower, Bloom waxing into fruit? can passion sink Thus deep embedded in a maiden soil? Masks not your love in an unwonted guise?
ALACIEL Sweet girl, you are a casket yet unused, A fair, unprinted page. These mysteries Are alien to your grasp, until Love pen His novel lithograph and write in you Songs bubbling with the music of a name. Oh, I am faster tangled in his eyes Than, in the net smoke-blasted Vulcan threw, Foam-bosomed Cytherea to her Mars.
GUENDOLEN But will he push his fancy to your bent?
ALACIEL How else? for in the coy glance of a girl A subtle sorcery lies that draws men on
Page – 768 As with a thread, nor snaps not ere it should. Love's palate is with acid flavours edged When what the lips repel, the eyes invite.
GUENDOLEN Have you forgotten then, my sister, how Since war's ensanguined dice have thrown a cast So fatal to our peace, the sweet confines Of Ilni and her primitive content Are hedged and meted by the savage Law?
ALACIEL Child, I have not forgotten; but first love Poseidon-like submerges with his sea All barriers, and the checks that men oppose But make him fret and spume against the sky. Who shall withstand him? not the gnawing flame Nor toothed rocks nor gorgon-fronted piles Nor metal bars; thro' all he walks unharmed. But lo where on the forest's lip there dawns My noonstar in the garish paths of day. He should not see you, sweet. Prithee, go in. Enter Melander. How now? was this your compact? Lift your glance Where yet the primrose-pale Hyperion clings Upon the purple arches of the air Nor on the cornice prints his golden seal. You are too soon. Why with this fire-eyed haste Have you o'ershot the target of your vows?
MELANDER Ah, cruel child! what hast thou done to me? What expiation in the balance pends Against thy fault? Not the low sweets of sound Fetched by thy piping tongue from ruby stops, Nor fluttering glances under velvet lids, Nor the rich tell-tale blush that sweetly steals
Page – 769 As if a scarlet pencil would indite A love-song in thy cheeks. These candid brows, The hushed seraglio to thy veiled thoughts, These light wind-kissing feet, these milky paps That peep twixt edge and loosely-married edge, Thy slumber-swollen purple-fringed orbs, Thy hands, cinque-petalled rose-buds just apart Beneath the wheedling kiss of spring, thy sides, Those continents of warm, unmelting snow, All in the balance are but precious air. Nay, with thy whole dear sum of beauties fill The scale, it will not tremble to the dust Save hooped upon thy breast my weight helps thine. If you deny me my just claim, I'll snatch You from yourself and torture with the whips Of Love, till you disclose your hoardings. Oh To seize this loaded honeycomb of bliss And make a rich repast! Oh turn from me The serious wonder of those orbed fires! Their lustre stabs my heart with agony. Hide in thy hair those passion-moulded lips! Veil up those milky glimpses from my sight! Oh I will drag thy soul out in a kiss! Wilt thou add fire to fire? Torture not My longing with reluctance; forge not now The pouted simulation of disdain. Leap quick into my arms! there lose thyself. She embraces him. Pardon me, sweet: thy beauties in my soul Blow high the leaping billows of desire And temperance is a wreck merged in his sea.
ALACIEL Loveliest Melander, if I have offended, Here like a Roman debtor yield I up My body to thy mercy or thy doom. Take my soul too! and in thy princely pomp
Page – 770 Let this rebellious heart that needs will fret To be thy slave, be dragged to thraldom. See, I hang, a lustrous jewel, on thy neck: Break me or keep me! I am thine to keep Or break: fear not to do thy utmost will.
MELANDER Hang there till thou hast grown a part of me! Ah yet, if passion be Love's natural priest Let not his fire-lipped homage scare thy soul. Thy ripe, unspotted girlhood give to me, For which the whole world yearns. A gift is sweet, And thou, O subtle thief, hast stolen my calm Who was before not indigent of bliss. Oh closer yet! Let's glue our lips together, That all eternity may be a kiss.
ALACIEL What, will you bury me with kisses? Dear, Be modest. Tell me why by a full hour You outran expectation's reaching eye?
MELANDER Inquire the glowing moon why she has dared Forestal the set nor wait the ushering star; Inquire the amorous wind, why he has plucked, Ere Autumn's breath have tampered with her hair, Petal on crimson petal the red rose: Nay, catechise the loud rebombing sea Who in a thundrous summer dim with rain Conspired with hoarse rebellious winds to merge The lonely life of ocean-wading ships; Then ask fire-footed passion why his rage Has shipwrecked me upon thy silver breasts. Ah love, thyself the culprit, thine the fault. Alaciel, thou, — O sweet unconscious sin! — Hast in my members kindled such a fire
Page – 771 As only sorcery knows: which to atone Thy virgin hours must sweetly swoon to death While in the snowy summer of thy lap Kind Night shall cool these passion-melted limbs. When thou dost imitate the blushing rose, I swear thy tint is truer than the life, Than loveliness more lovely. Dearest one, Let naked Love abash the curtained prude. Shame was not made to burn thy field of roses Nor in this married excellence of hues Unfurl disorder's ruby-tinted flag.
ALACIEL Dear, if I blush, 'tis modesty, not shame. I can refuse you nothing. When 'tis night And like a smile upon a virgin's lips Young moonlight dallies with a sleepy rose, Then come and call me gently twice and thrice, And I will answer you. Observe this well In that the harsh and beldam Law excludes Nature's sweet rites and Paphian marriage Unless her bleared eyes be privy too.
MELANDER O love, have you forgot the long elapse And weary pomp of hours ere the sun That follows now a path sincere of foam Make sanguine shipwreck in the lurid west? Scarce now his golden eye drops vertical Upon the belt and midline of our scope. Shorten your sentence by a term of hours When I shall ease my pain. Turn caution out To graze in nunneries: his sober feint Of prudence suits not with a lover's tryst.
ALACIEL Content you, sweet: let patience feed on hope
Page – 772 Until night's purple awning bar from view The hidden thefts of love. Nay, go not yet. Sit here awhile until yon sloping disk Swings prone above the poplar. Sweet, come in. Exeunt. Page – 773
Before Alaciel's house. Melander alone.
MELANDER Now, for her widowed state is wooed by night, The sable-vested air puts on her stars And in her bosom pins for brooch the moon. She from her diamond chalice soon will pour Her flowing glories on a rose's hair, In pity of my love. Sweet crimson rose, Alaciel's lamp, the beacon of my bliss, O kindle quickly at the moon thy rays. How happy art thou being near my love! For thou who hast the perfume of her breath, Why shouldest thou the spice-lipped Zephyr want? Her dove's-feet whispering in the happy grass Are surely lovelier to thee than the dawn; Or wilt thou woo the world-embracing orb, Who hast the splendour of her eyes to soothe Thy slumber into waking? O red rose, Might I but merge in thee, how would her touch Thrill all my petals with delicious pain! O could I pawn my beauty for a kiss, How happy were I to waste all myself In shreds of scarlet ruin at her feet! It is my hour! for see, the cowslip-curled Night-wandering patroness of lovers throws Her lantern's orange-coloured beams, where sleeps A bright, blown rose. Hail, empress of the stars! Be thou tonight my hymeneal torch. Alaciel! Echo, hush thy babbling tongue!
Page – 774 'Tis not Narcissus calls. I am a thief Who steal from beauty's garden one sweet bud Nor need like visitants thy tinkling bell. Alaciel! O with thy opiate wand, Thought-killing Mercury, seal every eye On whom the drowsy Morpheus has not breathed. Yet once again the charm. Alaciel! Now at thy window dawn, thou lovelier moon Than sojourns in the sky! look out on me, An ivory face thro' rippling clouds of hair. Enter Alaciel above. Marcion and Doris behind. ALACIEL Who calls? [The next sixteen pages of the notebook were torn out.]
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