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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
As with a thread, nor snaps not ere it should.
Love's palate is with acid flowers edged
When what the lips repel, the eyes invite.
Page .– 1074
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 noon-star 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 overshot 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
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
Page .– 1075
That peep twixt edge and loosely married edge,
Thy slumber-swollen purple-fringed orbs,
Thy hands, cinque-petalled rosebuds 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.
Therefore, dear girl, let thy necessity
Upon the linked union of our loves
Pronounce a solemn benediction.
ALACIEL
I owe you not a doit. You shall not have
So much of tender as will serve to buy
One grain of sand, one withered blade of grass.
My riches, sir, are in good coffers locked
And will evade a hungrier search than yours.
MELANDER
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
Page .– 1076
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
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 tempered with her hair,
Petal on crimson petal the red rose:
Nay, catechise the loud rebombing sea
Page .– 1077
Who in a thunderous 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 I —
Hast in my members kindled such a fire
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 Imibs.
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 his 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 on the lurid west?
Scarce now his golden eye drops vertical
Page .– 1078
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.
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 .– 1079
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