And God may give thee leave to slay him: I
Shall know not of it ever.
GALASSO.
Vivarini,
These women’s hands that here strike peace between us
To-morrow shall not stead thee. Live a little:
My sword is not more thirsty than the sea,
Nor less secure in patience. Thou shalt find
A sea-rock for thy shipwreck on dry land here
When thou shalt steer again upon the steel of it
And find its fang’s edge mortal.
[Exit.
ALVISE.
Have ye shamed me?
Mine enemy goes down seaward with no sign
Set of my sword upon him.
BEATRICE.
Let him pass.
To-morrow brings him back from sea — if ever
He come again.
FRANCESCA.
How should not he come back, then?
BEATRICE.
The sea hath shoals and storms.
ALVISE.
God guard him — till
He stand within my sword’s reach!
FRANCESCA.
Pray thou rather
God keep thee from the reach of his.
ALVISE.
He cannot,
Except he smite to death or deadly sickness
One of us ere we join. My saint Beatrice,
Thou hast no commission, angel though thou be, sweet,
Given thee of God to guard mine enemy’s head
Or cross me as his guardian.
BEATRICE.
Would I cross thee,
The spirit I live by should stand up to chide
The soul-sick will that moved me. Yet I would not,
Had I God’s leave in hand to give thee, give
Thy sword and his such leave to cross as might
Pierce through my heart in answer.
ALVISE.
Wouldst thou bid me,
When he comes back to-morrow from the sea
Whereon to-day his ship rides royal, yield
Thee and my sword up to him?
FRANCESCA.
Nay, not her:
Thy sword she might.
ALVISE.
She would not.
BEATRICE.
Fain I would,
And keep thine honour perfect.
ALVISE.
That may be,
When heaven and hell kiss, and the noon puts on
The starry shadow of midnight. Sweet, come in:
The wind grows keener than a flower should face
And fear no touch of trouble. Doubt me not
That I will take all heed for thee and me,
Who am now no less than one least part of thee.
[Exeunt.
Scene II.
— The same.
Enter
Beatrice
and
Francesca.
BEATRICE.
The wind is sharp as steel, and all the sky
That is not red as molten iron black
As iron long since molten. How the flowers
Cringe down and shudder from the scourge! I would
Galasso’s ship were home in harbour.
FRANCESCA.
Here?
What comfort wouldst thou give him?
BEATRICE.
What should I give?
Hadst thou some gentler maiden’s mercy in thee,
Thou might’st, though death hung shuddering on his lips
And mixed its froth of anguish with the sea’s,
Revive him.
FRANCESCA.
I, Beatrice?
BEATRICE.
Who but thou,
Francesca?
FRANCESCA.
Mock not, lest thy scoff turn back
Like some scared snake to sting thee.
BEATRICE.
Nay, not I:
Dost thou not mock me rather, knowing I know
Thou lov’st him as I love not? as I love
Alvise?
FRANCESCA.
There is none I love but God.
Thou knowest he doth not love me.
BEATRICE.
Dost thou dream
His love for me is even as thine for him,
Born of a braver father than is hate,
A fairer mother than is envy? Me
He loves not as he hates my lover: thou
Mayst haply set — as in this garden-ground
Half barren and all bitter from the sea
Some light of lilies shoots the sun’s laugh back —
Even in the darkness of his heart and hate
Some happier flower to spring against thy smile
And comfort thee with blossom.
FRANCESCA.
Thou shouldst be not
So fast a friend of mine: we were not born
I a Mariani, a Signorelli thou,
To play, with love and hate at odds with life,
Sisters.
BEATRICE.
I know not in what coign of the heart
The root of hate strikes hellward, nor what rains
Make fat so foul a spiritual soil with life,
Nor what plague-scattering planets feed with fire
Such earth as brings forth poison. What is hate
That thou and I should know it?
FRANCESCA.
I cannot tell.
Flowers are there deadlier than all blights of the air
Or hell’s own reek to heavenward: springs, whose water
Puts out the pure and very fire of life
As clouds may kill the sunset: sins and sorrows,
Hate winged as love, and love walled round as hate is,
With fear and weaponed wrath and arm-girt anguish,
There have been and there may be. Wouldst thou dream now
This flower were mortal poison, or this flasket
Filled full with juice of colder-blooded flowers
And herbs the faint moon feeds with dew, that warily
I bear about me against the noonday’s needs,
When the sun ravins and the waters reek
With lustrous fume and feverous light like fire,
Preservative against it?
BEATRICE.
Sure, the flower
Could hurt no babe as bright and soft as it
More than it hurts us now to smell to: nor
Could any draught that heals or harms be found
Preservative against it.
FRANCESCA.
Yet perchance
Preservative this draught of mine might prove
Against the bitterness of life — of noon,
I would say — heat, and heavy thirst, and faintness
That binds with lead the lids of the eyes, and hangs
About the heart like hunger.
BEATRICE.
I am athirst;
Thy very words have made me: and the noon
Indeed is hot. Let me drink of it.
FRANCESCA.
Drink.
BEATRICE.
The wells are not so heavenly cold. What comfort
Thou hast given me! I shall never thirst again,
I think.
FRANCESCA.
I am sure thou shalt not — till thou wake
Out of the next kind sleep that shall fall on thee
And hold thee fast as love, an hour or twain hence.
BEATRICE.
I thank thee for thy gentle words and promises
More than for this thy draught of healing. Sleep
Is half the seed of life — the seed and stay of it —
And love is all the rest.
FRANCESCA.
Thou art sure of that?
Be sure, then.
BEATRICE.
How should I be less than sure of it?
Alvise’s love and thine confirm and comfort
Mine own with like assurance. All
the wind’s wrath
That darkens now the whitening sea to southward
Shall never blow the flame that feeds the sun out
Nor bind the stars from rising: how should grief, then,
Evil, or envy, change or chance of ruin,
Lay hand on love to mar him? Death, whose tread
Is white as winter’s ever on the sea
Whose waters build his charnel, hath no kingdom
Beyond the apparent verge and bourn of life
Whereon to reign or threaten. Love, not he,
Is lord of chance and change: the moons and suns
That measure time and lighten serve him not,
Nor know they if a shadow at all there be
That fear and fools call death, not seeing each year
How thick men’s dusty days and crumbling hours
Fall but to rise like stars and bloom like flowers.
[Exeunt.
Scene III.
— The same.
Enter
Alvise
and
Beatrice.
ALVISE.
Thou art not well at ease: come in again
And rest: the day grows dark as nightfall, ere
Night fall indeed upon it.
BEATRICE.
No, not yet.
I do not fear the thunder, nor the sea
That mocks and mates the thunder. What I fear
I know not: but I will not go from hence
Till that sea-thwarted ship’s crew thwart the sea
Or perish for its pasture. See, she veers,
And sets again straight hither. All good saints,
Whose eyes unseen of ours that here lack light
Hallow the darkness, guard and guide her! Lo,
She reels again, and plunges shoreward: God,
Whose hand with curb immeasurable as they
Bridles and binds the waters, bid the wind
Fall down before thee silent ere it slay,
And death, whose clarion rends the heart of the air,
Be dumb as now thy mercy! O, that cry
Had more than tempest in it: life borne down
And hope struck dead with horror there put forth
Toward heaven that heard not for the clamouring sea
Their last of lamentation.
ALVISE.
Some there are —
Nay, one there is comes shoreward. If mine eyes
Lie not, being baffled of the wind and sea,
The face that flashed upon us out of hell
Between the refluent and the swallowing wave
Was none if not Galassi’s. Nay, go in:
Look not upon us.
BEATRICE.
Wherefore?
ALVISE.
Must I not
Save him to slay to-morrow? If I let
The sea’s or God’s hand slay mine enemy first,
That hand strikes dead mine honour.
[Exit.
BEATRICE.
Save him, Christ!
God, save him! Death is at my heart: I feel
His breath make darkness round me.
Enter
Francesca.
FRANCESCA.
Dost thou live?
Dost thou live yet?
BEATRICE.
I know not. What art thou,
To question me of life and death?
FRANCESCA.
I am not
The thing I was.
BEATRICE.
The friend I loved and knew thee
Thou art not. This fierce night that leaps up eastward,
Laughing with hate and hunger, loud and blind,
Is not less like the sunrise. What strange poison
Has changed thy blood, that face and voice and spirit
(If spirit or sense bid voice or face interpret)
Should change to this that meets me?
FRANCESCA.
Did I drink
The poison that I gave thee? Thou art dead now:
Not the oldest of the world’s forgotten dead
Hath less to do than thou with life. Thou shalt not
Set eyes again on one that loved thee: here
No face but death’s and mine, who hate thee deadlier
Than life hates death, shalt thou set eyes on. Die,
And dream that God may save thee: from my hands
Alive thou seest he could not.
Re-enter
Alvise
with
Galasso.
ALVISE.
Stand, I say.
Stand up. Thou hast no hurt upon thee. Stand,
And gather breath to praise God’s grace with.
GALASSO.
Thee
First must I thank, who hast plucked me hardly back
Forth of the ravening lips of death. What art thou?
This light is made of darkness.
ALVISE.
Yet the darkness
May serve to see thine enemy by: to-morrow
The sun shall serve us better when we meet
And sword to sword gives thanks for swordstrokes.
GALASSO.
No:
The sun shall never see mine enemy more
Now that his hand has humbled me.
ALVISE.
Forego not
Thy natural right of manhood. Chance it was,
Not I, that chose thee for my hand to save
As haply thine had saved me, had the wind
Flung me as thee to deathward.
GALASSO.
Dost thou think
To live, and say it, and smile at me? Thy saint
Had heavenlier work to do than guard thee, when
God gave thine evil star such power as gave thee
Power on thine enemy’s life to save it. Twice
Thou shalt not save or spare me: if to-morrow
Thy sword had borne down mine, thou hadst let me live
And shamed me out of living: now, I am sure,
Thou shalt not twice rebuke me.
[Stabs him.
BEATRICE.
Death is good:
He gives me back Alvise.
ALVISE.
Was it thou
Or God, Beatrice, speaking out of heaven,
Who turned my death to life?
BEATRICE.
I am dying, Alvise:
I thought to have left — perchance to have lost thee: now
We shall not part for ever.
[Dies.
Alvise
dies.
FRANCESCA.
Wilt thou stand
Star-struck to death, Galasso? Let our dead
Lie dead, while we fly fleet as birds or winds
Forth of the shadow of death, and laugh, and live
As happy as these were hapless.
GALASSO.
She — is she
Dead? Hath she kissed the death upon his lips
And fed it full from hers?
FRANCESCA.
Why, dost thou dream
I did not kill her?
GALASSO.
Not a devil in hell
But one cast forth on earth could do it: and she
Shall shame the light of heaven no longer.
[Stabs her.
FRANCESCA.
Fool,
Thou hast set me free from fate and fear: I knew
Thou wouldst not love me.
[Dies.
GALASSO.
What am I, to live
And see this death about me? Death and life
Cast out so vile a thing from sight of heaven.
Save where the darkness of the grave is deep,
I cannot think to wake on earth or sleep.
ACT V.
Scene I. — An ante-chamber to the drawing-room.
Enter Anne.
ANNE.
To bear my death about me till I die
And always put the time off,
tremblingly,
As if I loved to live thus, would be worse
Than death and meaner than the sin to die.
The sin to kill myself — or think of it —
I have sinned that sin already. Not a day
That brings the day I cannot live to see
Nearer, but burns my heart like flame and makes
My thoughts within me serpents fanged with fire.
He would not weep if I were dead, and she
Would. If I make no better haste to die,
I shall go mad and tell him — pray to him,
If not for love, for mercy on me — cry
‘Look at me once — not as you look at her,
But not as every day you look at me —
And see who loves you, Reginald.’ Ah God,
That one should yearn at heart to do or say
What if it ever could be said or done
Would strike one dead with shame!
MABEL
(singing in the next room).
There’s nae lark loves the lift, my dear,
There’s nae ship loves the sea,
There’s nae bee loves the heather-bells,
That loves as I love thee, my love,
That loves as I love thee.
The whin shines fair upon the fell,
The blithe broom on the lea:
The muirside wind is merry at heart:
It’s a’ for love of thee, my love,
It’s a’ for love of thee.
ANNE.
For love of death,
For love of death it is that all things live
And all joys bring forth sorrows. Sorrow and death
Have need of life and love to prey upon
Lest they too die as these do. What am I
That I should live? A thousand times it seems
I have drawn this flasket out to look on it
And dream of dying, since first I seized it — stole,
Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series) Page 284
