Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE SPANISH GYPSY: BOOK 1, by MARY ANN EVANS Poet's Biography First Line: Tis the warm south, where europe spreads her lands Last Line: (exeunt.) Alternate Author Name(s): Eliot, George; Cross, Marian Lewes; Evans, Marian; Ann, Mary Subject(s): Christianity; Gypsies; Jews; Man-woman Relationships; Moors (people); Plays & Playwrights ; Spain - History; Travel; War; Gipsies; Judaism; Male-female Relations; Dramatists; Journeys; Trips | ||||||||
TIS the warm South, where Europe spreads her lands Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep: Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love (A calm earth-goddess crowned with corn and vines) On the Mid Sea that moans with memories,And on the untravelled Ocean, whose vast tides Pant dumbly passionate with dreams of youth. This river, shadowed by the battlements And gleaming silvery towards the northern sky, Feeds the famed stream that waters Andalus And loiters, amorous of the fragrant air, By Córdova and Seville to the bay Fronting Algarva and the wandering flood Of Guadiana. This deep mountain gorge Slopes widening on the olive-pluméd plains Of fair Granáda: one far-stretching arm Points to Elvira, one to eastward heights Of Alpujarras where the new-bathed Day With oriflamme uplifted o'er the peaks Saddens the breasts of northward-looking snows That loved the night, and soared with soaring stars; Flashing the signals of his nearing swiftness From Almería's purple-shadowed bay On to the far-off rocks that gaze and glow, On to Alhambra, strong and ruddy heart Of glorious Morisma, gasping now, A maiméd giant in his agony. This town that dips its feet within the stream, And seems to sit a tower-crowned Cybele, Spreading her ample robe adown the rocks, Is rich Bedmár: 't was Moorish long ago, But now the Cross is sparkling on the Mosque, And bells make Catholic the trembling air. The fortress gleams in Spanish sunshine now ('T is south a mile before the rays are Moorish), Hereditary jewel, agraffe bright On all the many-titled privilege Of young Duke Silva. No Castilian knight That serves Queen Isabel has higher charge; For near this frontier sits the Moorish king, Not Boabdil the waverer, who usurps A throne he trembles in, and fawning licks The feet of conquerors, but that fierce lion Grisly El Zagal, who has made his lair In Guadix' fort, and rushing thence with strength, Half his own fierceness, half the untainted heart Of mountain bands that fight for holiday, Wastes the fair lands that lie by Alcalá, Wreathing his horse's neck with Christian heads. To keep the Christian frontier, such high trust Is young Duke Silva's; and the time is great. (What times are little? To the sentinel That hour is regal when he mounts on guard.) The fifteenth century since the Man Divine Taught and was hated in Capernaum Is near its end, is falling as a husk Away from all the fruit its years have ripened. The Moslem faith, now flickering like a torch In a night struggle on this shore of Spain, Glares, a broad column of advancing flame, Along the Danube and the Illyrian shore Far into Italy, where eager monks, Who watch in dreams and dream the while they watch See Christ grow paler in the baleful light, Crying again the cry of the forsaken. But faith, the stronger for extremity, Becomes prophetic, hears the far-off tread Of western chivalry, sees downward sweep The archangel Michael with the gleaming sword, And listens for the shriek of hurrying fiends Chased from their revels in God's sanctuary. So trusts the monk, and lifts appealing eyes To the high dome, the Church's firmament, Where the blue light-pierced curtain, rolled away,Reveals the throne and Him who sits thereon. So trust the men whose best hope for the world Is ever that the world is near its end: Impatient of the stars that keep their course And make no pathway for the coming Judge. But other futures stir the world's great heart. The West now enters on the heritage Won from the tombs of mighty ancestors, The seeds, the gold, the gems, the silent harps That lay deep buried with the memories Of old renown. No more, as once in sunny Avignon, The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page, And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song; For now the old epic voices ring again And vibrate with the beat and melody Stirred by the warmth of old Ionian days. The martyred sage, the Attic orator, Immortally incarnate, like the gods, In spiritual bodies, wingéd words Holding a universe impalpable, Find a new audience. Forevermore, With grander resurrection than was feigned Of Attila's fierce Huns, the soul of Greece Conquers the bulk of Persia. The maimed form Of calmly joyous beauty, marble-limbed, Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its lips, Looks mild reproach from out its opened grave At creeds of terror; and the vine-wreathed god Rising, a stifled question from the silence, Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns. The soul of man is widening towards the past: No longer hanging at the breast of life Feeding in blindness to his parentage, Quenching all wonder with Omnipotence, Praising a name with indolent piety, He spells the record of his long descent, More largely conscious of the life that was. And from the height that shows where morning shone On far-off summits pale and gloomy now, The horizon widens round him, and the west Looks vast with untracked waves whereon his gaze Follows the flight of the swift-vanished bird That like the sunken sun is mirrored still Upon the yearning soul within the eye. And so in Córdova through patient nights Columbus watches, or he sails in dreams Between the setting stars and finds new day; Then wakes again to the old weary days, Girds on the cord and frock of pale Saint Francis, And like him zealous pleads with foolish men. "I ask but for a million maravedis: Give me three caravels to find a world, New shores, new realms, new soldiers for the Cross. Son cosas grandes!" Thus he pleads in vain; Yet faints not utterly, but pleads anew, Thinking, "God means it, and has chosen me." For this man is the pulse of all mankind Feeding an embryo future, offspring strange Of the fond Present, that with mother-prayers And mother-fancies looks for championship Of all her loved beliefs and old-world ways From that young Time she bears within her womb. The sacred places shall be purged again, The Turk converted, and the Holy Church, Like the mild Virgin with the outspread robe, Shall fold all tongues and nations lovingly. But since God works by armies, who shall be The modern Cyrus? Is it France most Christian, Who with his lilies and brocaded knights, French oaths, French vices, and the newest style Of out-puffed sleeve, shall pass from west to east, A winnowing fan to purify the seed For fair millennial harvests soon to come? Or is not Spain the land of chosen warriors? Crusaders consecrated from the womb, Carrying the sword-cross stamped upon their souls By the long yearnings of a nation's life, Through all the seven patient centuries Since first Pelayo and his resolute band Trusted the God within their Gothic hearts At Covadunga, and defied Mahound; Beginning so the Holy War of Spain That now is panting with the eagerness Of labor near its end. The silver cross Glitters o'er Malaga and streams dread light On Moslem galleys, turning all their stores From threats to gifts. What Spanish knight is he Who, living now, holds it not shame to live Apart from that hereditary battle Which needs his sword? Castilian gentlemen Choose not their task, they choose to do it well. The time is great, and greater no man's trust Than his who keeps the fortress for his king, Wearing great honors as some delicate robe Brocaded o'er with names 't were sin to tarnish. Born de la Cerda, Calatravan knight, Count of Segura, fourth Duke of Bedmár, Offshoot from that high stock of old CastileWhose topmost branch is proud Medina Celi, Such titles with their blazonry are his Who keeps this fortress, sworn Alcaÿde, Lord of the valley, master of the town, Commanding whom he will, himself commanded By Christ his Lord who sees him from the Cross And from bright heaven where the Mother pleads; By good Saint James upon the milk-white steed, Who leaves his bliss to fight for chosen Spain; By the dead gaze of all his ancestors; And by the mystery of his Spanish blood Charged with the awe and glories of the past. See now with soldiers in his front and rear He winds at evening through the narrow streets That toward the Castle gate climb devious: His charger, of fine Andalusian stock, An Indian beauty, black but delicate, Is conscious of the herald trumpet note, The gathering glances, and familiar ways That lead fast homeward: she forgets fatigue, And at the light touch of the master's spur Thrills with the zeal to bear him royally, Arches her neck and clambers up the stones As if disdainful of the difficult steep. Night-black the charger, black the rider's plume, But all between is bright with morning hues, Seems ivory and gold and deep blue gems, And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion, All set in jasper: on his surcoat white Glitter the swordbelt and the jewelled hilt, Red on the back and breast the holy cross, And 'twixt the helmet and the soft-spun white Thick tawny wavelets like the lion's mane Turn backward from his brow, pale, wide, erect, Shadowing blue eyes, blue as the rain-washed sky That braced the early stem of Gothic kings He claims for ancestry. A goodly knight, A noble caballero, broad of chest And long of limb. So much the August sun, Now in the west but shooting half its beams Past a dark rocky profile toward the plain, At winding opportunities across the slope Makes suddenly luminous for all who see: For women smiling from the terraced roofs; For boys that prone on trucks with head up-propped, Lazy and curious, stare irreverent; For men who make obeisance with degrees Of good-will shading towards servility, Where good-will ends and secret fear begins, And curses, too, low-muttered through the teeth, Explanatory to the God of Shem. Five, grouped within a whitened tavern court Of Moorish fashion, where the trellised vines Purpling above their heads make odorous shade, Note through the open door the passers-by, Getting some rills of novelty to speed The lagging stroam of talk and help the wine. 'T is Christian to drink wine: whoso denies His flesh at bidding save of Holy Church, Let him beware and take to Christian sins Lest he be taxed with Moslem sanctity. The souls are five, the talkers only three. (No time, most tainted by wrong faith and rule, But holds some listeners and dumb animals.) MINE HOST is one: he with the well-arched nose, Soft-eyed, fat-handed, loving men for naught But his own humor, patting old and young Upon the back, and mentioning the cost With confidential blandness, as a tax That he collected much against his will From Spaniards who were all his bosom friends: Warranted Christian, else how keep an inn, Which calling asks true faith? though like his wine Of cheaper sort, a trifle over-new. His father was a convert, chose the chrism As men choose physic, kept his chimney warm With smokiest wood upon a Saturday, Counted his gains and grudges on a chaplet, And crossed himself asleep for fear of spies; Trusting the God of Israel would see 'T was Christian tyranny that made him base. Our host his son was born ten years too soon. Had heard his mother call him Ephraim, Knew holy things from common, thought it sin To feast on days when Israel's children mourned, So had to be converted with his sire, To doff the awe he learned as Ephraim, And suit his manners to a Christian name. But infant awe, that unborn breathing thing, Dies with what nourished it, can never rise From the dead womb and walk and seek new pasture Baptism seemed to him a merry game Not tried before, all sacraments a mode Of doing homage for one's property, And all religions a queer human whim Or else a vice, according to degrees: As, 't is a whim to like your chestnuts hot, Burn your own mouth and draw your face awry, A vice to pelt frogs with them, animals Content to take life coolly. And Lorenzo Would have all lives made easy, even lives Of spiders and inquisitors, yet still Wishing so well to flies and Moors and Jews, He rather wished the others easy death; For loving all men clearly was deferred Till all men loved each other. Such mine Host, With chiselled smile caressing Seneca, The solemn mastiff leaning on his knee. His right-hand guest is solemn as the dog, Square-faced and massive: BLASCO is his name, A prosperous silversmith from Aragon; In speech not silvery, rather tuned as notes From a deep vessel made of plenteous iron, Or some great bell of slow but certain swing That, if you only wait, will tell the hour As well as flippant clocks that strike in haste And set off chiming a superfluous tune, Like JUAN there, the spare man with the lute, Who makes you dizzy with his rapid tongue, Whirring athwart your mind with comment swift On speech you would have finished by and by,Shooting your bird for you while you are loading, Cheapening your wisdom as a pattern known, Woven by any shuttle on demand. Can never sit quite still, too: sees a wasp And kills it with a movement like a flash; Whistles low notes or seems to thrum his lute As a mere hyphen 'twixt two syllables Of any steadier man; walks up and down And snuffs the orange flowers and shoots a pea To hit a streak of light let through the awning. Has a queer face: eyes large as plums, a nose Small, round, uneven, like a bit of wax Melted and cooled by chance. Thin-fingered, lithe, And as a squirrel noiseless, startling men Only by quickness. In his speech and look A touch of graceful wildness, as of things Not trained or tamed for uses of the world; Most like the Fauns that roamed in days of old About the listening whispering woods, and shared The subtler sense of sylvan ears and eyes Undulled by scheming thought, yet joined the rout Of men and women on the festal days, And played the syrinx too, and knew love's pains, Turning their anguish into melody. For Juan was a minstrel still, in times When minstrelsy was held a thing outworn. Spirits seem buried and their epitaph Is writ in Latin by severest pens, Yet still they flit above the trodden grave And find new bodies, animating them In quaint and ghostly way with antique souls. So Juan was a troubadour revived, Freshening life's dusty road with babbling rills Of wit and song, living 'mid harnessed men With limbs ungalled by armor, ready so To soothe them weary, and to cheer them sad. Guest at the board, companion in the camp, A crystal mirror to the life around, Flashing the comment keen of simple fact Defined in words; lending brief lyric voice To grief and sadness; hardly taking note Of difference betwixt his own and others'; But rather singing as a listener To the deep moans, the cries, the wild strong joys Of universal Nature, old yet young. Such Juan, the third talker, shimmering bright As butterfly or bird with quickest life. The silent ROLDAN has his brightness too, But only in his spangles and rosettes. His party-colored vest and crimson hose Are dulled with old Valencian dust, his eyes With straining fifty years at gilded balls To catch them dancing, or with brazen looks At men and women as he made his jests Some thousand times and watched to count the pence His wife was gathering. His olive face Has an old writing in it, characters Stamped deep by grins that had no merriment, The soul's rude mark proclaiming all its blank; As on some faces that have long grown old In lifting tapers up to forms obscene On ancient walls and chuckling with false zest To please my lord, who gives the larger fee For that hard industry in apishness. Roldan would gladly never laugh again; Pensioned, he would be grave as any ox, And having beans and crumbs and oil secured Would borrow no man's jokes forevermore. 'T is harder now because his wife is gone, Who had quick feet, and danced to ravishment Of every ring jewelled with Spanish eyes, But died and left this boy, lame from his birth, And sad and obstinate, though when he will He sings God-taught such marrow-thrilling strains As seem the very voice of dying Spring, A flute-like wail that mourns the blossoms gone, And sinks, and is not, like their fragrant breath, With fine transition on the trembling air. He sits as if imprisoned by some fear, Motionless, with wide eyes that seem not made For hungry glancing of a twelve-yeared boy To mark the living thing that he could tease, But for the gaze of some primeval sadness Dark twin with light in the creative ray. This little PABLO has his spangles too, And large rosettes to hide his poor left foot Rounded like any hoof (his mother thought God willed it so to punish all her sins). I said the souls were five, besides the dog. But there was still a sixth, with wrinkled face, Grave and disgusted with all merriment Not less than Roldan. It is ANNIBAL, The experienced monkey who performs the tricks, Jumps through the hoops, and carries round the hat. Once full of sallies and impromptu feats, Now cautious not to light on aught that's new, Lest he be whipped to do it o'er again From A to Z, and make the gentry laugh: A misanthropic monkey, gray and grim, Bearing a lot that has no remedy For want of concert in the monkey tribe. We see the company, above their heads The braided matting, golden as ripe corn, Stretched in a curving strip close by the grapes, Elsewhere rolled back to greet the cooler sky; A fountain near, vase-shapen and broad-lipped, Where timorous birds alight with tiny feet, And hesitate and bend wise listening ears, And fly away again with undipped beak. On the stone floor the juggler's heaped-up goods, Carpet and hoops, viol and tambourine, Where Annibal sits perched with brows severe, A serious ape whom none take seriously, Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nuts By hard buffoonery. We see them all, And hear their talk, the talk of Spanish men, With Southern intonation, vowels turned Caressingly between the consonants, Persuasive, willing, with such intervals As music borrows from the wooing birds, That plead with subtly curving, sweet descent, And yet can quarrel, as these Spaniards can. JUAN (near the doorway). You hear the trumpet? There's old Ramon's blast No bray but his can shake the air so well. He takes his trumpeting as solemnly As angel charged to wake the dead; thinks war Was made for trumpeters, and their great art Made solely for themselves who understand it. His features all have shaped themselves to blowing, And when his trumpet's bagged or left at home He seems a chattel in a broker's booth, A spoutless watering-can, a promise to pay No sum particular. O fine old Ramon! The blasts get louder and the clattering hoofs; They crack the ear as well as heaven's thunder For owls that listen blinking. There's the banner. Host (joining him: the others follow to the door). The Duke has finished reconnoitring, then? We shall hear news. They say he means a sally, Would strike El Zagal's Moors as they push home Like ants with booty heavier than themselves; Then, joined by other nobles with their bands, Lay siege to Guadix. Juan, you're a bird That nest within the Castle. What say you? JUAN. Naught, I say naught. 'T is but a toilsome game To bet upon that feather Policy, And guess where after twice a hundred puffs 'T will catch another feather crossing it: Guess how the Pope will blow and how the king; What force my lady's fan has; how a cough Seizing the Padre's throat may raise a gust, And how the queen may sigh the feather down. Such catching at imaginary threads, Such spinning twisted air, is not for me. If I should want a game, I'll rather bet On racing snails, two large, slow, lingering snails, No spurring, equal weights, a chance sublime, Nothing to guess at, pure uncertainty. Here comes the Duke. They give, but feeble shouts. And some look sour. HOST. That spoils a fair occasion. Civility brings no conclusions with it, And cheerful Vivas make the moments glide Instead of grating like a rusty wheel. JUAN. O they are dullards, kick because they're stung, And bruise a friend to show they hate a wasp. HOST. Best treat your wasp with delicate regard; When the right moment comes say, "By your leave," Use your heel so! and make an end of him. That's if we talked of wasps; but our young Duke, Spain holds not a more gallant gentleman. Live, live, Duke Silva! 'T is a rare smile he has, But seldom seen. JUAN. A true hidalgo's smile, That gives much favor, but beseeches none. His smile is sweetened by his gravity: It comes like dawn upon Sierra snows, Seeming more generous for the coldness gone; Breaks from the calm, a sudden opening flower On dark deep waters: one moment shrouded close, A mystic shrine, the next a full-rayed star, Thrilling, pulse-quickening as a living word. I'll make a song of that. HOST. Prithee, not now. You'll fall to staring like a wooden saint,And wag your head as it were set on wires. Here's fresh sherbét. Sit, be good company. (To BLASCO.) You are a stranger, sir, and cannot know How our Duke's nature suits his princely frame. BLASCO. Nay, but I marked his spurs, chased cunningly! A duke should know good gold and silver plate; Then he will know the quality of mine. I've ware for tables and for altars too, Our Lady in all sizes, crosses, bells: He'll need such weapons full as much as swords If he would capture any Moorish town. For, let me tell you, when a mosque is cleansed. . . . JUAN. The demons fly so thick from sound of bells And smell of incense, you may see the air Streaked with them as with smoke. Why, they are spirits: You may well think how crowded they must be To make a sort of haze. BLASCO. I knew not that. Still, they're of smoky nature, demons are; And since you say so, well, it proves the more The need of bells and censers. Ay, your Duke Sat well: a true hidalgo. I can judge, Of harness specially. I saw the camp, The royal camp at Velez Malaga. 'T was like the court of heaven, such liveries! And torches carried by the score at night Before the nobles. Sirs, I made a dish To set an emerald in would fit a crown, For Don Alonzo, lord of Aguilar. Your Duke's no whit behind him in his mien Or harness either. But you seem to say The people love him not. HOST. They've naught against him. But certain winds will make men's temper bad. When the Solano blows hot venomed breath, It acts upon men's knives: steel takes to stabbing Which else, with cooler winds, were honest steel, Cutting but garlick. There's a wind just now Blows right from Seville BLASCO. Ay, you mean the wind. . . Yes, yes, a wind that's rather hot. . . . HOST. With fagots. JUAN. A wind that suits not with our townsmen's blood. Abram, 't is said, objected to be scorched, And, as the learned Arabs vouch, he gave The antipathy in full to Ishmaël. 'T is true, these patriarchs had their oddities. BLASCO. Their oddities? I'm of their mind, I know. Though, as to Abraham and Ishmaël, I'm an old Christian, and owe naught to them Or any Jew among them. But I know We made a stir in Saragossa we: The men of Aragon ring hard, true metal. Sirs, I'm no friend to heresy, but then A Christian's money is not safe. As how? A lapsing Jew or any heretic May owe me twenty ounces: suddenly He's prisoned, suffers penalties, 't is well: If men will not believe, 't is good to make them, But let the penalties fall on them alone. The Jew is stripped, his goods are confiscate; Now, where, I pray you, go my twenty ounces? God knows, and perhaps the King may, but not I And more, my son may lose his young wife's dower Because 't was promised since her father's soul Fell to wrong thinking. How was I to know? I could but use my sense and cross myself. Christian is Christian, I give in, but still Taxing is taxing, though you call it holy. We Saragossans liked not this new tax They call the nonsense; I'm from Aragon! I speak too bluntly. But, for Holy Church, No man believes more. HOST. Nay, sir, never fear. Good Master Roldan here is no delator. ROLDAN (starting from a reverie). You speak to me, sirs? I perform to-night The Plaça Santiago. Twenty tricks, All different. I dance, too. And the boy Sings like a bird. I crave your patronage. BLASCO. Faith, you shall have it, sir. In travelling I take a little freedom, and am gay. You marked not what I said just now? ROLDAN. I? no. I pray your pardon. I've a twinging knee, That makes it hard to listen. You were saying? BLASCO. Nay, it was naught. (Aside to HOST.) Is it his deepness? HOST. No. He's deep in nothing but his poverty. BLASCO. But't was his poverty that made me think. . . . HOST. His piety might wish to keep the feasts As well as fasts. No fear; he hears not. BLASCO. Good. I speak my mind about the penalties, But, look you, I'm against assassination. You know my meaning Master Arbués, The grand Inquisitor in Aragon. I knew naught, paid no copper towards the deed. But I was there, at prayers, within the church. How could I help it? Why, the saints were there, And looked straight on above the altars. I . . . . JUAN. Looked carefully another way. BLASCO. Why, at my beads. 'T was after midnight, and the canons all Were chanting matins. I was not in church To gape and stare. I saw the martyr kneel: I never liked the look of him alive, He was no martyr then. I thought he made An ugly shadow as he crept athwart The bands of light, then passed within the gloom By the broad pillar. 'T was in our great Seo, At Saragossa. The pillars tower so large You cross yourself to see them, lest white Death Should hide behind their dark. And so it was. I looked away again and told my beads Unthinkingly; but still a man has ears; And right across the chanting came a sound As if a tree had crashed above the roar Of some great torrent. So it seemed to me; For when you listen long and shut your eyes Small sounds get thunderous. And he'd a shell Like any lobster: a good iron suit From top to toe beneath the innocent serge. That made the telltale sound. But then came shrieks The chanting stopped and turned to rushing feet, And in the midst lay Master Arbués, Felled like an ox. 'T was wicked butchery. Some honest men had hoped it would have scared The Inquisition out of Aragon. 'T was money thrown away, I would say, crime, Clean thrown away. HOST. That was a pity now. Next to a missing thrust, what irks me most Is a neat well-aimed stroke that kills your man, Yet ends in mischief, as in Aragon. It was a lesson to our people here. Else there's a monk within our city walls,A holy, high-born, stern Dominican, They might have made the great mistake to kill. BLASCO. What! is he?. . . . HOST. Yes; a Master Arbués Of finer quality. The Prior here And uncle to our Duke. BLASCO. He will want plate: A holy pillar or a crucifix. But, did you say, he was like Arbués? JUAN. As a black eagle with gold beak and claws Is like a raven. Even in his cowl, Covered from head to foot, the Prior is known From all the black herd round. When he uncovers And stands white-frocked, with ivory face, his eyes Black-gleaming, black his coronet of hair Like shredded jasper, he seems less a man With struggling aims than pure incarnate Will, Fit to subdue rebellious nations, nay, That human flesh he breathes in, charged with passion Which quivers in his nostril and his lip, But disciplined by long-indwelling will To silent labor in the yoke of law. A truce to thy comparisons, Lorenzo! Thine is no subtle nose for difference; 'T is dulled by feigning and civility. HOST. Pooh, thou 'rt a poet, crazed with finding words May stick to things and seem like qualities. No pebble is a pebble in thy hands: 'T is a moon out of work, a barren egg, Or twenty things that no man sees but thee. Our father Isidor's a living saint, And that is heresy, some townsmen think: Saints should be dead, according to the Church. My mind is this: the Father is so holy 'T were sin to wish his soul detained from bliss. Easy translation to the realms above, The shortest journey to the seventh heaven, Is what I'd never grudge him. BLASCO. Piously said. Look you, I'm dutiful, obey the Church When there's no help for it: I mean to say, When Pope and Bishop and all customers Order alike. But there be bishops now, And were aforetime, who have held it wrong, This hurry to convert the Jews. As, how? Your Jew pays tribute to the bishop, say. That's good, and must please God, to see the Church Maintained in ways that ease the Christian's purse. Convert the Jew, and where's the tribute, pray? He lapses, too: 't is slippery work, conversion: And then the holy taxing carries off His money at one sweep. No tribute more! He's penitent or burnt, and there's an end. Now guess which pleases God. . . . JUAN. Whether he likesA well-burnt Jew or well-fed bishop best. [While Juan put this problem theologic Entered, with resonant step, another guest, A soldier: all his keenness in his sword, His eloquence in scars upon his cheek, His virtue in much slaying of the Moor: With brow well-creased in horizontal folds To save the space, as having naught to do: Lips prone to whistle whisperingly, no tune, But trotting rhythm: meditative eyes, Most often fixed upon his legs and spurs: Invited much, and held good company: Styled Captain Lopez.] LOPEZ. At your service, sirs. JUAN. Ha, Lopez? Why, thou hast a face full-charged As any herald's. What news of the wars? LOPEZ. Such news as is most bitter on my tongue. JUAN. Then spit it forth. HOST. Sit, Captain: here's a cup, Fresh-filled. What news? LOPEZ. 'T is bad. We make no sally: We sit still here and wait whate'er the Moor Shall please to do. HOST. Some townsmen will be glad. LOPEZ. Glad, will they be? But I'm not glad, not I, Nor any Spanish soldier of clean blood. But the Duke's wisdom is to wait a siege Instead of laying one. Therefore meantime He will be married straightway. HOST. Ha, ha, ha! Thy speech is like an hourglass; turn it down The other way, 't will stand as well, and say The Duke will wed, therefore he waits a siege. But what say Don Diego and the Prior? The holy uncle and the fiery Don? LOPEZ. Oh there be sayings running all abroad As thick as nuts o'erturned. No man need lack. Some say, 't was letters changed the Duke's intent: From Malaga, says Blas. From Rome, says Quintin. From spies at Guadix, says Sebastian. Some say, 't is all a pretext, say, the Duke Is but a lapdog hanging on a skirt, Turning his eyeballs upward like a monk: 'T was Don Diego said that, so says Blas; Last week, he said. . . . JUAN. Oh do without the "said"! Open thy mouth and pause in lieu of it. I had as lief be pelted with a pea Irregularly in the selfsame spot As hear such iteration without rule, Such torture of uncertain certainty. LOPEZ. Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please. I speak not for my own delighting, I. I can be silent, I. BLASCO. Nay, sir, speak on! I like your matter well. I deal in plate. This wedding touches me. Who is the bride? LOPEZ. One that some say the Duke does ill to wed. One that his mother reared God rest her soul! Duchess Diana, she who died last year. A bird picked up away from any nest. Her name the Duchess gave it is Fedalma. No harm in that. But the Duke stoops, they say, In wedding her. And that's the simple truth. JUAN. Thy simple truth is but a false opinion: The simple truth of asses who believe Their thistle is the very best of food. Fie, Lopez, thou a Spaniard with a sword Dreamest a Spanish noble ever stoops By doing honor to the maid he loves! He stoops alone when he dishonors her. LOPEZ. Nay, I said naught against her. JUAN. Better not. Else I would challenge thee to fight with wits, And spear thee through and through ere thou couldst draw The bluntest word. Yes, yes, consult thy spurs: Spurs are a sign of knighthood, and should tell thee That knightly love is blent with reverence As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue. Don Silva's heart beats to a chivalric tune: He wills no highest-born Castilian dame, Betrothed to highest noble, should be held More sacred than Fedalma. He enshrines Her virgin image for the general worship And for his own, will guard her from the world, Nay, his profaner self, lest he should lose The place of his religion. He does well. Naught can come closer to the poets' strain. HOST. Or further from their practice, Juan, eh? If thou'rt a specimen? JUAN. Wrong, my Lorenzo! Touching Fedalma the poor poet plays A finer part even than the noble Duke. LOPEZ. By making ditties, singing with round mouth Likest a crowing cock? Thou meanest that? JUAN. Lopez, take physic, thou art getting ill, Growing descriptive; 't is unnatural. I mean, Don Silva's love expects reward, Kneels with a heaven to come; but the poor poet Worships without reward, nor hopes to find A heaven save in his worship. He adores The sweetest woman for her sweetness' sake, Joys in the love that was not born for him, Because 't is lovingness, as beggars joy, Warming their naked limbs on wayside walls, To hear a tale of princes and their glory. There's a poor poet (poor, I mean, in coin) Worships Fedalma with so true a love That if her silken robe were changed for rags, And she were driven out to stony wilds Barefoot, a scornéd wanderer, he would kiss Her ragged garment's edge, and only ask For leave to be her slave. Digest that, friend, Or let it lie upon thee as a weight To check light thinking of Fedalma. LOPEZ. I? I think no harm of her; I thank the saints I wear a sword and peddle not in thinking. 'T is Father Marcos says she'll not confess And loves not holy water; says her blood Is infidel; says the Duke's wedding her Is union of light with darkness. JUAN. Tush! [Now Juan who by snatches touched his lute With soft arpeggio, like a whispered dream Of sleeping music, while he spoke of love, In jesting anger at the soldier's talk Thrummed loud and fast, then faster and more loud, Till, as he answered, "Tush!" he struck a chord Sudden as whip-crack close by Lopez' ear. Mine host and Blasco smiled, the mastiff barked, Roldan looked up and Annibal looked down, Cautiously neutral in so new a case; The boy raised longing, listening eyes that seemed An exiled spirit's waiting in strained hope Of voices coming from the distant land. But Lopez bore the assault like any rock: That was not what he drew his sword at he! He spoke with neck erect.] LOPEZ. If that's a hint The company should ask thee for a song, Sing, then! HOST. Ay, Juan, sing, and jar no more. Something brand new. Thou'rt wont to make my ear A test of novelties. Hast thou aught fresh? JUAN. As fresh as rain-drops. Here's a Cancion Springs like a tiny mushroom delicate Out of the priest's foul scandal of Fedalma. [He preluded with questioning intervals, Rising, then falling just a semitone, In minor cadence, sound with poiséd wing Hovering and quivering towards the needed fall. Then in a voice that shook the willing air With masculine vibration sang this song. Should I long that dark were fair? Say, O song! Lacks my love aught, that I should long? Dark the night, with breath all flow'rs, And tender broken voice that fills With ravishment the listening hours: Whisperings, wooings, Liquid ripples and soft ring-dove cooings In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills. Dark the night, Yet is she bright, For in her dark she brings the mystic star, Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love, From some unknown afar. O radiant Dark! O darkly fostered ray! Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day. While Juan sang, all round the tavern court Gathered a constellation of black eyes. Fat Lola leaned upon the balcony With arms that might have pillowed Hercules (Who built, 't is known, the mightiest Spanish towns); Thin Alda's face, sad as a wasted passion, Leaned o'er the nodding baby's; 'twixt the rails The little Pepe showed his two black beads, His flat-ringed hair and small Semitic nose Complete and tiny as a new-born minnow; Patting his head and holding in her arms The baby senior, stood Lorenzo's wife All negligent, her kerchief discomposed By little clutches, woman's coquetry Quite turned to mother's cares and sweet content. These on the balcony, while at the door Gazed the lank boys and lazy-shouldered men. 'T is likely too the rats and insects peeped, Being southern Spanish ready for a lounge. The singer smiled, as doubtless Orpheus smiled, To see the animals both great and small, The mountainous elephant and scampering mouse, Held by the ears in decent audience; Then, when mine host desired the strain once more, He fell to preluding with rhythmic change Of notes recurrent, soft as pattering drops That fall from off the eaves in faëry dance When clouds are breaking; till at measured pause He struck, in rare responsive chords, a réfrain.] HOST. Come, then, a gayer rómaunt, if thou wilt: I quarrel not with change. What say you, Captain? LOPEZ. All's one to me. I note no change of tune, Not I, save in the ring of horses' hoofs, Or in the drums and trumpets when they call To action or retreat. I ne'er could see The good of singing. BLASCO. Why, it passes time, Saves you from getting over-wise: that's good. For, look you, fools are merry here below, Yet they will go to heaven all the same, Having the sacraments; and, look you, heaven Is a long holiday, and solid men, Used to much business, might be ill at ease Not liking play. And so in travelling I shape myself betimes to idleness And take fools' pleasures. . . . HOST. Hark, the song begins! JUAN (sings). Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness, Lithe as panther forest-roaming, Long-armed naiad, when she dances, On a stream of ether floating, Bright, O bright Fedalma! Form all curves like softness drifted, Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling, Far-off music slowly wingéd, Gently rising, gently sinking, Bright, O bright Fedalma! Pure as rain-tear on a rose-leaf, Cloud high-born in noonday spotless, Sudden perfect as the dew-bead, Gem of earth and sky begotten, Bright, O bright Fedalma! Beauty has no mortal father, Holy light her form engendered Out of tremor, yearning, gladness, Presage sweet and joy remembered, Child of Light, Fedalma! BLASCO. Faith, a good song, sung to a stirring tune. I like the words returning in a round; It gives a sort of sense. Another such! ROLDAN (rising). Sirs, you will hear my boy. 'T is very hard When gentles sing for naught to all the town. How can a poor man live? And now 't is time I go to the Plaça, who will give me pence When he can hear hidalgos and give naught? JUAN. True, friend. Be pacified. I'll sing no more. Go thou, and we will follow. Never fear. My voice is common as the ivy leaves, Plucked in all seasons, bears no price; the boy's Is like the almond blossoms. Ah, he's lame! HOST. Load him not heavily. Here, Pedro! help. Go with them to the Plaça, take the hoops. The sights will pay thee. BLASCO. I'll be there anon, And set the fashion with a good white coin. But let us see as well as hear. HOST. Ay, prithee. Some tricks, a dance. BLASCO. Yes, 't is more rational. ROLDAN (turning round with the bundle and monkey on his shoulders). You shall see all, sirs. There's no man in Spain Knows his art better. I've a twinging knee Oft hinders dancing, and the boy is lame. But no man's monkey has more tricks than mine. [At this high praise the gloomy Annibal, Mournful professor of high drollery, Seemed to look gloomier, and the little troop Went slowly out, escorted from the door By all the idlers. From the balcony Slowly subsided the black radiance Of agate eyes, and broke in chattering sounds, Coaxings and trampings, and the small hoarse squeak Of Pepe's reed. And our group talked again.] HOST. I'll get this juggler, if he quits him well, An audience here as choice as can be lured. For me, when a poor devil does his best, 'T is my delight to soothe his soul with praise. What though the best be bad? remains the good Of throwing food to a lean hungry dog. I'd give up the best jugglery in life To see a miserable juggler pleased. But that's my humor. Crowds are malcontent, And cruel as the Holy. . . . Shall we go? All of us now together? LOPEZ. Well, not I. I may be there anon, but first I go To the lower prison. There is strict command That all our Gypsy prisoners shall to-night Be lodged within the fort. They've forged enough Of balls and bullets, used up all the metal. At morn to-morrow they must carry stones Up the south tower. 'T is a fine stalwart band, Fit for the hardest tasks. Some say, the queen Would have the Gypsies banished with the Jews. Some say, 't were better harness them for work. They'd feed on any filth and save the Spaniard. Some say but I must go. 'T will soon be time To head the escort. We shall meet again. BLASCO. Go, sir, with God (exit Lopez). A very proper man, And soldierly. But, for this banishment Some men are hot on, it ill pleases me. The Jews, now (sirs, if any Christian here Had Jews for ancestors, I blame him not; We cannot all be Goths of Aragon), Jews are not fit for heaven, but on earth They are most useful. 'T is the same with mules, Horses, or oxen, or with any pig Except Saint Anthony's. They are useful here (The Jews, I mean) though they may go to hell. And, look you, useful sins, why Providence Sends Jews to do 'em, saving Christian souls. The very Gypsies, curbed and harnessed well, Would make draught cattle, feed on vermin too, Cost less than grazing brutes, and turn bad food To handsome carcasses; sweat at the forge For little wages, and well drilled and flogged Might work like slaves, some Spaniards looking on. I deal in plate, and am no priest to say What God may mean, save when he means plain sense; But when he sent the Gypsies wandering In punishment because they sheltered not Our Lady and Saint Joseph (and no doubt Stole the small ass they fled with into Egypt), Why send them here? 'T is plain he saw the use They'd be to Spaniards. Shall we banish them, And tell God we know better? 'T is a sin. They talk of vermin; but, sirs, vermin large Were made to eat the small, or else to eat The noxious rubbish, and picked Gypsy men Might serve in war to climb, be killed, and fall, To make an easy ladder. Once I saw A Gypsy sorcerer, at a spring and grasp, Kill one who came to seize him: talk of strength! Nay, swiftness too, for while we crossed ourselves He vanished like, say, like. . . . JUAN. A swift black snake, Or like a living arrow fledged with will. BLASCO. Why, did you see him, pray? JUAN. Not then, but now, As painters see the many in the one. We have a Gypsy in Bedmár whose frame Nature compacted with such fine selection, 'T would yield a dozen types: all Spanish knights, From him who slew Rolando at the pass Up to the mighty Cid; all deities, Thronging Olympus in fine attitudes; Or all hell's heroes whom the poet saw Tremble like lions, writhe like demigods. HOST. Pause not yet, Juan, more hyperbole! Shoot upward still and flare in meteors Before thou sink to earth in dull brown fact. BLASCO. Nay, give me fact, high shooting suits not me. I never stare to look for soaring larks. What is this Gypsy? HOST. Chieftain of a band, The Moor's allies, whom full a month ago Our Duke surprised and brought as captives home. He needed smiths, and doubtless the brave Moor Has missed some useful scouts and archers too. Juan's fantastic pleasure is to watch These Gypsies forging, and to hold discourse With this great chief, whom he transforms at will To sage or warrior, and like the sun Plays daily at fallacious alchemy, Turns sand to gold and dewy spider-webs To myriad rainbows. Still the sand is sand, And still in sober shade you see the web. 'T is so, I'll wager, with his Gypsy chief, A piece of stalwart cunning, nothing more. JUAN. No! My invention had been all too poor To frame this Zarca as I saw him first. 'T was when they stripped him. In his chieftain's gear, Amidst his men he seemed a royal barb Followed by wild-maned Andalusian colts. He had a necklace of a strange device In finest gold of unknown workmanship, But delicate as Moorish, fit to kiss Fedalma's neck, and play in shadows there. He wore fine mail, a rich-wrought sword and belt, And on his surcoat black a broidered torch, A pine-branch flaming, grasped by two dark hands. But when they stripped him of his ornaments It was the bawbles lost their grace, not he. His eyes, his mouth, his nostril, all inspired With scorn that mastered utterance of scorn, With power to check all rage until it turned To ordered force, unleashed on chosen prey, It seemed the soul within him made his limbs And made them grand. The bawbles were well gone. He stood the more a king, when bared to man. BLASCO. Maybe. But nakedness is bad for trade, And is not decent. Well-wrought metal, sir, Is not a bawble. Had you seen the camp, The royal camp at Velez Malaga, Ponce de Leon and the other dukes, The king himself and all his thousand knights For body-guard, 't would not have left you breath To praise a Gypsy thus. A man's a man; But when you see a king, you see the work Of many thousand men. King Ferdinand Bears a fine presence, and hath proper limbs; But what though he were shrunken as a relic? You'd see the gold and gems that cased him o'er, And all the pages round him in brocade, And all the lords, themselves a sort of kings, Doing him reverence. That strikes an awe Into a common man, especially A judge of plate. HOST. Faith, very wisely said. Purge thy speech, Juan. It is over-full Of this same Gypsy. Praise the Catholic King And come now, let us see the juggler's skill. The Plaça Santiago. 'T is daylight still, but now the golden cross Uplifted by the angel on the dome Stands rayless in calm color clear-defined Against the northern blue; from turrets high The flitting splendor sinks with folded wing Dark-hid till morning, and the battlements Wear soft relenting whiteness mellowed o'er By summers generous and winters bland. Now in the east the distance casts its veil, And gazes with a deepening earnestness. The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes Of shadow-broken gray; the rounded hills Reddened with blood of Titans, whose huge limbs, Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh Of cactus green and blue, broad-sworded aloes; The cypress soaring black above the lines Of white court-walls; the jointed sugar-canes Pale-golden with their feathers motionless In the warm quiet; all thought-teaching form Utters itself in firm unshimmering hues. For the great rock has screened the westering sun That still on plains beyond streams vaporous gold Among the branches; and within Bedmár Has come the time of sweet serenity When color glows unglittering, and the soul Of visible things shows silent happiness, As that of lovers trusting though apart. The ripe-cheeked fruits, the crimson-petalled flowers; The wingéd life that pausing seems a gem Cunningly carven on the dark green leaf; The face of man with hues supremely blent To difference fine as of a voice 'mid sounds: Each lovely light-dipped thing seems to emerge Flushed gravely from baptismal sacrament. All beauteous existence rests, yet wakes, Lies still, yet conscious, with clear open eyes And gentle breath and mild suffuséd joy. 'T is day, but day that falls like melody Repeated on a string with graver tones, Tones such as linger in a long farewell. The Plaça widens in the passive air, The Plaça Santiago, where the church, A mosque converted, shows an eyeless face Red-checkered, faded, doing penance still, Bearing with Moorish arch the imaged saint, Apostle, baron, Spanish warrior, Whose charger's hoofs trample the turbaned dead, Whose banner with the Cross, the bloody sword, Flashes athwart the Moslem's glazing eye, And mocks his trust in Allah who forsakes. Up to the church the Plaça gently slopes, In shape most like the pious palmer's shell, Girdled with low white houses; high above Tower the strong fortress and sharp-angled wall And well-flanked castle gate. From o'er the roofs, And from the shadowed pátios cool, there spreads The breath of flowers and aromatic leaves Soothing the sense with bliss indefinite, A baseless hope, a glad presentiment, That curves the lip more softly, fills the eye With more indulgent beam. And so it soothes, So gently sways the pulses of the crowd Who make a zone about the central spot Chosen by Roldan for his theatre. Maids with arched eyebrows, delicate-pencilled, dark Fold their round arms below the kerchief full; Men shoulder little girls; and grandames gray, But muscular still, hold babies on their arms; While mothers keep the stout-legged boys in front Against their skirts, as old Greek pictures show The Glorious Mother with the Boy divine. Youths keep the places for themselves, and roll Large lazy eyes, and call recumbent dogs (For reasons deep below the reach of thought). The old men cough with purpose, wish to hint Wisdom within that cheapens jugglery, Maintain a neutral air, and knit their brows In observation. None are quarrelsome, Noisy, or very merry; for their blood Moves slowly into fervor, they rejoice Like those dark birds that sweep with heavy wing, Cheering their mates with melancholy cries. But now the gilded balls begin to play In rhythmic numbers, ruled by practice fine Of eye and muscle: all the juggler's form Consents harmonious in swift-gliding change, Easily forward stretched or backward bent With lightest step and movement circular Round a fixed point: 't is not the old Roldan now, The dull, hard, weary, miserable man, The soul all parched to languid appetite And memory of desire: 't is wondrous force That moves in combination multiform Towards conscious ends: 't is Roldan glorious,Holding all eyes like any meteor, King of the moment save when Annibal Divides the scene and plays the comic part, Gazing with blinking glances up and down, Dancing and throwing naught and catching it, With mimicry as merry as the tasks Of penance-working shades in Tartarus. Pablo stands passive, and a space apart, Holding a viol, waiting for command. Music must not be wasted, but must rise As needed climax; and the audience Is growing with late comers. Juan now, And the familiar Host, with Blasco broad, Find way made gladly to the inmost round Studded with heads. Lorenzo knits the crowd Into one family by showing all Good-will and recognition. Juan casts His large and rapid-measuring glance around; But with faint quivering, transient as a breath Shaking a flame his eyes make sudden pause Where by the jutting angle of a street Castle-ward leading, stands a female form, A kerchief pale square-drooping o'er the brow, About her shoulders dim brown serge, in garb Most like a peasant-woman from the vale, Who might have lingered after marketing To see the show. What thrill mysterious, Ray-borne from orb to orb of conscious eyes, The swift observing sweep of Juan's glance Arrests an instant, then with prompting fresh Diverts it lastingly? He turns at once To watch the gilded balls, and nod and smile At little round Pepíta, blondest maid In all Bedmár, Pepíta, fair yet flecked, Saucy of lip and nose, of hair as red As breasts of robins stepping on the snow, Who stands in front with little tapping feet, And baby-dimpled hands that hide enclosed Those sleeping crickets, the dark castanets. But soon the gilded balls have ceased to play, And Annibal is leaping through the hoops That turn to twelve, meeting him as he flies In the swift circle. Shuddering he leaps, But with each spring flies swift and swifter still To loud and louder shouts, while the great hoops Are changed to smaller. Now the crowd is fired. The motion swift, the living victim urged, The imminent failure and repeated scape Hurry all pulses and intoxicate With subtle wine of passion many-mixt. 'T is all about a monkey leaping hard Till near to gasping; but it serves as well As the great circus or arena dire, Where these are lacking. Roldan cautiously Slackens the leaps and lays the hoops to rest, And Annibal retires with reeling brain And backward stagger, pity, he could not smile! Now Roldan spreads his carpet, now he shows Strange metamorphoses: the pebble black Changes to whitest egg within his hand; A staring rabbit, with retreating ears, Is swallowed by the air and vanishes; He tells men's thoughts about the shaken dice, Their secret choosings; makes the white beans pass With causeless act sublime from cup to cup Turned empty on the ground, diablerie That pales the girls and puzzles all the boys: These tricks are samples, hinting to the town Roldan's great mastery. He tumbles next, And Annibal is called to mock each feat With arduous comicality and save By rule romantic the great public mind (And Roldan's body) from too serious strain. But with the tumbling, lest the feats should fail, And so need veiling in a haze of sound, Pablo awakes the viol and the bow, The masculine bow that draws the woman's heart From out the strings and makes them cry, yearn, plead, Tremble, exult, with mystic union Of joy acute and tender suffering. To play the viol and discreetly mix Alternate with the bow's keen biting tones The throb responsive to the finger's touch, Was rarest skill that Pablo half had caught From an old blind and wandering Catalan; The other half was rather heritage From treasure stored by generations past In winding chambers of receptive sense. The wingéd sounds exalt the thick-pressed crowd With a new pulse in common, blending all The gazing life into one larger soul With dimly widened consciousness: as waves In heightened movement tell of waves far off. And the light changes; westward stationed clouds, The sun's ranged outposts, luminous message spread, Rousing quiescent things to doff their shade And show themselves as added audience. Now Pablo, letting fall the eager bow, Solicits softer murmurs from the strings, And now above them pours a wondrous voice (Such as Greek reapers heard in Sicily) With wounding rapture in it, like love's arrows; And clear upon clear air as colored gems Dropped in a crystal cup of water pure, Fall words of sadness, simple, lyrical: Spring comes hither, Buds the rose; Roses wither, Sweet spring goes. Ojalá, would she carry me! Summer soars, Wide-winged day White light pours, Flies away. Ojalá, would he carry me! Soft winds blow, Westward born, Onward go Toward the morn. Ojalá, would they carry me! Sweet birds sing O'er the graves, Then take wing O'er the waves. Ojalá, would they carry me! When the voice paused and left the viol's note To plead forsaken, 't was as when a cloud, Hiding the sun, makes all the leaves and flowers Shiver. But when with measured change the strings Had taught regret new longing, clear again, Welcome as hope recovered, flowed the voice. Warm whispering through the slender olive leaves Came to me a gentle sound, Whispering of a secret found In the clear sunshine 'mid the golden sheaves: Said it was sleeping for me in the morn, Called it gladness, called it joy, Drew me on "Come hither, boy" To where the blue wings rested on the corn. I thought the gentle sound had whispered true, Thought the little heaven mine, Leaned to clutch the thing divine, And saw the blue wings melt within the blue. The long notes linger on the trembling air, With subtle penetration enter all The myriad corridors of the passionate soul, Message-like spread, and answering action rouse. Not angular jigs that warm the chilly limbs In hoary northern mists, but action curved To soft andante strains pitched plaintively. Vibrations sympathetic stir all limbs: Old men live backward in their dancing prime, And move in memory; small legs and arms With pleasant agitation purposeless Go up and down like pretty fruits in gales. All long in common for the expressive act Yet wait for it; as in the olden time Men waited for the bard to tell their thought. "The dance! the dance!" is shouted all around. Now Pablo lifts the bow, Pepíta now, Ready as bird that sees the sprinkled corn, When Juan nods and smiles, puts forth her foot And lifts her arm to wake the castanets. Juan advances, too, from out the ring And bends to quit his lute; for now the scene Is empty; Roldan, weary, gathers pence, Followed by Annibal with purse and stick. The carpet lies a colored isle untrod, Inviting feet: "The dance, the dance," resounds, The bow entreats with slow melodic strain, And all the air with expectation yearns. Sudden, with gliding motion like a flame That through dim vapor makes a path of glory, A figure lithe, all white and saffron-robed, Flashed right across the circle, and now stood With ripened arms uplift and regal head, Like some tall flower whose dark and intense heart Lies half within a tulip-tinted cup. Juan stood fixed and pale; Pepíta stepped Backward within the ring: the voices fell From shouts insistent to more passive tones Half meaning welcome, half astonishment. "Lady Fedalma! will she dance for us?" But she, sole swayed by impulse passionate, Feeling all life was music and all eyes The warming, quickening light that music makes, Moved as, in dance religious, Miriam, When on the Red Sea shore she raised her voice, And led the chorus of her people's joy; Or as the Trojan maids that reverent sang Watching the sorrow-crownéd Hecuba: Moved in slow curves voluminous, gradual, Feeling and action flowing into one, In Eden's natural taintless marriage-bond; Ardently modest, sensuously pure, With young delight that wonders at itself And throbs as innocent as opening flowers, Knowing not comment, soilless, beautiful. The spirit in her gravely glowing face With sweet community informs her limbs, Filling their fine gradation with the breath Of virgin majesty; as full vowelled words Are new impregnate with the master's thought.Even the chance-strayed delicate tendrils black, That backward 'scape from out her wreathing hair, Even the pliant folds that cling transverse When with obliquely soaring bend altern She seems a goddess quitting earth again Gather expression a soft undertone And resonance exquisite from the grand chord Of her harmoniously bodied soul. At first a reverential silence guards The eager senses of the gazing crowd: They hold their breath, and live by seeing her. But soon the admiring tension finds relief, Sighs of delight, applausive murmurs low, And stirrings gentle as of earéd corn Or seed-bent grasses, when the ocean's breath Spreads landward. Even Juan is impelled By the swift-travelling movement: fear and doubt Give way before the hurrying energy; He takes his lute and strikes in fellowship, Filling more full the rill of melody Raised ever and anon to clearest flood By Pablo's voice, that dies away too soon, Like the sweet blackbird's fragmentary chant, Yet wakes again, with varying rise and fall, In songs that seem emergent memories Prompting brief utterance, little cancións And villancicos, Andalusia-born. PABLO (sings). It was in the prime Of the sweet Spring-time. In the linnet's throat Trembled the love-note, And the love-stirred air Thrilled the blossoms there. Little shadows danced Each a tiny elf, Happy in large light And the thinnest self. It was but a minute In a far-off Spring, But each gentle thing, Sweetly-wooing linnet, Soft-thrilled hawthorn-tree. Happy shadowy elf With the thinnest self, Live still on in me. Oh, the sweet, sweet prime Of the past Spring-time! And still the light is changing: high above Float soft pink clouds; others with deeper flush Stretch like flamingoes bending toward the south. Comes a more solemn brilliance o'er the sky, A meaning more intense upon the air, The inspiration of the dying day. And Juan now, when Pablo's notes subside, Soothes the regretful ear, and breaks the pause With masculine voice in deep antiphony. JUAN (sings). Day is dying! Float, O song, Down the westward river, Requiem chanting to the Day, Day, the mighty Giver. Pierced by shafts of Time he bleeds Melted rubies sending Through the river and the sky, Earth and heaven blending; All the long-drawn earthy banks Up to cloud-land lifting: Slow between them drifts the swan, 'Twixt two heavens drifting. Wings half open, like a flow'r Inly deeper flushing, Neck and breast as virgin's pure, Virgin proudly blushing. Day is dying! Float, O swan, Down the ruby river; Follow, song, in requiem To the mighty Giver. The exquisite hour, the ardor of the crowd, The strains more plenteous, and the gathering might Of action passionate where no effort is, But self's poor gates open to rushing power That blends the inward ebb and outward vast, All gathering influences culminate And urge Fedalma. Earth and heaven seem one, Life a glad trembling on the outer edge Of unknown rapture. Swifter now she moves, Filling the measure with a double beat And widening circle; now she seems to glow With more declaréd presence, glorified. Circling, she lightly bends and lifts on high The multitudinous-sounding tambourine, And makes it ring and boom, then lifts it higher Stretching her left arm beauteous; now the crowd Exultant shouts, forgetting poverty In the rich moment of possessing her. But sudden, at one point, the exultant throng Is pushed and hustled, and then thrust apart: Something approaches, something cuts the ring Of jubilant idlers, startling as a streak From alien wounds across the blooming flesh Of careless sporting childhood. 'T is the band Of Gypsy prisoners. Soldiers lead the van And make sparse flanking guard, aloof surveyed By gallant Lopez, stringent in command. The Gypsies chained in couples, all save one, Walk in dark file with grand bare legs and arms And savage melancholy in their eyes That star-like gleam from out black clouds of hair; Now they are full in sight, and now they stretch Right to the centre of the open space. Fedalma now, with gentle wheeling sweep Returning, like the loveliest of the Hours Strayed from her sisters, truant lingering, Faces again the centre, swings again The uplifted tambourine. . . . . When lo! with sound Stupendous throbbing, solemn as a voice Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead, Tolls the great passing bell that calls to prayer For souls departed: at the mighty beat It seems the light sinks awe-struck, 't is the note Of the sun's burial; speech and action pause; Religious silence and the holy sign Of everlasting memories (the sign Of death that turned to more diffusive life) Pass o'er the Plaça. Little children gaze With lips apart, and feel the unknown god; And the most men and women pray. Not all. The soldiers pray; the Gypsies stand unmoved As pagan statues with proud level gaze. But he who wears a solitary chain Heading the file, has turned to face Fedalma. She motionless, with arm uplifted, guards The tambourine aloft (lest, sudden-lowered, Its trivial jingle mar the duteous pause), Reveres the general prayer, but prays not, stands With level glance meeting that Gypsy's eyes, That seem to her the sadness of the world Rebuking her, the great bell's hidden thought Now first unveiled, the sorrows unredeemed Of races outcast, scorned, and wandering. Why does he look at her? why she at him? As if the meeting light between their eyes Made permanent union? His deep-knit brow, Inflated nostril, scornful lip compressed, Seem a dark hieroglyph of coming fate Written before her. Father Isidor Had terrible eyes, and was her enemy; She knew it and defied him; all her soul Rounded and hardened in its separateness When they encountered. But this prisoner, This Gypsy, passing, gazing casually, Was he her enemy too? She stood all quelled, The impetuous joy that hurried in her veinsSeemed backward rushing turned to chillest awe, Uneasy wonder, and a vague self-doubt. The minute brief stretched measureless, dream-filled By a dilated new-fraught consciousness. Now it was gone; the pious murmur ceased, The Gypsies all moved onward at command And careless noises blent confusedly. But the ring closed again, and many ears Waited for Pablo's music, many eyes Turned towards the carpet: it lay bare and dim, Twilight was there, the bright Fedalma gone. A handsome room in the Castle. On a table a rich jewel-casket. Silva had dropped his mail and with it all The heavier harness of his warlike cares. He had not seen Fedalma; miser-like He hoarded through the hour a costlier joy By longing oft-repressed. Now it was earned; And with observance wonted he would send To ask admission. Spanish gentlemen Who wooed fair dames of noble ancestry Did homage with rich tunics and slashed sleeves And outward-surging linen's costly snow; With broidered scarf transverse, and rosary Handsomely wrought to fit high-blooded prayer; So hinting in how deep respect they held That self they threw before their lady's feet. And Silva that Fedalma's rate should stand No jot below the highest, that her love Might seem to all the royal gift it was Turned every trifle in his mien and garb To scrupulous language, uttering to the world That since she loved him he went carefully, Bearing a thing so precious in his hand. A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious In his acceptance, dreading all delight That speedy dies and turns to carrion: His senses much exacting, deep instilled With keen imagination's difficult needs; Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. Silva was both the lion and the man; First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught. A nature half-transformed, with qualities That oft bewrayed each other, elements Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; With tidal moments of devoutest awe, Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; Deliberating ever, till the sting Of a recurrent ardor made him rush Right against reasons that himself had drilled And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed Too proudly special for obedience, Too subtly pondering for mastery: Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. But look less curiously: life itself May not express us all, may leave the worst And the best too, like tunes in mechanism Never awaked. In various catalogues Objects stand variously. Silva stands As a young Spaniard, handsome, noble, brave, With titles many, high in pedigree; Or, as a nature quiveringly poised In reach of storms, whose qualities may turn To murdered virtues that still walk as ghosts Within the shuddering soul and shriek remorse; Or, as a lover. . . . In the screening time Of purple blossoms, when the petals crowd And softly crush like cherub cheeks in heaven, Who thinks of greenly withered fruit and worms? Oh the warm southern spring is beauteous! And in love's spring all good seems possible: No threats, all promise, brooklets ripple full And bathe the rushes, vicious crawling things Are pretty eggs, the sun shines graciously And parches not, the silent rain beats warm As childhood's kisses, days are young and grow, And earth seems in its sweet beginning time Fresh made for two who live in Paradise. Silva is in love's spring, its freshness breathed Within his soul along the dusty ways While marching homeward; 't is around him now As in a garden fenced in for delight, And he may seek delight. Smiling he lifts A whistle from his belt, but lets it fall Ere it has reached his lips, jarred by the sound Of ushers' knocking, and a voice that craves Admission for the Prior of San Domingo. PRIOR (entering). You look perturbed, my son. I thrust myself Between you and some beckoning intent That wears a face more smiling than my own. DON SILVA. Father, enough that you are here. I wait, As always, your commands, nay, should have sought An early audience. PRIOR. To give, I trust, Good reasons for your change of policy? DON SILVA. Strong reasons, father. PRIOR. Ay, but are they good? I have known reasons strong, but strongly evil. DON SILVA. 'T is possible. I but deliver mine To your strict judgment. Late despatches sent With urgence by the Count of Bavien, No hint on my part prompting, with besides The testified concurrence of the king And our Grand Master, have made peremptory The course which else had been but rational. Without the forces furnished by allies The siege of Guadix would be madness. More, El Zagal has his eyes upon Bedmár: Let him attempt it: in three weeks from hence The Master and the Lord of Aguilar Will bring their forces. We shall catch the Moors, The last gleaned clusters of their bravest men, As in a trap. You have my reasons, father. PRIOR. And they sound well. But free-tongued rumor adds A pregnant supplement, in substance this: That inclination snatches arguments To make indulgence seem judicious choice; That you, commanding in God's Holy War, Lift prayers to Satan to retard the fight And give you time for feasting, wait a siege, Call daring enterprise impossible, Because you'd marry! You, a Spanish duke, Christ's general, would marry like a clown, Who, selling fodder dearer for the war, Is all the merrier; nay, like the brutes, Who know no awe to check their appetite, Coupling 'mid heaps of slain, while still in front The battle rages. DON SILVA. Rumor on your lips Is eloquent, father. PRIOR. Is she true? DON SILVA. Perhaps. I seek to justify my public acts And not my private joy. Before the world Enough if I am faithful in command, Betray not by my deeds, swerve from no task My knightly vows constrain me to: herein I ask all men to test me. PRIOR. Knightly vows? Is it by their constraint that you must marry? DON SILVA. Marriage is not a breach of them. I use A sanctioned liberty . . . . your pardon, father, I need not teach you what the Church decrees. But facts may weaken texts, and so dry up The fount of eloquence. The Church relaxed Our Order's rule before I took the vows. PRIOR. Ignoble liberty! you snatch your rule From what God tolerates, not what he loves? Inquire what lowest offering may suffice, Cheapen it meanly to an obolus, Buy, and then count the coin left in your purse For your debauch? Measure obedienceBy scantest powers of feeble brethren Whom Holy Church indulges? Ask great Law, The rightful Sovereign of the human soul, For what it pardons, not what it commands? Oh fallen knighthood, penitent of high vows, Asking a charter to degrade itself! Such poor apology of rules relaxed Blunts not suspicion of that doubleness Your enemies tax you with. DON SILVA. Oh, for the rest, Conscience is harder than our enemies, Knows more, accuses with more nicety, Nor needs to question Rumor if we fall Below the perfect model of our thought. I fear no outward arbiter. You smile? PRIOR. Ay, at the contrast 'twixt your portraiture And the true image of your conscience, shown As now I see it in your acts. I see A drunken sentinel who gives alarm At his own shadow, but when scalers snatch His weapon from his hand smiles idiot-like At games he's dreaming of. DON SILVA. A parable! The husk is rough, holds something bitter, doubtless. PRIOR. Oh, the husk gapes with meaning over-ripe. You boast a conscience that controls your deeds, Watches your knightly armor, guards your rank From stain of treachery, you, helpless slave, Whose will lies nerveless in the clutch of lust, Of blind mad passion, passion itself most helpless, Storm-driven, like the monsters of the sea. O famous conscience! DON SILVA. Pause there! Leave unsaid Aught that will match that text. More were too much, Even from holy lips. I own no love But such as guards my honor, since it guards Hers whom I love! I suffer no foul words To stain the gift I lay before her feet; And, being hers, my honor is more safe. PRIOR. Verse-makers' talk! fit for a world of rhymes, Where facts are feigned to tickle idle ears, Where good and evil play at tournament And end in amity, a world of lies, A carnival of words where every year Stale falsehoods serve fresh men. Your honor safe? What honor has a man with double bonds? Honor is shifting as the shadows are To souls that turn their passions into laws. A Christian knight who weds an infidel . . . . DON SILVA (fiercely). An infidel! PRIOR. May one day spurn the Cross, And call that honor! one day find his sword Stained with his brother's blood, and call that honor! Apostates' honor? harlots' chastity! Renegades' faithfulness? Iscariot's! DON SILVA. Strong words and burning; but they scorch not me. Fedalma is a daughter of the Church, Has been baptized and nurtured in the faith. PRIOR. Ay, as a thousand Jewesses, who yet Are brides of Satan in a robe of flames. DON SILVA. Fedalma is no Jewess, bears no marks That tell of Hebrew blood. PRIOR. She bears the marks Of races unbaptized, that never bowed Before the holy signs, were never moved By stirrings of the sacramental gifts. DON SILVA. (scornfully). Holy accusers practise palmistry, And, other witness lacking, read the skin. PRIOR. I read a record deeper than the skin. What! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips Descend through generations, and the soul That moves within our frame like God in worlds Convulsing, urging, melting, withering Imprint no record, leave no documents, Of her great history? Shall men bequeath The fancies of their palate to their sons, And shall the shudder of restraining awe, The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine Of fasts ecstatic, shall these pass away Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace Of tremors reverent? That maiden's blood Is as unchristian as the leopard's. DON SILVA. Say, Unchristian as the Blessed Virgin's blood Before the angel spoke the word, "All hail!" PRIOR (smiling bitterly). Say I not truly? See, your passion weaves Already blasphemies! DON SILVA. 'T is you provoke them. PRIOR. I strive, as still the Holy Spirit strives, To move the will perverse. But, failing this, God commands other means to save our blood, To save Castilian glory, nay, to save The name of Christ from blot of traitorous deeds. DON SILVA. Of traitorous deeds! Age, kindred, and your cowl. Give an ignoble license to your tongue. As for your threats, fulfil them at your peril. 'T is you, not I, will gibbet our great name To rot in infamy. If I am strong In patience now, trust me, I can be strong Then in defiance. PRIOR. Miserable man! Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? You are a Christian, with the Christian awe In every vein. A Spanish noble, born To serve your people and your people's faith. Strong, are you? Turn your back upon the Cross, Its shadow is before you. Leave your place: Quit the great ranks of knighthood: you will walk Forever with a tortured double self, A self that will be hungry while you feast, Will blush with shame while you are glorified, Will feel the ache and chill of desolation, Even in the very bosom of your love. Mate yourself with this woman, fit for what? To make the sport of Moorish palaces, A lewd Herodias . . . . DON SILVA. Stop! no other man, Priest though he were, had had his throat left free For passage of those words. I would have clutched His serpent's neck, and flung him out to hell! A monk must needs defile the name of love: He knows it but as tempting devils paint it. You think to scare my love from its resolve With arbitrary consequences, strained By rancorous effort from the tninnest motes Of possibility? cite hideous lists Of sins irrelevant, to frighten me With bugbears' names, as women fright a child? Poor pallid wisdom, taught by inference From blood-drained life, where phantom terrors rule, And all achievement is to leave undone! Paint the day dark, make sunshine cold to me, Abolish the earth's fairness, prove it all A fiction of my eyes, then, after that, Profane Fedalma. PRIOR. Oh, there is no need: She has profaned herself. Go, raving man, And see her dancing now. Go, see your bride Flaunting her beauties grossly in the gaze Of vulgar idlers, eking out the show Made in the Plaça by a mountebank. I hinder you no further. DON SILVA. It is false! PRIOR. Go, prove it false, then. [Father Isidor Drew on his cowl and turned away. The face That flashed anathemas, in swift eclipse Seemed Silva's vanished confidence. In haste He rushed unsignalled through the corridor To where the Duchess once, Fedalma now, Had residence retired from din of arms, Knocked, opened, found all empty, said With muffled voice, "Fedalma!" called more loud, More oft on Iñez, the old trusted nurse, Then searched the terrace-garden, calling still, But heard no answering sound, and saw no face Save painted faces staring all unmoved By agitated tones. He hurried back, Giving half-conscious orders as he went To page and usher, that they straight should seek Lady Fedalma; then with stinging shame Wished himself silent; reached again the room Where still the Father's menace seemed to hang Thickening the air; snatched cloak and pluméd hat, And grasped, not knowing why, his poniard's hilt; Then checked himself and said: ] If he spoke truth! To know were wound enough, to see the truth Were fire upon the wound. It must be false! His hatred saw amiss, or snatched mistake In other men's report. I am a fool! But where can she be gone? gone secretly? And in my absence? Oh, she meant no wrong! I am a fool! But where can she be gone? With only Iñez? Oh, she meant no wrong! I swear she never meant it. There's no wrong But she would make it momentary right By innocence in doing it. . . . . And yet, What is our certainty? Why, knowing all That is not secret. Mighty confidence! One pulse of Time makes the base hollow, sends The towering certainty we built so high Toppling in fragments meaningless. What is What will be must be pooh! they wait the key Of that which is not yet; all other keys Are made of our conjectures, take their sense From humors fooled by hope, or by despair. Know what is good? Oh God, we know not yet If bliss itself is not young misery With fangs swift growing. . . . . But some outward harm May even now be hurting, grieving her. Oh, I must search, face shame, if shame be there. Here, Perez! hasten to Don Alvar, tell him Lady Fedalma must be sought, is lost, Has met, I fear, some mischance. He must send Towards divers points. I go myself to seek First in the town. . . . . [As Perez oped the door, Then moved aside for passage of the Duke, Fedalma entered, cast away the cloud Of serge and linen, and, outbeaming bright, Advanced a pace towards Silva, but then paused, For he had started and retreated; she, Quick and responsive as the subtle air To change in him, divined that she must wait Until they were alone: they stood and looked. Within the Duke was struggling confluence Of feelings manifold, pride, anger, dread, Meeting in stormy rush with sense secure That she was present, with the satisfied thirst Of gazing love, with trust inevitable As in beneficent virtues of the light And all earth's sweetness, that Fedalma's soul Was free from blemishing purpose. Yet proud wrath Leaped in dark flood above the purer stream That strove to drown it: Anger seeks its prey, Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Likes not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will. Silva's heart said, he must be happy soon, She being there; but to be happy, first He must be angry, having cause. Yet love Shot like a stifled cry of tenderness All through the harshness he would fain have given To the dear word,] DON SILVA. Fedalma! FEDALMA. O my Lord! You are come back, and I was wandering! DON SILVA (coldly, but with suppressed agitation). You meant I should be ignorant. FEDALMA. Oh no, I should have told you after, not before,Lest you should hinder me. DON SILVA. Then my known wish Can make no hindrance? FEDALMA (archly). That depends On what the wish may be. You wished me once Not to uncage the birds. I meant to obey: But in a moment something something stronger, Forced me to let them out. It did no harm. They all came back again, the silly birds! I told you, after. DON SILVA (with haughty coldness). Will you tell me now What was the prompting stronger than my wish That made you wander? FEDALMA (advancing a step towards him, with a sudden look of anxiety). Are you angry? DON SILVA (smiling bitterly). Angry? A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger. FEDALMA (still more anxiously). You deep-wounded? DON SILVA. Yes! Have I not made your place and dignity The very heart of my ambition? You, No enemy could do it, you alone Can strike it mortally. FEDALMA. Nay, Silva, nay. Has some one told you false? I only went To see the world with Iñez, see the town, The people, everything. It was no harm. I did not mean to dance: it happened so At last . . . . DON SILVA. O God, it's true, then! true that you, A maiden nurtured as rare flowers are, The very air of heaven sifted fine Lest any mote should mar your purity, Have flung yourself out on the dusty way For common eyes to see your beauty soiled! You own it true, you danced upon the Plaça? FEDALMA (proudly). Yes, it is true. I was not wrong to dance. The air was filled with music, with a song That seemed the voice of the sweet eventide, The glowing light entering through eye and ear, That seemed our love, mine, yours, they are but one, Trembling through all my limbs, as fervent words Tremble within my soul and must be spoken. And all the people felt a common joy And shouted for the dance. A brightness soft As of the angels moving down to see Illumined the broad space. The joy, the life Around, within me, were one heaven: I longed To blend them visibly: I longed to dance Before the people, be as mounting flame To all that burned within them! Nay, I danced; There was no longing: I but did the deed Being moved to do it. (As FEDALMA speaks, she and DON SILVA are gradually drawn nearer to each other.) Oh, I seemed new-waked To life in unison with a multitude, Feeling my soul upborne by all their souls, Floating within their gladness! Soon I lost All sense of separateness: Fedalma died As a star dies, and melts into the light. I was not, but joy was, and love and triumph. Nay, my dear lord, I never could do aught But I must feel you present. And once done, Why, you must love it better than your wish. I pray you, say so, say, it was not wrong! (While FEDALMA has been making this last appeal, they have gradually come close together, and at last embrace.) DON SILVA (holding her hands). Dangerous rebel! if the world without Were pure as that within . . . . but 't is a book Wherein you only read the poesy And miss all wicked meanings. Hence the need For trust obedience, call it what you will, Towards him whose life will be your guard, towards me Who now am soon to be your husband. FEDALMA. Yes! That very thing that when I am your wife I shall be something different, shall be I know not what, a duchess with new thoughts, For nobles never think like common men, Nor wives like maidens (oh, you wot not yet How much I note, with all my ignorance), That very thing has made me more resolve To have my will before I am your wife. How can the Duchess ever satisfy Fedalma's unwed eyes? and so to-day I scolded Iñez till she cried and went. DON SILVA. It was a guilty weakness: she knows well That since you pleaded to be left more free From tedious tendance and control of dames Whose rank matched better with your destiny, Her charge my trust was weightier. FEDALMA. Nay, my lord, You must not blame her, dear old nurse. She cried. Why, you would have consented too, at last. I said such things! I was resolved to go, And see the streets, the shops, the men at work, The women, little children, everything, Just as it is when nobody looks on. And I have done it! We were out four hours. I feel so wise. DON SILVA. Had you but seen the town, You innocent naughtiness, not shown yourself, Shown yourself dancing, you bewilder me! Frustrate my judgment with strange negatives That seem like poverty, and yet are wealth In precious womanliness, beyond the dower Of other women: wealth in virgin gold, Outweighing all their petty currency. You daring modesty! You shrink no more From gazing men than from the gazing flowers That, dreaming sunshine, open as you pass. FEDALMA. No, I should like the world to look at me With eyes of love that make a second day. I think your eyes would keep the life in me Though I had naught to feed on else. Their blue Is better than the heavens', hold more love For me, Fedalma, is a little heaven For this one little world that looks up now. DON SILVA. O precious little world! you make the heaven As the earth makes the sky. But, dear, all eyes, Though looking even on you, have not a glance That cherishes . . . . FEDALMA. Ah no, I meant to tell you, Tell how my dancing ended with a pang. There came a man, one among many more, But he came first, with iron on his limbs. And when the bell tolled, and the people prayed, And I stood pausing, then he looked at me. O Silva, such a man! I thought he rose From the dark place of long-imprisoned souls, To say that Christ had never come to them. It was a look to shame a seraph's joy And make him sad in heaven. It found me there, Seemed to have travelled far to find me there And grasp me, claim this festal life of mine As heritage of sorrow, chill my blood With the cold iron of some unknown bonds. The gladness hurrying full within my veins Was sudden frozen, and I danced no more. But seeing you let loose the stream of joy, Mingling the present with the sweetest past. Yet, Silva, still I see him. Who is he? Who are those prisoners with him? Are they Moors? DON SILVA. No, they are Gypsies, strong and cunning knaves, A double gain to us by the Moors' loss: The man you mean their chief is an ally The infidel will miss. His look might chase A herd of monks, and make them fly more swift Than from St. Jerome's lion. Such vague fear, Such bird-like tremors when that savage glance Turned full upon you in your height of joy Was natural, was not worth emphasis. Forget it, dear. This hour is worth whole days When we are sundered. Danger urges us To quick resolve. FEDALMA. What danger? What resolve? I never felt chill shadow in my heart Until this sunset. DON SILVA. A dark enmity Plots how to sever us. And our defence Is speedy marriage, secretly achieved, Then publicly declared. Beseech you, dear, Grant me this confidence; do my will in this, Trusting the reasons why I overset All my own airy building raised so high Of bridal honors, marking when you step From off your maiden throne to come to me And bear the yoke of love. There is great need. I hastened home, carrying this prayer to you Within my heart. The bishop is my friend, Furthers our marriage, holds in enmity Some whom we love not and who love not us. By this night's moon our priest will be despatched From Jaën. I shall march an escort strong To meet him. Ere a second sun from this Has risen you consenting we may wed. FEDALMA. None knowing that we wed? DON SILVA. Beforehand none Save Iñez and Don Alvar. But the vows Once safely binding us, my household all Shall know you as their Duchess. No man then Can aim a blow at you but through my breast, And what stains you must stain our ancient name; If any hate you I will take his hate And wear it as a glove upon my helm; Nay, God himself will never have the power To strike you solely and leave me unhurt, He having made us one. Now put the seal Of your dear lips on that. FEDALMA. A solemn kiss? Such as I gave you when you came that day From Córdova, when first we said we loved? When you had left the ladies of the court For thirst to see me; and you told me so; And then I seemed to know why I had lived. I never knew before. A kiss like that? DON SILVA. Yes, yes, you face divine! When was our kiss Like any other? FEDALMA. Nay, I cannot tell What other kisses are. But that one kiss Remains upon my lips. The angels, spirits, Creatures with finer sense, may see it there. And now another kiss that will not die, Saying, To-morrow I shall be your wife! (They kiss, and pause a moment, looking earnestly in each other's eyes. Then FEDALMA, breaking away from DON SILVA, stands at a little distance from him with a look of roguish delight.) Now I am glad I saw the town to-day Before I am a Duchess, glad I gave This poor Fedalma all her wish. For once, Long years ago, I cried when Iñez said, "You are no more a little girl;" I grieved To part forever from that little girl And all her happy world so near the ground. It must be sad to outlive aught we love. So I shall grieve a little for these days Of poor unwed Fedalma. Oh, they are sweet, And none will come just like them. Perhaps the wind Wails so in winter for the summers dead, And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries For what has been and is not. Are they, Silva? (She comes nearer to him again, and lays her hand on his arm, looking up at him with melancholy.) DON SILVA. Why, dearest, you began in merriment, And end as sadly as a widowed bird. Some touch mysterious has new-tuned your soul To melancholy sequence. You soared high In that wild flight of rapture when you danced, And now you droop. 'T is arbitrary grief, Surfeit of happiness, that mourns for loss Of unwed love, which does but die like seed For fuller harvest of our tenderness. We in our wedded life shall know no loss. We shall new-date our years. What went before Will be the time of promise, shadows, dreams; But this, full revelation of great love. For rivers blent take in a broader heaven, And we shall blend our souls. Away with grief! When this dear head shall wear the double crown Of wife and Duchess, spiritually crowned With sworn espousal before God and man, Visibly crowned with jewels that bespeak The chosen sharer of my heritage, My love will gather perfectness, as thoughts That nourish us to magnanimity Grow perfect with more perfect utterance, Gathering full-shapen strength. And then these gems, (DON SILVA draws FEDALMA towards the jewel casket on the table, and opens it.) Helping the utterance of my soul's full choice, Will be the words made richer by just use, And have new meaning in their lustrousness. You know these jewels; they are precious signs Of long-transmitted honor, heightened still By worthy wearing; and I give them you, Ask you to take them, place our house's trust In her sure keeping whom my heart has found Worthiest, most beauteous. These rubies see Were falsely placed if not upon your brow. (FEDALMA, while DON SILVA holds open the casket, bends over it, looking at the jewels with delight.) FEDALMA. Ah, I remember them. In childish days I felt as if they were alive and breathed. I used to sit with awe and look at them. And now they will be mine! I'll put them on. Help me, my lord, and you shall see me now Somewhat as I shall look at Court with you, That we may know if I shall bear them well. I have a fear sometimes: I think your love Has never paused within your eyes to look, And only passes through them into mine. But when the Court is looking, and the queen, Your eyes will follow theirs. Oh, if you saw That I was other than you wished, 't were death! DON SILVA (taking up a jewel and placing it against her ear). Nay, let us try. Take out your ear-ring, sweet. This ruby glows with longing for your ear. FEDALMA (taking out her ear-rings, and then lifting up the other jewels, one by one). Pray, fasten in the rubies. (DON SILVA begins to put in the ear-ring.) I was right! These gems have life in them: their colors speak, Say what words fail of. So do many things, The scent of jasmine, and the fountain's plash, The moving shadows on the far-off hills, The slanting moonlight and our clasping hands. O Silva, there's an ocean round our words That overflows and drowns them. Do you know Sometimes when we sit silent, and the air Breathes gently on us from the orange-trees, It seems that with the whisper of a word Our souls must shrink, get poorer, more apart. Is it not true? DON SILVA. Yes, dearest, it is true. Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken: even your loved words Float in the larger meaning of your voice As something dimmer. (He is still trying in vain to fasten the second ear-ring, while she has stooped again over the casket.) FEDALMA (raising her head). Ah! your lordly hands Will never fix that jewel. Let me try. Women's small finger-tips have eyes. DON SILVA. No, no! I like the task, only you must be still. (She stands perfectly still, clasping her hands together while he fastens the second ear-ring. Suddenly a clanking noise is heard without.) FEDALMA (starting with an expression of pain). What is that sound? that jarring cruel sound? 'T is there, outside. (She tries to start away towards the window, but DON SILVA detains her.) DON SILVA. Oh heed it not, it comes From workmen in the outer gallery. FEDALMA. It is the sound of fetters: sound of work Is not so dismal. Hark, they pass along! I know it is those Gypsy prisoners. I saw them, heard their chains. Oh horrible, To be in chains! Why, I with all my bliss Have longed sometimes to fly and be at large; Have felt imprisoned in my luxury With servants for my jailers. O my lord, Do you not wish the world were different? DON SILVA. It will be different when this war has ceased. You, wedding me, will make it different, Making one life more perfect. FEDALMA. That is true! And I shall beg much kindness at your hands For those who are less happy than ourselves. (Brightening.) Oh, I shall rule you! ask for many things Before the world, which you will not deny For very pride, lest men should say, "The Duke Holds lightly by his Duchess; he repents His humble choice." (She breaks away from him and returns to the jewels, taking up a necklace, and clasping it on her neck, while he takes a circlet of diamonds and rubies and raises it towards her head as he speaks.) DON SILVA. Doubtless, I shall persist In loving you, to disappoint the world; Out of pure obstinacy feel myself Happiest of men. Now, take the coronet. (He places the circlet on her head.) The diamonds want more light. See, from this lamp I can set tapers burning. FEDALMA. Tell me, now, When all these cruel wars are at an end, And when we go to Court at Córdova, Or Seville, or Toledo, wait awhile, I must be farther off for you to see, (She retreats to a distance from him, and then advances slowly.) Now think (I would the tapers gave more light!) If when you show me at the tournaments Among the other ladies, they will say, "Duke Silva is well matched. His bride was naught, Was some poor foster-child, no man knows what; Yet is her carriage noble, all her robes Are worn with grace: she might have been well born." Will they say so? Think now we are at Court, And all eyes bent on me. DON SILVA. Fear not, my Duchess! Some knight who loves may say his lady-love Is fairer, being fairest. None can say Don Silva's bride might better fit her rank. You will make rank seem natural as kind, As eagle's plumage or the lion's might. A crown upon your brow would seem God-made. FEDALMA. Then I am glad! I shall try on to-night The other jewels, have the tapers lit, And see the diamonds sparkle. (She goes to the casket again.) Here is gold, A necklace of pure gold, most finely wrought. (She takes out a large gold necklace and holds it up before her, then turns to DON SILVA.) But this is one that you have worn, my lord? DON SILVA. No, love, I never wore it. Lay it down. (He puts the necklace gently out of her hand, then joins both her hands and holds them up between his own.) You must not look at jewels any more, But look at me. FEDALMA (looking up at him). O you dear heaven! I should see naught if you were gone. 'T is true My mind is too much given to gauds, to things That fetter thought within this narrow space. That comes of fear. DON SILVA. What fear? FEDALMA. Fear of myself. For when I walk upon the battlements And see the river travelling toward the plain, The mountains screening all the world beyond, A longing comes that haunts me in my dreams, Dreams where I seem to spring from off the walls, And fly far, far away, until at last I find myself alone among the rocks, Remember then that I have left you, try To fly back to you, and my wings are gone! DON SILVA. A wicked dream! If ever I left you, Even in dreams, it was some demon dragged me, And with fierce struggles I awaked myself. FEDALMA. It is a hateful dream, and when it comes, I mean, when in my waking hours there comes That longing to be free, I am afraid: I run down to my chamber, plait my hair, Weave colors in it, lay out all my gauds, And in my mind make new ones prettier. You see I have two minds, and both are foolish. Sometimes a torrent rushing through my soul Escapes in wild strange wishes; presently, It dwindles to a little babbling rill And plays among the pebbles and the flowers. Iñez will have it I lack broidery, Says naught else gives content to noble maids. But I have never broidered, never will. No, when I am a Duchess and a wife I shall ride forth may I not? by your side. DON SILVA. Yes, you shall ride upon a palfrey, black To match Bavieca. Not Queen Isabel Will be a sight more gladdening to men's eyes, Than my dark queen Fedalma. FEDALMA. Ah, but you, You are my king, and I shall tremble still With some great fear that throbs within my love. Does your love fear? DON SILVA. Ah, yes! all preciousness To mortal hearts is guarded by a fear. All love fears loss, and most that loss supreme, Its own perfection, seeing, feeling change From high to lower, dearer to less dear. Can love be careless? If we lost our love What should we find? with this sweet Past torn off, Our lives deep scarred just where their beauty lay? The best we found thenceforth were still a worse: The only better is a Past that lives On through an added Present, stretching still In hope unchecked by shaming memories To life's last breath. And so I tremble too Before my queen Fedalma. FEDALMA. That is just. 'T were hard of Love to make us women fear And leave you bold. Yet Love is not quite even. For feeble creatures, little birds and fawns, Are shaken more by fear, while large strong things Can bear it stoutly. So we women still Are not well dealt with. Yet would I choose to be Fedalma loving Silva. You, my lord, Hold the worse share, since you must love poor me. But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good? DON SILVA. O subtlety! for me 'T is what I love determines how I love. The goddess with pure rites reveals herself And makes pure worship. FEDALMA. Do you worship me? DON SILVA. Ay, with that best of worship which adores Goodness adorable. FEDALMA (archly). Goodness obedient, Doing your will, devoutest worshipper? DON SILVA. Yes, listening to this prayer. This very night I shall go forth. And you will rise with day And wait for me? FEDALMA. Yes. DON SILVA. I shall surely come. And then we shall be married. Now I go To audience fixed in Abderahman's tower. Farewell, love! (They embrace.) FEDALMA. Some chill dread possesses me! DON SILVA. Oh, confidence has oft been evil augury, So dread may hold a promise. Sweet, farewell! I shall send tendance as I pass, to bear This casket to your chamber. One more kiss. (Exit.) FEDALMA (when DON SILVA is gone, returning to the casket, and looking dreamily at the jewels). Yes, now that good seems less impossible! Now it seems true that I shall be his wife, Be ever by his side, and make a part In all his purposes. . . . . These rubies greet me Duchess. How they glow! Their prisoned souls are throbbing like my own. Perchance they loved once, were ambitious, proud; Or do they only dream of wider life, Ache from intenseness, yearn to burst the wall Compact of crystal splendor, and to flood Some wider space with glory? Poor, poor gems! We must be patient in our prison-house, And find our space in loving. Pray you, love me. Let us be glad together. And you, gold, (She takes up the gold necklace.) You wondrous necklace, will you love me too, And be my amulet to keep me safe From eyes that hurt? (She spreads out the necklace, meaning to clasp it on her neck. Then pauses, startled, hold ing it before her.) Why, it is magical! He says he never wore it, yet these lines, Nay, if he had, I should remember well 'T was he, no other. And these twisted lines, They seem to speak to me as writing would, To bring a message from the dead, dead past. What is their secret? Are they characters? I never learned them; yet they stir some sense That once I dreamed, I have forgotten what. Or was it life? Perhaps I lived before In some strange world where first my soul was shaped, And all this passionate love, and joy, and pain, That come, I know not whence, and sway my deeds, Are dim yet mastering memories, blind yet strong, That this world stirs within me; as this chain Stirs some strange certainty of visions gone, And all my mind is as an eye that stares Into the darkness painfully. (While FEDALMA has been looking at the necklace, JUAN has entered, and finding himself unobserved by her, says at last,) Señora! FEDALMA starts, and gathering the necklace together turns round O Juan, it is you! JUAN. I met the Duke, Had waited long without, no matter why, And when he ordered one to wait on you And carry forth a burden you would give, I prayed for leave to be the servitor. Don Silva owes me twenty granted wishes That I have never tendered, lacking aught That I could wish for and a Duke could grant; But this one wish to serve you, weighs as much As twenty other longings. FEDALMA (smiling). That sounds well. You turn your speeches prettily as songs. But I will not forget the many days You have neglected me. Your pupil learns But little from you now. Her studies flag. The Duke says, "That is idle Juan's way: Poets must rove, are honey-sucking birds And know not constancy." Said he quite true? JUAN. O lady, constancy has kind and rank. One man's is lordly, plump, and bravely clad, Holds its head high, and tells the world its name: Another man's is beggared, must go bare, And shiver through the world, the jest of all, But that it puts the motley on, and plays Itself the jester. But I see you hold The Gypsy's necklace: it is quaintly wrought. FEDALMA.The Gypsy's? Do you know its history? JUAN. No further back than when I saw it taken From off its wearer's neck, the Gypsy chief's. FEDALMA (eagerly). What! he who paused, at tolling of the bell, Before me in the Plaça? JUAN. Yes, I saw His look fixed on you. FEDALMA. Know you aught of him? JUAN. Something and nothing, as I know the sky, Or some great story of the olden time That hides a secret. I have oft talked with him. He seems to say much, yet is but a wizard Who draws down rain by sprinkling; throws me out Some pregnant text that urges comment; casts A sharp-hooked question, baited with such skill It needs must catch the answer. FEDALMA. It is hard That such a man should be a prisoner, Be chained to work. JUAN. Oh, he is dangerous! Granáda with this Zarca for a king Might still maim Christendom. He is of those Who steal the keys from snoring Destiny And make the prophets lie. A Gypsy, too, Suckled by hunted beasts, whose mother-milk Has filled his veins with hate. FEDALMA. I thought his eyes Spoke not of hatred, seemed to say he bore The pain of those who never could be saved. What if the Gypsies are but savage beasts And must be hunted? let them be set free, Have benefit of chase, or stand at bay And fight for life and offspring. Prisoners! Oh, they have made their fires beside the streams, Their walls have been the rocks, the pillared pines, Their roof the living sky that breathes with light: They may well hate a cage, like strong-winged birds, Like me, who have no wings, but only wishes. I will beseech the Duke to set them free. JUAN. Pardon me, lady, if I seem to warn, Or try to play the sage. What if the Duke Loved not to hear of Gypsies? if their name Were poisoned for him once, being used amiss? I speak not as of fact. Our nimble souls Can spin an insubstantial universe Suiting our mood, and call it possible, Sooner than see one grain with eye exact And give strict record of it. Yet by chance Our fancies may be truth and make us seers. 'T is a rare teeming world, so harvest-full, Even guessing ignorance may pluck some fruit. Note what I say no further than will stead The siege you lay. I would not seem to tell Aught that the Duke may think and yet withhold: It were a trespass in me. FEDALMA. Fear not, Juan. Your words bring daylight with them when you speak. I understand your care. But I am brave, Oh, and so cunning! always I prevail. Now, honored Troubadour, if you will be Your pupil's servant, bear this casket hence. Nay, not the necklace: it is hard to place. Pray go before me; Iñez will be there. (Exit JUAN with the casket.) FEDALMA (looking again at the necklace). It is his past clings to you, not my own. If we have each our angels, good and bad, Fates, separate from ourselves, who act for us When we are blind, or sleep, then this man's fate, Hovering about the thing he used to wear, Has laid its grasp on mine appealingly. Dangerous, is he? well, a Spanish knight Would have his enemy strong, defy, not bind him. I can dare all things when my soul is moved By something hidden that possesses me. If Silva said this man must keep his chains I should find ways to free him, disobey And free him as I did the birds. But no! As soon as we are wed, I'll put my prayer, And he will not deny me: he is good. Oh, I shall have much power as well as joy! Duchess Fedalma may do what she will. A Street by the Castle. JUAN leans against a parapet, in moonlight, and touches his lute half unconsciously. PEPITA stands on tiptoe watching him, and then advances till her shadow falls in front of him. He looks towards her. A piece of white drapery thrown over her head catches the moonlight. JUAN. Ha! my Pepíta! see how thin and long Your shadow is. 'T is so your ghost will be, When you are dead. PEPITA (crossing herself). Dead! Oh the blessed saints! You would be glad, then, if Pepíta died? JUAN. Glad! why? Dead maidens are not merry. Ghosts Are doleful company. I like you living. PEPITA. I think you like me not. I wish you did. Sometimes you sing to me and make me dance. Another time you take no heed of me, Not though I kiss my hand to you and smile. But Andrès would be glad if I kissed him. JUAN. My poor Pepíta, I am old. PEPITA. No, no. You have no wrinkles. JUAN. Yes, I have within; The wrinkles are within, my little bird. Why, I have lived through twice a thousand years, And kept the company of men whose bones Crumbled before the blessed Virgin lived. PEPITA (crossing herself).Nay, God defend us, that is wicked talk! You say it but to scorn me. (With a sob.) I will go. JUAN. Stay, little pigeon. I am not unkind. Come, sit upon the wall. Nay, never cry. Give me your cheek to kiss. There, cry no more! (PEPITA, sitting on the low parapet, puts up her cheek to JUAN, who kisses it, putting his hand under her chin. She takes his hand and kisses it.) PEPITA. I like to kiss your hand. It is so good, So smooth and soft. JUAN. Well, well, I 'll sing to you. PEPITA. A pretty song, loving and merry? JUAN. Yes. (JUAN sings.) Memory, Tell to me What is fair, Past compare, In the land of Tubal? Is it Spring's Lovely things, Blossoms white, Rosy dight? Then it is Pepíta. Summer's crest, Red-gold tressed, Corn-flowers peeping under? Idle noons, Lingering moons, Sudden cloud, Lightning's shroud, Sudden rain, Quick again Smiles where late was thunder? Are all these Made to please? So too is Pepíta. Autumn's prime, Apple-time, Smooth cheek round, Heart all sound? Is it this You would kiss? Then it is Pepíta. You can bring No sweet thing, But my mind Still shall find It is my Pepíta. Memory Says to me It is she, She is fair Past compare In the land of Tuval. PEPITA (seizing JUAN'S hand again). Oh, then, you do love me? JUAN. Yes, in the song. PEPITA (sadly). Not out of it? not love me out of it? JUAN. Only a little out of it, my bird. When I was singing I was Andrès, say, Or one who loves you better still than Andrès. PEPITA. Not yourself? JUAN. No! PEPITA (throwing his hand down pettishly). Then take it back again! I will not have it! JUAN. Listen, little one. Juan is not a living man all by himself: His life is breathed in him by other men, And they speak out of him. He is their voice. Juan's own life he gave once quite away. It was Pepíta's lover singing then, not Juan. We old, old poets, if we kept our hearts, Should hardly know them from another man's. They shrink to make room for the many more We keep within us. There, now, one more kiss, And then go home again. PEPITA (a little frightened, after letting JUAN kiss her). You are not wicked? JUAN. Ask your confessor, tell him what I said. (PEPITA goes, while JUAN thrums his lute again, and sings.) Came a pretty maid By the moon's pure light, Loved me well, she said, Eyes with tears all bright, A pretty maid! But too late she strayed, Moonlight pure was there; She was naught but shade Hiding the more fair, The heavenly maid! A vaulted room all stone. The light shed from a high lamp. Wooden chairs, a desk, book-shelves. The PRIOR, in white frock, a black rosary with a crucifix of ebony and ivory at his side, is walking up and down, holding a written paper in his hands, which are clasped behind him. What if this witness lies? he says he heard her Counting her blasphemies on a rosary, And in a bold discourse with Salomo, Say that the Host was naught but ill-mixed flour, That it was mean to pray, she never prayed. I know the man who wrote this for a cur, Who follows Don Diego, sees life's good In scraps my nephew flings to him. What then? Particular lies may speak a general truth. I guess him false, but know her heretic, Know her for Satan's instrument, bedecked With heathenish charms, luring the souls of men To damning trust in good unsanctified. Let her be prisoned, questioned, she will give Witness against herself, that were this false . . . . (He looks at the paper again and reads, then again thrusts it behind him.) The matter and the color are not false: The form concerns the witness, not the judge; For proof is gathered by the sifting mind, Not given in crude and formal circumstance. Suspicion is a heaven-sent lamp, and I, I, watchman of the Holy Office, bear That lamp in trust. I will-keep faithful watch. The Holy Inquisition's discipline Is mercy, saving her, if penitent, God grant it! else, root up the poison-plant, Though 't were a lily with a golden heart! This spotless maiden with her pagan soul Is the arch-enemy's trap: he turns his back On all the prostitutes, and watches her To see her poison men with false belief In rebel virtues. She has poisoned Silva; His shifting mind, dangerous in fitfulness, Strong in the contradiction of itself, Carries his young ambitions wearily, As holy vows regretted. Once he seemed The fresh-oped flower of Christian knighthood, born For feats of holy daring; and I said: "That half of life which I, as monk, renounce, Shall be fulfilled in him: Silva will be That saintly noble, that wise warrior, That blameless excellence in worldly gifts I would have been, had I not asked to live The higher life of man impersonal Who reigns o'er all things by refusing all. What is his promise now? Apostasy From every high intent: languid, nay, gone, The prompt devoutness of a generous heart, The strong obedience of a reverent will, That breathes the Church's air and sees her light, He peers and strains with feeble questioning, Or else he jests. He thinks I know it not, I who have read the history of his lapse, As clear as it is writ in the angel's book. He will defy me, flings great words at me, Me who have governed all our house's acts, Since I, a stripling, ruled his stripling father. This maiden is the cause, and if they wed, The Holy War may count a captain lost. For better he were dead than keep his place, And fill it infamously: in God's war Slackness is infamy. Shall I stand by And let the tempter win? defraud Christ's cause, And blot his banner? all for scruples weak Of pity towards their young and frolicsome blood; Or nice discrimination of the tool By which my hand shall work a sacred rescue? The fence of rules is for the purblind crowd; They walk by averaged precepts; sovereign men, Seeing by God's light, see the general By seeing all the special, own no rule But their full vision of the moment's worth. 'T is so God governs, using wicked men, Nay, scheming fiends, to work his purposes. Evil that good may come? Measure the good Before you say what's evil. Perjury? I scorn the perjurer, but I will use him To serve the holy truth. There is no lie Save in his soul, and let his soul be judged. I know the truth, and act upon the truth. O God, thou knowest that my will is pure. Thy servant owns naught for himself, his wealth Is but obedience. And I have sinned In keeping small respects of human love, Calling it mercy. Mercy? Where evil is True mercy must be terrible. Mercy would save. Save whom? Save serpents, locusts, wolves? Or out of pity let the idiots gorge Within a famished town? Or save the gains Of men who trade in poison lest they starve? Save all things mean and foul that clog the earth Stifling the better? Save the fools who cling For refuge round their hideous idol's limbs, So leave the idol grinning unconsumed, And save the fools to breed idolaters? Oh mercy worthy of the licking hound That knows no future but its feeding time! Mercy has eyes that pierce the ages, sees From heights divine of the eternal purpose Far-scattered consequence in its vast sum; Chooses to save, but with illumined vision Sees that to save is greatly to destroy. 'T is so the Holy Inquisition sees: its wrath Is fed from the strong heart of wisest love. For love must needs make hatred. He who loves God and his law must hate the foes of God. And I have sinned in being merciful: Being slack in hate, I have been slack in love. (He takes the crucifix and holds it up before him.) Thou shuddering, bleeding, thirsting, dying God, Thou Man of Sorrows, scourged and bruised and torn, Suffering to save, wilt thou not judge the world? This arm which held the children, this pale hand That gently touched the eyelids of the blind, And opened passive to the cruel nail, Shall one day stretch to leftward of thy throne, Charged with the power that makes the lightning strong, And hurl thy foes to everlasting hell. And thou, Immaculate Mother, Virgin mild, Thou sevenfold-pierced, thou pitying, pleading Queen, Shalt see and smile, while the black filthy souls Sink with foul weight to their eternal place, Purging the Holy Light. Yea, I have sinned And called it mercy. But I shrink no more. To-morrow morn this temptress shall be safe Under the Holy Inquisition's key. He thinks to wed her, and defy me then, She being shielded by our house's name. But he shall never wed her. I have said. The time is come. Exurge, Domine, Judica causam tuam. Let thy foes Be driven as the smoke before the wind, And melt like wax upon the furnace lip! A large chamber richly furnished opening on a terracegarden, the trees visible through the window in faint moonlight. Flowers hanging about the window, lit up by the tapers. The casket of jewels open on a table. The gold necklace lying near. FEDALMA, splendidly dressed and adorned with pearls and rubies, is walking up and down. So soft a night was never made for sleep, But for the waking of the finer sense To every murmuring and gentle sound, To subtlest odors, pulses, visitings That touch our frames with wings too delicate To be discerned amid the blare of day. (She pauses near the window to gather some jasmine: then walks again.) Surely these flowers keep happy watch, their breath Is their fond memory of the loving light. I often rue the hours I lose in sleep: It is a bliss too brief, only to see This glorious world, to hear the voice of love, To feel the touch, the breath of tenderness, And then to rest as from a spectacle. I need the curtained stillness of the night To live through all my happy hours again With more selection, cull them quite away From blemished moments. Then in loneliness The face that bent before me in the day Rises in its own light, more vivid seems Painted upon the dark, and ceaseless glows With sweet solemnity of gazing love, Till like the heavenly blue it seems to grow Nearer, more kindred, and more cherishing, Mingling with all my being. Then the words, The tender low-toned words come back again, With repetition welcome as the chime Of softly hurrying brooks, "My only love, My love while life shall last, my own Fedalma!" Oh, it is mine, the joy that once has been! Poor eager hope is but a stammerer, Must listen dumbly to great memory, Who makes our bliss the sweeter by her telling. (She pauses a moment musingly.) But that dumb hope is still a sleeping guard Whose quiet rhythmic breath saves me from dread In this fair paradise. For if the earth Broke off with flower-fringed edge, visibly sheer, Leaving no footing for my forward step But empty blackness . . . . Nay, there is no fear, They will renew themselves, day and my joy, And all that past which is securely mine, Will be the hidden root that nourishes Our still unfolding, ever-ripening love! (While she is uttering the last words, a little bird falls softly on the floor behind her; she hears the light sound of its fall and turns round.) Did something enter? . . . . Yes, this little bird . . . . (She lifts it.) Dead and yet warm: 't was seeking sanctuary, And died, perhaps of fright, at the altar foot. Stay, there is something tied beneath the wing! A strip of linen, streaked with blood, what blood? The streaks are written words, are sent to me, O God, are sent to me! Dear child, Fedalma, Be brave, give no alarm, your Father comes! (She lets the bird fall again.) My Father . . . . comes . . . . my Father. . . . . (She turns in quivering expectation toward the window. There is perfect stillness a few moments until ZARCA appears at the window. He enters quickly and noiselessly; then stands still at his full height, and at a distance from FEDALMA.) FEDALMA (in a low distinct tone of terror). It is he! I said his fate had laid its hold on mine. ZARCA (advancing a step or two). You know, then, who I am? FEDALMA. The prisoner, He whom I saw in fetters, and this necklace ZARCA. Was played with by your fingers when it hung About my neck, full fifteen years ago! FEDALMA (starts, looks at the necklace and handles it, then speaks as if unconsciously). Full fifteen years ago! ZARCA. The very day I lost you, when you wore a tiny gown Of scarlet cloth with golden broidery: 'T was clasped in front by coins, two golden coins. The one towards the left was split in two Across the King's head, right from brow to nape, A dent i' the middle nicking in the cheek. You see I know the little gown by heart. FEDALMA (growing paler and more tremulous). Yes. It is true, I have the gown, the clasps, The braid, sore tarnished: it is long ago! ZARCA. But yesterday to me; for till to-day I saw you always as that little child. And when they took my necklace from me, still Your fingers played about it on my neck, And still those buds of fingers on your feet Caught in its meshes as you seemed to climb Up to my shoulder. You were not stolen all. You had a double life fed from my heart. . . . . (FEDALMA, letting fall the necklace, makes an impulsive movement towards him with outstretched hands.) For the Zincalo loves his children well. FEDALMA (shrinking, trembling, and letting fall her hands). How came it that you sought me, no, I mean How came it that you knew me, that you lost me? ZARCA (standing perfectly still). Poor child! I see, I see, your ragged father Is welcome as the piercing wintry wind Within this silken chamber. It is well. I would not have a child who stooped to feign, And aped a sudden love. True hate were better. FEDALMA (raising her eyes towards him, with a flash of admiration, and looking at him fixedly). Father, how was it that we lost each other? ZARCA. I lost you as a man may lose a diamond Wherein he has compressed his total wealth, Or the right hand whose cunning makes him great: I lost you by a trivial accident. Marauding Spaniards, sweeping like a storm Over a spot within the Moorish bounds, Near where our camp lay, doubtless snatched you up, When Zind, your nurse, as she confessed, was urged By burning thirst to wander towards the stream, And leave you on the sand some paces off Playing with pebbles, while she dog-like lapped. 'T was so I lost you, never saw you more Until to-day I saw you dancing! Saw The child of the Zincalo making sport For those who spit upon her people's name. FEDALMA (vehemently). It was not sport. What if the world looked on? I danced for joy, for love of all the world. But when you looked at me my joy was stabbed, Stabbed with your pain. I wondered . . . . now I know . . . . It was my father's pain. (She pauses a moment with eyes bent downward, during which ZARCA examines her face. Then she says quickly,) How were you sure At once I was your child? ZARCA. Oh, I had witness strong As any Cadi needs, before I saw you! I fitted all my memories with the chat Of one named Juan, one whose rapid talk Showers like the blossoms from a light-twigged shrub, If you but coughed beside it. I learned all The story of your Spanish nurture, all The promise of your fortune. When at last I fronted you, my little maid full-grown, Belief was turned to vision: then I saw That she whom Spaniards called the bright Fedalma, The little red-frocked foundling three years old, Grown to such perfectness the Christian Duke Had wooed her for his Duchess, was the child, Sole offspring of my flesh, that Lambra bore One hour before the Christian, hunting us, Hurried her on to death. Therefore I sought you, Therefore I come to claim you claim my child, Not from the Spaniard, not from him who robbed, But from herself. (FEDALMA has gradually approached close to ZARCA, and with a low sob sinks on her knees before him. He stoops to kiss her brow, and lays his hands on her head.) ZARCA (with solemn tenderness). Then my child owns her father? FEDALMA. Father! yes. I will eat dust before I will deny The flesh I spring from. ZARCA. There my daughter spoke. Away then with these rubies! (He seizes the circlet of rubies and flings it on the ground. FEDALMA, starting from the ground with strong emotion, shrinks backward.) Such a crown Is infamy on a Zincala's brow. It is her people's blood, decking her shame. FEDALMA (after a moment, slowly and distinctly, as if accepting a doom). Then . . . . I am . . . . a Zincala? ZARCA. Of a blood Unmixed as virgin wine-juice. FEDALMA. Of a race More outcast and despised than Moor or Jew? ZARCA. Yes: wanderers whom no god took knowledge of To give them laws, to fight for them, or blight Another race to make them ampler room; A people with no home even in memory, No dimmest lore of giant ancestors To make a common hearth for piety. FEDALMA. A race that lives on prey as foxes do With stealthy, petty rapine: so despised, It is not persecuted, only spurned, Crushed underfoot, warred on by chance like rats, Or swarming flies, or reptiles of the sea Dragged in the net unsought, and flung far off To perish as they may? ZARCA. You paint us well. So abject are the men whose blood we share; Untutored, unbefriended, unendowed; No favorites of heaven or of men. Therefore I cling to them! Therefore no lure Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake The meagre wandering herd that lows for help And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. Because our race have no great memories, I will so live they shall remember me For deeds of such divine beneficence As rivers have, that teach men what is good By blessing them. I have been schooled, have caught Lore from the Hebrew, deftness from the Moor, Know the rich heritage, the milder life, Of nations fathered by a mighty Past; But were our race accursed (as they who make Good luck a god count all unlucky men) I would espouse their curse sooner than take My gifts from brethren naked of all good, And lend them to the rich for usury. (FEDALMA again advances, and putting forth her right hand grasps ZARCA's left. He places his other hand on her shoulder. They stand so looking at each other.) ZARCA. And you, my child? are you of other mind, Choosing forgetfulness, hating the truth That says you are akin to needy men? Wishing your father were some Christian Duke, Who could hang Gypsies when their task was done, While you, his daughter, were not bound to care? FEDALMA (in a troubled, eager voice). No, I should always care I cared for you For all, before I dreamed . . . . ZARCA. Before you dreamed You were a born Zincala, in the bonds Of the Zincali's faith. FEDALMA (bitterly). Zincali's faith? Men say they have none. ZARCA. Oh, it is a faith Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts. Faith to each other: the fidelity Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share The scanty water: the fidelity Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, The speech that even in lying tells the truth Of heritage inevitable as past deeds, Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel The mystic stirring of a common life Which makes the many one: fidelity To that deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate Made through our infant breath when we were born, The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. Fear thou that oath, my daughter, nay, not fear, But love it; for the sanctity of oaths Lies not in lightning that avenges them, But in the injury wrought by broken bonds And in the garnered good of human trust. And you have sworn, even with your infant breath You too were pledged . . . . FEDALMA (lets go ZARCA's hand and sinks backward on her knees, with bent head, as if before some impending crushing weight). What have I sworn? ZARCA. To live the life of the Zincala's child: The child of him who, being chief, will be The savior of his tribe, or if he fail Will choose to fail rather than basely win The prize of renegades. Nay will not choose Is there a choice for strong souls to be weak? For men erect to crawl like hissing snakes? I choose not, I am Zarca. Let him choose Who halts and wavers, having appetite To feed on garbage. You, my child, are you Halting and wavering? FEDALMA (raising her head). Say what is my task? ZARCA. To be the angel of a homeless tribe. To help me bless a race taught by no prophet, And make their name, now but a badge of scorn, A glorious banner floating in their midst, Stirring the air they breathe with impulses Of generous pride, exalting fellowship Until it soars to magnanimity. I'll guide my brethren forth to their new land, Where they shall plant and sow and reap their own, Serving each other's needs, and so be spurred To skill in all the arts that succor life; Where we may kindle our first altar-fire From settled hearths, and call our Holy Place The hearth that binds us in one family. That land awaits them: they await their chief, Me who am prisoned. All depends on you. FEDALMA (rising to her full height, and looking solemnly at ZARCA). Father, your child is ready! She will not Forsake her kindred: she will brave all scorn Sooner than scorn herself. Let Spaniards all, Christians, Jews, Moors, shoot out the lip and say, "Lo, the first hero in a tribe of thieves." Is it not written so of them? They, too, Were slaves, lost, wandering, sunk beneath a curse, Till Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were born, Till beings lonely in their greatness lived, And lived to save their people. Father, listen. To-morrow the Duke weds me secretly: But straight he will present me as his wife To all his household, cavaliers and dames And noble pages. Then I will declare Before them all: "I am his daughter, his, The Gypsy's, owner of this golden badge." Then I shall win your freedom; then the Duke, Why, he will be your son! will send you forth With aid and honors. Then, before all eyes I'll clasp this badge on you, and lift my brow For you to kiss it, saying by that sign, "I glory in my father." This, to-morrow. ZARCA. A woman's dream, who thinks by smiling well To ripen figs in frost. What! marry first, And then proclaim your birth? Enslave yourself To use your freedom? Share another's name, Then treat it as you will? How will that tune Ring in your bridegroom's ears, that sudden song Of triumph in your Gypsy father? FEDALMA. (discouraged). Nay, I meant not so. We marry hastily Yet there is time there will be: in less space Than he can take to look at me, I'll speak And tell him all. Oh, I am not afraid! His love for me is stronger than all hate; Nay, stronger than my love, which cannot sway Demons that haunt me, tempt me to rebel. Were he Fedalma and I Silva, he Could love confession, prayers, and tonsured monks If my soul craved them. He will never hate The race that bore him what he loves the most. I shall but do more strongly what I will, Having his will to help me. And to-morrow, Father, as surely as this heart shall beat, You, every chained Zincalo, shall be free. ZARCA (coming nearer to her, and laying his hand on her shoulder). Too late, too poor a service that, my child! Not so the woman who would save her tribe Must help its heroes, not by wordy breath, By easy prayers strong in a lover's ear, By showering wreaths and sweets and wafted kisses, And then, when all the smiling work is done, Turning to rest upon her down again, And whisper languid pity for her race Upon the bosom of her alien spouse. Not to such petty mercies as can fall 'Twixt stitch and stitch of silken broidery work Such miracles of mitred saints who pause Beneath their gilded canopy to heal A man sun-stricken: not to such trim merit As soils its dainty shoes for charity And simpers meekly at the pious stain, But never trod with naked bleeding feet Where no man praised it, and where no Church blessed: Not to such almsdeeds fit for holidays Were you, my daughter, consecrated, bound By laws that, breaking, you will dip your bread In murdered brother's blood and call it sweet, When you were born in the Zincalo's tent, And lifted up in sight of all your tribe, Who greeted you with shouts of loyal joy, Sole offspring of the chief in whom they trust As in the oft-tried never-failing flint They strike their fire from. Other work is yours. FEDALMA. What work? what is it that you ask of me? ZARCA. A work as pregnant as the act of men Who set their ships aflame and spring to land, A fatal deed . . . . FEDALMA. Stay! never utter it! If it can part my lot from his whose love Has chosen me. Talk not of oaths, of birth, Of men as numerous as the dim white stars, As cold and distant, too, for my heart's pulse. No ills on earth, though you should count them up With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh For me, his ill who is my supreme love. All sorrows else are but imagined flames, Making me shudder at an unfelt smart, But his imagined sorrow is a fire That scorches me. ZARCA. I know, I know it well, The first young passionate wail of spirits called To some great destiny. In vain, my daughter! Lay the young eagle in what nest you will, The cry and swoop of eagles overhead Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame, And make it spread its wings and poise itself For the eagle's flight. Hear what you have to do. (FEDALMA breaks from him and stands half averted, as if she dreaded the effect of his looks and words.) My comrades even now file off their chains In a low turret by the battlements, Where we were locked with slight and sleepy guard, We who had files hid in our shaggy hair, And possible ropes that waited but our will In half our garments. Oh, the Moorish blood Runs thick and warm to us, though thinned by chrism. I found a friend among our jailers, one Who loves the Gypsy as the Moor's ally. I know the secrets of this fortress. Listen. Hard by yon terrace is a narrow stair, Cut in the living rock, and at one point In its slow straggling course it branches off Towards a low wooden door, that art has bossed To such unevenness, it seems one piece With the rough-hewn rock. Opened, it leads Through a broad passage burrowed underground A good half-mile out to the open plain: Made for escape, in dire extremity From siege or burning, of the house's wealth In women or in gold. To find that door Needs one who knows the number of the steps Just to the turning-point; to open it, Needs one who knows the secret of the bolt. You have that secret: you will ope that door, And fly with us. FEDALMA (receding a little, and gathering herself up in an attitude of resolve opposite to Zarca). No, I will never fly! Never forsake that chief half of my soul Where lies my love. I swear to set you free. Ask for no more; it is not possible. Father, my soul is not too base to ring At touch of your great thoughts; nay, in my blood There streams the sense unspeakable of kind, As leopard feels at ease with leopard. But, Look at these hands! You say when they were little They played about the gold upon your neck. I do believe it, for their tiny pulse Made record of it in the inmost coil Of growing memory. But see them now! Oh they have made fresh record; twined themselves With other throbbing hands whose pulses feed Not memories only but a blended life, Life that will bleed to death if it be severed. Have pity on me, father! Wait the morning; Say you will wait the morning. I will win Your freedom openly: you shall go forth With aid and honors. Silva will deny Naught to my asking . . . . ZARCA (with contemptuous decision). Till you ask him aught Wherein he is powerless. Soldiers even now Murmur against him that he risks the town, And forfeits all the prizes of a foray To get his bridal pleasure with a bride Too low for him. They'll murmur more and louder If captives of our pith and sinew, fit For all the work the Spaniard hates, are freed, Now, too, when Spanish hands are scanty. What, Turn Gypsies loose instead of hanging them! 'T is flat against the edict. Nay, perchance Murmurs aloud may turn to silent threats Of some well-sharpened dagger; for your Duke Has to his heir a pious cousin, who deems The Cross were better served if he were Duke.Such good you'll work your lover by your prayers. FEDALMA. Then, I will free you now! You shall be safe, Nor he be blamed, save for his love to me. I will declare what I have done: the deed May put our marriage off . . . . . ZARCA. Ay, till the time When you shall be a queen in Africa, And he be prince enough to sue for you. You cannot free us and come back to him. FEDALMA. And why? ZARCA. I would compel you to go forth. FEDALMA. You tell me that? ZARCA. Yes, for I'd have you choose; Though, being of the blood you are, my blood, You have no right to choose. FEDALMA. I only owe A daughter's debt; I was not born a slave. ZARCA. No, not a slave; but you were born to reign. 'T is a compulsion of a higher sort, Whose fetters are the net invisible That holds all life together. Royal deeds May make long destinies for multitudes, And you are called to do them. You belong Not to the petty round of circumstance That makes a woman's lot, but to your tribe, Who trust in me and in my blood with trust That men call blind; but it is only blind As unyeaned reason is, that growing stirs Within the womb of superstition. FEDALMA. No! I belong to him who loves me whom I love Who chose me whom I chose to whom I pledged A woman's truth. And that is nature too, Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth. ZARCA. Well, then, unmake yourself from a Zincala, Unmake yourself from being child of mine! Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: Unmake yourself, doff all the eagle plumes And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his That you should prattle o'er his words again! Get a small heart that flutters at the smiles Of that plump penitent and greedy saint Who breaks all treaties in the name of God, Saves souls by confiscation, sends to heaven The alter-fumes of burning heretics, And chaffers with the Levite for the gold; Holds Gypsies beasts unfit for sacrifice, So sweeps them out like worms alive or dead. Go, trail your gold and velvet in her presence! Conscious Zincala, smile at your rare luck, While half your brethren . . . . FEDALMA. I am not so vile! It is not to such mockeries that I cling, Not to the flaring tow of gala-lights: It is to him my love the face of day. ZARCA. What, will you part him from the air he breathes, Never inhale with him although you kiss him? Will you adopt a soul without its thoughts, Or grasp a life apart from flesh and blood? Till then you cannot wed a Spanish Duke And not wed shame at mention of your race, And not wed hardness to their miseries, Nay, not wed murder. Would you save my life Yet stab my purpose? maim my every limb, Put out my eyes, and turn me loose to feed? Is that salvation? rather drink my blood. That child of mine who weds my enemy, Adores a God who took no heed of Gypsies, Forsakes her people, leaves their poverty To join the luckier crowd that mocks their woes, That child of mine is doubly murderess, Murdering her father's hope, her people's trust. Such draughts are mingled in your cup of love. And when you have become a thing so poor, Your life is all a fashion without law Save frail conjecture of a changing wish, Your worshipped sun, your smiling face of day, Will turn to cloudiness, and you will shiver In your thin finery of vain desire. Men call his passion madness; and he, too, May learn to think it madness: 't is a thought Of ducal sanity. FEDALMA. No, he is true! And if I part from him I part from joy. Oh, it was morning with us, I seemed young. But now I know I am an aged sorrow, My people's sorrow. Father, since I am yours, Since I must walk an unslain sacrifice, Carrying the knife within me, quivering, Put cords upon me, drag me to the doom My birth has laid upon me. See, I kneel: I cannot will to go. ZARCA. Will then to stay! Say you will take your better, painted such By blind desire, and choose the hideous worse For thousands who were happier but for you. My thirty followers are assembled now Without this terrace: I your father wait That you may lead us forth to liberty, Restore me to my tribe, five hundred men Whom I alone can save, alone can rule, And plant them as a mighty nation's seed. Why, vagabonds who clustered round one man, Their voice of God, their prophet, and their king, Twice grew to empire on the teeming shores Of Africa, and sent new royalties To feed afresh the Arab sway in Spain. My vagabonds are a seed more generous, Quick as the serpent, loving as the hound, And beautiful as disinherited gods. They have a promised land beyond the sea: There I may lead them, raise my standard, call All wandering Zincali to that home, And make a nation, bring light, order, law, Instead of chaos. You, my only heir, Are called to reign for me when I am gone. Now choose your deed: to save or to destroy. You, woman and Zincala, fortunate Above your fellows, you who hold a curse Or blessing in the hollow of your hand, Say you will loose that hand from fellowship, Let go the rescuing rope, hurl all the tribes, Children and countless beings yet to come, Down from the upward path of light and joy, Back to the dark and marshy wilderness Where life is naught but blind tenacity Of that which is. Say you will curse your race! FEDALMA (rising and stretching out her arms in deprecation). No, no, I will not say it, I will go! Father, I choose! I will not take a heaven Haunted by shrieks of far-off misery. This deed and I have ripened with the hours: It is a part of me, a wakened thought That, rising like a giant, masters me, And grows into a doom. O mother life, That seemed to nourish me so tenderly, Even in the womb you vowed me to the fire, Hung on my soul the burden of men's hopes, And pledged me to redeem! I'll pay the debt. You gave me strength that I should pour it all Into this anguish. I can never shrink Back into bliss, my heart has grown too big With things that might be. Father, I will go. I will strip off these gems. Some happier bride Shall wear them, since Fedalma would be dowered With naught but curses, dowered with misery Of men, of women, who have hearts to bleed As hers is bleeding. (She sinks on a seat, and begins to take off her jewels.) Now, good gems, we part. Speak of me always tenderly to Silva. (She pauses, turning to ZARCA.) O father, will the women of our tribe Suffer as I do, in the years to come When you have made them great in Africa? Redeemed from ignorant ills only to feel A conscious woe? Then, is it worth the pains? Were it not better when we reach that shore To raise a funeral-pile and perish all? So closing up a myriad avenues To misery yet unwrought? My soul is faint, Will these sharp pangs buy any certain good? ZARCA. Nay, never falter: no great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty. No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, The undivided will to seek the good: 'T is that compels the elements, and wrings A human music from the indifferent air. The greatest gift the hero leaves his race Is to have been a hero. Say we fail! We feed the high tradition of the world, And leave our spirit in Zincalo breasts. FEDALMA (unclasping her jewelled belt, and throwing it down). Yes, say that we shall fail! I will not count On aught but being faithful. I will take This yearning self of mine and strangle it. I will not be half-hearted: never yet Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. Die, my young joy, die, all my hungry hopes, The milk you cry for from the breast of life Is thick with curses. Oh, all fatness here Snatches its meat from leanness, feeds on graves. I will seek nothing but to shun what's base. The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain, The grandest death, to die in vain, for love Greater than sways the forces of the world. That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed The curse of the Zincali. Father, come! ZARCA. No curse has fallen on us till we cease To help each other. You, if you are false To that first fellowship, lay on the curse. But write now to the Spaniard: briefly say That I, your father, came; that you obeyed The fate which made you a Zincala, as his fate Made him a Spanish duke and Christian knight. He must not think . . . . FEDALMA. Yes, I will write, but he, Oh, he would know it, he would never think The chain that dragged me from him could be aught But scorching iron entering in my soul. (She writes.) Silva, sole love, he came, my father came. I am the daughter of the Gypsy chief Who means to be the Savior of our tribe. He calls on me to live for his great end. To live? nay, die for it. Fedalma dies In leaving Silva: all that lives henceforth Is the Zincala. (She rises.) Father, now I go To wed my people's lot. ZARCA. To wed a crown. We will make royal the Zincali's lot, Give it a country, homes, and monuments Held sacred through the lofty memories That we shall leave behind us. Come, my Queen! FEDALMA. Stay, my betrothal ring! one kiss, farewell! O love, you were my crown. No other crown Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow. (Exeunt.) | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...RICHARD, WHAT'S THAT NOISE? by RICHARD HOWARD LOOKING FOR THE GULF MOTEL by RICHARD BLANCO RIVERS INTO SEAS by LYNDA HULL DESTINATIONS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE ONE WHO WAS DIFFERENT by RANDALL JARRELL THE CONFESSION OF ST. JIM-RALPH by DENIS JOHNSON SESTINA: TRAVEL NOTES by WELDON KEES TO H. B. (WITH A BOOK OF VERSE) by MAURICE BARING BROTHER AND SISTER by MARY ANN EVANS |
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