The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: 250+ Titles in One Edition. Оскар Уайльд

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СКАЧАТЬ as I crossed the square,

       Already the low rabble throng about it

       With fearful jests, and horrid merriment,

       As though it were a morris-dancer’s platform,

       And not Death’s sable throne. O Guido, Guido,

       You must escape!

      GUIDO

       Madam, I tarry here.

      DUCHESS

       Guido, you shall not: it would be a thing

       So terrible that the amazed stars

       Would fall from heaven, and the palsied moon

       Be in her sphere eclipsed, and the great sun

       Refuse to shine upon the unjust earth

       Which saw thee die.

      GUIDO

       Be sure I shall not stir.

      DUCHESS

       [wringing her hands]

       Is one sin not enough, but must it breed

       A second sin more horrible again

       Than was the one that bare it? O God, God,

       Seal up sin’s teeming womb, and make it barren,

       I will not have more blood upon my hand

       Than I have now.

      GUIDO

       [seizing her hand]

       What! am I fallen so low

       That I may not have leave to die for you?

      DUCHESS

       [tearing her hand away]

       Die for me? - no, my life is a vile thing,

       Thrown to the miry highways of this world;

       You shall not die for me, you shall not, Guido;

       I am a guilty woman.

      GUIDO

       Guilty? - let those

       Who know what a thing temptation is,

       Let those who have not walked as we have done,

       In the red fire of passion, those whose lives

       Are dull and colourless, in a word let those,

       If any such there be, who have not loved,

       Cast stones against you. As for me -

      DUCHESS

       Alas!

      GUIDO

       [falling at her feet]

       You are my lady, and you are my love!

       O hair of gold, O crimson lips, O face

       Made for the luring and the love of man!

       Incarnate image of pure loveliness!

       Worshipping thee I do forget the past,

       Worshipping thee my soul comes close to thine,

       Worshipping thee I seem to be a god,

       And though they give my body to the block,

       Yet is my love eternal!

       [DUCHESS puts her hands over her face: GUIDO draws them down.]

       Sweet, lift up

       The trailing curtains that overhang your eyes

       That I may look into those eyes, and tell you

       I love you, never more than now when Death

       Thrusts his cold lips between us: Beatrice,

       I love you: have you no word left to say?

       Oh, I can bear the executioner,

       But not this silence: will you not say you love me?

       Speak but that word and Death shall lose his sting,

       But speak it not, and fifty thousand deaths

       Are, in comparison, mercy. Oh, you are cruel,

       And do not love me.

      DUCHESS

       Alas! I have no right

       For I have stained the innocent hands of love

       With spilt-out blood: there is blood on the ground;

       I set it there.

      GUIDO

       Sweet, it was not yourself,

       It was some devil tempted you.

      DUCHESS

       [rising suddenly]

       No, no,

       We are each our own devil, and we make

       This world our hell.

      GUIDO

       Then let high Paradise

       Fall into Tartarus! for I shall make

       This world my heaven for a little space.

       The sin was mine, if any sin there was.

       ‘Twas I who nurtured murder in my heart,

       Sweetened my meats, seasoned my wine with it,

       And in my fancy slew the accursed Duke

       A hundred times a day. Why, had this man

       Died half so often as I wished him to,

       Death had been stalking ever through the house,

       And murder had not slept.

       But you, fond heart,

       Whose little eyes grew tender over a whipt hound,

       You whom the little children laughed to see

       Because you brought the sunlight where you passed,

       You the white angel of God’s purity,

       This which men call your sin, what was it?

      DUCHESS

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