The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: 150+ Titles in One Edition. Oscar Wilde

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СКАЧАТЬ to me with too pronounced a favour;

       Get to your tirewomen.

      DUCHESS

      Ay, there it is!

       There speaks the man! yet had you come to me

       With any heavy sin upon your soul,

       Some murder done for hire, not for love,

       Why, I had sat and watched at your bedside

       All through the night-time, lest Remorse might come

       And pour his poisons in your ear, and so

       Keep you from sleeping! Sure it is the guilty,

       Who, being very wretched, need love most.

      GUIDO

      There is no love where there is any guilt.

      DUCHESS

      No love where there is any guilt! O God,

       How differently do we love from men!

       There is many a woman here in Padua,

       Some workman’s wife, or ruder artisan’s,

       Whose husband spends the wages of the week

       In a coarse revel, or a tavern brawl,

       And reeling home late on the Saturday night,

       Finds his wife sitting by a fireless hearth,

       Trying to hush the child who cries for hunger,

       And then sets to and beats his wife because

       The child is hungry, and the fire black.

       Yet the wife loves him! and will rise next day

       With some red bruise across a careworn face,

       And sweep the house, and do the common service,

       And try and smile, and only be too glad

       If he does not beat her a second time

       Before her child! - that is how women love.

       [A pause: GUIDO says nothing.]

       I think you will not drive me from your side.

       Where have I got to go if you reject me? -

       You for whose sake this hand has murdered life,

       You for whose sake my soul has wrecked itself

       Beyond all hope of pardon.

      GUIDO

      Get thee gone:

       The dead man is a ghost, and our love too,

       Flits like a ghost about its desolate tomb,

       And wanders through this charnel house, and weeps

       That when you slew your lord you slew it also.

       Do you not see?

      DUCHESS

      I see when men love women

       They give them but a little of their lives,

       But women when they love give everything;

       I see that, Guido, now.

      GUIDO

      Away, away,

       And come not back till you have waked your dead.

      DUCHESS

      I would to God that I could wake the dead,

       Put vision in the glazéd eves, and give

       The tongue its natural utterance, and bid

       The heart to beat again: that cannot be:

       For what is done, is done: and what is dead

       Is dead for ever: the fire cannot warm him:

       The winter cannot hurt him with its snows;

       Something has gone from him; if you call him now,

       He will not answer; if you mock him now,

       He will not laugh; and if you stab him now

       He will not bleed.

       I would that I could wake him!

       O God, put back the sun a little space,

       And from the roll of time blot out tonight,

       And bid it not have been! Put back the sun,

       And make me what I was an hour ago!

       No, no, time will not stop for anything,

       Nor the sun stay its courses, though Repentance

       Calling it back grow hoarse; but you, my love,

       Have you no word of pity even for me?

       O Guido, Guido, will you not kiss me once?

       Drive me not to some desperate resolve:

       Women grow mad when they are treated thus:

       Will you not kiss me once?

      GUIDO

      [holding up knife]

       I will not kiss you

       Until the blood grows dry upon this knife,

       [Wildly] Back to your dead!

      DUCHESS

      [going up the stairs]

       Why, then I will be gone! and may you find

       More mercy than you showed to me tonight!

      GUIDO

      Let me find mercy when I go at night

       And do foul murder.

      DUCHESS

      [coming down a few steps.]

       Murder did you say?

       Murder is hungry, and still cries for more,

       And Death, his brother, is not satisfied,

       But walks the house, and will not go away,

СКАЧАТЬ