Charles Di Tocca: A Tragedy. Rice Cale Young

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      Antonio (turning): Helen – !

      Fulvia: A comely name, my lord.

      Antonio: Ah, you?

      My father's unforgetting Fulvia?

      Fulvia: At least not Helena, whoe'er she be.

      Antonio: And did I call you so?

      Fulvia: Unless it is

      These stones have tongue and passion.

      Antonio: Then the night

      Recalling dreams of dim antiquity's

      Heroic bloom worked on me. – But whence are

      Your steps, so late, alone?

      Fulvia: From the Cardinal,

      Who has but come.

      Antonio: What comfort there?

      Fulvia: With doom

      The moody bolt of Rome broods over us.

      Antonio: My father will not bind his heresy?

      Fulvia: You with him walked to-day. What said he?

      Antonio: I?

      With him to-day? Ah, true. What may be done?

      Fulvia: He has been strange of late and silent, laughs,

      Seeing the Cross, but softly and almost

      As it were some sweet thing he loved.

      Antonio (absently): As if

      'Twere some sweet thing – he laughs – is strange – you say?

      Fulvia: Stranger than is Antonio his son,

      Who but for some expectancy is vacant.

      Antonio: Stay, Fulvia, though I am not in poise.

      Last night I dreamed of you: in vain you hovered

      To reach me from the coil of swift Charybdis.

      Fulvia: A woman's voice!

      (Looking down the road.)

      And hasting here!

      Antonio: Alone?

      Fulvia: No, with another!

      Antonio: Go, then, Fulvia.

      'Tis one would speak with me.

      Fulvia: Ah? (She goes.)

      Helena: Antonio!

      Antonio: My Helena, what is it? You are wan

      And tremble as a blossom quick with fear

      Of shattering. What is it? Speak.

      Helena: Not true!

      O, 'tis not true!

      Antonio: What have you chanced upon?

      Helena: Say no to me, say no, and no again!

      Antonio: Say no, and no?

      Helena: Yes; I am reeling, wrung,

      With one glance o'er the precipice of ill!

      Say his incanted prophecies spring from

      No power that's more than frenzied fantasy!

      Antonio: Who prophesies? Who now upon this isle

      More than visible and present day

      Can gather to his eye? Tell me.

      Helena: The monk —

      Ah, chide me not! – mad Agabus, who can

      Unsphere dark spirits from their evil airs

      And show all things of love or death, seized me

      As hither I stole to thee. With wild looks

      And wilder lips he vented on my ear

      Boding more wild than both. "Sappho!" he cried,

      "Sappho! Sappho!" and probed my eyes as if

      Destiny moved dark-visaged in their deeps.

      Then tore his rags and moaned, "So young, to cease!"

      Gazed then out into awful vacancy;

      And whispered hotly, following his gaze,

      "The Shadow! Shadow!"

      Antonio: This is but a whim,

      A sudden gloomy surge of superstition.

      Put it from you, my Helena.

      Helena: But he

      Has often cleft the future with his ken,

      Seen through it to some lurking misery

      And mar of love: or the dim knell of death

      Heard and revealed.

      Antonio: A witless monk who thinks

      God lives but to fulfil his prophecies!

      Helena: You know him not. 'Tis told in youth he loved

      One treacherous, and in avenge made fierce

      Treaty with Hell that lends him sight of all

      Ills that arise from it to mated hearts!

      Yet look not so, my lord! I'll trust thine eyes

      That tell me love is master of all times,

      And thou of all love master!

      Antonio: And of thee?

      Then will the winds return unto the night

      And flute us lover songs of happiness!

      Helena: Nor dare upon a duller note while here

      We tryst beneath the moon?

      Antonio: My perfect Greek!

      Athene looks again out of thy lids,

      And Venus trembles in thy every limb!

      Helena: Not Venus, ah, not Venus!

      Antonio: Now; again?

      Helena: 'Twas on this temple's ancient gate she found

      Wounded Adonis dead, and to forget,

      Like Sappho leaped, 'tis said, from yonder cliff

      Down to the waves' oblivion below.

      Antonio: And will you read such terror in a tale?

      Helena: СКАЧАТЬ