Cale Rice - Charles Di Tocca - A Tragedy

Antonio: Good-night.

Helena ( returning ): Antonio – ?

Antonio: Ah! still – ?

Helena: There's gloom in the world again.

Antonio ( kissing her ): 'Tis gone?

Helena: Not all, I think.

Antonio: Two for so small a gloom?

Helena: So small!

Antonio: And still you sigh?

Helena: The vainest glooms
To-night seem ominous – as cloud-flakes flung
Upward before the heaving of the west.
( In fright ) Oh!

Antonio: Helena!

Helena: See, see! 'tis Agabus!

Agabus: O – lovers! lovers! Lord have none of them!

Antonio: Good monk —

Agabus: O – yes, yes, yes. You'd give me gold
To pray for your two souls. ( Crossing himself. ) Not I! Not I!
Know you not love is brewed of lust and fire?
It gnaws and burns, until the Shadow – Sir,

Have you not seen a Shadow pass?

Antonio: A Shadow?

Agabus: Silent and cold. A-times they call him Death:
I'd have him for my brain – it shakes with fever.

Helena: Antonio —

Antonio: You're calm?

Helena: Yes, very calm —
Of impotence – as one who in a tomb
Awakes and waits?

Antonio: He is but mad.

Helena: But mad.

Antonio: Yet fear you? still?

Helena: Who is it? soldiers come
From Arta?

Antonio: Yes.

Helena: And by this road! – They must
Not see us!

Antonio: No. But quick, within this breach!

Helena: Fallen! Ah, fallen! See, Antonio!

Antonio: What now!

Helena ( swaying ): It is as if the earth were wind
Under my feet!

Antonio: Are all things thus become
Omen and dread to you?

Helena: O, but it is
The pillar grieving Venus leant upon
Ere to forget she leapt, and wrote,
When falls this pillar tall and proud
Let surest lovers weave their shroud.

Antonio: Mere myth!

Helena: The shroud! It coldly winds about us – coldly!

Antonio: Should a vain hap so desperately move you?

Helena: The breath and secret soul of all this night
Are burdened with foreboding! And it seems —

Antonio: You must not, Helena!

Helena: My love, my lord —
Touch me lest I forget my natural flesh
In this unnatural awe! ( He takes her to him. )
Ah how thy arms
Warm the cold moan and misery of fear
Out of my veins!

Antonio: You rave, but in me stir
Again the attraction of these dim portents.
Nay, quiver not! 'tis but a passing mist,
And this that runs in us is worthless dread!

Helena: But ah, the shroud! the shroud!

Antonio: We'll weave no shroud,
But wedding robes and wreaths and pageantry!
And you shall be my Sappho – but through joys
Such as shall legend ecstasy about
Our knitted names when distant lovers dream.

Helena: I'll fear no more, then —

Antonio: Yet?

Helena: My lord, let us
Unloose this strangling secrecy and be
Open in love. My brother, Hæmon, let
Our hearts betrothed exchange and hope be told
Him and thy father!

Antonio: This cannot be – now

Helena: It cannot be, and you a god? I'll bow
Before your eyes no more! – say that it can!

Antonio: Not yet – not now. Hæmon's suspicious, quick,

And melancholy: must be won with service.
And you are Greek, a name till yesterday
I never knew pass in the portal to
My father's ear, but it came out his mouth
Headlong and dark with curses.

Helena: Yet of late
He oft has smiled upon me as he passed.

Antonio: On you – my father? O, he only dreamt,
And saw you not.
Helena: Then have you also dreamt!
He looked as you, when, moonlight in my hair,
You call me —

Antonio: Stay: I'll call you so no more.

Helena: You'll call me so no more?

Antonio: No more.

Helena: Why do
You say so – is it kind?

Antonio: Why? – why? Because
Words were they miracles of beauty could
As little reveal you as a taper's ray
The lone profundity and space of night!

Helena: And yet —

Antonio: And yet?

Helena: I'll hold you not too false
If sometimes they trip out upon your lips.

Antonio: Or to my father's eye?

Helena: If he but look
Upon me for thy sake.

Antonio: He smiled, you say?

Helena: Gently, as one might in forgetting pain.

Antonio: Perhaps: for some unwonted softness seems
Near him. But yesterday he called for song,
Dancing and wine.

Helena: Then tell him! These are years
So dyed in crime that secrecy must seem
Yoke-mate of guilt.

Antonio: Fear has bewitched you – shame!

Helena: Antonio, love's wave has cast us high
I would do all lest now it turn to fate
Under our feet and draw us out —

Antonio: 'Twill not!

Paula: My lady, some one comes.

Helena: And is the world
Not space enough but he must needs come here!
If it were – ?

Antonio: Hæmon? – 'Twere perhaps not ill.

Helena: I know not! Broodings smoulder from his moods
Feverous bitter.

Antonio: Kindness then shall quench them.
But now, away. Forget this dread and be you
By day my lark, by night my nightingale,
Not a sad bird of boding!

Helena: With the day
All will be well.