Cale Rice - Charles Di Tocca - A Tragedy

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: Forgive me, then.

Antonio: Surely you are unstrung,
And yet there is – ( Turns away from her. )

Helena: Is what? Antonio?

Antonio: Nothing: I who must ebb with you and flow
A little was moved.

Helena: Not you, not you! I'll change
My tears to laughter, if but fantasy
May so unmettle you! Not moved, indeed!
Not moved, Antonio?

Antonio: Well, let us off,
My Helena, with these numb awes that wind
About our joy.

Helena: Thy kiss then, for it can
Drive all gloom out of the world!

Antonio: And thine, my own,
On Fate's hard brow would shame it of all frown!

Helena: Yet is thine mightier, for no frown can be
When no more gloom's in the world!

Antonio: But 'tis thy lips
That lend it might. If I pressed other —

Helena: Other!
You should not know that any other lips
Could e'er be pressed; I'll have no kiss but his
Who is all blind to every mouth but mine!

Antonio: Oh? – Well.

Helena: "Oh – well?" – Then it is well I go!

Antonio: Perhaps.

Helena: "Perhaps!" ( Makes to go. )