Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated)
Page 863
A wandering minstrel, who will sing
For a baiôcco, anything.
BEATRICE. (Aside) ’Tis he. It is that voice so clear.
(Aloud) If my father find thee here,
Stranger, it will cost thee dear.
JULIO. What guerdon can I pay too dear
For the chance of being here,
Such as thou art stealing near?
BEATRICE. (Aside) I’ll hear him sing — I’m surely
right —
’Twas he who sang but yesternight!
(Aloud) There’s a baiocco — so — let’s hear
A song about a gondolier
And a sea-nymph singing near.
Have you none such?
(From the window she throws the coin, which he, receiving, pierces with a blow of his daggerpoint, and kissing it, attaches it to a golden chain that he draws from under his “tabârro,” and replaces next his heart. Beatrice laughs.)
JULIO. Her laughter sweeter is than singing —
How cheerily it thrills!
Running music in its rills —
How sparkling and how ringing.
Laugh on, laugh on, thou lovely one.
BEATRICE. And how, sir, could I choose but smile
When I saw a coin so vile
Hung upon a golden chain,
Within a tabard to remain,
Like a relic or an order!
Could Paliaccio aught absurder?
(She laughs again.)
JULIO. (Sings) The gift the gondolier has gained,
Dropped by her so laughingly,
A talisman until he die,
Worshipped with a kiss and sigh,
By her is yet disdained.
The folly she disdained,
If yet a folly, is a sign
Of a madness half divine —
Thine the cause, the madness mine!
And yet it is disdained.
The folly she disdained!
Oh! like the heart he laid it to,
The homely coin is metal true,
And like his heart is wounded through,
And like his heart is chained.
BEATRICE. Signor, thou art no gondolier —
No golden chains such people wear.
Oh! why didst thou come here?
JULIO. As a spirit cannot sleep,
Cannot stay, but from the deep
Rises at a spell,
So, enchantress, here am I.
BEATRICE. Ay, here thou art, but why
And who?
JULIO. Who? it matters not to tell.
And why?— ’Tis loving thee so well
BEATRICE. In an old ballad I have read
What flatteries a gallant said,
And turned a maiden’s foolish head.
JULIO. If thou knewest in my strange wooing,
In this voyage of my love,
How near I sail to my undoing,
By my Guardian Saint above!
I swear thou wouldst believe my love.
BEATRICE. Art thou, then, that gondolier
Who last night was singing here;
Tell me ere we part?
JULIO. I am, indeed, that gondolier,
And thou that fatal siren art.
CHORUS.
And so the selfsame way,
From day to day;
Sometimes in blithesome morn,
Sometimes by twilight lorn,
Or when the red sun braves
Westward the blazing sea,
Floating on a sky of waves —
Or in night’s lonely noon,
When wide in starlight quivers the lagoon —
He, like a vision, came and went,
Or as sweet music surges and is spent.
Visits made in mystery,
Suddenness and secrecy,
For he knew his fathers pride,
Ere Beatrice should be his bride,
Would lay her dead beneath the tide.
SCENE.
The same, on the next evening. JULIO AND BEATRICE conversing as before.
JULIO. And does thy father, all the year,
He and thy mother still live here?
BEATRICE. My mother’s dead —
JULIO. Oh! is she dead?
What has my careless folly said
I would not stir one grief in thee
For all the treasures on the sea.
BEATRICE. Not grief, but joy for evermore
That she to death is wed.
We say they die who go before,
’Tis we who stay are dead.
The earth her mouldering image shrouds
But robed above the golden clouds,
She lifts adoring hands and eyes
To God, all glorious, good, and wise;
And with the angels white and high
She walks the flooring of the sky —
With crown of light,
In robe of white,
Where rolls the chant of victory.
CHORUS.
He knew what she knew not, the story
Of her lineage and its fall —
Of Faliero’s ancient glory —
Of the Treason and the fall.
Little dared he to her tell,
But she came to like him well;
And from her rocky city citadel,
Above the waters’ sway and swell,
To him she would the simple love
Of all her innocent life run o’er.
SCENE.
The same by moonlight, some nights later.
(Beatrice relating to Julio how with her father and Leonardo, she sailed in the fishing boat to visit the convent where her mother is buried.)
BEATRICE. They lifted me down from the giddy plank
Into the boat that rose and sank:
The eager sails that rattle and slap
With thundering flap,
At a turn of the tiller filled at last,
And stooped the mast
As the wet rope raced through the mooring ring.
On the mad waves their boat was free;
And like a wild-bird on the wing,
With sudden dive and soaring swing,
Still bending with the breeze away,
Away she swept on the laughing sea
‘Mong waves and romping wind and spray.
Away the dancing island goes,
The sleeping headland dipt and rose,
The billows, that wild creatures be
Of the hearty and wondrous sea,
In sport and power
Welcome the boat with snort and plash
And riotous dash,
And hail of foamy shower.
High, spring high
Surge in your roaring glee
Fly, foam, fly!
And whirling mist of the sea!
The gusty wind be-stunned my ear
And drenched with pelting brine my hair;
Delightful were to me
The frown and the flash of the billows free
And the swell of the breezy sea!
Laughing with tremulous fear and delight
Salt on my cheek and salt on my lips;
With the joyful grips of my fingertips
I held the oozy gunwale tight.
When on the shore she furled her wing
How beautiful was everything!
Upon the mountain, sun and shade,
A splendour drowned in darkness made,
Purple and gold all blurred and barred;
And fluttering wild flowers’ flashing sheen,
Blue, argent, crimson, round were starred,
Like fairy fires beneath the green;
Oh! sweet was all I saw to me,
And all I heard an ecstasy!
The winsome wind in all its moods,
The warble and the coo of woods,
The darkened sward and fragrant air,
The massy vault, the dripping well,
Whose darksome drops in music fell
Like gliding beads of murmured prayer.
Where cypresses and long grass wave,
A young nun took me by the hand,
And passing many a grave,
With a sweet sadness softly said,
“Here, little girl, thy mother’s laid;
Oh, sister, pray that I
As well may live, as happy die.”
She looked on the grave with a gentle sigh,
I often think she wished to die;
And for these words so kind and sweet
I could have knelt and kissed her feet.
She was so young, that though a child,
I felt she clung to me;
Sad was her face and never smiled,
Yet smiling seemed to be.
And oft when pale the evening skies,
And fading hues and outlines swim,
When stars are soft and waves grow dim,
That pretty lady’s deep gray eyes
In twilight hours before me rise.
While homeward sailed our boat before
The sweet air blowing from the shore,
I silent gazed the gunwale o’er
On all that glided from my view,
The darkening trees and gables gray,
While our boat swept moaning through
The waters of the bay.
While like a voice of other years
Returning in a dream,
So far, so sweet, and sad it fell
And moving, why I could not tell,
With its mysterious harmonies,
And faint remembered memories,
The fountain of my tears;
From the gray belfry o’er the trees
Glided down the summer breeze
The grave note of the bell.
CHORUS.
And when the low farewell was spoken,
And when her light was gone,
And when the spell and dream were broken
And sea and sky were lone,
Looking ‘twixt the sea and sky
With desert gaze and weary sigh,
She holds communion with her soul.
And thus, alone, debateth she, —
“A worker of mosaic, he;
Or a carver fine, maybe,
Of those charmèd heads and flowers,
Snakes and birds in marble bowers
I have pondered o’er for hours?
And does he love me as he says?
Or — are his ways like others’ ways?
And will my hero come tomorrow —
Will he come again?
Oh! why is love so like a sorrow —
Hope so nearly pain?”
All on her hand she laid her head;
And with these thoughts her young brain rife,
Light slumber o’er her little bed
Winged away her waking care;
But quiet days for her were fled;
Without him sea and sky were dead;
And before she was aware,
He grew the music of her life.
ACT II.
CHORUS.
A lovely Queen, her life laid down,
Lies here in splendid state;
Upon her temples cold, the crown
Shows strangely fair and great.
Her lieges come, her lieges go,
And early pass, and late,
To look upon her, fallen so
From her high estate.
Beneath the starry tapers greeted
By the frozen eyes,
Where darkly in the coffin sheeted
The glimmering pallor lies —
They see the lines of beauty rule,
Where all its glow is ended,
Corruption that is beautiful,
And sadness that is splendid.
In marble beauty night and day,
E’en thus was Venice seen;
Thus in the death of spirit lay
The Adriatic queen.
Man upon his journey hies —
A chequered course and variable,
Walking through life as he is shown
By gleams through yawning darkness thrown
By lights that fall from Paradise,
And hues that cross from hell.
Can we read his words or ways?
Whence he acts, or whereto thinks?
A vapour changing as we gaze,
An utterance of the sphinx.
Still the man our judgment baulks.
Good is he? or, is he evil?
At his right an Angel walks,
At his left a Devil.
Beside that beauty dead and cold,
With word of power and vengeful hand,
I smite the coffin with my wand;
As Death and Sin thou workest there.
Rise up, thou living monster old,
Reveal thy presence in the air!
SCENE.
A gorgeous chamber in the Palazzo of NEROEA overlooking the Canal. NEROEA alone.
CHORUS.
An icy fear and rapture dread
Ravish the heart and warn the head!
This Wonder is no mortal Leman,
Spirit of the starry host —
Lais — Cleopatra’s ghost —
Saddest angel — fairest Demon!
Lo! all human beauties, paling
In her lovely splendour, wane.
’Tis some antique dream exhaling
From the dead Apelles’ brain!
Fell beauty! — Love akin to hate,
Indolent and coy she sate:
Loose her girdle o’er her hips —
Luxury in every wile —
A mystic pain — a loving guile,
The scarlet scorn of cruel lips,
The pearly danger of her smile —
Her downward smile and glance oblique
Evil — yet Madonna-like!
Her girlish bosom’s waving swell,
Her cheek’s shy dimple, like the play
Of waters darkling in a well,
Lure not a lover but a prey.
In all her lithe limbs’ modulations,
In the proud fulness of her throat,
In all her throbbing undulations,
The sorceries of beauty float.
Light at every stir up-throwing,
At every stir new marvels showing,
With enamelled pictures glowing,
Diamond-set and golden-chased,
Heroes of Venetian story,
In loose chains of linked medallions,
Loop the lithe round of her waist —
Riches floated here in galleons,
China silk and webs of gold
Round her throw an orient glory.
Green and crimson jewels burning
Glare and vanish at each turning,
Flash and vanish in each fold;
As the fiery eyes of snakes
Glide through nooks of flowery brakes,
Glare and vanish in each fold.
She was a deep thought of the Muse,
Whom canvas, marble, words refuse:
Striving what she was to tell
Is but a yearning and farewell —
And so — mute as first it rose,
The vision brief and broken,
With me to darkness goes
Unspoken —
But softly as an Orient Saint
Shadowed on a holy floor,
On memory that thrill and taint
Will smile and burn for evermore.
Who enters? Lo!
Passing phantom-like the door
A silent Monk stands on the floor.
Is he anchorite or devil?
High and gaunt this form of evil
Gliding noiselessly has sought her,
As a shadow on the water.
Marble-like beneath his cowl
Gleams the curve of his anguine scowl,
The broad cold eyes — that greenly stare,
And ever seem to search an
d smile,
And find in all things something vile —
Like insult and pollution scare.
She did not mean to greet him here —
She rose as people rise in fear.
He stood there in his garment sooty,
She stood gleaming in her glory,
Face to face, like Death and Beauty,
In a painted allegory.
(A pause, during which she gases on him.)
NEROEA. How earnest thou here?
SPALATRO. Your signoria’s order.
NEROEA. I know thee not.
SPALATRO. Lady, thou know’st me not.
And yet,
Lady, thou know’st me well.
NEROEA. Who called thee hither?
SPALATRO. Giacopo.
NEROEA. — Then thou art —
SPALATRO. Fra Spalatro.
NEROEA. Hast thou a sign?
SPALATRO. Thy ring, signora! Take it.
NEROEA. Ha! yes, I’ve heard. Be frank with
me — fear nothing.
SPALATRO. I fear nothing.
NEROEA. Nor I. Listen. My lover —
My noble lover — by a base girl cozened
SPALATRO. Alas! Alas!
NEROEA. By a base hussy in
A fisher’s cot —
SPALATRO. Insufferably queer!
NEROEA. My own — mine always — for a year and
more —
Mine passionately — till — of late — and now —
(She pauses.)
SPALATRO. And now is cooling? Thine — and — some one else’s?
What can I do?
NEROEA. What canst thou do? Well, sir?
SPALATRO. A philtre?
NEROEA. No.
SPALATRO. Find out who is the rival?
NEROEA. I know it.
SPALATRO. By my art inform thee how
‘Twill end?
NEROEA. Come, come. Can thine art do no more?
SPALATRO. Many things.
NEROEA. Name them.
SPALATRO. I would first know, lady