Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CUP OF YOUTH, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CUP OF YOUTH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: See, gaspar, how I hold the hours of love
Last Line: [exit gelosa.
Subject(s): Aging; Death; Love Affairs; Youth; Dead, The


SCENE, A SEA BEACH NEAR RAVENNA.
MOONLIGHT.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

GASPAR. GELOSA, his wife.
UBERTO. EMILIA, his wife.
GALILEO.

TIME, circa 1632.

SCENE I. GASPAR and GELOSA. GELOSA playing with the sand.

GELOSA (letting the sand fall slowly through her fingers). See,
Gaspar,
how I hold the hours of love,
Or bid the merry minutes flit away.

GASPER. Time should be captive in those pretty hands,
With none to ransom him, had I my way.
Yet must I break the spell and hustle in
The rough world's business. Wherefore, little one,
This long delay? You lacked not courage once.

GELOSA. Still am I in the bondage of my youth;
All my life long I feared that silent man
Who came across the garden from the tower,
Ate, slept, or to and fro athwart the grass
Trod one same path with bended head and back,
And shunned all company with this lower world.
She whose proud love and gold alike he spent,
She who did love him as the worst are loved
By those sad hearts who best know how to love,
Got but few words and bitter; but for her
I had not cared to see his face again.

GASPAR. Men say his silence guards such fateful power
As makes yon stars the vassals of his will,
Turns baser metals into golden coin,
And wrings all secrets from the miser Time.

GELOSA. And yet he knew not that one summer night
A little maid—Gelosa was her name—
Had stolen out beneath his starry slaves
To learn the subtle alchemy of love
That turns all fates to gold, nor lacks the power
To prophesy the sweetness of to-morrow.
Methinks he knew but little, knowing not
What love will dare; or haply knew too much
For all the gentler uses of the world
When, like a landlord with too full an inn,
He thrust out Love, that ever might have been
The fairest guest his learning entertained.

GASPAR. Nor I more welcome. I could laugh to think
How patiently I took the beggar's "Nay"
He cast in scorn. "What ! wed a landless squire,
Who spends in folly what he won in blood!—
None but a scholar wins my niece's lands."

GELOSA. My lands indeed; if certain tales be true,
He married them these many years ago.

GASPER. Ay, and may keep them if he be but wise.
Fair over Arno tower my castle walls,
With vine-clad hillsides rolling to the plain.
Nothing I owe you save your own sweet self.
A scholar, I! Not troubled will you be
By reason of my studies. I shall learn
Love from your eyes; your lips shall be my law,
And if their ripe decisions please me not,
The fount of justice at its very source
I shall know how to bribe. I brought you here
Because you willed it,— ay, and save for that
I care but little how this errand thrives.

GELOSA. Kiss, kiss away the thoughts that trouble me;
The lapsing days will bring some pleasant chance.

GASPAR. Who trusts that multitude of counsellors
Wins sad unrest.

GELOSA. Oh, let my errand wait.
How very silent is the sea to-night!
The little waves climb up the shore and lay
Cool cheeks upon the ever-moving sands
That follow swift their whispering retreat.
I would I knew what things their busy tongues Confess to earth.

GASPAR. Let me confess you, sweet!
Tell me again you love me.

GELOSA. Small my need.
'T is in my eyes; 't is on my lips; my heart
Beats to this music all the long day through.
A bird am I that have one single note
For song, for prayer, for thanks, for everything.

GASPAR. You cannot know how passing sweet it is
To change the camp, the field, the storms of war,
For this and you; to watch the gray moon wane
And see the slumbrous sea leap here and there
To silver dreams.

GELOSA. The hand of time seems stayed,
And joy to own the ever constant hours,
So full of still assurance is the night.
Love hath the quiet certainty of heaven,
Rich with the promise of unchanging years.
[Voices are heard near by.

GASPAR. Hush, my Gelosa! Who be these that come?

[Enter GALILEO and UBERTO, who sit down among the dunes close
by.

GELOSA. My uncle and his friend, the Florentine.

GASPAR. Hark you, he speaks your name. He said, "Gelosa."
He called you—was it Gelosetta, love?
Why, I shall call you Gelosetta too.

GELOSA. Distance and absence leave him this one friend,
A scholar grave, and gentle as the gentlest.

GASPAR. And that is Galileo! I recall
One day in Florence walking with the Duke,
A man most studious of his fellow-men,
We saw this scholar wandering to and fro
Intent of gaze where Giotto's campanile
Athwart the plaza casts its length of shade.
The Duke had speech with him. A serious face,
With eyes that seemed to search beyond the earth,
Large, open, steady, like Luini's saints.

GELOSA. More sweet than mine?

GASPAR. I'll tell you when 't is day.
A mighty student of bright eyes am I;
Now there I'll match my science with the best.
Those Florentines, who never want for wit
To label love or hate, say he's moon-mad,
And hath for mistresses the starry host
That wink at him by night.

GELOSA. Not Solomon
Had half so many. Yet for earthly love
He lacks not time nor honest appetite;
He never starved his heart to feed his head.
Hush! now he speaks again. The time may serve
To learn my uncle's mood.

GALILEO. This niece of yours—

UBERTO. Not ever greatly mine. The wayward child
Grew to the wilful woman, ignorant,
Untrained, and wild, a dreamer by the sea,—
Nor hers the housewife's knowledge. I have lived
Companionless of nobler intercourse,—
As to a friend I speak,—my wife wrapped up
In household cares and tendance of the poor,
Death busy with my manhood's friends. I tread
An ever lonelier road.

GALILEO. So seem all ways
To him who, yearning for too distant good,
Sees not the sweetness of the common path.
Life hath two hands for those who fitly live:
With one it gives, with one it takes away;
The willing palm still finds the touch of love,
And he alone has lost the art to live
Who cannot win new friends. Unwise are they
Who scorn the large relationship of life.
Yon restless sea, the sky, the bird, the flower,
The laugh of folly, and the ways of men,
The woman's smile, the hours of idleness,
The court, the street, the busy market-place,—
All that the skies can teach, the earth reveal,—
Are wisdom's bread. Alas! the common world
Hath lessons no philosophy can spare;
The tree that ever spreads its leaves to heaven
Casts equal anchors 'neath the soil below.
With man it is as with the world he treads:
No little stone of yonder pebbled beach
Could cease to be, and this great rolling orb
Feel not its loss. Enough of this to-night.
Count me your gains a little. Years have gone
Since last we met: what good things have they brought?

UBERTO. To-morrow I will tell you all. To-night
My mind is ill at ease; come, let us go,
But, as my love is valued by your own,
Speak not again of that unthankful child.

GALILEO. And yet I loved her. Have it as you will.
[Exeunt GALILEO and UBERTO.

GELOSA. O Gaspar, said I not that age was hard?
Be but your youth as kind.

GASPAR. Almost I thank
The misery that doubly sweetens love.
Strange seemed my life to him. To me, as strange
This corner-pickled shrivel of a man,
That all things dreaming never waked enough
To win the sanity of open eyes.
One day in Rimini, before a mirror,
So near I stood, my breath the image blurred.
Duke Francis, laughing, o'er my shoulder gazed;
Said I was like some men he knew, and went,
And would not read the riddle. Now 't is clear.
The man that hath no mirror save himself
Blurs the clear image conscience shows us all.
Now for a schoolless, helmet-dinted head,
The guess is not so bad.—What, tears again?
Tears for this man who in your childhood scorned
Its glad prerogatives of love and trust?
A thoughtless falcon, bold and wild of wing,
Like to my lover-self, had better kept
God's pledge to childhood.

GELOSA. Nay, no tears have I
For him who cost me many. But for her,
The simple, kindly dame who had no will
That was not his,—I am more sad for her,
Because she never learned the woman's art
To traffic with her sadness. Yet had she
A childless youth; the children of old age,
Love, solace, cheerful days of quietness,
Dead as the little ones she never knew.
Though sad at best the husbandry of years,
Time in the happy face no furrow cuts
That is not wholesome; but the loveless hours
Of uncompanioned sorrow and neglect
Make records sore with shame as are the scars
A master's whip leaves on the beaten slave.
Has life no answering scourge for them that sin?

GASPAR. For less than this, ay, for a moment's wrong,
I have seen men die young.

GELOSA. Come, let us go.
The night has lost its grace. These memories
Serve but to stir dead hates. To bed,—to bed.
Like his, my mind is very ill at ease;
I would his hurt were equal to my own.

SCENE II. Garden of a villa near the sea and bordering on a road.
Enter
UBERTO, who walks to and fro. Night of the day after the last act.

UBERTO. For gold, for lands, for any bribe of power
The soldier wastes the substance of the poor,
Sets ravage free and spills the innocent blood,
Yet sleeps as soundly. Shall I hesitate,
Checked by the memory of an outworn love,
A thoughtless woman and a foolish girl?
My friend—but he has won the laurel crown.
Dim continents of thought before me lie;
Their harvests wait the vigor of the scythe,
While in my heart the tardy blood of age
Unequal throbs. The mind, as tremulous
As these thin hands, has lost its certain grasp;
Pass, ye weak phantasies that bar my way,—
Children of habit,— I will do this thing!

Enter EMILIA.

EMILIA (aside). Now help me, Mary Mother, in my need.
Perhaps some memory of our joyous youth—

UBERTO. What, not abed?

EMILIA. I cannot sleep of late.
As if life were not long enough, the days
Live through the night, and mock with time's excess.

UBERTO. Why vex my soul with that of which each hour
Tells the sad tale?

EMILIA. Let us forget, Uberto!
Just half a century gone, when you and I,
Just fifty years ago this very night,
Walked 'neath the flowering locust, how I blessed
The kindly shade that hid my blushing cheek.
Not redder was the moon that night of May.

UBERTO. Still shall it mock the cheek of other loves
When you and I are dead. Oh, cruel time!
You lost the plaything of a pretty face;—
What was your loss to mine? What comfort lies
In useless babble o'er a squandered past?
Lo, when the eager spirit, worn with toil,
Has gathered knowledge, won its lordliest growth,
This robber comes to plunder memory
And lash with needless anguish to the grave.
We scorn the miser who in death laments
The gold he cannot carry; let us jest
At him whose usury of knowledge stops.

EMILIA. How know you that it doth? To me it seems
As if no office of our mortal frame
Has more the signet of immortal use
Than just this common gift of memory.
Forgive the thoughts that come I know not whence,—
I think our Galileo said it once,—
The ghosts that haunt the peaceful hours of night
Are not more unaccountable of man
Than the dead thoughts of life that, at a touch,
A taste, an odor, rise, we know not whence,
To scare us with the unforgotten past.
Your knowledge is not like the miser's gold,
For this world's usage only. Yet, perchance,
'T is like in this, that what it was on earth,
Self-ful, or helpful of another's pain,
May set what interest on that gathered hoard
The soul falls heir to in a world to come.

UBERTO. Alas, were I but sure that after death
I still should carry all life's nobler seed
To ripen largely under other skies,
I should not mourn at death.

EMILIA. Why is it, friend,
That I, for whom this life so little holds,
Should in its cup of emptied sweetness find
The pearl content, and with calm vision see
The stir of angel wings 'neath death's black cloak?
And life, ah, life might still be sweet to me!
O husband, had you been as some have been,
We might have lived a length of tranquil days,
With love slow moving through its autumn-time
To merge in loving friendship, and at last
To find the cloistered peace of patient age,
Tranquil and passionless, and so have walked
Like little children through life's wintry ways
To meet what fate the kindly years decreed.

UBERTO. Alas, the best is ever to be won!
There is no rose but might have been more red,
There is no fruit might not have been more sweet,
There is no sight so clear but sadly serves
To set the far horizon farther still.
[Voices are heard on the road back of them.

EMILIA (aside). Heart of my hearts! It is the little one!
My Gelosetta! Will he know the voice?

GELOSA (on the road as she goes by with GASPAR).
Can the rosebud ever know
Half how red the rose will grow?
Can the May-day ever guess
Half the summer's loveliness?

UBERTO. What voice is that?

EMILIA. Some wandering village girl.

UBERTO. No, 't was Gelosa's.

EMILIA. Would indeed it were!
Ah, that were joy! Alas, 't is but the girl
I helped last winter, one the plague cast out
With other Florentines. (Aside.) Would I could see!

UBERTO. Come back again to drain our meagre purse
Ay, there's the man,—a woman and a man.

A man's voice sings.

'T is better to guess than to see,
'T is better to dream than to be.
The best of life's loving
Is lost in the proving,
'T is better to dream than to be.
The joy of love's sweetness
Is lost with completeness,
'T is better to dream than to be.

EMILIA. A pair of lovers! She has found her mate.

UBERTO. Already doth your cynic lover sing
The death and funeral of love and trust.
Thrice happy these with wingless instincts born.
Perhaps is best the woman's ordered life,
Market and house, the husband and the child.

EMILIA. Mother of God! and I that have no child!

UBERTO. St. Margaret! but you women-folk are tender.

Behind a hedge GASPAR and GELOSA, while UBERTO continues.

Forget my haste, Emilia; all my mind
Dwells on the nearness of one fateful hour.

EMILIA. Again the dream that through these weary years
Has turned your life from God, and home, and me,—
To win for you that doubtful cup of youth.
Think yet, Uberto, on the thing you do;
It cannot be that I, grown drear and old,
The very death-tide oozing round my feet,
Shall see you glad and young. It cannot be
Earth holds for me that agonizing hour.
[UBERTO remains silent.

GASPER (to GELOSA apart). No answer hath he. Now speak you to
him.
It seems the wise man hath no wiser dreams
Than fools are heir to.

GELOSA. Heard you all he said?

GASPAR. Ay, all I cared to hear. Come, let us go.
Seek you his wife alone. Forget this fool.

GELOSA. Didst hear, my Gaspar? Can it be he owns
A cup which, drained, shall fetch his youth again?
Men say the thing has been in other days.
To leave her old and withered were to add
A crime, unthought of yet, to sin's dark list.

GASPAR. Less base it were to stab her where she stands.
[Exit EMILIA silently.

GELOSA. Hush! she has left him,—left him. Were I she,
I would crawl out at midnight to his tower.
Deep would I drain the damnèd cup of life,
And wander back a maiden fair and young,
To curse his age with jealous misery.
Or I would kill him as he lay asleep,
And keep him old forever,—that would I.

GASPAR. Now here's a wicked lady. Should I chance
To fall in love with larger length of days,
I shall be very careful of my diet.
Comes now the Florentine. The play were good,
Were you not in the plot. They say in Florence
The Pope will have it that this man of stars
Shall spread no gossip as to worlds that roll,
Nor play at Joshua with the Emperor Sun.
To be so wise that all the world's a fool
Might breed uneasy life.

GELOSA. Perhaps; and yet,—
You know we little women will have thoughts,—
I was but thinking that for one to own
A soul for actions great beyond compare,
A mind for thoughts that have the native flight
Of eaglets rising from the parent nest,
To soar so high they cast no earthward shade,
Might bring a very childhood of content.

GASPAR. There's ever music in your Umbrian heart
That lived where Dante died. Yet vain the thought;
For me the world may skip, or stop, or turn
Back-somersaults as likes the blessed Pope.
Where got you, love, these riddles of the brain,
These comments on a world you never knew?

GELOSA. A certain soldier taught me. Ah, you smile!
To greatly love is to be greatly wise.
God were less wise were He not also love.
Ah, there's a riddle only love can read!

Enter GALILEO. To UBERTO, still seated.

GALILEO. Far have I sought you through the ilex grove,
Among Emilia's roses, in your tower.

UBERTO. My tower—you saw—

GALILEO. Saw nothing. (Aside.) He distrusts me.

UBERTO. Forgive me. You shall see, shall hear, to-night.

GALILEO. Those many years that I, a jocund lad,
To you, my elder, turned for counsel, help,
Came back to me to-day. You were more kind
Than brothers are. Ah, happy, studious hours!
What was the Pope to me, or I to him?
A cardinal was as the farthest star,
Outside the orbit of my hopes and fears.
I came to you to share some idle days,
To get again within your life of thought,
To question and be questioned.

UBERTO. Wherefore not?

GALILEO. A messenger who followed me with haste
Bids me to Rome to answer as I may.
My sin you know.

UBERTO. What answer can you make?

GALILEO. Alas, it moves! This ever-patient globe
Moves, with the Pope and me; would move without.
Could I but summon God to answer them!
If He has whispered in my listening ear
This secret, guarded since the morn of time,
How shall I say I know not it nor Him?
A man may love or not, rejoice or not,
May hate or not, but what he thinks is sped
In word-winged arrows of eternal flight.

UBERTO. And you, the archer, you who loosed the string,
What harm if you should say this was not yours?—
This troubling doctrine long ago was born;
Sages in Egypt knew it. Or, at need,
Say that the world is stiller than a snail.
Say what you will, but live to draw anew
That bow of thought which you alone can draw.

GALILEO. Death is more wise than any wisest thought
The living man can think; death is more great
Than any life; and as for that stern hour
I meet in Rome next week, I know not now
How I shall judge my judge.

UBERTO. The fate I fear,
I fear for you, but would not for myself.
Ay, at this hour would I change lives with you;
For come what may, chains, prison, rack, or axe,
You will have lived so largely that no fate
Can pain your age with sense of unfulfilment.
But I have all things willed, yet nothing done.

GALILEO. I cannot think your solitary years
Have won us nothing, as you seem to say.
My hours are few and I go hence to-morrow
Perhaps no more to hear a friendly voice,
Or guess the starry secrets of the night.

UBERTO. Be patient with me. Many a year ago,
At twilight walking by the darkened sea,
The sudden glory of a broadening thought
Smote me with light as if through doors cast wide
To one in darkness prisoned. Then I saw
Dimly, as if at dusk, vast open space
Of things long guessed, but waiting fuller light.
What could I but despair? The hand and brain
No longer did my errands. There was set
A task for youth and vigor. Steadily
I gave my age to win the gift of youth,
That youth might help my quest.
That charm I sought
Which vexed the soul of old philosophy.
I won it, friend! To-night I drain this cup.
Like autumn leaves the withered years shall fall,
And sudden spring be mine. With wisdom clad,
With knowledge, not of youth, assured of time,
I shall speed swiftly to my certain goal.
The midnight calls my steps to yonder tower,
Where youth, the bride, awaits my joy's delay.
You have my secret. Oh, my God, if youth,
This second youth, should mock me like the first,
And bring no larger gain!

GALILEO. In this wild search
Great minds have perished. Where you think to win,—
In this the masters failed. Their wasted thoughts
Are in huge volumes scattered. It may be.
The strange is only what has never been,
And every century gives the last the lie.
But if 't is so, there's that within your cup
Might stay the wiser hand. Ay, if 't is so!

UBERTO. If? if 't is so? It is! Not vain the work
That filled these longing years. For no base end
These wasting vigils and these anxious days.
The gains I win shall lessen human pain.
One re-created life to man shall bring
Uncounted centuries in the gathering sum.

GALILEO. I too am of that sacred guild whose creed,
Before Christ died or Luke the healer lived,
Taught temperance, honor, chastity, and love.
I neither doubt the harvest nor the power
To reap its glorious fruit. And yet—and yet—
If the strong river of your flowing life
You shall turn back to be again the brook,
Is 't natural to think 't will float great ships,
Or with its lessened vigor turn the wheel?
Enough of me. I go to meet my fate.
Would I could stay!

UBERTO. Ah! when in Pisa's dome
You watched the lamp swing constant in its arc,
You gave to man another punctual slave,
And bade it time for us the throbbing pulse;
Joyful I guessed the gain for art and life.
Not that frail English boy Fabricius taught,
Not sad Servetus, nor that daring soul,
Our brave Vesalius, e're had matched your power
To read the riddles of this mortal frame.
And then you left us. Would our strange machine
Had kept your toil, and cheated yon fair stars!

GALILEO. We do but what we must. Some instinct guides.
To-night, when all the morrow world seems dim
And life itself a thing of numbered hours,
With clearing vision still for you I doubt.
Life hath its despot laws. You more than I
Know all their tyrant rigor. Tempt it not,
Lest failure, anguish, lurk within the cup.
Think sanely of this venture; let it pass.
Fill full, God helping, all the time He leaves.
Set 'gainst the darkness of death's nearing hour
In wholesome light all human action shines.
This dream is childlike; you will wake to tears.
Ask of your life if you have life deserved.
What did you with the gift? You had of it
All that another hath, or long or short.
Not time, but action, is the clock of man.
I should go happier hence if I could set
Your fatal cup aside. Nay, sorrow not;
Thank God for me. I have not vainly lived.
Truth have I served, and God, in serving her:
That heritage is deathless as Himself.
Something the thinker of the poet hath;
Our Dante was no mean philosopher:
With prophet eyes I see a freer day,
When thought shall mock at Kaiser and at Pope.
How can they think to chain the viewless mind,
Which is the very life within the life,
And in the irresponsible hours of sleep
Brings thought unto fruition? Yea, ethereal!
Of all God's mysteries most near to Him;
Instinctively creative, like the woman,
Pledged by conception's joy to labor's toil.
Grieve not for me. All that is best shall live.
There is no rack for thought; no axe, no block,
Can silence that.

UBERTO. But what, dear friend, if I
Should bid you laugh at pope or cardinal?
Take you this cup of mine. Take this and live.
In youth's disguise lie safely, freedom, life.

GALILEO (aside). Not stranger in its orbit moves my world
Than man, its habitant. Why, here is one
Could squander years and cheat a woman's love,
Yet turn to offer this. Not I, indeed!
(Aloud.) Life has been very dear to me, Uberto,
For that it has and that it has not been.
How many in their tender multitude
The cobweb ties of friendship, labor, love,
I knew not till this cruel storm of fate
Did thread them thick with jewels numberless.
And yet life owns no bribe would bid me back
To live it o'er anew. I can but thank you.

UBERTO. Is it only they who have no life of worth
Would live it o'er again?

GALILEO. That is not all.
Vainly and long would we have talked of it
In other days. No life is what it seems.
If thought were man's whole company in life,
Who would not live it o'er? But from our side
Friends, comrades, fall and torture us with loss.
Who is there born would will to live again
Such anguish as the happiest have known?
This is the heart's half only; more there is.
But the night wastes. [Rises.

UBERTO. To-morrow you go hence?
Write me from Rome. Before the day is spent
I shall have won or lost. Good-night, good friend.
[Exeunt both.

GASPAR. These learned folks are not more gay to hear
Than Lenten priests. I gave their riddles up
This half-hour since. And you?

GELOSA. I heard it all.
Love, friendship, reason, all alike are vain.

GASPAR. Had I a moment in his secret den,
That draught of his should give eternal life
To weeds that rot around the moat below.
[GELOSA whispers.
The jest were good. Is there no peril in it?

GELOSA. None, Gaspar. Wait for me beside the gate.
Quick, ere the chance be lost! 'T is past eleven.
Oh, he will like my jest. Come, this way, come!

SCENE III. Stairway of the tower, where EMILIA sits weeping at the door
of
the astrologer's laboratory, a small lamp beside her.

EMILIA. Though he should kill me, I will wait for him.
To die were easy, if to die would stay
His hand from wrong. Alas! too sure it is,
Alive or dead, I nothing am to him.
Who is it comes? Say, is it you, Uberto?

GELOSA comes up the stairs.

GELOSA. Oh, mother, it is I, your little one!
Friends, husband, wealth, all that life hath to give,
Are mine to-day. Come to my Tuscan home.
The flowers you love watch for you on the hills.
My children shall be yours. My good lord waits
Our coming at the gate. Leave, leave this man.

EMILIA. I cannot, child.

GELOSA. Then will I talk with him.
For this we came from Florence. Once again,
I would be sure his will is as of old.
Beside the tower my good lord waits for me.

EMILIA. Vain is your errand, child.

GELOSA. Yet must I try;
(Aside.) The equal years give me at last my turn.
(Aloud.) Is the door barred?

EMILIA. Nay, but I dare not enter.

GELOSA. Not long the thing you fear shall vex your soul.
Come with me. Spill the cursèd cup, or wreck
With wholesome fire this chamber of your fear.

EMILIA. Who has betrayed his secrets?

GELOSA. He himself.
Hid by the ilex hedge I heard it all.
Wept with you, for you; heard your tender plea.
Of other make am I. Give me your ring.
You used to say I had your sister's voice,
Twin to your own.

EMILIA. What would you say to him?
What do to him? You cannot mean him ill.

GELOSA. Not I, indeed. Hark! there's a voice without.
Trust me a little. Quick! the ring, the ring!
No other hope is left. Give me the ring!

EMILIA. You will not harm him? I shall have it back?
He gave it me the day we were betrothed.

GELOSA. A goodly half of this world's misery
Is born of woman's patience. Could you live
From that to this?

EMILIA. What can a woman else?

GELOSA. What else? Naught now. The ring, and have no fear!
[Takes her hand and removes the emerald ring, which is yielded
reluctantly.
Alas, poor withered hand! how dear thou art,
And sweet with use of bounty!
Quick, the lamp:
And wait for me upon the upper stair. [Urges her hastily.

EMILIA. Nay, tell me more. I am afraid, Gelosa.

GELOSA. Of me who love you? There, a kiss; goodby.
And stir not, if you love or him or me.

[GELOSA opens the door, and with the lamp in her hand enters the
room.
EMILIA ascends the upper staircase.

There may be too much sweetness in a woman.
A little soured on the shadowed side
My Tuscan peaches are.
Now what a den!
A winter wealth of kindling in old books.
Bones, and a skull—gay vipers, slimy things,
A crocodile that hath an evil eye. [Crosses herself.
And dust, ye Saints! but here's a long day's work.
[Lifts a bell glass from a small Venice goblet containing a
transparent
fluid.

Around the rim twin serpents writhe in coils.
[Reads the inscription below them.

Ex morte vitam. Life is child of death.
Is this in truth the draught shall make man young?
Now should I drink, it were a merry jest
To find myself a baby tumbling round,
Athirst for mother's milk. Not I, indeed.
[Empties cup on the floor, and refills it with water. Blows
out the light
and veils herself.

The moon is quite enough. Will he be long?
Now, kindly uncle, for this pretty play.
[She conceals herself in a corner. Enter UBERTO.

UBERTO. At last, 't is near. The stairs my constant feet
Have worn with many steps more toilsome grow.
The hounds of time are on their panting prey;
I wait no longer. No man owns to-morrow.
To-morrow is the fool's to-day. Ah, soon
I shall go gaily tripping down the hill,
Glad as a springtide swallow on the wing,
A man new born.—Nay, this is like to death.
Why should I falter here? We both are old.
Soon in the common way our steps would part.
And to be young; to feel the sinews strong,
Eye, ear, and motion quick, the brain all life,—
The visions of my manhood round me whirl,
White limbs, red lips, and love's delirious dream,
The passion kiss of wine, the idle hours
Unmissed from youth's abounding heritage.
Off, off, ye brutal years that gnaw our age!
Come, joy! come, life!—life at the full of flood!
[Pauses.
Birth is not ours. We are, and that is all.
Death is not ours. We die, and that is all.
This stranger birth that waits upon my will,
Ay, this is mine alone. The herd of men
Are born and die. One sole ignoble lot
Awaits them all. This none can share with me.
Auspicious planets shine upon the hour.
[Takes the hour-glass.
Swift waste the sands. So much of age is left.
Uncounted memories of things long lost
Leap to my view, as if to one who stands
Beside the waif-thronged surges of the deep,
And sees its dead roll passive to his feet,
Its pearls, its weeds, its wrecks.
So let it end.
[Fills up the glass with wine.
Nor fear, nor friend, nor love shall hinder me.
[Drinks.
Will it be swift? or will the change be like
The wonder work of spring?
[Lights a small lamp, and examines his face in a mirror.
A ghastly face!
Is this the earthquake agony of change?
[GELOSA, still veiled, advances.

GELOSA. Change that will never come. You that would cheat
A life-worn love of company to death,
Take the stern answer of a tortured soul.
You drained my cup of life, and cast aside
The poor mean vessel. I, Emilia, stole
Your cup of life. Mine is the youth you craved,
Mine the gay dream of girlhood's rosy joy,
Mine once again the wooing lips you kissed
When you and I were young. Ah, sweet is youth!
Go, thieving dotard, to a loveless grave!
[UBERTO staggers forward, with the lamp in his hand.

UBERTO. My wife, Emilia? No, not my Emilia.

GELOSA. Nay, touch me not! And is your memory dead?
Why, even I some dim remembrance keep.
Take back this ring, this pledge of endless love.
[UBERTO receives it.

UBERTO. Her ring—your ring—Emilia!—Lost, lost, lost!
Life, honor, fame, and youth. Emilia, wife,
Speak kindlier to me. Speak, oh, speak again!
Your voice is like an echo from the past.—
What devil taught you this? [Advances.

GELOSA. Off, off, old man!
What has a girl to do with palsied age?
I'll be a daughter to your feebleness,
And fetch your crutch, and set you in the sun,
And get me lovers kin to me in years.

UBERTO. Black Satan take your kindness! Yet have I
The strength to kill you! You shall die for this!
[Seizes her.

GELOSA. What?—feeble fool!
[Pushes him away; he falls and remains on the floor.

UBERTO. This is not my Emilia.
Help, help, without there! Help!

GELOSA. Come in,—come in!
Well have I paid a fool with folly's coin.

EMILIA enters and runs to lift her husband.

EMILIA. Ill have you done, and cruel I have been.
Oh, you have slain my love!

GELOSA. Not I, in truth.

UBERTO. Out, lying baggage! Now I know you well.

GELOSA. Come you with me, dear mother of my love.
Leave we this base old man. My husband waits.

EMILIA. Get hence! I never loved you. He knew best.
Pray God I see no more the wicked face
That cheated him and me. Begone, I say!
[Exit GELOSA.






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