Plays: Being: An unhistorical pastoral: A romantic farce: Bruce, a chronicle play: Smith, a tragic farce: and Scaramouch in Naxos, a pantomime.
General
Plays: Being: An unhistorical pastoral: A romantic farce: Bruce, a chronicle play: Smith, a tragic farce: and Scaramouch in Naxos, a pantomime.
Drama
Eulalie. My tongue must heave my bosom's suffering forth,
Or else into my mouth my prisoned heart
Will leap, and pant its desperate passion there.
Wild love has burst upon me like a storm:
The gathered clouds I knew; not their full freight.
O me! my desperate, foolish, high-pitched love!
Is this my fortitude, my deep-sworn muteness?
Now, blabbing tongue, be silent; for, behold,
How many bright-eyed, heavenly beings peer
From countless windows on my blush, self-called,
And, listening, smile the welkin wide across
At me, plaining anew love's endless tale,
So risible, so old, so stale to them:
Poor, weary stars, no wonder 'tis you wink!
But I have dared to tell myself I love,
And madly to confess to him 'tis he.
O daring, swift such madness to conceive!
O madness, with untimeous haste brought forth!
Nor will I venture on another thing.
The birds are all asleep; so are the winds;
The trees?--Ah, they have tongues and must have ears.
Dear trees, beseech you, tell no tales on me;
And never, when the wind would have you sing
Chant this sweet name which I will utter now,
Hereafter dreaming nevermore of Rupert.
Nay, gentle trees, you may sigh low his name,
And make all winds in love with that sole word,
Till northern pine-trees rustle it, and know,
As well as southern palmy groves, to teach
Their feathered choirs the syllables I love:
Ye streams and rivers, thou deep-swelling sea,
Confine your far-ranged voices to that theme:
Ye crystal ringing spheres the echo catch.
Rupert [aside]. Now will I kiss her. No, her melting heart
Exhales in words still. Hush, my heart; she speaks.
Eulalie. These are sweet thoughts; as sweet as foolish they. Though
all the myriad voices of the world
Should thunder Rupert far up into space
Until the moon swerved from her circling path
Distracted by the noise, I, bidding now,
'Twould only waste breath and the spheres endanger,
For it could not avail to make him love me.
I wish that it were ever night, and I
Could hold converse with it concerning Rupert.
Poor dreamer! have I not appointed this
For my fantastic, final love-discourse!
Rupert. And of true love's lasting communion first.
Eulalie. O, let me go!--My lord, I did not mean
My treason to be heard by any one.
To princes people are all hypocrites;
And sovereigns all believe that they profess
Which from a true desire to please is said:
This is what should be truth--I love you not.
Rupert. Treason most capital! Lov'st thou not me,
Thy prince, thy king? For this I rede thy doom:
Full twenty thousand kisses shalt thou pay,
And twenty thousand kisses after these,
As many more when these have been discharged,
To be due always, every hour of the day,
To him 'gainst whom thou hast conspired to cheat
Of what thou longest, burnest to bestow.
O, perjured felon, to thyself and me,
Begin fulfilment of this penalty.
Eulalie. Are you so peremptory? Am I lost?
Think that you heard no syllable of mine,
For you did apprehend my thoughts, as they
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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