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
Rupert. I see thee, moon, in thy high heavenly garden;
Thou walkest like a maid among her flowers.
But thou art not more beautiful, I ween,
Than she who gave herself to me to-night
Within an earthly garden.--Perhaps she sleeps.
O elves unseen, and far away from me,
Who dance upon the shore; and fairies, who
Enamel green hill-tops with little rings
Where merry balls are held; and all ye sylphs
Inhabiting dark shades and rustling bowers;
Ye naiads who make silver streams your haunts,
And ye aerial ones who chant high songs
Against the twinkling of the lyric stars:
From distant vales and hills of Greece o'erskip
The intervening countries at a bound
Ye ancient deities--if ye be dead,
Let your ghosts rise from flowery sepulchres,
Or coral tombs beneath the blue Aegean:
Ye little dwarfs and legendary people
In forest black, or by the oft-sung Rhine,
Or in the moonless caves of furthest Thule,
Desert your homes to-night: and all together,
Quaint, lovely, beauteous, delicate, and droll,
Troop to my lady's chamber: be her dream.
[Goes out.
Torello. Dragons and scorpions, hippogriffs and asps,
Hobgoblins, and the ghosts of murderers,
And fiery devils in a fierce nightmare
Confound this fellow's folly!
Felice. Are you mad?
Torello. Tell not me! Eulalie loves him. It was her he spoke of.
Felice. Are you mad? What he and she? [To Bruno.] Follow this foolery
with me. We'll persuade him he has not seen Rupert.--What trance were you
in for a minute's space, and, being roused, why do you tear your beard?
What vision have you seen?
Torello. Would you befool me? I'll after, and defy him.
Felice. Defy whom?
Torello. The prince.
Felice. Of the powers of the air?
Torello. Prince Rupert.
Felice. Ha! be careful what you do. But he is within doors just now.
Torello. Within doors! I hear his tread.
Felice. What! Is he coming hither?
Torello. No; he is going hence.
Felice. Let me understand you.
Torello. Understand that I am not deaf; and, having heard Rupert,
leaning against that tree, talk like a happy lover, I perceive at once
that he must have been accepted by Eulalie: therefore I will challenge him.
Felice. Love has turned his brain. Did you see Rupert, Bruno?
Bruno. Not since he left us.
Felice. Nor I.
Torello. Did you not see him put his shoulder against that tree, fold
his arms, gaze at the moon, and talk; then with a skip and a hop caper
away as merrily as a schoolboy from school?
Felice. By Luna's horns, but this is wonderful! It cannot be--yet
have you not a powerful imagination?
Torello. I scarce know; I think so: I am strong.
Felice. So strong you do not know your own strength?
Torello. I have never found its match.
Felice. That explains this rhapsody, then. Your imagination has
been slumbering. Love comes and rouses it, and, like all newly awakened
gifts, it attempts great things. Being in keeping with your other
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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