SCENE I.—_A retired Grove near Antioch.

_Enter CIPRIANO, EUSEBIO, and JULIAN, with books._

_Cipr._ This is the place, this the sequester’d spot Where, in the flower about and leaf above, I find the shade and quiet that I love, And oft resort to rest a wearied wing; And here, good lads, leave me alone, but not Lonely, companion’d with the books you bring: That while the city from all open doors Abroad her gaping population pours, To swell the triumph of the pomp divine That with procession, sacrifice, and song Convoys her tutelary Zeus along For installation in his splendid shrine; I, flying from the hubbub of the throng That overflows her thoroughfares and streets, And here but faintly touches and retreats, In solitary meditation may Discount at ease my summer holiday. You to the city back, and take your fill Of festival, and all that with the time’s, And your own youth’s, triumphant temper chimes; Leaving me here alone to mine; until Yon golden idol reaching overhead, Dragg’d from his height, and bleeding out his fires Along the threshold of the west, expires, And drops into the sea’s sepulchral lead.

_Eusebio._ Nay, sir, think once again, and go with us, Or, if you will, without us; only, go; Lest Antioch herself as well as we Cry out upon a maim’d solemnity.

_Julian._ Oh, how I wish I had not brought the books, Which you have ever at command—indeed, Without them, all within them carry—here— Garner’d—aloft—

_Euseb._ In truth, if stay you will, I scarcely care to go myself.

_Cipr._ Nay, nay, Good lads, good boys, all thanks, and all the more, If you but leave it simply as I say. You have been somewhat over-tax’d of late, And want some holiday.

_Julian._ Well, sir, and you?

_Cipr._ Oh, I am of that tougher age and stuff Whose relaxation is its work. Besides, Think you the poor Professor needs no time For solitary tillage of his brains, Before such shrewd ingatherers as you Come on him for their harvest unawares? Away, away! and like good citizens Help swell the general joy with two such faces As such as mine would only help to cloud.

_Euseb._ Nay, sir—

_Cipr._ But I say, Yea, sir! and my scholars By yea and nay as I would have them do.

_Euseb._ Well, then, farewell, sir.

_Cipr._ Farewell, both of you.

[_Exeunt EUSEBIO and JULIAN._

Away with them, light heart and wingèd heel, Soon leaving drowsy Pallas and her dull Professor out of sight, and out of mind. And yet not so perhaps; and, were it so, Why, better with the frolic herd forgetting All in the youth and sunshine of the day Than ruminating in the shade apart. Well, each his way and humour; some to lie Like Nature’s sickly children in her lap, While all the stronger brethren are at play; When ev’n the mighty Mother’s self would seem Drest out in all her festival attire In honour of the universal Sire Whom Antioch as for her own to-day Propitiates. Hark, the music!—Speed, good lads, Or you will be too late. Ah, needless caution! Ev’n now already half way down the hill, Spurr’d by the very blood within their veins, They catch up others, who catching from them The fire they re-inflame, the flying troop Consuming fast to distance in a cloud Of dust themselves have kindled, whirls away Where the shrill music blown above the walls Tells of the solemn work begun within. Why, ev’n the shrieking pipe that pierces here, Shows me enough of all the long procession Of white-robed priest and chanting chorister, The milkwhite victim crown’d, and high aloft The chariot of the nodding deity, Whose brazen eyes that, as their sockets see, Stare at his loyal votaries. Ah, me!— Well, here too happier, if not wiser, those Who, with the heart of unsuspicious youth, Take up tradition from their fathers’ hands To pass it on to others in their turn; But leaving me behind them in the race With less indeed than little appetite For ceremonies, and to gods, like these, That, let the rabble shout for as they please, Another sort begin to shake their heads at, And heaven to rumble with uneasily As flinging out some antiquated gear. So wide, since subtle Greece the pebble flung Into the sleeping pool of superstition, Its undulation spreads to other shores, And saps at the foundation of our schools. —Why, this last Roman, Caius Plinius— Who drawing nature’s growth and history Down to her root and first cause—What says he?— Ev’n at the very threshold of his book A definition laying, over which The clumsy mimic idols of our shrines Stumble and break to pieces—oh, here it is— ‘_Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quærere_, _Imbecillitatis humanæ reor_’— ‘All visible effigies of God But types of human imbecility.’— But what has Antioch to say to that, Who at such cost of marble and of gold Has built the very temple into which She drags her tutelary Zeus to-day?— Zeus veritable God, this effigy Is none of him at all! But then, alas! This same _Quapropter_ follows a premiss That elbows out Zeus with his effigy. For—as I gather from his foreign word— Wherever, or Whatever, Deity— _Si modo est alius_—if distinct at all From universal Nature—it must be One all-informing, individual Whole, All eye, all ear, all self, all sense, all soul— Whereas this Zeus of ours, though Chief indeed— Nay, _because_ chief of other gods than he, Comes from this Roman’s hand no God at all!— This is a knotty question.

_Lucifer_ (_without_). Nor while I Tangle, for you, good doctor, to untie.

_Cipr._ What! The poor bird scarce settled on the bough, Before the fowler after him! How now? Who’s there?

_Lucifer_ (_entering habited as a Merchant_). A stranger; therefore pardon him, Who somehow parted from his company, And lost in his own thoughts (a company You know one cannot lose so easily) Has lost his way to Antioch.

_Cipr._ Antioch! Whose high white towers and temples ev’n from here Challenge the sight, and scarce a random line Traced by a wandering foot along the grass But thither leads for centre.

_Luc._ The old story, Of losing what one should have found on earth By staring after something in the clouds— Is it not so?

_Cipr._ To-day too, when so many Are flocking thither to the festival, Whose current might have told—and taken—you The way you wish’d to go.

_Luc._ To say the truth, My lagging here behind as much I think From a distaste for that same festival (Of which they told us as we came along) As inadvertency—my way of life Busied enough, if not too much, with men To care for them in crowd on holidays, When business stands, and neither they nor I Gaping about can profit one another; And therefore, by your leave—but only so— I fain would linger in this quiet place Till evening, under whose dusky cloak I may creep unobserved to Antioch.

_Cipr._ (_aside_) Humane address, at least. And why should I Grudge him the quiet I myself desire?— (_Aloud_) Nay, this is public ground—for you, as me, To use it at your pleasure.

_Luc._ Still with yours— Whom by your sober suit and composed looks, And by this still society of books, I take to be a scholar—

_Cipr._ And if so?

_Luc._ Ill brooking idle company.

_Cipr._ Perhaps; But that no wiser traveller need be— And, if I judge of you as you of me, Though with no book hung out for sign before, Perchance a scholar too.

_Luc._ If so, more read In men than books, as travellers are wont. But, if myself but little of a bookman, Addicted much to scholars’ company, Of whom I meet with many on my travels, And who, you know, themselves are living books.

_Cipr._ And you have travell’d much?

_Luc._ Ay, little else, One may say, since I came into the world Than going up and down it: visiting As many men and cities as Ulysses, From first his leaving Troy without her crown, Along the charmèd coasts he pass’d, with all The Polyphemes and Circes in the way, Right to the Pillars where his ship went down. Nay, and yet further, where the dark Phœnician Digs the pale metal which the sun scarce deigns With a slant glance to ripen in earth’s veins: Or back again so close beneath his own Proper dominion, that the very mould Beneath he kindles into proper gold, And strikes a living Iris into stone.

_Cipr._ One place, however, where Ulysses was, I think you have not been to—where he saw Those he left dead upon the field of Troy Come one by one to lap the bowl of blood Set for them in the fields of Asphodel.

_Luc._ Humph!—as to that, a voyage which if all Must take, less need to brag of; or perchance Ulysses, or his poet, apt to err About the people and their doings there— But let the wonders in the world below Be what they may; enough in that above For any sober curiosity, Without one’s diving down before one’s time: Not only countries now as long ago Known, till’d, inhabited, and civilized; As Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with all their arts, Trades, customs, polities, and history: But deep in yet scarce navigated seas, Countries uncouth, with their peculiar growths Of vegetation or of life; where men Are savage as the soil they never till; Or never were, or were so long ago, Their very story blotted from the page Of earth they wrote it on; unless perchance From riot-running nature’s overgrowth Of swarming vegetation, peeps some scarce Decypherable monument, which yet, To those who find the key, perchance has told Stories of men, more mighty men, of old, Or of the gods themselves who walk’d the world When with the dews of first creation wet.

_Cipr._ Oh knowledge from the fountain freshly drawn Without the tedious go-between of books! But with fresh soul and senses unimpair’d What from the pale reflexion of report We catch at second hand, and much beside That in our solitary cells we miss.

_Luc._ Ay, truly we that travel see strange things, Though said to tell of stranger; some of us, Deceived ourselves, or seeking to deceive, With prodigies and monsters which the world, As wide and full of wonders as it is, Never yet saw, I think, nor ever will: Which yet your scholars use for clay and straw Of which to build your mighty folios— For instance, this same bulky Roman here, Whose leaf you turn’d, I doubt impatiently, When my intrusion rustled in the leaves—

_Cipr._ Hah! But how knew you—

_Luc._ Nay, if some stray words Of old familiar Latin met my ear As I stood hesitating.

_Cipr._ (_holding up the book_). This at least You read then?

_Luc._ One might say before ’twas written.

_Cipr._ But how so?

_Luc._ Oh, this same sufficient Roman, What is he but another of the many Who having seen a little and heard more That others pick’d as loosely up before, Constructs his little bird’s-nest universe Of shreds and particles of false and true Cemented with some thin philosophy, All filch’d from others, as from him to be By the next pilfering philosopher, Till blown away before the rising wind Of true discovery, or dropt to nothing After succeeding seasons of neglect.

_Cipr._ (_aside_) A strange man this—sharp wit and biting word. (_Aloud_) Yet surely Man, after so many ages Of patient observation of the world He lives in, is entitled by the wit Vouchsafed him by the Maker of the world To draw into some comprehensive whole The stray particulars.

_Luc._ Ay, and forsooth, Not only the material world he lives in; But, having of this undigested heap Composed a World, must make its Maker too, Of abstract attributes, of each of which Still more unsure than of the palpable, Forthwith he draws to some consistent One The accumulated ignorance of each In so compact a plausibility As light to carry as it was to build.

_Cipr._ But, since (I know not how) you hit upon The question I was trying when you came; And, spite of your disclaiming scholarship, Seem versed in that which occupies the best— If Pliny blunder with his single God, As in our twilight reason well he may, Confess however that a Deity Plural and self-discordant, as he says, Is yet more like frail man’s imagination, Who, for his own necessities and lusts, Splits up and mangles the Divine idea To pieces, as he wants a piece of each; Not only gods for all the elements Divided into land, and sea, and sky; But gods of health, wealth, love, and fortune; nay, Of war and murder, rape and robbery; Men of their own worse nature making gods To serve the very vices that suggest them, Which yet upon their fellow-men they visit (Else were an end of human polity) With chain and fine and banishment and death. So that unless man made such gods as these, Then are these gods worse than the man they made. And for the attributes, which though indeed You gibe at us for canvassing, yourself Must grant—as whether one or manifold, Deity in its simplest definition Must be at least eternal—

_Luc._ Well?—

_Cipr._ Yet those Who stuff Olympus are so little that, That Zeus himself, the sovereign of all, Barely escaped devouring at his birth By his own father, who anticipated And found some such hard measure for himself; And as for Zeus’ own progeny—some born Of so much baser matter than his brain, As from his eggs, which the all-mighty swan Impregnated, and mortal Leda laid; And whose two chicken-deities once hatcht Now live and die on each alternate day.

_Luc._ Ay, but if much of this be allegory In which the wisdom of antiquity Veils the pure Deity from eyes profane—

_Cipr._ —Deity taking arms against itself Under Troy walls, wounding and wounded—ay, And, trailing heavenly ichor from their wounds, So help’d by others from the field to one Who knew the leech’s art themselves did not.

_Luc._ Softly—if not to swear to allegory, Still less to all the poets sing of heaven, High up Parnassus as they think to sit.

_Cipr._ But these same poets, therefore sacred call’d, They are who these same allegories spin Which time and fond tradition consecrate; What might have been of the divine within So overgrown with folly and with sin As but a spark of God would such impure Assimilation with himself abjure, Which yet with all the nostril that he may Zeus snuffs from Antioch’s sacrifice to-day. Besides, beyond the reach of allegory The gods themselves in their own oracles Doubly themselves convict— As when they urge two nations on to war, By promising the victory to each; Whereby on one side their omniscience Suffers, as their all-goodness on the other.

_Luc._ What if such seeming contradictions aim Where human understanding cannot reach? But granting for the sake of argument, And for that only, what you now premise; What follows?

_Cipr._ Why, that if, as Pliny writes, Deity by its very definition Be one, eternal, absolute, all wise, All good, omnipotent, all ear, all eyes, Incapable of disintegration— If this be Deity indeed—

_Luc._ Then what?

_Cipr._ Simply—that we in Antioch know him not.

_Luc._ Rash leap to necessary non-conclusion From a premiss that quarrels with itself More than the deity it would impugn; For if one God eternal and all wise, Omnipotent to do as to devise, Whence this disorder and discordance in— Not only this material universe, That seems created only to be rack’d By the rebellion of its elements, In earthquake and tempestuous anarchy— But also in the human microcosm You say created to reflect it all? For Deity, all goodness as all wise, Why create man the thing of lust and lies You say reflects himself in his false god?— By modern oracle no more convicted Of falsehood, than by that first oracle Which first creation settled in man’s heart. No, if you must define, premise, conclude, Away with all the coward squeamishness That dares not face the universe it questions; Blinking the evil and antagonism Into its very constitution breathed By him who, but himself to quarrel with, Quarrels as might the many with each other. Or would you be yourself one with yourself, Catch hold of such as Epicurus’ skirt, Who, desperately confounded this confusion Of matter, spirit, good and evil, yea, Godhead itself, into a universe That is created, roll’d along, and ruled, By no more wise direction than blind Chance. Trouble yourself no more with disquisition That by sad, slow, and unprogressive steps Of wasted soul and body lead to nothing: And only sure of life’s short breathing-while, And knowing that the gods who threaten us With after-vengeance of the very crimes They revel in themselves, are nothing more Than the mere coinage of our proper brain To cheat us of our scanty pleasure here With terror of a harsh account hereafter;— Eat, drink, be merry; crown yourselves with flowers About as lasting as the heads they garland; And snatching what you can of life’s poor feast, When summon’d to depart, with no ill grace, Like a too greedy guest, cling to the table Whither the generations that succeed Press forward famish’d for their turn to feed. Nay, or before your time self-surfeited, Wait not for nature’s signal to be gone, But with the potion of the spotted weed, That peradventure wild beside your door For some such friendly purpose cheaply grows, Anticipate too tardy nature’s call: Ev’n as one last great Roman of them all Dismiss’d himself betimes into the sum Of universe; not nothing to become; For that can never cease that was before; But not that sad Lucretius any more.

_Cipr._ Oh, were it not that sometimes through the dark, That walls us all about, a random ray Breaks in to tell one of a better day Beyond—

_Enter LELIO and FLORO, as about to fight._

_Lelio._ Enough—these branches that exclude the sun Defy all other inquisition. No need of further way.

_Floro._ Nor further word; Draw, sir, at once—

_Lelio._ Nay, parry that yourself Which waited not your summons to be drawn.

_Cipr._ Lelio, and Floro?

_Floro._ What, will the leaves blab?

_Lelio._ And with their arms arrest a just revenge?

_Cipr._ And well indeed may trees begin to talk, When men as you go babbling.

_Floro._ Whoso speaks And loves his life, hold back.

_Lelio._ I know the voice, But dazzled with the darkness—Cipriano?

_Cipr._ Ay; Cipriano, sure enough; as you Lelio and Floro.

_Floro._ Well, let that suffice, And leave us as you find us.

_Cipr._ No, not yet—

_Floro._ Not yet!

_Lelio._ Good Cipriano—

_Cipr._ Till I know How it has come to pass that two such friends, Each of the noblest blood in Antioch, Are here to shed it by each other’s hands.

_Lelio._ Sudden surprise, and old respect for you, Suspend my sword a moment, Cipriano, That else—

_Floro._ Stand back, stand back! You are a scholar, And better versed in logic than the laws Of honour; and perhaps have yet to learn That when two noblemen have drawn the sword, One only must return it to the sheath.

_Lelio._ ’Tis so indeed—once more, stand off.

_Cipr._ And once more Back, both of you, say I; if of your lives Regardless, not of mine, which thus, unarm’d, I fling between your swords— Lelio, I look to you—Floro, as ever Somewhat hot-headed and thrasonical— Or do you hold with him the scholar’s gown Has smother’d all the native soldiery That saucy so-call’d honour to itself Alone mis-arrogates? You are deceived: I am like you by birth a gentleman, Under like obligation to the laws Of that true honour, which my books indeed May help distinguish from its counterfeit, But, older as I am, have yet not chill’d From catching fire at any just affront— And let me tell you this too—those same books, Ancient and modern, tell of many a hand That, turning most assiduously the leaf, When the time came, could wield as well the sword. I am unarm’d: but you, with all your swords, I say you shall not turn them on each other Till you have told me what the quarrel is; Which after hearing if I own for one That honour may not settle with good word, I pledge my own to leave it to the sword. Now, Lelio!—

_Lelio._ One answer does for both: He loves where I love.

_Floro._ No—I thus much more— He dares to love where I had loved before; Betrayed friendship adding to the score Of upstart love.

_Lelio._ You hear him, Cipriano? And after such a challenge—

_Cipr._ Yet a moment. As there are kinds of honour, so of love— And ladies—

_Lelio._ Cipriano, Cipriano! One friend my foe for daring love where I, Let not another, daring doubt that he Honours himself in so dishonouring me—

_Floro._ Slanting your sharp divisions on a jewel That if the sun turn’d all his beams upon He could not find, or make, a flaw—

_Cipr._ Nor I then, With far less searching scrutiny than Phœbus— I am to understand then, such a fair Jewel as either would in wedlock wear.

_Floro._ And rather die than let another dare.

_Cipr._ Enough, enough! of Lelio’s strange logic, And Floro’s more intelligible rant, And back to sober metaphor. Which of you Has this fair jewel turn’d her light upon?

_Floro_ (_after a pause_). Why, who would boast—

_Lelio._ Indeed, how could she be The very pearl of chastity she is, Turn’d she her glances either left or right?

_Cipr._ Which therefore each, as he obliquely steals, Counts on as given him only—

_Floro._ To have done With metaphor and logic, what you will, So as we fall to work; Or if you must have reason, this, I say, Resolves itself to a short syllogism— Whether she give or we presume upon— If one of us devote himself to win her, How dares another cross him?

_Cipr._ But if she Not only turn to neither, but still worse, Or better, turn from both?

_Lelio._ But love by long devotion may be won, That only one should offer—

_Floro._ And that one Who first—

_Lelio._ Who first!—

_Cipr._ And all this while, forsooth, The lady, of whose purity one test Is her unblemisht unpublicity, Is made a target for the common tongue Of Antioch to shoot reproaches at For stirring up two noblemen to blood. From which she only can escape, forsooth, By choosing one of two she cares not for At once; or else, to mend the matter, when He comes to claim her by the other’s blood.

_Lelio._ At least she will not hate him, live or dead, Who staked his life upon her love.

_Cipr._ Small good To him who lost the stake; and he that won— Will she begin to love whom not before For laying unloved blood upon her door; Or, if she ever loved at all, love more? Is this fair logic, or of one who knows No more of woman’s honour than of man’s? Come, come, no more of beating round the bush. You know how I have known and loved you both, As brothers—say as sons—upon the score Of some few years and some few books read more— Though two such fiery fine young gentlemen, Put up your swords and be good boys again, Deferring to your ancient pedagogue; If cold by time and studies, as you say, Then fitter for a go-between in love, And warm at least in loyalty to you. These jewels—to take up the metaphor Until you choose to drop it of yourselves,— These jewels have their caskets, I suppose— Kindred and circumstance, I mean—

_Lelio._ Oh such As by their honourable poverty Do more than doubly set their jewel off!

_Cipr._ Ev’n so? And may not one, who, you agree, Proof-cold, against suspicion of the kind, Be so far trusted, as, if not to see, To hear, at least, of where, and how, enshrined?

_Floro._ I know not what to answer. How say you?

_Lelio._ Relying on your honour and tried love— Justina, daughter of the old Lisandro.

_Cipr._ I know them; her if scarcely, yet how far Your praises short of her perfections are; Him better, by some little service done That rid him of a greater difficulty, And would again unlock his door to me— —And who knows also, if you both agree, Her now closed lips; if but a sigh between May tell which way the maiden heart may lean?

_Floro._ Again, what say you, Lelio?

_Lelio._ I, for one, Content with that decision.

_Floro._ Be it so.

_Cipr._ Why, after all, behold how luckily You stumbled on this rock in honour’s road, That serves instead for Cupid’s stepping-stone. And when the knightly courage of you both Was all at fault to hammer out the way, Who knows but some duenna-doctor may? And will—if but like reasonable men, Not angry boys, you promise to keep sheathed Your swords, while from her father or herself I gather, from a single sigh perhaps, To which, if either, unaware she turns; Provided, if to one, the other yield; But if to neither, both shall quit the field. What say you both to this?

_Lelio._ Ay—I for one.

_Floro._ And I; provided on the instant done.

_Cipr._ No better time than now, when, as I think, The city, with her solemn uproar busy, Shuts her we have to do with close within. But you must come along with me, for fear Your hands go feeling for your swords again If left together: and besides to know The verdict soon as spoken.

_Lelio._ Let us go.

[_Exeunt._

_Lucifer_ (_re-appearing_). Ay, Cipriano, faster than you think; For I will lend you wings to burn yourself In the same taper they are singed withal.— By the quick feelers of iniquity That from hell’s mouth reach through this lower world, And tremble to the lightest touch of mischief, Warn’d of an active spirit hereabout Of the true God inquisitive, and restless Under the false by which I rule the world, Here am I come to test it for myself. And lo! two fools have put into my hand The snare that, wanting most, I might have miss’d; That shall not him alone en-mesh, but _her_ Whom I have long and vainly from the ranks Striv’n to seduce of Him, the woman-born, Who is one day to bruise the serpent’s head— So is it written; but meanwhile my hour On earth is not accomplisht, and I fain Of this detested race would hinder all From joining in the triumph of my fall Whom I may hinder; and of these, these twain; Each other by each other snaring; yea, Either at once the other’s snare and prey. Oh, my good doctor, you must doubt, you must, And take no more the good old gods on trust; To Antioch then away; but not so fast But I shall be before you, starting last.

[_Exit._