SCENE I.—_The sea-shore; a storm raging.

_Cipriano_ (_cavalierly drest_). Oh, mad, mad, mad ambition! to the skies Lifting to drop me deep as Hades down!— What! Cipriano—what the once so wise Cipriano—quit his wonted exercise Among the sober walks of old renown, To fly at love—to swell the wind with sighs Vainer than learning—doff the scholar’s gown For cap and feather, and such airy guise In which triumphant love is wont to go, But wins less acceptation in her eyes— The only eyes in which I cared to show— My heart beneath the borrow’d feather bleeding— Than in the sable suit of long ago, When heart-whole for another’s passion pleading. She loves not Floro—loves not Lelio, Whose quarrel sets the city’s throat agape, And turns her reputation to reproof With altercation of some dusky shape Haunting the twilight underneath her roof— Which each believes the other:—and, for me, The guilty one of the distracted three, She closest veils herself, or waves aloof In scorn; or in such self-abasement sweet As sinks me deep and deeper at her feet, Bids me return—return for very shame Back to my proper studies and good name, Nor waste a life on one who, let me pine To death, will never but in death be mine. Oh, she says well—Oh, heart of stone and ice Unworthy of the single sacrifice Of one true heart’s devotion! Oh divine Creature, whom all the glory and the worth That ever ravaged or redeem’d the earth Were scanty worship offer’d at your shrine! Oh Cipriano, master-fool of all The fools that unto thee for wisdom call; Of supercilious Pallas first the mock, And now blind Cupid’s scorn, and laughing-stock; Who in fantastic arrogance at odds With the Pantheon of your people’s gods Ransack’d the heavens for one more pure and whole To fill the empty temple of the soul, Now caught by retribution in the mesh Of one poor piece of perishable flesh— What baser demon of the pit would buy With all your ruin’d aspirations?

_Lucifer_ (_within_). I!—

_Cipr._ What! The very winds and waters Hear, and answer to the cry She is deaf to!—Better thrown On distracted nature’s bosom With some passion like my own Torn and tortured: where the sun In the elemental riot Ere his daily reign half done, Leaves half-quencht the tempest-drencht Welkin scowling on the howling Wilderness of waves that under Slash of whirlwind, spur of lightning, Roar of thunder, black’ning, whitening, Fling them foaming on the shore— Let confusion reign and roar!— Lightnings, for your target take me! Waves, upon the sharp rock break me, Or into your monstrous hollow Back regurgitating hurl; Let the mad tornado whirl me To the furthest airy circle Dissipated of the sky, Or the gaping earth down-swallow To the centre!—

_Lucifer_ (_entering_). By-and-bye.

_Cipr._ Hark again! and in her monstrous Labour, with a human cry Nature yearning—what portentous Glomeration of the storm Darkly cast in human form, Has she bolted!—

_Luc._ As among Flashes of the lightning flung Beside you, in its thunder now Aptly listen’d—

_Cipr._ What art thou?

_Luc._ One of a realm, though dimly in your charts Discern’d, so vast that as from out of it As from a fountain all the nations flow, Back they shall ebb again; and sway’d by One Who, without Oriental over-boast, Because from him all kings their crowns derive, Is rightfully saluted King of kings, Whose reign is as his kingdom infinite, Whose throne is heaven, and earth his footstool, and Sun, moon, and stars his diadem and crown. Who at the first disposal of his kingdom And distribution into sea and land— Me, who for splendour of my birth and grand Capacities above my fellows shone, Star of the Morning, Lucifer, alone— Me he made captain of the host who stand Clad as the morning star about his throne. Enough for all ambition but my own; Who discontented with the all but all Of chiefest subject of Omnipotence Rebell’d against my Maker; insolence Avenged as soon as done on me and all Who bolster’d up rebellion, by a fall Far as from heaven to Hades. Madness, I know; But worse than madness whining to repent Under a rod that never will relent. Therefore about the land and sea I go Arm’d with the very instrument of hate That blasted me: lightnings anticipate My coming, and the thunder rolls behind; Thus charter’d to enlarge among mankind, And to recruit from human discontent My ranks in spirit, not in number, spent. Of whom, in spite of this brave gaberdine, I recognize thee one: thee, by the line Scarr’d on thy brow, though not so deep as mine; Thee by the hollow circles of those eyes Where the volcano smoulders but not dies: Whose fiery torrent running down has scarr’d The cheek that time had not so deeply marr’d. Do not I read thee rightly?

_Cipr._ But too well; However come to read me—

_Luc._ By the light Of my own darkness reading yours—how deep! But not, as mine is, irretrievable: Who from the fulness of my own perdition Would, as I may, revenge myself on him By turning to fruition your despair— What if I make you master at a blow, Not only of the easy woman’s heart You now despair of as impregnable, And waiting but my word to let you in, But lord of nature’s secret, and the lore That shall not only with the knowledge, but Possess you with the very power of him You sought so far and vainly for before: So far All-eyes, All-wise, Omnipotent— If not to fashion, able yet to shake That which the other took such pains to make— As in the hubbub round us; I who blurr’d The spotless page of nature at a word With darkness and confusion, will anon Clear it, to write another marvel on.— By the word of power that binds And loosens; by the word that finds Nature’s heart through all her rinds, Hearken, waters, fires, and winds; Having had your roar, once more Down with you, or get you gone.

_Cipr._ With the clatter and confusion Of the universe about me Reeling—all within, without me,— Dizzy, dazzled—if delusion, Waking, dreaming, seeing, seeming— Which I know not—only, lo! Like some mighty madden’d beast Bellowing in full career Of fury, by a sudden blow Stunn’d, and in a moment stopt All the roar, or into slow Death-ward-drawing murmur, leaving Scarce the fallen carcase heaving, With the fallen carcase dropt.— Behold! the word scarce fallen from his lips, Swift almost as a human smile may chase A frown from some conciliated face, The world to concord from confusion slips: The winds that blew the battle up dead slain, Or with their tatter’d standards swept amain From heaven; the billows of the erected deep Roll’d with their crests into the foaming plain; While the scared earth begins abroad to peep And smooth her ruffled locks, as from a rent In the black centre of the firmament, Revenging his unnatural eclipse, The Lord of heaven from its ulterior blue That widens round him as he pierces through The folded darkness, from his sovereign height Slays with a smile the dragon-gloom of night.

_Luc._ All you have heard and witness’d hitherto But a foretaste to quicken appetite For that substantial after-feast of power That I shall set you down to take your fill of: When not the fleeting elements alone Of wind, and fire, and water, floating wrack, But this same solid frame of earth and stone, Yea, with the mountain loaded on her back, Reluctantly, shall answer to your spell From a more adamantine heart stone-cold Than her’s you curse for inaccessible. What, you would prove it? Let the mountain there Step out for witness. Listen, and behold. Monster upshot of upheaving[11] Earth, by fire and flood conceiving; Shapeless ark of refuge, whither, When came deluge creeping round, Man retreated—to be drown’d— Now your granite anchor, fast In creation’s centre, cast, Come with all your tackle cleaving Down before the magic blast—

_Cipr._ And the unwieldy vessel, lo! Rib and deck of rock, and shroud Of pine, top-gallanted with cloud, All her forest-canvas squaring, Down the undulating woodland As she flounders to and fro All before her tearing, bearing Down upon us—

_Luc._ Anchor, ho!— Behold the ship in port! And what if freighted With but one jewel, worthy welcome more Than ever full-fraught Argosy awaited, At last descried by desperate eyes ashore; From the first moment of her topsail showing Like a thin cobweb spun ’twixt sea and sky; Then momently before a full wind blowing Into her full proportions, till athwart The seas that bound beneath her, by and bye She sweeps full sail into the cheering port— Strangest bark that ever plied In despite of wind and tide, At the captain’s magic summons Down your granite ribs divide, And show the jewel hid inside.

_Cipr._ Justina!—

_Luc._ Soft! The leap that looks so easy Yet needs a longer stride than you can master.

_Cipr._ Oh divine apparition, that I fain Would all my life as in Elysium lose Only by gazing after; and thus soon As rolling cloud across the long’d-for moon, The impitiable rocks enclose again!— But was it she indeed?

_Luc._ She that shall be, And yours, by means that, bringing her to you, Possess you of all nature, which in vain You sigh’d for ere for nature’s masterpiece. And thus much, as I told you, only sent As foretaste of that great accomplishment, Which if you will but try for, you can reach By means which, if I practise, I can teach.

_Cipr._ And at what cost?

_Luc._ You that have flung so many years away In learning and in love that came to nothing, Think not to win the harvest in a day! The God you search for works, you know, by means (That your philosophers call second cause), And we by means must underwork him—

_Cipr._ Well!—

_Luc._ To comprehend, and, after, to constrain Whose mysteries you will not count as vain A year in this same mountain lock’d with me?—

_Cipr._ Where she is?—

_Luc._ As I told you, where shall be At least this mountain after a short labour Has brought forth something better than a mouse; And what then after a whole year’s gestation Accomplish under our joint midwifery, Under a bond by which you bind you mine In fewer and no redder drops than needs The leech of land or water when he bleeds? Let us about—but first upon his base The mountain we must study in replace, That else might puzzle your geography. Come, take your stand upon the deck with me, Till with her precious cargo safe inside, And all her forest-colours flying wide, The mighty vessel put again to sea— What, are you ready?—Wondrous smack, As without a turn or tack Hither come, so thither back, And let subside the ruffled deep Of earth to her primæval sleep.— How steadily her course the good ship trims, While Antioch far into the distance swims, With all her follies bubbling in the wake; Her scholars that more hum than honey make: Muses so chaste as never of their kind Would breed, and Cupid deaf as well as blind: For Cipriano, wearied with the toil Of so long working on a thankless soil, At last embarking upon magic seas In a more wondrous Argo than of old, Sets sails with me for such Hesperides As glow with more than dragon-guarded gold.

[_Exeunt._