Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (630 page)

Say rather, the deserter’s. Oh, you smiled

From your clear height on all the million lots

Which yet you brand as abject.

ARMGART.

I was blind

With too much happiness; true vision comes

Only, it seems, with sorrow. Were there one

This moment near me, suffering what I feel,

And needing me for comfort in her pang —

Then it were worth the while to live; not else.

WALPURGA.

One — near you — why, they throng! you hardly stir

But your act touches them. We touch afar.

For did not swarthy slaves of yesterday

Leap in their bondage at the Hebrews’ flight,

Which touch them through the thrice millennial dark?

But you can find the sufferer you need

With touch less subtle.

ARMGART.

Who has need of me?

WALPURGA.

Love finds the need it fills. But you are hard.

ARMGART.

Is it not you, Walpurga, who are hard?

You humoured all my wishes till to-day,

When fate has blighted me.

WALPURGA.

You would not hear

The “ chant of consolation : “ words of hope

Only embittered you. Then hear the truth —

A lame girl’s truth, whom no one ever praised

For being cheerful. “ It is well,” they said:

“ Were she cross-grained she could not be endured.”

A word of truth from her had startled you;.

But you — you claimed the universe; nought less

Than all existence working in sure tracks

Toward your supremacy. The wheels might scathe

A myriad destinies — nay, must perforce;

But yours they must keep clear of ; just for you

The seething atoms through the firmament

Must bear a human heart which you had not!

For what is it to you that women, men,

Plod, faint, are weary, and espouse despair

Of aught but fellowship? Save that you spurn

To be among them? Now, then, you are lame —

Maimed, as you said, and levelled with the crowd:

Call it new birth — birth from that monstrous Self

Which, smiling down upon a race oppressed,

Says, “All is good, for I am throned at ease.”

Dear Armgart — nay, you tremble — I am cruel.

ARMGART.

Oh no! hark! Some one knocks. Come in! — come in!

(Enter LEO.)

LEO.

See, Gretchen let me in. I could not rest

Longer away from you.

ARMGART.

Sit down, dear Leo.

Walpurga, I would speak with him alone.

(WALPURGA goes out.)

LEO (hesitatingly) .

You mean to walk?

ARMGART.

No, I shall stay within.

(She takes off her hat and mantle, and sits down immediately. After a pause, speaking in a subdued

tone to LEO.)

How old are you?

LEO.

Threescore and five.

ARMGART.

That’s old.

I never thought till now how you have lived.

They hardly ever play your music?

LEO (raising his eyebrows and throwing out his lip).

No!

Schubert too wrote for silence: half his work

Lay like a frozen Rhine till summers came

That warmed the grass above him. Even so!

His music lives now with a mighty youth.

ARMGART.

Do you think yours will live when you are dead?

LEO.

Pfui! The time was, I drank that home-brewed wine.

And found it heady, while my blood was young:

Now it scarce warms me. Tipple it as I may,

I am sober still, and say: “My old friend Leo,

Much grain is wasted in the world and rots;

Why not thy handful ? “

ARMGART.

Strange! since I have known you

Till now I never wondered how you lived.

When I sang well — that was your jubilee.

But you were old already.

LEO.

Yes, child, yes:

Youth thinks itself the goal of each old life;

Age has but travelled from a far-off time

Just to be ready for youth’s service. Well!

It was my chief delight to perfect you.

ARMGART.

Good Leo! You have lived on little joys.

But your delight in me is crushed forever.

Your pains, where are they now? They shaped intent.

Which action frustrates; shaped an inward sense

Which is but keen despair, the agony

Of highest vision in the lowest pit.

LEO.

Nay, nay, I have a thought: keep to the stage,

To drama without song; for you can act —

Who knows how well, when all the soul is poured

Into that sluice alone?

ARMGART.

I know, and you:

The second or third best in tragedies

That cease to touch the fibre of the time.

No; song is gone, but nature’s other gift,

Self -judgment, is not gone. Song was my speech,

And with its impulse only, action came:

Song was the battle’s onset, when cool purpose

Glows into rage, becomes a warring god

And moves the limbs with miracle. But now —

Oh, I should stand hemmed in with thoughts and rules —

Say “ This way passion acts,” yet never feel

The might of passion. How should I declaim?

As monsters write with feet instead of hands.

I will not feed on doing great tasks ill,

Dull the world’s sense with mediocrity,

And live by trash that smothers excellence.

One gift I had that ranked me with the best —

The secret of my frame — and that is gone.

For all life now I am a broken thing.

But silence there! Good Leo, advise me now.

I would take humble work and do it well —

Teach music, singing — what I can — not here,

But in some smaller town where I may bring

The method you have taught me, pass your gift

To others who can use it for delight.

You think I can do that?

(She pauses with a sob in her voice.)

LEO.

Yes, yes, dear child!

And it were well, perhaps, to change the place —

Begin afresh as I did when I left

Vienna with a heart half broken.

ARMGART (roused by surprise).

You?

LEO.

Well, it is long ago. But I had lost —

No matter! We must bury our dead joys

And live above them with a living world.

But whither, think you, you would like to go?

ARMGART.

To Freiburg.

LEO.

In the Breisgau? And why there?

It is too small.

ARMGART.

Walpurga was born there,

And loves the place. She quitted it for me

These five years past. Now I will take her there.

Dear Leo, I will bury my dead joy.

LEO.

Mothers do so, bereaved ; then learn to love

Another’s living child.

ARMGART.

Oh, it is hard

To take the little corpse, and lay it low,

And say, “None misses it but me.”

She sings . . .

I mean Paulina sings Fidelio,

And they will welcome her to-night.

LEO.

Well, well,

“T is better that our griefs should not spread far.

HOW LISA LOVED THE KING.

Six hundred years ago, in Dante’s time,

Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme;

When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story,

Was like a garden tangled with the glory

Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown,

Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown,

Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars,

And springing blades, green troops in innocent wars,

Crowd every shady spot of teeming earth,

Making invisible motion visible birth, —

Six hundred years ago, Palermo town

Kept holiday.  A deed of great renown,

A high revenge, had freed it from the yoke

Of hated Frenchmen; and from Calpe’s rock

To where the Bosporus caught the earlier sun,

‘Twas told that Pedro, King of Aragon,

Was welcomed master of all Sicily, —

A royal knight, supreme as kings should be

In strength and gentleness that make high chivalry.

Spain was the favorite home of knightly grace,

Where generous men rode steeds of generous race;

Both Spanish, yet half Arab; both inspired

By mutual spirit, that each motion fired

With beauteous response, like minstrelsy

Afresh fulfilling fresh expectancy.

So, when Palermo made high festival,

The joy of matrons and of maidens all

Was the mock terror of the tournament,

Where safety, with the glimpse of danger blent,

Took exaltation as from epic song,

Which greatly tells the pains that to great life belong.

And in all eyes King Pedro was the king

Of cavaliers; as in a full-gemmed ring

The largest ruby, or as that bright star

Whose shining shows us where the Hyads are.

His the best genet, and he sat it best;

His weapon, whether tilting or in rest,

Was worthiest watching; and his face, once seen,

Gave to the promise of his royal mien

Such rich fulfilment as the opened eyes

Of a loved sleeper, or the long-watched rise

Of vernal day, whose joy o’er stream and meadow flies.

But of the maiden forms that thick enwreathed

The broad piazza, and sweet witchery breathed,

With innocent faces budding all arow,

From balconies and windows high and low,

Who was it felt the deep mysterious glow,

The impregnation with supernal fire

Of young ideal love, transformed desire,

Whose passion is but worship of that Best

Taught by the many-mingled creed of each young breast?

‘Twas gentle Lisa, of no noble line,

Child of Bernardo, a rich Florentine,

Who from his merchant-city hither came

To trade in drugs; yet kept an honest fame,

And had the virtue not to try and sell

Drugs that had none.  He loved his riches well,

But loved them chiefly for his Lisa’s sake,

Whom with a father’s care he sought to make

The bride of some true honorable man, —

Of Perdicone (so the rumor ran),

Whose birth was higher than his fortunes were,

For still your trader likes a mixture fair

Of blood that hurries to some higher strain

Than reckoning money’s loss and money’s gain.

And of such mixture good may surely come:

Lord’s scions so may learn to cast a sum,

A trader’s grandson bear a well-set head,

And have less conscious manners, better bred;

Nor, when he tries to be polite, be rude instead.

‘Twas Perdicone’s friends made overtures

To good Bernardo; so one dame assures

Her neighbor dame, who notices the youth

Fixing his eyes on Lisa; and, in truth,

Eyes that could see her on this summer day

Might find it hard to turn another way.

She had a pensive beauty, yet not sad;

Rather like minor cadences that glad

The hearts of little birds amid spring boughs:

And oft the trumpet or the joust would rouse

Pulses that gave her cheek a finer glow,

Parting her lips that seemed a mimic bow

By chiselling Love for play in coral wrought,

Then quickened by him with the passionate thought,

The soul that trembled in the lustrous night

Of slow long eyes.  Her body was so slight,

It seemed she could have floated in the sky,

And with the angelic choir made symphony;

But in her cheek’s rich tinge, and in the dark

Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark

Of kinship to her generous mother-earth,

The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth.

She saw not Perdicone; her young mind

Dreamed not that any man had ever pined

For such a little simple maid as she:

She had but dreamed how heavenly it would be

To love some hero noble, beauteous, great,

Who would live stories worthy to narrate,

Like Roland, or the warriors of Troy,

The Cid, or Amadis, or that fair boy

Who conquered every thing beneath the sun,

And somehow, some time, died at Babylon

Fighting the Moors.  For heroes all were good

And fair as that archangel who withstood

The Evil One, the author of all wrong, —

That Evil One who made the French so strong;

And now the flower of heroes must he be

Who drove those tyrants from dear Sicily,

So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly.

Young Lisa saw this hero in the king;

And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring

Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne

Was lily-odored; and as rites divine,

Round turf-laid altars, or ‘neath roofs of stone,

Draw sanctity from out the heart alone

That loves and worships: so the miniature

Perplexed of her soul’s world, all virgin pure,

Filled with heroic virtues that bright form,

Raona’s royalty, the finished norm

Of horsemanship, the half of chivalry;

For how could generous men avengers be,

Save as God’s messengers on coursers fleet? —

These, scouring earth, made Spain with Syria meet

In one self-world where the same right had sway,

And good must grow as grew the blessed day.

No more: great Love his essence had endued

With Pedro’s form, and, entering, subdued

The soul of Lisa, fervid and intense,

Proud in its choice of proud obedience

To hardship glorified by perfect reverence.

Sweet Lisa homeward carried that dire guest,

And in her chamber, through the hours of rest,

The darkness was alight for her with sheen

Of arms, and plumèd helm; and bright between

Their commoner gloss, like the pure living spring

‘Twixt porphyry lips, or living bird’s bright wing

‘Twixt golden wires, the glances of the king

Flashed on her soul, and waked vibrations there

Of known delights love-mixed to new and rare:

The impalpable dream was turned to breathing flesh,

Chill thought of summer to the warm close mesh

Of sunbeams held between the citron-leaves,

Clothing her life of life.  Oh! she believes

That she could be content if he but knew

(Her poor small self could claim no other due)

How Lisa’s lowly love had highest reach

Of wingèd passion, whereto wingèd speech

Would be scorched remnants left by mounting flame.

Though, had she such lame message, were it blame