Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (649 page)

Juan’s fantastic pleasure is to watch

These Gypsies forging, and to hold discourse

With this great chief, whom he transforms at will

To sage or warrior, and like the sun

Plays daily at fallacious alchemy,

Turns sand to gold and dewy spider-webs

To myriad rainbows. Still the sand is sand,

And still in sober shade you see the web.

‘T is so, I’ll wager, with his Gypsy chief, —

A piece of stalwart cunning, nothing more.

JUAN.

No! My invention had been all too poor

To frame this Zarca as I saw him first.

‘T was when they stripped him. In his chieftain’s gear,

Amidst his men he seemed a royal barb

Followed by. Wild-maned Andalusion colts.

He had a necklace of a strange device

In finest gold of unknown workmanship,

But delicate as Moorish, fit to kiss

Fedalma’s neck, and play in shadows there.

He wore fine mail, a rich-wrought sword and belt,

And on surcoat black a broidered torch,

A pine-branch flaming, grasped by two dark hands.

But when they stripped him of his ornaments

It was the bawbles lost their grace, not he.

His eyes, his mouth, his nostril, all inspired

With scorn that mastered utterance of scorn,

With power to check all rage until it turned

To ordered force, unleashed on chosen prey, —

It seemed the soul within him made his limbs

And made them grand. The bawbles were well gone.

He stood the more a king, when bared to man.

BLASCO.

Maybe. But nakedness is bad for trade,

And is not decent. Well-wrought metal, sir,

Is not a bawble. Had you seen the camp,

The royal camp at Velez Malaga,

Ponce de Leon and the other dukes.

The king himself and all his thousand knights

For body-guard, ‘t would not have left you breath

To praise a Gypsy thus. A man’s a man ;

But when you see a king, you see the work

Of many, thousand men. King Ferdinand

Bears a fine presence, and hath proper limbs ;

But what though he were shrunken as a relic?

You’d see the gold and gems that cased him o’er,

And all the pages round him in brocade,

And all the lords, themselves a sort of kings,

Doing him reverence. That strikes an awe

Into a common man, — especially

A judge of plate.

HOST.

Faith very wisely said.

Purge thy speech, Juan. It is over-full

Of this same Gypsy. Praise the Catholic King.

And come now, let us see the juggler’s skill.

The Plaga Santiago.

‘T is daylight still, but now the golden cross

Uplifted by the angel on the dome

Stands rayless in calm color clear-defined

Against the northern blue; from turrets high

The flitting splendor sinks with folded wing

Dark-hid till morning, and the battlements

Wear soft relenting whiteness mellowed o’er

By summers generous and winters bland.

Now in the east the distance casts its veil,

And gazes with a deepening earnestness.

The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes

Of shadow-broken gray ; the rounded hills

Reddened with blood of Titans, whose huge limbs

Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh

Of cactus1 green and blue, broad-sworded aloes ;

The cypress soaring black above the lines

Of white court-walls ; the jointed sugar-canes

Pale-golden with their feathers motionless

In the warm quiet; — all thought-teaching form

Utters itself in firm unshimmering hues.

For the great rock has screened the westering sun

That still on plains beyond streams vaporous gold

Among their branches; and within Bedmar

Has come the time of sweet serenity

When colour glows unglittering, and the soul

Of visible things shows silent happiness,

As that of lovers trusting though apart.

The ripe-cheeked fruits, the crimson-petalled flowers ;

The winged life that pausing seems a gem

Cunningly carven on the dark green leaf;

The face of man with hues supremely blent

To difference fine as of a voice ‘mid sounds: —

Each lovely light-dipped thing seems to emerge

Flushed gravely from baptismal sacrament.

All beauteous existence rests, yet wakes,

Lies still, yet conscious, with clear open eyes

And gentle breath and mild suffused joy.

‘T is day, but day that falls like melody

Repeated on a string with graver tones, —

Tones such as linger, in at long farewell.

The Pla9a widens in the passive air, —

The Pla9a Santiago, where the church,

A mosque converted, shows an eyeless face

Red-checkered, faded, doing penance still, —

Bearing with Moorish arch the imaged saint,

Apostle, baron, Spanish warrior,

Whose charger’s hoofs trample the turbaned dead,

Whose banner with the Cross, the bloody sword,

Flashes athwart the Moslem’s glazing eye,

And mocks his trust in Allah who forsakes.

Up to the church the Pla9a gently slopes,

In shape most like the pious palmer’s shell,

Girdled with low white houses ; high above

Tower the strong fortress and sharp-angled wall

And well-flanked castle gate. From o’er the roofs,

And from the shadowed patios cool, there spreads

The breath of flowers and aromatic leaves

Soothing the sense with bliss indefinite, —

A baseless hope, a glad presentiment,

That curves the lip more softly, fills the eye

With more indulgent beam. And so it soothes,

So gently sways the pulses of the crowd

Who make a zone about the central spot

Chosen by Roldan for his theatre.

Maids with arched eyebrows, delicate-pencilled, dark,

Fold their round arms below the kerchief full ;

Men shoulder little girls ; and grandames gray,

But muscular still, hold babies on their arms ;

While mothers keep the stout-legged boys in front

Against their skirts, as the Greek pictures old

Show the Chief Mother with the Boy divine.

Youths keep the places for themselves, and roll

Large lazy eyes, and call recumbent dogs

(For reasons deep below the reach of thought).

The old men cough with purpose, wish to hint

Wisdom within that cheapens jugglery,

Maintain a neutral air, and knit their brows

In observation. None are quarrelsome,

Noisy, or very merry ; for their blood

Moves, slowly into fervor, — they rejoice

Like those dark birds that sweep with heavy wing,

Cheering their mates with melancholy cries.

But now the gilded balls begin to play

In rhythmic numbers, ruled by practice fine

Of eye and muscle : all the juggler’s form

Consents harmonious in swift-gliding change,

Easily forward stretched or backward bent

With lightest step and movement circular

Round a fixed point : ‘t is not the old Roldan now,

The dull, hard, weary, miserable man,

The soul all parched to languid appetite

And memory of desire : ‘t is wondrous force

That moves in combination multiform

Towards conscious ends : ‘t is Roldan glorious,

Holding all eyes like any meteor,

King of the moment save when Annibal

Divides the scene and plays the comic part,

Gazing with blinking glances up and down,

Dancing and throwing naught and catching it,

With mimicry as merry as the tasks

Of penance-working shades in Tartarus..

Pablo stands passive, and a space apart,

Holding a viol, waiting for command.

Music most not be wasted, but must rise

As needed climax ; and the audience

Is growing with late comers. Juan now,

And the familiar Host with Blasco broad,