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JUVENILIA
THE WITCH OF ILNI
A Dream of the Woodlands
CHARACTERS
CORILLO
: prince of Ilm
VALENTINE
: a courtier
IMELANDER
: a sylvan poet
FORESTERS
: courtiers
ALACIEL
: the witch of Ilni
GUENDOLEN
: her sister
GIRLS OF THE FOREST
PERSONAE MUTAE
Page .– 1057
The Witch of Ilni
The Woodlands of Ilni.
Girls and youths dancing.
Song
Under the darkling tree
Who danceth with thee,
Sister, say ?
His hair is the sweet sunlight
His eyes a starry night
In May.
Under the leaf-wrought screen
Who crowns thee his queen
Kissing thee ?
His lips are a ruby bright,
His cheek the May-bloom’s light
On the tree.
Under the grass-green bough
Whom pillowest thou
On thy breast?
His voice is a swallow’s flight,
His limbs are jonquils white
Dewy drest.
IAMBLICHUS
Unwind the linked rapture of the dance!
For in the purple verge and slope of mom
Fast-flowering blooms, fire-robed and honey-haired,
In stainless wastes the daffodil of heaven.
Here till the golden-handed sun upbuilds
The morning’s cenotaph blue-domed and vast,
On daisy-dotted bank where sunlight nods
Page .– 1059
We’ll spin a curious weft of eerie tales.
MYRTIL
Be it so. But what occupation stays
Our deftest in the jewelry of rhymes,
Our liberal dispenser of sweet words,
Our laureate with the throstle in his throat ?
Sleeps he so long ? who saw Melander last,
Melander ashbud-browed with April hair ?
HERMENGILD
Before the russet-hooded morn gave birth
In Day’s embraces to the fire-eyed sun
I spied him nigh a mossy mantled cave
Which rosy trailers draped, and at his side
The silver-seeming witch Alaciel.
MYRTIL
Pray God, the black-haired witch may do no harm!
She is most potent and her science plucks
The ruby nightshade, Hecate’s deadly plum,
Soul-killing meadow-sweet, the hemlock starred
And berries brown, crushed in the vats of death,
Her mother’s hell-brewed legacy of arts.
MARCION
Were it not wisely done to call him hither ?
IAMBLICUS
‘Tis wisely urged, good Marcion, make good haste
And drench thy words in Hybla’s golden milk
To lure him thence. But you with dance and song
Beguile the laggard moments into joy.
Exit Marcion.
Page .– 1060
A glade in the woodlands.
ALACIEL
Why wilt thou go ? Noon has not budded, sweet.
Fresh-fallen dew stars yet the silvered grass,
The leaves are lyrical with lisp of birds
And piping voices flutter thro’ the grove.
Repose thyself where blue-eyed violet
Is married to that bugle of pale gold
We call the cowslip, and I’ll chain thee here
With flowery bands of rosebud-linked tales
Or murmur Orphic falls to draw thy soul
Upon the smoother wings of measured song.
Noon has not budded, sweet. Why wilt thou go ? .
MELANDER
The sylvan youths expect my lyric touch
To guild their leisure: nor am I so bold
To linger by thy snowy side too long
Whom men call perilous. Oh thou art fair!
Dawn reddens in thy vermil-tinted cheeks
And on thy tresses pansy-purple night
Hangs balsam-drenched with dewdrops for her stars.
Thou art a flower with candid petals wide,
Moon-flushed, most innocent-seeming to the eye;
But in thy cup, they say, lurks venomed wine
Which whoso sucks, pale Hades on him lays
Ensnaring arms to drag from the sweet sun.
ALACIEL
Whom will not Envy’s livid tooth assail ?
‘Tis true my wisdom dwarfs their ignorance;
That is most true: for in my fledgeling days
When callow childhood loved the rushy nest,
My mother drew my steps thro’ fretted walks;
Rose-rubied gardens, acorn-pelted glades.
Green seas of pasture, rural sweeps of bloom,
Page .– 1061
And taught the florid sensuous dialect
Of simple plants. This way I learned to love
The shining sisterhood of rhythmic names.
Roses and lilies, honey-hiding thyme
Pied gilliflowers, painted wind-blossoms,
Gold crocus, milky bell, sweet marjoram
Fire-coloured furze and wayside honey-suckle.
Nor these alone, but all the helpful plants
Gave me the liquid essence of their souls
Potent to help or hurt, to cure or kill.
Indeed the milky juice of pungent roots
I poured you in that curious walnut cup
With moderation just, were in excess
More deadly than the hemlock’s dooming wine.
Melander
It fused new blood into my pulsing veins
Raising me twice the stature of a soul.
ALACIEL
‘Tis margarite, the rare and pungent root,
That brewed this foamy vintage in his wand.
For twixt the bulb and pithy texture wrapt
You find a pod nut-form with misty skin,
In size no bigger than the early grape
But full and sweet with honey-tempered wine.
Such are my potions, philtres, poisons, drugs,
Distempered brews, and all the juggling arts
Your ignorance rebukes my wisdom with.
MELANDER
From such sweet lips when poppied utterance falls,
The carping spirit of disdain must sleep;
For subtler logic drops in simple words
From woman’s tongue, than phraseful orator
Or fine scholastic wit may offer up
On his.
Page .– 1062
ALACIEL
Sweet youth, why should I net you with deceit?
Ah yet, in truth you are too beautiful!
Come, you are skilled in phrases, are you not ?
You dice with women’s hearts — they tell me ’tis
A pastime much in vogue with idle youths.
(The philtre works: his eyelids brim with dew.)
You throw cogged dice with women for their souls,
You barter with them and deny the price,
Is it not so ? (O rare, fine margarite!)
Oh you are deft at such deceits: you make
Your beauty lime to cozen linnets with
And bid them sing, if they’d have sustenance.
Oh you will not deceive me, think it not:
You are just such a fowler to my guess.
MELANDER
Dear linnet, did I lime you in my nets,
One fine, sweet Hamadryad note would lift
The tangle from your wild-rose-petal wings.
ALACIEL
Ah but when lurking faces flower the bush,
Wild birds mock expectation with wild wings.
MELANDER
Nay, dear, you shall not go: I have you fast.
Come, where’s your ransom? the sweet single note
I bargained for, ere you may climb the winds ?
Prune not your fluttering wings: I have you fast.
ALACIEL
I pray you, make not earnest of my jest.
You are too quick: you shall not have a stiver,
No, not a coin to bless repentance with.
MELANDER
Then I will pay myself, sweet: from that warm
Page .– 1064
And flowering bed of kisses, I will pluck
Fresh with the dews of youth one red sweet rose.
(Kisses her)
Oh I have sucked out poison from your lips!
Physicians say that certain maladies
Are by their generating causes killed.
Sweet poison, one more drop to cure the last.
(Kisses her)
ALACIEL
You shall pluck no more roses from my tree.
Unclasp me now or you will anger me.
MELANDER
Dear, be not angry. I did but accept
The written challenge peeping thro’ the lids
Of those delicious eyes: O shy soft eyes,
Hiding with jetty fringes such a world
Of swimming beauty, virgin-sweet desire
You shine like stars upon the rim of night,
Like dewdrops thro’ green leaves, mute orators
Instinct with dropping eloquence to sway
The burning heart of boyhood to your will.
If I look on you long, you will seduce
My acts from virtue; which to anticipate
I’ll kill you both with kisses, thus, and thus.
Sweet, do not blush. I claim what is my own,
And with my lips I seal your whole self mine
From dear, dark head to dainty wild-rose feet.
Or, if you will, in sanguine tumult show
The throbbing conscience of a lover’s touch,
That I may watch a sea of springing rose
Diffuse its gorgeous triumph in your cheeks.
ALACIEL
Oh you have golden pieces on your tongue
To buy your pleasure: yet this single once
Page .– 1064
I’ll be your fool. Come, throw me clinking coin,
The thin flute-music of your flatteries.
You shall have favours if you pay for them.
MELANDER
His lips should dribble honey, who’d make out
The style and inventory of your graces.
His voice should be the fifing of mild winds
To happy song of bees in rose-red June,
His every word a crimson-tasselled rose,
His lightest phrase a strip of cedar wood,
Each clause a nutmeg-peppered jug of cream;
The very stops should argue aloes fetched
By spiced winds upon the rocking brine.
What, have I earned my wage ? I am athirst
With praising you. Give me your lips to drink.
ALACIEL
You trifle, sweet. Yours is no mint of coin
But scribbled paper-specie large as wind
Which I’ll not take. Here comes your paedagogue
To school you into more sobriety.
Alaciel retires. Enter Marcion.
MARCION
Well met, Melander. Long thro’ mossy paths
Have I with patient footing peered thee out,
Thro’ shadow-sundered slopes of racing light.
In ferny pales with blots of colour pricked
And by the rushy marge of spuming streams
Till lucky hazard made the Venus throw.
Why art thou here ? On leafy sheltered sward
Where daubs of sunlight intersperse the shade,
The rubious posies thrill to mazy feet
Like stars danced over by an angel’s tread
And strive with glimmering corollaries
To make a twinkling heaven of the green.
Page .– 1065
Moist blow the breezes with the myrrhy tears
Of pining night, and ruffle every blade
That keeps his pearls from clutch of dewy thieves
Until their indignation murmur past
From airy flute, from seraph-stringed harp
A daedal rain of music drop on drop
Wells past to rule the waft of dove-like feet.
The clustered edges of close heaped thyme,
A murmurous haven souled by merchant bees,
Are crumbling into fragrance and young flowers
Make fat by their decay the greedy earth,
While golden youths and silver feet of girls
Pass fluttering as with glimpse of gorgeous hues
A fleet of moths on emigrating winds.
There you shall see upon the pearled grass
The forest antelope, brown Hermengild,
lamblichus the honey-hearted boy,
Rose-cheeked lamblichus with roses wreathed,
And Myrtil honey-haired, our woodland moon,
Myrtil the white, a silver loveliness,
But tipped with gold. Thou only lingerest:
Only thy voice, the pilot of our moods,
Only thy thrush-lips welling facile rhymes
Mar the sweet harmonies of holiday
With one chord missing from the clamorous harp.
MELANDER
I thank you, Marcion, for your careful pain
But cannot guerdon you with more than thanks.
I am not well: the fumes of midnight thought
Unfit me for a holiday attire.
MARCION
Fie, fie, Melander: when have you before
Denied the riches of your tongue to eke
Our poorness with ? The forest waits for you
Dew-drenched with tears because you will not come.
Page .– 1066
MELANDER
Well, I will go with you, but not for long.
I’ll join you where deep-cushioned in soft grass
The stream turns inward like a scimitar.
Go on before, I pray you. I will come.
Exit Mar don.
ALACIEL
There, there, I said so! you are docile,’
sir.
Indeed I did not spy the leading-strings,
But they must be there. ‘Twas your paedagogue,
Was it not, come to fetch the truant back ?
MELANDER
Dear, be not vexed with me. I will return
Ere noon has dotted with her golden ball
The eminence of heaven. It seems not well,
When judgment has decreed the award of merit,
To disappoint Persuasion of her prize:
In sweetly cultured minds civility
Breathes music to the touch of wooing words.
ALACIEL
Oh words and words enough! but what’s the gist,
The run, the purport? Tush, a chattering pie,
A pie that steals and chatters, would not deign
To jeer this flaunting daw. What, did he deem
His gaudy colony of phrases roofed
The meaning from my eyes ? The prosing fool
Fibs very vilely: why, he has not conned
The rudiments and letters of his craft.
MELANDER
You do miscall sincerest courtesy,
Sweet courtesy that solders our conditions
Into the builded structure of a state.
Page .– 1067
ALACIEL
Yes, till the winds unbuild it for worse ruin.
But go your way. I’ll know you as a man
That honeys leisure with a lovely face
And coins sweet perjuries to make the hearts
Of women bankrupt. No defence, I pray you.
I’ll have no slices of your company.
MELANDER
Leave wrangling, sweet, and tell me soft and kind
Where shall I see you next ? I may not tarry.
ALACIEL
Why, nowhere: for I’ll not receive you, sir.
But if you love a door shut in your face
Come to my cottage on the forest’s hem
Where rarer thickets melt into the plain.
MELANDER
Thither I will outstrip the climbing noon.
For this one tedious hour, dear love, farewell.
ALACIEL
I pray you, sweet, do not break promise with me,
For that will kill me. I will think of you
And comfort solitude with sighs and tears
Until you dawn afresh, a noontide star.
Exeunt.
Page .– 1068
The Woodlands as at first.
Foresters and Girls. -
Melander leans against a tree absorbed in thought: in one group
Marcion and Ermenild are talking: in another lamblichus and
Myrtil: Myrtil comes forward.
MYRTIL
What passion, dear Melander, numbs thy voice ?
Why wilt thou cherish humorous peevishness,
The nursling of a moment and a mood ?
Now kernelled in the golden husk of day
Pale night with all her pomp of sorrow sleeps,
And stinted of soft-clinging melancholy
The elegiac nightingale is hushed,
Of melancholy from whose sombre grape
She crushes music out in foamy drops.
But all the votarists of happy Light,
A rainbow-throated anarchy of wings,
Lift anthems to the young viceregent sun:
Behind green curtains woven of fibrous baize
His lyric thrill unmasks the robin brown,
White with soft passion-pained moan the dove
Murmurs his love-notes in the long-lived elm:
The linnet pipes his simple pastoral,
Nay, all the winged poets of the air
Recite their stanzas from the pulpit sprays.
Why is thy crimson house of music shut,
Thy lips that passion into murmured song ?
MELANDER
Sweet friend, my spirit is too deeply hued
With sombre-sweet Imagination’s brush
To dress the nimble spirit of the dance
In lilt of phrase and honey-packing rhyme.
I pray you, urge it not. I am not well.
Page .– 1069
IAMBLICHUS
Urge him no more. The rash and humorous spirit
That governs him at times, will not be schooled,
But since the sweetest tongue of all is mute
Some harsher voice prick on the creeping hour.
MYRTIL
Ah no, lamblichus! when winds are hushed
Fall then the clapping cymbals of the sea
And every green-haired dancing girl downdrops
Her foam-tipped sinuous wand to kiss her feet!
The loss of sweetest palls what is but sweet,
For should the honey-throated mavis die,
Who in the laughing linnet takes delight
Or lends ear to the rhyming hedge-priest wren ?
Let us not challenge passion-pale regret,
But hand-in-hand down ruby-tinted walks
Gather the poppies of sweet speech, to press
For opiates when dank autumn looms and Life
Is empty of her rose. Were not this well?
IAMBLICHUS
Thy words are sweet as joy, more wise than sorrow.
Come, friends, let us steal honey from the hours
For memory to suck when winter comes.
Exeunt all but Melander.
MELANDER
Ask me, what drug Circean wakes in me?
My blood steals from my heart like pulsing fire
And the fresh sap exudes upon my brow.
O faster, faster urge thy golden wheels,
Thou sun that like a fiery lizard creepst
Glib-footed to the parapet of heaven!
Oh that my hand might clutch thy saffron curls
And thrust thee in the loud Atlantic! So
The violet manes of Evening may drink up
Page .– 1070
The sweet, damp wind, so dawn the ivory moon
And lurk shy-peeping in my darling’s eyes.
For my desire is like the passionate sea
That calls unto her paramour the. wind
And only hears a strangled murmur pant,
Mute, muffled by the hollow-breasted hills.
Enter lamblichus with Myrtil in his arms.
MYRTIL
No farther drag my steps, lamblichus!
I am not fond to bow my doating neck
Under your feet, like other woodland girls
Who image beauty’s model in your shape,
Heaven in your eyes and nectar in your kiss.
Fie, fie, be modest, sir. Let go your grasp.
Ah me, again a sea of subtle fire
Clamours about the ruby gates of Life!
My soul, expanding like a Pythian seer
Thrives upon torture, and the insurgent blood,
Swollen as with wine, menaces mutiny.
How slowly buildst thou up the spacious noon
To dome thy house, O architect of day!
Not from the bubbling smithy where Love works
Smooth Hebe fetched thy world-revealing fires;
Nor to the foam-bound bride-bed of the sea
Thou sailest, but like one with doom foreseen
Whose bourne and culmination lapses down
To sunless hell. Hope thou not to set out
My seasons in the golden ink of day:
My heart anticipates the pilot moon
Who steers the cloudy-wimpled night. Pale orb,
Thou art no symbol for my burning soul:
Page .– 1071
Lag thou behind or lag not, I will lead.
He is going out.
Re-enter foresters with Palleas.
MARCION
What’s this, Melander ? Noon not yet has sealed
His titles with the signet of the sun. ‘
‘Tis early yet to leave. Why will you go ?
MELANDER
I am bound down by iron promises,
The hour named. Would I not linger else ?
Even now the promise has outstript the act.
MYRTIL
Melander, do not go.
MELANDER
Dear child, I must.
IAMBLICHUS
Come, come, you shall not go. ‘Tis most unkind,
Let me not say uncourteous, to withdraw
The sunshine of your presence from this day,
Our little day of unmixed joy. Be ruled.
PALLEAS
Boy, let me counsel you. This eager fit
And hot eruption does much detriment
To youth and bodes no good to waning years:
When I was young, I ruled my dancing blood,
Abstained from brabbles, women, verses, wine,
And now you see me bask in hale old age
Mid Autumn’s gilded ruin one green leaf.
Life’s palate dulls with much intemperance,
And whoso breaks the law, the law shall break.
Love is a specious angler —
Page .– 1072
MELANDER
Dotard, off!
Confide thy heavy rumours to the grave
Where thou shouldst now be rotting.
Exit.
Page .– 1073
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