Collected Plays and Stories

 

CONTENTS

 

Pre-content

 

PLAYS

THE VIZIERS OF BASSORA

 

Rodogune

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE I

SCENE II  

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

 

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

 

 

Perseus the Deliverer

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE V

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

 

Eric

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE III

SCENE IV

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE I

 

Vasavadutta

 

Incomplete and Fragmentary Plays

The Witch of Ilni

Act One

 

Act Two

 

Act Three

SCENE I

SCENE II

 

SCENE I

 

 SCENE I

SCENE II

 

The House of Brut

Act  twO

 

SCENE I

 

The Maid in the Mill

Act One

 

 

 

Act Two

SCENE I

SCENE II

SCENE Iii

SCENE Iv

SCENE v

 

 

 

SCENE I

 

The Prince of Edur

The Prince of Mathura

Act  One

SCENE I

 

The Birth of Sin

Act ONE

 

Fragment of a Play

Act  One

SCENE I

 

STORIES

Occult Idylls

The Phantom Hour

 The Door at Abelard

 

Incomplete and Fragmentary Stories

Fictional Jottings

Fragment of a Story

The Devil's Mastiff

The Golden Bird

 

 

Act III

 

Scene 1

 

Before Alaciel's house.

 

GUENDOLEN

But what you tell me is not credible.

Could Love at the prime vision slip your fence

And his red bees wing humming to your heart?

What, at the premier interchange of eyes

Seed bulged into the bud, the bud to flower,

Bloom waxing into fruit? can passion sink

Thus deep embedded in a maiden soil?

Masks not your love in an unwonted guise?

 

ALACIEL

Sweet girl, you are a casket yet unused,

A fair, unprinted page. These mysteries

Are alien to your grasp, until Love pen

His novel lithograph and write in you

Songs bubbling with the music of a name.

Oh, I am faster tangled in his eyes

Than, in the net smoke-blasted Vulcan threw,

Foam-bosomed Cytherea to her Mars.

 

GUENDOLEN

But will he push his fancy to your bent?

 

ALACIEL

How else? for in the coy glance of a girl

A subtle sorcery lies that draws men on

 

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As with a thread, nor snaps not ere it should.

Love's palate is with acid flavours edged

When what the lips repel, the eyes invite.

 

GUENDOLEN

Have you forgotten then, my sister, how

Since war's ensanguined dice have thrown a cast

So fatal to our peace, the sweet confines

Of Ilni and her primitive content

Are hedged and meted by the savage Law?

 

ALACIEL

Child, I have not forgotten; but first love

Poseidon-like submerges with his sea

All barriers, and the checks that men oppose

But make him fret and spume against the sky.

Who shall withstand him? not the gnawing flame

Nor toothed rocks nor gorgon-fronted piles

Nor metal bars; thro' all he walks unharmed.

But lo where on the forest's lip there dawns

My noonstar in the garish paths of day.

He should not see you, sweet. Prithee, go in.

Enter Melander.

How now? was this your compact? Lift your glance

Where yet the primrose-pale Hyperion clings

Upon the purple arches of the air

Nor on the cornice prints his golden seal.

You are too soon. Why with this fire-eyed haste

Have you o'ershot the target of your vows?

 

MELANDER

Ah, cruel child! what hast thou done to me?

What expiation in the balance pends

Against thy fault? Not the low sweets of sound

Fetched by thy piping tongue from ruby stops,

Nor fluttering glances under velvet lids,

Nor the rich tell-tale blush that sweetly steals

 

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As if a scarlet pencil would indite

A love-song in thy cheeks. These candid brows,

The hushed seraglio to thy veiled thoughts,

These light wind-kissing feet, these milky paps

That peep twixt edge and loosely-married edge,

Thy slumber-swollen purple-fringed orbs,

Thy hands, cinque-petalled rose-buds just apart

Beneath the wheedling kiss of spring, thy sides,

Those continents of warm, unmelting snow,

All in the balance are but precious air.

Nay, with thy whole dear sum of beauties fill

The scale, it will not tremble to the dust

Save hooped upon thy breast my weight helps thine.

If you deny me my just claim, I'll snatch

You from yourself and torture with the whips

Of Love, till you disclose your hoardings. Oh

To seize this loaded honeycomb of bliss

And make a rich repast! Oh turn from me

The serious wonder of those orbed fires!

Their lustre stabs my heart with agony.

Hide in thy hair those passion-moulded lips!

Veil up those milky glimpses from my sight!

Oh I will drag thy soul out in a kiss!

Wilt thou add fire to fire? Torture not

My longing with reluctance; forge not now

The pouted simulation of disdain.

Leap quick into my arms! there lose thyself.

She embraces him.

Pardon me, sweet: thy beauties in my soul

Blow high the leaping billows of desire

And temperance is a wreck merged in his sea.

 

ALACIEL

Loveliest Melander, if I have offended,

Here like a Roman debtor yield I up

My body to thy mercy or thy doom.

Take my soul too! and in thy princely pomp

 

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Let this rebellious heart that needs will fret

To be thy slave, be dragged to thraldom. See,

I hang, a lustrous jewel, on thy neck:

Break me or keep me! I am thine to keep

Or break: fear not to do thy utmost will.

 

MELANDER

Hang there till thou hast grown a part of me!

Ah yet, if passion be Love's natural priest

Let not his fire-lipped homage scare thy soul.

Thy ripe, unspotted girlhood give to me,

For which the whole world yearns. A gift is sweet,

And thou, O subtle thief, hast stolen my calm

Who was before not indigent of bliss.

Oh closer yet! Let's glue our lips together,

That all eternity may be a kiss.

 

ALACIEL

What, will you bury me with kisses? Dear,

Be modest. Tell me why by a full hour

You outran expectation's reaching eye?

 

MELANDER

Inquire the glowing moon why she has dared

Forestal the set nor wait the ushering star;

Inquire the amorous wind, why he has plucked,

Ere Autumn's breath have tampered with her hair,

Petal on crimson petal the red rose:

Nay, catechise the loud rebombing sea

Who in a thundrous summer dim with rain

Conspired with hoarse rebellious winds to merge

The lonely life of ocean-wading ships;

Then ask fire-footed passion why his rage

Has shipwrecked me upon thy silver breasts.

Ah love, thyself the culprit, thine the fault.

Alaciel, thou, — O sweet unconscious sin! —

Hast in my members kindled such a fire

 

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As only sorcery knows: which to atone

Thy virgin hours must sweetly swoon to death

While in the snowy summer of thy lap

Kind Night shall cool these passion-melted limbs.

When thou dost imitate the blushing rose,

I swear thy tint is truer than the life,

Than loveliness more lovely. Dearest one,

Let naked Love abash the curtained prude.

Shame was not made to burn thy field of roses

Nor in this married excellence of hues

Unfurl disorder's ruby-tinted flag.

 

ALACIEL

Dear, if I blush, 'tis modesty, not shame.

I can refuse you nothing. When 'tis night

And like a smile upon a virgin's lips

Young moonlight dallies with a sleepy rose,

Then come and call me gently twice and thrice,

And I will answer you. Observe this well

In that the harsh and beldam Law excludes

Nature's sweet rites and Paphian marriage

Unless her bleared eyes be privy too.

 

MELANDER

O love, have you forgot the long elapse

And weary pomp of hours ere the sun

That follows now a path sincere of foam

Make sanguine shipwreck in the lurid west?

Scarce now his golden eye drops vertical

Upon the belt and midline of our scope.

Shorten your sentence by a term of hours

When I shall ease my pain. Turn caution out

To graze in nunneries: his sober feint

Of prudence suits not with a lover's tryst.

 

ALACIEL

Content you, sweet: let patience feed on hope

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Until night's purple awning bar from view

The hidden thefts of love. Nay, go not yet.

Sit here awhile until yon sloping disk

Swings prone above the poplar. Sweet, come in.

Exeunt.

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Scene 2

 

Before Alaciel's house.

Melander alone.

 

MELANDER

Now, for her widowed state is wooed by night,

The sable-vested air puts on her stars

And in her bosom pins for brooch the moon.

She from her diamond chalice soon will pour

Her flowing glories on a rose's hair,

In pity of my love. Sweet crimson rose,

Alaciel's lamp, the beacon of my bliss,

O kindle quickly at the moon thy rays.

How happy art thou being near my love!

For thou who hast the perfume of her breath,

Why shouldest thou the spice-lipped Zephyr want?

Her dove's-feet whispering in the happy grass

Are surely lovelier to thee than the dawn;

Or wilt thou woo the world-embracing orb,

Who hast the splendour of her eyes to soothe

Thy slumber into waking? O red rose,

Might I but merge in thee, how would her touch

Thrill all my petals with delicious pain!

O could I pawn my beauty for a kiss,

How happy were I to waste all myself

In shreds of scarlet ruin at her feet!

It is my hour! for see, the cowslip-curled

Night-wandering patroness of lovers throws

Her lantern's orange-coloured beams, where sleeps

A bright, blown rose. Hail, empress of the stars!

Be thou tonight my hymeneal torch.

Alaciel! Echo, hush thy babbling tongue!

 

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'Tis not Narcissus calls. I am a thief

Who steal from beauty's garden one sweet bud

Nor need like visitants thy tinkling bell.

Alaciel! O with thy opiate wand,

Thought-killing Mercury, seal every eye

On whom the drowsy Morpheus has not breathed.

Yet once again the charm. Alaciel!

Now at thy window dawn, thou lovelier moon

Than sojourns in the sky! look out on me,

An ivory face thro' rippling clouds of hair.

Enter Alaciel above.

Marcion and Doris behind.

ALACIEL

Who calls?

[The next sixteen pages of the notebook were torn out.]

 

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