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Read Ebook: Charles Di Tocca: A Tragedy by Rice Cale Young
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Ebook has 722 lines and 28020 words, and 15 pages
ANTONIO: Well, let us off, My Helena, with these numb awes that wind About our joy.
HELENA: Thy kiss then, for it can Drive all gloom out of the world!
ANTONIO: And thine, my own, On Fate's hard brow would shame it of all frown!
HELENA: Yet is thine mightier, for no frown can be When no more gloom's in the world!
HELENA: Other! You should not know that any other lips Could e'er be pressed; I'll have no kiss but his Who is all blind to every mouth but mine!
ANTONIO: Oh?--Well.
HELENA: "Oh--well?"--Then it is well I go!
ANTONIO: Perhaps.
HELENA: "Perhaps!"
ANTONIO: Good-night.
HELENA: There's gloom in the world again.
ANTONIO : 'Tis gone?
HELENA: Not all, I think.
ANTONIO: Two for so small a gloom?
HELENA: So small!
ANTONIO: And still you sigh?
HELENA: The vainest glooms To-night seem ominous--as cloud-flakes flung Upward before the heaving of the west. Oh!
ANTONIO: Helena!
HELENA: See, see! 'tis Agabus!
AGABUS: O--lovers! lovers! Lord have none of them!
AGABUS: O--yes, yes, yes. You'd give me gold To pray for your two souls. Not I! Not I! Know you not love is brewed of lust and fire? It gnaws and burns, until the Shadow--Sir, Have you not seen a Shadow pass?
ANTONIO: A Shadow?
AGABUS: Silent and cold. A-times they call him Death: I'd have him for my brain--it shakes with fever.
HELENA: Who is it? soldiers come From Arta?
ANTONIO: Yes.
HELENA: And by this road!--They must Not see us!
ANTONIO: No. But quick, within this breach!
HELENA: Fallen! Ah, fallen! See, Antonio!
ANTONIO: What now!
HELENA : It is as if the earth were wind Under my feet!
ANTONIO: Are all things thus become Omen and dread to you?
HELENA: O, but it is The pillar grieving Venus leant upon Ere to forget she leapt, and wrote, When falls this pillar tall and proud Let surest lovers weave their shroud.
ANTONIO: Mere myth!
HELENA: The shroud! It coldly winds about us--coldly!
ANTONIO: Should a vain hap so desperately move you?
HELENA: The breath and secret soul of all this night Are burdened with foreboding! And it seems--
ANTONIO: You must not, Helena!
HELENA: My love, my lord-- Touch me lest I forget my natural flesh In this unnatural awe! Ah how thy arms Warm the cold moan and misery of fear Out of my veins!
ANTONIO: You rave, but in me stir Again the attraction of these dim portents. Nay, quiver not! 'tis but a passing mist, And this that runs in us is worthless dread!
HELENA: But ah, the shroud! the shroud!
ANTONIO: We'll weave no shroud, But wedding robes and wreaths and pageantry! And you shall be my Sappho--but through joys Such as shall legend ecstasy about Our knitted names when distant lovers dream.
ANTONIO: Yet?
HELENA: My lord, let us Unloose this strangling secrecy and be Open in love. My brother, Haemon, let Our hearts betrothed exchange and hope be told Him and thy father!
ANTONIO: This cannot be--now
HELENA: It cannot be, and you a god? I'll bow Before your eyes no more!--say that it can!
ANTONIO: Not yet--not now. Haemon's suspicious, quick, And melancholy: must be won with service. And you are Greek, a name till yesterday I never knew pass in the portal to My father's ear, but it came out his mouth Headlong and dark with curses.
HELENA: Yet of late He oft has smiled upon me as he passed.
ANTONIO: On you--my father? O, he only dreamt, And saw you not.
ANTONIO: Stay: I'll call you so no more.
HELENA: You'll call me so no more?
ANTONIO: No more.
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