Pedro Calderon de la Barca

TAKEN FROM CALDERON’S
EL MAGICO PRODIGIOSO

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DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

Aurelio	Viceroy of Antioch.
Lelio	his Son.
Fabio	a chief Officer in Antioch.
Floro	his Son.
Lisandro	an aged Christian.
Justina	his Daughter.
Livia	their Servant.
Cipriano	a Professor of Learning.
Eusebio	} his Scholars.
Julian
Lucifer	the Evil Spirit.
Citizens, Soldiers, etc.

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ACT I

Scene I.—A retired Grove near Antioch.

Enter Cipriano, Eusebio, and Julian, with books.

Cipr. This is the place, this the sequester’d spot

Where, in the flower about and leaf above,

I find the shade and quiet that I love,

And oft resort to rest a wearied wing;

And here, good lads, leave me alone, but not

Lonely, companion’d with the books you bring:

That while the city from all open doors

Abroad her gaping population pours,

To swell the triumph of the pomp divine

That with procession, sacrifice, and song

Convoys her tutelary Zeus along

For installation in his splendid shrine;

I, flying from the hubbub of the throng

That overflows her thoroughfares and streets,

And here but faintly touches and retreats,

In solitary meditation may

Discount at ease my summer holiday.

You to the city back, and take your fill

Of festival, and all that with the time’s,

And your own youth’s, triumphant temper chimes;

Leaving me here alone to mine; until

Yon golden idol reaching overhead,

Dragg’d from his height, and bleeding out his fires

Along the threshold of the west, expires,

And drops into the sea’s sepulchral lead.

Eusebio. Nay, sir, think once again, and go with us,

Or, if you will, without us; only, go;

Lest Antioch herself as well as we

Cry out upon a maim’d solemnity.

Julian. Oh, how I wish I had not brought the books,

Which you have ever at command—indeed,

Without them, all within them carry—here—

Garner’d—aloft—

Euseb. In truth, if stay you will,

I scarcely care to go myself.

Cipr. Nay, nay,

Good lads, good boys, all thanks, and all the more,

If you but leave it simply as I say.

You have been somewhat over-tax’d of late,

And want some holiday.

Julian. Well, sir, and you?

Cipr. Oh, I am of that tougher age and stuff

Whose relaxation is its work. Besides,

Think you the poor Professor needs no time

For solitary tillage of his brains,

Before such shrewd ingatherers as you

Come on him for their harvest unawares?

Away, away! and like good citizens

Help swell the general joy with two such faces

As such as mine would only help to cloud.

Euseb. Nay, sir—

Cipr. But I say, Yea, sir! and my scholars

By yea and nay as I would have them do.

Euseb. Well, then, farewell, sir.

Cipr. Farewell, both of you.

[Exeunt Eusebio and Julian.

Away with them, light heart and wingÈd heel,

Soon leaving drowsy Pallas and her dull

Professor out of sight, and out of mind.

And yet not so perhaps; and, were it so,

Why, better with the frolic herd forgetting

All in the youth and sunshine of the day

Than ruminating in the shade apart.

Well, each his way and humour; some to lie

Like Nature’s sickly children in her lap,

While all the stronger brethren are at play;

When ev’n the mighty Mother’s self would seem

Drest out in all her festival attire

In honour of the universal Sire

Whom Antioch as for her own to-day

Propitiates. Hark, the music!—Speed, good lads,

Or you will be too late. Ah, needless caution!

Ev’n now already half way down the hill,

Spurr’d by the very blood within their veins,

They catch up others, who catching from them

The fire they re-inflame, the flying troop

Consuming fast to distance in a cloud

Of dust themselves have kindled, whirls away

Where the shrill music blown above the walls

Tells of the solemn work begun within.

Why, ev’n the shrieking pipe that pierces here,

Shows me enough of all the long procession

Of white-robed priest and chanting chorister,

The milkwhite victim crown’d, and high aloft

The chariot of the nodding deity,

Whose brazen eyes that, as their sockets see,

Stare at his loyal votaries. Ah, me!—

Well, here too happier, if not wiser, those

Who, with the heart of unsuspicious youth,

Take up tradition from their fathers’ hands

To pass it on to others in their turn;

But leaving me behind them in the race

With less indeed than little appetite

For ceremonies, and to gods, like these,

That, let the rabble shout for as they please,

Another sort begin to shake their heads at,

And heaven to rumble with uneasily

As flinging out some antiquated gear.

So wide, since subtle Greece the pebble flung

Into the sleeping pool of superstition,

Its undulation spreads to other shores,

And saps at the foundation of our schools.

—Why, this last Roman, Caius Plinius—

Who drawing nature’s growth and history

Down to her root and first cause—What says he?—

Ev’n at the very threshold of his book

A definition laying, over which

The clumsy mimic idols of our shrines

Stumble and break to pieces—oh, here it is—

‘Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quÆrere,

Imbecillitatis humanÆ reor’—

‘All visible effigies of God

But types of human imbecility.’—

But what has Antioch to say to that,

Who at such cost of marble and of gold

Has built the very temple into which

She drags her tutelary Zeus to-day?—

Zeus veritable God, this effigy

Is none of him at all! But then, alas!

This same Quapropter follows a premiss

That elbows out Zeus with his effigy.

For—as I gather from his foreign word—

Wherever, or Whatever, Deity—

Si modo est alius—if distinct at all

From universal Nature—it must be

One all-informing, individual Whole,

All eye, all ear, all self, all sense, all soul—

Whereas this Zeus of ours, though Chief indeed—

Nay, because chief of other gods than he,

Comes from this Roman’s hand no God at all!—

This is a knotty question.

Lucifer (without). Nor while I

Tangle, for you, good doctor, to untie.

Cipr. What! The poor bird scarce settled on the bough,

Before the fowler after him! How now?

Who’s there?

Lucifer (entering habited as a Merchant). A stranger; therefore pardon him,

Who somehow parted from his company,

And lost in his own thoughts (a company

You know one cannot lose so easily)

Has lost his way to Antioch.

Cipr. Antioch!

Whose high white towers and temples ev’n from here

Challenge the sight, and scarce a random line

Traced by a wandering foot along the grass

But thither leads for centre.

Luc. The old story,

Of losing what one should have found on earth

By staring after something in the clouds—

Is it not so?

Cipr. To-day too, when so many

Are flocking thither to the festival,

Whose current might have told—and taken—you

The way you wish’d to go.

Luc. To say the truth,

My lagging here behind as much I think

From a distaste for that same festival

(Of which they told us as we came along)

As inadvertency—my way of life

Busied enough, if not too much, with men

To care for them in crowd on holidays,

When business stands, and neither they nor I

Gaping about can profit one another;

And therefore, by your leave—but only so—

I fain would linger in this quiet place

Till evening, under whose dusky cloak

I may creep unobserved to Antioch.

Cipr. (aside) Humane address, at least. And why should I

Grudge him the quiet I myself desire?—

(Aloud) Nay, this is public ground—for you, as me,

To use it at your pleasure.

Luc. Still with yours—

Whom by your sober suit and composed looks,

And by this still society of books,

I take to be a scholar—

Cipr. And if so?

Luc. Ill brooking idle company.

Cipr. Perhaps;

But that no wiser traveller need be—

And, if I judge of you as you of me,

Though with no book hung out for sign before,

Perchance a scholar too.

Luc. If so, more read

In men than books, as travellers are wont.

But, if myself but little of a bookman,

Addicted much to scholars’ company,

Of whom I meet with many on my travels,

And who, you know, themselves are living books.

Cipr. And you have travell’d much?

Luc. Ay, little else,

One may say, since I came into the world

Than going up and down it: visiting

As many men and cities as Ulysses,

From first his leaving Troy without her crown,

Along the charmÈd coasts he pass’d, with all

The Polyphemes and Circes in the way,

Right to the Pillars where his ship went down.

Nay, and yet further, where the dark Phoenician

Digs the pale metal which the sun scarce deigns

With a slant glance to ripen in earth’s veins:

Or back again so close beneath his own

Proper dominion, that the very mould

Beneath he kindles into proper gold,

And strikes a living Iris into stone.

Cipr. One place, however, where Ulysses was,

I think you have not been to—where he saw

Those he left dead upon the field of Troy

Come one by one to lap the bowl of blood

Set for them in the fields of Asphodel.

Luc. Humph!—as to that, a voyage which if all

Must take, less need to brag of; or perchance

Ulysses, or his poet, apt to err

About the people and their doings there—

But let the wonders in the world below

Be what they may; enough in that above

For any sober curiosity,

Without one’s diving down before one’s time:

Not only countries now as long ago

Known, till’d, inhabited, and civilized;

As Egypt, Greece, and Rome, with all their arts,

Trades, customs, polities, and history:

But deep in yet scarce navigated seas,

Countries uncouth, with their peculiar growths

Of vegetation or of life; where men

Are savage as the soil they never till;

Or never were, or were so long ago,

Their very story blotted from the page

Of earth they wrote it on; unless perchance

From riot-running nature’s overgrowth

Of swarming vegetation, peeps some scarce

Decypherable monument, which yet,

To those who find the key, perchance has told

Stories of men, more mighty men, of old,

Or of the gods themselves who walk’d the world

When with the dews of first creation wet.

Cipr. Oh knowledge from the fountain freshly drawn

Without the tedious go-between of books!

But with fresh soul and senses unimpair’d

What from the pale reflexion of report

We catch at second hand, and much beside

That in our solitary cells we miss.

Luc. Ay, truly we that travel see strange things,

Though said to tell of stranger; some of us,

Deceived ourselves, or seeking to deceive,

With prodigies and monsters which the world,

As wide and full of wonders as it is,

Never yet saw, I think, nor ever will:

Which yet your scholars use for clay and straw

Of which to build your mighty folios—

For instance, this same bulky Roman here,

Whose leaf you turn’d, I doubt impatiently,

When my intrusion rustled in the leaves—

Cipr. Hah! But how knew you—

Luc. Nay, if some stray words

Of old familiar Latin met my ear

As I stood hesitating.

Cipr. (holding up the book). This at least

You read then?

Luc. One might say before ’twas written.

Cipr. But how so?

Luc. Oh, this same sufficient Roman,

What is he but another of the many

Who having seen a little and heard more

That others pick’d as loosely up before,

Constructs his little bird’s-nest universe

Of shreds and particles of false and true

Cemented with some thin philosophy,

All filch’d from others, as from him to be

By the next pilfering philosopher,

Till blown away before the rising wind

Of true discovery, or dropt to nothing

After succeeding seasons of neglect.

Cipr. (aside) A strange man this—sharp wit and biting word.

(Aloud) Yet surely Man, after so many ages

Of patient observation of the world

He lives in, is entitled by the wit

Vouchsafed him by the Maker of the world

To draw into some comprehensive whole

The stray particulars.

Luc. Ay, and forsooth,

Not only the material world he lives in;

But, having of this undigested heap

Composed a World, must make its Maker too,

Of abstract attributes, of each of which

Still more unsure than of the palpable,

Forthwith he draws to some consistent One

The accumulated ignorance of each

In so compact a plausibility

As light to carry as it was to build.

Cipr. But, since (I know not how) you hit upon

The question I was trying when you came;

And, spite of your disclaiming scholarship,

Seem versed in that which occupies the best—

If Pliny blunder with his single God,

As in our twilight reason well he may,

Confess however that a Deity

Plural and self-discordant, as he says,

Is yet more like frail man’s imagination,

Who, for his own necessities and lusts,

Splits up and mangles the Divine idea

To pieces, as he wants a piece of each;

Not only gods for all the elements

Divided into land, and sea, and sky;

But gods of health, wealth, love, and fortune; nay,

Of war and murder, rape and robbery;

Men of their own worse nature making gods

To serve the very vices that suggest them,

Which yet upon their fellow-men they visit

(Else were an end of human polity)

With chain and fine and banishment and death.

So that unless man made such gods as these,

Then are these gods worse than the man they made.

And for the attributes, which though indeed

You gibe at us for canvassing, yourself

Must grant—as whether one or manifold,

Deity in its simplest definition

Must be at least eternal—

Luc. Well?—

Cipr. Yet those

Who stuff Olympus are so little that,

That Zeus himself, the sovereign of all,

Barely escaped devouring at his birth

By his own father, who anticipated

And found some such hard measure for himself;

And as for Zeus’ own progeny—some born

Of so much baser matter than his brain,

As from his eggs, which the all-mighty swan

Impregnated, and mortal Leda laid;

And whose two chicken-deities once hatcht

Now live and die on each alternate day.

Luc. Ay, but if much of this be allegory

In which the wisdom of antiquity

Veils the pure Deity from eyes profane—

Cipr. —Deity taking arms against itself

Under Troy walls, wounding and wounded—ay,

And, trailing heavenly ichor from their wounds,

So help’d by others from the field to one

Who knew the leech’s art themselves did not.

Luc. Softly—if not to swear to allegory,

Still less to all the poets sing of heaven,

High up Parnassus as they think to sit.

Cipr. But these same poets, therefore sacred call’d,

They are who these same allegories spin

Which time and fond tradition consecrate;

What might have been of the divine within

So overgrown with folly and with sin

As but a spark of God would such impure

Assimilation with himself abjure,

Which yet with all the nostril that he may

Zeus snuffs from Antioch’s sacrifice to-day.

Besides, beyond the reach of allegory

The gods themselves in their own oracles

Doubly themselves convict—

As when they urge two nations on to war,

By promising the victory to each;

Whereby on one side their omniscience

Suffers, as their all-goodness on the other.

Luc. What if such seeming contradictions aim

Where human understanding cannot reach?

But granting for the sake of argument,

And for that only, what you now premise;

What follows?

Cipr. Why, that if, as Pliny writes,

Deity by its very definition

Be one, eternal, absolute, all wise,

All good, omnipotent, all ear, all eyes,

Incapable of disintegration—

If this be Deity indeed—

Luc. Then what?

Cipr. Simply—that we in Antioch know him not.

Luc. Rash leap to necessary non-conclusion

From a premiss that quarrels with itself

More than the deity it would impugn;

For if one God eternal and all wise,

Omnipotent to do as to devise,

Whence this disorder and discordance in—

Not only this material universe,

That seems created only to be rack’d

By the rebellion of its elements,

In earthquake and tempestuous anarchy—

But also in the human microcosm

You say created to reflect it all?

For Deity, all goodness as all wise,

Why create man the thing of lust and lies

You say reflects himself in his false god?—

By modern oracle no more convicted

Of falsehood, than by that first oracle

Which first creation settled in man’s heart.

No, if you must define, premise, conclude,

Away with all the coward squeamishness

That dares not face the universe it questions;

Blinking the evil and antagonism

Into its very constitution breathed

By him who, but himself to quarrel with,

Quarrels as might the many with each other.

Or would you be yourself one with yourself,

Catch hold of such as Epicurus’ skirt,

Who, desperately confounded this confusion

Of matter, spirit, good and evil, yea,

Godhead itself, into a universe

That is created, roll’d along, and ruled,

By no more wise direction than blind Chance.

Trouble yourself no more with disquisition

That by sad, slow, and unprogressive steps

Of wasted soul and body lead to nothing:

And only sure of life’s short breathing-while,

And knowing that the gods who threaten us

With after-vengeance of the very crimes

They revel in themselves, are nothing more

Than the mere coinage of our proper brain

To cheat us of our scanty pleasure here

With terror of a harsh account hereafter;—

Eat, drink, be merry; crown yourselves with flowers

About as lasting as the heads they garland;

And snatching what you can of life’s poor feast,

When summon’d to depart, with no ill grace,

Like a too greedy guest, cling to the table

Whither the generations that succeed

Press forward famish’d for their turn to feed.

Nay, or before your time self-surfeited,

Wait not for nature’s signal to be gone,

But with the potion of the spotted weed,

That peradventure wild beside your door

For some such friendly purpose cheaply grows,

Anticipate too tardy nature’s call:

Ev’n as one last great Roman of them all

Dismiss’d himself betimes into the sum

Of universe; not nothing to become;

For that can never cease that was before;

But not that sad Lucretius any more.

Cipr. Oh, were it not that sometimes through the dark,

That walls us all about, a random ray

Breaks in to tell one of a better day

Beyond—

Enter Lelio and Floro, as about to fight.

Lelio. Enough—these branches that exclude the sun

Defy all other inquisition.

No need of further way.

Floro. Nor further word;

Draw, sir, at once—

Lelio. Nay, parry that yourself

Which waited not your summons to be drawn.

Cipr. Lelio, and Floro?

Floro. What, will the leaves blab?

Lelio. And with their arms arrest a just revenge?

Cipr. And well indeed may trees begin to talk,

When men as you go babbling.

Floro. Whoso speaks

And loves his life, hold back.

Lelio. I know the voice,

But dazzled with the darkness—Cipriano?

Cipr. Ay; Cipriano, sure enough; as you

Lelio and Floro.

Floro. Well, let that suffice,

And leave us as you find us.

Cipr. No, not yet—

Floro. Not yet!

Lelio. Good Cipriano—

Cipr. Till I know

How it has come to pass that two such friends,

Each of the noblest blood in Antioch,

Are here to shed it by each other’s hands.

Lelio. Sudden surprise, and old respect for you,

Suspend my sword a moment, Cipriano,

That else—

Floro. Stand back, stand back! You are a scholar,

And better versed in logic than the laws

Of honour; and perhaps have yet to learn

That when two noblemen have drawn the sword,

One only must return it to the sheath.

Lelio. ’Tis so indeed—once more, stand off.

Cipr. And once more

Back, both of you, say I; if of your lives

Regardless, not of mine, which thus, unarm’d,

I fling between your swords—

Lelio, I look to you—Floro, as ever

Somewhat hot-headed and thrasonical—

Or do you hold with him the scholar’s gown

Has smother’d all the native soldiery

That saucy so-call’d honour to itself

Alone mis-arrogates? You are deceived:

I am like you by birth a gentleman,

Under like obligation to the laws

Of that true honour, which my books indeed

May help distinguish from its counterfeit,

But, older as I am, have yet not chill’d

From catching fire at any just affront—

And let me tell you this too—those same books,

Ancient and modern, tell of many a hand

That, turning most assiduously the leaf,

When the time came, could wield as well the sword.

I am unarm’d: but you, with all your swords,

I say you shall not turn them on each other

Till you have told me what the quarrel is;

Which after hearing if I own for one

That honour may not settle with good word,

I pledge my own to leave it to the sword.

Now, Lelio!—

Lelio. One answer does for both:

He loves where I love.

Floro. No—I thus much more—

He dares to love where I had loved before;

Betrayed friendship adding to the score

Of upstart love.

Lelio. You hear him, Cipriano?

And after such a challenge—

Cipr. Yet a moment.

As there are kinds of honour, so of love—

And ladies—

Lelio. Cipriano, Cipriano!

One friend my foe for daring love where I,

Let not another, daring doubt that he

Honours himself in so dishonouring me—

Floro. Slanting your sharp divisions on a jewel

That if the sun turn’d all his beams upon

He could not find, or make, a flaw—

Cipr. Nor I then,

With far less searching scrutiny than Phoebus—

I am to understand then, such a fair

Jewel as either would in wedlock wear.

Floro. And rather die than let another dare.

Cipr. Enough, enough! of Lelio’s strange logic,

And Floro’s more intelligible rant,

And back to sober metaphor. Which of you

Has this fair jewel turn’d her light upon?

Floro (after a pause). Why, who would boast—

Lelio. Indeed, how could she be

The very pearl of chastity she is,

Turn’d she her glances either left or right?

Cipr. Which therefore each, as he obliquely steals,

Counts on as given him only—

Floro. To have done

With metaphor and logic, what you will,

So as we fall to work;

Or if you must have reason, this, I say,

Resolves itself to a short syllogism—

Whether she give or we presume upon—

If one of us devote himself to win her,

How dares another cross him?

Cipr. But if she

Not only turn to neither, but still worse,

Or better, turn from both?

Lelio. But love by long devotion may be won,

That only one should offer—

Floro. And that one

Who first—

Lelio. Who first!—

Cipr. And all this while, forsooth,

The lady, of whose purity one test

Is her unblemisht unpublicity,

Is made a target for the common tongue

Of Antioch to shoot reproaches at

For stirring up two noblemen to blood.

From which she only can escape, forsooth,

By choosing one of two she cares not for

At once; or else, to mend the matter, when

He comes to claim her by the other’s blood.

Lelio. At least she will not hate him, live or dead,

Who staked his life upon her love.

Cipr. Small good

To him who lost the stake; and he that won—

Will she begin to love whom not before

For laying unloved blood upon her door;

Or, if she ever loved at all, love more?

Is this fair logic, or of one who knows

No more of woman’s honour than of man’s?

Come, come, no more of beating round the bush.

You know how I have known and loved you both,

As brothers—say as sons—upon the score

Of some few years and some few books read more—

Though two such fiery fine young gentlemen,

Put up your swords and be good boys again,

Deferring to your ancient pedagogue;

If cold by time and studies, as you say,

Then fitter for a go-between in love,

And warm at least in loyalty to you.

These jewels—to take up the metaphor

Until you choose to drop it of yourselves,—

These jewels have their caskets, I suppose—

Kindred and circumstance, I mean—

Lelio. Oh such

As by their honourable poverty

Do more than doubly set their jewel off!

Cipr. Ev’n so? And may not one, who, you agree,

Proof-cold, against suspicion of the kind,

Be so far trusted, as, if not to see,

To hear, at least, of where, and how, enshrined?

Floro. I know not what to answer. How say you?

Lelio. Relying on your honour and tried love—

Justina, daughter of the old Lisandro.

Cipr. I know them; her if scarcely, yet how far

Your praises short of her perfections are;

Him better, by some little service done

That rid him of a greater difficulty,

And would again unlock his door to me—

—And who knows also, if you both agree,

Her now closed lips; if but a sigh between

May tell which way the maiden heart may lean?

Floro. Again, what say you, Lelio?

Lelio. I, for one,

Content with that decision.

Floro. Be it so.

Cipr. Why, after all, behold how luckily

You stumbled on this rock in honour’s road,

That serves instead for Cupid’s stepping-stone.

And when the knightly courage of you both

Was all at fault to hammer out the way,

Who knows but some duenna-doctor may?

And will—if but like reasonable men,

Not angry boys, you promise to keep sheathed

Your swords, while from her father or herself

I gather, from a single sigh perhaps,

To which, if either, unaware she turns;

Provided, if to one, the other yield;

But if to neither, both shall quit the field.

What say you both to this?

Lelio. Ay—I for one.

Floro. And I; provided on the instant done.

Cipr. No better time than now, when, as I think,

The city, with her solemn uproar busy,

Shuts her we have to do with close within.

But you must come along with me, for fear

Your hands go feeling for your swords again

If left together: and besides to know

The verdict soon as spoken.

Lelio. Let us go.

[Exeunt.

[Exit.

Scene II.—A room in Lisandro’s house.

Enter Lisandro, Justina, and Livia.

Justina. At length the day draws in.

Lisandro. And in with it

The impious acclamation that all day,

Block up our doors and windows as we may,

Insults our faith, and doubly threatens it.

Is all made fast, Justina?

Just. All shall be, sir,

When I have seen you safely to your rest.

Lis. You know how edict after edict aim’d

By Rome against the little band of Christ—

And at a time like this, the people drunk

With idol-ecstasy—

Just. Alas, alas!

Lis. Oh, gladly would I scatter these last drops

That now so scarcely creep along my veins,

And these thin locks that tremble o’er the grave,

In such a martyrdom as swept to heav’n

The holy Paul who planted, and all those

Who water’d here the true and only faith,

Were ’t not for thee, for fear of thee, Justina,

Drawing you down at once into my doom,

Or leaving you behind, alone, to hide

From insult and suspicion worse than death—

I dare not think of it. Make fast; keep close;

And then, God’s will be done! You know we lie

Under a double danger.

Just. How so, sir?

Lis. Aurelio and Fabio, both, you know,

So potent in the city, and but now

Arm’d with a freshly whetted sword of vengeance

Against the faith, but double-edged on us,

Should they but know, as know they must, their sons

Haunting the doors of this suspected house.

Just. Alas, alas!

That I should draw this danger on your head!

Which yet you know—

Lis. I know, I know—God knows,

My darling daughter; but that chaste reserve

Serves but to quicken beauty with a charm

They find not in the wanton Venus here:

Drawn as they are by those withdrawing eyes

Irradiate from a mother’s, into whose

The very eyes of the Redeemer look’d,

And whom I dare not haste to join in heav’n

At cost of leaving thee defenceless here.

Just. Sufficient for the day! And now the day

Is done. Come to your chamber—lean on me—

Livia and I will see that all is fast;

And, that all seen to, ere we sleep ourselves,

Come to your bedside for your blessing. Hark!

Knocking ev’n now! See to it, Livia.

(She leads out Lisandro, and returns.)

Oh, well I got my father to his chamber!

What is it?—

Livia. One would see your father, madam.

Just. At such an hour! He cannot, Livia;

You know, the poor old man is gone to rest—

Tell him—

Livia. If not your father, then yourself,

On matter that he says concerns you both.

Just. Me too!—Oh surely neither of the twain

We both so dread?

Livia. No, madam; rather, one

I think that neither need have cause to fear,—

Cipriano.

Just. Cipriano! The great scholar,

Who did my father service, as I think,

And now may mean another; and God knows

How much, or quickly, needed!

Livia. So he says.

Just. What shall I do! Will not to-morrow—

Cipriano (entering). Oh, lady,

You scarce can wonder more than I myself

At such a visit, and at such an hour,

Only let what I come to say excuse

The coming, and so much unmannerly.

Just. My father is withdrawn, sir, for the night,

Never more wanting rest; I dare not rouse him,

And least of all with any troubled news.

Will not to-morrow—

Cipr. What I have to say

Best told to-night, at once; and not the less

Since you alone, whom chiefly it concerns,

Are here to listen.

Just. I!—Well, sir, relying

On your grave reputation as a scholar,

And on your foregone favour to my father,

If I should dare to listen—

Cipr. And alone?

Just. Livia, leave us.

[Exit Livia.

Cipr. Oh, lady—oh, Justina—

(Thus stammers the ambassador of love

In presence of its sovereign)—

You must—cannot but—know how many eyes

Those eyes have wounded—

Just. Nay, sir,—

Cipr. Nay, but hear.

I do not come for idle compliment,

Nor on my own behalf; but in a cause

On which hang life and death as well as love.

Two of the noblest youths in Antioch,

Lelio and Floro—Nay, but hear me out:

Mine, and till now almost from birth each other’s

Inseparable friends, now deadly foes

For love of you—

Just. Oh, sir!

Cipr. I have but now

Parted their swords in mortal quarrel cross’d.

Just. Oh, that was well.

Cipr. I think, for several sakes—

Their own, their fathers’, even Antioch’s,

That would not lose one of so choice a pair;

And, I am sure you think so, lady, yours,

So less than covetous of public talk,

And least of all at such a fearful cost.

Just. Oh, for all sakes all thanks!

Cipr. Yet little due

For what so lightly done, and it may be

So insufficiently; this feud not stopt—

Suspended only, on a single word—

Which now at this unseasonable hour

I stand awaiting from the only lips

That can allay the quarrel they have raised.

Just. Alas, why force an answer from my lips

So long implied in silent disregard?

Cipr. Yet, without which, like two fierce dogs, but more

Exasperated by the holding back,

They will look for it in each other’s blood.

Just. And think, poor men, to find their answer there!

Oh, sir, you are the friend, the friend of both,

A famous scholar; with authority

And eloquence to press your friendship home.

Surely in words such as you have at will

You can persuade them, for all sakes—and yet

No matter mine perhaps—but, as you say,

Their fathers’, Antioch’s, their own—

Cipr. Alas!

I doubt you know not in your maiden calm

How fast all love and logic such as that

Burns stubble up before a flame like this.

Just. (aside). And none in heaven to help them!

Cipr. All I can

But one condition hardly wringing out

Of peace, till my impartial embassy

Have ask’d on their behalf, which of the twain—

How shall I least offend?—you least disdain.

Just. Disdain is not the word, sir; oh, no, no!

I know and honour both as noblemen

Of blood and station far above my own;

And of so suitable accomplishments.

Oh, there are many twice as fair as I,

And of their own conditions, who, with half

My wooing, long ere this had worn the wreath

Tied with a father’s blessing, and all Antioch

To follow them with HymenÆal home.

Cipr. But if these fiery men, do what one will,

Will look no way but this?—

Just. Oh, but they will;

Divert their eyes awhile, a little while,

Their hearts will follow; such a sudden passion

Can but have struck a shallow root—perhaps

Ere this had perish’d, had not rival pride

Between them blown it to this foolish height.

Cipr. Disdain is not the word then. Well, to seek,

What still as wide as ever from assent—

Could you but find it in your heart to feel

If but a hair’s-breadth less—say disesteem

For one than for another—

Just. No, no, no!

Even to save their lives I could not say

What is not—cannot—nay, and if it could

And I could say that was that is not—can not—

How should that hair’s-breadth less of hope to one

Weigh with the other to desist his suit,

Both furious as you tell me?

Cipr. And both are:

But ev’n that single hair thrown in by you

Will turn the scale that else the sword must do.

Just. But surely must it not suffice for both

That they who drew the sword in groundless hope

Sheathe it in sure despair? Despair! Good God!

For a poor creature like myself, despair!

That men with souls to which a word like that

Lengthens to infinite significance,

Should pin it on a wretched woman’s sleeve!

But as men talk—I mean, so far as I

Can make them, as they say, despair of that

Of which, even for this world’s happiness,

Despair is better hope of better things—

Will not my saying—and as solemnly

As what one best may vouch for; that so far

As any hope of my poor liking goes,

Despair indeed they must—why should not this

Allay their wrath, and let relapsing love

In his old channel all the clearer run

For this slight interjection in the current?

Why should it not be so?

Cipr. Alas, I know not:

For though as much they promised, yet I doubt

When each, however you reject him now,

Believes you might be won hereafter still,

Were not another to divide the field;

Each upon each charging the exigence

He will not see lies in himself alone,

Might draw the scarcely sheathÈd sword at once;

Or stifled hate under a hollow truce

Blaze out anew at some straw’s provocation,

And I perhaps not by to put it out.

Just. What can, what can be done then?

Cipr. Oh Justina,

Pardon this iteration. Think once more,

Before your answer with its consequence

Travels upon my lip to destiny.

I know you more than maiden-wise reserved

To other importunities of love

Than those which ev’n the pure for pure confess;

Yet no cold statue, which, however fair,

Could not inflame so fierce a passion; but

A breathing woman with a beating heart,

Already touch’d with pity, you confess,

For these devoted men you cannot love.

Well, then—I will not hint at such a bower

As honourable wedlock would entwine

About your father’s age and your own youth,

Which ev’n for him—and much less for yourself—

You would not purchase with an empty hand.

But yet, with no more of your heart within

Than what you now confess to—pity—pity,

For generous youth wearing itself away

In thankless adoration at your door,

Neglecting noble opportunities;

Turning all love but yours to deadly hate—

Sedate, and wise, and modestly resolved,

Can you be, lady, of yourself so sure—

(And surely they will argue your disdain

As apt to yield as their devotion)—

That, all beside so honourably faced,

You, who now look with pity, and perhaps

With gratitude, upon their blundering zeal,

May not be won to turn an eye less loath

On one of them, and blessing one, save both?

Just. Alas! I know it is impossible—

Not if they wasted all their youth in sighs,

And even slavish importunities,

I could but pity—pity all the more

That all the less what only they implore

To yield; so great a gulf between us lies.

Cipr. What—is the throne pre-occupied?

Just. If so,

By one that Antioch dreams little of.

But it grows late: and if we spoke till dawn,

I have no more to say.

Cipr. Nor more will hear?

Just. Alas, sir, to what purpose? When, all said,

Said too as you have said it—

And I have but the same hard answer still;

Unless to thank you once and once again,

And charge you with my thankless errand back,

But in such better terms,

As, if it cannot stop ill blood, at least

Shall stop blood-shedding ’tween these hapless men.

Cipr. And shall the poor ambassador who fail’d

In the behalf of those who sent him here,

Hereafter dare to tell you how he sped

In making peace between them?

Just. Oh, do but that,

And what poor human prayer can win from Heaven,

You shall not be the poorer. So, good-night!

[Exit.

Cipr. Good-night, good-night! Oh Lelio and Floro!

If ever friends well turn’d to deadly foes,

Wiser to fight than I to interpose.

[Exit.

Lucifer (passing from behind). The shaft has hit the mark; and by the care

Of hellish surgery shall fester there.

[Exit.

---

ACT II

Scene I.—The sea-shore; a storm raging.

Cipriano (cavalierly drest). Oh, mad, mad, mad ambition! to the skies

Lifting to drop me deep as Hades down!—

What! Cipriano—what the once so wise

Cipriano—quit his wonted exercise

Among the sober walks of old renown,

To fly at love—to swell the wind with sighs

Vainer than learning—doff the scholar’s gown

For cap and feather, and such airy guise

In which triumphant love is wont to go,

But wins less acceptation in her eyes—

The only eyes in which I cared to show—

My heart beneath the borrow’d feather bleeding—

Than in the sable suit of long ago,

When heart-whole for another’s passion pleading.

She loves not Floro—loves not Lelio,

Whose quarrel sets the city’s throat agape,

And turns her reputation to reproof

With altercation of some dusky shape

Haunting the twilight underneath her roof—

Which each believes the other:—and, for me,

The guilty one of the distracted three,

She closest veils herself, or waves aloof

In scorn; or in such self-abasement sweet

As sinks me deep and deeper at her feet,

Bids me return—return for very shame

Back to my proper studies and good name,

Nor waste a life on one who, let me pine

To death, will never but in death be mine.

Oh, she says well—Oh, heart of stone and ice

Unworthy of the single sacrifice

Of one true heart’s devotion! Oh divine

Creature, whom all the glory and the worth

That ever ravaged or redeem’d the earth

Were scanty worship offer’d at your shrine!

Oh Cipriano, master-fool of all

The fools that unto thee for wisdom call;

Of supercilious Pallas first the mock,

And now blind Cupid’s scorn, and laughing-stock;

Who in fantastic arrogance at odds

With the Pantheon of your people’s gods

Ransack’d the heavens for one more pure and whole

To fill the empty temple of the soul,

Now caught by retribution in the mesh

Of one poor piece of perishable flesh—

What baser demon of the pit would buy

With all your ruin’d aspirations?

Lucifer (within). I!—

Cipr. What! The very winds and waters

Hear, and answer to the cry

She is deaf to!—Better thrown

On distracted nature’s bosom

With some passion like my own

Torn and tortured: where the sun

In the elemental riot

Ere his daily reign half done,

Leaves half-quencht the tempest-drencht

Welkin scowling on the howling

Wilderness of waves that under

Slash of whirlwind, spur of lightning,

Roar of thunder, black’ning, whitening,

Fling them foaming on the shore—

Let confusion reign and roar!—

Lightnings, for your target take me!

Waves, upon the sharp rock break me,

Or into your monstrous hollow

Back regurgitating hurl;

Let the mad tornado whirl me

To the furthest airy circle

Dissipated of the sky,

Or the gaping earth down-swallow

To the centre!—

Lucifer (entering). By-and-bye.

Cipr. Hark again! and in her monstrous

Labour, with a human cry

Nature yearning—what portentous

Glomeration of the storm

Darkly cast in human form,

Has she bolted!—

Luc. As among

Flashes of the lightning flung

Beside you, in its thunder now

Aptly listen’d—

Cipr. What art thou?

Luc. One of a realm, though dimly in your charts

Discern’d, so vast that as from out of it

As from a fountain all the nations flow,

Back they shall ebb again; and sway’d by One

Who, without Oriental over-boast,

Because from him all kings their crowns derive,

Is rightfully saluted King of kings,

Whose reign is as his kingdom infinite,

Whose throne is heaven, and earth his footstool, and

Sun, moon, and stars his diadem and crown.

Who at the first disposal of his kingdom

And distribution into sea and land—

Me, who for splendour of my birth and grand

Capacities above my fellows shone,

Star of the Morning, Lucifer, alone—

Me he made captain of the host who stand

Clad as the morning star about his throne.

Enough for all ambition but my own;

Who discontented with the all but all

Of chiefest subject of Omnipotence

Rebell’d against my Maker; insolence

Avenged as soon as done on me and all

Who bolster’d up rebellion, by a fall

Far as from heaven to Hades. Madness, I know;

But worse than madness whining to repent

Under a rod that never will relent.

Therefore about the land and sea I go

Arm’d with the very instrument of hate

That blasted me: lightnings anticipate

My coming, and the thunder rolls behind;

Thus charter’d to enlarge among mankind,

And to recruit from human discontent

My ranks in spirit, not in number, spent.

Of whom, in spite of this brave gaberdine,

I recognize thee one: thee, by the line

Scarr’d on thy brow, though not so deep as mine;

Thee by the hollow circles of those eyes

Where the volcano smoulders but not dies:

Whose fiery torrent running down has scarr’d

The cheek that time had not so deeply marr’d.

Do not I read thee rightly?

Cipr. But too well;

However come to read me—

Luc. By the light

Of my own darkness reading yours—how deep!

But not, as mine is, irretrievable:

Who from the fulness of my own perdition

Would, as I may, revenge myself on him

By turning to fruition your despair—

What if I make you master at a blow,

Not only of the easy woman’s heart

You now despair of as impregnable,

And waiting but my word to let you in,

But lord of nature’s secret, and the lore

That shall not only with the knowledge, but

Possess you with the very power of him

You sought so far and vainly for before:

So far All-eyes, All-wise, Omnipotent—

If not to fashion, able yet to shake

That which the other took such pains to make—

As in the hubbub round us; I who blurr’d

The spotless page of nature at a word

With darkness and confusion, will anon

Clear it, to write another marvel on.—

By the word of power that binds

And loosens; by the word that finds

Nature’s heart through all her rinds,

Hearken, waters, fires, and winds;

Having had your roar, once more

Down with you, or get you gone.

Cipr. With the clatter and confusion

Of the universe about me

Reeling—all within, without me,—

Dizzy, dazzled—if delusion,

Waking, dreaming, seeing, seeming—

Which I know not—only, lo!

Like some mighty madden’d beast

Bellowing in full career

Of fury, by a sudden blow

Stunn’d, and in a moment stopt

All the roar, or into slow

Death-ward-drawing murmur, leaving

Scarce the fallen carcase heaving,

With the fallen carcase dropt.—

Behold! the word scarce fallen from his lips,

Swift almost as a human smile may chase

A frown from some conciliated face,

The world to concord from confusion slips:

The winds that blew the battle up dead slain,

Or with their tatter’d standards swept amain

From heaven; the billows of the erected deep

Roll’d with their crests into the foaming plain;

While the scared earth begins abroad to peep

And smooth her ruffled locks, as from a rent

In the black centre of the firmament,

Revenging his unnatural eclipse,

The Lord of heaven from its ulterior blue

That widens round him as he pierces through

The folded darkness, from his sovereign height

Slays with a smile the dragon-gloom of night.

Luc. All you have heard and witness’d hitherto

But a foretaste to quicken appetite

For that substantial after-feast of power

That I shall set you down to take your fill of:

When not the fleeting elements alone

Of wind, and fire, and water, floating wrack,

But this same solid frame of earth and stone,

Yea, with the mountain loaded on her back,

Reluctantly, shall answer to your spell

From a more adamantine heart stone-cold

Than her’s you curse for inaccessible.

What, you would prove it? Let the mountain there

Step out for witness. Listen, and behold.

Monster upshot of upheaving[11]

Earth, by fire and flood conceiving;

Shapeless ark of refuge, whither,

When came deluge creeping round,

Man retreated—to be drown’d—

Now your granite anchor, fast

In creation’s centre, cast,

Come with all your tackle cleaving

Down before the magic blast—

Cipr. And the unwieldy vessel, lo!

Rib and deck of rock, and shroud

Of pine, top-gallanted with cloud,

All her forest-canvas squaring,

Down the undulating woodland

As she flounders to and fro

All before her tearing, bearing

Down upon us—

Luc. Anchor, ho!—

Behold the ship in port! And what if freighted

With but one jewel, worthy welcome more

Than ever full-fraught Argosy awaited,

At last descried by desperate eyes ashore;

From the first moment of her topsail showing

Like a thin cobweb spun ’twixt sea and sky;

Then momently before a full wind blowing

Into her full proportions, till athwart

The seas that bound beneath her, by and bye

She sweeps full sail into the cheering port—

Strangest bark that ever plied

In despite of wind and tide,

At the captain’s magic summons

Down your granite ribs divide,

And show the jewel hid inside.

Cipr. Justina!—

Luc. Soft! The leap that looks so easy

Yet needs a longer stride than you can master.

Cipr. Oh divine apparition, that I fain

Would all my life as in Elysium lose

Only by gazing after; and thus soon

As rolling cloud across the long’d-for moon,

The impitiable rocks enclose again!—

But was it she indeed?

Luc. She that shall be,

And yours, by means that, bringing her to you,

Possess you of all nature, which in vain

You sigh’d for ere for nature’s masterpiece.

And thus much, as I told you, only sent

As foretaste of that great accomplishment,

Which if you will but try for, you can reach

By means which, if I practise, I can teach.

Cipr. And at what cost?

Luc. You that have flung so many years away

In learning and in love that came to nothing,

Think not to win the harvest in a day!

The God you search for works, you know, by means

(That your philosophers call second cause),

And we by means must underwork him—

Cipr. Well!—

Luc. To comprehend, and, after, to constrain

Whose mysteries you will not count as vain

A year in this same mountain lock’d with me?—

Cipr. Where she is?—

Luc. As I told you, where shall be

At least this mountain after a short labour

Has brought forth something better than a mouse;

And what then after a whole year’s gestation

Accomplish under our joint midwifery,

Under a bond by which you bind you mine

In fewer and no redder drops than needs

The leech of land or water when he bleeds?

Let us about—but first upon his base

The mountain we must study in replace,

That else might puzzle your geography.

Come, take your stand upon the deck with me,

Till with her precious cargo safe inside,

And all her forest-colours flying wide,

The mighty vessel put again to sea—

What, are you ready?—Wondrous smack,

As without a turn or tack

Hither come, so thither back,

And let subside the ruffled deep

Of earth to her primÆval sleep.—

How steadily her course the good ship trims,

While Antioch far into the distance swims,

With all her follies bubbling in the wake;

Her scholars that more hum than honey make:

Muses so chaste as never of their kind

Would breed, and Cupid deaf as well as blind:

For Cipriano, wearied with the toil

Of so long working on a thankless soil,

At last embarking upon magic seas

In a more wondrous Argo than of old,

Sets sails with me for such Hesperides

As glow with more than dragon-guarded gold.

[Exeunt.

---

ACT III

Scene I.—Before the mountain. Cipriano.

Cipriano. Now that at last in his eternal round

Hyperion, after skirting either pole,

Of his own race has set the flaming goal

In heaven of my probation under-ground:

Up from the mighty Titan with his feet

Touching the centre, and his forest-hair

Entangling with the stars; whose middle womb

Of two self-buried lives has been the tomb;

At last, my year’s apprenticeship complete,

I rise to try my cunning, and as one

Arm’d in the dark who challenges the sun.

You heavens, for me your azure brows with cloud

Contract, or to your inmost depth unshroud:

Thou sapphire-floating counterpart below,

Obsequious of my moon-like magic flow:

For me you mountains fall, you valleys rise,

With all your brooks and fountains far withdrawn;

You forests shudder underneath my sighs;

And whatsoever breathes in earth and skies;

You birds that on the bough salute the dawn;

And you wild creatures that through wood and glen

Do fly the hunter, or the hunter flies;

Yea, man himself, most terrible to men;

Troop to my word, about my footstep fawn;

Yea, ev’n you spirits that by viewless springs

Move and perplex the tangled web of things,

Wherever in the darkest crypt you lurk

Of nature, nature to my purpose work;

That not the dead material element,

But complicated with the life beyond

Up to pure spirit, shall my charm resent,

And take the motion of my magic wand;

And, once more shaken on her ancient throne,

In me old nature a new master own.

Lucifer. But how is this, Cipriano, that misled

By hasty passion you affront the day

Ere master of the art of darkness?

Cipr. Nay,

By that same blazing witness overhead

Standing in heaven to mark the time foretold,

Since first imprison’d in this mountain-hold

My magic so preluded with the dread

Preliminary kingdom of the dead,

That not alone the womb of general earth

Which Death has crowded thick with second birth,

But monuments with marble lips composed

To dream till doomsday, suddenly disclosed,

And woke their sleepers centuries too soon

To stare upon the old remember’d moon.

Wearied of darkness, I will see the day:

Sick of the dead, the living will assay:

And if the ghastly year I have gone through

Bear half its promised harvest, will requite

With a too warm good-morrow the long night

That one cold living heart consign’d me to.

Luc. Justina!

Cipr. Ay, Justina: now no more

Obsequiously sighing at the door

That never open’d, nor the heart of stone

On which so long I vainly broke my own;

But of her soul and body, when and how

I will, I claim the forfeit here and now.

Luc. Enough: the hour is come; do thou design

The earth with circle, pentagram, and trine,

The wandering airs with incantation twine;

While through her sleep-enchanted sense I shake

The virgin constancy I cannot break.

(Clouds roll before the mountain, hiding Cipriano.)

(The clouds roll away, and discover Justina asleep in her chamber.)

Enter Livia.

[Exeunt.

Scene II.—Entrance to the mountain cavern.

Cipriano, in a magician’s dress, with wand, etc.

Enter slowly a veiled Figure of Justina.

The Figure (unveiling a skull and vanishing as it speaks).

(He catches up his wand.)

[Exeunt.

Scene III.—The Hall of Justice in Antioch.

Aurelio, Fabio, Senators, etc., just risen from Council.

[Exit Fabio.

Re-enter Fabio with Lelio and Floro.

Enter Cipriano.

(He falls senseless to the ground.)

[Exeunt. Then Justina is brought in by soldiers, and left alone.

(Here the play may finish: but for any one who would follow Calderon to the end,—

Enter Fabio with Guard, who lead away Cipriano and Justina. Manent Eusebio, Julian, and Citizens.)

(The wall at the back falls in, and discovers a scaffold with Cipriano and Justina dead, and Lucifer above them.)

HÚndese.