Don Silva.-What am I but a miserable brand Lit by mysterious wrath? I lie cast down A blackened branch upon the desolate ground Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink No cup of purest water but will taste Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma. Fedalma.-Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees A light serene and strong on one sole path Which she will tread till death . . .

...

He trusted me, and I will keep his trust:
My life shall be its temple. I will plant
His sacred hope within the sanctuary
And die its priestess-though I die alone,
A hoary woman on the altar step,

Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good.
The deepest hunger of a faithful heart
Is faithfulness. Wish me nought else.

Calamity

Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes,
Till sin is hidden in woe. You-I-we two,

Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight,
Opened the sluices of that deep.

-0

Don Silva.

Dear! you share the woe

Nay, the worst dart of vengeance fell on you.

Fedalma.-Vengeance! she does but sweep us with

her skirts

She takes large space, and lies a baleful light

Revolving with long years-sees children's children, Blights them in their prime . . . Oh, if two lovers leaned

To breathe one air and spread a pestilence,

They would but lie two livid victims dead
Amid the city of the dying. We

With our poor petty lives have strangled one
That ages watch for vainly.

—0—

Oh, I am sick at heart. The eye of day,
The insistent summer sun, seems pitiless,
Shining in all the barren crevices

Of weary life, leaving no shade, no dark,
Where I may dream that hidden waters lie;
As pitiless as to some shipwrecked man,
Who, gazing from his narrow shoal of sand
On the wide unspecked round of blue and blue,
Sees that full light is errorless despair.

The insects' hum that slurs the silent dark

Startles, and seems to cheat me, as the tread

Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, And hears them never pause, but pass and die. Music sweeps by me as a messenger

Carrying a message that is not for me.

The very sameness of the hills and sky

Is obduracy, and the lingering hours

Wait round me dumbly, like superfluous slaves,
Of whom I want nought but the secret news
They are forbid to tell.

(To Silva.)—We may not make this world a paradise By walking it together hand in hand,

With eyes that meeting feed a double strength.

We must be only joined by pains divine

Of spirits blent in mutual memories.

Silva, our joy is dead.

We must walk

Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite
Is our resolve that we will each be true
To high allegiance, higher than our love.
Our dear young love-its breath was happiness!
But it had grown upon a larger life

Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled-
The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed;
For we shall carry each the pressure deep
Of the other's soul.

Silva.

Juan, cease thy song.

Our whimpering poesy and small-paced tunes
Have no more utterance than the cricket's chirp

For souls that carry heaven and hell within.

Juan.

True, my lord, I chirp

For lack of soul; some hungry poets chirp
For lack of bread. 'Twere wiser to sit down
And count the star-seed, till I fell asleep
With the cheap wine of pure stupidity.

-0

I'm a plucked peacock-even my voice and wit
Without a tail !—why, any fool detects

The absence of your tail, but twenty fools
May not detect the presence of your wit.

Hem! taken rightly, any single thing,
The Rabbis say, implies all other things.
A knotty task, though, the unravelling
Meum and Tuum from a saraband :
It needs a subtle logic, nay, perhaps
A good large property, to see the thread.

Our nimble souls

Can spin an insubstantial universe

Suiting our mood, and call it possible,
Sooner than see one grain with eye exact
And give strict record of it. Yet by chance
Our fancies may be truth and make us seers.
'Tis a rare teeming world, so harvest-full,
Even guessing ignorance may pluck some fruit.

Men who are sour at missing larger game
May wing a chattering sparrow for revenge.

There's more of odd than even in this world.
Else pretty sinners would not be let off
Sooner than ugly; for if honeycombs
Are to be got by stealing, they should go
Where life is bitterest on the tongue.

'Tis but a toilsome game

To bet upon that feather Policy,

And guess where after twice a hundred puffs
'Twill catch another feather crossing it :

Guess how the Pope will blow and how the king;
What force my lady's fan has; how a cough
Seizing the Padre's throat may raise a gust,
And how the queen may sigh the feather down.
Such catching at imaginary threads,

Such spinning twisted air, is not for me.

If I should want a game, I'll rather bet

On racing snails, two large, slow, lingering snailsNo spurring, equal weights-a chance sublime, Nothing to guess at, pure uncertainty.

・0

Your teaching orthodoxy with faggots may only

bring up a fashion of roasting.