Authors: William Alexander Percy
(
They fasten the ladder to the parapet so that it drops to the road. Voices inside call “Open!
”)
G
UIDO
(
calls out
). I am the prisoner to be released.
Three minutes, friends, while I change raiment.…
David, Felice, take the old man down,
Ride north!
Five minutes’ start and you are safe.
Go, warn them that so soon must die.
D
AVID
. But you?
G
UIDO
(
taking
D
AVID
’s
broadsword
). I’ll hold them here.
F
ELICE
. Master —
G
UIDO
. Go, page of mine, Felice.
S
ERLE
. Thou child of God!
(D
AVID
falls on his knees and catches
G
UIDO
’s
hand, overcome
.)
G
UIDO
. Go, David, quickly, quickly — God-speed!
(F
ELICE
and
D
AVID
with difficulty help
S
ERLE
over the parapet and disappear
. G
UIDO
stands before the door, leaning on his sword
.)
How hatefully thou lovest me, God!
Voices within
. Open.
G
UIDO
. Another minute, friends!
(
Cries of “Open,” confused noise; they batter on the door, finally breaking it in
.)
G
UIDO
. Back, there, villains!
(G
UIDO
rushes in with the broadsword, forcing them into the passage-way. The sound of horses’ hoofs; it dies out
. G
UIDO
fights desperately; a guard rushes under his arm, stabs him. He staggers and falls. The guards enter, look around, think he is dead and go out. Enter
F
ELICE
over the edge of the parapet
.)
F
ELICE
. Master Master!
(
Finds
G
UIDO
and lifts him in his arms
.)
G
UIDO
. Thou, Felice? … Thou didst return to me?
F
ELICE
. I could not leave thee.
G
UIDO
. I’m glad.… And they have gone?
F
ELICE
. They’re safe.… But thou art wounded!
G
UIDO
. I’m glad we are alone. ’Tis almost like
Dying in Sicily.
F
ELICE
. Master, thou canst not die!
G
UIDO
. I should not die.
Death has mistook his quarry, and Jesus sleeps.
(
He sinks down
.)
F
ELICE
(
terrified
). I’ll fetch a priest.
G
UIDO
. Stay here.
I am beyond the laying on of hands.
My deeds were not. My aspirations lacked
Not beauty, but singleness of purpose.
And I have lived.
No priest can mend what’s broken here.
And for the rest …
Persephone or Mary will recall
That I on earth was young and beautiful.…
Help me up, page, where I may see the world.
(F
ELICE
supports him to the parapet
.)
I shall miss the iris skies and wet, clear stars
Of these our April evenings …
And thee, Felice …
Can any other world be half so lovely,
Or any other life so sweet?
This earthly ecstasy not yet half-lived,
This heady vintage of days and nights
Sipped only … Perhaps it is as well.…
When thou dost see Palermo, rising from the sea,
Felice, think of me.…
The bursting wave of life,
Breast it with twofold joy, remembering me.
F
ELICE
(
sobbing
). I am thy page. Ah, leave me not alone.
G
UIDO
. Hush, hush! But yet, forget me never.
Hold me — I cannot see — There, there —
I would that now I could find words of counsel
Which might protect thee always; but
I, too, am young and still untaught.
Yet treasure this:
Pray often, as you sing, unthinkingly;
’Twill Jesus please, and then, it sweetens one.
O littlest comrade of my heart,
Doubt not the world is good and mankind mostly noble.
That I have lived unstained
Hath profited me surely by the gift
Of deep delight. The lips of harlotry
Can never kiss the sun
With the light rapture that was ours.…
The rest I did not learn.
F
ELICE
. Why didst thou fight to save those men, Master?
G
UIDO
. Something about God — I can’t remember —
I
had
to fight—
Closer, Felice.… I’m sleepy.
Sing me that song we made
As we rode up from Sicily.
F
ELICE
. I cannot.
G
UIDO
. The little song …
F
ELICE
(
sings
).
Jesu,
If Thou wilt make
Thy peach trees bloom for me,
And fringe my bridle paths both sides
With tulips red and free,
If Thou wilt make Thy skies as blue
As ours in Sicily,
And wake the little leaves that sleep
On every bending tree,
I promise not to vexen Thee
That Thou shouldst make eternally
Heaven, my home.
But right contentedly —
Master! Master!
(
Guido dies
.)
Voice of the Madman
. Son of David, have mercy on us!
Now day,
Drawing his golden waters down the west,
Forsakes the loitering, low-bosomed moon.
Naked amid the unaccustomed stars
She stands, afraid, then down the shining ebb
Hastens to hide her girlish loveliness
From their too youthful wonder in the sea.
Along the sands where Ilium was proud
A crimson laurel bush, that draws, perhaps,
From Priam’s ancient buried house its blood,
Sprinkles with flame the unbeholding waste
In luxury of summer-hearted bliss.
Ah, better so its given years to burn
Unseen of maidens and young warriors
Than, plucked untimely, to have flushed an hour
The white of Helen’s bosom on a night
When Paris leaned across the lights and laughter
To drink her up with hot, unmanly eyes.
Its crimson, fading with the dawn, had been
Only a deathless tale in poets’ mouths.
To him the fate we bear was like a sea
That sweeps above the many ships that sailed,
And waits as home for all that sail again.
Bitter intolerably, and deep as death;
But shining, too, shining and full of spray,
In color stainèd lovelier than the sky,
Singing a requiem for them that die
Adventuring on its bounds, or, dauntless, sing
When roaring and inevitable wash
Heaves down the prows.… His heart was full of stars,
His prayers only to gods that deathlessly
Abide and dream no sin. And Syracuse
That builded on the sea, loved his name most.
Great mountain, swathed in blue with foamy crest
Of fire, majestic as the mighty sea,
Thy brother and immortal comrade close,
The stars except, sole comrade fitting, equal —
Only, perhaps, as dust upon the wind
Shall I behold again thy spreading might.
Yet no regret is mine. I have thee in
My soul, though lodgment base, where room the stars
And many a tide of vestal-footed ocean.
Nor waste I tears that now the Cyclops brood
Is dead, and never hoarse, heroic blast
Shall hurl again in white and purple yeast
Odysseus and the dark-eyed mariners.
Nor foe of gods nor friend thy splendor saw
Than now more dark, more high majestical.
Thy color of solemnity doth stain
The temporal and wayward thing I house.
But if, when I am sown upon the air,
Another, seeing thee against the sunken sun
In folds of wine-dark gauze and amethyst,
Should rise to exaltation more superb
Than mine, and praise with loftier flight of soul
Thy splendor that to-night is all my own —
That were regret! Lend me thy purple thought,
Eternal brooding vigilant, that I
May counsel with my soul to rival his.
Love and the lofty heart and tears — these three
Immortal are, and draw eternally
Deep from the young world’s loveliness their life.
The kiss, the prayer, the cry — the same to-day
As when the brute with noble pang distressed
Cleared the abysm and was man. Than these
Not surer come the stars, nor flooding up
The rainy slopes of spring dark violets.
More utterly than sunset cloud dissolved,
Soft Syracuse has passed. The bannered fleet
That flashed into her harbor scornfully
Left not a ghostly sail to haunt the blue.
And they that heard in Athens ere they came
Great Socrates, whose spoken word was like
The calm intoning of the lustral ocean,
Before they perished in their slavery,
Bequeathed not any dream for us to learn.
Nor shall we know the thought of those tall girls
That stood where now the yellow gorse stands high,
And in their golden, fluttering loveliness
Watched the young prisoners. Instead, remain
The bay, the bubble air, the secret dust,
These, and the mortal kinship that we own.
Kisses they whispered for I beg to-day.
Their eyes did never blur but I could guess.
And as their spirits stood, tall as the sword
Of one that guards the portal of a queen
And leans thereon in moonlight, mine hath stood.
I know their loves and wingèd hearts and tears,
And mine shall every man that lives know too;
And so the same, forever, to the close.
Perhaps some spring a thousand years from now
Two crowned ineffably with youth, their hearts
A-toss in wind-flower dance before the sun,
Loitering lover-wise across the fields
And empty places that I knew, may chance
Upon the rubble where I dream, and muse:
“Those old barbarians, dead so long ago,
Was life to them so fair, and did the sun
Shine honey-sweet into their open hearts?
Could they have ever dreamed such love as ours,
Or dared, O love, this slow, divinest kiss?”
Their words, I know, shall warm the flower roots
That were my heart. To them as now to me
May day be only blue; all moon the night;
And may enamored fate a little while
Hold back their portion due of tears and dark.
The archeress had gone;
A western hill across her path still bore
The magic of her recent footing there;
And upwards all the air was lustral pure.
The city slept, but far above shone bright
The city of the gods that never sleep.
I heard a bird at break of day
Sing from the autumn trees
A song so mystical and calm,
So full of certainties,
No man, I think, could listen long
Except upon his knees.
Yet this was but a simple bird
Alone, among dead trees.
Far, far from here the church bells ring,
As when I was a child,
And there is one I dearly love
Walks in the sunlight mild.
To church she goes, and with her once
I went, a little child.
The church bells ring far, far away,
The village streets are bright,
The sunlight falls in slanting bars
And fills the church with light.
And I remember when I knelt
Beside her, in delight.
There’s something lost, there’s something lost,
Some wisdom has beguiled!
My heart has flown a thousand miles
And in the sunlight mild
I kneel and weep beside her there
As she prays for her child.