English

Moonlight — A Terrace in the Garden of the Palace — Rizzio discovered playing on his harp, and singing — The Queen behind listening.

SONG .

Thou warbling lyre! to thee alone,
My trembling spirit dares to own
Its deep, soul-seated illness;
For the cold world would scorn my grief,
And friends would vainly seek relief,
And foes would chide my wild hopes down,
And she, for whom it bleeds, would frown
My heart to marble stillness.

The same as Scene the first.

Enter E LVIRA .

He parted strangely from me. His black brow
Lower'd like the gathering tempest; and his eye,
In hate or scorn averted, would not deign
One passing glance on me. Can he prove false?
Can all my dark forebodings come to pass?
Yet wherefore should I doubt him? wherefore write
Thus painfully on memory's tablet one
Cold act of grief or haste, while all his love,
All his kind words, and all his generous deeds,
I bury in oblivion. But, alas!

Another Apartment in the same.

MATILDA sola .

His heart is spell-bound. This pale girl has woven
Her fascinations round it, till it beats
For her, and her alone. Her hand shall moulder
In the cold grave ere it shall wed with Julio's.
Shall the last scion of that stately tree,
Whose top-branch dallied with the winds which ne'er
Blew on the world below, bow its proud head
To the base dust beneath it? Shall disdain
Point its lean finger at Savona's sons?

SCENE I.

An Apartment in Elvira's House.

Enter E LVIRA and A SPATIA .

Elv. Here at this casement let us sit, and wile
The hours away till Julio comes. How sweetly
Through the green vale the tranquil stream is gliding,
While the pale stars are studding it with gems
Immaculate, and silence reigns unbroken,
Save by the soft toned rippling of the waves,
And that low night-wind, which, scarce audible,
Rises and softly dies away, as 'twere

THE FIRST FYTTE

Merry it was in green forest,
Among the leaves green,
Where that men walk both east and west
With bows and arrows keen,
To raise the deer out of their den,
Such sights as hath oft been seen;
As by three yeomen of the North Countrey:
By them is as I mean.

The one of them hight Adam Bell,
The other Clym of the Clough,
The third was William of Cloudeslie,
An archer good enough.
They were outlawed for venison,
These three yeomen every one;

FOR ANOTHER'S SAKE .

Sweet , sweet? My child, some sweeter word than sweet,
Some lovelier word than love, I want for you.
Who says the world is bitter, while your feet
Are left among the lilies and the dew?

. . . . Ah? So some other has, this night, to fold
Such hands as his, and drop some precious head
From off her breast as full of baby-gold?
I, for her grief, will not be comforted.

SEPTEMBER .

Send back these lonesome lights to Fairyland,
Whose winged glimmer of gold lured childish feet,
Borrowed (with bud and bird), you understand,
To keep while moons were warm and dews were sweet,

Hush, — we may have them for a little yet
Before the weird leaf-gathering frost creeps on.
Ah, loveliest time! — wherein we may regret
The fair things going, not the sweet things gone.

ETIQUETTE

I N some old Spanish court there chanced to be
No one whose office was to save the king
From death by fire. The king himself? Not he; —
Could royal hands have done so mean a thing?

My boy, through life think how this king of Spain
(Whose name none knows — and so you'll not forget!)
Caught by his palace hearth-flames, not in vain
To ashes burned — for sake of Etiquette!

A LOOK INTO THE GRAVE .

I LOOK , through tears, into the dust to find
What manner of rest man's only rest may be.
The darkness rises up and smites me blind.
The darkness — is there nothing more to see?

Oh, after flood, and fire, and famine, and
The hollow watches we are made to keep
In our forced marches over sea and land —
I wish we had a sweeter place to sleep.

IN DOUBT .

Through dream and dusk a frightened whisper said:
" Lay down the world: the one you love is dead. "
In the near waters, without any cry
I sank, therefore — glad, oh so glad, to die!

Far on the shore, with sun, and dove, and dew,
And apple-flowers, I suddenly saw you.
Then — was it kind or cruel that the sea
Held back my hands, and kissed and clung to me?