Swore I would die for love, and did not die,
Wrote love bad verses; ay, and sung them badly,
Like all true lovers: Oh, I have done the tricks!
I know the partings and the chamberings;
We are all animals at best, and love
Is merely passion with a holy name.
GUIDO
Now then I know you have not loved at all.
Love is the sacrament of life; it sets
Virtue where virtue was not; cleanses men
Of all the vile pollutions of this world;
It is the fire which purges gold from dross,
It is the fan which winnows wheat from chaff,
It is the spring which in some wintry soil
Makes innocence to blossom like a rose.
The days are over when God walked with men,
But Love, which is his image, holds his place.
When a man loves a woman, then he knows
God’s secret, and the secret of the world.
There is no house so lowly or so mean,
Which, if their hearts be pure who live in it,
Love will not enter; but if bloody murder
Knock at the Palace gate and is let in,
Love like a wounded thing creeps out and dies.
This is the punishment God sets on sin.
The wicked cannot love.
[A groan comes from the DUKE’s chamber.]
Ah! What is that?
Do you not hear? ‘Twas nothing.
So I think
That it is woman’s mission by their love
To save the souls of men: and loving her,
My Lady, my white Beatrice, I begin
To see a nobler and a holier vengeance
In letting this man live, than doth reside
In bloody deeds o’ night, stabs in the dark,
And young hands clutching at a palsied throat.
It was, I think, for love’s sake that Lord Christ,
Who was indeed himself incarnate Love,
Bade every man forgive his enemy.
MORANZONE
[sneeringly]
That was in Palestine, not Padua;
And said for saints: I have to do with men.
GUIDO
It was for all time said.
MORANZONE
And your white Duchess,
What will she do to thank you?
GUIDO
Alas, I will not see her face again.
‘Tis but twelve hours since I parted from her,
So suddenly, and with such violent passion,
That she has shut her heart against me now:
No, I will never see her.
MORANZONE
What will you do?
GUIDO
After that I have laid the dagger there,
Get hence tonight from Padua.
MORANZONE
And then?
GUIDO
I will take service with the Doge at Venice,
And bid him pack me straightway to the wars,
And there I will, being now sick of life,
Throw that poor life against some desperate spear.
[A groan from the DUKE’S chamber again.]
Did you not hear a voice?
MORANZONE
I always hear,
From the dim confines of some sepulchre,
A voice that cries for vengeance. We waste time,
It will be morning soon; are you resolved
You will not kill the Duke?
GUIDO
I am resolved.
MORANZONE
O wretched father, lying unavenged.
GUIDO
More wretched, were thy son a murderer.
MORANZONE
Why, what is life?
GUIDO
I do not know, my lord,
I did not give it, and I dare not take it.
MORANZONE
I do not thank God often; but I think
I thank him now that I have got no son!
And you, what bastard blood flows in your veins
That when you have your enemy in your grasp
You let him go! I would that I had left you
With the dull hinds that reared you.
GUIDO
Better perhaps
That you had done so! May be better still
I’d not been born to this distressful world.
MORANZONE
Farewell!
GUIDO
Farewell! Some day, Lord Moranzone,
You will understand my vengeance.
MORANZONE
Never, boy.
[Gets out of window and exit by rope ladder.]
GUIDO
Father, I think thou knowest my resolve,
And with this nobler vengeance art content.
Father, I think in letting this man live
That I am doing what thou wouldst have done.
Father, I know not if a human voice
Can pierce the iron gateway of the dead,
Or if the dead are set in ignorance
Of what we do, or do not, for their sakes.
And yet I feel a presence in the air,
There is a shadow standing at my side,
And ghostly kisses seem to touch my lips,
And leave them holier. [Kneels down.]
O father, if ‘tis thou,
Canst thou not burst through the decrees of death,
And if corporeal semblance show thyself,
That I may touch thy hand!
No, there is nothing. [Rises.]
‘Tis the night that cheats us with its phantoms,
And, like a puppet-master, makes us think
That things are real which are not. It grows late.
Now must I to my business.
[Pulls out a letter from his doublet and reads it.]
When he wakes,
And sees this letter, and the dagger with