Charles Di Tocca: A Tragedy

Enter Bardas deprecatingly, followed by Antonio

Bardas: Antonio! not in the sea? You live?

Antonio: I say, where is she?

Bardas: You are mortal?

Antonio (groaning with impatience): O
This utter superstition! (Pricking his arm.) Is it not blood?

Bardas: You live! and live? but let her think your death!
You let her! still devising for yourself
Safety and preservation!

Antonio: She's not safe?

Bardas: O, safe – if she had shrift!

Charles (hoarsely): The dead are so!

Bardas: Ay, so.

Antonio: And none above the grave? – no answer?

Bardas: She came unto the cliff amid her tears —
Her being all into one want was fused,
You down the wave to follow.

Antonio: But you grasped – ?
You held her?

Bardas: Yes —

Antonio: Then – well?

Bardas: She had a phial.

Antonio: God! God!

Bardas: Out of her breast she drew it swift,
And instant of it drank.

Antonio: Drank? and she fell?
No? – no? – Ah but you dashed it from her lips?
She did but taste? —

Bardas: Only: and then —

Antonio: More? more?

Bardas: "Is 't not enough," she pled to me, "Enough
That I must wander the cold way of death
Unto his arms? Go hence! There is no rest.
I will go down and clasp him, drift with him
To some unhabited gray ocean vale
God hath forgot. There will we dwell away
From destiny and weeping, from despair!"

Charles: You left her?

Bardas: As I held her piteous hand
Came revellers who saw us – jested her
Of taking a new love. She broke my grasp —

Antonio: And leapt? – down the wide air?

Bardas: Swifter than all
Prevention.

Antonio: Helena! O Helena!
That all thy loveliness should fare to this,
Thy glory go in dark calamity!

Bardas: I saw her as she leapt and until death
Shall see no more.

Antonio (drawing): Blot it from you! Her face,
Her sorrow and her fairness shall not stand
Imprisoned in your eye, tho' 'twere to cry
Relentlessly your crime. – But no – but no!

(Sheathing his sword, he pauses, then staggers suddenly out.)

Paula: Let me go to my lady!

Charles: Still her! She
Forever hath a fluttering, a cry,
Undurably. It presses the lone air
With sensitive and aching agony.

Paula (witlessly, in tears): I know thy song, my lady, I know, I know!
'Twas pretty and 'twas strange, but now I know.

(Sings.) Sappho! Sappho!
In maiden woe
(Let alone love, it spurns and burns!)
Wept – wept, and leapt —
O love is so!