The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 47

Such self-anatomy shall teach the will _110 Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done.

Into the depth of darkest purposes: So Cenci fell into the pit; even I, Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, _115 And made me shrink from what I cannot shun, Show a poor figure to my own esteem, To which I grow half reconciled. I'll do As little mischief as I can; that thought Shall fee the accuser conscience.

[AFTER A PAUSE.]

Now what harm _120 If Cenci should be murdered?--Yet, if murdered, Wherefore by me? And what if I could take The profit, yet omit the sin and peril In such an action? Of all earthly things I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words _125 And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives His daughter's dowry were a secret grave If a priest wins her.--Oh, fair Beatrice!

Would that I loved thee not, or loving thee, Could but despise danger and gold and all _130 That frowns between my wish and its effect.

Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape...

Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar, And follows me to the resort of men, And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams, _135 So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire; And if I strike my damp and dizzy head My hot palm scorches it: her very name, But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably _140 I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights Till weak imagination half possesses The self-created shadow. Yet much longer Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours: From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo _145 I must work out my own dear purposes.

I see, as from a tower, the end of all: Her father dead; her brother bound to me By a dark secret, surer than the grave; Her mother scared and unexpostulating _150 From the dread manner of her wish achieved; And she!--Once more take courage, my faint heart; What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?

I have such foresight as a.s.sures success: Some unbeheld divinity doth ever, _155 When dread events are near, stir up men's minds To black suggestions; and he prospers best, Not who becomes the instrument of ill, But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes Its empire and its prey of other hearts _160 Till it become his slave...as I will do.

[EXIT.]

END OF ACT 2.

ACT 3.

SCENE 3.1: AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE.

LUCRETIA, TO HER ENTER BEATRICE.

BEATRICE [SHE ENTERS STAGGERING AND SPEAKS WILDLY]: Reach me that handkerchief!--My brain is hurt; My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me...

I see but indistinctly...

LUCRETIA: My sweet child, You have no wound; 'tis only a cold dew That starts from your dear brow.--Alas! Alas! _5 What has befallen?

BEATRICE: How comes this hair undone?

Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, And yet I tied it fast.--Oh, horrible!

The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, _10 And standing calm and motionless, whilst I Slide giddily as the world reels...My G.o.d!

The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!

The sunshine on the floor is black! The air Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe _15 In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me...'tis substantial, heavy, thick, I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues My fingers and my limbs to one another, _20 And eats into my sinews, and dissolves My flesh to a pollution, poisoning The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!

My G.o.d! I never knew what the mad felt Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! _25 [MORE WILDLY.]

No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul Which would burst forth into the wandering air!

[A PAUSE.]

What hideous thought was that I had even now?

'Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here _30 O'er these dull eyes...upon this weary heart!

O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!

LUCRETIA: What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not: Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, But not its cause; suffering has dried away _35 The source from which it sprung...

BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]: Like Parricide...

Misery has killed its father: yet its father Never like mine...O, G.o.d! What thing am I?

LUCRETIA: My dearest child, what has your father done?

BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]: Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. _40 [ASIDE.]

She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me, It is a piteous office.

[TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.]

Do you know I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales From hall to hall by the entangled hair; _45 At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there, Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story So did I overact in my sick dreams, That I imagined...no, it cannot be! _50 Horrible things have been in this wide world, Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived Than ever there was found a heart to do.

But never fancy imaged such a deed _55 As...

[PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.]

Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemest...Mother!

LUCRETIA: Oh!

My sweet child, know you...

BEATRICE: Yet speak it not: For then if this be truth, that other too _60 Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, Linked with each lasting circ.u.mstance of life, Never to change, never to pa.s.s away.

Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace; Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. _65 I have talked some wild words, but will no more.

Mother, come near me: from this point of time, I am...

[HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.]

LUCRETIA: Alas! What has befallen thee, child?

What has thy father done?

BEATRICE: What have I done?

Am I not innocent? Is it my crime _70 That one with white hair, and imperious brow, Who tortured me from my forgotten years, As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be!--Oh, what am I?

What name, what place, what memory shall be mine? _75 What retrospects, outliving even despair?

LUCRETIA: He is a violent tyrant, surely, child: We know that death alone can make us free; His death or ours. But what can he have done Of deadlier outrage or worse injury? _80 Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me, Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine With one another.

BEATRICE: 'Tis the restless life Tortured within them. If I try to speak, _85 I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done; What, yet I know not...something which shall make The thing that I have suffered but a shadow In the dread lightning which avenges it; Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying _90 The consequence of what it cannot cure.

Some such thing is to be endured or done: When I know what, I shall be still and calm, And never anything will move me more.

But now!--O blood, which art my father's blood, _95 Circling through these contaminated veins, If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth, Could wash away the crime, and punishment By which I suffer...no, that cannot be!

Many might doubt there were a G.o.d above _100 Who sees and permits evil, and so die: That faith no agony shall obscure in me.

LUCRETIA: It must indeed have been some bitter wrong; Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child, Hide not in proud impenetrable grief _105 Thy sufferings from my fear.

BEATRICE: I hide them not.

What are the words which yon would have me speak?

I, who can feign no image in my mind Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up _110 In its own formless horror: of all words, That minister to mortal intercourse, Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell My misery: if another ever knew Aught like to it, she died as I will die, _115 And left it, as I must, without a name.

Death, Death! Our law and our religion call thee A punishment and a reward...Oh, which Have I deserved?

LUCRETIA: The peace of innocence; Till in your season you be called to heaven. _120 Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done No evil. Death must be the punishment Of crime, or the reward of trampling down The thorns which G.o.d has strewed upon the path Which leads to immortality.

BEATRICE: Ay, death... _125 The punishment of crime. I pray thee, G.o.d, Let me not be bewildered while I judge.

If I must live day after day, and keep These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit, As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest _130 May mock Thee, unavenged...it shall not be!

Self-murder...no, that might be no escape, For Thy decree yawns like a h.e.l.l between Our will and it:--O! In this mortal world There is no vindication and no law _135 Which can adjudge and execute the doom Of that through which I suffer.

[ENTER ORSINO.]

[SHE APPROACHES HIM SOLEMNLY.]

Welcome, Friend!

I have to tell you that, since last we met, I have endured a wrong so great and strange, That neither life nor death can give me rest. _140 Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.

NOTE: _140 nor edition 1821; or editions 1819, 1839 (1st).

ORSINO: And what is he who has thus injured you?

BEATRICE: The man they call my father: a dread name.

ORSINO: It cannot be...

BEATRICE: What it can be, or not, _145 Forbear to think. It is, and it has been; Advise me how it shall not be again.