The Marriage in Cana

Rise up, my love, my fair one,Rise up, and come away,For lo! the winter is past,The rain is over and gone,The flowers appear on the earth,The time of the singing of birds is come,And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

Sweetly the minstrels sing the Song of Songs!My heart runs forward with it, and I say:Oh set me as a seal upon thine heart,And set me as a seal upon thine arm;For love is strong as life, and strong as death,And cruel as the grave is jealousy!

I sleep, but my heart awaketh;'T is the voice of my belovedWho knocketh, saying: Open to me,My sister, my love, my dove,For my head is filled with dew,My locks with the drops of the night!

THE BRIDE.Ah yes, I sleep, and yet my heart awaketh.It is the voice of my beloved who knocks.

O beautiful as Rebecca at the fountain,O beautiful as Ruth among the sheaves!O fairest among women! O undefiled!Thou art all fair, my love, there's no spot in thee!

My beloved is white and ruddy,The chiefest among ten thousandHis locks are black as a raven,His eyes are the eyes of doves,Of doves by the rivers of water,His lips are like unto lilies,Dropping sweet-smelling myrrh.

Who is that youth with the dark azure eyes,And hair, in color like unto the wine,Parted upon his forehead, and behindFalling in flowing locks?

PARANYMPHUS.The NazareneWho preacheth to the poor in field and villageThe coming of God's Kingdom.

How sereneHis aspect is! manly yet womanly.

PARANYMPHUS.Most beautiful among the sons of men!Oft known to weep, but never known to laugh.

And tell me, she with eyes of olive tint,And skin as fair as wheat, and pale brown hair,The woman at his side?

PARANYMPHUS.His mother, Mary.

And the tall figure standing close behind them,Clad all in white, with lace and beard like ashes,As if he were Elias, the White Witness,Come from his cave on Carmel to foretellThe end of all things?

PARANYMPHUS.That is ManahemThe Essenian, he who dwells among the palmsNear the Dead Sea.

He who foretold to HerodHe should one day be King?

PARANYMPHUS.The same.

Then whyDoth he come here to sadden with his presenceOur marriage feast, belonging to a sectHaters of women, and that taste not wine?

My undefiled is but one,The only one of her mother,The choice of her that bare her;The daughters saw her and blessed her;The queens and the concubines praised her;Saying, Lo! who is thisThat looketh forth as the morning?

MANAHEM aside.The Ruler of the Feast is gazing at me,As if he asked, why is that old man hereAmong the revellers? And thou, the Anointed!Why art thou here? I see as in a visionA figure clothed in purple, crowned with thorns;I see a cross uplifted in the darkness,And hear a cry of agony, that shall echoForever and forever through the world!

Give us more wine. These goblets are all empty.

MARY to CHRISTUS.They have no wine!

CHRISTUS.O woman, what have ITo do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.

MARY to the servants.Whatever he shall say to you, that do.

CHRISTUS.Fill up these pots with water.

Come, my beloved,Let us go forth into the field,Let us lodge in the villages;Let us get up early to the vineyards,Let us see if the vine flourish,Whether the tender grape appear,And the pomegranates bud forth.

CHRISTUS.Draw out nowAnd bear unto the Ruler of the Feast.

MANAHEM aside.O thou, brought up among the Essenians,Nurtured in abstinence, taste not the wine!It is the poison of dragons from the vineyardsOf Sodom, and the taste of death is in it!

ARCHITRICLINUS to the BRIDEGROOM.All men set forth good wine at the beginning,And when men have well drunk, that which is worse;But thou hast kept the good wine until now.

The things that have been and shall be no more,The things that are, and that hereafter shall he,The things that might have been, and yet were not,The fading twilight of great joys departed,The daybreak of great truths as yet unrisen,The intuition and the expectationOf something, which, when come, is not the same,But only like its forecast in men's dreams,The longing, the delay, and the delight,Sweeter for the delay; youth, hope, love, death,And disappointment which is also death,All these make up the sum of human life;A dream within a dream, a wind at nightHowling across the desert in despair,Seeking for something lost it cannot find.Fate or foreseeing, or whatever nameMen call it, matters not; what is to beHath been fore-written in the thought divineFrom the beginning. None can hide from it,But it will find him out; nor run from it,But it o'ertaketh him! The Lord hath said it.

THE BRIDEGROOM to the BRIDE, on the balcony.When Abraham went with Sarah into Egypt,The land was all illumined with her beauty;But thou dost make the very night itselfBrighter than day! Behold, in glad procession,Crowding the threshold of the sky above us,The stars come forth to meet thee with their lamps;And the soft winds, the ambassadors of flowers,From neighboring gardens and from fields unseen,Come laden with odors unto thee, my Queen!

Awake, O north-wind,And come, thou wind of the South.Blow, blow upon my garden,That the spices thereof may flow out.