Prologue at Ischia

VITTORIA.Will you then leave me, Julia, and so soon,To pace alone this terrace like a ghost?

JULIA.To-morrow, dearest.

VITTORIA.Do not say to-morrow.A whole month of to-morrows were too soon.You must not go. You are a part of me.

JULIA.I must return to Fondi.

VITTORIA.The old castleNeeds not your presence. No one waits for you.Stay one day longer with me. They who goFeel not the pain of parting; it is theyWho stay behind that suffer. I was thinkingBut yesterday how like and how unlikeHave been, and are, our destinies. Your husband,The good Vespasian, an old man, who seemedA father to you rather than a husband,Died in your arms; but mine, in all the flowerAnd promise of his youth, was taken from meAs by a rushing wind. The breath of battleBreathed on him, and I saw his face no more,Save as in dreams it haunts me. As our loveWas for these men, so is our sorrow for them.Yours a child's sorrow, smiling through its tears;But mine the grief of an impassioned woman,Who drank her life up in one draught of love.

JULIA.Behold this locket. This is the white hairOf my Vespasian. This is the flower-of-love,This amaranth, and beneath it the deviceNon moritura. Thus my heart remainsTrue to his memory; and the ancient castle,Where we have lived together, where he died,Is dear to me as Ischia is to you.

VITTORIA.I did not mean to chide you.

JULIA.Let your heartFind, if it can, some poor apologyFor one who is too young, and feels too keenlyThe joy of life, to give up all her daysTo sorrow for the dead. While I am trueTo the remembrance of the man I lovedAnd mourn for still, I do not make a showOf all the grief I feel, nor live secludedAnd, like Veronica da Gambara,Drape my whole house in mourning, and drive forthIn coach of sable drawn by sable horses,As if I were a corpse. Ah, one to-dayIs worth for me a thousand yesterdays.

VITTORIA.Dear Julia! Friendship has its jealousiesAs well as love. Who waits for you at Fondi?

JULIA.A friend of mine and yours; a friend and friar.You have at Naples your Fra Bernadino;And I at Fondi have my Fra Bastiano,The famous artist, who has come from RomeTo paint my portrait. That is not a sin.

VITTORIA.Only a vanity.

JULIA.He painted yours.

VITTORIA.Do not call up to me those days departedWhen I was young, and all was bright about me,And the vicissitudes of life were thingsBut to be read of in old histories,Though as pertaining unto me or mineImpossible. Ah, then I dreamed your dreams,And now, grown older, I look back and seeThey were illusions.

JULIA.Yet without illusionsWhat would our lives become, what we ourselves?Dreams or illusions, call them what you will,They lift us from the commonplace of lifeTo better things.

VITTORIA.Are there no brighter dreams,No higher aspirations, than the wishTo please and to be pleased?

JULIA.For you there are;I am no saint; I feel the world we live inComes before that which is to be here after,And must be dealt with first.

VITTORIA.But in what way?

JULIA.Let the soft wind that wafts to us the odorOf orange blossoms, let the laughing seaAnd the bright sunshine bathing all the world,Answer the question.

VITTORIA.And for whom is meantThis portrait that you speak of?

JULIA.For my friendThe Cardinal Ippolito.

VITTORIA.For him?

JULIAYes, for Ippolito the Magnificent.'T is always flattering to a woman's prideTo be admired by one whom all admire.

VITTORIA.Ah, Julia, she that makes herself a doveIs eaten by the hawk. Be on your guard,He is a Cardinal; and his adorationShould be elsewhere directed.

JULIA.You forgetThe horror of that night, when Barbarossa,The Moorish corsair, landed on our coastTo seize me for the Sultan Soliman;How in the dead of night, when all were sleeping,He scaled the castle wall; how I escaped,And in my night-dress, mounting a swift steed,Fled to the mountains, and took refuge thereAmong the brigands. Then of all my friendsThe Cardinal Ippolito was firstTo come with his retainers to my rescue.Could I refuse the only boon he askedAt such a time, my portrait?

VITTORIA.I have heardStrange stories of the splendors of his palace,And how, apparelled like a Spanish Prince,He rides through Rome with a long retinueOf Ethiopians and NumidiansAnd Turks and Tartars, in fantastic dresses,Making a gallant show. Is this the wayA Cardinal should live?

JULIA.He is so young;Hardly of age, or little more than that;Beautiful, generous, fond of arts and letters,A poet, a musician, and a scholar;Master of many languages, and a playerOn many instruments. In Rome, his palaceIs the asylum of all men distinguishedIn art or science, and all FlorentinesEscaping from the tyranny of his cousin,Duke Alessandro.

VITTORIA.I have seen his portrait,Painted by Titian. You have painted itIn brighter colors.

JULIA.And my Cardinal,At Itri, in the courtyard of his palace,Keeps a tame lion!

VITTORIA.And so counterfeitsSt. Mark, the Evangelist!

JULIA.Ah, your tame lionIs Michael Angelo.

VITTORIA.You speak a nameThat always thrills me with a noble sound,As of a trumpet! Michael Angelo!A lion all men fear and none can tame;A man that all men honor, and the modelThat all should follow; one who works and prays,For work is prayer, and consecrates his lifeTo the sublime ideal of his art,Till art and life are one; a man who holdsSuch place in all men's thoughts, that when they speakOf great things done, or to be done, his nameIs ever on their lips.

JULIA.You too can paintThe portrait of your hero, and in colorsBrighter than Titian's; I might warn you alsoAgainst the dangers that beset your path;But I forbear.

VITTORIA.If I were made of marble,Of Fior di Persico or Pavonazzo,He might admire me: being but flesh and blood,I am no more to him than other women;That is, am nothing.

JULIA.Does he ride through RomeUpon his little mule, as he was wont,With his slouched hat, and boots of Cordovan,As when I saw him last?

VITTORIA.Pray do not jest.I cannot couple with his noble nameA trivial word! Look, how the setting sunLights up Castel-a-mare and Sorrento,And changes Capri to a purple cloud!And there Vesuvius with its plume of smoke,And the great city stretched upon the shoreAs in a dream!

JULIA.Parthenope the Siren!

VITTORIA.And yon long line of lights, those sunlit windowsBlaze like the torches carried in processionTo do her honor! It is beautiful!

JULIA.I have no heart to feel the beauty of it!My feet are weary, pacing up and downThese level flags, and wearier still my thoughtsTreading the broken pavement of the Past,It is too sad. I will go in and rest,And make me ready for to-morrow's journey.

VITTORIA.I will go with you; for I would not loseOne hour of your dear presence. 'T is enoughOnly to be in the same room with you.I need not speak to you, nor hear you speak;If I but see you, I am satisfied.

MICHAEL ANGELO's Studio. He is at work on the cartoon of theLast Judgment.

Why did the Pope and his ten CardinalsCome here to lay this heavy task upon me?Were not the paintings on the Sistine ceilingEnough for them? They saw the Hebrew leaderWaiting, and clutching his tempestuous beard,But heeded not. The bones of JuliusShook in their sepulchre. I heard the sound;They only heard the sound of their own voices.

Are there no other artists here in RomeTo do this work, that they must needs seek me?Fra Bastian, my Era Bastian, might have done it;But he is lost to art. The Papal Seals,Like leaden weights upon a dead man's eyes,Press down his lids; and so the burden fallsOn Michael Angelo, Chief ArchitectAnd Painter of the Apostolic Palace.That is the title they cajole me with,To make me do their work and leave my own;But having once begun, I turn not back.Blow, ye bright angels, on your golden trumpetsTo the four corners of the earth, and wakeThe dead to judgment! Ye recording angels,Open your books and read? Ye dead awake!Rise from your graves, drowsy and drugged with death,As men who suddenly aroused from sleepLook round amazed, and know not where they are!

In happy hours, when the imaginationWakes like a wind at midnight, and the soulTrembles in all its leaves, it is a joyTo be uplifted on its wings, and listenTo the prophetic voices in the airThat call us onward. Then the work we doIs a delight, and the obedient handNever grows weary. But how different is itEn the disconsolate, discouraged hours,When all the wisdom of the world appearsAs trivial as the gossip of a nurseIn a sick-room, and all our work seems useless,

What is it guides my hand, what thoughts possess me,That I have drawn her face among the angels,Where she will be hereafter? O sweet dreams,That through the vacant chambers of my heartWalk in the silence, as familiar phantomsFrequent an ancient house, what will ye with me?'T is said that Emperors write their names in greenWhen under age, but when of age in purple.So Love, the greatest Emperor of them all,Writes his in green at first, but afterwardsIn the imperial purple of our blood.First love or last love,--which of these two passionsIs more omnipotent? Which is more fair,The star of morning or the evening star?The sunrise or the sunset of the heart?The hour when we look forth to the unknown,And the advancing day consumes the shadows,Or that when all the landscape of our livesLies stretched behind us, and familiar placesGleam in the distance, and sweet memoriesRise like a tender haze, and magnifyThe objects we behold, that soon must vanish?

What matters it to me, whose countenanceIs like the Laocoon's, full of pain; whose foreheadIs a ploughed harvest-field, where three-score yearsHave sown in sorrow and have reaped in anguish;To me, the artisan, to whom all womenHave been as if they were not, or at mostA sudden rush of pigeons in the air,A flutter of wings, a sound, and then a silence?I am too old for love; I am too oldTo flatter and delude myself with visionsOf never-ending friendship with fair women,Imaginations, fantasies, illusions,In which the things that cannot be take shape,And seem to be, and for the moment are.

Distant and near and low and loud the bells,Dominican, Benedictine, and Franciscan,Jangle and wrangle in their airy towers,Discordant as the brotherhoods themselvesIn their dim cloisters. The descending sunSeems to caress the city that he loves,And crowns it with the aureole of a saint.I will go forth and breathe the air a while.