LITMIR.BIZ

      Prologue at Ischia

       Table of Contents

       The Castle Terrace. VITTORIA COLONNA, and JULIA GONZAGA.

      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 castle

       Needs not your presence. No one waits for you.

       Stay one day longer with me. They who go

       Feel not the pain of parting; it is they

       Who stay behind that suffer. I was thinking

       But yesterday how like and how unlike

       Have been, and are, our destinies. Your husband,

       The good Vespasian, an old man, who seemed

       A father to you rather than a husband,

       Died in your arms; but mine, in all the flower

       And promise of his youth, was taken from me

       As by a rushing wind. The breath of battle

       Breathed on him, and I saw his face no more,

       Save as in dreams it haunts me. As our love

       Was 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 hair

       Of my Vespasian. This is the flower-of-love,

       This amaranth, and beneath it the device

       Non moritura. Thus my heart remains

       True 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 heart

       Find, if it can, some poor apology

       For one who is too young, and feels too keenly

       The joy of life, to give up all her days

       To sorrow for the dead. While I am true

       To the remembrance of the man I loved

       And mourn for still, I do not make a show

       Of all the grief I feel, nor live secluded

       And, like Veronica da Gambara,

       Drape my whole house in mourning, and drive forth

       In coach of sable drawn by sable horses,

       As if I were a corpse. Ah, one to-day

       Is worth for me a thousand yesterdays.

      VITTORIA.

Скачать книгу