I swear to keep—
BOTTLEJOHN
[Calls outside.]
Ned! Dick!
ALISOUN
[In low voice, to Swains.]
Get out! Back to your cellar; guard
The knight and the two knaves. Whoever enters
Gag ’em and tie.
BOTTLEJOHN
[Entering.]
Dick! Ned! The devil take
All ’prentices!
ALISOUN
[Retaining Friar.]
Hist!
[Staying the Miller.]
Bob!
[To the others.]
Go! Go!
BOTTLEJOHN
I wonder
Was it a spook he saw! ’Tis dark.
[Takes up an unlit candle.]
ALISOUN
Mind, when he strikes
A light, I am the devil, and your feet
Are hoofs.
BOTTLEJOHN
Folk say they dwell in cellars.
FRIAR
Soft!
I’ll sprinkle a pinch of this sal volatile
I’ the candle flame.
BOTTLEJOHN
[Lights candle.]
I’ll take my crucifix.
[He is about to go toward the priedieu, when the Friar thrusts his hand over the candle flame. A vivid flash of light reveals his black face to Bottlejohn.]
[He is about to go toward the priedieu, when the Friar thrusts his hand over the candle flame. A vivid flash of light reveals his black face to Bottlejohn.]
FRIAR
Succubus! Incubus!Praestare omnibus!
BOTTLEJOHN
[Drops the candle, which goes out.]
Help!
ALISOUN
Silence!
[On the hearth the Friar lights a dull red flame, which throwsa flickering glow about the room.]
BOTTLEJOHN
[To Alisoun.]
O! what art thou? Dost thou laugh?
What is thy name?
ALISOUN
My name is Lucifer.
These be my urchins, Belial and Moloch.
Salaam! Salaam!
FRIARANDMILLER
[Salaaming.]
Hail, Mephistophilis!
ALISOUN
[To Host.]
What thing art thou?—Duck!
BOTTLEJOHN
[Ducks as the Miller pricks him with a dirk.]
I be Bottlejohn,
The host o’ the One Nine-pin.
ALISOUN
Bottlejohn,
Thee and thy One Nine-pin I damn. For know,
Thy cellar is the attic over hell,
And hath been leaking bad ale through my ceiling
This seven year, and made a puddle deep
As Proserpina’s garter in her bridal
Chamber, where thy two knaves—
BOTTLEJOHN
What! Ned and Dick?
ALISOUN
Came plumping through head-downwards into hell
Like bullfrogs in a tarn.
MILLER
And drowned! and drowned!
Shaltthouin thine own ale.
[Leads him toward cellar.]
BOTTLEJOHN
O Virgin!
FRIAR
[At door, back.]
Whist!
One comes.
BOTTLEJOHN
Help! help!
ALISOUN
[To Miller.]
Quick, Belial, lug thine ass
Into his stall. Instruct him with thy whittle
What manner devils we are, and when I clap
My hands thus and cry “Host!” then lead him forth.
[Exeunt Miller and Bottlejohn into cellar. To Friar.]
Meantime, my pixy, hide we here.
FRIAR
Sweet lord—
[They hide in the cupboard. Enter, left, Chaucer andPrioress.]
PRIORESS
Parlez toujours, Monsieur!
Parlez toujours!
CHAUCER
How silver falls the night!
The hills lie down like sheep; the young frog flutes;
The yellow-ammer, from his coppice, pipes
Drowsy rehearsals of his matin-song;
The latest swallow dips behind the stack.
What beauty dreams in silence! The white stars,
Like folded daisies in a summer field,
Sleep in their dew, and by yon primrose gap
In darkness’ hedge, St. Ruth hath dropped her sickle.
PRIORESS
Nay, yonder’s the new moon.
CHAUCER
But here’s St. Ruth,
Whose pity hath reprieved a vintner’s son.
Your nephew’s verses—
PRIORESS
Pray speak not of them;
That wicked Friar Huberd was to blame.
But now—
[Turning to the casement.]
The moon, Monsieur; parlez, Monsieur!
CHAUCER
[Aside.]
“Parlez, Monsieur.” How shall I trust myself?
[Aloud.]
I may not, dear Madame. If I should speak,
My heart would run in passages too sweet
For this cloy’d planet.
PRIORESS
[Pointing through casement to the sky.]
Mais—parlez, Monsieur.
CHAUCER
Yea, if perchance there were someotherstar—
PRIORESS
Some other star—
CHAUCER
Some star unsurfeited,
Some blessed star, where hot and lyric youth
Pours not swift torment in the veins of age;
Where Passion—gorgeous cenobite—blurs not
With fumid incense of his own hot breath
The hallow’d eyes of sweet Philosophy;
Where body battens not upon the soul,
But both are Reason’s angels, and Love’s self—
Pontifical in daisy-chains—doth hold
High mass at nature’s May-pole;—if such star
There were in all God’s heaven, and such indeed
Were ours, there would I speak and utter, not
“Dear Eglantine, I love you,” but “We love.”
PRIORESS
Monsieur, ’tis true.
CHAUCER
The simple truth, once said,
Is very sweet, Madame.
PRIORESS
Merci, Monsieur.
ALISOUN
Whist, Huberd; are they gone?
FRIAR
Nay.
ALISOUN
Did he kiss her?
Bones! Are they dumb!
FRIAR
Art jealous, dame?
ALISOUN
Shut up!
CHAUCER
[At the window.]
Some other star! Choose, lady, which is ours?
PRIORESS
Yonder cool star that hides its winking light
Like a maid that weeps—but not for heaviness.
CHAUCER
Ha! If I were Prometheus now, I’d filch it
From out the seventh crystal sphere for you
And ’close it in this locket.
[Seizes her hand.]
PRIORESS
Nay, that holds
My brother’s hair.
CHAUCER
[Dropping her hand, looks away into the night.]
We dream.
PRIORESS
Of what, Monsieur?
CHAUCER
We dream that we are back in Eden garden
And that the gates are shut—and sin outside.
PRIORESS
Why, such in truth is love.
CHAUCER
Yes, such in truth
But not in fact, dear lady. Such sweet truth
Grows only on God’s tree; we may behold
And crave immortally, but may not pluck it
Without the angel’s scourge.—“When Adam delved”—
Aye, then he dragged both heaven and earth and hell
Along with him.—O God! this suzerain mansion
Where saints and crown’d philosophers discourse
Familiarly together as thy guests—
This ample palace of poesie, the mind—
Hath trap-doors sunk into a murky vault,
Where passion’s serfs lie sprawling.
PRIORESS
I am afraid!
CHAUCER
Forgive me, O sweet lady! I seem not
All that I am.
PRIORESS
[Timidly.]
What are you?
CHAUCER
Do you ask?
Why, then, for this dull, English bulk, ’tis true
A London vintner gat it; but for this
My moving soul, I do believe it is
Some changeling sprite, the bastard of a god,
Sprung from Pan’s loins and white Diana’s side,
That, like a fawn, I fain must laugh and love
Where the sap runs; yet, like an anchorite,
Pore on the viewless beauty of a book:
Not more enamoured (when the sun is out)
O’ the convent rose, than of the hoyden milkweed
Bold in my path. Life, in whatever cup,
To me is a love-potion. In one breath,
My heart hath pealed the chimes above St. Paul’s
And rung an ale-wife’s laughter.
ALISOUN
[Aside to the Friar.]
Bless his heart
And waistband! Heard ye that?
PRIORESS
[Who has listened, lost.]
To hear you speak
Is sweeter than the psalter. Do not stop.
CHAUCER
[Aside, smiling.]
Dear Lady Dreams!—
[Aloud.]
Hark! Footsteps from the chapel.
[Goes to the door.]
It is your nephew and his lady-love.
Let’s step aside before I introduce you,
And profit by these pangs of “lyric youth.”
[Chaucer and the Prioress step aside, as enter, left, Johannaand the Squire.]
SQUIRE
Stay!
JOHANNA
Leave me!
SQUIRE
Hear me!
JOHANNA
Is the house of prayer
No sanctuary that you drag me from it?
SQUIRE
Donna, the cloudy-pillar’d dome o’ the air
Alone can roof a lover’s house of prayer.
JOHANNA
More verses? Send ’em to your lady nun.
SQUIRE
O heartless bosom! Cold concave of pity!
Whet thy disdain upon the heart-shaped stone
Lodged, like a ruby, in that marble breast,
And slay me with the onyx of thine eye.
JOHANNA
Pray, did your Geoffrey write that?
SQUIRE
Do not scorn him.
He named you “Eglantine” because “Johanna”
Was not euphonious.
JOHANNA
Because “Johanna”
Was not—
SQUIRE
Euphonious. But “Eglantine”—
JOHANNA
But “Eglantine” was all symphonious.
“Johanna”—ha?—was not mellifluous
Enough to woo me! So a honeysuckle,
An eglantine, must be my proxy—ha?
Go! go! Hide in the night—Go! Kill thyself!
SQUIRE
[At the door.]
O sky! thy noon was a broad, glorious mirror,
Which now hath fallen from its frame and shattered;
And little stars, like points of glass, they prick me