Texts
The Birth of Galahad (Act IV, Scene 1) by Richard H0vey (1898)
LAUNCELOT.
Guenevere!
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!
LAUNCELOT.
Thou art more beautiful even than my dreams of thee.
GUENEVERE.
I am more glad of thee than even my heart foreknew.
LAUNCELOT.
Man is not God enough that his weak dreams,
Even from thy shadow in his memory,
Should mould so beautiful a world as thou.
GUENEVERE.
Thou standest tall between me and the sky,
Most like a spirit. Art thou real, love?
LAUNCELOT.
As real as the gleam of thee that plays
Across the night like starlight on a pool,
Swift witchery and the dark deeps underneath.
GUENEVERE.
My heart is deep with calm and light with joy.
LAUNCELOT.
Thou art a night of mystery and stars. [Pause.]
GUENEVERE.
I think the whole world is a song of love;
I think the whole world swims with lyric joy.
LAUNCELOT.
Thy voice is like a still star sped across the hush.
GUENEVERE.
There is another voice that cools out of the night.
LAUNCELOT.
The angel of our love . . . It has been long . . .
How great a mystery you seem to me
I cannot tell. You seem to have become
One with the tides and night and the unknown . . .
My child . . . your child . . . whence come? – by what strange forge
Wrought of ourselves and dreams and the great deep
Into a life? I feel as if I stood
Where God had passed by, leaving all the place
Aflame with him.
GUENEVERE.
How tell the secrets of
His coming – the weird vibrance of the room,
As if the chords of ghostly violins
Thrilled into looming dreams where'er you came.
From the beginning, ere he was conceived,
The air was quick with him.
LAUNCELOT.
The strangeness is
That I, who have not borne him, am aware,
I too, of intimacy with his soul.
It is as I were just awaked from sleep
And one should tell me of events that passed
While I was sleeping, and I knew them not;
Yet at each word confused memories
Stir somewhere deeper than the waking mind,
And I am conscious that I was a part
Of things I knew not of.
GUENEVERE.
He is watched over;
Where he is, one is brushed by the unseen,
And the air thickens with the hush of shadows.
LAUNCELOT.
What will he be? My thought leaps to the future
And pictures him a thousand different ways,
But always something starred above his fellows.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, do not haste the heavy-footed years.
Let him live out his pudgy dimpled life –
Dear baby – without fret of what's to be.
Other lives . . . boyhood, manhood . . . in their turn!
I want him as he is. What will make up
For those ten little aimless fingers? Who
Will ever give me back his helplessness?
LAUNCELOT.
His babyhood is not so real to me
As he is. You have seen him. Is he like you?
GUENEVERE.
He is like you.
LAUNCELOT.
I think he is like you;
And you forget to look for it in him,
Losing remembrance of yourself in me,
I have not seen him.
GUENEVERE.
I may never see him . . .
LAUNCELOT.
Your face is beautiful as one who thinks
Of death, with seaward eyes.
GUENEVERE.
It is worth all.
I know the rapture now the martyrs had,
When this was Nero's and Domitian's Rome.
I would not yield a pang of any woe
That I have suffered, so wrought into one
The pain is with the vision and the joy,
The peace and all the wonder of your soul.
LAUNCELOT.
We are more far off from the world of ills
Than Vega or Arcturus from our feet.
I feel as if it were some other I
That captains Arthur's army, moves, speaks, thinks, –
Some machine curiously made half alive,
Whose very feelings are mechanical.
But when what somehow seems to be indeed
I, lifts its head above the waves, I know
That all that turmoil does not rive nor jar
The bases of my soul.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, how alone
We are, as if the stars and only we
Watched in the darkness! (Pause.)
LAUNCELOT.
What is it that gleams
Like a coil of wan light in your eddying hair?
GUENEVERE.
A silver serpent. Ylen gave it me
In Lyonesse.
LAUNCELOT.
You used to wear a dagger.
GUENEVERE.
They took it from me.
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, your hair, your hair!
It is like dark water in a little light. . . .
Oh, your beautiful hair, Guenevere!
I let my fingers drown in it . . . Oh,
I let my soul drown in it, Guenevere.
(A noise without.)
GUENEVERE.
Oh, what was that?
LAUNCELOT.
A soldier's shield that fell.
GUENEVERE.
I thought it was a summons to my soul.
LAUNCELOT.
The whole night seems unearthly and remote,
And every common thing a prodigy.
GUENEVERE.
The earth and air are tense and augural,
And tremulous with the unseen. I think
It is our souls that thus compel the night.
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, your beautiful hands, Guenevere!
They are like moonlight lying on my arm.
(Kisses her hands; and then her cheek and throat, passionately. A wind rises, and stirs gustily in the trees.)
GUENEVERE.
Oh, the wind, the wind! It blows against my face
As if the night were waking.
LAUNCELOT.
Look at me!
I want to look deep down into your eyes.
I want to find your soul down in your eyes.
I want to find your kisses in your soul.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, you are like the passion of the morning
When all the kissed earth wakens into life.
LAUNCELOT.
I worship you, I worship you, I worship you, –
As a saint worships heaven I worship you;
You ray the darkness like the starry heaven,
And like the raptured woods I worship you . . .
GUENEVERE.
No . . . somewhere deeper than all me and thee . . .
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, your beautiful soul, Guenevere! . . .
(They’re interrupted.)
Guenevere!
GUENEVERE.
Launcelot!
LAUNCELOT.
Thou art more beautiful even than my dreams of thee.
GUENEVERE.
I am more glad of thee than even my heart foreknew.
LAUNCELOT.
Man is not God enough that his weak dreams,
Even from thy shadow in his memory,
Should mould so beautiful a world as thou.
GUENEVERE.
Thou standest tall between me and the sky,
Most like a spirit. Art thou real, love?
LAUNCELOT.
As real as the gleam of thee that plays
Across the night like starlight on a pool,
Swift witchery and the dark deeps underneath.
GUENEVERE.
My heart is deep with calm and light with joy.
LAUNCELOT.
Thou art a night of mystery and stars. [Pause.]
GUENEVERE.
I think the whole world is a song of love;
I think the whole world swims with lyric joy.
LAUNCELOT.
Thy voice is like a still star sped across the hush.
GUENEVERE.
There is another voice that cools out of the night.
LAUNCELOT.
The angel of our love . . . It has been long . . .
How great a mystery you seem to me
I cannot tell. You seem to have become
One with the tides and night and the unknown . . .
My child . . . your child . . . whence come? – by what strange forge
Wrought of ourselves and dreams and the great deep
Into a life? I feel as if I stood
Where God had passed by, leaving all the place
Aflame with him.
GUENEVERE.
How tell the secrets of
His coming – the weird vibrance of the room,
As if the chords of ghostly violins
Thrilled into looming dreams where'er you came.
From the beginning, ere he was conceived,
The air was quick with him.
LAUNCELOT.
The strangeness is
That I, who have not borne him, am aware,
I too, of intimacy with his soul.
It is as I were just awaked from sleep
And one should tell me of events that passed
While I was sleeping, and I knew them not;
Yet at each word confused memories
Stir somewhere deeper than the waking mind,
And I am conscious that I was a part
Of things I knew not of.
GUENEVERE.
He is watched over;
Where he is, one is brushed by the unseen,
And the air thickens with the hush of shadows.
LAUNCELOT.
What will he be? My thought leaps to the future
And pictures him a thousand different ways,
But always something starred above his fellows.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, do not haste the heavy-footed years.
Let him live out his pudgy dimpled life –
Dear baby – without fret of what's to be.
Other lives . . . boyhood, manhood . . . in their turn!
I want him as he is. What will make up
For those ten little aimless fingers? Who
Will ever give me back his helplessness?
LAUNCELOT.
His babyhood is not so real to me
As he is. You have seen him. Is he like you?
GUENEVERE.
He is like you.
LAUNCELOT.
I think he is like you;
And you forget to look for it in him,
Losing remembrance of yourself in me,
I have not seen him.
GUENEVERE.
I may never see him . . .
LAUNCELOT.
Your face is beautiful as one who thinks
Of death, with seaward eyes.
GUENEVERE.
It is worth all.
I know the rapture now the martyrs had,
When this was Nero's and Domitian's Rome.
I would not yield a pang of any woe
That I have suffered, so wrought into one
The pain is with the vision and the joy,
The peace and all the wonder of your soul.
LAUNCELOT.
We are more far off from the world of ills
Than Vega or Arcturus from our feet.
I feel as if it were some other I
That captains Arthur's army, moves, speaks, thinks, –
Some machine curiously made half alive,
Whose very feelings are mechanical.
But when what somehow seems to be indeed
I, lifts its head above the waves, I know
That all that turmoil does not rive nor jar
The bases of my soul.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, how alone
We are, as if the stars and only we
Watched in the darkness! (Pause.)
LAUNCELOT.
What is it that gleams
Like a coil of wan light in your eddying hair?
GUENEVERE.
A silver serpent. Ylen gave it me
In Lyonesse.
LAUNCELOT.
You used to wear a dagger.
GUENEVERE.
They took it from me.
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, your hair, your hair!
It is like dark water in a little light. . . .
Oh, your beautiful hair, Guenevere!
I let my fingers drown in it . . . Oh,
I let my soul drown in it, Guenevere.
(A noise without.)
GUENEVERE.
Oh, what was that?
LAUNCELOT.
A soldier's shield that fell.
GUENEVERE.
I thought it was a summons to my soul.
LAUNCELOT.
The whole night seems unearthly and remote,
And every common thing a prodigy.
GUENEVERE.
The earth and air are tense and augural,
And tremulous with the unseen. I think
It is our souls that thus compel the night.
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, your beautiful hands, Guenevere!
They are like moonlight lying on my arm.
(Kisses her hands; and then her cheek and throat, passionately. A wind rises, and stirs gustily in the trees.)
GUENEVERE.
Oh, the wind, the wind! It blows against my face
As if the night were waking.
LAUNCELOT.
Look at me!
I want to look deep down into your eyes.
I want to find your soul down in your eyes.
I want to find your kisses in your soul.
GUENEVERE.
Oh, you are like the passion of the morning
When all the kissed earth wakens into life.
LAUNCELOT.
I worship you, I worship you, I worship you, –
As a saint worships heaven I worship you;
You ray the darkness like the starry heaven,
And like the raptured woods I worship you . . .
GUENEVERE.
No . . . somewhere deeper than all me and thee . . .
LAUNCELOT.
Oh, your beautiful soul, Guenevere! . . .
(They’re interrupted.)
