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Sri Aurobindo

Collected Plays and Stories

CWSA. Volume 3 and 4

Incomplete and Fragmentary Plays

The Witch of Ilni

A dream of the woodlands

Characters

Act I

Scene 1

Scene 2

Act II

Scene 1

Act III

Scene 1

Scene 2

 

Characters

Corillo, prince of Ilni.

Valentine, a courtier.

   foresters.

Iamblichus

Palleas

Marcion.

Melander, a sylvan poet.

Foresters, courtiers.

Alaciel, the witch of Ilni.

Guendolen, her sister.

   forest damsels.

Myrtil

Doris

Ermenild1

Girls of the forest.

 

Act I

 

Scene 1

The woodlands of Ilni.
Girls and youths dancing.

Song

Under the darkling tree

Who danceth with thee,

Sister say?

His hair is the sweet sunlight,

His eyes a starry night

In May.

Under the leaf-wrought screen

Who crowns thee his queen

Kissing thee?

His lips are a ruby bright,

His cheek the May-bloom’s light

On the tree.

Under the grass-green bough

Whom pillowest thou

On thy breast?

His voice is a swallow’s flight,

His limbs are jonquils white

Dewy-drest.

Iamblichus

Unwind the linkèd rapture of the dance!

For in the purple verge and slope of morn

Fast-flowering blooms, fire-robed and honey-haired,

In stainless wastes the daffodil of heaven.

Here till the golden-handed sun upbuilds

The morning’s cenotaph blue-domed and vast,

On daisy-dotted bank where sunlight nods

We’ll spin a curious weft of lyric2 tales.

Myrtil

Be it so. But what occupation stays

Our deftest in the jewelry of rhymes,

Our liberal dispenser of sweet words,

Our laureate with the throstle in his throat?

Sleeps he so long? who saw Melander last,

Melander ashbud-browed with April hair?

Ermenild

Before the russet-hooded morn gave birth

In Day’s embraces to the fire-eyed sun

I spied him nigh a mossy-mantled cave

Which rosy trailers draped, and at his side

The silver-seeming witch Alaciel.

Myrtil

Pray God, the black-haired witch may do no harm!

She is most potent and her science plucks

The ruby nightshade, Hecate’s deadly plum,

Soul-killing meadow-sweet, the hemlock starred

And berries brown crushed in the vats of death,

Her mother’s hell-brewed legacy of arts.

Marcion

Were it not wisely done to call him hither?

Iamblichus

’Tis wisely urged, good Marcion. Make good haste

And drench thy words in Hybla’s golden milk

To lure him thence.

Exit Marcion.3

But you with dance and song4

Beguile the laggard moments into joy.

 

Scene 2

A glade in the woodlands.

Alaciel

Why wilt thou go? Noon has not budded, sweet.

Freshfallen dew stars yet the silvered grass,

The leaves are lyrical with lisp of birds

And piping voices flutter thro’ the grove.

Repose thyself where blue-eyed violet

Is married to that bugle of pale gold

We call the cowslip, and I’ll chain thee here

With flowery bands of rosebud-linkèd tales

Or murmur Orphic falls to draw thy soul

Upon the smoother wings of measured song.

Noon has not budded, sweet. Why wilt thou go?

Melander

The sylvan youths expect my lyric touch

To gild5 their leisure: nor am I so bold

To linger by thy snowy side too long

Whom men call perilous. Oh thou art fair!

Dawn reddens in thy vermil-tinted cheeks

And on thy tresses pansy-purple night

Hangs balsam-drenched with dewdrops for her stars.

Thou art a flower with candid petals wide,

Moonflushed, most innocent-seeming to the eye;

But in thy cup, they say, lurks venomed wine

Which whoso sucks, pale Hades on him lays

Ensnaring arms to drag from the sweet sun.

Alaciel

Whom will not Envy’s livid tooth assail?

’Tis true my wisdom dwarfs their ignorance;

That is most true: for in my fledgeling days

When callow childhood loved the rushy nest,

My mother drew my steps thro’ fretted walks,

Rose-rubied gardens, acorn-pelted glades,

Green seas of pasture, rural sweeps of bloom,

And taught the florid sensuous dialect

Of simple plants. This way I learned to love

The shining sisterhood of rhythmic names,

Roses and lilies, honey-hiding thyme,

Pied gilliflowers6, painted wind-blossoms,

Gold crocus, milky bell, sweet marjoram,

Fire-coloured furze and wayside honey-suckle.

Nor these alone, but all the helpful plants

Gave me the liquid essence of their souls

Potent to help or hurt, to cure or kill.

Indeed the milky juice of pungent roots

I poured you in that curious walnut cup

With moderation just, were in excess

More deadly than the hemlock’s dooming wine.

Melander

It fused new blood into my pulsing veins

Raising me twice the stature of a soul.

Alaciel

’Tis margarite, the rare and pungent root,

That brewed this foamy vintage in his wand.

For twixt the bulb and pithy texture wrapt

You find a pod nut-form with misty skin,

In size no bigger than the early grape

But full and sweet with honey-tempered wine.

Such are my potions, philtres, poisons, drugs,

Distempered brews, and all the juggling arts

Your ignorance rebukes my wisdom with.

Melander

From such sweet lips when poppied utterance falls,

The carping spirit of disdain must sleep;

For subtler logic drops in simple words

From woman’s tongue, than phraseful orator

Or fine scholastic wit may offer up.7

Alaciel

Sweet youth, why should I net you with deceit?

Ah yet, in truth you are too beautiful!

Come, you are skilled in phrases, are you not?

You dice with women’s hearts – they tell me ’tis

A pastime much in vogue with idle youths.

(The philtre works: his eyelids brim with dew.)

You throw cogged dice with women for their souls,

You barter with them and deny the price,

Is it not so? (O rare, fine margarite!)

Oh you are deft at such deceits: you make

Your beauty lime to cozen linnets with

And bid them sing, if they’d have sustenance.

Oh you will not deceive me, think it not:

You are just such a fowler to my guess.

Melander

Dear linnet, did I lime you in my nets,

One fine, sweet Hamadryad note would lift

The tangle from your wild-rose-petal wings.

Alaciel

Ah but when lurking faces flower the bush

Wild birds mock expectation with wild wings.

Melander

Nay, dear, you shall not go: I have you fast.

Come, where’s your ransom? the sweet, single note

I bargained for, ere you may climb the winds?

Prune not your fluttering wings: I have you fast.

Alaciel

I pray you, make not earnest of my jest.

You are too quick: you shall not have a stiver,

No, not a coin to bless repentance with.

Melander

Then I will pay myself, sweet: from that warm

And flowering bed of kisses, I will pluck

Fresh with the dews of youth one red sweet rose.

(kisses her)

Oh I have sucked out poison from your lips!

Physicians say that certain maladies

Are by their generating causes killed.

Sweet poison, one more drop to cure the last.

(kisses her)

Alaciel

You shall pluck no more roses from my tree.

Unclasp me now or you will anger me.

Melander

Dear, be not angry. I did but accept

The written challenge peeping thro’ the lids

Of those delicious eyes: O shy soft eyes,

Hiding with jetty fringes such a world

Of swimming beauty, virgin-sweet desire,

You shine like stars upon the rim of night,

Like dewdrops thro’ green leaves, mute orators

Instinct with dropping eloquence to sway

The burning heart of boyhood to your will.

If I look on you long, you will seduce

My acts from virtue; which to anticipate

I’ll kill you both with kisses, thus, and thus.

Sweet, do not blush. I claim what is my own,

And with my lips I seal your whole self mine

From dear, dark head to dainty wild-rose feet.

Or, if you will, in sanguine tumult show

The throbbing conscience of a lover’s touch,

That I may watch a sea of springing rose

Diffuse its gorgeous triumph in your cheeks.

Alaciel

Oh you have golden pieces on your tongue

To buy your pleasure: yet this single once

I’ll be your fool. Come, throw me clinking coin,

The thin flute-music of your flatteries.

You shall have favours if you pay for them.

Melander

His lips should dribble honey, who’d make out

The style and inventory of your graces.

His voice should be the fifing of mild winds

To happy song of bees in rose-red June,

His every word a crimson-tasselled rose,

His lightest phrase a strip of cedar-wood,

Each clause a nutmeg-peppered jug of cream;

The very stops should argue aloes fetched

By spicèd winds upon the rocking brine.

What, have I earned my wage? I am athirst

With praising you. Give me your lips to drink.

Alaciel

You trifle, sweet. Yours is no mint of coin

But scribbled paper-specie large as wind

Which I’ll not take. Here comes your paedagogue

To school you into more sobriety.

Alaciel retires. Enter Marcion.

Marcion

Well met, Melander. Long thro’ mossy paths

Have I with patient footing peered thee out,

Thro’ shadow-sundered slopes of racing light,

In ferny pales with blots of colour pricked

And by the rushy marge of spuming streams

Till lucky hazard made the Venus throw.

Why art thou here? On leafy-sheltered sward

Where daubs of sunlight intersperse the shade,

The rubious posies thrill to mazy feet

Like stars danced over by an angel’s tread

And strive with glimmering corollaries

To make a twinkling heaven of the green.

Moist blow the breezes with the myrrhy tears

Of pining night, and ruffle every blade

That keeps his pearls from clutch of dewy thieves

Until their indignation murmur past.

From airy flute, from seraph-stringèd harp,

A daedal rain of music drop on drop

Wells fast8 to rule the waft of dove-like feet.

The clustered edges of close-heapèd thyme,

A murmurous haven sailed9 by merchant bees,

Are crumbling into fragrance and young flowers

Make fat by their decay the greedy earth,

While golden youths and silver feet of girls

Pass fluttering as with glimpse of gorgeous hues

A fleet of moths on emigrating winds.

There you shall see upon the pearlèd grass

The forest antelope, brown Ermenild,

Iamblichus the honey-hearted boy,

Rose-cheeked Iamblichus with roses wreathed,

And Myrtil honey-haired, our woodland moon,

Myrtil the white, a silver loveliness,

But tipped with gold. Thou only lingerest;

Only thy voice, the pilot of our moods,

Only thy thrushlips welling facile rhymes

Mar the sweet harmonies of holiday

With one chord missing from the clamorous harp.

Melander

I thank you, Marcion, for your careful pain

But cannot guerdon you with more than thanks.

I am not well: the fumes of midnight thought

Unfit me for a holiday attire.

Marcion

Fie, fie, Melander! When have you before

Denied the riches of your tongue to eke

Our poorness with? The forest waits for you

Dew-drenched with tears because you will not come.

Melander

Well, I will go with you, but not for long.

I’ll join you where deep-cushioned in soft grass

The stream turns inward like a scimitar.

Go on before, I pray you. I will come.

Exit Marcion.

Alaciel

There, there, I said so! you are docile, sir.

Indeed I did not spy the leading-strings,

But they must be there. ’Twas your paedagogue,

Was it not, come to fetch the truant back?

Melander

Dear, be not vexed with me. I will return

Ere noon has dotted with her golden ball

The eminence of heaven. It seems not well,

When judgment has decreed the award of merit,

To disappoint Persuasion of her prize.

In sweetly-cultured minds civility

Breathes music to the touch of wooing words.

Alaciel

Oh words and words enough! but what’s the gist,

The run, the purport? Tush, a chattering pie,

A pie that steals and chatters, would not deign

To jeer this flaunting daw. What, did he deem

His gaudy colony of phrases roofed

The meaning from my eyes? The prosing fool

Fibs very vilely: why, he has not conned

The rudiments and letters of his craft.

Melander

You do miscall sincerest courtesy,

Sweet courtesy that solders our conditions

Into the builded structure of a state.

Alaciel

Yes, till the winds unbuild it for worse ruin.

But go your way. I’ll know you as a man

That honeys leisure with a lovely face

And coins sweet perjuries to make the hearts

Of women bankrupt. No defence, I pray you.

I’ll have no slices of your company.

Melander

Leave wrangling, sweet, and tell me soft and kind,

Where shall I see you next? I may not tarry.

Alaciel

Why nowhere: for I’ll not receive you, sir.

But if you love a door shut in your face

Come to my cottage on the forest’s hem

Where rarer thickets melt into the plain.

Melander

Thither I will outstrip the climbing noon.

For this one tedious hour, dear love, farewell.

Alaciel

I pray you, sweet, do not break promise with me,

For that will kill me. I will think of you

And comfort solitude with sighs and tears

Until you dawn afresh, a noontide star.

Exeunt.

 

Act II

 

Scene 1

The woodlands as at first.
Foresters and girls.
Melander leans against a tree absorbed in thought: in one group Marcion and Ermenild are talking: in another Iamblichus and Myrtil: Myrtil comes forward.

Myrtil

What passion, dear Melander, numbs thy voice?

Why wilt thou cherish humorous peevishness,

The nursling of a moment and a mood?

Now kernelled in the golden husk of day

Pale night with all her pomp of sorrow sleeps,

And stinted of softclinging melancholy

The elegiac nightingale is hushed.10

Melander

Sweet friend, my spirit is too deeply hued

With sombre-sweet Imagination’s brush

To dress the nimble spirit of the dance

In lilt of phrase and honey-packing rhyme.

I pray you, urge it not. I am not well.

Iamblichus

Urge him no more. The rash and humorous spirit

That governs him at times, will not be schooled.

But since the sweetest tongue of all is mute,

Some harsher voice prick on the creeping hour.

Myrtil

Ah no, Iamblichus! when winds are hushed

Fall then the clapping cymbals of the sea,

And every green-haired dancing-girl down-drop11

Her foam-tipped sinuous wand to kiss her feet!

The loss of sweetest palls what is but sweet,

For should the honey-throated mavis die,

Who in the laughing linnet takes delight

Or lends ear to the rhyming hedge-priest wren?

Let us not challenge passion-pale regret,

But hand-in-hand down ruby-tinted walks

Gather the poppies of sweet speech, to press

For opiates when dank autumn looms and Life

Is empty of her rose. Were not this well?

Iamblichus

Thy words are sweet as joy, more wise than sorrow.

Come, friends, let us steal honey from the hours

For memory to suck when winter comes.

Exeunt all but Melander.

Melander

Ah12 me, what drug Circean wakes in me?

My blood steals from my heart like pulsing fire

And the fresh sap exudes upon my brow.

O faster, faster urge thy golden wheels,

Thou sun that like a fiery lizard creepst

Glib-footed to the parapet of heaven!

Oh that my hand might clutch thy saffron curls

And thrust thee in the loud Atlantic! So

The violet mares13 of Evening may drink up

The sweet, damp wind, so dawn the ivory moon

And lurk shy-peeping in my darling’s eyes.

For my desire is like the passionate sea

That calls unto her paramour the wind

And only hears a strangled murmur pant,

Mute, muffled by the hollow-breasted hills.

Enter Iamblichus with Myrtil in his arms.

Myrtil

No farther drag my steps, Iamblichus!

I am not fond to bow my doating neck

Under your feet, like other woodland girls

Who image beauty’s model in your shape,

Heaven in your eyes and nectar in your kiss.

Fie, fie, be modest, sir. Let go your grasp.

[Here a page of the notebook was torn out.]

[Melander]

Ah me, again a sea of subtle fire

Clamours about the ruby gates of Life!

My soul expanding like a Pythian seer

Thrives upon torture, and the insurgent blood,

Swollen as with wine, menaces mutiny.

How slowly buildst thou up the spacious noon

To dome thy house, O architect of day!

Not from the bubbling smithy where Love works

Smooth Hebe fetched thy world-revealing fires;

Nor to the foam-bound bride-bed of the sea

Thou sailest, but like one with doom foreseen

Whose bourne and culmination lapses down

To sunless hell. Hope thou not to set out

My seasons in the golden ink of day:

My heart anticipates the pilot moon

Who steers the cloudy-wimpled night. Pale orb,

Thou art no symbol for my burning soul:

Lag thou behind or lag not, I will lead.

He is going out.
Reenter foresters with Palleas.

Marcion

What’s this, Melander? Noon not yet has sealed

His titles with the signet of the sun.

’Tis early yet to leave. Why will you go?

Melander

I am bound down by iron promises,

The hour named. Would I not linger else?

Even now the promise has outstript the act.

Myrtil

Melander, do not go.

Melander

Dear child, I must.

Iamblichus

Come, come, you shall not go. ’Tis most unkind,

Let me not say uncourteous, to withdraw

The sunshine of your presence from this day,

Our little day of unmixed joy. Be ruled.

Palleas

Boy, let me counsel you. This eager fit

And hot eruption does much detriment

To youth and bodes no good to waning years.

When I was young, I ruled my dancing blood,

Abstained from brabbles, women, verses, wine,

And now you see me bask in hale old age,

Mid Autumn’s gilded ruin one green leaf.

Life’s palate dulls with much intemperance,

And whoso breaks the law, the law shall break.

Love is a specious angler –

Melander

Dotard, off!

Confide thy heavy rumours to the grave

Where thou shouldst now be rotting.

Exit.

 

Act III

 

Scene 1

Before Alaciel’s house.

Guendolen

But what you tell me is not credible.

Could Love at the prime vision slip your fence

And his red bees wing humming to your heart?

What, at the premier interchange of eyes

Seed bulged into the bud, the bud to flower,

Bloom waxing into fruit? can passion sink

Thus deep embedded in a maiden soil?

Masks not your love in an unwonted guise?

Alaciel

Sweet girl, you are a casket yet unused,

A fair, unprinted page. These mysteries

Are alien to your grasp, until Love pen

His novel lithograph and write in you

Songs bubbling with the music of a name.

Oh, I am faster tangled in his eyes

Than, in the net smoke-blasted Vulcan threw,

Foam-bosomed Cytherea to her Mars.

Guendolen

But will he push his fancy to your bent?

Alaciel

How else? for in the coy glance of a girl

A subtle sorcery lies that draws men on

As with a thread, nor snaps not ere it should.

Love’s palate is with acid flavours14 edged

When what the lips repel, the eyes invite.

Guendolen

Have you forgotten then, my sister, how

Since war’s ensanguined dice have thrown a cast

So fatal to our peace, the sweet confines

Of Ilni and her primitive content

Are hedged and meted by the savage Law?

Alaciel

Child, I have not forgotten; but first love

Poseidon-like submerges with his sea

All barriers, and the checks that men oppose

But make him fret and spume against the sky.

Who shall withstand him? not the gnawing flame

Nor toothèd rocks nor gorgon-fronted piles

Nor metal bars; thro’ all he walks unharmed.

But lo where on the forest’s lip there dawns

My noonstar in the garish paths of day.

He should not see you, sweet. Prithee, go in.

Enter Melander.

How now? was this your compact? Lift your glance

Where yet the primrose-pale Hyperion clings

Upon the purple arches of the air

Nor on the cornice prints his golden seal.

You are too soon. Why with this fire-eyed haste

Have you o’ershot15 the target of your vows?

Melander

Ah, cruel child! what hast thou done to me?

What expiation in the balance pends

Against thy fault? Not the low sweets of sound

Fetched by thy piping tongue from ruby stops,

Nor fluttering glances under velvet lids,

Nor the rich tell-tale blush that sweetly steals

As if a scarlet pencil would indite

A love-song in thy cheeks. These candid brows,

The hushed seraglio to thy veiled thoughts,

These light wind-kissing feet, these milky paps

That peep twixt edge and loosely-married edge,

Thy slumber-swollen purple-fringèd orbs,

Thy hands, cinque-petalled rose-buds just apart

Beneath the wheedling kiss of spring, thy sides,

Those continents of warm, unmelting snow,

All in the balance are but precious air.

Nay, with thy whole dear sum of beauties fill

The scale, it will not tremble to the dust

Save hooped upon thy breast my weight helps thine.16

If you deny me my just claim, I’ll snatch

You from yourself and torture with the whips

Of Love, till you disclose your hoardings. Oh

To seize this loaded honeycomb of bliss

And make a rich repast! Oh turn from me

The serious wonder of those orbèd fires!

Their lustre stabs my heart with agony.

Hide in thy hair those passion-moulded lips!

Veil up those milky glimpses from my sight!

Oh I will drag thy soul out in a kiss!

Wilt thou add fire to fire? Torture not

My longing with reluctance; forge not now

The pouted simulation of disdain.

Leap quick into my arms! there lose thyself.

She embraces him.

Pardon me, sweet: thy beauties in my soul

Blow high the leaping billows of desire

And temperance is a wreck merged in his sea.

Alaciel

Loveliest Melander, if I have offended,

Here like a Roman debtor yield I up

My body to thy mercy or thy doom.

Take my soul too! and in thy princely pomp

Let this rebellious heart that needs will fret

To be thy slave, be dragged to thraldom. See,

I hang, a lustrous jewel, on thy neck:

Break me or keep me! I am thine to keep

Or break: fear not to do thy utmost will.

Melander

Hang there till thou hast grown a part of me!

Ah yet, if passion be Love’s natural priest

Let not his fire-lipped homage scare thy soul.

Thy ripe, unspotted girlhood give to me,

For which the whole world yearns. A gift is sweet,

And thou, O subtle thief, hast stolen my calm

Who was before not indigent of bliss.

Oh closer yet! Let’s glue our lips together,

That all eternity may be a kiss.

Alaciel

What, will you bury me with kisses? Dear,

Be modest. Tell me why by a full hour

You outran expectation’s reaching eye?

Melander

Inquire the glowing moon why she has dared

Forestal the set nor wait the ushering star;

Inquire the amorous wind, why he has plucked,

Ere Autumn’s breath have tampered17 with her hair,

Petal on crimson petal the red rose:

Nay, catechise the loud rebombing sea

Who in a thundrous18 summer dim with rain

Conspired with hoarse rebellious winds to merge

The lonely life of ocean-wading ships;

Then ask fire-footed passion why his rage

Has shipwrecked me upon thy silver breasts.

Ah love, thyself the culprit, thine the fault.

Alaciel, thou,– O sweet unconscious sin!

Hast in my members kindled such a fire

As only sorcery knows: which to atone

Thy virgin hours must sweetly swoon to death

While in the snowy summer of thy lap

Kind Night shall cool these passion-melted limbs.

When thou dost imitate the blushing rose,

I swear thy tint is truer than the life,

Than loveliness more lovely. Dearest one,

Let naked Love abash the curtained prude.

Shame was not made to burn thy field of roses

Nor in this married excellence of hues

Unfurl disorder’s ruby-tinted flag.

Alaciel

Dear, if I blush, ’tis modesty, not shame.

I can refuse you nothing. When ’tis night

And like a smile upon a virgin’s lips

Young moonlight dallies with a sleepy rose,

Then come and call me gently twice and thrice,

And I will answer you. Observe this well

In that the harsh and beldam Law excludes

Nature’s sweet rites and Paphian marriage

Unless her19 blearèd eyes be privy too.

Melander

O love, have you forgot the long elapse

And weary pomp of hours ere the sun

That follows now a path sincere of foam

Make sanguine shipwreck in20 the lurid west?

Scarce now his golden eye drops vertical

Upon the belt and midline of our scope.

Shorten your sentence by a term of hours

When I shall ease my pain. Turn caution out

To graze in nunneries: his sober feint

Of prudence suits not with a lover’s tryst.

Alaciel

Content you, sweet: let patience feed on hope

Until night’s purple awning bar from view

The hidden thefts of love. Nay, go not yet.

Sit here awhile until yon sloping disk

Swings prone above the poplar. Sweet, come in.

Exeunt.

 

Scene 2

Before Alaciel’s house.
Melander alone.

Melander

Now, for her widowed state is wooed by night,

The sable-vested air puts on her stars

And in her bosom pins for brooch the moon.

She from her diamond chalice soon will pour

Her flowing glories on a rose’s hair,

In pity of my love. Sweet crimson rose,

Alaciel’s lamp, the beacon of my bliss,

O kindle quickly at the moon thy rays.

How happy art thou being near my love!

For thou who hast the perfume of her breath,

Why shouldest21 thou the spice-lipped Zephyr want?

Her dove’s-feet whispering in the happy grass

Are surely lovelier to thee than the dawn;

Or wilt thou woo the world-embracing orb,

Who hast the splendour of her eyes to soothe

Thy slumber into waking? O red rose,

Might I but merge in thee, how would her touch

Thrill all my petals with delicious pain!

O could I pawn my beauty for a kiss,

How happy were I to waste all myself

In shreds of scarlet ruin at her feet!

It is my hour! for see, the cowslip-curled

Night-wandering patroness of lovers throws

Her lantern’s orange-coloured beams, where sleeps

A bright, blown rose. Hail, empress of the stars!

Be thou tonight my hymeneal torch.

Alaciel! Echo, hush thy babbling tongue!

’Tis not Narcissus calls. I am a thief

Who steal from beauty’s garden one sweet bud

Nor need like visitants thy tinkling22 bell.

Alaciel! O with thy opiate wand,

Thought-killing Mercury, seal every eye

On whom the drowsy Morpheus has not breathed.

Yet once again the charm. Alaciel!

Now at thy window dawn, thou lovelier moon

Than sojourns in the sky! look out on me,

An ivory face thro’ rippling clouds of hair.

Enter Alaciel above.

Marcion and Doris behind.

Alaciel

Who calls?

[The next sixteen pages of the notebook were torn out.]

 

Earlier edition of this work: Sri Aurobindo Birth Century Library: Set in 30 volumes.- Volume 7.- Collected Plays and Short Stories: Part Two.- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Asram, 1972.- 562-1089 pp.

1 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7, sic passim: Hermengild

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2 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: eerie

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3 In 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7, this line is placed after the line

Beguile the laggard moments into joy.

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4 In 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7, this line is joined with and continues the line To lure him thence.

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5 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: guild

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6 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: gillyflowers

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7 In 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7, there is a line after this one:

On his.

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8 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: past

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9 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: souled

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10 In 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7, there are 14 lines after this one:

Of melancholy from whose sombre grape

She crushes music out in foamy drops.

But all the votarists of happy Light,

A rainbow-throated anarchy of wings,

Lift anthems to the young viceregent sun:

Behind green curtains woven of fibrous baize

His lyric thrill unmasks the robin brown,

White with soft passion-painèd moan the dove

Murmurs his love-notes in the long-lived elm:

The linnet pipes his simple pastoral,

Nay, all the wingèd poets of the air

Recite their stanzas from the pulpit sprays.

Why is thy crimson house of music shut,

Thy lips that passion into murmured song?

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11 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: downdrops

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12 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: Ask

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13 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: manes

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14 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: flowers

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15 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: overshot

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16 In 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7, there are 10 lines after this one:

Therefore, dear girl, let thy necessity

Upon the linkèd union of our loves

Pronounce a solemn benediction.

Alaciel

I owe you not a doit. You shall not have

So much of tender as will serve to buy

One grain of sand, one withered blade of grass.

My riches, sir, are in good coffers locked

And will evade a hungrier search than yours.

Melander

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17 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: tempered

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18 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: thunderous

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19 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: his

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20 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: on

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21 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: shouldst

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22 1972 ed. SABCL, volume 7: tinkering

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