Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast
The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep!
[A flash of lightning, out of which LUCIFER appears, in
the garb of a travelling Physician.
LUCIF. All hail, Prince Henry!
P. HEN. (starting.)
Who and what are you?
LUCIF.
A moment's audience with the prince.
P. HEN. When came you in?
LUCIF.
I found your study door unlocked,
And thought you answered when I knocked.
P. HEN. I did not hear you.
LUCIF.
You heard the thunder:
It was loud enough to waken the dead.
And it is not a matter of special wonder
That, when God is walking overhead,
You should not hear my feeble tread.
P. HEN. What may your wish or purpose be? LUCIF. No thing or everything, as it please Your Highness. You behold in me
Only a travelling physician;
One of the few who have a mission
To cure incurable diseases,
Or those that are called so.
LUCIF.
Yes; very nearly.
And, what is a wiser, and better thing,
Can keep the living from ever needing
Such an unnatural, strange proceeding,
By showing conclusively and clearly
That death is a stupid blunder merely,
And not a necessity of our lives.
My being here is accidental;
The storm, that against your casement drives,
In the little village below waylaid me.
And there I heard, with a secret delight,
Of your maladies physical and mental,
Which neither astonished nor dismayed me.
And I hastened hither, though late in the night,
To proffer my aid!
P. HEN. (ironically.) For this you came! Ah, how can I ever hope to requite
This honour from one so erudite?
LUCIF. The honour is mine, or will be when I have cured your disease.
LUCIF. What is your illness?
P HEN.
A smouldering, dull, perpetual flame,
As in a kiln, burns in my veins,
Sending up vapours to the head;
My heart has become a dull lagoon,
Which a kind of leprosy drinks and drains;
I am accounted as one who is dead,
And, indeed, I think that I shall be soon.
LUCIF. And has Gordonius the Divine,
In his famous Lily of Medicine,—
I see the book lies open before you,-
No remedy potent enough to restore you?
P. HEN. None whatever!
LUCIF.
The dead are dead.
And their oracles dumb, when questioned
Of the new diseases that human life
Envolves in its progress, rank and rife.
Consult the dead upon things that were,
But the living only on things that are.
Have you done this, by the appliance
And aid of doctors?
Of doctors, with their learnèd rules;
But the case is quite beyond their science.
Even the doctors of Salern
Send me back word they can discern
No cure for a malady like this,
Save one which in its nature is
Impossible, and cannot be!
LUCIF. That sounds oracular!
P. HEN.
LUCIF. What is their remedy?
P. HEN.
Writ in this scroll is the mystery.
LUCIF. (reading.) "Not to be cured, yet not incurable!
The only remedy that remains
Is the blood that flows from a maiden's veins,
Who of her own free will shall die,
And give life as the price of yours!"
This is the strangest of all cures,
And one, I think, you will never try;
The prescription you may well put by,
As something impossible to find
Before the world itself shall end!
And yet who knows? One cannot say
That into some maiden's brain that kind
Of madness will not find its way.
Meanwhile permit me to recommend,
As the matter admits of no delay,
My wonderful Catholicon,
Of very subtle and magical powers!
P. HEN. Purge with your nostrums and drugs infernal The spouts and gargoyles of these towers,
Not me! My faith is utterly gone
In every power but the Power Supernal!
Pray tell me, of what school are you?
LUCIF. Both of the Old and of the New!
The school of Hermes Trismegistus,
Who uttered his oracles sublime
Before the Olympiads, in the dew
Of the early dawn and dusk of Time,
The reign of dateless old Hephæstus!
As northward, from its Nubian springs,
The Nile, for ever new and old,
Among the living and the dead,
Its mighty, mystic stream has rolled;
So, starting from its fountain-head
Under the lotus-leaves of Isis,
From the dead demi-gods of eld,
Through long, unbroken lines of kings,
Its course the sacred art has held,
Unchecked, unchanged by man's devices.
This art the Arabian Gebir taught,
And in alembics, finely wrought,
Distilling herbs and flowers, discovered
The secret that so long had hovered
Upon the misty verge of Truth,
The Elixir of Perpetual Youth,
Called Alcohol, in the Arab speech!
Like him, this wondrous lore I teach!
P. HEN. What! an adept?
Nor less, nor more!
P. HEN. I am a reader of your books,
A lover of that mystic lore!
With such a piercing glance it looks
Into great Nature's open eye,
And sees within it trembling lie
|