Читать книгу The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 155

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The mountains by moonlight. ALHADRA alone in a Moorish dress.

Alhadra. Yon hanging woods, that touch’d by autumn seem

As they were blossoming hues of fire and gold;

{ The hanging Act V, l. 41.

{ The flower-like woods, most lovely in decay,

The many clouds, the sea, the rock, the sands,

Lie in the silent moonshine: and the owl,

(Strange! very strange!) the scritch-owl only wakes!

Sole voice, sole eye of all this world of beauty!

Unless, perhaps, she sing her screeching song

To a herd of wolves, that skulk athirst for blood.

Why such a thing am I? — Where are these men?

I need the sympathy of human faces,

To beat away this deep contempt for all things,

Which quenches my revenge. O! would to Alla,

The raven, or the sea-mew, were appointed

To bring me food! or rather that my soul

Could drink in life from the universal air!

It were a lot divine in some small skiff

Along some Ocean’s boundless solitude,

To float for ever with a careless course,

And think myself the only being alive.

[Vide post Osorio, Act V, ll. 39-56.]

My children! — Isidore’s children! — Son of Valdez,

This hath new strung mine arm. Thou coward tyrant!

To stupify a woman’s heart with anguish,

Till she forgot — even that she was a mother!

[She fixes her eye on the earth. Then drop in one after

another, from different parts of the stage, a

considerable number of Morescoes, all in Moorish

garments and Moorish armour. They form a circle at

a distance round ALHADRA, and remain silent till

NAOMI enters.

Remorse.

[After 353] [Stage-direction] Alhadra (to Naomi, who advances from the

circle). Remorse.

Remorse.

[After 359] Enter Warville. MS. III.

[A pause.

Ordonio was your chieftain’s murderer

Remorse.

[After 375] Alhadra. This night your chieftain armed himself Remorse.

[Affixed to 375] (not in S. T. C.’s handwriting) and erased:

Naomi.

Proceed, proceed, Alhadra.

Alhadra.

Yestermorning

He stood before our house, startful and gloomy,

And stirr’d up fierce dispute with Ferdinand,

I saw him when the vehement Gripe of Conscience

Had wrenched his features to a visible agony.

When he was gone Ferdinand sighed out ‘Villain’

And spake no other word.

Warville (mournfully).

The brother of Albert.

MS. III erased.

[Note. — Warville was a character introduced into the deleted passage

360-70, the name being always altered by S. T. C. to ‘Maurice’.]

[After 425

All. Away! away! [She rushes off, all following her.

Remorse.