Scene.— Constantinople; the house of a Greek Conjurer. 1521.
Paracelsus.
Paracelsus.
Over the waters in the vaporous
The sun goes down as in a sphere of
Behind the arm of the city, which between,
With all that length of domes and minarets,
Athwart the splendour, black and crooked
Like a Turk verse along a scimitar.
There lie, sullen memorial, and no
Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last.
Strange—and the juggles of a sallow
Have won me to this act! 'T is as yon
Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a
And break upon a molehill.
I have
Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for
The heights already reached, without
To the extent above; fairly
All I have clearly gained; for once excludingA brilliant future to supply and
All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes:
And all because a fortune-teller
His credulous seekers should inscribe thus
Their previous life's attainment, in his roll,
Before his promised secret, as he vaunts,
Make up the sum: and here amid the
Uncouth recordings of the dupes of
Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results!
A few blurred characters suffice to noteA stranger wandered long through many
And reaped the fruit he coveted in a
Discoveries, as appended here and there,
The fragmentary produce of much toil,
In a dim heap, fact and surmise
Confusedly massed as when acquired; he
Intent on gain to come too much to
And scrutinize the little gained: the
Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's
And a mad lover's ditty—there it lies.
And yet those blottings chronicle a life—A whole life, and my life!
Nothing to do,
No problem for the fancy, but a
Spent and decided, wasted past
Or worthy beyond peer.
Stay, what does
Remembrancer set down concerning "life"?"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,'"It is the echo of time; and he whose heart"Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech"Was copied from a human tongue, can never"Recall when he was living yet knew not this."Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him"Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing,"It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after,"An altered brow and eye and gait and speech"Attest that now he knows the adage true"'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'"Ay, my brave chronicler, and this same
As well as any: now, let my time be!
Now!
I can go no farther; well or ill,'T is done.
I must desist and take my chance.
I cannot keep on the stretch: 't is no back-shrinking—For let but some assurance beam, some
To my toil grow visible, and I
At any price, though closing it,
I die.
Else, here I pause.
The old Greek's
Is like to turn out true: "I shall not quit"His chamber till I know what I desire!"Was it the light wind sang it o'er the sea?
An end, a rest! strange how the notion,
Encountered, gathers strength by moments!
Rest!
Where has it kept so long? this throbbing
To cease, this beating heart to cease, all
And gnawing thoughts to cease!
To dare let
My strung, so high-strung brain, to dare
My harassed o'ertasked frame, to know my place,
My portion, my reward, even my failure,
Assigned, made sure for ever!
To lose
Among the common creatures of the world,
To draw some gain from having been a man,
Neither to hope nor fear, to live at length!
Even in failure, rest!
But rest in
And power and recompense . . .
I hoped that once!
What, sunk insensibly so deep?
Has
Been undergone for this?
This the
My labour qualified me to
With no fear of refusal?
Had I
Slightingly through my task, and so judged
To moderate my hopes; nay, were it
My sole concern to exculpate myself,
End things or mend them,—why,
I could not chooseA humbler mood to wait for the event!
No, no, there needs not this; no, after all,
At worst I have performed my share of the
The rest is God's concern; mine, merely this,
To know that I have obstinately
By my own work.
The mortal whose brave
Has trod, unscathed, the temple-court so
That he descries at length the shrine of shrines,
Must let no sneering of the demons' eyes,
Whom he could pass unquailing, fasten
Upon him, fairly past their power; no, no—He must not stagger, faint, fall down at last,
Having a charm to baffle them; behold,
He bares his front: a mortal ventures
Serene amid the echoes, beams and glooms!
If he be priest henceforth, if he wake
The god of the place to ban and blast him there,
Both well!
What's failure or success to me?
I have subdued my life to the one
Whereto I ordained it; there alone I spy,
No doubt, that way I may be satisfied.
Yes, well have I subdued my life!
The obligation of my strictest vow,
The contemplation of my wildest bond,
Which gave my nature freely up, in truth,
But in its actual state, consenting
All passionate impulses its soil was
To rear, should wither; but foreseeing
The tract, doomed to perpetual barrenness,
Would seem one day, remembered as it was,
Beside the parched sand-waste which now it is,
Already strewn with faint blooms, viewless then.
I ne'er engaged to root up loves so frailI felt them not; yet now, 't is very
Some soft spots had their birth in me at first,
If not love, say, like love: there was a
When yet this wolfish hunger after
Set not remorselessly love's claims aside.
This heart was human once, or why
Einsiedeln, now, and Würzburg which the
Forsakes her course to fold as with an arm?
And Festus—my poor Festus, with his
And counsel and grave fears—where is he
With the sweet maiden, long ago his bride?
I surely loved them—that last night, at least,
When we . . . gone! gone! the better.
I am
The sad review of an ambitious
Choked by vile lusts, unnoticed in their birth,
But let grow up and wind around a
Till action was destroyed.
No,
I have
Purging my path successively of
Wearing the distant likeness of such lusts.
I have made life consist of one idea:
Ere that was master, up till that was born,
I bear a memory of a pleasant
Whose small events I treasure; till one mornI ran o'er the seven little grassy fields,
Startling the flocks of nameless birds, to
Poor Festus, leaping all the while for joy,
To leave all trouble for my future plans,
Since I had just determined to
The greatest and most glorious man on earth.
And since that morn all life has been forgotten;
All is one day, one only step
The outset and the end: one tyrant all-Absorbing aim fills up the interspace,
One vast unbroken chain of thought, kept
Through a career apparently
To its existence: life, death, light and shadow,
The shows of the world, were bare
Or indices of truth to be wrung thence,
Not ministers of sorrow or delight:
A wondrous natural robe in which she went.
For some one truth would dimly beacon
From mountains rough with pines, and flit and winkO'er dazzling wastes of frozen snow, and
Into assured light in some branching
Where ripens, swathed in fire, the liquid gold—And all the beauty, all the wonder
On either side the truth, as its mere robe;
I see the robe now—then I saw the form.
So far, then,
I have voyaged with success,
So much is good, then, in this working
Which parts me from that happy strip of land:
But o'er that happy strip a sun shone, too!
And fainter gleams it as the waves grow rough,
And still more faint as the sea widens; lastI sicken on a dead gulf streaked with
From its own putrefying depths alone.
Then,
God was pledged to take me by the hand;
Now, any miserable juggle can
My pride depart.
All is alike at length:
God may take pleasure in confounding
By hiding secrets with the scorned and base—I am here, in short: so little have I
Throughout!
I never glanced behind to
If I had kept my primal light from wane,
And thus insensibly am—what I am!
Oh, bitter; very bitter! And more bitter,
To fear a deeper curse, an inner ruin,
Plague beneath plague, the last turning the
To light beside its darkness.
Let me
My youth and its brave hopes, all dead and gone,
In tears which burn!
Would I were sure to
Some startling secret in their stead, a
Of force to flush old age with youth, or
Gold, or imprison moonbeams till they
To opal shafts!—only that, hurling
Indignant back,
I might convince
My aims remained supreme and pure as ever!
Even now, why not desire, for mankind's sake,
That if I fail, some fault may be the cause,
That, though I sink, another may succeed?
O God, the despicable heart of us!
Shut out this hideous mockery from my heart!'T was politic in you,
Aureole, to
Single rewards, and ask them in the lump;
At all events, once launched, to hold straight on:
For now' t is all or nothing.
Mighty
Your gains will bring if they stop short of
Full consummation!
As a man, you hadA certain share of strength; and that is
Already in the getting these you boast.
Do not they seem to laugh, as who should say—"Great master, we are here indeed, dragged forth"To light; this hast thou done: be glad!
Now, seek"The strength to use which thou hast spent in getting!"And yet't is much, surely't is very much,
Thus to have emptied youth of all its gifts,
To feed a fire meant to hold out till
Arrived with inexhaustible light; and lo,
I have heaped up my last, and day dawns not!
And I am left with grey hair, faded hands,
And furrowed brow.
Ha, have I, after all,
Mistaken the wild nursling of my breast?
Knowledge it seemed, and power, and recompense!
Was she who glided through my room of nights,
Who laid my head on her soft knees and
The damp locks,—whose sly soothings just
When my sick spirit craved repose awhile—God! was I fighting sleep off for death's sake?
God!
Thou art mind!
Unto the
Mind should be precious.
Spare my mind alone!
All else I will endure; if, as I
Here, with my gains, thy thunder smite me down,
I bow me; 't is thy will, thy righteous will;
I o'erpass life's restrictions, and I die;
And if no trace of my career
Save a thin corpse at pleasure of the
In these bright chambers level with the air,
See thou to it!
But if my spirit fail,
My once proud spirit forsake me at the last,
Hast thou done well by me?
So do not thou!
Crush not my mind, dear God, though I be crushed!
Hold me before the frequence of thy
And say—"I crushed him, lest he should disturb"My law.
Men must not know their strength: behold"Weak and alone, how he had raised himself!"But if delusions trouble me, and thou,
Not seldom felt with rapture in thy
Throughout my toils and wanderings, dost
To work man's welfare through my weak endeavour,
To crown my mortal forehead with a
From thine own blinding crown, to smile, and
This puny hand and let the work so
Be styled my work,—hear me!
I covet
An influx of new power, an angel's soul:
It were no marvel then—but I have
Thus far, a man; let me conclude, a man!
Give but one hour of my first energy,
Of that invincible faith, but only one!
That I may cover with an
The truths I have, and spy some certain
To mould them, and completing them, possess!
Yet God is good:
I started sure of that,
And why dispute it now?
I'll not
But some undoubted warning long ere
Had reached me: a fire-labarum was not
Too much for the old founder of these walls.
Then, if my life has not been natural,
It has been monstrous: yet, till late, my
So ardently engrossed me, that delight,
A pausing and reflecting joy,'t is plain,
Could find no place in it.
True,
I am worn;
But who clothes summer, who is life itself?
God, that created all things, can renew!
And then, though after-life to please me
Must have no likeness to the past, what
Reward from springing out of toil, as
As bursts the flower from earth and root and stalk?
What use were punishment, unless some
Be first detected? let me know that first!
No man could ever offend as I have done . . .[A voice from within.]I hear a voice, perchance I
Long ago, but all too low,
So that scarce a care it
If the voice were real or no:
I heard it in my youth when
The waters of my life outburst:
But, now their stream ebbs faint,
I
That voice, still low, but fatal-clear—As if all poets,
God ever
Should save the world, and therefore
Great gifts to, but who, proud,
To do his work, or lightly
Those gifts, or failed through weak endeavour,
So, mourn cast off by him for ever,—As if these leaned in airy
To take me; this the song they sing."Lost, lost! yet come,
With our wan troop make thy home.
Come, come! for
Will not breathe, so much as
Reproach to thee,
Knowing what thou sink'st beneath.
So sank we in those old years,
We who bid thee, come! thou
Who, living yet, hast life o'erpast.
And altogether we, thy peers,
Will pardon crave for thee, the
Whose trial is done, whose lot is
With those who watch but work no more,
Who gaze on life but live no more.
Yet we trusted thou shouldst
The message which our lips, too weak,
Refused to utter,—shouldst
Our fault: such trust, and all a dream!
Yet we chose thee a
Where the richness ran to flowers:
Couldst not sing one song for grace?
Not make one blossom man's and ours?
Must one more recreant to his
Die with unexerted powers,
And join us, leaving as he
The world, he was to loosen, bound?
Anguish! ever and for ever;
Still beginning, ending never.
Yet, lost and last one, come!
How couldst understand, alas,
What our pale ghosts strove to say,
As their shades did glance and
Before thee night and day?
Thou wast blind as we were dumb:
Once more, therefore, come,
O come!
How should we clothe, how arm the
Shall next thy post of life inherit—How guard him from thy speedy ruin?
Tell us of thy sad
Here, where we sit, ever
Our weary task, ever
Sharp sorrow, far from God who
Our powers, and man they could not save!"Aprile enters.
Aprile.
Ha, ha! our king that wouldst be, here at last?
Art thou the poet who shall save the world?
Thy hand to mine!
Stay, fix thine eyes on mine!
Thou wouldst be king?
Still fix thine eyes on mine!
Paracelsus.
Ha, ha! why crouchest not?
Am I not king?
So torture is not wholly unavailing!
Have my fierce spasms compelled thee from thy lair?
Art thou the sage I only seemed to be,
Myself of after-time, my very
With sight a little clearer, strength more firm,
Who robes him in my robe and grasps my
For just a fault, a weakness, a neglect?
I scarcely trusted God with the
That such might come, and thou didst hear the while!
Aprile.
Thine eyes are lustreless to mine; my
Is soft, nay silken soft: to talk with
Flushes my cheek, and thou art ashy-pale.
Truly, thou hast laboured, hast withstood her lips,
The siren's!
Yes, 't is like thou hast attained!
Tell me, dear master, wherefore now thou comest?
I thought thy solemn songs would have their
In after-time; that I should hear the
Exult in thee and echo with thy praise,
While I was laid forgotten in my grave.
Paracelsus.
Ah fiend,
I know thee,
I am not thy dupe!
Thou art ordained to follow in my track,
Reaping my sowing, as I scorned to
The harvest sown by sages passed away.
Thou art the sober searcher, cautious striver,
As if, except through me, thou hast searched or striven!
Ay, tell the world!
Degrade me after all,
To an aspirant after fame, not truth—To all but envy of thy fate, be sure!
Aprile.
Nay, sing them to me;
I shall envy not:
Thou shalt be king!
Sing thou, and I will
Beside, and call deep silence for thy songs,
And worship thee, as I had ne'er been
To fill thy throne: but none shall ever know!
Sing to me; for already thy wild
Unlock my heart-strings, as some
Reveals by some chance blaze its parent
After long time: so thou reveal'st my soul.
All will flash forth at last, with thee to hear!
Paracelsus.(His secret!
I shall get his secret—fool!)I am he that aspired to know: and thou?
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved!
Paracelsus.
Poor slave!
I am thy king indeed.
Aprile. Thou
That—born a spirit, dowered even as thou,
Born for thy fate—because I could not
My yearnings to possess at once the
Enjoyment, but neglected all the
Of realizing even the frailest joy,
Gathering no fragments to appease my want,
Yet nursing up that want till thus I die—Thou deem'st I cannot trace thy safe sure marchO'er perils that o'erwhelm me, triumphing,
Neglecting nought below for aught above,
Despising nothing and ensuring all—Nor that I could (my time to come again)Lead thus my spirit securely as thine own.
Listen, and thou shalt see I know thee well.
I would love infinitely . . .
Ah, lost! lost!
Oh ye who armed me at such cost,
How shall I look on all of
With your gifts even yet on me?
Paracelsus.(Ah, 't is some moonstruck creature after all!
Such fond fools as are like to haunt this den:
They spread contagion, doubtless: yet he
To echo one foreboding of my
So truly, that . . . no matter!
How he
With eve's last sunbeam staying on his
Which turns to it as if they were akin:
And those clear smiling eyes of saddest
Nearly set free, so far they rise
The painful fruitless striving of the
And enforced knowledge of the lips,
In slow despondency's eternal sigh!
Has he, too, missed life's end, and learned the cause?)I charge thee, by thy fealty, be calm!
Tell me what thou wouldst be, and what I am.
Aprile.
I would love infinitely, and be loved.
First:
I would carve in stone, or cast in brass,
The forms of earth.
No ancient hunter
Up to the gods by his renown, no
Supposed the sweet soul of a woodland
Or sapphirine spirit of a twilight star,
Should be too hard for me; no
Regal for his white locks; no youth who
Silent and very calm amid the throng,
His right hand ever hid beneath his
Until the tyrant pass; no lawgiver,
No swan-soft woman rubbed with lucid
Given by a god for love of her—too hard!
Every passion sprung from man, conceived by man,
Would I express and clothe it in its right form,
Or blend with others struggling in one form,
Or show repressed by an ungainly form.
Oh, if you marvelled at some mighty
With a fit frame to execute its will—Even unconsciously to work its will—You should be moved no less beside some
Rare spirit, fettered to a stubborn body,
Endeavouring to subdue it and inform
With its own splendour!
All this I would do:
And I would say, this done, "His sprites created,"God grants to each a sphere to be its world,"Appointed with the various objects needed"To satisfy its own peculiar want;"So,
I create a world for these my shapes"Fit to sustain their beauty and their strength!"And, at the word,
I would contrive and
Woods, valleys, rocks and plains, dells, sands and wastes,
Lakes which, when morn breaks on their quivering bed,
Blaze like a wyvern flying round the sun,
And ocean isles so small, the dog-fish trackingA dead whale, who should find them, would swim
Around them, and fare onward—all to
The offspring of my brain.
Nor these alone:
Bronze labyrinth, palace, pyramid and crypt,
Baths, galleries, courts, temples and terraces,
Marts, theatres and wharfs—all filled with men,
Men everywhere!
And this performed in turn,
When those who looked on, pined to hear the
And fears and hates and loves which moved the crowd,
I would throw down the pencil as the chisel,
And I would speak; no thought which ever stirredA human breast should be untold; all passions,
All soft emotions, from the turbulent
Within a heart fed with desires like mine,
To the last comfort shutting the tired
Of him who sleeps the sultry noon
Beneath the tent-tree by the wayside well:
And this in language as the need should be,
Now poured at once forth in a burning flow,
Now piled up in a grand array of words.
This done, to perfect and consummate all,
Even as a luminous haze links star to star,
I would supply all chasms with music,
Mysterious motions of the soul, no
To be defined save in strange melodies.
Last, having thus revealed all I could love,
Having received all love bestowed on it,
I would die: preserving so throughout my
God full on me, as I was full on men:
He would approve my prayer, "I have gone through"The loveliness of life; create for me"If not for men, or take me to thyself,"Eternal, infinite love!" If thou hast
Conceived this mighty aim, this full desire,
Thou hast not passed my trial, and thou
No king of mine.
Paracelsus. Ah me!
Aprile. But thou art here!
Thou didst not gaze like me upon that
Till thine own powers for compassing the
Were blind with glory; nor grow mad to
At once the prize long patient toil should claim,
Nor spurn all granted short of that.
And
Would do as thou, a second time: nay, listen!
Knowing ourselves, our world, our task so great,
Our time so brief, 't is clear if we
The means so limited, the tools so
To execute our purpose, life will fleet,
And we shall fade, and leave our task undone.
We will be wise in time: what though our
Be fashioned in despite of their ill-service,
Be crippled every way? 'T were little
Did full resources wait on our
At every turn.
Let all be as it is.
Some say the earth is even so
That tree and flower, a vesture gay, concealA bare and skeleton framework.
Had we
Answering to our mind!
But now I
Wrecked on a savage isle: how rear
My palace?
Branching palms the props shall be,
Fruit glossy mingling; gems are for the East;
Who heeds them?
I can pass them.
Serpents' scales,
And painted birds' down, furs and fishes'
Must help me; and a little here and
Is all I can aspire to: still my
Shall show its birth was in a gentler clime."Had I green jars of malachite, this way"I'd range them: where those sea-shells glisten above,"Cressets should hang, by right: this way we set"The purple carpets, as these mats are laid,"Woven of fern and rush and blossoming flag."Or if, by fortune, some completer
Be spared to me, some fragment, some slight
Of the prouder workmanship my own home boasts,
Some trifle little heeded there, but
The place's one perfection—with what
Would I enshrine the relic,
Foregoing all the marvels out of reach!
Could I retain one strain of all the
Of the angels, one word of the fiat of God,
To let my followers know what such things are!
I would adventure nobly for their sakes:
When nights were still, and still the moaning
And far away I could descry the
Whence I departed, whither I return,
I would dispart the waves, and stand once
At home, and load my bark, and hasten back,
And fling my gains to them, worthless or true."Friends," I would say, "I went far, far for them,"Past the high rocks the haunt of doves, the mounds"Of red earth from whose sides strange trees grow out,"Past tracts of milk-white minute blinding sand,"Till, by a mighty moon,
I tremblingly"Gathered these magic herbs, berry and bud,"In haste, not pausing to reject the weeds,"But happy plucking them at any price."To me, who have seen them bloom in their own soil,"They are scarce lovely: plait and wear them, you!"And guess, from what they are, the springs that fed them,"The stars that sparkled o'er them, night by night,"The snakes that travelled far to sip their dew!"Thus for my higher loves; and thus even
Would win me honour.
But not these
Should claim my care; for common life, its
And ways, would I set forth in beauteous hues:
The lowest hind should not possess a hope,
A fear, but I'd be by him, saying
Than he his own heart's language.
I would
For ever in the thoughts I thus explored,
As a discoverer's memory is
To all he finds; they should be mine henceforth,
Imbued with me, though free to all before:
For clay, once cast into my soul's rich mine,
Should come up crusted o'er with gems.
Nor
Would need a meaner spirit, than the first;
Nay, 't would be but the selfsame spirit,
In humbler guise, but still the selfsame spirit:
As one spring wind unbinds the mountain
And comforts violets in their hermitage.
But, master, poet, who hast done all this,
How didst thou'scape the ruin whelming me?
Didst thou, when nerving thee to this attempt,
Ne'er range thy mind's extent, as some wide hall,
Dazzled by shapes that filled its length with light,
Shapes clustered there to rule thee, not obey,
That will not wait thy summons, will not
Singly, nor when thy practised eye and
Can well transfer their loveliness, but
By thee for ever, bright to thy despair?
Didst thou ne'er gaze on each by turns, and
Resolve to single out one, though the
Should vanish, and to give that one,
In beauty, to the world; forgetting, so,
Its peers, whose number baffles mortal power?
And, this determined, wast thou ne'er
By memories and regrets and passionate love,
To glance once more farewell? and did their
Fasten thee, brighter and more bright,
Thou couldst but stagger back unto their feet,
And laugh that man's applause or welfare
Could tempt thee to forsake them?
Or when
Had passed and still their love possessed thee wholly,
When from without some murmur startled
Of darkling mortals famished for one
Of thy so-hoarded luxury of light,
Didst thou ne'er strive even yet to break those
And prove thou couldst recover and
Thy early mission, long ago renounced,
And to that end, select some shape once more?
And did not mist-like influences, thick films,
Faint memories of the rest that charmed so
Thine eyes, float fast, confuse thee, bear thee off,
As whirling snow-drifts blind a man who treadsA mountain ridge, with guiding spear, through storm?
Say, though I fell,
I had excuse to fall;
Say,
I was tempted sorely: say but this,
Dear lord,
Aprile's lord!
Paracelsus. Clasp me not thus,
Aprile!
That the truth should reach me thus!
We are weak dust.
Nay, clasp not or I faint!
Aprile.
My king! and envious thoughts could outrage thee?
Lo,
I forget my ruin, and
In thy success, as thou!
Let our God's
Go bravely through the world at last!
What
Through me or thee?
I feel thy breath.
Why, tears?
Tears in the darkness, and from thee to me?
Paracelsus.
Love me henceforth,
Aprile, while I
To love; and, merciful God, forgive us both!
We wake at length from weary dreams; but
Have slept in fairy-land: though dark and
Appears the world before us, we no
Wake with our wrists and ankles jewelled still.
I too have sought to know as thou to love—Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.
Still thou hast beauty and I, power.
We wake:
What penance canst devise for both of us?
Aprile.
I hear thee faintly.
The thick darkness!
Thine eyes are hid. 'T is as I knew:
I speak,
And now I die.
But I have seen thy face!
O poet, think of me, and sing of me!
But to have seen thee and to die so soon!
Paracelsus.
Die not,
Aprile!
We must never part.
Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more?
Part? never!
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Love—until both are saved.
Aprile, hear!
We will accept our gains, and use them—now!
God, he will die upon my breast!
Aprile!
Aprile.
To speak but once, and die! yet by his side.
Hush! hush! Ha! go you ever girt
With phantoms, powers?
I have created such,
But these seem real as I.
Paracelsus. Whom can you
Through the accursed darkness?
Aprile. Stay;
I know,
I know them: who should know them well as I?
White brows, lit up with glory; poets all!
Paracelsus.
Let him but live, and I have my reward!
Aprile.
Yes;
I see now.
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
Had you but told me this at first!
Hush! hush!
Paracelsus.
Live! for my sake, because of my great sin,
To help my brain, oppressed by these wild
And their deep import.
Live! 't is not too late.
I have a quiet home for us, and friends.
Michal shall smile on you.
Hear you?
Lean thus,
And breathe my breath.
I shall not lose one
Of all your speech, one little word,
Aprile!
Aprile.
No, no.
Crown me?
I am not one of you!'T is he, the king, you seek.
I am not one.
Paracelsus.
Thy spirit, at least,
Aprile!
Let me love!
I have attained, and now I may depart.
