PROLOGUE, EPILOGUE, AND SONG FROM THE INDIAN QUEEN

PROLOGUE

B OY . Wake, wake, Quevira! our soft rest must cease,
And fly together with our country's peace;
No more must we sleep under plantain shade,
Which neither heat could pierce, nor cold invade;
Where bounteous nature never feels decay,
And op'ning buds drive falling fruits away.
Q UEVIRA . Why should men quarrel here, where all possess
As much as they can hope for by success?

SONG OF AERIAL SPIRITS

Poor Mortals that are clog'd with Earth below
Sink under Love and Care,
While we that dwell in Air
Such heavy Passions never know.
Why then shou'd Mortals be
Unwilling to be free
From Blood, that sullen Cloud

Chorus
Come, we shepherds, whose blest sight
Hath met Love's noon in Nature's night;
Come, we lift up our loftier song
And wake the sun that lies too long.

To all our world of well-stol'n joy
He slept, and dreamt of no such thing;
While we found our Heaven's fairer eye
And kissed the cradle of our King.
Tell him he rises now, too late
To show us aught worth looking at.

Tell him we now can show him more
Than he e'er showed to mortal sight;
Than he himself e'er saw before;
Which to be seen needs not his light.

Willow catkins beyond the garden wait for evening tides;
across the stream, leaves of peachtrees
border the red bridge.
It is dusk: as I gaze in concentration
at springtime like a river,
beyond the T-pattern blinds of the Ting Family house
it is the Six Dynasties again.

Pavilions of dance, terraces of song,
clusters of lovely silks!
Yet now, no traces of visitors,
only springtime wind.
" Treading the Green, " unlimited
feelings of lamentation
all absorbed into the setting orb
of the Southern Dynasties.

This Dai adjusts his slipping shoulder-straps, wraps close his
misfit outsize greatcoat — he articulates his English with an
alien care.
My fathers were with the Black Prinse of Wales
at the passion of
the blind Bohemian king.
They served in these fields,
it is in the histories that you can read it, Corporal — boys
Gower, they were — it is writ down — yes.
Wot about Methusalum, Taffy?
I was with Abel when his brother found him,
under the green tree.
I built a shit-house for Artaxerxes.

1

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
O all the instruments agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

O happy hour, and happier hours
Await them. Many a merry face
Salutes them ÔÇô maidens of the place,
That pelt us in the porch with flowers.

O happy hour, behold the bride
With him to whom her hand I gave.
They leave the porch, they pass the grave
That has to-day its sunny side.

To-day the grave is bright for me,
For them the light of life increased,
Who stay to share the morning feast,
Who rest to-night beside the sea.

Let all my genial spirits advance
To meet and greet a whiter sun;

Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;

Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

O living will that shalt endure
When all that seems shall suffer shock,
Rise in the spiritual rock,
Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure,

That we may lift from out of dust
A voice as unto him that hears,
A cry above the conquer'd years
To one that with us works, and trust,

With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.