Classic Poem

SCENE II. A room in DON TOMMASO'S HOUSE. DON TOMMASO and ANNICCA.

DON TOMMASO.
Truly, you wrong your sister; she is young,
Heedless, and wilful, that is all; a touch
Of the Ribera's spirit fired the lass.
Don John was but her weapon of revenge
Against the malice of our haughty matrons,
Who hurled this icy shafts of scorn from heights
Of dignity upon the artist's daughter.

ANNICCA.
I cannot think with you. In her demeanor,
Her kindled cheek, her melting eye, was more
Than sly revenge or cautious policy.
If that was art, it overreached itself.
Ere the night ended, I had blushed to see
Slighting regards cast on my father's child,
And hear her name and his tossed lightly round.

DON TOMMASO.
Could you not read in such disparagement
The envy of small natures?

ANNICCA.
I had as lief
Maria were to dance the tarantella
Upon the quay at noonday, as to see her
Gazed at again with such insulting homage.

DON TOMMASO.
You are too strict; your baseless apprehensions
Wrong her far more than strangers' jests.

ANNICCA.
Not so;
My timely fears prevent a greater ill
And work no harm, since they shall be imparted
Only to him who hath the power to quell them,
Dissolving them to air — my father.

DON TOMMASO.
How!
You surely will not rouse his fatal wrath?
Annicca, listen: if your doubts were true,
He whose fierce love guards her with sleepless eyes,
More like the passion of some wild, dumb creature,
With prowling jealousy and deadly spring,
Forth leaping at the first approach of ill,
Than the calm tenderness of human fathers;
He surely had been keen to scent the danger.
I saw him at the ball — as is his wont,
He mingled not among the revellers,
But like her shadow played the spy on her.

ANNICCA.
A word would stir less deeply than you dread.

DON TOMMASO.
Ah, there you err; he knows no middle term.
At once he would accept as fact the worst
Of your imaginings; his rage would smite
All near him, and rebound upon himself;
For, as I learn, Don John brings royal orders
For the Queen's gallery; he would dismiss
The Prince as roughly as a begging artist.
Make no such breach just now betwixt the court
And our own kindred.

ANNICCA.
Be it so, Tommaso.
I will do naught in haste.

DON TOMMASO.
Watch thou and wait.
A slight reproof might now suffice the child,
Tame as a bird unto a gentle voice.

ANNICCA.
My mind misgives me; yet will I find patience.