The Complete Plays of Oscar Wilde. Оскар Уайльд

However he had wronged him: tell me that.

      MORANZONE

      [after some hesitation]

       You have sworn an oath, see that you keep that oath.

       Boy, do you think I do not know your secret,

       Your traffic with the Duchess?

      GUIDO

      Silence, liar!

       The very moon in heaven is not more chaste.

       Nor the white stars so pure.

      MORANZONE

      And yet, you love her;

       Weak fool, to let love in upon your life,

       Save as a plaything.

      GUIDO

      You do well to talk:

       Within your veins, old man, the pulse of youth

       Throbs with no ardour. Your eyes full of rheum

       Have against Beauty closed their filmy doors,

       And your clogged ears, losing their natural sense,

       Have shut you from the music of the world.

       You talk of love! You know not what it is.

      MORANZONE

      Oh, in my time, boy, have I walked i’ the moon,

       Swore I would live on kisses and on blisses,

       Swore I would die for love, and did not die,

       Wrote love bad verses; ay, and sung them badly,

       Like all true lovers: Oh, I have done the tricks!

       I know the partings and the chamberings;

       We are all animals at best, and love

       Is merely passion with a holy name.

      GUIDO

      Now then I know you have not loved at all.

       Love is the sacrament of life; it sets

       Virtue where virtue was not; cleanses men

       Of all the vile pollutions of this world;

       It is the fire which purges gold from dross,

       It is the fan which winnows wheat from chaff,

       It is the spring which in some wintry soil

       Makes innocence to blossom like a rose.

       The days are over when God walked with men,

       But Love, which is his image, holds his place.

       When a man loves a woman, then he knows

       God’s secret, and the secret of the world.

       There is no house so lowly or so mean,

       Which, if their hearts be pure who live in it,

       Love will not enter; but if bloody murder

       Knock at the Palace gate and is let in,

       Love like a wounded thing creeps out and dies.

       This is the punishment God sets on sin.

       The wicked cannot love.

       [A groan comes from the DUKE’s chamber.]

       Ah! What is that?

       Do you not hear? ‘Twas nothing.

       So I think

       That it is woman’s mission by their love

       To save the souls of men: and loving her,

       My Lady, my white Beatrice, I begin

       To see a nobler and a holier vengeance

       In letting this man live, than doth reside

       In bloody deeds o’ night, stabs in the dark,

       And young hands clutching at a palsied throat.

       It was, I think, for love’s sake that Lord Christ,

       Who was indeed himself incarnate Love,

       Bade every man forgive his enemy.

      MORANZONE

      [sneeringly]

       That was in Palestine, not Padua;

       And said for saints: I have to do with men.

      GUIDO

      It was for all time said.

      MORANZONE

      And your white Duchess,

       What will she do to thank you?

      GUIDO

      Alas, I will not see her face again.

       ‘Tis but twelve hours since I parted from her,

       So suddenly, and with such violent passion,

       That she has shut her heart against me now:

       No, I will never see her.

      MORANZONE

      What will you do?

      GUIDO

      After that I have laid the dagger there,

       Get hence tonight from Padua.

      MORANZONE

      And then?

      GUIDO

      I will take service with the Doge at Venice,

       And bid him pack me straightway to the wars,

       And there I will, being now sick of life,

       Throw that poor life against some desperate spear.

       [A groan from the DUKE’S chamber again.]

       Did you not hear a voice?

      MORANZONE

      I always hear,

       From the dim confines of some sepulchre,

       A voice that cries for vengeance. We waste time,

       It will be morning soon; are you resolved

       You will not kill the Duke?

      GUIDO

      I am resolved.

      MORANZONE

      O wretched father, lying unavenged.

      GUIDO

      More wretched, were thy son a murderer.

      MORANZONE

      Why, what is life?

      GUIDO

      I do not know, my lord,

       I did not give it, and I dare not take it.

      MORANZONE

      I do not thank God often; but I think

       I thank him now that I have got no son!

       And you, what bastard blood flows in your veins

       That when you have your enemy in your grasp

       You let him go! I would that I had left you

       With the dull hinds that reared you.

      GUIDO

      Better perhaps

       That you had done so! May be better still

       I’d not been born to this distressful world.

      MORANZONE

      Farewell!

      GUIDO

      Farewell!