CLARA.

Nay, but you can guess.

ADRIANA.

O, I have guessed a thousand times too oft!
And sometimes I am hopeful as the spring,
And up my fluttering heart is borne aloft
As high and gladsome as the lark at sunrise;
And then, as though the fowler's shaft had pierced it,
It comes plumb down with such a dead, dead fall.

CLARA.

And all the while is he, I nothing doubt,
As wayward and as lovesick as yourself.

He lovesick!

ADRIANA.

No it may be that he loves me;
But if he loves me 't is with no lovesickness.
His nerves are made of other cord than mine;
He saunters undisturbed along the Lis,
Forever angling as he used to do.

And when he told me he must come to-night,
And that he then would lay a burden down
Which he had borne in silence all too long,
His voice was strong and steady, calm and clear,
So that I doubted if it could be love

That then was in his thoughts.

CLARA.

O, much the doubt!

But this was what I knew had come to pass, When answering with your vacant no and yes, You fed upon your thoughts and marked me not.

ADRIANA.

But honestly, think you it must be love

He comes to speak of?

CLARA.

Why, 't is either that, Or else to tell you of what fish he caught.

ADRIANA.

O, do not tease me; for my heart is faint
With over-fulness of its expectations.

CLARA.

Nay, if your love 's so lamentable sick,
Nurse it yourself; I'll go.

ADRIANA.

With all my heart.

You're too light-headed for my company.

CLARA.

Is it with all your heart? then I'll not go ;
Or else I'll take you with me.

Come along;

Your bower lacks tendance; it is strewn with leaves;
The autumn winds have broken in, alas!

And many a flower is hanging down its head
Since the rude kissing of those wild intruders.
Come, come with me; the dew is on the grass;
The snails are running races on the walls;
And at this merry pace, an inch an hour,
We shall o'ertake some laggard. Snail, good day!
I like you well, but will not marry you.

I'll tell you why. Your eyes are in your horns.

SCENE V.-The House Van Artevelde.

PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE and FATHER JOHN of

HEDA.

ARTEVELde.

I never looked that he should live so long.
He was a man of that unsleeping spirit,
He seemed to live by miracle: his food
Was glory, which was poison to his mind
And peril to his body. He was one
Of many thousand such that die betimes,
Whose story is a fragment, known to few.
Then comes the man who has the luck to live,
And he's a prodigy. Compute the chances,
And deem there 's ne'er a one in dangerous times
Who wins the race of glory, but than him
A thousand men more gloriously endowed
Have fallen upon the course; a thousand others
Have had their fortunes foundered by a chance,
Whilst lighter barks pushed past them; to whom add
A smaller tally, of the singular few

Who, gifted with predominating powers,
Bear yet a temperate will and keep the peace.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

FATHER JOHN.

Had Launoy lived, he might have passed for great,
But not by conquests in the Franc of Bruges.
The sphere, the scale of circumstance, is all
Which makes the wonder of the many.

Still,

An ardent soul was Launoy's, and his deeds
Were such as dazzled many a Flemish dame.
There'll some bright eyes in Ghent be dimmed for

him.

ARTEVELDE.

They will be dim, and then be bright again.
All is in busy, stirring, stormy motion,

And many a cloud drifts by, and none sojourns.
Lightly is life laid down amongst us now,
And lightly is death mourned: a dusk star blinks
As fleets the rack, but look again, and lo!
In a wide solitude of wintry sky

Twinkles the reilluminated star,

And all is out of sight that smirched the ray.
We have not time to mourn.

FATHER JOHN.

The worse for us!

He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. 'T is an ill cure

For life's worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow 's held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.

Yet such the barrenness of busy life!
From shelf to shelf Ambition clambers up
To reach the naked'st pinnacle of all,
Whilst Magnanimity, absolved from toil,
Reposes self-included at the base.

But this thou know'st.

ARTEVELDE.

Else had I little learned

From my much-learned preceptor.

Enter the Page.

What, Sir Page!

Hast thou been idling in the market-place?

Canst tell whose chattels have been sold to-day

For payment of the White-Hoods?

PAGE.

Sir, I cannot;

'T is at the house Van Merestyn I've been To see the Lady Adriana.

ARTEVELDE.

Her!

Well, and what said the damsel ?

PAGE.

Sir, not much;

For Mistress Clara was her visitor,

And she said everything; she said it all.

ARTEVELDE.

What was it that ye spake of?

PAGE.

When I came

The talk was all of chivalry and love.
And presently arrived the Lord of Occo.

ARTEVELDE.

And what was talked of then?

PAGE.

O, still the same.

The ladies praised him mightily for deeds
Whose fame, they said, effulgent far and wide,
Eclipsed Sir Roland and Sir Oliver.

ARTEVELDE.

Now, Father, mark you that; hearts soft as wax These damsels would be thought to bear about, Yet ever is the bloodiest knight the best!

FATHER JOHN.

It is most true. Full many a dame I've known Who'd faint and sicken at the sight of blood,