spell by your effulgent youth.

HELENA: Say, say it not! To him I but smiled up--
But smiled!

ANTONIO: He knew not that such smiles could dawn
In a bare world. And now is flame; would take
Your tenderness into his arms and hear
Seized to him the warm music of your heart.
O, I could be for him--he is my father--
Prometheus stormed and gnawed on Caucasus,
Tantalus ever near the slipping wave,
Or torn and tossed to burning martyrdom--
But not--not this!

HELENA: Then, flight! In it we may
Find haven and new nurture for our bliss.

ANTONIO: Snap from his hunger this one hope, so he
Must starve? Push him who has but learned there's light
Back into yawning blindness? Ah, not flight!

HELENA: I know he is your father, and my days
Have been all fatherless, tho' I have made
Me child to every wind that had caress
And to each lonely tree of the deep wood--
Oft envious of those who touch gray hairs,
Or spend desire on filial grief and pang.
And most have you a softness in him kept,
Been to him more than empire's tyranny--
But baffled none can measure him nor trust!

ANTONIO: Yet must we wait.

HELENA: When waiting shall but goad
The speed of peril?

ANTONIO: Still: and strain to win
Him from this brink.--If vainly, then birth, pity,
And memory shall fall from me!--all, all,
But fierceness for thy peace!

HELENA: My Antony!

ANTONIO: And fierceness without falter!

HELENA: I am thine,
Thine more than immortality is God's!
Hear, does the nightingale not tell it thee?
The stars do they not tremble it, the moon
Murmur it argently into thine eyes?

ANTONIO: Ah, sorceress! You need but breathe to put
Abysm from us; but build words to float us
On infinite ecstasy. (_Kisses her._)

HELENA: How, how thy kisses
Sing in me!

ANTONIO: From my heart they do but send
Echoes born of thy beauty mid its strings!

HELENA: Then would I lean forever at thy lips,
Lose no reverberance, no ring, no waft,
Hear nothing everlastingly but them!

(_A mournful chant is borne from the Convent. They slowly
unclasp, awed._)

ANTONIO: Weary with vigil does it swell and sink,
Moaning the dead.

HELENA: Ah, no! There are no dead
To-night in all the world. Could God see them