CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
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 PR 4879.L53F76 
 
 The fountain of youth.A fantastic traged 
 
 3 1924 013 515 493 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 the Cornell University Library. 
 
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THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
THE 
 
 FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 B jfantasttc TLtaQcb^, 
 
 IN FIVE ACTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 EUGENE LEE-HAMILTON, 
 
 AUTHOE OF 
 
 ' THE NEW MEDUSA,' ' IMAGINARY SONNETS,' ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, KC. 
 
 1891. 
 
VERNON LEE, 
 
 WITH HER brother's LOVE 
 
^ramatt0 ^tveon^. 
 
 Ferdinand the Catholic. 
 
 Marquis of Villarica, Ais chamberlain. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Rosita, his daughter. 
 
 Maria, her maid. 
 
 Juan de Alvareda, alias Florestan, lover to Rosita. 
 
 EzDREL, a lea? ned Rabbi. 
 
 Aben-Hamet, a Moorish scribe. 
 
 A gipsy. 
 
 Agrippa, chief captain to PoNCE DE Leon. 
 
 Sanchez n 
 
 Garcia I 
 
 MoRASQUEZ I offilers. 
 
 Carpaza I 
 
 Cucheres j 
 
 Atalpa, King of Bimini. 
 
 The High Priest. 
 
 The Master of the Sacrifices. 
 
 Othoxa, an Indian sorceress. 
 
 Spanish sailors and soldiers, Indian warriors and priests, Indian 
 demons, and spirits of Youth and Age, etc. 
 
 In the first quarter of the sixteenth century. 
 
THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH. 
 
 ACT I. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 {A room in the ancestral castle of Ponce de Leon, full of 
 astrological instruments and alchemistic crucibles.') 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Child of the Sunrise, amber-pinion'd spirit, 
 
 Swift God of Youth, whom still, with panting "heart, 
 
 I follow on the river of the years, 
 
 Seeming each moment to have clutched at last 
 
 Thy dazzling shape, and made thee mine for ever. 
 
 Is all in vain, is all my labour lost ? 
 
 Have twenty years of effort to distil 
 
 Thy clear divine elixir only served 
 
 To bring me to the brink of loathed age. 
 
 To strew the first thin snows upon my brow. 
 
 And leave me in the grasp of black Despair ? 
 
 Have I not laboured in my lonely workshop 
 
 By Saturn's cold blear eye, and then as vainly 
 
 Beneath the burning blood-red eye of Mars ? 
 
 Have I not tried, at peril of my life. 
 
 To make it with the venom of the asp. 
 
2 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And with the spittle of the rabid wolf, 
 
 And with the mingled juice of plants so deadly 
 
 That, save the shelter of my mask of glass, 
 
 Their life-abhorring and pestiferous fumes 
 
 Would then and there have turned my clear thin blood 
 
 To black and heavy treacle ? — O Youth, Youth, 
 
 What sacrifices have I left unoffered 
 
 To make thee ever mine ? — And must I now. 
 
 In spite of all, behold this strong right hand 
 
 Shake with the palsy, — this unswerving foot. 
 
 Which still can climb the steepest mountain-side, 
 
 Grow vague and shuffling, — this unwrinkled skin 
 
 Become a creasy vellum, where the years 
 
 Have writ^heir^Quntless cajes, — and this keen eye 
 
 Become a cloudy lens, through which the shapes, 
 
 Which now I see distinct, will be as dim 
 
 As the pale memories which will flit like ghosts 
 
 Across my frozen heart ? — O rosy Youth, 
 
 Swift Wearer of the sandals of the Dawn, 
 
 Such cannot be the miserable end 
 
 Of thy fierce votary. — The great elixir 
 
 Is not the only means of stemming age : 
 
 Is there not also that transcendent fount. 
 
 That bubbling, rippling diamond of which men 
 
 Have drunk in magic dreams, — one draught whereof 
 
 Can make the wrinkled mask drop off for ever ? 
 
 Has any man a doubt that it exists 
 
 Upon some spot or other of the world ? 
 
 But whither turn our steps ? The two or three 
 
 Who in the course of centuries have reached it 
 
 Have locked the glorious secret in their breast. 
 
 Or left but dark and closely-guarded hints. 
 
 Yet there is one who speaks, — the great Astralphus. 
 
 Let me take down his book and read the passage. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 3 
 
 {He takes down a heavy volume, and reads a passage to 
 himself aloud.) 
 
 ' The fountain stands within the Wood of Ancients, 
 A pale and perilous enchanted forest 
 Of gnarled and leafless trees, gray wrinkled trunks, 
 Which once were men and women. There are gathered 
 All those within whose hearts the spark of youth 
 Died wholly out before they died themselves. 
 Their feet are twisted roots. Their bony fingers 
 Are warped and knotted twigs. Their frozen tears 
 Are now dry vitreous gums in crooked trickles. 
 While beard and hair are gray and tufted mosses, 
 Floating and fluttering in the passing wind. 
 Which tries to wake them with vague prophecies ; 
 And if you place your ear against the trunk, 
 You hear the faint, monotonous ticking heart, 
 Which never quickens, never beats more slow. 
 No sound the gnarled trees utter, save you prick 
 The trunk with your sword's point as you go by ; 
 And then they give a faint, dull moan of pain. 
 Eternal twilight wraps the forest round.' 
 
 Can aught be more precise ? He writes like one 
 Who surely has been there. And here again, 
 Where he describes the dangers of the journey ; 
 
 ' The Wood of Ancients is beset with peril 
 And full of dread enchantments, and, they say. 
 That he who has to cross it, should he cease 
 To look ahead, or should he let the cold 
 And numbness grasp him in their lethargy, — 
 Or should he stop» if only for one instant. 
 Doubting of youth and of his journey's goal, — 
 
4 The Fotmtain of Youth. 
 
 His feet at once take root ; his stiffened arms 
 Turn straightway into branches, and strong creepers 
 Twine round his trunk and bind him down for ever.' 
 
 A monstrous fate ; but one which I would risk 
 In very blitheness, if I had the chance. 
 It is not I who would feel doubt of youth. 
 Now let us see how he describes the water : 
 
 ' The fount itself, when once the wood is crossed, 
 Gleams in an opal basin in the centre 
 Of a great labyrinth bathed in floods of sun. 
 And guarded day and night by seven dragons. 
 Armoured in scales of solid natural gold. 
 With ruby-studded wings and claws of steel. 
 At night, the garden, lit by luminous flowers. 
 Is filled by countless butterflies of fire ; 
 The leaves of thin sheet emerald never fall ; 
 The fruit are of red gold, that can be eaten, 
 With pips and kernels made of precious stones.' 
 
 A tantalizing picture ; but, Astralphus, 
 
 Thou mighty wizard monk, why torture thus 
 
 Our hopes and dreams, and then withhold the clue ? 
 
 Oh, thou art cruel ! Strange : I recollect 
 
 That Michael of Ravenna and the Dutchman, 
 
 And, if I err not, Paul of Trebizond, 
 
 In commentating on this very passage, 
 
 Identify the garden of Astralphus 
 
 With that of the Hesperides. If so. 
 
 The Fount lies evening-wards and to the West. 
 
 What if it lay in that new world of islands 
 
 Discovered by Columbus ? there no search 
 
 Has ever yet been made. The thought is strange ; 
 
 Is it a revelation ? O fool, fool ! 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 5 
 
 Had I not wasted twenty years in seeking 
 
 The great elixir, had I not grown gray 
 
 In groping through the galleries of Error, 
 
 But sought instead the glorious fount of youth, 
 
 I might be kneeling on this very day 
 
 Beside its dazzling mirror, and be casting 
 
 One long last look upon my whitening hair, 
 
 About to plunge in laughing waves of joy. 
 
 And stand transformed, in godlike strength and beauty, 
 
 Trickling with youth ; but thought has worn me out : 
 
 The nights have brought so little rest of late ; 
 
 My temples ache ; I think that I could sleep. 
 
 {He lies down in a large armchair and goes to sleep. — Enter 
 Spirits of Youth and Age, who circle alternately 
 round his chair, singing in a low voice.') 
 
 Chorus of Spirits of Age. 
 
 With a little invisible chisel 
 
 We work on the stone of the brow. 
 Where the locks are beginning to grizzle. 
 
 And thinner and thinner are now ; 
 And deeper we furrow and deeper 
 By day on the cheek of the reaper. 
 And by night on the cheek of the sleeper, 
 With a little invisible plough. 
 
 The snow we have gathered and sifted 
 
 In the tiniest feathery flakes. 
 The wretch that has fevered and shifted 
 
 Shall find on his head as he wakes. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 No sunshine shall melt it, of heaven, 
 Nor the splinter of ice we have driven 
 Through the heart that has struggled and striven. 
 And tightened with infinite ache. 
 
 We blow on his hand, and it trembles 
 
 As trembles a tremulous tree ; 
 With fetter unseen, that resembles 
 
 A felon's, we palsy his knee ; 
 \\& perch on his neck and his shoulder, 
 And curve them, as older and older 
 He groweth, and colder and colder. 
 
 Still trying to shuffle and flee. 
 
 We deaden his eye as it glistens. 
 And wrap him in thickening haze ; 
 
 We sit in his ear, and he listens 
 In vain on the murmurous ways ; 
 
 We creep in his heart and destroy 
 
 The germs of affection and joy, 
 
 And the bubbles of pleasure that buoy 
 The years and the months and the days. 
 
 And though for a little he lingers 
 And clings to the gathering gloom. 
 
 Our silent invisible fingers 
 
 Inclose him in meshes of doom ; 
 
 And quicker we draw him and quicker. 
 
 With heart that is sicker and sicker. 
 
 Through the night that is thicker and thicker : 
 By invisible strings to the tomb. 
 
 Thou thinkest to fool us, O dreamer. 
 
 Though ever we hiss in thy ears, 
 And hopest in Youth, the redeemer. 
 
 To baffle the numbness of years : 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 7 
 
 But, lo, we have sought and have found thee, 
 And we hover above and around thee, 
 And tighter and tighter have bound thee 
 With pitiless nooses of years. 
 
 Ponce de Leon {murmuring in his sleep). 
 
 Ay ! but beyond the Wood of Ancients there is the 
 labyrinth ; and in the middle of the labyrinth there is a 
 fountain, trickling and sparkling in waves of molten 
 diamond. The seven dragons circle round and round 
 it ; I hear the clashing of their golden scales above the 
 ceaseless gurgling of the water. 
 
 Spirits of Youth. 
 
 In the auriferous. 
 Ripe and graniferous. 
 Full and lactiferous. 
 
 Bosom of Earth 
 Life is eternally 
 Quivering vernally, 
 Fiercely, diurnally, 
 
 Panting for birth. 
 
 Mustering under us, 
 Elements wonderous 
 Cry with a thunderous 
 
 Voice for the air. 
 Hearest the shout of them ? 
 While thou dost doubt of them 
 Springeth up out of them 
 
 Youth ever fair. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 All that is boiling, 
 Sprouting, uncoiling, 
 Through the earth toiling, 
 
 Once it was old ; 
 Out of senility, 
 Out of debility, 
 Bursteth fertility. 
 
 Grain as of gold. . 
 
 Space is inanity. 
 Time is but vanity ; 
 And for humanity 
 
 Nought is but youth. 
 Thou that art shivering. 
 Look at it quivering, 
 Saving, delivering. 
 
 Radiant as Truth. 
 
 Nature is making it. 
 Ever awaking it. 
 Out of age taking it ; 
 
 Yea, out of death. 
 Birth, death, infinity. 
 These are a trinity, 
 Ontf great divinity ; 
 
 Youth is its breath. 
 
 Earth the unshakable 
 Teemeth with breakable, 
 Old and forsakable 
 
 Chrysalis shells. 
 All is transmutable 
 If it seem suitable 
 To the Inscrutable : 
 
 Trust in the spells. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. g 
 
 {Enter a servant announcing a Jew, a Moor and a Gipsy. 
 His entrance awakes Ponce de Leon, who orders 
 that they be admitted^ 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Approach ye three, who, differing from each other 
 
 In race and creed, all differ from myself ; 
 
 I see suspicion darting in your eyes, 
 
 But cast your fears behind you and approach. 
 
 If I have summoned you within my doors, 
 
 Ye need not quake : it is not to extort 
 
 Apostasy or treasure, but for counsel. 
 
 Unlike and hostile as our races are. 
 
 Unlike as we may be in hue and feature. 
 
 In thought and act, in natural loves and hates. 
 
 Two things we have in common — youth and age. 
 
 The same hard winter strews our heads with frost, 
 
 The same invisible load weighs down our backs ; 
 
 The same inexorable law is writ 
 
 Upon our brows in wrinkles year by year ; 
 
 We pant with equal and unslakable thirst 
 
 For one same draught of youth. I therefore pray you 
 
 If all or any of you should possess, 
 
 In the traditions of your several peoples, 
 
 A knowledge of the ever-dazzling waters 
 
 Known as the Fount of Youth — of which one drop 
 
 Would make us hale for ever — to impart 
 
 Such knowledge to me now. Speak first, Jew. 
 
 Rabbi Ezdrel. 
 
 My hoary head, O most magnificent sir, 
 Bears cruel witness that my steps have never 
 Approached the Fount you speak of ; and my race, 
 Which wears the wrinkles of three thousand years 
 
10 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Upon the aching tablet of its brow, 
 
 And on whose back the cudgel of the world 
 
 Still falls from age to age, might say the same. 
 
 By many waters have we sat and wept, 
 
 Whether or not we ever shall sit down 
 
 Beside the gurgle of that magic water 
 
 I cannot tell ; nor can I tell you whither 
 
 To turn your footsteps to attain its brink. 
 
 But I can tell yoii what strange thing befell 
 
 The great King Solomon wheYi he yearned towards it ; 
 
 Is it not written in the Book of Jashel 
 
 For all to read ? 
 
 He was the mightiest king 
 Between the four far corners of the world ; 
 All that the breadth and bowels of the earth, 
 All that the depth and surface of the sea 
 Could yield was his. The genii who obeyed 
 The circles of his royal wizard wand 
 Built him hareems of sandal wood and gold. 
 With ivory doors and courts of trellised silver. 
 In endless stream the countless caravans 
 Brought to his gate the spikenard and the myrrh. 
 The gold of Ophir and the Tyrian purple, 
 The leopard skins, the peacocks and the pearls 
 Of subject peoples. . Every warlike tribe, 
 Famed for its slave-girls, sent its whitest tribute. 
 Glory he had and boundless subtle wisdom ; 
 One gift alone, one unreplenished treasure. 
 Was dwindling day by day : his beard was whitening. 
 And cold and dearth were settling on his heart. 
 He called a great assembly of the genii : 
 They flocked from east and north, from west and south, 
 Darkening the sky ; but none could give him youth. 
 Then Solomon bethought him of a Fountain 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Whose waters made men young, which he had heard ( 
 
 Belonging to the queen of seven islands, 
 
 Beyond the Pillars of Eternal Storm ; 
 
 And he resolved to send a ship to crave 
 
 A single gourdful. And he filled the ship 
 
 With costliest presents, with enormous rubies. 
 
 With gem-embroidered carpets, massive sceptres, 
 
 With eggs of ostrich in a golden setting. 
 
 With dwarf gazelles, begemmed of horn and hoof. 
 
 With frankincense in chiselled jasper vases. 
 
 And pictured targes of the hammered gold. 
 
 And fearing in the corners of his prudence 
 
 Lest any aged mariner should steal 
 
 The priceless draught of youth, he chose a crew 
 
 Of strong adventurous youths with life before them. 
 
 They were to sail for forty days and nights ; 
 
 And looking on the whitening of his beard, 
 
 Counting the days, he waited their return. 
 
 Six months went by ; but on the far horizon 
 
 The ship at last was seen, and young and old 
 
 Crowded the shore to meet it. But with wonder 
 
 Beyond all words, they found that it contained 
 
 A crew of wrinkled, tottering, white-haired men. 
 
 Toothless and blear of eye and curved of spine. 
 
 Whose palsied arms could scarcely pull the ropes — 
 
 The same, same men who, half a year before, 
 
 Had left exulting in their youth and strength. 
 
 They brought no draught of youth, nay, not one drop, 
 
 But gibbered in their dotage ; all save one. 
 
 Less crazy than the rest, who, ere he died. 
 
 Imparted unto Solomon alone 
 
 A tale of mad, unwhisperable horror. 
 
 Which none can ^verToiow. 
 
12 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I thank thee, Jew. 
 Thy spirit-crazing and abrupt narration 
 Would have thrown back my soul upon its haunches 
 Save for one thing : thou saidst thy Seven Islands 
 Lay past the Pillars of Eternal Storm, 
 Which can be none but those of Hercules, 
 And so thou, too, confirming all my clues, 
 Dost send me to the West. And so, O Moor, 
 If aught there lurketh in the ancient vellums 
 Or in the dreams and stories of thy race 
 Of what I seek, I pray thee keep it not 
 Within the inner chambers of thy breast, 
 But give it open wording. 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 Many a book 
 Hath been composed, most lofty sir, to lighten 
 The sleeplessness of caliphs, and the wonders 
 Therein contained are not less great in number 
 Than are the stars and circling orbs of heaven ; 
 For, as the poet excellently saith, 
 ' The ocean of the wondrous hath no shores. 
 And those who sail thereon may sail for ever.' 
 But one most marvellous and thrilling volume 
 Eclipses all the others ever written. 
 And he who hath not read the Yellow Book 
 Of Hassan of Aleppo knoweth not 
 What wonder means. In all that deals with magic. 
 With dreams, enchantments, philtres, transformations, 
 Afreets, ghouls, demons, and the world of genii, 
 There is no such authority on earth. 
 Know,. therefore, that the ever-dazzling Fount, 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 13 
 
 Whose magic wave can wash the wrinkles off, ' 
 Lies in the Valley of the Seven Moons. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 And where lies that ? 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 Behind the setting sun, 
 A thousand miles to westward of the West. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Ha ! west of West ? How all confirms my thought ! 
 But tell me more about thy magic valley. 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 A ring of black basaltic cloud-capped peaks 
 
 Surround it with eternal rock and chasm. 
 
 So dread and dizzy that no wingless thing 
 
 Has reached its lowest ridges, and the birds, 
 
 Scared by the lifeless horror, fly no higher. 
 
 Alone the shadowy genii, now and then. 
 
 Soar through the vapours on their demon wings, 
 
 And sit upon some livid shelf of rock. 
 
 Above a black intolerable abyss, 
 
 To rest their load of curse. There is no gap, 
 
 However narrow, in the monstrous rampart ; 
 
 And he who seeks the valley has to pass 
 
 By subterranean paths through Nature's entrails, 
 
 Through endless caverns filled with ghosts, and snakes. 
 
 The snakes in the obscurity wind round 
 
 The adventurer's feet, or from the unseen roof 
 
 Let themselves down and grasp him by the throat ; 
 
 And if he be not quick in disentangling 
 
14 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 His pinioned limbs, they keep him there for ever. 
 
 The caverns of the ghosts are farther on, 
 
 And are less dark. The phantoms start 
 
 From out the rock, and whisper in his ear 
 
 Secrets so horrible that few are those 
 
 Who, hearing, go not mad. And here and there 
 
 Upon the ground there lies a shapeless shape, 
 
 Which might be human. These are those who perished. 
 
 And whom the drippings from the vault above 
 
 Have changed to petrifactions. Then, midway 
 
 Along the chain of caverns is the lake 
 
 Of Tidal Fire, which he who seeks for youth 
 
 Must cross upon a slippery reef of rocks, 
 
 Uncovered only when the fiery tarn 
 
 Is at low ebb. It is a doubtful race 
 
 Between the adventurer and the molten lava. 
 
 Which creeps and creeps in waves of silent fire, 
 
 And never ceases rising, lighting up 
 
 The whole huge caverii with a lurid glare. 
 
 Terrifically splendid. Further on 
 
 Are many other caverns, each one full 
 
 Of some new crazing horror, and described 
 
 With the minutest detail in the Book 
 
 Of Hassan of Aleppo — biit whose name 
 
 I have forgot, save two — the cavern which is called 
 
 The Passage of the Ever Dropping Stones, 
 
 Where lumps of rock keep dropping from the roof, 
 
 To crush the wretchwho runneth in the dark ; 
 
 And one with deep, deep pools, all full of sharks, 
 
 Which from eternal darkness have no eyes. 
 
 And through the midst of which he has to swim. 
 
 The last of all the caverns opens out 
 
 Into the Valley of Eternal Moonlight. 
 
 The seven moons, eternally at the full, 
 
The Fottntain of Youth. i 
 
 Cast seven shadows, and display the Fountain 
 
 Leaping for ever in a tank of pearl 
 
 Towards them, as with vain, incessant longings ; 
 
 Then falling back in folds of luminous spray 
 
 Into the pearly basin, like the tail 
 
 Of Omar's battle steed. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 But does thy Hassan 
 Tell us where lies the entrance ? 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 Ay, he doth, 
 With uttermost precision. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Well? 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 The years 
 Are many since I read it, and the details 
 Are blurred upon the tablets of my mind 
 Beyond recovery. Hassan's Yellow Book 
 Was kept in the Alhambra, and the Christians 
 Destroyed it with a thousand other treasures 
 When they besieged Grenada. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 May the curse 
 Of Heaven consume them ! 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 What, you curse your own ? 
 
i6 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Nay, nay ; I meant the Moslem, for not having 
 Placed it elsewhere in time. And so the Moor 
 Leaves me no little wiser than the Jew ; 
 Now for the Gipsy. Why, the fellow's gone ! 
 
 Rabbi Ezdrel. 
 
 He was in the room only a minute back; and drinking 
 in the Moor's description as if it had been the water of 
 youth itself. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 And, by the Lord, the rascal has taken my gold 
 chain ! 
 
 Aben Hamet. 
 
 I miss the jewelled brooch upon my girdle. Oh ! 
 Allah ! Allah ! why did I ever enter the house of the 
 uncircumcised ? 
 
 Rabbi Ezdrel. 
 
 Oh, my shekels ! I had six doubloons in my purse. 
 Oh, my sweet little doubloons — he has taken my little 
 doubloons. 
 
 (A voice is heard singing in the garden below:) 
 
 Where the gipsy tinker tinkles, 
 
 On a kettle all of gold. 
 Is the fount that takes the wrinkles 
 From the forehead of the old. 
 IThe three run to the window, but can see no one.) 
 
 [Exeunt omnes. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 17 
 
 SCENE II. 
 (Rosita's chamber.) 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 What sounds are those, which, blending with my dreams, 
 Still charm, as echo, my awakened ear ? 
 
 Maria. 
 I think you ought to know. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Perhaps I do, 
 In the small corner where we keep sweet thoughts. 
 
 Maria. 
 
 Hark ! now the tinkling has begun again ; 
 
 And if you listen, in another minute 
 
 He will repeat his song. There, it begins. 
 
 Rosita. 
 Open the lattice, that the words may reach me. 
 
 Aubade, 
 
 Awake ! the steeds of Phoebus 
 Are pawing, maned with light, 
 
 To leap the cloudy fences 
 Between the day and night ; 
 
 And Phoebus' self is springing, 
 
 Flame-sandal'd, on his car. 
 To whirl the dust behind him 
 
 Of every conquered star. 
 
i8 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 «• 
 
 So leaps my love towards thee 
 
 At every break of day, 
 And bounds o'er bar and barrier 
 
 To whirl thy soul away. 
 
 See, see, how heaven's horses 
 Have sprung with meteor hoofs 
 
 Upon the sleeping cornfields 
 And sleeping cottage-roofs. 
 
 The valleys half are conquered, 
 The stars are put to rout; 
 
 Awake, awake, Rosita, 
 The night is trampled out. 
 
 Rosita. 
 
 Give me that yellow briar-rose from the vase, 
 That I may throw it. 
 
 Maria. 
 
 We have a saying in my native province 
 That when a woman bears a flower's name. 
 And throws a man that flower from a window. 
 She throws her own self with it. 
 
 Rosita {aside). 
 
 He has caught it ! 
 If souls can nestle in a flower's petals. 
 Mine has been thrown in that one, and he has it. 
 
 Maria. 
 Your birthday, madam, opens well. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 19 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 My birthday ? 
 Ay, so it is. And I had quite forgotten. 
 Indeed, indeed, I would that it were not ; 
 My heart is over heavy for a birthday. 
 
 Maria. 
 ■Wliat, in despite of singer and of song ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Alas ! because of singer and of song. 
 Juan de Alvareda is the son 
 Of our worst enemy, of one whose name 
 Few care to whisper in my father's presence ; 
 What hope of ever getting his consent ? 
 If he were caught 
 
 Maria. 
 
 Your father is too busy 
 With his own schemes to interfere with yours. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 My father's schemes ? Ay, that is what is casting 
 The ugly cloud, and darkening my birthday. 
 Of late he has some project in his mind 
 Which bodes us little good ; and every day 
 He drops some hint that fills my heart with fear ! 
 He now has always round him, as thou knowest. 
 Adventurers and seekers from the Indies, 
 Whose sight I cannot bear : one above all. 
 His favourite, Agrippa, seems to throw 
 An evil shadow on the sunny path, 
 I scarce know why ; perhaps it is the way 
 In which he stares at me whene'er we meet. 
 
20 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Maria. 
 
 I like the man as little as yourself, 
 Or any of the westward-sailing knaves. 
 Which dress will you put on upon your birthday, 
 The silver cloth, with stomacher of seed-pearl, 
 Or puce with gold pomegranates ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Which thou wilt : 
 It matters little in what silk or satin 
 I clothe my apprehensions : for myself, 
 I fain would wear my plain familiar frock 
 Of every day. But hark, what noise is that ? 
 What women's voices sound beneath the window ? 
 
 Maria. 
 
 It is a chorus of the reapers, madam ; 
 
 A band of girls and women of the village 
 
 Who bring a wreath of cornflow'rs for your birthday, 
 
 As large as any cart-wheel ; only look. 
 
 What motley streamers bind it ! 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Go thou down, 
 And take the harvest wreath, and give them largess. 
 
 [Exit Maria. 
 Their gift is very welcome. Was it not 
 Amid the ruddy ripeness of the corn 
 That he and I first met, that day of days ? 
 Would I were one of them, and he a peasant, 
 That with my shining sickle I might go. 
 And bathe at sunset in the sea of grain, 
 Free, without fear, and wait the great slow wave 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 21 
 
 Which evening sets in motion through the wheat — 
 The signal of his coming. Oh, how sweet 
 Would be the safety of a cottage hearth, 
 However humble, for the years to come. 
 Instead of this sad future of vague fear ! 
 How sweet to meet in open, fearless love. 
 And not, as now, with danger and intrigue. 
 When every meeting is perhaps a parting — 
 A parting, and for ever ! Though my brow 
 Would be less white than now, and the blue veins 
 Be tanned away upon my sunburnt arm. 
 Both Juan and the future would be mine. 
 But hush, my thoughts ! I hear my father's step 
 Approaching slowly through the gallery. 
 
 (Enter Ponce de Leon.) 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Come, let thy father kiss thy sweet young face, 
 
 The fairest thing on which his eyes can look, 
 
 Until they rest upon the radiant brow 
 
 Of youth that has no end. See here, Rosita ; 
 
 I bring thee something dainty for thy birthday — 
 
 A necklace made of unfamiliar beads. 
 
 In far Hispaniola wrought by Indians, 
 
 Each bead unlike the rest. What ! not content ? 
 
 I thought the gift would make thee dance for joy. 
 
 Rosita. 
 I would they came from any other place. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Thou art a silly and fantastic child ; 
 But I can well afford to miss thy thanks 
 
22 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 For this small gew-gaw made by Indian cunning : 
 Have I not in reserve the gift of gifts, 
 The dazzling, potent, and ineffable drops 
 That shall preserve the sparkle of thine eye, 
 The dimple on thy cheek for evermore ? 
 That which the daughters of magnificent kings 
 In vain have yearned for, shall it not be thine ? 
 Thine, and for ever ? 
 
 (Aside) The unconscious child ! 
 1 see an omen in her very beauty : 
 If God hath given her such eyes as hers 
 And chiselled features of such rare perfection. 
 It is because they are marked out by Heaven 
 To last for ever and have no decay ; 
 Because she shall be dowered with the glory 
 Of sharing my first draught. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I have no wish 
 For an eternal youth, an endless beauty ; 
 My mother had it not, so why should I ? 
 I wish to share the common lot of mortals ; 
 T[ wish to be, when comes the natural time, 
 A little silver-haired great-grandmother, 
 All shrunk and bent, with little twinkling eyes. 
 Who sits and spins beside the blazing hearth. 
 And tells the children fairy-tales all day. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Oh, hideous blasphemy and monstrous vision ! 
 Oh, most unnatural wish 1 But, thanks to Heaven, 
 Thy youth shall be preserved upon thy cheek 
 In all its rosiness and sunny charm. 
 Despite thyself. And now, Rosita, listen : 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 23 
 
 I brought thee this rare string of Indian beads, 
 That it might coax thy soul to greet with pleasure 
 A startling piece of news. I have resolved 
 To take thee to the Indies of the West 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Merciful Virgin ! so my fear was true. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I have resolved to sell these lands and walls, 
 And stake my fortune on a venturous sail 
 Beyond Hispaniola. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Sell these walls ! 
 Sell these broad, fertile lands ! Your very fathers, 
 Dead in their graves, will shudder and turn round. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Poor buried fools ! If they had had the wit 
 To do as I do, they would not to-day 
 Be dead and mouldering bones, but living men. 
 Quick with the breath of youth. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Sell these broad acres, 
 And hand them to the stranger ; leave each thing 
 That is famiUar and most dear to see ! 
 You cannot mean it, nor can I believe it ; 
 Oh, can you look on these ancestral portraits, 
 And harbour such a thought before their face ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Poor ghosts of paint and canvas, each of whom. 
 Had they not in their piteous dulness rooted 
 
24 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Their lives, like trees, to their inherited clods. 
 But sought the Fount of Youth, as their descendant. 
 Would now be flesh and blood ; it is not they 
 Who shall arrest me in my life's great scheme. 
 Just as begins the sunrise of success. 
 And now no more discussion ; I forbid it. 
 But what are those cracked voices that I hear 
 Rise from outside ? What hideous, loathsome song 
 Of crazed decrepitude ? Quick, shut the window ! 
 It makes me sick, the cackling squalls are more 
 Than ears can bear. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 It is the village elders, 
 Who come to wish me joy. 
 
 \^Exit Ponce de Leon. 
 Alas ! alas ! 
 
 Chorus of Village Elders. 
 
 We stand on the edge of the grave, 
 And look back in the sunset of gold 
 
 On the fields we have tilled, and that gave 
 More wheat than the garners could hold. 
 
 We have warmed us awhile in the sun, 
 We have drunk of the quickening light ; 
 
 Shall we murmur now noontide is done. 
 And shrink from the chill of the night ? 
 
 We cumber the land, and must leave. 
 
 That others may till it and reap, 
 Arid twirl at the spindle or weave, 
 
 While we shall eternally sleep. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 25 
 
 'The earth, she has given us grain, 
 And filled with the vintage the casks, 
 
 And filled with the olives the wain ; 
 
 Shall we grudge her the bones which she asks ? 
 
 The bird, it must drop from on high, 
 That another may sing in its stead ; 
 
 The beast of the forest must die, 
 That another may feed as it fed. 
 
 With the leaves that are waving above, 
 
 And the leaves that are crumbling beneath, 
 
 Through the pathway of labour and love 
 We have reached to the country of Death. 
 
 But, Lady, thy feet are still wet 
 With the dew of thy opening life ; 
 
 Thou knowest not, Lady, as yet 
 The yearning' for end of the strife. 
 
 And Youth for a little is strong. 
 In the beauty of dimple and eye ; 
 
 We bring thee the tribute and song. 
 Of Age that is willing to die ! 
 
 [Ee-enter Maria. 
 
 Maria. 
 Come, dry your tears ; your father's mind may change. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Thou knowest him but little if thou thinkest 
 That he will turn upon the steps of purpose. 
 One drop of what he sails for to the Indies 
 Is dearer to his bosom than my life ; 
 I felt it coming. 
 
26 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Maria. 
 
 Let me see the necklace 
 Of Indian beads. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Yes, take it from my neck ; 
 Were every bead that runs beneath my finger 
 A pill of poison, full of silent peril, ^ 
 
 It could not be more ominous of ill. 
 
 Maria. 
 Do you put credence in the Fount 'of Youth ? 
 
 Rosita. 
 
 I know not if the Fount of Youth exists ; 
 But well I know what does — the Fount of Sorrow ; 
 And all who dangle on my father's pleasure 
 Sooner or later have to drink of that. 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 {Dressing-room (?/" Ferdinand the Catholic, at 
 Valladolid.) 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 Hand me my dagger and my chain of gold ; 
 And now my rings. I can recall the time 
 When my white bony fingers were so plump 
 That I could scarcely force these same rings on, 
 Or force them off ; and now they trickle off 
 Each moment of themselves. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 27 
 
 ViLLARICA. 
 
 Your grace has thinned 
 From overmuch of thought, and not from years. • 
 Believe me, 'tis not age, but care and study ; 
 Your grace needs but repose to gain in flesh. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 I would my ribs and fingers had remained 
 As plump as hath thy flattery ; that continues 
 In all its fat exuberance. But now tdl me 
 Who stands the first inscribed for private audience 
 Upon this morning's list ? 
 
 ViLLARICA. 
 
 He whom your grace 
 Vouchsafes to see to please the Duke of Arcos. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 That Ponce de Leon ? Save that I have given 
 
 Arcos my word, I would not waste my patience 
 
 In listening to his plan ; and, as it is, 
 
 I mean he shall not have ten minutes' audience. 
 
 Another of those swindlers of the West ! 
 
 As if I had not wasted thought enough. 
 
 And ships and money, on the irksome rogues 
 
 Who promise all such wonders : to begin 
 
 With that arch-knave Columbus, in whose dreams 
 
 My good lamented queen put such sweet faith. 
 
 Oh, we were so persuaded of the gains ; 
 
 It was so clear and easy : you had only 
 
 To find the East by sailing to the West, 
 
 And reach the sun by flying to the moon. 
 
 And all the treasures of auriferous Ind 
 
28 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Would flow into your lap in streams of ingots. 
 
 We wdre to reach the ruby-rolling rivers 
 
 Beyond Bagdad, the porcelain-towered cities 
 
 Of the great Khan of Tartary, and what not, 
 
 In which the streets were paved with slabs of silver. 
 
 The houses roofed with tiles of solid gold. 
 
 The very beggars dressed in yellow silk. 
 
 With pearls upon the bonnets they extended 
 
 To beg for diamond pence. Much gold we got ! 
 
 A little less than thou wouldst find to-day 
 
 In any goldsmith's' shop in any street 
 
 Of Coraova or Burgos. 
 
 ViLLARICA. 
 
 Yet, sweet lord. 
 That Genoese set up your royal standard 
 In many an island where it flutters still ; 
 And I can keenly recollect the day 
 When he returned from his first venturous voyage. 
 Amid the wild ovations of the throng, 
 Bringing back Indians with him. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 Bringing Indians ? 
 A dozen red-skinned savages, wild scoundrels. 
 With nothing but a nose-ring for attire — 
 Fit raiment for the isles of swamp and ague 
 From which they came ! — And while we lost our time 
 In crazy Western plans, the Portuguese, 
 By creeping patiently toward the East, 
 Round Taprobana and the Cape of Storms, 
 Have reached to Muscat and to Calicut, 
 Made treaties with the sultans, plundered cities. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 29 
 
 And filled their ships with gold. No, no, my friend ; 
 Talk not to me of farther Western schemes. 
 
 "ViLLARICA. 
 
 Will your grace see him ? 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 Let the knave come in, 
 Since I have pledged my word to give him audience ; 
 But bid him to be prudent in his speech. 
 
 {Enter Ponce de Leon.) 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I bow in awestruck silence and obedience 
 Before the ample splendour of your grace. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 And so thou, too, hast framed a wondrous scheme, 
 A Western expedition that shall pour 
 More red and virgin gold into my coffers 
 Than all the ships of Christendom can carry ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I crave the humblest pardon of my liege : 
 My liege is misinformed. I am not come 
 To offer to your grace new mines of gold, 
 But, with your gentle and most royal license, 
 To rid you of your silver. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 Of my silver ? 
 My friends and courtly flatterers do that 
 Most perfectly already. 
 
30 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I am come 
 To offer to your sovereignty the means 
 By which the clear white silver on your brow 
 Shall be transmuted back to youth's dark locks. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 Art thou a merchant of Venetian hair-dye ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Your sovereignty hath made me bite my lip ; 
 But could I have for half a score of minutes 
 The perfect patience of your royal ear, 
 Methinks that I could fetter your attention. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 Speak on ; but not in riddles. I will listen. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I know as well as any that the West, 
 
 The Indies of Columbus, have belied 
 
 Our dreams of gold and gems ; but they contain 
 
 Another treasure of such wondrous value, 
 
 Of such extreme ineffable price to him 
 
 Who first shall make it his, that all the gold 
 
 Which men have clutched at in their wildest dreams 
 
 Would be but dross beside it. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 What is that ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 31 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 The Fount of Youth. We know from informations 
 Most certain and undoubtable that the spring 
 Which man has panted for through countless ages, 
 In every clime, with wistful, infinite thirst, 
 Lies in the Western Indies, in a realm 
 North of Hispaniola, named Bimini, 
 Whose king, the sole possessor of the secret, 
 And named the Ever-Beautiful, hath reigned 
 Six hundred years. 
 
 ViLLARiCA {to himself). 
 Bad for the heir-apparent ! 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 No shapes of magic guard the potent spring ; 
 No circling dragons watch it night and day ; 
 No evil angels sit beside its brink. 
 To mirror their dark wings within its waves. 
 It hath nor. spell nor supernatural essence. 
 But is mere natural water, one slight rill, 
 Which in its bright limpidity hath flowed 
 Through subterranean channels, over beds 
 Of mineral ore, and salts unknown to man. 
 Or through a filter of medicinal mosses 
 Of such high potency and healing virtue 
 That they can stop the onward march of age. 
 Create anew the tissues of the body, 
 And fill with sap the withered roots of life. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 What guards it, then ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 The dreadful guard of Nature : 
 Inextricable forests and morasses. 
 
32 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Haunts of the panther and all clawed assassins, 
 
 In whose pestiferous depths and clueless tangle 
 
 No white man yet has ventured ; where the twilight 
 
 In every tree awakes a vampire bat, 
 
 Who fans the sleeper with his leathery wings 
 
 Of monstrous span, and sucks his blood at night ; 
 
 Where there are trees whose dark and silent leaves 
 
 Distil a subtle vapour that converts 
 
 Sleep into death, and strange and treacherous flowers, 
 
 Whose scent breeds madness, till the forest rings 
 
 With crazy laughter ; where among the grasses 
 
 Lurk porcupines that shoot a venomed quill. 
 
 The wound whereof turns black like flesh of mushroom ; 
 
 Where there are snakes that make a running noose 
 
 Around your throat and strangle you in sleep. 
 
 Ere you can feel their twist. Man-eating Indians, 
 
 Whose poisoned arrows, shot by unseen hand. 
 
 In every vein change blood to liquid fire. 
 
 Infest the dreadful zone. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 And thou proposes! 
 To ransack such a region for a rill, 
 A hidden trickling thread ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Were that my thought. 
 Your sovereign's splendour well might call me mad. 
 My plan is this : to land a small picked force. 
 Armed with three falconets and ample powder. 
 On the Biminian coast, and with the help 
 Of disaffected tribes to boldly march 
 Upon the capital and seize the king. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 33 
 
 And then extort the secret as his ransom. 
 Part of the expedition I could pay 
 Out of my private fortune, if your grace 
 Would furnish me three caravels and sailors. 
 The conquest would be fruitful to the Church ; 
 For, haying made the monarch's body ours, 
 We should attack his soul, and win it back 
 From his unholy Gods. The Holy Office 
 Would find the means of teaching to his people 
 The greater sweetness of our kinder faith. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 If he has reigned for these six hundred years, 
 I fear his errors must be deeply rooted. 
 What is the name of thy Biminian king ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Atalpa Ever-young, so please your grace. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 North of Hispaniola didst thou say ? 
 How far to north ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Three hundred leagues of water 
 Is what I reckon, but it is uncertain. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 I cannot grant thee longer speech to-day, 
 But I will give thee in the coming week 
 Another ampler audience ; and meanwhile 
 Write out thy scheme more fully. Kiss my hand. 
 
 [Exit Ponce de Leon. 
 3 
 
34 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Strange, strange, most strange. Is this a madman's 
 
 dream, 
 Based on mere air, or hath it weight and substance ? 
 What think'st thou, Villarica ? 
 
 ViLLARICA. 
 
 Like your grace, 
 I chew the cud of my perplexity. 
 It seems to me unnatural that the fount 
 Be natural water : supernatural liquid 
 Would be more natural far. 
 
 Ferdinand. 
 
 The fount exists, — 
 That much is certain and unquestioned fact, — 
 Upon some point or other of the world : 
 Then why not in the Indies ? 'Twould be strange 
 Were I to live to bless that rogue Columbus 
 For finding those unprofitable islands. 
 Whether the draught would keep me as I am. 
 And merely keep all further years at bay. 
 Or place me back in manhood's strongest moment, 
 Such as I was on that triumphant morning. 
 When Isabel and I rode side by side 
 Into the trembling alleys of Granada, 
 At last made ours ! — The wide and general use 
 Of such a cordial would be full of peril, 
 And soon would over-populate the earth. 
 'Twould have to be confined to my own self, 
 And to the finder, by most strict engagement, 
 Or all would drink and live : a pretty thing 
 If Gaffer Maximilian or the Pope 
 Were made eternal each upon his throne ! 
 An endless King of France would never do : 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 35 
 
 But were the King of Aragon immortal 
 
 The case were somewhat different.— How time flies ! 
 
 How white my hair has grown in this last year ; 
 
 And my old hands, how thin and white and veiny ! 
 
 A little more— and I shall have to bid 
 
 The goldsmith come to tighten all my rings. 
 
 3—2 
 
ACT II. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 {Forepart of the vessel.) 
 
 First Sailor. 
 
 This is the nineteenth day. This white-hot sun 
 Has stewed the sea to syrup. 
 
 Second Sailor. 
 
 And so thick 
 That this swift ship, inclosed in sticky coils, 
 Stands like a spoon that stands of its own self. 
 
 First Sailor. 
 
 The water in the barrels ebbs away : 
 
 Death's hand is tightening round our parching throats ; 
 
 The curse of God is on us. 
 
 Second Sailor. 
 
 That was clear, 
 Even before the skeletons, like sharks, 
 Swam in the sunset in the vessel's wake ; 
 Was it not I who saw the first one raise 
 His long white arm above the livid water. 
 And gave the alarm ? The sun — dost thou remember ?- 
 Was almost on a level with the wave ; 
 A bright-red glare was thrown upon the sea. 
 All of a sudden, 'neath its bloodshot ball, 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 37 
 
 Just like the flag of crimson in the bull-ring, 
 Beneath the bull's wild eye. The whole sea glowed 
 A pool of new-shed blood. Then, one by one. 
 The sktills and arm-bones crested each small wave 
 Behind the vessel far as eye could reach, 
 Until it seemed as if the countless dead, 
 Who lie unburied in the ocean's depths, 
 Had risen to the surface, and gave chase ; 
 But we outsailed them. 
 
 Third Sailor. 
 
 Then the great white fog 
 Off Cape Cardozo, when we saw the giants 
 That towered o'er the mast by head and shoulders 
 And loomed like monstrous shadows through the vapour, 
 Now lighter and now darker as they waded 
 Further or nearer round us. I remember 
 How Sanchez cried, ' By luck ! the vapour thickens : 
 If one of them should see us, he will pluck 
 The ship from out the water by the mast, 
 And whirl it like a sling about his head.' 
 How we escaped I know not. 
 
 First Sailor. 
 
 Nor do I. 
 But worse, I take it, was the Wind of Whispers, 
 That blew for three whole days in spite of prayer, 
 Of exorcism, and of holy water, 
 And said to each a different thing of horror. 
 In his own mother's voice, as if from far. 
 I know not what it may have said to iAee ; 
 But unto me it said nine times distinctly : 
 ' I see thee sinking through a hundred fathoms, 
 And fish swim after thee.' 
 
38 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Third Sailor. 
 
 Anon the moon 
 Will have her stare at us, as here we stick, 
 And make a mirror of the fetid sea. 
 And then the water-witches rising up 
 "Will swim around the vessel as last night, 
 And croak their song of death. They came so close 
 As I was standing in the middle watch. 
 That I could see the wrinkles on their cheeks. 
 And on their knotty fingers. 
 
 Fourth Sailor. 
 
 Aye, last night 
 The sea-hags swam a-dance in all their number : 
 There must have been a hundred in the reel. 
 Their hair is old gray seaweed, and they wear 
 A necklace fashioned out of drowned men's teeth. 
 Some say they once were beautiful and young — 
 The whitest of the mermaids ; but their lips 
 Betrayed the secret of the ocean gold. 
 So they were stricken old, and cursed for ever ; 
 And now they work the mischief of the sea, 
 And stir up tempests with their spellful songs. 
 Down in their green and slimy ocean-caves, 
 They spin the thread of every vessel's voyage. 
 And where they cut the thread the ship goes down ; 
 It's they who have becalmed us. 
 
 Fifth Sailor. 
 
 Look, the moon 
 Is cropping up above the water-line, 
 Round as a silver plate. And, by the Lord ! 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 39 
 
 There are the hags already. Dost thou see ? 
 Out there, just in the moonshine, right ahead, 
 One of them swimming like a fish that rolls. 
 And now a second and a third joins in. 
 Ho, ho ! the lewd old sea-maids ! how they play ! 
 Thou'lt hear their singing when they all are there. 
 
 Song of Waterwitches. 
 
 We scatter the leaven 
 That raises to heaven 
 
 . The storm that we brew ; 
 Each multiplied bubble 
 Shall bring into trouble 
 Some merry ship's crew ; 
 
 We put into motion 
 The whirlpools of ocean 
 
 With twitch of the thumb, 
 When sailors are sleeping. 
 Or drowsy watch keeping. 
 
 And down the ships come. 
 
 The water-spout's tower. 
 That spins till you cower, 
 
 Is born of the reel 
 Which faster and faster 
 We dance, when we master 
 
 Some great ocean-keeL 
 
 We touch with a finger 
 The vessels that linger 
 
 Above where we lurk ; 
 And the leak never ceases. 
 But ever increases, 
 
 Till Death does his work. 
 
40 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 We crouch where the conger 
 Winds, stronger and stronger, 
 
 Round hvid dead limbs ; 
 And where, like a floating 
 Medusa's head, gloating. 
 
 The octopus swims. 
 
 In caves where the jellies. 
 With luminous bellies. 
 
 Seem watery moons ; 
 And fish phosphorescent 
 Shed light evanescent 
 
 Where heaven's ray swoons. 
 
 And now, with a leaden 
 Stagnation, we deaden 
 
 The sea and the air. 
 Until in the vessel 
 A horror shall nestle, 
 
 There, ever there. 
 
 And day on day follows 
 Until the throat swallows 
 
 Brine in its strain ; 
 And even another, 
 Till brother kills brother, 
 
 To drink of his vein ; 
 
 The while the broad ocean 
 Knoweth no motion. 
 
 Vapour nor breath, 
 But thirst, and thereafter 
 Madness and laughter, 
 
 Dancing and death. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 41 
 
 First Sailor. 
 
 What art thou looking at so hard, now that the water- 
 hags have disappeared? Answer; what art thou staring 
 at? 
 
 Second Sailor. 
 
 Look just a little to the left of the moon, on the 
 waterline. What dost thou see ? 
 
 First Sailor. 
 
 Very strange ! It was not there half an hour ago. It 
 has three peaks, with the valleys clear between them. 
 
 Second Sailor. 
 
 It is not twenty miles off. We must have drifted with 
 an unfelt current. Call Diego. Where is the com- 
 mander ? 
 
 Third Sailor. 
 In his cabin, deep in thought. 
 
 First Sailor. 
 
 Thinking how to get us a little water for our cracking 
 throats ! 
 
 , Third Sailor. 
 
 Yes, from the Fountain of Youth. 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 {Another pari 0/ the vessel.) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Oh, hers is fairer than the white, still face 
 Which peeps between the fleeces of the sky, 
 
42 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And flashes silver from each dark wave's crest ! 
 
 Out on the boasted power of the moon, 
 
 Who rules the tides of cold unconscious Ocean — 
 
 And only twice in every lazy day ! 
 
 My lady sways the living tides that run 
 
 From heart to pulse, and throb in brow and limb — 
 
 The tides that ebb with fear, or flow with joy 
 
 A hundred times a day. Ay ! hide thy face 
 
 Behind the screen of yonder sluggish cloud, 
 
 That she whose face is fairer than thy own 
 
 May meet me here more safely ; for the peril 
 
 To both of us is great. Oh, how she started 
 
 When, looking vaguely round, her eyes met mine. 
 
 And recognised me under my disguise 
 
 Of Florestan, the mate. Agrippa's eye 
 
 Fastened upon her with a quick suspicion — 
 
 I thought that all was lost. Shall I be able 
 
 To keep my face, my gestures, and my tongue 
 
 In such obedience as my part exacts ? 
 
 Shall I be able to coerce my passion 
 
 When I shall hear the officers and men 
 
 Speak rashly of her face, or see them fix 
 
 Their look of hungry insolence upon it ! 
 
 Did I not hear, this very day, two sailors 
 
 Call her the destined trophy of Agrippa ? 
 
 And did my knife not almost leap at once 
 
 Out of my sash ? And she — can she control 
 
 Her glorious eyes and meet me twenty times. 
 
 And never even give me one quick look 
 
 For other eyes to catch ? Oh, who shall measure 
 
 The danger of the part we have to play ? 
 
 And yet how else, if I am to protect her 
 
 From still more threatening perils, which the folly 
 
 Of her mad, reckless dreamer of a father 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 43 
 
 Will plunge her into, in untrodden lands 
 
 In his great search for youth ? How else, how else, 
 
 If I am ever to make mine for ever 
 
 That truer fount of loveliness and youth 
 
 Which sparkles in her eyes, and ripples over 
 
 In lightest waves of magic when she speaks. 
 
 That truer, brighter fount, from which my soul 
 
 Takes such delicious draughts ? How old the world 
 
 Would grow for me without it ; how decrepit 
 
 And cold and dull would grow all earthly things ! 
 
 But hush ! I see her, veiled in silver shadow. 
 
 {Enter Rosita.) 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I cannot sleep for thinking of thy peril ; 
 Thy life hangs on a thread. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 The thread of gold 
 That couples it to thine. 
 
 Rosita. 
 
 If thou wert found 
 In this disguise, no earthly help could save thee. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 We will control our eyes. Oh, I would wrap 
 The cloak of peril round me seven times. 
 So but I wore it as thy livery. 
 
 Rosita. 
 I would thou wert not here. 
 
44 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Oh, didst thou think 
 That I could stay behind and let thee face 
 The wild and Protean treachery of ocean, 
 Towards the regions of fantastic fear. 
 And not watch over thee ? Didst thou imagine 
 That I could stay in Spain while thou wert seeking 
 A frightful country, in whose virgin forests 
 The Indian and the tiger will make peace 
 To meet a white invader ? Oh, not I ! 
 Thy father takes thee to the lands of fever 
 Whose breath will kill the roses on thy cheeks, 
 Whose heat will scorch the dewdrops of thy gladness. 
 In his mad seeking for his own lost youth 
 He sacrifices thine. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Alas ! I know it. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I had a plan before we sailed from Spain 
 To save thee from the folly of his visions. 
 And carry thee away ; but Fate prevented. 
 Putting the bar of accident between 
 The wheel-spokes of my purpose ; but one day 
 I mean to do it still, when chance shall favour, 
 And bear thee back to Europe. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Oh, mine own, 
 It cannot be. Alas ! I cannot do it. 
 Hast thou not said thyself, a minute since, 
 That we are sailing to the lands oi fever ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 45 
 
 Oh, who will nurse him if he sickens there ? 
 I am the only being that he loves. 
 
 Juan. 
 He has no love except the Fount of Youth. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Yes ; but of earthly loves he loves me most. 
 
 Juan. ' 
 
 And loving thee the lesser of the two, 
 He shall not step between thyself and me 
 And rob me of my love. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Another shadow 
 Than his may step between us. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 How, another? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Two nights ago I had a dream of death. 
 
 Juan. 
 Oh, love ! my love ! 
 
 Rosita. 
 I had a dream of death. 
 I stood alone in an immense cave-temple, 
 Whose thickset pillars, hewn in the live rock, 
 Sustained a heavy vault, which seemed to crush 
 The spirit out. The red and lurid flicker 
 Of countless torches danced upon the stone. 
 But all was empty. Suddenly a clash 
 
46 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 As of a thousand cymbals shook the vault, 
 
 And, starting out of shadow, all about me, 
 
 A thousand dusky warriors locked me round 
 
 In the wild horror of a dizzy war-dance ; 
 
 And ever louder grew their guttural cries, 
 
 And ever nearer closed the hideous circle 
 
 Of painted demons with their brandished arrows. 
 
 As I stood trembling in the frightful centre. 
 
 Until at last they reached and overwhelmed me. 
 
 Beneath their countless numbers. Then, blindfolded. 
 
 They led me through the endless echoing caves, 
 
 With ceaseless, measured chant of ' Lo, the victim ! 
 
 We bring her to the Goddess, the Destroyer, 
 
 We bring her to the ever-murdering Beauty, 
 
 The Flower of Cruelty, the Scented Throttler, 
 
 The wondrous Executioner of Nature.' 
 
 And as we wound along in slow procession, 
 
 With measured tramp, a strange narcotic odour, 
 
 Delicious, and yet horrible, grew stronger, 
 
 Until it grew intolerable as pain. 
 
 Then we stood still, and in a pealing voice 
 
 I heard them cry, 'Now lay her in the lap 
 
 Of the Great Merciless.' And then they raised me 
 
 As if on to an altar ; round my throat. 
 
 Round limbs and body, strange and snake-like coils. 
 
 Which were not snakes, but felt like fleshy thongs, 
 
 Elastic and resistless, wound and wound. 
 
 I felt my body changing into pulp. 
 
 And in the monstrous agony I woke. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Oh, hideous And most horrible of dreams ! 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 What dost thou think the murdering goddess was ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 47 
 
 Juan. 
 
 An empty fear, the strangling goddess, nightmare, 
 Born of this leaden heat. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Love, I think not ; 
 I think it was a presage of the future, 
 A foresight of a fate that waits me there. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Whate'er it is, it shall be kissed away — 
 
 But hush ! I see the figure of Agrippa 
 
 There in the moonlight ; and he must not find us 
 
 So near together — Every time I see 
 
 His bold unholy eyes upon thy beauty, 
 
 It sets my fingers playing with my knife. 
 
 Away, away, he must not find us here ! 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 {Officei^s cabin.) 
 
 Sanchez. 
 
 What think'st thou the Biminians may be like ? 
 
 Garcia. 
 
 I know not what to think or to expect. 
 
 Some say that they are dwarfs and others giants. 
 
 Some say they are amphibious men whose cities 
 
 Are built in lakes, and paved like oozy Venice 
 
 With dark-green water. They can stay for hours 
 
 Like otters at the bottom ; then rise up 
 
 And shoot a flight of arrows ; which, when done. 
 
 They dive once more. 
 
48 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Sanchez. 
 
 Pedrillo says they live 
 In subterranean labyrinths like rabbits, 
 With issues imperceptible to man ; 
 And often, of a sudden in the desert, 
 From cities unsuspected under-foot, 
 Armies start up, or vanish all at once 
 Leaving the landscape bare. 
 
 MORASQUEZ. 
 
 I. know a man 
 Who says their cities stand on giant trees 
 High overhead : each forest is a city, 
 Up in the starry sky. They wear their hair 
 In one black rope that hangs along their back, 
 And, when their father dies, they dress in yellow. 
 
 Garcia. 
 
 No, those are the Chineses of Cathay 
 
 That mourn in yellow : the Biminians mourn 
 
 In black like Christians. 
 
 Carpaza. 
 
 What of their religion ? 
 
 Sanchez. 
 
 Some say that they are worshippers of fire. 
 And others that they worship their own souls. 
 I know a monk who says they are Nestorians, 
 Worse than all Jews and Moslems. 
 
 CUCHERES. 
 
 Thou art wrong. 
 I know an Indian at Hispaniola, 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 49 
 
 Whose brother once was wrecked upon their coast : 
 
 And so I know for certain what they worship. 
 
 They have as goddess a terrific flower, 
 
 A sort of Venus' fly-trap, so gigantic 
 
 That it can eat a man with as much ease 
 
 As ours can eat a fly, and once a month 
 
 They feed it with a slave. 
 
 Sanchez. 
 
 The thing may be, 
 For things as strange have been. But on the whole 
 It seems more likely that they be Nestorians, 
 Or heretics of some sort — This is clear, 
 That whatsoever be their faith, its root 
 Must be outrooted, just as has been done 
 In Guatemala. They use bloodhounds there : 
 Balboa has them trained on wicker figures 
 In human shape, and filled with carrion flesh ; 
 Each hound is entered on the army list, 
 And gets a soldier's pay. Balboa says 
 That if the Indians now can understand 
 The doctrine of the Trinity, 'tis thanks 
 To these same hounds ; he calls them his confessors. 
 
 Carpaza. 
 It is a pity that we cannot use 
 
 His hounds at home to teach the Moors their prayers, 
 A year or two, and they would be good Christians. 
 What sayest thou, Sanchez ? 
 
 {Enter Agrippa.) 
 Sanchez. 
 
 Aye, it is a pity 
 The king is bverkind : he should have rooted 
 Their race and their religion out of Spain 
 After Granada. 4 
 
50 The Fountain of Youth, 
 
 Agrippa. 
 Talking of the Moslem ? 
 
 MORASQUEZ. 
 
 Yes, and how to treat them. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 I will tell you : 
 Give a guitar, and you shall have a ballad. 
 
 I will tell you how, returning 
 From the far Arabian seas, 
 
 Once I set a bonfire burning 
 When I served the Portuguese. 
 
 Under Vasco we had rounded 
 Tempest Cape to India's shore. 
 
 And with Lisbon lead had sounded 
 Seas that none had sailed before. 
 
 And bombarded town and village 
 Of the coast, exacting gold ; 
 
 Filling up the ships with pillage, 
 Higher than the hulls could hold ; 
 
 Crazing with an unknown thunder 
 Every shaved and turbaned head ; 
 
 Heaping higher still the plunder 
 And the bodies of the dead ; 
 
 Till each Soldan, gemmed and sooty. 
 Trembled in his yellow shoes ; 
 
 Never were such piles of booty 
 Captured in a single cruise. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 51 
 
 Then to Muscat, where we sighted 
 
 On our path a Moslem sail ; 
 On its sljiggishness we lighted 
 
 Like a hawk upon a quail. 
 
 Mecca pilgrims in a vessel 
 
 Large and heavy, sailing slow, 
 Crowded as when insects nestle, 
 
 Head-dressed like the Moors we know. 
 
 Vasco cried, ' I know their turban : 
 
 Moorish vermin, one and all ; 
 We'll baptize them, as Pope Urban 
 
 Recommends, with cannon-ball.' 
 
 It was no slight work to board her : 
 
 Every devil fought like five ; 
 But at last, by Vasco's order, 
 
 Not one man was left alive. 
 
 But the children and the women 
 
 Still remained upon the ship, 
 Waiting for the fatal omen 
 
 That should fall from Vasco's lip. 
 
 And the Admiral said, ' Listen ; 
 
 For the women we've no room ; 
 Twenty children we can christen, 
 
 Choose them, thou, ere fall of gloom.' 
 
 So I from the ship selected 
 
 Twenty children, with a boat ; 
 But, ere rowing back, reflected, 
 
 ' Shall I burn, or let her float ? 
 
 4—2 
 
32 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 ' She will serve instead of torches 
 To light back my men and me 
 
 If the women find it scorches, 
 They can jump into the sea.' 
 
 And I lit a fuse and threw it 
 
 'Mid the tackle dry as hay, 
 Where the wind of nightfall blew it 
 
 Gently ; and we rowed away. 
 
 When sufficient distance sheltered. 
 
 On our oars we lay a spell, 
 Where the vessel, when it weltered. 
 
 Could not suck us down to hell. 
 
 Night had gathered. Like a spire, 
 
 Of a sudden by-and-by, 
 Shot the pinnacle of fire, 
 \ Dazzling-white from sea to sky. 
 
 Then all reddened, and the water 
 Round the ship for miles away, 
 
 Took the lurid hue of slaughter, 
 And the vividness of day. 
 
 As we watched ft never dimming. 
 But with radiance that increased. 
 
 Something from the ship came swimming- 
 Something — was it man or beast ? 
 
 Round it sputtered glowing ashes 
 Like a rain of bright red blood ; 
 
 We could see the head by flashes 
 Struggling through the crimson flood. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 53 
 
 While for half a mile or nearly 
 
 It pursued its lurid track, 
 Till we saw a woman clearly, 
 
 With a child upon her back. 
 
 ' By the Gospel ! it's another 
 
 Little Christian to baptize. 
 Being brought us by its mother — 
 
 I can see its head and eyes. 
 
 ' AVhat a zeal for the salvation 
 
 Of her little suckling calf ; 
 Swim, and save it from damnation ! 
 
 She's too fond of it by half.' 
 
 J^nd we watched her progress, betting, 
 
 Would she reach us, no or yes ? 
 
 We could see that she was getting 
 
 Weaker in her swimmer's stress. 
 
 But she managed still to reach us 
 And her gurgling shouts were wild. 
 
 In her lingo to beseech us 
 To have mercy on her child. 
 
 So we took it from her shoulder, 
 
 As she grappled to the boat ; 
 Back into the sea we rolled her, 
 
 With a handspike in her throat. 
 
 Juan {who has entered unnoticed, in time to hear the end 
 of Agrippa's story). 
 
 Thou art a base coward. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 Ha, what's that ? Say it again. 
 
54 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Thou art a base, base coward. 
 
 Agrippa {springing at him with his dagger). 
 Take that ! 
 
 (Juan snatches his wrist and averts the Mow. They roll 
 on the ground together, over and over. Juan wrenches 
 the dagger out i^^ Agrippa's grasp and holds it to his 
 throat.) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Shall I stick it in thy throat? There, keep thy dog's 
 life — I make thee a present of it. But stick no more 
 handspikes in women's throats. 
 
 \The others separate them and exeunt. 
 
 SCENE IV. 
 
 {Cabin i?/ Ponce de Leon.) 
 
 Ponce de Leon {alone). 
 
 At last the fixed complexion of the sky 
 Knows omens of a change ; and well it may — 
 This is the twentieth day of the stagnation ; 
 I was beginning in my soul to think 
 That this swift vessel, planted in foul brine. 
 Had stricken root, and was for ever tethered 
 To this one spot of sea. Oh, with what thirst 
 In these three weeks of waiting have I panted ! 
 Not for the base, unvivifying water 
 For which the others yearned, but for the rills. 
 The trickling diamond of my constant thought 
 By day and night. Doth not each fretful hour 
 Of new delay and baffled expectation. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 55 
 
 That trifles with the longing of my heart, 
 Add threads of silver to iny grizzling beard ? 
 Last night there was a change in the moon's cheek, 
 The catspaw nears, the wind will rise to-night, 
 And then we shall unfurl. 
 
 Fernandez' ship ? 
 My mind misgives me at its disappearance. 
 We parted company a month ago : 
 What if he were perchance to reach the goal 
 Before myself, and, landing first, to make 
 A private treaty with the immortal king ? 
 I think him treacherous enough for that. 
 Come in, Agrippa ! 
 
 (Enter Agrippa.) 
 Well, there is a change. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 I know there is. Have I not had my eyes 
 Hard fixed for half the night upon the moon 
 And on the faint, faint vapours that have formed 
 Upon the horizon ? Yes, there is a change. 
 I have already given all the orders : 
 The men are ready, and within twelve hours 
 We shall unfurl the sails and turn the helm 
 Back on Hispaniola. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Hell and thunder ! 
 What dost thou mean ? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 I mean that there is water 
 Sufficient in the cisterns (and that barely) 
 To reach Hispaniola, but not half 
 The quantity of water that is needed 
 To reach our destination. 
 
56 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Say it slower ; 
 Say it again ; say I have heard thee wrong ; 
 It cannot be, O God, it cannot be ! 
 Say that thou didst not say to ine ' Turn back !' 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 It is not I who say it, but the cisterns ; 
 Come and inspect the water for yourself. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Back to Hispaniola for the want 
 
 For some few paltry gallons of fresh water ! 
 
 It cannot be ; I say it cannot be ; 
 
 The thought is mad and monstrous. Why, it means 
 
 At least a year of wasted plan and effort : 
 
 What am I saying ? Why, it means the death 
 
 Cf the whole enterprise. For who would get 
 
 This mutinous crew to sail the sea again ? 
 
 It cannot be ; I say it cannot be : 
 
 It is a passing nightm'are of thy dreaming. 
 
 And while I turn my back upon the goal, 
 
 Fernandez with my other ship will reach it, 
 
 And cheat me of the object of my life. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 There is no arguing with parching throats : 
 'Tis not by talking of the Fount of Youth 
 That you can quench a sailor's raging thirst. 
 Come and inspect the cisterns. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 It may rain : 
 The gathering clouds are near. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 57 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 I know these seas : 
 Have I not sailed them at this very season ? 
 The wind is near, but not a drop of rain. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 And to be cheated of the Fount of Founts, 
 
 Of that all-potent and ineffable draught. 
 
 For lack of some few gallons of such water 
 
 As any dog can lap in any street ! 
 
 The thought will drive me mad. Rather than turn, 
 
 I will blow up the ship with all it holds. 
 
 And my own self. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 The thought is very kind ; 
 But, as it happens that the crew and I 
 Have not such violent and engrained objection 
 To reach old age as you have, I must pray you 
 To put your powder to some other use 
 Than sending all to Heaven. I have told you 
 How matters stand ; the case is very simple : 
 Compute the gallons and compute the mouths. 
 But there are ways of cutting Gordian knots, 
 Which only old adventurers of the sea 
 Like my own self can practise. 
 
 And now listen. 
 What would you give me if, despite the cisterns, 
 I led you to the goal ? Weigh well your answer. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 All that I have and love, save mine own life. 
 
58 The Fountain of Youth- 
 
 Agrippa. 
 Even the promise of your daughter's hand ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon (very slowly). 
 Yes, even that. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 Well, if you give me that, 
 And put me in possession for twelve hours 
 Of undisputed power on this vessel, 
 I take you to Bimini. Do you swear ? 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 I swear it by the shrine of Compostella. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 We understand each other. I will leave you 
 To your own meditations for a little, 
 While I give orders. 
 
 [£xif Agrippa. 
 
 Ponce de Leon {alone). 
 Is it a stagger that has left me dizzy, 
 Or is it only that my soul has stood 
 For half a score of black and icy minutes 
 A-shivering in the lobby of despair, 
 And still feels numb — and now that once agai|,i 
 I stand and warm me by the hearth of hope ? 
 Why is it that I feel as if a part 
 Of my own self had been lopped off for ever? 
 O Youth Eternal, spirit that I serve. 
 Why hast thou asked me for my daughter's weal? 
 Why hast thou asked of me to break her heart ? 
 Thou knowest that I can no more resist 
 The dazzling fascination of thy splendour . 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 59 
 
 Than can the moth who flutters scorching circles 
 
 Around the perilous flame. O well thou knowest 
 
 That if thou needest victims for thy altar 
 
 It is not I, thy priest and devotee, 
 
 Who can refuse them. Have not other men, 
 
 In order to attain their baser goals 
 
 Of avarice, or ambition, to crush out 
 
 Love, conscience, mercy, happiness, health, and slumber 
 
 For a base god ? And shall I dream that thou, 
 
 The ever-glorious and the ever-dazzling, 
 
 Will let me lave my wrinkles in thy Fount 
 
 At lesser price than that ? 
 
 And must not she 
 Who is to share the incomparable boon 
 Consent to share its price ? Must she not pay 
 In the red gold of happiness and peace, 
 She on whose cheek perennial youth will sit 
 For ever safe from ever-gnawing years ? 
 Aye, she must pay her share. 
 
 (Re-enter Agrippa.) 
 
 Already back ? 
 What orders hast thou given in these five minutes 
 Of thine omnipotence ? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Now I will tell you. 
 For these two days the sailors have been watching 
 A phantom island on the faint horizon. 
 It is a thing of unsubstantial vapour, 
 A freak of light portending change of weather. 
 I have commanded thirty men in boats. 
 Under the charge of Florestan, the mate, 
 To leave the ship and to await us there. 
 
6o The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 What, in a phantom island ! Art thou mad ? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Then, while they land upon it, we sail on. 
 The crew, diminished by so many men. 
 And put upon half-rations of fresh water. 
 Can reach Bimini safely. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 But, good God ! 
 Why, this is simply murder. What ! Send out 
 In open boats upon this unsailed sea 
 These thirty men, to slowly die of thirst, 
 Or drink the maddening horror of the brine ! 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 If they but think sufficiently on sugar 
 The sea will not taste salt. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 It cannot be, 
 I cannot let this monstrous thing be done. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 The thing is done already. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Christ of Heaven ! 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 The thing is done already : they have left. 
 And now are past recall. Did you not give me 
 The power of life and death upon this ship ? 
 
And so I turn his vanities to profit, 
 
 As I shall do a many times in future. 
 
 Upon the misty basis of his dreams 
 
 I will build up the structure of my house, 
 
 The solid edifice of real power. 
 
 While he is seeking for the Fount of Youth, 
 
 I will make mine the regions that we conquer. 
 
 He has a royal charter in his pocket ; 
 
 But I, once made his son-in-law, shall be 
 
 The real viceroy, master of the substance. 
 
 Until such time .as, feeling strength sufficient, 
 
 I shall deprive him even of the shadow. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 O Fount ! O Fount ! What hast thou made me do 
 
ACT III. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 (A chamber in the great rock temple at Bimini.) 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 This is the Feast of Arrows, and the walls 
 
 Of this huge fane of beauty and destruction 
 
 Have disappeared, with all their painted demons, 
 
 Beneath the dewy tapestry of blossoms 
 
 Bright in their transient patterns, while the pillars 
 
 Conceal the scars of their forgotten ages 
 
 Beneath the garb of odoriferous palms, 
 
 And hold each other, like colossal captives. 
 
 With Spring's ephemeral chains. Upon the pavement 
 
 The stains of human sacrifice are hidden 
 
 With fresh-strewn litter of uncounted roses. 
 
 The troops of garland girls have done their work, 
 
 And all have left. And now for seven days 
 
 The countless warriors of this warlike nation. 
 
 In silent companies will bring their quivers, 
 
 To the slow booming of the gong of gongs. 
 
 That every, long and copper-headed shaft 
 
 May be baptized with poison. Never yet, 
 
 Since these stupendous columns first were carved 
 
 Out of the living granite by our fathers. 
 
 Innumerable centuries ago. 
 
The Fountain of Youth, 6^, 
 
 Has venom of such potency been needed, 
 To stem the growing tide of an invasion ; 
 And never has the yearly Feast of Arrows 
 Been full of such solemnity as now. 
 The white invaders, with the impious help 
 Of the rebellious tribes, have reached our gates 
 And battle nears. Is all prepared and ready ? 
 Where rise the perilous vapours of thy cauldron ? 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 The white invaders will not long be white 
 
 If they give battle ; for the faintest scratch 
 
 With arrow or with javelin of my steeping 
 
 Will make their pale and leprous bodies blacken, 
 
 And fit them for the burial-ground of dogs. 
 
 Oh, trust my brew. Have I not worked in poison 
 
 Until the very flies that sting me drop 
 
 Dead on the floor ? The art which we possess, 
 
 And have developed since primeval times. 
 
 Of feeding snakes on juice of deadly plants. 
 
 And then inoculating with their venom, 
 
 Increased in strength, the deadly plant itself. 
 
 And so augmenting, in a ceaseless circle 
 
 The potency of poison, has now reached 
 
 Incredible perfection. One black drop 
 
 Of our unmixed and last-developed death-juice. 
 
 Were it to fall into the mightiest river, 
 
 Would poison all the nations on its banks, 
 
 And curdle Ocean's self. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 What demon shapes 
 Have risen in thy fumes ? 
 
64 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 Three gods of terror 
 Familiar to my visions, and one new. 
 First, Eyes-of-Madness, with the scarlet bat-wings ; 
 Then Ice-of-Fear, the god with lidless eye-bails ; 
 And Wince-of-Agony, the great tormentor. 
 The unknown spirit had a tiger's head, 
 With human limbs all of the fairest shape, 
 And ceaselessly he ate them — every limb 
 Growing again the while he ate the others. 
 It was a wondrous and terrific vision ; 
 And never since the god of Silent Horror 
 Placed, years ago, upon my novice head 
 The cold and restless wreath of living vipers. 
 Which turned my black hair white, have I beheld 
 So dread a deity. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 I know him well ; 
 He is the great and all-pervading god 
 Of Cosmic Cruelty, named Ataflis ; 
 And it is owing to his boundless power 
 That Nature preys for ever on herself, 
 And that the earth and air and sea are filled with millions 
 Who feed on others and themselves are eaten. 
 Is that the singing of thy venom-girls 
 Which echoes through these temple vaults ? 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 And if thou listen, thou wilt hear the words 
 Of a new song, which I have taught them sing 
 For this our Feast of Arrows, while we mix 
 
 It is; 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 65 
 
 The perilous essence with the vitreous gums 
 Which serve to glue it to the arrow's head. 
 
 , Song of the Arrow-Poisoners. 
 
 When Nature was fashioned 
 The vapours of Hell 
 
 Crept through to the surface, 
 Insidious and fell. 
 
 Of plants that are deadly 
 They fattened the root ; 
 
 The sap of destruction 
 Filled berry and fruit ; 
 
 While trickles of horror, 
 In numberless snakes, 
 
 Ran live through the grasses 
 That summer awakes. 
 
 And tetanus followed 
 The rattlesnake's grasp ; 
 
 And palsy the ripple 
 Of cobra and asp. 
 
 The juice of creation 
 Is venom and blood ; 
 
 And Torture is master 
 Of earth and of flood. 
 
 All nature is teeming 
 
 With claw and with fang ; 
 
 Above is the beauty, 
 Beneath is the pang. 
 
66 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 In shadow and flowers 
 The leopardess lies ; 
 
 Two living green embers 
 Glow wild in her eyes. 
 
 The sea is all sunshine ; 
 
 The shark is beneath, 
 A wave of red water 
 
 Wells up from his teeth. 
 
 But Man is the monarch 
 Of torture and death ; 
 
 The breath of his nostrils 
 Is murder's own breath. 
 
 The hunter of hunters, 
 Who hunts his own race, 
 
 Relentless and savage, 
 From off the earth's face. 
 
 So dip we the arrows 
 In juices of night, 
 
 That madness and horror 
 May follow their flight. 
 
 And waves as of lava 
 May run in each vein. 
 
 Till lethargy deadens 
 Unthinkable pain. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Thy maids sing well, and I approve the words. 
 Thy arrow song is worthy of the temple 
 Of that gigantic man-devouring Flower — 
 Goddess at once of Murder and of Beauty — 
 Whose ever-hungry tentacles can grasp 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 67 
 
 The living human hmbs — whose awful bosom 
 
 Is even as ready to engulf a slave 
 
 As the small sun-dew to engulf an insect. 
 
 The Flower of Cruelty, the lonely Empress 
 
 Of virgin forests, whom our sires enshrined 
 
 In this rock temple, and who there has grown 
 
 In beauty and in appetite, is symbol 
 
 Of what pervades the universe itself. 
 
 The two great ruling principles of Nature 
 
 Are Cruelty and Beauty — Pain and Sunshine. 
 
 And even as her iron tendrils grasp 
 
 The monthly wretch we give her to devour, 
 
 So Nature in her placid beauty murders, 
 
 Through sea, and air, and earth. The world is like 
 
 The walls in which we stand : Above, the flowers ; 
 
 And catacombs of dungeons underneath. 
 
 All choking full. But, hark ! I hear the sound 
 
 Of steps approaching : doubtless they are coming 
 
 To tell me that the Monarch is in sight. 
 
 Atalpa comes to see how we have wreathed 
 
 Our walls and columns. Othoxa, get thee gone. 
 
 ySxtt Indian Sorceress. 
 
 (Enter Atalpa, accompanied by two tame panthers and 
 followed by an escort of warriors^ 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Lord of the Panthers, ever-young Atalpa ! 
 I bid thee welcome to these sacred caves. 
 To-day as ever. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 For a thousand years 
 Have these old columns, on the Feast of Arrows, 
 
 s— 2 
 
68 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Put on their garb of aromatic green, 
 
 As regularly bursting into leaf 
 
 As if they teemed with sap ; and never yet 
 
 Has the King failed to come and praise the flowers. 
 
 But I, for once, have neither eyes nor nostrils 
 
 For wreaths, however sweet ; and I have come 
 
 With care-o'erclouded forehead, to consult 
 
 Upon the means which our religion offers 
 
 To stem the white invasion. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 My own thoughts 
 Have not been idle since the news grew darker : 
 I have gone over all the great invasions 
 Which we have baffled in the course of ages ; 
 And in each case I find that we have owed 
 Eventual triumph to one single cause — 
 Our policy of friendship with the gods. 
 The gods, remember, are destructive forces ; 
 They act from appetite, and not from justice — 
 If they were just, there were no need of prayer. 
 Naught is so mercenary as a god 
 In man's necessity. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 The whites are few. 
 Compared with our great legions ; but they carry 
 The bolt of Heaven with them, and their thunder 
 Shakes the great forest ; every echoing peal 
 Means scores of dead. Their heads are capp'd with steel, 
 Their breasts with plates which not a shaft can pierce — 
 Their very fingers are encased in iron. 
 Had I not seen the corpses of their slain 
 
The Fountain of Youth, 6g 
 
 I still should think them gods; besides, they have 
 The tribes as their allies. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Now, let me know 
 What presents thou art bringing to the temple. 
 Much will depend on that. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 Eleven targes 
 Of beaten gold, wrought round with figures showing 
 The war between the leopards and the gods. 
 Then I have brought thee, in a precious casket. 
 The famous ruby, called the Eye of Wrath, 
 And twelve great barrels full of minted gold. 
 
 High Priest. 
 I think the Goddess will accept the gift. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 In presence of the ever-growing peril 
 
 There is a thought which haunts me night and day. 
 
 Dost thou remember, from remotest ages 
 
 The prophecy which says : ' The day will come 
 
 On which this prosperous and victorious state 
 
 Will wholly perish, if a white-skinned virgin 
 
 Shall not be offered up in sacrifice 
 
 To the great goddess ?' 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Yes, I recollect it ; 
 But it has been interpreted to mean 
 That she would be miraculously born 
 With a white skin among us. 
 
70 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 Ay, and rightly ; 
 So long we knew not that a white-skinn'd race 
 Existed in the world. But now we know it ; 
 And seems it not as if the day were come 
 For the fulfilment, now that the invaders 
 Have raised the tribes against us and are marching 
 Straight on the capital ? 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Have the white invaders 
 Their women with them ? 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 That I cannot answer, 
 But I intend to ask them for a truce 
 And send an embassy, and so gain time 
 To get to know them better. Who comes here ? 
 
 {Enter the Master of the Sacrifices.) 
 
 Master of the Sacrifices. 
 
 I come with consternation in my soul 
 
 And staggering feet, that scarce can bear my weight 
 
 To bring most monstrous news. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 Quick, speak, what is it ? 
 Keep us not in suspense. 
 
 Master of the Sacrifices. 
 
 A fearful portent. 
 Big with catastrophe to king and people : 
 The ever-hungry Goddess of this temple 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 71 
 
 For the first time in history, has spurned 
 Her monthly victim. \ 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Spurned her monthly victim ? 
 It cannot be — the omen were too monstrous. 
 
 Master of the Sacrifices. 
 
 I have just seen it with these very eyes. 
 
 Scarce had we placed the gagged and writhing slave — 
 
 A virgin of the ebon race of Xu — 
 
 In the great Flower's lap, when a convulsion 
 
 Shook her prodigious petals. She relaxed 
 
 The feelers which had grasped the victim's body 
 
 And cast it out alive. We tried again 
 
 A second time : again she cast it out, 
 
 Alive just as before. And when we made 
 
 A third attempt, the miracle took place 
 
 Even again, except that then the slave 
 
 Was cast out dead. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 No such tremendous portent 
 Has ever tuned man's spirit to disaster, 
 Since the great star, which trailed a fan of fire 
 Depopulating Heaven, and the earthquake 
 Which shook the figures of the gods to pieces. 
 Gave warning of the most disastrous battle 
 Which history records. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 Thou sayest well, 
 Priest of the Scented Murderess ; such omen 
 Has not prepared the minds of men for evil 
 
72 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Since these three hundred years. But in this thing 
 I see not only presage of disaster, 
 But something more distinct. When I consider 
 The peril which surrounds us, and remember 
 The prophecy of old, the thing assumes 
 Another shape. I see a thought, a meaning, 
 A purpose, a command. The tongueless goddess. 
 In spurning thus the victim that we offer. 
 Means that she wants another — something new 
 For her terriiic maw ; and I can read 
 Her wish as clear as if she spoke in words. 
 She wants white flesh ; and if we give it not. 
 The pillars of this state will split and stagger ; 
 And with a crash which will outpeal the thunder 
 With which the white men's engines shake the air, 
 The edifice of ages will come down 
 Upon our heads, and bury us in its fall. 
 
 [Exeunt omnes. 
 
 SCENE II. 
 (The Virgin Forest near the Spanish Camp.) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 O loVe, look up ! What wondrous depths of green. 
 
 Bough above bough, and yet more boughs above them. 
 
 See how the mossy columns of the trees 
 
 Soar and divide and over-curve the gloom 
 
 With ever lighter arches, tier on tier. 
 
 See how the yellow sunlight, filtering through. 
 
 Grows ever greener till it finds the moss 
 
 On which we lie. Might not this beryl dome 
 
 Which shrines our love be some rare ocean cave. 
 
The Fountain of Youth, 73 
 
 In whose green lights and shadows during noon 
 The scaly nereids and enamoured Tritons 
 Seek refuge when the arrows of the sun 
 Strike ocean's heart ! Or is it all a dream ? 
 O tell me, love, that all these leaves are real, 
 And not a vision born of raging thirst 
 In the delirium of that open boat 
 Upon the leafless horror of the sea, 
 Among the dead and dying ; and that thou, 
 Who seemest to be leaning over me, 
 Art not a phantom of that final hour 
 Before Fernandez' vessel picked us up. 
 When I was calling on thy name in vain, 
 But thy own sweet reality. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Dear love. 
 Dismiss thy fears. Beneath the soft green light. 
 Thou art no longer in the open boat. 
 Dying of thirst ; nor yet art thou on earth. 
 These are the green and silent depths of ocean, 
 Far down below the surface of the storms, 
 And I a mermaid, bending over thee. 
 When some young comely sailor drowns at sea, 
 We catch his body as it slowly sinks 
 Through the green fathoms, and we wake him back 
 With spells and kisses to a deep-sea life. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Wert thou a mermaid, as thou say'st thou art. 
 Thou wouldst be so much fairer than the others, 
 That the green ocean cave and sea-weed forests 
 Would grow yet greener with their jealousy ; 
 Thou couldst be but their victim or their queen. 
 
74 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 No, here we all are equal, and no discord 
 Nor spite nor envy mars the placid depths. 
 Sweet sailor, I will take thee by-and-by 
 And show thee through the treasuries of ocean. 
 The caves in which we keep the sunken gold, 
 And all the shipwrecked jewels of the world. 
 
 Juan. 
 I have a richer treasury, thy heart. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Here will we live together and for ever. 
 
 And see no more of earth, save some rare glimpse 
 
 When we swim up and sit upon some rock. 
 
 Where, while I sing unto my golden harp, 
 
 Or watch some lazy vessel in the sunset, 
 
 Thou wilt repeat thy vows of merman love. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 O love, O love ! Would that thy words were true ! 
 Oh, I would tell thee that the pale green light, 
 Which shines so softly in the happy depths. 
 Is less to me than thou ; that the light stems, 
 Which wave for ever in the briny caves. 
 Are less divinely supple than thy form ; 
 That the pale rose which lines the ocean shell 
 Is conquered by the freshness of thy cheek. 
 The coral by the crimson of thy lips. 
 Oh, I would tell thee that thy voice outrings 
 The ocean's summer breeze ; and that thy kiss 
 Is softer than the kiss the seagull's wing 
 Gives to the panting wave. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 75 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Love, hark my song ! 
 
 I would not be a child of earth, 
 
 Which is so full of care ; 
 I would not leave my mermaid life 
 
 To be an empress there. 
 
 Juan. 
 But if I were a child of clay, 
 
 Wouldst thou not leave the sea. 
 To share the pain and care and woe. 
 
 And live on earth with me ? 
 
 RositA. 
 The ocean's caves are green and sweet. 
 
 They know nor sigh nor tear ; 
 The sea-weed forests shed no leaves, 
 
 As ends each passing year. 
 
 Juan. 
 Oh, wouldst thou stay where sea-bells bloom, 
 
 And let me pine alone ; 
 And give me, as the days go by. 
 
 No answer to my moan ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 The streets of earth are paved with cares, 
 
 Its roofs are tiled with woes ; 
 The bread it eats is made by grief. 
 
 From grain that sorrow sows. 
 
 Juan. 
 Oh, wouldst thou sit upon thy rock. 
 
 And watch the fading ships ; 
 And never give a kiss to him 
 
 Who lives but by thy lips ? 
 
76 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Love, I would leave a thousand seas — 
 A thousand caves that glow- — 
 
 To share with thee the paths of earth, 
 And all the tears they know. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 And so we are together upon earth. 
 
 We are on earth — oh, cruelly on earth ! 
 
 O sweetest, it is time for us to wake 
 
 Out of the day-dream that has wrapped us round ; 
 
 Here, where the dreamy magic of thy voice, 
 
 Mixed with the whisper of the leaves above. 
 
 Had lulled my soul till I had half forgot 
 
 What brought me here. Awake, awake, Rosita ! 
 
 Emergency is clamouring for an answer, 
 
 And peril girds us like a fiery belt ! 
 
 Rosita. , 
 
 O love, I was so happy in my dream. 
 Wilt thou not let us be a little longer 
 Merman and mermaid, in a cave of pearl — 
 Here, in the pale green sunlight, where the world. 
 With all its doubts and hates, and pangs and perils. 
 Has no existence for us ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Would I could ! 
 But danger presses ; we must think and act. 
 
 Rosita. 
 Thou deemest the danger greater than it is. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. yy 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I am no craven soul, for whom each mole-hill 
 Projects the shadow of a toppling mountain. 
 A hideous danger threatens thee. Agrippa 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I fear him not. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Thou little knowest him. 
 The most destructive and abhorred wild beast 
 That crouches in the tangles of these forests, 
 Compared with his ferocity, is kind. 
 And, measured with his treachery, is loyal. 
 He is thy father's favourite and tyrant ; 
 His daily evil genius ; and thy father, 
 For some mysterious service past or future, 
 Has given him the promise of thy hand, 
 And every day, with more intense insistence. 
 He presses for fulfilment of the bond. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 He will find out that he but wastes his pains. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 And when he finds it out, and drops the mask 
 Of love and courtship which conceals his rage. 
 Woe to thyself and me. His dark soul writhes 
 Beneath thy scorn ; and when fair means have failed 
 He will use foul. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I can defend myself. 
 I do not fear his violence. 
 
78 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Oh, my love, 
 Thou knowest not the danger thou art in. 
 If he were not the mean and cruel coward. 
 The unrestricted tyrant that he is — 
 If I could cross his blade in open fight — 
 Oh, I would rid thee of him soon enough ! 
 But if I gave him challenge, dost thou think 
 That he would take it ? Ere the day was out 
 I should have got but throttled for my pains. 
 Oh love, now list. Agrippa's insolence 
 Has fostered discontent among the soldiers. 
 Whose lives are being wasted month by month 
 In a vain, empty enterprise. Fernandez 
 With Garcia, Morasquez, and some others. 
 Have formed a plan to suddenly desert. 
 Seize on a ship, and sail away to Spain. 
 Love, we must fly. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I cannot leave my father. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Thy life depends upon it. As for me, 
 I owe thy father nothing. Did he not 
 Place me and others in an open boat, 
 To die of thirst upon an unsailed ocean ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 But I — I owe him all — my very breath, 
 And many a kiss between the eyes of childhood, 
 When he would hold me long upon his knee, 
 And when the Fount of Youth was not as now — 
 The only thing he loved. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 79 
 
 Juan. 
 
 For his mad thirst 
 For that enchanted water which he never 
 Will reach on earth, he plunges all in woe, 
 And drags thee into ruin with himself. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 The greater need that I, who am the only 
 True friend he has to warn him of his fate. 
 Should not desert him. Love, it cannot be. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 It must, it must ! There is no time to lose. 
 This single opportunity, once wasted. 
 Will ne'er recur. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I cannot leave my father ! 
 I cannot leave him — even, love, for thee. 
 But, hark, I hear a faint and distant clarion 
 Come from the tents. Haste, haste, or thou'lt be missed ! 
 We must return to camp by different ways. 
 Each kiss is but a danger. Oh, begone ! 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I still shall break thy purposes — think it o'er. 
 Oh, love, another kiss ! 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Away ! Away ! 
 
 [Exit Juan. 
 
 RosiTA {alone). 
 
 Now love is putting duty to the torture, 
 
 But it must stand the test. Oh, it were sweet 
 
8o The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 To fly with him to Spain, and see no more 
 This wild and cruel Indian world of -peril, 
 And with my hand in his once more to cross 
 The rippling cornfields, where we used to meet. 
 It cannot be ; no, no, it cannot be ; 
 I cannot leave my father to his fate, 
 And I must stay beside him to the end. 
 What figure is approaching through the trees ? 
 
 {Enter Agrippa.) 
 
 Agrippa. 
 What, here alone — without thy Indian guard ? 
 Not even thy Indian handmaid ; in this forest 
 Which has no paths, and out of sight of camp ! 
 Oh, this is rash ! 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Thou hast been dogging me ! 
 I care not to be dogged. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 I saw thee leave 
 The camp alone, and, spurred by love and fear 
 For thy sweet safety, followed in thy steps 
 For thy protection. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Does the roe require 
 To be protected by the skulking wolf? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 The forest is unsafe, however near 
 The bugle sound. There are wild beasts about. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Thyself, for instance ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 3i 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Call me what thou wilt, 
 Thou art the fairest when thou call'st me names ; 
 Love is the sweetest when he looks most fierce 
 And wears a mantle made of lion's hide. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 And Hate most hideous when his wolfish bristles 
 Are seen through lambskins. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Call me wolf again. 
 It is so sweet to hear thee call me wolf ; 
 Thou hast accustomed me to taunts and insults ; 
 They do no harm, I take them as pet names. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Oh, then I'll call thee courteously Agrippa, 
 Which is for me the most ill-omened name 
 Between the earth's two poles. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 I have already 
 Outstretched the usual patience of a courtship. 
 In wooing thee so long, and do not thou 
 Outstretch it further, till it snap in two. 
 I have thy father's promise ; thou art mine. 
 To-day I woo, to-morrow I shall order. 
 Fight not too long with fate, and, most of all. 
 Call not the wolf too often by his name. 
 Or, if thou dost, wait till he cares to rip. 
 
 6 
 
82 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Ho, ho ! the fleece is off ; and better so, 
 It suited thee but little, and thy growl 
 Is sweeter in my ears than was thy bleat. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 What, did I growl ? and yet I am no wolf. 
 At most a lamb, who happens to have fangs. 
 And who, in other woods and other seasons, 
 On one or two occasions in his life. 
 Has eaten up a woman for less cause 
 Than thou, young lady, givest him to-day. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I thank thee for the warning, though in truth 
 I did not need it. Now be pleased to take 
 Some other path than mine to reach the camp. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 I owe it as a duty to thy father 
 To see thee safely back. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 What, dost thou force 
 Thy company upon me ? Answer plainly. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Force is an ugly word ; it is my duty 
 
 To see thee through these brambles, and, besides, 
 
 I have a little tale I wish to tell. 
 
 About a woman, as we go along. 
 
 The story is instructive and pathetic. 
 
 And shows the latent goodness of my heart ; 
 
 I wish to prove how kind a soul I have. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 85 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I shall not listen. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Oh, thou'lt hear enough, 
 Whether thou listen or thou listen not. 
 To serve my purpose. Well, about this wench : 
 
 She was pretty enough, quite young. 
 
 And her fondness was great past measure ; 
 
 Nay, she loved me too much by far, 
 And she gave me of late no pleasure. 
 
 Complaints that I loved her not. 
 
 And in numberless strings reproaches, 
 
 And tears and a scene each day. 
 In spite of my rings and brooches. 
 
 And I realized more and more. 
 
 Each day of the week I met her. 
 That her love was too great for earth. 
 
 And that heaven would suit her better. 
 
 So I took her a walk one day 
 
 In the reeds that were tall and lonely. 
 
 And we talked as I held her hand 
 Of the red of the sunset only. 
 
 And I suddenly told her there, 
 While I stifled the cry she uttered, 
 
 As her minutes on earth were five, 
 
 To be quick in the prayer she muttered. 
 
 She clung to my knees and cried, 
 ' By the numberless saints in heaven, 
 
 Have mercy, and send me not 
 
 To my God with my soul unshriven.' 
 
 6—2 
 
84 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 ' If thou needst but that,' quoth I. 
 
 ' For heaven to have thee in it, 
 Set doubt and alarm at rest, 
 
 For I'll shrive thee myself this minute.' 
 
 And I questioned her, sin by sin, 
 With the care of a bare-foot friar, 
 
 While she knelt, and the beads of sweat 
 On her brow were like dew on briar. 
 
 And with many a sob, loud sobbed. 
 Like one who her soul well tidies. 
 
 She upcounted her fibs and sins 
 
 And the meat she had ate on Fridays. 
 
 And how for a year and more, 
 For her body and soul's pollution, 
 
 She had loved me, and loved too well. 
 And I gave her my absolution. 
 
 And then, as the sun went down 
 
 In the reeds, with her soul well shriven, 
 
 As the chill of the dusk fell cold, 
 I gave her good speed to heaven. 
 
 The story is pathetic, is it not ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 I have not been attending. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Were 't not wise 
 To make no more resistance, but accept 
 So tender-souled a suitor ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Never, never ! 
 Until God's lightning falls upon thy head ! 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 8.5 
 
 Thou Omniscient and Omnipotent God, 
 (".ive me the strength to fight Thy battle out 
 Against this man ! Oh, never, never ! 
 
 Agrippa. 
 Thou wilt think better of it at thy leisure. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 If all thy soldiers drag me to the altar, 
 They shall not force me to become thy wife. 
 For I will stab thee at the altar's foot. 
 And be the executioner for God. 
 The day that thou shalt have recourse to force 
 Shall be thy last, and mine. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 What, threat of dagger ! 
 
 1 love to see a beauty in her fury. 
 
 And know the value of a woman's threat. 
 It is a pretty bubble. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Look at this. 
 {She takes a small dagger from lier bosom, bares her 
 left arm, and passes the dagger slowly through it.) 
 Dost thou believe me now ? It is for thee. 
 And not for me, to meditate at leisure, 
 And weigh the peril of thy scheme to-day. 
 
 [jExit. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 By all the fiends who crowd the devil's stair 
 I thought her not so strong ; and for this once 
 I own that I have reckoned sans my host. 
 Yes, she is right ; it is for me to ponder 
 
86 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And weigh the items of my scheme at leisure. 
 
 She is too dangerous, and I must change 
 
 My plan from top to bottom, and build up 
 
 On other ground the edifice of fortune. 
 
 And better so, perhaps. The wind has changed 
 
 Since last I viewed the compass, and it brings me 
 
 Strange tempting whispers from the Indian king. 
 
 She shall not be my wife, but she shall be 
 
 A something better than a wife — a victim ! 
 
 Revenge is sweeter in the cup than love 
 
 For one like me ; and now that I am free 
 
 To give a hearing to Atalpa's offer 
 
 And found my altered schemes upon his help. 
 
 I can prepare a network of destruction 
 
 To wrap around her father and herself. 
 
ACT rv. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 {The Spanish Camp. Soldiers drinking and playing at 
 dice between the tents. ) 
 
 First Soldier. 
 
 Pass me the flagon, man. Until we dip 
 Our pewter tankards in the Fount of Youth 
 This old Canary is as good as any : 
 
 There's youth in each bubble 
 
 That rises and winks ; 
 The soldier has trouble, 
 
 But sings as he drinks. 
 
 The sunshine is in it 
 
 That ripened the grape ; 
 Life lasts but a minute, 
 
 The cannon mouths gape. 
 
 Second Soldier. 
 
 There's youth in the tankard, 
 
 There's youth in the can ; 
 The vine was uncankered 
 
 That round the eaves ran ; 
 
88 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And Age is a dragon 
 
 The soldier can kill, 
 If only the flagon 
 
 Has wine in it still. 
 
 Third Soldier. 
 
 Ay, faith, there's youth in this ; and we had better 
 Enjoy it while we have it. Our small store 
 Of barrelled sunshine will have trickled dry 
 For many a day and many a month and year 
 Before we reach the fountain. 
 
 First Soldier. 
 
 That it will ; 
 And every single drop of cellared wine 
 In Christendom as well. The Magic Water 
 Seems ebbing ever further from our eyes 
 As every month goes by. 
 
 Third Soldier. 
 
 And yet they say 
 That the commander thinks success quite certain. 
 Now that the Indian king has sent the envoys. 
 This morning they were walking through the camp, 
 With their great golden armlets. 
 
 Second Soldier. 
 
 Yes, I saw them ; 
 And they are all old men, which of itself 
 Is proof sufficient 'gainst the Fount of Youth ; 
 For if the Indians had it in their kingdom, 
 Would the ambassadors that they have sent us 
 Have snow upon their heads ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 8g 
 
 Fourth Soldier. 
 
 Ay, so I thought 
 This very morning, as I saw them pass ; 
 But Pedro says it is because their king 
 Keeps all the magic water for himself, 
 And takes good care his subjects shouldn't taste it. 
 That he alone may always be as young, 
 And always be as strong. 
 
 Second Soldier. 
 
 But some assert 
 That if he's got no wrinkles it's because 
 He's never twice the same. 
 
 Fourth Soldier. 
 
 What dost thou mean — 
 Not twice the same ? 
 
 Second Soldier. 
 
 I mean that he's elected 
 Only for some few years, among the strongest 
 Of their young warriors, and then yields his place 
 To one as young ; that's why he's never old, 
 And youth is always seated on the throne. 
 And if there's any truth in what I'm told, 
 Atalpa is a title, not a name ; 
 And their young king, instead of having reigned 
 Six hundred years, has not reigned sixty months. 
 
 First Soldier. 
 
 If that's the case, the sooner we give up 
 This wild-goose chase, the better for us all. 
 
go The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Fourth Soldier. 
 
 For my part, I am getting every day 
 Less faith in this strange water. 
 
 Third Soldier. 
 
 So am I. 
 
 Fifth Soldier. 
 
 Why, if the Fount of Youth exists on earth, 
 Would not that God-cursed and eternal Hebrew, 
 Who ever trudges round and round the world, 
 Over the graves of those whose birth he saw. 
 Have found it out by now ? His curse compels 
 The lonely horror of his dusty feet 
 To measure and re-measure every inch 
 Of hill and plain, of city and of desert ; 
 And if the Fount of Youth were to be found 
 He would have drunk the draught. 
 
 Third Soldier. 
 
 Perhaps he has. 
 
 Fifth Soldier. 
 
 No, he is old as ever. On the day 
 Before we sailed from Spain, as I was thinking 
 About the Fount of Youth and all our hopes, 
 I met him in the street, just as the Dusk 
 Was putting Day to bed. 
 
 Second Soldier. 
 
 What was he like ? 
 
 Fifth Soldier. 
 
 His great white beard, a yard in length and more. 
 Waved in the wind behind him. In his hand 
 
The Fountain of Youth. gi 
 
 He held a tall spiked staff on which were notched 
 
 The fifteen notches of his centuries. 
 
 His Syrian sandals, bound with dusty thongs, 
 
 Were made of hide of crocodile, to stand 
 
 The wear and tear of his eternal trudging ; 
 
 His wrinkled gourd, less wrinkled than his face, 
 
 The minister of his eternal thirst, 
 
 Swung from his girdle, made of one great snake-skin, 
 
 With tail in mouth — the symbol of his life. 
 
 I barred his way ; he started like a sleeper, 
 
 And shot a flame from out his sunken sockets. 
 
 ' Why sfopp'st thou me. Ephemeral ?' he asked ; 
 
 ' Walk to thy grave, and let me go my way. 
 
 To make the earth another belt of steps.' 
 
 ' Tarry,' I answered, ' but to tell me this : 
 
 Hast ever lighted, in thy endless journey. 
 
 Upon the thing they call the Fount of Youth ?' 
 
 He paused a moment, while a frown of pain 
 
 Convulsed his brow. ' The Fount of Youth ?' he said 
 
 Like one who slowly mutters in a dream ; 
 
 ' It bubbles up between the feet of Death, 
 
 In every land, in every plain and city, 
 
 And Death and I have nought that is in common.' 
 
 And he passed on and vanished in the twilight. 
 
 Fourth Soldier. 
 Strange, very strange. There's still a little wine 
 At bottom of the flagon ; pass it round. 
 Can any of you tell me, is it true 
 That the commander's daughter wears her arm 
 Since Thursday in a sling ? 
 
 Third Soldier. 
 
 Ay, true as gospel. 
 At first they said that she had had a fall. 
 
92 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 But now they say one of her Indian women 
 Sprang at her with a knife. They're lithe as panthers, 
 And just as fell. They say she's pardoned her 
 And hushed it up. 
 
 Fourth Soldier. 
 
 Well, anyhow, she's hurt. 
 Here's her good health ; she's been the soldier's friend 
 All through tiie expedition. Dost remember 
 How she took up our cause against Morasquez 
 The day he tried to cheat us of the salt ; 
 And how she saved Pedrillo from the lashes. 
 When all was ready waiting ? 
 
 Second Soldier. 
 
 And he's grateful ; 
 He'd give his life to save her little finger. 
 
 Fourth Soldier. 
 
 Yes, she's the soldiers' friend ; we'll drink her health, 
 And sing in chorus as we end the flagon : 
 
 There's youth in the barrel. 
 There's youth in the keg ; 
 
 So thump, as you carol. 
 Your dry wooden leg ; 
 
 And think as you tipple 
 
 At eighty and more. 
 That now the old cripple 
 
 Has youth as before. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 93 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 {The tent (2/"Agrippa.) 
 
 Chief Indian Ai\iBASSADOR. 
 
 Success has risen with the dawn to-day : 
 The treaty seems concluded ; and the spirits 
 Who shape the destiny of warlike states 
 Appear, indeed, to give us their support. 
 
 Second Indian Ambassador. 
 
 Yes, all seems going well ; and Heaven itself 
 Is giving us the omens which on earth 
 Precede its amplest favours. Late last night. 
 As I was fathoming the depths of sky 
 To find some sign amid the starry millions. 
 An unknown constellation, in the shape 
 Of a great panther, twinkled into sight. 
 With head erect, victorious. 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 
 Strange ; this morning 
 I, too, beheld the panther, made of cloud. 
 It lasted but a minute and was gona 
 
 Second Ambassador. 
 That matters little if it showed itself. 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 Now the white virgin, upon whose possession 
 The saving of our state depends, is ours : 
 And the same pact which gives her to our goddess 
 Secures what we would have our goddess grant — 
 The invader's quick departure. 
 
94 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Second Ambassador. 
 
 Hast thou seen her ? 
 No whiter victim could the mind of man 
 Conceive in day-dreams or in nightly visions. 
 White as the white invaders are, she seems 
 Of some yet whiter race : her pearly skin 
 Seems not of human texture, but seems made 
 Of the same' white material which coinposes 
 The water-lily's petals, or the disc 
 Of the thin moon at daybreak, when it floats 
 Most wafery in the sky. As I beheld her 
 Among her handmaids of our swarthy race, 
 She seemed some pearl-faced spirit. 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 
 All is strange 
 And unlike earth among these white-browed warriors. 
 Hast thou remarked their lightning-spitting weapons ? 
 Would'st thou not like to handle them ? 
 
 Second Ambassador. 
 
 Not I. 
 As soon take up the thunderbolt itself 
 When it lies dumb in Heaven's armoury. 
 Hush ! Here's Agrippa. 
 
 {Enter Agrippa.) 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Well, have you received 
 The answer of your king ? Does he agree ? 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 
 His messenger has come and he agrees, 
 And, as a token of his satisfaction. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 95 
 
 Atalpa sends thee over and above 
 Five of his largest rubies. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Let me see them. 
 I have a taste for precious stones, and thank him. 
 Now let us recapitulate the terms 
 Of this most secret pact. First, I engage 
 That you shall have the daughter of our chief. 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 
 She must be given up to us in public 
 
 By her own father : this our creed exacts ; 
 
 Else would she have no value for our goddess. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Dismiss your fears ; she shall be given up 
 Freely and openly. The glittering bait 
 With which I mean to lead him to the trap 
 Is bright enough for that. If you promise 
 To lay the stipulated ambuscade 
 Beside some solitary forest pool 
 Which I will tell him is the Fount of Youth, 
 I undertake to make him give her up 
 In presence of his soldiers as its price, 
 And then to send him thither to his death. 
 
 Second Ambassador 
 We have a dozen magic springs, but none 
 That makes men young. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Oh, any pool will do. 
 Provided you but kill him at its brink. 
 
96 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 
 The ambush shall be laid and shall be fatal. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Then, he once killed, and I once in possession 
 Of the supreme command, I undertake 
 To draw away our forces from this land 
 On payment of three hundred bags of gold. 
 Each of them of the stipulated weight. 
 
 Chief Ambassador. 
 All this Atalpa understands and swears to. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Then naught remains to settle, save the details 
 Of time and place, which we can do to-night, 
 When I have worked on my commander's mind ; 
 Till then, farewell. 
 
 [^Exeunt Ambassadors. 
 
 Agrippa {alone). 
 
 And so my scheme it prospers, 
 And everything is marching for the best. 
 But O, thou wondrous ever-young Atalpa, 
 Thy heart is young and innocent indeed. 
 I am an honest pirate and shall keep 
 Our secret stipulations to the letter ; 
 And in return for thy three hundred bags 
 Of virgin gold— if all so far goes well — 
 I shall relieve thee of the white men's presencej 
 But have I pledged me never to return ? 
 The country which has given me these rubies 
 Is not a country that one leaves for long. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 97 
 
 And thou shall see me on thy shores again. — 
 And now to manage that yet greater fool 
 Who daily counts his wrinkles in the mirror, 
 And here he is. 
 
 {Enter Ponce de Leon.) 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 How go negotiations ? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 I think I told you, you would not repent 
 Of having left them wholly in my hands ? 
 Prepare your soul for great and startling news. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Quick, tell me what it is. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Prepare your soul 
 For what your thoughts have played with many a year. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Keep not my reason dangling on the string 
 Of thy vague phrases. Tell me what it is. 
 Have we the Fount of Youth ? Quick, quick — oh, 
 answer ! 
 
 Agrippa. 
 The Fount of Youth is yours. 
 
 Ponce de Leon {aside). 
 
 O God in heaven, 
 This is too sudden ! Kill me not with joy. 
 But help me to dissimulate emotion. 
 
 7 
 
98 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 The Indian king consents to let you reach 
 
 The Fountain of your dreams, with a small escort, 
 
 Provided you will bind yourself by all 
 
 That is most holy in your own religion 
 
 To leave the land at once with all your forces 
 
 As soon as you have tasted of the water. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 My soul is drunk and dazzled : round about it 
 There seems to be too great a light for thought. 
 Yet I must think and force my wild ideas, 
 Which press upon each other and impede 
 Each other's march, to keep their proper order. 
 The joy is like a blow, and it has stunned me. 
 I pray thee now to leave me for a little. 
 I fain would be alone for some few minutes 
 Until my staggered soul can walk again. 
 
 [Exit Agrippa. 
 Ponce de Leon (alone). 
 
 Is it of any use to try and think ? 
 
 I have the Fount — I have the Fount of Youth ! 
 
 That is the only thought that I can shape. 
 
 Is it a thought ? It seems more like a feeling — 
 
 A sort of brightness, terrible within me. 
 
 I have the Fount— I have the Fount of Youth. 
 
 My hand is on the object of my life. 
 
 O ever rosy God ! O smooth-brow'd Spirit ! 
 
 Swift Wearer of the sandals of the Dawn, 
 
 Have I at last attained thee ? — art thou mine ? 
 
 How long I have pursued thee, night and day. 
 
 Upon the silent river of the years ! 
 
 For ever seeming to have clutched at last 
 
The Fountain of Youth, gg. 
 
 Thy dazzling shape, and made thee mine for ever, 
 While Time's resistless current year by year 
 Increased the space between us, — and at last 
 At last ! at last ! as by a sudden bound, 
 I hold thee in my grasp — and it is time. 
 
 {ffe draws a little mirror from his pocket and looks at 
 himself in it.) 
 
 Look at these wrinkles — look at this long line 
 Along my cheek, and this deep and starry crow's-foot 
 Beneath the eye — these furrows on my forehead. 
 Oh, how I laugh at all these wrinkles now ! 
 The rosy finger-tip of glorious Youth 
 Will wipe them out to-morrow. And these flakes 
 Of snow upon my brow and in my beard, 
 To-morrow's sun will melt them all for ever. 
 To-day my brow is still the shrivelled parchment 
 On which the Cares inscribe their words of woe ; 
 To-morrow it will be the virgin tablet 
 Where Love will write his softest words in kisses. 
 The prize is won, I have the Fount of Youth ! 
 The goal is reached, the dream is dream no more ! 
 Come, one and all, ye rosy-pinioned spirits. 
 Who do the errands of the smooth-browed god, 
 And hover round about me as ye hovered 
 Around old ^son when Medea's art 
 Convoked you from the mansions of the sunrise 
 To make him young and let him drain life's cup. 
 
 (Enter Spirits of Youth, wJio circle round about 
 him.) 
 
 7—2 
 
100 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Chorus of Spirits of Youth. 
 
 One day, when the world was younger, 
 
 To the Argonaut feast we flew, 
 Where sated their god-hke hunger 
 
 A demigod wondrous crew. 
 And god-like were boast and laughter 
 
 At the board of the half-divine ; 
 And the songs that they sang thereafter 
 
 Of love and the golden wine. 
 
 But one in the feast's gay middle, 
 
 Like an owl in the noontide glare. 
 As dumb as a waiting riddle 
 
 Stood lone with his blear-eyed stare : 
 For ^son the king was hoary ; 
 
 Like Lethe his blood's slow pace ; 
 He hearkened nor song nor story. 
 
 And knew not his own son's face. 
 
 Like a tree that is bare and hollow 
 
 While the others are green all round, 
 Nor buds when returns the swallow, 
 
 He stood in his frost hard bound. 
 Like a sleeper whom none can waken. 
 
 Or the phantom of times long dead, 
 He sat through the mirth unshaken, 
 
 Nor lifted his snow-crowned head. 
 
 Then Medea, the great dread seeker 
 Of herbs that are feared, she swore 
 
 That ^son should lift life's beaker 
 
 And drink of youth's wine once more ; 
 
The Fountain of Youth. loi 
 
 And she called on the night to give her 
 
 The plants that renew life's sap, 
 Where the moon lit a spell- bound river, 
 
 As many as filled her lap ; 
 
 And she poured in his veins their juices, 
 
 And watched how, by magical art, 
 They reconquered for life's young uses 
 
 His limbs, till they reached his heart ; 
 And how, like a frost-numb creature. 
 
 Unfreezing at Spring's strong call. 
 Each shrivelled and time-nipped feature 
 
 Was freed from the ice-like thrall. 
 
 His skin that was creased and deadened 
 
 Grew smooth as the new blood came. 
 And betrayed it as soft it reddened. 
 
 As an ivory screen shows flame ; 
 While his locks that were wan as mosses 
 
 On a tree that is ages old 
 Were converted by youth's bright glosses 
 
 Into hyacinth bells of gold. 
 
 His eyes than the dew were duller 
 
 Which never the sun o'ercrept ; 
 But in them, as dew takes colour 
 
 The spark of the sunrise leapt. 
 With myrtle and rose they crowned him, 
 
 And placed in his hand life's cup. 
 While we circled unseen all round him 
 
 And lifted its foam high up. 
 
 As much as was done for JEson, 
 
 As much shall be done for thee, 
 If thou drown but thy heart, thy reason, 
 
 In the glittering waves that free. 
 
102 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 In a day shall be healed and mended 
 The life work of Care's sharp tooth ; 
 
 And the dream of a lifetime ended 
 In eddies of god-like youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 Yes, and the day has come ; and we shall feast 
 As Jason and his demi-gods ne'er feasted, 
 And we shall lift life's golden cup yet higher 
 Than even the rejuvenated ^son. 
 Oh, we will lift it higher than we did 
 Upon the gayejt day of adolescence, 
 In the expansion of mere natural youth 
 Which feels old age fast treading on its heels, 
 And plant our foot upon the neck of Death 
 Crowned with acanthus and with dewy roses. 
 We shall defy the cares and woes of earth, 
 And like a god who pants with boundless life, 
 Drink to the rising sun. 
 
 (Re-enter Agrippa. As he comes in, the Spirits of 
 Youth take flight.) 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 There is one other item in the treaty 
 Which I, perhaps, had better tell you now : 
 As you must pass to reach the Fount of Youth 
 By many of his shrines and of his temples. 
 The Indian king insists upon a hostage, 
 Whom he will keep as long as you be there. 
 That no offence be offered to his gods. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 What hostage has he fixed upon ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 103 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Your daughter. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 My daughter ? Never, never, he must take 
 Some other person. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 He will take no other, 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 What ! place my daughter in Atalpa's hands, 
 Entrust her beauty to his ever-young 
 And ever-burning passions ? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 If you stickle, 
 He breaks the pact. Farewell the Fount of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 It cannot be that he will take no other. 
 What ! place her in Atalpa's hands for days — 
 Perhaps for weeks — alone ! The only white ? 
 Among the priesthood of his blood-stained gods ? 
 Lost in the frightful cities of the Indians? 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 ^\talpa is inexorable ; choose 
 
 'Twixt this condition and the Fount of Youth. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 Oh, thou must shake his purpose. 
 
 Agrippa. 
 
 Dost thou think 
 That I who am her lover, her betrothed, 
 
104 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 To whom she is more dear than breath of life, 
 
 Have left one word untried ? — although in truth 
 
 I think there is no peril, for Atalpa 
 
 Is bound by his self-interest to respect her. 
 
 He'll take no other hostage. Now I leave you. 
 
 You have until to-night to think it out : 
 
 And I meantime, if you will wait a little 
 
 Here in this tent, will send you one whose counsel 
 
 Will help your soul to come to a decision. 
 
 [Exit Agrippa. 
 
 Ponce de Leon {alone). 
 
 O God, O God ! Why dost thou dazzle me 
 
 With the effulgence of my life's great triumph. 
 
 And then remove the common light of Heaven ? 
 
 Rosita as the hostage of Atalpa — 
 
 The only white among a million Indians, 
 
 Who never yet have seen a living white ; 
 
 The single head round which their waves of hatred 
 
 May close at any moment ? Who can tell 
 
 That one or other of their frightful gods 
 
 Will not all of a sudden feel a taste 
 
 For young white flesh ? He said she was to serve 
 
 As guarantee that no offence be offered 
 
 To any of their deities or temples : 
 
 Why, any of the soldiers of my escort 
 
 May give in his imprudence such offence. 
 
 Or I myself by some mere careless gesture 
 
 May rouse the wrath of their suspicious priests, 
 
 And then her life is forfeit. O God ! God ! 
 
 It is too frightful, and I cannot do it. 
 
 It would be better to reject the treaty 
 
 And try and reach the Fount of Youth by force. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 105 
 
 How can I place her life in such a peril, 
 
 And build success upon my own child's death ? 
 
 {Enter Spirits of Age, who circle round about him ) 
 
 Chorus of Spirits of Age. 
 
 He wavers, his purpose is shaken. 
 Though fortune has come to his aid ; 
 
 We hold him, the fortress is taken, 
 If the draught of the fount be delayed. 
 
 So ply the invisible chisel 
 
 That works on the stone of the brow, 
 
 And drive in the locks as they grizzle 
 The little invisible plough. 
 
 And whiten him quicker and sprinkle 
 
 With the little invisible sieve, 
 The snow that on furrow and wrinkle, 
 
 Unmelted by summer, shall live. 
 
 And blow on his hand till it trembles 
 
 As trembles a tremulous tree, 
 And with fetters that palsy assembles 
 
 Encumber his foot and his knee. 
 
 And sit on his back and his shoulder. 
 And weigh with invisible weight ; 
 
 And bend them as older and older 
 He shuffles along to his fate. 
 
 And deaden his thought and his feeling 
 No less than his hearing and sight ; 
 
 And thicken the mist that is stealing 
 Around him as darkens the night. 
 
io6 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And though for a Httle he lingers, 
 And trusts to the powers that save, 
 
 With silent, invisible fingers 
 
 Enlace him, and pull to the grave. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 How cold I feel ! how numb my heart has grown. 
 
 As if Old Age had crept across my soul 
 
 In these few minutes, making it so dull 
 
 That now the very wish for Youth seems dead 
 
 Withip my breast, which pants and throbs no more. 
 
 How quietly ebbs the tide of exultation ! 
 
 Five minutes back it thundered at the flow 
 
 Victoriously advancing : now I feel 
 
 The heavy waters of the soul are sluggish 
 
 As lifeless Dead Sea brine. Five minutes back 
 
 My conquering hand was on the mighty prize. 
 
 About to clutch it ; and my fear for /ler 
 
 Has stricken it with palsy. Who comes here ? 
 
 {Enter Indian Sorceress.) 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 I am Othoxa, priestess of dark spirits, 
 
 And saturated charmer of curst snakes. 
 
 Agrippa sends me to impart such knowledge 
 
 .-\s lies within my cobra-bitten breast 
 
 About the Spring of Youth. Thou needst not fear 
 
 This lazy rattlesnake ; it has just spent 
 
 Its venom on my arm. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 The Spring of Youth ? 
 Ah, yes, I recollect ; thou wast to come 
 To tell me of the road. — How far to reach it ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 107 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 It lies in the great forests of the centre, 
 
 A twelve days' march from this, if speed be used, 
 
 In depths which man avoids, and where at most 
 
 Some wounded panther laps its healing wave. 
 
 None know the path except Atalpa's mutes. 
 
 Of whom one will be given thee as a guide. 
 
 They bear the shape and semblance of great youth, 
 
 But they are ages old : their tongues were cut 
 
 Six centuries ago, lest they should tell 
 
 The secret of the Fount. They and the king 
 
 Alone have ever tasted of its water. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 What aspect has the Fountain ? 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 There is nought 
 By which it could be told from any other. 
 It looks a simple, natural forest spring. 
 Save only this, that if you scan it closer, 
 Its depths are paved with pebbles of pure gold. 
 Where it wells up it is of little size — 
 A rippling diamond nestling in the moss ; 
 Beyond it forms a pool with floating flowers. 
 And changes into emerald dark and deep. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 How hath it got its virtue ? 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 Some affirm 
 That it by chance has trickled through the caverns 
 In which the cunning subterranean powers 
 
io8 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Prepare the germs of life and saps of Nature 
 For sunlight to mature ; and others say 
 That the great panting god of generation, 
 The flame-tongued Atapootaa, passing by, 
 Cooled his dark limbs one morning in its ripples. 
 And gave it its virility for ever. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 How many draughts must he who asks for youth 
 Take of this spring ? 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 A single draught sufficeth. 
 If taken from the fountain head, to change 
 The most infirm and wrinkled tottering age 
 To manhood's fairest strength ; though it is wise, 
 From time to time, as centuries go by. 
 To take the draught anew. But I will give thee 
 A small example of its potency : 
 This little phial contains a single drop 
 Of brightness from the Spring of Youth, diluted 
 With common water. 
 
 Ponce de Leon {trying to snatch the phial out of her 
 hands). 
 
 Give it ! — let me drink it ! 
 
 Indian Sorceress {brandishing the rattlesnake rouna her 
 head). 
 
 Back, back, rash man ! This one diluted drop. 
 If drunk in violence in the teeth of heaven. 
 Would strike thee into everlasting dotage. 
 Not everlasting youth. Now wait and listen : 
 Hast thou perchance a dry and long dead flower ? 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 109 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 I have a small dead rose here in this locket — 
 One of the roses that the mourners laid 
 Upon my mother's breast the day she died 
 Some forty years ago. You scarce can tell 
 What flower it was, it is so old and black — 
 Changed almost into dust. 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 Yes, this will do. 
 Now pour some water in this bowl and place 
 The crumbling relic in it, and observe 
 What happens when the phial's drop is added. 
 Now look ! now look ! — see how the dead rose quivers 
 See how its petals open one by one, 
 Grow soft and living, heal where they were injured, 
 And take the colour of the clouds at dawn. 
 Keep thy eyes fixed, and in another minute 
 'Twill be the rose of forty years ago. 
 As dewy as on the day that it was laid 
 Upon thy mother's breast. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 A wondrous sight ! 
 O dazzling transmutation ! 
 
 Indian Sorceress. 
 
 If one drop 
 Can work this miracle upon a rose. 
 Think what a cupful from the spring will do 
 For him who quaffs. Now for to-day farewell. 
 Before thou startest we shall meet again, 
 For it is I who am to take thy daughter 
 
no The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 To the great temple-city where Atalpa, 
 Lord of the panthers, rules in endless youth, 
 And place her as a hostage in his hands. 
 This rose is thine. 
 
 \£xit Indian Sorceress. 
 
 Ponce de Leon {alone). 
 
 O wondrous transformation ! 
 O most resistless and most glorious proof 
 That ever dazzled human eyes ! What doubts, 
 What hesitations or compunctious instincts. 
 Could stand against a miracle like this ? 
 A minute back, this sunrise-tinted flower, 
 Whose dewy breath delights the passing breeze, 
 Was crumbling dust — the wreck of former years. 
 Look at it now ! in all its new-born beauty : 
 How soft, how sweet, how infinitely lovely — 
 The loveliest my hand has ever held ! 
 O God of Youth, Aurora-pinioned Spirit ! 
 Forgive thy devotee if, for one moment, 
 He wavered on the pathway of thy shrine. 
 Have I not ever offered up, O Youth, 
 Whatever thou hast claimed ? The sleep of night, 
 Repose, health, friendship, country, home and fortune ; 
 And shall an instinct of paternal love 
 Arrest me on the threshold of thy altar ? 
 This wondrous and rejuvenated rose. 
 Which dazzles and intoxicates my soul. 
 Is dearer to my heart than fifty daughters. 
 This is the true Rosita ; and I kiss her 
 As never human brow or human lips. 
 
ACT V. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 (^ hall in the rock temple of Bimini.) 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 A MONTH has scarcely passed. The countless flowers 
 
 Which clad this temple for the Feast of Arrows 
 
 Are hardly withered, and the sacred gardens 
 
 Have scarce had time to reach another crop, 
 
 And lo ! the garland-girls again are busy, 
 
 Crouching by hundreds on the temple-pavement 
 
 For a far greater feast. No yearly pageant 
 
 Calls for their skill and fancy, but a rite 
 
 Unmatched in all the annals of our race : 
 
 The great fulfilment of a prophecy 
 
 Centuries old, which Heaven's heralds usher 
 
 vyith every portent, prodigy and sign. 
 
 Did not the northern sky, three days ago, 
 
 Assume the colour of the pale, thin blood 
 
 Which runs in white men's hearts, and did the earth 
 
 Not undulate and quiver under-foot ? 
 
 The victim should arrive to-day at sunset, 
 
 And I am come to view thy preparations. 
 
 I see the garlanding makes rapid way- — 
 
 Is all progressing for the great procession 
 
 And for the sacred dances ? 
 
112 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 Never fear ; 
 All will be ready by the stated moment, 
 And all will be upon a scale befitting 
 The greatness of the day. A hundred virgins, 
 Selected from the darkest of the tribes, 
 With leopard skins, and anklets of red gold. 
 Will lead her to the altar of destruction. 
 The companies of warriors have been chosen 
 Among the very finest, and their targes 
 Are studded with the nails of virgin gold. 
 The companies of priests are also ready, 
 The new white robes of sacrificial linen. 
 The charmers of the snakes, and sacred jugglers 
 Are more in number than the oldest man 
 Can recollect. Innumerable flowers 
 Of every shape and hue have been collected, 
 To strew the victim's path. As for the dances, 
 The javelin-men are practising all day 
 A reel of death, on a gigantic scale. 
 To dance around the victim in the crypt 
 Of the three hundred columns. Then a dance 
 Of sorcerers and snakemen round about her. 
 With new varieties of dreadful movement. 
 The sorcerers will show us in their fumes 
 Spirits that none have seen as yet, 
 And demon shadows through a haze of fire. 
 Oh, trust me that the Flower of Destruction 
 Has never had so grand or dread a pageant 
 Since the first trembling slave was offered up 
 To the great Executioner and Goddess 
 Fresh from her boundless forests. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 113 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 And the chants ? 
 High Priest. 
 
 The beauty and the cruelty of Nature 
 
 Will find expression in a great, slow death-dirge, 
 
 Which all will chant as winds the great procession, 
 
 And slowly booms the dreadful Gong of Gongs. 
 
 The guilty beauty of the Scented Throttler — 
 
 Her heavy odour and resistless strength — 
 
 Will find their praise in sacrificial hymns 
 
 Of newest fear as we approach her altar, 
 
 And as we lay the victim in her lap. 
 
 Now I will make them chant and thou shalt hear. 
 
 In the hot, primeval forest 
 
 Once the Virgin Goddess dwelt. 
 When, before her frightful beauty 
 
 Man as yet had never knelt. 
 
 Nor her hug of- horror felt. 
 
 Snowy were her monstrous petals ; 
 
 Flecked with blood, though not of man ; 
 Through her groves a rippling streamlet 
 
 With an endless whisper ran — 
 Nature's loveliness surrounded. 
 
 Like a shrine, her yearly growth. 
 Nature's cruelty abounded : 
 
 She was goddess of them both. 
 
 Great lianas in festoons. 
 
 Where the sense from odour swoons, 
 
 Hung from mossy tree to tree 
 
 Flowering for the gold wild bee ; 
 Where the humming-bird flew bright 
 As an azure flash of light, 
 
114 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And the gaudy parrot clung 
 To the garlands as they swung ; 
 Glowing flower and flaming feather 
 Vied in gorgeousness together. 
 While the panther, with a boundless 
 Hunger in his eyes, and soundless, 
 Slowly circled round and round, 
 Arching all his springs to bound. 
 Or the lazy current licked her 
 Of the great unrolled constrictor. 
 Once her rival ; now surpassed 
 In the art of locking fast. 
 And of squeezing out the breath 
 In a silent vice of death. 
 
 Human flesh had never fed her. 
 
 Nor man learnt to love and dread her ; 
 
 Only if some drowsy deer 
 
 Took close by its noontide sleep, 
 Would her iron tendrils creep 
 Round about it, draw it near. 
 
 And squeeze out its writhe and spasm 
 Slowly in the flowery chasm j 
 Or she caught some blue-faced ape 
 With the thongs whence none escape. 
 Or some guileless cockatoo 
 Straight into her bosom flew. 
 
 Man one day at last appeared. 
 And the great terrific Flower, 
 Luring him with beauty's power, 
 
 Slowly drowsed him as he neared, 
 Panting in the sultry heat 
 As she drew him to her feet. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 115 
 
 Then her mighty tendrils clasped him, 
 Round the drowsy limbs they grasped him. 
 
 And as sank his heavy head, 
 
 Like upon a nuptial bed. 
 
 Drew him to eternal rest 
 
 On the horror of her breast. 
 
 Then her appetite began 
 For the daily flesh of man. 
 
 Yea, and his best blood he gave, 
 
 Fed her with a daily slave. 
 With our own dark race we fed her. 
 
 Gave her worship, gave her hymns. 
 Watching how her iron tendrils 
 
 Grasped and crushed the writhing limbs. 
 Now we bring a whiter victim, 
 
 Since she spurns our dusky flesh. 
 One as white as her own petals 
 
 When they bloom with blood afresh. 
 
 Hail to thee, thou Scented Throttler, 
 Goddess of the murderous thongs : 
 
 Hail to thee, Terrific Flower, 
 
 Take the limbs and take the songs ! 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 While thou hast been preparing all these flowers 
 And giving all thy thoughts to the procession 
 And chants and dances, I have not been idle. 
 But I have been maturing in the shade 
 The other half of this great work of death. 
 The ambuscade to which the great white chief. 
 Lured by the promise of a magic spring, 
 Is to be drawn amid the primal forest. 
 
 8—2 
 
Ii6 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 I have selected as the fittest spot 
 
 The dark and ever-memorable pool 
 
 Known as the Fountain of the Yellow Spirits, 
 
 Where sixty years ago the tribe of Hara 
 
 Was massacred to a man. The huge old trees 
 
 Which cluster round the solitary water 
 
 Are hollow one and all, and each can hold 
 
 A dozen silent warriors now as then, 
 
 And nought be lessened of the loneliness. 
 
 His escort will be small, and though they carry 
 
 The thunder-pealing arms which make each white 
 
 A match for twenty of our dusky bowmen. 
 
 Still we can hide within the hollow trunks 
 
 More warriors than the massacre requires. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 The spot is well selected. May the ambush 
 
 Prove as successful as the one which ended 
 
 The thrice curst tribe of Hara. — Who comes here ? 
 
 Atalpa. 
 It is a messenger. 
 
 ■{Enter Messenger.) 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 I come to tell you 
 That the white maiden will arrive at sunset 
 If all goes well, for I have speeded on , : , 
 Faster than they could bear her in her litter. 
 The wounded will arrive to-morrow night 
 By slower stages. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 Wounded ! Slower stages \ 
 What dost thou mean ? Explain. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 117 
 
 Messenger. 
 
 As we were fording 
 The River of Green Snakes, the day we started, 
 A sudden and most desperate attempt 
 To rescue the white maiden on her way 
 Was made at set of sun. Twice did the whites 
 Surround her litter, wrested from our grasp, 
 And bear it off ; and thrice we snatched it back. 
 Until at last, by dint of greater numbers. 
 And with the help of javelin-hurling spirits. 
 We saved her for the Goddess at the price 
 Of many killed. The leader of this onslaught. 
 One of their younger chiefs — with a great wound — 
 Is in our hands and three of his companions. 
 And we are bringing them to swell the show. 
 
 Atalpa. 
 
 The thought was wise to spare them for the torture. 
 
 They shall be carried in the great procession. 
 
 And then be handed over to the tormentors 
 
 In sight of all. Meanwhile it is for thee, 
 
 Great Pontiff of the ever-hungry Flower, 
 
 To keep them in thy prisons with the victim 
 
 Who will arrive at sunset. This attempt 
 
 To snatch her from our hold, though it has failed. 
 
 Makes me uneasy lest the ambuscade 
 
 For the destruction of the white commander 
 
 Should be upset by something unforeseen. 
 
 I must increase the number of the warriors 
 
 That I am sending to the lonely pool : 
 
 They must be six to one. 
 
 High Priest. 
 
 I think thee wise. 
 An ambush laid with insufficient forces 
 
ii8 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Is but a trap one lays against one's self. 
 But if thou wishest to behold tfie dances 
 Which now are being practised, come with me, 
 And thou shalt see the great wild reel of death 
 Which is beginning : I already hear. 
 Like the vague roaring of a distant whirlpool. 
 Its roar of horrors, rising from the crypts. 
 
 \Exeuni 
 
 SCENE II. 
 {A dungeon in the Rock Temple.) 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 How dark it is ! how cold these temple crypts ! 
 They might have given me a little light : 
 And yet it matters little ; can a soul 
 Not grope its way to heaven in the dark ? 
 Perhaps God sees us better in the blackness, 
 As we see fireflies. I am free to think 
 The agony is over ; I am ready — 
 The martyrdom of spirit is gone through ; 
 There waits me but the martyrdom of flesh. 
 But oh, the struggle has been passing keen : 
 I wonder if my hair has turned all white 
 In these three days : I hope to God it has. 
 I fain would go to Heaven with the badge 
 Of holy Age pure snowy on my brow, 
 Not in the livery of loathfed youth ; 
 Since I must die before the time of wrinkles, 
 Oh, let me die white-headed. — I feel palm 
 As the most peaceful and contented eld 
 That ever died at ninety, and should smile 
 If but I knew that he is safe in Heaven 
 
The Fountain of Youth. irg 
 
 And waiting for me there. — Oh, if I knew 
 That he is out of reach of Indian torture ! 
 For if he is not dead, they surely hold him, 
 And I shall never know it upon earth. 
 How nearly he succeeded in the rescue ! 
 Why, in that frightful struggle round the litter. 
 There was a moment when he grasped my wrist. 
 Just as the javelin struck him. — O God, God, 
 Let me not think of it ; it shakes my courage. 
 And I am bound to die with decent strength. 
 I must not flinch beneath this great black vault 
 That holds me like the concave hand of Fate. 
 This iS the very temple of my dream — 
 The temple with the spirit-crushing columns 
 Hewn in the living rock. I know each step 
 I have to take ; I know the hideous end, 
 And now the quicker that I die the better. 
 How rosy seem the summits of old age 
 From this dark gorge of young and violent death ! 
 I who had thought to climb them hand in hand. 
 And sitting in the sunset — he and I — ■ 
 To look upon the plain of life beneath, 
 And on the path that we had slowly climbed. 
 Strange ; every now and then I seem to hear 
 A faint and distant echo of his voice : 
 Perhaps he calls me from the other world. 
 Oh love, I come ! 
 
 Juan. 
 To drink. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 OGod, O God! 
 His earthly voice. — Uphold me, God — I stagger. 
 {She gropes her way in the direction of his voice, lays her 
 and upon his face, and kisses if.) 
 
I20 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Juan {vety faintly). 
 
 Each time I speak it makes the blood well up. 
 The wound is through the lung ; my minutes run. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 God, again uphold me. 
 
 Juan. 
 Is this Hell ? 
 And art thou come from Heaven ? 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 No ; this place 
 Is neither earth nor Hell, but Heaven's lobby ; 
 Nor am I come from Heaven ; but we go there. 
 The door of Death which is about to open 
 Has still to be passed through. I cannot see thee ; 
 Oh for a little light to see his face ! 
 Is this great pain, or is it boundless joy ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 There is a jug of water by my sidp : 
 
 1 have not strength to lift it. 
 
 {She finds it, attd gives him to drink.) 
 
 Rosita. 
 
 I have found it. 
 "Where are thy lips ? Drink ; it is almost full. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 This is the Draught of Youth, for those who drink it 
 Ne'er reach old age. 
 
 Rosita. 
 
 And I am come to share it. 
 Is this the bitterest or the sweetest draught 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 121 
 
 That ever I have quaffed ? I cannot tell. 
 
 But whether it be bitter or be sweet, 
 
 Better this brackish water here in common 
 
 Upon the border of the land of shadows 
 
 Than that great lonely draught for which he thirsts. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 If he were not thy father, I would curse him 
 From all the deep abysses of my soul 
 That he has brought thee here. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Oh, curse him not, 
 Oh, curse not what I love, upon death's brink ; 
 He knows not what he does. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 O love, O love. 
 If only thou hadst suffered me to save thee 
 When all was ready planned ! 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 It might not be. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 O God, to think that we should now be both 
 Half-way across the ocean, with the helm 
 Turned full on life. — It is too horrible. 
 And if Hell holds 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 Hush, hush, thou must not speak. 
 Or thou wilt burst thy wound. A little more 
 Of this existence or a little less, 
 'Twill all be one in some few fleeting years. 
 It would have been surpassing sweet, no doubt, 
 
122 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 To walk life's path together hand in hand. 
 I think I should have made thee a good wife, 
 Perhaps have been the sunshine of thy house, 
 The soother of thy cares, thy loved adviser, 
 The mother and the trainer of thy children. 
 The thrifty ruler of thy growing fortune, 
 Until the time when thou and I, at last 
 Grown white together, by the dim wayside 
 In life's long winter twilight, would have sat 
 And talked about old memories sweet and dear ; 
 Or else to the low humming of my wheel. 
 With all the little grandchildren about us, 
 Close to the crackling logs and leaping shadows, 
 I should have let the vital twilight creep, 
 And told them fairy stories as I spun. 
 
 Shall I tell thee a fairy tale ? Let me see, what shall 
 I tell thee ? Shall I tell thee of the little maiden who 
 once upon a time wove herself a dress of sunbeams ?. and 
 how the wicked, envious fairies came and stole it away 
 in the night, and how, as she was standing in the tall 
 high rippling corn, telling her sorrows to the friendly little 
 field-mouse, a fairy prince came by and saw her and gave 
 her a kiss ; and how he came day after day, and at last 
 carried her away in a fairy coach ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I think that we are standing in the corn . . . 
 It rises to thy shoulder. ... It is sunset . . . 
 The grain extends away in miles of gold . . . 
 And every now and then a great slow wave 
 Rolls past us as the breeze of evening rises . . . 
 The air is full of ripeness and of heat . . . 
 A million insects chirp all round about us . . . 
 At intervals there rises from a distance 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 123 
 
 A gust of reapers' song. — The fairy coach 
 Has come too soon to take us up to Heaven. 
 
 Something is breaking in my bosom. Put thy lips to 
 mine, that my soul may kiss them as it flies away. 
 
 \I)ies. 
 
 RosiTA {crouching over his body, after assuring herself 
 that he is dead, and after a long interval of silence). 
 
 God ! I thought that we were in the dark, 
 And now the light seems suddenly snuffed out. 
 Is there a dark that is the dark to darkness — 
 A dark compared with which the black of night 
 Is what the sunlight is to night herself? 
 
 His hand is heavy as a hand of clay. 
 
 He answers not, nor moves, nor moans, nor breathes. 
 
 1 hear but my own breathing — he is dead. 
 What, leave thy love behind thee in the dark ! 
 Brush past her through the narrow gate of Heaven ! 
 O for this once thou art unmannerly. 
 
 And I will scold thee in the fields above. 
 Am I a little mad ? There was a maiden 
 Who wove herself a garment of the sunbeams. 
 And when they stole it, went and told her sorrows 
 To nibbling field-mice in the tall, ripe corn. 
 Come forth, ye rats, that nibble in this dungeon. 
 That we may stand around the dead together 
 And do a little mourning. O love, love ! 
 Would that I had the poppies and the flowers 
 That twine the wheat there in those auburn fields 
 Where first thy lips touched mine, or woodland bells 
 Fresh from the sweet wet woods in which we met. 
 To lay upon thee here now thou art dead. 
 But I can sing thee still the summer song 
 That thou dost love to hear, and I will make 
 The summer hazels wave above thee still. 
 
124 ^^^ Fountain of Youth. 
 
 The wild bee is humming, 
 The woodpecker drumming, 
 My sweetheart is coming 
 
 Through summer to me ; 
 The nutters are nutting 
 Till summer-day's shutting ; 
 And now he is cutting 
 
 My name on a tree. 
 
 The wood-dove is cooing. 
 And billing and wooing, 
 And now we are doing 
 
 As doeth the dove ; 
 The squirrels are clinging 
 Where hazels are swinging. 
 And all of us singing 
 
 And playing at love. 
 
 Ah ! here there is no light beneath these vaults. 
 No sunshine and no mercy and no hope ; 
 And if they bury thee where thou hast died, 
 No breeze will whisper to thy lonely rest. 
 So soon as they have taken me away 
 Silence and darkness wrap thee round for ever. 
 
 But lo ! a brightness steals upon my soul. 
 
 Is't light or music, or the two united ? 
 
 Is there a dawn can shine through solid stone 
 
 And set at naught such temple- walls as these ? 
 
 Who lifts these crushing crypts from o'er my brow 
 
 To let me see the sunrise ? Overhead 
 
 Is a great sea of amber, rose and gold, 
 
 Where angel-faces, numberless as bubbles. 
 
 Appear and disappear again so quickly 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 125 
 
 That scarce the eye can catch them 'mid the reefs 
 Of glowing jacinth and the isles of beryl 
 That shift and change with every passing minute 
 In dazzUng coruscation. Is't the sea 
 That once we dreamt to live in evermore, 
 Merman and mermaid, far from earthly woe ? - 
 I come ! I come ! and in that sea of death, 
 Oh, nought shall part us ! 
 
 Chorus of Dawn Spirits. 
 
 From the amber of the sunrise 
 
 We are calling thee to come 
 Where the heartache ends for ever 
 
 And the sob of earth is done ; 
 Where the soul no longer struggles 
 
 Like a bird that shakes a cage ; 
 Where the song of Life is over 
 
 And there is nor Youth nor Age. 
 
 Leave the land of wistful gazes. 
 
 Leave the shore of pain and care. 
 Where the smile is one of sorrow 
 
 And the laughter is despair; 
 For its hum is as the humming 
 
 Of a hollow Dead Sea shell. 
 And its very cries of gladness 
 
 Echo like a faint farewell. 
 
 Glowing undiscovered islands 
 In a golden ocean lie, 
 
 Where a diamond rim outlineth 
 All the headlands of the sky ; 
 
126 l^he Fountain of Youth. 
 
 And the light of peace is spreading 
 In a great transcendent fan, 
 
 Where the coasts of Death await thee, 
 Over-bright for eyes of man. 
 
 Come that we may greet and wing thee 
 
 With the pinions of the dead, 
 Come that we may place the halo 
 
 Of the martyr on thy head ; 
 Come that we may gather round thee 
 
 On the battlements of gold, 
 Where the older count no winters, 
 
 And the younger grow not old. 
 
 ROSITA. 
 
 The angel voices die away ; the amber 
 
 Of the great seas of glory overhead 
 
 Dies back into the darkness of the dungeon. 
 
 But now my soul is strong again and peaceful ; 
 
 The darkness is no longer one of iron, 
 
 But seems to hold me like the warm ripe gloom 
 
 Of summer woods at night ; and as I kneel 
 
 And hold his heavy hand of clay in mine, 
 
 I half might fancy him asleep, not dead— 
 
 And that his head is lying softly resting 
 
 On some sweet mossy pillow of the forest. 
 
 I scarcely dare to breathe, lest I should wake him. 
 
 What trees are spreading over us ? what flowers 
 
 Are scattered round us, waiting for the light 
 
 To open all their belts ? what fairies circle 
 
 Around us on the grass to charm his sleep ? 
 
 .\nd he is dead — quite dead — and never more 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 127 
 
 Will he and I sit listening in the forest ! 
 
 Dead, dead — quite dead for ever, ever more, 
 
 And I am waiting to be fetched for death. 
 
 Hark ! hark ! they come — I hear a tramp of feet 
 
 That echoes through the crypts. A glare of torches 
 
 Leaps red upon the arches of the vault. 
 
 They come to fetch me, and they find me ready. 
 
 {Enter Master of the Sacrifices, with many priests 
 and Indians bearing torches. They proceed to bind 
 RosiTA with leather thongs.) 
 
 Master of the Sacrifices. 
 Are both her wrists well bound, and are we ready ? 
 
 Rosita (aside). 
 Where are the thongs to fasten down my soul ? 
 
 Master of the Sacrifices. 
 
 I hear the Gong of Gongs begin to boom. 
 Now form yourselves in order of procession. 
 That we may gather as we go along 
 The hundred affluents of our human stream, 
 Until it rolls in sounding waves of men, 
 Like a great river rolling to the ocean. 
 
 Rosita (aside). 
 Death's sea of gold is gleaming at my feet. 
 
 Master of the Sacrifices. 
 
 And as the great procession winds along 
 Intone a great, slow chant of ' Lo, the victim ! 
 We bring her to the Goddess— the Destroyer ; 
 
128 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 We bring her to the ever-murdering Beauty — 
 The Flower of Cruelty, the Scented Throttler — 
 The wondrous executioner of nature !' 
 
 [Exeunt. 
 
 SCENE III. 
 ( The neighbourhood of a lonely forest pool. ) 
 
 Ponce dk Leon. 
 
 I see a gleam of water through the trees. 
 
 heart, burst not my breast ; and thou, O joy, 
 End not my life before I drain the draught, 
 Nor cheat me of my conquest ! Good Carpaza, 
 
 1 pray thee let the soldiers of the escort 
 And the dumb Indian guide await me here — 
 Here, within call, beneath these mighty boughs. 
 I fain would reach the margin of the fount 
 Alone, and not be watched. What giant trees ! 
 Each one seems ages old. Strange, if this forest 
 Should be the Wood of Ancients after all ? 
 
 If each was once a man within whose breast 
 
 Belief in youth died out, and who took root, 
 
 Then truly were they Titans. O Youth, Youth ! 
 
 It is not I whose feet will change to roots, 
 
 Whose arms will change to boughs, for want of faith 
 
 In thy eternal power. O my heart. 
 
 Thump not so fiercely in my hollow chest ! ' 
 
 Let me be sober in this mighty moment ; 
 
 And in the last supreme and awful minutes 
 
 That Age and I keep company on earth, 
 
 O let me keep his pace. 
 
 How lone it is ! — 
 How strangely silent here beneath the trees ! — 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 129 
 
 It almost strikes one with a chill of shadow. 
 
 ' ris as I thought, no signs or shapes of magic 
 
 Surround the fount. It looks mere natural water, 
 
 Like any other fountain of the forest. 
 
 No guarding dragons circle round and round, 
 
 With ceaseless clashing of their golden scales ; 
 
 No evil angels sit upon its brink 
 
 And mirror their deep pinions in its waves. 
 
 Nothing but lovely Nature. Now I stand 
 
 Upon its very brink — the brink of Youth. 
 
 Again, thump not so wildly, O my heart ! 
 
 Burst not thy dwelling in this great emotion ; 
 
 But let the beauty and the silence soothe thee, 
 
 Till I can drain the draught with steady hand. 
 
 A single ray of sunlight through the branches 
 
 Strikes to the clear recesses of the pool. 
 
 How infinitely limpid is the water ! 
 
 It seems like to an Indian emerald melted. 
 
 Down in the depths there quiver yellow spots — 
 
 Those surely are the pebbles of pure gold. 
 
 Upon the surface there are floating lilies ; 
 
 They doubtless are immortal. How could Death 
 
 Float on the bosom of the Fount of Youth ? 
 
 Yes, I am standing by the Fount of Founts ; 
 
 Beside the brightness of the gem of gems ; 
 
 Upon the spot that 1 have seen in dreams 
 
 By night and day through all these years of yearning 
 
 At last I throw the image of my face 
 
 Upon the mirror of eternal youth 
 
 In time, in time ! Now, let me kneel and cast 
 
 One long, long, lingering look of last farewell 
 
 Upon my whitening hair and whitening beard. 
 
 9 
 
130 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Before I lift the golden cup on high 
 In one great burning wish. 
 
 Ha, what was that ? 
 What trick was water playing ? Strange, most strange — 
 Although mere fancy. In the crystal depths, 
 Down at the bottom, as my eye was sounding 
 The glorious brightness of the trembling water, 
 I thought I saw a skeleton ! It's fancy ; 
 My sense is over-heated from excitement, 
 And sees a nightmare even in the fount. 
 Yet strange, how vivid was the glimpse of horror, 
 The watery spectre of my own wild brain ! 
 Now I see nothing but the golden pebbles 
 Which pave the bottom of the trembling pool 
 Like golden dreams beneath a sleeper's smile. 
 Oh ! there is naught but splendour in these depths — 
 Light, glory, radiance ; beauty, rapture, joy ; 
 Triumph and life, and boundless jubilation ; 
 With every dazzling gift a rapid hour 
 Can heap at once on one delighted head ; 
 And horror dwells not in the shrine of Youth. 
 
 {Jle takes a golden cup from his bosom, fills it from the 
 fount, ami holds it up.") 
 
 Son of the Dawn-Cloud, meteor-footed spirit. 
 
 Thou with the diamond eyes, through whom all nature 
 
 Lives, breathes,, enjoys ; for whom all life was kindled ; 
 
 Apart from whom there is but wrack and rubbish. 
 
 Regret and impotence, and lonely care ; 
 
 Thou that art lord of every sense and power, 
 
 Thou for whose sole enchantment upon earth 
 
 The whiteness and the witchery of woman. 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 131 
 
 Her kisses and cajoleries, were made ; 
 
 Thou for whose joyous thirst the yearly vintage 
 
 Of Sicily and Cyprus pours its streams 
 
 Of running ruby or of trickling topaz ; 
 
 For whose delight the lightning-sandalled dances 
 
 Leap, fly and circle, and the soaring songs 
 
 Pierce the charmed vault of midnight. Thou for whom 
 
 The fiery-nostril'd steed of battle waits, 
 
 While every straining hound and pouncing falcon 
 
 Invites thee to the chase, oh, make me young ! 
 
 If I have sought thee with the burning fire 
 
 Of love unspeakable, through all these years ; 
 
 If I have given thee unnumbered dreams, 
 
 The thoughts, the fears, the pantings of a lifetime. 
 
 The sleep of night, the sweet repose of day ; 
 
 If I have wasted all my natural youth 
 
 In seeking for thy youth which never dies ; 
 
 If I have reached thee o'er unsounded seas 
 
 And undiscovered lands, by the same force 
 
 Which makes the moth to flutter round the flame 
 
 In ever smaller circles — grant my prayer ! 
 
 Snatch from my brow the wrinkled mask of age, 
 
 Send through my veins thy mighty wave of life, 
 
 And let me be transfiguredby thy radiance. 
 
 Now that I stand before thy limpid shrine, 
 
 And in thy own clear emerald drink thy health. 
 
 Divine and dazzling spirit ! 
 
 {As he is about to put the cup to his lips a shower of arrows 
 from invisible hands strikes the grass and the water 
 all round him. One of the arrows lodges in his.hip. 
 He stagers and falls, the golden cup drops from Ms 
 hand and rolls into the pool.) 
 
 9—2 
 
133 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 O my God ! 
 
 A treachery ! a treachery ! Help ! help ! 
 
 {The soldiers of the escort run vp at his cries. Two of 
 them carry him away from the brink of the Fount in 
 spite of his furious resistance, and lay him on the grass 
 at a little distance ; while the others engage with the 
 Indians, one of the soldiers extracts the arrmv from 
 his hip.) 
 
 How dare you drag me from the Fountain ! I tell you 
 I have not drunk the draught. . . . O God ! O God ! 
 I have not drunk the draught. Carry me back ! carry 
 me back ! O God ! what intolerable pain ! The fire 
 of hell is in my hip. The arrow was poisoned — I feel 
 the poison spreading. Will no one suck the wound ? 
 O my God ! if only Rosita were here . . . she would 
 suck the wound and save my life. . . . 
 
 What pain ! what pain ! A haze is forming round me ; 
 
 How all the things about me dance and tremble ; 
 
 My mind is clouding — tell me where I am. 
 
 My limbs and head are swelling — bigger, bigger ; 
 
 My head is growing larger than the dome 
 
 Of Cordova. Oh ! what an icy cold 
 
 Is seizing on my body limb by limb ! 
 
 Am I imprisoned in a rock of ice ? 
 
 It is old age ; I know it — oh, I know it ! 
 
 It is a thousand years since I was born. 
 
 There is a skeleton in the Fount of Youth, 
 
 Down at the bottom, 'mid the golden pebbles. 
 
 My hip ! my hip ! my hip ! O God, what torture ! 
 
 I cannot move an inch, my limbs are locked ; 
 
 I'm taking root — I know I'm taking root . . . 
 
The Fountain of Youth. i33 
 
 My arms are changing into great black branches, 
 My fingers into knotted twigs. How monstrous ! 
 My skin is changing into shrivelled bark ; 
 Will no one root me out ? It is too frightful. 
 Rosita ; where's Rosita ? Call her, call her ; 
 Have I not always loved her? Where's Rosita ? 
 Oh, no one heeds me ; no one listens now ! 
 
 No, it's not that — I'm under some great weight. 
 Oh, now I know : it is a lump of rock— 
 The Passage of the Ever-Dropping Stones. 
 And I am lying, crushed and in the dark ; 
 Only a Titan could remove the weight. 
 What pain ! what pain ! what pain ! 
 
 There runs red fire 
 Through all my veins. O God ! O God ! what torture ! 
 A little water ! oh, a little water ! 
 My head is full of fire ; it will burst out 
 From mouth and ears and nostrils. Water ! water ! 
 Oh, no one listens, no one stops or answers. 
 Can they not hear me calling out for water ? 
 Will no one put an end to me ? O God ! 
 Or give me but a single drop of water ? 
 A drop of water, for the sake of Christ ! 
 Water from any well or any ditch ! 
 
 Chorus of Spirits of Mockery. 
 
 The fire of youth is running 
 
 In every vein thou hast ; 
 Success has crowned thy cunning, 
 
 And thou art young at last. 
 
134 The Fountain of Youth. 
 
 Why dost thou call for water 
 As if thou wert in hell ? 
 
 Hast thou not sold thy daughter 
 And bought the magic well ? 
 
 The snow the years had sprinkled 
 Is on thy head no more ; 
 
 Thy cheek no longer wrinkled, 
 Nor hollow, as before. 
 
 Why sounds so like death's rattle 
 Thy young exulting breath ? 
 
 Hast thou not won thy battle, 
 And conquered Age and Death ? 
 
 No sweat of torture christens 
 Thy brow, but dew of morn, 
 
 More bright than that which glistens 
 At sunrise on the thorn. 
 
 Come, wreathe thy brow with flowers, 
 With eglantine and rose, 
 
 And use thy new-born powers ; 
 The cup of Life o'erflows. 
 
 Ponce de Leon. 
 
 O God, what burning fire ! Oh, water ! water ! 
 A single drop — a single, single drop ! 
 The air is full of fire ; each time I breathe . 
 It shrivels up my lungs. Oh, water ! water ! 
 There is a broad red glare all round about me — 
 The Lake of Tidal Fire spreads all around ; 
 For miles and miles there is but creeping fire. 
 The tide is rising, creeping ever up ; 
 
The Fountain of Youth. 135 
 
 All round the small black reef on which I stand 
 I hear the lapping of the waves of fire. 
 The reef is disappearing, inch by inch, 
 Minute by minute. O my God,, what torture ! 
 A little water — ^oh, a little water ! 
 A little water, for the sake of Christ ! 
 Water from any well or any ditch ! 
 Rosita — Where's Rosita ? Water ! water ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Elliot Stock, 62, Patertiasier Row, London.