The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

Titus: Who knows how they would regard such an encroachment on their laws? If they should mutiny, must my choice be vindicated by bloodshed, or if they remain quiescent and sell their laws, to what do you expose me? By what complaisance must I one day pay for their patience? What will they not proceed to demand ? Can I sustain the laws which I have been unable to respect? When I accepted the empire, I swore to obey the laws.

Berenice : No longer do I ask to stay. I esteem you capable of destroying my very life. I ask for no avenger of my wrongs except, ungrateful one, that which will be found at the bottom of your own heart.

Act V

Berenice: No. I will hear no more. I will depart. Why do you again present yourself to my sight? Why thus deepen my despair? Are you not satisfied? I will see no more. I depart forthwith.

Titus: Stay! How unjust you are!

Berenice: Ungrateful one! Stay! And why? To US

hear the cruel joy of a malicious people, whose mockery would everywhere resound? To hear it, while I am drowned in my own tears ? And what crime have I committed but that of loving you too well ? Here I can look on nothing but what wounds my soul. This very apartment, prepared for me by your care, these places so long the witnesses of our love, on all sides bring up the past to my eyes. Come, Phenice!

Titus: Berenice, never did I love you so tenderly as now.

Berenice: You love me—you declare it; and yet I am departing, and you command me to go ? What! You find so many charms in my despair? Ah, cruel, display a little less love ! Recall not for me too dear a sentiment. And let me at least depart persuaded that, already in secret exiled from your heart, I am quitting an ungrateful one who loses me without regret.

Berenice hands Titus a letter which she has written, announcing that she is about to destroy herself. He reads it. and instantly declares that he will never permit such a design to be carried out, that for her sake he will renounce his imperial position and marry her. ~At this instant Antiochus enters and confesses to Titus that he has been his rival in love, but that he has been ever loyal, and now has resolved to deprive himself of life so that he may never be regarded as again becoming a possible suitor for the hand of Berenice. Berenice, touched to the heart, addresses both her lovers in noble terms. She will live. She will depart, never to see either of them again. But they are both to live likewise, and to pursue the pathway of duty and of honour.

116

ROMANCE OF THE ROSE Lorris and De Meun

/.—Of the Rose and Love's Cruel Arrows

'Twas in the Maytime of delight—

So dreamt I—that I rose aright

From off my bed, flung on my gown,

And went my way without the town.

I dreamt I scarce had wandered far

Where streams and meads and blossoms are,

When, straight, a garden wall I spied

On which were pictures, rich and pied.

Thereon was drawn the form of Hate

With frowning face, and desolate;

And Villainy, the fearful-eyed,

Her sister, Felony, beside.

" The Romance of the Rose," the most extraordinary poetic production of the age of St. Louis—the thirteenth century—is in reality two poems written at different periods by two authors differing very largely in character and outlook. One-fifth of the poem as we have it was written by Guillaume de Lorris, who was born at Lorris, near Orleans, about 1200, and died probably before 1230. During the five years preceding his death the first part of the " Romance " was composed. It is an allegorised tale of love, his own or imagined, in which the lover's hopes—the plucking of the rose—remain unsatisfied. Forty years later the tale was continued by Jean de Meun, born at Meun, on the Loire, about 1240, an ardent speculator in the questions of the day. His is a style less exquisite than that of De Lorris, but rich in satire, and in the course of his 16,000 lines he succeeds in holding up the mirror to his age, almost forgetting the lover and the rose in his zeal. He died in 1305. A translation of the poems, which was made in the fourteenth century, has been attributed to Chaucer. This epitome has been prepared from the French text.

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And Covetise, with fingers crooked; And Avarice, who sallow looked; And cheerless Envy—Sorrow, worn; And wrinkled Age, with form forlorn. There stood Hypocrisy, in guise Of one who went with prayerful eyes; And Poverty was also there In foulest rags, her body bare.

Before these forms I pensive stood; And also saw that garden good Reach tree-tops high above that wall, In which were birds a-singing all. I longed to enter that sweet place. Toward a gateway did I pace, A little gate; thereon I smote. Came one and oped, whom I would note.

A dame was she of beauty rare;

With tender flesh and flaming hair,

Bright eyes, and breath as sweet as thyme:

No goodlier known in any clime.

A chaplet on her brow was set.

She never grief nor labour met,

I ween; but all, from morn to night,

To deck herself was her delight.

She let me in. With gracious phrase, " My name is Idleness," she says. " In glee I live. My friend is Mirth, The master of this plot of earth. He built the walls; those paintings grim Were painted there to pleasure him. And here within he tarries oft, With song of birds and solace soft."