62
THE POEM
EsME.
It is his heart ; see, my hand is all covered
with blood. Give mea handkerchief. Here,
I will staunch the wound. [She attempts to
prevent the bleeding with her handkerchief.|
Oh! Percy! [4 pause.] Oh! Percy!
PERCY.
Iam going away, Esmé. - I shall see you
often. When you think of me I shall always
be with you. One day you will come to me,
Esmé! Kiss me! Your kisses must finish
my poem. One day your pen must finish it.
ESME.
You know I cannot write a line. Oh, how
sorry I am for that !
PERCY
[Zo VAUGHAN].
Good-bye, my dear, dear friend. Take
care of Esmé for me. [ shall watch over
her myself, I and God together. She is so
frail and white, and she understands. She
sees my soul, and IIeaven is always open to
her eyes when she looks up, and she is so
beautiful. Will it seem Jong, Esmé, till we
kiss again beyond the moon there—it is the
moon, isn’t it, come to see that Esmé is not
too sad about my dying? Be kind to her
always, moon, when Iam gone beyond you !
You must finish my poem, Esmé; there is
only a little to do. Kiss me the last time!
(good-bye, my dear friends. I wish I could
take your hands, but I am so weak. Kiss
me, Esmé, quickly. I feel the voice of God
come hke a shudder in my blood ; T must go
to Him. Esmé! Esmé! Esmé! To am so
happy ! [Dres.
[smi fines herselfpasstonately on o
the body, weeping and kisstug the
dead face. Crrlain.
SCENE IV.
The next morning. Esm® in bed asleep.
Enter VAUGHAN.
VAUGHAN.
Poor child, poor child, how are you? You
have not slept, I. know. Why, she is still
asleep! Hush! How calmly and regularly
she breathes! How fresh she looks! How
she smiles! It is wonderful! It is impos-
sible! Esmé! Esmé ! itisa pity you cannot
always sleep so, and never wake up to the
cruel sorrow of yesterday. Ah me! When
we all thought to be so happy. And in a
month he would have married her: in a day
he would have finished the poem. What a
wonderful poem it was! One could hear,
above the angels that sany, the voice of God
in that awful music that made his lines quiver
and shimmer like live coals. And the end
was to have been so perfect: there was on
the last passage of his work a hush, a silence
almost as if the world—his world—awaited
the voice of some great one. And now the
silence is not broken. Jerhaps men were
not ready for those final chords. Perhaps to
hear them would be to pass where he has
passed!) But oh! the pity! To leave his
greatest task undone! To be stricken down
in the last charge, a good soldier to the end !
Would God he could come back only for an
hour to put the keystone to his palace that
he built of running brooks and trees and buds
and the sound of the sea, and all the lights
of heaven to window it. [EsMi’s eyes oper.)
Esme ! you must wake up and kiss father !
Esmt [ha/f awake].
Iie sang to me all night, not his voice
only, but a deeper veice that I understood
so well as I never understood, a voice like
his poem, only more beautiful even than that,
and T can’t remember one word, only that
he kissed me all the night; and there was
as it were a vapour, an incense-cloud, about
me, and I could not see--and I am so happy.