THE MODERN DRAMA.
121
| Pale hemisphere of charms. Unhappy girl! |
| The curse of beauty was upon thy birth, |
| Nor love bestowed a blessing. Fare thee well! |
How clear his voice sounds at the very last.
| The rumor ran that I was hurt to death, |
| And then they staggered. Lo! we're flying all! |
| Mount, mount, old man; at least let one be saved! |
| Roosdyk! Vauclaire! the gallant and the kind! |
| Who shall inscribe your merits on your tombs! |
| May mine tell nothing to the world but this: |
| That never did that prince or leader live, |
| Who had more loyal or more loving friends! |
| Let it be written that fidelity |
| Could go no farther. Mount, old friend, and fly! |
| VAN RYK. |
| With you, my lord, not else. A fear-struck throng, |
| Comes rushing from Mount Dorre. Sir, cross the bridge. |
| ARTEVELDE. |
| The bridge! my soul abhors—but cross it thou; |
| And take this token to my love, Van Ryk; |
| Fly, for my sake in hers, and take her hence! |
| It is my last command. See her conveyed |
| To Ghent by Olsen, or what safer road |
| Thy prudence shall descry. This do, Van Ryk. |
| Lo! now they pour upon us like a flood!— |
| Thou that didst never disobey me yet— |
| This last good office render me. Begone! |
| Fly whilst the way is free. |
What commanding sweetness in the utterance of the name, Van Ryk, and what a weight of tragedy in the broken sentence which speaks of the fatal bridge. These are the things that actors rarely give us, the very passages to which it would be their vocation to do justice; saying out those tones we divine from the order of the words.
Yet Talma’s Pas encore set itself to music in the mind of the
