LUCIFER.

Shake the casements!

Break the painted

Panes, that flame with gold and crimson ;

Scatter them like leaves of Autumn,

Swept away before the blast!

O, we cannot !

VOICES.

The Archangel

Michael flames from every window,
With the sword of fire that drove us
Headlong, out of heaven, aghast!

And the Martyrs, wrapped in mantles,

Stand as warders at the entrance,

Stand as sentinels o'erhead!

THE BELLS.

Excito lentos!

Dissipo ventos!

Paco cruentos!

LUCIFER.

Baffled! baffled!

Inefficient,

Craven spirits! leave this labour

Unto Time, the great Destroyer!

Come away, ere night is gone!

VOICES.

Onward! onward!

With the night-wind,

Over field and farm and forest,

Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,

Blighting all we breathe upon!

They sweep away. Organ and Gregorian Chant.

CHOIR.

Nocte surgentes

Vigilemus omnes!

A Chamber in a Tower. PRINCE HENRY, sitting alone, ill and

I CANNOT sleep! my fervid brain

Calls up the vanished Past again,

And throws its misty splendours deep

Into the pallid realms of sleep!

A breath from that far-distant shore

Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o'er intervening seas
Sweet odours from the Hesperides!
A wind, that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And, touching the æolian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings!
Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled, one by one,

To stony channels in the sun!

Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended!

Come back, with all that light attended,

Which seemed to darken and decay

When ye arose and went away!

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long-ago,
The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;

They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!
I would not sleep! I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away!
Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place,

Season and scene come back again,

And outward things unchanged remain ;
The rest we cannot reinstate;

Ourselves we cannot re-create,

Nor set our souls to the same key

Of the remembered harmony!

Rest! rest! O, give me rest and peace!
The thought of life that ne'er shall cease
Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast

The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep!

A flash of lightning, out of which LUCIFER appears, in the garb of a travelling Physician.

LUCIFER.

All hail, Prince Henry!

PRINCE HENRY, starting.

Who is it speaks?

Who and what are you?

LUCIFER.

One who seeks

A moment's audience with the Prince.

PRINCE HENRY.

When came you in?