LUCIFER.

A moment since.

I found your study door unlocked,

And thought you answered when I knocked.

I did not hear you.

PRINCE HENRY.

LUCIFER.

You heard the thunder;

It was loud enough to waken the dead.
And it is not a matter of special wonder
That, when God is walking overhead,
You should not hear my feeble tread.

Only a travelling Physician;

One of the few who have a mission

To cure incurable diseases,

Or those that are called so.

PRINCE HENRY.

Can you bring

The dead to life?

LUCIFER.

Yes; very nearly.

And, what is a wiser, and better thing,

Can keep the living from ever needing
Such an unnatural, strange proceeding,
By showing conclusively and clearly
That death is a stupid blunder merely,
And not a necessity of our lives.

My being here is accidental;

The storm, that against your casement drives,
In the little village below waylaid me.

And there I heard, with a secret delight,
Of your maladies physical and mental,
Which neither astonished nor dismayed me.

C

And I hastened hither, though late in the night,

To proffer my aid!

PRINCE HENRY, ironically.

For this you came!

Ah, how can I ever hope to requite

This honour from one so erudite?

LUCIFER.

The honour is mine, or will be when

I have cured your disease.

PRINCE HENRY.

But not till then.

LUCIFER.

What is your illness?

PRINCE HENRY,

It has no name.

A smouldering, dull, perpetual flame,

As in a kiln, burns in my veins,
Sending up vapours to the head;

My heart has become a dull lagoon,

Which a kind of leprosy drinks and drains;

I am accounted as one who is dead,

And, indeed, I think that I shall be soon.

LUCIFER.

And has Gordonius the Divine,

In his famous Lily of Medicine,—

I see the book lies open before you,

No remedy potent enough to restore you?

PRINCE HENRY.

None whatever!

LUCIFER.

The dead are dead,

And their oracles dumb, when questioned Of the new diseases that human life Evolves in its progress, rank and rife. Consult the dead upon things that were, But the living only on things that are. Have you done this, by the appliance And aid of doctors?

PRINCE HENRY.

Ay, whole schools

Of doctors, with their learned rules;

But the case is quite beyond their science.

Even the doctors of Salern

Send me back word they can discern

No cure for a malady like this,

Save one which in its nature is

Impossible, and cannot be!

LUCIFER.

That sounds oracular!

PRINCE HENRY.

Unendurable!

LUCIFER.

What is their remedy?

PRINCE HENRY.

You shall see ;

Writ in this scroll is the mystery.

LUCIFER, reading.

"Not to be cured, yet not incurable!

The only remedy that remains

Is the blood that flows from a maiden's veins,

Who of her own free will shall die,

And give her life as the price of yours!"

That is the strangest of all cures,

And one, I think, you will never try;
The prescription you may well put by,
As something impossible to find
Before the world itself shall end!

And yet who knows? One cannot say
That into some maiden's brain that kind
Of madness will not find its way.
Meanwhile permit me to recommend,
As the matter admits of no delay,

My wonderful Catholicon,

Of very subtile and magical powers!

PRINCE HENRY.

Purge with your nostrums and drugs infernal

The spouts and gargoyles of these towers,
Not me! My faith is utterly gone
In every power but the Power Supernal!
Pray tell me, of what school are you?