THE MIGHTY MAGICIAN
A monologue from the
play by Pedro
Calderón de la Barca
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Eight Dramas of Calderon. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald.
London: Macmillan & Co., 1906. |
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- CIPRIANO: Oh, mad, mad, mad ambition! to the skies
- Lifting to drop me deep as Hades down!--
- What! Cipriano--what the once so wise
- Cipriano--quit his wonted exercise
- Among the sober walks of old renown,
- To fly at love--to swell the wind with sighs
- Vainer than learning--doff the scholar's gown
- For cap and feather, and such airy guise
- In which triumphant love is wont to go,
- But wins less acceptation in her eyes--
- The only eyes in which I cared to show--
- My heart beneath the borrow'd feather bleeding--
- Than in the sable suit of long ago,
- When heart-whole for another's passion pleading.
- She loves not Floro--loves not Lelio,
- Whose quarrel sets the city's throat agape,
- And turns her reputation to reproof
- With altercation of some disky shape
- Haunting the twilight underneath her roof--
- Which each believes the other:--and, for me,
- The guilty one of the distracted three,
- She closest veils herself, or waves aloof
- In scorn; or in such self-abasement sweet
- As sinks me deep and deeper at her feet,
- Bids me return--return for very shame
- Back to my proper studies and good name,
- Nor waste a life on one who, let me pine
- To death, will never but in death be mine.
- Oh, she says well--Oh, heart of stone and ice
- Unworthy of the single sacrifice
- Of one true heart's devotion! Oh divine
- Creature, whom all the glory and the worth
- That ever ravaged or redeem'd the earth
- Were scanty worship offer'd at your shrine!
- Oh Cipriano, master-fool of all
- The fools that unto thee for wisdom call;
- Of supercilious Pallas first the mock,
- And now blind Cupid's scorn, and laughing-stock;
- Who in fantastic arrogance at odds
- With the Pantheon of your people's gods
- Ransack'd the heavens for one more pure and whole
- To fill the empty temple of the soul,
- Now caught by retribution in the mesh
- Of one poor piece of perishable flesh--
- What baser demon of the pit would buy
- With all your ruin'd aspirations?
MORE MONOLOGUES BY CALDERÓN |
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