And yearning has
Grown impotent--as 'twere a moment's folly,
A left and quickly quenched desire of youth
Kindled in me!--To youth alone love's sudden.

CECCO: Sir, dare I speak?

CHARLES: Speak.

CECCO: When Antonio----

CHARLES: Cease: but a whisper of his name and I
Am frenzy--frenzy--though the stillness burns
And bursts with it!

(_CECCO steps back. A pause._)

CHARLES: The sun, how hangs it now?

CECCO (_going to window_): Above the bloody waving of the sea,
Eager to dip.

CHARLES (_staggering up_): Ah, I was in a foam----
Bitten by hounds of fury and despair!
Did you not, Fulvia, pleading for them say
They quailed but would not flee and leave me waste?

CECCO: She is not here, my liege.

CHARLES: Antonio!
Ah, boy! thou ever wast to me as wafts
Of light, of song, of summer on the hills!
Soft now I feel thy baby arms about me,
And all the burgeon of thy youth, ere proud
And cruel years grew in me, comes again
On wings and stealing winds of memory!

CECCO: O, then, sir----

CHARLES: Yes. Fly, fly! and stay the guard!
He must not--Ah!--down fearful fathoms, down
Into the roar!
(_CECCO starts. He stops him._)
Yet he has flung me from
Immeasurable peaks, and I have sunk
Forevermore beneath hope's horizon.
Who falls so close the grave can rise no more.

CECCO: This your despair would wound him more than death.
Forget the girl.

CHARLES: She? Ah, my sullen, wild,
And gloomy pulse beat with a rightful scorn
Against the hours that sieged it. Stony was
Its solitude and fierce, bastioned against
All danger of quick blisses--till, with fury
For that mute tenderness which women's love
Lays on the desolation of the world,
She ravished it!--Yet now 'tis still and cold.

CECCO: But 'twas unknowingly.

CHARLES: A woman's smile
Never was luring, never, but she knew it,
As hawk the cruel rapture of his wings.

CECCO: She though is young, and youth----

CHARLES: Must pay with moan
The shriving!--Ah, the sun--the sun--where burns it?

CECCO: Upon a cloud whence it must spring to night.

CHARLES: So low?

CECCO: Sir, yes.

CHARLES: Ah, 'tis? so low?

CECCO: Red now
It ru