The Purgatory of St. Patrick | Page 6

floating home?Expect a storm, for, lo! in heaven's high vault?Rise pyramids of ice, mountains of salt,?Turrets of snow, and palaces of foam.
POLONIA returns.
POLONIA. O dire misfortune!
KING. What so suddenly?Has chanced, Polonia?
POLONIA. This inconstant sea,?This Babel of wild waves that seeks heaven's gate,?So great its fury, and its rage so great,?Driven by a drought accursed,?(Who would have thought that waves themselves could thirst?) Has swallowed in the depths of its dread womb,?But now, a numerous company, to whom?It consecrates below?Red sepulchres of coral, tombs of snow,?In silver-shining caves;?For from their prison out o'er all the waves?Has Aeolus the winds let loose, and they,?Without a law to guide them on their way,?Fell on that bark from which the trumpet rang,?A swan whose own sad obsequies it sang.?I from that cliff's stupendous height,?Which dares to intercept the great sun's light,?Looked full of hope along that vessel's track,?To see if it was Philip who came back;?Philip whose flag had borne upon the breeze?Thy royal arms triumphant through the seas;?When his sad wreck swept by,?And every sound was buried in a sigh,?His ruin seemed not wrought by seas or skies,?But by my lips and eyes,?Because my cries, the tears that made me blind,?Increased still more the water and the wind.
KING. How! ye immortal deities,?Would you still try by threatenings such as these?What I can bear??Is it your wish that I should mount and tear?This azure palace down, as if the shape?Of a new Nimrod* I assumed, to show?How on my shoulders might the world escape,?Nor as I gazed below?Feel any fear, though all the abysses under?Were rent with fire and flame, with lightning and with thunder.
[footnote] *Nimrod is here used for Atlas. "Nimrod aber ist hier, was den Profandichtern und auch dem Calderon oft Atlas ist." -- Schmidt, 'Die Schauspiele Calderon's' etc.,' p. 426.

SCENE II.
PATRICK, and then LUIS ENIUS.
PATRICK [within]. Ah me!
LEOGAIRE. Some mournful voice.
KING. What's this?
CAPTAIN. The form,?As of a man who has escaped the storm,?Swims yonder to the land.
LESBIA. And strives to give a life-sustaining hand?Unto another wretch, when he?Appeared about to sink in death's last agony.
POLONIA. Poor traveller from afar,?Whom evil fate and thy malignant star?On this far shore have cast,?Let my voice guide thee, if amid the blast?My accents thou canst hear; since it is only?To rouse thy courage that I speak to thee.?Come!
[Enter PATRICK and LUIS ENIUS, clasping each other.
PATRICK. Oh, God save me!
LUIS. Oh, the devil save ME!
LESBIA. They move my pity, these unhappy two.
KING. Not mine, for what it is I never knew.
PATRICK. Oh, sirs, if wretchedness?Can move most hearts to pity man's distress,?I will not think that here?A heart can be so cruel and severe?As to repel a wretch from out the wave.?Pity, for God's sake, at your feet I crave.
LUIS. I don't, for I disdain it.?From God or man I never hope to gain it.
KING. Say who you are; we then shall know?What hospitable care your needs we owe.?But first I will inform you of my name,?Lest ignorance of that perchance might claim?Exemption from respect, and words be said?Unworthy of the deference and the dread?That here my subjects show me,?Or wanting the due homage that you owe me.?I am the King Egerius,?The worthy lord of this small realm, for thus?I call it being mine;?Till 'tis the world, my sword shall not resign?Its valorous hope. The dress,?Not of a king, but of wild savageness?I wear: to testify,?Thus seeming a wild beast, how wild am I.?No god my worship claims;?I do not even know the deities' names:?Here they no service nor respect receive;?To die and to be born is all that we believe.?Now that you know how much you should revere?My royal state, say who you are.
PATRICK. Then hear:?Patrick is my name, my country?Ireland, and an humble hamlet,*?Scarcely known to men, called Empthor,**?Is my place of birth: It standeth?Midway 'twixt the north and west,?On a mountain which is guarded?As a prison by the sea,--?In the island which hereafter?Will be called the Isle of Saints,?To its glory everlasting;?Such a crowd, great lord, therein?Will give up their lives as martyrs?In religious attestation?Of the faith, faith's highest marvel.?Of an Irish cavalier,?And of his chaste spouse and partner,?A French lady, I was born,?Unto whom I owe (oh, happy?That 'twas so!), beyond my birthright?Of nobility, the vantage?Of the Christian faith, the light?Of Christ's true religion granted?In the sacred rite of baptism,?Which a mark indelibly stampeth?On the soul, heaven's gate, as it?Is the sacrament first granted?By the Church. My pious parents,?Having thus the debt exacted?From all married people paid?By my birth, retired thereafter?To two separate convents, where?In the purity and calmness?Of their chaste abodes they lived,?Till the fatal line of darkness,?Ending life, was reached, and they,?Fortified by every practice?Of the Catholic faith, in peace?Yielded up their souls in gladness,?Unto heaven their spirits giving,?Giving unto earth their ashes.?I, an orphan, then remained?Carefully and kindly guarded?By