PROLOGUE TO ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM

Love dark as death and fierce as fire on wing

Sustains in sin the soul that feels it cling

Like flame whose tongues are serpents: hope and fear

Die when a love more dire than hate draws near,

And stings to death the heart it cleaves in twain,

And leaves in ashes all but fear and pain.

Our lustrous England rose to life and light

From Rome's and hell's immitigable night,

And music laughed and quickened from her breath,

When first her sons acclaimed Elizabeth.

Her soul became a lyre that all men heard

Who felt their souls give back her lyric word.

Yet now not all at once her perfect power

Spake: man's deep heart abode awhile its hour,

Abode its hour of utterance; not to wake

Till Marlowe's thought in thunderous music spake.

But yet not yet was passion's tragic breath

Thrilled through with sense of instant life and death,

Life actual even as theirs who watched the strife,

Death dark and keen and terrible as life.

Here first was truth in song made perfect: here

Woke first the war of love and hate and fear.

A man too vile for thought's or shame's control

Holds empire on a woman's loftier soul,

And withers it to wickedness: in vain

Shame quickens thought with penitential pain:

In vain dark chance's fitful providence

Withholds the crime, and chills the spirit of sense:

It wakes again in fire that burns away

Repentance, weak as night devoured of day.

Remorse, and ravenous thirst of sin and crime,

Rend and consume the soul in strife sublime,

And passion cries on pity till it hear

And tremble as with love that casts out fear.

Dark as the deed and doom he gave to fame

For ever lies the sovereign singer's name.

Sovereign and regent on the soul he lives

While thought gives thanks for aught remembrance gives,

And mystery sees the imperial shadow stand

By Marlowe's side alone at Shakespeare's hand.