I love the peril and the pain,
And revel in the surge of fortune's boisterous main!
A second (BERENGAR).
Is there not love, and beauty's smile
That lures with soft, resistless wile?
'Tis thrilling hope! 'tis rapturous fear
'Tis heaven upon this mortal sphere;
When at her feet we bend the knee,
And own the glance of kindred ecstasy
For ever on life's checkered way,
'Tis love that tints the darkening hues of care
With soft benignant ray:
The mirthful daughter of the wave,
Celestial Venus ever fair,
Enchants our happy spring with fancy's gleam,
And wakes the airy forms of passion's golden dream.
First (MANFRED).
To the wild woods away!
Quick let us follow in the train
Of her, chaste huntress of the silver bow;
And from the rocks amain
Track through the forest gloom the bounding roe,
The war-god's merry bride,
The chase recalls the battle's fray,
And kindles victory's pride:-
Up with the streaks of early morn,
We scour with jocund hearts the misty vale,
Loud echoing to the cheerful horn
Over mountain-over dale-
And every languid sense repair,
Bathed in the rushing streams of cold, reviving air.
Second (BERENGAR).
Or shall we trust the ever-moving sea,
The azure goddess, blithe and free.
Whose face, the mirror of the cloudless sky,
Lures to her bosom wooingly?
Quick let us build on the dancing waves
A floating castle gay,
And merrily, merrily, swim away!
Who ploughs with venturous keel the brine
Of the ocean crystalline-
His bride is fortune, the world his own,
For him a harvest blooms unsown:-
Here, like the wind that swift careers
The circling bound of earth and sky,
Flits ever-changeful destiny!
Of airy chance 'tis the sportive reign,
And hope ever broods on the boundless main
A third (CAJETAN).
Nor on the watery waste alone
Of the tumultuous, heaving sea;-
On the firm earth that sleeps secure,
Based on the pillars of eternity.
Say, when shall mortal joy endure?
