And was his guide; if once, why not again,
![[ocr errors]](https://books.google.com.co/books/content?id=encWAAAAYAAJ&output=html_text&pg=PA61&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&q=wish&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U3JMuQNLzzlrt4XsisHY6Oh2PXknA&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=224,153,14,5)
And in this desert? If never- then the whole
Of what he says, and looks, and does, and is,
Makes up one damning falsehood. Leave him here
To cold and hunger!-Pain is of the heart,
And what are a few throes of bodily suffering
If they can waken one pang of remorse?
[Goes up to HERBERT.
Old man! my wrath is as a flame burnt out,
It cannot be rekindled. Thou art here
Led by my hand to save thee from perdition;
Thou wilt have time to breathe and think-
Her.
O, mercy! Mar. I know the need that all men have of mercy, And therefore leave thee to a righteous judgment. Her. My child, my blessed child! Mar.
No more of that; Thou wilt have many guides if thou art innocent; Yea, from the utmost corners of the earth, That woman will come o'er this waste to save thee. [He pauses and looks at HERBERT's staff. Ha! what is here? and carved by her own hand! [Reads upon the staff.
"I am eyes to the blind, saith the Lord.
He that puts his trust in me shall not fail!"
Yes, be it so;-repent and be forgiven-
God and that staff are now thy only guides.
![[blocks in formation]](https://books.google.com.co/books/content?id=encWAAAAYAAJ&output=html_text&pg=PA61&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&q=wish&cds=1&sig=ACfU3U3JMuQNLzzlrt4XsisHY6Oh2PXknA&edge=0&edge=stretch&ci=423,108,528,661)
Should prove as Lennox has foretold, then swear,
[He leaves HERBERT on the Moor. My friends, his heart shall have as many wounds
SCENE, an eminence, a Beacon on the summit.
LACY, WALLACE, LENNOX, &c. &c.
One of the Band. Let us away! Another.
A third. Hark! how the horns
Several of the Band. (confusedly.) But patience! Of those Scotch Rovers echo through the vale.
Yee, you are right, we need not hunt for motives: To have been trapped like moles!
Lacy. Stay you behind; and when the sun is down, Light up this beacon.
One of the Band. You shall be obeyed.
There is no crime from which this man would shrink; To be alone, and therefore we must part.
From which I have freed myself-but 't is my wish
Osw. Nay, then-I am mistaken. There's a weak- Ill names, can render no ill services,
What need of this assurance
At any time? and why given now?
In recompense for what themselves required.
So meet extremes in this mysterious world,
And opposites thus melt into each other.
Mar. Time, since man first drew breath, has never
moved
With such a weight upon his wings as now;
You are now in truth my master; you have taught me But they will soon be lightened.
What there is not another living man
Had strength to teach;—and therefore gratitude
Is bold, and would relieve itself by praise.
Mar. Wherefore press this on me?
Because I feel
Osw.
That you have shown, and by a signal instance,
How they who would be just must seek the rule
By diving for it into their own bosoms.
To-day you have thrown off a tyranny
That lives but in the torpid acquiescence
Of our emasculated souls, the tyranny
Of the world's masters, with the musty rules
By which they uphold their craft from age to age:
You have obeyed the only law that sense
Submits to recognise; the immediate law,
From the clear light of circumstances, flashed
Upon an independent intellect.
Henceforth new prospects open on your path;
Your faculties should grow with the demand;
I still will be your friend, will cleave to you
Through good and evil, obloquy and scorn,
Oft as they dare to follow on your steps.
Mar. I would be left alone.
Osw. (exultingly.)
I know your motives!
I am not of the world's presumptuous judges,
Who damn where they can neither see nor feel,
With a hard-hearted ignorance; your struggles
I witnessed, and now hail your victory.
Mar. Spare me awhile that greeting
Osw.
It may be,
That some there are, squeamish half-thinking cowards,
Who will turn pale upon you, call you murderer,
And you will walk in solitude among them.
A mighty evil for a strong-built mind!-
Join twenty tapers of unequal height
And light them joined, and you will see the less
How 't will burn down the taller; and they all
Shall prey upon the tallest. Solitude!
The eagle lives in solitude!
The sparrow so on the house-top, and I,
The weakest of God's creatures, stand resolved
To abide the issue of my act, alone.
Ay, look up-
Cast round your mind's eye, and you will learn
Fortitude is the child of Enterprise:
Great actions move our admiration, chiefly
Because they carry in themselves an earnest
That we can suffer greatly.
Osw. Action is transitory—a step, a blow,
The motion of a muscle- this way or that-
"T is done, and in the after-vacancy
We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And shares the nature of infinity.
Mar. Truth- and I feel it.
Osw.
Eternal farewell to unmingled joy
And the light dancing of the thoughtless heart;
It is the toy of fools, and little fit
For such a world as this. The wise abjure
All thoughts whose idle composition lives
In the entire forgetfulness of pain.
-I see I have disturbed you.
Osw. Compassion! — pity! — pride can do without
Remorse
It cannot live with thought; think on, think on,
And it will die. What! in this universe,
Where the least things control the greatest, where
The faintest breath that breathes can move a world;
What! feel remorse, where, if a cat had sneezed,
A leaf had fallen, the thing had never been
Whose very
shadow gnaws us to the vitals.
Mar. Now, whither are you wandering? That a man
So used to suit his language to the time,
Osw. Now would you? and for ever? - My young Should thus so widely differ from himself—
Idon. (after some time.) What, Marmaduke! now That thou wert innocent.
thou art mine for ever.
Idon.
And Oswald, too! (To MARMADUKE.) On will we to O, heavens! you've been deceived.
my father
With the glad tidings which this day hath brought;
We'll go together, and such proof received
Of his own rights restored, his gratitude
To God above will make him feel for ours.
That I should ever live to see this moment!
Idon. Forgive me.-Oswald knows it all—he knows
Each word of that unhappy letter fell
As a blood drop from my heart.
To bring perdition on the universe.
Idon. Already I've been punished to the height
I see you love me still,
The labours of my hand are still your joy;
Bethink you of the hour when on your shoulder
I hung this belt.
Mar. I have much to say, but for whose ear? not To give it back again!
Idon.
What mean your words?
Mar. I know not what I said—all may be well.
Idon. That smile hath life in it!
Mar.
I will attend you to a hut that stands
Near the wood's edge-rest there to-night, I pray you:
For me, I have business, as you heard, with Oswald,
But will return to you by break of day.
weeps my brain shall burn for SCENE, A desolate prospect- -a ridge of rocks· -a
This is a dismal place — well — that is well
I was too fearful— take me for your guide
And your support — my hut is not far off.
[Draws him gently off the stage.
SCENE, a room in the Hostel - MARMADUKE and OSWALD.
Mar. But for Idonea! - I have cause to think
That she is innocent.
Osw.
Leave that thought awhile,
As one of those beliefs which in their hearts
Lovers lock up as pearls, though oft no better
Than feathers clinging to their points of passion.
This day's event has laid on me the duty
Of opening out my story; you must hear it,
And without further preface. In my youth,
Except for that abatement which is paid
By envy as a tribute to desert,
I was the pleasure of all hearts, the darling
Of every tongue-as you are now.
That I embarked for Syria. On our voyage
Was hatched among the crew a foul conspiracy
Against my honour, in the which our captain
Was, I believed, prime agent. The wind fell;
We lay becalmed week after week, until
The water of the vessel was exhausted;
I felt a double fever in my veins,
Yet rage suppressed itself; — to a deep stillness
Did my pride tame my pride; -for many days,
On a dead sea under a burning sky,
I brooded o'er my injuries, deserted
By man and nature; - if a breeze had blown,
It might have found its way into my heart,
Mar. Quick-to the point — if any untold crime Doth haunt your memory.
Osw.
Patience, hear me further!-
One day in silence did we drift at noon
By a bare rock, narrow, and white, and bare;
No food was there, no drink, no grass, no shade,
No tree, nor jutting eminence, nor form
Inanimate large as the body of man,
Nor any living thing whose lot of life
Might stretch beyond the measure of one moon.
To dig for water on the spot, the captain
Landed with a small troop, myself being one:
There I reproached him with his treachery.
Imperious at all times, his temper rose;
He struck me; and that instant had I killed him,
And put an end to his insolence, but my comrades
Rushed in between us; then did I insist
(All hated him, and I was stung to madness)
That we should leave him there, alive! - we did so.
Mar. And he was famished?
Naked was the spot;
Methinks I see it now-how in the sun
Its stony surface glittered like a shield;
And in that miserable place we left him,
Alone but for a swarm of minute creatures
Not one of which could help him while alive,
Or mourn him dead.
Mar. A man by men cast off, Left without burial! nay, not dead nor dying, But standing, walking, stretching forth his arms, In all things like ourselves, but in the agony With which he called for mercy; and He was forsaken?
There is a power in sounds: The cries he uttered might have stopped the boat That bore us through the water
Upon that dismal hearing-did you not?
Osw. Some scoffed at him with hellish mockery, And laughed so loud it seemed that the smooth sea Did from some distant region echo us.
Mar. We all are of one blood, our veins are filled At the same poisonous fountain!
"T was an island
Osw.
Only by sufferance of the winds and waves,
Which with their foam could cover it at will.
I know not how he perished; but the calm,
The same dead calm continued many days.
Mar. But his own crime had brought on him this
doom,
His wickedness prepared it; these expedients
Are terrible, yet ours is not the fault.
Osw. The man was famished, and was innocent!
Mar. Impossible!
The man had never wronged me Mar. Banish the thought, crush it, and be at peace. His guilt was marked - these things could never be Were there not eyes that see, and for good ends, Where ours are baffled.
I have been nourished by the sickly food
The proofs-you ought to have seen Of popular applause. I now perceived The guilt― have touched it—felt it at your heart—That we are praised, only as men in us
A fresh tide of crusaders
Drove by the place of my retreat: three nights
Did constant meditation dry my blood;
Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way;
And wheresoe'er I turned me, I beheld
A slavery compared to which the dungeon
And clanking chains are perfect liberty.
You understand me-I was comforted;
I saw that every possible shape of action
Might lead to good-I saw it and burst forth
Thirsting for some of those exploits that fill
The earth for sure redemption of lost peace.
[Marking MARMADUKE's countenance.
Nay, you have had the worst. Ferocity
Subsided in a moment, like a wind
That drops down dead out of a sky it vexed.
And yet I had within me evermore
A silent spring of energy; I mounted
From action up to action with a mind
Do recognise some image of themselves,
That never rested-without meat or drink
Have I lived many days—my sleep was bound
To purposes of reason-not a dream
But had a continuity and substance
That waking life had never power to give.
Mar. O wretched human-kind-Until the mystery
Of all this world is solved, well may we envy
The worm, that, underneath a stone whose weight
Would crush the lion's paw with mortal anguish,
Doth lodge, and feed, and coil, and sleep, in safety.
Fell not the wrath of Heaven upon those traitors?
Ost. Give not to them a thought. From Palestine
We marched to Syria: oft I left the camp,
When all that multitude of hearts was still,
And followed on, through woods of gloomy cedar,
Into deep chasms troubled by roaring streams;
An abject counterpart of what they are,
Or the empty thing that they would wish to be.
I felt that merit has no surer test
Than obloquy; that, if we wish to serve
The world in substance, not deceive by show,
We must become obnoxious to its hate,
Or fear disguised in simulated scorn.
Mar. I pity, can forgive, you; but those wretches-
That monstrous perfidy!
Osw.
Keep down your wrath.
False Shame discarded, spurious Fame despised,
Twin sisters both of Ignorance, I found
Life stretched before me smooth as some broad way
Cleared for a monarch's progress. Priests might spin
Their veil, but not for me -'t was in fit place
Among its kindred cobwebs. I had been,
And in that dream had left my native land,
One of Love's simple bondsmen the soft chain
Was off for ever; and the men, from whom
This liberation came, you would destroy:
Join me in thanks for their blind services.
Mar. 'Tis a strange aching that, when we would
And cannot,-You have betrayed me--I have done —
I am content -I know that he is guiltless-
That both are guiltless, without spot or stain,
Mutually consecrated. Poor old man!
And I had heart for this, because thou lovedst
Her who from very infancy had been
Light to thy path, warmth to thy blood! --- Together
We propped his steps, he leaned upon us both.
[Turning to OSWALD.
Osw. Ay, we are coupled by a chain of adamant;
Let us be fellow-labourers, then, to enlarge
Man's intellectual empire. We subsist
In slavery; all is slavery; we receive
|