I must be madder than I think I am
Ere I shall yield up my authority,
Which I abuse not, to be used by thee.
This comes of lifting dreamers into power.
I tell thee, in this strait and stress of famine,
The people, but to pave the way for peace,
Would instantly despatch our heads to Bruges.
Once and again I warn thee that thy life
Hangs by a thread.
Why, know I not it does?
What hath it hung by else since Utas' eve?
Did I not by mine own advised choice
Place it in jeopardy for certain ends?
And what were these? To prop thy tottering state?
To float thee o'er a reef, and, that performed,
To cater for our joint security?
No, verily; not such my high ambition.
I bent my thoughts on yonder city's weal;
I looked to give it victory and freedom;
And working to that end, by consequence
From one great peril did deliver thee-
Not for the love of thee or of thy life,
Which I regard not, but the city's service;
And if for that same service it seem good,
I will expose thy life to equal hazard.
VAN DEN BOSCH.
Oh, Lord! to hear him speak,
What a most mighty emperor of puppets
Is this that I have brought upon the board!
But how if he that made it should unmake?
Unto His sovereignty who truly made me
With infinite humility I bow!
Both, both of us are puppets, Van den Bosch;
Part of the curious clock-work of this world,
We scold, and squeak, and crack each other's crowns;
And if by twitches moved from wires we see not,
I were to toss thee from this steeple's top,
I should be but the instrument-no more-
The tool of that chastising Providence
Which doth exalt the lowly, and abase
The violent and proud: but let me hope
There's no such task appointed me to-day.
Thou passest in the world for worldly wise:
Then, seeing we must sink or swim together,
What can it profit thee, in this extreme
Of our distress, to wrangle with me thus
For my supremacy and rule? Thy fate,
As of necessity bound up with mine,
Must needs partake my cares: let that suffice
To put thy pride to rest till better times.
Contest-more reasonably wrong—a prize
More precious than the ordering of a shipwreck.
Tush, tush, Van Artevelde; thou talk'st and talk'st,
And honest burghers think it wondrous fine.
But thou might'st easilier with that tongue of thine
Persuade yon smoke to fly i' th' face o' the wind,
Than talk away my wit and understanding.
I say yon herald shall not enter here.
I know, sir, no man better, where my talk
Is serviceable singly, where it needs
To be by acts enforced. I say, beware,
And brave not mine authority too far.
Hast thou authority to take my life?
What is it else to let yon herald in
To bargain for our blood?
Why, what a very slave of life art thou!
Look round about on this once populous town;
Not one of these innumerous house-tops
But hides some spectral form of misery,
Some peevish, pining child and moaning mother,
Some aged man that in his dotage scolds,
Not knowing why he hungers, some cold corse
That lies unstraightened where the spirit left it.
Look round, and answer what thy life can be
To tell for more than dust upon the balance.
I, too, would live-I have a love for life-
But rather than to live to charge my soul
With one hour's lengthening out of woes like thesc,
I'd leap this parapet with as free a bound
As e'er was schoolboy's o'er a garden wall.
I'd like to see thee do it.
But for the present be content to see
My less precipitate descent; for lo!
There comes the herald o'er the hill.
Thou shalt not have the start of me in this.
[He follows, and the scene closes.
THOUGHTFULLY by the side Ernesto sate
Of her whom, in his earlier youth, with heart
Then first exulting in a dangerous hope,
Dearer for danger, he had rashly loved.
That was a season when the untravell'd spirit,
Not way-worn nor way-wearied, nor with soil
Nor stain upon it, lions in its path
Saw none or seeing, with triumphant trust
In its resources and its powers, defied—
Perverse to find provocatives in warnings,
And in disturbance taking deep delight.
By sea or land he still saw rise the storm
With a gay courage, and through broken lights,
Tempestuously exalted, for a while
His heart ran mountains high, or to the roar
Of shatter'd forests sang superior songs
With kindling, and what might have seem'd to some,
Auspicious energy;-by land and sea
He was way-founder'd-trampled in the dust
His many-colour'd hopes-his lading rich
Of precious pictures, bright imaginations,
In absolute shipwreck to the wind and waves
Suddenly render'd-
But time had been between and wov'n a veil
Of seven years' separation; and the past
Was seen with soften'd outlines, like the face
Of Nature through a mist. What was so seen?
In a short hour, there sitting with his eyes
Fix'd on her face, observant though abstracted,
Lost partly in the past, but mixing still
With his remembrances the life before him,
He traced it all-the pleasant first accost,
Agreeable acquaintance, growing friendship,
Love, passion at the culminating point
When in a sleeping body through the night
The heart would lie awake, reverses next
Gnawing the mind with doubtfulness, and last
The affectionate bitterness of love refused.
-Rash had he been by choice-by wanton choice
Deliberately rash; but in the soil
Where grows the bane, grows too the antidote ;
The same young-heartedness which knew not fear
Renounced despondency, and brought at need
With its results, resources. In his day
Of utter condemnation, there remain'd
Appeal to that imaginative power
Which can commute a sentence of sore pain
For one of softer sadness, which can bathe
The broken spirit in the balm of tears.
And more and better to after days; for soon
Upsprang the mind within him, and he knew
The affluence and the growth which nature yields
After an overflow of loving grief.
Hence did he deem that he could freely draw
A natural indemnity. The tree
Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enrich'd
By its own fallen leaves; and man is made
In heart and spirit from deciduous hopes
And things that seem to perish. Thro' the stress
And fever of his suit, from first to last,
His pride (to call it by no nobler name)
Had been to love with reason and with truth,
To carry clear thro' many a turbulent trial
A perspicacious judgment and true tongue,
And neither with fair word nor partial thought
To flatter whom he loved. If pride it was
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