Wilt swear obedience to my will, and do
My bidding, it may help thee to thy wishes.
MAN. 1 will not swear - Obey! and whom?
the spirits
Whose presence I command, and be the slave
Of those who served me
WITCH. Enough! - [ may retire then
MAN.
[The WITCH disappears.
MAN. (alone.) We are the fools of time and terron:
Stea on us and steal from us; yet we live;
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
In all the days of this detested yoke -
This vital weight upon the struggling heart,
Which sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain,
Or joy that ends in agony or faintness -
In all the days of past and future, for
In life there is no present, we can number
How few-how less than few - wherein the soul
Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back
As from a stream in winter, though the chill
Be but a moment's. I have one resource
Still in my science - I can call the dead,
And ask them what it is we dread to be:
The sternest answer can but be the Grave,
And that is nothing - if they answer not
The buried Prophet answered to the Hag
Of Endor; and the Spartan Monarch drew
From the Byzantine maid's unsleeping spirit
An answer and his destiny - he slew
That which he loved, unknowing what he slew,
And died unpardon'd - though he call'd in aid
The Phyxian Jove, and in Phigalia roused
The Arcadian Evocators to compel
The indignant shadow to depose her wrath,
Or fix her term of vengeance - she replied
In words of dubious import, but fulfill'd. 5
If I had never lived, that which I love
Had still been living; had I never loved,
That which I love would still be beautiful
Happy and giving happiness. What is she?
What is she now?
a sufferer for my sins,
A thing I dare not think upon - or nothing.
Within few hours I shall not call in vain
Yet in this hour I dread the thing I dare:
Until this hour I never shrunk to gaze
And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart,
But I can act even what I most abhor,
And champion human fears. -The night approaches. [Exit.
The Summit of the Jungfrau Mountain,
The moon is rising broad, and round, and bright; And here on snows, where never human foot
Of common mortal trod, we nightly tread,
And leave no traces; o'er the savage sea,
The glassy ocean of the mountain ice,
We skim its rugged breakers, which put on
The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam,
Frozen in a moment - a dead whirlpool's image;
And this most steep fantastic pinnacle,
The fretwork of some earthquake-where the clouds
Pause to repose themselves in passing by
Is sacred to our revels, or our vigils;
Here do I wait my sisters, on our way
To the Hall of Arimanes, for to-night
Is our great festival - 'tis strange they come not.
A Voice without, singing.
The Captive Usurper,
Hurl'd down from the throne,
Lay buried in torpor,
Forgotten and lone;
I broke through his slumbers,
I shivered his chain,
I leagued him with numbers
He's Tyrant again!
With the blood of a million he'll answer my care,
With a nation's destruction - his flight and despair.
The ship sail'd on, the ship sail'd fast,
But I left not a sail, and I left not a mast,
There is not a plank of the hull or the deck,
And there is not a wretch to lament o'er his wreck;
Save one, whom I held, as he swam, by the their,
And he was a subject well worthy my care;
A traitor on land, and a pirate at sea
But I saved him to wreak further havoc for me!
FIRST DESTINY, answering.
The city lies sleeping;
The morn, to deplore it,
May dawn on it weeping.
Sullenly, slowly,
The black plague flew o'er it
Thousands lie lowly;
Tens of thousands shall perish
The living shall fly from
The sick they should cherish;
But nothing can vanquish
The touch that they die from.
Sorrow and anguish,
And evil and dread,
Envelope a nation
This wreck of a realm - this deed of my doing For ages I've done, and shall still be renewing!
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