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_ ACT IV - SCENE III
[Night. Interior of Elizabeth's hut. A leprous boy
sleeping on a Mattress. Elizabeth watching by him.]
Eliz.
My shrunk limbs, stiff from many a blow,
Are crazed with pain.
A long dim formless fog-bank, creeping low,
Dulls all my brain.
I remember two young lovers,
In a golden gleam.
Across the brooding darkness shrieking hovers
That fair, foul dream.
My little children call to me,
'Mother! so soon forgot?'
From out dark nooks their yearning faces startle me,
Go, babes! I know you not!
Pray! pray! or thou'lt go mad.
. . . . .
The past's our own:
No fiend can take that from us! Ah, poor boy!
Had I, like thee, been bred from my black birth-hour
In filth and shame, counting the soulless months
Only by some fresh ulcer! I'll be patient--
Here's something yet more wretched than myself.
Sleep thou on still, poor charge--though I'll not grudge
One moment of my sickening toil about thee,
Best counsellor--dumb preacher, who dost warn me
How much I have enjoyed, how much have left,
Which thou hast never known. How am I wretched?
The happiness thou hast from me, is mine,
And makes me happy. Ay, there lies the secret--
Could we but crush that ever-craving lust
For bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose our life,
Our barren unit life, to find again
A thousand lives in those for whom we die.
So were we men and women, and should hold
Our rightful rank in God's great universe,
Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,
Nought lives for self--All, all--from crown to footstool--
The Lamb, before the world's foundations slain--
The angels, ministers to God's elect--
The sun, who only shines to light a world--
The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers--
The fleeting streams, who in their ocean-graves
Flee the decay of stagnant self-content--
The oak, ennobled by the shipwright's axe--
The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower--
The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms,
Born only to be prey for every bird--
All spend themselves for others: and shall man,
Earth's rosy blossom--image of his God--
Whose twofold being is the mystic knot
Which couples earth and heaven--doubly bound
As being both worm and angel, to that service
By which both worms and angels hold their life--
Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt,
Refuse, without some hope of further wage
Which he calls Heaven, to be what God has made him?
No! let him show himself the creature's lord
By freewill gift of that self-sacrifice
Which they perforce by nature's law must suffer.
This too I had to learn (I thank thee, Lord!),
To lie crushed down in darkness and the pit--
To lose all heart and hope--and yet to work.
What lesson could I draw from all my own woes--
Ingratitude, oppression, widowhood--
While I could hug myself in vain conceits
Of self-contented sainthood--inward raptures--
Celestial palms--and let ambition's gorge
Taint heaven, as well as earth? Is selfishness
For time, a sin--spun out to eternity
Celestial prudence? Shame! Oh, thrust me forth,
Forth, Lord, from self, until I toil and die
No more for Heaven and bliss, but duty, Lord,
Duty to Thee, although my meed should be
The hell which I deserve!
[Sleeps.]
[Two women enter.]
1st Woman.
What! snoring still? 'Tis nearly time to wake her
To do her penance.
2d Woman.
Wait a while, for love:
Indeed, I am almost ashamed to punish
A bag of skin and bones.
1st Woman.
'Tis for her good:
She has had her share of pleasure in this life
With her gay husband; she must have her pain.
We bear it as a thing of course; we know
What mortifications are, although I say it
That should not.
2d Woman.
Why, since my old tyrant died,
Fasting I've sought the Lord, like any Anna,
And never tasted fish, nor flesh, nor fowl,
And little stronger than water.
1st Woman.
Plague on this watching!
What work, to make a saint of a fine lady!
See now, if she had been some labourer's daughter,
She might have saved herself, for aught he cared;
But now--
2d Woman.
Hush! here the master comes:
I hear him.--
[Conrad enters.]
Con.
My peace, most holy, wise, and watchful wardens!
She sleeps? Well, what complaints have you to bring
Since last we met? How? blowing up the fire?
Cold is the true saint's element--he thrives
Like Alpine gentians, where the frost is keenest--
For there Heaven's nearest--and the ether purest--
[Aside] And he most bitter.
2d Woman.
Ah! sweet master,
We are not yet as perfect as yourself.
Con.
But how has she behaved?
1st Woman.
Just like herself--
Now ruffling up like any tourney queen;
Now weeping in dark corners; then next minute
Begging for penance on her knees.
2d Woman.
One trick's cured;
That lust of giving; Isentrude and Guta,
The hussies, came here begging but yestreen,
Vowed they were starving.
Con.
Did she give to them?
2d Woman.
She told them that she dared not.
Con.
Good. For them,
I will take measures that they shall not want:
But see you tell her not: she must be perfect.
1st Woman.
Indeed, there's not much chance of that a while.
There's others, might be saints, if they were young,
And handsome, and had titles to their names,
If they were helped toward heaven, now--
Con.
Silence, horse-skull!
Thank God, that you are allowed to use a finger
Towards building up His chosen tabernacle.
2d Woman.
I consider that she blasphemes the means of grace.
Con.
Eh? that's a point, indeed.
2d Woman.
Why, yesterday,
Within the church, before a mighty crowd,
She mocked at all the lovely images,
And said 'the money had been better spent
On food and clothes, instead of paint and gilding:
They were but pictures, whose reality
We ought to bear within us.'
Con.
Awful doctrine!
1st Woman.
Look at her carelessness, again--the distaff
Or woolcomb in her hands, even on her bed.
Then, when the work is done, she lets those nuns
Cheat her of half the price.
2d Woman.
The Aldenburgers.
Con.
Well, well, what more misdoings?
[aside] Pah! I am sick on't.
[Aloud] Go sit, and pray by her until she wakes.
[The women retire. Conrad sits down by the fire.]
I am dwindling to a peddling chamber-chaplain,
Who hunts for crabs and ballads in maids' sleeves,
I, who have shuffled kingdoms. Oh! 'tis easy
To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them--
The threading in cold blood each mean detail,
And furzebrake of half-pertinent circumstance--
There lies the self-denial.
Women
[in a low voice].
Master! sir! look here!
Eliz.
[rising].
Have mercy, mercy, Lord!
Con.
What is it, my daughter? No--she answers not--
Her eyeballs through their sealed lids are bursting,
And yet she sleeps: her body does but mimic
The absent soul's enfranchised wanderings
In the spirit-world.
Eliz.
Oh! she was but a worldling!
And think, good Lord, if that this world is hell,
What wonder if poor souls whose lot is fixed here,
Meshed down by custom, wealth, rank, pleasure, ignorance,
Do hellish things in it? Have mercy, Lord;
Even for my sake, and all my woes, have mercy!
Con. There! she is laid again--Some bedlam dream.
So--here I sit; am I a guardian angel
Watching by God's elect? or nightly tiger,
Who waits upon a dainty point of honour
To clutch his prey, till it shall wake and move?
We'll waive that question: there's eternity
To answer that in.
How like a marble-carven nun she lies
Who prays with folded palms upon her tomb,
Until the resurrection! Fair and holy!
O happy Lewis! Had I been a knight--
A man at all--What's this? I must be brutal,
Or I shall love her: and yet that's no safeguard;
I have marked it oft: ay--with that devilish triumph
Which eyes its victim's writhings, still will mingle
A sympathetic thrill of lust--say, pity.
Eliz.
[awaking].
I am heard! She is saved!
Where am I? What! have I overslept myself?
Oh, do not beat me! I will tell you all--
I have had awful dreams of the other world.
1st Woman.
Ay! ay! a fine excuse for lazy women,
Who cry nightmare with lying on their backs.
Eliz.
I will be heard! I am a prophetess!
God hears me, why not ye?
Con.
Quench not the Spirit:
If He have spoken, daughter, we must listen.
Eliz.
Methought from out the red and heaving earth
My mother rose, whose broad and queenly limbs
A fiery arrow did impale, and round
Pursuing tongues oozed up of nether fire,
And fastened on her: like a winter-blast
Among the steeples, then she shrieked aloud,
'Pray for me, daughter; save me from this torment,
For thou canst save!' And then she told a tale;
It was not true--my mother was not such--
O God! The pander to a brother's sin!
1st Woman.
There now? The truth is out! I told you, sister,
About that mother--
Con.
Silence, hags! what then?
Eliz.
She stretched her arms, and sank. Was it a sin
To love that sinful mother? There I lay--
And in the spirit far away I prayed;
What words I spoke, I know not, nor how long;
Until a small still voice sighed, 'Child, thou art heard:'
Then on the pitchy dark a small bright cloud
Shone out, and swelled, and neared, and grew to form,
Till from it blazed my pardoned mother's face
With nameless glory! Nearer still she pressed,
And bent her lips to mine--a mighty spasm
Ran crackling through my limbs, and thousand bells
Rang in my dizzy ears--And so I woke.
Con.
'Twas but a dream.
Eliz.
'Twas more! 'twas more! I've tests:
From youth I have lived in two alternate worlds,
And night is live like day. This was no goblin!
'Twas a true vision, and my mother's soul
Is freed by my poor prayers from penal files,
And waits for me in bliss.
Con.
Well--be it so then.
Thou seest herein what prize obedience merits.
Now to press forwards: I require your presence
Within the square, at noon, to witness there
The fiery doom--most just and righteous doom--
Of two convicted and malignant heretics,
Who at the stake shall expiate their crime,
And pacify God's wrath against this land.
Eliz.
No! no! I will not go!
Con.
What's here? Thou wilt not?
I'll drive thee there with blows.
Eliz.
Then I will bear them,
Even as I bore the last, with thankful thoughts
Upon those stripes my Lord endured for me.
Oh, spare them, sir! poor blindfold sons of men!
No saint but daily errs,--and must they burn,
Ah, God! for an opinion?
Con.
Fool! opinions?
Who cares for their opinions? 'Tis rebellion
Against the system which upholds the world
For which they die: so, lest the infection spread,
We must cut off the members, whose disease
We'd pardon, could they keep it to themselves.
[Elizabeth weeps.]
Well, I'll not urge it,--Thou hast other work--
But for thy petulant words do thou this penance:
I do forbid thee here, to give henceforth
Food, coin, or clothes, to any living soul.
Thy thriftless waste doth scandalise the elect,
And maim thine usefulness: thou dost elude
My wise restrictions still: 'Tis great, to live
Poor, among riches; when thy wealth is spent,
Want is not merit, but necessity.
Eliz.
Oh, let me give!
That only pleasure have I left on earth!
Con.
And for that very cause thou must forego it,
And so be perfect. She who lives in pleasure
Is dead, while yet she lives; grace brings no merit
When 'tis the express of our own self-will.
To shrink from what we practise; do God's work
In spite of loathings; that's the path of saints.
I have said.
[Exit with the women.]
Eliz.
Well! I am freezing fast--I have grown of late
Too weak to nurse my sick; and now this outlet,
This one last thawing spring of fellow-feeling,
Is choked with ice--Come, Lord, and set me free.
Think me not hasty! measure not mine age,
O Lord, by these my four-and-twenty winters.
I have lived three lives--three lives.
For fourteen years I was an idiot girl:
Then I was born again; and for five years,
I lived! I lived! and then I died once more;--
One day when many knights came marching by,
And stole away--we'll talk no more of that.
And so these four years since, I have been dead,
And all my life is hid with Christ in God.
Nunc igitur dimittas, Domine, servam tuam. _
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