CROMWELL'S SOLILOQUY OVER THE DEAD BODY OF CHARLES. CHARLES sleeps, and feels no more the grinding cares, The perils and the doubts, that wait on POWER. Lo! what a slender barrier parts in twain [will He would have outlived me! And to this end- [Advancing to the front of the stage.] CROMWELL'S REFLECTIONS ON "KILLING NO MURDER." SOME devil wrote this book! the words are daggers. Lawful to slay me! Slaughter proved a virtue! Writ in cold blood; the logic of the butcher; So calm, and yet so deadly! I'll no more of it![Advances to the front of the stage with the book in his hand.] "KILLING NO MURDER!" So this book is call'd; It summons that great England whom this hand Hath made the crown of nations, to destroy me! "At board, at bed,". -so runs the text,-"let Death Be at his side; albeit to the clouds 6 Reaches his head, the axe is at his root; [well?'" 66 [After a pause, again opens the book.] Can I believe These lines, and doubt all faith for evermore? My muster-roll-my guards-my palace train”It saith, "contain the names of freemen sworn To slay the tyrant!" I appeal from man, To thee, the Lord of Hosts! Out, damned thing! [Flings away the book.] Thou hast taught me one deep lesson, and I thank Power must be guarded by the fiery sword; [thee: Death shall be at my side-sure death to all Whose treason stings existence to a curse. I've been too merciful-too soft of soulTill bad men, drunk and sated with forgiveness, Grow mad with crime. The gibbet and the axe Shall henceforth guard the sceptre and the orb; And Law put on the majesty of Terror. Why what a state is this, when men who toil Daily for England cannot sleep of nights! Three nights I have not slept! I know my cure; The blood of traitors makes my anodyne! And in the silence of a trembling world, I will lie down, and learn to sleep again. RICHELIEU'S SOLILOQUY. "I silence and at night, the conscience feels The tints that colour and the food that nurtures? Can make our memory hideous! I have wrought In the time to come may bask beneath the light And lone amid the multitudinous web, And this is power! Alas! I am not happy. And yet the Nile is fretted by the weeds Its rising roots not up; but never yet Did one least barrier by a ripple vex My onward tide, unswept in sport away. Am I so ruthless, then, that I do hate Them who hate me? Tush, tush! I do not hate; Nay, I forgive. The statesman writes the doom, But the priest sends the blessing. I forgive them, But I destroy; forgiveness is mine own, Destruction is the state's! For private life, Scripture the guide; for public, Machiavel. Would fortune serve me if the Heaven were wroth? For chance makes half my greatness. I was born Beneath the aspect of a bright-eyed star, And my triumphant adamant of soul Is but the fix'd persuasion of success. Ah! here! that spasm! again! How life and death Do wrestle for me momently! And yet The king looks pale. I shall outlive the king! And then thou insolent Austrian, who dost gibe At the ungainly, gaunt, and daring lover, Sleeking thy looks to silken Buckingham, Thou shalt-no matter! I have outlived love. Oh beautiful, all golden, gentle youth! Making thy palace in the careless front And hopeful eye of man-ere yet the soul Hath lost the memories which (so Plato dream'd) Breathed glory from the earlier star it dwelt inOh! for one gale from thine exulting morning, Stirring amid the roses, where of old Love shook the dew-drops from his glancing hair! Could I recall the past, or had not set The prodigal treasures of the bankrupt soul In one slight bark upon the shoreless sea; The yoked steer, after his day of toil, Forgets the goad, and rests: to me alike Or day or night: ambition has no rest! Shall I resign? who can resign himself? For custom is ourself; as drink and food Become our bone and flesh, the aliments [dreams, Nurturing our nobler part, the mind-thoughts, Passions, and aims, in the revolving cycle Of the great alchymy, at length are made Our mind itself; and yet the sweets of leisure, An honour'd home, far from these base intrigues, An eyrie on the heaven-kiss'd heights of wisdom. AMBITION AND GLORY. ALAS! our glories float between the earth and heaven LAST DAYS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.* RISE from thy bloody grave, Thou soft Medusa of the fated line,† Whose evil beauty look'd to death the brave; Discrowned queen, around whose passionate shame Terror and grief the palest flowers entwine, [doom! And if revenge outlive the tomb, Thou art avenged. Behold the doomer brought to Lo, where thy mighty murdress lies, The sleepless couch, the sunless room, And, quell'd the eagle eye and lion mien, The wo-worn shadow of the Titan queen! There, sorrow-stricken, to the ground, Alike by night and day, The heart's blood from the inward wound And oft she turns from face to face A sharp and eager gaze, As if the memory sought to trace Ah, what the clew supplies In the cold vigil of a hireling's eyes! Ah, sad in childless age to weep alone, [own! And start and gaze, to find no sorrow save our Oh soul, thou speedest to thy rest away, But not upon the pinions of the dove; As on the solemn verge of night She wanes, the last of every glorious light Lull'd into glittering rest the subject sea; Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame, In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone, To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known, There, specious Bacon's unimpassion'd brow, "Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes, with shedding tears, to bewail Essex."- Contemporaneous Correspondence. + Mary Stuart-"The soft Medusa" is an expression strikingly applied to her in her own day. Watching the glass in which the sands run low; To weep the fate or pour th' averting prayer The impatient couriers wait; To speed from hour to hour the nice account That registers the grudged unpitied sighs Which yet must joy delay, before The Stuart's tottering step shall mount The last great Tudor's throne, red with his mother's gore! Oh piteous mockery of all pomp thou art, Those weary limbs have lain; Of heaviness to pain. As gazing into dismal air She sees the headless phantom there, The unheeded anguish feebly flow; In moanings faint and low; How slight a shade between And England's giant queen!* Lo, England white-robed for a holyday! Mary is dead! Look from your fire-won homes, Exulting martyrs! on the mount shall rest Truth's ark at last! the avenging Lutheran comes, And clasps the Book ye died for to her breast! With her the flower of all the land, The high-born gallants ride, The woman's hope and fear; * "It was after labouring for nearly three weeks under a morbid melancholy, which brought on a stupor not unmixed with some indications of a disordered fancy, that the queen expired.-Letter to Edmund Lambert. And mark the mellowing year, Call back the gorgeous past! The lists are set, the trumpets sound, The old chivalric life! "Forward." The signal word is given; Beneath the shock the greensward shakes; The fiery joy of strife! Thus, when, from out a changeful heaven Alike the gladsome anger takes Who is the victor of the day? Thou of the delicate form, and golden hair, Call back the gorgeous past! Where, bright and broadening to the main, No breeze above, but on the mast The warrior-woman rode! Hark, thrilling through the armed line "Though mine the woman's form, yet mine Bold Parma on the main ; "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England too."-Elizabeth's harangue at Tilbury Camp. Death in the battle and the wind; Carnage before and storm behind; Wild shrieks are heard above the hurtling roar By Orkney's rugged strands and Erin's ruthless shore. Joy to the island and the maid! Turn from the gorgeous past: A tree, that, in the world of bloom, But art thou fallen then so low? Art thou so desolate? wan shadow, No! [portal, Crouch'd, suppliant by the grave's unclosing Love, which proclaims thee human, bids thee know A truth more lofty in thy lowliest hour Than shallowest glory taught to deafen'd power, "WHAT'S HUMAN IS IMMORTAL!" 'Tis sympathy which makes sublime! Never so reverent in thy noon of time As now, when o'er thee hangs the midnight pall; No comfort, pomp; and wisdom no protection; Hope's "cloud-capp'd towers and solemn temples" gone Mid memory's wrecks, eternal and alone; THE LANGUAGE OF THE EYES. THOSE eyes, those eyes, how full of heaven they are, When the calm twilight leaves the heaven most holy, Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star Was it from yon lone orb, that ever by Ye sibyl books, in which the truths foretold, Inspire the heart, your dreaming priest, with gladness, Bright alchemists that turn to thoughts of gold The leaden cares ye steal away from sadness, Teach only me, sweet eyes! Hush! when I ask ye how at length to gain The cell where love the sleeper yet lies hidden, Loose not those arch lips from their rosy chain; Be every answer, save your own, forbiddenFeelings are words for eyes! EURIPIDES. LONE, mid the loftier wonders of the past, [age; Thou stand'st-more household to the modern In a less stately mould thy thoughts were cast Than thy twin masters of the Grecian stage. Thou mark'st that change in manners when the frown Of the vast Titans vanish'd from the earth, When a more soft philosophy stole down From the dark heavens to man's familiar hearth. With thee, came love and woman's influence o'er Her sterner lord; and poesy till then A sculpture, warmed to painting; what before Glass'd but the dim-seen gods, grew now to men The struggles of humanity became Of the great heart with that unbodied name [debate, Thy Phædra, and thy pale Medea were The birth of that more subtle wisdom, which Dawn'd in the world with Socrates, to bear Its last most precious offspring in the rich And genial soul of Shakspeare. And for this Wit blamed the living, dullness taunts the dead. And yet the Pythian did not speak amiss When in thy verse the latent truths she read, And hailed thee wiser than thy tribe. Of thee All genius in our softer times hath been The grateful echo, and thy soul we see Still through our tears-upon the later scene. Doth the Italian, for his frigid thought Steal but a natural pathos,-hath the Gaul Something of passion to his phantoms taught, Ope but thy page-and, lo, the source of all! But that which made thee wiser than the schools Was the long sadness of a much-wrong'd life; The sneer of satire, and the gibe of fools, The broken hearth-gods, and the perjured wife. For sorrow is the messenger between The poet and men's bosoms:-Genius can A SPENDTHRIFT. You have outrun your fortune; I blame you not, that you would be a beggar; Each to his taste! But I do charge you, sir, That, being beggar'd, you would coin false moneys Out of that crucible call'd DEBT. To live On means not yours; be brave in silks and laces, Gallant in steeds, splendid in banquets; all Not yours, ungiven, uninherited, unpaid for; This is to be a trickster, and to filch Men's art and labour which to them is wealth, Life, daily bread; quitting all scores with, "Friend, You're troublesome!" Why this, forgive me, Minus one crown, two liards! PATIENCE AND HOPE. UPON a barren steep, I saw an angel watching the wild sea; 66 Why dost thou watch the wave? Thy feet the waters lave; The tide ingulfs thee if thou dost delay." Unscath'd I watch the wave, 66 Time not the angels' grave, I wait until the ocean ebbs away!" Smiling upon the gloomy hell below. "The child God gave me in the long-ago? "Mine all upon the earth- Smiling all terror from the howling wild!" The dream that haunts me yet, LOVE AND FAME. Ir was the May when I was born, Soft moonlight through the casement stream'd, And still, as it were yester-morn, I dream the dream I dream'd. I saw two forms from Fairy Land, With smiles, the cradle bending o'er, I heard their whispered voices breathe- I stretch'd my hand, as if my grasp One leaf-as fragrant now! Be mine, at least, the gentler brotherFor he whose life deserves the one, In death may gain the other. |