QUEEN. Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts; A pattern to the unborn age of thee, Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow, Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that Dear Henrietta! KING. SCENE III. HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, and the younger VANE. England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle, I held what I inherited in thee, As pawn for that inheritance of freedom Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile: VANE. The vanes sit steady Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke, HAMPDEN. Hail, fleet herald Of tempest! that wild pilot who shall guide Of sunset, through the distant mist of years Tinged by departing Hope, they gleam! Lone regions, Where power's poor dupes and victims, yet have never Propitiated the savage fear of kings With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew NN Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake These exiles from the old and sinful world! Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green Of this wide prison, England, is a nest Of cradled peace built on the mountain tops, To which the eagle-spirits of the free, Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts That cannot die, and may not be repelled. PROLOGUE TO HELLAS-A FRAGMENT. HERALD OF ETERNITY. IT is the day when all the Sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house whose [place] Is chaos and the immovable abyss Frozen by his steadfast word to hyaline. The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Hierarchs and kings, Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Of mortal thought, which, like an exhalation Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall * annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped * it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends his decrees veiled in eternal * Within the circuit of this pendent orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought, in the world's golden dawn, Earliest and most benign; and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms, And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And, when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on, and swept In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed Haste, Sons of God, * * for ye beheld, Reluctant or consenting or astonished, The stern decrees go forth which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits. Assemble, Sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend (If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld) The unaccomplished destiny. CHORUS. The curtain of the universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-winged worlds disperse Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst of a cloudy shrine, In the blue glow of hyaline flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread. And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated, And, in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings, high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean. The senate of the Gods is met, CHRIST. Almighty Father! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny There are two fountains in which spirits weep The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood; by these wide wounds; By this imperial crown of agony; By infamy and solitude and death, (For this I underwent); and by the pain Of pity for those who would * for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, (For this I felt); by Plato's sacred light, In tempest of the omnipotence of God From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed, Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Victorious as the world arose from chaos! SATAN. Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns- Which pierces thee, whose throne a chair of scorn! • which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the strife Which our great Father then did arbitrate Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father's. But, lest thou shouldst faint, Shall wait on thee; the hundred-forked snake The earth behind thy steps; and war shall hover Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares On freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, CHRIST. Obdurate spirit! Thou seest but the past in the to-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds MAHOMET. Haste thou, and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow |