Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth

by William Wordsworth

  In Story, what men now alive have witnessed,

  How, when the People’s mind was racked with doubt,

  Appeal was made to the great Judge: the Accused

  With naked feet walked over burning ploughshares.

  Here is a Man by Nature’s hand prepared

  For a like trial, but more merciful.

  Why else have I been led to this bleak Waste?

  Bare is it, without house or track, and destitute

  Of obvious shelter, as a shipless sea.

  Here will I leave him—here—All-seeing God!

  Such as ‘he’ is, and sore perplexed as I am,

  I will commit him to this final ‘Ordeal’!—

  He heard a voice—a shepherd-lad came to him

  And was his guide; if once, why not again,

  And in this desert? If never—then the whole

  Of what he says, and looks, and does, and is,

  Makes up one damning falsehood. Leave him here

  To cold and hunger!—Pain is of the heart,

  And what are a few throes of bodily suffering

  If they can waken one pang of remorse?

  [Goes up to HERBERT.

  Old Man! my wrath is as a flame burnt out,

  It cannot be rekindled. Thou art here

  Led by my hand to save thee from perdition;

  Thou wilt have time to breathe and think—

  HER. Oh, Mercy!

  MAR. I know the need that all men have of mercy,

  And therefore leave thee to a righteous judgment.

  HER. My Child, my blessed Child!

  MAR. No more of that;

  Thou wilt have many guides if thou art innocent;

  Yea, from the utmost corners of the earth,

  That Woman will come o’er this Waste to save thee.

  [He pauses and looks at HERBERT’S staff.

  Ha! what is here? and carved by her own hand!

  [Reads upon the staff.

  “I am eyes to the blind, saith the Lord.

  He that puts his trust in me shall not fail!”

  Yes, be it so;—repent and be forgiven—

  God and that staff are now thy only guides.

  [He leaves HERBERT on the Moor.

  SCENE—An eminence, a Beacon on the summit.

  LACY, WALLACE, LENNOX, etc. etc.

  SEVERAL OF THE BAND (confusedly). But patience!

  ONE OF THE BAND. Curses on that Traitor, Oswald!—

  Our Captain made a prey to foul device!—

  LEN. (to WAL.) His tool, the wandering Beggar, made last night

  A plain confession, such as leaves no doubt,

  Knowing what otherwise we know too well,

  That she revealed the truth. Stand by me now;

  For rather would I have a nest of vipers

  Between my breast-plate and my skin, than make

  Oswald my special enemy, if you

  Deny me your support.

  LACY. We have been fooled—

  But for the motive?

  WAL. Natures such as his

  Spin motives out of their own bowels, Lacy!

  I learned this when I was a Confessor.

  I know him well; there needs no other motive

  Than that most strange incontinence in crime

  Which haunts this Oswald. Power is life to him

  And breath and being; where he cannot govern,

  He will destroy.

  LACY. To have been trapped like moles!—

  Yes, you are right, we need not hunt for motives:

  There is no crime from which this man would shrink;

  He recks not human law; and I have noticed

  That often when the name of God is uttered,

  A sudden blankness overspreads his face.

  LEN. Yet, reasoner as he is, his pride has built

  Some uncouth superstition of its own.

  WAL. I have seen traces of it.

  LEN. Once he headed

  A band of Pirates in the Norway seas;

  And when the King of Denmark summoned him

  To the oath of fealty, I well remember,

  ‘Twas a strange answer that he made; he said,

  “I hold of Spirits, and the Sun in heaven.”

  LACY. He is no madman.

  WAL. A most subtle doctor

  Were that man, who could draw the line that parts

  Pride and her daughter, Cruelty, from Madness,

  That should be scourged, not pitied. Restless Minds,

  Such Minds as find amid their fellowmen

  No heart that loves them, none that they can love,

  Will turn perforce and seek for sympathy

  In dim relation to imagined Beings.

  ONE OF THE BAND. What if he mean to offer up our Captain

  An expiation and a sacrifice

  To those infernal fiends!

  WAL. Now, if the event

  Should be as Lennox has foretold, then swear,

  My Friends, his heart shall have as many wounds

  As there are daggers here.

  LACY. What need of swearing!

  ONE OF THE BAND. Let us away!

  ANOTHER. Away!

  A THIRD. Hark! how the horns

  Of those Scotch Rovers echo through the vale.

  LACY. Stay you behind; and when the sun is down,

  Light up this beacon.

  ONE OF THE BAND. You shall be obeyed.

  [They go out together.

  SCENE—The Wood on the edge of the Moor.

  MARMADUKE (alone).

  MAR. Deep, deep and vast, vast beyond human thought,

  Yet calm.—I could believe, that there was here

  The only quiet heart on earth. In terror,

  Remembered terror, there is peace and rest.

  Enter OSWALD.

  OSW. Ha! my dear Captain.

  MAR. A later meeting, Oswald,

  Would have been better timed.

  OSW. Alone, I see;

  You have done your duty. I had hopes, which now

  I feel that you will justify.

  MAR. I had fears,

  From which I have freed myself—but ‘tis my wish

  To be alone, and therefore we must part.

  OSW. Nay, then—I am mistaken. There’s a weakness

  About you still; you talk of solitude—

  I am your friend.

  MAR. What need of this assurance

  At any time? and why given now?

  OSW. Because

  You are now in truth my Master; you have taught me

  What there is not another living man

  Had strength to teach;—and therefore gratitude

  Is bold, and would relieve itself by praise.

  MAR. Wherefore press this on me?

  OSW. Because I feel

  That you have shown, and by a signal instance,

  How they who would be just must seek the rule

  By diving for it into their own bosoms.

  To-day you have thrown off a tyranny

  That lives but in the torpid acquiescence

  Of our emasculated souls, the tyranny

  Of the world’s masters, with the musty rules

  By which they uphold their craft from age to age:

  You have obeyed the only law that sense

  Submits to recognise; the immediate law,

  From the clear light of circumstances, flashed

  Upon an independent Intellect.

  Henceforth new prospects open on your path;

  Your faculties should grow with the demand;

  I still will be your friend, will cleave to you

  Through good and evil, obloquy and scorn,

  Oft as they dare to follow on your steps.

  MAR. I would be left alone.

  OSW. (exultingly). I know your motives!

  I am not of the world’s presumptuous judges,

  Who damn where they can neither see nor feel,

  With a hard-hearted
ignorance; your struggles

  I witnessed, and now hail your victory.

  MAR. Spare me awhile that greeting.

  OSW. It may be,

  That some there are, squeamish half-thinking cowards,

  Who will turn pale upon you, call you murderer,

  And you will walk in solitude among them.

  A mighty evil for a strong-built mind!—

  Join twenty tapers of unequal height

  And light them joined, and you will see the less

  How ‘twill burn down the taller; and they all

  Shall prey upon the tallest. Solitude!—

  The Eagle lives in Solitude.

  MAR. Even so,

  The Sparrow so on the housetop, and I,

  The weakest of God’s creatures, stand resolved

  To abide the issue of my act, alone.

  OSW. ‘Now’ would you? and for ever?—My young Friend,

  As time advances either we become

  The prey or masters of our own past deeds.

  Fellowship we ‘must’ have, willing or no;

  And if good Angels fail, slack in their duty,

  Substitutes, turn our faces where we may,

  Are still forthcoming; some which, though they bear

  Ill names, can render no ill services,

  In recompense for what themselves required.

  So meet extremes in this mysterious world,

  And opposites thus melt into each other.

  MAR. Time, since Man first drew breath, has never moved

  With such a weight upon his wings as now;

  But they will soon be lightened.

  OSW. Ay, look up—

  Cast round you your mind’s eye, and you will learn

  Fortitude is the child of Enterprise:

  Great actions move our admiration, chiefly

  Because they carry in themselves an earnest

  That we can suffer greatly.

  MAR. Very true.

  OSW. Action is transitory—a step, a blow,

  The motion of a muscle—this way or that—

  ‘Tis done, and in the after-vacancy

  We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed:

  Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,

  And shares the nature of infinity.

  MAR. Truth—and I feel it.

  OSW. What! if you had bid

  Eternal farewell to unmingled joy

  And the light dancing of the thoughtless heart;

  It is the toy of fools, and little fit

  For such a world as this. The wise abjure

  All thoughts whose idle composition lives

  In the entire forgetfulness of pain.

  —I see I have disturbed you.

  MAR. By no means.

  OSW. Compassion!—pity!—pride can do without them;

  And what if you should never know them more!—

  He is a puny soul who, feeling pain,

  Finds ease because another feels it too.

  If e’er I open out this heart of mine

  It shall be for a nobler end—to teach

  And not to purchase puling sympathy.

  —Nay, you are pale.

  MAR. It may be so.

  OSW. Remorse—

  It cannot live with thought; think on, think on,

  And it will die. What! in this universe,

  Where the least things control the greatest, where

  The faintest breath that breathes can move a world;

  What! feel remorse, where, if a cat had sneezed,

  A leaf had fallen, the thing had never been

  Whose very shadow gnaws us to the vitals.

  MAR. Now, whither are you wandering? That a man

  So used to suit his language to the time,

  Should thus so widely differ from himself—

  It is most strange.

  OSW. Murder!—what’s in the word!—

  I have no cases by me ready made

  To fit all deeds. Carry him to the Camp!—

  A shallow project;—you of late have seen

  More deeply, taught us that the institutes

  Of Nature, by a cunning usurpation

  Banished from human intercourse, exist

  Only in our relations to the brutes

  That make the fields their dwelling, If a snake

  Crawl from beneath our feet we do not ask

  A license to destroy him: our good governors

  Hedge in the life of every pest and plague

  That bears the shape of man; and for what purpose,

  But to protect themselves from extirpation?—

  This flimsy barrier you have overleaped.

  MAR. My Office is fulfilled—the Man is now

  Delivered to the Judge of all things.

  OSW. Dead!

  MAR. I have borne my burthen to its destined end.

  OSW. This instant we’ll return to our companions—

  Oh how I long to see their faces again!

  Enter IDONEA, with Pilgrims who continue their journey.

  IDON. (after some time). What, Marmaduke! now thou art mine for

  ever.

  And Oswald, too! (To MARMADUKE). On will we to my Father

  With the glad tidings which this day hath brought;

  We’ll go together, and, such proof received

  Of his own rights restored, his gratitude

  To God above will make him feel for ours.

  OSW. I interrupt you?

  IDON. Think not so.

  MAR. Idonea,

  That I should ever live to see this moment!

  IDON. Forgive me.—Oswald knows it all—he knows,

  Each word of that unhappy letter fell

  As a blood drop from my heart.

  OSW. ‘Twas even so.

  MAR. I have much to say, but for whose ear?—not thine.

  IDON. Ill can I bear that look—Plead for me, Oswald!

  You are my Father’s Friend.

  (To MARMADUKE). Alas, you know not,

  And never ‘can’ you know, how much he loved me.

  Twice had he been to me a father, twice

  Had given me breath, and was I not to be

  His daughter, once his daughter? could I withstand

  His pleading face, and feel his clasping arms,

  And hear his prayer that I would not forsake him

  In his old age—[Hides her face.

  MAR. Patience—Heaven grant me patience!—

  She weeps, she weeps—’my’ brain shall burn for hours

  Ere ‘I’ can shed a tear.

  IDON. I was a woman;

  And, balancing the hopes that are the dearest

  To womankind with duty to my Father,

  I yielded up those precious hopes, which nought

  On earth could else have wrested from me;—if erring,

  Oh let me be forgiven!

  MAR. I ‘do’ forgive thee.

  IDON. But take me to your arms—this breast, alas!

  It throbs, and you have a heart that does not feel it.

  MAR. (exultingly). She is innocent.

  [He embraces her.

  OSW. (aside). Were I a Moralist,

  I should make wondrous revolution here;

  It were a quaint experiment to show

  The beauty of truth— [Addressing them.

  I see I interrupt you;

  I shall have business with you, Marmaduke;

  Follow me to the Hostel. [Exit OSWALD.

  IDON. Marmaduke,

  This is a happy day. My Father soon

  Shall sun himself before his native doors;

  The lame, the hungry, will be welcome there.

  No more shall he complain of wasted strength,

  Of thoughts that fail, and a decaying heart;

  His good works will be balm and life to him.

  MAR. This is most strange!—I know not what it was,

  But there was something which most plainly said,

  T
hat thou wert innocent.

  IDON. How innocent!—

  Oh heavens! you’ve been deceived.

  MAR. Thou art a Woman,

  To bring perdition on the universe.

  IDON. Already I’ve been punished to the height

  Of my offence. [Smiling affectionately.

  I see you love me still,

  The labours of my hand are still your joy;

  Bethink you of the hour when on your shoulder

  I hung this belt.

  [Pointing to the belt on which was suspended HERBERT’S scrip.

  MAR. Mercy of Heaven! [Sinks.

  IDON. What ails you! [Distractedly.

  MAR. The scrip that held his food, and I forgot

  To give it back again!

  IDON. What mean your words?

  MAR. I know not what I said—all may be well.

  IDON. That smile hath life in it!

  MAR. This road is perilous;

  I will attend you to a Hut that stands

  Near the wood’s edge—rest there to-night, I pray you:

  For me, I have business, as you heard, with Oswald,

  But will return to you by break of day.

  [Exeunt.

  ACT IV.

  SCENE—A desolate prospect—a ride of rocks—a Chapel on the

  summit of one—Moon behind the rocks—night stormy—irregular

  sound of a Bell—HERBERT enters exhausted.

  HER. That Chapel-bell in mercy seemed to guide me,

  But now it mocks my steps; its fitful stroke

  Can scarcely be the work of human hands.

  Hear me, ye Men, upon the cliffs, if such

  There be who pray nightly before the Altar.

  Oh that I had but strength to reach the place!

  My Child—my child—dark—dark—I faint—this wind—

  These stifling blasts—God help me!

  Enter ELDRED.

  ELD. Better this bare rock,

  Though it were tottering over a man’s head,

  Than a tight case of dungeon walls for shelter

  From such rough dealing.

  [a moaning voice is heard.

  Ha! what sound is that?

  Trees creaking in the wind (but none are here)

  Send forth such noises—and that weary bell!

  Surely some evil Spirit abroad to-night

  Is ringing it—’twould stop a Saint in prayer,

  And that—what is it? never was sound so like

  A human groan. Ha! what is here? Poor Man—

  Murdered! alas! speak—speak, I am your friend:

  No answer—hush—lost wretch, he lifts his hand

  And lays it to his heart—(Kneels to him). I pray you speak!

  What has befallen you?

  HER. (feebly). A stranger has done this,

  And in the arms of a stranger I must die.

  ELD. Nay, think not so: come, let me raise you up:

  [Raises him.

  This is a dismal place—well—that is well—

  I was too fearful—take me for your guide