Giles Corey of the Salem Farms
Page 5
I give my worldly goods to my dear children;
My body I bequeath to my tormentors,
And my immortal soul to Him who made it.
O God! who in thy wisdom dost afflict me
With an affliction greater than most men
Have ever yet endured or shall endure,
Suffer me not in this last bitter hour
For any pains of death to fall from Thee!
MARTHA is heard singing. MARTHA. Arise, O righteous Lord!
And disappoint my foes;
They are but thine avenging sword,
Whose wounds are swift to close.
COREY. Hark, hark! it is her voice! She is not dead!
She lives! I am not utterly forsaken!
MARTHA. singing.
By thine abounding grace,
And mercies multiplied,
I shall awake, and see thy face;
I shall be satisfied.
COREY hides his face in his hands. Enter the JAILER, followed by RICHARD GARDNER. JAILER. Here’s a seafaring man, one Richard Gardner,
A friend of yours, who asks to speak with you.
COREY rises. They embrace. COREY. I’m glad to see you, ay, right glad to see you.
GARDNER. And I am most sorely grieved to see you thus.
COREY. Of all the friends I had in happier days,
You are the first, ay, and the only one,
That comes to seek me out in my disgrace!
And you but come in time to say farewell,
They’ve dug my grave already in the field.
I thank you. There is something in your presence,
I know not what it is, that gives me strength.
Perhaps it is the bearing of a man
Familiar with all dangers of the deep,
Familiar with the cries of drowning men,
With fire, and wreck, and foundering ships at sea!
GARDNER. Ah, I have never known a wreck like yours!
Would I could save you!
COREY. Do not speak of that.
It is too late. I am resolved to die.
GARDNER. Why would you die who have so much to live for?—
Your daughters, and—
COREY. You cannot say the word.
My daughters have gone from me. They are married;
They have their homes, their thoughts, apart from me;
I will not say their hearts,—that were too cruel.
What would you have me do?
GARDNER. Confess and live.
COREY. That’s what they said who came here yesterday
To lay a heavy weight upon my conscience
By telling me that I was driven forth
As an unworthy member of their church.
GARDNER. It is an awful death.
COREY. ’T is but to drown,
And have the weight of all the seas upon you.
GARDNER. Say something; say enough to fend off death
Till this tornado of fanaticism
Blows itself out. Let me come in between you
And your severer self, with my plain sense;
Do not be obstinate.
COREY. I will not plead.
If I deny, I am condemned already,
In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses,
And swear men’s lives away. If I confess,
Then I confess a lie, to buy a life
Which is not life, but only death in life.
I will not bear false witness against any,
Not even against myself, whom I count least.
GARDNER (aside)
Ah, what a noble character is this!
COREY. I pray you, do not urge me to do that
You would not do yourself. I have already
The bitter taste of death upon my lips;
I feel the pressure of the heavy weight
That will crush out my life within this hour;
But if a word could save me, and that word
Were not the Truth; nay, if it did but swerve
A hair’s-breadth from the Truth, I would not say it!
GARDNER. (aside)
How mean I seem beside a man like this!
COREY. As for my wife, my Martha and my Martyr,—
Whose virtues, like the stars, unseen by day,
Though numberless, do but await the dark
To manifest themselves unto all eyes,—
She who first won me from my evil ways,
And taught me how to live by her example,
By her example teaches me to die,
And leads me onward to the better life!
SHERIFF (without)
Giles Corey! Come! The hour has struck!
COREY. I come!
Here is my body; ye may torture it,
But the immortal soul ye cannot crush!
[Exeunt.
III— A street in the Village.
Enter GLOYD and others. GLOYD. Quick, or we shall be late!
A MAN. That’s not the way.
Come here; come up this lane.
GLOYD. I wonder now
If the old man will die, and will not speak?
He’s obstinate enough and tough enough
For anything on earth.
A bell tolls.
Hark! What is that?
A MAN. The passing bell. He’s dead!
GLOYD. We are too late.
[Exeunt in haste.
IV. — A field near the graveyard, GILES COREY lying dead, with a great stone on his breast. The Sheriff at his head, RICHARD GARDNER at his feet. A crowd behind. The bell tolling.
Enter HATHORNE and MATHER. HATHORNE. This is the Potter’s Field. Behold the fate
Of those who deal in Witchcrafts, and, when questioned,
Refuse to plead their guilt or innocence,
And stubbornly drag death upon themselves.
MATHER. O sight most horrible! In a land like this,
Spangled with Churches Evangelical,
Inwrapped in our salvations, must we seek
In mouldering statute-books of English Courts
Some old forgotten Law, to do such deeds?
Those who lie buried in the Potter’s Field
Will rise again, as surely as ourselves
That sleep in honored graves with epitaphs;
And this poor man, whom we have made a victim,
Hereafter will be counted as a martyr!
FINALE