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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.
For him no more the uneasy day,—the night
At war with sleep! for him are bush'd at last
Loud Hate and hollow Love. Reverse thy law,
O blind Compassion of the human heart! [not,
And let not Death, which feels not, sins not, weeps
Rob Life of all that Suffering asks from Pity.-

Lo! what a slender barrier parts in twain
The presence of the breathing and the dead,
The vanquisher and victim; the firm foot
Of lusty strength, and the unmoving mass
Of that all strength must come to. Yet once more,
Ere the grave closes on that solemn dust,
Will I survey what men have fear'd to look on.
[He draws aside the curtains-the coffin of the King
lighted by tapers-Cromwell lifts the pall.]
'Tis a firm frame; the sinews strongly knit,
The chest deep-set and broad; save some gray hairs
Saddening those locks of love, no sign of age!
Had nature been his executioner,

[will

He would have outlived me! And to this end-
This narrow empire-this unpeopled kingdom-
This six feet realm-the over lust of sway
Hath been the guide! He would have stretch'd his
O'er that unlimited world which men's souls are!
Fetter'd the earth's pure air-for Freedom is
That air to honest lips;-and hère he lies,
In dust most eloquent-to after-time
A never silent oracle for Kings !-
Was this the hand that strain'd within its grasp
So haught a sceptre ?-this the shape that wore
Majesty like a garment? Spurn that clay,
It can resent not: speak of royal crimes,
And it can frown not: schemeless lies the brain
Whose thoughts were sources of such fearful deeds.
What things are we, O Lord, when at thy will
A worm like this could shake the mighty world!
A few years since, and in the port was moor'd
A bark to far Columbia's forests bound;
And I was one of those indignant hearts
Panting for exile in the thirst of freedom;
Then, that pale clay (poor clay that was a King!)
Forbade my parting, in the wanton pride
Of vain command, and with a fated sceptre
Waved back the shadow of the death to come.
Here stands that baffled and forbidden wanderer,
Loftiest amid the wrecks of ruin'd empire,
Beside the coffin of a headless King!
He thrall'd my fate-I have prepared his doom:
He made me captive-lo! his narrow cell!

[Advancing to the front of the stage.]
So hands unseen do fashion forth the earth
Of our frail schemes into our funeral urns;
So walking, dream-led in life's sleep, our steps
Move blindfold to the scaffold, or the throne !-
Ay, tothe THRONE! From that dark thought I strike
The light which cheers me onward to my goal.
Wild though the night, and angry though the winds,
High o'er the billows of the battling sea
My spirit, like a bark, sweeps on to fortune!

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?'"
And men shall cry, Where now the lofty Crom-
Vain threats, I scorn ye! Yet 'tis ably writ;
And these few leaves will stir a storm of passion
In the deep ocean of the popular heart.
We men of deeds are idiots, to despise
The men of books-for books are still the spells
Of the earth's sorcery, and can shape an army
Out of the empty air. Words father actions,
And are the fruitful yet mysterious soil [harvest,
Whence things bud forth, grow ripe, and burst to
And when they rot away, 'tis words receive
The germs they leave us, and so reproduce
Life out of Death-the everlasting cycle!
The Past but lives in words! A thousand ages
Were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts,
And kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us
From fleshless lips. So what will Cromwell be
To times unborn, but some dim abstract thought
That would not be if books were not? Our toil-
Our glory-struggles-life, that sea of action,
Whose waves are stormy deeds-all come to this,
A thing for scholars, in a silent closet,
To case in periods, and embalm in ink :
Making the memory of earth-trampling men,
The poor dependant on a pedant's whim!
It is enough to make us laugh to scorn
Our solemn selves! But Fate whirls on the bark,
And the rough gale sweeps from the rising tide
The lazy calm of thought.

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
That life should soar to nobler ends than power."
So sayest thou, sage and sober moralist!
But wert thou tried? Sublime philosophy,
Thou art the patriarch's ladder, reaching heaven,
And bright with beck'ning angels; but, alas!
We see thee, like the patriarch, but in dreams,
By the first step, dull-slumbering on the earth.
I am not happy! with the Titan's lust
I woo'd a goddess, and I clasp a cloud.
When I am dust, my name shall, like a star,
Shine through wan space, a glory; and a prophet
Whereby pale seers shall from their aëry towers
Con all the ominous signs, benign or evil,
That make the potent astrologue of kings.
But shall the future judge me by the ends
That I have wrought; or by the dubious means
Through which the stream of my renown hath run
Into the many-voiced, unfathomed Time!
Foul in its bed lie weeds and heaps of slime;
And with its waves when sparkling in the sun,
Ofttimes the secret of rivulets that swell
Its might of waters, blend the hues of blood.
Yet are my sins not those of CIRCUMSTANCE,
That all-pervading atmosphere, wherein
Our spirits, like the unsteady lizard, take

The tints that colour and the food that nurtures?
Oh! ye, whose hour-glass shifts its tranquil sands
In the unvex'd silence of a student's cell;
Ye, whose untempted hearts have never toss'd
Upon the dark and stormy tides where life
Gives battle to the elements; and man [weight
Wrestles with man for some slight plank, whose
Will bear but one, while round the desperate wretch
The hungry billows roar, and the fierce Fate,
Like some huge monster, dim-seen through the surf,
Waits him who drops; ye safe and formal men,
Who write the deeds, and with unfeverish hand
Weigh in nice scales the motives of the great,
Ye cannot know what ye have never tried!
History preserves only the fleshless bones
Of what we are; and by the mocking skull
The would-be wise pretend to guess the features!
Without the roundness and the glow of life,
How hideous is the skeleton! Without
The colourings and humanities that clothe
Our errors, the anatomists of schools

Can make our memory hideous! I have wrought
Great uses out of evil tools; and they

In the time to come may bask beneath the light
Which I have stolen from the angry gods,
And warn their sons against the glorious theft,
Forgetful of the darkness which it broke.
I have shed blood, but I have had no foes
Save those the state had; if my wrath was deadly,
'Tis that I felt my country in my veins,
And smote her sons as Brutus smote his own.
And yet I am not happy; blanch'd and sear'd
Before my time; breathing an air of hate,
And seeing daggers in the eyes of men,
And wasting powers that shake the thrones of earth
In contest with the insects: bearding kings
And braved by lackeys; murder at my bed;

And lone amid the multitudinous web,
With the dread three-that are the fates who hold
The woof and shears-the monk, the spy, the
headsman.

And this is power! Alas! I am not happy.
[After a pause.]

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
Like clouds which seem pavilions of the sun,
And are the playthings of the casual wind;
Still, like the cloud which drops on unseen crags
The dews the wild flower feeds on, our ambition
May from its airy height drop gladness down
On unsuspected virtue; and the flower
May bless the cloud when it hath pass'd away!

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,
That ever veil'd the ruins of a name
With the sweet parasites of song divine!
Arise, sad ghost, arise,

[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
Ebbs silently away.

And oft she turns from face to face

A sharp and eager gaze,

As if the memory sought to trace
The sign of some lost dwelling-place,
Beloved in happier days;

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;
When death draws nigh, how miserable they
Who have outlived all love!

As on the solemn verge of night
Lingers a weary moon,

She wanes, the last of every glorious light
That bathed with splendour her majestic noon:
The stately stars that, clustering o'er the isle,

Lull'd into glittering rest the subject sea;
Gone the great masters of Italian wile,
False to the world beside, but true to thee!

Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame,
The gliding craft of winding Walsinghame;
They who exalted yet before thee bow'd;
And that more dazzling chivalry, the band
That made thy court a faëry land,

In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone,
The Gloriana of the diamond throne:
All gone, and left thee sad amid the cloud!

To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known,
Who from thy smile, as laurels from the sun,
Drank the immortal greenness of renown,
Succeeds the cold lip-homage scantly won
From the new race whose hearts already bear
The wise man's offerings to the unworthy heir

There, specious Bacon's unimpassion'd brow,
And crook-back'd Cecil's ever earthward eyes

"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;
But deem not fondly there

To weep the fate or pour th' averting prayer
Have come those solemn spies!
Lo, at the regal gate

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,
Poor child of clay, worn out with toil and years!
As, layer by layer, the granite of the heart
Dissolving, melteth to the weakest tears
That ever village maiden shed above
The grave that robb'd her quiet world of love.
Ten days and nights upon that floor

Those weary limbs have lain;
And every hour but added more

Of heaviness to pain.

As gazing into dismal air

She sees the headless phantom there,
The victim round whose image twined
The last wild love of womankind;
That love which, in its dire excess,
Will blast where it can fail to bless,
And, like the lightning, flash and fade
In gloom along the ruins it has made.
"Twere sad to see from those stern eyes

The unheeded anguish feebly flow;
And hear the broken word that dies

In moanings faint and low;
But sadder still to mark, the while,
The vacant stare, the marble smile,
And think, that goal of glory won,

How slight a shade between
The idiot moping in the sun

And England's giant queen!*
Call back the gorgeous past!

Lo, England white-robed for a holyday!
While, choral to the clarion's kingly blast,
Peals shout on shout along the virgin's way;
As through the swarming streets rolls on the long
array.

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,
And, ever nearest of the band,
With watchful eye and ready hand,
Young Dudley's form of pride!
Ah, e'en in that exulting hour
Love half allures the soul from power,
And blushes half-suppress'd betray

The woman's hope and fear;
Like blooms which in the early May
Bud forth beneath a timorous ray,

* "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,
While steals the sweetest of all worship, paid
Less to the monarch than the maid,
Melodious on the ear!

Call back the gorgeous past!

The lists are set, the trumpets sound,
Bright eyes, sweet judges, throned around;
And stately on the glittering ground

The old chivalric life!

"Forward." The signal word is given;

Beneath the shock the greensward shakes;
The lusty cheer, the gleaming spear,
The snow-plume's falling flakes,

The fiery joy of strife!

Thus, when, from out a changeful heaven
O'er waves in eddying tumult driven
A stormy smile is cast,

Alike the gladsome anger takes
The sunshine and the blast!

Who is the victor of the day?

Thou of the delicate form, and golden hair,
And manhood glorious in its midst of May;
Thou who upon thy shield of argent bearest
The bold device, "The loftiest is the fairest!"
As bending low thy stainless crest,
"The vestal throned by the west"
Accords the old Provençal crown
Which blends her own with thy renown;
Arcadian Sidney, nursling of the muse,
Flower of fair chivalry, whose bloom was fed
With daintiest Castaly's most silver dews,
Alas! how soon thy amaranth leaves were shed;
Born, what the Ausonian minstrel dream'd to be
Time's knightly epic pass'd from earth with thee!

Call back the gorgeous past!

Where, bright and broadening to the main,
Rolls on the scornful river;
Stout hearts beat high on Tilbury's plain,
Our Marathon for ever!

No breeze above, but on the mast
The pennon shook as with the blast.
Forth from the cloud the day-god strode,
O'er bristling helms the splendour glow'd,
Leaped the loud joy from earth to heaven,
As, through the ranks asunder riven,

The warrior-woman rode!

Hark, thrilling through the armed line
The martial accents ring,

"Though mine the woman's form, yet mine
The heart of England's king!"*
Wo to the island and the maid!
The pope has preach'd the new crusade,
His sons have caught the fiery zeal;
The monks are merry in Castile;

Bold Parma on the main ;
And through the deep exulting swee
The thunder-steeds of Spain.
What meteor rides the sulphurous gale?
The flames have caught the giant sail!
Fierce Drake is grappling prow to prow;
God and St. George for victory now!

"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!
Pope Sixtus wept the last crusade ;
His sons consumed before his zeal,
The monks are woful in Castile;
Your monument the main,
The glaive and gale record your tale,
Ye thunder-steeds of Spain!

Turn from the gorgeous past:
Its lonely ghost thou art!

A tree, that, in the world of bloom,
Droops, spectral in its leafless gloom,
Before the grinding blast;

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;
Type of the woman-deity AFFECTION;
That only Eve which never knew a fall,
Sad as the dove, but, like the dove, surviving all!

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
Did ye
drink in your liquid melancholy?
Tell me, belovéd eyes!

Was it from yon lone orb, that ever by
The quiet moon, like Hope on Patience, hovers,
The star to which hath sped so many a sigh,
Since lutes in Lesbos hallowed it to lovers?
Was that your fount, sweet eyes?

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
Clear mirrors, and the passions took their place,
Where a serene if solemn awe had made
The scene a temple to the elder race:

The struggles of humanity became
Not those of Titan with a god, nor those

Of the great heart with that unbodied name
By which our ignorance would explain our woes
And justify the heavens,—the ruthless Fate;
But truer to the human life, thine art
Made thought with thought and will with will
And placed the god and Titan in the heart;

[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
Fill with unsympathizing gods the scene,
But grief alone can teach us what is man!

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,
Is what, when done with a less dainty grace,
Plain folks call "Theft!" You owe eight thousand
pistoles,

Minus one crown, two liards!

PATIENCE AND HOPE.

UPON a barren steep,
Above a stormy deep,

I saw an angel watching the wild sea;
Earth was that barren steep,
Time was that stormy deep,
And the opposing shore, eternity!

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!"
Hush'd on the angel's breast,
I saw an infant rest,

Smiling upon the gloomy hell below.
"What is the infant prest,
O angel, to thy breast?"

"The child God gave me in the long-ago?

"Mine all upon the earth-
The angel's angel-birth,

Smiling all terror from the howling wild!"
-Never may I forget

The dream that haunts me yet,
Of Patience nursing Hope-the angel and the child!

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,
Along the moonbeams gently glide,
Until they halted, hand in hand,
My infant couch beside.

With smiles, the cradle bending o'er,

I heard their whispered voices breathe-
The one a crown of diamond wore,
The one a myrtle wreath:
"Twin brothers from the better clime,
A poet's spell hath lured to thee;
Say which shall, in the coming time,
Thy chosen fairy be?"

I stretch'd my hand, as if my grasp
Could snatch the toy from either brow;
And found a leaf within my clasp,

One leaf-as fragrant now!
If both in life may not be won,

Be mine, at least, the gentler brotherFor he whose life deserves the one,

In death may gain the other.

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