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The open sea. Edgar Lee Masters
Читать онлайн.Название The open sea
Год выпуска 0
isbn 4064066124816
Автор произведения Edgar Lee Masters
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
That is your place in Time: you killed Marat!
You sneaked upon a great man, true man, weak
From torture of disease, contracted serving
Democracy, and slew him like a beast.
Charlotte Corday, assassin! That’s your place,
And character in history.
Charlotte
Let it be.
Assassin. Well, assassins kill assassins:
The words repel, destroy each other, sir.
If any grieve for me I beg of them
To think of me in the Elysian Fields
With Brutus and the heroes.
Chaveau-Lagarde
Gentlemen!
The deed’s admitted. What to say, but ask
Your clemency? The girl’s fanatical.
The prosecutor argues well for me
In saying that a lie corrupted her,
And maddened her to act; which is to say
If that lie were a truth, she had the right
To slay Marat. With this regard Voltaire,
Great minds before him, painted Brutus great
Because he slew a tyrant. But if Cæsar
Was not a tyrant, how does Brutus stand
But mad-man who believed, was honest, slew
In honesty of heart? Then what’s the case?
To punish for ill-judging of the facts,
Or mercy show for human frailty
Of judgment and of vision? Great Marat
Has done his work, and left his legacy.
We cannot help him, meting death for death.
And would his noble spirit ask her death?
Think of it! You will answer no, I think.
He would say: kill the ideas of Caen,
The world which fires these Charlottes with a lie.
Smallpox is deadly as a butcher knife,
He had to die. The syllabus is death
In this our human logic: what’s the odds
What premises produce conclusions? Knives,
Consumptions, fevers, wars? We may be gods
Withholding death where we have power to kill;
Withhold it saying: She mistook, believed
A lie, was faultless for believing it,
And slew believing. Were it truth and all
Believed we would applaud, as nations war,
Bound in a common vision of one truth.
The Revolution, France, will lose not, rather
Gain by this clemency; ’twill lift a light,
First in the world, of reason, justice purged
Of hatred’s refuse: vengeance, fear, all passions
Of bitterness of soul. We worship Reason,
And this is Reason.
Charlotte
You have done your part
And served me well. I thank you.
The Jury
Let her join
Brutus in the Elysian Fields. We say:
The guillotine!
The Mob
(Outside) To the guillotine! To the guillotine!
Charlotte
I am content.
A MAN CHILD IS BORN
(February 12th, 1809. Log Hut near Hodgenville, Ky.) (A neighbor woman is talking)
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