LITMIR.BIZ

      King [to the Marquis, after Lerma is gone].

      Speak on!

      Mar. [after a pause] I feel, Sire, all the worth—

      King.Speak on!

      Y' had something more to say.

      Mar.Not long since, Sire,

      I chanced to pass through Flanders and Brabant.

      So many rich and flourishing provinces;

      A great, a mighty people, and still more,

      An honest people!—And this people's Father!

      That, thought I, must be divine: so thinking,

      I stumbled on a heap of human bones.

      You are in the right, you must proceed so.

      That you could do, what you saw you must do,

      Fills me with a shuddering admiration.

      Pity that the victim welt'ring in its blood

      Should speak so feeble an eulogium

      On the spirit of the priest! That mere men,

      Not beings of a calmer essence, write

      The annals of the world! Serener ages

      Will displace the age of Philip; these will bring

      A milder wisdom; the subject's good will then

      Be reconcil'd to th' prince's greatness;

      The thrifty State will learn to prize its children,

      And necessity no more will be inhuman.

      King. And when, think you, would those blessed ages

      Have come round, had I recoil'd before

      The curse of this? Behold my Spain! Here blooms

      The subject's good, in never-clouded peace:

      Such peace will I bestow on Flanders.

      Mar. Peace of a churchyard! And you hope to end

      What you have entered on? Hope to withstand

      The timeful change of Christendom; to stop

      The universal Spring that shall make young

      The countenance o' th' Earth? You purpose, single

      In all Europe, alone, to fling yourself

      Against the wheel of Destiny that rolls

      For ever its appointed course; to clutch

      Its spokes with mortal arm? You may not, Sire!

      Already thousands have forsook your kingdoms,

      Escaping glad though poor: the citizen

      You lost for conscience' sake, he was your noblest.

      With mother's arms Elizabeth receives

      The fugitives, and rich by foreign skill,

      In fertile strength her England blooms. Forsaken

      Of its toilsome people, lies Grenada

      Desolate; and Europe sees with glad surprise

      Its enemy faint with self-inflicted wounds.

      Plant for Eternity and death the seed?

      Your harvest will be nothingness. The work

      Will not survive the spirit of its former;

      It will be in vain that you have labour'd;

      That you have fought the fight with Nature;

      And to plans of Ruin consecrated

      A high and royal lifetime. Man is greater

      Than you thought. The bondage of long slumber

      He will break; his sacred rights he will reclaim.

      With Nero and Busiris will he rank

      The name of Philip, and—that grieves me, for

      You once were good.

      King.How know you that?

      Mar. [with warm energy]You were;

      Yes, by th' All-Merciful! Yes, I repeat it.

      Restore to us what you have taken from us.

      Generous as strong, let human happiness

      Stream from your horn of plenty, let souls ripen

      Round you. Restore us what you took from us.

      Amid a thousand kings become a king.

      Oh, could the eloquence of all the millions,

      Who participate in this great moment,

      Hover on my lips, and raise into a flame

      That gleam that kindles in your eyes!

      Give up this false idolatry of self,

      Which makes your brothers nothing! Be to us

      A pattern of the Everlasting and the True!

      Never, never, did a mortal hold so much,

      To use it so divinely. All the kings

      Of Europe reverence the name of Spain:

      Go on in front of all the kings of Europe!

      One movement of your pen, and new-created

      Is the Earth. Say but, Let there be freedom!

      [Throwing himself at his feet.

      King [surprised, turning his face away, then again towards Posa].

      Singular enthusiast! Yet—rise—I—

      Mar. Look round and view God's lordly universe:

      On Freedom it is founded, and how rich

      Is it with Freedom! He, the great Creator,

      Has giv'n the very worm its sev'ral dewdrop;

      Ev'n in the mouldering spaces of Decay,

      He leaves Free-will the pleasures of a choice.

      This world of yours! how narrow and how poor!

      The rustling of a leaf alarms the lord

      Of Christendom. You quake at every virtue;

      He, not to mar the glorious form of Freedom,

      Suffers that the hideous hosts of Evil

      Should run riot in his fair Creation.

      Him the maker we behold not; calm

      He veils himself in everlasting laws,

      Which and not Him the sceptic seeing exclaims,

      'Wherefore a God? The World itself is God.'

      And never did a Christian's adoration

      So praise him as this sceptic's blasphemy.

      King. And such a model you would undertake,

      On Earth, in my domains to imitate?

      Mar. You, you can: who else? To th' people's good

      Devote the kingly power, which far too long

      Has struggled for the greatness of the throne.

      Restore

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