The Saint's Tragedy

Isen. Despise you? What's here? King Andrew's child? St. John's sworn maid? Who dares despise you? Out upon these Saxons! They sang another note when I was younger, When from th...

Lewis. So all these lands are mine; these yellow meads-- These village greens, and forest-fretted hills, With dizzy castles crowned. Mine! Why that word Is rich in promise, in t...

Soph. What! you will not? You hear, Dame Isentrude, She will not wear her coronet in the church, Because, forsooth, the crucifix within Is crowned with thorns. You hear her.

Fool [drowning his voice]. So we'll flatter them up, and we'll cocker them up, Till we turn young brains; And pamper the brach till we make her a wolf, And get bit by the legs f...

Eliz. No streak yet in the blank and eyeless east-- More weary hours to ache, and smart, and shiver On these bare boards, within a step of bliss. Why peevish? 'Tis mine own will...

Guta. From a nun who was a shepherdess in her youth--sadly plagued she was by a cruel stepmother, till she fled to a convent and found rest to her soul.

Con. This night she swears obedience to me! Wondrous Lord! How hast Thou opened a path, where my young dreams May find fulfilment: there are prophecies Upon her, make me bold. W...

Lady. Doubtless she is most holy--but for wisdom-- Say if 'tis wise to spurn all rules, all censures, And mountebank it in the public ways Till she becomes a jest?

Eliz. So I meant it-- And use it as a penance for my pride; And yet, alas, through my own vulgar likings Or stubborn self-conceit, 'tis none to me. I marvel how the Saints thus...

Over the wild moor, in reddest dawn of morning, Gaily the huntsman down green droves must roam: Over the wild moor, in grayest wane of evening, Weary the huntsman comes wanderin...

Woman's Voice. How can she know what 'tis, for months and months To stoop and straddle in the clogging fallows, Bearing about a living babe within you? And then at night to fat...

Count Hugo. I can't forget it, as I am a Christian man. To ask for a stoup of beer at breakfast, and be told there was no beer allowed in the house--her Ladyship had given all t...

Oh that we two lay sleeping In our nest in the churchyard sod, With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast, And our souls at home with God!

Lewis. Alas! the time is near; I must be gone-- There are our liegemen; how you'll welcome us, Returned in triumph, bowed with paynim spoils, Beneath the victor cross, to part n...

Isen. What? Always thus, my Princess? Is this wise, By day with fasts and ceaseless coil of labour; About the ungracious poor--hands, eyes, feet, brain O'ertasked alike--'mid si...

Eliz. You are afraid to shelter me--afraid. And so you thrust me forth, to starve and freeze. Soon said. Why palter o'er these mean excuses, Which tempt me to despise you?

Eliz. Yes--to go with him. I have kept my oath too long to break it now. I will to Marpurg, and there waste away In meditation and in pious deeds, Till God shall set me free.

1st Peas. Oh dear! oh dear! If any man had told me that I should ride forty miles on this errand, to see him that went out flesh come home grass, like the flower of the field!

Conrad. What's this new weakness? At your own request We come to hear your self-imposed vows-- And now you shrink: where are the high-flown fancies Which but last week, beside y...

C. Wal. You are wise, for the world's upside down here. The last gateway brought us out of Christendom into the New Jerusalem, the fifth Monarchy, where the Saints possess the e...

Pray! pray! or thou'lt go mad. . . . . . The past's our own: No fiend can take that from us! Ah, poor boy! Had I, like thee, been bred from my black birth-hour In filth and sham...

Con. As I expected-- A sermon-mongering herd about her death-bed, Stifling her with fusty sighs, as flocks of rooks Despatch, with pious pecks, a wounded brother. Cant, howl, an...

1st Monk. So they will publish to-day the Landgravine's canonisation, and translate her to the new church prepared for her. Alack, now, that all the world should be out sight-se...

Con. The work is done! Diva Elizabeth! And I have trained one saint before I die! Yet now 'tis done, is't well done? On my lips Is triumph: but what echo in my heart? Alas! the...

Gent. Talk not of honour--Hell's aflame within me: Foul water quenches fire as well as fair; If I do meet him he shall die the death, Come fair, come foul: I tell you, there are...