The Saint's Tragedy
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1st Lady. What will she do now, when this farce is over?
2d Lady. Found an abbey, that’s the fashion, and elect herself abbess—tyrannise over hysterical girls, who are forced to thank her for making them miserable, and so die a saint.
Knight. Will you pray to her, my fair queen?2d Lady. Not I, sir; the old Saints send me lovers enough, and to spare—yourself for one.
1st Lady. There is the giant-killer slain. But see—they have stopped: who is that raising the coffin lid?
2d Lady. Her familiar spirit, Conrad the heretic-catcher.Knight. I do defy him! Thou art my only goddess;My saint, my idol, my—ahem!1st Lady. That well’s run dry.Look, how she trembles—Now she sinks, all shivering,Upon the pavement—Why, you’ll see nought thereFlirting behind the pillar—Now she rises—And choking down that proud heart, turns to the altar—Her hand upon the coffin.Eliz. I thank thee, gracious Lord, who hast fulfilledThine handmaid’s mighty longings with the sightOf my beloved’s bones, and dost vouchsafeThis consolation to the desolate.I grudge not, Lord, the victim which we gave Thee,Both he and I, of his most precious life,To aid Thine holy city: though Thou knowestHis sweetest presence was to this world’s joyAs sunlight to the taper—Oh! hadst Thou spared—Had Thy great mercy let us, hand in hand,Have toiled through houseless shame, on beggar’s dole,I had been blest: Thou hast him, Lord, Thou hast him—Do with us what Thou wilt! If at the priceOf this one silly hair, in spite of Thee,I could reclothe these wan bones with his manhood,And clasp to my shrunk heart my hero’s self—I would not give it!I will weep no more—Lead on, most holy; on the sepulchreWhich stands beside the choir, lay down your burden.[To the people.]
Now, gentle hosts, within the close hard by,Will we our court, as queen of sorrows, hold—The green graves underneath us, and aboveThe all-seeing vault, which is the eye of God,Judge of the widow and the fatherless.There will I plead my children’s wrongs, and there,If, as I think, there boil within your veinsThe deep sure currents of your race’s manhood,Ye’ll nail the orphans’ badge upon your shields,And own their cause for God’s. We name our champions—Rudolf, the Cupbearer, Leutolf of Erlstetten,Hartwig of Erba, and our loved Count Walter,Our knights and vassals, sojourners among you.Follow us.[Exit Elizabeth, etc.; the crowd following.]
ACT IV
SCENE I
Night. The church of a convent. Elizabeth, Conrad, Gerard, Monks, an Abbess, Nuns, etc., in the distance.
Conrad. What’s this new weakness? At your own requestWe come to hear your self-imposed vows—And now you shrink: where are the high-flown fanciesWhich but last week, beside your husband’s bier,You vapoured forth? Will you become a jest?You might have counted this tower’s cost, beforeYou blazoned thus your plans abroad.Eliz. Oh! spare me!Con. Spare? Spare yourself; and spare big easy words,Which prove your knowledge greater than your grace.Eliz. Is there no middle path? No way to keepMy love for them, and God, at once unstained?Con. If this were God’s world, Madam, and not the devil’s,It might be done.Eliz. God’s world, man! Why, God made it—The faith asserts it God’s.Con. Potentially—As every christened rogue’s a child of God,Or those old hags, Christ’s brides—Think of your horn-book—The world, the flesh, and the devil—a goodly leash!And yet God made all three. I know the fiend;And you should know the world: be sure, be sure.The flesh is not a stork among the cranes.Our nature, even in Eden gross and vile,And by miraculous grace alone upheld,Is now itself, and foul, and damned, must dieEre we can live; let halting worldlings, madam,Maunder against earth’s ties, yet clutch them still.Eliz. And yet God gave them to me—Con. In the world;Your babes are yours according to the flesh;How can you hate the flesh, and love its fruit?Eliz. The Scripture bids me love them.Con. Truly so,While you are forced to keep them; when God’s mercyDoth from the flesh and world deliverance offer,Letting you bestow them elsewhere, then your loveMay cease with its own usefulness, and the spiritRange in free battle lists; I’ll not waste reasons—We’ll leave you, Madam, to the Spirit’s voice.[Conrad and Gerard withdraw.]
Eliz. [alone]. Give up his children! Why, I’d not give upA lock of hair, a glove his hand had hallowed:And they are his gift; his pledge; his flesh and bloodTossed off for my ambition! Ah! my husband!His ghost’s sad eyes upbraid me! Spare me, spare me!I’d love thee still, if I dared; but I fear God.And shall I never more see loving eyesLook into mine, until my dying day?That’s this world’s bondage: Christ would have me free,And ’twere a pious deed to cut myselfThe last, last strand, and fly: but whither? whither?What if I cast away the bird i’ the handAnd found none in the bush? ’Tis possible—What right have I to arrogate Christ’s bride-bed?Crushed, widowed, sold to traitors? I, o’er whomHis billows and His storms are sweeping? God’s not angry:No, not so much as we with buzzing fly;Or in the moment of His wrath’s awakeningWe should be—nothing. No—there’s worse than that—What if He but sat still, and let be be?And these deep sorrows, which my vain conceitCalls chastenings—meant for me—my ailments’ cure—Were lessons for some angels far away,And I the corpus vile for the experiment?The grinding of the sharp and pitiless wheelsOf some high Providence, which had its mainspringAges ago, and ages hence its end?That were too horrible!—To have torn up all the roses from my garden,And planted thorns instead; to have forged my griefs,And hugged the griefs I dared not forge; made earthA hell, for hope of heaven; and after all,These homeless moors of life toiled through, to wake,And find blank nothing! Is that angel-worldA gaudy window, which we paint ourselvesTo hide the dead void night beyond? The present?Why here’s the present—like this arched gloom,It hems our blind souls in, and roofs them overWith adamantine vault, whose only voiceIs our own wild prayers’ echo: and our future?—It rambles out in endless aisles of mist,The farther still the darker—O my Saviour!My God! where art Thou? That’s but a tale about Thee,That crucifix above—it does but show TheeAs Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now—Thy grief, but not Thy glory: where’s that gone?I see it not without me, and within meHell reigns, not Thou![Dashes herself down on the altar steps.]
[Monks in the distance chanting.]
‘Kings’ daughters were among thine honourable women’—Eliz. Kings’ daughters! I am one!Monks. ‘Hearken, O daughter, and consider; incline thine ear:Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house,So shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty:For He is thy Lord God, and worship thou Him.’Eliz. [springing up]. I will forget them!They stand between my soul and its allegiance.Thou art my God: what matter if Thou love me?I am Thy bond-slave, purchased with Thy life-blood;I will remember nothing, save that debt.Do with me what Thou wilt. Alas, my babies!He loves them—they’ll not need me.[Conrad advancing.]
Con. How now, Madam!Have these your prayers unto a nobler willWon back that wandering heart?Eliz. God’s will is spoken!The flesh is weak; the spirit’s fixed, and dares,—Stay! confess, sir,Did not yourself set on your brothers hereTo sing me to your purpose?Con. As I liveI meant it not; yet had I bribed them to it,Those words were no less God’s.Eliz. I know it, I know it;And I’ll obey them: come, the victim’s ready.[Lays her hand on the altar. Gerard, Abbess, and Monks descend and advance.]
All worldly goods and wealth, which once I loved,I do now count but dross: and my beloved,The children of my womb, I now regardAs if they were another’s. God is witnessMy pride is to despise myself; my joyAll insults, sneers, and slanders of mankind;No creature now I love, but God alone.Oh, to be clear, clear, clear, of all but Him!Lo, here I strip me of all earthly helps—[Tearing off her clothes.]
Naked and barefoot through the world to followMy naked Lord—And for my filthy pelf—Con. Stop, Madam—Eliz. Why so, sir?Con. Upon thine oath!Thy wealth is God’s, not thine—How darest renounceThe trust He lays on thee? I do command thee,Being, as Aaron, in God’s stead, to keep itInviolate, for the Church and thine own needs.Eliz. Be it so—I have no part nor lot in’t—There—I have spoken.Abbess. O noble soul! which neither gold, nor love,Nor scorn can bend!Gerard. And think what pure devotions,What holy prayers must they have been, whose guerdonIs such a flood of grace!Nuns. What love again!What flame of charity, which thus prevailsIn virtue’s guest!Eliz. Is self-contempt learnt thus?I’ll home.Abbess. And yet how blest, in these cool shadesTo rest with us, as in a land-locked pool,Touched last and lightest by the ruffling breeze.Eliz. No! no! no! no! I will not die in the dark:I’ll breathe the free fresh air until the last,Were it but a month—I have such things to do—Great schemes—brave schemes—and such a little time!Though now I am harnessed light as any foot-page.Come, come, my ladies. [Exeunt Elizabeth, etc.]Ger. Alas, poor lady!Con. Why alas, my son?She longs to die a saint, and here’s the way to it.Ger. Yet why so harsh? why with remorseless knifeHome to the stem prune back each bough and bud?I thought the task of education wasTo strengthen, not to crush; to train and feedEach subject toward fulfilment of its nature,According to the mind of God, revealedIn laws, congenital with every kindAnd character of man.Con. A heathen dream!Young souls but see the gay and warm outside,And work but in the shallow upper soil.Mine deeper, and the sour and barren rockWill stop you soon enough. Who trains God’s Saints,He must transform, not pet—Nature’s corrupt throughout—A gaudy snake, which must be crushed, not tamed,A cage of unclean birds, deceitful ever;Born in the likeness of the fiend, which AdamDid at the Fall, the Scripture saith, put on.Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook,To make him sport for thy maidens? Scripture saithWho is the prince of this world—so forget not.Ger. Forgive, if my more weak and carnal judgmentBe startled by your doctrines, and doubt tremblingThe path whereon you force yourself and her.Con. Startled? Belike—belike—let doctrines be;Thou shalt be judged by thy works; so see to them,And let divines split hairs: dare all thou canst;Be all thou darest;—that will keep thy brains full.Have thy tools ready, God will find thee work—Then up, and play the man. Fix well thy purpose—Let one idea, like an orbed sun,Rise radiant in thine heaven; and then round itAll doctrines, forms, and disciplines will rangeAs dim parhelia, or as needful clouds,Needful, but mist-begotten, to be dashedAside, when fresh shall serve thy purpose better.Ger. How? dashed aside?Con. Yea, dashed aside—why not?The truths, my son, are safe in God’s abysses—While we patch up the doctrines to look like them.The best are tarnished mirrors—clumsy bridges,Whereon, as on firm soil, the mob may walkAcross the gulf of doubt, and know no danger.We, who see heaven, may see the hell which girds it.Blind trust for them. When I came here from Rome,Among the Alps, all through one frost-bound dawn,Waiting with sealed lips the noisy day,I walked upon a marble mead of snow—An angel’s spotless plume, laid there for me:Then from the hillside, in the melting noon,Looked down the gorge, and lo! no bridge, no snow—But seas of writhing glacier, gashed and scoredWith splintered gulfs, and fathomless crevasses,Blue lips of hell, which sucked down roaring riversThe fiends who fled the sun. The path of SaintsIs such; so shall she look from heaven, and seeThe road which led her thither. Now we’ll go,And find some lonely cottage for her lodging;Her shelter now is but a crumbling ruinRoofed in with pine boughs—discipline more healthyFor soul, than body: She’s not ripe for death.[Exeunt.]SCENE II
Open space in a suburb of Marpurg, near Elizabeth’s Hut. Count Walter and Count Pama of Hungary entering.
C. Pama. I have prepared my nerves for a shock.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 earth. Not a beggar here but has his pockets full of fair ladies’ tokens: not a barefooted friar but rules a princess.
C. Pama. Creeping, I opine, into widows’ houses, and for a pretence making long prayers.
C. Wal. Don’t quote Scripture here, sir, especially in that gross literal way! The new lights here have taught us that Scripture’s saying one thing, is a certain proof that it means another. Except, by the bye, in one text.
C. Pama. What’s that?C. Wal. ‘Ask, and it shall be given you.’C. Pama. Ah! So we are to take nothing literally, that they may take literally everything themselves?
C. Wal. Humph! As for your text, see if they do not saddle it on us before the day is out, as glibly as ever you laid it on them. Here comes the lady’s tyrant, of whom I told you.
[
Conrad advances from the Hut.]
Con. And what may Count Walter’s valour want here?[Count Walter turns his back.]
C. Pama. I come, Sir Priest, from Andreas, king renownedOf Hungary, ambassador unworthyUnto the Landgravine, his saintly daughter;And fain would be directed to her presence.Con. That is as I shall choose. But I’ll not stop you.I do not build with straw. I’ll trust my pupilsTo worldlings’ honeyed tongues, who make long prayers,And enter widows’ houses for pretence.There dwells the lady, who has chosen too longThe better part, to have it taken from her.Besides that with strange dreams and revelationsShe has of late been edified.C. Wal. Bah! but they will serve your turn—and hers.Con. What do you mean?C. Wal. When you have cut her off from child and friend, and even Isentrudis and Guta, as I hear, are thrust out by you to starve, and she sits there, shut up like a bear in a hole, to feed on her own substance; if she has not some of these visions to look at, how is she, or any other of your poor self-gorged prisoners, to help fancying herself the only creature on earth?
Con. How now? Who more than she, in faith and practice, a living member of the Communion of Saints? Did she not lately publicly dispense in charity in a single day five hundred marks and more? Is it not my continual labour to keep her from utter penury through her extravagance in almsgiving? For whom does she take thought but for the poor, on whom, day and night, she spends her strength? Does she not tend them from the cradle, nurse them, kiss their sores, feed them, bathe them, with her own hands, clothe them, living and dead, with garments, the produce of her own labour? Did she not of late take into her own house a paralytic boy, whose loathsomeness had driven away every one else? And now that we have removed that charge, has she not with her a leprous boy, to whose necessities she ministers hourly, by day and night? What valley but blesses her for some school, some chapel, some convent, built by her munificence? Are not the hospices, which she has founded in divers towns, the wonder of Germany?—wherein she daily feeds and houses a multitude of the infirm poor of Christ? Is she not followed at every step by the blessings of the poor? Are not her hourly intercessions for the souls and bodies of all around incessant, world-famous, mighty to save? While she lives only for the Church of Christ, will you accuse her of selfish isolation?
C. Wal. I tell you, monk, if she were not healthier by God’s making than ever she will be by yours, her charity would be by this time double-distilled selfishness; the mouths she fed, cupboards to store good works in; the backs she warmed, clothes-horses to hang out her wares before God; her alms not given, but fairly paid, a halfpenny for every halfpenny-worth of eternal life; earth her chess-board, and the men and women on it merely pawns for her to play a winning game—puppets and horn-books to teach her unit holiness—a private workshop in which to work out her own salvation. Out upon such charity!
Con. God hath appointed that our virtuous deedsEach merit their rewards.C. Wal. Go to—go to. I have watched you and your crew, how you preach up selfish ambition for divine charity and call prurient longings celestial love, while you blaspheme that very marriage from whose mysteries you borrow all your cant. The day will come when every husband and father will hunt you down like vermin; and may I live to see it.
Con. Out on thee, heretic!C. Wal. [drawing]. Liar! At last?C. Pama. In God’s name, sir, what if the Princess find us?C. Wal. Ay—for her sake. But put that name on me again, as you do on every good Catholic who will not be your slave and puppet, and if thou goest home with ears and nose, there is no hot blood in Germany.
[They move towards the cottage.]
Con. [alone]. Were I as once I was, I could revenge:But now all private grudges wane like mistIn the keen sunlight of my full intent;And this man counts but for some sullen bullWho paws and mutters at unheeding pilgrimsHis empty wrath: yet let him bar my path,Or stay me but one hour in my life-purpose,And I will fell him as a savage beast,God’s foe, not mine. Beware thyself, Sir Count![Exit. The Counts return from the Cottage.]
C. Pama. Shortly she will return; here to expect herIs duty both, and honour. Pardon me—Her humours are well known here? Passers byWill guess who ’tis we visit?C. Wal. Very likely.C. Pama. Well, travellers see strange things—and do them too.Hem! this turf-smoke affects my breath: we mightDraw back a space.C. Wal. Certie, we were in luck,Or both our noses would have been snapped offBy those two she-dragons; how their sainthoods squealedTo see a brace of beards peep in! Poor child!Two sweet companions for her loneliness!C. Pama. But ah! what lodging! ’Tis at that my heart bleeds!That hut, whose rough and smoke-embrowned sparsDip to the cold clay floor on either side!Her seats bare deal!—her only furnitureSome earthen crock or two! Why, sir, a dungeonWere scarce more frightful: such a choice must argueAberrant senses, or degenerate blood!C. Wal. What? Were things foul?C. Pama. I marked not, sir.C. Wal. I did.You might have eat your dinner off the floor.C. Pama. Off any spot, sir, which a princess’ footHad hallowed by its touch.C. Wal. Most courtierly.Keep, keep those sweet saws for the lady’s self.[Aside] Unless that shock of the nerves shall send them flying.
C. Pama. Yet whence this depth of poverty? I thoughtYou and her champions had recovered for herHer lands and titles.C. Wal. Ay; that coward HenryGave them all back as lightly as he took them:Certie, we were four gentle applicants—And Rudolph told him some unwelcome truths—Would God that all of us might hear our sins,As Henry heard that day!C. Pama. Then she refused them?C. Wal. ‘It ill befits,’ quoth she, ‘my royal blood,To take extorted gifts; I tender backBy you to him, for this his mortal life,That which he thinks by treason cheaply bought;To which my son shall, in his father’s right,By God’s good will, succeed. For that dread heightMay Christ by many woes prepare his youth!’C. Pama. Humph!C. Wal. Why here—no, ’t cannot be—C. Pama. What hither comesForth from the hospital, where, as they told us,The Princess labours in her holy duties?A parti-coloured ghost that stalks for penance?Ah! a good head of hair, if she had kept itA thought less lank; a handsome face too, trust me,But worn to fiddle-strings; well, we’ll be knightly—[As Elizabeth meets him.]
Stop, my fair queen of rags and patches, turnThose solemn eyes a moment from your distaff,And say, what tidings your magnificenceCan bring us of the Princess?Eliz. I am she.[Count Pama crosses himself and falls on his knees.]
C. Pama. O blessed saints and martyrs! Open, earth!And hide my recreant knighthood in thy gulf!Yet, mercy, Madam! for till this strange dayWho e’er saw spinning wool, like village-maid,A royal scion?C. Wal. [kneeling]. My beloved mistress!Eliz. Ah! faithful friend! Rise, gentles, rise, for shame;Nay, blush not, gallant sir. You have seen, ere now,Kings’ daughters do worse things than spinning wool,Yet never reddened. Speak your errand out.C. Pama. I from your father, Madam—Eliz. Oh! I divine;And grieve that you so far have journeyed, sir,Upon a bootless quest.C. Pama. But hear me, Madam—If you return with me (o’erwhelming honour!For such mean bodyguard too precious treasure)Your father offers to you half his wealth;And countless hosts, whose swift and loyal bladesFrom traitorous grasp shall vindicate your crown.Eliz. Wealth? I have proved it, and have tossed it from me:I will not stoop again to load with clay.War? I have proved that too: should I turn looseOn these poor sheep the wolf whose fangs have gored me,God’s bolt would smite me dead.C. Pama. Madam, by his gray hairs he doth entreat you.Eliz. Alas! small comfort would they find in me!I am a stricken and most luckless deer,Whose bleeding track but draws the hounds of wrathWhere’er I pause a moment. He has childrenBred at his side, to nurse him in his age—While I am but an alien and a changeling,Whom, ere my plastic sense could impress takeEither of his feature or his voice, he lost.C. Pama. Is it so? Then pardon, Madam, but your fatherMust by a father’s right command—Eliz. Command! Ay, that’s the phrase of the world: well—tell him,But tell him gently too—that child and fatherAre names, whose earthly sense I have forsworn,And know no more: I have a heavenly spouse,Whose service doth all other claims annul.C. Wal. Ah, lady, dearest lady, be but ruled!Your Saviour will be there as near as here.Eliz. What? Thou too, friend? Dost thou not know me better?Wouldst have me leave undone what I begin?[To Count Pama] My father took the cross, sir: so did I:
As he would die at his post, so will I die:He is a warrior: ask him, should I leaveThis my safe fort, and well-proved vantage-ground,To roam on this world’s flat and fenceless steppes?C. Pama. Pardon me, Madam, if my grosser witFail to conceive your sense.Eliz. It is not needed.Be but the mouthpiece to my father, sir;And tell him—for I would not anger him—Tell him, I am content—say, happy—tell himI prove my kin by prayers for him, and massesFor her who bore me. We shall meet on high.And say, his daughter is a mighty tree,From whose wide roots a thousand sapling suckers,Drink half their life; she dare not snap the threads,And let her offshoots wither. So farewell.Within the convent there, as mine own guests,You shall be fitly lodged. Come here no more.C. Wal. C. Pama. Farewell, sweet Saint! [Exeunt.]Eliz. May God go with you both.No! I will win for him a nobler name,Than captive crescents, piles of turbaned heads,Or towns retaken from the Tartar, give.In me he shall be greatest; my reportShall through the ages win the quires of heavenTo love and honour him; and hinds, who blessThe poor man’s patron saint, shall not forgetHow she was fathered with a worthy sire. [Exit.]SCENE III
Night. Interior of Elizabeth’s hut. A leprous boy sleeping on a Mattress. Elizabeth watching by him.]
Eliz. My shrunk limbs, stiff from many a blow,Are crazed with pain.A long dim formless fog-bank, creeping low,Dulls all my brain.I remember two young lovers,In a golden gleam.Across the brooding darkness shrieking hoversThat fair, foul dream.My little children call to me,‘Mother! so soon forgot?’From out dark nooks their yearning faces startle me,Go, babes! I know you not!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-hourIn filth and shame, counting the soulless monthsOnly by some fresh ulcer! I’ll be patient—Here’s something yet more wretched than myself.Sleep thou on still, poor charge—though I’ll not grudgeOne moment of my sickening toil about thee,Best counsellor—dumb preacher, who dost warn meHow much I have enjoyed, how much have left,Which thou hast never known. How am I wretched?The happiness thou hast from me, is mine,And makes me happy. Ay, there lies the secret—Could we but crush that ever-craving lustFor bliss, which kills all bliss, and lose our life,Our barren unit life, to find againA thousand lives in those for whom we die.So were we men and women, and should holdOur rightful rank in God’s great universe,Wherein, in heaven and earth, by will or nature,Nought lives for self—All, all—from crown to footstool—The Lamb, before the world’s foundations slain—The angels, ministers to God’s elect—The sun, who only shines to light a world—The clouds, whose glory is to die in showers—The fleeting streams, who in their ocean-gravesFlee the decay of stagnant self-content—The oak, ennobled by the shipwright’s axe—The soil, which yields its marrow to the flower—The flower, which feeds a thousand velvet worms,Born only to be prey for every bird—All spend themselves for others: and shall man,Earth’s rosy blossom—image of his God—Whose twofold being is the mystic knotWhich couples earth and heaven—doubly boundAs being both worm and angel, to that serviceBy which both worms and angels hold their life—Shall he, whose every breath is debt on debt,Refuse, without some hope of further wageWhich he calls Heaven, to be what God has made him?No! let him show himself the creature’s lordBy freewill gift of that self-sacrificeWhich they perforce by nature’s law must suffer.This too I had to learn (I thank thee, Lord!),To lie crushed down in darkness and the pit—To lose all heart and hope—and yet to work.What lesson could I draw from all my own woes—Ingratitude, oppression, widowhood—While I could hug myself in vain conceitsOf self-contented sainthood—inward raptures—Celestial palms—and let ambition’s gorgeTaint heaven, as well as earth? Is selfishnessFor time, a sin—spun out to eternityCelestial prudence? Shame! Oh, thrust me forth,Forth, Lord, from self, until I toil and dieNo more for Heaven and bliss, but duty, Lord,Duty to Thee, although my meed should beThe hell which I deserve![Sleeps.]