MOSES
PLEADING BEFORE PHARAOH.
Scene—The Council Hall of Pharoah—Moses, Aaron, and Elders of Israel, awaiting the King's appearance.
Time—Supposed to be immediately prior to the Plague of Darkness.
Aaron to Moses.—Mark'st thou what troops are mustering round the palace?
Behold the guards are doubled at the gates—
The avenues are bristling with their spears;
What may this mean?
Moses.—It means we are beset,
And shall be dead ere night, if fierce Arbaces
Can move the king to wrath; and he who sent us
Permit our death.
Aaron.—My life may well be yielded;
But must thou die, my brother, Heaven directed
To be as God unto me? Hapless Israel,
Mourn without comfort if thy prophet fall!
Moses.—Fear not for thy life or my own, God with us;
Stand we before the king—for soon begins
The work a thousand years shall not conclude.
I feel assured our prayer will not be granted;
And I behold the ills which angry heaven
Will yet inflict on this devoted land:
The tenfold plagues, the last dread retribution,
The billowy grave prepar'd for Egypt's pride,
I see as things which pass before my eyes.
Our desert wanderings, perils and privations,
Miraculous deliverance from them all—
The solemn code in God's own thunder spoken,
The weary struggle, and triumphant close
Of Israel's sufferings, in that Land of Promise
Which I shall see, but not survive to enter—
Would I could see no more!
Thou only God, worthy of Israel's worship,
Who by the humblest instruments canst work
Thy purposes of goodness, hear thy servant!
Thou knowest that I am weak—be thou my strength;
Thou knowest that I am dull and slow of speech—
Do thou inspire such language as may sink
Into a heart self-steel'd against thy will!
Fill thought, and soul, and sense with thy idea,
That I, so lately taken from the desert,
May stand confess'd, tho' in a monarch's presence,
The chosen servant of the King of Kings;
And oh, if in the book of thy decrees
There be a space by which this prince and people,
Whom, spite of our deep wrongs, I cannot hate,
May find thy mercy and escape this doom,
Then let thy servant's prayer be even for Egypt,
Which, though of late oppressive, once hath been
Thy Israel's refuge in her utmost need.
PHARAOH AND HIS TRAIN ENTER.
Pharaoh, (being seated.)—Stand forward, Moses, and ye Hebrew leaders—
Say, wherefore do ye trouble me again
For that which I have sworn by all our Gods
Never to grant while I am king of Egypt?
Arbaces to Moses, observing that he made no obeisance.
And ere thou speakest to thy lord and master,
Unmanner'd peasant, proud rebellious slave,
Crouch to his throne, and gladly do that homage
Which all the brave and highborn in the land,
Honor'd and happy think themselves to render.
Moses.—The base prostration of an abject slave
Can do no honor to a sovereign prince;
As Pharoah's bondman I would not stand here,
But keep aloof, and quietly fold my chains
On arms which could not burst their links asunder;
And as the ambassador of Israel's God,
Call'd by his voice, sustain'd by boundless power,
And prompted by his spirit, ne'er will I
Bend to a sovereign who dishonors mine.
Pharaoh.—Wave we this question now; I stand not here
On points of ceremony—say thy errand.
Moses.—In fear that thou wilt promise as before,
And as before deceive us—yet in hope
That thou mayst profit by the part I speak.
The God we serve hath chosen Israel's children
Forth of this land to spread his name and worship
Throughout the earth—and by my voice he bids thee
Release our tribes from bondage, and permit
Their peaceable departure to the desert.
Pharaoh.—And who is Israel's God, that I should serve him?
Or who the God of Abram, that my kingdom
Should lose a million vassals at his word?
Moses.—Thou askest who is God? and how shall I,
A worm but crawling on his footstool, tell thee?
Or how wilt thou, so blinded by a worship
Degrading beyond utterance, understand?
Were every thought a ray direct from heaven,
And every word an angel's, I might hope—
But, Prince,—the Deity I serve is God
And Lord of Hosts; his name the Great Jehovah,
Supreme, Omniscient, present every where—
Strong to destroy, omnipotent to save.
By his command—the breathing of his will—
Beam'd in existence yonder brilliant orb—
The infinite host of heaven—the fruitful earth
Thou walk'st on and enjoyest, knowing little
Of regions close around thee, and but nothing
Of realms unmatch'd in beauty, which thy sons,
In the hundredth generation, will not see—
Nor dream of their existence. He alone
Can truly claim our gratitude for blessings
Shower'd without stint or measure on our heads,
Love, worship, loyalty, and true obedience,
But mix'd with wholesome fear. Not for thy throne,
With power a hundred fold of that thou hast—
Not for the sway of hosts innumerable
As sands in yonder desert—or the wealth
That earth contains and may produce through ages—
For giant strength, or patriarch's length of days—
Knowing Jehovah, would I tempt his wrath,
Or brave the stroke of his destroying arm.
Pharaoh.—Hast thou e'er seen the God of whom thou speakest?
Moses.—In his essential spiritual being? never!
Nor ever shall, until this mortal frame
Dissolve into the dust from whence it came,
And my emancipated spirit fly:
I trust and hope to dwell with him forever.
But in the unconsum'd, tho' burning bush,
Of which I spake when first I came to thee,
I have beheld the outward manifestation
Of his great presence, and have heard him speak
His holy purpose, and expound to me
What I should say—how plead with thee for freedom.
Pharaoh.—Apis and Isis are the Gods of Egypt—
And many more my ancestors have worshipped;
I too will serve them, nor embrace a faith
Preach'd by a leader of insurgent slaves,
Or such as would be so. But did Jehovah,
The God thou vauntest, prompt thee with a fraud?
Hast thou not striven t' amuse me with the thought
That sacrifice alone required your journey
Into the wilderness? and when deception
Might not avail, hast thou not own'd thy purpose,
And claim'd a right to quit the land forever?
Moses.—The crowned king who broke his solemn promise
To let our tribes depart, might well have spar'd
A pointless sarcasm and unjust reproach
To human policy. If I have stoop'd
So far as not to tell thee all the truth,
Be sure it was to spare thy pride alone,
And naught beside. But glance thine eye around—
Behold our people helpless and unarm'd,
Beaten with stripes, o'erlabor'd, driven and watch'd
By spears of vigilant armies. Be thou judge
If that deliverance can be their achievement,
Or less than God can free them from thy hands;
Then say if purpos'd fraud can be a means
With him who wrought such wonders in the land.
Let us depart, great prince. The voice of Justice,
True wisdom's dictates, and thy prescient fears
Of greater evils yet befalling Egypt,
All speak one word; that word—Emancipation.
Pharaoh.—Setting aside thy magic, or the wrath,
If such it be, of Israel's God, what wisdom
Worthy a prince's thought, would be in this?
Moses.—The highest and the greatest—that which chooses
Nobly t' endure a smaller present evil,
And shun a distant great calamity.
As truly as the waves of distant ocean,
Chasing each other, rise by turns and fall—
As truly as the air, surcharged with heat,
Gendereth the thunderstorm which clears and cools it—
So surely, in the troubled sea of life,
Wrong wreaketh wrong, and evil followeth evil,
And moral tempests purge the crimes of nations.
When will the sons of men be taught this lesson?
What tears, what blood must flow, what lands be ravaged,
What empires overthrown, or peopled only
With widows and with orphans, ere they learn it?
The wrong is ours, but such redress we seek not;
God hath our quarrel taken in his hands:
Our fathers journey'd here, th' invited guests
Of Egypt's king, and were by him receiv'd
With hospitality and royal bounty,
Which well became a prince whom Joseph serv'd.
I need not tell thee of the slow encroachments
By which the alien guests became thy subjects,
Or call to mind the hard and stern decree
Which, in a day, transferr'd us from subjection
To chain'd and absolute bondage; or the edict
Which gave our sons to death as soon as born:
These things are fresh in memory—but oblivion
Shall cover all, if thou but set us free.
Pharaoh, to one of his Council.—Osirion, I have ever held thee wise;
Speak thy opinion of this man's petition.
Osirion.—Most gracious prince, as briefly as I may.
The past experience fully proves this truth,
That in all prosperous and happy lands
There is a chain of order and gradation.
Vicegerents, counsellors, governors, warlike chiefs,
Subservient leaders, freeborn subjects, slaves,
Link within link, each in its proper place,
And guided by the sovereign hand alone.
Who is not bound on earth? If any can
Be free from all control save that of heaven,
The greatest and the wisest only should. (Bowing to Pharoah.)
Another truth is this—that be a nation
Govern'd as though the Gods themselves were here,
And order'd all things that we do on earth,
There will be innovators—men who seek
For their own ends to break establish'd usage,
And raise a storm of discord and commotion,
No matter what it wreck, so they be wafted
To the point they have in view; and never yet
Have they begun their work at the fountain head
Of a nation's wisdom, but by base appeals
To the lowest passions of the vulgar herd,
Furious and blind as snakes in the summer heat.
This man, half hypocrite and half fanatic,
Nurtur'd from childhood by thy royal sister—
Rear'd in thy palaces, and stor'd with learning
The most profound that Egypt could afford—
In our religious mysteries deeply skill'd,
And taking rank among our wisest magi—
Bold, politic and crafty, aims no doubt
To organize and sway a faith and nation
Broadly distinct from all upon the earth.
What asks he at thy hands? Emancipation!
Claim'd too of right, with most rebellious threats,
Even to thy face, on thy presum'd refusal—
And with what justice, Pharaoh, thou mayst judge.
Israel hath sojourned here four hundred years—
Thriven on our soil—found refuge here from famine—
Had Goshen for a heritage—and shar'd
Peace and protection with thy native subjects;
Shall they not share the vassalage and toil?
Nor see I aught unjust that they should be
Bondmen to those who fed and guarded them.
Throughout the world there must be slaves and masters;
The features of these men, their creed, their language,
And barbarous right of circumcision, mark
Them as a race made to be known as slaves:
And whether it were just t' enthrall these tribes,
Pharaoh, concerns not thee or us. Our sires
Bequeath'd the heritage of sway to us,
And their's entail'd the slavery on their sons.
Never, I trust, will I behold the day
When, at the bidding of a God unseen
By us, and even by him who takes his name,
These slaves be yielded, and the broad foundation,
Our social fabric's base, be taken away.
True policy, the guide which, when a king
Forsakes his throne's security, is gone,
Cries loudly to detain them. Where will be
The public works which make thy name eternal,
And raise thy kingdom to the loftiest height
Of national glory, if these men be freed?
And where the quiet obedience of thy subjects,
When those who were their menials, and perform'd
All offices of drudgery, are gone?
Let these men be arrested, and their bodies
Detained as hostages for Egypt's safety.
Pharaoh to Moses.—Hear'st thou?
Moses.—I grieve that thou who hast beheld
God's visits unto Egypt mark'd with ruin,
Canst reason yet, and listen too to others,
As if it were with me, and not my Maker,
Thou had'st to deal. Do I not know these magi—
Their priestly craft and worthless jugglery?
Presume not too far on thy power t' oppress.
Though proof against remorse for what is past—
Though deaf unto the cries of slaves in bondage,
And dumb when words of freedom should be spoken,
Prince, be not blind to thine own dearest interests—
Stake not thy life, thy honor and thy crown,
Thy people's safety, and thy kingdom's strength,
Upon the words of the most shallow fools
That ever tempted man to his destruction.
Trust not their crooked policy, which bids thee
Prefer convenient wrong to truth and justice;
Do that thy conscience whispers thee is right,
And leave the rest to him who sent me hither.
The God of Israel is the God of Egypt,
And though unhonored, careth for her sons.
Pharaoh to Arbaces.—Arbaces, give thy counsel.
Arbaces.—King of Egypt,
The sharpest evils need the sharpest cures.
Here, in the very grasp of thy great power,
Stands open-mouth'd rebellion; all the chiefs
And advocates of Hebrew discontent
Are now before thee: speak but thou the word,
And ere an hour be past, their traitorous heads
Shall grace thy palace wall, and their torn limbs
Be sent through Goshen and the land of Egypt,
A dreadful warning—and my life shall answer
For peace hereafter, and most tame submission
From all thy Hebrew vassals.
Pharaoh, to Moses.—Hearest thou?
Moses.—I hear, and smile to hear it. God of mercy!
Look not with utter scorn on thy creation,
Nor let thy anger rise, that these poor worms
With barely light to view the rapid stream
On which they drift from time to eternity,
Must purple it with blood, and freely deal
Death and extermination on each other,
As though thy uncreated power and thunders
Were all thy own, and thou hadst never been.
Pharaoh, to Arbaces.—T' imprison him and let him live, were folly—
And I have yielded to my sister's prayers
He should not die, unless the Hebrews rise
In servile war against us. (To Moses.) Thou mayst leave me,
And go where'er thou choosest; but thy people
Go not in peace while I am king of Egypt.
Moses.—The wisdom that would point thee to the path
Of peace, of honor, and thy Maker's favor,
Is lost on thee, and all appeals to justice
As well were made unto the marble steps
That base thy throne. But though thou fearest not now,
Hereafter thou wilt tremble, and it may be,
Own, when too late, the God thou now despisest.
Once more I must address thee. King of Egypt,
I charge thee in the name of High Jehovah,
Let all the Hebrews quit thy land in peace,
And bear their wives, their offspring, and their goods
Far from thy utmost limits, never more
To own thy sceptre, or to call thee Lord.
Nor send them empty handed. Let them take
From thine own subjects aught that may be needed
For journeying in the desert. Sayst thou no?
Then on thy country, from the king, who sits
Upon his throne, down to the meanest peasant,
The curse, the peril, and the plague will fall.
Darkness and tempests, pestilence and death
Shall triumph yet, and wring the very hearts
Of men grown faint and sick with utter ruin.
Nor this the worst. If then thy haughty soul
Experience cannot teach, or suffering bend,
Th' outstretched arm of God himself will sweep
Thee and thy legions from the earth forever.
And when yon pyramids, the unsolv'd enigma
Of future ages, rais'd by stripes and groans
Of trampled Israel—piles which thou hast built,
As if t' outlast the world on which they stand,
Are batter'd by barbarians, or have crumbled
Beneath the sure and silent hand of time,
The story of thy overthrow shall be
Had in remembrance, and the name of Pharaoh
A living proverb in the mouths of men
For harden'd heart and blind infatuation.
Pharaoh.—And durst thou threaten me, thou sorcerer?
Out of my presence—I defy thy magic,
Disown thy God, and scoff at his commands.
Moses.—Aye, wage thy puny strength against th' Almighty,
And feel his power, whoso name thou dost blaspheme.
See in what splendor rides the sun above us;
Few moments more will blot it from thy sight.
(Raising his rod to Heaven.) Shadows of night, arise! and let the gloom,
That mantled space, before the stars of heaven
Hail'd the first dawning of their God's creation,
Envelope Egypt! Yea, let utter darkness,
Intense as pride in this besotted prince,
Black as their thoughts who counsel him to murder,
Enduring, all-pervading, palpable,
Even to the sense of feeling, rayless, cheerless,
Be as a funeral pall upon this land!
Pharaoh.—Another plague. Beware, or thou mayst find
The faith I plighted to my sister fail,
And but for that thou hadst been dead ere now.
Officers.—Guard us from ruin, now, ye Gods of Egypt!
See, Pharaoh! see, the deepest midnight rising
Round heaven's extremest verge, and merging fast
Towards the fading sun, whose sickly beams
Flicker and die before the gathering horror.
Great prince, relent, and let this people go;
Should Egypt be destroy'd, to keep her slaves——
Pharaoh.—Peace, on your lives! and you, ye Hebrew leaders,
Approach while I can see ye. I know not,
Or care to know, if this be incantation,
Or work of other Gods than those of Egypt;
But while I live, and hold the sceptre here,
Tho' all the accumulated gloom of hell,
And all its plagues be wasted on the land,
I will not let ye go, or bate one tittle
Of royal right to hold ye in subjection.
(To Moses.) Listen, and mark my words! they touch thy life:
Go from my presence, nor return unsummon'd—
For in the day thou seest me thou shalt die.
Moses.—Thou hast said well—I'll see thy face no more.