Wal. None, if you could trust them;
But they are the people’s creatures; poor men give them
Their power at the church, and take it back at the ale-house:
Then what’s the friar to the starving peasant?
Just what the abbot is to the greedy noble—
A scarecrow to lear wolves. Go ask the church plate,
Safe in knights’ cellars, how these priests are feared.
Bruised reeds when you most need them.—No, my Lord;
Copy them, trust them never.
Lewis. Copy? wherein?
Wal. In letting every man
Do what he likes, and only seeing he does it
As you do your work—well. That’s the Church secret
For breeding towns, as fast as you breed roe-deer;
Example, but not meddling. See that hollow—
I knew it once all heath, and deep peat-bog—
I drowned a black mare in that self-same spot
Hunting with your good father: Well, he gave
One jovial night, to six poor Erfurt monks—
Six picked-visaged, wan, bird-fingered wights—
All in their rough hair shirts, like hedgehogs starved—
I told them, six weeks’ work would break their hearts:
They answered, Christ would help, and Christ’s great mother,
And make them strong when weakest: So they settled:
And starved and froze.
Lewis. And dug and built, it seems.
Wal. Faith, that’s true. See—as garden walls draw snails,
They have drawn a hamlet round; the slopes are blue,
Knee-deep with flax, the orchard boughs are breaking
With strange outlandish fruits. See those young rogues
Marching to school; no poachers here, Lord Landgrave,—
Too much to be done at home; there’s not a village
Of yours, now, thrives like this. By God’s good help
These men have made their ownership worth something.
Here comes one of them.
Lewis. I would speak to him—
And learn his secret.—We’ll await him here.
[Enter Conrad.]
Con. Peace to you, reverend and war-worn knight,
And you, fair youth, upon whose swarthy lip
Blooms the rich promise of a noble manhood.
Methinks, if simple monks may read your thoughts,
That with no envious or distasteful eyes
Ye watch the labours of God’s poor elect.
Wal. Why—we were saying, how you cunning rooks
Pitch as by instinct on the fattest fallows.
Con. For He who feeds the ravens, promiseth
Our bread and water sure, and leads us on
By peaceful streams in pastures green to lie,
Beneath our Shepherd’s eye.