Eliz. Then I had best
Roll to their door in lacqueyed equipage,
And dole my halfpence from my satin purse—
I am their sister—I must look like one.
I am their queen—I’ll prove myself the greatest
By being the minister of all. So come—
Now to my pastime, [aside] And in happy toil
Forget this whirl of doubt—We are weak, we are weak,
Only when still: put thou thine hand to the plough,
The spirit drives thee on.
Isen. You live too fast!
Eliz. Too fast? We live too slow—our gummy blood
Without fresh purging airs from heaven, would choke
Slower and slower, till it stopped and froze.
God! fight we not within a cursed world,
Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends—
Each word we speak has infinite effects—
Each soul we pass must go to heaven or hell—
And this our one chance through eternity
To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake,
Or like the meteor stone, though whelmed itself,
Kindle the dry moors into fruitful blaze—
And yet we live too fast!
Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad, if thou wilt:
Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven,
And that thy last deed ere the judgment-day.
When all’s done, nothing’s done. There’s rest above—
Below let work be death, if work be love! [Exeunt.]
SCENE VIII
A Chamber in the Castle. Counts Walter, Hugo, etc., Abbot, and Knights.
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 the malt to the poor.
Abbot. To give away the staff of life, eh?
C. Hugo. The life itself, Sir, the life itself. All that barley, that would have warmed many an honest fellow’s coppers, wasted in filthy cakes.
Abbot. The parent of seraphic ale degraded into plebeian dough! Indeed, Sir, we have no right to lessen wantonly the amount of human enjoyment!
C. Wal. In heaven’s name, what would you have her do, while the people were eating grass?