Asef. Oh! You ’ve been so far!—too far!
Raf. We rode all day, but made no terms for food. The people are afraid. Whoever gives us bread forfeits his life and home.
Asef. I bought some meat of a poor woman to-day. She needed the money.
Raf. And if the Imperials find her out they ’ll murder her and set her hut in flames!
Asef. Oh! What shall we do?
Raf. We are an army. We ’ll do as armies do. Take food where we can find it.
Raf. Yes, love, we ’ll play the robber to fill the mouth of Liberty,—she ’s fed too long on thistles.
Asef. She ’s a stern mistress, Rafael.
Raf. But sweeter, love,
Her harshest frown that summer smiles of kings!
O, I reproach her not, even when I see
My dearest friends lie dying in her name!
A bed of stones is soft enough for me
If she but rock to sleep,—a crust to-day,
To-morrow none, and at her board I ’m fed.
But when I look on you, my traitor blood
Flies from her service. Oh, to see these hands
That plucked no beauty ruder than the rose,
So meanly laboring in the basest needs!
Your gentle body resting on cold earth,
Glad of a blanket ’tween you and the sod,
While in your bed the foreign robber sleeps!
This shakes my loyalty till I could hate
The fair, unspotted cause my sword is drawn in!