Max. He is no common person; he requires
No common confidence: allow him space;
The proper limit he himself will set.
Quest. The trial shows it!
Max.Ay! Thus it is with them!
Still so! All frights them that has any depth;
Nowhere are they at ease but in the shallows.
Oct. [to Quest.] Let him have his way, my friend! The argument
Will not avail us.
Max.They invoke the spirit
I' th' hour of need, and shudder when he rises.
The great, the wonderful, must be accomplished
Like a thing of course!—In war, in battle,
A moment is decisive; on the spot
Must be determin'd, in the instant done.
With ev'ry noble quality of nature
The leader must be gifted: let him live, then,
In their noble sphere! The oracle within him,
The living spirit, not dead books, old forms,
Not mould'ring parchments must he take to counsel.
Oct. My Son! despise not these old narrow forms!
They are as barriers, precious walls and fences,
Which oppressed mortals have erected
To mod'rate the rash will of their oppressors.
For the uncontrolled has ever been destructive.
The way of Order, though it lead through windings,
Is the best. Right forward goes the lightning
And the cannon-ball: quick, by the nearest path,
They come, op'ning with murderous crash their way,
To blast and ruin! My Son! the quiet road
Which men frequent, where peace and blessings travel,
Follows the river's course, the valley's bendings;
Modest skirts the cornfield and the vineyard,
Revering property's appointed bounds;
And leading safe though slower to the mark.
Quest. O, hear your Father! him who is at once
A hero and a man!
Oct.It is the child
O' th' camp that speaks in thee, my Son: a war
Of fifteen years has nursed and taught thee; peace
Thou hast never seen. My Son, there is a worth
Beyond the worth of warriors: ev'n in war itself
The object is not war. The rapid deeds
Of power, th' astounding wonders of the moment—
It is not these that minister to man
Aught useful, aught benignant or enduring.
In haste the wandering soldier comes, and builds
With canvas his light town: here in a moment
Is a rushing concourse; markets open;
Roads and rivers crowd with merchandise
And people; Traffic stirs his hundred arms.
Ere long, some morning, look,—and it is gone!
The tents are struck, the host has marched away;
Dead as a churchyard lies the trampled seed-field,
And wasted is the harvest of the year.
Max. O Father! that the Kaiser would make peace!
The bloody laurel I would gladly change
For the first violet Spring should offer us,
The tiny pledge that Earth again was young!
Oct. How's this? What is it that affects thee so?