I hold he saw The unexampled sin, ordained the novel law, Whereof first instrument was first intelligence Found loyal here. I hold that, failing human sense, The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace. Earth oped not, neither fell the sky, for prompt was found A man and man enough, head-sober and heart-sound Ready to hear God's voice, resolute to obey. Ivàn Ivànovitch, I hold, has done, this day, No otherwise than did, in ages long ago, Moses when he made known the purport of that flow Of fire athwart the law's twain-tables! I proclaim Ivàn Ivànovitch God's servant!"
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When the Amen grew dull And died away and left acquittal plain adjudged, "Amen!" last sighed the lord. "There's none shall say I grudged Escape from punishment in such a novel case. Deferring to old age and holy life,—be grace Granted! say I. No less, scruples might shake a sense Firmer than I boast mine. Law's law, and evidence Of breach therein lies plain,—blood-red-bright—all may see! Yet all absolve the deed: absolved the deed must be!"
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So, while the youngers raised the corpse, the elders trooped Silently to the house: where halting, some one stooped, Listened beside the door; all there was silent too. Then they held counsel; then pushed door and, passing through, Stood in the murderer's presence.
Ivàn Ivànovitch Knelt, building on the floor that Kremlin rare and rich He deftly cut and carved on lazy winter nights. Some five young faces watched, breathlessly, as, to rights, Piece upon piece, he reared the fabric nigh complete. Stèscha, Ivàn's old mother, sat spinning by the heat Of the oven where his wife Kàtia stood baking bread. Ivàn's self, as he turned his honey-colored head, Was just in the act to drop, 'twixt fir-cones,—each a dome, The scooped-out yellow gourd presumably the home Of Kolokol the Big: the bell, therein to hitch, —An acorn-cup—was ready: Ivàn Ivànovitch Turned with it in his mouth.
They told him he was free As air to walk abroad. "How otherwise?" asked he.
ROBERT BROWNING.
A DAGGER OF THE MIND FROM "MACBETH," ACT II. SC. 1.
[Macbeth, before the murder of Duncan, meditating alone, sees the image of a dagger in the air, and thus soliloquizes:]
Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee:— I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still; And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before.—There's no such thing: It is the bloody business, which informs Thus to mine eyes.—Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder, Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost.—Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear The very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.—Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.