CROMWELL. [moved and aside] And this bold soul I am about to lose!
[Aloud] If me thou canst forget, and all my love,
Remember Edith! Is she thy betrothed,
And wilt thou leave her too? Thou hid'st thy face.
Stay, Hubert, stay; I, who could order, stoop
And pray thee stay.
CECIL. No—no!
CROMWELL. [with coldness and dignity] Then have thy will.
Desert the cause of freedom at her need,—
False to thy chief, and perjured to thy love.
I do repent me that I have abased
Myself thus humbly. Go, Sir, you have leave;
I would not have one man in honest Israel
Whose soul hath hunger for the flesh of Egypt.
CECIL. [approaching Cromwell slowly]
Canst thou yet make the doubtful past appear
Done but in sorrowing justice?—canst thou yet
Cement these jarring factions—join in peace
The friends alike of royalty and freedom,
And give the state, secured by such good laws
As now we may demand, once more a king?
CROMWELL. A king! Why name that word? A head—a chief,
Perchance, the Commonwealth may yet decree!
Speak on!
CECIL. I care not, Cromwell, for the name;
But he who bears the orb and sway of power
Must, if for peace we seek, be chosen from
The Stuarts' lineage. Charles the First is dead:
Wilt thou proclaim his son?
CROMWELL. [laughing bitterly] An Exile, yes! A Monarch, never!
CECIL. Cromwell, fare thee well!
As friends we meet no more. May God so judge
As I now judge, believing thee as one
Whom a bold heart, and the dim hope of power,
And the blind wrath of faction, and the spur
Of an o'ermastering Fate, impel to what
The Past foretells already to the Future.
Dread man, farewell.
[exit Cecil]
CROMWELL. [after a pause] So from my side hath gone
An upright heart; and in that single loss,
Methinks more honesty hath said farewell,
Than if a thousand had abjured my banners.
Charles sleeps, and feels no more the grinding cares,
The perils and the doubts that wait on POWER.
For him, no more the uneasy day,—the night
At war with sleep,—for him are hushed, at last,
Loud Hate and hollow Love. Reverse thy Law,
O blind compassion of the human heart!
And let not death which feels not, sins not—weeps not—
Rob Life of all that Suffering asks from Pity.
[He paces to and fro the scene, and pauses at last opposite the doors at the back of the stage]
Lo! what a slender barrier parts in twain
The presence of the breathing and the dead—
The vanquisher and victim—the firm foot
Of lusty strength, and the unmoving mass
Of what all strength must come to. Yet once more,
Ere the grave closes on that solemn dust,
Will I survey what men have feared to look on.
[He opens the doors—the coffin of the king on the back ground lighted by tapers—Cromwell approaches it slowly, lifts the pall, and gazes, as if on the corpse within]
'Tis a firm frame; the sinews strongly knit;
The chest deep set and broad; save some grey hairs
Saddening those locks of love, no sign of age.
Had nature been his executioner
He would have outlived me! and to this end—
This narrow empire—this unpeopled kingdom—
This six feet realm—the overlust of sway
Hath been the guide! He would have stretched his will
O'er that unlimited world which men's souls are!
Fettered the earth's pure air—for freedom is
That air to honest lips;—and here he lies,
In dust most eloquent—to after time
A never silent oracle for kings!
Was this the hand that strained within its grasp
So haught a sceptre? this the shape that wore
Majesty like a garment? Spurn that clay—
It can resent not; speak of royal crimes,
And it can frown not: schemeless lies the brain
Whose thoughts were sources of such fearful deeds.
What things are we, O Lord, when at thy will
A worm like this could shake the mighty world!
A few years since, and in the port was moored
A bark to far Columbia's forests bound;
And I was one of those indignant hearts
Panting for exile in the thirst for freedom;
Then, that pale clay (poor clay that was a king!)
Forbade my parting, in the wanton pride
Of vain command, and with a fated sceptre
Waved back the shadow of the death to come.
Here stands that baffled and forbidden wanderer,
Loftiest amid the wrecks of ruined empire,
Beside the coffin of a headless king!
He thrall'd my fate—I have prepared his doom:
He made me captive—lo! his narrow cell!
[Advancing to the front of the stage]
So hands unseen do fashion forth the earth
Of our frail schemes into our funeral urns;
So, walking dream-led in life's sleep, our steps
Move blindfold to the scaffold or the throne!—
Ay, to the Throne! From that dark thought I strike
The light which cheers me onward to my goal.
Wild though the night, and angry though the winds,
High o'er the billows of the battling sea
My Spirit, like a bark, sweeps on to Fortune!