MOSES
PLEADING BEFORE PHARAOH.
Scene—The Council Hall of Pharoah—Moses, Aaron, and Elders of Israel, awaiting the King's appearance.
Time—Supposed to be immediately prior to the Plague of Darkness.
Aaron to Moses.—Mark'st thou what troops are mustering round the palace?
Behold the guards are doubled at the gates—
The avenues are bristling with their spears;
What may this mean?
Moses.—It means we are beset,
And shall be dead ere night, if fierce Arbaces
Can move the king to wrath; and he who sent us
Permit our death.
Aaron.—My life may well be yielded;
But must thou die, my brother, Heaven directed
To be as God unto me? Hapless Israel,
Mourn without comfort if thy prophet fall!
Moses.—Fear not for thy life or my own, God with us;
Stand we before the king—for soon begins
The work a thousand years shall not conclude.
I feel assured our prayer will not be granted;
And I behold the ills which angry heaven
Will yet inflict on this devoted land:
The tenfold plagues, the last dread retribution,
The billowy grave prepar'd for Egypt's pride,
I see as things which pass before my eyes.
Our desert wanderings, perils and privations,
Miraculous deliverance from them all—
The solemn code in God's own thunder spoken,
The weary struggle, and triumphant close
Of Israel's sufferings, in that Land of Promise
Which I shall see, but not survive to enter—
Would I could see no more!
Thou only God, worthy of Israel's worship,
Who by the humblest instruments canst work
Thy purposes of goodness, hear thy servant!
Thou knowest that I am weak—be thou my strength;
Thou knowest that I am dull and slow of speech—
Do thou inspire such language as may sink
Into a heart self-steel'd against thy will!
Fill thought, and soul, and sense with thy idea,
That I, so lately taken from the desert,
May stand confess'd, tho' in a monarch's presence,
The chosen servant of the King of Kings;
And oh, if in the book of thy decrees
There be a space by which this prince and people,
Whom, spite of our deep wrongs, I cannot hate,
May find thy mercy and escape this doom,
Then let thy servant's prayer be even for Egypt,
Which, though of late oppressive, once hath been
Thy Israel's refuge in her utmost need.
PHARAOH AND HIS TRAIN ENTER.