Muza. Away with him.
Jul. Slaves! not before I lift
My voice to heaven and man: though enemies
Surround me, and none else, yet other men
And other times shall hear: the agony
Of an oppressed and of a bursting heart
No violence can silence; at its voice
The trumpet is o’erpowered, and glory mute,
And peace and war hide all their charms alike.
Surely the guests and ministers of heaven
Scatter it forth through all the elements;
So suddenly, so widely, it extends,
So fearfully men breathe it, shuddering
To ask or fancy how it first arose.
Muza. Yes, they shall shudder—but will that, henceforth,
Molest my privacy, or shake my power?
Jul. Guilt hath pavilions, but no privacy.
The very engine of his hatred checks
The torturer in his transport of revenge,
Which, while it swells his bosom, shakes his power
And raises friends to his worst enemy.
Muza. Where now are thine? will they not curse the day
That gave thee birth, and hiss thy funeral!
Thou hast left none who could have pitied thee.
Jul. Many, nor those alone of tenderer mould,
For me will weep—many alas through me!
Already I behold my funeral.
The turbid cities wave and swell with it,
And wrongs are lost in that day’s pageantry:
Oppressed and desolate, the countryman
Receives it like a gift; he hastens home,
Shows where the hoof of Moorish horse laid waste
His narrow croft and winter garden-plot,
Sweetens with fallen pride his children’s lore,
And points their hatred; but applauds their tears.
Justice, who came not up to us through life,
Loves to survey our likeness on our tombs,
When rivalry, malevolence, and wrath,
And every passion that once stormed around,
Is calm alike without them as within.
Our very chains make the whole world our own,
Bind those to us who else had passed us by,
Those at whose call brought down to us, the light
Of future ages lives upon our name.
Muza. I may accelerate that meteor’s fall,
And quench that idle ineffectual light
Without the knowledge of thy distant world.
Jul. My world and thine are not that distant one.
Is age less wise, less merciful, than grief,
To keep this secret from thee, poor old man?
Thou canst not lessen, canst not aggravate
My sufferings, canst not shorten nor extend
Half a sword’s length between my God and me.
I thank thee for that better thought than fame,
Which none, however, who deserve, despise,
Nor lose from view till all things else are lost.
Abd. Julian, respect his age, regard his power.
Many who feared not death have dragged along
A piteous life in darkness and in chains.
Never was man so full of wretchedness
But something may be suffered after all,
Perhaps in what clings round his breast, and helps
To keep the ruin up, which he amid
His agony and frenzy overlooks,
But droops upon at last, and clasps, and dies.
Jul. Although a Muza send far underground,
Into the quarry whence the palace rose,
His mangled prey, climes alien and remote
Mark and record the pang. While overhead
Perhaps he passes on his favourite steed,
Less heedful of the misery he inflicts
Than of the expiring sparkle from a stone;
Yet we, alive or dead, have fellow men
If ever we have served them, who collect
From prisons and from dungeons our remains,
And bear them in their bosom to their sons.
Man’s only relics are his benefits;
These, be there ages, be there worlds, between,
Retain him in communion with his kind:
Hence is our solace, our security,
Our sustenance, till heavenly truth descends—
Losing in brightness and beatitude
The frail foundations of these humbler hopes—
And, like an angel guiding us, at once
Leaves the loose chain and iron gate behind.