5 | Here is the key and casket. |
MANFRED | |
Thou may’st retire. | |
[ | |
There is a calm upon me – | |
Inexplicable stillness! which till now | |
Did not belong to what I knew of life. | |
If that I did not know philosophy | |
10 | To be of all our vanities the motliest, |
The merest word that ever fool’d the ear | |
From out the schoolman’s jargon, I should deem | |
The golden secret, the sought ‘Kalon,’ found, | |
And seated in my soul. It will not last, | |
15 | But it is well to have known it, though but once: |
It hath enlarged my thoughts with a new sense, | |
And I within my tablets would note down | |
That there is such a feeling. Who is there? | |
[ | |
HERMAN | |
20 | To greet your presence. |
[ | |
ABBOT | |
MANFRED | |
Thy presence honours them and blesseth those | |
Who dwell within them. | |
ABBOT | |
But I would fain confer with thee alone. | |
25 | MANFRED |
ABBOT | |
And good intent, must plead my privilege; | |
Our near, though not acquainted neighbourhood, | |
May also be my herald. Rumours strange, | |
30 | And of unholy nature, are abroad, |
And busy with thy name; a noble name | |
For centuries: may he who bears it now | |
Transmit it unimpair’d! | |
MANFRED | |
ABBOT | |
35 | Which are forbidden to the search of man |
That with the dwellers of the dark abodes, | |
The many evil and unheavenly spirits | |
Which walk the valley of the shade of death, | |
Thou communest. I know that with mankind, | |
40 | Thy fellows in creation, thou dost rarely |
Exchange thy thoughts, and that thy solitude | |
Is as an anchorite’s, were it but holy. | |
MANFRED | |
ABBOT | |
45 | Even thy own vassals – who do look on thee |
With most unquiet eyes. Thy life’s in peril. | |
MANFRED | |
ABBOT | |
I would not pry into thy secret soul; | |
But if these things be sooth, there still is time | |
50 | For penitence and pity: reconcile thee |
With the true church, and through the church to heaven. | |
MANFRED | |
I may have been, or am, doth rest between | |
Heaven and myself. – I shall not choose a mortal | |
55 | To be my mediator. Have I sinn’d |
Against your ordinances? prove and punish! | |
ABBOT | |
But penitence and pardon; – with thyself | |
The choice of such remains – and for the last, | |
60 | Our institutions and our strong belief |
Have given me power to smooth the path from sin — | |
To higher hope and better thoughts; the first | |
I leave to heaven, – ‘Vengeance is mine alone!’ | |
So saith the Lord, and with all humbleness | |
65 | His servant echoes back the awful word. |
MANFRED | |
Nor charm in prayer — nor purifying form | |
Of penitence – nor outward look – nor fast – | |
Nor agony – nor, greater than all these, | |
70 | The innate tortures of that deep despair, |
Which is remorse without the fear of hell, | |
But all in all sufficient to itself | |
Would make a hell of heaven — can exorcise | |
From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense | |
75 | Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge |
Upon itself; there is no future pang | |
Can deal that justice on the self-condemn’d | |
He deals on his own soul. | |
ABBOT | |
For this will pass away, and be succeeded | |
80 | By an auspicious hope, which shall look up |
With calm assurance to that blessed place | |
Which all who seek may win, whatever be | |
Their earthly errors, so they be atoned: | |
And the commencement of atonement is | |
85 | The sense of its necessity. — Say on — |
And all our church can teach thee shall be taught; | |
And all we can absolve thee shall be pardon’d. | |
MANFRED | |
The victim of a self-inflicted wound, | |
90 | To shun the torments of a public death |
From senates once his slaves, a certain soldier, | |
With show of loyal pity, would have stanch’d | |
The gushing throat with his officious robe; | |
The dying Roman thrust him back, and said – | |
95 | Some empire still in his expiring glance, |
‘It is too late – is this fidelity?’ | |
ABBOT | |
MANFRED | |
‘It is too late!’ | |
ABBOT | |
To reconcile thyself with thy own soul, | |
100 | And thy own soul with heaven. Hast thou no hope? |
‘Tis strange – even those who do despair above, | |
Yet shape themselves some fantasy on earth, | |
To which frail twig they cling, like drowning men. | |
MANFRED | |
105 | And noble aspirations in my youth, |
To make my own the mind of other men; | |
The enlightener of nations; and to rise | |
I knew not whither – it might be to fall; | |
But fall, even as the mountain-cataract, | |
110 | Which having leapt from its more dazzling height, |
Even in the foaming strength of its abyss, | |
(Which casts up misty columns that become | |
Clouds raining from the re-ascended skies,) | |
Lies low but mighty still. – But this is past, | |
115 | My thoughts mistook themselves. |
ABBOT | |
MANFRED | |
Must serve who fain would sway – and soothe – and sue – | |
And watch all time — and pry into all place — | |
And be a living lie – who would become | |
120 | A mighty thing amongst the mean, and such |
The mass are; I disdain’d to mingle with | |
A herd, though to be leader – and of wolves. | |
The lion is alone, and so am I. | |
ABBOT | |
125 | MANFRED |
And yet not cruel; for I would not make, | |
But find a desolation: – like the wind, | |
The red-hot breath of the most lone Simoom, | |
Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o’er | |
130 | The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast, |
And revels o’er their wild and arid waves, | |
And seeketh not, so that it is not sought, | |
But being met is deadly; such hath been | |
The course of my existence; but there came | |
135 | Things in my path which are no more. |
ABBOT | |
I ’gin to fear that thou art past all aid | |
From me and from my calling; yet so young, | |
I still would — | |
MANFRED | |
Of mortals on the earth, who do become | |
140 | Old in their youth, and die ere middle age, |
Without the violence of warlike death: | |
Some perishing of pleasure — some of study — | |
Some worn with toil – some of mere weariness – | |
Some of disease – and some insanity – | |
145 | And some of wither’d, or of broken hearts; |