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Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,
Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,
Void of wit, honesty, and temperance;

If Satan were my lord, as theirs, our God
Pattern of all I should avoid to do ;

Were I an enemy of my God and King

And of good men, as ye are ;- I should merit

Your fearful state and gilt prosperity,

Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn
To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.

But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not

The only earthly favour ye can yield,

Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,-
Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.

Even as my Master did,

Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth,

Or earth be like a shadow in the light

Of Heaven absorbed. Some few tumultuous years
Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes
His will whose will is power.

Laud. Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,
And be his tongue slit for his insolence.

Bastwick. While this hand holds a pen

Laud.
Juxon.

Be his hands

Stop!

Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak
No terror, would interpret, being dumb,

Heaven's thunder to our harm; .

And hands, which now write only their own shame,

With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away.

Laud. Much more such "mercy" among men would be,

Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge

Flinch thus from earthly retribution.

I

Could suffer what I would inflict. [Exit Bastwick guarded.

Bring up

The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.-[To Strafford] Know you not

That, in distraining for ten-thousand pounds

Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,

Were found these scandalous and seditious letters

Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?

I speak it not as touching this poor person;

But of the office which should make it holy,

Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.

Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes
His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.

Enter BISHOP WILLIAMS, guarded.

Strafford. 'Twere politic and just that Williams taste The bitter fruit of his connexion with

The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,

Who owed your first promotion to his favour,

Who grew beneath his smile

Laud.

Would therefore beg

The office of his judge from this High Court,-
That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,
In my assumption of this sacred robe,
Have put aside all worldly preference,
All sense of all distinction of all persons,

All thoughts but of the service of the Church.—
Bishop of Lincoln !

Williams.

Peace, proud hierarch !

I know my sentence, and I own it just.

Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,

In stretching to the utmost

SCENE IV. HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, his Daughter, and young SIR HARRY VANE.

Hampden. England, farewell! Thou, who hast been my cradle,

Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!

I held what I inherited in thee

As pawn for that inheritance of freedom

Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile :
How can I call thee England, or my country?—
Does the wind hold?

The vanes sit steady

Vane.
Upon the Abbey-towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.
Mark too that fleet of fleecy-winged cloud

Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.

Hampden.

Hail, fleet herald

Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide

Hearts free as his to realms as pure as thee,

Beyond the shot of tyranny,

Beyond the webs of that swoln spider

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Beyond the curses, calumnies, and lies (?)
Of atheist priests! . . And thou

Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
Bright as the path to a beloved home,

Oh light us to the isles of the evening land!
Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,
Where power's poor dupes and victims yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings

With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns ;
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo

Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites

Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,
To the poor worm who envies us his love!
Receive, thou young . . . of paradise,
These exiles from the old and sinful world!

This glorious clime; this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale-blue atmosphere, whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers;
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.
The boundless universe

Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul

That owns a master; while the loathliest ward

Of this wide prison, England, is a nest

Of cradling peace built on the mountain-tops,—

To which the eagle spirits of the free,

Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm

Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,

Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die

And cannot be repelled.

Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.

SCENE V.

Archy. I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old roots (?), as the [wind?] plays the song of

"A widow bird sate mourning
Upon a wintry bough."

[Sings] Heigho! the lark and the owl!

1822

One flies the morning, and one lulls the night :

Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,

Sings like the fool through darkness and light

"A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;

The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.

"There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound."

XXV.

LINES.

I.

WE meet not as we parted;

We feel more than all may see;
My bosom is heavy-hearted,

And thine full of doubt for me.
One moment has bound the free.

II.

That moment is gone for ever;

Like lightning that flashed and died,
Like a snowflake upon the river,
Like a sunbeam upon the tide,
Which the dark shadows hide.

III.

That moment from time was singled
As the first of a life of pain;
The cup of its joy was mingled
-Delusion too sweet though vain !
Too sweet to be mine again.

IV.

Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden
That its life was crushed by you,
Ye would not have then forbidden
The death which a heart so true
Sought in your briny dew.

1822.

V.

Methinks too little cost

For a moment so found, so lost

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