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"Sweet sleep! were death like to thee,
Or if thou couldst mortal be,
I would close these eyes of pain,
When to wake? Never again.
O world! farewell!

Listen to the passing bell!
It says, thou and I must part,
With a light and a heavy heart."

[The scene closes.

SCENE IV.-A Hall of the Prison.

Enter CAMILLO and BERNARDO.

Camillo. The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.
He looked as calm and keen as is the engine
Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself
From aught that it inflicts; a marble form,
A rite, a law, a custom; not a man.

He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick
Of his machinery, on the advocates

Presenting the defences, which he tore

And threw behind, muttering with hoarse harsh voice:
"Which among ye defended their old father

Killed in his sleep?" Then to another: "Thou
Dost this in virtue of thy place; 'tis well."
He turned to me then looking deprecation,

And said these three words coldly: "They must die."
Bernardo. And yet you left him not?

Camillo.

I urged him still;

Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong
Which prompted your unnatural parent's death.
And he replied; "Paolo Santa Croce

Murdered his mother yester evening,

And he is fled.

Parricide grows so rife

That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young
Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs.

Authority and power and hoary hair

Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew,—
You come to ask their pardon. Stay a moment;
Here is their sentence; never see me more,
Till to the letter it be all fulfilled."

I did believe indeed
preparation

words and looks
Once I knew them;

Bernardo. O God, not so!
That all you said was but sad
For happy news Oh there are
To bend the sternest purpose!
Now I forget them at my dearest need.
What think you if I seek him out, and bathe
His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?
Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain
With my perpetual cries, until in rage

He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample
Upon my prostrate head so that my blood

May stain the senseless dust on which he treads,

And remorse waken mercy? I will do it!

Oh wait till I return!

Camillo.

Alas! poor boy!

A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray

To the deaf sea.

[Rushes out.

Enter LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, and GIACOMO, guarded.
I hardly dare to fear

Beatrice.
That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon.
Camillo. May God in heaven be less inexorable
To the Pope's prayers than he has been to mine!
Here is the sentence and the warrant.

Beatrice (wildly).

My God! Can it be possible I have
To die so suddenly? so young to go

Oh

Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground?
To be nailed down into a narrow place;

To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
Upon familiar thoughts,-sad, yet thus lost
How fearful! To be nothing! or to be—
What? Oh where am I? Let me not go mad!

Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
No God, no heaven, no earth, in the void world,
The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
If all things then should be my father's spirit,
His eye, his voice, his touch, surrounding me,
The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
Even the form which tortured me on earth,
Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come,
And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix

His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!
For was he not alone omnipotent

On earth, and ever present? Even though dead
Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,
And work for me and mine still the same ruin,
Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned
To teach the laws of Death's untrodden realm?
Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now,
Oh whither, whither?

Lucretia.

Trust in God's sweet love,
The tender promises of Christ: ere night
Think we shall be in paradise.

Beatrice.

'Tis past!

Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more.
And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill.
How tedious, false, and cold, seem all things! I
Have met with much injustice in this world;
No difference has been made by God or man,
Or any power moulding my wretched lot,

'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.

I am cut off from the only world I know,

From light and life and love, in youth's sweet prime,
You do well telling me to trust in God;

I hope I do trust in him: in whom else

Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold.

[During the latter speeches GIACOMO has retired conversing with CAMILLO, who now goes out; GIACOMO advances. Giacomo. Know you not, mother-sister, know you not? Bernardo even now is gone to implore

The Pope to grant our pardon.

Lucretia.

Child, perhaps

It will be granted! We may all then live
To make these woes a tale for distant years.
Oh what a thought! It gushes to my heart
Like the warm blood.

Beatrice.

Yet both will soon be cold.

Oh trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:

It is the only ill which can find place

Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour

Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
That it should spare the eldest flower of Spring:
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch
Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free-
Now stench and blackness yawn, like death: oh plead
With famine or wind-walking pestilence,

Blind lightning or the deaf sea ;-not with man!
Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,
In deeds a Cain! No, mother, we must die:
Since such is the reward of innocent lives,
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.

And, whilst our murderers live, and hard cold men,
Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
To death as to life's sleep, 'twere just the grave

Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!

Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,

And rock me to the sleep from which none wake!
Live, ye who live, subject to one another,

As we were once, who now

Bernardo.

BERNARDO rushes in.

Oh horrible!

That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,

Should all be vain! The ministers of death

Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
Blood on the face of one.- -What if 'twere fancy?
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
As if 'twere only rain.

O life! O world!

'Cover me! let me be no more! To see
That perfect mirror of pure innocence,
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
Who mad'st all lovely thou didst look upon-

Thee, light of life-dead, dark! while I say "Sister,"
To hear I have no sister! And thou, mother,
Whose love was as a bond to all our loves-

Dead-the sweet bond broken!

Enter CAMILLO and Guards.

They come ! Let me

Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
Are blighted-white-cold. Say farewell, before
Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh let me hear
You speak!

Beatrice.

Farewell, my tender brother. Think

Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now:

And let mild pitying thoughts lighten for thee.
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,

But tears and patience. One thing more, my child:
For thine own sake be constant to the love
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,

Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
Lived ever holy and unstained. And, though

Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves.
So mayst thou die as I do, fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! farewell! farewell!
Bernardo. I cannot say farewell!

Camillo.

Beatrice.

Oh Lady Beatrice !
Give yourself no unnecessary pain,

My dear Lord Cardinal.-Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot: ay, that does well.

And yours, I see, is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another! now

We shall not do it any more. My lord,

We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well.

[graphic]

PETER BELL THE THIRD.

BY MICHING MALLECHO ESQ.

Is it a party in a parlour,

Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
Some sipping punch-some sipping tea,

But, as you by their faces see,

All silent, and all- -damned?

Peter Bell, by W. WORDSWORTH.

OPHELIA. What means this, my lord?

HAMLET.-Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.

SHAKSPEARE.

DEDICATION.

TO THOMAS BROWN ESQ. THE YOUNGER, H.F. DEAR TOM,-Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dullness.

You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well-it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And, in presenting him to you, I have the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three.

There is this particular advantage in an acquaintance with any one of the Peter Bells-that, if you know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells: they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated, to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell. Peter is a polyhedric Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colours like a chameleon, and his coat like a snake. He is a Proteus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull-oh so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dullness.

You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in "this world which is"-so Peter informed us before his conversion to White Obi

"The world of all of us, and where
We find our happiness, or not at all."

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