Thou took'st me napping once; I smarted for it.
But I have ta'en thee talking in thy nap,
That which, a little garbled, shall appear
Rank treason to the Duchess, and her schemes
For this fine marriage-which shall ne'er come off,
So my good timber-cutters know their trade.
Meanwhile I must be wary, wear two heads
Betwixt these shoulders-one, my own, for her,
Till she has wreaked my quarrel upon thee;
And one, a mask, wherein to spy, unspied,
Provoke to wilder tyrannies these tyrants,
And whet the axe till they be ripe to fall.
Enter HEINRICH, disguised as a student, parting the boughs cautiously, and calling gently to CORCILIUS
CORCILIUS (behind the scene).
I come, my lord.
Enter CORCILIUS, similarly attired, with painting-gear and sketch of the landscape.
Unlearn that formal deference, give me leave
To forget Traumberg and its mummeries,
Do off the prince and don the man; remember,
We are plain students on our travels now,
Karl and Corcilius merely. But what think you?
Whose battlements are these?
Except they top Sebastian's ducal towers;
For at my call, by yon half-ruined farm
Amid the forest, a starved country lad,
Driving his solitary cow, whose sides
Showed like a bare-ribbed wreck with sea-weed strung, Made answer we were come to Schlafenstein.
Ne'er did mine eyes see such a wilderness;
But as I mused if forty years would end
Our desert wanderings, lo! the promised land.
Nay, out of bosk and tangle so to light
On this fair garden is to plunge, methinks,
From the dark ages, while a man winks one,
To the broad stare of open-eyed to-day.
Traumberg and Schlafenstein! You mind the song
That hushed our cradle-cries? How ran the rhyme?—
"Luck comes to lord of Dream-hill's castled steep,
When bruised he rises from the rock of sleep.”
I used to wish that I might walk and fall
And wake to fame, a child-somnambulist!
But that's all over; I have fallen, and waked
To failure, not to fame. Can heaven, I trow,
With all its sunshine make the mole love light ?
Nor I the churl's heart sweetness. Who courts praise
Of such kills self-approval; and how stoop
To love that needs no winning-fruit o'er-ripe
Dropped in my very pathway? But the worst is
I may not wash my hands of it, nor ease
Myself of my own self an hour or twain,
But, like the travelling spider, still must spin.
The cord that binds me to my hated home.
I am half-minded never to return,
Would Proszka, my poor Atlas of an hour,
But shift the whole sad burden to his back.
God knows I am weary of it.
Let Proszka's aid suffice thee; and meanwhile
Theirs, and not yours, the failure, whose dead heft
Outweighed your powers of lifting. Had you ruled
As doth Sebastian, if the world say sooth,
A pard fang-fastened on the camel's back—
That patient beast, his people-while he drains
Their dwindling life to glut his miser-maw;
Had you done this—a thought ridiculous,
To all your life-deeds cross and contrary—
Even then, so time remained for its undoing,
I would not bid you wholly to despair.
But now, forsooth, because the herded swine
Grunt heedless on, though Orpheus tune the lyre,
Or in dim pastures the slow-munching ox
Impassive hear the moon-struck nightingale,
For this to grieve——
Stay, dear Corcilius, stay! Thou dost but bend the willow, and my heart Belike needs chiding more than words of cheer. Come, let me drug this viper of the brain With sweeter possets! Tush! man, let me see Thy canvass. Hast thou learned to be so coy?
'Tis roughly limned and all imperfect, sire.
HEINRICH (looking at picture).
Perfect in imperfection! A thing done.
Stands to be judged; and faults and frailties then
Peep out for censure, prisoned past escape
By the close wall of sheer accomplishment.
Ah, poet-like, you love the unrealized.
As leaving scope for that ethereal power,
Imagination, life's own atmosphere,
That softens, melts, subdues, and mystifies
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