Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here!
Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors!
Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
They that have done this deed are honorable.
What private griefs1 they have, alas! I know not,
That made them do it: they are wise and honorable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:
I am no orator,2 as Brutus is;
But, as you know me all, a plain, blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,*
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor, dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me. But were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny!
116. William Tell to his Native Mountains.
According to Swiss tradition, William Tell was a patriot, who, in the fourteenth century, rescued his native district from the tyranny of the House of Austria. This extract is from a play by the English dramatist J. Sheridan Knowles. The famous German poet Schiller wrote a drama on the same subject.
Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again!
I hold to you the hands you first beheld,
To show they still are free. Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answer me,
And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again! O sacred forms, how proud you look!
How high you lift your heads into the sky!
How huge you are, how mighty, and how free!
Ye are the things that tower, that shine; whose smile
Makes glad; whose frown is terrible; whose forms,
Robed or unrobed,' do all the impress wear
Of awe divine. Ye guards of liberty,
I'm with you once again! I call to you
With all my voice! I hold my hands to you
To show they still are free. I rush to you
As though I could embrace you!
8
Scaling yonder peak,
I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow,
O'er the abyss: his broad-expanded wings
1 Robed or unrobed; i.e., wheth
er clad in winter's snow or bare as in summer.
2 impress, aspect.
3 scaling, climbing.
4 wheeling, circling.
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded1 will,
That buoyed him proudly up. Instinctively
I bent my bow: yet kept he rounding still
His airy circle, as in the delight
Of measuring the ample range beneath
And round about. Absorbed, he heeded not
The death that threatened him. I could not shoot: 'Twas liberty! I turned my bow aside,
And let him soar away!
Heavens! with what pride I used
To walk these hills, and look up to my God,
And think the land was free! Yes; it was free;
From end to end, from cliff to lake, 'twas free,-
Free as our torrents are that leap our rocks,
And plow our valleys without asking leave;
Or as our peaks that wear their caps of snow
In very presence of the regal sun.
How happy was I then! I loved
Its very storms. Yes, I have often sat
In my boat at night, when midway o'er the lake 2
The stars went out, and down the mountain gorge
The wind came roaring. I have sat and eyed
The thunder breaking from his cloud, and smiled
To see him shake his lightnings o'er my head,
And think I had no master save his own.
On the wild jutting cliff, o'ertaken oft
1 unlorded; i.e., without a master, free.
2 lake. The reference is to Lake Lucerne.
By the mountain blast, I've laid me flat along;
And while gust followed gust more furiously,
As if to sweep me o'er the horrid brink,
Then I have thought of other lands, whose storms
Are summer flaws1 to those of mine, and just
Have wished me there: the thought that mine was free
Has checked that wish; and I have raised my head,
And cried in thralldom to that furious wind,
"Blow on! This is the land of liberty!"
117.-The Graves of a Household.
They grew in beauty, side by side,
They filled one home with glee:
Their graves are severed far and wide,
By mount and stream and sea.
The same fond mother bent at night
O'er each fair sleeping brow;
She had each folded flower in sight:
Where are those dreamers now?
One, 'midst the forest of the West,
By a dark stream is laid:
The Indian knows his place of rest,
Far in the cedar shade.
1 flaws, gusts of wind, blasts.
The sea, the blue lone sea,
He lies where pearls lie deep:
He was the loved of all, yet none
O'er his low bed may weep.
One sleeps where southern vines are drest Above the noble slain:
He wrapped his colors round his breast On a blood-red field of Spain.
And one o'er her the myrtle showers
Its leaves, by soft winds fanned:
She faded 'midst Italian flowers,-
The last of that bright band.
And parted thus they rest, who played
Beneath the same green tree;
Whose voices mingled as they prayed
Around one parent knee;
They that with smiles lit up the hall,
And cheered with song the hearth:
Alas for love, if thou wert all,
And naught beyond, O Earth!
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