12. Across the door no gossamer festoon

Swung pendulous-no web-no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon

About its nooks and hinges.

The spider shunned the interdicted room,

The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And where the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom
The very midge had vanished.

13. One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if with awful aim direct and certain,
To show the BLOODY HAND in burning red
Embroidered on the curtain.

And yet no gōry stain was on the quilt

The pillow in its place had slowly rotted;
The floor alone retained the trace of guilt,
Those boards obscurely spotted.

14. Obscurely spotted to the door, and thence
With mazy doubles to the grated casement-
Oh what a tale they told of fear intense,

Of horror and amazement!

What human creature in the dead of night

Had coursed like hunted hare that cruel distance?
Had sought the door, the window, in his flight,
Striving for dear existence?

15. What shrieking spirit in that bloody room
Its mortal frame had violently quitted ?-
Across the sunbeam, with a sudden gloom,
A ghostly shadow flitted.

Across the sunbeam, and along the wall,
But painted on the air so very dimly,
It hardly veiled the tapestry at all,
Or portrait frowning grimly.

O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!

THOMAS HOOD.

1

SECTION XIX.

I.

85. SCENE FROM WALLENSTEIN.

Characters: OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI, Lieut. General; MAX. PICCOLOMINI, his son, Colonel; and VON QUESTENBERG, Imperial Envoy.

AX. Ha! there he is himself.

MAX.

[He embraces his father. As he turns round, he
observes QUESTENBERG, and draws back with
a cold and reserved air.]

You are engaged, I see. I'll not disturb you.
Oct. How, Max? Look closer at this visitor,
Attention, Max, an old friend merits-rev'rence
Belongs of right to the envoy of your sovʼreign.

Max. [drily]. Von Questenberg!-Welcome-if you bring

with you

Aught good to our headquarters.

Ques. [seizing his hand].

Your hand away, Count Piccolomini !

Nay, draw not

Not on mine own account alone I seized it,
And nothing common will I say therewith.

Octavio-Max. Piccolomini

[Taking the hands of both.

O savior names, and full of happy omen!

Ne'er will her prosperous Genius turn from Austria,
While two such stars, with blessèd influences
Beaming protection, shine above her hösts.

Max. Heh!-Noble minister! You miss your part.

You came not here to act a panegyric.

You're sent, I know, to find fault and to scold us.

I must not be beforehand with my comrades.

Oct. [To MAX.]. He comes from court, where people are not quite

So well contented with the duke, as here.

Max. What now have they contrived to find out in him?

That he alone determines for himself

What he himself alone doth understand?

Well, therein he does right, and will persist in't.
Heaven never meant him for that passive thing
That can be struck and hammered out to suit
Another's taste and fancy. He'll not dance
To every tune of every minister.
It goes against his nature-he can't do it.
He is possessed by a commanding spirit,
And his too is the station of command.

And well for us it is so! There exist
Few fit to rule themselves, but few that use
Their intellects intelligently.-Then

Well for the whole, if there be found a man,
Who makes himself what Nature destined him,
The pause, the central point of thousand thousands-
Stands fixed and stately, like a firm-built column,
Where all may press with joy and confidence.
Now such a man is Wallenstein; and if
Another better suits the court-no other
But such a one as he can serve the army.
Ques. The army? Doubtless!

Oct. [To QUESTENBERG].

Hush! Suppress it, friend!

Unless some end were answered by the utterance.

Of him there you'll make nothing.

Max. [Continuing].

In their distress

They call a spirit up, and when he comes,

Straight their flesh creeps and quivers, and they dread him
More than the ills for which they called him up.

Th' uncommon, the sublime, must seem and be
Like things of every day.—But in the field,
Aye, there the Present Being makes itself felt.
The personal must command, the actual eye
Examine. If to be the chieftain asks
All that is great in nature, let it be
Likewise his privilege to move and act
In all the correspondencies of greatness.
The oracle within him, that which lives,
He must invoke and question-not dead books,
Nor ordinances, not mold-rotted papers.

Oct. My son of those old nărrow ordinances

Let us not hold too lightly. They are weights
Of priceless value, which oppressed mankind
Tied to the volatile will of their oppressors.
For always formidable was the league
And partnership of free power with free will.
The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds,
Is yet no devious way. Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shatt'ring what it reaches.
My son! the road the human being travels,

That on which Blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the corn-field and the hill of vines,
Honoring the holy bounds of property!

And thus secure, though late, leads to its end.

Ques. Oh hear your father, noble youth! hear him,

Who is at once the hero and the man.

Oct. My son, the nursling of the camp spoke in thee! A war of fifteen years

Hath been thy education and thy school.

Peace hast thou never witnessed! There exists
A higher than the warrior's excellence.

In war itself, war is no ultimate purpose.
The vast and sudden deeds of violence,
Adventures wild, and wonders of the moment,
These are not they, my son, that generate
The calm, the blissful, and th' enduring mighty!
Lo there! the soldier, rapid architect!

Builds his light town of canvas, and at once
The whole scene moves and bustles momently,
With arms and neighing steeds, and mirth and quarrel!
The motley market fills! the roads, the streams

Are crowded with new freights; trade stirs and hurries!
But on some mŏrrōw morn, all suddenly,

The tents drop down, the hōrde renews its march.

Dreary, and solitary as a church-yard

The meadow and down-trodden seed-plot lie,

And the year's harvest is gone utterly.

Max. Oh let the Emperor make peace, my father! Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel For the first viölet of the leafless spring,

Plucked in those quiet fields where I have journeyed!

Oct. What ails thee? What so moves thee all at once?
Max. Peace have I ne'er beheld ?—I have beheld it.
From thence I am come hither: oh! that sight,
It glimmers still before me, like some landscape
Left in the distance-some delicious landscape!
My road conducted me through countries where
The war has not yet reached. Life, life, my father—
My venerable father, life has charms

Which we have ne'er experienced. We have been
But voyaging along its barren cōasts,

Like some poor, ever-roaming horde of pirates,
That, crowded in the rank and nǎrrōw ship,
House on the wild sea with wild usages,

Nor know aught of the mainland, but the bays
Where safeliest they may venture a thieves' landing.
Whate'er in th' inland dales the land conceals
Of fair and exquisite, oh! nothing, nothing,
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.

Oct. [Attentive, with an appearance of uneasiness].
-And so your journey has revealed this to you?
Max. 'Twas the first leisure of my life. Oh! tell me,
What is meed and purpose of the toil,

The painful toil, which robbed me of my youth,
Left me a heart unsouled and solitary,

A spirit uninformed, unornamented,

For the camp's stir and crowd and ceaseless larum,

The neighing war-horse, the air-shatt'ring trumpet,
The unvaried, still-returning hour of duty,
Word of command, and exercise of arms—

There's nothing here, there's nothing in all this
To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart!

Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not-
This can not be the sole felicity,

This can not be man's best and only pleasure!

Oct. Much hast thou learned, my son, in this short journey.