To share remorse and scorn and soli- Brighter than morning light, and purer tude,

And all the ills that wait on those who The water of the springs of Himalah Indian. You waked not?

As if it lived, and was outworn with What plant it was; its stem and tendrils speed; Or that it loved, and passion made the Like emerald snakes, mottled and pulse

Of its bright life throb like an anxious With azure mail and streaks of woven
heart,
Till it diffused itself, and all the chamber And all the sheaths that folded the dark
And walls seemed melted into emerald

Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, That burned not; in the midst of which Until the golden eye of the bright flower, Through the dark lashes of those veined

I nursed the plant, and on the double Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sym

And crept abroad into the moonlight air, Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by

noon,

The sun averted less his oblique beam. And the plant died not in the frost?

Indian.

Lady.
It grew;
And went out of the lattice which I left
Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires
Along the garden and across the lawn,
And down the slope of moss and through
the tufts

stems

Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections
Of every infant flower and star of moss
And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.
And thus it lay in the Elysian calm
Of its own beauty, floating on the line
Which, like a film in purest space,
divided

The heaven beneath the water from the
heaven

Above the clouds; and every day I went

Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees Watching its growth and wondering;

o'ergrown

With simple lichens, and old hoary stones,
On to the margin of the glassy pool,
Even to a nook of unblown violets
And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,
Under a pine with ivy overgrown.

And as the day grew hot, methought I

saw

A glassy vapour dancing on the pool,
And on it little quaint and filmy shapes,
With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and
fall,

And there its fruit lay like a sleeping Like clouds of gnats with perfect linea

CHARLES THE FIRST

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

KING CHARLES I.
QUEEN HENRIETTA.

LAUD, Archbishop of Canterbury.
WENTWORTH, Earl of Strafford.
LORD COTTINGTON,
LORD WESTON.

LORD COVENTRY.

WILLIAMS, Bishop of Lincoln.
Secretary LYTTELTON,
JUXON.

ST. JOHN.

ARCHY, the Court Fool.

HAMPDEN.

ΡΥΜ.

CROMWELL.

CROMWELL'S DAUGHTER.

SIR HARRY VANE the younger.
LEIGHTON.

BASTWICK.

PRYNNE.

Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pur

That sin and wrongs wound as 23 orphan's cry,

The patience of the great Avenger's eat.
A Youth. Yet, father, 'tis a happy
sight to see,

Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;-'tis like the bright
procession

Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a para-
dise,

And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.

If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?

And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw

Unseasonable poison from the flowers Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?

suivants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make Judges, Clerk. the present

SCENE I. THE MASK OF THE INNS

OF COURT.

Dark as the future!

When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant
Fear,

A Pursuivant. Place, for the Marshal And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping
of the Mask!
As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle
thoughts

First Citizen. What thinkest thou of this quaint mask which turns, Like morning from the shadow of the night,

The night to day, and London to a place

Of peace and joy?

Second Citizen.

Heaven.

Eight years are gone,

Waken to worship Him who giveth joys
With his own gift.

Second Citizen.

How young art thou in this old age of time! How green in this gray world! Canst

thou discern

And Hell to The signs of seasons, yet perceive no

And they seem hours, since in this populous street

I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,

For the red plague kept state within that palace

Where now reigns vanity. In nine years

more

The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;

And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven

hint

Of change in that stage-scene in which

thou art

Not a spectator but an actor? or
Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?
The day that dawns in fire will die in

storms,

Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done,

Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found

My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still

heads,

Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,
To dank extinction and to latest To avert the wrath of him whose scourge

There goes the apostate Strafford; he For the great sins which have drawn whose titles down from Heaven and foreign overthrow.

whispered aphorisms

From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if The remnant of the martyred saints in
Judas
Rochefort
Had been as brazen and as bold as Have been abandoned by their faithless
he-
First Citizen. That is the Archbishop.
Second Citizen. Rather say the

Pope:

London will be soon his Rome: he
walks

As if he trod upon the heads of men:
He looks elate, drunken with blood and

gold;

allies

To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
Lewis of France,-the Palatinate is
lost

Enter LEIGHTON (who has been branded
in the face) and BASTWICK.
Canst thou be-art thou- ?
Leighton. I was Leighton: what

Beside him moves the Babylonian Iam thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,

Rouse up the astonished air.

And has permitted that most heathenish

First Citizen. I will not think but that our country's wounds

The Sabbath with their

custom

Of dancing round a pole dressed up with May yet be healed. The king is just

Third Citizen. You seem to know Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags.

You torch-bearers, advance to the great
gate,

And then attend the Marshal of the
Mask

Into the Royal presence.

A Law Student.

thou

What thinkest And some like cars in which the Romans

climbed

Of this quaint show of ours, my agèd (Canopied by Victory's eagle wings outfriend?

spread)

Even now we see the redness of the The Capitolian-See how gloriously The mettled horses in the torchlight stir Their gallant riders, while they check

torches

Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions

Gasp to us on the wind's wave. comes!

It

And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant,

their pride,

Like shapes of some diviner element
Than English air, and beings nobler

than

The envious and admiring multitude.