The Piccolomini

The oracle within him, that which lives,
He must invoke and question – not dead books,
Not ordinances, not mould-rotted papers.

OCTAVIO

My son! of those old narrow 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 path. 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 shattering 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 cornfield and the hill of vines,
Honoring the holy bounds of property!
And thus secure, though late, leads to its end.

QUESTENBERG

Oh, hear your father, noble youth! hear him
Who is at once the hero and the man.

OCTAVIO

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
An 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 the 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 morrow morn, all suddenly,
The tents drop down, the horde renews its march.
Dreary, and solitary as a churchyard;
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 violet[5 - In the original, —"Den blut'gen Lorbeer geb' ich hin mit FreudenFuers erste Veilchen, das der Maerz uns bringt,Das duerftige Pfand der neuverjuengten Erde."] of the leafless spring,
Plucked in those quiet fields where I have journeyed.

OCTAVIO

What ails thee? What so moves thee all at once?

MAX

Peace have I ne'er beheld? I have beheld it.
From thence am I 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 never experienced. We have been
But voyaging along its barren coasts,
Like some poor ever-roaming horde of pirates,
That, crowded in the rank and narrow 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 the inland dales the land conceals
Of fair and exquisite, oh, nothing, nothing,
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.

OCTAVIO (attentive, with an appearance of uneasiness)

And so your journey has revealed this to you?

MAX

'Twas the first leisure of my life. O tell me,
What is the 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-shattering 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,