Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 3.5

The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03

Год написания книги
2018
<< 1 ... 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 ... 69 >>
На страницу:
30 из 69
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля

[Pauses again.]

How else! since that the heart's unbias'd instinct

Impell'd me to the daring deed, which now

Necessity, self-preservation, orders.

Stern is the on-look of Necessity,

Not without shudder may a human hand

Grasp the mysterious urn of destiny.

My deed was mine, remaining in my bosom:

Once suffer'd to escape from its safe corner

Within the heart, its nursery and birth-place,

Sent forth into the Foreign, it belongs

Forever to those sly malicious powers

Whom never art of man conciliated.

[Paces in agitation through the chamber, then pauses, and after the pause breaks out again into audible soliloquy.]

What is thy enterprise? thy aim? thy object?

Hast honestly confess'd it to thyself?

Power seated on a quiet throne thou'dst shake,

Power on an ancient consecrated throne,

Strong in possession, founded in all custom;

Power by a thousand tough and stringy roots

Fix'd to the people's pious nursery-faith.

This, this will be no strife of strength with strength.

That fear'd I not. I brave each combatant,

Whom I can look on, fixing eye to eye,

Who, full himself of courage, kindles courage

In me too. 'Tis a foe invisible

The which I fear—a fearful enemy,

Which in the human heart opposes me,

By its coward fear alone made fearful to me.

Not that, which full of life, instinct with power,

Makes known its present being; that is not

The true, the perilously formidable.

O no! it is the common, the quite common,

The thing of an eternal yesterday.

What ever was, and evermore returns,

Sterling tomorrow, for today 'twas sterling!

For of the wholly common is man made,

And custom is his nurse! Woe then to them

Who lay irreverent hands upon his old

House furniture, the dear inheritance

From his forefathers! For time consecrates;

And what is gray with age becomes religion.

Be in possession, and thou hast the right,

And sacred will the many guard it for thee!

[To the PAGE who here enters.]

The Swedish officer?—Well, let him enter.

[The PAGE exit, WALLENSTEIN fixes his eye in deep thought on the door.]

Yet is it pure—as yet!—the crime has come

Not o'er this threshold yet—so slender is

The boundary that divideth life's two paths.
<< 1 ... 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 ... 69 >>
На страницу:
30 из 69