Оценить:
 Рейтинг: 3.5

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

Год написания книги
2018
<< 1 ... 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 >>
На страницу:
67 из 69
Настройки чтения
Размер шрифта
Высота строк
Поля

Hast not to fear thy mother's destiny.

THEKLA.

O let us supplicate him, dearest mother!

Quick! quick! here's no abiding place for us.

Here every coming hour broods into life

Some new affrightful monster.

DUCHESS.

Thou wilt share

An easier, calmer lot, my child! We too,

I and thy father, witnessed happy days.

Still think I with delight of those first years,

When he was making progress with glad effort,

When his ambition was a genial fire,

Not that consuming flame which now it is.

The Emperor loved him, trusted him: and all

He undertook could not but be successful.

But since that ill-starr'd day at Regensburg,

Which plunged him headlong from his dignity,

A gloomy uncompanionable spirit,

Unsteady and suspicious, has possess'd him.

His quiet mind forsook him, and no longer

Did he yield up himself in joy and faith

To his old luck and individual power;

But thenceforth turn'd his heart and best affections

All to those cloudy sciences, which never

Have yet made happy him who follow'd them.

COUNTESS.

You see it, sister, as your eyes permit you,

But surely this is not the conversation

To pass the time in which we are waiting for him.

You know he will be soon here. Would you have him

Find her in this condition?

DUCHESS.

Come, my child!

Come wipe away thy tears, and show thy father

A cheerful countenance. See, the tie-knot here

Is off—this hair must not hang so dishevell'd.

Come, dearest! dry thy tears up. They deform

Thy gentle eye.—Well now—what was I saying?

Yes, in good truth, this Piccolomini

Is a most noble and deserving gentleman.

COUNTESS.

That is he, sister!

THEKLA (to the COUNTESS, with marks of great oppression of spirits).

Aunt, you will excuse me?

[Is going.]

COUNTESS.

But whither? See, your father comes.

THEKLA.

I cannot see him now.
<< 1 ... 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 >>
На страницу:
67 из 69