Her faults were mine-her virtues were her own I loved her, and destroy'd her! WITCH. With thy hand? MAN. Not with my hand, but heart-which broke her heart It gazed on mine, and wither'd. I have shed Blood, but not hers-and yet her blood was shed- WITCH. And for this A being of the race thou dost despise, The order which thine own would rise above, The gifts of our great knowledge, and shrink'st back MAN. Daughter of Air! I tell thee, since that hourBut words are breath-look on me in my sleep, Or watch my watchings-Come and sit by me! But peopled with the Furies;-I have gnash'd Of elements the waters shrunk from me, And fatal things pass'd harmless-the cold hand Back by a single hair, which would not break. The affluence of my soul-which one day was WITCH. That I can aid thee. MAN. It may be To do this thy power Must wake the dead, or lay me low with them. Do so-in any shape-in any hour— With any torture so it be the last. WITCH. That is not in my province; but if thou Wilt swear obedience to my will, and do My bidding, it may help thee to thy wishes. MAN. I will not swear-Obey! and whom? the spirits Whose presence I command, and be the slave Of those who served me-Never! WITCH. Is this all? Hast thou no gentler answer?-Yet bethink thee, And pause ere thou rejectest. MAN. I have said it. WITCH. Enough!-I may retire then-say! MAN. Retire! [The WITCH disappears. MAN. (alone.) We are the fools of time and terror: Days Steal on us and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life, and dreading still to die. This vital weight upon the struggling heart, In all the days of past and future, for In life there is no present, we can number How few-how less than few-wherein the soul Still in my science-I can call the dead, The indignant shadow to depose her wrath, If I had never lived, that which I love Happy and giving happiness. What is she? Yet in this hour I dread the thing I dare: On spirit, good or evil-now I tremble, And feel a strange cold thaw upon my heart, But I can act even what I most abhor, And champion human fears.—The night approaches. [Exit. SCENE III. The Summit of the Jungfrau Mountain. Enter FIRST DESTINY. The moon is rising broad, and round, and bright; And here on snows, where never human foot The glassy ocean of the mountain ice, We skim its rugged breakers, which put on The aspect of a tumbling tempest's foam, The fretwork of some earthquake-where the clouds |