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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Golden Legend: VI. The School Of Salerno</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A traveling Scholastic affixing his Theses to the gate<br>of the College.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Scholastic._ There, that is my gauntlet, my banner, my shield,<br>Hung up as a challenge to all the field!<br>One hundred and twenty-five propositions,<br>Which I will maintain with the sword of the tongue<br>Against all disputants, old and young.<br>Let us see if doctors or dialecticians<br>Will dare to dispute my definitions,<br>Or attack any one of my learned theses.<br>Here stand I; the end shall be as God pleases.<br>I think I have proved, by profound research<br>The error of all those doctrines so vicious<br>Of the old Areopagite Dionysius,<br>That are making such terrible work in the churches,<br>By Michael the Stammerer sent from the East,<br>And done into Latin by that Scottish beast,<br>Erigena Johannes, who dares to maintain,<br>In the face of the truth, the error infernal,<br>That the universe is and must be eternal;<br>At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,<br>That nothing with God can be accidental;<br>Then asserting that God before the creation<br>Could not have existed, because it is plain<br>That, had he existed, he would have created;<br>Which is begging the question that should be debated,<br>And moveth me less to anger than laughter.<br>All nature, he holds, is a respiration<br>Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafter<br>Will inhale it into his bosom again,<br>So that nothing but God alone will remain.<br>And therein he contradicteth himself;<br>For he opens the whole discussion by stating,<br>That God can only exist in creating.<br>That question I think I have laid on the shelf!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_He goes out. Two Doctors come in disputing, and<br>followed by pupils._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Doctor Serafino._ I, with the Doctor Seraphic, maintain,<br>That a word which is only conceived in the brain<br>Is a type of eternal Generation;<br>The spoken word is the Incarnation.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Doctor Cherubino._ What do I care for the Doctor Seraphic,<br>With all his wordy chaffer and traffic?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Doctor Serafino._ You make but a paltry show of resistance;<br>Universals have no real existence!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Doctor Cherubino._ Your words are but idle and empty chatter;<br>Ideas are eternally joined to matter!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Doctor Serafino_. May the Lord have mercy on your position,<br>You wretched, wrangling culler of herbs!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Doctor Cherubino_. May he send your soul to eternal perdition,<br>For your Treatise on the Irregular Verbs!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They rush out fighting. Two Scholars come in._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_First Scholar_. Monte Cassino, then, is your College.<br>What think you of ours here at Salern?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Second Scholar_. To tell the truth, I arrived so lately,<br>I hardly yet have had time to discern.<br>So much, at least, I am bound to acknowledge:<br>The air seems healthy, the buildings stately,<br>And on the whole I like it greatly.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_First Scholar_. Yes, the air is sweet; the Calabrian hills<br>Send us down puffs of mountain air;<br>And in summer time the sea-breeze fills<br>With its coolness cloister, and court, and square.<br>Then at every season of the year<br>There are crowds of guests and travellers here;<br>Pilgrims, and mendicant friars, and traders<br>From the Levant, with figs and wine,<br>And bands of wounded and sick Crusaders,<br>Coming back from Palestine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Second Scholar_. And what are the studies you pursue?<br>What is the course you here go through?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_First Scholar_. The first three years of the college course<br>Are given to Logic alone, as the source<br>Of all that is noble, and wise, and true.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Second Scholar_. That seems rather strange, I must confess.<br>In a Medical School; yet, nevertheless,<br>You doubtless have reasons for that.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_First Scholar_. Oh yes!<br>For none but a clever dialectician<br>Can hope to become a great physician;<br>That has been settled long ago.<br>Logic makes an important part<br>Of the mystery of the healing art;<br>For without it how could you hope to show<br>That nobody knows so much as you know?<br>After this there are five years more<br>Devoted wholly to medicine,<br>With lectures on chirurgical lore,<br>And dissections of the bodies of swine,<br>As likest the human form divine.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Second Scholar_. What are the books now most in vogue?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_First Scholar_. Quite an extensive catalogue;<br>Mostly, however, books of our own;<br>As Gariopontus' Passionarius,<br>And the writings of Matthew Platearius;<br>And a volume universally known<br>As the Regimen of the School of Salern,<br>For Robert of Normandy written in terse<br>And very elegant Latin verse.<br>Each of these writings has its turn.<br>And when at length we have finished these,<br>Then comes the struggle for degrees,<br>With all the oldest and ablest critics;<br>The public thesis and disputation,<br>Question, and answer, and explanation<br>Of a passage out of Hippocrates,<br>Or Aristotle's Analytics.<br>There the triumphant Magister stands!<br>A book is solemnly placed in his hands,<br>On which he swears to follow the rule<br>And ancient forms of the good old School;<br>To report if any confectionarius<br>Mingles his drugs with matters various,<br>And to visit his patients twice a day,<br>And once in the night, if they live in town,<br>And if they are poor, to take no pay.<br>Having faithfully promised these,<br>His head is crowned with a laurel crown;<br>A kiss on his cheek, a ring on his hand,<br>The Magister Artium et Physices<br>Goes forth from the school like a lord of the land.<br>And now, as we have the whole morning before us<br>Let us go in, if you make no objection,<br>And listen awhile to a learned prelection<br>On Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They go in. Enter_ LUCIFER _as a Doctor._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer_. This is the great School of Salern!<br>A land of wrangling and of quarrels,<br>Of brains that seethe, and hearts that burn,<br>Where every emulous scholar hears,<br>In every breath that comes to his ears,<br>The rustling of another's laurels!<br>The air of the place is called salubrious;<br>The neighborhood of Vesuvius lends it<br>An odor volcanic, that rather mends it,<br>And the buildings have an aspect lugubrious,<br>That inspires a feeling of awe and terror<br>Into the heart of the beholder,<br>And befits such an ancient homestead of error,<br>Where the old falsehoods moulder and smoulder,<br>And yearly by many hundred hands<br>Are carried away, in the zeal of youth,<br>And sown like tares in the field of truth,<br>To blossom and ripen in other lands.<br>What have we here, affixed to the gate?<br>The challenge of some scholastic wight,<br>Who wishes to hold a public debate<br>On sundry questions wrong or right!<br>Ah, now this is my great delight!<br>For I have often observed of late<br>That such discussions end in a fight.<br>Let us see what the learned wag maintains<br>With such a prodigal waste of brains.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Reads._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Whether angels in moving from place to place<br>Pass through the intermediate space.<br>Whether God himself is the author of evil,<br>Or whether that is the work of the Devil.<br>When, where, and wherefore Lucifer fell,<br>And whether he now is chained in hell.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I think I can answer that question well!<br>So long as the boastful human mind<br>Consents in such mills as this to grind,<br>I sit very firmly upon my throne!<br>Of a truth it almost makes me laugh,<br>To see men leaving the golden grain<br>To gather in piles the pitiful chaff<br>That old Peter Lombard thrashed with his brain,<br>To have it caught up and tossed again<br>On the horns of the Dumb Ox of Cologne!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But my guests approach! there is in the air<br>A fragrance, like that of the Beautiful Garden<br>Of Paradise, in the days that were!<br>An odor of innocence, and of prayer,<br>And of love, and faith that never fails,<br>Which as the fresh-young heart exhales<br>Before it begins to wither and harden!<br>I cannot breathe such an atmosphere!<br>My soul is filled with a nameless fear,<br>That, after all my trouble and pain,<br>After all my restless endeavor,<br>The youngest, fairest soul of the twain,<br>The most ethereal, most divine,<br>Will escape from my hands forever and ever.<br>But the other is already mine!<br>Let him live to corrupt his race,<br>Breathing among them, with every breath,<br>Weakness, selfishness, and the base<br>And pusillanimous fear of death.<br>I know his nature, and I know<br>That of all who in my ministry<br>Wander the great earth to and fro,<br>And on my errands come and go,<br>The safest and subtlest are such as he.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Enter_ PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE _with<br>attendants_.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Can you direct us to Friar Angelo?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ He stands before you.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Then you know our purpose.<br>I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck, and this<br>The maiden that I spake of in my letters.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ It is a very grave and solemn business!<br>We must not be precipitate. Does she<br>Without compulsion, of her own free will,<br>Consent to this?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Against all opposition,<br>Against all prayers, entreaties, protestations.<br>She will not be persuaded.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ That is strange!<br>Have you thought well of it?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ I come not here<br>To argue, but to die. Your business is not<br>to question, but to kill me. I am ready.<br>I am impatient to be gone from here<br>Ere any thoughts of earth disturb again<br>The spirit of tranquillity within me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Would I had not come here<br>Would I were dead,<br>And thou wert in thy cottage in the forest,<br>And hadst not known me! Why have I done this?<br>Let me go back and die.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ It cannot be;<br>Not if these cold, flat stones on which we tread<br>Were coulters heated white, and yonder gateway<br>Flamed like a furnace with a sevenfold heat.<br>I must fulfil my purpose.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ I forbid it!<br>Not one step farther. For I only meant<br>To put thus far thy courage to the proof.<br>It is enough. I, too, have courage to die,<br>For thou hast taught me!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ O my Prince! remember<br>Your promises. Let me fulfill my errand.<br>You do not look on life and death as I do.<br>There are two angels, that attend unseen<br>Each one of us, and in great books record<br>Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down<br>The good ones, after every action closes<br>His volume, and ascends with it to God.<br>The other keeps his dreadful day-book open<br>Till sunset, that we may repent; which doing,<br>The record of the action fades away,<br>And leaves a line of white across the page.<br>Now if my act be good, as I believe it,<br>It cannot be recalled. It is already<br>Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished.<br>The rest is yours. Why wait you? I am ready.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_To her attendants._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Weep not, my friends! rather rejoice with me.<br>I shall not feel the pain, but shall be gone,<br>And you will have another friend in heaven.<br>Then start not at the creaking of the door<br>Through which I pass. I see what lies beyond it.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_To_ PRINCE HENRY.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And you, O Prince! bear back my benison<br>Unto my father's house, and all within it.<br>This morning in the church I prayed for them,<br>After confession, after absolution,<br>When my whole soul was white, I prayed for them.<br>God will take care of them, they need me not.<br>And in your life let my remembrance linger,<br>As something not to trouble and disturb it,<br>But to complete it, adding life to life.<br>And if at times beside the evening fire<br>You see my face among the other faces,<br>Let it not be regarded as a ghost<br>That haunts your house, but as a guest that loves you.<br>Nay, even as one of your own family,<br>Without whose presence there were something wanting.<br>I have no more to say. Let us go in.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Friar Angelo! I charge you on your life,<br>Believe not what she says, for she is mad,<br>And comes here not to die, but to be healed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Alas! Prince Henry!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ Come with me; this way.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(ELSIE _goes in with_ LUCIFER, _who thrusts_ PRINCE<br>HENRY _back and closes the door._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Gone! and the light of all my life gone with her!<br>A sudden darkness falls upon the world!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ News from the Prince!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ Of death or life?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ You put your questions eagerly!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ Answer me, then! How is the Prince?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ I left him only two hours since<br>Homeward returning down the river,<br>As strong and well as if God, the Giver,<br>Had given him back in his youth again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula (despairing)._ Then Elsie, my poor child, is dead!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ That, my good woman, I have not said.<br>Don't cross the bridge till you come to it,<br>Is a proverb old, and of excellent wit.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ Keep me no longer in this pain!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ It is true your daughter is no more;--<br>That is, the peasant she was before.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ Alas! I am simple and lowly bred<br>I am poor, distracted, and forlorn.<br>And it is not well that you of the court<br>Should mock me thus, and make a sport<br>Of a joyless mother whose child is dead,<br>For you, too, were of mother, born!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ Your daughter lives, and the Prince is well!<br>You will learn ere long how it all befell.<br>Her heart for a moment never failed;<br>But when they reached Salerno's gate,<br>The Prince's nobler self prevailed,<br>And saved her for a nobler fate,<br>And he was healed, in his despair,<br>By the touch of St. Matthew's sacred bones;<br>Though I think the long ride in the open air,<br>That pilgrimage over stocks and stones,<br>In the miracle must come in for a share!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ Virgin! who lovest the poor and lonely,<br>If the loud cry of a mother's heart<br>Can ever ascend to where thou art,<br>Into thy blessed hands and holy<br>Receive my prayer of praise and thanksgiving!<br>Let the hands that bore our Saviour bear it<br>Into the awful presence of God;<br>For thy feet with holiness are shod,<br>And if thou bearest it he will hear it.<br>Our child who was dead again is living!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ I did not tell you she was dead;<br>If you thought so 'twas no fault of mine;<br>At this very moment, while I speak,<br>They are sailing homeward down the Rhine,<br>In a splendid barge, with golden prow,<br>And decked with banners white and red<br>As the colors on your daughter's cheek.<br>They call her the Lady Alicia now;<br>For the Prince in Salerno made a vow<br>That Elsie only would he wed.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ Jesu Maria! what a change!<br>All seems to me so weird and strange!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ I saw her standing on the deck,<br>Beneath an awning cool and shady;<br>Her cap of velvet could not hold<br>The tresses of her hair of gold,<br>That flowed and floated like the stream,<br>And fell in masses down her neck.<br>As fair and lovely did she seem<br>As in a story or a dream<br>Some beautiful and foreign lady.<br>And the Prince looked so grand and proud,<br>And waved his hand thus to the crowd<br>That gazed and shouted from the shore,<br>All down the river, long and loud.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Ursula._ We shall behold our child once more;<br>She is not dead! She is not dead!<br>God, listening, must have overheard<br>The prayers, that, without sound or word,<br>Our hearts in secrecy have said!<br>O, bring me to her; for mine eyes<br>Are hungry to behold her face;<br>My very soul within me cries;<br>My very hands seem to caress her,<br>To see her, gaze at her, and bless her;<br>Dear Elsie, child of God and grace!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Goes out toward the garden._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Forester._ There goes the good woman out of her head;<br>And Gottlieb's supper is waiting here;<br>A very capacious flagon of beer,<br>And a very portentous loaf of bread.<br>One would say his grief did not much oppress him.<br>Here's to the health of the Prince, God bless him!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_He drinks._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ha! it buzzes and stings like a hornet!<br>And what a scene there, through the door!<br>The forest behind and the garden before,<br>And midway an old man of threescore,<br>With a wife and children that caress him.<br>Let me try still further to cheer and adorn it<br>With a merry, echoing blast of my cornet!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Goes out blowing his horn._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE _standing on the terrace at<br>evening. The sound of bells heard from a distance._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>_Prince Henry._ We are alone. The wedding guests<br>Ride down the hill, with plumes and cloaks,<br>And the descending dark invests<br>The Niederwald, and all the nests<br>Among its hoar and haunted oaks.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ What bells are those, that ring so slow,<br>So mellow, musical, and low?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ They are the bells of Geisenheim,<br>That with their melancholy chime<br>Ring out the curfew of the sun.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Listen, beloved.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ They are done!<br>Dear Elsie! many years ago<br>Those same soft bells at eventide<br>Rang in the ears of Charlemagne,<br>As, seated by Fastrada's side<br>At Ingelheim, in all his pride<br>He heard their sound with secret pain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Their voices only speak to me<br>Of peace and deep tranquillity,<br>And endless confidence in thee!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Thou knowest the story of her ring,<br>How, when the court went back to Aix,<br>Fastrada died; and how the king<br>Sat watching by her night and day,<br>Till into one of the blue lakes,<br>That water that delicious land,<br>They cast the ring, drawn from her hand;<br>And the great monarch sat serene<br>And sad beside the fated shore,<br>Nor left the land forever more.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ That was true love.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ For him the queen<br>Ne'er did what thou hast done for me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Wilt thou as fond and faithful be?<br>Wilt thou so love me after death?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ In life's delight, in death's dismay,<br>In storm and sunshine, night and day,<br>In health, in sickness, in decay,<br>Here and hereafter, I am thine!<br>Thou hast Fastrada's ring. Beneath<br>The calm, blue waters of thine eyes<br>Deep in thy steadfast soul it lies,<br>And, undisturbed by this world's breath,<br>With magic light its jewels shine!<br>This golden ring, which thou hast worn<br>Upon thy finger since the morn,<br>Is but a symbol and a semblance,<br>An outward fashion, a remembrance,<br>Of what thou wearest within unseen,<br>O my Fastrada, O my queen!<br>Behold! the hilltops all aglow<br>With purple and with amethyst;<br>While the whole valley deep below<br>Is filled, and seems to overflow,<br>With a fast-rising tide of mist.<br>The evening air grows damp and chill;<br>Let us go in.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Ah, not so soon.<br>See yonder fire! It is the moon<br>Slow rising o'er the eastern hill.<br>It glimmers on the forest tips,<br>And through the dewy foliage drips<br>In little rivulets of light,<br>And makes the heart in love with night.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Oft on this terrace, when the day<br>Was closing, have I stood and gazed,<br>And seen the landscape fade away,<br>And the white vapors rise and drown<br>Hamlet and vineyard, tower and town<br>While far above the hilltops blazed.<br>But men another hand than thine<br>Was gently held and clasped in mine;<br>Another head upon my breast<br>Was laid, as thine is now, at rest.<br>Why dost thou lift those tender eyes<br>With so much sorrow and surprise?<br>A minstrel's, not a maiden's hand,<br>Was that which in my own was pressed.<br>A manly form usurped thy place,<br>A beautiful, but bearded face,<br>That now is in the Holy Land,<br>Yet in my memory from afar<br>Is shining on us like a star.<br>But linger not. For while I speak,<br>A sheeted spectre white and tall,<br>The cold mist climbs the castle wall,<br>And lays his hand upon thy cheek!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They go in._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">EPILOGUE.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE TWO RECORDING ANGELS ASCENDING.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The Angel of Good Deeds (with closed book_). God sent his<br>messenger the rain,<br>And said unto the mountain brook,<br>'Rise up, and from thy caverns look<br>And leap, with naked, snow-white feet.<br>From the cool hills into the heat<br>Of the broad, arid plain.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">God sent his messenger of faith,<br>And whispered in the maiden's heart,<br>'Rise up, and look from where thou art,<br>And scatter with unselfish hands<br>Thy freshness on the barren sands<br>And solitudes of Death.'<br>O beauty of holiness,<br>Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness!<br>O power of meekness,<br>Whose very gentleness and weakness<br>Are like the yielding, but irresistible air!<br>Upon the pages<br>Of the sealed volume that I bear,<br>The deed divine<br>Is written in characters of gold,<br>That never shall grow old,<br>But all through ages<br>Burn and shine,<br>With soft effulgence!<br>O God! it is thy indulgence<br>That fills the world with the bliss<br>Of a good deed like this!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The Angel of Evil Deeds (with open book)._ Not yet, not yet<br>Is the red sun wholly set,<br>But evermore recedes,<br>While open still I bear<br>The Book of Evil Deeds,<br>To let the breathings of the upper air<br>Visit its pages and erase<br>The records from its face!<br>Fainter and fainter as I gaze<br>On the broad blaze<br>The glimmering landscape shines,<br>And below me the black river<br>Is hidden by wreaths of vapor!<br>Fainter and fainter the black lines<br>Begin to quiver<br>Along the whitening surface of the paper;<br>Shade after shade<br>The terrible words grow faint and fade,<br>And in their place<br>Runs a white space!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Down goes the sun!<br>But the soul of one,<br>Who by repentance<br>Has escaped the dreadful sentence,<br>Shines bright below me as I look.<br>It is the end!<br>With closed Book<br>To God do I ascend.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lo! over the mountain steeps<br>A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps<br>Beneath my feet;<br>A blackness inwardly brightening<br>With sullen heat,<br>As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning.<br>And a cry of lamentation,<br>Repeated and again repeated,<br>Deep and loud<br>As the reverberation<br>Of cloud answering unto cloud,<br>Swells and rolls away in the distance,<br>As if the sheeted<br>Lightning retreated,<br>Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409720" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It is Lucifer,<br>The son of mystery;<br>And since God suffers him to be,<br>He, too, is God's minister,<br>And labors for some good<br>By us not understood!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>

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