 | Calmstorm, the reformer |  |
SCENE V.
—Without the Court. Calmstorm, to him enter Waning.Wan.
Darkledge and Slinely in a by-street
I just now passed. There's darkness about them,
And a silent talk like that of spectres:
You should have taken Slinely by the hand,
In the full face of all the lookers-on,
And asked him of his child's health and his wife's,
With something of a yielding or a truckling,
As the weak world would call it, in your look.
Calm.
Good men are made and bad are bettered, doubtless,
My good friend Waning, by confounding them,
As in a hat or jury-wheel. O, that the world
Would for a day let go the crank by which
It jumbles clean and foul in one!
Wan.
He bit his lips, and looked from 'neath his lids
Upon you—I wished you could have picked a time,
At least, with a warm hand to greet him, though
'T had been in the undistinguishable throng,
Or in the passage from the court, even
The secret angle of the open door.
Calm.
What goblin's this that I must worship
Openly, or court in stealthy favor?
Wan.
The darkest Spirit of the city, Calmstorm!
Who keeps a secret book wherein is writ
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Each man's peculiar bias from the right,
Who darkly with his neighbor's wife has erred,
And who has clutched, with fingers lawless,
The vaulted gold; what judge, libidinous,
What priest, who hugs him in his catlike robe,
Holding his pitch above the unsheltered world;—
He cuts the thread and tumbles on the ground,
At his convenient time, fluttered and broken,
Soiled and pitiful. He is the city's fiend,
And keeps the evil count of all our deeds,
Avenging God in gloomy merriment.
Whiter than angels in his look: at heart
Blacker than devils in the sulphurous fire.
Calm.
By what charter plays he
These pranks on the round earth, so far beyond
His pale? And who is he?
Wan.
'Tis Slinely, the journalist: the master
Of the Organ that every morning breathes
Ruin or Joy on whom it pleases.
Calm.
Accursed be he who'd yield a single jot
Of all he holds at such a bidding! Must I,
Or smile, or look, or shake a greeting hand,
Or bear myself erect or bowed, this road
Pursue or that to public councils, sit
At my worship, or kneel at such suggestion?
Heaven's patent to free man runs not so writ,
Nor is it sent, blackening and dark, to these.
And yet there is a power, next Heaven's omnipotence,
That governs, guides, and soothes the vexed community
Whose eye unsleeping at the dead of night,
Looks on the secret heart of life, and counts
Its pulses to the morning sun: that all the world
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And brethren shake hands a thousand miles apart,
In far lands or seas, communing
By magic of the true journal's speedy breath!
Wan.
Look yonder, Calmstorm!
Arm-in-arm, you see Darkledge, the judge,
And the dark writer, passing. They look at you
Together, and pass on.
Calm.
[A newspaper in his hand.]
Death-like thou smilest, dost thou, winding-sheet!
Thou hast thy tricks of use, in circles various,
In high and low, in near and far, as the globe's belt.
I hold thee as a shield before my breast,
I shake thee as a banner in the air,
I spread thee on the ground, a battle's map;
Column on column, fold on fold, I see thou curl'st
About the membered life, fanged in its heart,
Or nursing underneath thy snow-white wings
In downy calm, the gentle brood of truth.—
How round about this place a dreadful stillness
Reigns, where late it roared with harshest sounds
Of trampling and of voices!
Wan.
Marked you
With what a cry the outside sitters
Of the court welcomed the rendering
Of the adverse order to the clerk? and how
The old judge smiled, and how they clapped again!
Calm.
Upon my spirit this silence falls,
Thickly as if another world were placed
Atop of this. Let us fly hence!
[Exeunt.
| Calmstorm, the reformer | |