University of Virginia Library

Scene II.—Afternoon. Platform on the ramparts.
Voices without.
Way for the wounded!

(The wounded are carried across the stage. Nobles entering in disorder.)
A Count.
Who will surgeon me
This gash? I bleed to death. Chirurgeon ho!
Where's Orval?

A Baron.
Orval? When I saw him last
He was surrounded by our swarming foe,
But fighting still. No lion fiercer.

A Prince.
Well,
It was a desperate sortie.

The Count.
Desperate? ay,
They shambled us like sheep.

The Baron.
All's lost!

Orval
(entering, followed by Andrew and vassals).
Lost? ha!
Who said then “All is lost”? What man of you,
That in his heart hath manhood left and life,
Dare say “All's lost”?

The Prince.
What, Orval? never more
I thought to see thee amongst living men.
Welcome, brave chief! We bleed at every pore.
What's left of us? How long can we hold out?

Orval.
So long as we are living men: no longer.

The Baron.
Count, you have seen that cruel man. How say you,
If we should fall into his bloody hands,
Shall we find mercy?

Orval.
Mercy? ay, my lord!
Such shameful mercy as the hangman grants
The felon that he gibbets—a swift end.
Thy father would have scorn'd such mercy.

The Baron.
Ah,
Then nothing's left but to defend ourselves
As best we may.

Orval.
And you, Prince? What say you?

The Prince.
My lord, a word with you.
(They walk apart.)
All this is well
To put upon the crowd. But you and I
Know that we must capitulate. My lord,
After this day's disastrous end, to think
We can repulse the enemy is not
Courage, but madness.

Orval.
Hush! speak lower, Prince.

The Prince.
Wherefore?

Orval.
'Twere pity if our friends should hear
From one whose name was honourable once
Words that dishonour it. (Aloud.)
Remember, sirs,
That unto him who of surrender speaks
The punishment is death.

The Count, the Baron, and the Prince together.
The punishment
Is death to him that of surrender speaks.

Omnes.
Ay, no surrender! Death, but no surrender!

(They go out.)
Orval.
Where is my son?

Andrew.
In the north tower. He sits
All day upon the flinty step beneath
The iron door that on the dungeons opes,
Singing strange songs.

Orval.
The western bastion arm
More strongly. We are weakest on that side.
See that the wall be double mann'd: this night
They may attack us. Go, good Andrew, ere
The sun sinks from our western outlook mark
The enemy, and bring me word of him.

Andrew.
God help us! O my lord, our soldiers faint.
They are o'erwatch'd.

Orval.
There is no lack of wine
For princely tables in our cellars stored.
Broach them the best.

Andrew.
I will, my lord.

Orval.
See to it.
(Exit Andrew.) (Orval ascends the ramparts, and eyes the plain. from beside the standard of St. John, which is planted on the ramparts.)
Yonder, from his red ramparts of the west,
Into his black and cloudy coffin, sinks
The bloody sun. And yonder spreads the foe.
My day is setting. And, like thee, O sun,
I to a gory grave am going down.
I too, like thee, have travell'd the world round.
Bright be mine end as thine! When we are gone
What shall come after? On what world not ours
Still wilt thou shine, and we, thy peers, be dust,
Who, whiles we yet were living souls, to thee
No homage owed! The days are few and fast.
And soon I,—they,—all these, that keep the forms
And semblances of men, shall be dead clay.
What matter, if, while yet we are, we are
Immortal in the moment we make ours?
O solitude of sovereignty! which they
That creep, and they that soar, aspire to reach,
By no base crawling guile, nor no blind flight,
But with the firm-set footsteps of a man
Whose vision measures what his manful will
Hath made the pathway of his purposes,
I have attain'd to be this day supreme
And paramount arbiter of those that were
My seeming equals yesterday. Content!
My days haste from me, but I grasp myself.
O such as never in the time gone by
I was, when through the dark of dreamless nights
I watch'd the rising of thy nebulous star,
Thou phantom Poësy, am I, who now
Hail life's bright burning brief Reality!
What if my days be number'd, being cramm'd
With numberless delights? And we will cheat
The chary time with memorable deeds
That shall outlive him, and whiles yet he lives
Feed him on passionatest pleasures. War,
Thou grand begetter of immortal men,
Make thou this lean life big with burly lust
Of glory, and fame gotten with a gust!