University of Virginia Library

ACT II.

SCENE I.

Alfred
alone.
'Tis now the depth of darkness and repose.
Now walks mute Midnight shadowy o'er the plain,
To rule the solitary hour; and sheds
His slumbery influence o'er the peaceful world.
All nature seems to rest: while Alfred wakes
To think, and to be wretched.—My brave friend,
I fear me, has miscarry'd.—Where yon oak
With wide and dusky shade o'erhangs the stream,
That glides in silence by, I took my stand:
What time the glow-worm thro' the dewy path
First shot his twinkling flame. Attent I stood,
Listening each noise from twilight hill and dale:
But all was hush'd around. Nor trumpet's clang,
Nor shout of roving foe, nor hasty tread
Of evening passenger, disturb'd the wide
And awful stillness. Homeward as I sped,
O'er many a delve, thro many a path perplext,
Maze running into maze; ill-boding thoughts
Haunted my steps.—Perhaps my gallant friend,
Discover'd to the Danes, this moment bleeds
Beneath their swords! or lies a breathless corse,
The prey of midnight wolves.—Some mournful sound
Struck sudden on my sense.

SCENE II.

Alfred, Eltruda.
Eltruda.
Here will I lean
On this green bank, to wait the wish'd return
Of morning, and my lord.

Alfred.
My gentle love,
Eltruda, why to this untimely sky
Expose thy health? The dews of night fall fast:
The chill breeze sighs aloud.

Eltruda.
I could not rest.
Can Love repose when Apprehension wakes,
And whispers to the heart all fearful things,
That walk with night and solitude? Methought,
In each deaf murmur of the woods, I heard
The dreadful foe—or heard my Alfred groan!
Our tender infants too—their fancy'd cries
Still sound within my ears!

Alfred.
Eltruda, there
I am a woman too: I who should cheer,
And shelter thee from every care. My children!
The thought of what may chance to them compleats
Their father's sum of woes. O what safe shade
Can skreen their opening blossom from the storm
That beats severe on us! Not sweeter buds
The primrose in the vale, nor sooner shrinks
At winter's churlish blast—

Eltruda.
Behold, my Lord—
Good Angels shield us—What a flood of brightness
Waves round our heads!

Alfred.
The Hermit moves this way.
That wondrous man holds converse with the host
Of higher natures. These far-beaming fires
Were doubtless kindled up at his command.
Be silent and attentive.

SCENE III.

Alfred, Eltruda, Hermit.
Hermit.
I have heard
Thy fond complainings, Alfred.

Alfred.
You have then,
Good father, heard the cause that wrings them from me.

Hermit.
The human race are sons of sorrow born:
And each must have his portion. Vulgar minds
Refuse, or crouch beneath their load: the Brave
Bear theirs without repining.

Alfred.
Who can bear
The shaft that wounds him thro an infant's side?
When whom we love, to whom we owe protection,
Implore the hand we cannot reach to save them?

Hermit.
Weep not, Eltruda.—Yet thou art a king,
All private passions fall before that name.
Thy subjects claim thee whole.

Alfred.
Can public trust,
O reverend sage! destroy the softer ties
That twine around the parent's yearning heart?
That holy passion heaven itself infus'd,
And blended with the stream that feeds our life.

Hermit.
You love your children, Prince—

Alfred.
Lives there on earth,
In air, or ocean, creature tame or wild
That has not known this universal love?
All nature feels it intimate and deep,
And all her sons of instinct or of reason.

Hermit.
Then shew that passion in its noblest form.
Season their tender years with every virtue,
Social or self-retir'd; of public greatness,
Or lovely in the hour of private life;
With all that can exalt, or can adorn
Their princely rank.

Alfred.
Alas, their hope must stoop,
Such my unhappy fate, to humbler aims:
Affliction and base want must be their teachers.

Hermit.
Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue:
Where patience, honor, sweet humanity,
Calm fortitude take root, and strongly flourish.
But prosperous fortune, that allures with pleasure,
Dazles with pomp, and undermines with flattery,
Poisons the soil, and its best product kills.
Should'st thou regain thy throne—

Alfred.
My throne? What glimpse,
What smallest ray of hope—

Hermit.

[Music grand and awful. The Genius descending sings the following
SONG.
From those eternal regions bright,
Where suns, that never set in night,
Diffuse the golden day:
Where spring unfading pours around,
O'er all the dew-impearled ground,
Her thousand colors gay:
O whether on the fountain's flowery side,
Whence living waters glide,
Or in the fragrant grove,
Whose shade embosoms peace and love,
New pleasures all your hours employ,
And rapture every sense with every joy!
Great heirs of empire! yet unborn,
Who shall this island late adorn;
A monarch's drooping thought to chear,
Appear! appear! appear!

Spirits of Edward III. Philippa his queen, and the Black Prince his son, arise.
Hermit.
Alfred, look; and say,
What seest thou yonder?

Alfred.
Three majestic shapes:
Two habited like mighty warriors old;
A third in whose bright aspect beauty smiles
More soft and feminine. A lucid veil,
From her fair neck dependent floats around,
Light-hovering in the gale.

Hermit.

Alfred.
Holy sage,
Whom angels thus enlighten and inspire,
My bosom kindles at thy heaven-born flame.
Great Edward! Be thy conquests and their praise
Unrival'd to thy self. But O thy fame
For care paternal of the public weal;
For England blest at home—my rapt heart pants
To equal that renown!

Hermit.

Alfred.
A son so rich in virtues, and so grac'd
With all that gives those virtues fair to shine,
When I would ask of heaven some mighty boon,
Should claim the foremost place.

Hermit.
Remember then,
What to thy infant sons from thee is due,
As parent and as prince.

Eltruda.
Forgive me, Hermit,
Forgive a queen and wife her anxious fondness.
Yon beauteous shade, that, as I gaze her o'er,
My wonder draws, escapes your graver thought.

Hermit.
O bright Eltruda! thou whose blooming youth,
Whose amiable sweetness promise blessings
To Alfred and to England! see, and mark,
In yonder pleasing form, the best of wives,
The happiest too, repaid with all the faith,
With all the friendship, love and duty claim.
She, powerful o'er the heart her charms enslave—
O virtue rarely practis'd!—uses nobly
That happy influence; to prompt each purpose
Fair honor kindles in her Edward's breast.
Amid the pomps, the pleasures of a court,
Humble of heart, severely good: the friend
Of modest worth, the parent of the poor.
Eltruda! O transmit these noblest charms
To that fair daughter, that unfolding rose,
With which, as on this day, heaven crown'd your loves.

The spirit of Elizabeth arises.
Alfred.
Say, who is she, in whom the noble graces,
Th'engaging manner, dignity and ease,
Are join'd with manly sense and resolution?

Hermit.
The great Eliza. She, amid a world
That threatning swells in high commotion round her;
Each dangerous state her unrelenting foe,
And chief a proud enormous empire stretch'd
O'er half mankind; with not one friendly power,
But what her kind creating hand shall raise
From out the marshes of the branching Rhine;
And min'd, at home, her ever-tottering throne
By restless bigots, who, beneath the mask
Of mild religion, are to every crime
Set loose, the faithless sons of barbarous zeal:
Yet she shall crown this happy isle with peace,
With arts, with riches, grandeur and renown;
And dash, by turns, the madness of her foes.
As when the winds, from different quarters, urge
The tempest on our shore: secure, the cliffs
Repel its idle rage, and pour it back,
In broken billows, foaming to the main.

Alfred.
How shall she, Hermit, gain these glorious ends?

Hermit.
By silent wisdom, whose informing power
Works unperceiv'd: that seems in council slow;
But, when resolv'd and ripe for execution,
That parts like lightning from the secret gloom.
By ever seizing the right point of view,
Her truest interest; which she firm pursues,
With steady patience, thro the maze of state,
The storm of opposition, the mixt views,
And thwarting manag'd passions of mankind.
By healing the divisions of her people,
And sowing that fell pest among her foes.
By saving, from the vermin of a court,
Her treasure; which, when fair occasion calls,
She knows to lavish, in protecting arts,
In guarding nations, and in nursing states.
By calling up to power, and public life,
Each virtue, each ability: yet she,
Amid the various worthies glowing round her,
Still shines the first; the central sun that wakes,
That rules their every motion: not the slave,
And passive property of her own creatures.
But the great soul that animates her reign,
That lights it to perfection, is the love,
The confidence unbounded, which her wisdom,
Her probity and justice, shall inspire
Into the public breast. Hence cordial faith,
Which nought can shake; hence unexhausted treasure:
And hence, above all mercenary force,
The hand that by the freeborn heart is rais'd,
And guards the blended weal of prince and people.
She too shall rouse Britannia's naval soul;
Shall greatly ravish, from insulting Spain,
The world-commanding scepter of the deep.

Eltruda.
O matchless queen! O glory of her sex!
The great idea, father, fills my soul,
And bids it glow beyond a woman's passions.

Spirit of William III. arises.
Hermit.

Alfred.
O Hermit! thou hast rais'd me to new life!
New hopes, new triumphs swell my bounding heart—

Hermit.
It comes! it comes!—The promis'd scene discloses!
Already the great work of fate begins!
The mighty wheels are turning, whence will spread,
Beyond the limits of our narrow world,
The fair dominions, Alfred, of thy sons.
Behold the warrior bright with Danish spoils!—
The raven droops his wings—and hark! the trumpet,
Exulting, speaks the rest.

SCENE IV.

Symphony of martial music.
Alfred, Eltruda, Hermit, Earl of Devon, followed by soldiers.
Alfred.
Welcome, my lord
I see true courage lags not in its course;
It stands not weighing actions, with cold wisdom
That borders near on cowardice.

Devon.
My Liege,
Your troops have been successful.—But to heaven
Ascend the praise! For sure th'event exceeds
The hand of man.

Alfred.
How was it, noble Devon?

Devon.
You know my castle is not hence far-distant,
Thither I sped: and in a Danish habit
The trenches passing, by a secret way,
Known to myself alone, emerg'd at once
Amid my joyful soldiers. There I found
A generous few, the veteran, hardy gleanings
Of many a hapless fight. They with a fierce
And gloomy joy inspirited each other;
Resolv'd on death, disdaining to survive
Their dearest country.—“If we fall, I cry'd,
“Let us not tamely fall like passive cowards!
“No: let us live—or let us die, like men!
“Come on, my friends: to Alfred we will cut
“Our glorious way; or, as we nobly perish,
“Will offer to the genius of our country
“Whole hecatombs of Danes.”—As if one soul
Had mov'd them all, around their heads they flash'd
Their flaming faulchions—“Lead us to these Danes!—
“Our country!—vengeance!” was the general cry.
Strait on the careless drousy camp we rush'd:
And rapid, as the flame devours the stubble,
Bore down the heartless Danes. With this success
Our enterprize encreas'd. Not now contented
To hew a passage thro the flying herd;
We, unremitting, urg'd a total rout.
The valiant Hubba bites the bloody field,
With twice six hundred Danes around him strow'd.

Alfred.
My glorious friend!—this action has restor'd
Our sinking country.—What reward can equal
A deed so great?—Is not yon pictur'd Raven
Their famous magic standard—Emblem fit
To speak the savage genius of the people—
That oft has scatter'd on our troops dismay,
And feeble consternation?

Devon.
'Tis the same.
Wrought by the sisters of the Danish king,
Of furious Ivar, in a midnight hour:
While the sick moon, at their enchanted song,
Wrapt in pale tempest, labour'd thro' the clouds.
The Demons of destruction then, they say,
Were all abroad, and mixing with the woof
Their baleful power: The sisters ever sung;
“Shake, standard, shake this ruin on our foes!”

Hermit.
So these infernal powers, with rays of truth
Still deck their fables, to delude who trust them.

Alfred.
But where, my noble cousin, are the rest
Of your brave troops?

Devon.
On t'other side the stream,
That half encloses this retreat, I left them.
Rous'd from the fear, with which it was congeal'd
As in a frost, the country pours amain.
The spirit of our ancestors is up,
The spirit of the Free! and with a voice
That breathes success, they all demand their king.

Alfred.
Quick, let us join them, and improve their ardor.
We cannot be too hasty to secure
The glances of occasion.

SCENE the last.

To them Corin, Emma, kneeling to Alfred.
Corin.
Good my Liege,
Pardon the poor unequal entertainment,
Which we, unknowing—

Alfred.
Rise, my honest shepherd.
I came to thee a peasant, not a prince:
And, what exalts a king o'er other men,
Stript of the toys of royalty? Yet more,
Thy rural entertainment was sincere,
Plain, hospitable, kind: such as, I hope,
Will ever mark the manners of this nation.
You friendly lodg'd me, when by all deserted:
And shall have ample recompense.

Corin.
One boon,
Is all I crave.

Alfred.
Good shepherd, speak thy wish.

Corin.
Permission, in your wars, to serve your Grace:
For tho here lost in solitary shades,
A simple swain, I bear an English heart:
A heart that burns with rage to see those Danes,
Those foreign ruffians, those inhuman pirates,
Oft our inferiors prov'd, thus lord it o'er us.

Alfred.
Brave countryman, come on. 'Tis such as thou,
Who from affection serve, and free-born zeal,
To guard whate'er is dear and sacred to them,
That are a king's best honor and defence.

Emma
sings the following song.

Alfred.

Eltruda.
Go, pay the debt of honor to the public.
If ever woman, Alfred, lov'd her husband
More fondly than herself, I claim that virtue,
That heart-felt happiness. Yet, by our loves
I swear, that in a glorious death with thee
I rather would be wrapt, than live long years
To charm thee from the rugged paths of honor:
So much I think thee born for beauteous deeds,
And the bright course of glory.

Alfred.
Matchless woman!
Love, at thy voice, is kindled to ambition.
Be this my dearest triumph, to approve me
A husband worthy of the best Eltruda!

Hermit.
Behold, my Lord, our venerable Bard,
Aged and blind, him whom the Muses favour.
Yet ere you go, in our lov'd country's praise,
That noblest theme, hear what his rapture breathes.

An ODE.

Hermit.