The works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. by mrs. Shelley

Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt? My lord,
I am more innocent of parricide
Than is a child born fatherless. Dear mother,
Your gentleness and patience are no shield
For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie,
Which seems, but is not. What! will human laws,
Rather will ye who are their ministers,
Bar all access to retribution first,

And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do
What ye neglect, arming familiar things
To the redress of an unwonted crime,
Make ye the victims who demanded it
Culprits "Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch

And yet, if you arrest me, You are the judge and executioner Of that which is the life of life: the breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it. "Tis most false That I am guilty of foul parricide; Although I must rejoice, for justest cause, That other hands have sent my father's soul To ask the mercy he denied to me. Now leave us free stain not a noble house With vague surmises of rejected crime; Add to our sufferings and your own neglect No heavier sum; let them have been enough: Leave us the wreck we have.

Why not to Rome, dear mother? There, as here,
Our innocence is as an armed heel

To trample accusation. God is there,
As here, and with his shadow ever clothes
The innocent, the injured, and the weak;
And such are we. Cheer up, dear lady! lean

On me; collect your wandering thoughts. My lord,
As soon as you have taken some refreshment,
And had all such examinations made
Upon the spot, as may be necessary
To the full understanding of this matter,
We shall be ready. Mother, will you come !

LUCRETIA.

Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest
Self-accusation from our agony!
Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio!
All present; all confronted; all demanding
Each from the other's countenance the thing
Which is in every heart! O, misery!

[She faints, and is borne out.

Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?
O that the vain remorse which must chastise
Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn,

As its keen sting is mortal to avenge!

O that the hour when present had cast off
The mantle of its mystery, and shown
The ghastly form with which it now returns
When its scared game is roused, cheering the
hounds

Of conscience to their prey! Alas, alas!
It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,
To kill an old and hoary-headed father.

GIACOMO.

How can that be? Already Beatrice, Lucretia, and the murderer, are in prison.

I doubt not officers

Sent to arrest us.

For instant flight.

are, whilst we speak,

ORSINO.

have all prepared We can escape even now, So we take fleet occasion by the hair.

GIACOMO.

Rather expire in tortures, as I may.
What! will you cast by self-accusing flight
Assured conviction upon Beatrice ?
She who alone, in this unnatural work,
Stands like God's angel ministered upon
By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong
As turns black parricide to piety;
Whilst we for basest ends-I fear, Orsino,
While I consider all your words and looks,
Comparing them with your proposal now,
That you must be a villain. For what end
Could you engage in such a perilous crime,
Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles,
Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No,
Thou art a lie! Traitor and murderer!

Coward and slave! But no-defend thyself;

[Drawing. Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue Disdains to brand thee with.

ORSINO.

Put up your weapon.

Is it the desperation of your fear
Makes you thus rash and sudden with your
friend,

Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger
Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed
Was but to try you. As for me, I think
Thankless affection led me to this point,
From which, if my firm temper could repent,
I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak,

The ministers of justice wait below:

They grant me these brief moments. Now, if you
Have any word of melancholy comfort
To speak to your pale wife, 'twere best to pass
Out at the postern, and avoid them so.

GIACOMO.

Oh, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me? Would that my life could purchase thine!

ORSINO.

That wish Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well! Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor?

[Exit GIACOMO.
I'm sorry for it; but the guards are waiting
At his own gate, and such was my contrivance
That I might rid me both of him and them.
I thought to act a solemn comedy
Upon the painted scene of this new world,
And to attain my own peculiar ends

By some such plot of mingled good and ill
As others weave; but there arose a Power
Which grasped and snapped the threads of my
device,

And turned it to a net of ruin-Ha!

[A shout is heard. Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad? But I will pass, wrapt in a vile disguise; Rags on my back, and a false innocence Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd, Which judges by what seems. 'Tis easy then, For a new name, and for a country new, And a new life, fashioned on old desires, To change the honours of abandoned Rome. And these must be the masks of that within, Which must remain unaltered.—Oh, I fear That what is past will never let me rest! Why, when none else is conscious, but myself, Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's contempt Trouble me? Have I not the power to fly My own reproaches? Shall I be the slave Of-what? A word! which those of this false world Employ against each other, not themselves; As men wear daggers not for self-offence. But if I am mistaken, where shall I Find the disguise to hide me from myself, As now I skulk from every other eye?

The terrible resentment of those eyes

Oh, dart

On the dread earth! Turn them away from me! They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth. My

Lords,

Having said this, let me be led to death.

BEATRICE.

Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.

CAMILLO.

Guards, lead him not away.

BEATRICE.

Cardinal Camillo,

You have a good repute for gentleness
And wisdom can it be that you sit here
To countenance a wicked farce like this!
When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged
From sufferings which might shake the sternest
heart,

And bade to answer, not as he believes,
But as those may suspect or do desire,

Whose questions thence suggest their own reply:
And that in peril of such hideous torments
As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now
The thing you surely know, which is, that you,
If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,
And you were told, "Confess that you did poison
Your little nephew: that fair blue-eyed child
Who was the load-star of your life;" and though
All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,

I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
(If he now lived, he would be just her age;
His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes
Like hers in shape, but blue, and not so deep :)
As that most perfect image of God's love
That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
She is as pure as speechless infancy!

And the rack makes him utter, do you think
I should have left this two-edged instrument
Of my misdeed; this man; this bloody knife,
With my own name engraven on the heft,
Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,
For my own death? That with such horrible need
For deepest silence, I should have neglected
So trivial a precaution, as the making
His tomb the keeper of a secret written
On a thief's memory ? What is his
What are a thousand lives? A parricide
poor
Had trampled them like dust; and see, he lives!
[Turning to MARZIO.
And thou-

MARZIO.

life?

Oh, spare me ! Speak to me no more! That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones, Wound worse than torture.

(To the Judges.) I have told it all; For pity's sake lead me away to death.

CAMILLO.

Guards, lead him nearer the lady Beatrice,
He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf
From the keen breath of the serenest north.
BEATRICE.

Oh, thou who tremblest on the giddy verge
Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me ;
So mayst thou answer God with less dismay :
What evil have we done thee? I, alas!
Have lived but on this earth a few sad years,
And so my lot was ordered, that a father
First turned the moments of awakening life
To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and
then

Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul,
And my untainted fame; and even that peace
Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart.
But the wound was not mortal; so my hate
Became the only worship I could lift
To our great Father, who in pity and love,
Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
And thus his wrong becomes my accusation:
And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest
Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth :
Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path
Over the trampled laws of God and man,
Rush not before thy Judge, and say: "My Maker,
I have done this and more; for there was one
Who was most pure and innocent on earth;
And because she endured what never any,

Guilty or innocent, endured before ;

Because her wrongs could not be told, nor thought;
Because thy hand at length did rescue her;

Think

I with my words killed her and all her kin."
Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
The reverence living in the minds of men
Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame!
Think what it is to strangle infant pity,
Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
Till it become a crime to suffer.
What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood
All that which shows like innocence, and is,-
Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,—
So that the world lose all discrimination
Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,
And that which now compels thee to reply
To what I ask: Am I, or am I not
A parricide?

Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.

How very

BEATRICE.

See now, thou mak'st me weep: friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,

What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what, If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say.
And therefore on the chance that it may be
Some evil, will ye kill us?

BERNARDO.

They have confessed; they could endure no more
The tortures

BEATRICE.

Ha! What was there to confess!
They must have told some weak and wicked lie
To flatter their tormentors. Have they said
That they were guilty? O white innocence,
That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide
Thine awful and serenest countenance
From those who know thee not!

Enter JUDGE, with LUCRETIA and Giacomo, guarded.
Ignoble hearts!
For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least
As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,
Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust?
And that eternal honour which should live
Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,
Changed to a mockery and a by-word? What!
Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep
The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,
Who, that they may make our calamity
Their worship and their spectacle, will leave
The churches and the theatres as void
As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude
Fling at their choice, curses or faded pity,
Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,
Upon us as we pass, to pass away,

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