Festus. Best ope the casement: see, The night, late strewn with clouds and flying stars, Is blank and motionless: how peaceful sleep The wind slips whispering from bough to bough. Paracelsus. Ay; you would gaze on a wind-shaken tree By the hour, nor count time lost. Those pleasant times! Does not the moaning wind Seem to bewail that we have gained such gains And bartered sleep for them? Festus. It is our trust That there is yet another world to mend All error and mischance. Paracelsus. Another world! And why this world, this common world, to be To some fine life to come? Man must be fed Through his corporeal baseness, warrant him As here and there a gem would constitute Down to the lowest spirit ministrant, Love, hope, fear, faith-these make humanity; And these I have lost!-gone, shut from me for ever, See, morn at length. The heavy darkness seems The shrubs bestir and rouse themselves as if Some snake, that weighed them down all night, let go His hold; and from the East, fuller and fuller Day, like a mighty river, flowing in; But clouded, wintry, desolate and cold. Yet see how that broad prickly star-shaped plant, And we have spent all night in talk like this! Festus. One favour, And I have done. I leave you, deeply moved; My friend has changed so sorely. If this mood Will you not call me to your side, dear Aureole ? III PART IV. PARACELSUS ASPIRES. SCENE.-Colmar in Alsatia: an Inn. 1528. PARACELSUS, FESTUS. Paracelsus [to JOHANNES OPORINUS, his Secretary]. Is scandalized, and poor Torinus paralysed, And learned Pütter had not frowned us dumb. A delicate blush, no fainter tinge is born I' the shut heart of a bud. Pledge me, good John"Basil; a hot plague ravage it, and Pütter "Oppose the plague!" Even so? Do you too share Their panic, the reptiles? Ha, ha; faint through these, At Basil, 't is like: but others may find means Now big with admiration at the skill Which stript a vain pretender of his plumes : And, that done,-means to brand each slavish brow So deeply, surely, ineffaceably, That henceforth flattery shall not pucker it Out of the furrow; there that stamp shall stay To do, whate'er arrangements for our trip Are yet to be completed, see you hasten This night; we 'll weather the storm at least: to-morrow For Nuremberg! Now leave us; this grave clerk Has divers weighty matters for my ear: [OPORINUS goes out. And spare my lungs. At last, my gallant Festus, |