Are crowded with new freights, trade stirs and hurries! 95But on some morrow morn, all suddenly,
The tents drop down, the horde renews its march.
Dreary, and solitary as a churchyard
The meadow and down-trodden seed-plot lie,
And the year’s harvest is gone utterly. 100
Max. O let the Emperor make peace, my father!
Most gladly would I give the bloodstained laurel
For the first violet of the leafless spring,
Plucked in those quiet fields where I have journeyed!
Octavio. What ails thee? What so moves thee all at once? 105
Max. Peace have I ne’er beheld? I have beheld it.
From thence am I come hither: O! that sight,
It glimmers still before me, like some landscape
Left in the distance, — some delicious landscape!
My road conducted me through countries where 110
The war has not yet reached. Life, life, my father —
My venerable father, life has charms
Which we have ne’er experienced. We have been
But voyaging along its barren coasts,
Like some poor ever-roaming horde of pirates, 115
That, crowded in the rank and narrow ship,
House on the wild sea with wild usages,
Nor know aught of the main land, but the bays
Where safeliest they may venture a thieves’ landing.
Whate’er in the inland dales the land conceals 120
Of fair and exquisite, O! nothing, nothing,
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.
Octavio. And so your journey has revealed this to you?
Max. ‘Twas the first leisure of my life. O tell me,
What is the meed and purpose of the toil, 125
The painful toil, which robbed me of my youth,
Left me a heart unsoul’d and solitary,
A spirit uninformed, unornamented.
For the camp’s stir and crowd and ceaseless larum,
The neighing war-horse, the air-shattering trumpet, 130
The unvaried, still-returning hour of duty,
Word of command, and exercise of arms —
There’s nothing here, there’s nothing in all this
To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart!
Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not — 135
This cannot be the sole felicity,
These cannot be man’s best and only pleasures.
Octavio. Much hast thou learnt, my son, in this short journey.
Max. O! day thrice lovely! when at length the soldier
Returns home into life; when he becomes 140
A fellow-man among his fellow-men.
The colours are unfurled, the cavalcade
Marshals, and now the buzz is hushed, and hark!
Now the soft peace-march beats, home, brothers, home!
The caps and helmets are all garlanded 145
With green boughs, the last plundering of the fields.
The city gates fly open of themselves,
They need no longer the petard to tear them.
The ramparts are all filled with men and women,
With peaceful men and women, that send onwards 150
Kisses and welcomings upon the air,
Which they make breezy with affectionate gestures.
From all the towers rings out the merry peal,
The joyous vespers of a bloody day.
O happy man, O fortunate! for whom 155
The well-known door, the faithful arms are open,
The faithful tender arms with mute embracing.
Questenberg. O! that you should speak
Of such a distant, distant time, and not
Of the tomorrow, not of this to-day. 160
Max. Where lies the fault but on you in Vienna?
I will deal openly with you, Questenberg.
Just now, as first I saw you standing here,
(I’ll own it to you freely) indignation
Crowded and pressed my inmost soul together. 165
‘Tis ye that hinder peace, ye! — and the warrior,
It is the warrior that must force it from you.
Ye fret the General’s life out, blacken him,
Hold him up as a rebel, and Heaven knows
What else still worse, because he spares the Saxons, 170
And tries to awaken confidence in the enemy;
Which yet ‘s the only way to peace: for if
War intermit not during war, how then
And whence can peace come? — Your own plagues fall on you!
Even as I love what’s virtuous, hate I you. 175
And here make I this vow, here pledge myself;
My blood shall spurt out for this Wallenstein,
And my heart drain off, drop by drop, ere ye
Shall revel and dance jubilee o’er his ruin. [Exit.
SCENE V
