Did not belong to what I knew of life.
If that I did not know philosophy

To be of all our vanities the motliest,

The merest word that ever fool'd the ear

From out the schoolman's jargon, I should deem
The golden secret, the sought " Kalon," found,
And seated in my soul. It will not last,

But it is well to have known it, though but once:
It hath enlarged my thoughts with a new sense,
And I within my tablets would note down
That there is such a feeling. Who is there?

Re-enter HERMAN.

My lord, the abbot of St. Maurice craves

To greet your presence.

Enter the ABBOT OF ST. MAURICE.

ABBOT. Peace be with Count Manfred!

MAN. Thanks, holy father! welcome to these walls;

Thy presence honours them, and blesseth those

Who dwell within them.

Аввот.

Would it were so, Count!—

But I would fain confer with thee alone.

MAN. Herman, retire. What would my reverend

guest?

ABBOT. Thus, without prelude:--Age and zeal, my

office,

And good intent, must plead my privilege;

Our near, though not acquainted neighbourhood,
May also be my herald. Rumours strange,
And of unholy nature, are abroad,

And busy with thy name; a noble name

For centuries; may he who bears it now

Transmit it unimpair'd!

ΜΑΝ.

Proceed, I listen.

ABBOT. 'Tis said thou holdest converse with the things

Which are forbidden to the search of man;

That with the dwellers of the dark abodes,
The many evil and unheavenly spirits

Which walk the valley of the shade of death,
Thou communest. I know that with mankind,
Thy fellows in creation, thou dost rarely
Exchange thy thoughts, and that thy solitude
Is as an anchorite's, were it but holy.

MAN. And what are they who do avouch these things?
ABBOT. My pious brethren-the scared peasantry—

Even thy own vassals—who do look on thee
With most unquiet eyes. Thy life's in peril.
MAN. Take it.

ABBOT. I come to save, and not destroy—
I would not pry into thy secret soul;

But if these things be sooth, there still is time
For penitence and pity: reconcile thee

With the true church, and through the church to heaven.
MAN. I hear thee. This is my reply; whate'er

I may have been, or am, doth rest between
Heaven and myself.-I shall not choose a mortal
To be my mediator. Have I sinn'd

Against your ordinances? prove and punish!

ABBOT. My son! I did not speak of punishment,

But penitence and pardon;-with thyself

The choice of such remains-and for the last,
Our institutions and our strong belief

Have given me power to smooth the path from sin

To higher hope and better thoughts; the first
I leave to heaven—“ Vengeance is mine alone!”
So saith the Lord, and with all humbleness
His servant echoes back the awful word.

MAN. Old man! there is no power in holy men,

Nor charm in prayer-nor purifying form Of penitence-nor outward look-nor fastagony-nor, greater than all these,

Nor

The innate tortures of that deep despair,
Which is remorse without the fear of hell,
But all in all sufficient to itself

Would make a hell of heaven-can exorcise

From out the unbounded spirit, the quick sense
Of its own sins, wrongs, sufferance, and revenge
Upon itself; there is no future pang

Can deal that justice on the self-condemn'd

He deals on his own soul.

Аввот.

All this is well;

For this will pass away, and be succeeded
By an auspicious hope, which shall look

up

With calm assurance to that blessed place,
Which all who seek may win, whatever be
Their earthly errors, so they be atoned:
And the commencement of atonement is
The sense of its necessity.-Say on—

And all our church can teach thee shall be taught;
And all we can absolve thee, shall be pardon'd.

1

MAN. When Rome's sixth Emperor was near his last,

The victim of a self-inflicted wound,

To shun the torments of a public deatli
From senates once his slaves, a certain soldier,
With show of loyal pity, would have staunch'd
The gushing throat with his officious robe;
The dying Roman thrust him back and said-
Some empire still in his expiring glance,

"It is too late-is this fidelity ?"

ABBOT. And what of this?

MAN.

"It is too late!"

Аввот.

I answer with the Roman

It never can be So,

To reconcile thyself with thy own soul,

And thy own soul with heaven. Hast thou no hope?
'Tis strange-even those who do despair above,
Yet shape themselves some phantasy on earth,
To which frail twig they cling, like drowning men.
MAN. Ay-father! I have had those earthly visions
And noble aspirations in my youth,

To make my own the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations; and to rise

I knew not whither-it might be to fall;
But fall, even as the mountain-cataract,