Dipsychus Continued
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ipsychus. O God! O God! and must I still go onDoing this work I know not, hell’s or thine;And these rewards receiving sure not thine;The adulation of a foolish crowd,Half foolish and half greedy; upright judgeLawyer acute the Mansfield and the HaleIn one united to bless modern Courts.O God! O God! According to the law,With solemn face to solemn sentence fit,Doing the justice that is but half just;Punishing wrong that is not truly wrong!Administering, alas, God! not Thy law.(Knock at the door.)What? Is the hour already for the Court?Come in. Now, Lord Chief justice, to thy work.(Enter a Servant.) Serv. My lord, a woman begging to be seen. Di A woman begging to be seen? What’s this?’Tis not the duty of your post, my friend,To give admittance on the busy daysOf a hard labourer in this great worldTo all poor creatures begging to be seen.Something unusual in it? Bid her waitIn the room below, I’ll see her as I pass.Is the horse there? Serv. He’s coming round, my lord. Di Say I will see her as I pass. (Exit Servant.)I have but one way left; but that one way,On which once entered, there is no return;And as there’s no return, no looking back,Amidst the smoky tumult of this fieldWhereon, enlisted once, in arms we stand,Nor know, nor e’en remotely can divineThe sense, or purport, or the probable end,One only guide to our blind work we keep,To obey orders, and to fight it out.Some hapless sad petitioner, no doubt,With the true plaintiveness of real distress,Twisting her misery to a marketable lie,To waste my close-shorn interval of rest.She came upon me in my weaker thoughts,Those weaker thoughts that still indeed recur,But come, my servants, at a word to go.(Enter Woman.)What is it? what have you to say to me?Who are you? Wom. Once you knew me well enough. Di Oh, you! I had been told that you were dead. Wom. So your creatures said;But I shall live, I think, till you die too. Di What do you want? Money, subsistence, bread? Wom. I wanted bread, money, all things, ’Tis true,But wanted, above all things, to see you. Di This cannot be. What has been done is o’er.You have no claim or right against me more;I have dealt justly with you to the uttermost. Wom. I did not come to say you were unjustI came to see you only. Di Hear me now.Remember, it was not the marriage vow,Nor promise e’er of chaste fidelity,That joined us thirty years ago in a tieWhich I, I think, scarce sought. It was not IThat took your innocence; you spoiled me of mine.And yet, as though the vow had been divine,Was I not faithful? Were you so to me?Had you been white in spotless purity,Could I have clung to you more faithfully?I left you, after wrongs I blush with shameE’en now through all my fifty years to name.I left you; yet I stinted still my ease,Curtailed my pleasures toil still extra toil,To repay you for what you never gave.Is it not true? Wom. Go on, say all and more.Upon this body, as the basis, liesThe ladder that has raised you to the skies. Di Is that so much? am I indeed so high?Am I not ratherThe slave and servant of the wretched world,Liveried and finely dressed yet all the sameA menial and lacquey seeking placeFor hire, and for his hire’s sake doing work? Wom. I do not know; you have wife and child, I knowDomestic comfort and a noble name,And people speak in my ears too your praise.O man, O man! do you not know in your heartIt was for this you came to meIt was for this I took you to my breast?O man, man, man!You come to us with your dalliance in the street,You pay us with your miserable gold,You do not know how in the Di (looks at his watch). You must go now. Justice calls me elsewhere;Justice might keep you here.You may return again; stay, let me seeSix weeks to-morrow you shall see me again;Now you must go. Do you need money? here,It is your due: take it, that you may live;And see me, six weeks from to-morrow, elsewhere. Wom. I will not go;You must stay here and hear me, or I shall die!It were ill for you that I should. Di What! shall the nation wait?Woman, if I have wronged you, it was for goodGood has come of it. Lo, I have done some work.Over the blasted and the blackened spotOf our unhappy and unhallowed deedI have raised a mausoleum of such actsAs in this world do honour unto me,But in the next to thee. Wom. Hear me, I cannot go! Di It cannot be; the court, the nation waits.Is not the work, too, yours? Wom. I go, to die this night Di I cannot help it. Duty lies here. Depart! Wom. Listen; before I die, one word! In old timesYou called me Pleasure my name now is Guilt.
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