Harold monologue (Act 8) — Becket and other plays

Poor Eva! O my God, if man be only A willy-nilly current of sensations-- Reaction needs must follow revel--yet-- Why feel remorse, he, knowing that he must have Moved in the iron grooves of Destiny? Remorse then is a part of Destiny, Nature a liar, making us feel guilty Of her own faults. My grandfather--of him They say, that women-- O this mortal house, Which we are born into, is haunted by The ghosts of the dead passions of dead men; And these take flesh again with our own flesh, And bring us to confusion. He was only A poor philosopher who call'd the mind Of children a blank page, a tabula rasa. There, there, is written in invisible inks 'Lust, Prodigality, Covetousness, Craft, Cowardice, Murder'--and the heat and fire Of life will bring them out, and black enough, So the child grow to manhood: better death With our first wail than life--