Eliz monologue (Act 4) — The Saint's Tragedy

[alone]. Give up his children! Why, I'd not give up A lock of hair, a glove his hand had hallowed: And they are his gift; his pledge; his flesh and blood Tossed off for my ambition! Ah! my husband! His ghost's sad eyes upbraid me! Spare me, spare me! I'd love thee still, if I dared; but I fear God. And shall I never more see loving eyes Look into mine, until my dying day? That's this world's bondage: Christ would have me free, And 'twere a pious deed to cut myself The last, last strand, and fly: but whither? whither? What if I cast away the bird i' the hand And found none in the bush? 'Tis possible-- What right have I to arrogate Christ's bride-bed? Crushed, widowed, sold to traitors? I, o'er whom His billows and His storms are sweeping? God's not angry: No, not so much as we with buzzing fly; Or in the moment of His wrath's awakening We should be--nothing. No--there's worse than that-- What if He but sat still, and let be be? And these deep sorrows, which my vain conceit Calls chastenings--meant for me--my ailments' cure-- Were lessons for some angels far away, And I the corpus vile for the experiment? The grinding of the sharp and pitiless wheels Of some high Providence, which had its mainspring Ages ago, and ages hence its end? That were too horrible!-- To have torn up all the roses from my garden, And planted thorns instead; to have forged my griefs, And hugged the griefs I dared not forge; made earth A hell, for hope of heaven; and after all, These homeless moors of life toiled through, to wake, And find blank nothing! Is that angel-world A gaudy window, which we paint ourselves To hide the dead void night beyond? The present? Why here's the present--like this arched gloom, It hems our blind souls in, and roofs them over With adamantine vault, whose only voice Is our own wild prayers' echo: and our future?-- It rambles out in endless aisles of mist, The farther still the darker--O my Saviour! My God! where art Thou? That's but a tale about Thee, That crucifix above--it does but show Thee As Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now-- Thy grief, but not Thy glory: where's that gone? I see it not without me, and within me Hell reigns, not Thou!