WERNER; OR, THE INHERITANCE. ACT I. SCENE I. The Hall of a decayed Palace near a small Town on the Northern Frontier of Silesia-the Night tempestuous. WERNER and JOSEPHINE his wife. Jos. My love, be calmer! WER. Jos. I am calm. To me Yes, but not to thyself: thy pace is hurried, And stepping with the bee from flower to flower; WER. Tis chill; the tapestry lets through The wind to which it waves: my blood is frozen. WER. (smiling.) Why! wouldst thou have it so? Jos. Have it a healthful current. I would WER. Let it flow Until 'tis spilt or check'd-how soon, I care not. Jos. And am I nothing in thy heart? WER. All-all. Jos. Then canst thou wish for that which must break mine? WER. (approaching her slowly.) But for thee I had been-no matter what, But much of good and evil; what I am, Thou knowest; what I might or should have been, Thou knowest not: but still I love thee, nor Shall aught divide us. [WERNER walks on abruptly, and then approaches JOSEPHINE. The storm of the night, Perhaps, affects me; I'm a thing of feelings, And have of late been sickly, as, alas! Thou know'st by sufferings more than mine, my love! How many in this hour of tempest shiver WER. And that's not the worst: who cares For chambers? rest is all. The wretches whom Thou namest-ay, the wind howls round them, and The dull and dropping rain saps in their bones The creeping marrow. I have been a soldier, A hunter, and a traveller, and am A beggar, and should know the thing thou talk'st of. Jos. And art thou not now shelter'd from them all? WER. Yes. And from these alone. Jos. WER. True to a peasant. And that is something. Jos. Should the nobly born Be thankless for that refuge which their habits Of early delicacy render more Needful than to the peasant, when the ebb Of fortune leaves them on the shoals of life? WER. It is not that, thou know'st it is not; we Have borne all this, I'll not say patiently, Except in thee-but we have borne it. Jos. Well? WER. Something beyond our outward sufferings (though These were enough to gnaw into our souls) Hath stung me oft, and, more than ever, now. Jos. (abruptly). My son―our son—our Ulric, Twelve years! he was but eight then :-beautiful My Ulric! my adored! WER. I have been full oft The chase of fortune; now she hath o'ertaken My spirit where it cannot turn at bay,— Sick, poor, and lonely. Jos. Lonely! my dear husband? WER. Or worse-involving all I love, in this Far worse than solitude. Alone, I had died, And all been over in a nameless grave. Jos. And I had not outlived thee; but pray take Comfort! We have struggled long; and they who strive With fortune win or weary her at last, So that they find the goal or cease to feel Further. Take comfort,-we shall find our boy. Jos. WER. Are we not pennyless? Jos. We are not baffled. We ne'er were wealthy. power; WER. But I was born to wealth, and rank, and Enjoy'd them, loved them, and, alas! abused them, |