To talk to thee in human language (for Thou canst not yet speak mine), the forester To petty burghers, who leave once a year Arn. Thy time on me: I seek thee not. Stran. Then waste not Your thoughts Are not far from me. Do not send me back: I'm not so easily recalled to do 130 Good service. Arn. Stran. What wilt thou do for me? Change Shapes with you, if you will, since yours so irks you; Arn. Oh! then you are indeed the Demon, for Stran. I'll show thee The brightest which the world e'er bore, and give thee Thy choice. There's a question! 141 An hour ago you would have given your soul Arn. No; I will not. I must not compromise my soul. Stran. Arn. 'Tis an aspiring one, whate'er the tenement Stran. Arn. Whose blood then? Not in your own. We will talk of that hereafter. But I'll be moderate with you, for I see i. Now I can gibe the mightiest.—[MS.] 150 But your own will, no contract save your deeds. I take thee at thy word. Stran. Now then !— [The Stranger approaches the fountain, and turns to Arn. ARNOLD. A little of your blood.1 For what? Stran. To mingle with the magic of the waters, And make the charm effective. Arn. (holding out his wounded arm). Take it all. Stran. Not now. A few drops will suffice for this. [The Stranger takes some of ARNOLD'S blood in his hand, and casts it into the fountain. Shadows of Beauty! Shadows of Power! Rise to your duty This is the hour! Walk lovely and pliant1 From the depth of this fountain, As the cloud-shapen giant Bestrides the Hartz Mountain.2 Come as ye were, That our eyes may behold The model in air Of the form I will mould, Bright as the Iris When ether is spanned ; Such his desire is, Such my command !ii. Demons heroic Demons who wore The form of the Stoic Or sophist of yore— i. Walk lively and pliant. 160 170 [Pointing to ARNOLD. You shall rise up as pliant.—[MS. erased.] ii. And such my command.-[MS.] I. [So, too, in The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (Marlowe's Works, 1858, p. 112), Faustus stabs his arm, blood Assures his soul to be great Lucifer's."] "and with his proper 2. This is a well-known German superstition-a gigantic shadow produced by reflection on the Brocken. [See Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic, 1831, p. 128.] Or the shape of each victor- Shadows of Power! This is the hour! 180 [Various phantoms arise from the waters, and pass in succession before the Stranger and ARNOLD. Arn. What do I see? Stran. The black-eyed Roman,1 with The eagle's beak between those eyes which ne'er The land he made not Rome's, while Rome became 190 Arn. The phantom 's bald; my quest is beauty. Could I Inherit but his fame with his defects! Stran. His brow was girt with laurels more than hairs.3 You see his aspect-choose it, or reject. I can but promise you his form; his fame I will fight, too, Arn. Stran. Then you are far more difficult to please Or Cleopatra at sixteen 3-an age When love is not less in the eye than heart. 200 [The phantom of Julius Cæsar disappears. And can it Be, that the man who shook the earth is gone,1 It be? the man who shook the earth is gone.—[MS.] 1. ["Nigris vegetisque oculis."-Suetonius, Vitæ C. Julius Cæsar, cap. xlv., Opera Ömnia, 1826, i. 105.] 2. [Vide post, p. 501, note 1.] 3. Sed ante alias [Julius Cæsar] dilexit M. Bruti matrem Serviliam dilexit et reginas. . . sed maxime Cleopatram" (ibid., i. 113, 115). Cleopatra, born B. C. 69, was twenty-one years old when she met Cæsar, B. C. 48.] And left no footstep? Stran. There you err. His substance Left graves enough, and woes enough, and fame More than enough to track his memory; I' the sun. Behold another! [A second phantom passes. Arn. Who is he? Stran. He was the fairest and the bravest of Athenians.1 Arn. Look upon him well. He is More lovely than the last. How beautiful! 210 Stran. Such was the curled son of Clinias;-wouldst With the wide nostrils and Silenus' aspect, Remain that which I am. Stran. I had better 220 And yet he was The earth's perfection of all mental beauty, And personification of all virtue. But you reject him? Arn. If his form could bring me I have no power That which redeemed it—no. To promise that; but you may try, and find it 1. Upon the whole, it may be doubted whether there be a name of Antiquity which comes down with such a general charm as that of Alcibiades. Why I cannot answer: who can?"-Detached Thoughts (1821), No. 108, Letters, 1901, v. 461. For Sir Walter Scott's note on this passage, see Letters, 1900, iv. 77, 78, note 2.] 2. [The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr and buffoon, but his soul was all virtue, and from within him came such divine and pathetic things, as pierced the heart, and drew tears from the hearers.- Plato, Symp., p. 216, D.] Arn. No. I was not born for philosophy, Though I have that about me which has need on't. Let him fleet on. Stran. Be air, thou Hemlock-drinker ! 230 [The shadow of Socrates disappears: another rises. Arn. What's here ? whose broad brow and whose curly beard And manly aspect look like Hercules,1 Save that his jocund eye hath more of Bacchus Stran. The ancient world for love. Arn. It was the man who lost I cannot blame him, Since I have risked my soul because I find not Stran. Since so far You seem congenial, will you wear his features? If but to see the heroes I should ne'er Have seen else, on this side of the dim shore, Whence they float back before us. Stran. Thy Cleopatra's waiting. Arn. Hence, Triumvir, 241 [The shade of Antony disappears: another rises. Who is this? Who truly looketh like a demigod, Blooming and bright, with golden hair, and stature, In all that nameless bearing of his limbs, Which he wears as the Sun his rays-a something Was he e'er human only ? 3 250 1. ["Anthony had a noble dignity of countenance, a graceful length of beard, a large forehead, an aquiline nose: and, upon the whole, the same manly aspect that we see in the pictures and statues of Hercules." -Plutarch's Lives, Langhorne's Translation, 1838, p. 634.] 2. As in the " Farnese" Hercules.] 3. [The beauty and mien [of Demetrius Poliorcetes] were so inimitable |