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a monologue from
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MARINO FALIERO
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ANGIOLINA: Sage Benintende, now chief Judge of Venice,
- I speak to thee in answer to yon Signor.
- Inform the ribald Steno, that his words
- Ne'er weighed in mind with Loredano's daughter,
- Further than to create a moment's pity
- For such as he is: would that others had
- Despised him as I pity! I prefer
- My honour to a thousand lives, could such
- Be multiplied in mine, but would not have
- A single life of others lost for that
- Which nothing human can impugn—the sense
- Of Virtue, looking not to what is called
- A good name for reward, but to itself.
- To me the scorner's words were as the wind
- Unto the rock: but as there are—alas!
- Spirits more sensitive, on which such things
- Light as the Whirlwind on the waters; souls
- To whom Dishonour's shadow is a substance
- More terrible than Death, here and hereafter;
- Men whose vice is to start at Vice's scoffing,
- And who, though proof against all blandishments
- Of pleasure, and all pangs of Pain, are feeble
- When the proud name on which they pinnacled
- Their hopes is breathed on, jealous as the eagle
- Of her high aiery; let what we now
- Behold, and feel, and suffer, be a lesson
- To wretches how they tamper in their spleen
- With beings of a higher order. Insects
- Have made the lion mad ere now; a shaft
- I' the heel o'erthrew the bravest of the brave;
- A wife's Dishonour was the bane of Troy;
- A wife's Dishonour unkinged Rome for ever;
- An injured husband brought the Gauls to Clusium,
- And thence to Rome, which perished for a time;
- An obscene gesture cost Caligula
- His life, while Earth yet bore his cruelties;
- A virgin's wrong made Spain a Moorish province;
- And Steno's lie, couched in two worthless lines,
- Hath decimated Venice, put in peril
- A Senate which hath stood eight hundred years,
- Discrowned a Prince, cut off his crownless head,
- And forged new fetters for a groaning people!
- Let the poor wretch, like to the courtesan
- Who fired Persepolis, be proud of this,
- If it so please him—'twere a pride fit for him!
- But let him not insult the last hours of
- Him, who, whate'er he now is, was a Hero,
- By the intrusion of his very prayers;
- Nothing of good can come from such a source,
- Nor would we aught with him, nor now, nor ever:
- We leave him to himself, that lowest depth
- Of human baseness. Pardon is for men,
- And not for reptiles—we have none for Steno,
- And no resentment: things like him must sting,
- And higher beings suffer; 'tis the charter
- Of Life. The man who dies by the adder's fang
- May have the crawler crushed, but feels no anger:
- 'Twas the worm's nature; and some men are worms
- In soul, more than the living things of tombs.
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