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THE PICCOLOMINI, OR THE
WALLENSTEIN. (starts up in violent agitation.)
Shew me a way out of this stifling crowd,
Ye Powers of Aidance! Shew me such a way
As I am capable of going.—I
Am no tongue-hero, no fine virtue-prattler;
I can not warm by thinking; cannot say
To the good luck that turns her back upon me,
Magnanimously: "Go! I need thee not."
Cease I to work, I am annihilated.
Dangers nor sacrifices will I shun,
If so I may avoid the last extreme;
But ere I sink down into nothingness,
Leave off so little, who begun so great,
Ere that the world confuses me with those
Poor wretches, whom a day creates and crumbles,
This age and [1]after-ages speak my name
With hate and dread; and Friedland be redemption
For each accursed deed!
Shew me a way out of this stifling crowd,
Ye Powers of Aidance! Shew me such a way
As I am capable of going.—I
Am no tongue-hero, no fine virtue-prattler;
I can not warm by thinking; cannot say
To the good luck that turns her back upon me,
Magnanimously: "Go! I need thee not."
Cease I to work, I am annihilated.
Dangers nor sacrifices will I shun,
If so I may avoid the last extreme;
But ere I sink down into nothingness,
Leave off so little, who begun so great,
Ere that the world confuses me with those
Poor wretches, whom a day creates and crumbles,
This age and [1]after-ages speak my name
With hate and dread; and Friedland be redemption
For each accursed deed!
COUNTESS.
What is there here, then,
So against nature? Help me to perceive it!
O let not Superstition's nightly goblins
Subdue thy clear bright spirit! Art thou bid
To murder?—with abhorr'd accursed poinard,
What is there here, then,
So against nature? Help me to perceive it!
O let not Superstition's nightly goblins
Subdue thy clear bright spirit! Art thou bid
To murder?—with abhorr'd accursed poinard,
- ↑ Could I have hazarded such a Germanism, as the use of the word after-world, for posterity.—"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen Nahmen"—might have been rendered with more literal fidelity:—Let world and after-world speak out my name, &c.
To
