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Through this deceitful, narrow world of ours,
Nor ever for an instant have removed
My eyes from that which lies beyond the skies.—
Think well thereon! in a whole century,
Not for a single day, a single hour!—
How often I have left my home, at night,
To go and listen at the doors of tombs,
And drive away the worm that gnawed the shroud!
How I rejoiced, king of that dismal realm,
When I at last had power to change a corpse
Into a phantom, and compel a dead man,
Cut from the gallows-tree, to falter forth
A word of the celestial alphabet!
The dead resolved the problem of the spheres;
And I have almost seen with these mine eyes
The Being, all resplendent, who inscribes
His awful name (and known to him alone)
Upon the heavens as on the mortal's shroud.—
But to thy glance, which dies when dies the day,
The constellations are a rayless flame!
Tell me, hast thou, in thy consuming zeal
To lose thyself in the immortal work,
Seen thy dark beard turn white, thy hair fall out?
Hast thou, although the peer in mystic lore
Of the wise men of old, dragged out thy days
Proscribed, contemned, and wretched beyond words?
Cromwell [interrupting him, impatiently.
Enough. I do requite thee for thy service.
Manasseh.⁠Thou dost confound two things. Man may to man
Enslave himself. Yes, while I still do live
This partial life, and while this flesh still clothes
My skeleton, mine eyes may minister
To thine ambitious projects here on earth;
But when, I prithee, did I promise thee