Page:Wallenstein, a drama in 2 parts - Schiller (tr. Coleridge) (1800).djvu/47

OCTAVIO. (attentive, with an appearance of uneasiness)

———And so your journey has reveal'd this to you?

MAX.

'Twas the first leisure of my life. O tell me,

What is the meed and purpose of the toil,
The painful toil which robb'd me of my youth,
Left me a heart unsoul'd and solitary,
A spirit uninform'd, unornamented.
For the camp's stir and crowd and ceaseless larum,
The neighing war-horse, the air-shatt'ring trumpet,
The unvaried, still returning hour of duty,
Word of command, and exercise of arms—
There's nothing here, there's nothing in all this
To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart!
Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not—
This cannot be the sole felicity,
These cannot be man's best and only pleasures!

OCTAVIO.

Much hast thou learnt, my son, in this short journey.

MAX.

O! day thrice lovely! when at length the soldier

Returns home into life; when he becomes
A fellow-man among his fellow-men.
The colours are unfurl'd, the cavalcade
Mashals, and now the buz is hush'd, and hark!
Now the soft peace-march beats, home, brothers, home!
The caps and helmets are all garlanded

With