No More Learning

Will you add to your load the sin of slander?

_Valentine_. Could I get at thy dried-up frame,
Vile bawd, so lost to all sense of shame!
Then might I hope, e'en this side Heaven,
Richly to find my sins forgiven.

_Margery_. My brother! This is hell to me!

_Valentine_. I tell thee, let these weak tears be!
When thy last hold of honor broke,
Thou gav'st my heart the heaviest stroke.
I'm going home now through the grave
To God, a soldier and a brave.
[_Dies_. ]




CATHEDRAL.

_Service, Organ, and Singing. _


[MARGERY _amidst a crowd of people.
_ EVIL SPIRIT _behind_ MARGERY. ]

_Evil Spirit_. How different was it with thee, Margy,
When, innocent and artless,
Thou cam'st here to the altar,
From the well-thumbed little prayer-book,
Petitions lisping,
Half full of child's play,
Half full of Heaven!
Margy!
Where are thy thoughts?
What crime is buried
Deep within thy heart?
Prayest thou haply for thy mother, who
Slept over into long, long pain, on thy account?
Whose blood upon thy threshold lies?
--And stirs there not, already
Beneath thy heart a life
Tormenting itself and thee
With bodings of its coming hour?

_Margery_. Woe! Woe!
Could I rid me of the thoughts,
Still through my brain backward and forward flitting,
Against my will!

_Chorus_. Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla.

[_Organ plays_.