No More Learning

The old human fiends,
With one foot in the grave, with dim eyes, strange
To tears save drops of dotage, with long white[bd] 110
And scanty hairs, and shaking hands, and heads
As palsied as their hearts are hard, they counsel,
Cabal, and put men's lives out, as if Life
Were no more than the feelings long extinguished
In their accursed bosoms.

_Doge_. You know not----

_Mar. _ I do--I do--and so should you, methinks--
That these are demons: could it be else that
Men, who have been of women born and suckled--
Who have loved, or talked at least of Love--have given
Their hands in sacred vows--have danced their babes 120
Upon their knees, perhaps have mourned above them--
In pain, in peril, or in death--who are,
Or were, at least in seeming, human, could
Do as they have done by yours, and you yourself--
_You_, who abet them?

_Doge_. I forgive this, for
You know not what you say.

_Mar. _ _You_ know it well,
And feel it nothing.

_Doge_. I have borne so much,
That words have ceased to shake me.

_Mar. _ Oh, no doubt!
You have seen your son's blood flow, and your flesh shook not;
And after that, what are a woman's words? 130
No more than woman's tears, that they should shake you.

_Doge_.
Woman, this clamorous grief of thine, I tell thee,
Is no more in the balance weighed with that
Which----but I pity thee, my poor Marina!

_Mar. _ Pity my husband, or I cast it from me;
Pity thy son! _Thou_ pity! --'tis a word
Strange to thy heart--how came it on thy lips?

_Doge_. I must bear these reproaches, though they wrong me.
Couldst thou but read----

_Mar. _ 'Tis not upon thy brow,
Nor in thine eyes, nor in thine acts,--where then 140
Should I behold this sympathy? or shall?

_Doge_ (_pointing downwards_). There.

_Mar. _ In the earth?

_Doge_. To which I am tending: when
It lies upon this heart, far lightlier, though
Loaded with marble, than the thoughts which press it
Now, you will know me better.