No More Learning

POLE. And unto no dead world; but Lambeth palace,
Henceforth a centre of the living faith.

[_Exeunt_ PHILIP, POLE, PAGET, _etc_.

_Manet_ MARY.

MARY. He hath awaked! he hath awaked!
He stirs within the darkness!
Oh, Philip, husband! now thy love to mine
Will cling more close, and those bleak manners thaw,
That make me shamed and tongue-tied in my love.
The second Prince of Peace--
The great unborn defender of the Faith,
Who will avenge me of mine enemies--
He comes, and my star rises.
The stormy Wyatts and Northumberlands,
The proud ambitions of Elizabeth,
And all her fieriest partisans--are pale
Before my star!
The light of this new learning wanes and dies:
The ghosts of Luther and Zuinglius fade
Into the deathless hell which is their doom
Before my star!
His sceptre shall go forth from Ind to Ind!
His sword shall hew the heretic peoples down!
His faith shall clothe the world that will be his,
Like universal air and sunshine! Open,
Ye everlasting gates! The King is here! --
My star, my son!

_Enter_ PHILIP, DUKE OF ALVA, _etc_.

Oh, Philip, come with me;
Good news have I to tell you, news to make
Both of us happy--ay, the Kingdom too.
Nay come with me--one moment!

PHILIP (_to_ ALVA). More than that:
There was one here of late--William the Silent
They call him--he is free enough in talk,
But tells me nothing. You will be, we trust,
Sometime the viceroy of those provinces--
He must deserve his surname better.

ALVA. Ay, sir;
Inherit the Great Silence.

PHILIP. True; the provinces
Are hard to rule and must be hardly ruled;
Most fruitful, yet, indeed, an empty rind,
All hollow'd out with stinging heresies;
And for their heresies, Alva, they will fight;
You must break them or they break you.

ALVA (_proudly_). The first.