No More Learning

WALLACE
A most subtle doctor
Were that man, who could draw the line that parts
Pride and her daughter, Cruelty, from Madness,
That should be scourged, not pitied. Restless Minds,
Such Minds as find amid their fellow-men
No heart that loves them, none that they can love,
Will turn perforce and seek for sympathy
In dim relation to imagined Beings.


ONE OF THE BAND
What if he mean to offer up our Captain
An expiation and a sacrifice
To those infernal fiends!


WALLACE Now, if the event
Should be as Lennox has foretold, then swear,
My Friends, his heart shall have as many wounds
As there are daggers here.


LACY What need of swearing!


ONE OF THE BAND Let us away!


ANOTHER Away!


A THIRD Hark! how the horns
Of those Scotch Rovers echo through the vale.


LACY Stay you behind; and when the sun is down,
Light up this beacon.

ONE OF THE BAND You shall be obeyed.


[They go out together. ]



SCENE--The Wood on the edge of the Moor.

MARMADUKE (alone)


MARMADUKE Deep, deep and vast, vast beyond human thought,
Yet calm. --I could believe, that there was here
The only quiet heart on earth.
In terror,
Remembered terror, there is peace and rest.


[Enter OSWALD]


OSWALD Ha! my dear Captain.



MARMADUKE A later meeting, Oswald,
Would have been better timed.


OSWALD Alone, I see;
You have done your duty. I had hopes, which now
I feel that you will justify.


MARMADUKE I had fears,
From which I have freed myself--but 'tis my wish
To be alone, and therefore we must part.


OSWALD Nay, then--I am mistaken. There's a weakness
About you still; you talk of solitude--
I am your friend.


MARMADUKE What need of this assurance
At any time? and why given now?


OSWALD Because
You are now in truth my Master; you have taught me
What there is not another living man
Had strength to teach;--and therefore gratitude
Is bold, and would relieve itself by praise.


MARMADUKE Wherefore press this on me?

OSWALD Because I feel
That you have shown, and by a signal instance,
How they who would be just must seek the rule
By diving for it into their own bosoms.
To-day you have thrown off a tyranny
That lives but in the torpid acquiescence
Of our emasculated souls, the tyranny
Of the world's masters, with the musty rules
By which they uphold their craft from age to age:
You have obeyed the only law that sense
Submits to recognise; the immediate law,
From the clear light of circumstances, flashed
Upon an independent Intellect.
Henceforth new prospects open on your path;
Your faculties should grow with the demand;
I still will be your friend, will cleave to you
Through good and evil, obloquy and scorn,
Oft as they dare to follow on your steps.