No More Learning

Let piety to God,
Brotherly love, justice and clemency,
And all things that make tender hardest hearts
Make thine hard, brother. Answer not. . . farewell. _390

[EXEUNT SEVERALLY. ]

SCENE 3. 2:
A MEAN APARTMENT IN GIACOMO'S HOUSE.
GIACOMO ALONE.

GIACOMO:
'Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
[THUNDER, AND THE SOUND OF A STORM. ]
What! can the everlasting elements
Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft
Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall
On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep: _5
They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
Be just which is most necessary.
O,
Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge _10
Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,
Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be
As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks _15
Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
But that no power can fill with vital oil
That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood
Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
It is the form that moulded mine that sinks _20
Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
In God's immortal likeness which now stands
Naked before Heaven's judgement seat!
[A BELL STRIKES. ]
One! Two!
The hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white, _25
My son will then perhaps be waiting thus,
Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;
Chiding the tardy messenger of news
Like those which I expect. I almost wish
He be not dead, although my wrongs are great; _30
Yet. . . 'tis Orsino's step. . .