ly goods and wealth, which once I loved,
I do now count but dross: and my beloved,
The children of my womb, I now regard
As if they were another's. God is witness
My pride is to despise myself; my joy
All insults, sneers, and slanders of mankind;
No creature now I love, but God alone.
Oh, to be clear, clear, clear, of all but Him!
Lo, here I strip me of all earthly helps--

[Tearing off her clothes.]

Naked and barefoot through the world to follow
My naked Lord--And for my filthy pelf--

Con. Stop, Madam--

Eliz. Why so, sir?

Con. Upon thine oath!
Thy wealth is God's, not thine--How darest renounce
The trust He lays on thee? I do command thee,
Being, as Aaron, in God's stead, to keep it
Inviolate, for the Church and thine own needs.

Eliz. Be it so--I have no part nor lot in't--
There--I have spoken.

Abbess. O noble soul! which neither gold, nor love,
Nor scorn can bend!

Gerard. And think what pure devotions,
What holy prayers must they have been, whose guerdon
Is such a flood of grace!

Nuns. What love again!
What flame of charity, which thus prevails
In virtue's guest!

Eliz. Is self-contempt learnt thus?
I'll home.

Abbess. And yet how blest, in these cool shades
To rest with us, as in a land-locked pool,
Touched last and lightest by the ruffling breeze.

Eliz. No! no! no! no! I will not die in the dark:
I'll breathe the free fresh air until the last,
Were it but a month--I have such things to do--
Great schemes--brave schemes--and such a little time!
Though now I am harnessed light as any foot-page.
Come, come, my ladies. [Exeunt Elizabeth, etc.]

Ger. Alas, poor lady!

Con. Why alas, my son?
She longs to die a saint, and here's the way to it.

Ger. Yet why so harsh? why with remorseless knife
Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud?
I thought the task of education was
To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed
Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature,
According to the mind of God, revealed
In laws, congenital with every kind
And character of man.

Con. A heathen dream!
Young souls but see the gay and warm outside,
And work but in the shallow upper soil.
Mine deeper, and the sour and barren rock
Will stop you soon enough. Who trains God's Saints,
He must transform, not pet--Nature's corrupt throughout--
A gaudy snake, which must be crushed, not tamed,
A cage of unclean birds, deceitful ever;
Born in the likeness of the fiend, which Adam
Did