at the Fall, the Scripture saith, put on.
Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook,
To make him sport for thy maidens? Scripture saith
Who is the prince of this world--so forget not.

Ger. Forgive, if my more weak and carnal judgment
Be startled by your doctrines, and doubt trembling
The path whereon you force yourself and her.

Con. Startled? Belike--belike--let doctrines be;
Thou shalt be judged by thy works; so see to them,
And let divines split hairs: dare all thou canst;
Be all thou darest;--that will keep thy brains full.
Have thy tools ready, God will find thee work--
Then up, and play the man. Fix well thy purpose--
Let one idea, like an orbed sun,
Rise radiant in thine heaven; and then round it
All doctrines, forms, and disciplines will range
As dim parhelia, or as needful clouds,
Needful, but mist-begotten, to be dashed
Aside, when fresh shall serve thy purpose better.

Ger. How? dashed aside?

Con. Yea, dashed aside--why not?
The truths, my son, are safe in God's abysses--
While we patch up the doctrines to look like them.
The best are tarnished mirrors--clumsy bridges,
Whereon, as on firm soil, the mob may walk
Across the gulf of doubt, and know no danger.
We, who see heaven, may see the hell which girds it.
Blind trust for them. When I came here from Rome,
Among the Alps, all through one frost-bound dawn,
Waiting with sealed lips the noisy day,
I walked upon a marble mead of snow--
An angel's spotless plume, laid there for me:
Then from the hillside, in the melting noon,
Looked down the gorge, and lo! no bridge, no snow--
But seas of writhing glacier, gashed and scored
With splintered gulfs, and fathomless crevasses,
Blue lips of hell, which sucked down roaring rivers
The fiends who fled the sun. The path of Saints
Is such; so shall she look from heaven, and see
The road which led her thither. Now we'll go,
And find some lonely cottage for her lodging;
Her shelter now is but a crumbling ruin
Roofed in with pine boughs--discipline more healthy
For soul, than body: She's not ripe for death.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE II

Open space in a suburb of Marpurg, near Elizabeth's Hut. Count
Walter and Count Pama of Hungary entering.

C. Pama. I have prepared my nerves for a shock.

C. Wal. You are wise, for the world's upside down here. The last
gateway brought us out of Christendom into the New Jerusalem, the
fifth Monarchy, where the Saints possess the earth. Not a beggar
here