IDA STRALENHEIM.

SCENE--Partly on the Frontier of Silesia, and
partly in Siegendorf Castle, near Prague.

Time--_The Close of the Thirty Years' War_[160].

WERNER; OR, THE INHERITANCE.

ACT I.

SCENE I.--_The Hall of a decayed Palace near a small Town on the
Northern Frontier of Silesia--the Night tempestuous_.

WERNER _and_ JOSEPHINE, _his Wife_.

_Jos._ My love, be calmer!

_Wer._ I am calm.

_Jos._ To me--
Yes, but not to thyself: thy pace is hurried,
And no one walks a chamber like to ours,
With steps like thine, when his heart is at rest.
Were it a garden, I should deem thee happy,
And stepping with the bee from flower to flower;
But _here!_

_Wer._ 'Tis chill; the tapestry lets through
The wind to which it waves: my blood is frozen.

_Jos._ Ah, no!

_Wer._ (_smiling_). Why! wouldst thou have it so?

_Jos._ I would
Have it a healthful current.

_Wer._ Let it flow 10
Until 'tis spilt or checked--how soon, I care not.

_Jos._ And am I nothing in thy heart?

_Wer._ All--all.

_Jos._ Then canst thou wish for that which must break mine?

_Wer._ (_approaching her slowly_).
But for _thee_ I had been--no matter what--
But much of good and evil; what I am,
Thou knowest; what I might or should have been,
Thou knowest not: but still I love thee, nor
Shall aught divide us.
[WERNER _walks on abruptly, and then approaches_ JOSEPHINE.
The storm of the night,
Perhaps affects me; I'm a thing of feelings,
And have of late been sickly, as, alas! 20
Thou know'st by sufferings more than mine, my Love!
In watching me.

_Jos._ To see thee well is much--
To see thee happy----

_Wer._ Where hast thou seen such?
Let me be wretched with the rest!

_Jos._ But think
How many in this hour of tempest shiver
Beneath the biting wind and heavy rain,
Whose every drop bows them down nearer earth,