Читать книгу The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 260
SCENE IX
ОглавлениеTo them enter the COUNTESS.
Countess. This suspense,
This horrid fear — I can no longer bear it.
For heaven’s sake, tell me, what has taken place.
Illo. The regiments are all falling off from us.
Tertsky. Octavio Piccolomini is a traitor. 5
Countess. O my foreboding! [Rushes out of the room.
Tertsky. Hadst thou but believed me!
Now seest thou how the stars have lied to thee.
Wallenstein. The stars lie not; but we have here a work
Wrought counter to the stars and destiny.
The science is still honest: this false heart 10
Forces a lie on the truth-telling heaven.
On a divine law divination rests;
Where nature deviates from that law, and stumbles
Out of her limits, there all science errs.
True, I did not suspect! Were it superstition 15
Never by such suspicion t’ have affronted
The human form, O may that time ne’er come
In which I shame me of the infirmity.
The wildest savage drinks not with the victim
Into whose breast he means to plunge the sword. 20
This, this, Octavio, was no hero’s deed:
‘Twas not thy prudence that did conquer mine;
A bad heart triumphed o’er an honest one.
No shield received the assassin stroke; thou plungest
Thy weapon on an unprotected breast — 25
Against such weapons I am but a child.
