No More Learning

MARTHA.
I thought it was a folly in a farmer
To waste his time pursuing such illusions.

HATHORNE.
What was the bird that this young woman saw
Just now upon your hand?

MARTHA.
I know no bird.

HATHORNE.
Have you not dealt with a Familiar Spirit?

MARTHA.
No, never, never!

HATHORNE.
What then was the Book
You showed to this young woman, and besought her
To write in it?

MARTHA.
Where should I have a book?
I showed her none, nor have none.

MARY.
The next Sabbath
Is the Communion Day, but Martha Corey
Will not be there!

MARTHA.
Ah, you are all against me.
What can I do or say?

HATHORNE.
You can confess.

MARTHA.
No, I cannot, for I am innocent.

HATHORNE.
We have the proof of many witnesses
That you are guilty.

MARTHA.
Give me leave to speak.
Will you condemn me on such evidence,--
You who have known me for so many years?
Will you condemn me in this house of God,
Where I so long have worshipped with you all?
Where I have eaten the bread and drunk the wine
So many times at our Lord's Table with you?
Bear witness, you that hear me; you all know
That I have led a blameless life among you,
That never any whisper of suspicion
Was breathed against me till this accusation.
And shall this count for nothing? Will you take
My life away from me, because this girl,
Who is distraught, and not in her right mind,
Accuses me of things I blush to name?

HATHORNE.
What! is it not enough? Would you hear more?
Giles Corey!

COREY.
I am here.

HATHORNE.
Come forward, then.

COREY ascends the platform.

Is it not true, that on a certain night
You were impeded strangely in your prayers?
That something hindered you? and that you left
This woman here, your wife, kneeling alone
Upon the hearth?

COREY.
Yes; I cannot deny it.

HATHORNE.
Did you not say the Devil hindered you?

COREY.
I think I said some words to that effect.

HATHORNE.
Is it not true, that fourteen head of cattle,
To you belonging, broke from their enclosure
And leaped into the river, and were drowned?

COREY.
It is most true.

HATHORNE.
And did you not then say
That they were overlooked?

COREY.
So much I said.
I see; they're drawing round me closer, closer,
A net I cannot break, cannot escape from! (Aside).

HATHORNE.
Who did these things?

COREY.
I do not know who did them.

HATHORNE.
Then I will tell you. It is some one near you;
You see her now; this woman, your own wife.

COREY.
I call the heavens to witness, it is false!
She never harmed me, never hindered me
In anything but what I should not do.
And I bear witness in the sight of heaven,
And in God's house here, that I never knew her
As otherwise than patient, brave, and true,
Faithful, forgiving, full of charity,
A virtuous and industrious and good wife!

HATHORNE.
Tut, tut, man; do not rant so in your speech;
You are a witness, not an advocate!
Here, Sheriff, take this woman back to prison.

MARTHA.
O Giles, this day you've sworn away my life!

MARY.
Go, go and join the Witches at the door.
Do you not hear the drum? Do you not see them?
Go quick. They're waiting for you. You are late.
[Exit MARTHA; COREY following.

COREY.
The dream! the dream! the dream!

HATHORNE.
What does he say?
Giles Corey, go not hence. You are yourself
Accused of Witchcraft and of Sorcery
By many witnesses. Say, are you guilty?

COREY.
I know my death is foreordained by you,
Mine and my wife's. Therefore I will not answer.

During the rest of the scene he remains silent.

HATHORNE.
Do you refuse to plead? --'T were better for you
To make confession, or to plead Not Guilty. --
Do you not hear me? --Answer, are you guilty?
Do you not know a heavier doom awaits you,
If you refuse to plead, than if found guilty?
Where is John Gloyd?

GLOYD (coming forward).
Here am I.

HATHORNE.
Tell the Court
Have you not seen the supernatural power
Of this old man? Have you not seen him do
Strange feats of strength?

GLOYD.
I've seen him lead the field,
On a hot day, in mowing, and against
Us younger men; and I have wrestled with him.
He threw me like a feather. I have seen him
Lift up a barrel with his single hands,
Which two strong men could hardly lift together,
And, holding it above his head, drink from it.

HATHORNE.
That is enough; we need not question further.
What answer do you make to this, Giles Corey?

MARY.
See there! See there!

HATHORNE.
What is it? I see nothing.

MARY.
Look! Look! It is the ghost of Robert Goodell,
Whom fifteen years ago this man did murder
By stamping on his body! In his shroud
He comes here to bear witness to the crime!

The crowd shrinks back from COREY in horror.

HATHORNE.
Ghosts of the dead and voices of the living
Bear witness to your guilt, and you must die!
It might have been an easier death. Your doom
Will be on your own head, and not on ours.
Twice more will you be questioned of these things;
Twice more have room to plead or to confess.
If you are contumacious to the Court,
And if, when questioned, you refuse to answer,
Then by the Statute you will be condemned
To the peine forte et dure! To have your body
Pressed by great weights until you shall be dead!
And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!


ACT V.

SCENE I. -- COREy's farm as in Act II. , Scene I. Enter RICHARD
GARDNER, looking round him.

GARDNER.
Here stands the house as I remember it.
The four tall poplar-trees before the door;
The house, the barn, the orchard, and the well,
With its moss-covered bucket and its trough;
The garden, with its hedge of currant-bushes;
The woods, the harvest-fields; and, far beyond,
The pleasant landscape stretching to the sea.
But everything is silent and deserted!
No bleat of flocks, no bellowing of herds,
No sound of flails, that should be beating now;
Nor man nor beast astir. What can this mean?

Knocks at the door.

What ho! Giles Corey! Hillo-ho! Giles Corey! --
No answer but the echo from the barn,
And the ill-omened cawing of the crow,
That yonder wings his flight across the fields,
As if he scented carrion in the air.

Enter TITUBA with a basket.

What woman's this, that, like an apparition,
Haunts this deserted homestead in broad day?
Woman, who are you?

TITUBA.
I'm Tituba.
I am John Indian's wife. I am a Witch.

GARDNER.
What are you doing here?

TITUBA.
I am gathering herbs,--
Cinquefoil, and saxifrage, and pennyroyal.

GARDNER (looking at the herbs).
This is not cinquefoil, it is deadly nightshade!
This is not saxifrage, but hellebore!
This is not pennyroyal, it is henbane!
Do you come here to poison these good people?

TITUBA.
I get these for the Doctor in the Village.
Beware of Tituba. I pinch the children;
Make little poppets and stick pins in them,
And then the children cry out they are pricked.
The Black Dog came to me and said, "Serve me! "
I was afraid. He made me hurt the children.

GARDNER.
Poor soul! She's crazed, with all these Devil's doings.

TITUBA.
Will you, sir, sign the book?

GARDNER.
No, I'll not sign it.
Where is Giles Corey? Do you know Giles Corey!

TITUBA.
He's safe enough. He's down there in the prison.

GARDNER.
Corey in prison? What is he accused of?

TITURA.
Giles Corey and Martha Corey are in prison
Down there in Salem Village. Both are witches.
She came to me and whispered, "Kill the children! "
Both signed the Book!

GARDNER.
Begone, you imp of darkness!
You Devil's dam!

TITUBA.
Beware of Tituba!
[Exit.

GARDNER.
How often out at sea on stormy nights,
When the waves thundered round me, and the wind
Bellowed, and beat the canvas, and my ship
Clove through the solid darkness, like a wedge,
I've thought of him upon his pleasant farm,
Living in quiet with his thrifty housewife,
And envied him, and wished his fate were mine!
And now I find him shipwrecked utterly,
Drifting upon this sea of sorceries,
And lost, perhaps, beyond all aid of man!
[Exit.


SCENE II. . -- The prison. GILES COREY at a table on which are
some papers.

COREY.
Now I have done with earth and all its cares;
I give my worldly goods to my dear children;
My body I bequeath to my tormentors,
And my immortal soul to Him who made it.
O God! who in thy wisdom dost afflict me
With an affliction greater than most men
Have ever yet endured or shall endure,
Suffer me not in this last bitter hour
For any pains of death to fall from Thee!

MARTHA is heard singing.
Arise, O righteous Lord!
And disappoint my foes;
They are but thine avenging sword,
Whose wounds are swift to close.

COREY.
Hark, hark! it is her voice! She is not dead!
She lives! I am not utterly forsaken!

MARTHA, singing.
By thine abounding grace,
And mercies multiplied,
I shall awake, and see thy face;
I shall be satisfied.

COREY hides his face in his hands. Enter the JAILER, followed by
RICHARD GARDNER.

JAILER.
Here's a seafaring man, one Richard Gardner,
A friend of yours, who asks to speak with you.

COREY rises. They embrace.

COREY.
I'm glad to see you, ay, right glad to see you.

GARDNER.
And I am most sorely grieved to see you thus.

COREY.
Of all the friends I had in happier days,
You are the first, ay, and the only one,
That comes to seek me out in my disgrace!
And you but come in time to say farewell,
They've dug my grave already in the field.
I thank you. There is something in your presence,
I know not what it is, that gives me strength.
Perhaps it is the bearing of a man
Familiar with all dangers of the deep,
Familiar with the cries of drowning men,
With fire, and wreck, and foundering ships at sea!

GARDNER.
Ah, I have never known a wreck like yours!
Would I could save you!

COREY.
Do not speak of that.
It is too late. I am resolved to die.

GARDNER.
Why would you die who have so much to live for? --
Your daughters, and--

COREY.
You cannot say the word.
My daughters have gone from me. They are married;
They have their homes, their thoughts, apart from me;
I will not say their hearts,--that were too cruel.
What would you have me do?

GARDNER.
Confess and live.
COREY.
That's what they said who came here yesterday
To lay a heavy weight upon my conscience
By telling me that I was driven forth
As an unworthy member of their church.

GARDNER.
It is an awful death.

COREY.
'T is but to drown,
And have the weight of all the seas upon you.

GARDNER.
Say something; say enough to fend off death
Till this tornado of fanaticism
Blows itself out. Let me come in between you
And your severer self, with my plain sense;
Do not be obstinate.

COREY.
I will not plead.
If I deny, I am condemned already,
In courts where ghosts appear as witnesses,
And swear men's lives away. If I confess,
Then I confess a lie, to buy a life
Which is not life, but only death in life.
I will not bear false witness against any,
Not even against myself, whom I count least.

GARDNER (aside).
Ah, what a noble character is this!

COREY.
I pray you, do not urge me to do that
You would not do yourself. I have already
The bitter taste of death upon my lips;
I feel the pressure of the heavy weight
That will crush out my life within this hour;
But if a word could save me, and that word
Were not the Truth; nay, if it did but swerve
A hair's-breadth from the Truth, I would not say it!

GARDNER (aside).
How mean I seem beside a man like this!

COREY.
As for my wife, my Martha and my Martyr,--
Whose virtues, like the stars, unseen by day,
Though numberless, do but await the dark
To manifest themselves unto all eyes,--
She who first won me from my evil ways,
And taught me how to live by her example,
By her example teaches me to die,
And leads me onward to the better life!

SHERIFF (without).
Giles Corey! Come! The hour has struck!

COREY.
I come!
Here is my body; ye may torture it,
But the immortal soul ye cannot crush!
[Exeunt.


SCENE III-- A street in the Village. Enter GLOYD and others.

GLOYD.
Quick, or we shall be late!

A MAN.
That's not the way.
Come here; come up this lane.

GLOYD.
I wonder now
If the old man will die, and will not speak?
He's obstinate enough and tough enough
For anything on earth.

A bell tolls.

Hark! What is that?

A MAN.
The passing bell. He's dead!

GLOYD.
We are too late.
[Exeunt in haste.


SCENE IV. -- A field near the graveyard, GILES COREY lying dead,
with a great stone on his breast. The Sheriff at his head,
RICHARD GARDNER at his feet. A crowd behind. The bell tolling.
Enter HATHORNE and MATHER.

HATHORNE.
This is the Potter's Field. Behold the fate
Of those who deal in Witchcrafts, and, when questioned,
Refuse to plead their guilt or innocence,
And stubbornly drag death upon themselves.

MATHER.
O sight most horrible! In a land like this,
Spangled with Churches Evangelical,
Inwrapped in our salvations, must we seek
In mouldering statute-books of English Courts
Some old forgotten Law, to do such deeds?
Those who lie buried in the Potter's Field
Will rise again, as surely as ourselves
That sleep in honored graves with epitaphs;
And this poor man, whom we have made a victim,
Hereafter will be counted as a martyr!



FINALE

SAINT JOHN

SAINT JOHN wandering over the face of the Earth.

SAINT JOHN.
The Ages come and go,
The Centuries pass as Years;
My hair is white as the snow,
My feet are weary and slow,
The earth is wet with my tears
The kingdoms crumble, and fall
Apart, like a ruined wall,
Or a bank that is undermined
By a river's ceaseless flow,
And leave no trace behind!
The world itself is old;
The portals of Time unfold
On hinges of iron, that grate
And groan with the rust and the weight,
Like the hinges of a gate
That hath fallen to decay;
But the evil doth not cease;
There is war instead of peace,
Instead of Love there is hate;
And still I must wander and wait,
Still I must watch and pray,
Not forgetting in whose sight,
A thousand years in their flight
Are as a single day.

The life of man is a gleam
Of light, that comes and goes
Like the course of the Holy Stream.
The cityless river, that flows
From fountains no one knows,
Through the Lake of Galilee,
Through forests and level lands,
Over rocks, and shallows, and sands
Of a wilderness wild and vast,
Till it findeth its rest at last
In the desolate Dead Sea!
But alas! alas for me
Not yet this rest shall be!

What, then! doth Charity fail?
Is Faith of no avail?
Is Hope blown out like a light
By a gust of wind in the night?
The clashing of creeds, and the strife
Of the many beliefs, that in vain
Perplex man's heart and brain,
Are naught but the rustle of leaves,
When the breath of God upheaves
The boughs of the Tree of Life,
And they subside again!
And I remember still
The words, and from whom they came,
Not he that repeateth the name,
But he that doeth the will!

And Him evermore I behold
Walking in Galilee,
Through the cornfield's waving gold,
In hamlet, in wood, and in wold,
By the shores of the Beautiful Sea.
He toucheth the sightless eyes;
Before Him the demons flee;
To the dead He sayeth: Arise!
To the living: Follow me!
And that voice still soundeth on
From the centuries that are gone,
To the centuries that shall be!
From all vain pomps and shows,
From the pride that overflows,
And the false conceits of men;
From all the narrow rules
And subtleties of Schools,
And the craft of tongue and pen;
Bewildered in its search,
Bewildered with the cry,
Lo, here! lo, there, the Church!
Poor, sad Humanity
Through all the dust and heat
Turns back with bleeding feet,
By the weary road it came,
Unto the simple thought
By the great Master taught,
And that remaineth still:
Not he that repeateth the name,
But he that doeth the will!



********


JUDAS MACCABAEUS.


ACT I.

The Citadel of Antiochus at Jerusalem.

SCENE I. -- ANTIOCHUS; JASON.

ANTIOCHUS.
O Antioch, my Antioch, my city!
Queen of the East! my solace, my delight!
The dowry of my sister Cleopatra
When she was wed to Ptolemy, and now
Won back and made more wonderful by me!
I love thee, and I long to be once more
Among the players and the dancing women
Within thy gates, and bathe in the Orontes,
Thy river and mine. O Jason, my High-Priest,
For I have made thee so, and thou art mine,
Hast thou seen Antioch the Beautiful?

JASON.
Never, my Lord.

ANTIOCHUS.
Then hast thou never seen
The wonder of the world. This city of David
Compared with Antioch is but a village,
And its inhabitants compared with Greeks
Are mannerless boors.

JASON.
They are barbarians,
And mannerless.

ANTIOCHUS.
They must be civilized.
They must be made to have more gods than one;
And goddesses besides.

JASON.
They shall have more.

ANTIOCHUS.
They must have hippodromes, and games, and baths,
Stage-plays and festivals, and most of all
The Dionysia.

JASON.
They shall have them all.

ANTIOCHUS.
By Heracles! but I should like to see
These Hebrews crowned with ivy, and arrayed
In skins of fawns, with drums and flutes and thyrsi,
Revel and riot through the solemn streets
Of their old town. Ha, ha! It makes me merry
Only to think of it! --Thou dost not laugh.

JASON.
Yea, I laugh inwardly.

ANTIOCHUS.
The new Greek leaven
Works slowly in this Israelitish dough!
Have I not sacked the Temple, and on the altar
Set up the statue of Olympian Zeus
To Hellenize it?

JASON.
Thou hast done all this.

ANTIOCHUS.
As thou wast Joshua once and now art Jason,
And from a Hebrew hast become a Greek,
So shall this Hebrew nation be translated,
Their very natures and their names be changed,
And all be Hellenized.

JASON.
It shall be done.

ANTIOCHUS.
Their manners and their laws and way of living
Shall all be Greek. They shall unlearn their language,
And learn the lovely speech of Antioch.
Where hast thou been to-day? Thou comest late.

JASON.
Playing at discus with the other priests
In the Gymnasium.

ANTIOCHUS.
Thou hast done well.
There's nothing better for you lazy priests
Than discus-playing with the common people.
Now tell me, Jason, what these Hebrews call me
When they converse together at their games.

JASON.