Shows me no tabard, nor a sign beside,
Denoting what your office is that asks

A hearing in this presence; nor know I yet
By what so friendly fortune I am graced
With your good company and gentle speech.
But we are here no niggards of respect
To merit's unauthenticated forms,

And therefore do I answer you, and thus:
You speak of insurrections: bear in mind
Against what rule my father and myself
Have been insurgent; whom did we supplant ?—
There was a time, so ancient records tell,

There were communities, scarce known by name
In these degenerate days, but once far-famed,
Where liberty and justice, hand in hand,
Ordered the common weal; where great men grew
Up to their natural eminence, and none,

Saving the wise, just, eloquent, were great;

Where power was of God's gift, to whom he gave

Supremacy of merit, the sole means

And broad highway to power, that ever then

Was meritoriously administered,

Whilst all its instruments from first to last,
The tools of state for service high or low,
Were chosen for their aptness to those ends
Which virtue meditates. To shake the ground
Deep-founded whereupon this structure stood,
Was verily a crime; a treason it was,
Conspiracies to hatch against this state
And its free innocence. But now, I ask,
Where is there on God's earth that polity
Which it is not, by consequence converse,

A treason against nature to uphold?

Whom may we now call free? whom great? whom

wise?

Whom innocent ?—the free are only they

Whom power makes free to execute all ills

Their hearts imagine; they are only great

Whose passions nurse them from their cradles up
In luxury and lewdness,-whom to see

Is to despise, whose aspects put to scorn
Their station's eminence; the wise, they only
Who wait obscurely till the bolts of heaven
Shall break upon the land, and give them light

Whereby to walk; the innocent, alas !

Poor innocency lies where four roads meet,

A stone upon her head, a stake driven through her,

For who is innocent that cares to live?

doth press the very life

The hand of power

Of innocency out!

What then remains

But in the cause of nature to stand forth,

And turn this frame of things the right side

up? For this the hour is come, the sword is drawn, And tell your masters vainly they resist. Nature, that slept beneath their poisonous drugs, Is up and stirring, and from north and south, From east and west, from England and from France, From Germany, and Flanders, and Navarre,

Shall stand against them like a beast at bay.

The blood that they have shed will hide no longer
In the blood-sloken soil, but cries to heaven.
Their cruelties and wrongs against the poor
Shall quicken into swarms of venomous snakes,
And hiss through all the earth, till o'er the earth,
That ceases then from hissings and from groans,
Rises the song-How are the mighty fallen!
And by the peasant's hand! Low lie the proud!

And smitten with the weapons of the poor—

The blacksmith's hammer and the woodsman's axe.
Their tale is told; and for that they were rich,
And robbed the poor; and for that they were strong,
And scourged the weak; and for that they made laws
Which turned the sweat of labour's brow to blood,-
For these their sins the nations cast them out,
The dunghills are their death-beds, and the stench
From their uncover'd carrion steaming wide,

Turns in the nostrils of enfranchised man

To a sweet savour. These things come to pass
From small beginnings, because God is just.

SIR FLEUREANT.

Sir, you are bold in prophecy, but words
Will not demolish kingdoms. This alone
Is clear, that we are charged to carry back
A warlike answer.

ARTEVELDE.

You have caught my sense.

Let no more words be wasted. What I said

Shall be engrossed, and rendered to your hands

Το

spare your memories; and so farewell

Unto your functions. For yourselves, I pray you

Το grace our table with your company

At dinner time, and taste of what we have.

Meantime farewell. And you, my honoured friends
And councillors, I bid you to the board.

Adieu till then.

I will detain you.

Good father, by your leave

(The council breaks up. The HERALD and SIR FLEUREANT are conducted out, and only VAN ARTEVelde and FATHER JOHN remain. After a pause ARTEVELDE proceeds.)

Did I say too much?

What think you? was I rash?

FATHER JOHN.

My son, my son !

You've spoken some irrevocable words,

And more, in my weak judgment, than were wise.

Till now might accident have opened out

A way to concord. Casualties or care

Might yet have counselled peace, and was it well

To send this challenge?

ARTEVElde.

Judge me not unheard.

We have been too successful to be safe