The Poems of Emma Lazarus Volume II Part 24

Peace be thine, father!

PRIOR.

Amen! and thine. What's new?

LAY-BROTHER.

A strange Flagellant Fresh come to Wartburg craves a word with thee.

PRIOR.

Bid him within.

[Exit Lay-Brother.

PRIOR places the casket in a Cabinet.]

Patience! No hour of the day Brings freedom to the priest.

Reenter Lay-Brother ushering in NORDMANN, and exit.

Brother, all hail!

Blessed be thou who comest in G.o.d's name!

NORDMANN.

May the Lord grant thee thine own prayer fourfold!

PRIOR.

What is thine errand?

NORDMANN.

Look at me, my father.

Long since you called me friend.

[The PRIOR looks at him attentively, while an expression of wonder and terror gradually overspreads his face.]

PRIOR.

Almighty G.o.d!

The grave gives up her dead. Thou canst not be--

NORDMANN.

Nordmann of Nordmannstein, the Knight of Treffurt.

PRIOR.

He was beheaded years agone.

NORDMANN.

His death Had been decreed, but in his stead a squire Clad in his garb and masked, paid b.l.o.o.d.y forfeit.

A loyal wretch on whom the Prince wreaked vengeance, Rather than publish the true bird had flown.

PRIOR.

Does Frederick know thou art in Eisenach?

NORDMANN.

Who would divine the Knight of Nordmannstein In the Flagellants' weeds? From land to land, From town to town, we cry, "Death to the Jews!

Hep! hep! "Hierosolyma est perdita!"

They die like rats; in Gotha they are burned; Two of the devil brutes in Chatelard, Child-murderers, wizards, breeders of the Plague, Had the truth squeezed from them with screws and racks, All with explicit date, place, circ.u.mstance, And written as it fell from dying lips By scriveners of the law. On their confession The Jews of Savoy were destroyed. To-morrow noon The holy flames shall dance in Nordhausen.

PRIOR.

Your zeal bespeaks you fair. In your deep eyes A mystic fervor s.h.i.+nes; yet your scarred flesh And shrunken limbs denote exhausted nature, Collapsing under discipline.

NORDMANN.

Speak not Of the degrading body and its pangs.

I am all zeal, all energy, all spirit.

Jesus was wroth at me, at all the world, For our indulgence of the flesh, our base Compounding with his enemies the Jews.

But at Madonna Mary's intercession, He charged an angel with this gracious word, "Whoso will scourge himself for forty days, And labor towards the clean extermination Of earth's corrupting vermin, shall be saved."

Oh, what vast peace this message brought my soul!

I have learned to love the ecstasy of pain.

When the sweat stands upon my flesh, the blood Throbs in my bursting veins, my twisted muscles Are cramped with agony, I seem to crawl Anigh his feet who suffered on the Cross.

PRIOR.

O all transforming Time! Can this be he, The iron warrior of a decade since, The gallant youth of earlier years, whose pranks And reckless buoyancy of temper flashed Clear suns.h.i.+ne through my gloom?

NORDMANN.

I am unchanged (Save that the spirit of grace has fallen on me).

Urged by one motive through these banished years, Fed by one hope, awake to realize One living dream--my long delayed revenge.

You saw the day when Henry Schnetzen's castle Was razed with fire?

PRIOR.

I saw it.

NORDMANN.

Schnetzen's wife, Three days a mother, perished.

PRIOR.

And his child?