SCENE-WILLIAM TELL.

Tell. Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again! I hold to you the hands you first beheld,

To show they still are free. Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answer me,

And bid your tenant welcome to his home
Again! O sacred forms, how proud you look!
How high you lift your heads into the sky!
How huge you are! how mighty and how free!
How do you look, for all your bared brows,
More gorgeously majestical than kings

Whose loaded coronets exhaust the mine!

Ye are the things that tower, that shine-whose smile
Makes glad whose frown is terrible—whose forms,
Robed or unrobed, do all the impress wear
Of awe divine-whose subject never kneels
In mockery, because it is your boast
To keep him free! Ye guards of liberty,
I'm with you once again! I call to you
With all my voice! I hold my hands to you
To show they still are free! I rush to you
As though I could embrace you!

Enter ERNI.

Erni. Thou'rt sure to keep the time, That com'st before the hour.

Tell. The hour, my friend,

Will soon be here. O, when will liberty
Be here! My Erni, that's my thought, which still
I find beside. Scaling yonder peak,
I saw an eagle wheeling near its brow:
O'er the abyss his broad-expanded wings
Lay calm and motionless upon the air,
As if he floated there without their aid,
By the sole act of his unlorded will,
That buoy'd him proudly up. Instinctively
I bent my bow; yet kept he rounding still
His airy circle, as in the delight

Of measuring the ample range beneath,
And round about, absorb'd, he heeded not

The death that threatened him. I could not shoot!—

"Twas liberty. I turned my bow aside,

And let him soar away.

Enter VERNER and FURST.

Tell. Here, friends !-Well met!-Do we go on?
Verner. We do.

Tell. Then you can reckon on the friends you named?
Ver. On every man of them.

Furst. And I on mine.

Erni. Not one I sounded, but doth rate his blood As water in the cause! Then fix the day

Before we part.

Ver. No, Erni: rather wait

For some new outrage to amaze and rouse

The common mind, which does not brood so much
On wrongs gone by, as it doth quiver with

The sense of present ones.

Tell. I wish with Erni,

But I think with thee. Yet, when I ask myself

On whom the wrong shall light for which we wait— Whose vineyard they'll uproot-whose flocks they'll ra

vage

Whose threshold they'll profane-whose earth pollute-
Whose roof they'll fire ?-When this I ask myself,
And think upon the blood of pious sons,

The tears of venerable fathers, and

The shrieks of mothers, fluttering round their spoil'd
And nestless young, I almost take the part
Of generous indignation, that doth blush

At such expense to wait on sober prudence.
Furst. Yet it is best.

Tell. On that we're all agreed.

Who fears the issue when the day shall come?
I'm not the man

To mar this harmony. Nor I, no more
Than any of you! You commit to me
The warning of the rest. Remember, then,
My dagger sent to any one of you—
As time may press-is word enough. The others
I'll see myself. Our course is clear Dear Erni,
Remember me to Melctal. Furst, provide
What store you can of arms. Do
you the same.
The next aggression of the tyrant is

The downfall of his

power. Remember me

To Melctal, Erni-to my father. Tell him

He has a son was never born to him!

Farewell!-When next we meet upon this theme
All Switzerland shall witness what we do! [Exeunt.

-KNOWLES.

SCENE-EMMA.

Emma. O, the fresh morning! Heaven's kind
That never empty-handed comes to those
Who know to use its gifts. Praise be to Him
Who loads it still, and bids it constant run
The errand of His bounty! Praise be to Him!
We need His care that on the mountain's cliff
Lodge by the storm, and cannot lift our eyes,
But piles on piles of everlasting snows,
O'erhanging us, remind us of His mercy.

Albert. My mother!

Emma. Albert!

Enter ALBERT.

messenger,

Alb. [Descending, and approaching Emma.] Bless thee!

Emma. Bless thee, Albert!

How early were you up ?

Alb. Before the sun.

Emma. Ay, strive with him. He never lies a-bed

When it is time to rise.

He ever is

The constant'st workman that goes through his task,
And shows us how to work by setting to't

With smiling face; for labour's light as ease
That cheerfulness doth take in hand. Be like
The sun.

Alb. What you would have me like, I'll be like,
As far as will, to labour join'd, can make me.

Emma. Well said, my boy! Knelt you, when you

got up

To-day?

Alb. I did; and do so every day.

Emma. I know you do! And think you, when you

kneel,

To whom you kneel?

Alb. To HIM who made me, mother.
Emma. And in whose name?

Alb. The name of Him who died

For me and all men, that all men and I
Should live.

Emma. That's right! Remember that, my son:
Forget all things but that remember that!

'Tis more than friends or fortune; clothing, food;
All things of earth; yea, life itself. It is

To live when these are gone, where there are naught
With God! My son, remember that!

Alb. I will!

Emma. You have been early up, when I, that play'd The sluggard in comparison, am up

Full early; for the highest peaks alone,

As yet, behold the sun.

Now tell me what

You ought to think on when you see the sun

So shining on the peak?

Alb. That as the peak

Feels not the pleasant sun, or feels it least;

So they who highest stand in fortune's smile

Are gladden'd by it least, or not at all!

Emma. And what's the profit you should turn this to? Alb. Rather to place my good in what I have

Than think it worthless, wishing to have more :

For more is not more happiness, so oft

As less.

Emma. I'm glad you husband what you're taught.
That is the lesson of content, my son;

He who finds which, has all-who misses nothing.
Alb. Content is a good thing.

Emma. A thing, the good

Alone can profit by.

Alb. My father's good.

Emma. What say'st thou, boy?

Alb. I say my father's good.

Emma. Yes; he is good! what then?
Alb. I do not think

He is content-I'm sure he is not content;
Nor would I be content, were I a man,
And Gesler seated on the rock of Altorf!
A man may lack content and yet be good.
Emma. I did not say all good men found content.

I would be busy; leave me.

[Exit ALBERT.

Why should my heart sink! 'tis for this we rear them!

Cherish their tiny limbs; pine if a thorn

But mar their tender skin; gather them to us

Closer than miser hugs his bag of gold;

Bear more for them than slave, who makes his flesh
A casket for the rich purloined gem,

To send them forth into a wintry world,

To brave its flaws and tempests! They must go ;
Far better, then, they go with hearty will!
Be that my consolation. Nestling as
He is, he is the making of a bird

Will own no cowering wing. 'Twas fine-'twas fine
To see my eaglet on the verge o' the nest,
Ruffling himself at sight of the big gulf
He feels anon he'll have the wing to soar.

[Exeunt. -KNOWLES.

SCENE-GESLER.

Gesler. Alone, alone! and every step the mist
Thickens around me ! On these mountain tracts
To lose one's way, they say is sometimes death.
What hoa! holloa!-No tongue replies to me!
What thunder hath the horror of this silence!
I dare not stop; the day, though not half run,
Is not less sure to end his course; and night,
Dreary when through the social haunts of men
Her solemn darkness walks, in such a place
As this, comes wrapped in most appalling fear!
I dare not stop, nor dare I yet proceed,
Begirt with hidden danger. If I take
This hand, it carries me still deeper into
The wild and savage solitudes I'd shun,
Where once to faint with hunger is to die:
If this, it leads me to the precipice,
Whose brink with fatal horror rivets him
That treads upon't, till, drunk with fear, he reels

Into the gaping void, and headlong down

Plunges to still more hideous death! Curs'd slaves!

To let me wander from them! [Thunder.] Hoa!-Holloa! My voice sounds weaker to mine ear; I've not