What is it you would see? If it be woe or wonder, cease your search, and let the following be told to the unknowing world how these things came about--of carnal and bloody acts, of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, of deaths put on by cunning, and plans of deceit fallen upon the deceiver's heads. All this can truly be delivered, so let it be told, even while minds are wild--words for the ear to make us dumb, yet still much too light for the bore of the entire matter. Let us recount the occasion of our sudden and strange return lest more plots and errors of mischance happen.
How stale, flat and without purpose the world seems--a garden gone to seed, weeds rank and gross posses it. That it should come to this, rendered mere beasts in comparison to the gods of the sun we are meant to be. Must we remember? Break, our altogether heart, for we must hold until in dreadful secrecy the dreadful knowledge comes--until the apparition appears no more upon the battery where we watch.
Some say ’tis but our fantasy, this dreaded sight that fills us with fear and wonder--this specter that appears when the stars have made their course to light the parts of heaven where they now burn. We would not have believed it without the assurance of our senses, this strange eruption in our state. Why is there so much brass going to cannons, ships being built seven days a week--what threat and purpose accounts for all this sweaty haste day and night? Who can answer the question of these wars? ’Tis a mote which troubles the mind’s eye, for when Rome was high and triumphant before it fell, they say graves opened up and the shrouded dead went shrieking through the streets. Stars with trails of fire, disasters in the sun, the watery moon sick almost to doomsday with eclipse--harbingers of fates coming on; such feared events have heaven and earth demonstrated to us now.
’Tis very strange, give it an understanding but no tongue. All is not well, we suspect foul play, and foul deeds will rise though all the earth would overwhelm them to our eyes. Oh angels and ministers of grace do not let us burst from a lack of understanding, but tell why this specter has been cast up again. What does this mean, this visitation shining by the light of the moon--making night hideous and we fools of nature; shaking us with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls. Say why this is--our fate cries out and makes each petty artery of our body as hardy as the lion’s.
Caught round in a net of villainies, sorting the plot and play through to the end--is it not damned to let this canker come to further evil? We must defy thoughts and feelings of fear when examples evident as earth exhort us as now. We put on our antic disposition--God’s jester--while putting up with the calamities of this life--bearing the whips and scorns of time, the injustice of tyrants, the arrogance of authorities, the law’s delay; we bear these ills rather than fly to others that we know not of. Consciousness makes cowards of us all! Were these bones begotten for no better purpose than to be used for playing games? We are no more than sheep and calves to think a document of law alone will secure us. Do we stand in the rule’s way even though it would blast us? Where is this knowledge which our knowing would help a fate avoid?
We’re asked to cast off our melancholy and look upon the rule with kindness, for the excuse that everything passes through nature into eternity. Yet is it not an offense to heaven, the dead, and nature, to subvert this potential so? Our woe is yet to be proved of no avail--oh heaven direct our course, that we, with wings as swift as thinking and thoughts of love may sweep to our revenge; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is, than honesty could ever translate beauty into its likeness; and in the corrupted currents of this world the gilded hand may shove justice aside, and ’tis often seen, the wicked prize itself buys out the law. But ’tis not so in heaven above: there, there is no shuffling, no trickery, there every action lies in its true nature and we ourselves are compelled from the teeth to the forehead of our faults to give evidence in all.
Who comes to chide our tardiness? Do we not have the bile to make oppression bitter? Is this late visit but to whet our almost blunted purpose? Let us confess ourselves to heaven, repent what’s past so we may avoid what is to come, for in times as obscene as these virtue itself begs the pardon of vice--bows and begs to do what is right.
This rule, whom we trust as we would fanged serpents, bears its mandate to sweep our path and marshal us to our doom. So be it--’tis sport to have the engineer blasted up with their own bomb. And it shall go, but we will delve one yard below their mines and blow them to the moon. Oh ’tis most sweet when in one line two schemes directly meet; oh that from this time forth our thoughts be bloody or nothing worth--where not even the ocean overpowers the flats with more haste than our rebellion sweeps aside the rule, as if the world begins now, former order be damned. Our state cries so loud to be heard, from heaven to earth, that we must question it all--and where the offence is, let a great axe fall. Oh treble woe fall ten times treble on the cursed head whose wicked deed deprives us of our most fine sense. A desperate disease requires a desperate remedy for relief or there is none at all.
Whose grief bears such an emphasis, whose words of sorrow would cause the wandering stars to stand still like a wonder-struck audience? Humanity. And what a piece of work--how noble in reason, how infinite in ability, in form and movement--how exact and admirable--in action how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a god--the beauty of this world--we will fight for this until our eyelids no longer blink. Our skills shall indeed stand out like the most fiery star in the darkest of nights.
Perhaps heaven has pleased itself with us, that we may be its minister and scourge. Then venom to its work, and let it be told, from here the day will arrive where all shall appear as clear to judgment as day is to the eye.
