Britain ... - Blue-Lite

Scene II.] THE VARANGIAN. 32?
The physic-monger and the leech subsist
By sickness, wounds, and all the agonies
To which poor man is heir ;
While those cause-pleading clerks who throng the
courts, ( 24 )
From malice, envy, and injustice reap
A golden harvest : even the King would be
Amerced of half his revenue, were there not
Offences in his 25
subjects. ( ) Thus, 'tis
plain,
That evil is a necessary good,
That virtue ever must companion vice
As yonder sun its shadow, or for aye
Lose its bright name and being.
WALTHEOF.
But, of late,
The stormy clouds of vice so dark and fast
Each other follow, that pure virtue's sun
Feebly, and far between, her faint
light sheds.
OSMOND.
Men will be men, long as within their breasts
Those passions they were born with hold a seat :
Were it not so, this world would be indeed
A strange dull world to look on, quite unfit
For me to struggle in.
WALTHEOF.
But when on man
The passions were bestowed, it was designed
He should, by that pure light which shines within,
Keep hourly watch and ward, with purpose firm
Their violence to restrain.
OSMOND.
I scorn to boast
Of victory o'er the passions : those who do,