CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

PARACELSUS
My friend has changed so sorely: if this mood
Shall pass away-if light once more arise
Where all is darkness now-if you see fit
To hope, and trust again, and strive again ;
You will remember-not our love alone­
But that my faith in God's desire for man
To trust on his support, (as I must think
You trusted,) is obscured and dim through you;
For you are thus, and this is no reward.
Will you not call me to your side, dear friend?
IV.-PARACELSUS ASPIRES
SCENE.-A House at Colmar, in Alsatia. 1528.
P ARACELSUS, FESTUS
Paracelsus. (To John Oporinus, his secretary.) Sic itur
ad astra! Dear Von Visenburg
Is scandalised, and poor Torinus paralysed,
And every honest soul that Basil holds
Aghast; and yet we live, as one may say,
Just as though Liechtenfels had never set
So true a value on his sorry carcass,
And learned Putter had not frowned us dumb.
We live; and shall as surely start to-morrow
For NUl'cmburg, as we drink speedy scathe
To Basil in this mantling wine, suffused
With a delicate blush-no fainter tinge is born
I' th' shut heart of a bud: pledge me, good John­
" Basil; a hot plague ravage it, with Putter
" To stop the plague I" Even so? Do you too share
Their panic-Lhe reptiles? Ha, ha I faint through them,
Desist for them I-while means enough exist
To bow the stoutest braggart of the tribe
Once more in crouching silence-means to breed
A stupid wonder in each fool again,
Now big with admiration at the skill
Which stript a vain pretender of his plumes;
And, that done, means to brand each slavish brow
So deeply, surely, ineffaceably,
That thenceforth flattery shall not pucker it
Out of the furrow of that hideous stamp
Which shows the next they fawn on, what they are,
This Basil with its magnates one and all,
Whom I curse soul and limb. And now dispatch,
Dispatch my trusty John; and what remains
To do, whate'er arrangements for our trip
Are yet to be completed, see you hasten
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