Part 3 (1/2)

VAL. We wait impatient thy reply, good father.

Is there such weapon in these walls?

ABB. There is:-- And knowledge of the fact attests the mission Heaven's work. See where the holy weapon lies, Beneath yon ma.s.sy stone.

_Chorus of Monks._

Spring from thy resting-place, sword of the brave!

Arm the deliv'rer's hand, destined to save-- France calls on thee.

_Chorus of Soldiers._

Give it rejoicing light--see! it is ours.-- Now we defy the foe--England's great pow'rs!-- France shall be free.

SCENE IV.--_Chinon._

JOAN. BERTHA.

JOAN. Alas! not yet returned?

BER. The way is far.

JOAN. What, if too careful of his charge, the abbot Coldly deny his suit, some fraud suspecting?

Wouldst know the heaviest ill mortality Can bear? 'Tis this--suspense. Suspense dries up The fertile mind, holds captive ev'ry nerve, The spirit sinks, impedes swift Time's career, And stays the golden chariot of the sky; Clothes noon's resplendent face with heavy clouds, Makes peaceful night laborious, watchful day.

Ill, and its train of ills, may all be borne; But dire suspense, that canker of the soul, Like a fell blight encrusts each energy Of mind and frame, and with unnatural heat Consumes the oil of life.

BER. Let's cheat the hours With converse of the past. Sit on this turf, And here recount the story of thy days.

Sure thou wert deemed, from reason's dawn, a treasure.

JOAN. E'en from my childhood I was never like Those whom my childhood shared. To be alone My joy, thoughts undefined my fancy filling.

Sometimes my heart would throb, my young eye swim With sudden tears; but why I could not tell.

I seemed, e'en then, cast from some other sphere, Of which sufficient memory was left To link me closer to a former state!

And make me feel an exile.

BER. Would I'd known thee!

How sweet to mark developement of mind Pregnant as thine!

JOAN. Thou might'st have been as others.

I was not loved. I was not understood.

Some deemed me void of Nature's kindly gifts, In intellect deficient, and in heart Most cold. Oh! how they wronged that heart! I loved Too keen, alas! yet had but few to love, And fewer still to answer to my love.

BER. I pain thee now.

JOAN. Regret it not; the heart, Like the swelled ocean, must exceed its bounds, And find departed calm best in exhaustion.

'Tis past, and I can smile again, dear Bertha.

It was a bitter time, and I, perhaps, Had been a ruined child, when Heaven first sent A holy man to shelter in our village.

A warrior he had been, but heavy woes Had made him change the helmet for the cowl.

In hist'ry's page he deep was skilled. I heard, And stole beside him. He did not notice me.

Then afterwards he marked my kindling eye, And soon, amazed, I found myself his favourite.