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قراءة كتاب The World's Greatest Books — Volume 17 — Poetry and Drama
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Goetz: Everybody blames me for the mischief, and nobody gives me credit for having prevented so much evil. Would I were thousands of miles away!
[Enter Sievers, Link, Metzler, peasants.
Link: Rouse yourself, captain; the enemy is near and in great force!
Goetz: Who burnt Miltenberg?
Metzler: If you want to make a fuss, we'll soon teach you!
Goetz: You threaten? Scoundrel! [He knocks him down with a blow of his fist.
Kohl: You are mad! The enemy is coming, and you quarrel.
[Tumult, battle, and rout of the peasants. Then the stage gradually fills with gypsies. Goetz returns wounded, is recognised by the gypsies, who bandage him, help him on to his horse, and ask him to lead them. Soldiers enter and level their halberds at Goetz.
Scene III.—Adelheid's room. Night. Adelheid. Franz.
Franz: Oh, let me stay yet a little while—here, where I live. Without is death!
Adelheid: Already you hesitate? Then give me back the phial. You played the hero, but you are only a boy; A man who wooes a noble woman stakes his life, honour, virtue, happiness! Boy, leave me!
Franz: No, you are mine. And if I get your freedom I get my own. With a firm hand I shall pour the poison into my master's cup. Farewell.
[He embraces her and hurries away.
Scene IV.—Rustic garden. Marie sleeping in an arbour. Lerse.
Lerse: Gracious lady, awake! We must away. Goetz captured as a rebel and thrown into a dungeon! His age! His wounds!
Marie: We must hurry to Weislingen. Only dire necessity can drive me to this step. Saving my brother's life I go to death. I shall kneel to him, weep before him.
[Exit.
Scene V.—Weislingen's hall.
Weislingen: A wretched fever has dried my very marrow. No rest for me, day or night! Goetz haunts my very dreams. He is a prisoner, and yet I tremble before him. (Enter Marie.) Oh, heaven! Marie's spirit, to tell me of her death!
Marie: Weislingen, I am no spirit. I have come to beg of you my brother's life.
Weislingen: Marie! You, angel of heaven, bring with you the tortures of hell. The breath of death is upon me, and you come to throw me into despair!
Marie: My brother is ill in prison. His wounds—his age——
Weislingen: Enough. Franz! (Enter Franz in great excitement.) The papers there! (Franz hands him a sealed packet.) Here is your brother's death-warrant; and thus I tear it. He lives. Do not weep, Franz; there's hope for the living.
Franz: You cannot, you must die! Poison from your wife. [Rushes to the window, and throws himself out into the river.
Weislingen: Woe to me! Poison from my wife! Franz seduced by the infamous woman! I am dying; and in my agony throb the tortures of hell.
Marie (kneeling): Merciful God, have pity on him!
Scene VI.—A small garden outside the prison, Goetz, Elizabeth, Lerse, and prison-keeper.
Goetz: Almighty God! How lovely is it beneath Thy heaven! Farewell, my children! My roots are cut away, my strength totters to the grave. Let me see George once more, and sun myself in his look. You turn away and weep? He is dead! Then die, Goetz! How did he die? Alas! they took him among the incendiaries, and he has been executed?
Elizabeth: No, he was slain at Miltenberg, fighting like a lion.
Goetz: God be praised! Now release my soul! My poor wife! I leave you in a wicked world. Lerse, forsake her not! Blessings upon Marie and her husband. Selbitz is dead, and the good emperor, and my George. Give me some water! Heavenly air! Freedom!
[He dies.
Elizabeth: Freedom is only above—with thee; the world is a prison.
Lerse: Noble man! Woe to this age that rejected thee! Woe to the future that shall misjudge thee!