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قراءة كتاب The Saxons A Drama of Christianity in the North

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‏اللغة: English
The Saxons
A Drama of Christianity in the North

The Saxons A Drama of Christianity in the North

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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us.

Fritz—Who do these woods belong to, anyhow?
Rudolph—Where a man puts his foot the dragon puts
His belly, and the man's track disappears.
Where is the tree that has not felt the storm?
Have they not disappeared? Like leaves the tribes
Are scattered.
Fritz— It has blown down trunk and all.
Rudolph—Forests and rivers and ten thousand graves
Lie under that red paw.
Fritz— It stains the world.
Rudolph—The Weser rolls down bodies to the sea;
Their yellow hair is matted in the Rhine;
The deer that drinks the Aller in the night
Starts back from bloody faces in the stream.
They are our fathers, Fritz, who cannot sleep
While this coiled Hunger tracks us toward the north.
Fritz—And we must feed it, eh? We must grub roots,
Fatten ourselves on acorns in the wood,
As swine do, and then waddle to the swamp
And stuff its belly so that it will sleep
And trouble us no more, we must do that?
Rudolph—No; we must leave, and starve it.
Fritz— It don't starve.
More hunger means more flesh. Let's feed it steel.
Rudolph—Steel draws the blood and brings the hunger on.
Fritz—Then draw the life. We don't feed it enough.
Rudolph—It eats the blade—
Fritz— Then feed it hilt and all.
Rudolph—It eats our swords and they come out in claws.
As Canzler says, a thousand spears have but
Peeled off its poisonous scales, and where they fall
A deadly fire burns and the elves die.
Fritz—We will call Wittikind.
Rudolph— From out the grave?
Fritz—His spirit will hear.
Rudolph— Wittikind was baptized.
Fritz—His head was baptized, but his heart was not.
A few drops here could not put out a fire
That scarred and seamed the dragon till it lashed,
Maddened and bleeding, all the tribes away.
A spark of him is in this forest.
Rudolph— Oswald.
Fritz— Yes.
Rudolph—Silent and shy.
Fritz— Their fate whom Woden loves.
He homes the lightning in the silent cloud.
Rudolph—Weak.
Fritz— In himself, but strong by prophesy.
Rudolph—Can you or I or chief hasten the day
Wherein Val-father's voice shall wake the North?
What man can say unto the lightning, "Leap"?
Of Woden's race, a million summer leaves,
We are, as it were, the winter mistletoe,
A lone green sprig with barren woods all round.
Can we shake off the snow and say, "Appear,"
To the young race asleep within the trees?
Cry out above the dragon winter, "Die"?
You cannot hurry in its growth one leaf.
Yet you would thrust a sword in Oswald's hands,
Thinking to hurry Prophesy along.
If naked strength can save us, why not chief's?
Why Oswald, if the battle is to be now?
Without the aid of Woden, he is naught.
Fritz—Without it, naught, and with it, everything.
Rudolph—Val-father calls to-day then?
Fritz— Wiglaf's ears
Are where the whispers of the dead go by.
Rudolph—Heard he the word, "to-day"?
Fritz— And Wiglaf's eyes
Blazed glee-fire and his lips spake Woden's word:
"In him shall be the strength of all your dead."
Rudolph—In Oswald?
Fritz— In the seed of Wittikind.
"The seed of Wittikind shall put forth a sprout
Shall make the whole North green."
Rudolph— The "seed" of.
Fritz— Yes.
Rudolph—There, Fritz, is where the whole great purpose turns.
Fritz—Eh?
Rudolph—Prophesy, you see, walks in the air.
No man can say on whom it will lay its hand.
Fritz—Why?
Rudolph—Would not Oswald's seed be Wittikind's?
Do you not see that some child still unborn,
The issue of Oswald's loins, may be the one
To take the sword that Woden

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