Firmilian: Or, The Student of Badajoz. A Spasmodic Tragedy |
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ALONZO OLIVAREZ ALPHONZO D'AGUILAR APOLLODORUS Badajoz beauty brain CHIEF INQUISITOR chivalry Chorus of IGNES Christendom Church CONFESSOR Costermonger COUNTESS cousin coverture cups curs'd dare dear death deed devil dream Drink ducats earth Enter FIRMILIAN Exit eyes FABIAN faith flower fool Gil of Santillane glorious GRADUATE guilt hand hath HAVERILLO heap hear heard heart heaven hedge-hog Holy office honor horrid hour Iago IGNES FATUI Inquisition Is't king knave libertine Lilian lips look lord Macbeth MARIANA master never NICODEMUS night OLD INQUISITOR ORGAN and CHOIR PERCY JONES pillar poet poetry PRIEST rack radishes ransom Raymond Lully Salamanca SANCHO Scene closes SECOND FAMILIAR SECOND GENTLEMAN sing slave sleep song soul stand sweet tell tender thee There's thine things Thou hast thought thousand Three thunder torch Twas Twere unto vault verse vile wine word wretch wrong young
Popular passages
Page 76 - Ha! as I take the matchbox in my hand, A spasm pervades me, and a natural thrill As though my better genius were at hand, And strove to pluck me backwards by the hair. I must be resolute. Lose this one chance. Which bears me to th
Page 118 - I was fain to hold my tingling ears. Mothers, whose sons had perished in the church, Howled curses at him : old men shook their fists With palsied vehemence ; and there were some Who carried naked daggers in their hands, And would have hacked him piecemeal. FIRST GENTLEMAN. And no wonder — 'Twas a most horrid and unnatural deed ; My young remembrance cannot parallel A fellow to it. SECOND GENTLEMAN. Yet was he quite calm : A little pale, perhaps, but noway moved By all their hooting. When he reached...
Page 104 - Leave off these childish tricks, and vapours bred Out of a too much pampered fantasy. What are we, after all, but mortal men. Who eat, drink, sleep, need raiment and the like. As well as any jolterhead alive? Trust me, my friend, we cannot feed on dreams, Or stay the hungry cravings of the maw By mere poetic banquets.
Page 119 - Then, sir, indeed the people's wrath was roused. And a whole storm of cats came tumbling in, Combined with baser missiles. I was fain, Not wishing to be wholly singular, To add my contribution to the rest. Yet he cursed on, till the Familiars gagged him Bound him unto the stake, and so he died. FIRST GENTLEMAN. You tell the story very pleasantly. Were there no more of note in the procession ? SECOND GENTLEMAN. There was a fellow, too, an Anabaptist, Or something of the sort, from -the Low Countries,...
Page 110 - I've dashed into the sea of metaphor With as strong paddles as the sturdiest ship That churns Medusae into liquid light, And hashed at every object in my way. My ends are public. I have talked of men As my familiars, whom I never saw. Nay — more to raise my credit — I have penned Epistles to the great ones of the land, When some attack might make them slightly sore. Assuring them, in faith, it was not I. What was their answer? Marry — shortly this: "Who, in the name of Zernebock, are you?
Page 158 - Listen one moment! When I was a babe, And in my cradle puling for my nurse, There fell a gleam of glory on the floor, And in it, darkly standing, was a form MARIANA. A negress, probably! Farewell awhile When next we meet - the faggot and the pile! Come, Lilian!
Page 106 - ... that, close beside the eye, Would show as largely as a giant's head, Is dwindled to a heap of gooseberries! If Justice held no bigger scales than those Yon pigmy seems to balance in his hands, Her utmost fiat scarce would weigh a drachm!
Page 26 - His heart's m the right place. He's wayward, doubtless, And very often unintelligible, But that is held to be a virtue now. Critics and poets both (save I, who cling To older canons) have discarded sense, And meaning's at a discount. Our young spirits, Who call themselves the masters of the age, Are either robed in philosophic mist, And, with an air of grand profundity, Talk metaphysics — which, sweet cousin, means Nothing but aimless jargon — or they come • Before us in the broad bombastic...
Page 102 - HAVERILLO, emerging from the staircase. How now, Firmilian ! — I am scant of breath ; These steps have pumped the ether from my lungs, And made the bead-drops cluster on my brow. A strange, unusual rendezvous is this — An old saint's pillar, which no human foot Hath scaled this hundred years ! FIRMILIAN.
Page 76 - And over/worked too, if the praise be just, Which these, his votaries, quaver as his claim. Yet it is odd he should o'erlook the fact That underneath this church of his are stored Some twenty barrels of the dusky grain, The secret of whose framing, in an hour Of diabolic jollity and mirth, Old Roger Bacon wormed from Belzebub!