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MANFRED
A monologue from the play by Lord Byron
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Lord Byron: Six Plays. Lord Byron. Los Angeles: Black Box Press, 2007. |
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- MANFRED: Thou false fiend, thou liest!
- My life is in its last hour—that I know,
- Nor would redeem a moment of that hour;
- I do not combat against Death, but thee
- And thy surrounding angels; my past power
- Was purchased by no compact with thy crew,
- But by superior science—penance, daring,
- And length of watching, strength of mind, and skill
- In knowledge of our Fathers—when the earth
- Saw men and spirits walking side by side,
- And gave ye no supremacy: I stand
- Upon my strength—I do defy—deny—
- Spurn back, and scorn ye!—
- What are my crimes to such as thee?
- Must crimes be punished but by other crimes,
- And greater criminals?—Back to thy hell!
- Thou hast no power upon me, that I feel;
- Thou never shalt possess me, that I know:
- What I have done is done; I bear within
- A torture which could nothing gain from thine:
- The Mind which is immortal makes itself
- Requital for its good or evil thoughts—
- Is its own origin of ill and end—
- And its own place and time: its innate sense,
- When stripped of this mortality, derives
- No colour from the fleeting things without,
- But is absorbed in sufferance or in joy,
- Born from the knowledge of its own desert.
- Thou didst not tempt me, and thou couldst not tempt me;
- I have not been thy dupe, nor am thy prey—
- But was my own destroyer, and will be
- My own hereafter.—Back, ye baffled fiends!
- The hand of Death is on me—but not yours!
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