Mary Stuart Author:Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morton Payne Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ACT I. Scene I. Babington's Lodging: A Veiled PICTURE ON THE WALL. Enter Babington, Tichborne, Tilney, Abington, Salisbury, and Barnwell. Babington. ... more »Welcome, good friends, and welcome this good day That casts out hope and brings in certainty To turn raw spring to summer. Now not long The flower that crowns the front of all our faiths Shall bleach to death in prison ; now the trust That took the night with fire as of a star Grows red and broad as sunrise in our sight Who held it dear and desperate once, now sure, But not more dear, being surer. In my hand I hold this England and her brood, and all That time out of the chance of all her fate Makes hopeful or makes fearful: days and years, Triumphs and changes bred for praise or shame From the unborn womb of these unknown, are ours That stand yet noteless here; ours even as God's Who puts them in our hand as his, to wield And shape to service godlike. None of you But this day strikes out of the scroll of death And writes apart immortal; what we would, That have we; what our fathers, brethren, peers, Bled and beheld not, died and might not win, That may we see, touch, handle, hold it fast, May take to bind our brows with. By my life, I think none ever had such hap alive As ours upon whose plighted lives are set The whole good hap and evil of the state And of the Church of God and world of men And fortune of all crowns and creeds that hang Now on the creed and crown of this our land, To bring forth fruit to our resolve, and bear What sons to time it please us ; whose mere will Is father of the future. Tilney. Have you said? Babington. I cannot say too much of so much good. Tilney. Say nothing then a little, and hear one while: Your talk struts high and swaggers loud for joy, And safely may perchance, ...« less