Brackenburg monologue (Act 1) — Egmont

(alone) I had resolved to go away again at once; and yet, when she takes me at my word, and lets me leave her, I feel as if I could go mad,--Wretched man! Does the fate of thy fatherland, does the growing disturbance fail to move thee?--Are countryman and Spaniard the same to thee? and carest thou not who rules, and who is in the right? I wad a different sort of fellow as a schoolboy!--Then, when an exercise in oratory was given; "Brutus' Speech for Liberty," for instance, Fritz was ever the first, and the rector would say: "If it were only spoken more deliberately, the words not all huddled together."--Then my blood boiled, and longed for action.--Now I drag along, bound by the eyes of a maiden. I cannot leave her! yet she, alas, cannot love me!--ah--no---she--she cannot have entirely rejected me--not entirely--yet half love is no love!--I will endure it no longer!--Can it be true what a friend lately whispered in my ear, that she secretly admits a man into the house by night, when she always sends me away modestly before evening? No, it cannot be true! It is a lie! A base, slanderous lie! Clara is as innocent as I am wretched.--She has rejected me, has thrust me from her heart--and shall I live on thus? I cannot, I will not endure it. Already my native land is convulsed by internal strife, and do I perish abjectly amid the tumult? I will not endure it! When the trumpet sounds, when a shot falls, it thrills through my bone and marrow! But, alas, it does not rouse me! It does not summon me to join the onslaught, to rescue, to dare.--Wretched, degrading position! Better end it at once! Not long ago, I threw myself into the water; I sank--but nature in her agony was too strong for me; I felt that I could swim, and saved myself against my will. Could I but forget the time when she loved me, seemed to love me!--Why has this happiness penetrated my very bone and marrow? Why have these hopes, while disclosing to me a distant paradise, consumed all the enjoyment of life?--And that first, that only kiss!--Here (laying his hand upon the table), here we were alone,--she had always been kind and friendly towards me,--then she seemed to soften,--she looked at me,--my brain reeled,--I felt her lips on mine,--and--and now?--Die, wretch! Why dost thou hesitate? (He draws a phial from his pocket.) Thou healing poison, it shall not have been in vain that I stole thee from my brother's medicine chest! From this anxious fear, this dizziness, this death-agony, thou shalt deliver me at once.