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Updated: May 13, 2025
SEVERAL VOICES. Destroy the emblem of the tyrant's power! Let it burn! FURST. No. Rather be preserved! 'Twas once the instrument of despots now 'Twill be a lasting symbol of our freedom. MELCHTHAL. Thus now, my friends, with light and merry hearts, We stand upon the wreck of tyranny; And gallantly have we fulfilled the oath, Which we at Rootli swore, confederates! FURST. The work is but begun.
'Tis not alone his lands that I inherit, His heart his spirit have devolved on me; And my young arm shall execute the task For which his hoary age remained your debtor. Give me your hands, ye venerable fathers! Thine, Melchthal, too! Nay, do not hesitate, Nor from me turn distrustfully away. Accept my plighted vow my knightly oath! FURST. Give him your hands, my friends!
FURST and STAUFFACHER. Peace, peace, friends! Riot! Insurrection, ho! WOMEN. The governor! Rebellion! Mutiny! STAUFFACHER. Roar, till you burst, knave! ROSSELMANN and MELCHTHAL. Will you hold your tongue? Help, help, I say, the servants of the law! FURST. The viceroy here! Then we shall smart for this! HARRAS. Room for the viceroy! GESSLER. Drive the clowns apart. Why throng the people thus?
We must be firm. For, be assured, the king will make all speed, To avenge his viceroy's death, and reinstate, By force of arms, the tyrant we've expelled. MELCHTHAL. Why, let him come, with all his armaments! The foe within has fled before our arms; We'll give him welcome warmly from without! RUODI. The passes to the country are but few; And these we'll boldly cover with our bodies.
MELCHTHAL. And all for me for my mad wilful folly! Blind, did you say? Quite blind and both his eyes? STAUFFACHER. Even so. The fountain of his sight's dried up. He ne'er will see the blessed sunshine more. FURST. Oh, spare his anguish! MELCHTHAL. Never, never more! O the eye's light, of all the gifts of heaven, The dearest, best!
Tell foresaw, on the arrival of Gessler, many of the misfortunes which must inevitably follow his iron rule, and without explaining his views even to Arnold, of Melchthal, without needlessly alarming his family, endeavored to devise some means, not of bearing the yoke patiently, but of delivering his country from the galling oppression which Albert had brought upon it.
And therefore was it that our sires allowed For what they had recovered from the waste, This honor to the emperor, the lord Of all the German and Italian soil; And, like the other freemen of his realm, Engaged to aid him with their swords in war; And this alone should be the freeman's duty, To guard the empire that keeps guard for him. MELCHTHAL. He's but a slave that would acknowledge more.
MELCHTHAL. And though he sat within the icy domes Of yon far Schreckhorn ay, or higher, where Veiled since eternity, the Jungfrau soars, Still to the tyrant would I make my way; With twenty comrades minded like myself, I'd lay his fastness level with the earth!
A heart like his That sees and owns its error claims our trust. MELCHTHAL. You ever held the peasantry in scorn; What surety have we that you mean us fair? RUDENZ. Oh, think not of the error of my youth! Be one! They were our father's latest words. See they be not forgotten! Take my hand, A peasant's hand, and with it, noble Sir, The gage and the assurance of a man!
The beautiful lake, at precisely its most fascinating point; the fisher-boy, all careless of the great world, singing his pretty song of the smiling but treacherous water; the herdsman and the hunter, announcing themselves above on the rocks in characteristic songs, and then conversing for a moment about the weather and their employments; the sudden arrival of Baumgarten with his tale of wrong and vengeance; the storm on the lake, and the hurried dialogue between the cautious fisherman and the stout-hearted Tell, who 'does what he cannot help doing'; the building of the hateful Zwing-Uri; the death of the slater and Bertha's curse; the grief and fury of young Melchthal, and, finally, the solemn covenant for life and death of the three leaders, what variety and animation are here, and what a wealth of realistic detail!
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