_Worthy._ Behold! He comes! he comes! _Enter_ Aylmere. _Lacy._ Thank Heaven! thou’rt free! _Aylmere_, (_laughs._) Ay, once more free! within my grasp a sword, And round me freemen! Free! as is the storm About your hills; the surge upon your shore! Free as the sunbeams on the chainless air; Or as the stream that leaps the precipice, And in eternal thunder, shouts to Heaven, That it is free, and will be free forever! _Straw._ Now for revenge! Full long we’ve fed on wrong: Give us revenge! _Aylmere._ For you and for myself! England from all her hills, cries out for vengeance! The serf, who tills her soil, but tastes not of Her fruit, the slave that in her dungeon groans, The yeoman plundered, and the maiden wronged, Echo the call in shrieks! The angry waves Report the sound in thunder; and the heavens, From their blue vaults, roll back a people’s cry For liberty and vengeance! _Lacy._ Wrong on wrong! Are there no bolts in heaven? _Aylmere._ _No swords on earth?_ _He’ll ever be a slave, who does not right_ _Himself. The heavens fight not for cravens. Let us strike,_ _Strike for ourselves, and Heaven will strike for us._ The ensuing are nervous and striking. All would o’ertop their fellows; And every rank—the lowest—hath its height To which hearts flutter, with as large a hope As princes feel for empire! But in each, Ambition struggles with a sea of hate. He who sweats up the ridgy grades of life. Finds, in each station, icy scorn above, Below him hooting envy. My lord, if you seek power in this, remember, The greatness which is born of anarchy, And thrown aloft in tumult, cannot last. It mounts, like rocks hurled skyward by volcanoes, Flushes a guilty moment, and falls back In the red earthquake’s bosom.