OCTAVIO. My son, the nursling of the camp spoke in thee! A war of fifteen years Hath been thy education and thy school. Peace hast thou never witnessed! There exists An higher than the warrior's excellence. In war itself war is no ultimate purpose, The vast and sudden deeds of violence, Adventures wild, and wonders of the moment, These are not they, my son, that generate The calm, the blissful, and the enduring mighty! Lo there! the soldier, rapid architect! Builds his light town of canvas, and at once The whole scene moves and bustles momently. With arms, and neighing steeds, and mirth and quarrel The motley market fills; the roads, the streams Are crowded with new freights; trade stirs and hurries, But on some morrow morn, all suddenly, The tents drop down, the horde renews its march. Dreary, and solitary as a churchyard; The meadow and down-trodden seed-plot lie, And the year's harvest is gone utterly. MAX. Oh, let the emperor make peace, my father! Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel For the first violet [5] of the leafless spring, Plucked in those quiet fields where I have journeyed. OCTAVIO. What ails thee? What so moves thee all at once? MAX. Peace have I ne'er beheld? I have beheld it. From thence am I come hither: oh, that sight, It glimmers still before me, like some landscape Left in the distance,--some delicious landscape! My road conducted me through countries where The war has not yet reached. Life, life, my father-- My venerable father, life has charms Which we have never experienced. We have been But voyaging along its barren coasts, Like some poor ever-roaming horde of pirates, That, crowded in the rank and narrow ship, House on the wild sea with wild usages, Nor know aught of the mainland, but the bays Where safeliest they may venture a thieves' landing. Whate'er in the inland dales the land conceals Of fair and exquisite, oh, nothing, nothing, Do we behold of that in our rude voyage. OCTAVIO (attentive, with an appearance of uneasiness). And so your journey has revealed this to you? MAX. 'Twas the first leisure of my life. O tell me, What is the meed and purpose of the toil, The painful toil which robbed me of my youth, Left me a heart unsouled and solitary, A spirit uninformed, unornamented! For the camp's stir, and crowd, and ceaseless larum, The neighing war-horse, the air-shattering trumpet, The unvaried, still returning hour of duty, Word of command, and exercise of arms-- There's nothing here, there's nothing in all this, To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart! Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not-- This cannot be the sole felicity, These cannot be man's best and only pleasures! OCTAVIO. Much hast thou learnt, my son, in this short journey.