A punishable man I seem; the guilt,
Try what I will, I cannot roll off from me;
The equivocal demeanor of my life
Bears witness on my prosecutor’s party. 
And even my purest acts from purest motives
Suspicion poisons with malicious gloss. 
Were I that thing for which I pass, that traitor,
A goodly outside I had sure reserved,
Had drawn the coverings thick and double round me,
Been calm and chary of my utterance;
But being conscious of the innocence
Of my intent, my uncorrupted will,
I gave way to my humors, to my passion: 
Bold were my words, because my deeds were not. 
Now every planless measure, chance event,
The threat of rage, the vaunt of joy and triumph,
And all the May-games of a heart o’erflowing,
Will they connect, and weave them all together
Into one web of treason; all will be plain,
My eye ne’er absent from the far-off mark,
Step tracing step, each step a politic progress;
And out of all they’ll fabricate a charge
So specious that I must myself stand dumb. 
I am caught in my own net, and only force,
Nought but a sudden rent, can liberate me.

        [Pauses again.]

How else! since that the heart’s unbias’d instinct
Impell’d me to the daring deed, which now
Necessity, self-preservation, orders. 
Stern is the on-look of Necessity,
Not without shudder may a human hand
Grasp the mysterious urn of destiny. 
My deed was mine, remaining in my bosom: 
Once suffer’d to escape from its safe corner
Within the heart, its nursery and birth-place,
Sent forth into the Foreign, it belongs
Forever to those sly malicious powers
Whom never art of man conciliated.

[Paces in agitation through the chamber, then pauses, and after the pause breaks out again into audible soliloquy.]

What is thy enterprise? thy aim? thy object? 
Hast honestly confess’d it to thyself? 
Power seated on a quiet throne thou’dst shake,
Power on an ancient consecrated throne,
Strong in possession, founded in all custom;
Power by a thousand tough and stringy roots
Fix’d to the people’s pious nursery-faith. 
This, this will be no strife of strength with strength. 
That fear’d I not.  I brave each combatant,
Whom I can look on, fixing eye to eye,
Who, full himself of courage, kindles courage
In me too.  ’Tis a foe invisible
The which I fear—­a fearful enemy,
Which in the human heart opposes me,
By its coward fear alone made fearful to me. 
Not that, which full of life, instinct with power,
Makes known its present being; that is not
The true, the perilously formidable. 
O no! it is the common, the quite common,
The thing of an eternal yesterday. 
What ever was, and evermore returns,
Sterling tomorrow, for today ’twas sterling! 
For of the wholly common is man made,
And custom is his nurse!  Woe then to them
Who lay irreverent hands upon his old
House furniture, the dear inheritance
From his forefathers!  For time consecrates;
And what is gray with age becomes religion. 
Be in possession, and thou hast the right,
And sacred will the many guard it for thee!