HAMILTON
This easy phrasing is a game of yours That you may win to lose. I beg your pardon, But you that have the sight will not employ The will to see with it. If you did so, There might be fewer ditches dug for others In your perspective; and there might be fewer Contemporary motes of prejudice Between you and the man who made the dust. Call him a genius or a gentleman, A prophet or a builder, or what not, But hold your disposition off the balance, And weigh him in the light. Once (I believe I tell you nothing new to your surmise, Or to the tongues of towns and villages) I nourished with an adolescent fancy -- Surely forgivable to you, my friend-- An innocent and amiable conviction That I was, by the grace of honest fortune, A savior at his elbow through the war, Where I might have observed, more than I did, Patience and wholesome passion. I was there, And for such honor I gave nothing worse Than some advice at which he may have smiled. I must have given a modicum besides, Or the rough interval between those days And these would never have made for me my friends, Or enemies. I should be something somewhere -- I say not what -- but I should not be here If he had not been there. Possibly, too, You might not -- or that Quaker with his cane.
BURR
Possibly, too, I should. When the Almighty Rides a white horse, I fancy we shall know it.
HAMILTON
It was a man, Burr, that was in my mind; No god, or ghost, or demon -- only a man: A man whose occupation is the need Of those who would not feel it if it bit them; And one who shapes an age while he endures Thepin pricks of inferiorities; A cautious man, because he is but one; A lonely man, because he is a thousand. No marvel you are slow to find in him The genius that is one spark or is nothing: His genius is a flame that he must hold So far above the common heads of men That they may view him only through the mist Of their defect, and wonder what he is. It seems to me the mystery that is in him That makes him only more to me a man Than any other I have ever known.
BURR
I grant you that his worship is a man. I'm not so much at home with mysteries, May be, as you -- so leave him with his fire: God knows that I shall never put it out. He has not made a cripple of himself In his pursuit of me, though I have heard His condescension honors me with parts. Parts make a whole, if we've enough of them; And once I figured a sufficiency To be at least an atom in the annals Of your republic. But I must have erred.
HAMILTON
You smile as if your spirit lived at ease With error. I should not have named it so, Failing assent from you; nor, if I did, Should I be so complacent in my skill To comb the tangled language of the people As to be sure of anything in these days. Put that much in account with modesty.
BURR
What in the name of Ahab, Hamilton, Have you, in the last region of your dreaming, To do with "people"? You may be the devil In your dead- reckoning of what reefs and shoals Are waiting on the progress of our ship Unless you steer it, but you'll find it irksome Alone there in the stern; and some warm day There'll be an inland music in the rigging, And afterwards on deck. I'm not affined Or favored overmuch at Monticello, But there's a mighty swarming of new bees About the premises, and all have wings. If you hear something buzzing before long, Be thoughtful how you strike, remembering also There was a fellow Naboth had a vineyard, And Ahab cut his hair off and went softly.
HAMILTON
I don't remember that he cut his hair off. BURRSomehow I rather fancy that he did. If so, it's in the Book; and if not so, He did the rest, and did it handsomely.
HAMILTON
Commend yourself to Ahab and his ways If they inveigle you to emulation; But where, if I may ask it, are you tending With your invidious wielding of the Scriptures? You call to mind an eminent archangel Who fell to make him famous. Would you fall So far as he, to be so far remembered?
BURR
Before I fall or rise, or am an angel, I shall acquaint myself a little further With our new land's new language, which is not -- Peace to your dreams -- an idiom to your liking. I'm wondering if a man may always know How old a man may be at thirty-seven; I wonder likewise if a prettier time Could be decreed for a good man to vanish Than about now for you, before you fade, And even your friends are seeing that you have had Your cup too full for longer mortal triumph. Well, you have had enough, and had it young; And the old wine is nearer to the lees Than you are to the work that you are doing.
HAMILTON
When does this philological excursion Into new lands and languages begin?
BURR
Anon -- that is, already. Only Fortune Gave me this afternoon the benefaction Of your blue back, which I for love pursued, And in pursuing may have saved your life -- Also the world a pounding piece of news: Hamilton bites the dust of Washington, Or rather of his horse. For you alone, Or for your fame, I'd wish it might have been so.
HAMILTON
Not every man among us has a friend So jealous for the other's fame. How long Are you to diagnose the doubtful case Of Demos -- and what for? Have you a sword For some new Damocles? If it's for me, I have lost all official appetite, And shall have faded, after January, Into the law. I'm going to New York.
BURR
No matter where you are, one of these days I shall come back to you and tell you something. This Demos, I have heard, has in his wrist A pulse that no two doctors have as yet Counted and found the same, and in his mouth A tongue that has the like alacrity For saying or not for saying what most it is That pullulates in his ignoble mind. One of these days I shall appear again, To tell you more of him and his opinions; I shall not be so long out of your sight, Or take myself so far, that I may not, Like Alcibiades, come back again. He went away to Phrygia, and fared ill.
HAMILTON
There's an example in Themistocles: He went away to Persia, and fared well.
BURR
So? Must I go so far? And if so, why so? I had not planned it so. Is this the road I take? If so, farewell.
HAMILTON
Quite so. Farewell.
