Part 4

Go on, sir; my attention is a trap Set for the catching of all compliments To Monticello, and all else abroad That has a name or an identity.

HAMILTON

I leave to you the names -- there are too many; Yet one there is to sift and hold apart, As now I see. There comes at last a glimmer That is not always clouded, or too late. But I was near and young, and had the reins To play with while he manned a team so raw That only God knows where the end had been Of all that riding without Washington. There was a nation in the man who passed us, If there was not a world. I may have driven Since then some restive horses, and alone, And through a splashing of abundant mud; But he who made the dust that sets you on To coughing, made the road. Now it seems dry, And in a measure safe.

BURR

Here's a new tune From Hamilton. Has your caution all at once, And over night, grown till it wrecks the cradle? I have forgotten what my father said When I was born, but there's a rustling of it Among my memories, and it makes a noise About as loud as all that I have held And fondled heretofore of your same caution. But that's affairs, not feelings. If our friends Guessed half we say of them, our enemies Would itch in our friends' jackets. Howsoever, The world is of a sudden on its head, And all are spilled -- unless you cling alone With Washington. Ask Adams about that.

HAMILTON

We'll not ask Adams about anything. We fish for lizards when we choose to ask For what we know already is not coming, And we must eat the answer. Where's the use Of asking when this man says everything, With all his tongues of silence?

BURR

I dare say. I dare say, but I won't. One of those tongues I'll borrow for the nonce. He'll never miss it. We mean his Western Majesty, King George.

HAMILTON

I mean the man who rode by on his horse. I'll beg of you the meed of your indulgence If I should say this planet may have done A deal of weary whirling when at last, If ever, Time shall aggregate again A majesty like his that has no name.

BURR

Then you concede his Majesty? That's good, And what of yours? Here are two majesties. Favor the Left a little, Hamilton, Or you'll be floundering in the ditch that waits For riders who forget where they are riding. If we and France, as you anticipate, Must eat each other, what Caesar, if not yourself, Do you see for the master of the feast? There may be a place waiting on your head For laurel thick as Nero's. You don't know. I have not crossed your glory, though I might If I saw thrones at auction.

HAMILTON

Yes, you might. If war is on the way, I shall be -- here; And I've no vision of your distant heels.

BURR

I see that I shall take an inference To bed with me to-night to keep me warm. I thank you, Hamilton, and I approve Your fealty to the aggregated greatness Of him you lean on while he leans on you.

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 The pin 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