{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4007/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4007","id":"gutenberg_4007","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4007","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","English poetry -- 18th century"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1887 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email\nccx074@pglaf.org\n\n                          [Picture: Book cover]\n\n                        CASSELL\u2019S NATIONAL LIBRARY\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n\n\n\n\n                                  GEBIR\n                                   AND\n                              COUNT JULIAN.\n\n\n                                    BY\n                          WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.\n\n                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]\n\n                       CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:\n                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.\n                                   1887\n\n\n\n\nINTRODUCTION.\n\n\nWALTER SAVAGE LANDOR was born on the 30th of January, 1775, and died at\nthe age of eighty-nine in September, 1864.  He was the eldest son of a\nphysician at Warwick, and his second name, Savage, was the family name of\nhis mother, who owned two estates in Warwickshire\u2014Ipsley Court and\nTachbrook\u2014and had a reversionary interest in Hughenden Manor,\nBuckinghamshire.  To this property, worth \u00a380,000, her eldest son was\nheir.  That eldest son was born a poet, had a generous nature, and an\nardent impetuous temper.  The temper, with its obstinate claim of\nindependence, was too much for the head master of Rugby, who found in\nLandor the best writer of Latin verse among his boys, but one ready to\nfight him over difference of opinion about a Latin quantity.  In 1793\nLandor went to Trinity College, Oxford.  He had been got rid of at Rugby\nas unmanageable.  After two years at Oxford, he was rusticated; thereupon\nhe gave up his chambers, and refused to return.  Landor\u2019s father, who had\nbeen much tried by his unmanageable temper, then allowed him \u00a3150 a year\nto live with as he pleased, away from home.  He lived in South Wales\u2014at\nSwansea, Tenby, or elsewhere\u2014and he sometimes went home to Warwick for\nshort visits.  In South Wales he gave himself to full communion with the\npoets and with Nature, and he fastened with particular enthusiasm upon\nMilton.  Lord Aylmer, who lived near Tenby, was among his friends.  Rose\nAylmer, whose name he has made through death imperishable, by linking it\nwith a few lines of perfect music, {6} lent Landor \u201cThe Progress of\nRomance,\u201d a book published in 1785, by Clara Reeve, in which he found the\ndescription of an Arabian tale that suggested to him his poem of \u201cGebir.\u201d\n\nLandor began \u201cGebir\u201d in Latin, then turned it into English, and then\nvigorously condensed what he had written.  The poem was first published\nat Warwick as a sixpenny pamphlet in the year 1798, when Landor\u2019s age was\ntwenty-three.  Robert Southey was among the few who bought it, and he\nfirst made known its power.  In the best sense of the phrase, \u201cGebir\u201d was\nwritten in classical English, not with a search for pompous words of\nclassical origin to give false dignity to style, but with strict\nendeavour to form terse English lines of apt words well compacted.  Many\npassages appear to have been half thought out in Greek or Latin, some, as\nthat on the sea-shell (on page 19), were first written in Latin, and\nLandor re-issued \u201cGebir\u201d with a translation into Latin three or four\nyears after its first appearance.\n\n\u201cGebir\u201d was written nine years after the outbreak of the French\nRevolution, and at a time when the victories of Napoleon were in many\nminds associated with the hopes of man.  In the first edition of the poem\nthere were, in the nuptial voyage of Tamar, prophetic visions of the\ntriumph of his race, in march of the French Republic from the Garonne to\nthe Rhine\u2014\n\n   \u201cHow grand a prospect opens!  Alps o\u2019er Alps\n   Tower, to survey the triumphs that proceed.\n   Here, while Garumna dances in the gloom\n   Of larches, mid her naiads, or reclined\n   Leans on a broom-clad bank to watch the sports\n   Of some far-distant chamois silken haired,\n   The chaste Pyren\u00e9, drying up her tears,\n   Finds, with your children, refuge: yonder, Rhine\n   Lays his imperial sceptre at your feet.\u201d\n\nThe hope of the purer spirits in the years of revolution, expressed by\nWordsworth\u2019s\n\n      \u201cWar shall cease,\n   Did ye not hear, that conquest is abjured?\u201d\n\nwas in the first design of \u201cGebir,\u201d and in those early years of hope\nLandor joined to the vision of the future for the sons of Tamar that,\n\n   \u201cCaptivity led captive, war o\u2019erthrown,\n   They shall o\u2019er Europe, shall o\u2019er earth extend\n   Empire that seas alone and skies confine,\n   And glory that shall strike the crystal stars.\u201d\n\nLandor was led by the failure of immediate expectation to revise his poem\nand omit from the third and the sixth books about one hundred and fifty\nlines, while adding fifty to heal over the wounds made by excision.  As\nthe poem stands, it is a rebuke of tyrannous ambition in the tale of\nGebir, prince of Boetic Spain, from whom Gibraltar took its name.  Gebir,\nbound by a vow to his dying father in the name of ancestral feud to\ninvade Egypt, prepares invasion, but yields in Egypt to the touch of\nlove, seeks to rebuild the ruins of the past, and learns what are the\nfruits of ambition.  This he learns in the purgatory of conquerors, where\nhe sees the figures of the Stuarts, of William the Deliverer, and of\nGeorge the Third, \u201cwith eyebrows white and slanting brow,\u201d intentionally\nconfused with Louis XVI. to avoid a charge of treason.  But the strength\nof Landor\u2019s sympathy with the French Revolution and of his contempt for\nGeorge III. was more evident in the first form of the poem.  Parallel\nwith the quenching in Gebir of the conqueror\u2019s ambition, and with the\nruin of his life and its new hope by the destroying powers that our\nmisunderstandings of the better life bring into play, runs that part of\nthe poem which shows Tamar, his brother, preparing to dwell with the sea\nnymph, the ideal, far away from all the struggle of mankind.\n\nRecognition of the great beauty of Lander\u2019s \u201cGebir\u201d came first from\nSouthey in \u201cThe Critical Review.\u201d  Southey found that the poem grew upon\nhim, and became afterwards Landor\u2019s lifelong friend.  When Shelley was at\nOxford in 1811, there were times when he would read nothing but \u201cGebir.\u201d\nHis friend Hogg says that when he went to Shelley\u2019s rooms one morning to\ntell him something of importance, he could not draw his attention away\nfrom \u201cGebir.\u201d  Hogg impatiently threw the book out of window.  It was\nbrought back by a servant, and Shelley immediately fastened upon it\nagain.\n\nAt the close of 1805 Landor\u2019s father died, and the young poet became a\nman of property.  In 1808 Southey and Landor first met.  Their friendship\nremained unbroken.  When Spain rose to throw off the yoke of Napoleon,\nLandor\u2019s enthusiasm carried him to Corunna, where he paid for the\nequipment of a thousand volunteers, and joined the Spanish army of the\nNorth.  After the Convention of Cintra he returned to England.  Then he\nbought a large Welsh estate\u2014Llanthony Priory\u2014paid for it by selling other\nproperty, and began costly improvements.  But he lived chiefly at Bath,\nwhere he married, in 1811, when his age was thirty-six, a girl of twenty.\nIt was then that he began his tragedy of \u201cCount Julian.\u201d  The patriotic\nstruggle in Spain commended at the same time to Scott, Southey, and\nLandor the story of Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings, against whom,\nto avenge wrong done to his daughter, Count Julian called the Moors in to\ninvade his country.  In 1810 Southey was working at his poem of \u201cRoderick\nthe Last of the Goths,\u201d in fellowship with his friend Landor, who was\ntreating the same subject in his play.  Scott\u2019s \u201cRoderick\u201d was being\nprinted so nearly at the same time with Landor\u2019s play, that Landor wrote\nto Southey early in 1812 while the proof-sheets were coming to him: \u201cI am\nsurprised that Upham has not sent me Mr. Scott\u2019s poem yet.  However, I am\nnot sorry.  I feel a sort of satisfaction that mine is going to the press\nfirst, though there is little danger that we should think on any subject\nalike, or stumble on any one character in the same track.\u201d  De Quincey\nspoke of the hidden torture shown in Landor\u2019s play to be ever present in\nthe mind of Count Julian, the betrayer of his country, as greater than\nthe tortures inflicted in old Rome on generals who had committed treason.\nDe Quincey\u2019s admiration of this play was more than once expressed.  \u201cMr.\nLandor,\u201d he said, \u201cwho always rises with his subject, and dilates like\nSatan into Teneriffe or Atlas when he sees before him an antagonist\nworthy of his powers, is probably the one man in Europe that has\nadequately conceived the situation, the stern self-dependency, and the\nmonumental misery of Count Julian.  That sublimity of penitential grief,\nwhich cannot accept consolation from man, cannot bear external reproach,\ncannot condescend to notice insult, cannot so much as _see_ the curiosity\nof bystanders; that awful carelessness of all but the troubled deeps\nwithin his own heart, and of God\u2019s spirit brooding upon their surface and\nsearching their abysses; never was so majestically described.\u201d\n\n                                                                     H. M.\n\n\n\n\nGEBIR.\n\n\nFIRST BOOK.\n\n\n   I SING the fates of Gebir.  He had dwelt\n   Among those mountain-caverns which retain\n   His labours yet, vast halls and flowing wells,\n   Nor have forgotten their old master\u2019s name\n   Though severed from his people here, incensed\n   By meditating on primeval wrongs,\n   He blew his battle-horn, at which uprose\n   Whole nations; here, ten thousand of most might\n   He called aloud, and soon Charoba saw\n   His dark helm hover o\u2019er the land of Nile,\n      What should the virgin do? should royal knees\n   Bend suppliant, or defenceless hands engage\n   Men of gigantic force, gigantic arms?\n   For \u2019twas reported that nor sword sufficed,\n   Nor shield immense nor coat of massive mail,\n   But that upon their towering heads they bore\n   Each a huge stone, refulgent as the stars.\n   This told she Dalica, then cried aloud:\n   \u201cIf on your bosom laying down my head\n   I sobbed away the sorrows of a child,\n   If I have always, and Heaven knows I have,\n   Next to a mother\u2019s held a nurse\u2019s name,\n   Succour this one distress, recall those days,\n   Love me, though \u2019twere because you loved me then.\u201d\n      But whether confident in magic rites\n   Or touched with sexual pride to stand implored,\n   Dalica smiled, then spake: \u201cAway those fears.\n   Though stronger than the strongest of his kind,\n   He falls\u2014on me devolve that charge; he falls.\n   Rather than fly him, stoop thou to allure;\n   Nay, journey to his tents: a city stood\n   Upon that coast, they say, by Sidad built,\n   Whose father Gad built Gadir; on this ground\n   Perhaps he sees an ample room for war.\n   Persuade him to restore the walls himself\n   In honour of his ancestors, persuade\u2014\n   But wherefore this advice? young, unespoused,\n   Charoba want persuasions! and a queen!\u201d\n      \u201cO Dalica!\u201d the shuddering maid exclaimed,\n   \u201cCould I encounter that fierce, frightful man?\n   Could I speak? no, nor sigh!\u201d\n         \u201cAnd canst thou reign?\u201d\n   Cried Dalica; \u201cyield empire or comply.\u201d\n   Unfixed though seeming fixed, her eyes downcast,\n   The wonted buzz and bustle of the court\n   From far through sculptured galleries met her ear;\n   Then lifting up her head, the evening sun\n   Poured a fresh splendour on her burnished throne\u2014\n   The fair Charoba, the young queen, complied.\n      But Gebir when he heard of her approach\n   Laid by his orb\u00e9d shield, his vizor-helm,\n   His buckler and his corset he laid by,\n   And bade that none attend him; at his side\n   Two faithful dogs that urge the silent course,\n   Shaggy, deep-chested, crouched; the crocodile,\n   Crying, oft made them raise their flaccid ears\n   And push their heads within their master\u2019s hand.\n   There was a brightening paleness in his face,\n   Such as Diana rising o\u2019er the rocks\n   Showered on the lonely Latmian; on his brow\n   Sorrow there was, yet nought was there severe.\n   But when the royal damsel first he saw,\n   Faint, hanging on her handmaids, and her knees\n   Tottering, as from the motion of the car,\n   His eyes looked earnest on her, and those eyes\n   Showed, if they had not, that they might have loved,\n   For there was pity in them at that hour.\n   With gentle speech, and more with gentle looks\n   He soothed her; but lest Pity go beyond,\n   And crossed Ambition lose her lofty aim,\n   Bending, he kissed her garment and retired.\n   He went, nor slumbered in the sultry noon\n   When viands, couches, generous wines persuade\n   And slumber most refreshes, nor at night,\n   When heavy dews are laden with disease,\n   And blindness waits not there for lingering age.\n   Ere morning dawned behind him, he arrived\n   At those rich meadows where young Tamar fed\n   The royal flocks entrusted to his care.\n   \u201cNow,\u201d said he to himself, \u201cwill I repose\n   At least this burthen on a brother\u2019s breast.\u201d\n   His brother stood before him.  He, amazed,\n   Reared suddenly his head, and thus began:\n   \u201cIs it thou, brother!  Tamar, is it thou!\n   Why, standing on the valley\u2019s utmost verge,\n   Lookest thou on that dull and dreary shore\n   Where many a league Nile blackens all the sand.\n   And why that sadness? when I passed our sheep\n   The dew-drops were not shaken off the bar;\n   Therefore if one be wanting \u2019tis untold.\u201d\n      \u201cYes, one is wanting, nor is that untold.\u201d\n   Said Tamar; \u201cand this dull and dreary shore\n   Is neither dull nor dreary at all hours.\u201d\n   Whereon the tear stole silent down his cheek,\n   Silent, but not by Gebir unobserved:\n   Wondering he gazed awhile, and pitying spake:\n   \u201cLet me approach thee; does the morning light\n   Scatter this wan suffusion o\u2019er thy brow,\n   This faint blue lustre under both thine eyes?\u201d\n      \u201cO brother, is this pity or reproach?\u201d\n   Cried Tamar; \u201ccruel if it be reproach,\n   If pity, oh, how vain!\u201d\n         \u201cWhate\u2019er it be\n   That grieves thee, I will pity: thou but speak\n   And I can tell thee, Tamar, pang for pang.\u201d\n      \u201cGebir! then more than brothers are we now!\n   Everything, take my hand, will I confess.\n   I neither feed the flock nor watch the fold;\n   How can I, lost in love?  But, Gebir, why\n   That anger which has risen to your cheek?\n   Can other men? could you?\u2014what, no reply!\n   And still more anger, and still worse concealed!\n   Are these your promises, your pity this?\u201d\n      \u201cTamar, I well may pity what I feel\u2014\n   Mark me aright\u2014I feel for thee\u2014proceed\u2014\n   Relate me all.\u201d\n         \u201cThen will I all relate,\u201d\n   Said the young shepherd, gladdened from his heart.\n   \u201c\u2019Twas evening, though not sunset, and springtide\n   Level with these green meadows, seemed still higher.\n   \u2019Twas pleasant; and I loosened from my neck\n   The pipe you gave me, and began to play.\n   Oh, that I ne\u2019er had learnt the tuneful art!\n   It always brings us enemies or love!\n   Well, I was playing, when above the waves\n   Some swimmer\u2019s head methought I saw ascend;\n   I, sitting still, surveyed it, with my pipe\n   Awkwardly held before my lips half-closed.\n   Gebir! it was a nymph! a nymph divine!\n   I cannot wait describing how she came,\n   How I was sitting, how she first assumed\n   The sailor; of what happened there remains\n   Enough to say, and too much to forget.\n   The sweet deceiver stepped upon this bank\n   Before I was aware; for with surprise\n   Moments fly rapid as with love itself.\n   Stooping to tune afresh the hoarsened reed,\n   I heard a rustling, and where that arose\n   My glance first lighted on her nimble feet.\n   Her feet resembled those long shells explored\n   By him who to befriend his steed\u2019s dim sight\n   Would blow the pungent powder in the eye.\n   Her eyes too!  O immortal gods! her eyes\n   Resembled\u2014what could they resemble? what\n   Ever resemble those!  E\u2019en her attire\n   Was not of wonted woof nor vulgar art:\n   Her mantle showed the yellow samphire-pod,\n   Her girdle the dove-coloured wave serene.\n   \u2018Shepherd,\u2019 said she, \u2018and will you wrestle now\n   And with the sailor\u2019s hardier race engage?\u2019\n   I was rejoiced to hear it, and contrived\n   How to keep up contention; could I fail\n   By pressing not too strongly, yet to press?\n   \u2018Whether a shepherd, as indeed you seem,\n   Or whether of the hardier race you boast,\n   I am not daunted, no; I will engage.\n   But first,\u2019 said she, \u2018what wager will you lay?\u2019\n   \u2018A sheep,\u2019 I answered; \u2018add whate\u2019er you will.\u2019\n   \u2018I cannot,\u2019 she replied, \u2018make that return:\n   Our hided vessels in their pitchy round\n   Seldom, unless from rapine, hold a sheep.\n   But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue\n   Within, and they that lustre have imbibed\n   In the sun\u2019s palace porch, where when unyoked\n   His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:\n   Shake one and it awakens, then apply\n   Its polished lips to your attentive ear,\n   And it remembers its august abodes,\n   And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.\n   And I have others given me by the nymphs,\n   Of sweeter sound than any pipe you have.\n   But we, by Neptune, for no pipe contend\u2014\n   This time a sheep I win, a pipe the next.\u2019\n   Now came she forward eager to engage,\n   But first her dress, her bosom then surveyed,\n   And heaved it, doubting if she could deceive.\n   Her bosom seemed, enclosed in haze like heaven,\n   To baffle touch, and rose forth undefined:\n   Above her knees she drew the robe succinct,\n   Above her breast, and just below her arms.\n   \u2018This will preserve my breath when tightly bound,\n   If struggle and equal strength should so constrain.\u2019\n   Thus, pulling hard to fasten it, she spake,\n   And, rushing at me, closed: I thrilled throughout\n   And seemed to lessen and shrink up with cold.\n   Again with violent impulse gushed my blood,\n   And hearing nought external, thus absorbed,\n   I heard it, rushing through each turbid vein,\n   Shake my unsteady swimming sight in air.\n   Yet with unyielding though uncertain arms\n   I clung around her neck; the vest beneath\n   Rustled against our slippery limbs entwined:\n   Often mine springing with eluded force\n   Started aside, and trembled till replaced:\n   And when I most succeeded, as I thought,\n   My bosom and my throat felt so compressed\n   That life was almost quivering on my lips,\n   Yet nothing was there painful! these are signs\n   Of secret arts and not of human might\u2014\n   What arts I cannot tell\u2014I only know\n   My eyes grew dizzy, and my strength decayed.\n   I was indeed o\u2019ercome! with what regret,\n   And more, with what confusion, when I reached\n   The fold, and yielding up the sheep, she cried:\n   \u2018This pays a shepherd to a conquering maid.\u2019\n   She smiled, and more of pleasure than disdain\n   Was in her dimpled chin and liberal lip,\n   And eyes that languished, lengthening, just like love.\n   She went away; I on the wicker gate\n   Leant, and could follow with my eyes alone.\n   The sheep she carried easy as a cloak;\n   But when I heard its bleating, as I did,\n   And saw, she hastening on, its hinder feet\n   Struggle and from her snowy shoulder slip\u2014\n   One shoulder its poor efforts had unveiled\u2014\n   Then all my passions mingling fell in tears;\n   Restless then ran I to the highest ground\n   To watch her\u2014she was gone\u2014gone down the tide\u2014\n   And the long moonbeam on the hard wet sand\n   Lay like a jasper column half-upreared.\u201d\n      \u201cBut, Tamar! tell me, will she not return?\u201d\n      \u201cShe will return, yet not before the moon\n   Again is at the full; she promised this,\n   Though when she promised I could not reply.\u201d\n      \u201cBy all the gods I pity thee! go on\u2014\n   Fear not my anger, look not on my shame;\n   For when a lover only hears of love\n   He finds his folly out, and is ashamed.\n   Away with watchful nights and lonely days,\n   Contempt of earth and aspect up to heaven,\n   Within contemplation, with humility,\n   A tattered cloak that pride wears when deformed,\n   Away with all that hides me from myself,\n   Parts me from others, whispers I am wise\u2014\n   From our own wisdom less is to be reaped\n   Than from the barest folly of our friend.\n   Tamar! thy pastures, large and rich, afford\n   Flowers to thy bees and herbage to thy sheep,\n   But, battened on too much, the poorest croft\n   Of thy poor neighbour yields what thine denies.\u201d\n      They hastened to the camp, and Gebir there\n   Resolved his native country to forego,\n   And ordered, from those ruins to the right\n   They forthwith raise a city: Tamar heard\n   With wonder, though in passing \u2019twas half-told,\n   His brother\u2019s love, and sighed upon his own.\n\n\n\nSECOND BOOK.\n\n\n   THE Gadite men the royal charge obey.\n   Now fragments weighed up from th\u2019 uneven streets\n   Leave the ground black beneath; again the sun\n   Shines into what were porches, and on steps\n   Once warm with frequentation\u2014clients, friends,\n   All morning, satchelled idlers all mid-day,\n   Lying half-up and languid though at games.\n      Some raise the painted pavement, some on wheels\n   Draw slow its laminous length, some intersperse\n   Salt waters through the sordid heaps, and seize\n   The flowers and figures starting fresh to view.\n   Others rub hard large masses, and essay\n   To polish into white what they misdeem\n   The growing green of many trackless years.\n   Far off at intervals the axe resounds\n   With regular strong stroke, and nearer home\n   Dull falls the mallet with long labour fringed.\n   Here arches are discovered, there huge beams\n   Resist the hatchet, but in fresher air\n   Soon drop away: there spreads a marble squared\n   And smoothened; some high pillar for its base\n   Chose it, which now lies ruined in the dust.\n   Clearing the soil at bottom, they espy\n   A crevice: they, intent on treasure, strive\n   Strenuous, and groan, to move it: one exclaims,\n   \u201cI hear the rusty metal grate; it moves!\u201d\n   Now, overturning it, backward they start,\n   And stop again, and see a serpent pant,\n   See his throat thicken, and the crisp\u00e9d scales\n   Rise ruffled, while upon the middle fold\n   He keeps his wary head and blinking eye,\n   Curling more close and crouching ere he strike.\n   Go mighty men, invade far cities, go\u2014\n   And be such treasure portions to your heirs.\n      Six days they laboured: on the seventh day\n   Returning, all their labours were destroyed.\n   \u2019Twas not by mortal hand, or from their tents\n   \u2019Twere visible; for these were now removed\n   Above, here neither noxious mist ascends\n   Nor the way wearies ere the work begin.\n   There Gebir, pierced with sorrow, spake these words:\n      \u201cYe men of Gades, armed with brazen shields,\n   And ye of near Tartessus, where the shore\n   Stoops to receive the tribute which all owe\n   To Boetis and his banks for their attire,\n   Ye too whom Durius bore on level meads,\n   Inherent in your hearts is bravery:\n   For earth contains no nation where abounds\n   The generous horse and not the warlike man.\n   But neither soldier now nor steed avails:\n   Nor steed nor soldier can oppose the gods:\n   Nor is there ought above like Jove himself;\n   Nor weighs against his purpose, when once fixed,\n   Aught but, with supplicating knee, the prayers.\n   Swifter than light are they, and every face,\n   Though different, glows with beauty; at the throne\n   Of mercy, when clouds shut it from mankind,\n   They fall bare-bosomed, and indignant Jove\n   Drops at the soothing sweetness of their voice\n   The thunder from his hand; let us arise\n   On these high places daily, beat our breast,\n   Prostrate ourselves and deprecate his wrath.\u201d\n      The people bowed their bodies and obeyed:\n   Nine mornings with white ashes on their heads,\n   Lamented they their toil each night o\u2019erthrown.\n   And now the largest orbit of the year,\n   Leaning o\u2019er black Mocattam\u2019s rubied brow,\n   Proceeded slow, majestic, and serene,\n   Now seemed not further than the nearest cliff,\n   And crimson light struck soft the phosphor wave.\n   Then Gebir spake to Tamar in these words:\n   \u201cTamar!  I am thy elder and thy king,\n   But am thy brother too, nor ever said,\n   \u2018Give me thy secret and become my slave:\u2019\n   But haste thee not away; I will myself\n   Await the nymph, disguised in thy attire.\u201d\n      Then starting from attention Tamar cried:\n   \u201cBrother! in sacred truth it cannot be!\n   My life is yours, my love must be my own:\n   Oh, surely he who seeks a second love\n   Never felt one, or \u2019tis not one I feel.\u201d\n      But Gebir with complacent smile replied:\n   \u201cGo then, fond Tamar, go in happy hour\u2014\n   But ere thou partest ponder in thy breast\n   And well bethink thee, lest thou part deceived,\n   Will she disclose to thee the mysteries\n   Of our calamity? and unconstrained?\n   When even her love thy strength had to disclose.\n   My heart indeed is full, but witness heaven!\n   My people, not my passion, fills my heart.\u201d\n      \u201cThen let me kiss thy garment,\u201d said the youth,\n   \u201cAnd heaven be with thee, and on me thy grace.\u201d\n      Him then the monarch thus once more addressed:\n   \u201cBe of good courage: hast thou yet forgot\n   What chaplets languished round thy unburnt hair,\n   In colour like some tall smooth beech\u2019s leaves\n   Curled by autumnal suns?\u201d\n         How flattery\n   Excites a pleasant, soothes a painful shame!\n      \u201cThese,\u201d amid stifled blushes Tamar said,\n   \u201cWere of the flowering raspberry and vine:\n   But, ah! the seasons will not wait for love;\n   Seek out some other now.\u201d\n         They parted here:\n   And Gebir bending through the woodlands culled\n   The creeping vine and viscous raspberry,\n   Less green and less compliant than they were;\n   And twisted in those mossy tufts that grow\n   On brakes of roses when the roses fade:\n   And as he passes on, the little hinds\n   That shake for bristly herds the foodful bough,\n   Wonder, stand still, gaze, and trip satisfied;\n   Pleased more if chestnut, out of prickly husk\n   Shot from the sandal, roll along the glade.\n      And thus unnoticed went he, and untired\n   Stepped up the acclivity; and as he stepped,\n   And as the garlands nodded o\u2019er his brow,\n   Sudden from under a close alder sprang\n   Th\u2019 expectant nymph, and seized him unaware.\n   He staggered at the shock; his feet at once\n   Slipped backward from the withered grass short-grazed;\n   But striking out one arm, though without aim,\n   Then grasping with his other, he enclosed\n   The struggler; she gained not one step\u2019s retreat,\n   Urging with open hands against his throat\n   Intense, now holding in her breath constrained,\n   Now pushing with quick impulse and by starts,\n   Till the dust blackened upon every pore.\n   Nearer he drew her and yet nearer, clasped\n   Above the knees midway, and now one arm\n   Fell, and her other lapsing o\u2019er the neck\n   Of Gebir swung against his back incurved,\n   The swoll\u2019n veins glowing deep, and with a groan\n   On his broad shoulder fell her face reclined.\n   But ah, she knew not whom that roseate face\n   Cooled with its breath ambrosial; for she stood\n   High on the bank, and often swept and broke\n   His chaplets mingled with her loosened hair.\n      Whether while Tamar tarried came desire,\n   And she grown languid loosed the wings of love,\n   Which she before held proudly at her will,\n   And nought but Tamar in her soul, and nought\n   Where Tamar was that seemed or feared deceit,\n   To fraud she yielded what no force had gained\u2014\n   Or whether Jove in pity to mankind,\n   When from his crystal fount the visual orbs\n   He filled with piercing ether and endued\n   With somewhat of omnipotence, ordained\n   That never two fair forms at once torment\n   The human heart and draw it different ways,\n   And thus in prowess like a god the chief\n   Subdued her strength nor softened at her charms\u2014\n   The nymph divine, the magic mistress, failed.\n   Recovering, still half resting on the turf,\n   She looked up wildly, and could now descry\n   The kingly brow, arched lofty for command.\n      \u201cTraitor!\u201d said she, undaunted, though amaze\n   Threw o\u2019er her varying cheek the air of fear,\n   \u201cThinkest thou thus that with impunity\n   Thou hast forsooth deceived me? dar\u2019st thou deem\n   Those eyes not hateful that have seen me fall?\n   O heaven! soon may they close on my disgrace.\n   Merciless man, what! for one sheep estranged\n   Hast thou thrown into dungeons and of day\n   Amerced thy shepherd? hast thou, while the iron\n   Pierced through his tender limbs into his soul,\n   By threats, by tortures, torn out that offence,\n   And heard him (oh, could I!) avow his love?\n   Say, hast thou? cruel, hateful!\u2014ah my fears!\n   I feel them true! speak, tell me, are they true?\u201d\n      She blending thus entreaty with reproach\n   Bent forward, as though falling on her knee\n   Whence she had hardly risen, and at this pause\n   Shed from her large dark eyes a shower of tears.\n      Th\u2019 Iberian king her sorrow thus consoled.\n   \u201cWeep no more, heavenly damsel, weep no more:\n   Neither by force withheld, or choice estranged\n   Thy Tamar lives, and only lives for thee.\n   Happy, thrice happy, you! \u2019tis me alone\n   Whom heaven and earth and ocean with one hate\n   Conspire on, and throughout each path pursue.\n   Whether in waves beneath or skies above\n   Thou hast thy habitation, \u2019tis from heaven,\n   From heaven alone, such power, such charms, descend.\n   Then oh! discover whence that ruin comes\n   Each night upon our city, whence are heard\n   Those yells of rapture round our fallen walls:\n   In our affliction can the gods delight,\n   Or meet oblation for the nymphs are tears?\u201d\n      He spake, and indignation sank in woe.\n   Which she perceiving, pride refreshed her heart,\n   Hope wreathed her mouth with smiles, and she exclaimed:\n   \u201cNeither the gods afflict you, nor the nymphs.\n   Return me him who won my heart, return\n   Him whom my bosom pants for, as the steeds\n   In the sun\u2019s chariot for the western wave,\n   The gods will prosper thee, and Tamar prove\n   How nymphs the torments that they cause assuage.\n   Promise me this! indeed I think thou hast,\n   But \u2019tis so pleasing, promise it once more.\u201d\n      \u201cOnce more I promise,\u201d cried the gladdened king,\n   \u201cBy my right hand and by myself I swear,\n   And ocean\u2019s gods and heaven\u2019s gods I adjure,\n   Thou shalt be Tamar\u2019s, Tamar shalt be thine.\u201d\n      Then she, regarding him long fixed, replied:\n   \u201cI have thy promise, take thou my advice.\n   Gebir, this land of Egypt is a land\n   Of incantation, demons rule these waves;\n   These are against thee, these thy works destroy.\n   Where thou hast built thy palace, and hast left\n   The seven pillars to remain in front,\n   Sacrifice there, and all these rites observe.\n   Go, but go early, ere the gladsome Hours,\n   Strew saffron in the path of rising Morn,\n   Ere the bee buzzing o\u2019er flowers fresh disclosed\n   Examine where he may the best alight\n   Nor scatter off the bloom, ere cold-lipped herds\n   Crop the pale herbage round each other\u2019s bed,\n   Lead seven bulls, well pastured and well formed,\n   Their neck unblemished and their horns unringed,\n   And at each pillar sacrifice thou one.\n   Around each base rub thrice the black\u2019ning blood,\n   And burn the curling shavings of the hoof;\n   And of the forehead locks thou also burn:\n   The yellow galls, with equal care preserved,\n   Pour at the seventh statue from the north.\u201d\n      He listened, and on her his eyes intent\n   Perceived her not, and she had disappeared\u2014\n   So deep he pondered her important words.\n      And now had morn arisen and he performed\n   Almost the whole enjoined him: he had reached\n   The seventh statue, poured the yellow galls,\n   The forelock from his left he had released\n   And burnt the curling shavings of the hoof\n   Moistened with myrrh; when suddenly a flame\n   Spired from the fragrant smoke, nor sooner spired\n   Down sank the brazen fabric at his feet.\n   He started back, gazed, nor could aught but gaze,\n   And cold dread stiffened up his hair flower-twined;\n   Then with a long and tacit step, one arm\n   Behind, and every finger wide outspread,\n   He looked and tottered on a black abyss.\n   He thought he sometimes heard a distant voice\n   Breathe through the cavern\u2019s mouth, and further on\n   Faint murmurs now, now hollow groans reply.\n   Therefore suspended he his crook above,\n   Dropped it, and heard it rolling step by step:\n   He entered, and a mingled sound arose\n   Like one (when shaken from some temple\u2019s roof\n   By zealous hand, they and their fretted nest)\n   Of birds that wintering watch in Memnon\u2019s tomb,\n   And tell the halcyons when spring first returns.\n\n\n\nTHIRD BOOK.\n\n\n   OH, for the spirit of that matchless man\n   Whom Nature led throughout her whole domain,\n   While he embodied breathed etherial air!\n      Though panting in the play-hour of my youth\n   I drank of Avon too, a dangerous draught,\n   That roused within the feverish thirst of song,\n   Yet never may I trespass o\u2019er the stream\n   Of jealous Acheron, nor alive descend\n   The silent and unsearchable abodes\n   Of Erebus and Night, nor unchastised\n   Lead up long-absent heroes into day.\n   When on the pausing theatre of earth\n   Eve\u2019s shadowy curtain falls, can any man\n   Bring back the far-off intercepted hills,\n   Grasp the round rock-built turret, or arrest\n   The glittering spires that pierce the brow of Heaven?\n   Rather can any with outstripping voice\n   The parting sun\u2019s gigantic strides recall?\n      Twice sounded _Gebir_! twice th\u2019 Iberian king\n   Thought it the strong vibration of the brain\n   That struck upon his ear; but now descried\n   A form, a man, come nearer: as he came\n   His unshorn hair grown soft in these abodes\n   Waved back, and scattered thin and hoary light.\n   Living, men called him Aroar, but no more\n   In celebration or recording verse\n   His name is heard, no more by Arnon\u2019s side\n   The well-walled city which he reared remains.\n   Gebir was now undaunted\u2014for the brave\n   When they no longer doubt no longer fear\u2014\n   And would have spoken, but the shade began,\n      \u201cBrave son of Hesperus! no mortal hand\n   Has led thee hither, nor without the gods\n   Penetrate thy firm feet the vast profound.\n   Thou knowest not that here thy fathers lie,\n   The race of Sidad; theirs was loud acclaim\n   When living, but their pleasure was in war;\n   Triumphs and hatred followed: I myself\n   Bore, men imagined, no inglorious part:\n   The gods thought otherwise, by whose decree\n   Deprived of life, and more, of death deprived,\n   I still hear shrieking through the moonless night\n   Their discontented and deserted shades.\n   Observe these horrid walls, this rueful waste!\n   Here some refresh the vigour of the mind\n   With contemplation and cold penitence:\n   Nor wonder while thou hearest that the soul\n   Thus purified hereafter may ascend\n   Surmounting all obstruction, nor ascribe\n   The sentence to indulgence; each extreme\n   Has tortures for ambition; to dissolve\n   In everlasting languor, to resist\n   Its impulse, but in vain: to be enclosed\n   Within a limit, and that limit fire;\n   Severed from happiness, from eminence,\n   And flying, but hell bars us, from ourselves.\n      Yet rather all these torments most endure\n   Than solitary pain and sad remorse\n   And towering thoughts on their own breast o\u2019er-turned\n   And piercing to the heart: such penitence,\n   Such contemplation theirs! thy ancestors\n   Bear up against them, nor will they submit\n   To conquering Time the asperities of Fate;\n   Yet could they but revisit earth once more,\n   How gladly would they poverty embrace,\n   How labour, even for their deadliest foe!\n   It little now avails them to have raised\n   Beyond the Syrian regions, and beyond\n   Phoenicia, trophies, tributes, colonies:\n   Follow thou me\u2014mark what it all avails.\u201d\n      Him Gebir followed, and a roar confused\n   Rose from a river rolling in its bed,\n   Not rapid, that would rouse the wretched souls,\n   Nor calmly, that might lull then to repose;\n   But with dull weary lapses it upheaved\n   Billows of bale, heard low, yet heard afar.\n   For when hell\u2019s iron portals let out night,\n   Often men start and shiver at the sound,\n   And lie so silent on the restless couch\n   They hear their own hearts beat.  Now Gebir breathed\n   Another air, another sky beheld.\n   Twilight broods here, lulled by no nightingale\n   Nor wakened by the shrill lark dewy-winged,\n   But glowing with one sullen sunless heat.\n   Beneath his foot nor sprouted flower nor herb\n   Nor chirped a grasshopper.  Above his head\n   Phlegethon formed a fiery firmament:\n   Part were sulphurous clouds involving, part\n   Shining like solid ribs of molten brass;\n   For the fierce element which else aspires\n   Higher and higher and lessens to the sky,\n   Below, earth\u2019s adamantine arch rebuffed.\n      Gebir, though now such languor held his limbs,\n   Scarce aught admired he, yet he this admired;\n   And thus addressed him then the conscious guide.\n   \u201cBeyond that river lie the happy fields;\n   From them fly gentle breezes, which when drawn\n   Against yon crescent convex, but unite\n   Stronger with what they could not overcome.\n   Thus they that scatter freshness through the groves\n   And meadows of the fortunate, and fill\n   With liquid light the marble bowl of earth,\n   And give her blooming health and spritely force,\n   Their fire no more diluted, nor its darts\n   Blunted by passing through thick myrtle bowers,\n   Neither from odours rising half dissolved,\n   Point forward Phlegethon\u2019s eternal flame;\n   And this horizon is the spacious bow\n   Whence each ray reaches to the world above.\u201d\n      The hero pausing, Gebir then besought\n   What region held his ancestors, what clouds,\n   What waters, or what gods, from his embrace.\n   Aroar then sudden, as though roused, renewed.\n      \u201cCome thou, if ardour urges thee and force\n   Suffices\u2014mark me, Gebir, I unfold\n   No fable to allure thee\u2014on! behold\n   Thy ancestors!\u201d and lo! with horrid gasp\n   The panting flame above his head recoiled,\n   And thunder through his heart and life blood throbbed.\n   Such sound could human organs once conceive,\n   Cold, speechless, palsied, not the soothing voice\n   Of friendship or almost of Deity\n   Could raise the wretched mortal from the dust;\n   Beyond man\u2019s home condition they! with eyes\n   Intent, and voice desponding, and unheard\n   By Aroar, though he tarried at his side.\n   \u201cThey know me not,\u201d cried Gebir, \u201cO my sires,\n   Ye know me not! they answer not, nor hear.\n   How distant are they still! what sad extent\n   Of desolation must we overcome!\n   Aroar, what wretch that nearest us? what wretch\n   Is that with eyebrows white, and slanting brow?\n   Listen! him yonder who bound down supine,\n   Shrinks yelling from that sword there engine-hung;\n   He too among my ancestors?\u201d\n         \u201cO King!\n   Iberia bore him, but the breed accursed\n   Inclement winds blew blighting from north-east.\u201d\n      \u201cHe was a warrior then, nor feared the gods?\u201d\n      \u201cGebir, he feared the Demons, not the Gods;\n   Though them indeed his daily face adored,\n   And was no warrior, yet the thousand lives\n   Squandered as stones to exercise a sling!\n   And the tame cruelty and cold caprice\u2014\n   Oh, madness of mankind! addressed, adored!\n   O Gebir! what are men, or where are gods!\n   Behold the giant next him, how his feet\n   Plunge floundering mid the marshes yellow-flowered,\n   His restless head just reaching to the rocks,\n   His bosom tossing with black weeds besmeared,\n   How writhes he twixt the continent and isle!\n   What tyrant with more insolence e\u2019er claimed\n   Dominion? when from the heart of Usury\n   Rose more intense the pale-flamed thirst for gold?\n   And called forsooth _Deliverer_!  False or fools\n   Who praised the dull-eared miscreant, or who hoped\n   To soothe your folly and disgrace with praise!\n      Hearest thou not the harp\u2019s gay simpering air\n   And merriment afar? then come, advance;\n   And now behold him! mark the wretch accursed\n   Who sold his people to a rival king\u2014\n   Self-yoked they stood two ages unredeemed.\u201d\n      \u201cOh, horror! what pale visage rises there?\n   Speak, Aroar! me perhaps mine eyes deceive,\n   Inured not, yet methinks they there descry\n   Such crimson haze as sometimes drowns the moon.\n   What is yon awful sight? why thus appears\n   That space between the purple and the crown?\u201d\n      \u201cI will relate their stories when we reach\n   Our confines,\u201d said the guide; \u201cfor thou, O king,\n   Differing in both from all thy countrymen,\n   Seest not their stories and hast seen their fates.\n   But while we tarry, lo again the flame\n   Riseth, and murmuring hoarse, points straighter, haste!\n   \u2019Tis urgent, we must hence.\u201d\n         \u201cThen, oh, adieu!\u201d\n   Cried Gebir, and groaned loud, at last a tear\n   Burst from his eyes turned back, and he exclaimed,\n   \u201cAm I deluded?  O ye powers of hell,\n   Suffer me\u2014Oh, my fathers!\u2014am I torn\u2014\u201d\n   He spake, and would have spoken more, but flames\n   Enwrapped him round and round intense; he turned,\n   And stood held breathless in a ghost\u2019s embrace.\n   \u201cGebir, my son, desert me not!  I heard\n   Thy calling voice, nor fate withheld me more:\n   One moment yet remains; enough to know\n   Soon will my torments, soon will thine, expire.\n   Oh, that I e\u2019er exacted such a vow!\n   When dipping in the victim\u2019s blood thy hand,\n   First thou withdrew\u2019st it, looking in my face\n   Wondering; but when the priest my will explained,\n   Then swearest thou, repeating what he said,\n   How against Egypt thou wouldst raise that hand\n   And bruise the seed first risen from our line.\n   Therefore in death what pangs have I endured!\n   Racked on the fiery centre of the sun,\n   Twelve years I saw the ruined world roll round.\n   Shudder not\u2014I have borne it\u2014I deserved\n   My wretched fate\u2014be better thine\u2014farewell.\u201d\n      \u201cOh, stay, my father! stay one moment more.\n   Let me return thee that embrace\u2014\u2019tis past\u2014\n   Aroar! how could I quit it unreturned!\n   And now the gulf divides us, and the waves\n   Of sulphur bellow through the blue abyss.\n   And is he gone for ever! and I come\n   In vain?\u201d  Then sternly said the guide, \u201cIn vain!\n   Sayst thou? what wouldst thou more? alas, O prince,\n   None come for pastime here! but is it nought\n   To turn thy feet from evil? is it nought\n   Of pleasure to that shade if they are turned?\n   For this thou camest hither: he who dares\n   To penetrate this darkness, nor regards\n   The dangers of the way, shall reascend\n   In glory, nor the gates of hell retard\n   His steps, nor demon\u2019s nor man\u2019s art prevail.\n   Once in each hundred years, and only once,\n   Whether by some rotation of the world,\n   Or whether willed so by some power above,\n   This flaming arch starts back, each realm descries\n   Its opposite, and Bliss from her repose\n   Freshens and feels her own security.\u201d\n      \u201cSecurity!\u201d cried out the Gadite king,\n   \u201cAnd feel they not compassion?\u201d\n         \u201cChild of Earth,\u201d\n   Calmly said Aroar at his guest\u2019s surprise,\n   \u201cSome so disfigured by habitual crimes,\n   Others are so exalted, so refined,\n   So permeated by heaven, no trace remains\n   Graven on earth: here Justice is supreme;\n   Compassion can be but where passions are.\n   Here are discovered those who tortured Law\n   To silence or to speech, as pleased themselves:\n   Here also those who boasted of their zeal\n   And loved their country for the spoils it gave.\n   Hundreds, whose glitt\u2019ring merchandise the lyre\n   Dazzled vain wretches drunk with flattery,\n   And wafted them in softest airs to Heav\u2019n,\n   Doomed to be still deceived, here still attune\n   The wonted strings and fondly woo applause:\n   Their wish half granted, they retain their own,\n   But madden at the mockery of the shades.\n   Upon the river\u2019s other side there grow\n   Deep olive groves; there other ghosts abide,\n   Blest indeed they, but not supremely blest.\n   We cannot see beyond, we cannot see\n   Aught but our opposite, and here are fates\n   How opposite to ours! here some observed\n   Religious rites, some hospitality:\n   Strangers, who from the good old men retired,\n   Closed the gate gently, lest from generous use\n   Shutting and opening of its own accord,\n   It shake unsettled slumbers off their couch:\n   Some stopped revenge athirst for slaughter, some\n   Sowed the slow olive for a race unborn.\n   These had no wishes, therefore none are crowned;\n   But theirs are tufted banks, theirs umbrage, theirs\n   Enough of sunshine to enjoy the shade,\n   And breeze enough to lull them to repose.\u201d\n      Then Gebir cried: \u201cIllustrious host, proceed.\n   Bring me among the wonders of a realm\n   Admired by all, but like a tale admired.\n   We take our children from their cradled sleep,\n   And on their fancy from our own impress\n   Etherial forms and adulating fates:\n   But ere departing for such scenes ourselves\n   We seize their hands, we hang upon their neck,\n   Our beds cling heavy round us with our tears,\n   Agony strives with agony\u2014just gods!\n   Wherefore should wretched mortals thus believe,\n   Or wherefore should they hesitate to die?\u201d\n      Thus while he questioned, all his strength dissolved\n   Within him, thunder shook his troubled brain,\n   He started, and the cavern\u2019s mouth surveyed\n   Near, and beyond his people; he arose,\n   And bent toward them his bewildered way.\n\n\n\nFOURTH BOOK.\n\n\n      THE king\u2019s lone road, his visit, his return,\n   Were not unknown to Dalica, nor long\n   The wondrous tale from royal ears delayed.\n   When the young queen had heard who taught the rites\n   Her mind was shaken, and what first she asked\n   Was, whether the sea-maids were very fair,\n   And was it true that even gods were moved\n   By female charms beneath the waves profound,\n   And joined to them in marriage, and had sons\u2014\n   Who knows but Gebir sprang then from the gods!\n   He that could pity, he that could obey,\n   Flattered both female youth and princely pride,\n   The same ascending from amid the shades\n   Showed Power in frightful attitude: the queen\n   Marks the surpassing prodigy, and strives\n   To shake off terror in her crowded court,\n   And wonders why she trembles, nor suspects\n   How Fear and Love assume each other\u2019s form,\n   By birth and secret compact how allied.\n   Vainly (to conscious virgins I appeal),\n   Vainly with crouching tigers, prowling wolves,\n   Rocks, precipices, waves, storms, thunderbolts,\n   All his immense inheritance, would Fear\n   The simplest heart, should Love refuse, assail:\n   Consent\u2014the maiden\u2019s pillowed ear imbibes\n   Constancy, honour, truth, fidelity,\n   Beauty and ardent lips and longing arms;\n   Then fades in glimmering distance half the scene,\n   Then her heart quails and flutters and would fly\u2014\n   \u2019Tis her belov\u00e9d! not to her! ye Powers!\n   What doubting maid exacts the vow? behold\n   Above the myrtles his protesting hand!\n   Such ebbs of doubt and swells of jealousy\n   Toss the fond bosom in its hour of sleep\n   And float around the eyelids and sink through.\n      Lo! mirror of delight in cloudless days,\n   Lo! thy reflection: \u2019twas when I exclaimed,\n   With kisses hurried as if each foresaw\n   Their end, and reckoned on our broken bonds,\n   And could at such a price such loss endure:\n   \u201cOh, what to faithful lovers met at morn,\n   What half so pleasant as imparted fears!\u201d\n   Looking recumbent how love\u2019s column rose\n   Marmoreal, trophied round with golden hair,\n   How in the valley of one lip unseen\n   He slumbered, one his unstrung low impressed.\n   Sweet wilderness of soul-entangling charms!\n   Led back by memory, and each blissful maze\n   Retracing, me with magic power detain\n   Those dimpled cheeks, those temples violet-tinged,\n   Those lips of nectar and those eyes of heaven!\n      Charoba, though indeed she never drank\n   The liquid pearl, or twined the nodding crown,\n   Or when she wanted cool and calm repose\n   Dreamed of the crawling asp and grated tomb,\n   Was wretched up to royalty: the jibe\n   Struck her, most piercing where love pierced before,\n   From those whose freedom centres in their tongue,\n   Handmaidens, pages, courtiers, priests, buffoons.\n   Congratulations here, there prophecies,\n   Here children, not repining at neglect\n   While tumult sweeps them ample room for play,\n   Everywhere questions answered ere begun,\n   Everywhere crowds, for everywhere alarm.\n   Thus winter gone, nor spring (though near) arrived,\n   Urged slanting onward by the bickering breeze\n   That issues from beneath Aurora\u2019s car,\n   Shudder the sombrous waves; at every beam\n   More vivid, more by every breath impelled,\n   Higher and higher up the fretted rocks\n   Their turbulent refulgence they display.\n   Madness, which like the spiral element\n   The more it seizes on the fiercer burns,\n   Hurried them blindly forward, and involved\n   In flame the senses and in gloom the soul.\n      Determined to protect the country\u2019s gods\n   And asking their protection, they adjure\n   Each other to stand forward, and insist\n   With zeal, and trample under foot the slow;\n   And disregardful of the Sympathies\n   Divine, those Sympathies whose delicate hand\n   Touching the very eyeball of the heart,\n   Awakens it, not wounds it nor inflames,\n   Blind wretches! they with desperate embrace\n   Hang on the pillar till the temple fall.\n   Oft the grave judge alarms religious wealth\n   And rouses anger under gentle words.\n   Woe to the wiser few who dare to cry\n   \u201cPeople! these men are not your enemies,\n   Inquire their errand, and resist when wronged.\u201d\n   Together childhood, priesthood, womanhood,\n   The scribes and elders of the land, exclaim,\n   \u201cSeek they not hidden treasure in the tombs?\n   Raising the ruins, levelling the dust,\n   Who can declare whose ashes they disturb!\n   Build they not fairer cities than our own,\n   Extravagant enormous apertures\n   For light, and portals larger, open courts\n   Where all ascending all are unconfined,\n   And wider streets in purer air than ours?\n   Temples quite plain with equal architraves\n   They build, nor bearing gods like ours embossed.\n   Oh, profanation!  Oh, our ancestors!\u201d\n      Though all the vulgar hate a foreign face,\n   It more offends weak eyes and homely age,\n   Dalica most, who thus her aim pursued.\n   \u201cMy promise, O Charoba, I perform.\n   Proclaim to gods and men a festival\n   Throughout the land, and bid the strangers eat;\n   Their anger thus we haply may disarm.\u201d\n      \u201cO Dalica,\u201d the grateful queen replied,\n   \u201cNurse of my childhood, soother of my cares,\n   Preventer of my wishes, of my thoughts,\n   Oh, pardon youth, oh, pardon royalty!\n   If hastily to Dalica I sued,\n   Fear might impel me, never could distrust.\n   Go then, for wisdom guides thee, take my name,\n   Issue what most imports and best beseems,\n   And sovereignty shall sanction the decree.\u201d\n      And now Charoba was alone, her heart\n   Grew lighter; she sat down, and she arose,\n   She felt voluptuous tenderness, but felt\n   That tenderness for Dalica; she praised\n   Her kind attention, warm solicitude,\n   Her wisdom\u2014for what wisdom pleased like hers!\n   She was delighted; should she not behold\n   Gebir? she blushed; but she had words to speak,\n   She formed them and re-formed them, with regret\n   That there was somewhat lost with every change;\n   She could replace them\u2014what would that avail?\u2014\n   Moved from their order they have lost their charm.\n   While thus she strewed her way with softest words,\n   Others grew up before her, but appeared\n   A plenteous rather than perplexing choice:\n   She rubbed her palms with pleasure, heaved a sigh,\n   Grew calm again, and thus her thoughts revolved\u2014\n      \u201cBut he descended to the tombs! the thought\n   Thrills me, I must avow it, with affright.\n   And wherefore? shows he not the more beloved\n   Of heaven? or how ascends he back to day?\n   Then has he wronged me? could he want a cause\n   Who has an army and was bred to reign?\n   And yet no reasons against rights he urged,\n   He threatened not, proclaimed not; I approached,\n   He hastened on; I spake, he listened; wept,\n   He pitied me; he loved me, he obeyed;\n   He was a conqueror, still am I a queen.\u201d\n      She thus indulged fond fancies, when the sound\n   Of timbrels and of cymbals struck her ear,\n   And horns and howlings of wild jubilee.\n   She feared, and listened to confirm her fears;\n   One breath sufficed, and shook her refluent soul.\n   Smiting, with simulated smile constrained,\n   Her beauteous bosom, \u201cOh, perfidious man!\n   Oh, cruel foe!\u201d she twice and thrice exclaimed,\n   \u201cOh, my companions equal-aged! my throne,\n   My people!  Oh, how wretched to presage\n   This day, how tenfold wretched to endure!\u201d\n      She ceased, and instantly the palace rang\n   With gratulation roaring into rage\u2014\n   \u2019Twas her own people.  \u201cHealth to Gebir! health\n   To our compatriot subjects! to our queen!\n   Health and unfaded youth ten thousand years!\u201d\n   Then went the victims forward crowned with flowers,\n   Crowned were tame crocodiles, and boys white-robed\n   Guided their creaking crests across the stream.\n   In gilded barges went the female train,\n   And hearing others ripple near, undrew\n   The veil of sea-green awning: if they found\n   Whom they desired, how pleasant was the breeze!\n   If not, the frightful water forced a sigh.\n   Sweet airs of music ruled the rowing palms,\n   Now rose they glistening and aslant reclined,\n   Now they descended, and with one consent\n   Plunging, seemed swift each other to pursue,\n   And now to tremble wearied o\u2019er the wave.\n   Beyond and in the suburbs might be seen\n   Crowds of all ages: here in triumph passed\n   Not without pomp, though raised with rude device,\n   The monarch and Charoba; there a throng\n   Shone out in sunny whiteness o\u2019er the reeds.\n   Nor could luxuriant youth, or lapsing age\n   Propped by the corner of the nearest street,\n   With aching eyes and tottering knees intent,\n   Loose leathery neck and worm-like lip outstretched,\n   Fix long the ken upon one form, so swift\n   Through the gay vestures fluttering on the bank,\n   And through the bright-eyed waters dancing round,\n   Wove they their wanton wiles and disappeared.\n      Meantime, with pomp august and solemn, borne\n   On four white camels tinkling plates of gold,\n   Heralds before and Ethiop slaves behind,\n   Each with the signs of office in his hand,\n   Each on his brow the sacred stamp of years,\n   The four ambassadors of peace proceed.\n   Rich carpets bear they, corn and generous wine,\n   The Syrian olive\u2019s cheerful gift they bear,\n   With stubborn goats that eye the mountain tops\n   Askance and riot with reluctant horn,\n   And steeds and stately camels in their train.\n   The king, who sat before his tent, descried\n   The dust rise reddened from the setting sun.\n   Through all the plains below the Gadite men\n   Were resting from their labour; some surveyed\n   The spacious site ere yet obstructed\u2014walls\n   Already, soon will roofs have interposed;\n   Some ate their frugal viands on the steps\n   Contented; some, remembering home, prefer\n   The cot\u2019s bare rafters o\u2019er the gilded dome,\n   And sing, for often sighs, too, end in song:\n   \u201cIn smiling meads how sweet the brook\u2019s repose,\n   To the rough ocean and red restless sands!\n   Where are the woodland voices that increased\n   Along the unseen path on festal days,\n   When lay the dry and outcast arbutus\n   On the fane step, and the first privet-flowers\n   Threw their white light upon the vernal shrine?\u201d\n   Some heedless trip along with hasty step\n   Whistling, and fix too soon on their abodes:\n   Haply and one among them with his spear\n   Measures the lintel, if so great its height\n   As will receive him with his helm unlowered.\n      But silence went throughout, e\u2019en thoughts were hushed,\n   When to full view of navy and of camp\n   Now first expanded the bare-headed train.\n   Majestic, unpresuming, unappalled,\n   Onward they marched, and neither to the right\n   Nor to the left, though there the city stood,\n   Turned they their sober eyes; and now they reached\n   Within a few steep paces of ascent\n   The lone pavilion of the Iberian king.\n   He saw them, he awaited them, he rose,\n   He hailed them, \u201cPeace be with you:\u201d they replied,\n   \u201cKing of the western world, be with you peace.\u201d\n\n\n\nFIFTH BOOK.\n\n\n   ONCE a fair city, courted then by king,\n   Mistress of nations, thronged by palaces,\n   Raising her head o\u2019er destiny, her face\n   Glowing with pleasure and with palms refreshed,\n   Now pointed at by Wisdom or by Wealth,\n   Bereft of beauty, bare of ornaments,\n   Stood in the wilderness of woe, Masar.\n   Ere far advancing, all appeared a plain;\n   Treacherous and fearful mountains, far advanced.\n   Her glory so gone down, at human step\n   The fierce hyena frighted from the walls\n   Bristled his rising back, his teeth unsheathed,\n   Drew the long growl and with slow foot retired.\n   Yet were remaining some of ancient race,\n   And ancient arts were now their sole delight:\n   With Time\u2019s first sickle they had marked the hour\n   When at their incantation would the Moon\n   Start back, and shuddering shed blue blasted light.\n   The rifted rays they gathered, and immersed\n   In potent portion of that wondrous wave,\n   Which, hearing rescued Israel, stood erect,\n   And led her armies through his crystal gates.\n      Hither (none shared her way, her counsel none)\n   Hied the Masarian Dalica: \u2019twas night,\n   And the still breeze fell languid on the waste.\n   She, tired with journey long and ardent thoughts\n   Stopped; and before the city she descried\n   A female form emerge above the sands.\n   Intent she fixed her eyes, and on herself\n   Relying, with fresh vigour bent her way;\n   Nor disappeared the woman, but exclaimed,\n   One hand retaining tight her folded vest,\n   \u201cStranger, who loathest life, there lies Masar.\n   Begone, nor tarry longer, or ere morn\n   The cormorant in his solitary haunt\n   Of insulated rock or sounding cove\n   Stands on thy bleach\u00e9d bones and screams for prey.\n   My lips can scatter them a hundred leagues,\n   So shrivelled in one breath as all the sands\n   We tread on could not in as many years.\n   Wretched who die nor raise their sepulchre!\n   Therefore begone.\u201d\n         But Dalica unawed\n   (Though in her withered but still firm right-hand\n   Held up with imprecations hoarse and deep\n   Glimmered her brazen sickle, and enclosed\n   Within its figured curve the fading moon)\n   Spake thus aloud.  \u201cBy yon bright orb of Heaven,\n   In that most sacred moment when her beam\n   Guided first thither by the fork\u00e9d shaft,\n   Strikes through the crevice of Arishtah\u2019s tower\u2014\u201d\n      \u201cSayst thou?\u201d astonished cried the sorceress,\n   \u201cWoman of outer darkness, fiend of death,\n   From what inhuman cave, what dire abyss,\n   Hast thou invisible that spell o\u2019erheard?\n   What potent hand hath touched thy quickened corse,\n   What song dissolved thy cerements, who unclosed\n   Those faded eyes and filled them from the stars?\n   But if with inextinguished light of life\n   Thou breathest, soul and body unamerced,\n   Then whence that invocation? who hath dared\n   Those hallowed words, divulging, to profane?\u201d\n      Dalica cried, \u201cTo heaven, not earth, addressed,\n   Prayers for protection cannot be profane.\u201d\n      Here the pale sorceress turned her face aside\n   Wildly, and muttered to herself amazed;\n   \u201cI dread her who, alone at such an hour,\n   Can speak so strangely, who can thus combine\n   The words of reason with our gifted rites,\n   Yet will I speak once more.\u2014If thou hast seen\n   The city of Charoba, hast thou marked\n   The steps of Dalica?\u201d\n      \u201cWhat then?\u201d\n         \u201cThe tongue\n   Of Dalica has then our rites divulged.\u201d\n      \u201cWhose rites?\u201d\n         \u201cHer sister\u2019s, mother\u2019s, and her own.\u201d\n      \u201cNever.\u201d\n         \u201cHow sayst thou never? one would think,\n   Presumptuous, thou wert Dalica.\u201d\n         \u201cI am,\n   Woman, and who art thou?\u201d\n      With close embrace,\n   Clung the Masarian round her neck, and cried:\n   \u201cArt thou then not my sister? ah, I fear\n   The golden lamps and jewels of a court\n   Deprive thine eyes of strength and purity.\n   O Dalica, mine watch the waning moon,\n   For ever patient in our mother\u2019s art,\n   And rest on Heaven suspended, where the founts\n   Of Wisdom rise, where sound the wings of Power;\n   Studies intense of strong and stern delight!\n   And thou too, Dalica, so many years\n   Weaned from the bosom of thy native land,\n   Returnest back and seekest true repose.\n   Oh, what more pleasant than the short-breathed sigh\n   When laying down your burden at the gate,\n   And dizzy with long wandering, you embrace\n   The cool and quiet of a homespun bed.\u201d\n      \u201cAlas,\u201d said Dalica, \u201cthough all commend\n   This choice, and many meet with no control,\n   Yet none pursue it!  Age by Care oppressed\n   Feels for the couch, and drops into the grave.\n   The tranquil scene lies further still from Youth:\n   Frenzied Ambition and desponding Love\n   Consume Youth\u2019s fairest flowers; compared with Youth\n   Age has a something something like repose.\n   Myrthyr, I seek not here a boundary\n   Like the horizon, which, as you advance,\n   Keeping its form and colour, yet recedes;\n   But mind my errand, and my suit perform.\n      Twelve years ago Charoba first could speak:\n   If her indulgent father asked her name,\n   She would indulge him too, and would reply\n   \u2018What? why, Charoba!\u2019 raised with sweet surprise,\n   And proud to shine a teacher in her turn.\n   Show her the graven sceptre; what its use?\n   \u2019Twas to beat dogs with, and to gather flies.\n   She thought the crown a plaything to amuse\n   Herself, and not the people, for she thought\n   Who mimic infant words might infant toys:\n   But while she watched grave elders look with awe\n   On such a bauble, she withheld her breath;\n   She was afraid her parents should suspect\n   They had caught childhood from her in a kiss;\n   She blushed for shame, and feared\u2014for she believed.\n   Yet was not courage wanting in the child.\n   No; I have often seen her with both hands\n   Shake a dry crocodile of equal height,\n   And listen to the shells within the scales,\n   And fancy there was life, and yet apply\n   The jagged jaws wide open to her ear.\n   Past are three summers since she first beheld\n   The ocean; all around the child await\n   Some exclamation of amazement here:\n   She coldly said, her long-lashed eyes abased,\n      \u2018Is this the mighty ocean? is this all!\u2019\n   That wondrous soul Charoba once possessed,\n   Capacious then as earth or heaven could hold,\n   Soul discontented with capacity,\n   Is gone, I fear, for ever.  Need I say\n   She was enchanted by the wicked spells\n   Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed\n   The western winds have landed on our coast?\n   I since have watched her in each lone retreat,\n   Have heard her sigh and soften out the name,\n   Then would she change it for Egyptian sounds\n   More sweet, and seem to taste them on her lips,\n   Then loathe them\u2014Gebir, Gebir still returned.\n   Who would repine, of reason not bereft!\n   For soon the sunny stream of youth runs down,\n   And not a gadfly streaks the lake beyond.\n   Lone in the gardens, on her gathered vest\n   How gently would her languid arm recline!\n   How often have I seen her kiss a flower,\n   And on cool mosses press her glowing cheek!\n   Nor was the stranger free from pangs himself.\n   Whether by spell imperfect, or while brewed\n   The swelling herbs infected him with foam,\n   Oft have the shepherds met him wandering\n   Through unfrequented paths, oft overheard\n   Deep groans, oft started from soliloquies\n   Which they believe assuredly were meant\n   For spirits who attended him unseen.\n   But when from his illuded eyes retired\n   That figure Fancy fondly chose to raise,\n   He clasped the vacant air and stood and gazed;\n   Then owning it was folly, strange to tell,\n   Burst into peals of laughter at his woes.\n   Next, when his passion had subsided, went\n   Where from a cistern, green and ruined, oozed\n   A little rill, soon lost; there gathered he\n   Violets, and harebells of a sister bloom,\n   Twining complacently their tender stems\n   With plants of kindest pliability.\n   These for a garland woven, for a crown\n   He platted pithy rushes, and ere dusk\n   The grass was whitened with their roots nipped off.\n   These threw he, finished, in the little rill\n   And stood surveying them with steady smile:\n   But such a smile as that of Gebir bids\n   To Comfort a defiance, to Despair\n   A welcome, at whatever hour she please.\n   Had I observed him I had pitied him;\n   I have observed Charoba, I have asked\n   If she loved Gebir.\n         \u2018Love him!\u2019 she exclaimed\n   With such a start of terror, such a flush\n   Of anger, \u2018I love Gebir?  I in love?\u2019\n   And looked so piteous, so impatient looked\u2014\n   And burst, before I answered, into tears.\n   Then saw I, plainly saw I, \u2019twas not love;\n   For such her natural temper, what she likes\n   She speaks it out, or rather she commands.\n   And could Charoba say with greater ease\n   Bring me a water-melon from the Nile,\u2019\n   Than, if she loved him, \u2018Bring me him I love.\u2019\n   Therefore the death of Gebir is resolved.\u201d\n      \u201cResolved indeed,\u201d cried Myrthyr, nought surprised,\n      \u201cPrecious my arts!  I could without remorse\n   Kill, though I hold thee dearer than the day,\n   E\u2019en thee thyself, to exercise my arts.\n   Look yonder! mark yon pomp of funeral!\n   Is this from fortune or from favouring stars?\n   Dalica, look thou yonder, what a train!\n   What weeping!  Oh, what luxury!  Come, haste,\n   Gather me quickly up these herbs I dropped,\n   And then away\u2014hush!  I must unobserved\n   From those two maiden sisters pull the spleen:\n   Dissemblers! how invidious they surround\n   The virgin\u2019s tomb, where all but virgins weep.\u201d\n      \u201cNay, hear me first,\u201d cried Dalica; \u201c\u2019tis hard\n   To perish to attend a foreign king.\u201d\n      \u201cPerish! and may not then mine eye alone\n   Draw out the venom drop, and yet remain\n   Enough? the portion cannot be perceived.\u201d\n      Away she hastened with it to her home,\n   And, sprinkling thrice flesh sulphur o\u2019er the hearth,\n   Took up a spindle with malignant smile,\n   And pointed to a woof, nor spake a word;\n   \u2019Twas a dark purple, and its dye was dread.\n      Plunged in a lonely house, to her unknown,\n   Now Dalica first trembled: o\u2019er the roof\n   Wandered her haggard eyes\u2014\u2019twas some relief.\n   The massy stones, though hewn most roughly, showed\n   The hand of man had once at least been there:\n   But from this object sinking back amazed,\n   Her bosom lost all consciousness, and shook\n   As if suspended in unbounded space.\n   Her thus entranced the sister\u2019s voice recalled.\n   \u201cBehold it here dyed once again! \u2019tis done.\u201d\n   Dalica stepped, and felt beneath her feet\n   The slippery floor, with mouldered dust bestrewn;\n   But Myrthyr seized with bare bold-sinewed arm\n   The grey cerastes, writhing from her grasp,\n   And twisted off his horn, nor feared to squeeze\n   The viscous poison from his glowing gums.\n   Nor wanted there the root of stunted shrub\n   Which he lays ragged, hanging o\u2019er the sands,\n   And whence the weapons of his wrath are death:\n   Nor the blue urchin that with clammy fin\n   Holds down the tossing vessel for the tides.\n      Together these her scient hand combined,\n   And more she added, dared I mention more.\n   Which done, with words most potent, thrice she dipped\n   The reeking garb; thrice waved it through the air:\n   She ceased; and suddenly the creeping wool\n   Shrunk up with crisp\u00e8d dryness in her hands.\n   \u201cTake this,\u201d she cried, \u201cand Gebir is no more.\u201d\n\n\n\nSIXTH BOOK.\n\n\n   NOW to Aurora borne by dappled steeds,\n   The sacred gate of orient pearl and gold,\n   Smitten with Lucifer\u2019s light silver wand,\n   Expanded slow to strains of harmony:\n   The waves beneath in purpling rows, like doves\n   Glancing with wanton coyness tow\u2019rd their queen,\n   Heaved softly; thus the damsel\u2019s bosom heaves\n   When from her sleeping lover\u2019s downy cheek,\n   To which so warily her own she brings\n   Each moment nearer, she perceives the warmth\n   Of coming kisses fanned by playful dreams.\n   Ocean and earth and heaven was jubilee.\n   For \u2019twas the morning pointed out by Fate\n   When an immortal maid and mortal man\n   Should share each other\u2019s nature knit in bliss.\n      The brave Iberians far the beach o\u2019erspread\n   Ere dawn with distant awe; none hear the mew,\n   None mark the curlew flapping o\u2019er the field;\n   Silence held all, and fond expectancy.\n   Now suddenly the conch above the sea\n   Sounds, and goes sounding through the woods profound.\n   They, where they hear the echo, turn their eyes,\n   But nothing see they, save a purple mist\n   Roll from the distant mountain down the shore:\n   It rolls, it sails, it settles, it dissolves\u2014\n   Now shines the nymph to human eye revealed,\n   And leads her Tamar timorous o\u2019er the waves.\n   Immortals crowding round congratulate\n   The shepherd; he shrinks back, of breath bereft:\n   His vesture clinging closely round his limbs\n   Unfelt, while they the whole fair form admire,\n   He fears that he has lost it, then he fears\n   The wave has moved it, most to look he fears.\n   Scarce the sweet-flowing music he imbibes,\n   Or sees the peopled ocean; scarce he sees\n   Spio with sparkling eyes, and Beroe\n   Demure, and young Ione, less renowned,\n   Not less divine, mild-natured; Beauty formed\n   Her face, her heart Fidelity; for gods\n   Designed, a mortal too Ione loved.\n   These were the nymphs elected for the hour\n   Of Hesperus and Hymen; these had strewn\n   The bridal bed, these tuned afresh the shells,\n   Wiping the green that hoarsened them within:\n   These wove the chaplets, and at night resolved\n   To drive the dolphins from the wreath\u00e9d door.\n   Gebir surveyed the concourse from the tents,\n   The Egyptian men around him; \u2019twas observed\n   By those below how wistfully he looked,\n   From what attention with what earnestness\n   Now to his city, now to theirs, he waved\n   His hand, and held it, while they spake, outspread.\n   They tarried with him, and they shared the feast.\n   They stooped with trembling hand from heavy jars\n   The wines of Gades gurgling in the bowl;\n   Nor bent they homeward till the moon appeared\n   To hang midway betwixt the earth and skies.\n   \u2019Twas then that leaning o\u2019er the boy beloved,\n   In Ocean\u2019s grot where Ocean was unheard,\n   \u201cTamar!\u201d the nymph said gently, \u201ccome awake!\n   Enough to love, enough to sleep, is given,\n   Haste we away.\u201d  This Tamar deemed deceit,\n   Spoken so fondly, and he kissed her lips,\n   Nor blushed he then, for he was then unseen.\n   But she arising bade the youth arise.\n   \u201cWhat cause to fly?\u201d said Tamar; she replied,\n   \u201cAsk none for flight, and feign none for delay.\u201d\n      \u201cOh, am I then deceived! or am I cast\n   From dreams of pleasure to eternal sleep,\n   And, when I cease to shudder, cease to be!\u201d\n   She held the downcast bridegroom to her breast,\n   Looked in his face and charmed away his fears.\n   She said not \u201cWherefore leave I then embraced\n   You a poor shepherd, or at most a man,\n   Myself a nymph, that now I should deceive?\u201d\n   She said not\u2014Tamar did, and was ashamed.\n   Him overcome her serious voice bespake.\n   \u201cGrief favours all who bear the gift of tears!\n   Mild at first sight he meets his votaries\n   And casts no shadow as he comes along:\n   But after his embrace the marble chills\n   The pausing foot, the closing door sounds loud,\n   The fiend in triumph strikes the roof, then falls\n   The eye uplifted from his lurid shade.\n   Tamar, depress thyself, and miseries\n   Darken and widen: yes, proud-hearted man!\n   The sea-bird rises as the billows rise;\n   Nor otherwise when mountain floods descend\n   Smiles the unsullied lotus glossy-haired.\n   Thou, claiming all things, leanest on thy claim\n   Till overwhelmed through incompliancy.\n   Tamar, some silent tempest gathers round!\u201d\n      \u201cRound whom?\u201d retorted Tamar; \u201cthou describe\n   The danger, I will dare it.\u201d\n         \u201cWho will dare\n   What is unseen?\u201d\n         \u201cThe man that is unblessed.\u201d\n      \u201cBut wherefore thou?  It threatens not thyself,\n   Nor me, but Gebir and the Gadite host.\u201d\n      \u201cThe more I know, the more a wretch am I.\u201d\n   Groaned deep the troubled youth, \u201cstill thou proceed.\u201d\n      \u201cOh, seek not destined evils to divine,\n   Found out at last too soon! cease here the search,\n   \u2019Tis vain, \u2019tis impious, \u2019tis no gift of mine:\n   I will impart far better, will impart\n   What makes, when winter comes, the sun to rest\n   So soon on ocean\u2019s bed his paler brow,\n   And night to tarry so at spring\u2019s return.\n   And I will tell sometimes the fate of men\n   Who loosed from drooping neck the restless arm\n   Adventurous, ere long nights had satisfied\n   The sweet and honest avarice of love;\n   How whirlpools have absorbed them, storms o\u2019er-whelmed,\n   And how amid their struggles and their prayers\n   The big wave blackened o\u2019er the mouths supine:\n   Then, when my Tamar trembles at the tale,\n   Kissing his lips half open with surprise,\n   Glance from the gloomy story, and with glee\n   Light on the fairer fables of the gods.\n      Thus we may sport at leisure where we go\n   Where, loved by Neptune and the Naiad, loved\n   By pensive Dryad pale, and Oread\n   The spritely nymph whom constant Zephyr wooes,\n   Rhine rolls his beryl-coloured wave; than Rhine\n   What river from the mountains ever came\n   More stately! most the simple crown adorns\n   Of rushes and of willows interwined\n   With here and there a flower: his lofty brow\n   Shaded with vines and mistletoe and oak\n   He rears, and mystic bards his fame resound.\n   Or gliding opposite, th\u2019 Illyrian gulf\n   Will harbour us from ill.\u201d  While thus she spake,\n   She touched his eyelashes with libant lip,\n   And breathed ambrosial odours, o\u2019er his cheek\n   Celestial warmth suffusing: grief dispersed,\n   And strength and pleasure beamed upon his brow.\n   Then pointed she before him: first arose\n   To his astonished and delighted view\n   The sacred isle that shrines the queen of love.\n   It stood so near him, so acute each sense,\n   That not the symphony of lutes alone,\n   Or coo serene or billing strife of doves,\n   But murmurs, whispers, nay the very sighs\n   Which he himself had uttered once, he heard.\n   Next, but long after and far off, appear\n   The cloud-like cliffs and thousand towers of Crete,\n   And further to the right, the Cyclades:\n   Phoebus had raised and fixed them, to surround\n   His native Delos and a\u00ebrial fane.\n   He saw the land of Pelops, host of gods,\n   Saw the steep ridge where Corinth after stood\n   Beckoning the serious with the smiling arts\n   Into the sunbright bay; unborn the maid\n   That to assure the bent-up hand unskilled\n   Looked oft, but oftener fearing who might wake.\n   He heard the voice of rivers; he descried\n   Pindan Peneus and the slender nymphs\n   That tread his banks but fear the thundering tide;\n   These, and Amphrysos and Apidanus\n   And poplar-crowned Spercheus, and reclined\n   On restless rocks Enipeus, whore the winds\n   Scattered above the weeds his hoary hair.\n   Then, with Pirene and with Panope,\n   Evenus, troubled from paternal tears,\n   And last was Achelous, king of isles.\n   Zacynthus here, above rose Ithaca,\n   Like a blue bubble floating in the bay.\n   Far onward to the left a glimmering light\n   Glanced out oblique, nor vanished; he inquired\n   Whence that arose, his consort thus replied\u2014\n      \u201cBehold the vast Eridanus! ere long\n   We may again behold him and rejoice.\n   Of noble rivers none with mightier force\n   Rolls his unwearied torrent to the main.\u201d\n   And now Sicanian Etna rose to view:\n   Darkness with light more horrid she confounds,\n   Baffles the breath and dims the sight of day.\n   Tamar grew giddy with astonishment\n   And, looking up, held fast the bridal vest;\n   He heard the roar above him, heard the roar\n   Beneath, and felt it too, as he beheld,\n   Hurl, from earth\u2019s base, rocks, mountains, to the skies.\n      Meanwhile the nymph had fixed her eyes beyond,\n   As seeing somewhat, not intent on aught.\n   He, more amazed than ever, then exclaimed,\n      \u201cIs there another flaming isle? or this\n   Illusion, thus passed over unobserved?\u201d\n      \u201cLook yonder,\u201d cried the nymph, without reply,\n   \u201cLook yonder!\u201d  Tamar looked, and saw afar\n   Where the waves whitened on the desert shore.\n   When from amid grey ocean first he caught\n   The heights of Calp\u00e9, saddened he exclaimed,\n   \u201cRock of Iberia! fixed by Jove and hung\n   With all his thunder-hearing clouds, I hail\n   Thy ridges rough and cheerless! what though Spring\n   Nor kiss thy brow nor cool it with a flower,\n   Yet will I hail thee, hail thy flinty couch,\n   Where Valour and where Virtue have reposed.\u201d\n      The nymph said, sweetly smiling, \u201cFickle man\n   Would not be happy could he not regret!\n   And I confess how, looking back, a thought\n   Has touched and tuned or rather thrilled my heart,\n   Too soft for sorrow and too strong for joy:\n   Fond foolish maid, \u2019twas with mine own accord\n   It soothed me, shook me, melted, drowned, in tears.\n   But weep not thou; what cause hast thou to weep?\n   Wouldst thou thy country? wouldst those caves abhorred,\n   Dungeons and portals that exclude the day?\n   Gebir, though generous, just, humane, inhaled\n   Rank venom from these mansions.  Rest, O king\n   In Egypt thou! nor, Tamar! pant for sway.\n   With horrid chorus, Pain, Diseases, Death,\n   Stamp on the slippery pavement of the proud,\n   And ring their sounding emptiness through earth.\n   Possess the ocean, me, thyself, and peace.\u201d\n      And now the chariot of the Sun descends,\n   The waves rush hurried from his foaming steeds,\n   Smoke issues from their nostrils at the gate,\n   Which when they enter, with huge golden bar\n   Atlas and Calpe close across the sea.\n\n\n\nSEVENTH BOOK.\n\n\n      WHAT mortal first by adverse fate assailed,\n   Trampled by tyranny or scoffed by scorn,\n   Stung by remorse or wrung by poverty,\n   Bade with fond sigh his native laud farewell?\n   Wretched! but tenfold wretched who resolved\n   Against the waves to plunge th\u2019 expatriate keel\n   Deep with the richest harvest of his land!\n      Driven with that weak blast which Winter leaves\n   Closing his palace gates on Caucasus,\n   Oft hath a berry risen forth a shade;\n   From the same parent plant another lies\n   Deaf to the daily call of weary hind;\n   Zephyrs pass by and laugh at his distress.\n   By every lake\u2019s and every river\u2019s side\n   The nymphs and Naiads teach Equality;\n   In voices gently querulous they ask,\n   \u201cWho would with aching head and toiling arms\n   Bear the full pitcher to the stream far off?\n   Who would, of power intent on high emprise,\n   Deem less the praise to fill the vacant gulf\n   Then raise Charybdis upon Etna\u2019s brow?\u201d\n   Amid her darkest caverns most retired,\n   Nature calls forth her filial elements\n   To close around and cruel that monster _Void_:\n   Fire, springing fierce from his resplendent throne,\n   And Water, dashing the devoted wretch\n   Woundless and whole with iron-coloured mace,\n   Or whirling headlong in his war-belt\u2019s fold.\n   Mark well the lesson, man! and spare thy kind.\n   Go, from their midnight darkness wake the woods,\n   Woo the lone forest in her last retreat:\n   Many still bend their beauteous heads unblest\n   And sigh aloud for elemental man.\n   Through palaces and porches evil eyes\n   Light upon e\u2019en the wretched, who have fled\n   The house of bondage or the house of birth;\n   Suspicions, murmurs, treacheries, taunts, retorts,\n   Attend the brighter banners that invade;\n   And the first horn of hunter, pale with want,\n   Sounds to the chase, the second to the war.\n      The long awaited day at last arrived,\n   When, linked together by the seven-armed Nile,\n   Egypt with proud Iberia should unite.\n   Here the Tartesian, there the Gadite tents\n   Rang with impatient pleasure: here engaged\n   Woody Nebrissa\u2019s quiver-bearing crew,\n   Contending warm with amicable skill;\n   While they of Durius raced along the beach\n   And scattered mud and jeers on all behind.\n   The strength of B\u00e6tis too removed the helm\n   And stripped the corslet off, and staunched the foot\n   Against the mossy maple, while they tore\n   Their quivering lances from the hissing wound.\n   Others push forth the prows of their compeers,\n   And the wave, parted by the pouncing beak,\n   Swells up the sides, and closes far astern:\n   The silent oars now dip their level wings,\n   And weary with strong stroke the whitening wave.\n   Others, afraid of tardiness, return:\n   Now, entering the still harbour, every surge\n   Runs with a louder murmur up their keel,\n   And the slack cordage rattles round the mast.\n   Sleepless with pleasure and expiring fears\n   Had Gebir risen ere the break of dawn,\n   And o\u2019er the plains appointed for the feast\n   Hurried with ardent step: the swains admired\n   What so transversely could have swept the dew;\n   For never long one path had Gebir trod,\n   Nor long, unheeding man, one pace preserved.\n   Not thus Charoba: she despaired the day:\n   The day was present; true; yet she despaired.\n   In the too tender and once tortured heart\n   Doubts gather strength from habit, like disease;\n   Fears, like the needle verging to the pole,\n   Tremble and tremble into certainty.\n   How often, when her maids with merry voice\n   Called her, and told the sleepless queen \u2019twas morn,\n   How often would she feign some fresh delay,\n   And tell them (though they saw) that she arose.\n   Next to her chamber, closed by cedar doors\n   A bath of purest marble, purest wave,\n   On its fair surface bore its pavement high:\n   Arabian gold enchased the crystal roof,\n   With fluttering boys adorned and girls unrobed:\n   These, when you touch the quiet water, start\n   From their a\u00ebrial sunny arch, and pant\n   Entangled mid each other\u2019s flowery wreaths,\n   And each pursuing is in turn pursued.\n   Here came at last, as ever wont at morn,\n   Charoba: long she lingered at the brink,\n   Often she sighed, and, naked as she was,\n   Sat down, and leaning on the couch\u2019s edge,\n   On the soft inward pillow of her arm\n   Rested her burning cheek: she moved her eyes;\n   She blushed; and blushing plunged into the wave.\n      Now brazen chariots thunder through each street,\n   And neighing steeds paw proudly from delay.\n   While o\u2019er the palace breathes the dulcimer,\n   Lute, and aspiring harp, and lisping reed;\n   Loud rush the trumpets bursting through the throng\n   And urge the high-shouldered vulgar; now are heard\n   Curses and quarrels and constricted blows,\n   Threats and defiance and suburban war.\n   Hark! the reiterated clangour sounds!\n   Now murmurs, like the sea or like the storm,\n   Or like the flames on forests, move and mount\n   From rank to rank, and loud and louder roll,\n   Till all the people is one vast applause.\n   Yes, \u2019tis herself, Charoba\u2014now the strife\n   To see again a form so often seen!\n   Feel they some partial pang, some secret void,\n   Some doubt of feasting those fond eyes again?\n   Panting imbibe they that refreshing sight\n   To reproduce in hour of bitterness?\n   She goes, the king awaits her from the camp:\n   Him she descried, and trembled ere he reached\n   Her car, but shuddered paler at his voice.\n   So the pale silver at the festive board\n   Grows paler filled afresh and dewed with wine;\n   So seems the tenderest herbage of the spring\n   To whiten, bending from a balmy gale.\n   The beauteous queen alighting he received,\n   And sighed to loose her from his arms; she hung\n   A little longer on them through her fears:\n   Her maidens followed her, and one that watched,\n   One that had called her in the morn, observed\n   How virgin passion with unfueled flame\n   Burns into whiteness, while the blushing cheek\n   Imagination heats and Shame imbues.\n      Between both nations drawn in ranks they pass:\n   The priests, with linen ephods, linen robes,\n   Attend their steps, some follow, some precede,\n   Where clothed with purple intertwined with gold\n   Two lofty thrones commanded land and main.\n   Behind and near them numerous were the tents\n   As freckled clouds o\u2019erfloat our vernal skies,\n   Numerous as wander in warm moonlight nights,\n   Along Meander\u2019s or Cayster\u2019s marsh,\n   Swans pliant-necked and village storks revered.\n   Throughout each nation moved the hum confused,\n   Like that from myriad wings o\u2019er Scythian cups\n   Of frothy milk, concreted soon with blood.\n   Throughout the fields the savoury smoke ascends,\n   And boughs and branches shade the hides unbroached.\n   Some roll the flowery turf into a seat,\n   And others press the helmet\u2014now resounds\n   The signal\u2014queen and monarch mount the thrones.\n   The brazen clarion hoarsens: many leagues\n   Above them, many to the south, the heron\n   Rising with hurried croak and throat outstretched,\n   Ploughs up the silvering surface of her plain.\n      Tottering with age\u2019s zeal and mischief\u2019s haste\n   Now was discovered Dalica; she reached\n   The throne, she leant against the pedestal,\n   And now ascending stood before the king.\n   Prayers for his health and safety she preferred,\n   And o\u2019er his head and o\u2019er his feet she threw\n   Myrrh, nard, and cassia, from three golden urns;\n   His robe of native woof she next removed,\n   And round his shoulders drew the garb accursed,\n   And bowed her head and parted: soon the queen\n   Saw the blood mantle in his manly cheeks,\n   And feared, and faltering sought her lost replies,\n   And blessed the silence that she wished were broke.\n   Alas! unconscious maiden! night shall close,\n   And love and sovereignty and life dissolve,\n   And Egypt be one desert drenched in blood.\n      When thunder overhangs the fountain\u2019s head,\n   Losing its wonted freshness every stream\n   Grows turbid, grows with sickly warmth suffused:\n   Thus were the brave Iberians when they saw\n   The king of nations from his throne descend.\n   Scarcely, with pace uneven, knees unnerved,\n   Reached he the waters: in his troubled ear\n   They sounded murmuring drearily; they rose\n   Wild, in strange colours, to his parching eyes;\n   They seemed to rush around him, seemed to lift\n   From the receding earth his helpless feet.\n   He fell\u2014Charoba shrieked aloud\u2014she ran\u2014\n   Frantic with fears and fondness, mazed with woe,\n   Nothing but Gebir dying she beheld.\n   The turban that betrayed its golden charge\n   Within, the veil that down her shoulders hung,\n   All fallen at her feet! the furthest wave\n   Creeping with silent progress up the sand,\n   Glided through all, and raised their hollow folds.\n   In vain they bore him to the sea, in vain\n   Rubbed they his temples with the briny warmth:\n   He struggled from them, strong with agony,\n   He rose half up, he fell again, he cried\n   \u201cCharoba!  O Charoba!\u201d  She embraced\n   His neck, and raising on her knee one arm,\n   Sighed when it moved not, when it fell she shrieked,\n   And clasping loud both hands above her head,\n   She called on Gebir, called on earth, on heaven.\n      \u201cWho will believe me? what shall I protest?\n   How innocent, thus wretched!  God of gods,\n   Strike me\u2014who most offend thee most defy\u2014\n   Charoba most offends thee\u2014strike me, hurl\n   From this accursed land, this faithless throne.\n   O Dalica! see here the royal feast!\n   See here the gorgeous robe! you little thought\n   How have the demons dyed that robe with death.\n   Where are ye, dear fond parents! when ye heard\n   My feet in childhood pat the palace-floor,\n   Ye started forth and kissed away surprise:\n   Will ye now meet me! how, and where, and when?\n   And must I fill your bosom with my tears,\n   And, what I never have done, with your own!\n   Why have the gods thus punished me? what harm\n   Have ever I done them? have I profaned\n   Their temples, asked too little, or too much?\n   Proud if they granted, grieved if they withheld?\n   O mother! stand between your child and them!\n   Appease them, soothe them, soften their revenge,\n   Melt them to pity with maternal tears\u2014\n   Alas, but if you cannot! they themselves\n   Will then want pity rather than your child.\n   O Gebir! best of monarchs, best of men,\n   What realm hath ever thy firm even hand\n   Or lost by feebleness or held by force!\n   Behold thy cares and perils how repaid!\n   Behold the festive day, the nuptial hour!\u201d\n      Thus raved Charoba: horror, grief, amaze,\n   Pervaded all the host; all eyes were fixed;\n   All stricken motionless and mute: the feast\n   Was like the feast of Cepheus, when the sword\n   Of Phineus, white with wonder, shook restrained,\n   And the hilt rattled in his marble hand.\n   She heard not, saw not, every sense was gone;\n   One passion banished all; dominion, praise,\n   The world itself was nothing.  Senseless man!\n   What would thy fancy figure now from worlds?\n   There is no world to those that grieve and love.\n   She hung upon his bosom, pressed his lips,\n   Breathed, and would feign it his that she resorbed;\n   She chafed the feathery softness of his veins,\n   That swelled out black, like tendrils round their vase\n   After libation: lo! he moves! he groans!\n   He seems to struggle from the grasp of death.\n   Charoba shrieked and fell away, her hand\n   Still clasping his, a sudden blush o\u2019erspread\n   Her pallid humid cheek, and disappeared.\n   \u2019Twas not the blush of shame\u2014what shame has woe?\u2014\n   \u2019Twas not the genuine ray of hope, it flashed\n   With shuddering glimmer through unscattered clouds,\n   It flashed from passions rapidly opposed.\n      Never so eager, when the world was waves,\n   Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried\n   (Innocent this temptation!) to recall\n   With folded vest and casting arm the dove;\n   Never so fearful, when amid the vines\n   Rattled the hail, and when the light of heaven\n   Closed, since the wreck of Nature, first eclipsed,\n   As she was eager for his life\u2019s return,\n   As she was fearful how his groans might end.\n   They ended: cold and languid calm succeeds;\n   His eyes have lost their lustre, but his voice\n   Is not unheard, though short: he spake these words:\n      \u201cAnd weepest thou, Charoba! shedding tears\n   More precious than the jewels that surround\n   The neck of kings entombed! then weep, fair queen,\n   At once thy pity and my pangs assuage.\n   Ah! what is grandeur, glory\u2014they are past!\n   When nothing else, not life itself, remains,\n   Still the fond mourner may be called our own.\n   Should I complain of Fortune? how she errs,\n   Scattering her bounty upon barren ground,\n   Slow to allay the lingering thirst of toil?\n   Fortune, \u2019tis true, may err, may hesitate,\n   Death follows close nor hesitates nor errs.\n   I feel the stroke!  I die!\u201d  He would extend\n   His dying arm; it fell upon his breast:\n   Cold sweat and shivering ran o\u2019er every limb,\n   His eyes grew stiff, he struggled and expired.\n\n\n\n\nCOUNT JULIAN.\n\n\nCHARACTERS.\n\n\nCOUNT JULIAN.\n\nRODERIGO, _King of Spain_.\n\nOPAS, _Metropolitan of Seville_.\n\nSISABERT, _betrothed to_ COVILLA.\n\nMUZA, _Prince of Mauritania_.\n\nABDALAZIS, _Son of_ MUZA.\n\nTARIK, _Moorish Chieftain_.\n\nCOVILLA, _Daughter of_ JULIAN.\n\nEGILONA, _Wife of_ RODERIGO.\n\nHERNANDO, OSMA, RAMIRO, &c. } _Officers_.\n\n\n\nFIRST ACT: FIRST SCENE.\n\n\n                            _Camp of_ JULIAN.\n\n                              OPAS.  JULIAN.\n\n   _Opas_.  See her, Count Julian: if thou lovest God,\n   See thy lost child.\n\n   _Jul._  I have avenged me, Opas,\n   More than enough: I only sought to hurl\n   The brands of war on one detested head,\n   And die upon his ruin.  O my country!\n   O lost to honour, to thyself, to me,\n   Why on barbarian hands devolves thy cause,\n   Spoilers, blasphemers!\n\n   _Opas_.  Is it thus, Don Julian,\n   When thy own offspring, that beloved child,\n   For whom alone these very acts were done\n   By them and thee, when thy Covilla stands\n   An outcast and a suppliant at thy gate,\n   Why that still stubborn agony of soul,\n   Those struggles with the bars thyself imposed?\n   Is she not thine? not dear to thee as ever?\n\n   _Jul._  Father of mercies! shew me none, whene\u2019er\n   The wrongs she suffers cease to wring my heart,\n   Or I seek solace ever, but in death.\n\n   _Opas_.  What wilt thou do then, too unhappy man?\n\n   _Jul._  What have I done already?  All my peace\n   Has vanished; my fair fame in after-times\n   Will wear an alien and uncomely form,\n   Seen o\u2019er the cities I have laid in dust,\n   Countrymen slaughtered, friends abjured!\n\n   _Opas_.  And faith?\n\n   _Jul._  Alone now left me, filling up in part\n   The narrow and waste intervals of grief:\n   It promises that I shall see again\n   My own lost child.\n\n   _Opas_.  Yes, at this very hour.\n\n   _Jul._  Till I have met the tyrant face to face,\n   And gained a conquest greater than the last;\n   Till he no longer rules one rood of Spain,\n   And not one Spaniard, not one enemy,\n   The least relenting, flags upon his flight;\n   Till we are equal in the eyes of men,\n   The humblest and most wretched of our kind,\n   No peace for me, no comfort, no\u2014no child!\n\n   _Opas_.  No pity for the thousands fatherless,\n   The thousands childless like thyself, nay more,\n   The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless\u2014\n   Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so,\n   Who now perhaps, round their first winter fire,\n   Banish, to talk of thee, the tales of old,\n   Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown:\n   Precious be these, and sacred in thy sight,\n   Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind.\n   If only warlike spirits were evoked\n   By the war-demon, I would not complain,\n   Or dissolute and discontented men;\n   But wherefore hurry down into the square\n   The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race,\n   Who would not injure us, and cannot serve;\n   Who, from their short and measured slumber risen,\n   In the faint sunshine of their balconies,\n   With a half-legend of a martyrdom\n   And some weak wine and withered grapes before them,\n   Note by their foot the wheel of melody\n   That catches and rolls on the sabbath dance.\n   To drag the steady prop from failing age,\n   Break the young stem that fondness twines around,\n   Widen the solitude of lonely sighs,\n   And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day\n   The ruins and the phantoms that replied,\n   Ne\u2019er be it thine.\n\n   _Jul._  Arise, and save me, Spain!\n\n\n\nFIRST ACT: SECOND SCENE.\n\n\n                              MUZA _enters_.\n\n   _Muza_.  Infidel chief, thou tarriest here too long,\n   And art perhaps repining at the days\n   Of nine continued victories, o\u2019er men\n   Dear to thy soul, tho\u2019 reprobate and base.\n   Away!\n\n                                                            [_He retires_.\n\n   _Jul._  I follow.  Could my bitterest foes\n   Hear this! ye Spaniards, this! which I foreknew\n   And yet encountered; could they see your Julian\n   Receiving orders from and answering\n   These desperate and heaven-abandoned slaves,\n   They might perceive some few external pangs,\n   Some glimpses of the hell wherein I move,\n   Who never have been fathers.\n\n   _Opas_.  These are they\n   To whom brave Spaniards must refer their wrongs!\n\n   _Jul._  Muza, that cruel and suspicious chief,\n   Distrusts his friends more than his enemies,\n   Me more than either; fraud he loves and fears,\n   And watches her still footfall day and night.\n\n   _Opas_.  O Julian! such a refuge! such a race!\n\n   _Jul._  Calamities like mine alone implore.\n   No virtues have redeemed them from their bonds;\n   Wily ferocity, keen idleness,\n   And the close cringes of ill-whispering want,\n   Educate them to plunder and obey;\n   Active to serve him best whom most they fear,\n   They show no mercy to the merciful,\n   And racks alone remind them of the name.\n\n   _Opas_.  O everlasting curse for Spain and thee!\n\n   _Jul._  Spain should have vindicated then her wrongs\n   In mine, a Spaniard\u2019s and a soldier\u2019s wrongs.\n\n   _Opas_.  Julian, are thine the only wrongs on earth?\n   And shall each Spaniard rather vindicate\n   Thine than his own? is there no Judge of all?\n   Shall mortal hand seize with impunity\n   The sword of vengeance, from the armoury\n   Of the Most High? easy to wield, and starred\n   With glory it appears: but all the host\n   Of the archangels, should they strive at once,\n   Would never close again its widening blade.\n\n   _Jul._  He who provokes it hath so much to rue.\n   Where\u2019er he turn, whether to earth or heaven,\n   He finds an enemy, or raises one.\n\n   _Opas_.  I never yet have seen where long success\n   Hath followed him who warred upon his king.\n\n   _Jul._  Because the virtue that inflicts the stroke\n   Dies with him, and the rank ignoble heads\n   Of plundering faction soon unite again,\n   And prince-protected share the spoil at rest.\n\n\n\nFIRST ACT: THIRD SCENE.\n\n\n               _Guard announces a herald_.  OPAS _departs_.\n\n   _Guard_.  A messenger of peace is at the gate,\n   My lord, safe access, private audience,\n   And free return, he claims.\n\n   _Jul._  Conduct him in.\n\n                      RODERIGO _enters as a herald_.\n\n   A messenger of peace! audacious man!\n   In what attire appearest thou? a herald\u2019s?\n   Under no garb can such a wretch be safe.\n\n   _Rod._  Thy violence and fancied wrongs I know,\n   And what thy sacrilegious hands would do,\n   O traitor and apostate!\n\n   _Jul._  What they would\n   They cannot: thee of kingdom and of life\n   \u2019Tis easy to despoil, thyself the traitor,\n   Thyself the violator of allegiance.\n   Oh would all-righteous Heaven they could restore\n   The joy of innocence, the calm of age,\n   The probity of manhood, pride of arms,\n   And confidence of honour! the august\n   And holy laws trampled beneath thy feet.\n   And Spain!  O parent, I have lost thee too!\n   Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days,\n   Me, thine avenger.  I have fought her foe,\n   Roderigo, I have gloried in her sons,\n   Sublime in hardihood and piety:\n   Her strength was mine: I, sailing by her cliffs,\n   By promontory after promontory,\n   Opening like flags along some castle-towers,\n   Have sworn before the cross upon our mast\n   Ne\u2019er shall invader wave his standard there.\n\n   _Rod._  Yet there thou plantest it, false man, thyself.\n\n   _Jul._  Accursed he who makes me this reproach,\n   And made it just!  Had I been happy still,\n   I had been blameless: I had died with glory\n   Upon the walls of Ceuta.\n\n   _Rod._  Which thy treason\n   Surrendered to the Infidel.\n\n   _Jul._  \u2019Tis hard\n   And base to live beneath a conqueror:\n   Yet, amid all this grief and infamy,\n   \u2019Twere something to have rushed upon the ranks\n   In their advance; \u2019twere something to have stood\n   Defeat, discomfiture; and, when around\n   No beacon blazes, no far axle groans\n   Through the wide plain, no sound of sustenance\n   Or succour soothes the still-believing ear,\n   To fight upon the last dismantled tower,\n   And yield to valour, if we yield at all.\n   But rather should my neck lie trampled down\n   By every Saracen and Moor on earth,\n   Than my own country see her laws o\u2019erturned\n   By those who should protect them: Sir, no prince\n   Shall ruin Spain; and, least of all, her own.\n   Is any just or glorious act in view,\n   Your oaths forbid it: is your avarice,\n   Or, if there be such, any viler passion,\n   To have its giddy range, and to be gorged,\n   It rises over all your sacraments,\n   A hooded mystery, holier than they all.\n\n   _Rod._  Hear me, Don Julian; I have heard thy wrath\n   Who am thy king, nor heard man\u2019s wrath before.\n\n   _Jul._  Thou shalt hear mine, for thou art not my king.\n\n   _Rod._  Knowest thou not the altered face of war?\n   Xeres is ours; from every region round\n   True loyal Spaniards throng into our camp:\n   Nay, thy own friends and thy own family,\n   From the remotest provinces, advance\n   To crush rebellion: Sisabert is come,\n   Disclaiming thee and thine; the Asturian hills\n   Opposed to him their icy chains in vain:\n   But never wilt thou see him, never more,\n   Unless in adverse war, and deadly hate.\n\n   _Jul._  So lost to me!  So generous, so deceived!\n   I grieve to hear it.\n\n   _Rod._  Come, I offer grace,\n   Honour, dominion: send away these slaves,\n   Or leave them to our sword, and all beyond\n   The distant Ebro to the towns of France\n   Shall bless thy name, and bend before thy throne.\n   I will myself accompany thee, I,\n   The king, will hail thee brother.\n\n   _Jul._  Ne\u2019er shalt thou\n   Henceforth be king: the nation in thy name\n   May issue edicts, champions may command\n   The vassal multitudes of marshalled war,\n   And the fierce charger shrink before the shouts,\n   Lowered as if earth had opened at his feet,\n   While thy mailed semblance rises toward the ranks,\n   But God alone sees thee.\n\n   _Rod._  What hopest thou?\n   To conquer Spain, and rule a ravaged land?\n   To compass me around, to murder me?\n\n   _Jul._  No, Don Roderigo: swear thou, in the fight\n   That thou wilt meet me, hand to hand, alone,\n   That, if I ever save thee from a foe\u2014\n\n   _Rod._  I swear what honour asks\u2014first, to Covilla\n   Do thou present my crown and dignity.\n\n   _Jul._  Darest thou offer any price for shame?\n\n   _Rod._  Love and repentance.\n\n   _Jul._  Egilona lives:\n   And were she buried with her ancestors,\n   Covilla should not be the gaze of men,\n   Should not, despoiled of honour, rule the free.\n\n   _Rod._  Stern man! her virtues well deserve the throne.\n\n   _Jul._  And Egilona\u2014what hath she deserved,\n   The good, the lovely?\n\n   _Rod._  But the realm in vain\n   Hoped a succession.\n\n   _Jul._  Thou hast torn away\n   The roots of royalty.\n\n   _Rod._  For her, for thee.\n\n   _Jul._  Blind insolence! base insincerity!\n   Power and renown no mortal ever shared,\n   Who could retain or grasp them to himself:\n   And, for Covilla? patience! peace! for her?\n   She call upon her God, and outrage Him\n   At His own altar! she repeat the vows\n   She violates in repeating! who abhors\n   Thee and thy crimes, and wants no crown of thine.\n   Force may compel the abhorrent soul, or want\n   Lash and pursue it to the public ways;\n   Virtue looks back and weeps, and may return\n   To these, but never near the abandoned one\n   Who drags religion to adultery\u2019s feet,\n   And rears the altar higher for her sake.\n\n   _Rod._  Have then the Saracens possessed thee quite,\n   And wilt thou never yield me thy consent?\n\n   _Jul._  Never.\n\n   _Rod._  So deep in guilt, in treachery!\n   Forced to acknowledge it! forced to avow\n   The traitor!\n\n   _Jul._  Not to thee, who reignest not,\n   But to a country ever dear to me,\n   And dearer now than ever: what we love\n   Is loveliest in departure!  One I thought,\n   As every father thinks, the best of all,\n   Graceful, and mild, and sensible, and chaste:\n   Now all these qualities of form and soul\n   Fade from before me, nor on anyone\n   Can I repose, or be consoled by any.\n   And yet in this torn heart I love her more\n   Than I could love her when I dwelt on each,\n   Or clasped them all united, and thanked God,\n   Without a wish beyond.\u2014Away, thou fiend!\n   O ignominy, last and worst of all!\n   I weep before thee\u2014like a child\u2014like mine\u2014\n   And tell my woes, fount of them all, to thee!\n\n\n\nFIRST ACT: FOURTH SCENE.\n\n\n                           ABDALAZIS _enters_.\n\n   _Abd._  Julian, to thee, the terror of the faithless,\n   I bring my father\u2019s order, to prepare\n   For the bright day that crowns thy brave exploits:\n   Our enemy is at the very gate!\n   And art thou here, with women in thy train,\n   Crouching to gain admittance to their lord,\n   And mourning the unkindness of delay!\n\n   _Jul._  [_much agitated_, _goes towards the door_, _and returns_.]\n   I am prepared: Prince, judge not hastily.\n\n   _Abd._  Whether I should not promise all they ask,\n   I too could hesitate, though earlier taught\n   The duty to obey, and should rejoice\n   To shelter in the universal storm\n   A frame so delicate, so full of fears,\n   So little used to outrage and to arms,\n   As one of these; so humble, so uncheered\n   At the gay pomp that smoothes the track of war.\n   When she beheld me from afar dismount,\n   And heard my trumpet, she alone drew back,\n   And, as though doubtful of the help she seeks,\n   Shuddered to see the jewels on my brow,\n   And turned her eyes away, and wept aloud.\n   The other stood awhile, and then advanced:\n   I would have spoken, but she waved her hand\n   And said, \u201cProceed, protect us, and avenge,\n   And be thou worthier of the crown thou wearest.\u201d\n   Hopeful and happy is indeed our cause,\n   When the most timid of the lovely hail\n   Stranger and foe\u2014\n\n   _Rod._  [_unnoticed by_ ABDALAZIS.]\n   And shrink but to advance.\n\n   _Abd._  Thou tremblest? whence, O Julian! whence this change?\n   Thou lovest still thy country.\n\n   _Jul._  Abdalazis!\n   All men with human feelings love their country.\n   Not the highborn or wealthy man alone,\n   Who looks upon his children, each one led\n   By its gay handmaid, from the high alcove,\n   And hears them once a day: not only he\n   Who hath forgotten, when his guest inquires\n   The name of some far village all his own;\n   Whose rivers bound the province, and whose hills\n   Touch the last cloud upon the level sky:\n   No; better men still better love their country.\n   \u2019Tis the old mansion of their earliest friends,\n   The chapel of their first and best devotions;\n   When violence or perfidy invades,\n   Or when unworthy lords hold wassail there,\n   And wiser heads are drooping round its moats,\n   At last they fix their steady and stiff eye\n   There, there alone\u2014stand while the trumpet blows,\n   And view the hostile flames above its towers\n   Spire, with a bitter and severe delight.\n\n   _Abd._  [taking his hand.]\n   Thou feelest what thou speakest, and thy Spain\n   Will ne\u2019er be sheltered from her fate by thee.\n   We, whom the prophet sends o\u2019er many lands,\n   Love none above another; Heaven assigns\n   Their fields and harvests to our valiant swords,\n   And \u2019tis enough\u2014we love while we enjoy.\n   Whence is the man in that fantastic guise?\n   Suppliant? or herald? he who stalks about,\n   And once was even seated while we spoke:\n   For never came he with us o\u2019er the sea.\n\n   _Jul._  He comes as herald.\n\n   _Rod._  Thou shalt know full soon,\n   Insulting Moor.\n\n   _Abd._  He cannot bear the grief\n   His country suffers; I will pardon him.\n   He lost his courage first, and then his mind;\n   His courage rushes back, his mind still wanders.\n   The guest of heaven was piteous to these men,\n   And princes stoop to feed them in their courts.\n\n\n\nFIRST ACT: FIFTH SCENE.\n\n\nRODERIGO _is going out when_ MUZA _enters with_ EGILONA; RODERIGO _starts\nback_.\n\n   _Muza_ [_sternly to_ EGILONA.]\n   Enter, since \u2019tis the custom in this land.\n\n   _Egi._  [_passing_ MUZA _disdainfully_, _points to_ ABDALAZIS, _and\n   says to_ JULIAN.]\n   Is this our future monarch, or art thou?\n\n   _Jul._  \u2019Tis Abdalazis, son of Muza, prince\n   Commanding Africa, from Abyla\n   To where Tunisian pilots bend the eye\n   O\u2019er ruined temples in the glassy wave.\n   Till quiet times and ancient laws return,\n   He comes to govern here.\n\n   _Rod._  To-morrow\u2019s dawn\n   Proves that.\n\n   _Muza_.  What art thou?\n\n   _Rod._  [_drawing his sword_.]  King.\n\n   _Abd._  Amazement!\n\n   _Muza_.  Treason!\n\n   _Egi._  O horror!\n\n   _Muza_.  Seize him.\n\n   _Egi._  Spare him! fly to me!\n\n   _Jul._  Urge me not to protect a guest, a herald\u2014\n   The blasts of war roar over him unfelt.\n\n   _Egi._  Ah fly, unhappy!\n\n   _Rod._  Fly! no, Egilona\u2014\n   Dost thou forgive me? dost thou love me? still?\n\n   _Egi._  I hate, abominate, abhor thee\u2014go,\n   Or my own vengeance\u2014\n\n   _Rod._  [_taking_ JULIAN\u2019S _hand_, _and inviting him to attack_ MUZA\n   _and_ ABDALAZIS.]\n   Julian!\n\n   _Jul._  Hence, or die.\n\n\n\nSECOND ACT: FIRST SCENE.\n\n\n                            _Camp of_ JULIAN.\n\n                          JULIAN _and_ COVILLA.\n\n   _Jul._  Obdurate!  I am not as I appear.\n   Weep, my beloved child, Covilla, weep\n   Into my bosom; every drop be mine\n   Of this most bitter soul-empoisoning cup:\n   Into no other bosom than thy father\u2019s\n   Canst thou, or wouldst thou, pour it.\n\n   _Cov._  Cease, my lord,\n   My father, angel of my youth, when all\n   Was innocence and peace.\n\n   _Jul._  Arise, my love,\n   Look up to heaven\u2014where else are souls like thine!\n   Mingle in sweet communion with its children,\n   Trust in its providence, its retribution,\n   And I will cease to mourn; for, O my child,\n   These tears corrode, but thine assuage the heart.\n\n   _Cov._  And never shall I see my mother too,\n   My own, my blessed mother!\n\n   _Jul._  Thou shalt see\n   Her and thy brothers.\n\n   _Cov._  No!  I cannot look\n   On them, I cannot meet their lovely eyes,\n   I cannot lift mine up from under theirs.\n   We all were children when they went away;\n   They now have fought hard battles, and are men,\n   And camps and kings they know, and woes and crimes.\n   Sir, will they never venture from the walls\n   Into the plain?  Remember, they are young,\n   Hardy and emulous and hazardous;\n   And who is left to guard them in the town?\n\n   _Jul._  Peace is throughout the land: the various tribes\n   Of that vast region sink at once to rest,\n   Like one wide wood when every wind lies hushed.\n\n   _Cov._  And war, in all its fury, roams o\u2019er Spain.\n\n   _Jul._  Alas! and will for ages: crimes are loose\n   At which ensanguined War stands shuddering;\n   And calls for vengeance from the powers above,\n   Impatient of inflicting it himself.\n   Nature in these new horrors is aghast\n   At her own progeny, and knows them not.\n   I am the minister of wrath; the hands\n   That tremble at me, shall applaud me too,\n   And seal their condemnation.\n\n   _Cov._  O kind father,\n   Pursue the guilty, but remember Spain.\n\n   _Jul._  Child, thou wert in thy nursery short time since,\n   And latterly hast passed the vacant hour\n   Where the familiar voice of history\n   Is hardly known, however nigh, attuned\n   In softer accents to the sickened ear;\n   But thou hast heard, for nurses tell these tales,\n   Whether I drew my sword for Witiza\n   Abandoned by the people he betrayed,\n   Though brother to the woman who of all\n   Was ever dearest to this broken heart,\n   Till thou, my daughter, wert a prey to grief,\n   And a brave country brooked the wrongs I bore.\n   For I had seen Rusilla guide the steps\n   Of her Theodofred, when burning brass\n   Plunged its fierce fang into the founts of light,\n   And Witiza\u2019s the guilt! when, bent with age,\n   He knew the voice again, and told the name,\n   Of those whose proffered fortunes had been laid\n   Before his throne, while happiness was there,\n   And strained the sightless nerve tow\u2019rd where they stood\n   At the forced memory of the very oaths\n   He heard renewed from each, but heard afar,\n   For they were loud, and him the throng spurned off.\n\n   _Cov._  Who were all these?\n\n   _Jul._  All who are seen to-day\n   On prancing steeds richly caparisoned\n   In loyal acclamation round Roderigo;\n   Their sons beside them, loving one another\n   Unfeignedly, through joy, while they themselves\n   In mutual homage mutual scorn suppress.\n   Their very walls and roofs are welcoming\n   The king\u2019s approach, their storied tapestry\n   Swells its rich arch for him triumphantly\n   At every clarion blowing from below.\n\n   _Cov._  Such wicked men will never leave his side.\n\n   _Jul._  For they are insects which see nought beyond\n   Where they now crawl; whose changes are complete,\n   Unless of habitation.\n\n   _Cov._  Whither go\n   Creatures unfit for better, or for worse?\n\n   _Jul._  Some to the grave\u2014where peace be with them! some\n   Across the Pyrenean mountains far,\n   Into the plains of France; suspicion there\n   Will hang on every step from rich and poor,\n   Grey quickly-glancing eyes will wrinkle round,\n   And courtesy will watch them day and night.\n   Shameless they are, yet will they blush, amid\n   A nation that ne\u2019er blushes: some will drag\n   The captive\u2019s chain, repair the shattered bark,\n   Or heave it from a quicksand to the shore,\n   Among the marbles of the Libyan coast;\n   Teach patience to the lion in his cage,\n   And, by the order of a higher slave,\n   Hold to the elephant their scanty fare,\n   To please the children while the parent sleeps.\n\n   _Cov._  Spaniards? must they, dear father, lead such lives?\n\n   _Jul._  All are not Spaniards who draw breath in Spain;\n   Those are, who live for her, who die for her,\n   Who love her glory and lament her fall.\n   Oh, may I too\u2014\n\n   _Cov._  But peacefully, and late,\n   Live and die here!\n\n   _Jul._  I have, alas! myself\n   Laid waste the hopes where my fond fancy strayed,\n   And view their ruins with unaltered eyes.\n\n   _Cov._  My mother will at last return to thee.\n   Might I once more, but\u2014could I now behold her,\n   Tell her\u2014ah me! what was my rash desire?\n   No, never tell her these inhuman things,\n   For they would waste her tender heart away\n   As they waste mine; or tell when I have died,\n   Only to show her that her every care\n   Could not have saved, could not have comforted.\n   That she herself, clasping me once again\n   To her sad breast, had said, Covilla! go,\n   Go, hide them in the bosom of thy God!\n   Sweet mother, that far-distant voice I hear,\n   And passing out of youth and out of life,\n   I would not turn at last, and disobey.\n\n\n\nSECOND ACT: SECOND SCENE.\n\n\n                            SISABERT _enters_.\n\n   _Sis._  Uncle, and is it true, say, can it be,\n   That thou art leader of these faithless Moors?\n   That thou impeachest thy own daughter\u2019s fame\n   Through the whole land, to seize upon the throne\n   By the permission of those recreant slaves?\n   What shall I call thee? art thou\u2014speak, Count Julian\u2014\n   A father, or a soldier, or a man?\n\n   _Jul._  All\u2014or this day had never seen me here.\n\n   _Sis._  O falsehood! worse than woman\u2019s!\n\n   _Cov._  Once, my cousin,\n   Far gentler words were uttered from your lips.\n   If you loved me, you loved my father first,\n   More justly and more steadily, ere love\n   Was passion and illusion and deceit.\n\n   _Sis._  I boast not that I never was deceived,\n   Covilla, which beyond all boasts were base,\n   Nor that I never loved; let this be thine.\n   Illusions! just to stop us, not delay;\n   Amuse, not occupy!  Too true! when love\n   Scatters its brilliant foam, and passes on\n   To some fresh object in its natural course,\n   Widely and openly and wanderingly,\n   \u2019Tis better! narrow it, and it pours its gloom\n   In one fierce cataract that stuns the soul.\n   Ye hate the wretch ye make so, while ye choose\n   Whoever knows you best and shuns you most.\n\n   _Cov._  Shun me then: be beloved, more and more.\n   Honour the hand that showed you honour first,\n   Love\u2014O my father! speak, proceed, persuade,\n   Thy voice alone can mutter it\u2014another\u2014\n\n   _Sis._  Ah lost Covilla! can a thirst of power\n   Alter thy heart thus to abandon mine,\n   And change my very nature at one blow?\n\n   _Cov._  I told you, dearest Sisabert, \u2019twas vain\n   To urge me more, to question, or confute.\n\n   _Sis._  I know it, for another wears the crown\n   Of Witiza my father; who succeeds\n   To king Roderigo will succeed to me.\n   Yet thy cold perfidy still calls me dear,\n   And o\u2019er my aching temples breathes one gale\n   Of days departed to return no more.\n\n   _Jul._  Young man, avenge our cause.\n\n   _Sis._  What cause avenge?\n\n   _Cov._  If I was ever dear to you, hear me,\n   Not vengeance; Heaven will give that signal soon.\n   O Sisabert, the pangs I have endured\n   On your long absence\u2014\n\n   _Sis._  Will be now consoled.\n   Thy father comes to mount my father\u2019s throne;\n   But though I would not a usurper king,\n   I prize his valour and defend his crown:\n   No stranger and no traitor rules o\u2019er me,\n   Or unchastised inveigles humbled Spain.\n   Covilla, gavest thou no promises?\n   Nor thou, Don Julian?  Seek not to reply\u2014\n   Too well I know, too justly I despise,\n   Thy false excuse, thy coward effrontery;\n   Yes, when thou gavest them across the sea,\n   An enemy wert thou to Mahomet,\n   And no appellant to his faith or leagues.\n\n   _Jul._  \u2019Tis well: a soldier hears throughout in silence.\n   I urge no answer: to those words, I fear,\n   Thy heart with sharp compunction will reply.\n\n   _Sis._  [_to_ COVILLA.]  Then I demand of thee before thou reign,\n   Answer me\u2014while I fought against the Frank\n   Who dared to smite thee? blazoned in the court,\n   Not trailed through darkness, were our nuptial bands;\n   No: Egilona joined our hands herself,\n   The peers applauded, and the king approved.\n\n   _Jul._  Hast thou yet seen that king since thy return?\n\n   _Cov._  Father!  O father!\n\n   _Sis._  I will not implore\n   Of him or thee what I have lost for ever.\n   These were not when we parted thy alarms;\n   Far other, and far worthier of thy heart\n   Were they; which Sisabert could banish then.\n   Fear me not now, Covilla! thou hast changed\u2014\n   I am changed too\u2014I lived but where thou livedst,\n   My very life was portioned off from thine.\n   Upon the surface of thy happiness\n   Day after day I gazed, I doted\u2014there\n   Was all I had, was all I coveted;\n   So pure, serene, and boundless it appeared:\n   Yet, for we told each other every thought,\n   Thou knowest well, if thou rememberest,\n   At times I feared; as though some demon sent\n   Suspicion without form into the world,\n   To whisper unimaginable things.\n   Then thy fond arguing banished all but hope,\n   Each wish, and every feeling, was with thine,\n   Till I partook thy nature, and became\n   Credulous, and incredulous, like thee.\n   We, who have met so altered, meet no more.\n   Mountains and seas! ye are not separation:\n   Death! thou dividest, but unitest too,\n   In everlasting peace and faith sincere.\n   Confiding love! where is thy resting-place?\n   Where is thy truth, Covilla? where!\u2014Go, go,\n   I should adore thee and believe thee still.\n\n                                                                  [_Goes_.\n\n   _Cov._  O Heaven! support me, or desert me quite,\n   And leave me lifeless this too trying hour!\n   He thinks me faithless.\n\n   _Jul._  He must think thee so.\n\n   _Cov._  Oh, tell him, tell him all, when I am dead\u2014\n   He will die too, and we shall meet again.\n   He will know all when these sad eyes are closed.\n   Ah, cannot he before? must I appear\n   The vilest?\u2014O just Heaven! can it be thus?\n   I am\u2014all earth resounds it\u2014lost, despised,\n   Anguish and shame unutterable seize me.\n   \u2019Tis palpable, no phantom, no delusion,\n   No dream that wakens with o\u2019erwhelming horror:\n   Spaniard and Moor fight on this ground alone,\n   And tear the arrow from my bleeding breast\n   To pierce my father\u2019s, for alike they fear.\n\n   _Jul._  Invulnerable, unassailable\n   Are we, alone perhaps of human kind,\n   Nor life allures us more, nor death alarms.\n\n   _Cov._  Fallen, unpitied, unbelieved, unheard!\n   I should have died long earlier: gracious God!\n   Desert me to my sufferings, but sustain\n   My faith in Thee!  O hide me from the world,\n   And from thyself, my father, from thy fondness,\n   That opened in this wilderness of woe\n   A source of tears\u2014it else had burst my heart,\n   Setting me free for ever: then perhaps\n   A cruel war had not divided Spain,\n   Had not o\u2019erturned her cities and her altars,\n   Had not endangered thee!  Oh, haste afar\n   Ere the last dreadful conflict that decides\n   Whether we live beneath a foreign sway\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  Or under him whose tyranny brought down\n   The curse upon his people.  O child! child!\n   Urge me no further, talk not of the war,\n   Remember not our country.\n\n   _Cov._  Not remember!\n   What have the wretched else for consolation!\n   What else have they who pining feed their woe?\n   Can I, or should I, drive from memory\n   All that was dear and sacred, all the joys\n   Of innocence and peace? when no debate\n   Was in the convent, but what hymn, whose voice,\n   To whom among the blessed it arose,\n   Swelling so sweet; when rang the vesper-bell\n   And every finger ceased from the guitar,\n   And every tongue was silent through our land;\n   When, from remotest earth, friends met again\n   Hung on each other\u2019s neck, and but embraced,\n   So sacred, still, and peaceful was the hour.\n   Now, in what climate of the wasted world,\n   Not unmolested long by the profane,\n   Can I pour forth in secrecy to God\n   My prayers and my repentance? where besides\n   Is the last solace of the parting soul?\n   Friends, brethren, parents\u2014dear indeed, too dear\n   Are they, but somewhat still the heart requires,\n   That it may leave them lighter, and more blest.\n\n   _Jul._  Wide are the regions of our far-famed land:\n   Thou shalt arrive at her remotest bounds,\n   See her best people, choose some holiest house;\n   Whether where Castro from surrounding vines\n   Hears the hoarse ocean roar among his caves,\n   And, through the fissure in the green churchyard,\n   The wind wail loud the calmest summer day;\n   Or where Santona leans against the hill,\n   Hidden from sea and land by groves and bowers.\n\n   _Cov._  Oh! for one moment in those pleasant scenes\n   Thou placest me, and lighter air I breathe:\n   Why could I not have rested, and heard on!\n   My voice dissolves the vision quite away,\n   Outcast from virtue, and from nature too!\n\n   _Jul._  Nature and virtue! they shall perish first.\n   God destined them for thee, and thee for them,\n   Inseparably and eternally!\n   The wisest and the best will prize thee most,\n   And solitudes and cities will contend\n   Which shall receive thee kindliest\u2014sigh not so;\n   Violence and fraud will never penetrate\n   Where piety and poverty retire,\n   Intractable to them, and valueless,\n   And looked at idly, like the face of heaven.\n   If strength be wanted for security,\n   Mountains the guard, forbidding all approach\n   With iron-pointed and uplifted gates,\n   Thou wilt be welcome too in Aguilar,\n   Impenetrable, marble-turreted,\n   Surveying from aloft the limpid ford,\n   The massive fane, the sylvan avenue;\n   Whose hospitality I proved myself,\n   A willing leader in no impious war\n   When fame and freedom urged me; or mayst dwell\n   In Reynosa\u2019s dry and thriftless dale,\n   Unharvested beneath October moons,\n   Among those frank and cordial villagers.\n   They never saw us, and, poor simple souls!\n   So little know they whom they call the great,\n   Would pity one another less than us,\n   In injury, disaster, or distress.\n\n   _Cov._  But they would ask each other whence our grief,\n   That they might pity.\n\n   _Jul._  Rest then just beyond,\n   In the secluded scenes where Ebro springs\n   And drives not from his fount the fallen leaf,\n   So motionless and tranquil its repose.\n\n   _Cov._  Thither let us depart, and speedily.\n\n   _Jul._  I cannot go: I live not in the land\n   I have reduced beneath such wretchedness:\n   And who could leave the brave, whose lives and fortunes\n   Hang on his sword?\n\n   _Cov._  Me thou canst leave, my father;\n   Ah yes, for it is past; too well thou seest\n   My life and fortunes rest not upon thee.\n   Long, happily\u2014could it be gloriously!\u2014\n   Still mayst thou live, and save thy country still!\n\n   _Jul._  Unconquerable land! unrivalled race!\n   Whose bravery, too enduring, rues alike\n   The power and weakness of accursed kings\u2014\n   How cruelly hast thou neglected me!\n   Forcing me from thee, never to return,\n   Nor in thy pangs and struggles to partake!\n   I hear a voice\u2014\u2019tis Egilona\u2014come,\n   Recall thy courage, dear unhappy girl,\n   Let us away.\n\n\n\nSECOND ACT: THIRD SCENE.\n\n\n                            EGILONA _enters_.\n\n   _Egi._  Remain, I order thee.\n   Attend, and do thy duty: I am queen,\n   Unbent to degradation.\n\n   _Cov._  I attend\n   Ever most humbly and most gratefully\n   My too kind sovereign, cousin now no more;\n   Could I perform but half the services\n   I owe her, I were happy for a time;\n   Or dared I show her half my love, \u2019twere bliss.\n\n   _Egi._  Oh!  I sink under gentleness like thine.\n   Thy sight is death to me; and yet \u2019tis dear.\n   The gaudy trappings of assumptive state\n   Drop at the voice of nature to the earth,\n   Before thy feet\u2014I cannot force myself\n   To hate thee, to renounce thee; yet\u2014Covilla!\n   Yet\u2014oh distracting thought! \u2019tis hard to see,\n   Hard to converse with, to admire, to love\u2014\n   As from my soul I do, and must do, thee\u2014\n   One who hath robbed me of all pride and joy,\n   All dignity, all fondness.  I adored\n   Roderigo\u2014he was brave, and in discourse\n   Most voluble; the masses of his mind\n   Were vast, but varied; now absorbed in gloom,\n   Majestic, not austere; now their extent\n   Opening, and waving in bright levity\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  Depart, my daughter\u2014\u2019twere as well to bear\n   His presence as his praise\u2014go\u2014she will dream\n   This phantasm out, nor notice thee depart.\n\n                                                          [COVILLA _goes_.\n\n   _Egi._  What pliancy! what tenderness! what life!\n   Oh for the smiles of those who smile so seldom,\n   The love of those who know no other love!\n   Such he was, Egilona, who was thine.\n\n   _Jul._  While he was worthy of the realm and thee.\n\n   _Egi._  Can it be true, then, Julian, that thy aim\n   Is sovereignty? not virtue, nor revenge?\n\n   _Jul._  I swear to Heaven, nor I nor child of mine\n   Ever shall mount to this polluted throne.\n\n   _Egi._  Then am I still a queen.  The savage Moor\n   Who could not conquer Ceuta from thy sword,\n   In his own country, not with every wile\n   Of his whole race, not with his myriad crests\n   Of cavalry, seen from the Calpian heights\n   Like locusts on the parched and gleamy coast,\n   Will never conquer Spain.\n\n   _Jul._  Spain then was conquered\n   When fell her laws before the traitor king.\n\n\n\nSECOND ACT: FOURTH SCENE.\n\n\n                        _Officer announces_ OPAS.\n\n   O queen, the metropolitan attends\n   On matters of high import to the state,\n   And wishes to confer in privacy.\n\n   _Egi._  [_to_ JULIAN.]  Adieu then; and whate\u2019er betide the country,\n   Sustain at least the honours of our house.\n\n                                      [JULIAN _goes before_ OPAS _enters_.\n\n   _Opas_.  I cannot but commend, O Egilona,\n   Such resignation and such dignity.\n   Indeed he is unworthy; yet a queen\n   Rather to look for peace, and live remote\n   From cities, and from courts, and from her lord,\n   I hardly could expect in one so young,\n   So early, widely, wondrously admired.\n\n   _Egi._  I am resolved: religious men, good Opas,\n   In this resemble the vain libertine;\n   They find in woman no consistency,\n   No virtue but devotion, such as comes\n   To infancy or age, or fear or love,\n   Seeking a place of rest, and finding none\n   Until it soar to heaven.\n\n   _Opas_.  A spring of mind\n   That rises when all pressure is removed,\n   Firmness in pious and in chaste resolves,\n   But weakness in much fondness; these, O queen,\n   I did expect, I own.\n\n   _Egi._  The better part\n   Be mine; the worst hath been\u2014and is no more.\n\n   _Opas_.  But if Roderigo have at length prevailed\n   That Egilona willingly resigns\n   All claim to royalty, and casts away,\n   Indifferent or estranged, the marriage-bond\n   His perjury tore asunder, still the church\n   Hardly can sanction his new nuptial rites.\n\n   _Egi._  What art thou saying! what new nuptial rites?\n\n   _Opas_.  Thou knowest not?\n\n   _Egi._  Am I a wife; a queen?\n   Abandon it! my claim to royalty!\n   Whose hand was on my head when I arose\n   Queen of this land? whose benediction sealed\n   My marriage vow? who broke it? was it I?\n   And wouldst thou, virtuous Opas, wouldst thou dim\n   The glorious light of thy declining days?\n   Wouldst thou administer the sacred vows,\n   And sanction them, and bless them, for another,\n   And bid her live in peace while I am living?\n   Go then; I execrate and banish him\n   For ever from my sight: we were not born\n   For happiness together; none on earth\n   Were ever so dissimilar as we.\n   He is not worth a tear, a wish, a thought\u2014\n   Never was I deceived in him\u2014I found\n   No tenderness, no fondness, from the first:\n   A love of power, a love of perfidy,\n   Such is the love that is returned for mine.\n   Ungrateful man! \u2019twas not the pageantry\n   Of regal state, the clarions, nor the guard,\n   Nor loyal valour, nor submissive beauty,\n   Silence at my approach, awe at my voice,\n   Happiness at my smile, that led my youth\n   Toward Roderigo!  I had lived obscure,\n   In humbleness, in poverty, in want,\n   Blest, oh supremely blest! with him alone:\n   And he abandons me, rejects me, scorns me,\n   Insensible! inhuman! for another!\n   Thou shalt repent thy wretched choice, false man!\n   Crimes such as thine call loudly for perdition;\n   Heaven will inflict it, and not I\u2014but I\n   Neither will fall alone, nor live despised.\n\n                                                      [_A trumpet sounds_.\n\n   _Opas_.  Peace, Egilona, he arrives; compose\n   Thy turbid thoughts, meet him with dignity.\n\n   _Egi._  He! in the camp of Julian! trust me, sir,\n   He comes not hither, dares no longer use\n   The signs of state, and flies from every foe.\n\n                                                 [_Retires some distance_.\n\n\n\nSECOND ACT: FIFTH SCENE.\n\n\n                      _Enter_ MUZA _and_ ABDALAZIS.\n\n   _Muza_ [_to_ ABDALAZIS.]  I saw him but an instant, and disguised,\n   Yet this is not the traitor; on his brow\n   Observe the calm of wisdom and of years.\n\n   _Opas_.  Whom seekest thou?\n\n   _Muza_.  Him who was king I seek.\n   He came arrayed as herald to this tent.\n\n   _Abd._  Thy daughter! was she nigh? perhaps for her\n   Was this disguise.\n\n   _Muza_.  Here, Abdalazis, kings\n   Disguise from other causes; they obtain\n   Beauty by violence, and power by fraud.\n   Treason was his intent: we must admit\n   Whoever come; our numbers are too small\n   For question or selection, and the blood\n   Of Spaniards shall win Spain for us to-day.\n\n   _Abd._  The wicked cannot move from underneath\n   Thy ruling eye.\n\n   _Muza_.  Right!  Julian and Roderigo\n   Are leagued against us, on these terms alone,\n   That Julian\u2019s daughter weds the Christian king.\n\n   _Egi._  [_rushing forward_.]  \u2019Tis true\u2014and I proclaim it\u2014\n\n   _Abd._  Heaven and earth!\n   Was it not thou, most lovely, most high-souled,\n   Who wishedst us success, and me a crown?\n\n                                                    [OPAS _goes abruptly_.\n\n   _Egi._  I give it\u2014I am Egilona, queen\n   Of that detested man.\n\n   _Abd._  I touch the hand\n   That chains down fortune to the throne of fate;\n   And will avenge thee; for \u2019twas thy command,\n   \u2019Tis Heaven\u2019s\u2014My father! what retards our bliss?\n   Why art thou silent?\n\n   _Muza_.  Inexperienced years\n   Rather would rest on the soft lap, I see,\n   Of pleasure, after the fierce gusts of war.\n   O Destiny! that callest me alone,\n   Hapless, to keep the toilsome watch of state;\n   Painful to age, unnatural to youth,\n   Adverse to all society of friends,\n   Equality, and liberty, and ease,\n   The welcome cheer of the unbidden feast,\n   The gay reply, light, sudden, like the leap\n   Of the young forester\u2019s unbended bow;\n   But, above all, to tenderness at home,\n   And sweet security of kind concern\n   Even from those who seem most truly ours.\n   Who would resign all this, to be approached,\n   Like a sick infant by a canting nurse,\n   To spread his arms in darkness, and to find\n   One universal hollowness around?\n   Forego, a little while, that bane of peace.\n   Love may be cherished.\n\n   _Abd._  \u2019Tis enough; I ask\n   No other boon.\n\n   _Muza_.  Not victory?\n\n   _Abd._  Farewell,\n   O queen!  I will deserve thee; why do tears\n   Silently drop, and slowly, down thy veil?\n   I shall return to worship thee, and soon;\n   Why this affliction?  Oh, that I alone\n   Could raise or could repress it!\n\n   _Egi._  We depart,\n   Nor interrupt your counsels, nor impede;\n   Oh, may they prosper, whatsoe\u2019er they be,\n   And perfidy soon meet its just reward!\n   The infirm and peaceful Opas\u2014whither gone?\n\n   _Muza_.  Stay, daughter; not for counsel are we met,\n   But to secure our arms from treachery,\n   O\u2019erthrow and stifle base conspiracies,\n   Involve in his own toils our false ally\u2014\n\n   _Egi._  Author of every woe I have endured!\n   Ah, sacrilegious man! he vowed to Heaven\n   None of his blood should ever mount the throne.\n\n   _Muza_.  Herein his vow indeed is ratified:\n   Yet faithful ears have heard this offer made,\n   And weighty was the conference that ensued,\n   And long, not dubious; for what mortal e\u2019er\n   Refused alliance with illustrious power?\n   Though some have given its enjoyments up,\n   Tired and enfeebled by satiety.\n   His friends and partisans, \u2019twas his pretence,\n   Should pass uninterrupted; hence his camp\n   Is open every day to enemies.\n   You look around, O queen, as though you feared\n   Their entrance\u2014Julian I pursue no more;\n   You conquer him\u2014return we; I bequeath\n   Ruin, extermination, not reproach.\n   How we may best attain your peace and will\n   We must consider in some other place,\n   Not, lady, in the midst of snares and wiles\n   How to supplant your charms and seize your crown.\n   I rescue it, fear not: yes, we retire.\n   Whatever is your wish becomes my own,\n   Nor is there in this land but who obeys.\n\n                                                     [_He leads her away_.\n\n\n\nTHIRD ACT: FIRST SCENE.\n\n\n                            _Palace in_ XERES.\n\n                           RODERIGO _and_ OPAS.\n\n   _Rod._  Impossible! she could not thus resign\n   Me, for a miscreant of Barbary,\n   A mere adventurer: but that citron face\n   Shall bleach and shrivel the whole winter long\n   There, on yon cork-tree by the sallyport.\n   She shall return.\n\n   _Opas_.  To fondness and to faith?\n   Dost thou retain them, if she could return?\n\n   _Rod._  Retain them? she has forfeited by this\n   All right to fondness, all to royalty.\n\n   _Opas_.  Consider, and speak calmly: she deserves\n   Some pity, some reproof.\n\n   _Rod._  To speak then calmly,\n   Since thine eyes open and can see her guilt\u2014\n   Infamous and atrocious! let her go\u2014\n   Chains\n\n   _Opas_.  What! in Muza\u2019s camp?\n\n   _Rod._  My scorn supreme!\n\n   _Opas_.  Say pity.\n\n   _Rod._  Ay, ay, pity\u2014that suits best.\n   I loved her, but _had_ loved her; three whole years\n   Of pleasure, and of varied pleasure too,\n   Had worn the soft impression half away.\n   What I once felt, I would recall; the faint\n   Responsive voice grew fainter each reply:\n   Imagination sank amid the scenes\n   It laboured to create; the vivid joy\n   Of fleeting youth I followed, and possessed.\n   \u2019Tis the first moment of the tenderest hour,\n   \u2019Tis the first mien on entering new delights,\n   We give our peace, our power, our souls, for these.\n\n   _Opas_.  Thou hast; and what remains?\n\n   _Rod._  Myself\u2014Roderigo\u2014\n   Whom hatred cannot reach, nor love cast down.\n\n   _Opas_.  Nor gratitude nor pity nor remorse\n   Call back, nor vows nor earth nor heaven control.\n   But art thou free and happy? art thou safe?\n   By shrewd contempt the humblest may chastise\n   Whom scarlet and its ermine cannot scare,\n   And the sword skulks for everywhere in vain,\n   Thee the poor victim of thy outrages,\n   Woman, with all her weakness, may despise.\n\n   _Rod._  But first let quiet age have intervened.\n\n   _Opas_.  Ne\u2019er will the peace or apathy of age\n   Be thine, or twilight steal upon thy day.\n   The violent choose, but cannot change, their end:\n   Violence, by man or nature, must be theirs:\n   Thine it must be, and who to pity thee?\n\n   _Rod._  Behold, my solace! none.  I want no pity.\n\n   _Opas_.  Proclaim we those the happiest of mankind\n   Who never knew a want?  Oh, what a curse\n   To thee this utter ignorance of thine!\n   Julian, whom all the good commiserate,\n   Sees thee below him far in happiness:\n   A state indeed of no quick restlessness,\n   No glancing agitation, one vast swell\n   Of melancholy, deep, impassable,\n   Interminable, where his spirit alone\n   Broods and o\u2019ershadows all, bears him from earth,\n   And purifies his chastened soul for heaven.\n   Both heaven and earth shall from thy grasp recede.\n   Whether on death or life thou arguest,\n   Untutored savage or corrupted heathen\n   Avows no sentiment so vile as thine.\n\n   Rod.  Nor feels?\n\n   _Opas_.  O human nature!  I have heard\n   The secrets of the soul, and pitied thee.\n   Bad and accursed things have men confessed\n   Before me, but have left them unarrayed.\n   Naked, and shivering with deformity.\n   The troubled dreams and deafening gush of youth\n   Fling o\u2019er the fancy, struggling to be free,\n   Discordant and impracticable things:\n   If the good shudder at their past escapes,\n   Shall not the wicked shudder at their crimes?\n   They shall\u2014and I denounce upon thy head\n   God\u2019s vengeance\u2014thou shalt rule this land no more.\n\n   _Rod._  What! my own kindred leave me and renounce me!\n\n   _Opas_.  Kindred? and is there any in our world\n   So near us, as those sources of all joy,\n   Those on whose bosom every gale of life\n   Blows softly, who reflect our images\n   In loveliness through sorrows and through age,\n   And bear them onward far beyond the grave.\n\n   _Rod._  Methinks, most reverend Opas, not inapt\n   Are these fair views; arise they from Seville?\n\n   _Opas_.  He, who can scoff at them, may scoff at me.\n   Such are we, that the giver of all good\n   Shall, in the heart he purifies, possess\n   The latest love\u2014the earliest\u2014no, not there!\n   I\u2019ve known the firm and faithful\u2014even from these\n   Life\u2019s eddying spring shed the first bloom on earth.\n   I pity them, but ask their pity too.\n   I love the happiness of men, and praise\n   And sanctify the blessings I renounce.\n\n   _Rod._  Yet would thy baleful influence undermine\n   The heaven-appointed throne.\n\n   _Opas_.\u2014the throne of guilt\n   Obdurate, without plea, without remorse.\n\n   _Rod._  What power hast thou? perhaps thou soon wilt want\n   A place of refuge.\n\n   _Opas_.  Rather say, perhaps\n   My place of refuge will receive me soon.\n   Could I extend it even to thy crimes,\n   It should be open; but the wrath of heaven\n   Turns them against thee, and subverts thy sway:\n   It leaves thee not, what wickedness and woe\n   Oft in their drear communion taste together,\n   Hope and repentance.\n\n   _Rod._  But it leaves me arms,\n   Vigour of soul and body, and a race\n   Subject by law, and dutiful by choice,\n   Whose hand is never to be holden fast\n   Within the closing cleft of gnarled creeds;\n   No easy prey for these vile mitred Moors.\n   I, who received thy homage, may retort\n   Thy threats, vain prelate, and abase thy pride.\n\n   _Opas_.  Low must be those whom mortal can sink lower,\n   Nor high are they whom human power may raise.\n\n   _Rod._  Judge now: for, hear the signal.\n\n   _Opas_.  And derides\n   The buoyant heart the dubious gulfs of war?\n   Trumpets may sound, and not to victory.\n\n   _Rod._  The traitor and his daughter feel my power.\n\n   _Opas_.  Just God! avert it!\n\n   _Rod._  Seize this rebel priest.\n   I will alone subdue my enemies.\n\n                                                              [_Goes out_.\n\n\n\nTHIRD ACT: SECOND SCENE.\n\n\n              RAMIRO _and_ OSMA _enter from opposite sides_.\n\n   _Ram._  Where is the king? his car is at the gate,\n   His ministers attend him, but his foes\n   Are yet more prompt, nor will await delay.\n\n   _Osma_.  Nor need they\u2014for he meets them as I speak.\n\n   _Ram._  With all his forces? or our cause is lost.\n   Julian and Sisabert surround the walls.\n\n   _Osma_.  Surround, sayst thou? enter they not the gates?\n\n   _Ram._  Perhaps ere now they enter.\n\n   _Osma_.  Sisabert\n   Brings him our prisoner.\n\n   _Ram._  They are friends! they held\n   A parley; and the soldiers, when they saw\n   Count Julian, lowered their arms and hailed him king?\n\n   _Osma_.  How? and he leads them in the name of king?\n\n   _Ram._  He leads them; but amid that acclamation\n   He turned away his head, and called for vengeance.\n\n   _Osma_.  In Sisabert, and in the cavalry\n   He led, were all our hopes.\n\n   _Opas_.  Woe, woe is theirs\n   Who have no other.\n\n   _Osma_.  What are thine? obey\n   The just commands of our offended king:\n   Conduct him to the tower\u2014off\u2014instantly.\n\n                                          [_Guard hesitates_: OPAS _goes_.\n\n   Ramiro, let us haste to reinforce\u2014\n\n   _Ram._  Hark! is the king defeated? hark!\n\n   _Osma_.  I hear\n   Such acclamation as from victory\n   Arises not, but rather from revolt,\n   Reiterated, interrupted, lost.\n   Favour like this his genius will retrieve\n   By time, or promises, or chastisement,\n   Whiche\u2019er he choose\u2014the speediest is the best\u2014\n   His danger and his glory let us share;\n   \u2019Tis ours to serve him.\n\n   _Ram._  While he rules \u2019tis ours.\n   What chariot-wheels are thundering o\u2019er the bridge?\n\n   _Osma_.  Roderigo\u2019s\u2014I well know them.\n\n   _Ram._  Now, the burst\n   Of acclamation! now! again, again.\n\n   _Osma_.  I know the voices; they are for Roderigo.\n\n   _Ram._  Stay, I entreat thee\u2014one hath now prevailed.\n   So far is certain.\n\n   _Osma_.  Ay, the right prevails.\n\n   _Ram._  Transient and vain their joyance, who rejoice\n   Precipitately and intemperately,\n   And bitter thoughts grow up where\u2019er it fell.\n\n   _Osma_.  Nor vain and transient theirs, who idly float\n   Down popularity\u2019s unfertile stream,\n   And fancy all their own that rises round?\n\n   _Ram._  If thou still lovest, as I know thou dost,\n   Thy king\u2014\n\n   _Osma_.  I love him; for he owes me much,\n   Brave soul! and cannot, though he would, repay.\n   Service and faith, pure faith and service hard,\n   Throughout his reign, if these things be desert,\n   These have I borne toward him, and still bear.\n\n   _Ram._  Come, from thy solitary eiry come,\n   And share the prey, so plenteous and profuse,\n   Which a less valorous brood will else consume.\n   Much fruit is shaken down in civil storms:\n   And shall not orderly and loyal hands\n   Gather it up?  (Loud shouts.)  Again! and still refuse?\n   How different are those citizens without\n   From thee! from thy serenity! thy arch,\n   Thy firmament, of intrepidity!\n   For their new lord, whom they have never served,\n   Afraid were they to shout, and only struck\n   The pavement with their ferrules and their feet:\n   Now they are certain of the great event\n   Voices and hands they raise, and all contend\n   Who shall be bravest in applauding most.\n   Knowest thou these?\n\n   _Osma_.  Their voices I know well\u2014\n   And can they shout for him they would have slain?\n   A prince untried they welcome; soon their doubts\n   Are blown afar.\n\n   _Ram._  Yes, brighter scenes arise.\n   The disunited he alone unites,\n   The weak with hope he strengthens, and the strong\n   With justice.\n\n   _Osma_.  Wait: praise him when time hath given\n   A soundness and consistency to praise:\n   He shares it amply who bestows it right.\n\n   _Ram._  Doubtest thou?\n\n   _Osma_.  Be it so: let us away;\n   New courtiers come\u2014\n\n   _Ram._  And why not join the new?\n   Let us attend him, and congratulate;\n   Come on: they enter.\n\n   _Osma_.  This is now my post\n   No longer: I could face them in the field,\n   I cannot here.\n\n   _Ram._  To-morrow all may change;\n   Be comforted.\n\n   _Osma_.  I want nor change nor comfort.\n\n   _Ram._  The prisoner\u2019s voice!\n\n   _Osma_.  The metropolitan\u2019s?\n   Triumph he may\u2014not over me forgiven.\n   This way, and through the chapel\u2014none are there.\n\n                                                              [_Goes out_.\n\n\n\nTHIRD ACT: THIRD SCENE.\n\n\n                           OPAS _and_ SISABERT.\n\n   _Opas_.  The royal threat still sounds along these halls:\n   Hardly his foot hath passed them, and he flees\n   From his own treachery; all his pride, his hopes,\n   Are scattered at a breath; even courage fails\n   Now falsehood sinks from under him.  Behold,\n   Again art thou where reigned thy ancestors;\n   Behold the chapel of thy earliest prayers,\n   Where I, whose chains are sundered at thy sight\n   Ere they could close around these aged limbs,\n   Received and blest thee, when thy mother\u2019s arm\n   Was doubtful if it loosed thee! with delight\n   Have I observed the promises we made\n   Deeply impressed and manfully performed.\n   Now, to thyself beneficent, O prince,\n   Never henceforth renew those weak complaints\n   Against Covilla\u2019s vows and Julian\u2019s faith,\n   His honour broken, and her heart estranged.\n   Oh, if thou holdest peace or glory dear,\n   Away with jealousy; brave Sisabert,\n   Smite from thy bosom, smite that scorpion down.\n   It swells and hardens amid mildewed hopes,\n   O\u2019erspreads and blackens whate\u2019er most delights,\n   And renders us haters of loveliness,\n   The lowest of the fiends: ambition led\n   The higher on, furious to dispossess,\n   From admiration sprung and frenzied love.\n   This disingenuous soul-debasing passion,\n   Rising from abject and most sordid fear,\n   Stings her own breast with bitter self-reproof,\n   Consumes the vitals, pines, and never dies.\n   Love, Honour, Justice, numberless the forms,\n   Glorious and high the stature, she assumes;\n   But watch the wandering changeful mischief well,\n   And thou shalt see her with low lurid light\n   Search where the soul\u2019s most valued treasure lies,\n   Or, more embodied to our vision, stand\n   With evil eye, and sorcery hers alone,\n   Looking away her helpless progeny,\n   And drawing poison from its very smiles.\n   For Julian\u2019s truth have I not pledged my own?\n   Have I not sworn Covilla weds no other?\n\n   _Sis._  Her persecutor have not I chastised?\n   Have not I fought for Julian, won the town,\n   And liberated thee?\n\n   _Opas_.  But left for him\n   The dangers of pursuit, of ambuscade,\n   Of absence from thy high and splendid name.\n\n   _Sis._  Do probity and truth want such supports?\n\n   _Opas_.  Griffins and eagles, ivory and gold,\n   Can add no clearness to the lamp above;\n   But many look for them in palaces\n   Who have them not, and want them not, at home.\n   Virtue and valour and experience\n   Are never trusted by themselves alone\n   Further than infancy and idiocy:\n   The men around him, not the man himself,\n   Are looked at, and by these is he preferred.\n   \u2019Tis the green mantle of the warrener\n   And his loud whistle, that alone attract\n   The lofty gazes of the noble herd:\n   And thus, without thy countenance and help\n   Feeble and faint is still our confidence,\n   Brief perhaps our success.\n\n   _Sis._  Should I resign\n   To Abdalazis her I once adored?\n   He truly, he must wed a Spanish queen!\n   He rule in Spain! ah! whom could any land\n   Obey so gladly as the meek, the humble,\n   The friend of all who have no friend besides,\n   Covilla! could he choose, or could he find\n   Another who might so confirm his power?\n   And now indeed from long domestic wars\n   Who else survives of all our ancient house\u2014\n\n   _Opas_.  But Egilona.\n\n   _Sis._  Vainly she upbraids\n   Roderigo.\n\n   _Opas_.  She divorces him, abjures,\n   And carries vengeance to that hideous height\n   Which piety and chastity would shrink\n   To look from, on the world, or on themselves.\n\n   _Sis._  She may forgive him yet.\n\n   _Opas_.  Ah, Sisabert!\n   Wretched are those a woman has forgiven:\n   With her forgiveness ne\u2019er hath love returned.\n   Ye know not till too late the filmy tie\n   That holds heaven\u2019s precious boon eternally\n   To such as fondly cherish her; once go\n   Driven by mad passion, strike but at her peace,\n   And, though she step aside from broad reproach,\n   Yet every softer virtue dies away.\n   Beaming with virtue inaccessible\n   Stood Egilona; for her lord she lived,\n   And for the heavens that raised her sphere so high:\n   All thoughts were on her\u2014all, beside her own.\n   Negligent as the blossoms of the field,\n   Arrayed in candour and simplicity,\n   Before her path she heard the streams of joy\n   Murmur her name in all their cadences,\n   Saw them in every scene, in light, in shade,\n   Reflect her image; but acknowledged them\n   Hers most complete when flowing from her most.\n   All things in want of her, herself of none,\n   Pomp and dominion lay beneath her feet\n   Unfelt and unregarded: now behold\n   The earthly passions war against the heavenly!\n   Pride against love, ambition and revenge\n   Against devotion and compliancy:\n   Her glorious beams adversity hath blunted;\n   And coming nearer to our quiet view\n   The original clay of coarse mortality\n   Hardens and flaws around her.\n\n   _Sis._  Every germ\n   Of virtue perishes, when love recedes\n   From those hot shifting sands, the female heart.\n\n   _Opas_.  His was the fault; be his the punishment\n   \u2019Tis not their own crimes only, men commit,\n   They harrow them into another\u2019s breast,\n   And they shall reap the bitter growth with pain.\n\n   _Sis._  Yes, blooming royalty will first attract\n   These creatures of the desert\u2014now I breathe\n   More freely\u2014she is theirs if I pursue\n   The fugitive again\u2014he well deserves\n   The death he flies from\u2014stay!  Don Julian twice\n   Called him aloud, and he, methinks, replied.\n   Could not I have remained a moment more,\n   And seen the end? although with hurried voice\n   He bade me intercept the scattered foes,\n   And hold the city barred to their return.\n   May Egilona be another\u2019s wife\n   Whether he die or live! but oh!\u2014Covilla\u2014\n   She never can be mine! yet she may be\n   Still happy\u2014no, Covilla, no\u2014not happy,\n   But more deserving happiness without it.\n   Mine never! nor another\u2019s\u2014\u2019tis enough.\n   The tears I shed no rival can deride;\n   In the fond intercourse, a name once cherished\n   Will never be defended by faint smiles,\n   Nor given up with vows of altered love.\n   And is the passion of my soul at last\n   Reduced to this? is this my happiness?\n   This my sole comfort? this the close of all\n   Those promises, those tears, those last adieus,\n   And those long vigils for the morrow\u2019s dawn?\n\n   _Opas_.  Arouse thee! be thyself.  O Sisabert,\n   Awake to glory from these feverish dreams:\n   The enemy is in our land\u2014two enemies\u2014\n   We must quell both\u2014shame on us, if we fail.\n\n   _Sis._  Incredible! a nation be subdued\n   Peopled as ours!\n\n   _Opas_.  Corruption may subvert\n   What force could never.\n\n   _Sis._  Traitors may.\n\n   _Opas_.  Alas\n   If traitors can, the basis is but frail.\n   I mean such traitors as the vacant world\n   Echoes most stunningly: not fur-robed knaves\n   Whose whispers raise the dreaming bloodhound\u2019s ear\n   Against benighted famished wanderers;\n   While with remorseless guilt they undermine\n   Palace and shed, their very father\u2019s house,\n   O blind! their own, their children\u2019s heritage,\n   To leave more ample space for fearful wealth.\n   Plunder in some most harmless guise they swathe,\n   Call it some very meek and hallowed name,\n   Some known and borne by their good forefathers,\n   And own and vaunt it thus redeemed from sin.\n   These are the plagues heaven sends o\u2019er every land\n   Before it sink, the portents of the street,\n   Not of the air, lest nations should complain\n   Of distance or of dimness in the signs,\n   Flaring from far to Wisdom\u2019s eye alone:\n   These are the last! these, when the sun rides high,\n   In the forenoon of doomsday, revelling,\n   Make men abhor the earth, arraign the skies.\n   Ye who behold them spoil field after field,\n   Despising them in individual strength,\n   Not with one torrent sweeping them away\n   Into the ocean of eternity,\n   Arise! despatch! no renovating gale,\n   No second spring awaits you\u2014up, begone\u2014\n   If you have force and courage even for flight\u2014\n   The blast of dissolution is behind.\n\n   _Sis._  How terrible! how true! what voice like thine\n   Can rouse and warn the nation! if she rise,\n   Say, whither go, where stop we?\n\n   _Opas_.  God will guide.\n   Let us pursue the oppressor to destruction;\n   The rest is heaven\u2019s: must we move no step\n   Because we cannot see the boundaries\n   Of our long way, and every stone between?\n\n   _Sis._  Is not thy vengeance for the late affront,\n   For threats and outrage and imprisonment\u2014\n\n   _Opas_.  For outrage, yes\u2014imprisonment and threats\n   I pardon him, and whatsoever ill\n   He could do _me_.\n\n   _Sis._  To hold Covilla from me!\n   To urge her into vows against her faith,\n   Against her beauty, youth, and inclination,\n   Without her mother\u2019s blessing, nay without\n   Her father\u2019s knowledge and authority\u2014\n   So that she never will behold me more,\n   Flying afar for refuge and for help\n   Where never friend but God will comfort her\u2014\n\n   _Opas_.  These, and more barbarous deeds were perpetrated.\n\n   _Sis._  Yet her proud father deigned not to inform\n   Me, whom he loved and taught, in peace and war,\n   Me, whom he called his son, before I hoped\n   To merit it by marriage or by arms.\n   He offered no excuse, no plea; expressed\n   No sorrow; but with firm unfaltering voice\n   Commanded me\u2014I trembled as he spoke\u2014\n   To follow where he led, redress his wrongs,\n   And vindicate the honour of his child.\n   He called on God, the witness of his cause,\n   On Spain, the partner of his victories,\n   And yet amid these animating words\n   Rolled the huge tear down his unvisored face\u2014\n   A general swell of indignation rose\n   Through the long line, sobs burst from every breast,\n   Hardly one voice succeeded\u2014you might hear\n   The impatient hoof strike the soft sandy plain:\n   But when the gates flew open, and the king\n   In his high car came forth triumphantly,\n   Then was Count Julian\u2019s stature more elate;\n   Tremendous was the smile that smote the eyes\n   Of all he passed.  \u201cFathers, sons, and brothers,\u201d\n   He cried, \u201cI fight your battles, follow me!\n   Soldiers, we know no danger but disgrace!\u201d\n   \u201cFather, and general, and king,\u201d they shout,\n   And would proclaim him: back he cast his face,\n   Pallid with grief, and one loud groan burst forth;\n   It kindled vengeance through the Asturian ranks,\n   And they soon scattered, as the blasts of heaven\n   Scatter the leaves and dust, the astonished foe.\n\n   _Opas_.  And doubtest thou his truth?\n\n   _Sis._  I love\u2014and doubt\u2014\n   Fight\u2014and believe: Roderigo spoke untruths\u2014\n   In him I place no trust; but Julian holds\n   Truths in reserve\u2014how should I quite confide!\n\n   _Opas_.  By sorrows thou beholdest him oppressed;\n   Doubt the more prosperous: march, Sisabert,\n   Once more against his enemy and ours:\n   Much hath been done, but much there still remains.\n\n\n\nFOURTH ACT.\u2014FIRST SCENE.\n\n\n                            _Tent of_ JULIAN.\n\n                          RODERIGO _and_ JULIAN.\n\n   _Jul._  To stop perhaps at any wickedness\n   Appears a merit now, and at the time\n   Prudence and policy it often is\n   Which afterward seems magnanimity.\n   The people had deserted thee, and thronged\n   My standard, had I raised it, at the first;\n   But once subsiding, and no voice of mine\n   Calling by name each grievance to each man,\n   They, silent and submissive by degrees,\n   Bore thy hard yoke, and, hadst thou but oppressed,\n   Would still have borne it: thou hast now deceived;\n   Thou hast done all a foreign foe could do,\n   And more, against them; with ingratitude\n   Not hell itself could arm the foreign foe:\n   \u2019Tis forged at home, and kills not from afar.\n   Amid whate\u2019er vain glories fell upon\n   Thy rainbow span of power, which I dissolve,\n   Boast not how thou conferredst wealth and rank,\n   How thou preservedst me, my family,\n   All my distinctions, all my offices,\n   When Witiza was murdered, that I stand\n   Count Julian at this hour by special grace.\n   The sword of Julian saved the walls of Ceuta,\n   And not the shadow that attends his name:\n   It was no badge, no title, that o\u2019erthrew\n   Soldier, and steed, and engine\u2014Don Roderigo,\n   The truly and the falsely great here differ:\n   These by dull wealth or daring fraud advance;\n   Him the Almighty calls amid his people\n   To sway the wills and passions of mankind.\n   The weak of heart and intellect beheld\n   Thy splendour, and adored thee lord of Spain:\n   I rose\u2014Roderigo lords o\u2019er Spain no more.\n\n   _Rod._  Now to a traitor\u2019s add a boaster\u2019s name.\n\n   _Jul._  Shameless and arrogant, dost thou believe\n   I boast for pride or pastime? forced to boast,\n   Truth costs me more than falsehood e\u2019er cost thee.\n   Divested of that purple of the soul,\n   That potency, that palm of wise ambition,\n   Cast headlong by thy madness from that height,\n   That only eminence \u2019twixt earth and heaven,\n   Virtue, which some desert, but none despise,\n   Whether thou art beheld again on earth,\n   Whether a captive or a fugitive,\n   Miner or galley-slave, depends on me:\n   But he alone who made me what I am\n   Can make me greater, or can make me less.\n\n   _Rod._  Chance, and chance only, threw me in thy power;\n   Give me my sword again and try my strength.\n\n   _Jul._  I tried it in the front of thousands.\n\n   _Rod._  Death\n   At least vouchsafe me from a soldier\u2019s hand.\n\n   _Jul._  I love to hear thee ask for it\u2014now my own\n   Would not be bitter; no, nor immature.\n\n   _Rod._  Defy it, say thou rather.\n\n   _Jul._  Death itself\n   Shall not be granted thee, unless from God;\n   A dole from his and from no other hand.\n   Thou shalt now hear and own thine infamy\u2014\n\n   _Rod._  Chains, dungeons, tortures\u2014but I hear no more.\n\n   _Jul._  Silence, thou wretch, live on\u2014ay, live\u2014abhorred.\n   Thou shalt have tortures, dungeons, chains, enough\u2014\n   They naturally rise and grow around\n   Monsters like thee, everywhere, and for ever.\n\n   _Rod._  Insulter of the fallen! must I endure\n   Commands as well as threats? my vassal\u2019s too?\n   Nor breathe from underneath his trampling feet?\n\n   _Jul._  Could I speak patiently who speak to thee,\n   I would say more\u2014part of thy punishment\n   It should be to be taught.\n\n   _Rod._  Reserve thy wisdom\n   Until thy patience come, its best ally:\n   I learn no lore, of peace or war, from thee.\n\n   _Jul._  No, thou shalt study soon another tongue,\n   And suns more ardent shall mature thy mind.\n   Either the cross thou bearest, and thy knees\n   Among the silent caves of Palestine\n   Wear the sharp flints away with midnight prayer;\n   Or thou shalt keep the fasts of Barbary,\n   Shalt wait amid the crowds that throng the well\n   From sultry noon till the skies fade again,\n   To draw up water and to bring it home\n   In the cracked gourd of some vile testy knave,\n   Who spurns thee back with bastinadoed foot\n   For ignorance or delay of his command.\n\n   _Rod._  Rather the poison or the bowstring.\n\n   _Jul._  Slaves\n   To other\u2019s passions die such deaths as those:\n   Slaves to their own should die\u2014\n\n   _Rod._  What worse?\n\n   _Jul._  Their own.\n\n   _Rod._  Is this thy counsel, renegade?\n\n   _Jul._  Not mine;\n   I point a better path, nay, force thee on.\n   I shelter thee from every brave man\u2019s sword\n   While I am near thee: I bestow on thee\n   Life: if thou die, \u2019tis when thou sojournest\n   Protected by this arm and voice no more;\n   \u2019Tis slavishly, \u2019tis ignominiously,\n   \u2019Tis by a villain\u2019s knife.\n\n   _Rod._  By whose?\n\n   _Jul._  Roderigo\u2019s.\n\n   _Rod._   O powers of vengeance! must I hear? endure?\n   Live?\n\n   _Jul._  Call thy vassals? no! then wipe the drops\n   Of froward childhood from thy shameless eyes.\n   So! thou canst weep for passion\u2014not for pity.\n\n   _Rod._  One hour ago I ruled all Spain! a camp\n   Not larger than a sheepfold stood alone\n   Against me: now, no friend throughout the world\n   Follows my steps or hearkens to my call.\n   Behold the turns of fortune, and expect\n   No better; of all faithless men, the Moors\n   Are the most faithless: from thy own experience\n   Thou canst not value nor rely on them.\n\n   _Jul._  I value not the mass that makes my sword,\n   Yet while I use it I rely on it.\n   Rod.  Julian, thy gloomy soul still meditates\u2014\n   Plainly I see it\u2014death to me\u2014pursue\n   The dictates of thy leaders, let revenge\n   Have its full sway, let Barbary prevail,\n   And the pure creed her elders have embraced:\n   Those placid sages hold assassination\n   A most compendious supplement to law.\n\n   _Jul._  Thou knowest not the one, nor I the other,\n   Torn hast thou from me all my soul held dear!\n   Her form, her voice, all, hast thou banished from me;\n   Nor dare I, wretched as I am! recall\n   Those solaces of every grief, erewhile.\n   I stand abased before insulting crime\u2014\n   I falter like a criminal myself.\n   The hand that hurled thy chariot o\u2019er its wheels,\n   That held thy steeds erect and motionless\n   As molten statues on some palace-gates,\n   Shakes, as with palsied age, before thee now.\n   Gone is the treasure of my heart, for ever,\n   Without a father, mother, friend, or name.\n   Daughter of Julian\u2014such was her delight\u2014\n   Such was mine too! what pride more innocent,\n   What, surely, less deserving pangs like these,\n   Than springs from filial and parental love!\n   Debarred from every hope that issues forth\n   To meet the balmy breath of early life,\n   Her saddened days, all, cold and colourless,\n   Will stretch before her their whole weary length\n   Amid the sameness of obscurity.\n   She wanted not seclusion, to unveil\n   Her thoughts to heaven, cloister, nor midnight bell;\n   She found it in all places, at all hours:\n   While, to assuage my labours, she indulged\n   A playfulness that shunned a mother\u2019s eye,\n   Still, to avert my perils, there arose\n   A piety that, even from _me_, retired.\n\n   _Rod._  Such was she! what am I! those are the arms\n   That are triumphant when the battle fails.\n   O Julian, Julian! all thy former words\n   Struck but the imbecile plumes of vanity;\n   These, through its steely coverings, pierce the heart.\n   I ask not life nor death; but, if I live,\n   Send my most bitter enemy to watch\n   My secret paths, send poverty, send pain\u2014\n   I will add more\u2014wise as thou art, thou knowest\n   No foe more furious than forgiven kings.\n   I ask not then what thou wouldst never grant:\n   May heaven, O Julian, from thy hand receive\n   A pardoned man, a chastened criminal.\n\n   _Jul._  This further curse hast thou inflicted; wretch,\n   I cannot pardon thee.\n\n   _Rod._  Thy tone, thy mien,\n   Refute those words.\n\n   _Jul._  No\u2014I can _not_ forgive.\n\n   _Rod._  Upon my knee, my conqueror, I implore\u2014\n   Upon the earth, before thy feet\u2014hard heart!\n\n   _Jul._  Audacious! hast thou never heard that prayer\n   And scorned it? \u2019tis the last thou shouldst repeat.\n   Upon the earth! upon her knees!  O God!\n\n   _Rod._  Resemble not a wretch so lost as I:\n   Be better; Oh! be happier; and pronounce it.\n\n   _Jul._  I swerve not from my purpose: thou art mine,\n   Conquered; and I have sworn to dedicate,\n   Like a torn banner on my chapel\u2019s roof,\n   Thee to that power from whom thou hast rebelled.\n   Expiate thy crimes by prayer, by penances.\n\n   _Rod._  Hasten the hour of trial, speak of peace.\n   Pardon me not, then\u2014but with purer lips\n   Implore of God, who _would_ hear _thee_, to pardon.\n\n   _Jul._  Hope it I may\u2014pronounce it\u2014O Roderigo!\n   Ask it of him who can; I too will ask,\n   And, in my own transgressions, pray for thine.\n\n   _Rod._  One name I dare not\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  Go\u2014abstain from that,\n   I do conjure thee: raise not in my soul\n   Again the tempest that has wrecked my fame;\n   Thou shalt not breathe in the same clime with her.\n   Far o\u2019er the unebbing sea thou shalt adore\n   The eastern star, and\u2014may thy end be peace.\n\n\n\nFOURTH ACT.\u2014SECOND SCENE.\n\n\n                   RODERIGO _goes_: HERNANDO _enters_.\n\n   _Her._    From the prince Tarik I am sent, my lord.\n\n   _Jul._  A welcome messager, my brave Hernando.\n   How fares it with the gallant soul of Tarik?\n\n   _Her._  Most joyfully; he scarcely had pronounced\n   Your glorious name, and bid me urge your speed,\n   Than, with a voice as though it answered heaven,\n   \u201cHe shall confound them in their dark designs,\u201d\n   Cried he, and turned away with that swift stride\n   Wherewith he meets and quells his enemies.\n\n   _Jul._  Alas, I cannot bear felicitation,\n   Who shunned it even in felicity.\n\n   _Her._  Often we hardly think ourselves the happy\n   Unless we hear it said by those around.\n   O my lord Julian, how your praises cheered\n   Our poor endeavours! sure, all hearts are ope\n   Lofty and low, wise and unwise, to praise.\n   Even the departed spirit hovers round\n   Our blessings and our prayers; the corse itself\n   Hath shined with other light than the still stars\n   Shed on its rest, or the dim taper, nigh.\n   My father, old men say, who saw him dead\n   And heard your lips pronounce him good and happy,\n   Smiled faintly through the quiet gloom, that eve,\n   And the shroud throbbed upon his grateful breast.\n   Howe\u2019er it be, many who tell the tale\n   Are good and happy from that voice of praise.\n   His guidance and example were denied\n   My youth and childhood: what I am I owe\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  Hernando, look not back: a narrow path\n   And arduous lies before thee; if thou stop\n   Thou fallest; go right onward, nor observe\n   Closely and rigidly another\u2019s way,\n   But, free and active, follow up thy own.\n\n   _Her._  The voice that urges now my manly step\n   Onward in life, recalls me to the past,\n   And from that fount I freshen for the goal.\n   Early in youth, among us villagers\n   Converse and ripened counsel you bestowed.\n   O happy days of (far departed!) peace,\n   Days when the mighty Julian stooped his brow\n   Entering our cottage door; another air\n   Breathed through the house; tired age and lightsome youth\n   Beheld him, with intensest gaze: these felt\n   More chastened joy; those, more profound repose.\n   Yes, my best lord, when labour sent them home\n   And midday suns, when from the social meal\n   The wicker window held the summer heat,\n   Praised have those been who, going unperceived,\n   Opened it wide, that all might see you well:\n   Nor were the children blamed, upon the mat,\n   Hurrying to watch what rush would last arise\n   From your foot\u2019s pressure, ere the door was closed,\n   And not yet wondering how they dared to love.\n   Your counsels are more precious now than ever,\n   But are they\u2014pardon if I err\u2014the same?\n   Tarik is gallant, kind, the friend of Julian,\n   Can he be more? or ought he to be less?\n   Alas! his faith!\n\n   _Jul._  In peace or war, Hernando?\n\n   _Her._  Oh, neither\u2014far above it; faith in God\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  \u2019Tis God\u2019s, not thine\u2014embrace it not, nor hate it.\n   Precious or vile, how dare we seize that offering,\n   Scatter it, spurn it, in its way to heaven,\n   Because we know it not? the Sovereign Lord\n   Accepts his tribute, myrrh and frankincense\n   From some, from others penitence and prayer:\n   Why intercept them from his gracious hand?\n   Why dash them down? why smite the supplicant?\n\n   _Her._  \u2019Tis what they do?\n\n   _Jul._  Avoid it thou the more.\n   If time were left me, I could hear well-pleased\n   How Tarik fought up Calp\u00e9\u2019s fabled cliff,\n   While I pursued the friends of Don Roderigo\n   Across the plain, and drew fresh force from mine.\n   Oh! had some other land, some other cause,\n   Invited him and me, I then could dwell\n   On this hard battle with unmixed delight.\n\n   _Her._  Eternal is its glory, if the deed\n   Be not forgotten till it be surpassed:\n   Much praise by land, by sea much more, he won;\n   For then a Julian was not at his side,\n   Nor led the van, nor awed the best before;\n   The whole, a mighty whole, was his alone.\n   There might be seen how far he shone above\n   All others of the day: old Muza watched\n   From his own shore the richly laden fleet,\n   Ill-armed and scattered, and pursued the rear\n   Beyond those rocks that bear St. Vincent\u2019s name,\n   Cutting the treasure, not the strength, away;\n   Valiant, where any prey lies undevoured\n   In hostile creek or too confiding isle:\n   Tarik, with his small barks, but with such love\n   As never chief from rugged sailor won,\n   Smote their high masts and swelling rampires down;\n   And Cadiz wept in fear o\u2019er Trafalgar.\n   Who that beheld our sails from off the heights,\n   Like the white birds, nor larger, tempt the gale\n   In sunshine and in shade, now almost touch\n   The solitary shore, glance, turn, retire,\n   Would think these lovely playmates could portend\n   Such mischief to the world, such blood, such woe;\n   Could draw to them from far the peaceful hinds,\n   Cull the gay flower of cities, and divide\n   Friends, children, every bond of human life;\n   Could dissipate whole families, could sink\n   Whole states in ruin, at one hour, one blow.\n\n   _Jul._  Go, good Hernando\u2014who _would_ think these things?\n   Say to the valiant Tarik, I depart\n   Forthwith: he knows not from what heaviness\n   Of soul I linger here; I could endure\n   No converse, no compassion, no approach,\n   Other than thine, whom the same cares improved\n   Beneath my father\u2019s roof, my foster-brother,\n   To brighter days and happier end, I hope;\n   In whose fidelity my own resides\n   With Tarik and with his compeers and chief.\n   I cannot share the gladness I excite,\n   Yet shall our Tarik\u2019s generous heart rejoice.\n\n\n\nFOURTH ACT.\u2014THIRD SCENE.\n\n\n                    EGILONA _enters_: HERNANDO _goes_.\n\n   _Egi._  Oh, fly me not because I am unhappy,\n   Because I am deserted fly me not.\n   It was not so before, it cannot be\n   Ever from Julian.\n\n   _Jul._  What would Egilona\n   That Julian\u2019s power with her new lords can do?\n   Surely her own must there preponderate.\n\n   _Egi._  I hold no suit to them\u2014restore, restore Roderigo.\n\n   _Jul._  He no longer is my prisoner.\n\n   _Egi._  Escapes he then?\n\n   _Jul._  Escapes he\u2014dost thou say?\n   O Egilona! what unworthy passion\u2014\n\n   _Egi._  Unworthy, when I loved him, was my passion;\n   The passion that now swells my heart is just.\n\n   _Jul._  What fresh reproaches hath he merited?\n\n   _Egi._  Deeprooted hatred shelters no reproach.\n   But whither is he gone?\n\n   _Jul._  Far from the walls.\n\n   _Egi._  And I knew nothing!\n\n   _Jul._  His offence was known\n   To thee at least.\n\n   _Egi._  Will it be expiated?\n\n   _Jul._  I trust it will.\n\n   _Egi._  This withering calm consumes me.\n   He marries then Covilla! \u2019twas for this\n   His people were excited to rebel,\n   His sceptre was thrown by, his vows were scorned,\n   And I\u2014and I\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  Cease, Egilona!\n\n   _Egi._  Cease?\n   Sooner shalt thou to live, than I to reign.\n\n\n\nFIFTH ACT: FIRST SCENE.\n\n\n                             _Tent of_ MUZA.\n\n                        MUZA.  TARIK.  ABDALAZIS.\n\n   _Muza_.  To have first landed on these shores appears\n   Transcendent glory to the applauded Tarik.\n\n   _Tarik_.  Glory, but not transcendent, it appears,\n   What might in any other.\n\n   _Muza_.  Of thyself\n   All this vain boast?\n\n   _Tarik_.  Not of myself\u2014\u2019twas Julian.\n   Against his shield the refluent surges rolled,\n   While the sea-breezes threw the arrows wide,\n   And fainter cheers urged the reluctant steeds.\n\n   _Muza_.  That Julian, of whose treason I have proofs,\n   That Julian, who rejected my commands\n   Twice, when our mortal foe besieged the camp,\n   And forced my princely presence to his tent.\n\n   _Tarik_.  Say rather, who without one exhortation,\n   One precious drop from true believer\u2019s vein,\n   Marched, and discomfited our enemies.\n   I found in him no treachery.  Hernando,\n   Who, little versed in moody wiles, is gone\n   To lead him hither, was by him assigned\n   My guide, and twice in doubtful fight his arm\n   Protected me: once on the heights of Calp\u00e9,\n   Once on the plain, when courtly jealousies\n   Tore from the bravest and the best his due,\n   And gave the dotard and the coward command:\n   Then came Roderigo forth\u2014the front of war\n   Grew darker\u2014him, equal in chivalry,\n   Julian alone could with success oppose.\n\n   _Abd._  I doubt their worth who praise their enemies.\n\n   _Tar._  And theirs doubt I who persecute their friends.\n\n   _Muza_.  Thou art in league with him.\n\n   _Tar._  Thou wert, by oaths,\n   I am without them; for his heart is brave.\n\n   _Muza_.  Am I to bear all this?\n\n   _Tar._  All this, and more:\n   Soon wilt thou see the man whom thou hast wronged,\n   And the keen hatred in thy breast concealed\n   Find its right way, and sting thee to the core.\n\n   _Muza_.  Hath he not foiled us in the field; not held\n   Our wisdom to reproach?\n\n   _Tar._  Shall we abandon\n   All he hath left us in the eyes of men?\n   Shall we again make him our adversary\n   Whom we have proved so, long and fatally?\n   If he subdue for us our enemies,\n   Shall we raise others, or, for want of them,\n   Convert him into one against his will?\n\n\n\nFIFTH ACT: SECOND SCENE.\n\n\n                  HERNANDO _enters_.  TARIK _continues_.\n\n   Here comes Hernando from that prince himself\u2014\n\n   _Muza_.  Who scorns himself to come.\n\n   _Her._    The queen detains him.\n\n   _Abd._  How?  Egilona?\n\n   _Muza_.  \u2019Twas my will.\n\n   _Tar._  At last\n   He must be happy; for delicious calm\n   Follows the fierce enjoyment of revenge.\n\n   Her.  That calm was never his, no other will be!\n   Thou knowest not, and mayst thou never know,\n   How bitter is the tear that fiery shame\n   Scourges and tortures from the soldier\u2019s eye.\n   Whichever of these bad reports be true,\n   He hides it from all hearts, to wring his own,\n   And drags the heavy secret to the grave.\n   Not victory, that o\u2019ershadows him, sees he!\n   No airy and light passion stirs abroad\n   To ruffle or to soothe him; all are quelled\n   Beneath a mightier, sterner stress of mind:\n   Wakeful he sits, and lonely and unmoved,\n   Beyond the arrows, views, or shouts of men;\n   As oftentimes an eagle, when the sun\n   Throws o\u2019er the varying earth his early ray,\n   Stands solitary, stands immovable\n   Upon some highest cliff, and rolls his eye,\n   Clear, constant, unobservant, unabased,\n   In the cold light, above the dews of morn.\n   He now assumes that quietness of soul\n   Which never but in danger have I seen\n   On his staid breast.\n\n   _Tar._  Danger is past, he conquers;\n   No enemy is left him to subdue.\n\n   _Her._    He sank not, while there was, into himself.\n   Now plainly see I from his altered tone,\n   He cannot live much longer\u2014thanks to God!\n\n   _Tar._  What! wishest thou thy once kind master dead?\n   Was he not kind to thee, ungrateful slave!\n\n   _Her._  The gentlest, as the bravest, of mankind.\n   Therefore shall memory dwell more tranquilly\n   With Julian, once at rest, than friendship could,\n   Knowing him yearn for death with speechless love.\n   For his own sake I could endure his loss,\n   Pray for it, and thank God; yet mourn I must\n   Him above all! so great, so bountiful,\n   So blessed once! bitterly must I mourn.\n   \u2019Tis not my solace that \u2019tis his desire;\n   Of all that pass us in life\u2019s drear descent\n   We grieve the most for those that wished to die.\n   A father to us all, he merited,\n   Unhappy man! all a good father\u2019s joy\n   In his own house, where seldom he hath been,\n   But, ever mindful of its dear delights,\n   He formed one family around him, ever.\n\n   _Tar._  Yes, we have seen and known him\u2014let his fame\n   Refresh his friends, but let it stream afar,\n   Nor in the twilight of home scenes be lost.\n   He chose the best, and cherished them; he left\n   To self-reproof the mutinies of vice;\n   Avarice, that dwarfs ambition\u2019s tone and mien;\n   Envy, sick nursling of the court; and pride\n   That cannot bear his semblance nor himself;\n   And malice, with blear visage half-descried\n   Amid the shadows of her hiding-place.\n\n   _Her._  What could I not endure, O gallant man,\n   To hear him spoken of as thou hast spoken!\n   Oh!  I would almost be a slave to him\n   Who calls me one.\n\n   _Muza_.  What? art thou not? begone.\n\n   _Tar._  Reply not, brave Hernando, but retire.\n   All can revile, few only can reward.\n   Behold the meed our mighty chief bestows!\n   Accept it, for thy services, and mine.\n   More, my bold Spaniard, hath obedience won\n   Than anger, even in the ranks of war.\n\n   _Her._  The soldier, not the Spaniard, shall obey.\n\n                                                                  [_Goes_.\n\n   MUZA _to_ TAR.  Into our very council bringest thou\n   Children of reprobation and perdition?\n   Darkness thy deeds and emptiness thy speech,\n   Such images thou raisest as buffoons\n   Carry in merriment on festivals;\n   Nor worthiness nor wisdom would display\n   To public notice their deformities,\n   Nor cherish them nor fear them; why shouldst thou?\n\n   _Tar._  I fear not them nor thee.\n\n\n\nFIFTH ACT: THIRD SCENE.\n\n\n                            EGILONA _enters_.\n\n   _Abd._  Advance, O queen.\n   Now let the turbulence of faction cease.\n\n   _Muza_.  Whate\u2019er thy purpose, speak, and be composed.\n\n   _Egi._  He goes; he is afar; he follows her;\n   He leads her to the altar, to the throne.\n   For, calm in vengeance, wise in wickedness,\n   The traitor hath prevailed, o\u2019er him, o\u2019er me,\n   O\u2019er you\u2014the slaves, the dupes, the scorn, of Julian.\n   What have I heard! what have I seen!\n\n   _Muza_.  Proceed.\n\n   _Abd._  And I swear vengeance on his guilty head\n   Who intercepts from thee the golden rays\n   Of sovereignty; who dares rescind thy rights;\n   Who steals upon thy rest, and breathes around\n   Empoisoned damps o\u2019er that serenity\n   Which leaves the world, and faintly lingers here.\n\n   _Muza_.  Who shuns thee\u2014\n\n   _Abd._  Whose desertion interdicts\n   Homage, authority, precedency\u2014\n\n   _Muza_.  Till war shall rescue them\u2014\n\n   _Abd._  And love restore.\n\n   _Egi._  O generous Abdalazis! never! never!\n   My enemies\u2014Julian alone remains\u2014\n   The worst, in safety, far beyond my reach,\n   Breathe freely on the summit of their hopes;\n   Because they never stopped, because they sprang\n   From crime to crime, and trampled down remorse.\n   Oh! if her heart knew tenderness like mine!\n   Grant vengeance on the guilty; grant but that,\n   I ask no more; my hand, my crown, is thine.\n   Fulfil the justice of offended heaven,\n   Assert the sacred rights of royalty,\n   Come not in vain, crush the rebellious crew,\n   Crush, I implore, the indifferent and supine.\n\n   _Muza_.  Roderigo thus escaped from Julian\u2019s tent.\n\n   _Egi._  No, not escaped, escorted, like a king.\n   The base Covilla first pursued her way\n   On foot; but after her the royal car,\n   Which bore me from San Pablos to the throne,\n   Empty indeed, yet ready at her voice,\n   Rolled o\u2019er the plain, amid the carcases\n   Of those who fell in battle or in flight:\n   She, a deceiver still, to whate\u2019er speed\n   The moment might incite her, often stopped\n   To mingle prayers with the departing breath,\n   Improvident! and those with heavy wounds\n   Groaned bitterly beneath her tottering knee.\n\n   _Tar._  Now, by the clement and the merciful!\n   The girl did well: when I breathe out my soul,\n   Oh! if compassion give one pang the more,\n   That pang be mine; here be it, in this land.\n   Such women are they in this land alone.\n\n   _Egi._  Insulting man!\n\n   _Muza_.  We shall confound him yet.\n   Say, and speak quickly, whither went the king?\n   Thou knewest where was Julian.\n\n   _Abd._  I will tell\n   Without his answer: yes, my friends; yes, Tarik,\n   Now will I speak, nor thou, for once, reply.\n   There is, I hear, a poor half-ruined cell\n   In Xeres, whither few indeed resort;\n   Green are the walls within, green is the floor\n   And slippery from disuse; for Christian feet\n   Avoid it, as half-holy, half accursed.\n   Still in its dark recess fanatic sin\n   Abases to the ground his tangled hair,\n   And servile scourges and reluctant groans\n   Roll o\u2019er the vault uninterruptedly,\n   Till, such the natural stillness of the place\n   The very tear upon the damps below\n   Drops audible, and the heart\u2019s throb replies.\n   There is the idol maid of Christian creed,\n   And taller images, whose history\n   I know not, nor inquired\u2014a scene of blood,\n   Of resignation amid mortal pangs,\n   And other things, exceeding all belief.\n   Hither the aged Opas of Seville\n   Walked slowly, and behind him was a man\n   Barefooted, bruised, dejected, comfortless,\n   In sackcloth; the white ashes on his head\n   Dropped as he smote his breast; he gathered up,\n   Replaced them all, groaned deeply, looked to heaven,\n   And held them, like a treasure, with clasped hands.\n\n   _Egi._  Oh! was Roderigo so abased?\n\n   _Muza_.  \u2019Twas he.\n   Now, Egilona, judge between your friends\n   And enemies; behold what wretches brought\n   The king, thy lord, Roderigo, to disgrace.\n\n   _Egi._  He merited\u2014but not from them\u2014from me\n   This, and much worse: had I inflicted it,\n   I had rejoiced\u2014at what I ill endure.\n\n   _Muza_.  For thee, for thee alone, we wished him here,\n   But other hands released him\u2014\n\n   _Abd._  With what aim\n   Will soon appear to those discerning eyes.\n\n   _Egi._  I pray thee, tell what passed until that hour.\n\n   _Abd._  Few words, and indistinct; repentant sobs\n   Filled the whole space, the taper in his hand,\n   Lighting two small dim lamps before the altar,\n   He gave to Opas; at the idol\u2019s feet\n   He laid his crown, and wiped his tears away:\n   The crown reverts not, but the tears return.\n\n   _Egi._  Yes, Abdalazis! soon, abundantly.\n   If he had only called upon my name,\n   Seeking my pardon ere he looked to heaven\u2019s,\n   I could have\u2014no! he thought not once on me!\n   Never shall he find peace or confidence;\n   I will rely on fortune and on thee,\n   Nor fear my future lot: sure, Abdalazis,\n   A fall so great can never happen twice,\n   Nor man again be faithless, like Roderigo.\n\n   _Abd._  Faithless he may be still, never so faithless.\n   Fainter must be the charms, remote the days,\n   When memory and dread example die,\n   When love and terror thrill the heart no more,\n   And Egilona is herself forgotten.\n\n\n\nFIFTH ACT: FOURTH SCENE.\n\n\n                             JULIAN _enters_.\n\n   _Tar._  Turn, and behold him! who is now confounded?\n   Ye who awaited him, where are ye? speak.\n   Is some close comet blazing o\u2019er your tents?\n   Muza!  Abdalazis! princes, conquerors,\n   Summon, interrogate, command, condemn.\n\n   _Muza_.  Justly, Don Julian\u2014but respect for rank\n   Allays resentment, nor interrogates\n   Without due form\u2014justly may we accuse\n   This absence from our councils, from our camp:\n   This loneliness in which we still remain\n   Who come invited to redress your wrongs.\n   Where is the king?\n\n   _Jul._  The people must decide.\n\n   _Muza_.  Imperfectly, I hope, I understand\n   Those words, unworthy of thy birth and age.\n\n   _Jul._  O chieftain, such have been our Gothic laws.\n\n   _Muza_.  Who then amid such turbulence is safe?\n\n   _Jul._  He who observes them: \u2019tis no turbulence,\n   It violates no peace: \u2019tis surely worth\n   A voice, a breath of air, thus to create\n   By their high will the man, formed after them\n   In their own image, vested with their power,\n   To whom they trust their freedom and their lives.\n\n   _Muza_.  They trust! the people!  God assigns the charge:\n   Kings open but the book of destiny\n   And read their names, all that remains for them\n   The mystic hand from time to time reveals.\n   Worst of idolaters! idolater\n   Of that refractory and craving beast\n   Whose den is in the city, at thy hand\n   I claim our common enemy, the king.\n\n   _Jul._  Sacred from justice then! but not from malice!\n\n   _Tar._  Surrender him, my friend: be sure his pains\n   Will not be softened.\n\n   _Jul._  \u2019Tis beyond my power.\n\n   _Tar._  To-morrow\u2014if in any distant fort\n   He lies to-night: send after him.\n\n   _Jul._  My faith\n   Is plighted, and he lives\u2014no prisoner.\n\n   _Egi._  I knew the truth.\n\n   _Abd._  Now, Tarik, hear and judge.\n   Was he not in thy camp? and in disguise?\n\n   _Tar._  No: I will answer thee.\n\n   _Muza_.  Audacious man!\n   Had not the Kalif Walid placed thee here,\n   Chains and a traitor\u2019s death should be thy doom.\n   Speak, Abdalazis!  Egilona, speak.\n   Were ye not present? was not I myself?\n   And aided not this Julian his escape?\n\n   _Jul._  \u2019Tis true.\n\n   _Tar._  Away then friendship; to thy fate\n   I leave thee: thou hast rendered Muza just,\n   Me hostile to thee.  Who is safe! a man\n   Armed with such power and with such perfidy!\n\n   _Jul._  Stay, Tarik! hear me; for to thee alone\n   Would I reply.\n\n   _Tar._  Thou hast replied, already.\n\n                                                                  [_Goes_.\n\n   _Muza_.  We, who were enemies, would not inquire\n   Too narrowly what reasons urged thy wrath\n   Against thy sovereign lord: beneath his flag\n   The Christians first assailed us from these shores,\n   And we seized gladly the first aid we found\n   To quell a wealthy and a warlike king.\n   We never held to thee the vain pretence\n   That \u2019twas thy quarrel our brave youth espoused,\n   Thine, who hast wrought us much disgrace and woe.\n   From perils and from losses, here we rest\n   And drink of the fresh fountain at our feet,\n   Not madly following such illusive streams\n   As overspread the dizzy wilderness,\n   And vanish from the thirst they have seduced.\n   Ours was the enterprise, the land is ours:\n   What gain we by our toils if he escape\n   Whom we came hither solely to subdue?\n\n   _Jul._  Is there no gain to live in amity?\n\n   _Muza_.  The gain of traffickers and idle men:\n   Courage and zeal expire upon such calms.\n   Further, what amity can Moors expect\n   When you have joined your forces?\n\n   _Jul._  From the hour\n   That he was vanquished I have laid aside\n   All power, all arms.\n\n   _Muza_.  How can we trust thee, once\n   Deceived, and oftener than this once despised?\n   Thou camest hither with no other aim\n   Than to deprive Roderigo of his crown\n   For thy own brow.\n\n   _Egi._  Julian, base man, \u2019tis true.\n   He comes a prince, no warrior, at this hour.\n\n   _Muza_.  His sword, O queen, would not avail him now.\n\n   _Abd._  Julian, I feel less anger than regret.\n   No violence of speech, no obloquy,\n   No accusation shall escape my lips:\n   Need there is none, nor reason, to avoid\n   My questions: if thou value truth, reply.\n   Hath not Roderigo left the town and camp?\n   Hath not thy daughter?\n\n   _Egi._  Past the little brook\n   Toward the Betis\u2014from a tower I saw\n   The fugitives, far on their way; they went\n   Over one bridge, each with armed men\u2014not half\n   A league of road between them\u2014and had joined\n   But that the olive-groves along the path\n   Concealed them from each other\u2014not from me:\n   Beneath me the whole level I surveyed,\n   And, when my eyes no longer could discern\n   Which track they took, I knew it from the storks\n   Rising in clouds above the reedy plain.\n\n   _Muza_.  Deny it, if thou canst.\n\n   _Jul._  I ordered it.\n\n   _Abd._  None could besides: lo! things in such a mass\n   Falling together on observant minds,\n   Create suspicion and establish proof:\n   Wanted there fresh\u2014why not employ our arms?\n   Why go alone?\n\n   _Muza_.  To parley, to conspire,\n   To reunite the Spaniards, which we saw,\n   To give up treaties, close up enmities,\n   And ratify the deed with Moorish blood.\n\n   _Jul._  Gladly would Spain procure your safe return,\n   Gladly would pay large treasures, for the aid\n   You brought against oppression\u2014\n\n   _Muza_.  Pay she shall\u2014\n   The treasures of her soil, her ports, her youth:\n   If she resist, if she tumultuously\n   Call forth her brigands and we lose a man,\n   Dreadful shall be our justice; war shall rage\n   Through every city, hamlet, house, and field,\n   And, universal o\u2019er the gasping land,\n   Depopulation.\n\n   _Jul._  They shall rue the day\n   Who dare these things.\n\n   _Muza_.  Let order then prevail.\n   In vain thou sendest far away thy child,\n   Thy counsellor the metropolitan,\n   And Sisabert\u2014prudence is mine no less.\n   Divide with us our conquests, but the king\n   Must be delivered up.\n\n   _Jul._  Never by me.\n\n   _Muza_.  False then were thy reproaches, false thy grief.\n\n   _Jul._  O Egilona! were thine also feigned?\n\n   _Abd._  Say, lovely queen, neglectful of thy charms\n   Turned he his eyes toward the young Covilla?\n   Did he pursue her to the mad excess\n   Of breaking off her vows to Sisabert,\n   And marrying her, against the Christian law?\n\n   _Muza_.  Did he prefer her so?\n\n   _Abd._  Could he prefer\n   To Egilona\u2014\n\n   _Egi._  Her! the child Covilla?\n   Eternal hider of a foolish face,\n   Incapable of anything but shame,\n   To me? old man! to me?  O Abdalazis!\n   No: he but followed with slow pace my hate.\n   And cannot pride check these unseemly tears.\n\n                                                                  [_Goes_.\n\n   _Muza_.  The most offended, an offended woman,\n   A wife, a queen, is silent on the deed.\n\n   _Abd._  Thou disingenuous and ignoble man,\n   Spreading these rumours! sending into exile\n   All those their blighting influence injured most:\n   And whom? thy daughter and adopted son,\n   The chieftains of thy laws and of thy faith.\n   Call any witnesses, proclaim the truth,\n   And set, at last, thy heart, thy fame, at rest.\n\n   _Jul._  Not, if I purposed or desired to live,\n   My own dishonour would I e\u2019er proclaim\n   Amid vindictive and reviling foes.\n\n   _Muza_.  Calling us foes, avows he not his guilt?\n   Condemns he not the action we condemn,\n   Owning it his, and owning it dishonour?\n   \u2019Tis well my cares pressed forward, and struck home.\n\n   _Jul._  Why smilest thou?  I never saw that smile\n   But it portended an atrocious deed.\n\n   _Muza_.  After our manifold and stern assaults,\n   With every tower and battlement destroyed,\n   The walls of Ceuta still were strong enough\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  For what? who boasted now her brave defence,\n   Or who forbade your entrance, after peace?\n\n   _Muza_.  None: for who could? their engines now arose\n   To throw thy sons into the arms of death.\n   For this erect they their proud crests again.\n   Mark him at last turn pale before a Moor.\n\n   _Jul._  Imprudent have they been, their youth shall plead.\n\n   _Abd._  O father, could they not have been detained?\n\n   _Muza_.  Son, thou art safe and wert not while they lived.\n\n   _Abd._  I feared them not.\n\n   _Muza_.  And therefore wert not safe:\n   Under their star the blooming Egilona\n   Would watch for thee the nuptial lamp in vain.\n\n   _Jul._  Never, oh never, hast thou worked a wile\n   So barren of all good! speak out at once,\n   What hopest thou by striking this alarm?\n   It shocks my reason, not my fears or fondness.\n\n   _Muza_.  Be happy then as ignorance can be;\n   Soon wilt thou hear it shouted from our ranks.\n   Those who once hurled defiance o\u2019er our heads,\n   Scorning our arms, and scoffing at our faith,\n   The nightly wolf hath visited, unscared,\n   And loathed them as her prey; for famine first,\n   Achieving in few days the boast of year;\n   Sank their young eyes and opened us the gates:\n   Ceuta, her port, her citadel, is ours.\n\n   _Jul._  Blessed boys! inhuman as thou art, what guilt\n   Was theirs?\n\n   _Muza_.  Their father\u2019s.\n\n   _Jul._  Oh, support me, Heaven!\n   Against this blow! all others I have borne.\n   Ermenegild! thou mightest, sure, have lived!\n   A father\u2019s name awoke no dread of thee!\n   Only thy mother\u2019s early bloom was thine!\n   There dwelt on Julian\u2019s brow\u2014thine was serene\u2014\n   The brightened clouds of elevated souls,\n   Feared by the most below: those who looked up\n   Saw, at their season, in clear signs, advance\n   Rapturous valour, calm solicitude,\n   All that impatient youth would press from age,\n   Or sparing age sigh and detract from youth:\n   Hence was his fall! my hope! myself! my Julian!\n   Alas!  I boasted\u2014but I thought on him,\n   Inheritor of all\u2014all what? my wrongs\u2014\n   Follower of me\u2014and whither? to the grave\u2014\n   Ah, no: it should have been so years far hence!\n   Him at this moment I could pity most,\n   But I most prided in him; now I know\n   I loved a name, I doted on a shade.\n   Sons!  I approach the mansions of the just,\n   And my arms clasp you in the same embrace,\n   Where none shall sever you\u2014and do I weep!\n   And do they triumph o\u2019er my tenderness!\n   I had forgotten my inveterate foes\n   Everywhere nigh me, I had half forgotten\n   Your very murderers, while I thought on you:\n   For, O my children, ye fill all the space\n   My soul would wander o\u2019er\u2014O bounteous heaven!\n   There is a presence, if the well-beloved\n   Be torn from us by human violence,\n   More intimate, pervading, and complete,\n   Than when they lived and spoke like other men;\n   And there pale images are our support\n   When reason sinks, or threatens to desert us.\n   I weep no more\u2014pity and exultation\n   Sway and console me: are they\u2014no!\u2014both dead?\n\n   _Muza_.  Ay, and unsepulchred.\n\n   _Jul._  Nor wept nor seen\n   By any kindred and far-following eye?\n\n   _Muza_.  Their mother saw them, if not dead, expire.\n\n   _Jul._  O cruelty\u2014to them indeed the least!\n   My children, ye are happy\u2014ye have lived\n   Of heart unconquered, honour unimpaired,\n   And died, true Spaniards, loyal to the last.\n\n   _Muza_.  Away with him.\n\n   _Jul._  Slaves! not before I lift\n   My voice to heaven and man: though enemies\n   Surround me, and none else, yet other men\n   And other times shall hear: the agony\n   Of an oppressed and of a bursting heart\n   No violence can silence; at its voice\n   The trumpet is o\u2019erpowered, and glory mute,\n   And peace and war hide all their charms alike.\n   Surely the guests and ministers of heaven\n   Scatter it forth through all the elements;\n   So suddenly, so widely, it extends,\n   So fearfully men breathe it, shuddering\n   To ask or fancy how it first arose.\n\n   _Muza_.  Yes, they shall shudder\u2014but will that, henceforth,\n   Molest my privacy, or shake my power?\n\n   _Jul._  Guilt hath pavilions, but no privacy.\n   The very engine of his hatred checks\n   The torturer in his transport of revenge,\n   Which, while it swells his bosom, shakes his power\n   And raises friends to his worst enemy.\n\n   _Muza_.  Where now are thine? will they not curse the day\n   That gave thee birth, and hiss thy funeral!\n   Thou hast left none who could have pitied thee.\n\n   _Jul._  Many, nor those alone of tenderer mould,\n   For me will weep\u2014many alas through me!\n   Already I behold my funeral.\n   The turbid cities wave and swell with it,\n   And wrongs are lost in that day\u2019s pageantry:\n   Oppressed and desolate, the countryman\n   Receives it like a gift; he hastens home,\n   Shows where the hoof of Moorish horse laid waste\n   His narrow croft and winter garden-plot,\n   Sweetens with fallen pride his children\u2019s lore,\n   And points their hatred; but applauds their tears.\n   Justice, who came not up to us through life,\n   Loves to survey our likeness on our tombs,\n   When rivalry, malevolence, and wrath,\n   And every passion that once stormed around,\n   Is calm alike without them as within.\n   Our very chains make the whole world our own,\n   Bind those to us who else had passed us by,\n   Those at whose call brought down to us, the light\n   Of future ages lives upon our name.\n\n   _Muza_.  I may accelerate that meteor\u2019s fall,\n   And quench that idle ineffectual light\n   Without the knowledge of thy distant world.\n\n   _Jul._  My world and thine are not that distant one.\n   Is age less wise, less merciful, than grief,\n   To keep this secret from thee, poor old man?\n   Thou canst not lessen, canst not aggravate\n   My sufferings, canst not shorten nor extend\n   Half a sword\u2019s length between my God and me.\n   I thank thee for that better thought than fame,\n   Which none, however, who deserve, despise,\n   Nor lose from view till all things else are lost.\n\n   _Abd._  Julian, respect his age, regard his power.\n   Many who feared not death have dragged along\n   A piteous life in darkness and in chains.\n   Never was man so full of wretchedness\n   But something may be suffered after all,\n   Perhaps in what clings round his breast, and helps\n   To keep the ruin up, which he amid\n   His agony and frenzy overlooks,\n   But droops upon at last, and clasps, and dies.\n\n   _Jul._  Although a Muza send far underground,\n   Into the quarry whence the palace rose,\n   His mangled prey, climes alien and remote\n   Mark and record the pang.  While overhead\n   Perhaps he passes on his favourite steed,\n   Less heedful of the misery he inflicts\n   Than of the expiring sparkle from a stone;\n   Yet we, alive or dead, have fellow men\n   If ever we have served them, who collect\n   From prisons and from dungeons our remains,\n   And bear them in their bosom to their sons.\n   Man\u2019s only relics are his benefits;\n   These, be there ages, be there worlds, between,\n   Retain him in communion with his kind:\n   Hence is our solace, our security,\n   Our sustenance, till heavenly truth descends\u2014\n   Losing in brightness and beatitude\n   The frail foundations of these humbler hopes\u2014\n   And, like an angel guiding us, at once\n   Leaves the loose chain and iron gate behind.\n\n   _Muza_.  Take thou my justice first, then hope for theirs.\n   I, who can bend the living to my will,\n   Fear not the dead, and court not the unborn:\n   Their arm will never reach me, nor shall thine.\n\n   _Abd._  Pity, release him, pardon him, my father.\n   Forget how much thou hatest perfidy;\n   Think of him, once so potent, still so brave,\n   So calm, so self-dependent in distress\u2014\n   I marvel at him\u2014hardly dare I blame,\n   When I behold him fallen from so high,\n   And so exalted after such a fall.\n   Mighty must that man be who can forgive\n   A man, so mighty; seize the hour to rise,\n   Another never comes.  Oh, say, my father,\n   Say, \u201cJulian, be my enemy no more.\u201d\n   He fills me with a greater awe than e\u2019er\n   The field of battle, with himself the first,\n   When every flag that waved along our host\n   Drooped down the staff, as if the very winds\n   Hung in suspense before him\u2014bid him go\n   And peace be with him, or let me depart.\n   Lo! like a god, sole and inscrutable,\n   He stands above our pity.\n\n   _Jul._  For that wish\u2014\n   Vain as it is, \u2019tis virtuous\u2014oh, for that,\n   However wrong thy censure and thy praise,\n   Kind Abdalazis, mayst thou never feel\n   The rancour that consumes thy father\u2019s breast,\n   Nor want the pity thou hast sought for me.\n\n   _Muza_.  Now hast thou sealed thy doom.\n\n   _Jul._  And thou thy crimes.\n\n   _Abd._  O father, heed him not: those evil words\n   Leave neither blight nor blemish\u2014let him go.\n\n   _Muza_.  A boy, a very boy, art thou indeed!\n   One who in early day would sally out\n   To chase the lion, and would call it sport,\n   But, when more wary steps had closed him round,\n   Slink from the circle, drop the toils, and blanch\n   Like a lithe plant from under snow in spring.\n\n   _Abd._  He who ne\u2019er shrank from danger might shrink now,\n   And ignominy would not follow here.\n\n   _Muza_.  Peace, Abdalazis! how is this? he bears\n   Nothing that warrants him invulnerable:\n   Shall I then shrink to smite him? shall my fears\n   Be greatest at the blow that ends them all?\n   Fears? no! \u2019tis justice\u2014fair, immutable,\n   Whose measured step, at times, advancing nigh,\n   Appalls the majesty of kings themselves.\n   Oh, were he dead! though then revenge were o\u2019er.\n\n\n\nFINAL ACT.\u2014FIFTH SCENE.\n\n\n   _Off._  Thy wife, Count Julian\u2014\n\n   _Jul._  Speak!\n\n   _Off._  \u2014Is dead.\n\n   _Jul._  Adieu,\n   Earth, and the humblest of all earthly hopes,\n   To hear of comfort, though to find it vain.\n   Thou murderer of the helpless! shame of man!\n   Shame of thy own base nature! \u2019tis an act\n   He who could perpetrate could not avow,\n   Stained, as he boasts to be, with innocent blood,\n   Deaf to reproach, and blind to retribution.\n\n   _Off._  Julian, be just; \u2019twill make thee less unhappy.\n   Grief was her end: she held her younger boy\n   And wept upon his cheek; his naked breast\n   By recent death now hardening and inert,\n   Slipped from her knee; again with frantic grasp\n   She caught it, and it weighed her to the ground:\n   There lay the dead.\n\n   _Jul._  She?\n\n   _Off._  And the youth her son.\n\n   _Jul._  Receive them to thy peace, eternal God!\n   O soother of my hours, while I beheld\n   The light of day, and thine! adieu, adieu!\n   And, my Covilla! dost thou yet survive?\n   Yes, my lost child, thou livest yet\u2014in shame!\n   Oh, agony past utterance! past thought!\n   That throwest death, as some light idle thing,\n   With all its terrors, into dust and air,\n   I will endure thee; I, whom heaven ordained\n   Thus to have served beneath my enemies,\n   Their conqueror, thus to have revisited\n   My native land with vengeance and with woe.\n   Henceforward shall she recognise her sons,\n   Impatient of oppression or disgrace,\n   And rescue them, or perish; let her hold\n   This compact, written with her blood, and mine.\n   Now follow me\u2014but tremble\u2014years shall roll,\n   And wars rage on, and Spain at last be free.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTE.\n\n\n   {6}  \u201cAh, what avails the sceptred race,\n      Ah, what the form divine!\n   What every virtue, every grace!\n      Rose Aylmer, all were thine.\n\n   \u201cRose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes\n      May weep, but never see,\n   A night of memories and sighs\n      I consecrate to thee.\u201d","title":"Gebir, and Count Julian","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":31852}