FINAL ACT.—FIFTH SCENE.
Off. Thy wife, Count Julian—
Jul. Speak!
Off. —Is dead.
Jul. Adieu,
Earth, and the humblest of all earthly hopes,
To hear of comfort, though to find it vain.
Thou murderer of the helpless! shame of man!
Shame of thy own base nature! ’tis an act
He who could perpetrate could not avow,
Stained, as he boasts to be, with innocent blood,
Deaf to reproach, and blind to retribution.
Off. Julian, be just; ’twill
make thee less unhappy.
Grief was her end: she held her younger boy
And wept upon his cheek; his naked breast
By recent death now hardening and inert,
Slipped from her knee; again with frantic grasp
She caught it, and it weighed her to the ground:
There lay the dead.
Jul. She?
Off. And the youth her son.
Jul. Receive them to thy peace,
eternal God!
O soother of my hours, while I beheld
The light of day, and thine! adieu, adieu!
And, my Covilla! dost thou yet survive?
Yes, my lost child, thou livest yet—in shame!
Oh, agony past utterance! past thought!
That throwest death, as some light idle thing,
With all its terrors, into dust and air,
I will endure thee; I, whom heaven ordained
Thus to have served beneath my enemies,
Their conqueror, thus to have revisited
My native land with vengeance and with woe.
Henceforward shall she recognise her sons,
Impatient of oppression or disgrace,
And rescue them, or perish; let her hold
This compact, written with her blood, and mine.
Now follow me—but tremble—years shall roll,
And wars rage on, and Spain at last be free.
FOOTNOTE.
[6] “Ah, what avails the
sceptred race,
Ah, what the form divine!
What every virtue, every grace!
Rose Aylmer, all were thine.
“Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and sighs
I consecrate to thee.”