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 actHe 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 boyAnd wept upon his cheek; his naked breastBy recent death now hardening and inert,Slipped from her knee; again with frantic graspShe 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 beheldThe 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 ordainedThus to have served beneath my enemies,Their conqueror, thus to have revisitedMy 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 holdThis 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.
[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 eyesMay weep, but never see,A night of memories and sighsI consecrate to thee.”