Tremble and tremble into certainty.
How often, when her maids with merry voice Call'd her, and told the sleepless queen 'twas
How often would she feign some fresh delay,
And tell 'em (though they saw) that she arose.
Next to her chamber, closed by cedar doors,
A bath of purest marble, purest wave,
On its fair surface bore its pavement high:
Arabian gold enchased the crystal roof,
With fluttering boys adorn'd and girls unrobed ;
These, when you touch the quiet water, start
From their aerial sunny arch, and pant
Entangled mid each other's flowery wreaths,
And each pursuing is in turn pursued.
Here came at last, as ever wont at morn, Charoba: long she lingered at the brink, Often she sigh'd, and, naked as she was, Sate down, and leaning on the couch's edge, On the soft inward pillow of her arm Rested her burning cheek: she moved her eyes; She blusht; and blushing plunged into the wave Now brazen chariots thunder through each street,
Behind and near them numerous were the tents As freckled clouds o'erfloat our vernal skies, Numerous as wander in warm moonlight nights Along Meänder's or Caÿster's marsh
Swans pliant-neckt and village storks revered. Throughout each nation moved the hum confused,140 Like that from myriad wings o'er Scythian cups Of frothy milk, concreted soon with blood. Throughout the fields the savoury smoke ascends, And boughs and branches shade the hides unbroacht.
Some roll the flowery turf into a seat,
And others press the helmet. Now resounds The signal! queen and monarch mount the thrones.
The brazen clarion hoarsens: many leagues 90 Above them, many to the south, the heron Rising with hurried croak and throat outstretcht,15 Ploughs up the silvering surface of her plain. Tottering with age's zeal and mischief's haste Now was discover'd Dalica; she reacht The throne, she leant against the pedestal, And now ascending stood before the king. Prayers for his health and safety she preferr'd, And o'er his head and o'er his feet she threw Myrrh, nard, and cassia, from three golden urns ; His robe of native woof she next removed, And round his shoulders drew the garb accurst, And bow'd her head, departing: soon the queen Saw the blood mantle in his manly cheeks, And fear'd, and faltering sought her lost replies, And blest the silence that she wisht were broke. Alas, unconscious maiden! night shall close, And love and sovranty and life dissolve, And Egypt be one desert drencht in blood.
And neighing steeds paw proudly from delay. While o'er the palace breathes the dulcimer, Lute, and aspiring harp, and lisping reed, Loud rush the trumpets bursting through the throng 100
And urge the high-shoulder'd vulgar; now are heard
Curses and quarrels and constricted blows,
Threats and defiance and suburban war.
Hark! the reiterated clangour sounds!
Now murmurs, like the sea or like the storm
Or like the flames on forests, move and mount
From rank to rank, and loud and louder roll,
Till all the people is one vast applause.
Yes, 'tis herself, Charoba. Now the strife
To see again a form so often seen.
Feel they some partial pang, some secret void,
Some doubt of feasting those fond eyes again?
Panting imbibe they that refreshing sight
To reproduce in hour of bitterness?
She goes, the king awaits her from the camp:
Him she descried, and trembled ere he reacht
Her car, but shuddered paler at his voice.
So the pale silver at the festive board
Grows paler fill'd afresh and dew'd with wine;
So seems the tenderest herbage of the spring
To whiten, bending from a balmy gale.
The beauteous queen alighting he received,
And sigh'd to loose her from his arms; she hung
A little longer on them through her fears.
Her maidens follow'd her; and one that watcht,
One that had call'd her in the morn, observ'd
How virgin passion with unfuel'd flame
Burns into whiteness, while the blushing cheek
Imagination heats and shame imbues.
Between both nations drawn in ranks they pass:130 The priests, with linen ephods, linen robes, Attend their steps, some follow, some precede, Where clothed with purple intertwined with gold Two lofty thrones commanded land and main.
When thunder overhangs the fountain-head, Losing its wonted freshness every stream Grows turbid, grows with sickly warmth suffused :170 Thus were the brave Iberians when they saw The king of nations from his throne descend. Scarcely, with pace uneven, knees unnerv'd, Reacht he the waters: in his troubled ear They sounded murmuring drearily; they rose Wild, in strange colours, to his parching eyes; They seem'd to rush around him, seem'd to lift From the receding earth his helpless feet. He fell Charoba shriekt aloud; she ran; Frantic with fears and fondness, mazed with woe,' Nothing but Gebir dying she beheld. The turban that betray'd its golden charge Within, the veil that down her shoulder hung, All fallen at her feet! the furthest wave Creeping with silent progress up the sand, Glided through all, and rais'd their hollow folds. In vain they bore him to the sea, in vain Rubb'd they his temples with the briny warmth; He struggled from them, strong with agony, He rose half up, he fell again, he cried "Charoba! O Charoba!" She embraced His neck, and raising on her knee one arm, Sigh'd when it moved not, when it fell she shriekt,
And clasping loud both hands above her head, She call'd on Gebir, call'd on earth, on heaven.
"Who will believe me? what shall I protest? How innocent, thus wretched? God of Gods, Strike me.. who most offend thee most defy.. Charoba most offends thee: strike me, hurl
He seems to struggle from the grasp of death !240
From this accursed land, this faithless throne. 200 Charoba shriekt and fell away, her hand
O Dalica! see here the royal feast!
See here the gorgeous robe! you little thought
How have the demons dyed that robe with death.
Where are ye, dear fond parents! when ye heard
My feet in childhood pat the palace-floor,
Ye started forth and kist away surprise:
Will ye now meet me? how, and where, and when?
And must I fill your bosom with my tears,
And, what I never have done, with your own?
Why have the Gods thus punisht me
Have ever I done them? have I profaned
Their temples, askt too little, or too much?
Proud if they granted, griev'd if they withheld?
O mother! stand between your child and them!
Appease them, soothe them, soften their revenge,
Melt them to pity with maternal tears.
Alas, but if you can not! they themselves
Will then want pity rather than your child.
O Gebir! best of monarchs, best of men,
What realm hath ever thy firm even hand
Or lost by feebleness or held by force?
Behold thy cares and perils how repaid!
Behold the festive day, the nuptial hour!"
Thus raved Charoba: horror, grief, amaze,
Pervaded all the host; all eyes were fixt;
All stricken motionless and mute: the feast
Was like the feast of Cepheus, when the sword
Of Phineus, white with wonder, shook restrain'd,
And the hilt rattled in his marble hand.
Still clasping his, a sudden blush o'erspread
Her pallid humid cheek, and disappear'd.
'Twas not the blush of shame; what shame has
woe?
'Twas not the genuine ray of hope; it flasht
With shuddering glimmer through unscatter'd
clouds,
It flasht from passions rapidly opposed.
Never so eager, when the world was waves,
Stood the less daughter of the ark, and tried
(Innocent this temptation !) to recall
With folded vest and casting arm the dove;
Never so fearful, when amid the vines
Rattled the hail, and when the light of heaven
Closed, since the wreck of Nature, first eclipst,
As she was eager for his life's return,
As she was fearful how his groans might end.
They ended cold and languid calm succeeds;
His eyes have lost their lustre, but his voice
Is not unheard, though short: he spake these
words.
"And weepest thou, Charoba! shedding tears***
More precious than the jewels that surround
The neck of kings entomb'd! then weep, fair
queen,
At once thy pity and my pangs assuage.
Ah! what is grandeur? glory? they are past!
When nothing else, not life itself, remains,
Still the fond mourner may be call'd our own.
Should I complain of Fortune? how she errs,
She heard not, saw not, every sense was gone; 230 Scattering her bounty upon barren ground,
One passion banisht all; dominion, praise,
The world itself, was nothing. Senseless man!
What would thy fancy figure now from worlds?
There is no world to those that grieve and love.
She hung upon his bosom, prest his lips,
Breath'd, and would feign it his that she resorb'd,
She chafed the feathery softness of his veins,
Slow to allay the lingering thirst of toil?
Fortune, 'tis true, may err, may hesitate,
Death follows close nor hesitates nor errs.
I feel the stroke! I die!" He would extend
His dying arm it fell upon his breast;
Cold sweat and shivering ran o'er every limb,
His eyes grew stiff, he struggled, and expired.
None of these poems of a dramatic form were offered to the stage, being no better than Imaginary Conversations in metre.
COUNT JULIAN. RODERIGO, King of Spain. OPAS, Metro-
politan of Seville. SISABERT, betrothed to COVILLA.
MUZA, Prince of Mauritania. ABDALAZIS, son of Muza.
TARIK, Moorish Chieftain. COVILLA, daughter of
JULIAN, EGILONA, wife of RODERIGO. HERNANDO, OSMA,
RAMIRO, &c., Officers.
FIRST ACT: FIRST SCENE.
Camp of Julian.
Opas. See her, Count Julian: if thou lovest God,
See thy lost child.
Julian.
I have avenged me, Opas,
More than enough: I only sought to hurl
The brands of war on one detested head,
And die upon his ruin. O my country!
O lost to honour, to thyself, to me,
Why on barbarian hands devolves thy cause,
Spoilers, blasphemers!
Opas.
Is it thus, Don Julian,
When thy own offspring, that beloved child
For whom alone these very acts were done
By them and thee, when thy Covilla stands
An outcast and a suppliant at thy gate,
Why that still stubborn agony of soul,
Those struggles with the bars thyself imposed?
Is she not thine? not dear to thee as ever?
Julian. Father of mercies! show me none,
The wrongs she suffers cease to wring my heart,
Or I seek solace ever, but in death.
Opas. What wilt thou do then, too unhappy man?
Julian. What have I done already? All my peace
Has vanisht; my fair fame in aftertime
Will wear an alien and uncomely form,
Seen o'er the cities I have laid in dust,
Countrymen slaughtered, friends abjured!
Opas.
And faith?
Julian. Alone now left me, filling up in part
The narrow and waste intervals of grief:
It promises that I shall see again
My own lost child.
Yes, at this very hour.
Julian. Till I have met the tyrant face to face,
And gain'd a conquest greater than the last;
Till he no longer rules one rood of Spain,
And not one Spaniard, not one enemy,
The least relenting, flags upon his flight;
Till we are equal in the eyes of men,
The humblest and most wretched of our kind,
No peace for me, no comfort, no.. no child!
Opas. No pity for the thousands fatherless, The thousands childless like thyself, nay more, The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless.. Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so, Who now perhaps, round their first winter fire, Banish, to talk of thee, the tales of old, Shedding true honest tears for thee unknown: Precious be these and sacred in thy sight, Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind. If only warlike spirits were evoked The daughter of Count Julian is usually called By the war-demon, I would not complain, Florinda. The city of Covilla, it is reported, was named Or dissolute and discontented men; after her. Here is no improbability: there would be a But wherefore hurry down into the square gross one in deriving the word, as is also pretended, from The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race, La Cava. Cities, in adopting a name, bear it usually as a Who would not injure us, and can not serve; testimony of victories or as an augury of virtues. Small Who, from their short and measured slumber risen, and obscure places occasionally receive what their neigh-In the faint sunshine of their balconies, bours throw against them; as Puerto de la mala muger in Murcia: but a generous people would affix no stigma With a half-legend of a martyrdom to innocence and misfortune. It is remarkable that the most important era in Spanish history should be the most
obscure. This is propitious to the poet, and above all to
the tragedian. Few characters of such an era can be glaringly misrepresented, few facts offensively perverted.
And some weak wine and withered grapes before
them,
Note by their foot the wheel of melody
That catches and rolls on the Sabbath dance.
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To whom brave Spaniards must refer their wrongs!
Julian. Muza, that cruel and suspicious chief,
Distrusts his friends more than his enemies,
Me more than either; fraud he loves and fears,
And watches her still footfall day and night.
Opas. O Julian! such a refuge! such a race! Julian... Calamities like mine alone implore. No virtues have redeem'd them from their bonds; Wily ferocity, keen idleness,
And the close cringes of ill-whispering want,
Educate them to plunder and obey:
Active to serve him best whom most they fear,
They show no mercy to the merciful,
And racks alone remind them of the name.
Opas. O everlasting curse for Spain and thee! Julian. Spain should have vindicated then her wrongs
In mine, a Spaniard's and a soldier's wrongs. Opas. Julian, are thine the only wrongs on earth?
And shall each Spaniard rather vindicate
Thine than his own? is there no Judge of all?
Shall mortal hand seize with impunity
The sword of vengeance from the armoury
Of the Most High? easy to wield, and starred
With glory it appears; but all the host
Of the archangels, should they strive at once,
Would never close again its widening blade.
Julian. He who provokes it hath so much to rue.
Where'er he turn, whether to earth or heaven,
He finds an enemy, or raises one.
Opas. I never yet have seen where long success Hath followed him who warred upon his king. Julian. Because the virtue that inflicts the stroke
Dies with him, and the rank ignoble heads
Of plundering faction soon unite again,
And prince-protected share the spoil at rest.
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RODERIGO enters as a herald.
A messager of peace! audacious man!
In what attire appearest thou? a herald's?
Under no garb can such a wretch be safe.
Roderigo. Thy violence and fancied wrongs I
know,
And what thy sacrilegious hands would do,
O traitor and apostate!
What they would
They can not thee of kingdom and of life
'Tis easy to despoil, thyself the traitor,
Thyself the violator of allegiance.
O would all-righteous Heaven they could restore
The joy of innocence, the calm of age,
The probity of manhood, pride of arms,
And confidence of honour! the august
And holy laws trampled beneath thy feet,
And Spain! O parent, I have lost thee too!
Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days,
Me, thine avenger. I have fought her foe,
Roderigo, I have gloried in her sons,
Sublime in hardihood and piety:
Her strength was mine: I, sailing by her cliffs,
By promontory after promontory,
Opening like flags along some castle-tower,
Have sworn before the cross upon our mast
Ne'er shall invader wave his standard there.
Roderigo. Yet there thou plantest it, false man,
thyself.
Julian. Accursed he who makes me this reproach,
And made it just! Had I been happy still,
I had been blameless: I had died with glory
Upon the walls of Ceuta.
Roderigo.
Surrendered to the Infidel.
Julian.
"Tis hard
And base to live beneath a conqueror;
Yet, amid all this grief and infamy,
'Twere something to have rusht upon the ranks
In their advance; 'twere something to have stood
Defeat, discomfiture, and, when around
No beacon blazes, no far axle groans
Thro' the wide plain, no sound of sustenance
Or succour soothes the still-believing ear,
To fight upon the last dismantled tower,
And yield to valour, if we yield at all.
But rather should my neck lie trampled down
By every Saracen and Moor on earth,
Than my own country see her laws o'erturn'd
By those who should protect them. Sir, no prince
Shall ruin Spain, and, least of all, her own.
Is any just or glorious act in view,
Your oaths forbid it is your avarice,
Or, if there be such, any viler passion
To have its giddy range and to be gorged,
It rises over all your sacraments,
She call upon her God, and outrage him
At his own altar! she repeat the vows
A hooded mystery, holier than they all.
Roderigo. Hear me, Don Julian; I have heard She violates in repeating! who abhors
Who am thy king, nor heard man's wrath before. Julian. Thou shalt hear mine, for thou art not my king.
Thee and thy crimes, and wants no crown of thine.
Force may compell the abhorrent soul, or want
Lash and pursue it to the public ways;-
Virtue looks back and weeps, and may return
Roderigo. Knowest thou not the altered face To these, but never near the abandon'd one
Honour, dominion: send away these slaves,
Or leave them to our sword, and all beyond
The distant Ebro to the towns of France
Shall bless thy name and bend before thy throne.
I will myself accompany thee, I,
The king, will hail thee brother.
Julian.
Ne'er shalt thou
Henceforth be king: the nation in thy name
May issue edicts, champions may command
The vassal multitudes of marshal'd war,
And the fierce charger shrink before the shouts,
Lower'd as if earth had open'd at his feet,
While thy mail'd semblance rises tow'rd the ranks,
But God alone sees thee.
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Who drags religion to adultery's feet,
And rears the altar higher for her sake.
Roderigo. Have then the Saracens possest thee
quite?
And wilt thou never yield me thy consent?
Julian. Never.
Roderigo. So deep in guilt, in treachery!
Forced to acknowledge it! forced to avow
The traitor!
Julian.
Not to thee, who reignest not,
But to a country ever dear to me,
And dearer now than ever! What we love
Is loveliest in departure! One I thought,
As every father thinks, the best of all,
Graceful and mild and sensible and chaste:
Now all these qualities of form and soul
Fade from before me, nor on anyone
Can I repose, or be consoled by any.
And yet in this torn heart I love her more
Than I could love her when I dwelt on each,
Or claspt them all united, and thankt God,
Without a wish beyond. Away, thou fiend!
O ignominy, last and worst of all!
I weep before thee.. like a child.. like mine..
And tell my woes, fount of them all! to thee!
FIRST ACT: FOURTH SCENE.
ABDALAZIS enters.
Abdalazis. Julian, to thee, the terror of the
faithless,
I bring my father's order to prepare
For the bright day that crowns thy brave exploits.
First, to Our enemy is at the very gate,
And art thou here, with women in thy train,
Crouching to gain admittance to their lord,
Julian. Darest thou offer any price for shame? And mourning the unkindness of delay!
Roderigo. Love and repentance.
Julian.
And were she buried with her ancestors,
Covilla should not be the gaze of men,
Should not, despoil'd of honour, rule the free.
Roderigo. Stern man! her virtues well deserve
the throne.
Julian. And Egilona, what hath she deserv'd,
The good, the lovely?
Roderigo.
Hoped a succession.
Julian, (agitated, goes toward the door, and returns.) I am prepared: Prince, judge not hastily.
Abdalazis. Whether I should not promise all
they ask,
I too could hesitate, though earlier taught
The duty to obey, and should rejoice
To shelter in the universal storm
A frame so delicate, so full of fears,
But the realm in vain So little used to outrage and to arms,
Julian. Blind insolence! base insincerity! Power and renown no mortal ever shared Who could retain or grasp them to himself: And, for Covilla? patience! peace! for her?
As one of these, so humble, so uncheer'd
At the gay pomp that smooths the track of war.
When she beheld me from afar dismount,
And heard my trumpet, she alone drew back,
And, as though doubtful of the help she seeks,
Shudder'd to see the jewels on my brow,
And turn'd her eyes away, and wept aloud.
The other stood awhile, and then advanced :
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