libera nos.

Min. Hark! from the bridal bower,Rings out the bridesmaid’s song;‘’Tis the mystic hour of an untried power,The bride she tarries long.’

Fool. She’s schooling herself and she’s steeling herself,Against the dreary day,When she’ll pine and sigh from her lattice highFor the knight that’s far away.

Monks. A carnis illectamentisDomine libera nos.

Min. Blest maid! fresh roses o’er theeThe careless years shall fling;While days and nights shall new delightsTo sense and fancy bring.

Fool. Satins and silks, and feathers and lace,Will gild life’s pill;In jewels and gold folks cannot grow old,Fine ladies will never fall ill.

Monks. A vanitatibus sæculiDomine libera nos.

[Sophia descends from the Dais, leading Elizabeth. Ladies follow.]

Sophia [to the Fool]. Silence, you screech-owl.—Come strew flowers, fair ladies,And lead into her bower our fairest bride,The cynosure of love and beauty here,Who shrines heaven’s graces in earth’s richest casket.

Eliz. I come, [aside] Here, Guta, take those monks a fee—Tell them I thank them—bid them pray for me.I am half mazed with trembling joy within,And noisy wassail round. ’Tis well, for elseThe spectre of my duties and my dangersWould whelm my heart with terror. Ah! poor self!Thou took’st this for the term and bourne of troubles—And now ’tis here, thou findest it the gateOf new sin-cursed infinities of labour,Where thou must do, or die![aloud] Lead on. I’ll follow. [Exeunt.]

Fool. There, now. No fee for the fool; and yet my prescription was as good as those old Jeremies’. But in law, physic, and divinity, folks had sooner be poisoned in Latin, than saved in the mother-tongue.

ACT II

SCENE I. A.D. 1221-27

Elizabeth’s Bower. Night. Lewis sleeping in an Alcove.

Elizabeth lying on the Floor in the Foreground.

Eliz. No streak yet in the blank and eyeless east—More weary hours to ache, and smart, and shiverOn these bare boards, within a step of bliss.Why peevish? ’Tis mine own will keeps me here—And yet I hate myself for that same will:Fightings within and out! How easy ’twere, now,Just to be like the rest, and let life run—To use up to the rind what joys God sends us,Not thus 

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