p. 52

Opas. Thou hast; and what remains?

Rod. Myself—Roderigo— Whom hatred cannot reach, nor love cast down.

Opas. Nor gratitude nor pity nor remorse Call back, nor vows nor earth nor heaven controul. But art thou free and happy? art thou safe? By shrewd contempt the humblest may chastize Whom scarlet and its ermine cannot scare, And the sword skulks for everywhere in vain. Thee the poor victim of thy outrages, Woman, with all her weakness, may despise.

Rod. But first let quiet age have intervened.

Opas. Ne’er will the peace or apathy of age Be thine, or twilight steal upon thy day. The violent choose, but cannot change, their end— Violence, by man or nature, must be theirs; Thine it must be, and who to pity thee?

p. 53Rod. Behold my solace! none. I want no pity.

p. 53

Opas. Proclaim we those the happiest of mankind Who never knew a want? O what a curse To thee this utter ignorance of thine! Julian, whom all the good commiserate, Sees thee below him far in happiness: A state indeed: of no quick restlesness, No glancing agitation—one vast swell Of melancholy, deep, impassable, Interminable, where his spirit alone Broods and o’ershadows all, bears him from earth And purifies his chasten’d soul for heaven. Both heaven and earth shall from thy grasp recede. Whether on death or life thou arguest, Untutor’d savage or corrupted heathen Avows no sentiment so vile as thine.

Rod. Nor feels?

Opas. O human nature! I have heard The secrets of the soul, and pitied thee. Bad and accursed things have men confest Before me, but have left them unarrayed, p. 54Naked, and shivering with deformity. The troubled dreams and deafening gush of youth Fling o’er the fancy, struggling to be free, Discordant and impracticable things: If the good shudder at their past escapes, Shall not the wicked shudder at their crimes? They shall—and I denounce upon thy head God’s vengeance—thou shalt rule this land no more.

p. 54

Rod. What! my own kindred leave me, and renounce me!

Opas. Kindred? and is there any in our world So near us, as those sources of all joy, Those on whose bosom every gale of life Blows softly, who reflect our images In loveliness through sorrows and through age, And bear them onward far beyond the 

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