[then turning his eyes languidly to Alvar She hath avenged the blood of Isidore! I stood in silence like a slave before her That I might taste the wormwood and the gall, With bitterer agonies than death can give. Oh !---couldst thou forget me! [Dies. Alh. (to the Moors.) I thank thee, Heaven! thou hast ordained it wisely, That still extremes bring their own cure. That point In misery, which makes the oppressed man Lord of the oppressor's---Knew I a hundred men This arm should shake the kingdoms of the world; Till desolation seemed a beautiful thing, fills with armed peasants, and servants, Zulimez and Valdez at their head. Alv. Turn not thy face that way, my father! Oh hide it from his eye! Oh let thy joy [hide, Flow in unmingled stream through thy first bles sing. [both kneel to Valdez. Val. My Son! My Alvar! bless, Oh bless him, heaven! Ter. Me too, my Father? Val. Bless, Oh, bless my children! [both rise. Alv. Delights so full, if unalloyed with grief, Were ominous. In these strange dread events Just Heaven instructs us with an awful voice, That Conscience rules us e'en against our choice. Our inward monitress to guide or warn, If listened to; but if repelled with scorn, At length as dire Remorse, she reappears, Works in our guilty hopes, and selfish fears! Still bids, Remember! and still cries, Too late! And while she scares us, goads us to our fate. APPENDIX. THE following Scene, as unfit for the stage, was taken from the tragedy, in the year 1797, and published in the Lyrical Ballads. Enter Teresa and Selma. Ter. 'Tis said, he spake of you familiarly, Sel. Now blessings on the man, whoe'er he be When you two little ones would stand, at eve, "Tis more like heaven to come, than what has been! Sel. Ter. No one. Sel. Can no one hear? It is a perilous tale! My husband's father told it me, Poor old Sesina-angels rest his soul; He was a woodman, and could fell and saw With lusty arm. You know that huge round beam He found a baby wrapt in mosses, lined With thistle-beards, and such small locks of wool A pretty boy, but most unteachable And never learn'd a prayer, nor told a bead, But knew the names of birds, and mocked their notes, And whistled, as he were a bird himself. To gather seeds of wild flowers, and to plant them The boy loved him, and, when the friar taught him, So he became a rare and learned youth: But O! poor wretch! he read, and read, and read, But yet his speech, it was so soft and sweet, Of all the heretical and lawless talk Which brought this judgment: so the youth was seized, Ter. 'Tis a sweet tale: Such as would lull a listening child to sleep, Sel. And ne'er was heard of more: but 'tis supposed, Note to the words " You are a painter," p. 184, Scene II. Act II. The following lines I have preserved in this place, not so much as explanatory of the picture of the assassination, as to gratify my own feelings, the passage being no mere fancy portrait; but a slight, yet not unfaithful, profile of the late Sir George Beaumont. Zul. (speaking of Alvar in the third person.) Such was the noble Spaniard's own relation. He told me, too, how in his early youth, And his first travels, 'twas his choice or chance To make long sojourn in sea-wedded Venice; |