Cleom. Nay, that's closed too; the gods are deaf to prayers!

Hush then; the irrevocable doom's gone forth,
And prayers lag after, but can ne'er o'ertake.-
Let us talk forward of our woes to come.

Crat. Cleanthes! (Oh, could you suspect his faith?) 'Twas he, that headed those, who forced her hence. Cleom. Pantheus bleeds!

Panth. A scratch, a feeble dart,

At distance thrown by an Egyptian hand.
Crat. You heard me not; Cleanthes is-
Cleom. He was no more, good mother;
He tore a piece of me away, and still

The void place aches within me.-O, my boy,
I have bad news to tell thee.

Cleon. None so bad,

As that I am a boy. Cleanthes scorned me;
And, when I drove a thrust, home as I could,
To reach his traitor heart, he put it by,
And cried, as in derision,-Spare the stripling.
Oh that insulting word! I would have swopped
Youth for old age, and all my life behind,
To have been then a momentary man.

Cleom. Alas! thy manhood, like a forward spring,
Before it comes to bear the promised fruit,
Is blighted in the bud. Never, my boy,

Canst thou fetch manhood up, with thy short steps, While, with long strides, the giant stalks before thee. Cleon. Am I to die before I am a man?

Cleom. Yes, thou must die with me, and I with her, Who gave me life; and our poor infant too, within, Must die before it knows what dying means. Three different dates of nature, one would think; But fate has crammed us all into one lease, And that even now expiring.

Panth. Yet we live.

Cleom. No, even now we die; death is within us,

7

And keeps our life; for nourishment is life,
And we have fed our last; hunger feeds death.
Crat. A lingering doom, but four days hence the

same;

And we can shorten those, turn days to hours,
And hours to moments; death is in our call.
Panth. The sooner, then, the better.

Cleon. So say I.

Panth. While we have spirits left to meet him boldly.

Cleon. I'll hold my breath,

And keep my soul a prisoner in my body;
There let it creep and wander in the dark,
Till, tired to find no outlet, it retreats
Into my Spartan heart, and there lies pleased;
So, we two are provided.-Sir, your choice?
[TO CLEOM.
Cleom. Not this dispatch, for we may die at leisure.
This famine has a sharp and meagre face:
"Tis death in an undress of skin and bone;
Where age and youth, their land-mark ta'en away,
Look all one common furrow.

Crat. Yet you chuse it,

To please our foes; that, when they view our skeletons,
And find them all alike, they may cry out,-
Look how these dull obedient Spartans died,
Just as we wished, as we prescribed their death,
And durst not take a nobler, nearer way!

Cleom. Not so; but that we durst not tempt the gods,

To break their images without their leave.
The inoment ere Cassandra came, I had
A note without a name, the hand unknown,
That bade me not despair, but still hope well.
Then die not yet;

For heaven has means to free us; if not me,
Yet these, and you. I am the hunted stag,

Whose life may ransom yours.

Crat. No more of that:

I find your distant drift,-to die alone;
An unkind accusation of us all,

As if we durst not die; I'll not survive you.

Panth. Nor I.

Cleon. Nor I.

Cleom. But hear my reasons.-

Enter CLEORA, in a black Veil.

Ha, what shadow's this! this, that can glide through walls,

Or pass its subtile limbs through bolts and bars! Black, too! like what it represents, our fate.

Cleor. Too true a shadow I, and you the substance. [Lifts up her Veil.

Omnes. Cleora!

Cleom. Thus let me grow again to thee,

Too close for fate to sever!

Or let death find me in these dear, dear arms;
And, looking on thee, spare my better part,
And take me willing hence.

Crat. What are you dreaming, son, with eyes cast upwards,

Like a mad prophet in an ecstacy?

Cleom. Musing on what we saw.

Just such is death,

With a black veil, covering a beauteous face.
Feared afar off

By erring nature; a mistaken phantom;

A harmless, lambent fire. She kisses cold;
But kind, and soft, and sweet, as my Cleora.
Oh, could we know

What joys she brings, at least, what rest from grief;
How should we press into her friendly arms,
And be pleased not to be, or to be happy!

Crat. Look, what we have forgot! The joy to see

L

Cleora here, has kept us from enquiring,
By what strange means she entered.

Cleom. Small joy, heaven knows, to be adopted here,

Into the meagre family of famine!

The house of hunger! therefore asked I not;
So am I pleased to have her company,
And so displeased to have it but in death.

Cleor. I know not how, or why, my surly gaoler,
Hard as his irons, and insolent as power
When put in vulgar hands, Cleanthes gone,
Put off the brute; and with a gloomy smile,
That showed a sullen lothness to be kind,
Screened me within this veil, then led me forth;
And, using to the guards Cassandra's name,
Made that my passport: every door flew ope,
To admit my entrance; and then clapt behind me,
To bar my going back.

Cleom. Some new resolve. ·

Cassandra plots, and then refines on malice; Plays with revenge. With rage she snatched you hence,

And renders you with scorn: I thought to show you,
How easy 'twas to die, by my example,

And hansel fate before you; but thy presence
Has changed my mind, to drag this lingering life,
To share thy sorrows, and assist thy weakness.
Come in, my friends, and let us practise death;
Stroke the grim lion, till he grow familiar.-
Cleora, thou and I, as lovers should,

Will hand in hand to the dark mansions go,
Where life no more can cheat us into woe;
That, sucking in each other's latest breath,
We may transfuse our souls, and put the change
on death.
[Exeunt.

ACT V.-SCENE I.

Enter CASSANDRA and SoSIBIUS.

Sosib.. And what have you determined?
Cas. He shall die.

Sosib. A wholesome resolution. Have you fixed The time?

Cas. He daily dies, by hours and moments;
All vital nourishment but air is wanting.
Three rising days and two descending nights
Have changed the face of heaven by turns,
But brought no kind vicissitude to him
His state is still the same, with hunger pinched,
Waiting the slow approaches of his death;
Which, halting onwards, as his life goes back,
Still gains upon his ground.

Sosib. But ere fate reach him,

The mercy of the king may interpose.
You have the signet?

Cas Yes, in your despite.

;

Sosib. Be not displeased, suppose he should escape? Cas. Suppose he should have wings: impossible! Sosib. Yet, keepers have been bribed. To whom can Ptolemy

Impute that crime, but you?

Cas. He may; but let him if he dares.-
Come, statesman, do not shuffle in your pace;
You would expose me to the people's hatred,
By hurrying on this act of violence:

You know a little thing provokes the crowd
Against a mistress; she's the public mark:
Therefore content yourself; I will be safe,
Nor shall the prisoner die a speedier death,
Than what my doom decreed; unless the king