AMELIA (affectionately kissing his hand). I curse you?
OLD M. Dost thou know this portrait, my daughter?
AMELIA. Charles!
OLD M. Such was he in his sixteenth year. But now, alas! how changed. Oh, it is raging within me. That gentleness is now indignation; that smile despair. It was his birthday, was it not, Amelia—in the jessamine bower—when you drew this picture of him? Oh, my daughter! How happy was I in your loves.
AMELIA (with her eye still riveted upon the picture). No, no, it is not he! By Heaven, that is not Charles! Here (pointing to her head and her heart), here he is perfect; and how different. The feeble pencil avails not to express that heavenly spirit which reigned in his fiery eye. Away with it! This is a poor image, an ordinary man! I was a mere dauber.
OLD M. That kind, that cheering look! Had that been at my bedside, I should have lived in the midst of death. Never, never should I have died!
AMELIA. No, you would never, never have died. It would have been but a leap, as we leap from one thought to another and a better. That look would have lighted you across the tomb—that look would have lifted you beyond the stars!
OLD M. It is hard! it is sad! I am dying, and my son Charles is not here—I am borne to my tomb, and he weeps not over my grave. How sweet it is to be lulled into the sleep of death by a son's prayer—that is the true requiem.
AMELIA (with enthusiasm). Yes, sweet it is, heavenly sweet, to be lulled into the sleep of death by the song of the beloved. Perhaps our dreams continue in the grave—a long, eternal, never-ending dream of Charles—till the trumpet of resurrection sounds—(rising in ecstasy) —and thenceforth and forever in his arms! (A pause; she goes to the piano and plays.)
ANDROMACHE.
Oh, Hector, wilt thou go for evermore,
When fierce Achilles, on the blood-stained shore,
Heaps countless victims o'er Patroclus' grave?
When then thy hapless orphan boy will rear,
Teach him to praise the gods and hurl the spear,
When thou art swallow'd up in Xanthus' wave?