Awaits the moment when shall be fulfilled
The knowledge thou requirest at my hand;
The knowledge of Numantia’s awful fate.[120]
There is nothing of so much dignity in the incantations of Marlowe’s “Faustus,” which belong to the contemporary period of the English stage; nor does even Shakspeare demand from us a sympathy so strange with the mortal head reluctantly rising to answer Macbeth’s guilty question, as Cervantes makes us feel for this suffering spirit, recalled to life only to endure a second time the pangs of dissolution.
The scenes of private and domestic affliction arising from the pressure of famine are sometimes introduced with unexpected effect, especially one between a mother and her child, and the following between Morandro, a lover, and his mistress, Lira, whom he now sees wasted by hunger and mourning over the universal desolation. She turns from him to conceal her sufferings, and he says tenderly,—
Nay, Lira, haste not, haste not thus away;
But let me feel an instant’s space the joy
Which life can give even here, amidst grim death.
Let but mine eyes an instant’s space behold
Thy beauty, and, amidst such bitter woes,