Give up its precious drug to heal our cares,—
but the supreme end was not wrought by contemplation, nor could its processes be resolved
by analysis, or other words be found to proclaim it than the simple but thrilling exclamation:
I feel it now! All through these withered veins
I feel it bound and glow! O life, life, life!
From this period the incidents of the drama develop with all the tensity of action which previous to this scene it has lacked, giving to the close a certain sense of crowding when compared with the slow movement of the previous scenes consisting chiefly of recital, well told, but with little to enact, making the work to this point rather a graphically related story than a drama. The incidents which come on apace in the latter part of the play have, to be sure, been foreshadowed in the earlier part, but one is scarcely prepared for the swift succession of events, nor for their bloody character after the sabbatical mood into which the earlier scenes of the work have thrown him. If the drama covered a longer period, giving time between scenes for the development of events, even though such development were but suggested by a statement of dates, the impression of undue haste in the climax would be obviated; but in the interval of one day, even though all events leading to the issue have been working silently for months or years, their culmination seems to come without due preparation to the
reader’s mind, and one is swept off his feet by consummations with whose causes he had scarcely reckoned.
Immediately following the healing of Abgar, the queen’s cousin, Agamede, enters breathless and announces to the king the plot on foot to overthrow him, which inspires the king with a resolve to set forth at once to the city. Upon the attempt of the queen to deter him, Abgar relates a prophetic dream of his city and its destiny through him, which is one of the finest conceptions, both in spiritual import and elevation of phrase, contained in the drama. The dream is related as having appeared to the king in three distinct visions, glimpsing his city in its past, present, and future. It is too long to follow in detail, but this glimpse is from the vision of the past, where
Through that wreck of fortress, mart and fane
And fallen mausoleum crowded o’er