S. Cath. A god indeed, after the Roman stile, An eagle mounting from a kindled pile: But you may make yourself a god below; For kings, who rule their own desires, are so. You roam about, and never are at rest, By new desires, that is, new torments, still possest; Qualmish and loathing all you had before, Yet with a sickly appetite to more: As in a feverish dream you still drink on, And wonder why your thirst is never gone; Love, like a ghostly vision, haunts your mind, 'Tis still before you what you left behind.
Max. How can I help those faults which nature made? My appetite is sickly and decayed, And you forbid me change, the sick man's ease! Who cannot cure, must humour his disease.
S. Cath. Your mind should first the remedy begin; You seek without the cure that is within. The vain experiments you make each day, To find content, still finding it decay, Without attempting more, should let you see, That you have sought it where it ne'er could be. But when you place your joys on things above, You fix the wandering planet of your love: Thence you may see Poor human kind, all dazed in open day, Err after bliss, and blindly miss their way: The greatest happiness a prince can know, Is to love heaven above, do good below.
To them Berenice and Attendants.
Ber. That happiness may Berenice find, Leaving these empty joys of earth behind; And this frail being, where so short a while The unfortunate lament, and prosperous smile. Yet a few days, and those which now appear In youth and beauty like the blooming year, In life's swift scene shall change; and cares shall come, And heavy age, and death's relentless doom.
S. Cath. Yet man, by pleasures, seeks that fate which he would shun; And, sucked in by the stream, does to the whirlpool run.
Max. How, madam, are you to new ways inclined? I fear the Christian sect perverts your mind. [To Ber.
Ber. Yes, tyrant, know, that I their faith embrace, And own it in the midst of my disgrace; That faith, which, abject as it seems to thee, Is nobler than thy purple pageantry; A faith, which still with nature is at strife, And looks beyond it to a future life; A faith, which vicious souls abhor and fear, Because it shows eternity too near: And therefore every one, With seeming scorn of it the rest deceives; All joining not to own what each believes.
S. Cath. O happy queen! whom power leads not astray, Nor youth's more powerful blandishments betray.
Ber. Your arguments my reason first inclined, And then your bright example fixed my mind.