Abdelm. No more; nothing my heart can bend:
That queen, you scorned, you shall this night attend.
Your life the king has pardoned for my sake;
But on your pride I some revenge must take.
See now the effects of what your arts designed!
Thank your inconstant and ambitious mind.
'Tis just that she, who to no love is true,
Should be forsaken, and contemned, like you.
Lyndar. All arts of injured women I will try:
First I will be revenged; and then I'll die.
But like some falling tower,
Whose seeming firmness does the sight beguile,
So hold I up my nodding head a while,
Till they come under; and reserve my fall,
That with my ruins I may reach them all,
Abdelm. Conduct her hence. [Exit Lyndar. guarded.
Enter a Soldier.
Sold. Almanzor is victorious without fight;
The foes retreated when he came in sight.
Under the walls, this night, his men are drawn,
And mean to seek the Spaniard with the dawn.
Abdelm. The sun's declined:
Command the watch be set without delay,
And in the fort let bold Benducar stay.— [Exit Sold.
I'll haste to court, where solitude I'll fly,
And herd, like wounded deer, in company.
But oh, how hard a passion to remove,
When I must shun myself, to 'scape from love! [Exit.
SCENE III.—A Gallery in the Alhambra.
Zulema, Hamet.
Hamet. I thought your passion for the queen was dead,
Or that your love had, with your hopes, been fled.
Zul. 'Twas like a fire within a furnace pent:
I smothered it, and kept it long from vent;
But, fed with looks, and blown with sighs so fast,
It broke a passage through my lips at last.