Cre. A man.
Eur. A man!
Cre. Why, doubt you I'm a man?
Eur. 'Tis well you tell me so; I should mistake you
For any other part o'the whole creation,
Rather than think you man. Hence from my sight,
Thou poison to my eyes!
136 Cre. 'Twas you first poisoned mine; and yet, methinks,
My face and person should not make you sport.
Eur. You force me, by your importunities,
To shew you what you are.
Cre. A prince, who loves you;
And, since your pride provokes me, worth your love.
Even at its highest value.
Eur. Love from thee!
Why love renounced thee ere thou saw'st the light;
Nature herself start back when thou wert born,
And cried,—the work's not mine.
The midwife stood aghast; and when she saw
Thy mountain back, and thy distorted legs,
Thy face itself;
Half-minted with the royal stamp of man,
And half o'ercome with beast, stood doubting long,
Whose right in thee were more;
And knew not, if to burn thee in the flames
Were not the holier work.
Cre. Am I to blame, if nature threw my body
In so perverse a mould? yet when she cast
Her envious hand upon my supple joints,
Unable to resist, and rumpled them
On heaps in their dark lodging, to revenge
Her bungled work, she stampt my mind more fair;
And as from chaos, huddled and deformed,
The god struck fire, and lighted up the lamps
That beautify the sky, so he informed
This ill-shaped body with a daring soul;
And, making less than man, he made me more.
Eur. No; thou art all one error, soul and body;
The first young trial of some unskilled power,
Rude in the making art, and ape of Jove.
Thy crooked mind within hunched out thy back,
And wandered in thy limbs. To thy own kind
Make love, if thou canst find it in the world;
137 And seek not from our sex to raise an offspring,
Which, mingled with the rest, would tempt the gods,
To cut off human kind.