When I myself have scarce my own consent?
Give me a son's unblemished truth again,
Or quench the sparks of duty that remain.
How slight to force a throne that legions guard,
The task to me; to prove unjust, how hard!
And if the imagined guilt thus wound my thought,
What will it, when the tragic scene is wrought?
Dire war must first be conjured from below,
The realm we'd rule we first must overthrow;
}