Sy. To thee she is.
So. As thou art then thyself,
Let her not be.
Sy. She is not!
[The guard seizeth Zanthia.
Za. Thus most speed:
When two foes are grown friends, partakers bleed.
Sy. When plants must flourish, their manure must rot.
So. Syphax, be recompensed, I hate thee not. 90
[Exeunt Sophonisba, Zanthia, and guard.
Sy. A wasting flame feeds on my amorous blood,
Which we must cool, or die. What way all power,
All speech, full opportunity, can make,
We have made fruitless trial. Infernal Jove,
You resolute angels that delight in flames,
To you, all-wonder-working spirits, I fly!
Since heaven helps not, deepest hell we’ll try
Here in this desert, the great soul of charms,
Dreadful Erictho lives, whose dismal brow
Contemns all roofs or civil coverture. 100
Forsaken graves and tombs, the ghosts forced out,
She joys to inhabit.
A loathsome yellow leanness spreads her face,
A heavy hell-like paleness loads her cheeks,
Unknown to a clear heaven; but if dark winds
Or thick black clouds drive back the blinded stars,
When her deep magic makes forced heaven quake
And thunder spite of Jove,—Erictho then
From naked graves stalks out, heaves proud her head
With long unkemb’d hair loaden, and strives to snatch 110
The night’s quick sulphur; then she bursts up tombs,
From half-rot sear-cloths then she scrapes dry gums
For her black rites; but when she finds a corpse
But[359] newly graved, whose entrails are not turn’d
To slimy filth, with greedy havock then
She makes fierce spoil, and swells with wicked triumph
To bury her lean knuckles in his eyes;
Then doth she gnaw the pale and o’ergrown nails
From his dry hand; but if she find some life
Yet lurking close, she bites his gelid[360] lips, 120
And, sticking her black tongue in his dry throat,
She breathes dire murmurs, which enforce him bear
Her baneful secrets to the spirits of horror.
To her first sound the gods yield any harm,
As trembling once to hear a second charm:
She is——