KING. Philip, cease! proceed no farther!
For I have not resignation
To bear up with any calmness
'Gainst so many forms of wrong,
'Gainst so many shapes of sadness,
'Gainst such manifold misfortunes.
Ah, my daughter! Ah, thou hapless
Treasure fatally found for me!
LESBIA. Grief my feeling so o'ermasters
That I have not breath to mourn.
Ah! of all thy woes the partner
Let thy wretched sister be!
KING. What rude hand in ruffian anger
Raised its bloody steel against
Beauty so divinely fashioned?
Sorrow, sorrow ends my life.
PATRICK [within]. Woe to thee, sin-stained Irlanda!
Woe to thee, unhappy people!
If with tears thou dost not water
The hard earth, and night and day
Weeping in thy bitter anguish,
Ope the golden gates of heaven
Which thy disobedience fastened.
Woe to thee, unhappy people!
Woe to thee, sin-stained Irlanda!
KING. Heavens! what mournful tones are these?
What are these sad solemn accents
That transpierce my very heart,
That cut through me like a dagger?
Learn who thus disturbs the flowing
Of my grief's most tender channels.
Who but I should so lament?
Who but I should wail thus sadly?
LEOGAIRE. This, my lord, is Patrick, who
Having as you know, departed
From this country went to Rome,
Where the Pontiff, the great father,
Made him bishop, and a post
Of pre-eminence imparted
To him here; through all the islands
He proceedeth in this manner.
[PATRICK enters.
PATRICK. Woe to thee, unhappy people!
Woe to thee, sin-stained Irlanda!
KING. Patrick, thou who thus my grief
Interrupted, and my sadness
Doubled with thy golden words,
Hiding false and poisonous matter,
Why thus persecute me? Wherefore
Thus disturb the hills and valleys
Of my kingdom with deceptions
And new-fangled laws and maxims?
Here we know but this alone,
We are born and die. Our fathers
Left us this, the simple doctrine
Taught by nature, and no farther
Have we sought to learn. What God
Can be this, of whom such marvels
You relate, who life eternal
Gives when temporal life departeth?
Can the soul, when it is severed
From the body, be so active
As to have another life,
Or of bale or bliss, hereafter?
PATRICK. Being loosened from the body,
And the human portion having
Given to nature, it being only
But a little dust and ashes,
Then the spirit upward rises,
To the higher sphere attracted,
Where its labours find their centre,
If it dies in grace, which baptism
First confers upon the soul,
And then penance ever after.