Since now full seventeen years, the unfruitful curse
Has fallen upon Hortensia. Are these signs,
(Tremendous signs, that startle Nature's order!)
Graves casting up their sleepers, earth convuls'd,
Meteors that glare my children's timeless deaths,
Obscure to thee alone?—I have found the cause.
There is no crime our holy church abhors,
Not one high Heaven more strongly interdicts,
Than that commixture, by the marriage rite,