ABDALLA.
Receive th' impatient sultan to thy arms;
And may a long posterity of monarchs,
The pride and terrour of succeeding days,
Rise from the happy bed; and future queens
Diffuse Irene's beauty through the world!
IRENE.
Can Mahomet's imperial hand descend
To clasp a slave? or can a soul, like mine,
Unus'd to pow'r, and form'd for humbler scenes,
Support the splendid miseries of greatness?
CALI.
No regal pageant, deck'd with casual honours,
Scorn'd by his subjects, trampled by his foes;
No feeble tyrant of a petty state,
Courts thee to shake on a dependant throne;
Born to command, as thou to charm mankind,
The sultan from himself derives his greatness.
Observe, bright maid, as his resistless voice
Drives on the tempest of destructive war,
How nation after nation falls before him.
ABDALLA.
At his dread name the distant mountains shake
Their cloudy summits, and the sons of fierceness,
That range uncivilized from rock to rock,
Distrust th' eternal fortresses of nature,
And wish their gloomy caverns more obscure.
ASPASIA.
Forbear this lavish pomp of dreadful praise;
The horrid images of war and slaughter
Renew our sorrows, and awake our fears.
ABDALLA.
Cali, methinks yon waving trees afford
A doubtful glimpse of our approaching friends;
Just as I mark'd them, they forsook the shore,
And turn'd their hasty steps towards the garden.
CALI.
Conduct these queens, Abdalla, to the palace:
Such heav'nly beauty, form'd for adoration,
The pride of monarchs, the reward of conquest!
Such beauty must not shine to vulgar eyes.
SCENE III.
CALI, solus.
How heav'n, in scorn of human arrogance,
Commits to trivial chance the fate of nations!
While, with incessant thought, laborious man
Extends his mighty schemes of wealth and pow'r,
And towers and triumphs in ideal greatness;
Some accidental gust of opposition
Blasts all the beauties of his new creation,
O'erturns the fabrick of presumptuous reason,
And whelms the swelling architect beneath it.
Had not the breeze untwin'd the meeting boughs,
And, through the parted shade, disclos'd the Greeks,
Th' important hour had pass'd, unheeded, by,
In all the sweet oblivion of delight,
In all the fopperies of meeting lovers;
In sighs and tears, in transports and embraces,
In soft complaints, and idle protestations.