IRENE.
Whence is this violence?
DEMETRIUS.
Your calmer thought
Will teach a gentler term.
IRENE.
Forbear this rudeness,
And learn the rev'rence due to Turkey's queen:
Fly, slaves, and call the sultan to my rescue.
DEMETRIUS.
Farewell, unhappy maid; may every joy
Be thine, that wealth can give, or guilt receive!
ASPASIA. nd when, contemptuous of imperial pow'r, Disease shall chase the phantoms of ambition, May penitence attend thy mournful bed, And wing thy latest pray'r to pitying heav'n! [Exeunt Dem. Asp. with part of the attendants.
SCENE VI.
[IRENE walks at a distance from her attendants.]
After a pause.
Against the head, which innocence secures,
Insidious malice aims her darts in vain,
Turn'd backwards by the pow'rful breath of heav'n.
Perhaps, e'en now the lovers, unpursu'd,
Bound o'er the sparkling waves. Go, happy bark,
Thy sacred freight shall still the raging main.
To guide thy passage shall th' aerial spirits
Fill all the starry lamps with double blaze;
Th' applauding sky shall pour forth all its beams,
To grace the triumph of victorious virtue;
While I, not yet familiar to my crimes,
Recoil from thought, and shudder at myself.
How am I chang'd! How lately did Irene
Fly from the busy pleasures of her sex,
Well pleas'd to search the treasures of remembrance,
And live her guiltless moments o'er anew!
Come, let us seek new pleasures in the palace,
[To her attendants, going off.
Till soft fatigue invite us to repose.
SCENE VII.
[Enter MUSTAPHA, meeting and stopping her.]