Alvar. My faithful Zulimez, for one brief moment
Let me forget my anguish and their crimes.
If aught on earth demand an unmix'd feeling,
'Tis surely this—after long years of exile, 5
To step forth on firm land, and gazing round us,
To hail at once our country, and our birth-place.
Hail, Spain! Granada, hail! once more I press
Thy sands with filial awe, land of my fathers!

Zulimez. Then claim your rights in it! O, revered Don Alvar, 10
Yet, yet give up your all too gentle purpose.
It is too hazardous! reveal yourself,
And let the guilty meet the doom of guilt!

Alvar. Remember, Zulimez! I am his brother,
Injured indeed! O deeply injured! yet [15]
Ordonio's brother.

Zulimez. Nobly-minded Alvar!
This sure but gives his guilt a blacker dye.

Alvar. The more behoves it I should rouse within him
Remorse! that I should save him from himself.

Zulimez. Remorse is as the heart in which it grows: [20]
If that be gentle, it drops balmy dews
Of true repentance; but if proud and gloomy,
It is a poison-tree, that pierced to the inmost
Weeps only tears of poison!

Alvar. And of a brother,
Dare I hold this, unproved? nor make one effort 25
To save him?—Hear me, friend! I have yet to tell thee,
That this same life, which he conspired to take,
Himself once rescued from the angry flood,
And at the imminent hazard of his own.
Add too my oath—

Zulimez. You have thrice told already [30]
The years of absence and of secrecy,
[[821]] To which a forced oath bound you; if in truth
A suborned murderer have the power to dictate
A binding oath—

Alvar. My long captivity
Left me no choice: the very wish too languished [35]
With the fond hope that nursed it; the sick babe
Drooped at the bosom of its famished mother.
But (more than all) Teresa's perfidy;
The assassin's strong assurance, when no interest,
No motive could have tempted him to falsehood: 40
In the first pangs of his awaken'd conscience,
When with abhorrence of his own black purpose
The murderous weapon, pointed at my breast,
Fell from his palsied hand—

Zulimez. Heavy presumption!