Enter 2nd Messenger.
2ND MESS. My lord and master. Thou art master here
Of nought but sorrows. One within thine arms
Thou bear’st with thee, and in thy palace hall
Thou hast possession of another grief,
Which soon thou shalt behold.
CR. What more of woe,
Or what more woeful, sounds anew from thee?
2ND MESS. The honoured mother of that corse, thy queen,
Is dead, and bleeding with a new-given wound.
[page 39] CR. O horrible! O charnel gulfI 2 [1284-1325]
Of death on death, not to be done away,
Why harrowest thou my soul?
Ill boding harbinger of woe, what word
Have thy lips uttered? Oh, thou hast killed me again,
Before undone!
What say’st? What were thy tidings? Woe is me!
Saidst thou a slaughtered queen in yonder hall
Lay in her blood, crowning the pile of ruin?
CH. No longer hidden in the house. Behold!
[The Corpse of EURYDICE is disclosed
CR. Alas!
Again I see a new, a second woe.
What more calamitous stroke of Destiny
Awaits me still? But now mine arms enfold
My child, and lo! yon corse before my face!
Ah! hapless, hapless mother, hapless son!
2ND MESS. [She with keen knife before the altar place]
Closed her dark orbs; but first lamented loud
[The glorious bed of buried Megareus,]
And then of Haemon; lastly clamoured forth
The curse of murdered offspring upon thee.
CR. Ay me! Ay me!II 1
I am rapt with terror. Is there none to strike me
With doubly sharpened blade a mortal blow?
Ah! I am plunged in fathomless distress.
2ND MESS. The guilt of this and of the former grief
By this dead lady was denounced on thee.