ACTE. Is it? Is it? Well—
Yet have I heard this ragged people speak,
And they have stirred me strangely: life they scorn,
And yearn for death's tremendous liberty,
But I—I cannot speak; yet I believe
There is a new air blowing on the world,
And a new budding underneath the earth.
POPPAEA. Ah, ah! the sun! The sun! It goeth down,
How cold it grows: the night comes down on me.
I'll have no lamp: but hold my hand in thine.
ACTE. Sister, forget the world, it passeth.
POPPAEA. [Falling back.] Rome!
SCENE II
SCENE.—The same. SENECA, BURRUS, ACTE, and PHYSICIAN
PHYSICIAN. The Emperor comes from gazing on Poppaea.
What woe may that dead face not work on him,
After such rain of dark calamities!
SENECA. Why hath he summoned me?
PHYSICIAN. He knows not why.
The infatuate orgies in Campania,
Defeat, revolt, have wrought upon his mind,
Till it begins to reel—behind each woe
He sees the angered shade of Agrippina.
[Enter NERO with tablets, murmuring to himself. He comes
to the COUNCILLORS, gazes at them, and retires to parapet.