Erastus.
Ah, treacherous fortune! enemy to love,
Didst thou advance me for my greater fall?
In dallying war I lost my chiefest peace;
In hunting after praise I lost my love,
And in love's shipwreck will my life miscarry.
Take thou the honour, and give me the chain,
Wherein was link'd the sum of my delight.
When she deliver'd me the carcanet,
Keep it, quoth she, as thou wouldst keep myself.
I kept it not, and therefore she is lost;
And lost with her is all my happiness;
And loss of happiness is worse than death.
Come therefore, gentle death, and ease my grief.
Cut short what malice Fortune misintends;
But stay a while, good death, and let me live;
Time may restore what Fortune took from me:
Ah, no! great losses seldom are restored.
What, if my chain shall never be restored?
My innocence shall clear my negligence.
Ah, but my love is ceremonious,
And looks for justice at her lover's hand:
Within forc'd furrows of her clouding brow,
As storms that fall amid a sunshine day,
I read her just desires and my decay. [Exit.
Enter Soliman, Haleb, Amurath, and Janissaries.
Soliman.
I long, till Brusor be return'd from Rhodes,
To know how he hath borne him 'gainst the Christians
That are assembled there to try their valour:
But more, to be well-assured by him,
How Rhodes is fenc'd, and how I best may lay
My never-failing siege to win that plot.
For by the holy Alcoran I swear,
I'll call my soldiers home from Persia,
And let the Sophy breathe, and from the Russian broils
Call home my hardy, dauntless janissaries,
And from the other skirts of Christendom,
Call home my bashaws and my men of war,
And so beleaguer Rhodes by sea and land.
That key will serve to open all the gates,
Through which our passage cannot find a stop,
Till it have prick'd the heart of Christendom,
Which now that paltry island keeps from scathe.
Say, brother Amurath, and, Haleb, say,
What think you of our resolution?
Amurath.
Great Soliman, heav'n's only substitute,
And earth's commander under Mahomet,
So counsel I, as thou thyself hast said.
Haleb.
Pardon me, dread sov'reign, I hold it not
Good policy to call your forces home
From Persia and Polonia, bending them
Upon a paltry isle of small defence:
A common press of base, superfluous Turks
May soon be levied for so slight a task.
Ah, Soliman! whose name hath shak'd thy foes,
As withered leaves with autumn thrown down,
Fog not thy glory with so foul eclipse;
Let not thy soldiers sound a base retire,
Till Persia stoop, and thou be conqueror.
What scandal were it to thy mightiness,
After so many valiant bashaws slain,
Whose blood hath been manured to their earth,
Whose bones hath made their deep ways passable,
To sound a homeward, dull, and harsh retreat,
Without a conquest or a mean[397] revenge?
Strive not for Rhodes by letting Persia slip;
The one's a lion almost brought to death,
Whose skin will countervail the hunter's toil:
The other is a wasp with threat'ning sting,
Whose honey is not worth the taking up.