CORNELIA. Words full of woe, still adding to my grief,
A cureless cross of many hundred harms.
O, let not Rome and poor Cornelia lose,
The one her friend, the other her delight.
SYLLA. Cornelia, man hath power by some instinct
And gracious revolution of the stars,
To conquer kingdoms, not to master fate:
For when the course of mortal life is run,
Then Clotho ends the web her sister spun.
Pompey, Lord Flaccus, fellow-senators,
In that I feel the faintful dews of death
Steeping mine eyes within their chilly wet,
The care I have of wife and daughter both,
Must on your wisdom happily rely.
With equal distribution see you part
My lands and goods betwixt these lovely twain:
Only bestow a hundred thousand sesterces
Upon my friends and fellow-soldiers.
Thus, having made my final testament,
Come, Fulvia, let thy father lay his head
Upon thy lovely bosom, and entreat
A virtuous boon and favour at thy hands.
Fair Roman maid, see that thou wed thy fairness[167]
To modest, virtuous, and delightful thoughts:
Let Rome, in viewing thee, behold thy sire.
Honour Cornelia, from whose fruitful womb
Thy plenteous beauties sweetly did appear;
And with this lesson, lovely maid, farewell.
FULVIA. O tedious and unhappy chance for me.
SYLLA. Content thee, Fulvia, for it needs must be.
Cornelia, I must leave thee to the world;
And by those loves that I have lent thee oft,
In mutual wedlock-rites and happy war,
Remember Sylla in my Fulvia still.
Consul, farewell! my Pompey, I must hence:
And farewell, Rome: and, Fortune, now I bless thee,
That both in life and death would'st not oppress me!
[Dies.
CORNELIA. O hideous storms of never-daunted fate!
Now are those eyes, whose sweet reflections cool'd
The smother'd rancours of rebellious thoughts,
Clad with the sable mantles of the night;
And like the tree that, robb'd of sun and showers,
Mourns desolate withouten leaf or sap,
So poor Cornelia, late bereft of love,
Sits sighing, hapless, joyless, and forlorn.
FULVIA. Gone is the flow'r that did adorn our fields;
Fled are those sweet reflections of delight:
Dead is my father! Fulvia, dead is he
In whom thy life, for whom thy death, must be.
FLACCUS. Ladies, to tire the time in restless moan
Were tedious unto friends and nature too.
Sufficeth you, that Sylla so is dead,
As fame shall sing his power, though life be fled.
POMPEY. Then to conclude his happiness, my lords,
Determine where shall be his funeral.
LEPIDUS. Even there where other nobles are interr'd.
POMPEY. Why, Lepidus, what Roman ever was,
That merited so high a name as he?
Then why with simple pomp and funeral
Would you entomb so rare a paragon?