Sis. Do probity and truth want such supports?
Opas. Griffins and eagles, ivory and gold,
Can add no clearness to the lamp above;
But many look for them in palaces
Who have them not, and want them not, at home.
Virtue and valour and experience
Are never trusted by themselves alone
Further than infancy and idiocy:
The men around him, not the man himself,
Are looked at, and by these is he preferred.
’Tis the green mantle of the warrener
And his loud whistle, that alone attract
The lofty gazes of the noble herd:
And thus, without thy countenance and help
Feeble and faint is still our confidence,
Brief perhaps our success.
Sis. Should I resign
To Abdalazis her I once adored?
He truly, he must wed a Spanish queen!
He rule in Spain! ah! whom could any land
Obey so gladly as the meek, the humble,
The friend of all who have no friend besides,
Covilla! could he choose, or could he find
Another who might so confirm his power?
And now indeed from long domestic wars
Who else survives of all our ancient house—
Opas. But Egilona.
Sis. Vainly she upbraids
Roderigo.
Opas. She divorces him, abjures,
And carries vengeance to that hideous height
Which piety and chastity would shrink
To look from, on the world, or on themselves.
Sis. She may forgive him yet.
Opas. Ah, Sisabert!
Wretched are those a woman has forgiven:
With her forgiveness ne’er hath love returned.
Ye know not till too late the filmy tie
That holds heaven’s precious boon eternally
To such as fondly cherish her; once go
Driven by mad passion, strike but at her peace,
And, though she step aside from broad reproach,
Yet every softer virtue dies away.
Beaming with virtue inaccessible
Stood Egilona; for her lord she lived,
And for the heavens that raised her sphere so high:
All thoughts were on her—all, beside her own.
Negligent as the blossoms of the field,
Arrayed in candour and simplicity,
Before her path she heard the streams of joy
Murmur her name in all their cadences,
Saw them in every scene, in light, in shade,
Reflect her image; but acknowledged them
Hers most complete when flowing from her most.
All things in want of her, herself of none,
Pomp and dominion lay beneath her feet
Unfelt and unregarded: now behold
The earthly passions war against the heavenly!
Pride against love, ambition and revenge
Against devotion and compliancy:
Her glorious beams adversity hath blunted;
And coming nearer to our quiet view
The original clay of coarse mortality
Hardens and flaws around her.
Sis. Every germ
Of virtue perishes, when love recedes
From those hot shifting sands, the female heart.
Opas. His was the fault; be his the punishment
’Tis not their own crimes only, men commit,
They harrow them into another’s breast,
And they shall reap the bitter growth with pain.