University of Virginia Library

SCENE III.

A Field of Battle—Armed Parties pass over the distant part of the Stage.
Amantha enters hastily, in great disorder, followed by Jerome.
JEROME.
Return, my child—return; where wouldst thou fly?
Madness alone, in such a fearful scene,
Would wander thus.—O! hear, Amantha!—hear me!

AMANTHA.
Away! away!

[Runs out.
JEROME.
My aged limbs refuse
To follow her. Good angels guard her innocence!
To what is she exposed!

Amantha enters wildly at another part of the Stage.
AMANTHA.
Where!—where! good Heaven!
O cruel, cruel father! my Alasco too!
Where shall I seek?—O! God! where shall I find them?
They've left me—both have left me to destruction,
On mutual slaughter bent.

JEROME.
Patience, my child!

AMANTHA.
Urge me no more, old man—no more, I tell thee!
Alas! I'm harsh,—good father, heed me not,
“For I grow wild, and feel my nature changed,
“That I could almost quarrel with thy kindness.”
But leave me to myself—I have business here.

JEROME.
Alas! alas! I tremble for thy wits.
“Thou hast no business in a scene like this.
“Death flies around us here.”—Return, my child—
Our safety's in the Abbey.

AMANTHA.
Safety! Friar!
Thou call'st it safety, to be shut secure
From all that harms the body; and, indeed,
'Tis such to thee, for thy calm spirit knows
No other dangers. I have that within,
Which scorns the body's perils; at my heart
A giant horror sits, that suffers not
Th' approach of pigmy fears.

JEROME.
Alas! what thought!
What dreadful thought absorbs thee so, Amantha,
That thus, with nerve unshaken, thou canst brave
Such perils as thy gentle nature else
Had shudder'd but to think on?

AMANTHA.
Such a thought,
As, were it but in action verified,
Would dash distemper'd reason from her seat,
And shut my soul from this world's peace for ever!

JEROME.
Good Heavens! what horrid image thus—

AMANTHA.
Last night!
Last night, I saw my mother in my sleep!
“If sleep it can be call'd, which seem'd in consciousness,
“Intense and quick as waking agony.
“Nay, start not as incredulous, but hear!
“A close, half-whispering motion at my side,
“Dispersed the vague and shadowy forms that roll
“In slumber's common chaos, and appear'd
“As summoning all the evidence of sense,
“To mark, with thrilling eagerness and awe,
“An agency more real and mysterious.”
Instant, in breathless terror as I lay,
My mother's sainted image stood before me—
Clear as in life—so plain—so palpable—
Had I the power to move, I could have touch'd her.
With pale and piteous aspect she beheld me,
And laid her wither'd hand upon my heart.
O! God! the chill that shiver'd through my frame,
From that cold hand!

JEROME.
And can a dream, my child,
Have power to move you thus?

AMANTHA.
A dream! but hear!
A moment fix'd she stood, and gazed upon me,
With looks of woe and pity, past all utterance;
Then, bending forward, press'd her clammy lips
To mine. She spoke—I heard her well-known voice;
But though her words seem'd whispering in my ear,
And all my soul stretch'd gasping for their purport,
I caught no sound articulate of speech.
She then, with solemn action, motioned me,
To rise, and follow her;—compelled by some
Resistless impulse, I obeyed;—she led
Through lonely avenues and gloomy groves;—
O'er wild and waste;—through dismal church-yard paths,
Where moaning winds, and muttering sounds of night,
Make up the talk of tombs.—At length, a grave,—
A yawning grave, before me, stopped our course,
And shewed, half buried in its loathsome jaws,
Two desperate men, with most unhallowed rage,
Contending o'er the uncoffined corse within.
“Fiercely they fought, and each, with frantic hand,
“Snatched from the mouldering fragments of the dead,
“His weapon of assault and sacrilege,
“In fiend-like profanation.”—All aghast!
I turned me, shuddering, from the hideous sight,
To seek my mother's shade;—but she had vanished:
'Twas then I felt, her presence which before
Appalled me, had been now a refuge to me;—
And I seemed lost in losing it. Again,
I fearful turned to that dread spectacle;—
It was my mother's grave!—the uncoffined corse
Was her's,—the furious men—O God! I saw,
In those ferocious—frantic—fiend-like men,
Who tore her sacred relics from the earth,
My father and my husband!—Powers of mercy!

JEROME.
Be calm, be calm, my child!—

AMANTHA.
At sight of me,
Though writhing—raging in each other's grasp,
They ceased their horrid strife, and both at once,
Combining all their wrath, rushed forth to seize me;
I gasped—I struggled—but my cries gave out
No sound—my limbs benumbed and powerless, seemed
As life had left them;—with united strength,
They dragged me down to that dark cave of death,
Where my poor parent lay, and were about
To close me in for ever, when despair,
In one wild shriek of horror, burst its way,
From out my quivering lips, and left me senseless.
Returning reason found me in my chamber,
Exhausted—weak—and wondering at my safety.

JEROME.
O! my poor child! regard not these illusions.—
Disturbed by life's events, our minds in sleep,
Work out most strange chimeras of the brain,
And all we suffer mix with all we fear,
In combinations wild and monstrous.

AMANTHA.
Aye,
I know what 'tis to dream;—to whirl and toss
In the wild chaos of distempered sleep;—
“To pant and suffocate, in horrid strife,
“Shaking the monster night-mare from the breast.
“I have been pursued by goblins,—hideous forms,
“Agape to swallow me;—have breathless hung
“Upon the slippery verge of some vast precipice,
“And sliding down, have grasped, in thrilling agony,
“Some slender twig, or crumbling fragment there,
“To save me from the yawning gulph below;”
But such a dream as this, I have not known—
“So stamp'd with truth—so certified to sense—
“So charactered in all that marks to man,
“Life's waking dreams, from sleep's close counterfeit.”
I tell thee, father, such a dream might well
Disturb the tests of strong reality,—
Confound the forms, and substances of things;—
Astonish truth herself, with her own attributes,
And shake the heart of daring incredulity

JEROME.
All, all, the wild creation of your fears—
The idle phantoms of a feverish brain,
Rejected by religion, as by reason.

AMANTHA.
Have I not waked to dreadful certainty?—
To worse conviction of substantial horror?—
“Have they not rushed with most unnatural rage,
“To realize my fears—to verify
“The visions of despair?”—Hark! hark! that sound,
That dreadful sound recals me to my purpose!
E'en while I speak, perhaps my father bleeds!—
And by my husband's hand!—Madness and horror!
Hold! hold, Alasco!—hold thy barbarous hand!—
Respect his whitened age—he is my father!—
Oh, God!—that blow has felled him to the earth!—
Murder!—give me way!—I will not be restrained—
Save him! save him, Alasco!—Oh, mercy! mercy!—

[Runs out distracted.
JEROME.
Almighty powers! her reason has given way:
Heaven grant me strength to follow and preserve her!

[Exit.