University of Virginia Library

SCENE II.

Eurydice, Leonidas.
Eurydice.
Leonidas!

Leonidas.
Ah Madam!

Eurydice.
Dare I ask
Where Periander is—ah where indeed?
Chain'd in a dungeon's airless depth, amid
Foul damps, and lonesome darkness! Oh that thought
Draws blood from my torn heart.

Leonidas.
Justice divine!
In thy great day of visitation, mark
This man of blood. O let him feel the hand
He dares to disbelieve. To all his counsels
Send forth, in thy just wrath, that fatal Spirit
Of error and illusion, that foreruns
The fall of guilty kings.
Ere morning-dawn,
Soft to the dismal dungeon's mouth I stole,
Where, by the glimmerings of a dying lamp
I saw my great unhappy Master laid
On the cold earth along—

Eurydice.
O hide the sad
The fatal image from me. The dire thought
Will run me into madness.

Leonidas.
Yet even there,
Where pale Dismay, the prisoner's drear associate,
Sits ever sad and sleepless, he could rest.
Superior to the cruel fate that crush'd him,
He slept as deep as Indolence on down.
These eyes beheld it: and I would not break
His wish'd repose, but fix'd in silent wonder,
Stood weeping o'er the sight.

Eurydice.
Ah me! my life
Flows out at every word: What's to be done?

Leonidas.
Madam, I set my all at stake for him.
Old as I am, and broken with the load
Of threescore years, what is a life like mine,
But as it may be useful to my Master?
Already the sad people know his fate:
And I, by faithful hands, will try to rouze
Their pity first, and next their rage. No hour,
No moment shall be lost.

Eurydice.
Thou good old man!
What words can speak thy worth? Fair loyalty
And faith inviolate, which seem'd quite lost
Among mankind, live in thy vertuous bosom.

Leonidas.
No more of this, my Queen. Might I but see
This haughty Tyrant, in some guilty hour
Of insolence and riot, when his pride
Plumes all her vainest wishes, hurl'd at once
To ruine unforeseen; my labours then,
My services were greatly over-paid.

Eurydice.
Heaven hear thy pious wish. I too the while,
To save my husband's life, have been contriving—

Leonidas.
Madam, the Tyrant—I will find another
More favourable moment.