University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

Enter Sopheian in haste, He runs and embraces them.
Soph.
They're here—They're found—
O let me fold them, let me wrap them inward;
Return them to the womb of yearning love,
The heart's warm seat of life! there feed my young ones,
And cloath them with my vitals—My Palmyra—
My Zaphna—my Palmyra—my long lost—
O children twice conceived—the happier birth,
To greet my years—new infants of my age—
I have it not in words—'tis here—'tis here—
The welcome of my babes!—Kneel ye, my children?
Now all the blessings of the dews that fall
In our Arabia, all the sweets that rise,
Be in you, and about you, till your virtues
Grow as in paradise, matured to Heaven,
Without a blossom dropt—These arms are aged,
In fondness overstrain'd—Nay, rise, pray rise,
And bless me also—

Zaph.
That which is not to be, and that which is,
Struck from the rank of things!—
It must—yet cannot—
These are the very megrims of existence;
The dizzy rounds of thought, that foundering drown
In their own whirlpools.

Soph.
How, my son!—Why Zaphna—

Zaph.
Nay—by your pardon, sir—I will dispute it
Against all tricks of sophistry—To say
That things without, are not within us—lo,
Those racks, those wheels—there's no such thing—'tis here!—
'Tis the mind's bed whereon the body lies,
Stretch'd out in anguish!

Soph.
I am lost to this.

Zaph.
But have you heard the like?

Soph.
Of what, my child?

Zaph.
Perhaps a fable—Clytemnestra too
Was but a mother, and the story says
A bad one—in his father's quarrel too
He struck—O wretched son!—and he ran mad for't—
I have not read of any son so lost,
As to assault a father—if you have,
I'll list—and weep the while.

Soph.
Alas! Palmyra.

Pal.
My lord.

Soph.
Dost thou know aught of this?

Pal.
In truth,
I am myself beside the sense of things.
You say, you are my father—Pardon, sir;
Your goodness makes you such to every orphan—
But, if I claim you by a nearer title,
Then who is Mahomet?

Soph.
A murderous faulcon!
Who seizing on the nest of my delights,
Bore off the mother with her little ones,
And left me reft indeed—How fares my Zaphna?—
His eye is much distemper'd.

Zaph.
Within the map of our mortality,
Is it not to be found—the land of sleep?—
Or if a stranger, and in foreign climes,
I have dream'd thus—would it were morning!—O—
My head—light, light—thy arm, sweet sister.

Soph.
His health—kind Heaven, be it thy care!—My daughter,
Lead him to some repose—