 | The Heroine of Cambria |  |
249
SCENE IV.
Another part of the Mountain with a distant prospect of a more elevated spot, on which may be discovered an attendant croud, and preparations for execution:LLANDORVIN, GUARDS.
LLANDORVIN.
Unhappy agents of injurious power!
I pardon your base taunts: alas! ye know not
To what depravity you sink your nature,
When you insult a guiltless, wronged old man,
Who unreluctant hastes to join the spirits
Of dear companions lost, bards! warriors! princes!
Whose fortitude and genius could not save
This dear devoted land from desolation,
Or shield their bright existence from the stroke
Of tyrannous extinction.
GUARD.
You forget,
Loquacious traitor! we have yet to mount
The steepest of these craggs.
LLANDORVIN.
Rude monitor?
250
I thank his unmeant kindness, has appointed
My death on yonder heights: I could not wish
A nobler scene, to shew how willingly
I seal, with blood, the bond of my attachment
To wounded freedom, and my ruined country.
Martyrs of liberty, like those of faith,
By public sufferings, with a soul unshaken,
Become the source of blessings infinite
To unborn ages, and my soaring spirit
Pierces thro' distant time to hail those blessings.
A father's feelings still, to this dread instant,
Recal my heart, and on this spot I pause,—
But to bestow, what tyranny itself
Must grant a parent, leave to give his child,
A dying benediction!
GUARD.
Then in vain
You halt; for see! where wiser friends are busy
To draw the damsel hence.
LLANDORVIN.
Tormenting slaves!
Wound me not there! O glorious Gwendylen!
Lo! her indignant spirit has eluded
Their vile constraint: like an impassive seraph,
That mortal limitation cannot stop,
She flies, Heaven-warranted! to give her father
All he demands on earth.
| The Heroine of Cambria | |