University of Virginia Library

SCENE IV.

Edwin advances with slow reverence.
Row.
What loveliness!—
Fond, fond resemblance! gesture, form, and grace,
Like my lost lord!—ideas, once so loved,
Nor yet forgotten!—Parent nature, how,
How dost thou stir me! how awaken all
The tender, dear distractions! O, my child!

[Embraces.
Edwin.
Your pardon, madam—I am much unskill'd,
And new to all the duties of a son;
But in your face, as in the front of Heaven,
There is a language that bespeaks my soul,
And dictates more than outward forms can reach!
Here, at my heart, you pull the vital cords;
Within I know and feel from whence I am,
Part of your being—But—O mother!—

Row.
What says my child?

Edwin.
Had Heaven so will'd, how doubly blest were Edwin!
My father—what of him?

Row.
Thy father?—ah, that I can only say,
Thou had'st a father!—His paternal lips
Have held fond talk with thy unthinking days,
For he did love thee with a mother's feeling;
And that strong arm on which the nations hung,
With thee hath toy'd away the smiling hours,
And grew around thy slumbers—Me, even me,
He loved—too fatally he loved thy mother!—
The nobler passions of humanity,
Bore his bold vessel with too strong a wind—
We were his ruin—O, my child, my child!
Thy father loved too well—and we have lost him.

Osric.
Bright saint, let other hours indulge the scenes
Of fond remembrance—now, the times are urgent!
Haste, haste, Rowena, 'ere the speedier foe
This night, perhaps, shall rush around these walls,
And intercept our journey.

Row.
Ah, my lord,
Fly thou—and with thee be my Edwin's safety!
But take no thought for one so lost as I am.—
I cannot, must not fly.

Osric.
Say you, Rowena?—
We have mistook your meaning.

Row.
No, good Osric—
My rest is fix'd even here; and Heaven, I trust,
Is the next mansion that receives Rowena.

Osric.
It must not be—Already, I behold
The powers of hell unbound;
They rush to earth, and with them bring along
Hair starting horror, fear, and hate, and rage,
And wild ey'd famine, and wide-reaching waste,
And lust and rape—by whom thy wrongs, Rowena,
Are multiplied on thousands.

Row.
Not so, I hope—around this hallow'd pile,
Oft hath the rage of battle felt rebuke;
While each licentious soldier stood abash'd,
Or bow'd at distance—From the pensive shrines,
The twilight arches, and the shadowy domes,
Religion throws a far-forbidding awe
On all beholders.

Edwin.
Alas! my mother, have I found you then,
To part with you so soon? like chearing light,
But for a moment sent to blind-born eyes—
Just come, to shew the blessedness of sight,
And bid them close for ever!

Osric.
Soft!—some lights approach,—
This way they move—Thy chamber, haste, Rowena!
An hour shall send us to thy last resolves.
[Exit Rowena. Back Scene closes.
'Tis Osbert—that is he—This way, my son;
I would observe him.

[They retire.