CLEOPATRA

My evils are wholly unsupportable, No human force can them withstand, but death. In striving lies no hope of my mishaps. I am sole cause: I did it, only I. Fire of his love was by my fear inflamed. Alas! this was not this offence, but mine. Antony (ay me! who else so brave a chief!) Would not I should have taken Seas with him: But would have lest me fearful woman far From common hazard of the doubtful war. Oh that I had believed! now, now of Room All the great Empire at our beck should bend. All should obey, the vagabonding Scythes, The feared Germans, back-shooting Parthians, Wandering Numidians, Britons far removed, And tawny nations scorched with the Sun. But I cared not: so was my soul possessed, (To my great harm) with burning jealousy: Fearing least in my absence Antony Should leaving me retake Octavia. Such was my error and obstinacy. Always from Gods good haps, not harms, do fallen. They never bow so low, as worldly cares. But leave to mortal men to be disposed Freely on earth what ever mortal is. If we therein sometime some faults commit, We may them not to their high majesty's, But to our selves impute; whose passion Plunge us each day in all afflictions. Wherewith when we our souls do thorned feel, Flattering our selves we say they dest'nies are: That gods would have it so, and that our care Could not impeach but that it must be so. Sooner shining light Shall leave the day, and darkness leave the night: Sooner moist currents of tempestuous seas Shall wave in heaven, and the nightly troops Of stars shall shine within the foaming waves, Then I thee, Antony, Leave in deep distres. I am with thee, be it thy worthy soul Lodge in thy breast, or from that lodging part Crossing the ioyles lake to take her place In place prepared for men Demigods. Live, if thee please, if life be loathsome die: Dead and alive, Antony, thou shalt see Thy princess follow thee, follow, and lament, Thy wrack, no less her own then was thy weal. Help, or help not, such must, such ought I prove. How ill think you to follow such a friend? Without this love I should be inhuman. Not inhuman who Misery's eschues. Nay for their father die. Wife kindhearted I. The less ought I to leave him lest of all. A friend in most distress should most assift. If that when Antony great and glorious His legions led to drink Euphrates streams, So many Kings in train redoubting him; In triumph raised as high as highest heaven; Lordlike disposing as him pleased best, The wealth of Greece, the wealth of Asia: In that fair fortune had I him exchanged For Caesar, then, men would have counted me Faithless, unconstant, light: but now the storm, And blustering tempest driving on his face, Ready to drown, Alas! what would they say? What would himself in Platos mansion say? If, I whom always more then life he lou'de, If I, Who am his heart, who was his hope, Leave him, forsake him (and perhaps in vain) Weakly to please who him hath overthrown? Not light, unconstant, faith less should I be, But vile, forsworn, of treacherous cruelty. Self-cruel him from cruelty to spare. He is my self. With mine it may be clos'de in darksome graven. What shame were that? ah Gods! what infamy? With Antony in his good haps to share, And overlive him dead: deeming enough To shed some tears upon a widow tomb? The after-livers justly might report That I him only for his Empire loved And high estate: and that in hard estate I for another did him lewdly leave? Like to those birds wafted with wandering wings. From foreign lands in springtime here arrive: And live with us so long as Some heat, And their food lasts, then seek another soil. And as we see with ceaseless fluttering Flocking of seelly flies a brownish cloud To vintaged wine yet working in the ton: Not parting thence while they sweet liquour taste: After, as smoke, all vanish in the air, And of the swarm not one so much' appear. I neither gain nor profit seek therein. Nor praise, nor Glory in my cares are set. My only end my onele duty is. On virtue it, the only good, is grounded. That which us beseems. Finish I will my sorrows dying thus. Good friends I pray you seek not to revoke My fixed intent of following Antony. I will die. I will die: must not his life, His life and death by mine be followed? Mean while, deer sisters, live: and while you live, Do often honour to our loved Tombs. Straw them with flowers: and sometime happily The tender thought of Antony your Lord And me poor soul to tears shall you invite, And our true loves to doleful voice commend. Ah live, I pray you: this disastered woe Which racks my heart, alone to me belongs: My lot longs not to you: servants to be No shame, no harm to you, as is to me. Live sisters, live, and sing his suspect Hath causeless me in sea of sorrows drowned, And that I cannot live, if so I would, Nor yet would leave this life, if so I could, Without his love: procure me, Diomed, That gainst poor me he be no more incensd. Wrest out of his conceit that harmful doubt, That since his wrack he hath of me conceived Though wrong conceived: witness you reverent Gods, Barking Anubis, Apis bellowing. Tell him, my soul burning, impatient, Forlorn with love of him, for certain seal Ofher true loyalty my corpse hath left, Tencrease of dead the number numberless, Go then, and if as yet he me bewail, If yet for me his heart one sighs fourth breathe Blessed shall I be: and far with more content Depart this world, where so I me torment. Mean season us let this sad tomb enclose, Attending here till death conlude our woes. So the desert The Gods repay of thy true faithful heart. Ah most miserable! Ah Gods what pity more! Never on us, good Gods, such mischief send. Rather a thousand death's. Ah my heart breaks. By shady banks of hell, By fields whereon the lonely Ghosts do tread, By my foul, and the soul of Antony I you beseech, Euphron, of them have care. Be their good Father, let your wisdom let That they fallen not into this Tyrants hands. Rather conduct them where their freezed locks Black Aethiops to neighbour Sun do show; On wavy Ocean at the waters will; On barren cliffs of snowy Caucasus; To Tigers swift, to Lions, and to Bears; And rather, rather unto every coast, To every land and sea: for nought I fear As rage of him, whose thirst no blood can quench. Adieu deer children, children deer adieu: Good Isis you to place of safety guide, Far from our foes, where you your lives may lead In free estate devoid of servile dread. Remember not, my children, you were born Of such a Princely raze: remember not So many brave Kings which have Egypt rul'de In right descent your ancestors have been: That this great Antony your father was, Hercules blood, and more then he in praise. For your high courage such remembrance will, Sing your fallen with burning rages fill. Who knows if that your hands false Destiny The Sceptres promised of imperious Room, In stead of them shall crooked shepehookes bear, Needles or forks, or guide the cart, or plough? Ah learn endure: your birth and high estate Forget, my babes, and bend to force of fate. Farewell, my babes, farewell my heart is closed, With pity and pain, my self with death enclosed, My breath does fail. Farewell for evermore, Your Sire and me you shall see never more. Farewell sweet care, farewell. Ah this voice kills me. Ah good Gods! I swoon. I can no more, I die. Ah, ah. Ay me! My Sisters, hold me up. How wretched I, How cursed am: and was there ever one By Fortune's hate into more dolours thrown? Ah, weeping Niobe, although thy heart Beholds it self enwrapped in causeful woe For thy dead children, that a senseless rock With grief become, on Sipylus thou standest In endless tears: yet didst thou never feel The weights of grief that on my heart do lie. Thy Children thou, mine I poor soul have lost, And lost their Father, more then them I wail, Lost this fair realm; yet me the heavens wrath Into a stone not yet transformed hath. Phaeton's sisters, daughters of the Sun, Which wail your brother fallen into the streams Of stately Po: the Gods upon the banks Your bodies to bank-loving Alders turned. For me, I sighs, I ceases weep, and wail, And heaven pitiless laughs at my woe, Revives, renews it still: and in the end (O cruelty!) does death for comfort lend. Die Cleopatra then no longer stay From Antony, who thee at Styx attends: Go join thy Ghost with his, and sob no more Without his love within these tombs enclosed. Who furnish will mine eyes with streaming tears My boiling anguish worthily to wail, Wail thee Antony, Antony my heart? Alas, how much I weeping liquour want! Yet have mine eyes quite drawn their Condits dry By long beweeping my disastered harms. Now reason is that from my side they suck First vital moisture, then the vital blood. Then let the blood from my sad eyes outflow, And smoking yet with thine in mixture grow. Moist it, and heat it new, and never stop, All watering thee, while yet remains one drop. Oh Goddess thou whom Cyprus does adore, Venus of Phaphos, bent to work us harm For old Julus brood, if thou take care Of Caesar, why of us takest thou no care? Antony did descend, as well as he, From thine own Son by long enchained line: And might have ruled by one and self same fate, True Trojan blood, the stately Roman state. Antony, poor Antony, my deer soul, Now but a block, the booty of a tomb, Thy life thy heat is lost, thy coullour gone, And hideous paleness on thy face hath seized. Thy eyes, two Suns, the lodging place of love, Which yet for tents to warlike Mars did serve, Locked up in lidds (as fair days cheerful light Which darkenese flies) do winking hide in night. Antony by our true loves I thee beseech, And by our hearts sweet sparks have set on fire, Our holy marriage, and the tender ruth Of our deer babes, knot of our amity: My doleful voice thy ear let entertain, And take me with thee to the hellish plain, Thy wife, thy friend: hear Antony, o hear My sobbing sighs, if here thou be, or there. Lived thus long, the winged raze of years Ended I have as Destiny decreed. Flourished and reigned, and taken joust revenge Of him who me both hated and despised. Happy, alas too happy: if of Room Only the fleet had hither never come. And now of me and Image great shall go Under the earth to bury there my woe. What say I? where am I? o Cleopatra, Poor Cleopatra, grief thy reason reaves. No, no, most happy in this happles case, To die with thee, and dying thee embrace: My body joined with thine, my mouth with thine, my mouth, whose moisture burning sighs have dried To be in one self tumble, and one self chest, And wrapped with thee in one self sheet to rest. The sharpest torment in my heart I feel Is that I stay from thee, my heart, this while. Die will I straight now, now straight will I die, And straight with thee a wandering shade will be, Under the Cypress trees thou hauntest alone, Where brooks of hell do falling seem to moan. But yet I stay, and yet thee overlive, That ere I die endue rites I may thee give. A thousand sobs I from my breast will tear, With thousand plaints thy funerals adorn: My hair shall serve for thy oblations, My boiling tears for thy effusions, Mine eyes thy fire: for out of them the flame (Which burned thy heart on me enamoured) came. Weep my companions, weep, and from your eyes Rain down on him of tears a brinish stream. Mine can no more, consumed by the coals Which from my breast, as from a furnace rise. Martyr's your breasts with multiplied blows, With violent hands tear of your hanging hair, Outrage your face: alas! why should we seek (Since now we die) our beauty's more to keep? I spent in tears, not able more to spend, But kiss him now, what rests me more to do? Then let me kiss you, you fair eites, my light, Front seat of honour, face most fierce, most fair! Oh neck, o arms, o hands, o breast where death (Oh mischief) comes to choke up vital breath. A thousand kisses, thousand thousand more Let you my mouth for honours farewell give: That in this office weak my limbs may grow, Fainting on you, and fourth my soul may flow. That I have thee betrayed, deer Antony, My life, my soul, my sun? I had such thought? That I have thee betrayed my Lord, my King? That I would break my vowed faith to thee? I ave thee? deceive thee? yield thee to the rage Of mighty foe? I ever had that heart? Rather sharp lightning lighten on my head: Rather may I to deepest mischief fallen: Rather the opened earth devour me: Rather fierce Tigers feed them on my flesh: Rather, o rather let our Nilus send, To swallow me quick, some weeping Crocodile. And didst thou then suppose my royal heart Had hatched, thee to ensnare, a faithless love? And changing mind, as Fortune changed cheer, I would weak thee, to win the stronger, lose? Oh wretch! o caitiff! o too cruel happen! And did not I sufficient lose sustain Losing my Realm, losing my liberty, My tender offspring, and the joyful light Of beamy Sun, and yet, yet losing more Thee Antony my care, if I lose not What yet remained? thy love alas! thy love, More deer then Sceptre, children, freedom, ligh So ready I to row in Charon's barge, Shall lose the joy of dying in thy love: So the sole comfort of my misery To have one tomb with thee is me bereft. So I in shady plains shall plain alone, Not (as I hoped) companion of thy moan, Oh height of grief! Eras why with Continual cries Your griefful harms do you exasperate? Torment your self with murdering complaints; Strain your weak breast so ost, so vehemently? Water with tears this fair all ablaster? With sorrows sting so many beauty's wound? Come of so many Kings want you the heart Bravely, stoutly, this tempest to resist? Oh cruel fortune! o accursed lot! Oh plaguy love! o most detested brand! Oh wretched joys! o beauty's miserable! Oh deadly state! o deadly royalty! Oh hateful life! o Queen most lamentable! Oh Antony by my fault buriable! Oh hellish work of heaven! alas! the wrath Of all the Gods at once on us is fallen. Unhappy Queen! o would I in this world The wandering light of day had never seen? Alas! of mine the plague and poison I The crown have lost my ancestors me left, This Realm I have to strangers subject made, And robbed my children of their heritage. Yet this is nought (alas!) unto the price Of you deer husband, whom my snares entrapped: Of you, whom I have plagued, whom I have made With bloody hand a guest of mouldy tomb: Of you, whom I destroyed, of you, deer Lord, Whom I of Empire, honour, life have spoiled. Oh hurtful woman! and can I yet live, Yet longer live in this Ghost-haunted tomb? Can I yet breath! can yet in such annoy, Yet can my soul within this body dwell? Oh Sisters you that spin the threads of death! Oh Styx! o Plegethon! you brooks of hell! Oh Imps of Night! Do I deprive them? no, it's dest'nies might.