COSMO

Thus hath our cost and best invention sweat To seal your welcome from the Athenean Schools: And trust me son, your thanks are much in debt Unto these Ladies, whose too prodigal loves Have searched for jewels, thus to do you grace. Your good deserts may soon requite our love, But tell us, How does learning flourish now In Athens? How can deserving virtue flourish then, If sacred learning be so slightly sought? To grieve at this, were in these senseless times To become monstrous; and to feel no grief, Were to be senseless with the times themselves. Have patience good Adrasta, We strive in vain to bandy with loves power And unresisted Charter of the gods, Which time and absence never could violate. Now Lady Julia let this continued ̄ firm your welcome, And yours Althea: trust me I could wish The season so disposed, since that our sons Happy and safe return has made us glad, That we might dedicate a longer time To harmless mirth: but now the night grows old, And we shall wrong your patience too too much. Urge me no more: the white unspotted hand Of never treacherous justice, shall not blush By our imbruing it in bleeding innocence. Nor shall posterity in after times, Seeking examples of black tyranny. Find our names registered in the Catalogue Of those whose deeds have given wide infamy Life to attend their memory, and brand it With shame, more durable than brass or marble. Can there be more than shedding guiltless blood? They let no good, that never did deny it. But it's not good that's bought at such a rate. They be not fortunate that rise by vice. Death to mine eyes, I must see thee kneel, Thy words have charmed my soul, benumbed my thoughts Against the stinging touch of sharp remorse; I will resolve her death, nor shall she live That stands 'twixtfull content and thy desires. But how shall swift winged fame, my deer Adrasta, Be held from loud proclaiming our disgrace? Policy will's some seeming cause be had To make that good which justice knows for bade. Wee'll then give order For her attachment and imprisonment Mean while your self may with persuasive words Prepare Lucilio's mind to meet her death. So's justice wronged, and innocence must die, aside. When they withstand a woman's tyranny. exeunt. How did we think, that when the storms of war Were with our danger, care, and cost expelled From out these confines, and the warmth of peace Turned Like a Spring to shine within your bounds, We should have sat secure? Or after all Those toils, that spent our strength, dried up our blood, Hastened the hand of time to seize our hairs, Before his date, and only in pursuit Of your (loved people) safety and content; Our own now fainting weariness of age Should taste that freedom which our labours bought In plenteous fullness for the poorest swain? And we have closed the Evening of our age Within a fearless slumber? But how weak Are all the Hope's that wretched Princes feign! When in the calm of peace, while we suppose Our perils banished, and our selves ingirt With such impenetrable love, as we Embrace our people with, then stand our lives Exposed to thickest dangers, which concealed Do strike the deeper, and are warded less. Such is the misery that follows State, That when we want abroad, we find at home Foes to besiege our lives. The discontent Of some aggrieved spirits, that think we stand betwixt their desires and them; and which is worse, The idle passion of unbridled youth, Rather than miss those Hope's inflamed lust Has fired within their thoughts, will overturn Whole States, and climb up to their aimed ends By our heaped slaughters: Yet I least had thought Such Tragic Acts had known a woman's breast, Nor if I could, Althea, would your life (Strong to retort suspicion) once permit Our least mistrust to stain your virtuous name: And had we not by heavens appointment found Under your hand and seal the firmest proofs Of tempting our own blood to parricide; Suspicions strongest proofs had never induced Our never lightly credulous belief To harbour your dislike? But should we now Neglect our safety, and our Countries good, When all the Providence of Fate conspires To bring those treacherous practises to light, Which Heaven abhors; we should contemn the Heavens, Abuse that form of justice we sustain, And stand as guilty of those wasteful ruins Our cruel mildness gives your actions scope To call upon your Country and our selves. We therefore by the Laws denounce you guilty Of Treason against our person and the State. We must check your impudence, That swells beyond the bounds we did expect Your modesty should have observed: you wrong Our son, and in our son our selves; know you This hand and seal? It'll speak it self, call it to witness then. Had you a privilege to shroud the blush Your conscious gilded casts against the eyes of Heaven As from our sighed you do conceal the Die That writes your Acts in shame upon your Cheeks, You might deny these proofs, and swear them feigned; But that all-seeing power that notes the wild And secretest passages of men conceit, Detesting those foul crimes of lust and blood, Reveals your Acts. Stand therefore, and from the Seat Of Justice hear your doom; since your ambitious Hope's Soared up, and by our Blood did mean to climb Into that Seat which Nature and our right Had given to us: be therefore from the Rock Thrown with your Hope's, that your example teach How low they fallen, that climb above their reach. And you Antonio we charge to see The execution speedily performed. Exit cumsuis. But have you found the body? Thou art deceived, good friend, 'twas not his hand, But the just hand of Heaven that whips my sins, And through my Veins powers out the innocent blood Which I had spilled before; the hand that holds The equal Balance to discern the weight betwixt Princes justice and their tyranny, Measures their blessings and their plagues, alike, To their fair virtues or black infamies, And makes the horrid acts of murderous minds But instruments of plague to punish gilded; And pay us in the coin with which we hoped To buy our gluttonous surfeits. Such is the state Of Princes privilege, that we may run Into the depth of sin, and uncontrolled Pull vengeance on our heads, while the smooth hand Of pestilent flattery claps us on the back, And gives us edge to villainy, till they see Misery and desolation close us round; Then they fly back, and gaze, as on a place Stricken with furious thunder in a storm: When every vulgar hand has laws, and fear Of prying authority to hold him back, And friendly enemies to upbraid him with His faults, and keep him in the bounds of mercy, Only our height bereaves us of these helps, And we are soothed in vices, till we run Beyond the reach of grace, and stand within The shot of heaviest vengeance, which seldom comes Short of our merits—Oh my son! my son! I shall grow mad with grief: my frighted conscience Opens the Book, where I do view my sins, And feel the furies with their wounding whips Lashing my guilty soul to penitence. So then, let Fortune make a perjod here, Since we are met just in the amid of woe, And stand upon the Centre of mishap. Whence we may see the full circumference Of all that Sphere, that bounds the power of Fate. Come Madam we will mix our tears a while, Dropping them jointly on the Marble Tombs Of our dead Issue, till the stones receive Large Characters of grief, carved by the drops That ceaseless flow from our too late laments. Let me be open Madam to your love, It's but the doom of Justice I sustain; I know I wronged your daughters innocence, And only know it now, for plagues make known That, oft, for sin, which once we thought was none. Come, we forget our selves in Ceremonies, And waste the time, whose every instant yields Scarce space enough for that large task of grief Sorrow exacts each instant from our hearts, Good Madam we will consecrate one Tomb To both their Memories; and since in life Their hearts were so united by Loves hand, In death their Graves shall join: so will ourselves Bequeathe the remnant of our days from hence, You to sad cares, and we to penitence. Come thou inhumane murderer of my son, Traitor unto thy Countries state and safety, And now before the stroke of Justice seize Thy hateful life, resolve the wondering world Why the slight motives of a woman's words Should win thee to so foul and horrid crimes? Then let the Execution proceed, That we may do this latest Exequy To his wronged ghost, which is to see his blood Revenged with blood of those that murdered him, As we have vowed to do, and not to leave These weeds of sorrow, till we have consumed The raze and name of them that did conspire In this abhorred Actium: And would it might Suffice the injuries we did his life, Thus to revenge his too untimely death; And from that height— Am I awake, or dream I? Is it my fancy Breeds this delusive show in my weak brain? Or do their souls come to condemn our gilded, More continued ̄ scious of their death, then who ̄ we have brought To die for it? See, do thy dazzled eyes Perceive that object which my self beholds: Or is't some shadow that abuses me? And none but me? If thou be'st such as is thy semblance, By all that duty that thy life did owe Unto a Parent; by the Bans once endue, Of Love and Nature, that unites the souls Of children and their careful nourishers, I do adjure thee tell, why in this midst Of day you come thus to renew our grief? What has there wanted to your Funerals, When we have wept us dry, and spent our tears More thick than winter showers upon your Hearse? Done all the Rites and Exequies were endue To your interring? And have vowed revenge To all that did conspire in that foul Act Of thy too guiltless murder Then let them fallen, we are prepared for woes Though shot as thick as Hail from out the Clouds, Our gilded is greater than those punishments, Or all our future plagues can expiate. Yet on our bent knees thus low to earth As we did both conspire in that foul plot We here entreat your pardons, and withal Wish the offended Heavens would be appeased With Vows and Orisons; and would your ghosts Forget those injuries we did your loves And rest in peace with us, and with the world. By Heavens I would; nor should the potentest hand Of earth resist your present Nuptials. Wonder and amazement do not oppress me! Why then there nothing wants But celebration of your Nuptials, Which we will do with greater signs of joy, Then we had grief in your supposed Funerals. But whose death is this murderer guilty of? We give him then his life, but banish him From our Dominions: and for this strange event We will expect a farther leisure To hear the whole discovery of the chance, And leave the rest to mirth, that shall command In all our Feasts, and whom wee'll Crown as King, To be chief Lord in all our Banqueting.