Το your belief in Heaven-to your mild virtues-
To your own faith and honour, for my own.

Ang. You have done well.-I thank you for that trust, Which I have never for one moment ceased

To honour you the more for.

Doge.
Where is honour,
Innate and precept-strengthened, 't is the rock
Of faith connubial: where it is not-where
Light thoughts are lurking, or the vanities
Of worldly pleasure rankle in the heart,
Or sensual throbs convulse it, well I know
'T were hopeless for humanity to dream
Of honesty in such infected blood,
Although 't were wed to him it covets most:
An incarnation of the poet's god

In all his marble chisell'd beauty, or
The demi-deity, Alcides, in

His majesty of superhuman manhood,

Would not suffice to bind where virtue is not;
It is consistency which forms and proves it:
Vice cannot fix, and virtue cannot change.
For vice must have variety, while virtue
Stands like the sun, and all which rolls around
Drinks life, and light, and glory from her aspect.
Ang. And seeing, feeling thus this truth in others,
(I pray you pardon me ;) but wherefore yield you
To the most fierce of fatal passions, and
Disquiet your great thoughts with restless hate
Of such a thing as Steno?

It is not Steno who could move me thus;

Had it been so, he should-but let that pass.

Ang. What is 't you feel so deeply then even now? Doge. The violated majesty of Venice,

At once insulted in her lord and laws.

Ang. But he has been condemned into captivity.
Doge. For such as him a dungeon were acquittal;

And his brief term of mock-arrest will pass

Within a palace. But I've done with him;

The rest must be with you.

Doge. Yes, Angiolina. Do not marvel: I

Have let this prey upon me till I feel

My life can not be long; and fain would have you
Regard the injunctions you will find within

This scroll.-Fear not; they are for your advantage:
Read them hereafter at the fitting hour.

Ang. My lord, in life, and after life, you shall
Be honoured still by me: but may your days
Be many yet—and happier than the present!
This passion will give way, and you will be
Serene, and what you should be-what you were.
Doge. I will be what I should be, or be nothing!
But never more-oh! never, never more,
O'er the few days or hours which yet await
The blighted old age of Faliero, shall
Sweet quiet shed her sunset! Never more
Those summer shadows rising from the past
Of a not ill-spent nor inglorious life,

Mellowing the last hours as the night approaches,
Shall soothe me to my moment of long rest.
I had but little more to ask, or hope,

Save the regards due to the blood and sweat,
And the soul's labour through which I had toiled
To make my country honoured. As her servant—
Her servant, though her chief—I would have gone
Down to my fathers with a name serene

And pure as theirs;

but this has been denied me.—

Joy's recollection is no longer joy,

While Sorrow's memory is a sorrow still.

Ang. At least, whate'er may urge, let me implore
That you will take some little pause of rest:
Your sleep for many nights has been so turbid,
That it had been relief to have awaked you,
Had I not hoped that Nature would o'erpower

At length the thoughts which shook your slumbers thus.
An hour of rest will give you to your toils

With fitter thoughts and freshened strength.
Doge.
I cannot-

I must not, if I could; for never was
Such reason to be watchful: yet a few—

Yet a few days and dream-perturbed nights,

And I shall slumber well-but where ?-no matter.
Adieu, my Angiolina.

An instant-yet an instant your companion!
I cannot bear to leave you thus.

Doge.

Come then,

My gentle child-forgive me; thou wert made
For better fortunes than to share in mine,

Now darkling in their close toward the deep vale
Where Death sits robed in his all-sweeping shadow.
When I am gone-it may be sooner than

Even these years warrant, for there is that stirring
Within-above-around, that in this city
Will make the cemeteries populous
As e'er they were by pestilence or war,—
When I am nothing, let that which I was

Be still sometimes a name on thy sweet lips,

A shadow in thy fancy, of a thing

Which would not have thee mourn it, but remember ;

Let us begone, my child-the time is pressing.

BYRON.

9.-HESPERUS AND FLORIBEL, FROM THE BRIDE'S TRAGEDY.

Hes.

SEE, here's a bower

Of eglantine with honeysuckles woven,

Where not a spark of prying light creeps in,

So closely do the sweets enfold each other.

'Tis Twilight's home. . . . . So! I've a rival here; What's this that sleeps so sweetly on your neck?

Flor. Jealous so soon, my Hesperus? Look then, It is a bunch of flowers I pulled for you:

Here's the blue violet, like Pandora's eye,

When first it darkened with immortal life.

Hes. Sweet as thy lips. Fie on those taper fingers, Have they been brushing the long grass aside,

To drag the daisy from its hiding-place,

Where it shuns light, the Danaë of flowers,

With gold uphoarded on its virgin lap?

Flor. And here's a treasure that I found by chance, A lily of the valley; low it lay

Over a mossy mound, withered and weeping,

As on a fairy's grave.

Hes.

Of all the posy

Give me the rose, though there's a tale of blood
In elfin annals old

Soiling its name.

'Tis writ, how Zephyr, envious of his love,
(The love he bare to Summer, who since then
Has weeping visited the world,) once found
The baby Perfume cradled in a violet ;
The felon winds, confederate with him,

Bound the sweet slumberer with golden chains
Pulled from the wreathed laburnum, and together
Deep cast him in the bosom of a rose,

And fed the fettered wretch with dew and air.

BEDDOES.

10.-HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

And. Too daring prince!-Ah! whither dost thou run? Ah! too forgetful of thy wife and son!

And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be?

A widow I, a helpless orphan he!

For sure such courage length of life denies;
And thus must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice.

Hec. Andromache! my soul's far better part,
Why with untimely sorrow heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemn me to the silent tomb.

And. Greece in her single heroes strove in vain :
Now hosts oppose thee-and thou must be slain.
Oh! grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of Heaven-an early tomb!
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun.
No parent now remains my griefs to share,
No father's aid, no mother's tender care;
Yet, while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee!
Alas! my parents, brethren, kindred, all
Once more will perish, if my Hector fall
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy dangers share—
Oh! prove a husband's and a parent's care.

Hec. My early youth was bred to warlike pains;
My soul impels me to the martial plains.
Still foremost let me stand to guard the throne,
To save my father's honours and my own.

And. That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the wall of Troy:
Thou from this tower defend the important post;
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host:
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from Heaven.
Let others in the field their arms employ;

But stay, my Hector, here, and guard his Troy.

Hec. How would the sons of Troy, in arms renowned,
And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,

Should Hector basely quit the field of fame!
No more-but hasten to thy tasks at home;
There guide the spindle and direct the loom.
Me glory summons to the martial scene;
The field of combat is the sphere for men.

Hec. [Solus.] Yet come it will; the day decreed by fates! (How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)

The day, when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,

Must see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet, no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Nor Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Not all my brothers gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache!-Thy griefs I dread!
I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led.—
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Pressed with a load of monumental clay;
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.

POPE'S Homer's Iliad.

11.-CATO'S SENATE.

Cato. FATHERS, we once again are met in council,

Cæsar's approach has summoned us together,

And Rome attends her fate from our resolves.