ASPASIA, yet pursue the sacred theme;
Exhaust the stores of pious eloquence,
And teach me to repel the Sultan's passion.
Still at Aspasia's voice a sudden rapture
Exalts
my soul and fortifies my heart.
The glitt❜ring vanities of empty greatness,
The hopes and fears, the joys and pains of life,
Dissolve in air, and vanish into nothing.
Let nobler hopes and juster fears succeed,
And bar the passes of Irene's mind
Against returning guilt.
Death rises to my view, with all his terrors;
Then visions, horrid as a murd❜rer's dreams,
Chill my resolves, and blast my blooming virtue :
Stern Torture shakes his bloody scourge before me,
And Anguish gnashes on the fatal wheel.
Since fear predominates in ev'ry thought,
And sways thy breast with absolute dominion,
Think on th' insulting scorn, the conscious pangs,
The future mis❜ries that wait th' apostate;
So shall Timidity assist thy reason,
And Wisdom into virtue turn thy frailty.
Will not that Power that form'd the heart of woman, And wove the feeble texture of her nerves, Forgive those fears that shake the tender frame?
The weakness we lament, ourselves create;
Instructed from our infant years to court,
With counterfeited fears, the aid of man,
We learn to shudder at the rustling breeze,
Start at the light, and tremble in the dark;
Till, affectation ripening to belief,
And Folly frighted at her own chimeras,
Habitual cowardice usurps the soul.
Not all like thee can brave the shocks of fate,
Thy soul, by nature great, enlarg'd by knowledge,
Soars unincumber'd with our idle cares,
And all Aspasia, but her beauty, 's man.
Each gen❜rous sentiment is thine, Demetrius,
Whose soul, perhaps, yet mindful of Aspasia,
Now hovers o'er this melancholy shade,
Well pleas'd to find thy precepts not forgotten.
O! could the grave restore the pious hero,
Soon would his art or valour set us free,
And bear us far from servitude and crimes.
Too well I know him; his immoderate courage,
Th' impetuous sallies of excessive virtue,
Too strong for love, have hurried him on death.
SCENE II.-ASPASIA, IRENE, CALI, Abdalla.
CALI to ABDALLA, as they advance.
Behold our future Sultaness, Abdalla ;—
Let artful flatt'ry now, to lull suspicion,
Glide through Irene to the Sultan's ear.
Wouldst thou subdue th' obdurate cannibal
To tender friendship, praise him to his mistress.
Well may
those eyes that view these heav'nly charms
Reject the daughters of contending kings ;
For what are pompous titles, proud alliance,
Empire or wealth, to excellence like thine ?
Receive th' impatient Sultan to thy arms;
And may a long posterity of monarchs,
The pride and terror of succeeding days,
Rise from the happy bed; and future queens
Diffuse Irene's beauty through the world.
Can Mahomet's imperial hand descend
To clasp a slave? or can a soul like mine,
Unus'd to power, and form'd for humbler scenes,
Support the splendid miseries of greatness?
No regal pageant deck'd with casual honours,
Scorn'd by his subjects, trampled by his foes;
No feeble tyrant of a petty state,
Courts thee to shake on a dependant throne;
Born to command, as thou to charm mankind,
The Sultan from himself derives his greatness.
Observe, bright maid, as his resistless voice
Drives on the tempest of destructive war,
How nation after nation falls before him.
At his dread name the distant mountains shake
Their cloudy summits, and the sons of fierceness,
That range unciviliz'd from rock to rock,
Distrust th' eternal fortresses of Nature,
And wish their gloomy caverns more obscure.
Forbear this lavish pomp of dreadful praise;
The horrid images of war and slaughter
Renew our sorrows, and awake our fears.
Cali, methinks yon waving trees afford
A doubtful glimpse of our approaching friends;
Just as I mark'd them they forsook the shore,
And turn'd their hasty steps towards the garden.
Conduct these queens, Abdalla, to the palace: Such heavenly beauty, form'd for adoration,
The pride of monarchs, the reward of conquest! Such beauty must not shine to vulgar eyes.
How Heaven, in scorn of human arrogance,
Commits to trivial chance the fate of nations!
While with incessant thought laborious man
Extends his mighty schemes of wealth and power,
And towers and triumphs in ideal greatness;
Some accidental gust of opposition
Blasts all the beauties of his new creation,
O'erturns the fabric of presumptuous reason,
And whelms the swelling architect beneath it.
Had not the breeze untwin'd the meeting boug hs,
And through the parted shade disclos'd the Greeks,
Th' important hour had pass'd unheeded by,
In all the sweet oblivion of delight,
In all the fopperies of meeting lovers;
In sighs and tears, in transports and embraces,
In soft complaints, and idle protestations.
SCENE IV.-CALI, DEMETRIUS, LEONTIUS.
Could omens fright the resolute and wise,
Well might we fear impending disappointments.
Your artful suit, your monarch's fierce denial,
The cruel doom of hapless Menodorus.—
And your new charge, that dear, that heav'nly maid.
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