Sar.
Sal.

Is lost?

Enter SARDANAPALUS and Soldiers.

My best brother!

And the battle

Sar. (despondingly). You see me here.

Sal.

I'd rather see you thus ! [He draws out the weapon from the wound, and dies.

DEATH OF JACOPO FOSCARI.

(TWO FOSCARI, Act iv. Scene 1.)

To JACOPO FOSCARI, MARINA, and the DOGE,
enter an Officer and Guards.

Offi. Signor! the boat is at the shore-the wind
Is rising-we are ready to attend you.
Jac. Fos. And I to be attended.
Your hand!

Doge.

Once more, father,

Take it. Alas! how thine own trembles ! Jac. Fos. No-you mistake; 'tis yours that shakes,

Fac. Fos.

My eyes swim strangely-where's the door?

Mar.

Now, I'm ready—

Away!

Let me support him-my best love! Oh, God!

How faintly beats this heart—this pulse!

Fac. Fos.

Is it the light?—I am faint.

The light!

Mar. There's death in that damp clammy grasp. Oh, God !-My Foscari, how fare you?

Jac. Fos.

Well!

[He dies.

Offi. He's gone!

Doge.

He's free.

Mar.

No-no, he is not dead;

There must be life yet in that heart-he could not

Thus leave me.

Doge.

Mar.

Daughter!

Hold thy peace, old man!

I am no daughter now-thou hast no son.

Oh, Foscari !

Offi.

We must remove the body.

Mar. Touch it not, dungeon miscreants! your base

office

Ends with his life, and goes not beyond murder,

Even by your murderous laws. Leave his remains
To those who know to honour them.
Offi.
I must
Inform the signory, and learn their pleasure.
Doge. Inform the signory, from me, the Doge,
They have no further power upon those ashes:

While he lived, he was theirs, as fits a subject-
Now he is mine-my broken-hearted boy!

Mar. And I must live!

[Exit Officer.

Doge. Your children live, Marina. Mar. My children! true-they live, and I must live To bring them up to serve the state, and die As died their father. Oh! what best of blessings Were barrenness in Venice! Would my mother Had been so !

Doge.
Mar.

My unhappy children!

What!

You feel it then at last-you!-Where is now
The stoic of the state?

Doge (throwing himself down by the body). Here!
Mar.
Ay, weep on!

I thought you had no tears-you hoarded them
Until they are useless; but weep on! he never
Shall weep more-never, never more.

CAIN AND LUCIFER IN THE ABYSS OF SPACE.

(CAIN, Act ii. Scene 1.)

Cain. Oh, god, or demon, or whate'er thou art,

Is yon our earth?

Lucifer.

Dost thou not recognise

Can it be?

The dust which form'd your father?

Cain.

Yon small blue circle, swinging in far ether,

With an inferior circlet near it still,

Which looks like that which lit our earthly night?

Is this our Paradise? Where are its walls,

And they who guard them?

Lucifer.

Of Paradise.

Cain.

Point me out the site

How should I? As we move

Like sunbeams onward, it grows small and smaller,

And as it waxes little, and then less,

Gathers a halo round it, like the light

Which shone the roundest of the stars, when I

Beheld them from the skirts of Paradise :

Methinks they both, as we recede from them,

Appear to join the innumerable stars

Which are around us; and, as we move on,
Increase their myriads.

Lucifer.

And if there should be

Worlds greater than thine own, inhabited

By greater things, and they themselves far more
In number than the dust of thy dull earth,
Though multiplied to animated atoms,

All living, and all doom'd to death, and wretched,
What wouldst thou think?

Cain.

Which knew such things,

Lucifer.

I should be proud of thought

But if that high thought were

Link'd to a servile mass of matter, and,

Knowing such things, aspiring to such things,
And science still beyond them, were chain'd down
To the most gross and petty paltry wants,
All foul and fulsome, and the very best
Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation,
A most enervating and filthy cheat

To lure thee on to the renewal of

Fresh souls and bodies, all foredoom'd to be
As frail, and few so happy-

Cain.

Spirit! I

Know nought of death, save as a dreadful thing
Of which I have heard my parents speak, as of
A hideous heritage I owe to them

No less than life; a heritage not happy,
If I may judge, till now. But, spirit! if
It be as thou hast said (and I within
Feel the prophetic torture of its truth),
Here let me die : for to give birth to those
Who can but suffer many years, and die,
Methinks is merely propagating death,
And multiplying murder.

Lucifer.

Thou canst not

The Other

All die-there is what must survive.

Cain.

Spake not of this unto my father, when

He shut him forth from Paradise, with death