Glows like solid amethyst

Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps

Upon its snow,

And the weak day weeps
That it should be so.

THE EARTH.

O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman borne the summer night
Through isles for ever calm;

O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe,
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.

Panthea. I rise-as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light among dark rocks—

Out of the stream of sound.

Ione.

Ah me! sweet sister,

The stream of sound has ebbed away from us;

And you pretend to rise out of its wave,

Because your words fall like the clear soft dew

Shaken from a bathing Wood-nymph's limbs and hair. Panthea. Peace, peace! A mighty Power which is as darkness

Is rising out of earth, and from the sky

Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight. The bright visions,
Wherein the singing Spirits rode and shone,
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
Ione. There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
Panthea. An universal sound like words. Oh! list!
DEMOGORGON.

Thou Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,

Beautiful orb, gathering as thou dost roll

The love which paves thy path along the skies!
THE EARTH.

I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON.

Thou Moon which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;

Whilst each, to men and beasts and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony!

Ye Kings of Suns and Stars! Dæmons and Gods,
Etherial Dominations! who possess

Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes

Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness!

A VOICE FROM ABOVE.

Our great Republic hears; we are blessed, and bless.

DEMOGORGON.

Ye happy Dead! whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to pourtray,
Whether your nature is that universe

Which once ye saw and suffered

A VOICE FROM BENEATH.

Or, as they

Whom we have left, we change and pass away-

DEMOGORGON.

Ye elemental Genii, who have homes

From man's high mind even to the central stone Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on!

A CONFUSED Voice.

We hear thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON.

Spirits whose homes are flesh! ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms and fish, ye living leaves and buds,
Lightning and wind! and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes!
A VOICE.

Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON.

Man, who wert once a despot and a slave ;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;

A traveller from the cradle to the grave

Through the dim night of this immortal day!

ALL.

Speak! thy strong words may never pass away.
DEMOGORGON.

This is the day which down the void abysm,

At the Earth-born's spell, yawns for Heaven's despotism. And conquest is dragged captive through the deep. Love, from its awful throne of patient power

In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour

Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs,
And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance-
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And, if with infirm hand Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free

The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to re-assume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

ANDREA, Servant to CENCI.

Nobles, Judges, Guards, Servants.

Assassins.

LUCRETIA, Wife of CENCI, and stepmother of his children.

BEATRICE, his daughter.

The SCENE lies principally in Rome, but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella, a Castle among the Apulian Apennines. TIME.-During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.

ACT I.

SCENE I. An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
Enter COUNT CENCI and CARDINAL CAMILLO.
Camillo. That matter of the murder is hushed up

If you consent to yield his Holiness

Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.

It needed all my interest in the conclave
To bend him to this point. He said that you
Bought perilous impunity with your gold;

That crimes like yours, if once or twice compounded,
Enriched the Church, and respited from hell
An erring soul which might repent and live;
But that the glory and the interest
Of the high throne he fills little consist
With making it a daily mart of guilt
So manifold and hideous as the deeds

Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.
Cenci. The third of my possessions-let it go!
Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope
Had sent his architect to view the ground,
Meaning to build a villa on my vines

The next time I compounded with his uncle :
I little thought he should outwit me so !
Henceforth no witness-not the lamp-shall see
That which the vassal threatened to divulge
Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.
The deed he saw could not have rated higher
Than his most worthless life :-it angers me!

Respited me from hell !"-So may the Devil

Respite their souls from heaven! No doubt Pope Clement
And his most charitable nephews pray

That the Apostle Peter and the saints

Will grant for their sakes that I long enjoy

Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days
Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards

Of their revenue.-But much yet remains

To which they show no title.

Camillo.

O Count Cenci !

So much that you might honourably live,
And reconcile yourself with your own heart,
And with your God, and with the offended world.
How hideously look deeds of lust and blood
Through those snow-white and venerable hairs!
Your children should be sitting round you now,
But that you fear to read upon their looks
The shame and misery you have written there.
Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?
Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else
Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.
Why is she barred from all society

But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?
Talk with me, Count; you know I mean you well.
I stood beside your dark and fiery youth,
Watching its bold and bad career, as men
Watch meteors,—but it vanished not; I marked
Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now
Do I behold you, in dishonoured age,