As parents only dare, should call himself
My father, yet should beOh, what am I?

What name, what place, what memory, shall be mine? What retrospects, outliving even despair?

Lucr. He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:
We know that death alone can make us free:
His death or ours. But what can he have done
Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?

Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth
A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,
Unlock those palid hands whose fingers twine
With one another.

Beatr. 'Tis the restless life

Tortured within them. If I try to speak

I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done;
What, yet I know not-something which shall make
The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
In the dread lightning which avenges it;
Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying
The consequence of what it cannot cure.
Some such thing is to be endured or done:
When I know what, I shall be still and calm,
And never any thing will move me more.

But now!-O blood, which art my father's blood,
Circling through these contaminated veins.
If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
Could wash away the crime and punishment
By which I suffer-no, that cannot be !
Many might doubt there were a God above
Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
That faith no agony shall obscure in me.

A

DELICI

Lucr. It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;

Yet what, I dare not guess. O my lost child,

Hide not in proud impenetrable grief

Thy sufferings from my fear.

Beatr. I hide them not.

What are the words which you would have me speak?

I, who can feign no image in my mind

Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up

In its own formless horror of all words,

That minister to mortal intercourse,

Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery; if another ever knew

Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
And left it, as I must, without a name.

Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward.-Oh, which
Have I deserved ?

Lucr. The peace of innocence,

Till in your season you be called to heaven.
Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment

Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads us to immortality.

Beatr. Ay, death

The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
If I must live day after day, and keep

These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit,
As a foul den from which what thou abhorrest
May mock thee, unavenged-it shall not be !
Self murder?-no, that might be no escape,
For thy decree yawns like a Hell between
Our will and it. Oh! in this mortal world
There is no vindication and no law
Which can adjudge and execute the doom
Of that through which I suffer.

Enter ORSINO.

(She approaches him solemnly.) Welcome, friend!
I have to tell you that, since last we met,

I have endured a wrong so great and strange,
That neither life nor death can give me rest.

Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds

Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue. Ors. And what is he who has thus injured you? Beatr. The man they call my father: a dread name. Ors. It cannot be-

Beatr. What it can be, or not,

Forbid to think. It is, and it has been.

Advise me how it shall not be again.
I thought to die, but a religious awe
Restrains me, and the dread least death itself
Might be no refuge from the consciousness
Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!

Ors. Accuse him of the deed, and let the law
Avenge thee.

Beatr. O ice-hearted counsellor!

If I could find a word that might make known
The crime of my destroyer; and that done,
My tongue should, like a knife, tear out the secret
Which cankers my heart's core: ay, lay all bare,
So that my unpolluted fame should be

With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story
A mock, a byeword, an astonishment:-
If this were done, which never shall be done.
Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate,
And the strange horror of the accuser's tale,
Baffling belief, and overpowering speech:
Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapt
In hideous hints-O most assured redress!
Ors. You will endure it then?

Beatr. Endure! Orsino,

It seems your counsel is small profit.

(Turns from him, and speaks half to herself.) Ay,

All must be suddenly resolved and done.

What is this undistinguishable mist

Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,
Darkening each other?

Ors. Should the offender live?

Triumph in his misdeeds? and make, by use,
His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt,
Thine element; until thou mayest become
Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue
Of that which thou permittest?

Beatr. (To herself) Mighty death!

Thou double-visaged shadow! Only judge!

Rightfullest arbiter!

Lucr. If the lightning

(She retires absorbed in thought.}

Of God has e'er descended to avenge

Ors. Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits Its glory on this earth and their own wrongs Into the hands of men; if they neglect

To punish crime

Sucr. But if one, like this wretch,

ould mock, with gold, opinion, law, and powerif there be no appeal to that which makes

The guiltiest tremble? if, because our wrongs,

For that they are unnatural, strange, and monstrous, Exceed all measure of belief?-O God!

If, for the very reasons which should make

Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs--
And we, the victims, bear worse punishment
Than that appointed for their torturer ?-

Ors. Think not

But that there is redress where there is wrong,
So we be bold enough to seize it.

Lucr. How?

If there were any way to make all sure,
I know not-but I think it might be good
To-

Ors. Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;
For it is such, as I but faintly guess,
As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her
Only one duty, how she may avenge:

You, but one refuge from ills ill endured;
Me, but one counsel-

Lucr. For we cannot hope

That aid, or retribution, or resource,

Will arise thence, where every other one

Might find them with less need.

Ors. Then

Beatr. Peace, Orsino!

(Beatrice advances.,

And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray
That you put off, as garments overworn,
Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear,
And all the fit restraints of daily life,

Which have been borne from childhood, but which now
Would be a mockery to my holier plea.

As I have said, I have endured a wrong,

Which, though it be expressionless, is such

As asks atonement, both for what is past,
And lest I be reserved, day after day,

To load with crimes an overburthened soul,
And be what ye can dream not. I have prayed
To God, and I have talked with my own heart,
And have unravelled my entangled will,

And have at length determined what is right.
Art thou my friend, Orsino?

False or true?

Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.

Ors. I swear

To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,
My silence, and whatever else is mine,

To thy commands.

Lucr. You think we should devise.
His death?

Beatr. And execute what is devised,

And suddenly. We must be brief and bold.
Ors. And yet most cautious.

Lucr. For the jealous laws

Would punish us with death and infamy
For that which it became themselves to do.

Beatr. Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino,
What are the means?

Ors. I know two dull fierce outlaws,

Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and they
Would trample out, for any slight caprice,
The meanest or the noblest life. This mood
Is marketable here in Rome. They sell
What we now want.

Lucr. To-morrow before dawn,
Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,
Petrella, in the Apulian Appenines.
If he arrive there-

Beatr. He must not arrive.

Ori. Will it be dark before you reach the tower?
Lucr. The sun will scarce be set.

Beatr. But I remember

Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
And winds with short turns down the precipice;
And in its depth there is a mighty rock,