Count Julian | Page 6

death.
OPAS. What wilt thou do then, too unhappy man?

JUL. What have I done already? All my peace Has vanished; my fair
fame in after-times Will wear an alien and uncomely form, Seen o'er
the cities I have laid in dust, Countrymen slaughtered, friends abjured!
OPAS. And faith?
JUL. Alone now left me, filling up in part The narrow and waste
intervals of grief: It promises that I shall see again My own lost child.
OPAS. Yes, at this very hour.
JUL. Till I have met the tyrant face to face, And gained a conquest
greater than the last; Till he no longer rules one rood of Spain, And not
one Spaniard, not one enemy, The least relenting, flags upon his flight;
Till we are equal in the eyes of men, The humblest and most wretched
of our kind, No peace for me, no comfort, no--no child!
OPAS. No pity for the thousands fatherless, The thousands childless
like thyself, nay more, The thousands friendless, helpless, comfortless -
Such thou wilt make them, little thinking so, Who now perhaps, round
their first winter fire, Banish, to talk of thee, the tales of old, Shedding
true honest tears for thee unknown: Precious be these, and sacred in thy
sight, Mingle them not with blood from hearts thus kind. If only
warlike spirits were evoked By the war-demon, I would not complain,
Or dissolute and discontented men; But wherefore hurry down into the
square The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race, Who would not
injure us, and cannot serve; Who, from their short and measured
slumber risen, In the faint sunshine of their balconies, With a
half-legend of a martyrdom And some weak wine and withered graces
before them, Note by their foot the wheel of melody That catches and
rolls on the sabbath dance. To drag the steady prop from failing age,
Break the young stem that fondness twines around, Widen the solitude
of lonely sighs, And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day The ruins
and the phantoms that replied, Ne'er be it thine.
JUL. Arise, and save me, Spain!
FIRST ACT: SECOND SCENE.
MUZA enters.
MUZA. Infidel chief, thou tarriest here too long, And art perhaps
repining at the days Of nine continued victories, o'er men Dear to thy
soul, tho' reprobate and base. Away! [He retires.
JUL. I follow. Could my bitterest foes Hear this! ye Spaniards, this!
which I foreknew And yet encountered; could they see your Julian

Receiving orders from and answering These desperate and
heaven-abandoned slaves, They might perceive some few external
pangs, Some glimpses of the hell wherein I move, Who never have
been fathers.
OPAS. These are they To whom brave Spaniards must refer their
wrongs!
JUL. Muza, that cruel and suspicious chief, Distrusts his friends more
than his enemies, Me more than either; fraud he loves and fears, And
watches her still footfall day and night.
OPAS. O Julian! such a refuge! such a race!
JUL. Calamities like mine alone implore. No virtues have redeemed
them from their bonds; Wily ferocity, keen idleness, And the close
cringes of ill-whispering want, Educate them to plunder and obey;
Active to serve him best whom most they fear, They show no mercy to
the merciful, And racks alone remind them of the name.
OPAS. O everlasting curse for Spain and thee!
JUL. Spain should have vindicated then her wrongs In mine, a
Spaniard's and a soldier's wrongs.
OPAS. Julian, are thine the only wrongs on earth? And shall each
Spaniard rather vindicate Thine than his own? is there no Judge of all?
Shall mortal hand seize with impunity The sword of vengeance, from
the armoury Of the Most High? easy to wield, and starred With glory it
appears: but all the host Of the archangels, should they strive at once,
Would never close again its widening blade.
JUL. He who provokes it hath so much to rue. Where'er he turn,
whether to earth or heaven, He finds an enemy, or raises one.
OPAS. I never yet have seen where long success Hath followed him
who warred upon his king.
JUL. Because the virtue that inflicts the stroke Dies with him, and the
rank ignoble heads Of plundering faction soon unite again, And
prince-protected share the spoil at rest.
FIRST ACT: THIRD SCENE.
Guard announces a herald. OPAS departs.
GUARD. A messenger of peace is at the gate, My lord, safe access,
private audience, And free return, he claims.
JUL. Conduct him in.
RODERIGO enters as a herald.

A messenger of peace! audacious man! In what attire appearest thou? a
herald's? Under no garb can such a wretch be safe.
ROD. Thy violence and fancied wrongs I know, And what thy
sacrilegious hands would do, O traitor and apostate!
JUL. What they would They cannot: thee of kingdom and of