Father of mercies! shew me none, whene'er
The wrongs she suffers cease to wring my heart,
Or I seek solace ever, but in 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.
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