Count Julian.
Roderigo, King of Spain.
Opas, Metropolitan of Seville.
Sisabert, betrothed to Covilla.
Muza, Prince of Mauritania.
Abdalazis, son of Muza.
Tarik, Moorish Chieftain.
Covilla, daughter of Julian.
Egilona, wife of Roderigo.
Officers.
Hernando, Osma, Ramiro, &c.
Camp of Julian.
OPAS. JULIAN.
Opas. See her, Count Julian: if thou lovest God,
See thy lost child.
Jul. I have avenged me, Opas,
More than enough: I sought but to have hurled
The brands of war on one detested head,
And died upon his ruin. O my country!
O lost to honour, to thyself, to me,
Why on barbarian hands devolves thy cause,
Spoilers, blasphemers!
Opas. Is it thus, Don Julian,
When thy own ofspring, that beloved child,
For whom alone these very acts were done
By them and thee, when thy Covilla stands
An outcast, and a suppliant at thy gate,
Why that still stubborn agony of soul,
Those struggles with the bars thyself imposed?
Is she not thine? not dear to thee as ever?
Jul. Father of mercies! show 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 gain’d 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 wherefor hurry down into the square
The neighbourly, saluting, warm-clad race,
Who would not injure us, and could not 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 grapes before them,
Note by their foot the wheel of melody
That catches and rolls on the sabbath dance.
To drag the steddy 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!
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!
[Muza retires.
Jul. I follow. Could my bitterest foes
Hear this! ye Spaniards, this! which I foreknew
And yet encounter’d; 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 armory
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.
Guard announces a Herald. Opas departs.
Guard. A messager of peace is at the gate,
My lord, safe access, private audience,
And free return, he claims.
Jul. Conduct him in.
[To Roderigo, who enters as Herald.
A messager 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 life
’Tis easy to despoil, thyself the traitor,
Thyself the violator of allegiance.
O would all-righteous Heaven they could restore
The joy of innocence, the calm of age,
The probity of manhood, pride of arms,
And confidence of honour! the august
And holy laws, trampled beneath thy feet.
And Spain! O parent, I have lost thee too!
Yes, thou wilt curse me in thy latter days,
Me, thine avenger. I have fought her foe,
Roderigo, I have gloried in her sons,
Sublime in hardihood and piety:
Her strength was mine: I, sailing by her cliffs,
By promontory after promontory,
Opening like flags along some castle-towers,
Have sworn before the cross upon our mast
Ne’er shall invader wave his standard there.
Rod. Yet there thou plantest it, false man, thyself.
Jul. Accursed he who makes me this reproach,
And made it just! Had I been happy still,
I had been blameless: I had died with glory
Upon the walls of Ceuta.
Rod. Which thy treason
Surrendered to the Infidel.
Jul. ’Tis hard
And base to live beneath a conqueror;
Yet, amidst all this grief and infamy,
’Tis something to have rushed upon the ranks
In their advance; ’twere something to have stood
Defeat, discomfiture; and, when around
No beacon blazes, no far axle groans
Thro’ the wide plain, no sound of sustenance
Or succour sooths the still-believing ear,
To fight upon the last dismantled tower,
And yield to valour, if we yield at all.
But rather should my neck lie trampled down
By every Saracen and Moor on earth,
Than my own country see her laws o’erturn’d
By those who should protect them: Sir, no prince
Shall ruin Spain; and, least of all, her own.
Is any just or glorious act in view,
Your oaths forbid it: is your avarice,
Or, if there be such, any viler passion
To have its giddy range, and to be gorged,
It rises over all your sacraments,
A hooded mystery, holier than they all.
Rod. Hear me, Don Julian; I have heard thy wrath
Who am thy king, nor heard man’s wrath before.
Jul. Thou shalt hear mine, for thou art not my king.
Rod. Knowest thou not the alter’d face of war?
Xeres is ours; from every region round
True loyal Spaniards throng into our camp:
Nay, thy own friends and thy own family,
From the remotest provinces, advance
To crush rebellion: Sisabert is come,
Disclaiming thee and thine; the Asturian hills
Opposed to him their icy chains in vain;
But never wilt thou see him, never more,
Unless in adverse war, and deadly hate.
Jul. So lost to me! So generous, so deceived!
I grieve to hear it.
Rod. Come, I offer grace,
Honour, dominion: send away these slaves,
Or leave them to our sword, and all beyond
The distant Ebro to the towns of France
Shall bless thy name, and bend before thy throne.
I will myself accompany thee, I,
The king, will hail thee brother.
Jul. Ne’er shalt thou
Henceforth be king: the nation, in thy name,
May issue edicts, champions may command
The vassal multitudes of marshall’d war,
And the fierce charger shrink before the shouts,
Lower’d as if earth had open’d at his feet,
While thy mail’d semblance rises tow’rd the ranks,
But God alone sees thee.
Rod. What hopest thou?
To conquer Spain, and rule a ravaged land?
To compass me around, to murder me?
Jul. No, Don Roderigo: swear thou, in the fight
That thou wilt meet me, hand to hand, alone,
That, if I ever save thee from a foe—
Rod. I swear what honour asks—First, to Covilla
Do thou present my crown and dignity.
Jul. Darest thou offer any price for shame?
Rod. Love and repentance.
Jul. Egilona lives:
And were she buried with her ancestors,
Covilla should not be the gaze of men,
Should not, despoil’d of honour, rule the free.
Rod. Stern man! her virtues well deserve the throne.
Jul. And Egilona—what hath she deserved,
The good, the lovely?
Rod.