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_ ACT II - SCENE III
[Alarms of battle within. Enter SIGISMUND wounded.]
SIGISMUND.
Discomfited is all the Christian [76] host,
And God hath thunder'd vengeance from on high,
For my accurs'd and hateful perjury.
O just and dreadful punisher of sin,
Let the dishonour of the pains I feel
In this my mortal well-deserved wound
End all my penance in my sudden death!
And let this death, wherein to sin I die,
Conceive a second life in endless mercy!
[Dies.]
[Enter ORCANES, GAZELLUS, URIBASSA, with others.]
[Footnote 76: Christian] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Christians."]
ORCANES.
Now lie the Christians bathing in their bloods,
And Christ or Mahomet hath been my friend.
GAZELLUS.
See, here the perjur'd traitor Hungary,
Bloody and breathless for his villany!
ORCANES.
Now shall his barbarous body be a prey
To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe,
Through shady leaves of every senseless tree,
Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin.
Now scalds his soul in the Tartarian streams,
And feeds upon the baneful tree of hell,
That Zoacum, [77] that fruit of bitterness,
That in the midst of fire is ingraff'd,
Yet flourisheth, as Flora in her pride,
With apples like the heads of damned fiends.
The devils there, in chains of quenchless flame,
Shall lead his soul, through Orcus' burning gulf,
]From pain to pain, whose change shall never end.
What say'st thou yet, Gazellus, to his foil,
Which we referr'd to justice of his Christ
And to his power, which here appears as full
As rays of Cynthia to the clearest sight?
[Footnote 77: Zoacum] "Or ZAKKUM.--The description of this tree is taken
from a fable in the Koran, chap. 37." Ed. 1826.]
GAZELLUS.
'Tis but the fortune of the wars, my lord,
Whose power is often prov'd a miracle.
ORCANES.
Yet in my thoughts shall Christ be honoured,
Not doing Mahomet an [78] injury,
Whose power had share in this our victory;
And, since this miscreant hath disgrac'd his faith,
And died a traitor both to heaven and earth,
We will both watch and ward shall keep his trunk [79]
Amidst these plains for fowls to prey upon.
Go, Uribassa, give [80] it straight in charge.
URIBASSA.
I will, my lord.
[Exit.]
ORCANES.
And now, Gazellus, let us haste and meet
Our army, and our brother[s] of Jerusalem,
Of Soria, [81] Trebizon, and Amasia,
And happily, with full Natolian bowls
Of Greekish wine, now let us celebrate
Our happy conquest and his angry fate.
[Exeunt.]
[Footnote 78: an] So the 8vo.--The 4to "any."]
[Footnote 79: We will both watch and ward shall keep his trunk] i.e. We will that both watch, &c. So the 4to.--The 8vo has "AND keepe."]
[Footnote 80: Uribassa, give] So the 8vo.--The 4to "Vribassa, AND giue."]
[Footnote 81: Soria] See note ?, p. 44. [i.e. note 13.]] _
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