ums did fumble
About thy breast in darkness of the night.

AGRIPPINA. My dear, dear son! And
Nero, well I know
That you could never hurt or injure me.
But you will not forget who set you here--
You will not, tell me?

NERO. Never, mother, never!

AGRIPPINA. Mothers for children have dared much, and more
Have suffered; but what mother hath so scarred
Her soul for the dear fruit of her body as I?
Thy birth-pang was the least of all the throes
That I for thee have suffered--a brief pain,
A little, little pain we share with creatures;
But what was this to torments of the mind,
The dark, imperial meditations,
Musing with eyes half-closed in moonless night;
The crimes--yes, crimes, the blood that has been spilt--
Why, I have made a way for thee through ghosts.
Nero, you'll not forget?

NERO. Ah! Never, never!

AGRIPPINA. My son, this very night it was foretold
'Nero shall reign, but he shall kill his mother.'
Tell me the stars have lied.

NERO. [_Smiling._] The stars have lied.

_Enter_ BURRUS

BURRUS. The pass-word, sir, to-night?

NERO. The best of mothers.

AGRIPPINA. Kiss me; we both of us must sleep awhile.

[_Exit_ AGRIPPINA. NERO _goes up, gazing out on the city
as the dawn comes on greyly._

NERO. O, all the earth to-night into these hands
Committed! I bow down beneath the load,
Empurpled in a lone omnipotence.
My softest whisper thunders in the sky,
And in my frown the temples sway and reel,
And the utmost isles are anguished. I but raise
An eyelid, and a continent shall cower;
My finger makes the city a solitude,
The murmuring metropolis a silence,
And kingdoms pine in my dispeopling nod.
I can dispearl the sea, a province wear
Upon my little finger; all the winds
Are busy blowing odours in mine eyes,
And I am wrapt in glory by the sun,
And I am lit by splendours of the moon,
And diadem'd by glittering midnight.
O wine of the world, the odour and gold of it!
There is no thirst which I may not assuage;
There is no hunger which I may not sate;
Nought is forbidden me under heaven!
[_With a cry._] I shall go mad! I shall go mad!

[ACTE _steals in noiselessly, and waits till he turns, then
comes down to him._

My Acte!

ACTE. [_Shrinking._] O, I seem so far from you,
And so beneath you now; your care henceforth
The world and nothing less. Long hav