Hearing unchecked, and unimpeded sight.
If we who walk now, then should wing the air,
Who stammer now, then should discard the voice,
Who grope now, then should see with other sight,
And send new eyes about the universe.

POPPAEA. O, this is madness!

ACTE. Is it? Is it? Well--
Yet have I heard this ragged people speak,
And they have stirred me strangely: life they scorn,
And yearn for death's tremendous liberty,
But I--I cannot speak; yet I believe
There is a new air blowing on the world,
And a new budding underneath the earth.

POPPAEA. Ah, ah! the sun! The sun! It goeth down,
How cold it grows: the night comes down on me.
I'll have no lamp: but hold my hand in thine.

ACTE. Sister, forget the world, it passeth.

POPPAEA. [_Falling back._] Rome!

SCENE II

SCENE.--_The same_. SENECA, BURRUS, ACTE, _and_ PHYSICIAN

PHYSICIAN. The Emperor comes from gazing on Poppaea.
What woe may that dead face not work on him,
After such rain of dark calamities!

SENECA. Why hath he summoned me?

PHYSICIAN. He knows not why.
The infatuate orgies in Campania,
Defeat, revolt, have wrought upon his mind,
Till it begins to reel--behind each woe
He sees the angered shade of Agrippina.

[_Enter_ NERO _with tablets, murmuring to himself. He comes
to the_ COUNCILLORS, _gazes at them, and retires to parapet._

'Beautiful on her bed Poppaea lay'--
I have begun to write her epitaph.

[_He again gazes over parapet, murmuring to himself. Then turning_

Ah, blow supreme! Ah, ultimate injury!
I can no longer write: my brain is barren.
My gift, my gift, thou hast left me. Let me die!
Ah! what an artist perishes in me.

[_He again returns to parapet, gazing and murmuring, and throws
his tablets from him._

Dead Agrippina rages unappeased.
At night I hear the trailing of a robe,
And the slain woman pauses at my door.
O! she is mightier having drunk of death;
Now hath she haled Poppaea from my arms;
Last doth she quench the holy fire within me----

_Enter_ MESSENGER

MESSENGER. Caesar, I bring dark news:
Boadicea the British Queen is risen,
And like a fire is hissing through the isle,
Londinium and Camulodunum
In ashes lie; the loosed barbarians
In madness rage and ravish, murder and burn.

BURRUS. Caesar, despatch.

[_Brings_ NERO _paper._

NERO. Ah, this is still the deed