Arise, arise from thy enthralling doom!
And if my invocation feeble be,
Regard the tears--the sighs,--shed--breathed for thee!
Love is too weak a word--I thee adore!

POLY.
Once have I said--yet now I say once more--
'Live with Severus, or--with Polyeucte die!'
Thy tears are mine, and thy pure constancy
I share: But--I am soldier of the Cross!
Take up thine own, and count all gain but loss!
Pauline--no more!
(To FELIX.)
Thy slumbering wrath rewake!
Thy fates and furies wait! Their vengeance slake!

PAUL.
His life is saved! These fetters all undo!--
For justice never yet a madman slew;
And he is mad,--but, father, thou art sane,
And thou, his father, must his friend remain.
A father cannot less than father be,
Oh, be to him what thou hast been to me!
But cast upon thy child a kinder eye,--
Slay him?--Then know that I am doomed to die!
But even if justly done to death were he,
The sentence wrong that, with him, slayeth me.
For double death would double wrong present,
And slay the guilty with the innocent.
'Twas thou didst link us closely hand in hand,
'To live in bliss together' thy command.
Oh, shall the will that both our lives did bless
Doom both these lives to death--to nothingness?
When lips are sealed to lips, and heart to heart,
'Tis tyranny, not law, such love to part.
Oh, not a tyrant, but a father be,
Forgive,--give back--restore my love to me!

FELIX.
Dear child, thy father is thy father still,
Nothing hath parted us, and nothing will.
My heart is tender, and it beats for thee:
Against this madman let us joined be.
O wretched man, hast thou no eyes to see, no heart to feel?
Thy guilt, thy crime, I would efface, thy pardon I would seal,
_For_ thee my daughter cannot die--say, must she die _with_ thee?
A victim to the only sin which ne'er can pardoned be.
O sight most strange! Here at thy knees as suppliant I sue!
(Felix kneels.)
The evil that thyself hast wrought--that ill thyself undo!

POLY.
Arise, old man, from knees unused to bend,
Or to another ear petition send!
This artifice befits nor me nor thee,
To beg of one twice threatened!--Mockery!
First, by thy hand Nearchus felt the flame,
Then love, forsooth, thy plea--(profaned n