eeks, short breath, and wishing eyes
Upon your breast supinely lay her head,
While on your face her famished sight she fed.
Then, with a sigh, into these words she broke,
(And gathered humid kisses as she spoke)
Dull, and ungrateful! Must I offer love?
Desired of gods, and envied even by Jove:
And dost thou ignorance or fear pretend?
Mean soul! and darest not gloriously offend?
Then, pressing thus his hand--

_Aur._ I'll hear no more. [_Rising up._
'Twas impious to have understood before:
And I, till now, endeavoured to mistake
The incestuous meaning, which too plain you make.

_Nour._ And why this niceness to that pleasure shewn,
Where nature sums up all her joys in one;
Gives all she can, and, labouring still to give,
Makes it so great, we can but taste and live:
So fills the senses, that the soul seems fled,
And thought itself does, for the time, lie dead;
Till, like a string screwed up with eager haste,
It breaks, and is too exquisite to last?

_Aur._ Heavens! can you this, without just vengeance, hear?
When will you thunder, if it now be clear?
Yet her alone let not your thunder seize:
I, too, deserve to die, because I please.[1]

_Nour._ Custom our native royalty does awe;
Promiscuous love is nature's general law:
For whosoever the first lovers were,
Brother and sister made the second pair,
And doubled, by their love, their piety.

_Aur._ Hence, hence, and to some barbarous climate fly,
Which only brutes in human form does yield,
And man grows wild in nature's common field.
Who eat their parents, piety pretend;[2]
Yet there no sons their sacred bed ascend.
To vail great sins, a greater crime you chuse;
And, in your incest, your adultery lose.

_Nour._ In vain this haughty fury you have shewn.
How I adore a soul, so like my own!
You must be mine, that you may learn to live;
Know joys, which only she who loves can give.
Nor think that action you upbraid, so ill;
I am not changed, I love my husband still[3];
But love him as he was, when youthful grace,
And the first down began to shade his face:
That image does my virgin-flames renew,
And all your father shines more bright in you.

_Aur._ In me a horror of myself you raise;
Cursed by your love, and blasted by your praise.
You find new ways to prosecute my fate;
And your least-guilty passion was your hate.

_Nour._ I beg my death, if you can love deny.
[_Offering him a