,
Saying that I his love would be
If he would only die for me!
Can he have cast himself away
Down this dark cave, and there lies dead,
Buried within the dread abyss,
Waiting my love, his promised bliss?--
My soul, not now mine own, has fled!

CYNTHIA (within).
Forward! forward! through the gloom
Every cave and cavern enter,
Search the dark wood to its centre,
Lest it prove Daria's tomb.

DARIA.
Ah! me, the sense confounding,
Both here and there are opposite voices sounding.
Here is my name in measured cadence greeted,
And there in hollow echoes oft repeated.
Would that the latter cries that reach my ear
Came from my mates in this wild forest sphere,
In the dread solitude that doth surround me
Their presence would be welcome.
[Enter Cynthia with bow and arrows.]

CYNTHIA.
Till I found me,
Beauteous Daria, by thy side once more,
Each mountain nook my search had well gone o'er.

DARIA (aside).
Let me dissemble
The terror and surprise that make me tremble,
If I have power to feign
Amid the wild confusion of my brain:--
Following the chase to-day,
Wishing Diana's part in full to play,
So fair the horizon smiled,
I left the wood and entered on the wild,
Led by a wounded deer still on and on.
And further in pursuit I would have gone,
Nor had my swift career
Even ended here,
But for this mouth that opening in the rock,
With horrid gape my vain attempt doth mock,
And stops my further way.

CYNTHIA.
Until I found thee I was all dismay,
Lest thou some savage beast, some monstrous foe,
Hadst met.

DARIA (aside).
Ah! would to Jove 't were so!
And that my death in his wild hands had paid
For future chastisement by fate delayed!
But ah! the wish is vain,
Foreboding horror fills my heart and brain,
This mystic music borne upon the air
Must surely augur ill.

(Enter NISIDA.)

NISIDA.
Daria fair,
And Cynthia wise, I come to seek ye two.

CYNTHIA.
Has any thing occurred or strange or new?

NISIDA.
I scarce can tell it. As I came along,
I heard a man, in a clear voice and strong,
Proclaiming as he went
Through all the mountain a most strange event:
Rome hath decreed
Priceless rewards to her whose charms may lead
Through lawful love and in an open way
By public wedlock in the light of day,
The son of proud Polemius from the state
Of gloom in which his mind is sunk of late.

CYNTHIA.
And what can be the cause that he is so?