r be
The law by which not only conscience-blind
Creatures, but man too prospers with his kind;
Who leaving all his guilty fellows free,
Under your fatal auspice and divine
Compulsion, leagued in some mysterious ban
Against one innocent and helpless man,
Abuse their liberty to murder mine:
And sworn to silence, like their masters mute
In heaven, and like them twirling through the mask
Of darkness, answering to all I ask,
Point up to them whose work they execute!

ROS.
Ev'n as I thought, some poor unhappy wretch,
By man wrong'd, wretched, unrevenged, as I!
Nay, so much worse than I, as by those chains
Clipt of the means of self-revenge on those
Who lay on him what they deserve. And I,
Who taunted Heaven a little while ago
With pouring all its wrath upon my head--
Alas! like him who caught the cast-off husk
Of what another bragg'd of feeding on,
Here's one that from the refuse of my sorrows
Could gather all the banquet he desires!
Poor soul, poor soul!

FIFE.
Speak lower--he will hear you.

ROS.
And if he should, what then? Why, if he would,
He could not harm me--Nay, and if he could,
Methinks I'd venture something of a life
I care so little for--

SEG.
Who's that? Clotaldo? Who are you, I say,
That, venturing in these forbidden rocks,
Have lighted on my miserable life,
And your own death?

ROS.
You would not hurt me, surely?

SEG.
Not I; but those that, iron as the chain
In which they slay me with a lingering death,
Will slay you with a sudden--Who are you?

ROS.
A stranger from across the mountain there,
Who, having lost his way in this strange land
And coming night, drew hither to what seem'd
A human dwelling hidden in these rocks,
And where the voice of human sorrow soon
Told him it was so.

SEG.
Ay? But nearer--nearer--
That by this smoky supplement of day
But for a moment I may see who speaks
So pitifully sweet.

FIFE.
Take care! take care!

ROS.
Alas, poor man, that I, myself so helpless,
Could better help you than by barren pity,
And my poor presence--

SEG.
Oh, might that be all!
But that--a few poor moments--and, alas!
The very bliss of having, and the dread