DRAMATIS PERSONE. MEN. LORD RANDOLPH, GLENALVON, YOUNG NORVAL, (DOUGLAS) OLD NORVAL, STRANGER, OFFICER, SERVANTS. WOMEN. MATILDA, LADY RANDOLPH, Scene, Lord Randolph's Castle at Balarmo in Scotland, on the banks of the Carron. Time, a day and part of the night. DOUGLA S. ACT I. SCENE, The Court of a Castle surrounded Enter Lady RANDOLPH. Lady Rand. Ye woods and wilds, whose melancholy gloom Accords with my soul's sadness, and draws forth Buried, my Douglas, in thy bloody grave. Enter Lord RANDOLPH. Lord Rand. Again these weeds of woe! say, do'st thou well To feed a passion which consumes thy life? Lady Rand. Silent, alas! is he for whom I mourn: Childless, without memorial of his name, He only now in my remembrance lives. *This fatal day stirs my time-settled 'sorrow, Troubles afresh the fountain of my heart.' Lord Rand. When was it pure of sadness! These black weeds Express the wonted colour of thy mind, For ever dark and dismal. Seven long years Are pass'd, since we were join'd by sacred ties: Clouds all the while have hung upon thy brow, Nor broke nor parted by one gleam of joy.' Time, that wears out the trace of deepest anguish, 'As the sea smooths the prints made in the sand,' Has past o'er thee in vain. Lady Rand. If time to come Should prove as ineffectual, yet, my Lord, When our Scottish youth 'Vy'd with each other for my luckless love, Oft I besought them, I implor'd them all "Not to assail me with my father's aid, Nor weakly blend their better hopes with mine, At last my Sire, rous'd with the base attempt And vow'd he should not, could not die in peace, • From violence and outrage. Then, my Lord! And begg'd thy Nobleness not to demand The forty-four following lines, except the three not printed between inverted commas, are not in the 8vo. edition of 1757, but are added from the 12mo. And must confess that I am not unjust, Nor more to thee than to myself injurious. 'Lord Rand. That I confess; yet ever must regret ← The grief I cannot cure." Would thou wert not Compos'd of grief and tenderness alone, But hadst a spark of other passions in thee, These might contend with, and allay thy grief, 'As meeting tides and currents smooth our firth. Lady Rand. To such a cause the human mind oft 'Its transient calm, a calm I envy not.' [owes Lord Rand. Sure thou art not the daughter of Sir MALCOLM: Strong was his rage, eternal his resentment: For, when thy brother fell, he smil'd to hear That Douglas' son in the same field was slain. Lady Rand. Oh!` rake not up the ashes of my fathers! Implacable resentment was their crime, And grievous has the expiation been. I had not been the last of all my race. Lord Rand. Thy grief wrests to its purposes my words. I never ask'd of thee that ardent love, Which in the breasts of fancy's children burns. Lady Rand. Thou do'st not think so: woeful as I am Lord Rand. Strait to the camp, Where every warrior on the tip-toe stands Of expectation, and impatient asks Lady Rand. O, may adverse winds, Far from the coast of Scotland, drive their fleet! In peace and safety to his pleasant home! Lord Rand. Thou speak'st a woman's, hear a war rior's wish: Right from their native land, the stormy north, Then shall our foes repent this bold invasion, And roving armies shun the fatal shore. Lady Rand. War I detest: but war with foreign foes, Whose manners, language, and whose looks are strange, Is not so horrid, nor to me so hateful, As that which with our neighbours oft we wage. A river here, there an ideal line By fancy drawn, divides the sister kingdoms. Lord Rand. I'll hear no more: this melody would A soldier drop his sword, and doff his arms, [make *Cowper, at the beginning of the second book of the Task, has a very beautiful passage somewhat similar to this: "Lands intersected by a narrow frith 1. 15. |