All that was mine, and bad, thy breast inherit. Alas, how weak is that for Catiline!
Did I but say-vain voice!—all that was mine?— All that the Gracchi, Cinna, Marius would, What now, had I a body again, I could,
Coming from hell, what fiends would wish should be, And Hannibal could not have wish'd to see, Think thou, and practise. Let the long-hid seeds Of treason in thee, now shoot forth in deeds Ranker than horror; and thy former facts Not fall in mention, but to urge new acts, Conscience of them provoke thee on to more: Be still thy incests, murders, rapes, before Thy sense; thy forcing first a vestal nun ; Thy parricide, late, on thine own only son, After his mother, to make empty way For thy last wicked nuptials; worse than they, That blaze that act of thy incestuous life, Which got thee at once a daughter and a wife. I leave the slaughters that thou didst for me, Of senators, for which, I hid for thee Thy murder of thy brother, being so bribed, And writ him in the list of my proscribed After thy fact, to save thy little shame; Thy incest with thy sister, I not name: These are too light; fate will have thee pursue Deeds, after which no mischief can be new; The ruin of thy country: Thou wert built For such a work, and born for no less guilt. What though defeated once thou'st been, and known, Tempt it again: That is thy act, or none. What all the several ills that visit earth, Brought forth by night with a sinister birth, Plagues, famine, fire, could not reach unto, The sword, nor surfeits; let thy fury do:
Make all past, present, future ill thine own ; And conquer all example in thy one. Nor let thy thought find any vacant time To hate an old, but still a fresher crime Drown the remembrance; let not mischief cease, But while it is in punishing, increase, Conscience and care die in thee; and be free Not heaven itself from thy impiety:
Let night grow blacker with thy plots, and day, At shewing but thy head forth, start away
From this half-sphere; and leave Rome's blinded walls
To embrace lusts, hatreds, slaughters, funerals, And not recover sight till their own flames Do light them to their ruins! All the names Of thy confederates too be no less great In hell than here: that when we would repeat Our strengths in muster, we may name you all, And furies upon you for furies call!
Whilst what you do may strike them into fears, Or make them grieve, and wish your mischief theirs.
CATILINE rises and comes forward.
Cat. It is decreed: nor shall thy fate, O Rome, Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills, And seas met seas to guard thee, I would through; Ay, plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust, And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds, But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud city! The ills that I have done cannot be safe But by attempting greater; and I feel
A spirit within me chides my sluggish hands, And says, they have been innocent too long. Was I a man bred great as Rome herself, One form'd for all her honours, all her glories,
Equal to all her titles; that could stand Close up with Atlas, and sustain her name As strong as he doth heaven! and was I, Of all her brood, mark'd out for the repulse By her no-voice, when I stood candidate To be commander in the Pontic war! I will hereafter call her step-dame ever. If she can lose her nature, I can lose My piety, and in her stony entrails Dig me a seat; where I will live again, The labour of her womb, and be a burden
Weightier than all the prodigies and monsters
That she hath teem'd with, since she first knew Mars
Who's there?
Aur. 'Tis I.
Cat. Aurelia ?
Aur. Yes.
Cat. Appear,
And break like day, my beauty, to this circle : Upbraid thy Phoebus, that he is so long
In mounting to that point, which should give thee Thy proper splendour. Wherefore frowns my sweet? Have I too long been absent from these lips,
This cheek, these eyes? [Kisses them.] What is my trespass, speak?
Aur. It seems you know, that can accuse your self.
Cat. I will redeem it.
Aur. Still you say so.
Cat. When Orestilla, by her bearing well
These my retirements, and stol'n times for thought, Shall give their effects leave to call her queen Of all the world, in place of humbled Rome. Aur. You court me now.
Cat. As I would always, love,
By this ambrosiac kiss, and this of nectar, Wouldst thou but hear as gladly as I speak. Could my Aurelia think I meant her less, When, wooing her, I first removed a wife, And then a son, to make my bed and house Spacious and fit to embrace her? these were deeds Not to have begun with, but to end with more And greater: He that, building, stays at one Floor, or the second, hath erected none. 'Twas how to raise thee I was meditating, To make some act of mine answer thy love; That love, that, when my state was now quite sunk, Came with thy wealth and weigh'd it up again, And made my emergent fortune once more look Above the main; which now shall hit the stars, And stick my Orestilla there amongst them, If any tempest can but make the billow, And any billow can but lift her greatness. But I must pray my love, she will put on Like habits with myself; I have to do With many men, and many natures: Some That must be blown and sooth'd; as Lentulus, Whom I have heav'd with magnifying his blood, And a vain dream out of the Sybil's books, That a third man of that great family Whereof he is descended, the Cornelii, Should be a king in Rome : which I have hired The flattering augurs to interpret Him, Cinna and Sylla dead. Then bold Cethegus, Whose valour I have turn'd into his poison, And praised so into daring, as he would Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire,
When I would bid him move.
Whom envy to the state draws, and puts on For contumelies received (and such are sure ones), As Curius, and the forenamed Lentulus,
Both which have been degraded in the senate, And must have their disgraces still new rubb'd, To make them smart, and labour of revenge. Others whom mere ambition fires, and dole Of provinces abroad, which they have feign'd To their crude hopes, and I as amply promised: These, Lecca, Vargunteius, Bestia, Autronius. Some whom their wants oppress, as the idle captains Of Sylla's troops; and divers Roman knights, The profuse wasters of their patrimonies,
So threaten'd with their debts, as they will now Run any desperate fortune for a change. These, for a time, we must relieve, Aurelia,
And make our house their safeguard: like for those That fear the law, or stand within her gripe, For any act past or to come; such will, From their own crimes, be factious, as from ours. Some more there be, slight airlings, will be won With dogs and horses, or perhaps a whore; Which must be had: and if they venture lives For us, Aurelia, we must hazard honours A little. Get thee store and change of women, As I have boys; and give them time and place, And all connivance: be thy self, too, courtly; And entertain and feast, sit up, and revel; Call all the great, the fair, and spirited dames Of Rome about thee; and begin a fashion
Of freedom and community: some will thank thee, Though the sour senate frown, whose heads must ache In fear and feeling too. We must not spare
Or cost or modesty: It can but shew
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить » |