109

I know if mind may bear us up, or no,
For I have such, and shown it before men;
It sinks in solitude: my soul is social.
Mar. I will be with thee.
Jac. Fos.
Ah! if it were so !
But that they never granted - nor will grant,
And I shall be alone; no men - no books,
Those lying likenesses of lying men.

I ask'd for even those outlines of their kind, Which they term annals, history, what you will,

Which men bequeath as portraits, and they

And not so hopelessly. This love of thine
For an ungrateful and tyrannic soil
Is passion, and not patriotism; for me,
So I could see thee with a quiet aspect
And the sweet freedom of the earth and air,
I would not cavil about climes or regions.
This crowd of palaces and prisons is not
A paradise; its first inhabitants
Were wretched exiles.

Jac. Fos. Well I know how wretched! Mar. And yet you see how, from their banishment

Before the Tartar into these salt isles, Their antique energy of mind, all that Remain'd of Rome for their inheritance, Created by degrees an ocean-Rome; And shall an evil, which so often leads To good, depress thee thus ?

Jac. Fos.

150

Had I gone forth From my own land, like the old patriarchs seeking

Another region with their flocks and herds;
Had I been cast out like the Jews from Zion,
Or like our fathers, driven by Attila
From fertile Italy, to barren islets,

160

I would have given some tears to my late