Dressed in each charm of gay magnificence, Alluring grandeur courts her to his arms; Religion calls her from the wished embrace, Paints future joys, and points to distant glories. Cali. Soon will the unequal contest be decided;

Prospects obscured by distance faintly strike, Each pleasure brightens at its near approach, And every danger shocks with double horror. Must. How shall I scorn the beautiful apostate!

How will the bright Aspasia shine above her! Cali. Should she, for proselytes are always zealous,

With pious warmth receive our prophet's lawMust. Heaven will contemn the mercenary fervour,

Which love of greatness, not of truth, inflames. Cali. Cease, cease thy censures; for the sultan

comes

Alone, with amorous haste, to seek his love.

Enter MAHOMET.

Hail, terror of the monarchs of the world!
Unshaken be thy throne, as earth's firm base,
Live till the sun forgets to dart his beams,
And weary planets loiter in their courses!

Mah. But, Cali, let Irene share thy prayers;
For what is length of days without Irene!
I come from empty noise, and tasteless pomp,
From crowds, that hide a monarch from himself,
To prove the sweets of privacy and friendship,
And dwell upon the beauties of Irene.

Cali. O may her beauties last, unchanged by time,

As those that bless the mansions of the good! Mah. Each realm, where beauty turns the graceful shape,

Swells the fair breast, or animates the glance,
Adorns my palace with its brightest virgins;
Yet, unacquainted with these soft emotions,
I walked superior, through the blaze of charms,
Praised without rapture, left without regret.
Why rove I now, when absent from my fair,
From solitude to crowds, from crowds to soli-
tude,

Still restless, till I clasp the lovely maid,
And ease my loaded soul upon her bosoin?

Mus. Forgive, great sultan, that intrusive duty
Inquires the final doom of Menodorus,
The Grecian counsellor.

Remote from tumult, in the adjoining palace, Thy care shall guard this treasure of my soul; There let Aspasia, since my fair entreats it, With converse chase the melancholy moments. Sure, chilled with sixty wintry camps, thy blood, At sight of female charms, will glow no more.

Cali. These years, unconquered Mahomet, demand

Desires more pure, and other cares than love.
Long have I wished, before our prophet's tomb,
To pour my prayers for thy successful reign,
To quit the tumults of the noisy camp,
And sink into the silent grave in peace.

Mah. What! Think of peace while haughty

Scanderbeg,

Our warlike prophet loves an active faith.
The holy flame of enterprising virtue
Mocks the dull vows of solitude and penance,
And scorns the lazy hermit's cheap devotion;
Shine thou, distinguished by superior merit,
With wonted zeal pursue the task of war,
Till every nation reverence the Koran,
And every suppliant lift his eyes to Mecca.

Cali. This regal confidence, this pious ardour,
Let prudence moderate, though not suppress.
Is not each realm, that smiles with kinder suns,
Or boasts a happier soil, already thine?
Extended empire, like expanded gold,
Exchanges solid strength for feeble splendour.

Mah. Preach thy dull politics to vulgar kings! Thou know'st not yet thy master's future great

SCENE I.

Enter ASPASIA and IRENE.

Irene. Aspasia, yet pursue the sacred theme; Exhaust the stores of pious eloquence, And teach me to repel the sultan's passion, Still, at Aspasia's voice, a sudden rapture Exalts my soul, and fortifies my heart. The glittering vanities of empty greatness, The hopes and fears, the joys and pains, of life, Dissolve in air, and vanish into nothing.

Asp. Let nobler hopes, and juster fears, succeed,

And bar the passes of Irene's mind
Against returning guilt.

Irene. When thou art absent,
Death rises to my view, with all his terrors;
Then visions, horrid as a murderer's dream,
Chill my resolves, and blast my blooming virtue;
Stern torture shakes his bloody scourge before

me,

And anguish gnashes on the fatal wheel!

Asp. Since fear predominates in every thought, And sways thy breast with absolute dominion, Think on the insulting scorn, the conscious pangs, The future miseries that wait the apostate; So shall timidity assist thy reason, And wisdom into virtue turn thy frailty.

Enter CALI and ABDALLA.

Cali. [To ABDALLA, as they advance.] Behold our future sultaness, Abdalla;

Let artful flattery now, to lull suspicion,
Glide through Irene to the sultan's ear.
Wouldst thou subdue the obdurate cannibal
To tender friendship, praise him to his mistress.
[To IRENE
Well may those eyes, that view these heavenly

charms,

Reject the daughters of contending kings;
For what are pompous titles, proud alliance,
Empire or wealth, to excellence like thine?

Abd. Receive the impatient sultan to thy arms;
And may a long posterity of monarchs.
The pride and terror of succeeding days,
Rise from the happy bed; and future queens
Diffuse Irene's beauty through the world!

Irene. Can Mahomet's imperial hand descend To clasp a slave? or, can a soul like mine, Unused to power, and formed for humbler scenes, Support the splendid miseries of greatness?

Cali. No regal pageant, decked with casual honours,

Scorned by his subjects, trampled by his foes; No feeble tyrant of a petty state

Courts thee to shake on a dependent throne; Born to command, as thou to charm mankind,

create.

Instructed from our infant years to court,
With counterfeited fears, the aid of man,
We learn to shudder at the rustling breeze,
Start at the light, and tremble in the dark;
Till, affectation ripening to belief,
And Folly frighted at her own chimeras,
Habitual cowardice usurps the soul.

Irene. Not all like thee can brave the shocks
of fate;

Thy soul, by nature great, enlarged by knowledge,
Soars unencumbered with our idle cares,
And all Aspasia, but her beauty, is man.

Asp. Each generous sentiment is thine, Deme-
trius,

Whose soul, perhaps, yet mindful of Aspasia,
Now hovers o'er this melancholy shade,"
Well pleased to find thy precepts not forgotten.
O could the grave restore the pious hero,
Soon would his art or valour set us free,
And bear us far from servitude and crimes!
Irene. He yet may live.

Asp. Alas! delusive dream!

Too well I know him; his immoderate courage,
The impetuous sallies of excessive virtue,
Too strong for love, have hurried him on death.

Observe, bright maid, as his resistless voice
Drives on the tempest of destructive war,
How nation after nation falls before him.

Abd. At his dread name the distant mountains shake

Their cloudy summits, and the sons of fierceness,
That range uncivilized from rock to rock,
Distrust the eternal fortresses of nature,
And wish their gloomy caverns more obscure.
Asp. Forbear this lavish pomp of dreadful
praise;

The horrid images of war and slaughter
Renew our sorrows, and awake our fears.

Abd. Cali, methinks yon waving trees afford
A doubtful glimpse of our approaching friends;
Just as I marked them, they forsook the shore,
And turned their hasty steps towards the garden.
Cali. Conduct these queens, Abdalla, to the

palace:

Such heavenly beauty, formed for adoration, The pride of monarchs, the reward of conquestSuch beauty must not shine to vulgar eyes.

[Exeunt ABD. and ASP. How Heaven, in scorn of human arrogance, Commits to trivial chance, the fate of nations! While, with incessant thought, laborious man Extends his mighty schemes of wealth and power, And towers and triumphs in ideal greatness, Some accidental gust of opposition Blasts all the beauties of his new creation,

O'erturns the fabric of presumptuous reason,
And whelms the swelling architect beneath it!
Had not the breeze untwined the meeting boughs,
And through the parted shade disclosed the
Greeks,

The important hour had passed unheeded by,
In all the sweet oblivion of delight,

In all the fopperies of meeting lovers ;

In sighs and tears, in transports and embraces, In soft complaints, and idle protestations.

Enter DEMETRIUS and LEONTIUS. Could omens fright the resolute and wise, Well might we fear impending disappointments. Leon. Your artful suit, your monarch's fierce denial,

The cruel doom of hapless Menodorus

Dem. And your new charge, that dear, that heavenly maid

Leon. All this we know already from Abdalla. Dem. Such slight defeats but animate the brave To stronger efforts, and maturer counsels. Cali. My doom confirmed establishes my pur

pose;

Calmly he heard, till Amurath's resumption
Rose to his thought, and set his soul on fire:
When from his lips the fatal name burst out,
A sudden pause the imperfect sense suspended,
Like the dread stillness of condensing storms.
Dem. The loudest cries of nature urge us for-
ward;

Despotic rage pursues the life of Cali;
His groaning country claims Leontius' aid;
And yet another voice-forgive me, Greece-
The powerful voice of love, inflames Demetrius,
Each lingering hour alarms me for Aspasia.

Cali. What passions reign among thy crew,
Leontius?

Does cheerless diffidence oppress their hearts?
Or sprightly hope exalt their kindling spirits?
Do they with pain repress the struggling shout,
And listen eager to the rising wind?

Leon All there is hope, and gaiety, and cou rage,

No cloudy doubts, or languishing delays;
Ere I could range them on the crowded deck,
At once a hundred voices thundered round me,
And every voice was liberty and Greece.

Dem. Swifty let us rush upon the careless tyrant,

Nor give him leisure for another crime.

Leon. Then let us now resolve, nor idly waste Another hour in dull deliberation.

Cali. But see, where, destined to protract our counsels,

Comes Mustapha. Your Turkish robes conceal

Has treason's dire infection reached my palace?
Can Cali dare the stroke of heavenly justice,
In the dark precincts of the gaping grave,
And load with perjuries his parting soul?
Was it for this, that, sickening in Epirus,
My father called me to his couch of death,
Joined Cali's hand to mine, and, faultering, cried,
Restrain the fervour of impetuous youth
With venerable Cali's faithful counsels!
Are these the counsels? This the faith of Cali ?
Were all our favours lavished on a villain?
Confest?

Mus. Confest by dying Menodorus.
In his last agonies the gasping coward,
Amidst the tortures of the burning steel,
Still fond of life, groaned out the dreadful se
cret,

Held forth this fatal scroll, then sunk to nothing. Mah. [Examining the paper.] His correspondence with our foes of Greece,

His hand, his seal, the secrets of my soul
Concealed from all but him,-all, all conspire
To banish doubt, and brand him for a villain.
Our schemes for ever crossed,, our mines disco-
vered,

Betrayed some traitor lurking near my bosom.
Oft have I raged, when their wide-wasting can-

non

Mus. Should we before the troops proclaim
Kis crimes,

I dread his arts of seeming innocence,
His bland address, and sorcery of tongue;
And should he fall unheard, by sudden justice,
The adoring soldiers would revenge their idol.
Mah. Cali, this day, with hypocritic zeal,
Implored my leave to visit Mecca's temple;
Struck with the wonder of a statesman's goodness,
I raised his thoughts to more sublime devotion.
Now let him go, pursued by silent wrath,
Meet unexpected daggers in his way,
And, in some distant land, obscurely die.

Mus. There will his boundless wealth, the spoil' of Asia,

Heaped by your father's ill-placed bounties on him,

Disperse rebellion through the eastern world; Bribe to his cause and lift beneath his banners Arabia's roving troops, the sons of swiftness, And arm the Persian heretic against thee; There shall he waste thy frontiers, check thy conquests,

And though at length subdued, elude thy vengeance.

Mah. Elude my vengeance! no-my troops

shall range

The eternal snows that freeze beyond Meotis,
And Afric's torrid sands, in search of Cali.
Should the fierce North upon his frozen wings
Bear him aloft above the wondering clouds,
And set him in the Pleiad's golden chariots,
Thence should my fury drag him down to tor-
tures;

Wherever guilt can fly, revenge can follow.
Mus. Wilt thou dismiss the savage from the
toils,

Only to hunt him round the ravaged world? Mah. Suspend his sentence-Empire and

Irene

Claim my divided soul. This wretch, unworthy
To mix with nobler cares, I'll throw aside
For idle hours, and crush him at my leisure.
Ms. Let not the unbounded greatness of his
mind

Betray my king to negligence of danger.
Perhaps the clouds of dark conspiracy
Now roll, full fraught with thunder, o'er your
head.

Twice since the morning rose I saw the Bassa,
Like a fell adder swelling in a brake,
Beneath the covert of this verdant arch,
In private conference; beside him stood
Two men unknown, the partners of his bosom;
I marked them well, and traced in either face
The gloomy resolution, horrid greatness,-
And stern composure, of despairing heroes;
And, to confirm my thought, at sight of me,
As blasted by my presence, they withdrew,
With all the speed of terror and of guilt.

Mah. The strong emotions of my troubled soul
Allow no pause for art or for contrivance,
And dark perplexity distracts my counsels.
Do thou resolve: For see, Irene comes!.

To hear my vows, and give mankind a queen?
Ah! cease, Irene, cease those flowing sorrows,
That melt a heart, impregnable till now,
And turn thy thoughts henceforth to love and
empire.

How will the matchless beauties of Irene,
Thus bright in tears, thus amiable in ruin,
With all the graceful pride of greatness height-
ened,

Amidst the blaze of jewels and of gold,
Adorn a throne, and dignify dominion!

Irene. Why all this glare of splendid eloquence,
To paint the pageantries of guilty state?
Must I for these renounce the hope of Heaven,
Immortal crowns, and fulness of enjoyment?

Mah. Vain raptures all-For your inferior na

tures,

Formed to delight, and happy by delighting,
Heaven has reserved no future paradise,
But bids you rove the paths of bliss, secure
Of total death, and careless of hereafter;
While Heaven's high minister, whose awful vo-
lume

Records each act, each thought of sovereign man,
Surveys your plays, with inattentive glance,
And leaves the lovely trifler unregarded.

Irene. Why, then, has nature's vain munifi

сенсе

Profusely poured her bounties upon woman! Whence, then, those charms thy tongue has deigned to flatter,

That air resistless, and enchanting blush,
Unless the beauteous fabric was designed
A habitation for a fairer soul?

Mah. Too high, bright maid, thou rat'st exte-
rior grace;

Not always do the fairest flowers diffuse
The richest odours, nor the speckled shells
Conceal the gem; let female arrogance
Observe the feathered wanderers of the sky,
With purple varied, and bedrop'd with gold;
They prune the wing, and spread the glossy
plumesy

Ordained, like you, to flutter and to shine,
And cheer the weary passenger with music.

Irene. Mean as we are, this tyrant of the world Implores our smiles, and trembles at our feet: Whence flow the hopes and fears, despair and rapture,

Whence all the bliss and agonies of love?

Muh. Why, when the balm of sleep descends

on man,

Do gay delusions, wandering o'er the brain,
Soothe the delighted soul with empty bliss,
To want give affluence, and to slavery freedom?
Such are love's joys, the lenitives of life,

A fancied treasure, and a waking dream.

Irene. Then let me once, in honour of our sex, Assume the boastful arrogance of man. The attractive softness, and the endearing smile, And powerful glance, 'tis granted, are our own; Nor has impartial Nature's frugal hand Exhausted all her nobler gifts on you; Do not we share the comprehensive thought, The enlivening wit, the penetrating reason? Beats not the female breast with generous passions,

The thirst of empire, and the love of glory?

Mah. Illustrious maid! new wonders fix me thine;

Thy soul completes the triumphs of thy face.
I thought,-forgive, my fair!-the noblest aim,
The strongest effort of a female soul,
Was but to chuse the graces of the day;
To tune the tongue, to teach the eyes to roll,
Dispose the colours of the flowing robe,
And add new roses to the faded cheek.
Will it not charm a mind, like thine exalted,
To shine the goddess of applauding nations,
To scatter happiness and plenty round thee,
To bid the prostrate captive rise and live,

SCENE I.

To see new cities tower at thy command,
And blasted kingdoms flourish at thy smile?
Irene. Charmed with the thought of blessing
human kind,

Too calm I listen to the flattering sounds.

Mah. O seize the power to bless! Irene's nod Shall break the fetters of the groaning Christian; Greece, in her lovely patroness secure, Shall mourn no more her plundered palaces.

Irene. Forbear-O do not urge me to my ruin!
Muh. To state and power I court thee, not to
ruin :

Smile on my wishes, and command the globe.
Security shall spread her shield before thee,
And love infold thee with his downy wings.
If greatness please thee, mount the imperial
seat;

If pleasure charm thee, view this soft retreat.
Here every warbler of the sky shall sing;
Here every fragrance breathe of every spring:
To deck these bowers each region shall combine,
And ev❜n our prophet's gardens envy thine:
Empire and love shall share the blissful day,
And varied life steal unperceived away. [Exeunt.

CALI enters with a discontented air; to him enters ABDALLA.

Cali. Is this the fierce conspirator, Abdalla? Is this the restless diligence of treason? Where hast thou lingered, while the encumbered hours

Fly labouring with the fate of future nations, And hungry slaughter scents imperial blood? Abd. Important cares detained me from your counsels.

Cali. Some petty passion, some domestic trifle, Some vain amusement of a vacant soul; A weeping wife, perhaps, or dying friend, Hung on your neck, and hindered your departure. Is this a time for softness or for sorrow? Unprofitable, peaceful, female virtues? When eager vengeance shows a naked foe, And kind ambition points the way to greatness? Abd. Must then ambition's votaries infringe The laws of kindness, break the bonds of nature, And quit the names of brother, friend, and father?

Cali. This sovereign passion, scornful of restraint,

Ev'n from the birth affects supreme command,
Swells in the breast, and, with resistless force,
O'erbears each gentler motion of the mind;
As, when a deluge overspreads the plains,
The wandering rivulet, and silver lake,

Mix undistinguished with the general roar.

Abd. Yet can ambition in Abdalla's breast Claim but the second place: there mighty love Has fixed his hopes, inquietudes, and fears, His glowing wishes, and his jealous pangs.

Cali. Love is indeed the privilege of youth; Yet, on a day like this, when expectation Pants for the dread event-But let us reason

Abd. Hast thou grown old amidst the crowd

of courts,

And turned the instructive page of human life,
To cant, at last, of reason to a lover?
Such ill-timed gravity, such serious folly,
Might well befit the solitary student,
The unpractised dervise, or sequestered faquir.
Know'st thou not yet, when love invades the soul,
That all her faculties receive his chains?
That reason gives her sceptre to his hand,
Or only struggles to be more enslaved?
Aspasia! who can look upon thy beauties,
Who hear thee speak, and not abandon reason?
Reason! the hoary dotard's dull directress,
That loses all because she hazards nothing:
Reason! the timorous pilot, that, to shun
The rocks of life, for ever flies the port.

Cali. But why this sudden warmth?
Abd. Because I love:

Because my slighted passion burns in vain!
Why roars the lioness distressed by hunger?
Why foam the swelling waves when tempests

rise?

Why shakes the ground, when subterraneous fires