The Mysterious Mother/Act 1 Scene 1

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THE

MYSTERIOUS MOTHER.

A

TRAGEDY.

ACT the FIRST.

SCENE I.

A Platform before the Castle.

FLORIAN.What awful silence! How these antique towersAnd vacant courts chill the suspended soul,Till expectation wears the cast of fear;And fear, half-ready to become devotion,Mumbles a kind of mental orison,It knows not wherefore. What a kind of beingIs circumstance!I am a soldier, and were yonder battlementsGarnish'd with combatants, and cannon-mounted,My daring breast would bound with exultation,And glorious hopes enliven this drear scene. ​Now dare not I scarce tread to my own hearing,Lest echo borrow superstition's tongue,And seem to answer me, like one departed.I met a peasant, and enquir'd my way:The carle, not rude of speech, but like the tenantOf some night-haunted ruin, bore an aspectOf horror, worn to habitude. He badeGod bless me; and pass'd on. I urg'd him farther:Good master, cried he, go not to the castle;There sorrow ever dwells, and moping misery.I press'd him yet—None there, said he, are welcome,But now and then a mass-priest, and the poor;To whom the pious Countess deals her alms,On covenant, that each revolving nightThey beg of heav'n the health of her son's soulAnd of her own: but often as returnsThe twentieth of September, they are boundFast from the midnight watch to pray till morn.—More would he not disclose, or knew not more.—What precious mummery! Her son in exile,She wastes on monks and beggars his inheritance,For his soul's health! I never knew a womanBut lov'd our bodies or our souls too well.Each master whim maintains its hour of empire,And obstinately faithful to its dictates,With equal ardour, equal importunity,They teaze us to be damn'd, or to be sav'd.I hate to love or pray too long.
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