And yet, God help me! Can I do it? God’s will May no man thwart, or leave his righteousness Baffled. I would not say, ‘My will be done,’ Were God’s will not for righteousness as mine, If right be righteous, wrong be wrong, must be. How else may God work wrong’s requital? I Must be or none may be his minister. And yet what righteousness is his to cast Athwart my way toward right this wrong to me, A sin against the soul and honour? Why Must this vile word of _yet_ cross all my thought Always, a drifting doom or doubt that still Strikes up and floats against my purpose? God, Help me to know it! This weapon chosen of me, This Almachildes, were his face not fair, Were not his fame bright—were his aspect foul, His name dishonourable, his line through life A loathing and a spitting-stock for scorn, Could I do this? Am I then even as they Who queened it once in Rome’s abhorrent face An empress each, and each by right of sin Prostitute? All the life I have lived or loved Hath been, if snows or seas or wellsprings be, Pure as the spirit of love toward heaven is—chaste As children’s eyes or mothers’. Though I sinned As yet my soul hath sinned not, Albovine Must bear, if God abhor unrighteousness, The weight of penance heaviest laid on sin, Shame. Not on me may shame be set, though hell Take hold upon me dying. I would the deed Were done, the wreak of wrath were wroken, and I Dead. _Enter_ ALBOVINE. ALBOVINE. Art thou sick at heart to see me? ROSAMUND. No. ALBOVINE. Thou art sweet and wise as ever God hath made Woman. I would not turn thine heart from me Or set thy spirit against the sense of mine For more than Rome’s old empire. ROSAMUND. That, albeit Thou wouldst, be sure thou canst not. God nor man Could wake within me toward my lord the king A new strange love or loathing. Fear not this. ALBOVINE. From thee can I fear nothing. Now I know How high thy heart is, and how true to me. ROSAMUND. Thou knowest it now. ALBOVINE. I know not if I should Repent me, or repent not, that I tried A heart so high so sorely—proved so true. ROSAMUND. Do not repent. I would not have thee now Repent. ALBOVINE.