TAMBURLAINE. Now, eyes, enjoy your latest benefit, And, when my soul hath virtue of your sight, Pierce through the coffin and the sheet of gold, And glut your longings with a heaven of joy. So, reign, my son; scourge and control those slaves, Guiding thy chariot with thy father's hand. As precious is the charge thou undertak'st As that which Clymene's [319] brain-sick son did guide, When wandering Phoebe's [320] ivory cheeks were scorch'd, And all the earth, like Aetna, breathing fire: Be warn'd by him, then; learn with awful eye To sway a throne as dangerous as his; For, if thy body thrive not full of thoughts As pure and fiery as Phyteus' [321] beams, The nature of these proud rebelling jades Will take occasion by the slenderest hair, And draw thee [322] piecemeal, like Hippolytus, Through rocks more steep and sharp than Caspian cliffs: [323] The nature of thy chariot will not bear A guide of baser temper than myself, More than heaven's coach the pride of Phaeton. Farewell, my boys! my dearest friends, farewell! My body feels, my soul doth weep to see Your sweet desires depriv'd my company, For Tamburlaine, the scourge of God, must die. [Dies.] AMYRAS. Meet heaven and earth, and here let all things end, For earth hath spent the pride of all her fruit, And heaven consum'd his choicest living fire! Let earth and heaven his timeless death deplore, For both their worths will equal him no more! [Exeunt.] NOTES: [a] [From THE FIRST PART OF TAMBURLAINE THE GREAT] Tamburlaine the Great. Who, from a Scythian Shephearde by his rare and woonderfull Conquests, became a most puissant and mightye Monarque. And (for his tyranny, and terrour in Warre) was tearmed, The Scourge of God. Deuided into two Tragicall Discourses, as they were sundrie times shewed vpon Stages in the Citie of London. By the right honorable the Lord Admyrall, his seruauntes. Now first, and newlie published. London. Printed by Richard Ihones: at the signe of the Rose and Crowne neere Holborne Bridge. 1590. 4to. The above title-page is pasted into a copy of the FIRST PART OF TAMBURLAINE in the Library at Bridge-water House; which copy, excepting that title-page and the Address to the Readers, is the impression of 1605. I once supposed that the title-pages which bear the dates 1605 and 1606 (see below) had been added to the 4tos of the TWO PARTS of the play originally printed in 1590; but I am now convinced that both PARTS were really reprinted, THE FIRST PART in 1605, and THE SECOND PART in 1606, and that nothing remains of the earlier 4tos, except the title-page and the Address to the Readers, which are preserved in the Bridgewater collection.