_Gondi._ Here is another moment snatch'd--a short one-- To commune with myself:--yet, wherefore, think? Why court consuming sorrow to my bosom, Which, like the nurs'ling pelican, drinks the blood Of its fond cherisher? Why rather should not turbulence of action Shake off the tax of tyrannous remembrance? 'Tis not the mere, and actual suffering, That bends the noble spirit to the earth, And cracks the proud heart's chord:--The prisoner, Whose feverish limbs, for many a long, long year, No summer breeze has fann'd, might still be patient,-- Did not remembrance, yoked with cursed comparison, Enter his dungeon walls, and conjure up The shadows of past joys;--then, thought on thought, Like molten lead, run thro' the wretch's brain, And burning fancy mads him.--Hence, Remembrance! How baneful art thou to me, when this course Must be thy antidote! I'll thro' the forest, And seek these wanderers.--Fell necessity, And the rude band that I am link'd withal, Demand that I should prey on them:--yet, still, My heart leans to them, tho' their fatal cause Has shorn me to the quick:--for them I fled My home, my dear loved----Oh, peace, Gondibert! Touch not that string!--If I must think, I'll think That Heaven one day may smile. [_Exit._ SCENE II. _Part of the Forest._ _Enter ADELINE and GREGORY._ _Gregory._ Gently, good madam; gently, for the love of corns! Where is it you mean to go? _Adeline._ Even where chance shall carry us, Gregory. _Gregory._ 'Faith, madam, and if chance would carry us, it would be doing us a great favour; for we have walked far enough, in all conscience. _Adeline._ Then, here, my good fellow, we must rest ourselves. _Gregory._ Here! what in the wood? and night coming on! _Adeline._ Good faith even here!--here, for necessity demands it, we must pass the night: and, in the morning, the ring-dove, cooing to its mate, will wake us to our journey homeward. This is a retreat, were but the mind at ease, a king might well repose in. _Gregory._ It must be King Nebuchadnezzar then: if we haven't some of his grass-eating qualities, we shall find ourselves badly off for a supper. 'Tis ten to one, too, but we may wander here for a week, without finding our way out again. _Adeline._ Oh! this world! this world! I am weary on't! 'Would I had been some villager!--'twere well, now, to be a shepherd's boy--he has no cares--but while his sheep browse on the mountain's side, with vacant mind--happy in ignorance--he sinks to sleep, o'ercanopied with heaven, and makes the turf his pillow. _Gregory._ Yes, but he has plaguy damp sheets, for all that. I'd exchange all the turf and sky in the county, for a good warm barn and a blanket; and as for the cooing doves, I would not give a crack'd tester for a forest full of them; unless I could see some of their claws stuck up through the holes of a brown piecrust.