These the soldiers quickly followed, And behind in that abandoned Savage place remained but two-- Two, oh! think, a son and father.-- One a judge, too, in a cause Wicked, bad, beyond example, In a cause that outraged Caesar, And the gods themselves disparaged. There with a delinquent son Stood I, therefore this should happen, That both clemency and rigour In my heart waged fearful battle-- Clemency in fine had won, I would have removed the bandage From his eyes and let him fly, But that instant, ah! unhappy! Came the soldiers back, and then It were but more misery added, If they knew of my connivance: All that then my care could manage To protect him was the secret Of his name to keep well guarded. Thus to Rome I brought him prisoner, Where pretending great exactness, That his friends should not discover Where this Christian malefactor Was imprisoned, to this house, To my own house, I commanded That he should be brought; there hidden And unknown, a few days after I in his place substituted . . . Ah! what will not the untrammelled Strength of arbitrary power Dare attempt? what law not trample? Substituted, I repeat, For my son a slave, whose strangled, Headless corse thus paid the debt Which from me were else exacted. You will say, "Since fortune thus Has the debt so happily cancelled, Why imprison or conceal him?"-- And, thus, full of doubts, I answer That though it is true I wished not, Woe is me! the common scaffold Should his punishment make public, I as little wished his hardened Heart should know my love and pity Since it did not fear my anger: Ah! believe me, Claudius, 'Twixt the chastisement a father And an executioner gives, A great difference must be granted: One hand honours what it striketh, One disgraces, blights, and blackens. Soon my rigour ceased, for truly, In a father's heart it lasteth Seldom long: but then what wonder, If the hand that in its anger Smites his son, in his own breast Leaves a wound that ever rankles-- I one day his prison entered With the wish (I own it frankly) To forgive him, and when I Thought he would have even thanked me For receiving a reproof, Not severe, too lenient rather, He began to praise the Christians With such earnestness and ardour, In defence of their new law, That my clemency departed, And my angrier mood returned. I his doors and windows fastened. In the room where he is lying, Well secured by gyves and shackles, Sparingly his food is given him, Through my hands alone it passes, For I dare not to another Trust the care his state demandeth. You will think in this I reached to The extreme of my disasters-- The full limits of misfortune, But not so, and if you hearken, You 'll perceive they 're but beginning, And not ended, as you fancied. All these strange events so much Have unnerved him and unmanned him, That, forgetful of himself, Of himself he is regardless. Nothing to the purpose speaks he. In his incoherent language Frenzy shows itself, delusion In his thoughts and in his fancies:--