Britain ... - Blue-Lite

132 THE DEVOTED ONE. [Act I.
Of both my children be bereaved, and left
Disconsolate indeed ! Selfish and base
It were to keep her here.
Enter Edith.
EDITH.
O, my preserver,
I came with thee to weep; but I behold
Thy grey
Then let me haste mine own dim eyes to dry,
And bind with filial love thy broken heart.
hairs bowed with sorrow to the dust :
Godwin hath left us, ay, for stranger halls
And dreams of idle pomp ; but thy poor Edith
Will never leave thee. Still at early morn,
And when the shadows of the evening fall,
I will be nigh to aid and cheer thine age ;
In health and sickness shall my prayers ascend,
That Heaven may give thee comfort.
WULFNOTH.
Ah, my child,
Thou too must leave me, yes,
The time is come that we must part, and thou
for ever leave me !
This humble cot, these savage deserts quit,
For courts and regal halls.
EDITH.
Ha ! name them not ;
They to my mind a thousand horrors bring
Of massacre and blood ! O, they recall
That dreadful night, in which the Danes were slain
Throughout the kingdom. Then was my loved sire,
Although an English Earl, stabbed by those fiends
Who, drunk with fury, rushed amid our halls.
Thou know^st too well, how, struggling with a host