Untitled - OUDL Home

388 WILLIAM CONGREVE [ACT I
Upon this solemn day, in these sad weeds?
In opposition to my brightness, you
And yours are all like daughters of affliction.
Aim. Forgive me, sir, if I in this offend.
The year, which I have vowed to pay to Heaven
In mourning and strict life for my deliverance
From wreck and death, wants yet to be expired.
Man. Your zeal to Heaven is great, so is your debt:
Yet something too is due to me, who gave
That life which Heaven preserved. A day bestowed
In filial duty, had atoned and given
A dispensation to your vow—No more.
'Twas weak and wilful—and a woman's error.
Yet—upon thought, it doubly wounds my sight,
To see that sable worn upon the day
Succeeding that, in which our deadliest foe,
Hated Anselmo, was interred.—By Heaven,
It looks as thou didst mourn for him! just So,
Thy senseless vow appeared to bear its date,
Not from that hour wherein thou wert preserved,
But that wherein the cursed Alphonso perished.
Ha! what! thou dost not weep to think of that?
Gon. Have patience, royal sir; the princess weeps
To have offended you. If fate decreed
Dne pointed hour should be Alphonso's loss,
And her deliverance; is she to blame?
Man. I tell thee she's to blame not to have feasted
When my first foe was laid in earth, such enmity,
Such detestation, bears my blood to his;
My daughter should have revelled at his death,
She should have made these palace walls to shake,
And all this high and ample roof to ring
With her rejoicings. What, to mourn, and weep;
Then, then to weep, and pray, and grieve! By Heaven,
There's not a slave, a shackled slave of mine,
But should have smiled that hour, through all his care,
And shook his chains in transport and rude harmony!
Gon. What she has done was in excess of goodness;
Betrayed by too much piety, to seem
As if she had offended.—Sure, no more.
Man. To seem is to commit, at this conjuncture.
I wo 1 not have a seeming sorrow seen