Mil. [Aside.] Is his mind distraught? [Aloud.] I have seen this, and more.  What of it?

Crom. Thus!  Shall he that caus’d it suffer?

Mil. On his Mood Vampires should batten—­

Crom. Yet, ’tis like she met
His guilty thought half-way; ’twas in the course
Of nature, when the blood is hot.  Contention
Led both to the encounter.  When youth sins,
Reason flies daunted—­to return with arms
Poison’d and terrible.—­

Mil. The lean excuse Of whirlwind Passion’s victims.  Homicide, Murder, theft, rapine, plead it—­

Crom. Think you then,
Should one array’d in reasoning manhood’s arms
Have done this?  Were the victim bright and good,
Round whose young heart sweet household fancies play’d,
Each natural thought of her enthusiast mind
Pure as the snow that softly veils the earth
’Tween Christide eve and morning white-enrob’d;
And yet her sum of suffering were great
As that, which I have painted for the child
Of sin and misery—­her silken cheek
Defil’d by ashen trace of furrowing tears,
Her sinless eye dim as a Magdalen’s;
And he that caus’d it lov’d her as a father,
Knowing no fiery passion, unchaste thought,
To rob him of his brain, his heart, and then—­

Mil. There’s no such thing!

Crom. There is, I say, here! here!

Mil. Lord General, I stand amazed!

Crom. Judgment! 
The Judgment! my good Milton.  O my child! 
My best belov’d, my sweet Elizabeth,
Is such a sacrifice.  The cause how different,
But the effect the same.  Thou think’st it strange
To pluck such image from remembrance forth—­
And use it thus.  There is a chain unseen,
Linking the human beggar to the king,
Virtue to vice; whereon doth sympathy
Like lightning play between the two extremes,
And so connect them.  There is none can say
“I am not as that man in anything.” 
I spoke of one that was a woman, one
That died repentant, one perchance in Heaven! 
My daughter’s face, I tell thee, grows like her’s. 
Reason not on it.  O!  The fault is here
Why she lies stricken thus. [Touches his breast.]
Her tender frame
Pines day and night, her young life breeding, sapp’d,
Curs’d in the tainted thought of my ambition—­
And she will die and sink into the grave,
Prey’d on by doubt and horror of her father! 
Ere Hampden’s death had seal’d the bond of strife,
Thou knowest not, how oft to quit these shores
With angel fervour she entreated me,
And girt by true hearts—­all my soul held dear—­
To seek a home in that far western clime—­
Nay, start not at the name—­America!*
Where boundless forests whisper Liberty
With all their million-musick’d leaves, and blue lakes
Murmur it, and great cataracts, that light