The passion you pretended,
    Was only to obtain;
  But when the charm is ended,
    The charmer you disdain. 
  Your love by ours we measure,
  Till we have lost our treasure;
  But dying is a pleasure,
    When living is a pain.

  Re-enter TORRISMOND.

Tor. Still she is here, and still I cannot speak; But wander, like some discontented ghost, That oft appears, but is forbid to talk. [Going again.

Leo. O, Torrismond, if you resolve my death, You need no more, but to go hence again; Will you not speak?

Tor. I cannot.

Leo. Speak! oh, speak!  Your anger would be kinder than your silence.

Tor. Oh!—­

Leo. Do not sigh, or tell me why you sigh.

Tor. Why do I live, ye powers!

Leo. Why do I live to hear you speak that word?  Some black-mouthed villain has defamed my virtue.

Tor. No, no!  Pray, let me go.

Leo. [Kneeling.] You shall not go! 
By all the pleasures of our nuptial bed,
If ever I was loved, though now I’m not,
By these true tears, which, from my wounded heart,
Bleed at my eyes—­

Tor. Rise.

Leo. I will never rise; I cannot chuse a better place to die.

Tor. Oh!  I would speak, but cannot.

Leo. [Rising.]
Guilt keeps you silent then; you love me not: 
What have I done, ye powers, what have I done,
To see my youth, my beauty, and my love,
No sooner gained, but slighted and betrayed;
And, like a rose, just gathered from the stalk,
But only smelt, and cheaply thrown aside,
To wither on the ground.

Ter. For heaven’s sake, madam, moderate your passion!

Leo. Why namest thou heaven? there is no heaven for me. 
Despair, death, hell, have seized my tortured soul! 
When I had raised his grovelling fate from ground,
To power and love, to empire, and to me;
When each embrace was dearer than the first;
Then, then to be contemned; then, then thrown off! 
It calls me old, and withered, and deformed,
And loathsome!  Oh! what woman can bear loathsome? 
The turtle flies not from his billing mate,
He bills the closer; but, ungrateful man,
Base, barbarous man! the more we raise our love,
The more we pall, and kill, and cool his ardour. 
Racks, poison, daggers, rid me of my life;
And any death is welcome.

Tor. Be witness all ye powers, that know my heart,
I would have kept the fatal secret hid;
But she has conquered, to her ruin conquered: 
Here, take this paper, read our destinies;—­
Yet do not; but, in kindness to yourself,
Be ignorantly safe.

Leo. No! give it me, Even though it be the sentence of my death.

Tor. Then see how much unhappy love has made us. 
O Leonora!  Oh! 
We two were born when sullen planets reigned;
When each the other’s influence opposed,
And drew the stars to factions at our birth. 
Oh! better, better had it been for us,
That we had never seen, or never loved.