The sunshine on the floor is black!  The air
Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe 15
In charnel pits!  Pah!  I am choked!  There creeps
A clinging, black, contaminating mist
About me...’tis substantial, heavy, thick,
I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
My fingers and my limbs to one another, 20
And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life! 
My God!  I never knew what the mad felt
Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! 25
[MORE WILDLY.]
No, I am dead!  These putrefying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
Which would burst forth into the wandering air!
[A PAUSE.]
What hideous thought was that I had even now? 
’Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here 30
O’er these dull eyes...upon this weary heart! 
O, world!  O, life!  O, day!  O, misery!

LUCRETIA: 
What ails thee, my poor child?  She answers not: 
Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
But not its cause; suffering has dried away 35
The source from which it sprung...

BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]: 
Like Parricide... 
Misery has killed its father:  yet its father
Never like mine...O, God!  What thing am I?

LUCRETIA: 
My dearest child, what has your father done?

BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]: 
Who art thou, questioner?  I have no father. 40
[ASIDE.]
She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
It is a piteous office.
[TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.]
Do you know
I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
From hall to hall by the entangled hair; 45
At others, pens up naked in damp cells
Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
Till she will eat strange flesh.  This woful story
So did I overact in my sick dreams,
That I imagined...no, it cannot be! 50
Horrible things have been in this wide world,
Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
Than ever there was found a heart to do. 
But never fancy imaged such a deed 55
As...
[PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.]
Who art thou?  Swear to me, ere I die
With fearful expectation, that indeed
Thou art not what thou seemest...Mother!

LUCRETIA: 
Oh! 
My sweet child, know you...

BEATRICE: 
Yet speak it not: 
For then if this be truth, that other too 60
Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
Never to change, never to pass away. 
Why so it is.  This is the Cenci Palace;
Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. 65
I have talked some wild words, but will no more. 
Mother, come near me:  from this point of time,
I am...
[HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.]