Luria by Robert Browning — Read

_Dom._ Well, Florence, shall I reach thee, pierce thy heart / Through all its safeguards? Hate is said to help -- / Quicken the eye, invigorate the arm; / And this my hate, made up of many hates, / Might stand in scorn of visible instrument, / And will thee dead: yet do I trust it not. / Nor man's devices nor Heaven's memory / Of wickedness forgot on earth so soon, / But thy own nature, -- hell and thee I trust, / To keep thee constant in that wickedness, / Where my revenge may meet thee. Turn aside / A single step, for gratitude or shame, -- / Grace but this Luria, -- this wild mass of rage / I have prepared to launch against thee now, -- / With other payment than thy noblest found, -- / Give his desert for once its due reward, -- / And past thee would my sure destruction roll. / But thou, who mad'st our House thy sacrifice, / It cannot be thou wilt except this Moor / From the accustomed fate of zeal and truth: / Thou wilt deny his looked-for recompense, / And then -- I reach thee. Old and trained, my sire / Could bow down on his quiet broken heart, / Die awe-struck and submissive, when at last / The strange blow came for the expected wreath; / And Porzio passed in blind bewilderment / To exile, never to return, -- they say, / Perplexed in his frank simple honest soul, / As if some natural law had changed, -- how else / Could Florence, on plain fact pronouncing thus, / Judge Porzio's actions worthy such reward? / But Berto, with the ever-passionate pulse, / -- Oh that long night, its dreadful hour on hour, / In which no way of getting his fair fame / From their inexplicable charges free, / Was found, save pouring forth the impatient blood / To show its color whether false or no! / My brothers never had a friend like me / Close in their need to watch the time, then speak, / -- Burst with a wakening laughter on their dream, / Cry, "Florence was all falseness, so, false here! " / And show them what a simple task remained -- / To leave dreams, rise, and punish in God's name / The city wedded to the wickedness. / None stood by them as I by Luria stand. / So, when the stranger cheated of his due / Turns on thee as his rapid nature bids, / Then, Florence, think, a hireling at thy throat / For the first outrage, think who bore thy last, / Yet mutely in forlorn obedience died! / He comes -- his friend -- black faces in the camp / Where moved those peerless brows and eyes of old.

(_Enter_ LURIA _and_ HUSAIN.)