Explore "The Return of the Druses" by Robert Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_Enter_ DJABAL.
_Dja._ Let me but slay the Prefect. The end now! / To-morrow will be time enough to pry / Into the means I took: suffice, they served, / Ignoble as they were, to hurl revenge / True to its object. [_Seeing the robe, etc. disposed._ / Mine should never so / Have hurried to accomplishment! Thee, Djabal, / Far other mood befitted! Calm the Robe / Should clothe this doom's awarder! [_Taking the robe._] / Shall I dare / Assume my nation's Robe? I am at least / A Druse again, chill Europe's policy / Drops from me: I dare take the Robe. Why not / The Tiar? I rule the Druses, and what more / Betokens it than rule? -- yet -- yet -- [_Lays down the tiar._ / [_Footsteps in the alcove_.] He comes! [_Taking the sword._ / If the Sword serve, let the Tiar lie! So, feet / Clogged with the blood of twenty years can fall / Thus lightly! Round me, all ye ghosts! He'll lift... / Which arm to push the arras wide? -- or both? / Stab from the neck down to the heart -- there stay! / Near he comes -- nearer -- the next footstep! Now! / [_As he dashes aside the arras_, ANAEL _is discovered_. / Ha! Anael! Nay, my Anael, can it be? / Heard you the trumpet? I must slay him here, / And here you ruin all. Why speak you not? / Anael, the Prefect comes! [ANAEL _screams_.] / So slow to feel / 'T is not a sight for you to look upon? / A moment's work -- but such work! Till you go, / I must be idle -- idle, I risk all! [_Pointing to her hair._ / Those locks are well, and you are beauteous thus, / But with the dagger 't is, I have to do!