Prado.
No, no, he dreams,
For he is wont to speak aloud in sleep.
Santa Anna.
[With a hollow twice and movements of his body, which reflect the horrors of his dream.]
What dreary region hast thou brought me to?
My erring eye roams, like a wanderer
Who lost his way, with painful, insane glance
Across the desert waste, and vainly seeks
A house, a tree, a hill to rest upon
'Mid this immense and dread monotony.
The yellow sands, commixed with glistening gold.
Which, scarce elsewhere and deeply hidden, here
With mockery offers to the crazed traveler,
Dying with thirst, its kernels for refreshment.
Send flashing shocks of fever-heated pain
Throughout my frame, as if below the ground,
Thin like a sheet, there lay a glowing oven.
And, oh! these sunlight-fervors! how my brain
Reels, boils and bakes beneath their fiery power;
How through my swollen veins I feel my blood
Seethe like a stream of liquid metal ore!—
Has come the Day of Judgment, speak! my guide?
Woe, woe to me! he left me here alone
Amid this desert: I must die with thirst.
My wealth, my might for one, one drop of water!—
