Page:The Lusiad (Camões, tr. Mickle, 1791), Volume 2.djvu/62

Me, for their sakes, if yet thou wilt not spare,
Oh, let these infants prove thy pious care!
Yet pity's lenient current ever flows
From that brave breast where genuine valour glows;
That thou art brave, let vanquish'd Afric tell,
Then let thy pity o'er mine anguish swell;
Ah, let my woes, unconscious of a crime,
Procure mine exile to some barbarous clime:
Give me to wander o'er the burning plains
Of Libya's deserts, or the wild domains
Of Scythia's snow-clad rocks and frozen shore;
There let me, hopeless of return, deplore.
Where ghastly horror fills the dreary vale,
Where shrieks and howlings die on every gale,
The lions roaring, and the tigers yell,
There with mine infant race, consign'd to dwell,
There let me try that piety to find,
In vain by me implored from human kind:
There in some dreary cavern's rocky womb,
Amid the horrors of sepulchral gloom,
For him whose love I mourn, my love shall glow,
The sigh shall murmur, and the tear shall flow:
All my fond wish, and all my hope, to rear
These infant pledges of a love so dear,
Amidst my griefs a soothing, glad employ,
Amidst my fears a woeful, hopeless joy.

In tears she utter'd—as the frozen snow
Touch'd by the spring's mild ray, begins to flow,

So