Tamburlaine the Great — Part 2

And make the power I have left behind
(Too little to defend our guiltless lives)
Sufficient to discomfit 74 (#x6_x_6_i150) and confound
The trustless force of those false Christians!—
To arms, my lords! 75 (#x6_x_6_i153) on Christ still let us cry:
If there be Christ, we shall have victory.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE III

Alarms of battle within.  Enter SIGISMUND wounded.

SIGISMUND.  Discomfited is all the Christian 76 (#x6_x_6_i156) host,
And God hath thunder'd vengeance from on high,
For my accurs'd and hateful perjury.
O just and dreadful punisher of sin,
Let the dishonour of the pains I feel
In this my mortal well-deserved wound
End all my penance in my sudden death!
And let this death, wherein to sin I die,
Conceive a second life in endless mercy!

[Dies.]

Enter ORCANES, GAZELLUS, URIBASSA, with others.

ORCANES.  Now lie the Christians bathing in their bloods,
And Christ or Mahomet hath been my friend.

GAZELLUS.  See, here the perjur'd traitor Hungary,
Bloody and breathless for his villany!

ORCANES.  Now shall his barbarous body be a prey
To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe,
Through shady leaves of every senseless tree,
Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin.
Now scalds his soul in the Tartarian streams,
And feeds upon the baneful tree of hell,
That Zoacum, 77 (#x6_x_6_i159) that fruit of bitterness,
That in the midst of fire is ingraff'd,
Yet flourisheth, as Flora in her pride,
With apples like the heads of damned fiends.
The devils there, in chains of quenchless flame,
Shall lead his soul, through Orcus' burning gulf,
]From pain to pain, whose change shall never end.
What say'st thou yet, Gazellus, to his foil,
Which we referr'd to justice of his Christ
And to his power, which here appears as full
As rays of Cynthia to the clearest sight?

GAZELLUS.  'Tis but the fortune of the wars, my lord,
Whose power is often prov'd a miracle.

ORCANES.  Yet in my thoughts shall Christ be honoured,
Not doing Mahomet an 78 (#x6_x_6_i162) injury,
Whose power had share in this our victory;
And, since this miscreant hath disgrac'd his faith,
And died a traitor both to heaven and earth,
We will both watch and ward shall keep his trunk 79 (#x6_x_6_i165)
Amidst these plains for fowls to prey upon.
Go, Uribassa, give 80 (#x6_x_6_i168) it straight in charge.

URIBASSA.  I will, my lord.

[Exit.]

ORCANES.  And now, Gazellus, let us haste and meet
Our army, and our brother[s] of Jerusalem,
Of Soria, 81 (#x6_x_6_i171) Trebizon, and Amasia,
And happily, with full Natolian bowls
Of Greekish wine, now let us celebrate
Our happy conquest and his angry fate.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE IV

The arras is drawn, and ZENOCRATE is discovered lying in her bed of state; TAMBURLAINE sitting by her; three PHYSICIANS about her bed, tempering potions; her three sons, CALYPHAS, AMYRAS, and CELEBINUS; THERIDAMAS, TECHELLES, and USUMCASANE.

TAMBURLAINE.  Black is the beauty of the brightest day;
The golden ball of heaven's eternal fire,
That danc'd with glory on the silver waves,
Now wants the fuel that inflam'd his beams;
And all with faintness, and for foul disgrace,
He binds his temples with a frowning cloud,
Ready to darken earth with endless night.
Zenocrate, that gave him light and life,
Whose eyes shot fire from their 82 (#x6_x_6_i174) ivory brows, 83 (#x6_x_6_i177)
And temper'd every soul with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry skies,
Whose jealousy admits no second mate,
Draws in the comfort of her latest breath,
All dazzled with the hellish mists of death.
Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven,
As sentinels to warn th' immortal souls
To entertain divine Zenocrate:
Apollo, Cynthia, and the ceaseless lamps
That gently look'd upon this 84 (#x6_x_6_i180) loathsome earth,
Shine downwards now no more, but deck the heavens