No More Learning

BEATRICE:
I hide them not.
What are the words which yon would have me speak?
I, who can feign no image in my mind
Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up _110
In its own formless horror: of all words,
That minister to mortal intercourse,
Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell
My misery: if another ever knew
Aught like to it, she died as I will die, _115
And left it, as I must, without a name.
Death, Death! Our law and our religion call thee
A punishment and a reward. . . Oh, which
Have I deserved?

LUCRETIA:
The peace of innocence;
Till in your season you be called to heaven. _120
Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done
No evil. Death must be the punishment
Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
Which leads to immortality.

BEATRICE:
Ay, death. . .
_125
The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,
Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
If I must live day after day, and keep
These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,
As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest _130
May mock Thee, unavenged. . . it shall not be!
Self-murder. . . no, that might be no escape,
For Thy decree yawns like a Hell between
Our will and it:--O! In this mortal world
There is no vindication and no law _135
Which can adjudge and execute the doom
Of that through which I suffer.
[ENTER ORSINO. ]
[SHE APPROACHES HIM SOLEMNLY. ]
Welcome, Friend!
I have to tell you that, since last we met,
I have endured a wrong so great and strange,
That neither life nor death can give me rest. _140
Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds
Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.