No More Learning

To me it seems the worst barbarity.
Let me seek out my husband: the sage "Ten,"
With all its jealousy, will hardly war 430
So far with a weak woman as deny me
A moment's access to his dungeon.

_Doge_. I'll
So far take on myself, as order that
You may be admitted.

_Mar. _ And what shall I say
To Foscari from his father?

_Doge_. That he obey
The laws.

_Mar. _ And nothing more? Will you not see him
Ere he depart? It may be the last time.

_Doge_. The last! --my boy!
--the last time I shall see
My last of children! Tell him I will come. [_Exeunt_.



ACT III.


SCENE I. --_The prison of_ JACOPO FOSCARI.

_Jac. Fos. _ (_solus_).
No light, save yon faint gleam which shows me walls
Which never echoed but to Sorrow's sounds,[58]
The sigh of long imprisonment, the step
Of feet on which the iron clanked the groan
Of Death, the imprecation of Despair!
And yet for this I have returned to Venice,
With some faint hope, 'tis true, that Time, which wears
The marble down, had worn away the hate
Of men's hearts; but I knew them not, and here
Must I consume my own, which never beat 10
For Venice but with such a yearning as
The dove has for her distant nest, when wheeling
High in the air on her return to greet
Her callow brood. What letters are these which
[_Approaching the wall_.
Are scrawled along the inexorable wall?
Will the gleam let me trace them? Ah! the names
Of my sad predecessors in this place,[59]
The dates of their despair, the brief words of
A grief too great for many.