Shall I light Myr. Myr. Thou shalt see. [Exit MYRRHA. Sar. (solus.) She's firm. My fathers! whom I will rejoin, It may be, purified by death from some As ye bequeath'd it, this bright part of it, Which most personifies the soul as leaving And then a mount of ashes, but a light To lesson ages, rebel nations, and Voluptuous princes. Time shall quench full many A people's records, and a hero's acts; Sweep empire after empire, like this first Of empires, into nothing; but even then Shall spare this deed of mine, and hold it up A problem few dare imitate, and none MYRRHA returns with a lighted Torch in her Hand, and a Cup in the other. Myr. Lo! I've lit the lamp which lights us to the stars. I've not To make libations amongst men. Forgot the custom; and although alone, [SARDANAPALUS takes the cup, and after drinking Is for the excellent Beleses. Myr. And this libation Why Dwells thy mind rather upon that man's name Sar. The other Is a mere soldier, a mere tool, a kind Of human sword in a friend's hand; the other But I dismiss them from my mind.-Yet pause, Freely and fearlessly? Myr. And dost thou think A Greek girl dare not do for love, that which Sar. We but await the signal. Myr. In sounding. Sar. Then It is long Now, farewell; one last embrace. Myr. Embrace, but not the last; there is one more. Sar. True, the commingling fire will mix our ashes. Myr. And pure as is my love to thee, shall they, Purged from the dross of earth, and earthly passion, Mix pale with thine. A single thought yet irks me. Sar. Say it. Myr. It is that no kind hand will gather The dust of both into one urn. Sar. The better: Hath piled in her brick mountains, o'er dead kings, So much for monuments that have forgotten Was for thee, my last thoughts, save one, were of thee! I loved thee well, my own, my fathers' land, [He mounts the pile. Art thou ready? [MYRRHA fires the pile. 'Tis fired! I come. [AS MYRRHA springs forward to throw herself into the flames, the Curtain falls. NOTES. Note 1, page 171, line 17. And thou, my own Ionian Myrrha. "The Ionian name had been still more comprehensive, having included the Achaians and the Baotians, who, together with those to whom it was afterwards confined, would make nearly the whole of the Greek nation, and among the orientals it was always the general name for the Greeks.”— Mitford's Greece, vol. i. p. 199. Note 2, page 192, last lines. "Sardanapalus "The king, and son of Anacyndaraxes, "Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip." "For this expedition he took only a small chosen body of the phalanx, but all his light troops. In the first day's march he reached Anchialus, a town said to have been founded by the king of Assyria, Sardanapalus. The fortifications, in their magnitude and extent, still in Arrian's time, bore the character of greatness, which the Assyrians appear singularly to have affected in works of the kind. A monument representing Sardanapalus was found there, warranted by an inscription in Assyrian characters, of course in the old Assyrian language, which the Greeks, whether well or ill, interpreted thus: Sardanapalus, son of Anacyndaraxes, in one day founded Anchialus and Tarsus. Eat, drink, play: all other human joys are not worth a fillip.' Supposing this version nearly exact (for Arrian says it was not quite so), whether the purpose has not been to invite to |