Page:The Mysterious Mother - Walpole (1781).djvu/9
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THE
MYSTERIOUS MOTHER.
A
TRAGEDY.
ACT the FIRST.
SCENE I.
A Platform before the Castle.
FLORIAN.
What awful silence! How these antique towers
And vacant courts chill the suspended soul,
Till expectation wears the cast of fear;
And fear, half-ready to become devotion,
Mumbles a kind of mental orison,
It knows not wherefore. What a kind of being
Is circumstance!
I am a soldier, and were yonder battlements
Garnish'd with combatants, and cannon-mounted,
My daring breast would bound with exultation,
And glorious hopes enliven this drear scene.
What awful silence! How these antique towers
And vacant courts chill the suspended soul,
Till expectation wears the cast of fear;
And fear, half-ready to become devotion,
Mumbles a kind of mental orison,
It knows not wherefore. What a kind of being
Is circumstance!
I am a soldier, and were yonder battlements
Garnish'd with combatants, and cannon-mounted,
My daring breast would bound with exultation,
And glorious hopes enliven this drear scene.
Now