Page:The Age of Shakespeare - Swinburne (1908).djvu/135

 Massinissa.Wilt thou be slaved? Sophonisba. No; free. Massinissa.How then keep I my faith? Sophonisba.My death Gives help to all. From Rome so rest we free: So brought to Scipio, faith is kept in thee. Massinissa. Thou darest not die!—Some wine.—Thou darest not die! Sophonisba. How near was I unto the curse of man, Joy! How like was I yet once to have been glad! He that ne'er laughed may with a constant face Contemn Jove's frown. Happiness makes us base.

The man or the boy does not seem to me enviable who can read or remember these verses without a thrill. In sheer force of concision they recall the manner of Alfieri; but that noble tragic writer could hardly have put such fervour of austere passion into the rigid utterance, or touched the note of emotion with such a glowing depth of rapture. That 'bitter and severe delight'—if I may borrow the superb phrase of Landor—which inspires and sustains the imperial pride of self-immolation might have found in his dramatic dialect an expression as terse and as sincere: it could hardly have clothed itself with such majestic and radiant solemnity of living and breathing verse. The rapid elliptic method of amoebæan dialogue is more in his manner than in any English poet's known to me except the writer of