Plays and poems: by George H. Boker.

THE BETROTHIAL. 33
I'11 venture. with your talents, you can prove,
Against all comers, that incontinence
Is but a wide benevolence; that murder -
Under the million given circumstances
With which your nimble wit shall hedge it in
Is a humane achievement; theft, an instinct;
Cheating, a thrifty thoughtfulness of self;
And so forth, on through all the deadly sins.
Poh! poh! what stuff you talk!
Rogo. Back to our subject.
Costanza di Tiburzzi should be dauglhter
To an old dwindled noble of -that name:
Is it not so?
IEar. It is.
Rogo. They want your wealth.
Mar. And they shall have it! Our long-shadowed
name
Shall blaze, with a new light, through Italy.
Rogo. O, ho! "our name i" ly sword crawls
in its scabbard.
Friend, you have not one generous aim in this;
Your own huge pride awakes this forward zeal:
But you'11 learn wisdom through humility.
Mar. How, raven, how?
Rogo. A hundred little things
Shall make you gnaw your fingers to the quick.
You'11 haply blunder at the first grand feast:
At which Lord So-and-so will titter, titter;
And Lady Somebody will simper, simper;
And sly Count Nobody, a noted wit,
Will wink and wink; while some bluff honest duke
Howls out his laughter. Then our father wriggles,
And stares straight through a six-foot granite wall;
VOL. II. 3