CHARLES: Yes. Fly, fly! and stay the guard!
He must not--Ah!--down fearful fathoms, down
Into the roar!
(_CECCO starts. He stops him._)
Yet he has flung me from
Immeasurable peaks, and I have sunk
Forevermore beneath hope's horizon.
Who falls so close the grave can rise no more.
CECCO: This your despair would wound him more than death.
Forget the girl.
CHARLES: She? Ah, my sullen, wild,
And gloomy pulse beat with a rightful scorn
Against the hours that sieged it. Stony was
Its solitude and fierce, bastioned against
All danger of quick blisses--till, with fury
For that mute tenderness which women's love
Lays on the desolation of the world,
She ravished it!--Yet now 'tis still and cold.
CECCO: But 'twas unknowingly.
CHARLES: A woman's smile
Never was luring, never, but she knew it,
As hawk the cruel rapture of his wings.