CALI.
Some petty passion! some domestick trifle!
Some vain amusement of a vacant soul!
A weeping wife, perhaps, or dying friend,
Hung on your neck, and hinder'd your departure.
Is this a time for softness or for sorrow?
Unprofitable, peaceful, female virtues!
When eager vengeance shows a naked foe,
And kind ambition points the way to greatness.
ABDALLA.
Must then ambition's votaries infringe
The laws of kindness, break the bonds of nature,
And quit the names of brother, friend, and father?
CALI.
This sov'reign passion, scornful of restraint,
E'en from the birth, affects supreme command,
Swells in the breast, and, with resistless force,
O'erbears each gentler motion of the mind:
As, when a deluge overspreads the plains,
The wand'ring rivulet, and silver lake,
Mix undistinguish'd with the gen'ral roar.
ABDALLA.
Yet can ambition, in Abdalla's breast,
Claim but the second place: there mighty love
Has fix'd his hopes, inquietudes, and fears,
His glowing wishes, and his jealous pangs.
CALI.
Love is, indeed, the privilege of youth;
Yet, on a day like this, when expectation
Pants for the dread event--But let us reason--
ABDALLA.
Hast thou grown old, amidst the crowd of courts,
And turn'd th' instructive page of human life,
To cant, at last, of reason to a lover?
Such ill-tim'd gravity, such serious folly,
Might well befit the solitary student,
Th' unpractis'd dervis, or sequester'd faquir.
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