rple river winding, as he runs,
His bloody arms about his slaughtered sons.

_Fazel._ I well remember you foretold the storm,
When first the brothers did their factions form:
When each, by cursed cabals of women, strove
To draw the indulgent king to partial love.

_Arim._ What heaven decrees, no prudence can prevent.
To cure their mad ambition, they were sent
To rule a distant province each alone:
What could a careful father more have done?
He made provision against all, but fate,
While, by his health, we held our peace of state.
The weight of seventy winters prest him down,
He bent beneath the burden of a crown:
Sickness, at last, did his spent body seize,
And life almost sunk under the disease:
Mortal 'twas thought, at least by them desired,
Who, impiously, into his years inquired:
As at a signal, strait the sons prepare
For open force, and rush to sudden war:
Meeting, like winds broke loose upon the main,
To prove, by arms, whose fate it was to reign.

_Asaph._ Rebels and parricides!

_Arim._ Brand not their actions with so foul a name:
Pity at least what we are forced to blame.
When death's cold hand has closed the father's eye,
You know the younger sons are doomed to die.
Less ills are chosen greater to avoid,
And nature's laws are by the state's destroyed.
What courage tamely could to death consent,
And not, by striking first, the blow prevent?
Who falls in fight, cannot himself accuse,
And he dies greatly, who a crown pursues.

_To them_ SOLYMAN AGA.

_Solym._ A new express all Agra does affright:
Darah and Aureng-Zebe are joined in fight;
The press of people thickens to the court,
The impatient crowd devouring the report.

_Arim._ T' each changing news they changed affections bring,
And servilely from fate expect a king.

_Solym._ The ministers of state, who gave us law,
In corners, with selected friends, withdraw:
There, in deaf murmurs, solemnly are wise;
Whispering, like winds, ere hurricanes arise.
The most corrupt are most obsequious grown,
And those they scorned, officiously they own.

_Asaph._ In change of government,
The rabble rule their great oppressors' fate;
Do sovereign justice, and revenge the state.

_Solym._ The little courtiers, who ne'er come to know
The depth of factions, as in mazes go,
Where interests meet and cross so oft, that they,
With too much care, are wildered in their way.

_Arim._ What of the emperor?

_Solym._ Unmoved, and brave, he like himself appea