t absent:
In this very house he 's living!--
Would the gods, ah! me, had rather
Made a tomb and not a prison
Of his present locked apartment!
Which is in this house, within it
Is he prisoned, chained, made captive.
This surprises thee, no wonder:
More surprised thou 'lt be hereafter,
When thou com'st to know the reason
Of a fact so strange and startling.
On that fatal day, when I
Sought the mount and thou the garden,
Him I found where thou didst lose him,
Near the wood where he had rambled:
He was taken by my soldiers
At the entrance of a cavern,
With Carpophorus:--oh! here
Patience, patience may heaven grant me!--
It was lucky that they did not
See his face, for thus it happened
That the front of my dishonour
Was not in his face made patent:
Him they captured without knowing
Who he was, it being commanded
That the faces of the prisoners
Should be covered, but ere captured
This effectually was done
By themselves, they flying backward
With averted faces; he
Thus was taken, but his partner,
That strange prodigy of Rome--
Man in mind, wild beast in manners,
Doubly thus a prodigy--
Saved himself by power of magic.
Thus Chrysanthus was sole prisoner,
While the Christian crowd, disheartened,
Fled for safety to the mountains
From their grottoes and their caverns.
These the soldiers quickly followed,
And behind in that abandoned
Savage place remained but two--
Two, oh! think, a son and father.--
One a judge, too, in a cause
Wicked, bad, beyond example,
In a cause that outraged Caesar,
And the gods themselves disparaged.
There with a delinquent son
Stood I, therefore this should happen,
That both clemency and rigour
In my heart waged fearful battle--
Clemency in fine had won,
I would have removed the bandage
From his eyes and let him fly,
But that instant, ah! unhappy!
Came the soldiers back, and then
It were but more misery added,
If they knew of my connivance:
All that then my care could manage
To protect him was the secret
Of his name to keep well guarded.
Thus to Rome I brought him prisoner,
Where pretending great exactness,
That his friends should not discover
Where this Christian malefactor
Was imprisoned, to this house,
To my own house, I commanded
That he should be brought; there hidden
And unknown, a few days after
I in his place substituted . . .
Ah! what will not the untrammelled
Strength of arbitrary power
Dare attempt? what law not trample?
Substituted, I repeat,
For my son a sla