Stay if you will, and keep ye merry here.
(Omnes.) No, we are tir'd, we will retire to rest.
(Exeunt.
SCENE II. Rayner's Lodgings.
Enter RAYNER alone.
RAYNER.
Changing like restless waves, but ever dark;
Or some one of you o'er his fellows rife,
And bear a steady rule. Adversity!
Thou'st come upon me like an ambush'd foe
In armed strength. If I had mark'd thy course,
I might have girt myself for thine approach,
While distant still, and met thee like a man.
But when new-fetter'd in a lover's bonds,
And dazzled too with hope's deceitful brightness,
Cam'st thou like a thick cloud of desart sand,
And in dark night o'erwhelm'd me: deepest night,
Thro' which no waking vision ever gleams,
Save thy grim visage only, loathly want,
In all thy varied forms of misery.
My night, my day dreams, ah! how are ye changed,
Since in the new-betroth'd, the lover's fancy,
Ye wove your sheeny maze of mingled thoughts,
Like sparkling dew-webs in the early Sun!
(after a pause.)
Elizabeth! methinks ev'n now I see her,
As in the horrors of my last night's dream,
When, after following her thro' flood and fire,
