Page:Three Plays Sunderland Hills.pdf/106

Drinking the waters of the tawny Nile,
Self-immolated victim, to avert
Impending peril from a darling head.
So would I gladly give for Julian
The unavailing, ineffectual,
And unregarded remnant of my life,
Could but my shorten'd day his day prolong.
But what's a woman's life—a woman's death?
Libanius, that I had dwelt in Rome!
That beating heart of our Imperial State—
Not here, in lazy, lukewarm Antioch,
Which sets her Chrestus and her Constantine
Above our philosophic Emperor.
Our Hero Julian, yet here I bide,
Heart-sick that I must linger, like a weed,
Not wafted at the wind and water's will,
In trackless tideways of the middle deep,
But where sick waters, neither fresh nor salt,
Churn at the harbour's mouth, among the piles,
Limbo of all unprofitable things.