I'll dream 'tis done: what then?
Mercy remains? For ever, not for ever
I charge my soul? Will no contrition ransom,
Or expiatory torments compensate
The awful penalty? Ye kneeling worshippers,
That gaze in silent ecstacy before
Yon flaming altar, you come here to bow
Before a God of mercy. Is't not so?
[ALARCOS walks towards the High Altar and kneels.]
[A Procession advances front the back of the Scene, singing a solemn Mass,
and preceding the Prior of Burgos, who seats himself in the Confessional
his Train filing of on each side of the Scene:
the lights of the High Altar are extinguished,
but the Chapels remain illuminated.]
III:1:2 THE PRIOR.
Within this chair I sit, and hold the keys
That open realms no conqueror can subdue,
And where the monarchs of the earth must fain
Solicit to be subjects: Heaven and Hades,
Lands of Immortal light and shores of gloom.
Eternal as the chorus of their wail,
And the dim isthmus of that middle space,
Where the compassioned soul may purge its sins
In pious expiation. Then advance
Ye children of all sorrows, and all sins,
Doubts that perplex, and hopes that tantalize,
All the wild forms the fiend Temptation takes
To tamper with the soul! Come with the care
That eats your daily life; come with the thought
That is conceived in the noon of night,
And makes us stare around us though alone;
Come with the engendering sin, and with the crime
That is full-born.
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