Tamburlaine the Great — Part 2

Alarms of battle within. Enter SIGISMUND wounded.

Sigismund. Discomfited is all the Christian [76] host, And God hath thunder'd vengeance from on high, For my accurs'd and hateful perjury. O just and dreadful punisher of sin, Let the dishonour of the pains I feel In this my mortal well-deserved wound End all my penance in my sudden death! And let this death, wherein to sin I die, Conceive a second life in endless mercy! [Dies.]

Enter ORCANES, GAZELLUS, URIBASSA, with others.

Orcanes. Now lie the Christians bathing in their bloods, And Christ or Mahomet hath been my friend.

Gazellus. See, here the perjur'd traitor Hungary, Bloody and breathless for his villany!

Orcanes. Now shall his barbarous body be a prey To beasts and fowls, and all the winds shall breathe, Through shady leaves of every senseless tree, Murmurs and hisses for his heinous sin. Now scalds his soul in the Tartarian streams, And feeds upon the baneful tree of hell, That Zoacum, [77] that fruit of bitterness, That in the midst of fire is ingraff'd, Yet flourisheth, as Flora in her pride, With apples like the heads of damned fiends. The devils there, in chains of quenchless flame, Shall lead his soul, through Orcus' burning gulf, ]From pain to pain, whose change shall never end. What say'st thou yet, Gazellus, to his foil, Which we referr'd to justice of his Christ And to his power, which here appears as full As rays of Cynthia to the clearest sight?

Gazellus. 'Tis but the fortune of the wars, my lord, Whose power is often prov'd a miracle.

Orcanes. Yet in my thoughts shall Christ be honoured, Not doing Mahomet an [78] injury, Whose power had share in this our victory; And, since this miscreant hath disgrac'd his faith, And died a traitor both to heaven and earth, We will both watch and ward shall keep his trunk [79] Amidst these plains for fowls to prey upon. Go, Uribassa, give [80] it straight in charge.

Uribassa. I will, my lord. [Exit.]

Orcanes. And now, Gazellus, let us haste and meet Our army, and our brother[s] of Jerusalem, Of Soria, [81] Trebizon, and Amasia, And happily, with full Natolian bowls Of Greekish wine, now let us celebrate Our happy conquest and his angry fate. [Exeunt.]