Is there a charm in wisdom? Is there power
In blushing modesty's retiring air?
Looks patience lovely in affliction's hour?
Is not humility a priceless flower?
And filial piety divinely fair?
And bloom such graces in this narrow dell,
Bosom'd in hills, from civil discord far;
Then, courts and camps, glory and wealth farewell!
All-powerful love hath broke ambition's spell,
And freed a captive from his iron car.
Ruminating on these lines, and recollecting the mild dutiful behaviour
of Constantia, she could not help supposing that melancholy beauty to be
the object of her son's attachment. She had sufficiently interested her
to inquire the reason of her mournful appearance, and learned that she
had lost her lover in the civil wars. Could that lover have been her
son? Could the figures she had seen sitting among the ruins, and which
she was persuaded were not human, be sent as supernatural omens to
indicate Sedley's death. It was happy for her unsettling reason, that at
the moment when this terrific thought shot across her brain, she
recollected, whatever her early misdemeanors might have been, she was
now in a safe state, and had wiped off all offences to her brother, even
supposing any had been committed.
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