And yet this passage occurs in a poem which contains such a passage as
the following:
And now with undismayed resolve behold,
To save you--you--for honor and just faith
Are most true gods, which we should much adore--
With even disdainful vigor I give up
An abhorred life!--You have been good to me,
And I do thank thee, heaven. O my stars,
I bless your goodness, that with breast unstained,
Faith pure, a virgin wife, tried to my glory,
I die, of female faith the long-lived story;
Secure from bondage and all servile harms,
But more, most happy in my husband's arms.
The lofty sweetness, the proud pathos, the sonorous simplicity of these
most noble verses might scarcely suffice to attest the poet's possession
of any strong dramatic faculty. But the scene immediately preceding
bears evidence of a capacity for terse and rigorous brevity of dialogue
in a style as curt and condensed as that of Tacitus or Dante:
_Sophonisba_. What unjust grief afflicts my worthy lord?
_Massinissa_. Thank me, ye gods, with much beholdingness;
For, mark, I do not curse you.
_Sophonisba_. Tell me, sweet,
The cause of thy much anguish.
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