SEV.
Cease!

FABIAN.
'Twill but enhance the grief I would appease.

SEV.
For hopeless ill, good friend, I seek no cure.
Who welcomes death can life's short pain endure!

FABIAN.
O lost indeed, if round her fatal light you hover!--
The lover, losing all, speaks hardly like a lover!
While passion still is lord--the passion-swept is slave--
From this last bitterness would I Severus save!

SEV.
That word, my friend, unsay; tho' grief this bosom tear,
The hand that wounds I kiss--love vanquishes despair;
Fate only, not Pauline, the foe that I accuse,
No plighted faith she breaks who did this hand refuse.
Duty--her father--Fate--these willed, she but obeyed;
Not hers the woe, the strife that envious Ate made!
Untimely, Fortune's shower must drown me, not revive;
Too lavish and too late her fatal gifts arrive.
The golden apple falls, the gold is turned to dross:
When Fate at Fortune mocks, all gain is only loss!

FABIAN.