[PATRICK enters.
PATRICK. Woe to thee, unhappy people!
Woe to thee, sin-stained Irlanda!
KING. Patrick, thou who thus my grief
Interrupted, and my sadness
Doubled with thy golden words,
Hiding false and poisonous matter,
Why thus persecute me? Wherefore
Thus disturb the hills and valleys
Of my kingdom with deceptions
And new-fangled laws and maxims?
Here we know but this alone,
We are born and die. Our fathers
Left us this, the simple doctrine
Taught by nature, and no farther
Have we sought to learn. What God
Can be this, of whom such marvels
You relate, who life eternal
Gives when temporal life departeth?
Can the soul, when it is severed
From the body, be so active
As to have another life,
Or of bale or bliss, hereafter?
PATRICK. Being loosened from the body,
And the human portion having
Given to nature, it being only
But a little dust and ashes,
Then the spirit upward rises,
To the higher sphere attracted,
Where its labours find their centre,
If it dies in grace, which baptism
First confers upon the soul,
And then penance ever after.
KING. Then this beauteous one, that here
Lies in her own blood bedabbled,
There, is living at this moment?
PATRICK. Yes.
KING. A sign, a proof, then, grant me
Of this truth.
PATRICK [aside]. Almighty Lord!
For Thy glory deign to hearken!
It behoveth Thee to show
Here Thy power by an example.
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