[SCENE IV.]

Enter B ETHSABE with her Handmaid.

Beth. Mourn, Bethsabe, bewail thy foolishness,
Thy sin, thy shame, the sorrow of thy soul:
Sin, shame, and sorrow swarm about thy soul;
And, in the gates and entrance of my heart,
Sadness, with wreathed arms, hangs her complaint.
No comfort from the ten-stringed instrument,
The tinkling cymbal, or the ivory lute;
Nor doth the sound of David's kingly harp
Make glad the broken heart of Bersabe:
Jerusalem is filled with thy complaint,
And in the streets of Sion sits thy grief.
The babe is sick, sick to the death, I fear,
The fruit that sprung from thee to David's house;
Nor may the pot of honey and of oil
Glad David or his handmaid's countenance.
Urias — woe is me to think hereon!
For who is it among the sons of men
That saith not to my soul, " The king hath sinned;
David hath done amiss, and Bersabe
Laid snares of death unto Urias' life? "
My sweet Urias, fall'n into the pit
Art thou, and gone even to the gates of hell
For Bersabe, that wouldst not shroud her shame.
O, what is it to serve the lust of kings!
How lion-like th[e]y rage when we resist!
But, Bersabe, in humbleness attend
The grace that God will to his handmaid send.