University of Virginia Library

ACT II

FRAGMENTS

I

JULIAN.
... there singing mends
His tackles on the shore—

REMIGIUS.
I'll bid him stop
To trouble you with his noise.

QUEEN.
... but that it's youth,
We all had youth, but not all sang it thro'.

II

QUEEN
The rarer gift
Is in the uses of imagination.
Many a poet or philosopher
Above his private ecstasy has seen
Venus and Truth, but from the sacred mount
With inward glory silently descended
Too selfish or too poor to speak a word.
Some very few have spoken, and by them
Humanity reminded to herself
More truly lives. But fewer, oh, how much fewer
Are they who crowning inspiration gave
The proof and grace of a majestic life,
And in the sordid world, the press of men,
Greed, pleasure, crime, abandon, passion, death,
Still armoured in their visionary gold
Did human deeds.
Rather in this they fail; and by how much
The flame rolls whiter thro' their mortal heart,
Their brain more terrible, their open eyes
Quicker and more fantastic, and their souls
Strung for a brighter flight among the stars,
So their relapse outdoes disaster—as if
Genius were a debt of Man to Nature
Paid alive on itself.

JUL.
You know not what it is to be alone;
You know it not.

EUS.
Oh, God forgive you this.