Plays of Near & Far Part 15

QUEEN: The Prince of Huz?

ZOON: Speared.

QUEEN: Still, still they are killing them.

ZOON: It is all the Hundred Princes.

QUEEN: They are killing them all.

ZOON: A sad sight once.

QUEEN: Once?

ZOON: I should have wept once.

QUEEN: It is so far off now.

ZOON: It is so far, far off. We can only feel joy upon this holy mountain.

QUEEN: Only joy. (_He sighs as he looks._) Look! (_He sighs again._)

ZOON: There falls the poor Prince Meliflor.

QUEEN: How huge a thrust it was with the great spear.

ZOON: He is dead.

QUEEN: Are you not happy?

ZOON: Yes.

QUEEN: In your voice there seemed to sound some far-off thing. Some strange thing. Was it sorrow?

ZOON: No; we are too high; sorrow cannot come. No grief can touch us here, no woe drift up to us from the woes of Earth.

QUEEN: I thought there was some strange thing in your voice, like sorrows we have dreamed.

ZOON: No, Golden Queen. Those fancied sorrows of dreams cannot touch reality.

QUEEN: You will never be sorry we have woken and left the dream of Earth?

ZOON: No, glorious lady; nothing can bring me trouble ever again.

QUEEN: Not even I?

ZOON: Never you, my Golden Zoomzoomarma, for on this sacred peak where there is only love you cannot.

QUEEN: We will dwell here for ever in endless joy.

ZOON (_looking down_): All dead now, all the Princes.

QUEEN: Turn, my Prince, from the dream of Earth, lest trouble come up from it.

ZOON: It cannot drift up here; yet we will turn from the dream.

QUEEN: Let us think of endless joy upon the edge of heaven.

ZOON: Yes, Queen; for ever in reality while all else dream away.

QUEEN: It is the years that make them drowsy. They dream to dream the years away. Time cannot reach so high as here, the years are far below us.

ZOON: Far below us, making a dream and troubling it.

QUEEN: They do not know in the dream that only love is real.

ZOON: If time could reach us here we should pa.s.s, too. Nothing is real where time is.

QUEEN: How shall we spend the calm that time does not vex, together here for ever?

ZOON: Holding your hand. (_She gives it._) And kissing it often in the calm of eternity. Sometimes watching, a moment, the dream go by; then kissing your hand again all in eternity.

QUEEN: And never wearying?

ZOON: Not while eternity lingers here in heaven.

QUEEN: Thus we will live until the dream goes by and Earth has faded under Aether Mountain.

ZOON: And then we shall watch the calm of Eternity.

QUEEN: And you will still kiss my hand at times.

ZOON: Yes, while eternity wiles Heaven away.

QUEEN: The silence is like music on Aether Mountain.

ZOON: It is because all is real. In the dream nothing was real. Music had to be made and then soon pa.s.sed trembling away. Here all things always are as the desire of Earth, Earth's desire that groped among fantasies finding them false.

QUEEN: Let us forget the dream.

ZOON (_kissing her hand_): I have forgotten for ever.

QUEEN: Ah!

ZOON: What trouble has drifted up to you from Earth?

QUEEN: An old saying.

ZOON: It was said in the dream.