"For what but idle questions?" she said; "for a traveller's vanity
that deems looking love-boys into a woman's eyes her sweeter
entertainment than all the heroes of Troy. Oh, for a house of nought
to be at peace in! Oh, gooseish swan! Oh, brittle vows! Tell me,
Voyager, is it not so?--that men are merely angry boys with beards;
and women--repeat not, ye who know! Never yet set I these steadfast
eyes on a man that would not steal the moon for taper--would she but
come down." She turned an arch face to me: "And what is to be
faithful?"
"I?" said I--"'to be faithful?'"
"It is," she said, "to rise and never set, O sun of utter weariness!
It is to kindle and never be quenched, O fretting fire of midsummer!
It is to be snared and always sing, O shrilling bird of dulness! It is
to come, not go; smile, not sigh; wake, never sleep. Couldst _thou_
love so many nots to a silk string?"
"What, then, is to change,... to be fickle?" I said.
"Ah! to be fickle," she said, "is showers after drought, seas after
sand; to cry, unechoed; to be thirsty, the pitcher broken. And--ask
now this pitiless darkness of the eyes!--to be remembered though
Lethe flows between.
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