You will have many lovers, and love one

Light hair, not hair like Norbert's, to suit yours:
Taller than he is, since yourself are tall.

Love him, like me! Give all away to him;
Think never of yourself; throw by your pride,
Hope, fear,-your own good as you saw it once,
And love him simply for his very self.
Remember, I (and what am I to you?)

Would give up all for one, leave throne, lose life,
Do all but just unlove him! He loves me.

Constance. He shall.

Queen.

You, step inside my inmost heart! Give me your own heart: let us have one heart! I'll come to you for counsel; "this he says, "This he does; what should this amount to, pray? "Beseech you, change it into current coin! "Is that worth kisses? Shall I please him there?" And then we 'll speak in turn of you-what else? Your love, according to your beauty's worth, For you shall have some noble love, all gold: Whom choose you? we will get him at your choice. -Constance, I leave you. Just a minute since, I felt as I must die or be alone

Breathing my soul into an ear like yours:

Now, I would face the world with my new life,

Wear my new crown. I'll walk around the rooms,

And then come back and tell you how it feels.
How soon a smile of God can change the world!
How we are made for happiness-how work
Grows play, adversity a winning fight!
True, I have lost so many years: what then?
Many remain: God has been very good.
You, stay here! T is as different from dreams,
From the mind's cold calm estimate of bliss,
As these stone statues from the flesh and blood.
The comfort thou hast caused mankind, God's moon!
[She goes out, leaving CONSTANCE. Dance-music

'Tis

from within.

NORBERT enters.

Norbert. Well? we have but one minute and one word!
Constance. I am yours, Norbert!

Norbert.

Constance

You were mine.

Constance.

Yes, mine.

Not till now!

Now I give myself to you.

Norbert. Constance?
Meaning to give a treasure, I might dole
Of giving-haply, 't is the wiser way.
Coin after coin out (each, as that were all,
With a new largess still at each despair)
And force you keep in sight the deed, preserve

Your own! I know the thriftier way

Exhaustless till the end my part and yours,
My giving and your taking; both our joys
Dying together. Is it the wiser way?

I choose the simpler; I give all at once.
Know what you have to trust to, trade upon!
Use it, abuse it,-anything but think

Hereafter, "Had I known she loved me so,

"And what my means, I might have thriven with it."

This is your means. I give you all myself.

Norbert. I take you and thank God.

Constance.

Look on through years!

We cannot kiss, a second day like this;

Else were this earth no earth.

Norbert.

With this day's heat

So, best!

We shall go on through years of cold.

Constance.

-I try to see those years-I think I see.

You walk quick and new warmth comes; you look back.
And lay all to the first glow-not sit down

For ever brooding on a day like this
While seeing embers whiten and love die.
Yes, love lives best in its effect; and mine,
Full in its own life, yearns to live in yours.

Norbert. Just so. I take and know you all at once.

Your soul is disengaged so easily,

Your face is there, I know you; give me time,

Let me be proud and think you shall know me.
My soul is slower: in a life I roll

The minute out whereto you condense yours—
The whole slow circle round you I must move,
To be just you. I look to a long life
To decompose this minute, prove its worth.
Tis the sparks' long succession one by one
Shall show you, in the end, what fire was crammed
In that mere stone you struck: how could you know,
If it lay ever unproved in your sight,

As now my heart lies? your own warmth would hide
Its coldness, were it cold.

Constance.

But how prove, how?

Norbert. Prove in my life, you ask?

Constance.

Quick, Norbert-how?

Norbert. That's easy told. I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve. As with the body-he who hurls a lance Or heaps up stone on stone, shows strength alike: So must I seize and task all means to prove And show this soul of mine, you crown as yours,

And justify Constance.

s both.

Could you write books,

Paint pictures! One sits down in poverty

And writes

Or paints, with pity for the rich.

Norbert. And loves one's painting and one's writing,

then,

And not one's mistress! All is best, believe,

And we best as no other than we are.

We live, and they experiment on life-
Those poets, painters, all who stand aloof

To overlook the farther. Let us be

The thing they look at! I might take your face
And write of it and paint it-to what end?
For whom? what pale dictatress in the air

Feeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghost-like form

With earth's real blood and breath, the beauteous life
She makes despised for ever? You are mine,
Made for me, not for others in the world,

Nor yet for that which I should call my art,
The cold calm power to see how fair you look.
I come to you; I leave you not, to write
Or paint. You are, I am: let Rubens there
Paint us!

Constance. So, best!

Norbert.

I understand your soul.

You live, and rightly sympathize with life,

With action, power, success. This way is straight;
And time were short beside, to let me change

The craft my childhood learnt: my craft shall serve.
Men set me here to subjugate, enclose,