ARDEN:
Filaments
The slenderest ever woven about a brain
From the brain's mists, by the little sprite called
Fancy.
A breath would scatter them; but that one breath
Must come of animation. When the heart
Is as, a frozen sea the brain spins webs.
ASTRAEA:
'Tis very singular!
I understand.
You translate cleverly. I hear in verse
My uncle Homeware's prose. He has these notions.
Old men presume to read us.
ARDEN:
Young men may.
You gaze on an ideal reflecting you
Need I say beautiful? Yet it reflects
Less beauty than the lady whom I love
Breathes, radiates. Look on yourself in me.
What harm in gazing? You are this flower
You are that spirit. But the spirit fed
With substance of the flower takes all its bloom!
And where in spirits is the bloom of the flower?
ASTRAEA:
'Tis very singular. You have a tone
Quite changed.
ARDEN:
You wished a change. To show you, how
I read you . . .
ASTRAEA:
Oh! no, no. It means dissection.
I never heard of reading character
That did not mean dissection. Spare me that.
I am wilful, violent, capricious, weak,
Wound in a web of my own spinning-wheel,
A star-gazer, a riband in the wind . . .
ARDEN:
A banner in the wind! and me you lead,
And shall! At least, I follow till I win.
ASTRAEA:
Forbear, I do beseech you.
ARDEN:
I have had
Your hand in mine.
ASTRAEA:
Once.