MICHAEL ANGELO.
Nay, I know nothing;
Not even my own ignorance, as some
Philosopher hath said. I am a schoolboy
Who hath not learned his lesson, and who stands
Ashamed and silent in the awful presence
Of the great master of antiquity
Who built these walls cyclopean.
CAVALIERI.
Gaudentius
His name was, I remember. His reward
Was to be thrown alive to the wild beasts
Here where we now are standing.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Idle tales.
CAVALIERI. But you are greater than Gaudentius was, And your work nobler.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Silence, I beseech you.
CAVALIERI. Tradition says that fifteen thousand men Were toiling for ten years incessantly Upon this amphitheatre.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Behold
How wonderful it is! The queen of flowers,
The marble rose of Rome! Its petals torn
By wind and rain of thrice five hundred years;
Its mossy sheath half rent away, and sold
To ornament our palaces and churches,
Or to be trodden under feet of man
Upon the Tiber's bank; yet what remains
Still opening its fair bosom to the sun,
And to the constellations that at night
Hang poised above it like a swarm of bees.
CAVALIERI. The rose of Rome, but not of Paradise; Not the white rose our Tuscan poet saw, With saints for petals. When this rose was perfect Its hundred thousand petals were not Saints, But senators in their Thessalian caps, And all the roaring populace of Rome; And even an Empress and the Vestal Virgins, Who came to see the gladiators die, Could not give sweetness to a rose like this.
MICHAEL ANGELO. I spake not of its uses, but its beauty.
CAVALIERI. The sand beneath our feet is saturate With blood of martyrs; and these rifted stones Are awful witnesses against a people Whose pleasure was the pain of dying men.