LUCIA. His age? Oh surely!
He never can be more than one month old.
FLORA. Yet he's your father!
LUCIA. Well, he is and is not;
[Proudly] I am the daughter of a million moons.
They month by month and year by circling year,
From their celestial palace looking down
On your day-wearied Earth, have soothed her sleep,
And rocked her tides, and made a magic world
For all her lovers and her nightingales.
You owe them much, my ancestors. No doubt,
At times they suffered under clouds; at times
They were eclipsed; yet in their brighter hours
They were illustrious!
FLORA. And may I hope
Your present Sire, his present Serene Highness,
Is in his brighter hours to-day?
LUCIA. Ah! no.
Be sure he is not—else I had not left
My cool, sweet garden of unfading stars
For the rank meadows of this sun-worn mould.
FLORA. What is your trouble, then?
LUCIA. Although my father
Has been but ten days reigning, he is sad
With all the sadness of a phantom realm,
And all the sorrows of ten thousand years.
{176}
We in our Moonland have no life like yours,
No birth, no death: we live but in our dreams:
And when they are grown old—these mortal visions
Of an immortal sleep—we seem to lose them.
They are too strong for us, too self-sufficient
To live for us; they go their ways and leave us,
Like shadows grown substantial.
FLORA. I have heard
Something on earth not unlike this complaint,
But can I help you?