PRATTLE. Good Lord!
DE REVES. Keats never saw her. Shelley died too young. She came late at the best of times, now scarcely ever.
PRATTLE. But, my dear fellow, you don't mean that you think there really is such a person?
DE REVES. I offer all my songs to her.
PRATTLE. But you don't mean you think you could actually see Fame?
DE REVES. We poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors and painters too. All the great things of the world are those abstract things.
PRATTLE. But what I mean is they're not really there, like you or me.
DE REVES. To us these things are more real than men, they outlive generations, they watch the passing of Kingdoms: we go by them like dust; they are still here, unmoved, unsmiling.
PRATTLE. But, but, you can't think that you could see
Fame, you don't expect to see it.
DE REVES. Not to me. Never to me. She of the golden trumpet and
Greek dress will never appear to me…. We all have our dreams.