and Juliet were
carried through the bright and solemn streets, that the world might be
saved; saved as ever by the spectacle and the worship of a mysterious
nobility, [comma added by transcriber] an uncomprehended greatness, a
beauty which haunts not its daily dreams, lifted up by the humble gaze
of devout eyes into the empyrean of greater souls, stirred to an
unfamiliar passion, and fired with glimpses of a strange unworldly
truth.

In the light of the sun the faces of the two lovers, as they lay amid
their flowers, seemed to have grown a little weary, but they still wore
their sweet and royal smile, and their laurelled brows were very white
and proud.

And in the faces that looked upon them, as they moved slowly by, with
sweet death music, and the hushed marching of feet, and the wafted odour
of lilies, there was to be seen strangely blent a great pity for their
tragedy and a heavenly tenderness for their love. It was like a dream
passing down the streets of a dream, so deep and tender was the silence,
for only the hearts of men were speaking; though here and there a girl
sobbed, or a young man buried his face in his sleeve, and the sternest
eyes were dashed with the holy water of tears. And with the pity and
tenderness, who shall say but that in all that silent heart-speech there
was no little envy of the two who had loved so truly and died in the
springtide of their love, before the ways of love had grown dusty with
its summer, or dreary with its autumn, before its dreams had petrified
into duties, and its passion deadened into use?

'Would it were thou and I,' said many wedded eyes one to the other,
delusively warm and soft for a moment, but all cold and hard again on
the morrow.

And maybe some poet would say in his heart--

'If you loved her living, my Romeo, what were your love could you but
see her dead!' for indeed life has no beauty so wonderful as the beauty
of death.

And, as in all places and times, there was a base remnant that gaped and
worshipped not, and in their hearts resented all this distinction paid
to a nobility they could not recognise, as the like had grumbled when
Cimabue's Madonna had been carried through the streets in glory. But of
these there is no need that we should take account, any more than of the
beasts that moved head down amid the pastures outside the town, knowing
not of the wonder that was passing within. For the ass will munch his
thistles though the Son of Man be his r