Vain torments these: this is but women's way.

MERCHANT.(looks about the room, smiles).
A mirror, too, I see thou hast provided.

SERVAMT.
Thine own command, the mirror is thy mother's,
Brought hither from her chamber with the rest.
And thou thyself didst bid me, just this one ...

MERCHANT.
What, did I so? It was a moment, then,
When I was shrewder than I am just now.
Yes, yes, a youthful bride must have a mirror.

SERVANT.
Now I will go to fetch your mother's goblet
And bring the cooling evening drink.

MERCHANT.
Ah yes.
Go, my good Bahram, fetch the evening drink.
[Exit BAHRAM.]
Thou mirror of my mother, dwells no glimmer
In thee of her sweet pallid smile, to rise
As from the dewy mirror of a well-spring?
Her smile, the faintest, loveliest I have known,
Was like the flutter of a tiny birdling,
That sleeps its last upon the hollowed hand.
[Stands before the mirror.]
No, naught but glass. Too long it empty stood.
Only a face that does not smile--my own.
My Self, beheld with my own eyes, so vacant
As if one glass but mirrored forth another,
Unconscious.--Oh for higher vision yet,
For but one moment infinitely brief,
To see how stands upon _her_ spirit's mirror
My image! Is't an old man she beholds?
Am I as young as oft I deem myself,
When in the silent night I lie and listen
To hear my blood surge through its winding course?
Is it not being young, to have so little
Of rigidness or hardness in my nature?
I feel as if my spirit, nursed and reared
On nourishment so dreamlike, bloodless, thin,
Were youthful still. How else should visit me
This faltering feeling, just as in my boyhood,
This strange uneasiness of happiness,
As if 'twould slip each moment from my hands
And fade like shadows? Can the old feel this?
No, old men take the world for something hard
And dreamless; what their fingers grasp and hold,
They hold. While _I_ am even now a-quiver
With all this