e comforted! I know--I know it all,
And _still_ I speak of love. Look at me, brightest,
And beautiful Lalage!--turn here thine eyes!
Thou askest me if I could speak of love,
Knowing what I know, and seeing what I have seen
Thou askest me that--and thus I answer thee--
Thus on my bended knee I answer thee. (_kneeling_.)
Sweet Lalage, _I love thee_--_love thee_--_love thee_;
Thro' good and ill--thro' weal and woe, _I love thee_.
Not mother, with her first-born on her knee,
Thrills with intenser love than I for thee.
Not on God's altar, in any time or clime,
Burned there a holier fire than burneth now
Within my spirit for _thee_. And do I love?
(_arising_.)
Even for thy woes I love thee--even for thy woes--
Thy beauty and thy woes.

_Lal_. Alas, proud Earl,
Thou dost forget thyself, remembering me!
How, in thy father's halls, among the maidens
Pure and reproachless of thy princely line,
Could the dishonored Lalage abide?
Thy wife, and with a tainted memory--
My seared and blighted name, how would it tally
With the ancestral honors of thy house,
And with thy glory?

_Pol_. Speak not to me of glory!
I hate--I loathe the name; I do abhor
The unsatisfactory and ideal thing.
Art thou not Lalage, and I Politian?
Do I not love--art thou not beautiful--
What need we more? Ha! glory! now speak not of it:
By all I hold most sacred and most solemn--
By all my wishes now--my fears hereafter--
By all I scorn on earth and hope in heaven--
There is no deed I would more glory in,
Than in thy cause to scoff at this same glory
And trample it under foot. What matters it--
What matters it, my fairest, and my best,
That we go down unhonored and forgotten
Into the dust--so we descend together?
Descend together--and then--and then p