ce come down and ask his way to Norwich.
But that was years agone--hundreds of years--
It may not be the same--I do not know
You royal father's age. . . .

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?

LUCIA. Lady, if you cannot,
No one can help. In Moonland there is famine,
We are losing all our dreams, and I come hither
To buy a new one for my father's house.

FLORA. To buy a dream?

LUCIA. Some little darling dream
That will be always with us, night and day,
Loving and teasing, sailing light of heart
Over our darkest deeps, reminding us
Of o