Eznarza: 

There is no land like the desert and like the Arabs no people.

King: 

It is all over and done; I return to the walls of my fathers.

Eznarza: 

Time cannot put it away; I go back to the desert that nursed me.

King: 

Did you think in those days on the sands, or among the tents in the mornings, that my year would ever end, and I be brought away by strength of my word to the prisoning of a palace?

Eznarza: 

I knew that Time would do it, for my people have learned the way of him.

King: 

Is it then Time that has mocked our futile prayers?  Is he then greater than God that he has laughed at our praying?

Eznarza: 

We may not say that he is greater than God.  Yet we prayed that our own year might not pass away.  God could not save it.

King: 

Yes, yes.  We prayed that prayer.  All men would laugh at it.

Eznarza: 

The prayer was not laughable.  Only he that is lord of the years is obdurate.  If a man prayed for life to a furious, merciless Sultan well might the Sultan’s slaves laugh.  Yet it is not laughable to pray for life.

King: 

Yes, we are slaves of Time.  To-morrow brings the princess who comes from Tharba.  We must bow our heads.

Eznarza: 

My people say that Time lives in the desert.  He lies there in the sun.

King: 

No, no, not in the desert.  Nothing alters there.

Eznarza: 

My people say that the desert is his country.  He smites not his own country, my people say.  But he overwhelms all other lands of the world.

King: 

Yes, the desert is always the same, even the littlest rocks of it.

Eznarza: 

They say that he loves the Sphinx and does not harm her.  They say that he does not dare to harm the Sphinx.  She has borne him many gods whom the infidels worship.

King: 

Their father is more terrible than all the false gods.

Eznarza: 

O, that he had but spared our little year.

King: 

He destroys all things utterly.

Eznarza: 

There is a little child of man that is mightier than he, and who saves the world from Time.

King: 

Who is this little child that is mightier than Time?  Is it Love that is mightier?

Eznarza: 

No, not Love.

King: 

If he conquers even Love then none are mightier.

Eznarza: 

He scares Love away with weak white hairs and with wrinkles.  Poor little Love, poor Love, Time scares him away.

King: 

What is this child of man that can conquer Time and that is braver than Love?

Eznarza: 

Even Memory.

King: 

Yes.  I will call to him when the wind is from the desert and the locusts are beaten against my obdurate walls.  I will call to him more when I cannot see the desert and cannot hear the wind of it.