Crassus. 
Yet at these secrets and riddles?  Behold! 
I can fill thy lap with a harvest of gold.

Alicia. 
Yet all the gold you could give to me
Would fall at my feet when I rose to be free.

Crassus. 
What will you then?

Alicia. 
No gift from men. 
Of my own free will I give you wit,
(O man so sorely in need of it!)
And happiness; and the flame that hath dwindled
On this dull hearth shall be rekindled. 
But this you must swear: 
To will, and to dare,
To seek the spirit and slay the sense;
  And for this hour
  To give me power
To lead you in silent obedience,
Though I bade you fall on your sword....

Crassus. 
                        Enough! 
I give my life as I gave my love.

Alicia. 
O! love you have not understood. 
You have not guessed its secret food. 
You have not seen its single eye;
But fear and doubt and jealousy
Have risen, and now your love is trembling
Like a mountebank dissembling
When his trick’s detected.  Come! 
To find home we must leave home.

Crassus. 
Starless and moonless, hidden in cloud,
The night’s one flame of pearl.

Alicia. 
The bat flaps; the owl hoots aloud.

Crassus. 
Lead on; I trust you, girl.

Alicia. 
You are bold to trust me; or, have you divined
My secret?

Crassus. 
No; the crystal of your mind
Shows only faint disturbing images,
Things passing strange, as if enchanted seas
Kept their great swell upon it, and strange fish
Played in its oily depths.  Some monstrous wish,
The shadow of some unspeakable desire,
Strikes my heart cold, and sets my brain on fire.

Alicia. 
Learn this, as we pass through the portico: 
Fear nothing; there is nothing you can know! 
And by these terraces and steps that gleam
Wintry, although the summer night is hot,
This — what we seek is never what we find!

Life is a dream, like love; and from the dream
If we may wake, we never find it what
We would; for the wisdom of a mightier mind
Leads us in its own ways
To a perfected praise.

Crassus. 
Why are these shadows thrown across the lawn
From the elms and yews?  They were not wont to reach
Beyond the branches of that copper-beech.

Alicia. 
Attend the dawn
Of an unknown comet, that shall come
From the unfathomable wells of space
Into its halidom.

Crassus. 
I know it not.  Last night I walked alone
Here, and saw nothing.

Alicia. 
                        I was not with you! 
There is no God upon the eternal throne
Of stars begemming the bewildering blue
Unless one has the eyes to see him.  Think
How we two stand upon the brink
Of nothing!  Here’s a globe, whereto we trust,
No larger than the smallest speck of dust
Or mote in the sunbeam is to that sun’s self,
And we are like dead leaves in autumn’s whil
Of wind upon it.