but shining tomb, you might draw into you the very breath of love.  The air you breathed had passed through the sweet lungs of Juliet, it had been etherealised with her holy passion, and washed clean with her lovely words.  And now, for a little while yet, it feasted on the fair peace of their glad young faces.  To-morrow, or the next day, or the next week, they would belong to the unvisited treasure-house of the past, but now this morning of all mornings, this day that could never come again, they still belonged to the real and radiant present.

Flowers there are that bloom but once in a hundred years, but here in this tomb had blossomed one of those marvellous flowers that bloom but once throughout eternity.  Poets and kings in after-times, O men of Verona, will yearn to have seen what you look upon to-day.  For you, you thick and greasy citizens, are chosen out of all time to behold this beauty.  There were once in the world thousands of men and women who had heard the very words of Christ as they fell from His lips, words that we may only read.  There have been men, actual living, foolish men, who have looked on at the valour of Horatius, men who from the crowded banks of the Nile have watched the living body of Cleopatra step into her gilded barge, men who, standing idle in the streets of Florence, have seen the love-light start in the great Dante’s eyes, seen his hand move to his laden heart, as the little Beatrice passed him by among her maidens.  Base men of the past, by the indulgent accident of time, have been granted to behold these wonders, and now for you, O men of Verona, a like wonder has been born.

* * * * *

Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of the Capulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came.

It had been an innocent little desire, yet had all the world come against it.  It had been a simple little desire, yet too strong for all the world to break.

Strange this enmity of the world to love, as though men should take arms against the song of a bird, or plot against the opening of a flower.

But now, what was this strange homage to a love that a few hours ago had no friend in all the daylight, a fearful bliss beneath the secret moon?  But yesterday a stupid old nurse, a herb-gathering friar, a rascally apothecary, had been their only friends, and now was all the world come here to do their bidding.

No need to steal again beneath the shade of orchard walls, no need again to heed if lark or nightingale sang in the reddening east.  For the world had grown all warm to love, warm and kind as June to the rose.

* * * * *

Three days lay Romeo and Juliet receiving their guests in the vault of the Capulets, with that strange smile of welcome for all who came.  Three days the world worshipped the love it could not understand, but still came dense and denser throngs to worship.  For the news of the wonderful flower that had blossomed in Verona had gone far and wide, and travellers from distant cities kept pouring in to look at those strange young lovers, who had deemed the world well lost so that they might leave it together.