,
What fires of blind fatality may catch them!
Say, you do love a woman--do adore her--
You may embalm the memory of her worth
And chronicle her beauty to all time,
In words whereat great Jove himself might flush,
And feel Olympus tremble at his thoughts;
Yet where is your security? Some clerk
Wanting a foolscap, or some boy a kite,
Some housewife fuel, or some sportsman wadding
To wrap a ball (which hits the poet's brain
By merest accident) seizes your record,
And to the wind thus scatters all your will,
Or, rather, your will's object. Thus, our pride
Swings like a planet by a single hair,
Obedient to God's breath. More wine! more wine!
I preach--and I grow melancholy--wine!

_Enter_ DRAWER _with a tankard_.

A GENTLEMAN (_rising_).

We're wending homeward--gentlemen, good night!

MARLOWE.

Not yet--not yet--the night has scarce begun--
Nay, Master Heywood--Middleton, you'll stay!
Bright skies to those who go--high thoughts go with ye,
And constant youth!

GENTLEMEN.

We thank you, sir--good night! _Exeunt_ GENTLEMEN.

HEYWOOD.

Let's follow--'tis near morning.

MARLOWE.

Do not go.
I'm ill at ease, touching a certain matter
I've taken to heart--don't speak of't--and besides
I have a sort of horror of my bed.
Last night a squadron charged me in a dream,
With Isis and Osiris at the flanks,
Towering and waving their colossal arms,
While in the van a fiery chariot roll'd,
Wherein a woman stood--I knew her well--
Who seem'd but newly risen from the grave!

She whirl'd a javelin at me, and methought
I woke; when, slowly at the foot o' the bed
The mist-like curtains parted, and upon me
Did learned Faustus look! He shook his head
With grave reproof, but more of sympathy,
As though his past humanity came o'er him--
Then went away with a low, gushing sigh,
That startled his own death-cold breast, and seem'd
As from a marble urn where passion's ashes
Their sleepless vigil keep. Well--perhaps they do.
(_after a pause_)
Lived he not greatly? Think what was his power!
All knowledge at his beck--the very Devil
His common slave. And, O, brought he not back,
Through the thick-million'd catacombs of ages,
Helen's unsullied loveliness to his arms?

MIDDLETON.

So--let us have more wine, then!

HEYWOOD.