the untarred keels
Drowse on the tide with parching decks unswabbed,
And anchors rusting on inglorious ooze.
All indolent the vast armada tilts,
A leafless resurrection of dead trees.
The sailors in a dream do go about
Or at the fo'c's'le ominously meet.
Should any foe upon the sea-line loom
They'll light with ease upon an idle prey.
And yet I felt the grandeur of stagnation
And the magnificence of idleness.

BURRUS. She hath seduced the breast-plates and the sails.

NERO. [_Distracted._] Here I pronounce her exile.

TIGELLINUS. Whither then?

ANICETUS. To Britain send her. There for Claudius
I fought; a melancholy isle, alone,
Sundered from all the world; and banned by God
With separating, cold, religious wave,
And haunted with the ghost of a dead sun
Rising as from a grave, or all in blood
Returning wounded heavily through mist.
Her rotting peoples amid forests cower,
Or mad for colour paint their bodies blue.
There in eternal drippings of the leaf
Or that dead summer of the living fly,
And by the eternal sadness of the surf,
Ambition cannot live, hope cannot breathe.
Even the fieriest spirit there will rust
Or gutter like a candle in the rain.
To Britain send her.

TIGELLINUS. Never isle remote
On the sad water, never desert sand
In trembling flame, nor rock-built prison-house
Shall tame her: there's the danger, that she lives.
While she hath life, it is no matter where,
While she hath breath, no other dares to breathe,
Not Caesar, even!

NERO. This breath to her I owe.

TIGELLINUS. [_Cautiously and slowly watching_
NERO, _as do the others_.] Caesar, there is a region of exile
Whence none hath yet returned--your pardon, sir--

NERO. [_Starts and turns away._] No, no, no!
I remember very clear
How gently she would wake me long ago.

BURRUS. Then be thy mother's son still and surrender
This toy of Rome to her: she bought it you:
Now, wearied, give it back!

NERO. Ah, patience, sir!
I cannot in one moment gird myself
To murder all these kisses, and she hath
A vastness in this narrow world so rare,
A sweep majestical about the earth--
True, that she hath no ear for verse----

TIGELLINUS. For thine.

NERO. Yet passion, fury, and ambition, these
Are primal things in our elaborate age.
Ill can we spare them.

BURRUS. Now, 'tis you or sh