.

_Asan._ Sweetest, dearest wife,
Our marriage! Thinkest thou I should forget,
Ay, though the chills of age had froze my brain,
That day of all my life?

_Gycia._ Dost thou regret it?
I _think_ thou dost not, but 'tis sweet to hear
The avowal from thy lips?

_Asan._ Nay, never a moment.
And thou?

_Gycia._ Nay, never for a passing thought.
I did not know what life was till I knew thee.
Dost thou remember it, how I came forth,
Looking incuriously to see the stranger,
And lo! I spied my love, and could not murmur
A word of courtesy?

_Asan._ Dost thou remember
How I, a feverish and hot-brained youth,
Full of rash pride and princely arrogance,
Lifted my eyes and saw a goddess coming----

_Gycia._ Nay, a weak woman only.

_Asan._ And was tamed
By the first glance?

_Gycia._ What! are we lovers still,
After two years of marriage?

_Asan._ Is it two years,
Or twenty? By my faith, I know not which,
For happy lives glide on like seaward streams
Which keep their peaceful and unruffled course
So smoothly that the voyager hardly notes
The progress of the tide. Ay, two years 'tis,
And now it seems a day, now twenty years,
But always, always happy.

[_Embraces_ GYCIA.

_Gycia._ Yet, my love,
We have known trials too. My honoured sire
Has gone and left us since.

_Asan._ Ay, he had reaped
The harvest of his days, and fell asleep
Amid the garnered sheaves.

_Gycia._ Dearest, I know
He loved thee as a son, and always strove
To fit thee for the place within our State
Which one day should be thine. Sometimes I think,
Since he has gone, I have been covetous
Of thy dear love, and kept thee from the labour
Of State-craft, and the daily manly toils
Which do befit thy age; and I have thought,
Viewing thee with the jealous eyes of love,
That I have marked some shade of melancholy
Creep on when none else saw thee, and desired
If only I might share it.

_Asan._ Nay, my love,
I have been happy truly, though sometimes,
It may be, I have missed the clear, brisk air
Of the free plains; the trumpet-notes of war,
When far against the sky the glint of spears
Lit by the rising sun revealed the ranks
Of the opp