ur lost childhood, playing our old games,
Singing our old songs, asking our old riddles,
Building our old hopes, and with our old gusto
Rehearsing for us in one endless act
The world past and the world to be.

FLORA. Oh! now
I see your meaning. Yes, I have indeed
Plenty of such sweet dreams: _we_ call them children.
They are _our_ dreams too, and though they are born of us,
Truly in them we live. But, dearest lady,
We do not sell them.

{177}

LUCIA. Do you mean you will not?
Not one? Could you not _lend_ me one--just one?

FLORA. Ah! but to lend what cannot be returned
Is merely giving--who can bring again
Into the empty nest those winged years?
Still, there are children here well worth your hopes,
And you shall venture: if there be among them
One that your heart desires, and she consent,
Take her and welcome--for the will of Love
Is the wind's will, and none may guess his going.

LUCIA. O dearest Lady Flora!

FLORA. Stay! they are here,
Mad as a dance of May-flies.

[_The children run in dancing and singing._

Shall we sit
And watch these children?
Phyllis, bid them play,
And let them heed us no more than the trees
That girdle this green lawn with whispering beauty.
[_The children play and sing at their games, till at a
convenient moment the LADY FLORA holds up her hand._]

FLORA. Now, Amaryllis, stay the rushing stream,
The meadows for this time have drunk enough.
[_To LUCIA._] And you, what think you, lady, of these maids?
Has their sweet foolish singing moved your heart
To choose among them?

LUCIA. I have heard them gladly,
And if I could, would turn them all to elves,
That if they cannot live with me, at least

{178}

I might look down when our great galleon sails
Close over earth, and see them always here
Dancing upon the moonlit shores of night.
But how to choose!--and though they are young and fair
Their every grace foretells the fatal change,
The swift short bloom of girlhood, like a flower
Passing away, for ever passing