'And if the promise unto which we cling be not a cheat, why, let him
come, come, and come quickly, for thy servant Israel, Lord, is now a
slave so infamous, so woe-begone, and so contemned, that even when our
fathers hung their harps by the sad waters of the Babylonian stream,
why, it was paradise compared with what we suffer.
'Alas! they do not suffer; they endure and do not feel. Or by this time
our shadowy cherubim would guard again the ark. It is the will that is
the father to the deed, and he who broods over some long idea, however
wild, will find his dream was but the prophecy of coming fate.
'And even now a vivid flash darts through the darkness of my mind.
Methinks, methinks--ah! worst of woes to dream of glory in despair. No,
no; I live and die a most ignoble thing; beauty and love, and fame and
mighty deeds, the smile of women and the gaze of men, and the ennobling
consciousness of worth, and all the fiery course of the creative
passions, these are not for me, and I, Alroy, the descendant of sacred
kings, and with a soul that pants for empire, I stand here extending my
vain arm for my lost sceptre, a most dishonoured slave! And do I still
exist? Exist! ay, merrily. Hark! Festivity holds her fair revel in these
light-hearted walls.
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