O beautiful! O more than beautiful!
for thou to me art as a dream unbroken: why art thou not mine? why lose
a moment in our glorious lives, and balk our destiny of half its bliss?
'Fool, fool, hast thou forgotten? The rapture of a prisoner in his cell,
whose wild fancy for a moment belies his fetters! The daughter of the
Caliph and a Jew!
'Give me my fathers' sceptre.
'A plague on talismans! Oh! I need no inspiration but her memory,
no magic but her name. By heavens! I will enter this glorious city a
conqueror, or die.
'Why, what is Life? for meditation mingles ever with my passion: why,
what is Life? Throw accidents to the dogs, and tear off the painted
mask of false society! Here am I a hero; with a mind that can devise all
things, and a heart of superhuman daring, with youth, with vigour, with
a glorious lineage, with a form that has made full many a lovely
maiden of our tribe droop her fair head by Hamadan's sweet fount, and I
am--nothing!
'Out on Society! 'twas not made for me. I'll form my own, and be the
deity I sometimes feel.
'We make our fortunes, and we call them Fate. Thou saidst well, Honain.
Most subtle Sadducee! The saintly blood flowed in my fathers' veins,
and they did nothing; but I have an arm formed to wield a sceptre, and I
will win one.
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