' AMARYLLIS AT THE FAIR ' 265 



embarrassed parents, whom she wished and prayed to 

 help in their coming old age. Here was Amaryllis, full of 

 poetic feeling and half a painter at heart, full of generous 

 sentiments — what a nature to be ground down in the 

 sordidness of married poverty ! 



' Here was Amadis, extremely poor, quite feeble, and 

 unable to earn a shilling, just talking of seeing the doctor 

 again about this fearful debility, full, too, as he thought, 

 of ideas — what a being to think of her ! 



* Nothing ever happens in the fitness of things. If 

 only now he could have regained the health and strength 

 of six short months ago — if only that, but you see, he 

 had not even that. He might get better ; true — he 

 might, I have tried 80 drugs and I am no better, I hope 

 he will. 



' Could any blundering Sultan in the fatalistic East 

 have put things together for them with more utter con- 

 tempt of fitness ? It is all in the Turkish manner, you 

 see. 



' There they sat, happier and happier, and deeper and 

 deeper in love every moment, on the brown timber in 

 the long grass, their hearts as full of love as the meadow 

 was of sunshine. 



' You have heard of the Sun's Golden Cup, in which 

 after sunset he was carried over Ocean's stream, while we 

 slumber in the night, to land again in the East and give 

 us the joy of his rising. The great Golden Cup in which 

 Hercules, too, was taken over ; it was as if that Cup had 

 been filled to the brim with the nectar of love and placed 

 at the [? their] lips to drink, inexhaustible. 



'In the play of " Faust "— Alere's " Faust "—Goethe has 

 put an interlude, an Intermezzo ; I shall leave Amaryllis 

 and Amadis in their Interlude in Heaven. Let the Play 

 of Human Life, with its sorrows and its Dread, pause 

 awhile ; let Care go aside behind the wings, let Debt and 

 Poverty unrobe, let Age stand upright, let Time stop still 

 (oh. Miracle ! as the Sun did in the Vale of Ajalon). Let 

 us leave our lovers in the Interlude in Heaven. 



