Now came still evening on, and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad; Silence accompany'd; for beast and bird, They to their grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale; She all night long her amorous descant sung; Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon, Rising in clouded majesty, at length Apparent queen unveil'd her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday-but never jam today It must come sometime to jam today, Alice objected No it can't said the Queen It's jame every other day. Today isn't any other day, you know
Alice had begun with 'Let's pretend we're kings and queens;' and her sister, who liked being exact, had argued that they couldn't, because there were only two of them, and Alice hand been reduced at last to say, 'Well, you can be one of them then, and I'll be the rest.
'Speak when you're spoken to!' The Queen sharply interrupted her. 'But if everybody obeyed that rule,' said Alice, who was always ready for a little argument, 'and if you only spoke when you were spoken to, and the other person always waited for you to begin, you see nobody would ever say anything, so that - ' 'Ridiculous!' cried the Queen. 'Why, don't you see, child - ' here she broke off with a frown, and, after thinking for a minute, suddenly changed the subject of the conversation.
Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.' I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!
The Red Queen shook her head. "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!
"Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?" [asked the Red Queen] Alice considered. "The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it-and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me-and I'm sure I shouldn't remain!" "Then you think nothing would remain?" said the Red Queen. "I think that's the answer." "Wrong, as usual," said the Red Queen, "the dog's temper would remain."
Just as the historian can teach no real history until he has cured his readers of the romantic delusion that the greatness of a queen consists in her being a pretty woman and having her head cut off, so the playwright of the first order can do nothing with his audience until he has cured them of looking at the stage through the keyhole, and sniffing round the theatre as prurient people sniff round the divorce court.
Oh Sleep! it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole, to Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, that slid into my soul.
What's more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace
We will perform in measure, time, and place.
"Can you do Addition?" the White Queen said. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?" "I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count." "She can't do Addition," the Red Queen interrupted.
This principle of opposites is at the very root of Creation, which is divided between the rule of the King and the Queen; Night and Day; the One and the Varied; the Eternal and the Evolving.
White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light.