Act 2, Scene 4.
The Salisbury plain. Within a henge, a watchfire burns. The Seer approaches The Seeker.
Take heed, my friend, our part in cosmic cheat
Plays on; below the stage the truth lies quite.
Hold off the blazing sun's firstfound deceit,
Trust only in the filtered lunar light.
Maids long for wifely pleasure while wives cry
For their lost maidenhood, each of a date
They'd cast away; while Fate presides on high,
With ever laughing countenance it waits.
Mere mortal men lie dreaming all bewitched;
They ken not of the ruse nor hollow fake
Which gods employ on them, their eyes bestitched,
Awash in hope shown false if they would wake.
Unknowing we are born, Illusion's tide
A ceaseless pull, until the great divide.
Jetblack sunrise ashen, breastbone of the final dark.
My priest must leave to return to his ghostly parish.
Where traitors necks stretch down from moss to swamp.
I met the host of my companions, caught by first dawn’s watchfire dogs, waits for his beloved no more.
Oh, his Clara, I must console before chill sets too deep within bone and lung.
I will guard my deathbed promise to him, for to wipe her fair brow.
To finger her dark ringlets with ever my trigger torn hands.
Considering myself curious to love a West Indies fleshy maid.
The poked corporal would find me, on ghastly red steed to behead twice over for him, my host, and her my temptress Clara.
The belle of run through young soldiers.
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