I have done my best. The barbarian people are kind and clean. They have blue eyes. There is one, with marigold curls and a crisp beard, who has brought up water and logs of wood. There are two maidens, with hair like a wheat-field and rough red fingers. There are others.... I know not. All seem civil and frightened. But your Majesty will be wretched. APHRODITE. No, Cydippe, I think I shall be happy. EROS [_walking to the parapet, and looking down_]. Our white ship still lies there, mother. Shall we start again? APHRODITE. On that leaden water, with the little cruel breakers like coriander seeds? Never. And whither should we go, Eros? We have lost our golden home, our only home. We have lost the old white world of empire; any grey corner of the world of stillness is good enough for us. I will eat, and lie down, and rest without that long, awful heave of the intolerable ocean. Which way, Cydippe? [APHRODITE _and_ CYDIPPE _enter the house_.] EROS [_alone_]. This little milk-white flower, with the drop of wine in it.... It is like the grass that grows on the slopes of Parnassus. It is the only home-like thing here. Can that be grey wool that hangs in the sky, and droops like a curtain over the opposite hills? How cold the air is! Ah! it is raining over in the other island, and the brown fields grow like the yellow fields, melt into a mere white mist behind the slate-coloured sea. Here is one of the barbarians. [POSEIDON _slowly appears at the top of the steps_.] POSEIDON. Ah, you here alone, Eros? EROS [_aside_]. It is Poseidon! How old and bluff he looks! [_To_ POSEIDON.] My mother is within. [_Smiling._] She was angry with you, Poseidon, but her anger is fallen. POSEIDON. Adversity brings us all together. It was once I who burned with anger against her. Why was she angry? EROS. The cruelty of your sea; it shook and sickened her. POSEIDON. It once was her sea, too. Now it is not even mine.... Rebellion everywhere, everywhere the servant risen against the master, everywhere our spells and portents broken. I rule the sea still, but it is as a man holds in a wild horse with a hard rein: it obeys with hatred, it would obey not one moment after the master's hand was withdrawn. EROS. How cold it is. But I am not disconsolate. Nor should you be, Poseidon, for you will have the sea to occupy your thoughts. Hephaestus will help you to break it in. He at least should be consoled, for in our fallen estate his magical ingenuity will employ his brain. POSEIDON. We have never needed to be ingenious. It has been enough for us to command, to wield the elements like weapons, to say it shall be and to see it is. EROS. To see it is not, and yet to make it be, perhaps this may be a joy in store for us. For Hephaestus, certainly; for you, if you are wise; but for me, ah! what will there be? My arrows break against old hearts, and now we all are old.