[_The_ QUEEN _runs to the small door. She looks out._
OOZIZI: Lady! Lady!
QUEEN: Oozizi.
OOZIZI: Lady! Lady! You must never leave the palace. You must never
leave it. You must not.
QUEEN: Hark, it is quiet now.
OOZIZI: Lady, it would be terrible to leave the golden palace. Who would
reign? What would happen?
QUEEN: It is quiet now. What would happen, Oozizi?
OOZIZI: The world would end.
QUEEN: It is quiet now; perhaps I need not fly.
OOZIZI: Lady, you must not.
QUEEN: And yet I would fain go over those green fields all gleaming with
summer, and see the golden hoards that no man guards, glittering with
such a light as glows this June.
OOZIZI: O, speak not, great lady, of the green fields and June. It is
these that have intoxicated the Princes so that they do this unrecorded
thing, letting sound of them be heard in your sacred room.
QUEEN: Has June intoxicated them, Oozizi?
OOZIZI: Oh, lady, speak not of June.
QUEEN: Is June so terrible?
[_She returns towards_ OOZIZI.
OOZIZI: It does strange things.
[_The noise breaks out again._
Hark!
[_The_ QUEEN _runs to the door again._ OOZIZI _stretches out her arms to
the_ QUEEN.
O, lady, never leave the golden palace.
[_The_ QUEEN _listens; all is silent; she looks outside._
QUEEN: I see the green fields gleaming. Strange flowers are standing
among them, like princes I have not known.
OOZIZI: Oh, lady, speak not of the bewildering fields. They are all
enchanted with Summer, and they have maddened the Princes. It is
dangerous to look at them, lady.
[_The_ QUEEN _gazes on over the fields._
And yet you look.
QUEEN: I would fain go far over the strange soft fields; far and far to
the high heathery lands----
OOZIZI: Lady, all is quiet; there is no danger; you must not leave the
palace.
QUEEN: Yes, all is quiet.
[_The_ QUEEN _returns._
OOZIZI: It was a passing madness seized the Princes.
QUEEN: Oozizi, when I hear the sound of all their feet it is dreadful,
and I must fly. And when I see the wonderful fields in the sunlight
sloping away to lands I have never known, then I long to fly away and
away for ever, passing from field to field and land to land.
OOZIZI: Lady, no, no!
QUEEN: Oozizi.
OOZIZI: Yes, great lady.
QUEEN: There is a mountain there that towers above the earth. It goes up
into a calm of which our world knows nothing. Heaven, like a cloak, is
draped about its shoulders. Why have none told me of this mountain,
Oozizi?
OOZIZI (_awed_): Aether Mountain.
QUEEN: Why has none told me?
OOZIZI: When your glorious mother, lady, loved for a day ...
QUEEN: Yes, Oozizi ...
OOZIZI: She went, as all songs tell, to Aether Mountain.
QUEEN (_entranced_): To Aether Mountain?
OOZIZI: So they sing at evening, when they throw down their loads of
gold and rest.
QUEEN: To Aether Mountain.
OOZIZI: Lady, Destiny sent her; but you must not go. You must not leave
your throne to go to Aether Mountain.
QUEEN: There is a calm upon it not of earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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