_Par._ Those words shall never fade from out my brain! This earnest of the end shall never fade! Are there not, Festus, are there not, dear Michal, Two points in the adventure of the diver, One--when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge, One--when, a prince, he rises with his pearl? Festus, I plunge! _Fest._ We wait you when you rise! II. PARACELSUS ATTAINS SCENE, _Constantinople: the house of a Greek conjurer_. 1521. PARACELSUS. Over the waters in the vaporous West The sun goes down as in a sphere of gold Behind the arm of the city, which between, With all that length of domes and minarets, Athwart the splendor, black and crooked runs Like a Turk verse along a scimitar. There lie, sullen memorial, and no more Possess my aching sight! 'T is done at last. Strange--and the juggles of a sallow cheat Have won me to this act! 'T is as yon cloud Should voyage unwrecked o'er many a mountain-top And break upon a molehill. I have dared Come to a pause with knowledge; scan for once The heights already reached, without regard To the extent above; fairly compute All I have clearly gained; for once excluding A brilliant future to supply and perfect All half-gains and conjectures and crude hopes: And all because a fortune-teller wills His credulous seekers should inscribe thus much Their previous life's attainment, in his roll, Before his promised secret, as he vaunts, Make up the sum: and here, amid the scrawled Uncouth recordings of the dupes of this Old arch-genethliac, lie my life's results! A few blurred characters suffice to note A stranger wandered long through many lands And reaped the fruit he coveted in a few Discoveries, as appended here and there, The fragmentary produce of much toil, In a dim heap, fact and surmise together Confusedly massed as when acquired; he was Intent on gain to come too much to stay And scrutinize the little gained: the whole Slipt in the blank space 'twixt an idiot's gibber And a mad lover's ditty--there it lies. And yet those blottings chronicle a life-- A whole life, and my life! Nothing to do, No problem for the fancy, but a life Spent and decided, wasted past retrieve Or worthy beyond peer. Stay, what does this Remembrancer set down concerning "life"? "'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream,' It is the echo of time; and he whose heart Beat first beneath a human heart, whose speech Was copied from a human tongue, can never Recall when he was living yet knew not this. Nevertheless long seasons pass o'er him Till some one hour's experience shows what nothing, It seemed, could clearer show; and ever after, An altered brow and eye and gait and speech Attest that now he knows the adage true, 'Time fleets, youth fades, life is an empty dream.'"