________________
Respite Ah! my Master ! I ask nothing of you. I want nothing. Having witnessed the pageantry of your royal court, I have no desire to own anything else.
Whatever of the highest worth you have got, you may distribute among mankind. Ah! distribute even that which would come to my share. I do not desire anything. Let me not ask anything of you!
I have come to plead for only one thing. Allow me to tune one lyric of mine in your royal court.
That lyric I will set to music, when no one else is left before you asking for something. I wish to tune that idyll before you, but not to have anything in return.
I shall tune my lyric only when those who plead for something have departed. I know I will have to wait till then. I shall wait. But I will not depart, my Lord! till I have tuned this lyric in your presence.
For this lyric has been moulded out of the basic material of my hallowed sentiments and wrought into delineation with the benign tears aflow from
119