Explore "The Pot of Basil" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"The balcony whence our Juliet leaned to whisper to her Romeo. " Do you recall how it was mentioned earlier, with wondering if in these days lunatics still came there to gibber to the moon? I say "still," for if passion is the reverse of reason, then is not love a sort of madness? And were not these two demented things, to think that, in a chief province of despotism, love would be allowed to override all distinctions of rank and fortune? Or did they really think so, or think that disgrace and ostracism were the worst alternatives they had to face? What does it matter what they thought, or failed to think; their need was not in thinking; the fire of immortality is in the transcendent passions which take no thought, and of their seed is born all that beauty which redeems the ignoble materialism of the world.
At night all the eastern side of the palace, where it faced upon the sunk gardens, was veiled in deep shadow. Only in one place, above a secluded myrtle-grown terrace, a faintly luminous oblong showed where secret wakefulness kept still its vigil in a lighted room.