Excerpt from The Heart of Youth AS muscular a Princess, take my word, As ever bloomed in gardens. Ah, but wait! We'll have her dying soon, and pale as death; And Babelin with horror in his eyes, Crying, Relent! Oh, punish me no more But that's our story. (the boys have one by one edged over to the right and disappeared.) Well, you've seen our players, And laughed at them a bit; and that was right. For they were only boys in paint and wig, Meant to be laughed at, boys like other boys, Your boys and mine. But once the play begins Forego the laughter. They are ours no more. The little while you sit upon this slope And watch our story like deep waters flow Before your eyes, now calm, now full of storm, They are not Of this world. A little while They put their souls to sleep, and lend to ghosts From other worlds the bodies that are theirs. They do not act, they are the Saint, the Duke, The hero-villain, the fair, fragile maid. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.