The Golden Doom

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Persons THE KING CHAMBERLAIN CHIEF PROPHET GIRL BOY SPIES FIRST PROPHET SECOND PROPHET FIRST SENTRY SECOND SENTRY STRANGER ATTENDANTS

SCENE: Outside the King's great door in Zericon.

TIME: Some while before the fall of Babylon.

{Two Sentries pace to and fro, then halt, one on each side of the great door.}

First Sentry:

The day is deadly sultry.

Second Sentry:

I would that I were swimming down the Gyshon, on the cool side, under the fruit trees.

First Sentry:

It is like to thunder or the fall of a dynasty.

Second Sentry:

It will grow cool by night-fall. Where is the King?

First Sentry:

He rows in his golden barge with ambassadors or whispers with captains concerning future wars. The stars spare him!

Second Sentry:

Why do you say "the stars spare him"?

First Sentry:

Because if a doom from the stars fall suddenly on a king it swallows up his people and all things round about him, and his palace falls and the walls of his city and citadel, and the apes come in from the woods and the large beasts from the desert, so that you would not say that a king had been there at all.

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