PRATTLE: Good Lord!
DE REVES: Keats never saw her. Shelley died too young. She came late at
the best of times, now scarcely ever.
PRATTLE: But, my dear fellow, you don't mean that you think there really
is such a person?
DE REVES: I offer all my songs to her.
PRATTLE: But you don't mean you think you could actually _see_ Fame?
DE REVES: We poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but
sculptors[7] and painters too. All the great things of the world are
those abstract things.
PRATTLE: But what I mean is, they're not really there, like you or me.
DE REVES: To us these things are more real than men, they outlive
generations, they watch the passing of kingdoms: we go by them like
dust; they are still there, unmoved, unsmiling.
PRATTLE: But, but, you can't think that you could _see_ Fame, you don't
expect to _see_ it?
DE REVES: Not to me. Never to me. She of the golden trumpet and Greek
dress will never appear to me.... We all have our dreams.
PRATTLE: I say--what have you been doing all day?
DE REVES: I? Oh, only writing a sonnet.
PRATTLE: Is it a long one?
DE REVES: Not very.
PRATTLE: About how long is it?
DE REVES: About fourteen lines.
PRATTLE (_impressively_): I tell you what it is.
DE REVES: Yes?
PRATTLE: I tell you what.
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