dew. Neither the white-breasted swallow nor the songful blackbird has nested there yet. The swift-footed stag, that soft-eyed creature, has not yet gone to drink from its springs. Not yet! Not yet do the tree-tops rustle on the hill-sides and the reeds by the waters. It possesses no shadow and not yet do the blue beetle and the seven-specked lady-bird sleep in the fallen leafage. Not yet have the seasons visited it
The Stripling, First Man and the Man with the Spade:
Then it is waste?
Pieris:
Then the earth was bare and waste, and the spirit of God hovered above the waters. And it was evening and it was morning, the first day.
The Stripling:
And riches, treasures?
Pieris:
Oh, treasure-house of a happy future! It is a new continent, a new paradise. The age-old dream is here becoming real. To us is granted a new world, new life. In unutterable purity gleams the naked earth. It is radiant with hopes and glows with the glory of coming ages. An immaculate, shining, uninscribed tablet awaits the advent of man, that he may mark it with his love and his spirit.
The Stripling and First Man:
Let us go there.
