Is that I love her? Going in unto her
I may unstrap my burdenous pack of kingship,
Shift me of reign, and escape my splendour.
Yea, and strange largeness in this power of love
For men too much limited! Now I am sick
Of knowing my greatness, now I want to be
Placed where my soul can feel vast room about me,
To be contained. Outside, among the men,
I am the room of the world; I and my rule
Contain the world; and I am sick thereof.
Vashti can remedy this; for here thy beauty
More spacious is for my senses to be in,
Than his own golden kingdom for the sun.

_Vashti_.
Thine eyes are glad with me? I please the King?

_Ahasuerus_.
Eyes? But there is no nerve thou takest not,
No way of my life thronging not with thee,
And my blood sounds at the story of thy beauty.
What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty?
Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all
The world, but an awning scaffolded amid
The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge
This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty?
The East and West kneel down to thee, the North
And South, and all for thee their shoulders bear
The load of fourfold place. As yellow morn
Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea,