Today's Stichomancy for Alan Moore

knight, these are her very words--Tell him that the hand which dropped roses can bestow laurels."

This allusion to their meeting in the chapel of Engaddi sent a thousand recollections through Sir Kenneth's brain, and convinced him that the message delivered by the dwarf was genuine. The rosebuds, withered as they were, were still treasured under his cuirass, and nearest to his heart. He paused, and could not resolve to forego an opportunity, the only one which might ever offer, to gain grace in her eyes whom he had installed as sovereign of his affections. The dwarf, in the meantime, augmented his confusion by insisting either that he must return

Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white, That defunctive music can, Be the death-defying swan, Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow, That thy sable gender mak'st With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st, 'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.

Here the anthem doth commence: Love and constancy is dead;

are incited to adopt the worse cause in speech and course in action.[17] And with what result?--from vain and empty arguments they contract emnities, and reap the fruit of evil deeds, diseases, losses, death--to the undoing of themselves, their children, and their friends.[18] Having their senses dulled to things evil, while more than commonly alive to pleasures, how shall these be turned to good account for the salvation of the state? Yet from these evils every one will easily hold aloof, if once enamoured of those joys whose brief I hold, since a chivalrous education teaches obedience to laws, and renders justice familiar to tongue and ear.[19]

[16] See "Hellenica Essays," p. 371.