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When he settled them on his nose he turned the letter over and read in young Sam's sprawling hand: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" "What's this? I don't understand." "Certainly you do not; no sensible person would. I showed it to my young gentleman, and requested an explanation.
Tongue out of mouth trotted the little dog after him; crouched panting when he stopped an instant; rose weariedly when he started afresh. Now and then a large white night-moth flitted through the dusk of the forest. On a barren corner of the wooded highland looking inland stood grey topless ruins set in nettles and rank grass-blades.
They were standing at the top of an immense flight of steps extending as far to right and left as they could see, and leading down by easy stages and wide landings to the white-paved city itself. The clear light flooded the scene lucid, vivid, many-peopled. Far as the eye could see, broad streets extended, lined with structures rivaling in splendour and beauty those unforgotten "topless towers."
"This night reminds me of those lines in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the ones that follow after 'Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilion? which are, to me, a trifle over-rhetorical ... the ensuing lines are more lovely: "'Fair as the evening air "'Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars, or is it 'ten thousand stars'?"
Among the accumulations of ten generations the living had left but few traces. Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book of poems. What tact! He picked it up and opened it. It was what the reviewers call "a slim volume." He read at hazard: "...But silence and the topless dark Vault in the lights of Luna Park; And Blackpool from the nightly gloom Hollows a bright tumultuous tomb."
Faustus then proceeds to enjoy all that the new order of things promised. He commands Homer to come from the realm of shades to sing his entrancing songs. He summons Helen to appear before him in the morning of her beauty. The apostrophe to her shows the vividness and exuberance of his imagination: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Is that the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? O Troy! O Helen! You'll permit me to add, with a glance at our friend Priske's predicament, O Dido! At five shillings per diem I realize the twin ambitions of a life-time and combine the supercargo with the buck. Well, well! cherchez la femme!" "You pronounce it 'share-shay?" inquired Mr. Badcock.
I am still wondering whether that topless bowl was really his own or whether he may not have filched it from some convenient dispense-khana. Meanwhile the Irani at the corner where the trams halt did a roaring trade.
There was a woman in the case a half-breed. Well, this half-breed woman fascinates me quite as much as she whose face "launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium"! In ancient times the immortal gods scourged nations for impieties; and, as we read, we feel the black shadow of inexorable fate moving through the terrific gloom of things.
To man, woman is still the siren tradition made her; she likes to be. She likes to think hers is 'the face that launched a thousand ships and fired the topless towers of Ilium. She insists that man shall set out on his high adventure in quest of her. But he is beginning to see through her. He has her fate in the test-tube of his scientific laboratories to-day.
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