Of fair and exquisite, oh, nothing, nothing,
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.

OCTAVIO (attentive, with an appearance of uneasiness).
And so your journey has revealed this to you?

MAX.
'Twas the first leisure of my life. O tell me,
What is the meed and purpose of the toil,
The painful toil which robbed me of my youth,
Left me a heart unsouled and solitary,
A spirit uninformed, unornamented!
For the camp's stir, and crowd, and ceaseless larum,
The neighing war-horse, the air-shattering trumpet,
The unvaried, still returning hour of duty,
Word of command, and exercise of arms--
There's nothing here, there's nothing in all this,
To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart!
Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not--
This cannot be the sole felicity,
These cannot be man's best and only pleasures!

OCTAVIO.
Much hast thou learnt, my son, in this short journey.

MAX.
Oh day, thrice lovely! when at length the soldier
Returns home into life; when he becomes
A fellow-man among his fellow-men.
The colors are unfurled, the cavalcade