[As a man would hold fast to the ruined timbers of his ship that he might spare himself from drowning, so too does Achilles clasp his companion's hand there where it rests upon his shoulder. The tears that have gathered in his eyes at last grow too heavy for his eyelashes to hold, and so they fall as rain would burst from a storm-swollen cloud. Patroclus speaks and all the while he shakes his head, mired still in disbelief: never has it been he who is left behind in his lover's wake.]
It shall not be enough - no matter how fully swells my love for her, it shall never be enough while still you hold my heart too. This she has made quite plain. It matters not that I love her as ever man has loved his wife, nor that I have cherished her more each day since first we lay together upon the shores of Nalawi. All the moments we have shared in one another's company are now as nothing to her, worth no more than the soot upon the hearth!
[For in her words, he loves Patroclus more. In his thinking he cannot love one more and another less, for no fair comparison can be drawn between the two, just as man cannot declare whether bread or wine is best when he requires both to sustain himself. The two loves that beat within his breast are of separate strains, the love one has for his wife and the love one has for his brother in arms, his second self. He cannot say how it is that both may nestle side by side; he knows only that this is so.]
What Olivia desires is that I harbor only her within my heart. Thus no love-sweet words shall ever persuade her. Death itself, which conquers even the best of men and kidnaps them into the house of Hades, had not the strength to take away my love for you. Just as I have loved you even after you were cast through death's hated gates, so shall I love you after I too have gone by that same grim path. Nor would I choose to leave off loving you if I could, as this would make a traitor of me.
[His words pour forth like the spray of the sea, the froth formed of its waves as upon the rocks they crash, carrying all at once his anguish, his confusion, his indignation.]
no subject
It shall not be enough - no matter how fully swells my love for her, it shall never be enough while still you hold my heart too. This she has made quite plain. It matters not that I love her as ever man has loved his wife, nor that I have cherished her more each day since first we lay together upon the shores of Nalawi. All the moments we have shared in one another's company are now as nothing to her, worth no more than the soot upon the hearth!
[For in her words, he loves Patroclus more. In his thinking he cannot love one more and another less, for no fair comparison can be drawn between the two, just as man cannot declare whether bread or wine is best when he requires both to sustain himself. The two loves that beat within his breast are of separate strains, the love one has for his wife and the love one has for his brother in arms, his second self. He cannot say how it is that both may nestle side by side; he knows only that this is so.]
What Olivia desires is that I harbor only her within my heart. Thus no love-sweet words shall ever persuade her. Death itself, which conquers even the best of men and kidnaps them into the house of Hades, had not the strength to take away my love for you. Just as I have loved you even after you were cast through death's hated gates, so shall I love you after I too have gone by that same grim path. Nor would I choose to leave off loving you if I could, as this would make a traitor of me.
[His words pour forth like the spray of the sea, the froth formed of its waves as upon the rocks they crash, carrying all at once his anguish, his confusion, his indignation.]